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Mark Sloan kept glancing over to Lexie from his spot next to Owen at the makeshift alter, something Blair had noticed from her spot sandwiched between Jackson and Declan.
She heard a sniffle as the marriage officiant spoke to the crowd, and peered over Jackson to see April standing there with a sad smile on her face, tears running down her cheeks profusely. She stepped around Jackson, both boys in her presence watching her move over to wrap her arms around April and hold her.
Blair knew what was on April's mind: watching this new life blossom out of the ending of others, because the only way to go from here was up, and to go up was to move on from their grief. Blair could still hear Charlie's raspy voice or the little chuckle he had saved just for his conversations about Reed and she could still smell the incense Reed would always burn in her apartment with April. If it was all so alive still for Blair, of course it had to be worse for April.
Watching them up there was beautiful, as everyone in that room celebrated watching another chance at life be taken so willingly.
She looked at Jackson, endless thankfulness for the world that he was standing there with her.
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In the sanctuary of the surgeon sorority house, the inhabitants had the nice safe haven from the gawking of other people. In the resident lounge, other residents stared at them, around the hospital, patients whispered about the incidents, wondering exactly what happened and to who. But inside of that house, they got to be invested in worlds other than their tragedy.
"I'm just saying," Alex said, following Jackson down the hallway, both of them still in their sleeping clothes, "Blair hates sleeping in the same bed as other people, ain't no way you two are just friends if you're sleeping on the same bed!"
Meredith, who was passing by the two of them, nonchalantly commented, "Cristina and I sleep on the same bed."
"Yeah, and the two of you are twisted," Alex remarked.
Jackson rolled his eyes, stopping in front of his bedroom door abruptly, and he swung the door open for Alex to peer inside. When he did, he saw an air mattress on the floor.
"Oh," Alex seemed to deflate, his teasing against the Avery meaning nothing now.
Jackson had his arms crossed over his chest, raising his eyebrows and agreeing, "Yeah, oh."
The two of them went over to the kitchen where Blair was making coffee. Lexie and April were sitting together at the kitchen island, eating bowls of cereal.
"Oh, woah, I didn't know you had a tattoo, Blair," Lexie said, her eyes honing in to the tiny inked design. "Is that a ghost?"
Blair had been wearing a camisole tank top that rode up when she turned around to face them, exposing a small portion of skin at her waist. On her right just above her hipbone was the outline of a ghost with a crescent moon behind it.
"Woah, a tramp stamp," Alex chuckled, earning a glare from everyone and a shove in the shoulder from Jackson. Alex winced, Jackson hitting him in the side where he still had the bullet lodged in.
"It's not a tramp stamp," Blair and Jackson both snapped, sending him disgusted looks.
Continuing his look and tone of disgust, Jackson added, "It's not even in the right spot, man."
Then, Alex's eyes squinted at Blair's tattoo, "Wait, I've seen that before."
Alex grabbed Jackson's shirt, lifting it to reveal his waist as well, the same ghost on his left side with a sun behind it.
Lexie and April looked to one another with pierced lips, then to Jackson and Blair for further information.
"Matching tattoos, super duper friendly," Alex gave Jackson a look, only to be met with a glare.
"Knock it off," Jackson said, smacking his hand away while Blair just turned back around towards the counter in embarrassment.
They had gotten those tattoos before Jackson had left to be halfway across the country from her. It was their way of saying they'd always haunt one another, no matter where they went. They would always be two ghosts wandering the Earth connecting to one another like the sun and the moon.
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"I'm sorry for them," Jackson said as Blair started to fold up her things that were on top of the air mattress, looking through his closet for an outfit to wear to work before he inevitably would change into scrubs.
"Story of our lives," Blair shrugged it off, grabbing her duffel bag that she practically lived out of when she was at the sorority house, which was most days of the week anyways. "I am heading back to my apartment for a few days, though."
"Hm, why?" he asked, turning around from his closet to see that she was packing her things.
"Because I still pay rent there?" she asked as if it were obvious. "If I don't go back at least once every two weeks, it's pretty much just a waste of money."
"Yeah, I guess," he eyed her while she packed her duffel, a small frown on his face.
She looked over her shoulder at him, and he immediately looked away, wiping the expression off his face. She could feel the disappointment radiating off of him that he was masking as he pulled his shirt over his head to put the shirt in his hand on. She looked away immediately, her eye twitching with irritation that he was able to do things like that so casually in front of her.
"Um," she cleared her throat. "You can come stay over, if you want..." She trailed off, waiting for a response but being met with silence. "...if you're not sick of me already, that is."
He chuckled, but nodded his head, not that she could see since she was now starring a the wall with her cheeks warm.
"I'll bring dinner."
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When Blair opened the door to her apartment that night, she was met with teary emerald eyes and a beautiful boy holding takeout.
"What's wrong?" she asked, opening her arms as he came crashing into them, closing the door behind him.
"It was just hard today," he said, holding her tighter.
She let her arms curl up from around his chest and grab onto his shoulders, trying to pull him down to her level.
"Yang's not okay," he said after a moment. "And so I'm trying to be..." she felt him shake his head. "But I'm not, either."
"Okay," she said, nuzzling his chest with her head. "Let's just sit here today and now be okay, okay?"
He sniffled, "Can we talk about Charlie?"
She bite her lip, hearing how he sounded like a little boy when he asked that question. She tightened her arms around him, hearing the brown paper bag he was holding their food in rustle as he held her tighter, too.
"Of course we can."
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a/n:
- trying to add in some little details i had planned out for jackson and blair's dynamic already, so basically using this chapter as a bit of a filler for that. the ghost tattoos though?? im obsessed with them
- i also think we don't get enough of jackson being affected by the shooting in the show, so he will indeed be vulnerable with blair ok?
first and foremost, hi, hello, it's been a few months, i know. just a quick life update: i am a graduated woman, i threw my best friend a going away party and then sent my best friend off to scotland to get her doctorate, and in the last two months spent the summer with some of my friends before they left for their college towns yet again (i graduated a year early so most of my friends are in their senior year now). we screamed at trains, stayed up until 3am almost every night even though i had 9am shifts the next day, and considering we were the high school graduating class that got shut down when the pandemic first hit, it almost felt like we were finally reclaiming that "coming of age" energy we never got to have during our high school senior year. i also had to do a bone marrow biopsy and said friends threw me a surprise dinner party when i did, indeed, test back negative for blood cancer. anyways, there's my lil life update, i am (hopefully) back for a while since all my friends are now out of town and i have free time when i'm not at work again :)