Jan 02, 2009 14:26
Lexie Grey is not one for taking risks. She adamantly refuses to partake in it, choosing to live the sheltered life of calm and safety. She distances herself as far as possible from thrills and fears because she knows herself well enough to know that she’s vulnerable, fragile and that recklessness does not become her. Cheap thrills of drugs have never interested her and as a youth, she has never been a moment where she felt misguided or lost. She isn’t Meredith, irrevocably damaged and defective, and she relishes in that fact. There’s a sense of relief in knowing that she won’t be broken, that she can’t be broken.
But here she was, taking the biggest risk and consequently perhaps the biggest mistake of her life. As far as she knows, Mark Sloane is the farthest thing from the safe and security with which she is so familiar. She knows this. She knows that showing up at his hotel room pleading to be taught as she strips is not what good, sensible, fearful Lexie would do. But she’s here and it’s done and she lies in the aftermath, wondering if she’d just simply lost her mind.
It’s dangerous, this thing she has started, and she wants to regret it. But somehow, she can’t quite bring herself to. She won’t.
--
Mark Sloane is defined by risks. He likes to live on the edge, just to acknowledge his own mortality as cynical as it sounds. As a child, he climbed trees all the way to the highest branch, jumped off swings as they reached their peak. He played hockey, loving the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his veins every time he was on the ice, slamming into boards and never once caring what injuries it may bring. Drug experimentation was inevitable. He’s probably tried everything at least once.
But he has never thought of any of those as risks. If anything, they were thrills to keep him entertained, a reminder that he is indeed alive. They have been a constant in his life, always present and strangely comforting.
When he’s older, he takes on a new kind of thrill: women. And he doesn’t mean dates, relationships or love. He’s talking about affairs, more specifically, sneaking around and having sex in inappropriate places. It’s the only kind of relationship he knows how to have because it’s simultaneously satisfying and thrilling. It doesn’t even register in his mind that it could be a risk. Not when it’s so fun and enjoyable, entertaining even. There’s no fear in that he may be discovered and beaten to a pulp by an angry husband or boyfriend. He doesn’t fear his emotions getting involved. Neither ever happens.
It’s no different with Addison. He goes after her like any other women, only it’s just a tad more interesting because she’s Derek’s wife. She’s forbidden, making her all the more enticing and desirable. She was fun and he genuinely cared for her. There had been times where he thought that he may love her, but he understands now that it was the excitement in his life that she brought that he was really in love with.
He has never really risked himself, hasn’t ever risked his feelings. Being the kind of man that he is, he simply cannot afford to. Or maybe he’s always known that that would be a true risk, one that he may never recover from.
But here, lying next to Lexie Grey, he thinks that he’s ready for risk, recovery or not. Because this time he didn’t chase her for the sake of chasing her. Instead, she comes to him, poetically vulnerable and so very breakable. It’s a gutsy move on her part and it’s her way of telling him that she’s risking something in this too.
She is a risk, the first risk he has taken in his life.
He doesn’t know how this will turn out. He doesn’t know what he wants or expects from it. All that he knows is that she’s an arm’s length away, pale skinned and beautiful, and his heart races a little just by looking at her. And if he’s being honest with himself, he’s scared. Really, truly scared.
For her, he thinks he may have risked his heart.
lexie,
fic,
grey's anatomy,
mark,
mark/lexie