𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙄𝙄
blood in the water

──────

NEW YORK

THE THING ABOUT days like this is, you can never tell when they're going to happen.

You don't wake up knowing that a single day is going to ruin everything good.

You don't know that something like that is going to happen, it's not the sort of thing that gets prophesied or spoken about before head—you just wake up, go where you need to go and have it catch you, horrendously, by surprise.

That. It was one of those days.

When Beth heard the words 'company fundraiser', her immediate response was to sigh so deeply that she felt the air in her toes.

It was sprung on her during one of the longest shifts of her life, eliciting a very overtired groan that had made her resident's eyebrows raise at her—not only was it the sound of someone who was slowly losing themselves to their impulse to carpe diem things to death, but it was the also the distinctive sound of a Montgomery child realising they were being pulled into yet another social soirée.

She buried her heel in the ground and frowned at the invitation as it was posted on the wall of the locker room.

    "This is a compulsory event," was all that was said to the group, the flier telling them all further details. "You're second-year interns working at a public hospital. We need funding. You need to learn how to get it, rub elbows with some executives, raise some money for the new Plastics unit. It's your time to shine."

Shine? Beth didn't feel like she was particularly capable of shining.

She didn't feel shiny, she felt like she'd been rubbed raw into something that was matte and unspectacular in every way. When she looked up from the notice and over towards an equally deflated Faith, she couldn't suppress the sigh that left her body.

Beth didn't quite need a social event right now.

She'd been successfully dipping out of Addison's fundraisers for nearly a year now, to the point where she'd begun to stop caring. Somehow, the thought of trying to schmooze with the social elite had become more of a chore over the years than it had been fun.

Beth had begun to not particularly care whether Addison was disappointed or stressed about her being a no-show (in all confidentially, she'd begun to not care about a lot of things anymore). She'd never liked it anyway, always found it completely exhausting in some way and by god did she not need any help with being tired.

She'd stopped feeling guilty about it too, stopped letting Addison guilt trip her into situations that she, frankly, could not care less about.

But compulsory. Fuck, the word compulsory was truly the knife in her side.

    "I guess it'll be nice to dress up," Faith said, despite the slight look of hesitation on her face.

She, too, had just finished a very long shift and was now hunched on her bench, wilted at the edges as the guys prepared to pick up where they left off.

In the background, Isaac snorted.

Faith didn't notice, "I've had a dress that I've been meaning to wear for ages—"

    "Is everyone just going to abandon their patients?" was Liam's only contribution, his forehead creasing as he tied his shoes. "If every one of the surgical attendings and heads are going to be at some hotel across the street aren't they putting their patients in danger?"

    "It's a test," Isaac said in the back, his head popping up from the top of his shirt as he changed. "Throwing all the shit they can at the first and third-year interns and the residents... they're testing them."

    "But why us?" chipped Faith in response, looking as though she was slowly catching onto Liam's confusion. "Why is it just us that have to go to this event?"

It was a very valid question.

It made Beth pause for a second as she tiredly attempted to shrug on her coat. She knew that fundraising, when it came to reliable employment at a public hospital, was incredible fundamental to the job.

She supposed that it was why she'd never been completely pissed off by the prospect of being her sister's lackey; Addison had taught her the skills she'd needed to approach one of these situations. It was one of the unsaid labels that came with working within the health services: a hospital, no matter how much they tried to hide it, was a business first and foremost.

    "Maybe they think we're the weak interns," as always, Isaac's contributions to the conversation caused widespread scoffs through the room.

Even the interns who were not associated through friendship with them, the other second-year interns that seemed to eavesdrop behind locker doors, appeared with narrowed eyes, looking over.

"Maybe they think that if we're the ones left with the patients, we'll just kill them all. They'd rather put all of the Post-Ops with all of the first years—"

    "Isaac!"

    "What?" He said in response to Faith's horrified gasp.

His dark eyes chased her as she stared at him, eyebrows raised and an angry flush to her cheeks. She was the only one who had been able to voice their distaste. Beth just looked up from her jacket, her exhaustion sinking into a look of contempt. He jerked his head in Liam's direction.

"I'd put 50 bucks on Carmichael killing one of his Cardio patients by the end of the day," He said, "Tran's a train wreck so that's three Neuro gone. Montgomery looks like she's about to fall over and die so that's at least one death there—"

    "And me?" Faith's question made him halt. In unison, everyone's heads turned to look over at the blonde as she placed her hands on her hips, eyebrows raised. "How crappy of a doctor am I?"

Even half-asleep, Beth knew how much of a landmine that question was.

She watched as Isaac stared at her, his jaw clenching as she cocked her head to the side expectantly. The room seemed to hum for a moment, every single person in the vicinity caught up in the way that Isaac hesitated.

Her eyes flickered between the not-a-couple wondering exactly how this was going to go.

Briefly, she caught Liam's eye; they exchanged a knowing look.

Faith's and Isaac's not-relationship wasn't supposed to be complicated.

They'd been sleeping with each other for the past four months and doing god knows what in on-call rooms, leaving everyone else just to watch as they failed to be secretive at all.

Faith said that it wasn't complicated—but the look that Isaac gave her and the pitch of her left eyebrow, yeah, Beth was going to go out on a limb and say that it was getting a little bit complicated.

Her question was left unanswered.

Eventually, Isaac just turned away and grumbled to himself, tossing his belongings into his locker and slamming it shut. It wasn't until he was gone, in true Isaac storming away fashion, that Faith let out a breath.

She'd been holding herself so stiffly that Beth was able to pinpoint the exact moment her muscles fell—the blonde turned back to the locker beside her and scoffed to herself.

    "Jerk."

A faint chuckle fell past Beth's lips as she watched Faith huff angrily.

The woman beside her clenched her fist as she grabbed her bag, a slight red hue to her cheeks as she changed back into civilian clothing.

She looked tired too, in a way that felt familiar to Beth—tired and done with the crap of men who really weren't worth their energy.

When Faith glanced over at the brunette, they exchanged yet another knowing look, one that told Beth that they were both on the same sort of brainwave.

    "Fucking douchebag," Faith said, making Beth chuckle again. Her lips twitched as Faith rolled her eyes. "Who does he think he is?"

That was the million-dollar question, one that Beth didn't exactly have an answer for.

She'd been wondering that for a while, specifically ever since Isaac Cochran had looked her eye in the eye and said, with such certainty, that she was sleeping with Mark.

What sort of specific brand of finely aged and cultured jerk had the balls to do that?

She'd kept herself too busy to really worry about him, hadn't allowed herself to show any signs of paranoia or stress—but the truth was, Beth wasn't sure who he was.

She'd thought that he would've immediately tattled if he was so sure of himself, she'd thought that he was bound to call out her lies on that empty staff relation form. But he didn't. He kept quiet.

Somehow, that was worse.

She figured, after a while, that Faith hadn't expected an answer.

Her movements were compacted into very short bursts to conserve what energy she had left, leaving her very glad that Faith didn't expect a very long conversation.

She was pretty sure she didn't have the capacity to talk for longer than a handful of seconds.

    "Do you want to go get a coffee?" Faith asked, interjecting Beth's internal monologue.

The blonde was in the middle of yawning, holding a forearm across her mouth as she forced her heels into old battered sneakers.

    "Sorry," Beth shook her head, "I've got to get over to the Upper East Side in like forty minutes—"

Faith's forehead crumpled.

It was very faint, a look of suspicion that Beth was (regrettably) becoming very familiar with.

She paused in the middle of changing her socks, shooting a glance over at her as Beth stifled a yawn, infected by the contortion of Faith's face.

    "Let me guess..." She sighed as if she was disappointed, "You've got a shift over at Manhattan Gen or something..."

Beth's eyebrows raised.

   "Oh c'mon," Faith scoffed, not exactly amused by Beth's feigned confusion. "We're not stupid. We all know that you're working extra shifts at other hospitals."

The brunette's nose wrinkled and she sighed, averting her head. She was too tired to put up a fight.

"Which one is it? Lincoln? Bellevue—"

    "Definitely ManGen," Liam chipped in, eavesdropping on the exchange.

He appeared from around the corner, as casual as his words were cutting; Beth barely even looked up at him, missing the slight curl of his lip as he looked between the two of them.

"Picking up some extra triage shifts in the ER department, right?" He said, "They love their volunteers over there..."

She didn't have the energy to be stand-offish. He was correct, after all, she was completely incapable of finding any flaw in exactly what he'd just said.

That's how her life had been over the past year: bouncing about Manhattan and volunteering wherever she could.

Sure, maybe it was going against the capped hour rule that they had on surgical interns to stop them from overworking themselves, but Beth was doing just fine.

She was great! She was the image of peak human health—

Beth grimaced into her coffee. It wasn't strong enough to even convince her of that today.

     "A surgical internship is a race," She said, getting to her feet despite how badly her body begged her to stay seated. Her voice was light but her whole body felt like lead. She could practically feel her muscles creak and bones tremble as she fought back a yawn. "It's not my fault if you guys can't keep up—"

    "Yeah, it's a marathon," Faith chipped in, her eyebrows raising. Beth could see her judgey little facial expression just out of the corner of her eye. It reminded her so much of Addison. Her skin crawled with the sensation of it. "Not a sprint."

It didn't feel like it. Beth felt like she needed to be at a constant uphill sprint just to make sure that she kept up with everything. Faith's words made her scoff under her breath to herself, wondering whether they were even doing the same internship.

Did Faith not pay attention to how much weighed on these years of their career? Beth was constantly on the edge, wondering whether the tiniest mistake she made was going to uproot the eight years she'd already invested into this career.

The startling thought of someone not having that anxiety was enough for Beth to pause for a second.

    "I get it," was Liam's contribution, making Beth glance up from the bag she was currently (very tiredly) packing. She met his hazy smile as Faith frowned over at him. "I've been picking up some extra shifts too. You've got to keep yourself busy."

    "Well," Faith said curtly, looking as though she wasn't completely convinced. Her eyes fixed on Beth intently.  "There's a difference between keeping yourself busy and working yourself to the death. Isaac wasn't lying when he said that you look like you're about to flatline. You look like hell."

(In all honesty, she felt inclined to verbally agree with her. She felt like hell too.)

(It was her best guess that she didn't exactly look like Kate Moss. It had been a very long day and, as she was beginning to learn, this was the downside of relying on little pills to keep her alert and sharp—the time where they eventually wore off. She was crashing as she didn't exactly have the willpower to cushion her own fall.)

    "Gee," Beth murmured to herself quietly, "Thanks."

    "I don't mean it in a bitchy way," the intern added immediately, looking over at Liam as if for backup. He just shrugged to himself, looking back into his locker as if he suddenly didn't want to be a part of the conversation he'd just inserted himself into, only a few moments ago. Faith sighed through her nostrils. "I mean it in the... 'the concerned friend who thinks you might be overworking yourself' way."

Beth looked over at her, at this blonde who was usually far too peppy to pick up on the dark spots. Her eyes narrowed slightly, the same way that someone would squint to look into the sun, and she tried to pick out the concern that Faith was talking about.

It was there, shining like a very unwelcome lighthouse on the edge of a thunderstorm at sea. It was Beth's turn to sigh; she shook her head and looked away.

    "I appreciate it," was Beth's response, "But I'm fine. I'm keeping on top of things—"

(Again, Faith shot a glance in Liam's direction.)

(They seemed to share a very brief moment, one that said that they knew exactly how Beth was keeping on top of things. Liam, however, didn't appear as alarmed as Faith did at that sentence. He was coping that way too. Too many interns were. Beth was far from the only one in this situation.)

    "It's just the getting to places on time part that's getting hard with all this traffic, Faith. Really, I'm okay—"

(And her relationship, Beth wanted to say. They'd always been okay. That was the consensus of their relationship that Beth had held since Mark had turned up at that wedding and told her that turning away had been a mistake. Even when little bumps and bruises had arisen, even when she'd seen his dismay at having to live some mediocre double life like a movie character, they'd been okay. But something felt a little off these past weeks. It'd been barely a month since Christmas and she'd been able to feel little cracks under her feet as they splintered through.)

Faith just raised an eyebrow at her. 

It was a persistent eyebrow, one that Beth had begun to recognise on Mark. 

It was the art of letting things go but only for the moment, the act of a dog dropping it's toy but only until it was thrown again. She didn't say anything else, just turned away and carried on with her morning as if they hadn't spoken in the first place—it wasn't until Beth got to her feet (swaying slightly from the sheer exhaustion of a shift that had dragged on for far too long) and reached for the familiar pill bottle at the bottom of her bag, that Faith's head raised again.

    "Maybe you shouldn't..."

She trailed off as Beth looked over at her. The brown bottomless eyes that met her gaze were cold and reproachful, red and blown from the lack of sleep and the building ache in her bones that had begun to dictate how often her fingers flipped the cap of the medication in her hand.

The words caught at the back of Faith's throat, blown away in the wind from the snort that came through Beth's lips. She watched as the brunette shook two pills in the centre of her palm.

They were tossed back dry, making Faith watch with the combined intrigue and horror as the reality that Beth had done this so many times before, found a very comfortable spot in the narrative of their friendship.

     "Shouldn't what?"

The question seemed to catch Faith off-guard. There was an uncomfortable pause which told Beth that Faith had absolutely no intention of finishing that question.

It was as she'd said a few moments previously: they never saw each other outside of work. Beth wasn't even sure whether she'd call Faith a friend. Just as no one else in Beth's life seemed capable of, Faith did not finish her sentence. Instead, the blonde just averted her eyes, sighed in a dismissive way and slammed her locker a little too abruptly.

Across the room, Liam (who had strayed over there in a moment of aimlessness) looked up from his pager, brow furrowed as he looked at the two women.

    "Beth," Faith said quietly, "You know what I mean. I've seen some of the people down in the rehabilitation clinic—"

The smile that twisted Beth's lips was cruel.

Her eyes moved down as she stuffed the bottle back into her bag and slung it over her shoulder, shaking her head as Faith was fixed to the spot.

     "Mind your own business," was all that Beth chipped over at her before she left. Her voice was weighted and unkind, "It's birth control. I'm fine."

(It wasn't birth control.)

Being fine, Beth had figured, was an art form.

It was a performance, one that was for other people more than it was for her. (For the record, she was never much 'not fine'. In fact, nearing to the most 'not fine' she'd ever been, but she was going to be damned before she let anyone believe that.) This internship wasn't just a race, it was a performance in itself, too, and she'd always been one hell of a stallion.

They were nearing the halfway mark of their internship and Beth was beginning to romanticise the finish line.

Just the mention of a rehabilitation clinic made her want to scoff again—rehab? How the hell did that factor into this?

There was something about the association between her, a clean-cut Montgomery who just happened to use the odd sleeping pill and upper and rehab... It made her want to peel her skin straight off. Faith clearly did not understand what was going on. No one understood what was going on—

Just the thought of it filled Beth with the same sensation she'd felt that morning with Mark as he'd stared at her with a veiled horror. The look in his eyes had unlocked something so deeply tragic within her, a sharp stab of something that she'd never felt before—

(Maybe it was the reality that she wasn't fine at all.)

But Beth could see the finish line. Why didn't people understand that there was a finish line? Couldn't they see it too?

When she reached the finish line this could stop. When she reached the finish line, she could stop working the double shifts and the exhausting hours.

When she reached the finish line, she wouldn't need these pills and she wouldn't need to put up with asswipes like Navarro. When she reached the finish line, she could pursue the life she wanted with Mark, build something with him, make things work.

When she reached the finish line, she could stop it all and just be happy—

Because a work party did not make her happy.

Maybe she was just numb?

She wondered that as she stood outside of the fundraiser, in the lobby of a hotel that she hadn't been in since a bar mitzvah in the nineties.

She did, for the record, feel kind of numb. There was a disconnect in her body, she could feel it with every breath she took. If she concentrated hard enough, she could compare it to a plug that wasn't pushed all the way in.

She had a perpetual chill too, a shiver that was completely incapable of shaking off; the only time she ever felt warm was when she rarely able to make it home during the night, her back pressed against Marks so tight she could count his breaths.

He was very warm.

The hotel was chilly and it raised goosebumps down her neck as she waited for the elevator. Five floors above she could envision the schmoozing and sweet-talking that was already in full swing.

God, how she dreaded walking into that room; she had so many other things she could have been doing: working at ManWest, working at ManGen, taking an evening off with Amy to go to one of those random bars in Greenwich Village, sleeping.

But no, instead, she was stood there in a dress she'd stolen from Addison years back, debating how many glasses of champagne she'd be able to knock back without her resident chewing her out.

Beth sighed and, with all the reluctance in the world, pressed her thumb firmly onto the elevator button.

It was not a good vibe by any means. Her feet were already aching from her heels and getting changed in the back of a cab had not been glamorous at all.

She'd had to do her makeup in the light of the overhead car illuminator and had given herself a perfume shower as she hadn't had time to get back to her apartment—in fact, Beth couldn't name the last time she'd been to her apartment.

Her life had revolved around on-call rooms and avoiding the exact man who—

    "Hey."

She didn't look over at Mark as he approached her.

There was something ominous about him. He seemed to materialise at the exact moment she decided that maybe this evening was a good thing; maybe she deserved some time to chill out and have some downtime—but there was something that didn't quite work with Mark standing beside her. 

Immediately, at the sound of his voice, she was reminded of their last exchange, their last real conversation, beyond the polite manner at work over patients.

Her gaze dropped to focus intently on her chipped manicure.

    "Doctor Sloan."

Her response was carefully performed, just like the rest of her.

She could sense the way that Mark shifted slightly as if he knew exactly what was going through her head—she was fairly sure that he did, but did he understand it?

Did he think that if he were to chip away at the back of her skull and see the deep-set discomfort still lingered after that argument?

She held herself the same way that she'd held herself when she'd stood in that scrub room and he'd tried to tiptoe around the nurses' coupe against him. It was, if any, a red flag.

Mark shot a smile at the ground.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye. It seemed slightly pained; the only problem was, she couldn't figure out whether it was because she was being difficult or whether the blunt use of such a formal address hurt him.

    "Beth—"

    "We're still on the clock," was all she said in her quick interruption.

What was he going to say? Was he going to apologise for accosting her? For accusing her of being some drunk that couldn't take care of themselves/?

Was he going to tell her that he was wrong and that he regretted it all— Of course not. She didn't even give him the chance. If there was one thing she knew about Mark Sloan it was that he did not apologise. He never apologised. Not even once.

A quick glance over at him and she saw the way that a muscle in his jaw clenched at the unspoken line underneath. Church and State.

Her gaze held his for only a second, but within it, Beth hoped that he got the memo. It'd been a long week and she really didn't feel like being cornered in an elevator ride to hell. His eyes seemed to scan her face closely and, for a split second, Beth could've sworn that he was going to raise his voice in response.

But he didn't; he just averted his head and looked over his shoulder, back towards the front of the hotel.

They'd been arguing a lot lately.

The disconnect wasn't only in Beth, but their relationship too. There was something off.

They'd been disagreeing and fighting over the little things, leading Beth to be exhausted by practically everything that he did and said.

If she was asked, she would have said that it was all Mark, that he was so finicky about her every action and seemed to always have something to criticise (and yet, on the other side, Mark would've said it was all her, that her constant pessimism was driving him insane).

It seemed that their lack of conflict at the beginning of their relationship was slowly beginning to bite them in the ass.

As Mark looked away, Beth briefly studied the side of his face.

He was a pain in the ass but Fuck how she loved him.

A quiet Mark was her least favourite Mark, but it was the only way she was going to get through this night without throwing her head through a wall.

On entering the elevator, he was distant and subdued, like an obedient dog that had followed its owners instruction to stop barking and behave.

The distance that was placed between them, two co-workers at a work party, felt so much further than it really was.

It felt unnatural too, despite how strict Beth was at enforcing it—what would Mark say to her right now if she told him that she seemed to only think clearly when she was in his arms? Would he find it as ironic as she did?

She found herself thinking about that at the beginning of their evening, a rogue thought that made her heart ache a little too much for a Wednesday evening.

It made her toes curl as she let him lean across her and press the elevator button, sealing their fate to be caught up in whatever nightmare the evening was bound to be.

She held her breath and clenched her jaw and tried her best not to think about how deeply bothered Mark had been during their last argument. It lead to a very natural thought progression for her, one that spiralled into a list of drinks she'd accomplish through the evening.

    "Beth," She allowed him his light exhale of her name. It was a breathy sound, one that sounded very, very tired. (Oh she could show him tired.) "How long are we going to do this?"

     "Do what?" Her response was nonchalant. Humouring him.

     Mark winced very slightly, "Fight."

Was he just searching for an argument tonight?

Was that what this was? Beth couldn't tell.

Sometimes, his inexperience when it came to the delicacies of relationships amused her as much as it peed her off— He handled things in one of two ways; he either refused to address them or simply could never let them go, and, in true Mark oblivious ass fashion, he always seemed to apply each to the wrong things.

The things that needed to be dropped were chased and the things that Beth so deeply wanted to discuss time and time again, were always shut behind a dismissive muscle jumping in his jaw or a sigh.

Oh, how it made her want to throw her head through a wall—this, this was something he would've dropped if he was smart. It was never a good idea to say something like that to someone who was very clearly not able to address it.

    "Fight?"

She found his annoyed sigh fulfilling.

    "Yeah, fight," Mark nodded his head, she saw the bob of it out of the corner of her eye. (It made her wonder whether this was the sole reason he'd come this evening: to corner her in some elevator and verbally frisk her down.) "We're still fighting."

    "I'm not fighting," Beth bit the tip of her tongue, knowing that she was very slowly reverting to school playground pettiness. Her tone wasn't far off from sticking her tongue out and just jeering at him. "I'm perfectly calm—"

    "You won't make eye contact with me for longer than three seconds," Mark interjected sharply.

He left a pause, one that made Beth fully feel the efficiency of his words. (Sure, he wasn't good at the relationship stuff, but holy shit he was good at arguing. He always approached everything methodically, just like a good surgeon should. Well, that was until temper got the best of him.)

"You've been avoiding me—"

    She reluctantly peeled her eyes off of the wall to look over at him, "I haven't been avoiding you—"

    "You haven't been home."

There was something about that word, specifically that word leaving Mark in reference to her apartment, that left her momentarily breathless.

It was the concept of it, the suddenness of the reality of it: her apartment, that little cramped space in the dampest corner of Bloomsbury, was her home.

Specifically, Mark in that apartment, Mark in that kitchen, in that family room and that bed. When she looked over at him, she was struck by the feeling of home, of having Mark waiting for her to come back—

But then her throat tightened.

Mark's gaze wasn't welcoming.

It wasn't a plead to come back to spend the nights sleeping beside him. There it was again, the distance, the thing that Beth was beginning to find behind every turn and every corner—it tasted the same as it had when Mark had struggled to vocalise how much he regretted walking away the first time, but when Beth swallowed, it had a bitter aftertaste.

This time, it made her eyes water very slightly. It was the wariness that shadowed all of their arguments, of Mark being not sure how much to invest in his every word.

A very quiet scoff fell through her lips and she shook her head.

    "I've been working."

    "That doesn't usually stop you," His response was curt.

It made Beth pause ever so slightly and brace herself. Asshole. For such a charming lover he could be one hell of an ass sometimes.

    "Well, I've been busy."

    "Beth—"

    "Mark, don't."

She wasn't sure how many times she was going to have to say those two little words in the succession of each other before he listened. Drop it. Let it go. Let me have my time to kick around dirt on the school playing field before I come in from recess.

She just needed time to get over it and then things would be okay, granted he'd have to drop this first and she had the feeling that he had absolutely no intention of doing that soon. When Mark made every movement to continue the conversation, she just smiled bitterly to herself. With her eyes set dead on the floor counter, she just shook her head and laughed at the world she was living in.

    "You accused me of being a drunk," She really wished that she didn't have to say it like that. It felt dirty and wrong to say it out loud. "You accused me of being intoxicated all the time and made me feel crap—especially seeing as you know everything that I went through with my Dad."

There was a pause.

    "I'm not fighting, Mark," Beth said tightly as the elevator door dinged, bringing them to their floor. She was relieved that the universe was giving her an opportunity to escape before this escalated. "I'm peed off and I don't want to say something I'll regret."

That answer didn't satisfy Mark, she could feel his disapproving sigh make its way through his body.

She took that moment to admire how good he looked in his suit, how he'd always been a nightmare but a pretty one all the same.

When she met his eye, she did not shy away; Beth just waited for him to say something with the precious time he had left. She'd been generous to give him this moment. He'd say something, she knew he would, he always had to get the last word—

The last word occurred as she stepped out of the elevator and refused to look back.

    "Don't drink tonight," was his comment in undertone just before they parted ways into a professional landscape of schmoozing and beige. The brief comment and his sharp, invasive tone made her breath hitch at the back of her throat—his hand, very briefly, lingered on the small of her back. "You're on the clock, remember?"

It was a backhanded rhetorical question that made Beth's skin crawl. It was said so mockingly, as if Mark was just daring her to prove the shitty allegation he'd thrown in her direction.

Her immediate reaction was that of a very splitting pain that echoed through her chest—god if he'd only drop it. How brutal it felt to hear those words in that tone. Did he not realise how he'd just made her clench so tightly that her skin throbbed?

Beth didn't have anything to say to him, so she didn't speak as walked away from him.

Douchebag, she thought to herself as she immediately scouted the drink tickets in the room, You don't fucking tell me what to do.

***

Crap.

Mark watched her walk away with his heart beating erratically in his chest. He could feel it, feel the way he'd said exactly the wrong thing; he stared at the back of her head and felt the blood rush to his ears. 

It was as if he'd strayed too near to a mass detonation and was left reeling, desperately holding onto the adrenalin of confrontation as it slowly died down. When he realised he'd been looking for too long (Church and State), he averted his head and cleared his throat, trying to stop his chest from collapsing in on itself. It was harder than he'd expected. 

His cheeks blistered with a flush as his temper flared down and he was left slightly scalded with regret.

Concern was unfamiliar to him. 

Paired with the ego of a man who had never had to look out for someone, or be so intimately involved with another person life like this—it was a dizzying cocktail, one that he was beginning to gauge was explosive. 

He didn't have the words to say it, to approach things tenderly or delicately, and he sure as hell didn't know what he wanted from her. When Beth walked away, silently and without looking back, Mark knew that he'd swapped her usual alcohol order for Molotov by mistake.

He wiped his sweaty, unnerved palms on his dress pants and shook his head.

The problem was, he didn't particularly believe he was in the wrong either. 

He'd spent a long time bearing witness to the things that Beth put herself through the long work hours, the constant pill consumption and the very slow invasion of the downers that she was now taking to combat the others. 

He knew the sort of shit that led to, insomnia, the struggles with eventual and inevitable psychosis—but what was he supposed to do? What could he do? Here this woman was, the one woman who he actually cared about, and she was just...

He glanced over at his girlfriend as she pretended that they were strangers.

Fuck this.

***

Beth, apparently, wasn't the only person having a bad evening.

When she appeared at the allocated intern's table, a red-faced Faith was already seated. Just a glance at the bottle blonde and Beth realised that her energy was matched: she looked sour, her mood spoiled by whatever had occurred not even twenty minutes into the event. 

She was slumped against the table, half a glass of wine in one hand and an entrée in the other. 

Beside her, a serene-looking Ashley, the intern that was rarely ever seen outside of the neurosurgery department, held out a napkin.

As Beth sat down, Faith snatched the small square and scoffed loudly.

     "Thank god you're here," was all that the blonde said, her head turning around to look over at Beth's disgruntled expression. 

Her flop down into the chair was unceremonious, exaggerated by the long sigh that fell past her lips. It appears that Faith's own inner turmoil was halted just by the look of her—Faith raised an eyebrow, swallowing half of her glass in the process. 

   A beat passed and then as if struck by lightning, she wagged a finger in Beth's direction: "Men!"

Immediately, Beth understood. 

Isaac had, very clearly, done something bad and it had left Faith in a state. 

She was, from the few moments that Beth had to gauge her body language, fairly drunk. It'd been a cry of frustration, a war cry that was caught up in the glass of Cristal that seemed to appear out of nowhere and press itself to Faith's lips. 

She rolled her eyes so deeply that, for a second, Beth was so sure that they'd fall out of her head.

    "They can kiss my ass," Beth said in place of a greeting. Immediately, she leant over the table and studied the bottle in the centre of the table, her eyebrows raising as she looked over at Ashley. "How much has she had to drink?"

    "I don't know," the raven-haired introvert mumbled, shaking her head, "She said that she started drinking at a bar across the street with some of the paediatric nurses."

    "Well shit," Beth sighed through her nose, and poured herself a glass, "I've got a lot of catching up to do."

To say that Faith seemed to be in crisis mode was an understatement. 

Beth was pretty sure that she'd never seen the intern so despaired. 

She seemed to be wilted at the edges, a complete contrast to the light airiness that she'd bought into the holiday period not too long ago—when she looked over at Beth with those sad, drunk little eyes, Beth could practically read her mind.

    She spoke with a glass stuck on her bottom lip, "Y'know, you should probably dump him, right—?"

   "I know," Faith laboured, her face scrunching up as if she was in physical pain. She hunched slightly and shook her head, burying her face in a clammy palm. Through crooked fingers, she wearily studied the look on Beth's face. "What did your guy do?"

    Beth's expression grew strained, "Nope, we're not talking about it. I don't even want to unpack it..."

She really didn't. 

There it was again, the alignment of the words drunk, addict, rehab, all with a self-perception that didn't quite correlate. It felt like trying to hammer pieces of a puzzle into spaces where it didn't fit. When she thought of those words, of that very specific label, she thought of her father and that's when things really started to go south. 

Beth felt her temper simmer again and she scoffed just at the thought of it—how dare he. How fucking dare he—

    "We don't even have time to deal with their crap," Faith began, the alcohol speaking through her in long, drawn-out sentences. Beside her, Ashely's face was vaguely contorted, as if she really wasn't enjoying being a part of this conversation. "We're busy, y'know? We're the only three women out of fifteen other surgical interns—we're career women and we're busy and we don't.... we don't need their bullshit, you... you know?"

Beth looked over at her, squinting slightly as she listened to Faith's words stumble over themselves. Crap. She really was wasted at a work function. In a way, Beth really admired the dedication; as much as she loved a few hundred of glasses of Dom Perignon at a soirée, this was work. She really was on the clock. Her complex when it came to her professional career was too rigid for her to even fathom being so damn far gone—

(Mark was standing on the other side of the room. He was turned ever so slightly towards her with a champagne flute balanced in between his fingers. (He didn't even like champagne.) He was caught up in conversation with a donor, dipping in and out of a lengthy conversation about skin grafts. Every so often he would glance to the left, over towards the familiar brunette in the navy dress. There was a nervous twitch about him, one that was gradually picked up on by the other half of the discussion. (Yeah, no, I'm fine. Just feeling the buzz of the champagne. Tell me about this research you invested in...) It wasn't until Beth caught his gaze, in a very brief glance, that Mark reminded himself of how angry he should've been.)

--Okay, Beth thought to herself as she watched Mark's head snap away after she could feel him staring at her. Maybe she could imagine getting so drunk at a work event. 

Maybe she could imagine staring that stupid man dead in the eye and doing shots of Cristal just out of spite. Maybe she could imagine irking him just to settle that tightness that was still seizing the back of her chest (the tightness that told her that maybe he was right at it wasn't normal to drink so much on a weekday morning).

Faith's head turned to look over at Beth, her eyes blazing as brightly as the grand light fixture in the centre of the room. 

They were all teetering underneath a crystal chandelier, making conversation under what looked like a very expensive display. Beth gazed at it for a while, wondering, for the slightest moment, what would happen if it was to fall—she figured that it would cause mass destruction, of course. 

Two hundred people against a lot of glass and metal, now that didn't sound like a very good time.

But it struck Beth, at that moment, that dying wasn't that bad of an idea.

It sure beat whatever the hell this was.

    "What did he do?" Beth said quickly, her eyes snapping away from the chandelier over their heads as if nothing had happened. 

When she met Faith's gaze, she could practically feel the word vomit building upon the blonde's tongue (or maybe it was literally vomit? Beth wasn't sure how solid her stomach was when it came to drinking). But, despite all that, Faith shook her head, as if to insist that she, too, didn't want to mention it.

   "You know you want to—"

    "He's just using me for sex!" Faith blurted out after the smallest prompt. 

Across the table, Ashley choked on her lemonade, eyes appearing to water as she registered what Faith had just said. Beth, meanwhile, just raised her eyebrows, eyes widening slightly as she read into Faith's despaired facial expression. 

    "Isaac is just using me for sex and to hell with my feelings—"

    "Holy shit," Beth said quietly, her eyes wide, "You have feelings for Cochran?"

It was almost unfathomable, but it was clear, from the way that Faith let out a gut-wrenching groan and cradled her forehead, that it was true. Immediately, Beth was filled to the brim with a sticky distaste, disgust welling up in the cracks and crevice the half a glass of champagne hadn't touched. 

Her gaze flickered over to Ashley, who was rendered completely speechless, her head averted as if she knew this was definitely not a conversation, she should've been involved it. 

(Or, alternatively, a very incriminating conversation as staff relationships was not allowed at all.) Beth swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth and blinked at Faith's slow descent into madness.

   "I'm so dumb," She murmured with nothing but pure pain in her voice at the mess she'd made for herself. 

Beth, very briefly, debated placing a comforting hand on her somewhat-friends back, but she figured that Faith just needed to drunkenly wallow—Beth, herself, had been doing that a lot lately.

There was nothing like finding a swan song at the bottom of a wine glass.

    "It's Isaac," Beth said lowly, mostly to herself than to the people around her. She, honestly, could not fathom the thought of seeing anything redeemable in the Southern Peach. "It's the hellfire demon—"

    "I know that," Faith groaned, her head rearing upwards to take another long gulp of alcohol. Her hand shook slightly, so Beth immediately took the glass from her, tilting it in front of her face and feeding it to her like a baby bird. Ashley just watched the two of them, her eyes still round and swirling with discomfort. "I know. I know. I know—"

    "What happened to dating basketball stars and guys from nice bars?" was all that Beth could think to say. Faith, in her clumsy drunkenness, had split it all down the front of her, causing the brunette to hastily pass her some napkins. "What happened to Upper East Side and guys that'll get you flowers every morning?"

    "Isaac fucking Cochran happened," Faith said glumly, not at all being proud to admit it. "He was reasonably decent in bed and now my heart is in my vagina and my standards are on the goddamn floor."

How poetic.

Beth, to be perfectly candid, was terrified to ask what Faith thought the extent of these feelings were. 

Was it a crush? Was it love? 

Beth couldn't bare to think of it. Whatever it was, Faith was clearly not very pleased about it. Every displeased groan was perfectly punctuated by the twist of Ashley's face as the intern, who normally kept to herself, realised that there was a lot more to the hospital than just cleaning bedpans. That thought made Beth snicker silently into her glass. If only she found out about—

At that thought, her eyes flickered over to her boyfriend, the man who was smooth-talking his way through a crowd of people, completely unbothered by the amount of anger that was still baked deep into her bones. Yeah, she was still angry. She didn't have the composure to even joke about Mark at the moment.

     "Do you know what you're going to do?" Beth said suddenly, attempting to drag her mind off of the fact she was dating a complete asshole. 

(What she, unfortunately, completely missed, was the way that Mark glanced at her between conversations, his brow slightly crumpled as he noticed how distressed and uncomfortable Ashley Tran looked in particular. Are they talking about me?) 

Instead, Beth saw the twisted look on Faith's face and her skin crawled. 

    A breathless and horrified sigh came through her lips: "Faith, no..."

The blonde just collapsed against the table again, her head in her hands.

     Beth appeared incredulous, "Did you learn nothing from me getting dumped for saying it—"

    "I told him," Faith said so quietly that the two other women almost missed it. (Ashley, Beth supposed, probably wished that she could miss this whole conversation to begin with.) Faith shook her head. "I told him at the pre-drinks at the bar with the nurses and then... he told me that he just wanted sex and I just..."

Oh god. Beth winced to herself as she ordered a glass of wine, extending her empty champagne glass to a passing waiter. In public?

     "And he's just..." 

She had no grasp on her words, making Beth realise exactly why she'd drank so much to begin with.

  "Why him? Why does it have to be the one man that drives me completely crazy... the one man in the world that I want to just... just..." Faith trailed off and Beth's nose wrinkled very slightly, trying her best to avoid thinking about exactly what Faith wanted to do to him. "It's not fair. I want a do-over—I want this feeling to go away."

    "I'm sorry Faith, but he's vile," Beth chipped in, feeling the need to bring some very nice reality into the conversation. Usually, she was all for being supportive of relationships, but Isaac was, well, Isaac. She, also, wasn't particularly feeling like cupid at the moment. "Like you said... he drives you insane, is clearly compromising your sanity, doesn't respect your boundaries... not to mention you work with him? I remember you saying that you feel like your family would hate him, right? He's literally the worst choice you could have gone for—"

Oh crap.

Again, Beth's eyes found Mark. She was sure that in any crowded room she'd be able to pick him out of a group. There he was, smiling that charming, unwavering smile and shaking those hands and getting all those donations—and there it was, the hop, skip and jump of her heart as it fell straight out of her ass at the resonating clunk of a realisation.

Oh fuck.

Is Mark my Isaac?

***

Mark had very little interest in the conversation in front of him.

No. 

He was far more invested in the look on Beth's face as she talked to two interns that Mark didn't really know the names of. 

From here, on the other side of the room, he was vaguely able to make out the sense of complete and utter despair that hung over all three of them, kind of like a very small and accurate storm cloud that didn't want to blow away. 

He watched everything in the form of small glances: the way that Beth collapsed into her chair and immediately started drinking (despite his assholey but very genuine plea for her to stay sober tonight), the way that the blonde seemed to immediately splinter into a state of complete ruin, and the dark-haired one on the end seemed to retreat into herself as if experiencing something highly traumatic.

With every passing moment, Mark found himself plagued with an itch that he wasn't too familiar with, but he was pretty damn sure it was paranoia. 

What were they talking about? Why did Beth look so deeply troubled? Why did the one in the middle look like she was about to commit physical assault? 

Why did they all look as though they were stranded in an extremely tense confession as if someone had just confessed to murder? Was it about him? Was Beth talking about him? Were they conspiring to murder him? Did he really need to think about sleeping in a stab-proof vest—

    "I'll be excited to see what your research comes up with in the next stages, Doctor Sloan..."

He was snapped back to reality by the sound of the current donor he'd been schmoozing. It was a sudden detour from a glance at the intern's table that was a tiny bit too long, but he managed to save himself. 

Within seconds, Mark's lips curved back into that charismatic smile and he bit back the paranoia that already had its teeth sunk in deep. 

His handshake was curt and professional as if he was finishing a business deal—his thoughts, however, didn't feel very invested in the business at all.

    "I'll look forwards to hearing from you, Jerry."

***

No, Mark wasn't Isaac, per se.

Beth wasn't that vengeful to put such a label to him. 

To call him Isaac felt a whole lot like the worst possible insult she could think of right now, but maybe she'd get there after a few bottles of wine.

Nevertheless, he was her Isaac, her equivalent, her version, she could see that. 

Was this how she looked a year ago, crumpled on Addison's couch and lamenting over how she'd told Mark that she loved him, and he'd just dumped her completely on her ass? 

For the record, Beth was pretty sure that she'd drank more than what Faith had already consumed and, she was also pretty sure, that she'd made more of a mess too—she watched Faith half-heartedly dab at a wine stain on the corner of her dress, the blonde's lips permanently fixed into a frown.

It was true, Mark had been the worst possible choice that she could have gone for, that had been very clear from the start. 

In fact, he'd been so bad that he'd come with his own folklore, myths of his assholery and legends of his terrible bedside conduct. 

He did, for all intents and purposes, drive her insane, compromised her sanity and did not respect her boundaries in the slightest. (All she was asking was for him to drop it, just one tiny little thing. That was the one thing she'd asked–) She worked with him too, as if she needed to remind herself of that painful little detail, and her family despised him, that was no secret—

All of the reasons Faith had to stay away from Isaac applied to Mark too (well, aside from the misogyny and the vague sense of homophobia and racism that Beth was pretty sure that was lurking somewhere in there). 

And what had she done? 

She'd thrown herself directly underneath whatever bus that had pulled up and told Mark to punch the gas. 

There were so many things that Beth wanted to say, how she wanted to tell Faith that she was irresponsible to let feelings get in the way, that this was bound to end up in tragedy—but god, she'd already been a bitch today, she wasn't sure whether she had the capacity to be a hypocrite. Faith didn't know it, but her situation was hitting a little close to home.

But it was Mark.

It was Mark and Beth couldn't imagine her life without him.

    "I'm sick of just being used for sex all the time," was what the drunk intern said next, causing both Beth and Ashley jump slightly in their chairs.

 Beth had been so divulged in her thoughts that she'd almost forgotten where she was (or maybe it was just the pills again? Sometimes they made her feel a bit foggy.) 

   Faith's words were caught in the crook of her elbow, said lowly and sadly as if it was a thought that plagued her all too often, "I just want to find one guy that—"

     "Didn't you use him for sex too?" was Beth's thoughtful contribution to Faith's spiral.

 She paused to hear the long, guttural groan that fell past Faith's lips. The short glower that came with it made Beth's eyebrows raise and she nodded her head. 

   "Okay, not the time, noted—"

    "I thought that if I got with someone who understood my career then it would be fine," Faith interjected, looking as though she was in deep pain, "I just wanted sex too at the beginning. I really did... but then he started being sweet sometimes and we had really great pillow talk and now I'm just—why am I even surprised? Of course, he was going to be an asshole, it's Isaac. That's who he is! He's an asshole."

Beth didn't speak. Her eyes had found their way back to Mark.

    "We're not compatible," Faith said firmly, although she was slightly slurring her words in a clumsy, unfocused way that betrayed exactly how much she'd had to drink. But there was a dramatic flair to the way that she lifted her arms and waved them. "We're like literal opposing forces: ice and fire, night and day, Cal Navarro and being faithful to his wife—"

     "Me and shellfish," Ashley added absently, making the two of them look over at her. 

Her face flushed at the sudden attention and she sunk slightly in her chair. Her awkward rambling made Beth smile very slightly. 

   "Allergies," She mumbled, "I have really bad allergies... Epi-pen and everything­–"

As if summoned by the mention of his name, the neurosurgeon in question smoothly slid in front of them, an easy smile on his face. He was dressed neatly, suit pressed, and every hair perfectly gelled in place—all it took was a single glance up at him and Beth could feel the disgust raise at the back of her throat again. 

She watched as he clapped someone on the back, suspended at the end of what she was sure was a very witty anecdote. Even Ashley sighed to herself as Navarro just happened to notice them sat there, his eyes lighting up as he looked each one of them head to toe.

Beth knew that she was not, by any means, looking her best tonight. 

She could count the layers of concealer she had under her eyes across both hands, and said eyes were twitching very slightly and almost periodically, as she came down from the pills, she'd taken a few hours ago. 

Faith, too, was worse for wear; her Isaac-centric spiral had left her with a crust of mascara underneath her own eyes and a look of intense forlorn across her face. That just left Ashley, although the intern seemed to have a very permanent expression of terror and horror branded across her like a tattoo.

    "Look alive ladies," was his way of a greeting.

Beth snorted into her wine glass.

Yeah, she could do with that chandelier around about now.

As slimy as always, Navarro's gaze felt like the sensory equivalent of a very unpleasant sweaty, clammy hand clutching against your skin. She felt her shoulders raise like the hackles on the back of a dog and tiredly watched the married man as he complimented the three of them tirelessly—frankly, Beth wasn't in the mood for any flirtation at all tonight. 

Her skin crackled with the fire that had been smouldering from the reoccurring argument she seemed to keep coming up against. Maybe that's why, when Navarro eventually swung around to her, she didn't have the patience to play his Reindeer games.

    "Nice to see you out of those scrubs tonight, Bethany," as if to punctuate his words, Beth's eye gave a particularly violent twitch. She raised her chin, giving him the widest smile that she could possibly muster. "Lovely figure. I'm liking the tease with the flash of the collarbone. How's one of my favourite interns doing?"

She was one of his favourites? What a player.

    "I don't know," Beth responded lightly, her perfect smile unwavering. She threw in a shrug for good measure, but her next question had just enough edge. "How's your wife?"

In her peripheral, she caught how Faith choked on her champagne, her body jolting slightly as Navarro paused. 

The sound of the blonde's incessant coughing to clear her windpipe was a perfect soundtrack to watching the great Cal Navarro's brain tick over. 

Beth held his gaze, watching the briefest of seconds in which the neurosurgeon wasn't so charmed about any little comment she might have had– she was filled with the same sensation that had swamped her when she'd, so curtly, told him that she had a boyfriend after a long surgery. 

It was satisfying to watch him flounder, if only just for the smallest second.

But, as always, Navarro recovered.

    "She's doing really well," His smile appeared very slappable, in Beth's opinion. 

She took great joy in imagining how exactly those smiling cheeks would feel under her palm. His voice was smooth, like barely travelled waters (even though they were all under the impression that his waters had, in fact, been travelled many times.) Those heavy eyes left a bitter taste at the back of her mouth as he tilted his head to the side, unabashedly prolonging an eye contact that she supposed was supposed to be flirtatious. 

   "Thank you for asking."

Meanwhile, Faith had finally caught her breath.

    "Jesus Christ," the drunk intern murmured, breathless from the assault of bubbles. 

The trio watched as Navarro wished them all a pleasant evening and slimed his way back into the crowd. A long-disbelieved laugh fell past Faith's lips as she looked over at Beth, her face matching the slightly alarmed expression on Ashley's. 

   "He really screwed up today, didn't he?"

By he, Beth knew that Faith was unknowingly referring to the plastic surgeon who had now stepped into a discussion with Navarro. 

She shot a glance in Faith's direction, a glance that held on for a few moments to really convey the fire that was still burning in the pit of her stomach. With an expression on her face that very clearly said 'I pity the fool', Faith chuckled until a very peculiar thought hit her.

    "Maybe I should sleep with Navarro."

It was Beth's turn to choke on her beverage.

    "Excuse me?"

    Faith just shrugged, "He's not bad looking if you squint."

There were simply no words in the English language to express the thoughts that flooded Beth's brain.

    "Fuck," was what she opted for instead, reaching across the table to grab the bottle of Cristal that Faith had been gradually draining. "Okay, I'm cutting you off—"

    "What do I have to lose?" Faith continued, barely perturbed by the brunette's declaration. Instead, she just leant backwards, straining to keep the champagne as far from Beth as humanly possible. "It's not like my standards could get any lower... two hours ago I told Isaac that I loved him. Isaac! The guy who failed female sexual anatomy classes two years in a row! That's like a hate crime directed at myself!"

    "You could lose your career," Ashley said very faintly, and Beth pointed to her insistently, waving a finger as if to say 'EXACTLY' (which, for the record, she vehemently was.) "Sleeping with an Attending is an abuse of power. It goes directly against hospital guidelines–"

    "Not to mention it's Navarro!" Beth exclaimed as if his name alone wasn't all of the red flags in the world. In unison, all of their heads turned to face the two men that were stood on the other side of the room. Ashley, meanwhile, faded away into the background, saying that she was going to go get something to eat. "You talked about Isaac seeing you only as a sexual object and you're actually considering sleeping with a man who's slept through Manhattan and probably most of the women in this room—"

Once again, Beth was left tongue-tied by her own realisation. At that precise moment, as if hearing his name in her thoughts, Mark glanced over at her. Yeah, she wasn't going to go there.

    "It's just a thought," Faith said breezily, her words still dragging slightly. "I mean, there's a rumour going around that an Attending is getting his rocks off with one of the interns, anyway. If someone's doing it, why shouldn't I just say to hell with it--?"

But Beth's whole universe had ground to a halt.

    "What?"

She stared at Faith, feeling her muscles lock with a very sudden stab of panic. 

For a moment, it was as if she could see every word that parted from the blonde's lips: she could visualise every syllable, every letter and every pause, all tumbling from Faith's drunk lips in the casual, off-handed way they were all delivered. Beth's breath suspended and she was forced to continue watching her, her attention unable to move from the information she'd just been told.

    Faith, meanwhile, suddenly perked up at the prompt, "I think it'd be a good way to get back at Isaac, y'know? Show him that I don't need him—"

The terrible logic behind Faith's master plan, however, was not the part that had caught Beth's interest.

    "No," Beth chipped out between clenched teeth, her whole being tensed uncomfortably, "The other part."

Or maybe caught was the wrong word? 

She felt as though she'd been bobbing calmly on a very nice ocean, feet wading through crystalline, clear waters and arms easily keeping her head above the waves. Everything had been fine, albeit actually pretty peaceful; the sun had shone, her lips had twitched into a carefree smile and then– Jaws. 

The mention of a rumour (the tiniest little suspicion passed mouth to mouth (probably between nurses, let's face it they were terrible when it came to gossip)) had clamped its sharp teeth around her unassuming ankle and dragged her down and down and down until that blissful sunshine had been nothing but a spot in the distance.

The only difference to shark-infested waters was that these sharks were all dressed in finely laundered suits and had their fins wedged firmly in a multi-billion-dollar healthcare industry. Instead of the calm lulling rock of waves, Beth had her feet sourly planted on the marble floor of a very prestigious Manhattan hotel, and, instead of the sun, she had that damn chandelier, twinkling innocently as if it was completely oblivious to the crisis that surely overwhelmed her.

Beth took a very large gulp of her wine as Faith caught on to what Beth had been alluding to.

    "Oh yeah," She said casually, shrugging as if it wasn't a big deal. Beth wasn't sure whether she was too drunk to care or whether the novelty of the gossip had run itself out. Either way, Beth knew that, normally, Faith would've been whole-heartedly invested in every inch of this drama. "There's a rumour going around that one of the Attendings has been exchanging sex for assisting placements in surgeries."

Huh.

    "I don't know how true it is," Faith said airily, "I don't know which year it is, but it could be ours. Like I said... in that case, it's either me, you or Ashley. We're the only three out of fifteen that are female and the female Attendings don't rub me as the 'have-a-love-affair-with-an-intern' type. I know sure as hell it isn't me. I wouldn't be feeling so crappy if it was."

One chance out of three didn't settle well with Beth. 

The knowledge that people were actually thinking about this, whispering about it behind closed doors—now that was enough for her chest to seize very slightly. 

This time she didn't look at Mark, on the contrary, she avoided him. Her eyes found themselves fixing on the table in front of them, cast aside as her heartbeat thumped away in her ears.

She held her wine glass a little tighter.

    "I bet it's Sloan," was what Faith said next as if the universe just wanted more of a reason to screw Beth over tonight. 

A hasty glance over at the blonde told Beth that she was staring at the plastic surgeon in question, her eyes narrowed very slightly as if he was spontaneously going to reveal all his secrets right in front of her. 

   "He strikes me as the type," She said, "He's probably exchanging steamy sex for standing in on boob jobs. That sexy smile and those sexy bed-me eyes... He's been glancing over here all evening and I'm sure he's probably communicating with someone to have a quickie in the coat closet or something—"

Beth, briefly, closed her eyes for a very insincere and sloppy prayer.

    "Only problem is, I can't figure out who he was talking to," Faith continued, and then, as if to punctuate her point, she craned her head around. Gazing behind her, she was met with all of the other interns who had been forced into this event. She squinted through all of them. "I mean, I know it's not me. I feel like he's a little too straight for a guy to do it for him and...."

(Well, tell that to the Derek and Mark bromance, Beth would've said if the moment was right.)

For the record, the moment wasn't right. 

It wasn't a very nice moment. 

Was this when Faith was going to accuse her of having a controversial relationship with an attending? 

Beth, honestly, didn't want to know. She'd always felt like everything was inevitable, that it'd always just been a matter of time until things came to an end. 

Things had always felt too good, too easy; surely hiding a relationship right under the noses of medical directors and Attendings should have been harder? As Faith's head very gradually turned to face her, Beth figured that they'd had a good run.

    "Maybe it's..."

From here, Beth could hear the calculation that was fighting for coherence in Faith's faded brain.

 She figured that all of the glasses of champagne had done very little for her critical thinking ability. The pause was long and Beth almost wished that she had elevator music to fill the awkward beat of anticipation. 

She hated how she could pinpoint the exact moment that realisation hit her. 

Her breath caught at the back of her throat, her eyes widened and she rose in her chair drunkenly, so abruptly that Beth thought she'd fall to the floor. Suspended in her dread and pain (and silently already reciting her speech of denial) Beth braced herself for the explosion of judgement and ridicule.

    "That little skank," Faith said first, mostly to herself. 

She shook her head, turning to give Beth the sharpest look of disbelief the brunette had ever received in her life. Beth winced to herself and opened her mouth to explain. However, before a single syllable passed her lips, she was cut short:

   "It's Ashley!"

That, Beth hadn't expected.

She stared at Faith, watching as the blonde started to lay out every piece of evidence as if she was a detective in a very kitschy crime thriller. 

Beth found herself listening to how Ashely had the perfect alibi for such a scandalous affair: she was reserved, she kept to herself and she always managed to get into the top surgeries on the board. Apparently one of the main surgeons who'd been mouthing off about the whole rumour was Bennett in the cardiology department—he'd been complaining that his coronary revascularization surgery got completely screwed over by inappropriate staff relations. 

That, naturally, made the hairs raise on the back of her neck: she'd been the one who had assisted, a last-minute pull in while Isaac had been benched.

She hadn't seen Isaac's reaction to finding out he'd lost the surgery, but she remembered how Faith had described it: loud, sudden, a lot of slammed doors. 

He had not taken the news lightly and Beth hadn't had the energy to feel bad about it. It did propose a very good question, however: surely hadn't Isaac connected two and two together? 

He'd been swapped onto Mark's service while Beth filled his place. 

If he was so confident about the two of them secretly being together, why hadn't he said anything?

This logic, also, seemed to be lost on Faith.

    "It must've been her," She continued with the same breath, oblivious to the light sheen of sweat that had appeared across Beth's brow. Her hand beat against the table as if she'd been completely blindsided before. "She was originally supposed to be the assist in the surgery, but she declined and moved onto Sloan's service—and then when Isaac got swapped back onto it, it must've been Sloan trying to cover his ass—"

The overcomplication of the situation felt less of a migraine and more like a veiled blessing.

 Beth, honestly, couldn't understand how Faith had managed to come up with such a conspiracy theory when the truth was so plainly in her face. It was not rocket science. Beth had gotten onto that surgery solely because of Mark, there was no denying it. She had not even been in consideration for it. 

She wasn't sure whether it was the mass amount of champagne that Faith had ingested or the fact that Faith appeared to be pretty crappy at Cluedo, that lead the blonde down such an outrageously wrong path.

The correct prediction was simple: Mark and Beth in the On-Call Room with the Christmas lights and reindeer antlers.

    "Slut," Faith sighed under her breath and Beth let out a slight gasp as if to turn and slap her arm. ("Faith!") "No... it's crazy. Look at her, I thought we were all going to do this fair, y'know? We're already putting up with all of this sexist crap... it's people like Ashley who just make us look like a joke. No wonder Navarro's such a creep, he probably knows about all of this and thinks we're all just patsies—"

There was nothing quite like the stab of horror realising that your worst nightmare was slowly unfolding right in front of your eyes.

 The feeling was distinct, draining as if she was losing a part of herself with every word. 

Maybe that's what it was, maybe she was bleeding out very slowly, recounting every instance where she'd begged Mark to let her handle things her own way. 

Maybe that's exactly what this moment felt like—like she'd slipped a vein unknowingly somewhere and she'd been bleeding out for a long time now, just waiting for the sharks to inevitably taste it in the water.

But then there was Ashley. 

If she thought that watching a nightmare unfold was horrific, there was something so deeply terrifying about watching it happen for another human being. She was fairly sure that Ashley was innocent; Mark, as far as Beth was aware, was not having an affair with any of the interns, Ashley included. 

He was just the dumbass that had found his way into her stupid head and planted itself there, infecting her body like a very persistent addiction and gripping her heart so tight that it hurt. She wouldn't call what they had an affair—but, from the word slut and the look on Faith's face, Beth knew that Faith wouldn't understand that.

    "Ashley?" Beth echoed and she almost didn't recognise her own voice. 

It was so wrapped up in a strained caution, as she toed very dangerous lines. Faith nodded immediately, completely surpassing the way Beth's whole body crumpled like a discarded receipt. 

   "You really think it's Ashley?"

    "It's not me," Faith repeated those words and threw a glance over at her. Beth just gave her a tight-lipped smile as if to say 'yes, you mentioned', but all she received was a reassuring grin. "And it's not you, you have a boyfriend."

Right.

    "I've seen how you look at him too," Faith's continuation cut straight through Beth's thoughts.

 She'd found herself staring at the tablecloth, wondering exactly how her life had lead to this sort of moment. But she had to look at Faith's face just to register what she was saying, like a blind person feeling the features of a familiar profile, just to figure out who they were. 

   Faith's face was made up into a drunk scoff, "Like if he touched you, you'd vomit. You don't like him, I can tell."

Beth raised a slight eyebrow as she drained the rest of her wine glass. It didn't surpass her how, in the span of ten minutes, she'd drunk an alarming amount of champagne and shiraz. 

She guessed Faith wasn't wrong in a way. 

Beth didn't like him, she loved him.

And as for the face... well, that was just Beth's default setting.

There was something so sudden about the trust in Faith's voice, the 'I've got your back' smile and the way she was so sure—the words in Beth's mouth withered back to weeds at the back of her throat. 

She could feel the leaves scratch against her oesophagus, and she resorted to dragging long breaths through her nose, just to stop herself from feeling sick. 

She was sure a sigh would've mustered a dandelion drifting out from right between her teeth, ready to infect its roots into something to make it as equally wicked as she was.

What a foreign sensation it was for someone to expect the best from you, rather than the worst.

Maybe that's why Beth hesitated to correct everything. She could've. 

It was so easy, it could've been compacted down to four words, maybe even three. 

All it would have taken was one breath, one moment, and whatever judgement that followed. Wasn't it easy? It didn't feel easy but it just...

In retrospect, Beth would wish that she'd had the drive to tell Faith the truth, to come clean to clear Ashley's name from slander she didn't deserve. 

She knew that Ashley was the introverted type, shy and subdued, but fiercely determined to succeed in the face of all of the obstacles in her way. They shared that. 

She knew that Ashley was the last person in the world that deserved to be branded a slut, a skank or whatever other words drunk Faith saw fit to throw at her—which, for the record, Beth found extremely interesting to hear just moments after Faith's whole 'we're women and we deserve better rhetoric'. 

She knew all of these things and yet, in that moment, Beth let it all happen.

It would've been so easy to save Ashley's ass, but it was so much easier for Beth to say nothing at all.

Or, at least, she didn't quite get the opportunity to say anything.

It was at that moment that a certain Southern Belle appeared at the ball and caused Faith to sink in her chair. 

She'd spotted him from across the fundraiser (vaguely impressing Beth as she was pretty sure, at any moment, Faith was going to start seeing double) and immediately bought all prior crisis's to a pause. 

Beth followed her stare, alongside the pained groan that reverbed through her chest, and spotted Isaac, the man of the hour, dressed in suit. 

He was nonchalantly chatting to Liam, the two of them having a carefree conversation and exchanging wry smiles over appetisers—what a stark contrast to this table: Beth felt as though she was five seconds away from a panic attack, Faith was practically 90% alcohol and Ashley returned to the table completely oblivious to what had preluded her.

A pause played out. 

It wasn't particularly nice. 

Beth's head turned from Isaac to Ashley and she felt her stomach crumple with the knowledge that she had no intention of defending her.

Faith, however, seemed very pleasantly side-tracked.

     "Fuck," she mumbled as if she hadn't expected him to turn up at a compulsory staff event. 

It was a statement that Beth recognised, in fact, it'd been the exact same thing that had crossed her mind when she'd heard Mark's voice in the foyer. In her peripheral, she watched Faith straighten herself in her chair, sloppily fix her hair and attempt to look soberer than she really was. 

Ashley, meanwhile, just frowned to herself, lost as to exactly what was going on.

     "It's going to be okay," Beth breathed out to Faith, although most of that was directed at herself. 

Her heart was still beating in her ears and her fight or flight response was far from over. If either woman had paid close enough attention, they would've noticed the way that Beth had to place her glass down and clasp her fingers together, just to hide how desperately they were shaking. 

   "Everything's going to be fine—"

It didn't feel fine. 

She had to remind herself that being and appearing fine were still very much performative. 

You had to fake it until you made it; just like everything else Beth was juggling in her life, being fine was just another ball. 

It was going to be fine, Faith was going to be fine, she was going to be fine, Ashley was definitely going to be just fine—

But, if that was the case, why were her ears still ringing? 

Why could she so vividly hear the word 'Slut' echoing around her head? 

Why could she not bring herself to look over at Ashley? 

Was it because Beth knew that she'd suddenly become complicit in her silence, complicit in some conspiracy that could ruin Ashley's surgical career if given the chance?

     "I should talk to him."

Faith's current turmoil was a delicious detour from what Beth could tell was going to be a sleepless night of hanging onto every word of this conversation and overanalysing every exchange she'd ever had in the workplace with Mark. 

   She sounded so convinced that it was the right decision and eventually so frustrated with Beth's immediate 'No!' as the brunette (rightly so) told her it was a terrible idea: "No, c'mon—I should."

     "Faith, you're drunk," was all that Beth said. 

She couldn't believe that she was being the voice of reason in this situation. (It had been well established that Beth was the last person to be considered sensible, especially with alcohol involved. 

   "Talking to him isn't going to solve anything," Beth reasoned, "You're angry and you just need your time to cool down—"

God, why did it feel like she was talking to herself?

    "I told him I loved him," Faith groaned once more, head almost in her hands again. "That's so embarrassing—I should tell him it was a joke—"

    "Leave it," Beth advised calmly, "You remember what happened to me, right? Six months. Six months and then things were okay—"

    "Okay?" Faith echoed, "Beth, you're a nervous wreck."

She didn't exactly know how to respond to that. Nervous wreck?

    "Oh shit," was what was said next, "They're coming over here."

They were, as Beth internalised her third nickname of the evening (the so-called 'nervous wreck') she'd completely missed the way that Liam picked them out of the crowd and started walking towards them, bringing Isaac with him in his path. 

Even Ashley seemed to understand that it was a bad omen. 

The only person who, in this situation, appeared completely unaware of how bad of an idea this was, happened to be Liam himself, the man greeting them all with wide smiles. 

Just like the rest of them, he was dressed nicely, boasting what looked to be a very expensive suit—Beth greeted him with a smile that was creased at the edges, folded into a very careful expression that wouldn't betray her overwhelming impulse to throw herself out of the furthest window in this place.

Subtly, she waved down the nearest waiter and asked for a glass refill.

Something told her that this wasn't going to go well.

***

Mark hadn't been to one of these sorts of things in a while.

Beth's aversions to becoming Addison's unpaid intern had resulted in Mark, himself, becoming a stranger to these events. 

He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually had to small-talk money out of someone like this. Schmoozing and charming felt like a skill like riding a bicycle, something you couldn't quite ever forget, but over time, lost stamina with. 

He'd gone into it all guns blazing, charm turned to a high and smouldering grin never fading. Mark set out with the goal to make ladies weak at the knees and the wallet, his shoulders lifted and his words perfectly laundered into whatever they needed—however, as he found, his heart wasn't exactly into it.

There was only one woman he wanted to make weak at the knees and she was staring at him in odd intervals as if he was suddenly estranged to her.

At some point in the evening, Mark found himself drinking champagne just for the hell of it and trying his best to actually enjoy himself. 

Sure, his relationship was in some rocky waters and he was increasingly feeling like he was losing his mind—but at least he could distract himself. There was only one tiny problem that he hadn't thought about, if just for one of the first times in his whole life—

    "Letting down women left and right tonight, Sloan."

He was still looking down at the cell phone number scrawled on the back of a napkin when Cal Navarro approached him, one hand buried in the pockets of his dress pants and the other holding a whisky glass. 

Mark didn't respond immediately, just looked up at the woman as she walked away (blonde, slender, had a noisy walk in expensive heels and had spent the last ten minutes with her hand on his bicep and a sparkle in her eye). 

His brow creased very slightly as he realised that, through the whole of the conversation, he hadn't exactly realised what was going on. That was until she'd squeezed his arm, pressed her lips against his cheek and whispered into his ear about a good time and left him to realise that fundraising wasn't the only thing he'd lost touch with.

Navarro gave him a dirty smile; not in the way that it was flirty, but in the way that it made a prickly feeling pick at his skin as the neurosurgeon inclined chin down at the crumpled little note.

    "I've been watching you fend them off all night," He continued, tutting under his breath and shaking his head very slightly. 

Mark raised an eyebrow at that, caught off-guard by the way that, for a moment, Navarro was almost fatherly. If he hadn't known better, he would've thought this was a moment between father and son, in which he was about to get scolded for his behaviour. 

   "You've probably grown quite a collection of those, huh?"

Again, Mark looked down at the phone number. 

It'd been scrawled hastily along with the name 'Natalie' and the tiniest heart. 

He stared at it until it was engrained into the back of his eyelids; when he looked back up at Navarro, quite happy to tell him that, in fact, he'd been tossing all of these cell numbers into the trash, there were spots in his vision. He almost missed the look of bewilderment on the neurosurgeon's face as his forehead crumpled in a miffed scoff.

    "Why would you do that?"

Mark shrugged and, taking a big breath, he admitted something he hadn't said to anyone before. The words were like a training mission deployed into what Mark was very aware was one hell of a dangerous mission.

    "I'm actually in a relationship at the moment."

In reality, it was said off-handily, casually, with no allusion to how much those words made Mark's chest want to burst. 

He'd played it off with a slight shrug as if to say 'you know how it is' and (in his opinion) downplayed the whole ordeal very successfully. Outwardly, he was cool and collected and inwardly he was smiling to himself at how proud he was to have it for the slightest moment—despite all of his flaws, he was fucking proud of the fact that he, Mark Sloan, was in a relationship. 

(Good job Sloan, you son of a bitch. Pats on the back all round.) 

Navarro, on the other hand, did not seem to share his sentiment.

    "And?"

Ah.

It'd almost surpassed Mark how many hours he'd listened to Beth seethe over how much of a creep this man was. 

He'd listened to her pace the hardwood floors half-buzzed and rave expressively with her hands, reeling off creative insults for a man who had the uncanny ability to make women feel (and, to directly quote) "violent". 

It came to him now alongside the hours he'd stood in surgery watching Beth grow increasingly uncomfortable as Navarro flirted with her over a half-cracked skull, all of the times he'd watched her shoulders rise in discomfort and the way she'd stood there, in the parking lot, that evening and begged him to do better.

    "I may be many things," Mark half-joked and half retorted, "But I'm not a cheater."

It was another comment that was double-sided, a pseudo joke that Mark had kitted out with a serrated edge. 

He wanted it to sting a bit, just a tiny bit, and wedge very slightly under the skin of a man he'd spent the past year trying his damned hardest to respect. 

(In place of a conclusion: it was very, very difficult. Dare he say impossible.) 

The comment was true too: although Mark was the asshole people credited him as he'd always tried to be a decent one. Navarro, on the other hand, well, everyone knew the things that his wife didn't.

The senior surgeon's only response was a slight smile. 

The expression felt calculated, and, in that moment, Mark knew that Navarro was a whole lot smarter than people thought he was. Beth had always painted him as this ignorant, stupid misogynist who was just playing with fire. 

The man, however, who met Mark's eye with a soft laugh and a tilt of his head, he didn't appear stupid at all. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Navarro, also, seemed to know exactly what hid behind those words.

    "Shame," He breathed out, again assuming the almost parental tone of disappointment in his voice. It made a muscle jump in Mark's jaw. Navarro shook his head. "You had so much potential."

There was a sudden tension, one that Mark hadn't ever felt between them. 

How peculiar it was to find this in such a busy room; just beside them, a group of final-year residents were taking a photo together as they celebrated a completed case with a swiped bottle of Chardonnay, and on the other side, two old academics were debating biological theory. 

Yet here, right in the middle, Mark felt as though Navarro had his whole career in the palm of his hand.

Potential? Mark didn't really want to know what Navarro meant by that. 

It felt disjointed and slightly bewildering and, in a glance downwards, Mark recognised exactly how much Navarro had had to drink. He did so just by gauging how much negative space there was in his whisky glass. It'd been a lot. 

It was enough to place the boldness of him, more so than usual, and the way that Navarro's eyes were sharper than the scalpel they shared in surgery.

    "I hear you're a personal friend of the Shepherds," Navarro said instead, the conversation topic transforming in a matter of seconds. It was sudden, unexpected and Mark's nod was more cautious than it was convincing. A lazy, comfortable smile replaced the tension in Navarro's masked expression. "Yeah, I heard that you knew Derek... I met him at a conference in '91, top guy."

It was a very random name-drop, one that had every single instinct in Mark's body bristling.

 Although he'd never admit it, he'd always been the sort of person who trusted his gut. Mark's intuition had a very solid track record; it'd got him through medical school, helped him avoid some very strenuous and overbearing situations with women and had bought him right onto Shepherd's doorstep when he needed it the most. 

Of course, he wasn't a stranger to being blindsided and things never failed to surprise him (particularly when it came to Beth and the unfamiliar territory of a committed relationship), but there was something about this mention, this casual cameo, that tickled that back of Mark's brain.

    His head tilted to the side inquisitively, "Huh. It's a small world."

    Navarro's smile rippled, "Isn't it just?"

It wasn't a small world, just a small island. 

Mark was not surprised at all that two neurosurgeons in Manhattan knew each other. 

In fact, he was pretty sure that there were countless plastic surgeons in this very room from other competing hospitals. 

When it came to inter-mingling and inbreeding, the only people who put medical professionals to shame were the European royal lineage—Navarro knowing Derek and having met him at a neurological conference was the surgeon's equivalent of Hapsburg Jaw. It was not a wild card—but why did Navarro treat it like one?

    "So you guys..." There was a pause in which Navarro took a long sip of whisky and washed it about his mouth as if to sterilise his gums. Mark's eye twitched slightly. "You guys grew up together or something? You went to his wedding?"

Mark hesitated before nodding.

Was there some Wikipedia page about his whole life that he wasn't aware of? 

Some forum that kept up to date with every second of his personal life—or had Navarro been asking around about his relationship with Derek specifically? Mark wasn't sure what he was insinuating with all of this. Was there a point he was getting to? Some sort of release to this tension.

    "Funny," Navarro said eventually after a long pause had left Mark exasperated. "Y'know, I don't really like fundraiser season that much in New York, it's a bit too much, don't you think? All of these parties every week stopping us from saving lives—I saw the Shepherds at one last week. Derek's wife is an old medical school friend of my Sylvia. It really is a small world... what is her name... Addison something—"

Oh.

(It was the same sensation that Beth was feeling in that moment on the other side of the room: a cold wash of water with a bite of salt that rubbed deep into every splinter in his skin.) 

It was the sort of realisation that made his bones hurt, his gums ache and his heart seize in what felt a whole lot like a heart attack. 

His jaw slackened and all of his energy was invested in his posture and expression, trying his damnest to not give away how deeply he knew he'd fucked it all up.

Fuck.

     "That was it," Navarro continued after another prolonged pause. His head tilted and he chuckled to himself as if it'd taken a lot of recollection to remember it. Mark, however, got the feeling that he'd known it all along. "Montgomery-Shepherd. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd. Nice name that. Rolls off the tongue."

He didn't miss how the neurosurgeon's eyes sparkled. 

Montgomery. 

It was as if the sun had appeared behind clouds and showered them in some divine bullshit light. Mark held his gaze, feeling as though he was suddenly caught up in some sort of western stand-off, his heart in his mouth and his blood rushing to his ears. 

The room, quickly, felt so much smaller, every second felt so much shorter and the air felt so scarce that it became a labor to breathe. Navarro's head twisted again, watching Mark's reaction so closely that every single movement felt incriminating.

The plastic surgeon's internal monologue sounded a whole lot like this: (Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.)

    "Yeah, she's a nice girl," Mark said evenly.

     "Any relation to our own Montgomery?" was the next inevitable question. 

It was said in a very distinctive way, one that made Mark pause to take a very quick mouthful of champagne. 

He drank it without any regard for the fact he hated the stuff as if the alcohol could cleanse him of every evidence of Beth's touch on his skin.

The neurosurgeon even turned his head to look back at her, at the brunette in the red dress as she furrowed her brow in conversation with the other interns. 

Mark followed his gaze, his mouth drying as he watched the way Beth shook her head and seemed to vehemently disagree with something the others had said. 

(He could imagine what sort of joke she'd make about frowning even from here: Good thing Bizzy's not here, she'd tell me I need botox.)

     Mark shrugged with his eyes quickly averting from the woman he loved, "I guess you'd, uh, you'd have to ask. I don't know that family very well."

Well my ass.

Navarro nodded thoughtfully, but Mark had the feeling his response wasn't enough. When he looked back at him, Navarro's mouth was quirked into a little half-smile. It was a half-smile, half-smirk. 

When he said 'Yeah, I will,' and chuckled to himself, Mark was filled with the sensation of being trapped.

 He'd been unknowingly backed into some sort of corner, trapped like a cat playing with a mouse. Navarro seemed to enjoy it too, gauging Mark's every reaction, toying with his every inflexion. Mark just inhaled deeply and relaxed his shoulders and pretended that nothing had happened at all.

    "How'd you find out about me and Derek, anyway?" His tone was approachable, and his enquiry was innocent. "He complaining about me to all of his friends, again?"

    "Oh no," Navarro said and then laughed again as if Mark's suggestion was stupid. It was gross and patronising and, for the tiniest moment, Mark felt exactly what the women of this hospital had felt. "No, it was mentioned by 'ole Bennett over there." He jerked his chin over in the direction of the cardiothoracic surgeon in question. "Apparently, you called in a favour to Shepherd to get your girlfriend on his surgery at Christmas."

Oh fucking fuck. FuCK fuck fuck--

In retrospect, this felt a lot like exactly what Beth had warned him about. 

(It was the inevitable that Beth had been worrying over, at the exact same time that this exchange was happening. While, on the other side of the room, Beth grappled with her own self-preservation complex on whether to admit that she was the one seeing Mark, not Ashley, Mark was confronted with it directly to his face.) 

It'd been served nonchalantly too, just casually enough for his stomach to curdled and his movement to pause in mid champagne sip.

Navarro was a shark. Through and through, he was a predator, Mark should've been able to tell. Most of these people were, it was a survival tactic in a career that was so competitive. 

He was stood in a fundraiser full of They were poised to sniff out competition and the weaknesses that came with it, sense a boat that was seconds away from sinking or a vein that was newly split. 

He should've known—he should've paid attention to the urgency of Beth's words—from the way that Navarro was looking at him now, a fellow surgeon that was heavily invested in keeping his own career afloat, Mark knew that he was probably about to drown.

    "You're sloppy, Sloan," was all that Navarro said. 

It was as if this whole situation was completely trivial to him. It had the same effect as Navarro just straight-forwardly saying 'it was a cute attempt right there,' and it made Mark's skin rise in goosebumps. 

     But then, he Navarro and sighed at the end, talking into his whisky glass, "Of course, you're not cheating, you'd never get away with it."

Admittedly, Mark didn't know what to do with himself. 

His mind was suddenly wiped clean with the same panic that he'd tried to ignore ever since Bennett had accused him of exchanging the cardio revascularisation for sex. 

He'd known that it would return to bite him in the ass and even now, he didn't particularly have the energy to be surprised—all he felt was a very distant feeling of foreboding as if he was dreading the fallout. 

Specifically, he was dreading the look on Beth's face when she realised that he'd made everything go to shit all over again.

He also didn't know what else Navarro was going to say. 

He was a talker, Mark knew that much, they were cut out of cloth that was a little too similar. Navarro was good with words and Mark could hear the accusations brewing even further around him—for lack of better words, Mark was fucked. 

For once in his life, he couldn't think of something to say; wasn't he supposed to be good with words too? 

Wasn't Mark supposed to be the Great Mark Sloan, master of seduction and manipulation and saying exactly what people wanted him to say?

Thankfully, he didn't hear what else Calvin Navarro of Manhattan West Hospital's Neurosurgery Department had to say, and he didn't have a response either.

For at that exact moment, a brawl broke out on the other side of the room, and everyone's heads turned to watch Isaac Cochran bury his fist very deep into the side of Liam Carmichael's face.

***

Wait. Let's back track a little bit.

From the moment Beth watched the two men approach their table, she knew that something was bound to go disastrously wrong. 

If it wasn't the tension in Isaac's body language, the slight square of his shoulders and the twitch in his jaw that gave it away, it was the way that Faith suddenly became extremely quiet. Beth's gaze bounced in between the two of them as Liam, seemingly completely oblivious to the sudden tension, greeted each of them enthusiastically. 

While Liam was a beacon of energy, Faith withered in her chair and Isaac shuffled in a very mechanical, stand-offish fashion.

Jeez, Beth thought to herself as she received her refill, and I thought the elevator had been uncomfortable.

She just watched, her eyes never leaving Faith's profile as the blonde tried to act as though nothing was wrong. 

It felt as though she was watching a nature documentary, watching a handful of different animals try to preserve and co-habit a water hole. 

In her peripheral, she could see Ashley pick at a plate of aperitifs as if she was severely regretting choosing to socialise tonight. 

The only person who seemed to be anywhere near energetic was Liam and Beth gave him a very strained smile as he asked her how she was doing.

Secretly, Beth enjoyed not being the centre of all of this drama. 

It was nice, for once, for her relationship to not be the main epicentre of this crisis—of course, it was a tiny bit, but she was happy to at least sit back and let Faith and Isaac determine the tension of this conversation. 

Usually, through their little arguments, it was always her and Mark who were leaving awkward silences over family dinner and making Addison and Derek very discreetly exchange looks over their plates. But now, it was Beth's turn to just observe and watch things unfold.

So she did. Over the rim of her wine glass, she watched as Liam dictated the conversation, talking at length about how he'd managed to score a date with one of the women in his apartment building. 

He spoke about how excited he was to finally take her out for dinner; he'd planned it all out, a little restaurant down in Little Italy with fresh pasta and world-famous Panelle. 

It was nice to hear, to listen to how determined he was to make a good impression on the woman he'd been crushing on for the past few months.

It was also very interesting to listen to Faith contribute to the conversation. 

Underneath her uncharacteristic quietness, she appeared very interested in everything Liam had planned.

 It quickly became evident that Liam was quite the romantic and very, very invested in this woman; the conversation rapidly became an interrogation, with Liam being grilled for every single detail of his relationship. 

What was the woman's name? How did they meet? (Apparently, it was possible to find love in your apartment building's laundry room, which, to Beth, apparently was where she'd always been going wrong. Maybe she needed men who were more likely to do their own laundry; Mark always just bullied his interns into doing it for him.) Was he going to bring her flowers? Had he booked the night off or was he going to be interrupted by the tell-tale scream of an incoming page?

    "That's so dreamy," Faith said, her voice betraying how much she'd had to drink as she sighed.

 Her chin was in the palm of her hand, shoulder swaying slightly as Beth's eyes absently floated over towards Isaac. He was staring at the floor, his jaw clenched as Liam finished the full rundown of his planned evening. 

    "And you're going to get one of those romantic carriage rides through Central Park?" She echoed almost incredulously, "What is this? A Rom Com?"

    "That's the plan," Liam bobbed his head with a smile. "Jennifer's great, y'know? I just... I want to make a good impression. I really like her, and I really want to impress her—maybe flowers aren't a too bad of an idea as well—"

     "Wow," The blonde exhaled in another long sigh. 

Beth watched Isaac's eye twitch slightly in the corner and she, suddenly, became unable to look away from the expression on his face. 

If she'd known better, she would've thought that he'd just been physically attacked, his body squared almost defensively, and his head lowered as if to avoid attention. 

   "That's so... Beth, are you hearing this?"

    "Hm?"

Beth hadn't heard it. 

She was too busy analysing the strange phenomenon that was Isaac Cochran's current state.

 This level of discomfort was so alien on him; she was pretty sure she'd only ever seen anger and arrogance on this man, so seeing something so vaguely vulnerable was deeply unsettling. When Beth's head turned to respond to her name, she missed the slight contortion to Isaac's face (he, very clearly, did not like how Faith was fawning over Liam right in front of him. If Beth hadn't known better, she would've thought that Isaac cared a lot more about Faith than he liked to let on.) 

Instead, she was faced with the impressed, drunk look of incredulousness that was painting Faith's face, leading Beth to raise an eyebrow.

    "Liam here is the full package," Faith raised a hand and gestured to him, causing the intern to chuckle. He appeared, for a moment, bashful, his dimples appearing as he chuckled off the compliment. "He's going all out for some woman he's only known for a couple of months... We could only be so lucky."

    "Lucky?" Liam repeated, sounding amused, "You must've just been out with a lot of terrible guys then, Faith."

    "Mm," Beth hummed lightly, although she was sneaking looks at Isaac from out of the corner of her eye. Faith's bright smile didn't quite correspond with the storminess of the man she'd declared her love for just hours before. "It sounds amazing, Liam."

Romantic gestures... now those were something Beth could get behind. 

She liked the concept of them: of the sweat-palms and nervous first date with the horse drawn carriages and the romantic under-the-stars kiss. She liked the other sort of gestures too, the movie sort of affairs with the dramatic gasps and kisses and dips. 

She was a particular fan of the wedding cliché, of the rushing objections and doors bursting open, but Liam's sounded sweet. 

It did seem dreamy; it did sound as though this Jennifer woman was the luckiest woman on earth. The only person who didn't seem to share that belief, was a certain sour-faced intern with an interest in plastics.

    Said intern scoffed, "Sounds like a waste of time."

Instead of looking at Isaac, who sounded very bad-tempered this evening, Beth's head turned to watch Faith. 

She'd frozen at the sound of his voice, her champagne glass virtually floating on air. In the span of a few seconds, the conversation had turned icy again. 

Beth was sure that if she squinted close enough, she'd watch icicles form on Faith's extended hand, the glass under her fingertips fogging from the cold. 

In the corner of the table, Ashley's cheeks flushed and her eyes flickered between each of them, preparing for what was probably going to be a very unpleasant argument. Liam, meanwhile, just frowned lightly, turning to finally look at his friend.

    "I don't think it is," he said back to Isaac. 

Idly, Beth wondered whether he had any idea of what was going on; could he tell from the way that Faith's eyes seemed to fix on Isaac so sharply that they could've each taken terms performing surgery with it as a scalpel. 

   "I like her so I want to make the effort," He shrugged, "It's not rocket science."

Somehow, Beth figured, 'rocket science' would've been easier than this conversation.

Isaac's idea of a 'waste of time', happened to be the bare minimum for what any person expected. It amused Beth sometimes, how hard it was to get any semblance of respect out of people. 

Was that what had annoyed Isaac? 

Was that what had caused him to scoff at Liam's enthusiasm? 

The fact that someone had the energy to give a damn?

   "Pretty pointless," was Isaac's response. He said it as if he was involved in some hilarious inside joke; he looked around at everyone, conveniently bypassing the vein that throbbed in Faith's forehead. Beth bit down on her bottom lip, holding her breath as she watched everything transpire. "What's the point if you're not even sure they're going to put out—"

Jesus. Beth winced a little bit at that.

She was reminded of Faith's earlier words, of how she'd felt as though she'd been compacted into a sexual object, even further than what she'd consented to. She could see it now and Beth wished that she hadn't thrown it back in Faith's face: no one deserved to be treated like that, even if they had, originally, wanted the same thing. 

She could tell that things between Isaac and Faith had spiralled out of hand and it was sour to watch.

Beth supposed that she hadn't realised it until that moment, how much Isaac reminded her of a very distant in the past Mark. 

They were parallel images, reflecting the worst in each other: she was pretty sure she must have had this exact conversation with him, explaining that sometimes you just did things because you cared for someone. 

There didn't always have to be some ulterior motive. Sometimes you just cared. 

She was fairly sure that Mark had learnt that somewhere along the way, despite how many times he managed to convince her otherwise. Isaac, however, seemed as stuck in an old fashion way of thinking that Beth's heart twisted for the blonde sat beside her.

Faith just snorted to herself.

    "Real classy, Cochran," She muttered under her breath. 

She sounded oddly disattached but distinctively hurt. He glanced over to her only fleetingly.

    "God," Liam said too, shaking his head, "I'm not just trying to screw her–"

    "Right," Isaac mocked. 

It was as if his discomfort and frustration had decided to target itself onto the man who stood beside him, veering its energy from Faith onto an unknowing Liam. There was nothing irregular about Liam's exasperated but amused tone; all of them happened to tease and ridicule Isaac and his backwards thinking as if it was an Olympic sport. 

   "Because you're a nice guy, right?"

Nice guy.

    Liam took it under his stride, "Does that make you the ass?"

If anyone was looking into this conversation from the outside, maybe they would have noticed how Isaac was just a tiny bit more bitter than usual. 

He wasn't taking things on the chin like he did usually. 

Sure, he was famous for storming out of rooms, but this... this was different—

     "Okay," Beth cleared her throat and set her glass down on the table, "How 'bout I get a round, drinks on me?"

She was ignored.

    "The ass?" Isaac echoed, his eyebrows raising, "You the tough guy too?"

    "Hey man," Liam chuckled, raising his hands on either side of his head. 

It seemed as though he'd begun to click onto the fact that Isaac was a little too invested in an argument tonight. In the background, Faith sighed to herself and drained what looked like the rest of the bottle of Cristal. 

   "Someone's gotta be around here," He said lightly, "No hard feelings. Someone's gotta be the gentleman, you're sure as hell not stepping up to the plate—"

Ashley choked slightly on her drink.

    "Sure," Isaac scoffed again, "And look like a douchebag while doing it."

     Liam's brow furrowed, "What's up your ass tonight, Cochran?

     "Nothing, what's up yours?" was the retort back, "You seem to be the one with the problem with me?"

A dent appeared Beth's eyebrows. 

She was fairly sure that they were actually arguing over the fact that Liam was a decent person, or, in Isaac's words 'the nice guy'. He'd used those three words like an insult, as if it was just a fallacy or something that would never be true. 

She was sure that he had a lot to say about it—about how nice guys didn't exist or were always worse. She could just tell that 'nice guy' was quite possibly one of the worst insults Isaac could think of.

    "Maybe everyone has a problem with you, Isaac," Faith said suddenly, her voice raising above the usual volume of conversation. In the corner of Beth's eye, she noticed how people on the next table looked over, alarmed by the sudden vocalisation of distaste. This time, Isaac looked dead at her, squinting slightly as if he was looking into the sun. "Maybe you should go have your tantrum in the hallway. You're embarrassing yourself—"

Immediately, Beth felt as though there was a lot more going on than Faith had let her know. 

Her eyes bounced between the estranged not-a-couple and she felt the air almost waver between, like it did on the horizon on a hot summer's day. Things felt warped, unclear and unfinished, and when Isaac's lip curled slightly, Beth thought it was a mirage.

    "You'd love that, wouldn't you?"

Beth let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

     Faith's chuckle bled into a hurt choke, "Fuck you."

This time, Liam seemed to understand. 

He looked over at Isaac, and then registered the expression on Faith's face. 

Her lips were pressed into a very white, thin bloodless line and her fists were clenched.

     "I don't know what's gotten into you, man," He said slowly, "But maybe you should go cool down." Liam reached out for his arm but Isaac snatched it away, his frustration turning into something a little less savoury. "Hey, c'mon—"

     "Don't touch me."

He'd drunk a lot. She hadn't seen it before, but Isaac was drunk. 

More than drunk, he was gone. 

The tell tale was the sloppiness of such a quick, sudden movement. 

He floundered on his feet slightly and, when he looked back at them, his eyes made direct contact with Beth's. Her head tilted to the side as he stared around at them, seeing the people he'd somewhat considered his friends all averted their gazes from him. 

They didn't want him here. If he was going to act like this, there was no place for him.

     "I'm fine," Isaac said dismissively, although there was still a little bit too much heat in his voice. He drew out a chair and went to sit down. "I'm just joking around—"

    "Fine," Faith's 'fine' was sharper than Isaac's. 

It seemed as though this sudden exchange had sobered her slightly and, as Isaac slowly sat down, she shot up out of her seat. She stooped, grabbing her purse and what was left of her bottle. 

   "I'll go then," She said, "That's what I'd love to do."

Beth didn't miss the expression that struggled to form on Isaac's face as he watched her wobble in her heels. 

It was something that looked vaguely remorseful—only slightly. 

As Faith rounded the table, passing by him to make her swift exit to the elevators outside the hall, he even reached out to catch her by the elbow.

     "Get your gross hands away from me," Faith snapped at him, sending him the most heated glare Beth had ever seen. 

She sighed to herself, drained the rest of her wine glass (of which was a pretty considerable amount) and gathered her jacket off the back of her own chair, preparing to go follow Faith outside. As she turned, Beth noticed exactly how many people were watching—

How lovely, they'd attracted a crowd.

    "Faith—"

    "Don't," Faith cut him off, her lip curling as Isaac attempted to get back on his feet. He seemed to struggle very slightly from the amount of alcohol he'd consumed. Beth looked between the two of them, pausing as she watched Faith's eyes brim with tears. "Don't say anything, Isaac—"

He tried to grab her again.

    "Hey..."

Every muscle in Beth's body wanted to stop Liam from getting involved. 

Faith was a big girl, she could handle herself, and she knew that Liam inserting himself was just going to cause more harm than good.

 However, just as she had when Faith had accused an absent Ashley of having a love affair with Beth's boyfriend, Beth was silent. 

Instead, she fixed to the spot, her eyes flickering between the three people stood in between two other tables. Liam approached the not-a-couple cautiously, clearly trying to disarm the confrontation.

    "C'mon, Cochran," Liam started, standing in between them. Beth couldn't see Isaac's face from here; he was half risen out of his chair and his hand was grasping air. Faith was slowly moving backwards, her eyes glassy. "Let her go. We can figure this out some other time, just not in front of half of the hospital boar—"

And that's when Isaac punched him.

***

The commotion was small, but it was noticeable.

An intern had throw a fist into the nose of another intern, knocking him back into a table of investors, all of whom had been minding their own business. 

From here, standing beside Navarro, Mark could make out the singular blow that sent heads turning in that direction—a light gasp fell through the room, necks craned and he raised his chin to watch one blonde hurriedly exit the room, one dark haired intern cradle his hand, and Mark's very own girlfriend quickly drop to help someone off the floor.

Immediately, Mark made his way through the crowd, moving alongside a handful of other senior doctors that were presumably poised to give whoever it was involved, fire and brimstone. 

He made his way past various staff members, Manhattan socialites, medical geniuses and millionaire investors, only to stop and stare at the bloodied face of Liam Carmichael as he sat on the floor, nursing a split nose.

However, by the time he reached the scene of the disruption, Beth and the others involved, were long gone, disappearing out of the ballroom doors. 

As his head raised to place the familiar brunette in the crowd, he caught the edge of her blazer just as it turned the corner and out of sight.

Mark's first thought delivered a stab of panic through his chest: Is Beth okay?

***

She wasn't particularly very fast in heels.

It'd been a long time since she'd last worn them, and, despite how many hours she'd spent flitting across Addison's mixers and soirees in borrowed Louboutin's, she felt painfully out of control. 

Admittedly, to begin with, rushing down a corridor in pursuit of Isaac had not been her greatest impulse—doing it all in heels just felt like an action of self-harm.

He was fast. Fuck, he was faster than she'd expected. 

She'd barely even stooped to check on Liam before he'd taken off, presumably prompted by the fact that Faith had been gone before his fist had even made contact with Liam's skull. 

He hadn't waited to see whether Liam was okay, or to assess the damage that he'd caused to the work event, he'd just left in what Beth was slowly figuring out, was a pursuit. So that left her skittering down a hall like a car with no breaks, determined to give Isaac a piece of her mind.

Turning corners felt a whole lot like putting all of her faith in a higher power; she gritted her teeth and almost went flying into the man who'd stopped in front of the elevator, having just missed it. 

The man in question, thankfully happened to be the exact guy she'd been looking for—she set her eyes on him and huffed loudly, feeling her temper from earlier simmer at the bottom of her stomach.

     "What the hell were you thinking!?"

It felt therapeutic to raise her voice. 

She hadn't been able to raise it earlier with Mark and had kept it reasonably contained (just because, sometimes, yelling at Mark felt a whole lot like screaming at a kid who didn't know better and hadn't realised that they'd misbehaved in the first place, and Beth didn't like the guilt that followed), but now, oh now, she narrowed her eyes and glowered at the man-child halfway through his tantrum. 

Isaac, on the other hand, seemed to of mellowed out the slightest; the glance that he tossed sideways as he watched her storm her way towards him was lined with disgust rather than anger, as if he could think of a thousand other people he'd rather have walking towards him.

     "Oh give it up Montgomery," He said sharply, his lip curling slightly as he slammed his palm onto the elevator button. It was the same first he'd thrown at Liam and, for a moment, Beth wondered whether it hurt. She hoped it did. "Is this your role now? Are you the little angel on my shoulder, here to tell me that I've just ruined things for myself—"

     "Well, this angel's gonna strangle you with her halo, jackass," Beth interjected, her hands falling to her hips almost instinctively. "I'm here to remind you that you have a damn career and you just made a fool of yourself not only in front of most of the medical executives in Manhattan but also the woman you clearly care at least a tiny bit about—"

There must've been some sort of trigger buried in there because she watched familiar clench of his muscles. 

He didn't look at her, just kept his eyes dead set on the wall in front of him. A frustrated scoff fell past his lips and he shook his head.

    "You don't know what the hell you're talking about—"

    "I know about you and Faith," She shot him down immediately, causing his chin to raise in her direction. Beth was, very suddenly, subject to a very heated stare, one that made her skin tremble slightly. "She told me everything. About how she told you that she had feelings for you and you let her crash and burn."

He just glared at her, jaw slack.

   "I know everything," She repeated for emphasis, "I know that you're just a scared little boy who's too afraid of a woman telling him that she loves him that you're going to throw your big fists around to try and regain whatever sense of masculinity you can get—"

Well, admittedly, she was really drawing on a lot of supressed frustrations here. 

When she looked at Isaac, she saw something so similar to the man that had left her stood on the side of the street, empty from the sudden 'I love you' that had left her without realising it.

 She saw the six months that she'd spent trying to make sense of it all, the crushing feeling in her chest when she'd watched Mark work his way from woman to woman around her, the unresolved pain that had resurfaced when he'd gotten into that town-car. S

he'd been through all this crap before, Faith deserved better.

     "You think you're so much better than all of us, don't you?" was all that Isaac said in response.

 He seemed completely incapable of touching on anything Beth had said, so just laughed bitterly and raised her eyebrows. Each word was said so bitterly that Beth almost didn't know what to do with yourself. 

   "What are you?" He asked sharply, "Some sort of... some sort of Upper East Side Princess? Probably living off of Daddy's money? Lunch on Fifth Avenue? Balthazar for Brunch?"

     "Deflection really shows a man," Beth said tightly, her eyes narrowing even further. The amount of adrenalin in her body was deliciously mixed with the half a pill and alcohol in her system. It was one hell of a high. "You stand here trying to make me into something I'm not just so you don't have to really look at yourself— News flash, Cochran, you're an adult and adults don't pull this sort of shit—"

    "You stand there thinking you know better than everyone else," He shook his head and laughed to himself as if every word Beth said was a joke at her own expense. "That you're god's given miracle to surgery­– But news flash, princess, you're just as crappy as the rest of us."

Beth rolled her eyes.

   "You can't avoid it," Her voice dropped slightly as she tried to make him actually listen to her words. Sure, sometimes yelling was great, but people never listened to what you said; they only listened to the tone, to the emotion—Beth wanted Isaac to really think about what she had to say. "You can't avoid her, Isaac. You work together, you're going to see each other every day—every time you hook up with some nurse or technician, she's going to know and it's going to hurt her. And if you do care about her in the tiniest way, it's going to hurt her too—"

   "You don't know anything about—"

    "Oh, I do," Beth insisted, dismissing Isaac's serrated interjection. "I know that you leaving her on her ass has made her so upset she's been drinking for three hours. I know that you pretending you don't care even though I watched you reach out to her like that and get so bothered when she talked about finding something better—I know that's hurting her. You're hurting her—"

Again, she couldn't avoid thinking about her own experience.

    "You're an adult," She repeated, "If you're old and wise enough to get into this mess, you're old and dumb enough to give Faith the respect that she deserves. Don't make her feel like a toy you're tossing aside. If you care about her enough to break hospital guidelines for her—do the decent fucking thing."

He did listen to her words. 

She watched them tick through his head and his consciousness, getting caught in all the little cracks and crevices where the thoughts eventually settled. For a moment, she hoped that it'd actually accomplished things and that he'd actually think and draw upon what she'd said—but then, she realised that he'd listened to all the wrong things.

     "Y'know, I had you all wrong," Isaac began, bringing in a long breath as if he was about to perform a speech or a Shakespeare play. He spoke so frankly too, as if he'd this all written out at the back of his brain. Beth's brow folded but she stood strong. "I had you sussed out as this prissy prude who was too good for everything—but I was wrong. You're the opposite—you're worse—if you want to talk about breaking hospital guidelines and messes, come back to me when you're not fucking your way to the top."

Her eye twitched.

     "Oh, this crap again, huh?"

Ah yes, this crap, the sequel.

She was wondering when it would come up again.

     "Yeah," Isaac said, this time turning to face her. He looked so angry for a moment that Beth wondered whether he was morally ambiguous enough to hit a woman; she'd figure that out if it got to it, Beth wasn't impartial to punching back, that was for sure. Her eyebrows raised as he stepped towards her. "I don't know what sort of thing you've got going on with Sloan but whatever it is, you're sick—"

    "Y'know," She cleared her throat, "It's so funny, you keep throwing these allegations at me and have nothing to stick them with." Beth cocked her head to the side, "You're getting creative with this whole thing... with the person you've made me out to be. So different from the real deal—"

    "Everyone knows what you did at Christmas," He said, his voice suddenly calm. It was almost eerie. She felt the blood rush to her ears again and her cheeks flush subconsciously, eyes fixed on him as he loomed closer and closer. "I know that Bennett didn't just happen to want to switch interns, he told me that himself. Sloan asked him to switch and called in a favour with your brother-in-law, of all the people in Manhattan. What a small world that's gotta be—"

    "I don't know what you're talking about," Beth responded tightly. It felt like a mechanical response, the sort that she'd recited in the bathroom mirror. She watched a smirk flicker on his lips with a bitter taste of panic in her mouth.

She also, for the record, hadn't been aware of any of this. For a moment, she kicked herself for not realising that there was more to what she'd initially thought was just a romantic Christmas gift from the man she loved.

    "He told me all about how Sloan thought he'd be your hero and get you into that surgery."

 Each word made her feel sick. She could feel the sickness start in her stomach and burn its way upwards, through every organ and through every bone. It was only when it was boiling at the back of her throat that she found her eyes watering very slightly. Only slightly. She didn't cry. 

  "That surgery was mine," He said, "I earned it. That was my patient, my prep notes, my gallery and you stole it from me—all for a quickie in an on-call room. And what, reindeer antlers?"

    "How dare you—"

     "Did you get on your pretty little knees for him?" Isaac said so sharply and Beth could tell that he'd been waiting to say all of this since he'd been kicked off of the surgery. She tried not to take it personally but the lines between Church and State had long been crossed. "Did you blow him? Stick your hands down his pants? Did he promise to make all your dreams come true and more—"

    "Oh, screw you," She said under her breath.

    "But I don't have anything to offer you?" Isaac echoed, "What would be the point in that? Princess, I've got nothing you want."

 Beth found her chest tightening like a rubber band on the verge of snapping; she found it hard to breathe and didn't until he was stepping back and burying his hands into his pocket.  

   He snorted to himself and looked away, "I don't like people like you, people who come into this with money and a pretty face and think they can just walk all over everyone. I'm not like you, I work hard for what I've got."

(It was ironic, that's all she could think in retrospect. So deeply ironic. This man was stood there, telling her who she was and what she'd done, and yet Beth was two days away from being hospitalised for exhaustion.)

(Not only was she very surely working herself to death, but she was working herself into a hefty mental health spiral. She'd already lost herself in some places, in the growing gnaw in her bones to keep opening that little pill bottle in her purse, or a bottle of wine every time she finished a shift. This man was telling her that she didn't work hard, but Beth was sure that she'd never worked harder in her life.)

Numb, that's how she felt staring at him, as if the shark had torn her in two and now she was just disembodied pieces floating on bloodstained water.

     "I don't know what I've done to make you feel this way," Beth began, sounding oddly breathless. 

She was fairly sure that she'd done was exist and best him in every single way possible; at least, for starters, she'd passed the female sexual anatomy quiz. However, it wasn't her fault she was better than him, it was only his fault that he was mediocre. 

  "But I am not any of those things and," She couldn't contain the disgust that overwhelmed her, "I can't believe I'm even saying this, but I am not sleeping with Doctor Sloan for professional advantages. It is disgusting for you to even suggest that."

Technically, Beth was telling the truth. She was not sleeping with Mark for the betterment of her career. She was not any of those things. She didn't think she was better than everyone; she was more than aware that Ashley was far better than her at neurosurgery, in the way that Liam was slowly championing Cardio and Faith was running ahead in General Surgery. 

If he gave her the time, she would've loved to debunk everything he'd said to her. 

She'd make a game out of all of this too, she'd trivialise it all until it didn't hurt anymore.

But Isaac just shook his head.

     "I'm not suggesting it," He said, and it felt final. "I'm stating it loud and clear. A fact. You do, you think you're so much better than everyone... but princess, you're not shiny. You're not hot, either. All you've got are your pills and that shit between your legs. You're not even a good doctor."

Beth's jaw clenched and she held her chin a little higher, trying to hide how much her stomach had dropped at those words. 

She'd never felt so small in her life, not even when Addison had treated her like she was disposable or when Mark had left her on that street like a trash bag waiting for collection. She felt those words reverb around her chest, bouncing of all of the empty spaces that her messy lifestyle had cleared for her. It was when they made direct contact with her heart that she felt her throat close, a lump forming that she couldn't swallow.

    "How can you be so sure?" was all that she could manage.

He stepped away from her and over towards the elevator. 

It had arrived back to him, presumably from distributing Faith on the ground floor for her quick escape. He gave her a wry smile, one that felt eerily out of place in the conversation and Beth felt her soul sink.

    "I've been doing scut for your little boyfriend for the past year and a half," She didn't like how sure he appeared through all of this, as if he had evidence that she couldn't dissuade. But she would, Beth would fight whatever he threw at her, she was determined to. (She didn't have any other option. She refused to go down on whatever disaster cruise ship this whole career was turning out to be.) "Taking a phone calls... running laundry and lunch orders—it's not hard to tell what's going on when you're dropping off ladies' underwear to the cleaners and paying bills under your name."

She felt her chest crush. It was as if he was pressing down on it, destroying bone, muscle and flesh. 

Her heart seized in her chest and it took everything within her not to close her eyes and curse Mark Sloan's name.

     "You're insane," Beth said firmly, making sure that she pronounced every syllable was every ounce of venom she had left in her. "You have no proof of any of these lies. No one is going to believe you. Faith won't believe you. You've got nothing."

    "I don't need to do anything, things always go to shit eventually," Isaac said with a light laugh, "But hey, if you're old and dumb enough to get into this mess, or, really, under this mess... you're old and dumb enough to get out of it, right?"

Beth didn't have the voice within her to respond.

***

He found her.

Had he been looking for her? Allegedly.

So what if he just happened to stroll down this hallway in the hotel and find her standing here?

 So what if he'd just stopped for a little talk, he was only asking about the commotion in the events hall, quizzing her so they could get all the information?

He hadn't been searching for her, he'd only found her—or, at least, that's what he'd say if he were asked by another staff member. 

He'd just happened across her, Beth Montgomery in her pretty dress and her pretty heels... and a look of complete disaster written directly across her face.

Coincidently, disaster had been what had prompted Mark to leave the event with the very specific intention of making sure that Beth was okay. 

(Sure, he'd watched only one punch get thrown and, sure he'd seen the recipient of it bleed with his own two eyes—but what if this was some insane hostage situation and Beth was somewhere in need of saving? What if she was getting put in danger at this very moment? What if Beth needed someone there for her? What if Mark needed to be there right­–) 

It had been, admittedly, so much easier than he'd expected to find her. He'd turned two corners, briefly debated on whether a hostage situation would take the stairs, and eventually found her standing right in front of the elevator, staring at the far wall.

He took a moment just to look at her, just as he had in the elevator earlier that night. 

He hadn't told her yet, but she looked beautiful. He'd seen her in that dress before, it was the one she'd worn to Addison and Derek's nuptials, the one from the boat in Miami where they'd both gotten drunk out of their minds. 

Seeing her stood there, he was reminded of it—of the way that she'd smiled at him and pressed her hand against his arm and triggered a series of events that all seemed so overwhelming now. She looked like a picture straight out of his memories—

But then her chin dropped and she was frowning to herself as if she was about to cry. 

He watched her shoulders slump and her eyes squeezed closed and that same feeling of urgency filled him. 

The pretty picture of a woman swiped her heel across the floor, kicked at air and said 'Fuck' loudly to what she thought was an empty hallway. 

A desperate hand punched the elevator button.

Mark pretended as if he'd just arrived.

    "Hey."

He'd expected her to blank him. 

He'd spoken so softly and tenderly that he was surprised she'd even heard him. 

But, she did here him and she did look at him two—her head turned to watch as he carefully walked across the small foyer area. 

They were alone, just two perfect strangers watching the other. He didn't know how close he should stand or how close she wanted him; all Mark knew was that, for a long time now, he'd just wanted to hold her hand tight and never let go.

Her gaze was so sad. He'd never seen something quite like it. Usually, just the feeling of her eyes on him... now that was the sort of shit that made him feel lighter. 

He'd never thought that it was possible that just someone looking at you could make you feel like you could take on the whole world, or fly just for thousands of miles, but she did. This, however, felt damp and dark and all of the things that he wished would never befall her.

     A dent slowly appeared between his eyebrows, "Hey."

Mark repeated it softer. 

It was a tentative hey, the sort to encourage her to look at him. 

He hadn't realised that he was capable of something so gentle, but he was standing closer to her now. 

The word was just a hum, a vibration passed through two bodies that couldn't touch. 

Touch, he wanted to touch her, he wanted to stop that chin from wandering downwards, to hold that jaw and guide her eyes back to him as they started to sway away. 

It was the small touches that would have to do for now; he stood beside her, elbow to elbow as if he was waiting for the elevator with her, and his fingers ghosted across the back of her arm. 

He didn't miss how she inhaled sharply and readjusted her posture, as if the tiniest fraction of contact hurt.

    "You leaving?"

She hadn't told him anything about her plans for the evening and Mark had so many questions. Was she coming home? Was she going to the hospital? Were they going to have tonight together? Or was he going to be stuck alone again in her apartment? 

He had so much he wanted to ask her, but the moment didn't feel right—she inhaled a long breath before nodding and very quickly rubbed underneath her eyes, as if to dispel unshed tears that Mark hadn't been able to make out.

    "Yeah," Beth cleared her throat, "I'm not feeling too well—"

     "I can call you a car," He said, already reaching for his phone, "Come back to your apartment and we can just watch a movie or something or go to bed and I can—"

But Beth shook her head.

    "No," She said; she sounded small, uncomfortably so, as if she could fit in the palm of his hand. "I can call my own. Don't worry, I just... I can do it."

The moment felt odd. 

Mark stared at her profile, watching every single muscle movement and wobble of her lips.

 There was something so alien about seeing her like this. It was a stark contrast to the fiery woman that had muttered 'fuck you' under her breath as she stalked out this very elevator not too long ago. 

Those same petals that had flourished in the face of getting the final word, now drooped slightly and, when she inhaled through her nose, he could hear that her throat was choked with ambiguous emotion. 

It made an unknown feeling weigh on his chest, his breath stilling as he fought the impulse to reach for her hand.

     "Did something happen?"

Beth was watching the floor counter above the elevator door. 

It struck him, in that moment, how uncanny it was to stand beside someone and feel as though they were thousands of miles away from you. 

He committed every second of her quiet subdued colour to memory, not used to how every breath seemed to cost her. It was as if she was bleeding secretly and losing strength with every second—it took a very long time for her head to turn towards him. She gave him a very empty look that was void of anything that gave anything away.

     "I can't do this right now, Mark––"

      "Did something happen?" He asked again, ignoring her deflection. She sighed to herself and looked away. It was as if she was disappointed that he was asking; it made his brow furrowed and his face fall into a frown. "Are you okay?"

     "I'm okay," Beth responded. "I just wanna go, okay?"

     "Did something happen with Cochran—"

     "He was just being a dick," She sounded dismissive, short, as if she didn't want to talk to him. It filled Mark with the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her senselessly. 

Look at me, he wanted to say to her, I'm concerned about you, I'm worried. I care. 

   "He drank too much, got riled up and thought that breaking Liam's nose would be funny," Beth sighed, "It's fine. I'm fine. Isaac's just an ass."

But there was more to it, Mark could tell. 

Beth was usually resilient when it came to things; not even Navarro could phase her and she'd gotten pretty good at handling Cochran too. 

But there was something about the fact that she had to handle things in the first place, something about how she had to stand here and pretend as though she was completely unbothered—

No, Mark wanted to tell her that she didn't have to handle things alone. He was here for her. He wanted her to talk about it. He wanted to help her with whatever was bothering her—

That, as Mark was slowly realising, was love.

Mark didn't quite know what to say. He was suddenly so unsure of himself, how to hold himself, how to appear and how to speak. 

(In reality, it was far more alien than a quiet Beth, an insecure and floundering Mark was so chilling to the two of them.)

 He pressed his lips together and tried to think of something to say, but just suddenly felt the weight of all of the champagne he'd drank through the evening hit him. He could tell that Beth was buzzed too, she had a haziness to her sadness that lingered on her like a wine stain against her skin.

When the elevator arrived, Mark didn't want to leave her.

 He knew that he should've returned to the event, but he couldn't bring himself to. He didn't want to leave her alone when she was like this—as she walked forwards into the little metal box, Mark didn't hesitate before following. He pressed the floor button on the panel and ignore the alarmed look that Beth gave him as she made it very clear she didn't want him here with her.

     "Mark—"

     "I'm going to walk you down to the car," He said quietly. 

It wasn't a negotiation. 

Beth was sad and he was going to walk her down into the lobby of the hotel, maybe he'd even wait with her until her car arrived. 

He wasn't sure what he was going to do, but he was adamant that he wasn't going to leave her alone.

     "We can't—"

     "I know," He did know, she never let him forget it. 

Mark wasn't allowed to do any of the things he wanted, he knew that. He watched the time tick by as she looked over at him again, eyes heavy as if it was physically painful to stand there. 

   "I just wanted to—"

The doors closed and she spoke.

     "Which laundrette do you use?"

It wasn't the question he'd been expecting. 

He'd been standing there with a head full of words that had been placed there by Navarro; he'd wanted to mention it to her, to admit that things weren't looking great, but her sudden question caught him off-guard. 

He did a double take at her, his pause filled with the sound of the elevator whirring them down the building. He frowned again, the expression so deep that he was sure that Bizzy would've even told him that he'd need Botox, and he was fairly sure she despised him.

     "The one that you send your interns to... when you need them to pick things up," He stared at her as she specified what she was questioning. 

A very slow realisation dawned on him, spreading through his body like wildfire. She watched his expression, watched the light hit his eyes and his chin drop. He swallowed a lump at the back of his throat and gently said her name as if to lead into an explanation. 

  She just shook her head and heaved a breathy chuckle. "Under my name too."

She sounded disappointed in him. 

(She'd wanted him to say something of value, tell her that he hadn't immediately thought of what he'd done wrong. He'd spent the last few months sending interns to their neighbourhood, paying for clothing with his credit card on bills that were under her name, her full name. She wasn't sure whether he was just dumb, inconsiderate, or spiteful—either way, Beth wasn't sure what was worse.)

     "Beth–"

     "They know," was all Beth said, "Did you know that? People are talking about us, Mark, about Christmas...."

He could feel the emotions in her, building up behind those brown eyes of hers and trembling lip. It made him wonder what exactly had been said to her; who had gotten her in such a state? He wanted to know what had lead to her like this, a picture of a modern tragedy stood in a pretty dress, clutching her own elbows so tightly, as if she was holding herself together. 

The words caught at the back of his throat, it didn't help—she just let out a slightly choked sound, one that almost sounded like a laugh. She pinched the bridge of her nose and refused to look back at him.

     "They all know about us, Mark," The words were so horrified, so hushed, that it almost broke Mark's heart to think that she could be so aghast to be associated with him. His pride, for all intents and purposes, shattered on the floor between them. "They don't know who the woman is but they know that you're sleeping with an intern... Isaac is so convinced that it's me—"

He didn't have it within himself to tell her what Navarro had said to him. 

She knew that there were different levels of emergency; one was, what he presumed was, Cochran scaring her with some sort of empty threat, and, on the whole other side of the scale, there was the look that had been in Navarro's eye. What Mark did have within him, however, was the agency to finally reach out and take Beth's hand. He gently peeled back her clenched fingers as if he was dismantling a bomb and felt his heart wrench when she stiffened at the contact. Her hand felt cold.

     "Beth, it's not the end of the world—"

      "How could you say that?" Beth said to the wall, "How could you––?"

      "Let's just come clean."

The eyes that met him were so ambiguous.

 If he squinted and looked close enough, he was pretty sure he could see the whole universe in the bottom of them. Her recoil was immediate and she rid herself of him, as if she couldn't process what he'd just said unless there was as much distance between them as possible. 

He hated how his hands felt empty without her—she pressed her back against the wall and shook her head wildly, an incredulous sound pouring out of her.

      "Are you fucking serious, Mark?"

     "Think about it," It was the same argument they'd had a thousand times over: Mark, dizzy from the recognition that this wasn't healthy for a relationship and Beth, staring at him as if he'd just condemned her to a death sentence. "It doesn't have to be complicated—"

     "Apparently it fucking does," Beth chipped back with a heated sharpness to her voice as she stared at him, eyes wide, "Because by the looks of things, you're costing me my whole career and everything I've worked for—"

He blinked.

      She pulled a face, "That sounds complicated to me."

      "That's not—"

      "I can't tell whether you do this on purpose," Beth continued, lowering her chin so she could collect her thoughts. "You know how much this means to me. You know how hard I work—it's all you complain about, about how I'm working all the time—and here you are! Telling me things don't have to be complicated if I just tell everyone, 'Hey, I'm fucking an Attending and setting feminism back by fifty years'."

      "It's not like that—"

      "I can't have this argument again," Beth shut him down with a sigh. She held up a hand and waved it dismissively. Mark didn't like that. He didn't like how she was constantly shutting down things; he was pretty fucking sure that he deserved a voice too. "I won't talk to you about this again Mark. I've told you what I think and I've begged you to listen to me—"

     "I've listened," He said, his voice raising very slightly, "I've stood here and I've listened to everything—"

     "Really?" She challenged, her eyebrows raising, "Because, by the looks of things, the shit you pulled with Derek and Bennett at Christmas, that might have cost me all of the respect I've built for myself in this whole career."

The mention of Christmas made a chill descend in him. It started deep within his bones and extended outwards, icy and frozen, gripping him hard with such suddenness that he had to suck in a breath. 

She held her forehead in her hands and seemed to mourn her professional career right in front of him—Mark, meanwhile, couldn't describe the emotion he felt. His lips were numb as he wiped his clammy palms against his slacks.

He'd tried.

He wasn't sure whether this all would've hurt less if he hadn't tried as hard as he had. 

Maybe it would? Maybe it would've felt less cold if he hadn't cared so much. It was the chilling truth: maybe this was his fault, maybe Mark Sloan trying to do something right for once, had ruined it all. He thought about Christmas, of that warmth and smiles and the faded haze of an on-call room dressed in tinsel, and felt it, very slowly, grow cold and estranged in his memory.

God, he'd tried so fucking hard.

In retrospect, Mark would understand Beth's fear. 

He'd look at Navarro and Newman and all of the other doctors in that hospital and he'd understand. He'd listen closer to the judgement, of how becoming a sexual object ruined women's career as such a male-dominated space struggled to see them as two things at once. 

A woman couldn't be a doctor and a woman, he'd understand that eventually. 

In that moment, however, he just failed to join the dots—instead, he completely changed the topic.

     "Are you embarrassed of me?"

His words were louder than he'd intended them to be. 

The expression on her face was chaotic; she looked as though he'd just physically assaulted her. It was an assault of sorts, a question that was a veiled accusation. 

But it was something he'd been thinking for a while, a jumble of words that had been subconscious and traitorous—his ears rang with its echo and his eyes hurt from the pain that flickered across Beth's face. 

Her eyebrows raised, her eyes turned vaguely glassy and she scrambled over her words, completely blindsided by the insinuation.

      "What?" Her voice broke slightly and she gaped at him, breath suspended, "Are- Are you serious?"

Immediate adrenalin-fuelled panic flooded his system. Mark ran a hand through his hair and, before he knew it, he was getting angry and defensive too.

      "I don't know," He said quickly, waving a hand at something that was invisible, "All of that stuff with the nurses—all those times you've said that I've got a reputation—"

       "Are you really...?" She trailed off and, in that moment, Mark had never anyone look so deeply hurt. Her eyes swirled slightly and she seemed completely incapable of processing it. When she said his name, she seemed incapable of holding herself together. "Mark."

It was something he'd been thinking about for a long time, feasting off of the sensation of being hidden from such a large part of her life. 

He struggled to process it sometimes, of how Mark knew that he was the sort of guy women would be jealous over, of how Beth would be looked at with so much awe. 

The contrast between how he was so wildly arrogant and walked like god's gift to humanity and yet this woman, the woman stood right in front of him, made him so weak. He knew he was new to this whole caring thing, but he was pretty damn sure things were supposed to be easier than this.

In his head, Beth being ashamed of him was the only logical explanation.

    "I can't believe you would..." 

He didn't speak as she struggled to formulate a response to that. Her chest heaved slightly and her brow scrunched so tightly as she pressed a hand to her chin. Her fingers trembled slightly. 

   "Is that... is that what you think of me? That I'm embarrassed of you?"

It was an oddly vulnerable thing to admit, but it was true. 

It'd taken a lot for him to say it out loud. He felt raw hearing her repeat it back to him. It felt as though she was peeling back a layer of skin to see the unsaid things that lurked beneath it. It was scalding. But what stung more was not the fact that he'd finally vocalise something so personal, but the fact that her immediate response was to scoff.

     "Of course," She said after a pause that felt too long, "Of course, you're going to make this all about you."

Now that caught him off-guard.

     "I'm not making this about—"

     "No," Beth insisted, her nostrils flaring as her anger overtook her hurt. "You are. You're deflecting the fact that you've done something wrong and you're trying to make me feel bad—fuck off with this whole me being embarrassed of you shit. If I didn't care about you, I wouldn't be in this mess to begin with, Mark—"

     "Right," He said, his cheeks flushing from the fact that she hadn't denied it. "Because it's all my fault—"

      "I'm not the one who pissed off Bennett—"

His voice dropped an octave.

      "I did it for you."

      "And look where that's got us."

She held out her arms as if to encourage him to look at what was happening. 

Mark didn't want to look—it felt painful to observe, as if he was watching his own mutilation. Was it his fault? Was it really his fault? 

He'd tried to do something nice for her, to fulfil her obsession with surgery and her career. He didn't like it that she'd thrown blame at him, push this all onto him as if it was his weight alone to carry. 

He also didn't like the insinuation that it had all been for nothing, that it had been a horrific mistake and not just him trying his best with a relationship that was rapidly becoming a minefield.

      "I did it for you," Mark repeated, although the words felt redundant in the face of Beth's anger. She was burning so brightly that he had to squint. "All of this shit, all of this pretending and hiding—making everything up as I go along, that's all been for you, Beth. Everything has been for you. I'm trying, Beth. I'm trying for you—"

They were both trying so hard but in the opposite directions. 

He'd figured that out pretty quickly—he didn't need to try so hard with his career now, he had it, he had the credibility and he was quickly becoming one of the most established and accredited plastic surgeons on the East Coast. But this relationship, god he needed to try so hard. 

He needed to put more effort into it than he'd ever realised, and he was trying. He was trying, trying, trying, trying... but Beth didn't need to. She knew what she was doing. 

She was so sure of their relationship, of how to treat him and how to love him. Their work, time and attention was being invested in two completely different areas.

That never failed to make his chest ache.

      "I appreciate it," Beth said, but it didn't feel genuine to him. She didn't take his hand like he wanted her to, she just sounded vaguely annoyed. "I really do Mark. I know that you're trying but this... this isn't what I need. This can't happen... This won't happen. You know how much I need this—"

He did.

     "I have no idea what I'm doing," He admitted again, candidly wishing that she'd stand closer to him. He wasn't sure how much time had passed in this little elevator, but what he did know was that she'd distanced herself again. Her back was pressed against the wall and she stared at him with eyes that swirled as if they were on fire. "I have no fucking idea what you want from me."

Mark sounded agitated and hopeless.

     "I want you to listen," Beth responded tightly. "I want people to stop bouncing everything back in my face all the time because I'm tired, I'm fucking tired of having to deal with all of this shit. I have a career and I have a life and I have things that I want—and you don't respect that, Mark."

He didn't speak.

     "I know this is a mess," She said so firmly. Mark just averted his eyes to the floor. "My whole goddamn life is a mess right now and you're supposed to be in my corner. That's what couples do, they back each other and they stand by them and help them. You need to stop putting me in this situation every time and think about how I'm gonna feel."

He supposed that this wasn't what he'd meant when he'd said that he wanted to talk about things. He didn't like how this had turned into what it always did, Beth giving some pseudo lecture about he had to be better, do better—he'd lost track of when this relationship had started feeling less like fun and more like a self-help seminar.

Maybe that was what made him angry: the feeling of doing wrong or being made feel as though all of his efforts were in vain. Or maybe it was the tiny thought at the back of his head that told him maybe their relationship being exposed wasn't such a bad thing. 

They'd deal with it, Mark told himself, they'd deal with it and they could cope and maybe he'd be able to go a day without second-guessing the fact that he was, and always would be, Mark fucking Sloan. 

It didn't have to be a bad thing to be associated with him; she was just looking at all of this wrong—

     "What about me?" Mark's voice was a little too tight, "What about what I want, what I feel?"

Beth stared at him.

     "Mark—"

     "No," He said, "You tell me to listen, but you only talk about the things you're interested in– Everything is on your terms. That isn't right. When I want to talk about things you shut me off, avoid me, stay away from the apartment and make me feel like a douchebag. What about me?"

      "You accused me of being an addict, Mark."

      "Because I'm concerned about you—" 

He wanted to exclaim those words with all of the twisted agitation in the world. He was concerned about her. He was watching her work herself to death and he wanted to protect her from her own descending mind. How could he help her protect a career that was slowly killing her? 

   "I'm worried about you," He struggled to keep his voice hushed, "I seem to give the only damn because you're just throwing your life away for what? For a career?"

     "It's easy for you to say when you have it all," Beth snapped back, "You, Addie, Archer, Derek and Amelia—you guys all have your careers and what do I have?"

Mark felt his chest fall slightly.

     "You have me."

A beat passed.

      She just grimaced, "And you think I'm embarrassed—"

      "I do, I do think that—"

      "Don't accuse me of being embarrassed of you when you can't even look at me when I'm drunk," Beth spat back, closing the distance between them as she dug up a grave that she'd half-buried. Mark heaved a breath and watched as she practically crackled with fury. There was hurt there too, he could see it writhe inside of her. "If you want to talk about people being ashamed, you can think about how you make me feel when you throw this addict shit in my face after one glass of wine—"

     "So you're going to tell me you haven't drunk anything tonight?" Mark challenged, meeting her level of agitation with ease. He'd seen her throw back those glasses of alcohol as if they were water. "So you're going to really look me in the eye and tell me you're not intoxicated right now—"

      "I'm not drunk," Beth said without batting an eyelash. (It was a lie. She could feel the buzz of it, it'd been what had convinced her that persuing Isaac down that corridor had been a good idea. It went deliciously with the pills she'd taken.) "But you know what I am? A skank... a... a slut! A whore! Whatever else they want to call me—"

      "Don't say that."

His face twisted into an unpleasant expression.

      "Why not?" She exclaimed, appearing miffed, "Might as well get ahead of them, right? Get a fucking foot in the door before they all start judging me—"

        "No one's going to think that."

       "Optimism doesn't fucking suit you," Beth said heatedly, laughing at what she deemed was a very wrong take. "You don't learn do you—do you believe anything I say? When I tell you this might destroy me, Mark. I fucking mean it, okay? You didn't see the look on Faith's face when she told me about a rumour. She think it's Ashley and I... I don't think I can do that—"

      "Someone's gotta be positive," Mark interjected, his face contorting, "Because half the time I feel like I'm doing this all on my fucking own, okay? So don't give me any of that crap—"

      "Arrogant bastard," She scoffed, "I can't believe you—"

      "What I can't believe is that you're lying about drinking, again," he said, despite everything within him that said not to. "You lie about a lot of things and all this time I've stood here and I've let it pass. But this, this was inevitable from the start. I didn't want to fucking lie, okay? I wanted to be up front about things. I wanted to tell the hospital board exactly what was happening and how this isn't a sexual favour thing. I know I don't know shit about relationships, but I do know that things don't end well when you're just constantly lying about everything—"

      "So what?" Beth snorted, her eyes flashing with mirth, "I what? Just tell everyone and let them think I'm the whore? Build my whole career off of a terrible reputation as that girl? Condemn myself to a career full of men like Navarro assuming that I'm just down for blowing them in the on-call room everytime, so I can get my hand on a damn scalpel—?"

        "That's not what I meant."

It hadn't been what he'd meant. 

Mark had never and, emphasis on never, expected anything in return for anything. This relationship had not been built on the physical. 

Somehow, Mark had found a relationship where he just wanted to be with the person rather than just their body or any novel sexualised body part. 

If he had to stand there and list things about Beth that he loved, he would have spent so much time and energy into picking his favourite, only to eventually crack and say everything—he'd never been a romantic, but god, Beth seemed to make him want to be one.

   "I thought you'd understand," She said so tightly, appearing to ball up into something that was so alien to him. "After all that shit with Petunia Vanderbilt... after fucking her so she'd get you into her ex-husband's research funding programme--"

"Don't."

Suddenly, Mark's skin was flushed with a red hot feeling. 

It was as if he was burning from the inside out. Suddenly, his whole world was balancing on the dangerous flash of her eyes and the way that she seemed to not even waver. There was something about the mention of that woman's name, of it's cameo in this conversation and coming from Beth's mouth-- it twisted something so deep in Mark, something that felt a whole lot like a knife. 

He knew what the burn was: it was the inherent shame of Beth dragging out a skeleton that he'd tried his best to bury.

He bit on the tip of his tongue and tried his best not to go past the point of no return.

   "Don't go there, Beth."

Beth seemed to twitch at the sound of his sigh.

    "Even after all this time," She said, speaking about it as if it'd been a decade ago. Mark's face twisted into something evil. She didn't look over at him. "That shame. That guilt that you feel every time when you think about how you slept your way into that program... that's what you're asking from me."

And then a pause that made Mark's blood run cold––

    "I'm not Petunia," Beth said, "I'm not Petunia and I'm not you––"

He squeezed his eyes closed as she spoke––

   "I love you, Mark," The words physically hurt, "But I'm not you."

Mark shook his head at the floor.

   "Don't you dare--"

   "No," Beth said, her voice sharp, "Don't you dare. We're different, Mark. What makes you will fucking break me, and you're either blind to it or you don't respect me enough to see it."

His jaw slackened.

He just stared at her.

She was always the worst in arguments. 

If Mark had to define his least favourite Beth, it was the one that was stood in front of her. 

She became so righteous and cold during these sort of conversations. 

She was always so sure and her words had dangerous intent. 

Her words shot to kill.

The pause after her words seemed to level out what had been a very fast and concise argument.

 His chest heaved slightly as his very fast but short temper began to fizzle out. 

On the other side of the elevator, Beth had tears in her eyes. 

She pressed her lips into a very thin line, dropped her chin to the floor and used this moment of silence to piece herself back together. 

She adjusted her shirt strap, wiped underneath her eyes and dragged a delicate thumb around the perimeter of her lipstick.

(She heard Isaac in the silence, felt the heat of his accusations and the weight of the words he'd used. She also felt the person she'd been in that ballroom, a woman who was so far away from the person she wanted to be, allowing Faith to curse Ashley out in a double-faced act of double standard. The guilt gripped her so deeply, as if Mark had reached his hand straight into her chest and grasped his fingers tightly over either side of her heart.)

He padded his way across the elevator until he was moments away from her, his fingers barely glazing her skin. 

He ignored the way the little metal box slowed, the way that Beth tensed—her breathing hitched but she did not pull away; there was a precariousness about it, of how Mark knew it'd been such a while since he'd been able to do this, to hold her like this. 

He trailed his touch up her arm until he was hovering underneath her chin, his nose so close to hers as she avoided his gaze. Her head was tilted away from him, her exhales still angry as he silently begged him to look at her.

He hated arguing.

     "Beth," He breathed her name and she looked at him.

There was love there, he could see it. It was hidden behind the weight of all of the other things in the world, but it was there. Beth had so many things on her shoulders that he could see them actually sag right in front of him. 

He had half a mind to tell her to go to a chiropractors or actually get a full nights sleep—there was so many other things hidden at the back of her eyes, but he either chose to ignore them or couldn't bring himself to understand what they indicated.

     "Don't," Beth said under her breath. He was holding her chin now, holding her in the palm of his hand. "Mark, don't—"

A sadness washed over him and he felt her remove herself from him. It was such a definite movement. She slid away from him and didn't seem to regret it—she left him standing there, hand still grasping air and stomach twisted into a thousand knots.

       "Don't make me choose between you and this career, Mark..."

She said each word so definitively and clearly that it reminded Mark of the last time she'd bought this all up. 

His back was turned from her as she cleared her throat and continued to preen herself, smoothing every crevice and wrinkle as if to rid himself of her. 

She'd told him this before, so he could envision her expression in startling clarity; the slight sigh, the half frown and half sad smile. This time, she spoke it all to his turned back, an audience that suddenly wished it wasn't here to hear it.

(For once, Mark wished she'd leave it well enough alone.)

But she didn't.

He could hear the despair mix with the truth in Beth's voice as she said five final words before leaving the elevator:

     "I can't promise that I"ll choose you."