APRIL

"I can't believe you haven't started studying!"

Despite any and all best efforts to control it, my voice does the thing that I already know everyone hates. The worry and stress slipped it just enough that it raised to that annoying pitch that Alex relentlessly mocked me for, and everyone else, really, even if the rest tended to know when was the best time to take a step back and let it happen. This was one of those moments.

Our boards were getting closer and closer, months turned into weeks. I was determined to absolutely crush them in every way possible, to prove that I wasn't a complete nervous wreck, that I was just as capable as everyone else. My resume was solid and strong, I have earned the position of being chief resident, and now I just had one more big thing to check off in order to prove myself. I was so close to the end of residency, so close to being board certified and finally accomplishing the dream that I had been attached to for years.

But of course, Jackson hadn't prepared. He was a natural genius, I knew that already, he didn't have to put in quite the same amount of work for the same outcome as me. He was lucky like that. The boards, however, were a completely different ballgame.

"We've still got a few weeks of time, April. You don't have to be this stressed out already. Try and take it easy." Jackson insisted, both his eyebrows raised up into his forehead.

"Yes, a few weeks where we still have to work and keep up with patients and have good outcomes," I reminded him, mimicking his facial expression. "This is a big deal, Jackson. Bigger than MCATS or anything else. One in five people fails their boards! And in case you haven't noticed, our class of residents have five people."

"That doesn't guarantee one of us is going to fail," he disagreed with a shake of his head. "It could be two people from a different hospital. We're lucky to be here."

I sighed. "That doesn't mean that we shouldn't prepare, Jackson. Everyone else already started."

"Really?" He questioned, looking dumbfounded.

"Really!" I practically shouted at him, my eyes widening to emphasize my point.

"Well, I was going to go to Joe's tonight with Sloan and Karev, grab a few cold ones. Sloan and I've got a big surgery tomorrow," Jackson explained, his hand reaching up to scratch the back of his neck.

I raised my eyebrows up at him sharply, not saying a word and instead, just letting him feel the judgment.

"But I guess I can push that off for another night," Jackson sighed out, rolling his light eyes as he did so. "I'm guessing you already have a study plan and a ridiculous amount of flashcards made for studying?" He prompted me. I smiled and gave a too eager nod of the head. I had over prepared, definitely. But it seemed like a superior option to the alternative.

"Mmhm." I clucked my tongue at him. "The perfect amount, actually. I've got everything covered. Even some plastics stuff in there, since you know, I kind of have to know everything for trauma." So I'd brag just a little bit. I was proud of my specialty.

Even if, well, it was the exact opposite of what I had wanted when I had first gotten to Seattle and started as an intern. I had wanted something steady and predictable – ironically, plastics had been on my list, even if I had lost interest in that over the years. That had been for the sake of setting down and raising kids without having to make too many sacrifices at work. But that had been pretty much thrown out the window after the trauma certification that we had done last year. Now, I lived and breathed trauma. It was where all of my passion laid.

"Know it all." He teased.

"Not exactly a bad thing when it comes to this stuff." I shrugged my shoulders, letting a proud smile tug across my cheeks. No, this was the best thing to be over-prepared for. Hopefully, it would help put off any and all nervous breakdowns.

"Are you done for the day?" Jackson asked, veering away from the subject at hand just a bit, pulling out his phone presumably to send Sloan or Alex a text message.

"Yeah, I was just heading up to my office to change so I can go back to the apartment," I answered with a slight nod. "What about you?"

"I am now." He chuckled.

Jackson followed me upstairs to what had once been my office, quickly having been taken over by the rest of the residents. I hadn't bothered putting up much of a fight on the matter, knowing that it wasn't one I was going to win. At least I could mostly keep Alex out of the mini-fridge. Mostly. That was a victory all by itself.

When we get up there, I turn my back to him so we can both change out of scrubs and into the clothes that we had come in this morning. We'd driven together with Alex, but if he was going over to Joe's, he would be able to catch a ride of his own back.

Once I'm back into slacks and a floral blouse, I turned around, catching the tail end of Jackson redressing himself. He had dimples on his lower back. Interesting.

Everyone with a pair of working eyes knew that Jackson was attractive. Jackson knew that he was attractive, too. He was tall and had the most beautiful eyes that I had ever seen in person before. He was obviously quite muscular as well. We'd been friends for a few years now and I'd caught him changing both at work and at home, seen the definition that he took pride in there. He was beginning to grow out some scruff on his face, and it was a good look for him.

"You ready?" He asked as he finished up, turning back to face me.

"Yeah." I nodded.

Side by side, the two of us head out of the building and out to the car. He drives back to the apartment. He nor Alex ever let me behind the wheel, and I'd given up on that a while ago. Unless they were completely exhausted, they would be the ones driving.

It's late enough that most of the rush hour traffic has pretty much disappeared from the roads and night was beginning to fall. That wasn't unusual for our work. Conventional hours were nonexistent.

"I'm going to go get my study stuff!" I announced once we got home, hurrying back to my bedroom. I had a thick binder full of more detail information on top of the color-coded flashcards, printed out practice questions, and a few case studies of different complex procedures that had gone on in the past few years. I wanted to be prepared for every possible thing that could be thrown my way when we flew out to San Francisco.

"Alright, here we go." The binder hit the coffee table with a loud thud, and Jackson looked up as he walked over from the kitchen, two beers in hand. I guess he hadn't completely abandoned tonight's plan.

"Here," he handed me one, already opened.

"Thanks." I took a quick sip from it before settling down on the floor, crossing my legs and undoing the rubber bands around my flashcards set. "Where do you want to start?"

Plastics, of course, is where we start for his sake. I don't mind helping him study in the slightest because I knew that there were always going to be applications for trauma from any specialty. I didn't get to work quite as hands-on with what cases do require plastics, though, because Sloan pretty much always swept in and took them off of me and Hunt's hands. It didn't matter that much, not really. Practice is practice. I needed all that I could get, and so did he.

Or at least, that's what I thought.

It turned out that even though Jackson hadn't put in any formal study time for the boards, the questions were all ones that he was pretty capable of answering or talking himself into the right answer. He really was brilliant in every way possible, and I knew that his handy work reflected the excellence inside of his head. That hadn't always been the case. I remember when Sloan had been hard on him because he hadn't reacted positively to it, and he had put in the work to get better. It showed. Everyone knew that now.

I couldn't decide whether he was outdoing me or not with some of the answers he gave, to be quite honest. I hadn't spent months preparing but I had started to really crackdown in the past few weeks. Having him know so much without the same preparation being put in made me a little insecure about my own standing. At least I wasn't doing this with Cristina.

"I can't believe you know so much," I muttered, drinking from what was now my second beer and leaning back into the sofa that he was sitting on. I craned my neck to look up at him. "It's not fair. I've been preparing so much."

"You know just as much as I do, April," Jackson shrugged, ruffling my hair affectionately. "You just don't answer with the same confidence. That's the only difference."

"Well, it seems to make a lot of difference," I whined slightly, head dropping back on the cushion of the sofa.

"What you need is a course in confidence." He retorted, swallowing a mouthful of his beer.

I snorted, closing my eyes and shaking my head. "Yeah, sure, let me put that right on top of my to-do list with surgery and studying and everything else. I'm sure I'll be able to make time for that, too." I replied sarcastically.

"See, if you let the rest of the world see a little more of that attitude, it might be better for you." He suggested.

"Or it would just give Alex even more ammunition against me," I commented with a shake of my head. "He's a lot nicer when it's just the three of us here, or just working with patients, but something about Mer and Cristina just brings out the snark in him. I don't get it."

"Just the way that he is," Jackson brushed off.

An accurate enough assessment even if it doesn't account for the why, but I don't want to get caught up in that right now. Setting down my beer bottle on one of the coasters on the table, I pushed myself up so I was sitting on the couch next to him, able to look at him without putting any kind of kink in my neck.

"I wish he was a little more like you," I mumbled, sinking back into the couch.

"Why's that?" He asked

"I don't know. You're nicer to me. Always have been. You treat me like an actual person all the time, not just when it's convenient for you. And you're pretty much the only person that we work with who does that if I'm being completely honest. It's just nice. You're a good friend, Jackson." With my words, I take one of his larger hands with mine and give it a squeeze, a soft smile on my face as I looked over at him.

After my little ramble, Jackson fell quiet for a brief moment, probably unsure how to respond. Even though he was nice and kind, he wasn't always the most emotionally available guy. He tended to be quite composed.

"You deserve it, April." He returned the gentle squeeze of my hand. "We should all be giving you a break now and then. And you're a good friend too, you know. I'm pretty sure no one else cares about me studying as much as you do. Or just, me in general, really." He expressed.

I leaned into him, a flood of happiness warming my heart. "I won't disagree about the break," I started lightly. "And you deserve someone to care about you."

Things hadn't been particularly easy for him with the relationship of will they or won't they between Sloan and Lexie. I knew that he had very strong and very real feelings for her, but it didn't seem to be reciprocated based on the other relationship that was in the picture. I couldn't imagine how complicated that must have been, the complicated mess between personal and professional lives.

"I care about you too, you know. I don't know if I've ever said it out loud." Jackson stated.

"I don't think you ever have," I replied back honestly, head turned toward him.

Our eyes meet and what felt like an impossibly moment passed between us, seafoam and hazel connected intimately. I'm suddenly completely aware of how little distance was between us without even trying, my knee pressed against his thigh from the angle I was sat at, probably only a foot of space between our faces. Personal space was something we had gotten rid of a long time ago. But I had never really thought about it until now.

This close to him, I can see little details of his face that I hadn't really appreciated before. The length of his eyelashes, maybe a little longer than my own, the unique speckle of color inside of his eyes. He's even more handsome when I'm this close to him. It's even harder to ignore the way that it made me feel inside, too. Warm and fuzzy and just a little bit turned on.

Before I could properly realize what I was doing, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his.

His mouth was warm and inviting, even with the soft stubble that brushed against the tip of my chin. I can taste the beer on his lips and I was sure that he could do the same for mine. But something about kissing him felt right like it was something that I should have done a long time ago. It just felt natural between the two of us, with nothing else in the world suddenly being a bother – not the day of work tomorrow, not the impending boards a few weeks out. It was just me and him. Maybe it had been that way for a long time now, even if I'd never confronted it.

Despite how right it felt between the two of us, though, the need for oxygen eventually overtook my sudden strength of desire that had possessed me.

"Was that okay?" I questioned once I had caught my breath, blinking a few times.

Not needing words, Jackson cupped my cheek and kissed me hard again, reigniting the spark between us and refusing to let it disappear for something as pesky as needing to breathe.

Yeah, it was okay.