Work Text:
Samira was slumped against the headboard of their bed at 2:47 PM on a Tuesday, which meant she'd called out of her shift. Again.
The trash bin sat within arm's reach. Paper towels were scattered across the comforter like evidence of her surrender, white flags across a obstetric battlefield. Further down the bed, a half-eaten banana had turned brown at the edges. Next to it, a piece of buttered toast with exactly two bites missing.
The smell of the butter was horrifying.
She'd tried to eat forty minutes ago. Got through part of the banana, started on the toast, and then her stomach had staged a revolt.
Now she couldn't move the food away because moving required energy she didn't have, and the smell kept triggering dry heaves that left her gasping and crying into the pillow.
Jack appeared in the doorway with a glass of water and a small white pill. He hadn't shaved in three days, and for one completely unhinged moment Samira noticed, before her stomach lurched and reminded her she was dying.
"Ondansetron," he said quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed. "Eight milligrams."
She took it without argument, swallowed it down, and immediately slumped back against the pillow.
He set the glass on the nightstand and reached for the toast.
"Don't," she managed. "I'll throw up if you move it."
"The smell is making you nauseous."
"Everything is making me nauseous."
He moved it anyway, quickly and efficiently, and opened the window. Cool, fresh, perfect air filtered in.
Samira closed her eyes and felt tears leak out from under her lids.
"Jack," she said, voice cracking.
"I'm here."
His voice was so calm. So steady. She wanted to find it annoying and could not quite manage it.
"I need you to do something."
"Anything."
She opened her eyes and looked at him. His face was worried, attentive, already braced for whatever she needed. The light from the window caught the mix of copper and silver in his curls and he looked so unfairly, so completely, so unreasonably good that for one deranged moment she forgot what she was going to say.
Then a wave of nausea rolled through her and she remembered.
"I need you to record me."
He blinked. "What?"
"Video. On your phone. Record me. Right now."
Jack stared at her like she'd just asked him to perform an appendectomy in their kitchen.
"Why would you —"
"Because," Samira said, and her voice broke on the word. She tried to breathe through it but another dry heave hit instead, her body convulsing even though there was nothing left to bring up.
Jack's hand found her back automatically, steadying her. He rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades without being asked, without making a sound, and she hated that even now, even through the misery, some part of her clocked how warm his hand was. She hated him a little, genuinely, for being so easy to love when she felt like this.
When it passed, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Because I'm going to want to do this again," she said flatly, like it was obvious (it was to her). "That's the problem. This baby is going to come out looking like some kind of cherub, with your eyes and my hair and objectively perfect genetics. And my brain is going to do that thing where it erases trauma to encourage reproduction, and I'm going to look at you holding our adorable child and think we could have another one."
Jack's expression was somewhere between bewildered and concerned. She was trying not to focus on the image in her head of him, shirtless, holding an infant, their infant — those arms, his ridiculous arms —
"So I need insurance," Samira continued, snapping out of her trance with genuine effort. "I need a video I can watch when Future Me gets any ideas. Documented evidence that this," she gestured at herself, at the trash bin, at the snack crime scene, "was not worth repeating."
"You want me," Jack said slowly, "to film you at your worst. As a deterrent."
"Exactly."
"For a hypothetical future pregnancy you're already planning to talk yourself out of."
"Yes."
He stared at her for a long moment.
Then he pulled out his phone.
The way he did it — one-handed, that small focused expression settling into his jaw — she thought, with total despair: this is the problem. This is the fucking problem.
"Okay," Jack said, standing and angling the camera toward her. "This is —" He stopped. Started again. "This is a message from Past Samira to Future Samira, recorded at fourteen hundred hours on —"
"You're doing a patient presentation," Samira groaned.
"You asked me to document this."
"Not like I'm a case study!"
"Would you prefer a different approach?"
She waved a hand weakly. "Just continue."
Jack cleared his throat. "Patient is a thirty-five-year-old female at thirteen weeks gestation, presenting with hyperemesis gravidarum and what seems to be —" He zoomed in slightly. "Significant regret."
"Oh my god."
"Note the emesis basin," he continued, panning the camera. "Positioned within reaching distance. Appears to have been used multiple times based on —"
"Don't you dare describe the contents —"
"— based on the patient report." He moved to the scattered paper towels. "Evidence of repeated episodes. The patient has been unable to complete basic nutritional intake, as demonstrated by…" The camera focused on the banana. "Exhibit A: partially consumed banana, now oxidizing."
Despite everything, Samira felt her mouth twitch.
"And here," Jack said, his voice taking on a clinical detachment that was somehow hilarious, "we have toast. Two bites. The patient reports the smell of butter is, quote, 'making everything worse.'"
"It is."
"Patient is —" He zoomed in on her face. "Currently slumped at approximately forty-five degrees against the headboard."
"I hate you," she said, but she was almost smiling now.
He caught her eye over the top of the phone and half-smiled back, and her heart did something pathetic and involuntary.
"Vital signs," Jack continued seriously, smirking now. "Patient has vomited twelve times today. Has cried —" He glanced at her, tensed his jaw.
"I don't know. A lot."
"Multiple times. Called out of work. Unable to perform activities of daily living." He lowered the phone slightly. "Patient has told me on three separate occasions that she wishes she was a seahorse so I would be pregnant instead."
Samira let out a wet laugh.
Jack raised the camera again, grinning at her now, and the afternoon light caught the silver threaded through his curls, and she thought: that's the one. That smile is why we're in this situation.
"Do you have anything you'd like to say to Future You?"
Samira looked directly into the lens, took a deep breath. "Don't do it. I'm serious. I don't care how cute the baby is, or how cute He is with it. Just don't."