Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟲𝟲 the sun also rises

𝙇𝙓𝙑𝙄.
THE SUN ALSO RISES

──────

NEW YORK

THEY DIDN'T GET to do this often.

Just the two of them. 

The two of them in the big brownstone, everything shut so tightly and the curtains drawn. She'd ordered some takeout from the other side of the city and opened a bottle of wine. 

There was already a movie in the VHS player by the time Beth arrived, slightly windswept and holding two more shiny bottles of Shiraz. She flashed a crooked grin at her sister as she stepped over the threshold, glancing around the empty townhouse.

A 'Men in Surgery' conference over in Atlanta meant that Addison had the whole place to herself for the weekend. Both Derek and Mark had left the city for some brown-nosing and small-talking over beer bottles and stiff collars. 

That, naturally, had resulted in Addison overhauling the brownstone and declaring Saturday Night as something both she and Beth needed desperately: A Girls Night. Just the two of them. 

It was something Addison was vehemently excited for-- she needed something like this, something that felt real and genuine, an opportunity to fully relax.

She missed her sister.

They barely ever got to see each other between their crammed work schedules; with Beth's internship and Addison's new position as Head of Fetal Surgery at Bellevue, both of them were a lot busier than they would have liked. They only saw each other at dinner, but they were both tied to men who spoke a lot and tended to dominate conversation. 

Their conversations over dinner had been reduced to a lot of knowing looks, vague expressions and half-smiles. They'd felt like the socialites at their mother's soirees, silenced by whatever dumb masculine conversation topic had been brought to the table-- inevitably, Beth would chuckle into her wine glass and Addison would amuse herself by pretending as if nothing was wrong.

(What was that? Oh, nothing Der, I just thought of something funny, go back to talking about football, honey.)

"So," Addison called out as she swanned through the brownstone, holding up two bottles of wine. "Do we start with the Cabernet Sauvignon, the Zinfadel or the Shiraz--"

"From the week I've had..." Beth responded, already settled on the couch with her legs pulled up to her chest. She looked exhausted, resting her head against the back of the seat. "I'll take all of them in a punch bowl..." Then she paused. "It's me, did you even have to ask? Shiraz'll do."

The older Montgomery sister chuckled, sitting beside her and letting out a long tired breath, one that made Beth laugh in return. 

They each poured a large glass of wine and soaked in a prolonged silence, revelling in how quiet the brownstone was-- Addison swore that sometimes the whole city screamed and shook these walls, but silence was something she was slowly becoming accustomed to.

She was alone more often than she would have liked these days. Maybe that's why it was such a relief to have Beth sat beside her; she didn't talk about it often, but she was convinced that her younger sister was her best friend. 

She wasn't dumb, she knew that the sort of friends that actually turned up to Sunday brunch were paper doll friends, the sort that were all for show and disintergrated when it started raining. She couldn't talk to them about how she was fighting more often than not with Derek and how he was barely home.