Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟬 it was only a matter of time

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓.
it was only a matter of time

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we usually love a double update but...

maybe you won't love this one ❤️

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ANDREW HAD NEVER been fond of ultimatums.

He'd been painfully sensitive to them as a kid, constantly burdened by little rules and time-sensitive deadlines. 

His nanny had always been the type to place time constraints on everything: do your homework by dinner for dessert, be ready for school by this time or brush your teeth by then. As a kid, he'd hated it, always running on a clock that was too fast or too slow; but as an adult, he recognised that time was a bitch and things needed to be completed. 

Like it or not, most times, ultimatums were the only way things were going to get finished.

That had been Andrew's thinking when it came to Charlie. He'd given him three days and, now, Charlie wasn't picking up his phone.

Andrew paced the length of his hotel room, surrounded by the foundations of what had been a very strenuous packing process. 

Admittedly, the trauma counsellor was used to living out of a suitcase, always moving and living where he was needed, so a hotel checkout day was not something he was a stranger to. He'd grown quite a strategic way of tackling it, always packing logically and giving himself as much time as possible—

Seattle was, in fact, just another mark on his very long ledgers of places that had needed him and passed him onto the next mass tragedy. It was because of that, that Andrew Perkins often felt like an omen of death, forever passed between cities but never allowed to stay.

"C'mon..." 

He muttered it under his breath, his face contorting as he was met with the dial tone yet again.

 The room around him was in disarray and he, himself, seemed to meet that energy. His brow was furrowed and his fist was balled very slightly, and the look he shot at his cell phone as he hung up was nothing less than scathing. 

"C'mon Charlie—"

Andrew's pleas with Charlie's voicemail were set to the backing track of his hotel room's shower playing gently in the distance. 

He, for all intents and purposes, had better things that he could have been doing. This was only a courtesy call. It was a reminder to tell Charlie that his three days had ticked over. It was a hopeful call to see whether he'd kept his end of the agreement, to make sure that Andrew didn't have to enforce the rules he'd set. 

(Please just tell me you've spoken to Beth and then I'll leave Seattle and I'll actually be able to sleep at night.) 

It was an olive branch and Charlie, currently, wasn't taking the damn thing.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. 

Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, feeling the hope very slowly dwindle at the back of his chest. Full disclaimer, Andrew didn't take joy from being the designated bad cop. 

He was a professional, he'd spent half his life studying human behaviour and subconscious thought, and he'd never thought that he'd ever have to enforce it against his own brother. Education had taught him that, sometimes, people were erratic and hard to anticipate, but experience with Charlie had taught him that nothing was ever a coincidence.