(no subject)
Title: I'll Be Running Right Behind You
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Lexie, implied one-sided Lexie/George
Word Count: 1,467
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Up to 5x01 - Dream A Little Dream Of Me
Summary: Every now and then Lexie thinks maybe putting puzzles together might be just as satisfying.
Somewhere between “I slept with Meredith” and “you’re one of my best friends” she realizes that no matter how much she wants this, her and George, right now, it’s not going to happen. At least it’s not going to happen in the way she wants it to happen.
(Later, she keeps saying, eventually, like a prayer)
---
“So?” Mark asks, a week later, no preface, just one single word, catching her as she’s walking out of a patient’s room, towards the cafeteria. Like they’re friends, which is vaguely amusing considering his earlier reaction to any attempts of hers to be even remotely friendly. There’s a little shot of pride, of something like happiness, that she’d maybe won him over.
She sighs out the “he’s an idiot.” She doesn’t mean it (at least that’s what she’s telling herself) but it gets him to smirk, ever so briefly, and there’s a part of her that thinks it’s worth it.
Lexie wonders when she started to care about what made Mark Sloan smile.
---
He’s hot.
It’s not like she hasn’t noticed before. She’s pretty sure you’d have to be blind not to. Like the one time where she caught him coming out of the locker room, pulling his shirt over his head, the briefest glimpse of skin. She’d noticed then. Definitely. Because she had stared (she’s only human, and it’s not like there isn’t a reason they call him McSteamy) and he had noticed, even if she’s pretty sure he hadn’t known who the hell she was at that point.
It’s his looks that enabled him to sleep with half the nursing staff and apparently Derek Shepherd’s ex-wife, if old gossip means anything. And they’re the reason for the almost-but-not-quite lawsuit. He’s immature, a sure way to heartbreak, some other colorful things that she won’t repeat, if you listen to the people around here. Hell, if you walk into Joe’s bar.
They said that about Alex too. That he was Mark Sloan in training, that they had more in than an interest in plastics. Except Alex had layers and, sure, he forgot he slept with her, so he’s a jerk, but that’s not all he is. He has layers; they just aren’t hers to peel away.
She’s kind of hoping Mark might have those too.
---
It used to be ‘the new Grey’ or ‘the good Grey’. He never said it to her face, but you hear things in locker rooms or the cafeteria; you can’t help it. But at some point he starts calling her ‘the new and improved Grey’ with that stupid little smirk that she can almost see through his surgical mask, like she’s some sort of robot or clone.
She thinks he likes toying with her. Part of her likes that he likes it.
The scrub nurse glares at him, unseen by her intended target; maybe he slept with her too. Lexie wonders how many people he’s slept with in this room. On this floor. In this hospital. It makes her head spin.
Images of her apartment, of red sweaters, of George and his lips and his dorky smile flit through her mind and she really wishes she he hadn’t said best friends. She really wishes he’d said something more. That he’d kissed her. But he didn’t. He was the safe guy, the one she should want, the one she does want but can’t have. Now she’s got the one she definitely can have but shouldn’t want.
And yet.
Every now and then she thinks putting puzzles together might be just as satisfying.
---
“Are you interested in plastics?” Arguably the former best plastic surgeon on the East Coast is asking her and, even if she isn’t, and she really isn’t, she should say yes. For her career. To keep him on her side. To get in on rare surgeries.
“No.” She surprises him; she surprises herself.
“Shame.” He turns the sink off, grabs a towel and dries those hands that she just watched work for four hours. “You weren’t half bad.”
She doesn’t get the full effect of his words until Cristina, who apparently eavesdrops, reminds her that Mark has never been big on the whole teaching aspect of the hospital, no matter what the Chief keeps trying to shove down the attending’s throats.
---
“Did you ever sleep with Meredith?” She figures she might as well ask, you know since assuming didn’t work so well last time. Once she found Meredith slept with George she threw out all her preconceptions of lines Meredith wouldn’t cross.
He laughs. She takes that as her answer. She just isn’t sure which one it was. “Isn’t that something you should ask her, not your attending?”
“We’re not that close.” It’s true enough. Only if it’s medical, Cristina had been enforcing that more and more, like a bodyguard. Like she’s protecting Meredith from something. “She’d probably lie anyways.”
“One good time between the sheets isn’t worth the crap I’d have taken from Derek.” He elaborates, even if he didn’t have to. It’s more than she thought she’d get. Then he turns his eyes on her. “Why? Trying to stay out of Meredith’s territory?”
He would say that. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play all dumb and doe-eyed.” It makes her drop her eyes; she hates that term. It loses it’s endearment after too many uses. “You know exactly what I mean.”
She scraps her initial comeback in lieu of, “maybe it’s all in your head. Maybe you’re making something out of nothing because you’re lonely. Ever think of that?”
Lexie thinks, maybe, if the slight twitch of his lips, the flash in his eyes, is of any indication, then maybe she hit a nerve.
He wants to play, she’ll play.
---
The game is a short one. At least he tries to make it one.
He must not like the idea of potentially losing because two hours and forty-three minutes (she counted, she doesn’t know why, she just did, like she was waiting for the next move) later she’s pressed up against the wall of the on-call room and he’s just as good a kisser as all the nurses begrudgingly admit. Good in bed, not so good afterwards.
“It’s not all in my head.” And he seems proud of that, like this goes in the win category for him. Considering the last women he openly slept with was recently spotted making out with Erica Hahn (yeah, she heard that gossip too) she figures he probably needs the ego boost.
However, she is no one’s plaything and she certainly won’t be used just so he can tell himself he still has it.
It’s for that reason that she pulls him in once more, all take charge and not at all the meek, sort of confused girl that she feels on the inside, and then breaks the kiss as she wriggles out of his grasp and heads for the door.
---
“So now you’re playing hard to get?” She’s getting used to his problem with prefacing questions. It’s different, a flowing conversation that never ends.
“Isn’t that you’re thing?” A smile turns up the corners of her lips, that feeling you get from shameless flirting when you know that nothing you say is going to be considered coming on to strong. It’s different from high school in that way, instead it’s much more like late night’s at Joe’s (there’s this fleeting image of Derek turning her down, not that specifically but right before it, when he looked like she’d just made his night or his week, that she can’t get out of her head) except her eyes are clear. Her cheeks are still flushed, just a little. “The chase.”
That smirk again, and, “They all stop running eventually.”
There’s no harm in leaning closer, just enough so that it’s noticeable, to him anyways. “You never know with interns. We’re too green, too immature and rebellious. We aren’t like everybody else, you know.”
She can’t help but think that this is what he wants. A challenge. Someone who isn’t just going to fall into bed with him at the drop of a hat. She can’t help but think it because the way he’s looking at her right now, like she’s some rare, unheard of case, something to be fascinated by, tells her that maybe, just maybe, she might be on the right track.
And she might not be barking up the wrong tree (or maybe it’s just the wrong time, with George, you know because she still thinks about him, a lot, just not as much; it’s more tolerable as a dull ache), which is what makes it so much better.
He watches her walk away. She doesn’t have to be looking at him to know that.