A/N: For the prompt- socks are the devil. This is just, you know, the living arrangement I would love to see when Callie moves in with Hahn. Enjoy-
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Wrecking Yard of Fancy Cars
- Spider Silk Dress
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"Who is that?" Cristina glares at the woman on the other side of her living room who is wearing big yellow plastic gloves.
"Our maid." Mark answers easily, shoveling more soggy fruity circles into his mouth.
Cristina dips her hand into the box of cereal that she likes dry and he loves mushy and chews it over. "Last time I hired a maid she left crying."
"Well, let's hope that doesn't happen again." The bowl clatters into the sink with a thud and the spoon bounces out of its holder into the bottomless pile of other dirty dishes that neither has touched for weeks.
"Yeah." Cristina snorts and watches the maid tidy up her magazine stacks. "No! Don't!" She yells when the woman makes a bee line for the trash can.
"You don't read them." Mark pokes his head out of his room, top half of his body devoid of clothing and Cristina is temporarily distracted. Neither one of the is modest in the slightest and you can usually find them prancing around in what would be considered unacceptable for other roommates to be seen in but they are them and they don't care.
"I could read them."
"But you don't." He nods to the maid, "Toss them."
"Hey! You don't get to vote Sloan. This is my apartment and my living room."
"I pay rent." He interrupts, sensing that this is headed somewhere else entirely.
"I let you live here when Callie moved out and if I say they stay then they stay."
Mark notices that she is about two seconds from slamming her feet into the hardwood floor like a toddler and gives up, "Fine. They stay."
"Thank you." She exhales, and heads over to the empty coffee pot. "God damn it! How hard is it to start the fucking coffee again?"
"I never started it to begin with genius, so why don't you learn how to set the timer and stop your bitching. I always buy my coffee on the way to the hospital." He reaches around her, pinning her to the counter because he can, for an apple to toss in the garbage can or accidentally leave in his car. He hates apples.
The maid eyes them both wearily, "What are you looking at?" Cristina demands, wrapping her scarf around her neck hurriedly as Mark holds the door open.
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"She lost my socks." Cristina says by way of hellos entering the attending's lounge four days later. They both know she is referring to the maid. It's all they ever talk about anymore for some reason.
Once they got yelled at for her being in here but no one seems to care or notice anymore. It's not like she isn't accomplished or smart enough to be an attending, she just doesn't have enough years behind her yet...and they all know it.
"Socks are the devil." Mark tells her, throughly convinced that there is no stupider item of clothing than socks. If he could, he'd be barefoot all the time. "You don't even like socks."
"Yes...I do." She interjects, remembering that one day, the very alcohol infused afternoon they both had off, she had shared her hatred for socks. They bonded. It was her first mistake.
"No. You don't." He insists. It's one of his favorite things about her.
"Well, I don't like her either."
"That's irrelevant." He replies, unwrapping her veggie sandwich and letting it drop with a dull thump into her scrub covered lap.
"Why do we even need a maid?"
"Because we are slobs." He replies and offers his pickle silently. She grabs it from his hands without thought and bites down roughly causing juice to spray and the vegetable to crackle in protest.
"True." She lets her attention fall to the journal on her right and carefully tucks her shoe-less feet under Mark's legs.
If they weren't roommates and if he wasn't really sick of living in the hotel all alone, Mark would have made a move by now. If Cristina didn't fear she actually liked Mark and understood she was nowhere near being ready for a serious relationship again, she would have already gone there. But as it is they merely enjoy the sexually tensed relationship that has all the perks of a pair of dating young adults- rounds of screaming about there being no clean towels (because neither of them has mastered the art of laundry yet), cuddle time (only on her terms he has learned), paid meals and someone to take the frustration of everyday out on.
It was better than any match she would have gotten placing an ad up at the hospital and she'll never admit that to anyone. Not even Meredith who, with McDreamy - to her sincere displeasure and Mark's joy -, is a frequent visitor of their bachelor pad. Sometimes she thinks Mark feels the same way because in the six weeks they have lived together he has never brought home another woman and he is almost always there in the morning.
Then again that could be the new leaf bullshit he is always spouting off about when he is drunk. Well, that and being heartbroken over the stupid, slutty redhead. When that happens Cristina comes back to her senses and realizes that this thing, whatever it is, will never work because based on past loves she is nowhere near his type and he is not even close to Burke.
"She'll be gone by the end of the week." He says quietly scrolling through his email on his phone.
"Thank you." She replies and buries her feet a little further under him, not minding when his hand not-so-subtly comes up around the back of the couch to rest, and his fingers toy with the curls she didn't manage to brush this morning.
"And we can send the laundry out to be done." Mark tells her, enjoying the way her waves feel in his hand. She smiles, the crooked smile, the one with teeth he has come to love and he thinks for maybe just an instant that this could go somewhere big.
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