Chapter Text
Samira and Jack first slept together when she was still an R2. It had been after the PTMC Christmas night out. Samira hadn’t wanted to go, but Collins who had been an R3 at the time, had made her.
Samira had got drunk, Jack had got drunk. They knew each other but they weren’t friends, he was an attending on the night shift, she was a junior resident on the day shift, and they’d known each other since she was an M3.
But that night, they’d been drunk and laughing and full of Christmas spirit. Jack had made fun of her for being so young. She’d made fun of him for being so old.
They’d fucked in his truck, the one he was too drunk to drive home. He’d ordered them an uber back to his house and she thought they’d fuck again, but Jack had admitted, embarrassed, he wasn’t going to be able to get his cock hard again for a few hours. It had been then Samira really remembered he was in his 40s and laughed in his face for almost a minute, whilst he glared at her and then threw her down on to the bed, and then ate her out until she couldn’t think, let alone make fun of him anymore.
It wasn’t until about seven months after that, when Samira was an R3, that they slept together again. That time they weren’t drunk.
Samira had been covering a week of night shifts for Ellis. There was one night when three children, all under the age of eight, had come in. They were victims of a house fire started by their father. All three children’s bodies were covered in third degree burns, the kind that still smelt like burning flesh.
Samira still doesn’t know what about that case it was that got her, it was horrific obviously, everyone knew that, but it was normally middle aged Indian men that got her, not kids. Still, Jack had caught her throwing up in the ambulance bay, retching her guts up, the smell of burning flesh suffocating her.
He’d driven her home and walked her up to her apartment, and Samira hadn’t wanted to talk, hadn’t wanted to feel, so she kissed him. Jack hesitated, tried to get her to talk, but he must have seen how desperate she was, because he fucked her up against her kitchen counter until she was sobbing his name, until all she could smell was him.
They slept together a few times again after that, when their days off overlapped, or when one of them had a shit shift.
Jack had asked her if she wanted to “go steady” five months ago. Samira had almost said no because she couldn’t believe she was actively fucking a man old enough to use the phrase “go steady”, and when she said that he’d rolled his eyes and said instead he wanted to be her boyfriend. Samira had said no. She didn’t want a relationship. Jack had looked hurt, and she hated herself a bit, but not enough to get in a relationship with him, and then he accepted it, and they kept sleeping together. Simple.
Two months ago, Jack asked her for a second time if she would be his girlfriend and this time Samira had said yes, and Jack had got that really soppy, stupidly happy, annoyingly sweet look on his face and had kissed her.
The thing is, Samira doesn’t do relationships, not even secret ones like the one she has with Jack. She hasn’t been in one since college, and even that wasn’t serious. She told Jack this before they got together and Jack had just smiled and kissed her, and told her he hadn’t been in a relationship since his wife died nine years ago.
It was different though, because Jack hadn’t been in another relationship because he was grieving, not only for his wife, but for his leg, for the man he was before he enlisted, for a brain not riddled with PTSD that he had to take medication for every day to avoid jumping off roofs. Samira hadn’t been in a relationship out of choice, she didn’t want one, never cared for it, she liked to have sex, yeah, but the feelings, the romance, the caring enough about another person to put them first, none of that interested her. All she wanted was to focus on her research, finish her residency, and get the best fellowship offered in the country.
Until Jack anyway, and Samira still doesn’t know what exactly it is about Jack that made her want to try and be a relationship kind of person.
It’s definitely not that he’s an attending. Samira hates that, hates that she’s become a cliche, the resident who entered into a relationship with her attending, even if they were discreet about it and no-one knew. The thought of her reputation being ruined, and the decade of work she put into getting here being reduced to nothing, all because she started dating her attending almost fills her with enough rage that she often wonders if it’s worth it, the relationship, that is, never the medicine.
It’s also definitely not because she’s got Daddy issues. When she first had sex with Jack, she did consider if she might. It would make sense, her father died when she was thirteen, she’s been chasing another father figure since, she’s aware enough to know that, to understand her desperation for Robby’s approval is because of that, but it’s not that with Jack. Samira finds Jack attractive, but not because he’s sixteen years older than her, just because she likes the way his hair curls, and she likes how his eyes are always a different colour, sometimes hazel, sometimes green, and she likes his smirk, because he’s nearly always smirking, but often pretending not to.
The only explanation as to why Jack is the exception is because, well, he’s Jack.
Jack is the kindest, most considerate, generous, loving, patient man she’s ever known.
Jack cooks her dinner every night and when she’s not there and he has to go to work, he leaves her a plate so she can heat it up.
Jack packs her lunch to take to work with her everyday because he doesn’t like that she goes the whole day not eating and he keeps making them even when she doesn’t eat it.
Jack subscribes to medical journals that Samira wants to use for her research project, not because he wants to read them, but just so she can access them.
Jack reads medical journals, books, articles, and if he thinks she’d find them interesting then he sends them to her.
Jack takes an interest in everything she likes and loves: shows, music, movies.
Jack wipes her tears away when she has a panic attack and doesn’t push her to talk about it, instead he just holds her whilst she sobs.
Jack hasn’t let her pay for a single thing since they got together, and grabs her phone and holds it hostage in his pocket if she ever tries to.
Jack is the world’s best boyfriend and Samira is the world’s worst girlfriend, because she gives him nothing back, except the occasional blow job, other than that all she does is take.
Samira watches Santos, Javadi, and Whittaker snipe and laugh as they walk out together, day shift are finishing now. The three of them had only been at PTMC about a year, and before that they hadn’t known each other, and yet they’d become friends. Santos and Whittaker even lived together. Samira has been here for five years and most people here won’t even know her birthday, because she doesn’t share things about her personal life.
She doesn’t get it, she can’t remember the last time she felt comfortable in a social situation that she wasn’t drunk or high for. All she does after every social interaction she’s forced into, is wonder if she spoke too much, or too loudly, or if she didn’t speak enough, or maybe she spoke too much. Or did she eat her food too fast, or did she eat her food too slowly. Or did she compliment people too much, or not enough and she came across a bitch.
Robby has no friends other than Jack. Samira knows that. Jack told her Robby never found it easy to make friends.
There was a different time Jack had told Samira she reminds him of Robby. Samira only thought of Robby with no friends, Robby, who everyone walks on eggshells around, Robby, who will without a doubt die alone. Samira had hated Jack a bit when he said that.
She’s had friends before, she’s not a complete loser.
In college, she had a friend called Mia, who grew up attending elite boarding schools and being raised by nannies rather than her parents. Mia was a white girl, blonde, blue eyed, who was a year older than Samira because she’d taken a year out before college to travel the world on her Daddy’s credit card. Samira spent the summer between sophomore year and junior year at Mia’s lake house at Lake Tahoe, mostly because it was a good excuse to avoid her mother. One night she and Mia had smoked a few joints and skinny dipped in the lake. She can remember Mia saying to her that she thought Samira would be the kind of person to drown in the lake silently, only ten feet away from people, rather than yell for help. It wasn’t a question, or accusation, it was just an observation. Samira had responded by kissing her, it was the first time Samira had kissed a girl, not the last, and it was not the last time she’d use physical touch to avoid a conversation.
She thinks of that lake and Mia often. She’ll never be twenty and kissing a girl for the first time again. She’s not felt at home in her own life for nine years, not since that moment.
Samira feels her phone vibrate in her pocket, she pulls it out and it’s a text from Jack.
I’m in the parking lot whenever you’re ready. Take your time, but don’t forget the reservation is at 8pm❤️😍🚗🍕
Samira often makes fun of Jack for being the only person she knows to text in full sentences, with perfect punctuation, and then to use every emoji in existence. There isn’t a reply that Jack doesn’t have an emoji for.
Samira swipes off the message and puts her phone back in her pocket. It’s only 7pm, she has an hour to see another patient, Jack had said take her time because he knew she’d want to.
Samira looks up at the patient board, arms folded across her chest, looking for something exciting, but there’s only a broken ankle and an allergic reaction.
She thinks about just going out to Jack now, they could get a drink before dinner, or maybe even fuck in his truck, but then the doors burst open and the EMT pushes in a gurney, shouting, “MVC, blunt force trauma to the chest and abdomen, bleeding internally!”
“Samira, you staying?” Robby shouts from behind her, he’s already running towards the gurney, pulling on gloves.
Samira doesn’t think about Jack or the reservation. “Yeah, coming!” she runs across the room, already pulling off her stethoscope.
Jack had said she reminded him of Robby. She wonders if that’s why Jack loves them both, because they’d both choose medicine over him, and he’s a masochist.
There’s four patients in total that come in from the MVC, she and Robby work with the night shift to stabilise them all. She works on every patient, ping-ponging between each, Robby shouting her in one direction, Shen in another, she feels alive, she feels useful, she feels comfortable and free. At some point she glances at the clock, 8.17pm, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket about twenty minutes ago and there’s been nothing since. Maybe Jack decided to go home and he didn’t want to do dinner anymore. She knows that won’t be the case, but she thinks it anyway, and runs over to Robby when he shouts her name for an assist.
“Don’t rush,” Robby warns from behind her. “Take your time, Dr Mohan.”
Her fingers run along the boy’s laryngeal prominence as she desperately searches for the cricothyroid membrane. She knows exactly where it should be, between the caudal end of the thyroid cartilage and the cricoid cartilage, but the rapid beeping of the heart monitor as the boy’s blood pressure drops, combined with the oppressive awareness of Robby standing so close behind her, is throwing her off.
Samira inhales sharply, forcing herself to focus again. Her fingers glide over the boy’s throat one more time until she finally feels the dip she’s searching for.
“Got it,” she says quickly.
Ellis immediately places a sterile drape over the membrane. Samira stabilises the throat with her left hand, gripping either side of the thyroid cartilage between her thumb and middle finger, while guiding the airway catheter with her right.
Mateo hands her the needle. She pushes it firmly through the cricothyroid membrane, maintaining steady pressure the entire time, just like Jack had taught her to do.
“Wait for the pop,” Jack’s voice in her head says.
She waits for the subtle pop as the needle enters the trachea. When it finally comes, she glances towards the syringe and exhales softly at the sight of air bubbles moving through the saline. Good placement.
She removes the syringe and threads the guidewire carefully through the needle and into the trachea. Matteo passes her the scalpel, and she makes a controlled incision beneath the guidewire site to facilitate insertion of the airway and balloon. Then she inflates the balloon cuff. Almost immediately, the rapid shrieking of the heart monitor begins to slow.
“Blood pressure’s 120 over 80 and climbing back to normal,” Matteo says.
“Good job, Samira,” Robby praises, patting her shoulder. Samira straightens at the warmth in his voice, the pride.
She exhales hard, adrenaline crashing through her system all at once. A wild grin spreads across her face as she yanks off her surgical mask and tucks a stray curl behind her ear.
“Good job, Dr Mohan,”
Samira looks up at the voice. Jack is standing there, face unreadable, hands shoved into dress pants. He’s wearing dress pants. And a nice shirt that she knows is new because she’d helped him pick it out last weekend.
“That’s your handiwork, I’d recognise it anywhere, Jack, you’ve taught her well,” Robby booms, grinning. He pulls Jack into a hug, “good to see you, brother. I thought you were off tonight. You staying?”
Jack’s eyes never leave hers, not when Robby hugs him, not when Robby speaks to him, and not when he replies, “Sure, I haven’t got anything better to do tonight.”
Robby drags him out of the trauma room with an arm around his shoulders. Jack looks back at her once, only once.
“What’s the time?” Samira asks Ellis, because she doesn’t want to look at her phone and see the notifications she knows will be there from Jack.
“10.16pm. You pulling a double?”
10.16pm. Samira exhales. “Yeah, why not?”
Later that night Jack shouts her over when a kid with a broken leg comes in. They work together seamlessly as always, already knowing what the other is thinking without saying it.
Jack’s good with kids, much better than her. She thinks it’s probably because he has about fifty nieces and nephews.
“Jack,” she says when they are both walking out of South 15, “I’m sorry about dinner,”
Jack stops, shoves his hands in his pockets, and looks at her, “It’s okay. Why’d you miss it though? I texted you an hour before.”
Samira doesn’t know what to say, she feels a bit ashamed she decided to stay when night shift could easily have handled it all. She has no good excuse, she let down Jack, she hurt him, for what? She doesn’t know.
Jack must know she’s not going to give him a response because he shrugs, smiling slightly, “I’ll re-book, we’ll go another time,”
“Yeah,” she agrees, and wonders if he thinks they’ll actually get there next time either.
Samira leans against the nurses desk, writing up the case notes from the kid with the broken leg on her tablet, inputting the children’s dosage of pain relief he had, making sure there’s no mistakes for whoever takes over.
“Food’s in the break room,” Jack appears at her side, “I ordered from that pizza place on Avenue, got your favourite.”
“Not hungry,” Samira murmurs distractedly, typing PENICILLIN ALLERGY in bold, and then increasing the size so it takes up almost half the page of notes.
“Don’t care,” Jack says shortly, snatching the tablet from her hand, “you won’t have eaten in more than seventeen hours, so go and get something to eat. Now.”
“You’re mad at me,” she accuses, glaring. She tries to grab the tablet back, he holds it out of her reach, and she doesn’t want to get into a tug of war with him in front of the entire Pitt, so huffs, folding her arms across her chest.
“I’m not mad,” Jack says, he sounds tired, “I just wish you’d let me in. Sometimes I think you’re going to and then you sort of look at me for a second and then go right back in.”
Samira rolls her eyes, scoffing. “Oh yeah, and you’re such an open book, Abbot.”
Jack smiles sardonically. “Two peas in a pod, me and you, aren’t we, Dr Mohan?”
Samira manages to grab the tablet back when he lets his guard down, and holds it behind her back before he can try to get it again. He won’t tackle her in the ER, she hopes anyway. “You used to pull this shit all the time, you used to have to be dragged away from here by Robby, you used to live here,” she snarls.
“Yeah, and then I found something better,” Jack offers with a shrug, he reaches out and tucks a curl behind her ear, “I’m just waiting for you to allow yourself the same grace. You’re allowed to be happy before you finish your residency, Samira, it doesn’t all have to be rigid, life’s not like that,”
Samira feels her cheeks flushing, she hates when he reads her like that, hates that he knows things about her she’s not willing to admit herself yet, “you’re not my therapist, Jack,” she hisses, turning away from him like she’s a child, maybe if she doesn’t look at him he’ll just leave her alone.
She feels his breath next to her ear as he leans in to her from behind, chest pushing against her back, “go and get something to eat, Samira, I mean it,”
The next day she’s sitting on his couch, laptop open as she reads a new medical journal entry on the disproportionate failures in the pandemic towards ethnic minorities, when she feels Jack behind her.
He leans down and kisses her cheek, fingers trailing down her neck in a way that makes her shoulders scrunch up automatically.
“Mike said day shift are going out for drinks tonight”, he says casually, sitting down next to her on the couch, the cushions shifting under his weight. He places two mugs of what smell like coffee down on the coffee table, and grabs her bare feet, pulling them into his lap.
Samira doesn’t respond, but lets him keep her feet in his lap, glancing up once with a warning glare, because he knows better than to try and give her a foot massage when her feet are too ticklish.
“Do you want to go?” Jack asks, one of his fingers trailing down her arch. She inhales sharply, yanking her feet back immediately. He’s smirking at her and she scowls. Asshole.
“Where?” She asks shortly, eyes falling back to her laptop.
She sees Jack roll his eyes, “To drinks with your colleagues, my colleagues. It’d be good for you.” He says, shuffling a bit closer and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, she melts into his touch instinctively.
Samira looks up, bored. “Why would I want to go out for drinks with people from work?”
Jack huffs a laugh, thumb stroking her cheek. “It’s good to build bonds with people you see everyday, especially in our job,” he kisses behind her ear, “You need to relax for once, sweetheart.”
Samira doesn’t tell him that if she relaxes her body will fall apart, that if she relaxed for even one second she’d never find her way back, her body, her mind would break into pieces, that it’s been that way since her father died.
“They’re my colleagues, not my friends,” She replies, shrugging, “you go have fun,”
“I want to go with you,” He insists, “I’ll make it worthwhile for you,”
Samira narrows her eyes on him. “Why do you care so much about me going out with people from work?”
Jack leans back, one arm resting along the back of the couch, the other still around her shoulders, fingers playing with some strands of her hair. “Because I want you to have a life outside the hospital, Samira, I want you to be happy and fulfilled, you know, normal things you want for people when you love them.”
Samira really doesn’t want to go, but Jack is looking at her in that way he does when he’s worried about her, which is annoying, because yeah she missed their dinner, and yeah she cried whilst sucking him off last week, and yeah, she’s not been eating properly, and maybe she’s not left his house for weeks other than work, but she’s absolutely fine, she’s just focusing on her research like she should be.
“Fine,” she sighs, because she hates when Jack worries about her, “but you need to teach me how to do an emergent Pericardiocentesis in return, I know you’ve done them, I heard you bragging about one to Walsh the other week.”
Jack grins, kissing her quickly. She grabs the back of his head and pulls him in for a deeper kiss, their mouths opening and tongues sliding against the other. She pulls back, and Jack is smiling at her, soft and sappy, and he’s so handsome she could cry.
“Deal, kid. We go out for drinks tonight, you try to have a good time, and I’ll teach you the procedure on our next day off,” he kisses her lips again, once, chaste, and then stands up, ruffling her hair, “we’re leaving in an hour, make sure you’re ready,”
Samira sits with Mel at a table, stirring her straw around the glass of her third gin and tonic. Mel is talking about her sister, Samira is trying to listen, trying to make an effort like Jack wanted, trying to be a nice person who people like and want to be friends with, trying not to come across as a loser with no social skills. But Jack, Robby, Dana, and Dr Al-Hashimi are on the other side of the room.
Dr Al laughs at something Jack said. Samira doubts it was even funny, Jack’s sense of humour is very much one of a middle aged man. Dad jokes. Then again, Dr Al is about his age so maybe they have similar sense of humours. The thought makes her stomach twist.
Jack looks so handsome tonight. He always looks handsome, but tonight he looks gorgeous. He’s wearing the same button down shirt he wore for their dinner plans, the sleeves clinging to his biceps. She knows exactly what is under that shirt, pure muscle, covered with a soft layer of fat, because Jack’s not got abs, but he’s annoyingly strong and broad. His grey curls are messy, artfully so, and he’s not shaved since yesterday so there’s white stubble coating his cheeks and chin.
“So, what do you think, would you want to come?” Mel asks brightly, pulling Samira out of her Dr Al and Jack spiral.
“Where, sorry?” Samira asks, downing the rest of her gin and tonic. She doesn’t like the taste of alcohol, never has, but she does like the way it makes her feel numb.
She can remember her mother using it in the same way after Samira’s father died. One glass of wine a night turned into two a night, then a bottle. Samira had been too young to understand it at the time, she used to scream at her Amma for being drunk every night, shouting at her that it wouldn’t be what Appa would have wanted, that she was a terrible mother, but when she got to high school and had her first red solo cup of vodka and iron claw mixed in one, she understood it. Who is she, if not her mother’s daughter anyway?
“Are you okay?” Mel asks quieter, there’s a furrow between her brows, almost identical to the one Jack gets when she doesn’t eat breakfast.
“I’m fine, sorry, just distracted,” Samira says breezily, “what were you saying?”
Samira’s glad that Mel seems to take most things at face value and nods, smiling again. “I was asking if you’d want to come to movie night with me and Becca one Friday night?”
Dr Al laughs again, loud enough that it rings throughout the bar. Samira clenches her fists.
“Sure, sounds good. Text me,” She tells Mel, “I’m getting another drink, want anything?” She asks, but she’s already getting up and walking away before Mel can respond.
Samira walks past the attending (and Dana) table on her way to the bar. She feels Jack’s eyes on her, but doesn’t look at him, because what if she does and he looks like he can’t believe he’s ended up with her and not someone like Dr Al.
“Gin and Tonic, please,” She tells the bartender.
“Same tab as before?” He asks. Samira nods. Jack has a tab open and ordered her to use it.
“And two shots of tequila,” she adds, because Jack’s got more money than he knows what to do with and really he’s lucky she didn’t order a bottle of champagne.
The bartender nods, pouring two shots into two glasses. Samira downs them both in rapid succession before he’s even placed her gin and tonic down, and as soon as he hands it her, she takes a long sip, sighing, and turning around to lean against the bar.
The pleasant feeling she’d been chasing is seeping through her body now, the numbness, the eradication of the social anxiety, the fear of letting herself be seen.
Jack is looking at her, he probably hasn’t stopped looking at her since she went to the bar. His eyes flick between the two empty shot glasses still on the bar behind her and the gin and tonic in her hand, he raises his eyebrows, she recognises it as a warning. Slow down.
She lifts her glass up to him in a cheers motion, smirking as she downs the rest of it. His jaw tightens.
“Big night?” A voice asks from beside her.
Samira turns to find a man standing just a bit too close, his intentions clear. He’s handsome in that finance bro kind of way, tall, late twenties or early thirties maybe, perfectly styled dark hair, dressed in a suit.
He’s the kind of guy she’d have hooked up with before Jack, nothing serious, just sex, only ever sex, never anything more.
“Something like that,” she replies. Jack’s gaze is burning into the side of her head and it only encourages her. She steps closer to the man, the overwhelming scent of his cologne almost choking her.
“Can I buy you a drink?” He’s already flagging down the bartender, clicking his fingers, Samira hates him.
“Sure. Gin and tonic,” she says, and then as an afterthought, “and a glass of champagne,” because if the guy is going to click at bartenders then she’s going to damage his wallet.
The man raises an eyebrow, looking amused, and maybe a bit annoyed, but he orders her drinks, anything for a quick lay.
The bartender glances at her, a subtle check in to ask if she’s alright, she smiles because she’s fine, she feels alive.
The drinks are placed in front of her and the man steps closer, he opens his mouth, probably to give her some gross line, but before he can, she grabs the drinks and walks away, throwing a dry thanks over her shoulder.
Jack is half in his seat and half out of it when she walks over to the booth. She knows he was probably one minute away from interrupting them at the bar, she thrives on that knowledge, and slides in next to him, but doesn’t acknowledge him.
Robby raises an eyebrow at her drinks. “Champagne? What’s the occasion, Samira?”
Samira shrugs, “handsome men who buy me drinks,”
Dana laughs, clinking her glass against Samira’s champagne flute. “That’s my girl,”
Jack is tense next to her, the kind of tense he gets when she’s winding him up deliberately in bed, just before he pins her down and fucks her until she’s crying out his name.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to take drinks from strangers, Mohan?” Jack asks lazily, he sounds bored, but Samira knows better, she can see the fire in his eyes, the annoyance, the want.
You did, she thinks. Back when she’d been an M3 and a guy had offered to buy her a drink, he’d been a bit pushy but Samira could have handled it—but Jack, who she was still kinda intimidated by, who she really only knew as the night shift attending, had stepped in and told him to back off.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you to mind your own business, old man?” she taunts back, it’s dangerous, but he won’t do anything in front of people.
Robby, Dana, and Dr Al laugh. Robby slaps Jack on the back, “Kid has you told, Sergeant,”
Jack smirks, lifting his bottle of beer to his mouth and taking a long sip, eyes never leaving Samira. “Doesn’t she just? Mouthy little thing,” He drawls, with a look in his eye that almost makes Samira consider taking Mel up on the offer of a movie night with her sister, preferably tonight.
Samira stays sitting with them, finishing her champagne and gin and tonic in quick succession. She’s really drunk now, her head is spinning, her words are slurring, Jack looks like he wants to throw her over his shoulder, she’s having the time of her life. Jack was so right, she should come out more, this has been so fun.
And to make it even better Dr Al left half an hour ago, probably because Jack stopped telling jokes, and had turned into the intense version of himself and has spent the last hour staring at Samira and scowling at any man who even looked at her.
Robby stands and helps Dana up, offering her a ride home, Jack waves him off when Robby extends the invite to him and Samira.
“I’ve only had one. I’ll drive the kid home, she’s safe with me.”
Robby nods, no reason to question it. And Samira has no reason to question it, she knows Jack will keep her safe, that’s never been a debate.
Jack immediately moves closer to her when Robby and Dana leave. The bar has emptied out, no-one from PTMC remains. Santos went off when Garcia showed up. Mel went home. Whittaker went home. It’s just her and Jack.
“Would you break up with me if I cheated on you?” She asks, resting her chin on her hand, eyes roaming over his stupidly handsome face. She’s not sure why she said it, actually she is, she’s feeling spiteful because he was making Dr Al laugh tonight. She said it because she’s a selfish, horrible, immature person who doesn’t deserve someone like Jack in her life, let alone loving her.
Jack doesn’t rise to the bait, he never does. Instead he leans back in the booth, tilting his head slightly. “Why are you trying to start a fight, Samira?”
Samira rolls her eyes, “Answer the question,”
“I’m not answering the question, because I know you’d never cheat on me, you’re doing that self-sabotaging shit and you’re drunk off your fucking head. Now shut up and drink some water, we’re going home soon.”
Samira huffs, folding her arms across her chest, glaring down at the glass, sulking like she’s a teenager.
Jack wraps an arm around her neck, pulling her in close in some kind of semi-headlock slash forced cuddle.
“You’re a fucking pain in the ass, kid, but it’s never gonna stop me loving you,” he says, kissing the side of her head, roughly.
When Samira wakes up the next morning her throat is dry, her mouth feels furry, and she’s pretty sure her eye lids are stuck together. She’s wearing nothing but one of Jack’s t-shirts, the one that she always sleeps in.
The memories from last night are fuzzy, but she remembers the bar, she remembers the man at the bar, she remembers Jack and Dr Al, and she remembers Jack throwing her over his shoulder when they got back to his house, dropping her on the bed and telling her she was in trouble tomorrow.
She belatedly releases tomorrow is now, and before she can prepare herself, she blinks her eyes open properly to find Jack sitting next to her on the bed, watching her.
He’s shirtless, only in his boxers, prosthetic on. There’s a splattering of grey hair across his chest, it looks darker this morning, or maybe she’s not still not adjusted to the light.
“There’s my beautiful girl,” Jack murmurs, leaning into press a soft kiss to her lips. His breath smells of coffee and he smells like pinecones, so he must have been up long enough to drink coffee and shower.
Samira groans, rubbing at her eyes and her face, her skin doesn’t feel grubby, which is a relief. “Did you take my make up off last night?” She croaks.
Jack grabs a bottle of water from the bedside table and hands it to her. “Yes, because you were so drunk you couldn’t stand,” he says and she can hear the disapproval in his tone, it makes her want to smother him with a pillow.
“You’re the one who made me go out,” she argues weakly, sitting up in the bed, pushing up the pillows and leaning against the headboard so she can down half the bottle of water without choking.
“I didn’t make you do anything, I said I thought it would be good for you,” he replies, voice cool, “I definitely didn’t make you accept drinks off a random asshole, and I didn’t make you glare at Baran the whole night,”
“Baran,” Samira mocks petulantly. Jack rolls his eyes. Samira groans again, rolling away from him, he’s going to win this argument, he knows she can’t argue for shit when she’s hungover.
Samira yelps when two strong hands grab her shoulders and flip her back over. Jack slips his knee between her thighs, leaning over her.
“Can I take this off?” He asks, tugging at her t-shirt. He always asks, he’s such a fucking gentleman.
“No,” Samira says just to be a brat. Jack raises his eyebrows and slides his hands under the shirt anyway, slipping it over her head and throwing it to the side. She shivers, partly because she’s now naked, mostly because of the way Jack is looking at her.
Jack lowers his face to her neck and starts pressing soft kisses below her ear, down the column of her throat. He nips her ear, tugging it with his teeth. She whimpers. “You were flirting with that guy to wind me up, weren’t you, baby girl?” He asks softly, hands sliding down over her breasts, rubbing her nipples, pinching them between his fingers. He shifts slightly, so he’s straddling her, pinning her down in place, without actually putting any of his body weight on her.
“I wasn’t flirting,” Samira lies breathlessly, she lifts her hips when his fingers drop to her clit, his thumb tracing feather light patterns, she’s already so wet. She hates how much he fancies him.
“No? Looked like flirting to me,” Jack says perfectly composed, “I’ll tell you what I think happened. I think you got in a strop because you thought Baran was flirting with me, which by the way, if she was I didn’t even notice, and you wanted to get back at me, because at times you can be an emotionally immature little brat. Does that all sound correct to you?”
Samira shakes her head jerkily. Jack huffs a soft laugh, “You’re lying to me, kid,”
Samira squirms when his fingers start to trace patterns across her ribs and stomach, she tries to bat his hands away, but he grabs both her wrists, pinning them above her head with one hand.
He goes back to the patterns across her ribs, fingers digging in slightly between each knob, Samira chokes on a laugh, wriggling violently, and the whole time he smirks down at her, eyes somehow both soft and hard at the same time. He’s tickling her, she realises. She’s ticklish as shit and he discovered this when they were just sleeping together and had taken great amusement in using it against her whenever he pleases.
“Jack, don’t you fucking dare,” she warns, giggling helplessly when his fingers creep down behind her knees, pinching at the soft skin.
“Tell me the truth, Samira. You wound me up deliberately, yes? You were trying to get a rise out of me.”
She shakes her head again, refusing to give into him, but when he turns slightly and starts to reach for her foot, she shouts, “Fine, fine, I was winding you up!”
Jack pauses, twisting back around to face her. He smiles, pushing her hair away from her forehead and face, and kissing her lips, soft and slow. “There’s my good girl, thank you for telling me the truth. I’m going to fuck you now, if that’s alright, baby girl?”
“Get the fuck on with it then,” Samira spits, bucking under him, it does nothing except make his eyes flash.
“Your wish is my command, Samira, as always,” Jack says softly. He inches back slightly, letting go of her, and kneeling on the bed, pulling back the covers a bit so they don’t get caught in his prosthetic, and then he tugs his boxers off and throws them carelessly over his shoulder.
Samira doesn’t get a chance to blink before a guttural whimper is torn out of her when he forces himself inside her entrance, thick and fast, hard and abrasive, and starts pounding into her.
He stops immediately at the noise, eyes widening slightly, like he’s worried he’s hurt her.
“Get on with it,” Samira snaps, bucking under him again. He’s always so caring, so soft, she wants him to make her hurt, to make her stop feeling, to make her forget everything expect the feel of his cock inside her.
His eyes roam over her face, she doesn’t know what he’s looking for, but she glares at him and he must find what he wants, because he pushes in again, harder, deeper, gripping her hips so hard she hopes they bruise.
“You like it hard, don’t you, Samira?” He taunts, breathlessly. He pinches her nipple, hard, between two fingers, and at the same time he thrusts into her again, each thrust met with a word. “You want me to make it hurt, don’t you?”
He twists her nipple between his fingers and then leans down, sucking it between his lips and then biting down hard. Samira gasps, she can feel her orgasm coming already, she pinches her other nipple, twisting it hard and harsh, eliciting more pain than Jack ever would.
Jack grabs her wrist, pulling her hand away and pins them both above her head again. His hips flex and he forcefully pushes deeper inside her, further than she’s sure a cock should be going. He whimpers, it’s a pathetic noise, and for a second she genuinely thinks he might cry, but instead he does it again, harder, and harder, again and again, until they’re both gasping and almost gagging at the sensation.
Samira clenches around his cock, just to torment him, and Jack lets out a ragged sob.
Jack drops his lips to her mouth, catching her lips in what she thinks is supposed to be a kiss, but is really just them breathing into each other’s mouth. He shoves back in again, the sound of skin slapping skin echoing, and then he cries her name, says it like a prayer, an oath, and she feels his cum leaking out of her hole, down her thighs. Jack keeps pumping, slower and deeper, mouth open and eyes glazed, utterly fucked. His fingers drop to her clit, tracing soft circles, and then pinching softly. She gasps and pushes up higher into his hand, Jack’s cock is softer now, but he rides her hard again, and his thumb pushes down on her clit until she moans, letting herself go, always in sync with him.
Jack collapses next to her, breathing heavily, and he pulls her on top of him, her head dropping to his chest. “I’m never gonna hurt you, Samira,” he tells her, softly, but seriously.
She doesn’t know if he means in sex, or something else, either way, she’s too out of it to question it.
“I love you,” he whispers into her neck. She closes her eyes, it’s not the first time he’s said it, but she’s never said it back. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” he repeats breathlessly, shamelessly, kissing her neck, behind her ear, like he’s trying to imprint the words on her skin
Samira closes her eyes and thinks of Lake Tahoe.