❛ 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐄 . . . ❜
007. gold rush by taylor swift
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THIS CHAPTER ENTIRELY TAKES PLACE IN
MID 1990s NEW YORK

The formula to breaking bad news was like any other.

It wasn't exactly a mathematical equation or a scientific study, but it required steps and concentration. It required a steady hand, usually placed on the shoulder, but back during her surgical internship and work at med-school, Beth had gravitated to the forearm.

A gentle press, the sort that felt both assertive and comforting. They'd been taught to be grounding, to draw the patient's guardian or loved one into the moment, to be succinct with what they said and how they said it:

Avoid miscommunication and most importantly, break the bad news.

That's how this had felt:

"Aren't you a little too old for a college event?"

In this scenario, the formula required a dry remark, drier than the martini in her hand. It called for a dress in a busy room full of surgical hopefuls, making small talk over pamphlets as they shot their bid for placements all across Manhattan.

She was a sudden voice over his shoulder that made him, very visibly, pause.

The bad news was that she, Beth Montgomery, was a final year medical student in a room full of twenty-something's and this man, right here, was a little too old for the demographic.

She crossed an arm over her chest, decided against making any physical content and just watched the man turn on his heel, slowly, to face her.

Beth had known who he was from the back of him, a familiar back-of-head that had stuck out like a sore thumb. She was fairly sure he was wearing the same dress shirt too, but he'd lost the blazer in favour of pamphlets that he now clutched in his hand.

His eyes descended on her and she tilted her head to the side, lifting her cocktail to her lips and giving him a very crooked smile.

"Montgomery."

It was almost an accusation.

He said her last name as if it explained everything about her: the hair, the eyes and the way she wobbled slightly in her heels. She raised her chin higher and stood a little taller.

Chin up, chest out, and fuck 'em all, kid.

Then came the smirk: a long, wide smile that almost made her skin tremble. His voice was smoother than the rest of him, an eyebrow twitching upwards as Beth just hummed lightly.

He recognised her, she could see it in his eyes (and how bright and sharp those eyes were.) She was fairly sure she was wearing the same dress from the clinic opening too, there hadn't been much variation in her closet and it was still on loan from Addison's wardrobe.

"Elizabeth, right?"

She let out a slightly dismissive noise and corrected him: "Beth."

"Right," His chin lifted as he looked her from head to toe, eyes sparkling very slightly. "It's nice to finally meet you ... If I didn't know better I'd think Addison was hiding you from me..."

She felt the rake of his gaze, it was like a cold chill running from head to toe. Beth just pressed her lips into a thin line, willing blood flow to resume in her frozen limbs.

(For the record, Addison had been hiding her. It was as if Beth was a teenager again, thrust into some celibacy meeting at their local church. Their family had never been religious, but their parents had taken it upon themselve to try and ward off evil, specifically sexual intercourse and the male genatalia. For years, their father, The Captain's, greatest fear had been one of his daughters having a teen pregnancy or a baby out of wedlock. Beth's first piece of jewellery had been a purity ring.)

(But, then The Captain had found Beth kissing their neighbour's daughter and maybe gotten the memo that it wasn't just guys he had to look out for.)

Without a falter in his perfect smile, he held out a hand.

"And I'm––"

"Mark Sloan."

He didn't need to introduce himself. She knew exactly who he was.

It was the first time she'd ever said his name out loud and in retrospect, Beth figured that there should have been some crack of lightning or the ground shaking beneath them. At least some sort of universal foreboding sign that this man would ruin her life.

But no, his smirk just elongated, his eyebrows rose even further and he looked far more pleased with himself than Beth could've imagined.

"Oh?" He said, seeming to be a single breath away from a chuckle, "You've heard of me?"

Sure have, asshole-and-jerk-all-in-one, Beth silently answered, I've been warned.

Mark Sloan. She'd heard that name too many times, too many times for a man she'd never even spoken to. What a contrast it was to say it herself instead of having Archer chip his name between his teeth bitterly.

"Oh, even more exciting," She said instead, and her head tilted in the direction of the name badge, "I can read."

The introduction was shadowed by the fact that Archer had done his best to make sure that they never crossed paths at the clinic opening, despite the fact they always seemed to catch each other's eye.

Addison had made it her mission too, reminding Beth under her breath over and over that Mark Sloan was the sort of guy you didn't just strike up a conversation with. He had a reputation and it had preceded him from the very moment Beth had set foot in Manhattan.

Mark followed her gaze down to his name tag and let out an easy chuckle, nodding his head. He murmured touché into a glass of scotch. When he looked back at her, light played through his irises and made his lips twitch.

"I'm guessing you're not too old for this med-school mixer then, huh?" He said very lightly, holding up a pamphlet proclaiming his hospital, Mount Sinai, to be the best Plastics Internship on the East Coast. "Younger than Addison, right?"

"What?" Beth's eyebrow raised, "You saying I look old?"

"No," Mark breezed without a single twitch or hesitation. His smile didn't waver. "I'm saying suddenly you're in a college mixer and at a clinic opening in a dress that's definitely not your sisters... and until a week ago I had no idea you existed."

A pause and Beth held his gaze without a single waver in return.

The corner of his lip twitched, "Why do you think that is?"

Oh, Why? was a question alright.

Mark, it seemed, was one of the very few things that Archer and Addison agreed on.

For the past few months, Beth had had to listen to the two of them bicker over her life choices that really should have been down to her–– things like whether Beth should have moved to Columbia University from Yale in the first place, or if she should have moved into dorms instead of a crappy apartment on the Upper West Side.

But they never argued about Mark, never spoke in his favour and agreed (as everyone seemed to) that this was man Manhattan's closest thing to a lothario. Or, maybe, lothario was putting it lightly... Addison had not held back on the horror stories of friends lost to heavy petting and stray fingers on the hems of dresses.

This man, so it seemed, was the sort of magnetic that could almost redefine diplomacy.

"I've heard you like to put your hands on things that don't belong to you," Beth said simply, her eyes flickering between him and the display over his shoulder.

Mark beamed, "So you have heard of me?"

She ignored his amused comment and passed him, briefly stopping to look down at the leaflets scattered across the table. She felt him follow her, silently and lightly, either out of curiosity or some bullshit cat and mouse.

"And to answer your question, six."

"Hm?"

"Six years younger," Beth replied, delicately turning over a print out about rhinoplasty. Her nose wrinkled very slightly, "Only six weeks in Manhattan too. I transferred from Yale for my final year."

"Yale," Mark said off-handedly, "Isn't that the sort of place people go to graduate and then just...just... choke on a pretzel? Or become president?"

Her mouth creased with a silent chuckle.

"Well, unfortunately, I can't handle my gluten," was Beth's response, "But, I'm pretty sure Bizzy made it so my first words were 'Jackie O'."

And then she looked at him, at his gilded smile and the way his eyes were trained on her so dutifully as if he had to be completely immersed in her every word (even when it was about her digestive issues).

Her eyes, very briefly, diverted down to his lips, to that smirk that she knew must've been his signature, and she knew, right there.

"Hm," He said so very tenderly, "I'll be interested to know what exactly you can handle."

Her face split into a slightly stupefied smile and, with every part of her, she scoffed.

At that reaction, Mark delicately lifted a single brow.

Oh, he was definitely the sort of person to hook up with you and never return your calls afterwards.

He was, one hundred percent, the person that Addison had made him out to be, exactly the man that The Captain had rattled on about on his way back from Church with a 15 year old Beth in the back and 21 year old Addison in the front.

It wasn't as if Archer and Addison had been the only people to mention him either, people at her college knew him too, in her classes, on the staff–– Mark seemed to be the most infamous alumni of Columbia University since Bush Snr. and Bush Jr. Even now, as they stood there in the centre of the campus, she noticed how people seemed to glance at him from out of the corner of their eyes.

And yet, Derek Shepherd seemed to trust him with his life.

"Six years," It was the only thing that Mark hung onto, "That's quite an age gap..."

"One Summer and one Winter Olympics," Beth breezed back and then, just like that, she was nodding her head down to a poster of Mark smiling so widely, boasting the Future of Plastic Surgery Innovation!, "Aren't you supposed to sell Mount Sinai to me or something?"

Each display seemed to be manned with old white men, all of whom looked as though they would've much rather been somewhere remote fishing. Instead, they were each stuck there, trying to fish for the next upcoming doctors of the future.

Beth had already spent most of the evening trying to make some sense of a pretty stacked field: in all honesty, she found this all completely overwhelming. All of these posters, these flashy infographics and big disingenuous smiles... she didn't like it much.

And besides, from just three minutes in conversation, she knew that Mark Sloan's grin was so much dirtier in person.

"Changing the subject?" Mark asked, almost amusedly.

Beth shrugged, "I just know what I want."

His head, very slightly tilted to the side. There was a glimmer in his eye that made her breathing, ever so slightly, catch at the back of her mouth. It was wicked. Too wicked. Beth was already exasperated by the time he got around to speaking––

"Now that," He said, the word balancing on the tip of his tongue, "I can appreciate in a woman––"

"Good," Beth interjected before he could even finish, "Then maybe you or someone in this place will hire me."

He took a moment to pause, visibly restrain his chuckle. With a sweeping breath, he turned towards his display.

"Plastic Surgery," He cleared his throat, straightening with some sort of professional inspiration as he remembered that yeah, somehow someone somewhere had elected him to be a representative and role model of a whole institution. "You think much about it?"

A very brief look rippled across her face. It was slow and almost gruesome. She didn't have to speak for Mark to realise there was little hope for his specialty.

"Think about what?" She asked, eyebrows raising as she looked over the brochures. A sea of split-lip kids and burned soldiers stared back at her. "Emotional guilt-tripping and the day-to-day tummy tucks and nose jobs––"

"This isn't just cosmetic surgery," He said, and Beth idly wondered whether he even knew what he did for a dayjob.

"It's not?"

"It's Plastics, it's hardcore stuff," Mark said, and then, as she displayed clear skepticism, something convinced him to launch into a long, comprehensive relay of what exactly he did every day. He prefaced it with this: "Here's my famous Plastics pitch, be prepared, it's not for the faint of heart––"

And she'd complied. She'd watched a Russian exchange student almost salivate over Mark's index cards and, at this moment, was almost curious. (What was it about this man? What made him so special?) She finished her glass of champagne, smiled weakly and set it on a passing tray.

"Go for it," had been the invitation, "I can't promise I won't laugh, though."

It turned out, ultimately, that the index cards were nothing to get hot and bothered about at all.

Beth found herself listening to Mark passionately advocate for his research in burn behaviours, detailing a prospective project he'd been writing up for weeks. He also seemed to have the whole 'we change people's lives' speech down perfectly. He gestured to pictures of kids with clefts, of recipients of skin grafts and nose transplants, and tiny statistics about how the field was full of innovation.

She listened politely, nodding her head absently and asking the odd question, as if this was nothing but an educational seminar. Mark used a lot of big words, shot her a lot of handsome smiles and by the end of it, seemed pretty proud of his case.

Then he looked at her, looked at the way she seemed so unswayed and disengaged, and tilted his head to the side.

A pause and he shook his head, "You're really not impressed, are you?"

"Oh no," Beth nodded towards the pictures and the brochures and the squeaky clean logo. "I'm impressed."

She was impressed.

He was very passionate about his work, so much so that she almost found it endearing. It had taken her completely and utterly off-guard.

Maybe she was the one who needed to figure out what he could handle, not the other way around.

"Good," Mark said with a wry grin, "I've been told that I'm very impressive."

Beth just raised an eyebrow.

Jesus Christ, she thought to herself, I wouldn't go that far.

"You sold?"

She opted to smile, grit her teeth and appear overly interested in a picture of a baby receiving a skin graft.

"I'll think about it––"

"You'll think about it?"

Absently, she nodded.

"I'll think about it––"

"C'mon Elizabeth––"

"Beth."

"––We both know it's the best."

He seemed so sure of himself, that Beth had to smile to herself. She could feel his audacity as surely as she could feel the champagne slowly settle itself in her bloodstream. Her chin raised to look at him, at the sure expression on his very sure face, to register his sure words with his very sure tone.

She watched his ego, so close and so intimately that she could almost reach out and cup it in her palm –– and then, just as she had when he'd flirted with the idea of hitting on her, she scoffed.

"Yeah," Beth said sceptically, ignoring the way that his eyes seemed to leave scathing trails on her splitting cheeks. Her smile was curved and severely doubtful. She took a step back and gave him a parting shrug, "Maybe you're just not as good as you think you are."

And to that, Mark just tilted his head.

That was how Beth left it. She told him to have a good night and she turned on her heel, navigating through the crowd of med-students with her brow furrowed very slightly as she tired to figure out who the hell Mark Sloan was. Admittedly, the conversation

She walked directly past the table for Bellevue, ignoring how an asshole from earlier shot her a glare and huffed to a colleague about how high-strung this years graduates were.

High-strung my ass, Beth thought to herself as she picked out a glass of champagne, More like done with your shit.

This room was full of the worst types of people Beth could imagine, and she was desperate for one of them to be interested in her. Not for her name, not for her looks but for her skills. She'd put too much effort into her studies for them to need her for anything else –– just for a moment, Beth needed them to listen. Just for a fucking moment ––

Chin up, chest out...

She caught sight of Mount Sinai's most promising resident as she spoke to a Paeds fellow from Manhattan East Hospital; his charm was on full force on some blonde that seemed to eat his every word up.

He appeared in fractures throughout the evening, each time with a different woman, talking about different things— and, ever so often, their eyes happened to just catch each other, just like it had across the clinic mixer. And he'd smile at her, so brightly, so almost mischievously, that it made her stomach churn.

Beth couldn't decipher if it was from nausea or just the uncanny feeling of being seen. But, despite everything, Mark just soldiered on.

The sight of him made Beth sigh through her nose. Didn't it ever get exhausting?

She found herself exhausted after talking to more than three people, and yet Mark was constantly hovering around the room, charming every woman in his path. Just observing it from a distance was enough for Beth to realise exactly why this man came with his own health warning–– if a person could be a drug, Mark was the most addictive of them all.

He was a human gold rush, heads turning, conversation sparking and people gravitating towards Mount Sinai like it was California in 1848. She could only watch, brow furrowed as she wondered what it must be like to be that sort of magnetic; from experience, Beth could only say that she was the sort of person that drove people away.

She was always too much or too little, and yet, people flocked to Mark Sloan in droves.

Archer's mantra had buried itself tightly in her bones and Beth knew that her nervousness about all of this had translated into stand-offishness. She'd levelled out during the first few years of college, gotten too nice and too comfortable, and now Manhattan was making her mean again.

Mark made her mean –– one conversation in and she was already cold to the touch. She saw his reputation and she saw how wildly he took to everything (like a forest fire) and she got mean.

She wasn't sure whether it was out of some preemptive safety measures or whether that just was who was now, but Beth didn't particularly hate it.

She was all too familiar with his type. It was his type that had driven her here in the first place. Her problem was all too classic: Beth Montgomery had a very nasty habit of getting involved with the wrong type of people, whether male or female, it never turned out well.

And on top of that, she'd developed the habit of running when things inevitably went to shit too––

In the centre of the event, Beth stared up at the sign proclaiming Columbia University and wondered if New Haven still felt like home.

"You finish thinking yet, Montgomery?"

Ah.

She'd wondered if he'd find her way back to her, and there he stood, after an hour and a half of her toes feeling as though they were about to drop off. She'd moved onto her second glass of champagne, chin still tilted upwards as she stared at the banner across the far wall, and didn't bother glancing over at the most sought-after man in the room.

He'd appeared so silently, so effortlessly, standing beside her, his shoulder almost against hers and gaze following her absent stare.

Beth blinked herself back to the present.

"Never," was her response, lip almost stuck to her second glass of champagne. "If I stop thinking I die––"

"Oh, I can tell," He said so smoothly, and Beth could've sworn that he, very briefly, took a side-glance over her chest, "You've got this whole mysterious pensive thing going on right now––"

"Pensive," Beth echoed, raising an eyebrow, "That's a big word."

"Mm," Mark hummed, "I've got a lot of big things to offer––"

Beth, ever so slowly, closed her eyes, sighing through her nose. A silent curse word swirled through her mind.

"––like the opportunity to study one of the greatest surgical electives with the greatest Plastic Surgeon to ever walk Manhattan's streets..."

Nice save.

When she opened her eyes, he was grinning at her, but there was something about it –– it was jarringly stupid, almost boyish as if this was all a game.

It wasn't what she'd expected from him; a dent, very faintly, appeared between her eyebrows. It took exactly forty seconds for Beth to speak, forty seconds of staring at Mark's goofy smile, forty seconds of registering that he was so very clear that everything he was doing was shameless––

"Could you imagine what Addison would think?" Beth remarked, eyebrows raised as she considered it, even for the tiniest moment, "A Montgomery? In Plastics?"

"It's better than Psych," He quipped back and Beth actually laughed. Her head dipped downwards and she couldn't find it within herself to correct him. He was right, anything was better than Psych. "To hell with what Addison or Archer wants, what about what you want?"

Now that made Beth pause.

He seemed to see it.

An eyebrow raised.

"C'mon," He repeated, "You know what you want, remember? What is it..."

No one had asked her what she wanted.

Throughout the whole process of making her career path, no one had taken a moment to ask what she wanted. Not once. Ever since Beth had told her siblings that she was applying for med-school at Yale, they'd both just thrust their own specialities onto her, as if she was just supposed to follow in their paths.

The Captain was a General Practitioner, and although she loved his clinic back home and had spent a lot of time running around it as a kid, Beth needed something else.

She needed something with a rush, with adrenalin, and that had led her to surgery. But then came the issue of the two siblings with surgical training: Addison was Manhattan's leading neo-natal specialist and Archer was a neurosurgery who'd deferred into neurology in some sort of burnout phase of his career. And yet, with all of that knowledge and all of that wisdom–– Mark Sloan had been the only person who took a moment to ask that question.

What did Beth want?

The truth was she really didn't fucking know.

A light grimace danced across her face.

"Well, maybe I don't know what I want," and then she paused, feeling foolish for saying those words. There was nothing more shameful in the Montgomery family than not knowing. She forced a shrug and a lighthearted deadpan. "I was hoping I'd figure it out before Addison disowns me."

Mark laughed at that: "Funny."

Beth raised an eyebrow.

"You think I'm joking?"

(She wasn't, for the record. Addison was the sort of person whose love seemed perpetually conditional. Case in point, these shoes; Beth couldn't feel her toes but god forbid Addison let her sister be seen at a college mixer in flats.)

She watched Mark's smile fade very slightly and, from that alone, she knew that he didn't think that at all. For a moment, Beth wondered whether Mark felt the heat of her sister's expectations too.

She knew Addison, she knew that Addison needed everything squeaky clean, that everything had to fit some aesthetic that she had baked into her fantasy life–– and that included people. From what she'd heard, Mark didn't fit into that at all.

(But to be honest, neither did Beth.)

"I don't, I completely believe you," He said after a long pause, and then a dent appeared between his eyebrows, "Your sister... she's definitely... definitely––"

"Pushy?" Beth supplied after Mark seemed to run out of words completely. He squinted at her, as if he was trying to debate whether to say something. "Anal retentive?"

"No," Mark shook his head, "I was going for more of..."

"Ah, a bitch," Beth caught on fairly quickly, a wide smile pulling back her lips. Mark blinked at her but didn't deny it. She laughed. "Yeah, it's a... it's a family thing. Genetic, actually, if you'd believe it."

He laughed too, and Beth found it a nice relief to know that someone at one of these displays actually had humour.

"Well," Mark said, "You seem nice enough."

The surgeon flashed a grin that was all teeth. It made Beth's eye twitch slightly. He was the sort that almost looked airbrushed; too clean, too pristine, the sort that had an agenda, whether it was selling toothpaste or trying to get into your pants.

Jesus Christ, Beth thought to herself, These students must not be putting out. Someone's going through a dry spell.

"Oh," was what she said in response, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it."

"I guess I will," Mark breezed back, and then he tilted his head to the side, "Haven't you seen anything else––?"

"I don't know," She replied honestly and felt the classic existential crisis ball at the back of her throat, "I've been looking around but..."

"Not really sure, huh?"

"Nothing stands out," Beth confirmed almost sheepishly, clutching her Martini as if it were a lifeline, "Archer wants me to go into Neuro and Addison wants me to go into Paeds... and then I look at a Cardio internship I was interested in at Bellevue and the Attending tries to put his hand on my ass, so..."

A low whistle fell past Mark's lips, "Not looking promising."

"Not at all," Beth said, "I don't think they're going to hire me, anyway, especially after I told their Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery to go fuck themselves."

In her peripheral vision, she saw how Mark's eyebrow rose, as if he wasn't expecting a Montgomery to say something like that, especially not while Beth was playing dress up.

If Beth squinted at her reflection enough, she almost saw Addison; the picture of sophistication, the sort of housewife borderline powerful woman that a surgical program would want to hire. The heels, the hair, the dress–– Addison didn't believe in business casual. Beth knew that it was part of their genetics, to be as pristinely presented as possible, but that didn't translate very well to her language.

As she'd said before, she really wasn't a people person.

She was trying her best. She was trying to punch herself into a mould that often felt a little too small –– snip off the edges, take a scalpel to the extra parts and present a squeaky clean, employable Montgomery with the perfect, pristine manner to match ––

(But then Doctor George Lloyd had put his hand on her ass and Beth had said 'You're in the wrong profession, maybe you should run for office?'. He'd stared at her as if she'd just murdered his child right in front of her, and he'd been the one who'd touched her.)

"So No Paeds..."

"No Paeds," Beth confirmed.

"And No Neuro..."

"No Neuro," She repeated with a nod.

"But that's not a No to Plastics?"

He said it so nonchalantly and she knew that she should have expected it, but Beth still laughed. It was breathlessly and tight. She shook her head.

"God, you don't give up, do you?"

"Call me a man who knows what they want," Mark mused so smoothly that Beth, for a moment, struggled to take a breath. She pressed her lips together tightly. His eyes glittered. "Although... I take it your definition of someone who knows what they want isn't very accurate––"

"I know where I want to go," Beth responded without a bat of an eyelash, "I just don't know how to get there––"

"And where would that be?"

"The top."

His smile was second nature, Beth should've known that by now.

It came in a crooked, twisted grin, one that felt almost like a chemical weapon designed to take her breath away. She held onto her champagne flute and kept her shoulders raised, refusing to get swept away by the gold tinted waters that threatened to rush through windows that had been long nailed shut.

His eyes ran the length of her, head to toe.

His gaze, for a lack of a better word, was suffocating. It was just like the rest of him–– so present, so intense, Beth had to pretend she didn't notice–– she just lingered on her existential crisis a bit longer, silently ignoring the way he blatantly stared at her ass.

He cleared his throat.

"Y'know, when Addie said that she had a sister, I didn't think that you'd be..."

That made her look at him. Slowly, Beth's head turned to look at him, at the way he so nonchalantly trailed off with a light shrug.

"I thought you hadn't heard of me?"

Her question made his lip twitch but he just shrugged again. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand and Beth just rolled her eyes.

"No, finish that sentence..." She encouraged dryly, "What am I? Career-focused? Hard-working? Ambitious... Driven?"

Another shrug but Mark couldn't hide his smirk.

"Hot."

Ah. Yep, there it was.

Beth was fairly sure that she should've turned on her heel and left it at that. She knew that she should've just let Mark wander onto the next woman, buy her drinks and then woo her into either his bed or a surgical internship at Mount Sinai Hospital, but she didn't leave.

She just raised an eyebrow, silently reminded herself that this wasn't just some asshole that flirted dirty at a surgical event. They were, begrudgingly, in the same social circles. He wasn't just a Plastic Fellow, he was Mark Sloan, the best friend of her sister's boyfriend.

"That was impressive," she said. Her sarcasm did not get lost on him. "I'll have to give you credit for that..."

"What?" He asked, humouring her. "Was it not smooth enough?"

"Not by a long shot," Beth answered.

"Damn," Mark sighed. He whistled lowly as if she had just broken his heart. "I thought it was a good one."

Beth's lips twitched with a smile she couldn't shake off and she hit it behind her champagne flute.

She got the impression that Mark couldn't help himself. He had to flirt just as he had to breathe and drink water. He had to try, no matter what, Mark always had to try at least once.

"Has it worked before?" She questioned, mostly out of curiosity. The Plastic Surgeon took a mouthful of champagne and seemed to regret it, grimacing as Beth's amusement shone through her tone. "How many women have you charmed with that one? How many sisters of friends girlfriends?"

He squinted across the room, as if trying to do the mental maths, "You'd be surprised actually..."

"Would I?" Beth raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Mark said with a chuckle, and then he sighed as if he didn't understand it, "I don't really get introduced to people's sisters much."

"I wonder why."

Much to her chagrin, he was unfazed by her off-handed interjection, "Although, I haven't exactly had the chance to try it out on a Montgomery sibling... so who knows... maybe I'll strike lucky?"

There it was.

A flash in his eye.

It was just a tiny bit exciting, like a live wire crackling a few steps away from her. She watched it come and go and figured that it was what drew people in.

Only, instead of falling at his knees and begging him to whisk her away in a dark corner, Beth just smiled, all teeth, and checked him out, shamelessly. No detail was left unscathed–– she studied every inch of him, from his bright smirk, suggestive bed-me eyes and the way that he leant ever so slightly towards her, as if she'd fall for it––

"Y'know... when Addie said that she had this player friend..." Beth trailed off, letting out a disheartened breath that seemed to thrill him. She tried my best to copy the way he'd said it, his canny awkwardness, the way that he could be so charming so naturally. "I didn't think you'd be so..."

And then a pause just to capture the moment, as if a word couldn't possibly capture who this enigma of man was––

"Hot?" He supplied confidently, smirking from ear-to-ear.

Her eye twitched.

"Underwhelming."

The man in front of her seemed to crash and burn right before her eyes.

It was a fast death, one that didn't take any prisoners or go easy with how brightly it burned–– all Beth knew was that she was drinking champagne desperately to keep her cool, stop herself from laughing outright at the way her answer took him so off-guard.

(Jesus, the ego was truly unmatched. Beth had thought she'd seen all the douchebags Manhattan had to offer... but this man... this one right here... Archer had not overplayed it in the slightest.)

"Ouch," he said. He paused further. A beat passed. He chuckled as if he'd been momentarily winded and then, very slowly, he nodded. "You're giving me a run for my money, aren't you?"

"It's not my fault you're slow."

"I'm sure I can keep up."

Something at the back of Beth's chest clenched.

"I'll believe it when I can see it."

"You free Friday?"

And then Mark looked at her–– he looked at her dead on, like Beth was staring straight into the sun.

Those baby blues shining and burning so intently, a fraction closer than they had been a moment before, and Beth, for the tiniest, most traitorous moment, struggled to catch her breath.

Her nostrils were swamped with aftershave, face deadset in the most stoic and unbothered expression a woman like her could muster, and yet, her brain was having a very brief sensory overload.

For a second, he had a hold on her, just like all of the other women in this room––

Why is it always the pretty ones that have the health risks attached to them?

Beth cleared her throat and looked away.

(God, wasn't he pretty.)

"I'd love to say that this wasn't a waste of time," was what Beth said next, voice dry but palms slightly clammy, "But then I'd be tipsy and a liar."

She hadn't liked how he'd looked at her, studied her face as if to commit her to memory. She hadn't felt so seen and brutally transparent in years.

Mark just chuckled: "How nice of you to kick me while I'm down, Elizabeth––"

"Beth," She corrected, for what felt like the thousandth time that night.

"I like the name Elizabeth," He countered almost absently, his face creasing into a thoughtful smile. Once again, his eyes roamed her. It was too intimate, too fast–– "It rolls off the tongue––"

"It does?"

She wasn't that impressed.

"You look like an Elizabeth."

Oh, he made it too easy.

"And you look like an intolerable ass."

Two could play this game, that's what Beth wanted to make clear. Whatever ego trip that Mark got out of all of this, she wanted to make it very apparent that she could do it too.

Beth had never considered herself to be a good person, never fair and never nice, but what she was proud of was the fact she could so easily tell this man to go to hell–– no matter how similar her exterior looked, Beth knew that her and Addison were nowhere near the same.

With one exception, of course.

But, despite how hard she tried, he just looked amused.

His eyes were alit, sparking with fire–– his smile was ever so briefly, victorious.

"Oh," Mark said, his voice light, "You're mean. I like it."

It was such a statement to make, one that made Beth just stare at him, almost wary.

A light chill wound its way down her spine, fleeting and careful like fingers tracing ever bump and every curve. For a moment, her feet weren't aching and the room wasn't a little too hot and her dress wasn't a little too tight. For a moment, she figured Mark's smirk wasn't the worst thing in the world––

And then just like before, she rolled her eyes.

"I'm not sleeping with you, Doctor Sloan," She said almost sweetly, and inclined her head over towards his table too, for good measure, "And, actually, I'm not applying for Mount Sinai's Plastic Surgical Research program, either."

She watched his expression change very slightly and figured that he didn't get rejected much. When she stepped back and, effectively, removed herself from whatever testosterone bubble he seemed to pull her into, Mark's chin dropped and he smiled at the floor, almost in grief of the last five minutes of their shared time.

"Don't tell me I've been wasting my time, Elizabeth."

She didn't like the way he said her name. It was as if he had it perfectly balanced on the tip of his tongue, as if he'd been saying it his whole life-– Oh, just one mention of her name and he made her feel special, what a trick that was.

"Beth," She corrected without a second of hesitation, "And you've actually saved yourself a lot of it."

"Really?"

"Really," She repeated back to him.

"Why's that?"

It occurred to her, only as she was preparing to walk away from him, how much that gold rush feeling was compelling her to stay.

"Because I don't think you'd be able to handle working with a bitch like me," was her response as she stepped backwards, heels clicking against the flagged stone floor. "At least, not up to the standard that I'd need..."

Mark's eyebrows raised.

There was calculation there, mouth falling very slightly open as he watched her retreat into the nameless, blurred crowd that would form the Future of Surgical Innovation and everything that came with it. His lip twitched and his chest swelled and he seemed to hang onto that parting thought.

With a crooked smile that was perfectly reflected from his own, Beth inclined her head.

"Have a good night, Mark."

──────

　　AUTHOR'S NOTE ! . . .
god bark has me in a chokehold,, already,,
them!

WORD COUNT ! . . . 6255

REWRITTEN ON THE 28TH OF DECEMBER 2021RE-REWRITTEN AND EDITED ON THE 16TH OF JUNE 2022