Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟲𝟭 illict affairs

"Oops."

She didn't look impressed.

"Mark," She said, continuing to shake her head at him. 

She continued moving on, as if she couldn't stay still. 

He pressed his cheek into the pillow and just grinned sheepishly. He watched as she spritzed herself with perfume and slipped on her shoes, stretched out her arms and searched for her jacket in the closet.

"Beth."

He repeated her exact tone back to her. 

It was the disapproving tone that made him want to smirk far more than anything else. The Beth in question just rolled her eyes, shoving her arms into her jacket. She sat on the side of the bed beside him and shot him a look out of the corner of her eye.

"We talked about this..."

They had. Sometimes, dating Elizabeth Montgomery felt like a contract; there were so many rules in this relationship that Mark was beginning to feel like he was back in school, constantly teetering the fine line between favourite pupil and class dunce. 

They'd defined a very sharp, precise line between their personal lives and their professional lives. 

Church and State. They were separate worlds, never to meet... But he liked the way her eyes glimmered very slightly; she would've been a very sexy teacher and really wouldn't have minded a detention —

"I must have just got carried away," He sat upwards, smiling at the side of her face as she snorted. The sheets crinkled around them and he leant towards her, his fingers creeping up her leg. "If I remember rightly... you weren't complaining..."

"Okay," She replied, a smile flickering at her lips despite the stern fold to her brow. 

It was the betrayal that had told him that she really hadn't been complaining at all. Now, in the morning when she was rushing to get ready for work on the other hand.... 

"But I will be complaining when someone notices and then I get hounded—"

"They won't notice," Mark shook his head, watching as Beth just rolled her eyes. Instead, she slapped his hand off of her thigh. Jokingly, he recoiled and scowled, cradling his fingers. "Hey, watch it— don't you know how much these fingers are worth?"

A low chuckle fell through her lips, she leant over, tying her shoe laces. He watched as she shook her head, her ponytail swinging like a pendulum. Mark tilted his head to the side, wishing, for the hundredth time, that she'd just get back in bed instead of running off into the city. 

He glanced over at the alarm clock on her dresser: it was 5am. 

She'd barely even been in bed for longer than five hours.

"They will notice," Beth continued onwards, choosing wisely to just ignore him completely. "Faith will notice because Faith notices everything... and then Faith will bug me about it for the next month until I lie to her and tell her that I hooked up with some guy... and then she'll try to get me to go with her to some bar in the West Village with Isaac to find a date..."

"Tell her you're seeing someone," He suggested, cutting her short as she spiralled slightly in her thoughts. 

He could pinpoint the exact moment she paused. It was a brief moment, a flicker of a smile as she rolled her eyes. Mark squinted at her, not exactly sure what was so eye-roll worthy—

"Then she'll want to meet him," Beth stated softly, placing her hand on his leg. 

She patted it fondly and chuckled to herself. She smiled at the floor, as if the whole thought of getting dragged into this whole situation was extremely amusing to her. Mark's gaze wavered back down to the hickey on her neck.