˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
The day before when she took a break from unpacking and moving around furniture, she went outside to go for a walk and see what was in her area. After stopping by a coffee shop for a hot white mocha, she found herself finding a small Asian market just a few blocks away from her building.
Thank God, she thought.
And thank God, indeed, as she had agreed to cooking Jackson breakfast in the morning if he stayed the night to help her move her furniture when he woke up. The market had been small, and their section for the Philippines even smaller. But she managed to find Martin brand Filipino red hotdogs and Pampanga pork tocino. Not the most healthy breakfasts, especially when paired with garlic rice and an over easy egg—or over hard for herself, she didn't like the yolk—but it definitely hit the spot.
She had cooked rice the day before, and unlike her parents who always kept their large rice cooker on, she had unplugged it and put the rice in the fridge for safe keeping. It didn't leave the rice fluffy like her parents and made the top layer kind of hard, but she found herself saving a few dollars on electricity back at her first apartment, and now that she was on her own in Boston, she wanted to keep that habit.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
She was surprised Jackson could sleep with the sound of the oils from the meat sizzling in her pan or the sound of her range hood sucking in the smoke. She had propped open a window, too, to make sure the place didn't get too smokey, but kept the blind shut since he was still sound asleep on the couch with the blanket pulled over half of his face, stopping at his nose.
"Av," she said, shaking his shoulder. "Avery."
He stirred pretty easily from there, probably a result from having to wake up from the sound of pagers. Though, the sizzling in the kitchen should have woken him up.
He blinked a few times, orienting himself as he tried to mentally remind himself of where he was. Blair moved here, this is her apartment, he thought once his heart rate started slowing after his initial panic of not recognizing his surroundings.
"Food's almost done," she told him, walking back to the kitchen without another word.
He watched as she walked away, still blinking the sleep out of his eyes as her let the reality of her being there really sink in.
She never saw the way he smiled at her that morning.
He threw the blanket off of himself, heading straight for her bathroom. She could hear him brushing his teeth in there, before the water ran for quite a while, and she assumed he was washing his face.
He never knew the pit in her stomach when she thought about how he was waking up in her apartment. Sure, she had visited him before, but he always had a roommate. It never really felt any different than college, but knowing it was just them in her own apartment had a momentous feeling of its own.
She used one of her small bowls to help her plate the rice into a nice mound, putting the egg on top and the others around it in a circle. She placed it on the coffee table and then went back for the mugs of coffee she had brewed for them, with creamer—hers a lot more than his.
By the time she was done setting the coffee table, he came back out. The water droplets on his shirt and how some of his hair near his forehead was wet confirmed her theory.
His face lit up in an excited smile when he actually looked down at the food. "This used to be my favorite parts of going to your house on the weekends back in high school," he said, sitting down next to her on the sofa, making her left side dip in as the cushions dented with his weight. "Your mom always made this."
"Your favorite part about coming to my house was red hotdogs and tocino, and not me?" she inquired.
"Oh, and Ryder and Hannah, they were usually there, too," he messed with her, which resulted in her shifting her weight all the way to her left, swinging herself into him. "Hey, keep your hands to yourself."
"That was my shoulder," she said, which he mocked her, repeating what she said in his high-pitched whine while shaking his head back and forth like a toddler.
She shoved him with her shoulder again.
"So, what did your parents say when you were moving out here?" he asked.
She paused, thinking about the conversation she had with them a few weeks ago when the move was beginning.
I don't approve of this. His family doesn't even like us.
Which was partially a lie. Catherine Avery loved Blair.
She swallowed even though there was no food in her mouth. Jackson furrowed his eyebrows at her in confusion, staring at her as he waited for a response.
"You know parents," she let out a forced laugh. "No matter how old you are, they never want you to fly the nest."
"You flew their nest when we left high school," Jackson replied, waiting for her to tell him what really happened.
"Yeah, to a nest super close to their nest," she replied, playing with her food. She shook her head, knowing he wanted to know more. "Don't worry, we're fine."
The way she said it was all he needed to know it wasn't, but he knew better than to push her. He looked around the apartment, switching the conversation.
"So, what things was it that you needed me to move around?"
The answer was: well, everything. She had asked them to place her bookshelves, which were the perfect height to go under her window sill without blocking it, under the window. Instead, the movers had placed them in the corner on the same wall as the window. The next thing was her couch. It wasn't perfectly in the middle, which bothered her. Then, in her bedroom, her bed also wasn't perfectly in the middle.
She helped him move them, of course. In her Boston apartment, rearranging things was easier since she had wooden floors. She had thrown felt patches on the legs of everything and was able to slide them around, but on carpet? No sliding, if she tried to push them, they would just tip over. If she tried hard enough.
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
The beginning of the semester rolled around quicker than anticipated, which meant: time to get her professor on. The interview process had been long and extensive, she had to interview first with the head of the English department, and then candidates were compiled.
Normally there were rounds where they would go into classes and take up about fifteen minutes of their time being interviewed by a faculty member, another professor, and answering student questions.
However, for her, she did her via Skype because of her location. She didn't really think she was going to get the job, it was half way she didn't tell anyone, especially Jackson, that she was interviewing. The other half was that she didn't want to deal with anyone's commentary about her incentives during the interview process.
Her first three days of work consisted of training with another teacher about the systems they used, how the syllabus worked, what she was able to add and take out of a syllabus depending on the curriculum and requirements of the course she was teaching, a tour of the campus, and what classroom she would be conducting her workshops and lectures in, and where her office was.
Since it was her first semester, the course load she was teaching was lighter than most. Her job title was actually officially Assistant Professor of English Creative Writing, but she also taught a a literature survey course on top of two sessions of Introduction to Creative Writing.
On top of teaching her own classes, she sat in the classes of another professor—Professor Declan O'Brien, for observation and technically help with coursework, grading, and things like that. She had met him during her interviews, he had an Irish accent that she thought was really cool. He was even the one who gave her the tour, and turns out their offices were across the hall from one another.
By the end of the third and last day of work before the semester actually begins, she texts Jackson to see what his dinner plans were.
"Hospital cafeteria food," his text read.
"Ew, gross," she texted back, then followed with, "I'm bringing burritos."
"Yum," he texted back.
"Where do I meet you?"
He didn't respond to that one, so when she got there, she texted him one last time before going inside of the hospital and deciding she would just ask around for him.
She ended up at one of the nurse's stations, plastic bag in hand. She waited for the nurse behind the desk to be off the phone before she walked up, asking her if she could page Dr. Jackson Avery. The woman just nodded, turning in her desk to do what Blair had asked.
"Blair?" she heard a familiar perky voice behind her, and when she turned around, she was met with ecstatic hazel eyes and a wide smile.
"April, hey!" she greeted her, bracing herself when she saw April launch herself for a hug. It was short-lived, great for Blair since she wasn't the best with hugs, and April pulled back with the same enthusiastic smile.
She looked Blair up and down, her eye lingering on the faculty badge she still had hanging around her neck on a lanyard, and put her hands on her waist. "Well, look at you, Professor Macaspac."
They moved to the side a bit for people moving around the hallway, both of them leaning with one elbow on top of the nurse's station counter top as they talked.
"Jackson told me you moved here, I've been meaning to call," April told her, running a hand through her hair. "I've just been so swamped."
"I get it," Blair reassured her. "I got to see Avery for like, a day, before he disappeared into his doctorly duties once again." She held up the bag in her hand. "Which is why I am forcing him to have dinner with me, wherever he is."
Not before long, Jackson came walking over, in his light blue scrubs under a white doctor's coat, with a guy with more of a square-ish face. Blair wasn't too sure how she would describe him, boxy? But also not boxy?
"Oh, there he is," she said to April, swinging on her heels to face him as he approached her with his small, close mouthed smile.
There was something about seeing him in scrubs that she was never going to really get used to. Sure, she had seen him in them on several occasions, but she doesn't think she would truly wrap her head around the fact that the pretty boy she knew back in high school with the entire world on his shoulders because of his bloodline went and proved everyone wrong that he wasn't just some rich spoiled pretty boy.
The guy next to Jackson looked at Blair then back to him, before telling April he needed her for something.
"Where to?" she asked Jackson, not bothering to ask what the guy's name was, as she held the bag of burritos up.
There was way too many doctors he worked with for her to have the desire to know all of them. She was friends with April, though, through Jackson, there was no way she wasn't going to know Charles since he was Jackson's roommate. There was no way she wasn't going to know Reed by default, being April's roommate and Charles' longterm crush.
"Follow me."
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
"Am I allowed in here?" she asked as Jackson turned on the lights to one of the rooms he brought her to, which had a a bunkbed and a single in there.
"You're with me, I don't see why not?" he asked, closing the door behind them and sitting on the single bed, patting the space next to him.
She was tentative at first, scanning the beds to make sure no one was actually in there with them.
"So, what do you think?" he asked, putting his hands up as if he was showing something off.
"About what, the in-hospital dorm room?" she asked, scrunching her lips upwards towards her nose in confusion. "Lacks personality."
He deadpanned and titled his head to the side, giving her his "are you serious" look. "No, the new scrubs finally came in," he motioned towards himself with both hands. "Light blue, finally don't look like I stick out now."
"Ah, quite the difference from the orange," she commented, sitting down next to him with one leg tucked under the other, and opening the plastic bag. She handed him one of the burritos, before glancing at his outfit. She shrugged and said rather nonchalantly, "I liked the orange better."
He continued to frown at her.
"You're mean, you know that?" he asked her, unwrapping the foil around his burrito, pointing it at her as he accused her of being a jerk. "A big ol' meanie whose come here just to make me insecure."
"Me make you insecure, Avery?" she rose an eyebrow, taking a bit out of her burrito. She used her free hand's pointer finger to cover her mouth while she talked with food still in it. "Look at you, don't make me laugh."
He squinted his eyes at her, a mischievous grin forming as just one side of his lips curled up in a smirk. "Are you calling me attractive?"
She fake gagged on her food and retorted, "Don't make me throw up. I'm just saying I liked that shade of orange on you. Best dressed prisoner for sure."
He crumbled up a napkin and threw it at her face.
"I was being nice! That was a complement."
˚ʚ♡ɞ˚
Jackson walked Blair to the front of the hospital after they ate together, having to get back to work.
"Good luck tomorrow," he said, grabbing her elbow for a second in an attempt to be comforting. Then, he practically fist bumped her shoulder, putting zero force or momentum into the small tap. "Those college students will love ya, probably a little too much, plus, look at you."
She glared at him for the joke she understood he was making. She also knew he was teasing her for what she had said in the on-call room.
"Ew, they're like, babies. But me, I have a Ph.D, I am old compared to those babies."
"You're not that old," he shook his head. "You don't even look like you aged since we turned twenty one."
"It's the Filipino genes," she smiled, raising a shoulder proudly.
"That, sure. Orrr it's that you're not old."
"You're only saying that because we're the same age."
"And I'm not old," Jackson agreed.
She giggled, pulling him into a quick side hug and finally saying she'd talk to him later. He yelled after her to text him when she got to her car and again when she got to her apartment before he finally returned back to doctor mode. He went back to the nurse's station where April and Alex were standing together.
"You're bringing your girlfriend here to bang in the on call room? That's ballsy," Alex said to him without even looking up from the chart he was reading.
Jackson and April both grimaced.
"Ew," April cringed.
Shaking his head but a smile on his face that Karev had perceived Blair as his girlfriend, said, "Blair and I aren't dating." He looked up to accept papers in a manila folder that a nurse held out for him.
Alex looked up at Jackson, shrugging. "That's even worse, man."
"Ew," April shivered again.
"We were not doing anything," Jackson argued, giving Alex a stern look. "My best friend just wanted to eat dinner with me, that's all."
"You have time to have friends outside of here?" Alex asked, which was half sarcastic and half genuine.
"Some of us are likeable by the general population, yes," Jackson said.
"And you decided that the one person to put in the friend zone was a girl like that?" Alex looked at Jackson like he was crazy.
"I didn't put her in the friend zone," Jackson didn't realize how that was going to sound until it came out of his mouth.
Alex rose suspicious eyebrows at him. "So, she put you in the friend zone then?"
Jackson didn't response, just let out a loud exhale and patted Alex's shoulder with the manila folder in his hand before walking off.
Feeling like she wanted to get something in other than "ew," April added, "Me and her text all the time."
Alex just blinked at her a few time with no emotions on his face, so April put her head down and scurried off to see a patient.
——
a/n:
i freaking love writing this story LOL
in case any of you are reading this after i added the new fc for professor declan o'brien, here it is:
INTRODUCING
NIALL HORAN
as
DECLAN O'BRIEN
"She has me. I'm a doctor." "So you've said quite a few times already, Dr. Avery. Don't mean to step on your doctor toes, I just wanted to help my colleague out."
NICKNAMES
Professor Steal Your Girl
Professor Leprechaun