Mark opened his eyes, thought better of it, and closed them again, swatting angrily at the buzzing alarm clock on his night stand. He was massively hung-over. Hung-over didn't even begin to describe it, in fact. It was as if a row of tiny jack hammers were working in his head.

He rolled over onto his back, sprawling his arms to either side. The bed was empty save for him, and he wondered for a moment if someone else had vacated it already. But no, there was no evidence of sex, and he vaguely remembered stumbling home and passing out alone.

He cracked his eyelids and looked up at the ceiling in misery. He'd had every intention of scoring last night, but he couldn't remember so much as smiling at a woman. He'd take a shot, decide to order just one more before he moved on to the man-whoring part of the evening, and then the cycle would repeat. He hadn't been so utterly trashed in ages—not since Addison had gotten rid of the baby and left.

He had to go to work, so he dragged his body from the bed feeling as if he weighed about a hundred pounds more than usual. He only wanted two things: coffee and a shower. Hopefully one or the other would help to alleviate his splitting headache. If not, one of the great things about being a doctor was the easy access to excellent painkillers.

He made a cup of coffee quickly with his hotel room hot pot and then slumped back to the bathroom for the shower. He turned on the water and leaned against the counter for a moment, resting his forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. He opened his eyes and noted his haggard expression. There was a strange black smudge across his cheek, and he reached up and touched it in confusion.

The reflection of his hand made it clear. There on his palm was a smudged but still legible phone number and name, "Perrin." The girl who wouldn't screw him.

He stared at his palm for a moment remembering. She had been hot, and she had flirted with him and then refused to come back to the hotel with him even when he tried to bait her with the promise of meaningful sex. Perhaps he wasn't as good of a liar as he had thought. Or maybe, he thought, remembering his empty bed, his man-whore abilities were waning. Could they have faded with disuse? He'd turned them on a little to help out the Chief that night (although Richard didn't seem to have appreciated his efforts very much) but other than that he'd been doing the celibate thing for Addison. Was it possible that he had lost his powers?

This was unsettling, and he felt like he would want to think about it more after he had his shower, when his mind would be clearer. Somehow having the phone number seemed relevant to deciphering this problem, and so he wrote it down on a cocktail napkin before he stepped under the cold stream of water pouring from the showerhead.

He stepped out ten minutes later, hangover ebbing slightly, and got dressed. The cocktail napkin was taunting him from the top of his nightstand. He really didn't get it; he knew he was hot. Hell, the interns had given him a sexy nickname, so it wasn't all just in his head. And yet, here he was without so much as a forgotten pair of panties sticking out from under the bed.

Addison was in the locker room when he arrived at Seattle Grace, and she looked at him with a mixture of disappointment and what he presumed was hatred. Slamming her locker, she whisked out in her salmon colored scrubs. Mark wondered how long he would have to tolerate this. No wonder he never took the freaking high road; she'd done something wrong and he got punished.

He couldn't even torture Karev, since the intern was on gynie squad, as usual. Life really wasn't fair. No tail and no justice: despite his best efforts, he was still the hospital's evil man-whore. The one person who did get it, Grey, wasn't even really his friend since that would probably lead Derek to beating him again and, truth be told, he did usually end up hitting on her, which pissed her off.

He was glad to get into surgery and get his mind off of Addison, Karev and the damn cocktail napkin which had become a symbol for all that was missing from his sex life. Surgery he was good at; surgery he understood. Women he was no longer so sure about. He had the perfect amount of stubble, dammit, she should've been begging for it.

It was a long shift, and he finally got back at around six the next morning, running off about a ten minute doze in the on-call room. Although he'd had his share of trysts on hospital grounds, after watching Addison and Karev stumble out he'd had a much more difficult time relaxing there than previously. He felt wiped-out and began pulling off his clothes the moment he stepped through the door.

He had nearly gotten the cocktail napkin off of his mind what with the lovely extensive surgeries, but there it was waiting for him before he could collapse onto his bed. The maid had arranged it neatly on his nightstand. He picked it up and looked at it lying in the palm of his hand. Perrin Rhodes had refused sex, but she had given him her phone number, so that must've meant something.

It was no wonder he was confused, he thought, after being at Seattle Grace. There wasn't a single person there who wasn't sexually frustrated on some level. He didn't often meet with women outside of the workplace except for those who wanted hookups. But miraculously he'd ended up next to a girl who was there as the female equivalent of a wingman and who was more choosy about who she screwed. It had nothing to do with his own hotness levels; those were still secure. He'd simply stumbled upon a woman with some sexual scruples. How odd.

And, he thought as he remembered their conversation, she had issued a challenge. She recognized the man-whore tendencies and didn't think he'd take her on an actual date. Well, if there was one thing Mark Sloan loved it was a challenge. Maybe he couldn't tell anyone at the hospital that they were wrong about he and Addison—with those gossips it would get back to her, and that wasn't very high-road-like—but he could damn well prove Perrin Rhodes wrong.

He crashed down onto the bed, nude and thankful for the cleaning service at the hotel that supplied him with crisp, clean sheets everyday. He had the day off; when he woke up, he'd set to making Perrin feel badly for making assumptions about him. It was a delicious thought.