When Callie finally says goodnight to her family and comes up to bed to join Mark, she finds him curled in the fetal position, arms wrapped around his stomach.
"You okay?" she asks and lightly strokes his forehead.
"Hurts," he says dismally, closing his eyes against the pain in his aching belly.
"You know, third helpings of literally everything my mother cooked for Thanksgiving dinner may not have been exactly the best idea," Callie suggests gently.
Mark groans, remembering in detail the formerly delicious Cuban food that now seems like some cruel form of torture.
"She kept offering," he grunts, drawing his knees as close to his chest as he can manage as his stomach churns at the memories of what he ate. "And your father kept glaring at me like if I said no, he'd kill me." He uncurls himself and rolls slowly onto his back and looks at her with pained, blue eyes.
Callie laughs. "He wouldn't actually kill you," she says. "Just break your arm, maybe. And I could fix that."
"Yeah, that's right, Torres. Make fun of me when I'm dying, why don't you?"
"Sloan," she says.
"What?" he asks, confused.
"Sloan, not Torres. We're married remember?"
"How could I forget?" He attempts a kind of smirk and makes an effort to tease her. "If we weren't married I wouldn't be lying here with the mother of all bellyaches. I'd be in the Archfield with a hot blonde nurse having—"
"Empty, meaningless sex."
"Hot, dirty sex," he corrects. "Plus I wouldn't have a Cuban food phobia. Anyway, Torres sounds better. It suits you better than Sloan. You'll always be Torres to me."
Callie wriggles her shoulders and smiles provocatively. "We could have hot, dirty sex," she flirts.
Mark groans again. "Did you not get the memo?" he asks and rubs his stomach despondently. "It hurts."
Callies eyes widen. "It hurts too much for sex?" she asks, slightly shocked.
He nods, utterly sorry for himself.
"I'm sorry, cariño," she leans down and breathes into Mark's ear, then adds with a slight laugh, "But it's just a man thing, right?"
"A man thing?" Mark asks, not understanding.
"You know. How men are total wusses about pain?"
Mark gives her an injured look. "I am not a wuss about pain," he protests. "When I was seventeen, one time in a football game, I fractured my wrist in two places and still played until the end of the quarter. And I scored a touchdown." He pauses and waits for her approval and, just because he obviously feels horrible, she puts on the expected look of cheerleaderish admiration. Then his eyes go all big and vulnerable again. "I'm not kidding," he says pathetically. "It hurts."
Callie slides on to the bed next to him and gently puts her hand on his stomach and tries to rub away the ache with slow, rhythmic circles.
Mark sighs deeply, a little from pain and a little from pleasure, and relaxes into her touch.
"So, is there anything else I can do for you?" Callie whispers in his ear.
He turns his head slightly to look at her.
"I mean it," he says plaintively. "I can't fuck you right now. Trust me, I would love to. But . . ." he pauses for a second, before adding, yet again, "it hurts."
Really, whatever he says about not being a wuss, like all men, he's being a little melodramatic. She can see he's hurting, but it's a bellyache, not an emergent condition. Still, she loves him and she'll play along with him for a while.
"Not sex," she says. "I mean, what do you like people to do for you when you're sick?"
He looks at her stupidly, as though she just asked the question in Spanish, so she clarifies.
"I mean, when I was a little girl and I was sick, my mom would tuck me in bed and sing to me in Spanish and it always felt really good." She smiles at the memory. "So is there something you like, that would make you feel good?" When he looks at her blankly, she adds. "It's okay, Mark. You don't have to be shy with me. I know you're a stud in real life an' all. But you're allowed to let up when you're sick. I won't tell anyone."
Mark swallows awkwardly. Finally, he says, very quietly. "I don't know."
"Seriously, you can tell me," Callie encourages him.
"Seriously," Mark replies, unexpectedly abrupt and harsh, "I don't know." He rolls back over onto his side and pulls away from her a little before he adds, in a low voice, "Nobody ever really took care of me when I was sick."
Callie's heart kind of breaks for him for a second, but then she decides she can't possibly have heard him right.
"Nobody ever took care of you?" she repeats incredulously.
"No," he says, still not looking at her.
"Not Addison?"' she asks.
"Addison and I weren't really like that," he says quietly and adds, after a pause that seems to last minutes, "If anything, all the taking care went the other way."
Tears start up in Callie's eyes and she can feel her heart tugging at her again. She hadn't misunderstood him and she hardly dares ask the next question.
"Your parents?" she whispers.
Mark gives a slight, bitter laugh that holds a suspicion of suppressed tears. He swallows again. "I didn't really get sick when I was a kid," he says. "I guess I learned not to."
It's true. He didn't get sick much. He hasn't gotten sick much as an adult. He's a healthy guy; he works out; and surgeons don't really have time to get sick. But he can't help feeling that the last time he had a bad stomachache, when he was seven and cried himself to sleep while his parents fought downstairs, might have something to do with it.
Callie snuggles next to him, as close as she can manage, spooning herself around him, with her hand resting on his stomach.
"I will always take care of you. I promise," she says, softness and love for him fighting in her voice with anger at the way life has treated him. "And, for the record, you are so not a wuss about pain."
It takes him a while, but eventually he says, "Thank you," investing the simple words with a wealth of gratitude that makes the tears well up in Callie's eyes again.
After a while, Mark falls asleep and then, lulled by his even breathing and his warmth, Callie feels her own eyes closing.
When she wakes up, it's to a delicious licking sensation that sends small shudders of pleasure running through her body. She can't actually see Mark, since he's buried under the comforter, but she can sure as hell feel him.
"You're feeling better, I take it?" she just manages to utter, then adds "No, don't stop!" as he maneuvers himself up over her body and emerges from the covers, grinning happily at her.
"You took care of me," he says softly, lovingly, his voice almost a caress in itself and Callie reaches out and strokes his tousled hair.
For a second, he holds her gaze and she can feel his absolute love and his amazement that she loves him as much as she does. It overwhelms her that her small, ordinary act of love meant so much to him and it's all she can do not to start crying again. But then he smirks dirtily at her, adding as he disappears back under the comforter, his breath hot and tantalizing between her legs,
"Now I'm gonna take care of you!"