Archive of Our Own

Jack looks tired. There are dark circles beneath his eyes and his pale skin nicely highlights the pink flush that started at his ears and has steadily worked its way down his neck. Samira is tracing it, caught somewhere between amusement and curiosity as to exactly how far down it goes. Maybe she shouldn't be contemplating that, considering the reason she's sitting at this table with Jack. She takes a sip of her milkshake and looks away from his flush to note how he's fiddling nervously with his wedding band. His shirt is rumpled and his curls are damp from the rain that's drizzling softly outside the diner they've found themselves in. Her scrub top might be equally rumpled, but at least she has an excuse—namely, the twelve-hour shift she just had.

When Samira fished her phone out of her locker as everyone was slowly handing over to the arriving day shift, the screen blinked up at her with three new messages from Dr. Abbot (PTMC). She wasn't quite sure why, even a solid year after Jack had offered her the use of his first name, she still had him saved as Dr. Abbot (PTMC). At first, it had been a desperate attempt to stop herself from wanting to climb the man like a tree, but Samira had long since given up that particular fight, so there was really nothing stopping her from changing his contact in her phone to something less impersonal. Choosing not to for some unknown reason, she read his messages instead.

Dr. Abbot (PTMC) — 04:23am

We should talk

Dr. Abbot (PTMC)— 04:23am

Can we talk? Whammys @ 7 30?

Dr. Abbot (PTMC) — 05:57am

No expectations… We can just forget about the whole thing

Samira raised her brows at the last message. It seemed a bit out of left field, considering it was her who had escalated it. Who had finally had enough of only receiving charged looks and hesitant, HR-approved touches from Jack and had decided that something should be done about her frustration.

She had miscalculated and today is the first time she's seeing him since she told him to kiss her in the hospital parking lot on Thursday morning, and he, instead of doing as asked, ran away. Since he tucked tail and bolted with a laughably weak excuse to hole up in his perpetually-dark bedroom, police scanner on full volume if Samira had to guess. The memory tastes bitter and Samira can feel the frown she's wearing. She doesn't like being wrong in general, but it feels infinitely worse to have been wrong about whatever this thing between her and Jack is. Or isn't.

Maybe she shouldn't have asked for a kiss. Maybe she'd just barrelled the poor man over with her request. But she'd figured there was something there. Or simply hoped, maybe, that the fond look in Jack's eyes when he looks at her goes beyond friendship, beyond the respect she knows he has for her. The one that had drawn her in in the first place.

As humbling as the knowledge is right now, the fact remains that Dr. Jack Abbot, attending physician at PTMC, is her closest friend. And with that, even if she might not be his closest friend, comes a lot of time spent together. They'll sit in the break room during that strangely tranquil lull around 3 am, and Jack will shoot a case at her, drip-feeding her symptom after symptom—provided she asks the right questions, which she does—until she's figured out what diagnosis lurks behind them. Then it'll be her turn, and if she runs out of cases due to her considerably shorter career in Emergency Medicine, she'll switch over to studies, and that conversation inevitably dissolves into good-natured bickering and the kind of discussion with someone on her level that leaves Samira bright-eyed and invigorated.

Recently, Samira has quietly noticed that their time spent together stopped requiring an explicit purpose or goal somewhere along the way.

She noticed when she watched Jack deliberate between two types of pasta, hands on his hips where he stood in one of the brightly lit aisles of the overpriced and overly healthy grocery store he gently but firmly insisted they go to to stock up Samira's pantry. She noticed when he decided to help her muddle her way through the assembly instructions of her new bed frame because he saw her old disassembled frame where it stood by the door when he came over for coffee, even though she'd badly bruised two fingers on her left hand between two gurneys the week prior and was therefore relegated to squinting at the schematics and trying to point Jack in the right direction, who patiently did as she said for more than an hour.

She notices now how clear of a reason they have for being here together and wishes they didn't.

But not everything has abruptly changed.

Jack has already ordered for both of them: pancakes for him, waffles with bacon and eggs for her, and Samira suspects he's paid, too, in the few minutes he's been here without her, just to make sure she can't get to the register before him, as if she hasn't given up on paying for her food when she goes to grab a bite with him months ago.

Samira looks at his syrup-drenched pancakes, the ones she started eyeing judgingly when she'd realised almost a year ago in this very diner that she wasn't here with Dr. Abbot, occasional supervisor and mentor, but with Jack, her friend, searches his kind eyes for some suggestion of what he's thinking, and wishes they didn't have to talk about it. Seeing him here, she's hit with the instinct to make it all go away. To take back what she said and sink back into the comfort of his friendship.

Because it is a comfort. And Samira can't believe how easy it was.

Despite what she knows people think, Samira wasn't oblivious to how alone she was. But she only ever used that word—alone. Because it's different from lonely, isn't it? Lonely implies a need for company, a desire even. Alone is simply a descriptor. And Samira did not need company, even if she vaguely desired it some days in a way that left her feeling guilty for not prioritizing what was important. She had her work, her research, and late nights spent in front of her too-bright laptop screen, after all.

Jack's friendship was… an accident, is the most apt way she can put it. At first, it was simply understanding that flowed between them when Samira picked up a night shift here and there, then they started talking about case studies and papers, their conversations slowly but surely venturing past the hospital's boundaries, and suddenly Jack was right there, her closest companion.

Samira was never a big texter—still isn't—but nowadays she regularly finds herself pulling out her phone because there's something she wants to ask Jack, or, the even more damning option, something she simply wants to tell him. And she might not have been at his place so far, but he's been in her tiny apartment often enough that he knows where her spare key is hidden—a concept he vocally disapproves of, but that comes in handy when Samira is running late for something as normal and novel as a movie night with a friend.

She's not sure when she started wanting him, but she remembers when she realised.

They were at a bar, a cosy one with low ceilings, soft yellow light, acceptable drinks and tired but friendly patrons, that Jack had found in his first few months in Pittsburgh. Samira remembers arriving after him, making her way through the door and spotting him leaning against the bar, chatting with one of the young bartenders. He noticed her almost immediately, expression brightening as he waved her over. Samira sidled up next to him, he turned towards her, and that was when she realised. Because right then, when he directed that soft smile of his at her, she was hit with the desire to slip a hand under his shirt, find him warm and solid, and wind her arm around his waist to pull him in close.

Samira didn't explicitly dislike hugs, handshakes, light touches to her shoulders, arms. She simply lived with the impression that she wasn't a particularly touchy person. It was different with Jack—is different with Jack. Even now, she wants to reach out, learn the shape and size of his hands in hers and feel his curls under her fingers.

Samira wants other things, too. Sometimes, she dreams of waking up next to him, crowding close, slipping a leg over one of his thighs and rutting leisurely against the firm muscle there. After she'd come, he would roll them over, his chest to her back, and nudge his cock inside her, gentle but steady in a very blunt and unyielding sort of way.

What she doesn't want but has to demand and accept right now is an explanation, because despite the embarrassed, scared part of her that wants to take Jack up on his offer to just forget it all, she knows there's no going back now. Not really.

"I'm sorry for running," Jack admits.

Samira can't really decide if she forgives him for it until she knows why he ran. "Why did you run?" she asks, therefore, absently twirling her straw between her fingers, eyes fixed on Jack's face.

Jack looks pained but resolved. He takes a breath and it comes out trembling. "Because I can't give you what you need," he says.

Samira's fingers still. She considers the man opposite her for a moment, considers how someone else would probably flat out tell him he's wrong, would assure him of his sufficiency. But she's not someone else. So instead, she inquires, "Why?"

Jack doesn't answer for a long moment, eyebrows drawing together even tighter. He looks embarrassed, Samira realises after a beat. She hasn't seen that look on Jack often, could probably count the times she's seen plain, old embarrassment on his face on one hand. There's been shame, yes, a dry kind of amusement directed at himself and his oddities. But he's always been unapologetic about who and what he is. It's what makes him so earnest, Samira recognised somewhere along the way.

After a while of alternating between fiddling with his ring and his fork, Jack steels himself and meets her gaze again. "Do you like sex?" is what comes out of his mouth.

Samira's brows shoot up despite herself, caught off guard by Jack's words. "Like in general or…?" she trails off, unsure what conversation Jack has just tipped them into.

"Is there any other way than general?" Jack asks, sounding genuinely curious, even while sitting all curled up, shoulders angled inward and spine bent, making himself small.

Samira tilts her head. "I think so."

Jack looks at her, and it takes her a moment to realise that she's supposed to answer his question instead of pondering about the potential kinds of ways to like sex. "Sure, I like sex," she finally says, bright and normal.

There's a look on Jack's face she knows. A goading kind of glint, something that says, 'Come on, you can tell me,' or 'You know I know you better than that.'

Samira drops her shoulders. She doesn't mean to fall into that not-quite scripted but at the same time not-quite natural dance she often finds herself in when interacting with people, with anyone really. Anyone who isn't Jack, at least.

She doesn't apologise, merely twirls her straw through her fingers some more and tells him the truth. "I do with the right person. Someone I know," she says, holding his gaze, "Someone I care about."

Jack's eyes soften and Samira knows he understood her. Understood that all that is true in regards to him. She knows him. She cares for him. Too much, she muses sometimes, muses right now, too, just a bit, until she sees that little cluster of freckles she adores, the one that sits in the dip between his thumb and index finger. And just like every other time she thinks that thought, every time she thinks that perhaps she's giving too much of herself to him and the care she has for him, she comes to the conclusion that too much is just the right amount for Jack Abbot. He's steadfast and skilled, but most of all he's good. Kind to the people around him with a broad hand clasped gently over the sons and daughters of the wounded that pass through the ED. He's deserving of every bit of affection Samira feels for him, despite how much grief love and care have brought her in the past.

Despite the tender look on Jack's face his brows are still drawn together and he's frowning at her in resignation. He makes a gesture at her words, a kind of 'There you go,' motion of his hand.

Samira hums at him questioningly, impatiently, when he doesn't elaborate. Jack is good at waiting her out, Samira less so.

"I can't," his eyes shift away, fingers trembling just slightly, "I can't give you that. Not all of it."

"How do you mean?"

Jack huffs, a self-deprecating little sound. "I've been on SSRIs for more than a decade now," he says, meeting her eyes for just a second. Then he cuts right through to the root of the issue, ripping off the bandaid. "I haven't managed to get—get hard in… well, pretty much the same timeframe." He offers a weak little laugh. "Nearly got there a few times, but no dice."

Samira doesn't respond immediately. She isn't sure what she expected, but it wasn't this. If asked, she would have wagered that Jack was either still not ready—would possibly never be ready—to move on, simply not interested in her, or worried about how it would look from the outside. This, something as inconsequential as this, is what made him run?

She almost can't believe it because of just how little sense it makes.

What does Jack think? What does he think of her and what she wants from their friendship and what it could grow into?

She considers him, meeting his eyes when his gaze trips over hers for a split second before he carefully lowers it again, ripping apart his napkin with his fingers. He's nervous.

Does Jack think she wants him because he could—what, stick his dick in her better than some random guy from a dive bar?

Samira's brows furrow at Jack, anger seeping into her. She doesn't want it to, but there it is. Has she been the only one in this friendship all along? This relationship she had always considered built on trust and mutual respect. Perched on pillars of sprawling late-night conversations on her too-tiny balcony, arches of favorite songs, movies, stories shared with one another.

She must have been for Jack to read her this incorrectly.

"You are making a lot of assumptions," Samira says. "About me and about what I 'need'." She's dismayed but unsurprised at how low and flat her voice is, how that bright, eager-to-please note it usually has is absent.

Jack's eyes widen, hands stilling, and Samira is relieved to see it. Not assuming her to be shallow, then, and not oblivious to the shape of their friendship either. Simply… insecure. And that's not something Samira has ever really connected with Jack Abbot, but looking at him now, she recognises shame's traces laid across the slump of his shoulders and the shifty, almost scared, look in his eyes. But most damning is the fact that his usual impenitence is absent. That unapologetic edge he brings whenever his faults are laid out before him.

Samira softens, lets out a slow sigh, and waits until Jack looks at her again, then holds him there the way he's done to her countless times. "I know that's not what you meant," she offers him. He lets out a carefully calm breath and nods. "And I know this isn't you speaking for me—"

"It's not—that's not what I—"

Samira holds up a finger.

Jack closes his mouth, lips pressed together.

"I wouldn't appreciate that. But I know what you meant." Samira considers him for a moment. Then she asks, "Are you generally interested in sex despite your erectile dysfunction?"

Jack blinks at her and Samira almost has to smirk at how, with all the familiarity Jack has with her, she still manages to catch him off guard once in a while. "Uh, yeah, I do still get," he clears his throat, "excited. Just without physical presentation."

Samira hums. "No physical presentation at all?"

"What do you mean?"

She gentles the smirk that wants to bloom on her face into a fond smile and points out, "Your cheeks are flushed. It goes all the way down your neck. That doesn't happen either?"

Jack looks caught, but he doesn't shy away this time. "I don't know," he admits.

"Hmm, interesting," Samira remarks, intending to return to the topic of conversation sometime in the future. "But not really what I asked."

"Right. I, uh, wasn't interested at all for a while. A long while. But I—with you I would be—am—interested," Jack says, back to tearing apart his napkin, the untouched pancakes on his plate probably long since cold. "It's just that I can't really, you know, and I guess it would be really—awkward," he finishes lamely. "And insulting, maybe? Not that it's anything personal, not at all, or well, it is but in a positive way, pinky promise. You're the first person I—"

"Jack," Samira interrupts him before he can spiral deeper into his rambling. He's always been a talker and Samira has long since realised that not even Jack really knows what's about to come out of his mouth when he opens it, but this isn't his usual chattiness. This is nervousness, still, and shame. "I haven't had sex in four years," Samira admits.

Jack shoots her an incredulous look.

She shrugs. Maybe she should be embarrassed about it, but she cares about feeling embarrassed over her dry spell about as little as she cared about finding someone to end it with at any point during those four years. "I don't need it," she explains, and it's true, she doesn't. She'd be entirely happy to spend her time sitting on Jack's couch, maybe thread their fingers together. But.

"But," she adds, "if you're interested despite your inability to maintain an erection… well, from where I'm sitting it looks like you have two hands."

Jack's mouth has dropped open just slightly and for a split second Samira thinks of his lips pressed to hers. Then she catches herself and meets his eyes again.

"Yes," Jack blurts, hurriedly, like he's trying to keep the chance of getting his hands on her from getting yanked away. "I'm in. Interested, that is."

"So if I tell you to kiss me, you won't run away this time?" Samira probes.

Jack shakes his head, hands clenched like he's keeping himself from reaching out. "I won't," he promises.

"What are you going to do instead?" Samira asks, shifting just an inch closer, absently pushing away their plates, food entirely forgotten.

"Kiss you," Jack promises and his gaze drops down to her lips, sweeps up to her eyes, then drops again.

Samira looks at the reddish glint in his otherwise silver stubble, at his lips, thinks of his crooked teeth and feels very impatient all of a sudden. "What are you waiting for?" she asks.

Jack sends her a crinkly smile. "For you to ask."

He's very sweet. But also kind of annoying. "Jack?"

"Yes, Samira?"

"Would you please kiss me?"

He answers her bid by closing the scant few inches between them and pressing his lips to hers. It's a chaste kiss, but Samira doesn't mind, relishing in the unexpected measure of comfort it brings. It feels entirely new, yet like something they've done before, were meant to have done before.

It's easy after that.

They fall back into the familiar rhythm of spending time in each other's presence, conversation flowing easily, silence lingering without being cloying. The only difference is that they exist just a tad closer to each other than before. She's a smidge more likely to brush Jack's fingers when he hands her a stack of rumpled and scribbled-on papers, more inclined to leave her leg where it is when their knees bump together under the table, and he not quite accidentally ends up orbiting her close enough for their shoulders to brush when they step out into the rain.

They walk, talk, and Samira watches Jack's hair darken again in the light rain, knowing that her curls are doing the same. Strolling through Pittsburgh does not distract Jack from staring at her and watching at all. She wonders absently if he'd like to watch her slip a hand between her legs, then feels abruptly grateful for her umber skin as she feels her cheeks heat.

Despite getting her cardiovascular system to relax back into a less frazzled state, Samira doesn't quite manage to stop thinking about it for the rest of their walk. To stop thinking about how he might watch her, how much he would or wouldn't flush if she bared herself to him completely and invited him to let his gaze wander. She wonders about what she'd find in his eyes if she let him see her come.

Samira doesn't realise where they are until Jack stops in front of what must be his two-storey walk-up she knows about but has somehow never seen. She lives closer to PTMC, so whenever their time spent together drew them out of the hospital, they either ended up in a diner or her apartment. His place looks comfortable, all worn and muted red brick, and the wood the front door is made of is brighter than the dark shade of oak she'd expected for some reason.

Jack, idling somewhat awkwardly in front of his door, seems to be wrestling with himself about something. Samira watches and considers that maybe she's the one who needs to be brave here.

"Coffee?" she finally asks.

"If you want to," Jack retorts immediately.

"Actually," Samira starts, notes how Jack's eyes follow her lips as they shape out the word. "Do you have tea?"

Jack gives her a grimace, rocking on his feet. "My tea supply probably won't be up to your standards."

Samira snorts and Jack gives her a curious look.

"I don't have many standards," she explains. "I've been living on a resident's salary for the past few years."

Jack nods like he's thought about that a lot. Samira knows he has but she doesn't know what to do with the knowledge, so she keeps filing it away for perusal at a later date.

"Let's do it like this," Jack says, always planning, always a solution on hand. "You try the tea I've got lying around. If it sucks we go buy you some good tea."

Samira laughs, and Jack doesn't attempt to keep the answering smile off his face.

"I mean it," he promises.

"I know," Samira responds and offers him a smile. She knows.

While Jack is busy with digging his keys out of his backpack and unlocking his front door, Samira occupies herself with tracing the way his damp hair curls at his nape and the border where hair gives way to freckles. He probably burns very easily in the sun.

When Jack gets his door unlocked, he swings it wide open and gestures her inside before him.

The first thing Samira is met by as she steps into Jack's home is the smell of his laundry detergent, something she wasn't even aware she'd picked up on until now. It's warmer inside than she expected, and she shrugs off her jacket, unsure where to put it until Jack notices her predicament and directs her to hang it next to his own.

He toes off his shoes and Samira lets out a small noise when he manages to get his right shoe off without sitting down or losing the foot shell of his prosthetic in the process.

Jack looks at her quizzically.

"Impressive," Samira explains, pointing at the shell in question.

Jack tilts his head first this way, then that way, not shy but seemingly not quite open to accepting the compliment either. "I've had practice," he waves it off.

Samira realises she actually has no idea how long he's had the prosthetic or when he lost his leg but wagers that this is not the ideal time to ask. She can come back to it. Maybe Jack will bring it up himself. He gets into these moods sometimes, where he just starts talking, telling her about his childhood, his first intubation, the bad hair decisions he'd made during high school. Sometimes, Samira knows, it's a distraction tactic; for him, for her, or both of them. But sometimes it's exactly what it appears to be: Jack wanting to share a piece of himself with her, wanting her to know something about him. Samira doesn't have any interesting high school stories; her childhood is a topic she does her best not to discuss, and her first intubation was made with Robby's guidance, but she tries to find interesting tidbits to share with Jack. Sometimes she can scrape together a halfway intriguing anecdote about one of her neighbors, but most of the time she lets Jack shoulder the brunt of their conversations, lets him tell the story and simply offers her thoughts and opinions on it. Of those she has enough.

Samira has never been in Jack's kitchen, but it's startingly easy to find her way around. She fills his electric kettle as he rummages around in his cabinets in search of tea, pulling out an old french press for himself so he can make his coffee with the water from the kettle too, while he tells her that he got the french press in a secondhand store a few blocks over and that the employee had somehow been surprised that the metallic appliance wasn't magnetically stuck to his carbon shin. She's surprised at how well it goes. How they don't bump into each other, don't reach for the same thing at the same time, don't open a cabinet door into the other's face. Instead, it's like Samira knows all of Jack's steps before he takes them; it's like he sees where she'll be a second before she's there.

When Jack is done with both his story and the search for his french press, and the water is slowly starting to simmer, he gestures towards his house at large and asks her, "And? What ya think?"

Samira hums and takes it all in again, properly this time, not with just a small glance as Jack led her to the kitchen. She lets her gaze trail across the bar past the dining table to his massive TV and couch. There are soft blankets thrown over the back of it, crutches propped up against the oak dining table, shelf after shelf overflowing with books she knows from her time in med school and books she never quite got to reading. Lining the windows are dying plants, which she can relate to, and there are a few paintings hung on the walls, which she cannot relate to. Despite the plants being close to dehydritation, there's a lot of green around, mixed in mostly with brown and black. It works; makes the place seem calming but neither dead nor minimalist.

"I like it," she tells Jack, glad she means it, when his face immediately splits into a bright grin.

"Yeah? I'm glad," he says, then adds with a wink, "Hope you like the tea, too."

Samira does not like the tea. Jack wasn't joking about his subpar tea supply. There are two options, peppermint and rooibos orange, and both of them are equally underwhelming, verging into actively bad.

She doesn't manage to even try to school her face into something other than pained almost-disgust before Jack notices where he's leaning against the kitchen counter, one hand behind him, the other holding a Christmas mug. His face falls for a moment as he puts down his coffee. "Yeah, sorry about that," he mumbles.

"It's okay—"

"You wanna stay here, or do you wanna come with me?"

Samira stares across the kitchen at him, tea steaming in her hand.

"To the store," Jack clarifies, raising his brows.

"Yes, no, I know," Samira confirms, an almost-smile tugging at her mouth, "Just… you're aware I'm not here for the tea, right?"

Jack blinks. "Oh," he exclaims quietly.

Yeah, oh.

Samira gnaws on her lip, puts down her tea, suddenly unsure, and tries not to give in to the impulse to cross her arms over her chest. Maybe she should stop pushing. Clearly she has no clue as to how normal and non-overeager people do this.

But when she looks back up, Jack has taken a step toward her, hands twitching at his sides, and slowly a half-disbelieving, half-hungry smirk makes its way onto his face. "You want to have sex? Right now?" he asks, blunt and to the point. It's clear that his answer to that question would be yes.

Samira appreciates honesty, but right here and now she feels how her face grows warm at Jack's words. Nonetheless, she does want and she does want it now, so she meets Jack's gaze as evenly as she can and nods, "Yes."

There's the click of his plastic foot shell on the kitchen floor, and then one of his hands finds one of hers. He laces their fingers together and lightly tugs on it.

Samira lets the gentle force pull her in and kisses him for the second time right there in his kitchen.

Samira wouldn't say she has been kissed a lot, but she does have some experience, a few data points to extrapolate her expectations out of, which is why she expects the kiss to be… not salacious exactly, but not cautious or chaste, at least.

All that's to say that Jack expertly rids her of all her assumptions.

Because, considering what Jack just asked her, their second kiss is exactly what she didn't expect it to be: tame.

Jack kisses her gently, lips warm and soft against hers as he slowly reels her in. His palm easily spans the width of her cheek when he cradles her jaw, not to guide or tug, simply to hold, thumb swiping lightly over her cheekbone. He tastes like coffee when Samira makes space for him to slide their tongues together, and she thinks that she should have taken him up on his initial offer, because the dark roast taste she gets is miles better than the tea that sits forgotten behind her. But maybe that's just because she's taking it right from Jack's lips.

"Wanna take this to the bedroom?" Jack asks when he pulls away. His lips are shiny and Samira has settled her free hand on his waist at some point.

She drops it and nods, licking her lips. Jack grins at her.

His bedroom, presented with a 'This is it, the lion's den,' she snorts at, is about as messy as his living room. There are clothes strewn on the floor, some thrown over a leather armchair that seems to have no real purpose beyond being a clothes rack, and various trinkets scattered on shelves around the room. His bed is pushed into the corner, as far away from the door as possible. Orange pill bottles line his nightstand, joined by thick-framed reading glasses and a few books stacked on top of each other.

"Sorry about the mess," Jack says, hand twitching like he wants to sheepishly scratch the back of his neck.

"I don't mind." It's a cosy room and it smells good, fresh but warm.

Jack huffs, like he minds it. "Wasn't expecting company." He shrugs, eyes shifty.

Samira squeezes his hand and his gaze returns to her. "Well," she drawls, "now that you've got company…"

That seems to spur him into action because Jack unceremoniously pushes the blankets heaped onto his unmade bed out of the way, keeping hold of her hand all the while. Then he sits down on the edge of his bed, and his legs fall open.

Samira takes the clear invitation and steps between his thighs, socked feet bracketed by a foot and a foot shell.

He looks good like this. Looking up at her, curls drying wild, sleeves of his sweater pushed up, broad hand still in hers. Samira doesn't resist the urge to card her fingers through his hair, just goes slow and calm, giving him the option to draw back.

But he doesn't. Instead, he pushes into her touch, shivers when she lightly scratches her nails across his scalp. The tops of his ears have gone red again.

"Can I take your shirt off?" he breathes, quiet like he's trying not to break the tranquil silence of the moment.

Samira nods, no words coming forth when she tries.

She expects Jack to rise, but instead he takes her second hand out of his hair and tugs her down.

Samira goes gently, folding to her knees between Jack's spread legs. She puts her hands on his thighs, feels her pulse beat between her legs, and looks up at him.

"Hi," he says, when their gazes meet.

Samira smiles. "Hi to you, too."

Jack plucks at her shirt. "Arms up," he directs.

Samira raises her arms and lets him reach down to ruck up her shirt. The backs of his fingers brush against her skin and she shivers, goosebumps trailing along her arms.

"You're beautiful," Jack tells her, earnestly and unabashed. Samira shivers at the words and under his gaze, left in her favorite purple sports bra and pants.

"Do you want this folded?" Jack asks then, her shirt in hand but his eyes still on her, pupils big and cheeks flushed. Samira revels in it, feels a dimple appear. She wants this man so bad, and knowing that she's beautiful to him is just as precious as the gentle way he'd kissed her in his kitchen.

At his question, she snorts, shaking out her hair. "I want," she says, tugging her shirt out of Jack's grip and throwing it somewhere behind her, "you to touch me."

Jack gapes at her for a moment, then smiles fondly, eyes crinkling as he shakes his head. "Your wish is my command," he mumbles and cradles her face in his hands, pulling her in again before she manages so much as a chuckle at his comment.

Samira's eyes flutter closed and she sighs into the kiss, craning her neck to press closer as she licks into Jack's mouth. It's warm and good, sparking lazily, leisurely through her whole body.

Most of all though, it's exhilarating in a way that makes her want more.

She grips Jack's wrists, pulls away to look at him. His chest is heaving and he's looking at her like he can't quite believe she's real. She wonders absently if he sees the same thing in her eyes, if she's as transparent about her feelings as he is. Shelving that thought for later, she uses her leverage to push until he gets the memo and lets himself drop backwards onto his mattress. Samira follows him immediately, settling onto his thick thighs when she reaches him, his wrists still caught in her hands.

"That's how you wanna play it?" Jack laughs from below her. "I've got a set of handcuffs lying around somewhere."

Samira snorts and presses a kiss to Jack's palm before dropping his hands.

"But seriously," he says, rearing up onto his elbows, watching her. "What do you want? What do you like?"

"I like the way you look at me," Samira admits. "The way you look up at me—yeah, like that."

Jack hums. "We can definitely do something with that," he says, a smirk on his lips. "What else?"

"I'd like for you to take off your shirt," Samira says primly. She wants to see.

Jack doesn't hesitate, just crunches up towards her, one hand settling low on her back for a beat to balance her out. Then, in an impressive feat of strength, he reaches behind him and tugs off his shirt.

"Fuck," Samira breathes, hands immediately finding the warm skin of his stomach where his abdominal muscles are tensed under a comfortable layer of fat, straining to keep him upright. He falls back onto the mattress with a laugh when she digs her fingers in experimentally.

Given the opportunity, and because fair's fair, Samira takes a long moment to just look at Jack. At the greying chest hair, his well-rounded delts, the defined pecs she wants to get her hands on. Jack does not seem particularly bothered by her staring, just keeps looking up at her with something like amusement in his expression.

When she's looked her fill, she nudges forwards until she's sitting squarely in his lap. His hands settle on her hips and hers settle on his forearms, softly carding through the fine hair there.

"Tell me what you don't like?" Jack asks and Samira gets the feeling that he hadn't intended for it to be a question.

"I don't like pain," she starts. "No slapping, pinching, none of it."

Jack nods easily. "No pain," he confirms.

Samira considers for a moment, then adds, "I like hickeys, that's my exception. But gentle ones only."

"I can do that," Jack says. His voice sounds lower than it was just a moment ago. Something to remember. Maybe there's a possessive edge to this man she hasn't really seen yet.

"I don't like being tied up," she continues, instead of following her previous thought down too far, "but I do like being held down a bit. Firm pressure."

Jack nods again, eyes thoughtful. "Could I lie on you? Hold you with my weight?"

Samira nods, thumbs brushing the soft skin of the inside of Jack's wrists. "I'd like that, yes."

"How much talking can you take?" Jack asks and his voice is teasing, but it's clear to Samira that he's genuinely asking. She's not sure how she knows, only that she does. Perhaps she shouldn't be surprised; Jack has always been easy to communicate with and it didn't take long until he was the easiest, full stop.

"From you?" Samira asks with a smile. "All the talking." She's never not liked having Jack talk to her, adores his raspy voice just as much as what he has to say.

"Alright," Jack says, evidently happy about her answer, looking almost relieved.

Samira wonders what he'd have done if she said no talking. Maybe he'd have suggested some creative methods of shutting him up, although Samira would honestly not be surprised if Jack could and would keep talking with his mouth occupied.

"Can I call you sweetheart?" he asks then.

Samira's stomach swoops at the thought and she nods. "You can call me other things, too," she offers, hoping Jack will.

He watches her with soft eyes, lips twitching. Samira gets the feeling that he's seeing right through her.

"Honey?" he tests, voice as syrupy as the pet name.

"Yes," Samira breathes, grip tightening incrementally around Jack's wrists, heart beating away in her chest.

"Baby—"

Samira tips herself forward, lets go of Jack's wrists in favor of taking his face in hand as she presses her mouth to his.

The kiss immediately turns deep and warm, dirty with the low sound of pleasure that hums out of Samira.

She only withdraws when she realises she never returned Jack's question.

"Wait, wait," she breathes as Jack cranes his neck to try to follow her, kiss her again.

He stills, hazel eyes fluttering open.

"I don't really—use pet names," she says, breath still heavy. "If you want me to call you something specific you have to ask."

Jack, lips shiny once more, just quirks a grin at her. "We can start with just my name."

"Alright." Samira nods, resolving to brainstorm what she could call him later. "I think we can manage that, Dr. Abbot."

Jack barks a laugh, then lightly taps her hip. "C'mon," he says, "You take off your clothes, I take off my leg. We meet here again in—say thirty seconds."

Samira giggles, feeling warm and unusually relaxed at the thought of being naked with someone else around. "If you lose the jeans, too," she tells him.

Jack hesitates for the first time, only for a split second, but one that Samira doesn't miss. Then he nods and she clambers off him to sit on the edge of the bed.

He joins her, bare shoulder and upper arm brushing hers.

Samira watches him take off his jeans, sees him watching her just the same.

He has thick thighs, which she knew, but seeing them bare like this, speckled with the fine light body hair that covers his forearms too, is different. She gets the urge to put her hands on them, dig in, knead like a cat until she's satisfied with her work and could rest her head in his lap.

His boxers are dark blue, checkered and though he isn't hard, Samira can make out the slight bulge of his dick. She itches to see. But not today. She's fine with him mostly naked, no reason to throw him off balance, poke where she perhaps shouldn't.

They can discuss the fine print of what his erectile dysfunction means for them and how Jack wants to handle it later. After he's had the chance to think it over, because Samira gets the feeling that Jack didn't expect to ever have to think about this specific situation.

When she hooks her fingers into the waistband of her underwear, she can see Jack turn from where he's been fiddling with his prosthetic.

She's not sure what it is, but there's something symbolic about her dropping her last piece of clothing to the floor just as Jack levers his prosthetic and liner off to rest them next to the bed.

He's watching her—still, again, or both—and there's something that looks like gratitude in his eyes. Clearing his throat, he directs her to the pillows lying close to the headboard, "Lie down for me."

Samira does, purposefully brushing up against Jack as she situates herself. He swings his legs up onto the mattress, kneeling in front of her for a second before he gently, slowly nudges her legs apart for him to fit between.

He puts his hands on her legs, angles them in a way that presses her feet flat to the mattress and bares Samira almost completely to his gaze. She's not surprised when all he does for a beat, two, three is look at her, thumbs drawing circles into the skin just above her knees.

"Jack," Samira says, slowly growing impatient, her arousal back to pulsing heavily through her body. She's never had a thing for being watched, but somehow Jack's eyes on her are a wholly different experience. Maybe it's because he's never truly found her wanting, has at worst only ever found her full of potential not yet realised.

"What do you want?" Jack asks, eyes flickering across her body, tracing her tits, the slight softness of her stomach and hips, her vulva and then back up.

"Kiss me again," Samira demands, recognising the bluntness in her voice as righteous somehow. As though she's owed a kiss from Jack Abbot every few minutes. She's not, of course, but she's fairly certain that she'll get it all the same. "And then touch me."

Jack does as told.

The kiss he gives her is deep but soft. He keeps his teeth to himself, doesn't disregard her instructions about pain, and while Samira might have suspected him to go down easy like this, to respect her thoughtlessly not only in Trauma-1 but also in his bed, the proof of it hums through her body all the same, bright and sparking.

Breaking the kiss and pulling away, Jack watches her as he drags his hands up her legs and testingly, softly digs his fingers into the flesh of her hips. She makes a low sound, directs her own eyes away from his to watch her skin dimple under his bright, thick fingers, so different from her own.

Samira wouldn't say she has missed sex, exactly. But she's liked it before, and she's beginning to suspect that she might like sex with Jack Abbot very, very much.

"Can I?" he asks, hands spanning her waist, thumbs almost brushing the edges of her vulva where her pubic hair starts.

Samira nods and follows his hands down between her legs. He brushes the back of his fingers over her curls, lets out a surprised little hum at how warm and wet he finds her. She wonders if he can hear the silent conversation they're not having—the 'For me?' and the 'For you' she'd answer with—or if she has to say it out loud.

Next time, she vows, because in that moment Jack really gets to work. He cups her pussy then, spreads her open in the vee of his fingers, glances a few fingertips over her clit—not teasingly, just curiously. He holds her like that, bared to him, while he dips the index finger of his other hand into her.

"Beautiful," he says, quiet but not hushed, gentle but with fervor. "Didn't think I'd ever get the chance to see you like this. Fuck, I thought about this so much—" he breaks off, mesmerised by the view of his finger slowly disappearing into her. "Fuck."

Jack keeps his finger there, inside her just to the second knuckle, and lifts his other hand, letting her labia close around his digit. He looks at her, eyes dark and hungry, and yet his next touch is featherlight, the tips of his index and middle finger ghosting over her clit. "How much pressure?" he asks her.

If asked, Samira would have confidently gambled on Jack keeping the absolute unshakeability he brings to every trauma she's ever seen him working on in the bedroom. She stands corrected, because Jack's voice is strained, like it's going to splinter and crack any minute, and his flush keeps spreading further down, a trail of soft red down his neck and pale chest.

"More than that," Samira snarks and Jack gives a trembling laugh, only barely brushing his fingers over her center again.

"You're teasing," Samira points out, sentence trailing off into a low, breathy kind of sound when Jack fits her clit between his index and middle finger in retaliation, softly pinching them together.

"I'm having fun," Jack corrects. "But shit, baby, I really wanna see you come," he adds, grabbing her hip with one hand as he inches his digit further into her.

Samira goes warm, revelling in the feel of his words and him, in the promise of more.

"Tell me how," he tells her, gaze flickering up to her.

Samira almost wants to look away, turn her head into the sheets. "Circles over my clit," she manages under Jack's raptured gaze. "Start soft and slow; I'll tell you to go faster and harder."

"No penetration?" he asks, looking vaguely guilty at the fact that his finger is still resting shallowly inside her. "Sorry," he says, starting to pull out of her, "I should've asked—"

"No, no," Samira rushes to say, refusing to give up the slight weight of him inside her, "Leave it."

Jack stills and does as she asked. "Alright, Samira," he says and, oh, she likes how her name sounds on his lips even more when he has his hands on her.

He reaches up, presses the pad of his thumb to her clit and circles it slowly, softly, his hand easily reaching from where he's slowly feeding more of his pointer finger into her up to her clit.

"More pressure," Samira tells him.

Jack nods, "Of course, sweetheart."

She almost thanks him when he does as she asked and her hips stutter up towards his hand. He lets out a groan at the sight and Samira shivers, stomach swooping. "Faster," she asks then.

"Yeah," Jack says, gaze breaking away from her face to look at what he's doing. "Whatever you want. Just say the word, whatever you need. I'll give it to you."

Samira makes a whiny little sound, and Jack answers it with a breathy, "Yeah, baby. Let me give it to you. Please, let me—"

She feels abruptly cold then, goosebumps racing down her body. "Want you closer," she interrupts, voice stuck in some oxymoronic place between begging and commanding.

Jack doesn't seem to care which it is. He just carefully folds himself over her, his weight landing on the hand he had been clutching her hip with, and catches her lips in a deep kiss.

There's something flowing through her, something Jack is carefully setting aflame, and Samira has no idea how he has the needed dexterity to methodically strum his thumb over her clit while his arm is half-caught between their bodies, but he does. He somehow does and it feels so fucking good.

"Give me another—" she manages when Jack slides away from her lips to kiss down the length of her throat, half-delirious off the pleasure that's coursing through her body.

"You want another finger?" he asks into her neck.

Samira nods hurriedly and then there's the sweet press of a second of his thick fingers at her entrance. "Just—just push it in—No friction. I like," she breathes, her words falling slurred and sweet off her lips, "Mhmm, like feeling full."

Jack obeys wordlessly, back to scattering soft kisses across her skin.

When he has both index and middle finger completely sheathed inside her, she clenches down on them experimentally.

Jack curses and Samira grins.

"Come on," she begs, close, shudders running down her spine, hips rocking, "Faster, please."

She buries her hand in Jack's curls as he speeds up to direct him back to her mouth. He goes willingly, kisses her deeply, but Samira's grip stays tight, and she can feel Jack's little shudder when she tugs him ever closer, licking into his mouth. A moan rumbles through his chest, and God, Samira wants to hear every kind of noise he could make, wants it all to thrum through her chest.

She hears another when she comes on his fingers minutes later, back arching slightly off the bed, her pulse beating heavily between her legs as a wave of fire carves through her body. It's a groan, like he's the one coming, low and drawn out, as raspy as his voice, and Samira wants to hear it again and again.

Jack guides her through the aftershocks with softly whispered praise and touch that grows gentler but not slower until she allows him to break their kiss and pull away to look at her.

"Good?" he asks and when Samira nods, speechless for the moment, something satisfied settles on his expression.

She watches Jack for a while, moments she uses to catch her breath, as he shakes out his hand before pressing it to her skin again, warm and wet with her. He strokes across her belly, pets over her pubic hair without any real direction, thumbs the jut of her hip bone, then travels upwards to gently cup one of her tits.

"I can come more than once, you know?" Samira finally says.

Jack, miles more at ease now, barks a laugh. "I figured. Just didn't wanna overstimulate you."

Samira stretches languidly, shivering into the soft drag of Jack's thumb over her pebbled nipple when her movement presses her chest more firmly into his hand. "I can take it," she says, without intending for the words to be quite as suggestive as they end up being.

Jack lifts his gaze, brows arched. "Oh, can you?" he asks lowly, with a sharp little smile.

"Give me a second one," she demands, cognisant of how she never quite managed to muzzle the part of her that doesn't merely want to be good, the part that wants to be better, the part that wants to win. "Then we can negotiate a third."

Jack flashes her a grin, boyish and excited, then he's suddenly there, mouth on hers again, and the delighted little sound she lets out is lost between the press of their lips.

Later, their heads lying on the same pillow, Jack tracing invisible, swooping lines across her back with the hand he has thrown over her waist, she blinks at him slowly, trying to figure out what it is he wants to say but hasn't yet.

"Let me take you on a date tomorrow," he finally murmurs.

Samira, who very purposefully hasn't been on a date in years, finds that she actually really wants to go on a date with Jack Abbot. She already suspected as much when she caught herself reading in his voice while making her way through 'Diagnostic Accuracy of Neuroimaging in Emergency Department Patients With Acute Vertigo or Dizziness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis for the Guidelines for Reasonable and Appropriate Care in the Emergency Department', but it's always nice to have one's theories proven.

"Alright," Samira says, instead of yes, please, offering him a smile. "But I don't like restaurants."

Jack shrugs. "That's okay. Takeaway?"

Samira nods. "That works."

They're silent for a few beats, then Jack asks, "Why don't you like restaurants?"

Samira considers the question as Jack watches her, gaze no less intense than before giving her three orgasms. "There's actually very little I do like about restaurants. I don't like the lights, the noise. I—" she trails off, but then she sees the gentle curiosity in Jack's expression and decides to tell him the truth. "I don't like the public aspect of it. I feel like if we went on a public date I'd do what I think I'm supposed to do on a date with you instead of doing what I want to do."

Jack smirks at her. "What exactly do you want to do at a restaurant that's not what you're supposed to do?"

He doesn't stop her when she reaches out to flick him on the nose, even though he could. Instead, he lets her watch how the corners of his eyes crinkle in response.

"Will you stay?" he blurts out then.

Samira's brows tick up in surprise and she sees a grimace span its way over Jack's expression. He looks like he's going to take the words back.

"I thought you'd go to bed around this time," Samira interrupts, gesturing to the late morning light.

"Uhm," Jack manages, then doesn't elaborate.

Samira blinks at him. "You want me to sleep with you?"

The corners of Jack's mouth twitch. Samira sends him a look, one that's half as exasperated and twice as fond as she intended for it to be.

"You wouldn't have to sleep," Jack mumbles after a beat. "You could just… Stay."

"And watch you sleep?"

"Hey," he shrugs, gesturing down at himself, "Whatever floats your boat."

Samira lets her eyes wander over the softened line of his shoulders, all curled towards her, and the pecs pushed together by how he's lying on his side, the smattering of greying chest hair that lazily curls over them, but she is not about to touch the heat that pulses through her. Not right now.

The interest, though, the urge to stay and watch, she accepts. "I'll stay," she says.

Jack beams at her. "Fuck yeah," he says and Samira snorts, ignoring the urge to paw at him in yet more fond exasperation.

"Gonna hold me too?" he asks, grinning now.

Samira tilts her head at him, tries to see the edges of truth behind his casual demeanour. "I'd like that," she settles on. Both because it's true and because it's easier to do something good for someone else than to allow someone else to do something good for you.

Jack's face slackens in surprise and for a moment he looks so earnestly hopeful, halfway to ruin, that Samira feels it all the way in her heart, chest going tight.

It's gone in the next second, replaced with something warm that makes his hazel eyes seem so much brighter than she's used to.

After some shifting that's very clumsy but somehow not awkward, Jack ends up on his back, Samira curled against his side, her head resting on his chest, and one of her legs thrown haphazardly over his thighs. He's soft and warm, and Samira knows she'll start overheating soon. That's when she'll pull away, carefully, without waking him, and split her attention between scrolling on her phone and watching Jack sleep.

But for now she closes her eyes and rests, listens to his heartbeat and doesn't let anything else cross her mind.

Jack normally doesn't mind conferences. They're part of the job and he understands their importance. Every once in a while Jack even learns something new from one of the speakers, but if he doesn't, then at least he did what he could to give emergency doctors all over the US the tools to save a few more people the next time they clock in.

That said, Jack would give his remaining foot for the chance to not be at this conference.

He wants to go home, he wants to sleep in his own bed, wants to shower in his own bathroom, and most of all he wants to find his way back between Samira's thighs.

Jack groans, dropping onto his back on the too-springy, too-soft hospital bed. He pulls out his phone, unsurprised at the lack of notifications.

Samira telling him to drive safe is the last message he got, half an hour before he settled into his car.

He hesitates, not sure what to say. He could tell her the truth. Admit that he misses her, that he started missing her not even a full five minutes after dropping her off for her shift at 6:30 am sharp.

Instead, he types:

You — 15:37

Survived the drive

You — 15:37

:)

Jack almost drops his phone onto his face when Samira's status switches to 'online' immediately, the read receipt blinking at him.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 15:37

Good.

Jack watches the typing bubble pop up, watches it vanish, then pop up again. Finally a message appears:

Dr. Samira Mohan — 15:38

I have to go. I'll text you later.

They probably have a trauma a few minutes out, and Samira has always been one of the first to snap to attention the second someone utters the word 'trauma' coupled with 'incoming'. No time for being on your phone or texting. Come to think of it, Jack can't recall a single instance of seeing Samira on her phone out on the floor. He's never even seen her having it on her person. He remembers Mateo teasing her for it, calling her a 'boomer in spirit', to which she'd primly and maybe somewhat sharply replied that she would rather be a boomer than a distracted emergency doctor.

Jack isn't sure what she intends to text him about, but that doesn't seem to matter to his hands that keep pulling up their text thread for the rest of the day, no matter what he's doing. In between sets in the kind of shitty but very polished hotel gym he scrolls through the articles they've sent back and forth; while eating alone at a corner table in the hotel's restaurant, he rereads all the login information for various medical journals he pays for that he's sent her; when he's tearing through his room's overpriced snacks that very much aren't complimentary, he finds himself staring at Samira's profile picture and zooming in on the dimple in her cheek like a lunatic.

She texts him just after 8 pm, finally releasing him from the vague excitement at the idea of talking to her that nearly had him pacing his room like a caged tiger.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:21

Just got home.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:21

What did you do today?

Jack huffs fondly, unsure as to how exactly all the affection that just bubbled up in him came so fast and forceful. It's probably that smile of hers. God save him, Jack Abbot is a man lost.

You — 20:24

Not much… Hit the gym, ate some food, ate some more food

You — 20:24

Did u eat anything yet?

There's radio silence for a few minutes, then a picture pops up in their chat. It's Samira's hand holding a bowl of what looks to be instant ramen. Jack sighs, tempted to order some actual food to her address.

To his lack of answer, Samira writes:

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:33

Not a fan of ramen?

You — 20:33

A fan of nutrition, mostly…

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:34

You meal prep, don't you?

You — 20:34

Yes… Is that a problem?

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:35

Nope. Just fits.

Jack laughs, missing her even more than he already did. He wants to taste her again. Finds himself thinking about how warm she'd been when he'd cupped the apex of her thighs in his hand.

With a groan he gets up from his perch on the bed to pace the room, leg unwisely still on. There has to be a way for him to get a grip. He's not sure how he hasn't lost his mind yet considering how head over heels for Samira he is. But then again, maybe he has. Maybe he only got to this depth of feeling by losing his mind, most of his sanity, and a good bit of his patience.

He's not sure what to do with that thought, but he doesn't have to consider it for long because just then his phone, left on the bed, vibrates, screen flashing. Jack is on it in seconds, the sheer excitement at seeing Samira's name on the screen keeping any embarrassment he could be feeling at bay.

It vibrates again while he's fumbling to get it unlocked. When he finally manages to put in the last number of his password and look at Samira's new messages, his first reaction is to drop the phone.

"Holy fuck," Jack croaks to the empty room, stomach swooping.

He's going to die.

"Holy fucking shit."

Frantically, uncoordinated in a way he normally isn't, he paws around the bed until his hand meets his phone. It's still on and Jack turns it around, heart in his throat, his chat with Samira splayed across the screen.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:39

I'm thinking of you.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:39

[image]

It's a picture of her. She's lying somewhere—on her bed, Jack thinks. Her shirt is either off or pushed up, baring the soft lines of her stomach to him. She's wearing her scrub pants, but her hand is hooked into the waistband, pushing it down just enough to see—for Jack to see—where her pubic hair starts, black curls and skin a darker shade of brown the further down his eyes wander.

If he could be, he'd be rock hard right about now. As it is, all that happens is a lazy, warm feeling gathering between his legs. To compensate for his infuriating lack of erection, his body decides to completely lose it in all the areas it can.

His heart, for example, is liable to bursting out of his chest soon with the way it's beating, and his hands are sweaty enough that he might just drop his phone again.

Mostly, though, he just can't stop fucking looking at the picture. He never wants to stop looking at it. Every pass of his gaze over Samira's beautiful dark skin makes him feel like he's burning up, like this time he really did take the shrapnel to the wrong part of his body.

Jack should be box breathing right now, but he can't do anything but look and want, want so badly that he's almost shaking with it.

He's not sure how he got here. How—even though he isn't wholly sure in what capacity Samira wants him in her life or for how long she wants him to follow her through life—he got as much as he did. How he got her friendship, her vulnerability, her affection. What he did to get to see her like this.

It's then that Jack realises that he never reacted. "Fuck," he curses emphatically, then repeats it for good measure.

Because what does he even reply? What the fuck does he do?

He types out, 'I'm thinking of you, too,' then deletes it again, grimacing. It sounds too dry. What is he supposed to do? He has no clue and the fact that the number of nudes, or nude-adjacent pictures, he's been sent stands at a proud one since roughly five minutes ago definitely isn't helping.

Is he supposed to call her beautiful? She is, of course, but maybe that's not what she intended. Maybe she wants him to tell her how hot she is, how sexy, or maybe he's supposed to tell her how turned on he is. And he is, but not in a tangible way.

It's also why he can't reply with a picture. What would he even send?

He can't send her a shot of his belly, waistband of his sweats pushed down, because that pose? That pose is a tease. It's a promise for more and Jack does not have more. All he's got under there is a dysfunctional dick and testicles that he assumes still work, but can't really know for sure considering aforementioned problem.

He could send her a picture of his hands. She seems to like them. He considers his free hand, turns it around, looks at his blunt fingers and the freckles that appear even on the skin here. No, that won't do.

He's so fucked.

But he can't just leave her with radio silence. He doesn't want to do that. She should know exactly how fucking magnificent she is. He hopes she does know.

You — 20:51

You're gorgeous, sweetheart

And then, because it's true, he adds:

You — 20:51

I'm thinking of you, too

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:51

Thank you. :)

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:51

Thought you died for a while there.

You — 20:52

Shit, so did I…

She reacts with a laughing emoji to that message.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:52

I miss you.

Jack sucks in a surprised breath, heart stuttering. He gets in a 'I miss you, too,' then her next message immediately pops up in their chat.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:52

I want to see you.

You — 20:53

I'll be back in Pittsburgh soon… Day after tomorrow @ 8 pm

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:53

Not what I meant.

And then there is a second picture in their text thread, and Jack whines, high and petulant and so fucking hungry.

Because sometime between sending him the first picture and the second one, Samira shoved down her scrub pants and underwear, spread her cunt open for him to see, took a picture and sent it to him.

Jack bites down hard on the meat of his left palm with a gasp, thinks he hears his jaw click. God fucking dammit, he can actually see how wet she is, how she's glistening. For him? He hopes desperately that he did this to her, that she really has been thinking of him, is still thinking of him now while she probably has her fingers inside herself—but no, she told him she prefers the satisfying fullness that comes with penetration, not the friction, and that's hard to do with that angle and fingers as slender as hers. He could help her, he could. He could be so good to her.

Jack lets out another strangled noise, still looking at the picture, at how dark and tightly curled her pubic hair is, how wet her fingers are, and how her clit is ever so slightly engorged, something he knows is leagues easier to feel than to see. And fuck, he wants to feel it. Wants to feel her throb under his tongue, wants to feel her flutter around his fingers, wants to breathe her in, in, in.

He doesn't know what to answer. What does he do? The insane thought to send her a selfie comes to mind, but that can't be what she means. He wants to get his hands on her more than anything, but he can't because he's more than two hundred miles away. What he can do, though, is ask her what she wants and give her whatever she asks of him. Hands, face, both, none—whatever she wants.

You — 20:54

Tell me what you meant

Her next message comes quick, very quick, and Jack's heart drops just as fast.

Dr. Samira Mohan — 20:54

I want to see all of you.

Jack isn't oblivious enough to misunderstand that. Maybe he wasn't the first time either; he just didn't want to be right because he can't give her that. The one thing he can't give her is what she asks for.

His hand drops to the mattress, the imprint of his teeth, tiny red grooves. It twitches towards his crotch, an aborted movement, because he knows he's not hard. He knows he isn't. What the hell is wrong with him? Why isn't he hard?

Rationally, he knows exactly what's wrong with him. He's intimately familiar with his everlasting depression and the meds he relies on to keep functioning despite it. Technically, this isn't his fault. It's a well-documented, common side effect of the pharmaceutical he takes 125 mg of every day without fail.

But it still feels like he's failing Samira, somehow, and the shame wrapped tight and ugly around his throat feels earned.

Jack has put in a lot of work to be okay with himself and most days, even if not explicitly proud of himself, he's at least proud of that. He's found a trusty companion in being unapologetic about his rough and at times actively fraying edges.

But when he thinks of Samira, sometimes he wishes he were a different man. Wishes he was born later in time and didn't meet Samira with an already-grey head of curls. Wishes he was born smarter and less trusting of the military-industrial complex and it's unyielding pursuit of profit for all the wrong people; wishes he could offer her more than ⅞ of a man.

You — 20:56

It's not much to look at.

His phone starts ringing immediately, Samira's caller ID flashing insistently at him.

Apprehensively, Jack presses the green button. There's a crackle and then there's Samira.

"Jack," is what she says, her voice low and drawn-out, breathy in a newly-familiar way.

Jack goes hot, the rustle of sheets in the background of Samira's one word and the trembling of her voice painting a very clear picture. "Oh, fuck," Jack croaks. "Sweetheart, are you touching yourself?"

She hums an affirmation and Jack curses again, something molten making itself at home low in his gut. He wishes he could join her, wishes he could wrap a hand around himself the way he learnt to when he was young, secret and forbidden, under his covers late at night. No use thinking about it, really, and wishing it was different, but here he is anyway.

"I was, mhm, keyed up all day," Samira tells him, with a small bitten-back gasp. "I dreamed about something."

"What did you dream about?" Jack asks, absently levering his prosthetic off and dropping it down the side of the bed.

"I don't remember," Samira says after a moment of just her breathing. "But I," she lets out a laugh, almost shy, and her next words are quiet, like she's sharing a secret with him, "Woke up wet."

"Goddamnit," Jack hisses, then, as desperate as he's ever been, he asks, "Can I come by when I'm back? I can—I could come directly, I don't need to go home first. I could—"

"I'd like that," Samira interrupts and Jack grins, glad there's no one around to see how dazed and halfway ruined he looks.

"I want you here," Samira adds.

Jack lets out a groan. "You don't play fair," he manages, past the voice in his head that keeps going, 'She wants you there. She wants you there. She wants you there.'

"Neither do you," Samira volleys back, petulant and accusatory. "More than a state away. Why would you do that?"

"I didn't want to but you know—"

"Don't bring work into our phone sex, please," Samira admonishes, between a hiss of pleasure. "What would you do if you were here?" she asks.

"Everything," Jack promises, nonsensically. "I could—We could—"

Samira lets out a moan, then there's the rustle of her sheets again, maybe as she changes position. "Yeah, let's do that," she replies just as nonsensically.

"How are you touching yourself?" Jack asks, her moan reverberating through his chest, down his spine. "Tell me," he demands, desperate to know, desperate to be able to paint a clear picture of it.

Samira laughs, then a gasp falls from her lips. "If I can't have what I want, why should you?" she brings out and Jack is momentarily impressed at how coherent and precise she is even in the midst of masturbating. He should have known, of course.

"Come on," Jack groans, the corners of his mouth twitching.

"No, you come home," Samira whines, then Jack hears her take a deep breath. "You were so good," she breathes, "So good to me."

The sound of her kind voice and gentle praise makes Jack shiver, pleased, almost proud. "Yeah?" he asks weakly, screwing his eyes shut, throwing his head back into the pillow in frustration that he isn't there to be good again.

"Yes, you were," Samira confirms. "Don't you want to be good again?"

He does, oh, how he does. "Please," Jack manages, "I want to. How?"

"Let me see," Samira immediately demands.

Jack opens his mouth, "I'm not—"

Samira lets out a frustrated noise. "Jack, I don't care that you're not erect. I genuinely could not care less. I am naked in my bed, actively masturbating to the thought of you—I promise you I don't want a dick pic to see someone's hard dick; I want you to send me one because I want to see your dick." She pauses for a beat. "If you don't want to send me one for any reason beyond the fact that you're not hard, that's okay, and we can move on. But if it's only that, then please trust me when I say that I don't care."

Jack swallows, mouth dry and palms sweating. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

Something hot and anticipatory flows through him as he kicks off his cargos, the utility knife he keeps in the left middle pocket giving a dull thud as it meets the floor. The sound of Samira breathing heavily in fragmented bursts between little sighs of pleasure follows him as he pushes his boxers down to mid-thigh. He considers his cock for a moment, soft and nestled into greying auburn curls he hasn't had a reason to trim in ages. After another few seconds of what Jack realises is him stalling, he shakily takes a picture. Considering his trembling hands, it's not too bad, and there's enough light in the room to see what he's working with. Which is a completely flaccid cock. Fuck him, he doesn't think he can do this.

But then Samira gives a little hum, a noise he heard for the first time last week when he finally got his mouth on her, his arms wrapped around her hips, pulling her closer as she chased her pleasure on his tongue.

He sends the picture, hands shaking badly, and he's not entirely convinced he could walk with his prosthetic securely strapped on if asked to right now.

There's a hitch of breath on the other side of the call, Samira's voice low when she asks, "Did you actually send one?"

"Uhh, yeah," Jack says, swallowing hesitantly.

A beat, two, three of silence, then the read receipt tells him Samira has seen it a split second before he hears her reaction.

She moans, louder than before and lower. "Oh, fuck," she whimpers, a staccato of punched-out little oh's following as Jack listens to her come.

"Sweetheart?" he asks, voice cracking the word right down the middle.

"Yes, Jack?"

"Did you just come?"

"Spectacular observational skills you got there, Dr. Abbot," she snarks and Jack huffs a laugh, simultaneously furrowing his brows at how breathless she still sounds.

"Samira," he drawls when it clicks, something bright building in his chest. "Are you still going?"

She hums again, letting out a giggle, maybe due to the rush of hormones in her blood or at his astonished silence. "I told you I can come more than once."

"That you did," Jack says, drawing his palm down his face, a sudden, incredulous grin on his lips so wide he knows it will make his cheeks ache if it stays for long enough. "You want another picture?" he offers, trying not to start laughing with the sheer relief he feels.

"Yes, please," comes Samira's answer.

Jack snorts. "So polite," he comments.

"Orgasms make me docile."

"I don't think that's entirely true," Jack says, remembering how hard she'd dug her heels into his upper back when he was ferrying her towards a third orgasm.

"Maybe not," Samira allows, then swiftly changes the topic. "You promised me something."

"I did, didn't I?" Jack muses. This time, he wraps a hand around himself, his dick lying heavy and soft in his grip.

Samira lets out a soft curse when she sees it. "I want you in my mouth," she states, decisively.

Jack lets out a low, hungry sound. He knows even that wouldn't get him hard, but fuck, what a picture. Samira kneeling on the rug in his bedroom between his spread legs, her hands on his thighs, her plush lips wrapped around his cock. She'd be warm, soft, would run her tongue over his tip, maybe tease at his slit if he told her he likes that.

"I'd let you. You could—You can. If you want," he says.

"I do want," Samira sighs. "I would be just as good to you as you are to me."

Jack whimpers, screws his eyes shut again.

"You could put your mouth on me again while I suck you off," Samira says.

"Jesus Christ," Jack chokes out. "Warn a man."

Samira's anwering chuckle is lost to another moan.

"You're close, aren't you?" Jack asks.

"Yes," Samira hisses, gasps. "Talk to me?"

That he can do, Jack thinks. And he does.

He tells her how pretty she sounds, how much he wants to be right next to her in bed, how he hasn't stopped thinking about nudging his way between her legs again. When her noises go high-pitched and fast, he tells her that she's doing so well, being so, so good, and to please let him hear her come. Tells her he needs to hear her come, please.

She does and it's not any noise he's heard her make before, which makes him dream about all the pretty little gasps and whimpers he intends to pull out of her in the near future.

"I miss you," she tells him when her breathing has slowed into something soft and relaxed.

"So do I."

"We're dating, right?" Samira's voice suddenly crackles through the speaker slightly haltingly, like she's testing the waters of this kind of conversation.

Jack stutters out something between a noise of surprise and the sound a dying man might make.

There's silence, abruptly awkward, then at the same time:

"I just—"

"If—"

Jack throws his free arm over his eyes, grimacing. "You first," he says, clearing his throat.

"If you ever say 'ladies first' I will hit you," Samira promises.

Jack laughs and his voice is soft when he clarifies, "Only you first; everyone else I'll leave behind."

"I'll hold you to that," Samira says.

After a beat, Jack manages, "As long as you'll have me. I'll be here for—yeah, as long as you want."

Samira lets out a soft noise, something almost cooing and Jack feels himself flush. "I like you," she states, simple and to the point. "More and more."

"So," Jack manages past his grin, "Let's go with the flow? See how far it takes us?"

"Sounds good to me," Samira agrees.

Three days later, when Jack is not only back from the conference but has also had the chance to catch up on as much sleep as his now-fucked-up sleep schedule and memories will allow, Samira parks her car in front of his house and shoots him a quick text that she's ready.

He sends back an 'eta 5' and walks out his front door in under two minutes.

When Jack found out that Samira hadn't had her oil changed in more than a year, he had already begun despairing, but by the time she admitted that she wasn't entirely sure what getting her tires rotated or realigned meant and therefore hadn't had it done in about the same timespan, he had dialed what she now knows was his car mechanic's number.

Despite their very nice phone call, Jack wasn't impressed when Samira floated the idea of skipping their appointment and spending the morning in Jack's bed.

Samira figured she would survive, but when Jack gets in and his warm, clean scent hits her, she is very close to fisting a hand in the collar of his shirt and pulling him over the center console into her lap.

"Hey," Jack says, smiling at her.

Samira nods, caught up in the fact that this man had his fingers in her, had his tongue in her. That this man likes her as more than simply a friend. That he listened to her come to a picture of his cock.

"Hi," she finally manages, feeling light-headed. The things she wants to do to him.

"Hi," Jack repeats.

They've seen each other in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of situations. Samira has seen Jack covered in blood up to the elbows, has felt his thigh press warm against hers as they sat together at Dana's birthday party, has smelled meat and antiseptic on him when he waited for her at her locker after a shift.

Then there's Jack, who has seen her flee out of the single-stall bathroom, tears blurring her vision, and who has felt her hand on his arm when he's said something particularly funny in the way he has that makes everyone groan but makes Samira laugh.

But before this week, Samira had never felt his thick fingers or wet tongue strum over her clit and she had definitely never seen his cock. She did not know that even flaccid there would be a clear vein running from Jack's pelvis up the shaft only to stop just shy of the pink head; she did not know just how much gray would be threaded in with his otherwise dark auburn pubic hair and what it would make her feel.

She knows now and there is an ache in her bones, dancing across her fingers, to touch and feel and smell.

She wonders if the same thing is happening to Jack. If the same exhilaration is coursing through him now that he's allowed to want.

If the dazed way he's looking at her means anything, he's just as dumbstruck as she is at this new dimension to their relationship.

She's not sure how she's going to survive this.

"Will you let me pay?" Jack asks her just as she's making a turn down the right street.

"Probably not," Samira admits.

"Tucker gives me a great discount, though," he tries.

Samira gives him a look. "As if you haven't already convinced him to give me the same discount."

Jack looks away, shifty, and Samira smiles to herself.

"You know you could just consider it my own personal discount on top of Tucker's," Jack says after she's parked her car, back to holding her gaze with his usual intensity as he unbuckles his seatbelt.

"It's not a discount if we're talking about a hundred percent," Samira points out and gets out of the car.

"Ninety?" You've got to hand it to Jack; he's very persistent.

"Try zero," Samira volleys back, ignoring the shiver that runs down her spine when Jack falls into step with her and his shoulder brushes hers.

"I'm willing to go down to seventy-five."

The bell chimes as they step into the garage. "Good for you," Samira snarks. "I'm willing to stay at zero."

Jack sighs and lets it go, but Samira knows him well enough to know he's going to try again with something else. About three weeks into being friends-friends, Jack suggested they split the bill for their movie nights, market strolls, journal club diner hangouts, and everything else they get up to together, according to their respective salaries, but Samira put a stop to that particular idea the second she calculated it and landed at a heinous 80:20 split. They didn't speak for almost a full ten minutes after that particular discovery and then Jack mumbled something about Gloria and 'crapitalism' and Samira—to her own horror—snorted.

After that, Jack resorted to creating his very own loopholes when it came to buying Samira things. For example, he sometimes hands her a replacement for something he knows she just lost or broke and promises her that he got it on clearance and did his very best to be a cheapskate for her sake. His own words, that make her smile instead of roll her eyes as they perhaps should.

"Morning," a heavy-set man with stained fingers standing behind the little counter greets them. Samira assumes that's Tucker if the way he lights up when he spots Jack next to her is any indication.

"Hey, man," Jack greets, and then they're both awkwardly leaning over the counter to give the other half a hug each. Tucker's hand is smaller than Jack's, Samira notices when he pats Jack on the back with it. Less broad. Less warm, too, maybe, and then she's thinking about just how warm Jack's hand was, spanning her waist, forearm draped over her stomach, holding her down gently but firmly, the force exerted as precise as his stitches.

"How you doing?" Jack asks and Samira blinks, tearing her gaze from Jack's hands, but the question isn't directed at her, of course.

"Good," Tucker says, eyes flickering to Samira, then back to Jack. "What about you? Still got that last foot?"

Jack barks a laugh and Samira bites back a smile at how his eyes crinkle, crow's feet as charming as ever. She needs to get him naked. She really, really does. Hopefully, this doesn't take too long.

"Yeah, still there," Jack confirms, patting the foot in question. Then he lifts his hands to her, like he's showcasing her. "This is Dr. Mohan—"

"—Samira," she cuts in with a polite smile.

Tucker beams at her and sticks to waving from behind the counter. "Pleasure meeting you," he says and Jack nods, satisfied, like people are supposed to enjoy meeting her.

Unfortunately, the whole thing does end up taking a while. The first ten minutes Samira spends acting like Jack knowing most that there is to know about cars is doing nothing for her at all, because despite not being surprised at her latent sapiosexual tendencies, she does not want to be the kind of girlfriend cooler-than-thou men in their early thirties bring to their car meetups. But then she considers if she would like any other man talking about cars and almost starts frowning at Jack and Tucker while they're hashing out what exactly her car needs, so her concern regarding Jack's car expertise and what it's doing to her body is abated for the moment.

The ten minutes after are spent waiting for something to happen. Samira watches Jack fiddle with the stack of business cards on the counter and a pen he found somewhere. She counts the freckles on his left hand, tries to connect them into constellations, then gets distracted by the veins on the back of his hand, and finds herself suddenly thinking of another vein she would like to trace just as intently if not more.

"How long is this going to take?" she asks.

Jack stills, tilting his head at her. Samira is not very patient outside of the Pitt; they both know that. She isn't as good at waiting people out when they're not her patients. But she doesn't normally let it show.

"Give or take an hour?" Jack wagers.

Samira's brows shoot up and she repeats his words, voice full of dismayed incredulity.

"Something I should know about?" Jack asks, confused but amused. "A burning house you gotta get to?"

Samira would love to tell him the truth. She would love to detail just how desperately she needs to press her mouth to his, suck his tongue into her mouth, and press him down onto his sheets. That ache is still there, in her mouth now, teeth and tongue heavy with the wish to taste Jack.

But before she can, an older man shoulders his way into the small shop, walking stick hitting the floor with a bang that almost makes Samira jump, completely lost in her fantasies again.

Jack is still looking at her, waiting for an answer.

"I just want to lie down," Samira offers, side-eyeing the older gentleman. It's more or less the truth. She does want to lie down. Just… onto Jack, ideally.

Jack just nods and immediately gets dragged into a friendly conversation by the man, always a bit of an easy target when it comes to elderly people wanting to vent their worries. Samira knows he'd love to cut the conversation short after the first two sentences, but then he deflates and gives in, making sure this man has at least one person listening to him today, no matter how inane his stories might be.

She smiles and settles into watching Jack. As the minutes tick by, his answers get progressively shorter until he only makes vague sounds of agreement roughly every two to three sentences the old man speaks. She's almost laughing, but then Jack, getting comfortable where he's propped up against the wall, crosses his arms over his chest, and her mouth abruptly goes dry.

He has to know what that does to his arms. How it emphasizes the generous swell of his pecs, the broad line of his ever-steady shoulders, the width of his biceps. He has to.

Samira wants to bite him. Both just to bite him and also to punish him for not allowing them to skip this tedious errand and stay home. The least he could do is to stop talking to the only other person here and stare at her tits instead. Maybe she should oh so accidentally drop a pen and bend over to give him a taste of his own medicine. But that's just it, because Samira really thinks Jack has no idea what he's doing to her a lot of the time. He did, after all, think that his inability to attain an erection would hinder Samira or her desire for him. Jack is a very sweet man, but he is also a stupid one sometimes.

Samira sighs quietly and goes back to ogling, mind racing with everything she could do to him when she finally gets him into his house.

After a further five agonizing minutes, an employee appears and hands over a set of car keys and a small stack of paper for the old man to sign. When he's out the door and the employee has vanished again, Samira takes the few steps needed to crowd up against Jack, shoulder to shoulder, the wall now at both their backs.

"This is very boring," she points out, annoyed.

Jack makes an inquisitive noise. "I get the feeling you're not much into cars."

"Correct."

At this, he laughs. "Next time, let me pay, and I'll do the whole thing for you. Pick up, drop off—full service," he says, sending her a sly look.

"No way, José," she tells him, shaking her head. "But I really respect your persistence."

"Of course you do," Jack says fondly. "It's one of my favorite things about you."

Samira furrows her brows. "Me respecting your persistence?"

"No," Jack huffs with a smile, like it's obvious. "Your persistence."

"Are you implying that I appreciate my own character traits in other people?"

"Yes." He nods, unapologetic.

Samira stays silent. She doesn't have a retort to that.

Jack nudges her with his shoulder. "Hey," he murmurs gently, waiting for her to look up at him. His gaze is as intense as it ever gets when she meets it, eyes dark and beautiful. "They're good traits. You should appreciate them."

Samira swallows, nods. She opens her mouth to say something she hasn't quite figured out when Tucker reappears, her car keys in hand this time.

"Can you drive?" she asks when they step outside after she's paid, offering Jack her keys lest she crash the car because she can't stop thinking about having sex with him.

"Sure," Jack says. "Back to mine?"

Yes, Jesus Christ. And fast, please, is what she wants to say. But she doesn't. Instead she goes, "Yep," then adds an impatient, "On y va," when Jack continues staring at her, decidedly not getting into the car to drive them home.

Samira's leg starts bouncing about a minute in, and she starts getting wet at the second red light when Jack, arm braced on the steering wheel, looks over at her, a thoughtful look on his pretty face. She can't stop thinking about the checkered boxers she now knows he prefers. Her mind is an image reel of making him take off his jeans and pushing down his underwear, jumping back to the start just to imagine undressing him again. Then the picture he sent her flashes in her mind once, twice, thrice, then over and over and over. She can't stop thinking about finally, finally, getting her mouth on his dick. He would be so warm in her mouth, so soft and heavy on her tongue.

Jack, seemingly oblivious, chatters about how his garden is faring and that he's sure Samira could do a better job growing strawberries even though she gave up ten minutes in when Jack decided that she needed to start her very own garden on her tiny balcony.

Samira almost asks how long until they get there but manages to suppress the instinct, gaze fixed on her car's ancient and very broken GPS, as she tries to stay on the topic of fruits and veggies.

Thankfully, Jack evades all the GPS' attempts to lead them into dead ends and the occasional construction site and gets them home as quickly as is possible without going over the speed limit, which he never does.

Feeling at once like a fainting maiden and a rabid beast, Samira watches him parallel park with one arm behind her headrest, confidently maneuvering her blocky car. The focus in his hazel eyes makes her swallow, saliva pooling in her mouth as her body misinterprets the hunger that sits snug behind her ribs.

There's a chain of sounds accompanying Samira as she almost jumps out of the car when Jack kills the engine, trying to hold tight to the last thread of her patience. First, the sound of both car doors opening, both doors closing, then their footsteps leading to Jack's door. He has to rummage around in his backpack again, but then, finally, he finds his keys and unlocks the door for them.

He lets her in first, stills, eyes on her, head tilted, when she doesn't hang up her jacket, just drops it to the ground in his hallway, kicking off her shoes and tugging off her sweater too for good measure.

"Do you want to order—"

"Can I please suck your dick now?" Samira blurts, uncaring about how close to downright begging she's come now that the last thread of her patience has finally snapped.

Jack blinks at her, mouth agape. "Uhh," he manages, slowly dropping his keys into the little dish on the hallway sideboard. "You don't wanna eat something first?"

"No," Samira manages, jaw clenching. "Not really."

Jack's brows tick up. "Wait, is that what's got you so riled up?" He sounds incredulous, disbelieving. Something for her to work out of him.

"Yes, so can you please get your ass to the bedroom?" Samira bids, then pauses. "That is, if you still want to—"

"Yeah, of course," Jack cuts in, like she's just asked him if the sky really is blue. He nods rapidly. Samira isn't sure if to himself or to her. "Just thought you might wanna—"

"Nope," Samira says, closing the space between them and fisting her hand in Jack's collar. She walks backwards in the direction of his bedroom, tugging him with her.

Jack stumbles along with her, giggling as he tries to shrug off his Carhartt. "Really need it that bad?" he drawls, flashing her a slow smirk and kicking off his shoes.

"Yes," Samira says, voice flat. Jack laughs, an almost shy look on his face, but he goes willingly, letting himself fall when Samira pushes him onto his mattress. When he's propped his prosthetic up against the nightstand, she motions for him to move up to the headboard, then follows him down onto the bed.

Tugging at his shirt, she tells him, "Off. Take all of this off."

"Aye aye, sir," Jack mumbles, voice muffled by the shirt he's already pulling over his head. He's somehow become even more attractive since the last time she saw him shirtless, all well-nourished, sturdy muscle and lived-in strength. Maybe meal prepping really is kind of cool.

After looking her fill, Samira moves off Jack's thighs for a moment so he can take off his jeans but stops him when his hands move to his underwear.

"I'm doing that part," Samira clarifies.

Jack gives her a sly smirk. "Oh, are you?"

"Yes."

"Take off some of your layers first," Jack challenges.

Samira has her shirt and bra off in record speed, dropping them down the side of the bed to join Jack's discarded outfit before she hooks her fingers into the waistband of Jack's underwear.

She directs her gaze to his face, tips her head as she waits for permission. Jack nods.

Samira draws his boxers down his legs and off, offering Jack a small 'thank you,' when he raises his foot off the bed to help.

Only then, nudging her way back between his thighs, does she look.

He's soft, which isn't a surprise. Neither is the fact that he's cut. What is a surprise, though, is how much it affects her to see him like this. Lounging on his bed, broad shoulders, pecs that would fill her hands if she grabbed them, soft stomach, equally soft cock nestled against one of his thick thighs. She nearly moans out loud at the sight, the view, and something about the sheer vulnerability of it getting to her.

Samira surges forward, seals her mouth over his, and molds herself along his front. Jack hisses into her mouth and she pulls back to look at him.

"Can you take off your pants, please?" he asks, looking down between their bodies where the rough fabric of her own pants is probably uncomfortably rubbing up against his crotch.

"Oh, sorry," Samira says, scrambling back, head already spinning, still spinning.

"All good," Jack assures her.

Samira makes quick work of her pants but leaves her underwear on because she has better things to do than spend five seconds taking them off. Like pouncing on Jack again, who receives her with a groan and half a laugh.

She kisses him again, sinks into the warm, wet slide of their lips and lets her weight rest on him. His hands slide into her hair and she luxuriates in the feeling for a few minutes. Then she moves away from his mouth, nuzzles over his stubble and scatters open-mouthed kisses along the line of his jaw and down his neck. He's breathing heavily; warm pants she feels in the air and in the way his chest rises and falls.

When she's made her way down the bared line of his throat, suppressing the instinct to sink her teeth into his thick neck, she mouths at his collarbone, feels a low sound of pleasure rumble through Jack's ribcage.

He stops her then and gently tugs her away. Samira's eyes flutter open and she meets Jack's gaze, brows furrowing. "You don't want me to eat you out first?" he asks, brows equally furrowed.

Samira shakes her head, moving to go back to what she was doing when Jack interrupts her again. "I could make you come on my fingers," he offers.

"I'm sure you could," Samira humors him. "But I'm occupied right now."

Jack huffs. "We could figure out some way to do both at the same time. You could sit on my face," he tries.

Samira gives a long-suffering sigh. "We can do all of that later. For now please stop talking about it—I'm trying to concentrate here." He can have his fun with her after, but right now she wants it to be about him, wants to learn his body and how to make him feel good. It's important to her that she can make him feel as good and appreciated as he did when he nudged her legs apart to fit between.

"Okay," Jack acquiesces, loosening his hold on her hair. "Later then."

"Thank you," Samira murmurs against his pecs. She drags her cheek over his chest hair, lets out a pleased hum when Jack begins softly carding his fingers through her hair, over her scalp.

When she makes her way down his stomach, over his pubic bone, to bury her face in the crease of his thigh, his scent gets stronger—fresh sweat, that warm laundry detergent of his all around her. She noses into his coarse pubic hair, breathes in musk and soap, and listens to soft, dry rustling as Jack lets his hands fall away from her head to grip his sheets instead of her hair. Very respectful, this sweet man.

Samira can feel his focus on her while she explores. She drags her tongue gently over the light stretch marks on the inside of his thighs, presses tender kisses to the soft skin of his balls. One of her hands that has been loosely resting on the outside of his thigh comes to stroke his balls and push them gently aside at the same time so she can get her mouth on his taint. It makes his breath hitch, fists going tight, knuckles white out of the corners of her eyes. She gently laps at the warm skin and a whine breaks free, a quiet but strained sound that has her pressing a smile into him.

When she carefully, incredibly softly scrapes her teeth over the skin in the warm crease of his thigh, he gasps, a hand flying to her head.

Samira raises her head to meet his gaze, a smirk on her lips. Jack's cheeks are ruddy and his eyes are deep and dark.

"You can bite," he breathes, voice raspy and trembling.

"With pleasure," Samira says and means it.

She starts slow, soft, bites a small mark into the skin just left of the thatch of his pubic hair, listening to his hitching breath. Another joins it on the same side but all the way down his crotch, balls still carefully held out of the way and softly petted as she keeps avoiding his cock.

Only after the fifth hickey sucked and bitten lovingly into his pale skin does she direct her focus onto what she has decided is her most favorite part of the apex of his thighs.

Expectedly, he's not hard when she finally gets her mouth onto his cock, but he's flushed red all the way from his ears down to his chest. His voice breaks on her name when she finally, instead of only lightly kissing the velvety skin of his shaft, seals her lips over his pink tip.

"Fuck, Samira," he gasps, half a moan, and Samira knows she's soaked through her boyshorts by now.

She feeds more of his cock into her mouth, then hums around it to another string of curses Jack rasps out. Despite the keening desperation in his words, he doesn't push her head down, just holds onto her.

Samira knew she would like having his cock in her mouth, but she didn't realize just how much. There's no way for her to know how big his dick is in its erect state, but flaccid like this, she can fit all of him in her mouth, a pleasantly heavy weight on her tongue without being uncomfortably big. Soft, there is a certain amount of give to the flesh of Jack's cock. If she sucks gently but firmly, she can stretch it, let it meet her soft palate. If she wants to breathe in his smell again she can simply bury her nose in his pubes, secure in the knowledge that the whole of his dick will still rest in her mouth, pliable, following her direction.

She could spend hours doing this, she knows, could sink into the easy pleasure of it—deep breaths, mouth full, no expectations beyond being a warm, soft place for Jack to rest.

Admittedly, a big part of this is for her sake, but as she begins properly sucking his dick, root to tip, then down again, getting wet and sloppy, adjusting for the lacking stability more easily than she expected, the realization that he could come like this hits her. Samira doesn't think Jack realizes, but she, despite her somewhat lacking experience, had the opportunity to look up soft orgasms on the internet and knows enough to correctly interpret the twitching and tensing of his thighs beneath her hands, how they try to stray outwards. She'd bet, too, that his toes are curling right now.

Then, next to her pleasure, there's the fact that sucking his soft cock is as good a way as any to really hammer home the point that she doesn't care about his inability to get erect. Because she really, really doesn't, and Jack shouldn't harbor even the smallest inkling of doubt about that.

If she's completely honest, the fact that he's naked under her and entirely soft does something to her, something warm and hungry that flows through her blood. Because this is where she would end up if she fit her teeth around his flesh, his deltoid maybe, or one of his pecs, and bit down. The soft, warm center of him split open to her, vulnerable to her.

Jack whines, hips twitching like he's trying to keep them from pressing upwards, when Samira pulls off for just a second, wiping her mouth and chin with the back of her hand, a question she wants answered suddenly springing up. She kneads her hands tenderly into his thighs, voice soft and soothing. "I just want to know what you like."

Jack, dazedly, responds, "I don't think there's anything you could do to me that I wouldn't like."

Sweet, she thinks, a fond smile on her lips. "Tell me what you like the most then, hm?"

She sees him swallow, his eyes dropping to her slick lips. "Focus on the tip. The, uhm, slit is also very sensitive."

"I can do that," Samira tells him. "Will you hold my hair back for me?"

Jack looks like he's halfway to insanity. "Yes, of course," he assures her in a tone of voice that makes Samira think he might just stop the earth in its tracks if she asked him to.

"You can grip, just no pulling," she says and Jack nods easily.

"Understood."

Samira sweeps her hair over her left shoulder, waits until Jack has gathered the softly curling strands in his hands, then moves back down his body.

It is easier to navigate and concentrate without her hair falling into her face, but mostly Samira asked Jack to hold her hair back because it gives him a clear view of what's happening. Even with her eyes fixed on his dick, Samira is utterly sure that Jack is watching her as she places a sweet, chaste little kiss on the head. He moans and sucks in a sharp breath.

"Christ, Samira," he gasps, "Fuck, you're so beautiful. How are you so—Jesus, fuck."

Samira suppresses a smile in favor of wrapping her lips around his tip. She suckles at him, gently, leisurely.

"Yeah," Jack breathes, voice breaking, "Yeah, like that. Shit, that's good. We—We gotta do this again. And then again, I think. Holy fuck, man."

When Samira has worked him back up to where he was, thighs shifty and grip white-knuckled, she can't take it anymore. The moans, the smell and heat of him, his breathy little whimpers when she does something he particularly likes—it's all too much. A groan slips out, smothered by Jack's cock, as she fumbles her hand between her legs, clumsily swiping a finger through the slick mess this has made of her cunt. She sucks his tip in little pulses, strums over her clit in the same rhythm, lets her eyes stay closed, focuses on what she feels, smells, and hears.

Jack doesn't notice at first, but when he does, he mewls, loud even with how muffled it sounds. "Are you—? Seriously?" he whimpers and Samira moans around his cock, hand speeding up. If he keeps this up, she's going to be the one coming.

Not really wanting to beat him to the finish line, Samira lets her hand get sloppy, focusing on Jack instead. She tongues at his slit, tries to chase the salty taste of his precum that's been steadily welling up in little droplets.

Despite at least having recognized the possibility of Jack orgasming, it still catches her off-guard when all at once, his thigh goes tense under her hand, an incredulous, choked-out sound that might have been a moan falls from his lips, and the salt-musk taste of cum spreads over her tongue. It doesn't shoot out; just trickles out of his cock into her waiting mouth, little pulses accompanied by Jack's stuttering, desperate noises.

"Holy shit, fuck, fuck, fuck," he's gasping, his shock evident, still not holding her down even as she feels how violently his muscles clench and ebb only to tense again. "Fuck, I love you, fuck."

Samira makes a surprised sound, chest going tight and hot, fingers slipping for a moment. Then she finds her clit again, rubs hurriedly, mouth still occupied with sucking and swallowing everything Jack gives her. She shudders into her orgasm, takes his cock completely into her mouth once more, buries her nose in his pubic hair and lets it wash over her in waves.

When she pulls off, she can feel how wet her face is and can taste the remnants of Jack's cum in her mouth. Her eyes flutter open and there he is, curls askew, cheeks red, eyes wide and bright. Samira can see the imprint of his own teeth in his bottom lip. She crawls up his body, presses her mouth to his, and they kiss for a long moment, pressed together from thigh to chest.

She kisses across his cheekbone until she can whisper into his ear how she loves him, too. Of course she does.

Of course they do.

"Holy shit," Jack rasps after what might have been five minutes or an hour of just lying and breathing together. "I didn't know I could do that. I didn't know you could do that."

Samira snorts where she has her face buried in his throat. "You didn't even google?" she asks.

Jack is quiet, which is really all the answer she needs, but she waits him out anyway. "No," he admits. "I probably should have, huh?"

"Maybe," Samira laughs quietly. "I googled while you were asleep."

"Of course you did." Jack kisses the crown of her head and Samira makes a pleased noise, nuzzling closer.