Nothing Else Matters: Chapter 6
Ten minutes later, Mark looked out of the supply closet. He made sure the coast was clear before exiting. Normally, he wouldn’t care about being seen with a woman in the supply closet, or any closet for that matter, but that strange urge to protect Lexie from the ruthless gossiping nurses made him overly cautious.
As he made his way to the nurse’s station, he found Callie already there. Callie looked up from her file and smirked at him.
“So what nurse has got you all hot and bothered?”
Mark frowned “I don’t know what you’re talking about”
Callie faced him and put her hand on her hip, “I just saw you leave the supply closet all sneaky like. So spill, who was it? And it better not be Dr. Robbins.”
"The new Peds surgeon? So is that who kissed you in the bathroom at Joe's?"
Callie smiled as she fondly remembered the kiss. "Yeah. "
She then shoved her finger in his face, "Don't change the subject. Who was it?"
Mark suddenly became fascinated with her file “Any good surgeries today?”
Callie sighed and closed her file. “Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out soon enough Mark. You’re terrible at keeping secrets.”
She then patted his shoulder and walked towards the elevators.
---
A couple of minutes later, Mark felt another pat on his shoulder. He figured Callie forgot something and felt his stomach drop when he gazed down at a pair of dark brown eyes. Even though he had seen her no less than twenty minutes ago, those twenty minutes felt like a lifetime to him. Mark shook his head. What was wrong with him? He was Mark Sloan. A loner. He was independent and self sufficient and he was not about to let an intern, a very young intern, get under his skin. He had to get a grip on this runaway train called his emotions.
“Why are you touching me Little Grey?” Lexie unexpectedly smiled up at him and Mark almost forgot how to breathe.
“To get your attention Dr. Sloan.”
“You could have coughed or cleared your throat.”
Mark was now reluctantly smiling back at her. It wasn’t something he could help; her smile was contagious.
“I did. I even called your name. Very loudly.”
Mark didn’t think Lexie noticed how her words affected him. She had been calling out his name loudly for the past few weeks in his dreams. Mark shifted slightly away from her as he felt his scrubs tighten.
“Why are you here?” Lexie moved closer to him, which did not help his current situation.
“Dr. Yang sent me to plastics for the day.”
Mark turned to looked at her “Why?”
Lexie smiled up at him, “Probably because of your reputation for making interns cry.”
Mark scoffed, “I don’t make interns cry.”
“Megan was in the bathroom for an hour after you yelled at her about the importance of your blueberry scone and bone dry cappuccino.”
“Not my fault interns are sensitive.” Lexie was now so close, he could smell her hair as she brushed up against him.
“Well lucky for you I’m not that sensitive. I think I can take what you dish out.”
He saw her eyes shining with playfulness. She was challenging him. He had to give her credit, no other intern had the balls to challenge him the way she did. Mark turned to face Lexie and gave her his most brilliant smile.
“We’ll see about that Little Grey.”
It was going to be an interesting day.
---
Little did he know that one interesting day would turn into interesting days. Cristina Yang had banished Lexie to “boring and mundane” plastics indefinitely and Mark didn’t know if he should be insulted or kiss Yang for allowing him more time to be around Little Grey. If Yang realized that he was actually doing more than nose jobs or breast implants, like that face transplant he had coming up in a couple weeks, she would probably take Lexie off his service. So whenever he caught Yang looking at him and Lexie, Mark would make sure to yell extra loudly at Lexie for something. Lexie must have realized what he was doing since she never seemed angry at him afterwards. She would just give him that special smile and apologize for whatever he was yelling about.
With Lexie all but glued to his hip during his cases, he started to notice the small things she would do. He learned that she loved her coffee milky and sweet, that she tended to chew on her bottom lip when concentrating and that no matter how hard she tried; her hair would constantly find it’s way out of her ponytail.
When Mark walked out of his patient’s room, he went over to Lexie at the nurse’s station. As he neared, he noticed that she kept blowing her hair out of her face. It kept falling into her eyes and had been bothering her all day, like it had been for the past couple days. So when that same strand of hair fell again, Mark instinctively reached out and pushed the strand behind her ear. Both of them froze as they realized what he had just done. Mark felt his fingers burning as he removed his hand from her hair.
Lexie bit her lip nervously as Mark swallowed roughly “Uh. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
They both looked in opposite directions and Mark noticed a very curious looking Callie looking at him from across the room.
Mark mentally cursed himself as he realized that Callie was right.
He wasn’t very good at keeping secrets.
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(next chapter)