𝙇𝙓𝙄.
ILLICIT AFFAIRS

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    "OH, YOU HAVE TO BE JOKING!"

The exclamation came from the bathroom one morning as he took his sweet time getting out of bed. It was tempting, this morning in particular, to stay there forever. But a surgical pager was blaring, the sheets had been thrown back and the curtains were parted to invite in the wanton rays of light that appeared in the sky. 

He ran a hand across his face, groaning to the tune of the electronic device by his head. It was their morning fanfare, they had no need for a alarm clock-- He stayed there, even as the woman beside him shot out of the bed as fast as a bullet leaving it's chamber. He stayed there until the bathroom door flew open and the hurricane started whirling across the bedroom.

"I can't believe you—"

He opened an eye, lifting his head very slightly to watch the tsunami as it lapped at the bedsheets and tore across the hardwood floor. 

She was in full force this morning, scooping her hair into a ponytail as she made him go dizzy from just watching her. One arm in a shirt, bra not even clipped into place and feet dragging over the floor. Ever so often, she shot him a look from her rampage, causing his eyebrow to lift.

"What?" 

His voice was low and husky, a stark contrast from the powerhouse in front of him. They'd collectively only been awake for five minutes and she was already a bright burning ball of energy, burning brightly as she stood at the end of the bed, hands on her hips. He stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. 

"What? Is it my pager—"

"No..." She said. The newly thrown together ponytail swung wildly as she shook her head. "It's mine. I'm talking about this."

The vague gesture towards her neck didn't answer any questions. 

Still half-asleep but completely used to this sudden wakeup call, he just frowned tiredly, rolling out his shoulders against the mattress.

"About what?" He muttered, letting his head fall back onto the pillow. 

Her bed was too comfortable. He liked it here. The comforter was just soft enough. The pillow was just firm enough. If he could only just close his eyes and doze for an extra twenty minutes...

She appeared in front of him again, this time closer and pulling back the collar of her adjusted shirt. He had to blink suddenly to focus on her, squinting up at the woman who looked only half on this planet. 

She yanked back her shirt with such urgency that he almost thought that it was going to rip at the seams.

"This."

He could see it now. 

It almost made him smirk, but he knew better— between the stern look on her face and the sizeable hickey on her neck, he knew that a smirk or a chuckle would probably result in certain death. She held back her collar and just exhaled through her nose, scrunching up her face as if she was dealing with a child. 

So, with the nonchalance of someone who had definitely known exactly what they were doing the night before, he just looked up at the her, studied the bruise and shrugged. A light smile flickered at his lips, but he bit it back with a long sigh.

"Oops."

She didn't look impressed.

"Mark," She said, continuing to shake her head at him. 

She continued moving on, as if she couldn't stay still. 

He pressed his cheek into the pillow and just grinned sheepishly. He watched as she spritzed herself with perfume and slipped on her shoes, stretched out her arms and searched for her jacket in the closet.

"Beth."

He repeated her exact tone back to her. 

It was the disapproving tone that made him want to smirk far more than anything else. The Beth in question just rolled her eyes, shoving her arms into her jacket. She sat on the side of the bed beside him and shot him a look out of the corner of her eye.

"We talked about this..."

They had. Sometimes, dating Elizabeth Montgomery felt like a contract; there were so many rules in this relationship that Mark was beginning to feel like he was back in school, constantly teetering the fine line between favourite pupil and class dunce. 

They'd defined a very sharp, precise line between their personal lives and their professional lives. 

Church and State. They were separate worlds, never to meet... But he liked the way her eyes glimmered very slightly; she would've been a very sexy teacher and really wouldn't have minded a detention —

"I must have just got carried away," He sat upwards, smiling at the side of her face as she snorted. The sheets crinkled around them and he leant towards her, his fingers creeping up her leg. "If I remember rightly... you weren't complaining..."

"Okay," She replied, a smile flickering at her lips despite the stern fold to her brow. 

It was the betrayal that had told him that she really hadn't been complaining at all. Now, in the morning when she was rushing to get ready for work on the other hand.... 

"But I will be complaining when someone notices and then I get hounded—"

"They won't notice," Mark shook his head, watching as Beth just rolled her eyes. Instead, she slapped his hand off of her thigh. Jokingly, he recoiled and scowled, cradling his fingers. "Hey, watch it— don't you know how much these fingers are worth?"

A low chuckle fell through her lips, she leant over, tying her shoe laces. He watched as she shook her head, her ponytail swinging like a pendulum. Mark tilted his head to the side, wishing, for the hundredth time, that she'd just get back in bed instead of running off into the city. 

He glanced over at the alarm clock on her dresser: it was 5am. 

She'd barely even been in bed for longer than five hours.

"They will notice," Beth continued onwards, choosing wisely to just ignore him completely. "Faith will notice because Faith notices everything... and then Faith will bug me about it for the next month until I lie to her and tell her that I hooked up with some guy... and then she'll try to get me to go with her to some bar in the West Village with Isaac to find a date..."

"Tell her you're seeing someone," He suggested, cutting her short as she spiralled slightly in her thoughts. 

He could pinpoint the exact moment she paused. It was a brief moment, a flicker of a smile as she rolled her eyes. Mark squinted at her, not exactly sure what was so eye-roll worthy—

"Then she'll want to meet him," Beth stated softly, placing her hand on his leg. 

She patted it fondly and chuckled to herself. She smiled at the floor, as if the whole thought of getting dragged into this whole situation was extremely amusing to her. Mark's gaze wavered back down to the hickey on her neck. 

"And then what would I do?" She asked.

"I guess then I'll meet her," He shrugged. 

It was a nonchalant remark, one that provoked such a different response from Beth— he watched as she seemed to cock her head to the side and blink at him, brow furrowing as she considered what he'd just said.

They'd spoken about this too. Mark knew very well that they'd spoken about it, about the precarious matter of their professional and personal lives intersecting. They'd spoken about it, in fact, at length, coming to an agreement that, for the interest of Beth's internship and Mark's integrity as her Attending, that they would try their best to keep their professional lives completely isolated.

Beth sighed. "Babe—"

"I know it sounds crazy," Mark's voice was still gravelly, he could still hear the exhaustion in his own voice. Maybe it was too early in the morning for this sort of conversation, but now the topic was here (by his own volition) he felt the need to run with it. "But haven't you... haven't you thought about it?"

He had. He'd thought about it a lot. 

Their relationship, despite the fact that they'd spent at least a year together (barring the six months that they'd been separated) had happened in this tiny bubble where they didn't seem to exist outside of Beth's apartment, only briefly at dinners with Addison and Derek. Mark's apartment was on the other side of the island, further from the hospital, so he tended to stay with her. 

She'd even given him a key (A key! Mark had never had a key to someone's apartment before) and Mark had a toothbrush in her bathroom. Every night, they'd get takeout (neither of them were particularly good at cooking and neither of them particularly had the patience to learn) and every morning they'd leave for work, spending the rest of the day as colleagues. 

There, they would live only off of stolen touches, wry smiles and the odd, passing glance as Mark tried his best not to remember how she'd writhed under his lips just hours before—

He really, really, had thought about it a lot.

"Of course," Beth breathed out; it was a stiff contrast to what she'd been moments before. Her pager had quietened, gripped in her fist as her other hand lingered on his calf. She seemed to still, halted by the conversation topic and the unfamiliar look in his eye. "Of course I have..."

"Is it really that crazy?" He didn't really think it sounded crazy. 

Or maybe it was crazy— Mark didn't really know what sounded crazy in relationships. His last girlfriend had been in college; he'd ended up dumping her and immediately slept with the whole of the girls swim team. 

"Let Brooks notice."

She looked at him, a slow smile playing at her lips. It was warm, like a burst of sun appearing from behind a set of clouds. 

He could see the cogs turning in her head, watching the slow progression of her thoughts— they were usually so fast, but in this moment everything seemed to be so slow.

"You know what I..." Beth seemed to hesitate over her thoughts. She didn't hesitate often. She paused, smiled at her hands and then sighed lightly. "It'd get messy."

It would, Mark could agree with that. 

He was the definition of messy when it came to his professional lives and personal lives. But this was different; he reached over and grabbed Beth's hand, attempting to tug her closer to him— she was too far away, always too far from him. 

She let out another breath, it was a familiar breath, it was her 'I've got to go' sigh. But, even still, as she did every time, she allowed him to coax her forwards, shuffling against the sheets so she could sit beside him.

"Messy is sexy," Mark said lightly, as if he was talking about something very trivial. Beth rolled her eyes again. "It is. It's really, really sexy—"

"It's also complicated," Beth interjected. 

He'd expected her interruption. She always had something to say, always thoughts to share. Mark was only every worried when Beth went silent. It didn't happen often, but when it did, he knew that something in the universe had gone seriously wrong.

 "It's also really, really complicated and problematic and—"

He tugged her closer, cutting her off.

In all honesty, Mark was pretty fucking tired of hiding. He was pretty tired of having to go outside of Manhattan for their dates, just out of the anxiety that they'd see someone from ManWest. 

He was tired of having to watch Beth get battered by his fellow Attending's and not be able to give them a piece of his mind. He'd never been a jealous person, but all this secrecy was beginning to get to him.

He wanted messy, he wanted problematic and complicated, anything other than secret. In his opinion, being in a relationship that only a few people knew about (one of them being Addison of all people) wasn't ideal. 

But he was doing it, he was trying, all because this woman in front of him couldn't handle a nuclear-level fall out.

He wasn't good at this whole commitment thing, but he figured that if you were going to commit, you couldn't just pick and choose when.

"Let them notice," Mark spoke quietly. 

By then, Beth was practically sat in his lap. He watched the crinkle of her face as she sighed again (she was always sighing, Mark wondered whether it was a mandatory biological rhythm for a hot-headed Montgomery child). She placed her arms around his neck. 

"Who gives a fuck what they think?" He mumbled against the skin of her arm, pressing a kiss against the concave of her wrist.

It was moments like these where Mark wished he could hear her thoughts. He'd say, for years to come, that he knew Elizabeth Montgomery inside and out, but sometimes, he really didn't. This, specifically the few seconds in which Beth just stared at him, was one of those times. 

He could see the thoughts, she had so many that he could see them swim around at the back of her eyes, but he couldn't anticipate what she would say, what she would do.

It was one of the things he hadn't expected about a relationship like this; never before had he so desperately needed someone to say what they were thinking. Usually, he couldn't give a crap... but Beth, Beth was different.

"In an ideal world..." She began, eyes flickering in between his eyes and his lips. "In an ideal world we'd be some super surgical couple that doesn't a fuck about what people think about us..." He didn't like the pause. He knew what word was going to come next— "But... that's just not... not right now, not with my surgical internship and... all of my work and your work..."

Mark didn't really know what to do with disappointment. It was the sort of wanton emotion that he'd grown desensitised to (God, that sounded dramatic but for Mark, it was pretty standard) through a lot of shitty childhood moments and a lot of failing to be the bigger person. He didn't feel it often, but he felt it then; it wormed its way through the contact he had with Beth's skin, transferring like an infection that burrowed deep beneath his skin. 

Goosebumps rose on his arms.

She was looking at him with those round, brown eyes waiting for him to say something. It wasn't often that Beth cut herself off, yet she had. She was sitting there just watching him, watching how he nodded at an even pace, very slowly digesting the image she'd placed in his head. 

It was a nice image. It was a very wholesome image. It made him think about the future.

"Church and State," Mark said softly. 

The separation between these two worlds. The complete compartmentalisation between the hospital and this apartment. He said those three words without an ounce of reluctance. He was better at lying than he'd realised.

Tenderly, Beth raised a hand, pushing back his hair, running her fingers against his scalp. As she looked upwards, Mark admired the mark against her neck, thinking that maybe this was going to need to be a common occurrence—

"Church and State," Beth agreed, smiling gently. Then she chuckled., "C'mon, Church and State is sexy." He couldn't help but roll his eyes. "I swear it is... it's really sexy, sexier than messy—"

"I would agree with you but I don't think church and sexy really belong in the same sentence," Mark's nose wrinkled in distaste and he really enjoyed the giggle that fell out of her mouth; her nose scrunched and she looked away, trying to "I mean... maybe at halloween with a whole costume vibe... maybe a sexy nun or something—"

"Okay," She shook her head, face contorting and trying her best to hide her smile. "I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy—"

"Blasphemy?" Mark repeated, eyebrows raising. "Blasphemy is how good you look right now."

There was something about Beth, something about the way she combated his charm with a scoff, that made him grin. She didn't look impressed at all; instead, she rolled her eyes and snorted. His shameless flirting never seemed to get under her skin. She always seemed completely unbothered, although he could've sworn that he saw the brief burn of a blush on the tops of her cheekbones. 

Much to his disdain, Beth went to pull away— he let her go, mostly because he knew that nothing would make her stay.

"So you have some sort of weird nun kink now?" She turned back into the closet, leaving him to drop back onto the sheets.. Mark chuckled as he listened to her pause, deciding that she'd rather not know. "Actually... don't answer that--"

She was cut short by the sound of his pager. 

The device screeched out over her speaking— Mark looked over at it immediately. It was a knee-jerk reaction, the immediacy of the world pausing for him to grab that pager. Beth reappeared, leaning against the door as he frowned down at the device. 

She had her bag under her shoulder, her own pager grasped in her hand.

"911?" She asked. 

Mark didn't answer, he just continued to stare down at the text. There was another brief pause. He just blinked, struggling to digest what was gazing back at him. Beth visibly paused, debating on asking whether something was wrong.

Church and State.

"No," Mark groaned. 

It was a groan that spelled disaster. A dent appeared between her brows and she lingered a few steps away, waiting for him to expand— but he didn't, instead, he leant over and grabbed his cell phone, dialling a number. 

"Doctor Sloan calling about the page..."

Meanwhile, Beth turned out of the bedroom, heart set on her morning coffee. She gave him a final glance as she closed the door behind her, giving him some privacy for his work call. Her foot tapped against the floor as she brewed the pot, silent pager still heavy in her hand. 

She'd been paged to cover an early round and figured that it was best to be early than late. A low hum fell past her lips, she poured her coffee and, by the time she was finished, Mark was half dressed. 

He bustled into the kitchen, tossing down his pager and cell phone down onto the tabletop.

The sudden appearance alarmed her, she shoved the pill bottle into her bag and swallowed the medication with a mouthful of coffee. He pressed a kiss to her forehead as he passed.

Silently, Beth just poured him a cup and slid it across towards him. 

He smiled at her, recognising the subtle affection behind the gesture, but it didn't do anything to diminish the tightness in his shoulders. Mark was bothered by something, annoyed by the page he'd just received, Beth could sense it. 

She glanced over at him as she packed her bag, grabbing her scrubs and refilling her water bottle— she wanted to ask what was happening, that was something that Mark could sense. He leant against the counter top and sighed.

"All of my surgeries have been cancelled," Mark admitted finally. His girlfriend looked over at him, eyebrows raised in shock as he rubbed a tired hand across his face. He yawned into a clenched fist, nursing his coffee as if he was a mysterious, weathered stranger in a saloon. "Looks like I've got a vacation day—"

A very slow frown unfolded over Beth's face.

"Shit." Her voice breathless. "Cancelled?"

"Yeah," He said, jaw clenched. He jerked his head towards his dormant cell phone, the screen dark and reflecting only the frustration painted across his face. "That was Newman paging to tell me I'm off the OR board."

"Off the board?" She seemed unable to do anything but parrot his words; she didn't seem to be able to digest the idea— Mark, one of the best surgeons they had on payroll, completely absent from the surgical timetable.

"Wiped clean."

Beth was completely caught off-guard. 

She knew what being barred from surgery for the day meant; it was the equivalent of a red card in soccer, being benched before you'd even gotten onto the field. Mark, on the other hand, wasn't as surprised. She didn't miss how he smiled bitterly to himself and chuckled. The looks she gave him said a lot more than just Church and State. 

The two of them stood there for a few moments. Mark tilted his head to the side, waiting to see if Beth would ask—

Church and State. Church and State. Church and—

"Why?"

Why? He didn't like the way she said it. 

It was a good question. He grimaced very slightly, knowing exactly what his answer was. He'd heard buzz around the hospital but had dismissed it as background gossip. 

But, then there'd been the coupe, the meeting with the Medical Director and the threat of walk outs. Mark hadn't mentioned anything to Beth.

She walked towards him, recognising the look of reluctance on his face. He wanted to be an asshole about it, he wanted to shrug and just say 'Church and State' and throw those words back in her face... but then she was stood centimetres away from him, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised. 

God, she could be intimidating when she needed to be. He took a mouthful of coffee, realised that he needed more creamer, and looked away.

He also really didn't want to tell her.

"Mark," Beth said and his tone made him grimace again.

He didn't like how she immediately assumed that he'd done something wrong (Of course he'd done something, because he wasn't exactly convinced that it'd been wrong). 

When he looked back at her, she had a slightly stupefied smile on her face, shaking her head as if she couldn't imagine what he was going to say.

"Church and State," Mark reminded her softly, trying his best not to squirm at how irritating he sounded. 

His girlfriend just sighed to herself. She opened her mouth and then closed it, mentally debated whether to say anything more... and then immediately decided against speaking. 

Mark hummed lightly. "Your call... not mine, remember?"

They tried their best not to talk about their careers, but it was pretty hard when they were constantly being roused by pagers, shared a workplace and both were self-proclaimed workaholics (although, Mark would've argued that Beth was far more career obsessed than he ever had been). 

They kept their professional lives on the threshold of the apartment, did not get involved with each other's issues, each small qualm or problem. The problem was, Mark couldn't exactly figure out whether calling 'Church and State' was his way of asking Beth to not get involved or whether it was just a scapegoat for this conversation to pass.

Neither of them really knew what was bad enough to call for a surgeon to be wiped off of the surgical board, but they could each make their guesses. He wondered whether Beth was thinking about all of the possible reasons in the universe that he'd gotten benched. He wondered if she'd guess right. 

He felt the need to say something, just to fill in the prolonged gap of silence. He really hoped that she wasn't guessing right.

"It's nothing," Mark shrugged slightly, trying to play it off. "I think Newman's just intimidated by the fact that his Attending is better than the head of the department. Maybe he's trying to psych me out..."

"You sure?" She looked both amused and suspicious.

"Yeah I'm sure."

He was interrupted by the sound of his cell phone vibrating. 

A phone call, one that he definitely didn't feel like answering. The two them watched the device thrash against the counter-top. Mark froze, completely fixated on it. 

Fuck. The silence was punctuated by the way Beth inhaled slowly, nodding as if the phone had answered her question. Conversation only restarted when the answerphone kicked in, cutting Mark's ringtone short. 

He cleared his throat, avoiding the way that Beth looked over at him, eyebrows raised.

"Don't feel like talking?" She asked, innocently.

It only just occurred to him that this had been the longest Beth had hung around after being paged to the hospital. Usually, she was a force to be reckoned with, practically storming her way out of the door and across the city. 

Now, she just tilted her head to the side and blinked at him. 

The best Mark could manage was a shrug.

"It's too early," was his response. "It's only what... five fifteen? It's rude to... rude to phone this time in the morning. It can wait."

It was a pretty shit response. Her eyes flickered between his face and the cup of coffee in his hand. She was already fully dressed, already perfectly ready to walk out of the apartment door, and yet she didn't. 

Beth lingered in the centre of the apartment like a wanton spirit that wasn't sure whether she was coming or going. She continued to stare at him with those heavy eyes.

"So you have a vacation day because your boss is an asshole?" Beth questioned. 

She would've made an excellent lawyer. It felt eerily like a cross examination. That scathing scare that seemed to blast through him and that suspicious smile that flickered like a tease of something more serious. 

"You've been taken off of the OR board because of a grown man's pettiness?"

"Yup, he's a dick," Mark nodded. He gestured towards the creamer as he stirred it into his coffee. "Creamer?"

She just chuckled, shaking her head slowly. 

Mark hadn't expected that; he blinked at her, watching as she took the creamer from the counter and shoved it back into the refrigerator, checking her reflection in the cladding as she went. He followed her every movement, the way that she just carried on with her day as if nothing had happened (was this really Church and State? because the only state Mark was in was unease). Even so, he could hear her brain whirring along, thoughts pushing their way through her consciousness and into the do not discuss pile. 

She swept herself into her morning routine (despite this morning taking noticeably longer than usual) and, by the time she was ready, Mark begun insisting on giving her a ride into work.

"I can take the subway like I do every morning," Beth said as they both walked out of the door. Her brow furrowed as she watched him lock it and follow her down the stairs. "I thought you had a vacation day?"

He sighed. "I'm going to go in anyway and do my post-ops." Beth raised an eyebrow. "There's no point in having a vacation day without you around anyway... unless you want to take some time off?"

Slick bastard.

She seemed to realise that this morning was working out to be different from the usual. Mark usually was the last person to get out of bed, usually he let Beth go off into working at the crack of dawn and would always wait until the start of his shift before arriving at the hospital. 

Beth had chalked that up to being comfortable with his career and not need to brownnose like she did. But as she held open the front door of the apartment building for him and hauled her jacket closer to her body against the harsh winter wind, Beth figured that he was hiding something.

He appeared nervous. When he looked over at his girlfriend there was tension in his jaw, a muscle in his forehead that twitched. 

Beth just sighed softly and wondered whether this Church and State thing was truly worth all of the energy it demanded of him—

"At least let me drive you to a nearer subway station," Mark asked, already walking towards his car. "I know you don't want people to... but save the environment and everything—"

"So you have a vacation day," He paused at the sound of Beth's tone— it was that lawyer tone again. It was methodical and made goosebumps raise on the back of his neck. "You have a vacation day because you have no surgeries... because you've been wiped off of the OR board... so you're going in anyway, earlier than usual... to do your Post-Ops... all because Doctor Newman is a gigantic, selfish, jealous asshole?"

She spoke slowly, laying out each part of the conversation they'd been having. 

Again, Mark felt as though he was being cross-examined. He turned to look over at her, running a hand through his hair as he began to realise that Beth was definitely not believing his nonchalant excuse. Maybe he wasn't a better liar than he'd thought...

"Yes," He said, exhaling it all into a big sigh, "And imagine how jealous he'd be if he found out that the hot surgical intern that everyone likes is my girlfriend."

Her lip twitched with a smile.

"So it has nothing to do with the rumour going around the hospital about the nurses walking out?"

This time it was Mark's turn to be caught off-guard. 

The woman in front of him just tilted her head to the side, blinking at him as if she was waiting for something. Mark paused, he froze, he stared at her with a painfully stoic expression on his face. In reality, he supposed that he shouldn't have been surprised.

"Maybe," Mark said slowly, not really sure how to approach this. Beth folded her arms over her chest and raised her chin, encouraging him to continue. He swayed from one foot to the other, his resolve faltering. "Well... definitely." He paused. "Yeah, it's everything to do with the rumour about the nurses walking out."

His actions were beginning to bite him in the ass. The six months that they'd been separated had been... interesting to say the least. 

Mark had really approached his work with reckless abandon. It had involved a lot of flirting, a lot of hooking up and a lot of not calling people back. He'd been shameless and dirty and now nurses union had filed a complaint against him. He'd been left miffed and completely blindsided.

"Okay," She said, nodding thoughtfully. Then she paused, glancing down at her feet. "So, how many nurses did you sleep with?" Mark's face contorted slightly. When he didn't answer immediately, Beth just sighed. "Two? Three?"

It wasn't a secret that he'd had a very nice meander during their 'break'. Beth hadn't asked questions, she hadn't addressed it at all, but Mark could feel the pressure of it, some times more than others. 

He felt the pressure of it in that moment, watching as Beth waited for him to reply. He averted his eyes and grimaced to himself, again, not wanting to respond. However, Beth got the message loud and clear.

"Holy shit," Her surprised words fell out in a miffed laugh. "Wow."

She looked surprised. She sounded surprised. Mark didn't know whether he found that comforting or not.

"It's not that bad," Mark shrugged again, attempting to play it off. 

He hadn't done anything bad. He hadn't done anything but been a dirtbag. He hadn't treaded anywhere anywhere he hadn't been invited— Beth shook her head.

"You got wiped off of the OR board," Beth said, cutting him short. "You slept with all of the scrub nurses and now... now they're saying fuck you." 

She sounded logical, she sounded as if this whole thing made sense in her head, as if they were completely justified-- Mark looked away, rubbed at his jaw and then nodded reluctantly.

"Okay," He conceded, "It's a little bad."

The way Beth rolled her eyes made him want to bury his head in the sand. He wasn't exactly proud of it. It wasn't as if this whole situation was just something he was going to wear like a badge-- were they going to give him a trophy? 

Did Beth have space on that shelf over there for a 'Hospital's Biggest Player' trophy? 

Really, Beth was the last person in the world he wanted to talk to about this--

Church and State. Church and State. Church and--

"What are we going to do with you, Doctor Sloan?"

"I'm hoping whatever it is, it doesn't involve dumping me," Mark answered smoothly, answering her rhetorical question with a stellar smile. She shook her head lightly, closing her eyes as he held open the door to the car. He waited for her to say something. "C'mon Montgomery, save the Ozone layer-"

"I'm dating an idiot," Beth muttered to herself before eventually giving into the offer. 

She glared at him as she insisted that she could hold her own car door-- in reply, he shot her a crooked grin and took a few steps back, holding his hands up in surrender. 

The beam on his face didn't falter, not even when she shot him a dirty look through the window as he sat down on the other side.

"Good thing I'm hot then, right?" Mark quipped, revelling in the way her lips twitched as if she was trying not to laugh. She turned her head to look out of the window, watching as he pulled into the already building Manhattan traffic. "I am more just a pretty face you know..."

"Yeah yeah," Beth waved a hand flippantly, "There's a bit of jackass thrown in there too."

She was running her fingers through her hair, pulling down her ponytail and trying to fix the tresses in the reflection of the dark window. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, watching as she attempted to cover the hickey on her neck.

"You're not off the hook about this, by the way."

"I apologised, didn't I?" Mark said breezily, smiling to himself.

That was a lie. He hadn't. 

In fact, he'd made the conscious decision not to. It was his form of rebellion. It was his form of throwing tea in the sea or chopping off the heads of aristocrats-- his rebellion just happened to be more fun (or at least, he'd just really enjoyed it). Mark didn't really apologise for anything and he definitely wouldn't apologise for something he wasn't sorry about. 

She must've been able to sense it— she snorted, looking over at him with a spark in her eye.

"But you're not sorry," Her finger traced over the bruise on her neck and Mark opted for a shrug. His wicked grin didn't fade away. She chuckled to herself and looked away. "Get that dumb grin off of your face, Sloan."

"I'm not smiling," He denied, shaking his head and eyebrows wiggling. "Why would I smile? We've just established that my surgical career is in ruins... why would I smile?"

"Because you're an idiot," Beth answered without missing a beat; it made his grin widen. 

He was tempted to feign offence, to press his hand to his chest and grimace as if she'd just delivered a finishing blow. But then he saw the hickey on her neck and felt the strong urge to remind her that even if he was an idiot, he was very much her idiot as was she his. 

Beth rolled her eyes, "And you know that you have a pretty smile that distracts people from what they're thinking about--"

"Projecting, are we?"

"And you're the best plastic surgeon that the hospital has on payroll..." She breezed through his interjection. They brief met eyes across the middle console. Mark's lips twitched with a smile. "You're also a white, successful heterosexual man... no matter how many nurses complain that you're a bad flirt that doesn't call back after sex.... Your surgical career won't be in ruins."

"Well," He said slowly, digesting her words with noticeable difficulty. "I called you back didn't I?"

"And I hope you regret it every single day of your life," Mark laughed, mostly hoping that it was a joke. He glanced over at her, seeing the flicker of a smile on her lips. She attempted to appear serious but she was unable to fight the way her eyes lit up when he chuckled. "I will make sure you never forget it—"

"Good," His grin was fleeting and stunning. His reply was short and simple and it caused her cheeks to heat. The colour swirled into her face as if they'd just ran a red light. Tenderly, he nodded, momentarily distracted by the soft look on her face. "Good."

He figured that that was the sort of person Beth was; she was the sort of person who hoped that she'd leave a lasting memory behind, an imprint like a red wine stain on a white dress. 

He couldn't tell whether it was out of desperation to be remembered or the impulse to be loved.

As he drove through a half-sleepy Manhattan, Mark thought about a daily carpool. He thought about being able to arrive at work with Beth every day, instead of watching her rush for the subway every morning. 

Of course, their timetables were wildly different. Beth worked so many more hours than he did, she was always working, always doing something— but Mark couldn't help but think about the normality of a half hour drive through the city with Beth sat by his side. 

He hadn't really thought about it before, but the more he lingered on it, the more he liked the concept.

But, then he looked over at Beth and those fucking words echoed through his head: Church and State. 

Mark was used to being someone's dirty little secret. At first, dating in secret had sounded like a good idea to a man like him who was very touch and go when it came to a relationship. 

A year later, he was starting to get cabin fever. He didn't want to be a dirty little secret... he wanted to drive his damn girlfriend into work each day and be able to shamelessly flirt with her over lunch.

"Do people hit on you?" His question was light, played off nonchalantly as Beth looked up from her phone. She'd been texting someone, fingers lightly tapping against the keys and the light illuminating the way her brow furrowed at his question. "At work... do they..."

"Occasionally," Beth said, forehead wrinkled as if she'd never really thought about it before. She paused, as if to really consider it. After a few moments, she shook her head. "I imagine more people flirt with you..."

"Really?" Mark appeared surprised. There was a pregnant pause. He hummed lightly to himself. "If you were my doctor I'd hit on you."

"I can't say the same to you," was her quick response. She started talking even before he'd even finished. The man beside her let out a loud, incredulous breath, ready to challenge the statement. Beth smiled to herself; it was a warm smile, one that felt too lively for such an early time in the morning. "My mother raised me to avoid men like you... and I'd consider myself to be a very good daughter—"

Mark chuckled. "Oh c'mon.. you'd hit on me... admit it." When Beth didn't answer, (her voice noticeably absent compared to her earlier, impeccable timing), he shot her a second incredulous look. Her eyebrows were raised, her head tilted slightly so she could return his expression. "Hell, I'd hit on me."

"How are you so sure?"

She looked amused by the thought of it. She completely bypassed the size of his ego— Beth was half surprised she was able to fit in the car alongside it. 

He never failed to surprise her with his confidence and arrogance. Watching the flicker in his expression, the quick dip of his lips and the calculation in his eyes, it made her think that maybe his ego wasn't as inflated as she thought it was. Mark didn't reply and just opted for a very solemn nod. 

Carefully, Beth hid her smile.

"I don't know," Her continuation was met with Mark glancing over at her. She turned her head towards the window and sighed, pressing her hand against her chin as if she was in a sad montage in an indie movie. "I don't think you're my type."

"Really?" He sounded almost offended. She'd managed to get under her skin. She smiled into her hand and refused to look back at him— Mark kept looking over, spotting the bruise that she'd tried to hide behind her hair. "Tell that to the hickey on your neck."

"I will actually," Beth said, attempting to appear serious, but then she snickered. She was unable to keep the smile off of her lips. "I'll have a very, very productive and serious conversation with it."

They fell into another window of comfortable silence. 

It left him to his own thoughts again, passing strings of words that accumulated under the procedural movements of driving. Ever so often, he'd glance over at the woman in the passenger seat— Beth had her knees pulled to her chest, bag underneath her and eyes glued to whatever conversation she was having. 

It was probably something to do with work.

Everything with Beth was work. He was pretty sure she thought exclusively in medical school flash cards and exhaled chart notes. 

Mark was utterly convinced that Beth orbited around her career. Sometimes that's what the universe felt like— The surgical internship was the Sun, Beth was the Earth and Mark was a Moon that had just been thrown into her orbit.

"How about you?" Beth said eventually. 

They both recognised their surroundings as they neared the hospital. The closer they got, the more Mark was reminded of how secular their lives had become. He half expected her to ask him to drop her off at the nearest subway station, but instead, she stayed seated comfortably.

Mark just hummed lightly, as if to ask what she meant.

"Flirting," She said simply, "Do people flirt with you at work?"

They'd only been awake for a half hour and yet it was the third question of the day that Mark really didn't want to answer. Instead, he looked far more interested in driving— suddenly it was all he could focus on. 

He avoided the way that Beth gazed at him. She pressed her lips together and watched the way he pretended to think about it. His nose scrunched and he hummed again, as if his brain was buffering. Both of them knew that it wasn't exactly an exam question.

"Uh, yeah," Mark's answer was more hesitant than Beth had expected. He sounded almost sheepish. Inwardly, Mark was wondering why he was so surprised that Beth had reversed the question back to him. He didn't look over at her as she nodded slowly. "A lot, actually."

It wasn't a foreign concept. Mark was attractive, he was charming... a thirst trap for patients and colleagues alike. There was very clearly a reason why the nurses had decided to strike against him. Half the time in these situations, Mark wasn't exactly sure what happened first-- did he flirt with them or did they flirt with him? Who made the first move in this confusing game of chess? 

He'd been called flirtatious before. He'd been called sociable, dashing and sexy and... There was a lot of smooth-talking, a lot of complimenting and a lot of suggestive exchanges. Mark sometimes didn't even notice it.

"Do you like it?" Beth's question felt risky. 

He almost grimaced at it. Her tone was light, nonchalant and inquisitive but made his skin crawl— it felt like a trap, the sort of conversation that would result in some sort of argument. They didn't argue often but when they did Mark really didn't exactly know how to make it out without selling his soul.

"Do I like what?"

Please say something like the weather or the traffic or--

"People flirting with you at work," When he looked over at her she was looking at him intently, as if she didn't realise what sort of door she was opening. 

Mark had a feeling that this was how his week was going to be; the topic of his romantic endeavours was going to be hot gossip throughout the whole of the hospital. Couldn't he just have a half hour drive without having to think about it? 

Beth sighed in his noticeable pause. "I'm not being weird about... I'm just saying... do you like having everyone being attracted to you all the time?"

"Everyone?" He quipped so easily, smiling as if his head didn't spin slightly. "I thought I wasn't your type?" 

Beth's gaze was unwavering, but he could tell she was trying very hard not to roll her eyes.

Instead, she flashed a very pristine smile in Mark's direction, "What can I say? Maybe I have a thing for a pretty face..."

"Just pretty?"

"Fine. You're hot and whatever," Beth said flippantly, rubbing a tired hand over her forehead. He chuckled to himself. A beat passed. "This whole nurse thing is crazy..." It piqued his interest, Mark looked over. "I can't say I've dated a guy who has had a literal witch hunt against him..."

"It's all part of my charm," He spoke with nonchalance and threw in another shrug for good measure. But it fell flat, as if he couldn't carry the conviction behind it. He averted his eyes back to the road and idly wondered how long it would be until Beth asked him to pull over. "Flirting is flattering. It's better than getting yelled at or having to tell someone their kid passed away in surgery or something..." He watched her thoughtful nod out of the corner of his eye.

Church and State. Mark thought about those two words a lot. 

He thought about how he didn't exactly understand what it meant; wasn't it something that Thomas Jefferson said, something about the separation of religion and politics? Mark wasn't sure. 

He also wasn't sure why, at first, he'd been so convinced that it was the best thing in the world; or maybe he did... maybe the 'why' was because he was the sort of person who, as soon as he breaks up with someone, sleeps with every scrub nurse in their department.

He didn't like Church and State. He thought it sucked. He didn't really want to pretend that Beth was just any other surgical intern anymore.

There was a pause.

"It's no fun without you, though."

His words were quiet, fleeting but triggered sunrise in Manhattan. 

A very slow grin dawned on her face. It started in her eyes and travelled downwards, pulling at her lips and gnaw at her cheeks. It was gentle and soft and Mark didn't notice it until he caught it in his peripheral-- she turned her head away, looking out of the passenger window and watching the city very slowly wake up. 

Maybe that was the dawn that morning: Beth's very careful and tender smile.

"If you were my doctor... I wouldn't hit on you," Her words made the crinkle appear between his eyebrows again, but she didn't seem to be finished. Still, she stared off at the waking city, attention dancing across passing windows and doors. "I'd ask you out on a really nice date... or at least make you take me out to some fancy restaurant... and then I'd force you to call me back after we hook up. I wouldn't even have to flirt... I'd have you from the moment you first see me."

He couldn't exactly explain the warmth in his chest. 

Mark's smile was silly. It felt almost bashful. He kept looking over at her, watching as her eyes glimmer in between each street lamp. She leant forwards and just grinned at herself, rolling her eyes at her words. 

He almost didn't want to look back at the road— there was something about the sight of her, excited for her day and full of teasing little smiles... he wanted to take a mental picture and hang it up in a cubicle like he was an office worker in his own hippocampus.

Mark supposed that she wasn't exactly wrong either.

His face twitched. "Steady on with that ego, Montgomery."

"Ah," Beth chuckled to herself, "This car's not big enough for the two of us, huh?"

"With that attitude we're talking at least Manhattan," Mark replied. "This island can't handle the two of us." Another soft chuckle reverbed from the passenger seat. He smiled out of the windshield. "It's not gonna survive."

She flashed him a wicked grin, one that he seemed to gravitate to out of his peripheral. The car slowed in traffic (they were just seconds away from where he and Beth would part) and he allowed himself to look over at her, giving her his full attention. 

But Beth's gaze was elsewhere, captured on the cellular device in her hands-- it was reflected in her round, brown eyes as she chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. Mark glanced fleetingly at her shirt, recognising it with a slightly miffed laugh.

"Is that my shirt?"

Beth just smiled to herself. "Eyes on the road, Sloan."

***

The first thing Faith Brooks did when she saw Beth in the locker room was point at her.

It caught the other surgical intern off-guard. It was sudden and immediate and made Beth freeze completely, balancing on one leg as she changed into her scrubs. 

An accusatory finger raised in her direction. Unwavering and bold. The blonde intern frowned, squinted and then let out a dramatic gasp.

"You got laid!"

It was a statement, an exclamation. It wasn't a question, it was a declarative. 

It was matter-of-fact and sparkled in her eyes as she seemed to piece things together. 

Beth, the victim of Faith's quick investigation, just blinked back at her, wobbling slightly as her muscles locked into place. Faith took a moment to sear through every inch of her.

Fuck. Beth's inner monologue fell into a repetitive pattern of cursing Mark Sloan's name. She sighed, shoved her thigh into her scrubs with little conviction and waited for Faith to do her worst. 

The surgical intern in question just seemed to linger on that thought for a long time; she was stood in the doorway, purse slung over her shoulder and eyes still cloudy with sleep— even so, it hadn't dissuaded her from being able to (apparently) read Beth's mind.

At least she had a very promising detective career ahead of her if surgery never worked out.

"Who got laid?" Faith moved aside, revealing a bewildered Isaac. The expression on Beth's face very quickly progressed from dread to acceptance. Okay, sure, so this was how today was going to go—

"Beth," said the super-sleuth. She powered towards a far bench, blonde ponytail swinging wildly like a pendulum in a clock. Beth could almost hear it tick in her head. Tick tock tick tock tick— "She totally got some last night."

Beth's nose wrinkled as Isaac swung his bloodshot, exhausted eyes over to her. 

She could hear the thoughts barrelling through his mind. Her skin itched under his gaze. He squinted, just as Faith had, appearing very suspicious of the 'allegations'. She knew exactly why he was suspicious: they'd worked a late shift last night and yet here they both were. They'd only been outside of this hospital for six hours. 

As Faith breezed through the locker room, appearing extremely happy with her detective work, Beth watched Isaac's tired brain struggle to do the maths.

"Who got some?" 

Next to enter the room was Liam. He appeared, as he did every morning, like a breath of fresh air. Not a hair was out of place, not a wrinkle on his shirt or an ounce of exhaustion in his eyes. He looked around the room, almost expectantly to hear the gossip.

"Montgomery," Isaac jerked his head in Beth's direction, still appearing to be half asleep. "She decided to dress up today as a skank."

The look that was shot across in his direction was rooted deep in exasperation. Skank. That was a nice word for this time in the morning. She wondered whether Mark ever got called that, whether that was what they were describing him as, now that all of the nurses were comparing notes and realising that he tended to just reuse his tricks-- 

Beth couldn't allow herself to think about it too much. When she did, she felt a little nauseous and the room felt smaller.

Even Faith seemed to turn her head over at him, eyes narrowing. 

They could hear the retort that simmered on the edge of her tongue; that's how their days went, passing the hours by watching Faith combatting every little bigoted question that Isaac let slip. In unison, Beth and Liam looked over at her to watch the first exchange of the day take place: it signalled the beginning of the day, just as a rooster on a farm or a morning military fanfare. 

Even Isaac turned his head towards her, as if he could sense the crackle of energy in the room; their eyes met and, for a second, Faith seemed to get caught up in her head. An unspoken conversation played out very quietly and she dropped her head to stare at the floor.

Beth's forehead crinkled. What the fuck was that? 

Consumed by very brief bewilderment, she tossed her hair over her shoulder, accidentally flashing the side of her neck to the occupants of the locker room. Liam noticed it first, a low whistle falling past his lips as he squinted at Beth.

"Jeez," Liam's eyebrows raised, voice conveying his surprise. All three of them stared at her, eyes wide as she just sighed to herself again. She yanked her hair a little too happily into a knot, taking great pleasure in the way her eyes watered. "Who did you have sex with... Dracula?"

"He was busy actually," Beth chipped back at him, closing her locker with a satisfyingly loud clang. Liam chuckled, nodding at the very timely reply. "Nosferatu on the other hand--"

"It looks like you had sex with a vacuum cleaner," Isaac commented from the background, busy stuffing his clothes into his gym bag. She rolled her eyes so hard that they threatened to fall out of her face. "Or... a really powerful shower mat."

Maybe today was Beth's turn to kick Isaac's ass? 

Maybe Faith was just taking a vacation day? She tried her best to ignore him, but he was like a very persistent fly, his comments following Beth as she attempted to start her day. She sat on the bench in the centre of the room, avoiding the way that Isaac smirked at her. She didn't particularly like him, nor did he particularly like her. 

Sometimes, Beth thought about telling him to shut the fuck up, but usually she just left that to Faith.

"I think it's great," Faith flashed Beth a stellar smile, one that had the recipient raising her eyebrows. It was slightly strained, an expression that really pulled at the muscles in Faith's face. It seemed as though something had thrown "I think it's great that Beth is having some fun. We all work so hard--"

"Never thought we'd see the day," Isaac interjected again, grinning and shaking his head. He exchanged a look with Liam from across the room and the two of them laughed, as if they were in some sort of secret joke. Even Faith seemed to smile to herself, studying her cuticles as she sat opposite Beth and waited for their resident to give them the morning briefing. Beth just frowned, completely bewildered at what the joke was. "It must be a special occasion--"

"What does that mean?"

Faith sighed. "It's nothing."

Across the room, Isaac snorted, "It's not nothing,"

Beth's eyes narrowed. 

She didn't appreciate feeling like the butt of the joke. No one would look at her; Faith was staring at her fingers with unwavering concentration and Isaac was chuckling to himself as he rooted through his locker. 

The only person who seemed to respond to Beth's question was Liam, he glanced over at her and shook his head slowly, rolling his eyes as if it was just something dumb that wasn't worth her time. It didn't do anything to dissuade her. Between the expression on Faith's face and Isaac's laugh, she felt her frustrations rise.

"What?" She repeated, not wavering. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Another sigh.

"He's just being an ass," Faith insisted, shooting a look over in Isaac's direction. It was a welcome fragment of normality in this (what was panning out to be) unusual morning. It made him chuckle harder, the sound made Beth shake her head. "Ignore him it's not--"

"Really?" Isaac said loudly, "Faith you said it too--"

"Isaac I don't--"

"We're surprised you put out," His words were matter-of-fact and blunt and made Beth blink at him. In the background, Liam and Faith both looked away, averting their eyes as Isaac started speaking. "Never thought we'd see the day that Beth Montgomery isn't anything but prim and proper--"

She stared at him, her brain lagging behind as she struggled to comprehend what he was saying. 

Prim and proper? 

She didn't quite understand what he meant-- was he... was he calling her a prude? Was he really trying to simultaneously shame her for having sex and not... at the same time? 

She couldn't figure out what was worse, the fact that this was Isaac's logic or the fact that she was having to deal with all of this before 7am.

Fuck that, Beth thought to herself.

"Really?" She questioned, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to ignore the familiar burn of agitation. Her face burned slightly. "Really?"

"You just..." Liam attempted to take the conversation, cutting off Isaac as he opened his mouth to reply. He shot a look in the other intern's direction, attempting to settle the tension. He seemed to seriously consider his words, but thought against it. "Isaac's being a dick about it."

"It's not mean," Faith added, "You just have a bit of a reputation..."

"A reputation?"

"Yeah," She continued brightly, but then her attitude seemed to falter slightly when Beth tilted her head to the side, encouraging her to continue. Faith took a long breath, looking over at Liam as if she was throwing up some emergency alarm. "It's nothing bad... it's not bad--"

"You're frigid," Isaac, the asshole of the hour, decided that Faith's hesitation was an indication to pipe up. His laughter grilled into her bones, causing her to skin crawl. The only reaction Beth could muster was a miffed laugh. "The guys down in radiology reckon you're made of ice or something. They've been wondering how long it would take your to thaw out--"

She had to say: that was a new one. Beth had never been called frigid before; she'd been called many things, all of which sometimes like to bounce around her brain like the Ghosts of Insults Past, but she couldn't remember frigid. 

It was the sort of word she didn't really understand; what did he mean by that? What did they mean by ice? She didn't like that her morning was starting with so many questions.

Her confusion translated into a furrowed brow. "And what does that mean?"

Beth was completely lost, watching as Isaac rolled his eyes at her. Beside him, Liam was suddenly very interested in his medical notes, pouring over them very closely as a muscle twitched in Faith's jaw (maybe this was the moment when Faith would decide that it was, in fact, time for her to brawl with Isaac as she did every morning). 

Beth just sat there, staring at the surgical intern she was very slowly beginning to realise really wasn't worth your time.

"Look, I can appreciate being ambitious as much as the next guy..." Isaac pulled a shirt over his head, a brief intermission as he received a mouthful of fabric. The shirt appeared to be for a music festival down in the South (Beth hoped that it had been shit and that Isaac had had a terrible time). "But you've got literally nothing else going for you... I won't be surprised if they start a bet in the department on how many guys you turn down just like how many nurses Sloan picked up--"

"Isaac..." Faith interrupted, looking over at the man with a contorted facial expression. "Knock it off--"

She didn't know much about Isaac, but what she did know is that he seemed to lack the capacity to actually win the arguments he started. 

He was easy pickings, the sort of guy you could sweep out in a debate without even trying. He would've been a terrible lawyer, an even worse politician, but an excellent [insert a high paying job for a white-heterosexual-male-who-approaches-things-with-minimal-effort]. 

He was unable to think of anything but his emotions. His first impulse was to get angry, meanwhile, Beth's first impulse was to get smart.

"I'd rather have a reputation for being frigid than a terrible doctor," Beth had taken time in formulating her reply. She did it with great glee, taking great delight in watching the hilarity slowly slide off of his face. "It seems like you're projecting... it's not my fault you can't get laid, Isaac--"

"I'm doing perfectly fine, Montgomery," He said and Beth's eyebrow raised at the sudden agitation in his voice. "Better than you. Just don't feel the need to do a shame of walk through the hospital."

Ah, how original. 

She was simultaneously being slutshamed and being called frigid at the same time; Beth was half tempted to just ask him to choose a narrative and stick to it. 

Inwardly, hellfire was burning its way through Beth's brain, encouraging her to rip him apart. Her jaw clenched very slightly and she crossed one leg over the other.

How ironic it was-- apparently she was made of ice and yet, she could only think about burning his sorry ass to the ground. He truly had chosen the wrong frigid bitch; this particular one had a family history of anger management issues. 

She was proud of the fact that she could funnel it all into a calm and cool exterior, paired with a smirk that seemed to smoulder at the edges.

"Oh, I'm sorry Isaac, I forgot to ask..." Beth tilted her head to the side. "When you pay your grandmother to live out of her basement... is the sex not included in the rent? Because when I think '28' and lives with his grandparents I automatically just think... wow, that man is having lots of sex."

He let out an angry scoff, "Just because you've got laid you have some sort of superiority complex. Your man doesn't know shit--"

"At least my shower mat knows where the clit is," Beth's words were very nonchalant but curved maliciously. "Talk to me when you actually pass the female sexual anatomy class, Isaac."

There was a brief, stunned silence. Faith hid her laugh with a loud, violent cough and Liam just stared in between the two of them, looking as though asking for gossip had been the best decision he'd made so far this week. 

He frowned at her, visibly disgruntled by the sharp turn in conversation— in reality, it was Beth's best opportunity to divert the conversation away from her sex life. She didn't need Faith bugging her over and over (and over and over and over and over) and she also didn't need Liam wisecracking jokes about the Jackson Pollock painting on her neck. 

She watched him exhale angrily, a vein throbbing in his head as she got to her feet and prepared to leave--

"Alright," He murmured lightly. "Don't have to be a bitch about it..."

"A bitch?" Beth repeated, eyebrows raising. "I thought I was a skank?"

"Alright, kids-- that's enough," Liam echoed from the sidelines. "Someone's on form this morning." He looked over at Faith, his lips pulled into a nervous grin. "Remind me to not get on Beth's bad side today...."

The conversation lulled as Isaac seemed incapable of finding anything in his brain to retort back to her. In reality, Beth was sure that he was debating whether or not it was too early in the morning to call her a slut, or a whore or whatever words 28-year-old-men-who-rented-their-parents-basement would choose from their misogynistic rolodex. 

She waited for him patiently. He didn't say anything further, just returned to his locker and changed with a subtle violence to his every move. They all watched as he slammed his locker door shut, causing a loud clang to fill the room.

She didn't like Isaac. He was a dick. She didn't like how he seemed to sulk, even when conversation moved towards the shift schedule for the next week. 

He hung at the back of the locker room as their Resident breezed into the room. He wouldn't look up as the resident started speaking, telling them about their assigned rounds and departments (Beth was assigned Neurosurgery). They came laden with papers, each one lined with boxes and categories-- they were handed out to each intern, their brows folding as they read the contents.

"Chief wants you to list your sexual partners from the last six months..."

 The speech that accompanied the words on the form made Beth's breath catch in her throat. Suddenly, Isaac Cochran was the last problem on her mind. 

"He needs all of the staff members from this hospital you've slept with written on that form... God forbid there be any at all..."

The instructions were simple, quite possibly the most straight-word directions they'd been given since starting their internships. It was very uncomplicated in concept, extremely easy in execution but made all of the interns stare at their Resident in alarm. 

Beth opened her mouth and went to say something but nothing came out. The longer she stared at the form, the longer she became worried about the sheer amount of columns and rows the entries had; it was as if the hospital board just assumed they'd all been... 

God, she couldn't even think about it.

It made her mouth go dry with the realisation of how many names Mark had for this tiny piece of paper. She checked the back of the document just to check whether they'd added extra space. 

She couldn't decide what was worse: the fact that she'd felt the need to check or the fact that they had, indeed, printed it double sided.

Holy shit.

Out of the four interns, Liam was the only person who was able to speak.

"What?" He questioned, staring at the resident as if they were crazy. "What do you mean sexual partners?"

"They're covering their asses," The Resident said stiffly, raising their chin and folding their arms over their chest. "There's a misconduct case that's come up against one of the Attendings..." A pause and a grimace. "I'm sure you can guess which one."

She didn't have to be personally affiliated with Mark to know exactly who the resident was talking about.

"This is so invasive!" Faith exclaimed, "They can't force us to disclose private information like this, can they?"

"They can do what they like," was the given response, "We are contractually obligated to tell the hospital board if we get involved with other staff members. Brooks, it said in your contracts that no interns can be romantically or sexually linked with senior doctors or immediate colleagues in your department."

Church and State. Church and... Ah fuck. 

Immediately, Beth was reminded exactly why she'd made Mark drop her off two blocks over from the hospital. She was reminded exactly why she was so adamant about these things. 

For a split moment, on the drive into work, Beth had thought long and hard about how easy it would be just to say fuck it and stop all of this mess-- But then she'd been reminded that she was breaking countless staff guidelines and.... 

Ah fuck.

To her, he was just Mark. He'd always just been Mark. Asshole Mark. Best Man Mark. Bad Idea Mark. Says-I-Love-You-Back Mark. Somehow, unwittingly Her Mark. 

But in this biosphere, he was their Mark too, the sort of Mark who could be considered very important and influential and not at all allowed to date interns like her.

"I bet this is because of Sloan," Faith said, appearing far more bothered about the thought of filling out one of these forms than Beth had anticipated. In fact, Faith looked as though she was much closer to the aforementioned mental breakdown; Liam and Beth exchanged a very stealthy look. "This is the whole nurse thing isn't it..."

It was at that moment that Beth noticed how stressed Isaac looked. 

He was glowering down at the sheet of paper as if it was the bane of his existence. It caused a dent to appear between her eyebrows; maybe she had underestimated his sexual prowess?

"Ding ding ding," The resident wagged a finger, eyes blazing at the mention of Mark's name. They clapped their hands together (carrying way too much energy for such an early time in the morning) and sighed. "Time to see if you guys have paid attention to the most important lesson in this hospital: Don't sleep with Mark Sloan."

Beth felt like laughing and crying simultaneously. The two sensations battled in her brain, causing her to just opt for a very strained smile as the Resident shot around a cautionary glare. It was as if it was a warning, a warning of a reprimand. Beth very slowly wondered what would be worse; the reprimand and punishment or the look in Isaac's eyes when he immediately came to the conclusion that Elizabeth Montgomery had been trying to sleep her way into better surgeries.

"Great timing for that love bite, hey Montgomery?" 

It was a playful joke, one made by Liam as he very breezily plucked a pen from his pocket. 

They all watched as he wrote his name in the header and then drew a big 'X' through the page, signifying that he hadn't slept with any staff members at all-- he handed it back to the Resident with a wide smile, but by then, the Resident had taken notice of the jab.

Their eyes zeroed in on Beth as she held the paper a little too tightly. She was staring at Liam, but her eyes drifted back to the higher doctor, shoulders sinking when she noticed the suspicious look that was being thrown in her direction.

 Quickly, she held up her hands, as if to beg for surrender-- she wasn't sure whether the action was to peacefully 'hand herself in' or whether it was a complete dismissal.

Either way, the Resident just glared. "That better not be from an Attending or I swear...

("Boyfriend," Beth interjected quickly, being careful not to confirm or deny, but instead disarm.)

The Resident just sighed again, "If I find out that any of my interns have slept with Doctor Sloan I will, personally, make your life hell. You will be on scut until your intern exams. The only way you'll see the inside of an OR is if you're the one on the operating table. Have I made myself clear?"

The speech was mostly directed at Faith and Beth, the two of them nodding curtly. It was a lingering threat that hung in the room even once the Resident had left. 

The warning left a bitter taste in the air, Beth grimaced to herself as she got to her feet, folded the piece of paper and placed in the pocket of her scrubs--

"D'you think people are going to lie?" Faith asked offhandedly. 

She sat on the bench again, tying the shoelaces of her tennis shoes with a frown fixed firmly on her face. At the hesitation in her tone, both Beth and Liam looked at her suspiciously (Suddenly, Beth was very, very stressed that this blonde bombshell had slept with her boyfriend too). 

Faith blinked at the too of them, momentarily bewildered by what their gazes implied. Realisation was slow. 

"Oh god," Faith gasped, "No I haven't slept with Sloan."

"I'm kinda surprised," Liam said attentively "You do talk about him a lot."

It was an unfamiliar feeling to Beth: a creeping sense of paranoia. It appeared out of the blue, fed by the sudden burst of alarm that Beth felt at the thought of someone she worked with having slept with her boyfriend-- oh god, this feeling sucks. 

She felt her skin itch very slightly. Mark must have so many names for all of these columns... Beth only had one.

"Yeah, because he's good gossip and he's pretty to look at," the response to Liam's observation made Beth sigh to herself. 

Faith was right, Mark was very good gossip; she could only imagine what gossip she'd become if she wrote Mark's name on her form. There was a prolonged pause in which Faith shot Liam an odd look. 

"Did you lie?"

"Seriously?" He asked, eyebrows raising. "No I didn't lie... Why? Are you thinking about lying?"

Faith pulled a face, "Hypothetically--"

The sound of a locker closing cut her short; in unison, they all looked over back towards Isaac.

 For a moment, Beth wondered whether he'd just opened for the novelty of dramatically closing it (she was half tempted to ask whether he'd been a theatre kid in High School). At the sound, Faith seemed to flinch, eyes very briefly closing as Isaac stomped past them. He even slammed the door closed too; it didn't exactly have the desired effect, just falling limply back into place and sending a tidal wave of air through the room. 

Once Isaac was gone, Faith let out a breath.

"Hypothetically," She repeated, her voice far more strained than it had been before. "Hypothetically if someone was to lie..."

"I wouldn't," Liam shrugged. He spoke critically, as if he was the most practical out of the four of them-- for a long time, Beth had thought that she was the most practical, but then again, she was the only one who was sleeping with Mark Sloan. "They're only really concerned about senior doctors... if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to lie about--"

"But hypothetically," Faith stressed again. She repeated the word as if there was nothing hypothetical about this situation at all. "Hypothetically if I did have something that I didn't want to disclose--"

He frowned at her. "What did you do... actually fuck Dracula or something?"

"Didn't realise you were into Phlebotomists," Beth joked very weakly from the corner. She was flying under the radar, internalising a very neat mental breakdown that was stopping her from moving from her position on the bench. Faith didn't seem to appreciate the joke. "I always took you as more of a... Chiropractor sort of girl."

Faith seemed to shake with nervous energy; she wiped her hands on her pant leg and focused on taking long, steadying breaths. Abruptly, Beth was reminded of Faith's mother's chihuahua, the bugged eyes, the anxiety-riddled way that her limbs seemed to tremble. 

She opened her mouth to ask whether Faith was okay, but then realised that Faith was probably going to tell her anyway and that the answer was very clearly 'No'. The sight of her was very familiar-- it was exactly how Beth felt on the inside.

Inwardly, Beth was wondering exactly how Church and State was supposed to happen when her Church was on fire and the only State she was in was a State of Emergency. 

It was taking everything within her to not page Mark and organise her own COBRA meeting.

"I did something bad."

Faith's words were very quiet, filled with dread and despair. 

They were so sudden and broken that, for a second, Beth wondered whether she'd imagined them. Faith's whisper caused Beth's attention to be ripped from her spiralling thoughts back to the bottle blonde. She also wondered whether Faith's bad was as bad as her bad-- did Faith's bad include secretly dating their Attending despite the fact that it was very clearly against hospital guidelines? 

Did Faith's bad include stacking shifts to the point where Beth was slowly losing her mind?

Liam just stared at her. "Worse than Dracula?"

Faith sighed to herself and nodded, unable to speak.

"Faith..." Beth began, fully prepared to give a speech that was fuelled completely on spite. 

Faith was fine, she wasn't sleeping with the man who was currently being set on fire for his sexual plunders. Faith wasn't going to end up on a list of names of conquests, serialised into a bullet point on a spreadsheet. 

"I can't imagine it being that bad... You never--"

The groan that came from Faith's body was tortured and made Beth stare at her with raised eyebrows. Faith pressed a hand to her face and rubbed violently at her eyes, "Oh no, it's bad."

"How bad?"

"Bad bad."

Beth's eyes widened. "Did you kill someone?"

"Worse."

Worse? At this point, Beth didn't really know what could be worse, but she felt a need to take Faith's word for it. 

Bad felt like a spectrum in this career; things could be bad or they could be bad. You could have a bad patient or a bad patient. A bad surgery or a bad surgery. Bad bad felt the closest they could get to DEFCON1. 

Faith looked as though she'd seen a ghost, avoiding Beth's eye as she just read the paper over and over. The energy from the hickey-revelation had dissipated completely, it felt as though Faith's whole day had fallen apart in the span of thirty minutes.

"I don't know what to do," Faith said breathily, seeming to be on the verge of a panic. "I'm not this sort of girl, okay? I don't do this— but I think I've been having a real weird time at the moment... between breaking up again with my ex and dying my hair—" ("Wait, you got back with flower guy?" Beth questioned) "—I'm not this sort of girl and it's really, really bad—"

"You know what," Liam interrupted. He grabbed his pager out of his locker and grimaced at the conversation topic. "I'm gonna go and leave you girls to this great girly conversation--" He beelined to the door without any other words. Beth stared at the door as it swung shut.

It wasn't that she didn't like Faith (She did, the blonde was actually beginning to grow on her, although Beth couldn't tell whether it was a bad rash or genuine fondness) and it wasn't that she didn't like talking to her, it was just that Beth didn't particularly feel like giving a pep talk together. 

She was a surgeon, specifically a surgical intern who had a very busy day planned out today, not a psychiatrist, not a shrink who could sit and listening to Faith's issues. Beth didn't want to be a shrink either, having long conversations about self-reflection sounded exhausting.

"C'mon," Beth murmured, getting to her feet and pretending like she wasn't having a mental spiral of her own. She grabbed Faith's arm, prepared to physically haul her to her feet. "We've got rounds to start--"

She would've continued if it wasn't for the sound of her pager. 

The small device yelled and screamed, flashing dramatically as Faith wobbled on her way upwards. Immediately, Beth dropped her arm and dug into her pocket, grimacing at the feeling of the paper against her skin. 

She squinted down at the text, feeling the pager vibrate against her hand. Her brow furrowed.

"That Neuro?" Faith asked as she attempted to perk herself up.

"Yeah," Beth sighed, "Doctor Navarro wants me down in the ER..." The look on Faith's face made her frown. "What?"

"He just paged you?"

That caught Beth off-guard. "He didn't page you?"

"No," Faith shook her head and frowned at the silent device in her hand. Then after a few moments, she just seemed to accept the fact that she wasn't needed on the Head of Neurosurgery's incoming case. "Are you trying to get on the Neuro service?"

"Nope," Beth's face contorted slightly. 

The look Faith gave her was filled with bewilderment and suspicion. Her eyes flickered between the hickey on Beth's neck and the sudden explosion of stress that had been detonated by a single piece of paper. 

"That's Ashley's thing..."

"So he's paging you in particular..."

"We're on his service, Faith," Beth pointed out, as if she wasn't exactly sure what Faith was implying. But then her brain caught up with what was happening; realisation settled into her bones, leaving a ice cold chill that made her mouth fall open slightly. An offronted scoff fell past her lips. "I'm not sleeping with Navarro for surgeries--"

"I didn't say that!" Faith interjected, waving a hand. "It's just with the forms and everything I'm a bit--"

"I thought I was frigid?" She ignored Faith completely, instead falling into the familiar panicked floundering of her thoughts. "What happened to being full of ice?--"

"I'm sorry, okay!" The blonde exclaimed, "I didn't mean it that way--" She cut herself off, shaking her head and groaning into her splayed palm. "I meant it as a joke... but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if someone here was sleeping their way through their job..."

Beth paused.

"Do you think people actually do that?"

In a way, this was her testing the water. 

She was all too aware of what consequences would come with dating one of the Attendings. The thought of it, the concept of someone exchanging sex for surgeries was so alien to Beth; it felt like an urban myth that only she was constantly terrified of. She needed to know whether it was something people actually believed-- In response to the question, Faith just shrugged.

"When there's doctors like Navarro and Sloan..." Faith said, shaking her head. "Y'know... I had such different expectations for Sloan. I thought he'd be more of a dirtbag. I mean, I've caught him checking out your ass a few times..." Beth looked over at the blonde, eyes widening. Faith just laughed, rolling her eyes. "He must be more into brunettes, I guess."

"Huh," Beth murmured, but there was a light smile on her face. It was a secretive twitch, Faith wouldn't have even been able to see it if she'd been studying Beth's face closely. But it was there... "I don't really pay attention to him."

(That was a very blatant lie.)

"I don't know what I expected," Faith continued, chuckling in agreement with Beth's dismissive attitude. "He's hot, sure... but I thought he'd be... more..."

"More?" Beth asked, not exactly sure what Faith meant.

"I've been on his service so many times now with Isaac," She said, tilting her head to the side. "And like... I'm attractive, right? Before dying my hair I was almost a brunette... I think I'm pretty hot and guys usually flirt with me all the time..." Faith rolled her eyes, as if she was exasperating herself. "But with that man... nothing."

"Nothing?"

"He's been completely professional, this whole time," She sounded almost disheartened, it made Beth stare at her. "I even tried flirting with him once... and nothing. I complimented him on his suture technique... I said he had nice eyes and... Absolutely nothing." A pause, Faith scrunched up her nose in distaste. "Am I supposed to be disappointed?"

This was a first, for sure. 

Beth couldn't say she'd ever had a conversation like this before; the uncanny feeling of talking about your boyfriend and how crestfallen your colleague was that he wouldn't flirt with her, it was a stranger to her. She wondered whether this had ever happened to anyone before. 

Here Faith was, discontented and bewildered, talking about Mark as if she'd expected him to beeline to her as soon as he'd arrived at the hospital.

"I thought he'd be a scumbag," Faith was talking as if Mark was some sort of wild fantasy that she had locked away at the back of her head-- it made Beth uncomfortable but, from the way Faith sighed to herself, Beth got the impression that Faith wasn't as hung up over Mark as she had been before Mark had started sleeping with the nurses. "Don't get me wrong... he's an asshole... he slept with literally every single unmarried nurse in the OR and ER departments."

Beth couldn't hide her surprise.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Faith breathed out, "I'm friends with one of the union co-ordinators-- did you know they figured out that he used the same pick up lines? Apparently he just recycles all of his flirting lines over and over..." She pulled a face, encouraged by the slight twist to Beth's face. "Jackass."

The other intern didn't respond. 

(She was too busy realising that her boyfriend, indeed, had dug himself into a very deep hole).

 That was a lot of nurses. That was a lot of entries on this form. Beth didn't like the fact that she actually believed Faith; the bottle blonde was usually a very reliable source of gossip and Beth had already accepted that this situation was highly unconventional.

"But even then, he's never pursued any of the surgical interns," Faith laughed at it, she got to her feet and waved a hand as if she couldn't fathom his stilted ethics. Again, Beth didn't speak. "He didn't even look at any of us, as if he just knew that it wasn't right-- I'm pretty sure he only sleeps with nurses. Granted, there's only you, me and Ashley on the internship programme at the moment..." Another laugh. "We should tell the hospital board to stuff the forms anyway... I mean... there's no way you've slept with him. You're definitely in the clear and Ashley doesn't even talk about anything other than craniotomies...."

The definitely was so certain. 

Faith said it with virtually no hesitation and even shot Beth a look as if to say 'don't worry, I've got your back'. The recipient of said look just smiled weakly, one that was passable as a 'thank you'. There was something about the certainty of Faith's definitiveness that made her wonder whether her time and money really should have been better invested in Julliard to go into acting. She was better at Church and State than she realised.

"Navarro's just gross," Faith stated, completely out of the blue. Beth looked over at her just in time to see the shudder that ran down her spine. She cracked a strained smile.

"He's awful," She agreed, and then she quirked an eyebrow. "Is he your bad bad...?"

"No," The blonde's face contorted with the same wave of distress and self-disgust. "Oh god! No. As if."

***

Usually, Beth couldn't tell when people were flirting with her. 

She wasn't good at that sort of thing. She lacked a sixth sense when it came to realising when people were making advances. She didn't particularly consider herself clueless per say, but more on the distracted and busy side. 

Maybe that's why she worked so well with Mark, he was blatant and so shameless that she'd been able to tell immediately when it was happening. But not all people were as bold as he was. 

Her last beau before Mark had been so subtle to the point where Beth had been convinced that he was just not interested in her anymore--

Doctor Navarro wasn't one of those people.

The Head of Neuro, was in fact, one of the least subtle and self-involved people Beth had ever met (which said a lot, seeing as she was dating a man she was completely convinced was a narcissist). He was far from pretty and gave the aura of a man who was well past his prime, yet it never stopped him from hitting on whichever woman had the misfortune of straying into his path. 

He had an uncanny way of being at all places at once, appearing at the end of every hallway with his scathing eyes and gap-toothed smile--

"Montgomery," He grinned at her as she entered his trauma room in the ER, having been directed there by a trauma nurse. Beth slapped on a pair of gloves, ignoring him as he attempted to get her attention. "It's always nice to have a pretty face in the room..."

Her face twitched with distaste. 

Navarro, was by far, her least favourite doctor in the hospital. She didn't miss the way his eyes lit up when he saw her idling in the doorway; what she did miss, however, was the shadow of Doctor Newman in the corner as he consulted on Navarro's patient. 

There was something about standing in the same room as Newman and Navarro together that made Beth want to tear her hair out. Even so, she acted as if nothing was wrong; Beth sat where she was asked to sit, ran the stats that she was expected to run. She smiled politely and ignored the overwhelming urge to throw something.

Church and State. It was becoming more of a code of professionalism every day.

The patient was in a great deal of pain, having taken a ice pick to the side of the head. It was a large trauma but looked as though it would be a very interesting surgery-- Beth hummed at the edge of the room, her eyes flickering between Newman and Navarro as the two surgeons discussed how to tackle it. 

She stood there, barely fazed by the way that Navarro caught sight of the hickey on the side of her neck; a wider grin spread across his face, amusement sparkling in his eyes.

"Looks like someone's had a fun night," Beth didn't respond to him, just followed the prior instructions to monitor the patient's vitals. When she didn't respond, Navarro shot an exasperated look over in Newman's direction-- the two surgeons just chuckled, Newman raising his eyebrows as if to say 'Women'. "You keeping busy out of hours?"

She couldn't exactly decide what was worse: having to withstand Isaac's blatant misogyny or having a grown-ass man perv over her. Today was beginning to feel like a game of Would-You-Rather? that Beth had very little interest in playing. 

Either way, Beth just gritted her teeth and ignored it. However, inside, she was telling him very curtly to fuck off.

"By the looks of it, the pick axe has gone right through the inner ear," Newman, for once, seemed to be the voice of reason in the room, gesturing to the patient's head as Navarro barely lifted his eyes from the surgical intern in the corner. "I'll page Powell down, get him to have a look at this and go with you into surgery--"

"Powell's in surgery," One of the trauma nurses said, currently holding the two halves of the patient's skull with her own hands. Beth glanced upwards just in time to see the muscle twitch in Newman's clenched jaw. "He's covering one of the ENT surgeries that they couldn't reschedule."

"I need an ENT," Navarro said, looking away as soon as Beth looked up. His gaze fell onto Newman, oblivious to the way that Newman appeared to very quickly grow annoyed. "We have more than one ENT, right? You're not telling me I've got to wait for Powell to finish surgery--"

Newman sighed. "We've got Sloan."

Beth watched him from the corner. 

She felt a strong sense of deja vu back to the only surgery she'd ever completed with Mark; Newman's face had betrayed the same agitation, as if having to page Mark Sloan was his fatal crux. Navarro, on the other hand, did not seem to exhibit the same qualms, he simply turned to Beth, flashed a pristine smile, and asked her to page Mark into the OR for an assist.

"Sloan's benched," Mark's boss interjected before Beth could even move from her chair. 

He spoke with such suppressed glee at the revelation that she felt her stomach roll slightly. The look that Navarro shot him made Beth think that the Neurosurgeon was completely out of the loop and definitely did not keep up with hospital gossip. 

Newman sighed. "Jackass got caught out sleeping with all of the scrub nurses and now they're refusing to assist with his surgeries. I cleared his board, he's benched till the end of the week until he can get his shit together--"

"Rookie mistake," Navarro sighed, shaking his head. 

He chuckled to himself as if it was a 'growing pain', like getting the incorrect answer to a math problem or misspelling a word in a kid's spelling bee. Even the trauma nurse who was keeping his patient stable looked caught off-guard, her eyebrows raising as she sought out the only other female presence in the room.

Beth just stared back at her, face stoic but eyes practically screaming expletives.

"Isn't it just," Newman chuckled back to him.

"I'll talk to the Head Nurse."

The Neurosurgeon shrugged as if it was nothing.

 Again, Beth and the trauma nurse exchanged a very brief look; they both knew that it wasn't that easy. If it was that easy then Mark would not have been wiped off of the board. Even Newman shot him a very skeptical glance.

"It's just one surgery," Navarro continued, prompted by the expression on his colleagues' face. His lips twitched into a grin that made Beth's skin crawl. "I've been known to be very persuasive--" Beth didn't like how his eyes flickered over to her. "I'm a go-getter and I always get what I want... What I want right now is Doctor Sloan assisting on this patient and getting his damn ears working."

"C'mon Cal," Newman said, smiling with an edge to it. "We can just wait for Powell, he's a good surgeon--"

"So's Sloan," was Navarro's reply.

For a moment, Beth couldn't quite believe that he was in his corner. She didn't want to have to like Doctor Cal Navarro, she really, really didn't want to have to like him. She was reminded of that when he looked at her, he had a very slimy gaze, the sort of eyes that would make the hairs raise on the back of your neck. Beth wondered what it would be like to assist through a surgery with both Navarro and Mark. 

"From what I hear he's more than a pretty face..."

"He's down on scut in the clinic..."

"You're wasting Sloan in the clinic?" Navarro's eyebrows raised and he scoffed openly, shooting Beth an exasperated look as if to say 'Do you hear this guy?'. She just eyed him stoically, opting to stay silent. "It's just one tiny complaint. If you really want to talk about misconduct you should've seen the shit I pulled in the 80s..."

Gross.

She'd participated in Navarro's surgeries before. 

They weren't particularly enjoyable. There was something pretty startling about a man who liked to shamelessly flirt over a cracked skull. Quietly, Beth watched him confidently walk out of the trauma room; she didn't know whether she wanted him to be successful or not. 

On one hand, Beth knew that Mark needed a surgery (she knew him well enough to know that he was very quickly going to go stir-crazy down in the non-emergent clinic) but on the other, Beth really didn't want Navarro to have that ego boost.

The nurses' face betrayed the frustration that Beth didn't have the energy to exude-- neither of them missed how blase the two surgeons acted when discussing the nurse issue. They'd laughed, as if there weren't very justifiably angry members of staff in this hospital. Beth let out a breath, averting her eyes from the trauma nurse and back onto the patient.

Poor guy. At least she was going to get a really interesting surgery out of so much pain.

A half hour later and Beth's was scrubbing at her knuckles, hands submerged under the faucet outside of the OR. Her scrub cap was fastened and she was gazing through the window into the OR, mind set on the next few hours.

 She didn't enjoy Neurosurgery much, it was far too precise and finicky for her, but watching it was definitely an experience in itself--

"Look chipper, Montgomery," Navarro said as he breezed past, entering into his OR. She could feel the sluggish drag of his eyes against her body; Beth bit into her bottom lip, burying her teeth there until he was out of the room. "You're about to witness genius."

Montgomery would've rather had a different 'genius'. 

As she watched the OR get set up and the patient be wheeled in, she found herself thinking how nice it would've been to work with her brother-in-law. 

Sure, Derk was a pain in the ass, but at least he wouldn't be trying to make hookup plans over an exposed brain. She thought about how she'd chosen ManWest because she'd thought it would be a good work environment...

Were all male surgeons this conceited? Beth didn't know whether she had the patience to find the answer to that question.

"Doctor Montgomery."

Talking of conceited assholes. 

She hadn't expected him to turn up but he did. 

The door swung open and the familiar scent of Mark's cologne prowled into the room, making her smile ever so faintly to herself. She didn't look up as he greeted her, just watched the soapy suds go down the drain. 

He chuckled under his breath, standing beside her and lathering his hands.

"Doctor Sloan," Beth greeted eventually, glancing over at him and spying the light sparkle in his eye. They met eyes only briefly, a fleeting glance that had Beth wondering what he was thinking about. She averted her gaze back down to the faucet and continued as if nothing had happened. "I'm surprised to see you in the OR today."

He hummed lightly.

"Believe me, no one is more surprised than I am," He lifted his head, watching as the OR slowly buzzed to life. 

The patient was in the centre of the room, head tilted to focus on the ice pick that was hanging out of the side of his head. They'd sawed it down to the head of the utensil with Navarro lingering over the fractured skull like some sort of gatekeeper. 

Mark sighed to himself, a brief look of exasperation falling across his face. "Apparently there's only two nurses in this hospital that want to give me the time of day..."

At that comment, one of said nurses appeared in the doorway, flashing a very short glare at the back of Mark's head. It was a brief drive-by of distaste and reproach; the two of them watched as the nurse reached over and grabbed one of the supply boxes in the corner, before silently (and angrily) disappearing back into the OR. 

Beth couldn't help but chuckle to herself; Mark's eyes flickered over to her immediately, a dent appearing between his eyebrows.

"Okay so maybe..." He trailed off, not sure whether to find it funny or sad, "Maybe it's just one."

She didn't say anything, just continued to scrub in, all while Mark seemed to try his best not to speak. 

He kept glancing over at her in sporadic bursts, enough for goosebumps to raise on the backs of her arms. She could feel his eyes against her cheek like the brief thud of rainfall against a window pane. 

He wanted to say something, there were words on the edge of his tongue-- Beth glanced up into the OR, and then over her shoulder to check if anyone was there.

"What is it, Mark?" She breathed, tone lowered into a breathy sound that was barely audible. 

He hesitated, which caught her off-guard; he barely ever hesitated, what was he about to say?

"I heard about the forms..." 

Ah. Beth realised exactly what he was talking about; the paper was locked tightly in her locker, far away from the work-focused tunnel she was trying to bury herself into. Immediately, at it's mention, she grew uncomfortable, her shoulders hunching and head bowing. He noticed it all, his jaw clenching at her discomfort. 

"Beth... we need to talk about it--"

"Not now," She said.

Maybe, she wanted to tell him that she couldn't possibly talk about this because they were metres away from their colleagues, moments away from a surgery. 

Or maybe she wanted to dismiss it because the thought of thinking about this whole situation made her break out in hives. 

The way he looked at her... it made her skin cover in goosebumps and her mind spin slightly. There was no sense of clarity when it came to Mark. Her thoughts seemed to get cloudy and her heart seemed to pick up and-- god, her Resident hadn't joked when he'd said that she'd end up on a gurney in the middle of an OR, sometimes Mark gave her a heart attack by just looking at her.

In this particular moment, it was linked to the way that she knew people could see the two of them at any moment. 

It was linked to the way that Beth knew that she was about to step into a room filled with scrub nurses, all of who had flirted and slept with her boyfriend. It was linked to the way that Beth could feel Navarro's greasy little eyes on her even from the next room over--

Beth hissed the final word between her teeth, "Later."

His brow furrowed but she could tell he understood.

Beth could feel the presence of it in the room. 

It was such a small room too, it almost suffocated her. 

There wasn't enough space in this narrow room.

Sometimes, it felt like there were three people in this relationship: Mark, Beth and the hospital.

 It hung very tightly over their heads, giving her the same chills she imagined a neck would feel under the axe of an executioner.

They each other's gazes for a prolonged few moments. She could tell that Mark had more to say. The thought of him speaking, suddenly, made Beth feel extremely clammy and unsettled-- with Navarro's impending harassment, this was the last thing that Beth could handle right now. 

Abruptly, she turned off the faucet, shook the excess water into the sink and turned away, continuing into the OR as if nothing was wrong.

Navarro gave her a wide smirk, waving her over towards the patient. Beth just inhaled sharply, silently accepting that this was how the next six hours of her day were going to pan out. 

"We're going to remove the axe from his skull and then we're going to assess the damage..."

He stepped backwards, talking Beth through the surgery. 

By the time he'd talked his intern through the process, Mark was entering the OR, hands raised in front of him as a sour-faced scrub nurse helped him prep. Beth glanced over at him very briefly; again, their eyes met, but this time, Mark was the first one to look away. He was followed in by a disgruntled Isaac, who appeared to be assisting on Plastics today. 

He, too, looked at Beth very briefly, but the echo of their argument from this morning made him grimace and avert his gaze.

Dumbass.

"Good to see you, Doctor Sloan," Navarro greeted, as his face mask was secured. With their faces all covered in masks, they were all reduced to pairs of eyes, wandering gazes and lifted brows. Mark nodded in Navarro's direction, completely distracted by the way nurses eyed him with reluctance. "I hear you've gotten yourself into a bit of trouble..."

"That's what I've been told," Mark said, his blue eyes avoided flickering in his girlfriend's direction. She stood beside Navarro as he took his position at the head of the gurney, preparing to start the surgery. "What's this guy's story?"

Their eyes all averted to the patient's scans; they were strung up on the wall like a set of very sorry party banners. 

All it took was a glance in Beth's direction to have her reciting the patient's information, she gestured to the areas of the scan as she spoke.

"Ahsan Heath, twenty-three, pick axe to the left side of his skull," Her voice was muffled by the face mask and her tone didn't waver, even when Mark glanced at her for a little too long. She kept her eyes solely on the illuminated image of a pick axe seconds away from entering Ahsan's frontal lobe. "The axe has cut just above his ear, and the scans show major damage to his auditory canal and there is major cosmetic compromise to his pinna-"

"Jeez," Mark breathed out, looking down at the chunk of metal that was still lodged in the side of the patient's skull. "Was it an accident?"

"Oh no," Navarro chuckled, looking over at the Plastic Attending as the scrub nurse set his optical enhancers in front of him. He peered down at the incision and Beth could tell he was grinning behind his mask. "Angry lover. Sound familiar?"

Mark didn't answer. He wasn't grinning. (There were apparently so many angry lovers in this hospital that Beth didn't particularly believe like she was the one Mark was thinking about.)

The surgery was spent with Mark and Isaac lingering about, constantly monitoring Ahsan's inner ear. They seemed to hover like wasps and Beth felt like swatting them away with the back of her hand. 

Their presences were so distinct; she'd grown to be so aware of Mark's presence, to the point where she could pinpoint exactly where he was in a room without even looking, and Isaac just exuded angry energy, the agitation rolling off of him in waves. Whenever Beth looked over at the fellow intern, she found herself wondering whether she was the reason for his ill temper--

No, Beth figured, as she watched him skulk at the end of the gurney, Something else must be going on--

"So, Montgomery," Her thoughts were cut short by a very rude interruption. Navarro was grinning at her, she could practically hear the gleam of his bleached teeth behind his surgical mask. "Is it just friends who call you Bethany, or what?"

She almost wanted to laugh, but she didn't. 

He was using that tone, the sort of tone that men used when they wanted to chat. Beth just looked up from the retractor in her hand, blinking at the Head of Neurosurgery as if she really couldn't care less what he was saying to her. (Spoiler alert: she really couldn't). 

The only person who seemed to care in the slightest was the Attending Plastic Surgeon at the foot of the table.

Beth sighed to herself.

"Bethany," Navarro repeated. He said it as if he was testing how it sounded in his voice; Beth supposed to be romantic in some way. She didn't exactly have the energy to tell him that it wasn't even her name. "It has a nice ring to it..."

Doesn't it? Beth wanted to say. 

Half of her wanted to play into this whole schtick and the other half of her wanted to tell him to stop talking to her; both were overruled by her self-respect and the want for high-profile neurosurgeries like these. As a result, Beth just opted for silence.

"Is it just friends?" He seemed to ask the question again as if Beth was actually going to answer. He was tireless and repetitive and the thought of having to go through this for six hours made Beth's stomach roll. "Do your friends call you Bethany?"

"I guess so," was Beth's response. It was half resigned and breathy and made Navarro nod thoughtfully. In reality, the only person who seemed to call her Bethany was Newman. She was convinced that was because he'd just assumed that was the only possible option-- for such a 'fantastic' doctor, he wasn't that sharp.

"Well," Navarro drawled, and once again, Beth could tell he was grinning at her widely. 

What a weird situation this was... here this grown man was, taking shards of metal out of the side of a patients head... all while looking at Beth as if they were in some questionable bar down a back alley. 

"I'd consider us friends, wouldn't you?"

Actually, Beth wanted to say, I'd consider us colleagues.

***

Mark wasn't having a particularly good day.

It'd started off good but had gone downhill very quickly. Between the lack of surgeries on the OR board and the dirty looks he was receiving from the nursing staff, Mark couldn't help but ask himself why he hadn't taken the vacation day that Newman had tried to give him. 

The head of plastic surgery had glared at him when he'd seen him enter the department, shot him a glower when Mark had asked to cover the department's Post-Ops and refused to help in the slightest. He'd sent him down to the non-emergent clinic, as if Mark wasn't an Attending with his own patients, and turned to one of the secretaries with a scoff as Mark left.

"I don't get what they see in that guy," Newman had said, and Mark had heard the end of it as he did a walk of shame that was unlike anything he'd ever done before. "He's not even sexy. I can give you young 'hotshot' doctor. I almost got a Harper Avery--"

Newman had been happy to send him on his way, while also telling Mark that he'd been pulled from surgery for the rest of the week. 

Apparently, it'd been Newman's choice and not the hospital board; the amount of glee on that man's face was enough for Mark to seriously consider giving him a piece of his mind. But, even so, he'd already lost one set of funding for his research project and couldn't afford to lose ManWest too.

That had left Mark sat in a trauma room, sewing facial lacerations and fulfilling jobs that were far lower than his pay grade. The head nurse, who ran the clinic, had seemed unable to keep her eyes off of him, warily eying him as he walked back and forth from patient to patient. He'd worked unassisted, only being approached when the head nurse (Wanda, as her scrubs told him) handed him a small white form.

 The elderly woman had given him a scathing look, hands on hips as he asked what the paper was for.

Her explanation had made him reassess coming into work today; in that exact moment, Mark's day had taken a complete nosedive for the worst.

"Can you page Doctor Montgomery?"

She'd stared at him as if she could tell there was something going on. 

Of course, there wasn't anything normal about having a Attending Surgeon stood in the centre of your clinic, leant against your desk with a very (not so) subtle ring of alarm to his tone. He'd flashed an easy smile, attempting to cover up the nervous twitch that was brewing in his face. Mark's justification was quick and sloppy.

"Or any, uh, surgical intern really--" Mark had grasped the form in one hand and rubbed at his chin with the other. Wanda's eyebrow raised and she just waited for him to pull whatever excuse he could find out of his ass. "But, um, Doctor Montgomery just expressed a specific interest in Plastics so I thought this would be a very educational case--"

She'd raised a hand, waving it to signify that she could smell the crap he was spewing. 

Inwardly, Mark grimaced; between Wanda's suspicion and the hellfire that was going to be dealt at Beth's hands, he figured that he would probably die today. He wasn't exactly that mad about it, either; if he had to choose between having an argument with his girlfriend and eternal peace he would've chosen the second option in a heartbeat.

He'd asked for Beth and they'd sent him Isaac instead.

The surgical intern had appeared with a thunderous expression, arms tight to his chest, descending like a storm cloud into the clinic. 

Mark had watched his arrival, muttering under his breath about how the Church and State metaphor seemed to be trying to spite him today. 

He had been able to tell from the way that Isaac didn't greet him and instead, glared rings into the hospital bed beside him, that Isaac really didn't want to be on Mark's service running the non-emergent clinic.

"Cochran," Mark was a good actor. His face had pulled into a good-natured smile and he'd raised his arms, gesturing to the (underwhelming) set of cases that lined the clinic beds. "Welcome to my exile."

Isaac had been less than amused.

Mark didn't like interns. 

He also didn't particularly like Isaac. So, he'd made Isaac go and get him a coffee from the cafe down the street. Then, once Isaac begrudgingly turned up with said coffee, Mark had sent him to go order some flowers ordered to Beth's apartment too ("I'm thinking big and pretty, the type that'll make you make out with someone instead of being angry") and Isaac hadn't asked questions. 

In fact, Mark had made Isaac do most of his chores all day; picking up his dry cleaning, getting Mark's lunch from the deli downtown, organising a preorder from a pizza place for his dinner, returning a phone call from Derek about this weeks meal plans...

It had resulted in a very reproachful Isaac stood at the foot of a hospital bed, a sub sandwich in his hand and a silent look of indignation on his face. There'd been a moment when Mark had caught Wanda's eye as she passed; her gaze reverbed through him, as if she was mentally questioning him why he'd requested an intern if he was just going to make him doing all of his housekeeping. 

That had caused Mark to wonder whether he really was just digging himself into a deeper hole--

"Next patient's all yours," He'd said loudly, more out of an inclination to dismiss the head nurse as she headed out of earshot. Again, Isaac did not look impressed at all; in fact, he was looking at Mark as if he knew something. It was a long, uncomfortable stare that had had Mark clearing his throat and changing the subject. "So my sub... extra mayo right--"

That had been the exact moment he'd been paged to the OR. 

It'd been Wanda's return alongside the buzz of his pager; Mark had been half inclined to just ignore it, but then she'd stood there, cocked her head to the side and grilled deeper with her skeptical eyes.

"Doctor Sloan?" He'd hummed lightly in response. "It's the OR for you."

Mark had meant it when he said that no one had been more surprised than he had. Stood across from Doctor Navarro in a surgery like this had been the last thing he'd expected after being stripped all of his surgeries. 

Even Isaac had been caught off-guard by the page, the disgruntled surgical intern now stood beside him as they monitored the extraction. Across from them, Beth was trying her best to concentrate on suctioning, and avoiding looking over in Mark's direction--

Mark couldn't help but glance over at her. 

There was something about seeing her stood in an OR, pursuing a career that she loved, that filled him with this sense of pride. She deserved good surgeries like this, she deserved to assist the Head of Neuro and learn from some of the best-- He kept looking over at his girlfriend... Over at Bethany.

His lips twitched as he heard the name. Bethany, Bethany? He'd never heard anyone call Beth that before. Their eyes met and they had a very brief moment of shared amusement. He could sense Beth's exasperation as Navarro continued speaking and Mark's attention piqued at the sound of the neurosurgeon's tone... was he?

He was.

"I'm a very good friend to have," Navarro commented. If Mark hadn't been able to see the glint in Navarro's eyes, he would've dismissed it as a very simple declarative statement. But no, this surgeon was flirting, right in the middle of the OR. "You look like you'd be a good friend too."

Maybe this surgery was less of a blessing than Mark had first thought. 

Not only was his intern in a bad mood but Mark was having to watch Navarro flirt with his girlfriend. 

He really should have taken that vacation day.

Beth didn't seem to share the same friendliness that Navarro did. 

She just gazed at him, a slight shadow looming at the back of her eye and spent the majority of the surgery just missing every single hit that Navarro threw in her direction. 

She was polite, making very professional conversation every time he dropped a comment here and there and ever so often, she would meet Mark's eye again. It was only fleeting.

He'd never been the jealous type, well, Mark had never had the reason to be jealous before. 

He didn't do this, the whole commitment to another person thing and he definitely didn't get jealous. He didn't know what the feeling was when he saw the way that Navarro looked at Beth, or maybe he did? Maybe he just didn't want to admit that Beth really did have that sort of hold on him--

Jealous? Mark almost scoffed at the thought. Jealous? He doesn't--

"Tell me, Montgomery," Navarro's voice wafted out from behind his surgical mask, eyes unmoving from the incision in front of him. "What does this look like?"

"Minor trauma to the prefrontal cortex," She replied with ease, following his direction. "The damage won't be clear until the patient is responsive in recovery..."

The two of them talked through the damage the brain had suffered as Navarro navigated through his repairs and Beth kept up with all of his instructions and questions. 

Mark had to give it him, he was a good teacher. Once they were finished talking it through, Navarro looked up at the surgical intern, eyes shining.

"I like a woman who can keep up."

Mark couldn't exactly figure out what he was supposed to do in the situation. 

Was he supposed to clear his throat? Was he supposed to make conversation? 

He did, very briefly. Mark asked Navarro about the weather (apparently, it was raining) and he asked whether Navarro had had any interesting surgeries lately (he had, he was very busy). However, every time Mark tried to divert the conversation back into professional territory, the neurosurgeon just seemed to find an excuse to flirt. 

Navarro asked Beth whether she liked the rain, she said no, so he said that it was a shame because his favourite thing to do outside of work is to sit in a bar down in the West Village while it rains and listen to Johnny Cash. 

Maybe you should join me sometime? Beth didn't answer. 

Maybe on my next surgery you can come watch? She just chuckled, but it lacked warmth--

Okay, so maybe he was just a little bit jealous.

He'd only felt jealous once in a relationship and that had been during college. 

She'd been a cheerleader and he'd found Beth's brother, Archer, flirting with her outside of his college apartment. A few days later, Mark had turned up to find out that his cheerleader girlfriend had broken up with him for the oldest Montgomery brother-- and so had started a venture into the fun life of hooking up with as many girls as he could manage in the span of a few months.

Huh, Mark thought to himself, Maybe I should find a healthier way to deal with my problems that isn't sex-- 

Beth glanced at him as Navarro attempted to smooth-talk. 

Her gaze was heavy and left a very hot feeling on his skin. It was the sort of look that told him that she definitely could keep up if he needed her to.

No, Mark resolved silently, mouth going dry. He was very, very happy to continue solve problems with sex. In fact, he couldn't think of anything better--

In a way, Mark wished that Beth was more like Isaac. The other surgical intern was so vocal and obvious about his anger; Isaac crackled like a electrical storm on the other side of the gurney, hard eyes stuck on the large shard of metal that was being removed.

 He was so loud and sudden and didn't need such a big flame to light his fuse-- the only time Beth he'd gotten a reaction out of Beth had been when he'd pushed her to her boiling point, pushed and pushed and pushed until she'd had no choice but to burst into flames.

"So, Sloan," Navarro cleared his throat, causing the Plastic Surgeon to be knocked from his train of thought. "All this trouble with the nurses... huh? Sounds like you've been misbehaving."

Again, Beth's eyes briefly met his. It was as if they were playing some sort of game, constantly testing each other to see whether they would stare back, but it was all in scattered fractures. A glance here, a fleeting glimpse there-- Mark just hummed to himself.

"It does, doesn't it?" Mark said with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. 

He could practically feel the silent chuckle that fell out of her lips. 

So, she still found it funny. Great. 

He could hear the strain in his own voice as he thanked the man who was hitting on his girlfriend in front of him. 

It made Mark's jaw clench very slightly. "I guess I have you to thank for convincing Newman to let me back into the OR."

"You're welcome," Navarro responded. Mark didn't particularly want his welcome. He wanted him to get his damn eyes off of Beth. "A word to the wise... do what you want, Doctor Sloan-- just don't get caught."

Don't get caught? 

It sounded like something shitty to say in the centre of a room of nurses. It reverbed around the back of his head and suddenly, Mark got very worried that this was the sort of jackass that he looked like when he made small talk.

 He didn't miss the dirty look that one of the scrub nurses shot between the two of them. Even Beth seemed to dim very slightly, she looked away, preparing to finish the end of her assist.

Don't get caught.

***

It rained all day.

Maybe the weather could sense the mood; it was a torrent of water, a violent downpour that had the streets flushed of people. Beth watched the storm roll over Manhattan as the sun set over the city. She stood at a window on the East Side and watched the clouds gather. 

She was busy, but that was her only pause, a moment of peace as she waited for her pager to ring out with the familiar scream. Faith stood beside her, leaning against the window sill with words heavy on her tongue; both of them had been so distracted all day, heavy under the weight of whatever was going on in their heads. 

They were both aware that the other had something that wanted to say, but neither of them had spoken.

It'd been an hour since Beth had left the surgery with Navarro, an hour since Navarro had turned to her, flashed her a smile and made a suggestive comment about her appearance. 

It'd been crude and had left a sour taste in her mouth. It'd been right at the end of a five hour surgery and Beth had cracked very slightly. It'd also been followed with a very vulgar laugh, one that had made the hairs on the back of her neck raise--

"With all due respect, Doctor Navarro..." She'd said, eyes blazing very slightly as she noticed how Mark's shoulders hunched. She was breathy, tired and really in need of another Adderall. "I have a boyfriend."

However, he'd taken it completely in his stride.

"Shame," Navarro had been nonchalant in his response. He'd let out this little sighed as if her response had disappointed him so deeply. But then, he'd chuckled again and shrugged to himself. "You look like you could handle two at once."

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck---

"Do you think I should lie?"

For a second, Beth thought that she'd said those words, she'd believed that her lips had betrayed her and spilled out those words that seemed to reverb through her skull over and over-- but no, it had been Faith who had spoken. 

The blonde's muscles were all tensed, back hunched as she rubbed at her face, jaded and uncertain. There was a very long pause, one shrouded in the startling confrontation of having to answer the same question you were languishing over; Beth's eyes turned to her and she attempted to execute a very nonchalant shrug.

"What's worse than Mark Sloan?" 

Her question carried a lot more weight than Faith realised; it was the vocalisation of the storm that had been building in Beth's own head all day. She chuckled in response to Beth's question, pressing a hand to forehead; she just laughed in dread. 

Beth's face stayed stoic, eyes closely following the wobble in Faith's posture.

Truthfully, Beth couldn't imagine anyone worse, but the problem was, she couldn't imagine anyone better either.

"It's not that bad," Faith admitted slowly, but then she winced at the thought of saying it aloud. "But it's disgusting and I'm disgusted by it--"

It then struck Beth how easy it would be to just say it: Oh hey, yeah you know that Plastic surgeon that slept with everyone and is now being threatened with a misconduct lawsuit against the hospital? Yeah, him-- I'm dating him. Out of all of the dumbasses in the world, I looked at him and went yeah, I'll fall in love with that one. 

It was easy, too easy. It was only a few lungfuls of air and a few seconds of consideration. But then there would come the justifications, the other seconds filled with thoughts and speech. 

No, I'm not sleeping with him for surgeries-- No, that was when we'd broken up-- No it's not like that it's--

"I'm sleeping with Isaac."

Faith's words were so out of the blue that they were able to cut Beth's train of thought in two. She halted completely, completely unprepared for that revelation. 

Her first impulse was to look over at the blonde and just stare (stare and stare and stare until Faith eventually looked back at her). She was so full of shame while doing so, Beth could feel it radiate off of her body. 

Faith had even flinched, startled by the sound of those words in the open. 

Beth watched her take her head into her hands and rake her fingers through her hair, massaging at her scalp.

"It's disgusting," Faith repeated, groaning into her palms. "I'm really not this girl-- I have standards... I dated a semi-professional basketball player in college... I once went out on a date with a guy who owned a Lamborghini Diablo-- I don't sleep with colleagues... I'm better than this-- but I'm sleeping with Cochran and I just..." Her ramblings were muffled as she sunk lower and lower. "Holy crap--"

"I'm dating him."

Admittedly, Beth hadn't really thought through her words before she'd said it. Instead, she'd just fired whatever ammunition that was on the tip of her tongue and figured that she could just improv from there. 

She let those words into the universe and was too exhausted to really make sense of her own mind. It was spur of the moment, a slip that left a terrible feeling in Beth's bones-- As soon as she'd spoken, she regretted it.

Beside her, Faith's head raised, a pair of confused and disturbed eyes fixing on Beth's own. Beth was too distracted by the alarm bells that were ringing in her head to understand how vague her words had been. 

Inwardly, Beth was begging her just to pass by it, thinking that Faith would immediately realise she was referring to Mark--

"You're dating Isaac?"

Aghast, Beth blinked at her. "Oh Fuck No."

Okay, maybe Isaac was worse. 

If Beth dated Isaac she didn't know what she'd do with herself. She suddenly understood Faith's despair, she understood why Faith had acted as if it was all a death wish. Although she would face little reprimand for it, there was still something very jarring about having people know that you were sleeping with Isaac Cochran of all people. 

Beth had honestly never met someone so.... Words truly failed her with that one.

"Sorry," She said as an afterthought, noticing how her reaction seemed to make Faith spiral deeper into despair. The other surgical intern waved a dismissive hand, eyes pressed against her fingers. "I meant... my ex, um," Beth wetted her lips with her tongue, struggling to figure out how she wanted to approach this. "I'm dating my ex again."

"The dog trainer?" Faith asked, looking over at her. 

It had made Beth chuckle; she'd almost forgotten that she'd lied to Faith and told her that her boyfriend was a dog specialist for a living (there was far too much irony in the idea of dating someone who was very succinct when it came to 'bitches'). She nodded silently, making Faith's eyebrows raise. "Even though he broke up over text--"

"Even though he broke up with me over text," Beth confirmed; she let out a long breath, at peace with the fact that she was hiding behind some fantasy scenario. She leant against the window ledge beside Faith, watching the rain as it started it's sorry fall. There was something oddly peacefully about watching it, seeing all of the people scatter below them, eager to get out of the way of the storm. "Wow, that sounds so dumb saying it aloud..."

It was nice, Beth found, to talk to someone about this that wasn't thrust in the middle of it. Sure, Faith was under the impression that they were talking about some dog trainer that she'd never met-- but Beth found it valuable to talk about this when she wasn't terrified of how someone would react. She hadn't been able to talk to Addison about it, she hadn't even brought it up to Derek, it just burrowed down in the space of silence when she was trying to sleep.

"God," Faith murmured. "Who allowed us to make decisions?"

"I'm at peace with my decisions," was Beth's response, although she realised that it wasn't exactly true. "Well, most of them at least..." She'd trailed off, spying the expression that passed over Faith's face. "Are you and Isaac..." Faith looked confused, not understanding what Beth meant; the brunette jerked her head meaningfully. "Are there... feelings there?"

"No," She scoffed at the thought. "God no, I hate him." In Beth's opinion, that was completely justifiable. "I look at him and get filled with so much anger... He's one of the most frustrating people I've ever met... and he's just so dumb and he's not even that attractive either..." Faith paused. She looked over at Beth with her round eyes, sighing under her breath. "But... then it's like... it's just--" A pause. "You know...."

"Ah," She knew exactly what Faith meant. "It's good, huh?"

"Really good," Faith sighed, she spoke with her hands, struggling to put the sensation into words. Beth just watched her, smiling as she was entertained by Faith's chaotic energy. "Angry and hot and... he's just... it's just... really good." A pause. "Is yours good?"

"So good," Beth answered immediately "Probably the best I've ever..." She cut herself short and let out a laugh, waving to her neck. "I mean... Clearly... but if he ever hears that I'm never gonna live it down--"

"Oh, he's that type," Faith recognised the look of instant regret on Beth's face; she laughed along with her, knowing all too well the problem with dating men with egos. "God complex, right?"

"Like you would not believe," The words were said with a fond but slightly pained smile. "He's an asshole. He irritates me like you really would not believe. My sister hates him... My parents hate him..." Beth looked down at the floor, almost bashfully, a sigh passing through her lips. "And I... I'm just in love with him."

A beat passed.

Faith was smiling at her. 

There was a softness in her eyes, it was tender and it made Beth's cheeks burn very slightly; she felt the need to look away, clearing her throat as the moment passed. How alien it felt to talk about Mark like this (or at least, Beth's personal life) in this hospital. She'd always left things like this at the door. 

She wasn't exactly sure what it was that was making her talk about him like this. Maybe it was because she found comfort in the fact that someone else didn't have a clue about what they were doing or because she knew that her world was very gradually starting to spin out of control. 

Either way, Beth pushed her hair behind her ear and found herself being honest.

"So what's the problem?" Faith asked, realising that, for the first time since meeting her, Beth was actually candid about her personal life. It was a rarity, something that she pounced on and intended to ride out. "Has he got a secret double life or something? What's the catch?"

Beth chuckled to herself. "It's stupid."

It was. It was so stupid. More than stupid, it was like a puzzle that didn't make sense to her, but she was being expected to solve it anyway. 

It had filled her ever since she'd heard the rumour circulating the hospital-- she was a fixer, she always needed to fix things, make things better. She wanted to fix this situation for Mark, but she couldn't bring herself to throw her career for him--

"No way..." Faith's eyes widened. For a second, Beth was scared she was going to say 'He's a senior surgeon, isn't he!?', but she didn't. Instead, she just laughed loudly. "Is he actually a vampire?"

"No," Beth said, eyebrows raising. She grinned at the callback to the earlier conversation as the amusement died slightly in Faith's eyes. But then Beth's smile faltered with a sigh. "God.. that would be so much easier--" Faith just stared at her, eyebrows hitched half way up her forehead. Another sigh. "It's just... when we were separated, he slept around... a lot. With a lot of women and it's all just coming back to bite him in the ass."

"Yikes," Faith sighed, her nose scrunching as she listened to what Beth said. "How many?"

"A lot, " Beth chewed on her bottom lip, eyes gazing off across the city. She chuckled to herself, secretly. "Let's just say if they formed a union against him... they'd be able to do some serious damage."

"Fuck," Faith replied, forehead folding in bewilderment; Beth felt that deep in her chest. Fuck indeed. If Beth thought about it for long enough, she felt truly overwhelmed. "Did he cheat?"

The question halted Beth completely. 

It was the sort of question that crept in very slowly and settled under the skin. Faith had said it so gravely that Beth couldn't quite digest it at first. She blinked, realising that she was holding her breath as if the whole world had ground to a halt. Beth didn't like that question. It sounded like the sort of question Addison would ask. 

It sounded like the sort of thing that Beth should have wondered but she hadn't. The question made her head spin slightly but there was something so abrupt and cool about her reaction that comforted Beth.

No, Mark wouldn't be that kind of guy. Not to her.

"I don't know," Beth breathed out. "I don't... I don't think so... " A nervous chuckle as Beth palmed the back of her neck. "I'd like to think he's the sort of guy who wouldn't..." The question dug deeper and deeper until it was all she could think about. "I mean... he's really not discreet with anything-- but I think I'm his first semi-serious relationship..."

"Oh that sucks," Faith breathed out, understanding the situation. She raised her head and just stared out of the window, fingers trailing over the cold windowpane. "I mean... it could be worse... You could be one of the nurses who got fucked over by Sloan... or you could be Navarro's wife."

The two of them briefly exchanged a look.

"Yeah," She forced a chuckle. It was strained. Her smile didn't meet her eyes. "Thank fuck for that."

"Do you think Navarro's wife knows that she's married to a scumbag?" Another question that had Beth thinking too hard. "I mean... what would make someone stay in a relationship with a guy who's just so... sleazy and just... has no respect for her.."

"Who knows," Beth said softly; she barely twitched as a clap of the thunder reverbed through the hospital. The window pane seemed to shake with the force of it. The storm had truly settled into the Manhattan streets. "Maybe she loves him too much to let him go."

Faith looked over at her. "I don't love Isaac." 

The other surgical intern just smiled. It was a small smile, the sort of smile that felt more sad than happy, but still carried an ambiguous quality to it, as if you couldn't quite be sure. 

Faith's head snapped back to the window. "I hate him."

"Hate sex is great," Beth commented off-handedly, as if it was a universally known fact. She said it with conviction causing Faith's eyebrows to raise and a laugh to fall past her lips. "If it's any consolidation... I hate Isaac too."

"Yeah but I'm sleeping with him," Faith responded, and sighed at herself. "He literally disgusts me... Earlier, when he was talking to you like that... I felt so ashamed and angry at him... I don't know what I'm doing... I really am better than this-- Like how am I supposed to... how do I work with him with everything that's happening?"

"Church and State," Beth murmured lightly, and chewed on the inside of her cheek as Faith shot her a questioning look. "It's a metaphor... seperation--" She paused, noticing how the blonde just appeared completely bewildered. "Thomas Jefferson said it once... I don't know it's just... it's kind of like a wall between the personal and professional."

"I don't know," Faith drawled, shaking her head. "I really don't know--"

"It's okay not to know what you're doing," It felt like the right thing to say. Beth spoke in a soft voice, one that caused Faith to pause for a second and just listen. "Half the time I get so stressed just... trying to figure out everything... and I think that's okay." A beat passed. "I used to know what I was doing, but now... now I have no clue what's going on."

It was at that interval, just between them speaking and the sound of the thunder booming through the city, that Beth fished out her Adderall and shook a pill into her hand, swallowing it dry. 

Faith watched, nose wrinkling slightly as she recognised what Beth was doing; she turned her head away, eyes widening as lightning cracked across the sky. It illuminated the way that Beth slipped the bottle back into the pocket of her scrubs.

"You'd make a good shrink." The comment came out of nowhere and made Beth laugh. The look that was shot in Faith's direction was chary and cynical, sparkling with slight amusement as Faith reinforced that belief with a nod. "You would! You would be really good! All this founding father quoting and shit--"

"Believe me," Beth interjected gently, "Me giving mental health advice is the last thing this world needs."

"No," Faith denied, shaking her head. "The last thing this world needs is more assholes like Navarro."

"Yeah," Beth inputted after a second of thought. "I'll second to that."

She really didn't like the Head of Neurosurgery, in fact a majority of the hospital staff didn't. He had a bad reputation, one that made Mark's look pathetic. 

It made Beth wonder how exactly he'd managed to convince the nurses to scrub in for the surgery with Mark... and more important it made Beth wonder how the hell he still had a job. He was vile, crude and Beth was still slightly reeling from his last comments. 

She made the resolution to beg Liam tomorrow morning to switch services.

"I don't want to have sex with Isaac," Faith said slowly, vocalising the thoughts that were swimming around her brain during the quiet spells. She rubbed at her face and groaned. "I think the whole hate part is the best bit of it... I think that's the only bit of it that I enjoy..." She then paused, looking over at Beth with a pair of torn eyes. "You were right, by the way."

"Right about what?"

"He has no idea where the clit is," Faith's words were low and slightly tortured, making Beth laugh loudly. 

There was something about the deep grimace on Faith's face that told Beth that this wasn't a joke at all. This was very, very serious. Still, Beth clutched her stomach, laughing as Faith just continued to grovel in self-pity. 

"The stupid idiot needs a fucking map."

"You poor girl," was Beth's breathy response, wheezing slightly as she recovered. "You poor, poor--"

"Can your boyfriend draw him a map?" The blonde asked, but it was more of a beg. Beth just laughed harder. "No, I'm being serious. I need help. Isaac needs all the help he can get. I'll even take a powerpoint or one of the anatomy models from the skills lab..." 

When Beth wasn't physically able to speak, Faith just sighed, gesturing to the hickey on Beth's neck. 

"I bet the shower mat knows what he's doing."

Oh, the shower mat knew exactly what he was doing.

"You would've thought that for doctors that study anatomy for literally our whole lives... he'd at least know the general area," Faith was talking to herself, shaking her head. "I can't believe I'm going to have to write his dumb fucking name on my sheet... even though the sex is...."

"You're not going to lie?" Beth asked quietly, feeling herself chill out immediately at the mention of the sheet. Faith shrugged to herself.

"Knowing Isaac he'd be a asshole and write me on there anyway," She fumbled with a loose thread on the bottom of her shirt, nose wrinkling. "It's just... bad. Out of all of the guys in this hospital it had to be... it had to be him." Faith seemed to wince at her own words, shaking her head. "I guess, yeah, I guess it could be worse and it could be Navarro or Sloan or... I don't know one of those weird janitors in the geriatrics ward..."

Beth didn't speak. 

She let herself listen to Faith's words, drinking them in and letting them submerge her thought pattern.

"I think I'm going to just do it," Her thoughts sounded as if there were reasonable and deeply considered. "I think I'm just going to write Isaac's name down and hope that... hope that some of the novelty comes off this whole thing, right?"

Faith looked over at Beth, her forehead crinkling.

"I think that's what makes me go back everytime..." The blonde continued. She spoke with her hands, face lined with concentration as she thought it all through. "I think it's the secret affair thing. The hot idea of sneaking around behind everyone's backs-- the sex is great, but it's not great. I think it's the secrecy and all of that... that's what keeps it good... Once people know we won't have that anymore."

Faith paused.

"Ugh, I sound crazy, don't I?"

"No," Beth said gently. "No, you don't."

***

Mark still wasn't having a good day.

He'd been sent back down into the clinic once his surgery was done; Newman had stood outside his OR and taken the personal liberty to remind him that he was benched. 

The walk of shame, again, had been interesting to say the least.

Mark was suturing a patient under local anaesthetic when Beth arrived; the patient hadn't been able to withstand needles without panicking so he'd been blessed with a quiet workspace to get his sutures finished. 

The contrast between the peace and silence of a unconscious patient and the jolting screech of the hospital curtain as Beth ripped it back was startling-- but Mark kept his cool, raising his head and smiling politely at the woman on the other side of the partition.

"Doctor Sloan."

Her voice was strained, face folded into a thousand folds as if she was an elaborate origami piece. 

She was tense, shoulders hunched and jaw clenched as he just continued to smile, Her eyes narrowed at him, her mouth fell into a thin line and she yanked the curtain closed behind her.

"Doctor Montgomery," Mark said lightly, still grinning as if nothing was wrong. "How are you today?"

Beth didn't look impressed. 

Instead, her face was completely stoic, eyes blazing through him as she wordlessly reached into her pocket, pulling out the form that her Resident had handed her. Silently, Mark stared at it. His smile faded slowly. He watched as Beth rubbed at her eyes, almost tiredly, heaved a breath and just blinked back at him, as if waiting for him to say something. 

When he didn't, she sighed again, inclining her head down towards the patient as if to question whether they could talk.

"Out cold," He confirmed warily, "I thought you could, uh, use this as a teaching opportunity--"

"They want names," Beth didn't seem interested in pretending. She knew exactly why he'd paged her down here, she'd known from the moment she'd read his message. "Did you know about this?" 

Her question was much quieter and hushed.

The clinic was busy today, a lot of background noise that was useful to cover up the sound of two surgeons talking in undertone. 

As if it would help, Beth pulled the curtains a little closer together, ignoring Mark's gentle pat on the stool next to him. She opted to stand in the corner of the section, arms folded over her chest and paper pressed against her chest. 

He could feel her eyes on him, heavy weights that made his chest feel tight. Mark continued his suture slowly, using the familiarity of his perfected technique to soften his nerves.

"They said they might do something like this..." He stared over at her slip of paper, identical to the one in his pocket. Gone was his blase smile and the cheerfulness of this morning's commute. Mark's jaw clenched and he shook his head. "I didn't think they'd..."

"Didn't think they'd what? Cover their ass?"

 Beth was deeply agitated, he could tell from the way her tone raised very slightly. He averted his eyes back to the patient, wondering whether Wanda could tell that there was a lot more than a teaching moment going on at this hospital bed. 

"They think everyone is just sleeping with each other--"

Mark grimaced. "Well, they're not wrong--"

"Not helping." She sounded like his parent more than his girlfriend. 

It reminded him of exactly why Church and State was in place. For a moment, their job titles were completely lost in translation; how tempting it would be for Mark to say 'I'm your Attending, you should watch your tone.' Instead, he just wordlessly watched as she shook her head. There were so many thoughts in her head that Mark could practically hear them fighting for dominance. 

"Did you get one too?"

He nodded.

"Right," She breathed out. It had felt like an obvious question but she needed to know. Mark paused his sutures and looked up at her, watching as she stuffed the "Okay...I'm gonna just leave it blank."

He didn't know what he'd expected, but somehow he found himself disappointed. She said those words matter-of-factly, as if there was no other option, and yet Mark felt his heart sink slightly. 

He knew what her mind was like. He didn't know what he'd thought paging her down to the clinic would achieve. Silently, Mark debated whether it was even worth it... 

Oh what the hell-

Meanwhile, the thought of writing Mark's name of the form terrified Beth deeply to the core. It was the same build of anxiety that she had had when it came to telling Addison over brunch; she'd found that situation so mortifying, it'd been so much harder than she'd anticipated, just to come clean. This, however, she couldn't even imagine doing. 

The thought of walking into the Medical Director's office and putting down her form and admitting that they'd been knowingly breaking hospital guidelines for such a long time— it made her skin crawl.

"I can't write your name and you can't write mine," Beth murmured, the sound barely audible. Although quiet, she sounded determined. She was giving him instructions as if she was the Attending in an OR and he was her intern. Mark's face contorted slightly but he stayed silent, watching the resolve form itself in her mind. "We need to lie... they won't know... no one knows—"

"Are you sure?," He asked tepidly, knowing that his words were definitely not what she wanted to hear. He spoke tiredly, with all of the exhaustion that he carried in his bones. Instead of being reassured, Beth just seemed aghast, staring at him with raised eyebrows. "Beth we can't do this for forever--"

"We can try," Beth nodded, trying to convince herself and Mark simultaneously. "You said... after Laurie's wedding that you'd try, remember-" He did remember. He remembered how he'd told Beth that he'd try, how she'd looked at him with those big round eyes and he'd told her that they'd try. "We're trying and it's working and we just gotta let this pass by--"

"And then what?" Mark asked, eyebrows bunching. He sounded exasperated, his face contorted and his raised enough for them to be worried that someone would overhear. "We spend our whole careers pretending that we're strangers?"

There was a muscle ticking in Beth's forehead, it twitched and spasmed and made Mark's chest squeeze. 

She was massaging her fingers, letting his words swim across her brain and settle into every crack and crevice. As she stood there silently, Mark thought about his own morning, of how Newman had so cheerfully stolen all of his surgeries, how Navarro had been so brazen and rude...

"Am I going to spend the whole of this relationship in an OR watching Cal fucking Navarro hit on you?"

He sounded agitated. He didn't want to sound agitated but he did. He was jealous and it really had taken a lot for him to walk out of that OR without giving that man a piece of his mind. 

He'd spent the whole of that surgery insanely jealous over the fact that Cal fucking Navarro could flirt with his girlfriend during a surgery but he couldn't.

"You're jealous?" Beth said. She seemed surprised. Her eyebrows rose and a sudden look of amusement danced across her face. "You're jealous of Navarro? Of Calvin Navarro? Of some middle-aged married douchebag who gets off on sexually harassing his co-workers?"

"You're surprised?" was Mark's response. His brow furrowed and he was filled with this sudden wave of frustration that was almost alien to him. "He's a piece of shit, Beth––"

"I don't need you to fight my battles, Mark," Beth's reply wasn't exactly what he wanted. The hilarity faded from her face and a muscle in her jaw clenched. "Navarro's an sleaze. He's unprofessional and he really deserves a nurse boycott-- but he's nothing I can't handle."

"I'm jealous because he gets to flirt with you at work while I can't," Mark continued, all in one breath. "I'm jealous because I have to stand there and pretend that I'm not the damn guy who gave you that love bite on your neck.... It's not right, Beth. You shouldn't have to handle it. It's disgusting and I wanted to give him a piece of my mind but I can't. He needed his ass handed to him. It's not right--"

"Says the man who literally has a protest against him for harassment right now."

It caught him off-guard. 

It caught him by surprise. Beth said those words and Mark halted in his speaking completely. He blinked at her. His sutures froze in mid-air. A hand wavering very slightly He tried his best to read the expression on Beth's face. 

She seemed to realise what she'd said. 

A sigh. A hand to her forehead and she sighed.

"Mark, I'm sorry, I know it's--"

"Newman took all of my surgeries," He hadn't complained about it to anyone yet and it felt like the perfect opportunity to voice his frustrations. As if Beth could sense it, she stood there, listening to his words; she was staring at his patient, watching as Mark simultaneously performed perfect sutures as if it didn't take any effort at all. "He stole all of my patients and put me in the research lab for the whole week as if I'm one of his interns."

His scoff made Beth flinch very slightly.

"It's a joke," His anger was restrained but it was visible, bubbling just beneath his skin. He shook his head, disgusted at the situation. "None of the scrub nurses will assist my surgeries and most of my procedures have been pushed back until next month... next month... that's doubling the complication risk because my patients trust me and are willing to wait--"

She didn't speak, just listened to him completely disregard the boundary in their relationship; Beth found herself not particularly minding, it was as if a damn had blown, spewing a tidal wave of pent up frustrations. 

Softly, she rounded the bed and stood beside him (closer for it to be deemed professional) and just lingered there, like a shadow behind him. 

She watched the hair raise on the back of his neck as she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I don't know what to do," Mark admitted.

He didn't admit things like this. 

She could hear the twist of his tone, feel the tension in his back as she trailed her thumb over his scrubs. There was something so bittersweet about hearing him admit it, admit that he was stuck and didn't know what to do. He was always so sure of things, always so confident and unwavering... 

Beth hated to say that she was subtly surprised that he was so affected by this situation. Mark glanced up, realised that he was rambling and grimaced. The look of regret made Beth's stomach twist.

"Shit, you probably don't want me to--"

Church and State. Beth could feel the presence of it in the room. It hung very tightly over their heads, giving her the same chills she imagined a neck would feel under the axe of an executioner. 

She could see it in Mark's eyes as he cut himself sort, face twisting as she just stared back at him. She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to do either--

"My resident said I'd be on scut if they found out I was sleeping with you," It felt redundant to say it, but it felt right. Mark couldn't help and even if he could, they both knew that she wouldn't have let him. "If they found out that I'm involved with you... I..." It hurt to think about. "I can't... I don't even know... How do I..."

"Church and State," Mark said warily, as if it was something that stop this whole situation from unfolding.

The sigh Beth let out was tired. 

She admired his sutures with a sad smile. He was so careful, so gentle and precise in his work that she truly couldn't have imagined him being as mindlessly cold as the nurses seemed to perceive him as. 

Her hand fell from his shoulder and she idly wondered whether he could feel it's absence.

(He could.)

"The Church is on fire and the State is catatonic," She shook her head. "God this is a shit show."

She hadn't imagined her day going like this, but arguably, she figured neither had Mark. He was the sort of guy who lived without truly considering the consequences of his actions. 

Beth was the opposite; she constantly lived while fearing the inevitable next steps, living her life with a far too much regard for consequences.

"Aren't we supposed to be one of those things?" He appeared very briefly alarmed, eyes raising to watch as Beth frowned at him. "I think that's how the metaphor works right... Work is Church and we're State or vice versa--"

"Honestly I have no fucking idea anymore," Beth cut him off, "All I know is that I'm supposed to be in Neuro right now and instead I'm here trying my best not to have a nervous breakdown."

"We don't have to do this," Mark began, "Fuck what they think... Fuck Church and State... let's just get this over with and let them all know that we're dating and--"

"It's not that easy--"

"It can be," He said, shrugging as if Beth had been complicating things from the beginning. She folded her arms over her chest and just stared at him, watching as he voiced the thoughts that crept around his brain when he thought about the two of them. "It's really easy. You write my name, I write yours--"

"And then what?" She asked, eyebrows pulling downwards into a miffed frown, "And then everyone calls me a skank and I spend the rest of my career being the intern that slept with a Plastic Attending 'to get ahead'."

"But you're not--"

"They don't care," Beth said, "They call it as they see it... just this morning I had Faith asking me whether I was sleeping with Navarro just because he paged me over her and Ashley..."

"Beth--"

"Mark..."

She sounded so small, so quiet. It was the sort of tone that made Mark wonder whether she was just breathing and not speaking at all. The surgical intern took a few steps towards him, to the point where she was too close to be deemed professional. Her hand lingered on his arm, a fleeting brief touch-- 

"I can't be that girl."

"I know," He responded, feeling his shoulders hunch slightly. "But you're not that girl--"

"People don't know that," She muttered. 

Her fingertips pressed against his shoulder and Mark found it very hard to concentrate on his work-- he glanced backwards to see a sad smile on her face. She walked onwards, circling the small space and leaving a cloud of her perfume in her wake. 

"They'll look at my name and your name and... they'll just pin as some..."

It hurt to even imagine.

"I'll be a slut whose sleeping her way into the OR." Her brow folded as she thought about the altercation she'd had earlier that morning with Isaac. Mark couldn't hear the words that still bounced around her head, the dirty looks she'd gotten for just having the audacity to have a hickey. "And I can't... I can't be that girl, Mark."

He stared at her.

"I mean... Do you want to be that girl?" 

Beth just looked at him, thoughts whirring as he tried his best to ease the tension. The timingof his joking was off. It didn't help. When she didn't say anything, Mark just sighed. He nodded very softly, realising that there was a lot more at stake than he'd realised. 

"I know you're freaking out right now and I understand that completely--"

"I've worked my ass off," She said with equal quiet, softness. "I'm working so, so hard at the moment to build a career and I can't let this ruin it--"

"Are you sure you want to--"

"Mark..." 

He didn't like the way she said his name. It was tired, wavering, her face screwed up into an expression of disarray. He didn't look up, he just finished a line of sutures and sighed to himself. Beth chewed on her bottom lip. 

"Don't write my name."

"Beth-"

"Please..." 

The last time she'd begged him like this was when she'd asked him not to walk away. He couldn't help but look over at her. She looked uncomfortable, eyebrows drawn downward and hands clasped tightly. Beth seemed to sway from foot to foot, appearing to want to leave rather than see this conversation to it's end. 

"We can talk about this later I... just..." Beth paused, dragging in a breath. Later. There was that word again. "I gotta go do my final rounds, Faith is waiting for me--"

"We're okay, right?"

It was the thought that crept at the back of his head, the question that liked to appear when Mark thought about this whole situation. 

He knew that it wasn't good, he knew that this wasn't fair on Beth at all, he knew that he'd really fucked up-- this was all because he hadn't been able to keep it in his pants, all because he'd used their breakup as an opportunity to fall back into bad habits. 

This nurse coup had fucked everything up, this document... that list of names--

Sometimes it terrified him how scared he was that Beth would just decide that this was all too much, that Church and State wasn't worth it at all and that they'd be better off forgetting this whole relationship.

Beth, who had turned to leave, looked back at him, a dent between her eyebrows. 

There was a noticeable pause, one in which she just frowned at him, as if she was bewildered why he would even ask the question. It relieved him to know that she didn't have it on her mind at all.

"Church and State," She breathed it out, syllables more like a rush of air than words, "Why wouldn't we be?"

Why wouldn't we be? 

It felt almost like a challenge. If there was anything the conversation with Faith had achieved, it had been Beth's realisation that she really didn't want to break things off with Mark. She really wanted to hold onto this for as long as she could. 

Faith had said that she wanted Isaac to go away, and taught that in taking away the secrecy of their relationship-- but Beth did not feel the same way. She didn't want Mark to go away.

It sounded like a challenge.

She didn't even make it to the elevator back to the surgical floor before challenge came her way. It came in the form of a familiar face at the end of the corridor, one who's eyes seemed to zero in on her as she pressed crossed the hallway. 

Beth heard someone's pace pick up, as if they were eager to fall into stride with her-- by the time she'd realised what was happening, someone was stood at her side.

Isaac.

She didn't greet him, she didn't exactly have the energy or the patience to deal with any more of his shit today. In fact, she was pretty much done with toxic men for the day; Beth's plan for the evening was to finish her shift and then go pick up whatever cover work she could find in the clinic. 

She was going to cope with this issue the way she always did: She was going to work through this.

Isaac tended to hang around like the permanent fixture of a sleep terror. He was persistent; her lack of a greeting was nothing to dissaude him. 

His presence was constantly so loud, so angry, that Beth had to look away. He had that same look on his face as he'd had earlier, the distinctive expression of a person who was definitely not happy about something. However, there was something different about him, she couldn't quite tell what it was. 

Maybe it was the reproachful sparkle in his eye, the slight twitch to his lips... whatever it was, it made Beth uneasy.

Immediately, she thought about the conversation she'd had with Faith; did Isaac know that she knew? 

Come to think of it, Beth didn't think she'd ever seen Faith and Isaac have a conversation that wasn't an argument. Did they even have serious conversations? Did they talk about things, or did they opt for arguing and sex over simple communication? 

Suddenly, the thought of Faith and Isaac existing outside of the hospital made Beth's head hurt. She couldn't even begin to imagine what it was like to have a conversation with this stupid idiot of a man--

Beth was immediately caught off-guard by a slow, mischievous smile that spread gradually across Isaac's face. It was very slow, the slowest expression that Beth had ever seen and she found herself unable to look away from his face as it appeared. 

It was the sort of smile that implied that something very bad was about to happen.

And so, something bad happened: "You're fucking Sloan."

Beth was beginning to really hate declaratives. 

His words were spoken with the same certainess that Faith had said 'definitely'. It was a statement, not a question but a statement. It wasn't a hypothesis like the beginning of all of those medical journals and experiments Beth had studied in college, it was Isaac's conclusion. The full stop was definitive, the syllables were plots on a graph and his smile was the acknowledgements at the bottom of the page. 

It was as if he'd gathered all of his evidence and this was the final result: three words that made Beth's chest jolt.

Beth froze. She actually stopped. She fell to a dead halt in the middle of a stride. This time, Isaac hadn't tried to keep up with her. He was still stood there, arms crossed over his chest, when Beth very slowly turned to look at him. 

There it was again, that dumb fucking smile-- it was the sort of expression Beth could imagine on the face of a predator when they'd cornered their prey. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

She couldn't put in words how chaotic her mind was in that moment. 

Her thoughts were a spiral of questions, of alarm bells ringing and words that were definitely not safe for work. She was trying to form together an argument, a rebuttal, as if she was a lawyer trying to build a case to defend herself-- this all happened within a span of microseconds.

Beth opened her mouth to speak, feigned a look of abhorrent disgust and let out a laugh that had his eyebrow raising. 

It was an exhausted laugh, a miffed laugh that was so deeply rooted in the tiredness of a girl who had worked her ass off so much over the past year. It almost brought tears to her eyes.

God, what a fucking mess this was turning out be.

***

Mark had become accustomed to being the first person back to Beth's apartment.

He couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment where they'd unanimously decided that her apartment was the place that they went every evening, but he had to say that he liked it. 

His apartment, which loomed on the opposite side of the city, sometimes felt a bit too far away. It was cold and too empty during the winter months and Beth's apartment felt so warm when the lights were dimmed and the curtains were drawn. He couldn't quite explain what was so different about sleeping in Beth's bed to his but he preferred hers to his.

He was always the first through the door in the evening and always the last to leave in the morning. 

She'd joked about it too: "It's more your apartment than mine", the comment had been said as she rushed out of the door with a coffee in one hand and her on-call bag in the other. 

Mark didn't know whether he agreed, the apartment was just so outwardly Beth that Mark couldn't ever imagine it being anything but hers-- it felt a lot like the inside of her head, cluttered but organised in a time-efficient way that only seemed to make sense to the one person it needed to benefit. 

Even so, she barely ever seemed to linger home long enough for him to be able to picture her in each room; Beth spent far more time in on-call rooms at the hospital or dozing on the subway. 

She seemed to exist in very short bursts of time, a flicker of her pouring french press coffee, a glimpse of her in the shower or a face hovering beside the comforter on the bed.

It wasn't a lot of time at all. She liked to keep busy, Mark knew that, but he just wished that they'd have more time.

Maybe that's why he was surprised to see her stood there. Specifically, stood in the elevator, dressed in his shirt and gazing at her cell phone, no uniform in sight, no trace of hurrying to a double-stacked shift or a bar-- 

Just Beth, standing in a elevator on her own, purse over her shoulder and brow furrowed very slightly as she read a message. Mark raised an eyebrow, clearing his throat as he stepped into the small space. 

Her head raised, brown eyes fixing on him as she noticed that, he too, was dressed for the end of his shift. There was no one behind him waiting for the same elevator. The door closed and left the two of them alone, listening to the mechanics as the tiny metal box was lowered through the building.

"Doctor Sloan," Beth's greeting was said with a small, amused smile. He stood at her side, watching the floor counter very slowly decrease. He wished that it would go slower.

"Bethany."

In his peripheral, Mark saw her smile twitch wider. 

She chuckled to herself, dragging in a long breath. She shook out her hair, running her fingers through it as if she'd forgotten a brush (Mark didn't doubt it, she had the habit of leaving things behind in her apartment (often, he was one of them)).

"Asshole," Another eyebrow raise on Mark's part, he almost couldn't hear the comment as she sighed it under her breath. 

He looked over at her, his brow furrowing with a faux offence.

"That's not the way to talk to your Attending..."

"If the shoe fits..." Beth responded with ease, averting her eyes back down to her cell phone and smiling to herself. "I would say bite me but... oh wait," The surge of sarcasm made Mark roll his eyes, chuckling to himself. "You already did."

Sometimes, Beth was too fast even for him; her replies fell like the crack of the whip, fast, scalding and perfectly placed. Half the time, she didn't even have to look at him as she spoke. There was something so expert about the way a smile lingered in the corner of her smile as she just let time pass by. 

She finished on her phone and just looked over at him, eyes sparkling slightly as Mark wondered what he should say-- he was still reeling from their conversation earlier, the way that Beth had begged him not to write her name on that piece of paper...

"Are you finished for the night?" 

His question was nonchalant, and an outsider would've interpreted it as an innocent enquiry. Beth smiled lightly. 

There was an almost exhausted edge behind it, a slightly sad curve that had his head tilting to the side slightly.

"Yep," She replied, popping the 'P' at the end of the word, "Doctor Carmichael is covering my shift in the clinic..."

"Ah," Mark raised his eyebrows, both surprised and delighted by the revelation. He dug his hands into his pockets and nodded thoughtfully. Beth never got her shift covered, that wasn't usual behaviour. "Is there any reason for that... any plans for the evening?"

He couldn't decide whether Beth coming back to her apartment early was a good sign or very, very bad. She seemed to sense his apprehension; Beth nodded slowly even going as far to shrug as if she was about to talk about watching a movie or going to the store.

"Yeah, I'm going to have an argument with my boyfriend."

He stared at her profile, head raising to just watch her; he couldn't pinpoint what was worse, the nonchalance of her voice or the way that his stomach dropped out of his ass. 

She wasn't looking at him, instead she was just watching the floor count drop as they descended through the hospital. The elevator paused, the doors opened but no one entered. 

They closed and allowed Mark to think of a reply.

"Lucky guy," His voice was slightly strangled. 

He missed the way that Beth smiled faintly at his response. She turned her head away to hide it, taking time to read a flier that had been pasted to the inside wall.

"Isn't he?" She mused indifferently.

Meanwhile, Mark was wondering how the hell he was going to survive the night; he'd seen Beth angry at him once, that had been after he'd accused her of having a pill problem. 

It'd been borderline nuclear fallout, never had Mark been so simultaneously terrified and turned on at the same time-- He'd learnt very quickly to not underestimate Beth's wrath. She was more like Addison than she realised.

"I'm going to go home... I'm going to open a bottle of wine and then I'm going to argue with him," She was planning it out right in front of him, musing over the idea of it as if she'd been looking forwards to it all day. In her peripheral, she watched him grimace faintly; she almost missed it, but when she did catch it, her lips twitched into another grin. "I'm going to make him order me a pizza, maybe have a shower and have some really angry, hot make up sex."

A breath caught at the back of his throat as he listened to her words. 

At first, the word 'angry' was all he could hear. He'd been wondering how angry Beth was with him all day-- between the way she'd burst into the clinic and the fire in her eyes... he'd figured that she was pretty pissed. 

But then he got to the end of her sentence and his eyebrows raised higher and higher and higher until they almost disappeared into his hairline.

God, she was going to kill him one day.

"Those sound like some pretty interesting plans," Mark cleared his throat, fully aware of the way that Beth chuckled at him. ("Aren't they just?") He stuffed his hands into his pockets and shifted from one foot to the other. He pressed his lips together, squinted at the walls and then hummed to himself. "A shower before sex? That doesn't sound very efficient."

She raised an eyebrow at him.

Mark just shrugged. "Personally, if you want to be efficient I'd say shower and sex, two-in-one."

Beth laughed. Mark watched her grin at the wall and he felt his palms go slick. She had a really pretty smile, it was quite possibly the nicest smile he'd ever seen. It wasn't particularly model-worthy, not the sort of smile that would be postered on the side of buildings or signs, but the sort of smile that made him smile back. It was as if it was an infection, one that crawled deep under his skin and made his mouth twitch. It left him very slightly breathless.

They reached the first floor and she walked out first, leaving him to hold his car keys and wonder whether the rain had slowed. It hadn't, they could see the torrents of precipation as it sleeted down, out of the thunderous clouds. It was going to be a stormy night, he could tell from the way the sky swirled and flickered with light. 

He watched, out of his peripheral as Beth seemed to sigh to herself, chewing on her bottom lip. They crossed the reception with Beth's nose wrinkled as if she was deep in thought. 

Stood underneath the shelter of the hospital entrance and wincing at the weather, Mark knew exactly what she was thinking-- she didn't like the rain.

"Should I bother asking?" 

His question made her eyes flicker to him, as if she was alarmed at the idea of him being able to read her mind. He stood on the edge of the shelter, holding his car keys, withstanding the electricity of a woman who was running on nothing but the pills in her pocket. A beat passed. 

He crossed his arms over his chest. "It's pretty cold out here. It's miserable and pretty wet--"

"I appreciate it, you know that?" Beth said softly, mimicking the gesture and pulling her coat close to her body. "The way you offer... every time even though you know I'm going to say no..." His smile faltered very slightly, but it lingered like the burn of her perfume at the back of his throat. "I appreciate it."

"I guess I keep hoping you'll change your mind," was his quiet reply.

"I did," She reminded him of that morning.

He nodded. "You do."

Mark didn't really like talking about his feelings. 

He didn't like that extension of vulnerability. He didn't like the fact that Beth, in particular, made him feel as if he'd been burned to the core, leaving the debrided flesh underneath exposed to the air. 

Sometimes, he was revisited by the panic that he'd felt when she'd told him that she loved him; it was finicky and flighty and made him think that this vulnerability and commitment shit wasn't worth it-- but then he'd see the way Beth looked at him when she thought he wasn't looking and Mark realised that he'd be pretty dumb to throw it all away. 

But offering her a ride into work, doing menial things like making her coffee and flirting shamelessly, that, that was something Mark could do.

"I'm angry," Beth's words didn't surprise him. 

He supposed that what did surprise him was the fact that they were still stood outside the hospital as she spoke. Her eyes were cast to the side as she was deep in thought. Mark just nodded again, voice locked very tightly behind a stoic expression. 

"More than angry sex angry," Beth specified after a moment, "I'm angry-at-the-universe-angry and angry at your dumb, handsome face angry."

He could tell. She wasn't particularly vocal in her anger and sometimes, Mark could tell that her own frustration scared her. 

She was avoiding looking at him, barely even flinching as more thunder rolled over the city.

"I want to be completely mad at you," She continued, rubbing at her face tiredly. "I want to be angry that you slept with all of those women instead of being with me but I... I don't have the energy to do that and I think I have more self respect than that."

He didn't know what to say to that.

"I don't like being angry," Beth continued, this time, meeting his eye. "I don't want to be angry, Mark. I... I want to be the sort of girl who can do everything I know you want to do-- I want to drive with you to work.. I want to flirt with you over surgery, not Navarro. I want to have weird On-Call Room sex that's actually... when you think about it, really unhygienic and not professional at all-- I want that. I really do... but you're Mark Sloan and I'm Me."

Another pause of silence.

"You fucked up," Her voice was cool and even and it made Mark's chest tighten. He went to speak but she shook her head. "No, I'm not talking about the hickey-- I'm talking about the fact that there's sixty other women in this hospital who have this hickey too, that you went around and you slept with so many women and then you tossed them aside." She paused, shaking her head at how it sounded aloud. "Mark, that's not right."

"If this is about the break I--"

"No, it's not about me," Beth cut him off as he attempted to re-engage with the same conversation they'd had back at that wedding, sat outside the reception. She had the same expression on her face as she had had then; bunched eyebrows, no smile on her lips. "This is about how people like you and Navarro seem to think you can just treat the female staff members as if... as if we're entertainment or placeholders."

He was immediately reminded of the way his skin had crawled in that OR, of how he'd been fixed with a jealousy that he didn't even truly understand-- he also really didn't like being placed in the same category as Navarro. 

He wasn't sure whether it was out of pride (he didn't like being associated with a man who was so blatantly unattract, surely he deserved better?) or out of the pure impulse to be perceived as a decent human being--

"Mark, I know you," She sounded breathless and hopeless and more sad than angry. "You don't belong with Navarro. You're not... you're not the sort of guy who would corner someone like that-- You fucked up. The person they know, the person that the nurses think you are is not the guy who I come home to."

Beth needed him to understand, he could tell. It felt very different from the argument they'd had when he'd confronted her over her pill use. There had been fall out, there had been raised voices and he'd just wanted to help, to look after her-- Mark had the feeling that now, Beth was trying to do the same for him. 

Her anger and discomfort was founded in the fact that she didn't agree with his inconvenience but with the nurses who he'd picked off one-by-one. He stared at her, aware of the fact that there wasn't enough space in this conversation for him to speak.

"You're a good guy," Beth said; she took a few steps towards him and seemed to linger on the fine line that laid between professional and unprofessional. "When I look at you I think of the jackass who sometimes burns my morning coffee and uses all of my hair conditioner and thinks I don't notice--"

"It smells really good."

His very quiet interruption made her laugh. 

It was a welcome intermission in the conversation topic. Her eyes scrunched up, her head bowed and she giggled to herself, nodding in agreement.

"It does," She said back to him. Then she paused, dragging in a breath and looked at him. It was a look, the sort of gaze that made him think that Beth was staring straight into his soul. She sighed, a rush of air that reminded him of airplane jets preparing to depart. "What are we going to do with you?"

It was the second time she'd asked that question that day. 

He was beginning to think that maybe it was a projection of her own internal voice. Did she ask herself that often? Was he almost like this inconvenient thing that she couldn't handle without deep consideration?

"I vote for pizza, wine and sex," Mark didn't exactly know how to answer that question seriously. Was he supposed to answer it seriously? He wasn't sure whether it was rhetorical or not. By the way that Beth rolled her eyes, he guessed that she hadn't expected him to answer seriously at all. "Exactly in that order would be nice--"

"Yeah well... with the way my day's going that wine is going to need to come first," She shook her head, as if she couldn't put into words how the last twenty-four hours of her life had been like. Silently, Mark sympathised with her, he was far happier to leave this place than he'd admit. "I don't usually want to just walk away but... with Navarro and the whole coup thing" Her voice trailed off and she laughed to herself. "God, I sound pathetic."

"You sound normal," was all Mark could manage in reply.

"I sound like I'm in love with an dumbass," Beth retorted, looking over at him with those round, brown eyes. He felt his heart jump into his throat as she sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. "For the record, you are a dumbass and I am very in love with you."

Her admission was small and made him pause completely. It was said quietly with a breathlessness that caught him unaware. There they were, stood alone underneath the hospital cladding, with wind rustling them and the stray rain drop making it's fleeting assault-- and Beth hugged her arms to her chest and looked at him as if she was just realising how tired she was. 

They stared at each other for a few moments. He smiled at her, but in this tired way that matched the mood.

"You're an asshole," She continued, "You fucked over all of those women, but I know that you're not a creep like Navarro and I know that you care that people are mad even though you probably will never apologise for it." A pause. "You're an fucking asshole, but you're my asshole, so... do better, babe."

It felt as though they were teetering on the fine line between Church and State. Beth had blitzed her way into professional waters and Mark was left just staring at her, heartbeat hammering against the inside of his chest. She stared back, face twitching as she tried to figure out whether she'd said all she wanted to say. 

A breath.

"I don't want to be Monica Lewinsky," Beth said it with conviction in her eyes and a slight frown. "I just want to be Beth. Or, if I have to be someone, I want to be Ellis Grey or..." She heaved a breath as she scrambled to think of someone she looked up to. " And to get to that-- If lying to a hospital board over a shitty sex list is what it's going to take and watching you get your ass handed to you rightfully by a group of understandably pissed off nurses.... I'll do it because I deserve to get what I want-- and I want you and this hospital. Don't make me choose. Don't make me second guess-- I want both."

There was another halt in the universe, a moment of temporary silence as Mark listened to her words. Behind them, the thunderstorm continued to whirl across the city, tousling Beth's hair as she pushed it out of her face. 

She pressed her lips into a grave line and waited for his response. He waited a few moments before nodding.

"Okay," Mark said finally. She seemed relieved to hear a voice that wasn't her own. Beth swallowed thickly and nodded back to him; the breath she exhaled seemed to deflate her, her shoulders sinking. He managed to don a faint grin. "Okay... So what's the plan Ellis Grey? You're gonna become a hot-but-still-very-respectable, kickass surgeon and then what?"

He wished he could've taken a picture of the smile that dawned across her face. It was the sort of expression that made him realise that she could've probably asked the thunderstorm to stop if she tried. 

The same determination and power that thrummed away in her eyes was the same flame that Navarro had been drawn to in that OR-- it was the same force that drew Mark in like a moth to a flame. It shone in the way her cheeks flushed with red in a momentary moment of bashfullness.

She drew the collar of her jacket tight up to her chin, the hickey on her neck submerging in a mess of canvas and hair.

"World domination," Beth responded with ease, eyelashes barely flickering as Mark's lip twitched fondly.

"Wow."

"And if that doesn't work out I'll just settle for being one of the most successful female surgeons in history," She shrugged as if it was barely anything. Mark felt his chest grow warm. "But y'know, either will do."

He let out a low whistle. "Big plans."

"Is that a problem?" She asked innocently, tilting her head to the side. "Scared you can't keep up?"

The question made him laugh. 

It made his shoulders fall and his chest reverb and his face to scrunch as if he was a piece of paper that had been tossed into the back of a wastebin. He didn't miss how Beth's eyebrow cocked slightly, but a playful, flirty light sparkled in her eyes.

"Oh you know I can," Mark's reply did not disappoint her. She flashed a smile that was all pearly whites. He massaged the back of his neck and glanced over her shoulder, noticing how they had barely even left hospital grounds. He looked between her and the turn in the conversation and chuckled to himself. "Damn, and here I was really looking forwards to the angry sex--"

"There is so much rage inside this woman you have no idea," Beth interjected, rolling her eyes as she adjusted her shirt. "I had to stand through a five hour surgery with Doctor Navarro today. I have enough rage to feed a whole village. But... If you call me Bethany one more time--"

"Jeez," Mark's eyes widened slightly. "And here I thought the hickey was the the worst thing--"

"Oh, you're still not off the hook about that Sloan--"

"C'mon It came from a place of love--"

"Love, my ass."

"I do actually now you mention it--"

"You'll enjoy me walking away from you, then.."

She actually snorted. 

It was loud and sudden and before he could even realise what was happening, Beth was walking. He was caught off-guard by the suddenness, she walked past him, wincing as she stepped into the onslaught of the rain. When she realised he wasn't following, she turned to him, shielding her face with her hands as a roll of thunder purred through the air. 

The rain battered against her, drowning out the wicked smile that appeared on her face.

Mark just blinked at her, not quite sure what she was doing. The subway was in the opposite direction--

"Well?" Beth said pointedly, cocking her head to the side. "Aren't you gonna drive me home?"

Good lord, Mark thought to himself as he followed her out into the rain, she really is going to be the death of me.

He spent the majority of the drive back to her apartment thinking about it. About the way that Beth had stood there in the middle of a storm with challenge in her eyes. 

And then, eventually when they'd laid in bed that evening, listening to the fury of Mother Nature against the window pane, Mark had thought about how she probably didn't need him at all. 

She didn't need this drama, she didn't need this nurse contention or the boys club schtick or the way the world seemed to be turning upside down-- but she wanted him.

Beth wanted him and he wanted her.

(But the problem was, sometimes, Mark felt like he needed her too.)