Chapter Text
There is an inevitability to it that Jack doesn’t resist, that he lets himself be overtaken by, willingly offering himself to the sheer destructive potential of it.
Because it is destructive, the idea of him and Samira Mohan, despite the heaviness in the air between them now, the looks he can catch her darting at him from the corner of his eye.
He doesn’t know how much younger she is, and having a concrete number may spur him to change jobs out of shame- he knows he has to be at least a solid fifteen years older, and despite the inherent clench of shame at the idea of lusting over this bright young thing with her unlined face and the glittering enamel pins studding her rucksack and the shining future career unspooling ahead of her, he gives himself enough credit to know that her youth is not the appeal.
If today hadn’t been the day it was, if he had been working with her in such close proximity on a normal shift, seeing her curious eyes drinking up every detail of every procedure he showed her, felt the solid reassuring warmth of her at his front as she competently and confidently wielded a scalpel with the steady hands of an artist with an 000 brush, watched the way she lit up with fervour and passion and the keen delight of learning as she described some obscure trial or cutting-edge research she’d read about, he could convince himself it was a sort of intellectual crush. Jack has always been into brainy girls- not necessarily academic, but even just women who move through life and the world with the assuredness of knowing everything that might come at them, the loose-limbed confidence of preparedness, like his Lainey used to.
And then it might never have devolved into this sparkling awareness that he now has of her as she stretches out her legs ahead of her on the park bench, his prosthetic leg between them.
There’s an itchiness under Jack’s skin, a feeling that is unfamiliar after years of not having it at all, exorcised by therapy and antidepressants and the slow dissolving of grief that comes with time. His PTSD is a carefully managed thing now, has faded in its intensity and vivacity, a slumbering beast that he knows how to deftly skirt and keep calm and in repose, but the past few hours have been long , stretched to windowpane opacity, drenched in blood and heart-rending screams and the heavy, thick miasma of disbelieving grief, and Jack is restless.
Princess, Javadi, Robby, Donahue- they have all left, drawn to their homes by their partners and their pets and their food-prepped containers and their soccer game highlights, and there’s no one but him and Mohan, and perhaps that’s why it's easy to offer her a ride.
She blinks at him, with those large doe eyes, slightly-red rimmed and exhausted. “Where do you live?”
Jack raises his eyebrows. “That’s not relevant. I’m not going to rescind the offer if your address happens to be out of my way.”
“I wouldn’t take your offer if I was out of your way,” she counters, and some of that tiredness has receded from her eyes, that light that made his gaze snag on her flaring back up.
“You’ll have to do better than that, Dr Mohan- there’s no way I’ll be letting you take public transport alone at this time of night, so it’s as good an opportunity as any other for you to learn how persistent I can be.” His attention is on his prosthetic, securing the straps tightly and tugging the leg of his scrubs over them as he casually drops that hint between them, and when he looks up, her eyes are glittering and even in the faint streetlights he can see the pink that has crept over her cheekbones.
“Lead the way, Dr Abbott,” is all she says, and Jack feels a stab of victory as he gets to his feet, hears the faint crunch of gravel behind him as she follows, feels the heavy weight of her eyes on the back of his head.
He’s glad that the military and his own predilection has made his car clean and uncluttered, no takeaway containers littering the back seats or tissues clumped in the footwell. Samira doesn’t say anything except to murmur her address, and the silence has mellowed into something more comfortable and peaceable as he pulls out of the parking lot, the indicator a soothing metronome.
“You handled yourself very well back there, Dr Mohan,” he says eventually, and she jerks in her seat, her head swivelling his way.
“I had an excellent team around me,” she replies softly, and a smile twitches at the corner of his mouth, threatening to break free when she continues, “You’re a very good teacher, Dr Abbott. I’m glad I had an opportunity to work under you, even if the circumstances were less than ideal.”
Why does this praise, from a resident he’s only properly gotten to know today, who is nothing like his dead wife, who is oblivious to the perverted thoughts and images racing through his head, make a warm glow flicker in his chest? “It’s a testament to you that you made the most of the opportunity,” he says instead. “A baptism by fire, a shift that most senior doctors are fortunate enough to never experience in their entire careers, and yet you handled yourself admirably.”
She scoffs at that, her gaze slipping to her lap when he turns to look enquiringly at her. “I don’t know about ‘admirable’” she mumbles. “It… caught up with me, eventually.”
Jack feels such tenderness towards her in this moment, her head bowed and her shoulders drawn and her loose hair beginning to frizz, unknowing of the depth of his regard for her, the objective appreciation and respect that she is owed by all her patients and all her colleagues. “Samira,” he says firmly, and her head shoots up at the sound her name, an unfamiliar shape in his mouth but one he likes the feel of. “You're an excellent doctor, and you're a very young doctor, and you're a doctor in a very challenging field, who just had a very challenging day. These kind of days aren't normal- they’re days that should never happen and that we can never be fully prepared for, and days that we should never get used to. I’d be more worried if you skipped out of the ER jauntily and were treating it like an ordinary shift. You were wonderfully professional and calm under pressure and didn’t compromise on your quality of care, and it doesn’t matter if you felt shit afterwards- it doesn’t make you any less of an exceptional doctor.”
He feels slightly stranger after he’s finished speaking- he’s not used to being this sincere with someone he barely knows; as a supervisor and an attending and a superior, he knows he’s fair with his feedback, and not frugal with his praise, but he also knows he’s a bit gruff and a bit dry, and he’s never spoken like this to any of his residents. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t feel like his junior or his colleague, in the hushed confines of his car, limned in the warm streetlights and watching him with shining eyes; maybe it’s because this shared experience they’ve both survived has bound them tenuously together with an invisible yet insistent weight.
Whatever it is, he feels lighter for having said it.
“Thank you,” she says, and the huskiness of her voice slices through any satisfaction he feels at having delivered such carefully professional comfort, sparks a heat in his lower abdomen. “It means a lot.”
He hums, turning into a more residential area, lots of tall leafy trees standing sentinel either side of the road, obscuring the tiers and tiers of apartment buildings. The silence is content, until she breaks it again.
“What do you do, when you have one of these days? How do you- how does anyone- how are you meant to process having seen everything we just did?”
Jack huffs out a laugh through his nose at the irony of him, of all people, being asked how to healthily process one’s emotions. “You let yourself feel whatever your feeling, with no shame or reservation,” he shares. “You let yourself cry, you take a long and hot shower- they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.” She snorts at that, and he taps the exit button on Google Maps as he pulls into a parking space a bit ahead of her building, turning off the ignition and facing her properly. Her eyes are dark pools, drawing him in inexorably, glimmering with something that makes his belly do a lazy flip that he tries to ignore. “You call your loved ones, let them know you’re OK- talk to them, if you can manage it. You eat hot food, have a drink or two, do something that brings you joy. You make plans with your friends, your partner if you have one- you think about and do all the things that bring meaning to your everyday, make your existence worth having, and you affirm life.”
Her belt, when she unlatches it, clicks loudly in the laden silence between them, and Jack’s pulse picks up in response. She is all shadows and darkness- her eyes, the wild curls of her hair that he itches to feel the softness of, the hollows underneath her eyes and her graceful jaw and the contours of her elegant neck and the sharp jut of her collarbones where his gaze has dropped as he tries to escape the way hers is reeling him in.
“And if I don’t have anything of those things?” she asks mildly, and Jack’s mouth dries at the confirmation. “How does one affirm life then?”
It feels like walking the razor-sharp slash of a tightrope, peering down into a yawning abyss, that totalising silence that sits heavy on your awareness just before an explosion. It feels like there’s lightning crackling through Jack’s blood and down his spine and into his stomach, and he can’t tear his eyes away from the soft curve of her lips.
His voice sounds like he’s been gargling gravel. “You find a way.”
And then she’s on him, and Jack feels like every one of his nerves is alight.
Samira’s hands are fisting his shirt, her soft curls brush his cheek, the faint scent of antiseptic and sweat and her spicy floral perfume invades his senses- her lips on his are a hot brand, and he’s helpless, his mouth opening on a groan-
Then nothing, suddenly- she jerks backwards into her seat, her eyes wide and her hands hovering uselessly in front of her, her chest falling and rising rapidly, and Jack feels like he’s been drugged, the good shit as well, everything sharper and keener-
“I’m so sorry!” she gasps out. “I didn’t- I shouldn’t- I mean-”
“Why are you sorry, Samira?” Somehow, he’s able to retreat to cool and collected professionalism- he might as well be asking her for a patient’s presentation. The car is dim but he can see her swallow when he says her name. “I’m not.”
“You’re- you’re not?”
Her shoulders have dropped slightly and there’s a note of wild hope in her voice; Jack doesn’t want to exasperatedly explain to her that a man will never be sorry for a beautiful woman on whom he has developed a mild hyperfixation in the last few hours kissing him when he knows she’s far out of his league.
So instead, he touches her hair, which is as smooth and satiny as he thought it would be, runs his fingers through it and uses the hold to carefully guide her mouth back to his.
The kiss this time is slower, purposeful- he maps the shape of her lips, strokes his tongue over the seam of them until they open up, licks inside as she gasps into his mouth-
And it’s like that one gasp unlocks something, because she’s suddenly wriggling in her seat, her lips devouring him, her teeth nipping and one arm banding around his neck as the tension and the fervour explodes between them.
Jack can hardly think straight- he’s enveloped in her intoxicating scent, her small murmurs of approval and faint moans, a kiss so all-consuming that any worries about propriety and power dynamics and age gaps, if they were ever there , have dribbled out of his ears. The arm that is around her waist, the shape of her body frustratingly concealed underneath her scrubs and her fleece, feels insufficient, and she’s clearly of the same mind because she scrabbles forward the same moment he drops the hand from her hair to fumble for the lever under his seat- it whooshes backwards just as she swings a leg over the centre console, dropping heavily into his lap- her jaw bumps against the side of his head and he mutters fuck as she gasps an apology and somehow it turns into a snicker and he huffs a laugh, but it’s against her throat, and her skin is warm under his lips and she wriggles so that her centre is pressed against his aching erection-
And there’s no laughter anymore, just need - pulsing, obliterating, primal- he rocks his hips up into her and she throws her head back and whines; Jack takes the opportunity to scatter kisses and bites down the beautiful column of her throat, noses at the neckline of her scrubs and distantly recognises that it’s not normal to feel hatred for an item of clothing.
“Jack- yes- oh God, please Jack-” Samira is moaning right in his ear, her hips undulating in his lap as she grinds on his impossibly hard cock. Through the fog of lust, Jack knows they can’t have sex in his car on an open street no matter the hour, but he drops a hand to fumble at the drawstring of her pants.
Her hands, their long, elegant, capable fingers, are similarly shoving at his, but he stills them, banding her wrists with a hold. She looms above him, a goddess over a devoted acolyte, and Jack wants to worship her as is her due, slowly strip away her clothes and map every inch of her beautiful skin with his lips, work her over with his lips and his fingers and his cock and take his time, but right now-
“Let me,” he whispers to her, and he whispers because this enclosed space and the shadows draped over them and the steamed up windows don’t feel seedy- they feel precious and private and only for them. “Let me take care of you, Samira.”
Her throat hitches and he takes it as assent to slide his fingers inside the waistband as she widens her straddle- they’re both holding their breaths and she whimpers just as he lets out a raspy curse as he makes contact with her blazing and sodden heat.
“Jack- go under- please-”
“You want me in this drenched pussy?” He doesn’t know where the words come from- he knows he talks a lot, and his godson calls him a yapper which doesn’t sound flattering, but he hasn’t talked to a woman like this, scarce though they’ve been, since Lainey.
They’re formed and ready on the tip of his tongue though, all for Samira, who he feels clench even with his fingers only probing at her drenched entrance.
“You like that?”
“I’d like it more if you went in,” she says, through gritted teeth, and he lets out an involuntary snort of laughter at her commanding tone as she opens her eyes to glare at him.
They clench shut again, however, because Jack can’t resist her, can’t resist heaven at his fingertips- he rotates his hand, the elastic of her waistband tight against the back of his wrist and his thumb hones in on her straining clit as his middle fingers slips down into her wet heat.
“Fuck- Jack- Jack, please…”
“Tell me what you want, Samira.” She is a moaning, writhing mess, her hips driving down to meet the finger he’s slowly stroking into her, and Jack can’t help but feel shamefully glad at everything that’s happened to bring her here, slick and ready and wanton in his lap.
“My- my clit- I need-”
“Ssh, ssh- I’ve got you, sweetheart.” The endearment slips out without thought, and it feels so right- Jack withdraws the finger, stiffens it so it’s rubbing along the length of her labia, seeks out her clit and begins to stroke tight circles-
“Is this good, Samira? You feel so goddamn perfect, so wet for me- I want to spread you out, take my time with you-” There’s no thought to what he’s saying, no room to feel self-conscious, no space or time to wonder if she’s into it, and anyway, she clearly is, her hips gyrating and her head flung back and sweat sheening along the line of her neck as she gasps out his name.
There will be time for more, Jack vows to himself, as a wet rush of heat spills into his palm and Samira lets out a long and throaty groan, freezing in his lap. There will be time to do this properly, he thinks, as she slowly comes down from her high, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glittering as she laughs softly, scattering kisses across his forehead and cheeks and eventually his mouth that he gladly accepts.
There will be time to do this again.