A/N: I can't believe it's been a month since I updated. I am way behind on all my stories, but I am about to make some progress. Here's a big long chapter. The good news, if you like this story, is that we're heading into the territory where the most meat is already sitting on my hard drive, so you can expect the next chapters to be faster. I am so grateful to anyone who's still reading; this piece is exhausting but I really enjoy writing it and I really want to tell the rest of the story. So I hope you'll keep reading.

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surprise
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It takes Mark a little while to answer when I knock – there's probably a pay-per-view related reason for that.

When he finally opens the door, there's a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair is still damp and standing up a bit at the back, and there's a recognizable glint in his eyes.

I know that look well, and I'm not exactly surprised.

Actually … wait.

Let me pause here for a moment.

And I'm not going to be defensive. Okay, I'm going to be a little defensive, because I get it. I get that it doesn't make sense. I mean, my patient is okay. It's over, it went as well as it could have, and she's okay.

So why am I … not?

Because here's the thing they don't tell you. Making it through a crisis is just half the battle. It's the after that gets you. Sometimes it gets you more than the during. Something like – supposedly I get too attached. Maybe some people don't get attached enough? Maybe those people are supposed to find each other – balance each other out.

(I wouldn't know – I've succeeded in driving away anyone remotely interested in balancing me out.)

My patient is okay. She's okay.

But maybe there's only a certain amount of okay I can manage, and when I'm done pouring it into a patient there's not enough left for me. Maybe now that the patient is okay … I don't have to be anymore.

I don't know, not really.

Maybe I just need a place to put all that adrenaline. Maybe I just need a place to put me and it shouldn't be in this strange lonely city where the only people who knew me before my very public divorce are three people who've seen my unfortunate underbelly?

(Different parts of it, maybe, at different times, but all three of those men have had a glimpse.)

What my body is craving is touch, and it's not that picky about how to get there.

I've never known how to get there without sex, certainly not since … well, not for a long time.

And yes, I know, it's so unique to use sex to get someone to hold me. I'm a snowflake, truly. Just file it under D for Daddy Issues, which conveniently is also the letter location of Derek Issues and Divorce Issues.

(There's nowhere on the D- list for Mark, specifically, although I'm pretty sure if he knew the breakdown he'd suggest some fairly vulgar way to shoehorn himself in there.)

Mark.

Right … back to Mark.

He's smirking, and the towel is low enough on his hips to dry my mouth and make me hate myself just a little bit more.

"Well, if it isn't the Virgin Mary. Did you come to lecture me on the evils of sex?"

He leans just enough on the word come to annoy me, but I'm not exactly surprised.

"Actually … I came to offer you a drink."

"Bombay Sapphire, huh?" he nods toward the bottle in my arms. "That kind of night?"

I nod.

"So we can drink, but we can't have sex," he confirms, drawing out the words a bit.

"Right," I say. But my voice goes up at the end the way I scold my residents for doing, and when he looks amused I wish I could take it back.

I'm trying to figure out the triangulation of preserving what's left of my dignity, drinking what's left of the gin, and getting what's left of Mark to drive the pain of me so I don't answer, not yet –

And that's when I hear rustling behind him, the bathroom door opens in a cloud of steam, and Mark almost – almost – looks sorry.

There's a woman in the white hotel-issued bathrobe – it's huge on her, the dainty bitch, and long blonde hair piled on her head, eyes wide with surprise.

And I know her.

Fuck.

"Dr. Shepherd!" she squeals.

All in all, it seems like the wrong time to correct her on my surname.

"Nurse Graham," I greet her politely.

"I have, um, I should go. My shift." She looks uncertainly between us, blushing. "I'll just, uh …"

And she ducks back into the room, grabbing handfuls of what I don't have to see her to know are discarded clothes.

I don't leave – why should I make this more comfortable for either of them? I stand in the open doorway, tapping the pointed toe of my shoe occasionally, waiting.

She dresses with record speed – another time, if she hadn't just fucked whatever-Mark-is-to-me, we could have joked about it, about being Women in the Medical Field who get used to slap-dash dressing in co-ed locker rooms. We could have … bonded.

That's not going to happen now, and she's smart enough to get that, because she avoids my eyes and there's a steady blush creeping down her neck.

Or maybe it's a giant hickey. Slut.

(Sorry. I know how terrible that sounds. That's why the worst of me is rarely out loud.)

Mark raises an eyebrow at me when I don't move from the doorway and Nurse Graham – Jessi, that's her first name, and she's barely out of the stage where she must have dotted the i with a fucking heart – has to sidle past me to get out of the room.

"Drive safe," Mark tells her. "I'll call you!" he adds to her back as she walks down the hall at a clip, bag slung over her shoulder.

I turn my head just enough to watch her walk away, then turn back to Mark.

"Do you think they believe that? When you say you're going to call them, I mean?"

Mark shrugs. "Does it matter?"

"You're a pig," I inform him.

"Here we go." He rolls his eyes. "Are you coming in or not?"

I stare at him.

"You said something about a drink," he reminds me neutrally.

Ugh.

"Is she a natural blonde?" I ask, still from the doorway.

"Come in and ask me that," he says, opening the door a little wider, and I take him up on it this time.

(I may be living a life that would make my mother die of shame, but I'm still not quite ready to conduct all my business in hotel hallways. A lady wouldn't. A lady doesn't raise her voice, bring bottles of gin to men's rooms, or screw their husband's best friends, for that matter.)

"Well?" I prop a hand on my hip. "Is she?"

"A natural blonde? Actually … yes. I know," he adds when he sees my expression, "I was surprised too. And let me tell you, it wasn't easy to find out … there wasn't much evidence."

I make a face at him as I open the bottle of gin. It's a point of contention between us, is the thing.

But one of the few nice parts about being my age – along with the clothes, and the sex, and the ability to torment interns who piss you off – is that the guys my age are my age too.

By which I mean they grew up looking at a very different kind of girl in their father's squirreled-away magazines.

Hell, they grew up looking at magazines, period. The current crop of interns is so young I have no idea where they set their standards. But I can tell you that the women posing for centerfolds in the seventies, the centerfolds guys my age were sharing in gym locker rooms and on lacrosse fields, were … natural, and I don't mean hippies.

That does something to a person. Show a kid his first naked woman and it actually does something to his brain – Derek agrees with this, and he's a neurosurgeon, so there you go.

"You know, you might have to modernize yourself if you're going back on the market," Mark says, raising an eyebrow.

"I haven't heard any complaints," I tell him primly.

Not that anyone but Mark has seen it, but … that's not the point.

"I have no complaints," he assures me, "believe me, other than the fact that it's on lockdown."

"Was on lockdown," I say after a moment, and the light in his eyes changes.

"Seriously?" he asks.

I actually wonder what he'd say if I tell him no … I don't want to have sex at all. That I just don't want to feel alone.

He wouldn't laugh. I don't think so, anyway. Mark may have a screwed-up moral compass – not that I'm in any position to judge – but he's not a bad person.

He might even be nice about it.

… he'd probably still try to have sex with me, though.

And he'd probably succeed.

"Seriously," I tell him and that slow wolfish grin of his starts working and makes my stomach drop to my toes.

And then I stop, I actually stop, because god, what am I doing?

Am I really that desperate that I'm willing to sleep with someone who just finished fucking someone else?

I was married for eleven years. Fifteen years of sex with the same person. When did I become this person?

"Forget it," I say quickly. "I'm going."

"Addison, wait – "

I don't. I grab my gin and what's left of my dignity and pull the door closed behind me. My heart patters all the way down the hall to my room and as I slide my key card into the slot I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed that he didn't follow me.

..

I'm neither, I decide a little while later, once I've shed my jacket and my shoes and any sense of concern for etiquette (I'm drinking straight from the bottle).

I'm unsurprised, is what I am.

Yeah, Mark likes to stalk prey, but he doesn't exactly go out of his way effort-wise. He's more like a lazy cat, or those male lions you see on the Nature Channel who kind of preen their manes and wait for someone else to bring down a wildebeest.

And I'm alone again, and I'm not surprised by that, either.

The gin tastes good – hard and tingling on my lips, and I turn on just enough light that no one could accuse me of sitting in the dark.

(It's dim, to be clear, but I try to avoid the most depressive clichés when I can.)

I drink until my wrist turns clumsy and the bottle hits my teeth and wait, alone, for it to numb the pain.

It's not working, not fast enough, and I'm regretting walking away before letting Mark try to make me forget. But I wasn't drunk enough not to be disgusted that there's only one bed in his room and it had clearly been used and even if Jessi is barely out of her teens, I'm a long way from twenty-two.

Twenty-two.

They knew me when I was twenty-two, both of them. And they were too. And we were young and stupid and idealistic and part of me wishes I could go back and grab that girl by the shoulders, with her hopeful smile and puppy fat on her cheeks, and shake her. You have no idea what's coming, Addie. No idea. That's what I'd tell her.

She wouldn't believe me. Not that girl; her whole life was in front of her.

There's a knock on the door.

I know it's Mark before I open it, and I'm right.

See, people you know like we know each other – they can't surprise you.

They can hurt you, they can disappoint you … but they can't surprise you. Maybe that's a good thing – at least you know what you're dealing with.

Mark's dressed, at least, even if it's in sweatpants and an ancient-looking Columbia tee like he's trying to emphasize how fucking old we are now.

"I guess you started the party without me," he says, mildly, nodding toward the bottle of gin.

I glance at it. It's kind of blurry, and I feel kind of blurry. There's more missing from the bottle than I realized.

"You didn't even change," Mark adds, sounding almost impressed. You started drinking right away. You're that fucked up.

"You don't like my outfit?" I raise an eyebrow at him, or try to, and use my free hand to smooth my skirt over my hips.

Not that it's wrinkled. I don't wrinkle.

Also, I might be a little more … tipsy than I thought.

"Your outfit is fine. Your tolerance, on the other hand, might have taken a hit."

"It hasn't. Trust me." I move closer to him, trying to be slow and deliberate so I seem less drunk.

(My tolerance is one hundred percent Montgomery guaranteed … to pickle your liver and complicate your life. A hit, indeed. Hardly.)

"There's still time for you to catch up," I suggest, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. "… if you think you can keep up with me, that is."

He frowns. "Don't do the desperate thing. It doesn't suit you."

"No?"

"I'm the desperate one, remember?" He props his hips against the wall and studies the carpet.

"What about me?" I challenge him. "Which one am I?"

Truthfully … I'm curious what he'll say.

The needy one?

The stupid one?

The easy one?

(Okay, fine, we're both the easy one.)

He looks up and his face actually softens a little. "You're Addison," he says, and when he grins at me and I can almost remember being young.

It feels good.

But just for a moment. The good feelings never seem to last more than a moment – a drink – an orgasm or three. The bad feelings, though? Somehow, they manage to linger.

So I need more. More gin, more Mark, more anything that will numb the pain.

"How drunk are you?" he asks. He actually sounds a little uncertain.

(Can you believe it? Mark Sloan. Uncertain.)

How drunk am I?

How do I answer that question?

Drunk enough to make the same mistake over and over again.

Drunk enough to think this time it might be different.

Drunk enough not to care that it won't be.

Drunk enough that nothing can surprise me.

" … drunk," I tell him, and twine my wrists around his neck. "Come on, Mark, you've been trying to get me back in bed. I'm here, I'm saying yes, what's the problem?"

"The problem is that you just want to use me to feel better about your lousy day."

The record scratches to silent.

Excuse me?

(First of all, lousy day is quite an understatement.)

But really, did I fall through the looking glass?

Since when is that a reason for Mark not to want to have sex with me? Since when have we done anything but used each other when we needed something stronger than alcohol?

"So?" My voice is a little too wobbly to be a purr, but I try my best. "Why is that an issue?"

He looks a little uncomfortable, his face tight, but his hands are traveling up and down my sides. They're big and warm through the silky fabric and I want to feel them everywhere because when he touches me I can almost forget how empty I am.

Which is … pretty fucking empty.

All the goddamn time.

I tilt my head back a little to see him – he's blurred around the edges, but he's here, big and real, and my hands drift to the waistband of his sweats.

"Hey," he frowns, pushing my hands down.

"You seriously don't want to have sex with me," I challenge him, propping a hand on my hip. A piece of hair falls in front of my face and I blow it out of the way, a gesture Mark used to say he thought was cute. Now he looks almost disgusted.

Great. So no one can stand the sight of me. Karev. Derek. Even Mark.

I'm zero for three tonight. And with Mark, who's the walking embodiment of an easy win.

"You should … drink some water," he says.

"Thanks, Dr. Sloan." I glare at him.

"And eat something, will you?" Mark points to the phone. "Order some dinner."

It's late – it's ridiculously late – but I probably should order some dinner, come to think of it. I call down to the concierge and when he says the usual? I'm grateful Mark can't hear the other end of the line.

He looks satisfied. "So eat," he says like he's planning out what's left of my night. "And then sleep it off. You're going to have a hell of a hangover in the morning."

"Stay?" I'm going for coy with the one-word answer thing but it's not really working because my ankles feel wobbly.

"You want me to?" he asks.

I can't answer.

He studies me for a moment and I can't help wondering what he sees.

"Sleep it off, Addison," he repeats after a moment, and he turns like he's going to leave.

"Wait, Mark!"

(Pathetic. Right? If you could see the size of the gin bottle I'm trying to kill, or the size of the hole in my heart I haven't figured out how to hide … you'd sympathize. Maybe. Or you'd just judge the hell out of me like everyone at the hospital where I still have the misfortune to work.)

He pauses.

I don't even know what I want him to do! I just know that he took care of Derek after Joe's, didn't he? And I know that I'm the one who told him to do that. And I know I'm confused, that's what I am, and that I still can't untangle all three of us and I guess he's thinking the same thing based on what he says next.

"You know, I didn't move to Seattle to pick up after drunk Derek and Addison."

"We're not Derek and Addison anymore," I remind him.

"Well, maybe you should work on the not being drunk anymore part, then."

"Why did you move to Seattle?" I ask.

Mark blinks. He actually looks sort of surprised. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, did you come to Seattle for Derek, or for me?" I keep talking so he can't. "You said you were here for me. The first time. And the second time, the … booty call time. But I told you we were just coworkers and then you told me to be honest with Derek and then ... and you've been trying to get back in his good graces."

He doesn't deny any of it, just waits for me to finish.

Be honest with Derek. He guilted me into it, he knows it works with me, and telling Derek what I kept from him through our whole disastrous non-reconciliation is what started all of this, wasn't it?

"Well?" I prop a hand on the hip of my skirt, which is starting to feel uncomfortably tight. "Which is it, Mark? Did you come to Seattle for Derek, or for me? You have to choose."

"Why?" he asks, looking right at me. "You couldn't."

I swallow hard.

"Addison … you're drunk." His tone is cajoling. "Look, I know you and Derek are competing for most functional alcoholic but neither one of you is winning, so maybe consider calling a truce?"

A truce? Derek and I don't do truces. The most we'll do is détente.

I don't want to think about him, though, or about the way my rings sat in his palm or the way the walls of that supply closet closed in on me when he sliced through whatever was left of my dignity.

The thought makes my stomach feel hollow, gin sloshing around inside.

So much for seduction. I think I'm fluttering my eyelashes, but it's hard to tell. I might just be falling asleep on my fucking feet. I decide to take my skirt off – double benefit, even my drunk self realizes that, because it's not very comfortable and because maybe it will change Mark's mind.

"I can't get my … zipper thing," I admit after a few tries.

He looks exasperated but he turns me around, and then I turn him because it's on the side, and we almost laugh for a minute. He gets the zipper in one – of course he does, and I push the skirt down over my hips. I don't even care how I look anymore.

"What are you so upset about anyway? I thought you did the … thing."

"I did do the thing."

"Then why are you so upset?"

"I'm not," I lie, mouthing cold glass for another long sip. "Here – are you having some or not?"

Mark examines the bottle. "How about you take it easy on this stuff?"

I frown. "Fine, don't have some." I take another long sip. I'm starting to feel a little bit better but I need something else, something more, so I can stop remembering.

"Addison…"

"What?"

"… nothing." He shakes his head. "You want to come up for air?"

"Not particularly, no."

There's a knock on the door then – the room service I didn't even want. Mark looks relieved.

"You want me to – "

"No, I've got it."

"Addison – Addison," he hisses, gesturing at me and I realize I'm wearing nothing but my blouse and panties.

Okay, he has a point. I make a grab for the boxers I've been sleeping in and drag them over my hips. Mark watches me pull them on – of course he does; what was I just saying about knowing exactly what to expect, about no surprises when it comes to the men in my life? – and then I pull open the door.

"I'm not hungry," I remind Mark once the tray is sitting on the low-slung coffee table.

The smell of the food is nauseating me, to be honest. Nothing smells good right now, not even the gin I'm still drinking straight from the bottle.

Mark takes the bottle out of my hand and sets it on the table. "Take a break, Addison."

I pick it up for another swig, and he doesn't stop me this time.

He just opens the top of the silver dome and sniffs. "The chicken thing? Not their best."

"It's heirloom chicken, thank you very much," I correct him, washing the word down with another long swallow of gin.

(Only the best for us hotel-dwellers, right?)

"Well, the filet is better," he shrugs.

"Not when it's clogging your arteries."

He smirks. "You act like I haven't seen you go to town on a burger."

Yeah, sometimes I forget how well he knows me. If he hadn't been in the room, I probably would have ordered a bacon cheeseburger. I'm not saying I would have eaten it, but that's not the point.

Still, I can't make myself interested in chicken, heirloom or not, and it's making me feel a little queasy. "Help yourself," I tell him.

He doesn't. Maybe he already ate dinner with his date. I glare at him and he shakes his head, hands spread as if to say I didn't do anything. If ever there were a Mark Sloan characteristic pose – not counting anything X-rated, I mean – that would be it.

Mark never thinks he's done anything.

He's the most innocent wreaker of havoc I've ever met.

"Eat," he says. "It's actually pretty good."

He's actually making some headway on the chicken; I stand there feeling foolish for a few minutes, then manage a couple of bites of warm bread before pushing it away.

I fiddle with the buttons on my blouse; I want to take it off, put on something comfortable, but for some reason the mechanics of it are challenge. I unlatch some of the easier buttons and then have to take a break.

And then there's another knock on the door.

Mark shrugs when I glance at him. Then I realize it's room service again, come back to pick up the tray. They know me now; I've told them exactly when to come back for it. I told them what I needed and they listened. Why can't everything be that easy?

I try to look as dignified as possible in a half-buttoned blouse and plaid boxers – not that it matters; people like the polite, uniformed busboy are paid to be discreet. I know that well, I grew up with it, and I depend on it.

(It's the people I don't pay who can't seem to master discreet, and yes I'm including myself in that category.)

Mark smirks at me when I close the door, his eyes skimming over what there is of my outfit. "Did you tip him in cash or just in … kind?"

"So amusing." I shake my head at him; he's still a little blurry, but he wouldn't be Mark if he didn't turn every possible moment into one more opportunity for a lecherous comment. How long have we all known each other? Sixteen years? Seventeen?

No wonder nothing surprises me anymore.

For a moment we just look at each other without speaking, and I try not to think what this room must look like to the busboy, to a stranger, to me if I could get the scales off my eyes. Nothing more or less than the two loneliest people in Seattle killing time in a big, empty hotel room. The same room … but not together.

Here's me, pushing forty, half naked, and all but throwing myself at someone who was screwing another woman an hour ago. Someone who screwed me out of my marriage and any chance of an amicable divorce.

Stop, I tell myself, not even sure if I mean stop before you have sex with Mark or stop blaming him for everything when you were a willing participant.

Stop.

Just stop!

(But I never listen. Not even to myself. It's a problem.)

"Addison…" Mark shakes his head as I approach him. The carpet is thick and soft under my bare feet; at least the neighbors can't complain too much. Next door, though … that's a different story.

He lets me kiss him – lets – and then he pushes me back.

"What?" I sound impatient because I am.

"Just take it easy."

"Take it easy. Seriously?" I glare at him. "I had a lousy day. A really, truly terrible day and now you're saying no? You're Mark, you don't say no."

"I say no sometimes," he mutters.

"No you don't," and I let my tone turn to teasing, let my body talk to him instead of my voice; it's not like he's listening anyway.

Everything is still blurry; I taste like gin so he will too. He's still dressed in the t-shirt and sweats he wore to my room, but I'm sitting on his lap now in the loveseat.

I don't even know how I got there but the feeling of his thighs underneath mine is making little pops of light go off behind my eyes.

"Addison…"

I ignore him and work on unbuttoning my blouse, which would be easier if I weren't so … whatever I am. Drunk, tired, some combination of both of them that's making each buttonhole feel more complicated than the MCATs. It takes multiple tries and Mark finally has to help me.

I can see his resolve weakening.

Who's waiting now?

He'll give in … I know he will.

I'm wearing a pretty bra, navy silk and cream colored lace and I know when he slides the back of one finger against the fabric – he doesn't meet my eyes – that I've got him.

No surprise there.

His fingers are skimming up my rib cage and I'm leaning forward, letting my long hair brush against him in the way I know he likes. Distract me, I'm begging him, and his thumb slips under the band of my bra. I sigh against his mouth …

… and then there's another knock on the door.

Ugh.

The perils of hotel life. (Well, "life.")

"He probably forgot something." I shrug, climbing off of Mark with some effort – he has to steady me, and then he points to my discarded blouse but I ignore him. I don't think I could manage to get that back on even if I wanted to.

I just leave my shirt on the carpet and pull open the door, about to say did you forget something, but it's not the busboy standing there.

It's not the busboy at all.

(Okay … so now I'm surprised.)

To be continued. Don't throw things! I'll have Chapter 17 up before 2018, and things are about to start moving forward in a way that I think you'll want to stick around for. Thank you so much to all of you who have responded to this story. Please review and let me know what you think - I would love to hear your thoughts.