First Things Fourth
Seattle, Washington 2008
He was still looking at her lips. He shouldn't, but he was. It'd been like this for the last few minutes - she'd been sleeping and he hadn't. Last night had been bad. He knew that. But why did it feel like the only thing right in his life. It couldn't just be the thrill of doing something he wasn't supposed to, could it? It had to be her. There was that thing - the thing that was missing with claire (his latest scrub nurse), and Sofia (his old scrub nurse), and Jamie (the scrub nurse before that). Something purer. He hp[ed it was that he liked her - like liked-her-personality liked her. Because Derek definitely wouldn't let him get away with that. And he was overthinking this.
Derek wouldn't have to know. How would he find out? Would she go telling everybody like it was something to brag about? No, he didn't think so. She didn't seem like that kind of girl. But then again, she didn't seem like the kind of girl who would sleep with Alex Karev either so where was the line? Where did she stop being a regular intern and start being something else. He so hoped he didn't like her.
When she opened her eyes she knew something was off, because he was still here. He was looking at her, at her face, instead of the rest of her, and he was smiling. She could tell he was trying not to, like he was re-evaluating all of his life choices. And yet his lips were curling and he couldn't help staring at her. Was this the Mark-Sloan-treatment? What every girl got when they woke up in his bed the next morning. If it was, then then understood why so many women fled from him in heartbreak after he 'forgot' to call them back.
She also felt simultaneously proud of herself. She would never have done this sort of thing before. College-Lexie would've shied away from anything encroaching on getting an in with a teacher because it was immoral. College-Lexie would've spent hours mooning over Mark Sloan in lecture halls. She'd possibly even go as far as working out which bar he liked to drink in after work just so she could convince her roommate Becky to get a drink there. She wouldn't ever go near enough to sleep with him. That was the rules. Staring but no touching. And it'd worked. But on the other side of the line she felt like she'd wasted four years never getting the things she wanted. George didn't want her. But Mark did. Mark was a grown man. He didn't have roommates, he paid someone else to do his laundry, and he could afford to live in a hotel room.
He was still looking at her lips. They were soft and pink and warming as she woke. Like rose petals. "Good morning," he said, and he meant it.