Shooting Stars

CHAPTER 2

Aria stood at the coffee cart half-awake, one hand wrapped around her cup and the other pressed briefly against her forehead as she stifled another yawn.

The hospital was already alive around her — stretchers rattling past, nurses weaving through the corridors, voices overlapping in that familiar rush that never really stopped. Morning at Seattle Grace was less a beginning and more a continuation, as if the building itself never really slept. Aria usually managed to keep pace with it. Usually.

Today, she was running on barely any sleep and sheer irritation.

She had spent most of the night staring at the ceiling, listening to Meredith moving around the house and replaying the previous day over and over in her head — Lexie's face, Lexie's voice, Lexie calling her Ariana like she belonged to a version of Aria that no one here knew. By the time she had finally drifted off, Cristina had shown up at the house, and whatever silence had existed before had vanished completely.

So yes, she was tired.

And apparently it showed.

"Well, yawning like that, I can only assume you've finally found someone capable of meeting your deepest desires."

Aria didn't even need to look up to know who it was.

She let out a tired sigh as Mark Sloan stepped up beside her, all smug confidence and polished charm, as if the hospital corridors were his own personal runway.

"Always about sex with you, isn't it?" she muttered, finally glancing sideways at him over the rim of her coffee.

Mark grinned shamelessly as he ordered. "Can you blame me?"

"Yes," Aria said flatly. "Actually, yes, I can."

That only made him smile wider.

"And no," she added, taking another sip. "That is not why I'm tired. My sister and your former best friend are driving me insane."

Mark accepted his coffee from the cart, then turned to walk with her toward the hospital doors. "I wouldn't say former best friend," he said easily. "I'd say Derek and I are... slowly making our way back there."

Aria snorted softly. "You slept with his wife. I don't think he'll be forgetting that anytime soon."

Mark winced, just slightly. "Seems nobody else will either."

She looked up at him with a small, smug smile. "Nope."

He shot her a look, and she smiled into her coffee.

"Anyway," he said after a beat, "are they really that bad?"

Aria let out another yawn, too tired to hide it. "Oh, yeah. Bad enough that I'm considering moving into an on-call room permanently. At least there I might get some sleep."

Mark's expression shifted into mock sympathy. "You could always stay with me."

Aria stopped just enough to give him a look. "In your dreams, Dr. Sloan."

"In many of them, actually."

She rolled her eyes and walked ahead, already peeling herself away from the conversation before he could say anything worse.

Behind her, she heard him laugh.

For all of Mark's relentless flirting and deeply irritating confidence, Aria found herself smiling despite herself as she pushed through the doors toward the locker room.

It was easier, sometimes, to deal with Mark. Easier than sisters she didn't know what to do with. Easier than the weird heaviness still sitting in the air at home. Easier than thinking too hard.