Chapter Text
Samira is getting ready to leave for work when she feels a prickle on her forearm.
Sweetheart
“Oh what the fuck is it now,” she mutters to herself. She doesn’t have time for this, she’s late as it is.
Light of my life. Beloved
What, she writes back, distracted, trying to slip on her shoes.
Just curious. How does John Shen know about your birthmark?
By the time she walks up to the ambulance bay, Are you ignoring me has been written on all four of her limbs and three times on her torso.
“Oh my god,” she says out loud, exasperated.
From around the corner, someone says, “Mohan?”
She looks up to find John Shen waiting for her, looking distressed. “Thank god. We have a problem.”
“I know.” She gives him a look. “Please, tell me you didn’t just—”
“No. I promise. It was . . . inadvertent. Ellis mentioned that the guy she had just treated had a birthmark shaped exactly like the state of Florida, and he really did. I saw it. It was uncanny.”
“And you just kept going with it?”
“I may have. . . forgotten. Who it belonged to? I mentioned that a girl I knew in med school had one shaped exactly like a crescent moon on the inside of her thigh. And he got real still. You know what he's like when he does that.”
Samira nods, smiling wryly. She does know.
“Anyway, can you just. Remind him that it was like, over a decade ago. And that he likes me?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
She’s greeted by a soulmate with a bright, sunny smile once she enters the ED.
“Shen thinks you’re going to murder him, you know,” she tells him as she passes him on her way to the lockers.
“Haven’t ruled it out,” Jack says, leaning against the wall as she turns the dials for the combination. “Was he . . . ” he trails off, leading.
“My first? Yes.”
He nods, a little longer than one would, as a normal person reacting to a regular situation.
“And was it . . . good?”
Samira rolls her eyes. “I mean, I’d literally never had sex before, I had nothing to compare it to. It was,” she exhales, thinking back. “Fine? I told you about it. I remember telling you about it.”
“No, no, I remember. I just want to make sure he was . . . respectful. Treated you well." He cranes his neck, trying to see if Shen has re-entered the ED.
“Do not,” she points a finger at him, repeating herself for emphasis, “do not talk to him about it.”
“I won’t,” he lies. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
“Because I knew you’d react like this. I hadn’t even talked to Shen about it before today. It’s not like we hang out and reminisce, like, Oh, John, remember when you took my virginity? Yeah, good times.”
His eyes narrow. “Isn’t he older than you?”
“You, of all people, do not get to comment on someone being older than me.”
Jack puts his hands up. “Okay, okay. It just took me by surprise, that’s all. I was just minding my business, and then I was blindsided by the fact that someone I work with knows my soulmate’s body. Intimately.”
“I’ll show you intimately,” she says, but the threat is hollow, as she leans in to press a kiss to his lips. “If you’re that bothered about it, I can tell you that our first time was much more special. And by first time, I mean,” she scribbles in the air, making it clear she’s talking about the night he’d written her through it.
A genuine smile lights up his face, grinning boyishly at her. “Oh?”
She nods, biting her lip, trying to downplay her own smile. “Now will you go tell Shen you aren’t going to murder him? He’s actually worried.”
“Nah. Gonna let him stew a little longer.”
“Jack.”
“All right, all right.” He gives her a quick kiss, and then raises an eyebrow. “And then maybe later we can revisit that uh . . . very special night of ours?”
Samira grins at him, no downplaying it this time. “Maybe.”
Definitely, she writes on her arm, ten minutes later.