Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟭𝟯 the monster under the bed

𝙓𝙄𝙄𝙄.
THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED.

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SEATTLE

I STARED AT HER, wide eyed and suspended somewhere in the gap between shocked and horrified.

The silence played between us, the tall-tale sign of the very tense game of cat-and-mouse that the past half hour had been. Everything had been building up, leading to this exact moment: me, stood in the doorway with disbelief in my eyes and every belonging I'd dragged into this home all bundled in my arms. 

Opposite me, Meredith Grey, the woman who was currently reminding me how easily it would be to pull the rug from under my feet, crossed her arms over her chest.

I couldn't believe her.

Looking at everything from this angle, the amount of belongings I'd carried with me from Indonesia seemed so sad. I only had my rugged suitcase and the handful of things that came with it: old medical journals that I'd honestly forgotten were there, heels with cracked soles and assorted clothing that still smelt musty from mosquito repellant. 

(Amongst everything, too, I'd found an old Boston Patriots jersey that had gotten caught up in the chaos. It smelt of Charlie and reminded me of him to the point where my stomach tended to twist painfully.) 

Everything could've fit into a knapsack tied to a stick and thrown over my shoulder, just like the true drifter I was proving to be.

I'd never been evicted before, but I had evicted other people. Maybe this was karma. Maybe I could feel this like a sick and twisted deja vu; me, stood in the Manhattan downpour on my apartment doorstep, screaming my lungs raw as I threw Mark's belongings into the street–– one wretched Gucci shoe after the other. 

I'd said so many profanities, some drunk and incoherent, some others very good and logical points that I'd rephrase while sober in the morning. It'd been a scene, it'd been a mess. I could still feel that rain on my skin and the sensation of watching that cheater's temper flare in the rain.

Yeah, I thought to myself, This was karma.

"No," I said.

If this was karma, I wasn't going out without a fight.

Meredith let in a very long breath, one that told me she was severely regretting ever agreeing to letting me stay. Again, it was very familiar to me–– I like to call this one the Montgomery turn around. 

I likened it to the puppy cycle of Christmas: getting so wrapped up in how cute it was and promising it the world but then realising, within the span of a week, how much of a mistake this was. Everyone went through it. People tended to realise I wasn't as cute and shiny as I appeared fairly quickly–– 

And, unlike a puppy, I was fairly sure there was no one exactly fighting for my honour. Her sigh did not waver me. I was in a big scary new city and her house was one of the places that I'd felt comfortable enough in to somewhat call home.

"Beth."

"No," I said, cutting her second sigh off short. I shook my head. "I'm not going to leave. Not right now."

What was the crime that fit this punishment? I didn't even know. 

If I had to list a crime, I guessed it would've been calling her fiancé (or whatever Derek was at this point, I wasn't exactly keeping up) a dick and telling him to get his shit together. Or, then again, there was the fact that I was her sister's current boyfriend's Ex.