Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟳𝟵 silver spring

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙓.
(YOU COULD BE MY) SILVER SPRING

──────

NEW YORK

"You're an asshole, you know that?"

He'd realised that she'd stopped walking a few moments before she'd yelled at him. 

She'd dropped back a few steps and then, with the chaos of a true New Yorker, had just let him have it, right in the middle of downtown. She'd stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, thrown her arms down and yelled it across the street.

Beth's words slurred slightly. 

She was drunk. He was drunk too. 

He supposed that that, in the heat of things, truly was a recipe for disaster. 

She was yelling her lungs raw, causing only the briefest of glances (people in the city were used to this sort of thing, they barely even caused a stir) but managing to rile herself up enough that Mark had to stop too, letting out a long, annoyed breath that condensed on the cold air. 

She was waiting for him to turn around, but he didn't-- he let her let off her own steam.

"I know you can hear me-"

(That was Beth, again. She wasn't quite finished.)

They'd been out for the evening. Addison had cancelled a table at La Grenouille last minute (despite the fact that it was the first time they'd all had a night off at the same time in weeks and Mark, admittedly, had actually been looking forwards to catching up with everyone), so, Beth had nonchalantly suggested going clubbing. 

At first, Mark had been extremely against the idea but she could be persuasive when she wanted to be-- that had resulted in some overcast nightclub and the realisation that clubbing wasn't just clubbing. 

Without even realising what was going on, Mark had ended up at a table in a club sat beside Amelia Shepherd, watching the supposedly recovered alcoholic do shots.

"Asshole--"

And why was he an asshole? He'd said he didn't like her friends.

He'd grabbed Beth as they all disappeared to the restroom and he'd told her, very firmly, that they needed to leave. 

He couldn't be here, he couldn't watch his best friend's sister act as if Derek hadn't been putting himself through hell trying to get her sober. It had made him feel dirty, feel unclean. He needed to tell Derek-- he needed to-- God, Mark didn't know what to do--

That's what he was thinking about as Beth scoffed at him and yelled. 

They'd made it a block and a half, Mark dragging her the whole time. He'd gripped her wrist so tightly, telling her over and over that she didn't belong in a place like that. In response, she'd writhed and told him that he was an asshole over and over and over-- Drunk Beth didn't understand. He wasn't thinking about her words, he wasn't thinking about her, he was thinking about Derek and the fact that Amy was very much not sober at all. 

Although, to be fair, neither were they.

"Fuck this," Beth exclaimed. 

She seemed to be angry at the fact that his mind was elsewhere. He was still turned away from her, completely distracted by his inner turmoil. She glowered lines in his shoulder blades, so heated that he could very faintly feel his shirt smoulder. 

"I'm going back--"

Suddenly, he was turning around and walking towards her, stopping her from leaving. He caught her arm. 

The look she shot him was venomous, eyes dark and wheeling very slightly from the amount of alcohol in her body. He'd lost count of how much either of them had drank; they definitely shouldn't have gone to a bar beforehand. 

He felt as though he was sober enough to make this very definitive decision for her: she wasn't going back there, not without him at least and Mark was very against enabling Amy to undo all of the time she'd spent in rehabilitation. 

His game plan was to get a hold of Derek as soon as possible, let him know exactly what was happening--

"No," Mark said firmly, "No, you're going home."

He'd never seen Beth so angry before.

"We're going home," He specified.

"Oh screw you," She almost tripped as she tried to rip her arm away from him. 

He really didn't know how much she'd had to drink; there'd been so many glasses that Mark couldn't remember what had reduced her to this-- but whatever number it was, it was quite possibly the drunkest he'd ever seen her (which was definitely a feat.)

"Beth--"

"No," Beth spat, shaking her head at him almost blindly. 

He let her go, worried that he'd hurt her while she was writhing around; the last thing they needed tonight was a ER visit, he couldn't imagine how he'd explain that to a hospital board. (He also really, really didn't want to hurt her either, there was something about drunk Beth that just made him protective of her, despite the screaming and the thrashing.) 

"You don't get to tell me what to do. I want to stay--"

"You can't stay."

He was completely miffed at why she would want to return to that half-cast nightclub. In all honesty, Mark could think of a million things he'd rather do; at the moment, he was thinking about getting back to Beth's apartment, getting Derek all filled in and then getting into Beth's double bed and sleeping off his lingering tipsiness. 

He'd been drunk only ten minutes ago, very happily drunk and carefree, following Beth through the nightclub like a moth chasing a flame, but this sudden crescendo had sobered him up very quickly.

Now, he blinked at his girlfriend, watching as she just stared at him, struggling to process what he'd just said. His bewilderment about why Beth could possibly want to stay with Amy had translated into a laugh of disbelief; in retrospect, Mark could tell that it was most definitely an asshole grade reaction. 

It was meant in a baffled 'why would you do that?' way, but came off, very distinctively, as a nonplussed 'why would you think that you can do what you want?'. Or, at least, it did to Beth's heavily intoxicated brain.

Her response was slow. A passing pedestrian turned to glance between them, warily glancing between the couple. They must've been a sight, even for Manhattan on a Saturday evening; over Beth's shoulder, Mark could see the stretch of restaurants and nightclubs that formed some of the key nightlife in the East Village, it was busy and lively, and yet Beth seemed more alive and wilder than any of them. 

She inhaled sharply, seemed to regain a tiny bit of composure in her hectic mind, and chuckled to herself.

"You're such an asshole."

The words were blurry almost (incoherent and sloppy in the way that Beth almost forgot what she was saying before she said it) but Mark could make them out without much effort. He was beginning to get the feeling that Beth used the term almost like a term of endearment. His name and the term were synonymous. 

This, however, did not feel like an endearing moment. She said it with all the spite in her chest, almost swelling from the physical effort that she channelled into those words. She scoffed and her eyes rolled drunkenly in her skull.

"No, really, I can't believe how much of a dick you're being right now--"

"Sure," He said sharply, blinking at how deeply bothered she actually was. 

He hadn't expected this. He hadn't expected to be fighting with Beth like this, not when he had such good reason to take her home-- he didn't want her around Amy, he didn't want her around those sorts of people? Was it crazy for him to just want to go home? 

"We can talk about this when we're home--"

"What is your problem?"

"Are you serious--?"

Was she really serious? What was his problem? 

Mark had just spent an hour in a room full of people he recognised only from Addison's botched New Year's Eve Party back in the 90s. He'd watched them all break a handful of different narcotic laws in a short five minute window. 

Mark, despite being designated the controversial friend in his social circles, had never been into hard drugs quite like that. It made him both uncomfortable and incredulous-- how could Beth spend time with these people? How could she possibly want to go back?

"Are you serious?" Beth parroted back to him, her eyebrows raised. "Do you not realise how rude you were back there? That was embarrassing--"

"Embarrassing?" Mark echoed, struggling to understand what had been so embarrassing about the situation. He didn't get how Beth could be so embarrassed while he was so deeply uncomfortable. He rubbed at his jaw and exhaled in a long breath, grappling with the confusion that filled him. "How was that embarrassing--"

"You were rude," She interjected, raising a hand to gesture back in the direction of the nightclub. "All they were trying to be was nice to you and you treated them like shit—"

"Nice to me?" His brain felt so scrambled that he was only able to bounce Beth's words back at her. She seemed to be sobering up a bit, the cold air causing goosebumps to race down the both of their arms and bring their brains back around. "They weren't being—"

"They were being nice to you," was Beth's interjection, tensing slightly as Mark shook his head. "They were being friendly and you just... you insulted them and then got us kicked out by security... you embarrassed me in front of all of my friends—"

He'd grabbed her while she went to follow them to the washroom. 

Amy had noticed and asked if Mark had a problem; he'd said that it'd been a long night and that they needed to leave now. Beth had met his statement with bewilderment: it was only 9PM and the night was still young-- in Mark's opinion, the night needed to shut the fuck up and let him leave already. It had escalated into an argument in which Mark could just remember feeling Beth's mood change and seeing her 'friends' eyebrows raise. 

At some point, Amy had called him a jackass (which was, in all honesty, a breath of fresh air and a nice change from 'asshole') and Mark had asked her, very pointedly, what Derek would think if he saw his little sister like this. That, in retrospect, had no been the best idea-- that's when things had gotten tense and voices had raised. 

One thing had lead to the other and Mark had held onto Beth tightly as they were hassled out of the club by a security guard who looked very, very done with their shit.

(A note Mark was to leave if their argument continued: he was pretty sure they were not welcome back into that nightclub, even if Amy and Beth's other 'friends' had been allowed to stay.)

"They're not your friends," Mark scoffed.

"They... they are my friends—"

"No," He found himself getting angry. 

He felt the swell of agitation in his chest as Beth glared at him-- he couldn't understand why she was angry with him and not the people who were putting them in this sort of situation. 

"Those people are not your friends," He said, "Those people are not the sort of people you should be or are friends with."

Beth's glower seemed to burn against his skin. 

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if she was finally feeling the chill in the air, and swayed slightly on her feet. He was almost scared to approach her, but took a slow step in her direction, as if worried that she might fall. 

(Beth was still very, very noticeably, blackout drunk and he was surprised she could even formulate an argument.)

"Wow," She shook her head and he watched her earrings glimmer in the glow of the subway station beside them. "So now you're gatekeeping who I can and can't be friends with?" ("That's not what I'm saying—") "No, what you're saying is that just because you think that they're a certain way I'm not allowed to see them?"

"Beth, I don't think—"

She ignored him, "Amy tried to ask you about work and you pulled a face at her—"

"I didn't pull a face—"

"You were rude," Her voice was quieter now, she was no longer yelling down the street at him. He saw Beth's shoulders tense with a shiver and she gritted her teeth, looking down at the ground. "You didn't talk to anyone, you didn't... y-you didn't even say thank you when Amy bought you a drink or when they moved for you sit down at their table—"

"What am I supposed to say to them?" Mark asked, mostly because he didn't know what Beth wanted from him. He waved a hand around, pretending as if they were back in the club. "Hey, thanks for the drink Amelia... shame about the fact that you're supposed to be sober and that you finally have a good relationship again with your brother... probably because he doesn't know that this is what you're doing at the weekend?"

"You're supposed to be nice to them," Beth seemed to completely blindside his (what he thought was) valid point and focus on his question. Her face contorted and Mark could tell that she was too drunk to be rational. "You're supposed to be Mr. Big Shot with his smooth talking and his charm—"

"Did you not listen to what I just said?" was all Mark could manage in response. 

His chest seized with the reinforcement of some expectation that he was supposed to fill. Mr. Big Shot, smooth talking and charming. Was that really all he was in Beth's eyes? He stared at her, a mixture of frustration and exasperation making his head spin slightly. 

"Do you remember any of what I just said to you?"

(She hadn't and she didn't. In fact, Beth didn't exactly have a coherent grasp of what was going on at all. All she knew was that she was cold and angry and couldn't get over the look on people's faces as they got escorted out of the nightclub.)

(Another note: she would remember none of this in the morning.)

"All I wanted to do," Beth began, her voice suddenly too loud and too performative. She ignored his question, eager to blast through into her side of the argument. "All I wanted to do was introduce my boyfriend to my friends-- I knew-- I knew that you wouldn't like them and you just—"

"They're not your friends," He repeated, shaking his head. 

There was nothing friendly about those people. If he remembered rightly, hadn't she even dated one of Amy's friends? Hadn't he died from an overdose? Could she not see the blatant red flags that were waving at her from inside that nightclub (which, offside, was a shit nightclub anyway)? 

"You're not friends with people like that—"

"—you just ruined it," She continued, talking over him as if he was just like the noisy traffic that passed down the street. Beth reduced him to city chatter and threw out her arms, letting out a miffed laugh. "You don't give a shit that this meant so much to me-- you don't even care that I wanted to let you meet these people who are so important to me--"

"Important?" Mark cocked his head to the side, "You've never even mentioned any of them."

"Do you listen to anything I say?"

He stared at her. 

Idly, he wondered whether she knew exactly how much attention he paid to her. He was pretty sure, at this point, that he could pick her voice out in a crowded room. To put it simply, Mark couldn't physically not listen to anything she had to say. 

He was completely convinced that he could hear her in a busy ER from the other side of the room or from the opposite side of a nurses station. He liked listening to Beth talk and could've easily listened to her wisecracks and commentary for hours-- Mark could not recall any of those names in that dimly lit nightclub. 

She definitely had never mentioned them, although, to be fair, it had been hard to make out precise introductions over the heavy drill of club music.

Instead of answering, Mark just rubbed at his forehead. 

He felt tired. He didn't feel good drunk anymore, he felt the remnants of it, the shitty feeling, the heaviness and the need to rest his head. Or, maybe that was just the impact of an argument with Beth. 

She was still burning so brightly and he was just feeling like a flame that was very close to being snuffed.

"They're not good friends," He said tightly, holding out his jacket. 

He was beyond conscious of the fact that his girlfriend was slowly turning into an icicle. The coat hung between them like a peace offering. He wondered whether it would make things okay.

Drunk Beth just scowled.

"Who would be good friends?"

"You have good friends," Mark said, feeling a lot like a parent talking patiently to their child. "The other interns at the hospital... Carmichael... Tran... Brooks... they're good, hardworking people."

Begrudgingly, Beth reached out and snatched the jacket from him. She shot him a dirty look. (The jacket had, very clearly, not made things okay.) "Oh yeah, the good friends that I'm lying to and think that I'm dating some guy from Brooklyn."

Silently, he watched her shrug on the coat. Inwardly, the words Church and State were standing tall at the back of his head, like an ominous statue that cast everything else in a cold shadow. He collected himself, lowering his head and only looking up when Beth seemed to have sensed the full-circle moment in their argument. It was their favourite topic of contention but was usually brought up by a frustrated Mark. He watched her pull the jacket tightly around her body and sigh loudly, knees colliding as she struggled to compose herself.

"That's not my fault."

His words weren't fair, he knew that. 

It felt like he was throwing petty fuel onto the fire. 

She'd taken a few steps towards him, but now stared at him as if he was a stranger, like he was any other asshole on a Manhattan street. She paused. He paused too. A silent beat passed between them.

It wasn't his fault. She knew that. 

Maybe that's why, when she parted her lips, all that escaped was a cloud of condensed air. His jacket shrouded her, pulling up tight around her chin, so she looked small but infinitely deadly-- there was electricity crackling at the back of her eyes, a drunken flame that was far from doused. It was in that moment that Mark realised that he'd made a mistake.

(It was basic science. Now, Mark knew that he hadn't done that sort of chemistry in a long time... but he would have had to be very slow to not put two and two together. He'd always been gifted at science, better at them than any of his other subjects-- Throwing petty fuel on a fire was pretty futile when it already had half of Manhattan's alcohol fuelling its flames.)

She let out a laugh and shook her head, pushing past him and sniping a single sentence over her shoulder.

"Oh, fuck you, Mark Sloan."

"Don't walk away---"

"So who the hell is Amy, then?"

She turned back and held out her arms, as if to encourage him to expand.

"Amy is family," Mark said sharply, his nostrils flaring. He was cold too, but he could see the waves of violent shivers that wracked at Beth's bones-- he began to shrug off his jacket, holding it tightly as Beth scoffed and looked away. "Just like Derek is family. The same Derek that would want to know what's happening-- the same Derek that would never forgive us if we stayed with those people--"

"I don't care," Beth said, holding her head high. "I don't care what Derek thinks." 

(That was a lie, Mark knew it. Sometimes, he had a sneaky suspicion that Beth cared more about what Derek thought than he did.) 

"All I care about..." She said, "All I care about is the fact that you're an asshole to everyone and now I'm going to have to apologise for you-- and you won't apologise at all--"

"Are we really fighting over..." He laughed at how stupid this was. It was so black and white, this whole situation. Drugs were wrong. Leaving and phoning Derek in the morning was right. He figured that the alcohol made Beth see greyscale lines and shapes. He hoped that it was the alcohol. "They're a bunch of kids. You've got other friends, friends that don't do god knows what in the restroom--"

"They're older than me, Mark," Her wide eyes blinked at him. It was in that moment that he realised her pupils were a little bigger than usual. He felt his stomach twist slightly. "You realise Amy's a year older than me, right? If they're kids what the hell am I?" He didn't answer. "And what are you? Some creepy old man that's dating a toddler?"

But then there was something else too. 

Mark searched her eyes and didn't particularly like what he saw. 

There was a disconnect in her gaze, she seemed to stare straight through him with two pupils that were noticeably blown. As a surgeon, he knew that there were only really two situations in which that would happen, and he was fairly sure that his girlfriend had not sustained a brain bleed in the last five minutes. He gaped for a second and then, filled with bewilderment and slight horror, his voice dropped into a low, hushed almost whisper.

"Are you high?"

In her drunkenness, Beth just scoffed.

"Mark—"

She was. He could see it. He could see the change in her manner, something that wasn't just pushed forwards by the alcohol in her system. She was fucking high. While Mark had watched Amy creep off to snort god knows what off of miscellaneous even surfaces, Beth had been doing it too—immediately, Mark found himself trying to figure out where exactly he'd missed it. Where exactly had he missed the point where Beth became just like them?

"Are you high, Beth? Yes or no—"

"Fuck you, Mark," She seemed completely finished with this argument and Mark could tell. The look that she shot him was final. "You can sleep on the couch tonight."

***

SEATTLE

Beth had always found it so bewildering how your perception of someone could change so quickly.

One tiny sentence or realisation was enough to change your whole view of someone. 

A single phrase, a single word, a single syllable or letter, it was all enough to rethink years of conversation—she'd been through it before, countless times. Not a day went by when she wasn't looking at someone in a new light, whether it was through acknowledging the tiniest change or discovery (like finding out how someone took their coffee or whether they preferred jazz or blues), it made things exciting and new. 

The world was constantly changing and Beth, as she had been since the day she was born, had been fighting to keep up with it.

She, herself, felt as though she'd changed drastically over the years. The girl who had arrived in New York was so different to the woman now, today, was planning to leave. That was the same with Seattle, too.

Beth found herself categorising the stages of her life by the cities that she'd lived in. They were eras, defined by the places she'd been and the men she'd loved within them. 

New York was so different to Seattle, just as the two cities had been so different to Toronto and Canada. But, she supposed, that nothing quite compared to the last two months—specifically, Seattle, in this bed, in this apartment, in this mind. So many things had happened and now there she laid, with numb lips and a deep itch within her that she couldn't quite scratch.

Charlie, however, had always been the same.

Beth spent the morning of their wedding day watching him doze, a warm weight heavy on her chest as she watched him sleep. Light fingers traced the planes of his face, the same face, the familiar face, and outlined his features as if she were a blind person trying to reach out and recognise him. 

With a touch so tender, Beth smoothed back his hair and pressed her cheek into her pillow, wondering whether marriage was a big change at all. She wondered if she'd feel different, strangely different, and whether she'd even recognise herself at all.

The man sleeping beside her felt familiar to her. As aforementioned, Charlie Perkins seemed to never change. Even in his sleep he looked the same; the same man she'd met during summertime with the light smile and the ease about him. There were a few tears to him, sure, he looked exhausted. 

He looked as though he'd been through a lot over the past two months and Beth could only lightly worry whether the stress of her fighting every step of the way had taken a toll on him. Her thumb outlined the slightly sunken set of his eyes, withered by exhaustion and the strain of being thrown into a whole different world—

Beth sighed.

He'd been so warm and friendly from the moment they'd met, extending a softness to her that had filled him with the same feeling that she'd met at the bottom of a wine glass. 

He was constant and never changing, always present and accepting, exactly what she'd needed. It had been through his round edges and delicateness that Beth had allowed herself, for a second, to think that she wasn't doomed to be alone for forever.

(Lucky for some.)

It was weird to think that she'd come to Seattle with no intentions to stay. 

She lingered on it as she laid on her side, pulling the comforter tightly up to her chin and sighing as the bedside clock flashed five am. It was still slightly dark outside, the night not entirely chased away. There was a chill in the air too, one that made goosebumps raise on the back of her arms as she buried herself deeper into her pillow. 

It reminded her of her first day in the city, of how Lexie had come fished her off the sidewalk in the pouring rain, skin soaked and her own personal storm cloud following her along. It felt as though it had been years ago.

Now, Beth spent her final morning in Seattle waiting for the world to catch up to her.

She gently sat upwards, dragging her tired limbs to rest on the chilled floor. 

The whole building seemed to creak around her as she padded across the bedroom and into the rest of the apartment. Before she was able to form fully coherent thoughts, coffee was brewing, a long sigh falling out of her as she weighed an empty mug in the palm of her hand.

Faintly, Beth could recall the hours she'd existed within back in New York (with her free hand, she found her pills and punched two from the foil, chewing her bottom lip as they skittered across the counter) and how she'd barely even batted an eyelid in the face of the early hours and minimal sleep (she made her coffee and swallowed the pills dry, without even batting an eyelash. It was the sort of thing she'd done hundreds of times before) and couldn't help but wonder how she'd been able to do it. Not even the French press coffee, the good shit that made her bones groan with thanks, was enough to deter her impulse to go back to bed. God, how things had changed. (She paused to feel the familiar sink of the tiny capsule as it travelled down her chest and into her system, eager to soothe the pain of aching muscle and bone.) She was no longer the person she had been during that internship.

She was no longer a morning person, that was for sure.

Beth's eyes stuck on the lonely haze of the sunlight on the horizon and wondered, quietly, whether the sun would rise differently today. 

She seemed to look at everything differently, as if trying to memorise everything for the last time. Her eyes wandered around the apartment, from the hastily shoved suitcases and everything that had been packed so hurriedly (the memory of stuffing belongings into storage with the intent to deal with it all later flickered across her mind). 

This apartment had been kind to her, despite the obvious animosity with a particular neighbour. It had served her well and she supposed that, in the same way that she always missed things she left behind, she was going to miss this place too.

"You're up early."

Beth hadn't noticed the gentle pad of feet on wooden floor and the feeling of warm fingers against her icy skin. She felt him before she heard him, his arms enclosing around her and hugging her to his bare chest. 

Her lips twitched he hugged her, appreciating the warmth of his skin against hers. He pressed a kiss into the crook of her neck and she chuckled to herself. She felt her shoulders ease and her stomach churn and the small voice in the back of her head remind her that this was going to be her forever.

The other voice in her head reminded her that Charlie's light surprise at how early she'd risen was not a sentiment that many people shared. Was Mark listening through the wall? Charlie was surprised that she was up so early. Eat on that Manhattan Beth; the one that had never slept sleeping and forever rose at the crack of dawn. Hear that Mark? She was surprising.

She smiled hazily, turning around to look over at him as he restrained a yawn. A pair of sleepy eyes blinked over at her as she hummed to herself.

"Big day today..." Beth said lightly, noticing how Charlie's brow seemed to crumple at the light in the room. He wasn't as elegant as he had been in his sleep and now, instead, battled with keeping his eyes open. His gaze was hazy and unfocused, watching Beth as she pressed a hand against his cheek. "Oh babe."

Immediately, Beth was reminded of the evening they'd had. 

She must've seen this coming eventually. That hazy look in his eye had reminded her of long nights in the South of France, hands under summer dresses and the way they'd been friends for precisely one week before they'd been lovers. Good lovers too, secret ones. Kissing behind closed doors while everyone in the villa was incoherent with wine and trailing fingertips over shoulders while the skin was skill burnt and crisp. 

Cigarette smoke and boats off of the coast of Saint Tropez with sand between her toes. There'd been the thrill of getting caught, of being ripped apart and condemned because Beth really wasn't in any capacity to be getting involved with a guy with that golden of a smile. 

There'd also been the taste of wine on his lips, so desperately needed by Beth that it had brought her back over and over until she'd fallen in love with the rest of him too—

He was hungover, she could tell from the way that he struggled beneath her palm. His face was strained, not quite sharing the joy that rose in her at the thought of doing the damn thing. She could remember the evening: he'd drank a lot, more than she'd seen him drink in a while. He'd bonded with Archer over champagne chasers and it had left him stumbling through Seattle as she tugged on his sleeve. 

She hadn't minded his drunkenness, admittedly, he was a pleasant drunk; although, she wasn't sure whether she just preferred people when they were drunk because things never felt permanent, words were never remembered and kisses were never carried into the daylight.

For such an extroverted introvert, drunk Charlie was always unapologetically loud, saying hello enthusiastically to whoever came his way and feverishly complimenting her whenever he got the chance. 

His shirt had been crumpled and his hair mussed slightly, and yet he'd brightly surveyed his surroundings with excitement as if the whole world was brand new. He'd spent the whole walk from the restaurant telling her that she was pretty before attempting to befriend every single pedestrian and a homeless guy on the street corner like an over-excited golden retriever. 

She'd wrapped her arm in his (given the homeless man a twenty for his troubles) and then encouraged the rest to go on without them: no, it's fine, I've got to get this one home before he pukes on me during the vows tomorrow morning. So, they'd gone on and left the bride and groom to stumble over cracks in the sidewalk and murmur Perry Como lyrics.

(The brightest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle... And the hills the greenest green in Seattle...)

Admittedly, the singing and the stumbling had mostly been Charlie. Beth had just watched.

And then there had been the elevator ride, Charlie's fingers tugging her into him as he kissed her from forehead to collarbone. 

She shamelessly liked flirty, drunk Charlie, he was always the right balance of nice and firm. It was the closest thing she managed to get to an assertion in him. His grasp was always a little bit tighter, and his movements were a little more unpredictable. 

When he'd drawn a line down her neck with his nose, eventually stopping to press an open-mouthed kiss against her collar bone, it had taken everything within Beth to not grab his chin and redirect him.

"You look very pretty," Charlie had said it quietly as if it was a secret. Her eyebrows had raised. His face had crept closer as if they were about to kiss and she'd felt his words against her skin, practically tasting the alcohol on his tongue. "I like your dress."

"You do?" Beth's free hand had slid upwards, tousling the hair on the crown of his head as he nodded. She hadn't been able to hide her smile. "Thank you. I like my dress too."

Of course he'd liked her dress, it was the dress, Amy had once called it her business suit. 

She'd worn it with the intention of having this feeling inside of her, of Charlie's hands and the spark in his eye when he murmured it again. Everyone seemed to like the dress. 

They liked it so much that she'd broken it countless times, puckering at a seam on her left upper thigh. She'd wanted that sort of evening but she hadn't counted on Charlie getting this wasted.

"It's pretty."

"It is."

"You're really pretty."

"Thank you."

He'd leant in to kiss her on the lips.

But Beth had tsked and shook her head, "Not when you've been drinking, babe."

He'd pouted in a long way that had had her chuckling again. 

He'd resolved to pressing a kiss on her jaw, humming an apology as his hands slid down. Lower and lower and lower—She'd giggled, enjoying the feeling of his body pressed against hers and his lips gradually descending down her jawline and onto her throat.

She'd played with the hair on the top of his head, smiling lazily as Charlie's hands roamed over the fabric of her dress. It occurred to her how even sober, he'd completely surpass the fix she'd made on the right side hem. (Would it pucker again? Would it split again? Beth had a funny suspicion that if this night continued the way it seemed to be going, they'd find out very soon. After all, that's how it had happened the first time.) 

It was untraceable, just like the other things she thought about sometimes. Like little bruises against necks or fingerprints on thighs and other assorted marks against her skin, all faded with time. Everything, eventually, faded. Things always went away and disappeared into nothingness-- but sensations like this, they lasted forever.

Beth had been perfectly happy to let Charlie drunkenly cuddle and kiss her, but had stopped it from going any further. 

As much as she'd wanted to give in, elevator sex with a man who wasn't coherent was not the sort of evening she'd signed up for. Sure, she'd worn her good underwear and shaved, but she'd been done up too nicely for an elevator. Couch or kitchen counter she could negotiate but elevator? She had standards--

Sure 'standards', the dress had whispered back to her sarcastically, split hem, remember?

Beth had been tempted. Oh, she'd been so tempted. But now, in the kitchen, Charlie didn't look particularly glamorous. 

He actually winced as she pressed her lips against his, gently cupping his jaw. Her nose wrinkled as she stepped backwards, realising that he still stank of alcohol. Instead, she resorted to holding his chin, turning his face side to side and sighing when she realised exactly how hungover he was.

And on their wedding day too.

"You should go back to bed."

It reminded her of the morning where she'd woken up with her first migraine since detox. It'd been the first time Beth had been so painfully aware of her own mortality and Charlie had been so gentle, trying to negotiate her to take the day off. 

When she looked over at him, at the strain in his muscles and the clench within his body, she was reminded of how many mornings she'd spent even before that; long days when she'd been stuck with a head that was crippled by the weight of bad decisions. 

His lip twitched as he looked down at her and he pressed his hand over hers.

"It's just a hangover," He said lightly, "I'll live."

Ideally, Beth had not envisioned a hungover groom at her makeshift wedding. She knew Charlie well enough to know that hangovers were pretty rough for him. 

God, she loved him to bits but he was on the delicate side; she knew that he was the complete opposite to the person she'd been in New York. He didn't have the ability to grit his teeth and bear with things like she did. She remembered the time he'd gotten the flu while they'd been in Indonesia and she'd practically reverted back to medical school nursing him through the tiniest fever.

The looks he shot him made him pause. She watched as he attempted to adjust to the light. Beth could imagine it: the pounding headache, the feeling of the world unsteady under your feet and the bile at the back of your throat—Charlie's resolution crumbled right in front of her.

"I'm going back to bed," Charlie mumbled. 

Her smile was fond. She pushed back his hair and nodded, them both sharing the knowledge that it was the best decision. 

"I'm going to save my strength and I'm going to see you at that courthouse later," He said, "Mark my words—"

They both had things they needed to do today. Beth found herself staring at the plane tickets on the countertop as Charlie pressed a kiss to the top of her head and padded off back to the bedroom. 

Next to it sat her resignation letter, just in between her pill bottle and their passports, freshly printed the evening before and with Ballard's name neatly scrawled on the front. She had a meeting to go to and Charlie was supposed to go to pick up some last-minute things from the store—but now their plans changed, Charlie was going to shower, pick himself together and meet her outside of the courthouse downtown while Beth handled their professional affairs.

This is it, Beth thought to herself as she dressed for her last day in Seattle, they're really going to do it.

She shrugged on her heels as she felt the bite of the pills she'd taken earlier, dragging in a long breath as she stared in the mirror. In the background, Charlie was showering, a long groan filling the room as he arched his back under a hot stream of water. 

Beth rolled down her sleeves, frowning at the rash that had accumulated across her skin—it irked her and wasn't particularly glamorous for a wedding day photo. 

(It was the last time she was going to buy cheap shower gel, that was for sure. They were both suffering.) 

In fact, if she thought about, today didn't particularly feel like a wedding day at all.

Was it supposed to? Were the birds supposed to be singing and the sun rise in a different way? Were things supposed to feel magical?

Oh crap, Beth thought to herself as she stabbed a earring through her lobe, maybe this is what simple feels like. Wondering these things... I'm simple.

Drawing from that thought, she briefly flirted with the idea of buying a live laugh love decal for their cottage in France.

Her dress from the night before was hung up on the back of the door from when she'd shrugged it off and crawled immediately into bed. 

She'd fished it off of the floor and paused, briefly, to reminiscence—when Amy had seen it, she'd choked on her fake champagne and asked, with watering eyes, when the last time Beth had worn it was—

Beth's answer had caught at the back of her throat. She'd seemed to choke on it slightly, the air getting strangled in her throat as Amy had raised her eyebrows. An internal debate had ensued of whether Beth should even admit it, or maybe whether Amy already knew. They both knew the last time Beth had worn this dress: it'd been New York and Beth had almost forgotten she even owned it. 

Black, teetering the line of smart and distasteful. She was pretty sure on the night she'd worn it last, it'd rained. If she remembered rightly, she'd worn it for drinks up on the Upper East Side, for a little half-lit bar with a pianist and over-priced cocktails.

(Mark. She'd worn it for Mark.)

It was the sort of dress that held history. 

She'd worn it on dates, to Addison's dinners and she'd even worn it to her graduation. Beth had seen it hanging at the back of her closet and it had caused such a deep shift within her, despite the fact she hated to say that it was associated with more bad memories than she could name. Staring at it hung up, she could see a slight stain at the hem from a glass of wine that had gone rogue, alongside a rip in the side she'd stitched together herself when she'd been trying to perfect her suturing--

(The brief image of a certain plastic surgeon hovering over her as she held that needle in her hand filled her mind. He'd overseen it, watched as she threaded the eye and eased her through it as it was a patient. He'd guided her hand. He'd talked strategy as if they were approaching a continuous suture on a stretch of skin. Start there and continue down, don't let it see you sweat, it can smell fear. The memory was so faint, but as she ran her fingers over the barely noticeable stitching, she could just so distantly feel it and feel the clouding of his breath against her ear as he surveyed--)

Beth placed the cup of hot water with honey and lemon that she'd made for the man she was sure was the love of her life, just down on the bedside table. She patted out her lipstick, tightened her ponytail and made the resolution to leave Seattle and never look back—

And the dress? Maybe she'd leave that behind too.

***

NEW YORK

There had been a time where Mark would have considered Drunk Beth his favourite Beth.

There was a whole different energy to her, the sparkle in her eye and the high emotions that, more often than not, resulted in some of the best sex he'd ever have in his life. Alcohol seemed to bring her to life, invigorate the parts of her that were slowly withering with the ferocity of her lifestyle and career. 

She was a touchy-feely drunk, addicted to the feeling of his skin against hers and never wanting to part. As soon as she was far enough gone, Mark's lips against hers seemed to be the only thing she needed; she wanted him, she needed him, and it elicited a deep joy from within him that he'd never quite felt before.

(Mark would never admit it, but he really liked to feel needed. He wasn't sure whether it was the little kid in him, the one that had spent his whole childhood neglected in that Upper East apartment, that filled him with warmth whenever Beth would cling to him, but he was sure it must've been something not far from it. By association, he supposed that's why he was somewhat addicted to one-night stands. He lived for the moment when someone needed him, when someone set their eyes on him and said I want you.)

He'd known that Beth liked to drink from the start, from hazy champagne smiles at Addison's soirée's to half drank bottles of red whenever he mentioned watching a movie. 

Their first kiss and their first hook up had been with drunk fingers and groans. He knew that alcohol was one of Beth's only vices, something she used to unwind and loosen up. He enjoyed her affinity for alcohol and had never mentioned her misuse of it after the way Addison had shut him down over it at that dinner long ago.

He was always on board with her flirty, drunken smiles. He hung onto her sweet touches and the nip of her teeth on his skin. He liked the way that she seemed to unfurl under his fingers and never want to let him go. He liked that her kisses were sloppy and passionate and tasted sweet, like the bottle of nondescript wine she'd tossed back without a flutter of an eyelash. 

Most of the time, he was equally as drowsy from whatever nightcap he'd nursed and met her drunkenness with his own, but as time wore on, he was unable to keep up.

It brought him there: to her bed one morning, Beth naked and him shirtless as he pressed her down onto the mattress and kissed her with reckless abandon. 

Heavy fingers traced frantic designs across his shoulders as he groaned into her mouth, enjoying the sensation of waking up to Beth's good mood. He felt touch starved and feeling Beth writhe underneath him was simply the best cure.

Mark would've been lying if he said that the distance between them drove him crazy. Church and State felt out of place in this relationship now. He was pretty sure that it was supposed to mean that both were equally as important as the other—and yet he'd spent months feeling the second rate to her career. 

He understood how important Beth's career was to her. It came first. He understood why she'd chosen to throw herself into cases, mostly because that's just who she was: the woman who didn't sleep and didn't kiss him in public just out of the fear that someone was going to see. 

His understanding of that eclipsed the lump that accumulated at the back of his throat, an unsaid insecurity that his reputation was what left Beth hesitant to be fully truthful about their relationship, that the judgement and criticism from her peers about loving him was enough to keep her distant.

So, he'd learnt not to question her kisses.

But this morning, this one, in particular, had felt different.

She'd been gone all night after an incoming trauma had forced her into overtime. He was sure that she must've been exhausted but here she was, kissed him hungrily and with an urgency to her. Again, Mark was pleasantly surprised, ever since they'd had the argument outside of the nightclub a few nights ago, he'd noticed that Beth was reluctant to give him her time. 

Their issue was painfully unresolved and even though Beth seemed unable to remember most of it, she could still hold onto the emotions that had risen behind it. They'd been making polite conversation, diplomatically going about their days for too long—and now, it seemed as though she was making strives to fix it.

Here she was, sober in the early morning, needing him—

Mark paused.

His lips were on her neck. He could feel the thrum of her pulse against his skin, feel the tireless running of her nails against his shoulder blades. Her breathing was hitched, her chin tilted back as her dark hair fanned out on the pillow. Her eyes were squeezed closed, her whole being concentrated on the sensation of Mark's wandering hands. 

His touch stalled immediately on her thigh as he gazed up at her, a dent appearing between his eyebrows.

"Are you drunk?"

Mark's question was meant tenderly but it came out as a faint accusation. 

At first, he felt foolish at saying it (his eyes flickered over towards the alarm clock on the table beside them), it was 7 am and Beth had been working all night. For a moment, he regretted it—of course, she wasn't drunk, he was being stupid to think that every time she wanted something from him she had to be drunk? Beth wasn't like that she wasn't going to be drunk this time in the morning—

He'd expected a very specific type of response. 

Something dismissive whether it was a laugh, a scowl or even for her to look him in the eye and sharply question why the hell he would think that. He'd waited for it too, lingering above her with the blood rushing to his ears like a rabbit that was waiting for a predator to pass. 

Beth, herself seemed to pause too, as if she was struggling to process exactly what he'd just said.

A second passed and then another and then another— and then it hit Mark.

She didn't say no.

He gently peeled himself off of her, a flurry of different feelings amounting within his chest. He was slick with sweat, a reminder of the fact that he'd gotten a little too caught up in the moment. Mark's face folded into a look of confusion and he watched goosebumps raise on Beth's skin as she lost the warmth of his body on top of hers. 

He watched as she seemed to get confused too, aching from the loss of him; when her head tilted upwards she was met with his furrowed brow as he waited for her to say something.

A pause.

Beth laughed, caught off-guard, "What?"

Mark didn't give her an opportunity to say anything else, he dove forwards and pressed his lips to herself, kissing her deeply as she was taken by surprise. 

He caught her gasp, pressing his fingers into her jaw and holding to him so closely that, for a second, Mark barely knew where Beth began and he ended—by the time Beth seemed to melt into the embrace, he was letting go, leaning backwards and leaving her with swollen lips and a disjointed fuzziness in her eye.

He could taste the wine on his lips, in that kiss.

"You've been drinking." 

Mark could smell it too. He was blind enough to sometimes mistake for her natural scent, but it was far from natural—it was heavy, sweet and alcoholic, the right sort of addicting. Beth continued to just stare at him, her skin flushing and rising with the sort of shiver that made Mark want to press his palm against her to ease it. 

"Beth are you drunk—"

"Mark," She said his name so disapprovingly as if she didn't want him to speak any longer. Those dark eyes surveyed him almost methodically as if she was trying to figure out how to get out of this conversation as time-efficiently as possible. "Are you serious?"

He was. He was very serious. 

There was something about Beth coming into this apartment at this time in the morning drunk that troubled him. Maybe it was the fact that it was painfully early or the very slow and gradual realisation that this had been happening more and more often—he was filled with a sick, deep sense of déjà vu as Beth sat upwards, pulling the covers to her bare chest and watching as he leant away from her.

They'd been in this position before, he was fairly sure that this wasn't the first time that Beth had come breezing in from some late-night shift and ended up drunk and handsy. It wasn't the first time that he'd kissed her at some painfully early time and tasted happy hour. It wasn't the first time that he was looking at her in this way and he could tell that Beth knew that—she knew what his silence meant and she seemed to bristle. A half shiver ran down her spine.

"Mark," Beth repeated his name, eyebrows raising, "Really?"

Yes, really.

"You told me you were working," He said, failing to understand how exactly she'd gotten drunk. "How did—"

He was completely lost, staring at Beth as if she'd spontaneously grown a second hand. Did she not understand how unusual it was? 

Most people, this time in the morning, were having milk with their cereal, not Shiraz. The sun had barely risen and his call time at work was in forty minutes and she, Beth Montgomery, had been getting drunk.

Mark, ultimately, had very little to say so he sat there, watchful and aware as if he was piecing together a very slow and gradual hypothesis. 

Maybe he was? He felt as though he was in Medical School again, picking up on little details and fitting them together like puzzle pieces, ready to write a whole study on it in exchange for a doctorate. 

There was something behind her slightly mussed hair and her smudged lipstick—usually Beth, no matter what time it was or what place, was respectably put together, forever anxious of Addison picking out a flaw. But now, just as she had been outside of that nightclub, she seemed softer, sloppier, in a way that was uncharacteristic of her. 

Those deep brown eyes seemed sluggish in their movements and, when she smiled at him, her lips twitched unnaturally. It was a slow smile, half held back by the last argument that they'd had, one that was still painfully unresolved.

"I'm not drunk." 

He couldn't tell if it was a lie. He hated it that he couldn't tell if she was lying. 

She looked at him so plainly, with those pretty eyes that glimmered with a very vague sense of panic. Beth hugged the sheet to her chest and forced a confusion that just irked him further. 

"What are you talking about—"

"Don't lie to me."

Mark's voice was sharp and he could see Beth recoil slightly, her eyebrows raising in surprise. His manner did not fit the time of day; his body was coiled like a tensed spring, his clenched muscles not meeting the softness of such a early morning quiet. 

The soft early light streaming through the cracks in the curtains, did nothing to smooth his hard edges. His voice was sharp but his face was uncharacteristically candid— he licked his lips and hated the taste that lingered.

"Mark—"

He wasn't sure whether he was mad or hurt or just bewildered, but either way, he matched her annoyed tone. "Beth—"

They stared at each other for what seemed like a lifetime.

"Fine," She exhaled and Mark seemed to ease very slightly, his shoulders falling alongside his gaze. He stared at the way her hands, almost shakily, trailed her nails across the skin on her arms. "I had one drink—"

"One drink?"

"Baby," Beth met his scepticism with a blasé laugh. She tilted her head to the side and forced a wide smile as if it would make this whole conversation just fade away. "Can't we talk about this later—you've only got twenty minutes and I'm literally right here naked right now—"

"Was it only one drink?"

His resolution wavered very slightly but he was determined to not let it go. 

She dropped the sheet a fraction as if to emphasise her point that she was very naked and very willing to continue where they'd left off—but Mark's words seemed to cause her to pause. Beth held his gaze again, her jaw clenching as she very gradually realised that he wasn't going to let it go. 

She sighed and rubbed at her jaw, averting her eyes to the wall behind him.

"One bottle," Beth admitted and then looked back over at him, "Why are you being weird about it—?"

"It's 7 am," Mark said tightly, "It's early—"

"And?" Beth frowned, "What does that have to do with anything—?"

What does that have to do with anything? Was she really that out of touch with reality?

"Where were even drinking?" He asked, his voice slightly strained, "What about the shift? About the trauma? Are you lying about that too?"

The surgical intern stared at him. She seemed to lag very slightly on the fast succession of questions, blinking slowly as she struggled to keep up. 

There was a pause and Beth's eyebrows raised; she shifted in the sheets, her face contorting almost beyond recognition. Meanwhile, Mark was staring back, his brow furrowed so tightly that, for a moment, he felt his pulse in his forehead.

"Wow okay," Beth breathed. It was a shuddering breath, one that Mark could practically feel in his own lungs. He watched as she ran her fingers through her hair and placed her hands on her elbows, hugging her knees to her chest. It felt oddly childlike. "Where is this coming from?"

"Beth—"

She almost looked bored by his line of inquiry but Mark could tell that, in reality, she was deeply irked by it. It was clear from the way that she moved, her arms crossing over her chest and a light scoff falling past her lips.

"I finished work at 5:30," She recited it so fluidly that, for a second, Mark forgot that she'd drank anything in the first place. (But he knew better, he knew that Beth was a master at feigning sobriety when needed.) "The trauma case was really shit so I went to a corner store on the way to the subway station and I got myself a bottle. There was a delay at Houston Street so I drank it, on my own, while sat on the platform like a sad crazy lady."

Beth paused.

"I worked a forty-eight-hour shift, had an awful case in which Doctor Applebaum ripped me to shreds overprescribing the wrong painkiller, and I had a little bit of a cry while sat beside one of the biggest rats I've ever seen. So I decided that I needed to have a drink and come home and have some good sex with my boyfriend," Each word felt genuine and Mark, for a moment, was lost for things to say. She looked up at him, brown eyes suddenly very clear, "Is that honest enough for you, baby? Or do you need me to take a polygraph test, too?"

He stared at her, watching as she waited for his response. 

She appeared so indifferent, neither angry nor sad, just impassive. Mark, meanwhile, couldn't quite gather his thoughts. He couldn't gauge his emotions either—he was just one big wave of indecision, staring at his girlfriend as she sucked on her bottom lip and furrowed her brow.

He didn't want to be right. 

He didn't want his second hypothesis, the one about Beth needing him only when she was drunk, he didn't want that to be correct. 

He looked between her impassive face and the remaining tremble in her fingers and inhaled in a long, indecisive sigh—he knew it wasn't okay that Beth was drunk this early and this often. But then again, she was right, her work hours were unconventional, and her lifestyle fluctuated, and it could've been as innocent as she claimed it to be—

And yet, as it had at that dinner all that time ago, Mark felt like something was most definitely off.

Beth had once mentioned that her family liked to cover things instead of fixing them. 

She'd told him that their parents were far fonder of painting over crevices and holes than patching them over, whether that involved legal help or off-the-books sort of intervention. Either way, Beth had been adamant on it—Bizzy Forbes' code of conduct was to pretend that things were fine. 

He'd witnessed it first-hand, in the way that Beth seemed to breeze through the day after as if she hadn't screamed her lungs raw on the subway the night before, and in the way that Addison's lip had curled when he'd first mentioned Beth's concerning behaviour at dinner all that time ago.

Maybe this was indicative of that? Maybe the look on her face and the very brief challenge in her eye was exactly that, it was covering for damage that Mark was only slowly beginning to sense?

(Whatever it was, he didn't have a good feeling about it.)

"I'm fine, Mark," She flashed him a perfectly saccharine smile and leant forwards, cocking her head to the side inquisitively. He watched as she loomed below him, her smile making his mouth dry. "I just had a bad day, tha's'all."

He wasn't stupid, he knew that she had him practically wrapped around his little finger. When he stared down at her, his heartbeat was in his ears and he found his skin heating as she set her fingers on his chest. 

She trailed a path along his chest, watching as he tensed—Mark found himself at a familiar crossroads, toeing the line in a relationship that completely blinded him. He wanted to say something, he wanted to make her all too aware of how troubling her behaviour was being, from getting drunk every night to only being interested in sex when she'd had something to drink. Mark didn't like it, he didn't like that things felt conditional.

It was toeing the line in the most explicit sense; Mark could feel there was something there, just as he had all week. It was the sensation of having Beth beside him but feeling her a million miles away. She was here but she was not. She was staring at him as if she didn't understand what all the trouble was about--

Mark sighed.

Fine.

***

SEATTLE

Amy wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected.

The last time they'd slept together she'd been high and drunk and numb, her fingers frosty and her body itching for another hit, something a little less metabolic and more physical. 

She couldn't particularly remember it, but she remembered the way her legs had ached for days after and how she'd been filled with a sense of very vague guilt, as if even drunk and out of her mind she'd been aware of how crappy she'd been to do that to her best friend—

But now, she was just miffed watching Mark have a very slow mental breakdown in his bedroom.

She sat in his bed nursing a cup of coffee, pleasantly surprised that Mark had offered her one as soon as her eyelids had twitched. 

He'd been stood above her as she awoke, teeming with some energy that she hadn't been able to place. It'd been both terrifying and confused, eyes opening only to be immediately faced with the plastic surgeon and whatever breakdown he was on the verge of—now she just watched impassively, her eyes following his slow pacing across the hardwood floor.

"Did you wait for me to get up before having this breakdown?" Amy asked with a very estranged note of disinterest. 

Mark's whole body was hunched very slightly, already completely full dressed while Amy was wearing one of his shirts. Her eyes moved with him, tracking back and forth as if he was playing tennis in the middle of the room. 

"Or is this just a secret never-seen-before bonus feature on the DVD of the Mark Sloan Sex Experience?"

He seemed to ignore her, making Amy seriously wonder whether she might as well just leave. Her eyes flickered over his movements, on how he marched back and forth almost systematically, and a sigh caught at the back of her throat. 

She had a very sneaky suspicion at why exactly Mark was having a crisis and said sneaky suspicion was the reason that she sighed so heavily. She saw his eye twitch at the sound and, very gradually, leant over to fish her cell phone off of the floor.

Amy had a handful of messages, all from an oblivious Beth who was asking where she was and what time she'd be able to make it to her apartment. 

According to said messages, Charlie was staying home until the wedding to try and get himself through a hangover and get ready, and Beth wanted to know whether Amy would be the one to kick his ass into shape while she organised all of their work stuff. When reading the messages, Amy found herself glancing over at Mark, watching the plastic surgeon's very slow and gradual decline.

"Do you want breakfast?" Amy asked offhandedly, barely fazed by the dismissive glance that Mark shot in her direction. The neurosurgeon shrugged. "I'm sure there's some fancy brunch place that does a consolatory 'I'm Sorry Your Ex-Girlfriend Is Getting Hitched Today And You Are Too Much Of A Pussy To Do Anything About It' with some poached egg or something—"

"Amy."

From the way his voice wavered and his slightly chaotic tone, Amy could tell that he did not appreciate the joke. She shrugged again, not exactly sure what he'd expected if he'd chosen to have this little moment right in front of her. 

She wasn't exactly world-renowned for insightful and deep advice; if he wanted that he was going to have to go straight to the problem and that, of course, was the problem in a wedding veil. 

In all honesty, Amy had hoped that he'd been able to fully work through this last night. She'd hoped that in, true Mark fashion, he'd been able to at least completely disassociate from his issues and at least save the breakdown until Beth was out of the country.

"Yeah," Amy murmured quietly. She found herself scrolling through the menu of a brunch restaurant that Beth had recommended, reading through all of the options. "You're right, they probably don't do the pussy part because that's just lame—"

"Amy," He repeated his interruption, this time shaking his head and actually saying a little bit more. "Can you just shut up for a minute?"

His tone was a lot sharper than she'd expected and she just blinked at him, eyes flickering up from the menu on her phone. 

They stared at each other for a beat, and, for a moment, Amy was able to really see the sort of hell Mark was dragging himself through at that moment. 

His face twisted very slightly, and he let out a long sigh; it was something that had caught Amy completely off-guard, the sudden emotions that Mark was able to convey.

She was so used to a completely unattached, disassociated Mark Sloan that did not show any degree of emotion or attachment. Her whole childhood had been characterised by his ability to completely be an unapologetic asshole, to be the opposite of Derek's gooey sensitive softness. But fuck, what the hell had Beth done to him? 

There was so much in his eyes and Amy, for a second, was caught on the way that he rubbed at his jaw irritably, as if caused him major discomfort too.

"Oh fuck," Amy said, recognising what exactly was going on, "You're actually gonna crash a wedding?"

He didn't respond.

She'd only meant it as a joke.

Amy wasn't sure whether his silence was comforting or not, but it definitely got her attention. She tossed her phone aside and gave him her time and mind, realising that maybe this was a whole different ballpark than their conversation last night. 

This man was sober, and he was still very overtly tortured, there was almost a heart-breaking quality about him—Amy's breath caught at the back of her throat when she realised exactly where she recognised that look from Beth standing in the pouring rain, indecisive on whether it was time to walk away.

Crap. Amy thought to herself, Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

She was suddenly filled with the sudden panic that she'd inspired some sort of Les Miserables revolution in the despaired man in front of her. 

Why did she get the feeling that he was about to do something extremely stupid—her eyes flew to the clock on her phone and she counted the hours she had until Beth's flight was due to leave. Seven hours.

"Five years," Amy began quickly. 

She was stuck in between talking Mark down off of whatever metaphorical 'objection' ledge he was teetering on and watching this play out as he pleased. 

So, she found herself repeating the exact words that she'd said to him the night before: "She barely fucking recovered, Mark—"

"Y'think I don't know that?" 

Again, he spoke so sharply that it almost winded Amy completely. She watched as he turned on his heel, cracking his knuckles and shaking his head at the far wall. 

"You think I'm not aware of how crappy it is for—?"

He was speaking as if he was seriously considering it. (Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.) He'd lost the sad rain cloud that had been following him around all the evening before and now appeared so much more focused on self-introspection. 

When he looked over at Amy, she could see the thoughts accumulating behind those blue eyes of his. (Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap--) He very clearly wasn't aware of how crappy it was for him to look at her like that as if they were understanding exactly where this was coming from.

"If you're thinking about running in there like you're some leading man in a Rom-Com, you clearly need to be reminded," was her response. Amy's brow furrowed very slowly. "Mark, I don't know what else I can say to you to make you realise it's a really bad idea—"

(I know, he wanted to say, just as he had when Arizona had told him things about Beth that he'd already known. I know, I know, I know, I know—but the problem was that they'd all been far too aware than their relationship had been founded on bad ideas since the beginning.)

"I'm not..." He began and then his face contorted, "I don't..."

Amy, truthfully, had never seen him so lost for words. 

She could see the words trip themselves over in that big head of his, see the syllables jar and stutter on his lips. She watched, her eyes wide and watchful and her brow folded just a fraction. He was very clearly frustrated, exhausted and probably wrestling with a hangover all at once. 

Amy, for once in her life, had never been so glad that she'd stayed sober; she felt like someone in this conversation needed to have a clear, unburdened train of thought so this situation could be defused—

"Mark, she's getting married in six hours."

"I know," He said, his head bobbing in a nod that was a little more solemn than she'd anticipated. "I know."

Or did she even want it to be defused? 

Amy would've been lying if she'd said that she hadn't thought about it. Beth had been into that, right? Big gestures, bigger than flying your long-lost friend in from LA for a surprise. She'd wanted romance and she'd failed to find it anyone but this one nice guy from Boston—when Amy thought of romance, Mark Sloan didn't exactly come to mind. But now, here he was, clearly just having a time and trying to figure exactly what he wanted—

"What do you want?"

Her question seemed to catch him off-guard. He looked over at her, his brow furrowed.

"What?"

"What do you want to do?"

She rephrased her question, looking at him with a completely different strategy than she had in that bar. 

Amy had tried to go for the Beth method, for the tough love and the hot sex and the metaphorical beatdown, but now she was realising that Beth, in this specific conversation, was quite possibly the last thing he needed. So, she tried to give him the next best thing—she gave him the sort of talk that she would've given anyone else in this situation. She squared her shoulders and used the Amy method.

"I mean you know what you want to do, right?" Amy continued, speaking quickly when Mark didn't pipe up. "It's what you should do, it's what Beth would want—that's what you're stuck on, right?"

The neurosurgeon watched a muscle clench in his jaw. 

She was right. Of course, she was right. 

Amy was right by fault most times; she often didn't want to be right but she was famously an amazing judge of character. When she looked at Mark, it was as if she knew exactly what was running through his mind. She braced herself as if readying herself for a physical impact and let out a long breath.

"He makes her happy," was what Amy chose to say next, "She is happy. That man loves Beth and I'm pretty sure she loves him as much as she loved you, Mark." She could see the way that Mark faltered very slightly. "We both know what love like that does to her. I love Beth, but she gets blinded by shit like that—she loves too hard, Mark."

(He was really hoping for a but around about now.)

"I don't know if that's a good or bad thing," She said, "I don't know whether that makes Beth naïve or whether it makes her the smartest person in this place, but I know that it makes her happy. Charlie makes her so happy. You made her happy too but that was five years ago—" (I know, Mark wanted to say again, God don't I fucking know that.) "Beth wants to be happy. I want her to be happy and if you care about her, you want her to be happy too."

It was the funny thing about this situation. 

They'd been throwing five years around as if it was supposed to be a reason for things, but in reality, Amy felt like New York had been just yesterday. Maybe it was the drugs finally finishing her idea of reality off into slaughter, or maybe it was the fact that the expression on Mark's face felt a lot like déjà vu. 

Things felt too immediate—the way he looked over at Amy made things feel not-very-five-years-ago at all.

"I want the best for her," He said quickly, making Amy's head very slowly cock to the side. It was done almost inquisitively with a very slight look of scepticism. "I owe to it to her. I owe to her to make up for what happened in New York. I owe it to Beth to try—"

"Try what?" Amy didn't exactly know where he was going with this.

Apparently, neither did he.

"I don't know," Mark said in a long drawn out breath, "I don't know what I want and I don't know what she wants and I just—"

"Mark, she's happy so—"

"So what?" He said lowly, his voice barely even a sound. "I just forget everything?"

Forgetting everything. Amy almost wanted to laugh. They'd be lucky if they could. It was the funny thing about New York, she was pretty sure that it wasn't going to go away for a very long time.

She didn't think it was humanly possible for any of them to forget.

There was something bittersweet about it too, about Mark looking at her with those eyes and that bewilderment and vague sadness about him, asking whether he should just let it all go like Beth had asked him too. 

It was enough for her to have the sneaky suspicion that he'd been holding onto it for a very long time, that the good parts had followed him through the years—that's what Amy saw at the back of his eyes, the good things, the good days, void of the times Beth had crushed him as much as he'd crushed her.

In all honesty, Amy wasn't sure what she was supposed to answer to that question. Her immediate impulse was to say yes, that was the smart decision. 

Forget about Beth, forget about the feelings that, very clearly, were being revisited, and push everything into the distant past. But then she remembered the way that Beth seemed to carry herself, how she looked at the world, how she'd glazed over very slightly whenever Amy had mentioned New York in passing—

If Mark was still holding onto the good times, Beth was too.

"I tried," Mark murmured, still quiet and almost tiny. If Amy hadn't known better she would've thought she could bend down and scoop him up into the palm of her hand. "I tried to forget but I just... it's not easy."

In a way, Amy knew she was only discouraging Mark from interrupting the wedding because she knew that Beth was very much in love with Charlie. 

She respected Beth's decision to marry a guy (a nice guy, someone who Amy had no doubt would treat her well) that she very clearly was in love with, and she felt the need to defend that fact. But, if she was to speak off-record, she would have rallied all of the troops and driven Mark to that courthouse herself.

Charlie was nice but Charlie wasn't Mark. Not by a long shot.

She'd always been an advocate for the two of them, she'd always quietly been rooting from them on the side-lines. 

She'd had to make all of the hard decisions for them and, in the end, look out for her friend when things had gotten bad. Sure, their relationship had been devastating, but the two blind idiots had never realised that they'd both been devastated and that it wasn't just a one-sided crime of passion— they'd been incapable of fixing things, of making the hard decisions and admitting that they were truly the endgame.

Charlie felt like a safe choice. He felt like the unchallenging option, the novice on the game setting board. 

Charlie was nice. Charlie was remarkably nice and plain and nothing like the challenge that Amy knew Beth yearned for. 

She knew Beth and she knew how she liked her love to burn. Mark had been that—he had the same fire in his eyes, a long slow burn that made Amy regret ever stepping into his bed.

(Secretly, Amy could see it. Mark and Beth, allowing each other to see how much they'd changed, allowing themselves to revisit old vulnerabilities that they'd refused everywhere else. Half of her was, very candidly, tempted just to lock the two of them in a room together and let them kiss it all out. There was happiness there, Amy could feel it, maybe one day if Beth's marriage ever went south, maybe then they'd have an opportunity to be together again.)

"Is Charlie the best for her?"

His question made Amy pause for a second.

"You need to tell me that Beth is better off without me," He said firmly, almost diplomatically, like a politician taking control of the conversation. "You need to tell me that if I do anything stupid that I'm just making everything worse. You need to tell me how nice Charlie and how great of a guy he is and how he'll never take her for granted like I did—"

"I know you care about her, Mark," Amy stared over at the man who was very slowly disintegrating before her very eyes. He'd burned out into a pile of ash that was gradually amounting on his bedroom floor. "I know that you want the best for her despite all of the crap you've put each other through. I can't tell you what to do, but I know whatever decision you make, I know that you'll do what you think will make her happy."

(Do it, Amy's traitorous thoughts bubbled at the back of her head, Man up and get your girl.)

How scandalous it was for Amy to be so tempted to encourage him. 

She liked Charlie. She liked Beth's happiness, it truly looked beautiful on her—but fuck, she loved chaos. She'd also loved Mark and Beth as a couple; they'd been exciting, they'd been challenging and Amy almost pitied the people in Seattle who hadn't been able to see it. She'd sat at that table at dinner, surrounded by people who sighed and fawned over Charlie as if he'd been made for Beth's hand in marriage—

She'd almost scoffed into her soft drink.

If they wanted a romance in a sculpture they should be right here to see the look on Mark's face.

"It isn't a decision," Mark said and, for a moment, Amy was sure that it was the fastest and sharpest she'd ever heard him speak. "It's not something that I can just choose—it's not--- I wouldn't even go visit her in hospital Amy, because I was scared—"

"Scared?" Amy repeated, her eyebrows raising as she stared at Mark as if he was a stranger. In all honesty, she'd never heard anyone ever describe Mark as scared in her life, and here he was, confessing that, for a split second, he'd felt fear. "About what?"

"I don't want to mess things up for her," Once again, she was struck by how feverish his words appeared. He shook his head and clenched his jaw and slowly unravelled her perception of him. "I didn't want to just get in the way of her time with the love of her life—"

Okay, well, Amy felt like throwing a hand up and dismissing the label. She wouldn't go that far. (If he needed her to cross-examine the way Beth looked at Mark with how the psychiatrist looked at Charlie, she would've probably given in after a lot of sweet-talking.)

"I want her to be happy," He said very quietly. He turned away. "I want her to be—"

(No, don't be scared. Don't be scared of getting in the way. Do it, make a goddamn hard call for once in your life.)

"Callie asked me if I missed her because I can't have her," His voice dragged along the floor, along every surface and every wall and every tiny inch of Amy's skin. "And I'm worried that she's right and I'm just some asshole that is throwing his toys out of a fucking stroller just because I can't get what I want—"

"Mark," Amy said his name softly, "Do you want Beth?"

He seemed to pause at that thought.

Beth. Beth. Beth. Beth.

She could practically hear the name bounce around his skull. 

Did it haunt him? Beth had once said that she hoped it did—she'd screamed it across a half-packed apartment, tossing clothes into a suitcase with one hand and a pregnancy test into the trash chute with the other. 

She'd cursed Mark out that night, given him the full works as far as bad luck went. She'd told Amy, with cheeks full of tears and a mouth full of mirth that she hoped Mark would think about her every time he fucked someone and would feel it every time she scratched her nails down someone else's back.

(Unsurprisingly, out of the two of them, Amy had always considered Beth the more unhinged drunk.)

"I just don't want her to leave," Mark said quickly, his thoughts appearing as disorientated as this conversation was. "I heard Addison talking about it earlier and I just... I don't want her to go. She said that if Beth leaves, she'll never come back and I just... I don't want that. That's all I want. I want Beth to be happy. Beth to just... I don't want her to disappear."

She could tell it was hard for him to put in words. 

She wondered whether the expression on his face and the repetitive motions of his hands was exactly what they'd missed in New York; the fallout of the realisation that Beth was going to be gone without a final word. 

She wondered whether he'd had this moment too, the slight sweat-slick sheen to his skin and the very tiny tremble in his fingers. He looked as though he was bleeding out very slowly right in front of her, so deeply troubled by the thought of Beth disappearing into memory and fading and fading and—

This situation had happened before, right? The prospect of Beth leaving and never coming back was something that neither one of them was a stranger to. In fact, Amy was more familiar with that concept than the idea of Beth staying.

"Then talk to her," Amy said, appearing slightly bewildered at why exactly she was sat here listening to this. "Why are you saying this to me, why not Beth?"

They'd never been close; their socialising had been restrained to childhood niceties and the pleasantries of Mark being best friends with her brother. 

They'd never had deep conversations or discussed their deepest desires and aspirations, and she'd definitely never envisioned ever being a confidant. Then New York had happened, and she knew that he'd slowly began to resent her for what Beth became; their midnight polite smiles in the kitchen developed into something more hostile and, then when Mark had been turfed out of the apartment, he began to hate her for surviving Beth's wrath, alongside fuelling it too.

"Because she's happy!" Mark chipped back, staring at Amy as if she'd just missed an extremely important detail in this whole picture. The neurosurgeon just frowned still not sure what that meant. "If I talk to her, I'll just—"

She watched his light dim slightly at a sudden, startling thought.

Suddenly, it made sense. 

This was Mark realising he hadn't had this opportunity back in New York. 

She knew he regretted letting her leave the first time (or at least the whole fucking Addison thing and not giving her any good reasons to stay) and had spent the whole evening in that bar mourning the fact that he'd never made the right decision when it came to Beth. Amy stared at him until there were two Mark's stood in front of her, two men who were very clearly on the edge of some sort of nervous break—or maybe this was the nervous break? Amy was finding it very hard to keep up with.

A pause.

"What?" Amy was lost, "You'll just what—?"

"Tell me I'm crazy," He said so quietly and slowly, "Amelia, tell me I'm mad for wanting to stop her from marrying him."

Amy's jaw slackened. There was something so different about hearing him say it out loud. She could've hypothesised for the rest of the day, thrown theories around her head as if they were tennis balls, but they would have barely touched the truth that came straight from his own mouth.

"Do you love her?"

Her question made him freeze.

She couldn't see his face, but she saw the way that his body seemed to knot so tightly as if he was having a purely biological reaction. 

She wasn't sure whether this was even mental anymore. Amy had the feeling that everything Mark was doing and saying came directly from his emotions and from the bloody organ that was straining to keep him alive. She watched the twitch of his fingers as he allowed her question to play over and over in his mind.

She figured that love was a good enough reason to do anything. 

If that was the reason that Mark wanted to forfeit Beth's whole new life for herself, Amy honestly just felt like wishing him good luck. Her scepticism and her need to remind Mark that Beth was fully in her right to move on permanently were overshadowed by the knowledge that Mark had truly never taken anything for himself. 

Sure, he'd had an affair and he'd flirted his way into so many different beds, but this was different. If it was love, it was painstakingly brand new to him. As loud and egotistical that man was, Amy knew that Mark doing something for himself and for his emotions was going to be a very rare occasion. That, in itself, would call for a celebration.

Then, very slowly, Mark's head shook from side to side.

Amy didn't exactly have the energy to be disappointed. 

She'd thought that Mark had changed. She thought that this moment was indicative of the person he'd become, that he'd changed enough that this would work—she'd thought that he'd passed the insecurity that Beth had once described, the lack of trust in his own feelings and thoughts. 

He needed that, Amy figured. He needed it to make any sort of decision.

"No," He said and Amy could sense the discomfort that lingered behind his words. She just stared at him. (Sure. Sure Mark.) "I don't think... But I care about her. I miss her. I... I just..." A pause, "If I made her happy, I think I'd be happy."

Amy didn't speak.

"But I don't think I've made her happy in a very long time," Mark's words made Amy shift slightly, recognising how rare it was for Mark to speak with this sort of tone. He didn't meet her eye and spoke to the wall exclusively. "I don't want to compete with Charlie. I don't really think there's any point in it... I had my shot, right? Like you keep saying, I had my chance and I blew it."

Amy stayed silent (quietly reminding herself why she'd already paypaled Sam Bennett a hundred dollars.) She also felt as though, in this situation, she just needed to listen. No wisecracks, no commentary, Mark was speaking with the intent to express.

"I can't compete with Charlie, even if I tried," He ran a hand through his hair and continued his slow pace, streaking a line down the centre of his bedroom. When he eventually to face her, his brow was knitted in concentration. "In New York, I would have a shot. I think I would have been able to make her happy and make something out of this—but this isn't Manhattan. Five years is a fucking long time. This isn't the same Beth. I don't think I'm the same either... but I care about her. More than I should... I want Beth to be happy. I really do. She doesn't need me to be happy anymore. Not this Beth. Not the person she's made herself into. She wouldn't choose me. You know that and I should know that. She's found her happiness with Charlie."

His pause was almost excruciating. She felt every second of it. He managed to speak with extreme clarity despite how messy she could tell his train of thought was—it made sense, Amy supposed, he was always so well-spoken and charming, that even during an extreme mental breakdown themed around I'm Sorry Your Ex-Girlfriend Is Getting Hitched Today And You Are Too Much Of A Pussy To Do Anything About It', he was able to be succinct.

"I'm happy that she's happy because someone needs to be," He held Amy's gaze and she found herself unable to look away, trapped in between the hard lines of a face that was far more weathered than it should have been at his age. "Someone needs to find something good out of the crap that we put each other through. She deserves it. Fuck, do I know how much deserves it. But then the thought of her marrying that man makes me want to throw myself through a god damn window—"

Nice.

"So please..." He almost begged, "Tell me I'm an asshole. Tell me that I'm fucking irresponsible and a douche bag and selfish—all because some tiny delusional part of me thinks that if I ran into that fucking courthouse Beth would choose me."

Amy felt her mouth dry. It wasn't often that she was lost for words, but this felt like one of those very important moments where she had to pick something specific to say. 

She didn't come across them often, but when she did, they tended to be worth a lot. She could tell from the look in his eye that he'd been internalising this for a long time.

His words came with the added weight of what-ifs: What if Beth had never left New York? What if he'd never fell into bed with Addison? What if Beth had never developed an affinity for bottled wine and uppers? What if they'd made it through? What if Mark was that man that was going to be in that courthouse? What if? What if? What if—

(The truth was that Amy wasn't sure what Beth would do. She'd once thought that Beth was ride or die for Mark. She'd once thought that they'd be the one couple that would get through all of the crap that gone thrown at them. Amy wasn't sure what Beth would've done if given the choice; just the thought of it bought up a mental wall, the sort that was impossible to climb. It was built on the foundation of obscurity, of how Amy hadn't even anticipated Beth to even consider marriage talk about go through with it—)

Mark stared at Amy so intently, waiting for her response. His whole body was clenched as if relaxing was going to fracture him into tiny Mark-sized pieces. 

His hands were balled into fists, gaze wavering slightly as the silence settled in between them. He waited and waited. It took her a while to find her voice. She cleared her throat and spoke with a tone that was so low that it vibrated through her.

"I'm not going to tell you that, Mark," Amy almost didn't recognise her own voice. "You know Beth better than I do—"

"No," He scoffed, shaking his head, "Don't give me that—"

Don't give me false hope, it almost said.

"It's true," She replied, "You've spent the last nine months with this 'Seattle Beth'. You know who she is and what she wants—I don't know how things have changed—"

"Everything," Mark almost exclaimed it, the tension rising in his neck as his body twisted like a tensed spring. "Everything changed!"

She was caught off-guard by the change of pace.

"Everything," He repeated, "Beth got shot and then suddenly I'm thinking about how six years ago I wanted to spend my whole life with her. I'm thinking about how I have this engagement ring at the back of my underwear draw that I brought to Seattle thinking that I'd be able to make some grand romantic gesture like a dumb fucking idiot—I'm thinking about how I know that this Beth would make me so happy and yet I wouldn't even be able to give her a fraction of the happiness Charlie gives her—"

"You don't know that," Amy murmured.

"Don't say that," Mark shook his head, "Amelia, don't—"

"It's true," She said, shrugging, "If everything has changed then maybe you don't know what she wants. Maybe I don't even know—"

"Amy," He said tightly, "I don't want to hurt her—"

"Did you sleep with me to see if she'd be jealous?"

She'd asked him that question before. 

It gave Amy a strong sense of déjà vu, one she wondered whether Mark felt too. She'd asked it to him the first time while in New York, voice low and dropped so no one could overhear. It'd been a week after it had happened and Amy had carried the weight of it with her through her days and hours, strange guilt that she wasn't able to process until she'd looked into Mark's eyes. He hadn't been able to give her an answer then, had appeared cold and indifferent—but now, now Amy was able to ask him flat out and enjoy the candid reaction as it flickered across his face.

He tilted his head to the side, surveying her as she shifted her legs underneath his comforter, still dressed in his old college tee.

"Didn't you?" Mark's volley of the question made Amy pause, "Didn't you sleep with me to see if she was going to be jealous? I thought that's what you wanted?"

He didn't say no.

They felt like very poorly executed scientific experiments, psychological at a stretch. She couldn't tell whether the burn on her cheeks was from being caught out on some secret intention or whether she really didn't like his patronising smile. There was a double-natured edge to it as if Amy was somehow involved in this downward spiral. 

(The Beth method had appeared once again, specifically, the Drunk Beth method. It was born from the same fire that had put the air in her lungs to allow her to fight her hardest battles and point scrutinising fingers.)

Amy scoffed.

"I'm not a cheap whore, Mark."

"Neither am I," Mark shot back in response with a sense of bitterness in his tone, "Even though people tend to forget that."

The laugh that fell out of Amy's lips was almost cold.

 It felt as devoid of character as Mark had appeared when she'd held onto his arm and warned him that she was aware of how much Beth finding out about their affair would hurt her. It'd horrified Amy so deeply that she'd done such irreparable damage to their friendship and she'd begged Mark so quietly to keep it a secret. 

For a while, it had been enough to make Amy seriously consider her sobriety and, it was a week after their one-sided conversation that she'd checked herself into rehab.

"Let's get this straight," It'd been cute for her to try to help. She knew that it'd been a nice little change of pace. At the end of the day, she was Amelia Shepherd, cut from the same cloth as Beth, her equal but with noticeably less psychiatric training. "You're sad because the woman that you definitely don't love is getting married and leaving and you definitely don't want to stop her from leaving—"

"I don't think—"

"No, it makes sense," Amy hummed lightly, crossing her arms over her chest. "I always thought that you were too much of a coward to really go after things that you really want—"

"Amelia—"

"I say go for it," She said, suddenly fed up with his self-pity. 

It was getting repetitive, and, in all honesty, she was sick and tired of hearing how hard his life was. If he wanted hard, she'd be all too happy to tell him exactly what she'd had to put up with over the past ten years. 

"I say man the fuck up and actually make a decision for once in your life," She shrugged, "Go after Beth, don't go after Beth, either way, I know that you're probably going to end up fucking someone else anyway—"

"And what would that accomplish?"

"Well, the way I see it you'll ride off into the sunset together for your big romantic happily ever after," Amy dropped her eyes to study her cuticles almost boredly. "Or you'll get rejected and Beth never talks to you ever again—Oh, just like she's going to anyway if you don't say anything—"

Mark's brow crumpled, "That's not—"

"Think about it," She said matter-of-factly, "In twenty years you'll be invited to some potluck at Derek's and you'll come across Beth and her little family with all of the Charlie-haired kids with her eyes and you'll, for a split second, wonder what-if all over again." Amy didn't miss the way that Mark seemed to pause, "But you're right, she's happy with Charlie. She's happy without you and I refuse to tell you otherwise—"

"That's not what I asked—"

"No," Amy said sharply, "That's what you hope. You hope that I'll tell you she's miserable and she's being forced to marry a man that's awful. That's he's cheating on her and gaslighting her and screwing her over far more than you ever did. But he's not. Charlie's nice. He's nice and he cares about her. I'm pretty sure Beth's stooping for the bare minimum with that—"

Mark looked away, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

"I've asked her, y'know?" She shifted, slipping out the bed and placing her coffee onto the side table.

 (Absently, Amy wondered how many women had been on this mattress and done the same walk of shame across these wooden floorboards.) She stood, hands on her hips and gaze steely as Mark just stared circles into the rug at the foot of his bed. 

"I asked if she wanted to change her mind... if she had cold feet—" Mark's head tilted slightly towards her, "She said no. She said that she needs this. She said that she wants this, Mark."

She played the conversation back in her head, all the while all too aware of how Mark's face turned away once again. Again, Amy wondered whether he was surprised? Was he stuck in some sort of fantasy that was so distanced from reality? Or did he feel it too? The unwavering gravity of being so painfully alive?

(As much as Amy wanted to believe in true romance, time had worn her down.) 

(Standing there in Mark Sloan's bedroom, she felt as though she'd weathered too many years. She felt old and wise, despite the fact that Mark was five years her senior. When she looked over at him, she felt both frustration and pity: she believed that Beth and Mark would be good together now, but Mark needed to get his act together. If he wanted to change this situation or speak out, it was going to have to be his decision, not hers.)

"You're no help," He said eventually. 

He said it slowly, thickly, with a swallow that felt like an accessory rather than a bodily function. It made Amy snort. She turned around, alerted by the sound of her text tone as it vibrated against the messed sheets.

Speak of the devil. Beth's response to Amy's reply lit the screen.

Fab! See you in half an hour.

"I'm not helpful," Amy said matter-of-factly, "Never claimed to be, never will be. Unless you've got a brain bleed that needs fixing, then I'm the girl for the job." She stooped slightly, trying to fish her underwear off of the floor. "Helping you isn't my kind of thing. You should hurry up and make up with my brother, he'd be much more useful—"

It was as if she was talking to a brick wall. When Amy turned around back to face Mark, she could see the distance in his stare. It was such a stark contrast to the man he'd been just hours ago, thrusting her down onto the bed, so eager to sink his fingers into hers. Amy wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that she'd actually quite enjoyed herself or the fact that Mark was now incapable of meeting her eye. 

She could feel the shift of the energy in the room; suddenly, Mark was closed off, walking out in the middle of her sentence.

Well, screw you then.

Amy took her time before following him out, shoving a foot into her clothing from the night before. She'd had to borrow a dress from Beth's closet and she'd borrowed Beth's perfume too, feeling oddly unlike herself as she stumbled out of Mark's bedroom and into the rest of his apartment. He didn't look up as she appeared, just poured himself his own coffee and pretended as if she didn't exist at all.

His back was turned to her and, in that moment, Amy figured that she'd been too nice.

"You are an asshole," She began, feeling the need to confirm exactly what he'd asked five minutes ago. 

Her words were sat to the background sound of him stirring his coffee, the whirling and tinkle of a teaspoon against ceramic. 

"You are a selfish, irresponsible jerk that really needs a fucking reality check," Amy felt the words line up at the back of her mouth like soldiers for deployment, "That's what I think Beth would say to you if she knew that you were sat here complaining about the fact she's finally found something good for herself."

The sound of stirring ceased.

"You're worse than a cheap hooker," Once she started speaking, she couldn't find the brakes to stop. "You're worse because you have feelings that you can't even admit to yourself talk about Beth— you're standing here, complaining and whining and you're too scared to do anything. Man the fuck up. You're supposed to be Mark fucking Sloan, so I think it's about time you act like it."

She couldn't see the expression on his face and fuck, didn't she wish that she could see his reaction with her own two eyes. These words had a very specific fire to them—it was the same fire she'd bestowed onto Beth when she'd booked those plane tickets and left them all in the dust.

Well... She might as well keep going right?

"You're probably in love with her or some shit..." 

Amy watched his shoulders stiffen slightly. 

Good. Good. 

"I don't know whether you're just an idiot when it comes to emotions, which I'm guessing you more than likely are, but it seems like it," Her scoff reverbed around the empty apartment of a bachelor, "This is what love is. It's wanting the best for someone and realising it really fucking sucks when that's not you."

She didn't remove her gaze from him.

"I don't want to hear you sulking about how Beth is the 'one that got away or the one person that could bring you happiness in the miserable life that you've given yourself," Her words were painfully genuine. "The only time I want to hear you even mention Beth's name is to congratulate her on what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life or something like that, or tell me exactly what you're going to do about it—because I'm hearing fucking crickets, right now. If you're not going to do anything, stop acting like the whole world owes you something."

"Amy, make up your mind—"

He sounded quieter than she'd anticipated. 

He sounded shrunken and collapsed and, when she glanced down at where his body met the countertop, she realised that he was bracing himself. His hands gripped the counter tightly, a noticeable sag in his posture. It was as if the light and life had been drained out of him, leaving him limp and lifeless like one of those half-inflated tube-men that were left outside car dealerships to wave in the wind.

"No," Amy said, shaking her head, "I said it was a bad idea. But it's an idea. I didn't say that it wasn't possible. I said that I wouldn't be able to tell you who Beth would choose because I don't know—this isn't a love triangle Mark but I just..." 

Here it came again, the hopeless romantic part of her that had idolised their relationship and been, honestly, as heartbroken as they had when it had all fallen apart.

Oh fuck, Amy thought to herself as she felt it descend in her mind; these fuckers were ruining her street cred.

"When Beth told me she was engaged I told her that it was weird to think that you guys were over with," Her words seemed to have no impact on Mark at all. In fact, he seemed to ice into something inhuman again, stock and unnaturally still. "You guys worked... even better than Derek and Addison. You weren't perfect but it just... it just worked—and I remember how happy you both were at the beginning and how many plans you had."

A pause.

"You got a ring?"

As if coming back to life for a five-second window, Mark's head lifted in the nod that she'd searched for earlier.

"Yeah," Amy said, clearing her throat, "Yeah, that's love."

And then she paused.

"I can't tell you that Charlie's a terrible guy, because he's not," Her lips almost numbed with the words she was speaking. "He's a nice guy. He's squeaky clean, and he's exactly what she needed to deal with everything she's been through—but he's the safe choice. He's the picket fence and the babies and the sweet vanilla missionary sex that only happens on the weekends. He's nice and he's going to treat her well... but he's safe and he surprised me because Beth is never the sort of person to take the safe option."

She'd given this a lot of thought on her flight over to Seattle. 

She'd come to the conclusion that Charlie was attractive to Beth for a number of reasons, one mainly being that, in the same way, Mark was scared, Beth was scared too. Her relationship with the notorious fuckboy had left her wary of challenge, of anything that resembled what she'd once coveted. She'd enjoyed difficulty, she'd found it exhilarating and self-satisfactory when things went okay—but she'd watched it wither into toxic and now, she was clinging onto driftwood as the Mark Sloan ship sunk far in the distance. 

Amy was sure that Charlie had other attributes too (he was definitely charming and had a very nice face) but that was the one point that stuck out to her.

The plastic surgeon across from her seemed to be paying very close attention.

"What are you saying?" Mark murmured.

"I'm saying that I'm saying that you need to make a decision," Amy risked another glance at her phone, grimacing when she saw the time. "And let me know what you're going to do," Mark sighed, "I've got a wedding that I need to get ready for and I'd appreciate the heads up if I need to remove all the sharp objects from a courthouse."

"I don't—"

"No," She sighed, "You know what you want to do, Mark. You know what you think is right."

He didn't speak.

A swift exit felt right. 

She practically tripped across the apartment in a pair of heels that were not hers (and she had a sneaky suspicion were actually Addison's on courtesy of Beth's very brief kleptomaniac tendencies in the late nineties) and didn't even bother looking back. Had she envisioned having an intense conversation with her brother's best friend today? Absolutely not--

Nevertheless, she figured she knew why now and why her. 

(The conversation he'd had with Callie Torres hadn't been able to touch on the same topics.)

 People in Seattle didn't understand the turmoil of Mark's slow breakdown, but Amy did. She'd seen everything first hand, she'd lived with the couple when they'd been happy and she'd watched them slowly disintegrate in front of her eyes. If there was anyone who could understand, it was Amy. She knew better than Derek, she knew better than Addison—and here she was, not telling him no, don't do it.

"Amy."

She risked a glance over her shoulder when she reached the door, her hand on the handle. Her whole body was rife with the impulse to get out and slam the door behind her, but she paused when she saw the sight of him, turned to face him this time and his arms crossed over his chest. He nodded in her direction as she hummed.

"Thank you."

It was a weird gesture to receive after the words she'd thrown at him and, for a second, Amy hesitated. 

When she looked over at Mark she saw the same guy who had given her light smiles over early morning and coffee and had looked at Beth with the same sort of love that she'd seen between her parents before her Dad had died. 

It made Amy falter, it made her chin bounce in a very choppy nod in response.

"Don't mention it."

No, really, don't fucking mention it ever to anyone. If Beth hears that I've encouraged, you to ruin her life I'll never hear the—

Amy threw open the door to Mark's apartment a little too dramatically, stepping out into the hallway fully prepared to do a pretty crappy walk of shame. If she had to be completely honest, she wasn't even sure exactly where she was; she recognised this corridor, but she couldn't quite place where she'd seen that very familiar carpeting—

"Ames?"

Mark's apartment door was barely closed behind her before a figure appeared. 

Just like the flooring, the walls and the lighting fixtures on the ceiling, the person was painfully familiar and the voice made Amy's face twitch into a very strained smile. 

Immediately, she was hit with the sensation of being caught in a compromising situation; her hand hadn't even left Mark's door handle when she turned to face the woman of the hour.

"You're early," Beth said in greeting, her brow furrowing as she approached. "I wasn't expecting you for another twenty minutes. I still need to have a shower—"

Over her shoulder, the elevator door was closing, telling Amy that her timing was impeccable. She was slightly out of breath, cheeks flushed, and body clad in athletic gear from what Amy guessed had been a quick morning run. 

As Beth stopped beside her, she pulled out her ear buds, letting them swing around her neck and faintly play muffled music. Her eyes slowly descended from Amy's unnatural smile to the clothing that was very recognisable from the night before. The thought seemed to be very slow to come to fruition and Amy wasn't exactly sure whether she dreaded the moment the puzzle pieces came together.

She watched the moment dawn on Beth's face.

Slowly, the psychiatrist glanced up to the apartment number and, to Amy's surprise, she smiled wryly.

"How's Mark?"

Amy stared at her for a minute too long, caught off-guard by the casualness of her question. Admittedly, Mark had figured out her game very quickly and, in the pursuit of some sign of jealousy, Amy found herself with a blank canvas that wasn't promising in results. 

She searched for a sign of any negative or hostile emotion but was only confronted by the twitch of Beth's top lip as she ambled around her and stuck her key into her own door.

"He's good," was the only response that Amy could muster, her voice strained. Her head turned so she could stare back at Mark's door and, for a split second, she was speechless. "I-I uh—"

"I hope you had a good night," Beth mused and, when Amy looked back over at her, she was grinning. 

It was a weird grin, it felt out of place in this situation. Amy had hoped for something, for anything, but here that grin was. It was the sort of expression you'd give to a friend who had clearly had a very long night. A friend who had hooked up with some random guy, notably not an ex-boyfriend that they were still hung up over. 

"I hope you didn't drink—"

"No," Amy shook her head, her brow furrowed, "Sober I just—"

"Fantastic, that'll make two of us," Beth breezed, chuckling to herself as she walked into the apartment. Bewildered, Amy trailed in behind her, watching as Beth rolled out her shoulders and untied her hair. "We have to be quiet because Charlie is currently dying in my bedroom. He drank way too much last night and to make things worse, I just got a text message from Archer saying that he went home with someone too and got really drunk and I just—"

"Right," Amy mumbled, "Right so—"

"So I'm sure it's going to be a very long difficult day," She continued without a bat of an eyelash. "But I'm more than ready to get things started—"

"Beth—"

"I just need to get to this meeting with my boss and then I can come back and quickly get changed. I have my dress hanging up in the bedroom—"

The way Beth appeared, in that moment, reminded Amy so vividly of Addison. It was the quick, fast-paced focus and organisation that almost made her unrecognisable. 

She was whirling through all of the tasks that she'd set herself for the morning, barely even giving herself time to breathe. Meanwhile, Amy seemed a few steps behind, struggling to exactly keep up with the aimless directions. Her brow furrowed and she watched Beth continue to rattle off quietly.

"I was hoping that I'd be able to maybe grab something for breakfast if you're down for ordering. I'm in the mood for some kind of poached egg toast combo—"

"Beth."

This time, Beth actually paid attention. 

Her head turned to see Amy still stood in the doorway, the door not even closed. 

She stared at her, at the girl in the same clothes from the evening before, the same makeup and the same shoes. Amy's hair was slightly bedraggled, and her eyeliner was smudged beyond flattery and Amy wondered whether the sight of her brought back memories. 

She watched Beth's face crease into a questioning frown and figured yes. She'd lost count of the morning afters over the years.

"I slept with Mark."

Amy figured that it needed a bit more of a dramatic spotlight. 

She wanted to make explicitly clear just so she could see it for herself—she tossed those words out in between them and watched Beth's face closely, watched the way that the psychiatrist just blinked at those four little words. (What cute words they were two. Fourteen little letters that had been said way too many times by way too many women.) 

Idly, Amy asked herself whether Beth had gotten used to hearing it from people.

"I gathered," Beth replied simply. 

There was no visible shift, no dip in her brow or frustration. She was wiped clean by Charlie's hand. A beat passed and she shot Amy an odd look, as if she didn't quite understand what was going on, and then continued her fast-talking. 

"I'm going to go have a shower and then we can talk transportation because I really don't think Charlie is going to want to drive anywhere—"

Amy just stared after her.

There were so many thoughts in her head, but one stuck out:

Maybe Mark was right. Maybe she wouldn't choose him.

***

NEW YORK

Admittedly, Mark didn't take it seriously until the cracks started showing.

His suspicions had always been quiet, whether it was out of self-preservation or just out of the fear of saying something wrong. But when things got bad, that was when he found himself really getting scared.

Deducing Beth's drunkenness was like trying to find the flaw in a forgery. It was faint, like staring at a fake Monet and vaguely noticing the imperfection. 

He had to study her for a while, observing all of her little quirks, that slight woozy sheen to her eye and concentrate on the sloppiness of her smile. She was good at pretending to be sober, he knew that, she'd spent years playing down her intoxication to an audience of the New York fundraising elite—

He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him.

"Again?"

It was another morning, another passing ships in the night as Beth's cold fingers found his under the covers and he was faced with her staring at him with a disengaged emptiness in her eyes. It had begun the same way, with Beth appearing and enticing him with sweet smiles and touches and him being perfectly happy to go along with her intentions. 

He'd allowed himself to enjoy it for the smallest window of time, stuck up on the feeling of having her so present and in front of him. He'd pressed her up against the kitchen counter, swallowing her yawns with his lips and allowing her nails to scratch thin lines down his shoulder blades—

But then, he'd realised his mistake.

Her gaze wandered as he forced her to face him, a disappointed sigh coming so deep within him. She tensed and tried to shake herself free from his hold. 

His grasp was unrelenting, and it took Mark a second to realise that he might have been hurting her. Her face twisted, flushed and conveying the immediate agitation that filled her at that single word.

He'd memorised every tiny little inch of her over the past year and he watched it unfurl right in front of his eyes.

"Don't..." Beth warned in a low voice as she tried to pull away. "Don't start this again—"

Mark's mood turned thunderous. 

He could see her eyes, see those pupils that were a bit too big for the amount of light that was in the room. It reminded him of how she'd scoffed at him in that subway station, miffed by how he could even suggest for a second that she was—another sigh fell out of his lips and he shook his head, suddenly too overwhelmed to put it into words.

"You're high?"

 It was as much of a question as it appeared. It was an accusation with a half-hearted but deeply bothered question mark through at the end. As he said those words, he could see the tension travel through Beth's body, exasperated by the way his jaw clenched. 

"It's five fucking am and you're high?"

"Don't start with this crap again, Mark—"

"No," He shook his head and felt his chest tighten, "No, don't—"

Immediately, couldn't exactly tell how he felt. 

There were so many thoughts and emotions that he felt in that moment, and the defining thought was the sudden panic that this was it. That his relationship, one that was already restrained to the privacy of out-of-sight spaces, had been officially reserved to whenever Beth was high or drunk. But then one emotion shone out over the others—

His first instinct was to be angry.

It wasn't a perfect reaction. 

It was brutally human and the flush of humiliation and disappointment that filled him was almost enough for his eyes to water. 

He felt the distaste bubble up inside of him as he watched her. 

She burned too brightly for Manhattan and would have been more suited amongst the stars above them; everything seemed too big, too dishonest, too messy. His skin prickled with a heated degree of anger that he wasn't quite familiar with—his face paled and his lips pressed together with the strain of holding back what I wanted to say.

It was the same anger that had risen at the nightclub, as he watched Beth immerse her in people who were so different to her. But then this-- This Beth stood before him... he almost didn't recognise her. She was so wildly out of touch with everything that Mark wondered whether he'd tripped and fallen into an alternate universe.

(In retrospect, Mark would figure that this was one of the downsides of his lack of experience in relationships. He'd looked at Beth's clear instability and seen a personal attack. He'd been unable to connect with the softness that she'd needed—she'd needed someone to recognise that, arriving home drunk and high was not malicious nor was it a lie that she needed him to pick apart. In fact, it was a precursor to the bad, the Beth Montgomery equivalent of cows sitting before a storm or waves receding before a tsunami. It was the sign that there were bad things on the horizon, and, through his lack of sensibility, Mark had missed every single one.)

She was high. Beth was high. Beth didn't get high—

Mark let her go, his brow creasing as he watched her immediately put as much space as possible in between them. 

She tracked back across the kitchen, snatching her shirt off of the countertop. 

It was a coward walk, that's how Mark interpreted it. 

He didn't know when the fuck he'd become her parent or the sort of person that needed to yell at his girlfriend for being high on a weekday when she was due to work in a few hours. He wasn't cut out for this sort of thing.

"Beth, you can't keep doing this—"

"And you can't keep doing this," Beth said loudly, turning around and waving a hand at the sight of him. "You're not my fucking parent, Mark. I don't have to stand here and listen to you lecture me about how my friends are all kids—"

"Beth—"

"I'm fine, Mark," She spat those words out as if they'd been loaded into a gun and fired like a bullet. "I'm not high. I'm not fucking stupid."

"Don't lie—"

"Don't do this."

Beth repeated again and Mark could see the traces of Addison in her insistence. 

He'd thought that it was just her family who had the tendency to cover things up instead of facing them or accepting the consequences—but it was her too. Here she was, trying to convince him that she was completely clean and yet everything about her biology betrayed her. 

They were doctors, weren't they? They'd been taught to trust biology over everything else, taught that people might lie but their bodies never could—she tried to lie with pupils that were round like dinner plates and a hand that trembled as she pushed her hair out of her face.

Don't do this. It was a plea. 

It was soft and it was strained, and it made Mark's stomach knot. The anger that was so deeply heating him felt a lot like a time bomb, indicative of the suspicions that he'd pushed back to the furthest corner of his brain. For a moment, it almost evoked some sense of pity—

Ultimately, he had no pity for her. What else did she expect when she opened her doors to people like Amy? He didn't know what she was on or what the hell she'd done to get it in her system, but whatever it was, Mark sure as hell hoped it was worth it.

Mark shook his head.

"Beth."

He felt frustrated in the most implicit sense. It was all expressed in that single exhale of her name. It was a mixture of sadness, of anger, of disappointment and fear; the fear that this was how things were going to be. 

He was going to watch Beth follow Amy's pathway into oblivion and make her own detours along the way. The sordid truth was, even staring at her and beginning to realise that this wasn't okay, Mark had no idea what he needed to do.

(He hadn't been taught how to watch someone slowly fade away in front of him. They didn't exactly print that in surgical textbooks.)

"Mark."

She repeated the same tone back to him, facing him on the other side of the kitchen with a face that was pale, even by the early morning standards. 

For a moment, Beth looked so small. She stared at him, her brow crumpled like a discarded junk flier—but then she dragged in a long breath, her edges sharpening and the soft disregard in her features turning back into something so plain. 

It was as if she'd wiped herself clean of this discourse and, before he could even register what was happening, she was walking towards him again.

What a fast turn around.

"Is there really a problem?"

 What a question it was for her to ask him. It was twisted and callous and it made Mark's bones hurt. It was so lightly, as if Beth had decided to forget what exactly his problem was. Initially, he didn't know what to respond—here he was, grappling and struggling with his concern for the woman he loved and she was looking up at him with blown pupils and light bewilderment. 

"I'm fine, Mark. I swear I'm fine—"

When he didn't answer, Beth's gaze dropped away and she turned away again. 

She dropped her shirt back onto the counter-top and rubbed a hand over her face. He watched with bated breath as she reached for a pill bottle that was stowed away in her purse and shook two pills into her hand. She swallowed them dry and barely even glanced back at him as a vein twitched in his forehead.

"I'm going to take a shower," Beth said calmly, as if Mark still wasn't filled with so much adrenalin.

He wanted to yell, he wanted to grab her again and shake her until she realised how frustrated he was. 

He wanted her to pay attention to how scared this made him. 

How he couldn't handle the thought of her not being okay. 

But, when she looked over her shoulder at him, Mark found himself unable to find the right words. 

She looked almost disinterested.

"Are we going to fuck or not?"

He wished that he had the patience to say something like he had last time. He wished that he was as concerned as he had been last time; the flowers of gentle concern and grace had withered into something a bit more thorny, little words that caught at the back of Mark's throat and didn't leave despite how insistent he was with his swallows. 

He'd watched Beth in that nightclub and watched the people she'd surrounded herself with—

Romantic, He thought to himself as, like every time, he gave in. How romantic it was to be so aware that someone was falling apart and yet be so painfully unsure on how to piece them back together.