the road is calling {mark/owen}
Jan. 20th, 2009 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slybrunetteTitle: The Road Is Calling
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Owen, definite Mark/Lexie and Cristina/Owen undertones.
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,513
Prompt: #2 - drunk for [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]
Author's Note: This is all [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] fault. And all to her credit. Thanks for the handholding up until the bitter end.
Summary: Post 5.11, AU from there. This is a story about losing something you never meant to have in the first place, and then realizing that you needed it more than you knew.
It’s one hell of a series of coincidences.
---
Lexie breaks up with Mark (he doesn’t understand the order of words in this sentence, but it’s certainly the truth) one Tuesday in late April. It’s five-twenty in the morning, in the car, and they’re both late to work, and they haven’t stopped yelling and blaming each other since his eyes opened to two seconds of too-bright light before his pants smacked him in the face.
“If you would just stop hiding this from Derek and…” she looks, more like glares at him, somehow musters the courage for the rest of the sentence, “and grow a pair,” he has to stop and look at her even if he is driving, and even if it is just for a second, “then maybe we wouldn’t be late to work every single day, and maybe I wouldn’t get in trouble for being late for rounds every single day.”
“Haven’t we already had this conversation – “
She talks right over him, in fact right along with him, like she knows exactly what he’s going to say, which is in fact the point here, “Yes we have already had this conversation, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you would just tell him. He was worried about you sleeping with me and…destroying my innocence or whatever, not having a five-month relationship with me, which, according to everyone I have ever met, you are completely incapable of having except with redheaded doctors who are married to your best friend. So maybe if you would just, I don’t know, say something to him, calmly, it would be a non-issue and I could actually get to work on time.”
“I can’t tell him because then he’d want to know why I didn’t tell him before, and I’ll still be in the doghouse with him.”
“You know – “ and then she just stops, her mouth snapping shut, and she faces forward, turning up the radio loud enough that talking over it would just be pointless. It’s childish – but then again that was the other thing Derek would be reading him the riot act over; she’s too young.
When they pull into the parking lot of Seattle Grace, Lexie slams the door into the frame hard enough that the car rattles a bit, and he gets out, calling after her, because he had nothing left to say, “So tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” she yells back, never turning around, her pace picking up significantly.
And that was how Lexie Grey broke up with Mark Sloan, and Mark got dumped for what was perhaps the first time in his life (cause Addison really does not count – at least in his head).
---
Roughly thirty minutes later, on the other side of the hospital, on that same Tuesday in late April, Cristina breaks up with Owen.
“Okay, are you planning on saying something to me today?” He walks alongside her, keeping pace with what might qualify as an all-out run if she gets any faster. To say she’s avoiding him is an understatement. Apparently he’d done a dumb thing. A very, very dumb thing. There might have been a ring, because Owen is spontaneous and impulsive sometimes, and she’d taken the box, held it in her palm, stared at it, and then chucked it at him.
And left.
“So it was a little premature.” Somehow this is going to end with him apologizing. It’s going to have to with the way things are going this morning.
“Understatement,” rolls off her tongue, and he’s just glad to hear her say something, anything. But she stops after that, keeps walking down the hallway, towards the elevator, and he knows he has approximately the time between now and that elevator to get her talking to him again. Because he is not getting in that elevator with her. He’s been through hell and back, but Cristina Yang can sometimes make all of that seem to pale in comparison.
“Blame it on the fact that we were at Joe’s first.” Because drunk is an excuse, a good one, even if it isn’t true, although he has a feeling it will be by tonight, no matter which way this ends. Cristina doesn’t say anything in reply to that, doesn’t even look at him, and while he’s trying to figure out another, better excuse they get to the elevator and Cristina punches the up button.
The doors open almost automatically, and she steps in, turns to face him finally, and in the ten seconds it takes for the doors to close completely, says, “This? Is over.”
And, you know, it’s not that Owen’s surprised so much as amazed at how easily she just did that. He stands there for a good minute or two, waiting for everything to set in. Waiting to stop feeling like he didn’t just lose something. If there’s anything he’s good at, through years of training and too much practice, it’s loss.
He’ll move on though somehow – he’s gotten pretty good at that too.
---
Part of the problem with never having been dumped before is figuring out what to do after the fact.
His first thought is Derek. Specifically single malt scotch and Joe’s bar, with Derek. Except for when you factor in two fairly big problems with that idea. One, Derek has Meredith and they’re happy, or as happy as Meredith can muster, and therefore Mark would probably be on the end of more pitying looks and lectures than sympathy. And two, and this is the big one, he can’t actually tell Derek because the reason he and Lexie broke up was because he wouldn’t tell Derek about them in the first place.
So that’s out.
It’s right around then when Mark starts to realize just how few people he has to turn to once Lexie and Derek are out of the equation.
It’s also right around then that he comes across Owen Hunt staring at the closed doors of the elevator on the third floor.
“Trying out telekinesis?” Mark asks, because he needs jokes and sarcasm and something that’s not wallowing in his own self-pity. “Because I’m fairly sure pushing the button is just faster.”
Owen snaps out of whatever daze he was just in with a, “What? Sorry.”
Mark frowns, this being the first time he’s caught the other man even somewhat off-guard and out of it. It’s both new and disconcerting. “Something wrong?” And then, because he recognizes the look on Owen’s face as being the same one he was in possession of just under half an hour ago takes an educated guess, “Women?”
There’s a moment in which Owen seems to be trying to decide whether or not he should reply, before he nods, letting out a breath. “Women.”
With that single word of solidarity a new idea, probably a bad one, forms in his head. It’s probably because Owen is the only other guy he ever really associates with on a semi-regular basis outside of Derek and the Chief (which is…not the same) and also because he looks like he could use it, but Mark asks, “Feel like getting a drink after work? Away from the women.”
It doesn’t take Owen very long to nod as he says, “Sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all morning.”
Considering the only two ideas Mark’s heard today so far have been ‘tell Derek’ and ‘grow a pair’ he’s inclined to agree on that.
---
True to his word, Owen slides into the seat next to Mark, front and center at the bar, almost as soon as he gets off shift.
Not true to Mark’s word, they aren’t away from the women. Callie sits on the other side of Mark, close enough that they’re probably sharing body heat. They’d been talking quietly, and it was fairly obvious that neither of them were even close to sober before he got there. But when Owen sits down there’s a nod between him and Mark, and Callie looks between the two of them before downing the rest of her drink and whispering something that sounds like a “you two have fun” to Mark before waving in Owen’s direction and leaving.
“Feel like talking about it?” Mark asks, his scotch half-raised to his lips.
Joe pushes a glass Owen’s way, and Owen stares into his drink like he’s looking for all the answers for a long moment, before he says, “Do you?”
He’s going to guess the answer is not really, but Mark still gives him something in the form of, “I don’t think I’ve ever been dumped before.”
Owen laughs, because the other man has to be somewhere near forty and there just isn’t any way that he isn’t lying – except for the way he’s staring, very seriously, at Owen like he doesn’t have the faintest idea why he’s laughing. Okay. Interesting. “I can top that,” he tells Mark, since it’s only fair that he reciprocate, “never proposed before. And then gotten shot down.”
“Yang?” Mark asks, like saying yes would make him certifiable. He only nods. “I’m not surprised. That’s what happens when you get left at the altar the first time.”
He nearly chokes. “She what?”
Mark raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t know that?”
No, but that would explain a whole lot. He wonders if she was this cold and distant before. “Does she strike you as someone who’s particularly talkative?”
Hands up, Mark just shakes his head. “Hey, I wasn’t the one who asked her to marry me.” There’s a moment where Mark seems to sober, studying his drink far too intently. “Marriage is overrated anyway.”
Owen nods, even if he isn’t sure he believes that. “So who was yours?” Mark looks up at him, confused, so he elaborates. “Who dumped you?”
Mark looks around, scanning their surroundings, probably to figure out who is in earshot. Satisfied, he keeps his voice low as he tells him, “Lexie Grey.”
He manages not to laugh this time. “Interns. Good. I hear they’re a feisty bunch this year.”
“Quite an accomplishment when you think about what came before them.” Owen doesn’t know much about how the first year resident’s were besides what he’s heard about a cut LVAD wire and some big cover-up. He doesn’t think he wants to.
“So what are you going to do about it,” seems like the next logical question. Everyone has that secret desire for revenge, even if it’s just said over a few drinks at the bar. It’s the people who act upon it who are the problem. They’re the ones you have to watch out for.
“It’s not going to be moping around, I’ll tell you that.” Mark replies, and Owen nods a silent amen to that idea. Moping never got him or anyone else anywhere.
“Just got to move forward,” Owen tells him, but the words hold meaning for both of them.
Perhaps there’s more there for Mark. He gets this look on his face, like he has ideas that maybe he shouldn’t have, which seems to be one of his more often used expressions. His finger swirls around the rim of his glass, and he seems to nod, deciding on something. “Right. Moving forward. Getting the hell out of that hospital for starters.”
“You so sure quitting is the way to go here?” It seems a bit rash, if you ask him. And his situation was probably the worst of the two.
Mark laughs at that. “Not quitting. Just…taking a break. I’ve got a motorcycle I haven’t used in forever. Maybe now is a good time.”
“Don’t you live in a hotel?”
“Not there. Storage. All my old stuff is in storage or back in New York.”
“Ah.” Owen nods, and then thinks better of that. “What exactly are you planning on doing?”
“Road trip. I’ve got vacation time. Give me some time to clear my head.” Mark tells him. There’s more nodding and Owen figures trying to talk him out of it would be fairly pointless. It might be overkill, but people do some really interesting things after failed relationships and bad breakups. Mark downs another drink, says, “You know you should come along. Road trips are highly underrated.”
It feels like it comes out of nowhere. Spontaneity and all that impulsiveness that had gotten Owen in trouble earlier, but the truth is these are things he does. These are things he used to do, before. Just…pick up and leave and breathe, and right now, when he’s had enough alcohol in his system that he’s feeling pretty good, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.
Besides, he also hasn’t been on a motorcycle in too long.
“You know, I think I will,” he says, and Mark seems surprised, just a little. He doesn’t blame him. So is he. This day is just full of surprises.
It starts like that.
---
They don’t really end up with a destination. Neither of them planned that far ahead. There was just here and somewhere else, and the latter seemed like the better idea.
It’s Wednesday when they both talk to the Chief – separately – and Mark sleeps on the couch for the two nights leading up to Friday because he can’t stand the empty bed. He doesn’t say anything to Lexie until they’re both leaving on Thursday night, at the same time, because that used to be how things were.
“I heard you were leaving.” She says, and her eyes are far less angry and accusing than they were just days before. “For how long?”
He shrugs. He couldn’t answer even if he was trying. “I don’t know.”
“Where…?” Lexie slides her bottom lip between her teeth, and he hates when she does that, because she looks like a child, looks innocent, and it always manages to make him feel like he’s a bad person for doing any of this in the first place. For kissing her, for hiding things, for showing up too late to work, maybe even to something else. She makes him hate himself, just a little bit.
“I don’t really know.” And at least he’s still being honest. At least they’re being honest, finally. Who were they kidding after all?
Mark manages to walk away like there’s nothing between them anymore, and when he glances back, as he’s getting in the car, she’s still standing there, in the middle of the parking lot. Her eyes are glassy and she’s looking up, which means tears if memory serves (and it does), and he can’t get out of that parking lot fast enough.
He sleeps on the couch again. Two hours, and then three in the morning rolls around and he can’t lie still so he just gets up and packs and gets his damn bike out of storage.
Owen looks just as tired as he feels when he meets up with him as dawn is just breaking, and they don’t say anything as they ride off.
---
Part 2
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: Mark/Owen, definite Mark/Lexie and Cristina/Owen undertones.
Rating: R
Word Count: 6,513
Prompt: #2 - drunk for [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]
Author's Note: This is all [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] fault. And all to her credit. Thanks for the handholding up until the bitter end.
Summary: Post 5.11, AU from there. This is a story about losing something you never meant to have in the first place, and then realizing that you needed it more than you knew.
It’s one hell of a series of coincidences.
---
Lexie breaks up with Mark (he doesn’t understand the order of words in this sentence, but it’s certainly the truth) one Tuesday in late April. It’s five-twenty in the morning, in the car, and they’re both late to work, and they haven’t stopped yelling and blaming each other since his eyes opened to two seconds of too-bright light before his pants smacked him in the face.
“If you would just stop hiding this from Derek and…” she looks, more like glares at him, somehow musters the courage for the rest of the sentence, “and grow a pair,” he has to stop and look at her even if he is driving, and even if it is just for a second, “then maybe we wouldn’t be late to work every single day, and maybe I wouldn’t get in trouble for being late for rounds every single day.”
“Haven’t we already had this conversation – “
She talks right over him, in fact right along with him, like she knows exactly what he’s going to say, which is in fact the point here, “Yes we have already had this conversation, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you would just tell him. He was worried about you sleeping with me and…destroying my innocence or whatever, not having a five-month relationship with me, which, according to everyone I have ever met, you are completely incapable of having except with redheaded doctors who are married to your best friend. So maybe if you would just, I don’t know, say something to him, calmly, it would be a non-issue and I could actually get to work on time.”
“I can’t tell him because then he’d want to know why I didn’t tell him before, and I’ll still be in the doghouse with him.”
“You know – “ and then she just stops, her mouth snapping shut, and she faces forward, turning up the radio loud enough that talking over it would just be pointless. It’s childish – but then again that was the other thing Derek would be reading him the riot act over; she’s too young.
When they pull into the parking lot of Seattle Grace, Lexie slams the door into the frame hard enough that the car rattles a bit, and he gets out, calling after her, because he had nothing left to say, “So tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” she yells back, never turning around, her pace picking up significantly.
And that was how Lexie Grey broke up with Mark Sloan, and Mark got dumped for what was perhaps the first time in his life (cause Addison really does not count – at least in his head).
---
Roughly thirty minutes later, on the other side of the hospital, on that same Tuesday in late April, Cristina breaks up with Owen.
“Okay, are you planning on saying something to me today?” He walks alongside her, keeping pace with what might qualify as an all-out run if she gets any faster. To say she’s avoiding him is an understatement. Apparently he’d done a dumb thing. A very, very dumb thing. There might have been a ring, because Owen is spontaneous and impulsive sometimes, and she’d taken the box, held it in her palm, stared at it, and then chucked it at him.
And left.
“So it was a little premature.” Somehow this is going to end with him apologizing. It’s going to have to with the way things are going this morning.
“Understatement,” rolls off her tongue, and he’s just glad to hear her say something, anything. But she stops after that, keeps walking down the hallway, towards the elevator, and he knows he has approximately the time between now and that elevator to get her talking to him again. Because he is not getting in that elevator with her. He’s been through hell and back, but Cristina Yang can sometimes make all of that seem to pale in comparison.
“Blame it on the fact that we were at Joe’s first.” Because drunk is an excuse, a good one, even if it isn’t true, although he has a feeling it will be by tonight, no matter which way this ends. Cristina doesn’t say anything in reply to that, doesn’t even look at him, and while he’s trying to figure out another, better excuse they get to the elevator and Cristina punches the up button.
The doors open almost automatically, and she steps in, turns to face him finally, and in the ten seconds it takes for the doors to close completely, says, “This? Is over.”
And, you know, it’s not that Owen’s surprised so much as amazed at how easily she just did that. He stands there for a good minute or two, waiting for everything to set in. Waiting to stop feeling like he didn’t just lose something. If there’s anything he’s good at, through years of training and too much practice, it’s loss.
He’ll move on though somehow – he’s gotten pretty good at that too.
---
Part of the problem with never having been dumped before is figuring out what to do after the fact.
His first thought is Derek. Specifically single malt scotch and Joe’s bar, with Derek. Except for when you factor in two fairly big problems with that idea. One, Derek has Meredith and they’re happy, or as happy as Meredith can muster, and therefore Mark would probably be on the end of more pitying looks and lectures than sympathy. And two, and this is the big one, he can’t actually tell Derek because the reason he and Lexie broke up was because he wouldn’t tell Derek about them in the first place.
So that’s out.
It’s right around then when Mark starts to realize just how few people he has to turn to once Lexie and Derek are out of the equation.
It’s also right around then that he comes across Owen Hunt staring at the closed doors of the elevator on the third floor.
“Trying out telekinesis?” Mark asks, because he needs jokes and sarcasm and something that’s not wallowing in his own self-pity. “Because I’m fairly sure pushing the button is just faster.”
Owen snaps out of whatever daze he was just in with a, “What? Sorry.”
Mark frowns, this being the first time he’s caught the other man even somewhat off-guard and out of it. It’s both new and disconcerting. “Something wrong?” And then, because he recognizes the look on Owen’s face as being the same one he was in possession of just under half an hour ago takes an educated guess, “Women?”
There’s a moment in which Owen seems to be trying to decide whether or not he should reply, before he nods, letting out a breath. “Women.”
With that single word of solidarity a new idea, probably a bad one, forms in his head. It’s probably because Owen is the only other guy he ever really associates with on a semi-regular basis outside of Derek and the Chief (which is…not the same) and also because he looks like he could use it, but Mark asks, “Feel like getting a drink after work? Away from the women.”
It doesn’t take Owen very long to nod as he says, “Sounds like the best idea I’ve heard all morning.”
Considering the only two ideas Mark’s heard today so far have been ‘tell Derek’ and ‘grow a pair’ he’s inclined to agree on that.
---
True to his word, Owen slides into the seat next to Mark, front and center at the bar, almost as soon as he gets off shift.
Not true to Mark’s word, they aren’t away from the women. Callie sits on the other side of Mark, close enough that they’re probably sharing body heat. They’d been talking quietly, and it was fairly obvious that neither of them were even close to sober before he got there. But when Owen sits down there’s a nod between him and Mark, and Callie looks between the two of them before downing the rest of her drink and whispering something that sounds like a “you two have fun” to Mark before waving in Owen’s direction and leaving.
“Feel like talking about it?” Mark asks, his scotch half-raised to his lips.
Joe pushes a glass Owen’s way, and Owen stares into his drink like he’s looking for all the answers for a long moment, before he says, “Do you?”
He’s going to guess the answer is not really, but Mark still gives him something in the form of, “I don’t think I’ve ever been dumped before.”
Owen laughs, because the other man has to be somewhere near forty and there just isn’t any way that he isn’t lying – except for the way he’s staring, very seriously, at Owen like he doesn’t have the faintest idea why he’s laughing. Okay. Interesting. “I can top that,” he tells Mark, since it’s only fair that he reciprocate, “never proposed before. And then gotten shot down.”
“Yang?” Mark asks, like saying yes would make him certifiable. He only nods. “I’m not surprised. That’s what happens when you get left at the altar the first time.”
He nearly chokes. “She what?”
Mark raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t know that?”
No, but that would explain a whole lot. He wonders if she was this cold and distant before. “Does she strike you as someone who’s particularly talkative?”
Hands up, Mark just shakes his head. “Hey, I wasn’t the one who asked her to marry me.” There’s a moment where Mark seems to sober, studying his drink far too intently. “Marriage is overrated anyway.”
Owen nods, even if he isn’t sure he believes that. “So who was yours?” Mark looks up at him, confused, so he elaborates. “Who dumped you?”
Mark looks around, scanning their surroundings, probably to figure out who is in earshot. Satisfied, he keeps his voice low as he tells him, “Lexie Grey.”
He manages not to laugh this time. “Interns. Good. I hear they’re a feisty bunch this year.”
“Quite an accomplishment when you think about what came before them.” Owen doesn’t know much about how the first year resident’s were besides what he’s heard about a cut LVAD wire and some big cover-up. He doesn’t think he wants to.
“So what are you going to do about it,” seems like the next logical question. Everyone has that secret desire for revenge, even if it’s just said over a few drinks at the bar. It’s the people who act upon it who are the problem. They’re the ones you have to watch out for.
“It’s not going to be moping around, I’ll tell you that.” Mark replies, and Owen nods a silent amen to that idea. Moping never got him or anyone else anywhere.
“Just got to move forward,” Owen tells him, but the words hold meaning for both of them.
Perhaps there’s more there for Mark. He gets this look on his face, like he has ideas that maybe he shouldn’t have, which seems to be one of his more often used expressions. His finger swirls around the rim of his glass, and he seems to nod, deciding on something. “Right. Moving forward. Getting the hell out of that hospital for starters.”
“You so sure quitting is the way to go here?” It seems a bit rash, if you ask him. And his situation was probably the worst of the two.
Mark laughs at that. “Not quitting. Just…taking a break. I’ve got a motorcycle I haven’t used in forever. Maybe now is a good time.”
“Don’t you live in a hotel?”
“Not there. Storage. All my old stuff is in storage or back in New York.”
“Ah.” Owen nods, and then thinks better of that. “What exactly are you planning on doing?”
“Road trip. I’ve got vacation time. Give me some time to clear my head.” Mark tells him. There’s more nodding and Owen figures trying to talk him out of it would be fairly pointless. It might be overkill, but people do some really interesting things after failed relationships and bad breakups. Mark downs another drink, says, “You know you should come along. Road trips are highly underrated.”
It feels like it comes out of nowhere. Spontaneity and all that impulsiveness that had gotten Owen in trouble earlier, but the truth is these are things he does. These are things he used to do, before. Just…pick up and leave and breathe, and right now, when he’s had enough alcohol in his system that he’s feeling pretty good, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea anymore.
Besides, he also hasn’t been on a motorcycle in too long.
“You know, I think I will,” he says, and Mark seems surprised, just a little. He doesn’t blame him. So is he. This day is just full of surprises.
It starts like that.
---
They don’t really end up with a destination. Neither of them planned that far ahead. There was just here and somewhere else, and the latter seemed like the better idea.
It’s Wednesday when they both talk to the Chief – separately – and Mark sleeps on the couch for the two nights leading up to Friday because he can’t stand the empty bed. He doesn’t say anything to Lexie until they’re both leaving on Thursday night, at the same time, because that used to be how things were.
“I heard you were leaving.” She says, and her eyes are far less angry and accusing than they were just days before. “For how long?”
He shrugs. He couldn’t answer even if he was trying. “I don’t know.”
“Where…?” Lexie slides her bottom lip between her teeth, and he hates when she does that, because she looks like a child, looks innocent, and it always manages to make him feel like he’s a bad person for doing any of this in the first place. For kissing her, for hiding things, for showing up too late to work, maybe even to something else. She makes him hate himself, just a little bit.
“I don’t really know.” And at least he’s still being honest. At least they’re being honest, finally. Who were they kidding after all?
Mark manages to walk away like there’s nothing between them anymore, and when he glances back, as he’s getting in the car, she’s still standing there, in the middle of the parking lot. Her eyes are glassy and she’s looking up, which means tears if memory serves (and it does), and he can’t get out of that parking lot fast enough.
He sleeps on the couch again. Two hours, and then three in the morning rolls around and he can’t lie still so he just gets up and packs and gets his damn bike out of storage.
Owen looks just as tired as he feels when he meets up with him as dawn is just breaking, and they don’t say anything as they ride off.
---
Part 2
