A/N: Okay, so this update wasn't quite as quick as I wanted but at least it was quicker than 6 months, right? I'm definitely trying to stick to that resolution. So, without any further delay, here's the first dose of Mark-Alex competitiveness. Hope you all enjoy. Don't forget to review! Thanks!
"Right. And these charades are going to help Izzie decide which one of us to choose," Mark asked, making sure he understood just exactly what Alex was saying.
"But we can't let her know. We have to be subtle. We'll act like everything is normal and we get along fine."
"Okay then. May the best man win," Mark said, holding out his hand to Alex.
Alex took it and they shook. "Don't worry, I will. You can count on it." Alex said, an evil grin playing at his lips
Chapter 29: The Time it Takes to Fall
Izzie sat on the floor in the bathroom, her mind reeling. Alex Freakin' Karev was now going to be in very close proximities to her and Mark for the next two weeks. Yeah, that wasn't awkward at all or anything.
And it was a good thing she and Mark had their "no-sex" pact going on. If not, she would not be against locking Alex in the bathroom so the two of them could have their alone time.
She blew her bangs out of her eyes in frustration. Honestly, what was with her? A week ago, she couldn't stand the man, and now she couldn't keep her hands off him. She smiled to herself. Traitorous hands.
And what was she going to do about Alex? The man only professed his love for her less than two days before. And it's not like she could just waltz out there and tell him she didn't feel the same way. She knew what he was like and she wasn't about to have a whiny child on her hands for the next two weeks.
As for Mark, Izzie really wasn't sure what to make of the whole situation. She felt herself falling, falling hard and fast, for him. Normally, she would be opposed to this- a playboy like Mark was not something she needed at the moment. And not to mention the pace that all this was happening. It shouldn't take only a week for her to fall for him and feel like this. But then again, their situation was anything but normal.
Izzie sighed, leaning her head against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. This was going to be a long two weeks.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the bathroom door, Mark and Alex were busy finalizing the terms of their "man challenges." Mark was lying on his bed, propped up by the headboard with his arms behind his head, while Alex paced back and forth across the floor in front of him.
"So how will we know, exactly, when we are competing?" Mark asked casually, a smirk playing on his lips. He was enjoying the sight of a wound-up Alex.
Alex stopped pacing, resulting in him standing directly in front of the attending. "If you have to ask, this might be easier than I thought," Alex scoffed, rolling his eyes before he resumed his previous route in front of the bed.
"Well, I mean, who's to say what constitutes a challenge?" Mark asked, never taking his eyes off the agitated intern, following him as went back and forth, back and forth.
This time, Alex didn't stop when Mark spoke, so he simply continued. "Sure, poker may be a test of our 'manliness' or however you put it, but is seeing who can sit through one of Izzie's chick movies the longest without vomiting a test? You see what I mean? Every single thing that we do can't be a contest."
That seemed to get Alex's attention. "What are you talking about?" he asked, his pacing finally ceasing. "Of course they can. Don't you realize that she's going to be judging us every waking moment, even if we weren't stuck in this room? It's what girls do."
It took ever once of self-restraint Mark had in him not to laugh out loud. Alex was taking this way too seriously. "I don't need a lecture on the inner workings of a woman's mind from you, Karev. I like to think I do pretty damn well for myself," he announced proudly, as he remembered his many conquests.
Shaking off the thought and refocusing, he continued. "But I hardly think that watching us try to see who can brush their teeth the fastest is going to set off any feelings about which one us would be better suited for her," he said sarcastically.
Alex pondered this for about a split second before a confident grin appeared on his face. "Who knows? It might. Good hygiene is almost always on every list of top qualities women look for in men," he said, folding his arms across his chest confidently, like he had proven a point.
Mark looked at the younger doctor through narrowed eyes. "I am so scared that you know that," he said, not bothering to try and conceal the shudder that ran down his spine.
"Hey, don't you look at me like that!" Alex snapped defensively, realizing just then how his previous statement must have sounded. "I grew up in a house with all women. Cut me some slack."
Mark scoffed. Like he was going to buy that excuse. "Yeah, well, I grew up with Derek and therefore in a house with all women also, but that doesn't mean I read their Cosmos."
Before he could realize what he was saying, Alex snapped. "We got Elle," as if that was going to make a difference.
Mark's eyebrows shot up when he heard that, but he kept quiet. He simply pressed his lips together, forming a thin line.
"What?" Alex asked defensively, trying to retain a cool demeanor.
Mark held his hands up in surrender. "I didn't say anything," he said innocently.
"You want to though, don't you?"
He did. He ran a hand over his chin, formulating the best way to phrase his thoughts. "I was just thinking how ironic it is that someone who reads Elle wants to test manliness," he said, eying Alex curiously.
On the inside, Alex was fuming. This conversation was not exactly going as he had planned. "Read. Read Elle. Past tense," he said, clarifying. "And it wasn't like I had a choice. There was nothing else in the house."
"No, no. There's always a choice," Mark said, waving his index finger back and forth, obviously mocking Alex. "You could have read…the newspaper…cereal box labels… nothing. Anything but girly magazines."
By this point, Alex was almost certain steam was coming from his ears. Who the hell did this guy think he was?
"Women appreciate men who aren't afraid to show their feminine side, all right?" Alex snapped as he shot Mark a hard glare.
The glare did nothing to rattle the attending. In fact, it had quite the opposite effect. It made Mark want to push him even further. There was nothing more he liked more than to rile up stubborn interns. It gave him a thrill when they finally broke. Which they always did.
Mark sent Alex his infamous "McSteamy" smirk. "Which is again, ironic, coming from you," he said, a hint of laughter in his voice. "But it's also interesting. Did you read that in one of your magazines too?"
He hit a nerve with that last retort. "Shut up," Alex said sharply, his face turning red.
Mark decided he would ease up for now. There was no use in breaking him now. Besides, instant gratification wasn't as exhilarating as delayed satisfaction. "You get riled up way to easily," he said, letting Alex know he was conceding. For now.
Alex, however, took Mark's letting up as a sign of submission. "I really can't to see the smug look of yours slide right off your face once Izzie chooses me," he said cockily, his self-assurance building up once again.
"My, my, someone's a little confident," Mark stated, one of his eyebrows rising in amusement.
"You're right. I am. And now that I think about it, I don't even know why we should bother wasting our time with this little charade. It's so obvious how this is going to end," Alex said, willing his voice not to waiver. He was trying to intimate Mark with his confidence.
"I think you've been watching too many mob movies, Karev," Mark said with a laugh, unaffected by the pressure Alex was trying to put on him.
"You are going to fall so fast, you won't even know what hit you."
Mark snorted. This was getting ridiculous. Alex's veiled threats meant nothing to him. In fact, the idea that he felt he needed to make them, let Mark know just how unsure of himself Alex actually was.
"Is that so?" he asked, staring directly at Alex.
"I predict that it'll only take three challenges before she realizes she can't resist me," Alex said, returning the stare.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you," Mark said, his voice low as his icy eyes continuing to bore right into Alex's. "That's a pretty fast time for her to fall for you and an even faster time for me to your manliness."
"Scared?" Alex asked, sounding amused.
"Hardly," Mark said, the corners of his lips turning up ever-so-slightly. "In fact, why don't we start right away?"
"What did you have in mind?"
Mark finally broke the stare. "Just follow my lead," he said, his voice returning to normal as he slide off the bed and made his way over to the bathroom.
"Hey, Stevens!" Mark called loudly, banging on the bathroom door, trying to get Izzie's attention. He could hear the music coming out of her earphones so he could only imagine what little else she could actually hear.
He received no reply so he banged a few more times. "You can come out now. We're done bickering like children."
The door opened a crack, just wide enough for Izzie to peer out. She eyed Mark carefully, and then glanced around him to check out Alex, who had climbed up onto his bed and was flipping through a magazine nonchalantly. She then turned back to Mark. Once she decided that they were indeed, done, she opened the door all the way.
"Took you long enough," she said, trying to be casual, as she brushed past Mark and ventured back into the room, pulling her I.V. behind her.
She plugged the machine back into the outlet next to her bed before she, like Alex, climbed onto it. "Do either of you know what time it is?" she asked.
Both male doctors glanced down at their watches before looking back up at Izzie. "9:00," they answered simultaneously.
Izzie eyed them curiously, but said nothing. "And the day?" she asked. She may have only been in the quarantined room a week, but the days had already started to blend together.
"Thursday," they said together once again, this time each of them shooting the other a hard glare.
The looks of contempt went unnoticed by Izzie. "Perfect," she said, clapping her hands together excitedly. "That means it's time for my favorite show."
She glanced at the bedside table. "Now where is that remote?" she asked, her eyebrows knitting together as she tried to remember where she had seen it last.
The next moment was like a scene from a movie. Both Mark and Alex eyed each other carefully before both their heads turned to simultaneously look at Izzie. From there, they looked back at each other before both their gazes travelled to the armchair, where they both could see the small remote wedged between the arm and the cushion. Both doctors must have processed this information at the exact same speed because at the same time, they both lunged across the room, diving for the remote.
Mark, however, was a split second faster than Alex had grabbed the remote first. He tossed it to Izzie indifferently, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Izzie looked between the two of them for a moment. She felt as though something must have been going on, but she decided to let it go. They were both acting fairly civil, if not very strange, and she figured she shouldn't say anything. If she did, she ran the risk of them bickering again. She thought she would rather live with the curiosity than to listen to them fight.
So she simply shrugged it off, clicked on the TV and settled in her bed comfortable to watch her favorite ABC drama.
Once he was reasonably sure that Izzie was focused on the screen and not paying any attention to him or Mark, Alex leaned over to him. "So what about this plan of yours?" he asked, keeping his eyes ahead, hoping to appear blasé.
Mark, also keeping his eyes forward, whispered, "Patience, young Grasshopper."
After a few more minutes of standing around idly while Izzie watched TV, Mark turned to Alex.
"Watch and learn," he said to him with a confident smirk.
Mark strolled directly into the middle of the room, and without any warning, grabbed the bottom hem of his scrub top and pulled it over his head before tossing it aside.
It was only because the dark blue scrub top flew across Izzie's line of vision that she broke her gaze from the screen. She outwardly gasped when she saw Mark standing there in (almost) all his glory.
"What the hell are you doing? I thought we had an agreement," she asked quickly, feeling her face turn flushed as she took in the sight of his hard chest, tight muscles and those sexy, sexy cuts of his pelvic bone which were peeking through his low slung scrub pants. It was right about when Izzie couldn't remember exactly why she had made that agreement in the first place.
She did remember, however, the third party in the room. "And what about-" she asked, trailing off as she nodded her head in Alex's direction very conspicuously.
Mark shot Alex a triumphant grin before turning back to Izzie. "Glad to see where your mind's at, Stevens, but don't get your sexy, little, red, lacy panties in a bunch."
Izzie's face turned even redder at Mark's very accurate description of her underwear.
Mark continued. "It's just that, we've been stuck in here for a week now and I haven't been able to do m y workouts. I can't have that, can I? And since it seems that I won't be getting to a gym anytime soon, I'm going to have to make do with what I can."
And with that, he immediately dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups, the muscles in his back rippling with every motion. "One…two…three…four…"
Alex saw Izzie eyeing the older man as she bit her lip. He knew what that look meant. She wanted to jump his bones right then and there. He had to act, and quickly.
"You know what?" he asked with a nervous laugh to no one in particular. "That seems like a good idea. Gotta keep in shape."
And in a similar fashion to Mark, he whipped off his scrub top and dropped to the floor. "Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneight," he huffed, doing eight push-ups in rapid succession so he could catch up to Mark.
Once he did, he slowed down the pace and the two of them continued with their side-by-side push-ups. "Nine…ten…eleven…twelve…thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…"
This went on for a while for both men were in practically spectacular shape. After they had reached 50, Alex decided he had better up his game. He paused for a moment so he could put his left hand behind his back. "51…52…53…" he counted out loud, turning his head slightly so he could see Mark's reaction.
When Mark noticed what Alex was doing, he simply smirked and turned up his own game. "54 (clap)…55 (clap)…56 (clap)…" He was throwing in a clap after every time he pushed himself up.
Alex gritted his teeth together. He knew Mark wasn't going to go down easily, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before he fell.
By this point, Izzie had completely abandoned her TV show and was totally preoccupied with watching the show of testosterone happening in front of her. There was definitely something go on between the two but she didn't quite know what.
The two doctors continued their push-ups for quite a while. Eventually Izzie got bored. "Well, at least you're not arguing," she said to them with a shrug before turning back to the TV.
