Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“This is a very detailed spreadsheet.” Jack tells her as he takes a sip of his coffee.

“Thank you.” Samira says proudly, quickly glancing at Jack as she clicks through the tabs, finding the one she wants to start with. They’re sitting next to each other at Jack’s kitchen table, Samira’s chair angled outwards so she could look at Jack a little easier as she talked through her spreadsheet, masala chai cooling next to her laptop as she starts to go through her spreadsheet with Jack. “So, it’s organized by program over here, and then each of the columns is a factor of the program, so like, length of the program, involved faculty specialty, research and clinical options, fieldwork opportunities, how I would be evaluated, what my mentoring responsibilities would be as a fellow or teaching attending.”

Jack listens to her intently, scans through her spreadsheet with her as she points out a specific program’s uniqueness or a faculty member that she would be especially excited to work with. He’s attentive to her excitement, her enthusiasm, her joy at the options she has found, at the professional path that she could be taking, at finally working with other doctors and under a mentor that understands her approach, that won’t berate or punish her for the way she approaches medicine and treating patients. She is genuinely excited for this, even if she hasn’t even sent off any applications yet, and Jack can tell, Jack is easily matching her excitement and animation as she shares everything she’s compiled in the last week.

“I think that this could be really good for me.” Samira admits softly, like that’s some big surprise, like she didn’t admit something similar last night as they were falling asleep. “I think…I really want it. I’ll apply for attending positions too just in case, but I—I want this. I want to do this.” Samira smiles to herself, embarrassed, self-conscious even in her mild vulnerability, and looks back at her laptop like she doesn’t have her spreadsheet just about memorized by now. “I think I could become the doctor I’ve always wanted to be if I do this.”

“You’re a phenomenally qualified candidate for these programs, Samira.” Jack tells her immediately, and Samira is brave enough to peek at him out of the corner of her eye, to take on a little bit of his certainty that she’s a good doctor, that she’s got a chance at any one of these fellowships. His confidence in her will never not floor her, will never not reflexively make her prepare herself for a but, will never not leave her mentally staggering for solid ground before she can right herself again. Jack has so much faith in her, in her capabilities, in her potential, and Samira doesn’t know how to keep it all safe inside of her when he gives it to her in excess. “They’d be stupid not to accept you. They’d be stupid not to see what you could bring to their program and how you could grow under their curriculum.”

“Well.” Samira chokes, not really knowing what to say to that. Maybe one day she’ll be able to accept his compliments and praise as easily as he gives them to her. “You’re biased.”

“And I’m right.” Jack counters with a little smile that grows into a grin when Samira scoffs at him. “Can I look at that more closely?” Jack asks her, gesturing toward her laptop, which she hands over easily, even though she’s curious about what Jack wanted to look at specifically, what he didn’t see when she was walking him through it. She eyes him as he clicks through the document in a pattern Samira can’t figure out, as he looks for something that Samira must have missed in her explanations but can’t imagine what.

“Most of these are in Pittsburgh.” Jack eventually says, voice careful and even as he sets her laptop back in front of her.

“Yeah.” Samira furrows her brows, glancing between him and her laptop, like it might reveal the confusing direction of that statement before Jack does. Did she not say that earlier? She included some programs in her list that were not in Pittsburgh, incredible programs with fantastic statistics and opportunities that she would be stupid to not even apply to, but she wants to stay in Pittsburgh. If she has the opportunity, if she has the option, she wants to stay where she is. “Is that…a surprise to you?”

“No, it’s just…” Jack trails off, pulling his lips inward and looking off to the side, and Samira’s stomach flips with unease at the gesture, at his hesitancy to say what he’s thinking. She forces herself to not jump to conclusions, to not make assumptions and start to spiral before Jack’s even opened his mouth, to not think that Jack was trying to push her away or signal to her that she should move somewhere else after her residency ended. It’s harder than she would have liked. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to stay in Pittsburgh.”

Samira hears the ending of that sentence, even if Jack is careful to keep it from her. For me. He doesn’t want her to plan to stay in Pittsburgh just because he’s here, just because they’re together again, just because she cares about him and their relationship. “Jack—"

Jack blows past her like she hadn’t even spoken, looking far more troubled than he has any right to be, looking guilty in a way that is already making Samira nauseous. “I—I don’t ever want to hold you back or be the reason you aren’t going after certain opportunities. I don’t want you to compromise your career because you thought of me or our relationship first and I don’t want you to prioritize fellowships in Pittsburgh just because I’m here.”

“Good thing that’s not what’s happening, then.” Her tone has a little more bite to it than she intended, but she’s mildly offended that Jack would assume that was what was happening here, that she would base her immediate professional plans entirely on her proximity to him. She thought about the fact that if she stayed in Pittsburgh she and Jack would have an easier time of it, of course she did, but it wasn’t the only reason she included Pittsburgh fellowships on her list, it wasn’t the only reason they ranked so highly to her compared to other hospitals.

“Samira,” Jack starts, his voice hinting at disbelief at her words, maybe even unimpressed, and she wonders if he meant to let his emotions bleed into his tone too. She wonders if the anger igniting inside her chest at his tone, at the direction this conversation is going, is healthy, is going to destroy them before they’ve even managed to get off the ground again. “You could go anywhere in the country, anywhere in the world for this fellowship, and your first ranked choice is PTMC’s program.”

“Yes.” She says tightly, narrowing her eyes at him. Jack shifts in his chair, straightening up his back and tensing the line of his shoulders, and Samira swallows around the bile rising in her throat and stares at him. Did he really think that? Did he really think that she would base her professional trajectory on the fact that Jack was close by, on the fact that she couldn’t stand to not work in the same building as him? When had she ever prioritized anything above her own career in her entire adult life? When has she given Jack the impression that she would ever do that?

“And who is to say that I could actually get in anywhere?” She continues, biting back her scoff when Jack scans over her with that same troubled, guilty look, when he gets squirmy in his chair without actually moving a single muscle. She doesn’t know why he even brought this up if he feels so bad about it, if it’s so difficult for him to talk about this with her. “It’s—it’s nice that you believe in me so much, really, but the reality is that these programs have a maximum of, like, three spots open each year, so it’s competitive. So why not rank the program I have a personal connection and experience with as my first choice to increase my chances of acceptance?”

Jack knocks his head to the side with a heavy breath, running his hands forcefully down his thighs. “Fine, I—I can concede that point. But you can rank any program as first, no matter the reality of the situation, and I don’t want your decision making to be influenced by how you feel about me.”

This time Samira does scoff at him, but she bites back the rest of her anger as she tries to understand where this is coming from and what the fuck happened to their nice morning once Jack brought this up. She knows…she knows Jack is overly aware and respectful of the power imbalance that exists between them, knows that he would torture himself until his last days if he even felt like he pressured Samira into anything, if she ever felt forced to do anything she didn’t want to do because of him and their relationship. She knows that he would never forgive himself if he hurt her, pressured her, or coerced her in any way, knows that he would never forgive himself if she had to compromise anything for him or their relationship. She knows he feels a certain type of way about their age difference and their job titles and their vastly different lived experiences, and she knows he gets insecure about all of it more than he should. More than she would ever want him to.

She knows that he would rather kill himself than feel like she’s been compromised because of him. She knows that he would accept the worst, most disrespectful treatment from her if it meant that she felt like her career was protected and safeguarded. She knows that he wants her to have the most successful, productive, and prosperous career imaginable, and sometimes feels like she can’t have that if she’s strapped to him.

Samira forces her tone to be calm, for her voice to be even and respectful as she poses these questions to Jack, as she tries to get him thinking about this more rationally. She scooches her chair a little closer to him, thinking the closeness might help him like it does her, thinking he might be soothed by her choice to be close to him right now. “Did you think that my first choice would be to move to Boston or Tennessee for a fellowship? Do you think that I want to uproot my entire life from Pittsburgh right now, aside from the fact that you’re here too?”

Jack eyes her carefully, and Samira braces herself for any number of things that might leave his mouth. They’ve never really fought about this topic before, never really gotten this far into a conversation about how he feels like a hindrance to her success and career, so she doesn’t know what to expect anymore, from either of them. She can’t mentally prepare for this conversation like she can with others, she can’t try to think ahead a few paces to have a few points locked away in case she needed them. She’s flying blind and she isn’t enjoying the experience. “You were talking about quitting and leaving PTMC not even a week ago, so I think it wouldn’t be the craziest—”

“That was different.” Samira snaps, glaring at him across the table. She pushes her chair away from him, opening up the distance between them again, and Jack eyes her movements like she just sucker punched him. Why would be bring that up? Why was he pushing, poking at her with this stuff? She didn’t understand why he couldn’t just accept the fact that she wanted to stay in Pittsburgh for reasons outside from him, and—and even if he was a factor in her decision-making process, would that really be so bad? Would it be so horrible for her to think about him as she plans her future, her life? She thinks her feelings might be hurt, a little bit, if she could focus on anything except the anger roiling to life inside her gut right now. “That is different and you know it. That was an unbelievably difficult day for me, and this is a list of fellowships that I ranked after I’ve had some time to calm down.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re right. That was…unfair.” Jack sighs, running both of his hands down his face, hiding, but Samira sees the shame and guilt flash and build in his eyes before he covers them, before he takes his hands away and it’s gone again. She had no idea what the hell was happening anymore, why Jack was being so difficult and defensive with her, why he’s choosing this as his sword to fall on. Samira doesn’t know why he’s hiding his emotions from her now, why he’s digging his heels in and hiding from her when in every other conversation they’ve ever had he’s thrown every emotion he’s felt at her and let her decide what to do with it. “But you cannot build your future around the fact that I’m in Pittsburgh and it would be easier for us both to be here. I…I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?” Samira laughs, cruel and harsh, and stands from her chair with so much force that it wobbles on its back legs before settling again. She stares down at Jack, angry and confused and defeated, chest heaving and nostrils surely flaring, and watches as Jack’s hands clench on his thighs, watches as his eyes flicker with pain and the line of his mouth twitches downward, but he’s…he’s serious. He means it. He isn’t taking back his choice of words, he isn’t rushing to explain over himself, he isn’t shying away from her. He means it.

“Is there anything else you won’t let me do?” Samira bites out, tone sharp and piercing in the quiet of the kitchen, words too jagged for the quiet morning they were just having. She doesn’t know what’s happening to her, to them. Anger is coloring all of her senses, edging in all around her and blurring out anything that isn’t the anger and disappointment she feels, making it harder and harder to focus, to stay rational as her blood boils inside of her as Jack just stares at her and takes her anger. “Maybe—maybe I should move to Boston for my fellowship, if that’s what you’ll let me do. Maybe I should just scrap all my applications to Pittsburgh hospitals because you won’t let me stay here. Be serious, Jack.” She snaps, reaching for her laptop and slamming it closed, sick at the sight of it now.

Jack has the decency to drop her gaze for a beat as she sneers at him. Samira hates it. “I just—you can’t let your feelings toward me influence your career path. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew—"

Samira doesn’t let him finish his sentence, doesn’t want to hear it anymore. She could say any number of logical, argument-driven things to end this argument. She could tell Jack that he simply isn’t listening to her right now, that Jack is taking this way to personally, that Jack is letting his insecurities get in the way of logic right now and driving this unnecessary fight. She could tell Jack any number of things, but she lets her anger win again, lets her anger fuel her response and grabs onto the first point her irritated brain throws at her, latches onto a point that makes her feel self-righteous and like she has the upper hand.  

“So now it’s bad that I’m thinking more about my personal life? Now it’s a bad thing to not be so focused on my career and to also be factoring in what will make me happy outside of work? I can throw myself into my work and have no familiarity with a personal life, or I can stop being so detached when I plan my life and think about everything that could make me happy—which is it, Jack?”

Samira can feel the mean twist her mouth ends up in, can feel the hard edge of her gaze trained on Jack’s face, can feel the endless tension vibrating through her body and her scary resolve to keep this going, to finish what Jack started. She wants to dig to the root of this issue until her fingers are bloody and raw, wants to snarl and bite and scream about this until she’s unrecognizable, she wants to throw herself at Jack and beg him to start making some sense before she does something she regrets. She wants to rewind the clock on their morning, she wants to start this conversation over and get ahead of whatever this is, wants to know exactly how long Jack has been holding onto this and keeping it from her.

“I don’t want you to feel beholden to me.” Jack whispers, eyes wide and shiny, infuriatingly calm and level, and Samira’s heart rages in her chest, irrationally mad at him for keeping his cool while she’s losing hers, mad at him for being able to stay calm while Samira has been unable to, mad at him for being the one to start this fight and still being able to stay collected.

Samira blows out a forceful breath and pushes her hair back from her forehead, pacing a few steps away and turning her back toward Jack so he doesn’t see her blink the tears out of her eyes. What is the point of her, of them, if she isn’t allowed to feel beholden to him? What is the point of her if she isn’t allowed to feel compelled by him, if she isn’t allowed to feel connected to him in a way that means something to her life? What is the point of a life with her if Jack doesn’t want her to feel bound to him in some way, in any way? What good is wanting him if she isn’t allowed to want him all the way? What good is Jack’s desire for her, if it comes with conditions?

“And what if I do?” She asks, letting her hands fall back to her sides as she turns and faces Jack again. Her eyes burn into Jack’s as she stares him down, as she swallows around her thickening throat and silently begs him to fix this, to take it all back and help settle her racing mind. Jack stares back at her, silent. “What—what if I feel bound and attached and obliged to you? What if I want to feel that way, what if I like that you make me feel that way? Would that really be so bad?”

Jack answers without hesitation, a bite of frustration leaking into his tone now, and horrifically, Samira feels some vindication at that. “Yes, if you’re restricting or denying opportunities for yourself because of it.”

“I’m not, you’re not listening to me.” She hisses, stomping across his kitchen and back to the table, reaching across the table to rip her laptop open again, highlighting the row for PTMC’s fellowship on her spreadsheet. She turns her screen toward Jack again, glaring at him until he takes his eyes off her and looks to her laptop, and continues to glare at him as she explains why PTMC is her top choice without looking at the laptop.

“PTMC will give me PHHA and ICRC certificates when I leave the program, PTMC basically guarantees me six months of international field work, PTMC has many faculty that work on social determinants of health and health equity that I could easily collaborate with. PTMC will give me opportunities to mentor and teach residents as a junior attending before I graduate, I will be able to represent PTMC and present my research all over the country, I will learn from physicians that I already have connections and experience with.”

Samira clicks on a link in her spreadsheet that brings her to a list of the faculty members associated with the fellowship and jabs her index finger at the screen, drawing specific attention to one person in particular. “Thisis the director of the fellowship program. I’ve talked to her a bunch of times, did you know that?” Samira asks, tone and expression a little arrogant, only because she knows Jack doesn’t know about that, only because she could anticipate the way Jack’s head snapped to hers, wide eyed and mouth parted, when she shared that with him. Nobody knows about that, she’s made sure of it.  

“My first year here, I saw her give a talk about achieving equity in emergency care and improving patient outcomes by embedding equity principles into our quality management systems. I talked to her for a half an hour after that and kept in contact with her afterwards. She helped me edit and review my publications before my funding got eliminated, she let me bug her with a thousand questions I had my first year about her work in developing equitable curriculums for emergency physicians, she’s talked to me about her international work in Guatemala and Uganda and Bhutan and all that she’s learned from it.”

Samira exhales heavily, running out of steam, but she pushes through, circles and proves her point with clinical efficiency. Jack stares up at her, attention completely pulled from her laptop and laser focused on her, and Samira feels her teeth soften, feels the muscles in her hand relax as she closes her laptop again, feels some of the pressure leave her chest as she stares back at him. “I know the director of the program. She likesme, I like her, she knows about me and my work. There are incredible professional opportunities embedded into the program. I already work at PTMC with the faculty members, I already live in Pittsburgh, and as an aside, you fucking live here too.” Asshole, she bites back, and can’t decide if she wants Jack to be able to tell she’s thinking it or not.

Jack stares up at her, solemn and sincere, earnest for the first time in a while, eyes bouncing around her face as she continues to glare at him and breathe a little too heavily, and Samira watches as his eyes flutter closed before he hangs his head, the back of his neck flexing as he exhales toward his lap. “I’m sorry. Fuck, I’m—I’m sorry. Samira, I’m sorry.”

“Jesus Christ, Jack.” She breathes out, watching him collapse on himself right in front of her, watches his shoulders shake and his hands clench into the hair on the back of his head. She takes a careful step toward him, not sure if he can see her feet or hear her footsteps, and lays a gentle hand on the back of his neck, digging her thumb into a notch of his spine as he audibly exhales again. She does it again, now that she knows he’s receptive to her touch, now that she knows he’s able to perceive her touch. “What—what the hell was that?”

Samira hears him inhale, shaky and trembling, and despite the fact that she’s still kind of pissed at him, she takes a step closer to him, forces the top of his head to rest against her stomach with the hand she has on the back of his neck, forcing him to take some pressure of his hanging head. Jack drops his own hands from his hair when she flicks at his fingers gripping his hair, and Samira watches them drop to his lap as she takes over for him, soothing over the back of his head with a wide, gentle hand. “Tell me, Jack, ‘cause I’m kind of mad at you.”

He nods his head against her stomach, hair scratching against her t-shirt, and Samira holds her breath as Jack begins to explain himself. “I can’t drag you down with me, Samira. I won’t let that happen to you.” Jack whispers, losing a little more of his composure, voice cracking as he ends his sentence. Samira stills with a stunned silence, her hand still in Jack’s hair in surprise as she blinks down at him, Jack unaware of it all as he confesses into her stomach.

“You—you could do anything and be anything you want, and I’m…I’m twenty years older than you and terrified that one day you’ll wake up and realize that you wasted the best years of your life on me instead of chasing what you deserve. I can’t—I can’t stand the thought of you not achieving everything you want and deserve because you were with me. I can’t stand the thought of you limiting yourself because you want to be with me too.”

“You’re not going to, you wouldn’t. I won’t ever feel that way.” Samira rushes to explain, rushes to wash away this particular fear that has somehow grown out of hand right under her nose, has grown roots of unknown length and size during their time apart. She tightens her hand on the back of Jack’s head, pressing his forehead deeper into his stomach, before she trails her hand to underneath Jack’s chin and picks his head up, making him look at her. He’s red-eyed and clearly unhappy with himself, guilty and dejected, a storm of emotions swimming in his eyes that Samira wants nothing more than to clear.

“Jack, if I thought for even a second that you were a hindrance or—or an obstacle or a burden to my many goals or to my career, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have even looked twice at you.” That pulls a tiny smile from Jack, nothing more than the edges of his mouth ticking upwards, but she counts it as a victory. “You believe in me, you respect me, you’re proud of me all the time. You tell me I can achieve anything I want all the time. I know that you want nothing more than for me to succeed in everything that I do, and I know that you’re cautious of the—the power imbalance between us, but I also know that you would never take advantage or pressure me into anything, including staying in Pittsburgh just for you.”

“And maybe I should have led with that, but you weren’t listening to me. Like, at all.” Samira murmurs, lightly glaring at him from underneath her eyebrows. Jack looks away from her for a beat, clearly embarrassed with himself, before he closes his eyes and leans back in his chair again, taking himself out of Samira’s hands. Jack slumps a little into his chair, shoulders sinking against the chair back and arms relaxed against his thighs, looking at her in a way Samira can’t decipher.

“No, I’m sorry, I was…I wasn’t listening, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so confrontational about it.” Jack apologizes. Samira gives him a little smile in acceptance as she collapses back into her own chair, suddenly very exhausted. She considers the merits of letting this go for now, of having them talk through this on another day, when their time wasn’t very limited, when she still wasn’t sort of angry with him. “I just…I hate the thought of you not getting what you deserve, especially if it was because of me.”

Samira shakes her head at him, pulling her lips inward as she rethinks her decision to let this lie. Even if Samira decided to stay in Pittsburgh just because Jack was here, just so she could continue to be with Jack without issue, it would be her choice. It would be her decision, and no matter how much Jack hated it, no matter how much it went against what he thought she deserved, it would be her decision and Jack would have to learn to live with it. She didn’t like how Jack said he didn’t want her to be beholden to her. She didn’t like that Jack was so resistant to the idea of her staying in Pittsburgh because Jack was here too, even in part. She didn’t like that Jack felt so strongly that he was a burden or liability to her career, to her overall life. She didn’t like that they let this whole thing escalate to a fight so easily, so quickly. She didn’t like that she got so angry, so quickly.

“I’m going to say something, and I—I don’t wanna hear about it, because I’m right, and if you take your emotions out of it, you’ll agree I’m right too.” Samira starts, looking at Jack carefully until he nods at her, also overly cautious. She takes a second to think about how she wants to say this, how to best phrase this to not deliver them into another fight, and comes to the unfortunate conclusion that she just needs to be direct about it. “If I had decided to stay in Pittsburgh just because you were here, because I knew I would be so much happier with you here and in a standard program than alone in the best program in the country, that would have been fine, because it would have been my decision. And—and I don’t think it would have been all that bad, really, to stay with you in mind.” Samira adds weakly, strangled, all her caution turning inward, self-conscious and scared.

“I don’t want you to miss out on anything because of me.” Jack says softly, the fight gone from him too, but still not budging, still not seeing her point of view. His eyes grow so wide, so sad, and Samira doesn’t understand why he can’t concede on the point that she might want to think about him in her future, why that was so hard for him to imagine for her. “I want you to stay—of course I want you to stay, but I also don’t want to hold you back from anything.”

“I wouldn’t be held back from anything if I were here and happy with you. I don’t think planning a future in Pittsburgh with you would really hold me back from anything.” Samira can’t look at him as she admits this, as she shares another piece of her thoughts with him, tries to tell him that she wants to build a future with him, maybe even more than anything else, maybe more than she’s ever wanted anything before.

But they were just talking in circles now, she could feel it. She could feel the rebuttal building in Jack’s throat that sounded like all his other protests, all his other stupid reasons as to why Samira should not feel obliged to stay in Pittsburgh with him. They were never going to be able to move on from this right now, because Samira wasn’t budging and Jack certainly wasn’t budging, and she didn’t want to spend the rest of the day talking about this, fighting about this.

He wants her to stay, and she wants to stay too. That could be enough for her, for now. She could work with that for now, could settle with the fact that Jack did want her to stay, even if he was being stupid about it. “Listen, we can—we can just agree to disagree.” Samira says before Jack can speak, reaching across the open space between them and taking Jack’s hands in hers. She nods to herself as she speaks, forcing Jack’s hand to agree with her. “We can agree to disagree for now, it’s okay. Even though I’m right.” Samira adds on at the end.

Jack’s startled, shocked burst of laughter makes her smile, the muscles in her face growing sore as Jack keeps smiling at her. “Agree to disagree, alright.” Jack repeats, squeezing her hands in his. Samira scooches her chair closer to his, eating up the distance between them, not wanting to be so far from him anymore, hooking her foot around his ankle and tugging.

“I didn’t know you knew Dr. Callisto.” Jack continues softly, referring to the director of PTMC’s fellowship program, thankfully moving them along.

“Nobody knows.” Samira mumbles, looking at her lap. “I didn’t want it to get weird with everyone else.”

“Why would it have been weird?” Jack asks, stroking his thumbs across the top of her hands.

“Because…” She suddenly feeling like she’s underneath a microscope. A very loving microscope, but still. It’s harder to talk about this than she thought it would be, hard to bring another person into this piece of her life that she’s kept protected for so long. “Because Robby was supposed to be my mentor, my teacher. And then—then he wasn’t, really, and I sort of found someone else who could help me sometimes, and I didn’t want to give Robby another thing to hold over my head or another reason for people to make me feel like I didn’t belong.” 

“Jesus.” Jack sighs, shaking his head, and Samira burns with shame and takes her hands back from Jack. She knew she should have kept it a secret, that she was right to keep this fact hidden from other people in the hospital, from people she worked closely with. She was right to keep this professional connection safe from other people, because it was something that could be made weird, that could make her even more of an outsider than she already was.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that.” Jack rushes to say, reaching to cup her knee, trailing his hand down the calf of her leg that was still looped around his own. She picks her gaze off her lap and looks at Jack, takes in his gentle smile and considering look, and wonders when she’s going to stop expecting the worst from people when she shares parts of herself with them. “You had every right to keep it to yourself, to seek out another mentor when Robby wasn’t doing his job. Just—every new thing you tell me about how working on the day shift makes you feel is significantly worse than the one before.”

Well, isn’t that just fucking fantastic. “I don’t wanna talk about Robby. Or work, please.”

“Okay.” Jack agrees easily, stroking up her calf again, and she relaxes into his touch so easily. “Have you sent out any applications yet?” Jack asks her carefully, like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to ask her anything else about her fellowship plans after he lost his mind before.

“No, I have to—” I have to wait for Al-Hashimi’s letter of recommendation is almost what she says before she stops herself, nearly biting her tongue with how quickly she shuts her mouth. Jack raises his eyebrows at her when she doesn’t continue, when she awkwardly glances at him and decides how she wants to tell him that she isn’t, that she can’t use his letter of recommendation in her applications.

“I have to wait for Al-Hashimi to send me her letter of recommendation, ‘cause…’cause I can’t use yours in my applications.” She pushes the words out far too quickly at the end, words blending and merging together to the point where they’re indecipherable, and rushes to explain far too quickly too, not wanting to leave any room for a misunderstanding. “We’re together again, and if anyone found out that I used my—my boyfriend’s reference in my applications, it would really ruin my prospects and my career, in general. It’s just—it’s too risky, and then when…when we tell people we’re together, eventually, you can’t be a reference in my file, because that would be a whole other mess for me.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” Jack squeezes her calf again, possibly feeling her tense up beneath his hand. She knows she has no reason to be nervous, knows that Jack isn’t going to be offended by her not using his reference, but she feels bad, feels bad that she made such a big deal of asking him for a recommendation only to end up not using it, only to end up unable to even read it. She feels bad that everything has to be such a big deal now, that she can’t just keep things simple for him. “Did you read my letter?” Jack asks, voice free of any judgement.

“Some of it.” Samira mumbles, before correcting herself under Jack’s raised eyebrow, once again. “The first two sentences.” She admits, scratching at her neck in embarrassment. She sees Jack’s shoulders shake with a repressed laugh and she bites back a groan of mortification, hating how well Jack knows her, how easily he’s able to isolate things she’s embarrassed about for no good reason.

“You called me your boyfriend.” Jack suddenly says, smug, arrogant, happy, bursting with all of it as he grins at Samira, as his eyes light up with joy as she flounders in front of him, unable to come up with anything to say to that. She did call him her boyfriend. She was very conscious of it as she was saying it, was very conscious of how awkward the word felt in her mouth and how her heart stuttered when she thought of acknowledging Jack as her boyfriend once again.

“Oh my God.” Samira succumbs to a groan around her laughter, slapping her hands over her face and tilting her head over the back of her chair, avoiding Jack’s eye contact for all she’s worth. “Shut up or I’ll take it back.” Samira says around her hands, lying through her fucking teeth.

“When did you want to tell people that we’re together, then?” Jack asks her, and even through her covered face, she can hear the smile in his voice, can hear how happy he is to be teasing her about this, that he’s allowed to tease her about these things again. She’s happy about it to, her smile starting to hurt her with how forceful and prolonged it is, and even if she won’t let him see it through her hands, she’s sure he can tell. He can always tell, with her.

“Never, ‘cause I’m gonna smother you in your sleep tonight.” Samira takes her hands off her face and stands up, Jack’s hand falling off her leg slowly as he laughs at her, avoiding Jack’s eyes with great effort as she takes their plates from breakfast to the dishwasher. Realistically, she imagined not being so secretive about their relationship a few months after she completed her residency, building enough of a buffer between her last day as a resident and the first time people see them as a couple for it to be believable.

This feels like something important for Jack to know though, feels like something she should be mature enough to discuss with him, so she shares what she’s thinking while her back is still turned to him, rinsing and loading their plates into the dishwasher. “I was thinking a little bit after I finished my residency. Maybe six months after.”

“Yeah.” Jack says right away, even if he does sound surprised that she answered him seriously. She hates that he’s even a little bit surprised that she took his question seriously, even if she knows that he was largely asking to tease her, to fluster her in that way only he could. “Yeah, whatever you want. We can wait as long as you want.”

She knew that already, knew as sure as she knew that the sun would rise tomorrow that Jack would take this at her own timeline, but it’s nice to hear anyways, nice enough that she glances at Jack over her shoulder and shoots him a little smile.

___

“Now she’s going on a cruise with her boyfriend and selling our house.” She grumbles, fiddling with a corner piece of the puzzle they’re currently working on, a messy sprawl across Jack’s kitchen table. She’s learning that she’s more of a liability than a partner when completing a puzzle. “She called me like a thousand times on the Fourth, asking when I could come to Jersey to pick up all my old stuff or telling me about all her plans for the cruise or yelling at me for not being happier for her.”

“Have you talked to your mom since?” Jack slips another piece of the puzzle into the framework that they’ve already built and she pouts with a stupid kind of jealousy. Jack is apparently very good at puzzles.

“No.” Samira blows out a forceful breath, looking at her hands as she spins her puzzle piece through her fingers. “We…I don’t know, we might just not need to talk to each other for a while. She can enjoy her cruise with her boyfriend and I can figure out my life here, and then when things are more settled maybe I’ll…”

Maybe she’ll what? Call her mom and be scolded for not letting herself be pushed around, try to calm the rocky waters that have been growing between them for more than a decade and come out with more things to be upset about? Be passive aggressively told that she should visit more, that she should have been more accommodating about the news of the cruise, that she should be making more of an effort to settle down and not be at the whim of the hospital? Not say a single real, honest thing to each other in their entire conversation and pretend that she wasn’t begging for something to come up for either one of them so she could be free from the suffocating pressure of talking to her mom?

“I don’t know. I just have a hard time talking to her.” is what she lands on. It doesn’t feel like enough to encapsulate everything wrong with her relationship with her mother, but she doubts there is any combination of words in English or Tamil would ever be enough.

“Yeah.” Jack says, like it’s a given. “You don’t have to talk to her, if it bothers you that much.” He quickly glances up at her after he shares that suggestion with her, pausing when Samira stills and blinks forcefully at him.

“No.” Her voice is firm, almost too hard in its resolve as she shakes her head. Her throat constricts at the mere suggestion and she swallows around it, pushing everything down until she can speak again. “I can’t cut her off completely.”

“Why not?” Jack’s voice is so devoid of judgement or criticism it almost makes her lie to him, almost makes her give him some generic answer about eventually patching things up with her mom or just pretending that none of this ever happened the next time they talk. It would be believable, but it would be a lie. She doesn’t want to lie to him, even if it might hurt her more to be honest right now, even if her words feel like they’re being ripped from her throat, even if her fingers start shaking around the puzzle piece she’s still working on.

“I can’t lose my mom too. I know what it’s like to never talk to one of your parents again, and I can’t—” She cuts herself as her voice rises in pitch, as a keening noise builds in her throat and she has to stifle it with a deep inhale. “I don’t want to know what that feels like ever again. I can’t.”

She hears Jack’s heavy inhale before she’s even aware that she’s started crying, tears slowly falling down her cheeks faster than she can swipe them away. “Samira, I didn’t—"

“I can’t talk about this. Please.” She begs, furiously digging her thumbs into the bottom of her eyes to stop her tears from falling, to stifle anything else that might be unknowingly building within her. She doesn’t know where all of this emotion is coming from, where it’s been hiding inside of her this entire time, ready to spill out of her at the slightest of coaxing from Jack. She imagines it’s been building since the Fourth, since Samira could count on one hand the number of times she’s been back home since starting her residency, since she told her mom she was going to medical school and got a mild congratulations, since she tried to talk to her mom about how unhappy she was in high school and received a scolding about perseverance, since her dad died and her mom couldn’t stand the sight of her anymore.

She doesn’t know why this is the moment her body has decided to release all of these emotions, why she’s crying at Jack’s kitchen table right now when she’s long known and accepted that her relationship with her mom is struggling, that she could never lose all contact with her mom, even if it might be better for her. She doesn’t know why all of her frustration and melancholy uncertainty toward her mom always leaves her panicking, crying, itching to get out of her skin before her thoughts can get out of hand and control her. She doesn’t know when her mom stopped being a source of comfort for her, when she stopped running toward her mother with open arms and instead started curling her arms around herself for empty comfort. She doesn’t know why her mom has so much power over her, living four hundred miles away, almost two decades of distance between the two of them, a thousand arguments and awkward silences and angry confessions deepening the divide between them with no end in sight.

She doesn’t know why even the mere suggestion of her mom destabilizes her so much. She doesn’t know how to fix it, how to stop that rampant and widespread unspooling throughout her mind and body until she feels unrecognizable, until she’s outside of her own control. She takes a deep breath and wipes underneath her eyes one more time, begging herself to calm down. “Please, I’m not mad at you, I just can’t talk about this. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Okay.” Jack agrees right away, reaching across the table for her hand and tangling their fingers together. Samira grips his hand desperately, staring down at their blurry puzzle until her eyes sting. “Okay, we won’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Samira croaks, using her free hand to wipe at her face again, even though she’s stopped crying by now. Family is a very sensitive subject for her, evidently, but that doesn’t feel like something worth saying right now. “Who gave you this puzzle, anyways?” Samira asks around a sniff, desperately trying to change the subject.

“My niece.” Jack says quickly, jumping on her unsubtle segue. She squeezes his hand again in a silent thank you. “She gave it to me after I took her to New York one summer.”

“That’s really nice.” Samira says, glancing at the design on the puzzle box once more, noting with more intention that it’s an ariel view of The Cloisters in New York, surrounded by a garden and medieval interpretations of real and fantasy animals. It’ll be a pretty puzzle, once she and Jack manage to complete it, or once Samira admits defeat and gives Jack the reins.

“Yeah.” Jack sighs, a private smile growing on his face, and Samira assumes he must be remembering his trip with his niece. She relaxes at the sight of his gentle, small smile, at the obvious love he has for his niece shining through his face. “We got all dressed up and she bought this flowy dress to walk around the museum in, and— and she said she felt like a princess all day, walking around the architecture in her dress. Said it was one of the best days she had ever had.”

“That’s really sweet.” Samira says, emotion building in her throat once more, but one she isn’t desperate to flee from. She imagines Jack running around a museum with the younger version of his niece, a version she can picture from the pictures placed around his house, imagines the two of them playing pretend all day and imagines Jack making her feel special enough to feel like a princess, and has to blink back a renewed sting of tears. She imagines Jack doing everything in his power to show his niece that she is loved and cherished and supported by him, and doesn’t have to imagine it for more than a second before she can picture it. “That must have been so special for her, for the both of you.”

“Yeah, it was a good day.” Jack says, tone wistful, like good days are hard to come by, or they were hard to come by at the time. They might have been. They probably were.

“Do you guys do a lot of puzzles together?” Samira pries gently, trying to understand why his niece would gift him a puzzle of all things, when she’s never seen Jack do a puzzle, never seen any laying around his house or stored away in his closets. She knows a little about his niece, just what’s come up in conversation or what Jack’s told her about his family. She knows her name is Julie, knows that she’s starting seventh grade this fall, knows that she once went through a devastating friendship breakup in the fourth grade that required Jack to call her every night for a month, knows that Jack has a collection of handmade bracelets courtesy of Julie that he keeps clipped to his backpack. She knows that Jack loves her more than anything in the entire world and would stop at nothing to make her happy.

“We used to. When she was younger.” Jack says softly, gaze suddenly far away. Samira squeezes his hand, their fingers still tangled together, and Jack blinks himself back to the present, shooting her an apologetic smile. Samira is willing to drop it, especially when Jack slots two more puzzle pieces into place and doesn’t say anything more about it, sure it’s a sensitive thing for him to talk about if he’s being so weird and quiet about it. Samira is willing to let it go, even though the urge to ask more questions is actively biting at her heels, even though her burning desire to know and understand him is flaming to life as she sits across from him and squeezes his hand. She can let this go, people are allowed their secrets and private memories, and there are plenty of other things they can talk about, far happier things for them to talk about.

Samira is willing to let it go, turning her attention back to glaring at the puzzle in front of her, until Jack clears his throat and her head snaps up faster than she knew possible. Jack keeps his hand tight around hers but his gaze focused on the puzzle, annoyingly slotting more pieces into the puzzle even as he visibly struggles to get his next words out. “I, uh, I wasn’t doing good a few years ago, so Victoria and Julie came up and stayed with me for a couple months. Julie was always coming up with things for us to do together to keep me busy, one of them being puzzles.”

“Oh.” Samira breathes, not expecting Jack to say that, not expecting that to be what was weighing on him during all of this. It must have been bad for him, for Jack to actually call Victoria up, for Jack to need them both in his house for a couple of months, for Jack to have initially struggled to share this with her.

Victoria is his sister, Samira knows this too from conversations with Jack. She’s a handful of years older than Jack, is a remote software engineer for a company that Samira doesn’t really understand because Jack did a bad job of explaining it to her, and she knows that Victoria basically raised Jack after their mom died young and their dad checked out well before that. She knows that Jack and his sister have a bond that she will never fully understand, are close in a way that she can never completely wrap her mind around, least of all because she’s an only child.

“How many years is a few years ago?” Samira asks hesitantly, unsure if she can ask more about this, if she is allowed to know this piece of information too. She knows that Jack relied heavily on Victoria when he lost his leg and then lost his wife so soon after, knows that Victoria flew to Pittsburgh and broke into Jack’s house when Jack stopped answering her calls one day, and then she didn’t leave for two years. She knows all about that, but she didn’t know Victoria needed to stay with Jack a second time, and so recently too.

“Six years.” Jack answers her easily, even as she sees his mouth push to the side in a sad twist. They can talk about this, then, Jack wants to talk about this with her, wants to share this piece of himself with her, even if it hurts him to poke at the wound. He still won’t look at her while he’s speaking. “I woke up one day and I wasn’t…I wasn’t good, anymore, and I knew I couldn’t be alone like that, so…”. So, he called his sister, who basically raised him, so he wasn’t alone in his house, so he didn’t kill himself that day or any other day after.

Samira nods, as if she could ever understand what that feels like, and swallows around the sudden, burning pit in her throat. It’s hard for her to think about Jack in a place like that, hard for her to think of Jack suffering that severely and brutally, hard for her to think about Jack feeling so depressed and alone that he was scared he would hurt himself. She knows those feelings haven’t fully abated, that he used to go up to the roof and climb over the railing far too recently for her comfort, but she also knows that he hasn’t done that in a while and hopes that he would tell her first if he felt the urge to do that again.   

Samira abandons her useless efforts on the puzzle and exhales a quick, short breath. She can do this. She can be a part of this conversation and not make it awkward or self-centered or uncomfortable, she can talk about this with Jack like a mature person because she wants to do that, she wants to be someone Jack can share these things with. “You don’t have to be scared to tell me stuff like that.” Samira whispers, hoping that this is the time that Jack believes her words, that this is the time it sticks when she tells him that she wants to know all of him, that she won’t be scared away when he shares the more heartbreaking pieces of his life with her.

Jack blinks down at the puzzle a few times and his hand twitches around the puzzle piece he’s holding, and Samira chokes and squeezes his other hand again, as if he might grab his crutches and walk away from the table because of what she said, when she can’t even figure out what was so wrong about what she said. Samira leans forward in her chair and tries to meet Jack’s eye before she says anything, and when she can’t she just spits out the words as they come to her. “Wait, sorry, I mean—thank you for sharing that with me, obviously, and I know these things can be difficult to talk about, but if you’re willing to talk about it, I want to hear it. I want to know these things about you, I want you to feel comfortable telling me things like that from your past or—or if you’re ever feeling like that again.”

Jack finally picks his head up and meets her gaze again, and Samira is helpless but to tip her head to the side with a shaky exhale when she sees that Jack’s eyes are a little red around the edges. She doesn’t know if it was something specific she said or the general content of the conversation, the spotlight pointed on him to talk about something he would rather not with her. “It’s…it’s a lot. It’s not just the one time. I don’t want to scare you, or—or make you think that I can’t—”

“I don’t.” Samira cuts him off with a quick shake of her head before he can finish his sentence, not wanting that thought, that fear, to enter the space between them, to give a voice to something like that. “I wouldn’t, Jack. I’m not going to run away because six years ago you had a depressive episode and needed your family. It’s not going to change any opinion I have of you if you tell me you’ve felt that way a hundred other times. I mean it.”

“I know.” Jack allows, sniffing once. Samira wants to climb across the table and pull him into a hug, wants to hold him until he collapses underneath her hands and soaks all of her words into the fabric of his being, but she doesn’t know if that would be appreciated right now. She doesn’t know if she would be doing it for Jack or herself. “I hear you every time you tell me we can talk about a nightmare or—or anything, I do. I’m just—I’m used to not getting into the specifics with anyone except Marc, and even then I don’t really…or with Victoria, when she threatens to come live with me again.”    

“Well,” Samira starts, not sure if she’s allowed to laugh at that. The little bit of light that’s back in Jack’s eyes makes her think it would be okay, but she doesn’t want to risk it. “We can work on it. I’m not asking you to spill your guts to me every time you get a little sad, or—or, yes, you can obviously do that, I would want—” Samira cuts herself off with a sigh, rolling her eyes at herself. A little more light comes back to Jack’s eyes, his face loses a little more of its tension and grief at her embarrassing struggle, and Samira rolls her eyes again. “We can work on it, is what I’m saying.”

“Alright.” Jack agrees, nodding. Samira smiles gratefully at him while she eyes him for a second, trying to figure out if he has anything else to say as he exhales heavily and rolls out his shoulders. When he doesn’t say anything else about their conversation, when he shoots Samira a very fond smile before going back to the puzzle, she figures they’re good, figures they’ve landed on a solid point they can move forward from. They’ll work on it, together. They’ll work on it, while Samira works on her own things too. What a pair they make.

They work on the puzzle a little more, Jack eventually untangling their hands and instead drawing patterns onto Samira’s hand with his fingertip, drawing gentle circles into her palm and tracing lines up and down the length of her fingers. Samira watches the movements raptly, blushing throughout the entire ordeal and pushing her smile to the corner of her mouth, eyes bouncing between the puzzle piece in her hand still waiting to be placed and Jack’s fingertip softly playing with her hand. Jack, to his credit, continues to touch her like he isn’t unraveling her across the table, like she isn’t about to combust as Jack touches her with so much love and doesn’t even seem to think twice about it.   

“Hey!” Jack cheers when she finally slots her puzzle piece into the correct spot after an embarrassing number of attempts. Jack gives her a goofy thumbs up, like that’s something to actually be proud of, and maybe it is, but she still feels silly about the swell of warmth that fills her chest at the gesture. Samira pretends that she doesn’t like the gesture as much as she does and picks up another puzzle piece, resigning herself to fiddling with it for another twenty minutes and lightly fuming while Jack puts in fifteen pieces while she struggles with her one.  

“You might have more success if you weren’t looking at the puzzle upside down, you know.” Jack says softly, his grin peeking through his mouth no matter how hard he fights to keep his face neutral. Samira gapes at him before she looks down at where she’s sitting, across the table from Jack and indeed looking at the puzzle upside down this entire time, scoffing at him while he tries very hard not to laugh at her.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” Samira cries, pushing her chair back and walking to the other side of the table, sitting in the chair next to Jack with a childish huff. She glares at him while he smiles at her, boyish and satisfied while she considers how long is an acceptable time for her to be mad about this.

“I wanted to see how long it would take you to notice.” Jack grips her chair from the bottom and tugs her closer to him, their thighs pressed now pressed together with how close he pulled her. Jack throws an arm around her shoulders and brings her even closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder, and Samira can hardly breathe by the end of it all. “You can be honest with me. Have you never done a puzzle before?” Jack teases, his voice low and rumbly in her ear, his words turning into a laugh when she pinches his thigh and leaves her hand resting against his skin.

___

“So, how am I supposed to act around you at work now?” Jack asks her sometime later, the puzzle largely completed in front of them now, Jack’s arm still hanging around her and Samira’s head still resting on Jack’s shoulder. “Do you want to set any rules or boundaries before we go back tomorrow?”

Samira knows that they need to talk about this, that she needs to dispel him of any lingering worries he may have about her freaking out and shutting down on him again if they act friendly at work, but she would give anything to live in ignorance for a little while longer, to keep pretending that the last three days with Jack are the norm and not a rare blessing they took full advantage of. “Yeah, um, I guess. We can talk to each other, like—like friends, it doesn’t have to be like last time. I’m not gonna freak out if you joke around with me or talk to me about something that’s not work related.”

“Alright. Tell me if I’m taking it too far, though.” Jack promises, pressing a kiss into her temple, and Samira melts further into his side. He won’t take it too far, she knows, might even be too reserved until he can gauge from Samira what her exact comfort level is, what her barometer is for friendly in terms of their conversations and interactions at work and how he can match it. She knows the last thing he would ever want to do is make her uncomfortable; she trusts him more than anyone to respect her and her boundaries. “What about the touching? You said we had to rein it in before.”

“Yeah.” Samira sighs, hating the idea already. She reaches for Jack’s hand hanging over her shoulder, gripping his hand as if it might help her with this conversation, as if it might make up for all the distance they’re going to have to keep while at work. Jack presses another kiss to her skin and breathes her in, as if he can hear her thoughts, as if he might feel the same way about going back to work tomorrow. “We can touch, just—discretely, subtly. No more kissing, probably, unless we’re absolutely sure no one is around. I’ll be on my best behavior from now on, I promise.” Samira tries to joke, tilting her head up on Jack’s shoulder and meeting his eyes, and is shocked to see some hesitation clouding his expression, nerves she isn’t used to seeing on him.

She pulls back from him, lets his arm drop off her shoulders and folding herself back into her own chair, raising her eyebrows at Jack to get him to tell her what’s on his mind. “If you want stricter boundaries, that’s fine. I won’t be offended or hurt if you don’t want us to be so friendly at the hospital. I don’t want you to be worried or stressing about anything unnecessarily.”

Samira shakes her head, but she understands where he’s coming from, why he felt the need to tell her that. She took it too far, last time, she got too in her head and let her anxieties and fears get on top of her, pushed Jack away too far and couldn’t find him when she needed him, when she knew he could have talked her down from the ledge she put herself on. It wasn’t fair then, and it wouldn’t be fair now to ask Jack to maintain those impossible standards again. “It wasn’t healthy, last time, what I was doing. What I asked you to do for me.” Samira admits, voice low. “It didn’t help me with my anxiety, it just…it made me very unhappy, on top of everything else, to not be able to talk to you like I wanted to at work. To keep you at such a distance when I didn’t have to, when I didn’t really want to.”

“Okay.” Jack concedes, tilting his head at her with a little smile, one Samira can’t quite figure out. It feels…good to admit that, to admit that she took it too far last time, that she let her anxiety control her instead of the other way around, so good that she thinks about all the other things she wants to admit and confess to Jack, all the other things she wants to apologize for and beg for his forgiveness about.

There’s the big one, of course, the big apology that sits on the tip of her tongue and hangs heavy around her neck every time she sees Jack, but she isn’t ready to share that one with him, isn’t prepared to give that apology the respect and detail it deserves right now. She can’t apologize for leaving him—for needlessly breaking his heart, without at least a little preparation, without planning exactly what she wants to say so she doesn’t blow it or hurt him any more than she already has. She doesn’t trust herself enough to blindly apologize, to apologize with the words coming straight from her heart and not her brain, when her heart has been beaten into submission one too many times for her to trust it with that responsibility.

But she could offer him something. She could start somewhere, somewhere small and inconsequential, in the grant scheme of things she needed to atone for when it came to Jack. She could trust herself a little bit, she could give her heart a little bit of leeway, give herself a test run to see what she does wrong with this small apology and course correct the next time she apologizes to Jack. She could get a sense to how receptive Jack would be to an apology from her, how sneaky she might have to be in how she delivers it, but Samira is already assuming that he would shut her apology down before she even finished it.

“I am sorry, you know, for…for a lot of things.” Samira starts weakly, blinking to herself as her eyes start to sting. She curls tighter around herself in her chair, shame hanging thick around every one of her words, around each of her tense limbs. This already feels like a complete failure. “I wish that I had handled things differently—”

“Don’t.” Jack says firmly, predictably. He tips his chin down and raises his eyebrows at her, forcing her to look at him, to accept his words. Samira doesn’t think it will happen so easily this time, doesn’t think an intense look from Jack and a few reassuring words is going to fix this in her mind, fix her. “Seriously, don’t ever apologize to me for that.” Jack adds, when it’s probably very obvious that Samira is not agreeing with him and still drowning in her guilt.  

“Well, I—I feel like I should, because I hurt you, a lot, and I was so unfair to you—”

“I don’t want an apology. I don’t need an apology, Samira.” Jack tries to convince her again, softening his tone when she’s clearly feeling very vulnerable about this topic, when he realizes how heavy it’s weighing on her right now. “You were worried, Samira. You were anxious and overwhelmed and if you needed to break up with me to stop feeling like that, that’s what you should have done. It was the right decision for you, and that’s all that mattered to me.”

Self-sacrificing bastard. Samira wishes he wasn’t such a good person sometimes, if only so it wasn’t so obvious how not good of a person she was, in comparison. “I wouldn’t say it was the right decision for me.” She mumbles. It was a decision she felt like she had to make, a decision that alleviated most of her immediate anxiety concerning her career being ruined and being fired from PTMC, but it probably wasn’t the rightdecision. The right decision probably would have been talking to Jack before it all got out of hand for her, before she spiraled so far into her anxiety that she couldn’t see a way out anymore, before she felt that her only way out was to sever every emotional connection she had with Jack. “I was miserable the entire time. I really missed you.”

Jack practically deflates at her admission, shoulders dropping and mouth parting in surprise, eyes bouncing around her face, and Samira freezes under his scrutiny. He…he knew that, right? He had to have known that she was unbearably miserable and lonely not being with him, not spending time with him, not being able to work with him the way she used to, not being able to talk to him, even if they were her own rules she was forcing on them. He had to have known that while she wasn’t as anxious that her career was destined for ruin, she was instead deeply unhappy, deeply heartbroken and longing for Jack every single day, forcing herself to believe that what she was doing was sustainable and healthy.

“If I hadn’t come up to the roof to talk to you, would you really have quit?” Jack asks her, the transition between those two topics only clear to him. Samira blinks at him, shocked at the sudden question and change in topic, to that topic, but she takes a second to think about it, to remember how awful and miserable she felt on that day too.

Would she really have quit? Would she really have gone home and put in for a transfer out of the residency program? Would she really have quit PTMC without any kind of plan for the first time in her life, all because she felt lost and weak and abandoned? Was her morale and confidence really so abused that she would have quit her dream rather than think through solutions first? Would she really have walked out of her shift that night believing that she didn’t belong in the ED, that maybe she was just chasing a childish dream and she should cut her losses before it was too late? Would she really have gone into geriatrics and done phenomenally in helping a vulnerable population, but still spent the rest of her life unfulfilled and desperate for something more?

“I think I might have.” She admits quietly, not proud of her answer, not proud of the way Jack’s mouth twists up into a frown at her words, but she doesn’t want to lie to him. “I really couldn’t see a future for myself there anymore, and I—I didn’t believe I could be a good emergency physician. I didn’t believe in myself anymore.” Samira pushes her mouth to the side as they sit in that admission for a beat, acknowledging how far she had fallen after that shift.

“Do you still think that?” Jack asks carefully, like there’s no wrong answer, but there’s one he definitely doesn’t want to hear, one he definitely doesn’t want her to believe enough to give.

“No.” Samira shakes her head, a little smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Jack matches her smile, a shine returning to his eyes that Samira drinks in greedily. “Someone talked some sense into me last week, told me that I was the best fucking doctor in the ED. Told me that I was good enough to claim the ED as mine and if anyone said otherwise they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.” Her smile grows into something real when Jack develops the beginnings of a blush as she quotes him back to himself, pulling forward the compliments that are burned into her mind from their conversation on the roof.

“Sounds like a smart guy.” Jack allows, tilting his head at her when she bites back a little laugh.

“He’s alright.” Samira shrugs, her cheeks starting to hurt with the force of her smile. “A little overconfident sometimes, but—”

“Get over here already.” Jack grumbles, still blushing, wrapping a hand around her calf and straightening her legs out from being folded underneath her in the chair, taking her hand in his and pulling her to stand up when all she does it laugh at him. She doesn’t put up a fight when he tugs on her limbs, doesn’t put up a fight when Jack pulls her to stand between his knees and wraps his arms around her waist, doesn’t put up a fight as her laughter dies down and Jack stares up at her fondly, with so much affection that Samira is once again glad that Jack can’t see her flush the way she can see him.

“I’m really glad you didn’t quit.” Jack tells her, smoothing a hand across her lower back, and Samira shrugs again, as if that was a given, as if his words weren’t sparking something to life inside her chest once more, as if she didn’t want to hear him repeat it a dozen more times. “And I’m really glad you kissed me again.” Jack adds on, easing over a bruise he might not even really know Samira was hanging onto, soothing her out of another sore spot.

“Well, you know me,” Samira starts, stroking her hands over Jack’s biceps, resisting the urge to squeeze his muscles. From the little smirk Jack was now sporting, she can only assume that Jack could tell what she was restraining herself from doing. They know each other too well, but Samira felt no real desire to hide from him at this point. Maybe ever. “I live to please.”

“Oh, I know.” Jack taunts her, his smirk turning into a dirty grin that Samira pretends to hate as she gently knocks his face to the side with her fingertips. She resolves herself to pretend to be grumpy about his comment for at least a little bit, but fails immediately when Jack grabs his hand in hers and kisses her fingertips, staring up at her the entire time.

___

“Can I say something crazy?” Samira asks, running conditioner through her hair, scrunching up her hair at the ends and squeezing more conditioner into her curls. She was standing out of the spray of the shower head, letting Jack wash his body off while she applied her conditioner, trying to forget about the goosebumps forming on her skin while she wasn’t standing underneath the shower head.

“Always.” Jack tells her, looking up at her from his shower bench, already sounding intrigued.

“I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow.” She admits, shaping and tightening one of her thicker curls around her finger for something to do, for something to keep her occupied while she admits this to Jack. Jack raises his eyebrows at her, but she can’t tell if he’s actually surprised or if he’s being nice about it, because to anyone else that doesn’t sound like a crazy admission. To anyone else besides her, and maybe Jack. Probably Jack too. “I don’t want to leave our little bubble.”

“What’s our little bubble?” Jack knows damn well what she’s talking about, he just wants to hear it directly from her, wants to hear her talk more about how she doesn’t want to go back to the real world after spending three full days under his undivided attention and proximity. She rolls her eyes at him as she finishes up with her conditioner, taking the showerhead from Jack to rinse the residual conditioner off of her hands, handing it back to Jack when he offers her the claw clip she’s taken to leaving in his shower, pinning her hair up when she doesn’t need to wash it or when she wants to let her conditioner soak for a little bit.

“Thanks.” Samira whispers as she gathers her hair up and clips it back, eyeing Jack as he goes back to washing the body wash off himself. It looks nice, is all, Jack rubbing his hands over himself, the soap running down his chest, his legs, his skin a patchy kind of pink that Samira is endlessly endeared by. “And you know what our bubble is.”

“Yeah, but I want you to tell me what it means to you.” Jack hangs the shower head back up and turns his full attention to her, resting his hands low on her hips, gently urging her to stand between his knees and smiling when she does.

That seems like a reasonable enough request, something she should be able to give him, even though she’s getting embarrassed already. “It’s just been nice, you know?” Samira starts, smiling to herself when Jack starts to rub his thumbs over her hip bones. His touch isn’t sexual, even though it could be, if she wanted it to be, but she doesn’t. Not yet, anyways. “Us, having time together outside of the hospital. Being able to wake up next to you and go to sleep with you, having actual meals together, finally being able to talk and just relax with you. We had time to do an entire puzzle together and that never would have happened if we were working.”

“Together might be generous. I was pulling most of the weight with the puzzle.” Jack’s teasing smile is heavily softened by the affection in his eyes, by the gentle way he’s still touching her hips. Samira never wants this moment to end, wants to be caught between his teasing and his affection for her forever.

“I would have been more helpful if you didn’t get off on giving me a hard time.” Samira scoffs, pinching the skin of Jack’s forearm while he winks at her. Samira pretends her heart didn’t stutter and jump in her chest at the sight of him winking at her, naked and flushed and holding onto her hips. She lets the moment pass, not wanting to get too caught up in him with conditioner still in her hair and risk needing to restart her wash routine, and gets back to their original conversation topic.

“Just—we can be together in your house. We didn’t have to pretend to be just coworkers, there wasn’t all this pressure to act casual or normal around each other with everyone watching us. We could relax and be ourselves and act however we wanted to for three full days, and now that’s over and we have to go back to work.” Samira sighs, a little bit of irrational frustration building up in her chest at the reminder. This was their last day off together. Tomorrow morning, Samira’s alarm would go off and they would be back to normal, comparing schedules to see if any of their off days aligned, stealing precious minutes together at shift change, trying to be sneaky about taking Samira for a night shift on occasion.

“Hey.” Jack says, tone a little more serious, his hands on her hips becoming firmer and more grounding. Samira blinks back to the present and looks back toward him, noting the teasing glint was gone from his face immediately. “It’s not over. Just because we have to go back to work doesn’t mean we’ll never be able to have time to ourselves again, that we’ll never be able to relax and do things together.”

“No, I know. Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Samira says immediately, stroking a hand up and down Jack’s arm a few times, for either of their comfort. Logically, she does know that they will have time together again, that there will probably be many more opportunities where their days off align this nicely, that they will make their opposite schedules work just like they did last time, it’s just—it was so fucking nice, being with Jack these past few days. It was so nice, everything she always told herself she didn’t need, and she doesn’t want it to end, she doesn’t want to give it up, ever again.

“We just have to go back to work tomorrow, and I can’t be with you how I want at work, and coming off three full days with you where we acted however we wanted is just…it’s gonna suck.”

Jack lets lose a little snort of laughter at her phrasing, and perhaps she was being a little dramatic about this whole thing, but she’s going to miss him. She’s going to miss waking up with him, she’s going to miss having breakfast with him, she’s going to miss figuring out ways to fill the day together, she’s going to miss having dinner with him and falling asleep with him at the end of the day, and she’s going to miss him when their schedules conflict and prevent them from repeating that for an endless amount of days. She’s going to miss being able to lean against his body when she sits next to him, miss being able to pull him into a quick kiss just because she wants to, miss holding his hand and hugging him and standing between his knees and touching him in the thousands of other casual ways she’s just become reaccustomed to.

She just got him back. She just got him back and now she has to give him up again, pretend that he doesn’t mean everything to her while they’re at work, pretend that she isn’t itching to touch him and laugh with him and stare at him every second that she’s not with a patient. She just got him back, and she never wants to spend another second pretending to not have him, to not want him, she never wants to spend another second pretending to herself or others that Jack isn’t someone special to her.

Perhaps she was being more than a little dramatic about going back to work.

“I’ll get over it.” She sighs, taking out her claw clip and shaking out her curls, preparing to wash the conditioner out of her hair. She reaches for the shower head when Jack stops her with a light hand around her wrist, considering her.

“Let me do it. Please?” Jack asks, adding on the please as if she would ever say no to him, as if she would ever deny either of them this. She remembers how she felt asking Jack if she could wash his hair a few days ago, remembers the swell of vulnerability and tenderness and devotion that overwhelmed her almost immediately, remembers the way her heart trembled inside her chest as she felt that desire take root inside her for the first time, as she shared something with Jack that she had never wanted with anyone else before.

She images Jack is feeling at least some of that as she nods in acceptance, sitting in between his spread legs with her back to Jack’s chest as he gently washes the conditioner out of her hair, running his fingers through her curls and lightly pulling the conditioner out of her hair by the end of it. Samira’s breath catches as Jack pushes her hair over her shoulder and starts washing the back of her neck and upper shoulders, washing any residual conditioner off of her skin with his body wash. Jack continues to run his soapy hands over the rest of her body, even though she already scrubbed herself clean before doing her hair, stroking over her arms and down her legs, up her waist and across her belly and back up to her shoulders, his gentle washing turning into a purposeful massage when he got back to her shoulders.

Samira drops her head forward in pleasure, when Jack kneads and presses against knots she didn’t even know she had, expertly bullies back the tension and tightness she carries in her shoulders. Jack lets his thumbs run down the length of her back next, parallel to each other at the edges of her back, and Samira twitches in his hands, not expecting it to feel so good. “Sorry. Feels good.” Samira whispers, unable to expend the energy or mental focus to speak at a higher volume or in full sentences.

Jack repeats the motion up and down her back, thumbs digging into her muscles and lingering where she twitches the hardest, and Samira lets loose a shaky exhale, overwhelmed by the feeling of Jack’s hands on her body, the worship she suddenly feels she’s under from a simple massage. It defies all logic and reason that Jack is able to take her apart so easily, is able to leave her feeling so fragile and small from a few simple touches, and it defies all logic and reasoning that Samira likes it so much. It goes against everything she told herself that she needed, everything she told herself that she should want, rails against her instincts to avoid all situations that could leave her vulnerable, weak and exposed, for someone to take advantage of or throw back in her face when the time came.

 It’s never made any sense to her, but she’s done questioning it. She’s done running from it, hiding from it, done pretending she hasn’t secretly craved this exact feeling for much of her adult life. She’s tired of running, tired of hiding from herself, tired of pushing everything down until it builds high enough to topple her and take everything she’s surrounded herself with down with her. All she wants is to collapse into the hands that are always waiting to catch her, that are primed to support her whenever she needs it, and she’s done relying on logic and reasoning to make sense of that or justify that to herself.  

Jack presses a dry kiss to her neck, pulling her out of her thoughts, and Samira sniffs and pulls her head back up, rolling out her shoulders once Jack lets his hands travel back to her hips. They sit in silence for a beat, the moment hanging heavy around both of them, before Jack breaks their silence. “I liked our little bubble too.” Jack whispers against her ear, voice nothing more than a thick rasp, and Samira blinks the wetness from her eyes before she turns her head and pulls him into a gentle, slow kiss, pressing as much emotion as she could manage into their kiss, into the light hand she rested on his chest.

___

“So pretty. Taking me so well.” Jack breathes, biting at his lower lip as he watches her move, watches her body sink onto his with shaking thighs.

Samira lets out a wavering exhale as she sinks completely onto Jack’s cock, her hands flexing on his chest as she’s stretched impossibly wide, one of Jack’s hands pressed low on her belly and the other sliding to her hip, guiding her as she chases away the ache that had built inside her. He was so big underneath her, so close and warm and big, thighs and hips spreading her own wide, chest broad underneath her hands as they reflexively twitch at being fucked, his cock stretching her and sinking impossibly deeper inside her as she starts to rock against him, finding her rhythm.

She was always easily overwhelmed by him, always pushed right to the edge when he fucked her, when she sunk herself on his cock and took him for all he was worth, when he folded her in half and fucked her until she was begging, when he took her from behind and kept her back arched with one hand on her neck and the other holding her ass in the air. He always took her apart so well, so easily, just like she asked him to, and it sent her spiraling toward an orgasm every single time.

“Fuck.” Samira whispers as she picks up the pace of her hips, grinding back and forth on his cock, tilting and rocking her hips until she feels a pulse shoot through her and her cunt clench around Jack’s cock. She bites back a whine and repeats the motion with more force, fucking herself until she can feel every inch of his cock dragging inside her, pressing against all the soft places inside of her and stretching her so wide, so fucking good.

Jack’s gaze is hungry and intense as he watches her ride him, eyes flitting between her face, her bouncing tits, her cunt swallowing his cock with every movement of her hips. Samira’s chest heaves as the hand that was on her belly slides up to her tit, squeezing the fat before rubbing at her nipple, tugging and squeezing at her as she whines and hardens underneath his thumb, as she arches her chest into his hand and silently begs for more.

“Fuck— fuck me, feels so good, Jack.” Samira moans, helplessly closing her eyes and letting her head fall forward in pleasure, hips bucking out of her specific rhythm as Jack plays with her tits, as he tries to help replace the grinding rhythm she lost with the hand still on her hip. It doesn’t really work as intended, since he keeps tugging at her nipple, since the forceful way he’s moving her body with the hand on her hip just builds the ache inside of her, just makes her pulse and flutter around his cock until her movements become more erratic.

“Samira.” Jack releases the hold he has on her hip, her movements faltering before she can find her rhythm again, and tucks her hair behind her ear when she drops her head, as if he would ever let her escape his heavy, intense stare right now. He lets his hand drop to her chin after tucking back her hair, his thumb underneath her chin and the rest of his fingers framing her jaw, picking her head up and keeping their eyes locked. “Look at me. I want to watch you take me.”

Samira lets loose a pathetic whimper as she rolls her hips again, grinding on his cock as Jack keeps his hand on her face, holding her firmly as she rolls her hips back and forth and grinds her clit against his body as best she can. Her mouth drops open around a needy whine, around Jack’s fingers still framing her jaw, when her clit catches particularly rough on the hair above his cock, when the sensation makes her clench around him again. She keeps looking at Jack, keeps her eyes still as she’s pinned by his gaze, burning and dark, warming her from the inside out and driving her wild.   

“Fuck, look at you. Taking me so fucking well.” Jack breathes, inching his thumb upward to drag against her lower lip, and Samira really can’t be blamed for when she slides her tongue underneath his thumb and sucks it into her mouth. Jack’s hips buck up beneath hers as he moans in surprise, meeting the grind of her hips more forcefully than she could achieve alone, hitting the angle she had kept them in and making her whine and suck harder on his thumb.

“Fuck, Samira. You’re perfect, so fucking good.” Jack grunts, the praise making her moan around his thumb and grind against him more recklessly. She eyes Jack as she rocks against him, his face and neck flushed red, chest stuttering underneath her hands, jaw clenching as she rides his cock for her pleasure, gazing up at her like he could devour her and it still wouldn’t be enough. Samira closes her eyes at the blatant display of his want, at how shameless he is about wanting her, but rips her eyes back open when Jack roughly pinches her nipple and presses down on her tongue at the same time. Samira moans, deep and ragged, the sound pulled from her chest as her hips buck at the shock of pleasure.

“What did I say? Keep looking at me, yeah?” Jack demands, keeping his thumb pressed hard against her tongue, but smoothing his thumb against her nipple as she whimpers and grinds her clit against him again. The juxtaposition makes everything more heady, more intoxicating and desperate, and Samira can’t help herself as she hollows her cheeks around Jack’s thumb and squeezes around his cock, chasing away the pulsing ache that roared to life again when he talked to her like that, pushy and insistent. She feels so full, stuffed with Jack’s cock and his thumb, sucking on his finger and riding his cock desperately, frantically, needy, stretched in every possible place and every possible way from Jack, and it’ll never be enough to satiate her.

Samira nods around his thumb, nostrils flaring and hips losing their rhythm again, grinding on his cock so he pressed right up against that spot inside of her and her clit got unrelenting friction against his body. She must be losing her mind, must be losing all of her senses as she fucks herself on Jack’s cock, because she takes one of her hands off Jack’s chest and brings it to his wrist, and before Jack can follow through on the worry that she wants his hand off her face, she starts guiding Jack’s thumb across her tongue, fucking his thumb in and out of her mouth while she stares right at him.

“Jesus, you’re unbelievable.” Jack groans, taking over for Samira and fucking his thumb into her mouth without her guiding hand, his thumb heavy on her tongue and occasionally hitting the back of her throat. “Take it, yeah, c’mon, take what you need from me.” Samira moans around his finger, feeling needy and insatiable, her mind resorting to filling with nothing but white noise and every messy, desperate thing that’s blocked off by Jack’s thumb in her mouth. On a particularly hard suck of his thumb, when Samira briefly imagines his thumb as his cock moving inside her mouth, Jack’s hips reflexively twitch upwards, sending her rolling more forcefully onto his cock, a desperate moan vibrating around Jack’s thumb at everything he’s doing to her.

“Enough, sorry, I want to hear you.” Jack pants, apologizing as he suddenly drags his thumb from her mouth and Samira follows after it with a wretched whine. She keeps up the rhythm of her rolling and grinding on Jack’s cock, rocking back and forth until she’s silently, open mouthed moaning, her thighs starting to burn as she moves herself and chases her orgasm. “C’mon, let me hear you. Look at you, baby, just let me hear you too.” Jack begs, his voice raw and gritty, eyes raking over Samira’s face as she stares him down in return and pants, unable to form any words or sounds.

In her panting silence, Jack moves both of his hands to her ass, grabbing at the fat and rocking her more forcefully against his cock, and Samira wants to moan, to beg, to tell him how good she feels, she wants to give him what he wants from her, but she can’t. She can’t force any words past her mouth, she can’t force any moans or whines or whimpers from her throat to satisfy Jack, she can only stare at him, chest heaving and cunt fluttering at the new angle and rhythm Jack is forcing her into, falling forward to rest her forehead against his as she pants against his mouth. 

Jack tilts his chin up and pulls her into a messy kiss that Samira matches eagerly, fingers digging into her ass as he bites at her mouth, as he slides his tongue against hers and swallows her weak moan. Samira throws herself into the kiss, lets Jack devour her and consume her, is happy to be at Jack’s mercy as he kisses her and fucks her however he wants, is happy to be pulled in a dozen different directions if one of those leads toward an orgasm. Jack pulls back from her mouth with a slick sound, her panting and the wet sound of her cunt taking Jack’s cock surrounding them again, drawing another weak moan from her throat, but apparently that’s still not enough for Jack.

A loud, gravely moan is pulled from Samira’s throat when Jack smacks a hand on her ass, squeezing and rubbing at her stinging skin immediately after. “Let me hear you, Samira. Tell me how it feels. Tell me you feel good.”

“I—I, oh—" Samira cuts herself off when Jack smacks her ass again, digging her forehead against his as she feels her skin recoil under his hand, the stinging pleasure-pain shooting straight to her cunt, clenching and soaking around Jack’s cock as she starts to tremble underneath his hands. Jack, to his credit, waits a beat for Samira to talk to him, to babble about how good she feels, how good his cock feels inside her, but when she can only whine against his mouth and stare into his dark, hungry eyes, he smacks her ass again. Her hips buck underneath his hands, an awful keening sound ripping free from her throat as Jack grips her skin and pushes her onto his cock, grinding her against him and making sure her clit catches against his body with every forced movement.

“Jack, Jack—” She moans, words finally forced from her throat, rolling her hips in tight circles as Jack helps her along, “Oh God, it feels so good. Feel so full, I—love it, love fucking you, love getting fucked on your cock—” Samira breaks off into another moan when Jack pinches the skin of her ass again, sore from where he had smacked her, starting her babbling all over again. “Please, I do, you make me feel so good, so big inside me, fucking me so good, please, tell me—”

“Good girl.” Jack tells her immediately, knowing her far too well. He stares up at her like she’s a wonder, a wonder that he wants to devour and keep on his cock forever, and Samira nearly comes right then, floored by how he never seems to run out of any desire for her. “Like a fucking dream, Samira, you’re perfect, you’re so good.” Jack promises, chest heaving and hips twitching, flush finally spreading down to his chest.

Jack lets her return to her moaning and whimpering as she rides him, thighs starting to shake from exhaustion and her building orgasm, cunt clenching around his cock every time he rolls her hips roughly, every time her clit rubs against his skin, every time he moans into her mouth, every time he tells her how good she is, how good she feels around him. He feels so fucking good inside her, his cock dragging inside of her obscene precision, stretching her and keeping her spread for him perfectly, stuffing her so full, big and thick as she chases her orgasm and takes him deeper than she ever thought possible, and Samira can only take so much.

“Fuck me.” Samira begs, seconds from her orgasm, knowing she had to ask Jack for this, that he would let her grind on his cock and chase her orgasm for eternity without purposefully fucking into her, not until she asked him. “Jack, fuck me, need it, need you, please fuck me—"

“Perfect, baby, you did so good.”  Jack doesn’t need to be told twice. His hands move to her hips, grip almost bruising on either side of her, fucking her on his cock while his hips buck upwards to meet her, thrusting into her hard while he bounces her on his cock. Samira’s mouth falls open around a whine, nails raking down his chest and back arching as her orgasm crashes through her, as the coiling in her belly finally snaps, cunt fluttering through her orgasm and pulsing as Jack continues to fuck her through it, as he takes her without hesitation.

“Samira, good girl, feel so fucking good for me.” Jack grunts mindlessly, staring down at her cunt while he fucks up into her, staring at the way her body takes him and soaks him as she’s forced to keep up with the desperate and fast pace Jack is keeping them in. Jack fucks her relentlessly, even as her thighs shake around him and her cunt continues to flutter and she whines long and loud, his hips snapping against her ass, cock driving into her and the sound of their bodies slapping against each other filling the room. She stares down at Jack while he fucks her, watches as his arm muscles bulge and strain as he moves her on his cock, stares into his glassy eyes and flushed skin and parted mouth, keeps looking at him like he asked while he falls apart underneath her now.

They keep at that for a little while, Jack bouncing Samira on his cock while his hips buck underneath hers, Samira moaning helplessly and tugging at Jack’s hair as she’s pushed to the point of overstimulation, as her tits bounce and her cunt drips around his cock every time she’s lifted off him, every time she’s forced to take every thick inch of him, and it’s all so loud and sloppy and filthy that she feels another orgasm building, feels her cunt pulsing and tightening until Jack groans against her mouth and drops her down on his cock again.

“Samira, I can’t—” Jack tries to say, but can’t finish when her cunt clenches around him involuntarily, shocked from being sat on his cock again so suddenly.

“What?” Samira pants, brushing her nose against his in apology. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She asks again, hands roaming and rubbing over his chest in what she hopes is a soothing gesture.

“I can’t come.” Jack breathes out, his eyes dropping to their laps, looking away from her, his pretty flush turning into a deeper, embarrassed red. “I can’t come right now.” Jack rushes to say again, as if she might have somehow misunderstood him the first time.

“Oh. Okay.” Samira says, hopefully recovering from her surprise fast enough. She slides her hands up to Jack’s face, thumbs on his cheekbones and tilts his head up so he was looking at her again, so he couldn’t hide from her anymore. Jack meets her gaze when she demands he does, but she can tell that he’s embarrassed, that he wishes he was in almost any other situation right now. “Do you want to stop? We—we can stop, obviously.”

This happens to him, sometimes. Jack is on a variety of medications that can affect his sexual function, so sometimes he can’t come or it takes him a little longer to come than expected, and he’s always embarrassed about it, feels like he’s somehow inadequate in that particular moment when he can’t come with Samira, even though she could not disagree any more strongly on that point, even though Jack sees the reality of the situation later, when he isn’t hard and inside her. When this happens, sometimes they just stop fucking, sometimes Jack makes her come a few times with his mouth or fingers before fucking her again, sometimes they switch positions and Jack is able to come that way.

“I—I think I might be able to. Just, later.” Jack tells her, not really answering her question.

“Do you want to stop?” Samira asks him again, enunciating each word of her question. She could keep going, she could come again on his cock or on his mouth if he wanted, or she could pull of his cock and go to sleep with him, and either way would be fine, of course. She just doesn’t know what he wants.

“We can try a different position.” Jack mumbles, running his hands across her hips again, making her belly twitch underneath his touch.

“Do you still have that thing for your leg? That—that cut-out block thing?” Samira asks, biting her lower lip through a shy smile when Jack blinks at her. She doesn’t know how to really describe what she’s asking about, has only ever seen it when she’s five seconds away from getting the life fucked out of her, but she knows Jack knows what she’s talking about when he subtly twitches underneath her and grips her hips tighter.

“Yeah. Yeah, I still have it.” Jack says gravely, Adam’s apple bobbing forcefully against his throat.

“Where is it?” Samira asks, tone a little teasing, losing her shy smile for a more playful one as she nudges their conversation along piece by piece.

“Under the bed.” Jack rubs his hands up and down her thighs a few times, particularly distracted by her for some reason, before he gently taps her thigh in decision. “Pull off, I’ll get it.” Jack tells her, watching as pushes up on her knees and Jack’s cock slides out of her with a little whimper, swearing to himself as he leans over the side of his bed and digs around for the block thing. “Get on your back.” Jack tells her once he finds what he’s looking for, voice gruff and raw, and Samira has never listed to someone so fast in her life.

___

Every time Samira has seen the cut-out block thing, she’s only seen it for a few moments as Jack situates it underneath his stump before he starts fucking her. She knows it’s a hollowed-out rectangle, the carved-out space padded and big enough for Jack to rest his knee and calf in it, the bottom of the block textured in some way to prevent it from sliding around the bed, the rest of the block running along where his calf would be and providing him a firm surface to balance against while he kneels before her. He still has to grip onto some part of her body or the bed for true balance or stability, but she knows the block gives him the ability to kneel in front of her where he wouldn’t have been able to without it. It looks homemade, but she can’t be entirely sure, because she’s never really asked about it, always forgets to ask him about it after sex and has no intention of delaying their sex to pester him with her dozens of questions about it.

Once Jack was situated with his leg and the device, he pulls Samira closer to him, tugging her down the mattress by her calves and sliding his hands up to her thighs to spread her open, keeping her knees bent and pushing her legs toward her chest, fingers squeezing into the fat on the back of her thighs as he holds her open. Samira whimpers and turns her face into the mattress, feeling like a live wire, exposed and crackling, twitching every time Jack spreads her legs just a touch wider, when he opens her up even further, pulling at her already sore muscles and sensitive cunt.

“Too much?” Jack pants, holding off on sliding his cock inside her, but she can hear the desperation in his voice, can hear the restraint he’s clinging to until he gets her answer. “We can—”

“No, this is good.” Samira promises, nodding her head against the sheets, clinging to every sensation she’s able to use to ground herself. “It’s good, fuck me like this.”

“Okay, okay.” Jack breathes out, and Samira squeezes her eyes shut and scratches at the sheets as Jack pushes into her, thick cock stretching her so wide, impossibly wide and deep in this position, her knees practically pushed to her chest and cunt spread open before him. She feels like the air has been knocked out of her lungs as Jack continues to slide into her, as he moans endlessly until his hips are flush with hers, his moans low and wrecked as if he forgot what she feels like, how good it feels for him to fuck her in the time it took to get here.

“Fuck, you feel incredible.” Jack moans, giving her a moment to adjust, rubbing gently on back of her thighs in direct contrast to how she feels with his cock filling her, unmoving and thick inside of her, driving her wild as she adjusts to the stretch again. “God, you—you feel so good. Samira, you always take me so well, so fucking good—” Jack breaks off as another broken moan is ripped from his throat, hips fucking into hers in reflex when she flutters around him at the praise, when she whines again because it’s all too much. It’s a vicious, perfect, intoxicating cycle they get themselves caught in for a second, Samira unable to stop herself from pulsing and clenching around Jack’s cock, Jack unable to control his reflexive thrusts into her cunt as a result, the two of them moaning as they can’t restrain themselves enough to still for one second and start fucking each other for real.  

Samira cracks first, or maybe Jack was just waiting for her permission to fuck her. “Just—please fuck me.” Samira moans, scrabbling at Jack’s arms and digging her nails into his skin, scratching her nails down his arms as he immediately rolls his hips into hers, dragging his cock against her cunt in slow, purposeful grinds, grinding his cock into her until she arches her back off the bed and lets out a high-pitched gasp, digging her nails into his arms again.

“That’s it, baby.” Jack groans, keeping the angle of his hips, rolling his hips into her cunt with more force now, a little rougher, the drag of his cock lighting her up from the inside out, hitting the spot inside of her that has her immediately trembling, thighs shaking in his hands and cunt clenching around him. Samira arches her back again, trying to take him even deeper, trying to force him to fuck her faster, shifting her head so she could look at Jack again, maybe even beg him a little to fuck her harder, but when she does land her eyes on him, all she’s able to do is let out a needy whine and buck her hips against his.

He looks fucking wrecked already. His eyes are wild and pinned to where he’s fucking into her, where he’s spreading her open for his cock, to her wet cunt taking him so easily, so desperately and his cock surely coated in her already. His chest is heaving, flush spread all the way down to his pecs, the muscles in his arms bulging as he spreads her for him, his hairline sweaty and hanging onto his forehead, overcome with exertion and the force that he’s fucking her with. He’s so gone, lost in her and the feel of her cunt around his cock, and Samira feels her stalled orgasm rush to life again, the weight building heavy and low in her cunt as Jack continues to fuck her.

Jack must be desperate to come too, must be aching to come after fucking her once and not being able to come before. “Is—is it good? You think you can come?” Samira asks around her moans and gasps, eyeing Jack like the hungry look in his eye might reveal something to her other than his desperation for her.

“I don’t—I don’t know.” Jack admits, tightening his hands around her thighs, pushing her knees even closer to her chest, the wet sound of his cock fucking into her suddenly sounding much louder in her ears as Jack finally picks up the pace, fucking her hard enough that the headboard starts to smack against the wall. Samira’s body rocks underneath his, every time his hips snap against hers her body bucks forward, her tits bouncing with every thrust, the pace rough and fast and hard, ripping a high-pitched whimper from her throat as she digs her head into the mattress and sucks in gasping breathes.

“You’re still so fucking tight, shit.” Jack groans, losing his rhythm for a second as he fucks his cock into her with abandon, fucking into her so deep and dragging against every soft spot inside of her it pushes the air from her lungs, has her eyes rolling into the back of her head along with his words. “Take—take me so well, fucking squeezing me, could have you around me like this forever…”

Jack trails off with wide, bouncing eyes as Samira’s body jerks in his hold, back arching and cunt clenching around his cock, the pit low in her belly growing tighter and heavier as she digs her nails into his arms and rolls her hips to meet his thrusts, fucking herself on his cock when he thrusts forward into her. She feels insane, body pulled and stretched in so many directions, her mind fracturing around her pleasure and his words, the promise of her orgasm creeping closer and closer, and Samira can’t help herself as she takes one of her hands off Jack’s arm and starts rubbing at her clit, firm circles that have her fluttering around Jack’s cock as she moans.

“You close?” Jack asks, question rhetorical, because Samira knows he’s going to start running his mouth anyways, knows he can tell that she’s going to come again and wants to push her a little closer to the edge, wants to talk her through it like he knows she likes. He tightens his hands on her thighs again, almost reflexively, keeping his thrusts relentless and fast, pulling sounds out of her she didn’t even know she could make as he stares down at her fingers rubbing against her clit. “That’s it, touch yourself, wanna feel you come around me again. Give it to me, baby, taking it so good, just a little more—”

Samira chokes around a gasp, her thighs shaking and trying to close around her orgasm, her fingers rubbing firm circles against her clit, her gasp turning into a needy whine when Jack just tightens his grip on her legs and spreads her open even more, watching her come around his cock. “Oh, oh God—” Samira moans, already oversensitive from her earlier orgasms, Jack’s words and his grip on her legs and the way he’s still fucking her pulling her through this orgasm, her back arching as her body can’t decide if it’s too much or if she wants more, if she wants to arch into Jack’s touch or shy away from him.  

“There you go, just like that.” Jack groans, continuing to fuck her as she whined and scratched at his arms again, silently begging for something she didn’t even know. She wants him to come, she wants to feel him come inside her, she wants to keep getting fucked and stay like this all night, close and warm and full, wants to be held open and stretched by Jack until neither of them could breathe, until neither of them could stand the thought of being separated from the other. She rolls her hips against his weakly, trying to give as good as she was getting, trying to give Jack something to work with, but her lower body felt very weak, hips and legs not cooperating with her brain as Jack continued to fuck her.

Jack dropped his head as he moaned, abandoning his rhythm, fucking into her with deep and unforgiving thrusts, chasing his own pleasure and Samira wants it for him, wants him to come, wants to feel good enough for him to come inside her. She can see him falling apart in front of her, can feel his cock twitching inside her and fucking into her carelessly, can see the wild look return to his eyes and she wants to give, she wants him to have everything he wants from her and then some. She wants to give as good as she’s getting.

His cock rolls into her cunt perfectly, expertly, deliciously, and Samira throws her arms onto his shoulders, digging her nails in and dragging Jack down onto her body, the shock of it all likely helping in her ability to actually move Jack’s body. Jack grunts in surprise as she pulls his torso down on top of hers, his upper body squishing her knees to her chest and spreading her open that much more, and Samira can’t stop herself from crying out in Jack’s ear as she scratches down his back, leaving red lines all the way down.

“Jesus, oh, fuck—” Jack moans, voice cracking and wrecked, bucking his hips into hers again as he moves his arms to rest next to her head, his hands gripping into the bedsheets as he lets his face fall into her neck. Samira can hear him panting in her ear, can hear his hands making frantic fists in the sheets next to her head, can hear his cock fucking into her wet cunt, and Samira pulses around him, digging her nails into his back again, unable to move any other part of her body with Jack on top of her and pressing her into the mattress.

“God, you have no idea—no idea how you make me feel.” Jack says through his moaning, and Samira achesfor him, aches as he fucks her even deeper, even harder now with the new angle, the drag and stretch of his cock inside of her almost unbearable as she struggles to find her words again, words stolen from her every time Jack fucks her hard enough to rock the bedframe. “No fucking idea how good you feel. So fucking tight around me, so warm, so—so wet, d’ya think you can come again? Do you want to?”

“Please.” Samira gasps, digging her head against Jack’s as he grazes his teeth against her shoulder, her neck. She wants him to leave a mark, even though he won’t, wants him to claim her, wants to be marked by him for everyone to see, wants everyone to look at her and know she’s Jack’s, that Jack chose her and wants her and fucks her. “Please—then you come, come inside me, please—”

Jack snakes a hand between their bodies as quickly as he can, not moving his torso an inch as he slips his hand flat against her lower belly, his thumb finding her clit and pressing down hard, breathing roughly in her ear through her sudden whimper, then slips his thumb over her cunt, where he’s still fucking her, gets his thumb wet before he slips it back over her clit, the glide of his thumb suddenly much smoother. Samira digs her nails into Jack’s skin again and closes her eyes as her body tries to move but can’t, as her hips try to roll into Jack’s cock or thumb, as she tries to do something other than take it, but can’t.

“Know it’s a lot, I know, baby. Just one more.” Jack coos in her ear, making her cunt pulse and soak around him, gripping around his cock as he fucks in and out of her, his choked off moan vibrating through her ear and sticking etching itself in her mind as he keeps touching her, keeps fucking her, keeps talking. She doesn’t know how he always has an endless stream of filth to whisper in her ear, but she’s never been more grateful for this particular talent of his. “Gimme one more, please, you can do it. Show me how good I make you feel, how well I fuck you—”

Her orgasm is pulled from her with a needy gasp, sneaks up on her and crashes through her recklessly, her cunt fluttering around Jack’s cock while Jack fucks her through another orgasm. She feels wrung dry, feels stretched beyond her limits and squeezed hard enough to collapse in on herself, feels like one more touch to any part of her body will shatter her, will either send her to tears or toward euphoria. She digs her head into Jack’s again, needing to be even closer to him, needing to touch him outside of getting fucked, and Jack somehow understands this, takes the hand that was still clutching at the bed sheets and wraps it around the top of her head, pressing their heads together and breathing into her ear.

“You’re perfect. You’re so good, did just like I asked.” Jack promises, pressing kisses to any part of her face that he can reach. Samira squeezes her eyes closed as he kisses her, reeling from the rough fuck Jack was still giving her in contrast to the gentle kisses he was pressing into her skin. “You did so good.”

“Please come.” Samira mewls in his ear, moving her hands to the back of his neck, scratching her fingers through his hair. “Please, Jack, need to feel you come.”

“I’m trying, I swear.” She can tell, is the thing, she can tell that he’s close, can tell that he’s frantic and on edge from his thrusts, from his panting in her ear, desperate to come, desperate to give her what she’s begging for. “I wanna give it to you—”

“Please.” She cries again, not sure what else to try, short of getting into a new position for him to try, but she thinks if she had to move right now, if Jack pulled out of her and got off of her body, she might actually fall apart. She scratches her nails through his hair again, rough against his scalp, relishing in the grunt Jack lets out as his hips buck against hers. “Please, baby, wanna feel you come in me. I want it, want it so bad—”

“Shit, fu—keep talking.” Jack gasps, chest heaving against hers, hips losing their rhythm again and fucking into her rough, chasing his pleasure, chasing his orgasm that must finally be close enough to touch. Samira rolls her head against the mattress at the potential promise, at the thought of Jack finally coming inside her after so long of aching for it.

She can talk. She can pull herself together enough to talk him through an orgasm. She can share every filthy thing that’s clouding her mind right now. She can make Jack come. “You—you’re fucking me so good, feel so good inside me, can—can barely breathe you’re so fucking deep in me.”  She feels like she’s outside of herself as she’s talking, that it can’t possibly be her whispering all of that into Jack’s ear, but it is, it’s her that’s talking, it’s her that’s making Jack moan like a man possessed, it’s her pushing Jack closer to his orgasm. “I—I want you all the time, and I’m gonna feel you tomorrow, gonna be so sore that I can’t do anything without thinking of you and your cock—”

“Fuck, close, think I’m close.” Jack breathes into her skin, and Samira scratches at his scalp again, heart flipping when he moans again, close close close, thinking of what else she wants, what else she could tell him. She clenches her cunt around him purposefully, just to hear him moan again. “Please, just a little more, I’m close.”

“I wanna feel you.” She whispers directly onto his ear. She feels the shiver that wracks through his body, feels him tremble against her body, and Samira presses a kiss to his ear before she pulls back to whisper to him again. “I want you to fill me up, wanna feel you leak out of me, want—want you to come in me and lick it out of me after. Wanna be so full of you it’s dripping out of me and you could fuck it back into me—”

Jack finally comes, comes inside of her like she’s been begging for, with a ripped, tortured moan, vibrating through her skin as he fills her cunt, as his come floods her thick and warm and his cock twitches inside of her. He pants into her neck, his mouth parted and pressed into her skin, chest heaving against hers at the same time as he fucks her through his orgasm, fucking his come into her like she said, as best as he could give her right now. Samira moans through it all, moans as she’s finally flooded with his come, as she feels him finally fill up her cunt, moans as Jack trembles and grips at her body wherever he can, clinging to her as he fucks her through his orgasm, drawing it out for himself.

“Jack.” Samira says weakly, not even sure what she was asking for, running her hands up and down Jack’s back, soothing this time instead of scratching. Jack digs his forehead into her neck, still inside her, groaning as she touches him and lightly clenches around him, the aftershocks running through her body now. “Jack, God, that was…” She trails off, not sure she has the words yet, not sure if she’ll ever have enough words to describe what just happened.

“I know.” Jack whispers before pressing more purposeful kisses into her neck, dry and lingering, and Samira leans into the pressure, closes her eyes against the feeling of his gentle kisses on her neck and his softening cock inside of her. It feels nice, really nice.

They stay like that for a little bit, Jack kissing her neck and running slow hands up and down her waist, Samira keeping her eyes closed and catching her breath underneath him, relishing in the feeling of Jack on top of her, Jack’s body weight pressing her into the mattress, Jack still keeping her full and warm. Samira isn’t expecting it when Jack pulls away from her, isn’t expecting Jack to leave her at all, and lets out a little noise when she feels his chest lift off her own. “Don’t go.” Samira says, fingers clutching against his back, burning with embarrassment immediately after she opens her mouth.

“No, I’m not. Not going anywhere.” Jack promises, smoothing a hand down her skin again to calm her. Jack only goes far enough to let her legs drop back onto the bed, to let her legs relax from her chest after being folded up for so long, and Samira didn’t realize her legs were so sore until they fell back onto the bed, didn’t realize how tight her muscles were until they could relax again. Samira shifts her legs and flexes her muscles as Jack takes his leg out of the block thing, throwing it carelessly onto the floor before he collapses back on top of Samira, smothering her again and wrapping his arms underneath her shoulders. Samira settles underneath his weight again, returning her hands to his back, running her hands over his skin and trying to see if she could feel the raised skin of her scratches yet.

“Do you want me to pull out?” Jack mumbles against her neck, the vibrations and reminder of his cock still inside her sending a shover down her spine, pulling one of his hands out from underneath her shoulders and stroking over the top of her head.

“In a little bit.” She tells him. “Feels nice.”

They sit in silence for a beat before Jack asks her another question. “I wasn’t too rough with you, was I? It was good for you too?”

“Yes, it was good for me.” Samira can’t believe that’s a question he feels like he even needs to ask her, can’t believe that’s even building as a doubt in his mind. “You made me come four times. I begged you to come inside me. I think I would fall over if I stood up right now.”

“Well, it never hurts to ask.” Jack grumbles, giving one of her curls a little tug when she laughs at him. They stay like that for an unknown amount of time, Jack pressing more kisses into her neck and stroking the top of her head, Samira rubbing at Jack’s back, finally feeling the raised skin from her scratches. She picks her head up just enough to see the damage, see how badly she scratched him up, and immediately winces to herself at what she sees, how red and scratched up his back actually is. She lets her head fall back onto the bed and starts tracing over the scratch marks, feeling a little bad, believing that Jack couldn’t tell what she was doing, until he sighs heavily against her neck.

“Stop doing that or I’m gonna want to fuck you again.” Jack tells her, making Samira’s hands still on his back immediately. He can’t get hard again that soon after coming, she knows this, but Samira is turned on by the pseudo-threat anyways, clenches a little on his softening cock still inside her, making Jack groan again. “Jesus.”

Samira chooses to not respond to what just happened out of self-preservation. “Sorry about the scratches.” Samira scrunches up her nose, even though Jack can’t see her face. “You probably shouldn’t change at work for a while.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Jack shakes his head against her skin, and Samira only has a second to be confused before he explains further. “You scratched my arms too.”

Oh. Right. She did do that, when Jack was fucking her into the mattress. She rips her attention to Jack’s arms and takes in the damage there too, sees the skin on his arms is just as red as the skin on his back. “I’m sorry.” She repeats, resisting the urge to touch the scratch marks on his arms now that she knows he can feel it. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t apologize.” Jack nips at her neck to get her to stop, soothing over the bite with a little kiss. Samira only feels mildly soothed, still mostly mortified and guilty that she scratched up Jack so badly, and in such a visible place too. “It’s hot. I like it.”

“It’s inappropriate for work.” She grumbles, but willing to let it go. It’s Jack’s body that’s all scratched up, Jack who is willing to parade around his staff with scratch marks all over him, Jack who is unbothered by it, so she might as well be too. It’s not like anyone could pin the marks on Samira, anyways. “You can pull out now.” She adds, fingers flexing on Jack’s back when he complies, slowly slipping out of her. She feels Jack’s come slide out of her immediately, leak out of her cunt and slide down her thighs, and forces herself to not react to it. There was always next time.

Samira knocks her head to the side as she purposefully breathes, eyes landing on the accessibility device Jack uses to fuck her. “Hey.” She says, poking at Jack’s back until he hums to get her to keep going. “Did you make that or buy it?” She points to the device, letting her arm flop back onto the bed when it gets too exhausting to hold it up any longer.

Jack tilts his face out of her neck and looks around before he sees what she’s pointing at, resting his head on her chest when he settles again, gaze still on the device on the floor. Samira slides a hand into his hair, swiping her palm across his scalp as she waits for him to answer her. “A guy at the VA made it. He made one for himself, then word got out and he offered to make them for everyone else.”  

Samira nods, willing to let that be her one question for now, willing to hold onto all of her other questions until another time, until they weren’t basking in the quiet afterglow of sex, until she felt like Jack might be more receptive to being asked all of her pre-existing questions and any follow-up questions that arise from their conversation. She could wait, even though she was itching to know more about it and this guy at the VA and Jack’s relationship with him and how long he’s had the device, she could wait. She could exercise restraint, she could be patient, she could read the tone of the room.

Jack nudges her chest with his nose. “Ask me all your other questions, c’mon.”

Samira smiles up at the ceiling, unbelievably happy.

___

Samira’s alarm goes off in the morning, disgustingly early and horrifically loud, and she slaps at her phone with a groan until it quiets. She shoves her face into her pillow, groaning again, dreading the idea of leaving the warmth of Jack’s body, his bed. The idea of getting up and going to work sounds miserable right now, sounds like torture when she knows what it feels like to stay in bed and have a slow, domestic morning with Jack.

“Morning.” Jack grumbles into her ear, making Samira shiver as he tightens his arm around her waist.

“Morning.” Samira says, tone clearly grumpy. She feels Jack smile against her skin, amused by her, and it cracks through some of her tired attitude, but barely. Barely. “I don’t wanna get up.”

“I know.” Jack tells her, patting her hip before he rolls her onto her back. Samira cracks one eye open to look at him, to take in his ruffled hair and pillow creased cheek and sleepy eyes, to take in how soft and cute he looks right now, and is even less motivated to go to work. “Let me make you breakfast.”

“I don’t normally eat breakfast when I go to work.” Samira knows Jack already knows this. He has already gently scolded her for her tendency to rely on a protein bar for breakfast and sometimes lunch, for not properly fuel herself before working a demanding job for at least twelve hours. Samira used to appease him by texting him a picture of the rare occasion she got breakfast for herself, or when the admin offices upstairs send down some kind of treat for them and she made sure to sneak a bite without Dana seeing.

“That’s why I offered to make you breakfast.” Jack strokes over her hip again, tilting his head at her with a little smile.

“Gimme a kiss first.” Samira demands, making grabby hands at him, much to Jack’s delight.

She does get out of bed eventually, hands Jack his crutches so he can make her breakfast while she gets ready for work, easily goes through the motions in Jack’s house instead of her apartment, trudging out to the kitchen when it was time for her to leave. She spots Jack in the kitchen immediately, wrapping up some kind of breakfast sandwich for her to take. “I’m gonna leave soon.”

“Just in time.” Jack tells her, handing Samira the wrapped sandwich. Samira closes the distance between them after taking the sandwich, throwing her free arm around his neck, careful to be mindful of his balance, and kisses him, exploring and lingering, taking one more thing for the road, something else to help her get through the day without him. She pulls back slowly, sliding her hand from Jack’s neck to his cheek, cupping his face while she smiles up at him. Seeing the dazed, adoring look on Jack’s face, Samira is helpless to go back in for another kiss, then another, until she forces herself to pull back and take her hands off Jack.

“Okay, I’m going.” She tells him, biting her lip as she stares at him some more, and goes back in for a quick, dry kiss, holding his chin still with one hand while she gets up on her tip toes to kiss him. “I love you, I’ll see you later.”

She spins on her heel and makes her way to the front door, double checking that she has her keys and her ID badge, quickly glancing inside her bag to make sure she didn’t forget anything else she needed for the day, when she freezes, her words suddenly catching up to her, Jack’s silence sending a shot of icy fear through her heart. She spins around slowly, having stopped in the open space between the kitchen and the living room, heart pounding against her chest as she turns to face Jack again.

Jack loves her. Jack loves her so much. She knows this, because he’s told her before. She knows this, because he has done nothing but show her how much he loves her every day since she kissed him for the first time, maybe even before then. She knows this, because she would be stupid not to, and she’s not stupid.

What she doesn’t know is why Jack hasn’t said it back by now. Her mouth drops open as she takes a hesitant step back toward Jack, her hands shaking around her keys and her legs suddenly very unsteady, and tries to think of something to say other than, Do you not love me enough anymore to be able to say it?  Jack is just staring at her blankly, face so unusually unexpressive and dull, void of everything that makes him him, and Samira might have to leave her breakfast sandwich behind if this goes poorly. “Um, if…if we’re not saying that yet, I—”

“Can I say it back?” Jack cuts her off, face coming to life again, eyes blinking rapidly, corners of his mouth lifting and stilling in a hesitant smile, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed yet. “If—if it just slipped out, and I can’t say it back yet, that’s fine, but if I can tell you—”

“Tell me.” Samira begs, hands shaking and heart pounding for an entirely different reason now. “I mean it, tell me.”

The first time she told him that she loved him, she almost had a panic attack. She didn’t mean to say it, didn’t mean for that to be the moment she said that she loved him, wasn’t prepared to have that admission lingering between the two of them, wasn’t prepared to talk about how much she loved him yet, especially with him. But she loved him, and it just slipped out. She told him she loved him, and while Jack stared at her and opened his mouth, Samira pressed a finger to his lips and told him not to say it back, not that she could presume that he would feel the same way, but she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, she didn’t even really mean to say it, it just slipped out. Jack was horrifically gracious and understanding about the whole thing, let Samira hide in his bathroom for ten minutes before showing her face again and then he never brought it up again. Not until she told him she loved him a second time, specifying that he was allowed to say it back that time.

“I love you.” Jack breathes out, his smile finally taking shape on his face, eyes shining as he stares at her. “Samira, I love you.”

Samira drops her keys and everything else she’s holding and throws herself at Jack again, gripping his face in both of her hands and kissing him again, their kiss awful and short lived because neither one of them could stop smiling for long enough, neither one of them could actually start a real kiss because they just kept smiling at each other like fools. “I love you. I mean it.” She tells him again, stroking her thumbs over Jack’s cheekbones, and can’t believe that she’s lucky enough to call this the rest of her life.