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Jack Abbot likes to know people.
His colleagues, his patients, his friends– his people.
It’s a fairly simple thing to accomplish, mostly consisting of asking questions, listening, and observing, which he seems to have down pat. He’s genuine in his curiosity, unadulterated in his care and maybe that’s why he notices it.
Samira Mohan doesn’t let people know her.
At first he thinks it must be intentional– it wasn’t unheard of for residents to want to keep a hard line between work and home– but when even the little things fail to slip through, he finds his first impulse isn’t to ask her more questions, listen, or observe. It’s to invite her in .
The thing about people like Samira, Jack knows, is that they don’t respond well to the typical outreach. It’s like an infringement on their independence, on their self-sufficiency and control, so he moves in a way that lets her keep it all.
“Careful, it’s hot.”
“Oat milk?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks.”
Jack can speak several languages but most importantly, he can speak hers: case reports, cortados, and complex procedures and there’s a surprising amount to gleam from that alone. He can tell she doesn’t sleep much because she regularly emails him links to journal articles while he’s on shift. He can tell she hates how cold the hospital is because she refuses ice in her coffee, even in the summer, save the one night the air conditioning went out and she finished the ice straight out of his cup.
It’s entirely friendly, totally collegial, and no boundaries are ever crossed. Except the moment Jack starts thinking about boundaries, he realizes the problem really isn’t the container; it's what he's been trying to contain since the moment he met her. It's undeniable now: he’s not just trying to know Samira Mohan. He’s trying to have her, too.
With that frightful conclusion cemented, Jack goes home to the house he hates, where he eats the microwavable pasta he hates, and listens to his sixty-five year old neighbor sing her heart out to country music, which he also hates, but is preferable to the silence he hates more.
*
“Dr. Mohan,” he greets, when he sees her gazing up at the board, the gleam of mild delirium in her eyes as she scans for available cases. “You trying to break the record for number of doubles in a month or something?”
“Am I close?” she asks, a little hopefully. Jack’s not surprised, just slightly amused that it would be some sort of personal victory for her. If he’s been keeping track (and he has), she’s not far off from the record. The one he holds.
“No clue, you’ll have to ask Dana,” he says, “Night shift is always happy to have you, Dr. Mohan.”
“Samira is fine, you know,” she replies, leaning back on her heels like she’s trying to take the day’s weight off. “I might not have the record yet, but I think I’ve got enough hours under my belt to be ‘Samira.’”
The ‘ to you ,’ goes unspoken. It’s not lost upon him that he’s the only one left on the night shift still calling her Dr. Mohan. It’s sort of become a crutch, a protective measure to keep his thoughts about her in line. That’s what a title is for, isn’t it? A distinction. A threshold. A shortcut to safety. So long as he’s Dr. Abbot and she’s Dr. Mohan, he can let himself believe it’s all just professional admiration.
And yet–
“Samira, it is.”
How can deny her anything, much less a simple, innocuous request to say her name?
She beams and then she’s off to be brilliant around the corner while all Jack can think is how monumental each syllabus feels on his lips, how he’d like to say it again and again until he forgets any other name could even exist. And wouldn’t it all be so much easier if nothing else existed? At forty-nine Jack’s certain he’s seen it all, felt it all, but somehow this is brand-fucking-new.
When Jack falls in love for the first time, it’s in that natural, inevitable way. It’s something that builds like a fire started by nothing more than a crackling electric current. It’s a chance meeting at a bar that blurs into a first date, then a second, and eventually mounts into an engagement. As with everything exponential, he loses track some time around marriage.
But this? This is just fucking unnatural. There is no slow progression here. Just a roaring, flaming desire that won't let up, won’t leave him alone.
He’s losing his mind. He thinks he’s going to die.
Samira Mohan, who would go to the ends of the Earth to save a life, is going to kill him and he can’t think of a better way to go.
Perhaps for the best, what does reach him before death can, is what appears to be a flustered teenager. Or rather, a flustered student doctor sporting a bright pink hoodie and a deer-like skittishness.
“Hi, er, Dr. Abbot. I don’t know if you remember we, uh, met briefly during Pittfest. Well, not met, but I guess we did meet…anyways, I don’t know if you saw the email but I’m doing a second EM rotation.” The girl he recognizes as Shamsi’s kid is talking at him in mostly coherent but shaky sentences and Jack has to try hard not to laugh. “I asked to be on nights this time.”
“Damn, Robby really scared you off days, huh?” he responds, when it finally seems like she’s stuttered her way through the speech he imagines she’s practiced several times over before even approaching him.
“No! Dr. Robby is great!” she exclaims, eyes widening, “I don’t know if you heard. I mean you probably have, you’ve been here like forever. Not that you're old or anything like that…my parents have been here even longer.” She freezes, sheer panic. “ Shit . I didn’t mean it like my mom is super important or anything like that. I’m just trying to say both my parents work here. They’re both on days. I just thought I would have a better shot at figuring out if I’m right for EM without them breathing down my neck all the time.”
Jack nods. He gets it. Mostly. His parents weren’t doctors, not even close, but he gets it in the sense that everyone who chooses to be on the night shift takes comfort in a certain separation from the rest of the world. It’s a sort of escape from the weight of daylight and all that comes with.
“First, I need you to take a long, deep breath,” he offers. “Second, welcome aboard, kid.”
“I’m actually twenty-one.”
“Okay?”
“So, I’m not a kid. I can, like, legally drink now and stuff.”
“Right,” he says, a half-apologetic, half-bemused smile slipping at the edge of his lips. “No drinking on the job, though, right?”
She freezes. “No, no. I would never. I just meant–”
“Relax, Javadi, just a little ribbing,” he laughs, shaking his head. “You’ll have to get used to that if you plan on sticking around.”
“Dr. Mohan did mention that.”
“Really?” he says, trying to not sound any less casual when he asks, “What else did she say?”
“She said that the night shift has a different energy,” Javadi replies, “That it’s rough on the body but the people are great. She actually spoke very highly of you, specifically. Something like 'you're the type of doctor this place needs.'”
And suddenly, somehow, Jack’s thinking maybe he’s not so different from the flustered not-teenager before him. He’s just better at hiding it.
*
As it turns out, rather soberingly, the not-teenager thrives on nights. What’s worse is that she may actually be braver than him.
“...then I did it! I went right up to him, asked for his number, and if he wanted to go on a real date this weekend…guess what he said, Samira?” Victoria announces, excitedly. She's sort of latched on to Samira, him, to a lesser degree, but Jack's always pleased to see a student find their people, whomever they are. Besides, he'd never begrudge someone for having good taste.
“He said yes?” Samira replies, tiredly. He notices her claw clip is a bit off-center, a few curls askew, threatening to spill before her double shift comes to an end. He is struck by the thought that he’d follow her into a hurricane, if she ever asked.
Victoria grins. “He said: ‘ I’d love that ,’ so now, we’re deciding what to do on Sunday. Any thoughts?”
“That’s great, Victoria,” Samira smiles, as she charts. “But I’m definitely the wrong person to ask. Maybe Dr. Abbot has some good ideas?”
They both look over at him expectantly, like he’s some great authority on dating. He can’t quite tell if Samira thinks he actually knows good date spots or is just trying to palm off the responsibility, but somehow neither option feels like a compliment. Instead, he just feels old.
“Dinner?” he offers, entirely unhelpfully.
Victoria blinks, “I’m going to find Dr. Ellis.” And then she’s gone.
“Is ‘dinner’ really all you’ve got or are you just trying to keep work people away from your top secret date spots?” Samira asks, once Victoria is out of earshot. She'll throw him these little quips every once in a while, though, never in front of other people. She's more honest with him, he notices, freer, less filtered with her thoughts and he can't help but feel a little honored, if not charmed by it.
Jack looks over, “I haven’t been on a date in close to a decade. Besides, I don’t think Javadi Jr. needs any advice from me. She’s clearly got it all handled.”
“I might have you beat,” Samira says, “My last real date was high school prom.”
“You’re not serious.”
She shrugs, unaffected, finishing up her chart.
“Samira, that’s–” he’s trying to do the math.
“Eleven years, give or take,” she supplies for him. “You get used to it.”
“Not even in college? Or med school? Anything?” he replies, a little bewildered, walking towards her like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing.
“It’s actually very normal,” she says, folding her arms a little defensively.
“I swear I’m not judging,” he promises, “I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
“Look.” She turns to face him and suddenly, they’re quite close, aren’t they. “I just can’t bring myself to waste two hours doing the whole ‘what are your hobbies?’, ‘where do you like to travel?’ thing. It feels ridiculous to do all that get-to-know-you nonsense with some mediocre guy that I’m never going to talk to again. Not when I could be here, you know, actually saving lives.”
“I get that,” he says. “It’s just funny.”
“How so?” she says, dryly.
“You’re a great doctor because you take the time to know your patients. I’ve literally seen you ask patients about their hobbies and travel history on more than one occasion.”
She lifts her fingers on the keyboard. “It’s different.”
“Yeah?” he’s prodding, less because he disagrees and more because he likes the fire in her eyes when she senses a challenge, the way she’s reinvigorated by the mere chance to explain herself and have someone really listen.
“They’re data points. Sometimes all it takes is one right question to unravel an entire diagnosis,” she responds, “Besides, the patient in South 14 isn’t going to want to fuck me because I asked if he’s been to country with a high risk of malaria recently.”
Jack chokes on something. Air, probably.
“Maybe he does,” Jack jokes, weakly, still trying to catch his breath. He kind of wants to punch himself- it's always the terrible, stupid jokes that come out around her. Like he's got a compulsion to make her smile and the result is never better than a half-baked punchline.
She gives him a pointed look, entirely unimpressed. Deserved, he thinks. “There are much easier ways to find sex, Dr. Abbot.”
While he’d really like to unravel that , she doesn’t give him the chance because she’s on to her next patient and he’s left wondering exactly how many hours he has left until he goes into cardiac arrest or HR shoots him.
*
The thing about Pittsburgh is that the rain comes in bursts. Long dry spells, followed by torrential downpours. He knows when it’s coming– his leg starts to ache, the clouds turn slate grey and the temperature drops. It’s not been a particularly rainy year, but over the course of the shift, his body feels it: the brew of a storm before so much as a raindrop forms. He’s resting on the stiff break room couch feeling a little worse for wear when Samira marches in, eyes scouring the room. Her eyes move straight past him, as though he isn’t even there. A feat, Jack thinks, that would entirely be impossible in the reverse.
“Looking for something?” he asks.
“Spare umbrella. Left mine at home,” she replies, peering around the trash can. “I checked the weather app and I would prefer not to get soaked on the walk home.”
“I’m about to head out, let me drive you,” he insists. “If we leave now you’ll make it back before the rain even starts.”
“It’s fine.” She purses her lips, as if to search for an excuse. “I need the steps.”
“You’ve been on your feet all night, Samira.” Jack shakes his head, not backing down. “Not to mention, I think Robby would lose it if his best resident was struck down by lightning on her way home.”
Jack doesn’t know why he’s making it about Robby right now, but it feels like the only safe way he can discuss his mounting concern for her. Of course, Robby, her attending, her mentor wouldn’t want her walking in the rain. He’s just the messenger.
“He doesn’t think that,” she scoffs. “Besides, data shows 90% of all lightning strike victims survive. Maybe I’ll even get lucky and get super speed, too. That's the only world where I'm Robby's best resident.”
And the thing is, it’s hanging right there, ripe for taking. He really, really shouldn’t say it but sometimes, even men well-trained in the art of denial can’t help themselves.
He grins.
“There are much easier ways to get lucky, Samira.”
Half-baked, indeed.
(She accepts the ride.)
*
“I think you like me, Dr. Abbot.”
Even in the dark, he imagines Samira must see the dark red flush blooming from his neck upwards. He knows how obvious he’d made it, but somehow being faced with the evidence that even she, in all her laser-focus, had finally noticed made it that much worse. He doesn’t even bother with denial. “Sorry.”
“Why?” Samira asks, shrugging, as if entirely unaffected.
“I didn’t mean to put anything on you.”
“Right,” Samira says, “Because staring at me from across the hospital like you’re staring at me right now, isn’t putting anything on me.”
His jaw drops down and stays hanging open, nothing audible coming out. It’s a rare moment of utter speechlessness, in which he’s unable to conjure up any viable defense for his behavior. Samira, for her part, takes it in stride, flexing her fingers, tracing the veins on the back of his hand which sits atop the gear stick. She runs the back of her knuckles up his arm causing him to stiffen.
“You know, Dr. Abbot, the whole attending-resident thing is cliché,” she muses, “But I think the whole self-sacrificing, self-imposed chivalry thing is even more so.”
“You’re saying my respect for you is a shtick?” he laughs.
“No,” Samira says immediately, “I know it’s genuine. Whole-heartedly. I’m just saying that it's cliché.”
“And what exactly would you have me do, Dr. Mohan?” he says, almost helplessly.
“I don’t know– maybe ask if I was interested? If I want to grab coffee or something?” She replies like it’s the most simple thing in the world. Like there’s this ultra-obvious solution to a problem that’s been plaguing him for what must be nearing half a decade. Like he hasn’t practiced the words a million times but never quite dislodged them from his throat.
It’s at this point Jack realizes that she still has him all wrong. She thinks this is some fleeting interest for him, that this is ‘coffee’ and not a graceless, hopeless, unbecoming adoration for her. She thinks that this is something that can pass.
“I didn’t exactly have a plan,” he mumbles. “I was sort of banking on your continued unawareness.”
“Noted,” she says with a little shake of her head, “So, just to clarify, you don’t want to sleep with me, then?”
She’s straight-to-the-point, he’ll give her that. And yet for all her capacity for candor at the hospital, Jack’s never imagined how it might apply to this scenario. Needless to say, her words alone are enough to make him a little lightheaded. It’s like he’s a teenager and the mere suggestion of sex is enough to send blood rushing to all sorts of places that aren’t his brain.
The thing is, Jack absolutely wants to. He’s wanted her for so long he can’t remember what it feels like to not. He wants her in ways that are sweepingly romantic and in ways that are carnal and hard and everything in between.
But his answer should be no. It needs to be a hard, firm, resolute no, for both their sakes because starting anything with her is a terrible idea. Still, there’s the chirping cry of rebellion rattling around his brain that keeps reminding him of his therapist’s words: it's okay to do what you want and not feel guilty about it . Had they been discussing his impulse purchase of a three thousand dollar portable defibrillator? Yes. Did the sentiment still seem to apply? Also, yes.
“It’s a bad idea,” he settles on. “I don’t want to make things complicated. For either of us. You’re a brilliant doctor, Samira. I would never risk interfering with that.”
Samira goes momentarily silent, like she’s thinking deeply, contemplating all the ways this could go. Somehow the easy curve of her lips has him nervous, heart rate quickening. When her hand skims down his arm and lands at the side of his hip, his head snaps over violently.
“Okay, let’s simplify things.”
“What?” he asks, largely spurred on by the fact that her fingers are mere inches away from his cock that’s already gone half-hard. Her hand slips beneath the soft fabric of his old t-shirt, hot against his already warm skin. She leans in, at which point, it doesn’t take a genius to know exactly what her intentions are.
Jack clears his throat. Twice. “ Samira . I’m driving.”
“Yeah, so eyes on the road,” she says, utterly dismissively. “The thing about complications, Dr. Abbot, is that they are simply the product of too many unknown variables. Let me demystify what I can and then you can decide how risk averse you really are…”
She unclicks her seatbelt.
Jack realizes it is increasingly difficult to formulate a response or protest when her mouth is pressed up against his throat. She tucks her tangled wave of dark curls behind her ears as she sucks long and hard at the exposed skin, her tongue teasing along the flesh of his jaw, before peppering butterfly-light kisses down the line of his neck only pausing once she’s reached the edge of his collar.
“I should pull over.”
“Why? You have to beat the rain, Dr. Abbot,” she says, like he’s being ridiculous. Maybe he is, but if there was ever a good answer to her question, he suddenly doesn’t know it. He keeps his foot even on the accelerator and doesn’t tell her to put her seatbelt back on, however much he thinks he should.
“I don’t get it, Dr. Abbot,” she continues and Jack wonders if she can sense even half the effect she’s having on him. Undeterred, her teeth scrape languidly over the soft material of his t-shirt that covers his shoulder. When she reaches the freckled skin of his bicep, she bites down just hard enough to cause the tiniest, little sting, which she quickly soothes away with the gentle press of her lips. “You run the night shift like a high roller. You make all those life and death decisions everyday with no hesitation, flirt right up to the edge, but I’m where you draw the line? How does that make any sense?”
On one hand, she’s right. It’s entirely inconsistent, illogical, too. But on the other, he wants to tell her it makes perfect sense. That she’s even more than life and death for him. That his feelings for her could span several lifetimes and then some more.
“Fuck, Samira,” he groans, voice raspy and low as his head slams back hard against the headrest. He feels sinfully selfish right now. So deeply, incredibly selfish that her hands are on him and he can’t control the urge to press into her palm. “This is not how this is supposed to go.”
“Yeah?” she asks with the kind of curiosity, inquisitiveness she might have for a patient, “And how exactly was it supposed to go? You said you had no plan.”
“This is supposed to be about you,” he manages, weakly.
She laughs, a beautiful, vibrant sound. “You really think this isn’t about me?”
He might have argued more if Samira didn’t choose that exact moment to slide his zipper down and free his length. She gets a firm, unapologetic grip around him and if the car swerved ever so slightly into the right lane when she swiped her thumb around the head of his cock, then Jack was just glad the streets of her neighborhood were dead empty this early in the morning.
At the stop sign, he pauses to look over at her, which is admittedly a mistake when he sees her head moving down and she spits right on the head of his cock, staying close enough that her breath grazes him. Her hand languidly pumps him up and down mingling her spit with his pre-cum and he thinks there’s no way he’ll survive this or that he even wants to.
“Still complicated, Jack?” she asks. Maybe she was right; maybe it really was simple. Simple as sutures and stars and sunrises.
She waits for no answer before her lips are on his length. She works her mouth at the head of his cock, hand steadily moving at the base, and licks one long, tortuous drag along the underside before enveloping him completely. And god, her mouth is warm and velvety and perfect and he thinks she must know as much by the way she’s sucking and toying with him until he’s grunting like a starving man. Her tongue is as precise as her fingers are with a scalpel and now he’ll have to grapple with the reality that she's diabolically good at everything every time they’re scrubbed in.
In fact, Jack thinks, it’s a quite cruel twist of fate that he can’t look at her properly right now. Even if he were to rip his gaze from the road, all he would get would be a pool of dark curls splayed across his lap instead of those gorgeous eyes. The urge to reach for her is maddening. He wants to dig his thumbs into her hip bones and feel every inch of her skin. He would settle for tangling his fingers in her hair or testing the temperature between her legs, but he knows if he starts he won’t be able to stop and that wouldn’t do them much good, certainly not with the way he’s going forty-five miles per hour in a residential zone, breaking about thirty different traffic laws.
And yeah, once upon a time (ten minutes ago), Jack liked to think he was unflappable.
He is proven decidedly not , when Samira pulls off of him to draw shallow few breaths, looks up and just smiles before returning her mouth back to his cock until she reaches the back of her throat. She stays there. God must really want this for him because Jack doesn’t know how he doesn’t crash the car right then and there. And it’s exactly that which ultimately sends him barreling over the edge.
“Samira, you gotta stop,” he says warningly because he’s unbearably close to his finish. She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t so much as even pause.
“ Samira ,” he groans. She bobs her head and keeps working him– hands, tongue, lips relentless until he comes shuddering down her throat. She takes the majority of his release in a single swallow before licking his length clean as he finally, finally pulls up into an open spot by her apartment and slides the car into park.
She pulls away, collapsing a little into the passenger seat, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as his cock, still sensitive, softens in his lap. He does his best to collect himself, put himself back together, but it’s all a little useless after she’s utterly undone him like that. She’s ruined him, entirely. So rather than words, he lands on a kind of ardent, unrepenting stare. If it was less dark and the street lamp was actually repaired last week like it was supposed to be, then she would have seen everything she needed to know scrawled across his face in neon letters.
“Don’t say anything,” she says before he can try. “I feel like you’re going to say something stupid about how guilty you feel or some other nonsense. I can sense it.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything. I can’t really think right now.”
“Good,” she says. He can hear the satisfaction in her voice. “That was the point.”
She may have forbidden him from speaking, but she’s certainly made no rules against touching, so before the silence can linger much longer, he reaches over. His hand gently works his way through her curls and like a heat-seeking missile, finds its place at the base of her neck before guiding her over for a kiss. A real, proper one. Jack kisses her slowly at first until it becomes something earnest and unabashed when she opens her mouth, tongue inviting him to join. He swirls his tongue around her own and he can still taste the slight saltiness of his release on her lips.
She’s making all sorts of lovely, incoherent noises, but his particular favorite comes when he bites down on her lower lip and sucks. And when she taps his elbow softly, as if to indicate a need for air, there’s a sort of glassy, indulgent glaze that travels across her beautiful features.
“You’re so fucking gorgeous, Samira.” It comes out before he can stop himself but it’s really quite true and if he couldn’t be unflappable, well, at least he could be honest. “I need to taste you.”
“You really don’t have to,” she says, brushing it off, “Please don’t feel obligated because I–”
“Samira, it’s not an obligation, it's a privilege . I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something more in my life.”
“That cannot be true.”
“It is painfully true,” he says, solemnly. “You are so beautiful. You are–” Jack continues, thumbing at the cuff of her blouse, “so bright . From the moment I saw you–”
Samira kisses him, swallowing the words off his tongue before he makes it any further into his sentence. She fumbles with the lever of her seat until it goes shooting flat. And fuck, he thinks, they’re really doing this here. He breaks off from the kiss only to gently lay her back so her head is flat against the passenger seat, legs strewn over the center console between them. It’s a horrible angle, not particularly comfortable for either of them, he imagines, but he’s long lost any semblance of self-control (or good judgement) about three red lights ago.
“God, I think about you all the damn time,” he confesses lowly, pressing a kiss to the soft skin above her ankle. As the sun creeps up over the horizon, there's enough diffused light for him to see her eyes are dark and wide, that she’s grinning up at him. “It’s like that smile just follows me everywhere .” He shoves her up skirt with little finesse or patience, notching her panties to the side with a growl before descending on her.
“So fucking perfect,” he murmurs against her clit. She’s already incredibly slick and the addition of his tongue only adds that much more wetness between her folds. “I swear I’ve dreamed of this, Samira.”
“Please, stop talking, Jack,” she says through a sharp cry of bliss, needy, if not a little tortured.
He holds her thighs open, pressing them into the console as he works and perhaps all too predictably, Samira twists her hips beneath him, as if to test his grip. He keeps her pinned down with little effort and she whines (physics is, after all, on his side), though he can tell she isn’t really trying that hard at all.
“Why don’t you believe me, Samira?” he asks, releasing one of her thighs, so he can test his middle finger at her entry, “When I tell you how smart you are? How beautiful you look? Do you think I’m a liar?”
“What part of less talking, more doing is unclear?” she retorts, half-breathlessly.
“I think, gorgeous girl,” he says, pushing in slowly, working her open over his thick finger with little to no resistance, “since you're essentially a captive audience right now, I’m allowed to tell you all the things you don't hear enough. The things I've been wanting to say.”
He thinks he hears a whimper.
“You are the kindest, most determined person I have ever met.” She’s really squirming beneath him now as he crooks his fingers. He’s really touching her now, trying to know her and have her in all the ways he couldn’t before. “You give so much, take so little.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Jack,” she manages out, “That you’re the exact same way?”
Jack stills for a moment, chest going tight. Rather than address it, he adds a second finger, finding a steady, new rhythm before returning his lips to her wetness, concentrating on hitting the exact angles that drive her wild. He knows he has her close as her as breath starts to go staggered and uneven, quiet moans spilling from her lips as she arches off the console chasing more of his fingers. He gives her a third. Simultaneously, he gives her clit one hard, long suck and then she’s bucking into his fingers violently, hips shuddering as he works her through her climax.
When her body goes limp, he slowly pulls away, gently extracting his fingers, pressing a few, greedy kisses to her thighs. He sucks his fingers cleans as she sort of flops herself upright, working his passenger seat back into a sitting position collecting herself, probably her thoughts too. She jolts a little, when she hears the thunder clap in the distance and it rumbles through his tired bones, reminding him where exactly they are.
“Well, thank you for the ride, Dr. Abbot,” she finally says, as his windshield begins to dot from the drizzle.
“Yeah, anytime,” he nods, stroking his thumb across her cheek, suddenly keenly aware of the fact that the inside of the car reeks of desperation and sex.
“Jack?”
“Yes?”
“Last month, on my evaluation, Robby said my tolerance for risk might be too low to be an emergency medicine doctor. So, I asked him how I could improve it.”
“And he said?”
“Exposure.”
“Samira, if you’re trying to tell me you went down on me in a moving vehicle because of some stupid shit Robby said—”
“No,” she interrupts quickly, “I did that because I wanted to. I’m saying Robby made me realize that being around you is what makes me fearless. It’s like all my self-doubt and overthinking disappears when you’re there. I’m also trying to say you should ask me if I want to grab coffee. Exposure to risk and all.”
“I feel like I at least owe you dinner .”
“Oh my god,” Samira says, like she’s just had some major revelation, “Dinner really is your idea of a date, isn’t it?”
“Let me get this straight,” he laughs, “sex in the middle of the street is fine but the prospect of a dinner date is where you take offense.”
“I didn’t take you for a Puritan,” she chuckles.
“Lapsed Catholic, actually,” he corrects, “But I think we’re past get-to-know-you coffees.”
“Yeah,” she says with a pleased little sigh. “We are.”
“So…” Jack tries, still not wanting to push too hard, seeing if she’ll get there on her own. The little furrow between her brow tells him he’ll likely need to be a little more upfront for that to happen.
He’ll work his way up to it.
(It does in fact take the very beautiful, very observant Samira Mohan, an entire three months, six dates, and several more orgasms in questionable locations before she really realizes how he feels about her, but she does eventually get there.)
For now though, as the rain soaks through their hair and drenches their scrubs as their lips lock outside her apartment, Jack thinks maybe Samira was right about his affliction for clichés.
He’s not too concerned about it, though.
Not when he’s standing in the downpour, thinking how he got so lucky to be struck by lightning. Twice.