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Jack POV
I could spend a lifetime watching her like this.
The world turned, and he was at peace. It had been so long since the dark thoughts in his head had threatened to demolish his mental defenses. However, it felt so easy to be here with her in his bed, so out of place and yet so right.
Jack reminded himself to breathe. This was real. It was not a dream, so similar to the ones he had often fantasized in the deep hours of his sleep. However, the extraneous heat permeating through his body was soothing his spirit like morphine. The real Samira drifted between dreams beside him, her small hand instinctively bringing his arm around her middle, searching for his protective warmth. Nuzzling further into him.
A moment to be seen and be understood in return, that’s all they needed to clash after so many nights chasing each other in circles.
Jack had been battling with himself for an eternity, arguing to his ghosts how he would not be good to someone like Samira, so young and full of ambitions. Someone who was, in his eyes, the smartest doctor in the ED. He would only get in her bright future, staining the beaming smile he grew to love every time their gazes met across the hub.
Her bright brown eyes always pulled him out of his deepest fears.
His adrenaline-hungry brain always slowed when he was around Samira. All those hours spent chasing the next hollow rush to silence his past demons, his work at PTMC, the extra shifts, the moonlighting as a SWAT medic, had never been enough. Yet somehow, the quiet steadiness of her composure drew him into her orbit and did what none of it could. It balanced out the noise in his chest.
Watching the person he admired the most drown in sadness and frustration after one of the worst shifts of her life almost broke him. He wanted to reach out, to pick up the pieces of her heart and fix them. Afraid of realising the world was tumbling around her, too late because he had been hyper-focused on Robby, and the 4th July chaos.
He was late. Too late.
So he did the closest thing he could do when Jack found her outside in the ambulance bay at the end of her shift. He listened, he denied every comment of hers not being enough, every doubt and fear was met against his unmovable strength and reassurance for her. He could be her anchor tonight. Jack would be for her as long as she would let him, hopefully until they grow old and tired. He could be selfish like that.
It was a doomed wish, he knew. After last night, she was going to leave PTMC. Jack was aware she had been admitted to New Jersey for her fellowship, and despite her doubts about her mother leaving and not having anyone to rely on back at her hometown, Robby had pushed her over that decision.
In a way, it was ironic how the person Samira had put all of her confidence and hopes on after her long years of residency was the one who drove her away.
Robby failed her. The Pitt failed her.
And she almost lost herself in the storm.
Samira POV
His voice could calm the wildest sea.
She had seen him command the night shift with ease throughout her time as a resident, like an orchestra conductor who commanded respect without trying. It did not prepare her for what happened last night.
She could not ignore the flutter inside her chest when he confessed his feelings, when the words of comfort she was instinctively chasing came from his lips. Samira still felt like a train had run her over, but somehow her chest felt a little lighter when he closed the distance and pulled her closer in an embrace. He smelled clean and of something that was uniquely him. Only Jack.
The day had been slowly burning her within her biggest fears, dragging over her lying figure until she was a prisoner of her own coffin. The pressure, the nagging of Robby over her shoulder, the frustration of not being good enough. Her mother is selling their childhood house to run away with a stranger. A ticking cocktail waiting to explode in her face.
And it had exploded, at least for a moment.
The shift turned into a daymare.
What do you do when the life you have worked so hard to build comes tumbling down around you?
“Please, don’t go.”
A plea, a whisper cutting through the clouds of her thoughts. Samira felt the pressure of his hold tightening. She twisted in response, turning to find his misty hazel eyes looking at her, almost breaking her. She did not remember who closed the distance again, only that she allowed herself to drift away in his sweet kiss, their mouths rediscovering a rhythm in their hunger for connection.
“I’m right here,” she panted, his lips quickly drifting lower to her neck with eagerness. “I need you.”
“Be with me,” Jack was on her now, his knee parting her legs, anxious for proximity. Samira could feel him hard against her center, slowly coaxing her body to the same easy rhythm they had found before. Caution thrown to the wind, Samira let herself go, replacing her doubts about the big red lines they had crossed tonight with the way Jack felt within her.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
She could have this, she mused. It would be so easy to give in, to lie to herself, and the future ahead looming over her. She would move out back to Jersey, make it work somehow despite the setbacks. Everything will go according to the plan she had set for herself since med school. Something deep within her stomach clenched with anxiety.
No, don’t go there. Not now.
Because that would mean letting go of the best thing she had obtained in her stay during PTMC, and she was not ready to say goodbye.
“Jack,” she sighed, before catching his lips again. He was so solid over her that she could be strong for him right now. Be present, Samira repeated to herself over and over in her head. How many times had she fantasized about this? She tried to ignore for so long the effect he had on her, acting like she did not care about the way his praise after a very complicated procedure sent a current down her spine. Like her name, his lips did not sound like coming home.
“Only you, Jack.”
She could give them a time of quiet between the storms.