Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟳 derek and mark

Would Derek collect all of his letters and syllables, arrange them into a line, and then cross them off one by one? 

Mark had never been good at the game, luck never seemed to be on his side.

   "Uh, not much."

 What a strong start. 

He almost felt like patting himself on the fact. 

Good job Sloan, for such a smooth talker you sure have a way with words. 

  "I just..." He said, "I heard that you were talking to Beth––"

Mark noticed it this time. 

Amy had tried to explain in length, how over the years she'd developed the sensitivity to feel when things weren't quite right. 

She'd tried to compare it to the spider bite in a Marvel comic, but instead of it being a bite it was a long term oxy and alcohol problem (that, technically speaking, happened to bite her in the ass more than she would have liked to admit.) 

That's what all of this balanced on top of, the one inflexion in the face of Bethenny Ballard's own secretary, the way a woman had grimaced at the mention of Elizabeth Montgomery's name.

And he saw it. 

He saw the way that Derek seemed to pause for the tiniest second. 

Tinier than the five minutes he'd given up for Mark. 

There was the smallest breath of a moment in which Derek seemed to realise where this was going to go. 

Mark didn't often talk about Beth to Derek, it was, by all means, a conversation topic that he tended to avoid when it came to his everyday conversations. But lately, he'd been discussing her more and more–– and besides, last time he'd started a conversation like this, it had been to berate Derek for hiring Addison while Beth was out of the game. 

Mark was sensing to see a pattern when it came to their conversations, and he wasn't exactly sure yet whether he liked it.

Derek let out a very short breath, moving onwards as if he hadn't already given away the fact that something was very, very wrong.

"Right."

Crap, Mark clasped his hands in front of him, Maybe Amy was right.

He really, really, didn't want Amy to be right.

"She's uh, she's disappeared..." 

Mark couldn't have sounded more scattered and aimless. He listened to himself, to his voice and wondered what the hell had happened to the man who spoke every sentence with such gravitas. Now he sounded like a kid struggling to give a PowerPoint presentation to his class. 

  "We... we wanted to check that she was okay––"

   "We?"

Maybe that's what he needed. 

Maybe Mark should have prepared more. He could imagine this going so much smoother if he'd bought in a presentation, something a bit more visual to help him communicate the exact sort of crisis that was going on. 

He'd use pictures, maybe a laser pointer or some sort of pointing stick and he'd wave to a diagram detailing how Amy's stress levels had increased over the past hour. He'd jab his hand at an image of Seattle's courthouse downtown and then back at the hospital, showing the place she was last seen and the place she had never arrived at. 

Or maybe he'd draw Beth's outline in the elevator with chalk and buy aviators, really commit to the role of a detective who was too emotionally estranged to really string a sentence together.