"There's no way that it's not going there."
Whose to say moving across the country for a job and a best friend is a stupid decision? Oh, right, everyone she knew back home.
But where he was, that just had to be home. She just wasn't sure if she'd e...
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After a stressful trauma shift, losing one brother but being able to save the other, Lexie and Jackson stood at one of the nurse's stations. Owen had just praised them for their good work in the OR and asked Lexie to give their parents the good news about the elder brother.
Jackson, however, was tense in there. As Owen walked away, Lexie stepped closer to him. "You can, um, you can talk to me, you know," she said to him. He glanced over at her. "If you want to talk, and if, um... if Blair's not able to be around all the time."
He looked away again, back to the paperwork he was doing. "About what?" he was being short, partially because he remembered she was the one to wake him up from his nightmare. A part of him felt bad because he knew he was taking a lot his frustrations and aiming them at Lexie, and considering he did admit to April he was "going there" in his head when it came to Lexie, this wasn't going to gain him any brownie points.
"I hear you every night," Lexie admitted, which wasn't like it was news. April mentioned it when she was airing them all out a few weeks ago, but Jackson still sighed. "You know, I-I'm just saying, I had sleep problems, and they turned out to be real problems. Blair—"
"Yeah, well, I don't have any problems, and stop bringing up Blair," Jackson denied, not wanting to talk about this with Lexie. "That kid was practically dead when he got here, and I pulled half of his car out of him, so he lived. He's gonna live to be stupid another day because of me. Those parents aren't gonna lose everything because of me. I call that a pretty great night. So what is your problem?"
His arrogance and overconfidence would always be the way he masked the pain inside.
Lexie, because she cared about him, just took it and didn't say a word as he walked away.
It wasn't until the next morning, when the boy woke up and Jackson gave Lexie a speech about what to say and prepare the boy for that she realized where all of his anger was coming from.
Every time he was glad to be alive, he hated himself for it, that he got to live.
And all of that was because one of his best friends, someone he may have even considered a brother, because the person he had nightmares looking for, didn't.
Jackson hated that he survived the day of the shooting, but Charles didn't. Lexie couldn't help but look at him with her sad puppy dog eyes while he talked about it, and Jackson would be lying if he didn't say it made him feel some kind of way that she cared.
What Lexie didn't know, though, is that he did talk about those big emotions. He talked about them with Blair.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
"Pour it out," Blair said, sitting on the floor of her apartment floor with Jackson, holding her cup towards him as he mixed soju, sprite, and calpico for the two of them.
Despite having a perfectly good couch, there was nothing like pushing her coffee table away and the two of them sitting on the floor with their backs against the couch.
As they poured themselves their mixed drink concoction, they always talked about their feelings and their issues and life. It was something they used to do with Hanah and Ryder back in college, something they did a few times with April, Reed, and Charles.
They hadn't had a chance to do it at all since her move, and boy, was there a lot to unpack for them. So, they just talked and drank, Blair cried and Jackson laughed at her. Then Jackson cried, which made Blair cry, which then made Jackson laugh at her, and despite all the shit they were thrown and stuff that hurt them, they ended up sitting there laughing at the end of the night.
Jackson wasn't too sure what clicked in his head, but with the loss of Charles and Reed, with the knowing Blair wasn't talking to Hannah or Ryder, he made himself a promise that he never spoke out loud. He could never leave her, and he could never do anything that could make her leave him. He couldn't, wouldn't, live in a world where she was gone, too.
And the only way to protect their friendship was to keep it that way. A friendship.
So, no matter how absolutely gorgeous Blair Macaspac looked in his eyes, sitting there with a stuffy nose and puffy eyes and yet, the most carefree smile on her face, he had to vow to himself to keep her there. No matter what part of him he had to sacrifice to do it.
She was too important to even run the risk of losing her, too. Even if that meant he couldn't keep his promise to Charlie.
He knew that their friendship had been progressing a bit since then, and he had to kill any progress it had made.
So, when she told him to pour it out, he said, "I think I'm crushing on Lexie."
He saw her smile fade from his peripherals as he stared up at her ceiling, ignoring the fact that he could see the hurt flash through her eyes for a millisecond before she put on her fakest smile.
"Oh, my God!" and there was her feigned enthusiasm. "I didn't even see this one coming!"
She wanted to throw up.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
Jackson overheard Mark Sloan and Lexie Grey's conversation, a suspicious look on his face as he walked up to his friend and roommate. He knew how badly things ended last time.
"You're going out with Sloan tonight?" he asked her.
"One drink," she said, looking irritated. "And then you are gonna interrupt us and tell me that there's a medical emergency."
She was bossy and came up with funny overcomplicated escape plans. He was starting to pick up on her personality similarities and little habits she had in common with Blair, an unfair comparison for him to be making, but one he was making nonetheless.
"Well, there might be a medical emergency," Jackson replied, "if you don't get that drain back in your guy."
But he did what she asked him to do, anyways, and went to Joe's that night in a sorry attempt at being her knight in shining armor like she had asked him to be. But one look into Mark's eyes and one kiss later, and there was no pulling Lexie away from him.
He just tried to smile away his slight disappointment, realizing this whole moving on from Blair to Lexie thing might be a little harder than he thought, and turned to leave the bar. What he did realize, though, is that it actually did hurt his heart a little, seeing her there with Sloan again knowing it was just going to break her heart.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
a/n: two updates in one night?? that's crazy
the lexie and jackson storyline has to happen for the development i have for blair and him later on, i promise <33 (not to mention they were probably one of my fav couples until she realized she still loved mark i cri)
y'all already know what's gonna happen in the next chapterrrr... (hint: it's disarm/season 7 ep 11... and a certain favorite professor of ours works at a certain college... sneak peak of what happens in the pinned post on my tiktok dsprsos.wp.)
on a happy note-ish, there will be high school/college jalair/jair/backson? (someone pick a shipname lol) flashbacks and scenes in the next/next few chapters :))
