"I–I can't believe you that just did that." April stuttered out.
It was hard to believe that I had just done that, too. Her crying when she arrived and the pieces of an explanation that she had given had been enough to send me into a blind rage when I had seen Alex walk into the party and attempt to approach her as if it was something that he could just brush away. Stretching out my fingers, I could feel the soreness in my hand from pounding my fist against his face. It was definitely going to be a pain in the ass the next few days at work given how important hands were to our job, but I had come out on top of the fight in the short duration that it was before being pulled apart from one another.
All of it was unlike me. With the group that we tended to hang out in now, all seeming to get along better now after the shooting than we had in the weeks before, Alex was the hothead. He was the one who threw himself into trouble and violence blindly. That was probably how he had ended up in such hot water with April in the first place. That was him, not me.
Pulling at my fingers, the knuckles pop loudly and it hurt. I could feel April's gave burning holes into me. The two of us had been attached at the hip more than with anyone else that we hung out with, but I was sure that even she didn't understand why I had acted out so violently when she told me what happened between the two of them. It's hard not to think of the two of them together as anything other than him defiling her. Sure, virginity was bullshit as a whole. But April was… April. She didn't need someone like him.
"Yeah, well," I breathed out, finally speaking. "Someone had to do something about it, and I knew that you would've just accepted his apology without thinking about it." Maybe the words were a little unfair, but they seemed true.
"Doing something about it is… different than what you just did." April murmured. I shrugged my shoulders.
When I don't respond to her words, April stepped forward. Her smaller hands took a hold of mine gently and examined the bruised knuckles, a little more swollen than usual. I hadn't held back anything when it came to swinging at him. If he hadn't fought back against me, things could have been a lot worse than they were.
"You should wrap it and put some ice on it." She murmured, wetting her lips as she looked up at me.
"I'm a doctor too, you know," I reminded her.
"Well, you weren't acting very professional tonight." She pointed out, words coming out quickly.
Letting her tug me along to the kitchen, I don't protest or resist as she grabbed a ziplock bag and filled it with a few pieces of ice from the freezer, wrapping it up in a dish towel before setting it on top of my knuckles. Both of us lived with Meredith and everyone else – Alex included. The chances of us going back there tonight were extraordinarily slim. Better to avoid the drama and let things cool off for at least a few hours before trying to figure out things again.
"Thanks, April," I said as I stretched out my fingers.
"Don't do that again." Her brows were drawn together toward the bridge of her nose as she looked at me, a clear frown presented on her lips. It was weird to think that a few hours ago, Alex Karev had been kissing those lips.
"Would it be wrong of me to say that's dependent on you?" I questioned, leaning back against the counter and raising my eyebrows as I looked down at her.
"Yes," April replied quickly, glaring at me. "It's not going to happen again. Never. I feel like I need to wash out my mouth and take some… boiling hot shower but I assume that we're not going back to the house tonight." She rubbed her arm as she spoke.
"Good," I grumbled. She gave me a curious look that I didn't answer.
What she did technically wasn't my business. I had been there right along with the others to make fun of the fact that she was still a virgin at twenty-seven. It'd been over ten years since I had lost my virginity and I had never shied away from sex in any form. But religion had never played a factor in my decisions, which I knew was far from the case with her. April had made it clear on day one that she wanted a traditional family, so it shouldn't have been a surprise that some traditional values like trying to wait till marriage would go along with it. Or almost trying, given what had happened.
Looking down at her again, I couldn't help but over examine her. Truthfully, before tonight, I had never really thought about her in a sexual manner. She had always shied away from all matters regarding it. But now when I looked at her, it was different. Her lips looked soft and full, just slightly parted as she looked back at me. She had a pretty face, innocent eyes. The kind that would've been undeniably sexy looking up at you from a position on her knees.
What the hell – where did that thought come from?
Swallowing thickly, I tried to bury the thought as quickly as I could. I didn't need to make things weird or awkward with her, especially not right now. She was my best friend here and I didn't want to risk ruining that in any kind of way. April was an important person in my life, a grounding force that I needed. I didn't want that to change for something worse.
"Where are we going to stay tonight?" April asked, breaking the silence between us.
"I don't know," I admitted with a sigh. "Wherever you want, I guess." I'd go with her.
"Would it be weird to go back to the hospital and just sleep in an on-call room?" She questioned, thinking out loud. I gave a slight nod. "Or… I don't know. Cristina and Hunt probably don't want us staying here. I can't think of anything else. I know that Owen would say yes but– I don't know." She mumbled.
My eyebrows raised. "Like I said, it's up to you." Staying here would be weird, but it wasn't like we had a lot of options.
"I'm going to go talk to Owen," she sighed, walking out of the kitchen.
Shutting my eyes for a moment, I took a deep breath. April was my best friend. I had to run the thought through my head a few times like a reminder, to think of her only that way and no other way. Yet now that the thought had been implanted in my mind, it seemed more than happy to run with it inappropriately. As long as I didn't act on it or do anything weird, it could be fine. It would be fine. But hell, it was hard to shake those thoughts.
I shifted the ice pack across my sore knuckles, dropping my gaze down to look at them. Even if it was going to be a pain for the ass for a couple of days at work, I didn't regret what I had done. I would have done it again without a second thought. She wouldn't stand up for herself, I knew that. She deserved to have someone do it.
One way or another, I was going to have to get those thoughts out of my head. I couldn't sit around thinking about kissing April Kepner or doing a hell of a lot more to her. I was sure that she wasn't interested in me like that, especially not if she was going after a guy like Karev. She had to see me as nothing more than a friend and I was supposed to be seeing her in the same light. A sigh passed through my lips. This was something that I definitely couldn't open up to anyone about. She would have been confused and weird about it, and anyone else would have made fun of me for it, I was sure. Even if it would have explained the way that I had reacted tonight.
"Owen said that we could stay here tonight," April announced as she reentered the kitchen, looking at me with a small smile. "How does your hand feel?"
"It's alright," I shrugged. "I guess we're going to be the first to use their guest room."
Following her, Owen showed the both of us to the guest bedroom. It was all new furniture, practically smelled like it had just been freshly unwrapped, but it was fine. better than sleeping in an on-call room in the hospital, that much was for sure.
"Thanks for letting us stay here," I offered up appreciatively.
"No problem," he shrugged off. "Don't want to cause any more problems between you and Karev."
When we were alone, I unwrapped my hand and set the bag of partially melted ice in the sink of the guest bathroom so it wouldn't make a mess. There was just one bed in the room, a queen-sized one with a thick duvet covering it and matching pillows. It all matched a weird amount given, well, who Cristina was as a person and that I figured this was something neither she nor Owen cared a particular amount about.
"I can sleep on the floor," I suggested, glancing up at her and scratching the back of my head.
"You don't have to do that," April said with a shake of her head, stepping out of her shoes and lining them up against the bed. "It's fine, Jackson. We're both mature adults. We can share a bed."
Somehow, I doubted that. She turned around and I realized that I should have averted my eyes, but instead I watched as she reached up beneath her shirt and unclipped her bra. I knew that she was going to sleep fully dressed if we were sharing a bed, she was far too modest to do anything else. But I also knew women well enough to know they hated sleeping in bras.
"Yeah, okay," I muttered, my mouth dry.
Stepping away from her to use the bathroom, by the time that I was washing at my hands, I stared at myself for a long minute in the mirror. I was being ridiculous. There was no reason that I couldn't control myself. I respected her, a hell of a lot more than Karev did apparently, and I would have done just about anything for her. This should have been easy. Taking a deep breath, I nodded as if it was going to convince myself that this was going to be fine. I didn't want to mess things up and I certainly didn't want to push her too far after the day she had already had.
Walking back into the bedroom, April was sitting at the end of the bed, staring down at something on her phone. I approached her slowly, careful not to startle her and placed my hand on her shoulder, giving a gentle squeeze. When she looked up at me with a smile, my heart nearly skipped a beat.
"Are you feeling any better?" I inquired gently.
"Yeah," she nodded slightly. "Just a weird day. Not where I thought today was going when I woke up."
"Yeah, me either," I chuckled in agreement. I hadn't expected this can of worms to open up inside of my head and yet, there they were, insistent on staying there and not going anywhere. I'd just have to hold them back and leave them there. Especially if we were sharing a bed together. The last thing that either of us needed was waking up in the morning with a boner. Hopefully, I could keep my dreams under control, but there was no guarantee. "Which side of the bed do you want? I don't care."
April patted the side she was sitting on. "This one is good with me."
Nodding so she knew it was fine, I stretched out my arms for a moment before pulling off my shirt. Sleeping shirtless was the norm for me. I was glad that I hadn't worn jeans that day, though, given how uncomfortable they would have been to sleep in. Sleeping in slacks wasn't much better but I wasn't going to do go in just boxers with her in the same bed.
She got up and we both removed some of the extra pillows from the bed and set them at the end, pulling down the duvet and the sheets. I turned off the lights. But once it was all done and it was time to get in, we both paused and looked at each other.
"Are you sure this is okay with you?" I asked one more time. "Because it's fine if it's not. I get it."
"Yeah, it's fine," April confirmed with a nod.
The mattress sank as I got down onto it, waiting for her to join me. I laid on my back first, as did she, though I normally slept on my side or stomach. I could hear her breathing as we both fell quiet. Thoughts remained racing through my head about her, about her and Karev, unable to shake them.
"Can I ask you something?" I questioned, rolling on my side and propping up my head with my arm.
"Sure." She answered, mimicking my posture as she rolled toward me.
"Why Karev?" It seemed like the obvious.
April sighed. "I… I don't know. He's good with the kids, did you know that? I know that he doesn't seem like it, but he is. He's really good with them. I've been seeing this softness in him but I guess I just forgot that he's still himself at the surface. I think I saw something in him that wasn't actually there." Her cheeks turned red as she spoke.
"He's not the worst guy." I would give her that much. "I just never even began to consider someone like him to be your type. I always figured you'd go for some clean-cut, good guy."
"I've never been good at dating," she shrugged slightly. "All my relationships were best friends at first."
Oh.
That changed things. I blinked in surprise at her words but I was sure that it was for reasons that she didn't realize. It just brought back the surge of thoughts that I was trying to keep buried. Maybe it was easier when you started off as friends. There was no awkward phase of getting to know each other. I knew a ton about her and I knew that she knew a lot about me, too. She had a knack for remembering details about the people around her. She was the only one who had remembered my last birthday without me having to mention it.
"I can see why that's appealing." Supportive, but not giving away too much of what was going on inside of my head. That seemed like a fair enough balance. I gave her a small smile.
"I wish all guys were as understanding as you were," April admitted with a soft look.
It was so tempting to kiss her then, to see if she was thinking the same things that I was at that moment. It almost seemed like it could have been possible, but maybe I just wasn't accustomed enough to being rejected by women to consider the possibility seriously.
Truthfully, getting lucky with women had never been a problem for me. I knew what I looked like. I wasn't oblivious to it. But I also knew that kind of charm wasn't going to have the same effect on her as it did with most girls – she just wasn't like most girls. She could have seen me naked in the shower on numerous occasions yet instead, she blushed and turned away, making a face of disgust and covering her eyes. She wasn't shallow. She wanted something real, more than just physical. That was why things with her and Karev wouldn't work, I was sure. But thinking about who she should have been with, what kind of guy… I couldn't help but settle on myself again. Maybe I was full of it.
"You're giving me too much credit," I tried to shrug off her words.
"No, I'm not. You don't give yourself enough credit." She replied.
The opposite seemed our inside of my head but I couldn't say that out loud without having to set myself up for explaining it to her. That was messy. But it was hard to fight the feelings inside of my head when I was laying in bed this close to her. I was caught up in the moment, the soft look in her eyes as she stared back at me. My thoughts were spinning too fast.
"C'mere," I mumbled instead, shifting closer to her and wrapping my arms around. April froze in surprise for a moment before returning the embrace. She smelled nice.
A few seconds passed and I just remained there, holding her in my arms. She was more physical than I was when it came to contact like this, platonic hugs, and I was glad that she was so comfortable with it, even when the two of us were laying in bed like this. Anyone else catching us like this would have laughed or thrown accusations, but she wasn't like that. I was so glad that she wasn't like the others, even if I seemed to fit in just fine with them. I wouldn't want her to change to be like them. I liked her the way that she was.
Pulling away from the embrace finally, I lingered there before acting. My lips pressed against her forehead, staying there for a few seconds longer than what it would have called for and what was necessary, just lingering with the simple intimacy of the moment. But I don't stay there too long, not wanting to screw things up or have her question it when I'm not ready to answer.
"Goodnight," I murmured.
"Goodnight, Jackson," April replied.
It would be impossible not to dream of her.