keep me hanging on so contagiously {mark/lexie}; transference {mark, derek}
Title: Keep Me Hanging On So Contagiously
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Lexie
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 684
Author's Note: Written during class, because I was bored.
Summary: Spoilers for 4.16. She drives him home, and he looks at her like she's never been in a car before, much less driven one. She eyes his injured hand like she's daring him to try and take the keys from her.
She drives his car home. It’s an adventure in itself, trying to get him to give her the keys and, failing that, stealing them and swatting at him, deadly close to his injured hand, until he just gave up and dropped into the passenger’s seat, resigned.
“It’s not like I’ve never driven before,” she says, as she puts the car in gear and backs out of the parking lot.
“Nobody drives this car other than me,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes at stupid boys and their attachments to inanimate objects, before he adds, “And it feels like my mother’s picking me up from the principal’s office.”
She laughs, trying to picture that. She has no idea what Mark would’ve been like when he was a kid, but imagines he probably got in trouble a lot if his current behavior is any indication. “Did that happen a lot?”
“Yes.” He frowns, and she catches sight of that out of the corner of her eye. “Actually, no, mostly Derek’s mother came to pick me up.”
It sounds kind of sad, but it doesn’t appear to bother him, so she shrugs it off. Water under the bridge, she figures. “What did you do? Sex in the auditorium? Or the janitor’s closet? Did you hit on a teacher?”
“You underestimate me.” It leads her to believe something worse, until he adds, “I never got caught for that. Now leaving campus - that I got caught for.”
“Where did you go?”
“Not important, Little Grey,” he replies, leaving it to her imagination. She gives him a look as they pull up to a stoplight, and he corrects after a too long pause, “Lexie.”
It’s only a seven minute drive from the hospital to his hotel and they spend the next two in comfortable silence. Mark keeps his gaze fixed in her general direction, and she’s fairly sure that it’s more about the car than it is her, but she’ll take what she can get. Still she finds herself hoping for some sort of reaction as she says, “I’m glad you told him, but I’m sorry if I caused a rift between you two.”
“I don’t think you did,” he replies.
“Says the man with the cuts on his face and the injured hand.” She points out. “I mean you two have known each other forever and I don’t want to mess that up; it’s not…it’s not worth it for something like this.” A relationship that might, probably won’t, last, she almost says, but stops herself before she can doom them any further. Lexie believes in things like jinxes after all.
“I slept with his wife, Lexie, I really don’t think this is going to be our downfall.”
“Still,” she exhales, turning into the parking lot of the hotel and pulling the key out of the ignition, even as they remain in the car after its stopped running.
And you know, for someone who’s supposed to be so emotionally challenged when it comes to relationships, he doesn’t do such a bad job with her because his hand comes up underneath her jaw, tips her head up so that she’s looking him in the eye as he repeats, “It was worth it. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was.”
She nods, slowly, lets herself savor what’s probably the closest to any kind of declaration that she’s going to get from him. Then, with a smile asks, “Are you going to get all sentimental on me now? Is this the secret side of Mark Sloan?”
He glares, but it’s not backed by anger or irritation, so much as a certain kind of playfulness. They’re good at compromise, the two of them. She can be the sweet, semi-emotional one, and he can be the one that makes everything into a joke and sucks at commitment, and they manage a balance. Apparently. Telling Derek kind of makes this official, and she never saw that coming when she walked into his hotel room and started taking her clothes off. Then again, she kind of figures he probably didn’t either.
---
Title: Transference
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 740
Summary: Spoilers for 4.16. It takes time for people to leave them in the same room, much less alone in the same room, again.
It takes time. Mostly it seems like no one really wants to leave them in a room together, much less alone together. But there’s work and staying out of each other’s way is manageable but not for long. Necessity and habit get in the way, and eight days later when they finally do end up in the same place at the same time, alone, Mark’s hand still aches and that cut along Derek’s nose still isn’t fully healed.
They stand in their corners, like they’ve forgotten how to be in the same room with each other, forgotten how to talk to each other with mouths instead of fists and glares.
(It’s not like they haven’t been through this before, going from talking and fine, to sleeping with Addison and flying across the country to get away, back to coffee in the morning and being perfectly fine, and maybe there’s a reason they say you hurt the ones you love, the ones you care about; maybe there’s truth to those words).
There should be an apology here, Mark’s pretty sure. Someone should be apologizing, whether they mean it or not, in order to make this better. Because, speaking for himself here, he didn’t do so well without Derek last time. He didn’t do so well, and he ended up relocating here because of that, not because of Addison. So, really, he’d like to avoid having to go through all of that again.
So he’ll say it. He’ll apologize. Whatever.
At least, that’s the plan right up until the point where Derek beats him to it. “I’m sorry,” comes out, clear and simple, and Mark’s got to admit he’s a little stunned by the admission, feels a little like there’s something that he just missed.
Derek isn’t the one to say sorry - because you know, Derek is Mark’s best friend, his longest lasting relationship, probably the person he cares about most in the world, even if some days he forgets (ignores) that, but the thing that accompanies that fact is the ability to be able to confidently say Derek is never the one to say sorry or the one to back off (and then came Meredith, he thinks, and maybe he’s learned that way - maybe she’s taught him things Mark or Addison or his mother couldn’t teach him). It’s disconcerting in much the same way as it is to know, for once, that he actually hasn’t done anything wrong.
“I threw the first punch, and you walked away, and I should’ve too.” Derek continues, and if he notices the way Mark’s basically only half hearing him, focusing too much on figuring out the why behind it, then he doesn’t show it. “I should’ve walked away, and I didn’t, and that wasn’t your fault. And I’m sorry.”
That last helps him understand a little more clearly. “That didn’t have anything to do with Lexie did it?”
Derek shakes his head, repeats back to him, “That didn’t have anything to do with Lexie.”
It should make him feel better, it should absolve him, but instead all it does is make him sink a little. Things are made so much easier when the conflict rests in the trivial, in the ‘I told you not to but you did anyways’ because at least they’ve been there before, at least they’ve moved past that before, once, twice, numerous times. Now this leaves them in foreign territory, a problem heavier than just a little indiscretion between friends.
That will never, ever, be something he finds comfort in.
(Because this is bigger than him, and excuses said to make himself feel better, about how it’s not his fault; they’re getting older, and new problems that arise at this point signal trouble and heartache that doesn’t just go away and can’t be passed off as part of life and learning - things like insecurity and failure and wondering if this is really who should be right now, if you’re doing the right thing, or if you’re completely off track).
“Are you going to - “ he starts, but doesn’t quite know how to finish.
Derek seems to get it anyways. “I don’t know.” His gaze falters, eyes finding a neutral spot on the wall and settling. “I don’t know where this leaves me.”
Mark thinks he feels a bit like that, lost with no set of instructions, no textbook references to follow, but somehow he’s fairly sure his problems pale in comparison.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Lexie
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 684
Author's Note: Written during class, because I was bored.
Summary: Spoilers for 4.16. She drives him home, and he looks at her like she's never been in a car before, much less driven one. She eyes his injured hand like she's daring him to try and take the keys from her.
She drives his car home. It’s an adventure in itself, trying to get him to give her the keys and, failing that, stealing them and swatting at him, deadly close to his injured hand, until he just gave up and dropped into the passenger’s seat, resigned.
“It’s not like I’ve never driven before,” she says, as she puts the car in gear and backs out of the parking lot.
“Nobody drives this car other than me,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes at stupid boys and their attachments to inanimate objects, before he adds, “And it feels like my mother’s picking me up from the principal’s office.”
She laughs, trying to picture that. She has no idea what Mark would’ve been like when he was a kid, but imagines he probably got in trouble a lot if his current behavior is any indication. “Did that happen a lot?”
“Yes.” He frowns, and she catches sight of that out of the corner of her eye. “Actually, no, mostly Derek’s mother came to pick me up.”
It sounds kind of sad, but it doesn’t appear to bother him, so she shrugs it off. Water under the bridge, she figures. “What did you do? Sex in the auditorium? Or the janitor’s closet? Did you hit on a teacher?”
“You underestimate me.” It leads her to believe something worse, until he adds, “I never got caught for that. Now leaving campus - that I got caught for.”
“Where did you go?”
“Not important, Little Grey,” he replies, leaving it to her imagination. She gives him a look as they pull up to a stoplight, and he corrects after a too long pause, “Lexie.”
It’s only a seven minute drive from the hospital to his hotel and they spend the next two in comfortable silence. Mark keeps his gaze fixed in her general direction, and she’s fairly sure that it’s more about the car than it is her, but she’ll take what she can get. Still she finds herself hoping for some sort of reaction as she says, “I’m glad you told him, but I’m sorry if I caused a rift between you two.”
“I don’t think you did,” he replies.
“Says the man with the cuts on his face and the injured hand.” She points out. “I mean you two have known each other forever and I don’t want to mess that up; it’s not…it’s not worth it for something like this.” A relationship that might, probably won’t, last, she almost says, but stops herself before she can doom them any further. Lexie believes in things like jinxes after all.
“I slept with his wife, Lexie, I really don’t think this is going to be our downfall.”
“Still,” she exhales, turning into the parking lot of the hotel and pulling the key out of the ignition, even as they remain in the car after its stopped running.
And you know, for someone who’s supposed to be so emotionally challenged when it comes to relationships, he doesn’t do such a bad job with her because his hand comes up underneath her jaw, tips her head up so that she’s looking him in the eye as he repeats, “It was worth it. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it was.”
She nods, slowly, lets herself savor what’s probably the closest to any kind of declaration that she’s going to get from him. Then, with a smile asks, “Are you going to get all sentimental on me now? Is this the secret side of Mark Sloan?”
He glares, but it’s not backed by anger or irritation, so much as a certain kind of playfulness. They’re good at compromise, the two of them. She can be the sweet, semi-emotional one, and he can be the one that makes everything into a joke and sucks at commitment, and they manage a balance. Apparently. Telling Derek kind of makes this official, and she never saw that coming when she walked into his hotel room and started taking her clothes off. Then again, she kind of figures he probably didn’t either.
---
Title: Transference
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Derek
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 740
Summary: Spoilers for 4.16. It takes time for people to leave them in the same room, much less alone in the same room, again.
It takes time. Mostly it seems like no one really wants to leave them in a room together, much less alone together. But there’s work and staying out of each other’s way is manageable but not for long. Necessity and habit get in the way, and eight days later when they finally do end up in the same place at the same time, alone, Mark’s hand still aches and that cut along Derek’s nose still isn’t fully healed.
They stand in their corners, like they’ve forgotten how to be in the same room with each other, forgotten how to talk to each other with mouths instead of fists and glares.
(It’s not like they haven’t been through this before, going from talking and fine, to sleeping with Addison and flying across the country to get away, back to coffee in the morning and being perfectly fine, and maybe there’s a reason they say you hurt the ones you love, the ones you care about; maybe there’s truth to those words).
There should be an apology here, Mark’s pretty sure. Someone should be apologizing, whether they mean it or not, in order to make this better. Because, speaking for himself here, he didn’t do so well without Derek last time. He didn’t do so well, and he ended up relocating here because of that, not because of Addison. So, really, he’d like to avoid having to go through all of that again.
So he’ll say it. He’ll apologize. Whatever.
At least, that’s the plan right up until the point where Derek beats him to it. “I’m sorry,” comes out, clear and simple, and Mark’s got to admit he’s a little stunned by the admission, feels a little like there’s something that he just missed.
Derek isn’t the one to say sorry - because you know, Derek is Mark’s best friend, his longest lasting relationship, probably the person he cares about most in the world, even if some days he forgets (ignores) that, but the thing that accompanies that fact is the ability to be able to confidently say Derek is never the one to say sorry or the one to back off (and then came Meredith, he thinks, and maybe he’s learned that way - maybe she’s taught him things Mark or Addison or his mother couldn’t teach him). It’s disconcerting in much the same way as it is to know, for once, that he actually hasn’t done anything wrong.
“I threw the first punch, and you walked away, and I should’ve too.” Derek continues, and if he notices the way Mark’s basically only half hearing him, focusing too much on figuring out the why behind it, then he doesn’t show it. “I should’ve walked away, and I didn’t, and that wasn’t your fault. And I’m sorry.”
That last helps him understand a little more clearly. “That didn’t have anything to do with Lexie did it?”
Derek shakes his head, repeats back to him, “That didn’t have anything to do with Lexie.”
It should make him feel better, it should absolve him, but instead all it does is make him sink a little. Things are made so much easier when the conflict rests in the trivial, in the ‘I told you not to but you did anyways’ because at least they’ve been there before, at least they’ve moved past that before, once, twice, numerous times. Now this leaves them in foreign territory, a problem heavier than just a little indiscretion between friends.
That will never, ever, be something he finds comfort in.
(Because this is bigger than him, and excuses said to make himself feel better, about how it’s not his fault; they’re getting older, and new problems that arise at this point signal trouble and heartache that doesn’t just go away and can’t be passed off as part of life and learning - things like insecurity and failure and wondering if this is really who should be right now, if you’re doing the right thing, or if you’re completely off track).
“Are you going to - “ he starts, but doesn’t quite know how to finish.
Derek seems to get it anyways. “I don’t know.” His gaze falters, eyes finding a neutral spot on the wall and settling. “I don’t know where this leaves me.”
Mark thinks he feels a bit like that, lost with no set of instructions, no textbook references to follow, but somehow he’s fairly sure his problems pale in comparison.