A/N: So... sorry this took so long! But.. it's like ten pages long. Does that make up for how long it took? Also, I know you've all been waiting for a super long time for some actual Mark/Lexie interaction. So here it is!

Also, this fic is over! It's finally finished! I have really enjoyed writing this fic and there will definitely be more Mark/Lexie to come. The song for the end of this chapter is "Something Good Can Work" by Two Door Cinema.

Chapter Eight: Obviously

It wasn't until the day after the surgery that Mark woke up. They'd been slowly reducing the sedatives he'd been on and a nurse told me this morning that he was expected to wake up soon. Of course, I wasn't there at the time. I was down in the cafeteria, eating lunch with Meredith.

Seconds after I finished eating my food I got a text from Callie saying he was awake and asking for me. I shoved my phone in Meredith's face and as soon she got past her confusion she read the text and said one word. "Go."

I nodded and ran for the elevator.

After what felt like two entire lifetimes, I burst out of the elevator and ran down the hall to Mark's room. Just before I hit his room I stopped short and ran a hand through my hair. I hadn't really looked at it today but I was sure it was a disaster. I, less than discretely, raised my hand to my mouth and blew into it. My breath smelled like the beef enchilada I'd had for lunch. I reached for my purse which I was pretty sure had some mint flavoured gum in it only to realize that I'd run out of the cafeteria so fast that I'd left my purse at the table. The only thing I had with me was my phone. I spun around and kicked the wall in frustration. I bit my lip but not before a tiny groan managed to escape. This was stupid. This was stupid, right? Why was I all of a sudden so concerned with how my hair looked or how my breath smelled or that I'd been wearing the same pair of jeans for the past several days in a row?

Mark's voice drew me out of my distracted thoughts. "I thought you said you texted her."

I rolled my eyes at my own stupid behaviour. He wasn't going to care what I looked like. Besides that, he would probably be too high on painkillers to notice anyway. I took a tentative step forward but before I made it to the room I heard Callie say, sounding very annoyed, "Would you like me to go look for her?"

"No, because that would mean you'd have to leave and I don't want you to go," he said.

Callie scoffed. "You know I'm leaving when she gets here anyway."

"Not allowed. I want to have at least two of my four favorite women in my room at all times," he said. There was the unmistakeable, over-the-top cheery tone of someone on really good painkillers to his voice. I had to clap my hand down over my mouth to stop a giggle from bursting out.

"Four favorite women?" Callie asked.

"You, obviously," said Mark. "Lexie, Sofia and Arizona." I could imagine him smiling childishly as he said, "I have so many women." He cleared his throat and said, attempting to be more serious this time, "I demand, as the guy with two broken legs, that you all like each other."

Again, Callie scoffed. This time she didn't say anything.

"Why don't you like her, Callie?"

I could hear Callie's scrubs ruffle as she shifted her weight and she said, "I don't dislike her." It was impossible to miss the hard, defensive edge in her voice.

"Liar," Mark said with the kind of honesty that was usually reserved for the very, very drunk.

Callie let out an exasperated sounding sigh. "If she leaves you... I don't want to have to pick up the pieces again. Or put up with your cooking."

"Hey!" Mark shouted, sounding indignant. "I'm a very good cook." There was a pause, then, "Arizona likes my cooking."

Callie said, again with that sharp edge to her words, "I just don't trust Lexie."

Without thinking about what I was doing I stepped forward into the doorway and said, "Well, I guess we'll just have to work on that."

The look that Callie levelled at me after I said that almost made me wish I'd stayed out in the hall.

Mark didn't notice this. At all. "Lexie!" he called out, impossibly excited at my having shown up. "I missed you."

I let out a tiny laugh. "How long have you been awake?"

"Mmmm..." Mark made a face like he was thinking really hard. "Twenty minutes? But I missed you."

"In twenty minutes?" I laughed a little louder this time even though Callie was still staring at me.

"No," he said, his voice almost at a whisper. "Before."

"I'll take that as my cue to leave," Callie said. She stuffed her hands in her lab coat pockets and walked past me but before she walked away she gave me another heavy look. "We'll work on it," she said.

"Huh," I muttered after she'd walked off down the hall. After all the awkward silence and the glares and her outright admitting she didn't like me, I really hadn't expected that.

"What?" Mark asked, the goofy little kid look firmly back in place.

"Nothing." I shook my head. I'd have plenty of time to think about that later.

"Come here," he said. He crooked a finger at me and stared.

I shrugged and walked over to the side of the bed.

"Closer," he demanded.

He kept staring. I sat down in the chair next to the bed.

"Closer," he demanded again.

I inched the chair forward so it was closer to the bed. "Still not close enough," he said.

I raised an eyebrow at him. The chair was as close to the bed as it could get. "Please?" he asked, close to pleading this time.

I pursed my lips and frowned. I wasn't sure what he wanted.

"Please?" he asked again.

I slid the chair closer, practically crushing my legs against the side of the bed. Awkwardly, I leaned over the bed and put my chin on his shoulder. "Good?" I teased. From this angle I could only see his neck, his jaw and part of his cheek. He smiled and I couldn't help but notice how different his smile looked from this close up. "Perfect," he said.

I laid my head down on his shoulder and almost instantly closed my eyes. From this angle I had much too good a view of his legs. That was a reminder of things I didn't need to be reminded of so I closed my eyes. "I..." I started to say. I didn't want to say this but I felt I had to. "I... I wanted to leave. I was scared. This whole time... I've been... a mess. But I stayed. I'm not going anywhere. I won't leave. No matter what happens, I won't leave."

"Me either." From where I was his voice sounded larger, bigger, deeper. I nudged myself forward a little bit more, the top of my head brushing up against his neck. My legs were starting to cramp up but I didn't dare move, didn't want to.

We didn't speak again after that. I just laid there, my head on his shoulder. After a while, we both fell asleep.

The next few weeks were exhausting but I tried (and maybe failed a few times) not to complain. Everyone who was in the crash had survived. Everything had worked out. And on top of all of that, I wasn't alone anymore. I had Mark but it was more than that. I had worried that after the immediate trauma of the crash had faded things would go back to the way they had been before. I would go back to not having any friends. That didn't happen.

There was a party the night Mark was released from the hospital. Callie, Arizona, Mark, Jackson, April, Meredith and Derek and I all got together at Callie and Arizona's place and ate pizza and watched a stupid action movie. I didn't really like action movies but Mark had picked it and as it was his party, he got to pick. I got the feeling he was going to be using that against me, the whole 'recovering from a plane crash' thing to get just about anything he wanted. A little part of me was annoyed at that, but for the most part, I didn't care. I didn't care how many stupid movies I ended up watching or how many nights in a row he picked what we'd have for dinner. He'd survived. That was the important part.

A month later, I was preparing to go out and Mark watched me putting on lip gloss and picking out what earrings to wear from his spot on the couch. He had a sour look on his face and I wished there was something I could do about it.

"Why do you have to go?" he asked.

We were currently staying with Callie and Arizona until Mark was better and we could move into his place. I had gone back to work last week so I couldn't be around all the time, but between me, Arizona and Callie there was usually someone around. He kept trying to convince the three of us that he was fine, he was okay enough to be left alone, but none of us bought that. He had to use a wheelchair to get around but he hated using it, so most of the time he didn't. Most of the time he just laid on the couch and we didn't quite trust him to not try and walk around if left alone.

I gave myself a last once over in the mirror and walked out into the living room. "I told you. We're celebrating April's new job at Seattle Presbyterian tonight. They keep inviting me out and I need to go."

"So you're just leaving me here?" he asked. He tried to smile, tried to make it a joke but it didn't quite work. Originally, I'd invited him along, but that meant going outside in the wheelchair and he hated to be seen in it, even by me.

Before I could respond Callie walked in carrying a grocery bag that I assumed was full of sodas, popcorn and at least seven different types of junk food. "What, I'm not good enough for you anymore?" Callie said with a smile.

Mark scowled.

"I heard you just as I opened the door," she said.

I turned to face her and gave her a look, trying to express that he seemed to be upset again and that I didn't know what to do about it. That was a lot to convey with just a look but Callie seemed to understand. She put a comforting hand on my shoulder and nodded before walking over to the kitchen and putting down her bag. She started pulling food out and it was, like I had suspected, candy, popcorn and diet sodas.

"What movie do you wanna watch?" Callie asked as she put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. She spun around and leaned up against the counter. "I'm thinking something with lots of explosions."

Mark just sort of shrugged and sighed. "You know, I don't really care."

For a split second Callie looked like she was about to start yelling at him before she carefully reined her annoyance in with a deft shake of her head. She looked over at me and asked, "When are you going to be back?"

I walked to the front door and grabbed my purse off of one of the hangers. "Probably not too late, we've all got to work in the morning."

She nodded and smiled just a little. "Should be a good time anyway. The few times I've seen it, Kepner is funny drunk. And I'm betting she gets drunk tonight."

It was weird, but in the month since Mark had been out of the hospital and we'd been staying here, Callie and I... we weren't what you would call the best of friends or anything, but I did count her as a friend now. We'd never said as much but I think she felt the same.

"Probably," I said in response.

"I'll be back later, okay?" I looked over at Mark. He stared at me with a sullen, dark look and I sighed. I raised my hands and opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't come up with anything. So instead I just shook my head, my hair swinging back and forth with the motion.

I shrugged and walked out of the apartment.

At the bar, things were a little better. Or a little worse, I suppose, depending on who you asked.

But for me, it was hard to be depressed sitting at the table with April. She was beyond excited and every time she opened her mouth to say anything it came out in a fast rush of consonants and vowels and things that were only barely words.

"Ihaveajob!" she sing-songed. "Ihaveajob!" She said the words like they were all one word.

Delicately, Jackson extricated a dark brown beer bottle from her grip. "And you've clearly had way too much to drink." He was trying to reprimand her but a smile slipped through the "I'm cutting you off now" vibe he was going for.

She glared at him in her cutesy little way and stole the bottle back from him. Before he could stop her, she downed the rest of the bottle in one gulp. She slammed it down on the table almost hard enough to break it. "Idon't evencare!" she said. "'Cause..."

I laughed and cut her off. "You have a job. You've said."

She narrowed her eyes at me momentarily but ended up smiling. "Whatever." She looked down at the table and noticed the absence of alcohol anywhere nearby. She got to her feet and nearly fell over. "I'm going to get more beers!" she said. She wobbled off towards the bar with Jackson quick on her heels.

Once they were gone Alex slid over so he was sitting next to me. "How are you doing?" he asked.

I shrugged. "It's hard, you know? Sometimes he's fine but other times he gets so... so... just... upset about things and I don't know what to do."

Alex nodded. "I don't really have advice for that. Or for anything, really. But..." He paused and took a long drink of his beer. "Just keep trying, I guess."

I nodded and agreed. What else was I going to do, really?

April came back to the table a few minutes later, another beer in her hand.

"You are going to be so hungover tomorrow," I said. "Isn't that like a bad idea if you're working in the morning?"

"Nope!" she said. She slid into the booth a little too hard and ended up knocking into me. "I don't start till the day after tomorrow."

"Lucky you," said Alex, his tone more than just a little mocking.

Jackson just rolled his eyes and sat down on the edge of the booth.

A few more weeks and life had almost returned to normal. The plane crash was no longer new, interesting news at the hospital and Meredith was returning to work in a few days. She wasn't really supposed to go back for another week, but she was going to start in three days. She'd been getting restless, staying at home all day, every day. Cristina had been teasing her about how she needed to cut something or else she'd go mad. Meredith insisted she wouldn't go crazy if she had to wait another week but I wasn't so sure.

But overall, at the hospital, things were returning to normal. People had stopped staring at me every time I walked by and all of the bruises and cuts I'd gotten from the accident had long since faded.

But at home?

At home was a completely different story.

We'd just moved back into Mark's apartment the week before and that should have been a good thing. Things were supposed to be getting better, moving forward. Mark had started his physical therapy but it wasn't going well. He kept wanting to push himself, go faster and work harder. He knew better, as a doctor himself he knew better, but as a patient it was like he thought that if he pushed harder and worked at it more he'd get better faster. That was not how it worked, as I, Callie and Arizona all kept telling him and as he himself knew, even if he was pretending he didn't.

One day while we were over at Callie and Arizona's, Arizona offered to drive him to his physical therapy and he made some sharp remark about how he should be able to drive himself and maybe he just wouldn't go and that was when Callie snapped.

"Here," she said, handing Sofia over to me. I took Sofia and to distract myself started making silly faces at her. Sofia giggled her adorable baby giggle and smiled widely.

"I get it. I do. I've been where you are. Literally. But you've got to take this slowly," said Callie. She had her hands on her hips and a stern look on her face.

Arizona, who up to this point had been standing by the door, walked over to Callie. "Callie, come on," she said softly.

"No, no, I will not," Callie took a step towards Mark. He was sitting on the couch and putting on his shoes, pretending he hadn't heard her, didn't know what she was talking about. She walked towards him and kneeled down in front of the couch. "Is the whole being in a sour mood all the time thing really helping? Is it really? If it is, we'll put up with it and I'll shut up. But I kinda doubt it actually makes you feel any better."

Mark finished tying up his shoes but he didn't let go of the laces. He clenched them like if he squeezed them hard enough, they'd explode. He didn't look up at her either. "You don't get it. I was trapped under a plane. I thought I was going to die. That's not exactly something you just get over."

Everyone in the room, except for Sofia who was now busy entertaining herself by sucking on her fingers, was silent. We'd talked about it more than a few times and we'd all naturally assumed he'd been upset because he wanted to be better, wanted to be up and walking around by himself. That was what he complained about, so that was what we assumed. He'd never said...

"I was there too, you know," I said. Sofia struggled in my arms and I shifted my grip on her. I walked slowly, like I was in a trance, over to him. I sat down on the couch and put Sofia down next to me. Still, he did not look up, still kept that death grip on his shoelaces. I reached out and gently, quickly, ran a hand through his hair. "We don't talk about it... we should talk about it."

He straightened up, but still refused to look at me. "I don't want to see a psychiatrist, Lex."

I put a hand on his arm, but he shoved it off. "I don't mean a psychiatrist. I mean... we should talk about it. With each other."

He hung his head and raised a hand to the back of his neck and nervously scratched at it. Callie groaned and got to her feet. She groaned again and rubbed at her knee. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her walk over towards Arizona.

"But what about..." Arizona started but Callie waved her off.

"He'll miss it," Callie said. She opened the door and less than delicately pushed Arizona out of it. She shut the door and we were alone. Or, mostly alone, if Sofia counted against that, which I was pretty sure she didn't.

I dragged Sofia up onto my lap and hugged her tightly. She started to whine and fuss so I put her back on the side of the couch.

"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night," Mark said. I waited for him to continue and tried not to let my guilt at being able to sleep like the dead show on my face.

"I wake up and it hurts and for a few seconds I think I'm still trapped," he said. Sofia crawled over my legs and made a grabbing motion for Mark. I picked her up and put her in his lap. He smiled, but it was a bitter little smile. He absent mindedly started running his hands through her hair and she giggled.

"And then I feel guilty for thinking about it, worrying about it. Like I shouldn't be feeling this way. I have so much." He looks down at Sofia and kisses the top of her head. He looks up at me and I can see that his eyes are wet, he's almost crying. "I feel like I should be..." He shakes his head. "I don't know. Better than this."

I open my mouth, shut it and gulp. How did I not notice any of this? He'd never said it but... I should've noticed, right? I should've known something was wrong. "I'm sorry," is all I can think to say.

He looks over at me and makes a face, confused. "Why are you sorry?"

"I should've noticed something. You've been dealing with all this and I... I didn't know. I.. haven't really thought about it much. I freaked out, more than a few times those first few days but then... you were okay and... I stopped thinking about it."

He shakes his head and looks back down at Sofia. "I should've told you. Instead I..." He stopped short and I was tempted to reach out and touch him, but I didn't. "I didn't."

This time I did reach out and touch him. I put a hand on his shoulder and he didn't push it off. "Let's just both admit we've handled this badly and move on, okay?"

He nodded and I saw a few fat teardrops fall. They landed on Sofia's head and as soon as they did she raised her hands, exploring her hair, trying to figure out what had just happened. Once she was done with that, she spun around in his lap and looked up at him. He laughed a watery little laugh and sat up a little straighter. He rubbed at his eyes with his hand and said to her, "Sorry about that." Sofia just smiled and shook her head at him. Curious, she put a hand on his face and stared at him. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight.

I was just finished working and wanted nothing more than to go home and shower. And probably take a long nap. I'd had a long, awful, nasty, dirty shift. The kind that makes for great bad stories later but in the moment makes you feel nothing but dirty all over, even if you've already showered and changed your clothes.

But I had to go and pick up Mark from physical therapy first. I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time. I was a few minutes early.

I walked up the stairs and down the hall to the physical therapy room and stood in the doorway, watching Mark standing there, standing there all on his own, just talking to the physical therapist, Jeremy.

A sound something like shock escaped my lips. Mark slowly, very slowly, turned around, saw me and frowned. "I was going to surprise you. I had this whole thing planned, I was going to walk on those-" he pointed over to the bars at the other end of the room "-then walk past them and walk over to you." He took a few slow, shaky steps towards me. I met him halfway. I smiled and wrapped my hands around his neck.

"Sorry I was early," I said.

"Well..." he said, leaning on me slightly. "I still get to do the last part."

"The last part?" I asked.

That was when he leaned in and kissed me.

Three months after that, everything was just about as perfect as things could get. Almost.

I had a plan.

I'd told pretty much everybody else about it, largely because I was super nervous and probably wouldn't have been able to keep my mouth shut if I'd tried. So the only one who didn't know was Mark, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because it was important than he didn't know but it was a bad thing because people, particularly Derek, Jackson, Arizona and Callie, kept staring at him and not saying anything. I even saw Callie doing it. It was now or never.

I was going to propose to Mark.

And now that I was sitting out here on a bench in front of the hospital, waiting for him, I couldn't stop shaking. My leg kept bouncing up and down and up and down. More than a few times in the ten minutes I'd been sitting here someone walked by and looked at me like I must have been an escaped mental patient.

I ran through my plan one more time. I'd gotten the coffees. Check. They were sitting on the bench next to me. I'd started out holding them but I was so unable to sit still that the coffee had started sloshing around inside the cups and spilled out a little bit. So the coffees sat on the bench, where I couldn't touch them. Speech. I rehearsed my speech in my head one more time. Check. I didn't have a ring or anything. A girl proposing to a guy was one thing, but giving him a ring? Not really something I could picture. My plan was to give him his coffee and then ask him. To marry me. Oh, god.

I had not ever been so nervous for anything in my life.

Exactly two minutes and seventeen seconds later - I knew because I hadn't been able to stop checking my phone - Mark walked out of the hospital and over to me. He sat down next to me and groaned. "Ugh," he said. "Sitting down is always the worst part." He'd recovered almost entirely and was finished with physical therapy, though there was, and might always be, a bit of residual pain there. He had on more than one occasion teasingly said I was officially dating an old man. Every time he had made this joke I told him I disagreed.

"And worse than that?" He said as he stretched his legs out. "Everybody keeps staring at me. Usually, I would think it was just for my impossible good looks but this is definitely different."

I laughed just a little too loud and he looked over at me, concerned. "You okay, Lex?" he asked.

"Uh, yeah, um, just fine," I said, my voice about a solid octave higher than it was supposed to be. I reached over and grabbed a coffee with my still shaking hand. "Coffee?" I asked, like it was a super important question. He reached over to grab it but as he grabbed I pushed and it spilled all over. He jumped up and then grimaced. "Ow," he groaned.

I could feel my eyes getting as wide as dinner plates and my cheeks were heating up like they were actually, literally on fire. Instead of proposing to him I'd spilled coffee on him and caused him pain. Just freaking fantastic.

"Oh, my god, I'm so sorry! I didn't, oh crap... talk about doing it wrong. I mean, of course I did, I've been sitting here shaking like a person with a mental disorder for the past ten minutes! Not that you shouldn't have figured it out anyway because I couldn't help but tell everyone and then they've been staring at you. And I've seen it. And Arizona? If you've been wondering why she's been actively avoiding you for the past three days that's because she can't seem to open her mouth without talking about it, so now, of course, everybody knows. Except you, of course, which is a good thing but... that leaves me with actually having to do it and clearly, I just screwed that up."

He stopped hopelessly wiping the coffee from where it had splashed on his scrub pants and looked up at me. He sat down on my other side because where he had previously been sitting was covered in a giant puddle of coffee. "Okay, you're scaring me now. What's going on?" He had this worried look on his face, like I was trying to tell him something awful. I could almost see the gears in his head working overtime coming up with one bad scenario after another.

And that was when I did the worst thing possible. I laughed. It wasn't a normal laugh, oh no, it was a high-pitched yelp of a laugh. Immediately I clapped a hand over my mouth. Could this possibly get any worse?

Mark delicately took my hand from my mouth and squeezed it. "Are you okay?"

I let out a sigh. "This is the single worst proposal in the the history of the entire universe."

Several emotions crossed Mark's face in rapid succession. Relief. Confusion. Joy. "What?" was all he could manage to ask.

I twisted my body so I was facing him. "I've been sitting here, rehearsing a speech. I've been trying to propose for weeks now. I want to marry you, Mark Sloan. Will you marry me?"

He stopped moving and for a second seemed to stop breathing. After a few seconds he seemed to return to himself and said one word, "Obviously." Then he smiled and said, "But do you mind if I change out of these wet scrubs first?"

I smiled and then smacked him on the shoulder. He pretended it hurt. "Well, I didn't mean like right now or anything! I mean, geez, I don't have a dress and you don't have a tux and we don't have rings, or music, or a cake or -"

He burst out laughing. "I don't actually mean we have to do it right now. In scrubs. At the hospital. We'll do this right. Fancy outfits, a gigantic cake big enough to feed a tiny country, crazy flowers flown in from other countries for no good reason, a dance floor outside, a big, fancy band, all of it."

"You've actually thought all this out, haven't you?"

He blushed. "Yes."