On Call (Sam/Cara, 1200 words, T)
Title: On Call
Fandom: SPN
Pairing: Sam/Cara
Characters: Sam, Dr Cara
Wordcount: c.1200
Rating: T
AO3 link
Summary: Sam calls Cara
Author's note: A present for my friend Audree's birthday, a timestamp to my fic Marks Made, a coda to episode 11.02. Essentially it's just MORE SAM AND CARA, okay?!
It's probably six weeks later when he rings. She's at home, exhausted after a twelve-hour shift, sitting on the couch in stockinged feet watching a programme about drag queens and eating ice cream. Really, she ought to be in bed, but after a difficult day in work she needs this kind of wind-down time, even if it comes at the expense of sleep.
Anyway, it's a good thing she's awake, because otherwise she'd definitely have missed his call. As it is, the noise of her phone makes her jump; but it's the name blinking at her from the centre of the screen which really shakes her out of her ennui.
"Sam?" she says.
"Hey." He sounds as tired and dispirited as she's been feeling most of the evening.
"What's up? Bad day?"
"Um," he says; breathes out, shaky. "Yeah, not great."
"Hey, I'm sorry," she says. "Wanna talk about it?"
"You'd think so," he says, "given that I called you. But. Maybe in a little bit." He hesitates. "Sorry, I didn't... I didn't really think this through."
"Hey," she tells him, "no worries. I said you could call any time, right?" He makes a small, doubtful noise, but she ploughs ahead anyway. "So. Tell you what'll make you feel better. I'll unload about my day. Then you can tell me about yours."
"Yeah," he says, "okay," soft and sweet, and she launches into a long description of her nightmare shift; hamming up the sillier details on purpose to make him laugh. Honestly, it was kind of a horrible day. Jack was off which left her running around two wards trying to keep on top of everything, and there had been some nasty lung infection going around in gerontology and three septuagenarians had died. Old, right, and you should recognise that these things happen, but three in one day is tough to take. She doesn't dwell on that stuff or anything, focuses on the moment when she found herself changing her vomit-stained scrubs for the third time that day, but by the time she gets to the end of her story it's evident that Sam has got her pegged.
"I'm sorry you had to deal with all that," he said. "Not just the vomit, but. It's hard to work to save people and see them die anyway. That's never easy, right?"
"Yeah," she says. It's. She was fine about it, really, would have been fine by the time she got to the bottom of this tub of Ben and Jerry's; but something about the unexpected sympathy touches her and she finds herself fighting a lump in her throat. “Just how it goes sometimes.”
His voice is honey-warm. “You do an amazing job, Cara. You’re amazing.”
“Jeez,” she says, uneven. “I’m supposed to be cheering you up.”
“You are,” he says. “You are.” He pauses. “How’s the house?”
It’s a good topic; shifts her off the dangerous ground she’s been occupying and makes room for another self-consciously comic bit about the long feud she’s undertaken with one particular eBay seller, who sold her a bunch of art deco light fittings and then sent her something completely different. By the time she’s finished recounting the story, Sam’s laughing and so is she, lying flat on the couch with her feet up on the arm of it like a teenager on the phone to her friends. “I’m serious,” she says. “There’s not enough negative kudos in the world.”
“EBay can be dangerous,” Sam says. “You wouldn't believe the weird shit I've bought on there before.”
“I don’t even want to know,” she tells him. There’s a companionable silence, the creak of a bed through the phone. “Ready to talk about your day?” she says.
“Huh,” says Sam. She can almost hear him thinking. “I don’t… it’s a long story and I don’t wanna make you listen to all of it,” he says, “but I… it’s been a really long day.”
“Okay,” she says.
“I guess… um. I guess I had a, I got a diagnosis,” he says, “and for a while I thought that. Um. I thought that maybe I was gonna die.”
A shiver runs right through her, when he says it. It’s stupid. Until they met again the other week, she’d not seen him for six years. He could have been dead all that time. But. Jeez, Sam. What a thing to say.
“It’s okay,” he says, hurried now, “I’m not. It’s… I guess it turned out to be wrong? Or it wasn’t… anyway, I’m better,” he says, “Or getting there. But it was a nasty few hours.” He laughs again but this one’s not convincing like the one about her stupid lampshades. “I’m at home now,” he says, “in bed, but I can’t stop thinking about it. And so.”
Honey, she wants to say. Darling. Sweet thing. “Sam,” she says. “I can’t imagine. That’s horrible, so scary. Christ. You poor thing. And of course you’re worrying about it. You can’t just turn off that feeling.”
“No,” he says. “Not really.” He pauses. “I should. In my job, I should be prepared for that kind of thing, you know? And I thought I was. I thought. I’ve been okay about dying. But. I’ve had a couple of close calls lately and I guess I’m not as ready as I hoped.” He sighs, long and weary. “I don’t know. I’ve kind of lost sight of what’s... right. For me.”
“Buddy,” she tells him, firm, “you being alive is definitely what’s right, okay?”
“Mm,” he says, noncommittal. Then he draws in a breath, hardens his tone into cheerfulness. “I’m just tired. It’s okay.”
She wants to ask him where his partner - his brother? - was while all this was going on; where his brother is now. Only when she saw him, Dean didn’t exactly seem to make Sam feel good, and she doesn’t know how much of how he’s feeling right now is mixed up with whatever’s going on between the pair of them.
“You don’t have to be alright,” she tells him, instead. “But you do kind of have to be alive, okay? I’m really happy you’re alive.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I mean it, Sam,” she says.
He’s quiet again for a few moments, maybe as much as a minute; the two of them just breathing into the phone.
Then, “Well,” he says, and his tone is different again, more confident, “there is one way I can think of to remind myself that I’m alive.”
“Oh really?” she asks him. He can’t see, but she’s grinning. She opens her bent knees, shifts her feet a little further apart.
“Yeah,” he says, and she can hear the answering smile in his voice. “Honestly, as a doctor, I’m surprised you didn’t propose it already.”
“You’re right,” she said. “What an oversight.” She slides a hand under the top of her skirt, just resting it on her stomach. “Lucky for you, I’m on call any time.”