she smiles at herself in mirrors {mark, derek}
Title: She Smiles At Herself In Mirrors (A Little Too Often These Days)
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Derek. Sadie may or may not be in this. Also strong hints of Mark/Lexie.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,981
Prompt: #40 - Pass for 100_situations
Author's Note: No clue where this came from. A lighter, a little sillier, than my usual fare.
Summary: Spoilers for Season 5, a few weeks/months post last episode. While the girlfriend is away the boys will play, or at least so goes the saying. Let's see how accurate it is.
Lexie spends a three-day weekend, a self imposed vacation without the relaxation, as she says, with her sister, her niece, and her newly returned from Iraq brother-in-law, as well as her father, in some screwed up family reunion or whatever that she’d just rather him stay away from. Briefly, Mark has the thought to protest, but it passes, and she packs and says that they have things to sort out and really it’s all just better if they’re locked in the same house, trapped like animals or whatever. He’d point out that they could leave at any time, but that thought also passes, probably for a good reason.
He waits for the warning at the door the morning she leaves, the variation on the common theme of ‘behave yourself’ he almost expects, but she just kisses him, and shuts the door behind her with a nonchalant “see you in a few days” like the thought that he’s never been very good at staying with the same woman for longer than a day, much less months, doesn’t even cross her mind.
Maybe it doesn’t. He’d like to think that they’ve come that far.
Derek offers his company, a night at the bar after work, like they haven’t found the time to do in so long. It’s been a month since they mended their fences; they need the time together. So Mark says yes, and doesn’t think anything more of it until Derek corrects him in that it’s too warm for in the back of his car. Instead he announces it’s time for a change of scenery and that he’s got somewhere else in mind.
They end up in this bar Mark’s only seen the inside of once or the parking lot.
“Not Joe’s,” he says, throwing the coat twice, when he first moved here and briefly entertained the idea of not sleeping with his co-workers, in the name of not getting a reputation with the first month he was there. It hadn’t really worked out. Mostly, it was just too easy to keep going back night after night. Derek probably doesn’t know anything about that though; that was back when they weren’t on speaking terms the first time. He intends to play dumb and keep it that way.
The clientele is just as he remembered, so very different from Joe’s. Blondes in tight dresses, leering burly men who parked their bikes outside, the occasional downtrodden businessman who looked like he’d just rather drink himself to death than go home and face whatever’s waiting for him. It’s not the place for them, to put it nicely, but Derek doesn’t seem to let on that he notices, only tells him that being here frees them up from interruption.
Within the first ten minutes they’re there, three different woman clearly have their sights set on one or both of them, and Mark is this close to taking bets on which one of them walks up first, when Derek’s cell starts dancing across the bar. Mark gets a quick peek at the Caller ID, noticing it’s a hospital number, and deducing from the reply he gives the caller that it’s Meredith calling from Izzie Stevens’ room, also known as bride central these days. Some days he feels bad for Karev, having to deal with all the wedding hoopla and estrogen infestation every time he wants to see his girlfriend - the way he figures it the man might as well be married himself, having to deal with all the crap and getting none of the sex in return; of course, then he thinks maybe that’s inappropriate, even for him. That’s probably why he keeps that thought to himself.
Point is, Derek starts doing a lot of nodding that Meredith can’t see anyway, and alternating between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, before he places his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “I’ll be right back.”
Mark nods, waving him off, letting his hand fall back to his glass as soon as Derek’s gone. Five minutes at most, he guesses, before Derek’s back, and he figures he’ll just amuse himself by pretending he’s single enough to be making eyes at that one woman who can’t seem to keep hers off of him, when she’s not checking her own reflection in whatever shiny surface she can find. He takes one last glance around to make sure there’s no one else he knows here, his scan of the room turning up no one, save for the woman who catches his eye as she slips into the bathrooms.
The black dress she wears hugs the curve of her ass, and all he can see is that and the blonde curls that fall down her shoulders, her back. No face, but he’s already fairly sure that matches up with the rest of her. So maybe he’ll be amusing himself by waiting for her.
He doesn’t have to wait long. The clack of heels against the wooden floor gets his attention, and when he looks back up he figures karma’s finally caught up with him as he nearly chokes on his drink. The woman’s eyes widen, ever so slightly, when she locks eyes with him from across the bar, and she’s sauntered over to him moments later.
“Well if it isn’t Mark Sloan,” the familiar Australian accented voice says, as she takes a seat next to him, setting her clutch purse on the table. Sadie’s lips aren’t quite the bright red he’d expected to go with that outfit, but its close. “Lexie finally cut you loose?”
“Lexie’s on vacation.” At Sadie’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “Family problems.”
“Right.” She motions to the bartender, apparently for a refill of whatever she’s already been drinking, and he seems more than happy to oblige. “While the girlfriend’s away, the boys will play.”
“I’m here with Derek.” He says, quickly, unsure of why he was defending himself to a woman he barely knows, aside from her friendship with Lexie, and whatever the entire hospital wrongly appeared to have thought he did with her that caused that wonderful little injury he won’t be forgetting any time soon. But it’s not like he’s got anything more interesting to be doing other than drinking and waiting. “And you’re here with a date?”
“Looking for one.” She says, brushing her hair from her eyes. “And it’s not so much a date as something more…temporary.”
“Last I heard you were in Europe,” he tells her, finding some kind of rhythm in their small talk.
She sips her drink, dabbing at the corner of her lips with her fingertips, as if fixing a smear that isn’t there. “You heard wrong.”
“Rumor mill - “ he starts.
She finishes for him, quite differently than he’d intended. “Will have a field day with what you’ve been up to if anyone happens to see you here tonight making eyes at the slutty blonde over there. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”
Mark wastes no time in changing the subject. “So are you going for the biker-types or the men who don’t want to go home to their wives?”
“Subtle,” she tells him, but lets it go anyway. “And I don’t have any preference. Unless of course you’re on the market.”
If he didn’t already know that she was half-hitting on him, this would’ve made it crystal clear. It’s almost funny, how many lines she will cross, and how many of those lines he also used to cross. There’s a lot of similarity there, in an odd way, he notices not for the first time. But she’s younger than he is, she hasn’t been doing this for quite as long, and she doesn’t quite know that eventually there is such a thing as going too far. She’ll learn that the hard way; they all do. “Sorry,” is all he says.
“Of course.” She downs the rest of her drink in one swift movement, then gestures in the general direction of one of those broken-down businessmen, this one with the first two buttons of his blue button-down undone, the formerly starched collar wilted. “Well then if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some work to do.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” he observes, and she nods in agreement, a lack of joy in her expression even so. She looks more calculating than anything else. He’d wish her luck, but he both doesn’t think she’ll need it and wouldn’t quite call it that.
“Tonight,” she begins, pushing off the bar and rising to her full height, “that’s the point.”
He watches her do the same thing she did to him, walk over to the man, except everything is more provocative, from the way her hips sway to the way her hand plays with the charm around her neck, fingers nearly dipping into her cleavage. It’s all intentional but she’s good at making it not seem like it. And the guy, well, he just looks like his day got a hell of a lot better so Mark guesses it’s mission accomplished for her.
Derek slides back into the seat next to him, not a minute later, his phone closed and on the table between them. “Everything okay?”
“Wedding invitations,” Derek tells him, and Mark frowns, increasingly more and more glad that Derek is the one getting married.
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” Mark says, the rest of the ‘why does it matter right now’ speaking for itself.
“I think Izzie is either making her insanely organized or freaking her out more.” He shrugs. “Last time it was flowers.”
“Women.”
“Women,” Derek echoes. “Speaking of which, who was the blonde?”
Mark waits until he’s got his glass held up to his lips to say, “Sadie.” It works, because Derek chokes a little, but manages to cover it up with a look that says he isn’t completely surprised now that he thinks about it. What he does seem a bit surprised about is that she isn’t still here. “Looks like everyone’s got a shot with her,” he adds, without really thinking about the fact that Derek isn’t really privy to the almost-thing with her and Callie.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Mark shakes his head, switches subjects a little more seamlessly this time. “So much for no interruptions.”
There’s this grin that insists he knows something that Mark doesn’t, and it makes him shift in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“I didn’t think so.” Mark replies, because he pretty much figured that out the moment Derek told him that they were changing plans and going here in the first place. The problem here is that Mark still doesn’t quite know why they’re here. Derek seems content not to answer that particular question, and so Mark presses on. “So fess up.”
“Maybe I wanted to see if you were actually telling the truth about changing your stripes,” Derek admits.
“So you took me to the trashiest bar you could think of and left me alone for a while just to see what I’d do?”
“No, that last part wasn’t planned. That was just good timing.”
For the moment, Mark’s caught between annoyance that he didn’t trust him, and amusement that he actually went to such lengths. “Were you drunk when you came up with this plan?” He shrugs; it’s not really an answer, but he does live with Meredith so it’s not entirely impossible. “So you were testing me?”
“Something like that.”
“And I passed.”
“Surprisingly.”
Mark glares, and takes this opportunity to be as childish as absolutely possible, as he says, “I told you so.”
“Enjoy it while you can,” Derek says, but he’s smiling when he says it, and Mark shakes his head and downs the rest of his drink as he watches Sadie leave out the front door, her one-night stand in tow, musing on the brief thought that a few months ago that surely would have been him.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark, Derek. Sadie may or may not be in this. Also strong hints of Mark/Lexie.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,981
Prompt: #40 - Pass for 100_situations
Author's Note: No clue where this came from. A lighter, a little sillier, than my usual fare.
Summary: Spoilers for Season 5, a few weeks/months post last episode. While the girlfriend is away the boys will play, or at least so goes the saying. Let's see how accurate it is.
Lexie spends a three-day weekend, a self imposed vacation without the relaxation, as she says, with her sister, her niece, and her newly returned from Iraq brother-in-law, as well as her father, in some screwed up family reunion or whatever that she’d just rather him stay away from. Briefly, Mark has the thought to protest, but it passes, and she packs and says that they have things to sort out and really it’s all just better if they’re locked in the same house, trapped like animals or whatever. He’d point out that they could leave at any time, but that thought also passes, probably for a good reason.
He waits for the warning at the door the morning she leaves, the variation on the common theme of ‘behave yourself’ he almost expects, but she just kisses him, and shuts the door behind her with a nonchalant “see you in a few days” like the thought that he’s never been very good at staying with the same woman for longer than a day, much less months, doesn’t even cross her mind.
Maybe it doesn’t. He’d like to think that they’ve come that far.
Derek offers his company, a night at the bar after work, like they haven’t found the time to do in so long. It’s been a month since they mended their fences; they need the time together. So Mark says yes, and doesn’t think anything more of it until Derek corrects him in that it’s too warm for in the back of his car. Instead he announces it’s time for a change of scenery and that he’s got somewhere else in mind.
They end up in this bar Mark’s only seen the inside of once or the parking lot.
“Not Joe’s,” he says, throwing the coat twice, when he first moved here and briefly entertained the idea of not sleeping with his co-workers, in the name of not getting a reputation with the first month he was there. It hadn’t really worked out. Mostly, it was just too easy to keep going back night after night. Derek probably doesn’t know anything about that though; that was back when they weren’t on speaking terms the first time. He intends to play dumb and keep it that way.
The clientele is just as he remembered, so very different from Joe’s. Blondes in tight dresses, leering burly men who parked their bikes outside, the occasional downtrodden businessman who looked like he’d just rather drink himself to death than go home and face whatever’s waiting for him. It’s not the place for them, to put it nicely, but Derek doesn’t seem to let on that he notices, only tells him that being here frees them up from interruption.
Within the first ten minutes they’re there, three different woman clearly have their sights set on one or both of them, and Mark is this close to taking bets on which one of them walks up first, when Derek’s cell starts dancing across the bar. Mark gets a quick peek at the Caller ID, noticing it’s a hospital number, and deducing from the reply he gives the caller that it’s Meredith calling from Izzie Stevens’ room, also known as bride central these days. Some days he feels bad for Karev, having to deal with all the wedding hoopla and estrogen infestation every time he wants to see his girlfriend - the way he figures it the man might as well be married himself, having to deal with all the crap and getting none of the sex in return; of course, then he thinks maybe that’s inappropriate, even for him. That’s probably why he keeps that thought to himself.
Point is, Derek starts doing a lot of nodding that Meredith can’t see anyway, and alternating between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, before he places his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and says, “I’ll be right back.”
Mark nods, waving him off, letting his hand fall back to his glass as soon as Derek’s gone. Five minutes at most, he guesses, before Derek’s back, and he figures he’ll just amuse himself by pretending he’s single enough to be making eyes at that one woman who can’t seem to keep hers off of him, when she’s not checking her own reflection in whatever shiny surface she can find. He takes one last glance around to make sure there’s no one else he knows here, his scan of the room turning up no one, save for the woman who catches his eye as she slips into the bathrooms.
The black dress she wears hugs the curve of her ass, and all he can see is that and the blonde curls that fall down her shoulders, her back. No face, but he’s already fairly sure that matches up with the rest of her. So maybe he’ll be amusing himself by waiting for her.
He doesn’t have to wait long. The clack of heels against the wooden floor gets his attention, and when he looks back up he figures karma’s finally caught up with him as he nearly chokes on his drink. The woman’s eyes widen, ever so slightly, when she locks eyes with him from across the bar, and she’s sauntered over to him moments later.
“Well if it isn’t Mark Sloan,” the familiar Australian accented voice says, as she takes a seat next to him, setting her clutch purse on the table. Sadie’s lips aren’t quite the bright red he’d expected to go with that outfit, but its close. “Lexie finally cut you loose?”
“Lexie’s on vacation.” At Sadie’s raised eyebrow, he adds, “Family problems.”
“Right.” She motions to the bartender, apparently for a refill of whatever she’s already been drinking, and he seems more than happy to oblige. “While the girlfriend’s away, the boys will play.”
“I’m here with Derek.” He says, quickly, unsure of why he was defending himself to a woman he barely knows, aside from her friendship with Lexie, and whatever the entire hospital wrongly appeared to have thought he did with her that caused that wonderful little injury he won’t be forgetting any time soon. But it’s not like he’s got anything more interesting to be doing other than drinking and waiting. “And you’re here with a date?”
“Looking for one.” She says, brushing her hair from her eyes. “And it’s not so much a date as something more…temporary.”
“Last I heard you were in Europe,” he tells her, finding some kind of rhythm in their small talk.
She sips her drink, dabbing at the corner of her lips with her fingertips, as if fixing a smear that isn’t there. “You heard wrong.”
“Rumor mill - “ he starts.
She finishes for him, quite differently than he’d intended. “Will have a field day with what you’ve been up to if anyone happens to see you here tonight making eyes at the slutty blonde over there. And don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”
Mark wastes no time in changing the subject. “So are you going for the biker-types or the men who don’t want to go home to their wives?”
“Subtle,” she tells him, but lets it go anyway. “And I don’t have any preference. Unless of course you’re on the market.”
If he didn’t already know that she was half-hitting on him, this would’ve made it crystal clear. It’s almost funny, how many lines she will cross, and how many of those lines he also used to cross. There’s a lot of similarity there, in an odd way, he notices not for the first time. But she’s younger than he is, she hasn’t been doing this for quite as long, and she doesn’t quite know that eventually there is such a thing as going too far. She’ll learn that the hard way; they all do. “Sorry,” is all he says.
“Of course.” She downs the rest of her drink in one swift movement, then gestures in the general direction of one of those broken-down businessmen, this one with the first two buttons of his blue button-down undone, the formerly starched collar wilted. “Well then if you’ll excuse me I’ve got some work to do.”
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” he observes, and she nods in agreement, a lack of joy in her expression even so. She looks more calculating than anything else. He’d wish her luck, but he both doesn’t think she’ll need it and wouldn’t quite call it that.
“Tonight,” she begins, pushing off the bar and rising to her full height, “that’s the point.”
He watches her do the same thing she did to him, walk over to the man, except everything is more provocative, from the way her hips sway to the way her hand plays with the charm around her neck, fingers nearly dipping into her cleavage. It’s all intentional but she’s good at making it not seem like it. And the guy, well, he just looks like his day got a hell of a lot better so Mark guesses it’s mission accomplished for her.
Derek slides back into the seat next to him, not a minute later, his phone closed and on the table between them. “Everything okay?”
“Wedding invitations,” Derek tells him, and Mark frowns, increasingly more and more glad that Derek is the one getting married.
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” Mark says, the rest of the ‘why does it matter right now’ speaking for itself.
“I think Izzie is either making her insanely organized or freaking her out more.” He shrugs. “Last time it was flowers.”
“Women.”
“Women,” Derek echoes. “Speaking of which, who was the blonde?”
Mark waits until he’s got his glass held up to his lips to say, “Sadie.” It works, because Derek chokes a little, but manages to cover it up with a look that says he isn’t completely surprised now that he thinks about it. What he does seem a bit surprised about is that she isn’t still here. “Looks like everyone’s got a shot with her,” he adds, without really thinking about the fact that Derek isn’t really privy to the almost-thing with her and Callie.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Mark shakes his head, switches subjects a little more seamlessly this time. “So much for no interruptions.”
There’s this grin that insists he knows something that Mark doesn’t, and it makes him shift in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“I didn’t think so.” Mark replies, because he pretty much figured that out the moment Derek told him that they were changing plans and going here in the first place. The problem here is that Mark still doesn’t quite know why they’re here. Derek seems content not to answer that particular question, and so Mark presses on. “So fess up.”
“Maybe I wanted to see if you were actually telling the truth about changing your stripes,” Derek admits.
“So you took me to the trashiest bar you could think of and left me alone for a while just to see what I’d do?”
“No, that last part wasn’t planned. That was just good timing.”
For the moment, Mark’s caught between annoyance that he didn’t trust him, and amusement that he actually went to such lengths. “Were you drunk when you came up with this plan?” He shrugs; it’s not really an answer, but he does live with Meredith so it’s not entirely impossible. “So you were testing me?”
“Something like that.”
“And I passed.”
“Surprisingly.”
Mark glares, and takes this opportunity to be as childish as absolutely possible, as he says, “I told you so.”
“Enjoy it while you can,” Derek says, but he’s smiling when he says it, and Mark shakes his head and downs the rest of his drink as he watches Sadie leave out the front door, her one-night stand in tow, musing on the brief thought that a few months ago that surely would have been him.