Fic - The Song Beneath the Song (Lexie, Mark/Lexie) pg-15, 1/1
Title: The Song Beneath the Song
Summary: It's a self defense mechanism, she rationalizes, because sometimes you need something to hold on to -- no matter what it is.
Rating:pg-15
Author's Note: 1,865 words. General series spoilers. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Maria Taylor for the title. Feedback is a lovely, lovely thing.
It starts with a look, a touch of his fingers between her shoulder blades, soft and fleeting, and any rational human being would have thought nothing of it. Would have filed it away as one of those non-existent things and kept moving forward.
But Lexie’s Lexie and while she’s good at compartmentalizing (father’s alcoholism? Check. Mother’s death? Check. A half sister who hates the mere thought of her existence? Check) there are some things she holds onto like a lifeline and hits the ground running with before she can stop herself.
(Self defense mechanism, she rationalizes, because sometimes you just need something to hold on to, no matter what it is.)
___
“So. You and George?”
It’s late, almost morning actually, and he’s letting her stitch a patient’s scalp back together.
She gives a short little laugh and wonders how many days she can make it without seeing her roommate. It’s been two so far. She’s trying to go for three.
“Over,” is all she says, putting the needle to the thread with immaculate precision. “And really, I don’t think that’s an appropriate statement. How can something be over if it never really began, right?”
“It began for you,” he says, all serious-like, and when she looks up, he’s regarding her in an almost odd way.
Lexie looks down almost immediately, suturing through the uncertainty.
She never falters.
___
There’s coffee one morning.
Well, really, what happens is she runs into him and Derek at the place across the street and Mark swoops in behind her, all faux gentleman like (and she’d stress this particularly upon prompting because if there was one adjective Lexie would absolutely not use to describe Mark Sloan it’s gentleman-like) and puts it on his tab.
Lexie smiles and he smiles back and Derek clears his throat and looks angry and before she can even say thank - you, they’re out the door.
___
Alright, looking back the whole appendectomy on a fellow resident thing? Not the best of ideas. And when Cristina takes the blame, she does feel bad. And it’s not like her, really, this whole thing. She’s not a follower. She’s not the type of person who confronts potentially hazardous situations head on.
Lexie likes to think that she’s strong-willed and independent, more like Meredith in that regard than her older sister would like, and maybe it was all about learning and Cristina teaching her absolute shit about medicine, but maybe it was about other things, too.
Maybe it was them looking at her like she was their leader, their friend, and it was like she wasn’t so alone anymore. Like she had somebody besides her best friend who really only considers her his best friend because he slept with his other best friend and it didn’t exactly work out in his favor.
(And maybe, just maybe, the fact that Meredith takes her in after, starts regarding her with something other than utter distaste makes it worth it.)
___
Meredith lets her stay for a while, and Lexie’s thankful, but knows it’s more out of obligation than anything else. So Lexie starts staying later at the hospital, sleeping in the on call room some nights, and using the hidden key under the mat after everyone’s gone to sleep and sneaking out in the morning before everyone’s up.
At night, Lexie will lay there and think of her mom, of her father, of all the things in her life she wishes she could have done differently.
Sometimes, she thinks about taking a year off. Just dropping out and traveling to Europe, have the experiences that all her friends got to have. She thinks about her life and how utterly safe it is. College, med school, even George, really. She thinks about how becoming a doctor was more a result of being smart and ridiculously good at science than anything else.
She can’t help but think about how falling for George was a result of her fixating on the only constant in her life full of shifting and going with it. She can’t help but think that the state her life is in now is irrevocably intertwined with George and the fall she never wanted to make.
For all her intelligence, Lexie muses, she really should have known better.
___
There are drinks, too.
It happens, however, much like the coffee. She’s at the bar, ordering herself a beer, and he slides up behind her, leans in close, and slips the bartender a bill before she gets a chance to.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He grins. “I know that,” then, while he’s waiting, appraises her up and down, and she’s a woman and he is Mark Sloane and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t affect her, just a little. “Beer? Little Grey, I didn’t picture you as a beer chick.”
“Well,” she says, bottle between her fingers as she turns on her heels. “I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
And then she leaves, and if she turns around a second later, just a bit to catch his smirk that has a hint of something behind it, well, sue her.
___
“It’s not that I don’t care about you,” George says one night, all sheepish grins and long sighs, and Lexie can’t help but look at him and wonder how she let herself get this far deep. “I do.”
It’s been weeks since he passed his test and left her in the dust, all broken-hearted and disappointed. It’s been weeks since she laid it out there the best she could and he still didn’t get it. She’s never been terribly good at these things - there have been boys, yes, and she’s a quick study, but Lexie has always traded a good time for good grades and up until now she’s never really regretted it. Up until now it didn’t matter.
Now she just wishes this weren’t the only thing she wasn’t inherently good at.
“Don’t,” she says, stopping him. “I don’t need the it’s not you, it’s me speech, Ok?”
“Lexie-“
“I’m a big girl, George. I don’t need you to placate me. I just need honesty.”
George says nothing, just looks at her for a long, long time.
She wants to hate him for it, want to scream and yell and say, that’s it? That’s all I get? until he gets it, but doesn’t.
She’s just too tired.
___
“Have you been sleeping on the on-call room?”
She’s suturing another patient, with Mark on the other side of the gurney, and if they’re not careful, this might constitute the forming of a habit.
“No.”
“You’re here when I leave. You’re here when I arrive in the morning. Do you ever go home?”
“Do you make it your duty to track all the intern’s coming and goings?”
Mark smiles effortlessly, teeth and all, and it’s predatory almost. Like the real Mark Sloane of things past is still hiding somewhere underneath and all this claimed change is just a front.
“Only the good ones.”
She just smirks in response.
___
“Coffee,” he says one morning, pre-rounds. He runs into her in the hallway while she’s on her way to fetch something unimportant for Cristina. Mark shoves it into her hands.
“You brought me coffee?”
He shrugs. “You look tired.”
“When people say that it’s usually a tactful way of saying you look like shit.”
“Have you ever know me to use even an ounce of tact, Grey?”
Another smirk and Lexie sips her coffee. “Guess not. No.”
“Don’t read into this,” he warns..
But she already is.
___
There is one particularly shitty day. They lose seven patients, five of them kids, and Lexie has always taken those more to heart than the others. She’s knee-deep in going over the past day, backwards and forward, all the things they could have done differently when he comes up behind her, hand to shoulder, startling her.
“You want to go grab a beer?” he asks in a rush, almost as if he was trying to get it out before he could rethink it, and Lexie looks around and notices they’re the last ones left.
“Sure,” she says. “Why the hell not?”
And really, why not?
___
The thing about Lexie is that she’s a flirty drunk. She gets all touchy-feeling, saying things she’ll regret in the morning, leaning in too close, so when she asks bluntly, “have you ever fucked Meredith?” she doesn’t feel regretful right away, but the taste is already budding on her tongue.
Mark just laughs.
“Oh, God,” she blanches, eyes wide, and downs the rest of her beer. Her seventh beer to be exact. “You have. That’s disgusting. That’s wrong. So, so wrong.”
“Clam down. I haven’t. I wouldn’t.” he says, still laughing, and in her inebriated mind, she kind of likes his laugh. Likes the way it makes her feel warm and fuzzy all over.
Then again, that might just be the booze.
“I have a hard time believing that.”
“Believing what?”
“That there’s a woman in this world you wouldn’t fuck.”
Mark downs his fifth scotch and winces. “Let’s just say, been there, done that, and screwing someone attached to Derek isn’t worth the trouble.”
“hmmm,” she sort of hums out, and raises her hand for Joe to bring her another beer. He’s quick with the uptake, and before she knows it there’s another bottle in her hands and she’s taking another long swig. Mark is watching her every move, appreciative almost. “You know what I think?”
“What could that possibly be?”
“I think you fuck women because you’re lonely. I don’t really think you’re that big of an asshole, I think you’re just sick of being alone.”
His eyes widen a bit, the muscle in his cheek twitching and she swallows, afraid that she might have crossed over that imaginary line they’d agreed somewhere along the way to keep between them.
But he doesn’t react, doesn’t get angry. Just leans in, the smell of aftershave and scotch flooding her senses as she breathes him in. She has to remind herself to breathe.
“Maybe that’s what I want you to think.”
She giggles and he smirks. “Maybe I want you to want me to think that.”
It’s right out of the movies, this moment, with their gazes flowing from eyes to lips and back again.
___
It’s her who breathes the classic you want to get out of here, her breath in his ear, face so close to his that she can feel his smile against her cheek.
Later, in the cab, it’s him who kisses her though, palms framing her face, lips against hers and it is all built up tension, and sloppy drunkenness. Everything she never thought it would be and more. She kisses him back, arms winding around his neck, teeth dragging his bottom lip between her own.
It’s all kinds of wrong, all kinds of stupid, but Lexie grabs a hold of it, whatever it is, and hits the ground running.
He is Mark Sloan and maybe, well, maybe she’s just sick of playing it safe.
Summary: It's a self defense mechanism, she rationalizes, because sometimes you need something to hold on to -- no matter what it is.
Rating:pg-15
Author's Note: 1,865 words. General series spoilers. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Maria Taylor for the title. Feedback is a lovely, lovely thing.
It starts with a look, a touch of his fingers between her shoulder blades, soft and fleeting, and any rational human being would have thought nothing of it. Would have filed it away as one of those non-existent things and kept moving forward.
But Lexie’s Lexie and while she’s good at compartmentalizing (father’s alcoholism? Check. Mother’s death? Check. A half sister who hates the mere thought of her existence? Check) there are some things she holds onto like a lifeline and hits the ground running with before she can stop herself.
(Self defense mechanism, she rationalizes, because sometimes you just need something to hold on to, no matter what it is.)
___
“So. You and George?”
It’s late, almost morning actually, and he’s letting her stitch a patient’s scalp back together.
She gives a short little laugh and wonders how many days she can make it without seeing her roommate. It’s been two so far. She’s trying to go for three.
“Over,” is all she says, putting the needle to the thread with immaculate precision. “And really, I don’t think that’s an appropriate statement. How can something be over if it never really began, right?”
“It began for you,” he says, all serious-like, and when she looks up, he’s regarding her in an almost odd way.
Lexie looks down almost immediately, suturing through the uncertainty.
She never falters.
___
There’s coffee one morning.
Well, really, what happens is she runs into him and Derek at the place across the street and Mark swoops in behind her, all faux gentleman like (and she’d stress this particularly upon prompting because if there was one adjective Lexie would absolutely not use to describe Mark Sloan it’s gentleman-like) and puts it on his tab.
Lexie smiles and he smiles back and Derek clears his throat and looks angry and before she can even say thank - you, they’re out the door.
___
Alright, looking back the whole appendectomy on a fellow resident thing? Not the best of ideas. And when Cristina takes the blame, she does feel bad. And it’s not like her, really, this whole thing. She’s not a follower. She’s not the type of person who confronts potentially hazardous situations head on.
Lexie likes to think that she’s strong-willed and independent, more like Meredith in that regard than her older sister would like, and maybe it was all about learning and Cristina teaching her absolute shit about medicine, but maybe it was about other things, too.
Maybe it was them looking at her like she was their leader, their friend, and it was like she wasn’t so alone anymore. Like she had somebody besides her best friend who really only considers her his best friend because he slept with his other best friend and it didn’t exactly work out in his favor.
(And maybe, just maybe, the fact that Meredith takes her in after, starts regarding her with something other than utter distaste makes it worth it.)
___
Meredith lets her stay for a while, and Lexie’s thankful, but knows it’s more out of obligation than anything else. So Lexie starts staying later at the hospital, sleeping in the on call room some nights, and using the hidden key under the mat after everyone’s gone to sleep and sneaking out in the morning before everyone’s up.
At night, Lexie will lay there and think of her mom, of her father, of all the things in her life she wishes she could have done differently.
Sometimes, she thinks about taking a year off. Just dropping out and traveling to Europe, have the experiences that all her friends got to have. She thinks about her life and how utterly safe it is. College, med school, even George, really. She thinks about how becoming a doctor was more a result of being smart and ridiculously good at science than anything else.
She can’t help but think about how falling for George was a result of her fixating on the only constant in her life full of shifting and going with it. She can’t help but think that the state her life is in now is irrevocably intertwined with George and the fall she never wanted to make.
For all her intelligence, Lexie muses, she really should have known better.
___
There are drinks, too.
It happens, however, much like the coffee. She’s at the bar, ordering herself a beer, and he slides up behind her, leans in close, and slips the bartender a bill before she gets a chance to.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He grins. “I know that,” then, while he’s waiting, appraises her up and down, and she’s a woman and he is Mark Sloane and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t affect her, just a little. “Beer? Little Grey, I didn’t picture you as a beer chick.”
“Well,” she says, bottle between her fingers as she turns on her heels. “I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
And then she leaves, and if she turns around a second later, just a bit to catch his smirk that has a hint of something behind it, well, sue her.
___
“It’s not that I don’t care about you,” George says one night, all sheepish grins and long sighs, and Lexie can’t help but look at him and wonder how she let herself get this far deep. “I do.”
It’s been weeks since he passed his test and left her in the dust, all broken-hearted and disappointed. It’s been weeks since she laid it out there the best she could and he still didn’t get it. She’s never been terribly good at these things - there have been boys, yes, and she’s a quick study, but Lexie has always traded a good time for good grades and up until now she’s never really regretted it. Up until now it didn’t matter.
Now she just wishes this weren’t the only thing she wasn’t inherently good at.
“Don’t,” she says, stopping him. “I don’t need the it’s not you, it’s me speech, Ok?”
“Lexie-“
“I’m a big girl, George. I don’t need you to placate me. I just need honesty.”
George says nothing, just looks at her for a long, long time.
She wants to hate him for it, want to scream and yell and say, that’s it? That’s all I get? until he gets it, but doesn’t.
She’s just too tired.
___
“Have you been sleeping on the on-call room?”
She’s suturing another patient, with Mark on the other side of the gurney, and if they’re not careful, this might constitute the forming of a habit.
“No.”
“You’re here when I leave. You’re here when I arrive in the morning. Do you ever go home?”
“Do you make it your duty to track all the intern’s coming and goings?”
Mark smiles effortlessly, teeth and all, and it’s predatory almost. Like the real Mark Sloane of things past is still hiding somewhere underneath and all this claimed change is just a front.
“Only the good ones.”
She just smirks in response.
___
“Coffee,” he says one morning, pre-rounds. He runs into her in the hallway while she’s on her way to fetch something unimportant for Cristina. Mark shoves it into her hands.
“You brought me coffee?”
He shrugs. “You look tired.”
“When people say that it’s usually a tactful way of saying you look like shit.”
“Have you ever know me to use even an ounce of tact, Grey?”
Another smirk and Lexie sips her coffee. “Guess not. No.”
“Don’t read into this,” he warns..
But she already is.
___
There is one particularly shitty day. They lose seven patients, five of them kids, and Lexie has always taken those more to heart than the others. She’s knee-deep in going over the past day, backwards and forward, all the things they could have done differently when he comes up behind her, hand to shoulder, startling her.
“You want to go grab a beer?” he asks in a rush, almost as if he was trying to get it out before he could rethink it, and Lexie looks around and notices they’re the last ones left.
“Sure,” she says. “Why the hell not?”
And really, why not?
___
The thing about Lexie is that she’s a flirty drunk. She gets all touchy-feeling, saying things she’ll regret in the morning, leaning in too close, so when she asks bluntly, “have you ever fucked Meredith?” she doesn’t feel regretful right away, but the taste is already budding on her tongue.
Mark just laughs.
“Oh, God,” she blanches, eyes wide, and downs the rest of her beer. Her seventh beer to be exact. “You have. That’s disgusting. That’s wrong. So, so wrong.”
“Clam down. I haven’t. I wouldn’t.” he says, still laughing, and in her inebriated mind, she kind of likes his laugh. Likes the way it makes her feel warm and fuzzy all over.
Then again, that might just be the booze.
“I have a hard time believing that.”
“Believing what?”
“That there’s a woman in this world you wouldn’t fuck.”
Mark downs his fifth scotch and winces. “Let’s just say, been there, done that, and screwing someone attached to Derek isn’t worth the trouble.”
“hmmm,” she sort of hums out, and raises her hand for Joe to bring her another beer. He’s quick with the uptake, and before she knows it there’s another bottle in her hands and she’s taking another long swig. Mark is watching her every move, appreciative almost. “You know what I think?”
“What could that possibly be?”
“I think you fuck women because you’re lonely. I don’t really think you’re that big of an asshole, I think you’re just sick of being alone.”
His eyes widen a bit, the muscle in his cheek twitching and she swallows, afraid that she might have crossed over that imaginary line they’d agreed somewhere along the way to keep between them.
But he doesn’t react, doesn’t get angry. Just leans in, the smell of aftershave and scotch flooding her senses as she breathes him in. She has to remind herself to breathe.
“Maybe that’s what I want you to think.”
She giggles and he smirks. “Maybe I want you to want me to think that.”
It’s right out of the movies, this moment, with their gazes flowing from eyes to lips and back again.
___
It’s her who breathes the classic you want to get out of here, her breath in his ear, face so close to his that she can feel his smile against her cheek.
Later, in the cab, it’s him who kisses her though, palms framing her face, lips against hers and it is all built up tension, and sloppy drunkenness. Everything she never thought it would be and more. She kisses him back, arms winding around his neck, teeth dragging his bottom lip between her own.
It’s all kinds of wrong, all kinds of stupid, but Lexie grabs a hold of it, whatever it is, and hits the ground running.
He is Mark Sloan and maybe, well, maybe she’s just sick of playing it safe.