Taking a much needed break from the hospital, a few of the doctors of SGMW escape to the lake. Unfortunately for Jackson and April, their dramas cannot be so easily escaped. (Set sometime post 9x15)

Jackson turned his gaze out over the water. "Do you remember when we went camping-"

"Our first year as interns?" April cut across him. "Yeah," she added sadly.

They sat in silence for a moment in the presence of their dead friends, as if they'd raised their spirits merely by mention of their memories. The shrinks were right, the pain of losing someone close to you faded with time, but it never went away. Jackson swallowed as he remembered his best friend. Surviving a medical internship together was enough to make any friendship unbreakable, but he and Charles went far beyond that. They'd survived medical school together too, and before that college, and before that two years of high school. There were some friendships that were what they were simply due to time, and that could never change. Charles had known Jackson as a scrawny teenager who had suddenly blossomed into a swimmer and an academic in only one year. "Like some freaking, soppy movie," Charles used to moan. He'd never quite forgiven Jackson for developing his unbelievable good looks, unbeatable charm and most of all that smile, while Charles had had to wait till their second year of college to gain any sort of sway with girls. Jackson chuckled as his best friends voice floated through his mind. It was good to be able to remember them fondly. There'd been a time when he could only remember them with unbearable pain, which really meant not being able to remember them at all.

He glanced across at April and analysed her wistful, faraway expression. He didn't need to study her though to know she was playing a similar process in her head, remembering Reed. He'd never quite been sure what it was that made them friends. April was flighty, and nervous, and talkative, and painfully shy. Reed was confident, and determined, and sure knew how to charm her way onto any resident's service. But somehow they'd ended up as close as Seattle Grace's own Twisted Sisters, even rooming together too.

Remembering their friends, their family really during intern years, and looking at April now, Jackson felt overwhelmingly glad that he still had her. Instinctively he reached out his hand and took hers, entwining their fingers together. Her gaze didn't move from the horizon as she clasped his hand back and he wondered just when being close to each other had become as natural as breathing. He knew it, that even before they'd slept together, she'd been the closest person in his life. He couldn't bear the thought of losing her.

Suddenly she smiled and he found himself smiling too. "What is it?" he asked laughing. Her smile was contagious, it always had been.

"I was just remembering how Charles had been adamant he could get Reed to sleep with him before the trip was out," she said, still smiling at the memory.

Jackson laughed again, rocking back on the log where they sat and looking at the water. "If I remember correctly she pushed him off the jetty into the lake."

"And made him sleep outside," April added, now laughing too.

Jackson shook his head. Charles may finally have figured out how to talk to women, but he'd never figured out how to do it well. Plus, the poor guy just didn't have the smile, or the eyes. Jackson let his mind wander along with the memory and was surprised at where it took him. "I slept in your tent that night," he said quietly. He felt April stiffen slightly next to him but kept going. "After Charles threw Reed's tent into the lake as punishment, only to realize it was actually mine."

"Yeah," April said carefully. "I remember."

'Did she now?' Jackson thought with amusement. At the time he had never received any indication from April that she was even particularly interested in being friends with him. She'd been so driven, so focused on her work, and to be honest she'd seemed a little scared of him. He'd never been able to figure out why.

He took a deep breath and decided to keep talking. Maybe it was his way of punishing her for…he wasn't even sure what for. He was the one that had broken up with her, and he was the one that had slept with someone else first. He was so angry that she was going on coffee dates with Paramedic. He had no right to be, after all she was only drinking coffee with a guy while he was screwing Stephanie, and had bluntly announced as such to April. That hadn't been his finest hour. But logic and fairness aside, he was angry at her. Maybe because she seemed to have been able to move on, seemed happy with Paramedic and hadn't even held it against Stephanie. Meanwhile Jackson had been riddled with guilt and hadn't been able to get her out of his mind and quite frankly wouldn't mind it if Paramedic got run over by his own ambulance.

…okay maybe he was angry at himself rather than her.

He tightened his grip on her hand so she couldn't pull away. "I remember too. I remember not being able to sleep one second that night. I lay there for hours, till the sun came up, because all I could think about was how your skin was burning hot against my arm, and how the sound of your breathing was so rhythmic, and how your hair was brushing against my neck. All I could think about was that if I rolled over ever so slightly…I could kiss you."

April inhaled sharply and as he had predicted tried to pull her hand away. He'd known the frank confession would have frightened her. This was what they did though. He spoke frankly and she shied away, like a nervous pony. "April…" he said, a pleading tone to his voice, tilting his head to the side so he could find her eyes where she was staring at the shore line a few feet away. He could see her enough behind her curtain of hair to tell that she was holding back tears, and he sighed. He only ever seemed to be able to make her cry these days.

With another sigh he pulled his hand away and straightened his back, putting half a foot of space between them on the log. "That was seven years ago," she said quietly, her hand lifting to her face. He pretended he didn't see her quickly wiping the tears from her eyes.

"Uh huh."

She sniffed. "You were thinking that, on that night, seven years ago?"

"Uh huh," he repeated, setting his jaw, ready to have her push him away again.

"If..if you…how come you didn't say anything?" There was a trace of doubt in her voice but he chose to ignore it.

He shrugged his shoulders and glanced out across the lake, feigning casualness in his voice and demeanor. "At best I thought you were completely uninterested in me, at worst you seemed terrified. Even when all of us just ended up being friends, you always seemed so flighty, like I scared you."

"I was not terrified of you!" she exclaimed adamantly and he held up his hands in mock surrender. She looked away. "But-"

What had almost been about to turn into a smile at her feistiness quickly turned into a frown at her unfinished sentence. "But…?" He knew he had to push her. They were on a roll, talking like this, talking about important things. But he was nervous he was going to push her too far and she'd shut down again.

She heaved a deep sigh and looked back at him. "Like I said, you were you and I was me."

She brushed her hands together, sending a cascade of dirt to the ground, and moved as if to stand up, as if that was the end of the conversation. Jackson's hand on her elbow tugged her back down insistently. "What does that even mean? I was me and you were you. Of course we were, who else were we going to be?"

She'd reverted back to flighty, he could see it now. She didn't want to be talking about this, he'd pushed too far, but now he was determined to get an answer. She used to always make cryptic comments like that, and then never explain them. But that was when they'd just been best friends and he's just shook his head with his usual 'I'll never understand her' expression. Now there was more at stake and he was tired of accepting it.

She glared at him slightly and twisted nervously on their log, sighing loudly. "Jackson, it's a nice day and this is meant to be a break, can't we just enjoy it?"

"No," he replied flatly, staring her down. "What did you mean?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"How can you know whether I'd understand if you won't tell me?"

"I know because…because…" she was growing frustrated, unable to find the words she wanted. "You have no idea what it's like for other people!" she finally exploded and immediately looked like she regretted it, snapping her lips shut and fixing her eyes on the horizon and refusing to look at him even though he was trying his hardest to meet her eyes.

"What do you mean 'for other people'?" he pushed, figuring he'd gone this far now he might as well try everything to get the uncryptic truth from her. "April, what do you mean?"

She flicked her eyes up to his and then away again, but it was enough for him to realize that she wasn't angry like he thought she'd been. Her eyes revealed embarrassment. She mumbled out her response when she finally gave it. "I mean for people like you, Jackson. People…people who have it all, who are beautiful, and charming. People who…who get listened to." There was a long pause as she pulled the words up from deep within her and he stared at her in stunned silence as she did. "People who are actually liked." Somewhat angrily she swiped her hair from her face, her eyes bright with tears. "Basically people who are the opposite of me."

He sat back slightly as he took in her words. He knew she was insecure and she had been for as long as he'd known her, but he hadn't realized how much. Maybe he'd been like everyone else and been fooled into thinking she didn't care that much, because she seemed so honest about the fact that people didn't like her sometimes. She said it often enough. Suddenly he felt like a terrible friend.

He'd assumed that because he saw that she was beautiful, and brilliant, and totally loveable that she did too.

She was blinking furiously, seemingly determined not to cry in front of him. He let out a long slow breath and inched towards her slightly on the log, turning his body so he was fully facing her. "April, why on earth would you think something like that?"

She huffed slightly. "I learned long ago, Jackson, that men like you are not interested in women like me." She took a deep shuddering breath and finally looked up to meet his eyes. He tilted his head, staring at her intently, waiting for her to continue. "We were never going to work, Jackson. Not when we were interns, and not when we slept together, and not if you were forced to marry me because you knocked me up."

"…you were happy when you weren't pregnant…" he mused out loud as the thoughts formed in his mind, "…you were happy because you thought you were trapping me into something I didn't want?"

She inclined her head and wiped her eyes again. "Jackson, you didn't want to marry me, not really. You were scared…we were scared."

"Stop telling me what I feel, and think!"

"Jackson-"

He shook his head even before she had finished. "I wasn't scared, not of that anyway. I was scared that you wouldn't want to raise it; I was scared that you'd get spooked and run; I was scared that if we did get that far, that I'd make the same mistakes my parents did. But I was never scared of marrying you, April, or about us raising that baby together. Those two things, I couldn't have been more certain about…or more happy about."

She shook her head and it was as if she hadn't heard a word he'd said. "Jackson, we'd never work," she repeated. She rubbed the heel of her palm against her nose and sniffed. The hurt was plain in her voice, and her slumped shoulders.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You don't think we'd work because…?"

"Because look at you, Jackson!" she all but shouted, waving a hand at him in exasperation. "You could have any woman you liked. You could have someone who is as beautiful as you are, someone who is as brilliant as an Avery ought to have, someone who deserves you!"

It was odd. He thought he'd been mad at her before, when he thought about her rejecting him and her coffee dates with Paramedic. But it was nothing compared to how angry he felt now. How could she be so blind, so perceptive in everything else, but so blind and so stupid about this?

He shook his head, moving away from her, opening and closing his mouth as he tried to find the words. She glared at him, as much as April could glare, as if she was waiting for him to confirm what she'd said.

"April…" he finally managed to get out. He shook his head again, trying to clear it of his anger. "You think all that…you've thought all that all this time and you never said anything?"

She looked away, still glaring, eyes bright.

Incredulously he turned away, placing his head in his hands, fingers gripping into his skin. "Do you have any idea?" he whispered at her. There was a pause as she didn't answer but he didn't bother looking at her to see her reaction, he just kept talking. "Do you have any idea how much you meant to me? All my life I've been one of two things. With my family I was always the 'pretty one', never good enough to follow in my grandfather's footsteps. They didn't think I'd ever be good enough so they just let me screw around. But I didn't want to, so I worked my ass off to get into med school, to get into Mercy West, to become a surgeon! But it never mattered there either because to them I was always just an Avery. It didn't matter what I did, only what he had done."

"Jackson," she said softly, but he shook his head to stop her. He wasn't finished. He turned to her, anger flaring up in him.

"Except with you! April. I was never any of that with you! You never saw me as the pretty one, the one to screw around with. To be with you and think you didn't care…you weren't interested in only how I looked! And right from intern year you watched me make mistakes, you watched me screw up and not know things, you knew I wasn't just an Avery, you knew how hard I worked to be me. I love you, April, as a friend, as more than a friend, because with you, and only with you, I can be me. Not a pretty boy, not an Avery, but me. I always thought you liked me, you loved me, for me!"

She was staring at him open mouthed, speechless. He was actually close to crying, hot, angry tears threatening to fall. He swiped at his eyes angrily, refusing to let them, and looked back at her, flash anger replaced with sorrow. "I guess I was wrong. You do only see me for those things, you were just too scared to say so."

He held her gaze as he watched her try and form words to reply to his outburst. He'd never said any of those things to anyone before. No one had ever mattered to him enough to warrant it.

"I-I…" she stuttered, flushing and glancing around nervously. "I didn't know you f-felt like that."

"I guess we really don't know that much about each other," he shot back, thinking of how he hadn't really known what she thought at all. Suddenly he felt guilty though. He hadn't known her, she hadn't known him. They were both at fault here. If he'd known how truly insecure she was he would have done something, stood up for her more, talked to her more.

He took a deep breath to calm the remaining anger that was slowly seeping away. He always had had a flash temper. He got blindingly furious, but it never lasted. It was part of the reason he'd often gotten into trouble, like the time he tried to kill Karev after he almost slept with April.

He was drawn from his thoughts by her voice. "I do see you for who you really are, Jackson," she said carefully and then laughed, weirdly. "But I don't know if you've noticed but even as yourself you're still pretty damn intimidating." She looked up at him shyly. "Still pretty damn amazing."

There was only raw honesty in her voice, he knew her well enough to know that. April might hide from what she was really thinking and feeling but he knew when she did say it, or show it, she never lied. He couldn't help but smile, the anger completely gone now. She looked so nervous, looking up at him like that, like he was…more. Gently he cupped her face and was silently relieved when she didn't pull away. "Well you're pretty damn amazing too April. I don't know why you can't see that."

She looked away. "Don't mock me, Jackson." She always said that. Whenever anyone showed any interest in her, or in what she was doing, she assumed they were mocking her. He'd watched her rip into an intern once because he was genuinely enthusiastic about being on her service.

He sighed and thought back to the conversation they'd had, the things they'd said. He didn't know how to make it any clearer to her that he genuinely liked her, and always had.

He inched forwards again, so there was no space between them, and clutched at her arms, holding her in front of him like she was trying to escape. "April, I don't know how to prove to you that you are perfect to me, and that I will never want anyone other than you. But if you give me the chance, I will try and make you see it every single day, till one day you do believe it."

He'd seen her look the way she did now once before. When they'd thought she was pregnant and he'd told her he was in, that they could get married, in a field of wildflowers if she wanted, and that they could raise that baby together. She was looking at him with so much hope, but also like she couldn't quite believe it, like she expected it to be some huge joke and he was going to send her high crashing down any moment. He wondered how many times that had happened to her before. He didn't give her the chance to say what he knew she was going to, 'Are you sure? Do you mean it? Don't lie to me, Jackson'. He decided to answer her doubts before she could voice them.

"April, I promise you, I am saying this 100% because I mean it. I do not want anyone but you, I love you….do you love me?"

She exhaled slowly, staring at his lips. "So much it hurts," she replied barely audibly.

He broke into a smile hearing her say those words. His hurt of before had vanished. She may have been scared by what she thought he was, but he knew it had just as much to do with her own insecurities as it did with him. When she said it like that, looked at him like that, he knew she meant it. She loved him.

Slowly he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "I wish you'd tell me what you were thinking," he said softly, firmly. She blushed again, her eyes darting to his and then back to his lips. He took a deep breath and the scent of her shampoo tickled the back of his throat. "If you'd told me what you were thinking all those years ago, who knows how things could have gone. If you'd told me what you were thinking after…after the Boards, everything could have been alright. If you told me what you were thinking now…" he trailed off, leaving the decision up to her. He wanted nothing more right then than to close the seemingly miniscule distance between them and kiss her. It had been too long since he'd felt her lips on his, her body pressed up against his. He missed her.

She held his gaze and he unconsciously counted the seconds, wondering if it was going to be a record before she glanced away and shook him off with something trivial. He silently steeled himself for that moment.

And there it was. Her eyes dropped, choosing to focus on the rip in her jeans rather than his face. He let his hand drop from her cheek too and felt his expression set into resentment, his heart setting along with it. Why couldn't she just give them a chance?

"How can we be best friends, and I not have a clue what's going on in your head?" he asked, hurt, turning away. He kicked at the dirt angrily, scuffing a line. He sighed in frustration and ran his hands through his short hair. He didn't care if she saw how frustrated it made him, he was beyond trying to hide his hurt from her. They were beyond that. She knew how much she meant to him and she still couldn't risk it.

He glared at a beetle making its determined way passed his foot. He considered taking his anger out on the defenseless creature by simply lifting his foot and crushing it. He couldn't do it. Even as a boy he'd never even been able to kill an ant. It really shouldn't have surprised his family so much that he wanted to go into medicine. A light touch on his arm pulled him abruptly from his thoughts. His body knew it was her before his mind did, sending a flurry of goosebumps along his skin from the source of her touch. He looked up before he could stop himself, his eyes connecting with hers. She looked nervous.

"Y-you want to know what I was thinking?" she asked breathlessly, her voice quivering slightly. He knew it only did that when she was terrified or so excited she could barely get the words out. He wasn't sure which one he wanted it to be, but after a considered pause he gave a small nod.

He was surprised when he heard her laughing, a slightly manic bubble of laughter that sounded like it was halfway to hysterical sobs. She kept laughing as he looked at her in mild alarm. "April?"

She giggled, clasping a hand over her mouth and leaning forwards slightly. Raising his eyebrows he placed a hand on the crook of her arm and waited until she regained control of herself. Eventually her giggles subsided, almost sadly, and she looked up at him. Despite her laughter there wasn't anything particularly happy about her expression. "Jackson. I-I wasn't asleep."

He shook his head, frowning, confused. "Huh?"

She laughed again and wiped fresh tears from her eyes. He wondered if they were caused by the laughter or still him. "I wasn't asleep, that…that night in the tent. I couldn't sleep. All I could feel was…was your body next to me. And I'd never been that close to a guy before, not like sleeping, and it felt…nice…safe and…it was easy. It was always so easy being with you. I miss that. I miss you."

She was blushing, ducking her head to hide from him, but he didn't want to let her hide. With gentle fingers he swept her hair behind her ear so he could see her face, properly look at her. And he did, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes.

"You sure had me fooled April Kepner."

"What do you mean?"

"If only I'd known what was going on in that head of yours seven years ago…" he trailed off, smiling at her. She blushed again with the implication of how things could have been different.

"What are you thinking right now?" he asked quietly, his eyes darting down to her lips. They were so close, and not just physically. He could feel something different between them, something was gone. He felt like he could be close to her now, even if they were miles apart. The thought made him feel…free. He'd never realized how much he wanted that feeling till he had it.

She held his gaze for a long, tense, silent moment.

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "I am…thinking pretty much exactly what I was thinking that night in the tent…except it- it's worse. Seven years ago it was imagination, it was just in my head, just a fantasy that I knew would never happen…that I didn't think would ever happen." He silently noted the correction and kept his eyes locked on hers as the words tumbled out of her in their usual nervous hurry. "Now, it's worse, because it's not imagination, it's memory, and so I know it's real, and possible, and that just makes it so, so much harder not to want to kiss you like, all the time, and especially right now and…you're laughing at me."

She was babbling and he couldn't help himself, his frown had slowly turned into a smile as she rattled on, and then it had turned into a grin which had burst into a laugh. She was staring at him, crestfallen, open mouthed, hands still raised in the air. He shook his head, covering his mouth with one hand and tried not to smile. "I'm sorry," he said, failing miserably.

She huffed and slouched down, slightly glaring at him. "That's fine. I tell you I want to kiss you and you laugh at me. That's just fine, that's brilliant, that-"

"April, stop talking." She looked up at him, surprised at the blunt order. Her mouth opened to object but he didn't give her the opportunity to insult him, he finally closed the space and kissed her.

A/N: Reviews are greatly appreciated.