Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟮 sober

This mess was the reason why he'd been so thankful that he kept pre-pressed suits already packed and ready to go, and why he'd had the thought to do a teeth-whitening strip the night before, alongside a fresh fade at the barbers only days later. 

This mess was the reason he came to Seattle just raring to perform.

Even still, there was a sense of panic deeply entrenched in him, the awareness that Andrew's phone call just three hours before Beth had started leaving voice mails, had been far from a courtesy call. 

It was enough for him to second-guess ever dabbling with the unlawful, ever becoming the sort of guy who could bury the dead before they'd even had their last breath.

Lord give me strength, he thought to himself as he asked the taxi driver to burn rubber on the way to Seattle Grace. 

He wasn't the slightest bit religious, but sometimes even sinners felt the need to put it out there.

Today's going to be a big one.

***

In the meeting room, Derek Shepherd cleared his throat.

They were all too aware of the empty chair in the corner.

He averted his gaze to the congregated board, notably avoiding Archer's eye.

Derek's knee bounced nervously, his palms slick against his slacks.

"Anyone want a coffee?" He asked.

***

The first time Beth had met Dominic Fox, she'd been drunk.

It was not, by any means, her finest hour and seemed to be a reoccurring theme when it came to her acquaintances from both Boston and Manhattan. 

It'd been the running joke that had hidden behind her alcoholism, of how she was incapable of making distinctively sober first impressions. 

It'd been funny the first handful of times but, in retrospect, Beth knew that it was pretty fucking depressing.

He'd first come up in conversation with Calum, with her then-boyfriend mentioning how he'd become friends with Dom while at school in Boston. 

They'd been roommates, two Black kids who, by no means, fit the usual crowd at Harvard Law School. They'd stuck together like blood cells trying to heal a clot. Fox and March been partners from the moment they'd shook hands over the threshold of their college room, and it had been funding that had drawn them into separate directions. 

It had been their desire to start their own firm and find the money and resources for it that had sent Dom to California and Calum to scout for their startup. 

It wasn't until a year had passed, funds had been collected, and Beth firmly sanctified in Calum's love life, that the infamous Fox had blown into Manhattan on an East-bound wind.

All too often, seeing him in rooms often felt like the first time. 

He seemed to approach everything with such dryness to it that Beth could've sworn they were strangers. She knew that Dom didn't particularly like her (which, in all honesty, she didn't completely like herself either so they had at least that in common) and that running after her was not something he particularly enjoyed. She was filled, like always, with the same sensation of apprehension, as if every time Dom appeared, something was about to go terribly wrong.