Chapter Text
Jack Abbot has always been good at noticing things.
He used to notice when his mom was too tired from work to scrounge up a meal because his sisters — and eventually he, too — would step in. Too many cooks in the too-small kitchen, cutting up veggies for salad, mashing potatoes, stirring the beef stew, filling the pitcher with ice. He noticed when his buddies in school didn’t know the answer to a question posed by the teacher, so he’d scribble some semblance of a response they could read in the top corner of a notebook page. In the field, he learned quickly how to notice what was wrong and what was going right. Knew how to replicate it, but knew also that sometimes things would be out of his hands.
This — whatever this is — definitely feels out of his hands most of the time.
It’s not like he’s new to the concept of being… of having… respect, or… admiration for someone. Of liking someone, whatever shape that takes. But she’s — Samira Mohan is different. She is completely outside of anything he’s ever thought his cards might have in store for him. He feels completely unequipped to deal with the feelings he feels for her.
So he does what he’s good at: he notices things. It makes him feel closer to her, even if that feeling lives only in his head. (Plus, she gets a certain curve in her smile when he recalls some detail she’d previously divulged. And if that’s all he ever got from her, he’d take it, happily.)
He watches, and he notices things. About Samira. Like the fact that she fidgets with the ear pieces of her stethoscope when she’s pondering something, unsure of what to do next, squeezing the ear tubes towards each other like she’s testing the pressure. He notices she always forgets to layer a long-sleeve under her scrub top when it gets cold. He at first thought she didn’t mind the chill, but then he saw her — elbows braced on the hub counter, trawling the board for her next case, her arms erupting in goosebumps before she headed off to the head lac in North 4. So he swiped the spare fleece jacket he always kept in his locker and hung it over the back of her workstation chair. Ignored the twinge in his chest when he walked into South 15 and saw her wearing it, the shoulders hanging loose on her lean frame.
He notices she declines Ellis’s invitations to their post-night shift breakfasts until she hooks her with the promise of discussing the latest issue of AJEM and that case they had started talking about earlier before a ped versus electric scooter rolled in and interrupted them. He’s tired as shit that day, but comes to breakfast anyway, ignores Ellis’s and Shen’s raised eyebrows at this decision of his, ignores them again when he puts down $120 to cover their four bagel sandwiches and coffee and juices and hashbrowns that definitely do not cost $120.
He learns Mohan does actually like talking about herself if you ask her the right questions. Will tell stories from her childhood and from med school with a nostalgic, faraway smile on her face, her dimples creasing adorably. He learns he gets this feeling, a flutter he thought he’d long since outgrown, when he’s listening to her talk. He does not know what to do about it, so he does nothing, keeps noticing.
He shoves over Shen’s knee when the younger doctor tries nudging him winkingly, instead choosing to store away the information that Mohan prefers grapefruit juice to orange, but nothing unless it’s freshly squeezed; that she likes her hashbrowns extra crispy and with lots of black pepper; that she doesn’t eat red meat usually but once a month indulges in a breakfast sandwich with extra bacon; that she likes her eggs scrambled with cheddar cheese and doesn’t mind if they’re scrambled a little soft, that she prefers that sometimes, in fact; that she takes her drip coffee brewed strong but spoons in a bit of cream and a frankly worrisome amount of sugar stirred into it, and, if it’s available, a dash of cinnamon; and that if a place has chai on the menu she’s going to order it, even if it’s bad, because she never makes it herself at home even though she should. This place doesn’t have chai, she observes quietly as she flips through the menu with a resigned sort of tilt to her mouth. He’s never tried chai, even though it’s a drink of choice of his sisters and nieces, too. Maybe he should. If Samira likes it.
He notices the places that come up the most when he googles “best chai in pittsburgh” are Dobrá, Big Dog, and People’s Indian, notices that when he brings one for her before she’s on nights with him, she always finishes the offerings from Dobrá and People’s, always leaves a couple sips at the bottom of the cup from Big Dog but loves their seasonal scones, scarfs them down with an endearing enthusiasm every time.
He notices, sometimes, when he runs a trauma — well, more like hovers at the edge of a trauma, instructing her, watching her handle it confidently, standing ready to step in as needed, and he’s usually not needed — she’ll look over at him with a proud gleam in her eye and he’ll have to try and temper his smile so he doesn’t give away everything he’s ever thought about her. He notices, above all, that he likes watching her succeed. His sisters have always told him he wears his heart on his sleeve, he’s sure she can see all that anyway.
And then, at some point, he starts noticing that things slide into a different sort of territory. Notices that when he gets close to her, she blinks and furrows her brows ever so slightly, squeezes the ear tubes of her stethoscope together. That she starts smiling at him a lot more. That her comments on the case studies he sends her grow less abbreviated, the questions more layered, the email responses longer. That she starts coming to retrieve him when he ends up on the roof instead of Robby, always with bright eyes and a kind, knowing smile and a patience that seems endless. That she seems, a lot of the time, excited to see him, or at the very least, at ease, her shoulders relaxing, her smile curving in that way he likes. That, more than ever, he wants to kiss her most days, hold her to him, thread his hands in her hair, feel the strength and grace of her hands on his own skin, anywhere.
(And, best of all, the night they’ll come to consider their anniversary, he notices — or rather, he realizes — in the split second before she leans in, before she presses her lips to his tentatively and then insistently, openly, lusciously, that he never stood a chance trying to squash his feelings down, and fuck, if he isn’t so. goddamn. glad for it.)