hello my lovelies, i gave my graphics masterpost a lil makeover: it’s now extra detailed + marvel/mcu focused. also changed my url and blog theme (new era new me) and hopefully there’ll be more mcu graphics dropping soon!!! feeling very motivated for these since thunderbolts* and fantastic four. so… stay tuned :)
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STAR WARS | ALL GRAPHICS | episode ii | episode iii | episode iv | episode vii |
the mandalorian
There’s a chill in the air today for the first time this season, Samira thinks as she slams her car door in the shimmying way that’s become necessary to not disengage the tricky lock mechanism-whatever-thing. She’s been meaning to get it looked at by someone. She’s had someone offering to look at it, actually; she just keeps forgetting to take him up on it.
She drags her feet on the quick shuffle from her car to the stairwell that will take her down to the ED, her breath a thick puff of fog in the cold.
“Jesus Christ,” she says under her breath when she bursts through the door and into the bright fluorescents. Bag shoved into her locker, she rubs her forearms through her longsleeve under-layer as she walks with stiff joints over to the hub.
“Someone didn’t check the weather,” a familiar voice, thick with tired gruffness, says as a warmth materializes beside her. She can feel it radiating off him like a space heater. She wants to lean into it, see if his touch would burn her; she doesn’t think it would.
“I’ve been taking our mild autumn for granted, I guess,” she admits. The thwick sound of a paper cup set on the counter before her pulls her attention down from assessing the board.
“Oat milk cinnamon honey latte with an extra shot,” Jack says by way of the explanation that she doesn’t need. They’ve traded places, his chin tilted up at the board now while she follows the path of blushing skin across his cheeks, down his freckled neck, disappearing down the hem of his scrub top. And then he’s looking at her, the cool white bulbs doing nothing to diminish the fond glint in his hazel-green eyes. “Right?”
Samira smiles as the cup warms her palms, cinnamon sweetness rising through the air. “Right,” she affirms.
They’ve been doing this dancing around each other thing for a couple months now, ever since she realized he’d been flirting with her, possibly for the entire time he’s known her. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to do about it, figures that must be a different set of actionables than the list that’s been forming in her head of everything she wants to do about it.
He knows her coffee order, her locker combo so he can leave journals and articles in it; knows that she’s allergic to hazelnuts, and if she doesn’t pack a lunch (which, usually, she doesn’t), she will probably only have a protein bar and whatever random food is made available to the whole staff over the course of an eight-hour shift that will probably stretch to twelve. He’s started loading up the staff lounge fridge with containers with sticky notes imploring, DR. MOHAN — YOU NEED TO EAT LUNCH, and if Samira had to guess, he probably keeps a spreadsheet of which dishes she finishes ravenously and which she leaves a spoonful or two of, because pretty soon he only stocks the ones she verifiably loves.
Samira’s not sure where they go from here. He doesn’t even call her Samira. She’s somewhat terrified to learn what crumpled facial expression of attempted composure he will make when she calls him Jack for the first time.
When they get breakfast after she works doubles, he refuses to let her pay for her share. Has bailed her out of a flat tire, was the first to wish her a happy birthday this year.
(They were both working, he’d poked his head into the exam room she was wrapping up in and asked her to come see him when she was done. When she found him and asked what he needed from her, he’d just said, “Oh, nothing. Just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, Dr. Mohan.” He’d squeezed her shoulder, a confusingly platonic gesture, as he walked past her shoulder in the hall and added, “Hope the year has everything you want in store.” She’d spent half the rest of her shift thinking about what she wanted her year to have in store for her.)
There’s a chill in the air, but Jack Abbot beside her — and the latte he’s procured for her; how he always manages to do that before she shows up twenty minutes early is still a mystery to her — fill her with a warmth she wants to chase after. But after so long being stationary, she’s not quite sure how to make her legs run. Can’t find the command for it in her brain, her wiring all scrambled with mush every time he looks at her like that.
“It’s good?” Jack asks, his gaze flicking down to the cup at her lips and back up.
“Yeah,” Samira gulps. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he says, the most miniscule movement of his arm leaning in towards hers, his bare skin to her longsleeve, his smile a tiny thing like it’s for her eyes only. If she wasn’t sipping at her coffee — the coffee he got her — the contact might have stolen her breath.
The shift goes well; as well as it can go, at least. She has her favorite coffee to buoy her for the first couple of hours, sees one of her frequent flyers and strikes the balance of enough of a catch-up conversation with them and a timely referral and discharge, opens the fridge at a reasonable hour for lunch to see one of her favorites, a chicken stir-fry with noodles and plenty of veggies, no yellow bell peppers in sight because she never really likes those. Robby stays off her back, and she’s even managing her caseload well enough to justify a five-minute break during which she checks her email to see a case study in her inbox that she’d already bookmarked and been looking forward to read; now she gets to read with his notes alongside it.
When she’s retrieving her bag from her locker, rolling her shoulders in their sockets and not even feeling any of the usual soreness that typically plagues her by this time of day, she opens it to see an unfamiliar scarf, red and black tartan plaid, flannel, so soft and well-worn, smells like—
“Can’t have my best resident out for the count from the first chill of the season,” Jack says, a pillar of warmth at her side again, go-bag still slung over one shoulder, a navy blue fleece zip-up his own armor against the cold.
Samira bites the inside of her cheeks to temper her smile. “You know, you keep doing stuff like this, you’ll make me think—”
“And you’d be right,” he says easily. Her eyebrows furrow. Her fists bunch in the scarf on either side of her neck.
“What?”
“Whatever you start to think,” his lips form a pout that looks to her like an admission of something. “You’d be right.”
“So you—” she tries. “So, uh, well, me, of all—and you, er—but—”
“Don’t work yourself up about it, Dr. Mohan,” Jack says, one hand reaching up to loop the scarf around her neck, reach behind her for her bag, settle it on her shoulder. “Whenever you’re ready.” He shuts her locker, twists the lock. “You know where to find me. Don’t worry, take your time.” His lips tick up in that crooked smile she adores, and then he’s walking past her towards the hub, leaving her alone and enveloped in the scarf, a hug around her neck that smells like spicy tobacco and warm vanilla and him.
“Jack?”
He swivels on his heel to look back at her. Her face must be telling, because the slightest smile of secret knowledge plays across his face.
“I don’t wanna wait,” she half-whispers.
Jack’s head tilts in a sideways nod, no secret between them now. Her head feels mushy again, but her legs carry her forward at the same time he steps toward her.
“Well then,” he says, that same hand reaching to pull her into him by the scarf, his eyes darting all around her face, taking in every detail he can read so he can commit it to memory, same as she’s doing. The freckles across his face, the lines by his eyes deepening as he grins, the singular curl hanging down his forehead. “Now’s as good a time as any for this, isn’t it, Samira,” and before she has time to see what he looks like when he says her first name like that, so sweetly, Jack Abbot’s lips are on hers, tasting of honey. And usually she quashes these cues, but she’s hungry for more, so she tugs him in closer and presses her chin forward and opens her mouth to let his cinnamon tongue twine with hers.
A chill is in the air, and Samira doesn’t need to chase after any warmth as safeguard against the cold because it’s right here, in their smiles kissed softly into each other’s, beneath her palm braced on his stubbled cheek, pressed against her chest through layers of fleece, flannel, and cotton. It’s the silliest first kiss she’s ever had — by the lockers at work, white fluorescents instead of mood lighting, an empty tupperware with her name on it in her bag so she can wash and return it to its owner, her hair frizzing out of its bun. But it’s somehow perfectly fitting for them.
