Chapter Text
At shift change Wednesday morning, after he pocketed the warm piece of metal Samira Mohan had just handed him, he watched her stride toward the charge desk and the board.
Sometimes, seeing the fresh faces come to take over made Jack Abbot tired and irrationally kind of angry. Never her, though. He always got a little jolt of contentment from seeing her, even if all she had time for was a friendly grin and a sincere Good morning, Dr. Abbot. Hope it hasn't been too crazy.
The night had been fairly normal, and, this morning, the greeting had been slightly more substantial than that. He was heading home and day shift was starting, and she was striding toward Robby, who was, in turn, watching him.
In fact, he was watching him long after Samira walked away. All it inspired in Jack was the desire for a hasty exit, back toward the locker room.
Robby caught up with him pretty quickly, and he didn't even try to act casual.
"Okay, what was that?" he asked.
Jack replied flatly: "My house key."
"I know what it was."
"So glad we had this little chat, then," he said with an eye roll, pushing past him and into the locker room.
"Abbot."
Robby watched him bin a gown and begin working at his locker combination.
He pursed his lips, then he said as nonchalantly as he could, though he was pretty sure he wasn't fooling the man — or anybody else who might've heard them:
"I've given you my house key on too many occasions to count, brother."
"Yeah, well, she isn't your brother."
"Maybe she is," Jack snapped back. He paused with his hand on the locker door. "Whatever you think is going on, you're wrong. She's a friend. We work well together."
"So I hear."
Backpack in hand, he was now prepared to march right out of the room, right out of the hospital. Give himself a few more hours to prepare to have this losing fight with the man.
"She's also a resident," he said.
Robby replied, "You're not her attending."
He made his mouth into a hard line and wheeled around, hand on the door.
"Why do I feel like you're trying to talk me into something here? Something dangerous?"
"Definitely not what I'm going for," Robby replied, projecting so much confident sincerity that Jack almost believed him, or at least he believed the guy wanted it to be the truth. "Although I am having this conversation as your friend, not chief attending."
He had at least some of the justification prepared. Of course he did — he'd been saying it to himself, like a mantra almost:
"She has her boards in three months. She's not getting a ton of sleep. My place is closer than hers, and it's quiet." Then, risking a little vulnerability to make a personal plea — maybe even undercutting his point, but fuck it — he added, "Just… Just leave it alone."
Robby was apparently at least somewhat willing to do so, because he replied, "Okay."
Jack turned the handle.
Robby added, "Not because I believe a word of that, by the way."
Jack just huffed out an impatient breath, unable to be any more articulate than that.
"I realize it's true," Robby said. "But it’s not the reason."
"Oh?"
"You still mark the exits when you walk in anyplace new, and you still sit facing the door. Yet you just gave your house key to—"
"Seriously?" he barked. Then he moderated his tone along with his level of irritation, because it was objectively very funny. "You worried she's planting IEDs in my kitchen? Aiming for the other one, maybe?"
Robby frowned against his attempt to distract with humor and volume, firmly saying, "I just want you to consider why you're okay with—"
"I know why, you asshat," he hissed. Lowering his voice even more, he said, "You don't have to understand it to stop giving me grief about it. She's near the finish line. I'm not that guy. I will not be that guy."
"You are not her attending," he said again, and the man suddenly couldn’t look him in the eye anymore.
In a more generous mood, Jack would have backed off, then, mindful of Robby's own particular history. Instead, he had what he hoped would be the last word.
"I am every damn time she's on my shift," Jack snapped out. "So unless you can guarantee she stays off nights and I stay off days, then shut your fucking mouth. Brother."
Miraculously, Robby was indeed willing to let him have the last word. For now.
*
That evening he was off, thankfully. Didn't have to enter back into an awkward conversation with Robby until the next evening at the earliest. The next day, however, turned out to be one of those days where Robby had to slip out early for something, so Mel and Whitaker, who had kind of become each other's emotional support animals, were for some reason the ones delivering the department into his hands.
By the time they were face to face Friday morning, 48 hours later, Robby looked at him like it was a perfectly normal shift change when he came onto the floor.
"Quiet?" Robby asked.
"For now. Shen's in the middle of something ugly, though. Might be a while."
"Like clockwork."
Jack could have left it at that, but he hated having this unresolved shit hanging over them.
"You smoke before you came in?" Jack asked.
When Robby shook his head, Jack gestured with a nod toward the door to the ambulance bay, and Robby shoved his hands in his pockets and followed.
They tucked themselves away in the little alley between the buildings, well out of sight of anyone but Robby's fellow hypocrites.
Jack said, "You're not even trying to quit these days, are you?"
"Cutting down. But I'm sure you could find something to scold me for without resorting to..." He gestured between them, and then to the alley.
Robby wasn't upset, though. He was actually eyeing him with cool amusement.
"So," Jack said. "I came in a little hot the other day."
"I expected nothing less," Robby replied with a sardonic smile. He took a drag and turned his head to exhale it downwind. "Which is why I didn’t say anything the first three times."
"You're a nosy bastard."
"Not usually. Anybody else making themselves miserable, I’d let it go. Depending on who it was, I'd make popcorn. You and Mohan?" He shook his head and took another drag.
"I want you to know that was not a dig about you and Heather."
"Hmm?"
"Me saying I wasn't that guy. You're not that guy, either."
Robby waved a hand to dismiss the sentiment. It was both absolutely true and not fucking fair.
He just said, "I know what's going through your head, though. And how unnecessary it is in this case."
"Who even says she'd be interested, you know?" Jack finally said. "Actually interested."
Robby made the most comical skeptical face at him.
"You honestly think she's the type to throw herself at an attending just because they’re an attending?"
Jack kicked out with the toe of his shoe, just enough to tap Robby's boot.
Giving him his most charming smile, he said, "If she was that, she'd be tying herself in knots to rescue you and your big sad eyes. I could tell her you're good friends with the Newports again. Might do it."
Robby rolled his eyes but otherwise did not reply, just let the silence hang. That was usually Jack’s own tactic, which was more than a little irritating.
So Jack decided to go all in on this very unwise conversation Robby was apparently dying to have:
"I'm more than fifteen years older than her. That's the big thing."
"Does she seem like a kid to you?"
"Not for a second."
"Then stop treating her like one."
"Fuck you," he murmured.
He wasn't even mad, just suddenly feeling sort of bruised. Robby had a way of knowing a person's weakest spots and sort of grinding into them. Probably a lifetime of doing that to himself. The hell of it was he usually had a genuine point to make.
But he also should have known that Jack’s concern wasn't just that she was young. He was also old, comparatively. Bruised and fading, at the very least in a metaphorical sense. What did he have to give her?
"You enjoying keeping her at arm's length?" Robby said. He gave him that wide-eyed stare, then, ashing his cigarette over the broken walkway, he muttered, "If you think she gives a rat's ass that you're closer to fifty than forty, you're not paying attention."
"We're not just talking about, I don't know, attraction here."
"Of course not."
Jack took a deep breath, then he pushed it out in a rush, saying, "I will not be a drain on her life. Or a distraction. Or whatever."
"What makes you think you're aren't already?" Robby didn't look at him this time, just took another drag and released it into the morning air. "She's caught in your gravity, and she’ll keep orbiting there at a distance unless you let her go."
He couldn't even come up with arguments. There was just a gut reaction:
"Well, that’s not on the table."
When Jack didn't offer anything else, Robby just nodded as he put out his cigarette in an ashtray tucked against a nearby windowsill and said, "I should get in there."
Robby had taken a few steps back toward the bay when Jack said, "Hey — we good?"
"Always," Robby called back over his shoulder. Then he came to a halt and turned. "If we had to stop and acknowledge every time we said something pushy or halfway shitty to each other, that's all we'd ever do."
"I appreciate you."
"Same," he said with a small but warm grin, then he turned and headed back toward his day.
*
When Jack came in that evening, he was early on purpose. Not that he expected things to be so straightforward.
Mohan was camped out at the charge desk, entering something on an iPad. She looked tired but not exhausted, which he was happy to see, and she was drinking some kind of iced coffee drink, so she was at least hydrated. He would suspect Shen was interested in her if he didn’t know just how desperately the man wanted to get in the pants of one Emery Walsh.
She just pointed upward, saying, "I think he wants to talk to you."
Jack snorted. "He wants me to talk to him."
"You have my sympathies, then," she responded.
Those two were no longer at constant loggerheads, but it was by no means an entirely comfortable relationship. That always felt so funny to him, because his own relationship with each of them was easy if not simple.
The sun was hovering above the skyline. Robby was nowhere near the railing. This was clearly about him, then. It made him want to grab the man and shake him. As if he hadn't thought about all this shit. As if it wasn't one of the things taking up space rent-free in his head, in the biggest penthouse apartment.
So he didn't give him a chance to meander toward the topic after pleasantries.
"You're wrong," Jack said.
"What this time?"
"Mohan. She's not at a distance. My life is better with her in it. I like to think I've got the emotional intelligence now to say she's glad I'm in hers."
Robby just nodded at him and, after a pause, said, "Okay."
"That's all you got?"
"I guess I have to treat her like an adult, too. That's all I wanted to say. You'd be in a gray area, but I know you know that, and you've made the choice you wanted to make. Maybe even for the right reasons."
Jack frowned, and he found his mouth saying, "You're not wrong. It's not fair to her."
"Or to you. I don't think you're a drag, by the way. Or a weight or whatever you said."
"Too late to consider that, honestly. Do you know what it's like to…?"
Robby barked out a laugh, shaking his head. "Definitely never held a beautiful woman at arm's length for fear of pulling her any closer and terror of letting her get away."
"Mike…"
"You asked and I'm telling you. It's a kind of happiness. It's not a waste. And, since I really do believe you're trying to do the right thing here, it's noble."
"Then why are you…?"
"Being a dick? I was surprised, I guess. It's one thing to watch a couple of doctors fall into snarky flirtation or cutesy 'work spouses' crap. It's another to watch the most cautious man I know handing his own copy of his house key to a colleague. Except she couldn't be just a colleague, could she?"
"A friend. I'm just a nice old man trying to be helpful."
"Tell yourself whatever story you want about how ancient and busted up and damaged you are. But think about yourself at 29. What would you have thought about the serious attention of an older woman? Let's say she's brilliant, sort of darkly funny, and attractive, with a strong presence that does very little to hide how essentially kind she is. Would that seem sad and pathetic to you? And, if it did, would you have the slightest interest in even pretending to flirt with her?"
"I wish it was that rational. I really do."
Jack leaned back against the railing beside him. He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes.
"She sleeps on the couch," he said. "About a million times, I've wanted to tell her she could sleep in the bed, but that's a bridge too far, you know."
"Sure."
"But not really, in a way. A couple of weeks ago, she had a day off but I encouraged her to take the key anyway. She looked like the walking dead, you know? She was still there when I got home. Probably took her a while to come down and fall asleep. I found her on the couch. And, look, I knew that's where she slept. Always folds the throw blanket and fluffs the pillows. But I saw her, and my brain did a double take. Why wasn't she in the bed?" He chuckled out loud at himself. "Part of me deep down felt like that's where she was supposed to be."
He looked at Robby out of the corner of his eye and saw a fond smile on his face.
Jack continued, "When I woke her up and she smiled at me… You know that swooping feeling when you lose your balance?"
It felt a little crazy to say it out loud, but at this point, who was he kidding? He definitely wasn’t kidding Michael Robinavitch, who wrote the playbook on martyred pining.
Fuck, he said to himself.
Robby let out a soft snort of amused sympathy. Then, after a moment, he reached out and tapped the ring on Jack’s finger.
"And yet…" he said.
"We had that conversation a long time ago, actually. Not like… Just getting to know each other. She wanted to know what happened, and I told her. I explained that it feels like a part of me, that I needed to hang onto all the good things it meant — about me, as a person, as a man. That it didn't mean I was actively trying to stay out of relationships at this point."
"But you have to know it's the opposite. For a relationship, you'd have to actively try to open up."
"Funny, coming from you. Also: You do know I have a shrink, right?"
"Have you talked to him about her?"
"Around the subject enough, apparently, that he made me dig this stuff up a few weeks ago. He thinks I'm kind of full of shit, too. About Mohan, not about the ring thing, weirdly. Just takes more words to say so."
"I don't think you're full of shit. Scared, maybe. But there are stupider reasons to take the high road."
"Thanks."
"Three months isn't that long, I guess."
"And then we’ll see."
The problem: He wasn't sure what he'd do then. There was a good chance he'd continue to coast along just as he had been. That's why Robby's comments stung — he knew his excuse was reasonable at the moment, but the man wasn't wrong about the immobilizing fear that propped it up. Falling in love was easy the first time he did it. Back then, he had no idea how painful it could be in the long run. It was
Soon, Robby went back inside, but he turned and leaned over the rail for a few more minutes, taking in the skyline. The sun was sinking behind a set of high-rises, but its rays were still finding windows and metal struts and a million other things that glittered in reflection.
Maybe he was thinking about this all wrong. It's always easy, falling in love, in the sense that you rarely have control over it happening. But you get to choose what you do with that. Right now the only thing he could do was keep bringing her sandwiches (no pickles) because she sometimes doesn't take care of herself, keep praising her when she does something well or confronts something very hard, keep sharing articles with her because she's got a delightfully piercing way of annotating them before she stuffs them back into his locker, and keep letting her see more and more pieces of himself. Some day, he thought, that would matter. They would come together, if they were meant to.
*
A few days later, after she spent a night at his place, he was in the locker room getting ready to leave. She seemed a little puzzled to find him there instead of the charge desk, where he typically waited for her to show up and hand off the key.
She pulled out her key ring and began to unclip it from its little claw clasp. He just held up his hand.
"That's yours."
"What?"
He leaned back against a nearby locker, crossing his arms as he said, "I was digging something out of my junk drawer yesterday, and I remembered that I had another spare. Forgot to mention it last night."
In actual fact, it was Robby’s spare. The man had handed it over without a word at his request. He hadn’t even smirked at him.
She said, "Don't you want your key back?"
He paused for a breath, then he said breezily, with a shrug, even:
"What's it matter? They both open the door."
Her eyebrows knitted together, but she was smiling — trying, actually, to tamp down a grin to something soft and easy. She stepped toward him and touched his hand.
"Thank you," she said.
"You're welcome."
She was looking at him, searching his face. When he mustered up the courage to actually look her right in the eyes, she smiled and tipped her face up and leaned in to press a kiss to his mouth, soft and sure.
She tasted like some kind of sugary lip gloss. His face flushed, and he could feel it travel down over his neck and chest, too. Jesus Christ.
As she drifted away, toward her locker, he found himself rooted in that spot. It had been that easy for this to become something else. Except it wasn't. It was a natural extension of everything they always were, and he'd foolishly thought he could stop it from growing and evolving.
"How's the studying?" he said, desperate to fill the silence of the room.
She raised her hands in a noncommittal motion. "Ask me tomorrow and I might give you a different answer, but today I'm feeling pretty okay about it. It's a lot, but it's what I've been training for."
"Hold onto that attitude. Don't let it make you cocky, though."
"Don't worry. I'm keeping at it."
She paused, long enough that if he hadn't been watching her in profile, watching the telltale signs of her internally deliberating, he wouldn't know she was working up to something else.
More softly now, she said, "But I am trying to be kind to myself. Just the other day, I told Dana no more doubles for me. I'm too prone to distracting myself with work. I need to be able to breathe sometimes. And study. But, anyway, yeah, no doubles." At that, she looked back at him, catching his gaze and holding it. "I mean, no nights. None at all until I get past the goalpost."
He felt something heavy settle in his stomach. Was she that eager to get away from him? But that didn’t make sense. Why would she take the trouble to explain if…?
He looked up at her face again and saw that she was smiling. Cautiously.
Oh.
He managed to choke out, "Good idea."
"Yeah?"
"Sure," he said, marshaling his voice into wise attending mode. "We’ll miss you on the odd night, but that's a very sensible move. Are you still off tomorrow?"
"Yep," she said, now brushing past him, laying a quick hand on his back, somewhere between friendly and familiar.
"You're always welcome to camp out at mine tonight anyway."
"I appreciate that, Dr. Abbot."
"Of course."
She smiled at him and opened the door.
He added, "You know, you can sleep in the bed if you want."
She paused, looking back at him with a raised an eyebrow, clearly trying not to grin as his eyes went wide.
The words tumbled out of him: "Obviously, it would be empty. And only if you're comfortable…with that. I just wanted… You don't have to cram yourself onto the couch is all I'm saying. I wouldn’t mind."
She gave him an inscrutable smile as she searched his face, but he took it as a good sign – at least until she headed for the door. But she just pressed it closed and stepped back into his personal space.
"You wouldn’t mind?" she asked.
"No."
"It’s more than that, though, right? You want me there. In your bed."
It wasn’t a question, but she was definitely asking for confirmation.
His heart hammered in his chest, hard enough that he could feel himself automatically going into the breathing exercises he learned a long time ago to ward off panic attacks, but he managed to nod.
Belying her steady voice, her face was turning a little pink, which made him feel a little less mortified, but only a very little.
He murmured, "If you don't know by now…"
"I didn't know if you wanted me to know." She grinned playfully, but it quickly dropped into a cautious ghost of a smile. "Or if it…meant anything."
"Everything," he replied, before he could stop himself.
Her smile softened into surprise and, maybe, a little bewilderment. He found it hard to hold her gaze.
"Samira," he said, "tell me you're not just being kind to an—"
But she was already wrapping her hands around both sides of his neck, to stop his words with a long, searing kiss. Then she leaned her forehead against his and murmured, lips brushing his again:
"I’m not just being kind, Jack."
Hearing his name, a name she never uses, even outside the hospital, made him feel strange. Out of his depth. A little desperate in a way he's managed not to be for so many months.
At that, she dropped her hands, but they lingered at his chest. So he shifted closer to her and settled his hands on the outside of her hips. Easy as anything, he stepped into her, and she followed, shuffling backward until her back was against the door.
With nervous fingers, he miraculously found the handle without looking, and then he groped for the deadbolt above it and threw it closed. She gave him a mischievous grin — somewhere between impressed and playfully chastising, nothing like she was bothered by the way things were going — which was all he needed.
He kissed her then, hands finding her waist, tasting more of her lip gloss and feeling the soft, warm press of her full lips waking up things inside him that he honestly thought were dormant. Her hands were on his neck, clutching him so hard he could feel her fingernails dig in a little. He kissed her slowly, softly, just lips rolling against lips, trying to help them both breathe and relax a little. In response, she made a barely audible little happy noise, and it made him feel so hot it was like his skin was burning.
After a moment, she nipped at his bottom lip, laving her tongue over it and leaving her lips parted, to invite him inside. He was more than a little shocked at how quickly it turned deep and hard, like an impulsive kiss in the break room had no right to be. Just a little of that, of tongues stroking, of his hips settling firm against hers, was doing things to his body that weren't exactly reasonable here at the end of a twelve-hour shift.
He huffed out a laugh against her mouth and pulled away, pointedly making space between them and shaking his head without for a second taking his eyes off her face, her absolutely liquid brown eyes and her wet lips.
"You gotta get out there," he said in a tone of miserable apology.
"I know," she replied, rolling her eyes, either at herself or at the situation, maybe both.
He reached out and cupped her face in his hand, fondly now, saying, "You're gonna make me do all sorts of reckless shit, aren't you?"
"I hope so," she replied through giggles. "I mean, not stupid reckless."
All he could do was nod.
After she turned the bolt open again, she stopped with her fingers around the handle.
"Do I remember right — you have the Eichman anatomy?"
"Of course. And Westbrook. And no, it’s not the one from when I was doing boards, back in the stone ages. If you need Thomason, grab Robby’s copy from behind the front desk."
"Robby’s copy that Mel King pores over like scripture? Lucky for me my copy’s in my car."
"Lucky?"
"I’m apparently a lucky girl today, Dr. Abbot," she said, inclining her head. "Who has the other spare, by the way?"
"Your attending." Her eyes went wide, and he stuttered out a laugh, saying, "Not even with somebody else’s dick, Dr. Mohan."
And here they were, attending and senior resident, the energy flowing fast and easy. But that was always, deep down, Jack and Samira. He wondered, not for the first time, what that would feel like in bed. If it was anything like simply kissing her…
"No?" she said. "He could be cute. In a best friend’s nerdy older brother who might be good company if he stopped being so grumpy and weird kind of way."
"He's an even bigger mess than me. Which, no, would probably not stop me if I was into dudes, like, at all."
"You have a thing for messes? Should I be offended?"
"My tastes are varied. No, you should not be offended. I am also highly attracted to competence."
"Ditto," she replied. "Especially for a best friend’s introvert jock older brother who low-key flirts like crazy." She grinned and slipped out into the hallway.
He stood in the locker room suddenly feeling a little at sea, or maybe just realizing he'd been at sea all along. Mainly, he felt how hard it was to part with her after he'd finally gotten to hold and kiss her. But he could wait.
He would see her again at the change to night. He would see her in the morning, too. He was sure of that now.