Odds Against You • •

[Taylor Caroline Becks]

Taylor had taken some time off from the hospital in the last week. She’d had enough vacation days saved up to pull a few strings after citing personal reasons as an excuse. She knew that she couldn’t run from all of this forever, but she had needed the few days to clear her head of the cobwebs and the confusion that had been mounting over the last several months. It was a mess, and that was probably an understatement and the most spoken line she had used in the last handful of days. Drake was, unfortunately, the last person that she could hide from since their paths crossed on a daily basis even in a busy hospital. She had learnt that being in the morgue meant that most doctors knew where to find her and who she was, even when she tried to hide or steal an hour for lunch in her small office down in the hospital basement.

She also knew how persistent Drake could be. If she had gone to work when she was scheduled to be in then she wouldn’t have even picked up a scalpel in the time it took Drake to corner her about her abrupt exit at the ball and the embarrassment she had caused him with it. She also wouldn’t have heard the stories from Bridget or Damien, or even see the bruise that marred the handsome face of her oldest friend. She might have made some mistakes and behaved in some crazy manner, but Drake wasn’t exactly innocent in all of this himself. Who the hell started a brawl just because his proposal got rejected?! Taylor had known that the two men didn’t like each other, but she didn’t think Drake would stoop to something like that and it just gave her another reason to say ‘no’.

The hospital was never quiet enough to steal too much time away from the wards, but Taylor had planned on timing her lunch break with Drake’s. At least with the added pressure of a clock they could, hopefully, keep this short, sweet, civilised and simple. Before that, she needed to get through her morning workload. Her patients might not have been in a rush, but their families were and Taylor needed to catch up on everything. It gave her something to do, something to calm her nerves and keep her mind occupied before she faced up to Drake. It didn’t take the whispers of the hospital long to travel around and in the end it seemed as though Taylor wouldn’t have to find Drake. He did it for her. She knew it would be him the second she heard the knock on the glass and the security card was swiped in the door before she even had the chance to glance over her shoulder. Sighing, she snapped the gloves from her wrists and moved to sanitise her hands; this was not a conversation for around an autopsy table and she refused to let Drake have the power in her morgue. “I was coming to see you at lunch.”

[/color] She told him, crossing back towards the door of her office where they could have a little more privacy.
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• • •

TAGGED! Drake <3
WORDS! 565!
OUTFIT! Breakdown Beauty!
QUOTE! Fallout: New Vegas
NOTES! <3 <3 <3

[drake lochlyn wilde]

Drake had thought he was going to win. And yes, win was the word he had been using in the build-up to what had been nought more than a disaster. He was going to get the girl, make her his forever and then get to watch Damien crumble as he realised Taylor could never feel the same for him that he did for her. When he hadn’t gotten any of that all Drake had been left with was blind rage and a desire to blame someone for it, and whenever things went sour in his relationship with Taylor he blamed Damien. Throwing the punches was just the first time he had given in to what he had wanted to do for so long already. The man infuriated him and what infuriated him more was this vanishing act stunt that Taylor had tried to pull. Not coming to work, not answering her door and ignoring his calls. He had the right to have another answer than just the abrupt “no” she had thrown his way before storming out of the ball like Cinderella at midnight.

He didn’t see himself as the bad guy in all of this. He loved Taylor and clearly there was something else going on. She didn’t give him straight answers, she looked a little more red faced than just one too many glasses of champagne and Damien had given just as good as he had gotten in that ball room brawl. Drake had the split lip to prove it and the bruised knuckles that were a little less obvious now. Still, people kept asking him if he had spoken to Taylor and each time he had been forced to respond with the negative. She didn’t pick up her phone, had done a Houdini act from her homely morgue and now Drake was losing patience with her. A day or two might have made sense; just a little time to clear her head, but this was a hell of a lot longer.

When he heard that the tall and slender brunette was back where she belonged, his mind was hardly on his job. He pulled a few strings and got a colleague to hold the fort in the ER. It was fairly quiet anyway, with just a few minor worriers floating around waiting for test results before they would be moved to another ward or released back into the city with a relatively clean bill of health. Taylor wasn’t hard to find, like some doctors. She didn’t move from ward to ward or wing to wing; she was always in the basement or the administrative offices. Unless they had a zombie outbreak and the dead started walking, she would always be in the same place and Drake didn’t hesitate in riding the elevator down to the smaller corridors to the protected morgue. He saw her standing next to the table, patient prepped and cursed when his first thought was how radiant she looked in a very unglamorous job. Swiping himself in, he kept his darkened eyes fixed on her as she moved about the room so casually, as though she hadn’t made a complete fool of him. “Well, I figured I’ve waited long enough for answers, Taylor. What the hell is going on?” He left his manners at the door, it seemed, and Taylor was already a master of distraction without him needing to play the gentleman to make this easier.

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Word count of 601!
Written for Taylor!
Listening to Damn Girl by All American Rejects
Outfit is hurr.

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[Taylor Caroline Becks]

Taylor knew that she hadn’t been entirely innocent in all of this drama. She could, and probably should, have broken up with Drake the second her feelings for Damien had hit her full force. No man could come close to winning her heart when he already had it and it wasn’t fair to let someone believe that they could. The tall brunette just couldn’t wrap her head around why Drake had even thought they were on the same page, let alone that far ahead in the book! She had never told him that she loved him, never made any indication that she was thinking of their future or white dresses, and yet he had been so bold that he thought proposing in front of a large, fancy crowd was the best way to go.

She wanted to keep things civil, peaceful, but she doubted any of that would happen. Drake had a reason to be upset and so did she. With their previous clashes stored in her memories, she knew that it didn’t take too long for either of them to reach boiling point and start hurling the home truths about like they were deliberately hoping to hurt the other. Still, Taylor wanted to be the bigger person out of this and she was refusing to let her confrontation with Drake turn into a brawl like the one at the masquerade ball. She had hoped that the time that had passed would allow Drake the time he needed to calm down and cool off, but something told her that she wasn’t going to be that lucky. There were only so many unanswered phone calls and text messages that could happen before frustrations grew.

Her eyes studied Drake for a moment, trying to gauge just how bad his temper was flaring. She could see the anger in his eyes and hi tone didn’t exactly give her hope for the calm situation she had been wishing for, but Taylor wasn’t the kind of woman who scared easily when someone else played the rage card. She had held her own plenty of times in school yard scraps and just because she had grown out of those immature confrontations, it didn’t mean she wasn’t capable of dragging them back out if she needed to. “Just calm down for starters, Drake. If you keep yelling at me then I’m telling you nothing.”

[/color] She warned, not once letting her gaze falter. She wasn’t intimidated by him and she was still determined to hold the control in the situation. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t called but I needed time to clear my head and work through everything. These problems didn’t just go away overnight.”[/color] She began, giving him a moment to understand what she was saying before she pressed on. “It’s over between us, Drake. And I should have told you that before now.”[/color] She admitted, keeping her voice soft and forcing herself to hold his glare with an apologetic look of her own.
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• • •

TAGGED! Drake <3
WORDS! 532!
OUTFIT! Breakdown Beauty!
QUOTE! Fallout: New Vegas
NOTES! <3 <3 <3