Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or anything remotely attached to this show, only the basis of this story.

CHAPTER SIX
THE INTERROGATION

"Wasn't your flight booked for tomorrow morning?"

April slides a third mug of hot tea along the kitchen worktop as she asks her question, eyes confused and brows still raised.

"Oh, well, Alice has to be back at college on the 28th, so we thought we'd come a day earlier, leave a day earlier."

The oldest Kepner, Libby, sister explains, blowing into her tea a little bit too sweetly. She grins over at April, shares a quick side-glance with their own sisters, "Dish."

"I'm sorry?" April frowns, feeling a lot of pressure beneath their demanding brown eyes.

Kimmie pipes up then, rolling her eyes in fake annoyance, "Spill the beans on that fine piece of fudge in the bedroom."

"The f-" She stops herself from questioning further, instead just shakes her head and licks her lips with a resigned smile, "We are not doing this."

"Doing what? Duckie, we're your sisters. We're supposed to tell each other stuff like this. I told when Todd was having erectile dysfunction. This is like that." Libby butts in on her end of the table, long fingers wrapped around her tea.

"This is not like that, and I'm honestly still not sure why you keep bringing that up because it doesn't seem like something you'd wanna tell people about, but-"

Alice, the youngest of the four, reaches a hand out to her older sis, patting the back of April's hand kindly. "We're sorry, it's just that- This is a surprise!"

"You don't think I know that?" Her hazel eyes widen just a little bit more, lips dry and curled at the corners, "I didn't think anyone was going to marry me, ever. Much less him!"

She points a finger around down the hallway, obviously referencing to Jackson who had buried himself away with work somewhere in the apartment.

Not that she could blame him. She'd escape from her sisters, too, if she had the chance.

"Then tell us how it happened!"

She doesn't quite feel like reliving that whole sham of their affair again, so she tells it straight and short and simple and easily.

"I needed a job, he hired me. Apparently I caught his eye. We had lunch. We dated briefly. Love at first sight, I suppose."

"Well that sounds," Kimmie pulls a face, eyes her older sister carefully, "romantic."

The oldest redhead nudges her side then, shooting April an apologetic glance, "It sounds lovely." She nods, as though it'll confirm her statement.

She can't lie to save her life. Seems like April was the only to successfully earn those genes.

"It sounds boring, I know. But- But we're happy, and I'm happy. And you should be happy for me, okay? Because this is…good. It's great. So, just be happy for me. Please? And that means never mentioning what you witnessed earlier to anybody."

"Our lips are sealed."

"Can I tell mom, though? I feel like she might want to know about it?"

"No."

Libby stands up from her perch then, taking a final sip of her tea before she flicks her browning hair behind her shoulders and smiles across at her younger sister.

"So," she starts, lifting her eyebrows suggestively, "Where are we staying tonight?"

"I- uh-" April swallows a nervous breath.

Obviously, because their flight was booked for a day later, their hotel room won't be available for another day. And as a responsible, money-saving adult, she doesn't want to make them hike out and find a room or two and spend a ton.

And while it's not really her place to decide, because she chooses to ignore the fact that this is now her apartment too, she figures Jackson wouldn't mind letting them stay over for one night.

It couldn't hurt, right? The guy had like three guest bedrooms. She doubted it'd be an inconvenience for him.

"You can stay here." She attempts to crack a smile, feeling her shoulders weigh as her decision lays heavily down on her.

Now she'd just have to move all of her stuff into her husband's room for the night. Her sisters are nosy, curious, stick-their-face-in-where-it-isn't-wanted people. They'd snoop.

And she can't have them find out about her little arrangement. She'd be the laughing stock of the family if anyone ever found out.

They get settled into the guest bedrooms about an hour later.

April had somehow miraculously managed to move all of her personal items and essentials into Jackson's room for the night.

Granted, he wasn't thrilled at the idea of having to wake up and walk into a kitchen probably full of gossiping mid-western doe-eyed women. But he'd settle, he'd concede.

Because April did an enormous favour for him without actually knowing the slightest thing about him, and it was the least he could do.

"You don't think they know, do you?"

"Given what they saw, I doubt it."

There's a faint smirk behind his voice and she rolls her eyes in return, watching as he walks into his bedroom, their bedroom for the night, with a toothbrush hanging past his lips.

April sits down on the bed, feeling the cushiony mattress beneath her backside. It's the same as hers, in her room, but somehow comfier.

Or is that just a side effect of her being completely and utterly infatuated with him? Everything of his smelt nicer, looked better?

She curls her legs up beneath her and drops her hands to her lap, rubbing hand cream around her wrist tenderly.

He heads back into the en-suite after plucking a pair of sleep pants from a drawer and smiling at her, toothpaste-covered teeth and all. What a dork.

This is weird, she thinks. Getting ready for bed in the same room as someone else, in the same actual bed as a man. This isn't her.

She's the kind of girl who falls asleep tucked in bed nicely, neatly, with an alarm on her clock and her curtains drawn. She's the kind to have sleepers beside her bed, not a man's watch.

But now the curtains are closed blinds, and the alarm is on his side, set at his wake time.

She's adjusting, and the change is happening faster than she could have ever guessed it would.

"I'm not sure what to say to them." She breathes out, lowering her gaze to her legs and taking note of her many goosebumps beneath the small hairs.

Great, she needs to shave. How ladylike. Damn it.

Jackson walks into her range of sight then, one hand on his hip and a glass of water in his other hand.

She slowly looks up at him, eyes dangerously focused in on his bare chest.

"Just tell them what Amelia told you to."

"I would, but-" She gulps a breath, feels her cheeks turn a faint shade of pink as he moves, closer, nearer to her to place the glass down on her bedside table. "But they're my sisters. What if they don't buy it? They know me, Jackson. They know I wouldn't just date someone and marry him after five minutes."

The darker skinned man nods, listening to her talk, green eyes wide and helpful. "Then lie."

"This is already lying." She reminds him, suddenly waving both arms around the room, back and forth between them.

"Lie to cover up a lie." He frowns softly, takes a seat at the bottom of the bed, moving a hand out to wrap around her calf. "Politics."

"And a double negative has a positive outcome?"

"That's mathematics." He smirks, squeezes her leg when she swats his chest.

April giggles slightly, feeling her eyes widen as she realises that his warm hand is curled around her leg, skin to skin.

"Uh, I have to-" Shave? Wax? Disappear?

"You have to what?" He pulls his hand away from her then, brows knitted when he senses that he's done something wrong.

"I just- " She doesn't need to be ashamed of it, does sh? It's natural, normal for women. "I need to shave my legs." She mumbles out quickly, casting her gaze up on his ceiling as she notices his face erupt into a grin. "It's not funny."

"No, I'm just amused you think I give a crap."

"Who says it's for your benefit?" She grimaces, peeking back over at him sharply. "Maybe I just don't like it? Why do men think that women wanting to take pride in their appearance is for their benefit?"

"Because it's the middle of the night and I doubt you'd be so concerned about this if you were in bed alone." Jackson states, raising a brow knowingly and making a point to grab her leg again, gently wrapping his long fingers around her ankle.

"Shut up." She pouts, tugging a cushion from the other side of the bed and pulling it into her chest, arms wrapped around the corners protectively.

"Besides, there's barely anything there." Her husband informs her, tracing his index finger up her leg slowly, watching as cold shivers creep out over her skin. "I don't care, April."

"Then I suppose I don't either." She shrugs, drawing the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth when he pulls her down the bed by her legs, palms around her shins and body leaning over hers.

Jackson smirks, runs his hands up her legs to her knees before he lets go, instead reaches for her hands to pull her up and closer to him, "Good."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm not tired yet."

"Well, I kind of am…"

"Well, talk to me, and then we'll both fall asleep."

April gasps at his intended joke, and she shoves the cushion in her hands against his shoulder. "Rude!"

"Come on." He sighs, moving up on the bed until he reaches the other side.

He doesn't tell her that she's on his side, the left always behind his since he was little and had to share.

"What do you want me to talk about?" She smiles innocently, batting her lashes as he turns his bedside lamp off and lies down, irritably shifting to arrange his pillow.

Jackson lifts a brow and pushes himself up on both his elbows when he can't seem to get comfy. "I don't know." He ducks his head and she's tempted to run her hand over his faint cut, tempted to touch him. "Can you speak another language?"

"Do I look like I can speak anything other than English? Jackson, I can barely form a sentence in my own language sometimes." She reasons, shaking her head and throwing herself back against the cushions.

"Your sentences sound parfait to me."

She laughs at the way he pronounces the R, and finishes the word with an almost click of his tongue. Her eyes flicker open to glance up at his face, admiring his lips as he continues on in French, proudly smirking.

"Am I meant to be surprised that you speak French? Because I'm kind of not."

Of course he can speak another language. Of course it sounds hot. Of course it makes her even weaker for him.

Damn it.

"Pardon?"

"My knowledge of the language is limited, okay? I know like…one thing."

Jackson grins, eyes beaming down at her excitedly. "Which would be?" He leans up on his forearm as she prepares herself, and his left hand drops to her waist.

"Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce soir?"

The man erupts into a laugh then, lowering his head to her neck and pressing her lips faintly against her jawbone, breath warm and fuzzy and ticklish against her flesh.

"Ce serait mon plaisir."

"I- what?" She quits her smile to frown, to lift her neck and cup the back of his head in her hand. She knew what she said, but hopefully his answer doesn't mean he took it seriously.

This isn't how she wants to go about that. Well, not with her sisters a couple of doors down, really.

"Ferme tes yeux."

April continues to stare down at him in utter confusion, at a loss for understanding. She lets his hands push back against her shoulders, hands running up and down her arms slowly, sweetly.

He leans forward, lips to the weak spot behind her ear and voice hot, "Close your eyes." He whispers, wicked smile pressing into her skin.

The redhead smiles amusedly, tilting her head to the side and letting her eyes drift shut as he kisses down her neck, hands gripping her sides as he moves to hover over her.

She swallows a nervous breath when she feels his weight above her, knees beside her thighs and lower body timidly pressing into her own. "What are you doing?"

Jackson shushes her, bringing his hands up to her face and cradling her cheeks, palms to jaw and thumbs sweeping her lips.

She remains still as he moves above her, repeatedly shifting his hands from her face to her arms, rhythmically tracing her flesh, ignoring the creases of her nighttime t-shirt.

"Ouvre ta bouche."

She faintly remembers the word 'bouche' and catches the drift when she realises that her mouth is closed. Open your mouth.

April parts her lips slowly, and she feels the faint sweep of his thumb along her bottom lip, tanned pad to pink flesh.

She absentmindedly closes her mouth around his thumb as he touches the corner of her lips, and he slightly groans in return as she budges her hips, body finding comfort in a sleeping position.

He backs off of her then, smile on his face. Pulling his hand away from her touch, he reaches down to pull the covers up to her chest.

"Now go sleep." He mutters to himself with a smug grin, slipping back into his side of the bed for the night.

She won't understand how that worked in the morning.

Jackson wakes up before she does. His alarm goes off early, and he turns it off entirely before it rings again to wake her.

Obviously she's under a lot of stress from this whole thing and it's mainly his fault.

He asked her to do it, practically pleaded to get her to agree. He's pretty sure that their arrangement counts as some kind of abuse, but if she's going along with it, then how could it be bad?

The world could easily think they were legitimate with how they act around one another. They mesh well, seem to have an understanding. They can act in love, play the lovebird newlywed card if they need to.

It's just an odd situation, one he never thought he'd force himself into, much less drag some innocent employee into.

She was hired to work, not serve as a plot device in his wicked little game.

But if it wasn't his idea in the first place,is it really as bad as it seems? Or does that just make it worse because he didn't have the courage to stop it, to force Amelia and Mark to find another solution?

"Good morning!"

There's a pretty chipper greeting from behind him, and Jackson spins around to face one of his wife's sisters. She seems young, so he guesses she's the last one of the bunch. Alice?

"Morning." He takes a sip of his coffee, holding out the pot in his free hand with a smile.

She waves a hand to turn it down, instead just sighs and takes a seat at the counter. She pulls on the strings of her dressing gown and shivers from the morning cold. "Thanks, but my body isn't used to ingesting anything before noon."

He nods, placing the pot back on the stand and flicking through the newspaper briefly, "I take it you're the…calm…one of the four?" He raises a brow, notices her loaded sigh.

"Yeah. Definitely." Alice folds her hands together in her lap, her shoulders raised, "I think I take after our dad rather than our mom. She can be a little…nutty?"

"And did April get that gene?"

"Well, you're her husband. Shouldn't you know that?" The young redhead picks up an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter, and she twirls it around in her hand for a moment.

Jackson shrugs casually, ignoring his minor slip. He's not good at this stuff so early in the morning. "She's a little neurotic to me. I'm just wondering how bad it gets?" He proudly scores himself a point for that catch.

"April is- She can be a bit…emotional, at times?" Alice stiffs a laugh, looks up at him as she bites a chunk out of her apple. "Don't hurt her. Please."

He's not sure where her request comes from, but it's obviously warranted and well placed.

"I would never dream of it."

"And, you know, be careful with the other thing."

"Sex?"

Her mouth tugs up in one corner and she nods with a small chuckle, "Yeah. She's a Christian, and- She's a lot more Christian than I am. She attends Church. So, just- Don't make her- We were raised to think that intercourse before marriage was a sin, okay?"

"We're married."

"And yet I found a pair of her panties in the drawer in the guest room. You don't seem very domesticated to me."

"We-" Jackson begins, but finds himself cut off by his own gulp of air, sharp and tight in his throat.

Alice stands then, apple in her hand and eyes warning. "Look, I won't tell anyone about…whatever it is you and my sister have got going on, because frankly I don't know enough about it, or you, to judge, or have an opinion. But, if you hurt her," She walks closer to him, jabs a finger against his chest with a much-too-innocent smile, "I'll ruin you."

He fakes a smile, though his hidden smirk is sincere. "I'll try to remember that."

Is her little sister seriously going to keep a check on him? Unbelievable.

"Good. Now, I need to go get dressed and you should probably wake my sister up because we're going shopping."

"Are you asking me to wake her up, or telling me?"

"Telling you."

"Do I look like someone you wanna mess with?" He's not gonna deal with her twisted little game.

"Do I?"

"What's going on?"

Jackson spins around at the sound of the voice in the doorway and he spots April stood in her pyjamas, pulling her hair up into a loose ponytail.

"Me and your sister were just talking."

"Sharing stories, you know." Alice shrugs nonchalantly. "About you. Bonding."

The youngest Kepner nudges his arm, and he feigns amusement, clearing his throat.

"Oh. Okay." She steps closer into the room and pulls the coffee pot from the machine after taking a mug from the shelf.

"Are you working today?"

"Yeah." Jackson breathes out, moving to stand beside her and leaning his elbows against the counter. He shoots a glare over at Alice, already sending him a look of death.

This will be fun.

Enjoy, and review nicely :)

I imagine some lovely guest reviewers will have some harsh words to say about this because it doesn't feature rape, or unicorns or rainbows, or women portrayed as submissive creatures to their men, and well, it's by me. This piece of work has feminist undertones, so if you'd rather spike your interest with a story about abuse against women and violent men, then look elsewhere. Excuse me for actually being able to write something good, of substance, in-character. Feel free to read and review something else if you already know you don't like me. Leaving anonymous hate is laughable. Have fun.