I'm on an Amelia kick lately. What can I say? The show hints at backstory, and I consider it our responsibility to fill it in.
The Magic Word
"Please, Mark." Ice blue eyes shining with need, damp sooty lashes. "Please."
X
"Mark!" she bounces on her tiptoes in front of him, apple-cheeked and giggling. "I really really really need it."
"Really really?" he teases her. "What happened to your dessert, Amy?"
"I dropped it." The dark ring around her little mouth betrays her lie. "I need yours."
He grins in spite of himself. "Are you sure your mom wants you to have all this sugar?"
Amy bounces more fiercely. "She won't mind. Maaark," she draws out the syllable. "She won't!"
"What's the magic word, then?"
"Please," she flutters her eyelashes and Mark, who after three years of college has more notches on his belt than any of his friends, is impressed and rueful at how early they learn.
"Because you asked nicely." He hands over his cupcake, sloppy from the late-May sun. Down the sloping lawn, Derek and his reedy sometime-girlfriend Laura (privately, Mark refers to her as Bore-a) are playing pig-in-the-middle with Nancy. It smells like burgers and the promise of summer and Amy rewards him with a big, gap-toothed grin.
"Thank you, Mark," she chirps sweetly, cramming half the cupcake into her mouth at once, then the other half, not even stopping when she starts to cough.
X
"Mark, please - it would take you five minutes and I'm going to be here all night."
"As opposed to where?" he asks dubiously, checking his watch. It's nearly nine o'clock and the private time he grudgingly allowed Derek and Addison is already an hour overdue.
Amy bounces a scuffed tennis shoe against the side of the old sofa. "I want to go to the movies with Jess and Peter and-" she stops at Mark's raised brow. "What?"
"A boy?"
"Not a real boy," she rolls her eyes. "Just a friend."
"They all start out that way," Mark advises her and she makes a face.
"Yuck. I just want to see the movie. It's not even R-rated."
"So why can't you go?"
"I have to finish my homework first. Mom said. Science is all that's left and if you help me..." she trails off, regards him with wide, shining blue eyes. "Pretty please?"
"Isn't that cheating, Amy?"
"No." She shakes her head vigorously, dark hair swishing from side to side. "It's helping. I'd help you too, if I knew how to do anything," she says this last bit glumly. "It sucks being the youngest."
Mark gives her ponytail an affectionate tweak. "You know things."
Amy sits up straighter, tips her head to the side. "I'll know more if you help me with my science paragraph. Please, Mark? I really really need your help." She gives a comically dramatic sniff when he hesitates and then it's his turn to roll his eyes.
"Fine." He relieves her of the notebook. "I'll help you out. Just this once, since your brother and Juliet aren't back yet."
"Her name is Addison," Amy corrects, her neat little features crinkling with confusion.
Derek and Addison don't get home for another hour - Mark's already driven Amy to the movies and given Peter a threatening glare that promised everything he would do to him if he dared hurt his surrogate baby sister.
X
"Mark, please." Amy tugs at his shirtsleeve and he pulls back automatically. "Please believe me. I didn't touch the liquor cabinet, I swear. I can't even reach it. I'm the shortest, Mark, it's not fair to blame me."
It's Christmas and she smells like peppermint schnapps. "Just the sip Addie gave me. I swear."
Mark throws Addison a dark look and she shrinks back. "It was just a sip, Mark - it was mostly cocoa."
"Amy," and he hears how sharp his own voice is. Louder than he intends.
"What's going on in here?" Carolyn Shepherd, red-and-green apron and flour-dusted wooden spoon, holidays to the hilt as always, her face flushed from the kitchen heat.
"Nothing," Amy says quickly. Her blue eyes are very bright, pupils dilated.
Addison looks uncertainly at Mark.
"Addie, where'd you go?" Derek, wind-mussed curls and an armful of logs, bursts through the door before anyone can answer his mother. He sets the wood down before the fireplace, gives the group a mildly curious look and kisses Addison's cheek.
Please, Mark, Amy mouths at him over her mother's shoulder and he swallows down his anger, swallows everything except the fear in her eyes.
"Nothing, Ma," he says quietly. "Everything's fine."
Thank you, Amy mouths and he gives her a tight smile.
X
"Please, Mark." Her blue eyes are wild, unfocused. One of her arms is strapped down; his throat tightens at the sight of her slim wrist struggling against the stiff beige cuff. "Please. I need something, Mark. I can't - I need it. Please."
He sits in the hard chair by her side, tries to stroke her dark hair but she pulls her head away, trembling. "Don't touch me." A violent shudder runs through her. "Please Mark, I just need a little something."
"Amy." He grips the plastic railing of her bed. "Amy, you know I can't do that."
"You can. You're a doctor. Please, Mark, it hurts." A tear slides down one cheek. It's not the round rosy cheek he remembers; the skin stretches taut and white over delicate bones. "Just to get me through. Please."
"I'm sorry." His throat is stuck, burning, and he swallows hard on an impulse to reach out to her, to hold her. She looks tiny and fragile in the bed and he fights the memory of her in another hospital bed when she was even smaller.
"Mark, you came!" she whispered then, husky-voiced from crying. In the endless white of the hospital sheets she looked almost too small to be real, tearstained and fragile. A broken doll. "Did you hear? Did you hear what happened to my daddy?"
"Please, Mark," and she's crying in earnest now, bony chest heaving.
"Amy, you're going to be okay. You have to detox. I know it hurts, but it's going to get better. You're going to get better."
"Please." Her lips are cracked and dry. White shreds of dehydration build up at the corners of her mouth. She groans around another sob. "Please, Mark."
He knows he can't. His hand hovers at his side for just a moment. His prescription pad is in his bag on the floor. But he can't. In the bed Amy moans again, an ugly guttural sound and he has to fist the moisture from his own eyes. He can't. Can he?
"Please. Please, Mark."
His hands brush the coarse nylon strap of his bag.
"Amy - oh, Amy," the soft familiar voice interrupts his thoughts. It's Addison in the doorway, crying openly, and he goes to her, gives her a quick hard hug before leading her to Amy's side. Embarrassed fingers clench in his pockets at how close he had come.
Addison takes Amy's hand and they cry together, Mark leaving with only a quick glance over his shoulder to try to appease the sour taste of betrayal at refusing her.
X
"Please, Mark. Please." Her blue eyes are shining with tears under damp sooty lashes. "I need it. I need you. Please, Mark."
She looks beautiful in the shadow of the twinkling downtown lights. Her dark hair is wispy around her face, little curling tendrils - it's the humidity of the Pacific Northwest, it's different and she looks different. Or maybe it's the way she stands there in this city she's never seen before, in his apartment - a little brighter and a little darker than everything around her.
He closes the distance between them and places a gentle kiss on her soft pink mouth, warm and mobile and strong enough to swallow him whole. She sinks into his arms like the leaf piles of their youth, arms thrown wide, cheeks rosy with exertion and the heady anticipation of winter.
"Please," she murmurs as he mouths her neck, nips her shoulder, palms greedily down the shape of her body, slender and deeply curved and nothing like their youth at all. He doesn't ask her if she got what she needed from Derek. What she came here for. He just gives her everything she asks, until there's nothing more.
"Thank you, Mark." She collapses next to him on the damp silk sheets, spent and flushed, dark hair tumbling everywhere. She sounds stronger somehow. Older. "I needed that."
Right or wrong, he's never wanted to refuse her.
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