night terrors {grey's - april; jackson/april}
Title: Night Terrors
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: April. Jackson/April, should you choose to read it that way.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,166
Author's Note: For leobrat. We all know how I feel about April but I tried here. Hopefully it shows; I think these are two characters I still need to play with in order to nail down.
Spoilers: Up to 7.03.
Summary: For the first few nights, she would wake up at odd hours of the night. Her alarm would be silent by her bed, her pager next to it, but her eyes would snap open regardless, suddenly wide awake and without need for it.
i found my will in your car
i found myself on that poor country drive
(it goes on and on; the avett brothers)
Jackson was the one who put her in the car.
The clock had clicked past four-fifteen, day two, and her body sunken into a chair in the lobby of an unfamiliar hospital, wondering how she got there in the first place. His hand swallowed her smaller one, replaced eventually by piping hot coffee from down the street, sending steam curling through the air to cut the early morning chill.
His car radio came to life in a sharp blast and the noise that escaped her throat made her cheeks burn.
“It’s okay,” he sighed, but the words were perfunctory and he meant no such thing.
-
She was a shy child, born a month into the spring that winter refused to let go of. Some mistook that for sadness.
Her birth month became her namesake and exactly no one was surprised when a few years passed and there was Alice May, she of the cheery smiles and melodic voice.
There was always that old saying hanging over their heads when they were kids, April showers and May flowers, the rain and the sun, and how fitting it was that April went on to move to Seattle while Alice went to Los Angeles.
It’s supposed to be funny, the way that worked out.
April’s sense of humor was never completely in tune with everyone else’s.
-
She moves out of her old apartment before she stops paying rent, leaves Reed’s jacket in the closet and her toothbrush in the holder. Finds herself first on Meredith’s couch and then in her attic, two beds and usable living space if you don’t mind the old Christmas decorations strewn about up there.
Jackson joins her less than a week later, a single suitcase thrown on the bed, the trunk of his car filled with the rest of his belongings.
“Just like old times,” he says.
-
On the way to Reed’s funeral, she puts a run in her stockings just getting out the door. Brushes up against a bush on her dash to the car, five minutes late to put her best friend in the ground.
She hits every red light and doesn’t even notice it until the third. An inch long tear that widens when she runs her finger along it, her skin smearing faintly red-orange from the blood. Her hand shakes and the guy behind her has to honk before she notices the light change.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, startled, to no one.
-
He’s the only one she ever apologizes to, even though she called everyone out.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she murmurs across the pitch black divide that separates her from him. The lights just turned out; her eyes have yet to adjust.
“It’s fine,” he replies, sounding more nonchalant than he looked when she said it in the first place. That usual laid-back demeanor had just drained right on out of him, and while he didn’t look mean he also didn’t look right. She’s known him long enough to say that with some authority. “It was probably just a one time thing. Not like Karev and his elevator fear which, believe me, you’re not the only one who’s noticed that.”
In the darkness, he can’t see the way her smile doesn’t ever quite form.
-
For the first few nights, she would wake up at odd hours of the night. Her alarm would be silent by her bed, her pager next to it, but her eyes would snap open regardless, suddenly wide awake and without need for it.
There was always ragged breathing from the bed next to hers; she tried not to think about that too much, classified it as pleasure and something she absolutely didn’t want to know about.
In the absence of concrete answers, she blamed it on an elusive crack of thunder and frayed nerves. Tried not to question the unusually dry ground under her feet in the mornings and the sunny days in the 7-day outlook.
-
They were friends by proximity.
It was the four of them, loosely so, more closely knit after the merge. Reed was her best friend but, as a group, it was really about Reed and Charles and that thing he had for her that he thought no one else knew about, the thing that had all the makings of a tragic love story never to be by the time the last shot was fired.
In this new world, shaken to the core, she doesn’t know where that leaves them.
-
In her dreams, there is a long hallway, white walls splattered with blood, and the smell of antiseptic.
There is a door at the end, windowless and seemingly unreachable.
Someone is always screaming.
-
And then it turns out the screaming isn’t just in her head -
-
After the shooting, she slept for sixteen hours straight, woke up sometime after nine in an empty apartment.
The answering machine registered twenty-three messages; she deleted them all and answered none.
It was the first time she’d ever gone more than three days without calling her mother.
-
Jackson doesn’t wake to touch.
Once the initial shock wears off, she tries his name. Tries shaking his shoulder. Gets nothing but more tossing and turning and murmured responses that aren’t reactions to anything based in reality.
He does calm when she settles on the edge of his bed, constraining his movements due to lack of space and her weight against the blanket that covers him, so she stays there for a while, her hand on his shoulder and her legs drawn up underneath her.
For the rest of the night, he sleeps in silence.
-
Some would call the arrangement creepy.
If she had the guts to, she’d probably ask them if they’ve ever woken up to someone screaming at nothing at all but the film reels playing back behind their eyes.
The sound chills her to the bone; she’s just trying to keep warm.
-
Her hand slipped into his at Charles’ funeral, side by side in their best mourning clothes. It had been cold, the wind and the trees swallowing the words she wasn’t processing and then wasn’t hearing. She could fill in the blanks, ashes to ashes and the by now all too familiar lump in her throat.
She kept tugging on her sweater sleeves, too long for her arms, fidgeting to distraction, and then there was the soft clearing of his throat, the curl of his fingers.
Her hand slipped into his and it fit.
-
Once, she falls asleep to the sound of his breathing, no longer ragged but instead steady, gentle in and gentle out.
She wakes with her body slumped against the wall and Jackson suggests that she was sleepwalking,
“We’re all a little off lately,” he says, and it’s this that she chooses to laugh at.
-
fin.
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy
Characters/Pairings: April. Jackson/April, should you choose to read it that way.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,166
Author's Note: For leobrat. We all know how I feel about April but I tried here. Hopefully it shows; I think these are two characters I still need to play with in order to nail down.
Spoilers: Up to 7.03.
Summary: For the first few nights, she would wake up at odd hours of the night. Her alarm would be silent by her bed, her pager next to it, but her eyes would snap open regardless, suddenly wide awake and without need for it.
i found my will in your car
i found myself on that poor country drive
(it goes on and on; the avett brothers)
Jackson was the one who put her in the car.
The clock had clicked past four-fifteen, day two, and her body sunken into a chair in the lobby of an unfamiliar hospital, wondering how she got there in the first place. His hand swallowed her smaller one, replaced eventually by piping hot coffee from down the street, sending steam curling through the air to cut the early morning chill.
His car radio came to life in a sharp blast and the noise that escaped her throat made her cheeks burn.
“It’s okay,” he sighed, but the words were perfunctory and he meant no such thing.
-
She was a shy child, born a month into the spring that winter refused to let go of. Some mistook that for sadness.
Her birth month became her namesake and exactly no one was surprised when a few years passed and there was Alice May, she of the cheery smiles and melodic voice.
There was always that old saying hanging over their heads when they were kids, April showers and May flowers, the rain and the sun, and how fitting it was that April went on to move to Seattle while Alice went to Los Angeles.
It’s supposed to be funny, the way that worked out.
April’s sense of humor was never completely in tune with everyone else’s.
-
She moves out of her old apartment before she stops paying rent, leaves Reed’s jacket in the closet and her toothbrush in the holder. Finds herself first on Meredith’s couch and then in her attic, two beds and usable living space if you don’t mind the old Christmas decorations strewn about up there.
Jackson joins her less than a week later, a single suitcase thrown on the bed, the trunk of his car filled with the rest of his belongings.
“Just like old times,” he says.
-
On the way to Reed’s funeral, she puts a run in her stockings just getting out the door. Brushes up against a bush on her dash to the car, five minutes late to put her best friend in the ground.
She hits every red light and doesn’t even notice it until the third. An inch long tear that widens when she runs her finger along it, her skin smearing faintly red-orange from the blood. Her hand shakes and the guy behind her has to honk before she notices the light change.
“Sorry,” she murmurs, startled, to no one.
-
He’s the only one she ever apologizes to, even though she called everyone out.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she murmurs across the pitch black divide that separates her from him. The lights just turned out; her eyes have yet to adjust.
“It’s fine,” he replies, sounding more nonchalant than he looked when she said it in the first place. That usual laid-back demeanor had just drained right on out of him, and while he didn’t look mean he also didn’t look right. She’s known him long enough to say that with some authority. “It was probably just a one time thing. Not like Karev and his elevator fear which, believe me, you’re not the only one who’s noticed that.”
In the darkness, he can’t see the way her smile doesn’t ever quite form.
-
For the first few nights, she would wake up at odd hours of the night. Her alarm would be silent by her bed, her pager next to it, but her eyes would snap open regardless, suddenly wide awake and without need for it.
There was always ragged breathing from the bed next to hers; she tried not to think about that too much, classified it as pleasure and something she absolutely didn’t want to know about.
In the absence of concrete answers, she blamed it on an elusive crack of thunder and frayed nerves. Tried not to question the unusually dry ground under her feet in the mornings and the sunny days in the 7-day outlook.
-
They were friends by proximity.
It was the four of them, loosely so, more closely knit after the merge. Reed was her best friend but, as a group, it was really about Reed and Charles and that thing he had for her that he thought no one else knew about, the thing that had all the makings of a tragic love story never to be by the time the last shot was fired.
In this new world, shaken to the core, she doesn’t know where that leaves them.
-
In her dreams, there is a long hallway, white walls splattered with blood, and the smell of antiseptic.
There is a door at the end, windowless and seemingly unreachable.
Someone is always screaming.
-
And then it turns out the screaming isn’t just in her head -
-
After the shooting, she slept for sixteen hours straight, woke up sometime after nine in an empty apartment.
The answering machine registered twenty-three messages; she deleted them all and answered none.
It was the first time she’d ever gone more than three days without calling her mother.
-
Jackson doesn’t wake to touch.
Once the initial shock wears off, she tries his name. Tries shaking his shoulder. Gets nothing but more tossing and turning and murmured responses that aren’t reactions to anything based in reality.
He does calm when she settles on the edge of his bed, constraining his movements due to lack of space and her weight against the blanket that covers him, so she stays there for a while, her hand on his shoulder and her legs drawn up underneath her.
For the rest of the night, he sleeps in silence.
-
Some would call the arrangement creepy.
If she had the guts to, she’d probably ask them if they’ve ever woken up to someone screaming at nothing at all but the film reels playing back behind their eyes.
The sound chills her to the bone; she’s just trying to keep warm.
-
Her hand slipped into his at Charles’ funeral, side by side in their best mourning clothes. It had been cold, the wind and the trees swallowing the words she wasn’t processing and then wasn’t hearing. She could fill in the blanks, ashes to ashes and the by now all too familiar lump in her throat.
She kept tugging on her sweater sleeves, too long for her arms, fidgeting to distraction, and then there was the soft clearing of his throat, the curl of his fingers.
Her hand slipped into his and it fit.
-
Once, she falls asleep to the sound of his breathing, no longer ragged but instead steady, gentle in and gentle out.
She wakes with her body slumped against the wall and Jackson suggests that she was sleepwalking,
“We’re all a little off lately,” he says, and it’s this that she chooses to laugh at.
-
fin.