Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟱𝟴 i could never give you peace

𝙇𝙑𝙄𝙄𝙄.
I COULD NEVER GIVE YOU PEACE

──────

FLYING FROM LA to Seattle was a lot easier than Addison would've thought.

It was short. Too short.

***

Mark didn't particularly like it when his flings stayed the night.

He had half a mind to leave a little notice on his bedroom door; it'd be compromised of three steps, a three-step plan of how their night was going to go. He could imagine himself maybe printing leaflets (like Andrew's helpful assortment of little foldouts) and leaving them on the nightstand. 

Maybe he'd print it on a business card, leave an info-graphic on the bathroom mirror. It'd say three things:

1. This is a one-time thing.

Mark didn't want reoccurring flings, to be honest, he'd gotten pretty sick of them. He'd tried his hand at dating and it hadn't worked out well. He didn't want anything that was going last longer than a night. He really didn't want anything that wasn't physical. He didn't have time to be concerned or attached. He didn't want to be concerned or attached either. He wanted things to be easy, to be simple.

2. Take your shit with you when you leave.

Mark didn't want reoccurring conversations either. He didn't want a reason to even make eye contact with you again (He hadn't had time to unpack that yet, he couldn't tell whether it was exhaustion or shame but he was running with it for the time being). He didn't want to have to mail someone's panties across Seattle. He was busy. He had better things to do.

And finally;

3. Don't stay the whole night.

The final one was something that Mark had to enforce many times.

Twenty years ago he'd done it with so little regard for the other person: Oh, I'm done now, want me to call you a cab? or Bye, don't forget your bra!  He'd managed to do it with such indifference that he'd become numb to the raised eyebrow, the dirty look of a woman who'd barely even gathered her wits— now, he had a little less enthusiasm. 

It was more of an exhausted gesture towards the door and a grimace that wouldn't dwindle until the front door to his apartment slammed shut (the sound bouncing around his apartment and causing his muscles to clench).

He didn't like feeling like an asshole.

A few times, he was stuck with one of them going straight to sleep. He'd been lost at that point, not quite at his peak jackass power to have the heart to shake someone from their sleep. In that situation, he'd devised his own plan of action; he'd leave them to his bed and rough it on his couch. It wasn't ideal, but Mark didn't really find the idea of someone staying the night ideal. 

No, he wanted them out of the door, far away as soon as he closed his eyes to sleep.

He really didn't want to wake up with someone next to him.

He didn't want it to feel domestic. He didn't like feeling as though he had a girlfriend who was just so happy to wake up next too him. It was the exact sort of thing he was trying to escape— one morning he'd woken up with this beautiful blonde girl flipping pancakes in his kitchen. It'd been enough for him to break out of hives.