Meet Your Match

Mr. Sullivan's surgery was over, and Mark was in the kitchen sipping a coffee when his pager beeped. He glanced at the small screen, and saw that Mr. Sullivan was coming out of anesthesia and asking about his face. As Mark stepped into the elevator and waited to reach the floor of the burn unit, he contemplated the very first surgery he had performed at Seattle Grace. Both that patient and Mr. Sullivan had needed a new face from him. Jacob had deserved a face as much as anybody. Shaun Sullivan, on the other hand - he'd had, in the words of his wife, "such a good face," and he'd thrown it away for a smoke. Mark wished that he was going up to see Jacob instead of the middle-aged car salesman.

When he was followed into Mr. Sullivan's room by Dr. Bailey, whose name he'd made sure not to forget this time, he became even more reluctant to speak to Mr. Sullivan. New York had never been like this for him. Everybody he saw there was just a patient, just another surgery. What had this hospital and the people in it done to him?

Mark gave Bailey a cautious, measured stare before flipping shut the patient's chart and turning to the man on the gurney and his fretting wife to update them on the prognosis.

"He'll have his face back?" Mrs. Sullivan prompted when Mark had nearly finished.

"Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan," Mark said, realizing for the first time how naïve they truly were, "Your face may never be exactly what it was. Even if everything goes perfectly well, there will be scarring." Mark knew he was being more distanced than was warranted towards the family, but he couldn't keep Jacob out of his mind.

"But he's a salesman," Mrs. Sullivan said again, as if it was a mantra she clung to. "He has such a nice face."

Dr. Bailey was looking expectantly at Mark, he could feel her powerful eyes on him; she was waiting for him to reassure Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, but his throat seemed unable to function as he remembered the dark lines penciled across Jacob's sunken face. In another corner of his mind Mark noticed vaguely that Bailey made him feel like her intern, not her attending.

Mark snapped out of his reverie as Bailey took control and her fierce tones cut into his thoughts. "You know as well as I do," she was saying, "it's not about what you look like. Or your job, or how successful you are" - here her eyes cut to Mark meaningfully - "It's about having people in your life who you love, and who love you." Bailey's eyes were boring into Mark's soul.

Mark dropped his gaze. Miranda Bailey may be only a resident, but here she was, speaking with an audacity and self-carriage with which nobody in New York would have dared address him. And yet, Mark realized painfully, she was right. What good were fame and arrogance and a pretty face? It wasn't enough to earn Dr. Bailey's respect. It wasn't enough to deserve Addison's love. It wouldn't win his best friend back. He watched Bailey's hand clasp Mr. Sullivan's firmly and wondered if he would ever have that, that security, that confidence in the knowledge that there was a hand for him to grasp. All day he'd wondered why Seattle Grace was so different. Now he knew. There was nothing wrong with the people at the hospital. What was wrong was him.

Mark walked out of the building at the end of his first shift, feeling oddly lost, odd because he was a city boy - had always been one - and so Seattle should not appear so hostile as he walked to the parking lot. He paused halfway to his car as the neon lights in the window of Joe's bar across the street caught his eye. Even though he wasn't in the mood to drink or socialize, he turned away from his car and crossed the street because Joe's warm atmosphere was preferable to the emptiness of his hotel room.

As he looked around the small bar, Mark seemed to recognize the faces of some of the scrub nurses and doctors he'd met that day. It seemed that the place was a frequented spot by many of Seattle Grace's staff. After making sure that Derek and Addison were nowhere to be seen, he seated himself at the bar and sighed, Bailey's words ringing in his thoughts. They were right, all of them. Derek and Addison. Bailey. She saw straight through him. Mark groaned quietly and leaned forward against the counter of the bar, his hands in front of him, ducking his head.

When the woman a few seats over leaned across to him and asked in a teasing tone, "McSteamy, right?" he wanted to close his eyes until she and everybody else went away.

Instead he glanced at her briefly and said in a low monotone, "You must be a friend of Meredith's."

"Not really," she replied, her voice turning sour for an instant. Mark registered the change but didn't care enough to look or inquire. He knitted his fingers together and stared down at his hands. "Dr. Torrez - Callie," she introduced herself in a brighter tone despite his obvious disinterest.

"Mark Sloan," he said, reaching over to shake the hand she extended before looking away again, staring at the counter of the bar and remembering the last time he'd been seated on a stool at that counter - how on that day he'd clung to the faint hope that Addison would care enough to meet him there.

"Bad day?" Callie asked, sounding oddly concerned.

"You could say that," Mark answered quietly, pulling himself out of it enough to really see her for the first time, see that she was smiling at him in a friendly way, her chin propped in her hand, but that behind her smile she was sad. He was surprised that when she heard his answer she didn't probe, but just turned to take a sip of her drink.

"You?" he asked, finding that he actually wanted to know.

"Oh yeah." Her voice was emphatic and slightly bitter.

Mark looked over at her again, and this time he observed that she was good looking, beautiful even, though not in the conventional way. She had long black hair that rippled down her back in sleek, shinning curls, dark, alluring eyes, and a curvy shape. He turned towards her with renewed interest and leaned forward. "So what have you heard about me, exactly?" he asked, honestly curious now. He somehow knew that she would tell him the truth.

"Mostly things that involve the words 'dirty' and 'bad.'" Callie grinned at him playfully, and Mark tried not to see her smile as seductive.

"Right." Mark wished he hadn't asked. He didn't need to know that he'd lost the respect of the doctors before he even begun to work with them. But now Callie was looking at him, and he'd begun a conversation, and he had to say something. He nodded his head slowly, and said sadly, "Guess there, uh, really is no starting over, is there?"

She didn't speak, but shook her head and sighed as if she didn't need to say anything. She just… knew. Mark's eyes roved over her, and he shifted over a seat so that he was next to her. She certainly was attractive. "Can I buy you a drink, Callie?" he asked, smiling a confident, charming smile.

She gave him a piercing look and drained the liquor in her glass before standing and swinging her handbag onto her shoulder. Mark gave a short, bitter laugh. Of course she had judged him, what with all she'd heard. Of course she didn't want to be bought a drink by him. Did nobody want him? Even though she'd said nothing outright, Bailey had seen right through him. He had nobody.

"Not unless you have it delivered to my hotel room, because I'm off to bed."

Mark looked up. Her voice… it was low, sultry… inviting. It was the sort of thing he would say. Callie just barely smiled, and then began to walk off. Mark had looked back down at the bar when she glanced back over her shoulder and said, "You comin'?"

He turned his head slowly to look at her, in awe. There he saw a reflection of himself. Sexy, confident, passionate. Lonely. Heartbroken. She was just like him. She knew him without his having to say a word.

"Yeah. I'm coming."

Mark lay next to Callie the next morning, both sprawled comfortably across her bed on their backs, their hands behind their heads. He hadn't had to pretend that she was Addison as he'd done with numerous scrub nurses in New York. She didn't have a need to talk to him. She didn't have to. She just knew him. Words would only dilute it.

He didn't have to look at her to know that she, too, was staring at the ceiling, and didn't have to ask to understand that she was perfectly content, that he had been exactly what she had needed.

Callie's cell phone beeped for what seemed like the millionth time since they'd arrived in her hotel, and the feeling of content that radiated from her vanished. She reached over him and took it off the bedside table, flipping it open and then sighing almost imperceptibly, frowning when she saw the number.

"That your boyfriend?" Mark asked, guessing that whoever was calling was the same person who had troubled her last night.

"I… do not have a boyfriend," she answered tightly, and so Mark knew that she was lying.

"Then why the guilty face?" he asked, not caring about the fact that she was seeing someone, but wanting to let her know that he could see through her.

Callie sighed slowly and raised her head to look at him. "You were sexier when you weren't talking," she complained.

Mark grinned and drawled, "That's funny, you know, because that's what they all s-"

"Shhh!" Callie interrupted, smacking his chest lightly and then leaving her hand there, pressed softly against his heart. "Stop talking!" And with that she cupped her other hand under his head and pulled it up to hers. Mark chuckled into her mouth as he realized again that they were indeed exactly alike.

A/N: So, I decided to continue this. Clearly. Thank you to all the reviewers who convinced me to keep going, because I'm so glad that I did. A special thanks to CitronPresse and Juni for their reviews, advice and encouragement. Thank you! I hope everybody enjoyed this new chapter. I'm questioning my characterization of Mark in this chapter; I'm not sure if my portrayal of his thoughts and feelings were in character. Thanks for reading, and please review!