18+ | the pitt x animal kingdom crossover | tags: no beta we die like mrs. abbot, popemira, mentions of past animal abuse but the animal is safe and healthy now, Andrew "Pope" Cody is Down Bad, Fluff, Angst, J Cody never existed, Short Chapters, Fic is Already Written, Minific, POV Alternating, pope cody worships samira mohan, Getting Together
⤹ full chap below. likes, comments, kudos, rbs appreciated! ⤵︎
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Pope could plan bank robberies, yet he’d fumbled a simple operation. He didn’t want the smart, pretty neighbor that he yearned to make life easier for, finding out he had woken up at 5:30am to place her mangled stray into the litterbox (he loathed having something as unhygienic as a litterbox inside his home, but hated the thought of her stray freezing to death even more) before getting aptly bundled up to go clear her windshield off. He’d set the other scraper brush at her door- it didn’t fit in her mailbox- along with the gloves before emptying the kitten’s bowl into a ziploc bag he stuffed into his pocket and heading to her car.
In true Pope manner, he was in the zone shovelling the sidewalks and clearing the car off. So much so, in fact, he missed the sound of her door opening and closing entirely.
“Hey!”
Pope froze and stood stock still from where he’d been brushing the very last spot: the driver’s side mirror. Despite the downy coat his blood ran cold to the bone at being caught, adrenaline pumping almost as much as it had that unfortunate day at the bank when Baz had driven off and sent him to prison. Don’t speak. Don’t move. Maybe run? No, maybe she’ll forget you were there-
“Hey, what are you doing?”
Her voice wasn’t angry, but it sure wasn’t chipper. Quite frankly, if this was the doctor woman (and he guessed it had to be) he was terrified of her. Slowly, he turned to face her from where she stood on the salted stoop in front of her door.
She was very pretty, he thought, and waiting for an answer. Seeing as how he didn’t have one, and it would’ve died on his lips anyways at the sound of her voice, directed at him, coming from the face he’d only seen from one story up- he cleared his throat and tried to conjure up even one good sentence to put her mind at ease.
“I, uh,” Pope licked his lips. When, aside from his words to the kitten last night, had he really spoken to another person? Had it been weeks? Two full months since his move? He went on: “I’m cleanin’ my car off.”
“That’s my car,” Samira looked up and down the street, and around the small lot attached to the apartment building, “And it’s the only red car that’s ever here.”
And he didn’t have anything to say to that because, true to her intellect, she was right. Pope didn’t say anything, just shuffled several steps away from her car. They stood, unmoving, locked in an unspoken stalemate. Then;
“I’m… not mad, and thank you, just… people are creepy, you know? I can’t afford a new car so if you did something to it please just tell me so I can Uber. And there’s nothing worth stealing in there, trust me. Just tell me if you’re gonna take my engine when I’m sleeping so I leave enough time to grab the bus?”
The eyebags under her eyes made sense, and not just because of the inhumane hours she worked. She sounded like a woman at the end of several ropes. Pope wanted to know every single person responsible for driving her to that point. Instead, he looked up from where he’d been staring at her tire. Never at her. Never even near her.
“I ain’t gonna steal from you. I… you’re a doctor, I dunno. Shouldn’t have to… and the sidewalks… and that scraper you had, gonna scrape your windshield.”
Salt crystals crackled under her shoes. He saw them come into his view, not far from the tire, but did not look up or to the side. Better to stare at the tire than see her reaction to him.
“So this was you?” The gloves waved into his line of sight and then back out of it. He didn’t move, nor did he reply. It seemed to give her all the information she required.
“Are you the new neighbor?” She tried instead. Pope shifted his weight to his other foot awkwardly and, having figured this deserved some response, gave one singular nod: up, and then down, almost imperceptible. But she noticed and a hand came into view wearing the gloves he’d purchased. “I’m Samira. Sorry it took me so long to-”
“You work a lot,” Pope blurted before she could finish the utterly unnecessary apology. He finally allowed himself to look almost up and, from the new angle, he could see her face at the top of his vision without risking any eye contact. “Don’t say sorry.”
“Yeah, I… I really do appreciate this, but please don’t feel like you-”
“You gotta warm up your car. I could do it if you slide your keys-” Pope stopped himself. Creepy. Creep. Stop being creepy. Stop being scary. You know how you are. “Your car shouldn’t make the noises it does. I can check it out when you’re back, but… let it warm up, y’know? So you don’t break down. Cold starts aren’t good.”
Her eyebrows raised. They were pretty. Their shape was pretty. Her eyes were so big and beautiful, and she had a dimple (which was weird because it meant she was at least kind of smiling) and a curl fell down from the edge of her coat’s hood. Samira was very pretty, and very nice, he thought, and he liked clearing off her windshield and would very much enjoy continuing to do so.
“I’m Samira,” She repeated and offered a hand out. Pope’s head tilted to the side.
“I know, you already said-” He mumbled, then blinked. Hard.
Stupid.
Weird.
“I’m P- Andrew. Andrew,” He stammered. Without warning he suddenly took a big step past her without shaking her hand, only stopping once she was behind him again to say: “I’m not going to do something bad to your car. I’m not like that. I just… wanted to help you. I…”
Pope debated saying the next part but, since everything else sounded exactly like what a creepy dude planning something sinister would say, he decided a grain of unfortunate truth was fair play. “I don’t have a lot to do. And you seem so busy, I just… just wanted to be neighborly.”
Pope disappeared inside before she could respond. He heard her car start and run for nine minutes before it pulled out of its parking spot.
“This kitten is a sweet little angel. Does she have a name?”
“No. Well, I- I mean, maybe,” Pope said. The vet poking and prodding at her with gloved hands waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t, so she went on with the inspection. As she worked, he wondered what doctor neighbor Samira was like at work, wearing rubber gloves and scrubs and a mask and saving patients with needles and whatever the hell else doctors used. She was probably a good, smart doctor, if he guessed.
The vet was turning the writhing, shrieking cat on its back to observe its bubblegum-pink stomach when she spoke and broke Pope from his train of thought. “Well, Mr. James,” Pope cringed; that new name would take some getting used to, “Other than the obvious, she’s in about the best condition she could be.”
“The obvious? You can tell what happened to her?”
The vet’s eyes darkened with a brief flicker of sadness and she adjusted her mask. “You said this was a stray, right?”
Pope nodded.
“Well, it looks like she survived some pretty severe abuse as a newborn. Some surface level scars from a razor blade, intentional burn patches across the body,” Pope must have looked horrified. She added, “Unfortunately, with strays or newborn cats people don’t want… it’s not the first time I’ve seen it. She must have gotten put out quickly, and they probably left her to die, but lucky for her, she lived and found you. So, we’ll have to have her back in soon for a checkup and I’d like to prescribe some-”
Pope was only half listening. He was staring at the little kitten as it made itself as small as possible, shivering against the furthest wall of its carrier. Somebody tried to kill her and afterwards she had to accept food from other humans because she had no other choice.
What if she had ended up in any other alley? What if somebody stopped setting out food for her once they saw her body, mangled in scars, sliced off left ear, past malnourishment, patchy hair, and bald spots?
What if Samira had never been there?
Andrew set the carrier in his passenger seat and drove back from the vet in teary-eyed silence, one hand on the carrier the entire ride home.
And if I said I’m writing a Rohabbot one-shot where Robby and Jack are partners at a law firm and Samira is a mid-level assoc working under Robby (focusing on pre-trial and research/writing) while Jack is OBVI head of litigation and Mohabbot bond over shared loss and start dating and there’s preexisting Rabbot. And WHAT IF I SAID Samira and Jack take Robby on a trip…. To Paris. And WHAT IF I SAAAIIIIIDDD this gif is absolutely inspo
My headcanon is that Jack only started working nights regularly after his wife died bc he couldn't sleep in their bed at night without her, and I think sleeping became a bigger issue for him after she passed. And when he and Samira inevitably move in together, he will adjust his schedule as much as possible to have the most overlapping time off with her bc he hates being home alone especially when she could be there with him.
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