Fic - The Battle's Almost Won (Mark/Lexie) 1/3
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There is a conference in Boston and Lexie goes because it is sort of her job to do so now and because her boss is - to put it nicely - forcing her. The frustration isn’t due to the fact that she minds a pseudo paid mini-vacation in the middle of a work-week, but instead that she would much rather be taking care of patients rather than sitting in lectures for what feels like seventy-two hours straight on how to take care of patients. Of course, there is also the matter that the three-day, evidence based practice research symposium culminates with Lexie and her mentor giving a summation of their findings.
Before some of the greatest minds the medical industry has to offer.
Which is, well, first and foremost it is an honor and privilege. It is also extremely intimidating. The Lexie Grey of here and now is not very easily intimidated, but still her stomach rolls at the mere thought of standing before a bunch of people that were both more qualified and much more intelligent than she is.
She is on what feels like hour eighteen - but in reality is only hour six - returning from lunch, coffee in one hand and her blackberry in the other when she runs smack dab into somebody else, hard. She is too busy answering the million and one text-messages her residents have sent her instead of giving her full attention to just where exactly she is headed. Because Lexie never developed her mother’s grace and instead possesses her father’s distinct lack of it, she manages to spill her brand new macchiato all over somebody’s crisp, white linen shirt in the process.
On reflex, Lexie reaches out, face a picture of pure mortification as she tries to blot the brown stain with the sleeve of her jacket, mumbling I’m sorry, I’m so sorry over and over again before realizing she is just making matters worse. The stain just keeps spreading and the edge of her coat is now soaked nearly all the way through. For all of her intelligence, Lexie has never quite learned how to excel at stopping while she is ahead.
The man laughs, reaching out to still her hands with his own, and when she looks upwards, she is hit with a wave of vertigo, the entire world tilting on its axis around her.
After Seattle, the next time Lexie Grey sees Mark Sloan is when she is just two weeks shy of her thirtieth birthday.
“I heard you went into plastics.”
They are standing near the complimentary refreshment table, Mark dipping napkins into a glass of water and trying to make the very large stain on what Lexie can only imagine is a very expensive shirt less noticeable. It’s not working. With an arched eyebrow, she reaches out again to help him, only to pull back, stung, when his fingers graze her own. She breathes and laughs awkwardly, turns to watch people mull about around them, and checks her watch. The next lecture starts in five minutes.
“Yeah, well, somebody once told me that it wasn’t all rhinoplasties and boob jobs,” she jokes, or at least tries to joke because it falls flat. Mark still smiles, giving up on his shirt and sliding his jacket back over his shoulders in an effort to cover the stain. It doesn’t work either; the stain seeps out from underneath his left lapel. He motions with his thumb to the auditorium behind his shoulder, and without thought she falls in line beside him as they make their way in that direction.
“How are you, Lexie?” Mark asks after a moment. His voice is soft, kind, so utterly familiar and she breathes and takes a small step back, placing some much needed distance between them.
Still, after all this time, he has this effect on her. Lexie isn’t quite sure what to make of that. Isn’t quite sure what to make of anything - her head is spinning, congested with memories she hadn’t allowed herself to remember, hadn’t allowed herself to indulge in quite some time. Lexie’s first, initial thought is that he looks good. He looks rested, fit, still graying around the temples, but essentially the same as when she last saw him five years ago. Her immediate, just as important second thought is she really wishes she would have put some make-up on or worn something other than the suit she’s had since her medical school interview that is about a size and half too big.
Still, she smiles. “I’m doing well. Really well, actually. You?”
“The same. Still at Mass Gen?”
“More or less. Still at Seattle Grace?”
He grins, and some things never change, she finds, because something settles deep in the pit of her belly in response, her ears tinged red along the edges. “More or less,” he says.
There are only two seats available - one on the far right of the room and another on the far left. They pause on the outskirts of the audience, watching as the lecturer starts to make his way to the podium at center stage. There is a short span of time where they just sort of look each other and the whole thing is just entirely way too surreal for Lexie - seeing Mark Sloan here, in her city, years and what feels like lifetimes after she knew him. It is almost like something out of the movies, really, the whole meet-cute with the music swelling in the background and just the right dash of awkwardness that would make anyone with a heart cringe.
Nodding her head to the left she says quietly, “I’m going to go this way,” because self-preservation has been a way of life for so long that it’s all she knows, all she breathes, and putting actual tangible distance between them is the only way Lexie knows how to keep Mark Sloan from muddying the well-defined boundaries of her life. She takes a moment to pause, allowing her eyes to sweep over him one last time. Makes a memory of him like she used to. Sighing softly, mostly to herself, she says, “It was really great seeing you, Mark.”
His grin is almost wistful. “Maybe we’ll see each other after?”
Lexie just smiles, mumbling a quiet and half-hearted sure before walking away.
(“You ever think of getting out here?” Sadie asked her once.
She took Lexie out for a drink before she left Seattle behind for good, and Lexie smiled softly in that quiet way of hers, fingering the beer bottle between her fingers and just shrugged.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, feigning innocence because it was always on her mind, really, the idea of leaving, even if she would never admit it aloud.
“I mean,” Sadie drew out the word and traced a lone finger over the rim of her glass. They had been there for an hour, maybe two, and Lexie’s shoulders were tense from lack of sleep, from sheer exhaustion and she really, really just wanted to go home. Sadie had asked, though, all sheepish smiles and a gentle touch to her forearm and Lexie had a hard time saying no to people, and really, what was the harm? “I mean,” she repeated firmly, “there is more to life than living in Meredith Grey’s shadow.”
It’s kind of uneventful, that meeting. It was pretty much akin to all the other nights she had at Joe’s with Sadie. But when Lexie looks back on it somewhere down the line (and she will, mind you, because hindsight is always twenty-twenty and there are some lessons that are always harder to learn than others) she will remember first, always, the way Sadie had smiled then. How the curve of her lips was tight and brittle, and without mirth. Lexie will look back on it and remember how chilling it had been to watch the warmth flow completely out of somebody in a five-second time span.
They day after, Lexie envied Sadie a little in some far off and removed type of way. Envied her for leaving, for moving on, for forging paths on her on terms, and in her own way. But it that moment it’s nothing. Lexie pressed her lips into a thin line and didn’t quite understand yet what any of it meant.
Sadie threw back the rest of her drink in a single swig and pushed the glass away from her as she reached for her jacket and shrugged it on.
“I really, really hope it takes you less time to figure that out than it did me, Lexie,” she said quietly, throwing a few bills onto the countertop and grabbing her purse.
And that was that.)
Of course, Lexie spends the next three hours thinking about him, about them, about Seattle and all the things she had worked so hard to bury and forget over the past five years.
The lecturer drones on and on about things Lexie would normally find fascinating, but now tunes out as she remembers things she wishes she didn’t. Like, for example, the heavy weight of his lips against hers, the feel of his hands and mouth between her legs, the subtle weight of him as he pressed over her, against her, inside of her. It’s too much all at once - the remembering, him being here, and she squirms in her seat, crinkles the program between her fingers.
Lexie turns in his direction, just once, not all that surprised to see him returning the gesture.
He smiles slowly and she can count the lines on his face near the corner of his mouth from all the way across the room from memory alone. There are some things you can never forget. No matter how hard you may try, some things just have a way of sticking, imprinting themselves on every fiber of your being.
Mark Sloan is apparently one of them.
Smiling tightly in return, Lexie shifts in her seat once more to get comfortable. She compartmentalizes and files away all things related to Mark and tries to focus all of her attention on the lecturer and his heroic and groundbreaking movements in the arena of plastics.
It doesn’t work.
After the lecture, she lingers in the entryway. There is a friend of a friend from Hopkins who she knows in passing and he's talking about dinner and some drinks, but all Lexie can focus on is the hard line of Mark's shoulders out of the corner of her eye. He's surrounded by a sea of people - faces she recognizes, some she doesn't. Mark has been in the news lately because of his efforts in advancing and mainstreaming intricate techniques in burn grafting. Lexie would be lying if she said she hadn't kept up with his work, if she denied being able to recite his research paper from memory or didn't have a million and one facets of it she wanted to pick his brain over.
Mark turns suddenly, meeting her eyes and she startles, jerks her attention back to the young, handsome doctor standing in front of her. She tries instead to focus on him, but gets lost in her own thoughts again when she tries to remember his name and fails miserably. He's been talking and talking, but Lexie couldn't even begin to say about what. Instead, she nods absently, lips curling when appropriate. Her smile widens across her mouth involuntarily when she sees Mark excuse himself and make his way over to her.
"So drinks?" The cute handsome doctor from Hopkins whose name she cannot remember asks, and Lexie stutters a bit, surprised. She has never been more thankful for Mark than she is when he strolls over to her, forcing himself between her and Handsome Doctor From Hopkins and mumbling you ready to go? Lexie beams at him, offering an apology to the other guy whilst making empty promises of another time.
When they are out of earshot, Mark laughs softly. Mumbles, "Looked like you could use an out."
While she is mostly the same person she was in Seattle, it has been years since Mark has known her, and there has been some shifting and subtle changes along the way. Lexie doesn't say thank you but instead I had it covered with an accompanying smile that takes a bit of the edge out of her words.
Mark nods. Says, "I realize this may be awkward and I might be stepping over some unseen line, but I'd really like to have dinner and... I don't know... catch up?"
He's hopeful, and Lexie doesn't think, doesn't take the time to second-guess herself or this before she breathes, "I know this great place."
(During those early weeks, when she was lonely and still horribly in love with Mark, she would call him after a hard shift or a few too many at the bar.
Sometimes Mark would pick up and other times he wouldn’t. When he did she was hardly ever greeted with a hello or some version thereof. It was always a long stretch of silence that wore her too thin, that forced her into closing her eyes just so she could imagine him, every bit of him. If she tried hard enough, she could picture him perfectly - in the on call room or the apartment she heard from Meredith or Derek that he bought, the one with three bedrooms and wide-open spaces for the family and life he wanted with her and she hadn’t been ready to give.
During those early weeks, Lexie would allow the longing and regret to get the best of her. She would call, dial his number from memory and allow the silence to comfort her, allow the sound of his breathing to settle deep under her skin, into her bones and wait for him to say something, anything. Lexie would wait for him to say her name the way he used to: the two syllables strung together with a sigh, the left corner of his mouth twitching upwards, and allow the familiar weight of it to settle near the base of her spine.
Sometimes they would talk and sometimes they wouldn’t.
Until one night he answered, his voice tired and hardened by the distance between them as he breathed her name in lieu of a greeting.
“You have to stop doing this,” he said. “You need to stop calling… it’s just… it is too much. It just hurts too much, okay?”
Lexie reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. The tequila mixed with bile in the back of her throat and she swallowed around it, turning onto her side and drawing her knees to her chest as she curled deeper into herself.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she repeated. Her words slur embarrassingly. “You’re right. You are absolutely right.”
There was silence and tears stinging her eyes and she reached up with her free hand to wipe at them angrily. Blamed it all on the alcohol and not something else entirely.
Sighing again, Mark said, “You left for a reason, Lexie. Doing this it’s just… it’s a step backwards and it’s just -”
“Too much?” she supplied for him.
He paused before breathing, “Yeah.”
“Okay,” she swallowed, nodding to the empty air around her. “Okay.”
There was silence, again, and Lexie heard it pounding in her ears, the finality of the moment palpable, mixing with the acridness in the back of her throat as the room and world continued to spin on their axes around that moment with him. She remembered things in spurts - images of the time they spent together bright and hazy at once, the way he loved her wholly and unashamedly and how she wasn’t ready, didn’t quite understand how to return the gesture.
“Goodbye, Lexie,” he said quietly, his parting gift, and before she had the opportunity to reply the line went silent.)
She takes him to this little hole in the wall restaurant she discovered during those first few weeks in Boston. It's nothing fancy, just a nice place to come to when she is looking for a good meal and cheap booze. It’s familiar to her after all of these years, and everyone knows her by name - as soon as she walks in there is a round of hellos rattled off in her direction. She answers every single one in kind. The hostess immediately sits her in her favorite spot near the back, the one just far enough from the bar so she could hear herself think, but close enough so she could watch the drunken shenanigans that start during happy hour and continue well into the night.
Jamie, her favorite waitress and close friend, brings menus and Lexie’s customary rum and diet. They've known each other for years now, know each other in the confines of this bar and the real world, and Jamie can usually tell when Lexie is in need of her regular standby or something harder, something the burns her throat on the way down and promptly takes the edge of thereafter. Because Jamie knows Lexie, her smile is wide and teasing as she looks between Lexie and Mark with approval. Mark orders a beer, and as Jamie walks away, she gives Lexie a non-overt display of approval in the from of an exaggerated thumbs up and mouthing he's cute as she walks backwards towards the bar.
With her face flushing slightly, Lexie resists the urge to release the laugh bubbling in the back of her throat.
It's awkward at first, being here with him. Her bravado starts to fall and Lexie starts to second-guess herself. There have been other men since Mark. Some lasted longer than others, but she's never brought them here, to this place, to this part of her life. Lexie thinks it is entirely way too telling that she did so with Mark tonight without thought. He's back in her life for less than twelve hours with no intention of staying and he's already seeping into the crevices of it that have remained untouched for so long.
After Jamie takes their order and brings Mark his beer, she spends a short time conducting a thorough yet heartfelt interrogation that lasts just long enough to make both Mark and Lexie uncomfortable. After, when they are left to their own devices, there is a lull of silence that stretches Lexie's nerves thin, has her shifting in her seat and crumbling her napkin between her fingers just to give her hands something to do. But when Mark starts asking questions and Lexie starts replying with some of her own, things start to feel more natural, less awkward. She finally gets to ask him about his research, trying so very hard not to gush over how enthralled she is by it all. Mark gets riled up over it, all loud tones and wide, open arms; her million questions and his overly detailed but appreciated responses fill time during dinner and well past paying the check.
"So," he starts, then stops, reaching up to rub at the beard on his chin like he always used to when he was thinking about what to say and just exactly how to say it. "Have you been seeing anyone?" The words leave his mouth in a rush, like he's been waiting to ask her that very question since they sat down at the table more than four hours ago. She thinks he probably has.
Lexie smiles and looks away, draws the tip of her finger over the rim of the glass of water she switched to two hours ago. "No," she says. "Not really." Before she loses her nerve she adds, "You?" almost as an hopeful afterthought.
Mark's grin is nearly blinding. "No. Not really."
To say that things feel inevitable after that would be an understatement.
He walks the few blocks over to the hospital with her, because he has always been that sort of guy with her. Even if he had tried to hide it under the women and talk that screamed otherwise. The conversation eventually dies and after all they are left with are the shuffling sounds of their shoes against the pavement and the swinging of arms. His hand lingers near hers, fingers brushing fingers every so often as they walk, and Lexie hates herself, just a little, for how much she wants him. How much she wants to fall back into old patterns with him and for how often today she has imagined leaning in, breathing him in, and just connecting her mouth with his.
Lexie hates herself because she was never this easy before him.
She was also never this easy after him either, but she doesn't really like to think about that.
When the hospital finally looms in the distance, she starts walking a single step ahead, putting some distance between them without trying to make it noticeable. If he notices, he doesn't react, only increases his pace to keep up, to stay in place by her side.
History serves as a guide and she knows where this is very probably heading: his hotel room, between his sheets, the familiar arching of backs. If she's honest with herself, Lexie would fully admit that she isn't completely opposed to the idea. It wasn't a lie when she told Mark she wasn't seeing anyone, but it wasn't the complete truth either. There is an ER resident that has nice hands and a very nice mouth and she allows him to show her a good time every so often. It's just sex. Nothing more, nothing less. Absolutely zero strings attached.
She and Mark approach the proverbial fork in the road where she heads to the hospital and eventually her apartment, he goes right, towards his hotel. She thinks about calling Cute ER Resident once she is safely away from Mark and all that he represents - her old life, their old life, all of the things she convinced herself she didn't want once upon a time. She could call him just to get it out of her system, to keep herself from making a mistake that is destined to leave a lasting, irrevocable impact because sex with Mark, while great, could never just be sex. Experience has taught her that.
Which is why when they reach the intersection where she needs to keep going straight and he needs to veer off in her own direction, she doesn't linger, doesn’t allow him to move in for a hug or a kiss on the cheek. Lexie definitely does not allow herself to move in and brush her lips against his just so she can indulge in the very thing she has wanted to do since she sat down across from him at dinner.
Instead, she mumbles, "It's late," and allows the words to speak for themselves.
Mark nods. "Yeah, you're right." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, shoves his other hand deep into his pocket. "It is late. And we've got an early morning tomorrow. But, I'd, uh," he stops, laughs lowly to himself. He's nervous and it shows and she kind of loves it and hates it at the same time. "I'd like to do this again. Tomorrow, maybe?"
Lexie thinks better of it, but still replies, "Yeah. I'd like that," because her heart has always had serious problems keeping up with her head.
They say their goodbyes and she watches him walk away for a short moment before continuing on, one last linger glance thrown over her shoulder as she watches the sight of his retreating back. Her fingers unconsciously reach for her cell phone, thumb scrolling through her contacts, hovering over the Cute ER Resident’s name. She sends him a text. It is a pointless and transparent, what are you doing right now?
As soon as she clicks send she regrets it immediately, and clicks the phone off to subvert his reply. Instead, continuing past the hospital to her apartment, Lexie spends the rest of the night doing exactly what she had planned to do before Mark Sloan strolled back into her life: charting, practicing her presentation, and checking to make sure her residents hadn't managed to screw anything up too horribly in her absence.
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