Work Text:
It’s been a week since Amira and Mohammed got together. Which all good and wonderful if not for the fact that Mohammed tells his mother everything. Amira has barely told her own mother anything about their relationship, choosing to keep it more on the private side. It’s not as if her mama doesn’t know Mohammed, he’d been over to her house what felt like a million times before he and Amira had even spoken a word to each other. And Amira likes that he tells his mother things. It's sweet but it also means the next time Mohammed sees her, he invites her over for dinner. With his mother. And his three younger siblings. Who she doesn’t know.
She calls Kiki about it because Kiki has the best advice when dealing with significant others and also their family, but Kiki is no help. She says that she brought Carlos’ mother flowers when she first met her but that seems like the kind of cliche that Amira can’t pull off.
But as she’s standing in front of the Razzouk family household empty-handed, she wishes she had brought flowers.
“Amira!” Mohammed answers the door with a grin, his hair sweeping across his kind brown eyes, and Amira swallows her nerves. If his mother is anything like him, Amira will be fine. He opens the door wider and steps aside to let her in.
“I should have brought something,” Amira mutters as she passes him.
“I told you,” Mohammed assures her, ducking his head down to whisper. His hand touches the small of her back as he guides her forward. “You’re fine just the way you are. My mom already loves you.”
“Oh, so you really do talk about me,” Amira teases.
“Of course I do,” Mohammed smiles, and he’s not even trying to joke back, he’s being completely genuine, and somehow he is always just smooth enough to catch her off guard.
Luckily, she has a lot of practice at comebacks without having to think much before hand, “Hmm, well, I don’t work in a kindergarten, so I can’t promise that your siblings will.”
“Nah,” Mohammed says easily, taking her hand to guide her through the rest of the hallway and into his kitchen. He grins back at her. “They’ll love you too.”
Around the table are three children, all of them no older than elementary school, yelling at each other from where they kneel on their seats, reaching over the placemats for scattered crayons. The oldest, a young boy, sits and the head of the table and doodles diligently with a pencil.
“Mama,” Mohammed calls over their noise to a woman by the stove. Amira can recognize her from the pictures of Mohammed’s Instagram and squeezes his hand a little tighter. Mohammed squeezes back. “Amira is here!”
“Amira!” the woman turns around and Amira had been right. She looks just as kind as her son and her smile is just as bright. “You look just as beautiful as Mohammed said! Let me just finish with the food and I can come talk to you, yes?”
Amira freezes and pulls her hand out of Mohammed’s to elbow him in his side while completely failing to hide a blush, hissing, “You told your mother I was beautiful?”
“You are,” Mohammed says cheekily. “You mean to tell me that you haven’t told your mother you met the handsomest man in the world?”
“Oh,” Amira says, blinking a bit cruelly. “Chris Hemsworth is here?”
“Chris-” Mohammed stammers out, falling back dramatically with his hand to his heart. “I’m wounded. I manage to woe an angel but she wants another man.”
They are starting to gain attention from Mohammed’s younger siblings and Amira suddenly wants him to stop so that she isn’t so embarrassingly charmed. But she is charmed. Completely. An angel? What kind of romance novel is she living in?
“Mohammed,” she huffs, trying to hide her laugh as she tugs on his arm. They are right in front of his family. “Mohammed,” she tries again, aiming for teasing but just missing the mark. “I think you are very handsome.”
Mohammed grins at that. It’s absolutely blinding.
“Alright, everyone out to the outside table,” his mother interrupts, shuffling the younger kids towards the sliding door leading to their backyard. Amira and Mohammed remain staring at each other. Amira’s lips twist upward while Mohammed’s soften.
“Come on,” he whispers, nodding his head minisculely towards where food is waiting. “My siblings get loud if they’re waiting too long.”
“They weren’t loud before?” Amira asks, but she’s not really thinking about his siblings at the moment.
“No,” Mohammed says, and she’s pretty sure he’s not either.
She clears her throat and drops her gaze toward where they are actually supposed to be going instead of just standing in the middle of his kitchen. “Shall we?”
“My queen,” Mohammed says solemnly, holding out an arm for Amira to hold.
She laughs and takes it. “It’s chancellor, actually.”
“Chancellor then,” Mohammed corrects. “Your ceremonial dinner awaits.”
Amira holds her head up higher, jutting her chin out in order to play the part and then twists her head back and forth, showing off. “How do I look? Official enough?”
“Beautiful as ever,” Mohammed says.
Amira wonders if she will ever get tired of that. She wonders if Mohammed will get tired of saying it. She lets her smile spread before raising an eyebrow. “Flirt.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“I’m glad it did,” Amira admits.
“Me too,” Mohammed admits back.
“Mo-ha-mmed,” his younger sister’s voice shouts dramatically from outside, emphasizing every syllable. “Bring your girlfriend outsideeee. There’s food!”
“Oh my god,” Amira mutters, looking toward the door again. “They’re going to hate me.”
“Amira,” Mohammed says seriously. “They will absolutely adore you.”
Mohammed’s mother smiles at them when they make it outside and sit in chairs next to each other. She doesn’t ask them what they were doing inside but Amira gets the feeling that she trusts that it wasn’t anything to show concern about. She trusts Mohammed. Which is good because Amira trusts Mohammed too, with her boundaries and her religion and her dreams and everything that makes Amira who she is.
“So Amira,” his mother finally begins, after all the food has been spread across the table and piled onto plates. “Mohammed tells us that you’re taking a gap year to go to Australia.”
Amira pauses, searching for any sign of judgement out of habit but finds absolutely none.
“Yes,” Amira finally agrees. “I leave in a week.”
“What do you plan on doing there?”
“Are you going to see any koalas?” Mohammed’s youngest brother interrupts. “That’s so cool.”
Amira takes a deep breath and calms herself. She is Amira Thalia Mahmood and she is one of the fiercest members of the girl squad. If anyone can handle meeting her boyfriend’s family, she can.
“I plan on seeing so many koalas,” Amira tells him with a smile.
“And kangaroos?” his sister asks.
“Hopefully.”
“I hear,” the oldest of the three of them starts as he stabs his fork down in his food to eat it. “That Australia has some of the biggest spiders but Mama doesn't like those. Are you afraid of spiders?”
“No,” Amira answers easily.
“Badass,” he agrees.
“Language,” both Mohammed and his mother admonish.
His brother goes off on a rant about spiders anyway and how he had once found one in the shower but Mohammed released it back outside, and Amira looks to her side to see Mohammed smiling smugly at her. Within a few seconds, it feels like she is already a part of his family. There hadn't been anything to worry about at all.