#queer pitt

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey

Chapter 25: Part 5 - The End

Summary: This is the end, and it is 45 pages long, nearly 20k. It is a whole year in the life of our romantic heroes. I could have broken it into smaller chapters, but I also just couldn't. Forgive me, readers.

I am sending Jack and Samira into a future where they can continue living together off-screen from the Pitt.

Author’s note: Song choice:  Samira uses Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" to get into herself and finally come into her own. Jack: Iron & Wine with "Resurrection Fern" which finds new life in his relationship with Samira. For Jack and Samira "The End" by Luke Temple.

WC 18,954; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

You came down to Pittsburgh when you were ending your first trimester. Even though you no longer needed the monthly visits to try and get pregnant, you and Jack kept scheduling them. He’d come up to New Jersey back in April and quietly filled your basement, walk-in closet, and car with FEMA-grade emergency boxes and go-bags. He had gifted you a CB radio saying, “No matter what, whatever happens, you can always find me. Okay?” 

You weren’t married. You probably would never be married. But giving him that space meant Jack let you into parts of himself deep enough to hurt. Like when he’d called you after the flowers and told you about Jason. Like when you saw that his first response to news was worry and calculation, but having Ahmed’s joy gave him joy.

The drive was long, but you ended up enjoying the chance to calm your thoughts or listen to a book. The morning sickness, however, was becoming tiring. You were past week 14 and had hoped it would fade away by now, but an alarm would ring in your body that you either needed food right now or it would throw up.

You guessed that some of the nurses and orderlies had figured out your bathroom trips and sallow face, but surprisingly the doctors were aloof. Being in geriatrics maybe kept them far enough away from obstetrics that they forgot to look for the telltale signs. That was okay, you didn’t want to disclose until you had to. On the way to Jack’s you ate a bagel with so much extra cream cheese that thinking about it too long would make you sick, but it made your stomach happy. Then you picked up a Coke slurpee, something you had had maybe once before and now craved regularly. Besides that, the cravings weren’t especially interesting: crackers, cereal, rice, and a whole lot of 50-year-old dick.

You’d thought that pregnancy would make you feel worse with your body dysmorphia and the strangeness that came with neither being female nor male. But as you marveled at the biology of your body, you felt like it was healing your relationship. There was nothing shameful or alien here. Besides the emesis, you felt like your body was tapped into a routine of care and order that you couldn’t have organized on your own. You stopped fighting your body and instead admired it. And it made you shockingly horny.

The little curve to your stomach was not yet noticeable but you wondered if you would feel this way when carrying bulkier weight in a few months. Would you want to throw down on Jack so fast it alarmed him, made him ask you to slow down, or even brought out the surprise oxy! last month when you tried too many things too quickly. Usually, right after you’d finishing throwing up your guts and you’d brushed and gargled, your mouth would water. Your whole body would surge with a carnivorous lust and you’d want to get him deep down your throat. The sweats would pass, the relief would come, and then you would have the hunger.

Then there were times where you needed him face down between your legs to relieve all the new sensations happening there. Sometimes you would get a heat or almost an itch, like you had been riding a bike with a bad saddle for too long. Your pubic bone would be sore, your labia hot. It hadn’t exactly been a recipe for intimacy until Jack had been giving you his bedroom eyes and you’d decided What the hell and ended up loving it more than you’d expected. Now you craved him—more so since you only saw him monthly.

“Send a message to Jack!” You shouted at your phone while sipping your sweet, icy drink. What would you like me to say to Jack!? “Get your oxygen now because I’m going to smother you as soon as I’m through that door.”

Siri repeated it back and you agreed it sounded right.

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey

Chapter 24: Part 4.5 - Sticky

Summary: Jack visits Samira in New Jersey to see what her life is like outside of Pittsburgh Song choice: This is another Outro only, with Ellie Goulding's "Anything Could Happen" having a very different meaning in this context. Samira is doing this without Jack, finding what she can do on her own, what she wants. It's trembling, but it should still be empowering.

Author’s note: Jack reached the end of the relationship, the place where it would be safe to let go and stop loving Samira. But he couldn't stop. And even with all the distance and clarity, Samira grew stronger and bolder, but ever more in love with Jack. What can they do? Their strengths, the worlds that make them the people that they are, are so far apart.

WC 2,854; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

Tika had filled your closets with lush bird of paradise wallpaper. When she wasn’t at the shore she spent Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays with you. The weekends were worst at her house, where her parents were locked together without the buffer of work. She and Suchi made little TikTok projects to see how long it took to make over a space: filling a bookshelf in the most aesthetically pleasing (though impossible to navigate) books and adding all your embarrassing trinkets and baby photos; repapering the cabinets in your kitchen and painting the outsides ochre yellow; using tiered shelving to fit extra party dishes for the events you were apparently going to begin hosting. You gave them two hundred dollars each weekend and a Pinterest board, and let the chips fall where they may. You most appreciated the saffron black-out curtains in your maroon red bedroom, your favorite armchair in a corner to keep your stacks of folded laundry you were too tired to put away.

But the house was unfinished and strange. It made you nervous to show it to Jack. It was early October and the fall in New Jersey was superior in every way to Pittsburgh. He circled your driveway, the soft echo of his car door slam waking you out of the panicky worry in your bedroom. It was mid-week and there would be no cousins, no interruptions now. But you had already scheduled a dinner delivery for nine that night. You had no plans to leave the house until the conference made you.

He dropped his bags and wrapped you in a kiss that started sweet but grew urgent. You hadn’t expected this, after his long drive. He pushed you by your hips toward the stairs that must lead to your bedroom, but you, reluctantly, had to pause him.

“I want to talk to you about something first,” you said. “Something… serious.”

“Oh,” he leaned back. “Okay?” You could see the gears turning in his head, the worst ideas coming up first.

“It’s not bad,” you said, “embarrassing for me, a big decision for you, but I… I just love you so fucking much, Jack.”

He smiled, relieved. He kissed you again, with the sweetness and reassurance that you were still his after all these months. You brought him to your dining room where so many family conversations had happened. The table was new, since your mother had taken the one you grew up with. You’d had to turn down a dozen suggestions from Suchi before you found what you wanted. Manaka had actually picked it up for you, her husband Juan helping move the heavy three-leaf mahogany carved giant into your home. 

“I want a family, Jack,” you said, sitting adjacent to him at the table to hold his hand. “It’s always been what I’ve wanted and I’m not going to make it a deal breaker for us. We live different lives now, and when you say you don’t want to be a dad—well, I don’t have to understand it to respect it. But… I don’t want anyone else. And I… I want to be connected to you… forever.”

He was listening and you could tell he was emotional, but which emotions you weren’t sure of yet. His eyes glistened.

“My friend is a lawyer and she says there are plenty of agreements written up to keep… donors… safe. I have a sample one, if you want to read it. If it doesn’t work out, then that’s just biology and I’ll go to a clinic. But before I do that… I wanted to ask you first.”

“I feel like you’re going to get on one knee,” he joked, wiping at his eye with the joke. But then his eyes, bright in the late sun of midday—the way he was hungry for you, how closely he listened, not giving you any signs of refusal—you did. You got onto one knee and held his hands in yours.

“Jack Abbot,” you asked, your voice cracking and a nervous smile on your lips, “would you give me a baby?”

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey

Chapter 22: Part 4.3 - Spring pt 2 JACK

Summary: Springtime for our lovers, from Jack's POV. Song choice: The Weeknd's "After Hours" for a long, sensuous make-up song between Jack and Samira. They've finally dropped the L word and their intimacy has gotten another level deeper. Author’s note: I hope you enjoyed Jack telling this one directly to you. One of the most romantic books I've ever read (not telling which) is in second person and you only learn who is narrating at the end. Jack has been telling this story about you. WC 2,760; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

When she told me she loved me that first time, when I said it back to her and gathered her against me, I wanted to unfold her. I wanted to search the dark corners of her insides for every last harm I’d done to her and heal it. I wanted to bloom her open to the sunshine I’d kept her from.

She had been scared to tell me she loved me, and it was my doing. I’d done that to her. A few times she had also scared me—some of our fights when she hewed too close to venom, that awful time when I took her home and thought she’d gone down the basement stairs—but very little of that was Samira. The worst of it was me. It wasn’t Samira’s fault. She was new to fighting, and getting better at it—she never said the words that couldn’t be taken back, no matter how close she got.

I was the one who kept hurting her–-hurting us. And I knew better by now. Of course my therapist didn’t want me in SWAT for my hobby. Of course I had to come to grips with the dancing deathwish I still found myself waltzing. Now she was trying to push me about the house, another layer of bullshit I didn’t want to think about-–didn’t used to have to think about. 

But as I moved her panties aside and pushed two and then three fingers inside Samira, I was pushing back. This time, I was pushing away her fear. She kept her eyes on mine as she bit her lip to try and keep quiet. She’d been afraid to say she loved me because I’d seemed unable to say it back. I was the coward. I’d felt it the longest, and held back this whole time. I couldn’t even tell her when I knew I’d fallen in love, because it had to have been early. Too early. If I had to guess, it was the moment under the umbrella, being so near to her, wanting to know her life and share it with her. But this, what we had now, wasn’t giving her any kind of life. I could only give her days at a time.

“You have to keep quiet,” I murmured to her, nodding to the open windows, “eyes on me. Practice for the Pitt.”

She shuddered, mouth agape, her skin hot under the Pittsburgh rainbow t-shirt she always wore to bed. Her nails dug into my shoulder, under the scapulae of my back. Once or twice at the gym when I’d been changing my shirt, a younger man would say, Damn, and I’d turn to see if it was a proposition. But they weren’t admiring me, they were admiring Samira’s work. 

She couldn’t look away which meant she couldn’t bury her face into the meat of my body for a quiet scream. Her brown eyes were locked with mine and I felt the ease of control stumble.

“I love you,” I whispered again. Feeling my sinuses crackle as I let myself really feel it. “Jesus Christ, Samira. I love you,” I broke the eye contact for us, bringing my mouth to hers as she whimpered and rocked against me. Her breathing was fast and she was rolling her shoulders, arching her back, her whole body electric. “Come for me,” I said in her ear. She pulled me back by my hair, looking me in the eye and tilting her head back, fighting against the orgasm.

“I lo-love you,” she uttered. That broke me. I pulled her against me and kissed her as she came, her cries muffling into my mouth as I groaned with her, feeling tears in my eyes and a sob in my throat. I only ever cried for grief. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried for joy.

We kissed and fucked like newlyweds, or like two people who knew they only had a few weeks left with each other. We were desperate. When I was finally inside her, she made me come so hard it gave me a ringing headache, but I didn’t care. In the echos of the reverberations I heard the unanswered question my therapist had asked me earlier that week: Jack, do you think you find comfort in already knowing how this relationship will end?

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey Chapter 21: Part 4.2 - Spring pt 1 SAMIRA

Summary: Springtime with Jack and Samira. This chapter was written in two parts, this first one is from Samira's perspective and where they are going. The next will be from Jack's. Song choice: There is a lot going on in this chapter and I even had to remind myself how I got to Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy" for the Eid chapter until I remembered it is where Samira realizes she can fuck with Jack in bed. She starts to come into the feeling of being the bad guy might seduce your dad guy. Author’s note: I wanted to see how long I could go without them admitting they were in love. The slow burn continues, as Samira still holds back secrets from Jack, and Jack holds them from her as well. Who is the joke TikTok about sexual awakenings? Well, who didn't grow up with a restraint fetish after seeing Maleficent gleefully bind up that idiot prince in Sleeping Beauty? Love that for her. WC 2,877; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

*~*Mature content after the jump*~*

When spring came, you budded open with it. You’d spent winters in Pittsburgh before, but this one had the stale air of a sarcophagus. The December fight had led to a January fight that had led to a February fight—each time the two of you retreated to your separate lives, separate friends, and each time you found your way back to the bedroom full of apologies and small changes. 

First he told his therapist about SWAT.

Then you picked up therapy and begrudgingly learned how unhappy you still were, even with Jack in your life. But the therapist gave you tools. Manaka, Marco, and Ivy took an interest in your work. They called you brave.

Then he finally quit SWAT. 

The two of you chose to live, even as the heavy blanket of dirty snow and sharp ice seemed to smother you in this city.

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey Chapter 23: Part 4.4 - Summer

Summary: Samira has left Pittsburgh for New Jersey. She remembers the way she left, saying goodbye to Jack, and how she wishes it had maybe gone differently. Song choice: "Be Brave" by My Brightest Diamond should reach the mid-point fever pitch just as the chapter ends, all the flutes and bird-like trills happening earlier. Author’s note: Poor Samira needs bravery right now and I wanted this chapter, as dreaming and wild as it may be, to end strong for her. Even if this is going to hurt. WC 2,705; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey Chapter 20: Part 4.1 - Community

Summary: Post-fight, how will our lovers find their way back to each other? Song choice: "Seabird" covered by Molly Murphy. Usually this is a too-poppy upbeat old song with glam production. I first heard it on Bob's Burgers of all places, sung so beautifully by trans talent Jari Jones, but she didn't sing in full and I hunted everywhere for another acoustic cover until I found this. Author’s note: I wanted to address the loneliness that haunts the doctors of the ER and give them a community to turn to. If our lovers are going to get a happy ending, it is going to take a village! WC 3,236; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

“Tell me, friend, what brings you here? The widower’s group you said?” I explained I’d gotten back into dating and had found myself in our first major fight. “And why did you pull my name up? I have not been with any women since my Fatima’s passing.”

“I remember you had some wise words for Luis. And, if I recall correctly, you were in our group because you didn’t want to tell you romantic intrigues to your mosque?”

“Your memory is good, Jack. Yes, I have had many coffees with the widows and women of my mosque. But it amounted to nothing.”

“Why do you think that is? If I may ask.” I noticed a wooden rack with beautiful heavy fabrics and realized they were prayer rugs. This was a prayer room.

“At my age, we have been living alone for so long. The dating is not so bad! But our lives do not easily mesh together. Whose house do we visit for the holidays? Does one of us move in with the other or do we buy a new house? A new house! At my age! In my first dates I met a woman who, to my embarrassment, told me I was looking for a housekeeper, not a wife. She said no woman wants to give up her independence to do my laundry.”

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey

Chapter 19: Part 3.6 - Winter

Summary: Some heat to get into the winter. Jack and Samira are feeling the full effects of their relationship and what it means to care for someone, good and bad. Song choice: "My Love Took Me Down To The River To Silence Me" by Little Green Cars.

Author’s note: I admit the song choice is a pretty violent and brutal song choice. The vibes tell the story of this back-and-forth fight between Samira and Jack, a bit of the more brutal fights he had with Mary. There is a running current of harmonies, rushing you along with something that almost feels like calm, huge, echoing spaces of silence in the music. But the singer is loud and androgynous and dying. Anyway, it is a pretty good song to have a terrible break-up to.

WC 3,547; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

“What are your Christmas plans?” She had asked, flakes of snow bright along the curls of her dark hair. Most of the time I could trick myself into thinking we were fine. Nothing was so broken that a little pussy or play scene couldn’t find a way through it. The sex seemed to smooth things over for us. I didn’t want to think too hard about that.

But these were the moments between the sex. 

“Oh,” I had considered lying, “I’ve got some things lined up. Breakfast at Jill’s. Visiting Mom’s grave out of duty. But, uh,” I ran a hand through my hair, melting the snow rather than brushing it off. This shouldn’t be something I had to feel ashamed about. “I picked up a few more shifts with SWAT.”

“Jack,” she said my name like I’d been caught writing on the walls with crayon. It rankled something ugly in me.

“It’s important work to me, Samira.”

But she wouldn’t hear it. The conversation veered wildly. It wasn’t just about SWAT. She was angry about other things too. She even brought up not fucking at work? One of those is an understood work hazard, the other is a fantasy that could jeopardize our careers. 

Then she brought out the tired argument about my risk taking. It was hypocritical—all ED doctors are fucking adrenaline junkies. She was simultaneously berating me for being too risky and not risky enough. I’d had this fight before, but it was worse having it with another goddamn junkie.

Still, I could handle this sloppy, immature fight. I could handle all of it until she turned the hurt on herself. Am I your newest risk?

Mohabbot Mohabbat, I love you by AubreyBaubrey

Chapter 18: Part 3.5 Thanksgiving & Diwali

Summary: During Samira's last year in Pittsburgh, the holidays form a challenge to her and Jack. Song choice: For now, you can imagine Jack thrashing to some Glassjaw. Their song "Ape dos mil" is an intentionally nonsensical song, meant to throw you into confusion.

Author’s note: This is meant to be a more melancholy chapter. Jack and Samira have whole lives outside each other and they are struggling to find how to fit them together while maintaining a secret. The final chapter will explain why Jack is dressed like Andrew "Pope" Cody...

WC 4,296; blurb below. Read it all on AO3

It was one of the weirdest white people holidays you had ever been to, and you’d gone to golf pros and tennis hoes party at school. Jack dressed in a button-up shirt you’d never seen before with khaki slacks and polished shoes, as if he were a math teacher ready to impress his graduating tweens. You’d splurged on black lipstick and, when Jack had said “Wear something that makes you feel more like you, especially if it is something you don’t usually get to wear,” you’d decided not to shave your legs or armpits. You had rolled-up jeans that showed your hairy ankles, and under your loose sweater you had a tank top if you felt overheated.

It turned out you were the only one allowed to dress comfortably. Apparently, Mary would have delighted in seeing her loved ones pressed into playful discomfort. Jack was supposed to look like a “thrasher for a pit show” which you chose to not investigate too thoroughly. His sister had his cheekbones and changeling eyes, switching from dark to light seemingly with her mood. But she had dark wavy red hair with a shock of white that appeared over her left eye. She was in a leopard print body suit with tight black high-waisted pleather pants and heels. You couldn’t help but greet her cleavage first, as it was on proud display. You later learned she was cosplaying as someone from New Jersey and she was properly mortified to learn that was where you were from. The sweet daughter Hailey couldn’t hide her bubbly nature under the black eye makeup, black clothes, and black nail polish.