Counting To Fifteen [Grey's Anatomy]

chapter seven - quirks

Daisy and Calypso had been living with Mark for a month, meaning that both parties had started to pick up on each other's quirks.

Calypso, for instance, had a thing for jellybeans. She always had to pull on a pair of fuzzy socks in the morning, and she hated making her bed when she woke up. Most of the time she just left it a mess.

Daisy was a bit more complicated. Mark noticed that she was a neat freak, her room organized in the most orderly fashion.

But it ran even deeper than that. She genuinely had a system for everything, a system for keeping order within the tiny ecosystem that she called her bedroom.

Daisy was obsessed with order. And...fifteen. Mark couldn't figure out why, but she loved the number.

"What is she doing?" Mark had asked Calypso a few days ago. Daisy had flipped out, and Mark hadn't understood why. Her breakdown had come out of nowhere, and she had been mumbling to herself as she shut her eyes tightly.

"Counting to fifteen." Calypso had explained as if it were the most elementary concept ever. She had offered Mark a small smile. "It calms her down."

It did calm her down, sure enough. Daisy opened her eyes and stopped mumbling, focusing her eyes on her little sister. Calypso spoke something softly to Daisy that Mark couldn't quite make out, but Daisy's shoulders dropped a bit as she noticeably relaxed. Mark found it intriguing that the roles had reversed, and Calypso had been the one calming Daisy down as opposed to the other way around.

Presently, Mark was setting the table for dinner, and he wanted to test something out.

Another quirk of Daisy's was that she was very particular about which plate she ate off of. It had to be the red one, though Mark wasn't sure why.

He placed the red plate in Calypso's spot as opposed to Daisy's, just to see what would happen. To see if it would become a big deal.

Mark didn't even have to call for the girls, because Calypso was there almost immediately. The kid loved eating, and she could always smell the food that was being made.

"What are you making?" Calypso asked curiously as she wandered into the kitchen, peeking over at the stove where Mark was stood.

Mark hadn't even spoken when Calypso began to talk again. "I want to help. Can I help?"

"It's still cooking in the oven." Mark chuckled as he tapped the oven door, a pasta dish cooking inside. "We have to wait."

Calypso frowned. Waiting was not her thing; patience was not a virtue that she had been given. All she wanted to do was help, and it made her annoyed that she couldn't do that.

"I'll wait, then." Calypso nodded to herself, taking a seat at the dinner table. She was silent for a moment as she frowned down at the placement. "My plate is red."

"Is that a problem?"

Calypso frowned, looking over at Mark as she skipped over his question. "Do you have any more red plates?"

He had a set of them, actually. But Daisy had gone through his red plate supply like candy. It was odd.

"Why?" Mark asked, though he very well knew the answer.

Calypso hesitated, looking a bit confused. "Daisy likes red."

Mark eyed the oven once more, making sure the food was still cooking before he made his way over to Calypso. He spared a glance down the hallway at Daisy's closed bedroom door before speaking. "Does your sister have any... weird behaviors?"