Chapter Text
Daylight licked me into shape
I must’ve been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes
–
Samira can’t deny herself anymore: she’s kind of loving what having a life feels like.
Because right now, she feels confident. Secure. And more than anything else, eager for more. She wants to sink her hands into everything and try everything. But it no longer feels like she’s desperately grasping for purchase. It feels like she’s pulled herself onto the safe side of the precipice, like she’s running towards a bright clearing with wide arms and something that feels like hope in her heart.
And right now, what she wants to sink her hands into is Jack’s gray curls, softened by humidity and slippery from the lake water. What she wants is to slide her hands up the light weave of his linen shirt and let them settle on his shoulders as she presses her nose into his freckled cheek. What she wants is to snake her arm down and around his, to lace her fingers with his own, to lean into him like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
She wants to try making Jack blush the way he did when Shen and Parker waltzed up to flank him, clapped him on the back, and held out their fists for a bewildered Jack to bump before saying “Fucking finally,” and “Took you long enough.”
Samira realizes she wants. Realizes the extent of her wants, the depth of them, realizes that it’s been too long since they’ve been excavated. Realizes she wants a lot of things, actually. And most importantly, she realizes she wants to let herself go after them.
So Shen and Ellis were right: finally. Took them long enough.
Now on the other side of the beginning, all there’s left to do is keep saying yes.
And Samira’s never been one to shy from staring down the barrel of a challenge, after all.
Which is why, when the group has gathered around the picnic tables to serve themselves lunch and is pretending not to have noticed they’ve kissed, when she twines her hand around his for the first time in full view of everyone — when Jack turns to her with a single raised eyebrow that asks her tacitly are you sure? — she is unwavering.
Which is why she does not shy away from the path she’s embarked upon. There’s no room for that in her mind, not anymore. So she grins at him and revels in the way the crinkles by his eyes slowly deepen, and she nods and tightens her grip on his hand as she pops a piece of charred red pepper in her mouth.
It’s why she, in fact, wants to take it a step further and plant another kiss on his mouth, which is twisting adorably in a crooked smile.
And it’s why she decides she will do that, why she leans in until the green of his eyes flutters behind closing eyelashes and until the hand she’s grasped lets go to pull her in by the hip and return her kiss.
And, finally, it’s why she doesn’t feel the urge to pull away, not even after she hears Trinity and Parker start whistling exaggeratedly, or when a surprised “Oh!” escapes Dennis’s mouth. Not when she hears Heather nudge Robby with a teasing lilt in her voice as she says “I told you,” or when she hears girlish giggles that sound suspiciously like Victoria’s and Princess’s.
She only pulls away once Jack’s hand slips from its place on her hip up to the bared skin of her waist, gives it a light pinch that she can’t suppress her reaction to. She jerks her waist away from his tickling fingers, the contact between their lips unlatching despite his chasing after hers, and she admonishes him with a glare.
But she knows he can still read the warmth in her eyes, because he won’t stop grinning.
And she has quickly realized that she can’t, either, not when she’s around him. Now that they’ve drawn the curtains, now that there’s no need for secretive glances or keeping affections under guard. She lets what she feels show on her face. She smiles openly, happily. She feels the thrill of recognition as she sees him read all her expressions like they’re pages of the most cherished book on his shelf.
She feels open, and happy, and deeply understood.
And instead of feeling terrified of the vulnerability —
She wants to chase it.
(She’s going to.)
–
Samira is replaying scenes from the past hour or so in her head, settling them steadily into her reality, absorbing them as part of her.
(Her favorite:)
She thinks of her and Jack walking, hands brushing but not quite touching, parallel to the ebbing water, until Dennis had walked up and asked Dr. Abbot if he wanted to keep his prosthesis on or if he could offer to hold it while they went in the water? And Jack had been a bit stunned with the simple kindness with which Dennis had offered, but then he’d caught Samira’s encouraging smile and taken Dennis up on the offer. As she recalls the moment, she feels the sand squishing beneath her feet and the smooth lines of Jack’s hand in hers.
They’d all taken a few steps together until they were closer to the shallows and Jack had eased down in a single-leg squat, keeping his prosthesis dry, until he was sat in the sand. Samira joined him as he reached to unlock the mechanism and peel off the sock, handing them off to the awaiting Dennis, who then smiled easily at them and walked a short ways off.
The pair sat in the quiet as the waves approached. Water flowed slowly over their toes, then their shins and knees and hips. Jack ran his fingers through the wet sand that tumbled away with a receding wave and then laid back flat, holding a hand out for Samira to join him. She nestled easily into the arm he extended and wrapped around her shoulder and shut her eyes, feeling the water gain closer until it tickled underneath her back and wrapped around her curls.
He broke the silence with, “I can still feel my toes wiggle sometimes.” She turned her head so she could see his face. His eyes were closed against the high sun and his expression was relaxed, blank.
“Tell me about it?” she asked.
“It’s hard to describe. But I can control them like they’re still there. You can see it. Look,” he said, lifting his right leg so she could see his tibialis anterior flexing. “It feels almost the same as it should, just a little weird. Different.” She nodded, trying to imagine the feeling. “I mentioned it because I swear I could feel the water between my toes.”
“You could?” she asked. He opened his eyes and looked down at her, one eye squinting from the bright light shining down on them.
“Yeah.”
They went quiet again, just a moment passing before she felt his arm pull her closer, so she’d let herself be led until she rested her forearms on his chest, her chin perched atop, looking down at him.
“I like you a lot, Samira,” he said, like it was an admission of a secret.
“You might have mentioned that, yeah,” she replied, teeth biting the inside of her lip to temper her grin.
“I don’t think I did yet,” he shook his head, sand gristling under his head of curls.
“You said you’re fond of me.”
“It’s different, okay,” He pinched her ticklish spot, something she’s discovered he likes doing.
“How so?” She teased.
“C’mere and I’ll show you,” he’d requested, even though he didn’t need to ask her to come closer, because Samira was already leaning in for a kiss that left a low, swooping feeling in her belly, as the water swirling surrounding them and the sun caressing their warm skin and the slow slide of Jack’s tongue along the seam of her lips and the steady pulse of his heartbeat underneath her fingertips reminded her of all the wonderful things about being alive.
(Having a life, huh. This is what it’s like.)
Samira is pulled out of her little reminiscent reverie when she feels the soft skin of an arm brush hers. It’s Dana’s, who is suddenly beside her, holding her beer out to clink it against Samira’s drink.
“Happy for ya, kid,” Dana tells her fondly before raising her hand to point at Jack and tell him, all sternness and warmth at the same time, “You, though. I’m watchin’ you. Real closely,” with a wink.
When Samira rounds the picnic table to grab herself a veggie burger, Heather makes a comment too, welcoming Samira to “the club” as she passes her the ketchup.
“The club?” Samira asks.
“Yeah. The fell in love with your attending club? Our numbers are growing.”
“Shut up,” Samira replies lightheartedly, but her mind catches on that word. Love.
(And she realizes, okay, maybe, if she thinks about it—)
Yeah, maybe she does love Jack. Maybe she has loved him.
She loves that he takes the time to respond to every single one of her comments and annotations — even the single-word ones, even the ones where she has simply underlined a detail or two — left in the margins of case studies they’ve traded back and forth over email, or slipped into each other’s lockers, or left on each other’s workstations with sticky notes scribbled with opening commentary like “Thought you’d like this one” or “I hope I never see this… then again, checking eyelid zipper entrapment off my list could be kinda cool, no?”
And she loves responding to the comments he leaves, loves getting to pick his brain to see how he arrives at conclusions and threads throughlines she hasn’t yet thought of, loves how when they discuss cases it’s like he already knows where her mind is going before it’s there, and he asks just the right particular questions that pull her closer towards the reasoning she’s working to develop. And then he’ll smile at her, looking pleased and fond and (yeah, now that she thinks back to it) a little in love.
She loves how, at least once a week, he’ll find time towards the end of the night shift to head to the café they like down the street from the hospital. He’ll wait in line despite the morning rush and pick up a tea to pull him through the last dregs of his shift and the short drive home, along with her order — a quad-shot latte, iced or hot depending on the weather, with a shake of cinnamon, or a matcha with oat milk, if she’s feeling in the mood for it and she answers his inquiring text message early enough — and it’ll be waiting at the hub for her with an SM scribbled in Sharpie on the cup, whether or not he’s still there when she arrives for her shift.
She loves how, when she’s on a double and starting to fade from weary and loopy to the wrong side of burnt out, he’ll guide her by the elbow to the on-call rooms, ignoring her protests and insistences that she can keep going, she swears, as long as there’s another peach mango and green tea Celsius in the staff fridge she can claim.
(And there always is another in the fridge, because she knows that he stocks them himself when he knows she’s working doubles.)
He’ll open the door to the on-call room and give her a look like he knows that she knows she needs the rest, and she’ll give in and he’ll watch as she perches herself reluctantly, stubbornly, on the cot. And then he’ll turn off the light but not before giving her another look that edges on affectionate, and he’ll say “Sweet dreams, Dr. Mohan,” and then sometimes, she’ll have them. The sweet dreams. And a lot of the time (most of the time — all of the time? She can’t remember) he’ll feature in them, saying things in the same kind of tender voice he’d seen her off with.
She loves how he cares.
And she loves not only how he makes her feel, but how he is. Loves the quiet command with which he runs the ER on nights: doling out attention and approval where it’s earned, pointing out faults and weak spots while pushing you towards a solution in a way that helps you recognize the thought pattern undergirding it. She loves watching him run a case. Loves the quickness with which he’s able to act and react under pressure while keeping a cool head. Loves the crazy shit he pulls out of his bag of tricks. And she loves his wry sense of humor that threads through everything always, buoying them through both lulls and chaos during shifts.
(She thinks about it now, and she knows. It is love. It has been, all this time.)
Samira looks up at him, across the picnic table now as everyone settles into the benches bearing plates piled high with food. Some hot dogs are burnt and others are not so burnt, and everyone’s bare shoulders and pinkening noses, too, are also burnt and not-so-burnt. And Jack nudges her knee with his and the right side of his mouth turns up in a smile that’s just for her, and she thinks—
Yeah. She loves him.
–
Hours later — after a responsible amount of jalapeño cocktails poured by Jack instead of Shen, who Samira claims doesn’t rim the cup with as much salt as she likes; after a number of both failed and successful attempts to drag herself and Jack over the line to victory in a spikeball tournament; after stealing Jack’s seat in his Tommy Bahama lounge chair after he’d so kindly offered to fetch her another one of those wildly good ube and vanilla cookies Princess had brought, and he’d come back with cookies for her and for himself to see Samira beaming at him from his seat, and he’d given her a faux-exasperated shake of his head before settling in front of her knees so she could lean forward and hug around his shoulders and try her hardest not to get ube crumbs in his hair when she started running her fingers through it; after Dana clocked that Shen was indeed, as Samira had predicted, developing phytophotodermatitis on his hands from the brutal combination of the blazing August sun and the limes he’d been cutting and squeezing and garnishing with — the group starts gathering themselves to head in their respective directions home.
Jack had carpooled up to the lake with Robby and Heather and the three of them had stayed in the house of Jack’s brother-in-law the previous night. Dana packs Princess, Mateo, Donnie, the spikeball set, and her trusty Yeti cooler into her soccer-mom Subaru and leaves to head south back to Pittsburgh; and Parker takes off with Mel in the passenger seat, Langdon in the back, and an annoyed Shen hanging half-out the window, whining about how irritated his hands are and how much of a bitch it’s going to be to shove them into nitrile gloves on his shift tonight.
Samira is shaking the sand out of her towel and stowing her tote bag with her book, sunglasses case, and sunscreen when there’s a soft padding sound in the sand near her and Jack’s feet appear in her view.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hi,” she looks up at him.
He sits beside her on the bare sand, pointing with his head toward the lake where a bright watercolor wash of sky promises a beautiful sunset.
“You’re really a romantic, huh,” she teases, leaning to bump his shoulder with hers.
“Glad you finally fuckin’ noticed,” he teases back, planting his arm in the sand around her opposite hip.
(She’s glad, too, for the record.)
She leans closer into his warmth that hugs her as they watch the shining coin of the sun inch its way down the sky. When it’s flattening into the strip of the horizon, Jack stands and holds out a hand to help Samira up. They make their way to the parking lot to find that everyone else has already peeled away, leaving Samira’s baby blue Camry as the only car left in the lot.
Their phones buzz simultaneously with texts. Jack chuckles at his phone and then shows Samira it’s from Robby saying “Thought you’d rather carpool with Mohan, we’ll use the key under the mat.”
“Well, it’s not like they left you any other option,” Samira jokes.
“He’s right, though, I would rather pool with you,” Jack says. Samira pulls her phone out of her bag to check her own texts, expecting a coy joke from Parker or Victoria along the same lines. But when she unlocks it, it’s from Trinity, and it’s not a joke or teasing, not poking light fun at her, not anything like “see what happens when u put urself out there and be ur hot self!!!”
It’s a photo with no commentary appending it, of her and Jack sitting in the sand watching the sun setting on the lake. It’s a beautiful photo, the silhouettes of their bodies bending towards each other and the inky pink-and-blues of the sky skirting around them. She feels something in her heart lift at the sweet gesture from Trinity and she tilts her phone to show Jack the picture.
“That’s sweet,” he smiles. “Send me that, will you?”
“Yeah, ‘course.”
When they climb into her car, Samira is immediately met with the realization that one’s car is a deeply intimate place. As Jack settles into the passenger side, adjusting the seat and wordlessly sliding her tote bag from her shoulder to hold it in his lap, she notices the uniquely him scent of spicy tobacco and warm vanilla mingling with the scent of sunscreen on his skin floating in the enclosed air of her car.
She’s never going to be able to forget the scent memory of this moment. She’s never going to be able to look at her passenger seat without thinking of how his broad shoulders fill the space, pulling the seat belt over his chest. She’s never going to be able to sit next to him this closely without wanting to reach over and pull him in by the collar for a kiss.
(Good thing she’ll never have to — never have to forget these memories, never have to stop thinking of him, never have to prevent herself from kissing him when she wants. She just knows that, somehow, deep in her chest. That this is it .)
When they pull into the driveway, Robby has the garage open and the front door propped, and everyone is helping cart leftover food and drinks inside. Jack starts helping right away, going to pick up a half-empty rack of beers from Robby’s trunk. Robby meets him and bumps Jack in the shoulder before pulling him in sideways for a chummy hug, radiating warm affection.
“Finally fuckin’ did something about it, brother,” Samira hears Robby say as she’s hanging her wet towel on a rack in the garage.
Jack’s chuckling and pretending to push Robby’s affection away, but she hears him say, “Nah, shut up, I didn’t do shit. Was all her, of course.”
(Was it? Maybe she made the first moves, sure. But it was his looking at her, his words, his reading of her and throwing back volleys for her to return, that encouraged her to. It may have been all her taking the steps, but it was definitely all him letting her know — assuredly, quietly confident, always — that the steps were there to be taken.)
She chooses that moment to sidle up to them, grab an aluminum tray to bring inside, and say, “Of course it was all me. Someone has to pick up on the hints. Catch up, boys,” she strolls into the house, throwing a grin over her shoulder, hearing their chuckles behind her.
Jack leads the residents and interns around a quick tour of the house, showing everyone where they’ll be able to sleep. There are five bedrooms: Jack has the primary bedroom that belongs to his brother-in-law and his sister, with Heather and Robby down the hall in the larger guest bedroom with an en-suite. There’s a medium-sized guest room with a bed and a trundle that he points out to Santos and Whitaker — who accept the reinforcement of their status as roommates less begrudgingly than Samira expects — and Victoria and Samira are shown to their own respective rooms.
Samira’s setting down her tote bag and the backpack she always keeps in her car with a spare change of clothes and travel-size toiletries when she hears a knock at her threshold. She knows who it is before he says—
“I didn’t want to be presumptuous or anything, I don’t know how you wanna go about this,” he explains, and she realizes he’s a little nervous, the twitch in his mouth that he gets when he’s not too sure about something appearing.
“No, of course. Thank you,” she says, holding out a hand to invite him into the space. He starts towards her and she feels each step like the bass of live music in her heart. “I appreciate that. Come here,” she urges when she sees he’s stopped his approach a foot away from her. Her hands wrap themselves around his shoulders instantly and she smiles up at the soft expression on his face. She leans up more so that her lips are just barely kissing his as she says,
“You gonna keep your word on that date, Jack?”
She feels his hum in her own chest as he kisses her. Feels his pulse — beautiful, vivid, so alive — in his neck as he angles it to kiss her more deeply. Feels his hands mapping along her back and her hips as if he’s finding in her curves a way out of feeling lost.
She feels him kiss her like he loves her.
(She thinks—)
When he finally does pull away, catching his breath, the hazel-green of his irises reduced to a thin ring around his wide pupils, he gives her a brief nod, looking down at the rising and falling of her chest before steeling himself.
“I’m nothing if not a man of my word.”
So while everyone winds down from the day of sun and spikeball, Samira and Jack freshen up and get dressed for their date.
(Separately! Promise.)
Samira feels no nerves, just a sort of giddy anticipation as she unhurriedly but efficiently showers, pulls on her white skirt from earlier and a light cardigan, gathers her hair into an artfully messy updo, and applies a daub of tinted lip balm. She pads down the hallway to the room where Trinity is and knocks on the open door.
“Do you have any of those printed silk scrunchies?” Samira asks Trinity, who’s laid out on the trundle, still in her bikini top and oversized jean shorts and typing something away on her phone.
“Yep, in my bag there,” Trinity points out to her. “Well, don’t you look so cute.”
“Thanks,” Samira grins. “I think this is just what I need to pull the look together,” she adds, fluffing her curly tendrils around the scrunchie she’s stretched around her bun. Victoria suddenly appears in the doorway, eyes bright.
“I heard we were seeing Samira off for her first date,” she says.
“Just in time,” Samira says, picking a tuft of lint off her sweater. “What do we think?”
“Love,” Victoria assures her. “And extra-love that our plan today worked.”
“What plan?” Samira whips around to face Victoria. “Don’t tell me there was a plan.”
“You think we came up with having you take ass pics in front of Dr. Abbot on the spot?” Trinity guffaws.
“Diabolical, you two,” Samira shakes her head. “We will be discussing this later. I’m leaving, bye…”
“Have fun,” Victoria calls after her, drawing out the words in a sing-song.
–
While Trinity, Dennis, and Victoria gather a handful of board game options from the living room cabinets and bring them out onto the back deck, trying to convince Heather and Robby to tag along for one game before the couple retires to watch The Bachelorette — Heather’s guilty pleasure and Robby’s very reluctant, even guiltier pleasure — Samira and Jack slip out the front door like two teenagers sneaking away.
Over the hood of her car, she catches Jack’s eye, which is already glinting with boyish charm. There’s a firefly hovering and flickering near his ear and it seems to fill the moment with a burst of the surreal. The street buzzes with quiet and they’re in no rush for once in their lives, fireflies blinking around them, and Jack Abbot is standing across her car, looking at her in that beautiful way he always does.
Looking at her like he loves her.
Samira knows — it’s because he does.
–
(She shouldn’t have expected anything less, but—)
Samira has the time of her damn life. This is the best first date she’s ever been on, because it’s easy. Because it’s Jack, who is basically already her best friend, but she wouldn’t be caught dead telling Trinity that. Because her cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing so much, because she can’t stop wanting to touch him, because he won’t stop saying things that make her heart spin and her head thump and maybe she’s mixing her metaphors a little bit.
Even though neither of them opt for a drink, Samira still feels wonderfully relaxed and uninhibited. Free. Not overthinking, just letting herself lead things and do things and feel confident in it all.
(She thinks Jack has a way of bringing that out in her.)
They sit opposite each other at their small table until dessert arrives and Samira decides that there’s too much distance between them, that his hand reaching for hers across the table or his clothed thigh brushing up against the skin of her leg exposed through the slit in her skirt is not enough contact for her liking. She stands suddenly, which prompts that adorably confused furrow of his brow that she reaches a hand out to smooth as she lowers herself into the seat perpendicular to him.
“Oh,” Jack says.
“This okay?” she smiles, lowering a hand chastely on his knee.
“You know the answer to that,” he responds, resting his chin in his hand and gazing at her over the tiramisu they’ve barely dipped into. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“What if I want to?” Samira leans in closer.
She wants to.
And she wants, also, to kiss the laugh off his lips, wants to lick the cocoa powder off the stubble below his mouth, wants to taste the sugar he’s stirred into his cappuccino, wants to kiss her lip balm all over him.
So she does.
And then when they leave the restaurant — Jack, of course, making good on his word to not entertain for even one single second the idea of her paying any part of the bill — he crowds her against the driver-side door of her car and kisses her thoroughly for a long time, pressing his fingertips under the soft knit of her sweater, leaving a heated trail along the skin of her thigh, edging his knee between her legs, shifting between gripping the back of her neck with his wide palm and lightly pulling at the curls that have escaped from her bun in a way that makes her head spin.
“We need to get home,” Samira gasps, pulling away for a second. Her vision is narrowed and fuzzy around the edges; all she can see and feel and smell is Jack and the taste of espresso being passed between them.
“Never thought you’d say those words to me,” he mutters, his tongue tracing a hot line down her jugular.
“Jack,” she urges. His head pops up and she takes in the gorgeous sight of him, his hair a mess from her fingers carding through it, his pupils blown, his lips kiss-bitten and smirking.
“I’m not gonna be able to drive if you keep doing this to me. We need to get home,” she repeats.
“Been waiting years, sweetheart,” he says, hushed, his head dipping again to mouth at her jaw and whisper closely, “Lemme make you wait a little bit, it’s fun for me,” before biting just below her ear.
She has half a mind to silence the groan that scrapes out of her throat.
Samira’s not sure how long they spend standing in the parking lot and grabbing at each other like two people desperately starving for each other, but eventually, somehow, they stop just short of Jack unexpectedly bringing her to the brink of an orgasm against her car door. They duck into her car and the air is charged, heavy, full of friction.
(She’s never going to be able to get in her car without thinking of Jack again.)
Samira pulls quietly into the driveway and feels like a teenager again as they push their car doors closed as quietly as possible, tiptoe up the path, Jack reaching for her hips every step she tries to take and pulling her back towards him to kiss her shoulder or bite the space below her ear.
She feels like she’s emitting a glow and feels like she’s vibrating with it, knows that he feels that too, and knows, most of all, that he’s basking in it.
They enter through the back door with hushed voices, peer through the doorway looking towards the living room and see that Heather and Robby have retired for the night and the rest of the group are piled chaotically all over the couch with blankets and droopy eyes, half-asleep with some comedy movie playing quietly on the tv.
Samira is heading down the hallway to the bedroom she’s been assigned when she feels Jack yank at her hand and stage whisper, “If you don’t get over here,” pulling her towards the primary bedroom where he’s staying.
“Or else what?” she teases before he pulls her over the threshold and shuts the door, a bit too loud for the hour of the night, locks it, and gets his hands all over her immediately, pulling her towards him.
“Or else…” he trails off, nudging his nose up and down her throat, taking deep inhales. “I don’t know, I don’t have a joke right now. Can’t really think straight.”
Samira can’t, either, with the way his hot mouth licks all over her skin. The way he’s stirring at the simmering feeling low and flaming in her abdomen. The way their bodies are pressed up against each other is making it feel like their hearts are beating into each other, extending curly veins outward and twining themselves together in an irreversible braid.
“God, I love the way you smell, Samira,” he tells her, his voice low.
“Thank you,” she manages, her hands surprisingly steady for how dizzy with desire she feels as she goes to grasp for his arms roaming over her.
“Love the way your lips taste,” he adds, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to them. “The way you grab at me.”
Samira is stunned into silence. She lets her fingers run through his hair, her nails scratching at his scalp lightly, drawing a groan out of him that she feels deep in her core.
She wants to hear what else he has to say.
“The way you bend up for me,” as he lowers his head to kiss between her collarbones and drag his tongue along them. It makes her breath hitch and her knees buckle, but he’s got her, his arm around her waist.
And she does — bend for him, that is, letting her head fall back towards the wall, pushing her shoulders back so he has better access to keep kissing lower and lower down her chest.
She tries to push down the whimpering moans that try to bubble up out of her throat—
“Love those sounds you make for me,” he says, as she’s obviously failed to keep herself quiet. “Let me hear ‘em, sweetheart. I’ll drink ‘em up, give ‘em to me.”
His hand lands on her thigh, hot and heavy, searing her through her skirt.
“Love your soft skin, love making you feel good, I wanna make you feel good,” he continues, his voice low as if he’s really just talking to himself. His head picks up as his fingertips start lifting the cotton of her sweater and he looks at her straight-on.
She sees that bright look in his eye that she loves. The look he reserves for just her.
“I’m fucking so in lov—”
Samira shuts him up with a kiss, whispering, “I know,” into his lips.
“Let me say it,” he kisses the words all over her face.
“Okay,” she grins, “But only if I can say it too.”
The moment goes quieter as his head pulls up to gaze at her. Their hands still. His lips part in a grin. His eyes hold hers with the intensity the moment deserves. Her heart thuds in anticipation.
“I am so goddamn in love with you, Samira Mohan,” Jack tells her.
“I’m in love with you, too, Jack,” Samira tells him.
He lets a little breath out of his nostrils like he can’t believe it. She nods at him, her brows knitting together, her palms cupping his face. She nods and sees the weight of the realization hit him, the realization that this is truly happening, that they’re letting each other in, finally. It seems to crest through him in a shudder, his head rolling on his neck and his lips pressing together, his eyes shining and bright.
“Yes,” she whispers, her hands finding their way under his shirt. He sucks in a breath when their bare skin makes contact. He lets her rub her hands all over him before she goes to undo the buttons of his shirt.
“It’s been a long time,” he says, quiet and sudden, his eyes not quite meeting hers as his hands roam over her curves thoughtfully. She senses there’s more and waits for him to say more.
“A really long time, since anyone’s touched my — touched any of me, really, in an intimate way like you were earlier. On the beach. With the, when you were putting sunscreen on me. I—” he pauses a moment, his eyes flit to hers. She cradles his jaw in one hand, making sure he can see the gentle look she’s giving him.
(Making sure he sees, really, truly sees, that she loves him.)
“Yeah,” he says. “I — I haven’t felt that way in a long time. It’s been a long time.”
Samira’s heart tugs at his vulnerable admission. She grabs one of his hands and presses it to her heart, beating slow and steady. He smiles, a small but tender one, at that.
“Will you let me make you feel loved, Jack?”
“God, yes. I will, I will,” he promises, surging forward to kiss her, pull her in, wrap his arms around her, to let himself be loved.
Surging forward to love her.
She meets him halfway.
–
As Samira drifts off to sleep, nearly two hours later, she can’t help but feel — on top of feeling simultaneously like she’s floating in the air and sinking into Jack’s sheets — a little vindicated.
(Because of course he’s good at that. Of course he dedicates the same sharp attention and the same confounding, uncanny ability to read her mind, to pick up on every signal she gives off before she knows she’s giving it, to be there for her every need, to attend to her every want, in an intimate setting like that. Of course.)
When Samira finally falls asleep, it’s with a sated and deeply happy feeling flowing through her limbs. It’s with her nose tucked into the crook of Jack’s neck and her hand resting over his beating heart. It’s with his arms around her and their legs tangled easily, a euphoric drip of ease oozing through her veins and a blanket of warmth settling over her.
It’s after he presses one last kiss to her forehead, whispering goodnight, whispering again that he loves her, the words a tattoo warm on her skin. After she whispers the same with her lips pressed to his pulse.
It’s like she’s dozing off in the bright clearing with hope in her heart.
It’s the easiest thing in the world.
She has the best sleep she’s had in years.
–
Samira stirs slowly, starting to register the new and unfamiliar sensations surrounding her.
Morning light filters in sleepily through the powder-blue curtains hanging from large windows opposite the bed. An arm, pleasantly heavy, weighs on her waist, soft breaths and second-day stubble tickling the skin of the back of her neck. The repetitive whirring of the ceiling fan cuts through the air, a consistent hum she hopes kept the secret of her snoring from reaching Jack’s ears overnight. The scent of caramelly coffee percolating wafts from downstairs. Quiet creaks of stairs and hushed voices in other rooms filter through the walls.
And her bare ass, barely covered by the soft and worn T-shirt Jack had pulled over her head sometime after her third orgasm last night, is cradled snugly in the warm bracket of his hips behind her.
(And, yeah, if she pushes back against him a little, just a little, even though he’s still asleep, she can feel—)
“Good morning, Samira,” he says, his voice sounding positively illegal, thick as gravel, low and laden with sleep. He tightens his arm around her and they both push and pull at each other at the same time until there’s no space between them, her hand moving quickly to ruck up the shirt she’s got on.
“Jesus, you’re a dream to wake up to, aren’t you,” he says, and she’s already practically panting just from the sound of his voice and the heat of his hands on her skin. He’s got her already, knows what she wants, palming one tit and then the other greedily, his other arm between her legs so he can run his fingers, just a passing whisper of a taste, along her cunt which is already—
“Christ,” he sucks in a breath as she goes to dig her nails into the skin of his forearm. Yeah. Christ.
“Jack,” she gasps.
Because she wants him again. She’s got him right where she wants him, and god, does she fucking want him. He’s dragging his tongue, his wet lips all over her shoulder, up her neck. He’s biting the lobe of her ear and soothing the sting with a kiss. He’s hitching his leg over hers so he can grind into her, so he can pull her by the hips back against his hard cock.
“If you don’t give it to me right now,” she bites out, needy but not caring.
“I know, baby, I know,” he says back, dipping his fingers into her wetness again and letting out a groan into the shell of her ear. “God, I know. Lemme just — yeah,” he mutters, almost to himself, sinking a finger in deep, easy, nothing, like it’s through water.
“Oh, god,” Samira lets out, a hand reaching behind her and coming up to his neck, holding him up close to her.
“You’re so — Jesus, you’re so soft, so wet, so perfect — gimme a kiss, Samira,” he asks, and she twists until she can, bending towards him with an open mouth that he pours his tongue into. It’s messy, hot, their lips never closing, just breathing into each other and licking and biting as his thumb finally finds her clit and rubs, making her back arch away from him.
“Don’t you fuckin’ go anywhere,” he challenges her, pulling her back with his other forearm, the meat of his bicep right below her face.
(God, she shouldn’t be this fucking close already but she is, she doesn’t know what the fuck he’s figured out about her so quickly—)
The steady circles around her clit, teasing, just outside of where she needs him, and the slow pump of his middle finger inside her, dragging, pressing just where she needs him, is holding her just on the verge and it’s like he fucking knows, because he lets out a dark chuckle. Not mean, but dark. Sinful. It shouldn’t do as much for her as it does.
(But it’s him, so — it does.)
“Yeah? You want it?”
“Please, yeah, I do,” she whines, trying to grind her hips into the palm of his hand or her ass back against his heavy cock, but the way he’s got both his arms around her holds her firmly in place.
“You do what, Samira? You can say it. Ask for it. Ask for what you want. Ask me for what you want.”
“Don’t be fucking mean,” she urges, but there’s no punch in her voice the way she aimed for. Just pure need. Unsatiated need. She needs him to—
“Just fucking make me come already, Jack,” she emphasizes his name pointedly, her eyes locking with his across the space of their noses, and he lowers his forehead ‘til it rests on hers.
“Yeah? You’ll let me?” he says, another finger sinking in to join the first.
(Yeah, fuck, she will. If it feels like this every fucking time — she will.)
She turns her head, it just all feels like so much and she needs to let something release, and the bulging muscle of his bicep is right there so she opens her mouth on it and sinks her teeth in, which he responds to with a “Fuckin’ Jesus, Samira,” and a reflex drive of his hips against her ass.
“Fucking tell me about it,” she hisses, trying to keep her voice low. “C’mon, Jack,” she eggs him on, taunting him between biting and suckling at the skin of his bicep. She wants to suck hard enough to leave a mark. She’s never done that before, somehow. Never felt the desire to. But she feels it now, tasting his skin with her tongue and feeling the give of it between her teeth, feeling how the muscle jerks under her when she sucks especially hard.
“Give it to me, Jack. You can do it, can’t you? Don’t you wanna make me come?”
“Samira,” he admonishes, his arm holding her back against him tighter as his fingers somehow reach deeper. As she sucks harder, digs her heels into the sheets and grinds against him faster.
(God, she’s gonna—)
“Yeah, that’s it, baby. Give it to me,” he says, echoing her words.
(He knows, because of course he does.)
He hooks his fingers inside her, and fuck if that doesn’t make her feel a little floaty and vibrant, a little like she’s starting to melt into the bed. Her lips pop off his arm with a wet smack and she barely blinks down at the lush red mark she’s left before his own lips bear down on her neck, and she feels the scratch of his stubble and the drag of his teeth on her neck, the junction of her shoulder, along the line of her collarbone—
“Wait, Jack, don’t,” she starts to say, doesn’t want to head downstairs to sit at the breakfast table with a hickey on her neck like a teenager. But she doesn’t get to finish her sentence, because he’s grinning into the space by her shoulder and somehow finding enough give to push a third finger inside her, and yeah, he fucking knows, because it just takes one last swipe over her clit and she’s giving it over to him, all of it, all of her, every muscle in her body contracting for one hard, bright second before exploding into a lush looseness that he holds her through, grounding her.
“Mmmm,” she hums blissfully once the waves in her core have subsided. “God. What the fuck.”
“Yeah, right?” he remarks, his voice just as full of awe. He slots his mouth with hers and she basks in the way his kisses feel like he’s passing secrets for her to store deep in the marrow of her bones, in the thick of her bloodstream, secrets he wants her to know. She lets them sink into her body, the tender caresses of these secrets, feels them build and bubble.
She still wants more. More of him, more of these feelings he lets flow from his tongue onto hers, more of the sensations he draws out of her, more of the kisses he lavishes on the dip of her collarbone. And she can tell he wants more, too, can tell that he wants to give it to her.
“I know, Samira,” he utters into her lips when she tries to grasp at his leg to pull him on top of her. “I know, sweetheart, just give me a second,” and the warmth of him against her is suddenly lost and he’s sitting up, quickly pulling the liner over his limb and notching his prosthetic over it.
“What are you doing?” she asks cautiously, her voice quiet as he stands and turns to face her on the bed.
He holds a hand out for her, and as soon as she takes it, she is gripped and pulled by one wrist and one ankle — manhandled in a way she never expected she would like so much — until she’s at the edge of the bed, right in front of him.
“Giving you what you want,” he responds, casual. The breath in her chest stutters.
Her shirt’s cinched all the way up from being dragged over here, and she watches his eyes slowly sweep up her exposed skin, drinking her up and savoring every sip.
“Are you gonna do it then, or you’re just gonna stand there?”
As soon as she says it, regret fills her chest, because she sees the idea dawn on him, sees the wicked smirk play out over his face slowly.
“I’m gonna do both,” he says, a disclosure she doesn’t quite understand until her eyes flit down to see where he’s palming himself through his boxer briefs, a dark spot on the front of them she wants to rub her mouth all over.
(God, when did she get so — she’s never felt such raw want for anyone before—)
Slow as all get-out, he tucks his thumbs into his waistband and pulls it down just enough for his cock to be freed.
“Are you?” she asks, her voice sounding reedy. She feels empty, aching. Desperate again, the tension he’s built up settling over the room like a heavy mist pressing her down into the bed.
“Yeah, sweetheart, I am,” he promises, his voice a dangerous whisper, stepping close and bringing his hands to her ankles, pulling her legs apart for him slowly. God-awfully slowly.
She pulls in a sharp inhale, her chest bucking when she feels the head of his leaking cock prod near her clit.
“Fucking hell, Jack—”
“I know, Samira,” he says. She has no clue how he’s still standing upright. She can only imagine the sight of herself, writhing on the edge of the bed, curls in a dark halo around her head, chest heaving and red-marked from his fingerprints, pussy glistening from the deeds done by his fingers and from the assurances promised by his cock.
Like he can read her mind, he whispers again, “Look at you. I can’t believe you’re real, that you’re really here right now.” It’s reverent, sweet, but she’s feeling too pent-up to properly appreciate it.
“I am really here right now, Jack, and please, I want you, I want you so bad,” she pleads.
“Yeah, baby, I know,” he grunts, notching the head of his cock right at her entrance, a just-barely-there hint, but she wants, needs more. Needs it all.
“Please—”
“Yeah, I know, yeah. Here, sweetheart,” he says, starting to push into her at a punishingly slow pace. She’s trying hard not to be so obvious about the need that’s thrumming through her veins, knows he can read everything her body is telling him anyway. Knows that he can tell she wants to push her ankles into the divot at the small of his back and pull him in faster, harder.
She’s about to do that when she hears a voice down the hall and then, terrifyingly, suddenly, a knock on the bedroom door.
“Jack?” Robby’s voice from the other side sounds out, mid-morning quiet but just loud enough to feel thunderous in her bones, vibrating with cold, hard fear.
And then, a zip of something else — not fear, but something even more frightening because it feels eerily close to arousal — cracks through her when Jack pushes in another inch and says, with a crease between his eyebrows but with not a single thread of concern in his voice, “Yeah?”
There’s a pause in which she imagines Robby’s gathering himself. In which she catches Jack’s eye and sees a glint of something she’s never seen before. In which she feels a puddle pooling in her gut, oil-slick and rainbow on the pavement, because she wants to make that glint in his eye shine even more. She feels bold and messy. She wants. She wants to say yes.
She tips her chin up, keeping the eye contact. Sees that he reads her silence. He nods once, clipped. Sure.
Robby’s quiet, until, “Samira with you?”
Jack’s lips part slightly and she thinks it’s to respond to Robby, but he lowers his tongue and raises his thumb to it, wetting it slowly. He hasn’t looked away from her except to, just for a split second, glance at the spot where their bodies are connected.
Jack lowers his slick thumb to her puffy clit and starts rubbing her in a slow circle.
“Yeah, she is,” Jack finally says to Robby, throwing his voice in the direction of the door.
“We’re gonna pick up breakfast from Zodiac,” Robby says. And then nothing more.
Jack’s eyes are on the spot he’s rubbing now. They’re on her, where he’s buried half inside her. He’s taking ages to fill her up. Robby’s taking ages to finish his goddamn sentences.
“Sounds good to me,” Jack says, and Samira takes advantage of his voice covering hers to let out the lightest, breathiest of moans. His eyes snap to hers instantly. Her eyebrow ticks up, a challenge.
“Okay, great. Just, uh, let me know what you want, I know you like the veggie omelette. Or that one breakfast combo? Or I can get you both?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jack replies, still only half sheathed inside her. “That’s good for me,” he adds, pushing in the tiniest bit more. Samira’s so glad he can read her the way he can, because from the flickering darkness on his face she can see that he knows she wants to let out more whiny sounds for him.
And so she feels so glad, so satisfied, and still so wanting, when he leans down closer over the bed, bending over her, burying himself deeper with an abruptness she hadn’t expected, and shoves two fingers in her mouth just before a humming rumble echoes in her chest around his fingers.
“Perfect,” Jack grunts out of nowhere. There’s a silence on the other side of the door, not quite uncomfortable, but unsure. Jack takes advantage of the silent moment to keep rubbing at her clit, not moving a centimeter of anything else. She can feel him pressing against the soft spot inside her, can feel herself clenching around him when he swipes her clit with a particular pressure, can taste the salty tang of her own slick still on his fingers in her mouth.
“Okay, great. And Samira? What does she want?” Robby asks, his voice showing no evidence that he’s aware of what he’s (unknowingly) bearing partial witness to.
“Samira,” Jack rasps, his thumb still circling, his fingers notching inside the wetness of her mouth, pressing down on her tongue, his cock achingly still and throbbing hard inside her. “What do you want, Samira?”
You know what I want, she wants to say. His thumb removes itself from her clit and the absence tears through her abdomen. She feels the loss like a gnawing, stabbing need.
It’s torture, the pressure inside her. She wants him to move, to thrust, to drag. She wants to pull him in like a ship into the harbor of her chest.
She wants him and she can feel it vibrating over the surface of her skin. She feels like she’s quickly unraveling.
It seems that he senses her need, because he presses his thumb back where it belongs and continues his pursuit of her pleasure, the brutally slow pace of his thumb from before abandoned for something more desperate.
He wants her to squirm, to tug at him, to burst underneath him in a beautiful explosion so he can revel in it and replace his memories of other ways he’s seen people come undone before his eyes. He wants her to come on his cock right now, before he’s even gotten the chance to properly fuck her, with her boss and his good friend on the other side of the door.
He wants her, and she can see it, plain on his face. He looks wrecked.
“She’s looking at the menu right now, just give us a second,” Jack calls, and then, with a diabolical look in his eye, the kind she’d been hoping to elicit, “Yeah, I think you’d like that,” and a pinch of his fingers on either side of her clit.
(Fucking — yes, she does like that. Jesus Christ, she does.)
“I’ll come back?” Samira barely hears Robby over the ringing in her ears as the pressure builds inside of her. Jack is alternating between light pinches and luscious circles, all while keeping his hips tilted up ever so slightly to push up against that spot inside, all while resisting the urge she feels trembling through him to thrust inside of her.
“Nah, one second, she’s almost ready,” Jack says assuredly.
And he’s fucking right, god dammit, she is almost ready. She’s almost there, she’s so close, feels herself pitching her hips against him in a way that angles him right where she needs him. The breaths in her chest feel angular coming out. She can almost see the shape of her desire filling the room. She can feel the shape of his own desire encasing her like a cocoon, shielding her from the outside, tending to hers with a careful hand.
She’s gripping his wrist where it works on her clit, her nails digging into his skin. She’s biting down on his fingers in her mouth, soft but just hard enough to make his lips turn up in what she could almost call a snarl.
She’s so achingly close she feels like she’s bursting with it, and Jack looks at her, the downturn of his lips turning into a grin that she knows only means trouble, and he reaches with his free hand to press down on her lower abdomen so she can feel the press of his cock inside her even more.
(And fucking Jesus, she does, she does feel it, feels it like it’s in between her goddamn ribs, like it’s in her throat, like it’s making a home inside of her—)
Feels like she’s bursting with it, and then suddenly, she is, everything on her body going cold and then blaringly hot for a glorious moment. It rolls over her in waves and then even longer waves, and she can tell Jack is hanging on by a nonexistent thread trying not to thrust inside her as she tenses again and again on his cock. Her cunt still constricting him like a vise, he somehow finds the wherewithal keep up the performance for Robby, still upholding the charade that he’s awaiting her perusal of the menu, “Sure, that’s perfect, that sounds good to me, sweetheart.”
Her eyebrows furrow, the stimulation and the attention and the surprise at how much of a thrill she has felt during the past few minutes getting to her and bringing prickly tears to her eyes.
“Yeah, I got you,” Jack says, this time just for her, quiet, before burying himself fully to the hilt. He removes his fingers from her mouth and gestures for her to keep quiet, and then goes to hold her by both hips as he thrusts and thrusts into her, chasing his own release. The buildup has taken its toll on him, too, and it doesn’t take long for him to quickly follow her over the edge, his fingers tight on her hips, his eyes tracking all over every inch of her exposed, tanned skin, one of his thumbs coming up to wipe the tear that slides down her temple.
A moment later, Samira’s wrapped up in the duvet again, catching her breath and sheltered from the view of the door as Jack, shirt and shorts haphazardly pulled on, opens it and tells Robby breezily, “She’ll have the same as me. Oh, and a side of home fries?”
She can hear the winking tone of his voice and she scoffs lightly. She’s rolling her eyes when she feels the warm weight of him wrap around her.
“You’re insane,” she tells him, planting a kiss on his arm.
“Gave you what you wanted, though, didn’t I?”
She can’t help the laugh that bubbles up out of her.
He can’t help the grin that he flashes her in response.
–
Samira’s been saying yes to everything that comes her way.
When Jack offers to refill her coffee, Samira says yes even though she doesn’t need another cup of coffee, because she likes being reminded that he knows exactly how she takes it, with a splash of oat milk and a dash of cinnamon, and sometimes with a teaspoon of brown sugar spooned into the mug before the hot coffee’s poured over it. When he passes off the last few bites of the home fries they’ve been sharing onto her plate and slides the hot sauce across the table to her, she nods and knows he’s watching her with his chin in his palm and that look on his face.
When everyone’s packing back into their cars after a leisurely breakfast out on the deck and Samira’s turning on her car to get the AC blasting, Jack strides down the driveway with his backpack slung over one shoulder after locking up the house and his eyes flick to meet hers through her windshield, and she gives a nod yes and gestures with her head for him to get his ass in her passenger seat.
As they pull out of the neighborhood and Jack asks if she’ll put on whatever album or playlist she’s been listening to lately because he’s curious to know what she likes, Samira agrees even though she thinks her taste is probably more basic than she feels it should be, and she queues up Clairo and Olivia Dean and watches as his fingers tap through the grooving beats on his knee or on the back of her hand when he’s holding it over the center console.
When the southbound traffic holds them in a stall and Samira can turn her head to fully look at the man next to her — her eyes flitting over his freckles, darkened in the bright sun, the smile lines by his eyes, the threads of gray and reddish-brown stubble, the swirl of whiter hair by his ears — and all he can do is blush a little and grin from her attention aimed at him, and he asks, “You really know how to make a guy feel appreciated, huh?” Samira doesn’t quite say yes , but tells him that he’s not just any man to her, so no, she doesn’t really know how to do that, tells him that because it’s him, she thinks it just comes naturally.
(And when she tells him that, she stores the image of the resulting flush creeping over his cheeks and down his neck growing deeper and redder in her mind for later.)
When they’re back in Pittsburgh proper, Samira takes the opportunity at every red light to shoot her hand out and tug Jack by the collar towards her for a kiss, and she only gets honked at once.
“Yeah, yeah, okay, I’m going, I’m going!” she calls out to the honking offender who can’t hear her.
When Samira pulls up to his house in West View, Jack asks if she’s free later this week so he can take her out again, not only does she say yes, but she also says she’s free for the rest of the day and he can take her out right now if he so pleased.
She looks over at him and she sees the answer plain on his face.
Sees that he loves her.
This is what she gets, Samira knows, for saying yes.
“If only you knew what I’m thinking right now,” Jack says to her across the charged space in the front seat of her car. Samira can hear the leaves rustling in the trees outside.
“Say it,” she whispers. “You can tell me.”
(She thinks she has an idea, anyway.)
“I think you’re it for me, Samira. And maybe I’m crazy for saying that, and maybe I’m even crazier for being so selfish as to think you could feel even an inkling of the same—”
“Jack.” She interrupts gently, reaches for his hand to hold it between hers.
“You’re not crazy. I think—”
(She’s not scared. Not with him.)
“I think you’re right, Jack.”
“You mean that?”
She takes a second to fill her senses, so she can remember everything about this forever. The hum of her car’s idling engine. The low volume of one of her favorite songs coasting over the moment. The warmth of his hand in hers and the sun on her cheek. The way his freckles stand out as the shadows of tree leaves waver across his face. The way her heart beats a steady cadence, unafraid and sure.
(Samira does mean it, so she says—)
“Yes.”
