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Department meetings, going over course schedules, and checking her many syllabi. That was what Blair's life had gone back to looking like, which also meant: no more practically living at the sorority house. Not when her apartment was closer and quieter and had all of her actual things there.
She also thought that she had to pull away a little bit from Jackson. Their closeness was taking a sharp turn down a road she had always tried to avoid, and she was trying to feel less attached. She was right when she first left Boston, though. If she moved out, she would feel her parents slipping away.
They didn't call or text after the shooting at Seattle Grace, but she did have a call with them a few weeks ago just asking for an update on her life and if they should be expecting her back for Thanksgiving in a few months. It didn't end well, with Blair telling them that she was, in fact, grieving the deaths of two friends, but it was nice to know that they remembered they had a daughter in Seattle at all.
She sat next to Declan, still technically just an assistant professor under him and therefore only teaching two courses on her own and two that she assisted Declan with that semester.
The two of them sat in silence, waiting for their meeting to start. It was an English department meeting where they basically just talked curriculum, course goals, reading material, and all the jazz. Not that she really felt like she had a say in it as a non-tenure professor.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. It was from Avery. She smiled down at his name, she hadn't talked to him in a few days with how swamped she had been getting prepared to start the semester.
1 photo attachment.
She clicked on the message, opening it up to a mirror selfie of him inside of rhe resident's lounge—he had no right talking about the brown of her office when their glorified and fancy locker room was also all brown—and it was him in dark navy blue scrubs. There was a giddy smile on his face.
She zoomed in to the locker behind him, seeing photos put up, hanging off the top. She could see herself.
She ignored that, though she did smile when she could make out exactly which photos he had put up, and she responded back with a few question marks.
"We're attendings for the day. dark blue scrubs!!!
She mumbled, "Ohhhhh," to herself, nodding as her nails clicked against her screen, responding.
Blair typed back, "nice! fancy :) very smarty pants of you :))"
"Declan," she said, getting the man's attention as she held her phone up to their faces to take a selfie.
The blond stuck his tongue out, and she giggled at him as she sent the photo to Jackson.
"We're about to be in a meeting," she sent.
Jackson frowned down at his phone, the giddy excitement wiped off of his face. At least Blair looked pretty.
Declan was wearing that same brown.
He typed back, "nice, fancy, very smarty pants of you ;)"
Was a wink too much?
Was there anything he could do with Blair that could be considered "too much"?
Then, just because he was an Avery, and therefore a bit petty, he added," "And I guess O'brien, too."
"Is this something the two do you regularly do?" Declan asked, seeing as Blair clicked away, texting her best friend.
"Hm?" she asked, not even looking up to talk to him.
"Just updating each other on the little things?"
"Knowing what he's doing and what he's up to isn't what I'd consider the little things," she said softly, slipping her phone back into the pocket and flashing him a smile. "They're the absolute biggest things in the world, because it's the stories in his life."
This girl has got it bad, Declan thought to himself, a smile on his face that almost hurt with how unnatural it was. He didn't want to smile hearing her talk about someone else that way, but he couldn't really be upset by it either.
Jackson Avery was the one she talked about in all her stories long before he ever existed.
Declan just wondered if he could be the one she talked about in them, someday, perhaps, if Blair was actually telling the truth when she claimed there was no way she'd end up with Jackson.
Even Declan himself wasn't too convinced.
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When Blair got back to her apartment building, she saw Jackson waiting by the door to the lobby, starring off into space with a clenched jaw. She hadn't been expecting him that night, a stark contrast to how they lived the previous semester basically attached at the hip. She tried to think if she had enough ingredients to cook food for two in her fridge.
"Avery?" she asked, tugging her bag up her shoulder a bit more as she walked up, her buzzer to let herself into the building in her hand.
He didn't say anything really, just offered her a lifeless smile and followed her into the lobby and then into the elevator.
"What's going on?" she asked, rocking her hip into his with a worried smile.
He let out a loud exhale, rubbing his face with his palms. When he looked down at her, she could feel his sorrow in her own bones. "I'll tell you inside."
The minute she left her apartment door shut, Jackson started to rant about how he messed up on a neuro case after "hustling" Meredith out of it, so Derek had to step in and save the day. He was leaning against one of her kitchen counters while she went to brew some drip coffee.
"The patient's fine?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at him, and he nodded.
"Derek told me it's apart of the job and the training and the learning..." he was getting riled up against himself again, before coming to another loud exhale.
"And he's right," Blair said, turning around so that they were now facing another another across the kitchen. She folded her arms across her chest. "But I know there's nothing I can say to make you feel better, so I'll just stay here and make sure you feel loved."
"The patient was someone else's entire world," he said, staring at her with some intensity she wasn't sure if she could shake. "What if it hadn't been okay?"
"Every single patient is someone else's entire world," she said, pushing herself off from the counter, walking towards him. She grabbed his face in her hands. "Every single person is someone else's entire world." She stared into his green eyes, hoping hers was instilling something into his that she couldn't put into words. "You can't carry that weight on your shoulders. You just can't, Jackson."
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"Hello, students, I'm Professor Macaspac," Blair said, standing in front of her lecture hall. "I hate icebreakers as much as the next person, so I'll just give myself a little introduction, and you guys can decide if you want to introduce yourselves to each other later. You guys can call me Professor Macaspac, you can call me Blair, I don't really mind between the two. I'm originally from Boston, I moved here a little under a year ago, and if there is one piece of advice I can give to you from one writer to another, from an old teacher of mine: no story worth its weight in words can be paraphrased."
Her students were quiet, staring at her either with intrigue or like they wanted to fall asleep. She wasn't surprised, she was a student not too long ago.
"And this," she said, pointing to the girl sitting at the desk in the front corner. "Is Haley. She is my teacher's aid and peer mentor this semester. Hales, why don't you come up and give yourself a little introduction."
"Hey everyone, I'm Haley James, and as Professor Blair said, I will be your teacher's aid this semester," Haley said, looking back at Blair with a smile before turning back to the class. "I'm a third year, I took Professor Blair's course last semester, and since I also work for Peer Connections, I am here as a peer mentor as well. I will be hosting office hours in the writing tutoring center every Tuesday evenings and I'm also available in class and by appointment, my email is on your syllabi."
"Okay, let's have a wonderful semester."
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Jackson's life was falling apart just a little, work wise and social life wise. Well, Blair life wise, at least. At work, he didn't want to do the trauma skills lab because he didn't think he needed some stupid simulation to tell him how unfair trauma was when two of his friends died in the shooting, had his ass handed to him by Hunt about it, and found himself not on the O.R board and stressing about it.
Seattle Grace Mercy West in general felt like it was falling apart. Robbins left, without Torres, Yang was falling to pieces, left the program, and perhaps was never going to be a surgeon again, and Karev wasn't feeling too hot with his mentor leaving him either. Sloan and Shepherd were freaking out over Yang leaving the program, and now all eyes were on Grey as questions came up about if she was ever going to come back.
Actually, instead of freaking out, Shepherd was blaming Altman.
Jackson was feeling like no one wanted to work with him, April was somehow now harboring a little crush on Alex, and while Jackson was getting a small inkling a few weeks ago that him and Blair were finally starting to progress with one another, she was practically unreachable now. He also couldn't get his mind off of the fact that she was still not talking to anyone from Boston or talking about anyone from Boston. That girl adored her godchildren, Hannah and Ryder's two little boys, but he knew things were deep when their birthdays past, and Blair wasn't catching any flights out.
He drafted so many messages to all of them—Hannah, Ryder, Mr. and Mrs. Macaspac, but he wasn't sure what to really say to them. Hey, Blair's been here almost a year and you're all still on bad terms, what gives? Yeah, he couldn't say that to them.
Yeah, Seattle was currently a shit show.
"He's not the guy for you, okay? Trust me," Lexie tried to emphasize to April once she let it slip about Alex, despite insisting she "wasn't going there." She turned to Jackson next, knowing he was thinking none of the attendings wanted to work with him. "And don't be paranoid, trust me on that, too."
Jackson stared after Lexie, a look on his face that April caught. Scolding, she said, "Oh, but it's okay for you to go there?"
"I'm a guy," Jackson defended, "I live there."
"No," April shook her head, giving him a look of disgust. She closed the folder in front of her, telling him, "You live in Blairland."
He actually hadn't actually seen Blair in several days, but he felt her pulling away a little while ago. With the semester starting and her guilt for cutting out at the end of last semester, she had been working a lot. She also said she needed to make some meaningful connections of her own, whatever that meant, and so she had been going to professor bondings with O'Brien. He had seen enough photos of the two of them on her FaceBook for a lifetime, especially when he started seeing them trying out new food places he had been wanting to go to with her when they both had a free moment.
She never had a free moment these days, it felt like.
He vaguely remembered her also saying she was taking her teaching aid, assistant, student? Whatever she was, some college student named Haley, out for lunch once. Apparently, this Haley really liked Blair's writing before she even became a professor.
He sighed, raising his eyebrows and saying, "Well, maybe it's time for me to move out of Blairland, I can't seem to get any closer to her than I already am, right?"
He walked away, mumbling about having to go find Bailey. April stared after him as he went, blinking a few times to herself as she realized he had just agreed, for once in his damn life, that he did want to go there with Blair.
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Blair wasn't expecting to get the phone call that she had, but she showed up to a random renovated fire house, the words "SEATTLE FIRE DEPARTMENT" still on it.
"Avery?"
She turned around to see Callie walking up behind her on the sidewalk, looking as confused as Blair was feeling.
"What did you just call me?" Blair asked.
"Sorry," Callie said, wincing at herself. "It's the first name that comes to mind when I see you."
Before Blair could respond to that, Callie pointed up, "You here for her, too?"
Blair nodded, and the two of them wordlessly walked up the staircase into the fire house.
They could hear jumping around as they went inside—why don't people lock their doors around here?—being met with tons of boxes on their way up.
"Hello? Cristina?" Callie called out, walking in front of Blair into the open space. "Oh, hey, hello."
Cristina Yang was jumping around dancing to the loud music they could hear escaping through her headphones, not even able to hear Callie calling out to her, jumping onto the bed and continuing her little solo dance party. When she turned around on the bed, the girl jumped in fright at the two standing in what could be a living room, Blair thinks?
"Um, what are you doing here?" Cristina asked, coming off the bed and taking her earphones off, staring between the two girls she would have never assumed would be there for her.
"I'm not back until next week," Callie shrugged.
"Wait, so it's true? You guys broke up? Uh, she's in Africa?" Cristina came in with the twenty questions, concerned for her old roommate and close friend.
Callie threw her bag down onto one of the boxes, telling Cristina, "Okay, Sloan told me that you quit."
At the talk of the surgical residency program, Cristina put her music back on and went back to dancing.
"Hey! What are you doing?"
"This," Cristina replied. "Go away, both of you."
"Okay, this is disturbing," Callie told her. "Hey, stop!"
Cristina, surprisingly, listened, sighing and running a hand through her hair. "Look, I was unpacking, but then I didn't enjoy it. What are you doing?"
"What do you mean?" Callie asked.
"You don't have a job to go to. You don't have a girlfriend telling you you have to go to Africa, you're completely free, you can do whatever you want," Cristina said, then turning to Blair. "And why are you here?"
"Sorority mother told me to be," Blair said awkwardly, half wishing she hadn't shown up at all. This was a lot going on.
"Meredith called you to check in on me," Cristina sighed, going back to opening boxes. "Both of you, the world is your oyster, make lemonade."
Callie and Blair shared a look before looking back at Cristina. Callie started talking about how she wanted a haircut, but probably shouldn't make radical changes when a woman had ripped her heart out of her chest. And that was when Cristina did something insane.
Using scissors that no one even noticed Cristina had picked up, she cut Callie's hair. Blair let out a loud, shocked gasp, her hands flying to her mouth when she saw. Cristina just smiled, "Let's make lemonade."
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a/n: the greys x oth crossover yall never knew i was giving you huh