Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟭𝟭 if we were villains

𝙓𝙄.
IF WE WERE VILLAINS

──────

SEATTLE

I'M OVER HIM.

I swear.

***

───Romance sucked ass.

I was usually light on it, but sometimes, it really sucked a lot.

I'd had my fair share of movie romances, the sort that truly swept you off your feet. I'd dated a lot, I'd tried a lot. I'd tried to do the whole 'end of movie grand gesture' before and it'd fallen flat on his face. I'd tried to believe in it too, believe that romance was the sort of thing that I needed-- but I'd failed with that too.

The movies made it out to be so nice, so sweet and mushy and full of spontaneous romantic gestures and heart-to-heart confessions. They made it out to be some sort of miracle where the man would let the girl lie on the door and die in her place, or where the guy would come to the table, stick his hand out and say 'Nobody puts Baby in the corner'.

There was always a lover and another lover and a conflict and a problem and a solution and then the end. The lovers kissed, the title reel ran and happily ever after happened off-screen--

From experience, that wasn't usually how it went.

Often, movie romance didn't really translate to real life. I'd been a hopeless romantic once but then I'd realised that, half the time, men just wanted to get laid. They didn't want to get involved with the mushy stuff-- in reality, they didn't want to dance around the kitchen to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack or, if they did, they just really wanted to get in your pants. Romance, for all intents and purposes, was a scam.

I wasn't the only one who seemed to share that sentiment.

Romance, it seemed, happened to suck for a lot of people.

The man opposite me, for example, seemed to have a pretty shitty hand of cards. I was sat there, in an office in the middle of the Psychiatry department, watching as he folded his arms tightly across his chest, troubled deeply by the sick joke of a romance he was currently stuck with.

My eyebrows wavered, bunching together as I sat in my first-ever session as a doctor of Psychiatry at Seattle Grace, my first ever attempt at this job.

I'd practically been shoved into the room by Dr Wyatt. The last few days had been my 'training' which had consisted of a short tour of the Psych floor, a rundown on policies held by the hospital.

This was, apparently, my test-run, a half an hour session with a man who looked as though he would rather hit me around the head with the armchair he was perched on, than talk to me. I licked my chapped lips, knowing that not soon after this, I'd have to be introduced to the Hospital Board.

As Alex Karev, my newest patient, let out a huff and leant back heavily in his chair, I wondered what it was, exactly, that had persuaded me into becoming a Psychiatrist in the first place.

    "So, how are you feeling today?"

My tone was nonchalant, my eyes dipping to the blank notebook that was resting on my knees.

A pen wobbled in between my fingers, tapping it against the lined paper ever so often like some sort of timer.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock—I had half an hour to make Alex Karev actually say something valuable enough for me to scribble down.