A/N: written for the ga_lfas challenge on livejournal, for the prompt "coloring book."

*

She's lounging on the couch, flicking through a magazine; he's watching a football game on TV, sitting on a chair placed strategically away from her. It's not exactly hanging out and it's far from comfortable; but they're in the same room, father and daughter, without Lexie to act as a buffer. And it's okay; well, it's something approaching okay-ish.

Until Sloan asks, out of nowhere, "So what are your mom and dad like?"

Mark pretends he's engrossed in the game. Discussing the senior side of the intergenerational Sloan shitstorm with the unanticipated junior side isn't something he plans on doing. Ever.

But she's not letting it go. "Dude!"

He raises an eyebrow, gives a dry smile, and wearily offers, "Better parents than yours, I guess," hoping that an answer of some kind (especially one that comes with a little irony) will shut her up.

It doesn't work; barely a beat passes before she asks, "D'you ever meet my mom's parents?" She puts down her magazine, warming to the subject. "Her dad's okay, I guess. But her mom's a bitch. Like totally stuck on herself. And it's such bullshit when they live in a fucking double-wide."

He gapes at her as he catches up with the stream of talk. It's too late for fatherly clichés like 'watch your language,' or 'respect your grandmother,' and either, coming from him, would be a joke. So he focuses on the part he can respond to (sort of). "Your mom and I weren't exactly at the meet the parents stage," he says stiffly.

"Duh!" She rolls her eyes. "I just thought you might've, you know? It's a really small town."

"No." He clears his throat, awkward as he processes the cynical 'Duh!' But Sloan's lack of illusions about the stage he and her mom were at (eleven days shacked up with booze, pizza and very few clothes, before he moved on to another girl) is another thing it's too late to do anything about. So he picks up the remote, turns up the volume of the TV and squints at the game he's not following.

"Seriously?!" She scoots along the couch, grabs the remote and turns off the TV.

"Hey," he protests weakly. "I was watching --"

"What are your mom and dad like?"

Feeling cornered and increasingly guilty, Mark sighs deeply, but trots out the excuse he taught himself to make for them. "They weren't really interested in having a kid. They had careers and their own friends."

It's rationalized crap; obvious self-protection on more than one level; and he shoots her a quick, evasive look, doubting she's buying it.

Open, stark emotion is written across her face.

She jumps up, absently handing back the remote. "Wait there," she says, and goes off to the guest room. When she comes back, she's carrying a large, thin, crumpled book. She holds it out to him.

"My mom gave it to me," she says, sitting down again as he reluctantly takes it. "When I was like three or something. It has animals and stuff." She shrugs, as though uncaring, but a faint blush spreads across her cheeks and nose. "Open it if you want."

It's a coloring book. Zoo animals, colored outside the lines and in all the wrong shades. The part that catches his eye, though, is the inscription inside the front cover: 'Happy Birthday, Sloan. Love Dad xxx.'

He swallows, caught between his heart sinking for her (and maybe himself) and thinking up a defense. "I didn't . . ."

"I know," she says. "But for the longest time . . . " She shrugs again. "I keep meaning to throw it out."

They both stare at the floor, until she says, "Kinda sucks, huh? When your parents aren't interested in having a kid?"

Her eyes are full of a kind of guarded, who-gives-a-fuck hope. She's enough like him that he has a pretty good idea of the feelings that make her cling to a tattered old coloring book, and when he mutters, "I'm sorry," he feels useless; and that doesn't change when she mutters back,

"Whatever."

But she doesn't take her eyes off his and, when she almost smiles, he almost smiles too and agrees, quietly, "Yeah. It kinda sucks."