Asystole ✷ Mark Sloan

𝟬𝟴𝟮 sober

𝙇𝙓𝙓𝙓𝙄𝙄.
BUT WHAT WILL WE DO WHEN WE'RE SOBER ?

tw: drug abuse
discussion around relapse

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ADMITTEDLY, DOMINIC FOX was a West Coast kind of guy.

He loved the Pacific Ocean, loved the sun and loved the time zone. He loved the gold rush of the western States and the way that everything seemed to be tinted with warmth.

He'd been living in California itself for a few years now, enjoying the hot weather that San Francisco, in particular, had to offer. 

He'd always been a sucker for the heat and the lifestyle, the unapologetic nature of the people and the way he could always inevitably always find a party. He was innately a social being, forever entertaining a wide array of guests and keeping himself occupied when not working. 

The West Coast, for him, had been the perfect place for it—after all, he considered his character to be defined by one thing: the sexual tension between his love for professionalism and just getting completely fucked up on a Friday night. 

The whole coast seemed to be a hive for the sort of energy that played perfectly well with his fast-paced lifestyle—

Seattle, however, seemed determined to challenge that.

It was the one place that seemed to be perpetually sad, as if the whole city just couldn't stop crying. It was the rain; Dom didn't like it, the way that the heavens seemed to open, and he'd get completely soaked to the skin. 

West Coast? He considered it Wet Coast. 

Dreary and depressing and no fun. 

The heavy looking clouds and the slick sidewalks just spelled a limp tie and a depressing conversation over a shitty sandwich (with extra mayo because Derek Shepherd was an inconsiderate asshole). It was enough for him to grimace whenever he stepped off of that plane and onto that tarmac at the airport, draw up his collar and scowl at the floor.

This was beginning to happen more often than he would've liked.

The second time in two weeks, he estimated. This place was more familiar than he would have liked. This ground was the same and the sky was still as shit as it had been last time. 

He thought he'd been done for when he'd jumped into that cab after serving Chief Shepherd papers to stop him from blabbing medical secrets. Was he truly that irresistible that Seattle was just begging for him to return? And here he was thinking he'd always been such a sight to watch from behind.

What the fuck does Beth see in this place? He asked himself as he scowled at the gloominess. Why are they even still here?

He guessed that it was a fitting place for things to end. That's what him turning up signified, right? 

As much as the weather and the wind and the scowl on his face set the mood, his presence in the city was a signifier. He supposed that he'd become used to being at client's beck and call; it was the unsaid cost of being a partner for one of the leading medical law firms in the Northern Hemisphere. 

He'd spent years getting hauled out of bed in the middle of the night, torn away from whatever thing he'd been doing in the exact moment—whether it had been entertaining beautiful men, women or even a night out in Vegas, being Dominic Fox meant making compromise, dropping everything in the matter of seconds and catching the next flight out—