𝙓𝘾𝙑𝙄𝙄.
BETH AND MARK

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V - PLEA

Ah.

From the moment he'd kissed her, Mark had known he'd fucked it all up.

And he had, for the record, but Mark figured he'd go along with all of this for the hell of it anyway.

Why not give it a shot?

The thing was, it was so easy. Just one moment and then the next––

Fuck it.

He'd watched enough of these moments to know that his timing wasn't great. 

You didn't kiss the girl when she was yelling at you, that was for sure. You didn't kiss the girl when she had a jaw full of spite, fingers clenched and tongue coated with venom. 

You didn't kiss the girl when the music wasn't swelling, when the whole world was too fast and the air was full of the blasts of car horns and a distant ambulance. 

If this were a movie, he'd gotten it all wrong.

There was nothing soft about this kiss. Nothing delicate, nothing cinematic, nothing amorous. 

It was an act of murder, he was sure of it–– shaking fingers, a cheek that flushed, nostrils full of perfume, so strong it almost burned like napalm. She was cold, he was blue and wet and aching, and yet reaching for her with his fingertips felt like reaching into fire. 

The sort of burn that would never heal. An action that would not end well, no matter how much hope he had in him.

It was a desperate kiss, a survival instinct, ferocious and starving, a pure impulse like a drowning man clutching to driftwood–– a fight or flight... the most violent move he'd ever made in a five-year stand-off that was beginning to feel like a cold war.

Kissing the girl when she was pissed off had never, historically, worked out well for him. 

He'd braced in the silence he'd caused, tensing in the quiet like the pause between thunder and lightning, waiting for hellfire to rain and Beth to flinch–– it was inevitable, as inevitable as good things had to end. He kissed her, gave her his whole soul in a moment of morbid desperation, and waited for the retaliation. He waited for the pullback, for the fire, for his cheek to sting against her scorching palm––

But all Beth did was freeze.

She didn't move. She didn't kiss back.

 A gasp of surprise got caught between them and Mark wasn't sure whether she was dead from shock or just feeling. 

His heart thudded in his chest, a heart attack? 

Her arms were frozen in between them, a knuckle brushing his chest, a condemnation? 

It was too quick for any coherent thought, for any conclusion or diagnosis— All Mark Sloan knew was that he was kissing Elizabeth Montgomery for the first time in half a decade, and the world hadn't ended.

He pulled back. He'd expected it to be her but no, he was the one who pulled away. 

He stood underneath her umbrella, eyes still closed and just lingered there, trying to give time for his mind to catch up. To describe how he felt was to describe a ship that was unsure whether it was going under; there was that liminal feeling, a constant feeling of that pause between peace and panic. 

He felt achingly, distressingly calm as if, despite it being such a sudden and impulsive movement, it was the only decision in months that had felt right. But, that didn't mean it was—

Mark pressed his forehead against hers. He just needed this— it was the closest they'd been since he'd restrained her from murdering Derek. For just a moment in time, they had peace. For just a second, for just a breath—

He felt her catch her breath.

It was a shudder that he felt go through her body. She didn't pull away. A twitch in the hand that was caught between the two of them. She didn't pull away. A traitorous, painful wondering whether Charlie had kissed her like this. She didn't pull away. He felt her exhale on his chin and squeezed his eyes tighter. She didn't pull away. His hand hovered over her jaw. She didn't pull away. Not even as it ended. Beth didn't. She just didn't. She didn't pull away...

Fuck, Mark thought to himself as the world caught up with them. What now?

There was no script to follow, there was no predestined plan. For the first time in years, he felt as though he had no idea what was coming next. For all that he knew about Beth seemed to shatter in that moment— Seattle Beth, Charlie's Beth, the Beth that now shivered against him as he just waited, waited for something— He was left wondering what she would do.

"Beth."

He murmured her name so lightly and felt her body shift. She didn't speak and he wondered whether she'd gotten stuck in the moment, sunken so deep that she had lost her voice— his breath fanned across her face and he felt her tense. But she was still there, she was still... he was holding her jaw like he was holding the whole world in his hands. Her name on his lips and her whole being trembling very slightly against him; Mark couldn't tell whether this was purgatory all over again.

Saying her name had always felt like some sort of prayer. It felt divine. It either felt like a plea or a prayer, but Mark couldn't exactly tell which at the moment. All he knew was that if Beth was some sort of deity, she would have had his full devotion (although, honestly, in that moment, Mark wasn't sure he could get any more intense about her whole existence.) He wanted to say her name over and over and over until his throat dried and his voice was nothing but a croak at the back of his throat.

"Beth," His voice sounded so frail. It was the vocal equivalent of dipping his toe cautiously into bathwater. He was testing it, making sure that he was capable of saying more than just Beth and not rip a vocal chord in the process. "Please just... just wait for a second."

And then he looked at her.

He opened his eyes and he looked at her. They were so close. So achingly, traitorously close. Mark couldn't remember the last time he'd ever held anyone like this. She was looking right back at him, his hand on her cheek and her brown eyes wide. Her skin was still wet, his whole body was slick with adrenalin sweat and rain–– his thumb trailed a pattern across her cheekbone. She tensed very slightly but just continued to stare at him, lips slightly parted and lipstick smudged along the border.

When she didn't move, Mark felt his heart skip a beat. He inhaled deeply, studying the emotion at the back of her eyes as he was infected by her perfume, every single cell, every single––

She wasn't the sort of person that could wait, Mark knew that. Beth always had to be moving, she always had to be doing something–– saying something–– working–– overstimulating her brain to the point of complete and total destruction–– but this, here, all she did was exist in the palm of his hand.

"Please just..." Fuck, these words weren't scripted. There was no script, all he had left was this lump at the back of this throat and this slight ringing in his ears, as if the space between them had truly detonated and Mark just trying to choke his way through the ashes. "I know you don't want to... but please, for me, just take a second to..."

To what?

Mark hadn't thought that far ahead.

He had to pause, just as Beth's eyes watered with the strain of staying open. Her gaze didn't move from his eyes, her whole body frozen in time. (Did yesterday even exist anymore? Did tomorrow?)

An apology felt pretty standard for what had just transpired. He knew that, for the amount of time they'd known each other, he hadn't said half as many apologies as he should have. Now, he felt the impulse to apologise for it all–– for talking to her, for troubling her, for walking the same hallways and running after her just to kiss her in the rain. Mark had once had an issue saying those two little words but now, they came so easily:

"I'm sorry," He cleared his throat, "I'm sorry but I just couldn't..."

Jesus, Mark thought to himself, Did they put this sort of crap in the movie outtakes?

"I can't let you leave."

He couldn't. He would have said wouldn't if it wasn't for the fact that he knew nothing would stop her. When Beth put her mind to something, she followed through, come rain or shine–– maybe that's why he'd kissed her? To ground her to the earth and fall like the rain into his hands. Or maybe it was the fact that he'd been burning with the impulse to do it for far too long––?

Tenderly, Mark pushed hair behind her ear.

What a soft gesture for a moment that felt so much like life or death.

"You were wrong," He didn't know what he was saying, but he figured that this direction was somewhat correct. "Yesterday... you said that Lexie was my Charlie and I... You were wrong."

Trying to find his voice felt a whole lot like an uphill battle. He kept on having to stop just to keep his composure. What a sensation it was to toe the line between desperation, panic and despair?

"You were wrong," Mark repeated as if it was the only thing he was completely sure of in the whole wide world, "And I'm saying that because you're you... you're you and you're always right and I know that... but this time you were wrong, okay? You were really wrong about that."

(Fucking get on with it, Mark knew Amy would have called across the plaza if she were there. We get it! Beth was wrong! Move the fuck on!)

"Lexie made me happy, Beth, but she..." Another pause, another clench in his chest as if his whole body was trying to make Beth see it. "She wasn't my Charlie, she never was my Charlie."

The woman in his palm didn't speak. She just lingered there, staring at him as he tried to fumble words together with the nervousness of a kid that had never been outside of Manhattan. He'd been eight when he'd first left the city and he'd spent a week in Florida, trying to understand how people could exist without a shadow over them. That's how he felt as Beth stared at him, like a kid who was trying to figure out how to live in the full glare of the sun. There was no hiding. Not now, not when he could feel her heartbeat with his fingertips.

He was existing so brutally before her very eyes.

Her gaze was slightly unfocused as if she'd been lost between the kiss and the way Mark's face twisted as he fought to string coherent sentences together. Wide but slightly out of touch. Her slow blinks, her flushed cheeks and the way her knuckles seemed to tremble as she held onto that umbrella–– he just swallowed all of his pride and shook his head.

"I don't want Lexie."

Saying that out loud almost caught him off guard. 

It wasn't something he'd realised himself, it just appeared in his consciousness and slipped out between his teeth— he didn't want Lexie. He might have in the past, but not now. He'd watched that woman fumble her way across Emerald City Bar in half cast light and into the bed of someone new and he hadn't been jealous. He didn't want Lexie, not out of spite, not out of malicious contempt, but out of this wistfulness in him. This hope.

"You were wrong," He frowned, knowing that maybe he didn't have the words to express this at all. "You were wrong and it made me want to laugh and I... I didn't know what to do with that... because being someone's Charlie feels like a crappy deal right now, and I don't think I have a Charlie..."

There were tears in Beth's eyes, he could see them. He wasn't sure whether it was from the wind, the repetitive use of her fiancé's name over and over, or the fact that she was being held so delicately and yet Mark could drop her at any moment. He held his breath and silently told her that he wouldn't–– he wouldn't ever drop her, not again.

"I don't have a Charlie," He repeated with air straight from his aching lungs, "But I do have a Beth."

It felt like the sort of comment Beth would scoff at if this had been a normal conversation but it wasn't. 

Now, to Mark, this all felt like a slow death–– it felt like what people meant when they said putting your heart on your sleeve and fucking hell, this felt like it'd been ripped out of his chest.

 A myocardial infarction? A cardiac tamponade? Mark couldn't diagnose it specifically; all he knew was that candidness was going against every belief he had, and it was slowly making his heart bleed.

Please, Beth, Mark silently asked, Please listen to me.

"I'm going to ask you this question," He said too, his whole body burned as he was filled with the strongest impulse to squeeze this woman tighter and tighter until she was nothing but putty–– incoherent flesh full of mystery and truths, a flattened disc under the fist of a vengeful toddler, "And I need you to answer it, please, Beth... Please."

She didn't speak.

"Do you really think he's worth it?"

Beth just stared at him.

"Is Charlie worth all of this?" His brow furrowed, "I know how addiction works, I know it now... I know that's equally not his fault as much as it is, but you shouldn't have to do all of this in the name of some marriage that might not even last... I know he's a human being and he needs someone right now but you have to think about yourself, too."

Somehow, the silence wasn't disheartening. He could see the tiniest shifts at the back of her eyes, glazing over as if his question had burrowed so deep into her soul that she didn't know what to do with it. But, even so, with the look in her eye and the placacy of her stare, Mark knew that she wasn't going to speak.

(Beth couldn't. For the first time in a very long time, Beth Montgomery didn't know what to say."

"If love is the only thing you want I... I don't think he's worth it," Mark almost fumbled with his words, "I know you think he needs you, that he needs help... but he's not alone. He has people... Dominic just spent two hours telling us how many people that guy has. This isn't New York... he has people who will figure out everything for him. He has his people but you Beth... Beth you have yours..."

A pause.

"You have people," He needed her to remember that. Oh so desperately, he needed her to remember that. "You need to think about yourself. Charlie isn't the only person who relapsed–– if you go to Boston you'll be surrounded by people you don't trust... I saw the way you looked at Dominic... I saw the way you flinch when he touched you–– you can't rely on them Beth. You can't push your recovery aside. Archer's here for you..."

And then another pause.

He felt his heart soar erratically in his chest and his mouth dry at those words.

"And I can be too."

Maybe he was just talking at her? Or, maybe this was all the shit he'd been thinking about for the past five years, all spewing out like he was some nicked sewage line? 

Maybe he didn't know how to stop––

"If you can't think about yourself that's okay... I'll just... I'll do it for you," He said, and he meant it. He really did. He really meant it. "You just need to be okay, and I don't think you will be if you go... Beth, I know you won't be okay–– you're you, you need someone... you can't do this all on your own."

This shouldn't be so hard.

"If you need someone to tell you the truth, tell you that the world has gone to shit and we're all gonna die, I can do that. Or... Or if you need someone to hold your hand and hug you as you cry and tell you that everything is going to be okay, I can do that too..."

He was just asking to be in someone's life. He was fairly sure that communicating should have been this––

And then he felt it. He felt the distance of five years of silence. He felt the weight of a relationship in which neither party had truly been honest. That's why this felt like it did– it felt like for the first time in centuries, Mark was being truly sincere with his every syllable.

But even so, fuck, it ached so bad.

For everything Mark liked about this moment, he still didn't appreciate the sweaty palms, the way that he couldn't stand still, for the life of him. 

He didn't appreciate how innately difficult it was, no matter how much weight it relieved from his shoulders–– he didn't appreciate the way that she stood there, like a stranger in the rain––

But then her eyes swirled with tears.

He found himself staring at it, fixed by the realisation that she could feel just like he could. It was so cold out here and they were both so numb and blue, and yet Beth shivered against him and, for a moment, it almost felt as though she sunk into his grasp, searching for everything he was willing to give.

It was so familiar to stand there, so close to her. Her chin was tilted upwards. 

She was looking at him with those eyes— the same eyes that had drawn him in nearly twelve years ago. 

Dark and swirling, rippling with emotions that he couldn't decipher. He could so easily fit her into his body; he wondered whether they'd fit like two jigsaw puzzle pieces. Did they still fit together? Or were they slightly worn down, their edges sanded and frayed over time?

She was shaking too. He felt her trembles as if she was just one of his limbs. He guessed she'd always been like that, an extension of him, one that had been there like a ghost for so long now. Beth had been severed from him and it'd taken him longer than it should've for him to realise that that had been his choice, not hers.

Yes, Beth had left New York, but he'd left their bed first.

"I know we fucked it up last time..."

What exactly was he talking about? Was he talking about the inability to understand her? The times he'd refused to drive her to NA? The times he and Addison had kissed behind closed doors as Beth was passed out in the next room? (Fucked up had always felt like an understatement.)

"And I know... I know that you don't believe a word I say... I know you think we're all liars–– and we are... we are, Beth... But believe me... Believe me when I say that I want to do this right. I don't deserve to try this again... I don't deserve another go, but holy shit I want it––"

He did. He really did.

"––I just want you to be okay," He almost held his breath, "I need you to be okay. I can't... not like before... you can't disappear. It's been two months Beth... two months and... and all I've been able to think about for the past two months is ... is You."

It almost felt like an accusation. You. He could've pointed a finger, but he wasn't malicious, he was tender and pensieve and feeling. You. He could've squeezed her, dug his nails under her skin and settled there. You. She was already in his mind, why not the rest of him too?

Beth stiffened in his grasp, as sure as a gorgons victims turning to stone.

"You, Beth," It was a confession that made his heart beat erratically, so fast he was almost light-headed, "You and the fact that I have I have never... I have never been so terrified in my life... never, not once... not like I was seeing you in that boardroom––"

He watched her twitch and knew that she was thinking about it too. He wondered how much she remembered. Did she remember it like he did? 

The way she'd felt this cold, this still, but with so much more blood. He watched her eyes close, like the sun disappear behind cloud, and squeeze shut–– he held her tighter, knowing that the memory wasn't kind to either of them. But Mark had to say this... he just had to––

"I could've killed him," Mark said, and there was something eerie about how quietly he spoke. His whole being trembled with that very clear assertion. He, Mark Sloan, would've drawn blood. "God, Beth. I wanted to kill him for what he did to you."

He'd never been a particularly violent person. 

He didn't get into fights, he didn't throw punches but for Beth, he would've. 

He'd stood in that boardroom and he'd paced, his whole body urging him to go find the shooter–– incoherent, impulsive plans that Lexie had noticed in the corner of her eye. She'd gazed at him, at the twist of pain on his face and the subconscious clench in his fist and she'd shaken her head. 

Lexie had spent five seconds of their time telling him that it wasn't worth it. A gentle, pleading glance that reminded Mark that, no matter how badly he needed to see some sort of justice for the woman slowly dying on the floor, he was still just a man and Gary Clark had a smoking gun.

In a way, this felt a lot like that. Standing there, holding Beth–– this girl was a Gun. This woman was the sort that would kill him. Either with his hands tied or his heart on his sleeve. Either like a cyanide pill he'd willingly slipped past his lips or a timebomb ticking in his frontal lobe, Mark knew that Beth would be the death of him.

He couldn't tell her that he would've taken that bullet for her, he didn't know how to.

"I couldn't protect you," Mark murmured, and he really hoped that she was listening to him. "I held your hand, remember? I tried to–– I watched you bleed out and I tried to protect you–– I tried, just like I didn't in New York. I couldn't stop it from happening but I–– I can help you now, Beth. If you leave this city, we both know this will just get worse."

He wouldn't if she could feel how his hands trembled. 

With every blink he saw her. So faint, so pale, but burned into the back of his eyelids. 

The woman in his mind was so delicate, so brutally, painstakingly delicate. 

She was bleeding and she was blue. He couldn't allow herself to but herself in that position again, not like the time before–– not like the woman beyond the bathroom door. If she left, he'd spend too much time wondering whether that's who she was destined to become, just like he had for the past five years.

He'd spent so much time trying not to think about whether she was okay, spent so much time worrying in a moment of weakness. Her appearance had been half a shock and half a relief. She'd been okay. She'd been fine. But, he couldn't do that again. He couldn't wonder. He couldn't be in the dark again. He couldn't. He wouldn't––

God, Mark didn't want her to leave.

But, what would make her stay?

He just wasn't programmed for this. 

This fell outside of flirting, of shameless perversion and philandering. It wasn't his brand to struggle with dictation, to have to pause and mess with his words like he was struggling with a key in a lock. 

All of this felt pretty wrong, but right too in the most achingly cathartic way. For example, He was fairly sure you weren't supposed to kiss your ex-girlfriend as she was running away to be with her somewhat-fugitive fiancé on the other side of the country, but he felt lighter. For each word and letter that he said, he felt lighter.

There was a burden here, secrets and hidden feelings and little thoughts at the back of his head–– and there they were falling off of him, one by one. 

Like Atlas rejecting the world, Mark Sloan felt he could stand a little bit taller with Beth Montgomery's full attention.

And god, wasn't he going to make the most of it.

"I know what he means to you," Mark almost whispered, "I know how you feel about Charlie. I know you want it. That whole life that you were grieving last night... the picket fence... the wedding ring and all the microwaves and automatic coffee machines––"

It stuck with him. She'd spoken about it all as if it'd been a fever dream, the sort of pipe dream that lured women into MLMs and cults and everything in between. She'd spoken about it with a bittersweet smile as if she should have known better. She really should have known better, women like her didn't get Hollywood Endings like that. And now he knew that she thought that for sure––

Who could love this? she'd said, as if Mark wasn't supposed to respond.

Who could love this? she'd said, as if it wasn't one of the most stupid fucking questions he'd ever heard in his life.

Mark knew how he was supposed to feel. 

He knew that he was supposed to scoff at the prospect of some Happily Ever After. That was his character design, right? He was the asshole, he was the womanizer and the player, and he was supposed to scowl at the prospect of marriage, of 'till death do we part and the shiny ring around his finger. He'd felt that way, he really had–– he really, really had for such a long time––

"If that's all you need from Charlie," Mark said, and his whole body went numb at the assertion, "If you want that whole life, Beth, the whole thing, the whole... I'll do it. Beth, I'll give it to you."

He heard her breathing hitch.

He'd give it to her. If she wanted it, if she wanted some quite humble life, a picket fence and a mortgaged house and a thousand cats, he'd give it to her. 

He felt as he had all that time ago, picking glass from her bruised knuckle and rolling the words around his head like dice. 

He'd rolled a six, enough to advance forwards, but then Amelia had thrown open the door–– but now there was just him, mouth dry and words shaky and slightly incoherent.

She was staring at him, staring at him as if she was stuck in time, just like he was, lost in the threads of the tapestry that told their whole history.

"Stay here, Beth."

He pleaded.

He begged.

Mark let go of her jaw.

"Please, just stay in Seattle. We can figure all of this shit out. You don't need Charlie. Stay here."

Stay here.

Stay here with me.

"I don't want you to go," He lowered his voice, murmuring to her as if they were kids sharing secrets. "I don't want to spend the next forever of my life wondering what you're doing... "

It wasn't particularly romantic and Mark knew that he could do better; but it wasn't the sort of moment you reshoot. 

He wasn't Hugh Grant or Patrick Swayze standing so tall in the rain–– 

No, he was Mark Sloan and he was fucking cold. He was soaked to the skin, his skin chilled and his whole being begging her to see this as what it was–– this was the big movie moment, and this was damn closest thing Mark could get to a declaration of love.

Cinematic, wasn't it?

"I want to make you happy," He did. "I want you to be happy. You stay and we can be happy, okay? We can do it. We can figure it all out."

Beth, just as she had been for all this time, was deathly silent.

"I don't know what the hell we mean to each other," Mark said, and he was brutally honest, " I don't know whether you think of me at all and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing... but this is me saying that I think we could make something out of this. Out of New York... out of whatever the fuck that's left over–– I'm here. If you stay here, I'm here. For you."

And Amelia said he wasn't a poet at heart.

But Jesus Fucking Christ, why couldn't he stop talking?

"I tried to hate you..."

The words just kept coming. He couldn't stop them, not if he tried. What he did, however, was step backwards. Just far enough for him to think clearer, to register the proposition he'd thrown into the wind. Mark let out a miffed laugh and shook his head.

Even stood a pace apart, he still would've given her the world if she asked for it.

"I don't hate you."

He didn't?

"I can't hate you."

He couldn't?

"I can't hate you because I..."

Finish the damn sentence Sloan.

All he could do was clear his throat.

Oh for fucks sake––

"I think I'm supposed to hate you... but I don't. And I don't pity you either. Don't say this about the kid... don't say this is because I'm trying to make up for the shit I did... I'm here because... I'm because I––"

Say it, Mark, say it you stupid dumb fucking asshole––

"I'm here because you were right about one thing and that's that were something, right? You said it earlier..."

That wasn't what he was supposed to say.

(Beth had also said if you loved someone you should tell them, too.)

She had said it. 

With a wistful smile and a mouth full of white smoke, Beth had said We were something, don't you think so? and he'd held it like a kid would hold their pocket money, protect their allowance in their pocket and hide their lunch money. He carried it with him, not like a weapon, but a small token. They'd been something, Mark remembered, and he was so sure it had been something good.

"I'm here," He repeated it, "For everything and anything you need, Beth. You want someone's attention? You have it. You want understanding and patience? You can have it–– fucking take it. Everything... take everything from me because... because I'm here, Beth, and I don't want to go anywhere else. I don't want to sleep around. I don't want to be with anyone else. I'm not leaving. I'm not planning on it. Not this time."

Fit me behind your ribs, Mark wanted to say, in your chest, in your lungs, in your heart... shelter me and carry me with you. If you leave, take me with you.

(Unbeknownst to Mark, his words echoed a sentiment that stirred something in Beth's wind. Charlie had said that once, over a dinner table with Beth planning on the right time to get down on one knee... It caused her face to contort slightly. Her eyes moved away from his and she blinked, as if for the first time in a very long time. She blinked tears in her eyes and sucked in a very deep breath, her chin dipping to look at the floor just beside him.)

Mark, meanwhile, just bristled in the realisation of what just happened.

What had just happened?

He was fairly sure he'd just fucked up five whole years of moving forwards. He'd fucked up that feeling he got of being able to say something was buried. (This wasn't buried, this corpse had a fucking hand around his throat in a chokehold.) He'd fucked up that peace that he'd had the night before she'd arrived in Seattle; when Lexie had slept beside him and he'd seen this whole place as a good thing, as a good omen. He'd fucked up the sensation of knowing what he wanted, and doing anything and everything to get it.

Well fuck.

Ever since he was a kid, he'd always just known what he wanted. If people had superpowers, that was his. He'd known that he'd wanted to be a doctor from the first he'd ever stood outside a hospital and listened to the sirens scream into the air. He'd known what car he wanted to get when he was sixteen, generally knew which woman he wanted to spend the night with (and knew exactly how to accomplish) and had always known that he never wanted to be alone again. But, just as everything in his life, then there was Beth.

She threw him off, she wrecked his plans, and she made him feel as though anything in the whole world was possible.

This was possible, right? This woman could choose this man, this man who felt like he was a kid just screaming into the rain saying things that were wildly experimental and vulnerable. 

Mark hadn't begged someone like this since his parents; since he was a child wailing for company on evenings when he was left in the dark. He was, for all intents and purposes, in this moment a children begging to not be left alone in a bottomless space. Mark hadn't emoted like this in what felt like years–– he was feeling more vivid and intense things than when he'd softly asked Lexie not to leave him.

The silence between them felt skewed. It was the silence of two people who didn't know how to navigate the sudden quiet. Tears paled Beth's cheeks and the rain weathered Mark down and he knew that this whole thing had been his attempt to do what he'd wished he'd done last time.

This was his New York. This was his standing on a stoop and throwing rocks at her bedroom window. This was his boombox. This was his big, cinematic moment-–

"I think it's supposed to be you and me."

Now that was the sort of line Mark could imagine on a movie poster. It was said with exhaustion and the sudden flicker of Beth's as she looked at him. He shrugged and smiled. It was slightly pained. Hope was no longer a question–– he was just a man with a poor poker face throwing down all of his cards.

He felt numb and peaceful saying it out loud, as if he'd found the exact place he was meant to be:

"I might be crazy, but I think is," And then a pause, "And if you leave, I'm fucking terrified that I'll never feel the way I feel right now about anyone else."

***

VI - RESPONSE

If you'd told Beth she would shed more tears over this man, just five years ago, she would have told you to Stop saying such stupid shit.

Then again, if you'd also told Beth that she'd stood in the rain, watching Mark Sloan pour his soul out in a downpour, she would have booked you in for an evaluation too.

It was needless to say that she hadn't seen it coming. When she blinked, she almost saw stars. She was so cold, so exhausted and so terribly scared of what was to come, that this almost felt like a distant dream. Beth found it hard to move, but when she did, she managed to find her voice at the bottom of her chest. It was cobweb-covered and full of dust. She cleared her throat as a roll of thunder enveloped the city, and she said it:

"Mark..."

***

VII - ABSOLUTION

Sweaty palms.

How did he feel about her?

He had sweaty palms.

Mark didn't think he'd be able to explain it. 

How could he put into words how he'd go hungry for her. He'd go blue. He'd go black with bruises. He'd go crazy, honest–– Mark knew that this feeling couldn't just be condensed into one word. 

If she asked it of him, he'd promise to never be angry ever again, to never raise his voice, to never drink–– Hell, he'd never make eye contact with another woman if she asked it of him. He'd stop breathing or some shit! Take that bullet from Gary Clark and kiss her all over again while he was bleeding––

Mark had sweaty palms as he watched her say his name.

He watched her lips form it. 

He watched the way she hesitated for so long before letting it make a sound. He watched the way her eyes stuck to him, wide, reeling and so familiar. 

So familiar that he could've recited each detail within that iris from memory. He watched one arm raise to cradle her elbow, slow and tender as if she'd been winded. The other hand was grasping so tightly on the umbrella that he was so sure there was no blood flow there at all. He watched her face twist, chin drop to toe the ground and his name be crafted out of the gravel at the back of her throat.

Mark...

What he felt at the sound of his name was some twisted euphoria that Mark really hoped wasn't the sort of shit Beth had gotten hooked on, because it damn well felt like a high. 

His body rose in a way he couldn't describe, eyes holding hers with such intensity he was almost shy. If Beth was a drug, Mark knew he'd overdosed a very long time ago and this was a relapse. 

One big messy relapse, full of fumbled words and the beg for her to hear him, to stay for him–– for him to be enough, their future to be enough for her to stay––

(Wasn't it ironic? Last time, Beth had been the one begging him to realise their life together would be enough, and he'd chosen Addison.)

Mark...

She said it again.

I miss you, Beth.

He said that back.

I really miss you. All the time, not just sometimes. All the time.

He said that too.

He couldn't decipher her tone. It was just a scrape, just dust and ashes caught up in a sweep of wind.

Mark, I...

Beth let out a breath that almost choked her. He watched it.

It sounded like a choke, but it sounded like a death rattle too. Her face contorted with so much pain she had to raise that she had to look up at the sky. She looked painfully human in the half-light of a storm, like some divine statue in the eye of a hurricane. Something destructive but something beautiful.

But then time moved forwards even further. Mark found himself stuck to the floor as he watched it: the slight shake of her head, a silent rejection that he wouldn't feel until thirty seconds later, and the way she turned away.

He watched her walk away too.

Mark didn't miss a single step. 

Each step, through puddles and on shaky feet in heels, he saw it all. She didn't walk slowly, as if to hope he'd catch her again, hold her wrist like he wished she'd hold his–– No, she walked pointedly, faster than the last. 

A mission, a trail of almost fire behind her. Her strides were fluid and she didn't look back, not even once. It was so jarring, so sudden that he didn't process what had happened until it was over.

Mark watched her until she was gone.

Well, Beth would never be gone, he was sure of that at least.

She left him standing in the rain.

Ah, was the first thought Mark had in the aftermath, That didn't go how I hoped it would.

(It feels important to specify that he didn't allow himself to stand there for too long, just as he didn't allow himself to linger on the intense pain that gripped his chest. He wiped a hand over his face and, slowly, followed in her wake with no intention to apprehend her. He ignored the way his heart seemed to boil itself in his burning blood and stuffed his hands into his pockets, resolving that that was it––)

Huh, that was it.

That was really it.

After all this time, all of these hours of wanting her to want him. 

All he had was that moment. 

That moment, that feeling of Beth against his fingertips, of her lips against his, of her perfume, of the flush of her body as he pulled her into him like he wanted her there for the rest of his life–– that was it.

If he'd a clock, he supposed he should've called Time of Death, five years overdue.

Ironically, the walk back to his apartment did feel like a funeral march. It felt like a lot of things, but Mark didn't let him feel any of them. He didn't think, he didn't ponder, he just entered his apartment building and walked through it as if it was his house to haunt–– numb, rejected and pushed aside, he gathered his thoughts like he'd gather no-longer-needed bloodsoaked padding in a chest cavity. It was cast aside. 

Mark left whatever coherence he had at the door.

He couldn't think about it... He wouldn't allow...

No, he left himself numb. It was better this way. 

He held onto the rain and the chill as he stood in the elevator and stared at the ceiling. He encouraged the cold. He encouraged the shiver and the wet plastered on his skin.

Mark was just going back to get changed, grab a towel, wipe himself down and continue with life as if nothing ever happened–– 'cuz that's what he had to do, right? 

That's what he was telling himself. That's how all of this worked–– they said shit, he fucked up and then he tried to forget it. 

Just like he'd forgotten New York, right? Just like he hadn't spent months reminiscing on every time he'd ever felt loved––?

Oh, fucking bullcrap goddamn hell.

Mark held his head in his hands.

She'd left him in the rain, just like that. Just like that, it was all over. He'd spent the past eleven months in a silent standoff with himself, muttering soft but dark threats warning himself not fuck this up. And then he'd fucked it up. He'd fucked it up so bad–– she'd left him standing there like a stranger like he hadn't said anything at all. Like he didn't miss her. Like he wouldn't do anything in the goddamn world to make sure that she was safe and loved––

He cleared his throat as the elevator door opened, wiping, very quickly, under each one of his eyes. He spared only one glance for her apartment door as he opened his. She'd be in a cab by now, beginning her forever with a man who Mark envied with every part of him. (What a pleasure it must've been to be loved by Elizabeth Montgomery so deeply that she would throw away everything for them.) The hallway was empty and quiet. He moved on just as he should have done with everything else.

The key slipped in his hand, almost cutting him. His palms felt so much warmer than the rest of him, but he was beginning to figure that was the imprint of her. Beth always left a mark, and, so it seemed, Mark too.

He swore under his breath, too zoned out to truly do anything but fight with a lock that didn't want to budge–– he called it bad things, muttering and cursing and jamming his foot into the bottom until he couldn't even––

The lock clicked open. It wasn't the door's fault, his hand had just been shaking.

For a moment, Mark pressed his forehead against the door and just closed his eyes. 

He wanted a quiet far more silent than the ringing in his ears, the echo of the way she'd said his name–– but when he closed his eyes, there she was, a film reel on the one screen in whatever town he'd exiled himself to the exact moment he'd slipped his hand under Addison's shirt.

He used the same foot that had slammed against the door to open it.

His apartment was just as he'd left it, but he couldn't pay attention to it. He walked through this silent picture of a heartless bachelor, taking off piece by piece in his wake. His shirt went first, crumpled into a wet heap by the fury of his fist. 

Then a water logged pager was cast aside onto the dining table and his shoes were kicked off under the dining table. 

He found a towel and thought about burying himself in it, curling up underneath it and never facing the world ever again.

That would be nice, he thought to himself, To just do what she always does. (Maybe it was due time to take her example?) Just up and leave and wonder whether anyone would care where I'd gone.

It was hard not to feel the heat of it, just a tiny bit at least. 

His skin felt scalded as if he'd been burned to the third degree but just couldn't feel it. He knew enough about his own profession to know that it was the damage you couldn't feel that was the deepest, the worst. 

It'd taken him six months the first time to feel the true cost of what he'd lost. 

Now, Mark raised his eyes to his calendar as if to start tracking it.

Oh, it'd hurt.

He knew it would. He just didn't know whether it'd take five minutes or another five years. 

He didn't often get rejected, but even then, he figured that a rejection from Beth after he'd been so desperate for her to understand him, would hurt like nothing he'd ever felt in his life.

Never feel this again in my life... Fuck, Sloan... What sort of Notebook shit was that, anyway? Really?

Mark knew what he should've said, but he hadn't given that up. Maybe, a piece of him had always known that it wouldn't be enough. Maybe, it'd just been inevitable. Maybe, he just wasn't capable of the word love, no matter if every cell in his whole entire being believed it to be tr––

No, don't think about it.

Don't think about it.

But––

No, don't you dare.

This was it. This was really, really it.

Fuck, you idiot.

You and Me. (He said it and he believed it.) It feels like it's supposed to be Me and You.

His apartment felt emptier than it had when Sloan and Lexie had both left him within a span of a few months. He tried to ignore it. He felt crappier than when he'd stood on a street corner in Manhattan and squinted for a familiar brunette. He tried to ignore that too. 

He felt–– fuck it. How about he stopped feeling? How about that?

He was still in his bedroom when someone knocked on his door. 

On answering, shirtless and still damp, he found his landlord staring over at him, giving him a very hesitant and slightly alarmed greeting. He knew what this was about even before they started talking. His rent was overdue. 

Crap. He'd meant to pay it last week.

 It'd been due yesterday, just as everything had threatened to catch on fire. He disarmed her with a very half-hearted smile that didn't meet his eyes. He'd just grab his chequebook.

Adulting, yeah, he still had to do that despite how the world had ground to a halt. Maybe he still was stuck on that curb with Lexie beside him, wondering wildly how people could just exist when something so traumatic had happened right under their noses–– how could you drink coffee when two blocks over people were dying? How could take his rent cheque when he'd just been left out in the rain?

But he had so many other things to think about, a whole career and life to focus on instead of holding onto the last ten minutes–– yeah, maybe that's what he'd do. 

He'd go back to work and he'd pretend that this never happened. He'd pretend that he hadn't poured his heart out and practically proposed to this woman, and he'd pretend that Beth hadn't turned everything he had to offer down.

He'd focus on his patients, on the surgery he needed to prepare for tomorrow, for the patients he was currently supposed to be doing checkups on in the ICU. 

He had a uvulvectomy patient in post-op, a supraglottoplasty consultation and intern rounds to oversee. He was busy, he was very busy. Then there was the patient coming in to enquire about restoration surgery after their double mastectomy and a possible complete ear reconstruction that was due to fly in from Atlanta–– Not to mention all of the other adulting bullshit he had to do. He had laundry that he needed to get sorted, he needed to change the oil on his car, and Mark certainly needed to buy some more groceries.

Maybe he'd have pasta for dinner? Treat himself with some carbs? And then, afterwards, he'd watch some trashy reality show and pretend that he didn't enjoy watching assholes on the Jersey Shore beat the shit out of each other. And then to the gym; yeah, the gym sounded like a good idea. He needed cardio, he needed something to run this all out of his system––

It wasn't until five minutes later that Mark realised the landlord had taken his pen.

He didn't think it was an issue. 

It was just a cheap biro, the sort that seemed to always be lying around at work. It didn't register with him that it was gone until there was a second knock on his door. 

Right, returning the pen. 

He padded across the apartment towards the door with a heavy sigh, this time, with a t-shirt on and a towel in his hands. 

Mark didn't hesitate before answering.

"Don't worry about the pen––"

Crack.

Suddenly, his head was almost tossed to the side, cheek stinging as a hand came in rough contact with his face. 

It was a very brisk slap, the sort that carried rage and made him see stars. It was, needless to say, not what he'd expected from a ninety-year-old landlord who could barely even carry her weight.

 Grasping his jaw, caught-off guard and already developing a bruise, Mark's wide eyes turned to stare at the woman stood in his doorway.––

Oh.

***

VII - FEVER

"Fuck you."

Okay, so maybe pigs were flying? Maybe hell had frozen over? Maybe... just maybe... the whole world was fucked and Beth hadn't gotten the memo. 

Beth didn't know what the hell her life had been for the past forty-eight hours, but she did know that she was so angry she didn't know what do with herself.

She felt it. All of this anger that had accumulated over half a decade, salivating in the corners of her eyes and broiling her bones. 

She loathed it, just as she loathed the rest of this dumb city–– she hated every step, every jolt of her body that seemed to jump grief, devastation and just some deep agony. 

Bewilderment had never been her best friend–– and neither had Mark Sloan's audacity.

Her palm burned. She'd struck him good. Just as she'd gotten Derek, she got Mark.

 (Did it feel good? Beth couldn't tell. She wasn't entirely sure whether she was currently capable of feeling anything good at all.) 

The air had whipped past fingers and her hand had barely hesitated and she'd been so enraged by the look of his stupid fucking face––

Mark stared at her.

(He saw the woman who had turned away and left him standing there, was back and she was glowering at him with tears in her eyes. Her fists were clenched by her sides, but he watched how her dominant hand trembled. She was still damp from the rain, still pale and pasty, but she no longer was accompanied by her umbrella. She stood there, in that same blazer and those same heels, lipstick still smudged and hair still slightly unruly from how he'd grabbed her.)

(And she was furious.)

"Beth––"

(He said her name so quietly. Of course, he did, she'd knocked his voice box right down into his gut. His mouth was dry and he felt so feeble. His mouth dried. As he stared at her and watched her glare so harshly it almost blinded him, Mark felt his whole chest ache.)

No.

She wanted him to take her name out of his mouth. 

Jesus, she couldn't think straight when he said her name like that. 

She wanted to slap him again, but she caught the impulse this time, eyes brimming with tears as her whole body tensed.

"No."

While he was quiet, she was so loud. He was so quiet and so tender and it pissed her off. So she was the opposite–– 

So loud, so bright, just as before, just as before he'd kissed her–– 

The asshole had kissed her. Kissed Her! 

Her jaw wobbled, eyes blazed and her head shook from side to side, fast but far more irregularly than the pendulum of a clock.

"No, Mark," She repeated it, serrated and deadly. 

She watched his lips part very slightly, she watched so much happen across his face at the way she said his name. She spat it out like blood between teeth, as if his kiss had been a fist that had rearranged her dental record.

"No you don't get to say anything––"

"Beth, I..."

"Don't–"

"Beth just––"

"Screw you."

"I don't––"

"You've said enough," Her voice cracked slightly, but she couldn't hide her fury. It was as if she was so angry she didn't know what to do with herself. "Don't you think? Don't you fucking think you've said enough?"

He just stared back at her, his hand falling from his scalded cheek.

"How fucking dare you, Mark."

(If he'd thought she was upset before, he was very wrong. He'd watched her burn out, but now he was watching the sun die. This wasn't the death of a star, this was the death of a whole solar system. Just like the rejection, it wouldn't be felt immediately, but whenever the lightyears caught up and he was left cold. Fire was catching and he was forced, in silence, to watch the woman he was fairly sure he couldn't live without, burn.)

Beth just continued to shake. 

Jesus, what could do with this feeling inside of her? 

She wanted to scream at him, with a shrill tone that would fade into a husk at the back of her throat–– better yet, why didn't she just cut out her own vocal cords, save them both the effort of a screaming match.

How dare he... How fucking dare––

"You don't get to say that shit," Beth said, (and Mark wondered whether this had been what she'd been thinking of that whole time. Was this what had patterned her silence? Anger and resentment? He didn't really want to think about it.) "You don't get to say crap about making me happy... about wanting the best for me–– Not you, Not you Mark––"

Mark didn't speak.

Good.

"Do you know how much fucking therapy I had to go through because of you?"

It was a rhetorical question, she really didn't want him to answer because she knew he would wildly underestimate it and she refused to be embarrassed by this man again.

"So many hours that I almost felt like asking for a loyalty card," She said it with an angry and miffed laugh, the sort that was, in fact, deeply embarrassed, I was in the fucking Sephora Rouge of therapy, Mark. I spent years learning how to get my shit together all because you decided I wasn't good enough–– and now you want to sing Kumbya and try again?"

He just held her gaze. 

(He couldn't respond to that. Her eyebrows were raised as if she accepted an answer, but he couldn't give one to her. He couldn't. If she was looking for an argument or a conflict, Mark couldn't give that to her either. He just bit on the inside of his cheek and tried to hold himself steady.)

"No," Beth took his answer as a confirmation. She thrived in his silence, for the first time in such a long time, "You can't say that... You can't fucking say that––"

"Beth––"

"Don't even––"

"I don't–"

"I've already told you how I spent years building myself back together," Her words shook but she tried to stand tall, "I already told you how much you fucked me up, Mark. You really think that a fucked up speech would make it all better––?"

"I was being honest––"

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

(He was trying to say that he knew exactly what he'd did and that he was sorry. It's all he'd been trying to say for months. But god, she was so angry and his whole body felt so hot and searing. Mark's throat felt so tight, so did his chest and his lungs and every other part of him. He pressed his lips into an even tighter line to stop his composure from slipping.)

(God, when did he start feeling so goddamn fragile?)

"'Cuz you are," Beth continued, feeling nothing but fire everywhere, over every inch of herself. "You're the biggest asshole I've ever met."

She meant it, she really did.

"You can't do that to someone... Mark, not to me..."

He didn't look away.

"Not to me..."

(He really wanted to look away.)

"You don't get to stand there and have some... some big romantic gesture about how you don't want to fuck anyone else..."

It baffled her, it really did. 

Beth couldn't understand what gave him the right. 

Why did he think he could just follow her out into the rain and say shit like that? 

Who told him he could do that? Did he really think that this was all just gonna be fine? That he could just say that stuff and not get chewed out for it?

If he didn't think that was wrong, she was very happy to make it explicitly clear.

"I do not give a shit about what you think my life is..."

God, wasn't this cathartic to say out loud?

"I do not need your permission to leave this city..."

She spoke with her hands too, aching hands, punctuating every word with a tear and a jab at the floor.

"I do not need anyone to hold my fucking hand..."

Beth watched his jaw clench, chin raising as if he was trying his best not to move. 

She wondered if that was easy–– that's the thing she'd found about Mark. He could be real impassive when he wanted to be. Sometimes, looking into those eyes felt like looking into nothing–– but then she, right now, looked into his eyes and saw too much.

(Today, Mark was infinite. Some days, he was cold and sheltered and estranged, but today, Mark was feeling everything. It was why he bit down on the inside of his cheek, tethered himself to the doorway and crossed every nerve in his body. )

Jesus Christ. That was not what Beth needed right now.

"No," She said, and she meant it with her whole soul, with her whole body, "Don't fucking look at me like that––"

"Like what?"

"Like you're not sorry about anything that you just said."

This man was infuriating. 

How was it that Charlie had just fucked up her whole goddamn life and yet the fury she felt towards Mark was triple anything that she felt for her own damn fiancé? 

All it had taken was one look at his face and she hadn't been able to control her blood pressure, hadn't been able to restrain her pitch or her vengeful hand–– this man unlocked so much within her.

He let out a soft breath through his molars, a hand raising to hold the door frame beside him. His knuckles tensed. A light shake of his head. 

He seemed to say his next words as if she was forcing him to say them, forcing him to be truthful, forcing himself to get in deeper shit:

"That's because I'm not, Beth."

(He wasn't sorry. He was honest. He'd been honest. Mark had spoken freely and, although he felt guilty and felt as though completely understood why she was furious at him, he didn't regret it. He'd expected this, right? He'd expected this reaction in mid-kiss. But she hadn't pulled away. She hadn't spoken–– she'd just left–– This was the fire, it was delayed, but this it what he'd expected, and he refused to apologise for it.)

You motherfuck––

A choked, furious chuckle fell past her lips.

"Fuck you."

"I'm not sorry––"

"Well, I'm sorry Mark," She retorted, full of a pain she couldn't really describe, "I'm sorry that you're such a douchebag that you can't understand how that was the worst thing you've ever done... the worst sick shit you've ever done––"

"Don't say that––"

"No, really, fuck you," She made sure every single syllable was crisp, "Fuck you and stupid dumb fucking speech––"

"Beth––"

"I always knew you were a jackass but this really fucking takes the cake," Beth truly believed it was one of the worst things he'd ever done to her, "I always knew you were piece of work and look at you, baby, you're a fucking Van Gogh––"

Okay, maybe she sounded more erratic than intended? 

But that was, she figured, a symptom of how her day had been. If she had to diagnose herself with something that day, it would've been the end of all things: her sanity, her engagement, her career, half a dozen friendships–– and the look on Mark's face as he swallowed thickly and glanced down at the floor.

"You and Me?" She repeated his words from earlier as she shook his head, "There is no You and Me."

He just stared at her.

"Saying that it's supposed to be the two of us..." She scoffed it, eyes burning with tears as she shook her head over and over and over–– hopefully, at some point she'd get dizzy. "What sort of asshole says that? After all the shit we've been through Mark..."

"I know it's not––"

"It's not," Beth interjected, finally agreeing with something this man was saying, "You're right... It's not... Like hell it's supposed to be You and Me? It's not––"

"You can't say th––"

"I can say whatever the hell I like, you did," She snapped back, done with this bullshit matra that Mark seemed to have ingrained in his ego, "You don't get to say that... You don't get to... Not now. Not right now–– It hasn't been Me and You for a very long time."

Mark seemed to pause at that, and she watched his shoulder tense.

(The question was, why didn't it feel like it? Why, when Mark had kissed her, had it felt, to both of them, like it'd barely been five minutes... five seconds even... Why had it felt like things had never ended? Why, when had Mark kissed her, had it felt like something had been restored? Pick your poison: peace, balance in the universe or a shitty piece of artwork that someone had put so much care into... for a moment, just for a tiny moment, things had felt right.)

He cleared his throat, looking, very briefly, down at the floor.

"Five years, Mark," She said and they felt it. Five whole years. "It's been half a fucking decade––"

"I know, Beth."

God, didn't they both know!

"Five years and we weren't even good to each other," Bitterness, distaste, her throat was lined with venom. She shook her head again, "You can't look at me like it was a fairytale romance Mark–– are you out of your mind? Are you insane? The things you... the things you did... Fuck, the things I did... there's nothing to make out of that!"

The plastic surgeon didn't speak.

"You don't get to stand there and have a big Rom-Com ending..."

Didn't he get it?

This wasn't a movie. 

She didn't need a big gesture–– if this were a movie, she was fairly sure it'd be a horror one. 

The sort of sick twisted shit that involved a lot jump scares, screaming, pills laced with things and lovers who turned out to be double-faced. 

Maybe she'd rewrite this all and package it, slap a title on the cover and sell it to a movie production company. 

Maybe she'd make so much money she'd never had to ever work again. 

Fuck the career, she'd go into showbusiness!

"I am not the girl you get at the end of the movie..."

Mark, the whole time, just stood there. He stared at her and she felt snapping at him, telling him to stop it because she didn't like the way it felt as though he could just see straight through her. It wasn't right. This whole situation... this whole day... this whole life–– this wasn't right.

"You don't get to tell me we'll figure shit out," She was crying again, angry crying, sad crying–– fuck it, just all of the crying. Beth had never cried so much in forty-eight hours. "You do not get to stand there and act like this is how it ends... You don't get to look at me with those stars in your eyes and that hopeful smile and think that I can do this–– and you definitely do not get to... to..."

The cry that came the deepest was the exhausted cry. Yeah, that one sucked, but eventually, Beth figured that that was all she'd have left. She felt so exhausted, but not just physically, emotionally and psychologically too–– her thoughts were lazy and incoherent and yawned in periodic increments. 

The anger had been nice, it was keeping her afloat and she was clutching to it with everything she had in her–– but just like before, when they'd been standing in the rain and she'd been yelling about how much she loved Charlie and needed to leave... Beth was beginning to feel it run out.

She cleared her throat, fury holding her close like a dependable but toxic friend.

"I am not yours to kiss."

That's what had lit this match: the kiss. 

(That kiss! Mark thought to himself as he chewed his tongue and tried to hide how much he trembled. That kiss! His own, personal act of murder.) 

Her voice broke slightly on that word, on that acknowledgment–– that kiss, the one that had left Beth stood in the centre of her apartment, zoned out and caught in time. It had been both the lighter fluid and the kindling–– or no, no, maybe Mark was the flame and Beth was the wood? He'd pressed his lips to hers and she'd become something different.

She'd become the woman who had stood in JFK, fighting to find numbers through the tears in her eyes.

"Beth."

Mark spoke. He said her name as he had with his forehead pressed against hers, and she felt cold for it. A shiver caught her skin and her face contorted–– eyes squeezed shut and she waved a hand. 

No, that hand said, No, shut the fuck up. 

But he wasn't swayed.

When she opened her eyes again, the man standing in front of her was so much softer than the man she recognised–– but what she, out of everything, recognised was the exhaustion in him.

 He stood a little lower, he wasn't feigning impassivity or a sad smile, he was just looking at her with glassy eyes and the bitter truth between them.

"I just want to help you––"

"I don't need your fucking help."

"I didn't mean to upset you––"

"So you just go around kissing your ex-girlfirends 'cuz you think that's gonna cheer them up?"

(It usually does, Mark would've joked if the time was right.)

"That wasn't exactly planned––"

"You can't fucking do that, Mark," It was said lowly. Beth's chest was heaving. Sparks wallowed in the depths of her eyes. "I mean it, Mark–– and the rest of it, too–– talking about a future... chatting crap about stuff you don't even believe in––"

"No," He said lightly, and she watched his sigh before she heard it, "I think I am crazy enough to believe in it."

"You don't have the right––"

(Admittedly, he was beginning to get resigned with this whole thing. He'd said what he'd need to say and now just felt like owning up to it. He was tired and he was crazy enough to want to give this woman everything, it was true. No matter everything that had happened. Yeah, Mark believed it.)

"I don't need a future––"

"I'm pretty sure people don't get a choice with that––"

"I don't need a boyfriend––"

(He shook his head at that, a slightly exasperated smile picking at the corner of his mouth.)

"I'm not saying you can have a boyfriend––"

That confused her.

"So you what? Just wanna fuck me? Is that it––?"

"Jesus, Beth."

"Then what, Mark? What the fuck did any of that mean––?"

She was tired, she was begging... begging for a reason... begging for a sign... begging to make sense of why she felt like she couldn't breathe from the moment his hands had carved their way into her skin. And then Mark answered:

"I'm saying you could have a husband."

***

VIII - HOW TO BREAK A HEART

(REPRISE)

There it was.

Mark watched the effect of it.

What a funny power words had.

It wasn't too many words, but he knew that it was more than the usual three. Will. You. Marry. Me. Shit. Not three words, four–– 

Mark had never been particularly great at maths anyway.

He watched the four words as they left him, his thoughts, his voice box, his lips and seemed to accost her. 

Across the space between, across the time and history, and into her ears, into her consciousness–– he watched the marriage proposal, watched a moment he'd thought about for more than a commitment phobe should have. 

He watched the sort of moment that actually made it into the final cut of movies, was plastered over a big screen and fawned over by an audience–– he watched it happen and then he watched Beth's reaction.

Admittedly, Mark had also thought a lot about what Charlie and Beth's engagement must've looked like. 

He'd heard from Derek that she'd proposed herself, thrown caution to the wind, gotten down on one knee and just done it. Derek had recited it all with raised eyebrows, as if he hadn't seen it coming, but Mark? 

Mark had just thought it was the most Beth thing he'd ever heard.

But he'd wondered what her reaction had been to Charlie those two other times. 

Had she been caught off guard? Had she dreaded it? Had Charlie been able to watch the thoughts so painstakingly transparent behind her eyes––– Because Mark could, in that moment.

He could see the way her whole brain seemed to halt. She'd got cut off mid rant, eyes wide and nostrils flared, and he watched it all fade. He watched her face drop, twist and her body almost fold in on itself–– the woman in front of him recoiled, as if she was a snake who had decided against striking. 

Her first audible words were too quiet for such a rage:

"That's not funny Mark."

It was, kinda. If he thought about it long enough, it was hilarious: here he was, on a Monday evening, proposing to his ex-girlfriend. 

Here he was, trying to promise her a happy life of care and attention and tenderness, and here she was screaming at him for it. This sort of shit didn't even make it into the extended scenes.

"It's not supposed to be funny," He said back, and he sounded serious. He was serious. He was also seriously standing there with ringing in his ears and a full-body numbness, just hoping that whatever words fell out of him next sounded smart: "I'm saying that... well, I said it before and I'm saying it again but... I'm saying if you want a marriage, if you want that life that you were talking about last night... I mean it. I'll give it to you."

If he hadn't known better, Mark would've thought that he'd just taken something from her. A limb? An organ? Anything but her heart, he bet. 

She was staring at him as if he'd just stabbed her, as if he'd taken that needle all over again and skewered her, right through the chest–– if Mark had to guess, he figured that was probably how he'd looked when Derek had told him that Beth was pregnant.

Her jaw slackened.

"Mark..."

It was another warning. But, lucky for the both of them, Mark couldn't stop talking.

"I mean it, Beth," He said, and she tensed at the name. "We can have a good life. Fuck New York, we'll have Seattle. Or we'll go and find another city... probably make a mess, knowing us, but have a good life together––"

"We don't––"

"I'm not going to lie and say that I know what I'm doing," Mark continued, ignoring the way that her bottom lip tremored and she had to cross her arms over her chest as if to hold herself together. "But I'm gonna guess and say that you don't know what you're doing either, so that's okay. We really can just figure it out... We can figure it out and we can be happy."

Was that such a reach? Sure, they'd been shit to each other, but there had been so much happiness there too. There was happiness in his life because of her and there'd been happiness in her life because of him.

 It'd been a transaction. 

Was it so crazy for him to think they could find it again?

He watched Beth wilt. She looked away from him and her chin sunk down to the floor. A hand came up to comb through her hair, grasping at her scalp as if it would help her to think. Slowly, she shook her head.

"No... Mark... No that's not––"

"What?" He asked and he felt the energy to crack an actual joke just to remind her what it actually looked like, "You wanna sign a prenup? I don't give a shit... if you leave me you can take everything, I don't care... I just want you."

It was half a joke and half a very disturbing realisation. To describe it fully, he'd have to come up with another metaphor. Okay, let's try. 

If this apartment burned down tomorrow and Beth was the only thing left in the ashes, he would've been fine with that. If they were told that the world was gonna end in sixty days and Beth was willing to give him every single second, he'd be fine with that too. If he were stranded in the forest, with no civilization for miles (Hell, maybe they'd been on a plane and fallen out of the sky and were left there to rot) and nothing but each other, Mark would've fine with that, as well. All he wanted, all he needed, was her.

But, Beth was looking at him as if she didn't share the sentiment.

"You can't say that..."

"I can," Mark responded without a moment of hesitation, "I just did."

"You can't joke about this, Mark––"

"You wanna see the ring?"

The ring. The ring that had been with him like a tumour, followed him from New York and into his underwear drawer. He chipped the proposition out so casually, all despite the fact that his whole body wretched at the thought of admitting it–– it was something he'd guarded so tightly for all this time.

But of course, today was the day for revelations.

"You're such an asshole," She scoffed, her anger returning with the bite at the back of her throat. Beth chuckled to herself, holding her forehead in her hands. "A ring? Mark? A fucking ring? Do you hear yourself? This is a low blow, even for you––"

His eyes, so graciously, drifted to the engagement ring still sat on her finger. It winked at him in the light.

"I've had it for a while, actually," Mark said, and he felt his resentment towards Charles Perkins boil in his stomach. He shrugged, trying to play off everything as if it didn't make him want to curl up into a very small ball. "If I had to estimate... I'd say seven or so years––"

"Shut the fuck up," She groaned, her smile as bitter as the rest of her, "Are you really making fun of me, right now? For wanting a life with Charlie––?"

"I'm not," He wasn't. He wasn't being malicious. What Mark was, in fact, was trying to marry her. "I think you deserve a life like that... but I don't think Charlie can give it to you––"

"Yeah," Beth interjected sharply, and she shot him a look that was far more fed up than it was murderous, "You mentioned that––"

"I'm not making fun of you––"

"Well it fucking feels like it––"

"You really don't see it, do you?"

He said it in another sigh. 

It was, for all intents and purposes, some form of surrender. His heart twisted in his chest and he looked over at her, looking at the woman whose face contorted–– maybe this wasn't the time. Maybe she was too angry to really make sense of everything; but Mark couldn't make sense of the fact that everyone in the whole world seemed to see it, but her.

It'd been something that had been handled in the smile that Amy had given him as she'd watched him stand in that hallway, ready to go into a room full of suits and defence Beth's honour. It'd been something that had pressed in Derek's hand as Beth's engagement had been thrust into their lives and she'd walked away, just leaving them to deal with it. It'd been in the way that Callie had sat next to him in Joe's Bar, silently processing everything he had to say––

And Beth didn't see it... she just didn't.

He smiled sadly at the floor.

She didn't.

"See what?" She was still geared for her fight, eyebrows raising as he chuckled to himself. There was so much hate there. He was throwing in the towel. "That you're being an ass?"

"No," His smile turned wistful, "You don't see how much I'd do for you, even now."

-

"Don't say that."

Beth had never said something so desperately in her life.

It was a beg that had come from the core of her, exploding from her with such violence that, for a second, she was sure she'd ruptured something. 

It erupted from a fissure, from a vessel, from an organ–– tumbling out with a mess of syllables, of haste and the blood that was stuck between her teeth.

She said it with her heart beating beyond a sensible pace, with her whole mouth dry and bones full of sand. She said it with the threat of doing something about it, as if Mark had to take it back or else. 

She wasn't sure what the threat would be, but she was fairly sure whatever happened, she'd start yelling again.

How dare he.

Was this his idea of a sick joke? 

Pacify the sad girl in the rain with pretty words? 

Listen to her speak honestly about how she just wanted to be adored, have someone who loved her, have someone who gave a damn... and then ridicule her for it?

 Say things that you knew didn't fit your character?

 Build problems like it was nothing, make her heart beat out of her chest... make her wonder, if only for the slightest moment, if that was possible––?

Slowly, Mark shook his head.

"Beth, cut some slack–"

"Don't––"

"I'm not lying," She held onto his every word and hated herself for it. Tears came and she blinked wildly against them. Mark shook his head and she wondered if he'd cry too. "We both know we were never any good at being friends. I'm fucking tired of pretending that you're not all I think abo––"

"Don't fucking finish that sentence."

It was his turn to scoff slightly. 

He sounded miffed, he sounded inconvenienced. His eyes narrowed very slightly and before her eyes, Beth watched a foundation build, a tease of the Mark she knew better than the back of her hand. 

The coherent composure he'd had while grasping the doorframe slipped and slid. He acted as if she'd just said something completely bewildering.

"Why not?"

Why not? Oh? How many reasons could she give off the top of her head. 

Beth started with the obvious one: the fact that he definitely did not care that much about her, not in the slightest. She was gripped with the horror that maybe a savior complex was infectious, that it had transferred from whatever sick corner in Derek's brain it manifested and found its way into Mark–– seeing someone die was not a reason to suddenly decide they meant something to you.

The next reason was the fact that they'd not been good for each other. She felt the need to stress that a couple of times. She'd spent eleven months telling Mark how shitty he'd treated her, but Beth knew that she hadn't been fair. 

If anyone, in the relationship, deserved their ass handed to them, it was her.

And then... and then there was the only reason that made it past her lips:

"You chose Addison, Mark."

Beth said it as her hands trembled so badly she had to press them together just to remind herself she wasn't a complete wreck. 

She had some dignity left, she was sure of it. 

Despite how her cheeks were wet with tears and her wedding day had been completely demolished, she had dignity. She wouldn't let Mark take that away from her.

He chose her, and she could see it in her eyes that he knew that all too well. He chose Addison over her, and Beth needed to make sure he really, really understood what that meant. It was her only card to play.

"You do remember that right?"

"I know––"

"You had your chance..."

He didn't speak.

"You had me, Mark––"

In a moment of guilt, Mark looked down at the floor.

"And you left me for my sister."

Was she going insane? Had that not happened? Was Beth the only person who remembered this? Who was able to logically think about everything? That question alone made her want to slap him all over again–– hell, maybe it would slap some sense into him?

"Am I not allowed to regret it?" He asked, and she didn't like how his tone changed. A dent appeared between his eyebrows as if he'd registered that she didn't want him, and now he was pissed about it. "Am I not allowed to change my mind?"

"No," Beth said, and she meant it, "That's the thing about you, Mark... You don't change."

"I don't?"

He sounded more bothered than he did offended.

"No," She said, and she didn't regret it one bit, "You're the exact fucking same. You don't know what the fuck you want, Mark. You never did––"

He shook his head and shot a bitter laugh at the wall, "You don't know what you're talking about––"

"You fucked Addison––"

"Yeah, you've said that," Mark said and then he pulled a face, "And I did... I did fuck her. No one is challenging that. I fucked Addison, all while imagining it was you––"

"Oh, because that makes it so much better?"

"You wanna ask how many times I called her Beth in bed, or should I phone a friend?"

She stared at him, halfway caught between a scoff and a sob.

"How romantic."

"I try my best."

Beth couldn't believe him. Not one bit. She didn't believe him so much that the next words came

"You don't care about me," She said, "You only ever cared about yourself."

Across from her, Mark just raised his eyebrows, dark amusement playing across his face.

"You sure about that?"

"Certain."

There was no challenge. Beth knew him. She knew him. She fucking knew him––

"This is the problem with you," Beth said, and she felt like this was the last thing she had to say to him. Ever. Close a chapter with a speech, be courteous to do what she hadn't been able to do last time. "You say things and you don't think about them... and you have this disgusting ego. You think that you can get everything you want and say shit and you can't... Mark, you just can't––"

"Beth just––"

"You take and you take and you take––"

"That's not––"

"I have Charlie."

"Yeah, I wonder how well that's going to turn out––"

"Please, just for once, shut up––"

"You can't just––"

"No," She had to repeat that word a few more times to make it clear, "Mark, shut the fuck up––"

"I had to say it––"

"No, you didn't."

He really didn't.

She hated the way he had the audacity to sigh, as if she was being the infuriating one.

"I did."

"Fuck you."

"I don't regret it."

"Oh, Fuck you––"

"Stop saying "Fuck you"––"

"Don't fucking tell me what to do, Fuck you––"

"Beth, if you just calm down for a goddamn second––"

"Don't tell me to fucking calm down––"

"I'm in love with you."

There was no pause this time.

(Which kinda sucked, because it felt like the sort of thing that deserved it's moment. He'd said it sadly, which, didn't often happen, for starters–– and then there was the content of it. There was the love. And there was so much of it. Mark wished Beth had given it more time than it needed. He wished she'd just let it be.)

But, she couldn't. She couldn't allow it to have it's moment.

"No, you're not."

She laughed. 

She outwardly, deeply, laughed. 

It was a laugh that went from finger to toe. It spanned her, it reaped her, and with it, came the gasp of air that followed. It was a purely manacial laugh, but all air, as if she had nothing else to give up–– it was a prompt for Mark to correct himself, to admit that this was all one big joke on her. 

He'd said the word love and she laughed. She laughed.

Then she stared at him. 

She watched the way that Mark seemed to register what had just happened after she did. A flush worked its way down his face–– realisation looked a whole lot more honest than she'd thought it would be–– 

Beth's brow folded and her heart seized in her chest.

"The fuck you're not, Mark."

He wasn't.

"You're not in love–– You're not..."

She couldn't finish her sentence.

He couldn't.

But his face. He looked away, quickly, as if he had to break his gaze just to regains something. The whole time, Beth just stared with tears in her eyes.

And then it ended.

Whatever confrontation that had happened between the two of them ended, just there, with Beth running out of breath and the moment feeling egregiously not-finished. 

It was clear, from the way that Mark stared at her, face strained and his own skin flushed, that he was mad too. They were seething, both feverish, both of their chests heaving from the conflict.

(Once upon a time, that had been their love language. Between everything, between the love and the lust and the hate–– there had just been the two of them, staring across at each other, wondering what the fuck was supposed to happen next––)

Mark didn't have anything to say. He seemed, so suddenly, unsure of himself. The anger that was left seemed to be trapped in the word that bounced around the two of them: LOVE. Beth tried to slow her breathing, but figured she'd just sob.

And What was left? Two people, aching, scalded and bruised, a marriage proposal that she didn't even understand. He couldn't love her... He couldn't want to marry her... He just couldn't––

And then it happened.

It was another casualty of a cross-fire. Aching fingers, sore skin and fever. 

Adrenalin and a love declaration that had made a tiny part of her flourish. 

She wasn't how much of her believed him, or wanted to believe him, at least, but at least some of her did. And it manifested in the lump at the back of her throat, on the heave of her soul as their eyes connected and, just like a plant would find the sun, Beth's gaze locked onto his lips.

Oh.

Fuck it.

Her stride was angry. One step. Two step. Three–– a hand planted on the back of his head as she reached for him and brought him to her–– she commanded his lips onto hers in a movement of fury. 

An angry kiss, far more destructive than the last. Hot, heavy, assertive. 

She pulled herself into him. 

A stray hand secured itself around his neck and Beth wondered what would happen if she stayed there for forever. Two meteors colliding. 

She planned to bury herself in his chest and plant flowers there, and felt him groan so deeply as if he'd been waiting for her, waiting for this for far too long.

He didn't pull away, he didn't speak, he just welcomed her, as if this was his surrender. Her body greeted him like an old friend.

A decade of silence and now this.

In her fury, resentment and yearning to be loved, Beth trapped him in her. 

She fashioned a cage from her ribs, with her legs hiked around his waist and his lips on her jugular and, this time, she refused to let go.