Why not

The neon sign of the Emerald City Bar buzzed with a dull, low-voltage hum that vibrated right through Izzie Stevens’ front teeth. Outside, Seattle was doing what Seattle did best: drowning itself in a relentless, grey, miserable downpour. Inside, the air smelled of stale draft beer, fried mozzarella sticks, and absolute, unadulterated defeat.

Izzie stared fiercely into the bottom of her cocktail glass. The lime wedge looked pathetic, limp and drowning in watery tonic.

"Look at them," she muttered, pointing a glittery, pink-manicured finger vaguely toward the corner booth. "Just look at them, Mark. He chews with his mouth open. I saw him at the nurse's station yesterday eating egg salad, and he sounded like a woodchipper. And she—she wears beige cardigans with lint on them and talks about her irritable bowel syndrome in the scrub room. Yet, what do they have on their left hands? Matching platinum bands. Eternal devotion. A mortgage. A two-car garage."

Sitting on the stool beside her, Mark Sloan swirled three fingers of single malt scotch, staring into the amber liquid as if it held the answers to the universe, or at least the secret to why his personal life was a smoking crater. He didn’t even have to look up to know who she was talking about.

"Life is a biological lottery, Blondie," Mark murmured, his voice laced with the smooth, gravelly cadence that usually made interns swoon and attendings roll their eyes. "And clearly, the committee in charge of handing out domestic bliss is completely blind, deaf, and profoundly stupid."

"I am a catch," Izzie announced, slamming her glass onto the sticky mahogany counter. Joe, standing twenty feet away wiping beer taps, shot her a wary look, but she ignored him. She was on a roll, fueled by three cranberry-vodkas and an unbearable week of surgical purgatory. "I am smart. I am a doctor. I cut into human hearts and brains and fix people! I am insanely hot. Look at this bone structure! I look like a literal Barbie doll, Mark! Men used to buy posters of me in lingerie to hang in their college dorms!"

"Can confirm," Mark said dryly, raising his glass in a half-salute. "I bought two. One for the bedroom, one for the dorm bathroom."

"And that’s just the exterior!" Izzie pressed on, gesturing wildly with both hands, her golden curls bouncing around her flushed cheeks. "Underneath the blonde hair and the surgical scrubs, I am the ultimate dream. I am the woman men write folk songs about! I bake. I don't just bake; I temper chocolate, Mark. I make my own puff pastry from scratch! I fold butter into flour ninety-six times until it’s lighter than air! I scrub baseboards with a toothbrush when I'm stressed. My linen closet is organized by thread count and color-coded by season! I want to pack cute little lunches with handwritten notes, and I want to cook pot roasts that simmer for twelve hours until the meat just falls apart! I am an exquisite, five-star, high-performance homemaker! And I am fun in bed! I am adventurous and generous and enthusiastic!"

She paused, gasping for breath, her chest heaving against her scrub top, her blue eyes wide with manic indignation.

"So why the hell," she whispered, her voice cracking with a sudden, painful vulnerability that made Mark’s smirk falter, "am I going home alone to a drafty attic bedroom to eat stale graham crackers while absolute trolls get fairy-tale endings?"

Mark stared at her. For a second, he saw the cracks in the porcelain. He knew she came from nothing—he had heard the hospital gossip about the trailer park in Chehalis, the daughter given up for adoption when she was practically a child herself. He saw the way Izzie Stevens ran herself ragged trying to be the sweetest, brightest, most immaculately put-together creature on the planet, desperately overcompensating so no one would ever see the dirt of her past. She wanted so badly to be wholesome. She wanted a white picket fence so tall it would block out everything behind her.

Mark let out a rough, self-deprecating laugh and knocked back the rest of his scotch. The burn hit his throat, familiar and grounding.

"Join the club, Stevens," Mark said, leaning his elbows on the bar and letting his broad shoulders slump just an inch. "Look at me. Go ahead, drink it in."

Izzie narrowed her eyes, squinting at his ridiculously symmetrical face, the salt-and-pepper hair cut to perfection, the designer leather jacket over his scrubs. "You’re disgusting to look at."

"I am a masterpiece," Mark corrected without a trace of humility. "I have a trust fund that could bail out a small European nation. I am head of plastics at a top-tier teaching hospital. I can rebuild a human face from a pile of shattered bones. I am charming, I am witty, I smell like sandalwood and old money, and in bed? Please. Women have written poetry about what I can do with my hands. I’m generous, I’m attentive, I have stamina that defies modern science."

He turned his glass on the napkin, watching the condensation bleed into the paper. The bravado slipped, just for a fraction of a second, revealing the hollow, echoing ache he spent his entire life running away from.

"And yet," Mark said, his voice dropping an octave, quieter now, "I go home to an empty hotel suite. I sleep with women whose last names I forget by breakfast because if I let them stay until noon, they realize I'm terrified of my own shadow. Everyone thinks I’m a dog. Derek thinks I’m incapable of loyalty. Addison thought I was a distraction. Nobody actually wants me. They want the packaging. They want thirty minutes of fun, and then they want me to disappear."

"It's unfair," Izzie whispered, resting her chin on her palm. Her eyes were glazed with alcohol and a profound, aching loneliness. "We are top-tier merchandise, Mark. We are luxury goods. And we're sitting in the clearance bin."

Mark turned his head to look at her. Really look at her.

She was glowing, even in the dim, dirty light of the bar. There was a faint smudge of powdered sugar on the cuff of her jacket from the muffins she’d brought to the pit that morning. She smelled like vanilla, hospital sanitizer, and expensive perfume. She was terrified of being worthless, and he was terrified of being unlovable. They were both brilliant, beautiful wrecks masquerading as gods of medicine.

A sudden, sharp, utterly reckless spark ignited in Mark's chest. It was the scotch. It had to be the scotch, mixed with thirty-eight years of chronic emotional starvation.

"Then let's do it," Mark said.

Izzie blinked, her eyelashes fluttering. "Do what?"

"Let's get married."

The bar around them seemed to quiet down, though in reality, the jukebox was blaring an old Tom Petty song. Izzie stared at him, her lips slightly parted. Then, a high-pitched, incredulous giggle bubbled up from her throat.

"You're drunk," she said, waving a hand at him.

"I am. But I’m also a genius," Mark said, leaning in closer. His eyes were bright, locked onto hers with surgical focus. "Think about it, Stevens. We’re both miserable. We’re both convinced we’re the ultimate domestic and romantic partners, but the world won't give us a shot. So let's test the hypothesis. A field trial. An experiment."

"An experiment," she repeated, her voice skeptical, but her head tilted in that whimsical, manic way it did when an idea began to burrow into her brain.

"Yeah. Just to see if it’s really that wonderful. If the institution of marriage is actually the holy grail, or if everyone else is just lying to themselves." Mark leaned against the bar, his charismatic grin spreading across his face, dazzling and dangerous. "You want to be a wife? Be my wife. You want to cook, bake, clean, host, be adored? Do it for me. I have the money, I have the stamina, and God knows I wouldn't mind coming home to a hot blonde and a hot meal."

Izzie's heart did a strange, violent flip in her chest. The rational part of her—the part that had studied organic chemistry until her eyes bled—was screaming that this was insane. This was Mark Sloan. The hospital man-whore. The guy who slept his way through the nursing staff and broke up his best friend's marriage.

But the impulsive girl from the trailer park, the girl who had always looked through the windows of the big, warm houses in town and wondered why she was locked outside in the cold, suddenly stood up and took the wheel. What did she have left to lose? Alex had shattered her heart. Denny had died and left her with a ghost and eight million dollars she felt too guilty to spend. She was twenty-seven years old, exhausted, and desperately hungry for a life that felt solid. Safe. Beautiful.

"You're serious," Izzie said softly, searching his face.

"Dead serious," Mark replied, not blinking. "Unless you're chicken, Stevens."

"I am not chicken!" she snapped instinctively, her competitive pride flaring. She reached into her purse, rummaged past three lip glosses, a stethoscope, and a half-eaten bag of dried cranberries, and pulled out a black Pilot G2 pen. She grabbed a stack of clean paper napkins from the dispenser and slapped them down between them.

"If we do this," Izzie said, pointing the pen at his nose, "we do it right. I am not playing house in some sleazy, half-assed way where you treat me like a roommate with benefits. There have to be rules. A strict, binding contract."

Mark's grin widened. He loved a negotiation. "Lay it on me, Barbie."

"Rule number one," Izzie stated, writing furiously on the napkin. Her handwriting was neat, loopy, and aggressively cheerful. "Marriage certificate and a real ring. None of this common-law, secret-handshake crap. If we are doing this, the state of Washington has to recognize it, and I want a rock on my finger so big it gives me carpal tunnel. I am not going to be someone's dirty little secret."

Mark didn't even flinch. "Done. Platinum band, five carats minimum. You’ll need a wrist brace."

Izzie’s breath hitched slightly, but she forged ahead, writing 1. Certificate + Ring (Huge) on the napkin.

"Rule number two: A real honeymoon. At least four days. Somewhere warm, somewhere with five-star room service where you don't answer your pager, and I don't answer mine. We start this like normal, happy people."

"Maui," Mark agreed smoothly. "Four Seasons. Oceanfront suite. Done. Next?"

"Rule number three: A house with a yard and a big kitchen." Izzie looked up, her gaze fierce, almost defensive, daring him to mock her. "I am sick of living in Meredith’s attic. I am sick of hearing the floorboards creak, and I am sick of tiny, cramped apartment stoves. I want a real house. A craftsman or a colonial. With a yard where flowers can grow, and a kitchen with an island, a double oven, a Sub-Zero fridge, and enough counter space to knead three loaves of bread at the same time."

Mark watched her closely. He saw the way her fingers gripped the cheap pen, white-knuckled. He recognized the yearning for space, for territory that couldn't be revoked. He had grown up in cavernous penthouses with absent parents, but he understood the need for a sanctuary.

"I'll buy the house tomorrow," Mark said without hesitation. "You pick it out. As long as it has a master bathroom that doesn't smell like other people's damp towels, I don't care what it costs."

Izzie swallowed hard, her pulse hammering against her ribs. She scribbled down 3. House, Yard, Dream Kitchen.

"Rule number four," she continued, her voice gaining momentum, intoxicating herself with the fantasy. "Hosting cookouts and dinners. We are going to be a hospitable couple. We are going to host Sunday dinners. We are going to have the chief over, and Derek, and Meredith, and Cristina, and they are going to sit at our mahogany dining table and eat my braised short ribs, and they are going to choke on how functional and civilized we are. We will have seasonal centerpieces."

"Terrifying," Mark murmured with an appreciative smirk. "Derek will hate every second of it. I'm completely on board. Rule four: mandatory domestic flexing."

Izzie tapped the pen against her chin. The alcohol was buzzing loudly in her ears now, making her cheeks burn. She leaned across the sticky counter, lowering her voice so Joe wouldn't hear, though her eyes were flashing with challenge.

"Rule number five," she said, looking right into his dark, hooded eyes. "Sex three times a day."

Mark choked on his own saliva. He coughed, clearing his throat, his eyebrows shooting straight up toward his hairline. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Izzie said, lifting her chin proudly, though a bright blush crept down her neck. "You brag about your stamina, Sloan. You say you're a god in bed. And I am sick of being treated like a fragile, neurotic little virgin who just wants to hold hands. I want passion. I want fireworks. I want a husband who is obsessed with me. Morning, evening, and either an afternoon quickie in an on-call room or right before bed. Three times. Every single day. If you can't handle that, walk away now."

A slow, wicked, thoroughly dangerous smile spread across Mark's face. The womanizer in him was practically purring, but beneath that, something far deeper was electrified. She wanted him. She was demanding him. No games, no passive-aggressive sighs, no holding back.

"Honey," Mark said, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling purr, "I don't just accept rule five. I intend to overperform on rule five. You might want to stock up on hydration salts."

Izzie's stomach performed a frantic, thrilling somersault. She quickly wrote 5. Sex 3x daily (NON-NEGOTIABLE) on the napkin and slid the pen across the bar.

"Your turn," she breathed. "What are your demands?"

Mark took the pen, turning it between his long, dexterous surgeon’s fingers. He pulled a fresh napkin toward himself. The playful smirk remained, but his eyes grew sharp, focused, laying out terms that went far deeper than a drunken bar dare.

"Rule number one for me," Mark said, writing with bold, decisive strokes. "A three-month trial. We give this ninety days. No quitting after two weeks because we had a fight about whose turn it is to take out the recycling. Ninety days of full, unadulterated, committed effort. If at day ninety we want to strangle each other, we file for an annulment or a quiet divorce, no harm, no foul. But for three months, we are all in."

"Three months," Izzie agreed, nodding firmly. "Agreed."

"Rule number two," Mark said, his pen hovering over the paper. He hesitated, just for a beat, his jaw tightening slightly. The vulnerability flickered again, raw and unvarnished. He looked up, catching her eye. "We try for a baby."

The noise of the bar seemed to cut out entirely. Izzie froze.

"What?" she breathed.

"You heard me," Mark said, holding her gaze, not backing down an inch. "I want a family, Izzie. I'm tired of pretending I don't. I'm thirty-eight. I don't want to be the creepy old guy in the club anymore. If we're having sex three times a day, we're not using birth control. We do it for real. We try. If it happens, it happens, and we raise it together. If that terrifies you, tell me now."

Izzie felt the air leave her lungs in a rush. A baby. A child of her own, one she wouldn't have to give away to strangers because she couldn't afford diapers. A baby with a father who had money, who had status, who actually wanted it. Her motherly, fiercely protective instincts, buried so deep under years of surgical ambition, roared to life. Her eyes stung with sudden, hot tears, but she blinked them back furiously.

"We try," Izzie whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "No birth control. Rule two: try for a baby."

Mark’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, visibly surprised that she hadn’t laughed in his face or run screaming out into the rain. A strange warmth settled behind his ribs. He wrote 2. Baby (No goalie) on the napkin.

"Rule three," Mark continued, his voice regaining its trademark levity, though his eyes remained soft. "Sex. Which, honestly, you already covered with your three-times-a-day mandate, but I’m putting it on my list anyway to show enthusiasm. Enthusiastic, dirty, loud sex."

"Noted and approved," Izzie said, biting the corner of her lower lip.

"Rule four," Mark said, writing quickly. "Weekly date nights where you dress to the nines. I am a vain man, Stevens. I like having the most gorgeous woman in the room on my arm. Once a week, we go out. Fancy restaurant, high heels, tight dress, hair done. I want the men at the other tables looking at me like they want to poison my steak just to take my place."

Izzie laughed, a bright, musical sound that made a few people at nearby tables glance over. "Deal. I have three dresses in my closet with the tags still on that I’ve never had an excuse to wear. You’re going to need a cold shower."

"Looking forward to it," Mark replied smoothly. "Rule five: Lunch dates. At the hospital. I don't care if we're swamped. At least three times a week, we find each other. We sit together in the cafeteria, or in my office, or on a bench outside. We eat lunch like a normal husband and wife. No hiding. No acting like we're ashamed of what we did."

Izzie’s heart swelled so violently she thought her ribs might crack. No hiding. Alex had always treated her like an embarrassing secret, or a burden he had to carry. Mark was demanding to show her off in broad daylight.

"I’d love that," she whispered honestly.

"And rule six," Mark concluded, writing the final line with a flourish. "Home-cooked meals. You bragged about your pot roast, Stevens. I expect dinner on the table when I get home, or waiting in the fridge if we’re on opposite shifts. Real food. Not takeout, not protein bars. You feed me, I protect your sanity and buy you shiny things."

He set the pen down. Two napkins lay between them, covered in frantic scribbles and ink stains, resting beside an empty scotch glass and a sticky cocktail ring.

Izzie’s Rules:

1. Marriage certificate and ring.
2. A honeymoon.
3. House with a yard and a big kitchen.
4. Hosting cookouts/dinners.
5. Sex 3 times a day.

Mark’s Rules:

1. 3 months of marriage.
2. Try for a baby.
3. Sex (enthusiastic/reiterated).
4. Weekly date nights where Izzie dresses to the nines.
5. Lunch dates.
6. Home-cooked meals.

They stared at the napkins. The absurdity of it hung in the air, thick and terrifying, but beneath the alcohol-induced haze, there was a startling clarity. Two lonely, wildly capable people, daring each other to take a leap off a cliff.

"So," Mark murmured, leaning in until he was inches from her face, his cologne—cedar, spice, and clean linen—filling her senses. "Do we sign?"

Izzie Stevens looked at Mark Sloan. She looked at his crooked, boyish grin, the fierce intelligence hidden behind his vanity, and the desperate, quiet hope that he was trying so hard to disguise as a joke.

She picked up the pen.

With a steady hand, she signed her name at the bottom of both napkins: Isobel Katherine Stevens, M.D.

Mark didn't hesitate. He took the pen from her fingers, his skin warm against hers, and scrawled his signature beside hers: Mark Everett Sloan, M.D.

"Joe!" Mark called out, slamming a black American Express Centurion card onto the bar. "Close our tab! And call us a cab!"

"Where are we going?" Izzie asked, her voice breathless, a giddy, reckless panic fluttering in her throat as she stood up. The room swayed slightly, but Mark’s strong hand was immediately at the small of her back, steadying her, anchoring her.

"First, to my penthouse to pack a bag," Mark said, his eyes gleaming with sheer, unadulterated madness. "Then, to Boeing Field. My buddy owns a charter jet. We’re going to Vegas, Blondie. If we’re getting a ring, a license, and our first round of three-times-a-day, we’re doing it properly."

---

The sun rising over the Puget Sound three days later was entirely indifferent to the fact that Seattle Grace Hospital was about to experience a seismic event.

Izzie stood in the middle of a massive, empty kitchen, the hardwood floors cold beneath her bare feet. The morning light poured through towering, paned windows, illuminating a sprawling island topped with white Calacatta marble, a six-burner Viking range, and a double oven that had never once seen a frozen pizza. Outside the French doors, a manicured green lawn stretched out toward a row of blooming hydrangeas and a high, cedar fence.

She looked down at her left hand.

The ring was obscene. It was a flawless, five-carat emerald-cut diamond flanked by tapered baguettes, catching the morning sun and throwing miniature rainbows across the pristine white cabinetry. It was heavy. It felt like an anchor, pulling her out of the storm and planting her firmly on solid ground.

Beside her, leaning against the marble counter in nothing but a pair of grey flannel pajama bottoms, Mark Sloan was sipping coffee from a mug that said World’s Okayest Surgeon.

His hair was completely disheveled, standing up in messy tufts from the three separate times they had ended up tangled in the sheets of their newly delivered king-sized bed between midnight and six in the morning. There were faint, blooming red marks on his collarbone—marks that Izzie knew with a shock of pride had been put there by her own teeth.

"The movers are bringing the rest of your boxes from Meredith’s at ten," Mark said, his voice deep and raspy with sleep. He took a sip of coffee, watching her over the rim. "The gardener comes on Thursdays. And the butcher in Queen Anne is delivering a standing rib roast this afternoon, per your obsessive specifications."

Izzie slowly turned to face him, clutching her own mug of Earl Grey tea. She was wearing one of his oversized white button-down shirts, the hem falling halfway down her thighs. Her hair was a wild halo of blonde curls, her face completely bare of makeup.

"We bought a house," she said, her voice a mix of awe and lingering disbelief. "We went to Vegas, we got married in a kitschy chapel by a guy who smelled like menthol cigarettes, we spent seventy-two hours in a penthouse suite having... an ungodly amount of sex, and then we bought a four-bedroom craftsman in Queen Anne. In seventy-two hours."

"We are efficient people, Mrs. Sloan," Mark said, the corner of his mouth ticking upward into a slow, thoroughly satisfied smirk. He set his mug down on the marble and crossed the few feet between them, stepping into her personal space with an ease that felt terrifyingly natural.

He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers wrapping around her nape, pulling her gently toward him until her forehead rested against his bare chest. She could hear his heart beating—strong, steady, and alive.

"Are you having buyer's remorse?" Mark murmured into her hair.

Izzie closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of him. Sandalwood, coffee, and clean skin. The anxious, racing chatter in her mind—the voice that constantly told her she was just trailer trash trying to play doctor, the voice that told her she was too much, too emotional, too demanding—was miraculously, wonderfully silent.

She reached up, her small hand resting over his heart, the diamond ring cold against his warm skin.

"No," Izzie whispered, tilting her head back to look up into his hazel eyes. A bright, sunny, utterly defiant smile broke across her face. "I'm not. But you have clinic at one, Dr. Sloan. And according to my calculations, we are currently behind schedule on Rule Number Five."

Mark’s eyes darkened, his pupils dilating with instant, electrifying heat. He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound in his chest, and swept her up effortlessly, lifting her onto the marble island as her tea mug clattered safely out of the way.

"Stevens," Mark growled against her lips, pulling her hips flush against his, "I told you. I never miss a quota."

And as his mouth crashed down on hers, fierce and demanding, Izzie Stevens decided that while the world might be completely mad, their little experiment was going to be an absolute, glorious masterpiece.