Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is an inevitability to it that Jack doesn’t resist, that he lets himself be overtaken by, willingly offering himself to the sheer destructive potential of it.

Because it is destructive, the idea of him and Samira Mohan, despite the heaviness in the air between them now, the looks he can catch her darting at him from the corner of his eye.

He doesn’t know how much younger she is, and having a concrete number may spur him to change jobs out of shame- he knows he has to be at least a solid fifteen years older, and despite the inherent clench of shame at the idea of lusting over this bright young thing with her unlined face and the glittering enamel pins studding her rucksack and the shining future career unspooling ahead of her, he gives himself enough credit to know that her youth is not the appeal.

If today hadn’t been the day it was, if he had been working with her in such close proximity on a normal shift, seeing her curious eyes drinking up every detail of every procedure he showed her, felt the solid reassuring warmth of her at his front as she competently and confidently wielded a scalpel with the steady hands of an artist with an 000 brush, watched the way she lit up with fervour and passion and the keen delight of learning as she described some obscure trial or cutting-edge research she’d read about, he could convince himself it was a sort of intellectual crush. Jack has always been into brainy girls- not necessarily academic, but even just women who move through life and the world with the assuredness of knowing everything that might come at them, the loose-limbed confidence of preparedness, like his Lainey used to. 

And then it might never have devolved into this sparkling awareness that he now has of her as she stretches out her legs ahead of her on the park bench, his prosthetic leg between them.

There’s an itchiness under Jack’s skin, a feeling that is unfamiliar after years of not having it at all, exorcised by therapy and antidepressants and the slow dissolving of grief that comes with time. His PTSD is a carefully managed thing now, has faded in its intensity and vivacity, a slumbering beast that he knows how to deftly skirt and keep calm and in repose, but the past few hours have been long , stretched to windowpane opacity, drenched in blood and heart-rending screams and the heavy, thick miasma of disbelieving grief, and Jack is restless.

Princess, Javadi, Robby, Donahue- they have all left, drawn to their homes by their partners and their pets and their food-prepped containers and their soccer game highlights, and there’s no one but him and Mohan, and perhaps that’s why it's easy to offer her a ride.

She blinks at him, with those large doe eyes, slightly-red rimmed and exhausted. “Where do you live?”

Jack raises his eyebrows. “That’s not relevant. I’m not going to rescind the offer if your address happens to be out of my way.”

“I wouldn’t take your offer if I was out of your way,” she counters, and some of that tiredness has receded from her eyes, that light that made his gaze snag on her flaring back up.

“You’ll have to do better than that, Dr Mohan- there’s no way I’ll be letting you take public transport alone at this time of night, so it’s as good an opportunity as any other for you to learn how persistent I can be.” His attention is on his prosthetic, securing the straps tightly and tugging the leg of his scrubs over them as he casually drops that hint between them, and when he looks up, her eyes are glittering and even in the faint streetlights he can see the pink that has crept over her cheekbones.

“Lead the way, Dr Abbott,” is all she says, and Jack feels a stab of victory as he gets to his feet, hears the faint crunch of gravel behind him as she follows, feels the heavy weight of her eyes on the back of his head. 

He’s glad that the military and his own predilection has made his car clean and uncluttered, no takeaway containers littering the back seats or tissues clumped in the footwell. Samira doesn’t say anything except to murmur her address, and the silence has mellowed into something more comfortable and peaceable as he pulls out of the parking lot, the indicator a soothing metronome. 

“You handled yourself very well back there, Dr Mohan,” he says eventually, and she jerks in her seat, her head swivelling his way. 

“I had an excellent team around me,” she replies softly, and a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth, threatening to break free when she continues, “You’re a very good teacher, Dr Abbott. I’m glad I had an opportunity to work under you, even if the circumstances were less than ideal.”

Why does this praise, from a resident he’s only properly gotten to know today, who is nothing like his dead wife, who is oblivious to the perverted thoughts and images racing through his head, make a warm glow flicker in his chest? “It’s a testament to you that you made the most of the opportunity,” he says instead. “A baptism by fire, a shift that most senior doctors are fortunate enough to never experience in their entire careers, and yet you handled yourself admirably.”

She scoffs at that, her gaze slipping to her lap when he turns to look enquiringly at her. “I don’t know about ‘admirable’” she mumbles. “It… caught up with me, eventually.”

Jack feels such tenderness towards her in this moment, her head bowed and her shoulders drawn and her loose hair beginning to frizz, unknowing of the depth of his regard for her, the objective appreciation and respect that she is owed by all her patients and all her colleagues. “Samira,” he says firmly, and her head shoots up at the sound her name, an unfamiliar shape in his mouth but one he likes the feel of. “You're an excellent doctor, and you're a very young doctor, and you're a doctor in a very challenging field, who just had a very challenging day. These kind of days aren't normal- they’re days that should never happen and that we can never be fully prepared for, and days that we should never get used to. I’d be more worried if you skipped out of the ER jauntily and were treating it like an ordinary shift. You were wonderfully professional and calm under pressure and didn’t compromise on your quality of care, and it doesn’t matter if you felt shit afterwards- it doesn’t make you any less of an exceptional doctor.”

He feels slightly stranger after he’s finished speaking- he’s not used to being this sincere with someone he barely knows; as a supervisor and an attending and a superior, he knows he’s fair with his feedback, and not frugal with his praise, but he also knows he’s a bit gruff and a bit dry, and he’s never spoken like this to any of his residents. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t feel like his junior or his colleague, in the hushed confines of his car, limned in the warm streetlights and watching him with shining eyes; maybe it’s because this shared experience they’ve both survived has bound them tenuously together with an invisible yet insistent weight. 

Whatever it is, he feels lighter for having said it. 

“Thank you,” she says, and the huskiness of her voice slices through any satisfaction he feels at having delivered such carefully professional comfort, sparks a heat in his lower abdomen. “It means a lot.”

He hums, turning into a more residential area, lots of tall leafy trees standing sentinel either side of the road, obscuring the tiers and tiers of apartment buildings. The silence is content, until she breaks it again. 

“What do you do, when you have one of these days? How do you- how does anyone- how are you meant to process having seen everything we just did?”

Jack huffs out a laugh through his nose at the irony of him, of all people, being asked how to healthily process one’s emotions. “You let yourself feel whatever your feeling, with no shame or reservation,” he shares. “You let yourself cry, you take a long and hot shower- they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” She snorts at that, and he taps the exit button on Google Maps as he pulls into a parking space a bit ahead of her building, turning off the ignition and facing her properly. Her eyes are dark pools, drawing him in inexorably, glimmering with something that makes his belly do a lazy flip that he tries to ignore. “You call your loved ones, let them know you’re OK- talk to them, if you can manage it. You eat hot food, have a drink or two, do something that brings you joy. You make plans with your friends, your partner if you have one- you think about and do all the things that bring meaning to your everyday, make your existence worth having, and you affirm life.”

Her belt, when she unlatches it, clicks loudly in the laden silence between them, and Jack’s pulse picks up in response. She is all shadows and darkness- her eyes, the wild curls of her hair that he itches to feel the softness of, the hollows underneath her eyes and her graceful jaw and the contours of her elegant neck and the sharp jut of her collarbones where his gaze has dropped as he tries to escape the way hers is reeling him in. 

“And if I don’t have anything of those things?” she asks mildly, and Jack’s mouth dries at the confirmation. “How does one affirm life then?”

It feels like walking the razor-sharp slash of a tightrope, peering down into a yawning abyss, that totalising silence that sits heavy on your awareness just before an explosion. It feels like there’s lightning crackling through Jack’s blood and down his spine and into his stomach, and he can’t tear his eyes away from the soft curve of her lips.

His voice sounds like he’s been gargling gravel. “You find a way.”

And then she’s on him, and Jack feels like every one of his nerves is alight. 

Samira’s hands are fisting his shirt, her soft curls brush his cheek, the faint scent of antiseptic and sweat and her spicy floral perfume invades his senses- her lips on his are a hot brand, and he’s helpless, his mouth opening on a groan-

Then nothing, suddenly- she jerks backwards into her seat, her eyes wide and her hands hovering uselessly in front of her, her chest falling and rising rapidly, and Jack feels like he’s been drugged, the good shit as well, everything sharper and keener-

“I’m so sorry!” she gasps out. “I didn’t- I shouldn’t- I mean-”

“Why are you sorry, Samira?” Somehow, he’s able to retreat to cool and collected professionalism- he might as well be asking her for a patient’s presentation. The car is dim but he can see her swallow when he says her name. “I’m not.”

“You’re- you’re not?” 

Her shoulders have dropped slightly and there’s a note of wild hope in her voice; Jack doesn’t want to exasperatedly explain to her that a man will never be sorry for a beautiful woman on whom he has developed a mild hyperfixation in the last few hours kissing him when he knows she’s far out of his league.

So instead, he touches her hair, which is as smooth and satiny as he thought it would be, runs his fingers through it and uses the hold to carefully guide her mouth back to his.

The kiss this time is slower, purposeful- he maps the shape of her lips, strokes his tongue over the seam of them until they open up, licks inside as she gasps into his mouth-

And it’s like that one gasp unlocks something, because she’s suddenly wriggling in her seat, her lips devouring him, her teeth nipping and one arm banding around his neck as the tension and the fervour explodes between them.

Jack can hardly think straight- he’s enveloped in her intoxicating scent, her small murmurs of approval and faint moans, a kiss so all-consuming that any worries about propriety and power dynamics and age gaps, if they were ever there , have dribbled out of his ears. The arm that is around her waist, the shape of her body frustratingly concealed underneath her scrubs and her fleece, feels insufficient, and she’s clearly of the same mind because she scrabbles forward the same moment he drops the hand from her hair to fumble for the lever under his seat- it whooshes backwards just as she swings a leg over the centre console, dropping heavily into his lap- her jaw bumps against the side of his head and he mutters fuck as she gasps an apology and somehow it turns into a snicker and he huffs a laugh, but it’s against her throat, and her skin is warm under his lips and she wriggles so that her centre is pressed against his aching erection-

And there’s no laughter anymore, just need - pulsing, obliterating, primal- he rocks his hips up into her and she throws her head back and whines; Jack takes the opportunity to scatter kisses and bites down the beautiful column of her throat, noses at the neckline of her scrubs and distantly recognises that it’s not normal to feel hatred for an item of clothing. 

“Jack- yes- oh God, please Jack-” Samira is moaning right in his ear, her hips undulating in his lap as she grinds on his impossibly hard cock. Through the fog of lust, Jack knows they can’t have sex in his car on an open street no matter the hour, but he drops a hand to fumble at the drawstring of her pants.

Her hands, their long, elegant, capable fingers, are similarly shoving at his, but he stills them, banding her wrists with a hold. She looms above him, a goddess over a devoted acolyte, and Jack wants to worship her as is her due, slowly strip away her clothes and map every inch of her beautiful skin with his lips, work her over with his lips and his fingers and his cock and take his time, but right now-

“Let me,” he whispers to her, and he whispers because this enclosed space and the shadows draped over them and the steamed up windows don’t feel seedy- they feel precious and private and only for them. “Let me take care of you, Samira.”

Her throat hitches and he takes it as assent to slide his fingers inside the waistband as she widens her straddle- they’re both holding their breaths and she whimpers just as he lets out a raspy curse as he makes contact with her blazing and sodden heat.

“Jack- go under- please-”

“You want me in this drenched pussy?” He doesn’t know where the words come from- he knows he talks a lot, and his godson calls him a yapper which doesn’t sound flattering, but he hasn’t talked to a woman like this, scarce though they’ve been, since Lainey. 

They’re formed and ready on the tip of his tongue though, all for Samira, who he feels clench even with his fingers only probing at her drenched entrance.

“You like that?”

“I’d like it more if you went in,” she says, through gritted teeth, and he lets out an involuntary snort of laughter at her commanding tone as she opens her eyes to glare at him.

They clench shut again, however, because Jack can’t resist her, can’t resist heaven at his fingertips- he rotates his hand, the elastic of her waistband tight against the back of his wrist and his thumb hones in on her straining clit as his middle fingers slips down into her wet heat. 

“Fuck- Jack- Jack, please…”

“Tell me what you want, Samira.” She is a moaning, writhing mess, her hips driving down to meet the finger he’s slowly stroking into her, and Jack can’t help but feel shamefully glad at everything that’s happened to bring her here, slick and ready and wanton in his lap.

“My- my clit- I need-”

“Ssh, ssh- I’ve got you, sweetheart.” The endearment slips out without thought, and it feels so right- Jack withdraws the finger, stiffens it so it’s rubbing along the length of her labia, seeks out her clit and begins to stroke tight circles-

“Is this good, Samira? You feel so goddamn perfect, so wet for me- I want to spread you out, take my time with you-” There’s no thought to what he’s saying, no room to feel self-conscious, no space or time to wonder if she’s into it, and anyway, she clearly is, her hips gyrating and her head flung back and sweat sheening along the line of her neck as she gasps out his name.

There will be time for more, Jack vows to himself, as a wet rush of heat spills into his palm and Samira lets out a long and throaty groan, freezing in his lap. There will be time to do this properly, he thinks, as she slowly comes down from her high, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glittering as she laughs softly, scattering kisses across his forehead and cheeks and eventually his mouth that he gladly accepts.

There will be time to do this again.

Chapter Text

It’s a testament to how much he loves his brother-in-law that Jack is here.

Not that he’d ever express that sentiment to Eddie Alamillo, who’d crow about it for the rest of the night with a shit-eating grin on his face.

But if there’s anyone for whom Jack would be willing to spend a rowdy evening in a bustling bar on a Saturday evening, it’s his dead wife’s younger brother, even if he had to be cajoled and pleaded with to end up perched on this rickety stool around this tottering table, nursing a lukewarm beer.

It’s not just the affection he feels for Eddie, the type that is difficult to not have when you’ve seen someone grow from a buck-toothed, gangly, rock aficionado tween to a cockily confident senior park ranger- there’s some guilt there as well. Eddie didn’t just have to process Lainey’s death- he had to deal with Jack’s subsequent depressive spiral too, and Jack knows with certainty that there was a time when it was just Eddie and Robbie anchoring him to this mortal plane. 

He owes Eddie more than he thinks even he himself understands- it’s why he has not prefixed “former” or “ex” to their relationship, it’s why despite living a three and a half hour drive away he’ll always make the effort to visit him at least every other month, and it’s why when Eddie insisted on dragging him out to Cassidy’s, he relented.

Perhaps next time, he reflects somewhat sulkily, buying him a six-pack of beer will be enough to assuage his guilt. Jack doesn’t do nights out, not if he can help it- it’s nothing so exciting as packed bars blasting ear-splitting music being triggering or setting off flash-backs. They just make him feel old and tired.

“Come on, man- I know this isn’t your scene any more, but at least pretend you’re having a good time,” Eddie tells him, knocking his fist lightly against Jack’s bicep.

“You’re asking far too much of me,” Jack grouches. “If you wanted to drink we could have done it at home on my couch and with beer that doesn’t taste like ass. I’m a pretty senior doctor, you know. I make good money, I can afford the good shit.”

“We’re not just here to drink, Jacky-boy,” Eddie says in a sing-song voice. His eyes are tracking a cluster of giggling girls that have just trooped in, barely-clothed in short, glittery dresses and sporting big, big hair. “You’re on wingman duty.”

Jack lets the silence stretch out enough that Eddie’s gaze tears away from the girls to meet his incredulous glare. “What,” he says flatly.

Eddie’s straight teeth, the fine gold hoop in his ear, those warm Alamillo eyes- they sparkle in the bar’s low lighting as he throws back his head to laugh. As far as Jack knows, Eddie’s never been in any kind of serious long-term relationship- just a rotating carousel of women whose presences in his life range from a few hours to a few weeks, something Lainey used to despair of and Jack wisely stayed quiet about. He’s well built, athletic- he has to be, as a ranger- and he has a tangible charisma that Jack can’t fathom having, which means he’s never needed a wingman.

“Slim pickings in Winchester, Virginia,” Eddie says unrepentantly. “You didn’t think I was coming all this way just to spend time with my favourite almost-brother, did you?”

“There is no one here remotely appropriate for you,” Jack says reproachfully. “All of the women in this bar are still on graduate schemes.”

“Then maybe they’ll benefit from my worldly experience,” Eddie says loftily, and Jack would scold him if he didn’t trust that Eddie knows when he’s not wanted, and if he didn’t feel like a hypocrite, having fingered one of his much younger subordinates in his car a few days previously.

Fuck - Jack’s done his utmost best to put that encounter out of his mind's reach, and he doesn’t need to be caught getting aroused in a public setting now that the memories are flashing vividly in glorious technicolour. He’s only seen Samira in the distance once since then, as he was coming in for his shift two days later and saw her and Perlah’s heads bent together at the nurse’s station; by the time he’d left the locker room, she was nowhere to be found, and maybe it was for the best because he had no idea what he’d say to her.

Samira had pressed a kiss and a breathy “ Thank you” into his mouth before hopping jauntily out of his car and disappearing into her building with nary a backwards glance. Jack had not recovered from it so fluently- and he hadn’t even come, mind you- and had sat in a dazed stupor for five minutes, trying to process what had just happened, before turning on his ignition with trembling hands.

He can’t bring himself to regret it- how can he, when the vision of Samira squirming unashamedly in his lap and the sound of her pleading in his ear and the feel of her silky wetness around his fingers and her hot breath against his temple played across his mind with every shower he’d taken?

And Jack has never had much use for shame as an emotion either, and in a scenario like this, when Samira had been so vocal in her enjoyment and her consent, it seems even more unnecessary than usual. She had wanted him, and he had wanted her, and it wasn’t like they were planning their lives together or taking out an advert announcing what they’d done in the hospital internal newsletter, so what is there to squirm about?

“Come on, Jacky,” Eddie says, jerking him back to the present where he is absolutely not allowed to get an erection. He sobers suddenly, his hand coming up to rest heavily on his shoulder. “How long are you gonna live like this, man? Lainey wouldn’t want this for you either.”

Hearing her name doesn’t bring a lump to his throat like it used to for years afterwards, but Jack feels a pang instead, because he’s not sure Lainey would want Samira Mohan for him either. Oh they’d get on, get on like they’d spent their entire lives together, team up and make his life hell- Samira is level-headed, pragmatic, cool-tempered, dedicated, kind, meticulous, insanely driven-

No, no, no .

“I take your point, Eddie,” Jack says dryly, “but I promise you I won’t be finding my next wife in this bar.”

Eddie throws his hands up in the air in exasperation. “You think you’re going to find your next wife anywhere with how out of practice you’ve been? I’m not telling you to take one of these women home- hell, a lot of them look a bit too young for me and you’re even older-”

“Get fucked, Alamillo-”

“I’m trying,” Eddie says, with a wink. “And I’ve decided I’m wingmanning you tonight, actually.” Jack’s icy look, which has cowered many a belligerent patient, slides off Eddie’s back like water. He raises his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying take one of them home- just engage in a bit of light flirting, dust off those ol’ schmoozing skills. How are you gonna get good if you don’t practice?”

“I need to piss.” Jack shoves past Eddie unceremoniously, heedless to what he shouts after his turned back, stomps towards the men’s toilets and takes care of business. He does actually need to go, but when he exits the stall, he throws cold water on his face, uses his wet hands to slick down his unruly curls, and takes a moment to breathe.

There’s not a chance in hell he’ll ever tell Eddie about Samira, but it’s difficult to act like he’s been stoically honouring his dead wife’s memory, given the debaucheries he had gotten up to the Wednesday just gone, particularly with Eddie being as insistent as he is. It’s difficult to tell whether the discomfort swirling in his gut is residual from contemplating the wide gulf between him and Samira, or the dishonesty about it to Eddie, or even just the overstimulating, exhausting bar environment. 

“Get your shit together, Abbot,” he tells his reflection. He’ll go out there, jump into whichever conversation Eddie is surely having with one of the numerous women in Cassidy’s, banter and lightly flirt a bit before heading home. It’s not like Eddie will be using his guest bedroom tonight, anyway.

Predictably, Eddie is not where Jack left him- he’s reclined at the bar, talking delightedly to a woman in a tight white dress, sleek ringlets cascading down her back. Eddie catches sight of Jack before he has time to gather his fortitude and waves him over.

“Look who I’ve just met!” he crows, and the Jack’s stomach swoops like he’s missed a step going down a steep flight of stairs, when Samira Mohan turns around.

He almost doesn’t recognise her at first- he’s only ever seen her hair scraped back and lightly frizzing in a claw clip, not these shining and beautifully defined curls she’s coaxed out today. The dress is white, off-the-shoulder, full sleeved, but it clings to her body like a glove, exposing the long and elegant line of her legs and the swoop of her collarbones, where Jack remembers inhaling her scent. The contrast between her colouring and the dress is stark- she glows, bronze and bright, almost celestial.

Her eyes are teasing, dancing, as she takes him in. 

“Dr Abbot,” she says, with a wry smirk.

“Dr Mohan,” he manages.

“Small world, huh,” Eddie says obliviously. “What are the chances that the most beautiful woman in this bar tonight is one of my beloved brother-in-law’s underlings?”

An icy trickle goes down Jack’s spine, but the wink Eddie sends Samira’s way lacks its often lascivious quality, and Samira mock scowls back at him in a way that makes Jack unclench.

“Call me an underling again and you won’t get any of those embarrassing stories you’re hankering after,” she tells him.

“Ah sweetheart, I’ve known Jacky most of my life- the most scandalous thing he’ll have gotten up to recently is feeding too many sheets in the shredder in a single go,” Eddie laughs, and when Samira’s gaze catches Jack’s there’s something heated in it that sends a delightful frisson through him.

“Gotta get my kicks from somewhere,” Jack says blithely, hoping that if he stops watching the play of the light in Samira’s glossy hair he can stave off his erection.

“So, doc- any of these college friends of yours single?” Eddie asks Samira in a lowered voice. “And, importantly, commitment averse?”

Samira laughs and elbows Eddie, pointing with her chin to the cluster of women seated in a booth. “Lana- the redhead- caught her boyfriend cheating on her a few weeks back, and lets say I think you’re gonna be into her method of working off her rage. It helps that you’re a hundred times better looking than her asshole ex.”

“A hundred, huh?” Eddie smirks. “You do know how to make a man feel good, Mira.”

“Unfortunately for them all, I’m married to my job,” Samira says with a sweet smile, and Eddie lets out a bark of laughter.

“I like this one,” he tells Jack, with a playful nudge to Samira’s side. “I hope you and Robby are keeping her around.”

“We’re certainly planning on it,” Jack replies, refusing to look at Samira even as he feels her gaze burning into the side of his face.

“And with that,” Eddie says, straightening up and mock dusting off his hands, “I leave Samira in your capable hands. Doc,” he takes Samira’s hands to brush a kiss over her knuckles, “I hope to see you around some day again soon.” And with a roguish wink, he breaks out of their little triangle.

Jack and Samira watch him head over to her friends in their booth, make a comment that has laughter pealing out from all four women, slide deftly into the open space next to Lana whose gaze hasn’t dropped from his face once. 

“You don’t know what you’ve unleashed on your friend,” Jack says with a grimace, as Eddie leans over to whisper something in Lana’s ear that has her giggling and squirming.

“I only hope your brother-in-law’s man enough to handle her,” Samira retorts in a level voice, not turning in his direction when Jack’s head snaps her way. Her shoulders are tense, and she’s laser-focused on her friend as if Lana’s heading to a sketchy location on a blind date instead of blushing and playing with Eddie’s fingers

“Former,” he says eventually, quashing the churn of guilt that comes with the clarification. “My wife… she’s been dead for years. Eddie’s never felt like a ‘former’ anything, though.”

Samira’s shoulders slump, the tension draining from her body as she turns repentant eyes up to him. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “I didn’t mean to… I know you’re a widower, and I know and have faith in you enough to be confident you’re not that kind of man. I just- I guess I had no idea what to think when Eddie said it. You’ve… made me lose my mind, a little bit.”

The admission, hushed and almost ashamed though it is, makes a masculine pride roar awake in his chest. If he had his head on straight, if he was a better kind of man, if he hadn’t already experienced the sweet oblivion of a wet and willing Samira Mohan, he might have tried to think about the bigger picture, tried to remind himself of Samira’s youth and her promising career and the fallout of Robby and Collins’ fling.

Maybe he’s a weak man, maybe he trusts Samira to know her own mind, maybe he’s desperate to be convinced that she doesn’t regret what happened between them at all.

Perhaps that’s why he replies, just as hushed as her, “A feeling I can sympathise with, Mira.”

Their eyes lock, and a palpable heat passes between them. How could he have ever found her inscrutable, unreadable, cool- her gaze is burning, an inferno that threatens to drag him in, consume him, cocoon his being in its sweet agony.

A mischievous light enters her eyes. “You don’t have anything to be worried about, Jacky,” she teases. “I prefer my men older.”

A crinkled smirk tugs at the corner of Jack’s lips, and he lets it. “Is that so?” 

“Mmm. Wearier, greyer.”

“I see.”

“More life experience, I guess you could say.”

Jack takes a step forward, until they’re toe to toe and her head willingly tips back to look up at him. Maybe she’s dusted some sort of glitter along her collarbones, or its her own radiant glow lighting her up from within- whatever it is, it’s making Jack lose his mind .

“Comes in handy, all that experience,” he tells her, satisfaction ringing through him at the way she unsuccessfully tries to repress a full-body shiver.

“I might have benefited from it, once or twice,” she says with a slow smirk, and Jack can’t stop looking at the pouting curve of her glossy lips.

Perhaps that’s the reason he can’t remember the journey from the bar to the shadowy alley that the side entrance opens out to, Samira's hand warm in his as she wends through the crowds and exchanges a chuckled comment with the bartender who waves her on while he follows, deep in her thrall, and really, he can’t spare the mental real estate when he has Samira pressed up against the wall, devouring his mouth in drugging, endless kisses.

Jack can’t stop smoothing his hands along the lush lines of her body, just as spectacular and perfect to the touch as he fantasised about them being under her shapeless scrubs. Samira lets out approving murmurs, one of her hand buried in his curls, the other fisting his jacket as she licks filthily into his mouth in a way that makes his mind white out. 

“We can’t,” he gasps out eventually, tearing away from her, and the very same second, wondering what possessed him to do that, as he sees her dilated pupils and kiss-swollen lips and the flush of arousal spread over the top of her chest, his argument falling right out of his head as bends down to trace the shape of her collarbones with lips and teeth and tongue. “We- we need- we should-” The second try is just as unsuccessful, and he literally can’t even fathom what he thought he was going to say, transfixed by her heaving breasts and her red, red lips.

“We can.” Her voice is throaty with arousal, her eyes are open and lucid, and Jack drops a kiss on her mouth, because he can and her lips are right there and it’s what they were made for. 

“We- Samira, this is- if we get caught-”

“No one will catch us,” she says soothingly, her nails digging into her chest as she emphasises her point, and Jack focuses on their bite, uses it to drag his rational mind back to the front, attempts to center himself. She plants a kiss on his jaw as her hand comes down to palm at his straining erection, and Jack muffles a curse in her sweet-smelling, riotous curls. Her lips tease at his earlobe, and she whispers. “And besides, I really do owe you.”

Jack has never done anything like this, never even been slightly inclined to it, never able to look past the sheer riskiness of it, but when Samira’s slight hand worms inside his unzipped fly, cups his cock as she presses kisses underneath his ear, he really can’t summon up enough logic to work out why they shouldn’t. He has just enough presence of mind to try and slide his hand up her thigh- warm strong soft beautiful- but she elbows his arm aside. “This is for you,” she whispers in his ear, tracing the shape of his length over his boxers. “And besides, I can’t come standing up.”

With that bombshell lobbed, she tugs down the elastic of his boxers, and the first touch of her warm palm on his stiff cock makes all his sense evaporate. 

“ Fuck, Samira, what did I do to deserve this?” His voice is grainy, harsh, splintering under the force of the white lightning tearing through him at the firm strokes of her grip, and her kisses along his neck become frantic, sloppy, hurried. Distantly, he remembers how she’d responded to his unfiltered reactions in his car. “Your perfect body, your perfect hair, your perfect everything- how am I ever gonna get this fucking image of you in this dress out of my mind? You gotta let me see what’s under there one day, sweetheart-”

“Jack- Jack-” She’s gasping now too, no longer kissing, just breathing hot and harsh in curve of his shoulder, the motion of her hand speeding up, spreading the constant stream of pre-come up his length deftly, never altering the strength of her grip, everything as right and perfect as she is. “Come for me- I have to see you- please-”

He ducks his head to capture his mouth with hers, tries to pour his jagged breaths into her willing and chasing lips, as he feels that knot tighten in his stomach, every stroke leading him closer and closer to the precipice until they’re no longer kissing, just panting into each other’s mouths-

He detonates, and the flood of sensation wipes everything from his mind, suspends him for long, glorious moments in a sea of pleasure and sensation and bliss, and it takes a while for the soft slide of Samira’s curls against his cheek to filter back in, to register her warm and supple body pressed up against his, her heady perfume grounding him in her magical, unique way.

Her eyes are satisfied, sparkling, contented, when he finally regains controls of his faculties, and he's sure she’s never looked more beautiful. The kiss that she dusts over his mouth is tender and gossamer-soft, and it makes Jack’s heart tremor in a way that he didn’t think he’d ever experience again.

Chapter Text

Jack has a crush, and he hates it.

He’s never had one before, and he can’t believe people survive this. How can people flit from a first crush to the next, gather up the broken pieces of one and anticipate the other? The MCAT was a less torturous experience than whatever this is.

Maybe, at forty-nine, Jack’s body is simply too weathered and weary to process something that should have happened during the first flutterings of youth. He’s not sure he ever had a crush on Lainey- they grew up together; she was always there , so it could be that the shift away from a simple platonic relationship happened when he was too young to label it with the correct terminology. With Lainey though, it was more likely that they just slowly dissolved into love. 

Love- steady, dependable, a constant, flickering lantern flame, that warms and comforts and reassures.

Not this raging inferno devouring all of Jack’s good sense and logic, sparking against his skin until he wants to claw it all off, restless and tossing and turning all night.

“Damn, Abbot- you look like absolute shit,” Walsh had said amusedly a few nights previously, having come down to consult on a four car pileup that had absolutely decimated the forty year old dad’s pelvis. It had been touch and go for a while, but they’d finally managed to stabilise him so he could be wheeled up to an OR in relative ease- Jack was feeling every one of the three hours he had spent bent over the man’s hip in his own creaking spine, and had sent Walsh a flat look. “Some young hot thing keeping you up all night? Or, well- day.”

Jack was fortunate that he had been so exhausted that he didn’t even have the physical energy to be taken aback by Walsh’s alarmingly accurate assessment, which she definitely would have picked up on and enjoyed needling him about for eternity. 

Whatever it was going on between him and Samira, he didn’t want anyone at the hospital finding out for as long as they could keep it under wraps.

And there definitely was something going on. In the most tenuous sense, perhaps- they hadn’t so much as held hands in the two weeks since the filthy handjob he had received in the alley outside Cassidy’s (he still had trouble believing that it hadn't simply been a dream, not just because he had come so hard his knees had physically weakened, but because he could never have previously fathomed ever doing something so reckless, and in the days since, was struggling to meet his own gaze in the mirror) but there was something heavy and laden crackling in the air between them, sending Jack’s pulse racketing up whenever they even brushed gazes.

Because she is suddenly everywhere, where he had before only ever shared the odd shift with her before Pittfest.

“You better be taking me out for a steak dinner after this,” Jack had grumbled the previous week, when Robby had pleaded for him to cover his shift three hours before it was due to start.

Robby had looked pleadingly at him with red-rimmed, exhausted eyes. “It’s such an asshole move, I know. But Jake- he finally called me man, and I know he needs me…I have to go to him, Jack.”

And there was nothing much he could say after that. Truth be told, Jack didn’t mind too much- every other month or so, he and Robby would inverse their shifts for a week, both understanding the importance of the entire ER staff being familiar with their two attendings, so they would have built it into the next rota anyway. Jack would always prefer the night shift, but there was something to be said for clocking out to be greeted with balmy, golden evenings, in the luxuriously warm summer months.

Any third-year residents that typically worked the day shifts had no bearing on Jack’s anticipation as he strolled into the hospital that first day.

Jack isn’t sure whether his crush would have abated or intensified if he’d ever actually gotten to have any kind of meaningful interaction with Samira over that week. Hell, they didn’t have to be meaningful- he’d settle for any solo and prolonged exchange, a moment of peace in the locker rooms, just the two of them, or lingering a little bit after exiting a patient bay together.

But the day shift crew are exhaustingly clingy- or maybe it’s just that Samira had taken the interns and students under her wing, or maybe it’s that they’re naturally drawn to her warm but no-nonsense demeanour and her briskly efficient teaching style. Whatever it is, they flock after her like a row of ducklings, Shamsi’s kid and that reedy farm boy in particular- babbling away to her at the nurse’s station, eagerly scribbling down notes as she takes patient histories, bursting in to call her away from her own patients.

Actually, Jack is pretty confident his crush would have gotten so much worse if he’d had greater exposure to Samira that he already did, because these glimpses he’s gotten of her, smiling benevolently as the medical students excitedly explain the procedures they’d been roped into, calm and unflappable and adeptly asking questions when blood-soaked gurneys are rushed in, speaking patiently and compassionately to her panicking patients until they themselves calm, equilibrated and eased by her warm professionalism.

It’s so dangerous, for Jack to see how good she is at her job.

“Great kid, huh?” Dana says to him one day, seeing him watch the grateful and blubbering parents of a twelve year who’d gotten his leg mangled in a freak cycling accident shower a blushing Mohan with praise and effusive thanks.

Jack is too busy enjoying the pink flush of her cheeks over his monitor, so similar to the colour that steals over her face when she moans during climax, to both realise he hasn’t been as discreet as he’d thought in his ogling, and that Dana has said something to him.

“Very talented doctor,” he manages eventually, and Dana lets out a chuff of amusement. 

“You better be planning to keep a hold of her,” she says sternly, peering at him over the rims of her specs, “because that kid can do a lot of good here. She’s perfect for the research fellowship, and given the demographic of patients that we get, we’d be perfect for her. Be a shame if UPMC snapped her up.”

“I’d burn down every last one of their branches myself,” Jack says, and he knows he delivered that with too much seriousness, but Dana hums approvingly. Samira is gingerly patting the back of the woman weeping and snotting into her neck, and her gaze flits over to Jack, who can’t help smirking at her and raising a brow. She blushes an pleasingly deeper pink as her eyes dart away, and Jack feels a thrum of satisfaction, completely unaware of Dana’s gaze flitting between them.

“As long as it’s for the right reasons,” she says, smiling blithely when Jack frowns at her.

The crush might have petered out, lessened in its intensity, dissolved into nothing but sweet memory under the onslaught of cases and their busy working lives bursting at the seams with colleagues and patients constantly trailing them, if it hadn’t been for the hundred moments like that. 

Looking up to orient himself around her movements, only to catch her gaze fixed on him already, eyes glittering and intense.

The heated way she looks at him, unabashedly hungry in a way that has nothing to do with what he is trying to teach, as they array themselves around a comatose patient.

The way she stands a smudge too close to him whenever they’re packed together in a huddle, swaying imperceptibly into him when he places a hand on her back that doesn’t really need to be there whenever he moves past her.

Jack has never claimed to be a nice guy- he’s sure there’s some kind of divine reckoning waiting for him for everything he saw and did on tour,  and also once you’ve clawed your way out of deep depressive pit and back from the literal edge of a highrise and gotten over the loss of both a beloved spouse and a just as beloved limb… you don’t really have the capacity for over moralising or self-flagellation or pussy footing around. All that to say that he’s made his peace with fucking Mohan- he can’t bring himself to feel guilt about it, especially when she’s just as on board as he is.

He can pretend it’s because he respects her autonomy and freedom of choice as an adult, and he trusts that someone as level-headed and smart as she is has thoroughly considered any repercussions that may arise from them being found out and decided it was worth it. 

But mostly, it’s because he hasn’t actually fucked her yet, and his right hand has been getting a thorough workout as he considers, at length and during long showers, how unfair that is.

The other thing about having a crush- Jack seems to have reverted to historical levels of horniness, ones he had thought he had left behind with the development of his frontal lobe. 

Apparently not, if the mild yet persistent ache in his right wrist is to be believed.

Jack usually enjoys and is content with his highly regimented days off- he’s out of the door by six in the morning, taking advantage of the desolate gym to give most of the machines in it a thorough workout, then reaching the bakery a few streets over from his place when they’ve been open for a bit and put out their hazelnut pain au chocolats.

Today though, he hasn’t been able to exorcise his restlessness, even after an extra thirty minutes of calisthenics. That, and the fact that the sun is bright and white, with a stronger than mild breeze that feels excellent on his sweat dampened hairline, means he takes a circuitous and brisk detour through Frick Park, which deposits him in a side of town that he rarely frequents, but seems oddly familiar.

He dropped Mohan here, he remembers suddenly, as he joins the line outside of a cute looking cafe, with bright satin furnishings and ornately carved wooden screens and benches. There is a sweet, spiced scent heavy in the air, which is what must be responsible for the jogged memory- he has smelt it coming out of Mohan’s travel mug, over which she has surveyed him with bright eyes in the locker room many times over the past week.

When he shifts slightly to the side after placing his order- masala chai and a pistachio and rose croissant that the peppy barista promised him he’d love- he thinks that he’s losing his mind, the aroma of spices masking some kind of hallucinogen that’s making him see things.

Because Samira Mohan is sitting at a table on the side, watching him with amusement.

He has time, between collecting his paper bag and cup, and edging through the crowds towards her, to put two and two together- she’s in workout gear, sinfully tight leggings and a sports bra underneath a flimsy mesh shirt; curls escaping her scraped back hair around her face, lengthened and weighted down by sweat. The cafe is near her place, she has the day off- happenstance and his blessed, blessed luck had drawn him to her usual post-workout haunt.

“Fancy seeing you in this neck of the woods,” she says teasingly, as he draws out the seat opposite her. She’s dewy with perspiration, the neck of her shirt damp and sliding off one shoulder, and Jack tries to stifle the burning desire to lick by taking a bite out of his croissant, which lives up to the hype but is still only the second most delicious thing in the room. 

“I’ll start coming here more often,” he says, taking a sip of the beautifully aromatic chai.

“Oh?” Her eyes are gleaming, tracing a slow, meandering path from his hands, up his forearms, lingering on his throat before reaching his own.

Jack waits a beat. “This a damn good croissant, after all.”

She snorts a laugh, and Jack feels like he can float at the certainty of their attraction that’s evident in it, her teasing confidence and her heavy gaze that strokes over his skin like her touch.

“Dr Abbot’s got a sweet tooth, who would have thought it,” she smirks. “You always struck me as a black coffee and overnight oats kinda guy.”

Jack sighs, daring to stretch out his legs so that they brush along hers, a thrill going through him at her not shifting away from the blatant contact. “Despite me making use of every bit of my gym membership, the bakery near my place is solely responsible for my lack of muscle definition.”

He sees her swallow, her tongue dart out to swipe at a crumb on her bottom lip. “Well, you’re welcome to visit Andaaz whenever you feel like switching it up,” she murmurs. “You should try the kashmiri chai next time- it’s my favourite.”

So that’s what that luscious smell that often surrounds her is. “Noted.”

There’s a laden pause as they pick at their pastries, their gazes heavy on each other. Jack feels that awful scratching sensation underneath his skin once more, a tight twisting in his stomach and an effervescence bubbling through his blood, but this time he luxuriates in it, in the comforting weight of her shin nestled against his, in her curls gilded lovingly by the sun and her dilated pupils that keep being drawn to his mouth.

She props her elbows on the table, leans forward, asks briskly, “Don’t suppose you’re interested in a second opinion on that muscle definition?”

Despite everything, despite the certainty of where this cafe encounter is going to go, despite everything he knows about Samira Mohan and the kind of no-bullshit person she is, Jack can’t help the jolt of surprise that goes through him. He knows she’s attracted to him and that she doesn’t care about hiding it, not shying away from their filthy and hurried interludes, facing them and him with a bold gaze that burns with something fiery and threatens to consume him in the inferno. He feels furiously offended on her behalf about the inane nickname coined for her by someone in the ER who clearly has no idea who she really is 

It’s this damned crush, that’s rewired his synapses and fucked with his brain and thrown him back into the body of a giddy teenager who has to focus on thoughts of his grandmother’s wizened face when a cute girl smiles at him. He’s forgotten that this silly, infuriating, debilitating feeling has a recipient that is aware of it, and is clever and wonderful and doesn’t beat around the bush and is more than willing to do something about it.

Jack lets a genuine smile steal across his face, a smile that Mohan matches in a way that makes something melt in his chest.

He’s not really aware of the short walk to her apartment, deathly aware of the sweet scent of chai that clings to her somehow, the comforting weight of her arm brushing against his. The sigh of her pert ass as they climb the flight of stairs to her place makes his brain short out, and you lucky lucky lucky bastard is beating a tattoo through his thoughts, obliterating everything in its path, as she leads him into her entryway, dropping her keys in a bowl to the side before fixing him with a devious grin. 

They’re on each other then- Jack can’t hold back the sigh of relief at the shape of her lips on his, again, finally , and instead pours it into her mouth as her fingers twist in his hair and his hands yank her hips into his.

“Fuck- Jack your hair should be fucking illegal,” she pants, breaking away to nip at his jaw, bite her way up to his earlobe. “Couldn’t stop fucking staring at it all week- thought I was dreaming when you walked in all sweaty and sexy.”

Jack grunts his amusement, flinging away the clip in her own hair so he can bury his hands in its mass, guide his mouth back to hers. “You can fucking talk,” he murmurs into it, their kisses turning uncoordinated and wet and panting and perfect. “HR would resign if they knew all the things I thought about doing to you every time you came anywhere near me last week.”

She manages to pull back and raise an eyebrow- her eyes are pools of obsidian, her lips are red and wet, her hair is an uncontrolled explosion of curls and she is breathtaking. “Lucky for you I’m not HR.” Her hands smooth down his front, the heel of her hand pressing into his aching erection. “Tell me.”

Jack bites back a moan, batting away her hands so he can mould her body to his. “Easier to show you,” he says in a ragged voice, backing her into her lounge so he can push her down onto the nearest seat.

She looms above him, her eyes darkening even further somehow as he stays crouched on the floor, his hands smoothing up the thighs that automatically part for him as he shimmies down the waistband of her leggings. “Fuck, yes,” she breathes, and Jack is so turned on by her complete confidence in her body and her desires that he has to take a deep breath to center himself.

Not that it works, because with her splayed legs, he can smell her, the rich scent of her sopping cunt, and the sliver of control leashing Jack snaps as he yanks her underwear down with no finesse, taking only a second to appreciate her slick, pink folds before he devours her.

The shivery whines she lets out, the soft velvet of her inner thighs clamping around his head as he works her over, the smell that Jack has been fantasising about for days that feel like months, her wetness on his chin and his nose and across his mouth and the taste that is sweeter and better than anything he could have expected- eating out Samira Mohan is a banquet for Jack’s senses, and when he chances a glance up to see that she’s wrestled her shirt and bra off, presenting the lithe and bronze shape of her body and her magnificently shaped tits, Jack swears into her cunt which makes her shout and makes his cock ache so much he has to grip it for relief, which really, is just the beginning of the end.

Samira’s body is a tight, taut line as she bows up in a magnificent curve, her mouth wide open and her features blissful as her release pours out of her and into Jack’s mouth. Her breathy sighs and murmurs of his name and the thought of getting to taste those pebbled brown nipples mean it doesn’t take many more passes of his hand before his own climax barrels into him, his cock jerking as he muffles his curses into her thigh, a cleansing sort of fire raging through him as he slowly returns to earth, Samira’s nails softly scraping his scalp guiding him back to the here and now, where the girl he can’t stop thinking about is naked before him, her wetness all over his face, smiling lazily down at him before bending to capture his mouth with her own.

“You got anything more for me, old man?” she whispers teasingly, her hand trailing down his chest to ghost her fingers over his cock, which somehow manages to stir with interest.

He lunges up to tumble her back onto the couch, her delighted squeal of laughter making him grin giddily as she squirms in his arms, and as they press their smiles into each other’s mouths, Jack falls just that little bit more. 

Chapter Text

There are very few silver linings to being a veteran widower with no family in immediate proximity, but the assumption that Jack is a curmudgeonly recluse is one that generally benefits him.

He could be offended by it, if he chose- Jack wouldn’t classify himself as anti-social, or withdrawn, or severely introverted, but his coworkers’ presumption that he doesn’t care much for socialising is not a drain on him. Jack enjoys being around people- well, ones that he knows and likes at least- and he’s adept at striking up conversation with strangers if he is forced to, even  charming them like when he is trotted out every other year or so at fundraising galas for the  hospital. A doctor has to have social skills, and whilst his bedside manner has certainly come a far way from when he was a green and eager medical student, he’s always been comfortable  enough in a crowd. He doesn’t always need to be in the thick of the conversation, the life of the party, the biggest and most boisterous attention-puller; he actually enjoys the happy hum of conversation washing over him, letting him observe and catalogue in silence.

But… he does prefer his own company, prefers solitude when he can get it, starts to wince and feel crankiness descending upon him like a thick blanket draped over his shoulder when a crowd starts to get rowdier and drunker.

Which is why it’s a very good thing that Robby is the head honcho of the emergency department, so that the onus of throwing a summer social for all the staff doesn’t fall on a lowly night-shift attending like himself.

“You bitch about it every year, man,” Jack had said to him at the brilliantly-lit early hour of six a.m., when Robby, red-faced and bleary-eyed, opened the door to receive the two ice chests he had begged Jack to scrounge out of his garage, calling him just as he’d literally just pulled into his driveway. Robby was cursing and wrestling with folded garden chairs that had to be forced open and hose washed to remove the crust of dust; Jack eventually took pity on him and helped him spread them out in a sunny patch in Robby’s lawn so they’d be able to dry by midday. “Just take everyone down to the bar, open a tab- give them a bit of extra cash so they can put out corndogs and shit- I guarantee you it’s less hassle than all this, and everyone might actually prefer it.”

“Gotta do something for the families,” Robby had grunted, losing a fight with a monstera-printed chair that was determined to keep its jaws clamped shut around his forearm. “Something wholesome and in the sun where everyone gets to know each other better.”

Jack can’t really argue with this. He remembers when he and Robby were fresh-faced and over-eager medical students, almost fidgeting and jittery with nerves and excitement at their first foray into an actual hospital, a far cry from the cavernous lecturing theatres of UT Southwestern and the grimly lit cadaver labs and thick anatomy textbooks that you could brain an intruder with. The hospital, a non-descript, limewashed storey of departments in downtown Plano, through an unfortunate cocktail of tight funding and poor retention of senior management and physicians, had been an almost oppressively grim place to work, beyond the wailing of bereaved mothers on Robby’s rotation in peds and Jack’s own tense and bewildering time in ICU. Jack still recalled how the department attending, a skeletal and gaunt octogenarian called Dr Montgomery, who seemed like he had had all the joy sucked out of him alongside his body fat, would bark criticisms at him in lieu of any proper teaching, and had no compunction in brusquely taking over when he felt he was doing a sub-par job taking patient histories.

Robby was no ray of sunshine, but he was level-headed, lavish with his praise when it was needed, firm but fair with his criticism. The most important thing was that he always went to bat for his staff, whether it was locking horns with Underwood or turfing out McKay’s asshole ex or calling security on the bigots the previous day who’d harassed Perlah. Even if he didn’t, on top of that, know the names of the custodians who didn’t come in more than once a week, and greet any of the staff’s family members with a weary but still genuine warmth, and insist on hosting everyone at his place every summer, complete with spouses and partners and children, he would always have the uncompromising loyalty of the entirety of the ER the way they had his.

Still, it seems to Jack that there surely had to be other events that Robby could host that didn’t lead to Princess and Langdon bodily fighting over the Bluetooth speaker and sticky syrup-like puddles of spilled lemonade and melted ice pops on the driveway that must have been a Mardi Gras for the blow flies and six hundred packets of beef burgers and veggie burgers and halal burgers and gluten-free burger buns to cater to the wide gamut of everyone’s dietary needs.

He’s not sure what exactly, but blessedly, it’s not his job to come up with it.

Jack pulls up at Robby’s at noon on the dot- the side entrance is unlocked and the spacious backyard is pristinely arrayed and devoid of life. It will begin to fill up within half an hour, and it’ll be chaos when it does- every year, Jack comes bang on time and shoulders the arduous responsibility of the grill so that no one can decry him when he says his goodbyes ninety minutes later. It helps that Robby’s monstrous, gleaming barbeque is set in a nice semi-permanent station in the corner- traffic is controlled, over-active children are far away, and he doesn’t really have to speak to anyone he doesn’t have to.

“One of these days,” Robby says, depositing a crate packed with ice and burger patties next to him with a grunt, “I will fight you for the prestigious role of King of the Grill.”

Jack smirks. “Until that day comes, you can flit around filling everyone’s glasses in between mixing punch and making eyes at Collins.”

The sun begins its onerous hike across the sky; the afternoon is warm and humid, and Jack’s glad he runs cold because the ice creams that Dana and Collins are carving out and distributing from a mountain of soft-scoop tubs are dripping down the kids’ shirt fronts and the ice is melting fast, be it in people’s cups of soda or trying, unsuccessfully, to cool down all the raw burgers under Jack’s purview. There’s a soft-voiced girl crooning through the speakers with an acoustic guitar, the children screaming as they wave bubble wands sound more delighted than demonic, and Jack’s Corona is deliciously cool in the shaded enclosure of hotdog buns he’s built around it.

“Nice apron, Abbot,” Mellie says, and Jack graciously inclines his head even as her eyes track the rippling six-pack printed in all its slightly pixelated glory on the cotton in a blatantly performative way that her mirrored sunglasses don’t hide. Dana snorts out loud at her night-shift mirror’s antics. “Is it a preview for the real deal?”

“More of a throwback to his glory days,” Robby says, coming up behind the two women, a girl with Langdon’s distinctive blue eyes squealing with delight from where she’s slung over his shoulders. Robby lets her squirrel her way down to the ground, where she runs off to where Mel King and presumably her sister are carefully and seriously explaining proper ladybug handling etiquette to a huddle of wide-eyed children. “Don’t be fooled by the biceps and the leather jacked- it’s all paunch under those polos.”

“Leather jacket, Abbott?” Dana says delightedly. “You been holding out on us?”

“Can’t have all you ladies swooning,” Jack says drily.

“If only we had medical professionals in close proximity who could do something about it,” Robby says, and if he’s quipping and letting kids use him as a jungle gym and taking up another pair of tongs to prod at the hotdogs, he must be in a good mood.

Jack grumbles and swats him as he pokes at the burgers he’d just flipped. “Take your six-pack to the fridge and get some more cheese slices- leave the grilling to us burger experts, okay?”

“Honey, have you seen how many sugars this man takes in his coffee and how regularly?” Dana cackles. “If you turn off the lights and squint, you might see a two-pack.”

“More like if you layer him in hoodies and then turn the opposite way,”  someone says, and Jack looks over his shoulder to see a slightly smirking Dr Collins and- his stomach swoops, not unpleasantly- Dr Mohan.

Collins is in a floral blouse and denim cut-offs, and he has to focus on her, because Samira is wearing a sundress, a floaty, gauzy thing that comes down to just above her knees but is only held up with the merest suggestion of straps, tied up in bows he wants to pull open with his teeth- her gleaming arms and elegantly sculpted collarbones and smooth arms and the warm yellow colour of the dress make it look like she’s bathed in sunlight. She’s laughing at Collins and Robby and not looking at him, and Dana and Mellie’s  gazes are bouncing delightedly between Robby and Collins and the heavy way they’re watching each other, and yet it’s still safer for Jack to turn back to the grill and to cross-examining the same burgers he'd chased Robby away from.

"You never saw me in my hey day, so I'll let it slide this once," Robby tells them, or, well, Collins, and his jaunty mood suddenly makes a lot of sense. "Jack did- come on, back me up."

"Not after your attack on my muscle definition," Jack says, trying to sound airy, and very glad that there's no risk of eye contact with Samira.

"Knocked it out of the park as usual, Robby," he hears her say, in a valiant attempt to change the subject. "I know you're not the type to give everyone arrival slots, but it's amazing how well the flow of people is managed."

"No one would stick to them even if he did, hon," Mellie snorts. "But Robby's Annual Summer Bash is a long-standing enough tradition that it basically runs itself."

"I won't have you talk down on all my effort like that," Robby says, and Jack turns around with a tray of steaming and fat-dripping patties to see him brandishing a solo cup threateningly at the women. "Takes a lot of blood and sweat to get it running this smoothly, not to mention my co-pilot's manning of the grill."

"I'm sure Dr Abbot's happy to have a reason to sequester himself away in this corner," Dana says, her eyes twinkling. "All you have to do is make sure nothing burns and people only come up to bother you if your output's flagging."

Jack raises his shoulders in a shrug as he sets about assembling the burgers. "You say that like you don't remember the chaos the year Eddie was in town and decided to add carne asada to the menu," he says, moving on autopilot as he layers hamburger, ketchup, pickles, burger sauce, bun.

"That was something," Robby laughs. "Marinade burning on my grill, pounds of half-charred, half-raw beef on every surface, and Eddie down the other end of the garden flirting with Princess with my entire kitchen a mess."

"He ran the kids' games like army boot camp," Dana says fondly. "Hadn't had a moment to myself the entire evening, and then he took Sunny and Leo off my hands and I could finally enjoy my drink in peace."

"Eddie was fun," smiles Collins. "You should have invited him this year too! What's he up to these days, Jack?"

"Still park ranging at Shenandoah," Jack says, slipping the burgers onto paper plates and sliding them out. "He's doing well, and he loves it- we see each other every month or so, I go to Virginia or he comes here. Here, Dr Mohan." He hands Samira the veggie burger, unable to resist brushing his fingertips past hers- her gaze, when he meets it, is warm and pleased in a way that makes him feel hot and prickly. Her hair is pulled back into a low bun, with loose curls falling out from it that sweep against the exposed and elegant line of her neck in a way that makes Jack, who doesn't have an artistic bone in his body, want to sketch her.

"Man, I haven't seen him in a while," Robby says wistfully. "He's always a good time- just wish he came up more."

"He said he'll be back the weekend after Fourth of July," Samira says casually, and then her head twitches up from where she's examining her burger, wide-eyed as she realises what she's said.

"Eddie?" Robby says, letting out a confused laugh. "Eddie Alamillo? Jack's brother-in-law? Where did you bump into him?"

"Dr Mohan happened to be in Cassidy's a few weeks back when Eddie frog-marched me out for a drink," Jack puts in, when Samira's deer-in-headlights expression doesn't abate for long seconds and Robby's brow begins to furrow and Dana begins to look speculative. He's glad that his voice is steady and his eyes are relaxed when his gaze returns to Samira, raising his eyebrows in a way that makes the tension in her shoulder's visibly dissolve. "I don't need to tell you that Eddie and her immediately hit it off."

"Oh no," Mellie laughs. "Careful, kid. That's a boy that knows he's handsome and that he can get away with all kinds of bad behaviour."

"Doe-eyed asshole," Robby says, and his voice is light but his eyes are slightly suspicious as they bounce between Jack and Samira, who is now utterly engrossed in the eating of her veggie burger as if it's a fascinatingly detailed tomography image and not a bread-crumbed sweetcorn, carrot and mozzarella patty.

"Eddie enjoyed a lovely evening with one of my friends," Samira says, a self-conscious giggle escaping her. "I promise you, he wasn't missing me at all."

Dana claps her hands together. "Plenty more where that came from, kid. You're young! Enjoy yourself, live a little!"

"If I hadn't heard such horrendous things from all my friends who've tried, I'd counsel getting on the apps," Collins says, nudging Samira with her elbow. "This is the time to explore, and enjoy yourself."

"Carefully and responsibly," Robby interjects, to a chorus of moans and booing from the female ensemble.

"I'm gonna get some cheese," Jack says, to absolutely no one, and turns and strides into the kitchen before he can hear if anyone says something. His heart is pounding in his ears, which must be the weather, the combination of the bright midday heat and the fug from the grill. The kitchen is blessedly cool and silent, and he rests his forehead against the cold metal of the fridge, propping his knee up against it. Robby makes sure to keep a chair by the grill for him, and he's not so macho that he feels he has to be standing at all times, flipping burgers one-handed whilst guzzling beer- he listens to his body and makes sure that he sits down when his leg begins to twinge, but wearing the prosthetic is never comfortable, and the cool sensation even through his cargos is better than a massage.

"So, you know the cheese is inside there," comes Samira's voice; he lets his head loll to the side so he can see her standing in front of Robby's kitchen island, all amused eyes and escaping curls and tanned legs and beautiful, and there's really nothing else to do except to push away from the fridge, cross over to her in two large strides, mould her body to his and lower his mouth to hers, finally.

Her lipgloss is sweet, but not as sweet as her mouth when she finally moans, letting him lick into it, the familiar shape and taste of it making something click, a rightness that feels better than even the inferno of arousal that's wrapping around him.   He winds one arm around her body, the shape of her waist underneath the thin fabric maddening in its temptation; the other stealing into her hair, unable to find proper purchase, making him growl his frustration and her huff laughter.

Samira pulls away; her lips are red from his, her eyes are shimmering and open and beautiful, fringed with long, sooty lashes. "Fuck, Jack," she breathes, one hand coming up to rake through his curls, the other pressed against his chest, right over his heart. "I didn't know you grilling was going to do it for me."

The laughter that escapes him is uncontrolled, genuine, surprised; he drops his head into the crook of her neck for a brief second to hide it from her. "You had to know what this tiny sundress was going to do for me, though," he says, and he didn't even know his voice could drop to a register so gravelly.

She bites her lip in a way that makes Jack want to do the same, so he does, because he can, and she presses him back with a devious little smirk, rolling up into her tiptoes so that her smoky voice washes right over his ear. "You haven't even seen what I'm not wearing under this."

Jack can't really say confidently and with surety what exactly happened next- his mind whites out, consumed with images of flipping up her skirt to bury his mouth between her legs, tugging down the modest neckline so he can worry her nipples with his fingers whilst he inhales the sweet smelling cloud of her hair, the idea of her turning up to Robby's barbeque with all their colleagues sans underwear with a very conscious and purposeful end result in mind.

All he knows is he's kissing her ferociously, sandwiching the lean planes of her body with his own and the locked door of Robby's downstairs bathroom, both hands holding her face still so he can slant her mouth at the right angle to devour her. He feels almost feral with lust, an animalistic impulse to just rut against her seizing control of his entire being, so he does just that, grinding into her impossible softness so that she whines.

"Fuck, Samira- you gotta be quiet, baby," he whispers, breathing raggedly into her mouth, and her pupils are completely dilated, endlessly dark pools when she nods jerkily, but she's breathing harshly, and clamps her eyes shut when he slowly descends onto his haunches, taking her hem into his hands as he strokes along her smooth, silky thighs.

When his gaze finally drops to the pale pink cotton of her panties, he can't help the curse that escapes at the sight of the visible dark patch. "All this for me, Samira?" he bites out, and he can't even be disappointed at her wearing underwear when the clear and visible evidence of her arousal is an inch from his mouth, so he doesn't wait for a response or to take the time to pull them down- he tugs the crotch to one side drags his tongue in a long, hard lick.

"Jack, Jack, Jack… fuck." Her chanting is low, guttural; he pulls back, exploring her flushed and soaked folds with his middle finger so he can look up at her, only to see her heavy lidded gaze and heaving chest as she watches him, one hand massaging her breast over the bodice.

"Is that what you like, Samira?" He punctuates the question with a kiss just shy of where her clit is, and in response, she hooks a leg over his shoulder, tries to draw him in closer with a bitten-off growl. His knee is beginning to pulse, but Samira Mohan's wetness is on his lips and really, one of those things is much more important than the other. "Go on baby, show me how you like to play with your tits."

He sees her clench at his words, and the sight is too much- his mouth gets to work again, interspersing licks along the length of her with gentle circling of her entrance with his index finger and rapid rotations around her clit, her whimpers above him driving him on, and on, and on-

"Jack, stop- Jack please… I need you-" Insistent hands are yanking at his hair, and Jack sees that the neckline of her dress has been pushed to below her breasts, propping the modest handfuls up obscenely, and he shoots to his feet so quickly that even if his leg hadn't made its protestations known, he might have gotten a head rush.

As it is, he bites out a "Fuck!" as he stumbles, his weight dropping onto her; she lets out a soft shriek as the pit of her knee gets caught in the crook of his elbow from where her leg was on his shoulder- they wobble, knock over the metal toilet roll holder, and then freeze in their absurd tableau, straining to hear as it clatters noisily to the floor.

"Oh my God, Jack," Samira finally giggles, trying to wriggle away from him when they don't hear Dana marching over to bang on the door, and Jack's laughing too, genuinely and openly in a way he doesn't remember doing mid-coitus maybe ever, as she drops to her feet and looks up at him with shining, happy eyes-

The kiss he drops onto her lips is tender, reverential; her mouth is smiling under his, the hard points of her nipples pressing into his chest as she loops her arms around his neck, and somehow this sweet and gentle moment heats and turns ravenous in moments, their mouths turning graceless and sloppy and uncoordinated.

"I need you- Jack- please, in me-"

He struggles to parse through the haze, the consuming lust that demands he bury himself in her wet and welcoming heat- "I don't have a condom."

Her head jerks back and she's glaring. "What?"

"I'm not twenty-four and assuming I'm gonna get lucky everywhere I go!" he says defensively.

"Well, start assuming," she says fiercely, and he doesn't even have a moment to process what that means because her next words are, "I'm clean."

"I- you… what?"

"I'm clean," she repeats impatiently, her gaze determined and almost feverished, "and I haven't been with anyone in months."

"I, um… same." It's honestly amazing that he can string together even monosyllables.

"Well then," Samira says, smugness re-entering her eyes as she props her weight more heavily against the door, her bluntly shaped and beautiful fingernails coming up to caress one of her own nipples.

And they're right back in the moment, as Jack battens away her hand to do the honours himself, watching Samira toss back her head so it thuds, cataloguing her response to speed and pressure and harshness-

One of her hands has sneaked down to his straining erection, and the firm, assured way she palms it over his pants makes him bite not ungently at the curve of her shoulder.

Jack might actually leave Robby's and try and slaughter a lamb as an offering to Apollo or some shit- the bone deep gratitude he feels towards the sun and the warm Pittsburgh summer and just the inventor of the sundress who had to know how sexy it was to ruck up its skirt and instantly be able to bury oneself inside a willing and panting woman-

He wouldn't have cared one bit if she'd insisted he wear a condom, but fuck, it has been literal years since he last had unprotected sex, and the sensation of her warm and pulsing and clinging and snug walls means he can't even draw out once before he has to nestle his face in her neck, breathe in the scent of her coconut shampoo and her spicy perfume and her faint hint of sweat, and God, it's really not helping him not spill into her in a single stroke like he's seventeen again.

She's impatient, her hips grinding into him restlessly, his name a whimpered litany in his ears, and he has to move, withdrawing and pushing back hard into her so that she lets out an airless squeak, but she's clamped down onto him so he knows she's not hurt-

Instinct, base and savage and primordial, is firmly in the driver's seat- his hips are working into her relentlessly, a fierce and driving rhythm, all aches and pains and twinging knees a far and distant memory as he mouths sloppily just under her ear where her scent has collected. He brings a thumb down between them, circling her clit and making her mewl her approval, but as white-hot pleasure chases him higher and higher, consuming in his intensity, he loses all finesse, his hand stilling as euphoria wipes through his mind, electric and all-powerful.

Jack begins to register, as he slowly spirals down from the dizzying heights of pleasure, Samira's nails lightly scratching his scalp doing their hardest to prolong his descent, that Samira is still throbbing and hot around him-

"Fuck," he says, pulling his head back so that her hand drops and her eyes, still blown and pulsing with desire, shoot up to his. "You didn't- you said you can't come standing up-"

"Jack- hey, hey." Her hand against his cheek is soothing, and Jack doesn't even care that much that she's petting him, trying to calm him down, because it's working, and working spectacularly. "I promise, I still felt good. You didn’t do anything I didn't want."

If Samira's handed shifted even slightly to the side and down, he knows she'd be able to feel his rabbit-fast pulse thrumming at the edge of her palm, as he stares down at this maddeningly beautiful, perfect woman, her gaze open and content and somehow replete-

"Come on," he says, pulling out of her with a wince, pulling away from the alien shape of the emotion that is lurking over him, unfamiliar after such a long time. "Make your excuses, come on."

"What?"

"We're leaving, and I'm gonna follow you to your flat, where we will make ample and repeated use of every horizontal surface you have." She looks so lovely, her gaze a bit bewildered, her hair askew and beginning to frizz from the friction of rubbing against the door, the soft brown edge of her areola still peeking out from where her bodice has spring back into place, and Jack wants to say fuck it and lay her out on the floor of Robby's downstairs toilet and make her come so hard she speaks tongues, but instead he says, "Five minutes, and then I'll be right out after you."

Her gaze is sparkling- his clever, quick, adaptable girl, and she says, "You think you can escape Dana's clutches in five minutes?"

"She doesn't know what I have waiting for me," he says, and he likes when Samira Mohan blushes at him telling her how sweet her cunt tastes, but, he realises, he likes it even more when she blushes at him saying how much he likes her, this tender feeling unfurling in his chest that he carefully cups his hands around and watches bloom.

Chapter Text

It's been two months, and they keep fucking.

Jack's never been particularly… consumed by the idea of sex. He remembers those early, halcyon, sun-drenched days with Lainie, fumbling around under her t-shirt, her hands tentative down his shorts, both of them giggling and snorting into each other's mouths, the laughter slowly evolving into gasps and pants as they began to learn each other's bodies. For years, she was the only woman he had ever touched, the only woman he had ever wanted to touch- after she'd died, he'd emerged from his depressed, grieving funk with just enough libido to still be able to recognise himself, but it wasn't anything he'd particularly missed. Sex with Lainie had been fantastic- they'd learnt what made the other person tick together, puzzling it out in real time, so by the time they'd finally moved into their own place together and been able to have as much sex as they liked and wherever they wanted to, it was liking giving a thoroughbred stallion his head. Jack has very fond memories of their first weekend in their first apartment, tiny and pokey but all theirs, and the way they had emerged from it with matching limps, having made creative and regular use of every (not that there were many) surface available to them.

Since then, there's been the odd encounter with a surgeon or specialist from the West Coast at galas and conferences, but it's felt more like maintenance than anything- reassurance that he still has some semblance of a sex drive and that all parts are in working order, confirmation that he can pass off having processed the death of his childhood sweetheart and the first and only woman he had loved in a somewhat healthy manner.

It feels disloyal and a bit yucky to compare this with that, but Jack's tentatively prodded at the idea enough to acknowledge that with Lainie, there was security and commitment and compatibility and the knowing, the having grown up together, the seeing her with every awkward haircut and every zit breakout and every boyband hyperfixation (he wishes he didn't remember as many Backstreet Boys tracks as he does).

With Samira, there's none of that, and maybe why Jack's losing his fucking mind.

It feels, he mused one time, trying to distract himself from the hot silken squeeze of her cunt so that he didn't embarrass himself and come inside her instantly, when she'd manhandled him onto her couch and pulled down her scrub pants with very little ceremony within moments of stepping into her apartment after returning from a shift together, like being on an autobahn. He, Robby, and a few of their other friends from home, had done a trans-Europe boys trip the summer before starting med school. Jack wasn't particularly into cars, but their friend Carl, who now had his own auto repair shop in Plano, had cajoled and begged them into renting a shoe-box manual-drive Nissan for the drive south to Zurich rather than taking a sleeper train. The smeared, green-grey blur of the scenery, the unholy way the little tinpot flew down the yawning highway, the way Jack's heartbeat pounded in his ears as Carl whooped and Robby cursed and Abdul screamed as they tore through southern Germany in a way Jack's little American brain couldn't believe was legal, the certainty that they'd die before they even reached Switzerland- none of it was enough to lessen the adrenaline thrumming through him, that primal ecstasy that came from facing your own mortality and thumbing your nose at it.

(It didn't work. She'd wrestled her top off mid-bounce and the sight of her sweat-sheened cleavage in a black bralette had absolutely done it for him. Samira had luckily been very understanding about it, and had fingered herself to completion on his lap whilst he worshipped her nipples. All in all, it had turned out OK.)

There's a recklessness to it, is what Jack's trying to get at. They haven't ever really properly talked about what this is. Some things are quite obvious- they absolutely don't want to become gossip fodder, so no one at work can find out, nor do they want to be pulled up in front of HR or side-eyed any time they work the same shift, so they have to be careful at the Pitt. Under no fucking circumstances is Robby allowed to find out- Jack's a big boy and more than capable of handling Michael Robinavitch on a rampage and, crucially, picked up the pieces post Heather Collins, but, still. It would rather put a damper on things.

And they are very much on the same page that they enjoy having a lot of frantic sex together, so there's that.

It just feels so good, which is the thing that's giving Jack pause. Jack's not a young man, and he considers himself pretty sensible and level-headed, but when Samira Mohan is shrugging off her hood and giving him a sly smile when she walks into Andaaz and sees him nursing a cardammom bun and pretending to not watch the door, or pulling out an ear bud and slowing down when she sees him jogging (his path now conveniently re-routed to cross with hers) and acting like he's not ogling her Lycra clad body and bared midriff, or making eyes at him from the nurses station when they're both supposed to be working, goddammit… well, he can't help corralling her somewhere enclosed in four walls as soon as physically possible, and debauching her as much as time and decency and their patients will allow.

Having more of her, just as willing and frantic and on-board as he is, is not sating him the way logic demands it should. They're hooking up several times a week- Ellis has been called for jury duty, of all things, for an indeterminate length of time, which means Samira and Collins are picking up the slack on the night shift, so he usually drives to her place, following behind an appropriate thirty minutes later, being happily pulled straight into her bed. When they're working opposite shifts, he uncharacteristically clocks out with punctuality and detours to Schenley Park on his way home, where he knows she'll be on her morning run, pretending her bashful smile when she sees him doesn't turn his fucking insides out, happy to just make out like teenagers before driving home with a grin on his face that he can't stifle. On their rare days off together, he runs errands and calls his mom and goes fishing, keeping his phone determinedly in his pocket, like the bzzz denoting a message from her doesn't make his cock twitch in a Pavlovian response or make him drop everything and drive just barely at the speed limit to her apartment where they fuck most of the day away.

On the surface, everything is going amazingly, and that's why Jack doesn't know what to think.

He does know that she's quite happy to have him as a regular hookup, and he's now come inside her enough times to say with certainty that she's not seeing anyone else.

He does know that she's quite into him- she's obsessed with his hair, raking her fingers through his curls at every opportunity she gets, stroking his scalp in a way that, Jack isn't ashamed to admit, almost makes him purr; she's usually obscenely drenched already when he first touches her; she makes enough teasing jokes about his physique that he knows just couch her admiration of his fitness- and isn't that a fucking balm for his ego, that his stunningly beautiful and scarily talented and devastatingly younger colleague is just as enamoured of his graying and decrepit ass?

He does know things about her, because they're not animals in heat who don't talk at all- she tells him about the French cooking lessons she's taking on Masterclass  and her hunt to find the perfect running shoe with the exact right amount of arch support and the way Lana still asks heavy-handed questions about whether she's in touch with Eddie. They talk about a million small things, but never about them.

Jack doesn't need to put a ring on it, for Christ's sake, and he doesn't want to be the panting, older man who doesn't understand the meaning of casual, but it stopped feeling casual quite a while ago, and he's losing his mind trying to figure it all out.

He wouldn't have enjoyed that autobahn as much if he hadn't been so scared shitless though, if each of Carl's jerky overtakes of the more sedately paced people carriers hadn't made his ass reflexively clench, and barrelling headfirst into this thing with Samira Mohan, picking up pace faster and faster until the wind is pulling several Gs and tears are streaming out of his eyes with absolutely no idea of the destination, might be why even the mundane, quiet moments with her feel like fucking lightning in his veins.

Such as now, when he's lying in her bed, boneless and dazed from the way she had ridden first his mouth and then his cock, making him come so hard his ears are still slightly ringing and he hadn't been able to summon up any kind of response when she teasingly offered him the use of her shower. They'd had the rare occasion of shared time off that they hadn't been able to share since they started hooking up- Samira had texted him this morning to say that her cousin Asha was passing through and she'd be busy with her most of the day.

No worries, Jack had replied, unable to hold back from following it up with a yellow thumbs up emoji that he knew she'd rib him about. Then, Working a double tomorrow, see you afterwards?

how about i raise you seeing me tonight :) she had texted back. she'll be gone by the evening.

Jack hadn't needed much more encouragement, and it was always gratifying when Samira was the instigator- even more so when she expressed her thanks by greeting him at her door in nothing but one of his t-shirts, faded and softened from wear, her black panties on full display because he's not that much taller than her, and really, just the sight of her in his clothes would have done it for him, never mind the subsequent energetic fucking she had bestowed.

The languor has ebbed- Jack stretches until his back cracks, then reaches down to massage the area where his prosthetic usually is. He pats around down the side of Samira's bed to retrieve a crutch, then hobbles over to the bathroom, pushing open the door of her en-suite to be rushed by sweet-smelling steam.

"Jack?" comes Samira's voice, over the running water.

"You got someone else hiding in your wardrobe, sweetheart?" Jack replies amusedly. He goes to turn on the tap, then reconsiders, tugging the shower curtain aside to reveal Samira's slick and sudsy body, her curls plastered over her chest as she blinks bemusedly at him.

"You'd have been blasted by cold water if I'd turned on the tap," Jack explains, catching a fistful of water and using it to rinse the sweat and her wetness from his face. He's distracted by the iridescent bubbles gleaming on the hard tips of her breasts, but still catches the wide-eyed, frozen look on her face, even as it's replaced by a mischievous grin and a coy head tilt.

"That's the only reason you came in here?" she pouts, and then he's very enjoyably and willingly distracted.

A fun twenty minutes later, Jack is looking assessingly in her closet as she putters about doing her post-shower routine- he doesn't know how, or when, but the collection of odd shirts and clean boxers and socks and even a set of his size scrubs, has amassed into a pretty considerable pile. He remembers those mesh-lined Nike shorts- he'd been loathed to put the sweat-drenched garment back on after a morning 5K had been cut most of those Ks short in favour of a quickie with her bent over the arm of her couch, and Samira had taken them from him with an eye-roll and promise to launder them- and he remembers her casually, nonchalantly, directing him to the shiny, unscuffed crutches, still wearing little polystyrene pool noodles and leaning against her coat stand, her eyes skittering away from his gaping, speechless face, but it still feels like the strings of his heart are twanging melodically, seeing the accumulated evidence of him and them, neatly folded and stacked on the floor of her closet.

"You staying?" Samira asks from behind him, jerking him from his reverie, and she's carefully smearing body lotion along her forearms and elbows and fortunately doesn't see the small, dopey smile on his face. He's stayed over before, and it's far too practical for him to read anything into it.

"I've gotta be up in about six hours," Jack replies, which saves him from pointing out that she knows that he has to go in for mandatory wellbeing training that always gets Robby itchy whenever it rolls around for the attendings each year, and that her place is much closer to the hospital than hers is, and that it's not a big deal for them to sort of cuddle in her double bed (it's not like they fall asleep spooning, but he usually wakes to find her ass nestled against his morning wood, which, you know…)

And Samira simply hums in acknowledgment, turning away to mess around with more of the countless small pots and bottles of creams, serums and unguents lined atop her dresser. There's an uneasy pang that goes through Jack- he's had these moments of what the shitting fuck are we doing before but they seem especially insistently vocal in his head today, and now he can't help but read into every single small action of hers. But then she's turned back to the bed, her face dewy and gleaming from her skincare routine, wearing a long checkered sleep shirt and fuzzy socks that go to her knees, and the sight is so familiar and so beloved that the disquiet is easily replaced by a small grin.

"Stop, you know I get cold feet," Samira grumbles, toeing the socks off before slipping under the duvet next to him.

"Well, that's why you keep a professional feet-warmer around," Jack says lightly, tugging her back slightly and nudging with his knees until she brings them up and rests the soles of her feet against his bare shins.

"I mean, you are pretty fucking hot," Samira mumbles, her voice already drowsy, and Jack tries to repress a snicker as he settles behind her, slinging his arm over her abdomen, closing his eyes and uncaring of the cold, floral-scented wetness spreading across the front of his shirt from where Samira's mostly still-wet hair is bundled between them.

Something pulls him out of his sleep, and he's not fully sure what- he's not sure he's ever been in this hazy, liminal, half conscious state before, military training having beaten the habit of sudden, sharp waking alertness into him. He's adrift in a sea of half-felt sensation, that his mind lazily strokes over, perusing at leisure before deciding whether to release each feeling back into the void of unknowing, or holding it close.

The sun is very much up, he registers, feeling a stripe of searing brightness across his face that he testily shies away from, angling his face away from the searching rays and instead into soft, soft silk.

The silk is hair, he thinks, and he's not sure how he can be so certain of that- coconut, his brain reminds him, although right now he's not a hundred percent on the relevance of that. He could poke at that fact a bit more, but there's a soft, warm body pressed against his that his arm is banded over, something round and firm pressing rhythmically into his groin, and fuck, isn't that a delightful sensation?

Drowsy instinct is guiding him, the soft murmurs and appreciative hums edging through the fug of his consciousness making something stronger and more heated stir in him. He tightens the arm that is banded over her- Samira, he remembers, and the thought is golden and warm and glowing- and they release matching sounds of approval at the increased contact.

Her sleep shorts have been rucked off, Jack's boxers have been clumsily pulled down just enough to free his aching cock, and when he sinks into her searing heat, contentment radiates through him, a feeling of rightness more than any kind of baser, lustier response, and it's that which makes him slowly grind into her- languid, careful strokes of his cock as he breathes heavily into her hair, a gentle, coaxing orgasm stealing over him, and her walls clenching around him moments later.

And sleep comes for him again, now that he feels lighter, sated, and with Samira Mohan warm in his arms.

It doesn't quite settle though, it's ill-formed and mishappen- his mind is playing snatches of a dream for him, nothing lucid or vivid. He's adrift, and stranded, being lashed by the elements from every direction- he can't make out any shapes, except for a shadowy, person-shaped mass in the corner of his vision that he doesn't seem to be able to look at straight on. It refuses to coalesce into something concrete, and just as suddenly as the dream descended on him, he awakens.

Jack's properly awake now, and a bit unsettled. He dreams, sometimes- not like the lurid, adventurous sagas that Eddie sometimes like to regale him with in excruciating detail, but weird flashes that slip like soap from his mind as soon as he's awake. The feeling from this one is lingering, however, and as he shifts upwards into seating, it's compounded by the sight of Samira Mohan.

She's dressed, in jeans and a mohair cardigan, her hair scraped back in a clip, and he didn't think she had anywhere to be. She's not really one for a lie-in, always with some activity or exercise class or plans lined up, but it's odd that she's awake this early, and that she didn't wake him, and that she's frozen in place, staring at him with an expression of dread on her face with one sneaker in her hand.

"Is everything OK?" His first instinct is that something has happened, that her mom has called her in an emergency, that a friend from school is having some sort of crisis, that something's happened at the hospital… except they'd call him in too, and she wouldn't have been trying so hard to sneak out of her own place, and she looks a bit nauseous and is staring at a spot just over his shoulder rather than at him.

"Samira?"

Her name gets to her- she turns to him with a jolt, apprehension on her face. "I'm sorry- I just… I have a… I gotta go. I have a thing. Umm."

Samira Mohan is many things, but she's not inarticulate, or a stammerer, or visibly uncomfortable around him, but right now she's exuding a skittish energy so strong Jack freezes for fear she'll dive out of the window if he moves towards her. There is a curdling feeling in his gut- he feels horrendously out of place, shirtless and with bed head and slouched in the mess of her blankets, and slowly swings his leg over the side of the bed to reach for his shirt.

She's got her other shoe on when he emerges from the neck. "I just need to go," she says, weakly, her gaze skittering over him like she's ashamed to meet his. "I promise I- well, I'm not gonna- please, Jack... I just need some space to clear my head."

"Samira," Jack says hoarsely, his chest tight at the sight of her looking so drawn and nervous. "Sweetheart- you can have it- I'm not asking you to-" Her eyes are bright, and Jack doesn't want to make her have a breakdown, so even though he feels like the bottom has dropped from his stomach, he inhales long and deep and slow and tries again. "I can lock up behind me. Go- it's OK. Take all the time you need."

Her shoulders are tight around her ears, which he notices when they suddenly drop, and that makes Jack feel like a monster. Has she been terrified to break up with him for fear of his reaction? Nausea swirls through him as she shrugs on her bag- he wishes he still had that fucking prosthetic on so he could go after her, even though he just promised he'd let her go, but what the fuck is happening? What the fuck has he done- there hadn't been any signs, he didn't think he was stifling her, he had been happy to just follow her lead and continue on exactly as they were going-

"I'll see you soon, Jack." Samira's voice is soft, and he can't bring himself to look up at her retreating back, still winded from whatever that just was. The door clicks shut behind her, and it seems like the air in her apartment is very thin, suddenly.

So this is what it would have felt like, if their little dinged up rental had smashed into the autobahn guardrails. Euphoria and invincibility and the joyful, sharp thrum of living, suddenly smashed by a suffocating, ringing emptiness, and the feeling of Jack's world being flipped on its head, leaving him reeling and bewildered in the wreckage.

Chapter Text

Samira has never really been particularly good at sitting still.

"My little titli," she remembers Appa calling her fondly, nuzzling into her neck with his bristly walrus moustache that would make her squeal and try to wriggle away, before he'd toss her into the air, giggling and secure and confident in her father's abilities to catch her, scampering away without a backwards glance, flitting from one person to the next activity just like the butterfly Papa nicknamed her for.

There's always just been so much to do. Samira has never struggled with boredom- she wishes she did get bored, actually, would always just smile and nod along whenever friends would moan about feeling lethargic or restless or unfulfilled. Samira wouldn't necessarily confidently claim that she has never felt bored, but it's been a long time since she's had free time with absolutely nothing to fill it with.

When she was young, it was a mixture of her highly regimented timetable from her parents- homework club after school, karate classes on weekends, forty minutes of reading every night before bed, biweekly playdates with her cousins Asha and Ravi- and her own ever-changing roster of hobbies and interests. Rock-collecting, which would weigh down her pockets every time she returned home from somewhere, poring over hefty encyclopaedias to see if she could identify minerals or classify according to grain size; dinosaurs, the subject of the crackly, pixellated Attenborough documentaries she'd devour with her nose almost pressed to the screen; colouring, when she'd been gifted Faber-Castel watercolour pencils one birthday, in a shiny red tin that she'd meticulously order and carefully store away, painstakingly creating sunsets and marvelling at the way the colours would perfectly run into each other with the passing of a wet brush. She wasn't flakey or uncommitted, dropping hobbies as easily as she picked them up. She just genuinely loved it all, and the idea of giving up any one interest in order to squeeze in another was quite inconceivable- it was far better to make time for everything.

It's a habit Samira hasn't grown out of, and is one she's quite comfortable with. She resents Asha, her favourite cousin, close in age and temperament, trying to tentatively suggest in the years after Appa's passing, that it’s a way for her to exhert an iron-clad control over her life, busy her brain and her time with so many things that she doesn't have space to let someone in that might make her feel the same agony as the loss of Appa did, keep her so preoccupied and running from one commitment to the next that she doesn't have a moment to slow down and breathe and examine whether, after everything, she's actually truly content with her life.

She didn't speak to Asha for a month after that hissed and furious confrontation.

Asha was clearly full of shit, because Samira has obviously always been like this. She's been busy and in a perpetual state of motion since she was a child, so clearly it's bullshit to hypothesise it's a coping mechanism for the loss of her father. Now that she's older, the encyclopaedias and art chests and keikogi have been replaced with medical journals and regular 5k runs and latte art lessons and if she doesn't really have any friends except for when the girls from college congregate in the group chat to physically drag her onto nights out, it's never really affected her before, and she actually genuinely is content with the way things are.

Samira always enjoys the time she does spend with her friends, the ease with which she falls back into her mother hen dynamic with Lana and the good-cop-bad-cop thing she has going on with Umaima; it's been unexpected but fun spending time with Cassie and Mel and sometimes Heather outside of the ER, debriefing at IHOP after exhausting shifts and swapping patient stories to see who had to treat the most outrageous implement stuck in the most outrageous orifice.

But equally, she's fine when it's just her and her own company and her own interests- she's never felt the gaping lack of a social life, has more than enough things to busy herself with, would probably not have minded the isolation and seclusion of COVID if she'd been born in an alternate universe where she wasn't a key healthcare worker.

It's just that… she did feel the lack, after PittFest. After that day when she had been almost an automaton of efficiency and practiced skill, reflex and habit and training taking over, when there was no space or time to sit with a patient and coax out the minutia of their symptoms and history, just the thrill and blur and adrenaline of instinct and talent taking the wheel.

In the moment, buzzing with the rush of that pigtail catheter and the way Robby had looked at her with bone-deep surety and the admiring gleam in Abbot's eyes and the unflinching, confident way the nurses had carried out her instructions and the relief and trust in the eyes of the tearful family members hovering over her patients… Samira had been too alight with far more exciting sensations to realise that it was disgusting to have enjoyed it that much, and actually, she hadn't enjoyed it all that much, because Paeds was full of gurneys shrouded in blankets and because she'd heard the guttural scream of a mourning mother out in the ambulance bay and because she'd paused and stared for a whole twenty seconds at the two teenagers curled into each other in the Pink Zone, silent and expressionless as relentless tears cut tracks through the blood splattering their faces.

Her breakdown in the toilets had been a natural biological reaction to being responder in the middle of a mass casualty incident, she told herself afterwards, her body and brain coming to exact its price for the blood and death she had found herself in the centre of. Even that moment of madness with Dr Abbot in his car… it would have never happened had she had even thirty minutes longer at the end of the shift to ground herself, to hold up each of the deaths and bodies she had seen under the lightening sky and the faint rays of daybreak and acknowledge them and mourn them and then tuck them away so they wouldn't be swimming on the surface of her mind.

But, well, he had been there, with understanding in his hazel eyes, that wry tug of his mouth that spoke of seeing more death than she might ever do in the rest of her career, those strong, corded forearms on his steering wheel she couldn't help staring at and imagining the strength of, and she'd watched the creases bracketing his mouth under his silver stubble pull and crinkle as his lips formed the words affirm life, and it had suddenly seemed like an excellent idea.

She hadn't regretted it- she was a doctor and she was a progressive woman and she had benefited from the healing powers of an orgasm too many times to wring her hands at the who and the where and the why, and she didn't usually work with or even see Abbot, and sure, she didn't think she'd ever found any man as sexy as she'd found his intense, unblinking eyes, but it had happened and it was out of her system and she wasn't ashamed and it was over.

In the days after, however, the routine and the schedule and the silence of her neat and carefully curated apartment didn't quite give her the serene contentment it used to. She'd come back from her morning run and the quiet in her small living room would be so loud and she'd find her thumb closing Strava to flick through her contacts, open up Instagram to see if McKay or Collins had posted anything on their stories to indicate they were too busy for her to drop them a message.

This job can't be your life, McKay had told her, and it wasn't, but it had taken a mass-shooting for Samira to falter a little bit and actually consider what was her life, and if she was pleased and satisfied and content with the portrait of it.

So if she'd begun, slowly and incrementally, to not flit around the ER trying to get in on a quick final case when her shift drew to a close, and instead walked out with Heather and Cassie at a reasonable, normal time, complaining about anti-vax patients and Gloria's breathing down Robby's neck making their attending even more short-tempered and snappish and the shitty, cheap, bright green handwash that the hospital was transitioning to for the staff toilets that smelled of wet leaves, until it made more sense to carry on the conversation over black coffee and scrambled eggs instead of standing in the car park… well, Samira was enjoying the new addition to her timetable too much to think about what else her cousin and her friends and her long-suffering mother might have been right about.

She's not willing to give them the boyfriend thing though, because whatever Jack Abbot is, he's not her boyfriend. She doesn't know how to label it, how to describe it, even how to understand it, except that she hadn't quite been able to get their hurried and filthy interlude in the driver's seat- you absolute slut, Samira- of his car out of her mind, so it made sense, when she saw him in Cassidy's, scowling and uncomfortable and looking so good out of his scrubs, to find out if the night after PittFest had been a flash in the pan.

The problem was how easy it had been- even, annoyingly, the orgasms. Samira had learnt to stop relying on men instead of her own expert knowledge for them, and figured the emotional and chemical imbalance from that fateful shift had been in large part responsible for the tidal waves of pleasure Jack Abbot had coaxed out of her with his masterful fingers, and he was definitely pushing fifty, men's sex drives and stamina waned by then, didn't they?

Samira's not exactly unhappy to be proven wrong by Jack's dedicated and thorough pursuit of her pleasure, but God, it would have been so much better for everyone involved if he wasn't able to play her body like he had the user manual for it. It would have been great if he didn't watch her with a steady, unflinching gaze that made all the skin on her body heat and all the moisture evaporate from her mouth until she couldn't focus on anything except the memory of how his weight felt on top of hers and the feeling of his chest hair against her nipples and the clean, sharp scent of him and his bright hazel eyes cataloguing every expression on her face and every twitch of her body from between her legs.

It would have been even greater if she wasn't attuned to his every movement and his relative position to her in any room, if her stomach didn't take a lolloping tumble with his every casually remembered mention of something she'd said once, ages ago, in passing, if the peace and easy silence that blanketed them when she'd curl up into his body afterwards didn't so naturally, so seamlessly, smooth into companiable, comfortable discussion of their upcoming rotas and wry dissection of the latest nurses drama and updates on Samira's half-marathon training and Jack's plans for a bros hiking trip with Eddie and some of their friends from back home in Yosemite.

Jack's presence in Samira's life, his inclusion in her schedule, his calm steadiness and his obvious desire for her, for every messy part of her, is so natural and right that when Samira finally realises what she's done, what she's let happen, she doesn't handle it very well.

My little titli, and she lives up to the moniker, flitting nervously around her apartment and from one errand to the next, consumed with restless anxiety, an itchiness under her skin that means she cannot sit still, that shouldn't even be there now  that she's excised the problem.

But Jack's not the problem- Samira is. She knows that and thinks she's always known that, and she's fed up of scurrying out after shifts with her head bent low to avoid seeing him, a confused Heather and Cassie an unfortunate casualty of her insecurities and neuroses, and she misses him, misses him so much it's difficult to sleep at night, and she's always been incisive and strongly emotional and maybe a bit rash, and if that's what got her into this mess, it'll damn well get her out of it too.

It's why she's waiting for him on his porch, a few days later, when she's off and the summer morning skies are brightly lit and a watercolour wash of faded cornflower, as he pulls into his driveway after his shift, his eyes fixed, as ever, unerringly on her as she unfolds to meet him.

"You should have called," he says as he stops just before the first step leading up, and she's missed the low rasp of his voice and the way he devours her with his gaze and the delicious heft of his single-minded focus and attention. On level footing, he's only got a few inches on her, but it's still strange to be looking down at him from this vantage point, even if she's got an excellent view of his tightly curled, grey streaked hair. "It's pretty cold out here- I'd have told you where the spare key is, or gotten here quicker."

"It's June, Jack," she says, her voice unsteady, and he's on the porch now, not even a foot away from her, and it's hard work getting her body to not sway into him.

"It's Pittsburgh, Samira," he counters, and she huffs a laugh, and his eyes crease slightly, and then she's looking at the nape of his neck and the khaki rucksack slung over one shoulder as he unlocks his door, and holds it open for her to follow him in, absolutely no questions asked about why she's there or how she found his home.

It's jarring, actually, being at his place for the first time. She has Eddie on Instagram, has enjoyed the glimpses of Jack she's caught on his grid, skulking in the back row of group pictures with that same close-mouthed smile, brow furrowed in concentration and oblivious to Eddie's camera as he strings a fishing pole in a pixellated boomerang.

heyyyy, hope youre doing well!! do you mind sending me jacks address pls?? she'd DM-d him the previous night, and her phone had buzzed with his reply only moments later- a Google Maps link, followed by be gentle with my brother mira :))

His house is, unsurprisingly, a single storey, in a quiet, well-maintained neighbourhood she suspects is populated with geriatrics. She's never asked that they go to his place, he's never offered, and their interludes have always happened in a way that it makes more sense to carry them on at her apartment. And anyway, she prefers the comfort and control and solidity of being on home ground, on safe turf, and so she's surprised at the way her eyes drink in every detail as he flicks on warm lights and she trails him into his open plan kitchen.

It's pretty generically male- light coloured flooring, no rugs, a navy three-seater sofa and matching armchairs arrayed around a flatscreen, a serviceable kitchen area that doesn't look as if it's been renovated since it was installed. Still, there are hints of Jack- medical texts and copies of The Lancet stacked into the media unit around the TV, a crutch stowed beside the sofa and propped up on the breakfast bar, the fridge laden with the odd pinned leaflet and Post-Its covered in his slanting writing, reminding him to Call Mom about Oct flight and Broccoli Tuna Milk Apples Cashews.

"Anything to drink?" comes Jack's voice, and she whirls away from smiling stupidly at his grocery lists to see that he's on the sofa, carefully rolling up the leg of his scrubs and fiddling with his prosthetic.

"No, I'm OK," she replies, rounding the kitchen area and coming to gingerly sit opposite him in the one-seater. She feels restless, slightly nauseous; her tongue seems big and heavy and unwieldy in her mouth all of a sudden, and she doesn't know what's worse, him placidly focusing on removing his prosthetic and content in the silence, or if he were to spit fury and confrontation at her.

The thought is ridiculous- this is Jack, her Jack, and even before he was hers, he was Doctor Abbott, who has never shouted at even the nerviest, most ill-suited medical student fumbling and stuttering in the middle of a procedure. Samira knows, deep in the marrow of her bones, that Jack could never be hostile to her, and that her nerves are because she's scared of exposing herself, of showing him all her insecurities and her fucked-up-ness and her hangups and having to confront them in the cold light of day herself, and sure enough, he's watching her with patient eyes, happy to let her take the lead.

"I'm sorry," she forces out, in a strangled voice, making herself hold his gaze and not pick at her cuticles, the obvious sincerity in her words making her feel vulnerable, naked, ashamed, and to her dismay, she feels a tell-tale prickle in her nose and behind her eyes. She steadies her voice, tries again. "I'm so sorry, Jack. For- for running away like that, for not trusting you and talking to you or being honest with myself about what this is and what I want-"

The words are pouring out, fast, hurried, and tripping over themselves- it's so easy to bare herself before this man, and she should have known that, because she wouldn't have ended up so in over her head, halfway to something seismic and scary and upending, if it wasn't. His face has not closed or darkened- he watches her steadily, and there is a slight furrow in his brow, and she breaks off with an almost gasping pant when he interrupts her.

"Samira, sweetheart-" even in this moment, something molten trickles down her spine at the endearment- "you don't need to apologise for anything." Suddenly, finally, his gaze darts away, his hands jerking up in aborted movement and awkwardly settling on his lap. "We never talked about this, and that's just as much on me." He makes a strangled sound that could be a laugh. "Therapy 101 is to be clear and defined on your boundaries and I- I… I never meant to ever cross any of yours; I'm the one who should be apologising-"

"You didn't cross my boundaries, Jack," Samira breaks in, unable to bear the shame creeping into Jack's words. "I've loved every minute of every moment we've spent together- I've been a willing and enthusiastic participant in everything-" Jack's eyes finally return to hers, and there's a flash of heat in them that makes Samira squirm ever so slightly- "and I could never regret… this. You."

Jack is silent, intent on her, and she feels so fond of him in this moment where he's giving her everything she needs to make this confession, that now the time is here, she is entirely undaunted and calm. She rises on slightly unsteady knees, feeling warm as Jack's gaze tracks her coming to sit beside him, savouring the scent of antiseptic and his clean cologne and the fresh smell of exertion that emanates from him.

"Everything changed for me, after PittFest." She didn't think she could ever unburden herself like this, lay out and flatten all the crevices of her soul and clinically point them out, and yet it's easy to do with Jack Abbott, whose level and patient and unjudgmental gaze makes everything easier, smoother. She hooks her elbow through his, rests their twined forearms and laced fingers on his warm, solid thigh, leans slightly into him and his wonderful, familiar bulk.

"I've always kept myself busy, even as a kid. There's always so many things to do, and I want to do them all, and I've never really needed anyone alongside me whilst I do them. I mean, I've taken psych modules, I'm a pretty self-aware person- I know it's just my dead-dad issues… but like I said, I was like this even when he was alive, and I've been pretty happy, you know? It's not something that I ever thought I needed to fix… and then PittFest happened, and I felt so… unmoored. It wasn't something I could just walk off, or distract myself from with all my usual activities and schedule- it would take me hours to get to sleep for about a week afterwards.

"And then… you were there, and… I wasn't just… "affirming life" with the first warm body I came across, I know that now, but in the moment I thought that's all it was. I thought we'd fuck once, driven by… hormones and madness, I don't know… and it would be awkward for a bit at work, and then we'd get over it, and then that would be that. But… then I'd keep seeing you everywhere, and it turns out once I had you, I'd actually keep wanting you, not the opposite, and I might have gotten over it even then, but… fuck, Jack, you know how to make a girl feel wanted… and I was just… glutting myself on that feeling, of being desired and, and… cherished… which I'd never had before, so I couldn't recognise that that's all it was, not this dangerous, terrifying thing that suddenly, out of nowhere, made me want to flee."

The words are an incoherent, rambling, unsteady mess- it's hard, this unburdening business, and maybe that's why Samira's never done it before. She feels like she just stumbled her way through a disjointed rant and she wouldn't be surprised if Jack now slowly inches away from her, giving her a wary look; accuses her of being emotionally stunted, giving him mixed-signals, far too old to only just now be figuring out this relationship stuff and coming to the realisation that it's actually pretty nice to be in one.

But Jack is of course not doing or saying any such thing, because he's a wonderful and kind man who is inexplicably very into her and patient with her and her moments of madness, and she knows that she's idealising and romanticising him and that he's worked very hard and overcome things she might never even be privy to, to become the man before her today. It's difficult to focus on those thoughts though, because his eyes are crinkling in that familiar way she's missed so much, and his thumb is stroking a hypnotic circle on the back of her hand, and she feels giddy with the relief of putting all her cards on the table like this and with the sensation of being the focus of Jack Abbot's attention.

"So what you're telling me," he says slowly, "is the sex was just that good."

The laugh that bursts out of Samira sounds slightly hysterical to her ears, and it takes her a while for her to rein it in- she has to bury her face in Jack's shoulder whilst her body is racked with giggles, and when she pulls away, a jolt goes through her at the unrestrained, beaming grin on his face.

She's never seen him smile like this, and the fact that she's put it on his face is maybe a better high than sex- he looks so young, so proud, so pretty, and Samira can't bear it a moment longer. She makes a sound of desperation, pulls her hand out of his to hook her arm around the back of his neck and yanks him in for a kiss.

Finally, her brain chastises her, and it's like all the stress has melted out of her body, now that she's back in Jack's arms- she'd gotten so used to him, she realises, that the handful of days when she was spiralling and alone in her apartment felt like withdrawal symptoms, and whilst she knows they have a lot more talking to do, nothing feels as important right now as getting her next fix.

Jack seems to be feeling the same urgency- his hands are stroking up and down her back like he can't believe she's back in his arms, and there is desperation and hunger in the way he is devouring her, the way he is pulling her until she fumbles her way into his lap, both of them groaning in relief at the feeling of her centre pressed against his. She rakes her hand through his scalp- God, she's missed the feeling of his curls, it's really quite unfair for a man his age to have as sharp a hairline as he does. She might have to mount him right there and then, because a gene pool that excellent deserves her enthusiastic and vocal appreciation.

She chases his lips as he finally pulls away from her, can't help the tiny, mournful whine at losing the drugging, delicious, taste and shape of his mouth.

"Hey, hey," he breathes, his voice rough and deep and stroking over all of her nerves in the absolute right way. "I just got back from my shift… we need to take care of some basic hygiene first." His eyes are heavy and hungry and fixated on her lips, and it gives Samira a flush of confidence that has her rising to her feet, rounding the sofa as she heads towards the kitchen.

"Well, come on then," she says briskly, when all Jack does is watch her. "I don't know where your shower is."

She stifles a giggle as Jack shoots to his feet, cursing as he stumbles slightly, his intense gaze predatory as he crowds her backwards with his body, his hands firm on her hips as they back towards one of the doors. She doesn't get even a second to take in the sight of his bedroom, because she is being ushered into the bathroom by a man very much on a mission, and luckily, their priorities are very much in alignment.

Samira takes the opportunity to shimmy out of her hoodie and fling off her bra whilst Jack turns on the shower; when he faces her again, she grins at the way his eyes immediately drop to her chest.

"Fuck, Samira, baby- you don't know how much I've missed your gorgeous tits-"

"Ah ah ah," she stops him with a hand as he moves closer. "You're a bit overdressed, Dr Abbot."

The speed with which Jack kicks off his shoe and yanks down his scrub pants makes Samira smile as she steps into the shower enclosure; it turns into a full-blown laugh when he wrestles off his scrub top and undershirt in one go, his flushed face and tousled hair popping out adorably.

Jack's smile in response is warm, affectionate, as he slowly moves toward her, backing her into the tiled wall as the hot water beats down onto them. One hand comes up to cup her face, his thumb stroking over the arch of her cheekbone, and Samira can't help but feel self-conscious at the unabashed adoration in his eyes.

"I've missed that laugh," he says, soft, low, tender, and Samira's heart is full, so full, as she presses a kiss to his palm, and tilts her chin up to meet his lips with hers.

What starts out as a reverential, measured re-acquainting devolves very quickly into steamy, uncoordinated, open-mouthed kisses, filthy licks into her mouth that makes wetness not just from the water pouring overhead collect between Samira's thighs. There's something so illicit and dirty about shower sex, the slickness of their bodies against each other and the thick steam and the way their pants and groans amplify and echo in the enclosed space. Samira's mind is swimming with want, but she's not so far gone that she'll subject Jack to risky shower sex.

She pulls out of Jack's arms, rolling her eyes fondly as he immediately plasters himself to her back, his erection thick and heavy against the small of her back as his hands come up to play with her breasts and he buries his face in the side of her neck.

"None of that now," she says, fighting past the sensation of Jack's masterful fingers on her nipples and his teeth on her earlobe. She turns back around, shower gel in hand, fixing him with a reproving look. "Let's get you clean so we can relocate to a horizontal surface."

"Only because I'm planning to bury my face in that sweet cunt of yours and make you come about six times," Jack grumbles, but he quiets when Samira shoots him a glare, trying not to react at the lewd images flashing through her mind at his words and instead busying herself with squirting his eucalyptus bodywash into her hand.

Samira has gravely miscalculated, because smoothing her sudsy hands all over Jack Abbot's hot, hard, muscled body is not lowering the temperature at all.  Her slick hands slide over the planes of his chest and she's transfixed by their firm solidity, the greying curls of his chest hair, the way she can feel him tense when she passes over the hard points of his nipples. Samira looks up at him through her eyelashes at that- his burning gaze is fixed firmly on her, his lips pressed together in a thin line to muffle his harsh, panting breaths.

Samira's hands glide up, along the muscled breadth of his shoulders, slipping down behind them to work his trapezoids, tense and hard underneath her fingers. She presses her fingertips into them, trying to massage them in this unconventional position- she's stretched up right alongside the length of his body, his hard cock searing a brand along her lower abdomen, and Jack mutters a curse, his hands coming down to grip her ass as he breathes shallowly into the curve of her shoulder.

None of this is helping to temper the raging inferno of Samira's lust- it's slightly concerning how entirely her animal brain has taken charge, seized the wheel and decided she absolutely has to fuck these feelings out of her body right now, but fucking in the bath or shower is never as sexy as it looks in the movies, and that's without the additional consideration of Jack's leg.

There's a convenient bench installed in the shower though, and Samira reluctantly pulls away from the heat of Jack's body to push him down onto it. He goes, pliant and willing, looking up at her silently with blown, glittering pupils and flushed cheeks and his curls plastered flat along his head and droplets glistening on the ends of his lashes and there's something so appealing about the way he's attentively waiting for her that it unlocks a more devious, teasing instinct in Samira, makes her want to take control and draw out his pleasure into translucent, thin ribbons that don't dare to break without her command-

But that would be just as agonising for her as it is for him, and Samira can't handle that just now.

Later, she tells herself, and the thought doesn't make her freeze or balk but instead she feels a warmth that isn't related to looking down at Jack's red, throbbing cock between his spread thighs.

For now, she'll put him out of his misery.

Jack's breathing is more like panting, guttural and echoing as she slowly lowers herself to her knees, caresses his, massaging the join just above his prosthetic. There's no pretence of washing him any more- she kisses up his thigh, hovers tantalisingly over his cock, presses her smile into his other thigh when he pants "Fuck, Samira." And then she's too impatient to deny them both any longer, and grasps the base of his cock as she engulfs him in one go.

The effect is instantaneous- Jack's hands shoot to her hair, she tilts her face up to see that his head has dropped backwards, his eyes screwed shut, and that won't do at all. She pulls off his shaft, lightly tracing the length of it, waiting for him to look at her- his eyes are dazed and hazy, and it sends a heat squirming down her spine.

"Eyes on me," she tells him, a hoarse quality to her voice that she can't help. "And keep my hair out of my face." His hands tighten in agreement, and that's all the signal she needs to resume- she laves the head of his cock before taking the rest of him in.

Samira's never particularly enjoyed giving blowjobs- she hasn't given many, in fairness, and it's usually precluded hasty and fumbling sex where she's lucky to get a weak, stuttering orgasm by the end of it- but, she decides, as she holds Jack Abbot's cock in her mouth and his molten gaze with hers, she quite likes giving this man blowjobs. He's smooth and hot on her tongue, a satisfying length and girth that feels great inside of her whatever the configuration; his grip in her hair is only slightly insistent, not harsh or controlling and actually, in other scenarios, she doesn't think she'd mind if it was. An unceasing litany of praise and her name is dripping from his mouth, and it makes Samira drool and whine around his shaft, going faster and faster-

She splutters and gasps when he pulls her off, bending over himself like he's in pain, their broken pants mingling and echoing.

"Not- I don't-" he gasps, finally straightening up to reveal his red, leaking cock, and the strain etched across his face. "I want to come in you- I need-"

And to Samira that sounds like an excellent plan- they towel off in record time, and she's sure they're not fully dry, but neither of them care because he's tumbling her onto her back on his bed and his hard cock is right where she wants it and they're biting and licking at each other's mouths with absolutely no finesse and it's perfect.

"Samira- I- I wanted to-" he's muttering to himself as he scatters bruising kisses along her jawline, down her neck, across her collarbone, and she guides his face upwards, as much to give herself a break as for him to get his words out.

"You wanted to what?" she prompts gently.

He drops a kiss on her nipple, and the action is more tender than it has any right to be, given the animalistic lust whirling around them only moments previously. "I wanted to take my time with you," he says, in a low voice, and it's not just the timbre of it that makes her shiver. "Slowly, carefully, map out every part of your body, learn what every bit of you feels like under my mouth. I wanted it to be… gentle, and soft… but-"

She ducks her head to take his mouth with hers, a deep, worshipping kiss, a benediction and a gesture telling him everything she doesn't quite know how to put in words just yet. "I want that too," she murmurs against his lips. "But we have the rest of today, and tomorrow- right now, I really need you to fuck me."

He laughs, right into her mouth, and it makes her giggle too- there's no shame, with them, no fumbling or awkwardness or shyness, not any more and it's so freeing, and so much of what Samira never knew was missing in her life. She pours her gladness into his mouth and he instantly responds- their kisses instantly become wet and messy and filthy and she's writhing and fretful when he once again starts moving down her body.

"Jack- I can't- please, I just need you-" she gasps, when he's nosing at the junction of her thighs, looking up at her with bright eyes and tousled hair and his mouth open over her visibly wet pussy, the visual making her clench and keen. She's nudging his back with the heels of her feet, and he lets himself be guided back up, a smirk on his face that Samira suddenly needs to wipe off.

He goes over easily, when she loops her arms around his neck and rolls them over, and yes, it's not like he's in a position he doesn't want to be in, but Samira's still satisfied with the way his expression darkens and his gaze is instantly drawn to her tits as she straightens above him. She could tease him further, take the tip of him in and nothing more, drag him to the edge of delirium, but they have time for that, and she did ask him for a fucking, after all.

She's so slick, so wet and desperate for him, that he slides in with absolutely no effort at all, not even a pinch or a hint of discomfort. They both groan, long and drawn-out, as she takes him all the way in- the position is absolutely fantastic, the head of his cock nudging a spot inside her that makes galaxies explode across her vision, and she's glad Jack's hands tighten on her hips to hold her there, because she needs a moment too.

"Ride me, sweetheart," he rasps, eventually, and when she shifts her position slightly so that she can dig her knees into the bed, his cock shifts inside of her, making her tense and Jack groan, and suddenly, Samira can't bear the stillness.

There's no room for self-consciousness, no space in her head for any worry about how she looks at this angle, about whether she's threaded the stray long hairs that like to crop up on her chin, about whether her stomach is rolling and rippling like it does in certain positions, because she knows how Jack sees her and also he's brough a hand up to stroke her clit and his eyes are glittering obsidian wells and the burn in her thighs as she bounces on him is almost as satisfying as the feeling of him pistoning in and out of her-

Jack lunges up, making her squeal, but his arms are around her to make sure she doesn't fall off his cock and actually, now they're pressed together, chest to chest, where she can pant into his mouth and his wiry chest hair can scrape against her sensitive nipples and he can get leverage to thrust into her and she feels the tension in her winding tighter and tighter, she has to throw her head back as she chases the feeling-

"Samira- I need- I didn't-" he pants, and Samira opens her eyes to see him looking absolutely wrecked, and it's amazing that he can form any words because she's mindless with need, and yet somehow, she knows exactly what he means and is nodding frantically.

"It's fine- in- in…" and he must be the same because he doesn't need her to construct a proper sentence either- he drives up into her with a new ferocity, braces his hand on her mound so that as she rides him, her clit brushes against his thumb, and that's all it takes, for Samira's climax to tear through her, obliterating all thought and feeling except him.

She registers, vaguely, the liquid heat inside of her as he follows her over the edge, swearing into the valley of her breasts as his thrusts slow, still guiding her hips in gentle gyrations to eke out every last bit of her orgasm. When she comes to, she's lying on his chest, his fingers working her scalp in a way that makes her almost purr, and it doesn't matter that it reeks of sex and that they're sticky with exertion and that their combined fluids are tacky between her thighs, Samira is quite content to not ever move.

Samira's never indulged in post-coital glow before Jack- well, there hasn't ever really been much glowing, if she's honest with herself- and now that she is, she finds there's absolutely no restlessness or ill-fitting sensation. Her limbs are heavy and she feels drowsy and her body slots so nicely against Jack's, and she's glad, actually, that she's experiencing this now, because anyone other than him wouldn't have felt this good.

"I need you to know," he says eventually, making her raise her head to prop her chin against his chest, "that I'm in this for the long haul." His face is relaxed, but his eyes are absolutely clear and brimming with determination. "If I was a better person, I'd say that I'm in this for as long as you are… but I'm not gonna let you go without a fight again, Samira. I'll always respect your space and your wishes and I don't ever want to hold you back from following opportunities- but I'm not willing to let you chase yourself away. I know you can do a lot better than with an old man like me, but if you haven't realised it yourself, I'm not gonna work particularly hard to convince you of it."

Samira lets out a shaky laugh. "I know I still have stuff to work out," she murmurs, trying to raise herself up to sit properly next to him, but Jack grumbles and pulls her back down. Smiling, she nestles herself back on his chest, his hand returning to stroke through her curls, and this feels even more intimate than if they were looking at each other. It doesn't scare Samira anymore, though. "I know I'm still insanely fucked up. The way I was living before- it wasn't sustainable, and I know that now, but it'll still take time and effort to fix, and I can't promise it'll be easy… but as long as it doesn't chase you away, I'm in this too."

She feels the kiss he presses to her head like a hot glow throughout her entire body. "You couldn't ever chase me away, Samira," he says quietly, and the butterflies in Samira's stomach take flight throughout her entire body.

The cocoon of silence, the careful drag of Jack's fingers through her hair, his reassuring solidity underneath her cheek, warm and slowly moving with each exhale- it almost lulls Samira into sleeping, but there's something prodding insistently at her from the back of her mind.

"Jack."

"Hmm?"

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what, sweetheart?"

She's getting better at this, but Lord, she's glad she's curled against his chest and not sitting across from him, looking him in the eye as she asks. "When you said you loved me."

His hand stalls in her hair, and Samira holds her breath like it'll make him answer faster. "When… I said I loved you…" he repeats slowly.

And Samira tenses, because this is exactly what she had feared, a nagging, nauseating feeling that pushed her into perambulating her apartment as she examined the memory from every possible angle, splicing together the sensations just before and after that half-remembered instance, like a forensic detective fervently praying that the evidence matched the hypothesis they'd already drawn.

In the moment, she couldn't have been more certain. She didn't know what had woken her, tugged her blearily from her slumber so that she existed in some twilight, half-formed state, but Jack's warm body was around her, his hand spanning the breadth of her stomach, his deep, reassuring breathing whistling across the nape of her neck, and even as she tried to sink back into sleep, he was stirring against her, the thick ridge of his cock pressing insistently at the small of her back, and it had been instinct, really, something base and natural and inevitable, for her underwear to be tugged lazily to the side and Jack to slowly, smoothly, slide in…

It hadn't been like any other sex she'd ever had- the slow, languorous driving of his hips and the unfocused brush of her fingers against her clit, Jack's arm tight across her abdomen and his breaths ragged in her ear, the sounds of her faint whining and the rustling of her sheets and his muttered praises as they both inexorably spiralled towards their peak and the tension slowly, gently, all at once, broke and washed all over her.

And Samira could have stayed wrapped up in Jack's arms and the musk of their sex and the uncomfortable wetness between her thighs if Jack's muffled "I love you," hadn't managed to slip its way past the post-orgasmic glow and his brain-to-mouth filter and all her defences.

She'd lain there frozen, suddenly wide, wide awake, her stomach churning with dread and her palms clammy and Jack's arm across her heavier than it had ever been before, her mind tumbling frenetically until the only way to get it to stop had been to just leave. And then, well…

The problem was that even an hour later, as Samira furiously speed-walked around Schenley Park, wishing fervently that she'd at least fled from her apartment in her running gear rather than street clothes, she couldn't say with any certainty that he had said that. She'd been half asleep, he'd been half asleep, there had never been any mention of it before, their relationship wasn't like that, the words had been half-slurred, it could have been the oxytocin talking… every explanation under the sun tore through her mind, seized on with gratitude and then flung away with horror. She couldn't even rely on the memory of the ice that seemed to have frozen inside of her and crushed her under its weight until she struggled to draw a proper breath, because there had been moments, more and more recently, where her rational brain had smashed through the golden glow of good sex and mutual attraction and tried to shock her back into her senses; was it possible that it had joined forces with whatever sweet nothings Jack had whispered to her (the man very rarely shut up during sex, after all) and whipped her up in a frenzy with, churning up a sickening cocktail of doubt and terror?

The problem with Samira's mind immediately being tugged back into that whirlpool of confusion and insecurity and fury was that Jack could very clearly feel the way her shoulders had hunched and her spine had stiffened, laid out as she was against his chest. Samira can't help cringing away, averting her gaze, until Jack reaches down to hitch her knee over his hip, levering them both upwards so that she's sitting on his lap, gently cupping her cheek to guide her eyes to his.

"Samira," he says firmly and calmly, his hazel eyes steady and open on hers. "I don't remember saying that I loved you. That's not to say that I didn't or that I don't… I'm assuming you meant that last morning at your place, just before you left, and you'd just fucked all the sense out of my head-" she snorts, even as nerves lap up her throat, and Jack smirks too, "-but it wasn't conscious and I would never spring it on you, certainly not like that. Even in my most favourite position in all the world."

Now the laugh that escapes her is more genuine, and Jack is grinning too, and even though it sounds like he's saying he doesn't love her, the genuine emotion and pure conviction in his eyes is grounding her, cupping her hands in his and pushing down on that instinct to flee, to protect herself, to armour herself again.

Jack slides a hand to the nape of her neck, presses his forehead to hers. "We'll go slow, baby," he whispers, and Samira feels a prickling at the back of her eyes. "Whatever you need. It'll take a lot more than that to chase me away."

Samira's glad she's not a huge crier, because joy and tenderness and disbelief in her good fortune at being the woman that Jack Abbot loves is subsuming her entire body and really wants to leak out of her eyes. It turns out that not quite declarations of love really rev her engine, because as she shifts against him, she can feel herself slicken again, and she shifts her face for a kiss that Jack happily, willingly, gives her.

There's no urgency any more, and it still feels as good as their frantic fucking. Their kisses are slow, lush, exploring, his hands moulding over the contours of her body are reverential and caressing. Samira could do this forever, straddle him and just make out for hours like teenagers until their lips are kiss-bitten, but as she pushes them both back down and stretches luxuriously against him, the apex of her thighs catches the head of his cock and actually, she'd quite like him inside her again.

Jack, however, hisses and arches his hips away slightly. "Go easy on this old man, Samira," he says jokingly. "My sex drive might have gotten its second win but I still have a refractory period, sweetheart."

Samira pouts dramatically at him. "But I was promised slow sex too," she says, and God, she might actually be whining. "You just said we'd go slow."

A devious glint lights in Jack's eyes, and he rolls them over, ducking to press a peck to her lips, then down to kiss each nipple carefully. "I think I also promised to make you come six times with my head between those gorgeous thighs of yours," he says, his voice rough and thready, and Samira gasps and bows her back at the cool air brushing over her still soaked pussy as Jack makes himself comfortable between her spread thighs.

It's not just that Jack is excellent at eating pussy, which of course he is- with his meticulous attention to detail and that eye for precision borne of years in the high-stress ER environment, there was never a question of him not being able to blow her mind. He can read her body perfectly, hones in on the spot inside of her that makes stars explode across her vision, knows that she spews gibberish when he pumps roughly with two fingers but that she prefers soft, barely-there glances against her clit.

It's just as much what an excellent sight he makes, his corded forearms wrapped across the top of her thighs, his rumpled curls and his bright eyes devouring her every expression and reaction, the wetness smeared across his mouth and chin and even his cheeks, glistening lewdly at her whenever he pulls away to take a breath… Samira's instinct is usually to clench her eyes shut, but she forces them open, loath to miss the spectacular visual component of Jack Abbot eating pussy like he was meticulously crafted in a lab with that sole purpose in mind.

The orgasm steals over her, gentle in its approach but no less powerful for it, a rolling tide that subsumes her incrementally but thoroughly, her mind whitening out blissfully as her body slowly relaxes into the mattress. Samira's body welcomes Jack's settling back on top of her mindlessly, an instinct that's too deep-rooted, an act that has already become habitual- by the time her gaze refocuses and she grins dopily, happily, up at him, he's hard again, testing her entrance as he scatters kisses over her lips and cheeks and nose.

"Slow and gentle," he manages to work out. "Just like I promised, sweetheart."

The glide in and out of her is like nothing she's ever felt- she's loose and relaxed and boneless from already climaxing twice, happy to let him take his pleasure, revelling in the stroking against her swollen and sensitive walls, doing nothing but letting him fuck her, except it feels trite and flippant to say this is fucking- the tempo allows Jack to map out a careful constellation of kisses across her face and chest, and she's quite glad she doesn't really have any intention of having sex with a different person again because she doesn't know how it would match up to this.

She steadies him with both palms cradling his face, presses her forehead to his. "Come on, baby," she breathes against his mouth. "Come- for me."

Even the deep kiss Jack catches her mouth with is still reverential, careful- he's licking into her deeply, and Samira clenches at the realisation that the taste on his tongue is her, but it's slow and deliberate and feels like a vow, and when Jack's hips begin to pump faster and deeper before they eventually stutter, warmth spurting inside her as he groans into her tits, Samira matches it with her own silent promise.

"Not yet," she grumbles, as he tries to pull away from her- she knows she's slightly slurring, but she's too well-fucked to feel any embarrassment or to go to the effort of enunciating, and when she feels his smirk against her chest, she twines her arms and legs around him and lets herself relax with a happy, content sigh.

"You're not fucked up, Samira," Jack murmurs into her skin "And if you are a bit, that's fine- I'm fucked up too. I used to be a lot more fucked up than you, and if I've gotten through it, then you will too. And I promise, I'll be here with you, every step of the way."

Samira buries her nose in his damp curls, inhales the clean, warm scent of him, and tries to hide her trembling smile in it. "Thank you," she says, and it comes out as a heartfelt wisp of breath, that Jack acknowledges with a squeeze of his arms. "We should probably get moving though," she continues, more audibly.

"I don't have any intention of ever moving," Jack says peevishly. "I'm quite happy to stay in and on you for as long as we can both bear."

"Well, I need to get some stuff from home- it's my first time sleeping over at my boyfriend's," Samira says conversationally, and she's smirking when Jack's head jolts up, an incredulous smile spreading across his face.

"Boyfriend, huh?" he says teasingly. "You're really winding back the years, aren't you, Samira?"

"Well we gotta describe this to HR somehow," she says innocently, and Jack lets out a disbelieving bark of laughter, before burying it in the slope of her shoulder.

"You really do go all in once you commit, Dr Mohan," he says, biting softly at her collarbone, and Samira pulls his earlobe in revenge and Jack's arms scoop underneath her back to gather her to his chest as he takes her mouth in another of his deep, drugging kisses, and she's so glad that she can give him even a fraction of the euphoric lightness he's given her, soaring high and chasing the sunbeams, a titli in flight, secure and content in love once again.