Chapter Seven There was nothing homey about the apartment, it still sported the bare white walls it had had when Mark moved into it almost three months ago. He hadn't added any personal touches, as it was just a place to exist. He showered, slept, and sometimes ate there. He didn't need pretty walls or paintings to do those things. He let out a rather forlorn sigh and plopped down on the over stuffed sage green sofa Cristina had made him take. She had tried to force other parts of their life together on him, but he had refused. He didn't want to be reminded of what a fool he had been. There had been no love, just respect, and these days there wasn't even that. It was hard to respect a woman who had used his past to end some thing he would have gladly ended if only she had asked. Closing his eyes, Mark willed the loneliness away. It hovered near, ever present, always reminding him that he was, indeed, alone. Meredith avoided him, as though she couldn't trust herself to be around him, and Derek spoke only when spoken to, almost as if he knew which was impossible. There was nobody else in Seattle he felt close enough to call a friend. If he really was hard pressed, he supposed he could call Callie one, but her life was so wrapped up in Erica and the little boy they had adopted he didn't have the heart to unload his misery upon her. A rather abrupt pounding on his door had him opening his eyes. "Go away," he muttered, not really wanting to deal with any visitors. Most likely it was a package for his neighbor; the old lady had a habit of leaving a note for the delivery people to take her stuff to Mark if she didn't answer. He didn't know why the old bat was attached to him, other than he had helped her with her groceries a few times. The person wasn't leaving, Mark realized. With a scowl on his face, he rose from the deep cushions of Cristina's couch and stormed over to his front door. He didn't bother to check through the eye hole, just yanked the door open and snapped out an impatient "What?" "Nice to see you too," Derek said sullenly. He edged around Mark, not waiting for an invitation. His lithe form stalked across the beige carpet to the spot Mark had just vacated and stopped. He looked as though he was going to sit, but then changed his mind. "What do you want Derek?" Mark shut the door quietly, resting his forehead against the cool metal. He hadn't been too bothered by Derek's lack of interest in him lately. The less he seen of his so called friend, the better off he was; the guilt didn't eat at him as much when Derek wasn't around. "Is that any way to speak to your oldest and dearest friend?" Derek asked, sarcasm laced through his wounded voice. He looked as miserable as Mark felt. There were dark circles under his eyes that seemed to intensify the blue, and he almost sported a full beard; a few more days and he would. "I came to talk, Mark. I need to talk." "Make your self at home," Mark muttered as he walked into the kitchen. He removed two bottles of beer, twisted the tops off, and joined Derek in slouching on the couch. He offered the second beer while he sipped on the first. He would have poured Scotch or something harder if he had had any. He had given up on the hard stuff a month ago. When he had first realized Meredith wasn't going to leave Derek he had been consumed with a need to numb himself, and Scotch had seemed like the perfect way. Numbing the pain with alcohol hadn't worked, so he had thrown the bottles out. "Meredith cheated on me," Derek said matter of factly. Mark choked on the yeasty tasting liquid in his mouth. "She cheated on me two months, one week, and three days ago. Do you want to know how I know the exact time she cheated?" His intense blue gaze slid to Mark. "How?" Mark managed to gasp the question out. He was pretty amazed by how calm Derek was. The man was talking about his wife's indiscretion as though it was a simple fact of nature. "I know the exact time because I haven't slept with my wife in almost five months and she is two and a half months pregnant." Derek set his bottle of beer on the glass topped coffee table Cristina had foisted on him as well. "I spent almost a year begging her to have a baby and she kept refusing, said she wasn't cut out to be a mother. I make one small mistake…" "You gave Addie your sperm," Mark interjected. "That's not exactly small, Derek. Especially since that sperm is now making up half of a kid's DNA." His mind hadn't quite processed the fact that Meredith was pregnant and the baby was his. He couldn't process it, not with Derek around. It was something he needed to do alone. "True," Derek conceded, his long fingers drumming on his knee. "I suppose it is rather ironic, if you think about it. I give Addison my sperm so she can have a kid, and you use your's to impregnate my wife." He turned his head to look at Mark, a rather twisted smile on his face. "Surprised that I knew?" "How long?" Mark asked, unable to look Derek in the face. "How long have you known it was me?" "I knew the minute she walked through that door. Really, Mark, if you're going to fuck other people's wives you should change your cologne." Derek laughed bitterly. The other man stood, his right fist flexing and un-flexing. He was contemplating a hit, Mark knew. If it came to that he wouldn't stop him. Derek had the right to get at least one punch in. "It wasn't something either of us planned," Mark snapped. Unable to tolerate the way Derek stood over him, as though he was ruler and conqueror. "And maybe, if you hadn't lied to your wife she wouldn't have turned to some one else." "I never lied to her," Derek shouted. "I might not have told her the truth, but I never lied." The man was forgetting New Year's Eve, Mark thought ruefully. That was Derek, conveniently forgetting things when they didn't suit his purpose. "Yes, I should have told her when Addison asked me, and maybe I shouldn't have agreed to help Addison but damn it that didn't give Meredith the right to screw another man, and you at that!" "Ah, yes." Mark nodded. "Tell me Derek, what pisses you off more? The fact that she cheated or that she cheated with me?" It was the latter and they both knew it. "She left," Derek sneered. "The moment she found out she was pregnant she left." He started to prowl, walking the length of the living room. "I told her I didn't care who the father was, that I would raise the baby as my own. That nobody had to know. She said she would know," he went on, talking more to himself than to Mark. "She would know and she couldn't bring herself to live a lie. As if we haven't been living a lie these last couple months." "What's she going to do?" Mark asked, his heart pounding. He wasn't cut out to be a father, wasn't even sure he wanted to be one. Sure he had had a moment of longing on the due date of the baby he would have had with Addison, but that moment had passed, and with it his desire to procreate. "If you think she's going to let you off the hook the way Addison did, you better think again. Meredith, it would seem, has rethought her previous assessment of her abilities as a mother." Derek ran a hand through his hair. "Now, it seems, she is all about being a mother. Going so far as to tell me it would be better for the baby to have no father than one that didn't love him or her." "Maybe she's right," Mark said quietly. The words left a sour taste in his mouth. He knew she was right; no father was better than one who would cause pain. "She's not right, she's delusional! I would never take my hatred for you out on that baby. Never." Derek seethed. "She won't listen, though. Which is why you are going to tell her that you want nothing to do with this baby. You are going to tell her that I'm the better choice. You owe me that Mark." Disbelief coursed through Mark as he stared at the stranger who had once been his best friend. The irrational man before him wasn't Derek, but some confused soul who looked like him. "I don't owe you anything, Derek." "You do," Derek insisted. "You've broken up both my marriages. Both of them, Mark. It's like you can't stand for me to be happy." "You're full of it, Derek. You want to blame some one, look in the mirror. You drove both of them to sleeping with me. I'll admit that I pursued Addison, and maybe it was out of this need for you to be as miserable as me, but that wasn't the case with Meredith. I didn't want to care about her. I didn't want to touch her. I'm only a man, though, and when she begged…she begged me Derek…to make her feel something again, I would have had to of been heartless not to." Mark felt his body tremble with rage. Derek never seen beyond himself, beyond his own hurt. It was always about Derek, always. Not anymore. Meredith was right, Derek wouldn't be able to love that baby. Every time he looked at him or her he would see Mark, would be reminded of what his wife had done. He might not want to, but he would come to hate the child, and no child deserved that. "You need to grow up. To stop looking at everyone else when things go wrong. You treated both Addison and Meredith like they were after thoughts. A person can only take that for so long before something in them snaps." "I never treated Meredith like she was an after thought," Derek defended. He knew better than to lie about his treatment of Addison, he had already confessed to that. "Why don't you ask her if she feels the same way," Mark sneered. Derek said nothing, just stared back at him with a hard, wounded look in his eyes. Mark softened a bit. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I never meant for…" "You never do," Derek said quietly. His shoulders droop. "Real mess I created, agreeing to help Addie." "Yeah," Mark sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face. "You really think you can love that kid like your own?" Derek frowned. "Why wouldn't I? I know Addison doesn't…" He stopped, realizing Addison's baby wasn't the one he was talking about. "You want the truth? I don't know. I would like to think I could, that I'm a big enough man that I could look at that baby and see your goodness, but I'm sort of hard pressed to remember anything good about you these days." That was fair. Mark couldn't say he wouldn't feel the same way if the roles were reversed. "I'm not cut out to be a father," he blurted out. "You might surprise yourself," Derek muttered. "I love her, Mark, and baby or no baby I'm going to fight for her." "Why are you telling me this?" Mark frowned. There was nothing between Meredith and him, there never had been, except for the one night. "Figure it out," Derek spit out before slamming out of the apartment. Mark stared after him, feeling more confused and alone than he had before Derek arrived. Who cheated whoYou're the one to blameTell me it ain't true