Perhaps I Will Read Until I Feel Better

21 | bi & grey ace | join me as i cry about my current hyperfixation | header & icon: heoldramaicon

[kcrlfs]

mohabbot (the pitt): a kind of undressing | 8.3k

She doesn't know how to approach it, exactly. Knows what she would do if Jack was a patient, a real one, how she'd talk long enough to get her hands on him for an examination. As it is, she's frozen, isn't even sure how to ask. Can I touch you? You're bleeding and also it's all I think about.

jack abbot/samira mohan | 8.3k words | rated e

read on ao3

[pittofdespair]

sticks and stones they throw froze mid air

rating: t | words: 1,632

summary:

She'd only narrowly escaped bursting into tears when time of death was called. Robby pulled her aside later, reminded her that time was a resource, that she couldn't save everyone, that she had to stop taking things so personally.

She'd escaped through the automatic doors hoping that the cold morning air would shock her system back into rhythm but it didn't seem to be helping.

Jack must have seen her, coming in through the back for night shift, and didn't hesitate. He dropped his ever-present backpack onto the concrete beside her feet and enveloped her in his strong arms, wrapping them around her torso.

[ofhouseadama]

all the bright places #mohabbotmonday thanks to @anextrapart for the inspo! trigger warning: suicidal ideation

The most fun aspect of his self-loathing is that it’s factually correct. 

He served in the military. He signed up for ROTC right there in the cafeteria of his high school, valedictorian of a class of sixty-two and desperate to get out. He believed the promises and the patina of patriotic bullshit, swallowing it willingly. And it was easy, for the next eight years, to keep doing that. 

By the time he owed the American military close to four hundred and fifty grand for his education, the only options he saw for himself were to go all-in or kill himself. So to Fallujah he went, and then to Ranger School, and then a second deployment, a third, a fourth. And every time he threw himself back onto American soil and into the arms of a wife who loved him, it made less and less sense. 

The first time Jack Abbot tried to kill himself was in the Tangi Valley in 2011, the night a CH-47 helicopter carrying thirty-eight American and Afghan servicemen was shot down by the Taliban. The night he first realized he’d wished he’d been with them and sat, service weapon loaded, the barrel finding its way into and out of his mouth again. 

Not even his therapist knows that. 

The second time was fall 2020, when every shift was spent helping people die with their loved ones on FaceTime. Gen was isolating at home with her parents while he stayed in a hotel, calling her three times a day as she underwent chemo and radiation and sweated out neutropenic fevers. His wife was sick, his wife was dying, everyone was dying. And he was a doctor who couldn’t save anyone, not strangers, and not the woman he loved more than anyone else in the world. Robby pumped his stomach full of charcoal after he swallowed a bottle of Valium, threw back half a bottle of Jim Beam, and decided it would be polite to tell Robby he wouldn’t be showing up for his next shift. Or any of the other ones after that. 

The third time was in 2022, two months after Gen died in their living room, bloodstream swimming with morphine and fentanyl that did very little to quell the pain of late-stage cancer. He stopped eating, stopped bathing, stopped sleeping, stopped doing much of anything, let the house get foreclosed on and ran the math on how to die easiest without traumatizing anyone else. It was Walsh who pulled him out of his dark bedroom and shoved him fully clothed into the shower, and made his first appointment with his therapist. 

He’s not allowed to kill himself. 

That much the universe has made clear to him. So he shows up to therapy once a week when he’s doing okay, and twice a week when he’s doing poorly. He’s compliant with his meds. He logs his symptoms in an app. Every once in a while, his therapist throws a little exercise at him. Keep a notebook or a piece of paper in your pocket. Write down good things that happen that day, and review it before you go to sleep. Good things do happen to you. Don’t let PTSD control the narrative of what your life can be. 

Sometimes he even does them, even when it feels stupid at first. 

When he first starts, his lists are a compilation of sentence fragments about the patients he’s able to save, new restaurants on DoorDash, and journal articles he read and enjoyed. Sometimes he mentions the weather, or a card from one of his sisters, or a dog he saw in the park. The farmer’s market starts up again, and he can buy homemade sourdough. The flowers are blooming. Samira Mohan smiles at him at handover. 

Samira Mohan makes eye contact when an MS4 is overly arrogant. 

Samira Mohan shares her protein bar with him at the Hub, because she remembers that he loves chocolate and peanut butter. 

Samira Mohan lends him a pen when his explodes in his hand in the middle of shift. 

Samira Mohan lets him drive her home because it’s snowing.

Samira Mohan looks at him.

Samira Mohan smiles.

Samira Mohan.

Four months into his little experiment with intentional positivity, Robby has disembarked Pittsburgh and possibly his sanity on his motorcycle, and Jack’s lists have become a post-it note kept in a zippered pocket, marked neatly with blue and black ink tally marks. 

Times that Dr. Mohan has spoken to him, grinned at him, sought him out in the Pitt, texted him the link to something that she read on PubMed. Cups of coffee and tea, shared sandwiches on the roof, babies held and rocked and soothed in Pedes, minutes spent on the park bench after a rough night. Times they’ve handed each other a scalpel or a clamp or catheter. Times they saved patients. Times they lost them. 

The door of his fridge becomes a compendium, but he still needs proof positive of her regard for him. Something that definitively answers that she sees him as a friend, as someone worth trusting, as someone worth remaining in her orbit and her light. He knows that come July she’s moving back home to New Jersey, that they might never have the opportunity to work together again. He is no longer acclimated to base reassignments and deployment groups and loss. He wants to keep her. He wants her to stay. 

When she smiles at him, it makes it a little easier for him to remain in his own skin, in his own body, in his own arms and legs and his final five toes. And when he thinks of her leaving, moving six hours away to a hospital he’s never seen, let alone heard of, the stomach acid that crawls up his throat chokes him harder than charcoal as it came back up into an emesis bag. 

His fridge is crowded with pieces of little yellow paper—fluttering on the door whenever it opens or shuts, the adhesive on the oldest ones drying and starting to lose tack—on the day she tells him that she’s forgoing a fellowship at all. I think I’m done postponing the rest of my life, she says, leaning on the railing. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do all along. So I’m staying here. 

That night the post-it note that goes on the fridge only says one thing. She kissed me.

[warpedraven]

Ao3 going down and then up and then down again is making me realize I would genuinely be done for if ao3 was permanently deleted

[jackabbotsarms]

MOHABBOT FIC RECS

Wanted to shine some light on my favourite Mohabbot fics from AO3! Will make a list with Tumblr works too sometime in the near future...

If your work is featured here and you'd prefer it not to be, just let me know and I'll be more than willing to remove. Happy reading!

one shots

if you need to, darling, lean your weight to me by emilyikes devastating! area woman trapped in blizzard with attractive coworker by ohtempora whisper network by DrOdyssey (TheLadyVanishes) christmas in connecticut by DrOdyssey (TheLadyVanishes) ↳ Veteran!AbottxColumnist!Mohan 1940s au fair warning by lennynards freudian slips: or, a critical examination of repression, acquiescence, and devotion by HotelRaleigh ↳ Professor!AbbotxGradStudent!Mohan au

two shots

good men die too (so i'd rather be with you) by stargirltv welcome to wherever you are by simplyprologue

multichapter

Samira is Totally Fine by elizasnoth emergence by wanderleave (fakelight) ↳ Ballet au dark days (but i got sun rays) by SconeofDestiny

[sheisraging]

*screaming and crying about it forever*

[yrsonpurpose]

Not like I love you.

[shymagnolia]

so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god

[shymagnolia]

okay so i just got my dream job??? a week after applying to it?? and now i’m thinking….maybe this is the good luck post

[flagellant]

…..not even six hours later i got an offer of a well paying full time long-term job with free room and board in queens in nyc, allowing me independence and a way to escape an abusive situation and an unhealthy environment

likes charge reblogs cast, folks, this is the good luck post

[coffee-or-hot-cocoa]

i need all the help i can get for finals

[finnglas]

Hey so

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

This might be the real one, y’all.

[snufkinnieee]

i think the thing that makes rupert and taggie so compelling is that he wants to take care of her???? as another eldest daughter who has to keep all the shit together..... to have a man admit that he did you wrong, actively try and help you with your problems, and then work on himself because he said he doesn't like how you see him is like.....insane.

[ariadnethedragon]

RIVALS (2024-)

Yearning ™

[elena-gilbert]

I can't breath without you. BELLA MACLEAN as Agatha ‘Taggie’ O'Hara and ALEX HASSEL as Rupert Campbell-Black RIVALS (2024 - )

[0-0malik]

furnace and chimney duo.

Also, just squish your face on that pectoral hon.

[sara-likes-things]

Love me a ship whose dynamic is this

[ninicaise]

laurent: i love you and i respect the akielon culture of polyamory and open relationships :) if you were to take another lover, i would understand :) [dying inside]

damen: the other day i remembered you spoke to other men before me and threw up on the street

[cactiunderyourfeet]

[bb-8]

Damen 🤝 Neil Josten 🤝 Will Kempen

[buddiegoingcanon2026]

Perfectly said Oliver. Thank you for a truly great start to Buck’s Bisexuality storyline. I’m here for the series till the bitter end.