Nuclear Family (ga - lexie/sloan, lexie/mark)
Title: Nuclear Family
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Lexie | Lexie/Sloan Riley, Lexie/Mark.
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,059
Author's Note: I understand that this is going to freak a lot of people out. It freaks me out. However, I miss the days of thinking completely outside of the box. So...outside of the box it is.
Summary: Post 6.10 - Holidaze. "It must be weird for you," Sloan says, and Lexie appreciates the dramatic understatement of that sentence.
“I can’t,” Mark says, after Lexie’s been standing outside the door for just long enough to hear her long, slow sobs (the most human thing she’s seen out of this girl in over a month) and his soothing words (which equally tug at her heartstrings and annoy her).
“You can’t,” she repeats; effort is made, on her part, to keep all judgment out of her tone.
“I can’t.”
Lexie wasn’t lying: there will be no sex tonight.
---
For the record, if he had bothered to mention the whole ‘she’s pregnant’ part, she would’ve probably been ten times more sympathetic.
Instead, she finds out three days later, watching Sloan (Riley, she prefers to think of her as, whether it’s her last name or not - Sloan just screams ‘Mark’s daughter’ all over again, on repeat) paint her nails a new shade of red.
“It must be weird for you.”
Lexie appreciates the dramatic understatement of that sentence. In fact, she appreciates it so much that she has a hard time formulating a response that isn’t along the lines of ‘it would be less weird if you would ever leave’. She will not stoop to that level; she will not be catty or bitchy or rude because she was raised better than that. Because she is better than that.
Unfortunately, her silence gives Sloan or Riley or that girl enough time to elaborate. “I mean, one second you’re dating some guy and then you find out he has a kid that’s basically your age.” She cringes. It’s probably fairly visible. “And now he’s going to be a grandfather? I mean that’s just crazy?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
For this, Sloan bothers to look up from the very complicated work of making sure the polish covers her entire nail. “You know I’m pregnant right?”
Lexie chokes on her coffee.
---
She can not go there with Mark.
Just…no.
That night, when his hands make their way from his (unofficially) newly designated side of the bed to fall on her hip, right at the waistline of her shorts, she lets him. Hell, she lets him go much farther the next night.
For most of it, her mind is elsewhere.
(It would probably be a hit to his ego if she ever bothered to tell him. That he couldn’t blow her mind this time.
She won’t.)
---
Sloan might have cried on him and Mark might’ve been all comforting and dad-like for about five minutes, but Lexie’s still the one who ends up interacting with her the most.
Warm fuzzy feelings of understanding, sympathy, maybe even pity, never develop -- passing of time be damned.
Other emotions come into play however.
“Why are there packing boxes in there?”
It’s an empty room, full of the stuff that she and Mark had but had never quite placed. Stuff of his from New York, stuff of hers from her dad’s house. “We just haven’t found a place for it.”
“How long does it take?” Sloan asks, like that is an absolutely ridiculous explanation.
“Apparently, five months.”
This gets the attention of the other…girl (she’s not a woman, not really, even if she is eighteen and three months pregnant). “You’ve only lived here five months?”
Lexie doesn’t have a good answer to that because she’s not sure what there is to say. All that comes out is, “He used to live in a hotel.”
“Oh.” Sloan replies, after a beat, like she’s thankful that she managed to get knocked up now instead of then.
The emotion there is most definitely irritation.
---
Shopping was probably inevitable.
Sloan has no car and seems unable to figure out the bus schedule, so Lexie ends up taking her to the mall for a few hours while she’s off.
This, of course, was designated to her by Mark because it’s ‘a girl thing’.
“Now that’s hot.” Sloan utters, outside of the Victoria’s Secret store that they are definitely passing by, eyeing sparkly bras and lacy thong underwear. Lexie prefers to ignore the fact that ‘that’s hot’ was just used in her presence.
“Yeah and also what got you in this position,” Lexie replies. She’d point to the swell of Sloan’s belly, for emphasis, but there isn’t one yet.
“Not really. It was probably either that time under the bleachers or in his friend’s bedroom at that really crappy party I got dragged to. Lingerie definitely wasn’t involved.” It’s an over-share, really, not that Sloan appears to notice. “And I wasn’t talking about for me. I was talking about for you.”
Lexie blushes. There’s no reason because she shouldn’t be feeling even a hint of embarrassment or nervousness or whatever, but there’s still a faint pink that colors her cheeks. “I’m not having this conversation.”
“Oh come on, you’d look hot.”
With nothing to say to that, Lexie grabs Sloan by the arm and pulls her along, effectively putting an end to the conversation.
---
Nowadays, Lexie understands Meredith’s affinity for tequila a little better.
“You’re toasted,” Sloan remarks, following her down the hall. They’re the only ones home. Again. And Lexie just got here.
“Yes but, unlike you, I can legally be toasted.” Lexie replies, kicking off her shoes in the master bedroom. Sloan thinks nothing off just flopping down on their bed and Lexie both doesn’t know what to make of that and is far too inebriated to make a decent argument as far as why she shouldn’t be there without sounding like an idiot.
So. She stays. “I have been drunk before, you know.”
“I’m sure,” she says and she is. Cautiously, she takes a seat on the bed, as far away from Sloan as she can reasonably be while on the same bed. King sized or no.
“It makes you feel freer.”
There’s no reasonable explanation for why Sloan’s still on this topic. Lexie has no idea what her endgame is here. She would not be opposed to it ending though.
“Blurs the lines a little.”
Lexie decides that Sloan was definitely drunk when she went and got herself pregnant.
“I like that.”
What happens next, like this conversation, has no rhyme or reason.
Sloan closes the distance between them, one red finger-nailed hand coming to rest on her cheek, followed by her mouth on Lexie’s lips. The blonde’s lips are tacky with lip gloss that dissolves around the time Lexie’s lips involuntarily start moving against hers, and her fingers move down her cheek to her neck to where the strap of her camisole meets her shoulder, slipping underneath that. She snaps it as she nips at Lexie’s lower lip, and the combination of the two actions causes something in Lexie to snap and she jumps.
“No,” she says, equally pulling back and pushing away. “No, that’s…I mean…what the hell?”
“Just having a little fun,” Sloan says with a frown, like there’s something wrong with Lexie for not seeing that and joining in.
Today’s emotion, ladies and gentleman, is confusion.
---
“Mark?”
The question still stands, even as someone slides into bed with her. It’s fair, considering tonight’s earlier events.
His mouth is on her bare shoulder, pressing a kissing there, and he pulls her towards him before he says anything. It’s not an answer. Then again, he probably doesn’t see how she needs one. “She said you two were getting along better.”
She’s back on her side of the bed seconds later.
It’s his turn to be confused.
---
She’s cautious for the rest of the week.
And by cautious, what Lexie really means is that she takes care to make sure that she’s never there unless Mark is.
Lexie’s pretty sure (at the very least she’s incredibly hopeful) that nobody in their right mind would hit on the father’s girlfriend right in front of them. Or try to make out with her.
Except, you know, Sloan had been in her right mind. It was Lexie who was drunk. Which is interesting since those things usually work the other way, with the inebriated person initiating and the stone cold sober person reminding them that maybe this is a bad idea.
Then again, Lexie supposes she hasn’t done much the normal way since she ended up at this hospital.
---
“It doesn’t have to be this big awkward thing, you know.”
Lexie looks up from the grocery list she’s making, one of those ridiculous domestic things that she actually enjoys. This is two days before February. “Excuse me?”
“You’re talking to me even less than he is,” Sloan replies. Twice, Lexie makes the ‘that’s crazy talk’ face, complete with a smile, but she can’t seem to get it right so she drops the act entirely. “That’s got to be, like, some kind of record.”
She’s always prided herself on being the nice one, the friendly one, the welcoming one. They are traits her mother passed on to her, little reminders of a woman she misses dearly. Lexie never wanted to be this person, the one who just can’t be that sometimes, in certain situations -- in this situation. But she is.
That being said, she would really like to know how the hell she became the one that’s mishandling things here.
“It is awkward,” she settles on, after staring at the word ‘bread’ for a straight minute.
“Because you’re sleeping with my dad?”
She hopes that was rhetorical.
“Whatever. You were totally into it.”
Lexie balks at this. She can’t believe she’s having this conversation. “For a very, very brief amount of time. And I was drunk. Therefore you were taking advantage of me.”
“That’s really going to be your argument?” Sloan shoots back, with a tilt of her head. She leans in, closer, across the island. “The eighteen year old took advantage of you? Also, with the whole drunk thing? I could argue that you’re setting a bad example and corrupting my youthful innocence.”
“Youthful innocence?” She abandons the grocery list entirely now. “Do you have any idea how many ways that phrase doesn’t apply to you?”
Sloan just leans back and smiles. Wide and mischievous, like this is totally what she was going for. Then she gets up, going to pour herself the last of the orange juice from the fridge. On her way there, she unnecessarily brushes her fingers against Lexie’s arm. The pen in her hand jerks in response to the contact, turning her ‘l’ into some kind of backslash and she sighs.
---
“It’s the whole being pregnant thing right?” It’s February the first and she’s just returned with those groceries. In a way, it feels like the appropriate time to have the second half of this conversation.
This is really the same conversation, just in reverse, because Sloan’s comeback is, “Excuse me?”
“The hormonal changes. Sometimes they make people, well, horny.” This is less information gleaned from a textbook and more the result of something her sister once decided to share. “That’s why you’re hitting on me.”
You see it makes the kind of sense that absolves her from being at fault for this in any way.
“See, really, it’s just biological. And it’ll pass.”
She turns back from the cupboard to find Sloan staring at her. Again with the smiling. Lexie really sort of hates it. And that’s major because Lexie’s big on the smiling usually. “You have to rationalize everything, don’t you? Is that like a doctor thing?”
Lexie’s of the opinion that maybe some rational thinking might do this girl some good. Not that she’ll say that.
Sloan shrugs, fine without any sort of response on Lexie’s part. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.”
---
This right here is critical.
Lexie’s reading of the conversation: an explanation and a resolution that will effectively put an end to any sort of awkward tension between them, no matter of what nature. Or at least alleviate it.
Sloan’s reading of the conversation: permission to continue.
---
Eventually, she just gets tired of arguing.
The third time Sloan kisses her, she just kind of falls into it at first. Her hands move from resting atop the mattress (it’s the bed again and that is so wrong) and tangle in Sloan’s blonde waves, and somewhere in between the realization that Sloan’s pretty good with her tongue and that she’s definitely been using her shampoo, Lexie decides, you know, fuck it.
Which is about when she takes initiative.
(The second time:
In the kitchen, Lexie’s hands soapy from dishes and it’s for that reason that she hesitates to push at Sloan’s shoulders or, you know, touch her at all. Instead she’s forced to use her words, whenever she can disengage her mouth from the very forward teenager in front of her.
Sloan knows this. Lexie’s fairly sure that’s why she did it.
“This has got to stop,” Lexie reprimands, seconds after the fact.
“Yeah, sure.”)
---
Mid-February comes, and Lexie discovers that the best way to channel any anger or annoyance she feels towards this girl, and there’s more than enough of it, is through inappropriate sex with her.
Meredith would be proud. Not that she’ll ever tell Meredith. Or anyone.
“Just don’t say anything. To anyone.” Lexie restates for the seven-hundredth time. She is insanely thankful that Sloan can’t drink, not legally or ethically.
“Who am I going to tell?” Her nails clack against the counter. They’re pink, for Valentine’s Day. “I only talk to you and my dad. And my girlfriend’s back home.”
“I don’t care what you tell them. I care what you tell Mark.” After a deep breath, she rephrases carefully. “Don’t tell anyone in Seattle.”
“Paranoid much?”
Lexie rolls her eyes but by then she’s walking down the hall and Sloan can’t see her anymore.
---
During sex, she calls her Riley.
Not that she calls out her name or anything, just every now and then when she’s not emitting a string of curse words or various nonsensical ones, she’ll say her name. And it’s Riley here because it helps her not think of what she’s really doing here.
Like when they’re playing return the favor and Sloan’s hand slips up the inside of Lexie’s thigh and the other woman’s fingers curl inside of her. Usually there’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘more’ (never ‘please’; she will not beg), and somewhere in there the first syllable of Sloan’s middle name will escape her lips as well.
In movies, after sex there is the cuddling or the cigarette smoking. In lieu of either of those options, Lexie gets this:
“So if it’s hormonal for me, what the hell is it for you?”
She doesn’t fucking know.
---
“Thanks.”
She catches Mark’s serious gaze out of the corner of her eye. Instantly, because she knows exactly how rare those are, she stills. Abandoned underneath her fingertips sits an overly cheerful Hallmark card full of birthday wishes, her sister’s name on it and an unfinished message that’s taking up more than half of the blank side of the card. “For what?”
He angles his neck so that he’s gesturing towards the spare room that Sloan’s currently occupying. “You’re better at this than I am. And I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Trust me, I’m not…” she looks away and her sentence drops with her eyes. “I just don’t have as much to lose here.”
It’s his daughter. At most, she’s just Lexie’s accidental occasional lover and her boyfriend’s daughter. Those are titles that you can leave behind with a flick of the wrist, a packed suitcase and closed door behind her. Blood holds him here and she understands that more and more.
His smile is weak but it’s there and she’s so beyond sorry that she has to ruin the moment. But she does. “There’s no plan here is there?”
“What?”
“There’s no plan. She’s just going to…stay until something else comes up.” She doesn’t say ‘falls into our laps’ but she desperately wants to. “Because you weren’t exactly in a hurry to get her out of here before and now that she’s pregnant and everything…there’s just no plan is there?”
After a moment, he lowers his head. “I left.”
“You were eighteen. That’s what kids do.” Lexie swallows; she kind of imagined this conversation involving more yelling, more arguing. “But you took her in when her mother kicked her out and you didn’t have to. You took her in when she needed you the most. And that’s something.”
Her brief pause is punctuated by SportsCenter, on low in the background, and the ringing of Sloan’s cell phone, abandoned on the kitchen counter. Neither one of them moves to do anything about that.
“You should call her mother.”
Mark nods. And they leave it at that.
---
Problem is, Mark doesn’t call. If she were to ask why she knows there would only be a myriad of excuses and so she doesn’t bother.
Instead, she snatches Sloan’s cell phone, finds the number (not that hard since it’s listed under ‘mom’) and dials.
What ensues is probably the most awkward fifteen minutes of her life, in which Samantha Riley asks after her daughter, after ‘that bastard’, and inquires about just who the hell Lexie is in all of this, in that exact order. Lexie tells her all of that, fills in all the blanks, and then oh-so-carefully tries to work into the conversation the part about Sloan not having anyone in her time of need and how strained things are with her and Mark, you know, because of his job and his life here. It’s a long, ridiculous conversation and she isn’t sure any good is going to come of it anyway.
Of course, since she’s doing this while at the hospital, she’s also locked herself in a supply closet and the moment she steps out she runs right into Callie.
“Don’t ask,” she says, with an emphatic shake of the head and these big doe eyes that very few people have ever been able to say no to.
Callie only holds up her hands and starts walking away, throwing “I don’t want to know” over her shoulder.
She’s entirely too right about that.
---
“You called my mother,” Sloan spats, just as soon as Lexie gets home.
Apparently, that was the kind of good it did. Lexie hangs up her coat and mentally prepares herself for this. Briefly, she wishes Mark was here. “I did,” she confirms.
There’s an angry shake of Sloan’s head and her hair falls out of the messy twist it was in. “What the hell? She kicked me out.”
“I know.” Now would probably be a good time for those doe eyes to work. “I was just trying to help.”
“Funny because I don’t remember asking for your damn help,” Sloan’s voice has now raised to a full on yell, the kind that she’s sure can be heard in Callie and Cristina’s apartment. “I asked for my dad’s, not yours. You have nothing to do with this.”
Lexie wasn’t going to yell. She swears she wasn’t until half a second ago when Sloan started making incorrect accusations. Now she’s going to yell or shout or at the very least raise her voice. “Newsflash, I have everything to do with this. I’m the one who talks to you, I’m the one who helps you, I’m the one who deals with you.”
Sloan narrows her eyes. She’s got more to say and her mouth opens to start when Lexie cuts back in, albeit with a much lower voice. You know, just in case anyone in the neighboring apartment is actually listening in.
“I’m the one you’re freaking sleeping with,” she nearly hisses, “so I have a say.”
There’s a defiant raise of an eyebrow, hands on hips, and Lexie only thinks she might know how this ends.
---
It’s hate sex - really, that’s the literal definition of it. It’s always been that way and it only worsens as the days pass and more buttons get pushed, more nerves stepped on.
Lexie hates her because she’s rude and superficial and also because Lexie sort of fears that Mark will wake up one day and discover that he really should be working on his relationship with his daughter before his relationship with her.
Sloan hates her because she’s passive-aggressive, far too close to her age to be telling her what to do, and has Mark’s attention more than she ever will.
Having sex is just easier than having the same argument fifteen times.
(Sloan’s nails still dig into her skin, adding unnecessary injury to insult, and Lexie’s fingers twist inside of her, accidentally on purpose changing the angle because she knows it’ll piss Sloan off to no end.
“Tease,” Lexie receives for her efforts.
Lexie breathes “bitch” in return, with a kind of callousness she wasn’t sure she had in her.
A minute later there’s a moan and Sloan bucking against her hand, and Lexie remembers the difference between this and the alternative is the payoff.)
---
“This is stupid.”
Sloan does not argue.
It’s not exactly a revelation.
---
It’s the end of February when Samantha shows up at the apartment.
Lexie avoids eye contact with the woman and steps aside to let her in, silently thankful that Mark’s with Derek, probably at Meredith’s by now.
When Sloan catches wind of who just walked through the door, instantly going on the offensive, Lexie bites back the urge to tell her that crossing her arms under her chest like that only accentuates the problem, the curve of her belly under the same red shirt she was wearing when she told Mark two months ago.
“You were the one who kicked me out,” Sloan says, repeats actually, since it seems to be her main line of defense. Lexie thinks she gets the reasoning behind it. Sloan’s hurt that her mother would do that because, even with someone as vain and angry and vapid as her there are certain things you’re supposed to be able to depend on, things like your parents always having your back, always looking out for you. Lexie had that. And she thinks, beyond a single doubt, that if she was in this situation with her own mother this would’ve never happened.
She gets that she was lucky. She’s always understood that. And this only drives the point home.
---
“They’re at a hotel. Leaving tomorrow.”
There is nothing but silence on the other end of the phone but she knows that he’s still there because she can hear him breathing.
“It’s what’s makes the most sense,” she says, firm even if she’s starting to think that maybe she overstepped. It’s what she believes is right but it’s also, in a way, not her territory. It just looks a whole lot like it.
“I’m going home,” he announces, from somewhere that sounds very distant, and it takes her too long to notice that’s because he isn’t talking to her, he’s talking to Derek.
When he hangs up, she exhales the sentiment on a sigh.
Lexie is alone in the apartment for the first time in months and the kitchen stinks of acetone from the bottle of nail polish remover that still remains, left behind.
---
Someday, this will make a good story. It’s not one for your children or your grandchildren though, much as it is about Mark’s.
In June, Sloan has her baby, a boy, and Lexie intentionally leaves the cordless phone on the bed, hoping he’ll take the hint. He does. He calls. He plays the role of the father who cares and it’s hard for him and maybe it doesn’t suit him either but he tries.
There is, at least, that.
In October, Samantha calls to inform the answering machine that Sloan’s skipped town again. For two weeks, Lexie holds her breath and waits for a knock that never comes.
“We make our own families,” Lexie takes to saying, often, drawing looks of something like understanding from Meredith, a sense of unity, confusion from others, and curiosity from Mark. With him, it’s really meant to be synonymous with ‘it’s not your fault and it wasn’t working anyway’.
Lexie still thinks about her, though the emotion tinting those thoughts varies with her moods and the seasons.
---
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Lexie | Lexie/Sloan Riley, Lexie/Mark.
Rating: R
Word Count: 4,059
Author's Note: I understand that this is going to freak a lot of people out. It freaks me out. However, I miss the days of thinking completely outside of the box. So...outside of the box it is.
Summary: Post 6.10 - Holidaze. "It must be weird for you," Sloan says, and Lexie appreciates the dramatic understatement of that sentence.
“I can’t,” Mark says, after Lexie’s been standing outside the door for just long enough to hear her long, slow sobs (the most human thing she’s seen out of this girl in over a month) and his soothing words (which equally tug at her heartstrings and annoy her).
“You can’t,” she repeats; effort is made, on her part, to keep all judgment out of her tone.
“I can’t.”
Lexie wasn’t lying: there will be no sex tonight.
---
For the record, if he had bothered to mention the whole ‘she’s pregnant’ part, she would’ve probably been ten times more sympathetic.
Instead, she finds out three days later, watching Sloan (Riley, she prefers to think of her as, whether it’s her last name or not - Sloan just screams ‘Mark’s daughter’ all over again, on repeat) paint her nails a new shade of red.
“It must be weird for you.”
Lexie appreciates the dramatic understatement of that sentence. In fact, she appreciates it so much that she has a hard time formulating a response that isn’t along the lines of ‘it would be less weird if you would ever leave’. She will not stoop to that level; she will not be catty or bitchy or rude because she was raised better than that. Because she is better than that.
Unfortunately, her silence gives Sloan or Riley or that girl enough time to elaborate. “I mean, one second you’re dating some guy and then you find out he has a kid that’s basically your age.” She cringes. It’s probably fairly visible. “And now he’s going to be a grandfather? I mean that’s just crazy?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
For this, Sloan bothers to look up from the very complicated work of making sure the polish covers her entire nail. “You know I’m pregnant right?”
Lexie chokes on her coffee.
---
She can not go there with Mark.
Just…no.
That night, when his hands make their way from his (unofficially) newly designated side of the bed to fall on her hip, right at the waistline of her shorts, she lets him. Hell, she lets him go much farther the next night.
For most of it, her mind is elsewhere.
(It would probably be a hit to his ego if she ever bothered to tell him. That he couldn’t blow her mind this time.
She won’t.)
---
Sloan might have cried on him and Mark might’ve been all comforting and dad-like for about five minutes, but Lexie’s still the one who ends up interacting with her the most.
Warm fuzzy feelings of understanding, sympathy, maybe even pity, never develop -- passing of time be damned.
Other emotions come into play however.
“Why are there packing boxes in there?”
It’s an empty room, full of the stuff that she and Mark had but had never quite placed. Stuff of his from New York, stuff of hers from her dad’s house. “We just haven’t found a place for it.”
“How long does it take?” Sloan asks, like that is an absolutely ridiculous explanation.
“Apparently, five months.”
This gets the attention of the other…girl (she’s not a woman, not really, even if she is eighteen and three months pregnant). “You’ve only lived here five months?”
Lexie doesn’t have a good answer to that because she’s not sure what there is to say. All that comes out is, “He used to live in a hotel.”
“Oh.” Sloan replies, after a beat, like she’s thankful that she managed to get knocked up now instead of then.
The emotion there is most definitely irritation.
---
Shopping was probably inevitable.
Sloan has no car and seems unable to figure out the bus schedule, so Lexie ends up taking her to the mall for a few hours while she’s off.
This, of course, was designated to her by Mark because it’s ‘a girl thing’.
“Now that’s hot.” Sloan utters, outside of the Victoria’s Secret store that they are definitely passing by, eyeing sparkly bras and lacy thong underwear. Lexie prefers to ignore the fact that ‘that’s hot’ was just used in her presence.
“Yeah and also what got you in this position,” Lexie replies. She’d point to the swell of Sloan’s belly, for emphasis, but there isn’t one yet.
“Not really. It was probably either that time under the bleachers or in his friend’s bedroom at that really crappy party I got dragged to. Lingerie definitely wasn’t involved.” It’s an over-share, really, not that Sloan appears to notice. “And I wasn’t talking about for me. I was talking about for you.”
Lexie blushes. There’s no reason because she shouldn’t be feeling even a hint of embarrassment or nervousness or whatever, but there’s still a faint pink that colors her cheeks. “I’m not having this conversation.”
“Oh come on, you’d look hot.”
With nothing to say to that, Lexie grabs Sloan by the arm and pulls her along, effectively putting an end to the conversation.
---
Nowadays, Lexie understands Meredith’s affinity for tequila a little better.
“You’re toasted,” Sloan remarks, following her down the hall. They’re the only ones home. Again. And Lexie just got here.
“Yes but, unlike you, I can legally be toasted.” Lexie replies, kicking off her shoes in the master bedroom. Sloan thinks nothing off just flopping down on their bed and Lexie both doesn’t know what to make of that and is far too inebriated to make a decent argument as far as why she shouldn’t be there without sounding like an idiot.
So. She stays. “I have been drunk before, you know.”
“I’m sure,” she says and she is. Cautiously, she takes a seat on the bed, as far away from Sloan as she can reasonably be while on the same bed. King sized or no.
“It makes you feel freer.”
There’s no reasonable explanation for why Sloan’s still on this topic. Lexie has no idea what her endgame is here. She would not be opposed to it ending though.
“Blurs the lines a little.”
Lexie decides that Sloan was definitely drunk when she went and got herself pregnant.
“I like that.”
What happens next, like this conversation, has no rhyme or reason.
Sloan closes the distance between them, one red finger-nailed hand coming to rest on her cheek, followed by her mouth on Lexie’s lips. The blonde’s lips are tacky with lip gloss that dissolves around the time Lexie’s lips involuntarily start moving against hers, and her fingers move down her cheek to her neck to where the strap of her camisole meets her shoulder, slipping underneath that. She snaps it as she nips at Lexie’s lower lip, and the combination of the two actions causes something in Lexie to snap and she jumps.
“No,” she says, equally pulling back and pushing away. “No, that’s…I mean…what the hell?”
“Just having a little fun,” Sloan says with a frown, like there’s something wrong with Lexie for not seeing that and joining in.
Today’s emotion, ladies and gentleman, is confusion.
---
“Mark?”
The question still stands, even as someone slides into bed with her. It’s fair, considering tonight’s earlier events.
His mouth is on her bare shoulder, pressing a kissing there, and he pulls her towards him before he says anything. It’s not an answer. Then again, he probably doesn’t see how she needs one. “She said you two were getting along better.”
She’s back on her side of the bed seconds later.
It’s his turn to be confused.
---
She’s cautious for the rest of the week.
And by cautious, what Lexie really means is that she takes care to make sure that she’s never there unless Mark is.
Lexie’s pretty sure (at the very least she’s incredibly hopeful) that nobody in their right mind would hit on the father’s girlfriend right in front of them. Or try to make out with her.
Except, you know, Sloan had been in her right mind. It was Lexie who was drunk. Which is interesting since those things usually work the other way, with the inebriated person initiating and the stone cold sober person reminding them that maybe this is a bad idea.
Then again, Lexie supposes she hasn’t done much the normal way since she ended up at this hospital.
---
“It doesn’t have to be this big awkward thing, you know.”
Lexie looks up from the grocery list she’s making, one of those ridiculous domestic things that she actually enjoys. This is two days before February. “Excuse me?”
“You’re talking to me even less than he is,” Sloan replies. Twice, Lexie makes the ‘that’s crazy talk’ face, complete with a smile, but she can’t seem to get it right so she drops the act entirely. “That’s got to be, like, some kind of record.”
She’s always prided herself on being the nice one, the friendly one, the welcoming one. They are traits her mother passed on to her, little reminders of a woman she misses dearly. Lexie never wanted to be this person, the one who just can’t be that sometimes, in certain situations -- in this situation. But she is.
That being said, she would really like to know how the hell she became the one that’s mishandling things here.
“It is awkward,” she settles on, after staring at the word ‘bread’ for a straight minute.
“Because you’re sleeping with my dad?”
She hopes that was rhetorical.
“Whatever. You were totally into it.”
Lexie balks at this. She can’t believe she’s having this conversation. “For a very, very brief amount of time. And I was drunk. Therefore you were taking advantage of me.”
“That’s really going to be your argument?” Sloan shoots back, with a tilt of her head. She leans in, closer, across the island. “The eighteen year old took advantage of you? Also, with the whole drunk thing? I could argue that you’re setting a bad example and corrupting my youthful innocence.”
“Youthful innocence?” She abandons the grocery list entirely now. “Do you have any idea how many ways that phrase doesn’t apply to you?”
Sloan just leans back and smiles. Wide and mischievous, like this is totally what she was going for. Then she gets up, going to pour herself the last of the orange juice from the fridge. On her way there, she unnecessarily brushes her fingers against Lexie’s arm. The pen in her hand jerks in response to the contact, turning her ‘l’ into some kind of backslash and she sighs.
---
“It’s the whole being pregnant thing right?” It’s February the first and she’s just returned with those groceries. In a way, it feels like the appropriate time to have the second half of this conversation.
This is really the same conversation, just in reverse, because Sloan’s comeback is, “Excuse me?”
“The hormonal changes. Sometimes they make people, well, horny.” This is less information gleaned from a textbook and more the result of something her sister once decided to share. “That’s why you’re hitting on me.”
You see it makes the kind of sense that absolves her from being at fault for this in any way.
“See, really, it’s just biological. And it’ll pass.”
She turns back from the cupboard to find Sloan staring at her. Again with the smiling. Lexie really sort of hates it. And that’s major because Lexie’s big on the smiling usually. “You have to rationalize everything, don’t you? Is that like a doctor thing?”
Lexie’s of the opinion that maybe some rational thinking might do this girl some good. Not that she’ll say that.
Sloan shrugs, fine without any sort of response on Lexie’s part. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.”
---
This right here is critical.
Lexie’s reading of the conversation: an explanation and a resolution that will effectively put an end to any sort of awkward tension between them, no matter of what nature. Or at least alleviate it.
Sloan’s reading of the conversation: permission to continue.
---
Eventually, she just gets tired of arguing.
The third time Sloan kisses her, she just kind of falls into it at first. Her hands move from resting atop the mattress (it’s the bed again and that is so wrong) and tangle in Sloan’s blonde waves, and somewhere in between the realization that Sloan’s pretty good with her tongue and that she’s definitely been using her shampoo, Lexie decides, you know, fuck it.
Which is about when she takes initiative.
(The second time:
In the kitchen, Lexie’s hands soapy from dishes and it’s for that reason that she hesitates to push at Sloan’s shoulders or, you know, touch her at all. Instead she’s forced to use her words, whenever she can disengage her mouth from the very forward teenager in front of her.
Sloan knows this. Lexie’s fairly sure that’s why she did it.
“This has got to stop,” Lexie reprimands, seconds after the fact.
“Yeah, sure.”)
---
Mid-February comes, and Lexie discovers that the best way to channel any anger or annoyance she feels towards this girl, and there’s more than enough of it, is through inappropriate sex with her.
Meredith would be proud. Not that she’ll ever tell Meredith. Or anyone.
“Just don’t say anything. To anyone.” Lexie restates for the seven-hundredth time. She is insanely thankful that Sloan can’t drink, not legally or ethically.
“Who am I going to tell?” Her nails clack against the counter. They’re pink, for Valentine’s Day. “I only talk to you and my dad. And my girlfriend’s back home.”
“I don’t care what you tell them. I care what you tell Mark.” After a deep breath, she rephrases carefully. “Don’t tell anyone in Seattle.”
“Paranoid much?”
Lexie rolls her eyes but by then she’s walking down the hall and Sloan can’t see her anymore.
---
During sex, she calls her Riley.
Not that she calls out her name or anything, just every now and then when she’s not emitting a string of curse words or various nonsensical ones, she’ll say her name. And it’s Riley here because it helps her not think of what she’s really doing here.
Like when they’re playing return the favor and Sloan’s hand slips up the inside of Lexie’s thigh and the other woman’s fingers curl inside of her. Usually there’s a ‘yes’ or a ‘more’ (never ‘please’; she will not beg), and somewhere in there the first syllable of Sloan’s middle name will escape her lips as well.
In movies, after sex there is the cuddling or the cigarette smoking. In lieu of either of those options, Lexie gets this:
“So if it’s hormonal for me, what the hell is it for you?”
She doesn’t fucking know.
---
“Thanks.”
She catches Mark’s serious gaze out of the corner of her eye. Instantly, because she knows exactly how rare those are, she stills. Abandoned underneath her fingertips sits an overly cheerful Hallmark card full of birthday wishes, her sister’s name on it and an unfinished message that’s taking up more than half of the blank side of the card. “For what?”
He angles his neck so that he’s gesturing towards the spare room that Sloan’s currently occupying. “You’re better at this than I am. And I couldn’t do this without you.”
“Trust me, I’m not…” she looks away and her sentence drops with her eyes. “I just don’t have as much to lose here.”
It’s his daughter. At most, she’s just Lexie’s accidental occasional lover and her boyfriend’s daughter. Those are titles that you can leave behind with a flick of the wrist, a packed suitcase and closed door behind her. Blood holds him here and she understands that more and more.
His smile is weak but it’s there and she’s so beyond sorry that she has to ruin the moment. But she does. “There’s no plan here is there?”
“What?”
“There’s no plan. She’s just going to…stay until something else comes up.” She doesn’t say ‘falls into our laps’ but she desperately wants to. “Because you weren’t exactly in a hurry to get her out of here before and now that she’s pregnant and everything…there’s just no plan is there?”
After a moment, he lowers his head. “I left.”
“You were eighteen. That’s what kids do.” Lexie swallows; she kind of imagined this conversation involving more yelling, more arguing. “But you took her in when her mother kicked her out and you didn’t have to. You took her in when she needed you the most. And that’s something.”
Her brief pause is punctuated by SportsCenter, on low in the background, and the ringing of Sloan’s cell phone, abandoned on the kitchen counter. Neither one of them moves to do anything about that.
“You should call her mother.”
Mark nods. And they leave it at that.
---
Problem is, Mark doesn’t call. If she were to ask why she knows there would only be a myriad of excuses and so she doesn’t bother.
Instead, she snatches Sloan’s cell phone, finds the number (not that hard since it’s listed under ‘mom’) and dials.
What ensues is probably the most awkward fifteen minutes of her life, in which Samantha Riley asks after her daughter, after ‘that bastard’, and inquires about just who the hell Lexie is in all of this, in that exact order. Lexie tells her all of that, fills in all the blanks, and then oh-so-carefully tries to work into the conversation the part about Sloan not having anyone in her time of need and how strained things are with her and Mark, you know, because of his job and his life here. It’s a long, ridiculous conversation and she isn’t sure any good is going to come of it anyway.
Of course, since she’s doing this while at the hospital, she’s also locked herself in a supply closet and the moment she steps out she runs right into Callie.
“Don’t ask,” she says, with an emphatic shake of the head and these big doe eyes that very few people have ever been able to say no to.
Callie only holds up her hands and starts walking away, throwing “I don’t want to know” over her shoulder.
She’s entirely too right about that.
---
“You called my mother,” Sloan spats, just as soon as Lexie gets home.
Apparently, that was the kind of good it did. Lexie hangs up her coat and mentally prepares herself for this. Briefly, she wishes Mark was here. “I did,” she confirms.
There’s an angry shake of Sloan’s head and her hair falls out of the messy twist it was in. “What the hell? She kicked me out.”
“I know.” Now would probably be a good time for those doe eyes to work. “I was just trying to help.”
“Funny because I don’t remember asking for your damn help,” Sloan’s voice has now raised to a full on yell, the kind that she’s sure can be heard in Callie and Cristina’s apartment. “I asked for my dad’s, not yours. You have nothing to do with this.”
Lexie wasn’t going to yell. She swears she wasn’t until half a second ago when Sloan started making incorrect accusations. Now she’s going to yell or shout or at the very least raise her voice. “Newsflash, I have everything to do with this. I’m the one who talks to you, I’m the one who helps you, I’m the one who deals with you.”
Sloan narrows her eyes. She’s got more to say and her mouth opens to start when Lexie cuts back in, albeit with a much lower voice. You know, just in case anyone in the neighboring apartment is actually listening in.
“I’m the one you’re freaking sleeping with,” she nearly hisses, “so I have a say.”
There’s a defiant raise of an eyebrow, hands on hips, and Lexie only thinks she might know how this ends.
---
It’s hate sex - really, that’s the literal definition of it. It’s always been that way and it only worsens as the days pass and more buttons get pushed, more nerves stepped on.
Lexie hates her because she’s rude and superficial and also because Lexie sort of fears that Mark will wake up one day and discover that he really should be working on his relationship with his daughter before his relationship with her.
Sloan hates her because she’s passive-aggressive, far too close to her age to be telling her what to do, and has Mark’s attention more than she ever will.
Having sex is just easier than having the same argument fifteen times.
(Sloan’s nails still dig into her skin, adding unnecessary injury to insult, and Lexie’s fingers twist inside of her, accidentally on purpose changing the angle because she knows it’ll piss Sloan off to no end.
“Tease,” Lexie receives for her efforts.
Lexie breathes “bitch” in return, with a kind of callousness she wasn’t sure she had in her.
A minute later there’s a moan and Sloan bucking against her hand, and Lexie remembers the difference between this and the alternative is the payoff.)
---
“This is stupid.”
Sloan does not argue.
It’s not exactly a revelation.
---
It’s the end of February when Samantha shows up at the apartment.
Lexie avoids eye contact with the woman and steps aside to let her in, silently thankful that Mark’s with Derek, probably at Meredith’s by now.
When Sloan catches wind of who just walked through the door, instantly going on the offensive, Lexie bites back the urge to tell her that crossing her arms under her chest like that only accentuates the problem, the curve of her belly under the same red shirt she was wearing when she told Mark two months ago.
“You were the one who kicked me out,” Sloan says, repeats actually, since it seems to be her main line of defense. Lexie thinks she gets the reasoning behind it. Sloan’s hurt that her mother would do that because, even with someone as vain and angry and vapid as her there are certain things you’re supposed to be able to depend on, things like your parents always having your back, always looking out for you. Lexie had that. And she thinks, beyond a single doubt, that if she was in this situation with her own mother this would’ve never happened.
She gets that she was lucky. She’s always understood that. And this only drives the point home.
---
“They’re at a hotel. Leaving tomorrow.”
There is nothing but silence on the other end of the phone but she knows that he’s still there because she can hear him breathing.
“It’s what’s makes the most sense,” she says, firm even if she’s starting to think that maybe she overstepped. It’s what she believes is right but it’s also, in a way, not her territory. It just looks a whole lot like it.
“I’m going home,” he announces, from somewhere that sounds very distant, and it takes her too long to notice that’s because he isn’t talking to her, he’s talking to Derek.
When he hangs up, she exhales the sentiment on a sigh.
Lexie is alone in the apartment for the first time in months and the kitchen stinks of acetone from the bottle of nail polish remover that still remains, left behind.
---
Someday, this will make a good story. It’s not one for your children or your grandchildren though, much as it is about Mark’s.
In June, Sloan has her baby, a boy, and Lexie intentionally leaves the cordless phone on the bed, hoping he’ll take the hint. He does. He calls. He plays the role of the father who cares and it’s hard for him and maybe it doesn’t suit him either but he tries.
There is, at least, that.
In October, Samantha calls to inform the answering machine that Sloan’s skipped town again. For two weeks, Lexie holds her breath and waits for a knock that never comes.
“We make our own families,” Lexie takes to saying, often, drawing looks of something like understanding from Meredith, a sense of unity, confusion from others, and curiosity from Mark. With him, it’s really meant to be synonymous with ‘it’s not your fault and it wasn’t working anyway’.
Lexie still thinks about her, though the emotion tinting those thoughts varies with her moods and the seasons.
---