the road is calling {mark/owen} (cont'd)
They go South. California. It just seems natural. He doesn’t know how far; he does know that there will come a point where things click into place and they’ll miss the hell of Seattle Grace and that’s when they’ll turn around.
For now, there’s this.
Driving toward nowhere, looking for something in the curves of the road, in the trees that lie beyond where the asphalt stops and the dirt begins, in the fresh air and stale sweat. The comfortable silence that comes with common ground. They don’t know each other very well, but Owen’s fairly sure that when this is all said and done that will have changed.
They ride until the sky begins to turn inky black, and he’s distantly aware that they’ve passed two signs, one welcoming them to Oregon, the next to California, but he still isn’t sure where that puts them. They’ve been on the road at least ten hours, most of that spent on the same interstate highway.
There’s a park not far from where they pull off, full of RV’s and other travelers, camping, going about their business. Owen sees, but doesn’t interact, and neither does Mark. They just find some place that’s far enough away from them to not be disturbed, but close enough for comfort, some symbol that they’re not completely in the middle of nowhere.
It’s mostly silent until they’ve got a fire going, and he has to admit that he’s impressed that some city boy knows as much as Mark does.
“I haven’t seen this many stars in awhile,” Mark says, laying out his sleeping back on the flat, solid ground. They’re doing this the old fashioned way, tents be damned, because Owen wants to see the stars too.
“Too many streetlights, not enough nature,” Owen replies, giving the sky a too-long look. He has missed that.
Lying there, later that night, with nothing but blue-black infinity above them, has a calming effect on him - it’s the best he’s felt in a while.
His eyelids are feeling heavier, sleep close to claiming him, when he hears that long, drawn-out sigh into the night, the other man who probably already thought he was asleep. It speaks of loss and loneliness, and somehow Owen’s starting to think that, despite him being the one whose proposal was turned down, maybe Mark is the one who had it worse.
Briefly he considers asking the other man if he wants to talk, breaking the silence and the calm, but the simple act of inhaling feels like it echoes, feels like it cuts the air in a manner that is all too new and uncomfortable, and so he just lets sleep claim him.
In the morning, he wakes to coffee and the sight of the mountains as they reach out toward the sky. Mark looks stiff but better, just a little, and he tries to make himself believe that they’ll get through this just fine.
---
The further into California they get the warmer it seems to become, and they break after noon, hiding from the sun in an off-road dinner. The waitress is some cute blonde who talks big about going to Los Angeles just as soon as she can afford it, and asks what he does. Plastic surgeon, Mark tells her, and it rolls off the tongue unconsciously, a pick up line that got him a lot of girls back in New York, even a few in Seattle, ones who weren’t co-workers. Everybody loves a doctor, and here they aren’t so common.
Then Owen comes back from the bathroom, muttering something about some guy he must have run into, and the blonde raises an eyebrow, and gets this little smile on her face. Before she takes their order and backs the hell off.
Mark knows exactly what she’s thinking, but doesn’t quite know how to put it out there how wrong she is without sounding weird. So he doesn’t. He’ll never see her again anyways.
They’re back on the road by one-thirty, driving until dark again, except this time they don’t end up anywhere near the stars. Los Angeles is not a place where you can expect to see those. They check into a motel, leave their stuff there, and roll up to the first dive bar they can find because it’s not like they’re looking for the height of expense and glitz. They’re just looking for a drink.
In retrospect, that was probably the problem.
---
It’s scotch. Again. It usually is with Mark, he’s quickly learning. He’s a lot like Derek, and more than once he’s thought of asking why he’s the one Mark invited on this little trip instead of Derek. He always stops himself. It probably has something to do with his previous choice of a bedmate, at least that’s what Mark had alluded to, albeit briefly, and he thinks he can figure it out from there.
The bar is seedy, full of some really interesting characters, most of them with a serious head start on the both of them, and Owen can’t help but feel like this place has trouble written all over it. Not that he’s ever been one to back down from that. From a challenge.
They aren’t there for too long before some guy in a baseball cap and grimy t-shirt, easily bigger than them, starts making comments from the other end of the bar about out-of-towners coming into ‘his’ bar. The bartender keeps refilling his glass, and Owen counts six over the next half hour, wondering if the guy was going to pass out before he tried to start something. Maybe hoping.
Minutes pass and the guy’s complaints seem to get louder, more force behind them, and Mark seems to get progressively tenser. Owen shifts, nudging him, telling him, “Don’t start anything. It’s just some drunk looking to take out his problems on someone else. No point in it.”
Mark mumbles a “yeah” but he’s looking over there, at that guy, and Owen figures he’s only got a short few minutes more of peace and quiet before this all goes to shit.
He orders another drink. And then he stops. He needs to be alert for this one, if Mark’s decided not to be.
It’s precisely three minutes, almost on the dot, when Mark asks, loudly, “You got a problem?”
The man stands up, rising to his full height, takes a few steps towards them. Mark straightens but doesn’t get up. Yet. “Yeah, I got the problem. I got a problem with you two being in my fucking bar.”
And since Mark has enough in him to be unaware of clichés, he asks, “Does it have your name on it?”
The guy narrows his eyes. Owen puts a hand on Mark’s leather-clad arm, and pretends this is going to help at all. “We’re not looking for trouble. So why don’t you just go back over there, and we’ll stay there. No harm, no foul.”
Like it could be that easy. “Pussy,” the man shouts, like he hasn’t heard that one before. It’s enough to set Mark off though, because Owen loses his grip on Mark’s arm a second later, and then a fist flies in a direction that is, thankfully, not his.
It’s downhill from there.
---
“I can do this myself.”
“Would you just shut up,” Owen tells him, sitting across from him, pushing him back into place with his elbow, getting him in the ribs.
Mark grimaces. “Yeah, thanks, that definitely helped.”
“Stop moving,” comes in lieu of any kind of ‘I’m sorry’, which Mark figures is probably just as well. Owen’s sporting a purple bruise on his cheek that he didn’t exactly earn and it wasn’t him who started it anyways. He doesn’t actually have much to be sorry about, compared to Mark.
“I really can do this myself,” he repeats, making another effort at both blocking Owen’s access from the gash on his face (which is in nearly the exact place where the last one, made by Derek’s fist, was, he notes with some irony - he was going to pay for this all somehow), and trying to get the needle and thread out of his hand. “Done it before.”
“I stapled my own leg wound closed before, okay. You’re not going to win any points for bravery here.” Owen bats his hands out of his way for what is probably going to be the last time before he knocks him out if he tries again. Mark’s distantly aware that he’s being childish and this will go a lot quicker if he just cooperates, but he can’t quite force himself to stop. “Besides, you’d need a mirror, and the only one in this shithole of a motel room is in the bathroom, and I think you’ll either fall over or pass out if you’re forced to stand for too long, so why don’t you just sit there quietly and think about how you’re not going to get into a bar fight next time.”
“It’s been awhile since I’ve been in one of those,” Mark tells him, as the needle goes into his skin. It doesn’t hurt all that bad; hell he really isn’t feeling much pain right now.
“Let’s continue that trend. At least for this trip.” Owen’s eyes are focused, his fingers careful, cool to the touch, a contrast to his own skin which feels like it’s on fire, overheated. “No more bars for you.”
They’re both quiet for a moment, and Mark’s having a lot of trouble keeping still, too restless, and Owen’s so silent and serious that it’s just making him more jumpy. The fight should’ve knocked that out of him but he’s far from tired. He’s just wired and itching and needing, and can’t admit to any of it, not even with the alcohol in him. “I miss her,” he says, after a moment, and he didn’t really mean to say it anywhere but his head but his mouth isn’t quite caught up to his brain right now so it just comes.
Owen pauses, stops his movements for just a second, and then continues. His voice is too even when he says, “I miss her too.” It’s a different her, but in a way it’s all the same thing. It’s still absence and feelings of loss over that absence. It’s comfort and familiarity that has since faded. It’s need that’s ever present. Before Mark knows it, Owen’s pulling his hands away, letting him know, “You’re done.”
“Thanks,” Mark replies, roughly. He goes to move, stand up, but it’s too fast, and he doesn’t get more than an inch or two of the edge of the bed before he ends up right back on it. Right back where he started. With that plan off the table, and Owen still sitting in front of him, looking like he doesn’t quite know what he’s supposed to be doing, if there even is something to be doing, instead of sitting here, staring, waiting. Mark imagines this is a man who can take orders as well as he gives them, verbal or otherwise, and so Mark lets himself continue to let old habits die hard and hopes that somehow this will all either result in a bad dream or a blackout.
He leans in the few inches that he needs to, giving no warning or pretense before he smashes his lips against Owen’s. Because he’s drunk, and he’s lonely, and he needs and wants in more ways than he can understand, in circles that got stopped by Lexie Grey and all the ways she slipped under his skin. And Owen does the funniest, most unexpected thing, because he lets the palm of the hand that isn’t still holding that needle come up to rest along Mark’s cheek, graze over two-day old stubble, pull him in closer. Those cool fingers run over his jaw, and Mark tries not to lean into that too. Owen kisses him exactly like he’s enjoying this and shifts, the position a tad uncomfortable for both of them. He presses forward, and ends up shoving Mark back into the bed, the kind of desperate that Mark wasn’t sure the other man was capable of. He lets himself arch into Owen’s lips, into his touch, just a little.
Later - when the sheets are tangled, half around them, half off the bed, a mess that seems like it might take too much energy to solve, and Owen’s dropped off like he can sleep just about anywhere - Mark’s fairly sure that he just might have made things worse.
---
The sun that leaks through the curtains wakes him up. The warm hand that just brushes his side is secondary, and he moves forward instead of backwards when he takes note of just how close Mark is to him. It makes it so that he has to sit up and then turn in order to see the clock change to six-thirty, and he blinks the sleep out of his eyes a few times before he taps Mark on the shoulder, just like yesterday morning. Once. Twice. Nothing.
Mark sighs in his sleep, and Owen figures Mark will need it with the hangover. And he could use a shower in the meantime. So he abandons Mark’s sleeping body in favor of hauling his off to the shower that he’s fairly sure is only warm because this is Los Angeles in the spring and it’s not like it’s particularly cold there.
When he comes back Mark’s still out and it’s almost seven, and if they’re going to be on the road they should probably start now.
“Alright, rise and shine.” Owen slips two fingers underneath Mark’s shoulder and pushes up, digging into the skin, until Mark moves, and his eyes finally crack open. Mark blinks, rapidly, and then he groans like he’s either just feeling the hangover hit him full on, or he’s feeling the other events of last night hit him. Either way, he doesn’t look too pleased. “I think I’m getting tired of LA already,” he adds, just to have something to fill the air.
Mark pauses, presumably trying to figure out how this is going to work (because Owen, well, he’s had the time to think and process and get over it, and Mark really hasn’t yet, so this is all still new to him), but then he nods, shakes it off, and sits up. “Yeah, I think I am too.”
Today they’ll start to head west. Time for a change.
---
It’s Reno this time. Another nine hours and change on the road, and there’s a certain amount of freedom in the fact that they don’t have to talk with the wind whipping, making it hard to hear and far harder to focus enough to hold a conversation. Eventually they’ll have to stop though and that’s what makes him nervous.
Mark doesn’t get nervous. Ever. Not even that one time, back in med-school, with Derek. He’d blown it off and Derek had freaked out for about an hour before Mark kissed him silent and told him that it didn’t have to happen again. It would be their little secret.
But he doesn’t know Owen that well. Or at all. They can pass each other in hallways and surgeries for months and that doesn’t mean he knows anything but what kind of doctor he is. He might as well have just really met him about a week ago. Which makes him the equivalent of his normal one night stand back in Seattle, except they’re going to wind up sharing a hotel room tonight in all likelihood, and he definitely does not normally have to do that with the other one night stands.
So that makes him nervous. Owen not reacting, not even in the slightest, makes him nervous. Not having anywhere to hide makes him nervous. There’s a lot of things.
“So much for roughing it,” Owen remarks, that night, throwing his sleeping bag in the corner of the room, his stuff on the chair next to it. Mark drops his by the door and just sort of stays there, watching Owen flop down onto his bed. Two doubles on either side of the room. He used to sleep like that with Derek when they were kids. “How long are we planning on doing this anyway?”
It takes Mark a few seconds to pick a meaning. “Until it stops feeling right.”
“Just tell me that we’re not going to end up in New York or something. It’s fucking cold up there.” It’s purpose is to make him laugh, maybe relax, and Mark does, decides that maybe last night wasn’t anything but two drunk, lonely, and bored people. It gets him as far as his own bed, and after a moment he lies down too, looking at the ceiling in exactly the same way he had the stars a few days ago. After a moment, Owen adds, “You know in a month or two none of this will matter. Not them, not this insane road trip, none of it. Nature of the job, personal lives get thrown on the backburner. It’s what I always used to like about it.”
“Yeah,” Mark replies, quietly. He knows, he agrees, but that doesn’t help the now. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Owen rise and come towards him, but doesn’t have the time to react before Owen’s taken enough purposeful strides to end up on the edge of his bed. “What are you doing?” Mark asks, even if he would have to be a complete idiot not to know.
“None of this is going to matter,” Owen repeats, a hand coming around the back of Mark’s neck, holding him there as he leaned down to press his lips to Mark’s. And Mark thinks, okay, you know, if it’s going to work like this, then he can do this. He knows how to have a fling, knows how to go through the motions and have his fun. It’s habitual for him, harder to become involved than to not.
He lets his hands come off of the bed, move over Owen’s solid body, running over broad shoulders and down his back, pushing at his shirt, at the waistband of his pants. Owen’s lips move from his own to journey along the curve of his jaw, to his neck, and he can feel teeth graze the skin there. Mark’s fingers are already working down the zipper of Owen’s trousers, but Owen’s hand gets between them and stills his movement, moving his hand away, and undoing Mark’s pants first, instead, and Mark knows exactly where this is going, and exactly how fast.
It’s a refreshing change of pace.
---
Their rides keep getting shorter, more time spent in hotel rooms, never bars because they’re not looking for a repeat. They keep heading west, but Owen’s a little more sure every day that they’re also heading north as well. Subconsciously.
But the bottom line is that they spend more time fucking than getting anywhere, and he isn’t sure what kind of sign that is.
They also spend more time talking. Learning. They stop feeling like strangers put together out of the need for companionship and common ground. Owen starts to feel something, not surprisingly, but he doesn’t spend too much time wondering or analyzing just what it is. Like he said, none of this will matter. They aren’t going to come back with a new outlook on life and some established relationship. They’re just going to come back in fewer pieces than they left.
That’s the whole point.
---
They’ve been gone for eight days now, been through more than that many states. Half the time Mark can wake up and not have any idea where the hell they are, which state they left off in.
This is one of those blurry mornings, where he rolls over into a body, a hand against him that he doesn’t remember, have to blink a few times to put a name to a face. Then he’ll have to look at the clock. Then his cell phone, see the exclamation point next to the ‘2 new voicemails’ message. He hasn’t checked those since he left. After that, usually he starts to remember where he is, get some sort of bearings.
Every morning still feels like waking up from a blackout.
But this particular morning he doesn’t. He has to search through the drawers looking for stationary or paper or something to tell him which state he’s in, much less which city. He finds a phone book in the end, bright yellow, with black print labeling it as being from Wyoming. They’re in Wyoming. When the hell did that happen?
All the shifting and digging wakes Owen up, because he can hear him murmur from the warm bed he’d just left. “What time is it?”
“Late.” Mark tells him, shoving the phone book back into the bottom drawer.
“Define late.” But he doesn’t have to because Owen rolls onto his side, up on one elbow, and leans over to look at the clock. It’s only a little after eight-thirty. “What are you doing?”
Mark slams the drawer shut, stays on the cold floor. “We’re in Wyoming.”
He hears a soft thud as Owen lets himself fall back against the bed. “Yeah, I know, I thought we were in Colorado.”
“No,” Mark shakes his head, straightens but keeps on the other side of the bed so that Owen doesn’t go and do something stupid like pull him back into it. “No, I mean we’re in Wyoming - we’ve been gone for over a week.” He’s aware that this means nothing to Owen, and he really wishes that he hadn’t picked up Lexie’s habit of not speaking in completely coherent sentences. That was a trait he wished he hadn’t absorbed. What he means is that he’s lost track - they’ve been gone so long that he’s no longer running and hiding from anything, they’re just moving. He’s mended all that he’s going to. “It’s stopped feeling right.”
Owen seems to understand that. “Well then maybe it’s time to go home.”
---
It only takes them three days going back. They stop in another diner, just outside of Seattle, their version of a transition. They’ll be back in Joe’s bar by the time night falls, and there’s something strange that after all this time that’s all it takes. It’s all over and done with.
Mark starts second guessing fifteen minutes into lunch. “None of this is going to matter right?”
“Not if you don’t want it to.”
---
Later: smiling faces greet them at Joe’s, along with more questions about where they went and why. Derek buys him a drink. He and Meredith got engaged while they were gone. He wants to know if he’ll be the best man. Try this again. Mark nods, accepts, tells him he’s happy for him.
Lexie eyes him from across the bar, but doesn’t come near him. It’s better that way.
He lets the feeling of being back soak in, lets himself catch his breath, think, finally. It’s nearing last call and people are starting to leave, when Mark catches Owen’s eye for the first time in hours. And somehow, that’s when he knows.
“I do want it to matter.” He tells him, coming up behind him as soon as he thinks no one’s looking. Owen nods, even though he doesn’t turn around, and Mark downs the rest of his drink, sets the glass on the bar, next to Owen’s, and leaves. He decides he’ll wait five minutes, outside, in his car. If Owen doesn’t come by then, he never will.
So he waits. And waits. And counts minutes, and realizes just how much he wants that man to come out that door, and how he hates that it really does matter. He hates that this happened again. But it did, and now the ball isn’t in his court and all he can do is tap his fingers against the steering wheel in some exceedingly frantic pattern.
Owen’s there in three.