Disclaimer: Still not mine
Okay, so originally this was only meant to be a one-shot, but the feedback for this was just overwhelmingly nice (you guys are all great!) and then the thought popped into my head that there are actually eight rules of Fight Club. So here's my plan: I'm hoping to extend this to an eight chapter story (seeing the connection yet? :P), each loosely based around the eight rules. I've already got most of my ideas for the chapters mapped out, some are fitting better into this theme than others, but hopefully I'll be able to get it done. I don't have a great history with multi-chapter works, but I'm going to try as hard as I can not to give up on this! It's just a matter of actually writing a lot of the chapters out.
This one came pretty easily, though, so I thought I'd get it up here as for the next two or three weeks I'm going to be so busy I don't think I'll have time to go on the computer, let alone write on it. Hopefully this will tide you over until I can get back online and put another chapter up. Thank you all again for the feedback, and hope you enjoy!
(In case you missed it)
"The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club.
The second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club."
"Hey there, Little Grey."
Pathetic. She's just so pathetic, and she knows it because she can feel a delicious little coil of heat warm somewhere in her just at the sound of his voice, his breath on her ear, and really, that seems a little too clichéd even for her liking. But, still, she can't suppress the tiniest of shivers running through her, and she can practically hear him smile from behind her at her reaction.
He's been hanging around her more and more lately, not that she minds, since he caught her (and pretty much every other intern on the hospital's pay-roll) playing doctor in the basement. A guiding hand at her elbow when they walked together, leaning tantalizingly close over her shoulder to check on her stitching during a surgery, he's been everywhere. She's slowly getting used to the idea. Looking forward to it, even.
She turns, surprised (although maybe she shouldn't be) by just how close he is. All he has to do is reach out, rest his palms on the nurse's station counter behind her, and she'd be trapped. Flashes of the basement, of his hands running up and down her bare arms, her face buried between his neck and his collarbone, come flooding back to her, and she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear to distract herself.
"Good morning, Dr. Sloan" she finally replied, watching the corners of his mouth curl up slowly, his trademark smirk spreading over his features. She pretends (or tries to, at least) that she wasn't watching.
It doesn't work.
"We'll see" is all he says, looking her up and down. She wishes she would stop blushing so much, and really, it's only a matter of time before one of the nurses milling around notices (let alone her fellow interns, or Derek or Meredith…) He must have picked up on her train of thought, because he backs up, not quite to a professional distance and his smirk dulls slightly from predatory to just suggestive. It must have been a big effort on his part and the thought makes her smile, too. "So, you and the rest of the peons doing another darts night at Joe's?"
He tries to sound uninterested, uncaring of her answer, but Lexie understands what he's really asking. "I'm getting a little bored of darts." She clutches the charts she's holding against her chest, before adding, "And they're not peons" as an afterthought (but she's not really focused on them right now, so she's not sure how convincing she sounds).
His laugh is warm and infectious. "So no darts, then." She shakes her head. "But Joe's isn't completely out." Lexie nods this time, still smiling prettily, and pats him playfully on the arm.
"You catch on quick, Dr. Sloan."
"Grey," he grins back at her, wishing they hadn't attracted the attention of the nurse sitting behind her so he could run his fingers along the top edge of her scrub pants. "You have no idea."
She looks up at him from under dark lashes like she can tell what he's thinking. "You could always give me an idea. Tonight. At Joe's." Mark likes the idea, leaning closer to continue her train of thought. Lexie's eyes flickered to the sleeves of her lab coat.
She hadn't meant to draw attention to them, but the practice sutures on her arms were itching in the worst way, and between the temptation to scratch them and the (now overwhelming) temptation to rise to stand on her tiptoes and kiss him again, Lexie's forced to chose the more work-appropriate course of action.
The stitches feel a little better after scratching, though, and she can focus more now on what he's saying.
On the other hand, it gave Mark time to notice where her attention was directed (instead of him, that is, something he was quick to admit he wasn't exactly used to). His brow furrows, and Lexie can all but see the gears turning in his head.
She's ready with the story this time. Bees. She'll say it was bees, because last time she tried this, a kitten turned somehow into a scratchy hairbrush, and Dr. Yang didn't buy one word of it. But bees would work, right? So when he starts to say something, to extend his hand to touch her arm, Lexie shrinks back and assures him the itching is nothing, but…
He reaches out anyway, lifting the white sleeve of her lab coat, and is met with a neat line of five bandages. She begins to fidget.
"Huh, so that's what Derek meant by fragile" he mutters, not realizing he spoke it aloud, but he has bigger things to worry about. Hand still closed around Lexie's wrist he looks to her, actually concerned. "I have to ask, Grey. Are you cutting yourself?" The last part came out an incredulous whisper, and suddenly anything in the world, any other explanation, was better to Lexie, than letting him think she was capable of doing that.
"No, no! No, nothing like that. God! First Meredith, which I guess I can understand seeing as maybe she's spoken three words to me these last couple of days and that's an unusually high number," she's rambling again, and there's no end in sight, "but you of all people should know better. I mean, you're pretty much the only one I talk to around here, and I know we're not like the new Meredith and Christina, but I tell you things, sometimes." She takes a deep breath, calming down now. "And I would have told you this… you know, if this was that."
Mark is fighting the smirk on his face. That speech was just so incredibly Lexie (a little neurotic, kind of haphazard, but well-intentioned), and he liked the way her cheeks flushed when she got worked up, but there was clearly still something serious going on here, and he needed to find out what. So he played along (but not before shooting the nurse a severe glance, who'd looked up at Lexie's sudden outburst, and just as quickly looked back down now under Mark's stare).
"So you're telling me that this is absolutely not that?"
"Absolutely," she nods, very seriously. "Uh, not, that is."
"Then you're going to have to tell me what this is, because either way it doesn't look good."
She tries tugging her arm back from him now, wondering what it is about their encounters that makes it so he's always preventing her escape (although it turned out pretty well for her last time), but his hold on her wrist doesn't waver, and she remains standing guiltily in front of him.
"Can we just do this later please?" she practically begs, glancing almost nervously around her.
He shrugs, and for a moment she thinks that he's actually going to let this go. But then his grip tightens, just slightly, as he begins steering her away from the nurses' station. "How about we just do it now?" he asks.
"You don't think this looks the tiniest bit suspicious?" she quips when she realizes he is, in fact, dragging her into the nearest supply closet.
He just looks at her like she doesn't know what she's saying. "Grey, I think that's the least of your problems."
The door shuts loudly behind them, and Mark takes up position in front of it, arms crossed, blocking the only escape route. His gaze, she notices, is more expectant than anything else, and he's looking at her like she's a puzzle he's almost finished. He just has to put the last few pieces in the right places. This, she knows, is a huge piece, and she hesitates, not sure where to start. She clutches her files closer to her chest.
"I… well, I'm not cutting myself."
He nods slowly, making his way towards her. "We already covered that" he reminds her, almost gently.
Her hands are shaking a little now, just because she knows that he's not going to like what she's about to tell him, and what Mark Sloan does and doesn't like has become increasingly important to her over the last few days. Lexie takes a deep breath, and remembering their encounter in the basement, can't help but blurt out:
"IV club!"
That stops him dead in his tracks, knowing what that means (but hoping like hell he's wrong). Lexie keeps going.
"Uh, except we're not doing IV's anymore. We've kind of moved on…. to suturing." She winces a little, wanting to close her eyes, but watching Mark's reaction is more important, so she forces them open.
If Mark is surprised, or upset, or furious (and Lexie would guess the answer is, and rightly so, 'd' all of the above) he's not showing it. The look on his face is bordering on impassive as he reaches out, tugging the folders out of her arms and tossing them carelessly on the ground next to her. She hastily shoves her hands in her pockets, now that she has nothing left to hold on to, and Lexie is a little uncomfortable with how vulnerable she feels right now. Whatever she expected to happen next, this wasn't it:
"Dr. Grey" he begins slowly, like he's talking to a five year old, "Can I please take a look at your arm?"
His question would sound ridiculous, but the circumstances now are less than comical, so Lexie just keeps her mouth shut and obediently holds her right arm out to him, rolling the sleeve of her lab coat up to just past her elbow. This time, he doesn't ask permission; he peels back the edge of the first in the row of bandages as carefully as he can. Lexie lets a small hiss of air escape her as the adhesive catches on her skin.
The stitches look purple and ugly (like stitches are supposed to, but Lexie wishes now they'd have healed a little more and didn't look so monstrous against her pale skin) and Mark, she can tell, is not pleased. He wasn't happy when he'd found her in the basement letting her peers shove needles into her arms, but this, she'd venture a guess, is much worse.
He looks up at her, dropping her arm. "You can't really be doing this. No one is this stupid, least of all you." He looks away and rubs the back of his neck, both frustrated and unsure of exactly how to go about handling this. Lexie remains motionless in front of him, not wanting to further exacerbate the situation. "Why would you even…. what could possibly make you do this?"
She's silent.
"Tell me, please, because I really want to figure this out. Do you actually think this is a good idea? That this is going to end well for you?" She would almost prefer him yelling at her than scolding her in this restrained tone. Like he's given up on her in some way. "How can you still be practicing on yourself?"
Her eyes narrow dangerously (and he's never really looked at Lexie before like someone who would fight back, but now, with this expression she's wearing, he thinks maybe he miscalculated). "We have to! No one will teach us! No one cares! Dr. Yang still calls us by numbers, you know, or stupid embarrassing nicknames, like 'Lexipedia'."
Mark crosses his arms. "I thought you liked nicknames, Little Grey."
"No fair" she concedes, her features softening a little. "I like that one." Her hand reaches out to meet his own, tentative and shy, fingers brushing against his wrist.
Mark catches her hand, stilling it. "You're an intern. You're basically the bottom of the surgical food chain, okay?" He meets her gaze. "It's supposed to be hard."
"But we're supposed to be learning things. And we're not." She snatches her hand back, somehow managing to look both hurt and betrayed at the same time. It's not the first time a woman has looked at Mark like that, but it's the first time that he's upset by it.
"There's still plenty of time…" he tries, unsure now of what to say, feeling that, at this point, anything he tries to offer her would be the wrong thing to say (he'll have time later to wonder how exactly she had taken control of this particular conversation).
"Everyone's worried about the solo surgery and they hog the skills lab and they don't have time to teach us. Not any of the residents, not Dr. Yang, and not you!" Which isn't exactly fair, she knows (because Mark Sloan doesn't owe her anything), but she's angry and upset, and shoves him away anyways, or at least tries to, two hands pushing on the front of his chest.
"So now this is my fault?" He asks, incredulous. "I'm not your resident, Grey, if you have a problem with Yang, you take it up with her. If any of the interns have a problem with their assigned residents, why should they come running to me?" Mark shakes his head. "I missed the part where this became my responsibility. Like I have nothing better to do than run around baby-sitting all day."
Lexie's breath catches. "Then don't! Contrary to whatever you make think, Dr. Sloan, I don't need you hanging over my shoulder all the time. I have a job to do, too, only I have to find other ways of doing it since apparently everyone around here is too wrapped up in their own damn business!" She missed the part exactly where this became an argument, but Lexie will be damned if she lets it continue without her input.
He shrugs his shoulders, already tired of fighting. "There are better ways of handling this. You know it and I know it, even if you are being too stubborn for your own good right now." He looks at her, catching her gaze and not breaking contact. "This will end very badly for you. You realize that, right?" He gets no response. "Just…stop it while you still can."
Mark turns to leave, but Lexie calls out when his hand closes around the doorknob.
"Dr. Sloan?"
He doesn't bother to turn around, just glances back at her over his shoulder. "Dr. Grey?"
Lexie bites her lip (a habit she gets when she's nervous, he's noticed, but he doesn't want to think about that right now.) "You're not going to tell anyone, are you?" And even though it came out as a question, Mark can hear it for the plea that it really is, and sighs, shaking his head.
"Second rule of IV Club, Grey. Besides," and, though she doesn't know exactly why, Lexie suddenly decides she hates him looking her at this, disappointed, "It's not my secret to tell." He shrugs his shoulders, and there is something very final in the way he walks out, leaving Lexie behind, alone with her charts on the floor and stitches on her arm.
