Work Text:
A few tears slid down his cheeks when he finished. It surprised both him and Derek, who laid a hand on Mark’s cheek and wiped them away with his thumb.
Derek had touched him so, so many times over the course of the night. And he had been gentle each time—he really was a kind lover—but this…this had a tenderness that made Mark’s head spin. Made him want to lean into it and everything else Derek had to offer him.
“Are you okay?”
Question of the hour.
He could only answer by pulling Derek into a kiss. A real, genuine, earnest kiss, not like the drunken and feverish ones from before.
And Mark had known in that moment that all he wanted was for someone to suture him to his best friend so he could live in whatever he had been feeling.
Which was insane, of course. Who the hell talks like that?
And yet, nothing had ever made more sense.
—
It wasn’t serious. You can screw your best friend and it doesn’t have to mean anything.
That’s what Mark tells himself, at least, when he and Derek climb into the elevator with Callie and Dr. Hahn.
Never mind that he spends the elevator ride staring at Derek’s hair, thinking about how it looked pressed against Mark’s pillows last night.
They make idle conversation until the two women get off on the next floor.
Then they’re alone. Alone in the elevator, and all Mark wants to do is lean into Derek. Not even to kiss him or to make a move, but to let himself be absorbed in his presence.
He definitely doesn’t want to be sutured to him, because he’s no longer drunk and no longer fucking insane with the afterglow of a good orgasm.
He should just want to screw him, again, after last night. That should be it. Just be some guy who, amidst his tireless pursuit of women, got his wires crossed and found them sparking for his best friend? And then he learns that it’s about the person, not the equipment, that really matters at the end of the day. Or some other poignant lesson.
That would be if he had the hots for Derek, though. He knows damned well what that feels like and this isn't it.
Something strange and warm and twisting moves in his chest as he leans forward despite himself, close enough to rest his chin on Derek’s shoulder. He can’t even tell if he wants to. Only that being in proximity to Derek makes this thing in his chest spread like some malignancy, if he should even call it malignant.
He wonders if Derek feels something similar.
There’s the feeling of fingers brushing against his own when Derek shifts as Mark continues to linger. A fleeting moment that may have become—it’s not like he can be sure what—until the elevator halts and the doors part.
Some random hospital staff, probably a scrub nurse or something, walk on.
Mark’s face slides into his go-to grin as he pretends to tease Derek, rattling off some nonsense that he doesn’t even parse himself.
He can feel the sudden stiffness in Derek’s posture, the tense sharpness that cuts through whatever was lingering in the air before.
His chest starts to ache.
Derek chuckles, in what he has long since come to know as bemusement, but forced in a way that’s so subtle that Mark doubts anyone else could pick it up.
Then Derek turns his head and catches Mark’s gaze, grin hastily plastered on. But his eyes betray the rest of his face.
It’s always been the eyes with Derek Shepherd.
It’s what helps him win with the ladies. Bright and lively and flirtatious. Or that endearing look when he cares about someone that lets him keep a woman, even when he has fucked up beyond belief.
It’s those same eyes that are going to be Mark’s undoing.
The tender gaze reminds him, at first, of how he stares at Meredith when he’s longing for her. It’s strikingly similar. But there’s something else to it, beyond the sorrowful tenderness, that Mark can’t place.
All he knows is that it shoots to the core of that thing in his chest—it knows that thing in his chest—and there’s some relative of it residing in Derek’s chest, too.
All he knows is that he wishes no one else had gotten on the elevator.