Work Text:
“I just need you to go over it one more time.”
“Samira, I read your last draft yesterday, I’m sure it’s–”
“No, I know, but I’ve made some changes. Just. Tell me what you think.”
Their voices overlap, unfinished sentences tailing from the bedroom out into the hallway.
Really, he should’ve known this is how the night would end.
He offers no resistance, allowing his body to be led into the living room by the firm grip around his wrist. This is a routine that has been going on for the better part of the week—or a variation of it, at least.
Tonight, Jack Abbot was comfortably lying in bed, readers on, shirt off; headphones on, prosthetic off; laptop sitting on his lap with an article Samira had sent him earlier this week opened on his screen. His right hand scrolled whilst his left busied itself with the cat at his side—a coat of black fur with emerald eyes—that would meow at him every time he attempted to, or even thought of, stopping the constant petting. How could he say no to such a thing?
Well, he could only say no if the one person who could get him to do just about anything demanded his attention. Unfortunately for their cat, she just so happened to be the one sitting by the foot of the bed, impatiently shaking his leg over the covers.
The disturbance seemed to bother The Void, as she flailed herself off the bed and out of the bedroom before Samira even opened her mouth; before Jack brought his hand up to stop her, anticipating the words to be spoken.
She looked at him with pleading eyes and a pout on her lips and he knew that he was done for. Again, he asks: how could he say no?
He sighed, swinging himself over and reattaching his prosthesis. That was all it took for Samira to decide to start dragging him towards the living room.
She sets him down on one of the chairs at the dining table—the one that has her laptop propped open at full brightness, with a font so tiny his head is already pounding before he gets the chance to read it—in front of it.
Samira lets him adjust himself, and removes herself from the situation by heading over to the kitchen. Her anxious energy drags her feet from one corner of the house to another—racing just as much as her thoughts are. She begins opening the cabinets but chooses to close them a short second later, clearly not bothering to take a look at what’s inside. Then she’s on the move again, pacing along the side of the table as she starts nibbling away at her nails.
“Samira,” he starts, his eyes pointedly tracking her movement. “Would you please stop that? I can’t concentrate with all this back-and-forth.”
A small white lie.
With the chaos of the ER, he is certain his brain is now wired to thrive under these conditions, actually preferring them to the all-consuming feeling of continuous quiet. Even just the buzz of a lamp filling the silence is better than no noise at all. And though he is sure Samira knows this about him—and can probably guess his concern is more about her than his own attention span—she indulges, bringing herself back to the kitchen, where she grabs a cereal box from the counter and starts eating mouthfuls of it—dry and straight out of the cardboard.
Good, he thinks. At least she’s eating something, and not spinning around until her head falls off.
When he offered to make her dinner a few hours earlier, all he’d gotten in response was a hum; when he’d left a bowl of steaming soup next to her, it had remained untouched until it grew cold. When he pointed it out, she fed herself a spoonful of it before claiming to be full.
Samira has the tendency to neglect even the most basic human needs when she has a task to focus on, becoming so narrow-minded everything else fades into the background. When she is riddled with nerves, her stomach seems to tighten to the point of finding food repulsive and unnecessary—just before she swings back around and starts eating everything in sight, out of pure need.
He is glad to see her move on to that second phase, at least.
He hears her munching and crunching, and he can’t help the smile that begins to pull on his face as he catches sight of her on his periphery. The claw clip in her hair is holding her wild curls in place, still wet from the shower she had a few hours earlier. The shorter strands fall out of it, framing her face with untamable frizz, falling over her oval glasses—the ones she wears only when she’s around the house, giving herself a break from her contacts. Jack notices she is wearing one of his old cotton t-shirts, which drapes loosely over her frame and falls right above the boxer shorts she threw on to lounge on. Her hand keeps reaching in and out of the box, handfuls of cereal being shoved in her mouth as she restlessly waits to hear the verdict.
After the government cut the funding for her research on racial disparity in the ED, Samira needed to find other ways to keep her project up and running. This is why she now finds herself applying to private grants that will allow her to continue gathering what she deems to be important sociological and medical data; to hopefully achieve better care management within hospitals in the future.
At first, she didn’t think she’d touch the subject again. Her whole life was crumbling to pieces little by little, one loss after the other leaving her completely defenseless and untethered. She had other things to focus on—like where she would be moving to in less than a year now that New Jersey was out of the equation, for example.
Enter Dr. Jack Abbot, ready to help her rebuild her life piece by piece.
It started with him simply being the attending she needed, nay, deserved—his words, not hers—after the way Robby had treated her for the better part of her residency. Switching to nights did wonders for her confidence, and helped her narrow down which path she wanted to continue on as she chose her fellowship for the next few years.
That seemed to take care of the professional side of things, easily.
And then it only took Trinity pointing out how much Abbot gravitated towards her—both in and out of the hospital—for Samira to notice it, too. The realization led to the discovery that maybe she also liked being orbited by him.
She waited for him after that very same shift, attempting casualty as she against his car—which had him doing a double take; he was clearly missing pieces of this puzzle. Pulling the guts from who-knows-where, she sealed their lips together in a kiss. It took him a second to take in what was happening—every time he tells the story he says his brain short-circuited the moment her lips brushed his—but eventually he reciprocated the action, melting into the kiss as his hands found her waist and shifted her closer to him.
That would do for the personal side of her life, she guessed.
He became her rock, her person. With him, she found that she could do just about anything, because he believed she could. A few months into her critical care fellowship, once she was better adjusted, she decided she wanted to return to her research. Jack couldn’t have been more supportive, spending every minute of freedom he had helping her look for resources, fundings, opportunities, and so on and so forth.
If anyone were to ask him right now, he would claim he regrets it. Samira has been working on finalizing the details of her proposal for an upcoming application for months now, but for the last week—with the deadline approaching—she has been solely focused on writing and submitting the perfect application. This consists of hours of blank staring, reading, re-writing and re-wording, re-reading, and more blank staring before having Jack then stamp his approval on the draft … Before the process is repeated entirely the next day.
At this point in time, Jack can confidently say he no longer recognizes the changes made from one version to the other, having lost track of them maybe four drafts ago. He doesn’t understand why his input is so relevant, especially when she is much more knowledgeable on this side of the field, but he’s not one to deny Samira anything. When it comes to her, he is basically incapable of saying no.
Jack does a quick skim of the overview, and scrolls past endless pages of writing, before returning to the highlighted sections to complete a more thorough read. He is thankful Samira has learned to signal the parts she wants him to review, instead of subjecting him to reading the whole thing on a nightly schedule.
He takes off his readers and sets them down, next to her laptop, on the mahogany wood.
“It looks great, honey,” he says, with a lackluster tone—not due to lack of care, but no longer containing the same excitement his words had once carried. “Same as it did yesterday. And the night before. And the previous one.”
He can’t help the smirk that begins twitching at his mouth, the same way she can’t help the eye roll that escapes her at his feedback—the same comment she has been receiving every night this week, like clockwork; like a weird deja vu, or an irregular time loop.
“But is it better?” She asks, despite herself, knowing Jack will not have a clear answer for her, because really, changing one word to another makes a minimal difference in the grand scheme of things, but she ultimately does think it is a better choice and worth the replacement.
“I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you that you’re brilliant and anyone with a set of eyes will see that,” he offers, sincerely. “You know how I feel already. It was one of the best outlines I’d read when you first showed it to me, and it remains one of the best proposals as it is, right now, sitting open in front of me. The only one who is overthinking things here, and driving herself crazy for it, is you.”
Samira groans. She recognizes he has a point.
She settles the cereal box back on the counter. She turns towards the sink, where she rubs her hands together to rid herself of any crumbs before running the tap and gently washing off the sticky syrup coating left by her oat Cheerios with some soap. She pats herself dry with a towel, then makes her way to the dining table, pulling out the chair next to his and plopping herself down as if she was entirely weightless, letting gravity carry her, and fusing into the chair.
“I just want it to be perfect,” she admits, pushing her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose—they slid down when she was hunched over the sink.
Jack’s hand reaches for hers. Their fingers intertwine, and hers are cold against his. His thumb lightly rubs the back of her hand in a circular motion, almost reassuringly.
“We both know perfection is unachievable,” he murmurs kindly, eyes on her face.
She sighs. “I know. I know. I’m just scared they’ll hate it.”
He brings her hand up to his lips and presses a kiss to it, his silver stubble tickling her knuckles. “I don’t think they will.”
“Well, you can’t be sure.”
“That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.”
Samira snorts. “Right, a fact. Objective, right? Didn’t Robby say you were incapable of being that when it came to me?” she asks, deliberately.
Jack hates how, even now, after almost two years of no longer working under the day-shift attending’s supervision, she still hears his voice whenever she is doubting herself; whenever she feels like she is not enough. He made her feel like she was not enough. The programming he installed in her still boots up occasionally, and sometimes he’s sure it’ll take a miracle for it to stop.
“He was projecting,” Jack says, his hand now absentmindedly tracing up and down her arm in sweet caresses. “He couldn’t be objective about you, so he assumed I couldn’t either.”
Jack had said as much, when Robby first denied Samira’s request to permanently change her shift—a decision that she hadn’t taken lightly, as she believed that leaving the day shift meant admitting she failed as a doctor. In reality, all it showed was that Robby had failed her as a mentor.
“Your feelings for her will cloud your judgement. I cannot take that risk. Not in my department, not under my supervision,” Robby’d said, when Jack confronted him about his decision.
“Whatever you think is happening–”
“C’mon. You really think I haven’t noticed? The constant staring from across the hub, your inability to hold eye contact with her for longer than ten seconds when she’s presenting a case? Jack, you’re not subtle, man. She might be the only one in this damn hospital who doesn’t realize—”
“You’re a hypocrite, Michael,” he’d interrupted, his voice low and steady but with just the right amount of sternness and anger. “You think I’m incapable of putting my feelings aside? Take a look in the mirror. The way you treat her is because of your own feelings for yourself. It’s bold of you to accuse me of being blinded by my feelings, which you have no evidence for and have never once impacted her performance as a physician, by the way, when you’re incapable of practicing what you’re trying so hard to preach here. You let your own feelings dictate how you see her and take your frustrations out on her. You are actively hurting her, as a person and as a doctor. And if you can’t see why, well, no one can help you there.”
He’d taken a step forward, his arms firm and folded behind his back. “So you will approve of the transfer. And you will leave her the fuck alone. Is that clear?”
Jack only told Samira this story after they started dating. The version of it she had been told back then was much more tame and reasonable; it did not involve Jack threatening his friend and, yes, his superior. Samira had immediately frowned, said something along the lines of ‘you didn’t have to do that for me’ and ‘that could’ve turned sour quickly’, before Jack shut her up with a trail of kisses from her jaw to her neck that had her dissolving her into a string of giggles that felt like sweet cotton candy in his mouth. This was all somewhat funny, in retrospect, and he didn’t want her to look back on it with tainted eyes.
Samira hides a smile. Even though Jack is right in criticizing Robby’s judgement, Samira doubts he was ever able to be fully impartial himself. He has always showered her with praise and compliments and sometimes she wonders if his love for her is the reason for it—though he claims it has always been the other way around. He doesn’t think she’s brilliant because he loves her; he fell in love with her because she’s brilliant.
“Hey,” he says, tugging at her sleeve. “What’re you thinking? Where did you go just now, hm?”
Samira blinks, her thoughts fading as she looks back at him, his torso leaning towards her as his eyes search for hers—as if that would help—as if she wasn’t just as capable of getting lost there, staring into the specs of green and gold and light warm brown. She would live there, if she could, in his tender stare and crinkled eyes; in his crow's feet and ridiculously long lashes.
He uses a little more force to pull her over, guiding her onto his lap so she is straddling him.
Samira wraps her arms around his neck on instinct. One of Jack’s hands comes up to cup her cheek.
“Your proposal is ready to be submitted,” he whispers, like it’s a secret meant just for them (and it is—the cat, now on the couch, is quietly snoozing and completely uninterested in their conversation). “I think you know that-”
Samira leans into his warm touch, letting her cheek fall against his rough palm, strong and calloused while careful and gentle. “What if it isn’t? What if I can make it better?”
“There’s always a chance you could make something better,” he says, using her therapist’s chosen words on her.
At this, she flicks the back of his head. “Shut up.”
He can’t help but laugh.
It was around September last year, when she was still a senior resident, that she finally decided to start therapy—not the mandated kind after PittFest that provided no sort of genuine value to their life and was just meant to follow a protocol, but the kind that allowed her to delve into her anxiety, her perfectionism, and even the trauma after what happened during the mass casualty—and yes, even her repressed grief from years prior, when her father died. Turns out she had a lot to work through. One of the things Dr. Prakash had suggested was trying out some grounding techniques, one of which included making the people in her life tell her things could always be improved upon, or that things could have gone better, but ultimately she had to accept that she would never know and would have to be ok with the way things were; to accept the reality of the situation.
It has been months of this, and Samira hates it. She knows her therapist is right, of course, but she still hates it.
“I never should’ve told you about that,” she mutters through gritted teeth. The words push past her with just a hint of annoyance.
“Well, I’m glad you did.”
He smiles, and it strikes her how much he means that. Trust doesn’t come easy to Samira, and she half-expected Jack to run from her when he found out she was not nearly as put-together as she made herself appear. Well, turns out he knew all along, and still chose to love her anyway. He loves her anyway. He will do anything to support her and help her, even when she would prefer not needing it. She wishes he could see he deserves the whole world, too.
She presses a quick peck to his lips. Unsatisfied with it, Jack pulls her back down for a second attempt, which makes Samira smile against his lips.
“You have to submit it now,” he whispers, only breaking off the kiss to speak, minimal distance still between them: noses still pressed together, breath still landing on her skin and sending shivers down her spine.
“But—”
“No buts,” he counters. “There’s nothing you can do in the two hours you have left before it’s due that could change the outcome. Besides, I think if you made me read through it one more time, I might just lose my mind.”
She gasps in surprise and swats his chest. “Hey!”
“What? If you can’t do it for your own good, then at least consider mine,” he half-pleads, half-jokes.
Samira shakes her head, defeated. “Fine. But you click submit.”
“Samira—”
“I’m not going to argue about this. I know you’ll say it’s my work so it should be me, I know you’ll say I’m deflecting, but that’s not what this is about,” she says, and the look in her eyes makes him believe her. “You’re my good luck charm. So please just click on the button while I look away, okay?”
She places her head on his shoulder, hiding in the crook of his neck.
How could he ever say no to her?
His fingers hover over the touchpad, tension building as he slowly moves the cursor over the blue button. Right click. Confirm. Refresh the page.
“Done,” he says, and Samira turns to look back at the screen so fast the doctor in him worries about whiplash.
“Oh God. Oh my God.”
The realization hits her all of a sudden. Jack can practically feel her vibrating, and he notices her heart rate has elevated. Now he just needs her to confirm whether it’s out of excitement or anxiety, so he can know how to properly react. Right now, his face reads as pure, unfiltered worry.
“It’s gone. It’s … out of my hands now.”
That doesn’t clue him in any further, so he just gently places his hands on her hip bones—stable, grounding. She presses against them as she turns once again to face him.
“Now we wait,” she says.
Samira lets her head fall, finding the comfortable nook from before, where she can feel the warmth of his bare shoulder and smell the scent of his skin. His hands crawl up to the small of her back, pulling her down closer and resting there with practiced ease and a sense of belonging.
Jack angles his head, dropping a kiss to her temple, taking in the notes of coconut and vanilla from her shampoo in her hair.
He nods, echoing her statement. “Now we wait.”
And wait they will.
Jack Abbot knows waiting; he is familiar with waiting.
He waited for her. He would’ve waited longer, had it been necessary.
He would continue to wait for her.
But waiting with her? That is his new favourite form of waiting.
He could wait with her a million years. And then maybe a million more.