𝙓.
BIG MISTAKE. BIG. HUGE.
──────
NEW YORK
WHAT WAS IT about Mark Sloan and derailing my weekend plans?
I'd been a half-hour into a detox facemask on a Friday night when I got the phone call. My cell phone lit up like Rockerfella at Christmas, the shrill sound almost causing me to jolt out of my chair. It was unexpected and took me completely out of my surprise. Pretty Woman was in the VCR, my boyfriend was out down the street picking up our pizza order and Addison was trying to get through to me.
Getting a call from my older sister usually meant one of two things; one reason to call was a death in the family, and whenever I saw her name on my screen I tended to cross my fingers and toes in hope that it'd be either one of our parents.
The second happened to be, somehow, drastically worse and, unfortunately for me, painstakingly common: A last-minute social soiree in need of some free labour. As I paused my movie and reached for the shrieking device, I found myself begging the universe for a moment of peace--
Please be a death. Please be a death. Please be a death. Please be a--
"I need your help."
Fuck. Addison's voice rushed through the receiver the moment I picked up, filling me with a dread that didn't pair very well with the cheap glass of red wine that I held in my free hand.
My nose wrinkled and I stared over at the frozen image of Julia Roberts, hoping that by needing help she meant planning a funeral. With high hopes, I gussied myself up to shed some fake tears-- Oh? A plane crash? Both Mom and Dad, Oh God!
"Good evening to you too, Addie," I went for instead, figuring that maybe trying to manifest becoming an orphan was a bit too much for a Friday night. The only response I heard was the rush of air as Addison walked down some street on the other side of Manhattan, that, in itself, took me by surprise. "Are you walking?"
"I need you to come to the Lincoln Centre," Her voice was muffled by a light wind and I could faintly picture her stalking her way down Fifth Avenue, hair tumbling out behind her. She completely disregarded my surprised comment (It was Addison, she took taxi cabs and town cars everywhere. She never walked further than a block. What was she doing out in the city at 5pm?) "Can you get here by 7? Dress nice-- the dress code is black tie--"
"Excuse me?" She was talking a little too fast, too fast for me to truly process what exactly was going on. Did she say Lincoln Centre? Did she say black tie? What was going on? "Do what?"
Addison dragged in a long breath and, just like before, I could imagine the agitation that flashed across her face as she realised I was struggling to keep up. She was stressed, I could tell from the way she'd made a good attempt at breaking the Guinness World Record for the amount of words spoken in a minute. Surprisingly, she seemed more high-strung than usual. She sounded as if her whole world was about to implode on itself, which, from Addison's track record, I could somewhat believe.
"I need you to come to a business gala down at the Lincoln Centre," My confusion had triggered the passive aggressive kindergarten teacher within her. She spoke slowly and tepidly, as if she was talking to a two-year-old. I frowned to myself and considered hanging up. "There's going to be a lot of important surgical program executives and Department Heads and I think it would be really useful for you to come and do some networking, make some good impressions and--"
"Okay," I said slowly, my brow furrowing as I glanced over towards the clock on the wall. The Lincoln Centre was on the other side of town. If she wanted me there by 7, I was going to have to haul ass. It sounded impossible. Black tie? I wasn't exactly prepared for a last minute soiree. "What... Why is this so last minute?"
"A plus one became available," Addison reverted to her fast and slightly manic pace. In the background of the phone call, I could hear the shrill yell of a car horn as traffic in Manhattan got a little testy. It further bewildered me. "I can send a town car that can get there for half past and I know you have that black dress from Sachs--"
"You want me to wear the dress I got for our grandfather's funeral?" I echoed, my nose scrunching at the thought of it. It wasn't a bad dress, I supposed, but when I'd tried to manifest a funeral, this wasn't what I had meant. "I have no idea what I'm going to--"
"--and I was thinking that you could wear those Kate Spade heels that I leant you..." I don't think she even heard me. She was so caught in whatever spiral that gripped her, that Addison just kept talking and talking and talking. She continued to list exactly what earrings I should wear, how to do my hair and what perfume to choose. I listened with an exasperated sigh caught at the back of my throat. "..don't forget to take a change of shoes and wear that coat from--"
"Okay," I interjected and this time, Addison actually ground to a halt. It was as if she'd been driving recklessly and suddenly punched the break, screeching to a very sudden stop. I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed.
Did I want to go anywhere this time of night? No.
Traffic across the city was always it's crappiest when the night settled in. I, honestly, couldn't think of anything worse than dressing up to stand in a room full of important people and pretending that I hadn't been in my pyjamas just two hours before.
But, I knew she always phoned for a reason, mostly because she knew that I could be depended upon and I was incapable of saying no. I could already feel the regret sneaking into my body as I decided to add another favour to the growing pile that Addison owed me.
"Okay," I repeated breathlessly, teetering somewhere between reluctance and petulence. "Okay-- I'll go--"
"Great," Addison replied. She sounded relieved, as if this had been weighing on her all day. I barely heard her response, too focused on turning off my television and mentally prepping myself for what I'd unknowingly signed up for. By the time my sister spoke again, I was already stood in my bathroom, hastily washing my face. "Oh and one thing--"
"Hm?"
I had her on speaker as I stooped trying to find things to make myself look even the slightest bit presentable. I'd managed to bundle beauty products by the sink, already trying to roughly plan out exactly how I was going to charm a handful of the most powerful medical board members in Manhattan.
Addison spoke as I stuck my head in a cupboard, rooting around--
"You're Mark's plus one."
Oh fuck.
The suddenness of that reveal startled me, alarming me so much that I jolted, smashing the back of my head against the inside of the cupboard. My reaction was loud and unceremonious, a yelp paired with a swear word so explicit that Addison seemed caught off-guard. My eyes watered as I buried my teeth in my bottom lip.
With a hand firmly massaging the splitting pain at the top of my head, I got to my feet and reached out for my phone.
"Addie--"
Mark. Mark's Sloan's plus one. Fucking hell that was not my idea of a good night.
"I know," She cut me off, knowing exactly what was going through my mind, "I know what--"
"I'm not going to--"
"Derek asked me to find a date for him," Addison had never sounded so strained and withdrawn and, in that moment, I realised that she wasn't happy about any of this either. Somehow, I could imagine her boyfriend on the other side of the line, a gun to Addison's head, forcing her to drag me to Lincoln Centre. "I set him up with a friend school but she cancelled a half hour ago and he really needs someone to go with him so I--"
"He slept with her, didn't he?" My question made Addison sigh, but she definitely did not correct me. Of course he did. "Let me guess, he slept with her and then was a complete dick to her and she decided to dip--"
"He really needs to make a good impression at this event," Addison said and I could so vividly imagine the dent between her eyebrows, her tongue trapped between her teeth as she struggled to figure out exactly how she'd gotten into this position. She hated Mark and here she was, begging his case. Oh how I would've found this hilarious if it wasn't all at my expense. "He's trying to get funding for a research project and all of the prospective investors are family-oriented and he really needs to--"
"Be someone he's not?" I suggested, meeting my own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Fuck, my head really hurts. My brow seemed to be permanently furrowed, mouth downturned as I thought about all the things I loved about Mark Sloan. (Yeah, nothing exactly came to mind other than his stupid pretty smile.) "So you want me to go and save his reputation, all while networking while associated with him? That really doesn't make any sense--"
"I know it doesn't," She said, sighing for the fiftieth time in the past five minutes. "But please... please... just for me."
Fuck, the things I do for family.
And with that, my hopes for a peaceful night died a very swift death.
***
─── My favourite thing, I decided, about a good social mixer in Manhattan, was the champagne.
It was what I thought about as I sat in the towncar, watching the city blur by. Champagne, the expensive stuff too, the sort that made up for the look on Calum's face as I told him that I'd have to take a rain check on our date night. (He'd been devastated and it'd taken everything within me to remind myself that my career came first no matter what.)
I fully intended on getting drunk at some point in the evening, something to make me forget exactly whose company I was in. I, also, fully intended on breaking Mark Sloan's hand if he even thought about making a single comment about--
I let out a breath as the car came to a stop outside of his apartment.
(I'd never been religious in the slightest. However, at that moment, I was close to mumbling a numb prayer. If I had, it would've gone something like this: Dear Lord, please let tonight go without flirting, arguing or homicide. Yet, funnily enough, prayer was the last thing on my mind as Mark very swiftly opened the town car door.)
He was in a suit, a nice suit, the sort of suit that was paired with a sparkle in his eye that told me he knew exactly how good he looked. He'd opened the door with the sort of grace and decorum that told me this wasn't the first time he'd had to brace himself for a mystery suitor.
There was this expectant lilt to his eyebrow, a slight hopefully flirtatious curl to his lip that met me head on-- a pause. A flicker of his eyes at the sight of me. Mark seemed to devour the sight of me, head tilted as I sat there in a little black dress with hell brewing behind my eyes.
His lips twitched into a wide smirk, "Well, this is a welcome surprise."
He, by all means, represented all four horsemen during my Friday night apocalypse. There was something about him, stooped half into the town car with his tie not yet perfectly clipped, that made me teeter a little too close to violence.
I was pretty sure that I had never truly experienced despair until he was sliding into his seat, bringing with him a storm cloud of cologne that made my mouth dry like waves drawing out before a tsunami. Then he was sat a little too close, his leg brushing against mine, his smirk a little too fuelled by the imagination--
God. My eye twitched, as if it was taking everything within me not to slap that stupid expression off of his face.
I reached for the complimentary champagne bottle that I definitely hadn't been waiting for him before opening. My flute balanced in my hand as I crossed one leg over the other, all too aware of the way that Mark seemed to watch the flash of my thigh as the slit in my dress shifted.
"You look--"
"Don't," I murmured into my glass, feeling my cheeks flush as I realised how truly screwed I was this evening. I risked a glance out of the corner of my eye, watching as Mark secured his seatbelt and clapped the seat of the driver in front of him. He was chuckling under his breath, shaking his head slightly as I grimaced to myself. "Don't even say a thin--"
"I was being nice," He said it teasingly and I knew, that if I'd looked over at him, I would've seen that dumb grin on his face that had begun to haunt me in my nightmares. I made a dismissive sound, a scoff that he didn't seem to appreciate. "I was, I was being nice--"
(For the record, I'd truly outdone myself that evening. I was wearing a dress that seemed to flirt with the idea of scandal, reflecting on my outgoing debate between how Addison wanted me to appear as a dependable woman in a relationship with a very dependable man, and my impulse to be memorable. A pale gold dress that had a flowing skirt, perfectly for swanning around and making boring conversation. It wasn't particularly extravagant or grand but, apparently, it was enough to make Mark stare at me with great concentration, as if he was trying to decipher what exactly hid behind the fabric.)
"You're not nice," I cut back with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Before I could even register what I was doing, my head turned and I looked over at him, giving him a sharp look as I exhaled in a disappointed sigh. "You're Mark Sloan."
That was the problem. Mark Sloan, the wretched and perpetual thorn in my side.
I'd been to thousands of these little soirees, swept my fair share of gilded floors in search of intelligent conversation, and this, by no means, was this dress' first debut at an event like this. The only problem was that out of all of the galas I'd attended and avoided, turning up with Mark on my arm felt a whole lot like a wild card.
While these thoughts tumbled through my head, Mark seemed to amuse himself. He wasn't grinning at me. It was more of a smile. Mark's eyes sparkled in the dim town car light as we slowly trundled across Manhattan.
It was such an unfamiliar expression to me; over the bar nights and the social mixers and the sly comments, I'd become so accustomed to the dirty grins and the wicked smirks. This was so light and tender, the sort of smile that he seemed to not even notice as I raised an eyebrow at him-- Mark conceded another chuckle and looked away.
I supposed that Mark was used to having women swoon over him. After all, sat beside me in the towncar, he looked fresh off of a magazine. His suit was perfectly pressed,
Admittedly, sitting in the back of a car with Mark Sloan was not how I'd envisioned my weekend starting. It felt too intimate and he was close enough so his leg brushed against my foot as he adjusted himself in his seat. Every inhale was tainted with the heavy musk of his cologne and I could feel the scent settle deep into my fucking bones with every breath.
The heat that filled my body was straight hell fire. Suddenly, the vehicle felt a little too hot. I found myself yearning to open a window, staring at the condensation of our breaths against the window. All I could taste on my tongue was him; idly, I wondered whether he showered the French way, dousing himself in cologne until it was so integrated into him and his DNA.
"How much is Addie paying you?"
I wasn't exactly sure how I was supposed to take that question. It made me pause for a moment, the champagne still on the top of my tongue as I looked out the front of the car. I blinked at the red break lights of the town car in front of us and pressed my lips into a thin line.
Why did I suddenly feel like some cheap hooker? Why did I feel like a poor mans Vivianne from Pretty Woman? God-- was Addison pimping me out? Fuck, she was totally pimping me out--
"I thought she'd at least let you off of champagne duty?" He said, seeming to get caught off-guard by the prolonged pause that followed his question. Or maybe it'd been rhetorical? I couldn't exactly tell. I caught him glancing at me in my peripheral, his blue eyes dipping down the side of my dress as I sighed to myself. "Although, something tells me that you wouldn't mind champagne duty for the next few parties."
"It's a favour," I said. All of my responses were so curt and sharp tonight. It was as if I was trying to limit talking to him as much as possible; which, admittedly, was absolutely what I was trying to do. In my head, I was classing this as a work operation. This was a strictly professional event. Mark just happened to be a con to this endless list of pros. "I'm doing this as a favour to my sister."
"Hm," Mark mused, "And does she ever do favours for you?"
I looked over at him again, holding his gaze as the question had me visibly taken aback. (Well, fuck.) I gripped my champagne a little too tightly and rolled my eyes, trying to regain what little sanity I had in the moment.
I heaved a long breath, not liking how Mark's eyes seemed to burn brighter in the dark. (An idle thought wandered across my head, musing on what bulbs and what wattage it took to light an iris like that.) As much as I disliked the slimy asshole, he had a point:
My sister wasn't exactly famous for being able to hold up her end of bargains.
"You realise this is a favour for you too, right?" I cleared my throat and attempted to change the subject. Again, my legs crossed each other, a nervous twitch in my foot causing me to shift from side to side like the pendulum in a clock. Mark just hummed in questioning, as if he'd forgotten completely about our ongoing scoreboard. "It'll be your turn to pay me back at some point."
"Ah," He itched at his nose and exhaled a breathy chuckle, "What do I owe you for?"
"I didn't tell Addie about you hitting on me at the college mixer," I reminded him as he very slowly nodded. Mark's face smoothed into a look of contemplation as if he was thinking through each memory. Meanwhile, I was just trying to avoid rolling my eyes; if Mark hitting on me was enough for him to owe me a favour, I was pretty sure the score would be in the hundreds. "And I didn't tell her about the whole thing in the bedroom with that socialite--"
"What's the score?"
"Zero to two."
Mark pulled a face.
"That's not right," He said, seeming to find a problem with my book-keeping. My eyebrows raised and I held my retort on the tip of my tongue; no, I was absolutely correct. I happened to keep a very reliable tally at the back of my head, one that was specially dedicated to Mark Sloan. "There was that dinner at Nobu--"
"Really?" I said, remembering the exact thing he was talking about. "Are you serious?" He just looked over at me, not quite following why I was suddenly so incredulous. "Are you going to say you did me a favour by hitting on me in front of the waiter--?"
It had been one dinner. Addison had decided to take control over weekly drinks and had dragged us all to Nobu's as if it was any semblance of getting drunk at a bar downtown.
I'd had to dress respectably and eat respectable food and sit there across from Mark as Addison pumped the conversation full of whatever monotonous subject she could pick out of her brain. One dinner. Just one.
Mark had taken the one opportunity he could as Derek went to pay the bill and Addison disappeared into the powder room. He'd brazenly looked me in the eye and told me that he liked my dress but it would have looked so much better on
"He kept looking down your dress!" He said, matching my tone and gesturing to my chest as if I needed reminding. (The waiter, admittedly, had been overbearing and patronising. He'd been a little too friendly and now I was wondering whether I was just completely oblivious to everything.) "He kept trying to flirt with you and you have a boyfriend so I--"
Oh, what a gentlemen.
"Okay!" I interjected, mostly because I really didn't feel like hearing him explain whatever dumb excuse he could find to excuse flirting with a girl who was in a very happy relationship. I inhaled sharply and shook my head. "Okay, fine. It's one to two. But I swear to god I'm not having sex with you as a favo--"
"Where is your boyfriend tonight?" He drawled those words so lightly that I almost didn't hear them, but there was something about the sudden flare in his expression that made me stop in the middle of my sentence. My cheek pivoted towards him and my brow furrowed, watching as Mark seemed to cock his head to the side. "It's Friday night, you're young and free... You must've had plans."
In my head, I envisioned Calum sat in the middle of my apartment, trying to distract himself with whatever television program that I'd vaped on the VCR. The thought of it made my chest ache a little bit, reminding me how much I would've rather been home.
"He's about forty minutes of the way through an episode of ER right now," I said indifferently, wondering whether someone had given Mark Sloan a guide to get directly under my skin. I was trying my best to avoid thinking about how I'd left my boyfriend in my apartment to entertain himself; it happened more than I would've liked and I was beginning to wonder what exactly kept Calum around. "But he understands that I needed to do this and that I don't particularly want to be here--"
"So he's fine with seeing you get all dressed up to hang off of another guys arm?" Mark's question made me want to scream into a very deep abyss. It was perfectly innocent but the way he grinned at me made me bite back the intense impulse to throw myself out of a moving vehicle. I just smiled condescendingly at him, my face contorting into an expression of contempt. "I'll take that as a no."
The way he sat in that seat made me want to tear my hair out. He managed to lounge so effortlessly as if he'd just been ripped straight out of a magazine. His gaze didn't leave me, not even as I turned my head away and attempted to devote my whole interest to the passing scenery.
"How did you screw over your original date, anyway?" My voice was awkwardly strained, half by the bubbles in my throat and half by the intense impulse to throw myself out of this moving vehicle. I shared a secret smile with myself as I gazed at the passing traffic. "I'm assuming screwing was involved."
Mark chuckled in the background.
"You don't hold back, do you?" His question made me laugh to myself in response. (I didn't quite know the definition of holding back. I'd always been very forward about things.) "You're pretty comfortable with someone you barely know--"
"I'm a people-person," I said, turning my head to give him what I considered my 'patient smile'. It was the same smile I'd give to a patient who was very slowly draining me of my will to live-- and, seeing as I was essentially being hired out like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, for the evening, I guessed it wasn't too far off from this conversation.
"Or," Mark said, his eyes glancing down at the champagne glass balanced in my hand. "You're champagne drunk."
I just shrugged. I supposed he wasn't wrong.
"You don't like me."
It wasn't a question, it was a statement. Mark said those four words as a declarative, the sort of shit they'd stamp on the front of a newspaper: Elizabeth Forbes Montgomery Doesn't Like Mark Sloan (Extra! Extra! Read all about it!).
He was staring at me with amusement in his eyes, it seemed like he was incapable of anything else-- he watched as my eyebrows raised and my lips quirked and I swallowed champagne as if it was oxygen.
"What gave that away?" My question was, ideally, rhetorical. I found myself watching as Mark pretended to think about it; his brow furrowed, lips pulled into a frown and he paused, appearing like Rodin's The Thinker. (Maybe, on the way to the gala, we could pull over to a museum and get this jackass a podium and cast him in bronze. Stupid bastard looked pretty enough to be a sculpture anyway.) I looked away, shaking my head and chuckled. "You're a manwhore, Mark."
That was enough of a reason to dislike anyone, right? He went through women like they kleenexes. If I hadn't believed it before, watching Carly grapple with her self-confidence and self-worth for a month and a half had been enough to set it in stone (or, bronze, I supposed.) Mark wasn't worth the dirt on my shoe, and something told me he knew that.
"And you're a pushover that can't say no to your big sister," His drawl in response felt frostier than I'd anticipated. I froze, his words eliciting a chill across my skin. I felt his head turn to look over at me. "We're both great at conversations, don't you think?"
Fuck.
"So?" I asked with the intention to appear level headed and determined, but my voice wavered slightly at the end. "How is this going to go?"
"Well," Mark mused lightly and I could practically hear the comment brewing in his dumb stupid head, "Usually I buy you dinner first and then maybe--" I wondered whether he could hear the sound of my eyes rolling my skull. I didn't say anything, just closed my eyes in a very silent wince. "--after we've had a couple of drinks, we'll see where this night goes?"
My head turned to glower over at him, at the wide smirk and those glistening eyes. He seemed to track my reaction with amusement, watching as a muscle jumped in my jaw. I, very clearly, didn't appreciate anything that came out of his mouth. My eye twitched with the strain of not doing something stupid (refer to the previous mention of homicide).
I didn't like how his gaze seemed to hold me into place for a little too long-- the champagne seemed to hold me in a frozen little bubble, my heart beating against the inside of my chest as Mark chuckled to himself.
"I see nothing in the future but an arrest warrant made out for first degree murder," was my chilly reply, despite how badly my chest ached at the thought of having to put up with this while Calum was at home. I almost felt guilty.
In my peripheral, Mark shrugged, "I've never been against handcuffs."
My eyes rolled for a second time and I bit down on my tongue, hard.
I could tell that he was doing all of this to get under my skin. He was a Plastic Surgeon, a burn specialist, why not gravitate around skin in conversation too? He'd already made me feel bad for leaving Calum behind. As much as every little comment killed me inside, something told me that flirtation was almost Mark's autopilot.
In all the times I'd been around him, I'd been subject to watching him impulsively flirt with every woman he came across. I was nothing particularly special. I was simply a piece of meat in a dress that he so desperately wanted to get his grimy little fingers into.
"This is strictly professional," I said tightly, "I help you make a good impression on your prospective investors and you help me make surgical contacts with all of your surgical friends."
It was the sort of deal that I was willing to make; an evening of vaguely questionable kind-of-sexual-harassment that seemed to come with the territory of being a woman in any field. Sure, Mark was intolerable, but so, it seemed, was every male surgeon who was delusional to think they were God's gift to medicine.
The disappointment that came with realising that Mark was exactly what it said on his packaging: a jerk who couldn't keep his hands to himself and had very small regard for women. I hadn't expected anything different and, for a while, I wondered whether he even remembered my name; it he couldn't remember the women he slept with whose to say he even knew mine?
Mark agreed to the deal with a very tentative incline of his head.
"To stop me from second guessing this and getting out of the car right this moment," I felt as if I was speaking through a mouth full of moth balls. In the reflection of the window, I saw Mark's eyebrows raise expectantly as he looked over at me. "Can you promise to not hit on me all evening?"
The pause in the car spoke more than words.
When I caught sight of his face again, there was a dent between his eyebrows and his lips were flattened into a line as if he was doing some major soul searching. It was my turn to chuckle soundlessly to myself, my head shaking from side to side as Mark let his silence do all the speaking. The glance I shot him was slightly amused but exhausted all the same.
"Really?"
"I can't promise that," Mark replied a couple of seconds too late.
"You can't?" I echoed, silently wondering what back alley behind a bar had Derek Shepherd found this man. I looked at the real Mark this time, not just a muted glass version. His cologne practically backhanded me across the face. "Or you won't?"
Another pause.
My apprehension faded into incredulousness.
"Really, Sloan?"
"I can't promise that," He repeated and then, with a slightly annoyed hitch in his tone, he flapped a hand at me. I wasn't exactly sure what that was in reference too, but I opened my mouth to immediately accuse him of shaming me for my clothing choice. If he was about to blame my dress for his inability to keep his slimy thoughts to himself I was going to forget the small talk and get straight to the murder. Thankfully, he cut me short. "We're supposed to be... aren't we supposed to be--"
"In a relationship?" I suggested when he seemed unable to find the words. Mark just dropped his hand, nodding. The realisation that he was supposed to be fronting as something he really wasn't made me immediately chuckle in amusement. "Well, you don't date."
"I do tonight."
There was something about those three little words and the way that he looked at me. It made me want to oh so desperately exit that towncar in that exact moment. I felt as though my whole body was made of beads on a wire.
Everything was so stiff, tightly packed and rigid. I'd hoped that the champagne would kick in a lot sooner, but no. I was left only slightly light headed and already yearning to be in bed. I clutched the champagne flute so tightly that my knuckles were trembling very slightly. I finished the rest of my glass and flashed him a smile that was all teeth.
"How many of your rules are you breaking tonight, then?"
Mark seemed to pause at that. I watched his brow crinkle very slightly.
"God," I said, mostly to myself, "This is going to be interesting to watch."
And I had a front row seat.
By the time the town car arrived at the Lincoln Centre, I was reasonably tipsy. Not too tipsy, but enough for my body to not flinch when Mark helped me get out of the car. My body still tensed as soon as he extended his hand through the open door and I saw his lips twitch in recognition of the movement-- there he was, stooped slightly in his suit with the hair all neat and his bright eyes dancing with amusement of seeing me flounder in debate.
His eyes swum the length of me, with my bare leg extended out through the slit in my skirt. My skin ridged in goosebumps from the rush of cold wind coming off the Hudson River.
My hesitation in my hand taking his made Mark snort to himself. It wasn't a charming gesture, nor was it very suave. It felt out of place for such a smooth-talking man whose every word and action seemed gilded with honey.
"Loosen up," He said.
The way he said it, 'loosen up' it was as if he thought that flirting with me was going to help this situation. It reminded me of the mixer at Columbia when he'd encouraged me to 'live a little'.
Was this what he'd meant? Getting dragged along to play family with a man who physically probably couldn't say the word 'commitment'.
I also got the impression that it was almost Mark's autopilot-- whenever he was in any situation, it was his first port of call. It was if he assumed that it was a cure all, and that it would actually help me relax the one little part of my brain that was screaming that this was the worst idea in the universe--
Loosen up? How could I?
I'd impulsively signed up to the field trip of hell and Mark Sloan was my questionable and handsy chaperone. This felt a lot like getting into a car that was already on fire and on the verge of an explosion--
Also, bold for him to tell me to loosen up when he was the man with his own head shoved so high up his own asshole that he could probably give me a weather report on his lower intestine.
What I didn't do impulsively, however, was let Mark help me out of that car. I took his hand begrudgingly, annoyed at how his thumb ran down the back of my palm fleetingly as I gained my footing on the sidewalk. The look I shot him was scathing; I didn't need the little gestures. They all seemed to taunt me, reminding me that the man who I was stuck with was not the man I loved.
It didn't help that holding hands had always felt so intimate to me either. There was something about grasping onto someone like that and being determined to not let go that made my chest tighten uncomfortably-- my hand slid to hold his elbow, interlocking my arm with his as my heels teetered on the concrete plaza fronting the centre. It pulled my body into his almost haphazardly, almost causing me to trip over as the champagne flew straight to my head.
"Easy," Mark said, steadying me with a hand on my waist.
I inhaled sharply at the contact. His hand lingered for a second too long and I was filled with the strongest impulse to slap it off of me.
Why the fuck had I thought this was going to be okay?
Trainwreck, I thought to myself as I walked along on Mark's arm, noticing how the whole building was lit up for the fundraiser. I was completely convinced this was all going to fall apart. Mark was going to end up finding some busty blonde and take her home while I was left eating scraps off of passing cater waiters. This evening, by any means, was not going to end pretty.
"So," I chipped through gritted teeth as we followed a stream of guests across the Lincoln Centre plaza. My jaw was clenched half as a reaction to the proximity to him and half out of how cold it was on the West Side of Manhattan tonight. My shoulders hunched slightly as I mourned the champagne I'd left in the towncar. "What do you need me to be?"
I glanced over towards him, catching how the street lighting illuminating the apprehensive lift of his brow, "What do you mean?"
"It's like the Pretty Woman movie, right?" My question seemed to catch him off-guard. His eyes met mine as we finally reached the building. I watched the slow look of confusion dawn across his face-- it was nice to look at; for such an arrogant ass it was nice to see him confused once in a while. "Do you need an Upper East Side socialite? The sort of bitch that gets through pointless conversation? Or do you need some wide eyed girl who's going to sing your praises to the grave?"
He seemed to pause at the aspect of there being so many options. We moved inside and he seemed to internalise what I'd just said. The gala itself seemed a lot busier than I'd expected, it was definitely a whole different world compared to what I was acclimated to at Addison's soirée's and my Mom's garden parties in Riverside. Everyone was dripping in expensive clothing and intelligent conversation--
I exchanged a look with Mark as his grasp on me tightened.
"What can you do best?"
His question in response to my question made me want to roll my eyes again. I was almost worried that prolonged exposure to him was going to leave me with some long term sight issues. Looking at Mark from up close, where his shoulder was so close to mine and his arm was so firmly wrapped around me, I was annoyed to see that he was candidly perfect in every way. I hated the way his lip twitched, as if he was all too aware of the double meaning behind his words.
Of course he was. What an ass.
My eyes narrowed very slightly at him, "Make this night very difficult for you."
He chuckled to himself but didn't appear to challenge that fact.
"If you do that, then you're not going to make a good impression, are you?"
"How much money do you need?"
I ignored his question and instead tried to pull everything back into focus-- we were here with a goal and that goal happened to be getting funding pledges for Mark's research project.
I could tell that it was on the forefront of his mind; there was a muscle jumping in his jaw as he looked around, his eyes catching on every single person that passed her on their way into the main gala. (Mark's nervous? Dear lord, maybe the champagne had kicked in and I was just hallucinating things?) I held my tongue as he very reluctantly looked over at me.
I'd never seen him like this. Huh. It was interesting. He seemed to drag the words out of himself, the fire in his dwindling a little bit as he thought about the reality of the situation-- it was simple. He needed me. He needed me to go into that room and convince a shit tonne of research executives that he was worth investing in. He needed me. He needed this money. He needed help.
I could practically hear the funeral progression for his ego.
"I need three investors," Mark responded, glancing over his shoulder towards the band at the back of the room. I followed his gaze, catching sight of a very intimidating wall of men in suits. My skin prickled at the thought of having to sweet talk a bunch of old white men. "But first, I need a drink. Then I need three private investors or a million in grants through hospital outreach funding."
Holy shit. My eyebrows raised. That was a lot of money. That was a lot of stress too.
I knew the ins and outs of project funding after watching both Addison and Archer go through it for years; my sister's research into in vitro fetal conditions had been single handedly carried by John Hopkins while Archer's exploratory neurological study had been funded by private investors he'd met in a country club in suburbia. I could tell from the look in Mark's eyes that he so desperately wanted that sort of support too.
It was almost terrifying how much money was in this room. There was a reason why medicine was so prolific, it was profitable-- I supposed that it wasn't a coincidence that the top hospital donors and investors in Manhattan also made up most of the social elite.
To my earnest, I was already able to recognise a handful of passing socialites from Addison's weekly brunch that I rarely attended. They briefly met my eye as they passed, making me all too aware of the fact that despite the fact we hadn't even stepped into the main gala, we were already being watched.
"And you need me too then, huh?"
I said that as I stepped closer to him, absently straightening his tie and smoothening the front of his suit. It was an odd move to do on someone so unfamiliar to me; I was accustomed to do it to Calum whenever he left for work and needed just a last minute check over before he walked out the door.
I kept my chin tilted downwards, trying to put on a show to the passing guests. I couldn't help but smile bitterly as my initiative took Mark off guard-- his breathing seemed to hitch slightly as my hands gently smoothed around his shoulders.
I supposed that, no matter how suave and godly the man was, he didn't have these sort of moments often. He didn't have someone that was attentive enough to pick lint off of his collar, or someone to straighten his tie.
Most people just looked at him and saw pretty-- I was constantly searching for a mistake or a flaw in him, hungry to find something to level the field. In all fairness, it was a nice suit, the sort that Derek had probably made him get (through insistence of my sister, of course.) It was expensive, perfectly tailored. It was the sort of fabric that I almost wanted to dig my nails into.
"No," I could almost feel his breath fan my face, although it could have been my imagination, "I need a character reference." It sounded like such a egotistical ass thing to say that I didn't even bother to look up. I just chuckled under my breath, trying to supress the impulse to shake my head. "Apparently, I need to appear reliable and flying solo at these sort of things, according to Addison, doesn't exactly say 'I'm dependable, give me a million dollars.'"
"Of course," I sighed, talking in undertone as I said a quick hello to someone I vaguely recognised as one of Addison's acquaintances.
Their face seemed to light up at the sight of me and then very slowly wither when they noticed the man stood beside me. Fabulous. They shot Mark a dirty look and picked up their pace, suddenly appearing very eager to get as far as they could in the opposite direction.
In response to it, I just looked up at Mark and raised an eyebrow. "Because you don't need me, right?... you could practically find just anyone who could stand being around you long enough to help?"
His face was so close to mine. Almost uncomfortably so. If anyone had been watching from afar, they would've thought we were about to kiss. But we weren't-- Instead, Mark was staring down at me impassively. I stared back, head tilted slightly as I held onto his shoulder. His mouth was pressed in a thin line as if he was chewing on his own tongue. My pupils jumped one eye to the other, waiting for him to say something to correct me.
He didn't. He couldn't. The truth was that Mark had burned all of his bridges. All of his options had been scorned out of the picture. I was the last woman standing.
"Strictly professional," I warned in a low voice, "If you even think about making any--"
"Like I said," Mark interjected in a equally low voice, "I can only try."
That was a terrible response, it was enough for me to turn and stare at him, slightly aghast despite how badly I was trying to pretend I cared about him. I stared at him long enough for him to falter slightly, as he slowly realised that it, indeed, had not been the appropriate response.
"You're an ass," I said so quietly that it was almost like a secret passed between us, aside from the fact that it was indeed, not a secret at all. It was widely known and, from the glare that a passing woman gave us as she entered into the event, it was very much present in the room too.
Mark did not respond.
Our arrival into the gala came with the realisation that he'd probably slept with quite a few women in his room. With Mark's arm tightly wrapped around my waist, I could feel a few burning gazes on me as we crossed the floor, walking underneath a chandelier that could probably single-handedly fund Mark's research at resale value.
Everything was decorated lavishly, hitting me with the reminder that this wasn't exactly a college recruitment mixer--
I took two glasses of champagne off of the nearest cater waiter and Mark grimaced slightly when I tried to hand him one.
"I don't drink champagne," His reluctance almost felt childish, "This wasn't what I meant when I said I needed a drink--"
"Well," I forced it into his hand. Our fingers brushed almost clumsily. "A month ago I was told by a really old man, like old, old man, a creepy man who was way too old for a college mixer, that I should 'live a little'..." I deadpanned the whole sentence, looking at him as his lip twitched. The words were almost too easy on my lips and I donned my perfectly plastic socialite smile. "Loosen up, Sloan and don't be picky."
His nerves were making me uneasy. Where was the smooth, suave man who'd tried to hit on me by using pictures of kids with cleft palettes and skin grafts? Mark was almost unrecognisable. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his suit (his suit, his beautiful, perfectly fitting suit) and he seemed, standing under that chandelier, suddenly so small.
Of course, this social mixer was my idea of hell, but I was here for my career. I was here to make sure these white old men saw potential in me and kept my name at the back of their heads for whenever it was my turn to sniff around for a fellowship or funding.
I kept my posture perfect, my smile wide and champagne glass stuck to my bottom lip. My life would continue unchanged if Mark was unable to get his financial stability, maybe that realisation explained why, unlike Mark, I was no longer on the verge of a mental breakdown.
(But then again, maybe it was the half a bottle of champagne I'd necked in the car.)
"So much for hiding away during Addison's parties," Mark commented, inclining his head at the way I seemed to suddenly transform in front of his eyes. I just chuckled to myself. His eyes seemed to linger a little too long on the front of my dress and I briefly flirted with the idea of stabbing his foot with the heel of my stiletto. "You seem to be enjoying yourself--"
"Bizzy Forbes did not raise a daughter," I said through my smile, "She raised a career-focused bitch who can disassociate to Chopin," (the four-string orchestra was currently playing a very cute Etude in E major) "and..." I paused and took a tentative sip of the champagne, my eyebrows raised considerably, "one hundred dollar champagne."
Being able to price alcohol from the smallest mouthfuls happened to be a very charming trait of mine.
"Go easy on that," He said, almost acting his age for a second.
It amused me, making my chuckle reverb through my chest as he nursed his flute as if we were back in that bar with Derek. That was a very Archer or Derek thing for him to say-- maybe I'd been wrong about his nervous impulses, maybe when push came to shove, he was just as vanilla as everyone else.
"I can hold my alcohol," was my indifferent response.
"I don't doubt it," Mark said, gesturing down at the glass in my hand, "You can tell that price of champagne just from the taste."
"Well," I said with a very innocent shrug, "You could say that I'm not exactly a virgin when it comes to this sort of thing. It's sure as hell not my first time." I cocked my head to the side and gave him a dazzling smile, "Shame we can't say the same about you, huh?"
Now to that, Mark didn't exactly seem to have a response.