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There was the sound of typing for the first time in what felt like forever. Aggressive backspaces, moments of nonstop word vomits, and mass scrolling and speed reading that was making Blair's right eye twitch a little. Next to her was a marked up manuscript with red ink everywhere, edits she made as she read through it, though the edited version usually got double edited once she tried to convey the new paragraphs on her laptop.
She was finally writing again after not having the time or motivation for nearly a year. She hadn't even looked at the manuscript all semester. The roughest of drafts on the novel she oh-so desperately denied was about Jackson. As she once said, it was just a "love story between two main characters of color who may look a bit like her because, well, she was the damn writer, and another who may look or even act a bit like him because there would always be pieces of him in everything she did. He was all she ever knew, it was called having inspiration, having a muse."
No, she was actually just creating a world where their love story actually existed. A book where two people were able to grow around one another despite being so different in their careers and hobbies, yet their lives still found a way to be in one another's.
Even the short story she wrote that was published in AGNI that Haley had read before Blair ever came to work at Pacific College, a modular short story that spanned in and out of all these precious moments between a certain Briar and Jonah, called Born to Chase Sunsets. The two drift away and back, like waves crashing and retreating, yet growing around each other. The one where Haley perceived Jonah as Briar's sunset.
Haley once told her that her prose flowed like poetry, but Blair wasn't feel very poetic lately.
No, she was feeling angry, she was feeling lost, and she was feeling loss. In a span of a year she managed to find herself in a box, neatly folded into the lifestyle of Jackson Avery and Seattle Grace Mercy West. She found herself sometimes going out with her colleagues, but found most days, she found ways to fit her schedule around the busy ones of her surgical friends. She found herself thinking about Boston, and the price that choosing Jackson cost her.
She felt overwhelmed with grief over the idea that Ophelia might not be around to watch Blair publish her first book. It kicked Blair's ass back into gear, telling her that she needed to start prioritizing herself and her desires yet again, that she put her writing career on hold when she took the Pacific College position because not only was she continuously finding herself in spaces where she can't even finish out a semester of her job, but she couldn't even find space to be a writer.
So, now she was writing as if she was running out of time.
Because she might be. Because she wanted to be a published author before heaven forbids she losses Ophelia.
But she was changing the premise of the book. Forget a love story about a girl who chased after one thing for so long until she obtained it, she was now writing a loss story about a girl who finally wakes up from her tunnel vision to find that she really underestimated the ability of human delusion. Faking it until you make it really just ends up with you breaking, doesn't it?
Oh, that was good. Write that down, it counts as poetic, right?
Her doorbell rang, waking her out of whatever zone she falls into when she had a good writing streak going.
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It was that time of the year again, the chicks have hatched. The Seattle Grace Mercy West surgical residents would be in charge allowing first year medical students to shadow them for a day.
"First year med students," Cristina sighed disappointedly, as if that wasn't her once, crossing her arms over her chest. "Too dumb to find the toilet."
Cristina considered these tours to be like court ordered community service. Lexie Grey read off the assignments for which resident would be giving a tour to which med student. When she saw, and heard, Jackson and Alex trying to call dibs—whispering 'mine' to one another back and forth,—on Laurel Pinson, a really pretty first year med student. Lexie glared at the both of them, looking down at the names she had written on her paper to see who was assigned to her.
April stepped on Jackson's foot, pretending like she didn't as she faced forward. Jackson looked down at her wanting to mouth out, "What the hell?" but only getting the "Wh-" out before Lexie assigned Laurel to Alex, and a guy, Edward Taylor, to Jackson.
"Blairville," April whispered to Jackson as she went to go take a few steps to her own medical student while Jackson's walked over to her.
He flared his nostrils at April for it, shaking his head at her. He did not live in Blairville. And he did not want to have this guy as the medical student that shadowed him.
And now that April said the word, "Blair," Jackson was wondering what she was doing at that very moment, considering he hadn't received any update texts from her—not that he expected her to, but she had just had major surgery and was left by herself in a new apartment for the first time and isn't allowed to drive herself anywhere.
If only the hospital daycare accepted twenty-eight year old friends of surgeons, too...
Cristina would be staying on Richard Webber's service for the day just so he could monitor her progress after her being gone for so long. He also non-discreetly, because he's loud and trying to be obvious about it, mentioned how he was going to be picking Chief Resident in a few months. The other residents were taken aback to hear that he had been evaluating them for Chief Resident since, according to Webber, they had their first days there.
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Callie Torres put on a yellow trauma gown and slapped on some gloves. There was an ever-present frown on her face as she thought about her current troubles—an Arizona-shaped issue not only haunts her at work, but outside of her front door as well.
Owen was already outside, waiting in the ambulance bay for the ambulance to arrive. He glanced to his right as Callie walked up next to him.
"Dr. Torres," Owen greeted her nonchalantly.
"What?" she snapped at him, not even bothering to look at him.
He glanced over at her after hearing the attitude, trying to assess the situation. "Nothing...?" he shook his head, but it came out more like a question.
"Well, you said my name," Callie grumbled.
"Just as a... ya know... 'good morning' type thing," Owen said, still unsure why Callie was in an upset mood but not pushing it either.
Callie ignores what Owen says next, looking past him at the ambulance bay wondering when the ambulance was going to arrive. "Where's the stupid meat wagon?" she sighed.
Owen just glanced at her with bemusement, his eyebrows knit together.
Jackson came out, trauma gown on and stethoscope wrapped around his neck. Edward was following behind him.
"Morning, Dr. Hunt," Jackson greeted Owen. He leaned over Dr. Hunt to try and greet Callie, "Dr—"
Hunt leaned closer to Avery, "Don't."
Callie's eyes honed in on Jackson though, squinting a glare when she saw him. She pointed an accusing finger at him and said, "Why didn't you tell me your girlfriend and my ex-girlfriend were moving into my apartment together?"
Jackson tilted his head to the side confusedly at Callie's cold tone and the way she was glaring daggers at him, his own eyebrows knitting together and his mouth parting just a little as he tried to think of what to say to that.
"You know she's not my—"
Owen's eyebrows raised at this, slightly amused at the situation. Then his eyebrows knitted together in confusion again, looking between Jackson and Callie confused. Owen cut Jackson off again.
"Wait, you didn't know Blair was moving in with Arizona?" Owen asked, facing Callie. He turned to Jackson. "Wasn't Cristina over with you guys yesterday to help pack up and move?"
Callie's eyes widened and her jaw opened a little in disbelief, looking at Owen as if he and Cristina had both just personally betrayed her. She just laughed, thinking the entire situation was ridiculous. All of her friends knew, and nobody bothered to even tell her?
"You're all unbelievable," Callie sneered.
She then just shook her head, turning her attention to the ambulance that was getting closer and closer as the siren rang louder.
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"Can I offer you anything to drink? Coffee? Water? Tea?" Blair asked as she set large file box onto the floor near the kitchen island. "Soda?"
Declan was kind enough to drop off essays she needed to grade from her classes. She may not be able to go to work—which she thought was kind of B.S of Teddy and Cristina to decide from her since her job required her to sit in a desk while her students wrote their finals—but at least she could grade their work from home.
Declan looked around the apartment with his hands in his pockets. He had never been to what Blair liked to call her "crappy apartment" before, but the one she had just recently moved into seemed nice. There was a small fake Christmas tree in a corner in the living room without any ornaments on it. Blair followed his eyes to it.
"Oh, that," Blair chuckled, closing her laptop after making sure her most recent file was saved.
She would literally combust if she had written for two hours straight after not writing for months and not having the file save.
Blair went over to stand next to Declan. "Arizona—my roomate—and I managed to at least set the tree up last night," Blair chuckled as she thought about how she sniffled back sobs while the blonde woman and her put up the Christmas tree at nearly one in the morning. "We're gonna put ornaments on it tonight."
It was Blair's fake Christmas tree. She kept putting off putting it up in her old apartment. Arizona had seen its box in Blair's room while Blair had been crying to her about Jackson the night before, trying to take the girl's mind off of her downward spiral and suggesting they "spruce up" the apartment for the holiday.
"C'mon, let's try to have some holiday cheer," Arizona had said to her.
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"I mean I get it," Arizona ranted as she walked out of the elevator with Sloan, April, Alex, and her medical students followed closely behind them. "She's got a hang up about me being perfect, y'know, everything comes easy for me, and I don't have any flaws, and now that I've clearly made a mistake, she's just gonna pound the crap out of it."
Mark just snickered as Arizona spoke, chuckling out a, "So, you don't think you're perfect?" when Arizona's little spiel was over.
"No!" Arizona said defensively. "I have lots of flaws, I'm competitive, I'm a workaholic, I smoke when I'm stressed—"
"Blair's asthmatic," Alex leaned over, his head between Arizona and Mark's shoulders as he interrupted their conversation. "So you know," he shrugged, "can you not smoke near her?"
Both attendings glanced over their shoulders at Alex, who was now invading their personal space, and gave him looks of puzzlement and the desire for him to back the hell up.
"You sound like Avery," Mark noted to Alex, staring at Alex until he did, indeed, back the hell up. He turned back to Arizona and said, "Well, I'm sure Callie would love to hear all of those, along with any other real faults you come up with."
He paused for a moment before adding, "Also, how come everywhere I turn, Avery's girlfriend's name pops up, or she is physically standing outside of my door when I'm trying to leave for work?" he asked, genuinely confused and mildly concerned. Then, in a whisper as he leaned down towards Arizona, he asked, "Is she, y'know, getting therapy?"
Arizona rose an eyebrow at Mark's question. To answer it honestly, the answer would be yes, she starts therapy tomorrow. But Mark and Blair were not necessarily close, Arizona couldn't think of a time when she saw Mark even talking to Blair outside of knowing they were both at her dumpster fire of a surprise birthday party after Wallace passed away, and that Mark was one of the surgeons in the gallery waiting for Altman and Yang to finish Blair's surgery.
Though, Arizona can't talk, she didn't know Blair that well before she asked her to move in with her.
"What?" Arizona asked Mark anyways.
"She's gonna need counseling, we all needed counseling after our own and none of us got shot," Mark still whispered, trying to keep a nonchalant tone to his voice.
Alex, having heard Mark because he does not whisper well, said, "Hey, I got shot."
"I'm not talking to you, Karev," Mark didn't even bother to look at the resident as he kept leaning down just a little to talk to Arizona. "Just... Lexie may have mentioned that Blair has hyperthymesia..."
Arizona raises an eyebrow at Mark, again. His relationship with Lexie was many things, including confusing, because Arizona knew that they were long broken up... since then Mark has slept with other people and Lexie had a relationship start and end with Alex, but she also saw Mark hugging her and consoling her when Blair's school was shot at.
"Blair has HSAM?" Arizona questioned, this being the first she had ever heard of Blair being one of the very few people in the world with hyperthymesia, or highly superior autobiographical memory.
"Yeah, apparently Derek confirmed it and everything a few months ago, did the whole checking if she spends an abnormal amount of time thinking about her past and seeing if she has an extraordinary capacity to recall specific events of her past and did the whole MRI thing," Mark nodded, continuing with his story.
There was truly no formal way of diagnosing a person with hyperthymesia.
Arizona nodded to herself as Mark talks. In the limited conversations she's had with her newfound roommate, one could suppose that Arizona agreed Blair thinks about her past in very vivid detail, but she hadn't talked to her enough to know if it was an abnormal amount or extraordinary detail.
"But anyways," Mark continued on. "Lexie had a mental break just having photographic memory after Gary Clark, Blair's memory is even more detailed and who knows whose often that girl is reliving the shooting, and, well, eh..." Mark tilted his head from side to side, like he was weighing something in his mind as he said, "...I guess one can say Lexie and Blair are pretty similar personality wise... so I dunno... just wanted to make sure that there was someone looking out for her. And you're her roommate, so..."
"Blair's getting counseling," Arizona nodded, a soft smile on her face at the concern Mark was showing for Blair.
"Good," he nodded, standing up straight and seeming like a weight was coming off his back. "Because she kinda looked like a wreck this morning when you and Callie had your throw down, and yanno, Blair's important to Lexie."
Arizona frowned just slightly. Blair did look like a wreck this morning because Blair was feeling like a wreck. Then, she frowned deeper when she thought about Blair possibly constantly reliving every aching second of her shoot
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"Stop it," Blair laughed as she drank coffee with Declan, both of them sitting in the living room of the apartment. She pointed at him threateningly, but there was a wide smile on her face.
Declan sent her a soft, closed-mouth smile back. They both sat on the ends of the couch, their backs facing the arm rests and their socked feet on the cushions as they faced each other.
"How's the transition from everything?" Declan asked her, a tender tone in his voice as they both leaned their heads against the back of the couch cushions, holding their mugs in their laps.
"I was trying to live on autopilot," Blair shrugged nonchalantly.
The more she tried to process the shooting, she less she wanted to. She didn't want to have to open up that red-stained door in her memory and unpack how everything had gone. She was basically on autopilot since she heard that first gunshot ring through the university, how her body just moved to turned off the lights, lock the door, and hide Haley first.
Autopilot never came off. She woke up in the hospital, aching and dry-throated, a sleeping Jackson holding on her cold hand, too many flowers to count decorating her hospital room. She put on smiles for Ophelia, glad to see her. She teased Cristina, sarcasm being their default form of communication with one another. She told Jackson and Catherine not to hover, though nobody successfully tells Catherine Avery not to hover—she was just glad she had to head back to Boston the day before Blair was released from the hospital.
She was on autopilot when she put on her best upbeat persona and helped her friends pack up her crappy Lucky Apartment 13 and stayed on autopilot until last night, when she unpacked her boxes to find her old manuscript and cried to Arizona.
"Autopilot not working now?" Declan question, seeing the way her closed mouth smile kept dropping until it turned into a frown.
Blair shook her head in response, using her mug to warm up her hands.
"Nothing makes sense anymore," she said honestly, her chin quivering as she gave Declan another hopeless shrug and downturned smile. "I..." she trailed off, shaking her head as she tried to figure out words to say. "I'm lost. One minute I was thinking I was living the dream, that there was no way I wasn't going to get that dream, and now... now I'm wondering how the hell did I get here?"
Declan reached over the couch to comfortingly shake Blair's knee, giving it a squeeze as if to tell her, "Hey, I'm here."
"I get it," Declan said, and Blair didn't doubt it.
Declan was able to admit to her that he had moved to Seattle to be with his college girlfriend, the one he had met in Ireland for University, and when they both graduated, she went home to Seattle, and he followed after her. Then, the two of them broke up, and it was just Declan, halfway across the globe from his home and his family, in a city he was trying to make a career in. He, too, once went through his own period of, "how the hell did I get here?"
"How did you... y'know, get through it?" she asked.
She didn't need to be specific. They were English majors, they could read between the lines.
"I went home," he replied, and Blair bit the inside of her cheek, "for a summer, and I thought about whether I should pack up my Seattle flat and stay home, or if I should continue in Seattle. I had already made friends outside of her, friends in the department, friends I'd met when going out, and I liked them quite a bit. I liked the way the people I knew challenged me as a writer, as a storyteller, and I liked my job."
Blair just nodded. She would not be going home on a soul searching journey herself, but she could make friends.
"You've already done half of them," Declan continued to speak. "I saw you writing," he pointed at her closed laptop. "Something here is challenging you as a writer, I presume?" He just smiles when Blair said nothing. "And I know you've made friends here outside of him."
"They're all his friends though," she argued.
"No," Declan shook his head. "I don't mean the surgeons. Sure, you live in a bubble with the center of the circle Seattle Grace and the radius being wherever Jackson may touch, but you have Pacific College. You have friends there, people who care about you enough that we're all stepping in with your classes, that we all wrote your letters when you were in the hospital, that we all have been inviting you out to group bondings..."
Blair just made eye contact with him as he spoke. There was something comforting about the way Declan said it. He didn't make her feel bad for having the center of her bubble set on Jackson, he didn't guilt her about the fact that she chose this life. Instead, he gave her options and showed her that there was so much more to her than what she thought she was in for.
"We're all here," Declan insisted. "I'm here. And I think I'd still very much like to be that person for you."
The term "my person" meant something different to Blair than it had when Declan first proposed being her person. He was meaning that he wanted to be someone she could lean on, someone to make her feel less alone in a city where she moved to for someone else, that person he wished he had when he had broken up with his girlfriend.
"My person" was now that person you'd call when you murder someone and need help dragging the corpse across the room. That person was now someone who just knows what's going on, no communication or questions or looks even really needed. They just know. Declan wasn't her person in that sense, but then again, Blair wasn't too sure who was. Jackson was her best friend, but he wasn't her person. If he was her person, then he would've figured out a long time ago that Blair loved him.
He would've seen right through her at her debut, the one he threw for her when she was eighteen. A Filipino coming of age party—not that he threw an extravagant one for her. No, he gave her a rooftop debut, where she was adorned in a beautiful dress and there was fairy lights and Catherine Avery wept. She didn't have an eighteen roses, where eighteen important male figures all presented her a rose and slow danced with her, or an eighteen candles where eighteen important females all lit a candle and gave a speech.
but she did have that beautifully lit rooftop, she slow danced with Jackson, Ryder, and Connor. Catherine, Hannah, Ophelia, and Aria all lit candles and gave speeches about her. They ate good food. She wore a beautiful sage green dress and had a tiara in her hair. And she fell in love, for the first time, with the boy who set it all up.
If Jackson was her person, he would've seen that twinkle in her eye, no words necessary.
Jackson was something for Blair, but she had yet to friend her person the way Cristina and Meredith had.
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"Unwilling to delegate?" April repeated the words her medical student gave as her review to Dr. Webber, sitting at the dining room table in the Sorority House with Jackson, the two of them drinking. "I am a great delegator. It's the key way to why I'm so organized," she says as she takes a sip of her beer.
Jackson laughed at her, shaking his head.
Their heads turned when they heard footsteps, followed with an awkward, "Oh."
Both residents were met with the sight of Laurel, who neither of them even knew was even in the house in the first place. She was wearing one of Alex's oversized t-shirts, a beanie on her head, and nothing else.
Jackson squinted at the beanie.
Laurel stood there awkwardly, her cheeks turning red while Jackson seemed to beam a smile up at her. "Hi... uh... just wanted to get some water..." she said awkwardly, silently wishing she had put on some pants. She didn't think anyone would be in the kitchen, either.
"Well, the glasses are in that cabinet," Jackson told her, using his thumb to point behind himself as he continued to stare at her, scratching the back of his head after and following her with his eyes.
When she went to the cabinet to grab a glass, Jackson moved up in his seat a bit to look over April's head. April smacked him in his head, a loud thwacking sound as her palm collided with him.
"Ow-wahh," Jackson groaned, extending the ending of the word to show his annoyance at April.
April just tilted her head to the side at him, deadpanning before she let out a heavy exhale. She shook her head at his disappointedly, taking another sip of her beer. Jackson just smiled at her innocently in response, drinking his own and looking away.
"Oh, I hear your girlfriend's asthmatic and has HSAM," Laurel said to Jackson as she heads back towards Alex's room, turning on her heels to point at him while she talks. "Oh, and she makes really nice beanies."
Jackson just furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, following her with his eyes as she left.
"What?" he whispered to himself, looking at April.
She shrugged at him, her lips turning downwards in an awkward, "I dunno" grimace.
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Blair's phone went off. She was mid-yawn with a red pen in her hand, her eyes drooping as she got through her large stacks of essays to grade. At least having work to do got herself out of her head. Though, she could really go down for some sleep. Arizona wasn't home yet, though, but it was pretty late.
Blair decided that if Arizona wasn't back by midnight, they could just reschedule decorating their Christmas tree. She already set out all the ornaments she had packed away in boxes for them to choose from. She had assortments of gold, white, and sage green ornaments, ribbons, and other knick knacks to ador the tree with.
She glanced down at her phone, checking what the ding was. A message from Evil Spawn—Cristina had put his contact information in Blair's phone, and Blair thought it was too funny to change to anything else.
"A med student i slept with just stole my beanie, can you make me a new one?"
She stared at the text, grimacing as she processed the too much information Alex decided to present to her via text.
"First of all, didn't need to know you're sleeping with college students, second of all, stop doing that. third of all, fine."
Her phone beeped again.
"She's like 23, give me a break," Alex texts back. "Just beanie me." Then adds. "Pls:)"
Blair chuckled and shook her head, grabbing her mug of hot cocoa to warm up her cold hands.
She heard the keys jingling outside of the apartment followed by the sound of someone unlocking the door. She turned around in her barstool, still holding the mug with both of her hands as she was met with a mortified look on Arizona's face.
"I bail," Arizona said.
Blair rose an eyebrow at her, taking a sip from her mug as she waited for the blonde to expand on what that meant.
"When things get hard, Mark says I bail," Arizona continued, closing the door as she spoke quickly.
Blair got up from her barstool and started to heat up milk in a mug for Arizona, still looking at her expectantly.
"And I told Calliope that I am in love with her and that... and that I didn't want us to spend the next thirteen years in love with one another and too afraid to just... let ourselves be that," Arizona explained, thinking about how Callie had told her, "thirteen years is oddly specific."
"Well, yeah, because now I'm projecting Avery and Blair on us," Arizona had replied, but she doesn't tell that to the girl standing in the kitchen microwaving milk.
Blair is still looking at Arizona curiously, taking the mug out and mixing in hot cocoa powder.
"And I told her that at some point she would have to forgive me, and that I was asking her for just one more chance..." Arizona sighed, sitting down at the kitchen island as Blair slide a mug to her.
Blair stood leaning against the island, waiting for Arizona to get to the point of her little rant. She wanted to give her whatever time she needed to get her words out right.
All anybody ever really wants is a clean slate, a new beginning, right?
"But I think I'm gonna bail again..." Arizona said softly, a disappointed look on her face as she looked down at the brown cocoa in her mug.
"What do you mean?" Blair finally spoke, knitting her eyebrows together in confusion.
Arizona closed her eyes, breathing in a deep inhale and on her exhale, she says, "Callie's pregnant."
Blair's eyes widen.
"...with Mark's baby..."
"Oh..." the small sound of surprise left Blair's lips.
She thought about Lexie first, how that would affect her after she had to first deal with Mark's eighteen year old coming to town.
Oh... Blair continued to think to herself, her and Arizona now silent as they raise their hot cocoa's to their mouths, trying to process.
She thought about what that meant for Arizona second. She only knew the hospital drama as far as Jackson knew or as far as anyone else was willing to relay to her. She knew Arizona and Callie were both meant to go to Africa, but obviously Arizona went and Callie stayed. She knew Callie and Mark lived together across the hall. She knew Callie and Mark were best friends.
She did not know Callie and Mark were sleeping together.
Oh... Blair continued to think, wrapping her head around it.
Lexie was still in love with Mark, Arizona was still in love with Callie, but Callie was having Mark's baby.
Oh...
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a/n: in another universe, blair is a surgeon who trains under arizona and together they are the "pediatric package" to jackson and mark's "plastics posse."
i know i talk to you guys about who blair's person "should be" but blair has yet to figure that out for herself (plus i have yet to really delve into it in the storyline just yet), but this chapter just feels like chef's kiss to me ok enjoy.