The Breath that Passed from You to Me (2/?)
Rating: M
Word Count: 2760
Summary: This takes place after the last aired episode (6x12) after Mark and Lexie's very short, very unsatisfying, conversation/fight/whatever.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author's Notes: There's a bit of cursing in this chapter.
Enjoy =)
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Chapter 2
When Derek entered Joe’s bar, he didn’t immediately notice his best friend. That alone gave Derek pause and his first clue that something was wrong. Normally, Mark Sloan would be surrounded by dozens of people; most of them women. It really wasn’t anything Mark consciously did, everyone just always seemed to gravitate toward him. It wasn’t until Derek caught the eye of Joe behind the bar that he finally noticed Mark. The grave look and frown on Joe’s face while nodding towards Mark didn’t exactly fill Derek with any optimism.
Derek walked cautiously over to Mark and nodded at Joe, who silently made his way down the bar to his other customers. He sat at a stool on Mark’s right and noticed he was uncharacteristically hunched over the bar, silently nursing a beer. Derek also noticed the five shot glasses sitting in front of him on the counter; three of them were already empty. He could already smell the whisky seeping out of Mark’s skin. Derek groaned inwardly. Mark was never a good drunk; neither happy nor quiet. He tended to drift towards being introspective, unruly and confrontational. Not a good mix in a man as big as Mark.
"Mark! What’s going on?" Derek said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel.
Mark didn’t even look up as he took a long swig of his beer. "The end of the world."
Derek frowned, "Is it Sloan? Did something happen to the baby?" He hadn’t heard any bad news so he figured Sloan and the baby had been doing fine. He was relieved when Mark shook his head.
"No. Sloan’s fine. She’s just great." Mark said with a voice Derek didn’t find too positive.
"What happened?" he asked.
Mark was silent for a moment before responding, "Sloan decided to give up the baby for adoption. Apparently Addison gave her the idea and Sloan was more than happy to run with it."
Derek sighed and rubbed his forehead. He had known there was a possibility this was going to happen. Sloan was obviously not cut out to be a mother at eighteen. From the brief visits he’s had with her, all he perceived was that she was a very selfish teenage girl who was not going to be able to put someone else’s needs before her own.
"She didn’t even ask for my opinion. She just went ahead and got an appointment with the adoption agency."
"It was her decision Mark. It’s a horrible thing to say but she just wasn’t cut out to be a mom." Derek said as he placed a hand on Mark’s shoulder.
"Well, I was ready to be a dad" Mark burst out, shrugging Derek’s hand off his shoulder. He obviously didn’t want to be comforted right now. "After all the yelling and all the fighting and all the worrying, I was finally feeling like a real father. One who would do anything for their kids."
"Sloan is still your kid Mark. That’s never going to change. You’ll always be a father" Derek countered.
"She didn’t come back with me to Seattle Derek. She went back to her mother and I haven’t heard from her since." Mark picked up his beer and drained it in less than five seconds. "I’m nothing more than a rich sperm donor to her."
Derek was going to say something he hoped would be comforting when Mark spoke again.
And you want to know what the icing on the cake is?" Mark then looked at Derek for the first time since their conversation started and Derek didn’t like what he saw in his eyes. His cold blue eyes were empty; they completely lacked any emotion.
"Lexie left me." Mark’s hand then shot out like lighting and grabbed one of the shot glasses in front of him; swallowing it quickly as if to wash away the bad taste the words left in his mouth. "When given the choice between Sloan or Lexie, I chose Sloan. And look what it got me" Mark said with a wry laugh before swallowing the remaining shot.
Derek sighed with relief when Joe walked over asking for drink orders. He was going to need something stronger than a beer to get through this conversation.
---
For the next two hours, Derek listened to Mark rant and rave about what happened with Lexie. He told him about sleeping with Addison and then finding out Lexie slept with Alex Karev. Derek’s head felt like it was being smashed with a sledgehammer. The entire situation was a huge, messy clusterfuck of pain and heartbreak.
"How could she sleep with someone else!" Mark said with a loud voice, oblivious to the stares he was getting from the entire bar. Everyone was already giving them a wide berth; as if they could sense the black hole Mark Sloan had become and were afraid to be sucked in.
"How could you?" Derek countered.
Mark turned to glare at his best friend "I am not the bad guy here Derek. She broke up with me. She left me."
"You did chose another woman over her" Derek commented before taking a sip of his drink
"Sloan was not another woman. She was my daughter." Derek ignored the use of past tense when Mark talked about Sloan but knew better than to correct him. That would have to be a conversation for another time.
"And Lexie is the woman you love." Derek then shook his head in disbelief, "Wow. I never thought I’d ever say those words."
Mark ignored the comment, "I had to choose Sloan. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You have to choose your kid."
"She’s also pregnant Mark. How do you think that made Lexie feel? When you decided, all by yourself, to invite Sloan and her potentially special needs baby to move in without talking to her first? I would be more surprised if she didn’t break up with you."
Mark spoke as if he didn’t hear a word Derek said.
"She’s supposed to support me. She’s my girlfriend."
Derek smiled to himself as he noticed Mark still referring to Lexie as his girlfriend.
"That doesn’t mean she has to agree with every decision you make. That’s not how a relationship works."
Mark groaned "Do not give me relationship advice right now. I’m not even in a relationship anymore."
"You have to talk to her Mark." Derek knew it had to be said.
"I don’t want to talk to her." Mark’s mouth slightly pouted like a kid not wanting to do something.
"Well what did you expect would happen Mark? That Sloan would give birth and you’d all be an instant happy family?" His silence made it clear that was exactly what Mark expected.
"Lexie is only twenty five years old. She always seems so focused and put together that we all seem to forget that sometimes."
Mark narrowed his eyes at Derek. "Why are you taking her side?"
"I’m not. I’m just trying to make you see that none of this is easy for the both of you. Lexie was just getting used to the fact that you have a child not much younger than her. That alone would have sent most women packing. But she stayed and supported you through that. She tried making Sloan feel welcome, which I heard was not an easy task." Derek paused for a moment to make sure Mark absorbed that information. "You were both hurting and both chose to sleep with someone else. You BOTH handled the situation badly."
---
Mark silently swirled the remaining liquid in his glass before swallowing it in one shot. The whisky blazed a trail down his throat and settled uneasily in his belly. Hearing Derek defend Lexie’s side of the story made it that much harder to feel anger towards her. At this point anger was all he had left before the heartbreaking pain would begin to crush him. He had never felt so sick before in his entire life.
"I hate it when you make sense."
Derek laughed "That’s cause I’m smarter than you."
Mark rubbed his hand against the day old stubble that was growing on his face. He couldn’t bring himself to shave, knowing that Lexie preferred him with facial hair. Even though he was hurt and angry, there was still a small part of him that wanted to stay close to her. Besides that, he was just too exhausted to worry about his appearance.
"I didn’t think anything could hurt this much" Mark softly admitted to Derek and to himself. "I thought sex would help. It’s always helped before. Especially sex with Addison."
"I didn’t need to know that" Derek interjected.
Mark reached for another drink. "But the sex made everything worse. Now I feel like I can’t breathe." He then placed his hand over his heart. "It feels like something is sitting on my chest, keeping me from breathing. I’m a world class surgeon and I can’t figure out why I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe Derek?" Mark asked him.
"Because you’re actually in love with someone other than yourself" Derek said with a sad smile, hoping to inject a tiny bit of humor in a humorless situation before the corners of his mouth turned downward into a frown.
"Have you ever felt like you couldn’t breathe?" Mark asked.
A short laugh escaped Derek’s lips. "I’m with Meredith. What do you think?"
Derek felt a small ripple of relief as a corner of Mark’s mouth quivered slightly, like he was holding back a smile. That relief was short lived when Mark’s face turned grim once more.
"You know I asked Addison to help me raise the baby?"
Derek choked on his drink "What?"
"I knew that on some level Sloan wasn’t going to be able to take care of the baby on her own. I figured that maybe if the three of us lived together, we could all take care of the baby and still have lives. Addison was up for it."
All of a sudden, Derek felt like he was in the Twilight Zone. "She was?"
Mark nodded. "For about five minutes before I took it back."
"I’m getting whiplash from this conversation. Why did you take it back?"
Mark sighed tiredly "She asked me if I would still stay with her if there was no baby. To only ask if I was serious about being with her and not if I was still in love with someone else."
Derek was almost afraid to ask "So what happened?"
Mark scoffed before taking a drink "I’m here aren’t I?"
"That was not one of your better ideas" Derek said after a few moments of silence.
"No kidding" Mark laughed briefly before turning somber.
Derek could hear and see the pain his best friend was dealing with. While he felt sorry for what Mark was going through, Derek couldn’t help but be happy that he was finally going through something real. To his surprise, Mark Sloan managed to have a meaningful relationship with one woman. A relationship that lasted for almost a year with no infidelity.
"I hate what she’s done to me" Mark said, interrupting Derek’s thoughts.
"I hate that she was the one to put me back together. It gave her all the power. From the beginning, she’s had all the power. You know what that makes me? The woman. I’m the woman in our relationship." Mark knocked back another shot, "I hate her."
Derek scoffed "You love her."
"I hate her."
"You love her."
"I hate you." Mark then sighed as his irritation faded. "What it is about those Grey girls?"
"I’m married to one and I still haven’t figured it out" Derek said with a laugh. He smiled a bit wider when he saw Mark join in with a brief chuckle.
The door to Joe’s jingled and Derek looked over his shoulder to see who entered the bar and the smile fell from his face. Mark, noticing the sudden change in Derek’s mood, followed his line of sight. It took only a second to recognize the newcomer and his fists clenched immediately. Mark felt like there was liquid rage running through his veins. The last person he ever wanted to see had just walked into the bar.
Derek looked at Mark and knew that he had noticed the bar’s new occupant. He also knew that the best thing right now would be for them to leave immediately.
"Mark, why don’t we call it a night? It’s late and I’ve got an early surgery scheduled tomorrow."
Mark swallowed the rest of his drink and slammed the glass down on the bar. "I’m not going anywhere. Not until that prick understands who he’s messed with."
Mark stood from his stool and brushed off Derek’s attempts to hold him back. For someone who should be passed out by the amount of alcohol in his system, Mark barely stumbled as he walked over to two people sitting in a dark corner booth. One was Alex and the other he recognized as one of the Mercy West residents. He couldn’t remember her name; Reese or something like that. Not that it really mattered to him.
When he reached the table, Mark grabbed Alex’s shoulders and pulled him to his feet.
Alex quickly turned to face him and instantly tensed when he saw who grabbed him.
"What do you want?" Alex asked, annoyance evident on his face. Mark could tell this wasn’t how Alex expected his night to go when he came into the bar. He took another glance at the woman sitting in the booth and frowned.
"That isn’t Stevens."
"Great observational skills."
"Aren’t you still married Karev?"
Alex crossed his arms in front of his chest "How is that any of your business Sloan?"
And Mark thought he was bad for sleeping with his best friend’s wife. Here Karev was on a date while his cancer surviving wife was probably still in the hospital waiting for her PET scan results. This was the man that slept with his Lexie. The man whose hands were in places only his were allowed to go.
Mark didn’t even realize he had punched Alex until he felt the stinging pain in his right hand. He later told himself that he really hadn’t meant to punch him. But he wouldn’t be lying if he didn’t admit it felt good.
Alex was knocked back a couple steps from the force of the blow and was holding his hand up to his face. Mark’s punch had split his lip; causing small drops of blood to stain his chin.
"Dude, what the hell is your problem!"
"You slept with my girlfriend. That’s my problem dude" he said the last word with a mocking tone.
Alex wiped the blood off his chin with the edge of his sleeve. Not one to back down from a fight, he smiled and taunted Mark.
"She wasn’t your girlfriend when I fucked her."
This time when Mark swung his fist, it collided with Alex’s nose.
"Fuck!" Alex swore as blood exploded from his nose.
Before Mark could take another step towards him, Owen Hunt suddenly appeared at Mark’s side. Mark hadn’t even noticed he was in the bar. Hunt had an uncanny way of moving around silently and appearing at the right moment.
Mark felt Owen’s hand on his arm. He hadn’t even noticed that he had pulled it back with the intent to punch Alex a second time. It scared him a little at the way he wasn’t in control of his own body.
"That’s enough Mark. I think he got the point" Owen calmly told him. He was obviously a master at diffusing tense situations.
Mark pulled his arm out of Owen’s grasp and stomped out of the bar; deaf to the sounds of Alex’s painful moans and the calls from Derek.
He needed to get some air.
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