Why the fuck not

The emerald neon sign of the Emerald City Bar buzzed with a low, dying hum that matched the exact frequency of Izzie Stevens’s throbbing left temple.

Outside, Seattle was doing what Seattle did best: vomiting a relentless, freezing downpour against the stained glass windows, turning the neon glow into a smear of bruised violet and sickly green. Inside, the bar smelled of stale beer, wet wool coats, fried jalapeno poppers, and crushed dreams.

Izzie was sitting on a barstool with her knees pulled tightly together, both hands wrapped around a tumbler of cheap reposado tequila that had long since surrendered its ice cubes to room temperature. Her blonde hair was falling out of its surgical clip in limp, frantic wisps, her scrub top had a faint ring of iodine on the collar, and her heart felt like a collapsed lung.

Two stools down, separated by a puddle of spilled tonic water, sat Mark Sloan.

He didn’t look like the god of plastics. He looked like an exceptionally handsome, deeply disgruntled wreck. His charcoal dress shirt was unbuttoned three buttons too far down, exposing an indecent amount of collarbone, his sleeves were rolled to his forearms, and his tie lay crumpled beside a bowl of half-eaten salted peanuts like a dead snake. He was on his fourth—or maybe seventh—bourbon, swirling the amber liquid around the glass with the dark, brooding intensity of a man contemplating arson.

"Look at them," Izzie muttered, her voice slurred just enough to sound dangerously theatrical. She pointed a trembling, manicured finger toward a booth across the room.

Mark didn't lift his head, but his hooded, heavy-lidded eyes cut sideways. In the booth, an accountant who looked remarkably like a poached pear was affectionately feeding a limp French fry to a woman wearing a fleece vest covered in cat hair. They were both laughing, completely lost in each other’s mundane, suffocating bliss.

"He breathes through his mouth," Mark observed flatly, his gravelly voice scraping the bottom of the bourbon barrel. "I can hear him from here. It’s like an asthmatic pug."

"And she’s wearing fleece. Indoors. In a bar," Izzie added with venomous passion, slamming her glass onto the sticky mahogany counter. "She has cat hair on her shoulders, Mark! Real, visible orange cat hair! And he’s looking at her like she’s Helen of Troy! Like she personally invented the orgasm!"

"Tragic," Mark agreed, tipping his glass back and swallowing a mouthful of fire. "The human race has no standards left. We’re in the end times, Stevens."

"No, what’s tragic is that they are together," Izzie hissed, leaning closer to him, her eyes wide, wild, and swimming in eighty-proof resentment. "They probably have a two-bedroom condo in Queen Anne. They probably have a shared Costco card! They probably go to farmers' markets on Sunday mornings and argue about organic artisanal honey, and then they go home and make boring, satisfied, comfortable love!"

"Don't flatter them," Mark grunted. "He looks like a three-minute man. Four if he thinks about baseball."

"Even so!" Izzie threw her hands up, nearly whacking Joe the bartender as he wiped down the beer taps with an expression of profound, weary neutrality. "Four minutes is four minutes more than I’ve had in months! Months, Mark! Do you know what my love life is right now? A graveyard. A literal, historical monument to terrible judgment and dead men."

"Join the club," Mark scoffed, resting his jaw in his palm. "My love life is an international scandal followed by a parade of twenty-two-year-old scrub nurses who think foreplay is asking me to pay their student loans."

Izzie narrowed her eyes, studying his aristocratic nose, his strong, chiseled chin, and the faint stubble that made him look like an expensive Italian cologne ad even when he was practically catatonic with liquor.

"It’s not fair," she whispered, her chin trembling with sudden, aggressive indignation.

"Life isn't fair, Blondie. If it were, I’d be Chief of Surgery and Derek Shepherd would have an irreversible receding hairline."

"No, shut up and listen to me!" Izzie leaned into his personal space, grabbing his forearm. Her grip was surprisingly tight. "Look at me, Sloan. Look at me right now!"

Mark sighed heavily, slowly turning his face toward her, his hazel eyes bleary but razor-sharp around the edges. "I'm looking. You're very close. You smell like agave and desperation."

"I am hot!" she declared, enunciating every syllable as if testifying before Congress. "I have great skin! I have amazing legs! I was a literal magazine model to put myself through college! My body is an undeniable temple of Swedish-American genetic excellence!"

Mark’s gaze drifted lazily down her neck to the collar of her scrub top, then traveled back up to her flushed, furious face. A slow, appreciative smirk broke through his sullen pout. "I've never disputed the goods, Stevens. You’re built like a pin-up. It’s the brain that occasionally goes off the rails."

"My brain is fine! My brain got into the top surgical residency in the country!" she shouted, ignoring the fact that Joe cast a pointed look in her direction. "I am smart! And you know what else? I’m good in bed! I am extremely, shockingly good in bed! I’m enthusiastic, I’m adventurous, and I don't lay there like a dead fish! Ask Alex! Actually, don't ask Alex, because he's a Neanderthal who doesn't deserve to remember it, but that is not the point!"

"Duly noted," Mark drawled, taking another sip of bourbon. "Enthusiastic. Good to know for the permanent record."

"And beyond that—beyond the sex and the face—I am the ultimate domestic goddess!" Izzie was practically bouncing on her stool now, her voice climbing in pitch, driven by the holy, manic fire of absolute drunken conviction. "I bake! I bake flaky, buttery croissants from scratch! I make seven different kinds of muffins! I can roast a chicken with rosemary and lemon so tender it will make a grown man weep into his mashed potatoes! I vacuum under the furniture! I fold hospital corners on fitted sheets! I am sweet! I am loving! I want to pack cute little lunches with handwritten notes! Why the hell am I single, Mark? Why am I sleeping in a twin bed in a drafty house full of neurotic, emotionally stunted weirdos while Cat-Hair-Fleece over there gets fed French fries?!"

She finished her rant, chest heaving, hair falling across her forehead, glaring at him as if he were personally responsible for the collective romantic failure of the western hemisphere.

Mark stared at her for a long, silent moment. The ice melted a fraction of an inch in his glass.

Then, he straightened his spine, rolling his shoulders back until his massive chest filled out his unbuttoned shirt.

"You think you’ve got it bad?" Mark said, his voice dropping into that smooth, resonant, velvet-coated baritone that usually made first-year interns drop their clipboards. "Look at me, Stevens. Seriously. Take a long, sober look—or a drunk look, whatever you’ve got left."

"I'm looking," Izzie sniffed, crossing her arms defensively.

"I am ridiculously handsome," Mark stated, completely devoid of modesty, stating it as plainly as the fact that water was wet. "I have full, thick hair that women want to run their fingers through. I have an East Coast trust fund that could buy this entire city block and turn it into a private garage for vintage motorcycles. I am a world-renowned, double board-certified plastic surgeon. I pull six figures before I even scrub in for lunch. I have impeccable taste in art, wine, and Italian footwear."

"You sleep around," Izzie pointed out, rolling her eyes.

"Because I'm single!" Mark barked, leaning in, their faces inches apart over the damp counter. "Because nobody stays! Because the one woman I wrecked my entire life for treated me like a dirty little secret and then ran back to New York! I am charming. I am playful. I am loyal to a fault once I’m actually locked down! And as for bed?" Mark gave her a wicked, half-lidded grin that held pure, unfiltered arrogance. "Stevens, I am legendary. I don’t just participate; I orchestrate. I am a master craftsman of female pleasure. It is literally my life’s work. And yet, I am drinking alone on a Tuesday night while Richard Webber lectures me about inappropriate conduct in the on-call rooms!"

"We are catches," Izzie breathed, staring at him as the revelation washed over her tequila-soaked mind. "We are absolute, undeniable, premium catches."

"Top tier," Mark agreed solemnly, clinking his glass against hers with a sharp, crystal ping. "The absolute apex of the dating pool."

"Then why are we rotting in this dive bar?!"

"Because people are idiots," Mark said. "Because the dating game is rigged against high-value assets like us."

Izzie slumped forward, resting her forehead against the cool, sticky wood of the bar. A pathetic groan escaped her lips. "I just want it to work. Just once. I want the house. I want the dinners. I want someone who looks at me and thinks, God, I am so lucky she’s mine. Is that so hard? Why does everyone act like marriage is a miserable prison sentence? Look at Meredith and Derek, dragging their feet, brooding in trailers! Look at Cristina and Burke, suffocating each other with cello music! Why can't people just... be happy?"

Mark stared down at the top of her blonde head. His hazel eyes narrowed. The gears in his alcohol-saturated, brilliant, impulsive brain began to turn, grinding past common sense, past caution, past every ethical boundary established by the American Medical Association.

"You really want to know if it’s that great?" Mark murmured.

Izzie lifted her head, cheek red from the wooden surface, squinting at him. "Know what?"

Mark set his glass down. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a thick wad of hundreds, and slapped one onto the wood in front of Joe.

"Joe," Mark called out, his voice ringing with sudden, crisp authority. "A pen. And a stack of napkins. The clean ones."

Joe raised an eyebrow, reached under the counter, and slid a plastic ballpoint pen and a thick stack of white paper cocktail napkins toward them without asking a single question. He had worked across the street from Seattle Grace long enough to know that intervention was futile.

"What are you doing?" Izzie asked, watching Mark smooth out a napkin with his long, surgeon’s fingers.

"We’re getting married," Mark said casually.

Izzie froze. Her mouth slightly parted. For three whole seconds, the ambient noise of the bar—the jukebox playing an obscure folk song, the rain on the glass, the clinking of pint glasses—completely vanished.

"Excuse me?" she squeaked.

"You heard me," Mark said, uncapping the pen with his teeth, tossing the cap onto the table, and writing the word AGREEMENT in bold, block letters across the top of the napkin. "We’re getting married. You want to see if marriage is really the holy grail? I want to see if it’s really that wonderful? Fine. Let’s road-test it. Let’s take the holy institution of matrimony out for a spin."

Izzie stared at him, her brain short-circuiting. "You... you’re out of your mind. You’ve had too much bourbon. You have bourbon-induced delirium."

"I am completely lucid, Stevens," Mark said, leaning over the counter, his hazel eyes burning with a strange, competitive intensity. "Think about it. We’re both miserable. We’re both single. We both think we’re god’s gift to domesticity and romance. What do we have to lose? You want someone to cook for? Cook for me. You want someone to worship your body and tell you you’re gorgeous? I do that recreationally anyway. We get married. Just to try it out."

Izzie let out a wild, breathless laugh that teetered on the edge of hysteria. "Just to try it out? You don't try out a marriage, Mark! It’s a sacred vow! It’s... it’s legal! It’s serious!"

"Everything is an experiment until proven otherwise," Mark countered, tapping the pen against the napkin. "You’re a scientist, Stevens. Where’s your empirical curiosity? Unless, of course... you’re chicken. Unless you secretly know you're not the domestic goddess you claim to be, and you’re terrified I’ll expose the fraud."

Izzie’s spine snapped straight. Her chin shot up, her eyes blazing with offended blonde pride.

"I am not a fraud!" she practically yelled.

"Prove it," Mark challenged, his voice silky, dropping the bait right in front of her. "Marry me. Let’s play house. If it’s heaven, we win. If it sucks, we get an annulment and we spend the rest of our lives smug in the knowledge that married people are lying to themselves. Either way, we win."

Izzie stared at the napkin. Then she stared at Mark Sloan.

He was gorgeous. He was arrogant. He was an absolute disaster of a human being.

And yet, sitting alone in her cold room in Meredith’s attic sounded like a special brand of hell she couldn't endure for another second. Her heart had been broken, stomped on, and dragged through the mud. What did she actually have left to lose? Dignity? That ship had sailed the night she cut a LVAD wire.

"Fine," Izzie said, her voice dropping into a steely, resolute register. She snatched the pen right out of his hand. "Fine! We do it. But we do it my way. I am not entering into a half-assed, frat-boy arrangement. If we do this, there are rules. Strict, non-negotiable rules."

Mark grinned, a slow, predatory flash of perfect white teeth. "Lay them on me, Stevens. I can handle whatever neuroses you’ve got."

"Rule number one," Izzie announced, pressing the pen so hard into the cheap paper napkin that the blue ink nearly tore through. She wrote a large, assertive 1.

"A real marriage certificate and a real ring," she declared, glaring at him. "None of that Vegas drive-through paper-ring nonsense. We go to the courthouse, we file the papers, we stand before an official, and you put a ring on my finger. A real ring. Platinum. With a diamond that doesn't look like it came out of a gumball machine. If people are going to see me, they are going to know I am claimed, respected, and lavishly adored."

Mark didn't even blink. "Done. Three carats minimum. Harry Winston or Tiffany. You won't be able to lift your left hand without a spotter."

Izzie swallowed hard, momentarily thrown off by his effortless compliance. She shook her head and scribbled: 1. Real Certificate & Massive Ring.

"Rule number two," she said, tapping the pen against the paper. "A honeymoon."

"A honeymoon?" Mark raised an eyebrow. "Stevens, we have shifts."

"I don't care!" Izzie snapped. "We have vacation days stacked up from the last three years because we live in that damn hospital! I want a real honeymoon. A tropical beach. White sand, turquoise water, private cabana, little drinks with paper umbrellas, and you carrying my beach bag like a devoted, subservient husband."

Mark chuckled, leaning his chin on his knuckles. "Subservient? Keep dreaming. But I’ll take you to Maui. Five-star resort. Private bungalow over the water. You can wear tiny bikinis and I’ll rub coconut oil all over your back. Deal."

Izzie’s stomach did a strange, traitorous flip at the thought, but she quickly masked it with a severe scowl, writing: 2. Luxury Tropical Honeymoon.

"Rule number three," she continued, her momentum building into an unstoppable avalanche of domestic fantasy. "A house. With a yard. And a massive kitchen."

Mark’s smirk faded slightly. "A house? I live in an upscale hotel suite, Stevens. It has room service and clean towels every four hours."

"Well, your hotel suite doesn't have a Viking six-burner gas range, does it?" Izzie demanded, leaning into his face. "I am not playing housewife in an apartment where I can hear your neighbors flushing their toilets! I want a Craftsman. Or a Victorian. With a porch, a green lawn, and a kitchen with an island large enough to roll out three types of pastry dough simultaneously! You’re rich, Sloan. Buy one. Lease one. I don't care. But I am not staying in Meredith’s attic, and I am not living in the Archfield like high-class vagrants."

Mark studied her flushed cheeks, the desperate, beautiful longing in her eyes. He gave a slow nod. "Consider it done. I know a real estate broker in Queen Anne. We’ll get the biggest kitchen in the city. Granite countertops, sub-zero fridge. You can bake until your arms fall off."

Izzie’s breath hitched. She quickly scribbled: 3. House w/ Yard & Dream Kitchen.

"Rule number four," she pressed on, her eyes shining with manic ambition. "Hosting. We are hosting cookouts, dinner parties, and Sunday brunches. We are inviting the entire surgical staff. Meredith, Derek, Cristina, Bailey, Webber—everyone! And they are going to walk into our beautiful home, smell the braised short ribs, see our immaculate table settings, and they are going to choke on their own envy! They treat me like a joke, Mark! They think I'm just a soft, emotional blonde who can't handle surgery and gets dumped by bad boys! I want them to see me thriving! I want them to see what a real, functioning, glamorous adult life looks like!"

Mark burst out laughing, a deep, barking laugh that made his broad shoulders shake. "Oh, Stevens, you are vicious under that sugar-cookie exterior. I love it. I want Shepherd to walk into my dining room, see my beautiful wife, eat my five-star food, and realize his stupid trailer in the woods is an embarrassment to humanity. Approved. Dinner parties every two weeks. We’ll destroy their morale with hospitality."

Izzie beamed, feeling a surge of pure, intoxicating triumph. She wrote: 4. Ruthless Hostessing & Morale-Destroying Cookouts.

"And rule number five," Izzie said, hesitating for just a split second, her cheeks flushing a deeper shade of pink. "Intimacy. We need... a schedule. Or a minimum standard. I am not being in a sexless sham marriage where we pass each other like ghosts in the hallway."

"Oh, don't worry about that, sweetheart," Mark purred, his voice dropping an octave.

"I mean it!" she said sternly. "Sex. At least three times a week. Real, passionate, attentive sex. No rolled-over-after-a-trauma-shift duty sex. You have to put effort into it."

Mark scoffed, snatching the pen out of her fingers. "Three times a week? Stevens, are you insulting me? Three times a week is what men in their seventies do when their arthritis acts up. If I’m your husband, you’re getting three times a day if I have anything to say about it."

Izzie’s jaw dropped. "A day? Mark, we work eighty-hour surgical shifts!"

"Then we’ll utilize the on-call rooms during lunch, blondie. But fine, on your napkin, we'll write regular, top-tier intimacy. But just know, your quota is rookie numbers." He struck through her handwriting with a cocky grin and wrote: 5. Mandatory, High-Yield Intimacy (3x/week min, Sloan override applicable).

"Hey! You don't get to override my rules!"

"My turn, Stevens," Mark said, sliding a fresh napkin off the stack and laying it squarely between them. The playful, arrogant smirk remained, but underneath it, Izzie caught a flicker of something intensely focused. Something hungry.

"Let’s see what you’ve got, McSteamy," Izzie challenged, leaning back against the bar, crossing her arms over her chest.

Mark uncapped the pen and wrote a bold 1. across the crisp white surface.

"Term number one," Mark said, his hazel eyes locking onto hers with unwavering intensity. "Three months. A ninety-day trial period. No cutting and running after two weeks because you had a bad day or because I leave my socks near the laundry hamper instead of in it. We commit to ninety full days of playing for keeps. If at day ninety we hate each other, we file for an uncontested dissolution, divide whatever we bought, and go back to being miserable colleagues. But for three months, you are completely, totally in."

Izzie swallowed. Three months. It was long enough to be terrifying, but short enough to survive. "Deal. Three months."

Mark nodded, jotting down: 1. Ninety-Day Full Commitment (No Bailing).

"Term number two," Mark continued, his voice steady, his eyes never leaving hers. "We try for a baby."

The entire bar seemed to tilt on its axis.

Izzie choked on her own saliva, coughing violently as her hands flew to her throat. Joe paused his glass-drying routine, giving Mark a sideways glance that could have thawed permafrost.

"Excuse me?!" Izzie shrieked, her voice cracking into a dog whistle. "A baby?! Are you completely insane?! We’re drunk at Joe’s on a Tuesday and you want to conceive a human child?!"

"I said we try for a baby," Mark said smoothly, not a single muscle in his jaw flinching. "I didn't say we sign the adoption papers today. But if we’re doing this, Stevens, we’re doing the whole damn thing. Real marriages have stakes. Real marriages have the biological mandate. I want the reckless, wild, enthusiastic baby-making sex. No birth control, no barriers, no holding back. If it happens, it happens. I’m thirty-eight years old, I have millions in the bank, and despite my reputation, I want a family. You want domesticity? That’s what domesticity is. You don't get to play housewife without the part where we build a legacy."

Izzie stared at him, absolutely paralyzed.

Underneath the swagger, underneath the liquor and the cocky half-smile, there was a raw, naked truth in Mark Sloan’s face that she had never noticed before. He was lonely. He was just as terrified of dying alone in a cold, sterile room as she was. He hid it behind silk sheets and flippant smirks, but the ache was identical.

And the thought of it—the sheer, terrifying, exhilarating madness of throwing caution entirely to the wind—set a fire in her blood that no amount of logic could extinguish.

"No birth control," she whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.

"None," Mark murmured. "We let the chips fall where they may."

Izzie exhaled a shaky breath. "Fine. Rule two. Baby-making protocol. Write it down before I change my mind."

Mark’s eyes flared with satisfaction. He wrote: 2. Active Baby-Making Protocol.

"Term number three," Mark said, his voice husky now. "Unrestricted, uninhibited, enthusiastic sex. Whenever, wherever, as often as physically possible. If we’re both home and not actively bleeding from a surgical wound, clothes are optional."

"I already agreed to intimacy!" Izzie protested, her cheeks burning hot.

"No, you agreed to three times a week like a polite schoolteacher," Mark countered, tapping the pen against the paper. "I am talking about absolute, total physical consumption. You wanted a man who worships your body? I demand a wife who worships mine. I want no shame, no hesitations, and maximum effort. You said you were fantastic in bed, Stevens. I intend to hold you to the highest possible standard."

"You won't be disappointed," Izzie shot back, her competitive surgical instincts flaring to life. "Write it down! Write 'Mind-Blowing Sex'!"

Mark smirked, jotting down: 3. Mind-Blowing, Unrestricted Physical Relations.

"Term number four," Mark said, leaning closer, his knee brushing against hers under the counter. The contact sent a jolt of pure static through her scrubs. "Weekly date nights. Real dates. High-end restaurants, private booths, valet parking. And on these nights, Isobel, you dress to the nines. I want the heels. I want the dresses that make every man in the room want to murder me out of jealousy. I want you looking so damn good that the waiter stumbles over himself."

Izzie bit her lip, a slow, flattered smile curling the corners of her mouth. She had spent the last two years wearing baggy cotton scrubs, shapeless sweaters, and sneakers stained with bodily fluids. The thought of getting dressed up, of having an impossibly handsome man take her to a dimly lit five-star restaurant and show her off like a prize... it made her chest ache with longing.

"I can do that," she murmured softly. "I have dresses you haven't seen. They’ll put you in cardiac arrest, Sloan."

"I’m a doctor, I can manage the palpitations," he retorted, writing: 4. Weekly High-End Date Nights (Izzie in Killer Dresses).

"Term number five," Mark said, his tone shifting into something surprisingly tender, though he tried to keep the smirk in place. "Lunch dates. At the hospital. Every shift we share, we eat lunch together. No scarfing down protein bars alone in the stairwell. No hiding in the clinic. We sit down, we look at each other, and we eat together."

Izzie blinked, genuinely touched. "Lunch dates? That’s... surprisingly sweet, Mark."

"Don't ruin it by calling it sweet," he muttered, looking momentarily defensive. "A man needs to eat. Which brings me to term number six."

He jabbed the pen onto the napkin.

"Home-cooked meals. You bragged about roasting chickens and making grown men weep over mashed potatoes. I expect to be fed, Stevens. Real dinners. Hot food on the table when we get home from a long day. If I’m buying a multi-million-dollar house with a Viking range, I want to smell garlic, butter, and baking bread every time I walk through the front door."

"Deal," Izzie said instantly, her eyes sparkling. "You buy the groceries, I will feed you like an Italian king. You’ll gain ten pounds in the first month."

"I have an exceptional metabolism, Blondie. I can take it." Mark finished scribbling the last line: 6. Gourmet Home-Cooked Dinners.

He set the pen down.

The two napkins lay side-by-side on the dark wood of the bar, stained with faint rings of condensation from their glasses, covered in blue ink that laid out the blueprint of an absolute, catastrophic, magnificent disaster.

Izzie stared at the two napkins.

Izzie’s Terms:

1. Real Certificate & Massive Ring
2. Luxury Tropical Honeymoon
3. House w/ Yard & Dream Kitchen
4. Ruthless Hostessing & Morale-Destroying Cookouts
5. Mandatory Intimacy (Sloan Override)

Mark’s Terms:

1. Ninety-Day Full Commitment (No Bailing)
2. Active Baby-Making Protocol
3. Mind-Blowing, Unrestricted Physical Relations
4. Weekly Date Nights (Killer Dresses)
5. Hospital Lunch Dates
6. Gourmet Home-Cooked Dinners

It was the most absurd, irresponsible, clinically insane document ever drafted in the history of King County.

And yet, looking at it, Izzie felt a sudden, electric rush of adrenaline that she hadn't felt since her first solo surgery. It was bold. It was terrifying. It was completely outside the suffocating, tragic script her life had become.

"Well?" Mark asked, his voice low, vibrating right against her ear. He picked up the pen and offered it to her, handle first. "Are you a woman of your word, Stevens? Or are you going to finish your tequila and crawl back to your drafty attic?"

Izzie snatched the pen from his fingers.

With a fierce, deliberate motion, she signed her name at the bottom of his napkin: Dr. Isobel Stevens.

Mark’s eyes darkened with raw triumph. He took the pen back, leaned across her, and signed the bottom of her napkin in a bold, sprawling, masculine scrawl: Dr. Mark Sloan.

"Joe," Mark called out, not taking his eyes off Izzie.

Joe walked over, wiping a glass, looking between the two glowing, completely intoxicated surgeons and the signed cocktail napkins. "Yeah?"

"Witness this," Mark commanded, pointing a finger at the paper. "Sign your name. You’re our legal witness."

Joe sighed, pulled a stubby pencil from behind his ear, and scribbled Joe across the corner of both napkins. "If this ends with one of you stabbing the other with a scalpel, I’m telling the police I was legally blind tonight."

"Fair enough," Mark said. He pulled another hundred-dollar bill from his roll and tossed it onto the counter. "Keep the change. We’re leaving."

"Wait, we’re leaving?" Izzie asked, panic suddenly fluttering in her chest as the reality of what they had just done began to claw through the tequila haze. "Where are we going?"

Mark slid off his barstool, steadying himself on the edge of the counter for a brief second before pulling himself up to his full, towering height. He buttoned his coat, reached down, and took Izzie’s hand in his. His grip was large, warm, calloused, and utterly unyielding.

"First, I’m taking you to your house to pack your things," Mark said, his voice dropping into that commanding, decisive tone that brooked zero argument. "Then you’re sleeping in my bed at the Archfield. And tomorrow morning, at eight sharp, we are walking into City Hall, we are getting a marriage license, and I am buying you the biggest damn diamond in the Pacific Northwest."

Izzie looked down at their joined hands. Her fingers were small inside his, but they fit with an uncanny, startling naturalness.

She looked up into his handsome, arrogant, reckless face. The rain was still beating against the glass, the accountant in the booth was still feeding his fleece-wearing girlfriend French fries, and Seattle was still cold and miserable.

But inside the Emerald City Bar, the game had completely changed.

"Tomorrow morning," Izzie agreed, her chin lifting, a brilliant, wild smile finally breaking across her face. "Eight sharp, Sloan. Don't you dare be late for our wedding."

"I'm never late for an operation, Stevens," Mark whispered, bringing her knuckles to his lips and pressing a warm, lingering kiss against her skin. "And this is going to be the performance of our lives."