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Jack Abbott has never been good at putting things into words - at least, not the kind that matter.
He can call a code in seconds, can rattle off drug dosages half-asleep, can bark orders in the middle of chaos with a steadiness that makes people listen when everything else is falling apart. But none of that helps him explain this - the way loving Samira Mohan doesn’t feel like something external, something he chose once and maintains. It feels cellular. Ingrained. Like his body had learned her before his mind ever caught up. Loving Samira Mohan feels less like something he does and more like something that keeps him alive.
Because how is he supposed to articulate the way her shampoo - something simple, something sweet and honeyed - lingers on his pillow long after she’s left for an earlier shift? It’s ridiculous, objectively. Honey-scented without being sickly. Soft, sweet, a little floral if it lingers long enough to mix with her perfume. And it does linger. In his sheets, in the collar of his hoodie she steals and forgets to return, in the air after she’s walked past him in the cramped corridor outside trauma two. And every time it hits him it’s like something sparks low in his chest - slow at first, then spreading, a quiet ignition.
Not heat like panic, not heat like adrenaline. Something steady and glowing. It seeps into him, warm and golden, until it feels like his cells are sparking awake one by one, like he’s being rebuilt from the inside out just from the memory of her?
Or the way the sun hits her eyes at the farmers market.
They don’t always go - shifts get in the way, exhaustion wins more often than not - but when they do, it becomes something close to sacred. It’s always early when they go - too early for most people, but perfect for them, coming off nights or chasing the quiet between shifts. Early morning, the city not fully awake yet, the air cool and clean in a way the Pitt never is. Samira moves through the stalls like she belongs there, fingers brushing over produce, bargaining lightly with vendors who always seem to soften for her.
Jack mostly just watches.
Because the light - God, the light.
It filters through the canvas awnings in fractured gold, catching her curls, sliding across her skin, settling in her eyes until they’re not just brown but lit and suddenly there’s gold there too. Honey again. Always honey. Warm, alive, reflecting something he can’t quite name but feels like home anyway.
Samira turns to him sometimes, holding up something small - tomatoes, herbs, something wrapped in paper - and asks, “What do you think?”
And Jack, who has never cared about tomatoes in his life, feels like the answer matters more than anything.
“Yeah,” he says, every time. “That one.”
Because it’s never really about the tomatoes. It’s about the way she looks at him like he’s part of the choice.
It settles somewhere deep in his chest, that warmth, and he thinks distantly that if everything else fell apart - if the Pitt burned down, if the world went to shit - he could survive on that alone.
Then there’s her laugh.
God.
The Pitt is never quiet, never still. It hums and pulses and groans under the weight of too many patients, too many stories, too much everything: recycled air, fluorescent lighting, voices and monitors layered on top of each other until it becomes a kind of constant static. Jack exists in it in the way he exists in most things - controlled, compartmentalized, efficient.
Until he hears her laugh.
It shouldn’t cut through the noise as clearly as it does, but it always does. Across the department, around corners, through closed curtains - it finds him. Bright and unrestrained in a place that demands restraint.
And every time, it lands the same way.
Like a hand at the back of his neck, steadying him.
Like a reminder: you’re still here.
There was a night - one of those endless ones, where every patient seemed worse than the last, where his leg ached in that deep, grinding way that made him want to crawl out of his own skin. He’d been running on fumes, vision tunnelling, the edges of everything going just a little too soft.
And then - her laugh.
Sharp. Sudden. Real.
He’d paused mid-chart, eyes closing for half a second longer than he should have, and just… let it hit him.
And it was enough.
Not to fix anything. Not to make the night easier. But enough to keep going.
Enough to finish.
Enough to get back to her.
Enough to push through the last chart. Enough to take one more patient. Enough to make it to the end of the shift without feeling like he’s about to come apart at the seams. Because he knows - knows - that at the end of it, they’ll stumble through the front door together, exhausted and aching, and collapse into something softer.
Something warm.
Like the couch.
Like her.
There are nights - mornings, really - when they don’t even make it to the bedroom. They just fall onto the couch in a tangle of limbs and half-mumbled sentences, shoes half-kicked off and bags abandoned by the door, the TV flickering quietly through something neither of them is really watching. Samira curls into his side like it’s instinct, like gravity pulls her there.
Jack pretends, sometimes, that he’s fine. Even when he’s not.
Even when the ache in his leg is sharp enough to make him hold his breath just a little too long, even when phantom pain flickers at the edges, confusing and cruel. He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t ask - he never has to.
Samira shifts closer after a while, her movements careful but sure, like she’s done this a hundred times - because she has. Her body turning toward his without breaking the quiet. Her fingers find the straps of his prosthetic, sure and gentle and practiced. Samira eases the limb off as if she’s done it a hundred times - because she has. Because she paid attention, she learned. She cared.
She doesn’t ask, does it hurt? She doesn’t say, let me help. She just… does.
Setting the prosthetic aside without ceremony and shifts closer. Samira’s hands settle against Jack’s skin, warm and grounding, thumbs pressing in steady, deliberate circles that make something in his chest loosen before he can stop it. Samira massages his stump slowly, like she’s mapping him. Like she’s telling his body it’s safe to let go.
Jack doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it - the quiet understanding of it. The way she just knows. No questions, no hesitation, no pity. Just care. Just her. The way she knows him. The way she reads him without needing translation. The way she touches him like there’s nothing broken about him, nothing missing - just something that needs care, like any other part of him.
Jack exhales, long and quiet, his head tipping back against the couch.
“Better?” Samira murmurs, almost absentmindedly.
Jack doesn’t trust his voice, so he just nods. Samira’s hand slides briefly over his knee, grounding him again, before she settles back against him like nothing monumental just happened.
Like it’s normal.
Like he’s normal.
It settles over him, that warmth, deeper than anything else. Not sharp like adrenaline or fleeting like relief, but steady. Constant. A slow-burning thing that seeps into his bones and stays there.
And for once, Jack doesn’t feel like he has to hold himself together.
Maybe - here, with her - he doesn’t have to.
—
Samira’s side of it isn’t quieter, it just looks that way.
Because from the outside, Jack is steady. Controlled. Predictable in the best possible way. He shows up. He follows through. He doesn’t make promises he can’t keep.
But Samira has learned the small things.
Like the way he always positions himself slightly to her left when they walk - subtle, barely noticeable, but deliberate, so she doesn’t have to adjust her pace to match his prosthetic. Like he’s the one accommodating her, not the other way around.
Or the way he hands her coffee without asking on the mornings she’s quieter than usual - exactly how she likes it, even when she’s convinced she never told him.
Or the claw clip.
It’s still in his go-bag. She’s checked. More than once. It doesn’t belong there, technically. It has no medical purpose, no practical use in the controlled chaos of the Pitt.
Except it does.
Because once - just once - Samira’s had snapped in the middle of an intubation. One second her hair had been secured, out of the way; the next, it had fallen loose around her face, curls sticking to her skin as she worked.
Jack hadn’t hesitated.
He’d stepped in behind her without a word, his fingers threading through her hair, gathering it back, holding it in place so she could finish. Steady. Unwavering. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Afterward, he’d just shrugged it off when she thanked him.
The next shift, there’d been a claw clip tucked into his bag.
He never mentions it. Doesn’t make a big deal out of it.
But it’s always there.
Just in case.
After the first time - after his fingers had woven through her curls mid-intubation, steadying them, steadying her - she’d expected it to be a one-off. A moment of instinct, nothing more.
But then she saw the clip.
Tucked neatly into a side pocket, like it belonged there.
Like she belonged there.
“Jack,” she’d said once, holding it up, a little incredulous. “Why do you carry this around in your go-bag?”
He’d barely glanced up from what he was doing. “It’s useful.”
“For who?”
A pause. Then, quieter, “You.”
That was it. No big declaration. No dramatic gesture.
Just that.
And somehow, it meant more than anything else ever could.
—
The night she comes home to him cooking, it hits her harder than she expects. Samira knows he’s home before she even opens the door.
The first thing she notices is the smell. It’s enough to stop her in the doorway, breath catching as her mind conjures images from the past.
Spices - warm and layered, something toasted, something familiar in a way that makes her chest tighten before she can even place it. It curls through the apartment, wraps around her like a memory she didn’t know she was carrying.
For a second, she’s not here. As memory floods in, thick and immediate, Samira is transported in time.
She’s back in her grandparents’ kitchen, standing on tiptoes to see over the counter, listening to the soft rhythm of Hindi mixing with the clatter of pots. Her grandmother’s bangles chiming as she stirs something fragrant and simmering, her grandfather humming under his breath.
Home.
The door clicks shut behind her, and she blinks herself back into the present - but the feeling lingers.
It’s not just the smell though - it’s him.
“Hey,” Jack calls from the kitchen, and there’s something almost sheepish in his voice.
She rounds the corner to find him there, one-handedly stirring a pot, the other braced against the counter for balance. Brow furrowed in concentration like what he’s trying to achieve is something that matters. There’s a recipe open on his phone, smudged and clearly referenced about a dozen times already.
“You’re cooking this?” she asks, soft, a little incredulous.
He shrugs, glancing at her, but there’s something almost uncertain in it. “Attempting to.”
Samira steps closer, drawn in by the scent, by him. “This is–” She swallows, emotion catching unexpectedly. “This is my grandmother’s recipe.”
“Yeah,” he says, quieter now. “You mentioned it once. Figured I’d give it a shot.”
“You’ve never even had this before.”
“You talked about it,” he says simply. “Seemed important.”
And that’s it.
That’s the thing about Jack.
He doesn’t always say the right words. Doesn’t always know how to articulate what he feels, but he listens.
He remembers.
He acts.
Samira steps closer, drawn in by the warmth of the stove, the familiarity of the scent, the quiet gravity of him trying. Something in her chest cracks open, warm and aching all at once. She doesn’t trust herself to speak, so she just reaches for him instead. Her hand finds the back of his shirt, fingers curling lightly into the fabric as she presses her face briefly in between his shoulder blades. He smells like soap and spice and something unmistakably Jack, and it steadies her.
“Thank you, you did good,” she murmurs, and hopes he understands everything packed into those few words.
He huffs softly. “Let’s wait until you taste it.”
But she already knows.
He does.
He always does.
—
Later, in the quiet of their bedroom, Samira wakes just enough to feel him move.
Not fully awake - just enough to register the shift in the bed, the subtle movement behind her. Then she feels it: the mattress dipping, the warmth of Jack’s body curling into her back.
His arm slides around her waist, slow and instinctive, pulling her closer until there’s no space left between them. His hand settles against her stomach, grounding, familiar. Samira lets herself be pulled back, her body fitting into his like it was made for it, her spine aligning with his chest. His face presses into the curve of her neck, breath warm against her skin, nuzzling in with a quiet, almost unconscious need.
There’s a soft exhale - almost a sigh - and then he stills.
Sleep.
Real, unguarded sleep.
Samira’s eyes flutter open in the dark, her chest tightening in a way that has nothing to do with stress or exhaustion. Because this - this - is rare for him. Rest doesn’t come easily to Jack, not with the weight he carries, not with the way his mind refuses to quiet.
But here, with her–
He sleeps. His body sinks fully into rest without tension coiled beneath it.
She lets her hand drift back, fingers brushing lightly over his arm where it rests against her stomach, anchoring him there. Anchoring herself too.
Warmth blooms in her chest, soft and steady and overwhelming in its quiet certainty. Pride, too - gentle but fierce, because she knows what this means. Knows what it costs him to let go like this.
He trusts me.
And she’ll spend as long as it takes proving that he’s right to.
Samira closes her eyes again, letting herself sink back into the weight of him, the heat of him, the life they’ve built in these small, careful moments.
Outside, the world keeps moving. The Pitt will call them back soon enough. The noise, the chaos, the endless demand.
But here -
Here, in the dark, wrapped up in each other -
There is only warmth.
And it is enough.