JACKSON
I had never thought that kissing April Kepner would be something that I was into, yet that had quickly turned out to be the exact case.
As timid and quiet as she could be, usually the scapegoat of the group in one way or another, as much confidence as she lacked, she was still really something else. April might have been a virgin, but she definitely didn't kiss like she was one. She was a natural.
All of the kissing that we had done since that first night of studying and now had really opened up my eyes to just how great she really was. She was smart and funny when she had the opportunity to speak up. It was our daily, really. We rarely gave her the opportunity to be herself and speak freely without some kind of ridicule or harassment. If I could take it back now, I would. Instead of that, though, now I would just have to do what I could to make up for it.
We weren't exactly dating or at least doing anything that was labeled, but, it was still something that we were having fun with. We were studying more and more, except it wasn't exactly just studying. More like a few minutes of back and forth and some heavy petting. I wasn't going to push her any further than what she wanted, but she'd become more comfortable with me and in her own skin.
Like right now.
Karev had been pulled into some emergency surgery late at night which meant that it was just the two of us home. The living room table was covered in an open pizza both with two slices and some crust in it, open beers, and messy stacks of April's notecards scattered here and there between.
Instead of paying any attention to the carefully constructed notecards and scenarios that she had crafted, though, April was currently sitting on my lap and straddling me. She was dressed, unfortunately, even if the pair of pajama shorts that she had on were fairly short and I knew for sure that she didn't have a bra on underneath the t-shirt that she had changed into after work. It'd be easy to tell, running my hands up and down her back as we had made out.
Granted, I was pretty much just as dressed, because as touchy as she had gotten with me, she was trying to put up some invisible shield of modesty. I didn't think it made a difference with as much as the two of us had been kissing.
"We should… be studying…" April barely managed to mutter out, wetting her lips.
"We kind of are," I reasoned, stretching up and snagging another kiss from her.
"How do you figure?" She questioned.
"Remember what I said about you needing a little boost in confidence for you to do well on your boards?" I said as I ran my hands over her bare thighs, stopping when my thumbs brushed against the edge of her shorts. A little teasing, for me as much as it was for her.
A sigh parted through her lips, shaking her head side to side. "That doesn't count," she disagreed, placing her hands on my forearms.
"Sure it does," I grinned at her, wetting my lips. "You'll perform better if you're confident. There's plenty of psychological research about it, I'm sure that you don't need me to tell you that." I raised my eyebrows, silently daring her to challenge me on the matter.
"Yeah, yeah, I know." April shook her head even as she agreed with me. "But there's nothing as good for the test as knowing facts, Jackson. You know that. Facts go much further than confidence does."
"Well, you could have both. It's not one or the other." I pointed out. "I know that you're going to have all the facts. Everyone knows that April, you've been obsessively studying for the boards for weeks. More than everyone else has, probably. Maybe more than some of us combined, even. You'll be fine with knowing everything that they're going to through your way. You just have to gain a little more confidence in everything that you do." I lifted up one hand, tucking hair behind her ear with a sympathetic smile.
"You're just…" she started, not finishing her sentence and shaking her head.
"I'm just what?" My eyebrows raised.
April fell quiet and chewed at the flesh of her lower lip, her hazel eyes finding mine again after a moment. There was something twinkling there that I couldn't quite identify, She leaned forward and kissed me hard, my lips parting open easily so our tongues could meet again. It was a distraction from the topic, and we both knew it, of course.
"Very distracting." She settled on the two words when she finally pulled away from me. I grinned at her and offered a shrug of my shoulders that was certainly far from innocent.
"Well, I won't disagree with that." I chuckled. "But I'm also very correct."
"Maybe." One eyebrow arched at me. "Maybe," she repeated.
"Are you saying that you don't enjoy all of this?" I raised an eyebrow right back at her, the thumb resting on her thigh drawing a few little circles against her pale skin.
"No, that is most definitely not what I'm saying." April laughed and shook her head.
I grinned. "Thought so." Fingertips tapped along her thigh at my own entertainment.
She beamed at me for a moment before leaning forward and placing another kiss on my lips. Both hands returned to her hips and I pulled her against me a little tighter than before. She tasted sweet like sugar but had a perfect warmth. Whatever this was, I didn't know, but I did know that I enjoyed it just as much as she did. I'd be a fool to say if I tried to lie to myself and say I didn't enjoy the hell out of doing this with her.
My hands slid up from her thighs to her hips, just beneath her t-shirt though I knew better to try and go any higher with her. Holding onto her hips was a good anchor, holding her right against me. I had a little self-control, just enough to not make her uncomfortable. Getting her straddling me was perfect enough.
Lips separated but the two of us don't, instead, trailing my lips down the slope of her neck to leave a few open-mouthed marks there. I know better than to leave marks despite the temptation there. She squirmed and whined like no other when I sucked on her neck, making it so hard not to leave her a hickey. I do everything but that, pretty much. She squirmed and squealed, and I don't miss the needy whine that came out of her mouth. She was far from quiet.
But there's a sudden interruption, the door to the apartment swinging open loudly and clattering against the wall with the force of it being pushed open. We both froze.
"What the fuck?" Alex blurted out.
There was no way to lie about what we were doing. She was on top of me and my hands were all over her
"Kepner and Avery. Damn. Should have placed bets on that one." He remarked, shaking his head.
"Oh, my gosh," April said, pushing me back off of her but leaving her hands on my chest. With wide eyes, she stared up at him, clearly without a clue for what to say. "You– oh. Oh god."
"If only Mer and Cristina were here to see that," he chuckled. "You popped her cherry yet?"
"No." I frowned.
"No!" April echoed, voice coming out a little shrill, the typical octave Alex mocked her for.
Louder laughter came from him. "Yeah, sure, whatever you say. Figured it was only a matter of time before the two of you got it on. Someone had to pop your cherry, April. We all knew you weren't going to make it to marriage."
"What does that mean?" April questioned, shooting a dark glare at Alex that surprised even me. I didn't realize just how dark she could get, but damn.
"I mean, first there was Derek, then me and Stark, now Avery. C'mon, Keps." He grinned.
"Alright, let's take it down a notch," I suggested as I turned back to get a better look at him. Given that the two of us were considerably more promiscuous than she had ever been, the last thing that she or I needed was commentary along the lines of slut-shaming. I couldn't tell if that was his actual attention, or if he was just messing with her.
April slid off my lap, on her knees and facing the back of the couch. "That doesn't mean anything. I am still a virgin. I am still going to be a virgin for as long as I want to be." She snapped at him. "Have you taken the elevator any time soon, Alex?"
Well, there was a comment to shut him up.
It worked to the effect that she intended and the one that I expected, Alex grumbling before moving to grab a beer from the fridge and heading toward his bedroom without another word. I'm sure that he was irritated by it and more than likely, she was going to end up apologizing for it down the line. She was too sweet like that, often too kind for her own good. But at least for now, it had gotten him off of our backs.
Until work tomorrow.
"I can't believe he just walked in on us," April sighed out, falling back onto the couch. "What are we going to do? He's never going to let me hear the end of this. It's going to be so much. And gosh, Cristina is going to be even worse about it. Meredith could go either way, but he and Cristina are going to be so hard to deal with."
"Hey, hey," I repeated the word, trying to get her to calm down just a bit. "It's not just you, alright? They'll lose interest in it. It won't take long for something else to come up." I reached over, rubbing her arm gently to soothe her.
"It's not the same. They like you. They respect you." She disagreed, shaking her head.
"Remember what I said about confidence?" Might as well bring it back around to that.
April raised her eyebrows at me, and I wait to see if she was going to say something about it. I let a few quiet seconds pass to give her the opportunity, and when she ends up saying nothing, I go ahead and open my mouth again.
"It's important. I'm a cocky guy. They know that there's not a lot they can say that's going to get under my skin. It's why they don't waste their time going after me." I explained. "But you? You wear your heart on your sleeve. And you know, that's… a really beautiful thing. It is. But sometimes, you have to know when to toughen up."
She sighed. "I don't think I could do anything that would make them change at this point, to be honest. They're probably never going to stop that."
"That's not true," I shook my head. "C'mon. This could be the thing for you, you know? The thing where you finally get to stand up for yourself and they finally start to knock it off. This could be good for you." I suggested, both my eyebrows shooting up in my brows.
"I don't know if I can spin it like that as easily as you can," she wet her lips.
I leaned forward, kissing her. She doesn't return it quiet as passionately, and I pulled away after a minute. "I'm being serious, April. Completely serious. Trust me, I don't want to screw you over with these guys anymore. That's not what I want."
"What do you want?" April turned back around on me, shifting gears slightly. Not what I expected.
"I don't know," I admitted honestly. "But I'd like to continue doing this with you. The sort of study, and the lots of kissing. I like you, April, a lot. I wish they saw in you what I do. And you know? This could be a good gate to get them to see that. I believe that, I really do." But I knew that I seemed to believe in her much more than she believed in herself.
"Do you really mean that?" She questioned, eyebrows furrowed together yet a spark of hope flickering through the hazel hue of her eyes nonetheless.
"Yeah, I do." I nodded quickly.
This time when she leaned forward, she didn't kiss me like expected, but instead, April wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. I smiled to myself for a moment and wrapped my arms around her to return the affection. It was different than the kissing we usually did.
"Karev knowing is not the end of the world, Apes." I murmured, giving her a slight pat on the back before pulling away. "It'll be fine. I mean, we had to figure this out eventually, right?"
April blinked at me in surprise before nodding. "Yeah, I guess we did." She wet her lips.
My hands rested on her forearms. "So, do you want to do that now? Or later?" I asked.
"There's really only one thing to ask." She said.
"Yeah?" I prompted. It was obvious enough to me, but I wanted to make sure that we were both on the same page about it. I knew she didn't have a lot of history with relationships, but I didn't want to assume that she didn't know what she was doing, either.
"Are we going to date?" She asked. Yep, same page. That was the most obvious question.
"If you want to," I answered simply.
I liked her as a person, and she had always been a good friend to me. Now that I had been thinking about her in a much more physical way in the past few days, picturing a relationship between me and her was pretty easy. You were supposed to date someone that you were friends with. That was the way that relationships were supposed to work.
"Okay," April took a deep breath and nodded her head. "Then I would like to. Very much so."
"Okay," I echoed her words, smiling back and kissing her sweetly. "Then we're in a relationship."
