Work Text:
Samira had not planned for things to spiral so wildly out of control. That was the only rational thought she had in her head at the moment.
The rest of her body and her mind was intently focused on Jack’s hot breath, soft lips, rough stubble grazing the exposed curve of her neck as he mapped the vast expanse of sweat glistening skin hungrily with his mouth.
She distantly realised that her hands were twining, tugging on his curls, and every time she yanked a bit too hard, he dragged the tips of his canines warningly, teasingly, against her skin. He brought his knee up between her writhing hips even as his hands wrapped even tighter around her waist, pulling her flush against the broad solidness that was Jack Abbot.
Her head thumped back, exposing the arch of her neck even further to Jack’s hungry mouth, when he ground his knee gently into her, the sparks of pleasure radiating through her.
God, she’d been a teenager in the back of a shitty Toyota Corolla the last time she’d dry humped anyone. And now here she was, on the cusp of thirty, pressed up against the door that led off this roof and back into the hospital she spent most of her waking hours in, grinding shamelessly against her senior attending’s thigh. Well, not her attending. That was still Robby, though he seemed less and less happy about it.
“Dr Mohan,” he rasped against her throat.
She smiled despite herself, even as she stilled her rocking hips and loosened her grip on his curls.
“I think we’re at the stage where you can call me by my name, Dr Abbot.”
She felt his smile against her throat, “Alright, Samira.”
“Yes, Jack?” She crooned, wondering where the hell she’d found this vivacious fox inside her.
“We shouldn’t do this,” he panted desperately into her ear even as he pressed closer into her, before lifting his head to look at her with those ridiculously intense sea glass eyes, lips ghosting across hers in a terrible tease of a kiss. His lips were still swollen with the bruising one he’d pressed into hers as he’d stepped her backwards against this wall. The final straw that sent the poor camel tumbling down, I’d you will.
“I agree,” she murmured into his mouth, eyes roving over his face, taking a strangely vicious glee in the way his jaw ticked every time her lips so much so as grazed his, “this is a terrible, terrible idea. We should stop.”
He rocked his thigh up into her and she ground against it helplessly, fingers clutching desperately at his scrubs.
“I’m an attending,” he was almost pleading with her, “and you’re a rez. I don’t want to do that to you.” His statement was very close to incoherent, but she understood, even appreciated, the sentiment and the care for her professional life.
“Uh huh,” was all she managed as his hand came up to wrap gently around her throat, not to strangle—he was an ER physician, he knew better—just to hold. Like he enjoyed the furious fluttering of her riotous pulse against the palm of his hand.
“Technically, I’m Robby’s.”
His eyes flashed with something bright and furious and hungry.
“You are not Robby’s anything,” he insisted.
She grinned up at him, unreasonably delighted by this reaction, “Now you know that’s just not true.”
He pressed her harder into the black-painted wood at her back, leaning down to kiss her, fiercely as though he could kiss the smug smile right off her face.
And he did kiss it away—slowly at first, then with a heat that felt equal parts frustration and restraint. His mouth was demanding, but his hands were careful, as if he were drawing a line he refused to cross even while leaning perilously close to it, staring hungrily at the other side. When he finally pulled back, their foreheads rested together, breaths tangled, the city’s distant sirens bleeding up onto the roof like a much needed reminder of where they were and how they’d wound up here.
“This is such a bad idea,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.
Samira laughed under her breath, the sound shaky. “Now you’re just repeating yourself.”
His thumb brushed along her jaw, reverent now, almost reluctant.
She pushed up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to his again, and he melted into it, hand pulling out her claw clip and clipping it to the belt loop in his jeans, before his hand delved into her riotous curls. His other hand gripped her hips, holding them steady, as her hands darted forward and curled into said belt loops, tugging him closer, ignoring the dull ache of her clip digging into her ribs.
Jack broke the kiss first, breath uneven, jaw set like he was bracing against impact.
“No,” he said, the word rough but resolute. He took another step back, hands dropping to his sides as if keeping them on her were a liability. “We really, genuinely need to stop. It’s a terrible idea.”
Samira arched a brow, thoroughly unimpressed. “You already said that.”
“And I mean it,” he insisted, even as his eyes tracked the movement of her mouth when she smiled. “I’m serious. We walk away. We go back downstairs. Tomorrow, we forget this ever happened, yeah?”
She tilted her head, considering him with exaggerated seriousness. Then she closed the distance again, deliberately slow, until her fingers caught in the fabric of his scrub top.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she murmured. “You look like you’re in actual pain. It’s cute.”
His eyes squeezed shut for half a second. “Samira.”
She leaned in just enough that her lips brushed the shell of his ear. “You’re the one who said I wasn’t Robby’s anything.”
A sharp exhale. His hands came up, gripping her wrists—not pushing her away, just holding them, anchoring himself. “One time,” he said, the words dragged from him like a concession extracted under duress. He opened his eyes and fixed her with a look that was equal parts warning and surrender. “One. Just to get it out of our systems and then never again.”
Her grin was incandescent, a cat that caught the canary. “You’re driving.”
The car ride was a study in barely contained tension—a painting titled “Want” that she would mull over in a gallery, appreciating the artist’s finer nuances and attention to detail. The city slid past the windows, streetlights flashing over his white knuckles clenched tight around the steering wheel, red headlights trailing over her legs angled toward him just enough to be provocative, and over his other hand which was placed—almost possessively—high up on Samira’s thigh. The radio was off and the AC was blasting. Jack’s teeth gritted with every red light, Samira squirmed at every stalling of traffic, as Jack’s fingers impatiently tightened ever so slightly against her skin.
When he finally pulled into the lot of his apartment complex and killed the engine, the tension snapped.
She leaned across the console, kissed him before he could say a word. It was all hunger and fraying restraint again, hands everywhere, laughter and teasing words caught between breaths. By the time the elevator doors slid shut behind them, they were already fumbling—her fingers at his collar, his mouth finding her jaw, both of them exploiting the slow ascent.
They stumbled out of the elevator rumpled and out of breath. He grabbed her hand and speedwalked them to his door, hand delving into his pocket as Samira’s lips found the curve of his jaw. He nearly dropped his keys once. Swore under his breath. She laughed, soft and delighted, pressing him back against his apartment front door while he tried again with hands that were clearly no longer cooperating.
The lock finally turned. They tumbled inside in a graceless tangle, the door swinging shut behind them, the rest of the building sealed away even as the city opened up in glorious twinkling expanse beneath them through Jack’s massive floor to wall window.
His hand came up to cradle her face, his forehead resting against hers. “One time,” he repeated, like a vow and a warning all at once.
She kissed him in answer.
He kicked off his shoes and she followed suit. Peppering light, teasing kisses on her lips, he walked her backwards towards his bedroom, lights still off—city lights and shadows dappling across her features—hands sliding under her shirt to wrap around warm skin (her answering groan against his lips would be pulled out from the memory stores months later in the quiet early morning hours of his bedroom when he fell into it after a long shift). She grinned against his lips, nipping at them lightly with her teeth as she pushed down on the handle of the door he’d stopped them at, giggling in delight as they fell through and he kicked it shut behind them.
Her fingers scrabbled frantically at the buckle of his belt and he resisted the urge to tear her shirt as he painstakingly worked his way down the fiddly buttons. She stepped back to shuck of her jeans as he took off his prosthetic and tugged his black T-shirt off (she bit her lip, eyes wide and hungry at the way he carelessly gripped the fabric at the base of his neck and slid it off in one elegant motion, throwing it aimlessly to the side).
They collided again—nuclear fusion—as she inched her way up the bed, and he followed suit, crawling over her. Her hands were trailing over the newly exposed vast expanse of bare skin, half in lust half in sheer awe, while his hands frantically roved all over her like he didn’t quite know how to take it all in. How to indulge in her the way he craved with the disgusting limitation of only his two hands.
He decided that clearly he would simply have to resort to using his mouth like a real man, taking his time with it, trailing his way down her body. Dropping a final kiss on her lips, down ghosting down the sharp line of her jaw, down worrying the skin of her throat gently, gently between his teeth as his hands acquainted themselves with her breasts, down teasing, licking, kissing between them, down to the soft swell of her stomach, getting momentarily distracted by the curve of her hip, before he found himself staring hungrily between her thighs.
He ran his palms gently across the inside of her thighs, pressing them open and leaning in closer, chest heaving as he devoured her with eyes alone. I will gaze.
“Look at how beautiful you are,” he murmured, hot breath whispering across her, and making her hips twist. He grinned, even as his hands gently held her down.
“Stay still, Mohan.”
She let out a garbled groan, and Jack, huffing a laugh, slipped his finger in her mouth. She wrapped her lips around it, laving it with her tongue even as he murmured, eyes still on her sex,
“Shh, I’m trying to focus.”
She opened her mouth to retort, “You seem to focus perfectly fine in a busy ER most nights,” his hand withdrew even as his eyes shot to hers, amused even as they remained glossed over with what she could only describe as lust, “and from what I’ve heard, war zones and shootouts don’t seem to be an issue either.”
Jack didn’t think it necessary to fire back.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she felt the tip of his finger press into her, wet from her own spit, splitting her open. It was at least twice as big as one of her own. She nearly swallowed her tongue.
He laughed at the way her eyes squeezed shut as a string of unintelligible curses fell from her mouth.
“See now why I need to focus?” She shook her head stubbornly, even as she bit her lip to keep another groan from escaping her and adding to his mounting amusement.
“Don’t you see, Mohan,” he groaned, “you’re so slick and warm and tight. I’m going to have to study you. Learn you to work you open on my hand so that you’re able to take me in you.”
The filth dripping from his lips, as well as the pressure of what felt like another finger at her opening had her hips inadvertently bucking upward, accidentally forcing both of his fingers deep inside her and tearing a pained yelp from her. The smirk on his lips made her think that perhaps he had calculated this.
His fingers scissored inside her, pressing into her walls, pressing her shockingly, deliciously open, an unexpected knife-edge of pleasure curling in her stomach.
Her head pressed back into the firm mattress, neck straining, “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Jack, it’s too much. Please. Please.” Her voice was thin and pleading. She would cry if he pulled out of her now.
He made to pull his fingers out of her, faux concern etched across his face like he knew how much it ached just to think of him stopping now. She mewled in distress, fingers twining in the sheets beneath her even as she begged, “No, no. I need more.”
“If you insist, Mohan.”
He pressed a third finger into her, his other hand moving from her knee to press down on her lower stomach to still her frantic twisting. A half sob fell from her lips. The stretch was too much, too vast, too painful, and yet each slight edge of friction edged into pleasure that made her core ache and her body tremble. She’d kill him if he stopped now.
Slowly he leaned forward and dragged his tongue up her clit, exposed from how wide her legs were pressed open and the unbearableness thickness of his fingers forced deep inside her. Her vision went white and her hips bucked again, a scream tearing from her throat as his fingers were forced even deeper. She felt his smile against her as his lips wrapped around her clit and gently sucked.
Her vision fractured as the orgasm surged up inside her, a half-second away from crashing over her and sweeping her away, before his fingers were yanked violently out of her and his mouth fell away from her and she felt the cresting ecstasy dissolve into the thick air of the room.
He had ruined her fucking orgasm.
A sob of frustration caught in her throat as she looked plaintively at him, her frustration and misery etched across her face.
“What the fuck, Jack!” She spluttered, even as she stayed splayed out on the bed, too overwhelmed with the ache of unfulfilled promised pleasure.
“Don’t worry, Mohan. You’re going to come.”
“Jack, you cannot be fucking serious.”
“I promise, baby,” he purred as he traced his way back upward with deliberate slowness, mouth brushing along the curve of her hip, then higher—across her stomach, along the delicate rise of her ribs. “But if we’re doing this just once, your first time is going to be with me inside you.”
Fuck.
He peppered more kisses around her breasts, his lips barely touching her pointed nipples before, to her continuing frustration, he moved up towards her collarbones. He kissed up the hollow of her throat, sucked hard on the side of her neck until he saw a small blooming of dark purple, peppered more gentle kisses along the point of her chin, the highs of her cheekbones, her temple, the tip of her nose, before finally he pressed a gentle unassuming kiss against her open, gasping mouth.
She was so lost to his sudden tenderness—such a sharp contrast to the cruelty of his denial—that she didn’t quite register the sound of tearing foil, and jerked sharply when she felt something press against her opening. She mewled as his hips rocked against her, the head of him too big, despite all of Jack’s “opening her up”, for him to slide into her.
He continued to gently thrust against her, lips still pressed against hers, endlessly patient and entirely determined. His hand, still slick with her wetness, trailed down the path he had just kissed, to reach down and pinch her clit. The sudden sharp pain, and the unexpected blooming pleasure in its immediate wake, had her crying into his mouth and jerking up, the tip of him finally sinking into her, the vastness of the stretch drawing out her cries.
Jack groaned into her neck, burying his face into the crook of her neck, forearms bracketing her head, as he continued to rock into her, slowly but insistent, oh god, he was so fucking insistent. And he was big, far too big, he was going to tear her apart and ruin her forever and she needed him to stop. Needed him to fuck her into the mattress until she was a sobbing, shaking, sweat-soaked mess.
It didn’t stop her hands from scrabbling at his chest, in a frantic, instinctive, desperate attempt to push him him away, off her, anything but that insistent too-big stretch inside her, even as she murmured pleas for more.
“Baby, be still for me,” his crooning words against her lips had her immediately going still and pliant for him, “god, you’re such a good girl when you listen to me.”
The stretch of him inside her became almost monstrous as he pressed deeper, deeper, deeper still, until she could feel the tip of him pressed against the very limit of her, hips flush against her.
He held still inside her, allowing her a moment to adjust, as he licked her tears off her cheeks, humming in appreciation like it was his favourite vintage whisky.
His head dropped down, lips pressing against the curve of her shoulder, murmuring, “Fuck baby, so tight and warm and slick and perfect,” as his hips began to gently rock against her again.
She threw her head back with a plaintive mewling sound as the tip of him continued to press into that resistance at the very end of her, stretching her far too wide, the pain and pleasure twining into a dark twisty pleasure in the pit of her stomach.
She babbled pleas and curses, legs winding around his hips to pull him closer.
His thrusts became harder, bursts of pain melting into liquid pleasure, her nails carving bloody scratches down his back and accidentally spurring him on.
“Samira, god you’re so beautiful like this, taking me so well. So willing and wet and open for me.” The filth dripping from his mouth finally tipped her over the edge, her orgasm crashing into her, fracturing her vision and forcing her inner walls, agonisingly, to clench around him, the hugeness of him even more overwhelming and aching, drawing out her pleasure, heightening its intensity until it walked the knife-edge of pain.
Her body was still shuddering with aftershocks when he dipped his head to suckle on her nipple as his thumb began to swipe insistently at her too-sensitive clit, angling his cock up to repeatedly rub against her g-spot.
“Come on baby, give me another,” he murmured, the sudden onslaught of stimulation far too much for her over-sensitive body.
“No, no, no,” she sobbed, “I can’t, it’s too much. Please.”
“Yes you can baby. It’ll be so good, trust me. Let yourself fall.”
“Please, Jack,” she sobbed, as he relentlessly fucked into her, drawing firm circles on her clit and increasing the suction on her breast. She writhed against him, sobbing, even as her hands clutched at his shoulders, pulling him closer. Another orgasm was building inside her, too big and too overwhelming, and far too much for her.
”Oh, I can’t, I can’t.”
He pressed his lips gently into hers, even as his hips ground insistently at that spot inside her.
“Baby, please.”
Her orgasm crashed into her at the same time his did, vision darkening at the edges, her entire body trembling as he gathered her up and held her close, pressed into her as deep as he could go, as her body was wracked with pleasure so sharp it became pain.
“Good girl, you’re such a good girl for me, I’m so proud of you baby.” He uttered an endless stream of praise, as her walls spasmed painfully around him, and as she clung to him, riding out the final aftershocks of her little death.
Samira knew—logically—that she should leave now. He had said it more than once, and she had agreed wholeheartedly: this was a terrible idea. A fuck it out of our systems situation (and look how well that had gone), after which they would resume their lives as friendly colleagues and politely pretend she didn’t know exactly how it felt to have Jack inside her.
How good it felt to have Jack inside her.
Instead, she registered distantly—as Jack rose and grabbed his crutches to dispose of the condom and returned with a warm, damp cloth, gently wiping her down—that she was crying. Which made absolutely no sense. She had enjoyed what had just happened very much, she was fully on board with the agreed-upon course of action, and she had never been much of a crier anyway.
And yet. She was well and truly weeping.
“Oh god,” she muttered weakly, mortified, “I really am fine, I swear. I have no idea—none—why I’m crying. But Jack, please don’t freak out. I’m good. I swear.”
What she hadn’t expected was for Jack to smile down at her, pull her firmly into his chest, and run his fingers in slow, soothing lines down her back, humming something soft and unintelligible into her hair.
“Stop freaking out, Samira,” he said calmly. “It’s very normal to cry after sex. It’s just an emotional release that sometimes follows the physical one. Happens all the time. Perfectly expected.”
There was something about his matter-of-fact explanation—so logical, so unalarmed—that eased the tight knot in her chest. She found herself relaxing despite everything, melting into the warmth and unguarded comfort he offered so freely. Strangely, for someone who had never considered herself a physical-touch person, it helped more than she would have thought possible.
After a few more stolen minutes, she disentangled herself carefully, the way one did when moving might break something delicate. “I’m just—” she gestured vaguely toward the bathroom, already reaching for the edge of the bed. “Give me a minute.”
Jack nodded, no questions asked. He was a doctor and an adult man: he knew already. Probably would have gently advised her to run to the loo if she didn’t get up to herself.
The bathroom light was too bright, too real. Samira shut the door, leaned her palms against the cool counter, and took a steadying breath before doing what she’d come in for. Health and safety first. Freak out later. She flushed, washed her hands, splashed cool water on her face, and caught her reflection in the mirror—eyes red-rimmed, hair a frizzy mess, skin still warm and flushed.
You’re fine, she told herself. This is fine. You get dressed, you leave, you both behave like adults who made a questionable but mutual decision.
She turned the tap off and reached for the door.
It opened before she could.
Jack stood there balancing on his crutches, underwear back on but that was about it, hair still sticking up and rumpled (she was oddly proud of her work), his expression composed in that irritatingly competent way of his. He didn’t block her or touch her—just stepped past her into the bathroom like this was the most natural thing in the world.
“Jack—” she started, reflexively.
“I know,” he said mildly, crossing to the tub. “You’re leaving.”
She paused, watching him sit on the edge of the tub, turn the faucet, test the water with his fingers. Steam began to curl upward, softening the edges of the room.
“But,” he continued, glancing at her over his shoulder, “we don’t have to do this like we’re twenty and fleeing the scene of some imagined crime. We agreed it was once. We didn’t agree it had to be rushed or careless.”
Her mouth opened. Closed again.
He reached for a bottle she hadn’t noticed, poured a measured amount under the running water. The scent—clean, subtle—bloomed through the air.
“Bath,” he said simply. “You can sit for five minutes. Ten, if you want. Then you can put your clothes on and go. No pressure. No ulterior motives.”
Samira stared at him, at the steam, at the bath filling steadily, and felt something in her chest loosen in a way she hadn’t expected.
“You’re very… normal about this,” she said finally.
He huffed a quiet laugh. “I’m trying to be.”
She considered protesting, arguing that she didn’t need it, that this was unnecessary. Instead, she surprised herself by nodding once.
“Okay,” she conceded. “But I won’t stay long.”
Jack smiled and stepped back toward the door.
“I’ll give you your privacy,” he said. “Take your time.”
When the door closed behind him, Samira exhaled slowly and sank onto the edge of the tub, watching the water rise. Just because it was once, she thought, didn’t mean it had to be handled badly.
Jack was handling it badly.
He was an adult man, most probably closer to death than the day he was born. A lost leg, a lost wife, and many lost comrades and friends along the way. He was the fucking night shift senior attending of one of the biggest ERs in the goddamn city, if not state.
And the young senior resident that wasn’t even on his team was going to be the reason that he lost his fucking mind.
He hadn’t planned for any of this. Not for seeing her for the first time in the hellscape of the middle of an ER in the immediate aftermath of a mass casualty event. He hadn’t really even looked at her at first, in the midst of it all. She was one in a throng of moving bodies, part of the living, breathing, constantly in motion organ that was the emergency department of any big hospitals.
He was always good with faces, so when he’d wound up face to face with her, he hadn’t been entirely incapable of placing the frizzy hair held back by a claw clip, the dark circles that looked more like bruising under her eyes, and that strange sort of luminous beauty that shone through under the hospital fluorescent lighting anyways.
Which—he was old enough now to have stopped thinking with his dick now—he was easily capable of shelving away, compartmentalising if you will, up until she’d done that mental fucking IO borehole with a goddamn pigtail catheter.
Sue him, he’d always had a thing for competence. And for women who were secretly metal as fuck.
And Samira Mohan was metal as fuck.
The next time he saw her, he’d been trying to discreetly clean up that light graze from a bullet near his shoulder blade. She hadn’t looked twice at him, completely unfazed by both his injury and the story behind it, much more concerned about one of her diabetic patients.
He remembered the spark of… recognition? in her eyes when he offered to pay for it. Like that more than anything, that fundamental care for a patient, sliced through all the background noise and distractions and when she looked up at him, she saw him. Not like that lasted for long. Even though she saw him long enough to take over patching him up, her movements were swift, clinical, half distracted almost, if Samira Mohan were the type of doctor to do anything half assed. She wasn’t, so he’d settle on the world preoccupied instead.
He’d have thought she’d forgotten about him entirely had she not caught him pulling out his phone (to fulfill his promise) at the nurses station and chased up on it.
Jack told himself after that—repeatedly—that noticing her was inevitable.
Emergency departments were ecosystems. Functionally bodies of their own. You learned the rhythms, the personalities, the reliable constants. You learned who could be trusted at three in the morning when the board was red and the waiting room was overflowing and everyone was one bad decision away from disaster.
Samira Mohan became one of those constants far faster than she should have.
She was dayshift, officially, despite his many efforts to poach her over to his team. Third-year senior resident. Efficient, sharp, unflappable in a way that didn’t stem from a lack of care or empathy, like many others. Not the fastest but also the least likely to miss something or make a mistake that would cost them much more time than her investigations.
It reminded him of when he would babysit Jake for Robby, and he’d be running late, knocking shit over and forgetting things. Jack had wound up grasping him gently by the shoulders, kneeling before the young boy to look him in the eye and repeating what his mother had told him twenty-five years ago when he’d been the same.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” It was a damn shame he hasn’t managed to teach that to the boy’s father. The father who was unnecessarily critical of his best resident for reasons beyond Jack.
The first night shift she covered, six weeks after the mass casualty event, Jack found her, honed in like a goddamn sniffer dog, almost immediately.
Jack noticed her first because she didn’t look at him when she entered a room. Most people turned to the senior most person whenever they entered a space, but not Samira Mohan. She looked at the patient, at the monitor, at the tubing, and then, at the hands doing the work. Of the nurse or the technician or the student doctor. When she finally looked up at a senior physician, it was because she needed an answer—or because she already had one and wanted confirmation. One particularly amusing instance, she had genuinely been checking if he needed anything.
She leaned into counters on her elbows instead of perching on them like her fellow senior resident Langdon. Drank her coffee black and forgot about it half the time, much to distracted with rushing around and taking care of as many things for as many people as she could. When the night got too quiet, he could always find her hunched over some research she was working on in the break room, sat right next to the tinselled up skeleton, black coffee long gone cold next to her and a little tub of cucumber and carrot sticks with hummus.
They didn’t talk much at first. Not properly.
There were handoffs, clipped exchanges, shared glances across trauma bays. A seeking out of his eyes, as they chased after a paramedic rushing a gurney to where Lena had directed it, an amused eyebrow raise at him when Shen cracked a particularly bad joke and laughed the loudest too, an almost delighted widening of the eyes when Emery came down from surgery and tore into them and he ripped right back into her. Jack found himself tracking her too, without meaning to—registering where she was in the department, whether she’d eaten, whether she was taking on too much.
She noticed him too. He knew because she started anticipating him.
She had labs ready before he asked. Had imaging queued. Had already spoken to consultants he hadn’t had the time to ring up himself. She wordlessly handed him a coffee when he was midway through his seventh yawn nearing the end of a particularly long and difficult shift. He caught her eye afterward and gave her a brief nod.
She nodded back and casually turned back to charting.
It became a thing.
Not overt or anything obvious. But there were moments—small, contained, private in the middle of chaos. Standing shoulder to shoulder at the central station, both of them watching the board update in real time. Passing in the hallway at shift change, exhaustion mirrored in their faces as they greeted each other with a weary smile and nod of acknowledgement. The occasional conversation that slipped sideways into something more personal—his nieces birthday, her mother visiting the state, the guy from uni that had emailed her (how archaic)—before snapping back into professionalism.
He learned she had an encyclopedic memory for patient histories. That she hated wasting words. That she had little patience for ego and infinite patience for fear. She learned he drank his coffee stupidly hot (tongue-burning temperature), that he had a habit of rubbing his thumb against the side of his wedding ring when he was thinking, that he never raised his voice even when the department was understaffed and trying its best to manage a crisis.
She started joining the night shift team for breakfast at their diner five minutes down the road after their shifts. They went around, treating each other. She’d always been friendly with Emery and her and Ellis went far back enough (uni classmates apparently) for her to slot right into Jack’s team perfectly. She wasn’t too talkative but he noticed her sharp eyes easily tracking conversation, only jumping in with rarely. When she decided to interject, everyone stopped to listen to her. She was mostly never wrong. Her breakfast choice was a black coffee and pancakes with chocolate sauce (she had a closet sweet tooth). She insisted on covering the bill every time she accompanied them (Jack and Emery made sure to put an immediate stop to that) and she happily joined them after all the night shifts she covered afterwards. Jack liked to think that the increased covered shifts she took were incentivised by breakfast.
Once—just once—she stayed late after a brutal night to help him finish charting because he’d mentioned off-handedly how much he hated it.
The noticing sharpened.
Eye contact lingered a beat too long. Silence became loaded instead of comfortable. There was an understanding that grew between them, unspoken and carefully contained. Jack told himself it was respect. Mutual admiration and collegial trust.
Even now, he told himself it was nothing more.
The rooftop yesterday happened because it had to—because all that pressure, all that restraint, all that careful distance finally had nowhere else to go.
And Jack knew, standing again on that roof with the city bleeding light below him, that the problem hadn’t started here.
It had started months ago.
In the building was standing at the very top of right now. In the rooms beneath his feet pulsing with movement and energy, love and life and loss. To everyone living in this city, this building would most likely one day witness the best or worst, or maybe both, days of their lives. For him and Samira and countless others who walked its halls everyday, it was an average workday.
The catalyst yesterday was fittingly not dramatic.
It wasn’t a declaration or a moment of jealousy or a grand emotional confession. It was, infuriatingly, a perfectly ordinary night that went slightly worse than usual.
The department was understaffed. Two nurses called out. One trauma bay was down for maintenance. Some fucking idiot student doctor had kindly pointed out that things looked quiet. In furious response, the city decided—collectively—that this was the night to crash cars, fall off ladders, overdose, and bleed creatively. All at the same time.
Samira had come in to cover a night shift on her one day off that week. She looked more tired than usual, hair scraped back loosely with that claw clip always in her hair, shoulders set like she was bracing for impact. She didn’t complain. She never did. But when she handed him a chart an hour into the shift, their fingers brushed, and he felt the faint tremor she hadn’t bothered to hide.
“You good?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. Too fast.
The night dragged. An arrest of a violent drunken patient that ended messily. A belligerent high patient who took three security guards and a prayer thrown up by Lana to sedate. Robby, who had stayed late to help—irritated, increasingly sharp around Jack in a way that had not gone unnoticed—snapped at Samira in front of a junior resident over a call that hadn’t even been hers. Territorial motherfucker.
Jack intervened on Samira’s behalf. Calmly and professionally but firmly.
Robby backed down, even as his eyes sparked with something sharp and hot, but the damage was done.
Samira didn’t say anything at the time. She finished her shift. Tied up loose ends. Signed out. When Jack finally caught up to her near the lockers after throwing his jeans and tshirt back on in the attendings office (he hated wearing the scrubs outside of the hospital), she was staring into her open bag like she’d forgotten why she’d stopped there.
“You okay, Dr Mohan?” he asked, trying to cover how deep his concern ran.
She looked at him then. Something in her expression made his chest tighten.
“Yeah, sure,” she sighed. “I’m just really fucking tired.”
They stood there, neither moving.
Jack glanced at the clock. It was just past seven. The department was settling into that strange, fragile calm that came after a night like this—too early for day shift to be fully awake, too late for night shift to pretend they weren’t wrecked.
“Come up to the roof,” he said, before he’d quite decided to. “Five minutes. Fresh air. Always helps me feel better. Just keep me company.”
She hesitated. Then nodded.
The roof was empty, washed pale by early morning light. The city stretched beneath them—quiet, deceptively peaceful, belying the shit it got up to (evidence currently in their usual workspace). Samira leaned against the low wall, exhaled deeply, and closed her eyes.
Jack stood beside her, careful to leave space.
They didn’t speak for a long moment.
Then she said, softly, “Thank you. For earlier.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Another pause.
“I don’t think he thinks I’m a good doctor anymore,” she added. Not angry or sad, even though her eyes betrayed her. Just stating a fact.
Jack felt something inside him shift—something he’d been holding rigidly in place for months. “I do,” he said, before he could stop himself.
She turned to him.
The air changed. It felt inevitable.
They were close enough now to feel each other’s presence fully, to register the subtle things: the tension in her shoulders, the faint crease between her brows, the way his attention settled on her with a steadiness that felt different from everything else in her life.
“This is not a good idea,” she pointed out quietly.
“Yes,” he agreed.
Neither of them moved away.
“I should go,” she said.
“You should,” he replied.
She didn’t.
The kiss happened slowly. No rush. No desperation. Just a moment where Jack lifted his hand, paused—gave her time to stop him—and when she didn’t, brushed his thumb along her jaw.
She leaned in.
The kiss was brief. Soft. Controlled in a way that made it worse, not better. When they pulled apart, their foreheads rested together, breaths uneven.
“That,” Jack said, voice low, steady with effort, “was a mistake.”
Samira laughed softly, the sound edged with disbelief. “Yeah.”
He kissed her again anyways.