Work Text:
Everyone knows not to say the word quiet during a shift. But Samira also believes it’s a curse to say—or even think—anything along the lines of what a shit shift.
Because it can always get worse.
So she tries not to let those words float through her mind, no matter how much she wants to. She’s on a rare night shift, and not only was she unable to adjust her sleep schedule in advance, but she’s barely slept at all for the past two days. They’re short-staffed, of course, and the shift has been endless right from the jump, without the usual middle-of-the-night lull that allows her to chug down a cup of coffee. Plus, two hours ago she got something in her hair, some bodily fluid she doesn’t want confirmation of, so she just has it twisted up tight on the top of her head and is trying not to think about it.
The only thing getting her through tonight’s slog is the prospect of staggering home, washing her hair, and passing out for several hours.
Eventually she gets a short break between patients, but instead of wolfing down a protein bar or investigating the dregs of the coffee pot in the break room, Samira slips out into the ambulance bay for some air. Not that it’s particularly refreshing—they’re in the midst of a brief spring heat wave, and the air is heavy and still, even in the middle of the night. She pulls her scrub top away from her skin, wincing as it sticks. After a Pittsburgh winter she’s not used to the warmth at all and even forewent her usual undershirt beneath her scrubs when she got changed earlier. But she takes a deep breath anyway, sticky air and all, and wills her body to keep going for just a few more hours.
“Hey.”
Samira’s shoulders drop at the familiar voice, and despite the fatigue tugging her down and the horror of whatever the fuck is in her hair, a smile creeps onto her face. She turns to look at Jack, walking from the door over to her with his arms crossed over his chest.
The company is the only good part of a night shift, in her opinion.
“Hey. Need me in there?” she asks, but he shakes his head.
“Nah. We got one coming in a couple minutes, though, suspected OD.”
Samira nods. It probably won’t require curbside service, but she’ll stay out here anyway, if she can. She rolls her shoulders and stretches her arms toward the sky, trying to get some blood flow going to wake her up.
Jack’s watching her, a little furrow between his eyebrows. “All good?” he asks.
“Yeah. Just not—” She hides a yawn, unsuccessfully, behind her hand. “—not nocturnal like the rest of you yet.”
“Oh, so you do have a flaw.”
Samira rolls her eyes, but the smile is still there, she can feel it in her cheeks, and she can’t bite it back. She can hear the approaching siren now.
“I’ll take my proper circadian rhythms, thanks,” she says primly, and he laughs.
Jack stays outside with her, and even though they don’t talk, the peaceful, companionable silence seeps into her like some kind of fortifying elixir, and by the time the ambulance rolls in, she’s hit her second wind and feels ready to tackle the rest of her shift.
Unfortunately, the patient, a beefy college-aged kid, ends up being much less unconscious than everyone thought and sits up swinging before they even get him inside. Samira dodges a crazed punch to the face but does get shoved, hard, and stumbles backward, tripping over the curb and landing on the pavement on her back with a harsh thud and painful, pathetic slide.
She stares up at the sky—it’s so humid and hazy that there are no stars—and tries, ineffectually, to breathe. There’s commotion by the ambulance, someone yelling about why the fuck the patient wasn’t restrained, and by the time two faces pop into her field of view, Ellis and Jack, she still can’t get any air.
“Samira,” Jack says. His eyes, always so intense, lock right onto hers. “Samira, talk to me. You okay?”
He sounds panicked, and that, more than anything, more than the screaming pain in her back or the awful tightness in her chest, makes her panic, too.
But she takes a shuddering breath, finally, and squeezes her eyes shut with a groan—she needs the pain to recede, just a little bit, so she can diagnose herself. After a few more torturous seconds, her head clears enough for her to move down her mental checklist. She can move her extremities fine, no head trauma, her breathing is close to normal now. Must’ve just gotten the wind knocked out of her.
“I’m okay,” she rasps.
“Did you hit your head?” Ellis asks, already shining a light into her eyes. “Pupils are equal, reactive.”
“No,” Samira says, but Jack’s hand slides under her head anyway, so gently, and prods at her scalp. She lifts her hand and peers at the scrape at the base of her palm. “Landed on my hand, I think.”
Ellis takes her hand and slowly manipulates her wrist, looking at Samira for any reaction. She shakes her head.
“What hurts, then?” Jack asks, like he knows. It must be all over her face.
“My back,” she manages, and both of their faces get pinched again. “No, just—surface. Little scratch, probably.”
Jack motions toward someone back by the entrance and raises his voice. “Let’s get a—”
“Nope,” Samira says, rolling to her side before either of them can protest. She feels steadier now that she can breathe and the adrenaline is receding. “I can stand.”
And she does, all by herself, though her legs are a little shaky and Jack and Ellis each have to take hold of an elbow. She does another scan when she’s upright—most of her body is fine, other than her scraped-up hand, but her back feels like it’s on fire. Road rash, probably.
Parker tugs at her collar and peers down her shirt at her back. “Ooh. Ouch.”
Jack’s grip tightens on her elbow. “Let’s go take a look.”
Samira’s face is hot, a combination of the temperature and the pain and the embarrassment, and avoids everyone’s curious gazes as Jack ushers her inside and into a room. He closes both the door and the curtain. “Shirt off, please,” he says, then falters, literally pausing mid-stride, as the words catch up to him. “Uh. I can get Ellis, if you—”
“It’s fine,” she says, already stripping off her scrub top, ripped from her fall, and tossing it onto the floor. When she turns around, showing Jack her back, he lets out a low whistle. She winces. Never a good sign to impress an ER doctor. “That bad?”
“Nah,” he says after a second. He steps closer and touches her shoulder, twisting her into better light. “Prettiest case of road rash I’ve ever seen.”
Samira laughs and winces yet again as the movement pulls at her skin. “Shit, ow, don’t be funny.”
“I’ll do my best. Here, lie down. On your stomach.”
She obeys and takes a deep breath, watching Jack out of the corner of her eye as he rifles through cabinets for supplies and snaps on a pair of gloves. Is he really going to be the one to take care of this? Shit.
She focuses on her injury instead. The wound feels huge on her back, like all the skin from one shoulder blade to the other is rubbed raw and open. Showering is going to be miserable for weeks. “How big?”
Jack uses his index finger to trace the edges, and she visualizes the shape of it. It’s not quite as big as it feels, but it’s not small, either, probably the size of his hand.
He taps the clasp of her bra. It’s just an everyday flesh-toned one, nothing fancy but nothing threadbare, either. “I need to—”
“Yeah,” she interrupts. Heat floods her face, but at least he can’t see it. “Yeah, you can.”
He flicks it open easily, and she exhales as the pressure on her damaged skin releases.
“Smooth,” she says, can’t help it, and Jack huffs.
“I’ve—” He cuts himself off abruptly.
Samira shrugs the bra straps down, holding the fabric against her chest, and dares a glance over her shoulder. He’s looking at her back, not her face, and biting his lip like he’s stopping himself from saying something.
“You’ve what?”
“Nothing. Bad joke.”
“Like that’s ever stopped you before,” she says, and he smiles.
“You told me not to be funny.”
“Can I guess what the joke was?”
“No, you may not,” Jack says, lifting his gaze to narrow his eyes at her playfully, and she bites down on a smile as she turns back to the tiny scratchy pillow. I’ve been undoing bras since before you were born, she guesses.
“I need to clean this,” he continues. “I’d tell you that it won’t hurt—”
“But that would be a lie,” Samira finishes. “I know.”
“You want anything for the pain?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes even though he can’t see her.
“No. Come on, give me a little credit.”
It does hurt, as he starts to clean the dirt and gravel from the wound, it hurts like a bitch, actually, but far more distressing is how gentle Jack’s being. His hands are warm, even through the gloves, and he’s close enough that she can feel his breath on her skin. It makes her shoulders tighten and her thighs clench.
Because yes, Samira has a crush on the handsome, competent, older doctor who has a nasty little habit of praising her. She’s such a cliche. It’s deeply embarrassing, really, especially because she’s never really been one to even have crushes. Normally at work it’s easy to ignore her feelings and not be distracted by him because she is a professional, but he’s never had his hands on her bare back at work, either. It’s taking all of her willpower not to leap from the bed and bolt from this room.
Actually, this particular scenario is his fault. Why is he torturing her like this, anyway? Literally anyone on staff could do this for her.
“Isn’t there something else you need to be doing?” she asks.
“Nope,” Jack says easily. He’s leaning over her, and his voice sounds lower and quieter than usual. “They’ll find me if they need me.”
Great.
Maybe it’s safer to focus on the pain. But then he moves to what must be a deeper part of the wound, and it burns so badly that a whimper comes out before she can swallow it down.
“Sorry,” Jack says under his breath, more softly than she’s ever heard him say anything, and she squeezes her eyes shut tighter. God, fuck. “Almost done.”
Samira does not think about Jack at all and instead curls her hands into fists and focuses on the bite of her short nails digging into her palms.
Finally he steps away, and she exhales in relief, both because the wound is clean and covered and because Jack is no longer all up in her personal space. “Good job,” he says.
She grits her teeth and fumbles to reclasp her bra on the loosest hook—not at all comfortable over the gauze but manageable for a couple hours—before she sits up. Jack holds out a fresh scrub shirt, which she takes with a quiet thanks and tugs over her head.
“I think we should do some imaging, just to be safe,” he says, but she shakes her head before the words are even fully out of his mouth.
“No way, we’re backed up, and I’m not cutting the line or waiting around. I’m fine, really. I’d tell you if anything started bothering me.”
Jack lifts an eyebrow. “Would you?”
“Pinky swear,” she says, mostly meaning it.
“You should go home, then. Rest.”
“Also no. We’re understaffed, and shift’s almost over, anyway.”
Jack frowns at her, but she’s not deterred, just meets his gaze without hesitation. Although he’d be well within his rights to force her to go home, he won’t.
“Fine,” he allows, as she knew he would. “But take it easy.”
“Sure,” Samira lies, and he drops an ibuprofen into her palm. She swallows it dry and heads for the door.
“Hang on.” Jack reaches out and snatches her wrist before she can get far, and she freezes. The warm pressure of his fingers on her bare skin overshadows the persistent ache in her back.
She makes no motion to dislodge his grip. “Yeah?”
He lifts her hand, and she blinks down at the scrape on her palm that she’d completely forgotten about. “Oh, come on,” she protests. “This is fine.”
“I’m going to at least cover it.” He’s doing a good job of putting on a serious face, but the smile is so obvious in his eyes. “Infection is a serious risk, Dr. Mohan, especially in a place like an ED.”
She sighs. “Then by all means, Dr. Abbot.”
“Your sarcasm is noted for the record,” he says as he cleans the scrape, quick but thorough, and slaps a bandage on.
Samira flexes her hand, testing her mobility, and his fingers fall away from her wrist. “Thank you. Really.”
Jack nods. “I’m sorry that happened,” he says, a little gruff. “I don’t like people getting hurt on my watch, scares ‘em off from night shift.”
“Oh, the hours do that anyway,” she says, and he laughs. “Not to mention the guy in charge.”
It’s a blatant lie, and given the eye roll, he knows it.
“Funny, funny girl,” Jack says, his voice low. “Get out of here, back to work.”
“Great bedside manner, Abbot. But hey, you can make it up to me by handling all the incident paperwork!”
She ducks out of the room over his protests, smiling despite her throbbing skin.
The ibuprofen takes the edge off, but Samira only gets through the final two hours of her shift on pure grit and determination. On a normal day she’d linger through handoff and double-check everything with her patients one last time, but today, partially to avoid telling the story of her injury a dozen times over to everyone on the day shift, she clocks out the second she can.
Her mood lifts only when she spots the sheaf of papers wedged neatly into the door of her locker. She eases it out and smoothes down the post-it stuck on the top page. This one is wild, let me know what you think. –Jack
Samira flips through the article, smiling at the amount of post-its he’s put inside. Blue ones today. They’ll be stories, observations, opinions, questions, all written in the messy scrawl she’s fluent in by now.
She tucks the stapled papers carefully into her bag, into the padded compartment meant for a laptop. It’ll be her treat when she gets home, to snuggle into bed and read his notes and write out her own responses on the pink post-its she steals from the ED. She’ll do it right after she showe—
Fuck.
She drops her forehead against her locker with a groan.
“What could have possibly elicited that noise, Dr. Mohan?”
God, she hadn’t even heard Jack approach.
She glances over at him without removing her head from her locker. He’s apparently ready to get out of here on time today, too. For once. “All I want to do is wash my hair. Something got in it a while ago, I don’t even want to know what.”
“Yeah, and?”
Samira sighs again. “And, all I have at home is a tiny, shitty shower stall. I don’t want to get this—” She gestures to her back. “—wet, and it’s going to be impossible to wash my hair that way.”
“Come over and use my shower, then.”
She gapes at him, but Jack isn’t even looking at her, doesn’t seem perturbed or bothered at all. Just stands in front of his locker and rifles through his bag with his usual calm steadiness, like this is something he offers to everyone. Hell, maybe he does.
“I—what?”
He swings his bag over his shoulder and uses his elbow to slam his locker shut as he finally meets her gaze. “Got a nice, big shower. Bench, detachable shower head, the works. It’ll be real easy for you to just wash your hair.”
“Uh.” Samira has no words. That sounds amazing, actually, but she can’t go to Jack’s house. To take a shower. Can she?
He lifts an eyebrow at her. “Plus you’ll have to redress your road rash, anyway, and there’s no way you can do that by yourself.”
That is, unfortunately, true.
“Okay.” Normally she would never agree, would be too worried about overstepping. But she must be too tired to overthink it because the word just slips out. “Thank you.”
Jack just nods. He doesn’t look disappointed that she accepted his offer, or enthusiastic, or anything really, just neutral. Because they’re friends, good ones, and he’s helping her out. How else would she expect him to look? “Come on, then. You have your car?”
Samira does not. She’s hyper-conscious of how it looks, them leaving together, but literally no one notices or glances at them or says anything at all and in the parking lot there’s no one around to even see when she heads for the passenger side of his Subaru.
“Thanks again,” she says, once they’re off hospital property.
“No problem.” He glances at her with a half-smile. “Not sure you would’ve made it home on your own, anyway.”
She groans and drops his gaze. “I’m not usually this incompetent, I swear.”
“You’ve never been incompetent a day in your life.”
Samira swallows. She has half a mind to tell Jack to stop praising her while she’s too tired to temper her reaction to appropriate levels.
“I’m just tired, haven’t slept well in a few days,” she says instead, and he hums. Jack gets it, she knows, she had an orange post-it pressed into her hand at a shift handoff last month that just said my notes are probably bad, sorry, slept like SHIT with an impressive recreation of the skull emoji.
Plus, her back fucking hurts. She must make some kind of face as she tries to settle into the passenger seat because he looks over at her again.
“Feeling all right?”
“Yeah, just sore.”
“I fell off my bike once, a million years ago, scraped the hell out of my thigh,” he says, gesturing. “About the size of my palm. I’m not ashamed to tell you I cried in the shower.”
Samira snorts despite the fact that now she’s thinking about his thighs. And him in the shower.
“Yeah, so if you hear me yelling in your shower, don’t come running.”
He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Fat chance.”
Jack’s house is a cute one-story not far from the hospital, older but well-maintained, with what looks like a fairly fresh coat of light blue paint on the exterior. He takes Samira’s bag despite her protests—she’s not that injured, come on—and ushers her inside. While she kicks off her shoes she gets a quick glance at the living room, at the big leather sectional and the crowded bookshelves, but before she can look around enough to satisfy her curiosity he leads her straight through his bedroom and into the bathroom.
Jack drops her bag on the counter and gestures to her back. “You really should take that dressing off before you shower.”
She doesn’t actually want to cry in his shower, though.
“Yes, I should, but doctors make the worst patients, haven’t you heard?” She smiles sweetly at him. “So I’m leaving it on.”
Jack rolls his eyes but doesn’t protest. “You’re letting me clean it afterward, then,” he says, and it’s not a question. He pulls out a neatly-folded towel from a short stack under the sink and sets it on the counter. “You need anything else?”
Samira does a quick mental inventory of what’s in her backpack. She has a spare shirt, but it’s a workout top, and the mere thought of pulling something that tight over her sore skin makes her shudder. “Um. A shirt, maybe? Something loose?”
“Sure, I’ll leave one on the bed.” Jack heads for the door and smirks at her. “Yell if you need anything.”
“Very funny,” she says, even though she’s fully dying on the inside, and closes the door in his face.
She blows out a breath and lets her eyes fall shut. One thing at a time. Take a shower, wash her hair, don’t think about Jack. Easy.
He wasn’t lying about the shower, it’s spacious with multiple shower heads and a bench cut into the stone. It feels like she’s in a fancy hotel. She’s able to sit and flip her head over and wash her hair—twice—with a palmful of Jack’s shampoo. She would’ve pegged him for a 2-in-1 kind of guy, but she’s not complaining.
She dries off, scrunches some of her emergency travel-size curl cream into her hair, tugs on her spare shorts from her backpack, and peeks around the door into the bedroom. Empty. There’s a shirt laying on the bed, as promised, and it sends an illicit little thrill down her spine to walk shirtless across Jack’s bedroom to get it. It’s an oversized dark red plain long-sleeve, big enough on her that the hem falls only a couple inches above the edge of her shorts.
Samira hangs up her towel and cleans the bathroom as much as she can, until there’s no trace of anyone having used it. On her way out, she slows her steps and lets her gaze drift around Jack’s bedroom. The bed is big—a king, she’s pretty sure—and made neatly with soft-looking sheets and four pillows that are not at all decorative. Two nightstands, though one only has a lamp. The other has two books, a pair of reading glasses, a phone charger, and a small dish with Jack’s wedding band in it, gleaming dully in the low light. She’s ashamed to admit that she noticed a change in his habits a couple months ago: sometimes he wears it on his right hand, sometimes not at all.
She tears her gaze away and follows the faint sound of clattering down the hallway and through the living room to the kitchen, open to the rest of the house with a breakfast bar in between. Jack’s at the stove, poking at something in a skillet, and as Samira slows to a stop, she has to lock her knees to stay firmly upright. She can’t remember the last time someone cooked for her, let alone someone she wasn’t related to.
Jack looks up when she drops her bag on the breakfast bar and stares at her for a second, his gaze flicking down to her—his—shirt, before redirecting his attention to the stove.
“I’m hungry,” he says, “figured you would be, too.”
“Yeah, definitely,” she says, although it’s mostly a lie. She’s actually tired enough that it’s almost making her nauseated, but she knows she should eat something anyway, before she crashes.
She stands on her toes to see what’s in the pan: eggs with something mixed in, maybe peppers. “Breakfast for dinner?” she asks, and Jack smiles down at the pan.
“It’s eight in the morning.”
“I just figured you nocturnal folks flip your eating habits, too.”
“Well, if you wanted something besides eggs and toast you should have put in a request.”
“Eggs and toast sounds great. Can I help?”
“No, you can sit,” Jack says, nodding at the breakfast bar, and she obeys like her strings have been cut.
Samira only gets to watch him move competently around the kitchen—can he cook?—for a couple more minutes before he slides a plate in front of her with a pile of softly scrambled eggs and a thick piece of buttered toast, bread that looks like it came from a bakery or a farmers’ market instead of in a bag from a grocery store.
“Water okay?” Jack asks, already pulling down two glasses from a cabinet next to the fridge. “I have tea if you want it. Or coffee, I guess, if you’re a real freak.”
She smiles. “Water is perfect, thank you.”
There’s another stool next to her, but instead of taking a seat, though he must be at least almost as exhausted as she is, Jack just stands across the counter from her and digs into his plate like he hasn’t eaten in days.
“Shower okay?” he asks, between bites.
“Oh, yeah. I feel so much better.”
“Good.”
He sounds so satisfied that Samira has to look down and focus on her food. She makes it through about two-thirds of her plate before she pushes it away.
“Something not to your liking?” Jack asks, and she shakes her head quickly.
“Oh, no, it’s—really good. Delicious. Thank you. I just tend to lose my appetite when I’m really tired.”
He nods, accepting her answer easily. “Funny, I’m the exact opposite.” He points at her plate, his eyebrow up in a silent question, and when she nods, he pulls it toward himself and picks up her half-eaten toast.
Samira stares. She’s been in his car and his house and his shower and is wearing his shirt, but this, watching him eat the rest of her piece of toast, the mark of his teeth neatly overtaking hers, is what makes her feel completely possessive and feral.
She leans over on her elbows and digs her palms into her eyes with a muffled groan. She’s so tired and so stupidly lovesick that she wants to cry.
“You all right?” Jack asks.
She blinks up at him. He’s eating the rest of her eggs now.
“Yeah.” She stretches her arms above her head and winces as the motion pulls at her back. “Just—so fucking tired. I should get home.”
Jack finishes clearing her plate and looks at her for a long second over the rim of his water glass as he chugs it, then tips his head toward the other side of the house, back where his bedroom is.
“I have a guest room.”
She blinks. “You—what?”
“You look like you’re about to pass out, and I have a pretty nice guest room right over there. Blackout shades, the whole deal.”
The thought is so tempting, so enthralling, that she shoves it out of her brain immediately. Can’t even look at it.
“I don’t want to put you out.”
Jack shrugs. He’s making the offer as easy as anything, just like he offered her his shower. Like it doesn’t mean a thing at all. Like he’s just being nice, pitying the poor, tired resident he’s friends with who got hurt while on his shift. “You aren’t. I’m happy to drive you home if you want, but you’re also welcome to stay.”
He stands, stacks their plates, and takes everything to the sink. She should offer to help, probably, since he cooked for her, but she’s frozen on her stool.
She clears her throat. “Well, I obviously would take an Uber.”
“You obviously would not.”
He says it in a tone that brokers no argument and also makes her want to lie down in a hole and sweep sand over herself like in that one SpongeBob meme. Samira swallows down the overwhelm and exhales carefully. “I—okay. Thank you.”
“I want to take a look at your back, anyway, and change the dressing.”
A noise escapes her, a petulant little whine, and when he looks at her with a smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth, her cheeks heat in embarrassment. But she definitely can’t handle his hands on her again, not when she’s so goddamn tired that her defenses are down.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she says, but he just scoffs.
“Who knows what kind of hack fixed you up? Gotta double-check the work.”
Samira can’t hold back a smile. “He was super over-qualified for the job, actually.”
“Even worse,” Jack says gravely, bracing both hands on the counter. It makes his shoulders bunch under his shirt and his triceps flex, and she has to close her eyes. “Probably out of practice with basic wound care.”
She laughs and rubs her hands over her face again. “What’re you worried about? It’s not gonna get infected.”
“How do you know? Just let me check and redress it.”
“Fine.” She drains the rest of the water in her glass and stands. She can’t sit here and look at him anymore. “But if I’m lying down, I’m not getting back up again. Guest room through there?”
Samira turns away without waiting for a response and heads back down the hallway. The guest room is a little starker than the main bedroom, less homey-looking, and the bed is smaller, but it looks just as comfortable. She closes the blackout shades, pulls back the sheets, and tugs her shirt off before climbing in and settling on her stomach with a sigh. It feels so, so good to be horizontal, good enough that she feels delusionally confident in her ability to handle Jack touching her. She’s fine.
Her eyes are closed when he comes in, but she’s keenly aware of his presence as he kneels next to the bed and unzips a bag.
“You still awake?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah.” Her voice is already thick with sleep. “How many first aid kits you have stashed around this place?”
“You haven’t snooped around yet?”
Only your bedroom. “Just you wait.”
Jack picks at the edge of the tape holding down the dressing, and Samira braces herself for the slight sting. But it never comes and she must doze off as he works because next thing she knows there’s a warm hand on her shoulder—no glove—and an even warmer voice close to her ear. “Hey. All done.”
On autopilot Samira works her arms underneath her to lever herself up, but the hand on her shoulder gets heavier, pressing her back down easily. “Don’t get up.”
Right. Because she’s not wearing a shirt. She buries her hot face in the pillow and then peeks out with one eye. Jack’s zipping up the first aid kit, not looking at her.
She clears her throat. “Give me your professional opinion, Dr. Abbot. Am I gonna make it?”
“Yeah, it looks great. Whoever took care of it really knows what he’s doing.”
She yawns. “I had no doubt.”
Jack flips off the lamp on the nightstand and gently tugs the sheets up over her, all the way up to her neck. “Sleep well, Samira.”
She says thank you, or she tries to, but she’s asleep before he can reply.
Samira wakes up dazed and disoriented, and it takes several moments for it to register that it’s not morning and she’s not in her apartment. She’s at Jack’s, and it’s…what time is it? She rolls over, scanning the nightstand for a clock, but all she sees is a glass of water and her phone, neither of which were there when she fell asleep.
She chugs the water and checks her phone. Late afternoon. Probably later than she should have slept, given that she’s back on her normal shift the day after tomorrow, but she feels great—her fucked-up sleep schedule is officially tomorrow’s problem.
The guest bedroom has an ensuite, with a travel-size tube of toothpaste and a toothbrush, still in its plastic, helpfully sitting next to the sink. As she scrubs the awful taste out of her mouth and stares at herself in the mirror, the guilt officially sets in. She has overstayed her welcome, for sure. Jack probably had things he wanted to do today but instead he’s been stuck in his house while she slept the day away. She needs to get out of his hair and get back to her own apartment, ideally without putting him out any further. Maybe if she calls the Uber without him knowing he won’t protest too much when it arrives.
But when Samira eases the door open and peeks out into the hallway, the house is quiet and dark and Jack’s bedroom door is closed. Is he still asleep? Or maybe he left?
She tiptoes into the main part of the house. Jack’s car is still in the driveway, she can see through the front window, so he must still be asleep. Should she leave? That feels rude. Though—creeping around Jack’s house while he’s asleep feels rude, too.
The living room is a little bit messier than she would have expected. Not much, certainly less messy than her own apartment has a tendency to get, but it’s not the stark, pin-straight place she’d for some reason imagined in her head. The throw blanket is balled up in the corner of the couch, not folded neatly over the back, and there’s a stack of mail on the coffee table, half opened and half not, next to an empty coffee cup. The TV is giant, and there are a couple framed photos tucked into the bookshelf amid the books. The first one she sees is a much younger Jack on a beach somewhere with his arm around a pretty dark-haired woman, almost certainly his late wife.
Samira tears her eyes away, feeling the sting of having invaded his privacy, and drifts into the kitchen. There’s a big, well-worn cutting board on the counter and a couple cookbooks on an open shelf above the counter and a ceramic bowl in the corner with two onions and a sweet potato. Maybe Jack does cook, not just breakfast. Samira would try to whip something up for dinner, but she can’t cook for shit. She’d more likely burn Jack’s house down.
She can bake, though. Well—one singular thing, anyway.
She peeks through Jack’s cabinets. He does have sugar, and peanut butter, and a cookie sheet. Would that be weird? No, she decides. It’s just a nice gesture. A thank you for hosting her in such an impromptu fashion. Plus, it’ll give her something to do that isn’t just snooping around Jack’s house while he’s asleep.
She preheats the oven, finds a bowl, and mixes together the sugar and the peanut butter. She goes to the fridge for an egg, but a flash of pink on the front of it makes her pause.
There isn’t too much on his fridge: a postcard from his electric company reminding him of a meter change next month, a photo of the night shift all dressed as pirates from Halloween last year, a grocery list with paper towels and bananas in Jack’s familiar handwriting.
And, held securely by a big clip with a magnet, a thick stack of pink post-its.
Heat floods her body as she stares at them.
Though she has Jack’s phone number, they rarely text. Most of their communication—substantial in its quantity, despite the fact that they don’t often work together—comes via post-it. Journal articles and case studies shoved into their lockers, notes and questions about patients stuck onto monitors, stories about their shifts tucked into each other’s bags, the occasional Property of Dr. Mohan DO NOT TOUCH on an overpriced matcha latte he brings for her or, once, a Tupperware of leftover fried rice he made and didn’t finish that he left for her in the break room.
She recognizes the post-it on top of the stack on the fridge, it’s from last week. She stuck it on a travel mug of coffee that she left for him one evening at the end of her shift and the beginning of his. The post-it on top just said ABBOT in handwriting as neutral as she could make it, for plausible deniability in case anyone saw, but she put another one underneath, the one that’s staring at her from his fridge.
Mel and I snuck up to the Nespresso machine on 4th, you’re welcome. I know you like the sweet vanilla, don’t bother lying :)
It started months ago, them staying in touch this way, and judging by the size of the stack on his fridge, he kept every note.
The oven beeps, done preheating, and Samira is so startled she almost screams.
Completely on autopilot, she finishes mixing the dough and drops careful spoonfuls onto the cookie sheet one by one. Her hands, her highly-trained hands that are always, always steady no matter the complexity of the procedure or the severity of the situation, tremble slightly as she uses a fork to make the little criss-cross pattern on the cookies, just like Susan taught her. She puts the pan in the oven and washes the dishes she used, just to keep her hands busy.
Does Jack…why would he keep those notes? She’s the one with the inappropriate crush, but she never assumed that it was reciprocated. They’re good friends. He drops a charming comment every once in a while, sure, but he does that with everyone. They’ve never spent time together alone outside the hospital, he’s never made any sort of physical advance. Not a hug, not a lingering arm squeeze, nothing beyond a tap to her shoulder or her hip when they’re working in close quarters or when he’s complimenting her for how she handled a patient.
A door creaks open, on the other side of the house, and Samira freezes. A moment later Jack turns the corner, sniffing.
“What is that smell?”
“Uh.” He’s wearing sweatpants and a snug t-shirt—blue, not black—and Samira abruptly realizes she’s never seen him in such casual clothes. “I just—made some cookies. Just a thanks. For hosting me, I mean.”
Now that she says it out loud, it sounds ridiculous. She should have left a note on the counter and gone home.
But Jack smiles, a genuine one that reaches all the way up to his eyes. “You don’t have to thank me for that.” He joins her in the kitchen, almost shoulder-to-shoulder—does he always stand so close to her?—and crouches down to peek into the oven. “How’d you know? Did someone tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
His gaze narrows. “That peanut butter’s my favorite.”
“Oh.” Samira twists her hands behind her back. “No, that’s just literally the only thing I know how to do in the kitchen.”
“Really? Peanut butter cookies?”
She nods. “When I—after my dad died, I spent a lot of time with one of my friends who lived nearby. Her mom was a big baker, and she tried to teach us. This was the only thing that stuck.”
Jack’s face softens, but whatever he was going to say in response gets cut off by the shrill beeping of the timer Samira had set on the microwave. She flinches, still antsy, and Jack laughs at her as he hands her an oven mitt from the drawer next to the stove.
He reaches for a cookie as soon as she sets the pan on the stovetop, but she grabs his hand before he can. “No, no, too hot.”
“I’ll take the risk,” Jack says. Why is she still holding his hand? She drops it and gives his shoulder a gentle shove, away from the stove.
“You have to let them cool so the texture’s right! Otherwise they’re too gummy.”
He lifts his hands. “Fine.”
“Do you have a cooling rack, by the way?”
“I don’t, sorry.”
Silence falls between them, and Samira fights the urge to fidget or flee. It feels like there’s a giant neon sign hanging from the ceiling, pointing toward the post-its on the fridge. Is that why he invited her over? Her brain is on overdrive, busy reevaluating every interaction they’ve ever had.
“Sleep well?” she asks, inanely.
“Yes, actually. You? How’s your back?”
“It’s fine. And yeah, that mattress is super comfortable. Though my sleep schedule’s fucked now.”
Jack smirks. “All part of the plan to lure you to night shift.”
“You’ll have to try harder than a fancy mattress,” she says, surprised by the flirtatious edge to her words.
“Yeah?” He leans back against the counter next to her and crosses his arms over his chest. She, courageously, keeps her eyes on his face. “That implies there’s a chance. What’s it gonna take?”
“Less road rash,” she shoots back, and he laughs. “More matcha lattes.”
“Easy, done. You can have unfettered access to my DoorDash account, even.”
“Oh, wow. Is that an official perk of night shift residents?”
“No,” Jack says simply.
His gaze is so fond, and anything clever and cute Samira might’ve had to say in response gets stuck in her throat. Being smooth and subtle in a situation like this has never really been her strong suit.
“I like your post-it collection,” she blurts out instead.
Jack’s brow furrows in confusion, and Samira steels herself as she glances over at the fridge. He follows her gaze, then his eyes go wide as the realization sets in. It’s fascinating, actually, watching the emotions flash across his face. His mouth opens, just a little, as if he’s going to say something, but closes without making a sound. She’s never seen him look uncertain before.
Then he drops his arms and straightens. He’s meeting her eye, of course he is, and the expression on his face is as serious as she’s ever seen it. ”You have nothing to worry about, I swear. I would never pursue anything or, or retaliate, in any way. You have my word, if that means anything at all, that I would never do anything that could jeopardize your career. I know we don’t work together a lot, but I can make it so we never overlap, and no one will know, okay? The night shift stuff is just a joke. Or—not really, but it’s purely professional, I swear. And hell, if you want to report it, I’ll take you to HR myself. I wo—”
“Jack,” she says, too loud, and he stops mid-word. He’s rambling. And his cheeks are pink.
Samira clears her throat. If she wondered before, what this could possibly mean, she’s not wondering now. “I kept all yours, too.”
He blinks at her. “My what?”
“Your post-its.”
She has all of his in a stack, too, of course she does, every single one in a friendly little rainbow. He switches up the colors, unlike her. And he signs each one, as if she’d ever be getting notes from anyone else in the ED, usually Jack or sometimes just J, and even though that’s how Samira thinks of him in her head, she’s never actually called him Jack to his face.
Not until just now. Which, going by the look on his face, he’s very aware of.
“You kept my post-its,” he repeats.
“I did.” Some of the giddiness seeps out; her mouth curves into a smile that she couldn’t stop if she tried. “Now, mine are in my desk, not on my fridge where literally anyone could see them—”
He groans, cutting her off, and crosses the kitchen toward her, caging her in with his hands braced against the counter on either side of her. Her breath catches in her throat as she tips her head up, just a bit, to meet his eye. There’s still plenty of space between their bodies, but they may as well be pressed together head to toe given how much Samira’s heart rate kicks up.
“I wasn’t too worried about it,” Jack says. “I don’t make a habit of inviting people to my house.”
She looks around pointedly, at herself, standing in his kitchen.
His face softens. “Yeah, exactly.”
“Jack,” she says again. She feels…unmoored. Like she could float away, like Jack’s intense gaze is the only thing keeping her pinned to the ground.
Jack likes her. He kept her post-its. Probably even the one that only had a singular exclamation point on it, the one from a few weeks ago that was just pointing out a particularly well-done figure in a paper.
“Samira,” he says. She’s used to the eye contact, of course she is, but this is different, his eyes are warm and his mouth is curled into a tiny smile. All he’d had to do was look at her like this, just once, and she would’ve gotten it. “Why’d you keep them?”
“Why do you think?”
Samira dares to reach out and fists her hands in Jack’s t-shirt on either side of his torso. The fabric is softer than she expected. He looks down at her grip for a long second, and when he meets her eye again, he looks wrecked. “This is crazy,” he says.
He doesn’t seem mad about it, though, instead the exact opposite, so Samira smiles. “Is it? You’re one of my closest friends.”
“I talk to you more than I talk to anyone,” Jack admits. “But yes, it is crazy. Because you’re…”
He trails off, so she throws out a couple options. “A fully-grown adult? A senior resident with only a few months left?”
“Young,” he settles on, and she makes a face.
“That’s all relative.”
He laughs. “Yeah, exactly, in that you are relatively younger than me.”
“So what?”
She tugs, and he takes a step closer to her with no hesitation at all. “So I feel like you could probably do better.”
Samira rolls her eyes. “Do not make me feed your ego right now. I won’t do it.”
Jack drops his head, almost down to her shoulder, and laughs. “Then let me feed yours instead. I’ve had feelings for you for a while, of course I have. How could I not? But I never thought…”
He trails off, looking at her like he’s still not sure this is happening, and Samira swallows heavily. “You thought wrong.”
“If you need time to—”
“No,” she interrupts because seriously? “Stop it. I have liked you forever, and I’m gonna lose it if you don’t fucking kiss me right now.”
He’s smiling as he obeys, and so is she, but then she tilts her head just a little and Jack’s hand falls to her waist and abruptly, no one’s laughing anymore. It’s a kiss, like a kiss you see in a movie or in a romance novel, the kind of kiss Samira always thought was a little unrealistic, but here she is, living it right now.
Her hands come up to Jack’s face to keep him there, just in case he has any notions of going anywhere, and he all but melts into her as his fingers tighten on her hips. “God,” he says against her mouth, already a little breathless after about two minutes of making out, and she’s glad to hear it. So it’s not just her.
“Yeah,” she says, nonsensically, after another kiss. “I thought—yeah.”
“You thought about this?”
Samira kisses him again instead of telling the truth, that her crush was bad enough on its own that she didn’t dare allow herself to think about this at all. She’d never be able to get anything else done.
He moves to her jaw, dropping kiss after kiss to her skin down to her ear. “When we’re back at work I’m gonna have such a good story to tell you on a post-it.”
She laughs, a little hysterical, and rubs her thumbs over the neat line of stubble on Jack’s cheeks. “Maybe we could start texting. So I don’t have to feel bad anymore for stealing all the post-its from work.”
Jack’s smile takes on a mischievous slant, and Samira knows she’s missing something.
“What?” she asks.
“You didn’t steal those, I bought them all.”
What? She frowns. “No, I…”
Samira thinks back. She takes them from the ED, doesn’t she? But she’s never had to go rummaging through the supply closet or even in a drawer. There just always happens to be a pink post-it pad lying around when she needs one, and by now she must have half a dozen partially-used ones in her bag and her locker and her apartment. Once she found two full, unused pads in her bag and just assumed she was so tired she didn’t remember snatching them.
“Oh my god,” she says, and he laughs at whatever expression of stunned realization must be on her face. “You take all the other colors and leave me the pink ones! Jack!”
“A variety pack is like 20 bucks, it’s not a big deal.”
It is a big deal, actually, the thought of him going to CVS or Target or wherever to buy office supplies to keep flirting with her via post-it note is so overwhelming that she has to cover her face with her hands.
“You’ve been flirting with me.”
Jack laughs again. “Not very well, clearly.” He takes hold of her wrists and gently tugs her hands away from her face. “I was trying really, really hard not to.”
Samira adjusts their grip until they’re palm-to-palm and twines her fingers with his. “So you were just going to pine in silence forever?”
“That was the plan, yeah. Ever since I met you, pretty much.” Samira's face goes hot. God, that was so long ago. Years. “But that was just because you’re beautiful, obviously. And then I got to know you, and you’re—you’re so fucking brilliant, you work so hard and you care so much, you do such a good job at fucking everything.”
“Including hiding how I felt, I guess. And here I thought you were smart,” she says, softening her words with another kiss. He bites down on her lip in retaliation, making her hiss and press even closer.
“Speaking of work. How do you want to handle this?”
“I…”
She trails off, but Jack nudges her cheek with his nose and kisses her again, just a peck. “What? Tell me.”
She steels herself and pulls back to look him in the eye. “I only have a few months left. Could we not tell anyone for now?”
Samira feels guilty about the request. But she doesn’t want the gossip, the rumors, the jokes—even though they’d be good-natured—the possible insinuations of any favoritism or that she got where she is because of him. As of July, she’ll be a fellow at UPMC and it won’t matter anymore.
“Of course,” Jack says immediately, and the ease with which he agrees with her—she doesn’t know what to do with that.
“Are you sure? I don’t—”
“Yes,” he says firmly. Then he kisses her, just as firmly. “Of course I’m sure. I mean, would I like to take an ad out in the newspaper? Sure. Local genius Samira Mohan, best doctor in Pittsburgh, announces crush on—”
Samira laughs and shoves him. “Shut up. An ad in the newspaper? You really are old.”
Jack glares at her and reels her in again, his hands slipping under her shirt, hot and sure on her bare skin. Heat flares through her at the touch, and it must show on her face because his gaze sharpens and he kisses her again, slow and intense.
“But I mean it,” Jack says, later, and it takes a minute for Samira to remember what they’d been talking about. “Whatever you want. That makes perfect sense, it’s probably for the best. We can just…be normal at work.”
“Be normal,” Samira repeats. It feels impossible now, with his hands under her shirt and her fingers digging into his biceps. “We can totally handle that.”
“They’ll have a goodbye party for you, I’m sure. Maybe I’ll just stand up and make a very public love declaration. Ask you out in front of everyone.”
Samira laughs. God, think of everyone’s faces. “Oh, I’d love to see that.”
“I’ll start rehearsing a monologue, then.”
“What about you?” she asks. “What you want matters, too.”
Jack hesitates, too, but when he speaks, his voice is sure. “I think—slow. Slow would be good.”
She nods, biting her lip. She’s not opposed, obviously, but she wants clarification. “And what do you mean by slow, exactly? I’m in your house, in your shirt, and your hand is about two inches from my boob.”
Jack’s thumb, which has been brushing a mesmerizing arc over her ribs for the past few minutes, freezes. He laughs, mostly just an exhaled puff of air, and slides his hand down to her waist instead. “Sorry.”
“It was not a complaint.”
“Good. But I meant slow in that while I really, really want to just put you up on this counter and take off those tiny shorts and go to town, I should probably not do that. Yet.”
Samira groans at the thought and tips her head against Jack’s shoulder. “Bummer for me.” He laughs again, his hands sliding around to the small of her back, and she bites down, gently, on the cotton covering his deltoid. “I’m just kidding. Of course that’s fine.”
When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, right into her ear. “I haven’t dated anyone or—or anything, not even close, since Kate died. I feel ready, or as ready as I can be, I guess, but I don’t know. It might take me a bit to get my head around some things, that’s all. I really have no idea.”
Kate. Samira hadn’t even known her name.
She moves back until she can see his face. Jack looks a little uneasy, maybe even embarrassed, but his hands are firm on her back, his gaze as steadfast as ever, and in return Samira wants to scrape up some vulnerability of her own.
“I haven’t ever really had, like, a grown-up relationship,” she says, cringing as soon as the words are out of her mouth. Could she sound any more immature? “I mean, I’ve dated people and had a few boyfriends, but undergrad and med school are like a different world, you know? Haven’t made time for anything while I’ve been a resident, haven’t wanted to.”
Jack hums. “So we’re both really well-adjusted when it comes to relationships, is what you’re saying.”
“Yeah, exactly. I’ll probably be shit at it.”
“As if you could ever be shit at anything.”
She smiles. “Is this you feeding my ego again?”
“Yes,” Jack says, tipping forward to kiss her again. It’s a little deeper, a little dirtier, and he makes a low noise when she twines her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck. “And just to be clear,” he continues, right up against her mouth. “I don’t mean slow in that I want to be casual.”
“Wait,” Samira says, feigning outrage, “you want to be exclusive already?”
He digs his fingers into her ribs, making her yelp, but when she squeezes his forearms he immediately stills. “Who else could there possibly be?” she says, and his face softens.
“Maybe we could start with dinner? I’ll cook.”
“Great because I will not be.”
“Of course not, you already made dessert.” Jack unearths one of his hands from under her shirt and reaches over for a cookie. “These are delicious,” he says, after eating half in one bite. He holds it out to her, and she leans forward for a taste. Mmm. Not bad, but—
“A little overdone. I think I need to reduce the baking time to compensate for no cooling rack. Actually—”
Samira ducks under Jack’s arm and heads for the fridge. She finds the junk drawer on her second try and smiles at the handful of post-it pads she finds there, every color but pink. She picks up a purple pack and digs around for a pen. Next time you’re out buying post-its, pick up a cooling rack pls
She peels it off the pad and walks back across the kitchen to stick it right on Jack’s forehead. He plucks it off and laughs as he reads it. “It would be my pleasure.”
He pulls her back in to his chest, both of her arms coming up to loop around his neck as he kisses her again. “There’s one more thing that I want,” Jack says softly, against her cheek, and Samira’s heart gives an alarming little thump.
“Anything.”
“A few more night shifts, before you leave. Please.”
He’s grinning, and she laughs. “You got it. Only if you help me adjust my sleep schedule, though.”
“No problem. If you thought the guest bed was comfortable, just you wait. You can give my bed a test drive tonight, if you want.”
She lifts an eyebrow at him. “Is that slow?”
“You’d be fully clothed, of course,” Jack says, mock-solemn.
Samira shrugs. “Close enough, anyway. I didn’t have any spare underwear in my backpack.”
Jack gives her a flat look and slides his hands down to her hips, his thumbs brushing over her bare hip bones under the waistband of her shorts. “Menace.” But he goes no further, just turns his face into her hair and inhales. “You had your hair stuff with you but not an extra pair of underwear?”
She squeezes her eyes shut. He recognizes how her hair smells, god.
“Yeah. Just the true essentials in my backpack. Hair stuff, deodorant, ibuprofen. And like three packs of post-its.”