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Jack had always been a man at war.
As an emergency room physician, he had studied for years to become an expert healer, a man capable of finding a solution with barely a thought.
As the Senior Night Shift Attending, Jack had become one of the most respected doctors at PTMC, charged with decisions on the care and future of countless patients.
As a soldier, with a warrior’s heart, he could never just sit by and let things take their course — he would fight any fight and risk and risk to keep people safe. There was never a moment of calm — his nerves were always on end, prepared to leap into action at a moment’s notice.
But this — this felt something like peace.
He knew the exact number of steps that would take him from his car to the room he shared with a certain PTMC Fellow — 158, to be exact.
He was gentle while opening the door, not wanting to disturb the likely sleeping woman inside.
Though they both spent so much time away from this place, twelve-hour shifts eating away at their days, returning to their bedroom always felt like a homecoming to Jack. It had technically been his before it had ever been theirs, but before that point, it had only been a place to sleep, and only when he had to. Now it was safe and warm, and it smelled like mint, jasmine, and slight hints of citrus. The darkest bits of the forest and the clean, aromatic scents of a garden.
In this room, it smelled like home.
The door clicked closed behind him as he moved silently across to the walk-in closet attached to the main bedroom. There, he unlaced his boots and placed them neatly beside a pair of On Clouds, an almost-ritual. He shrugged out of his scrubs, folding them so they would not wrinkle, even though they would be washed or discarded. They had sustained too much wear tonight.
Another dirtied set of black scrubs was in the room, thrown haphazardly over the door of the wardrobe, and Jack took a moment to pay it the same attention he had paid his own. Only then did he change out of his underscrubs, trading them out for flannel pants and an old sweatshirt. He didn’t have to be ready for action here, could let his hackles lower and bare his soft underbelly.
Jack made his way into the bathroom, splashing his face with water. It would take a shower to actually get clean, but it would have to wait until the morning.
“Jack?” came a faint, drowsy voice from the other room. “En kaadhale, is that you?”
He used one of the plush towels to dry his face and followed the sound of the voice he knew so well.
There, in the king-sized bed piled high with blankets and pillows, was Samira, blinking the sleep from her eyes. She always slept on her side, but now she rolled onto her back to watch him. When she registered that it was just her husband, her face broke out into a smile that was like the sun at daybreak.
Jack was sure he’d never gotten in that bed faster.
“It’s me,” he murmured as he slid under the covers beside her. His hands were on her in an instant, cradling Samira’s face in his palms.
“You’re earlier than I thought you’d be.”
The sun still hadn’t crept up over the winter horizon.
“Night Shift knows how to treat ‘em and street ‘em,” Jack replied, which was true, especially when he was on-shift with Ellis and Shen. It also didn’t hurt that there had only been two Traumas all night.
“Which reminds me,” Jack muttered, shifting so that he was in a sitting position. His fingers found their way to the tie that kept Samira’s shirt on her. “Are you alright?”
She raised an eyebrow. “If this is going where I think it’s going, then yes.”
Jack rolled his eyes, but couldn’t conceal the smirk that tugged at the corner of his lips. “You know what I mean. Did Santos do the sutures?”
Jack still remembered the pool of dread that had filled his stomach when Samira had yelped out in pain in Trauma 1. Student Doctor Fallows had turned while passing a scalpel to her, slicing through her scrub shirt, t-shirt, epidermis, down to the dermis.
After he had run over and helped her out of the room with Dr. Santos, he had found out (through some slightly less-than-professional, choice words) that the 11-blade had been fresh, no chance for blood-borne illness. It didn’t matter; the fear was still there. He remembered Samira’s shaking hands clutching at him, her hand grabbing at his bicep for stability right after, the way her pupils shrunk from the pain.
Jack hadn’t strayed far from Samira’s side for the rest of her shift, observing her to make sure that she wasn’t in pain. She had only started to weaken around the last hour, as the lidocaine began to wear off, but by then she insisted on finishing it out.
Samira did not speak, and then Jack pulled the edges of her shirt away to reveal a bled-through bandage.
“I told you to get the dressing changed before leaving,” he grumbled, pushing up his cuffs and lifting the edge of the bandage, feeling a prick of anger and worry. “Why didn’t you?”
Samira shrugged, then grimaced from the movement. “I didn’t want to bother anyone, and I wanted to sleep as soon as possible after I got out of there.”
“But you had enough energy to bathe, apparently.” Samira didn’t smell like he did, like chemicals and sweat and the sharpness of blood. She smelled like fresh linen and clementines.
“Pri—orities,” she gasped, reaching out with one hand to grasp onto Jack’s thigh as the wound began to burn as he peeled the gauze away.
It didn’t take him long to grab the First-Aid Kit, clean the wound, inspect the sutures, and redress it. Jack let his gaze wander over Samira’s body, ensuring she was free of any other injury, before he settled back down again beside her.
“Next time, your priority needs to be my priority.” Jack ran a hand over the bandage once more, pressed a kiss to it. “I’m begging you to put yourself first.”
Samira blinked at him with wide, brown eyes. “Are you, now?”
“I’ll get on my knees if I have to,” Jack murmured. “Whatever you want, baby.”
And then he was kissing her. Her lips were as sweet as sugar, as soft as satin, and though it started as the light kisses of reunion, soon there was a fire behind it.
Samira groaned and rolled onto her back, pulling Jack over her by the collar of his shirt. For a moment, they did not speak in words, but through the language of lips on lips and questing hands.
Just as Jack was pulling Samira’s shirt away, a hand caught at his.
“Fuck,” Samira whispered, her breath hot on Jack’s cheek. “I hate to stop this, but…. you smell terrible.”
Jack laughed and dropped his head into the crook of Samira’s neck. “Your flirting needs some work.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You’re right, Mira, it doesn’t.”
Jack planted one searing kiss on the tender skin of her neck before rolling off of her.
Swiftly, Samira’s hands found their way around Jack’s waist as he settled into a sleeping position. Jack didn’t protest — his exhaustion was creeping nearer and nearer, hounding him like a wolf on a deer’s trail. Soon enough, there would be nowhere else to run.
“Shhh,” Samira cooed, sliding closer to him. “Sleep, Abbot. I know you want to. I can sense how sleepy you are.”
“I was a soldier. I can sleep whenever I’d like.” (It was true, for the most part, thanks to the military sleep method.)
“But you’re staying up for me. Trust me, I’ll be right here when you wake up.” Samira ran a hand over his forehead, pressing into lines time had etched there. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Since his BKA, Jack had always had a difficult time with sleep. He had seen too much death, faced too much loss, let in too much of the night. He could sleep, but never without nightmares.
Except for when he was held by Samira.
Only in the safety of this room, in the safety of her arms, did he sleep without terror.
“I love you,” Jack whispered, just as Samira placed two fingers on the pulse in his wrist. He could feel his heart rate slowing, could feel sleep racing toward him.
The last thing he saw before sleep took him was Samira smiling.
“I love you, too.”