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Samira finally snaps at Robby.
She’s not particularly proud of it, but it feels good. He deserves it. Robby’s being an asshole.
It happens on the second floor in his office he barely has time to be in. She can’t even remember what mistake she made, only that Robby’s glaring at her with enough vitriol that Samira’d thought she might get fired.
He gets to be mad at her. Always. For one thing or the other. He gets to yell at her. He gets to strike her down and tell her the exact moment where she messed up and then tell her not to ever do that again. He gets to berate her and derail any sort of self confidence she previously had stored up.
Robby is her teacher. Her mentor, of sorts. Her superior. Her attending. And Robby is a pain in her ass who won’t shut the fuck up.
“ – never do that again. Do you understand, Samira?” he stresses, for the third time, harsh and scolding.
Samira can’t keep the lid of her annoyance down anymore. Her eyes roll, from their usual place of dissociating at a spot of undefined colored carpet behind him. “I fucking get it, Jesus,” falls off her tongue. She looks him dead in the eyes now.
His face screws up. “What?”
“What? You’re allowed to be a fucking asshole to me— and me only, I might add— but I can’t be one back?” she snaps. She’s tired. Her feet hurt. She ate a protein bar seven hours ago. He did the stupid bend-down-to-keep-eye-contact move twice in the last three hours.
She watches the features of his face slowly drop, his lips close, and his eyes cloud with an emotion she can't place. Robby’s arms cross over his chest. The tips of his fingers slip underneath the sleeve of his scrub top. The aura of someone’s dad radiates off of him.
Disappointment. He’s disappointed.
Samira’s gut twists. Anger and guilt rush up her throat like bile and she fears she might actually vomit.
Abbot somehow knows the exact moment to show up. A few raps of his knuckles hitting the wood of the door are the only warning, because he gives almost no time between that and pushing it open accompanied by squeaky hinges.
“Hey, we got— ” His voice cuts off when he meets Samira’s dark eyes. There’s a moment of Abbot looking between the two of them with their hackles up. He clears his throat, blinking. “Uh… Multiple GSW’s on their way in. Need you both. Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” she says quickly, almost embarrassed.
“Yes,” Robby says at the same time, in that stern tone he tends to hold for interns trying to intubate a real person for the first time.
Samira’s head swivels, her vision snapping to him again, the anger rising inside of her again. The frown perpetually etched on his face somehow deepens.
“Well, we got people who need our expertise. Seven minutes out. Figure this out later, yeah?” Abbot’s voice cuts through the mud of Samira’s mind.
And she finds herself, for probably the first time in her career, walking away from Robby.
She watches the elevator doors close. It’s just her and Abbot.
They could have easily taken the stairs. Samira could have made it to the ED in time to check up on Trish, the woman with the stomach pains. The thing Robby was yelling about. Another expensive test or whatever. She’s pretty positive Trish has cancer.
She leans back against the handrails, a sigh reverberating from deep within her chest. Out of the corner of her eyes she registers Abbot moving toward the panel on the wall. Then the elevator lurches to a stop.
“What the f— ”
“Take a sec, Mohan. He’s crabby,” Abbot says plainly.
He hears him turn to face her, leaning his weight to the left and she imagines he’s giving her a signature soft half smirk, half smile.
His hand rests but a few centimeters from her own on the railing. She can’t bring herself to lift her head up, can’t bear to break eye contact with the floor tiles. Samira knows he doesn’t expect that of her. He never expects anything of her. Abbot only pushes, when he is certain she can do what he’s asking. Abbot questions her decisions in a way that doesn’t diminish her way of thinking. In place of doubt, he believes for her.
“You two are scarily similar, you know that right?” Abbot asks, hushed. As if he might scare her off if he’s too loud. Her gaze has migrated to the seam of the doors; she ponders if she could force them open to escape.
“I understand that he’s a hypocrite, yes,” she says dryly.
Abbot chuckles. “Yeah, he’s that too.”
Samira jolts when their fingers clash, warm skin instead of metal. Her head finally turns to look at him. He’s looking at the floor instead, a rare moment where they're not laser focused on the other.
“But he’s also fiercely loyal to his patients, the people he cares for. And I know, I know he gets on your ass about it, but Gloria’s the one up his for it, too. Not that it's right, but he’s trying— in his shitty Robby-like ways— to mold you into something that isn't him. He’s been burned by the system too much. It…”
“I’m not Jell-O.”
Their fingers are still pressed together on the railing when Abbot’s head snaps up, an incredulous chuckle falling from the smile his mouth makes and around a: “What?”
An involuntary, mocking laugh bubbles out of Samira.
“I can’t be molded to be whatever made up person he has in his head. I’m not Langdon. Or Whitaker. I was b— I can’t be any other way. I don’t have it in me to be any other way…” She trails off, somber and thinking about things she doesn’t have time for. The things that will get her through treating the GSW’s and Trish. And whoever else. And everyone else.
Abbot gives her a sad smile. Samira gives him one right back. He understands. He always understands.
She shivers when Abbot moves to press the emergency stop button back in. He looks her in the eyes after taking his spot back, the elevator churning to life to move the half floor down. She shivers, again, when his fingertips brush her temple to move a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Hazel looks like a soft place to land.
The elevators open, revealing Robby like a super villain.
But that’s not Robby. Not really. That version is someone she’s made up in her own head.
She forces a mask onto his face. He does the same to her. It’s just the game they like to play– even if it blurs the lines of knowing how he really feels about her and how she feels about him.
“With me, Mohan,” Robby says to her, holding up a trauma gown for her to slip into.
Jack ties it shut from behind, standing close to her back. Samira cranes her head to look at Robby’s face, gauge his temperature for her now. He slips safety glasses on her face with such a ginger hand, a tender but firm gaze, that she has to suffocate a gasp.
Then, as they all do, the moment ends. And they stumble forward into the chaos.
- - - -
The plane ride to Seattle was fine. Robby and Abbot were a few rows ahead, thankfully not bothering her, and Samira spent most of the flight anxiously looking over her powerpoint and rewriting flashcards.
Jack plucked her suitcase off the carousel before she could blink or reach it. He insisted on wheeling it to the rental car since she also had her duffel bag. They both waited as she got her key for her hotel room and again, once they all made it back downstairs to the registration station, while she got her badge for the conference. The three of them got dinner at a place close by, and chatted about patients and cases mostly. Robby drank a beer and eyed a baseball game on the TV angled on a pillar haphazardly. Samira picked at the fried pickles, her veggie burger and onion rings, her Coke— she blamed the post-flight adrenaline comedown. Abbot shoveled food in his mouth like it was his last meal, stole a few onion rings from her plate.
She takes a shower when they get back to the hotel. Tries desperately to ignore many things while washing her hair.
Jack’s knee leaned on hers four times during dinner. The last time it took him 78 seconds to pull it back.
Jack’s arm brushed her shoulder when he was reaching over for the ketchup.
None of that means anything. The body wash supplied by the hotel smells like a cheap eucalyptus scent, artificially clean. She scrubs it over her shoulders anyway.
Robby’s calf grazed hers briefly when he stretched his legs out after they got the appetizer.
Robby offered her a sip of his beer, told her she should drink a little tonight to cut the nerves of tomorrow and he was paying for dinner anyway. He laughed, like, really laughed, when she made a face at the soapy taste of the hops.
“Shitty fuckin’ IPA’s, dude,” Jack had commented, offering condolences for her tastebuds with a crinkles on the sides of his eyes and the last bit of ranch for the fried pickles. Samira laughed with them.
She nicks her leg with her razor. Not bad, but enough for her to take pause. Samira stares at the blood bubbling out of the cut— one second subdued by the water coating her leg, the next furiously moving downstream alongside it.
It means nothing. It’s presentation nerves. She’s always been acutely observant. People move their legs and arms and knees.
The blood spot on the extra, dry washcloth lies on the counter in the darkened bathroom. Where it belongs. Samira studies her flashcards in bed and mumbles the presentation to herself while Friends reruns play on the TV. 22 minutes and 53 seconds. Two halves of separate episodes.
Her eyes refuse to close, to encase her brain in actual darkness instead of focusing on the streaks of light poking through the curtains that refuse to close all the way and the fluorescents from the hallway flooding underneath the door on the opposite side.
The inside of her lip is chewed raw trying to ignore, forget, un-perceive.
She thinks about the handful of cases her and Jack ran the last time he was on swing shift, twelve days ago. Replays them like watching a movie in her mind. She wills herself to fall asleep thinking about the smell of antiseptic wipes and the texture of gauze.
A crushed pelvis. They both moved in sync. A birth. Robby helped with that one, too. Degloved feet. Jack called her Samira for the tenth time in the ambulance bay. A STEMI. When had he transitioned to Jack in her head? Kidney stones. What if he hadn’t interrupted that day in Robby’s office? A burn victim from a house fire. What if— A pregnant seventeen year old ultrasound to determine if she can administer mifepristone.
It means nothing.
She falls asleep.
- - - -
Samira’s presentation is basically perfect.
She stutters over a couple words in the beginning, but she finds a good rhythm and doesn't have to look at her notes as often as she had expected.
5 minutes and 17 seconds in, she finds Jack and Robby in the crowd. She keeps going back to them, sweeping her eyes over them watching her.
Samira is surprised Robby even showed up– she’s heard he usually favors schmoozing over old friends from college and their residents on the expo hall floor. His arms are crossed over his chest, high and tight, while he lounges against the back of the chair. Evaluating. Judging. His eyes twitch as she comes to the end of a point, a semi-conclusion that relates back to a statement she gave in the beginning. She can see other people nodding. She can see Jack nodding, his smile small but proud, eyes bright and shining.
Jack’s sitting up, leaning forward even, and nervously rubbing at his fingers with his hands clasped– a habit she’s noticed amongst their many night shifts.
One time she was giving a patient CPR, a patient she hadn’t expected to code, and was desperately trying to bring her back given her 14 year old daughter was out in the hallway— with Perlah and seemingly unaware of what was happening. Samira looked up to Jack for… something. Guidance, a miracle, a magic potion. Samira is experienced and knows when she’s going to lose patients, but she couldn’t lose this one. And Jack was standing at the foot of the bed wringing his hands and biting the inside of his cheeks, with a med student she can’t remember the name of anymore, but remembers he puked after seeing an emergency birth.
They lose the woman. Jack told her daughter. He waited for the dad who was en route, stuck in traffic. His hand found its way to her shoulder while she looked up at the board after crying– sobbing– in the bathroom for four minutes. She felt the squeeze in the dark of her apartment hours later.
She feels it now.
Samira finishes her presentation. The crowd claps and whoops for her. And then everyone is standing. She didn’t expect a standing ovation whatsoever. She feels a little awkward with her hands clasped in front of her, mouthing thank you to all the eyes she makes contact with and smiling ear to ear.
She catches their eyes one at a time.
Robby’s are glinting, sparkling from the lights high in the ceiling. He’s smiling. He’s clapping alongside Jack.
Jack is stretching his neck, to make sure he can still see her. His crooked teeth poke out of the large grin he has plastered on his face. She’s sure his hands hurt from how hard he’s clapping them together. He whistles and sees Robby laugh at him, tightlipped but unfiltered.
Her stomach unknots, finally, once she’s ushered off the stage to the backstage hallway.
After talking to one too many doctors about her presentation and taking a nap, she decides to eat whatever the kitchen at the hotel bar is able to whip up (a small caesar salad and garlic knots) and orders herself a celebratory drink.
Callum Underwood is an emergency medicine attending physician at UT Health Tyler. He spoke on a panel about rural emergency medicine and what working at the region's only Level 1 Trauma Center in East Texas is like. He has brown eyes, a dusting of facial hair, curly brown hair, a sharp jaw line, and a killer smile.
He approaches Samira at the hotel bar, where she’s cradling her second martini, waiting for Jack and Robby to show up. Introduces himself again with his slight southern drawl, and tells her he had heard about her presentation, that he was upset he wasn’t able to see it.
“So what does the esteemed Dr. Mohan like to do outside of the hospital?” he asks, after sitting next to her, tipping the neck of his beer bottle toward her.
Cal, as he told her to call him, has the sleeves of his button down shirt pushed up past his elbows. The burgundy tie he had on when she was first introduced to him on the expo hall floor is gone, and there's a patch of chest hair poking out from where the top three buttons of his shirt are undone. He’s cute, she thinks. Handsome, even, in the low light of the bar.
“Well, I’m a resident, so the outside of the hospital is an enigma to me. I barely know how I got here,” she says, smiling from the rim of her glass.
Cal laughs, loud and boisterous.
“I was a resident like a year ago, so I get it. No time for even the basics,” he says, smiling a grin that shows all his teeth. Flirting. He’s flirting with her. “But,” his eyes go hooded, flicking from his beer bottle and her face in a boyish way, “do you have time now?”
Samira feels a warm hand slide across the scratchy material of her slacks. She looks down at it, confirms it’s Callum’s large hand with his thick fingers and a gold ring on his pinky resting on her thigh, and looks up to his face. A sly, sultry smile and heated eyes. She bites the inside of her lip to constrict the gasp in her throat.
“You want another drink?” he asks in a murmur.
His fingers flex against her thigh. His knee is against hers. Samira’s belly swoops with warmth, heating the muscles surrounding her pubic bone.
She hums around the last dregs of her martini, clinking the glass base against the wood bartop.
“Let me go to the bathroom first,” Samira says. Fingertips graze the back of Cal’s hand– the tendons and veins creating hills to rove over– then they fall back to her own lap. His hand slips away as she stands from the barstool. He nods with a quiet smile.
Samira feels his kind, hot gaze on her back until she ducks past the pillars to the lobby.
Samira is not running away. She is not avoiding someone age appropriate and interested in her. She has to pee.
Samira feels his presence and his stare immediately.
“Oh, Samira!”
To her right, next to the fake fern at the archway that leads to the elevators, she finds Jack stepping up to her and the back of Robby’s head going the opposite direction toward the side exit to one side of the parking lot and a small garden. Jack grabs her bare elbow, huddling them against the wall out of the way of a group of residents stumbling their way into the bar. It burns. The sharp inhale she takes is covered by Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles playing overhead.
“I was just coming to find you. Me and Robby are gonna go smoke before we come to the bar, just wanted you to know,” Jack says. The slight rasp in his voice scratches her brain in a place that sends her body buzzing. Or maybe it's just the martinis. His hand is still on her elbow, searing a mark there. He gives her a small smile, no teeth showing, but his eyes crinkle at the edges.
“Can I come?” Samira asks, the words racing past her lips. Her eyes brighten at the idea of leaving Cal at the bar with his second Michelob Ultra, abandoning her vodka martini.
The feeling of his hand on her thigh has already faded, morphed into a what if for another hand, another person entirely. She only lets a small trickle of guilt into her system.
Jack’s face startles: eyebrows raising, mouth slightly agape, eyes wide. He drops his hand. A nervous chuckle tumbles out of him too.
“I’m just itching for a cigarette,” she lies. Samira fidgets with the seam of her pants. “I deserve one after my presentation.”
He laughs this time, full bodied.
His hand lands on her shoulder that’s covered by the fake silk shirt she has on. The fire reignites.
“Alright, Mohan, c’mon.”
Jack steers her toward the door Robby was heading toward. Keeps his hand branding her until they get to it, where he holds it open. The warmth in her stomach is ten times stronger than it was with Cal. She hates it. What Jack does to her is unprofessional, a distraction. She’s never had time to lean into it.
They walk next to each other down a sidewalk to an alcove in the side of the building. There are a few newly planted trees, a couple of bushes with budding flowers, a concrete pillar with an ashtray inlaid, and two cement block benches across from one another and only separated by a foot or so of space. It’s lit by a lone yellow-bulbed light on the side of the building. Robby’s sitting with his back facing them, a smoke trail lifting in the air.
The gravel crunches under her heeled boots. Jack’s steady hands help anchor herself, one on the small of her back, the other on her arm. She narrowly avoids brushing up against Robby’s legs when she spins to sit.
“Didn’t know Dr. Mohan was joining us,” Robby says as she eases herself onto the bench, his voice tight. Samira hears him exhale more intently and looks up in time to see a cloud of smoke obscure his features.
“She wanted a cigarette to celebrate,” Jack answers matter of factly, extending his hand with a smirk.
Robby rustles his hand into the pocket of his dark blue jeans, coming up with a pack of Marlboro Reds and a Pittsburgh Pirates themed lighter.
Jack palms them both, flipping the lid to the pack, and silently handing a stick to Samira. She takes it, gingerly placing it between her lips.
The movement feels foreign; the last time she smoked was in undergrad and she had been heavily drunk at the one frat party her roommate– Chelsea, the blonde nursing major– dragged her to before spring break. He does the same, but with more ease.
Finally he looks at her face, zeroing in on the cigarette hanging from her lips. His eyes are close enough to see the way his pupils dilate a bit. Jack tilts her head with a couple fingers pressing up on her chin and brings the lighter up. She looks through her lashes at Jack. Ignores the eruption from the skin on skin. She barely feels the heat from the flame, briefly remembers that she should lean back once she inhales to keep the embers lit.
His hand falls to shield the flame of the lighter from the slight breeze from his own cigarette in his mouth. The honey-brown in his eyes is more pronounced from the wall light and lighter.
She takes a real drag from hers, sucking in the smoke into her lungs to let it burn inside her for a moment. Letting it recede from her, she wonders how she can still feel Jack’s hands on her skin moments later, hotter than her lungs felt.
Samira watches him mimic her.
He closes his eyes on the drag in and pulls the cigarette from his mouth between his pointer and middle fingers. Her own hangs from her fingers in the same way, flicking the ash to the ground with her thumb and using the same hand to hold her weight on the bench.
She marvels, unabashedly, at how a cigarette adds another layer of attractiveness to his side profile. Her other hand moves to brush away the opened collar of her shirt, exploding more skin to the air.
“Do I need to, like, leave?” Robby asks.
Samira’s throat catches, leaving her to cough around the smoke cloud that's settled around them. She sits up, Jack’s leg pressing against hers and his hand is soothing down her back for a moment until she comes to, blinking away tears and looking at Robby.
She shakes her head, her face still screwed up. More so to rid herself of the feelings and desire coursing through her body than at Robby’s question. It was intimate. And he was right there, barely a foot away.
“You okay?” Jack asks, softly.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” she dismisses, looking at Robby looking at her.
His eyes have flicked from her face to the cigarette dangling from her fingers twice now. The look on his face is something between contemplative and confusion. Whatever he’s thinking is making the crease between his thick eyebrows more pronounced.
“It’s weird seeing you smoke,” he says after another beat. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen. He smirks a bit. “Not something I’d, uh, expect from you, Mohan.”
One of her eyebrows arches up. “You think I’d have a vape instead, then?” she jokes, a smile playing at her lips.
He rolls his eyes, more fond than when he does the same move to Gloria. “Those things are literal poison in a bottle, cigarettes at least derive from a plant.”
Jack laughs, stretching out his legs and knocking his left knee into Robby’s. Robby knocks his back softly. Samira hums, inhaling another drag.
A comfortable beat of silence passes. Robby’s eyes are still tracing down to the half-burnt cigarette in her hand and then back to her face. She does the same to him, tracing his figure down from his striped blue button down to his brown dress shoes and back up to his deep brown eyes.
His facial expression darkens. It reminds her of when he's mad at her. But it’s not.
And— she just checked him out, didn't she? Her boss. And whatever that charged moment was with Jack— Abbot. Her other attending.
Robby had checked her out, too. That was— that was something.
“There anything else you wanna do to celebrate, Mohan?”
“The night is young! You are young, Mohan,” Jack says, bumping her with his shoulder. “Could go bar hopping? Though that might actually send Robby for a loop.” He chuckles.
Her martinis have hit her. Hard. She’s woefully lightweight; it takes nothing for her to feel tipsy. The cigarette smoke on her tongue tastes acrid, it adds to her mild discomfort. She breathes in another drag, flicks the ash off to the side. Samira feels a little dizzy, but invincible.
So there’s no wonder that she answers Robby’s question with only the word “You,” wisping off her tongue along with smoke, in as best a sultry manner as she can make.
She's fairly confident one of them won’t keel over immediately. Someone has to be into it. Samira’s very good at reading rooms, she thinks.
The silence that follows swallows up all of that confidence. Her head is tilted up toward the sky, though. There has to be a star bright enough to wish on. She’s not avoiding the stares she feels from the two of them.
“Who?” Jack asks, his voice cracking a bit.
Gravel crunches loudly under one of their feet. His fingertips grazing her hand pulls her down from space to lock eyes. Her body is immediately flooded with want, because he is looking at her with want. Unwavering, as always.
A smirk tugs at her mouth, and then she turns her head.
Robby and his permanent melancholy features are looking back— coated in a thick paint of desire. Only Michael Robinavitch can make sadness, a prominent frown, look horny. Samira can’t see it but she knows his eyes have likely dilated even more in the dim light. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were both at least a little hard by now. The air around them is thick, not even factoring in the cigarette smoke.
“Who, Mohan?” Robby sounds as if he desperately needs to clear his throat.
Samira ponders.
There’s consequences to every action. This could go horribly. She could get fired. There might be a possibility she could lose her medical license. A UTI. Death.
Samira stopped enjoying barely living her actual life outside of work after PittFest.
“Both” rolls off her tongue easily, looking at Robby without an ounce of regret.
He blinks. Jack’s fingers resting on the top of her hand twitch.
They stare at each other for a moment. Robby’s eyes snap over to Jack. Samira turns enough to look at him too. Jack swallows as he likely tells Robby something telepathically. Then his hazel eyes are on her. There’s a question in them. She hopes he sees a yes in hers.
The gravel under Robby's shoe sounds loud as he toes at it, crushing his cigarette out. His tall figure extends in her peripheral. He steps to the concrete of the sidewalk.
“C’mon you two.”
- - - -
Robby’s hands are in the pockets of his jeans as they walk down the hallway toward his room on the seventh floor of the hotel. Jack is walking beside Samira, behind him. His hand is on her lower back. She can barely believe this is actually happening.
Robby uses the keycard to get into his room, holding the door open. Jack pushes her forward to slither past Robby. She toes her shoes off once they hit the carpet. The room is standard, a replica of her own down some stairs and another hall— King bed, grand windows looking out onto the rooftop of the building next door and the highway, a lamp on the end table and light fixtures above the bed (both already washing the room in a soft white), a desk and chair only a few feet away from the entertainment center/dresser combo holding up a dated flat screen TV. Some of Robby’s things– his open suitcase, a backpack, a notebook, and a worn paperback– are strewn about the room. She’s looking at the half empty water bottle and M&M’s wrapper on the desk when she feels warm hands slide across her silken covered waist. The door slams behind her, footsteps softened by carpet walk toward them.
“How do you want to start, Samira?” Jack whispers into her neck. His hands are skating over the fabric of her shirt– at her sides, catching at a button at her stomach, a whisper of pressure on the underside of her boob. Samira wheels around, rushing her hands up his arms.
“Kiss me.”
She doesn’t ask. He will oblige. Given their stolen glances and lingering touches as of late, he probably would have kissed her a year ago if she hadn't been so obtuse. She could have had him, all of him, before this. The realization hurts, knowing she’s the reason it took so long. He’s always so considerate, but she wants him to take from her now.
It’s soft– his lips against hers. Samira’s been kissed plenty. Well, not as many times as maybe the average person has, but she’s been kissed. But the champagne bubbles of want in the cautionary movement, the drag of his tongue across her mouth to beg for more, the sting (teeth, nails scraping over fabric, pulling the baby hairs at the nape of her neck), the exact moment he snaps– she might be easily swayed to give Jack Abbot a gold medal and a standing ovation. Jack’s hands cup around the hinges of her jaw, forcing her head to tilt one way, causing a gasping moan that lets him lick into her with abandon. She is then pulled, crushed, pinned to his body by his arm. Samira pulls him back, her arms winding tight around his neck, hands sinking into his curls.
“You two paint a pretty picture, hmm?”
Samira is smacked with reality; Robby’s voice rumbles close behind her.
“How long have you two been dancing around this?” he asks. Samira feels the heat of him but he’s not touching her. The anticipation thrums inside her body. Jack’s trailing his way down her neck so she tries to twist her head to get eyes on Robby.
“Probably almost as long as you two have been butting heads,” Jack mumbles into her neck. Watching Robby watch Jack has her insides boiling. Robby’s then grabbing at her hips, turning her to face him.
“This is about her, Robs. Her night, her presentation. Anything she wants.” Jack rasps into her shoulder, nosing underneath her shirt and accentuating with a bite. One of his hands wormed its way under her shirt untucked from her slacks and skims the lace of her bra. She shudders as it retreats, fingers starting to pick open the buttons enough to reveal lace.
“Yeah. Sure,” Robby says, squeezing her hips, his eyes focused on looking down at her body. Warmth rushes to her cunt knowing he’s imagining what's under her clothes. Has he ever looked at her like that before now? In the hospital, in her scrubs? Any of the times she’s been dragged to bars for workplace development events in t-shirts and jeans? The one time they ran into each other in the summer at the gym, with sweat dripping down her face, a matching purple workout set she ordered from Amazon because of a TikTok Trinity sent her? Would she have ever known?
Samira throws her head back onto Jack’s shoulder, hearing her belt buckle clink as Robby pulls it open.
Jack’s fingers work the rest of the buttons open. Her shirt slides down her arms, puddles to the floor. Large, calloused hands slither underneath the waistband to her hipbones and slide the pants down her legs. Robby and, presumably looking over her shoulder, Jack watch the large expanse of her skin present itself to them. Their breathing is labored, loud as she stands in the rich cobalt blue lace bra and panties she bought specifically for this trip. Not that she thought she was going to get laid. Truthfully, she thought she was going to end up in her room, alone, with only her fingers and her mind or pay-per-view porn to satiate her. The set was just for herself, for confidence on stage.
She watches different emotions flash over Robby’s eyes looking at her body. It lands on something dark, heated over coals— hunger. Jack’s hands pull her flush against his front, roaming possessively against her dark skin, across the swell of her breast over the lace. Samira can’t contain the moans. She turns her head, reaching up to grip at his hair and pulls his face to hers in a searing kiss. Jack groans into her mouth, and she feels his hand clench hard around her tit.
“Jesus,” Robby says, sounding wrecked already.
Robby invades her space at her front. She pulls away from Jack's mouth to gaze up with barely opened eyes and a whine. He’s looking down at her face, an unreadable expression. Stoic, but not. Gentle, but also not really. She’s too familiar with the mosaic he makes. He thumbs lightly at her hip, grating over the lace there. Her hips cant forward into his touch, another whine bubbles out of chest. The bra falls to the floor. Jack’s whispering a string of filth into her ear.
“The bed?” he asks. His hand skips its way up to catch her jaw when she grinds her ass back into Jack instead. He raises a thick eyebrow.
“Take off my panties first, Robby.”
His fingers flex against her jaw bone. She stares and stares until his eyes have turned almost black and his hand is skimming across her warm skin turning it hot. He cups her cunt, pulsing and dripping already, over the panties.
“Fuck,” he whispers. “Are you sure?”
He’s looking back up to her face. There’s genuine concern. It startles Samira, because she wants this. Given by the strain at the front of his jeans, he does too. She forgets he actually doesn’t hate her like she sometimes thinks.
Samira reaches down and covers his hand with hers, presses his fingers into the damp spot, tries to press him inside, ignoring the barrier and hopes he can feel her squeeze around them.
“What do you think?” she asks. Jack laughs behind her.
“She’s not afraid of you, Mike,” he says over her head. “Don’t be afraid of her either, dipshit.”
Then, as if they never existed on her body, thin blue lace panties drop to her feet. She can’t help the grin that spreads across her face.
The rest of their clothing is shed, besides the boy’s boxers. She made a whiny comment how that was unfair but Robby just spread her legs wider over Jack’s thighs, a scheming smirk to match.
Samira is situated in between Jack’s legs. She’s leaning against his chest and she thinks, even if it was just the two of them, this would be nice. Jack’s petting her hair and it kind of makes her feel like a cat, like she could purr. Robby’s thick finger is teasing her entrance.
“For us?” Robby asks, sounding in awe and looking up from her cunt through his lashes, his mouth hanging open like he can't be bothered to close it. It feels almost condescending.
She wiggles her hips, arches her back against Jack’s hand that's playing with her chest, pinching lightly at a nipple.
He pushes his pointer finger in, not bothering to inch the thick digit inside of her. A noise bubbles out of her chest, her brows cinching, and she puts more of her weight on Jack behind her.
“Asked you a question, Samira,” Robbby rasps, looking raptly at her pussy, at his finger pulling halfway out and coated and shiny with her slick.
“Fuck,” is what she answers. He pushes back in. Her hips buck to try and feel him more and she expects him to repeat the motion, fuck her with his finger. That doesn’t happen. He keeps his finger nestled inside of her, curling it ever so slightly to rub against her walls.
“Doctor Mohan,” Robby says, his tone reprimanding and full bodied.
Samira feels Jack hum behind her, his hands now tracing up and down her arms. He flexes his hips into her back, she can feel how hard he is there. “He wants you to answer the question, baby.” His lips graze over her shoulder.
The pet name makes her shiver. The use of her title, in bed, in that tone she’s heard a million times over has her shiver deeper. Samira— senior resident and esteemed emergency medicine doctor— has never been one to be rendered speechless during sex. And she’s had good sex. A few times. But Jack and Robby have barely done anything to her and she already feels like a puddle of molten goo. This was— This is something she has subconsciously wanted. There’s always been something about the two of them that has been intriguing to her. Chalk it up to dead daddy issues, but she likes what she likes. So she moans, reaching down for Robby’s wrist to do the work herself.
Robby plucks it mid air, his hand engulfing her own wrist, his thumb pressing into the center of her palm. “Is this,” he punctuates with a shallow thrust of his finger. “for us?”
One of Jack’s hands forces her chin forward gently. Samira blinks her vision clear again. Robby is looking expectantly up at her— sharp brown eyes, slight frown, tilted head.
“Yes.” This word comes straight from her chest, with a need to be believed.
“Good.” This word melts any sort of resolve she thought she had at this whole ordeal not affecting her.
- - - -
Robby wrings her first orgasm out of her with his fingers embarrassingly easily. He had barely thrust both his pointer and middle finger in twice, thumb circling at her clit, before she came. He kept going before pulling both fingers out and licking the sheen off while maintaining eye contact.
She looks down at his crotch where he’s now sat in front of her— one leg stretched out, lazily draped over Jack's calf, the other bent at the knee with his foot toward him. The navy boxer briefs he has on do very little to hide anything. He’s big. She could have guessed. Jack feels thick and damp at her back.
Her mouth waters. She feels empty, craves anything to make it go away.
Robby leans over. He bypasses her to kiss Jack above her. The sound she makes must sound exceptionally pained, because they startle apart and both of them are blinking down at her with concern.
“Fuck, don’t stop, assholes,” she says arching off the bed as if it would give her a better view.
“Not in charge here, Samira,” Robby says, casting his gaze down at her.
“Whatever. Kiss him again. God, could I get you two to fuck?”
Jack laughs, “Not this time, sweetheart.” He reaches over and pulls Robby’s face back to his. The idea of a next time has Samira’s heart racing twice as fast while she watches them make out.
Robby wiggles out of his boxers with Jack’s tongue down his throat.
She can’t help but make an attempt to wrap her legs around Robby’s waist. She feels his dick graze over her cunt, twin moans ricocheting in the room.
Samira is suddenly pulled to the end of the bed. Robby is towering over her, choosing to stand. His eyes are roaming over her body. She’s sure he’s about to ask her again if she’s sure, readies a retort in her head.
The tip of Robby’s cock is nestled inside of her.
Her entire worldview zeroes in on the feeling. The ugly brown curtains to her left, the blue and gold abstract painting above the desk, the weird texture of the ceiling— it all fades. Even Jack.
She bucks her hips, forcing him deeper a centimeter, if that. His hands, previously smoothing up and down her thighs softly, grab at her hips and force them down with pinching nails digging in her skin.
“God, you’re such a fucking brat, Samira,” Robby says, just above a whisper and coated in pounds of gravel.
She whines, lifts her head up to look down where they're joined, and tries to wriggle her hips against his hands, to move so his cock will go deeper inside. “Fuck, please, Robby.”
“Now you wanna beg? Hmm?” he asks, bending down so his face is close to hers. So he’s in her line of sight instead.
Samira is forced to look into his eyes; dark brown irises, blown out pupils, condescending stare. The deja vu rushes up her body like hot lava. Her cunt constricts around his cock, nails digging into his forearm and bicep, eyebrows knitted together so hard it aches. Another whine, higher and louder and more desperate, claws its way out of her throat.
Robby takes that moment as an opportunity to thrust all the way in with no warning.
The wind is knocked out of Samira’s body through a loud yell. She’s sure whoever is on the other side of the room can hear them. She couldn’t care any fucking less.
He kisses her. Which is truly not what she had anticipated happening next. It’s soft, just a hint of his tongue playing at the seam of her mouth. She moans, letting it through for a moment. His beard hairs scratch at her face. A hand worms its way between them and he circles her clit lightly. Their lips part with a small pop. Samira is panting and trying to follow his mouth, feeling dizzy with want and need.
Robby shifts up again to shove her thighs up a bit more and taps them both with his fingers as if to say stay here. The silent command sends tingles to the ends of her toes. Then his hands are trailing up her body, grazing her breasts, her nipples, and landing so his arms bracket her head.
Robby leans down and kisses her again, this time lifting his hips to pull his cock almost all the way out, then thrusts back in. Samira feels her stomach drop, a sound garbled around his tongue in her mouth.
He repeats the motion, gaining a steady rhythm. His mouth trails up her jaw, nipping at her dark skin.
“You’re going to come on my cock,” he demands, a quiet sternness drips from his words, into her ear. “You think you can do that, Samira?”
Samira nods furiously, involuntarily. “Uh huh,” she breathes out.
She knows it’s going to be true. Would be surprised if she doesn’t come in the next handful of thrusts with the way her limbs feel taut and her chest is starting to coil up already.
“You’re going to come on my cock,” he repeats, leaning his sweaty forehead on hers, his frenzied eyes sharply gazing into hers. He keeps talking, like he's possessed. Like he can’t help himself but dictate what she’s about to do with them. He can’t help but morph his tone to mimic a breathier version of his teaching voice. “And then Jack’s gonna fuck you. You’re gonna be good and come for him too, sweetheart. On his cock. You want that, yeah?” Samira’s left hand, previously tangled in the sheets, flies to grip at his shoulder. She hopes the scratches and divots from her nails last for days, weeks, months on his skin. “Fuck, Samira. And then— And then we are going to fuck you.” His voice is strained, his hot breath cascading over her face. “You wanted both of us, right?”
The thought alone pushes her over.
Samira’s whole body tightens, the pleasure runs hot and cold through her system with the strength of her orgasm. She throws her head back and cries out when fingers press hard onto her clit, after he abruptly pulls out of her. Robby’s other hand comes down on her mouth, blocking the noise of the sounds she can’t hear over the blood rushing in her ears.
She wrenches her eyes back open, with no real recollection when they had squeezed shut, and is met with Robby’s face hovering over her. He’s kneeling between her thighs, a red tinge covering his heaving chest, his neck, his face.
The bed dips to her right.
Robby’s hand moves with the tilt of her head. Jack is kneeling, sans his prosthetic. He’s staring at her, naked and laid bare for him, with the same reverence he gives her during a trauma case, watching her with a patient, watching her from across the Hub.
The look tears open her chest, raw and ragged. She pleads, the sound of her whine traveling through the spaces of Robby’s fingers. The hand still laying limp next to her reaches weakly toward Jack.
Jack shuffles forward on his knees, bracketing her thigh. He reaches forward and clasps their hands together. The pad of his thumb runs softly across her own.
“Can I eat you out first, sweetheart?”
The contrast of Robby and Jack almost brings tears to her eyes.
Robby helps position her on the bed for Jack. Then he slinks away to the chair in the corner.
Jack eats her out: slow, exploring, and then like a man starved. As if his only life objective is to make her come.
He stares at her from where his mouth is attached to her cunt, over the hair she had been slightly self conscious about in the hallway.
She knows, now, that he wants to devour her. There’s something underneath all of that that calls to her. It has a name, but she’s not sure she can say it. But Jack is… well, Jack. So he waits. He waits for her to come, on his tongue with her hands gripping his soft curls, his name falling fast off her lips, and his own nails digging into her thighs. He waits for Samira to pull him by the fist in his hair up to her so she can taste herself on his mouth. He waits for air, breathing her in instead.
Jack calls her baby and honey in a sickeningly sweet tone. Then Jack whispers into the skin of her stomach as he trails languidly back down to her cunt with his fingers explaining exactly how he wants to fuck her in a second.
- - - -
There's some maneuvering.
There's some lube she didn’t know existed pulled from a bag.
There's a moment where Robby is watching her ride Jack and all she can manage to focus on is the way he never looks away. His usual off-putting bashful self— the way he interacts with patients or nurses or Dana or Heather— has not made an appearance. For her he is hardened and stoic. It’s always been that way. Jack has to grip at her chin, just a tad too hard, to force her forward so she stops looking back.
Samira forces herself to center in on Jack. She is admittedly very attracted to Jack in a variety of ways. Jack is someone Samira could see herself being with. She wants to take her time, find out every little thing he likes, the different ways she can take him apart. But that’s not what tonight is for. Yet, he’s tender with his touches while she tries, and fails, to fast track her fifth orgasm. She whimpers frustratedly, bucking her hips rapidly.
He soothes at her side, rubs slowly at her clit, and kisses her long and slow. Hushed words fill their space once she’s pulled away, panting.
“I know, I know, slow down. That’s it. You’re doing so goddamn good, Samira. Just like that. Good girl. I know you can give me one more, baby. Just for me, yeah? You can do anything. I believe in you, always.”
He always knows exactly what she needs, what to say. She comes, body jerking and mouth moaning softly and uncontrollably, while Jack whispers into the skin of her neck about how bad they both want her, how much they respect her, how good and perfect she is here and in the hospital.
The two of them have talked about it, apparently.
Then, finally, there is the moment when Robby stands from the chair in the corner. He stalks his way over to the bed again. His skin is hot on hers. Her brain no longer processes the way she gets from point A to point B.
All she knows now is that she has them both in her grasp. Jack’s laying on his back now, she’s spread out over him, his cock still sheathed in her, her hands fisted in the sheets around his head. And then Robby’s holding his cock steady, a gravely “Ready?” as her only signal after the lube is smeared around enough.
“Robby,” she says, sounding like a warning. The head of his cock bullies its way inside her cunt next to Jack’s. He slowly pushes farther in, but doesn’t fully stop to let her accommodate the stretch of them both. She twists around, only able to stare at the top of her ass and how Robby's hands hold her open. She grapples to claw at his forearm. “Robby— fuck, fuck, fuck, Robby.” Samira’s voice climbs high and bounces off the four walls enclosing the three of them together. She stares at him biting his lip as he concentrates on splitting her in half and feels Jack’s hands soothing down her sides.
Robby shushes her, not bothering to even look up. “You’re fine, Samira.”
The words are even, calm, exactly the words he used when he walked her through an emergency fasciotomy three months ago. A rare moment where he taught her and believed in her ability. It’s still placating.
She clenches, whines again at the stretch. Jack groans below her.
“I have seen you and have heard about you doing more complicated procedures in the trauma rooms, and correctly diagnosing entangled symptoms that have several differentials more often than not, then I ever did as an R4– you are fine,” Robby says through his teeth. His hips are closing in. The sentence stabs into her back.
Jack moves her hair, likely frizzy and wild, off her shoulder. His fingers card through the tangles, his other hand moving to tug at her nipple, pulling a small moan out of Samira. Robby’s pelvis meets her ass finally. Where their skin meets is warm, like the heat emitting through oven mitts from a hot dish. Almost enough to burn.
She can feel Jack twitch inside her. Next to Robby’s cock. Her head swims again, nails digging into Robby’s forearm harder.
“Told you,” he says, finally meeting her gaze.
“So good, baby,” Jack murmurs into her collarbone. “Good for us, you’re so fucking good for us.”
“Shit,” she hisses.
Robby smooths his hand around to her hip, tilting his head to the side. His hooded tired eyes gaze lazily down her body and back up to her face. He squeezes his hand. A silent question.
There’s no hesitation when she nods. She’s never been a quitter.
The time between Robby pulling back to just the head of his cock inside and thrusting into her is microscopic.
“Oh, fuck,” is all Samira can muster as he starts fucking her in quick succession.
Jack moans alongside her, pulling at her hair. “God, fuck, Mike.”
Robby shushes again, “You’re both fine. Take it.”
Samira gasps at his words, curls her toes into Jack’s calves. “Jesus, Robby.”
“You asked for this,” he says in that familiar low growling tone, leaning over her back to breathe hot in her ear. “You wanted this so bad. You wanted us, you said. Both of us. So take it, Samira.”
Samira cries out and bends away from his words, her head falling to Jack’s shoulder. She can feel herself hurtling toward another orgasm.
Jack’s hips flex against hers, grinding his cock deeper into her as he moans. She chokes around a yell and digs her forehead into the meat of his shoulder. It doesn’t last long.
A large hand, calloused and worn, grips at the roots of her hair to pull her head up, forcing her back to arch. The loud yelp she barks out bounces off the walls. Robby’s cock is still moving at a punishing pace. She attempts to glare at him over her shoulder.
“Stop holding back, Doctor Mohan,” he grunts, enunciating her title and her name with a hard thrust each and another pinching tug at her hair.
Samira will deny the way her entire body trembles later.
Samira will deny how hot her blood burns when Robby’s eyes snap up to hers from looking at how he’s fucking her.
Samira will never speak of how images flicker through her brain of different positions, on different days, in different rooms. (Hers. Robby’s. Jack’s. The supply closet near the elevator. The on-call room with the gaudy floral print wallpaper and paper thin sheets. An imaginary cabin, far, far away from anything and everybody so they can take their time and try everything they want and wake the next morning to tangled limbs and a cool breeze and the sun rising and it’s still the three of them.)
“Come for us,” Jack babbles and whines underneath her into whatever skin his lips can reach, scratching at her sides, reaching down to messily graze her clit. “Come for us, baby, Samira. Fuck, I can’t— Mike, Samira. You can. We know you can. Believe in you, sweetheart. Be ours, be good for us.”
Robby groans, pained and desperate, and he, somehow, fucks harder, faster into her, next to Jack. The slap of skin on skin is pronounced. He’s still looking her in the eye.
Robby nods.
There is a cacophony of sounds pouring out of Samira’s mouth when she comes— clenching hard around the two of them, around the feeling of Jack’s twitching dick coming and the way it’s making the slide of Robby’s cock slippery. Someone’s circling her clit, making her reel.
Robby leans forward, gripping her waist, and bites her shoulder. The pointed, deep thrusts when he comes, pouring hot and mixing with Jack inside her, startles another yell out of Samira. She thinks she hears her name and Jack’s infiltrate a sob. Salty tears she didn’t realize were leaking out of her eyes fall into her open mouth.
The room falls still.
There’s a ringing in Samira’s ears.
Entwined, but aching and softening. Panting breaths from all of them. A noise that's a breath away from a sob when they both pull out of her– careful, slow, messy. The bumpy bridge of a nose rubs against her C7 and T1, accompanied by murmured praise she can’t parse. She’s maneuvered to her back, still touching sticky, sweaty skin that is not hers. Breathless words exchanged above her. A body and the warmth it holds pulls away.
“—s comin’ back, baby. S’okay. He’s comin’ back.”
She must have made a noise. Jack’s smoothing her hair, his nose rubbing at her cheek. She’s smushed against his side by his arm.
Their eyes meet and, not for the first time, she thinks she might be a little in love with Jack Abbot. She almost says it.
He whispers praises that wash over her and help to slow her pounding heart with soft hazel eyes gazing so lovely: You did so good, Samira; You were perfect, fucking perfect for us; Loved every second of it, so grateful for you, baby; A gift to us, to me. Thank you; We’ll take care of you now, let us take care of you, baby.
The press of the warm washcloth on her cunt startles her in Jack’s arms.
“Sorry,” Robby whispers, husky and rough. His glassy eyes flick up to her then back down to the task at hand. A scratchy kiss is pressed to her lower thigh.
It’s the first time he’s ever looked truly apologetic in her direction. Maybe it’s because he spent the last however many minutes fucking her so thoroughly to this state.
Another washcloth surfaces in Jack’s hands and he’s wiping her face, pushing strands of hair away, dragging it down her shoulders and over her chest where marks bloom. He’s saying something about taking care of her again, about one of them carrying her to pee, getting them all something to eat and drink.
“Sleep,” she croaks out.
“Bathroom first, sweetheart. I’ll carry you,” Robby murmurs, tossing the wet washcloths toward the desk in the corner.
She’s on the toilet, trying to blink back into reality, when the hand soothing her shoulder and scratching at her scalp retreats.
“Here.”
Samira looks up and he’s holding out a hair tie. It looks new, unused. When she doesn’t immediately reach for it, he pulls it back, puts it between his teeth. She’s reminded of the cigarette. Then he gathers her hair behind her back. It's haphazard and loose. She looks back up to his looming figure and he tucks a stray curl behind her ear. It’s entirely too domestic.
Samira stands on shaky legs, flushes, walks delicately to the sink to wash her hands. He crowds around her back, hands on her hips with thumbs circling the bone.
“Do you want a shirt to sleep in?” The words are murmured into her shoulder, barely audible over the running water. His sad boy eyes are looking at her through his lashes in the mirror.
She can see what Heather might have seen.
Samira detaches, stepping around him to reach for a towel on the other side of the long counter. She turns back to face him, looking anywhere but.
It tumbles out of her mouth.
“You don’t get to suddenly act different now that we’ve—“
“I’m not.” It’s cool toned. Even. Believable, if she were anyone else.
“Sure.”
He grabs her chin, forces her to look into his eyes. “I’m not.”
She searches his face. He does the same.
Something in her feels pulled, tugged. He is naked and so is she. She knows she’s looking into a mirror— cracked and warped in different places, but still a mirror. He's frowning, she’s frowning back. Maybe she wants to kiss herself.
She rises on her toes, grabbing at his forearms, and kisses him. He inhales loudly from his nose, kissing her back, forcing her backward a step.
“Don't start round two without me, you assholes. I can see you in the mirror,” Jack yells from the bed.
Samira pulls away, rolling her eyes, smiling small. Robby huffs out a laugh into the side of her face.
Maybe Jack was right. Maybe, in his weird, shitty, Robby-like way, he does care. She knows he can be kind. He can be gentle. He is a good man at his core. She thinks he can learn a thing or two from Jack, though.
She also thinks that maybe the way they are all intertwined isn't so bad.
Samira lets him carry her back to the bed. Lets him pull a threadbare t-shirt over her head, Jack’s boxers up her legs. Lets them both pull her in opposite directions between them, until they settle with Samira's back to Robby’s chest, Jack’s forehead against hers, legs tangled. She mumbles something about the light, her eyes heavy and her body worn. The light is flicked out. They’re drowned in darkness. Tired, fulfilled sighs from all directions fill the silence.
Samira leans into them both, unsure of where she will stand tomorrow. She can worry about that in the morning. For now, she gives herself the luxury and drifts off.