𝙇𝙓𝙓.
TWENTY-MINUTE CHRISTMAS

──────

✧ ah yes, nothing says the holidays

like a christmas chapter that's twoweeks late. ✧

──────

NEW YORK

IF THERE WAS one thing that Mark didn't anticipate when it came to relationships, it was the holiday season.

It crept up fast on Manhattan, coating the streets with thick sheets of snow and tinting the air with that fresh, winter bite, all before he could even wrap his head around it. 

Suddenly, he was opening the door to the sound of choirs carolling, cabs straining through the sleet-strewn streets and the same droning holiday song that played over and over at the back of all department stores (I, don't want a lot for Christmas, there is just one thing I need--) There were people donning red jackets and hats, pot-bellies and the constant lingering smell of roasting chestnuts on every corner-- festivity, as always, had hit New York City hard.

He found it different in every corner of the city. 

Christmas over in Bloomingdale, around Beth's apartment, was so different from what he usually experienced on the Upper East. The streets were filled tighter to the brim, lights hung from every spare crevice in every building and there seemed to be a star on the top of every tree from Columbia to Lincoln Square. 

The festive cheer and the goodwill, very slowly, seemed to leak in through the door, beginning in the light treads of stray snow across Beth's apartment floor. It seemed to appear very gradually, as if scared that it would rouse the inhabitants. 

Slowly but surely, it bloomed into a stray piece of tinsel and a greetings card from a work colleague, a WHAM! Tune tumbling in through a open window, a Macauley Culkin movie accidentally taping over an episode of ER on the DVR--

Mark fucking loved Christmas.

It was, by all means, his favourite holiday of the year. 

Usually, when people discovered that assertion, it perplexed them. (How was it that he, Mark Sloan, didn't favour Valentine's Day or maybe even International Women's Day, or whatever other days of the year that he could use to his advantage for an extra squeeze?) 

Mark, meanwhile, didn't really understand what the big deal was-- all he knew was that Christmas seemed to make the world seem a little bit brighter.

He loved it all. He loved the snow, he loved the songs, he loved the high spirits and the way that the whole world seemed to twinkle in unison. 

He loved the way that he'd managed to find his own annual tradition, hauling ass into Carolyn Shepherd's brownstone for their yearly Christmas Eve celebration. He loved the way that it was something that he looked forward to each year, some semblance of the Christmas that he'd never quite managed to get in his childhood. 

He loved how it brought people together and made him feel a little bit further from that little kid in that dark, empty apartment on the Upper East Side--

His girlfriend, however, didn't seem to share the sentiment.

If anything, Beth was caught off-guard by it too. She'd taken his excitement with a raised brow, blinking at him as he seemed to burst into December with high hopes; well, to be specific, she'd stared at him and said, very seriously, holy shit who are you? after watching him smile for longer than five minutes. 

It'd been then that Mark had had to do the mental mathematics-- that slight grimace on her face, plus her uncharacteristically solemn silence equals--

"Oh God!" He'd halted in the middle of a busy Manhattan street, watching the cringe race down Beth's spine as a group of carollers beside them burst into a frosty rendition of Mary Did You Know. 

She'd looked over at him, her dark eyes clouding slightly underneath the layers of clothing she'd thrown on in the cold. 

It had almost robbed the life out of him just to mutter those few words: "You're a Grinch."

Beth had stared back, her brow furrowing, appearing to not understand why it was so surprising, "And you're a kid."

Beth, so he had discovered, happened to deeply dislike Christmas. It was his first Christmas with another person in his life and... and she was as far from the festive spirit as you could possibly get. 

It'd only been when it had struck him like a runaway reindeer that he'd taken to interrogating her about it. She, as established a few moments ago, was not a fan of the holiday season at all. 

She didn't like the snow, she didn't particularly like the songs and she didn't like how everyone seemed to take it so seriously. 

She'd never really liked winter anyway to begin with so that Mark didn't find it surprising. 

But, he'd never taken time to really notice how Beth seemed reluctant to embrace the holiday cheer.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Now, it almost made him feel bad. 

He'd bought a little tree for the corner of the apartment, just one that was big enough for a handful of baubles and a string of tinsel. (They'd both been so caught up in their work schedules that neither of them had had the time to go shopping, so Mark had ended up with the leftovers and rejects. 

Arguably, the ratty little pine that teetered in the corner was charming and understated, but, then again, smelt very faintly like pee.) He'd never decorated a whole apartment before, never having the time nor the space, but something about Beth's apartment, and how it felt so much like a home for them both, had compelled him to slowly integrate the festivities into their small space. 

He'd snuck it in almost bashfully, all in the form of little bits and pieces, in the aforementioned frost and cards.

The tree had been a big thing for him-- He'd never had his own tree before! It'd never felt right, even when he'd moved out of his parent's apartment and into his own. It'd never felt right when it was just him and his inclination to work through Christmas Day anyway. 

However, now he had Beth and Amy in this little Manhattan apartment and there it was! Questionably decorated and modest, and all that he could've hoped for.

"It's not a big deal," Beth said, shrugging as Mark began to realise that his inexperience in relationships was really beginning to kick him in the ass. (He hadn't even thought to ask? Was that an asshole move? It felt like an asshole move-- God, he was an asshole wasn't he?!) "Just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean you can't enjoy it."

Apparently, that's what she'd been doing the whole time. She hadn't made any bad comments on the tree or the slow foundations of Christmas as it accumulated around them. Mark couldn't tell whether she was just being nice about it or whether she truly didn't mind it at all. 

The only person who had commented on it had been Amy; the youngest Shepherd had stood in the centre of the apartment and tilted her head to the side. She'd looked from the tree to the man in the corner and paused.

"Beth know about this?" He hadn't responded. Amy had taken in a long breath, shrugged and then continued on her way out the door. "Good luck with that."

Good luck? How much did she hate Christmas? 

Was Beth not liking Christmas common knowledge? Why did he feel like he hadn't studied for some Beth Montgomery pop quiz that he hadn't even known was going to come up in class? How was it that Beth, who binge-watched cheesy movies and music for her guilty pleasure, did not like the most wonderful time of the year?

He'd set this down in front of Derek and the neurosurgeon had just chuckled, slowly shaking his head from side to side almost in amusement. It'd been at the end of a meeting with Archer, when Beth's brother was far out of the door and they'd just finished discussing contracts about the practice ownership. 

He'd turned to his best friend with slight desperation and strain in his voice, and Derek had rolled his eyes.

"It's not your first Christmas together, I don't get why this is a surprise," He'd said with an exasperated sigh, but then paused as he saw the look on Mark's face. The plastic surgeon had just stared at him, waiting for the realisation to kick in. The breath that Derek had let out had been full of disappointment. "Yeah I forgot about that you broke up with her when she said that she lov--"

It was their first Christmas together and, most pressingly the first Christmas that Mark had had while in a relationship. 

He wasn't used to this, having a second person that he needed to factor into everything. He wasn't used to the fact that suddenly, he was having to tell Mrs Shepherd that he would be bringing a plus one to their Christmas Eve dinner and that 'no, she's not just some girl this time.' He also wasn't used to the fact that this 'not some girl' happened to get no joy out of tinsel and the song 'Run Rudolph Run' by Chuck Berry. 

Then, to add on top of everything, he definitely wasn't used to the gift-giving part of a relationship either.

"I have no idea what to do--"

"Just get her something nice--"

"Like what?"

"I don't know... something sweet--"

"Like a box of chocolates?"

"No, I think you're going to need to do something better," Derek had sighed it out as Mark wrung his hands, face contorted into a look of pure panic. "...seeing as last year all you gave her was a broken heart--"

"Right," He'd interjected.

So maybe he was discovering another downfall of his lack of monogamy? Maybe this Christmas was going to need to be more than usual? And maybe, even in the holiday that meant the most to him, Beth wasn't going to feel the same way.

Selecting a Christmas gift for Beth was a lot more stressful than it appeared; as Derek had so kindly reminded him, he'd already made a mess of what had supposed to have been their first Christmas together. 

Their breakup, the one which had resulted in a teary exchange outside of a wedding reception, had happened to fall in late November, leaving the two of them single for Christmas Eve. (He'd spent that Christmas drunkenly flirting with singles at a bar and had eventually spent the night alone. A bit too drunk to truly make sense of things.) 

Derek was right, he needed to try and find a way to make up for it.

It was needless to say that this year, Mark was terrified about Christmas.

"Don't overthink it," Derek had said lightly, as if that was going to help in the slightest when it came to the muffled screaming at the back of his head. 

He then stared at Mark as if, for the longest moment, he couldn't quite believe how the hell Mark had made it this long being such a hit with the ladies.

(The man was absolutely clueless.)

"But I've still got to...."

"Well yeah," Derek had shrugged, as they stood in the elevator in Archer's office, watching the floor number lower. "I think a basic train of thought is pretty key to doing anything."

"But I don't know what to..."

"Look," Derek had said shortly, not as charmed by Mark's cluelessness as anyone else would've been. "I mean it, don't overthink it. I'm just getting Addison a bracelet from Harry Winston. Nothing too crazy. You're usually good at gifts, right?"

"Yeah," Mark had exhaled. He was. He was a great gift giver. "But not for someone like Beth--"

"Okay," was all that Derek had said, nodding his head slightly. "Well, it's Beth, what does she like?" The plastic surgeon had paused, his face contorting as he tried to recall everything Beth had ever verbally praised or taken a liking too. When he didn't speak immediately, Derek had just sighed. "All you need is a nice romantic gesture--"

"Okay?"

"Something special," He'd continued, half suspended in disbelief that he was having to coach Mark Sloan on how to treat a woman. 

(For most of their life, it had been the complete opposite. Mark was the one who had dragged Derek out of his awkward Middle School slump where he'd been deemed geeky and wildly unpopular. Mark had introduced him to hair care products. Now, Derek was introducing Mark to basic chivalry.) 

"Women like that..." Derek said, "they like things that mean something--"

"So a grand gesture?"

"Sure, something like that--"

"Like a proposal? You think I should propose?"

The question had caught both of them off-guard. 

There'd been a complete halt in the universe, the sort that realigned planets and exploded blood vessels. Even the elevator seemed to notice how sudden and out of blue those words were falling from Mark's mouth. 

It seemed to catch a little and slow, despite the fact that they had been a minute away from their floor.

Derek's head had turned to stare at Mark. 

It had been an odd stare. It had been an odd situation. 

His mouth had filled with a metallic taste, the sort that made him think that he was either hallucinating or having a grand-mal seizure; or maybe even both for good measure. Either way, Mark Sloan had just made a comment about proposing and the world hadn't blown itself to pieces.

He'd looked flushed, the plastic surgeon staring back at Derek with his brow furrowed as if he hadn't expected himself to say that either. 

The two of them had been completely stuck in this middle ground; it was between the before and the after. Before Mark had thrown out the concept of a proposal and then after he'd digested his own words.

"Uh," Derek had said, his eyes almost bugging out of his head as he looked over at his best friend. 

It was the way Mark had said it, the slow voice and the slight squint as he struggled to wrap his brain around the fact that Mark had just talked about proposing to someone, commitment like that to someone, so casually. 

He squinted at him, "You wanna propo--?"

"No." 

Mark had interjected very quickly, his mouth in a thin line as he spiralled a little bit. He avoided Derek's eye, heaving a long breath as a dent appeared in between his eyes. Another beat passed, one filled with Derek just staring and staring listlessly. 

Mark paused, hesitating. 

His cheeks flushed with a slight bashfulness, the tips of his ears catching red. "I mean... I don't know... maybe--"

"You've thought about it?"

"Derek--"

"So you have thought about it?"

"Stop talking--"

"You want to propose to her?"

"You said that you were getting Addison some jewellery--"

"Don't change the subject--"

"Can we not make a big deal out of this!"

"No, let's go back to this whole proposal thing--"

"You said a grand gesture!"

"I meant a carriage in Central Park or something--"

"Is that a grand gesture?"

"I didn't mean a proposal--"

"You said a grand gesture!"

"Yeah," Derek had interjected, still staring at Mark as if he'd grown a second head. (Mark, for the record, didn't like how he was looking at him. It was as if he was someone that Derek couldn't recognise.) "Something a little more than a box of chocolates... I didn't mean marriage. I was thinking something a little bit more in-between."

Mark hadn't responded to that. 

He'd just continued his avoidance of Derek's prying gaze and silently begged the doors to open. (Inwardly, the plastic surgeon had been screaming. Why the fuck had he brought up marriage?) Derek proceeded to let a very awkward silence fill the space between them, occasionally glancing out of the corner of his eye. (Meanwhile, Mark was trying to figure out what the fuck the universe wanted from him: what the fuck was in the in-between? He really didn't know what an in-between on the gifting Richter scale was?)

"So..." 

That was the way that Derek had tried to move the conversation forwards, a twitch of a smile in the corner of his mouth and a long, prolonged pause. 

"Marriage?"

"Shut up," Mark had only been able to shuffle uncomfortably, his jaw locking. "I didn't mean it."

He deeply regretted even mentioning it. He wasn't even sure where it had come from. 

Marriage was the sort of thing that seemed so alien to him, so abstract and terrifying-- maybe he did know where it had come from? It was some desperation to try and gauge what exactly was expected of him. He couldn't fathom anything outside of the radical extremes.

"That's exciting--"

"Don't start--"

"I'm not," Derek had said lightly, although he'd been unable to stop the slight smile that lingered on his mouth. His eyes had chased the way that Mark inclined his head slightly as if he was suddenly in physical pain. "I'm not starting."

"You are," had been Mark's response, his eye twitching. "I can that crap going around your head--"

"I just think it's nice," The neurosurgeon had added quietly, his eyes glittering as Mark continued to wish he was somewhere miles away from this particular conversation. 

(Astoria was looking better and better, would Carolyn let him stay the month? Would she let him hide in a little ball at the back of whatever deep, dark crevice he could find?) Derek had even had the audacity to chuckle to himself. 

"You guys have been together for what?" Derek's brow wrinked,  "A year and a half?--"

"Oh god."

"It's just nice that you've--"

"Don't."

"I'm trying to be nice!"

"Don't," Mark had interjected a second time, "Don't be nice just help me."

Derek's smile hadn't wavered.

"It seems like you've got everything under control--"

"I have no idea what I'm doing," He'd grilled out, not too proud of the fact that he was admitting a pretty big flaw about himself. 

He'd spoken directly to the faded poster on the back of the elevator door: an airbrushed lawyer with a wide toothy smile that reminded him so faintly of Beth's ex-fiancé. 

"Don't make fun of me," Mark almost begged, "I'm feeling strung out here Shep and I have no fucking idea what I'm going to do because now I feel like if I don't make it the perfect Christmas she's gonna dump me on my ass--"

"She's not gonna dump you."

"I don't know what she's gonna do," had been his clipped reply. "I don't know what she thinks or what she likes and I sure as hell don't know what I'm doing." Mark had sighed and shaken his head. "I don't do this sort of thing. I haven't had a Christmas like this before. I don't do grand gestures. I don't bring dates to Christmas parties and I don't usually care what people think of me but--"

"It's Beth," Derek had finished for him, watching how Mark had clenched with his every word. The plastic surgeon had sighed at that and nodded. "It's Beth and you care."

Of course, he fucking cares. That's the problem.

Then, there had been a pause and Derek had attempted to contribute to Mark's internal conflict: "Have you thought about jewellery?"

"I said--"

"No rings."

"What about perfume?" Mark had suggested just as the elevator doors opened. He didn't really understand why every elevator journey felt like an eternity. "Girls like perfume."

Derek had just rolled his eyes.

"Beth likes cats, right?"

"They don't allow pets in her building."

He'd already covered that basis as soon as he'd started thinking about what to get her. It was the one thing that he knew that Beth really wanted-- she wanted a little feline friend to pad around her apartment and shoot her demure, borderline bitchy looks. 

He'd been so tempted to adopt a cat for her, to add a second roommate alongside Amy in that tiny apartment, but he'd thought it out logically. The tenant agreement forbade any pets and their busy work schedules meant that it was completely impractical and almost cruel. (Not only that but getting a cat together sounded like one hell of a commitment and Mark had only just got over the whole love thing.)

(So why the fuck had he mentioned marriage? Idiot.)

"My Mom heard rumours that you're seeing someone," Derek had said as a way of parting as they stood side by side in that elevator. There had been a noticeable pause between them. The neurosurgeon had glanced over at him. "Are you bringing Beth to the family dinner?"

"Does she know I'm dating your sister-in-law?" was all that Mark managed to say in response.

He was left almost cringing at the thought of Carolyn Shepherd realising that he was seeing a girl that the matriarch had once described as kind and respectable. (He was bound to get a talking to, he could almost feel it.) 

Derek had shook his head, his lips twitching as Mark sighed. 

"Great."

"She loves Beth," Derek had said lightly, but Mark hadn't been reassured.

"Yeah," Mark had sighed for the second time, "That's the problem."

Fuck, he thought to himself as he got in his car, beginning the familiar drive back to Beth's apartment. 

He didn't like this feeling that was inside of him. It was the same feeling that he'd felt as he'd vowed to cheer Beth up-- it was the very present pressure of caring about something a lot and wanting the best for them. He glanced up into the mirror, seeing the stream of traffic following him across Manhattan. 

Caring is fucking exhausting.

(And God, did he care.)

All he had to do was get to Christmas Eve and everything was going to be fine. It was the sort of day that had been the same every year since Mark was a child.

It'd be a cocktail of work and a lazy morning, culminating in the yearly migration to Carolyn Shepherd's townhouse in Astoria for the evening. 

When he was really young, it would be his only semblance of a Christmas Day in itself; the 25th was reserved for family and, as he'd discovered a long time ago, the Sloan family was far from functional. He'd taken the evening off, spending his time wining and dining and then he'd take a late shift on the day after.

Beth, on the other hand, didn't have the same idea. She hadn't carried any Christmas traditions into New York, instead telling Mark that her only tradition was a slightly bigger glass of wine at the end of the night. 

She usually worked through the holidays, picking up the graveyard shifts that most people tended to avoid-- You get the best patients, she'd said matter-of-factly, all it takes is one argument over the tree and there's a whole world full of medical maladies that are possible. She seemed to look at Christmas as less of a festivity and more as an opportunity for some interesting surgeries.

He didn't exactly blame her. There was truly no Christmas present quite like an intricate, painstaking surgery, one that got the heart pounding.

Oh.

(That was an idea.)

***

"It doesn't look good out there."

Beth spoke through a bundle of scarves as she peered out of the apartment window, her eyes tracing across the unusually quiet street-- it was early in the morning on Christmas Eve and, as aforementioned, there was a blizzard on the horizon. 

The snow-coated streets seemed to crinkle in anticipation of what was to come: one of the worst snowstorms that Manhattan had seen in years.

Across the apartment, Mark was standing beside his half-hearted tree, frowning back at her with a mug of coffee steaming in his hands. 

He followed her gaze, seeing how preliminary snowflakes seemed to catch on a wind that was already prowling the streets. When Beth looked back at him, she saw the way his brow crinkled, almost in concern. 

She saw the hesitation that filled him as she let the curtain fall back. She walked towards him, accepting the coffee as he held it out for her-- she kissed him on the cheek and sighed to herself as Mark rubbed a hand over his chin, clearly annoyed.

"Snow's just snow," He said tentatively, although his tone blistered slightly. He passed her, taking up the same place she'd had at the window. He parted the same curtains, gazing out at the weather. "It won't hurt--"

"Maybe we should take the subway later," Beth said warily, half chugging the coffee so she could get out of the door. 

The sun had barely risen and she was already dressed and ready for work. At the same time, Mark had barely blinked the sleep out of his eyes. 

She wobbled as she attempted to shove her foot into a shoe, still glancing over at him. "It might be dangerous if we're going to be driving straight from the hospital--"

"We should be fine," Mark said dismissively, "They'll clear the roads... we're only going to Astoria--"

"Are you sure, I just want to be safe--"

"We don't have to go," He interjected, seeming to tense very suddenly. 

She halted, raising an eyebrow as he looked back at her again. There was a slight exasperation and strain in it, as if Mark was completely under the impression that she didn't want to go. (For the record, Beth didn't but there was no way she was going to ruin this for him.) 

"If you don't want to go we don't--"

"We're going," Beth interjected, a dent appearing between her eyebrows. Did he really know her that well? He stared at her, waiting for some further confirmation that she wanted this. "We're absolutely going--"

"And the tree?"

"I like the tree," She lied.

She fucking hated the tree, it was leaving pine needles all over her living room and she'd had to hoover every time she'd finished her shift-- resulting in a half-asleep Amy yelling at her through the walls at 9 am. 

She thought it was really macabre and a bit ironic that they saved lives all day only to come home to a dead lump of wood in their apartment. Beth also didn't like the smell, it reminded her of her childhood and boy, she did not need any reminders of that.

In all honesty, Addison had been trying to get her to go to Carolyn's Christmas Eve dinners for the past ten years. 

Apparently, it was a healthy Christmas, one that was so far from the Christmas' that they'd grown up with and Addison had wanted her to experience it, if not just once. 

Beth didn't want a healthy Christmas. In fact, she didn't want a Christmas at all; if it was her perfect world, there would have been no such thing. 

She'd turned her down every year, despite how much she loved Derek's family.

The problem was... it wasn't her perfect world at all... that and the fact that her boyfriend seemed to be a closeted Christmas lover.

 And holy shit, how deeply she wished he'd stay in the closet.

(In a further confession of honesty, Beth had thought that he'd understand her.) 

(Mark had always been the sceptical one, the one who didn't believe in basic things like monogamy and love. She'd thought that they'd be able to bond over their childhood trauma and make some sort of beautiful anti-Christmas day out of it, where they both completely avoided any sense of festivity. Finding out that Mark Sloan heralded the whole affair had surprised her completely-- she'd always taken him as a Valentines or International Women's Day sort of guy.)

(But no, that man loved Christmas and took it frighteningly seriously.)

"Mark, I love the tree," She had to reinforce her lie with a pointed smile, a little too exhausted to be better at gift-wrapped mistruths. He'd just stared at her, not entirely convinced. Beth rolled her eyes. "I love Carolyn and I love you, okay? We're going."

Her words seemed to reinstate that determination and their parting words for the morning were filled with the assertion that they were going to make it to Astoria no matter what. 

It made Beth smile to herself as she stepped out into the icy, blustery street and draw her jacket closer to her. As much as she was reluctant to take the evening off from work and go to a party for a holiday she had absolutely no interest in, she really liked seeing Mark excited. 

Happiness looked good on him.

(When Mark had mentioned in passing that Beth had agreed to come to Carolyn's for Christmas with absolutely no grovelling or reluctance, Derek had stared at him as if he couldn't believe that they were talking about the same person. Beth? Yes. Our Beth? Yeah. She's coming to dinner? Really? Yeah. A pause. Jeez, she must be crazy about you.)

The hospital did not have the same happy aura as her home did. 

There were no sickly Christmas lights or happy manchilds donning gay apparel, there was just the forever present cloud of death that seemed to welcome her like an old friend. As she began her shift, she realised how much sadder it was in here than the rest of the world. 

The hospital stood tall and solemn, even in the face of a snowstorm and festive cheer; nothing translated into the world of stiff sheets and scrubs.

"Montgomery," Her resident looked over as she massaged hand cream into her aching, cold fingers. (The cold seemed to really sink in deep this time of year.) "You working through the holidays?"

"Yep," Beth tied her ponytail as tight as it would go and swallowed the pills that she'd fished out of a bottle (the 2 hours sleep she'd had the night before just wasn't enough to fuel her.) 

Her fingers trembled slightly as the resident shot her an odd look, taken aback by her enthusiasm.

"Haven't you got family to see? Loved ones to hug for the holidays?"

(Her parents were on opposite sides of the world and Addison didn't particularly care about Christmas either. The only person she could possibly care about enough to spend Christmas with was working too--)

It took everything within her not to chuckle; "Not this side of the equator."

The bad day forecast for the weather seemed to translate to the patients as they crossed into the Emergency Department. She spent most of her morning chasing traumas across the hospital, helping keep on top of whatever manic accidents people had gotten into while last minute shopping or organising. 

A woman who'd fallen while hanging lights, a man who'd accidentally hot glued his hand to himself while wrapping, a kid who'd gotten trampled by a spooked reindeer in Central Park-- the traumas kept coming, as did the snow outside. By the time mid-morning came along, half of the ambulances were being rerouted elsewhere through the blizzard.

"We're fucked," Faith whined lightly as they stood on the top floor, staring across Manhattan.

 Across from her, Beth hummed indignantly as she tried to inhale a sandwich. Her eyes were stuck on the heavy snowfall as it passed the window. Ever so often, the wind would tumble a handful of snowflakes and make the whole world look mad. 

The blonde groaned. "I'm supposed to be driving up to Rochester this evening--"

"You're not going to get anywhere," Liam said from the other side of the corridor and Beth felt her heart drop at his tone. He held his cell phone aloft, gesturing to an incoming message as the ringtone echoed around them. "They've just announced that the roads are blocked. They're telling people to stay off the roads."

Oh crap.

Beth didn't particularly have the energy to be disappointed nor excited. All she felt was tired. She wanted a nap. 

(What little time she had to sleep these days always ended up dominated by sex. She hadn't had a good nights sleep in what felt like weeks.) 

With another handful of pills and a screaming pager, Beth found herself silently debating whether or not to break the news to Mark herself or let him find out through the grapevine--

They weren't going to be going to Astoria tonight, that she was pretty sure of. 

However, as Beth watched a car accident roll in through the ER of the hospital, she figured that this Christmas wasn't going to be as much of a waste as she thought. 

Across the ER, the attending assigned to the trauma sought her out, jerking his head for Beth to follow. She smiled to herself.

Merry Christmas to me.

***

Okay, so maybe there was a second thing that Mark hadn't anticipated when it came to the holidays: Snow. A fuck tonne of it.

He watched it fall from the staff room window, his brow furrowing as he watched it push up against the window ledge. 

Manhattan was taking a truly hard battering, his hometown shuddering under the weight of the worse blizzard in the past twenty years. He sighed into his coffee, realising that this year definitely wasn't going to go to plan at all--

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" One of the surgical oncology attendings commented idly as they passed Mark. He didn't respond, staring out of the window with his vague scowl. The attending didn't particularly pay attention, just grinning at the sight of the city blanketed in white. "It'll be like a Hallmark card in the morning."

"It's going to be a busy night, that's for sure," A cardiothoracic surgeon mused as they retied their shoes in the far corner. "But I heard they're rerouting all of the incoming trauma to Lincoln. They've closed all of the roads so there's bound to be some car accidents that slip through--"

Fuck. Yeah, there was no way that they were going to get all the way to Astoria in this weather if the roads were being shut. 

It made Mark heave a very long breath as he internalised how the universe seemed intent on turning the lights off this Christmas. No doubt, his car was buried under a foot of snow somewhere in the parking lot and wouldn't be recovered until after the holidays. 

God, this was a shitty draw. He'd just wanted to make his first Christmas with Beth a little more special.

He'd had things planned. He'd wanted to go to a diner in Astoria before it closed at midnight and show Beth where he used to take his dates in High School. He'd wanted to sit her in the same booth that he'd had his first kiss and listen to Christmas music on the jukebox-- he'd wanted to make something a little bit more out of his yearly migration out of Manhattan. 

He'd had plans. He'd tried to swallow his indecision and his stress and he'd tried to stay optimistic. He believed in Christmas spirit. He tried to believe that everything would work out.

It hadn't.

Fuck, Mark shook his head slowly, Merry Christmas to me.

He finished his coffee, too busy feeling sorry for himself to really pay much attention to the conversation--

"Plus Bennett's got that big coronary revascularization tonight," It was an off-handed reference to the Head of Cardiothoracic surgery, one that made Mark's ears perk up. He looked over at the attending as they stood upwards, grabbing their pager off the table. "It's intense. The viewing gallery is going to be packed--"

"You know if they need any more assists?"

Mark's question caused both of the surgeons to look over at him, taken aback from his sudden interjection. He didn't know either of them, at least, not well enough to know their names. He knew Bennett, though, the Head of Cardiothoracic surgery had a reputation for taking on extremely strenuous and challenging cases. 

A coronary revascularization was no anomaly; it was one of the riskiest procedures possibly. It sounded laborious. It sounded long. It sounded like the exact sort of Christmas miracle Mark had been looking for.

Al Bennett was the sort of old-timer whiskey-on-the-rocks guy that Mark saw skulking around the back of staff parties, barely ever making conversation. He appeared stand-offish and bizarre, dressing like a reclusive English professor, even under his doctor's coat. 

He looked as though he was bound to say a racist comment at any moment, like a delight to have at a Thanksgiving table, but, at that moment, Mark could've sworn that he looked like Santa Claus. He found him standing on the outside of his department, leaning against a nurses' station with an apple rolling around his palm.

It took Mark a tiny pep talk to approach him. 

They'd never really had a conversation before, only very brief exchanges on some cases that they'd crossed paths on. But, Mark was pretty sure that Derek considered Doctor Bennett a good friend. There must have been some sense of humanity in such a displeasing little package--

"Hi," Mark said quickly, appearing beside the cardiothoracic surgeon before he could change his mind. With a long breath that made Mark think that Bennett was really not in the Christmas spirit, the older surgeon looked over at him, a frown already plastered across his face. Mark threw in an introduction for good measure. "Doctor Sloan. You're leading that revascularization later this evening, right?"

"I don't need a plastic surgeon," Bennett chipped back at him, wary of where this conversation was going to go. "If you're trying to get your way onto my surgery, then there's no use in begging--"

Mark shook his head, "No, don't worry, I'm not." Then he paused. "I heard that you have Cochran assisting you?"

"I do," He responded, looking completely disinterested in the conversation. 

He turned back to the chart he'd been reading, raising his apple to his lips and taking a long, bored bite. Mark's eye twitched at the sound of his chewing, the surgeon seeming to completely disengage with the conversation-- Mark bit down on his tongue, reminding himself that this was all for a very good cause. 

"Cochran's currently prepping my patient if you're looking for him--"

"I need him."

"I told you," Bennett replied absently, flicking a page in the chart. "He's currently in the department behind us with my patient. Room 309--"

"No," Mark repeated, "I mean I need him on my service tonight."

The look of complete bewilderment on Bennett's face, and the dent between the older surgeon's eyebrows, all made Mark's stomach twist with the introduction of his lie. 

He'd decided on it while he'd nervously jolted about in the elevator. It was, very much, a lie. He didn't need Isaac Cochran at all. In fact, he had Carmichael on his service today who was a better plastic surgeon than Cochran could have ever dreamed of-- but Mark was on a mission.

"He's been preparing to assist this surgery for the past two weeks," Bennett looked as though Mark had just tried to steal his whole life savings from out under him. He appeared completely miffed with the request. "If you think I'm going to give him up this close to the surgery you're insane--"

"He's a good plastic surgeon," Mark argued, his method very strategic. "He's got a very good hand and I need that for the surgeries I have planned for this evening--" Another handful of lies. His OR board was clean and Cochran was average at best. "--He's expressed an explicit interest in burn infection cultures and I think that he would be best with me tonight."

"Did he ask you to swap?"

Mark's grimace was hidden behind a sigh, "I read between the lines."

Bennett didn't look too convinced.

"And I suppose you have an intern that just loves cardio?"

"Beth Montgomery," Why did he feel like he was in some sort of negotiation and Beth was his only chip. He placed her name on the table and watched how Bennett's head bounced slightly in recognition. Mark inhaled sharply. "She's an excellent surgeon. She'd be able to assist just as well, probably even better, than Cochran would--"

"She hasn't been prepping like Cochran has," Bennett interjected, his jaw tight as he looked back down at his chart. "She'd be going into that surgery blind. Has she even assisted on a coronary revascularization before?" Mark didn't know the answer, but he was inclined to say no. "Yeah, I thought so--"

"She's a fast learner," Mark added quickly, aware of how Bennett's eyebrow rose slowly up his forehead at his persistence. 

Beth was. She was more than capable of taking on this surgery and Mark knew that Bennett knew that too. His girlfriend was the best damn intern in the hospital and anyone who didn't see that was delusional. 

"I'm sure if you just gave her the chance, she'd really exceed your expectations--"

"The answer is no," Bennett decided with another shake of his head. "If you need Cochran for anything, you're going to have to wait until tomorrow morning. I'm sure you can give some of the patients a real Christmas to remember--"

Well, this wasn't going to plan.

"Look," He tried again, really not feeling like letting this go. 

He had to get Beth on this surgery. He had to. Dinner was cancelled. The diner was probably closed and his Christmas Tree was actually pretty sad and pathetic if he really thought about it. Mark was truly prepared to beg at this point. 

"I really think you would be making a mistake--"

"Doctor Sloan," Bennet cut him short again, causing the plastic surgeon to sigh in exasperation. He seemed to pause, taking his time as if every second he spoke to Mark was a courtesy that he should've been thanking him for. "As much as I respect you as a practitioner, I'm not exactly jumping at the thought of helping you--"

"If I could just--"

"You have a reputation," The cardiothoracic surgeon continued, completely ignoring how Mark attempted to speak. He fell silent, watching how Bennett shook a dismissive hand as if anything that he could say was not going to change his mind. "You have a reputation for using all means necessary as a means of seduction... and I'm afraid that I am not taking on an intern just so you can have some company for the holidays."

Mark stared at him. Jesus Christ. 

He thought his cover had been clever. He'd almost been proud of it-- but here Al Bennet was, staring at him as Mark was trying to implicit him in some sort of sex scheme that wasn't at all like reality. 

Well, he supposed that it was closer than the whole Cochran story, he guessed, and Beth would've been very grateful. But, still, Beth was not just company for the holidays, she happened to be the only thing he had left.

"I'm not being complicit in this," Bennett said, ignoring Mark's complete spiral into a state of despair. "I heard that you have only just managed to settle with your sexual harassment case against the nurses... Honestly, it's quite disappointing that you would stoop as low as to exchange sexual intercourse for medicine--"

"That's not," Mark's low voice combined with his furrowed brow and displeased scowl made Bennett's eyebrows raise even higher. "That's not what's happening--"

Bennett just sighed, in a disappointed, almost fatherly way that made the hairs on the back of Mark's arms bristle. "My answer is no. Try another way of flirtation with Doctor Montgomery, I hear a more obvious abuse of professional power is very popular these days."

Mark watched him leave, somehow feeling worse now than he had before. He crumpled slightly, his shoulders falling as Bennett disappeared back into the Cardiothoracic department, far away from where his little grimy plastic surgery hands couldn't touch him.

What now? Mark was running out of options. 

He was stuck in this damn hospital for god knows how long, probably until the new year knowing the reliability of the snowploughs across the city, and he couldn't even finesse Beth onto a surgery. What a failure this year was turning out to be--

Mark paused. He hadn't exhausted all of his options.

"Derek?" He said into his cell phone as he hid at the back of a stairwell, goosebumps racing down his arms as a rush of chilly, December air rustled his scrubs. 

It was so much colder out here, as if the outside was gradually leaking in. When he exhaled, his breath condensed on the air, a white cloud that made his skin shudder slightly in the chill. 

"I need a favour."

***

Faith, apparently, loved the holidays.

Why did everyone love Christmas but Beth? She didn't understand it. What was it about snow and trees and flashing lights that seemed to get everyone so invested? 

It was one day a year, one day that seemed to have a whole month dedicated to it. It was the heavy commercialisation of a religious holiday. It was the heavy commercialisation of shitty music and shitty movies and shitty--

"Merry Christmas!"

Her energy was completely unparalleled. 

It was another thing that Beth epically failed to understand as they worked together down in the ER. The blonde had the world's widest smile stretching across the blonde's face as she hummed Christmas tunes. She walked with a bounce to her, cheerily wishing everyone Merry Christmas as she tended to some of the non-emergent patients that had found themselves in ER beds. 

Beth watched her, watching how that smile didn't waver, how her ponytail bounced with such vivacity and life.

It baffled her. Was this what people meant when they said Joy to the World? Because, from Beth's perspective, it just looked like Faith had done the world's longest line of cocaine.

"How are you so....?" 

Beth trailed off as Faith looked over expectantly, having just returned from wheeling a patient up into Psychiatry. The blonde seemed to perk up, every under the weight of Beth's skeptical gaze. 

"So what?"

Beth's nose wrinkled as she struggled to find the right wording. "Happy?"

"It's Christmas," Faith said it in a way that implied that Christmas was a good excuse for anything. 

It made Beth blink at her, not quite understanding the sentiment behind it-- the cheery smile on Faith's face and the way that the surgical intern was practically bouncing off the ceiling with seasonal cheer, it just made her deeply uncomfortable, if nothing else. 

"C'mon, it's the most wonderful time of the year!"

"The busiest time of the year," Beth corrected her, sighing as they moved a patient bed into a room. (If Beth had to be honest, work was quite possibly the only reason she didn't despite Christmas completely.) "We've got patients stacking themselves out of the door--"

"The most wonderful time of the year," Faith repeated, singing it insistently as if the business just aided her point, "and by the looks of things, we're going to all be stuck here until the road clearance guys come to save us... so we might as well make some sort of festive thing out of it, right?"

Beth didn't reply. 

Inwardly, she was internalising the thought of being stuck in this hospital for the next twenty-four hours. Usually, that wouldn't have been a problem at all. In fact, she would've happily volunteered if this was any other Christmas-- but it wasn't. 

They were stuck in this building during the one Christmas that Beth felt like she should actually care about. She was stuck here and so was Mark, the one person in her life that she actually felt like deserved some degree of festive relief.

The realisation that Mark was probably upset about it made Beth falter. 

She knew him well enough to know that he wasn't going to upfront about it. He was going to be quiet in his disappointment, and that made her heart clench. 

This meant a lot to him, she knew that. While she didn't particularly share his adoration for the holiday, she hadn't lied when she said that she cared a lot about him and him exclusively. 

If Beth had her way, she would've been steam-rolling her way through a bunch of cases, barely even fluttering an eyelash, but now, she felt herself unravelling the tiniest bit.

"You think we're stuck?" Beth asked, a sense of dread filling her as she thought about how Mark was probably having a really shitty time right now. Faith raised an eyebrow, catching the sudden shift in her tone. "Like, stuck stuck?"

"Until the storm ends, yeah," Faith nodded and then she paused, "Let me guess, you wanted to spend the night with your hot boyfriend?"

Why did this suddenly feel like Beth's idea of hell?

"I was supposed to be going to dinner with him and his friends," was what Beth said instead, her lips dragging into a frown as the two of them cleared down a bed for an incoming patient. The nurses were sparse so they'd taken to clearing up where they could. "It... It meant a lot to him that's all--"

"Well," Faith exhaled, her festive light dimming slightly as she cleaned vomit off of the bottom of her shoes. (It was barely even midday and they'd already both been soiled twice today. Something about Christmas really got people into the alcohol poisoning mood.) "It's not your fault, it's not like you're controlling the weather--"

"Still," Beth sighed, "He's going to be crushed--"

"You know... I had to break it off with Brad, my ex, because he got really weird about my career," The blonde seemed to get absorbed in a thought that swamped her brain, cutting Beth short as the other surgical intern sanitised her hands. "He didn't like it that I was at work so much-- but screw him right? He got really weird about how I didn't spend Thanksgiving with him and his family because of that case with the semi-truck, remember?" 

Beth nodded absently, knowing what she was referring to. 

"He told me that he couldn't live being second to some guy with a dislocated neck," Faith sighed, then she rolled her eyes, "As if I was going to leave him for some ten hour surgery--"

A thoughtful pause.

"Your boyfriend will get over it," She continued finally, instilling a message that Beth didn't quite understand. "He'll probably be an ass about you working through Christmas but... but he'll go over it eventually--" She supposed that Faith's heart was in the right place, but just seriously lacking the context. "--I mean, look at me, I'm doing great now, right?"

"Yeah," Beth murmured, tilting her head to the side, "You've moved onto greener, Isaac-shaped pastures."

The blonde scoffed.

"Don't try to divert to Isaac," Faith sighed, visibly crumbling slightly at the mention of the man she was still sleeping with. She pushed her hair behind her ear and chewed on the inside of her cheek. "All I'm saying is, just make it up to him."

Beth all too well that Faith had very little grasp on the situation. 

She didn't know that Beth was, technically, still spending the holidays with her hot boyfriend. In fact, he was a couple of floors away at that very moment. She also didn't know that Beth had no interest in Christmas at all-- all Beth could think about was Mark. 

Dumb Mark. Dumb, stupid handsome Mark. Dumb, stupid gets way too excited about Christmas Mark--

"I'm not talking to Isaac anyway," Faith continued, blissfully unaware of how Beth was suddenly completely trapped in her thoughts. They weighed her to the spot, the brunette unmoving as Faith handled their new patient assignments. "I'm still pissed off that he got into Bennett's surgery-- God, I'd kill to get in on that."

Make it up to him?

That had made Beth's brain stutter, to the point where she barely even swooned at the mention of the most competitive surgery in the hospital. 

Faith's suggestion had planted a very dangerous seed in her mind. It grew and grew until it had roots in every single part of Beth's brain, until it was all she could think about...

Fuck, she was thinking about trying to save Christmas, wasn't she? 

She was suturing some kid that had faceplanted a sheet of black ice, and she was thinking about saving Christmas as if she was the protagonist of a festive movie. 

The revelation made her sigh. She was busy as it was and then Mark had to get overly invested in a dinner that neither of them could physically get too--

She slapped her surgical gloves off loudly, grimacing to herself as she realised that she loved Mark too much to just let him mope around this hospital alone. On the other side of the patient bed, Faith shot her a knowing look.

Fine, fuck it. They were going to do a Christmas on her terms this year.

***

"A favour?" The neurosurgeon echoed Mark's request and he could almost imagine the look of bewilderment on Derek's face. 

He exhaled loudly, watching the air come rushing out of his nose as if he was a dragon expelling steam. There was a pause on the line, a beat where Mark knew this was where Derek's confusion turned to amusement.

 "What? Beth not like the whole engagement ring idea--?"

"Screw you," Mark gritted out, regretting saying anything about marriage for the thousandth time. 

He got the feeling that he was never going to live that down, ever. (And, for the record, he wasn't going with the 'whole engagement ring idea', either.)

"Well," Derek chastised lightly, "I'm not gonna do you a favour when you use that tone--"

Maybe this hadn't been a good idea at all.

It really was fucking freezing in the stairwell, a constant reminder of how, despite how enthusiastic Mark was trying to be, this season was truly kicking his ass. He paced a taut line up and down the centre of the stairwell. 

It was the same one that Beth had dragged him into on his first day at Mercy West; at the bottom of these stairs, he'd pressed her up against the wall and kissed her feverishly and she'd kissed him back. It was the first and last time they'd ever done anything together like that in the hospital.

"I'm stuck in the hospital," Mark ignored his best friend completely, running a hand through his hair as his goosebumps continued to work their way across his body. 

There was a harsh wind tumbling through space, making him think that maybe a fire escape door had been left wedged open. 

"So is Beth," He said, "we can't make it to dinner."

"Damn," Derek breathed out, sounding like an actual being this time. He sighed, immediately understanding why Mark sounded so frustrated and short-tempered. "Addie and I drove out yesterday evening. We're here and so is everyone else--"

Great. Fantastic. Excellent--

"I need your help with Beth's present..."

 Mark tried his best not to linger on the fact that, it appeared that it was only his holiday that had been completely fucked over by the weather. He should have listened to his girlfriend when she'd voiced concern about the weather. He'd fucked up. He'd fucked everything up-- 

"I'm trying to get her onto a surgery..." Mark said, "I was hoping to get her on a great trauma case but all of the ambulances have been rerouted and I'm kinda fucked completely which is a lot of fun right now--"

He was talking quickly, waving his hands around as he circled the stairwell over and over. He felt like a NASCAR doing repetitive laps, or, maybe more fitting to the season, Santa Claus doing rounds across the globe with his reindeer. He ranted, expelling all of his agitation into the receiver. 

On the other side of the line, Derek just silently listened, letting Mark go off onto a tangent about how he was definitely not trying to swap surgery for sex. ("As if I needed that to get off? Who do they take me for? Newman?") As he spoke, his shoulders sunk lower and lower, resulting in a long breath that, for a second, made Mark think the building was on fire.

"--So I need you to call Bennett and tell him how great of a surgeon she is," He was coming to the end of his impassioned, vaguely angry speech. "Because she is... She's a fucking excellent intern and he'd be at no loss to have her in that surgery."

There was a pause.

It was as if Derek was trying to digest it. 

Why did it suddenly feel like Mark had just completed a completely unprofessional business pitch on Shark Tank, and was now in the middle of watching them debate whether they'd let him crumble financially and lose everything he'd ever worked for? He waited.

"So," Derek said finally and Mark could practically hear the pinch of skin between the neurosurgeon's eyebrows. He sounded very slightly miffed. "You're giving her a surgery for Christmas?"

Mark heaved another breath.

"I got her perfume too," He mumbled it into his hand as he massaged his face, groaning as he quietly mourned the most wonderful time of the year. Why did this feel so make or break? He just wanted everything to be perfect? Why was everything so fucking hard to get perfect? Was this what relationships were? "I got her some perfume... Addie picked it out."

"Hm," Derek said, triggering another moment of quiet. Mark, in all honesty, felt like throwing himself through a wall. "What surgery?"

"A coronary revascularization."

"A big one?"

"A full house."

"Beth would kill to get in there," Derek's comment made Mark roll his eyes. Of course, she would, why else would Mark be going through all of this to get her in there? He wasn't doing it just because he thought she'd find it funny-- no, he was doing it because he knew it'd mean the world to her. "Did you try the--"

"Yeah."

"But did you mention--"

"I tried to."

"Huh," Another pause. 

Mark felt a shiver run down his spine. He waited and waited for Derek to agree to make this call. He had to? Right, it was Christmas. It was the season of joy and goodwill and great things happening to even greater people-- Derek, however, didn't agree. 

Not yet anyway. 

First, he said this: "God, you're whipped."

It was said with a low chuckle.

Mark just groaned.

"Are you saying yes to the call or not--?"

"I'm saying it's nice," Crap, not this again. Mark pinched the bridge of his nose as Derek sighed almost dreamily. "You're really trying make this special Beth and I'm really happy for you Mark, it's great--"

"The call," Mark cut him short, audibly and visibly uncomfortable. "Please just do the damn call--"

"Okay," Derek mused and he could picture the smile on the neurosurgeon's face. "Okay, I'll see what I can do."

***

It felt like the beginning of a really bad joke, or, at least a very painful brainteaser:

Imagine it. You're stuck in a hospital on Christmas Eve in the middle of a hospital. You've just been tasked with single-handedly Christmas together, a holiday which you care very little for. But, the man you love seems to depend his whole year on it, like a kid who had never quite grown out of being excited over Santa Claus. 

You have just three hours to find some sort of saving grace before this whole thing collapses. 

Oh, and everyone around you would crucify you if they knew exactly who it was that you wanted to kiss under the mistletoe.

So, needless to say, Beth's blood pressure had never been higher.

She was in the middle of her makeshift Christmas when she came across the interns in her group, all sat on the side of the corridor. They were sat side by side, staring out over Manhattan, their eyes chasing the snow flurries as they descended through the sky. It looked as though it was laying thick on everything it could reach. 

Beth paused beside them, her eyes following the progression on winter on the city; it reminded her of how she'd watched it all fall this morning from her bed, Mark's arms wrapped around her and her naked skin flushed from the icy chill--

It was almost peaceful. Almost.

Beth clutched a takeout box from the cafeteria to her chest, looking over at everyone sat in front of her. 

Liam gave her a warm smile and patted the gurney beside him in an open invitation for her to join them-- she smiled back, the expression feeling frighteningly fragile on her frost-bitten face.

She didn't have the time.

Faith looked over at her tired face, watching as Beth stifled a yawn, simultaneously managing to somehow find her pills at the bottom of her pocket. 

The blonde's eyebrows bunched together, watching how Beth shook them into her palm and knocked them back dry. (Faith looked away quickly, meeting Isaac's eye as they exchanged a knowing look between the two of them.)

(They were all too aware of Beth's affinity to pop pills.) It was something that she was indiscreet about and something that made their eyes twitch whenever it was looked over by an attending. As of yet, none of the interns, Ashley included, had found it within themselves to say anything about it.)

Liam cleared his throat.

"I'm going on break," Beth said as she gestured to the food in her hand. Wordlessly, all of the interns nodded, their eyes unmoving from the outside world. "If any traumas come in... I'll be napping in the on-call rooms--"

"Must be nice to have free time," Isaac sighed almost dramatically, causing Beth to look at him with a furrowed brow. He was sat cross-legged, a mess of papers spread around him, just as they had been over the past few weeks. As if he could feel the weight of her gaze, he looked up, smirking widely at her. "I'll fully booked--"

"I swear," Her face contorted as she tried to remind herself that he wasn't worth her time, "If you mention the Bennett surgery one more time--"

The way his eyes glimmered told her exactly what she needed to know. It'd been the only thing that anyone had been able to talk about, especially Isaac, who seemed to treat his appointment to assist as some divine bestowment. 

It had struck up his nasty ego, leaving all of them jaded as he gloated whenever given the chance. It was a major surgery and, apparently, a major opportunity for Isaac Cochran to be a complete dick.

Faith sighed, as if she wished that Beth hadn't even mentioned it, "Don't get him started."

"Jealous?" Isaac spoke over the blonde.

Beth looked in between the two of them, noticing how Faith leaned away from him, her face twisting in disdain. 

His eyes bored deeply into hers, his question lacking any question at all-- he knew she was jealous, they all were. Even Ashley, forever quiet and lingering, shot him a look of frustration from her perch on the other side of the gurney.

It was an extremely rare surgery, the sort that came in a blue moon and wouldn't be seen again for a long time, simply just because not many surgeons were crazy enough to do it.

"Of the hand cramp you're gonna get?" Her eyebrow raised and she chuckled patronisingly, "Yeah, I'll pass."

"Well," Isaac hummed, shrugging, "At least I didn't have to sleep my way into this surgery--"

"Oh my god, you're right you didn't," Beth retorted, her smile stretching into something a little more unhinged as he snickered to himself. A faux inhale of surprise. "Isn't it a Christmas miracle!"

They glared at each other, their dislikes evenly matched as the other interns sat in between them. 

As Beth lingered, she thought about how Isaac had stalked her down and thrown the accusation that she was sleeping with Mark at her. He'd been so sure, he'd been so convinced and she could see it written across his face as he stared back at her-- she waited for him to speak, for him to say something in retaliation, but the response she predicted never came.

"It's my Christmas gift," He said smugly. Discreetly, Beth noticed how Liam and Faith both exchanged a look. A gift that Isaac did not, under any circumstances, deserve. The surgical intern's smirk just widened. "Merry Christmas to me."

Liam rolled his eyes, "I'm sure you'll be very happy together--"

"Happy? I'm going to be hot shit," Isaac retorted, scoffing as if Liam had completely dismissed how integral this was to his personality. (Beth, meanwhile, was pretty sure they'd all gathered, by now, that this single surgery was his only personality trait. Well, other than being a dick, but saying that out loud wasn't exactly very Christmassy of her.) "I'm going to Head Resident before you know it--"

"Huh," Faith muttered to herself, her head dropping back against the wall. She let out a sigh, half despaired at the dumbassery of the male gender and half agonised by her taste in them. "You've got the shit part right."

"The only Christmas gift I care about is getting the universe off my ass right now," Beth stated off-handedly, dropping her gaze down to her cell phone as she scrolled through her messages. "So I've got better things to do than watch Cochran here rub one out over how great he is--"

"You figure out what you're going to do?"

The question came from Faith as the blonde continued to watch the snow outside. 

She didn't look away, just kept her gaze completely trailed on the winter wonderland (that was less dreamy and more senselessly violent) beyond the window. 

Beth pressed her lips into a thin line, dropping her head to stare at the carton of lukewarm food in her hand.

"I've got an idea," She responded with a sigh, still not completely sure what she was doing. In the corner of her eye, she caught how Faith nodded, subconsciously leaning against Isaac. "As I said, if anyone needs me, page me."

Like Mark, Beth had struggled to come up with a gift; but that wasn't unusual for her at all. She was, through and through, notoriously a terrible gift-giver. Her usual port of call was the nearest book store. 

Derek had been receiving books on the native fish of Alaska for the past decade, Addison slowly building up a collection of he'd learnt over the years that it was some sort of talent or skill that people just happened to have or develop-- one that, by all means, Beth lacked. It wasn't that she didn't care, in fact, she cared too much. 

One single holiday season was enough for her to break out in hives. She wanted to be the sort of person who didn't have to dread the thought of things--

Beth so desperately wanted to feel like she had her shit together.

"What do I get him?" She'd asked her sister desperately. 

Addie was good at this sort of shit. She knew how to weather this sort of storm; she'd been full of suggestions but Beth knew that Mark didn't want cologne or cufflinks or some shitty sale rack item. 

"What the fuck do you get a guy like Mark Sloan?"

She liked to think she'd grown to know him inside out, but there were so many things about him that still kept her on her toes. 

She knew what he didn't like: he didn't like Patrick Swayze, for starters. He didn't like thin crust pizza, he didn't like artificial strawberry flavouring and really had a thing against radio jingles, to the point where he predominantly drove in complete silence. 

He did, on the other hand, like blockbusters. He did like deep dish pizza, mint flavoured things and the smell of her hair conditioner. He liked driving at night when everything was silent and as empty as Manhattan could get. And, despite how badly he would deny it, he liked it when Beth hugged him-- she knew that he really, really liked to be the little spoon.

But what do you get the guy who seems to have everything? He had the apartment, he had the money, he had the career and the car too. He had the toothbrush in Beth's bathroom and the shirts in her closet and the--

Oh.

That spiralling descent of thought had given her the perfect idea.

One thing, however, that Beth was sure he didn't have, was his Christmas Eve. 

That blizzard was one hell of a bastard. Hence why she was suddenly feeling a whole lot like the protagonist of some low budget holiday flick. She'd tightened her ponytail, gritted her teeth and powered through it. 

She set her pager to one side and granted Mark one more thing, one of the things she knew he wanted more than anything.

***

You owe me.

That's what the text message said. Three words. Eight letters.

It made Mark pause as he tossed gloves into a medical waste bin, having just spent the last half hour suturing a patient who'd gotten themselves impaled while basting a turkey. 

He glanced over Derek's message as he walked very quickly across the ER, fully prepared to dive into a supply closet if it meant that he could have a few moments of peace. He was an hour overdue for his break and he'd already had to juggle five different patients at once, and, on top of that, seemed to have no chance of getting in the OR anytime soon. 

His trudge up to radiology to wait on a set of scans was paired with a long breath, one that was hungry for just a second of relief.

Right about now, he should've been introducing the girl he loved to the woman who he'd grown to consider a second mother. Well, technically they knew each other already; Carolyn adored her son's sister-in-law and Beth adored her. 

Even so, he'd spent the past few days giving himself a pep talk for it, preparing himself to make a big step. He'd spent the past few days trying to ignore the smile on Derek's face as the neurosurgeon commented on how he was finally growing up.

"If you think I'm bad," Derek had said with that stupid little grin, "Just wait until Kathy and Liz find out that you actually have feelings like a normal person."

Kathy and Liz. God, Mark had been able to hear their commentary already; they were, by all means, the chorus to his love life. 

They'd been there to witness his first date and had, in the tradition of all older siblings, made his cheeks burn as he nervously navigated his firsts. 

The thought of setting Beth in front of them and watching their eyebrows raise and their lips pinch had filled him with that familiar twist of nerves-- but at the same time, it made it feel so real.

They thought Beth was great (and so did he.)

Now, Mark chewed on his bottom lip as he passed through the hospital, silently thinking to himself how weird it was that he hadn't seen Beth around anywhere. 

Usually, he'd see her racing from one trauma to another, sprinting out of an elevator or fighting her way into one. 

(Secretly, Mark looked forward to those sort of moments more than he let on. He liked how she'd catch his eye briefly, no matter how busy she was. It was the sort of moment that he held onto-- it made this stress and the anxiety of walking into the unknown worth it. It was that little smile too, the flicker in the corner of her mouth and the knowing moment between them.)

Dammit, Mark breathed out and shook his head, Derek's right.

"Congratulations Doctor Sloan."

Mark frowned at the sound of his voice being called down the hallway and, for a split second, he wondered whether it was a voice adding to his internal monologue. Congratulations Mark, it took you long enough. 

His head raised, along with his eyebrows and he stared down at the perpetrator. There Bennett was, passing across the corridor, eyes set dead on him as Mark approached him.

Oh crap.

He didn't look particularly happy. There was a muscle that was tensed in his jaw, his brow furrowed as he glowered over at the Plastic Surgeon. 

Mark didn't like it-- there was something about how Bennett seemed to tear through his so silently and so casually that made the tips of his ears burn. He cleared his throat and, for good measure, flashed a clean, charming smile.

The cardiothoracic surgeon just shook his head and shoved a file into his chest. 

It almost made Mark stumble backwards, the action taking him completely off-guard. From here, he could see how everyone in the radiology department had stilled, their heads turning to watch at the senior doctor's lip curled almost spitefully.

"Your ego is going to be the death of you."

Bennett held his gaze for a few moments, just long enough for Mark to see the disdain in his eyes. 

It was such a striking exchange, one that made his throat dry. Suddenly, Mark understood exactly what was going on, he looked down at the folder, seeing the surgical notes that most of the doctors in the hospital had been at war over-- he gripped it with numb fingers, not realising that he was holding his breath until Bennett had turned and started stalking down the corridor. 

Mark watched him go, the relief slowly creeping over him. Well, that was until Bennett paused--

The cardiothoracic surgeon turned and shot him a glare that almost rumbled him. Bennett flashed a perfectly serrated smile and, at that moment, Mark could pinpoint when the gossip began. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed how a nurse turned to whisper to the technician beside them, their eyes gleaming with the addictive thrill of the drama unfolding in front of them.

"Oh," He called down the hallway, amongst all of the staff that had halted to watch this not particularly festive, "And I hope, for your sake, that Montgomery puts out." (Crap.) "Otherwise, you've just killed a perfectly good patient for no reason, huh?"

Mark's jaw slackened. He could feel everyone staring at him as Bennett tossed a final glance around the hallway. 

The surgeon left a mess in his wake, one that didn't feel very Christmassy at all, by the time Bennett was gone, people were already talking-- Mark felt his face flush and he averted his eye to the chart in his hands.

Yeah, this was pretty shit compared to just Kathy and Liz gossip.

He found himself back in that stairwell again, his cell phone balancing in his fingers as he debated whether to page or call. How did he get in contact with Beth? God, why did he feel like his Christmas gift was just going to end up with--

Oh.

His eyes flew to his pager as it echoed up and down the freezing stairwell, thrashing in his hand.

Beth was paging him. Now.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuc--

That was new. That didn't happen. (Church and State.) Why was she paging him? (Church and State.) 

Had rumours already spread that far and wide that she was seething at the back of some supply closet somewhere? 

Fuck what if he'd really gone and fucked it up? 

Fuck, what if she wanted to break up--? 

What if this was really going to be a truly shit Christmas?

(Mark had never been broken up with before. But, then again, he supposed that he'd never cared about someone breaking up with him before, either.)

The suddenness of being paged to an on-call room was like none other. 

An on-call room? 

Mark squinted down at the tiny text, convinced that he'd read it wrong. (Church and State.) He'd been in on-call rooms before, but never with Beth. She was always so paranoid about that sort of thing. (Church and State.) They'd never even thought of-- Well, no that was a lie. He'd thought about it. He'd thought about it a lot more than he'd admitted.

Standing outside of an on-call room, appearing deeply bewildered and disorientated, needless to say, was not how Mark had envisioned his Christmas Eve going. 

Tentatively, he reached out and rapped his knuckles against the door, a little too wary of what the door would open to reveal. 

He was 100% sure that he was about to get coal in Christmas stocking-- oh, he'd definitely made the naughty list this year.

"Come in!"

Beth's voice was faded and hitched a bit quieter than usual, so Mark risked a glance down the hallway before slipping in through the door. 

It was unlocked and, for a moment, Mark was so consumed by making sure that no one had seen, that he didn't get the chance to look around. 

He shut the door behind him, wincing when it made quite a loud noise; on top of that, he took a moment to gussying himself up before he turned, already mentally reciting whatever crap he could come up with to diffuse the situation.

I know I fucked up but it was all in the name of Christmas right? Happy holidays! Don't murder me--

He turned around.

"Hi."

It was a small room. That's what hit him first. 

They'd always been small rooms, yet, somehow, Beth had managed to make it feel smaller. 

She was stood in the centre of the room, hands collapsed in front of him as she smiled carefully at him, positioned so awkwardly in a way that appeared so alien to her-- he blinked, his eyes bouncing from her to the sudden transformation of the tiny space.

"Hi," Mark breathed out slowly, realising what this was. He halted completely, his jaw slackening as he watched her smile grow.

...

How the fuck had she gotten her hands on Christmas lights?

For a split second, he forgot that they were in a hospital; he could've sworn that this was something straight out of Rockerfella. 

Beth had managed to decorate it into Chris Cringle's wet dream, bundles of lights scattered across the room, casting pretty colours against the walls and ceilings. She'd wrapped the fixtures in the room with scrappy pieces of tinsel and even donned a very tired-looking pair of reindeer antlers that looked as though they'd seen better days. 

Her smile wavered slightly as he fell silent, drinking in every thoughtful detail with a tight, unmoving chest--

There was even the faint sound of Christmas music in the background, splitting the silence in two as Mariah Carey's voice murmured over the sound of Beth's uneasy chuckle. It was playing off her cell phone, slightly crackled and worn, but making Mark's lip twitched as he recognised how much it must've taken Beth to finally cave and choose something festive for once.

She was still in her scrubs, head-to-toe, and it was the one, lingering reminder of where they were and who they were. 

She took two steps towards him, close enough for things to be a bit too far into personal than professional. Her hand pressed over his chest and Mark held his breath, looking down at her as she let out a breath. 

Could she feel how hard his heart was beating against his scrubs? 

She leant upwards until their faces were level and her hands were resting against his shoulders-- she pressed a kiss against his cheek, just below his ear and whispered:

"Look up."

He did. He squinted upwards, seeing what looked like a mess of leaves that had been hastily fixed to the ceiling (with what looked like surgical tape). It took a second for the realisation to hit him, but when it did, he couldn't fight the grin that split his whole being in two. 

With a touch as light as a feather, her fingers trailed up the back of his neck and Mark had to inhale very sharply to make sure he could keep his wits--

"What is this?" Mark asked, his voice low as his hands snuck around Beth's waist, pulling her closer and closer. 

She looked up with him, eyes trailing across the makeshift mistletoe that limply quivered on the ceiling. He didn't miss how he seemed to chuckle to herself, faltering for a second as if she was cringing inwardly.

"Christmas," Beth murmured. 

He pulled her closer into him, delighted by the proximity and the feeling of her skin against his. Her hand played with the bottom of his shirt, making his eyebrows raise. She shot him a long, sneaky grin and trailed her thumb over the naked skin. 

"Or.. at least I think it is--"

"Christmas?"

"Mhmm," She mused breathily, amused by how the breath caught at the back of Mark's throat. Her eyes glittered, swirling like a kaleidoscope in the fractured colours of the decorative lights. "Merry Christmas, Doctor Sloan."

Just that phrase alone was enough for Mark's lungs to squeeze so tightly that he was almost convinced that he'd forgotten how to breathe. 

Or maybe that was just the hug, the way that Beth's body was pressed against him. He looked over her shoulder, at the lights that she'd hung despite her distaste for the holiday, at the tinsel, at the glitter and the effort that she'd tried to put into anything-- his heart swelled.

"What is this all for?" Mark asked, his brain slowly coming back down onto earth as Beth's hand snuck further and further under his shirt, glazing his skin with her trimmed nails. 

He felt the goosebumps climb across his body; they seemed to follow her touch like a salute, the hairs on the back of his arms bristling as Beth sighed to herself.

"I wanted to do something for you," She said lightly, her eyes unmoving from the small smile that played at the corner of his mouth. From the way she spoke, he didn't doubt that this was exactly that it had been-- for him, for Mark and only Mark. A light grimace folded her face. "This sounds gross and dramatic--"

His lips twitched. He didn't think it was any of those things at all.

"I didn't want you to miss out," Beth's eyelashes fluttered just as Mark's mind came to a complete halt. 

She avoided his eye as Mark's grasp on her tightened. 

"I know that you're sad that we can't go to Carolyn's Christmas party--" Mark opened his mouth to reinforce the fact that he was a man and nothing in the world could possibly upset him, but she rolled her eyes and cut him short. "--Oh, so I should put this all away--?"

"No," He said very quietly.

Mark had never had a sure grasp on his emotions; sometimes, feeling things felt a lot like some sort of puzzle. 

It was a precarious thing, knowing what to say, what to do, what to feel, and he'd spent the last year trying to figure it out. His emotions, as much as he tried to convince himself the opposite, terrified him. 

Feeling often felt a lot like struggling, as if he'd been given a maze with no exit or a question with no answer-- he wasn't sure of many things, but in that moment, he was sure that no one had ever made a grand gesture like this before.

He felt warm. 

That was the word that came to mind: Warm. 

He was so accustomed to feeling hot (I mean, c'mon, Mark Sloan, it was his only vice) but this, this was warm. He felt as though he was melting very slowly, like a handful of the blizzard that they could so distantly hear raging outside. 

He felt as though Beth's fingertips would leave irreparable dents on his skin, burning through the frost that coated his body. His chest was packed with a mellow comfort, a feeling that made the words get caught at the back of his throat. It made his body almost feel clumsy and unfamiliar to him-- he always felt so unfamiliar when it came to Beth.

To put it simply: He didn't know what to say.

No one had ever done anything like this for him before.

It didn't surpass him how much Beth disliked this sort of stuff. He'd been driven crazy by the shadow behind her eyes as she lied through her teeth about how the tree was nice, the music was fun and about how she couldn't imagine anything better than taking time off of work to go to a party.

Beth's eyebrow was quirked in a challenge, but gently faded as she noticed how soft Mark's interjection had been. Her eyes met his and he felt her study him, gauge the way that he stared back-- her eyes bounced from one to the other.

"Like I was saying," She continued, smiling slightly as Mark watched her silently. "The blizzard's a bitch. She's ruined our plans so I figured..." A pause. "I figured that I'd make new plans."

He stared at her, completely caught off-guard by the way that Beth gazed back. She was looking at him so tenderly, with a flush in her cheeks as if she was very slightly mortified-- Mark, meanwhile, was overwhelmed by the fact that she'd clearly put so much effort into something that she infamously hated. 

His head was spinning along to the pace of the glowing Christmas lights, careful and tender-- his thumb traced her cheekbone and she sighed lightly.

(She was put off by his silence. Mark was a many of so many words, and yet he was silent, just staring at her and holding her so tightly.)

(She'd fucked it, she was sure that he didn't like it. She could tell it in the way he was looking at her weird.)

(It was weird, wasn't it?)

(It was weird for her to decorate an on-call room and say, hey, sorry about your family party and sorry that I'm not really that sorry about it but here's some half-assed attempt at holiday spirit from a girl who wouldn't recognise Christmas even if she got in a Hit and Run with Chris Cringle--)

"It's shit, isn't it?" her words made Mark's brow fold very slightly. A deflated exhale that mad her shoulders sink. Beth chewed on her bottom lip. "You hate it--"

"No."

"It's a lot," Beth breathed those words out, her face suddenly twisting into a vague expression of discomfort. He could feel her beginning to teeter out of his grasp, causing him to frown in confusion. "I knew the lights were overkill--"

"No--"

"No, it's okay," She said quickly, "Church and State. I know. I just thought it would be nice to just have a-- I just--"

"Beth--."

"I wanted it to be nice and to make up for the whole bitchy blizzard thing--"

He cut her short. 

Suddenly, he was kissing her, holding her jaw so delicately as Beth spiralled into his touch. 

He felt her tensed body ease into his hold, her hands limply trailing down his body as he, quite literally, swept her off her feet. He leant her back, smirking as she was left completely speechless and unable to do anything but kiss back-- she let out an indignant noise as she felt him walk them further back into the room.

(Somewhere on the floor behind them echoed the slap of the medical file as it fell from Mark's fingers onto the floor.)

When it ended, her cheeks were pink. 

Her eyes were round as she blinked at him, slow and slightly shellshocked as if she hadn't expected such a rude interruption. 

Mark chuckled under his breath, his heart racing in his chest as he watched Beth catch her breath. Her hair was mussed, reindeer antlers slightly askew and her lips eyes completely stuck on the flicker of Mark's lips.

Beth paused for a second and then, in a small exhale, jerked her head back up towards the sad, limp bundle of leaves that she'd taped to the ceiling. She squinted at it, as if she'd forgotten.

"Mistletoe, right."

That made him laugh. 

It was a light laugh, making his cheeks scrunch and his head tilt to the side as he pushed up her hairband, straightening it on the top of her head. 

Beth just stared at him, the sleeves of her shirt rolled up past her elbows and ponytail half fallen out of it's hair-tie.

He cupped her jaw, forcing her to look him dead in the eye, "Hate it? You kidding me?"

"Well," Beth murmured numbly, speaking as if she couldn't feel her lips anymore. She blinked slowly, looking so small in the palm of his hand. "I don't exactly know whether this translates. But I have no idea what I'm doing."

(Beth hadn't been lying when she'd said that she didn't recognise Christmas. She'd never had a Christmas Eve like Mark's. She'd never had a second family to fall back onto, but she wasn't bitter about that by any means. She was happy for Mark, happy that he'd had this through his life and she really, really didn't want him to miss out--)

"I..."

What could he say? 

How could he say that it was one of the best things that anyone had ever done from him? 

How could he say that his love of Christmas had been so deeply founded in the kindest extended to him by a family who had had no reason to open their door to him other than humility? 

How could he say, that in that moment, he felt so much love for her that his heart was almost twisted and pained over it--?

With a lingering smile, he inclined his head at the decorations around them. "I like the tinsel."

Well done Sloan, so smooth.

"I had to steal all of this from the pediatrics department," Beth said in the smallest voice possible. His eyebrows raised, another chuckle falling past his lips as Beth's face contorted, cringing at how it sounded out loud. "I'm a terrible human being--"

"Someone's on the naughty list this year."

(Her eye twitched at the sight of the smirk on his face as he spoke.)

(God, it made her close her eyes for a split second and inhale very sharply._

(She couldn't decide what irked her more, the fact that she was stuck with a smug bastard or the Christmas cliché. Either way, it took everything within Beth not to slap it off of him-- but he was holding her so delicately, his hand gently brushing some hair out of her face. Her heart was at the forefront of her mouth, striking up a rhythm that almost made her feel sick.)

Mark pressed a kiss to the side of her neck, smiling as he felt her breathing hitch at the gesture.

 He lingered on her carotid, feeling the thrum of it against his lips. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, stabilizing herself as he trailed small imprints down the stretch of skin.

"The mistletoe is a branch from the rubber plant down in the secretaries office," It was if she couldn't stop herself from talking, her words catching at the back of her throat as Mark hummed lightly against the curve of her neck. Her head tilted to the side and she balled her fists on the shoulder of his scrubs. "--and I found some fake snow in the radiology department and--"

His hands pressed through the fabric of her scrubs, seeking out the familiar shape of her body beneath the layers; he couldn't wipe that stupid smirk off his face as he enjoyed something that felt so deeply taboo. 

This was far from a church activity and the state? Oh, the state of her--

"Fuck."

She groaned so lowly as his hands and mouth continued to roam. 

He felt the sound in his chest, the groan reverbing through both their bodies. When he looked up at her, her eyes were closed tightly. (He found himself doing that all too often, just watching her respond to his touch. She was so wonderfully responsive. 

He enjoyed the delicious noises that fell past her lips.) He would've kept going too, but a firm hand snaked out of nowhere, grabbing the nape of his neck and pulling him back until a pair of heavy-lidded eyes could meet his. Beth's mouth drew into a light pout.

"Don't distract me--"

"You want me to stop?" 

His question was so light, so provocative and he could see the hesitation in the way Beth's breath caught at the back of her throat. She was still holding his shoulders so tightly, clinging to him as if she couldn't let go. 

"Or do you want me to--?"

"This the sort of shit you do at family parties?" Beth asked breathlessly, slapping a hand away as Mark got a little too ahead of himself. He chuckled, retracting him arm and stepping backwards, tilting his head to the side. "Because if so... I'm gonna need another invitation next year--"

"Done," He said without hesitation, "Done, done, done--"

Her smile was a burst, a momentary cloud moving and revealing the sun. 

She shook her head and, for a split second, Mark distracted himself by reaching out and fixing her headband. He straightened the reindeer antlers, his lips twitching as Beth sighed; as he went to retract his hand, she grasped it with her own, interlacing her fingers with his-- Mark held his breath as she tugged him forwards, dragging him onto the bed.

"You realise how many times I've imagined this?" His flirting was shamless. Always had been and always would. He enjoyed the roll of Beth's eyes as she sat him down on the rubber mattress and "How many times I've thought about being in this room alone with you--"

"Oh sure," Beth muttered, her lip quirking, "Becuase nothing says erotic like a girl in reindeer antlers that smells a tiny bit like vomit."

(Her eyebrow lifted again in yet another challenge and she searched his eyes for the release that confirmed that he was just a tiny bit delusional. The pause was a little too long and, with a long breath, she rolled her eyes.)

"Mark Sloan," She said his name so precariously and his heart skipped a beat. "Whatever will we do with you?"

"Oh I have some ideas--"

"Someone's getting coal in their stocking, hm?"

Another indignant snort, but this time, Beth didn't walk away. Instead, she got closer, climbing onto the bed. Well, specifically, on top of him. 

She placed her legs either side of his and perched on top of him, her hand finding it's familiar hold around the back of his neck. She smiled at him, another small flicker of light, and she skillfully stifled a yawn in a long sigh-- 

He chuckled at the sight of him straddling his lap, a very distorted parallel to a small child beaming on the lap of a mall Santa.

"So, Elizabeth, what do you want for Christmas?"

She chuckled and shook her head, "Shut up."

"I'm just saying--"

"You're a dork," was her breathy interruption, causing his eyebrows to raise. His incredulous expression was smothered by the grin on her face. "You're a dumb, handsome Christmas-loving dork--" A pause and something faded at the back of her eyes. "I'm sorry you couldn't be with Derek's family."

The sudden change in tone made a lump form at the back of Mark's throat.

It was the thing that he'd been trying to avoid. It was what had gone hand-in-hand with the pursuit of Bennett's surgery, a distraction that was able to uproot the constant reminder of--

"It's okay," He said, his face crumpling into a dismissive frown. He shook his head, shrugging as if it had meant absolutely nothing to him this whole time. Beth watched him intently, her dark eyes catching every muscle that twitched in his face, "It's not a big deal."

Lie.

"It is," She said, and Mark was completely convinced that she knew him better than he did. "They're your family too."

Mark exhaled sharply.

"I'm sorry," Beth continued, a thumb trailing along his jawline. It left goosebumps in its wake. Beth held his gaze. "I know I'm not the best person when it comes to festive things and I just..." Mark followed her gaze as she glanced downwards at her lap, appearing almost uncomfortable with the topic. "I know that this time of year means a lot to you... and... and it's our first Christmas together after.."

They both felt the pause.

"You deserve a Christmas," Beth said so softly and then she chuckled to herself, "I tried to bargain with Mother Nature, but I think you're onto something with that naughty list," Mark grinned to himself, "But, I think this is all we're gonna have for our Christmas now... I hate that all I have to offer you are the..." She paused to peer over at the clock in the corner, "twenty minutes that I have left on my lunch break."

What a morbid reality that was: their whole holiday, compressed into a half-hour in a tiny on-call room surrounded by Christmas lights. 

It sounded as though Mark had found himself in some stalemate, one where Mother Nature truly had screwed them all over-- he was working through the most wonderful time in the year, he was unable to see his family and friends, and half of Manhattan was spiralling into chaos. 

Now they were stranded in the hospital, there was no doubt that there was no way that they'd get any semblance of normalcy or relaxation.

Yet, somehow, with Beth's tender touch and the reflection of lights in her eyes, Mark found himself thinking that there was nothing he'd rather do than entertain her company.

(Oh, and in true Mark fashion, do 😏, in the literal term, too.)

"You hate Christmas," It felt like such a redundant statement for him to say. 

He said it so carefully, so warily and Beth didn't correct him. 

She just smiled sadly, a hand pressed to his cheek as he voiced that little pestering thought that lingered at the back of his brain.

"Oh, yeah, it fucking sucks," She said, her voice so honest and so jilting as she tried to stop the chuckle that rose within her. 

He could tell from the way that her eyes lit up at the comment that it was something she believed so deeply.

 Then, she dimmed again, "But, you're worth it. I'm gonna regret this but..." Beth grimaced, "I'd celebrate Christmas every day of the year for you if it made you happy."

It was the return of the familiar conundrum, the bewilderment that filled him with whatever new feeling his stumbled onto during this relationship-- it was everything. It was the tender honesty in Beth's voice, the feeling on her fingers twisting the hair on the nape of his neck and the way that his chest seized so tightly, as if he was having a cardiac arrest. 

(For the record, Mark was fairly sure that it wasn't a heart attack, but he wasn't entirely sure.) 

He found himself completely breathless, just staring and staring and staring until his eyes were dry and he was biologically inclined to blink--

And then he kissed her. It was his impulse. Whenever in doubt, kiss the shit out of the girl you love. Mistletoe present or not.

"You need to stop doing that," Beth murmured outside of the way Mark's body flushed so tightly against hers. Despite her words, however, she seemed completely reluctant to move. She spoke directly against his lips, smiling faintly as Mark's brow furrowed at her. "I have Christmassy things planned for our express Christmas--"

"They can wait," Mark said lightly, "I have other things in mind right no--"

He was cut short by a small envelope.

It appeared out of nowhere, suddenly thrust in between them as he went to kiss her again. His lips hit the paper just as his eyes hit hers-- she held it up so innocently, her smile small as Mark just stared at her. 

He leant back a few inches and, very carefully, took in from her, recognising his name on the front in her messy scrawl.

"Uh, the gift shop in the plaza kinda ran out of the good cards," Beth stated awkwardly as Mark gently tugged the card out of its envelope. 

She hid her smile behind her hands, waiting for him to react to the image on the front-- he peered down at it, his brow furrowing as he realised what exactly she'd meant.

It wasn't a Christmas card, per se, but a dramatically vandalised Get Well Soon card. 

He met the eyes of a traumatised bear holding a balloon, chuckling at the hastily doodled Santa's hat and beard. 

In the place of Santa's beard, she'd gone in a more artistic direction and, with a light smile, she explained it as an ode to him, a very rough depiction of the scruff that he'd been too tired to shave over the past few weeks. ("It's more chic, y'know?") To that, he didn't quite know what to say.

Inside the card, she'd just written one thing.

All my love, Your Grinch.

"Funny," He mused, his whole being welcoming that flood of warmth. It stretched from his fingertips to his toes, welling in the contact between them and reaching deeper and deeper and deeper-- "I like the bear, he's got a good sense of style."

"You..." Beth's eyes peeked out from behind her hand as she inclined her head at the discarded envelope. "You missed something."

He had. Mark hadn't realised that there was something he'd left behind. 

On second glance, there was a tiny bit of weight to the envelope, one that he'd missed-- Beth shied back for a second, watching as he gently parted the paper, peering down into the folds. 

A dent appeared between his eyebrows and Beth exhaled tiredly.

"Okay," She said, pulling a face, "This was a whole lot more romantic in my head--"

"Your apartment key?"

It was her apartment key. Mark could recognise it in a heartbeat. 

It'd been pulled from its keyring, removed from its usual position in between Addison's spare key and a faded fob from a trip to Coney Island. 

It sat in the centre of his palm, worn and gleaming in the glow of the Christmas lights. Of course, he recognised it, he had one that was completely the same.

"Yeah, I..." Beth trailed off, her face contorting as if she was now regretting putting it in there. She pinched the bridge of her nose, "As I said, it seemed like a better idea on paper--"

"Is it my copy?" He asked, suddenly completely bewildered. 

He had a copy, he'd had a copy for a long time. Beth had had it made for him for whenever he finished before her and he didn't feel like making the drive onto the other side of the island and preferred to stay over (which, admittedly, was most nights but not necessarily for that reason.) He was completely lost.

"No, it's--"

"Your one--"

"Yes--"

"I don't--"

"What I'm trying to say," Beth interjected, her tone almost exasperated. 

She was balled up, her muscles tense as Mark blinked at her. (He really wasn't putting two-and-two together and she really didn't blame him. She'd had to throw this all together within twenty minutes and, in all honesty, she was still completely convinced that this was all complete crap.) 

"What I'm trying to say is," She tried it again: "I want you to move in with me."

Oh.

Mark halted.

Oh.

She was staring at him, her eyes completely stuck on his frozen facial expression. 

The key hovered in between them, one of his hands holding it and the other clasping her waist to steady her. 

(Beth trapped her tongue in between her teeth, eyes darting around his face to try and gauge his facial expression. She didn't realise she was holding her breath until her lungs were screaming at her to inhale.)

(Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.)

(She'd fucked it all up, hadn't she?)

Mark, meanwhile, was staring at the key. 

He was familiar with this key. He'd used it, quite possibly, over a hundred times in the past year to the point where it was more familiar to him than the key to his own apartment. He knew this key. 

He'd run his thumb down it's jagged edge so many times that he could almost replicate it's pattern in his mind. 

He was so familiar with this object-- but he was so unfamiliar with the response that it suddenly elicited from him.

"Fuck," Beth breathed out so lightly when Mark didn't speak. It was tragically amused, "Please don't ghost me for another six months."

He would've considered it morbidly funny if it wasn't for the way that he could tell she meant it. Was this what he'd become? 

The sort of guy who was so spooked by the commitment that small tokens and big steps were enough for him to skitter off into the opposite direction? (Mark had to swallow a big lump as it accumulated at the back of his throat, triggered by that realisation.) 

Beth's voice had been so strained and so breathless and so close to desperate. It made his chest seize and this time, when he considered whether he was having a heart attack, it was for all of the wrong reasons.

When Mark looked up at her, at the surgical intern with the flushed cheeks and the crooked reindeer antlers, he saw the apprehension that was etched on her face. 

She was tensed, her eye twitching very slightly as if she was completely prepared for the worst-case scenario.

What if he said no-- but what if he said yes?

Mark paused.

"Is this your smooth way of asking me to pay rent?"

His question made Beth's brow furrow and, this time, it was her who was completely lost. 

It seemed as though she was so prepared for the worst, that anything else had her completely caught off-guard-- her brown eyes followed him as he held the key up between thumb and finger, pushing the card aside.

"What?"

"I spend more time in that apartment than you do," He said, eyebrow quirking and lips spreading into a slow smile. 

It seemed as though the expression seemed to unlock something within Beth. Relief slowly deflated her and a very slow grin dawned across her face. She let out a scoff, jokingly pushing his shoulder. 

"Is this your way of telling me that you don't want me freeloading anymore--"

"Exactly," Beth teased, but her lips twitched too far for him to take it seriously, "I've decided that I'm going to do something about the strange man in my bed that keeps using up all of my hot water and then not paying--"

"Excuse me," He interjected, "Since when do I shower alone?"

His comment caused Beth to halt. 

She was frozen with her mouth open in mid-sentence, eyes fixed on him as she processed his rhetorical question. 

He watched the way her eyes widened and her grin wavered, as if she was struggling to find a response-- eventually, she just shook her head, a breathy laugh falling past her lips as she pushed her festive headband further up her head.

"Honestly, that's a good point."

"Thank you," Mark accepted humbly, "Give me some credit, Montgomery. I work very hard for my spot in that bed--"

She hummed lightly, "Again, you're bringing up some very strong pointers--"

"I haven't been back to my apartment in four months," Mark said suddenly, studying the way that Beth's lips parted very slightly at the revelation. "The doorman got rehired six months ago and when I lasted went home, they didn't even know who I was. I had to show him my license just to prove that I lived there..." He chuckled at the thought, rolling his eyes, "I think, what you must have missed, is that I've kinda already moved in."

"I want more than your toothbrush in my bathroom," Beth stated off-handedly, a dent appearing between her eyebrows as Mark pushed the hair out of her face. Absently, his fingers found the remnants of her ponytail and he took great joy in gently pulling out her hair tie. She smiled at him faintly. "And I want your share of the rent, yeah. I want to stop being worried that you're not going to be there when I get home--"

Mark quirked an eyebrow at that. So far, he always was. Without fail.

"What about Amy?" Mark asked, referring to the Shepherd sister who had taken residence in her spare room. 

The apartment was not, by any means, anything like Derek or Addison's brownstone, they'd been lacking space, even with Mark spending nights. It was an awkward space, with little room for anything but awkward smiles in communal spaces. 

"Have you spoken to her--?"

Beth paused.

(She hadn't.)

"I'm sure she'll..." Beth trailed off, "I don't think she'll mind."

Mark's lip twitched. Beth didn't sound so sure.

"Okay," He said quietly, almost startled by how mature he felt in that moment. If he hadn't known better, he would've thought he was an adult. "I have another idea--"

"Oh for fucks sake," Beth drew in a long breath, her nose scrunching as if she was about to be subjected to a method of torture, "If you mention sex one more time I swear to god--"

"Let's get an apartment. An apartment together."

(Holy crap. Beth hadn't expected that. She stared at the man in front of him, completely convinced that she'd misheard him.) 

Holy crap, Mark hadn't expected that either. 

It'd felt so right to say in the moment, but so brazen and bold in the moments following-- he felt his tongue clog his mouth in a clumsy way that made him trip completely over all of his words. 

"I mean-- if you want to I don't--"

"Are you really hijacking my romantic Christmas gift?" 

Her question was such a deadpan delivery that Mark almost didn't see it. His eyes were completely stuck on her raised an eyebrow, her ajar mouth and the way that she blinked repeatedly as if he was going to disappear like some sort of mirage. A beat passed. 

"Who are you?"

"What?"

He was feeling just a tiny bit bashful. That was a very good question: Jesus Christ, who is he?

"Who the fuck are you?"

It was said with a miffed laugh as if she was pleasantly surprised by the change in character. Mark, meanwhile, really didn't have an answer to her question.

"You want to get an apartment?" 

She repeated it as if she needed further clarification as if she was so deeply convinced that she was hearing things. (Beth was, she really, really was.) Mark seemed to hesitate as if he was now completely caught up inside his head that he was seriously debating convincing her that she was hearing things. 

(Mark was, he really, really, really fucking was.)

"Uh," He faltered, "Yeah."

"Yeah?"

"Fuck," Mark breathed out a tumble of syllables, "Sure."

Her head tilted to the side, "Sure?"

Why did he suddenly feel so exhausted?

The expression on Beth's face was so soft. 

She was studying every inch of him as if she was completely determined to commit this moment to memory. A smile lingered in the corner of her mouth, a smile that she couldn't suppress no matter how hard she tried to appear stern. 

A pause enveloped them both, so gentle and careful like the card sealed so tightly in the paper.

The thought of getting an apartment with Beth made him feel light-headed. It was such an image to think of-- a home, a home together, a place that was equal parts his and equal parts hers. It struck Mark so deeply. He'd always been so accustomed to solitude. 

He'd always been so fine with being alone-- but then he thought about Beth making french press coffee in the morning, her late-night, hazy smile and the smell of her body wash in the shower--

Yeah, he wanted to get an apartment with her.

"It was kinda a shitty present," Beth sighed, looking over at the key in his hand. He followed her gaze. He didn't think it was shitty at all. "I had something better planned with a nicer card and a cooler leadup and more of a... more of a thing... and I got you a nice jacket--"

"I got you perfume," He said and, in his peripheral, he saw Beth smile. "Addie helped me pick it out."

Beth nodded slowly, "Yeah, she's good at that sort of stuff--"

Then Mark paused. God, it sounded so shitty when it was placed up against what Beth listed so tiredly, almost in mourning of the Christmas that she'd tried to plan for him. 

It was said in the same 'in memoriam' that he'd been filled with when thinking of the diner back in Astoria and Lizzie and Kathy's teasing. It made him feel weird. He felt a sudden impulse to speak:

"I think we should get a cat."

The suggestion was so sudden that he saw the shock as it flashed across her face.

"A cat?" She repeated back to him, just as she had when he'd mentioned the apartment. This time, Mark managed a nonchalant nod, recovering from his own bewilderment as his brain just went off on it's own accord. Beth smiled. "An apartment and a cat?"

"Yep."

Wasn't that what normal people wanted? Didn't they want to move into apartments and adopted ratty street cats and share things? Didn't they want to share their Christmases and savour that very expression on Beth's face that was right there--?

He could imagine it. An apartment. 

A little cat that really didn't want anything to do with them until it was a cold night when they alll had to huddle for warmth. They'd figure something out. It wouldn't be neglect. 

They'd name it Maverick or Patrick or whatever dumb name that came out of an argument (the Beth would probably win) and they'd love that bastard with every inch of them. They'd co-parent that monster until--

Oh fuck.

(Parenting?)

Who is he?

"Wow," Beth's head leant backwards and she looked back at the lights above them. From this angle, he could see the way her face exploded into a delighted grin. The antlers nearly fell off her head as she stretched and stretched and stretched, Mark's hands holding her so tightly so she wouldn't fall. A long, miffed laugh. "It's a Christmas Miracle."

It felt like it.

It struck him, in that moment, that this was it. 

It was the opposite of that night all those months ago, the night where he'd turned his back on her offer of love and never quite forgiven himself for it. This was it. This was all she'd needed. Maybe he hadn't needed to go to all of that trouble after all--

Oh, he'd almost forgot.

"I got you something else," He spoke quietly, making Beth's chin tilt down to look over at him.

 There was a sudden inflexion of light in those dark, bottomless brown irises that made him wonder whether she truly hated everything about Christmas. That, right there, was an almost childish excitement that made his heart skip a beat. 

Sheepishly, he nodded in the direction of the medical file that was long abandoned near the doorway. "It's over there."

Her brow furrowed and she shot him an odd look. 

Despite this, however, she still got to her feet and Mark took great delight in watching her bend over to slide it off the floor. He sat there, waiting patiently for her to speak-- her back was turned to him as she opened the file. He could hear the gentle turn of the pages as she slowly read the contents.

A pause. For a moment, everything was peaceful and Mark found himself enjoying this prolonged moment of calm. 

It truly was a magnificent little space in this on-call room; he drunk in the decorations and the faint sound of Frank Sinatra, ingesting it all like a very festive cocktail. 

It was then, in that moment, that Mark decided this little twenty-minute Christmas was his favourite gif that he'd ever received.

"Holy shit."

Beth's realisation was soft but her movements were harsh. 

She whipped around with so much urgency and disbelief, her eyes bugging out of her head as she looked over at the man sat on the bed. 

Her eyes were wide, mouth ajar.

"Holy shit."

"The surgery's at 9," Mark said, hungrily catching every single second of Beth's thought process.

 Usually, she was so hard to read, but in that moment, her binding seemed to fall apart and her pages went flying. When she looked at him, there was so much on her face, so much in her eyes. 

"Bennett's excited to have you on board--"

"Holy shit."

Beth kept repeating it over and over, her voice hushed as her head dropped back down to rip through every single piece of information in the chart. 

She flipped through the pages with a sense of delirium. 

When Mark met her eye again, he was grinning; he hunched slightly, placing his elbows on his knees and all too aware of how he missed the weight of Beth sitting on his lap. 

But this was definitely worth it--

She let out a laugh of disbelief.

"Are you serious?"

Mark chuckled, "Dead."

(Beth, in all honesty, couldn't believe her eyes. Was it the lights? Had this whole conversation been some sort of Christmas-light-induced delirium? Some sort of mirage? She bit down on her tongue, hard, trying her best not to squeal like a child who had just found their wildest dreams at the bottom of their stocking.)

(Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.)

"I love you," She said it in a rush of air, hugging the medical file to her chest so tightly that, for a second, Mark was concerned that she'd destroy it completely. His eyebrows raised as she came cantering towards him, "Holy shit, I love you so muc--"

She cut herself off this time, pressing her lips to his with so much urgency that it wiped Mark's mind. 

There was so much passion behind it that Mark felt his blood boil-- her legs resumed their previous position, the medical file caught between their bodies as she pushed him back onto the bed. 

The antlers skittered to the floor, Beth's hair flying as she pressed him down into the rubber mattress, skin so hungrily seeking skin.

"There's no mistletoe over here," Mark mused as they parted (reluctantly) for air. 

From the moment they were disconnected, they were so desperately trying to reconnect. They were so close together, hands roaming, senses alert and so awake--- she let out a slight yelp as he flipped them over, lingering on top of her as her hair splayed out against the sheets.

"Shut the fuck up," Beth murmured against his lips but he didn't miss the way she failed to stifle her chuckle. "God, Isaac's going to be pissed. Serves him right, smug bastard--"

Mark's nose wrinkled, "Here's an idea: maybe don't talk about Cochran right now--?"

"Why?"

"You know why."

(Oh, Beth could feel why.)

"Oh, he's not going anywhere don't be so dramatic--"

"How long have we got?" 

Mark's question was caught amongst the sound of scrubs shifting against skin. Beth's hands were up the front of his shirt and her pants were already slowly sliding down her thighs. A guttural sound caught at the back of his throat as she shifted against him. 

"How long--"

"Five..." Beth hummed.

"We can do five," He said against her skin. His hand was so tightly wrapped in her hair as she trailed a line of kisses along his jaw. "I like the sound of five-"

"You sure of that?"

In between the lights and the tinsel and the hazy music, Mark didn't miss the way that Beth's eyes seemed to burn with a very dangerous challenge. 

Her question, which knowing her was designed to be the sort of sultry teasing that kept things interesting. It didn't help that her lips split into a very wide smirk, that sort that made his mind do very interesting things--

Mark's jaw clenched and a vein throbbed in the corner of his forehead.

"You're really going to question me?"

He played right into the palm of her hand. It felt like such a lame question, such a weak response-- but he was so wrapped up in the unspeakable that speaking felt like such a trivial courtesy. 

Why speak when he could show?

She smiled.

"Worth a try," Beth shrugged so casually, but then her hand tightened very slightly on the front of his neck. Something so deeply devious and delicious flickered deep in her eyes. Mark tensed under her affirmative hold. "I'm already on the naughty list, might as well act like it, huh?"

***

The irony was not lost on him, throughout that five minute period.

Between the sweat and the hands and the faded sound of Christmas Eve in the background, Mark supposed that, in a way, Al Bennett's caution had become true-- for when Beth left with a newly tighten ponytail and her antlers in the first position, she did not bring Mark with her. 

No, her only companion was a surgery had been pulled out from under the feet of one of her rivals--

Mark, well... Mark was left to hold onto his twenty-minute Christmas, and oh did he hold it tight.