A/N: written for the prompt "What happened last night?" for ga_lfas on livejournal.

- - - - -

Lexie wakes with the alarm and, at first, fumbling to turn it off, everything seems normal.

But she's cold. Freezing, actually. And when she rolls over to Mark's side to nuzzle and warm up, her skin meets emptiness and smooth sheets.

She blinks her eyes open, not quite able to pin down her shifting feelings as loneliness gives way to annoyance, annoyance to guilt, guilt to loneliness again.

He's been walking on eggshells ever since Sloan moved in and sometimes, now, he takes things too seriously. Perhaps it was the wrong time to tell him 'no more sex for you,' until he'd talked to his daughter about her plans.

She gets out of bed and quickly pulls on thick socks, sweat pants, a cosy knitted sweater. She'll find him, bring him back to bed and make sure he knows she was joking.

But he's not in the apartment. Only Sloan, asleep on the couch, covered in a blanket. For a moment, Lexie lets herself hate her, before padding across the hallway to Callie's place to find her boyfriend.

Again, he's not there. Just Arizona drinking coffee.

"He's outside, Lexie," she says, widening her eyes and half-smiling, trying to be reassuring, but only succeeding in bringing Lexie's emerging fears to the surface. "You should go down there," she adds, nodding quickly several times to back up her words.

- - - - -

On the steps outside the apartment building, Mark is sitting watching smoke curl from the cigarette in his hand.

"I didn't know you smoke." Lexie sits down next to him. She's not judging, just scared. As an afterthought, she adds a soft, "Hey."

"I don't. Well . . ." He smiles apologetically, looks down at his hand. "Arizona offered, so . . . " He shrugs before taking a quick drag. "Bad night."

"I didn't really mean it. About the sex." She bumps her shoulder affectionately against his arm. "I missed you."

He's not listening.

"Sloan's pregnant," he says. (Lexie swallows.) "She doesn't have anyone else."

At first all her thoughts are about him. Being a dad is hard enough for him; a grandfather is unimaginable! There's a little part of her that wants to laugh at the absurdity. Of course, she doesn't: that would be tactless. And anyway, the urge quickly gives way to bubbling, anxious anger.

The girl doesn't even like him. She's rude and mean and vapid and she bought him a freaking snow globe for Christmas! Now they have to turn their whole life upside down for her?

She hasn't let herself go there before, but now she thinks her finger was an omen. She's a surgeon: a young, promising, dedicated surgeon and Sloan Riley made her cut off her own finger! Who knows what she'll wreck next?

But she strokes his arm. "We'll get through this," she says.

He flicks ash on the sidewalk. "Yeah . . ." he mutters.

Her heart lurches a little, because it doesn't sound like he believes it any more than she does.