Work Text:
"I don't know what I'm going to do. I guess I'll have to book a flight and ship my stuff back. Fuck." Samira buries her head in her hands, ignoring the patient chart open on the laptop next to her as she rants to her captive audience. Dr. Ellis, charting alongside her, gives her a sympathetic but distracted nod.
Dr. Abbot, who has been hovering around the hub waiting for the calm of the early morning lull to suddenly snap, slides up next to her. "I have the weekend off. I can drive you."
Momentarily taken aback, all that comes out is a small noise of agreement. Before she can take it back and insist that she's fine on her own, two paramedics push a man on a stretcher through the ambulance bay, and Jack is on his way over.
Slightly awkwardly, Samira adjusts the heating in Jack's truck, wary of seeming like she's too comfortable. A change of clothes and a plastic bag full of toiletries are stuffed into a duffel bag in his trunk and a paper cup containing an overly sweet caramel latte sits in his cup holder, and she already feels like she's taking up enough of his space. The radio hums some old rock song, and the bass rattles around in her brain, exacerbating the headache she's been trying to stave off for the past few hours. He asks her if she's okay when she tilts her head back against the headrest, neck straining as she pushes her scalp against the smooth leather.
"Can you turn down the music?" she grits out before she can convince herself she's being too much of a burden. He turns it off completely, and she breathes out through her nose.
The headache would've been better than the awkward silence that ensues. Last time Jack had tried to make conversation with her, she had snapped at him. She shouldn't take out her frustration on him, but the anger keeps building inside her with no where to go, and his simple question of how her shift went warped into a critique of her mood.
"I'm sorry." She twirls a strand of her hair around her finger before smoothing it out.
"What for?" he asks, eyes remaining focused on the road. The kiss of sun on the side of his face makes his hazel eyes seem a warm shade of brown.
Samira exhales sharply at the question, trying to tamp down her annoyance. After all he's done for her, if he wants her to recite her misdeeds like a naughtily schoolchild, she can do that.
"For snapping at you. For asking you to drive me six hours to another state then back and snapping at you when you try to talk to me," she says, contrite.
He taps a finger against the steering wheel when she finishes talking and spares a glance away from the road to look at her. "Well, I offered. And it's really only five and a half hours." His gaze drifs to where his phone is propped up on his dashboard. "Five more hours, by now."
Her anger surges again. "Really? That's all you have to say?"
His eyes are back on the road. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know. Don't you want to yell at me? Call me ungrateful?" She slumps back against the leather seat, voice suddenly sounding small.
His expression softens noticeably even though she can only see the side of his face. "No, not really." He reaches a hand out to her and intertwines her fingers, and she tries to brush off the way her heart speeds up. "Your mom suddenly selling her house and leaving for a year is a huge change. If snapping at me makes you feel better, than by all means, snap."
She squeezes his hand weakly, shifting towards him. She has kicked off one of her shoes, and the sock-clad foot sits on the seat. She wraps an arm around her shin. She doesn't say anything more than a whispered thank you, certain anything that leaves her mouth will come out sounding choked up. Jack eventually lets go of her hand to merge lanes, and she instantly misses the warmth of his skin.
They pull into the parking lot of a small but quaint diner just off the highway two hours later. Jack insisted on buying her something to eat, some completely undeserved attempt at cheering her up that made her heart thump with guilt.
Inside, it's loud and crowded: the mid-morning rush. Samira wraps her arms around herself, feeling a little on edge as a baby wails across the diner. They are seated in the corner, crammed between two full tables.
They sit quietly while they wait for the waiter to come take their orders, Jack trying to give her space. She appreciates it, but she wishes he would talk, just so she'd have a distraction. She taps away on her phone, pretending like she has something to do. Even if she did, she doesn't think she'd be able to focus in the ruckus of the diner.
When their food comes, they make small talk about work while Jack takes bites of his omelet and her of her pancakes. They look delicious, but she can't taste anything. She taps her fingers against her plate anxiously as a few officers workers sat at a nearby table burst into boisterous laughter.
"Are you okay?" he asks, putting down his fork.
She gives him a tight half-smile; it's meant to be reassuring, but it seems to have the opposite effect. "I'm fine. It's just a little loud."
He nods understandingly. "Let's leave then."
"What? We're eating."
"We can take it to go."
As much as she feels like she's being a burden, she doesn't think she can stand being in this diner for another minute, so she nods. He waves over the waiter and asks for their stuff to go, then insists on paying the bill even when Samira offers to split it.
She sighs a breath of relief when the door swings shut behind them, bell ringing happily, and the chatter fades away.
"Where are we going?" she asks as she clicks her seatbelt into place.
"It's a surprise," he replies, a half-smirk growing on his face. For the first time since she got in the car—maybe even before then: since her mother had told her she was selling the house in some weird midlife crisis that involved deluding herself into thinking a new marriage would last if they were crammed into the small cabin of a cruise ship together for a year—she feels a genuine smile pulling at her cheeks.
If Jack's goal was cheering her up, he did a great job. They sit on the coast of a peaceful river, looking out at the rocks, the flowing water, and the open sky as they eat the diner food. Samira feels lighter, like when she takes off her heavy backpack after the fifteen minute walk from the bus stop to her apartment. Jack has the unique skill of being able to take her mind off her worries. She isn't thinking about her mom or her childhood home or their fraught relationship; all her attention is on him—his anecdotes and the cheesy jokes he cracks when he sees her mind start to wander.
Her pancakes suddenly taste much better than they did at the diner, and she has no trouble scarfing them down. Once she's done, restless from the sugary syrup and the intoxicating way Jack makes her feel, she wanders to the edge of the river, carefully stepping over the rocks. She picks a flat, circular stone up and turns it over in her hands.
When Samira was young, her dad used to take her hiking. There was a clearing in the middle of the woods with a river not dissimilar to this one. He taught her how to skip rocks, and would always pick her up and twirl her around when she succeeded, as though it was the biggest accomplishment in the world.
She smiles a small, secretive smile, looking down at the rock in her hands. She makes to tuck it in her pocket, but loses her grip and watches as it tumbles down the bigger rocks closer to the shore. Determined, she steps over the sharp, jagged rocks and tries to keep herself steady as she searches for it. She hears Jack call out to her, but she ignores him. Planting her feet in between two large stones, she loses her footing and falls down, scraping her knees on their sharp edges.
It's her breaking point, for some reason. Her knees sting and her rock is gone and she suddenly feels achingly, overwhelmingly alone. A small sob escapes past her lips, and then the tears come, flowing down her cheeks like the river next to her.
He's by her side by the time her first tear splatters on the rock underneath her, pulling her into his arms and tucking her head underneath his chin. She thinks he's whispering to her, but she can't quite make out what he's saying over the anxious tempo of static in her ears.
She can feel his heart pulsing against her hand, which she presses into his chest. He inhales dramatically, and Samira infers that he's trying to encourage her to sync her breathing to his. She tries to, but her lungs can't take in all the air, like they're half stuffed with cotton. She coughs once, a wet, pathetic sound, and thinks she'll never live down the embarrassment of hyperventilating over scraped knees and a lost stone.
The thought feels like a bucket of cold water being dumped over her, and she pulls away from him, breath still coming in and out in small stutters. She wants nothing more than for Jack to think she's a competent, composed doctor, and the image she's projecting right now is the complete opposite. She scans his face for any traces of disgust, but she only sees concern.
She sits back on her heels, watching him while she tries to catch her breath. He's kneeling on the rock, and she images that can't be comfortable with his prosthetic.
"I'm sorry," she says once she's able to speak.
Jack furrows his eyebrows. "Don't apologize."
She shakes her head. She doesn't have the energy to argue with him, and she's sure he isn't going to accept her apology anytime soon. Instead, she tries to justify herself.
"I don't know what happened. I think I'm just tired." She hears the river rush past behind her. "I'm never that emotional usually."
He doesn't deign her justification with a reply, instead standing up with a grunt and reaching his hand out to her. "Come, let's get you cleaned up."
Hesitantly, she grabs his hand and lets him pull her up. His palm is warm and less calloused than she would've expected. He guides her over to his truck, where he pulls a big backpack that she recognizes as his go bag out of the trunk. She looks down at her scraped knees, dirty with blood dripping down to her ankles.
"I don't need all that," she protests, wiping a few tears from her cheeks. Her breathing is more regulated now, but still a little quicker than usual. Every once in a while, it'll hitch in a way that threatens to unleash the waterworks again.
"I have bandaids and hydrogen peroxide in here."
He places the bag on the ground and kneels down next to it. Before she can ask what he's doing, he pats his thigh. Reluctantly, she places her right foot on it, bracing her hands on his shoulders when she wobbles unsteadily. The position is far too intimate, and it would scare her if it didn't make her feel so warm.
He cleans her wound gently then puts a bandaid on it. He puts his hand on her ankle to remove her foot from his leg, but then as a second thought, presses a kiss right over the bandaid. A little stunned, she doesn't say anything as her seats the same process with her other leg, down to the kiss. He gently places her left foot back on the ground before standing back up.
Samira feels slightly dizzy, but she chalks that up to the lack of oxygen. He sees her wobble a little and puts a hand on her back, which just serves to make her feel more shaky. She hates that he seems so composed while she feels like a newborn foal, so the only solution is to change that. She puts her hand back on his shoulder and uses it to haul herself up on her tiptoes so she can press a kiss to his temple.
The second her lips touch his skin, he turns bright red. She has to bite her lip to tamp down her smile. "Thank you for everything," she says, batting her eyelashes sweetly.
"Uh, yeah, of course," he stutters. "Let's get back on the road?"
Taking pity on him, she nods. As she closes the passenger side door, she wonders how he would react if she kissed him on the lips, if he would turn a similar shade of pink. She shakes the thought off and leans against the window with a small smile illuminating her face.
As they creep closer to New Jersey, Samira feels herself getting more and more restless. She glances at his phone, checking the time the GPS displays: two hours until they drive past the park her and her friends used to play in, past the one house in the neighbourhood that would always give out full sized candy bars on Halloween, and pull into the small driveway of childhood home. The lingering calm from Jack's care and attentiveness starts to wane, and she bounces her leg anxiously. She fidgets with her phone to try to distract herself from her nerves, but it doesn't work, and she has nothing else to do since Jack insists on driving for all six hours. It's a nice gesture, she reminds herself, pushing down the reflexive twinge of annoyance.
"I don't even know if my mom is going to be there," Samira says suddenly. In the corner of her eye, she can see Jack's neck twitch like he's about to give her full attention to her, but then remembers he's on the road. "She told me to come pick up my stuff before next week so I told her I was coming today, and she just said okay." Samira hardly pauses to breathe before continuing. "Okay! Who says that? What does that even mean? Is she too busy with her new boyfriend"—disdain drips from the word, and Samira only thinks she's being semi-dramatic. It is ridiculous to call a man she barely knows her fiancé, after all—"to talk to her own daughter?"
"I thought you barely call her," Jack says quizzically, probably recalling some conversation they had had during a lull at work or an outing after work—something that had become more and more prevalen as of late. She doesn't know if he's trying to be helpful or piss her off even more, but it just makes her drop her head into her hands.
"Maybe I don't want to be the one calling her. Maybe I want her to call me. Maybe I want her to make a fucking effort," she mumbles through the spaces between her fingers.
"Sorry," he says, sounding genuinely apologetic. "That's fair. I'm sorry."
Samira pulls her hands away from her face and sits up straight, twisting around in her seat to face him. "I'm sorry. I'm being so mean to you and you— you're driving six hours to another state for me. You brought me for a picnic. You bandaged my knees and calmed me down from a panic attack." It's almost a beat for beat replay of their conversation a couple of hours ago, which only serves to make Samira feel more guilty. She really is being horrible to him today.
"I thought we've been through this. Stop apologizing," he tells her sternly. Her stomach gives a half hearted little swoop that's muffled by the knots pushing against her lungs.
"I owe you when we get back. Whatever you want."
She doesn't consider the implications of her words until she sees his cheeks go bright red. He clears his throat quietly. "That's really not necessary."
She bites her lip, turning away from him again. "I'm serious. Whatever you want."
They fly past the "Welcome to New Jersey" sign half an hour later, and Samira exhales deeply, fogging up the window she's leaning against. Her eyes are drooping shut, and she has had to stifle several yawns in the past couple of minutes. Jack has already instructed her to rest, but her racing mind won't let her.
"Are you going to come inside the house with me or wait in the car?" she asks, constructing a mental plan in her head. It's something her father taught her, a way to feel more in control of any situation. Together, they'd write out list for the first day of school, a large project, or summer camp on the small whiteboard he had mounted in her room.
She wishes he could've been there to help her make a plan after his death. She hadn't utilized the whiteboard much during that time. The words have fun with a poorly drawn smiley face, half wiped and smudged, had remained on it for months after his death, until her mother had come out of her depressed stupor and decided the whole house needed a deep cleaning. Samira had come home from school one day to see it gone, and the resulting argument had been explosive.
"Whichever you want," he responds, taking a break from humming whatever tune was playing on the radio. "I don't mind coming in."
Samira nods. "It might be easier if you do. I don't know how many boxes I'll have to cart out."
He nods. "Then I'll come in."
"And we'll go straight back to Pittsburgh after?"
"Sure. You know I don't sleep much, anyway."
"We can stop somewhere to eat?" she suggests, wanting to prolong their time together even if they will have been trapped in his truck together for over twelve hours straight by that point.
He nods again. "Sounds good."
Samira takes another deep breath and goes over the simple plan in her head. She wishes her dad was here with her now, but maybe Jack is the next best thing—and that's a thought she'll have to unpack later.
Her childhood home looks bigger than she remembered, but that might be because of how painfully empty it is now that her mom has packed away most of their things. Anitha Mohan—Samira realizes she isn't sure if she keeping that name or taking her soon-to-be-husband's—greets them in the entryway, wrapping Samira in a loving hug that makes her take in a breath of relief and eyeing Jack quizzically. Samira just shakes her head, not wanting to get into that right now.
As they walk up to Samira's old bedroom, Anitha tells her that they want to 'travel light'—despite the three large suitcases behind her—so whatever she didn't take would be donated or thrown out, including her father's things. Samira is about to argue, but if she can have her mother hugging her as her last memory of her before she leaves for a year, she won't ruin it.
Her bedroom is like a time capsule of her teenage years, having remained mostly untouched. She feels her cheeks heat up as she traces Jack's line of sight to the posters littering her walls, but then turns solemn when her eyes catch on her whiteboard.
Jack is there to steady her, like always. He unfolds one of the cardboard boxes she had brought and asks her what she wants to start with.
"I don't know. I don't know how I'm going to choose what to bring. I thought I wouldn't take much, but of whatever I don't take is gone forever…" she trails off, sitting down on the lavender duvet.
He nods sympthetically. "Take as much as you want. My truck is big enough, and you can always throw things away later."
She bites her lip nervously. "It's a lot."
"I know, but I'll help. I'll help you decorate your apartment with whatever you take back, and I'll help you throw away the things you decide you're ready to part with," he says, kneeling down in front of her so he can meet her gaze. His eyes are warm and his hands are on her knees, and Samira thinks for the first time that maybe she can get through this.
In a small cafe an hour outside of Pittsburgh, Samira munches on an almond croissant with red eyes and warm cheeks. Across from her, Jack takes a bite of a panini and sips his double espresso. She had cried no less than three times while going through the things in her childhood home—while going through her dad's things especially—and Jack had been there to deal with the fallout each time. Now, there were two medium sized boxes filled to the brim with clothes, framed pictures, and trinkets that Samira wasn't quite sure she could find room for in her small apartment, but Jack promised she'd help her. She likes that their closeness won't come to an end, that even after they get back from their road trip, there's still an opportunity to see each other again in a more personal setting.
"Your mother scares me," Jack say suddenly, making her laugh for the first time in a while.
"She has that effect."
"She kept glaring at me."
"She wanted to know what you were doing there," Samira explains. "I told her you're a friend who offered to help, but I don't think she believed me."
Jack's cheeks develop the faintest twinge of pink. "Oh."
Samira presses her tongue into the inside of her cheek contemplatively before leaning forward, elbows on the table. "I mean, it isn't that believable, is it?"
"What do you mean?" he asks, but she can see a sparkle of playfulness in his expression.
"Who drives twelve hours around the country for a friend?"
"A very good friend," he replies with a smile. He breaks eye contact for a second to move his hot drink away from where her elbow is creeping up the table, but then his intense stare is back on her.
"You held me when I cried," she says. It sounds almost accusatory.
"I did." He nods.
"You look at me like—"
"Like I'm in love with you?" he interrupts her, clasping her elbows in his palms. She tries not to reel back in shock, but she doesn't think she's successful. "Don't tell me you don't know."
"Well I knew— I thought— but love?" she splutters.
He shrugs. "It's kind of an open secret. I really did think you knew."
She shakes her head, pursing her lips. "I really wish you would have told me."
He raises an eyebrow as a smirk begins to form on his face. He leans in towards her. "Oh, yeah? How come?"
"Come pick me up next Thursday after my shift and you'll find out," she says, smiling wide.
"Oh, I have to earn it now?"
"If you're willing to drive twelve hours for me, twelve minutes shouldn't be a problem."
His expression changes from one of mirth to something softer and more genuine. "It isn't."
Unable to resist his magnetic tug, she lifts herself off her chair a little to plant a kiss on his lips. She doesn't linger, as much as she wants to, and only lets the contact last a second before sitting back down. It's enough to unleash the butterflies in her stomach, and by his stunned expression, she pretty sure he's having a similar reaction.
"Finish your food," she tells him, still beaming.
He picks up his sandwich. "Yeah? You're eager to get back, now?"
She nods seriously. "Well, I have something to look forward to."
He nods at her and takes another bite. Beaming, Samira thinks that she loves him, too, though she'll only tell him she shares his feelings five days later on their date, once things feel more steady. Back in Pittsburgh, her father's stuff scattered across her apartment, she feels like she's beginning to grow roots, and she wants to tangle them with Jack's.