Home Is Where Your Heart Is
Rating: It's fine.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything!
Summary: She had always been fascinated with the human heart.
A/N: This is my first 100 fic! I'm a HARDCORE Kabby shipper. I'm only halfway through season two, but I'm in LOVE. For this story, let's pretend Marcus and Abby dated before she got married to Jake! :D
Sorry for any grammar mistakes and I hope you all like it!
Abby had always been fascinated with the human heart.
She'd spent hours reading and reciting the flow of blood through the different valves and chambers, having the circulatory system memorized in less than one week. She fought to get her hands on any medical books, educational videos, or old diagrams that could teach her more. She knew the electrical pathway, the different EKG readings, what each wave meant, what drugs would stimulate or slow down the blood-pumping muscle.
Which is why he knew, from the moment he learned she wanted to be a doctor, that she'd be a damn good one.
But as Marcus watched her pace back and forth across his bedroom from where he laid in his bed, he couldn't understand why she was reciting the pathophysiology and the mechanisms of the heart.
"You know this," he assures her, but she simply waves him off and keeps reciting. In a few days, she'd be taking her Medical Ark Admission Test. At twenty years old, she'd be the youngest to pass the exam. The exam would test every medical skill from simple terminology to complex carbohydrate pathways. She had spent the last few months taking over his room, filling his bed with hand-written notes, flashcards, torn pages from books, and materials alike. "You've recited the information so much, at this rate… I could probably past the MAAT," he teases.
His teasing isn't helping. She looks worried. And he realizes this is the first time she's ever been this distressed over an exam. So he pushes himself up from the bed, his legs hanging over the edge and his feet coming to rest on the floor. He reaches out quickly and catches her by the arm as she paces in front of him, pulling her to rest in between his parted thighs.
"Stop," he says. She opens her mouth to protest, but he squeezes her waist gently and her mouth promptly closes. "Why are you so worried?"
The apprehension on her face is enough for him to feel guilty that he hasn't been taking her seriously the past few hours.
"I've never used a stethoscope before, Marcus," she finally says, her eyes nearly filling with tears at the sheer embarrassment of her confession. How was she supposed to be the Ark's prized doctor if she didn't even have her own stethoscope? "I don't even have one of my own," she's almost reluctant to admit it, but she does… because she trusts him not to make fun of her for this.
"Abby," her name leaves his mouth in the most soothing tone she's ever heard and it somehow manages to calm her down. "Come here." Before she knows it, he's pulling her back onto the bed with him, guiding her head to rest against his chest with one hand tangled in her long hair.
She can hear his heart beat and she smiles.
"What do you hear," he asks her softly, trying not to impede the sounds of his heart beating against her ear. "Teach me," is all he says and she feels as if she wants to cry again. This was the most maddening feeling she had ever experienced, but Marcus could always bring her back down. She sniffs her tears back and starts to effortlessly explain what she hears.
"I hear your atrial muscle contracting because of the sinoatrial node firing. The signal goes through the bundle of His, down your bundle branches, through the Perkinje fibers until it reaches the atrioventricular node and causes your ventricles to contract." He closes his eyes at the sound of her voice and he wouldn't trade this moment for anything in the universe; her lying atop him, her ear pressed against his chest above his heart while his fingers absently play with her long hair, is what twenty-two year old Marcus Kane wanted for the rest of his life.
—
He sneaks her out from her quarters in the dead of night, hours before her MAAT, and frowns at the bags under her beautiful brown eyes. He knows it's the only chance he'll have to see her before she goes off to test for hours and before he has to report to the guard for his shift that morning.
"Marcus, you should be asleep," she protests, fighting off a yawn as he pulls her by her hand through the empty corridors, leading her into his dimly lit bedroom as quietly as possible.
"I should say the same for you," he retaliates, but she shoots him a well knowing look.
"You have to report in a few hours," she challenges him. He's stopped, standing in front of his bed that's got a small rectangular box that's wrapped with a simple bow. He picks it up, turns to face her, and presents it to her with a grin.
"And you have a medical exam to conquer." She narrows her eyes, slowly accepting his gift and carefully unwrapping the box without ever taking her eyes off of him.
"Marcus," she warns. But whatever was about to come out of her mouth is long forgotten as she opens the old, beaten box to reveal a brand new stethoscope. "Marcus," she says his name again, this time in pure awe. "What- how… did you get this," she asks in wonder, a shaky hand hovering the piece of medical equipment she had yearned for in all of her years.
He's too elated to answer her question, more concerned with whether or not she likes it.
"What do you think," he asks, nodding towards the stethoscope that's gotten her favorite color incorporated into the heavy-duty tubing that'll intensify her favorite sound. She's almost afraid to touch it, but when she runs her fingers over the cool metal of the diaphragm, she can feel her eyes tear up at the thoughtfulness of it all. Things like this were very difficult to come by. And knowing his tendency to follow rules to the letter, she knew it must have been that much harder for him to get his hands on something this rare.
"I think I love it," she finally confesses. Her gaze turns to him, their eyes meeting and he slowly takes the box from her. He's careful taking her new stethoscope out from the box, holds it up for her to admire, and slowly drapes it around her neck. She smiles through the joyful tears that are rimming her eyelids and stands on her toes to press a thankful kiss to his lips.
"It looks good on you," he comments with a grin when she reluctantly pulls her lips away from his. She smiles at his words and looks down to confirm that she does, in fact, look like a doctor. "Wanna test it out," he asks finally. She nods her head slowly, reaching up and removing the stethoscope from around her neck and inserting the ear pieces as if she had done this a million times over.
The amount of pride that courses through his body will never be comparable to anything else, he figures. His girlfriend, his soulmate, was a doctor… had accomplished her dreams.
And all it takes is her placing the cool metal under his shirt right above his heart for him to see the excitement in her eyes at being able to hear a human heart, truly, for the first time in her life, for him to realize that he was in love with this girl and her simple joys.
A/N: GAHHH THEY'RE SO CUTE I CAN'T EVEN. Review and let me know!