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He’s a gentleman, really. Hand on his heart.
It’s just that being a gentleman and being curious aren’t mutually exclusive. He’d always been a curious kid, Jack had, a trait that only continues to ring true here in the home of his attending. He’s been over once before, for a Thanksgiving she’d hosted his intern year — that was Dr. Mohan, generous through and through — and for the most part, the space looks how he remembers it, modest and warm, not so polished so as to seem anything but totally her, always a thrum of something vibrant, almost frenetic, just under the surface.
He has no point of reference for her bedroom, though, and why would he? He hardly has just cause to be seeing it now, but she’s in San Francisco for a few days before and after ACEP and needed someone to cat-sit and Jack, would you be interested in making a few extra bucks? You’re welcome to stay at the house that week, if you’d like.
(“No parties, though, that’s my only rule.”
“I’ll be good,” he promised with a salute and a cheeky grin.
She turned away, but not before he caught her mouth twitch and her murmur of, “Oh, I know,” leaving the front of his scrub pants suddenly tighter.)
And so, if pressed, he’d say it’s Saag Paneer Mohan, his Russian blue ward, who brings him to her bedroom now.
Of all the spaces in her home, it’s the most lived-in, her nightstand teeming with journals that are, in turn, teeming with post-its and annotation flags. There’s an assortment of photos atop her dresser: of and with her father, whose death Jack knows was the catalyst for her career in medicine; from residency, a group portrait with a doctor he recognizes from the Front Line Heroes wall in the center; others from that same period in time, Dr. Mohan pressed close to one recurring face in particular. He can make out part of the other woman’s badge in one of the images: Al-Hashimi.
She’d cited an “old friend” as her reason for extending her time in California. Was this Dr. Al-Hashimi said friend? Her name rings a bell, something to do with Stanford, maybe. Jack feels oddly jealous at the thought, even though he has no reason to assume their relationship is anything other than platonic; and anyway, what right did he even have to speculate—
A flash of long, golden limbs against the navy sheets in front of him, sheets so close he could reach out and touch them.
He swallows hard. Only barely resists the temptation by resting his palm on the dresser’s surface instead.
Get yourself together, Abbot, he tells himself, at the same time as another part of his brain offers, Is it so bad to want to be special?
And, well - was it? There is something about his relationship with Dr. Mohan that is unique, he’s sure of it. He doesn’t see her treat the others the way she treats him. Certainly not Robby, for all that his bullish friend clamors for her attention; not Shen or Ellis either, which is not to say that she isn’t supportive, because she is in spades, but - is he crazy for reading an undertone of flirtation in their interactions?
Maybe he is. Maybe he needs to pay Dr. Jefferson a visit in Psych.
There’s a crinkle and Jack looks down to see that Saag Paneer has been successful in retrieving the foil toy that landed the pair of them here in the first place. It’s his cue to usher them out, yet Jack skims his hand down the smooth wood and tugs the first drawer open before he can convince himself not to indulge his implacable curiosity.
Truth be told, he isn’t entirely sure what Real Adults put in dressers; his organizational methods, for clothing or otherwise, leave much to be desired, he knows.
The answer, evidently, is lace.
Jesus, his frontal lobe is fully developed, but he’s beginning to suspect there’s been some evolutionary anomaly in his brain because he feels like a teen at the sight, like he’s about to shoot off just from seeing a girl’s tits for the first time. This is somehow worse; at least Audrey in his lap had been a reality then, but this is just his imagination, just the implication that at any given point, Dr. Samira Mohan, Attending Physician at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, leading researcher of racial disparities in healthcare and lodestar of the emergency response during PittFest, might be wearing lace panties in hues of pale blue, burgundy, marigold, or cream under her scrubs.
Jack Abbot is a fucking gentleman, and so he doesn’t grab the topmost pair and wrap it around his fist and get himself off, but he does think about it, how easy it would be, goes so far as to note that he knows where her laundry products are, could have it washed and dried and returned before long, especially given how hard he somehow already is, before he shoves the drawer shut.
Saag Paneer starts at the sound. Tosses him a reproachful look as he skulks out of the room as if to say, Well? You coming or what?
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack says tightly, following behind. But he passes where the cat has curled up in the living room in favor of beelining for the guest bath.
As expected, it takes him hardly any time to shuck his sweatpants down his hips and strip his dick and flush the evidence of his curiosity, then immediately step into an ice-cold shower. It’s the reset he needs; or at least, he wills it to be until he falls back into the guest bed that evening — the guest bed that, somehow, even after two, now three, nights of being here, still smells more like Dr. Mohan than like him.
Maybe agreeing to house-sit was a mistake, Jack thinks with a groan, then rolls to smother his face in the scent.