Mark is sitting in Archer's office and he almost wishes Derek was with him so it would be easier to just confer right there on the spot, but he's still glad that it's his fiancée at his side. She sits back a little, doesn't try to be too involved or forceful because she's aware of how doctors make the worst patients and even it's even worse when they are part of the family. Part of him wants to see her lose her patience and attempt to control the situation because he knows - he knows that Derek and Addison are the impatient ones so they always pick up the slack. He knows one of them will break and then it will be the downfall of them all.

Archer comes back into the room and the whole room seems to tense up, makes Teddy lift her eyes from the book open in front of her. Mark's a little impressed with how much pretending she can do, not that he isn't doing the same. He just doesn't want their life to go on pretending anymore.

Archer's silence pushes Teddy to her feet, forces her to move to Mark's side like she needs to protect him. She starts, "Doctor Montgomery-"

"Please," Archer interrupts with a wide smile, "call me Archer."

"Archer," Mark says, eyes narrowing in Archer's direction like he knows exactly what the blonde is up to. He's known Archer a long time, the only man even slightly notorious for stealing Mark's girlfriends before he is done with them and this is usually how it starts. First Archer is charming and thoughtful, then he's a dirty thief. Voice gravely, "Cool it, man. I'm serious."

"What?" He replies somewhat defensively, "I'm not doing anything."

"Please, I know exactly what you're doing," Mark counters with the slightest bit of laughs, one that could be easily missed but she sees his jaw start to cock and she can tell just how angry he is. She slides her hand around his bicep in an attempt to interrupt him, to calm him down because one of the things that she hates more than anything is when he gets upset - especially now. But that doesn't stop him, "you take women away for sport and that's bullshit. You may have done it to me before because they didn't matter, but she's going to be my wife and I'm not going to sit back and just watch you steal her now."

"Doctor Montgomery," she interjects. She realizes that there's just no way to play it safe and finds her fingers absently sliding through Mark's hair as she forces a smile; she back to pretending. Maybe she's only pretending to be happy because she can't stand the idea that anyone would think she isn't. It wouldn't be fair for her to be unhappy because the man she wants to spend her life with is dying - and there it is, the nail in the coffin (quite possibly literally). "Do you think it's operable? Do you think we can keep it from getting any worse?"

"Listen, I'll look into it, okay?" Archer softens, suddenly remembering that Mark is someone who has been in his life for the last decade, "I'll get in touch with Derek and we'll talk - we will."

("I don't like him," Owen says, "he's a plastic surgeon, Teddy. Get real. He's too materialistic for you. Those things have never mattered to you."

"Shut up," she growls at him, "you don't even know him. You haven't bothered to try and know him. You've just been judging him because of his profession but have you ever wondered why he does it? Have you?"

"There's nothing heroic-"

"And what makes you so damn heroic, Owen? You think I feel like a hero? I don't, but what that man does," she pauses, lifts a hand to her forehead as she struggles to get away from this man in front of her. She just wants there to be distance between them; she never wants to see him again. "He changes people - he makes people feel better about themselves by giving them confidence, and you just walk in here and try to tear it all down. What that man does with his hands is so goddamn beautiful."

"Teddy," he replies softly, voice hanging in the air between them.

"No, Owen, I'm serious this time. I don't want to see you again.")

His alarm goes off, a piercing noise spreading throughout the room and making him grumble. He can't move, doesn't want to and doesn't think that anyone or anything could successfully make him if he tried. He feels Teddy stir beside him, the way her blonde hair tickles his skin as she curls into him. Her hand slides around his front, settles onto his stomach as her front presses into his back, and he tries to appreciate her body warmth.

He feels her lips trail between his shoulder blades, her breath skating along his spine, and he shudders a little as her foot slides between his legs. His hand shakes a little as he moves it down his front to meet hers, and it takes everything in him to keep his hand from feeling like a dead weight. He releases a languid breath, having no control of the way his lungs feel empty no matter how deep of a breath he takes.

"Are you okay?" She whispers like she's afraid to disturb the room.

He hisses into the darkness, wishing he were able to wake up like someone who wasn't sick rather than a constant worry throughout the night, but it's mostly his inability to let someone take care of him that has him feeling annoyed by her inquisition. He turns a little, her breasts pushing into his arm as he does, and he feels his muscles tense as his bones ache; he grits out a lie, "yeah, I'm fine. Just a little sore."

"I told you to slow down on your morning workout regimen. You don't need to lose all of your energy," she replies. He hates it, in that moment wants to hate her for her pity, for telling him what to do when he doesn't need anyone to put him on limitations. He doesn't know what kind of a man that makes him, to hate someone that he loves so much - to hate them for their desire to take care of him. She feels him grumble a little in his chest, (she thinks he sometimes forgets that she knows everything about cardio), and proceeds to pretend that what he thinks is silent complaints doesn't hurt her feelings just a little bit. "We want you better, not worse."

"Come on, Teddy, people go on living with brain tumors for months without any symptoms," he reasons. It seems to take everything out of him to counter though and his chest feels tight; he's almost instantly grateful that she's beside him to save him in case he were to go into cardiac arrest. He feels a small smile tug at the corners of his lips, one that is fleeting and mostly to himself. "I don't mean to sound like that."

"I know, you just won't let me take care of you," she replies softly. She offers him a slightly teasing smile and presses it against his skin, his back muscles flexing against her cheek and his stomach muscles flexing against her fingertips. She pushes her palm up his torso and when her fingertips tap against his jaw bone, he rolls over a bit more to look at her face. "I just want to keep you around, baby. I don't think I'd be happy if I lost you."

"What is happiness?" He asks aloud, almost unsure if it even really matters anymore.

She swallows, "it's the way your skin smells when I haven't been with you all day. The way you feel when I haven't been close to you for a while. It's the way you look at me like you don't notice anyone else. You are my happiness and if I didn't have you anymore after having you, I don't know what I'd do."

"I'm sure it would be really difficult at first, but you'd move on. Look at you," he mutters. He isn't jealous anymore because he doesn't worry he's going to lose her to someone else - he knows better now, knows that he doesn't deserve her and that all he's doing is making her life a living hell. He hates that he's ruining her life - wishes sometimes that he could set her free but knows that he couldn't because he'd probably die without her, literally. "You're amazing, beautiful, intelligent, heroic, everything anybody could ever want. Anybody would be an idiot to pass you by."

"I've been passed by plenty of times."

"I didn't. I didn't pass you by. I couldn't stop thinking about you even when you wanted me to. You couldn't have done anything to scare me away," he says with a small yet reassuring smile. He rolls onto his back, settling somewhere into the middle of the bed and not really caring about how much room he's taking up. He knows he's been in her space, suffocating her and taking all of her air like she doesn't deserve to breathe on her own; he never thought he'd be ithat/i guy. He releases a tired breath, let's his eyes fall away from hers like he's afraid to look at her, "but I'm scaring you away. I can't give you what you need anymore."

("What happened to your friend?"

"I told him I didn't want to see him," she replies. If he didn't know any better, he would think that she was a little heartbroken over the situation and he hates to see her like this. Even more than that, he would hate to find out it's true and she actually is. She shrugs absently, "it's no big deal, Mark. He was trying to intrude on something I don't want anyone else to be part of."

"Is that so?" He replies suggestively with a quirked eyebrow. "Like what?"

"Us," she replies cheekily, "I don't want to lose you, lose what we have, Mark. I love you."

"I think you said it without hesitation that time," he says with a grin, "I heartily approve."

"I thought you might," she whispers as she leans forward. She lightly rubs her nose against his as he smiles, the warmth from his mouth expertly touching her lips. She presses her lips against his and for the first time, she doesn't feel fear. He pushes her back against the arm of the couch and her legs slide around his waist. She pulls back and whispers against his lips, "you know why I like living with you?"

"Hm?" He mumbles into her neck, his tongue sweeping over the hollows of her collarbone.

"So I can be with you any time I want," she answers honestly.)

She's always been someone who considers the iwhat ifs/i. She's never been particularly fond of taking her time out to think about each and every possible outcome, but after Lillian died in 9/11 she can't help it. She visualizes the possibility of things going right or wrong or right with a bit of a twist or wrong with the possibility that it'll quickly go right or that just nothing is going to work out the way it should. She's never been a pessimist, really, she's just…prepared.

But, she hasn't really allowed herself to consider any other possibility in these circumstances other than everything will be all right.

In a sense, he saved her. Not figuratively or even literally, but through his patience and generosity and flat out determination, he saved her from herself. She doesn't know the person she would be today without him, and she thinks that maybe, without him, she would have returned back to the middle of the battle long ago. She wasn't really ever meant to be there, she knows this through trial and error but mostly because she's discovered all of the cracks in the pavement that she can fill the gaps. Mostly, she joined the Army as a revenge mechanism and not really to save lives. Saving lives just became a habit.

She's found herself watching him sleep lately and when she does finally fall asleep, it's light again (like when she was in Iraq) so she can hear his every movement. She checks his breathing, sometimes silently, almost always silently, but not just with her ears; she uses her hands as well, in the sense that she grazes her fingertips over his chest just make sure his heart is working as it should be. It always is, but that doesn't keep her from worrying.

She doesn't get much sleep these days. It's for multiple reasons, all having to do with the man she agreed to marry, but they all cloud her thoughts and penetrate her heart. Almost every night, she feels her heartache as she feels the tears prick the corners of her eyes. The tears though, they never fall – they just threaten to, they just make her eyes glassy long enough that her fingertips retract from his skin for fear that he might wake up to see her crying.

So far, he never does, but for the last two months everything has changed. Everything has been centered around the possibility that he doesn't get better, that he changes into this shell of a person that he used to be rather than who he's been since she realized just how in love with him she was – still is. She doesn't think that anyone does attribute her mental change to him, but no one knows what went on behind closed doors.

"Baby," she hears him croak, his worry evident in the sound of his voice. In reality, she knows that she thought too soon when she said that he never wakes up to see her near tears. He shifts a little in the bed, angling his body towards hers and sliding his hand along her skin as his fingernails catch in the crease of her elbow. He pushes himself up into the sitting position; "is everything all right?"

"Yeah," she replies breathlessly.

"Then why are you crying?" He absently scrubs at his face with his other hand before he leans forward a little to look her in the eye, coughing like oxygen went down the wrong tube. "It's because of me, isn't it?"

"It's not your fault," she replies softly.

He lifts a hand and pushes the imaginary hair out of her eyes, fingertips lightly brushing down her temple until they come to rest on her chin. He slowly tilts his head, like he's considering offering her some kind of gentle rebuttal, but his words fail to fall from his mouth when he feels her shiver a little beneath his fingertips. He leans towards her as he tilts her chin upwards, lightly touching his lips to hers.

Part of her isn't expecting it, the feel of his soft lips coming into contact with hers, and she thinks that maybe it's because it seems like lately it's been about everything else – but her fingers wrap around the back of his neck in response.

His lips part hers, his tongue expertly sliding in to the slight gap, and his fingertips dig in to her ribcage as he presses harder against her. He pulls back, breath trailing over her lips as his nose brushes over hers, and she becomes distinctly aware of the way his fingernails scratch against her stomach on their trail to her waistline. His fingers hook beneath the waistband of her incredibly short shorts and she thinks she hears herself intake a sharp breath, but she isn't too certain. There's a moment that the room stops moving and he breathes a little deeper than normal (she writes it off as a side effect of the brain tumor that is ever present in everything they do and every decision they make), but his fingertips skate down her thighs as he tugs at her bottom half of clothing.

Absently, like second nature, she returns the gesture and trails her hands down his bare chest to help him out of his boxers; just as slowly as everything stopped, everything started to move again at a speed that seemed to constrict her breathing as well. Straddling his waist, she sinks down onto him and releases a groan into his mouth as he captures her lips in his again. Her fingertips tap against his chest, hovering just over his heart, and she thinks she can tell his breath intake rapidly expel from his lungs.

"Baby," he whispers breathlessly. It's beginning to seem that way lately, that he's always breathless and it always takes everything in him to speak. She doesn't move, he doesn't move, even his fingertips still against her shoulder blades, and his breathing slacks for just a moment as he leans his forehead against her shoulder. iInhale, exhale, ragged collision in the air between them./i He lifts his eyes back to hers, a slight glint from the moonlight bouncing off of his dilated pupils, and she feels his nails drag across her back suddenly before his thumb sweeps over her cheekbone. "You're crying."

"I know," she finally admits. Small tears creep down her cheeks, leaving tear stains that aren't even shadows in the darkness, but his rough fingertips scratch them away and leave her cheeks damp. Her hands slide up his stomach and slip beneath his so she can wipe her own tears away; he slides his hands into her hair and briefly kisses her again, thumb absently tracing her jaw line. Her own hand touches his cheek, her thumb sweeping over his cheekbone, and she offers him a slight smile – she adds in a whisper, "I just love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart," he replies.

His hand trails down between them, index finger brushing over her clit just quick enough to tease her, and she releases a sigh against his cheek. She feels his lips tug upward against her skin as he fights a smirk and buries it into her collarbone. She drags her hand through his hair, engagement ring smoothing over his earlobe, and her hips roll when he repeats the motion – circular movements that entwine with sharp breaths.

He thrusts and her movements meet his, somehow; he releases a breath, teeth digging into her neck as he keeps moving against her. She feels his heart beat against his sternum and she breathes a sigh of relief while his fingertips dig into the small of her back. She feels the heat rising in her stomach, her chest tightening as he releases a rugged breath into her skin, and it makes her go over the edge with a string of moans that she doesn't know she's holding back. He quickly follows behind, sharp breathing between them, and his fingers slide into her hair as he drops another kiss against her lips.

He leans back on his elbow, smiling slightly at her; "I don't like to see you cry. I think it kills me a little bit when you do. I just want you to be happy. What can I do to make that happen?"

"Just give me you," she answers honestly.

He smiles, drops his eyes into the space between them as he pushes his hands into her stomach and leaves feather light touches along her skin. He nods slightly as he closes the space between them and presses his lips into hers. "You got it, babe."