Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟵𝟯 sign of the times

Amelia was the only person who looked at him, cracking a smile as Mark asked her how they understood any of this.

"Do you know how many of these I've been to?" was her only response. She jerked her head over in Beth's direction. "And do you know how many times she's seen Legally Blonde?"

The joke didn't fit the way that Beth was tensed perpetually, as if she hadn't relaxed in years.

 She was a permanent fixture in the corner of Mark's eye and, for a long time, he'd been scared to look at her. 

He tried to avoid her like he avoided the sun, terrified that a single glance at her would burn him permanently, scorching her into his retinas. He did, however, allow himself to stare at the hand extended on the table–– he watched her fingers on the other side of Amy, watched as they twitched along to Dom's every word. 

Throughout the whole meeting, Beth didn't speak once; she sat there, her jaw locked, shirt tucked and fingers tapping a silent beat against the tabletop. 

She was stoic to the eye, perfectly still and unbothered, all aside from those fingers.

A single manicured hand with a slightly chipped pointer finger.

Her nails were red. A red flag that consistently flew in his peripheral as Dominic discussed worst-case scenarios. As the attorney talked about Beth being stripped of her licence and being arrested and sent to sobriety programs, all Mark could do was watch her. 

He didn't think about Dominic's words, about how many things were on the line at this very moment, he just thought about how Beth had appeared last night.

He thought about how her shoulders had shaken against his chest. 

He thought about how brutally human she'd felt in these hands. 

Despite how perfectly calm she appeared, that one tapping hand felt like a reminder last night hadn't been a bad dream. 

It was the whistleblower, the one that assured Mark he hadn't just hallucinated–– Beth had burned out in her apartment last night, Mark was so sure that this was all just show.

But even so, she was so put together it almost terrified him. 

He'd seen this before, how easily Beth could brush herself down and act as if nothing had happened in the first place. Back then, of course, she'd used half of the narcotics in Manhattan to keep herself upright. 

But this... this wasn't... this couldn't... they weren't in New York. 

They were in this, in this conversation, in whatever this Monday morning was trying to do––

Mark didn't really know what was going on, but he managed to grasp the basics:

Dominic knew he could minimise all of this and save Beth's career, probably get her a few months in a rehabilitation program and then a precautionary regulation training course hosted by the DEA to keep a hold on her prescription license.

There was only one problem.

"Are you sure we can't just punch my brother?" Amy asked.

The consensus was that Derek was the one red herring of this whole operation.

 Dominic could make this go away just fine, but they all knew that Derek would not let this go. 

He was the sort of guy who'd fight for this until the end. They'd spent the past fifteen minutes discussing how Derek was a human spanner in a perfectly oiled machine. Mark had only been able to stew quietly in the background.