Grey's ficlet: Waiting (Derek/Mark, PG-13)
Title: Waiting
Pairing: Derek/Mark
Rating: PG-13, mostly for language
Summary: It's dangerous when I watch Grey's. Specifically, the elevator scene from last week did. Damn boys being all adorable. Not that this is a coda to that ep or anything, just inspired by it, shall we say. 1400 words.
Note: For holycitygirl.
Waiting
Derek stands in front of the elevator, waiting for Mark to catch up to him before he pushes the 'down' button.
They've taken this elevator so many times, and it's only one of so many elevators they've been in together. Different hospitals. Different times. Different situations and minds and somehow the same fucking Mark Sloan every time: open except how he's definitely hiding something, flippant except how he takes things with such earnest seriousness underneath it all, his best friend except when…
Well, his best friend. Even when.
They've been going up and down for as long as Derek can remember.
It's good now, he thinks as they step into the empty elevator together. It's better than it's been since they were young and nothing could touch them. Things can touch them now, and they thank God for it as often as they curse him.
They're doctors now, older and supposedly wiser, but they still banter. The banter is really no different from their constant handwashing. It's a rhythm, Derek's realized. You don't notice how you're doing it, just that you're doing it at all. It pleases you the way only inane tasks can. This is not to say he doesn't enjoy and appreciate this trading quips and barbs with Mark in the elevator, giving him mysteriously knowing smiles even when he doesn't have a clue what he's doing or how he's holding himself together. It's blissfully easy to be around someone who doesn't notice.
Except Mark does. He really does. He sees every crack and seam. It's just that he's learned when to point them out and patch them, and when to pretend he doesn't notice. To Derek, this seems funny: the plastic surgeon who sometimes does not try to smooth over hurts or eradicate scars. Maybe it's because Mark has scars of his own. They don't have to talk about them, but they do anyway, even when they ride in silence down to the ground level.
And when they actually speak about hurts and scars-when Mark decides he thinks being a caring adult means saying hard things-they're not really speaking about them anyway. It's maybe always been about this thing so big that if they stopped the banter, stopped the skillful, perfect, unceasing dance they do, they might never regain the rhythm. The way Derek sometimes wants to touch him when he's too quiet; the way Mark looks at him when he's angry…
Derek shuffles his feet. It's easier to banter when you don't think about it. It's easier to banter than it is to ride in sympathetic silence, but even that can be done if you don't think too much, because it has its own kind of rhythm. It's also better not to think about what makes it work at all. He's only begun to admit to himself that it is and maybe always way flirting. Didn't Addison used to joke about the two of them that way? Wasn't Addison the type to joke about things because they had some basis in reality?
Because this is reality: he can call this thing-this riding in elevators and bantering, or this being silent together-a chore all he wants, a thing as unconscious and easy as hand-washing, but he can do that only because both are essential. Crucial.
As he wonders whether he should turn to Mark or not, say something or not, he suddenly thinks that, really, his handwashing analogy is actually just as inaccurate as it is dull. Maybe this is more like a day off work when he has the energy to clean up outside his trailer. Radio blaring music he hasn't heard in years. Sun beating down hard on his back, making him sweat things out. Eyes taking in more and more things to straighten, fix, throw away, make over. He is happy, then. He does it because he must, but he's secretly sorry when it's over. It has a rhythm of its own.
But following a pace all his own, though not without its pleasures, is nothing at all like keeping step with someone else. A doctor and nurse: knowing and anticipating, asking and receiving. No-a doctor and a doctor, equals. Sharing the task together. Thinking as one.
The door dings open, the familiar world is bright in his eyes, and Derek thinks he thinks too goddamn much.
As he's stepping out into the lobby, Mark groans beside him. "Shit. Forgot my umbrella."
"It's not raining."
"It's Seattle," he says with a shrug, then grabs Derek by the sleeve and pulls him back inside, the door closing them back into their own quiet world.
Mark's hands are strangely uncoordinated as he presses their floor. Derek closes his eyes against it, against him, and leans back into the wall.
A second later, Mark turns and says, "Derek?"
"Mmm?"
"You know it's not that I dislike Rose, don't you?"
Derek's eyes snap open. Mark smells like cologne. The whole elevator smells like cologne. And disinfecting soap. It was never like cleaning, Derek thinks, not even the fucking yard. It was dancing. And now a step closer. And here is where Derek spins away.
But Derek doesn't move, and the gravitational pull of this thing makes Mark finally reel closer, turn, one of his feet stepping into place between Derek's just before he runs his hand along his jaw and leans in, like he's stumbling in, and kisses him soft on the mouth, Derek's lips nudging open against his, warm and wet. The second time they open against each other, Mark's tongue slips in, and Derek lets it slide along his and inside his mouth in a way that ought to seem pushy, maybe even vulgar, especially when he does it again, going deeper this time, but, really, it's just….
It's Mark.
It's kind of perfect.
And short. It has to be. Just three kisses, really: two short and softly decisive, with the last this long wonderful promise that makes heat tingle warm down into his gut, and lower.
They feel the elevator coming to a stop, and Mark's whirling around, leaning back against the wall beside him as two nurses get in, struggling into coats and hats. He find himself wondering if they can smell Mark's cologne. Then he wonders if they've fucked him before. He knows--God, he knows that if he asked Mark to stop, he would. Stop fucking nurses, stop fucking anybody. Even if he wasn't fucking Derek, not at first anyway. And not that Derek even wants that. Does he?
What he feels, though, despite all this wild, absurd overthinking, is how red his cheeks are. He's lit up in a blush he thinks Mark can probably feel emanating from him. He doesn't dare look, knowing Mark's blushing, too. He has to be. Like goddamn teenagers. Mark's shoulder rests against his, and it's enough, the way it's enough when you're fifteen, waiting to hold somebody's hand at the movies. But it's not enough, the way kissing them on their front porch after is not everything you want, even when it's perfect.
But the kiss was not perfect. It's a rhythm they don't know yet. Their noses had bumped. Mark's stubble had scraped his upper lip, and his own tongue had been slow in reacting. But they'll figure it out. These things always figure themselves out when you mean for them to. And he does mean it.
The nurses leave the elevator, and they're alone again, and now this is the same fucking Mark, smirking both conspiratorially and mockingly at the same time, and almost in spite of himself. But as soon as Derek turns his eyes on him, Mark's looking at him the way he does when he's serious. It's that look that says he doesn't want to talk, he can't talk, he's maybe even sorry he had to say the things he just said but he couldn't help it.
Derek is about to speak when they elevator opens them up to their floor. He watches Mark walk out ahead of him without hesitation, off toward his office.
"So you really did leave your umbrella?" Derek says.
Mark turns, and he's wearing the most curious expression. Soon, it warms into a vaguely seductive mischievous grin. "Why else do you think I brought you back up here?"
Because you didn't want to take even an elevator ride without me.
Derek says, "You want me to wait?"
Without turning around, Mark replies, "Of course I want you to wait."
Of course he's already been waiting. Maybe Derek has been, too.
Mark whirls around the corner, and Derek stands in front of the elevator, waiting for Mark to catch up to him before he pushes the 'down' button.
~
Pairing: Derek/Mark
Rating: PG-13, mostly for language
Summary: It's dangerous when I watch Grey's. Specifically, the elevator scene from last week did. Damn boys being all adorable. Not that this is a coda to that ep or anything, just inspired by it, shall we say. 1400 words.
Note: For holycitygirl.
Waiting
Derek stands in front of the elevator, waiting for Mark to catch up to him before he pushes the 'down' button.
They've taken this elevator so many times, and it's only one of so many elevators they've been in together. Different hospitals. Different times. Different situations and minds and somehow the same fucking Mark Sloan every time: open except how he's definitely hiding something, flippant except how he takes things with such earnest seriousness underneath it all, his best friend except when…
Well, his best friend. Even when.
They've been going up and down for as long as Derek can remember.
It's good now, he thinks as they step into the empty elevator together. It's better than it's been since they were young and nothing could touch them. Things can touch them now, and they thank God for it as often as they curse him.
They're doctors now, older and supposedly wiser, but they still banter. The banter is really no different from their constant handwashing. It's a rhythm, Derek's realized. You don't notice how you're doing it, just that you're doing it at all. It pleases you the way only inane tasks can. This is not to say he doesn't enjoy and appreciate this trading quips and barbs with Mark in the elevator, giving him mysteriously knowing smiles even when he doesn't have a clue what he's doing or how he's holding himself together. It's blissfully easy to be around someone who doesn't notice.
Except Mark does. He really does. He sees every crack and seam. It's just that he's learned when to point them out and patch them, and when to pretend he doesn't notice. To Derek, this seems funny: the plastic surgeon who sometimes does not try to smooth over hurts or eradicate scars. Maybe it's because Mark has scars of his own. They don't have to talk about them, but they do anyway, even when they ride in silence down to the ground level.
And when they actually speak about hurts and scars-when Mark decides he thinks being a caring adult means saying hard things-they're not really speaking about them anyway. It's maybe always been about this thing so big that if they stopped the banter, stopped the skillful, perfect, unceasing dance they do, they might never regain the rhythm. The way Derek sometimes wants to touch him when he's too quiet; the way Mark looks at him when he's angry…
Derek shuffles his feet. It's easier to banter when you don't think about it. It's easier to banter than it is to ride in sympathetic silence, but even that can be done if you don't think too much, because it has its own kind of rhythm. It's also better not to think about what makes it work at all. He's only begun to admit to himself that it is and maybe always way flirting. Didn't Addison used to joke about the two of them that way? Wasn't Addison the type to joke about things because they had some basis in reality?
Because this is reality: he can call this thing-this riding in elevators and bantering, or this being silent together-a chore all he wants, a thing as unconscious and easy as hand-washing, but he can do that only because both are essential. Crucial.
As he wonders whether he should turn to Mark or not, say something or not, he suddenly thinks that, really, his handwashing analogy is actually just as inaccurate as it is dull. Maybe this is more like a day off work when he has the energy to clean up outside his trailer. Radio blaring music he hasn't heard in years. Sun beating down hard on his back, making him sweat things out. Eyes taking in more and more things to straighten, fix, throw away, make over. He is happy, then. He does it because he must, but he's secretly sorry when it's over. It has a rhythm of its own.
But following a pace all his own, though not without its pleasures, is nothing at all like keeping step with someone else. A doctor and nurse: knowing and anticipating, asking and receiving. No-a doctor and a doctor, equals. Sharing the task together. Thinking as one.
The door dings open, the familiar world is bright in his eyes, and Derek thinks he thinks too goddamn much.
As he's stepping out into the lobby, Mark groans beside him. "Shit. Forgot my umbrella."
"It's not raining."
"It's Seattle," he says with a shrug, then grabs Derek by the sleeve and pulls him back inside, the door closing them back into their own quiet world.
Mark's hands are strangely uncoordinated as he presses their floor. Derek closes his eyes against it, against him, and leans back into the wall.
A second later, Mark turns and says, "Derek?"
"Mmm?"
"You know it's not that I dislike Rose, don't you?"
Derek's eyes snap open. Mark smells like cologne. The whole elevator smells like cologne. And disinfecting soap. It was never like cleaning, Derek thinks, not even the fucking yard. It was dancing. And now a step closer. And here is where Derek spins away.
But Derek doesn't move, and the gravitational pull of this thing makes Mark finally reel closer, turn, one of his feet stepping into place between Derek's just before he runs his hand along his jaw and leans in, like he's stumbling in, and kisses him soft on the mouth, Derek's lips nudging open against his, warm and wet. The second time they open against each other, Mark's tongue slips in, and Derek lets it slide along his and inside his mouth in a way that ought to seem pushy, maybe even vulgar, especially when he does it again, going deeper this time, but, really, it's just….
It's Mark.
It's kind of perfect.
And short. It has to be. Just three kisses, really: two short and softly decisive, with the last this long wonderful promise that makes heat tingle warm down into his gut, and lower.
They feel the elevator coming to a stop, and Mark's whirling around, leaning back against the wall beside him as two nurses get in, struggling into coats and hats. He find himself wondering if they can smell Mark's cologne. Then he wonders if they've fucked him before. He knows--God, he knows that if he asked Mark to stop, he would. Stop fucking nurses, stop fucking anybody. Even if he wasn't fucking Derek, not at first anyway. And not that Derek even wants that. Does he?
What he feels, though, despite all this wild, absurd overthinking, is how red his cheeks are. He's lit up in a blush he thinks Mark can probably feel emanating from him. He doesn't dare look, knowing Mark's blushing, too. He has to be. Like goddamn teenagers. Mark's shoulder rests against his, and it's enough, the way it's enough when you're fifteen, waiting to hold somebody's hand at the movies. But it's not enough, the way kissing them on their front porch after is not everything you want, even when it's perfect.
But the kiss was not perfect. It's a rhythm they don't know yet. Their noses had bumped. Mark's stubble had scraped his upper lip, and his own tongue had been slow in reacting. But they'll figure it out. These things always figure themselves out when you mean for them to. And he does mean it.
The nurses leave the elevator, and they're alone again, and now this is the same fucking Mark, smirking both conspiratorially and mockingly at the same time, and almost in spite of himself. But as soon as Derek turns his eyes on him, Mark's looking at him the way he does when he's serious. It's that look that says he doesn't want to talk, he can't talk, he's maybe even sorry he had to say the things he just said but he couldn't help it.
Derek is about to speak when they elevator opens them up to their floor. He watches Mark walk out ahead of him without hesitation, off toward his office.
"So you really did leave your umbrella?" Derek says.
Mark turns, and he's wearing the most curious expression. Soon, it warms into a vaguely seductive mischievous grin. "Why else do you think I brought you back up here?"
Because you didn't want to take even an elevator ride without me.
Derek says, "You want me to wait?"
Without turning around, Mark replies, "Of course I want you to wait."
Of course he's already been waiting. Maybe Derek has been, too.
Mark whirls around the corner, and Derek stands in front of the elevator, waiting for Mark to catch up to him before he pushes the 'down' button.
~