A/N: Sorry for the wait! Thanks for the reviews! :)
Disclaimer: Same as always!
Chapter 10 – Place Your Bets!
Alex chuckled quietly to himself as he looked down at the sleeping red-head. He was sitting up on the on-call room bed with his flashcards in his hands and her feet in his lap. Last night, after Morgan's boyfriend had arrived, April had told him, quite adamantly, that she would only nap with him for a few hours and then she would head back to the apartment.
In reality, she had slept through the night and he had actually awoken before her. He couldn't remember the last time that he had shared a bed with a chick with his clothes on, or without some kind of inappropriate touching, but it had been nice. She was a pretty freakin' cute sleeper, and she was practically drowning in that sweater she was wearing.
He glanced at his watch and figured that he should probably wake her up soon. If he didn't call her soon then she would be pissed at him because she wouldn't have time to look over her precious surgical board before rounds. He looked down at her feet in his lap and began to stroke the bottom of her foot with his index finger. Her foot flinched reflexively and she awoke with a start. "Alex, don't," she whined sleepily.
He laughed as she stretched and made herself comfortable in a new position. "It's time to get up," he told her. "You have work."
"I've only been asleep for a couple hours," she mumbled.
He laughed again. "It's almost seven," he corrected her.
She jumped up and ran both of her hands through her hair. She looked at her watch and her eyes widened in disbelief. "Oh crap! How did this happen? I was going to go back to the apartment so that I could shower and make breakfast and have a good start to the morning," she rambled. "Why didn't you wake me?"
He shrugged, "I dunno. You looked cute so I let you sleep. Cute and tired. Besides, you can just grab a shower and some coffee here."
"How long have you been up?" She asked him with narrowed eyes.
He shrugged again and lied, "A little while."
"Well I have to update the board and do rounds before I teach a skills lab to the interns. Busy day!"
She made a move to leave but he grabbed her hand just in time. "Hey, wait a second," he spoke quietly, "about last night..."
He trailed off and April smiled softly as she watched him shift his gaze and struggle with his words. She knew that he had a hard time communicating to people that he was grateful, or appreciative, or thankful, and she didn't fault him for it, most of the time anyway. It was just a part of who he was. She knew what he wanted to say though, it was written all over his expression. "Don't mention it," she responded with a smile. "I wanted to."
He nodded slowly. "I think I'm going to stay here again tonight too. I want to keep an eye on Morgan and the baby. It's not exactly much of a date," he continued awkwardly, "but we could study. I know I'm not your study buddy though," he muttered sarcastically.
She ignored his jab at Jackson and continued to smile. "We could order pizza," she added with a chuckle.
He smirked as he realized that she was accepting his stupid, terribly phrased offer. "Yeah, we can order pizza." He pulled her closer to him and hooked a finger through one of the belt loops on her jeans. "Have a good day."
"I can't start my day until you let me go," she giggled.
He chuckled as he tugged her into his lap. "I'm sorry that my good looks are distracting you from starting your day."
She rolled her eyes and tossed her head back in laughter. "That's the best you can come up with? Your good looks are distracting me? You've lost your edge, Karev," she teased.
He leaned forward and pressed a series of kisses to her throat. "I don't think I've lost anything," he retorted.
Instead of giving in, like she wanted, she tore herself away from him and stood up. "I have to go so knock it off," she told him as she playfully smacked his chest. "I'll see you later."
"Yeah," he smirked as he leaned back against the wall. "I'll see you later, Kepner!" He watched her leave the room with that same smirk on his face before deciding that it was time to grab a coffee. He had to start work soon too.
He opened the door and found Meredith standing at the nearby nurses' station. "Hey Mer," he greeted her as he came to stand at her side. "Here already?"
"Yeah, so are you." She quickly looked over his wrinkled scrubs and scrunched up her nose. "Did you stay here all night?"
He nodded before unabashedly sniffing his armpit. "And I don't even smell bad. I brushed my teeth and put on more deodorant and stuff."
Meredith began to smile to herself as she turned her head and pointed at the nearest on-call room. "Hey, did you just come out of that room?"
"Yeah. So?" He shrugged.
Her grin widened even further as she pointed her pen at the room. "That on-call room? The same one that a very frazzled April Kepner just walked out of?"
He shrugged and repeated, "Yeah. So?" Meredith opened her mouth but he cut her off before she could say anything. She was either going to tease him, or scold him, or offer him some advice that she considered to be a pearl of wisdom. He really wasn't in the mood to hear any of it. Mer had yelled at him about April Kepner once already. "Don't make a big deal about it, okay? We're trying things out and I'm not in it just for the sex and it's still new, and it's complicated, alright? So whatever you're going to say, you don't need to," he huffed.
Meredith laughed at how instantly defensive he became. Classic Alex. "All I was going to say," she began slowly, "is that she could be good for you."
Alex's mouth dropped open in surprise. "Oh. Well okay," he trailed off awkwardly as he started to back away. "Whatever," he added before he took off down the hallway.
Jackson sprinted towards the coffee cart as he spotted April paying for her beverage. He hadn't seen her at all this morning and he was beginning to think that she hadn't even spent the night in the apartment. She had left her bag in the living room, coffee had not been percolating when he had gotten out of bed, and he had noticed that there were no dirty dishes in the sink from her breakfast. His suspicion was confirmed when he saw her buying coffee; April hardly ever bought herself coffee in the hospital. She considered it to be a superfluous purchase.
"Hi," he smiled brightly as he sidled up to her.
She turned to him with a smile and he noticed that her hair was a little damp, like she was fresh out of the shower. Yeah, she definitely hadn't spent the night at their apartment. For whatever reason.
"Hi Jackson," she breathed. "How are you?"
"A little confused," he answered honestly. "Did you sleep here last night?"
"Oh, yeah, I-I did," she stammered. "Something came up and then I fell asleep."
He nodded and pursed his lips. He supposed that he had to be satisfied with that answer because it was clear that she wasn't telling him the entire truth, but he didn't want to push her. "So what's on your plate today?" He asked to change the subject.
"I have to teach a skills lab in twenty minutes," she answered perkily.
"Wanna hand?" He offered with a grin.
She looked up at him skeptically. "Don't you have your own work to do?"
"Sloan will page me if he needs me."
She chewed on her bottom lip before she smiled. "Sure! It'll be fun. I'm teaching them the horizontal mattress stitch. I think you can keep up with me," she teased.
Jackson grinned broadly and followed her as she began to walk away. God, all that he wanted to do was kiss her. She wasn't exactly making things easy on him.
After the skills lab, Jackson and April went for one of their walks around the hospital. He waited until they were in the basement, and away from prying eyes, before he grabbed her hand and entwined their fingers.
"So when can we go out again?" He asked with a smile as he stopped and tugged her towards him.
She giggled as she placed her free hand on his chest. "I don't know, I'm busy. I'll have to check my schedule."
He sighed dramatically before his expression turned serious and he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You did have a good time last night, right?" He questioned self-consciously. "I shouldn't read anything into the fact that you slept here last night or that you won't say when you can go out with me again?"
"Jackson," she assured him in a soft voice. "Like I told you, I had a really nice time. Dinner was great and I loved your company."
"You didn't let me kiss you," he pointed out nervously. "You practically ran into your room."
She felt her cheeks blush in embarrassment. "Well, I was nervous," she admitted in a whisper.
"Me too," he agreed. "It was our first date so I was nervous too."
She had a hard time believing that he had been nervous. Nothing ever fazed him. "But you seemed so calm," she chuckled. "You were so confident and...sexy," she finished as her cheeks reddened again.
He took her other hand and entwined their fingers so that he could swing theirs hands at his sides. "I was just trying to treat it as a regular first date, not a first date with my best friend who means the world to me. If I had thought about it that way then I would have been so nervous that I wouldn't have been able to eat dinner," he laughed softly. He paused before he asked shakily, "Is this...is this too weird for you? Us being more than friends?"
She chewed on her bottom lip as she considered the very question that she had been asking herself. Was this weird? Could they really be more than friends?
"No, it's not weird," she finally answered in a whisper. "I like this."
Jackson smiled brightly. "Good." He started to walk her back towards an abandoned gurney and grinned when her mouth opened in surprise as her backside collided with it. "Can we just...?" He lowered his head, fully intent on getting his 'better late than never first date kiss', when he heard one of the last voices that he wanted to hear.
"Hey Kepner!" Cristina bellowed. "Bailey wants you!"
April turned to her in confusion. "Why didn't she page me?"
Cristina shrugged as she tried to keep the smirk off of her face. "Not sure."
April sighed but offered Jackson a soft smile before she headed towards the nearest elevator.
The cardio obsessed surgeon waited until the red-head was out of earshot before she began to cackle. "Pretty Boy, you dog you," she teased.
Jackson rolled his eyes but kept a good-natured smile on his face. "Knock it off, Yang," he replied before he started to walk away as well.
She raced to catch up with him as his long legs led him down the hallway. The joy that she felt over having caught them in a very intimate moment was almost too much to bear. "Seriously though, the Virgin Mary? Have you deflowered her yet?"
He chuckled as he reached the elevator and pressed the call button. "Go away, Yang."
April paid for a sandwich and a bottle of water and tentatively approached the table in the cafeteria where Meredith and Cristina sat. She hoped that Cristina would keep quiet about what she had seen earlier, but April knew that the chances of that happening were very slim.
She swallowed nervously before she squeaked, "Hi guys."
"April, sit down," Cristina encouraged with a devilish smile.
The red-head slowly lowered herself into a chair and noticed that Meredith was wearing an identical grin. Maybe Cristina had spilled the beans already. She took a bite of her sandwich as the two women continued to stare at her. "So, how are you guys?" She asked to break the ice.
"How are you and Alex?" Meredith asked at the same exact time that Cristina asked the same question, except she used the name of a different co-worker.
Cristina turned to her best friend in confusion. "Alex? What? I caught her pressed up against Pretty Boy this morning."
Meredith turned her head towards the red-head and narrowed her eyes. "April," she practically growled. "What's going on?"
"It's complicated!" She blurted out. She still hadn't wrapped her mind around the fact that she was dating two guys, so she definitely couldn't explain it to anybody else. But obviously she had been caught. Cristina had seen her with Jackson and Meredith knew that there was something going on between her and Alex.
There was a long silence before Cristina uttered in disbelief, "Are you dating both of them?"
As per usual, it did not take long for word around the hospital to spread. By the next day it seemed as if everyone at the hospital knew that Alex Karev and Jackson Avery were both vying for April Kepner's affection. The nurses were talking about it, all of the techs and support staff were talking about it, and of course the surgical interns were talking about it.
But most unsurprisingly of all, the residents couldn't shut up about it.
"I need this!" Cristina gushed at the nurses' station. "There is way too much crap going on in my life right now so I need this to distract me. I need to watch Pretty Boy and Evil Spawn fight over the Virgin Mary. It is going to be so entertaining!"
Meredith couldn't stop herself from laughing but she still viewed the situation much more seriously than Cristina did. "What about Alex? Our friend?"
Cristina stared at her in confusion. "What about him?"
"What if he gets screwed over in all this mess? Jackson only wants her because Alex does."
"I don't think that's true at all," Lexie butted in. "April and Jackson have been friends forever, clearly it's been brewing for a while."
"Oh yeah?" Her older sister challenged. "Like when? When she was crushing on Alex last year or when he was head over heels for you?"
Lexie sighed in annoyance and rolled her eyes. "Come on, Mer, it's cute. Who doesn't want to marry their best friend?"
"Not me," Callie chirped as she came around the corner and reached over the nurses' station to grab a chart. "Don't get me wrong, I love my wife, but if she was my best friend then who would I complain about her to? Besides, Izzie and George were best friends. Look how that turned out."
Meredith gestured towards Callie proudly. "See! That's what I'm talking about!"
Mark Sloan sidled up alongside his best friend and grinned. "Are we talking about Karev and Avery?"
"Of course," Cristina answered quickly. "Is there anything else we should be talking about?"
"Well, my boy is a winner," the plastics surgeon stated proudly. "Karev doesn't stand a chance."
Callie glanced up at him and laughed. "Arizona has a hundred bucks that says otherwise."
"You guys are betting on this?" Lexie enquired in disbelief.
Mark and Callie exchanged a sheepish look before Callie nodded. "The attendings may or may not have a pool going."
"Can I get in on this?" Cristina asked eagerly.
Before either of the attendings could respond, April approached the nurses' station with a purpose.
Everyone around her instantly fell silent so it wasn't hard to deduce what they had been talking about. "You were talking about me, weren't you?" She asked bravely.
Cristina was the only one bold enough to speak up. "Well you are obviously a hot commodity around here now, Kepner."
A/N: So now the fun really starts! Next chapter: Jackson goes after his long awaited first date kiss and Alex gets another date.
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