A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

by zinzinina

Summary:

You've had bad luck working with other bounty hunters. Which is why you're doubtful to say the least when Boba Fett offers you a deal: help him get close to a handful of high-ranking targets, and he'll split the credits with you. With his reputation, you tell yourself the nervous electrical tension you feel is just because he could throw your ass off his ship at any moment. So why does it seem like he's affected, too?

Notes:

Hey pals! Please be aware; there is some suggestion/threatening (non-explicit) of sexual violence as well as mention of drugs/syringes and descriptions of physical injuries.
Oh, and the usual, y'know, absolute filth. Please take a moment to leave any feedback you may have. This is the first thing I've ever written here and would love to hear what you think so I can improve. Thanks for reading! x

Chapter 1: A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

Night in Canto Bight is warm amidst the frenetic energy of myriad species of well heeled revellers. Sitting in the flashiest dress you’d ever worn, sipping sweet Alderaanian liqueur… okay, you could get used to this.

You were skeptical when Fett first propositioned splitting the bounty on a handful of high-profile pucks. Why the hell would someone as notorious as Boba Fett want a partner? Whenever his armoured figure appeared in the usual haunts for members of your profession, the room would fall silent. You’ve heard whispers about his ruthlessness, working for whoever’s paying the highest price and making a habit of taking on impossible-sounding jobs nobody else will touch.

But the few times you’ve encountered him, he’s surprised you. Like that time an enormous Mirialan guy tried to lay his hand on you outside a popular bounty hunters’ bar on Coruscant; you'd thrown the shocked creep over your shoulder… and you could have sworn you heard an impressed, soft chuckle from the helmeted figure leaning against the shadowed doorway.

Or after that disastrous job on Kijimi when you'd made yourself proud with how easily you brought in your target - only for the Trandoshan whose garbage ship you’d chartered to try blasting you in the side to take the quarry for himself. It was pure dumb luck that Fett’s distinctive attack ship was sitting in the same launch bay, and as you ducked behind the side of Slave I to aim a few shots at the traitorous lizard-brain, the man himself stalked easily around behind you.

“Having trouble, little one?” his modulated voice had gravelled out.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” you’d smirked up at him. But he wasn’t fooled by your attempt at bravado, and you saw the weathered helmet tilt down to take in the way you were clutching your ribcage as you slumped against the hull of his ship.

He swivelled wordlessly, blaster drawn in a smooth motion - barely seeming to aim before you heard a hissed exhale and the thunk of a heavy body falling from the other side of the platform.

“I’d offer you a lift, but looks like you just got yourself a free ship,” he drawled lazily, spurs clinking lightly as he disappeared up into his ship and withdrew the ramp behind him.

But it was still a hell of a shock when he approached you sitting alone at that same seedy Coruscanti bar a week ago. His rationalisation made sense, you had to admit. High-profile Imperial officers have started taking precautions amidst a slew of assassinations between political rivals. It’s getting harder to sidle in close enough to these guys to make things look accidental, and you can see why Fett’s… conspicuous appearance would raise an instant alarm. Besides, he wasn’t known for the kind of delicate work you were. As effective as disintegrations were, they were about as far from natural-looking deaths as it got.

Which is how you ended up here, wearing the kind of sleek dress favoured by socialites and consorts as you roll your shoulders back languidly. The plan’s easy; get the target to a quiet enough location to slide one of your specialty syringes into a major artery while Fett monitors the security detail from outside. You don’t know how you’ll get back out past the guards alone if things go wrong, but Fett’s assurance that he’ll be watching is oddly comforting.

Despite initially attempting to stifle your growing curiosity, you've been banking up a little collection of observations about him from the last couple of days on his ship. He was unobtrusive and patient, and he smelled... good at close quarters; something not many bounty hunters had in common. You hadn't been surprised to learn he’s not much of a talker. Though the near-silent journey to Cantonica had felt somehow companionable, you hoped he hadn’t noticed the way your gaze had involuntarily kept returning to the shape of his muscular leg underneath those thigh plates, or the broad line of his shoulders as you wondered exactly what kind of man was underneath all of that metal.

“Target’s entering through the doors to your left,” his low voice crackles through your earpiece. You smooth your hair down to conceal the tiny comm device and arch your spine in a fluid gesture as you tip the rest of the drink back.

“How do I look?” you murmur, glancing up through narrowed eyes towards the man approaching the bar alongside you. You swiped the outfit from a storefront on the way in, and while Fett was supposed to be guarding your back, you hoped he'd had the courtesy not to watch you gracelessly shimmying into it in an alleyway.

You can’t tell if it’s just static, but his response in your ear has a rough quality that makes something hot unfurl low in your stomach. “Like this guy doesn’t stand a fucking chance.”

A statuesque Togruta woman draped in jewels lets out a burst of laughter at the opposite end of the bar and you feel goosebumps rise on your arms and legs. It takes everything in your body to not twist and look out over the balcony to see where he’s watching from. You instead turn your attention to the sweaty-looking figure beside you as he barks his order for a bloodsour at the server droid.

“That’s quite a unique choice of drink,” you offer breathily, allowing one of your crossed legs to slide ever so slightly against the leg of his trousers as you lean over. You have no idea what that fabric is, but it feels expensive.

He appraises you as he takes his first sip, a heavy-looking ring with a black stone glittering on one of his thick red fingers. His gaze feels disparaging, small eyes dragging from the low cut of your dress to the high slit on your leg as though deciding whether you’re a fathier worth betting on. You must pass the inspection because he leans toward you, tone oily.

“There’s a lot about my tastes that some find… surprising,” he says. You suppress the desire to shudder and allow a small smile to lift the corners of your lips.

 

-

 

It’s going surprisingly smoothly. You’re fairly sure he’s getting ready to return to his accomodation, the night having slowed to a point where few other patrons remain at the bar. He’s ordered you not to move while he visits the refresher for the third time and you mentally run over the next steps. Your hypo-syringe is strapped to your thigh, far enough from the slit in your dress to be concealed but close enough for easy access, right beside the tiny palm-sized blaster you’ve brought in case things go south. You’ve noticed a handful of heavy-looking attendants which you assume comprise his bodyguard detail but they’re keeping their distance, incorrectly assuming you pose no threat. You haven’t heard anything more from your accomplice, but you’ve felt his gaze on you for the past couple of hours. Every time you’ve run a fingertip over your own lower lip while pretending to be enamoured with some repulsive anecdote, or let your head tip gently back to expose the line of your neck, you’ve wondered whether he’s still watching you.

And then the target is back beside you, wrapping his hand around your upper arm as he leans in close to your ear. “Look girl, I’m no fool. You probably think that performance was pretty impressive, but I know exactly what this is.” Your blood freezes in your veins. How the fuck…? Your muscles are coiling to fling yourself behind the bar before drawing your blaster but his next sour words are washing over you and you feel like laughing with relief. “I’ll pay whatever your rate is, but I don’t want to hear any crying or arguing. I have certain expectations and I’m not wasting my time. Is that clear?”

“As crystal,” you manage. You’re feeling vaguely nauseated at the implication behind his words, and you could have sworn you heard a faint hiss of disgust from your earpiece as well, but you’re just thanking the Maker you haven’t thrown the whole plan. You probably should have expected him to reach this conclusion, and it would have made your entire night easier if you’d gone with this angle from the beginning. Oh well, you figure. This is your first attempt at such an… underhanded approach and if it works there’s always next time.

He keeps his grip on your arm and you try not to lose your balance as you step after him towards the doors. One of his attendants is standing beside an ostentatious-looking gilded speeder and as you climb in, you feel a twinge of unease. You’ve been in some pretty hairy situations in your line of work, and one thing you’ve never willingly done is put yourself into an enclosed space with a quarry before. There’s nowhere to run, no room to kick out or wind back to jab his eyes or crotch if something goes wrong. Your could drive your hand through his nose and into his brain, but there’s still the Rodian driving the speeder to contend with. You’re not really prepared to fire your blaster in here in case the shot ricochets back around the cabin and you take yourself out.

As though he can hear your concerns, your earpiece releases a tiny crackle and you hear Fett’s words. “Locked on to the driver. If something happens, you just worry about stabbing the Imp with your serum. I know you can take care of yourself, but if you need to get out of there fast just say the word.”

And despite the reassurance of backup, the part that rings the loudest for you is him saying he knows you can handle it. Like when he didn’t intervene on Coruscant. Or when he only stepped in on Kijimi once he saw that you were hurt. You’ve always wanted to prove to yourself that you’re strong enough to handle this line of work without help. Too many guys have assumed you’re an easy target, either to exploit you or to stoke their own egos as a rescuer. Every time you’ve used their mistake in your favour, winning bounties someone with twice your muscle would have struggled to take down because you’re smarter and faster than they are.

You’re realising now what it is about Boba Fett that feels so different. He respects your competence, but he’s offering to back you up if you ask. As though he knows you don’t need his help, but he’s letting the offer stand there if you want it. The most vicious bounty hunter in the galaxy, the man everyone else is too afraid to talk about, and he’s treating you as an equal. As a partner. It makes you even more determined to finish this job properly, leaving as little evidence as possible. A nameless escort disappearing into the night leaving behind the body of one of the richest men in the Imperial ranks isn’t exactly completely innocuous, but it’s the closest thing to invisible as you can manage.

You’re jerked out of your reverie as the speeder pulls up in front of a glittering building atop the cliffs of the city. Curved and low-set, transparisteel panels make up the entire front of the building and you suppress a grin. This is going to be way too easy.

 

-

 

The target ignores you, pouring himself a glass of something dark blue as he wordlessly gestures to the attendant to leave the room. You hear the soft click behind you of the door closing and you cross lightly to where he’s standing.

You feel the adrenaline starting to kick up in your system, silently calculating the distance from here to the open doors of the balcony, bathed in the light of both full moons. You’re not familiar enough with Cantonica’s artificial ocean to know whether the current will tear you up if you try leaping over the edge, but you guess that’s your best exit strategy. Your train of thought is interrupted as the target moves to recline on a wide, padded bench seat facing out over the view.

“Lose the dress,” he orders with no preamble. You try to force your expression into something playful as you step over to hover next to him.

“Isn’t there anything you’d like me to do first? To help you... relax?” You run a hand up his chest and find the heavy gold clasp holding the expensive tunic closed, pressing with your fingertips until it releases. Okay, great, now you just need to get a clear shot at his neck... if you could just get the collar open...

His hand cracks sharply against the side of your face and you’re momentarily stunned. You’ve been shot, stabbed and punched more times than you care to remember. You once had to use your teeth to tie a splint around your own shoulder after rolling out of a moving transport and landing badly. So it’s hardly the worst pain you’ve felt. Still, it catches you off guard, and you taste salt as you gently touch your tongue to your lip where his ring caught you. He’s seething at you.

“I don’t have time for more games. I wasn’t going to cause you any more pain than I had to, but stupid girls like you always seem to ask for it. The dress. Now.”

The second you take your clothes off, he’ll see what you’re really here for and you’ll be completely fucked. So you swing a leg over his hips and straddle him, making a show of reaching for the hem of your dress.

“You’re so right,” you hiss back. “I think I’m tired of playing too.” And as smoothly as you can, you draw the hypo-syringe from the holster at the top of your thigh and plunge it up under the side of his jaw, stabbing clean through the collar of his tunic and depressing the serum with your thumb, your forearm braced over his chest, holding him down. His face purpling with fury and eyes bulging, you use your other hand to cover the strangled noises coming out of his mouth.

“Shh, shh. It’s okay,” you whisper, holding him as still as you can while you feel his body beginning to seize under you. Your revulsion for him forces you to keep talking, straining to hold him still while the serum races through his body. “Hey, I don’t know who you pissed off enough that they put a price on you. But we’ve only been friends a few hours and I can see why. You’re a real fucking monster.”

His chest has stopped heaving and his eyes are rolled back in his head, frothed spittle at the corner of his mouth, jaw hanging slack as you relax your grip. You need to get out. You step up and around the bench, straightening the dress back over your thighs and leaning over to glance out the arched opening into the night.

“Fett?”

“On the roof,” comes the modulated reply in your earpiece. “Five guards in the courtyard, I’ve got eyes on them. Climb up the side of the building but keep flat.”

You step outside onto the balcony and hear the sound of footsteps crunching somewhere below you. There’s a lattice of spiked, ornamental-looking fruit growing nearly to the top of the building, and you step back before jumping lightly and grabbing hold of the lowest vine. It feels good to be out in the fresh air and as you always do after a job, you let your body take over, muscles in your back and shoulders burning pleasurably as you pull yourself towards the edge of the roof. You’ll let your mind catch up with what happened later, for now you're just relieved you were successful, and you’re kind of... exhilarated. You don’t want to admit this to yourself, but you were petrified at the prospect of fucking everything up on your first job with someone as legendary as Boba Fett.

As you reach to swing yourself over the lip of the roof, a gloved hand grasps your forearm and pulls you the rest of the way up.

“You okay?” he’s asking before your feet are even on solid ground.

“Fine,” you gasp back. Stars, he just pulled you up here one-handed like you weighed nothing. His hand hasn’t left your arm and you can see his helmet is tilting towards you, looking into your face. You suddenly remember the slap, and you automatically reach to touch the edge of your lip. “Oh, this is nothing. Really. I actually think it went pretty well.”

He releases a low chuckle and the sound of it makes you even more acutely aware of your close proximity up here. “You’re selling yourself short there. That was flawless. And fast. I can’t even take a cut, that was all you.”

You feel your face heat up and you can’t stop the goofy little smile creep over your face. “Well... yeah. But thanks for the lift.”

“About that,” he responds, and his hand on your wrist slides up around your shoulder while his other arm smooths down to support your lower back. “Hold on.”

The breath leaves your body in a strangled intake as you both rocket straight out over the edge of the rooftop, his jetpack surprisingly quiet under the wind whistling in your ears. You screw your eyes shut as your hair whips around your face and your hands tighten involuntarily against him, aware of how solid he feels. It’s thrilling, and yet the pounding of your heart is slowing from the urgent state of hyperalertness you always feel during a mission as your breathing syncs up to the rise and fall of the chest you’re currently pressed against.

This whole thing has been… weird. You know Fett’s worked with other hunters before, he mentioned it briefly as you agreed on the details of your arrangement before leaving the Core. Maybe it’s always like this for him; the easy camaraderie, the sense of security that comes from having someone watch your back. Somehow you don’t believe that’s the case though. You’ve seen what he’s like around other Guild members and it’s easy to see what earned that reputation for being cold-blooded. Gruff and monosyllabic, he’s never stayed to socialise any of the times you’ve seen him stalk in to collect a job or payment. You’ve heard about the time he somehow got away with silently blasting some smartmouthed hunter in the head for an insolent comment about removing his helmet. So why does he feel so different with you? Despite being betrayed or threatened by nearly every other hunter you’ve come across, you can’t seem to help the way your mind drifts back to the sound of his voice and the way it feels like… security.

 

-

 

Back onboard, things are strictly professional again. Boba’s disappeared into the cockpit to set course for the next target, leaving you to squeeze into the tiny fresher. You have a wild, inexplicable urge to look through the metal locker over the sink for any clues it might offer about what's underneath that helmet. Does he shave? Surely there's not a beard under there? What about cutting his own hair? Get a grip, you’re acting like a kid. This guy could vaporise you if he wanted to. Sighing, you finish cleaning yourself up and drag yourself back into the practical yet decidedly unsexy flight suit you normally wear when traveling.

Climbing up into the cockpit with two bowls of veg-protein, your eyes take a second to adjust to the dizzyingly blurred lines of your velocity. Boba’s leaning back in the pilot’s seat, reading a string of aurebesh projected from the holodisplay on his wrist gauntlet. “Next target’s in the Tungra sector. Barely any details on the guy; another high-ranker judging by the size of the bounty. And another kill job, just need to deliver proof of elimination. You need to stop anywhere on the way?”

You shake your head. “I travel pretty light. I hope you don’t mind I checked out your ration stores. Here, I rehydrated you a pack.” He seems to pause for a second before taking the bowl from your outstretched hand. There’s an awkward silence, then - oh shit. You realise your mistake and practically leap back out of the co-pilot’s seat. “I’ll go down to the hold, let you eat in peace.” But he’s already reaching a hand up to the back of his head, then there’s a quiet hydraulic hiss as he lifts the helmet off, leaving a headful of thick wavy hair standing messily in tufts.

You stare openmouthed as he quirks an eyebrow at you. He’s… young. Still a few years older than you, but younger than you expected from his voice and that reputation. Handsome, even. Apart from the faint frown lines, his deep skin is perfectly smooth - another rarity for bounty hunters, as your own recently busted lip reminds you. You wonder dazedly if the helmet is just to protect his looks and immediately dismiss the silly thought; there’s something incredibly fierce in his black eyes despite the relaxed way he’s gazing back at you, like he's waiting for something. You’re reminded that this man is every inch a warrior. There’s something else though, something you can’t exactly put your finger on… he’s so familiar, as though you’ve seen him before on a holodrama, but you know there’s no way that could be -

“You’re probably too young to remember. But I figured out a long time ago my face raises a few too many questions. You meet some of these Mandalorian guys and they’re fanatical about keeping their helmets on. Better people assume I’m just a religious headcase than dig any deeper.” He takes a bite of food as he talks, the words casual but the tone guarded.

“You’re not Mandalorian?” He glances at you sharply. “Sorry, I just… the armour.”

“It belonged to my father.”

You consider this as quiet settles again, breathing through the bland taste of the starchy ration food. His father mustn't have been around for a long time, then. He's been working in that armour for years, the stories among Guild members stretching back to before the Empire. And he’s shown absolute respect for bounty hunting rule number one: no questions. In fact, he’s been nothing but respectful. You should have known better than to pry. He took a risk bringing you out here with him, he could’ve asked any number of tougher, more experienced hunters instead. Are you trying to fuck this up? He interrupts the introspective self-flagellation by standing and moving to the ladder down to the hull, helmet under his arm.

“Coordinates are set. We’ll drop back to realspace in about nine standard hours. There’s a bunk there, above the cockpit.”

Something in your brain slips out of reality long enough to let you rest your hand on his elbow as he passes, and you hear yourself before you know what's happening. “Boba… thank you. For setting me up with these jobs.”

You have no idea what possessed you to touch him without needing to. But now that you have, something shifts. The stilted tension in the cabin feels charged with meaning, and you watch the way streaks of starlight cross his features. Those dark eyes are inscrutable, and you wonder what kind of things he’s seen… or done. Your chest hitches as he reaches a gloved hand down and gently cups your chin, tilting your face up towards him. You lean unconsciously into his hold, restraint slipping sideways as time expands around the moment. Despite how intimidating you know he is, you haven’t felt any fear towards him, which makes the way your heart has just started pounding thoroughly disconcerting. You take a shaky breath and the rough leather of his covered thumb brushes the edge of your parted bottom lip lighter than a whisper.

“I’ll get you a micropatch for that.” Oh. Right. The lip. He’s gone, boots ringing on the ladder down to the hull. You feel warm all over, your face and chest prickling as pure liquid heat settles low between your legs. This isn’t what you were expecting. You were expecting him to be brusque, dismissive at best. You thought he’d be making you carry his gear around, ordering you not to touch anything on his ship then ignoring you completely. You’re beginning to understand how badly you misjudged the situation, misjudged him, and with an involuntary throb somewhere below your navel something clicks into place: the realisation that you are absolutely fucked.

 

-

 

The Tungra job doesn’t go well.

Your hands are clumsy, trying to get the top off an ancient-looking medkit and ending up ripping it completely open, dropping the lid with a clang. “Hey, sit down,” Boba’s saying somewhere behind you. You’re digging around in the kit, balanced on one leg as you use your raised knee to try to support the weight of the pack. A quiet metallic thunk against the grated durasteel floor where he’s sitting and his voice comes back, unmodulated. “Calm down, wait a second. Come here.” There is no cauterizer in this medkit. Why is there no cauterizer in this medkit? You whirl on him.

“Take off your pants.”

Despite the ashen sheen to his face, he manages to leer at you. “All you had to do was ask.”

You don’t crack a smile. There’s a chunk of polyfibe as long as your hand sticking out of his calf, and you can already see the surrounding fabric of his pants beginning to darken with blood. You kneel in front of him and seize one of his boots, yanking it off and tossing it haphazardly behind you. You reach for his other foot and he catches your hand in a firm grip, making you pause.

“Careful. You’ll end up with a knee dart in your face,” he groans, dragging the boot off his injured leg gingerly and reaching to unlatch the fastenings on his knee plates. You watch him, gnawing the inside of your cheek and scowling. This is all your fault.

If it weren’t for the armour, he would be dead. You'd watched an entire panel of a building crash into him midair. You weren’t fast enough, too busy watching where Boba was to notice the armoured walker shoot the platform you were both standing on into a million pieces. If you’d just managed to catch onto something, if you’d rolled out of the way of the mess of debris smashing over you, if he hadn’t launched himself after you, if, if, if… the possible scenarios spin jerkily around in your head. So much for a fucking stealth mission. Luckily the skirmish that had already been in full swing between the Imperials and the local people had caused enough chaos that you were able to shoot the target in the head before you jetted the fuck out. Natural? Maybe not. But hopefully it would appear accidental what with everything else that had been going on. 

He’s gritting his teeth, chestpiece already off as he slides the gauntlet off his wrist, taking the glove off with it and your heart lurches with a strange endearment watching how carefully he places each piece of armour down, arranging the pieces beside him. How much he must revere those pieces of metal, you think. This is the same man you just saw smash a trooper’s helmet clean off his head with the butt of his rifle. Impatient, you wriggle forwards and unsheathe the vibroblade from the belt of your flight suit. Before he can stop you, you’ve cut jaggedly up the side of his pants and ripped the fabric back from his leg wound.

“You only have Republic-issue medkits here, these things must be at least twelve years old. And they’re half empty,” you try not to sound as shaky as you feel. “We’ll need to do this the old-fashioned way… I can hit you with a micro-dose of one of my stims, it’ll help with the pain and slow the bleeding.”

His stare feels like it’s cleaving you open, a plasma bolt to the chest, dark brows creased over that burning black gaze. You press your knees together to stop from squirming. Your offer is insane, insulting even. You’re asking him to let you stab him with a mix of potent drugs - drugs he’s watched you kill with, and he’s already in a vulnerable position… you could throw his body out the airlock, steal his ship, raid that impressive weapons locker. And his armour is probably worth a small fortune… His voice sounds somehow, impossibly rougher than usual. “Do it.”

You nod once, swallowing down the crazed sudden urge to brush your lips over the back of his clenched fist. He’s trusting you; undeservedly, inexplicably. For some reason the intimacy of this affects you with a nearly-painful surge of heat. You feel warmth on your cheeks, your lips, as you work quickly with a handful of delicate stim cylinders from your belt, adjusting the dispensers in minute increments to set the dosages.

Syringe in hand, you line up the needle tip to the side of his thigh, just above the site of the protrusion. You flick your eyes back up to read his features for a sign to continue, and his face looks strangely relaxed against the pain you imagine he’s feeling. He’s just watching you, breathing slowly, dark eyes softened into something gentle, and as he tilts his head back the light catches a warm brown cross-section through his iris. The openness of his expression emboldens you, and you shift closer, hovering your body over his and resting a tentative hand over his on his lap.

You try to make the injection as smooth as possible, slowly depressing the solution as you concentrate on numbing the area. You can still see him watching you from your peripheral vision, and you focus on keeping your face serene as you size up the task at hand. He should be pretty well anaesthetised now, but you still hold back a flinch of empathised discomfort as you work the jagged polyfibe shrapnel out, not as smoothly as you would have liked. Luckily the tranex you hit him with is working; the blood oozing slower than before despite the blockage being removed.

The hold is quiet under the hum of the hyperdrive. You don’t look up from packing gauze into the wound at his murmured voice. “I never asked if you even wanted to do kill jobs. I just assumed. Those serums, I’m guessing they come in handy for live bounties.”

Your tone is light. “They do. Pretty hard to bring them in without a ship. That Trandoshan’s piece of junk left me stranded in Hutt Space with an escape pod that was malfunctioning. But that’s not what you’re asking.”

“No.”

You wait. His breathing is still steady as you work around the exposed skin and you think he won’t continue, the pause growing until his lips move again.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. Since I was a kid. Before my father died… he used to take me on jobs so I could learn. Met a lot of hunters. And some of them just love the work itself. Bloodthirsty, get a kick out of ripping someone apart. Or greedy; a lot of these guys feel like the galaxy owes them something.”

You meet his gaze for the briefest moment in a pause between wrapping a length of bandage. “You’re still not getting to the question.”

He tilts his head further back, leaning against the hull of the ship. “You’re good at this. You’re tough, and smart. Get in, get the job done. No complaints. But it doesn’t suit you.”

You let a handful of seconds pass, then a few more. His praise thrills in your chest, and you decide to let the compliment settle despite the urge to point out your current situation and how you both ended up there.

Pressing your lips together, you measure each word carefully.

“I was still a kid when the Republic fell. The war on the holonet felt like something happening in a story. My parents didn’t let me watch, but I still heard what people were saying in the streets. Talking about them and us, being for or against the Republic like two seperate sides of a chit with no way they could ever overlap. When the war ended, things started getting messy. There was a man who used to import meilooruns to sell in the square… I saw him yelling at one of our neighbours, calling her a Separatist. People got paranoid - you’d walk through an alley and hear voices pause behind doors, waiting for you to pass. None of it mattered in the end. When the Imps moved in, they said it was to protect us. But then they started mining. They devoured everything on the planet to build ships and weapons. Seized property, land… food. Pretty soon even the loth-cats were starving to death.”

You finish tying the bandage in place, leaving your hand to rest on his knee. Your next words are lower, your gaze still focused on his leg. “My mother was the one who taught me how to splice serums, altering them to make something new. They caught her smuggling in medicine: just bacta, and some low-cost stims the Empire’d taxed up until nobody could afford them. Antibiotics and vaccines. I used to help her run supplies out to her contacts in Jalath. That’s why I wasn’t at home when they came.”

You realise you’ve been talking for far longer than you meant to and sit back, self conscious under his intense scrutiny as you examine the floor. His hand reaches out slowly and you hold perfectly still, heart thrumming as he lifts your chin with the barest touch of his fingertip. “Why are you doing that?” his voice coarse. “Why won’t you look at me?”

You’re startled, and automatically you meet his gaze as though to disprove his point. You don’t know how to answer him without leaving yourself horribly exposed. You can’t say it’s because every time you do glance at him you get caught on the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, or the way he doesn’t bother to conceal any emotion that passes over his face; a product, no doubt, of rarely needing to guard his expressions beneath the helmet. And yet he’s never betrayed any hint of a smile - you wonder if he has dimples, if the corners of his eyes crease when he laughs; if he laughs.

You imagine suddenly what he would have been like as a child, so proud and tough, worshiping a father who would leave him alone in a galaxy with nothing but ugliness and evil: inheriting a warrior’s armour and a belief that killing was the only way to survive.

You wonder how many other people have seen him like this. You wonder why he’s letting you.

Now that you are looking at him - really looking, he looks almost pained. He’s looking into your face like he’s expecting some kind of answer there. Like your confession - revealing yourself to him that way - has given him an invitation. That intangible something hanging between you holds you frozen there, heavy on your limbs as the weight of Sirpar but thin as a thread of silk, so delicate you’re almost afraid to breathe lest you shatter the moment.

And then his hand is in your hair, pulling you toward him with a savage urgency and you gasp into his lips against yours, awkwardly repositioning and trying not to collapse your weight onto his leg. He’s growling into your open mouth, “Stop worrying about the fucking leg”, as straight fire is bolting down the centre of your chest, from the base of your stomach to a keen point between your legs.

You’re in his lap, facing him as you straddle his waist, and you’ve been here before; you’ve had a handful of quick, grasping, fumbled liaisons with other hunters between jobs and it always felt convenient, fulfilling an urge like any other, but this - this is like running for your life from a crowd of firing enemies, every nerve ending bolting with electrified adrenaline. The need to feel his hands on every inch of you feels more desperate than your own survival, and that terrifies you.

His mouth on yours is like being devoured, his tongue pressing into you, tasting and groaning, rough hands cradling the back of your neck in a hold that feels practised and secure. The unbidden thought bursts into your head that this is routine for him; you’re one in a string of women who’ve been here, and your mind rejects the idea as quickly as it came, but the possessive itch lingers. You bite down on his lip and he hisses, fingers tightening in your hair, and you’re dragging yourself against the hardness you can feel even through the bulky flight suit you wear.

You reach down between you, ripping open the fastenings at the front of your suit, leaving your chest exposed to the navel as he breaks off from your lips, holding you at arm’s length to look down at the deep v of your skin. He brings a hand down to slide underneath one side of your body and his thumb brushes the concealed swell of your breast, his hand broad enough to cup your entire ribcage.

You’re too impatient for his exploration, and you’re already bringing your hands down to slide beneath the waistband of his pants as you use your thumb to pop open the fastenings. You palm him through his pants; he’s fucking hard, and you can feel the breadth of him, but then his other hand is on your wrist, lifting it gently away. For a moment you feel a stun of dejection, is he stopping you? Does he not want…? But he’s peeling your opened flight suit back over your shoulders, trying to free your arms and you lean back to help him push the heavy canvas off until you’re naked from the waist.

His hungry gaze is reverential. You resist the urge to cover your breasts with your hands, watching him watch you, shivering. His large, rough hand keeps you upright, holding your lower back, and he leans in. Before your frantically sparking brain has had time to register what he’s doing, he’s pressing his mouth to your nipple, taking you into the heat of his lips and dragging his tongue up with a warm languidity. You can’t stop the slow moan from deep in your throat and, encouraged, he presses harder against the base of your spine, arching your back up into his mouth.

Keeping the furnace of his mouth around your breast, he slides his grip down, trying to push the bunched flight suit past your waist, made awkward by your spread legs on either side of his body. He leans forward, supporting your weight with his arms and pushing you both back until you’re laying flat on the floor of the ship’s hold. He’s leaning over you, practically ripping the jumpsuit off the lower half of your body - you’re careful not to kick him in the face as he pulls your legs out and leaves you propped back on your elbows, panting up at him in your underwear.

You feel undone, wanton. Your chest is heaving with each gasped breath and your hair is loose around your hot face, your parted lips tender and eyes wide. You wonder how deranged you must look as he studies you, that same fierce expression - so severe, he doesn’t take his gaze from your face as he hooks his fingers into the sides of your underwear and slides them down the curves of your thighs in a smooth motion as you collapse onto the flat of your back.

You almost don’t hear his rasp, “Beautiful. Fuck… you’re, - beautiful…” and you feel your walls clench hard, your cunt exposed in front of him, and you know he must be able to see that you’re glistening with arousal. Your arms are thrown up over your head on the floor, fingers splayed, waiting, gasping, for him to touch you. He balls your underwear in his fist, as though he can’t decide what to do with it, and then you feel like you’re going to completely fucking combust when he presses it to his face, eyes on yours. The intake of his breath is shuddering, and he brings a hand down to press against the growing bulge in his pants.

“You have no idea - No. Fucking. Idea how good you look. How good you smell,” and then a thick finger is sliding between your folds, feeling the slick of your heat, his pressure light but firm enough that the brush against your clit jolts through your entire body and you nearly choke.

He moves down your body, a hand sliding beneath you and shifting to cup your ass, encouraging you to lift your hips slightly. His other hand is still testing you, feeling how soaked you are as he slides his fingertips over your clit, and you’re so overwrought, your sensitivity dialled up to a thousand that your hips jerk up with each pass. You squeeze your eyes shut, whimpering, and his hand withdraws from your throbbing, desperate cunt to cup your jaw in his large hand. His thumb is beneath your ear, a finger pressing against your lower lip until you take it into your mouth, first one, then another.

“Keep your eyes open. Let me see you,” and you can’t respond, mouth open under his hand, tasting your own arousal on his fingers and watching helplessly. He withdraws and then, excruciatingly slowly, he’s pressing them against your opening, feeling the responsive arch of your body at the slow intrusion. He releases his own roughened breath as though he can’t quite believe how hot you are, how wet, how tight as he begins to work the slick fingers inside you, pressing up hard against that aching spot.

You feel a slow, steadily building core of pure sensation registering with each touch and your scrambled thoughts are trying desperately to maintain some element of togetherness; you’re biting hard on your lip to try to stop the sobbing, animalistic noises threatening to burst from your chest as shockwaves of pleasure ripple up into your stomach.

He leans down, roughened thumb pressing directly over your clit, the pressure with each pass deliciously agonising as he strokes you with a torturous focus. His pace is both too slow and too fast: too much and not enough, and you’re holding your breath without meaning to, unable to take in the sensation wracking your body - you feel simultaneously frozen to the spot and desperate to move, muscles locked and straining to writhe against his touch.

How is he doing this to you? He’s breaking you. Your brain doesn’t feel like it belongs to you anymore; there’s not a single coherent thought in there, just a chorus of moremoremorefuck-icantstopdontstop. But then his head ducks lower and his tongue dips out to flick a hard, hot line in a stripe along your clit as his curled fingers drag hard against the spot inside you, and you’re fucking done. Whiteness explodes beneath your eyelids and you feel your cunt flood with an exquisite wash of agonising bliss. Your released breath is a jagged thing, your hands involuntarily curled into fists, your elbows coming up together to shield your face as your hips jerk in his hold and your muscles contract around his buried fingers.

He doesn’t even give you a second of rest, using your complete loss of control to slide a third finger inside to join the first two, and you moan around the stretch, blunt fingers so thick it feels like his entire fucking hand is inside of you, the graphic image tearing unbidden through your mind as he’s splitting you open through the contractions of your orgasm. You can hear his fingers scissoring inside you, the wetness obscene.

His tongue has slowed its ministrations, lapping slowly but firmly against you, until he closes his lips and sucks your clit into his mouth, and you’re gasping nonsensically, “I can’t, I’m gonna.. fuck, I can’t -“ and the heat of the press of his tongue drives you into another orgasm before the first has even receded; the dual pleasure cresting over you and your thighs shaking uncontrollably as your cunt clamps down, your muscles clenching and pushing against the sensation as your hands unintentionally fly down to uselessly clutch at his thick, dark hair.

He releases his hold on your hips, and you collapse back onto the floor, a trembling mess as he sits back into a kneel, throwing off his shirt one-armed and pulling his ripped, bloody pants down carelessly over the bandaged wound and - fuck his cock, like the rest of him, is beautiful, thick and broad; the head flushed a deep shade of berry and a pearl of precum glistening at the tip. He’s so hard it looks painful, his arousal obvious as he wraps his hand around himself to squeeze lightly - you’re transfixed at the sight of him touching himself.

“Is this what you want?” his voice sounds strained, and despite his obvious need he’s waiting, restrained, watching you. And like watching him set down his armour, your heart lurches with a strange, tender emotion; something you can’t account for, watching this indurate warrior literally kneeling at your feet, bloodied clothes ripped away. You haven’t yet recovered the use of your voice, instead you bring a trembling hand up slowly, and his expression is wary as you trace your fingertips across his furrowed brow and downturned lips.

How to smooth away that expression of such guarded tension? you wonder. His eyes are dark, soft, searching under his hard brows - watching you and waiting. You decide in that moment that even if this is standard procedure for him; even if every other bounty hunter he’s worked with has also ended up flushed with sticky pleasure on the floor of his ship, you don’t care.

You don’t know if his desperate hold on you is because he recognised the kernel of truth in your story; that hidden, shameful secret that you suspect he knows too - there is a yawning, lonely terror that comes with fighting in this galaxy; there is no softness, no tenderness. There is only survival, in this moment, and then the next one, until time runs out. And in this moment you’re together, wounded, needing, reaching.

You lean up on your elbow and kiss him, letting your hand slip around to the nape of his neck to feel the secret way his hair curls there before tracing down that broad muscled back. You pull him down closer, pressing your breasts up to meet his sweat-filmed chest as you try to close the space between your bodies, and he understands - lowering his hips down to yours. He breaks the kiss to watch you, eyes hard as he lines his cock up with your entrance and - Stars, you’re so soaked from your orgasms you can feel it on the inside of your thighs, and there’s no friction as he presses in, breaching you; just a slow, shearing stretch as you try to relax to accomodate his thickness, your thighs shaking from the intensity as he splits you open millimetre by millimetre.

An arm roped with muscle slides underneath your back, holding your body off the floor and to his chest as he finally, agonisingly, bottoms out impossibly deep inside you. His lips drop to your face, open mouth pressed inelegantly to your temple as he releases a low, long groan. You realise you’re holding your breath again and let out your own juddered exhale into the side of his neck as he moves so slightly inside you, and you‘re no longer aware of the hard coldness of the durasteel floor underneath you or the smell of hydraulic grease from the engine room, you’re utterly drunk on how warm he feels, how solid, and the masculine spice of his skin; soap underneath sweat.

He’s dragging the length of his cock achingly slowly through the grip of your tightness, and through half-lidded eyes you can see the muscles of his shoulder flexing with his restraint. You imagine he holds the immense pleasure of simply feeling you squeezing his cock warring with the desire to take you apart entirely. And oh, you want him to move - you lift your hips to meet him, trying to speed his movements; every inch of you burning with want, to draw him deeper, for him to hold you harder, hard enough to bruise. You want to rake your nails down his back, sink your teeth into him, make him savage - make him show you why you’re supposed to be so afraid of him. You want him to ruin you.

He presses you down hard, pinning you in place with one hand on your waist as his lips brush your ear, his breath making you shudder deliciously as he hisses “Easy, little one,” and Stars, his voice is so rough, like gravel, juxtaposed with his movements so slow and deep as he controls the pace.

And though you’ve begun to realise that his contradictions are endless, this one is the greatest surprise so far: you never would have imagined this man would hold you down and fuck you - so slowly.

His hand slides up from cupping your ass to your thigh, until he’s hitching your knee up and deepening the angle of your hips and you didn’t think it was possible but you feel even fuller, stretched to your limit. You’re absolutely trapped within the feeling of his cock - you can’t move, you can’t think, you only feel him, and as his long strokes are pressing so hard against that same deliciously aching spot you feel almost feral with desperation for him to move as you sob.

“Boba, I need… fuck, please, I need… - ,” and you feel his lips twist up against your neck, as though your torture is satisfying to him, until he raises up to look down at you, spread beneath him on his filthy floor, hair tangled, flush burning underneath your face all the way down to your breasts, tears sliding from the corners of your eyes, begging him.

His expression is total obliteration; the intensity of a man watching prey, but awed, worshipful, and he’s drinking in the sight of you wrecked beneath him; savouring this moment as though he’s being presented with the purest quality of spice. You know immediately that for him, as is it for you, this is an indulgent ecstasy - no sloppy, frantic rut up against the wall of a cantina fresher between bounties but instead a rare, luxuriant coming apart.

Your impatience wars with your desire to stay here forever (fuckthebountiesfuckthe-Empireletthewholegalaxyburn) but then his thumb is rolling on your clit, wide hand cupping your hip as he does, and your breath stops with a strangled sound, eyes rolling back until they’re closed, absolutely lost, back arching off the floor in pleasure, and you’re tipping over again, cumming around him, clenching until he growls, squeezing his cock.

And that does it; he seems to no longer be able to hold back. He flexes his hips backwards in a fluid motion, pulling almost completely out of you, before driving back inside in a savage thrust which would have hurt if he hadn’t prepared you so thoroughly, but your drenched, fluttering cunt is still riding the crest of your orgasm and you feel as though you’ve transcended the limits of clear thoughts, reduced to a creature of hot, roiling sensation as you cry out against his unleashed pace as he begins to drive into you.

And this, this is the man who has never bargained with a quarry. Who has vaporised other hunters for ill-considered comments. Whose silent, stalking presence warns of no escape, no mercy, no hesitation. He has both hands around your hips, raising your ass off the floor to pull you against him as he tears into you, the rhythmic wet smack of your bodies a violent sound under his harsh, gritty exhalations, and your head is limp; neck tipped back as stars explode behind your eyelids.

You can’t breathe, entire body engulfed in roaring heat as your hands claw helplessly into fists on the floor above your head, teeth clenched to prevent them from rattling in your head with the force of his movement. His ruthless motion stutters, rhythm falling out of time as you feel him shuddering, his cock pulsing inside you as he hunts down his own climax with exacting brutality.

He orders, “Open your eyes,” and you do, meeting his gaze through the fog of dizziness in your senseless head. And he snarls, falling over the edge as you feel thick ropes of spend filling you, throbbing out his climax in drawn out bursts as his shaky arms release your hips and he slumps over you, gasping.

You don't know how long it takes before awareness of your surroundings returns. You're staring dreamily at a transparisteel panel in the ceiling over his shoulder, covering a tangle of wires and sensors as you work to slowly replenish your oxygen stores, brain fizzing in an amber afterglow.  

You’re both still joined, mixed sweat cooling on each others’ bodies, the hold hot with the smell of your combined sex. You realise you’re laying on scraps of discarded clothing, some of it torn and bloody, as he withdraws from his position between your legs and stands up, leaning his weight heavily on his uninjured leg.

A horrible twang somewhere in your chest tells you that he’s going to leave you there without a single word, slump up to the cockpit and disappear, and you curl onto your side around the thought that you could be so quickly discarded... but he unlatches a concealed compartment over the weapons locker, pulling out an armful of worn, soft fabric. He slides his weight heavily back down the wall, unrolling the bundle and spreading the blanket over you gingerly shifting down to ease himself down behind you, his posture mirroring yours, arms almost… hesitant before sliding around your body and pulling you flush against his front. 

You're frozen, mind racing despite the heaviness of your eyes. You're both filthy, bruised, bloody and sweaty from the job before as well as your bodies' exertion. You should go clean up, you think vacantly, check your weapons, make sure you don't have broken shards of plasticrete in your hair.

But instead you're loosening, feeling his torso begin to slowly expand and then exhale against you. His face is in your hair as though he’s drawing the scent inside himself, despite your state of griminess and destruction. Gradually his movements slow, and you assume from that chest-deep breathing that he’s already asleep, unsurprising with the painkillers you gave him. You try to breathe slowly too, telling yourself you'll figure this out when you wake up. Clean up then, reassess your situation. Figure out what's supposed to happen next; how you're supposed to navigate the inevitable awkwardness of the next day. And as you slip into unconsciousness, you dream that you can feel his lips, ghosting through your hair, pressing the lightest touch imaginable to the nape of your neck.

Chapter 2: Reward

The credits clink in your bag as you stride up to the hazy Guild dive. In the space of a few weeks, you’ve made more than you have in the entire rest of your hunting career. Still not enough for a ship with a decent hyperdrive but it’s a good start. You can put a chunk of this aside to upgrade your weapons, maybe finally get your hands on a dart rifle you can customise with some range on it. Everything has turned out even better than you expected. Which is why it’s so fucking annoying that you feel completely wretched.

You can’t stop thinking about that night on the floor of his ship. The way his hair slipped between your fingers, the feel of his tongue between your thighs. Or, more painfully, how broken his voice sounded when he called you beautiful. His insistence on you keeping your eyes on him. And the tentative way he pulled you against him in the dark, both spent and exhausted from your injuries and the botched hunt. And as badly as you want to replay these memories over and over, it’s impossible to escape the ones that come next; the following morning when you woke alone, stiff with dried sweat.

You’d gathered up your discarded clothing and crept around while the buzz of a macro welder drifted distantly through the ship, until you’d climbed into the cockpit only to find him fully armoured and helmeted again. Your heart had sunk. Surely in his own ship, he wouldn’t normally bother with what you assumed would be such a restrictive and uncomfortable piece of equipment over his head? And after what had happened, you'd imagine a certain... relaxation between you. So the fact he was wearing it again seemed to send a pretty clear message; nothing had changed. You were working together; that's it.

And so you'd matched his air of casual civility the entire rest of the job, exchanging words about weapons and drop locations only. You ate your meals alone, unwilling to reveal that you were dying to see his face again. You polished your blaster, replenished your stim canisters and spent your time alone in the hold running through stretches and the simple agility exercises you need to stand a chance against any larger opponent. All the while excruciatingly aware of his presence on the ship. When he'd stepped down to check a display panel or climb into the engine room to adjust the deflector generator, you had made a concerted effort to appear thoroughly occupied. Ignoring the fact you could see him pausing in the doorway, watching you for just a moment longer than necessary.

When you’d finally landed back in Coruscant, it wasn’t just the desire for nonrecycled air that had you bursting out of the ship -  which is good because the Lower Levels weren’t exactly known for their freshness. Just like that, the job was done. You’d split the bounties, and true to his word he gave you more than half, handing over the complete sum on the jobs he’d barely had to work on, still leaving you both with a very sweet profit. Now, pausing in the seedy glow of the alley’s fluorescent lights, you’re exhausted. And ready for a drink.

 

-

 

“Hey. Hey! Stim girl.”

You scowl into your spotchka. It would’ve been smarter to just find a cheap inn to slink into, you think mournfully as the Weequay claps a hand on your shoulder.

“Heard you and Fett were the ones who cleaned out all the pucks. Couldn’t leave any for the rest of us, sweetheart? I’m surprised you lasted so long! Fett doesn’t play nice with others. Just ask poor old Aurra, Maker rest her soul! He must like you. And who could blame him, eh?” He’s far too loud, guffaw setting your teeth on edge as you dreamily contemplate shooting him in the face. Shit, maybe Fett's rubbed off on you more than you realised.

“What do you want?” your voice an inflectionless deadpan. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone.

He leans in even closer, clearly not picking up on your mood through his slurred enthusiasm.

“I could use your help. I had… well, let’s call it an unfortunate disagreement with my crew. I’m looking for another pair of hands, and I can offer you a ride to wherever you need to go if you just help me get my ship back.”

You're absently inspecting your nails as he talks, brain empty except for thoughts of Fett’s thighs under your hands. You hear yourself hum noncommittally, and he ploughs ahead.

“I knew you’d understand! Brains in that pretty head, who would've thought! All we gotta do is, uh, well all you gotta do is clean ‘em out. Backstabbers! They don’t deserve the protection of The Code! Which is why you need to make it look good… A terrible accident, something unavoidable. Like a... a gas leak, or whatever. However it is you do your thing. If they find out we’re going after members, they’ll mount our heads on the wall.”

You choke on your drink.

“Wait, what the fuck?!”

He’s unperturbed. “We could start a real gas leak… poke a hole in the hyperfuel line… be expensive to fix, though.”

You whip your head around the bar in alarm. You knew he was a moron but he must be totally wasted to be discussing this so loudly. If anyone hears you, you’ll be thrown out of the Guild for even having this conversation.

“I’m not interested in working with anyone. And while it's just a great offer, I’ll pass.”

He smacks a hand to his chest in mock heartbreak.

“Sweetheart. Baby! You won’t help a poor man in his hour of need? Whatever special treatment Fett was giving you, I’ll double it!”

Unbidden, that image pops into your head and you shudder. He snickers in an insinuating way you don’t like at all. And that's it; you really don’t feel like listening to this anymore. You swing yourself off the stool, tossing a few chits on the bar and heading for the exit. The drunk idiot follows you, wheedling and stumbling to keep up with your lengthened stride as you pass through the grubby streets of the Lower Levels. You skip down a few more darkened rows and turn into an alleyway, head throbbing as you try to remember the last time you ate. Surely you didn’t just pour that spotchka into an empty stomach? Ugh. You’re realising now that this far down, you probably aren’t going to find anywhere to stay and you’re about to turn back when the Weequay swings around in front of you, temper flaring.

“Alright girl, listen. You think you’re too hot for me now you’ve worked with a bigshot like Fett, huh? Walking around flaunting more credits than you need? Too bad. I can’t have you telling anyone about this. And maybe that cash you got jangling in your bag’ll buy me someone a bit more helpful.”

You frown at him. He’s gone a little blurry around the edges. You wonder if that’s something his species does when they’re angry. Then you realise the walls of the alley are tilting sideways.

“Huh,” you murmur to yourself, fascinated.

Your fuzzy head registers a flash of light in his hand, and you twist just in time to dodge the vibroblade aimed at your abdomen, your arm shooting out to grasp his forearm. Using his forward momentum to pull him off balance, you twist yourself lithely underneath his arm as he tumbles to the ground. A manoeuvre you’ve pulled hundreds of times, it takes you a second to realise that you’re falling with him.

Your dulled reflexes slow your limbs like you’re trapped in wroshyr sap, and you kick out with your legs as he rolls your bodies until you’re underneath him, his gnarled face twisted into a snarl as you grapple wildly for the stims in your belt, finding only his legs straddling yours and blocking your access. Instead, you smash your fist upwards, connecting with the ridge of hornlike growths along his jaw and even through the fog of alcohol the pain forces the breath out of your lungs. He takes his chance to headbutt you, and your head snaps back against the garbage-strewn alley floor.

You’re desperately trying to bring your knees up between his legs, but your boots scuff on the filthy ground, unable to gain purchase. Your head is ringing, your limbs useless, the hard angles of your bag digging into the base of your spine where you’re laying on it. He’s scrabbling at the ground around you, searching for the knife, when his entire body is ripped off yours and you gasp at the release of weight from your chest, sucking in clear air.

There’s a horrible noise, and you force your spinning gaze back into focus just in time to see the armoured figure holding the Weequay’s body up in front of his own, both men facing you as Boba Fett’s arm wraps underneath the struggling bounty hunter’s arm and up to his throat from behind. Fett’s build is stocky and solid, and despite the fact that he’s a good head shorter than the Weequay, he shows no signs of exertion as his grip tightens on the other hunter’s neck, letting him gurgle brokenly for air for a few seconds. You’re catching your breath, and you see the helmet tilt down to consider you as you scramble up into a sitting position.

“You’re drunk,” his modulated voice gravels out.

You can’t think of a single intelligent thing to say, so instead you say something stupid:

“How d’you know?”

The helmet watches you impassively for another moment, while the Weequay writhes and claws uselessly at the beskar-covered arm holding him. Fett’s movements seem almost an afterthought as he drops the other man bodily to the ground, letting him crumple into a heap.

“Because a piece of shit like this wouldn’t be able to knock you off your feet if you weren’t.”

The Weequay is retching, grasping at Boba’s foot.

“Fett! I wasn’t going to hurt her - she attacked me! The bitch is crazy!”

If he hadn’t just tried to kill you, you’d almost feel sorry for him. Boba raises a boot and kicks down, hard. You hear the clean, loud snap of his knee breaking before he starts screaming. You clear your throat, voice loud enough over the noise for Boba to hear.

“I was actually fine.”

He makes a gruff noise under the helmet. You continue, tongue garbling the words as they pour out.

“Why do - you even... following me for? Aren’t you busy? Like... ignoring me?”

He shakes his head once, an irritated gesture. The Weequay’s still wailing at the top of his lungs, and Boba unlatches the carbine rifle from across his back. You panic for a second.

“Wait, don’t kill him! You might get away with flouting the Code whenever you want, but some of us still need to follow rules. Everyone saw him leaving with me.”

His voice is barely above a growl.

“He lost any protection the Code had to offer when he tried to kill you. If you’re worried about getting in trouble, I’ll just make sure there aren’t any pieces left big enough to find.”

You aren’t sure why you feel the need to stop him, but you do. You’re not squeamish about the violence of the act itself. You know he’s right; the Weequay was only going to kill you and then the rest of his crew. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to owe him any more of a debt than you already do. He’s aiming the blaster down when you blurt -

“Boba. Please. Don’t.”

He jerks his head up, and you wish you could see his expression under there. Instead, he brings the butt of the rifle down and smashes it across the side of the writhing hunter’s head, cutting off the noise and knocking him out cold.

You breathe through your nose a few times, trying to slow the way everything’s spinning with dots of light. You’re not sure if it’s the spotchka or the blow to your head, but you’re feeling queasy as you ease yourself up into a lopsided lean against the wall of the alley. A wild, involuntary gasp of hysteria bursts out of your lips as you look at him standing motionless.

“Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is? I was gonna… I don’t know, do something impressive the next time I saw you. Something really tough. Strut in with a rancor on a leash.”

He still hasn’t moved. At least, you don’t think he has. You don’t trust your eyes anymore. Everything appears to be wobbling around as though you’re underwater.

He sighs, finally stepping toward you.

“I don’t know, this is pretty impressive. You can barely stand and you still disarmed the guy.”

You groan, wrapping an arm around your middle as you bend to pick up the Weequay’s fallen vibroblade, your heavy bag swinging around your body.

“You’re laughing at me.”

He chuckles shortly through the modulator, reaching an arm out to stop you from losing your balance as you straighten up.

“Never.”

And the sound of his gravelly voice is enough to cut through your haze and burn pleasurably into the base of your stomach. The buzzing in your limbs now feels like a warm effervescence, and you suddenly decide the absolute best thing you could do in this moment is press yourself against the entire length of his body. His hand is still on your shoulder, keeping you steady as you blink up at the helmet, head tilted back as you lean against him. He exhales in a huff.

“Yeah, you’re coming back to the ship.”

Heat explodes beneath your skin, and he speaks again.

“To sleep.”

He turns to lead you out the way you came, your heart sinking as you step over the motionless lump at your feet. The rejection smacks you with humiliation, and you vacantly recall how you ended up here in the first place: drinking, confused and lonely. You concentrate on placing one foot in front of the other, thoughts boiling around in your head. He’s silent beside you, the only sound his spurs ringing lightly over the distant sounds of music and speeders drifting down from the next level.

You wonder what he was actually doing down here. Surely not the same as you; he’s never been seen to socialise. You’re normally not one to indulge in fantasies, but you let yourself pretend he came to apologize. Maybe he’d been thinking about you just as you’d been thinking about him. The two of you are passing back up through the same levels as earlier now; the smoggy streets brighter and louder with activity.

As you pass outside a lewd-looking establishment, a Twi’lek woman stands bored while a group of rough-looking men argue among themselves. One catches sight of you and your companion and falls silent, watching nervously. The others look around to see what he’s staring at and blanch, shuffling quickly out of the way to clear your path. Boba seems to barely register the scramble his appearance produces, ignoring the men completely as you both step up to the next level and approach Slave I’s temporary landing pad. And it’s so fucking hot, you think, dimly aware of the unfairness of it, how unbothered he seems, how untouchable. If you'd been alone, you're positive those men would've had something boorish to say. And he doesn't even notice the effect he has on what's happening around him.

A flick at his vambrace brings the ramp of the ship down, and he turns to face you.

“You should rest. Wouldn’t want you getting into any more fights.”

There’s a faint tone of humour underneath the growl of his voice and you open and close your mouth before speaking.

“Where are you going?”

“Someone to see. Won’t take long. Unless there was somewhere else you want to go?”

You frown. You could still try to find a cheap inn, there’s plenty of them around here. But if you’re being honest, it’s a waste of credits. And the bunk on the ship is way more comfortable than anything you’re prepared to pay for.

“How do you know I’m not just going to steal your ship and disappear?”

He just shakes his head, stalking up the steps leading to the next level.

 

-

 

You sleep badly, your head pounding and knuckles beginning to swell, throbbing where you connected with the exposed bone of the Weequay’s face. You know how easy it would be to dull the pain with a shot from one of your canisters, but you’ve long held an aversion to using them unless the situation is absolutely dire, acutely conscious of the addictive properties. So instead you toss uneasily in the bunk, uncomfortable in your loose-fitting shirt and underwear, flinching awake every time you hear a creak in the ship’s hull in case it’s Boba returning.

After several long hours of this, you decide you’ve had enough and drag yourself to the fresher. Gulping mouthfuls of stale-tasting recycled water, you splash your face and consider your reflection. You feel disgustingly, spikily sober, and you’re furious about last night. You’ve held your own against much bigger and smarter enemies than that drunken sleemo, and you know you would never have been taken down so easily if you weren’t distracted. You decide right there that you’re not letting this kind of fuckup happen again. It's beneath you. And whatever Fett’s deal is with following you and letting you pass out in his ship, you’re not getting sucked in by it. No way.

Filled with fresh resolve, you spin to exit the tiny chamber, the door retracting up into the ceiling track - and freeze, inches from the man leaning against the doorframe, helmet under his arm.

You were woefully unprepared for the visceral reaction to seeing his bare face again, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, dark brow furrowed into that familiar, piercing glare as he considers your state of undress.

“How’s the head?”

You forcibly tear your gaze from the movement of his lips as you respond.

“Fine. Like I said, it was under control. What were you doing down there?”

He doesn’t even pause before answering.

“Looking for you.” As though nothing happened. As though it doesn't mean a thing.

Your mouth drops open. How dare he? To treat you with such professional, polite civility after making you beg him to to fuck you on the floor of his ship. To dish out your share of the bounty and let you walk off, only to come swooping in when you fuck up and find yourself unable to defend yourself - and when it was all his fault you were so preoccupied in the first place. You’re spitting the words at him before you consider what you’re doing.

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to walk around like nothing happened, when all it's all I can fucking think about. You don’t get to, to - feel nothing, you fucking ass-“

His helmet hits the ground between your bodies with a low clunk, his mouth hard against yours as he forces you back through the doorway. Your back hits the wall of the tiny chamber, his tongue sliding into your mouth as a gloved hand roughly yanks your hair back to allow him better access, the cold hardness of his armour crushing as he presses you back. The sharpness of the contrasting sensations; the heat of his kiss and the thrill of pain from the tightness of his grip cause an immediate and insistent throb of need between your thighs. You moan involuntarily into his mouth, trying to press your legs together to relieve the spike of pressure. He breaks from your lips, his body hard against yours as he hisses at you, practised hands ripping plates of armour off piece by piece.

“We had a fucking job to do. Do you know how hard it is to focus when you’re in here? Stretching your legs, bending over like that? Walking around my ship, looking at me like that? And doing it on purpose. You know what you do to me, you...”

You feel like your entire body is aflame, pinned in place and watching as he lets a pauldron drop somewhere behind him. You can feel how hard he already is through his pants, the length pressing into your hip.

You bite back a whimper as you twist your body against his, trying to manoeuvre yourself into a better position so you can feel him against your cunt. The heat between your legs is unbearable, you’re desperate for his touch, his tongue, his cock, anything. He rips off a glove with his teeth, his bare hand cupping your chin and forcing your head up as his glower devours you.

It’s like he’s been starving to death for those interminable weeks just the same as you, as he takes in the shape of your body, the frantic rise and fall of your chest, the way your legs are pressed together against the weight of him. His hands are hard, running down your back to grab at the curve of your ass and you gasp as he lifts you bodily against him, holding your weight between himself and the wall. He’s pressing himself hard into the apex of your thighs, the tented material doing nothing to conceal his arousal as you wrap your legs around his waist, squeezing yourself as close as possible to the hard outline of his cock, lining it up perfectly with your aching clit. Even the dulled sensation through the layers of your clothing is enough to elicit a gasp from you.

“Fu- fuck, fu-“, your breaths are broken, hitching in your chest as you shamelessly roll your hips, twitching in his grasp, dragging yourself against him. He’s watching you, eyes impossibly dark as his voice is a barely audible growl.

“You’re gonna get me killed.”

He turns, supporting your weight easily as he lifts you to sit on the edge of the cold durasteel cabinet on the opposite side of the enclosed space, drawing your underwear off as he slides his hands out from underneath you and down to your knees, forcing them apart. Your mind goes completely blank, purely driven by animalistic sensation as he slides his fingers down between your legs and parts your lips, groaning low in his chest when he feels how wet you already are. He drops to a kneel, and his grip on your thighs feels bruising as he leans in to taste you. You can’t stop yourself raking your fingers through his thick hair, remembering how soft it felt, having missed the sensation of it. You only have a second to enjoy the feeling before he closes his lips around your clit, and you shudder, your toes pointing and back arching as you involuntarily press your hips toward his face.

His mouth on your cunt is like a furnace, and you’re exquisitely aware of the exact pressure of his hands, holding your legs open, his thumbs pressed into the sensitive underside of each knee. You imagine his fingerprints branding you, his touch marking you permanently as he drags his tongue firmly but slowly up the side of your clit - and you feel the moment he registers that spot, up and slightly to the side that causes you to jolt in his grasp. He focuses his attention there as you feel your limbs melting in his grip, the helpless undoing coalescing in the soaked thrum of agonising bliss between your legs.

You feel as though you could die right now: you could be thrown out of the airlock in hyperspace, shot to pieces, torn limb from limb, you don’t give a single fuck, because this - this is the most uncontrolled pleasure you’ve ever felt. Just as you feel the lower half of your body begin to seize up, he turns his head to the side, withdrawing his mouth from your cunt, his absence a shock of cold lack, instead biting gently into the inside of your thigh. You exhale in a huff, your climax lost.

He doesn’t let you move before he patiently begins again from the very start, lips a breath away from your clit as he slowly licks a hot line up your pussy. He’s still moving achingly slowly, and you’re unintentionally making whimpering complaints of frustration - how the fuck is he moving so slowly? His hands on your thighs are hard, his brow furrowed above his closed eyes as he works you into a sweating, writhing mess - then he pulls back again, your building orgasm dropping out into nothing.

And then it hits you. He’s doing this on purpose. The fucking asshole is doing this on purpose, lifting you towards your release then drawing back, letting you crack apart with madness. And like any disciplined hunter, he’s completely calm about the way he’s torturing you, a sign of his absolute control, his focus. You scoff breathlessly in disbelief, and you feel his lips quirk into a smirk against the inside of your thigh, where he presses a kiss. Even as your fury blazes, a tiny cylinder firing in the back of your brain mourns that you don't get to see that upturn of his lips.

You dimly register that your grip in his hair is savage; you must be tugging hard enough to cause pain but if anything his hums against your cunt sound as though he’s sinking into his own unravelling, and he withdraws his hold on one of your legs to palm his erection. You wonder how rare it is for him to feel someone else’s fingers in his hair, how good it must feel, how sensitive. You watch, blood pounding in your face at the sight of his head buried between your thighs, as he frees his swollen cock from the waistband of his pants and roughly squeezes the length.

The way he touches himself is harsh - fist tight as the flushed head leaks precum and the sight couples with the way your inner thighs are trembling to bring a sharp throb of arousal deep in your belly. You’re once again starting to climb the cresting waves of pleasure from his unrelenting attention, bringing you to a state of total destruction. You can hear your own whimpering moans, and you drag one of your hands free from his hair to press to your mouth, biting the back of your own hand to still the sounds. His tongue presses harder, more urgently, and your hips buck spasmodically but he doesn’t break his rhythm for a moment and your eyes roll back in your head, your head falling back against the wall as you tumble toward your peak with an intensity that forces the air from your lungs.

You feel it before it hits; and it's like watching an enormous wave cresting before dragging you off your feet. Your cunt is clenching down on nothing, again and again, as your release both loosens and tightens every muscle in your body. He doesn’t let up on his attention, tongue still dragging your orgasm from you, time suspending as you keep cumming and cumming around his mouth, impossibly endless, your brain absolutely liquefied, abdomen straining hard as a gush of wetness floods the inside of your thighs, and he hisses something low, sounding triumphantly arrogant.

Your legs are shaking so hard you can’t do anything to resist when he yanks your ankles, dragging you forward to the edge of the bench until your feet hit the ground. You don’t even have time to rest your weight there before he’s flipping you, bending you double over the bench, the corner hard against your hipbones. The cold metal bites at your sensitive nipples through your thin shirt and you shiver at the sensation, conscious of the way he’s staring down at your exposed ass, your legs stretched out for your toes to barely reach the floor, and he hisses a drawn out curse as he presses and curls two fingers tight and deep into your drenched cunt, gathering the wetness of your orgasm to stroke his own throbbing cock once and again. Heat thrumming in your face, you can only grip the edges of the counter to brace yourself and bite your lip as he splits you open in one long, smooth motion. Your cunt is gripping him like a vice, the stretch unbelievable with your legs pressed closed together between his, and you both shudder as he bottoms out.

“How - fuck, how are you so fucking tight - fuck,” he chokes.

He withdraws completely, the loss of the fullness enough to make you want to sob, before driving his cock back in as he presses a large, rough hand down on the small of your back, holding you pinned against the counter as he begins to work in and out. And you can’t move a millimetre, all you can do is squeeze your thighs, trying to encourage his movements, desperate for him to hold you tighter, fuck you deeper, your legs useless, the air forced from your lungs. He quickly sets a punishing rhythm, and your ragged breaths fall into synchrony with one another. His firm hips slap against your ass with each thrust, a sheen of sweat covering you both, and you can feel how ridiculously hard he is, how overwrought he must be, how tight it must feel, the heat and wetness loud enough as to be downright gratuitous. The angle is torturous; you can feel him in your fucking guts, deeper than you’ve ever imagined possible, the thickness cutting your shallow breaths into short gasps as he slides deliciously against that spot at the front of your cunt, making you clench down hard. And it makes him groan, his arm sliding around your waist and up between your breasts to crush your body to him, leaning you back against the length of his chest - which is when two things happen at once.

The abrupt change of angle is suddenly, blindingly powerful against that sensitive spot, throwing you over the edge of another orgasm; but the climax is delayed for a moment, and you hang suspended as something in your melted brain tumbles into place. When it finally connects, the realization slams into you like a speeder; this is the same position you saw him in last night, when he crushed the other bounty hunter with one arm against his own body while you watched. And the parallels between that and now, the brutality and tenderness, the thought of his savagery coupled with the devastating way he’s fucking you rips you over the edge and you cum, viciously hard, and you can’t hold back a wail that cracks your voice on the way out as your entire body explodes in a wave of unbearable pleasure. Every muscle in your body tightens around him, losing all feeling in your fingers and toes. You hear the moment he loses control too, and his lips press down on your shoulder, teeth biting down as if he’s desperately trying to anchor himself, and you feel the thickness of his cock pulsing as he releases himself in long bursts. The moment stretches, the throbs slowing before finally he withdraws from you.

You’re distantly aware of Boba dragging himself up behind you and tossing off his shirt and pants as you feel a trickle of cum run down the inside of your thigh and you collapse shakily onto your knees, curled on the floor. You slip out of time, no idea how long you’re there before he’s scooping you up and lifting you into the tiny fresher stall where you’re both silent under the warmth of the water. This part; the part afterwards, feels somehow as though you’re far more exposed, more intimate than during what came before. You’re hesitant to touch him, and so you quietly soak in the warmth, leaning your weight on the wall, your legs still loose and boneless. But then you catch him looking at you, eyes considering, and as though he doesn’t even mean to do it, he’s scooped your wet hair gently from where it’s plastered to your face, drawing the strands carefully from where they catch around your eyes and mouth.

You start, and he doesn’t withdraw his hand. His permanently severe expression is back, mouth a hard line under furrowed brows, but his hand is soft against the side of your head. And it feels oddly reckless, but you lift your own hand to hold him there, turning your head to press a kiss to his palm. You’re rewarded with... it’s not a smile. It’s not even the beginning of a smirk. But it’s there: the faintest, tiniest lift at the side of his lips. And for now, that’s enough.

 

-

 

You’re dry, clean and clothed when you hear him step behind you while digging through your bag. Without turning, you speak lowly, your gaze fixed determinedly on nothing.

“Thank you. I owe you a favour, not just for stopping that guy from skinning me, but letting me crash here last night. I really should go, though. I need to get to Zolan, pick up some gear and book a ride before I claim any more pucks. And you’ve probably got shit to do, you don’t want to hang around here...”, you trail off as his step sounds closer, and force yourself to glance over your shoulder.

Armoured but helmetless, his arms are crossed over his chest. There’s a pause before he speaks.

“I can give you a lift to Zolan. And I wanted to ask you... there’s work on Sriluur. Might be a two person job. If you’re interested.”

His normally monosyllabic speech sounds more disjointed than usual, as though he's exerting an inordinate amount of effort on the simple words. You feel the smallest lightening in your chest, and you feel your mouth twitch on one side.

“Yeah. I’m interested.”

He nods stiffly, and leaves you standing there with half a smile as he turns to head to the cockpit.

Chapter 3: A Rule

Notes:

CW: Smut (duh), canon-typical violence, some slight dubcon/coercion.

You’re amazing even yourself with how seriously you’re taking this. No distractions on the job. Not that hard, you think. You’ve never had trouble keeping your focus before. And you’re not tiring now, despite the fact it’s been hours that you’ve been laying flat on the rooftop, eyes trained on the street below, your hands sweaty in your gloves as you keep the dart rifle steady on your shoulder. There’s no sign of either your partner or your target, but you can’t lower the sight for a second in case you miss something and blow the whole job. And you absolutely refuse to blow this job. The sooner the target is secured, the sooner Boba relaxes the 'no distractions' rule and you can wrap your thighs around his head again. So, in a roundabout way, you’re impressed with your own level of focus and professionalism, even if the motivation is... questionable.

Movement in the street below catches your eye and you swivel the end of the rifle, finger tightening on the trigger. The street is filled with bodies, drunk and laughing, but your attention had been caught by something moving much faster; a dark shape surreptitiously darting out of a side exit, head hidden under a hooded robe. You squint an eye shut, sharpening the focus on your scope… three eyes, scaly skin; that’s the target. You have no idea where Fett is, but he was supposed to be closing on the target from the ground level. Then you realise your shadowy figure isn’t alone; several hulking men have slipped out that same doorway, scanning the street. You count five, each scowling - except the Aqualish, for all you know that facial expression could mean anything.

“Shit,” you hiss under your breath. They’re all heavily armed, belts hung with blasters.

“Fett?” you breathe into your comm. You’ll have to try to separate them, draw the target away from their guards. There’s no response in your ear and you grit your teeth. The hooded figure is almost at the end of the street now, and you don’t like the thought of wasting several long days tracking him down again.

Before you can make a decision, everything goes to hell. There’s a blast, and someone starts screaming. Suddenly the bodies below are panicked, voices raised over one another as people clamber to get out of the street. You’re swinging the scope wildly, you can’t see a single thing through the chaos, then- there. The familiar helmeted silhouette separates from the dark of an alleyway, blaster in hand as he shoots again. You can see one of the bodyguards is already down, the smoke still rising from the scorched blaster mark in the centre of his chest. The second shot rings over the noise in the street and another huge body falls.

The remaining two have their blasters drawn, spinning and yelling. One scrambles backwards, pressing his back to the wall and shielding his face with his arm as he shoots indiscriminately into the mass of bodies. You barely take the time to line up your aim before squeezing the trigger, your stim dart pinging off the wall behind him.

Swearing, you fumble to reload. Fett’s stalking the fourth guard, and the shape of him striding down the centre of the street is enough to send a fresh wave of terror through the revellers, screaming people throwing themselves sideways to get out of his path. You finally take your second shot, and this time you don’t miss, the man dropping like dead weight with your canister lodged in his windpipe.

Fett’s nearly on top of the last remaining man standing, but from your vantage point you can see the target disappearing around the end of the street, having broken into a run with the rest of the crowd. You launch yourself up, swinging the rifle strap around on to your back, throwing your whole body into a sprint towards the edge of the rooftop. You are not going to endure another week of silent stalking.

Running parallel to the street below, you leap over the vents and pipes littering the roof the building, your boots pounding against the duracrete as the neons reflect an array of colours up into your face. The hooded shape is dead ahead, turning into another street, but you’re already there. You hoist yourself over the edge of the roof and without thinking, swing down into the street below. You land hard, bending into a crouch to absorb the shock of the fall and the hooded shape lurches backward at your sudden appearance, stumbling as he tries to wheel around. You aim a low kick at his ankle, sweeping his feet out from underneath him and he falls in a tangle.

The figure is flailing, non-human speech clicking from underneath the hood. You’re pulling the binders from your belt when you catch movement from your peripheral vision and throw yourself sideways just in time to miss the blaster bolt, the bounty flinching back as the shot narrowly misses his head. Spinning, you catch a glimpse of the giant man’s twisted expression as he fumbles to aim again but you’ve already kicked out hard, catching him in the centre of his sternum and forcing the breath from his chest as he goes down. Kicking the blaster out of his hand, you crouch over him, a stim positioned near enough to his face that he doesn’t move an inch. You grin, panting from your mad dash over the rooftops.

“You are so lucky you followed me. My partner is nowhere near as nice.”

Knocked out but unhurt, you leave him in the street, propped against a building. You kind of wish you could do the same to the target, you think. It’s awkward as hell trying to walk him along in front of you, his cuffed... hands? paws? behind his back. The clicking language is still sounding out from under the hood, and you sigh.

“Sorry, I don’t speak Gran. Try to relax, they want you alive.”

The clicking increases in pitch and you pick up your pace, pushing the quarry forward, when -

“Bounty hunter. Listen to me. I have powerful friends. You are making a mistake.”

You raise an eyebrow.

“So you do know Basic.” You’ve reached the bodies of the other guards, but Fett’s nowhere to be seen. “I hope your powerful friends are tougher than your bodyguards. That wasn’t much of a defence.”

Ugh, are you going to have to march this three-eyed loudmouth all the way back to the ship? You were counting on Fett being here so you could knock the quarry out and stop talking. You’re not strong enough to carry him by yourself.

“Tougher than you,” he’s clicking out. “Powerful enough to rip your thoughts from your head.”

You can’t help but laugh at this. “That’s a new one.” Lights flare in the sky a block over and you hear the familiar sound of a modified ion engine landing. He’s coming to pick us up, you realise, thankful. You shove the Gran in the small of the back, urging him forward. He’s still babbling in that clicking, insectlike voice, but you’re already thinking of how good it’ll be once you’re back on the ship, quarry knocked out and caged, job finished, just you and Boba...

As you round the corner, the subject of your thoughts is leaning, arms folded against the open ramp of the ship, helmet tilted as you draw closer.

“That new dart rifle isn’t worth the credits you spent on it,” his gravelly voice drawls.

You wince. “It’s not that bad. I’m the one who can’t aim for shit.” You hustle the Gran, now silent and stiff with terror up the ramp. Boba follows you in, raising the door behind him and watching impassively as you wrangle the bounty into one of the small prisoner cages in the hold. The quarry regains his nerve just as you’re pressing a stim into the crook of his elbow, bursting out with a panicked “-you will both die! Bounty hunting scum!” before slumping down in a heap. You turn and carefully unloop the strap of the rifle from across your body.

“That should keep him asleep - and quiet - for at least five standard hours. How far back to the Core?”

He’s halfway up the ladder to the cockpit, and you hear his modulated response drift down.

“We’re only nine parsecs out. Heaps of time to pick up another job in the system before we leave.”

“Another- what?”, you clamber up behind him. He’s already in the pilot’s seat, flipping switches and powering up the engines. “This was the last puck. Once we drop this one off, we don’t have any other jobs until we get back to a Guild posting.”

He doesn’t turn his head but you sense the tension in the set of his shoulders. Your next argument dies on your lips. You’re getting slowly better at reading his body language; particularly when he’s hyperfocused on a job and becomes a cold, silent hunk of walking metal. He doesn’t… shut down exactly. He just becomes harder, withdrawing almost literally into the shell of his armour. You’re bitterly disappointed at the thought of having to wait even longer before a break, but conscious of the fact you’re on his ship, using his fuel, eating his rations, you don’t feel like complaining would be fair.

So instead of pushing back, you swallow the disheartened lump in your throat and lower yourself into the copilot's seat behind him, laying the dart rifle you’re still carrying down across your lap. Modifying it to take your stims seems to have unbalanced it somehow; the weight feels unevenly distributed in your hands. You pull the canisters out, frowning as you reassess them in your hands. You could probably try to load smaller quantities in, but you’re not sure how concentrated you could make a soporific dose to still be effective. You’re contemplating the detached interface scope, wondering whether you should get rid of it entirely to try to rebalance the rifle when his voice breaks the extended silence in the cockpit.

“It’s not your shooting. That thing’s too heavy for you. You’re fine with your blaster.”

You scrunch your nose at this. “You’re giving me too much credit. I’ve never been much of a sharpshooter. But I think you’re right about this at least; loading the stims isn’t working. The glass is too bulky. I’ll need to figure out a way to load the doses loose.” You hear the frustration in your own voice. Not so much at the waste of credits, but moreso in feeling irritated you’ve fucked up something as fundamental as weaponry.

“Give it here,” Boba’s low voice grits. You hand to to him wordlessly, chewing the inside of your cheek. He leans back in the seat, thighs spread as he expertly disassembles the power cell, pulling the gas canisters out and dropping them on the control board in front of him. Watching his gloved hands work easily with the fine pieces, you let yourself drift back into the dreamy headspace you’ve been occupying for the past few weeks since you left Coruscant. He looks almost… relaxed, the rifle in his hands seeming like a natural extension of his armour. For the first time on this job, his posture has softened slightly from the rigid way he holds himself whenever he’s hunting.

You know what that’s like; every job you’ve ever done has left an additional weight on your chest. Some days you feel like you want to shed your entire body and crawl out like a skinned creature to escape the oppressive tightness of knowing the things you’ve done. Boba’s response seems to be the opposite. He throws himself into the work headlong, like he’d willingly drown. You definitely aren’t in a position to judge, but it seems to you like he pushes so hard out of a fear of stopping. Like if he slows down, everything will catch up with him.

He unlatches the handguard, and you let your gaze follow the motions of his fingers. While you’ve been on your best behaviour around him, you still haven’t been able to entirely abstain from thoughts of those fingers… among other things. You’re only human, and it’s pretty fucking hard to fall asleep in your tiny bunk when you’ve spent the day watching his broad back, muscled thighs and solid ass strutting ahead of you down dingy streets. The last couple of nights you’d been possessed with the image of him crouching to one knee as he threw an enormous Gamorrean quarry over his shoulder, the lazily nimble way he’d recovered immediately from the exertion by shooting two more of the approaching pig monsters without even seeming to aim.

You’re unconsciously squirming a little in your seat, too warm in the gear you’d worn for the cold climate of the planetoid you’ve just left. Which is unusual for you; normally perpetually cold on the ship. You pull your gloves off, loosening the top fastenings of your shirt and lifting your hair from the back of your neck. He’s still totally absorbed with your rifle, pinching one of your canisters between two fingers to examine it more closely. You’re fixated on the way he’s sitting, thighs spread comfortably as he leans back in the seat. Maker, you wish you were sitting there.

“Boba,” your voice breathy even to your own ears.

“No.” He practically bites the word back at you, leaving absolutely no room for movement.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” you return, unperturbed. Your face still feels hot, and you undo another fastening on your top.

“I can guess. And we’re still working.”

For some reason, the fact he’s fully armoured and helmeted makes you feel oddly brave, despite the intimidating effect it has on everyone else. The staticky quality of his voice through the modulator rumbles pleasantly through your lower body and you press your thighs together.

“Actually, I thought we were between jobs. And if you wanted to double back, that gives us... mmm... two more hours?” You let one of your hands drop from where it was undoing your shirt even further to knead your thigh, letting your fingers spread wide. The helmet tilts almost imperceptibly in your direction, and you know he has no peripheral vision in that thing, so even if he’s listening, he can’t quite see you from that angle. Biting your lip, you let your head fall back against the seat as you lengthen your spine and hum lowly. Your hand drifts higher, pressing now at the seam of your pants. The contact immediately makes you shiver, and you watch in satisfaction as he shifts in his seat.

“There is a quarry. On. The. Ship,” each word gritted as though through his teeth. You’re unbearably hot now, and you can’t help the tiny whine that escapes your throat as you slip your hand under the waistband of your pants. You slide your fingers between the lips of your pussy, gathering your growing wetness to circle your clit, just applying pressure for now, not yet moving in earnest.

“I know,” you breathe. “And he’s fast asleep, and we’re wide awake, and - oh,” you catch your breath as your cunt clenches reflexively as you drag the pad of a finger over your clit. Boba’s completely frozen in his seat now, the loose rifle parts laying across the control panel in front of him. You can practically hear the creak of leather as his posture stiffens, the rigidity of his posture telling you all you need to know: he’s affected by this. And that’s all the invitation you need.

You raise your hips off the seat long enough to push your pants down, the lack of restriction allowing you to change the angle of your hand and you don’t bother trying to bite down your whimper. Now he is looking, head snapping to the side as if of its own volition and you let your mouth drop open into a little “o” as pleasure overtakes your body. There’s an incoherent growl of something that sounds a lot like “Fuck” from the modulator, and you spread your legs a little for him, letting him see how wet you are.

“Don’t you want to touch me? Oh, fuck… I wish you were touching me,” you tell him. His hand is curled into a fist, and you’re just about ready to throw yourself onto his lap when he speaks, so low you can barely hear it.

“Suck on those fingers.” And oh, that voice. He sounds dangerous; this is the way you’ve heard him speak moments before eliminating a target, voice dark and hard. You comply, slowly licking the length of your fingers before sliding them between your lips. You can taste yourself, the tang of your arousal slick as you make a show of it for him, hollowing your cheeks and slowly sliding them out of your mouth, keeping your eyes pinned to the visor of his helmet. You can see the hardness growing in his pants, the plate of armour across his lap straining, but he doesn’t move to touch himself or offer any relief, perfectly still.

“Now let me see them in your tight little cunt.” Your body floods with heat, and you feel you could combust right there. Wet with saliva, you press your middle finger inside yourself, stroking your clit with your thumb as you do. Your exhale is shaky, and you rock your hips back into the chair against the delicious squeeze of your muscles. You’re burning under his gaze, and you’re desperate to touch him, climb onto his lap, pull the helmet off and suck his lower lip into your mouth.

But you know he won’t let you do it with a bounty on the ship; he’s too rigidly affixed to his own rules even though it would be so easy for him to throw you back against the control panel and fuck you as hard as he needs, relieving the tension from the past few jobs. He’s too harsh, too tied down to his own asceticism. So instead you torture him, moaning and rolling against the ministrations of your own body.

“Both of them. I want to see you fuck yourself with both those fingers.” You press your index finger in to slide beside the other, your head rolling back in pleasure, and he groans. “Good girl… fuck, you look so good.”

And the liquid curling of heat low in your stomach is beginning to spark the loss of your control; your stomach muscles are tensing in anticipation - the echo of his voice repeating good girl, good girl, bouncing in your head, and it’s enough to make you want to melt into a puddle.

“Boba…” you’re breathless. “Please, I want you… please,” and you know he’s tempted, so you drag your gaze down to his tented lap. “What if… what if I touched you? Please… oh, you don’t have to do anything, just let me…” and for a long pause, he remains frozen in place, hands clenched, and you think he won’t crack, but then he slowly releases a breath from deep in his chest and you can hear the strain in it. And you just want to make him feel good, give him something to help with the steely focus you’ve both been working with for weeks on end.

He’s so tense you feel he could snap at any moment. You slide to your knees, fingers still buried between your legs as you crouch between his spread thighs. You free your hands from your throbbing pussy long enough to lay them on top of his legs, looking up at him through your lashes. And you know you’re not being fair, that offering yourself to him on your knees there’s no way he could possibly deny you. But you don’t care. So he doesn’t refuse.

A gloved hand cups your chin as you ease his straining cock out of the top of his pants, having loosened the plate of armour across his waist. You can’t stop yourself peeking up at him as you take the leaking tip into your mouth, opening your mouth wide to accomodate his girth, your lips soft as you resume your ministrations to your swollen clit. Easing your head forward, you take the length of him into your mouth, laving your tongue up along the bottom of the shaft as you do.

He’s so thick that you have to hold your jaw uncomfortably wide, and you try to relax your throat as you take him deeper, relishing the feeling of his hot, hard cock filling your watering mouth. Your fingers are working faster on your clit, and as your moan vibrates around him his hands tighten in your hair, his hips jolting involuntarily as his breath hitches.

“Fuck... why do you do this to me... I should’ve cuffed you... like a bounty... make you control yourself... fuck,” and the thought of it is enough to make your entire body shudder deliciously. You dip your fingers back inside your clenching pussy, reaching your other hand up to cup his balls, letting your thumb stroke a line up the sensitive middle, and he hisses as you duck your head, taking him as deep as you can, letting him hit the back of your tongue, breathing through your nose and swallowing around your gag reflex.

You’re so close, a wash of sensation breaking over your entire body, your legs shaking, and as you drag your saliva-slippery lips along his length, coating him in wetness, your cunt clamps down, your wail muffled by the thick cock gagging you. You cum in a burst of heat, shoulders slumping forward as your spine goes completely loose, nostrils flaring as you fight for breath around your stuffed mouth. The vibrations of your wracking hums trigger his own undoing, Boba’s hand cradling the nape of your neck tightening as he grits out a stuttered curse and the back of your throat fills with spurt after spurt of cum, the warmth thick as you swallow.

You slump back, panting and sweaty, your clothes twisted around your body. Boba’s breathing isn’t much steadier, and you blink up at him, his helmet tilted back to look at the curved ceiling panel as he fights to regain control. You did that, you think, and you’re so fucking proud you can’t stop your triumphant little smile as you lick your lips, chest heaving while you both catch your breath.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he rumbles finally, leaning over and picking up loose rifle pieces from where they’ve dropped to the floor.

“Like what?”

“Like you’ve gotten away with something.”

You frown, feigning innocence. “I don’t know what you mean. You hungry?” You’re straightening your clothes, pulling your pants back on and smoothing a hand over your thigh as he watches.

He shakes his head. “No. Help yourself, I have a few things to take care of here.”

As you drop back down to the hold, you feel curiously light. A cautious domesticity has settled between the two of you, and you’ve forgotten at times that this is just a temporary agreement; once he’s had enough, he’ll drop you at the nearest spaceport and you can put a deposit on your own ship with the money you’ve made. And then you'll both just continue on with your lives.

You’re trying not to get too comfortable here - no matter how easily he tolerates your presence on the ship, you’re an interloper first and foremost. You can’t quite believe you just bullied him into breaking his own rule, you muse as you rehydrate a ration pack. You’re pushing it, and as much as you’re trying to greedily take as much of him as you can get in the short time you have, you can’t help but feel a horrible creeping sense of dread whenever you think of parting ways.

 

-

 

If you thought the last place was cold, this stop is a nasty shock. As soon as the ramp lowers, the biting air rushes in and you audibly startle, clenching your teeth together and lifting your shoulders to protect your neck under your heavy jacket. It’s a moon, tidally locked; this side of the surface in permanent darkness and the atmospheric instability causing constant storms, eroding the moon's surface to the point that most of the inhabitants live underground in interconnected tunnel-streets. You’re seriously considering digging out a vac suit when Boba’s heavy tread pauses beside you.

“Stay with the ship. This one won’t take long.” You frown at him. Since you’ve been working together, you’ve been working together. This is the first time he’s left to do a job on his own, and your defences are immediately triggered by the implication.

“I can handle the cold. Probably better than you; that beskar is going to ice up as soon as you get outside.”

He shrugs. “It’ll be fine. It’s an alloy; if it were pure it’d cost more than the ship.”

“Don’t change the subject. I’m coming with you. I’m not some freeloader looking for you to fly me around; I can pull my weight.”

He chuckles. “I know you can, little one. This isn’t a job you’ll like, though. It’s a... private bounty. Non-Guild. It won’t.... it might be ugly.”

You pause at this. You didn’t know he was taking on private bounties, but it makes sense. It explains why he’s able to come and go as he pleases, why he can seemingly flout the Creed as much as he likes. It’s also incredibly worrying. Private clients set exacting, sometimes impossible conditions. It’s not unheard of for hunters to end up with a lifelong debt for failing to return a target. As much as the Guild pisses you off sometimes, it has certain protections in place for its members. You know he’s never failed to return a quarry but you still don’t think there’s any price high enough for this kind of gamble. You press your lips together against a wracking shudder as Slave I creaks in a violent burst of wind. Boba’s already halfway down the ramp, heading out into the ice.

“Wait!” He pauses, turning to look back up at you. “Just... watch your back. Comm if you need. Please.”

He stands there a beat longer than necessary. And it is a weird fucking thing for one hunter to say to another, admittedly. You wait for him to laugh, or give you shit about it. But he doesn’t. He just nods once and disappears out into the icy darkness. Wrapping your arms around yourself, you hit the controls to raise the ramp, sealing the hold against the wind. The hull is groaning; the popping of contracting metal loud in the silence.

You’re about to climb back up to the cockpit when you pause. The quarry is curled where you left him, all three eyes still closed as he shivers unconsciously in the prisoner cage. He won’t die down here, you’re pretty sure. It might be uncomfortable but the ship’s generating enough warmth to keep you both alive. You couldn’t say what makes you shrug off your thick jacket and drape it over him... guilt, maybe? - but you don’t particularly want to stand there and analyse it, so you hurry up the ladder, the cold metal biting under your fingers.

 

-

 

You’re trying to doze off curled in his seat, it’s warmer; the sides higher, but it also has a comforting smell that somehow helps you ignore the way your teeth are chattering. You’ve never had an easy time falling asleep and the cold isn’t helping much. Your thoughts drift back to the Gran in the hold, wondering who wants him, what he’s done, what will happen to him after you drop him off. You hope that if whoever’s paying the bounty plans to kill him, they at least give him a merciful death.

And then you’re back where you always are when you can’t sleep; playing a slideshow of the faces of every target you’ve ever taken down, some of them scared, some of them angry, some of them pleading. You tell yourself the same thing as always: it’s none of your business whether they deserved it. It doesn’t help thinking about the crimes they’ve committed, the people they may have hurt. It’s just work. And if you hadn’t been the one to find them, someone else would have. The ones you’ve killed have had gentler deaths at your hands than they may otherwise have suffered. But after all this time, it doesn’t feel like a comfort anymore, just an empty excuse.

At some stage you must drift off because the sound of the second prisoner cage clattering open jolts you awake. You leap up, sliding down the ladder just in time to see Boba unceremoniously tossing the body of a middle-aged human male inside. The man’s beard is streaked with blood, and you can see the beginning of a black eye forming. Boba takes in the sight of the Gran covered in your jacket and you cross your arms over your chest, ready to defend your ridiculously sentimental gesture to some sarcastic remark if necessary. But he doesn’t say a word, just disappears up into the ship’s cockpit. You follow, wanting to ask a million questions but uncertain where to begin.

His helmet is crusted with a layer of ice, and he wipes his gloved hands over the visor to clear his sight before punching in familiar coordinates.

“Coruscant?” you ask, and he doesn’t answer right away, stomping the frost from his boots as he runs through the takeoff cycle. The gyroscopic hydraulics kick in down in the hold and the cabin rotates inside the outer shell, keeping you upright as the rest of the ship rearranges into its flight configuration.

“I’ll drop you off with the Guild quarry and the dead pucks so you can collect the bounties. I should be back in about ten standard hours; try not to pick any fights while I’m gone.”

You wince at the reminder of the last time he left you alone in the ecumenopolis, but can’t help the next questions already forming on your lips.

“I’m not coming with you to take in the private job? Who’s the client?”

You’re pretty sure he’s not going to answer you, the silence stretching an uncomfortably long time. But then he speaks, his tone hard. “ISB.”

Oh. And you almost regret asking, because despite yourself you’re now thinking about the unconscious man underneath you both. For Imperial Security to want him badly enough to put out a private bounty, he’d have to be involved in something they didn’t want publicly known. The Empire: lovers of public executions and making an example of wrongdoers aren’t usually worried about keeping their punishments secret. Something must be happening here that undermines the Empire in a way that they believe would be dangerous for others to know about. There’s only one thing you can think of that would call for this kind of subterfuge: insurgency. The man must be some kind of rebel conspirator. You can see Boba turning to watch you, the helmet still as his hands are hovering unmoving over the ship’s controls.

He speaks again, a forced kind of levity. “Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

He seems… tense. You realise he’s waiting for you to say something about it; to fight him on this, condemn him. You aren’t sure why you don’t want to. By all accounts, you should be sickened at the thought of helping the Empire crush its dissenters. Your hatred of the regime that took so much from you, and from so many others, is still as strong as ever. But that carousel of images spins through your mind again; the faces of the bounties you’ve brought in. Young, old, all genders, all species… you can’t afford that kind of righteousness anymore.

“I think we both know this isn’t the kind of work that allows for idealists,” you finally answer carefully. He’s still turned towards you, and you look back at the blank visor for several long moments. You breathe, a muscle tugging somewhere in your chest. You’re overwhelmed with the need to see his face. Fuck the quarries; you know he hates taking it off with targets on board, but you also know he has to do it to bathe and eat anyway. He'll survive for a couple of seconds.

Slowly, so he knows what you’re doing, you reach out and release the catch at the back, lifting the helmet slowly off. He doesn’t try to stop you, although you see his posture stiffening in his chair. With his face finally free, you pause to take in the sight of him. He’s frowning, always frowning, and you automatically press your finger gently to the line between his dark brows, trying to smooth his expression. He looks tired, a shadow of stubble across his jaw and his hair sticking up in messy tufts. You can’t help the little lift to your lips… you’ve missed him, even though he’s been here the whole time.

“Hi,” you whisper.

And the sight fills your chest with light; his face relaxes fractionally. “Hi,” he echoes, sounding vaguely amused. You bend and press your lips quickly to his, standing between his knees, and he catches your wrists, holding you there as he leans in to deepen the kiss. Reaching blindly behind you to leave his helmet on the copilot’s chair, your hands are free now to run through his hair; the object of so many of your daydreams. You rake your nails lightly along his scalp and he hums into your lips, his arms reaching around your waist to hold you still, a hand travelling down to cup your ass appreciatively. His tongue dips into mouth, and you feel a hot melting low in your stomach, your knees wobbling. He doesn’t miss it and catches you behind both knees, jerking first one leg and then another over his own so you’re straddling his waist, facing him on the chair.

“What happened to no distractions?” you murmur against his mouth, and he bites your bottom lip in warning, grinding you down onto the hardness of his codpiece.

“You happened,” he shoots back. “You can’t follow my fucking rules, on my ship,” and the rough quality of his voice would be threatening in any other circumstance but here it sends a thrill through you like a bolt of plasma. You roll your hips on his lap, pressing yourself against the curved armour, and the cold metal sends shivers through you, contrasting with the heat of your cunt deliciously.

You let your hands fall from your grip on his hair, and then you’re unbuckling the sides of the plate from his waist, leaning back as you pull it off from between your bodies and drop it softly somewhere behind you. Now you can feel him, his cock already as hard as the armour you’ve been shamelessly riding, and you bite your lip as you drag yourself against him, his eyes glazed as he watches you using his body to get yourself off.

“Take off your pants,” he grits. You oblige, leaning your weight back against the ship’s console as you wriggle the pants off your legs. You shove your underwear to the side, hooking your fingers around the bunched fabric as you resume the lazy roll of your hips against the bulge in his pants. He’s staring at you with a feral intensity, as though he could drag the pleasure from your cunt with his gaze alone, and he bites a glove, dragging it off his hand. He glides his bared fingers up the inside of your thigh, feeling the tension in the lines of your muscles as he gently kneads you with his fingertips, your sensitivity racketing up with the feel of his touch.

The press of his rough finger against your clit makes you squeak and you arch your back, stiffening as he begins a slow, firm circling. You clutch at his shoulders, trying to hold yourself steady when he presses two thick fingers into your aching core, stretching you open as he sinks in deep, all the way to the base of the knuckle. Your mouth drops open silently, and you shudder, the sensation sharp and unbelievably full.

“Is this what you wanted?” he hisses at you. “You’re so fucking wet… you have no self control.”

Your voice sounds broken to your own ears as you whimper back to him. “It’s only because of you… fuck, I can’t help it, I can’t stop myself… all I can think about is you,” and he twists his fingers, stroking against that unbearably sensitive spot as his thumb presses your clit, and you can’t move, pinned on his lap with his thighs spread under yours, forcing you wide open for him.

You can feel your heart beating in your throat, each pulse echoed in a wave of heat through your cunt, and you dig your nails into the unarmored gaps at his shoulders, squeezing your fingertips hard enough you know he can feel it even through the rough fabric of his shirt. You’re beginning to clamp down, the pressure building - but you don’t want to cum yet, his fingers aren’t enough, you want to feel him inside you, and so you fumble with the fastening of his pants, trying to loosen his cock.

He realises what you’re up to, and pulls his hand from your pussy, the slow drag making you hitch your breath.

“Here,” he murmurs, pressing his fingers to your lips. “Taste how soaked you are for me,” his other hand freeing his cock from his pants, pumping it roughly in his fist. The taste of your arousal dances on your tongue, and you let your eyes roll closed as you thoroughly lick his fingers clean, trying to show him with your attentiveness how desperately you want to please him.

He slides his hand from your mouth and grips your ass, lifting you easily until you’re braced inches above his erection. Your thighs are shaking from the effort of holding yourself above his cock, not yet ready to take him inside, and he’s rough as he seizes you, cupping your face in his large hands. He kisses you hard, almost savage as his tongue steals the taste of your cunt from inside your own mouth, and you let yourself ease down to take the first inches inside you.

You aren't completely ready for the size of him, having only previously taken him after cumming already, and you panic slightly. Your heart pounds wild in your ears, warring with your desperate need to continue. The stretch is exquisite, and you clench your core to stop from collapsing all the way onto his cock, only serving to tighten your grip even further. He groans into your mouth, his hands holding tight around your waist and supporting your weight, and you can feel the effort he's exerting in keeping you still. You ease down another torturous inch and your cunt is so wet you can hear him split you open, your own fingers curling into his hair, desperately trying to control the stretch.

“You're too tense, fuck… relax, little one,” he bites out, and your high pitched gasp is the only answer you can give him, your grip on him vicelike, positive you’re pulling his hair hard enough to hurt and trying to consciously relax every muscle you have.

He kisses the indentation at your clavicle, his thumb pressing again at your clit, and the sensation is too much for your oversensitive body. You lose control of your thighs and drop your weight fully onto his cock, the sharpness yanking a hiss loose from you as you're stretched smoothly open around the entire length. You both freeze for a second, his grip squeezing your waist hard enough to bruise, and you bury your face in the crook of his shoulder, the metal of his shoulderpiece beautifully cool against your overheated cheek. His spread thighs are flexing underneath yours as he holds still, waiting for you to adjust, your eyes clenched shut with concentration.

You raise your weight up on your toes, lifting yourself from his lap, and slowly let yourself ease down again, the feeling almost too much to take, making you dizzy. He’s trying to help you, his hands supporting your ass, cupping you but letting you set the agonisingly slow pace, dragging your body off his cock and letting yourself down onto it again.

Slowly, slowly you fall into a dragging rhythm, rolling your hips to adjust the angle. You can’t stop the whimpers now, the pressure building in your core as you helplessly start to move faster, your calves straining as you bounce on his lap with your weight on your tiptoes. His thumb circles your clit harder, matching the speed of your movement with his strokes, and your skin feels like it’s on fire as you feel the rush of blood heat your chest, your face, your clit, every nerve ending sparking and contracting.

He lets go of your ass, bringing the hand up to hold the back of your head steady, your eyes fluttering open, forced to remain focused on him as he works you closer to the edge.

“Cum for me,” he snarls, “let me see how beautiful you look when you cum,” and your head falls back, brows drawn together, your lips open in a wordless cry as you collapse completely, your walls spasming uncontrollably with the force of your climax, feeling the squeeze of your orgasm envelop his cock as you burst into heat around him.

He doesn't let you go, bringing both hands to your waist, keeping you still as he fucks up into you, lifting his hips to meet yours with a nearly-brutal intensity. The wet slap of his thrusts fills the cockpit and he groans, pressing his face into the fabric at the space between your breasts and you feel his fingers curl, digging into the softness at your waist as his breathing stutters, shuddering as he grinds you down, his cock buried deep.

You feel each pulse of his climax inside you as he convulses, and you’re both gasping as you clutch blindly at each other in his seat, his hips flexing until finally his grip goes slack. Panting, he continues pressing slow, sloppy kisses to the line of your jaw as you both come down, feeling your beaded sweat cooling behind your knees.

Silence returns to the cockpit as you hold onto him, matching each expansion of his ribcage. When your heart has returned to normal, he’s still inside you. You don’t really want to move, content to remain where you are forever, even as you can feel the trickle of cum on the inside of your thigh combining with your own fluids, distractedly conscious of your sweat-slick limbs and messed hair.

You let yourself stay there just a little longer, memorizing the feeling of his lips lazily pressing to your neck, chest, wherever he can reach. You don’t want to think about it, but a tiny voice at the back of your head is urging you to store this sensation away so that you can remember it when you’re no longer with him. So that when you’re alone again, running and hiding and always watching your back, you can draw on this memory and try to conjure the dream of his face, his voice, the way he smells.

When you finally drag yourself up on shaky legs, he watches you go, his expression inscrutable as you bundle your pants in your arms. You try to keep your voice light, but you can hear your own emotion in it, your thoughts having turned fretful as you realize how hard it's going to be to give this up.

“I’ll wait for you on Coruscant. Don’t take too long.” His lips tighten at one side, twitching into something that almost resembles a soft expression, and he nods as you make your way down to the fresher.

Notes:

So, this story has been eating my brain and I've decided to turn it into an ongoing series! Thank you so much for the incredibly kind and encouraging comments; I'm blown away by how lovely everyone is. I've also (very) recently joined Tumblr, so please pop over and say hi at zinzinina.tumblr.com

See you soon! x

Chapter 4: Brother

Notes:

CW: No smut this time sorry! It's quite a plot-heavy chapter, so there's some angst, violence and a little bit of fluff.

It’s been a long time since you’ve been able to wander aimlessly with nowhere to be. Conscious of the growing attention focused on you in the Lower Levels due to your association with Fett, you’ve opted to kill some time up in the five thousands; levels of the planet considered surfacelike due to the decreased density of buildings. Brighter and more open, it’s colder up here than it is in the steamy maze of levels underneath and is popular with tourists, being the site of the Imperial headquarters and Monument Plaza.

At first you’re edgy; still in hunting mode. You’re hawkishly drawn to every movement, muscles tensed and ready to spring when a screaming child dressed in fine blue wool dashes past you tailed by a flustered-looking Mirialan woman in servant’s garb. The streets are much busier here; none of the skulking miasma of the Lower Levels. Well-dressed people are chatting, laughing, strolling comfortably.

Everyday life in the Core has had the fortune of remaining largely unchanged by the unrest in the broader galaxy. The Imperial Senate is still based here, and the industries associated with the influx of credits pouring in from oppressed outer worlds are flourishing. It would be easy to view the bustle of life here with a sense of awe if you weren’t painfully aware of the cost, having seen firsthand what’s left behind when the Empire devours all the resources a planet has to offer.

When you almost pull your blaster on a protocol droid as it exits a speeder, you decide to find somewhere quieter to kill time. The last thing you need to do is accidentally hurt someone, or to end up with the local law enforcement chasing you. Slipping onto a grimy public transport shuttle with a crowd of bleary-eyed passengers heading to and from work, you try to force yourself to relax. Your gaze snags on a young couple at the back of the shuttle, heads close together as they giggle and whisper. They’re just kids, you think, gangly teenagers with eyes only for each other.

You remember being that age, terrified and angry, running from stormtroopers as you pulled off small acts of agitation following the murder of your family. You’d spent several years hardening, like layer upon layer of lacquer compounding your focus. You’d begun by taking out individual troopers unlucky enough to come close to you, hitting them clumsily with incorrect dosages. You’d never expected to end up using the stims for harm, always working to heal and comfort others.

The first time you tried to create an altered neurotoxin, you’d nearly gassed yourself accidentally, and you remember several horrifying experiences when a trooper you thought was dead began to breathe raggedly again, scaring the shit out of you. Once you’d developed enough of a technique to feel confident, you actively went out baiting troopers, testing your doses until you figured out a formula. That’s when you started focusing on officers. But they just kept coming; one grey uniform replaced with another, and another. The retribution brought upon your neighbourhood still sears you with guilt, and once you'd found a way offplanet hiding with a group of smugglers, you knew you wouldn’t go back.

No other skills to speak off, you’d started taking on jobs, earning small amounts of money until you’d worked up enough of a reputation within the right circles to get your foot in the door of the Guild. You hadn’t looked back once, knowing that the softness of that life wasn’t possible anymore.

But now, watching the floppy-haired boy stretching his arms around the curved waist of his giggling girlfriend, you’re wistful. It’s an unfamiliar emotion, and you’re unprepared for how keenly affected you are. You find yourself thinking the most random, disconnected thoughts; wondering whether you’ll ever kiss someone on a transport shuttle, careless and free. Whether you’ll ever tie ribbons in your hair; the girl’s colourful dress a stark reminder that your appearance is intended only to disappear; shades of grey and black designed to be undetectable and unremarkable in a crowd.

Bizarrely, the thought of Boba’s startlingly youthful features pops into your head as you watch the young couple wrap one another in a kiss, ignored pointedly by the surrounding people on the transport. You let yourself wonder where he is right now - which of the thousands of occupied planets his Imperial contact is working from. You hate to admit how worried you are; by all accounts you should be fine. You’ve never had to watch anyone’s back but your own before and it’s bizarre how easily you’ve fallen into the habit of thinking of yourself in the plural form… no longer just concerned with what you’ll do next or where you’ll go, but thinking in terms of the both of you instead.

You would have expected it to feel restrictive; you’d never wanted to be stuck in one place, or with one person for long. So why does it feel like the opposite? There’s a low ding as the shuttle lowers onto a landing platform, and you blink as you remember where you are, slipping out with a handful of other passengers and trying to chase the incomplete tatters of the thought from your head.

This seems to be a more commercial area, and the streets are scattered with litter as the hum of people rushing past doesn’t completely drown out the low jingle of music from a Gungan street performer, playing a kloo-horn while he juggles joganfruit. There’s a vaguely greasy-looking diner on the corner; you decide nursing a cup of caf is probably a safe way to waste a few hours.

As you reach the doors, you notice the bundle of rags on the street sitting underneath the window of the diner and nearly have an aneurysm as a mechanised hand reaches out from within the folds of fabric. You realise it’s a person, and your heart thunks hollowly. The man’s threadbare hood hangs haggard around his head, a faded tattoo of a flower along one side of his forehead barely visible in the shadows. Digging under your coat, you pull out a handful of credits and drop them into the outstretched prosthetic with a little metallic clink.

“Thank you, thank you…” and the broad, gruff intonation of his accent catches you off guard just as the diner owner slams the door open, a pan in one of his pairs of hands brandished weaponlike.

“You! I’ve already warned you about lurking outside my shop, bothering my customers. Miss, come inside. Don’t let this defective old clone bother you.”

And your frown deepens at the words… clone. This is a clone. You peer closer at the pitiful old man as he’s flinching now from your scrutiny. You’ve only seen a handful of them in your life, and never this close before.

Most of the clones died; their genetically modified bodies had been unable to resist most viruses and their enhanced ageing meant that their bodies broke down faster than normal, even without the injuries many sustained during the war. The Empire no longer needed them, so they were discarded and forgotten. But… that voice. The diner owner is talking again, trying to coax you inside, telling you about his specials… but you can’t hear him, something’s swimming up from the back of your brain, something important…

And just then, the clone lifts his head to look back at you and the breath leaves your body in a rush. No. It couldn’t be, how is that possible…? You stare stupidly at him for several long seconds, the face old and gaunt, one eye clouded, but the other unmistakably warm, dark, familiar.

“Miss-“ you whirl on the diner owner, already yanking the blaster from its place at your hip. He drops the pan with a dull clang and holds up both pairs of hands, alarm settling over his features.

“A table for two, please. The soup, and a cup of caf for my friend and I.” Your voice comes out harder than you intended, the threat undisguised.

The diner owner’s face crumples into an expression of disgusted disbelief, but you can see that the fear is greater than his reluctance and he wordlessly turns to go back inside, barking orders at a server droid to clear a table at the back. You stare down at your own hand, mortified at your overreaction. What the fuck is wrong with you? The guy was rude, not dangerous. Surely he wasn’t actually going to hit anybody with that pan. You tuck the blaster back into your belt and attempt to wrangle a calm expression onto your features.

“Will you join me?” you murmur, reaching a hand out. The clone stares at you in shock for several long moments before offering you his robotic hand, and he’s worryingly light as you help him to his feet. Inside the diner, the owner is wordlessly points you to a half-concealed table in the darkest corner of the room before disappearing into the kitchen. Settling across from the old man, you realise he looks distinctly uncomfortable and you wonder if you’ve made a mistake. Maybe you should’ve left him alone; though it’s warmer inside, and he looks like he hasn’t had a meal in a while.

“What’s your name?” you ask, and immediately regret your thoughtlessness. Shit, do they even have names?

The clone looks surprised by the question, but answers albeit hesitantly. “Kickback. That was my… that’s what everyone called me.”

You consider this, still staring in unguarded amazement at his face. Now that you’re looking, it’s impossible to imagine how you didn’t immediately realise. The same strong, broad nose and dark, deep-set eyes, the dimpled chin, the bronze skin - though this man’s face has a sallow, grey tinge. His age is impossible to tell, but he looks like he could easily be Boba’s grandfather.

So: Boba is a clone? Trying to mentally do the math, you realise it’s just not possible. He’s too young; only a few years older than you, but with the way the clones age, he’d have to have been created within the last several years - and the Empire decommissioned the clones as soon as it rose to power some twelve years ago. So, could he be the child of a clone? It seems unlikely; the match is too perfect, right down to the faint freckles underneath his eye…

He coughs awkwardly. “Look, lady… I appreciate this, but…”

You flinch, realising you’re being incredibly rude. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve just… not met a clone before.” You wonder as you say it if that’s even true.

He raises an eyebrow at you, and the expression is so similar to Boba’s that you want to cry. “There aren’t many of us left.”

“What happened? I mean… I know the official story, but…”, you don’t need to finish the thought. It’s an unspoken understanding among most citizens of the galaxy these days that the official version of events is treated with about as much gravitas as children’s stories.

The old man glances around the room, white stubble glinting on his narrow cheeks. His eyes are unfocused, darting from one side to the other, looking dazed. He scratches his head slowly with the prosthetic hand, gaze finally resting on your face, considering you.

“My brothers and I were proud to serve the Republic. We were good soldiers. We were… we...,” you can tell you’re already losing him, his rheumy eye skipping past your face again as something catches his attention outside.

“Kickback, right? Do you remember where you were... born?”

His eyes twitch back to you. “Kamino. That was our home planet. The Kaminoans raised us. It was just us and them before the Jedi came. And our template, Jango... we never met him. But we all knew about him. The perfect genetic specimen. Our source. And his son.”

This last piece of information drops hollowly into your stomach and echoes back up, around and around in your head without quite landing. You decide to worry about it later. It’s a skill you’ve mastered over the past several years; deciding to compartmentalise a thought until you have time to take it out and look at it properly.

“What happened to you when the war ended?”

The deep scar-like lines around his mouth deepen into a frown. “Yeah. Yeah, the end of the war... we had the clankers beaten. They were retreating. The Seppies left their droids behind and took off. We were still on the ground, waiting for the shuttles to take us back up. My commander... he got an emergency transmission. From the Chancellor. It was the Jedi. They were trying to take over - they were trying to overthrow the Republic. General Loorne didn’t have his lightsaber drawn, but... We had our orders. We followed our orders.”

You feel sick, but you have to know. “What did you do?”

He looks at you, confused, answering as though it should be obvious. “We stopped them. The Jedi had to be stopped. We saved the galaxy. We were good soldiers.”

A server droid rolls past, barely slowing as it drops two bowls of soup and two cups of caf on the table, slopping both liquids slightly over the sides of the dishes.

You’re not totally sure what you wanted from this. Gazing across at the confused old man, you realise you really don’t want to know any further details. You watch silently as he slurps at the warm soup, his prosthetic hand curled around the cup of caf as he alternates sips. When he’s done, you wordlessly slide your bowl over to him and he gulps it down too. You’re incredibly tired all of a sudden, and you press your fingers into your eyelids for a moment before withdrawing the pouch containing your half of the Gran's bounty.

“Here. This should be enough to get you off-world. Go somewhere warm... somewhere you can see the sky. I’ve heard  that Alderaan takes in refugees. You could stay there, or they’ll help you settle on another world. They can find you somewhere quiet.” He squints at the pouch, looking lost again.

You don’t know if the old man will do as you’ve suggested. He probably won’t, you think. The thought of going somewhere unknown is probably too much for him, but at least you can give him the choice. You won’t force him to do anything. You slide out of your seat and turn to leave, pausing for just a second longer.

“Kickback. How old are you?”

He’s still staring at the pouch in confusion as he answers, his remaining hand papery and wrinkled where it lays curled on the table.

“Twenty four. I’m twenty four years old.”

 

-

 

If Boba notices how quiet you are, he doesn’t say anything. You drop his half of the bounty onto the floor by his seat as he’s crouched leaning into the deflector generator, only the back half of his body visible as the sound of his welder buzzes somewhere within.

You curl in the copilot’s seat, pulling the handful of new pucks from your pocket and rolling them thoughtfully through your fingers, considering. It could be several minutes or hours you’re there, staring out the viewport at nothing in particular. You haven’t left Coruscant yet; Boba set the ship to orbit after you came back onboard and the glittering circles of the city-planet have you mesmerised as you think of... nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your brain feels like it’s stuffed with bantha-wool.

Eventually, Boba’s head pops out from the panel and he slams it shut, wiping his bare hands on a rag. You feel a tingle of warmth as you look over at him. Helmetless, armourless, he’s wearing only his long-sleeved white undershirt and pants. It’s the most exposed you’ve seen him, even nude in the fresher. This isn’t functional nakedness; this is a comfortable relaxedness. You’re between jobs, there’s nobody on the ship but the two of you.

And the realisation that even with you here he still feels like he can walk around so exposed - barefoot, as he tinkers with the ship... you decide not to say anything about the old clone. The memory of the guarded way he’d looked at you when you first saw his face seals it for you. You don’t want him to know what you’ve learned. Not right now, anyway.

He reaches under the control panel and pulls out your rifle, handing it over to you. “I don’t know if this’ll work any better for you, but I tried loading your compounds into some of my old dart shells. They’re better suited for this kind of long-range weaponry.”

You run your fingers over the sides, seeing where he’s made small modifications, touched. “Thank you. I mean, I’m still pretty sure it’s just me. I work better close up.”

“Close up means there’s a bigger risk of someone getting their hands on you. Doesn’t always end well.”

You smile at him wryly. “I have learned that, yeah. Doesn’t feel great getting stabbed in the shoulder. Or shot in the hip. Um... or the thigh.”

His lip curls into a scowl at this. “Need to get you some beskar’gam.”

“Some what?”

“Armour. That’s what my father used to call it. It’s Mando’a.”

Your heart lurches at this casual mention of his father and you drag your eyes away from his face before your expression gives something away, staring back into the bounty pucks in your lap. Is he serious? Are you even allowed to wear Mandalorian armour? Wouldn't it be... disrespectful, somehow?

“You got something for us?”

You nod, handing him one of the pucks you’ve picked up. He raises an eyebrow at it, dropping himself into the seat.

“Shit. This is... it’s doable. But it won’t be easy. You sure about this?”

You offer him a little smile. “Losing your nerve, Fett? I have a plan.”

He snorts, punching the figures into the navicomp. Once you’ve made the jump to hyperspace, you can’t help the huge yawn that wracks your whole body in a shiver.

“This’ll be a long jump. Nearly fifteen hours; there’s no direct hyper lane. Go get some sleep.”

You frown. “When was the last time you slept?”

His response is immediate. “Same as you. Before I dropped you back to the Core.”

You shake your head. “No. You sat here. You can’t tell me you slept in the chair, with your helmet on.”

His silence is his only answer as he frowns out the viewport at the streaks of hyperspace and you huff in disbelief. “Surely that wasn’t very restful. Wait, have you been sleeping in your fucking chair the whole time I’ve been here? You don’t have a second bunk somewhere, do you?”

He shuts his eyes briefly like you’ve delivered some kind of offputting news and you snap your mouth shut. You’re both silent for a few minutes, the verbal standoff terse. Finally, you break it.

“Come on. I won’t be able to rest if I know you’re planning to keep walking around on zero sleep. I’ll be worried you’re gonna accidentally shoot me in the back of the head or something.”

Scowling, he opens his mouth and you point a finger at him. “Don’t. I’ll put you to sleep myself if I have to. You know I can.”

Shaking his head, he drags a hand back through his mussed hair and pushes himself out of the chair, leaning up to adjust something from a panel on the bulkhead. “I’ll set proximity alerts in case anything tries to attack us. Let’s just hope that patch to the backup hyperfuel line doesn’t spring another leak.”

Your tone is chirpy as you climb up into the tiny compartment behind the cockpit. “If that happened, we’d both die regardless of whether we were awake or not.”

Dragging your boots and pants off, you watch as Boba eases himself up into the alcove, suddenly hit with a wave of shyness. Why is it so much more nerve-wracking climbing into bed together like this when you’ve already felt so many parts of him inside you? When you’ve tasted his bare skin? You chew your lip, curling onto your side in the tiny bunk and watching as he shuts off the overhead glowpanels before easing down beside you.

You’re hyperconscious of your own body, holding as still as possible while he reaches down and drags the worn blanket up over both of you. It’s awkwardly close in the bunk; not really big enough for two people to lay flat, and he turns onto his side, reaching an arm underneath your body.

“Come here,” he gruffs, and you scoot closer, feeling the warmth and firmness of his body underneath your hands. Your head tucks under his chin, and you press your face into his chest, breathing in deeply the smell of the fabric. There’s a faint hint of engine oil, ozone from his plasma rifle… but underneath it the warm, clean smell of his skin, faintly spiced. He tilts his head downwards, and you can feel the press of his lips in your hair. Ridiculously, you feel close to tears.

You aren’t sure if it’s the combination of your tiredness, or the lingering sense of dread and grief from your encounter with the old clone. He seems to sense your unrest, and shifts you gently until you’re wrapped completely in his arms, your head resting in the crook of his shoulder. A hand trails softly against your back, and the tenderness of the gesture makes your heart swell with warmth. You’re continually surprised by him. Bounty hunters are hard creatures by necessity - focused on survival only. Mercy makes for a poor hunter; if you had stopped to care for every broken thing you found, you’d never complete a single job. And you know he’s not a gentle man. You’ve seen how he doesn't hesitate when presented with an unpleasant job; made more menacing with his controlled patience, his remorselessness.

But somehow, in the dark, the hum of the ship’s engine vibrating gently against your back, you don’t feel like you need to hold up your defences quite so solidly. The feeling of Boba’s body beneath your hands feels like a grounding presence. You try to match your breathing to his much slower speed, eyes dropping closed as your mind conjures the strange image of you pressing further into him, changing yourself into a small, curled thing, sliding right through his ribcage and lodging yourself solidly into his chest. You don’t know what it means, but it feels like… something you haven’t known for a long, long time. Home.

 

-

 

Akiva is a pit. Though you’ve only stopped off to refuel and pick up supplies, you’re already itching to leave. The humidity is unbearable, like a thick wet coating over your skin as you follow Boba’s clinking footsteps into town. The planet is similar in climate to the one you’re headed to, and you know it’s probably a good idea to try to pick up some appropriate clothing. The people in the marketplace are skittering back out of Boba’s way, open hostility and fear in their faces. It’s not the best way to keep a low profile, and you’re painfully aware of the prickling sensation of being watched. Window hangings twitch as you pass, the inhabitants within invisible but clearly keeping an eye on the two of you. You don’t like it at all, and you pick up the pace to keep level with Boba.

“They don’t seem very friendly here,” you murmur, and he makes a noncommittal scoff underneath the helmet.

“They just don’t like me because last time I was here I disintegrated a guy in the square.”

You nearly trip over your own feet. “You- shit, Fett.”

He shrugs, not breaking pace as he heads for a cluttered-looking junk shop on the corner of a seedy alleyway, leaving you gawping in the centre of the street.

The people are still giving you sidelong glances, though it seems you’re definitely not considered as much of a threat as your companion and most return to their prior activities. You wander further on, the buildings rough-hewn but colourful, passing a stand of spicy-smelling yobshrimp dumplings and an assortment of intricate woven baskets. There’s a shop selling lengths of sheer, airy-looking fabric at the far end of the street and you make a beeline for it, thoughts entirely occupied with the sight of the silks. You’re running your fingers over the softness when you hear the hissing voice behind you.

“That colour suits you, sweetheart.”

You turn, ready to deliver a biting rebuff when you realise who’s spoken. A tweaked out-looking Koorivar woman leers at you, her yellow fangs bared.

“Uh, hey. Thanks. Love the... horn.” You turn to continue browsing when a ridged, scaly hand catches your arm in a vicelike grip. Frowning, you’re getting ready to give her an earful when you catch sight of the blaster in her other hand and your words die on your lips.

“What do you want?”, you manage instead.

“Just a little chat. Girl to girl.” She prods you with the blaster, and you let yourself be walked along the street, deciding it’s better to see where she’s taking you before trying to twist out of her hold.

The people in the market are completely ignoring you now, and you can’t help but curse their obvious disdain for bounty hunters but apparent indifference toward hostage-taking in broad daylight. She steers you in the direction of a dim cantina, the Aurebesh sign painted over the door reading ‘The Alcazar’. A hapless-looking Ithorian stands dozily behind the bar, blinking his far-set eyes blearily at you as the Koorivar jostles you into a booth seat and slips in opposite you, crossing her legs and twisting her features into something you're guessing is meant to be a smile.

“Don’t try anything clever, warmblood. One move and you’re dead.”

You attempt a placatory tone, taking in your surroundings. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Nice place. Cocktail menu? I would love a Rodian splice.”

You're about ninety percent sure her expression is one of amusement, the horned ridges along her cheeks stretched upwards. “Cute. But I’m more interested in talking about you. And your friend. Heard Fett’s been taking up a lot of interesting bounties. Working for some pretty high-level Imps. Rumour has it, even doing jobs for the Emperor’s inner sanctum.”

You struggle to keep your face impassive. You have no idea who Boba’s been working for within the ISB, but if the Emperor’s people are involved, it must be pretty fucking serious. She lets out a little hissing laugh at your stilled reaction.

“Oh, really? You didn’t know? Word is he’s got himself tied into a hell of a contract. We’re talking tens of millions of credits - as long as he delivers whatever is it they’re looking for. If he doesn’t…” she clicks her tongue sadly. “There aren’t many bounty hunters over a certain age, are there, pateesa? Your kind don’t tend to last very long, and… well. Let’s just say we can offer you an arrangement with a little more longevity.”

Washed out red is beating dully behind your vision as you clench your teeth, trying to resist the urge to shoot her right between her venomously yellow eyes. You had suspected that the deal he’d made was bad, but it’s not the best surprise to learn the terms. You’ll add it to your growing list of things to worry about later. Your hand twitches toward your hip, and the Koorivar lays her own clawed hand between you. “My boss is always looking for talent. And he pays well. Words been getting around about Fett’s little girlfriend. You’re getting your own reputation. They say your work is undetectable. And Surat has a lot of enemies.”

It takes an enormous amount of effort to control your voice as you answer. “It’s funny, actually. Since partnering with Fett I’m getting all kinds of tempting offers. But I have to be honest here. You know, girl to girl.” You throw her own words back at her, leaning in conspirationally. “Thing is, the climate really disagrees with me. Pretty soon I’ll be as scaly as you. So, it’s not gonna work out. Tell Sulat or whatever I’m honoured.”

You edge out of the booth, getting ready to dash, when you realise the dopey Ithorian has crept up beside you, and is blocking your path. The Koorivar woman has already lunged to grab you, and you make a split-second decision, tucking into a tight ball and throwing yourself under the table, yanking your blaster from your belt and releasing several bolts of plasma directly into her ridged shin in quick succession. She screeches, an awful grating sound, and you push yourself up with as much force as possible, lifting the table over your head and onto your shoulders and throwing it back, slamming it flat against the Ithorian and knocking him sideways.

You leap over the tangle of limbs as you scramble for the door, throwing your arms over your head and ducking as the roaring Koorivar shoots wildly after you. Back on the street, you sprint madly back the way you came, twisting your head back to see whether you’re being pursued. The sound of furious hissing and non-human vocalisations bounce down the street as you pass the fabric stall from earlier, slowing your pace long enough to yank an armful of silk off a hanger and bundle it up in your arms as you run.

Up ahead, you can see Boba leaving the junk shop, turning to watch you dash toward him. He reaches reflexively up for the rangefinder on his helmet, bringing it down to aim as you draw level with him, spinning to press your back to his side. Lungs burning, you raise your blaster again, ready to face off as the Koorivar woman lopes into the street, throwing an arm out to halt her Ithorian companion beside her.

“Makarial,” grits Boba, the twang of his accent pronounced by the dangerous edge in his tone. “Always a pleasure to see your face. I bet you haven’t forgotten my last visit to Myrra.”

She snarls, leaning heavily on one leg. “You’ve got some fucking nerve showing up here again, Fett. We haven’t forgotten what you did to Kopollo.”

“You sure about that? You’re acting like you want to see another demonstration.” He raises his disrupter rifle pointedly, and you hold your own blaster steady, waiting.

The Koorivar spits onto the street, her features twisted in fury. “Your days are numbered, bounty hunter. If the Empire doesn’t finish you off, Surat will.” She whirls, dragging her slow-moving companion beside her as she retreats down the street. Boba looks like he’s considering shooting her in the back anyway, finger tightening on the trigger, but you hold out your arm.

“Let’s get off this swampy shithole. Please.”

He cocks his helmet at you, and you shake your head, trying to look stern. His disappointed sigh is audible through the modulator, and you suppress a rueful grin as you lead him back towards the docking bay.

Notes:

As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting. I love hearing your thoughts!

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Chapter 5: Binding

Notes:

CW: Canon-typical violence, smut, voyeurism, light bondage, slight degradation, drug use and potentially dubcon elements. Let me know if you think there's anything I've missed.

“If you want to get out, the signal-“

“I know the signal. Stop freaking out, you’re making me nervous.”

You don’t entirely blame him for being overly solicitous; the weight of this insane plan is starting to make you doubtful too. But the bounty is high, almost suspiciously so, and you wouldn’t have even considered it several months ago, before working with Boba. You wonder if your confidence has become grossly overinflated from the time you’ve spent with him - you really don’t want to die dressed up as a slave girl on some backward-ass planet. The outfit barely covers the most intimate parts of your body, the sheer white silk strands wrapped around your limbs helping to prevent the cold metal binders from chafing at your wrists and neck. Boba hadn’t said a word when you told him your idea, just the usual thoughtful frown on his face betraying his skepticism.

You’d felt briefly deflated. “You don’t think it’ll work?”

He’d shaken his head, his helmet under his arm as you both prepared to disembark the ship. “You’ll make it work. But I won’t be able to watch your back once you’re out of my sight. You’ve got nowhere to hide a commlink.”

You’d felt a blossom of warmth in your stomach at this admission of concern, which you’d reflexively shielded with artificial flippancy. “Luckily for you, I’m leaving all my stuff here. If they figure out what’s going on and decide to behead me, you’ll be a bagful of poisons richer.”

His response to this was a pained grimace and you’d flicked him lightly on the shoulder. “I’m recycling your plan from Cantonica. It worked fine then. What’s changed?”

And you knew perfectly well what had changed. But since learning about the things he’s keeping from you, your preservative resistance to the tightening between you won’t allow you to acknowledge it.

Instead of answering, he’d shoved his helmet roughly onto his head and stalked down the ramp of the ship.

 

-

 

Luckily for you, the planet is warm. Fingers of fading sunlight wrap around your bare limbs, and you soak in the deep blood-tinged light of afternoon, greedy for the feeling after so long in the frigidity of hyperspace. You’re both silent, walking up the wide stone steps, carefully picking your way over the flowered vines growing between the cracks and avoiding the thorns with your bare feet. The walled town surrounding the palace slopes naturally up an incline towards the steps, and in the lowering light of the day people are pausing to talk to one another in doorways, market stall holders packing up their wares. Nobody bats an eye at the sight of the two of you, though to be fair you’re hardly dressed any more scantily than a lot of the other people here. Three women stand around a fountain in the square, nude from the waist up as they laugh and gather water.

The palace is a wide, open structure and even from down here you can see wide balconies billowing with light coloured curtains, balustrades glinting a dull gold in the lowering light. You notice with a start that the pale stone beneath your feet is flecked with gold too; shit, no wonder the bounty is so high. Boba’s gloved hand is firm on your wrists behind your back, and to anyone watching it would look like he’s marching you forward, but you can feel him gently guiding you, helping you keep your balance so you don’t topple backwards down the stairs.

Here’s what you know: the target is the prince and heir to the throne, the holoprojection you’ve seen showing a man whose severe expression makes him look older than he probably is. The client placed the bounty through the Guild, reward already paid and ready to be transferred once the job is complete. Like most political assassinations the conditions are clear: the job has to be clean and untraceable. There’s a bonus if it looks natural, the less scrutiny the better.

It’s the kind of job that most hunters won’t touch - too fiddly, too much room for small things to go wrong, and to be fair it sounded like more trouble than it was worth; the amount of security surrounding a member of the royal family will undoubtedly be excessive. Somehow though, you feel like you can do this. The royal family is known for its loquacious and hedonistic tastes - and the gold-speckled stones are confirming what your research has told you to be true. You only hope the other rumours are true too, because you have no other ideas and then you’re both screwed.

As you reach the top of the steps, two guards armed with short spears almost too beautifully ornate to be threatening step forward. “State your business, bounty hunter,” the first barks.

“Merchandise for the prince. It’s told that he pays well for quality slaves.” You do your best to keep your head lowered, trying to appear meek.

The guards confer with one another briefly, before the second and older of the two beckons you forward. Boba resumes walking you forward, and you’re led to an antechamber lined with low burning lanterns, stone pillars inlaid with dull hammered gold bands.

“Your weapons,” says the man escorting you, and Boba unlatches the carbine rifle from his back before pulling the blaster from his hip and handling them both to the guard. You’d anticipated this, and you mentally thank the Maker he left most of his armour-modified weaponry on the ship, right down to the spurs from his boots. You don’t imagine he’d willingly leave a single piece of armour, however briefly. The guard is already turning to lead you on further, and you feel a grim thrill of vindication. Typical, you think. He hasn’t bothered to search you, obviously assuming your near-nakedness equates to harmlessness.

Wide doors at the end of the hallway open, and the guard stands to the side, expression impassive as he gestures you forward. As you both step into the cavernous room, you try not to gape too openly. Humans are draped on every available surface in various stages of undress, low braziers scattered around the room wafting thick, lilac-coloured smoke. Atop each brazier is a shallow gold bowl filled with sweet-smelling oil, the affect cloying and dizzying. You watch a man with the most exquisitely beautiful features you’ve ever seen stretch lazily against a pile of cushions, where a woman with gold-leaf pressed to her face is reclined, her expression contorted in pleasure as another woman buries her head between her legs. You look away quickly, heat rushing up the backs of your thighs and prickling your palms.

“Welcome,” comes a smooth, slow voice and your head snaps to the low stone dais at the end of the room. There a young man is lounging on a cushioned bench, loosely dressed in a fine grey robe, the heavy-looking gold necklace denoting his importance… but this isn’t the target from your holoprojection. Fuck, you think. If he’s not the prince, where…?

“My elder brother is regrettably engaged for the moment. Please allow me to extend to you his hospitality until such time as he can join us,” he purrs. The slow, lazy voice is deceptive, you think. This man’s eyes are sharp, taking in the sharp angles of armour behind you. Boba shoves you forward a little rougher than necessary, and you remember with a start that you’re supposed to be keeping your gaze lowered.

“Your Highness” Boba starts, and you really hope the prince doesn’t detect the sardonic bite behind the title. “I’m here to offer the girl. She was a bounty, but the client was killed by the time I located her. I do not wish to incur a loss for my time, and I’ve heard you’re a purchaser of fine goods like this.” Boba has the faintest edge to his tone; a dangerous irreverence underlying the respectful words and you wish you could see his face.

You let yourself glance up through your lashes, and the prince is watching you, stroking his lips slowly with his fingers. “You heard correctly. As you see, I am a collector of beautiful things. Name your price.”

Boba’s tone sounds gruffer than usual. “Two hundred thousand. Her bounty was even higher.”

What? You’d discussed this ahead of time; he was supposed to ask for fifty thousand. The whole operation will be over before it starts if the prince doesn’t agree to actually buy you. You consider stretching a foot back and kicking him, but stop yourself in time. The prince’s smile has widened, the glint of teeth visible, and before you have time to panic he’s already speaking. “A fair price. Such an acquisition will be best suited to my brother, I feel. Please, sweet thing. Come closer. Let me see you.” The syrupy haze of the room has begun to make your limbs thick, and you numbly register Boba letting go of your binders, pressing you forward gently with a hand at the base of your neck. Wrists still clasped behind your back, you step carefully over to the dais and stand, head bowed.

The prince laughs. “So shy! How delightful. No, girl. Here.” He pats a hand on his thigh, and you’re momentarily bewildered before he reaches out and guides you gently to sit on his lap, facing back across the room. Your eyes flick to the visor of Boba’s helmet, and you can’t imagine what’s going through his head. The prince’s whisper is conspirational, his breath tickling your ear, and a helpless warmth spreads over your chest and face as he murmurs to you.

“I wonder if you taste as sweet as you look. Not even my brother could resist, I think. But we needn’t wait for him, hmm?” His hand slides appreciatively up to cup your jaw, and you feel a twinge low between your thighs - not from the man who’s lap you’re sitting on, but from watching the reaction of the helmeted figure still standing frozen in the centre of the room. The prince notices too, and hums in amusement as he glides his hand down your side and lower, resting on the bare inside of your thigh inches from your just-covered centre.

“Please, bounty hunter, make yourself comfortable. We expect our guests to enjoy themselves here.” Boba still hasn’t moved, a statue of paint-chipped armour. “Will you have a drink? One of my girls? Or boys?”

You’re trying to urgently signal with your eyes alone that he needs to relax, to move. The spice-laced smoke has made your body slow and warm, but your mind is still racing as clear as ever. You need to keep up the act until you can get close enough to the target. It’s not going to work unless he chills the fuck out right now. You need to do something, give him a sign to remind him that you’re both playing a part right now. So, eyes locked pointedly to his visor, you turn your head and whisper to the man beside you.

“May… may I have my hands freed? …your Highness?,” trying to keep your strain-roughed voice as light as possible. He considers you, pressing a testing finger to your bottom lip. Across the room, a young man moans lowly as a woman kneels behind him and you shiver warmly as your own body thrums heavy with arousal in response.

“Will she run?” and you’re silently screaming at Boba to unfreeze, when he finally answers in a strained sounding voice.

“No. And if she tries, she knows I’ll find her again.” Despite yourself, your muscles clench at this; at the authentic edge in his voice.

The prince’s hands are slow, trailing down behind your back as he unlatches the binders and tosses them to the side. He runs a soft finger over the mark at your shoulder, following it down to the bruise across your back from heaving an entire cantina table over your head only a few days ago. He tuts, the sound one of distaste as he presses a finger gently to the side of your neck.

“You’ll find we treat our companions extremely well here. None of that savagery. Unless you ask, of course.” He chuckles at his own comment. “Poor little thing. Once you’ve settled in, we needn’t even keep these chains on. What do you think? Will you make me glad to have invested in you?”

And you know you’re in the middle of a job, you know that remaining focused is the most important thing here, but all you can think about is Boba’s gaze on you; having to stand and watch and not being able to do a thing. You know he could stop this if he wanted to. Even without any of his weapons, he’d rip everyone in this room limb from limb if you gave him the signal to. And it looks like he’s waiting for permission to do just that. For some reason, that thought drips hot and slow down to your core, melting with the steadily building ache there. You could try to hedge for time, wait until the elder prince arrives. You flex your hands together in front of you, rubbing your wrists gently. But you’re throbbing, and you tell yourself you have to be convincing... tentatively, you lay a hand on the inside of your thigh, letting your fingers curl inwards to press gently into the fabric there.

Your breath catches at the contact, and though the room is filled with slow, writhing movement, you can’t see any of it. Your eyes are fixed solidly on Boba as you press harder, your clit unbearably sensitive even through the fabric. You squirm, toes curling, chest forced outward as you breathe as deep as you can. And then you see it; his shoulders hitch. Boba’s holding his breath. The knowledge that this is affecting him, in this setting, surrounded by a veritable feast of beautiful bodies moving languidly together… you can’t help it. Blinking slowly at him, you let your fingers slip beneath the edge of the silk covering and inside the wetness of your cunt as he watches. It’s like there’s no distance between you at all; the room feels smaller, emptier than it did a moment ago.

The prince chuckles, gently lifting your fingers from between your legs and kissing the tips of them. You blink, trying not to show your frustration at your movements being halted so soon.

“Lovely, just lovely.”

There’s a disturbance at the doorway, and several guards march in, following a pale man dressed in a rather severe-looking short black coat. The target, you realise, and your arousal-hazed brain clears long enough to register Boba’s already moved to the side of the dais, out of the way of the guards. The prince stands, leaving you sprawled gracelessly on the cushioned bench, skin gleaming with warmth and legs spread.

“Brother. A gift for you,” he’s saying, stepping down to clasp both hands of the newly arrived man. The elder prince has a dour expression on his face, and he barely glances at you before speaking.

“Fine. Take her to my chambers. I must meet with the city guard; we’ve had word an Imperial ambassador will be arriving within days to investigate the reports of insurgent activity to the east. We must be seen to cooperate; it would not to do weaken our alliance with the Grand Moff.”

The younger prince doesn’t seem to listen, accepting a glass from a servant and leaning boredly against a pillar. Your eyes are drawn helplessly to movement behind him; a beautiful, slim man with perfectly smooth dark skin is dipping his hand into one of the shallow dishes of oil warming over the brazier and you feel your thighs shake as you watch him press two, then three fingers slowly into the taut opening of a younger man with pale golden hair, kissing the back of his neck as the glistening fingers slide inside.

“How terribly stressful for you. Surely you would be better able to focus on such responsibilities if you were well rested. These concerns can wait until morning. The bounty hunter here is the one who brought the girl.”

The elder prince’s head snaps around, hard expression turning frantic as his gaze lands on Boba. “Bounty hunter. I wish to engage your services. Stay with us tonight; my people will find suitable accomodation. You’ll accompany me in the morning.”

Boba nods once, voice low through the modulator not betraying a hint to how he feels about being given these orders. “As you wish.”

And you wonder if he’s picking up on the same thing you are; the elder prince is tense. Jumpy. Why would he need an unknown mercenary to come with him when meeting with his own guards? He must suspect something. You’ll have to be more careful than you thought. The effect of the spice-smoke is still overwhelming, you can feel the thud of your pulse between your legs as the elder prince makes a dismissive motion with his fingers, and two guards step forward to help you to your feet, one reclasping your hands in front of you. Glancing over your shoulder as you’re led out of the room, you try to communicate with just your eyes to Boba to stick to the plan. The only part of him that moves is the helmet as it turns and watches you go.

 

-

 

The prince’s quarters are sparser than you’d expected; more pale stone and lightweight draperies shivering in the warm breeze through open windows. You’re perched on the edge of a wide, low bed in the centre of the room strewn with finely embroidered cushions. You’d been silently elated at your good fortune in being led directly to the place you needed to be, but with each twisted corridor you were led down, your confidence had dissipated. The palace is a maze. The thought of skulking around in the dark of night, trying to make your way out undetected is beginning to sound like a harder job than you expected. The lax security is evidently only partially because most of the slaves are kept too drugged to run; even if they tried, they’d have to figure out which direction to go.

Away from the burning spice, your body feels lighter, more awake, and you stretch your limbs out, shaking off the looseness of your earlier intoxication. Which you’re trying not to let yourself focus too closely on.

You’d heard enough about this place, so you were prepared to have to… act the part. But if you’re being totally honest, you let yourself get carried away. Not from the spice, or the surrounding stimuli. No, you were getting off on the thrill of holding Boba in the palm of your fucking hand. Making him watch you touch yourself on another man’s lap, knowing there wasn’t a single thing he could do without throwing the bounty. The memory of how rigidly he’d held himself, the way you could feel his gaze burning you even through the helmet... you can’t help the delicate shudder that rumbles through you. You wonder how angry he is. You probably didn’t need to lay it on quite so thick.

Methodically checking each shadowy alcove of the room, you’re positive they’ve left you alone. You stretch your clasped hands up and over your head, the wrist binders clicking against the collar around your neck as you reach into your hair. And… oh, fuck. Your heart drops horribly into your stomach. The stim is gone. How could it possibly… you’d secured it perfectly so it wouldn’t be visible. There’s no way it could have fallen out. Panic climbs up your throat as you reassess your situation. You’re still confident you can defend yourself, even with your hands bound… but you won’t be able to make it look like a natural death without the shot of serum.

The reward is going to be significantly lower, but you have options. You could garrotte him, you think, considering unwinding the length of silk from around your breasts - when a muffled noise in the dark antechamber just past the door outside freezes you to the spot. You’re out of time to plan; you’ll just have to think on your feet. You dash to the wall beside the dark archway, pressing your back flat and holding your breath as quiet footsteps sound just around the corner… bringing your clasped hands up, you’re ready to smash the heavy metal of the binders down as you spin out from the wall and face the prince - except it isn’t the prince.

You catch yourself just in time to prevent the crash of metal on metal, the paint-chipped helmet tilting down at you.

“What the - what are you doing? They’re going to find you here…” he claps a gloved hand over your mouth, pushing you back, and you’re hit anew with the overwhelming presence of him, the intensity of being so close to him and blinded to his face, having no idea how he feels, what he’s thinking. He presses his fingers between your teeth and into your mouth, and you bite down on the leather of his glove as he withdraws his bare hand, crowding your body with his own against the wall and sliding the scrap of fabric from between your legs. You can feel every inch of metal on your bare skin, electric with sensitivity, choking as he plunges two fingers into your soaked cunt without warning. He curses, feeling you tighten around him.

“You looked so good up there,” his voice icy, almost too low to hear. “Like it’s where you were meant to be; even dressed as a slave, you belong on a throne.”

He twists his fingers inside you and your eyes swim out of focus, your clasped hands clutching at the front of his chestplate. Oh Maker, you think. He’s completely lost his mind. He can’t be doing this now. He wouldn’t risk a job like this. You knew you’d pushed him too hard.

“So soft and pretty. None of them have any clue how fucking dangerous you are.” His growl spikes right to your clit, and you roll your hips helplessly towards him. He drags your wrist binders over your head, pinning them to the wall, snatching his fingers from your wetness and making you whimper from the loss as he yanks the fastenings of his pants open, wrenching the panel of armour aside so you can feel the insistence of his erection, as hard against you as the curve of his armour had been. Your chest is heaving against him, body pinned in place and unable to move an inch as he frees his swollen cock. He releases your hands, grasping your chin and forcing your face up; his scrutiny invisible behind the visor as he hisses at you.

“What were you thinking about, touching yourself like that?”

And you can’t help but arch your spine, trying to bring your aching, desperate centre closer to his straining cock as you answer him, hitching one knee around his waist as he keeps you balanced.

“You - I was... oh, I wanted you to watch me... watch what I’d do, to finish the job... to make you proud...” and you’re babbling now, saying more than you mean to, embarrassing things, admitting how badly you’ve sought his approval, something you’ve tried to keep secret. His hand is hard at your hip as he holds you still and sheathes himself inside you in a hard thrust, plunging deep and stretching you open. Your teeth are nearly painful on your lower lip with the effort of trying desperately not to make any noise and his voice catches, the drawl of his accent broad as your muscles bear down on him, clenching tight.

“I am proud of you, little one, fuck, you’re so good,” and you can hear the hoarseness through the modulator as he cups your ass with his hands, holding you upright. Desperate to feel him move inside you, you wrap your other leg around him, both feet off the ground and back pressed hard to the wall, your body supported completely by his hands and his cock. Your chest is a fluttering, weightless cavity as you gasp for air while he drags you off his length, dropping you back down hard enough that you’re blinded, colour exploding underneath your eyelids like a charge of overheated rhydonium.

He’s growling something too low for you to hear, in a language that's not Basic, firm against your writhing body, holding you in place as he drives deep into you again and again, the pleasure brutally hard. You’re pinioned against the wall, your bound hands scrabbling uselessly above your head, trying to find purchase, anything to brace yourself against his vicious, unrelenting pace. You can feel him in your throat, each exacting stroke slamming so deep inside you that you’re dizzy. The muffled noises you’re making don’t even sound human, strangled little squeaks as you try desperately to grind back against him, rolling your hips, trying to hit that spot, helpless and overwrought without the use of your hands, and a tear rolls down your cheek as you gasp at him.

“I need - please, please...” and somehow he understands enough from this to lift you against him, your heels cutting into the sharp edge of armour across his back as he walks you both back into the room, still impaled on his cock. Reaching the low bed he lets you drop back, pulling out with an obscene wet suck as he strokes himself roughly with his other still-gloved hand.

“You look like a bounty, bound up like that,” his voice sounding absolutely ragged and you throb so hard you feel you could cum just from hearing him talk, your neglected clit swollen to the point of pain.

“Would you have let him touch you?,” and you can barely gasp back between heaved breaths, spread wide open for him.

“No - I would - have killed him first,” still trying to keep quiet, your whisper hoarse.

“But you’d let me fuck you here? Restrained, on some other man’s bed? Some prince’s bed?” and you just about sob with need.

“Yes, anything - I would... I’d let you destroy me,” and as the words slip out you taste the truth in them, startling you; how badly you’ve become entangled. You would follow him into insanity, into ruin. He snarls, the guttural sound distorted by the modulator as he plunges two thick fingers inside you and curls them, dragging hard against the roof of your cunt while his thumb presses your clit, and you nearly knock yourself out from how hard you throw your head back, the line of the inside of your thighs shaking uncontrollably as you almost immediately begin clamping down around his fingers. The force of your orgasm is a violent thing, shattering through the centre of your body and tearing a hoarse scream from deep in your throat as Boba’s free hand hurriedly claps over your mouth, muffling the sound. You can feel the tendons of your neck straining, your head pounding from the intensity as your lower muscles ripple, savage and abandoned.

He drags himself from you, cursing lowly as he pumps himself with the slick coating his fingers and you’re insensate, unwound, barely cognisant as his thumb presses against your lower lip, forcing your mouth open. Obediently you drop your jaw, your eyes fluttering open to watch him as he grips his cock harshly, and at the sight of your feverish, reverent gaze on him his breath stutters, ropes of hot cum spilling onto your tongue and chin, one line rolling down your neck.

The room is hot, low light dancing on your bodies from the burning braziers. Panting, you lick your lips as he hunches over you, catching his breath while tucking his pants back into place. You’re glistening with a fine sheen of sweat, trembling as you both come back down. You have no idea how loud you were, but you really hope no guards are outside the room right now, not least because the sight of the bounty hunter helping himself to the prince’s newest toy would likely inspire some harsh recrimination - on the prince’s bed, no less. You drag yourself shakily into an awkward seated position, your hands still clasped in front of you as he uses the trailing edge of his cowl to carefully wipe your neck, the gesture bizarrely tender under the circumstances.

“You need to get out of here,” you whisper roughly. “He could walk in at any second; I still need to finish the job.”

Boba draws back and tilts his head at you, reaching under his belt. Wordlessly, he holds out a tiny object pinched between two fingers and you nearly lose your balance in your rush to snatch it from him, your hands clumsy where they’re pressed together.

“Where did you... ?” you trail off, realising the stim is empty, the plunger depressed. Confused, you frown up at him, but he’s already stepping back from the bed and towards the door, leaning into the pitch black antechamber and dragging something out. Your jaw drops as he easily lifts the already-stiffening body of the elder prince and unceremoniously deposits it onto the bed behind you.

“Has he been there the whole - what did you do?” Ridiculously, you feel more panicked now than you did before, despite the fact the job is complete and you can both leave. The thought that Boba left the body right there while he... and the fact that he usurped your mission, undermined your capability and left you with no option but to let him take over. You could hit him. But you need to go; the longer you’re here with the body, the greater the chance you’ll be caught.

So you keep your mouth shut, holding your arms out as he unlocks the binders and clips them to the back of his belt. Hands free, you twist your wrists, shaking the feeling back into your fingers as you brush past him. You don’t want to be here a second longer, you think, padding through the black antechamber and pausing briefly before slipping out into the darkened corridor - coming face-to-face with the younger prince leaning against the opposite wall. He smiles slowly, glittering eyes taking in your clear state of dishevelment.

“My, how fast you are. I trust you took excellent care of him?”

You nod mutely, inching back as he steps forward, running a gentle finger across your swollen, flushed lips.

“Good. You see, he has a terribly weak heart, my brother. We’ve all seen it. So highly strung. Too much stress. Best you let him rest now.”

You frown, heart lurching as Boba steps out into the hallway beside you.

“I’ve changed my mind about the girl,” he tells the prince flatly. “Not for sale. Neither are my services as a bodyguard. You can tell your brother as much in the morning.”

The prince shows no sign of surprise at the bounty hunter’s sudden appearance; if anything he looks nothing short of delighted, his voice practically bubbling with amusement. “I understand completely. I imagine you’ll be leaving... promptly, then. Good night.”

You feel sick with understanding, and you can’t stop yourself from glancing back as you and your silent companion disappear down the shadowy hall.

 

-

 

You’re vibrating with rage as the ramp lifts, hands clenched into fists at your sides.

“You knew he was the client,” you accuse, eyes narrowed.

“I suspected.”

“Then why did you take over? That was my job, I had it under control! You didn’t even ask me!”

He stands motionless, the visor giving no clues to his reaction. “It’s still your job. You’ll get the full amount.”

“That isn’t the point. I haven’t earned it. You didn’t let me.” Horribly, you feel your face warm, your eyes burning, but you keep going. “If you don’t think I can do my fucking job anymore, drop me back to Coruscant. You obviously don’t need me.”

You turn before he can catch the angry tears in your eyes and close yourself quietly in the fresher. Ripping the silk from your body, you leave it in a heap, dropping your face into your hands as the warm water embraces each curve of your skin. Your fury is building in your stomach with a steady drip as each thought you’ve been repressing for the past few weeks lands and burns, acid-like. How could you have let yourself get to this point? You’ve been so safely insulated for so long from any pain or fear. So why is your chest clawing with some unnamed terror? You don’t want him to discard you, you realise. You want to stay with him; you want to figure out how he manages to make the galaxy simultaneously feel bigger and smaller for you - dreaming about him, afraid of him, afraid for him - whatever destructive deals he’s made. It’s insane to you that someone with so much blood on his hands, blood he doesn’t even regret or mourn, makes you feel like you’re returning to something near-human again. He made you shudder around his cock while there was a dead body in the room, for fuck’s sake.

You’d been afraid there wasn’t much goodness left inside you, but your need for him has proven that isn’t true. You want to help him, but he won’t let you. You can feel some terrible edge approaching, and you don’t want to fall over it alone. You feel like you’re hanging suspended, waiting for it to drop out underneath you.

Mechanically, you drag yourself back into your shapeless flightsuit, your skin raw after an interminable amount of time standing motionless under the spray. You can’t stop shivering. You imagine your bones etched in ice, the cold seeping up from the inside. The hold is empty but you can hear the hyperdrive humming; Boba must be in the cockpit. Numbly, you realise he must already be heading back to the Core. Okay, perfect. That’s what you said you wanted. You dig the remaining pucks out of your bag; they’re all live bounties, which suits you just fine. You start splitting them in half; sitting with your back against a hard durasteel panel, legs curled up underneath you to try to keep warm.

Fully absorbed, you jump at the sound of boots hitting the grated floor and glance up to see Boba’s changed out of his armour; wearing an ancient-looking tunic with the sleeves rolled back. You raise your chin, determined not to let him see you crack.

“There are five more pucks; I’ll leave you three of them. I don’t care which ones, just let me know which you want and I’ll keep the rest.”

He doesn’t reply, brow furrowed as usual as he eases down beside you. You consciously force yourself to release your held breath, waiting for him to speak. When he does, he looks vaguely pained, like he can’t quite figure out how to get the words out properly.

“You can get into places I can’t. People underestimate you. You don’t look like a threat. And your stims… there’s nothing else like that. Poison darts are detected too easily. Even mycotoxins and the old adapted xenotoxins are starting to show up in chem scans. But the way you structure them, the stims are too subtle to trace. It’s more sophisticated than anything I’ve seen. Not just the compounds, but the way you load them and concentrate them. That’s why the rifle didn’t work for you. It was because it wasn’t up to your level, not the other way around.”

And you know he’s just listing information, matter-of-fact and dry. But because he’s reciting it so factually and emotionlessly, you believe him, and your heart swells with the praise. He runs a hand through his hair, dark eyes intense as he looks down at you beside him.

“You said I don’t need you. I do. Which is why I couldn’t let you walk in there with no armour, no weapons, and no way to call for help.”

You stare up at him, feeling the slow pulse of your heart. You’re caught on the fine lines around his eyes, the curve of his lip. You wonder how many other men are left in the galaxy wearing this face. But the look in his eyes… that’s just him. You exhale, blinking slowly.

“You need to be honest with me. If you don’t like a plan, tell me. We won’t do it. But it works both ways. If you’re still running jobs for the ISB, I want to know about it. Especially if you’re risking a lifelong contract over them.”

He’s silent for several long seconds, gaze searching. You wait for him to argue, to remind you who he is, that he’s used to working alone, that he doesn’t owe you any promises or explanations. But he doesn’t. He nods once, and you feel a tiny lift at the corner of your mouth, his eyes following the movement of your lips with something like hunger. Tentatively, you reach up to trace the edge of his jaw, brushing your thumb against the dimple in his chin.

He leans into your touch, his eyes dropping closed as he turns his head to the side, pressing a kiss to the palm of your hand. You need to be closer, seeking his warmth, and you carefully raise yourself up onto your knees, shuffling until you’re practically on top of him. His arms snake around you, holding you bundled close to his chest, his warm hand wrapping tight around the icy tips of your fingers. You nuzzle your face into the open neck of his soft, worn shirt. The fabric is so faded it’s nearly colourless, barely a hint of the blue left.

And there it is, finally, the drop you’ve been watching approach: you feel your heart slip completely under.

Notes:

zinzinina.tumblr.com

Chapter 6: Raw

Notes:

CW for this chapter: Smut, graphic depictions of violence/injuries, mention of drug use and effects. Let me know if you feel I've missed any warnings.

You wake slowly, swimming to the surface through the blood-thick warmth of sleep. Weighted, your spine curled and knees drawn up, you’re more comfortable than you can remember being since childhood. The loose threads of your dream slip away, smoke through your fingers as you try to grasp at the dissipating memory, and your eyes flicker open into the bluish gloom of the bunk compartment, the dim light of hyperspace washing over you. Your contented exhale vibrates into a silent hum and you press yourself tight against the heated lines of the body behind you. 

You're rewarded with a deep rumble as the heavy arm draped across your waist tightens unconsciously. Bare limbs entwined in the tiny space, you decide you aren’t ready to move yet. You’ve got no clue how long you’ve been asleep; for all you know you could be anywhere in the galaxy right now. The jump to Nar Shaddaa is lengthy enough that you’ve got nearly two standard days of transit ahead. 

Despite your efforts to maintain the same loose rhythm of breath, some hunter’s instinct triggers Boba’s senses behind you, and you feel the fleeting tense of his body as he wakes. You clutch softly at the arm around your waist, sliding your fingers through his, trying to trap him in place as you feel his bare chest expand against your back.

“Don’t get up yet,” you murmur, tongue sleep-softened.

His response is a shift closer to you, curving around your body, and you wonder how long it’s been since he let himself be lazy like this; nestled low and torpid as ash-rabbits.

“Y’were dreaming,” he rasps against your hair. “Could feel you twitching in your sleep.”

“I can’t remember what it was about,” you admit. “I never remember.”

“Mmm.”

He glides his lower forearm underneath the curve of your hip, rolling you back slightly and pulling your weight into his arms easily. You’re loose-limbed; your joints supple in his hold as he flattens his hand against your navel, holding you fast to him. You roll with pleasure against the growing hardness pressing at the cleft of your ass, and he drops his lips from the back of your head to the side of your neck, his hot breath fanning over the curve. Testing, you arch your back, thrilling internally when the firm drag along his length pulls a low hiss from behind you. His fingers slip under the waistband of your underwear, his large hand cupping the mound of your sex, feeling for your warmth.

Trying to roll your ass harder back onto his erection, your curled toes press into his calves and he growls.

“Your feet are freezing.”

“Then warm me up,” you mumble back, and he slides his thick middle finger between the slick folds of your labia, spreading your lips with his other fingers and gathering your increasing wetness. He dips the digit inside, shallowly, just past the first knuckle and your breath catches as he crooks it inside you, pressing hard to the roof of your pussy. Your hands loosen their hold on him as your eyes roll closed, and he takes advantage of your relaxed grip to enclose your breast in his rough palm, sensitive and warm through the thin fabric of your sleep shirt. 

The press against your ass is insistent now, straining toward you, and you spread your knees, grinding his tented erection between your thighs as he groans. He slips a second finger inside you to join the first, and the muscles low in your abdomen tighten with the sensation as he begins working against you in earnest.

But you’re greedy, intoxicated with the smell and weight of your entanglement with him, and you thrust your hips up into his fingers, dragging yourself along the length of him.

“More,” you whisper, and his rough hand on your breast tightens at the demand. The slow ache of a third finger eases into you, and you mewl pitifully at the stretch, his curled hand hooked hard against that spot. You’re driving yourself down as he lets you use him for your own pleasure, your own hands grabbing uselessly at his wrist, both urging him on and trying to hold him back as you struggle to contain the pounding seed of white-hot pressure building steadily with each throb of your pulse. 

His lips are soft against the corner of your jaw, and you turn your head blindly, seeking him, your brows drawn tight, senses sparking. He breathes inaudibly into your neck, some sibilant secret, and his thumb presses against your clit, circling the overwrought nerves and drawing you into the shallow cocoon of his body. You tighten around his fingers, his manipulation of your body impossibly dextrous, as though he’s attuned to every neural path in your brain, somehow knowing exactly what to do to wrest the most overpowering sensation from you.

You feel your abdominal muscles drawing in, galloping closer to the edge as your climax rockets up through your core with a terrifying intensity, and your gasp is a strangled thing wrenched deep from your chest as your cunt clamps down around him, drawing out long pulses of release, each overlapping the next. Your entire body falls slack in his arms as he eases his fingers out, your hips jolting from the tenderness of his retreat. His hand is slippery on your skin as he drags your underwear down, leaving a glistening trail along the curve of your thigh. 

He seizes your waist, and in a single motion twists you bodily onto your back before climbing up over you. Your knees are drawn up between your bodies, and he settles between them, his breadth forcing your legs wide.

Braced on his forearms, he leans down and presses his face to yours; not quite a kiss, just a drag of his nose along your cheek. You hook your fingers into the waistband of his loose sleep pants and wriggle them down, grip lingering on his solid thighs, letting your fingertips explore the tightly muscled curve of his firm ass. His weight is heavy between your legs, and as he guides himself inside you your breaths hitch simultaneously at the sharp stretch. He breathes, seated deep as he searches your face, eyes liquid in the dark.

You don’t bother trying to conceal the little smile this pulls from you. He may never say much, but when he looks at you like this, you almost don’t need him to. As he starts to move, the thickness of his cock drags deliciously against your tightness, and your fingers dance over the lines and valleys of his body, his skin hot and firm and so solid. His eyes roll closed, each languid flex of his hips bringing you impossibly closer together as he angles down. This is not the fireworks you’d come to expect from him, frantic and explosive in its immediacy. It’s closer to a steady flow of lava, igniting and drowning you both.

This time, you cum slowly. Your drawn out release is a melted undoing, wrapped around the warmth of him, your breathing aligned. You feel the responding ripple of his cock inside you, and you wrap your legs around his waist, pulling him as tight as you can as he pulses deep inside, his exhalation rough.

You’re still not ready to let him go. Arching your neck up, you scatter messy little kisses on as much of him as you can reach, the permanent crease between his brows, the edge of his lips and the wide, low bridge of his nose as he softens within you. Braced over you, he catches one of your roaming hands in his, drawing it down from where it had returned magnetically to its habitual raking of his scalp.

“Your hair’s getting long,” you observe, secretly pleased to have more to grab onto.

“It’s been too long since I shaved it last.”

You’re horrified. “You’re going to shave it?”

And your delight is immeasurable as his lips quirk up with wry amusement at your animated response. That is a fucking smile, you think, stunned and rapturous. It doesn’t last long before he shakes his head, face neutral again.

“Cooler under the helmet.”

He rolls to the side, leaving you to mourn his withdrawal as he swings his legs over the edge of the bunk before dropping lightly into the cockpit. You stretch, stifling a contended yawn. You have nowhere to be; nothing to do. Just hours of confinement with him, temporarily safe and invisible from the rest of the galaxy. Your eyes are drifting closed again before you realise it.

 

-

 

You perch the bowl of rehydrated chale on your knee, spicy enough to disguise the lack of actual flavour. Boba has a wrist gauntlet open in front of him, working at some indiscernibly tiny piece of tech with a fine tool. Something about watching his big, rough hands work with such delicacy is making you stupid with affection, your brain soft and cloudy. And as a result, you’re peppering him with dumb questions, the kind you’d be too nervous about irritating him with to ask otherwise.

“Okay, but how do the charges work? You couldn’t deploy them in deep space; there’d be nothing to draw from.”

He huffs something akin to a laugh, eyes focused on his task. “They aren’t designed for deep space but as long as you’re close enough to the target, they’ll put on a good show. You want to find an asteroid field or jettison some junk. Anything you can stir up enough agitation to get a decent wave from.”

He looks relaxed, utterly absorbed in the minutiae of his work as a companionable silence settles while you eat, watching him work. He eventually finishes with the adjustments, closing the tiny electrical panel and tilting his head towards you, the gesture one you’re used to seeing with a helmet.

“Tell me something.”

You’re taken aback. Far from being annoyed with your chatter, he’s initiating more?

“Anything,” you tell him, meaning it.

“What are you doing?”

You squint at the beige lump on your fork. “Attempting to manifest honey-roasted nuna.”

“No. I mean with the Guild.”

You blink. “Same as you. Working. Surviving. Earning a living.”

You’ve been learning to detect hints of emotion in his slow, inflectionless drawl, and you pick out an air of frustration now. “No, you’re not. You don’t want to keep hunting forever. What’s the goal?”

This is far more exposing than you were expecting. You don’t know how to answer him without revealing the latent nihilism you’d surrendered to a long time ago. He’s right; you haven’t had any purpose since you began this whole violent endeavour. Nothing past the next mission, the next weapons acquisition, the next payday. It felt futile to plan long-term when you didn’t know whether you’d make it another week. Finding a ship of your own was the closest thing to a dream you had, and you’re nearly there. You haven’t examined any further.

“Does anybody know what they want to do forever?” You can’t keep the defensive edge from your voice, though you’re attempting to come across playfully. “The goal was to get my own ship. One that won’t kill me or leave me to float dead in realspace, so I could keep working. Successfully.”

He leans back, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Was?”

Face burning, you realise you’ve let something slip. How are you supposed to tell him that lately, your only real aim is to keep touching him? To keep waking up like you did that morning, knowing you could reach out and grasp him with your fingertips whenever you wanted? You hate the smallness of your own voice when you speak next, though you make a conscious effort to keep your chin lifted. “I just figured… since I’ve been working with you. I haven’t felt like it’s as urgent to find something of my own. At least for the moment.”

“Then what? You get your own ship; you keep taking jobs. Eventually, a mark manages to fight back, or one of their friends comes after you, and that’s it. That your plan?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

The quiet stretches in the dim cockpit. You didn’t want to force him to examine his double standards, but you will if you have to. He has no right to question your motivations for being in this line of work. He’s looking out the viewport, the lights of your velocity painting out his concentration.

“Everything I have is inherited… a legacy. My profession, my ship, my armour, my... face.” He doesn’t look at you as he says it, but you jolt at the inferred reference to his strange origins. You’d assumed he wouldn’t want to address it with you, that he’d be happier leaving this unsaid. The searching way he’d scanned your face the first time he took off his helmet in front of you told you he was relieved when you didn’t immediately recognise him. You wouldn’t have expected him to make even a passing mention of it, and you wonder if he realises what he’s said, if he knows what you’ve figured out. “Even if there were other options for me, I don’t know that I’d take them. This is all I’ve ever done. You do have other choices. You have other skills.”

You don’t want to have this conversation. You feel pinned by the questions he’s posing to you, and you hate the implication that you’re somehow inherently different to him, that he’s doomed to a fate he didn’t get to have any say in. Bizarrely, his suggestion that you’re freer than he is only makes you feel more trapped.

“Maybe. But I’m here with you right now because I made a choice to be.”

He lets it go. It’s the longest conversation you’ve had, and it’s left you feeling vaguely jangled. Whatever he’s trying to say, you don’t think you like it.

You snatch the tracking fob from the controls in front of you and flick it around in your fingers. “I didn’t think you’d want to come along for this one. I wonder how your friends in the ISB feel about the fact you’re still running anti-Imp jobs?”

He runs his tongue over his teeth before he answers. “I’ve pledged my loyalty to no-one. The Empire doesn’t own me.”

The stone in his voice makes you shiver. It sounds like he’s saying it to remind himself. You know he wasn’t talking about you, but you feel a little shock of sadness at the thought that he doesn’t feel as bound to you as you do to him. You nod thoughtfully, tucking the fob into a compartment on your belt and stretching your arms over your head.

“I can get into New Vertica easily; I’m guessing this officer’s up to no good if she’s lurking all the way out here. Minimal troopers, if any. It’ll be quick. You can probably drop me, pick up this other job via the syndicate on Sriluur, and meet back in under a cycle.”

He grunts. “What’s the rush?”

You stand, empty bowl in one hand as you lean over and quickly kiss him on the side of his nose. “You disappear when there’s a prisoner on board. I don’t want to wait too long before I can see your face again.”

You don’t give him a chance to respond, his eyes following as you slide down the ladder into the hold below.

 

-

 

Nar Shaddaa’s dangerous reputation is well-deserved, and your grip on your blaster is sweaty as you hold the swaying Imperial officer close, paranoia creeping in. You were fairly sure you hadn’t been followed, but the longer you wait up here, the more likely it is that someone will spot you and decide you look like an easy target. It wouldn’t be a first, and you’re confident you can fight off any would-be attackers, but trying to keep an eye on a quarry at the same time sounds like more work than you’re prepared for right now, tired, cold and grimy after your overnight hunt.

It’s violently windy on the tower landing pad, and your comms are crackling with the interference as you strain to hear the signal, hunching your shoulder to create a barrier as you listen hard.

“Did you put something in my drink?” the silver-haired woman slurs beside you.

“Who, me?” you breathe back, eyes sharp as you watch for movement on the shadowed ledges of the surrounding buildings. You’d found her in a gilded members-only club above the city’s tent slums, laughing it up with the crime barons that run this system. Her dress alone would have been worth over a year’s wages for most of the people here. Just more on-brand corruption from the Empire, you think bitterly. If she weren’t worth more to you alive, you’d toss her over the roof of this building and be rid of her.

She lets out a tired little squeak beside you, and you look back up at her face, snapped out of the roil of your dark thoughts. Her short hair is wispy, grey strands curled around the sharp lines of her narrow jaw, thin lips wrinkled and cracked underneath her dark lipstick. Her eyes, though unfocused, look frightened. This woman has done awful things. She’s allowed people to starve and be murdered while she lives in luxury - people who were supposed to be under her governance and protection. 

And yet you don’t like the fact that you’re thinking of killing her if you don’t have to. Your hands may be far from clean, but you still have control of your actions. When you lose that, you know you’ll be truly gone.

Her glassy eyes roll in her head, and she catches you looking, seething at you and exposing her small teeth. “Little… bitch. Don’t y’know who’mm?” The words barely make it out.

“Just cooperate, and I won’t have to hurt you,” you tell her quietly. “We’re going somewhere out of the weather, then you can rest.”

Her head lolls forward, her weight beginning to drag at your shoulder, and you nearly overbalance, quickly catching her around the waist and hauling her back up.

“Fuck,” you hiss, trying to keep her feet underneath her body. You’d hit her with a delayed dose, counting on the serum taking a while to make it through her veins. You were hoping you’d be airborne by this point. If she completely passes out now, you don’t know how far you’ll be able to get dragging her body behind you.

Fett’s voice bursts through the static, and you feel a physical response as your muscles unwind in relief. “Got your ping. I’m coming down now. You get what you needed?”

“That’s an affirmative. Watch your descent, it’s blowing a fucking gale up here.”

“Copy that.”

His landing is smooth, the grate of the gyroscopic rotation silent under the roar of the wind. Shoving your mark forward, you duck your head to get out of the eye-watering squall, your hair whipping into your face and stinging your skin. Boba takes off as soon as you’re aboard, and you wrangle the woman into the second prisoner cage one-handed, her eyes already closed as she flops to her knees. 

The Zabrak male in the first cage is slumped on his side, arms chained awkwardly underneath him, and you wince as you notice several of his horns are snapped off close to the scalp. You decide to hit him with a shot as well, just to prevent him waking up and screaming all the way to the Guild drop-off. Easy work, you think. Quick and clean. Nobody had to die.

Clambering up to the cockpit, you’re met with the back of the helmet and feel your heart sink with disappointment despite yourself. You knew to expect this, but your impatience to get the job finished doesn’t abate with the quarries safe on board.

“Calculating the jump now,” he says as though reading your thoughts. You yank off your boots, relieved to shake off your brief stay on the seedy crime moon.

It takes him less time than you would have thought before you’re on your way, and he settles back in his seat as the hyperdrive hums to life underneath you. The vambrace from earlier is open in front of him again, and you do an exaggerated double-take as your brain lurches to catch up to what it’s seeing - somehow he’s both completely armoured and has a loose piece in his hand.

“Is - is that new?” you wonder aloud, plonking down beside him. His response is slow.

“No. This is a very old piece. It was salvaged near Keldabe during the Mandalorian Civil War.”

You stare at it, fascinated. Now that you’re looking properly, you can see that it’s oxidised with age, the unpainted metal somehow unassuming in his hands but still gleaming darkly. It looks powerful, the surface perfectly smooth but impossibly deep under the light. “Is it…?”

“Yes. Pure beskar. Worth a fortune. It was intended to symbolise the high status of the wearer.”

“What happened to the Mandalorian who owned it?”

“The whole clan was wiped out. Armour is supposed to be handed down through generations. When the lineage ends, the beskar’gam is orphaned. My father kept the pieces he found after the war. Like this one. He had planned to reforge them for me, so I could begin hunting.”

As he speaks, you realise the vambrace is much smaller than the one he’s wearing. As though fashioned for a youth’s arm, narrow and flat. You press your lips together as a sudden wave of sad understanding washes over you, at the future this piece of metal was supposed to have seen compared to the one it did.

You fold your legs up underneath you in the co-pilot’s chair, wrapping your arms around your chest. Once you drop off these quarries, there’s a couple more to collect before the round is finished. Your earlier conversation trickles back to you: so, then what? You could… take a break, you think. Somewhere quiet and sun-filled, where you can see the sky. Just like what you told the old clone to do. You miss seeing the sky - a real, endless sky. Lothal’s clouds used to tower thick and soft as dreams, and as a child you used to imagine flying weightless over the plains of knee-deep gold grass, bowing in the wind as far as you could see. It was infinitely open, serene.

You know in reality you can never go back home. Even if the occupation were to one day end, you’ll never be able to let go of the memories of what happened there. But it’s a big universe. Tens of thousands of habitable planets. There must be a place for you somewhere. Even as you think it, you feel the daydream shifting, adjusting to accommodate space for a body beside you. Once you realise what you’re thinking, you shutter the whole vision completely.

You can’t imagine going anywhere, because you know you’d have to go alone. And there’s nowhere in this or any galaxy where you’ve felt as at home as you do in the tiny, hard cot behind you. Maybe he’d take some time off with you, you wonder. It’s the kind of dreamy, insubstantial thought you don’t attribute too much weight to, knowing how unlikely it is… still, you let yourself imagine it… somewhere empty where nobody would bother either of you, where you could reach out and touch him whenever you wanted to. No blood, no pain. Just warmth.

You didn’t realise you’d dozed off until hours later, when you startle awake at the sound of the navicomp beeping a landing proximity alert. Cramped in the seat, you uncurl your legs as the blanket draped over your body slides to the floor and, disoriented, you automatically pull it back up before you realise what it is. Boba’s footsteps ring on the ladder behind you, and he steps up into the cockpit, hitting a switch overhead and silencing the noise.

“Need to spend some time on the hydraulics again. It’s still sticking underneath on landing. You want me to bring the quarries in?”

You hum sleepily. “I can do it. Just give me a minute -,” you grope blindly underneath you for your boots, stifling a yawn, and he grunts.

“Stay here. I won’t be long.”

You blink up owlishly, and a gloved hand cups the back of your head, leather-rough fingers running through your hair. You snuggle back down into the chair, pressing the blanket to your face as he clomps back down to the hold.

He’s right; he’s barely gone an hour before he’s back, and by then you’ve dragged yourself awake, showered and dressed, mentally preparing yourself to broach the topic of a break. You’d gone over it and over it in your head while in the fresher, trying to figure out a way to make this frivolous suggestion sound like a serious proposal; one he won’t immediately reject. You’ll try to frame it as a strategic thing, you’ve decided, like a sensible and necessary recharge. There’s nothing wrong with two professionals in a working partnership taking time off. You’re not asking for more of him than he can give. At least, you’re pretty sure you aren't.

“We’re refuelled. You need anything before we go?”

You shake your head, standing awkwardly as he raises the ramp and makes to head past you, but he pauses when he catches your frozen stance.

“Something wrong?”

You chew your lip, all of your carefully prepared words dissolving from your mind as stage fright takes hold. This is ridiculous, you think. Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? He doesn’t want to go on a holiday with you. He’s Boba fucking Fett. Just because he’s tolerated you, treated you with kindness, even seemed to enjoy your company and your body, doesn’t mean he’s about to turn into some moon-eyed boy like in the songs from Naboo. He’d said it himself; he needed your skills and your tools to help him work. It doesn’t mean he would ever want the soft things you can’t help but feel for him.

He’s still waiting for you to answer, head swivelling slowly from your face to the anxious way you’re picking at the skin beside a fingernail. You force yourself to speak, and the words that come out of your mouth are about as far from what you’d planned that you barely recognise that you’re the one saying them.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

He tenses, waiting.

“About what happens next. You said I had other options. And I’ve been thinking about them. Maybe I could… take some time off. Between jobs.”

He nods slowly, and you can hear the muffled sound of speeders outside of the complete silence of the ship as you both stand, several feet apart but separated by lightyears of distance. You can’t look at him as you speak next.

“And I want you to come with me.”

It’s completely still. Neither of you move a single muscle, and you could almost swear he isn’t breathing from how total the silence is. The moment stretches, drawn-out stringy and messy as you feel your pulse kicking hard in your chest. That’s it, you think, dejectedly relieved despite yourself. He’ll say no, dismiss you, and that’ll be the end of it.

But he doesn’t. After an impossible length of empty silence, he shifts slightly on his feet before raising a hand to the back of the helmet, releasing it with a click and lifting it over his head. His dark eyes are indecipherable as he looks hard into your face, like he’s trying to read something sketched underneath the skin and muscle.

“Where do you want to go?” he finally gravels out.

The air leaves your lungs in a startled huff and your eyes snap up to his face. Is he…?

“I don’t care,” you say, voice weak, disconnected from your own body. “Anywhere. As long as I can stay with you.”

You feel like you’ve cracked your chest open, exposing the organs, waiting while he peers inside.

He takes a jolting, half-step toward you, and something in your face must give him permission, because he continues, crossing the distance and seizing your waist roughly in one of his large hands.

You’re unprepared for how hard he kisses you, his tongue demanding, drawing you inside himself. Your head is spinning, breathless as he runs his hand up to your jaw, his grip a little tighter than gentle, thumb pressing into the pulse at your neck. You sigh into his mouth, and he grinds you back against the wall of the ship, setting your knees wobbling. Breaking his lips from yours, he murmurs against your throat. “I’d go with you if I could. Believe me.”

You pull back, cupping his face in your hands, your heart frantic and wild. This isn’t an out-and-out no. This is him admitting he wants it. “You can.”

He makes a sound low in his chest, and you shiver in his hold, writhing against the length of him. You press your fingertips lightly to the edge of his jaw, the smooth skin at the junction of his neck and his earlobe, and his slow, broad accent is rough as he breathes against your hair.

It’s that same hissed word you heard in the dark; the one you don’t understand, lilting underneath the curves of each vowel. It’s beautiful, and it shudders right down the centre of your body, keening deep between your legs where you can still feel the echo of him. He kneels, the helmet rolling out of his hands as he presses his face to your midsection, roughly yanking your pants and underwear down together. He lifts your feet carefully out of the tangle and slides one over his pauldron, your knee crooked at his shoulder as he presses his face to your centre. 

Staring down wide-eyed, you shiver as his gaze turns molten, his nose sliding against your clit, his tongue insistent as he enters you, tasting you, filling you. Your hands clutch weakly at his neck as he grasps the back of your thighs, pulling you to his face, groaning in his chest as his tongue works inside you, heat racketing through your limbs.

“I missed the taste of you,” he grits, and it’s like hearing him admit to a secret weakness; the words humbling. Your answering hum catches at the back of your throat and you nearly collapse onto his shoulders as he closes his mouth around your clit, tongue laving flat over the sensitive edges. He begins working you in earnest, alternating sloppy, open-mouthed swipes with hard flicks, making you jerk as he keeps a firm grip, hands bearing down and pulling you even harder to his face.

The kernel of pleasure between your legs starts to sharpen into something you can’t escape, and you hear garbled nonsense spilling out of your mouth as your breathing hitches, the words hiccuping out in staccato.

“I want you to… I want - st-stay with you, p-please… fuck, Maker… st-stay with me,” and he captures your clit with his full lips, dragging your pleasure out in carefully orchestrated waves as you shatter around him. The force of your orgasm punches you in the guts, folding you double. You’re curved over him, clutching his hair, spine juddering as he holds you steady.  His tongue hasn’t slowed, continuing to coax you through each wave when the leg you’re balancing on gives out.

Instead of letting you topple over him, he captures you in his arms and gently lowers you to his lap, waiting while you regain control of your extremities, head spinning and caught completely off guard by what had just happened. You blink dazedly at him, his gloved hands smoothing your hair from your face, tracing the hollows underneath your eyes, the points of your upper lip.

“If it’s what you want. I can… try. I don’t know when. But, someday -,”

You cut him off with another kiss, this one soft as you gently take his bottom lip between your teeth, tasting yourself on his skin. “That’d be enough. Just your answer is enough.”

He watches you as your breathing slows, curled in his arms. When you finally stop shaking, he stands, supporting your weight close to his chest.

“You have more than one in you,” he growls, heading to the cockpit.

 

-

 

There are still two bounties to bring in, you think absently, trying and failing to care in the slightest as you watch him dress, the muscles in his broad back shifting under the surface of his skin as he drags his shirt over his head.

“The work on the hydraulics’ll have to wait until we get back from this next job,” he’s saying as you swing your feet back and forth over the edge of the bunk. “For now I can just divert power from the shields to the reverse thrusters, not ideal long-term but it’ll get the job done.”

You’re barely listening, eyes raking over his toned forearms as he flicks his sleeves up. He’s willing to stay with you. The thought fills your extremities with warmth. Not just for work. He’s willing to try to spend time with you just for the enjoyment of it.

“I should’ve got you to dose that Zabrak before I took them both in. Had a loud fucking mouth.”

“Mmm,” you murmur in agreement, unabashedly watching as he bends to retrieve a discarded boot from under the pilot’s set. “Sounds nearly as bad as that Gran mark from the other week. After I woke him up, he raved at me all the way back to the tradeoff. Telling me he was going to get his wizard friend to cut my head off with his laser sword.” You snort at the memory, but you trail off when you realise how stiff his posture has become, hands frozen on his boots.

Boba’s head turns slowly to face you, his eyes frighteningly cold. “Wizard friend?” he repeats, voice perfectly flat.

Your amusement evaporates as you feel a prickle at the back of your neck.

“He said… he knew a guy who could read minds. It was as I was hauling him back; just panicked threats, like they always try to scare us with. It’s impossible, you saw his bodyguards. There was no mind activity of any kind -” Your words die in your throat as Boba throws himself forward, punching the display panel to life as he powers up the engines.

Slave I’s modified cylinders whine as he yanks the controls back with one hand, the ship veering violently, stabilisers barely able to keep up. You nearly fall off your perch, catching yourself hard against the frame of the bunk compartment as the ship rattles, pushed to its considerably enhanced maximum MGLT acceleration. His hands are working fast, entering hyperspace coordinates faster than your eyes can follow.

Gingerly, you drop down to the cockpit and grip the back of your seat to try to keep your balance, the intense velocity testing the limits of the ship’s inertial compensators.

“What is it?” you eventually manage, alarmed by his extreme reaction.

“Jedi,” he spits the word, acid lacing his voice.

You frown, confused. “They don’t exist anymore. They were all killed.”

“Most of them,” he corrects. “But they’re like spider-roaches. Hard to make them stay dead.”

Your mind is reeling from this. The Jedi are supposed to be long gone, but you know enough about them from the stories that this doesn’t feel right. It just doesn’t seem possible that there’d be some glowing sorcerer-knight hiding on the shitty little planetoid you’d collected the Gran quarry from so recently.

“Aren’t they dangerous?”

He chuckles, but it’s an ugly, hard sound that sets your teeth on edge. “They used to be. Only strong in numbers. And bold enough to murder indiscriminately according to the code they set down for themselves. Without the Republic, they’re weak, hiding like cowards."

Coldness is creeping into your chest. You don’t feel good about this at all. He may not consider them to be a credible threat, but you don’t like your chances against a desperate, cornered target armed with a laser sword and potential mind-powers.

“What about the other bounties?” you hedge.

“Fuck the other bounties,” he shoots back. You bite your tongue. He’s almost vibrating with tension despite the icy stillness of his expression. You’ve never seen him like this; his focus sharpened with pure, crystalline hatred. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t afraid of what he would do. Which is why you can’t let him go alone.

 

-

 

He’d spent most of the approach to the system silently checking over every weapon in his arsenal, pulling out vicious-looking blades and rifles you’d never seen before, meticulously assessing each one and loading ammunition into every pocket on his belt. The warm aura of intimate domesticity in which you’ve been basking has burst like a soap bubble, your sense of dread deepening as you watch him, forgotten in your corner of the cockpit. If there truly was no threat posed by the Jedi, why was he taking such extensive precautions? You want to try to stop him, but you don’t dare, keeping out of his way, your anxiety mounting.

As the landing sequence kicks in, he stands, phase-pulse blaster gripped in his hands as he moves to sweep past you to the ramp. You follow, your own modified rifle strapped over your shoulder when he lurches to a halt, seeming to remember you’re there.

“Stay with the ship,” he grits, and you’re already scowling as you step after him.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

“This won’t be pleasant.”

Your lips are pressed into a hard line, eyes cool as you appraise him. “I gathered as much from the heavy packing. Makes it seem like you could use some backup.”

He looks like he wants to argue further, but urgency wins out and he lifts his helmet onto his head, disappearing out into the cold air of the city, not waiting to see if you’re following.

You’ve arrived during the planetoid’s day cycle, and the dirty streets aren’t as busy as the last time you were here. The nightclubs and bars are shuttered, neon signs lifeless in the frigid grey light as people skitter out of your way, side-eyeing you and your companion. You’re aware of the image you present; both heavily armed, with Boba’s armour already an alarming sight for most people, and you can only imagine what your own tersely focused expression looks like to the casual observer. 

As you approach the alley where you first intercepted the target, you step carefully, finger poised over the trigger and listening sharply for the sounds of movement around each corner. If this Jedi is as omniscient as the stories say, there’s a chance they’ll know you’re coming. You don’t like the idea of an ambush.

The entry to the cantina you’d waited for hours outside of only a few weeks ago is predictably bolted, lewd posters depicting a trio of impressively limber women papering the shut door. Boba barely slows before shooting two blasts into either side of the bolts and kicking the door in mid-stride, heat glowing red around the twisted hinges as he steps over it. You follow him into the dark interior, swivelling to watch your backs through your scope as you keep close behind.

There’s a muffled crash from somewhere deeper inside the building, and Boba keeps his pace steady, each step producing a quiet clink as he stalks into the back room. You lower the rifle, swinging the strap around to your back as you slip after him just as a shout punches through the silence.

Stepping through the doorway, you appear to be in a small living space behind the main cantina. Boba’s gloved hand is around the throat of a Quarren male whose hands are scrabbling desperately for purchase against the vambrace, his wide gill-flaps blowing in and out with exertion as his legs kick uselessly.

Boba’s voice is harsh through the modulator. “You’re going to answer a couple of questions for us,” he says, dropping the man to scramble to a seated position, feet scuffing at the ground in front of him.

“I don’t know anything,” the Quarren grunts, his face-tendrils twitching wildly with alarm, small beak-like mouth opening and closing with each gasping breath. His small eyes dart up to you, and you keep your face cold, not willing to reveal a thing.

“You had a guest here a few weeks ago. A Gran, big entourage. Remember?”

The Quarren’s tendrils curl up under his chin, quivering as he balls his fists.

“I get a lot of customers here. How’m I supposed to remember all of them? What do you care anyway? He’s gone; they say he got picked up by one of your kind.”

“I know he did. He mentioned a friend of his. Someone with a talent for mind reading.”

You’re watching the Quarren carefully, eyes following every tiny shift and twitch of his body, so you don’t miss the hastily-concealed blanch that passes over his bright little eyes at the words “mind reading”.

“That Gran was known for telling tall tales. You can’t believe there’s -” There’s a burst of heat and the smell of cooking squid fills the room, panicked screaming hoarse under the roar of the flamethrower. You concentrate very hard on not moving a muscle, not showing any indication of your creeping desire to get the fuck out of here. He was right, this isn’t something you want to see. But you’re not going anywhere, not while there’s a chance something could happen to him.

The burst of fire stops, and you breathe slowly through your parted lips as the Quarren whimpers, frantically slapping his scorched hands over his clothes, face-tendrils already blistered and smoking.

“Remembered anything?”

“Look, fuck, look, there might be a guy, he runs a s-syndicate; weapons, spice, contraband - that’s what Urgos was doing when you picked him up, handling his shipments.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know, I never met the guy -” There’s another short burst of flame, and the Quarren makes a horrible, phlegm-gurgled moan from deep in his chest. Your eyes are watering from the heat and your jaw is practically creaking from how tightly clenched your teeth are.

He doesn’t speak immediately after the burst ends; taking several long, rattling breaths of pain before he tries to talk.

“The next city…” he trails off, staring in horror at the skinless backs of his own hands, the pink flesh burnt orange in the few places it remains.

“The next city?” you can’t help but prompt. You need him to keep talking so you can get out of here. Your stomach is turning with the smell.

“To the south… Jii Gani. I heard it’s just some young guy, human, red hair I think. They’re all scared of him. I don’t know! I swear, man, I swear to the Maker. I only dealt with his guys a couple times. I don’t remember, I don’t…”

Boba’s voice is icy, void of emotion. “Let’s hope for your sake that’s enough for us to find him, or we’ll have to pay you another visit.”

He turns and disappears, spurs ringing as you hurry after him, your legs weak.

Back outside, you release a shuddered breath, opening and closing your hands several times to try to stop the trembling. The frigid air of the street is cleansing, and you suck in deep breaths, trying to clear the scorched smell from your nose. Boba’s reading a chain of coordinates from the dataprojector on his vambrace, the readouts scrolling past faster than you can follow.

“How far’s the city?” you ask, and he shuts it off with a flick of his fingers.

“Ten klicks. Faster to fly directly. Going back for the ship’ll take too long, and I won’t be able to carry us both that far. I’ll send you the coordinates. Find a speeder and meet me there.”

Your eyebrows are drawing down as he speaks. It sounds like he’s trying to shake you off without hurting your feelings. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up. What if the Jedi does read your thoughts? What if he knows you’re coming?”

“I hope he does.” The words are grim, spoken with a curled-lip harshness.

His helmet turns, catching you in his sight as he pauses for a moment. Reaching out a hand, he’s tentative, as though waiting for you to pull back before gently cupping the back of your head. It feels like he’s trying to say so much more with the simple gesture than he has time to verbalise.

The thought flits through your head that you could pull away. His brutality has affected you, despite the fact you’ve seen him fight plenty of times before, and you knew perfectly well what he was capable of. This wasn’t a fight, though. It was unnecessarily savage, cruel. 

And you don’t want to consider this, but you aren’t sure if he would have shown temperance even if you’d asked. The thought scares you; that you’d been kidding yourself into believing you had any kind of influence over him at all. You want to see his eyes, try to figure out what he’s thinking. You want an explanation. But you can’t have that right now. So instead, you try to tell him silently to be careful. Leaning into his touch, you hold his hand there, staring up into his visor.

Only a few seconds have passed when he lets you go. Stepping back, he hits a control and jets up past you, the wind ruffling your hair as he disappears out of sight, leaving you with an aching void in your stomach.

Notes:

Always dying to hear what you think! x

 

zinzinina.tumblr.com

Chapter 7: The Trade

Notes:

CW: Violence, death, injuries, drug use.

The stolen speeder bike screams underneath you as you twist the throttle down. Too slow, too slow, the refrain pounds under the wind tearing at your ears. It took far too long to find an unattended speeder, too long to clear the narrow streets and get onto the raised magnetic freeway out of the city. Every extra second it takes for you to get there is a fresh burst of panic; another chance for Boba to get cleaved in half with a fucking laser sword. Your brain unhelpfully produces a mental picture of this, and something cracks in your throat, not quite a sob, but not entirely unlike one either.

Veering wildly around an armoured transport, you lean down flat, trying to protect your burning eyes. The already-frigid air has numbed your face, the planetoid’s short day cycle darkening the roiling horizon as the temperature continues to drop fast. But there’s another problem: geomagnetic agitation high in the secondary atmosphere is limning the sky green, ionised molecules crackling far out in the distance.

The freeway, like the rest of the planetoid’s structures, is built high, raised above the tar-like surface on the planet. Every few hundred metres, thin spires of static discharge towers stretch skyward, designed to deflect as many lightning strikes as possible from the series of open-air ramps and passages leading toward the city’s tessellated platforms.

You really, really don’t need a burst of static to short out your speeder and leave you stranded out here. Gripping the sides of the speeder bike tight with your thighs, you work to maintain your balance, rifle tucked firmly to your side. The lanes leading into the city creep into view as you swerve around a grav-crawler, and you narrow your eyes, trying to work out the best route to take you into the centre. Most of the lanes are blocked with traffic; metrocabs congesting the widest ramp.

It looks like there’s another way though, and you don’t wait to weigh up the reckless idea before you’ve decided on it, tearing out into oncoming traffic and skipping diagonally across five lanes until you’re on an unused stretch of road, the speeder shrieking underneath you. Bearing down toward the fringes of the city, you tighten your fists around the handles, holding your breath as you rocket closer to the barricaded end of the lane and, praying for a miracle, wrench the front of the speeder bike upwards.

Suspended for a second in the loose air, your stomach drops out and time freezes as you squeeze your eyes shut, waiting for the crash.

You just barely clear the plasticrete barrier, sparks skidding from the back of the seat as you force the bike far higher than the antigrav was ever designed to accomodate safely. Cresting the wall, the bike slumps down and your teeth snap together with a lurching jolt as the repulsorlift pulls you up sharply, catching before you smash into the road.

Your foot swings out wildly, and you feel the heated friction through the sole of your boot as you rebalance, managing to prevent yourself flattening a graffitied cleaning droid. It squeals, its tiny brush-claws waving in panic, and you throw it a sheepish grimace as litter is blown up in an arc by your exhaust, forcing the engines on.

Jii Gani is a lot bigger than its sister city. The buildings tower over you, tinny advertisements audible from open shopfronts and an Iridonian woman leaps back out of your way, yelling something obscene as you nearly mow her down. Nothing appears to be on fire yet. That’s a good sign, you hope, decelerating, listening hard.

This sorcerer guy could be anywhere, you think. But hunting has helped you cultivate good instincts for this kind of thing, and you follow the neons, squeezing the speeder down progressively shiftier back alleys until you reach a district that feels similar to the area where you’d found the Gran, and where Boba had tortured the Quarren. The buildings are older; scratched and fogged windows affording glimpses into sabacc dens and pleasure houses. The rumble overhead mixes headily with the bass of music.

Heads turn to follow as you slowly roll down the street, and you watch more than one hand slipping underneath a coat as they take in your unconcealed weapons. A young woman watches you from the opening of an alley, and something in the back of your head twinges with alarm. You’re about to throw yourself off the speeder bike and take cover when a roll of thunder stills the street, static crackling. For a second, everyone is comically frozen, staring at one another, waiting.

And you realise a split second before everyone else does; that most recent booming is coming from street-level. The familiar crack of a disruptor rifle ricochets through the narrow maze of duracrete, coming from the other side of the alley as the crowd launches into movement. There’s an echoing burst of fire and screaming, and you aren’t sure if it’s from the storm or the explosion but you could swear the ground shakes underneath your feet, the entire section of the city being shaken to its raised foundations.

People shove one another to get out of the street, dashing past in the opposite direction as you crane your neck to see over them, the colour-leeched signs making faces ghoulish as they blur past. The woman meets your gaze just as she turns and darts back through the alley, toward the sound.

You fling your legs over the side of your speeder and throw yourself after her, boots nearly slipping on the grimed street as she looks over her shoulder and fumbles at her belt, sprinting away. A shoulder catches you in the side and you duck your head as you run, knocking someone over behind you without pausing to look back.

You reach her just as she looses her blaster, spinning to press her back to the wall of the alley. The shot sears the edge of your outstretched wrist as you seize her hand, twisting the blaster out of her grip and kneeing her hard in the stomach. She retches, doubling over and you’re too panicked, too furious to think as your hand circles her throat, slamming her back into the wall. If he’s still fighting in the street, it’s not over yet. You need to find the source of the threat before he does, before he gets himself killed.

“Where is the Jedi?” you snarl, another explosion shuddering underneath you. Blaster fire is deafening in the cramped space, red bolts of light illuminating both your faces. She stares at you in unveiled surprise for a second, before she laughs, the sound contemptuous.

“You’re fools. Both of you.”

You don’t have time for this. You fire off a shot into her knee, leaving her screeching and immobilised on the ground as you tear down the alley, skidding to a halt at the mouth and staring upward.

You’ve never seen anything like it; innumerable figures pouring out from the surrounding buildings, blasters firing wildly into the air. The street’s surface is cratered with rubble underneath the scorched bodies of limp figures, scattered like trash across the ground. And above all of it, the darkly gleaming figure above, twin sources of light from the jet pack at his back as he launches from a ledge just as it explodes into pebbles. There is a constant deluge of firepower, blaster bolts interspersed with cracking shots of the disruptor rifle, and as another explosion rocks the street you realise distantly that he’s somehow dropping charges too, singlehandedly decimating the street and everybody in it.

You don’t know how he’s doing it. He might as well be an entire army unto himself.

Another bolt of light skitters above and you dash sideways, making for what remains of a crumpled plasticrete billboard, gravel sliding under your boots as your feet prickle, nerve endings trying to stop your fall. You skid to your knees, catching yourself hard as rocks and broken glass rip into the fabric of your pants. Shoving your stolen blaster into your belt, you push the pain sideways, concentrating.

From behind your temporary shelter you swing your rifle up, firing off shot after shot into the street, teeth gritted through the punching recoil. You don’t wait to see whether your darts land, too occupied with watching above your head, trying to deflect as much fire from him as possible. Glass pops overhead as the building behind you is blown in, and the shards rain down, tiny stings of pain on your face and hands.

The heaviest concentration of bodies shooting are standing in a loose semicircle around the arched entrance to the building opposite, blaster fire and lightning by turns illuminating the street, enough that you can see a gap where a Gamorrean has fallen. It’s not a huge opening, but it might be big enough for you to flit inside unseen.

You’re trying to figure out a way to skirt around the edge of the chaos when a particularly loud pop of fire sounds out in front of you and a jagged bolt of plasma sears into the back of Boba’s leg, right into that fucking unprotected calf muscle again. He barely reacts, managing to fire off two bolts into the man who’d shot him, sending him careening backwards into another, but the sight of the blast hitting him compounds with the panicked adrenaline that had you racing to find him. This is not an assassination or a quiet extraction. It’s a full-scale brawl. Nothing prepares you for your own blind, protective fury.

A feral cry slips through your bared teeth, and you throw yourself over the barricade, firing point-blank into the startled figures turning toward you, dropping a man with a stim lodged directly in his eye, his screaming and clawing already forgotten as you fire twice more, bodies falling. You kick down on a tiny Sullustan man crouched near your feet, his jowls wobbling in terror as his crushed fingers release the blaster he was clutching, a gratifying crunch under your boot.

Hot pain shears through your grazed knee as a blaster bolt glances off your skin and you nearly lose your balance, your hair whipping into your eyes as your head swivels desperately, looking upward, trying to see whether any more shots have found gaps in his armour. A craggy-looking man with long grey hair is aiming a boiler rifle up into the air, and you don’t pause to think, stumbling over what looks like a pile of rocks but feels unpleasantly soft under your feet as you launch yourself at him.

Catching him around the waist, you throw him off his feet, the two of you tumbling down in a heap, your raw knees grinding excruciatingly against the ground as you straddle his waist. He’s trying to kick you off, the butt of his rifle catching on the side of your head, and you rear back, aiming to shoot down at his face, but nothing happens.

Cursing, you smash your jammed rifle in an upward swing across the man’s jaw, kicking back hard as another set of arms grab at you from behind. You twist your arms free, dropping the rifle and leaving your assailant holding your heavy jacket. A hot trickle of blood runs from your eyebrow into your face and you blink furiously to clear your sight, crouching to dodge the swipe of heavy arms over your head.

You wrench both your own and the stolen blasters from your belt, firing madly into the smoky confusion, no idea if your shots are hitting, indiscriminately loosing bolt after bolt into the mass of bodies.

But there are too many of them, and behind you a burst of short percussive shots ring out. Something singes your bare arm, and in the time it takes you to flinch your blasters are knocked from your grip, a kick catching you hard in the ribs before you can dodge away. You see white, knees buckling, going down hard onto your hands as your shoulders are seized and you’re flipped onto your back.

Your chest heaving, blinking away the blood in your eyes, it takes a second for you to realise why the next hit doesn’t come. The man holding you is frozen, recognition flaring long enough to make him pause and in the split second of fire bursting overhead you remember; he was one of the Gran’s bodyguards, the one you chose not to kill, leaving alive but unconscious in the street.

You pant, looking at each other, trapped in a tiny feedback loop of shock, when there’s a deafening crack of discharge and the man disappears into an explosion of sparks, grey ashes drifting down onto your face.

Boba stands over you, disruptor rifle still raised, and you roll to your feet, spitting blood through your teeth from where you’ve bitten your tongue. He’s roaring something, garbled by the modulator and indistinguishable from the cacophony around you, but the meaning is clear enough as he points toward the alley leading away from the fight.

Positive he wouldn’t be able to hear you anyway, you don’t respond, turning as the remaining men charge forward, getting ready to face them down. There aren’t very many left, but you’ve lost your blasters and you have no idea how long you’ll last with your bare hands. Resorting to your last remaining weapon, you whip the vibroblade from your thigh, holding it sideways in your fist as you prepare to throw yourself forward. Before you can, Boba snarls a curse, the noise one of pure frustration. He launches himself up back over your head, drawing the attention of the encroaching mob and tossing out another charge as he sweeps backward, leading the fight away from you.

You don’t wait for another chance. Tripping clumsily over the mess at your feet, you make for the arched doorway, left unguarded and lit with incongruously comforting yellow glowpanels. Lengthening your strides, nostrils flaring with the effort of catching your breath, you cross the threshold and make it halfway up a wide staircase before you need to rest, leaning heavily against the balustrade as pain dances up your side.

The interior of the building is glaringly unexceptional. It could be an office anywhere in the galaxy; institutional-looking geometric wall panels between rows of doors. It’s... not exactly crystals and ancient statues, you think, wiping the back of your arm across your mouth to clear the grit of ash from your lips.

It’s completely deserted, the sounds from outside echoing over your dragging footsteps. Listening hard, you just make out a quiet rattling, like a bottle rolling across a polished floor from behind a doorway at the end of the passage.

Forcing your legs forward, you reach the door and press your back to it, straining to hear, chest burning. There’s nothing, just a low humming, then… a whimper. It’s all the incentive you need. Vibroblade between your teeth, you throw your shoulder into the door. It bursts open as you crouch, bracing to fight whatever’s inside, terrified and wild.

The room is a wreck, littered with smashed glasses, overturned furniture piled haphazardly into a makeshift fortress against the long window taking up an entire wall. Your brows crease in confusion as you take in the scene. A skinny, well-dressed kid is cowering underneath the shelter of the piled chairs, shaking violently. A weapon unlike any you’ve ever seen is clutched in his outstretched hand, the source of the low vibrating sound; burning a dazzlingly bright green and thrumming with unmistakeable power.

“Don’t come any closer,” he warns, voice cracking. He couldn’t be more than eighteen, patchy facial hair, eyes fear-wild. A wine-coloured birthmark is splashed over one side of his face, and as you stare down at him, you’re filled with a creeping sense of wrongness. This isn’t right. It can’t be.

Your mouth is open, ready to question him, when spur-accented footsteps sound in the hallway and Boba storms into the room behind you, both rifle and blaster raised. He’s splattered with darkening stains, every line of his body held tight with tension. He freezes, and you see his head turn slowly, taking in the barricaded furniture.

“This is a Jedi?” you pant, dubious, and Boba stalks forward, firing a shot into the kid’s hand. He howls in pain, dropping the weapon immediately. The glowing blade retracts, leaving the ornate gold hilt laying harmlessly on the ground.

“No,” Boba finally grits, voice flat. “This is an impersonator.”

Relief wars with apprehension. How could a kid like this have managed to exert such influence over the entire organised crime ring in this sector without the powers he claimed to have? Boba steps over him, rifle raised in warning.

“Where did you get this weapon?” he demands roughly, picking it up and holding it over him. The kid squeaks in alarm, shuffling further down into a ball, cringing away from the bounty hunter.

“I found it. You can have it, take it. Take it!”

You let your attention drift, noticing the glasses scattered around the room. One is mostly intact, only part of the side cracked away. You bend to examine it, slow on your weak legs. Carefully running the pad of your ring finger around what remains of the rim of the glass, you collect the residue of the bright-coloured liquor and bring it to your nose, frowning at the sickly almondine smell.

“Skirtopanol,” you murmur, and Boba turns, the tinted visor glinting as he faces you. “It’s an interrogation drug. But it works intravenously, I don’t know why anyone would put it into a drink.”

The kid’s voice still manages to sound scornful despite the tremor in it. “Aren’t you supposed to be the expert?”

You flinch at this, and Boba lunges as though about to hit him in the face, but you step forward, hand held out, crouching in front of him.

“Wait. This is how you did it, isn’t it? Easy to make people think you’re pulling their thoughts out, if they’re too out of it to know what they’re saying. But... how did you...?”

He lifts his chin, pride evident underneath the glittering fear in his eyes. “I’ve heard of you. Running around with the Mandalorian hunter. You’re not the only one good at reworking formulas.”

You lean back on your heels, considering him. It’s ingenious, if incredibly reckless. Instilling this much fear in people with just a clever compound and an antique weapon. Sooner or later someone was going to figure out what he was doing here and then he would have been royally fucked. But you’re impressed with the complexity of the con; despite also being absolutely enraged with him for the carnage he’s caused.

“Get up,” barks Boba, and you blink, alarmed.

“What are we going to do with him?”

“He’s coming with us.”

The kid blanches, throwing his arms up in front of his face as Boba raises his arm, backhanding him with his vambrace. A tiny mist of blood accompanies a tooth, glinting briefly in the air like a comet before disappearing somewhere in the shadows. He slumps back, knocked out cold.

“He’s a child,” you start, but he’s not listening, holding firm to your shoulders, turning you backwards and forwards, helmet tilted close as he bends to examine you.

“Where is this blood coming from?”, he demands, voice hard as his gloved hand presses gently against your crusted brow. You realise how bad you must look; covered in blood and ash, clothing ripped, and you pull back, catching his hand in your own.

“It’s not mine. Not that much of it, anyway. Your leg-”

“Will be fine. Hit me with a shot so I can’t feel it,” he says, and something in his tone tells you not to argue. You fumble in your pocket, fingers meeting broken glass, and you curse as the shards prick your skin. Only one canister remains intact, and as you kneel in front of him, you suck your bleeding fingers as you gently depress the tiniest amount possible behind his kneeplate. You glance up, face inches from his crotch, filthy and wounded. You resist the ludicrous impulse to press your sore face to the cool armour over his knee.

“Never do that again,” he says, voice harsh through the modulator. You raise your eyebrows, confused.

“When I saw you down there... trying to fight the whole fucking lot of them at once. I didn’t... They would’ve killed you. Never do it again.”

You raise yourself up slowly, bracing your hands on his plated chest.

“You want to do this now? Really? Because I have a few thoughts about you flying off - alone - to get yourself shot out of the fucking sky hunting down a make-believe wizard. Why are we here? What is this? Do you know how scared I was when I thought you were in trouble?” Tears prick in your eyes but you’re too angry to be embarrassed. “I would have ripped every single one of them apart with my bare hands if it meant they couldn’t get to you,” you tell him, fierce. Your voice doesn’t sound like your own; it’s foreign, hard and cold. “I’m glad I did it. And I’d do it again.”

He takes in a ragged breath, and you wonder if your painkillers weren’t strong enough.

But then a boom of thunder rumbles through the building and you remember where you are, and how dangerous it is to stay here any longer. You bend, sliding your arms underneath the unconscious kids’ shoulders and lifting him bodily against you, biting back a groan of pain.

“I swiped a speeder bike. I can probably balance him long enough to get out of the city but that freeway was all open-air. The controls might short out halfway back.”

He raises his blaster and you nearly drop the kid as the window shatters, glass blowing out into the crackling air.

“Get to the roof,” he says, and then he’s gone, the sound of his jets disappearing into the night. You shiver, jacketless in the wind, and frown down at the motionless form slumped in your arms.

“C’mon kid,” you mutter, awkwardly drag-carrying him toward the staircase.

 

-

 

You don’t know if it’s because of his tender age, but you take more care than usual laying him down in the prisoner cage. His gangly limbs are puppyish, hands and feet too big for the rest of him. You’re standing over him, lost in thought when Boba seizes you from behind. You yelp with shock, instinctively preparing to fight him when he turns you, gloved hand running over your torso, fingers probing.

“Where are you hurt?” he grits, his hand lifting your shirt to examine the spreading bruise on your ribs. You try to twist out of his grip.

“You need to - what the fuck, put me down!”

He slings you up into his arms, swinging you into the fresher and plonking you on your ass in the shower.

Spluttering indignantly at the sudden downpour of warm water over your head, a disgusting mix of blackened grime bubbles out of your clothes. You stare, entranced as it washes around your feet. That is a lot of blood, you think distantly. Boba kicks off his pants, laying them atop the pile of armour on the floor as he slips in behind you.

You only catch a glimpse of his wound, but it’s enough to make your heart catch. The blaster hole is blackened, the surrounding skin burned tight and shiny.

“Boba, that looks really bad, you need me to -“ he cuts you off again, cupping warm water in his hands and tipping it over your hair. His face is inscrutable, eyes cold as he tilts your head back, thumb brushing your busted eyebrow.

“That could’ve been your eye,” he tells you, voice low.

“It wasn’t.”

“Mm.” He eases down behind you, his legs either side of your own as he slouches to examine your scraped knees, visible through your ruined pants. Carefully, he plucks shards of broken glass and gravel from the mess of your skin. It’s heartbreakingly gentle, almost comical with his thick fingers. You quieten, warm and suddenly exhausted as the adrenaline trickles slowly out of your system. Your sopping clothes are weighing heavy on your body and the dragging feeling is oddly soothing, making you feel drowsy.

He finishes cleaning out your knee and begins to undress you, rolling the spongy material away from your body, dropping everything into dark, squelching bundles on the floor. You let him move you, doll-like in his rough hands as he shuts off the water and throws on a pair of pants, leaving his chest bare, throwing his clean shirt over your head instead.

Back out in the hold, he lowers you onto the floor, rummaging in a compartment overhead.

You glance nervously at the door to the cage, where the kid is laying. Boba’s shirtless, armourless, helmetless in full view of a prisoner, albeit an unconscious one.

You watch blearily as he digs out a medkit, scowling at the contents as though he’s never seen inside one before.

“Those foil pouches are single-use bacta sprays,” you offer helpfully.

Wordless, he rips the top off one with his teeth, kneeling in front of you, the plastic ampoule small in his hand as he holds it expectantly over your mangled knee. Nothing happens.

“The blue part,” you try, and he stares at the thing in his hand for a beat before depressing the nozzle, the relief of the bacta immediate. You let your head fall back against the hull with a thud, breathing slowly. You hadn’t realised how badly it hurt until the pain fades, leaving space in your head to worry again.

“Is there a webbing attachment in there for burns?” you ask, eyeballing his leg.

“I don’t know,” he admits, sounding gruff. “I’m better with tech. Never tried to do this before.”

That’s obvious, you don’t say. But the fact that he’s... trying to look after you, despite the fact he has no idea what he’s doing… it’s fucking adorable. You feel stupid with endearment as your expression softens, watching the permanent furrow dug between his eyebrows.

“What did you do when you were injured before I came along?”

He doesn’t answer straight away. You’d seen the scarring on his backs of his legs, the armourless weak spots that enemies seemed to zero in on.

“Spice,” he finally says. “I’d just try not to feel it until it healed.”

You glance up at him. He wouldn’t be the only bounty hunter who turned to spice; it was almost ubiquitous in your line of work. But he’d never shown any indication of a dependence on it since you’ve known him. You wonder what else he’d been getting up to before you came along. Nothing good, you suspect.

“You’re lucky nothing got infected,” you say instead. “I’ll have to pack that with gauze again. It’s a mess.”

He’s not even listening, clumsily dabbing at your tender eyebrow, tense face inches away as he concentrates hard. He’s so bad at this, you think affectionately. Carefully, you reach up and catch his hand, extracting the swab from between his fingers.

“I can do this. You’re going to tell me what’s going on. And give me your leg.”

He hesitates and you raise both eyebrows at him, challenging.

Shaking his head, he eases himself back, legs stretched in front of his body in the cramped space. The position seems somehow boyish and your practised fingertips are gentle as you extract pieces from the medkit laying on its side beside you, barely glancing at them as you go to work.

He lays his hands flat on his thick thighs, and you watch his broad chest rise and fall as he considers your quick fingers, wrapping his mangled calf, spraying bacta into the dressings as you pack the wound.

“I have a contract.”

“That ISB client?”

“Something like that.”

“What does that mean?”

He looks exhausted, dragging a hand back through his hair. You tie off the end of the roll, wondering how many times you’ll have to do this, feeling a growing foreboding at his extended silence.

And then it hits you. Your head snaps up, cold horror dripping down your throat.

“Please tell me this isn’t it. This isn’t the deal you made.”

The look on his face answers your question and you feel like laughing, or crying, you aren’t sure.

“A Jedi? Why? Why would you agree to something that’s impossible? How many credits is your life worth?”

“I would have done it for free,” he tells you, harsh again. “I volunteered.”

You look frantically around the hold as though the answer to this situation is painted somewhere. Even if there were any Jedi left, which there aren’t, trying to capture one would be a suicidal endeavour. Catching a fake one nearly was. Smacking your head into your hands, you shiver violently. It’s cold down here, and you’re nearly naked. The ridiculousness of your positions strikes you. Both damp, wounded, barely dressed, facing off with each other like parodies of your former selves. Two professionals without a fucking clue.

He’s still watching you warily, like you might spontaneously burst into flames and you peek between your fingers.

“So. It definitely would’ve been worth nearly getting us both dusted.”

It’s a weak effort at a joke and he doesn’t respond.

Sighing, you reach out for him across the space of the hold.

“Come here,” you whisper. He grunts, shifting around until he’s beside you and reaching to pull you into the gap between his legs. Your ribs are tender but you bite back the hiss of pain, deciding it’s worth it to be touching him again. You feel… bereft. You knew the deal must’ve been bad. You just couldn’t have imagined how bad.

“Is there a time limit?”

He inhales, exhales. “No. But… until the contract is fulfilled, I keep working. Other hunters I knew tried to renege on similar deals. They were… decommissioned.”

You close your eyes. It hurts, and you can’t pretend it doesn’t. One version of the future dissolves and another takes its place. One in which there’s no rest, no peace. Just fighting. Constant, endless fighting. Far from feeling yourself drawing away from him, you only sink closer. This what he costs, you think. And you know, even as your head swims with the thought of what’s to come, even as your eyes prickle and blur, you’re prepared to pay it.

“Okay,” you breathe, trying to keep your sniffle as silent as possible as a single, hot tear rolls down your cheek.

He ducks his head to look down at you. “Okay?”

“Yeah. It’s okay. We’ll find one. We’ll turn over every rock in the galaxy if we need to. And until then… well. You’ll have to stop getting hit in that leg if we’re gonna keep hunting.”

He hasn’t said a word and you twist in his arms, trying to see his face. It’s awkward and you twinge something in your side, gasping at the sudden sharpness. He presses a hand gently to your ribs, soothing the ache there before speaking slowly. His voice is unsettlingly calm.

“I can’t involve you, little one.”

And he preemptively cuts you off, knowing you’ll argue before you’ve even begun. “This is not something I’ll drag you into. It’s not about your competence. It’s about this,” he says, pressing a finger gently to your cheek, catching the moisture there.

You clench your hands into fists, your lips trembling. “Because you think I’m weak.”

“No. You aren’t weak. But you are still soft. I would mourn the loss of your softness, even if you wouldn’t.”

If anyone else had said it, you’d be insulted, defiant. You’d knee them in the groin, break their nose to prove them wrong. But because it’s him, it fills you with a strange ache.

You manage to slide yourself sideways, careful of your bruised ribs until you can see him.

His tiredness looks bone-deep, shadows underneath his eyes. You lean in, tracing the curve of his broad nose with your fingertips, lightly touching the edge of his lip.

His hands slide up your back, holding you to his chest, frowning at you, always frowning. You feel like you need to try to make him understand, somehow.

“I’d make that trade, so I could stay with you,” you tell him. He closes his eyes, dragging in another exhausted breath. You can see the words he’s holding back: that he disagrees, it’s not a fair trade, at least not one he’d make. So you kiss him again before he can say anything.

“Can we go to bed? I’m cold,” you murmur.

“You’re always cold.” The cool amusement in his voice tells you he’s letting it drop for now.

But as you drag your messy, patched bodies to the bunk, you get the distinct impression this conversation isn’t over. Which is fine, you decide. You’re not backing down.

 

Curled around him in the dark, you’re almost asleep, face smushed to his chest. Your mind tries to produce its usual cycle of post-job guilt; examining each of the people you’ve killed so you can absorb what you’ve done. But this time, you can’t picture a single face. You can’t remember them. Not one. You don’t even know how many there were.

 

-

 

You hold your breath as you try to stretch your pants over your still-tender knees. There are tiny cuts on the backs of your hands from broken glass and you aren’t sure what your face looks like this morning, but it can’t be good. Boba is working on something; quiet metallic noises emanating from below as you dress in the cramped space of the bunk. Your thoughts drift back to the prisoner underneath. He’ll probably get a decent price; the crime ring he was running had managed to attract attention from more than one quarter. Hopefully his young age will inspire lenience with whoever wants him.

 

Dropping gingerly down into the cockpit, Boba’s already dressed and armoured, his helmet on the control panel behind him. His gaze zeroes immediately on your brow, looking stern.

“I know,” you say. “I look like I’ve been through a meat grinder.”

“You’re still beautiful.” There’s nothing gentle or kind in his voice; it’s not stated as though he intends to reassure you. He just says it, like he’s pointing out something you should have already known. It affects you more in his way than if he had presented it as flattery and you feel your face warm, eyes dropping to his feet.

He leans in, gloved hand lifting your chin. You hold your face still as his lips ghost over your grazed forehead.

“Where are we taking the kid?” you ask.

He lets you go, stepping back. “About that. I’ll drop you off in the Core -“

“No,” you’re already shaking your head. “Not this again. I’m coming with you. And by the way, I hate the Core. It’s crowded and freezing and we still have two pucks; there’s no reason for me to be there.”

He looks the closest to annoyed you’ve ever seen him. “I’m not going to be the one who gets you tied up in -“

“You aren’t. I am. I am choosing this. Just as you did. Let me choose.”

You glare at each other, and he breaks first. “Fine. This is a bad idea. Let it be known I disagreed with this.”

“Noted,” you tell him with satisfaction. “So. Where?”

“I have to wait for a response from the client. For now, we’re drifting.”

“Okay,” you say. “I’m going to go check on him.”

 

He’s awake. Sitting with his back to the side of the cage, knees curled up close to his body, he looks even younger. You hold out a pack of freeze-dried dru’un slices between the bars.

“Hungry?”

He eyes it suspiciously and turns his head away, the edges of a bruise blending in with his birthmark and making it look like he’s wearing a mask over half of his face.

“It’s not drugged. It’s a new packet. Look, still sealed.”

Nothing. Against your better judgment, you open the cage door and slip inside, leaning on the wall as you ease down beside him. You make a point of ripping the packet open, eating a slice and staring at him pointedly.

The kid sniffs, and you catch him side-eyeing the pouch in your hands. Sighing, you pass it to him.

“Come on. If I wanted to knock you out, I wouldn’t bother with the subterfuge.”

His eyes dart to yours before he seems to accept this, snatching the pouch from your hands, tipping half the packet into his mouth at once. He chews fast, digging his hand into the pack and holding another slice ready to shovel in next.

“There a bounty on me?” he says, mouth full of food.

You rock forward slightly, wrapping your arms under your knees, bringing your thighs together.

“Probably more than one. But we’re taking you to the ISB. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll send you to a labour planet. It’s better than being eaten alive by the people you were scamming,” you tell him bemusedly.

He glares at you, flushing underneath his marked skin. “I would never have been caught. I would’ve skipped before they figured it out.”

You give him a little smile. “Maybe. What did you do if they didn’t want a drink?”

He’s matter-of-fact. “Diffusers. Not as effective but I was working on concentrating the vapours.”

You nod, admiring. “Pretty advanced stuff.”

It falls quiet, only the faint sound of small tools working drifting through the ship. You wonder where his parents are, whether he grew up in the city.

“What’s your name?” you try.

He snorts. “What’s yours?”

You don’t answer. You probably shouldn’t be doing this. Talking to him like this is only going to make you feel worse about handing him over. But an ugly voice in the back of your head tells you that’s exactly why you’re doing this: so you suffer more later. Like that makes the act any less abhorrent. Sitting side by side, your eyes drift out of focus and you find yourself lightyears away; thinking about nothing. If he finds it strange that you’re hanging out here with him, he doesn’t say so.

Hours pass, though it doesn’t feel that long. It isn’t until your legs cramp from sitting in the same position for so long that you realise you should probably move. Standing up slowly, careful with your bruised ribs, you watch as he makes a point of not looking at you.

“You’ll be okay,” you tell him. “You’re smart. They might even send you to the Academy.”

He’s still glowering at the wall opposite, his picture of absolute stoicism only slightly ruined by the faint wobble in his lower lip. His voice pauses you at the cage door.

“My sister. You have her blaster. You killed her, didn’t you?”

You turn, frowning.

“No,” you answer. “She was hurt, but alive.”

He doesn’t look like he believes you. You let yourself out, climbing back up to the cockpit.

 

Boba doesn’t look up, his voice low as you lean on the back of the co-pilot’s chair, hyperspace streaking beyond the viewport.

“We have coordinates. I already jumped, but it’s not too late to stop somewhere and let you off.”

“My mind’s made up.”

He shakes his head, turning and reaching out to you.

“I should have had this ready faster. Lucky you lost that fucking rifle or I would have smashed it myself.”

You stare uncomprehendingly at the vambrace in his hands. “I... don’t understand.”

He turns it over, retracting the cover at the top to reveal rows of dart launchers.

“Mandalorian darts use smaller casings than the darts you were using. I already loaded these for you; if you give me the shells you made for the rifle I can show you how they work.”

You’re still lost, mouth opening, closing and then opening again. You aren’t completely sure why he’s showing it to you; the vambrace he’d been working on, the one too small for him; made for a youth’s arm... or a woman’s, you think. Something tugs heavily in your ribcage as your brain finally catches up. Looking at it, you can see where it’s been rebuilt in places, the solder lines clean and fine. But more than that, it’s been polished and buffed to a deep shine. That’s the part you’re stuck on: he didn’t just make it functional. He made it beautiful for you, too. Dumbstruck, you hold out your arm and he slides it over your hand, clasping the underside shut.

It fits firm but comfortably to your wrist, the edges smoothed painstakingly to prevent it from cutting into your skin. It’s a perfect fit, two-thirds the length of your forearm and with a flat enough profile that it’s unobstructive when you move. It could be a piece of jewellery, it’s so exquisite. The beskar is light but unmistakably powerful.

You turn your face to him, lost for words. He seems to be caught on the sight of it on your arm, some kind of great distraction burning in his eyes.

“It suits you,” he says roughly.

“Are you… sure you want to give this to me?” you breathe. It feels like more than just a weapon. It feels like something else.

He holds your hand in his, and you both watch him turning the vambrace to catch the light.

“I would give you anything,” he murmurs. Your breath catches, eyes snapping back up to his face. It’s hard, like the rest of him, eyes shining black. Your heart is beating so fast you can feel your pulse in odd places; the palms of your hands, and around your lips. You have no words for this. But you suspect he does, and you wish you could remember how to pronounce what he’d said to you in the dark; your mind circling on loose sounds… dara, ta’la, meaningless out of context.

Instead, you step closer to the seat, stopping between his legs. Wrapping your arms around his head you bring his face to your chest, hoping he can hear your heartbeat, counting on it to tell him what you can’t.

There’s a quiet alert from the navicomp and you both turn. He reaches out to silence it, flicking a control and bringing up a string of numbers.

“We’re here,” he tells you flatly. “Let me talk to them. Don’t draw attention to yourself and you should be alright.”

“Okay,” you respond, hesitant. He adjusts the shield deflectors, shutting down the overhead panels as he pulls his helmet over his head with a click.

“One more thing,” he says, voice harsh. “Be careful what you think.”

You look at him. “What I think? Are you serious?”

He doesn’t answer. Legs weak, you lower yourself into the co-pilot’s chair as the ship drops out of hyperspace, the lights of the Star Destroyer filling the viewport.

Notes:

zinzinina.tumblr.com

Chapter 8: The Client

Notes:

CW: This chapter has some slightly heavier smut elements including rough sex and breath play. Please let me know if you think I need to tag anything else.

You are so grateful for your busted face.

The officer who had met the ship in the hangar had the same scrubbed-pink and indistinguishable features as most Imps you’d encountered, which had immediately sparked flashbacks to your time slipping into secure facilities on your home planet. You were decidedly unpolished back then, and you’d be willing to bet your poorly-covered tracks had led to the entry of more than one database alert attached to you.

Now, you meet his gaze levelly as you stand side-by-side with Boba, waiting while a pair of stormtroopers clomp up the ramp of Slave I. His ears stick out, affording the undersized command cap the appearance of a child’s costume. Hands behind his back, his stiff posture does nothing to disguise the nervous way he keeps glancing between the two of you. It’s immature, but you can’t help shooting a thin-lipped smirk his way. Let him be scared, you think. His eyes snap forward, red creeping up his neck.

As the troopers usher the kid down the ramp of the ship he turns, chest puffed out.

“Nobody else on board, sir.”

“Good. Bring the prisoner. Bounty hunters,” derision unveiled, “this way.”

One of the troopers shoves the kid in the small of the back and he nearly stumbles, eyes downcast as you march forward, boots squeaking on the shiny floors.

The launch bay alone is bigger than some Midrim spaceports. The scale is utterly mind-boggling, distant uniformed officers looking no bigger than toys as they move between workstations. Adding to the surreal artificiality of the place, everything is implausibly new and clean-looking. There isn’t a trace of carbon scoring as far as you can see.

Rows of gleaming starfighters line the hangar, immaculately maintained with teams of engineers at each station. A young woman, pale hair scraped back firm from her face and uniform buttoned to the throat, glances over and turns hurriedly away, busying herself at a terminal.

It’s all in stark contrast to you and your companion. Boba’s paint-chipped armour still has splotches of dried rust-coloured stains around the kneeplates, heels ringing as you walk beside him. Your own roughened appearance feels at odds with the elegant piece of weaponry on your arm, shallow plasma burns decorating the exposed skin of your shoulders. Secretly, you thrill internally at the fact you match him. Each scrape feels earned, as though you belong at his side. You decide to wear it like a statement, and you lift your chin as you walk, shoving down the steadily intensifying sense of unease you’ve been feeling since boarding the Destroyer.

Leading your small entourage into a turbolift, the commanding officer turns and faces the doors, eyes staring fixedly at the control panel, his back to you. You’re standing so close you can see where the hem at the back of his uniform has been taken up and something about this detail makes the severity of his demeanour incredibly funny to you. The whole operation takes itself so seriously, and yet it’s peopled with mere humans, just like yourself and Boba. The officer’s discomfort is palpable, and you slide your eyes infinitesimally to the side, meeting the visor of Boba’s helmet and letting the tiniest of wry smiles play around your lips. He shakes his head once, a quiet crackle from the modulator the only indication he shares your amusement. It feels like a hollow attempt to pierce the abrading confinement you’re both wrapped up in.

The lift opens out into a corridor illuminated with cutout glowpanels set into the walls, casting an unflattering pallor over your faces. As you step out, one of the troopers behind you delivers a kick to the back of the kid’s leg, nearly buckling his knee and making him yelp. You turn, incensed.

“You want to knock that off? He's still our prisoner.”

The officer sniffs, tone aggrandising as he fixes his gaze somewhere around your hairline.

“It is standard operating protocol that all charges taken into Imperial custody are processed according to-“

“Something wrong with your ears?” Boba grits. “She told you to watch it.”

He recoils, eyes darting to your face and back to the visor of Boba’s helmet before nodding sharply.

“Don’t harm the charge,” he tells the troopers.

Turning on his heel, he leads the way down the curving walkway, passing more uniformed officers, all grey-faced in the sickly glow of the ship.

Most barely glance in your direction, distaste scudding across their features as soon as they register the sight of Boba’s armour. Clearly these Imperials consider themselves entirely removed from bounty hunting, a thought that spikes you with an oddly bitter mirth, experience having taught you so many of them readily employ hunters to do their dirty work. A handful, however, drag their attention over your form, gaze lingering at your face. You fight to stay composed, trying to remind yourself how long ago Lothal was, how different you look now, how unlikely it is that in a galaxy this enormous any of them would have a particular interest in you. None and all of them look familiar; featureless and indistinct as droids; another paunchy, middle-aged man with a moustache passing, raking your figure with his eyes.

Your chaperone comes to an abrupt halt outside a pair of pneumatic doors. They hiss quietly open to reveal an empty chamber with a wide, single viewport over rows of turrets, the only source of light the washed-out reflection from the hull.

“In here,” he clips, and you bite the inside of your cheeks to prevent yourself from grinding your teeth as you follow. Everything is grey, unplated durasteel curving from the floors up to the ceiling and giving the impression of a cell. This room feels bad. The whole fucking ship does. It’s claustrophobic, sterile, but... something else too. Something darker, far more sinister. The banality of your surroundings suddenly seems a mockery; like the kind of trap concealing a fanged, spiked unknown underneath, a maw waiting for prey.

Something occurs to you, and your brows furrow as you murmur under your breath to Boba beside you.

“They haven’t taken our weapons.”

His answering growl is barely audible.

“They don’t need to.”

It’s impossible to gauge how he’s feeling about all this. His stance looks easy, hands clasped loosely in front of his body, but it seems impossible that he doesn’t feel the curling tendrils of wrongness as strongly as you do.

The silence rings as you wait, heart thundering in your chest, palms slick. And then there’s a moment of tilt; at first you think the hull has depressurised and you’re all about to be spaced. You’re deafened, the air stilling as some invisible heaviness constricts and dampens the air both around and inside your head.

As the doors open in front of you, you startle, wanting to squeeze your eyes shut before you begin to even comprehend what you’re looking at. Its edges are unclear in the dim of the room; just a monstrous outline of shadow. Then reality reconfigures itself, and you begin to understand.

It’s a gigantic droid, towering and black, photoreceptors bulging nightmarishly under the shining dome of a headplate. But then you hear the steady, artificially-controlled breathing and your stomach lurches at the grotesque realisation. That’s a person in there. Or, what’s left of one. A cyborg. The panels on its chest look like life-support controls. You have a sudden, irrational urge to just turn on your heel and run away like a child, hands pressed over your face. Instead, you lean closer to Boba as it comes to a halt, arms folded, robe billowing behind it.

“This is a disappointment, bounty hunter. You dare insult me by wasting my time with a counterfeit? Did you believe I could be so easily deceived?” The voice is deep, slow, thunderous. The inflections of its speech are strange, as though each word is delivered with difficulty. You feel your eyes twitch with the need to look anywhere but that mask, forcing your attention instead to the creature’s feet.

“No deception was intended, Lord Vader,” Boba replies evenly. “The boy was masquerading as a Jedi in order to gain control of the trading rings in the Falleen system. He was using this.” Boba removes the gold hilt from his belt, and the black figure raises a gloved hand, catching it in midair. You blink twice, fear-scrambled brain unsure what you just saw. Magna-gloves, you tell yourself belatedly. Just... really strong magna-gloves.

Examining it, the cyborg activates the blade. The green glow reflects back from the curved dome of the helmet, filling the room with a low hum of energy. You wriggle your toes inside your boots, trying to get blood circulating through your panicked body. As long as it doesn’t come any nearer to you, you’ll be fine, you tell yourself. As long as it stays on the other side of the room. And it’s almost as though it hears your terror, enormous boots thudding mechanically as it crosses to stand opposite you, barely four feet away. You dare to peek up, blood returning to your face when you realise it’s not even looking in your direction.

Slowly, the helmet is turning to face the kid. He’s limp, head slumped forward as he’s gripped behind each elbow by a stormtrooper. You’d almost forgotten he was there, too wrapped up in your private meltdown. Now, you watch as the kid raises his head with a shudder, colour leeching from beneath the red of his birthmark as he takes in the figure in front of him.

“Where did you obtain this lightsaber?” the vocoder intones, and you silently beseech the kid to just submit, obey, tell them whatever they want. But as soon as you think it, you’re filled with knowing dread. He isn’t going to. He has nothing to lose. Fear emboldens him, and he tosses his head back as he answers, scrawny throat bobbing.

“If you wanna buy it, I won’t consider offers under ten thousand,” he sneers. “That’s a genuine antique. You’d better not get any dirty marks on it.”

The room seems to freeze in anticipation, and you half expect the cyborg to cut down with the glowing blade, shearing the kid in half. Instead, the source of the light retracts into the hilt, closing off with a clean-sounding snick. Nothing at all happens for several moments, and you glance around nervously. The grey-suited officer is staring at his own boots, lips white. Then the kid makes an odd, glottal sound, and you whip your head back in time to watch him crumple to the floor, released by the troopers.

But nobody touched him, you think, bewildered. You’re sure of it. The room was completely still. You watch aghast as the kid retches, his breaths whistling in his windpipe. The cyborg sweeps away, heavy tread pausing in front of the officer. The man’s head jerks up reluctantly, his face turning the same colour as his uniform.

“Commander Seriss. Summon my Inquisitors. They are to establish an investigation into the Falleen system. The boy obtained this weapon on the black market there. It is vital they determine the origins of the sale.”

“Yes, my lord.” The officer almost runs from the room, reaching the doors before they have time to open fully and awkwardly stepping backwards to avoid a collision before vanishing out into the hall. You’re dizzied by the suddenness of the entire exchange, unsure how you could have missed what happened. The room still feels airless, the pressure behind your eyeballs throbbing.

You barely have time to be confused before it’s speaking again, articulating each word with electronic precision.

“You are fortunate this acquisition may yet prove fruitful, bounty hunter. I would advise against further disturbances without adequate cause.”

Boba’s voice is perfectly neutral, and it’s only your intimate familiarity with his tone that tells you he’s struggling to contain the cast of impertinence underneath as he answers. “Yes… Lord Vader.”

The cyborg raises a clenched fist, pointing a finger inches from Boba’s visor. “You would do well to remember to whom it is you are indentured, until you have fulfilled this contract, Fett.”

Defensive, impulsive anger bubbles in your chest at this, and you scowl down at your feet. Whatever this droid-man-thing is, it can go fuck itself. Find its own Jedi, if it’s so tough. It clearly has the time and resources. Maybe it’s too afraid, just a shrivelled little creature under all the hardware. Too late, you remember Boba’s warning about schooling your thoughts, but the shining carapace-like helmet is already raising to consider you. Fresh terror prickles your scalp as you feel the ghost of a hand curling under your chin, forcing your head up.

You can’t fight against it, the invisible touch stronger than any real hold and your first instinct is to panic, gasping as your eyes meet the vacant darkness of the mask. Boba’s helmet turns to follow your movement as you freeze, and in your periphery you watch his gloved hand open at his side, close to where his blaster is holstered.

Before anything irreversible happens, you’re released. You drop your chin to your chest, shaking as you suck in air. It was touching you, without touching you, your mind screams, the ease with which you’d been restrained removing any modicum of your bold contempt from your head. You stand no chance against this thing. Neither of you do.

It’s real, it’s real, you think, the galaxy as you knew it rearranging itself around you. You’re nearly too lost to follow the sound of the creature’s voice as it speaks again.

“This girl is a known agitator. Her disruption of Imperial progress is well documented. There are several warrants for her capture.” There’s a level of cold indifference in its voice, as though pointing out a smudge on the floor missed by a mouse droid.

Boba’s already talking, biting each word out shortly. “She’s mine. She works for me. The dispensation I operate under extends to her, too.”

Helplessly, a warm shiver runs up your thighs at the possessive, protective edge in his voice, curling into something low in your stomach. It grounds you; restores the feeling of being solid in the sleeves of your skin. And you don’t mean to; you really don’t. But the words she’s mine, she’s mine, she’s mine loop around and around, and your fear-washed head isn’t capable of repressing the intrusive image of Boba repeating those same words while buried inside you.

The cyborg pauses, and a beat passes in which only the mechanised rhythm of its ventilator is audible in the room. One of the troopers standing guard over the motionless kid shifts uneasily on their booted feet.

Slowly, it turns its face toward Boba, the gesture distinctly analytical. As the only conscious person in the room with their face visible, you feel at a thorough disadvantage as Boba’s helmet raises to meet the featureless mask of the cyborg. It feels like being surrounded by people speaking a language you don’t understand, while you hover uselessly in the middle.

Finally, the cyborg speaks in that same booming register. “For now. Her exemption from Imperial persecution will cease should you fail to complete the deal. Perhaps this will incentivise you to work faster. Do not test my patience further.”

At that, it seems you’ve been dismissed. It turns, cloak whirling out behind it as it stalks to leave. Back turned, it motions with a gloved hand and one of the troopers hastily scrambles to heave the kid up, his arms draped floppily over the white-armoured shoulders as he’s carried out of the room.

Your tongue is stuck dry to the roof of your mouth and you can only watch mutely as he disappears, his feet dragged like dead weight along the floor before the doors slide closed again.

You press a shaking hand over your mouth to suppress the urge to be sick, grateful for your absolute stupor serving as antiemetic. You could pretend he’s going to be okay. You could tell yourself he’ll be imprisoned for a few days, fed well, kept warm, asked a few questions and then released. You would be able to sleep just fine.

Boba takes a step closer to you, and your whisper cracks on the way out.

“What the fuck was that thing?”

He just shakes his head. The remaining stormtrooper clears his throat nervously with a crackle.

“You two better, uh… follow me.”

 

-

 

The return trudge to the hangar is silent. A young man slips into the turbolift with your little group, bruise-dark bags underneath his eyes as he passes to stand behind you, TIE helmet under his arm. You can smell him from where you stand; sour with old sweat.

You make it back into the hold of Slave I in time for Boba to sweep past you, the ramp barely sealing before he’s starting the takeoff cycle as the gyroscopics stabilise around you. You lean on an inner wall as the ship tears out of the hangar, brittle and teetering.

It’s there; right there, all you have to do is turn and acknowledge it. You’ve crossed a new line, come face-to-face with the kind of definitive choice that defines what kind of person you truly are. It may be too late to reverse handing over the kid. But it’s not too late to get the fuck out of this, whatever this is. You’ve been sliding for a while, comfortably dipping lower and lower. And now you can see the bottom.

Even as you think it, you know the truth. You figured it out a long time ago. This is just the inevitable conclusion. And you’re so fucking tired of feeling this way. It’s all you ever do; worry, dissolve in your own guilt and regret. Maybe you could just… let go.

So you lift your head, pressing your hands between your knees. You don’t want to think about what just happened, what it means for you both. Acknowledging what you just saw, and felt, would be too much. Easier by far to withdraw and insulate instead by focusing on something else, that old failsafe.

The strangest comfort; to have been claimed by him. Even in the face of an unimaginable power you don’t think you’ll ever understand, you’d managed to hold on by clinging to the sound of Boba’s voice, naming you as his own. Right now, all you want is to be touched by corporeal hands. Warm flesh and blood, work-roughened, hard and familiar. Desperately, urgently, you need him.

You pull yourself up into the cockpit just as he turns, lifting his helmet off, space blurring behind him.

He could be unkind about this; remind you that he tried to warn you against what just happened. But he doesn’t, only watches silently as you wrap your arms over your chest. This is it, you think. I have nothing left to keep from you.

“So. I work for you, that right?”

“That was the only way to -“

“I know.” Your voice is dark, breathier than you intended, and you don’t try to change it. “The way you said it. You made it sound like you have me… bound to you, in some way.”

He doesn’t answer immediately, sharp angles of his furrowed brow inscrutable, but you see the tiniest narrowing at the edges of his eyes as he considers you. Deliberately, you open and then curl your fingers around your own upper arm, hard enough to dig into the skin.

“You are free to go whenever you want,” he tells you, the words thick.

You shiver as you inhale, meeting his gaze from under your eyelashes, pleading. He doesn’t get it. You don’t want to be free of him. You want his grip on you to only tighten, harder and harder, until he’s dragged you down with him wherever it is he’s going. You don’t even care where that is.

“I’m not. As long as you’ll have me… I’ll do whatever you want. Just… tell me.”

His expression flashes dark as you square your shoulders. And then, understanding. He leans back in the seat, legs spread as he runs his hand over his jaw. Slowly, he reaches up and unlatches the plate of armour covering his chest.

You creep closer, pulled forward in the gravity of his orbit. Sinking to your knees as you reach him, you prostrate yourself at his feet, leaning your cheek into the inside of his thigh.

He inhales. “Careful,” the warning roughened in his chest. It sounds dangerously like an offer.

His face is hard as your eyes drift closed, turning your face to press your mouth to the outside of his pants, the seam course under your open lips. The line of muscle inside his thigh stiffens under your touch, and you hear rather than see as he yanks the armour off his shoulder in a single motion.

“Get up. Put your hands on the control panel,” he directs flatly. You open your glazed eyes, blinking up at him as you lean closer, face inches from his codpiece. His lip curls.

“Don’t make me say it again.” And it thrills down your spine, the unspoken shift as he clenches his fist shut inside its glove.

You obey, bracing your hands on either side of the lit displays. The board is lowered; the perfect height for a seated person to reach, but in your position it forces you to bend at the waist, leaving you feeling exposed in front of him despite remaining fully clothed.

You can’t see him, but you listen as he continues to methodically disarm himself. You drop your head, hair falling into your eyes as you lean over. Light paints your face and your closeness to the viewport makes it feel as though you’re hurtling through space, untethered. Your heartbeat picks up in your fingertips as you breathe through your nose, every nerve in your body poised and waiting.

You jump as his large hand cups the curve of your ass, fingers dipping close to the seam at the apex of your thighs. You’re not prepared for the suddenness of the movement as he tears your pants down over your thighs. He palms your cheeks, heat boiling as he roughly parts them in his hands and you want to wriggle away from this scrutiny, unbearably vulnerable in your position. But this is what you wanted, you tell yourself. Reckless, bodiless, thrown out into hyperspace. Instead you press your knees together, forcing yourself to bend over even further in front of him as he squeezes the mounds of flesh, hard.

He groans, releasing one hand. “You ever seen yourself like this?”

You shake your head, unable to find words, heat sparking electric along the lines of your limbs.

“I can see every fucking part of you, little one. Your tight little ass. Your pretty cunt.” You squeeze your eyes shut, and yelp in surprise as his open palm cracks over the soft plane of your skin. Almost immediately, the sting is relieved as he leans forward and laves his tongue over your heated flesh. You make a strange sound, a tiny keening in your throat at this unexpected movement.

Softly, gently, he sinks his teeth down and you drop your head, eyes opening in shock. Your hands are tense on the controls, your knuckles standing out with the effort of holding yourself still. Heat pours from your fingertips, blurring the glass underneath your skin with steam.

He lets you go, leaning back in his seat as you sway, legs trembling. Pure, liquid fire gathers low in your stomach. You wonder if he can see the wetness soaking you from his position, and the thought makes you clench shut reflexively. His groan tells you he definitely sees that.

“Put your face on the controls,” he rasps, and you’re briefly confused before his hand presses between your shoulder blades, pushing you down until your cheek is resting on the cool glass of the display screen, your ass forced up even further.

“Now, spread your cunt for me,” and you swallow with difficulty. You don’t know how much more exposed you could possibly be, but this feels like it could kill you, blood pooling in your overheated face. There is no softness in his voice when he speaks again. “Let me see your wet little fucking cunt.”

Reaching your trembling hands between your parted thighs, you comply, the cold metal of your vambrace biting at the inside of your leg. He hisses, and you catch the sound of his seat creaking as he leans forward to take you in. Hands bare, a thick finger breaches your entrance and you gasp at the pinched intrusion as he twists it inside you a little harder than you had anticipated.

“Good girl,” his murmur gravels, and fuck, those words; it does something to you, your legs wobbling as you curl your spine, trying to writhe against his touch. You wait for him to add a second finger but he withdraws suddenly, too soon. You don’t have time to be disappointed before his tongue replaces it and at this angle it feels filthy, his nose pressed into a far more intimate position than any you’ve been in before. You gasp, chest prickling with heat as he hums lowly into you, dipping inside and gathering your arousal into his mouth as though it were the sweetest nectar he’d ever tasted.

As he draws out of you, he drags his tongue up, letting it trail up through your folds backwards until he’s at your second entrance. The animal depravity of the act is almost too much for you; your breaths far too loud in the quiet cockpit.

He straightens behind you, and you hear the fabric shift as he releases himself from his pants. You shift your weight restlessly from foot to foot, arched up on your toes. You slide your thighs together, spreading the warmth smeared inside them as he leans over you, voice low, blunt head of his cock poised at the entrance of your pussy. You wait for it to be slow, for him to ease you into it. He surprises you.

“They only let you go because you’re mine,” he says, harsh as he forces himself inside in a single cleaving motion. You choke, the stretch almost too sudden as he strokes your hair back from your face, incongruously gentle. “Is this what you wanted?”

And how to tell him? You want annihilation; for him to tear out any tender part that remains and fill you until all that’s left is him, so you no longer have to take ownership of your mistakes.

Instead, you nod helplessly as he draws his hips back, reaming into you with enough force to wrench a rough sob from your throat. Your grip on your own thighs falls limp as you bring your hands up to cushion your injured brow against another punching impact. The vambrace glints in the lines from the viewport and you hear the moment he sees it, catching his hoarse groan.

His next thrust is savage; hard and deep, pinching as he hits your cervix. You flinch, squeaking - he senses your response and, perfectly attuned to your body adjusts his angle, still keeping you on the absolute edge of your limit.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no -“ your answering gasp is ragged, urging him to weaponise his hold on you. “I’m asking... I want you to.”

He only pauses for a second before his hips snap back against you, hard enough to force the air from your lungs. It’s too hard, and it’s exactly what you want. You keen, tears stinging your eyes as he wrenches your head back, your hair wrapped in his fist. You’re dancing along a knifepoint, your body teetering between the desperate, uncontrollable need to be taken apart and the hard edge you’re struggling to contain.

“You can take it,” he murmurs against your hair, huffed between breaths. “You’re doing so well. My girl, my strong fucking girl.”

His words make you bear down, every muscle below your waist tightening on him like he’s the only thing holding the stars in place. He responds by angling even higher, driving himself right against that spot. You shudder through a stifled moan, your jaw clenched as his other hand reaches around in front of you, working at your clit. And you’re playing with fucking fire right now, even as light sparks behind your eyelids, urging him to hold you harder, tighter. He said you were still soft. You don’t want to be touched like you’re fucking soft anymore.

“Harder,” you choke, throat scraping the word as it escapes. He releases his hold on your hair, hand wrapping instead around the nape of your neck. His hand is so broad his thumb and forefinger nearly meet, inches apart in the fragile space under the pulse at your jaw. And he squeezes, your restricted bloodflow blurring your vision as your stomach clenches hard, something releasing in your cunt as you surrender completely to the oblivion of pleasure, and immorality, and destruction, eyes rolling back in your head.

Each thrust is punctuated with a harsh exhalation behind you as he chases you down, ever the hunter, brutal releases blooming in your clit and g spot simultaneously. Your feet aren’t on the floor anymore, his violent movements pinning you completely to the control dash as you wail brokenly, wordless as you shatter slowly under his absolute control. The flood feels like it begins in your brain, leaving you disoriented when you feel it dribble out around where he has you stretched open. Your orgasm feels like you’re turning inside out as he reams you through it. You can still see the streaks of passing stars even with your eyes shut, the moment of suspension dragging on and on as you convulse, elbows and knees twitching, drooling through your clenched teeth.

You barely register his groan as he spills over as well, filling you with pulses deep inside as your own heartbeats. Your combined climaxes seep from your fucked-raw pussy as he eases out of you, his large hands now gentle as he lifts you around your ribs, taking care not to press against your darkened bruises. He supports your weight against his chest as he flops heavily back into the pilot’s seat, drawing you up onto his lap, your legs curling limply over the side.

“You’re okay, I’ve got you. Shh, shh,” and you have no idea what he’s talking about until you realise you’re crying, chest heaving. You curl into him, reaching your hands up around his neck as you press your face into the gap between his neck and shoulder. He waits, hand rhythmically smoothing along the length of your spine as you regain gradual control of your shuddering breaths, murmuring to you, words fragmented, only snippets reaching through.

“…so well… beautiful…” the sound of his voice a balm as you blink through your trembling. When you feel you’ve begun to regain some control of your own body, you lean back, pulling your face from his neck to look up at him. His eyes are soft as he frames your chin with two fingers.

“You good?”

You nod. “I was just… I needed -,” and he presses his thumb to your lower lip.

“I know, little one. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

You nestle down into him, his hands still in motion as his fingers gently work through your hair. Awareness trickles back into your thoughts, and as badly as you want to prolong this pocket of intimate peace, you hear yourself speaking anyway.

"We could disappear."

He shifts slightly, hands pausing before resuming their movements. You continue. "We could go to the Unknown Reaches, jump into one of those shifting hyperlanes and end up... wherever we end up."

The hardness of his voice juxtaposed with the way his lips brush the top of your head makes you shiver. "Not even the Outer Reaches are free of the Empire. I've seen others try. They'd track my Guild signature. The only escape would be death."

"I'm in the Guild as well," you remind him. "And now that they know I'm... involved, I'm guessing they'll track me too."

"I'm not letting that happen," he says, cold.

You raise your face to his, smiling weakly. "I think it's a little bit late for that."

He's not looking at you, focused instead out the viewport. His expression is flinty. "I'm... sorry."

Your bare thighs feel sticky against his as you curl in tighter. "I'm not." 

It falls quiet, the comforting white noise of the engines lulling you in a slow looseness in his arms. Time passes slowly as your breaths fall in with one another. You realise belatedly that you have no idea where you’re going, the final two pucks blinking red as they hang from the bulkhead above the viewport.

“Where’s the next job?” you ask eventually, voice strange to your own ears as you break the extended silence.

His chin is resting on top of your head and you feel it move as he answers.

“Tatooine. Hutt job; they want the quarry brought in alive. Jabba usually prefers to feed them to one of his exotic pets.”

You don’t miss the irritated tint to his voice and a bubble of quiet amusement rises in your chest.

“You don’t like the Hutts? I don’t think anybody does. They’re disgusting, but they pay well.”

“I don’t like Tatooine,” he returns lowly.

You turn to look out the viewport, resting your head back against him. “I’ve never been.”

“You’re not missing much. Ugly, mean place. Hopefully we’re not there long.”

You stifle a yawn. “I didn’t get a good look at the puck when I picked it up. Do we have a track on them?”

“No. Just a rough location and description. Some old man out on the Jundland Wastes. A hermit, apparently. Reckless fool keeps picking off Jabba’s water tax collectors. I’ll stop at the palace first to nail down more details before we head out into the open desert. Should be easy.”

You nod sleepily. “Mm. Easy.”

 

-

 

It’s blindingly, dazzlingly bright through the viewport as the ship lowers. Boba curses beside you, flicking a control overhead.

“Once we’re done with this one and that last job, we’ll need to stop somewhere so I can get some repairs done. That landing sequence is still shifty. Can’t keep flying around with the shields powered down forever.”

You turn to him, brightening. “Like a break?”

He grunts. “Don’t get too excited. We’ll need to steer clear of anywhere densely populated. I can’t exactly take you to a villa on Naboo.”

“Naboo’s too crowded for me anyway. I don’t care where we go. We could be on Lotho Minor for all I care,” you tell him, grinning shyly.

He gives you a pained look, and you giggle, stifling the impulsive sound with your hand. For everything else he’s able to tolerate uncomplainingly, this is a point of major discomfort for him? Planetary snobbery, you muse. You would never have guessed.

You follow him down to the hold, wrapping a worn shawl over your head as a defence against the sun. Even through the hull, you can feel the heat prickling your skin. With all that’s supposedly undesirable about Tatooine, you’re just grateful it’s not snowing.

Boba pauses in front of you, helmet under his arm, about to lower the ramp.

“What’s that?” he says. You follow his gaze into the prisoner cell, where something metallic shines on the floor. And when you realise what it is, you wait for the gnaw of guilt to pierce you as you remember with a jolt. It should be right there. It should be…

It doesn’t come. Wordless, you slip into the cell, crumpling the empty dru’un wrapper in your fist.

“It’s nothing. Trash for the incinerator. Let’s go.”

He lifts the helmet over his head as the ramp lowers, filling the hold with light.

Notes:

Just a quick little note to say thank you so, SO much for your continued support. I still can't quite believe that you guys take the time out of your day to join me here, and I'm super grateful for every single one of you. As always, keen to hear your thoughts/questions/complaints/criticisms. x

zinzinina.tumblr.com

Chapter 9: Gold

Notes:

I had a rough week so we get some extra off-the-charts-tooth-rotting fluff as a treat! I'm not sure if this is something anybody else cares about, but I really enjoy when authors share the music that inspired them so I'm including a link to the song that informed every creative decision I made in all but the first quarter of this chapter.

Burn - Låpsley

The throne room is hellish. Not the heat; although it’s particularly oppressive down here, you can’t help but luxuriate in the respite from the cold bite of hyperspace.

Rather, it’s the dense, sweet stench of rotting things murking the air that cuts at you with each breath. Jabba seems to be in no hurry whatsoever to address his guests. Upon your arrival in the subterranean chamber you and Boba had been led to a circular, stone-carved booth at the back of the throne room and promptly left. It’s loud and close, hard laughter and upraised voices from the assembled rabble beating in your ears. Hunters, spice-traders and assassins, some you recognise, others you don’t, crowd the audience chamber.

You can tell from the darkening steps leading up to the entrance of the chamber that night fell some time ago. You drum your fingers on the table, impatient.

“Has he forgotten we’re here?” you grouse, having to raise your voice over the pound of brash music.

Boba’s posture is deceptively loose while he scans the room, thighs spread wide. His helmet tilts down towards you. “No. He knows. He’s reminding us how busy and important he is.”

You groan, peering around in the dim haze at your surroundings. The structure itself looks like it was once remarkably beautiful; the sandstone pale and weathered from millennia deep underground. Strange, ornate carvings line the arched buttresses vaulting the space, worn almost smooth with age. Your curiosity is piqued by a detail high overhead; ancient bronze greened and dull, inlaid in the centre of the room’s ceiling.

“It’s lovely,” you murmur distractedly. The statement makes no sense; the smoky room is grimy and filled with dancing slaves and mercenaries, ugliness apparent at every turn. But Boba seems to understand what you’re looking at, visor following your gaze up to look over your heads.

“It used to be a monastery,” he tells you. “Jabba added the fortifications after he took over.”

You absentmindedly pick a loose flake of green paint from the unarmored gap at Boba’s sleeve, your leg pressed alongside his. You half wish you could go back outside while you wait; the heat outside had been drier, less cloying. It’s humid down here, and as you watch the moisture-gleamed folds of Jabba’s body you curl your lip involuntarily. Of course, on a planet where more than half the population is dying of thirst a Hutt would be using stolen water to pump steam around his body.

A purple-skinned Twi’lek woman approaches your table, and you watch as her cheeks darken prettily to violet as she glances over Boba’s form beside you. You can’t help but catch on the flawlessness of her softly curved body, lekku slightly curled up at the ends. Your Huttese is poor, but the gist is clear as Boba motions to you, waving two gloved fingers away from his body to dismiss her. She glances shyly up through her lashes at you, tittering and ducking her head before returning back the way she came. You lift an eyebrow.

“What was that about?”

Boba’s voice is hard. “Jabba’s hospitality.” You blink, following the woman’s swaying gait as she skirts the room to return to the dais where several similarly undressed-women are reclining. As she reaches the small group, there’s a flurry of nervous, relieved-looking laughter and furtive glances back in your direction as the Twi’lek covers her lips with a dainty hand.

“They’re scared of you,” you murmur to him. “Have you… been a guest here before?”

He sighs, his answer low. “I used to run an… operation out of Mos Eisley. Years ago. Last time I was here, Jabba tried to send a girl up to my room. She was out of her mind on spice, chained up and terrified. I sent her away, and when Fortuna tried to offer another girl, I reacted… violently. Surprised they’d try again after that.”

You can understand the edge in his tone as you glance back at the chained women. You know slavery is common in the Outer Rim, and you know that most hunters would have no compunctions against indulging in whatever pleasures Jabba had to offer; spice, drink… bodies. A thought occurs to you, and you’re speaking before you’ve considered whether this is an inappropriate thing to ask.

“Why’s your ship called Slave?” If he dislikes the question, he shows no indication.

“My father was once betrayed as a young man. The people who did it dishonoured him. They stole his armour, tried to enslave him. Taking the ship was retribution… and a warning to others.”

You let this sink in. Every time he mentions his father, you feel like you’re being given a gift; another pearl on a string. The fact that he’s begun sharing these parcels of information more easily with you fills you with a frightened sort of affection - like being asked to hold another person’s baby. Though you know you would never do anything harmful intentionally, the instinctive terror associated with trust, and the fear of being unworthy of it, still thrills through you.

“So much for the humanitarian efforts of the Empire,” you mutter, too disgusted to even attempt lacing sarcasm through the words. “D’you remember that? They used to have those propaganda campaigns, telling everyone they were saving the poor wretched souls the Republic left behind.”

His gravel is low in your ear under the ambient racket of the palace. “Flesh-traders like the Hutts have been allowed to continue for so long, most people here don’t even realise it’s not common in the rest of the galaxy. Over the years, there have been efforts to free the slaves, but without anyone to help them reintegrate, rehabilitate, relocate… it falls apart quickly without a dedicated overseer.”

Your anger curdles, and you taste the sourness of your own hypocrisy. Everyone in the Guild has worked for the Hutts at some point or another, but that fact does nothing to diminish your suddenly vivid fantasy of driving a vibroblade up directly between Jabba’s eyes. Your reverie is interrupted as the majordomo at Jabba’s side stands, clapping his hands once. The music screeches to an abrupt halt and Boba stands stiffly, sauntering out into the sand-strewn centre of the chamber.

You follow slowly, flexing the fingers of your hand underneath your vambrace. The hum of conversation in the room falls quiet as Boba speaks, holding out the blinking puck in one fist, the Huttese harsh in his accented drawl. Jabba takes a long pull of his hookah, yellow-grey smoke curling out of the gash of his mouth as he responds, tongue lolling around the words.

Boba stiffens, and you feel a twinge of unease as he bites out a handful of short words. The Huttese for ‘bounty’ is almost the same in Basic, and it’s one of the only words you can understand, but the steel in his posture is contagious as you feel your own brows draw down. The albino majordomo leers, stroking his pale lekku nervously, and exposing his pointed teeth. His red eyes shift from Boba to you, and then to something behind you both. You turn, nearly jumping out of your skin as a huge shadow detaches from the dim edges of the room and lurches forward.

The Wookiee is a monster; long black hair matted over a scarred face, an ornate gold chestplate dwarfed by his sheer size. He opens his fanged mouth, yowling something in Shyriiwook. You narrow your eyes and meet his gaze as he tilts his head down. The scar over his brow nearly matches yours. He looks as though he’s judging whether he could toss you across the room, huge, intelligent eyes appraising. He may be big, you think, but Wookiees are notoriously unbalanced on their feet. You shift your weight forward restlessly as the room seems to take a collective breath of anticipation.

Just as the tension seems as though it’s about to boil over, he shakes his shaggy head, dismissively purring out a low yodel and lumbering past you. You frown in confusion as he claps a massive paw on Boba’s armoured shoulder, tilting his mangled face down close.

“Krrsantan,” Boba says, giving him a short nod. Your tension dissipates, as does the interest of the watching crowd. The low rumble of voices resumes as people return to their drinks, and you cross your arms over your chest, trying desperately to follow the foreign exchanges taking place around you. The Wookiee warbles again, gesticulating in the direction of the dais.

The majordomo’s long, pointed fingers flutter as he whispers something in Jabba’s ear, and the Hutt’s tail flexes emphatically as he booms out a string of words. You only catch a few: wamma, bunka, nibobo… payment, palace, contract. It’s obvious that something’s not right; the Wookiee looses a string of outraged-sounding yodels and Boba lowers his hand to his hip, but the majordomo is already speaking again, tone conciliatory - or as close to conciliatory as you’ve ever heard in Huttese.

“We good?” you murmur, shifting closer to Boba’s side.

“We’ve been made… an alternate offer.”

You frown. Jabba pulls in another mouthful of foul-smelling smoke, yellow eyes sliding from side to side. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you; like he’s considering roasting you on the spit behind him. You scowl at him, lifting an eyebrow in challenge. He releases the breath, letting out a deep, croaking laugh as Boba’s low grit sounds beside you.

“He’s already contracted Krrsantan for the job. Couldn’t wait any longer, apparently. We shouldn’t have made that detour.” You bite your tongue at this as he continues. “He’s offering ten thousand as a... gesture of goodwill.”

You lean on one hip, weighing the options. The puck’s in your name, which means relinquishing it puts a demerit against your Guild status. You’d be well within your rights to push this, report the breach of contract and potentially create a big fucking problem for him. Not enough to do him any harm - the Hutts are untouchable, but enough to be irritating.

However. It’s warm here, and you’re sore and tired from weeks of travel. The amount he’s offering is almost half as much as the bounty itself; and you won’t have to go traipsing through open desert to get it. The Hutts haven’t held onto their supremacy for this long by pissing off their allies.

Your voice is hard. “Fifteen. And I want a room for the night. A nice one. He made us wait this long; I’m not walking back to the ship now.”

The visor shifts slightly to the side as Boba glances quickly down at you, before turning back and translating your demands in a flat grit. You roll your shoulders back, the tilt of your head imperious as you wait. If he’s going to screw you, he can damn well make it worth your time, you think, watching serenely as the majordomo confers once more at the Hutt’s side.

You don’t need a translation to understand the nod, and the red-eyed Twi’lek barks an order at one of the serving girls. He turns, delivering an obsequious leer, his head bowed as he gestures for you to follow her. 

You flick your gaze up to Boba, lifting one side of your lips. Even through the helmet you can tell he’s giving you an odd look. “Is this okay?” you murmur, suddenly unsure whether you’ve made the right decision.

He unfreezes, spurred footsteps ringing on the loose floor as he moves to follow you. “You’re the one calling the shots here,” he returns, a note of amusement in his modulated gravel. As you pass, the black Wookiee fixes your gaze with his own and you blink slowly, refusing to look away first.

“We could kill the Wookiee and take back the job, too,” you muse under your breath.

“That’s enough, troublemaker,” he chuckles.

 

-

 

As you’d suspected, the farther you get from the dungeon-cum-throne room, the more appealing the palace becomes. The air grows clearer the higher you climb, and the halls are spaced with bronze-inlaid latticework, long arched windows open to the warm black breeze of night.

The serving girl bows her head, her small palm open as she pauses outside a wide door. You dig a handful of chits from your bag, pressing them into her palm. Her eyes widen, and she stuffs them into the neck of her blouse as she hurries away, glancing nervously back over her shoulder.

You pause, watching her go. “What happens to Jabba’s slaves when he’s… finished with them?”

“He sells them on. Usually as labourers for farmers or out into the mines. If they’re lucky. He doesn’t tolerate subordination well.”

“Someone really needs to clean this whole place out,” you hiss disgustedly. Boba breathes out a low chuckle, large gloved hand lifting your bag from your grasp as he shoulders the door open.

“We’re going to have to work on your Huttese before you can take over here.”

You run your tongue over your teeth as you grin back at him. “Doubting me, Fett? I know enough to get by.”

“That right?”

“Yep,” you lean up, lips inches from his helmet, breathing your next words like a caress. “E chu ta.”

His answering laugh is a loosened thing, deep and rough and you glow at the sound as you turn to take in the space. It’s simple; the walls and floors carved from the same moon-pale stone as the rest of the palace, but fortified with exposed durasteel pillars. Not entirely dissimilar to the last palace you visited, oil lamps are set into shallow niches along the walls, casting a lazy dusk, making the shadows dance.

The room is wedge-shaped, widening out from the doorway to a low, curved balcony hung with pale roughspun drapery. The door and windows are bare to the star-scattered desert night, endless sky stretching beyond the dim glow of the room. Ancient-looking jabor-wood furniture populates the space, smoothed with age and only a shade darker than the walls. And there’s a bed. A real, huge, comfortable-looking bed, draped with linens. You fling yourself onto it, groaning in pleasure.

“When we do take over, the bed can stay,” you tell him lazily, eyes shut as you lengthen your spine. You can’t remember the last time you laid on a real bed like this, and you unlatch your vambrace, sliding it loose from your wrist and laying it carefully beside you. You kick off one boot, then another as grains of sand skitter out from the treads of the soles. You know you probably look rough as hell; your hunting gear is still in need of a thorough clean, and your skin is marked with injuries both old and new.

“Anything you want, princess,” he teases back. You snort at this. Scarred, filthy and ragged, you’re the furthest thing from royalty imaginable. You crack an eye open, looking up at him. He’s leaning back against the wall, watching you stretch out. He sounds… relaxed, amused. Oddly, even though you’ve been cheated out of a job that was rightfully yours, this has worked out better than you could have hoped. It’s still a payday, albeit less than you’d hoped, but for a whole night off, just the two of you, with a real bed… well, you can definitely think of worse things.

“There a fresher?” you wonder aloud, rolling back off the bed.

He wordlessly tilts his head toward a smaller arch set close to the balcony, and you pad over, sticking your head in to take a look. You’d expected a sonic shower, something spartan and utilitarian to match with the paucity of comforts in the desert. But then, this is a palace after all. The dim room is centred around a wide, low-set tub, carved from the same stone as the rest of your surroundings. Copper piping runs up one side, aged to a rosy patina.

Here, on Tatooine, the thought of filling that tub with precious water feels obscenely decadent. You try to tell yourself as much sternly, even as the thought grows roots around your brain; how long it’s been since you truly indulged in something as luxurious as a bath, how good the water will feel on your aching body. You’re pulling your shirt over your head before you even realise what you’re doing. 

You start toward the tub, pausing when you realise Boba still hasn’t moved from his position against the wall. You realise then that he’s watched silently the entire time as you’d been overcome with quiet excitement while exploring your surroundings. “Are you… going to join me?”

“Do you want me to?”

Your answering smile is slow. “We’d be saving a lot of water by only bathing once.” He pushes away from the wall, armour clinking quietly. It’s darker in here, the floor smooth and cool beneath the soles of your feet and you shiver as you kick out of the rest of your clothes. Worn almost through in places, the dark fabric only vaguely shows where the bloodstains haven’t washed free of the fibres. It feels good throwing them onto the ground, along with the memories of everything that’s happened in them.

Boba wordlessly removes his armour piece by piece behind you as you lean over, starting the flow of water. There’s a strange charge in the air; a gentle, inchoate quietude in the unfamiliar surroundings. The shapeless dark takes on the wavering quality of being underwater as you turn to watch him shuck his undergarments, bronze skin polished smooth in the dimness. He drags his hand back through his shaggy hair, where several strands had been stuck damp around his face. Annoyance flashes across his features and you feel a warm blossom of fondness.

“Thought you were going to shave that?” He steps closer, bending to test the temperature of the water with his fingers.

“Thought you liked it long,” he murmurs back, holding onto your hand as you step carefully over the lip of the tub. Lowering to a seated position, you exhale around the sensation of your limbs being enveloped in the body-warm water.

“I’d love you regardless of what you look like,” you say, and it’s not until he makes a peculiar, abortive gesture from the wrist that you realise what you’ve said. Your chest seizes, and your eyes snap up to his. You could try to backtrack, or laugh it off as a slip of the tongue, but… watching as several emotions flit across his face faster than you can follow, your tongue sits heavy in your mouth.

He recovers before you do, tearing his gaze away and stepping in to join you in the shallows. At this point you’ve seen him bare enough times that your fingers prick with the ghost of his shape without even needing to touch him. Your gaze is hungry as you watch the play of ripples over the darkness of his body. He cups water in his palms and tips it over his head, smoothing his hair back. A droplet runs down from his hairline as he opens his eyes, catching you watching.

“Come here,” he says, opening his arms. You move slowly, trying not to puncture the heady thickness between you. Fitting yourself between his thighs, his skin is the exact temperature of the water. You lean back against his chest, letting your hands float on the surface with your fingers spread. His chest rumbles beneath you as he slowly works his damp hands through your hair and down the back of your neck.

“I didn’t think I’d like it here,” you tell him quietly. “But… it’s so warm. And there’re no cities. At least not as far as I could see from the ship.”

He hums, his thumbs working gently down into the space between your shoulderblades. “There are a few cities, but they’re a long ride away. And they’re all open. Nothing like the Core. Tatooine is sparsely populated.” Your eyes drift closed as he works, letting your limbs loosen. It feels so good; the heat of the bath, the kneading of your muscles.

The rhythmic vibrations of his chest clarifies into sound, and you realise he’s humming something. It’s so low as to be nearly inaudible, but you can just pick out the simple melody. It’s lovely; the roughness of his voice underscoring the lift and dip of notes.

“What’s that?” you murmur. He stops, the sound fading out, and you wish you hadn’t said anything. He takes a moment to answer, sounding slightly confused, as though he didn’t even realise he was doing it.

“I don’t know what the words mean. It’s very old, and in Mando’a.”

Your lips turn down as you realise what he’s saying. “You… don’t know Mando’a?”

“Not very much. I didn’t have much time to learn, and I haven’t needed it for a long time. We mainly spoke in code around the Kaminoans. I only remember a few things. Besbe'trayce. That’s… weapons. Akaanir means fighting. Oya'karir, hunting. Kyr'amur is kill.” The words roll over his tongue with the easy familiarity of a childhood memory. It breaks your heart that of all the things he’d need to learn, so many are centred around violence. His pause lengthens before he adds a final note. “And… buir.  That’s father.”

You hesitate, parting your lips slowly. “What about… din, dala… dara…?” You trail off, unable to remember the exact words, butchering the pronunciation.

His fingers twitch on your shoulders and he inhales, exhales. A drop of water falls from your fingertips, echoing loud in the hollow space.

“It’s an expression. There’s no… direct translation. The meaning is hard to explain in Basic. It means…” another, longer pause. “One who has… created a future. But more than that. An endless future, infinite. It means, you have given me a chance at eternity. It could mean legacy. Or… possibility. Inside another person.”

You’re frozen as he speaks, blood rushing to the surface of your skin as something sharp hooks in between your lungs and tugs. He continues roughly, as though he’s determined to plough ahead despite the uncertainty crackling underneath. “The most literal translation would be closest to something like... ‘you give eternity’, maybe. Like I said, it’s not exact. Gar dinuir darasuum.”

You can understand why this particular phrase would have stayed with him since childhood; the sheer magnitude of existing as a vessel containing all the infinite possible futures you could bring to another person. A father’s hope that their child would live all the lives they couldn’t, continue their legacy forever, or a promise to another soul that together you would carve out your own space. Somebody who would force your life onto a different trajectory; creating a new existence altogether. To be given a chance at eternity.

It isn’t quite the same thing as I love you. If you’re being honest, you’re not sure if you would have expected it from him. But it’s so fucking close. It’s just a fraction to the left. It might be the closest he can get. And it’s enough.

You wish you could see his face. But you feel like you’re on the very edge of waking from a dream, tiptoeing along the line of reality, and so you’re hesitant to move too much. Instead, you turn your head as slightly as possible to the side, until your lips meet the backs of his knuckles on your shoulder. “Gar dinuir darasuum,” you repeat quietly.

 

-

 

There were no towels that either of you could find anywhere in the room, but the night is warm enough that it barely matters. The dampness on your skin feels exquisitely cooling on your knees over the coarse, loosely-woven linens on the bed. Boba watches through heavy-lidded eyes as you crawl over him, your hands braced on the firm breadth of his chest. You lean down, pressing your lips to the lines of his abdomen, thick but hard with muscle. His stomach expands under your touch as he draws in a deep breath.

You follow the gentle curve of his body down until you reach the base of his cock, straining toward you. You’d felt him hardening steadily since laying against him in the bath, and the evidence of his impatience beads from the tip as he watches you lay your face into the indentation where his thigh meets his pelvis. Your breath blows warm across the thick vein at the underside of his cock, and his skin reacts beautifully, raising into goosebumps all along the tops of his thighs.

“Can I…?” you trail off, your lips inches from his skin. He tips his head back, eyes rolling shut.

“You’re calling the shots here,” he reminds you, rasping from deep in his chest. A dangerous little thrill of excitement races up the insides of your legs. You lift yourself up, looking down at the tense lines of his body, the faint frown as he keeps his eyes shut. He’s giving you permission to do whatever you want to him. For a man who spends almost his entire life literally armoured from the rest of the world, the power in your hands right now is heady.

Slowly, you lean in and press your tongue to the ridged underside of his cock. It jumps, his abdominal muscles contracting. Wetting your lips with your tongue, you slide your open mouth over the roundness of his tip, taking it carefully into your mouth. He exhales roughly as you press your tongue into the slit, gathering his taste, salted and warm. You watch as his large hand fists in the linen beside you, struggling to stay still.

You lower your lips a few more inches, dragging your tongue up the length of the shaft and letting your mouth soften as saliva pools under your tongue. Hollowing your cheeks, you can’t quite take the entire length of him. You reach your limit and slowly raise yourself up again, your soft lips leaving a slick trail. You want to devour him like this, you think, flicking your tongue gently over the tip before taking his length again into your mouth. Your cunt throbs heavily as his thigh flexes under your hands with the effort of keeping still, allowing you to take your time, take whatever you want from him.

You let one of your hands drift down the length of your body, brushing your nipple, feeling the bunched swell of your waist. As you take his length again in your mouth, you strain to relax, wanting him deeper, needing more. Your hand finds its way between your legs, your fingers slipping against your arousal as you press against your clit.

Balancing your weight on your knees, you lift your other hand from his leg, wrapping it around the shaft close to the base of his cock and squeezing as he groans a low, long hiss. Breathing through your nose, your own desire urges you on. You try to relax, opening your throat as though to yawn and taking him as deep as you can, until his cock fills your mouth entirely. Something about this is so unbearably powerful for you; feeling almost suffocated with his cock, the power and vulnerability swelling together as you hum around him.

It vibrates along the length of his cock and you register the sound of his breathing, no longer steady and slow but breaking out in short gasps. You lift your head back, your saliva rolling thick down his length as you follow the movement with your hand, using the wetness to smooth the slide of your grip. His shudder travels through you, directly down to your cunt. Eager, you take the length of him again, this time catching your gag reflex, but you’re so desperate for him, so drunk on his cock you breathe through it, your mouth filling again with even more wetness.

You’ve completely soaked him, drool running down to his balls, making a mess with your mouth, coating your fist with your own gag-deep saliva and working the length as your fingers plunge up between your legs. You mewl unconsciously, and you feel him shift to look down at the small sound. You hear the moment he sees you touching yourself, cursing through his teeth. Forgetting about keeping still, he brings his hand up to cup your face, small in his large hold, his thumb brushing your temple and smoothing away your hair. You look up at him, your lips still wrapped around his length. His dark eyes look positively predatory as he watches you work, and your eyes flutter closed as you take him deep again.

“Keep touching yourself,” he breathes, and you clench at the words, your engorged clit aching under your touch. You’re overwrought, heat springing from deep in your stomach. Taking him deep again, you hold his length at the back of your throat. Your moan is muffled around him as you feel a tightening in your core, and he cups your jaw in his hand, worshipful as he hisses harshly at you.

“I want to see you to cum with my cock down your fucking throat, princess,” and you swallow around his length, blood rushing to fill your cunt. The title doesn’t sound like mockery this time. Your fingers work frantically, chasing that peak, and you’re so focused on the sensation you forget about gagging, throat relaxed to the point you can now somehow take his whole length. Your jaw aches from the angle, and as your climax hitches up through your centre you try to moan, unable to produce much more around his cock than just a garbled, wet-choked cry.

He holds your face through your orgasm, even as you try to keep working his length through each shudder, stroking fingertips gently encouraging you to slow down. He grasps you under your shoulders, dragging you up off him. Your lips pop free, leaving a glistening trail up his stomach as he lifts you to hover shakily over his body, insistence in his eyes.

Still trembling, you manage to find the breath to speak. “What... what’s wrong?”

His answer is rough. “I want to feel you. I want you to cum again, and I want you to use me to do it.”

It’s the closest thing to absolute surrender you can imagine him offering you, and it makes you savage with need. Your fingernails dig into his chest as you straddle his waist, and as you slide onto the soaked length of his cock your eyes roll shut. Still coming down from your orgasm, your cunt tenses and ripples around his stretch and his hips flex unconsciously up into you.

You snarl at him, your smaller fingers coming up and clutching hard around his neck as he huffs out a low, rough laugh. You bear down, hard, rocking your hips rather than raising them, throwing your head back and lengthening your body as you do. You work yourself against him, riding the angle you need and abandoning yourself to the sensation of his cock inside you. His hands slide up to cup your thighs, his thumb pressing into the dimple at one side as he watches you, eyes hard with focus.

The extreme effort of holding off on his own release stands out in the tendons of his arms, waiting for you, laid low underneath you. You feel deific, glowing burnished under the dim lights in the palace room, each roll of your hips driving you higher, chasing your own pleasure as your breath gasps out. Arching over him, you press your fingers to his full lips and, subservient, he opens his mouth, sucking your small fingers inside. Coated with his wetness, you drag them hard against your clit as you lean back, languidly flexing against him, a convulsive wave of pleasure curving you over him.

Your climax washes hot up through your centre, heating your neck, your face, making you weak as you soak his cock anew. You collapse shakily onto his chest and his hands come up to stroke your back, hips lifting to thrust up into your still-fluttering tightness. He watches your face as he fucks you, a roll of sweat making its way from his temple down his cheek and it reminds you of earlier, in the bath, and the things that he’d said to you. Both gasping, you press your lips to his, kissing him messily through his movements. You want to take him inside yourself forever, deep enough that nothing could ever separate you again.

Your low gasps are the only sound under the spongey meeting of damp flesh, warm starlit desert air wrapping you both as his fingers tighten. He shudders hard, his cock pulsing inside you as he fills you, thrusts slowing but continuing as though to drag out the moment as long as possible. You both still as you regain your breath, feeling his cum run out around his cock where you’re joined. The familiar crease between his brows is pronounced as he keeps his eyes shut, pressing his lips to the blaster-burned mark on your shoulder without looking at it.

It takes a while before his eyes open again. He shifts, arms cradled around you as he turns to lay you on your side. It reminds you of the first time; laying bloody and exhausted on the dirty floor of his ship. This time, he doesn’t hesitate before drawing you close.

 

-

 

Light creeps under your eyelids.

Boba’s arm is draped heavy over your waist, your legs hot where they’re tangled in the loose linens. Moving as cautiously as you can, you ease out from underneath his weight. He looks incredibly young; his face serene in sleep, no trace of his usual frown. You follow the beckoning light, your feet silent as you step out onto the balcony. The cool air of the young day kisses at your bare skin, raising a faint shiver.

It takes a moment to adjust from the darkness of the room, and you step forward blindly until your hands meet the stone of the low half-wall separating you from the edge of the cliffside. Blinking while your eyes react to the light, you focus briefly on your own hands. Scratched and scarred, they match with the sandblasted roughness of the palace’s stones. Neither are gentle. Both have been damaged. But both have endured, and the palace remains beautiful in its own way. You lift your chin.

Pale gold stretches as far as you can see, millions of layers of mica glinting. The curves of the dunes on the horizon are bruised deep in the shadows where the suns haven’t yet stretched. Far in the distance, low clouds gather thick as rising dough, lit as though from within by the rising heat of morning. The infinite bowl of sky wraps blue overhead. As you inhale deep into your stomach, a hot, slow wind rolls lazily up the side of the curved palace wall, lifting your hair and kissing the backs of your hands, your cheeks, your bare breasts.

You tilt your face up, raising your upturned palms to the sky as the underside of your closed eyelids blush under the brightness. You’re suffused with the undiluted light; warm right down to your bones, and then through them, as though you’ve become bodiless, a being made only of light and warmth and the suns.

You hear him behind you, his footfalls having become as familiar as your own and you wait for him to join you on the balcony. When he doesn’t, you turn your face to the side, glancing back over your shoulder.

Boba stands in the shadow of the doorway, watching as the desert breeze lifts the tiny strands of hair to dance around your ears. He doesn’t move or speak, but the look in his eyes is enough to keep you pinned in place. It is reverential. And suddenly now, the way he’s looking at you, you can believe what he’d told you the day he gifted you his beskar.

Standing bare and gilded at the edge of the galaxy, you know he would give you anything.

Notes:

A few little notes:

I’ve tried to keep this as close to canon-compliant as possible but obviously I’m making stuff up/changing certain details for narrative purpose (ie. Black Krrsantan goes looking for Obi-Wan a lot earlier, Boba’s dealings with Vader and the Empire on the whole are a lot more casual and have far lower stakes, etc).

One thing that I was surprised about was the fact that Boba Fett doesn’t really ever speak Mando’a in either Legends or Canon (at least, from what I could find. If I’m wrong please correct me).

It’s unclear whether this was intentional on Jango’s part as an effort to distance them from any Death Watch remnants, but Boba can apparently read and understand at least a rudimentary level of Mando’a that I would guess he just absorbed in his early years. I can’t imagine Jango telling Boba that he loves him in as many words, but we know that Jango considered creating Boba to be a way to preserve Jaster’s legacy (or at least, that’s what he told Dooku and probably also tried to tell himself).

For that reason, I think Jango would express his feelings toward his son a little differently and I hope this long-winded explanation helps clarify what may otherwise be (or maybe still is? sorry 🤡) a confusing exchange.

As always, I love and appreciate your feedback more than I know how to show! I try to reply to as many comments as I can but if I don't it's probably because I'm too fucking anxious to think of anything to say, lol sorry. Questions, comments, criticism welcome both here and on Tumblr.

Thank you so much for reading. x

Chapter 10: The Rest

Notes:

Thank you so much for your patience with this update; I'm really sorry it took a bit longer than usual. I'd been working on another fic which proved to be more challenging than I'd thought and honestly, it's been a rough couple of weeks. I received a few really lovely messages on Tumblr checking to make sure I was okay which honestly makes my heart swell; you're all way too kind and I can't even begin to tell you how much I appreciated you checking in. I hope this is worth the wait!

CW: Graphic descriptions of injuries, face sitting/oral sex (f receiving), PIV sex.

It’s almost funny that you’d die like this, considering everything else you’ve been through.

“You can’t drop a charge?” you manage, clutching for dear life at the edges of the copilot’s seat as a hit smashes into the back of the ship. You should have anticipated running into one of Boba’s hostile ex-associates in a place as thick with other hunters as Jabba’s palace, but you couldn’t have predicted that the combination of small, shitty decisions you’d both recently made would lead to this situation: being chased by a crew of the ugliest, meanest-looking fuckers you’d ever seen.

The modulated response is flat, sounding more frustrated than genuinely concerned. “Without shields, we’d be risking damaging ourselves as much as them. Surat must’ve had a tipoff that we’ve been limping. Not even he’d be crazy enough to try anything against the Slave at her full power.”

Another wracking shudder through the hull as he fires off several short bursts of concussion fire. If flying with disconnected shields wasn’t bad enough, you’re running dangerously low on supplies. You’d agreed not to replenish your stores before leaving Tatooine; the thought of taking any more water from Jabba distasteful at best. Llanic, with a refuelling depot directly beside the hyperlink stop point, had seemed like the wiser option… at the time.

The comms crackle to life and there’s a burst of jeering and whooping background noises before an accented voice fills the cockpit.

“You’re finished, Fett. You and the girl. I’d rather not have to rebuild your whole ship when I take it. Pull up and we might go easy on her.”

You laugh. “Go easy on me?” Boba manoeuvres higher, firing another volley of shots. You can hear the cursing and beeping of alerts through the open channel as the hits meet their mark; the pursuing crew’s laughter fracturing into shouted commands.

Another deep voice, sibilant and thick with hatred. “I haven’t forgotten you, little ingrate. Should’ve accepted my offer when you had the chance.” You frown at the comms.

“Is that you, Makarial? Huh. You still owe me a cocktail, by the way.” She starts snarling something in response, but you’ve already reached up to switch off the channel. “You gonna jump us out of here?”

He’s reaching above his head to bring up the navicomp. “Try not to get hit,” he tells you, grasping your wrist and dragging you across into his lap. You settle between his thighs, your hands clumsy as you seize the controls.

Almost immediately the ship lurches forward in an uncontrolled burst, responding to your touch with a jolt. “Oh,” you gasp. “What the fuck have you done to the engines on this thing?”

He chuckles low. You knew it’d been modified within an inch of its life, but - more bolts raze past the viewport and you try to bring your focus back to the controls. His gloved fingers are quick, his spread thighs braced around your legs and holding you secure as you wrench the yoke sideways, narrowly missing a volley of fire. You can’t fire and fly at the same time; you have no idea how he was doing it.

“Motherfu-“ he hisses, and you don’t have a chance to ask before you’re frantically trying to manoeuvre into a violent turn, bringing the ship about to face the smoking craft still firing at you. You let go of the yoke to seize desperately for the ion cannons as Boba reaches around your waist to steady the controls.

“We should be gone by now. Boba?”

“The hyperdrive - must’ve been the first thing they hit,” he grits. The gravelly quality of his voice through the modulator, right beside your ear, makes you shiver pleasantly and you don’t immediately understand what he’s said.

“Oh. Oh. Shit.”

“Yep.”

He yanks the controls back smoothly, and you lean your weight against the cold metal length of his body as the ship accelerates over the top of the burning attack barge. You manage to fire off several shots, clumsily sending all of them wide but managing to force the barge to veer out of your way.

“Back to Tatooine?” you gasp, bracing yourself between his legs.

“Not a good idea. We’ve taken some damage; I won’t know exactly how much ’til I’ve had a proper look. But Surat’s crew aren’t the only ones who’d happily take her off my hands. We’re an easy target like this. We need to find somewhere off-grid until I can get some work done.” He’s already bringing up a chart and you marvel again at how easily he controls the ship; his practised familiarity with the controls seeming as natural to him as walking.

“We’ve already left the Tatoo system,” you mutter, twisting to look into the displays beside you. The attack barge is floundering but you can tell it’s far from scuttled. As soon as the crew figures out how, they’ll reroute their systems and pick up the chase. “We might have nowhere else to go within realspace range.”

He’s shaking his head behind you and you feel as his thighs tighten around yours, leaning in to bring up a shorter-ranged scanner than the broad-system charts. “Arkanis is closer. And they won’t be expecting us to head there.” He’s already punching in the coordinates, Slave I accelerating smoothly despite the rattle of loosened panels beneath.

“Arkanis? Why wouldn’t they expect us to go there?” You’ve never heard of it, and you’re assuming it’s just another Outer Rim backwater no more than a smudge on most charts.

He sounds darkly amused as he responds, your cheek pressing against the cool of his helmet as you look back up at him. “Because it’s the location of an Imperial Training Academy.”

It takes less time than you’d expected to reach the sector, burning through the fuel in the backup engines faster in sublight but, thanks to the ship’s years of customisations, easily outpacing the smoking barge. Without a working hyperdrive, you can’t outrun them forever but once you’re out of range of their scanners, you easily lose them well before your approach to the system.

The whole planet is blanketed in cloud; the sun-facing surface glowing pale and moonlike with reflected light on approach. Boba manoeuvres to a quadrant low on the upper hemisphere, avoiding the heavy concentration of orbital traffic surrounding the planet’s equator.

As you lower into the atmosphere, the pound of rain on the hull is thunderous and you can barely see through the viewport; grey mist obscuring everything beyond a line of tall trees. The landing is uneven, gyroptics catching and whining as the ship attempts to right itself on the softened ground before finally shuddering to a rather final-sounding stop.

You turn slowly to look up at him, failing to repress the little twist of your lips. “So. This finally going to be that holiday you promised me?”

His answering grunt is scornful. “I don’t want to be here for any longer than we need to. You can’t afford to miss two pucks in a row, little one.”

You’d nearly forgotten about that, and you glance up to where it swings from the bulkhead, tiny red light blinking. “It can wait,” you say, pressing your lips together. “It’s just a warrant for some smuggler. Nobody’ll be in a hurry for that one.”

Now that you’re landed somewhere solid, away from danger, you’re aware of how close you are. Pinned between the controls and his thick, powerful thighs… you wriggle back experimentally and he groans low.

“We need to get supplies…” he trails off as you grind your ass back against his codpiece, your fingers digging into the unarmored gaps above his knees.

“I like this,” you breathe. “We should co-pilot from the same seat more often.” He lets go of the controls to wrap his arms around your body, gloved hands cupping your breasts over your clothes.

“If you do that, I'll end up flying us into the side of a moon. You won’t be happy until one of us are dead,” he grouses, but you can tell from the roughened quality of his voice through the modulator that you’ve got him, arching into his hold with satisfaction.

“All the more reason to make the most of the time we have,” you tell him, reaching to unbutton the front of your flightsuit.

 

-

 

Your hand squeaks on the steamed inside of the viewport as you squint out into the gloom. You can’t see any signs of activity; only trees and moss awash in deep green.

“It looks quiet out there,” you murmur. Boba glances up from where he’s pulling his boots back on behind you, running a hand back through his hair.

“There’s a town a few klicks away, just over the hill. We’re pretty far from the Academy,” he tells you. “Arkanis’ main export used to be fish. Probably still is, for the civilians anyway.”

“That’ll be a nice break from the ration packs.” You shiver as you stand, fastening your flightsuit back up to your neck. The chill from outside is already seeping through the transparisteel, and you don’t like the thought of venturing out into the rain, but need overtakes want. “Okay. I know we need food. Hopefully the tanks can filter enough water from the rain without me hauling any back. And… I need compound elements for my stims. Any other requests?”

He frowns as he reaches across for his helmet. “I’ll figure it out when I see what kinds of spare parts they have.”

“Make a list for me and I’ll see what I can do. We’re supposed to be laying low. And… you’re too recognisable, armoured or not,” you tell him. He glances at his helmet, still grasped in his hands, before shaking his head.

“Ah,” he says, a trace of some dark, deprecating humour flicking across his features. “Fair point.”

You press a closed-mouth kiss to the space above one of his eyebrows, your tone teasing but light. “It’s not just your face. Or the armour. Maybe if you didn’t have quite so much presence, Fett.”

He snorts. “That meant to be a joke?”

You bite your lower lip, raking your gaze up the length of his body. “The way you carry yourself. When you walk into a room. Even the way you sit. It’s… fuck, you know exactly what you do. I’ve seen you doing it on purpose. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

His dark eyes glint in the pale light as his hand grabs roughly at your ass, dragging you closer. “You’d better stop now if you want to get out there and back before dark.”

You leave him with the front half of his body buried under the side of a radiator fin, the overturned panels laying around his feet pinging with raindrops.

It’s quiet under the thickness of the cloud cover; the gentle white noise of dripping leaves disguising the sounds of any animal life. Your boots sink inch-deep with every muddy step, your hand resting lightly on your belt as you walk. You don’t anticipate any danger; it’s quiet, and feels oddly peaceful in the watery green light, but old habits die hard.

Past the line of towering trees, you pick out the signs of a rough path leading over the hill toward the town. It’s paved with asymmetrical round stones, but they appear to have been laid for beings with a non-human step. Even at a leap you can’t avoid squelching into the mossy spaces between, and by the time you pass the low stone walls bordering the edge of the town, you’re soaked up to your knees.

The town is alive. Moss grows up between gaps in the paved road, creeping bright and slippery across the charcoal-coloured external walls of most buildings. The town is bigger than you expected, but spread out, squat buildings set low and wide with smooth round roofs. Little dim alleyways run with water into deep stone gutters. It seems to have been built with the planet’s climate in mind; aqueducts running overhead to carry the worst of the rain away from the peaked rooftops.

As you pass an open-sided building, several Mon Calamari children skip past, yelling and squealing as one brandishes a stick at the others. A woman follows, her gills blowing impatiently as she folds her webbed hands across the thick woollen sweater covering her chest.

“You won’t be allowed to come next time if you behave like this every market day,” she yells, protuberant eyes narrowed. Her gaze darts across to you as you pass, and you duck your head, hurrying on. While it’s far from crowded, the few figures on the streets all seem to know one another, pausing to stop and talk, unbothered by the drizzle. Pots of tiny, dark coloured flowers hang from the awnings of a row of small shops, and you pause in front of one, peering through the glowing windows.

A heavy-set human man sits beside the door, reading from a datapad as it glows up into his face. He takes you in warily, gaze resting on the mark over your brow and the weaponry on your wrist and belt, his thick red eyebrows lowering with mistrust. “You’re not from here,” he observes, and you bite back a sarcastic response at the obviousness of his statement.

“My ship’s damaged and I need supplies. Raw bacta bases, separated cleaning compounds, or Medkit stores, if you have them. Is there a dispensary here?”

He appears to think hard, glancing up the street. You shift on your feet, your eyelashes clumped together with rain. The damp is beginning to make you shiver miserably.

Finally, he sniffs, running a hand under his nose. “There’s an apothecary two laneways down. Cross into the alley, go down the steps. She might have what you need.” He says it low, like he’s afraid of being overheard. You frown. There’s nobody else within earshot, and you wonder briefly what’s so secret about an apothecary.

You give him a short nod, heading off in the direction he’d indicated. Maybe she’s not supposed to be selling raw materials so close to an Imperial base, you muse. You know the Empire’s tax on merchants is debilitatingly high and wouldn’t be surprised to learn most traders are operating off-books. He’d obviously taken a look at your bloodied, scruffy appearance and worked out that whatever you were, it wasn’t an Imp. The laneways are empty, and as you cross into the alley you feel a prickle of apprehension. You have your blaster and vambrace, but you’re running low on darts. If somebody tried to jump you now, you’d be drawing a lot more attention than what probably constituted laying low.

You find the shadowed staircase leading down, an arch of the building overhead providing shelter from the rain. There’s a plain door set in a durasteel frame, warped and knotted from years of moisture. The access panel set into the wall is leaching rust into the surrounding stone, but blinks a welcoming green. Glancing back over your shoulder, you rap on it with your knuckles. Nobody else is in sight, the windows facing into the alley dark. You stand for several long moments, unease mounting. You take the few steps back up to street level and glance around. It’s deserted.

Against your better judgment, you step lightly back down to the bottom of the steps and bang once more, loud now, with the side of your fist. When there’s still no answer, you huff quietly and jab your thumb at the panel, the door withdrawing up into its frame smoothly. Your hand rests on your hip as you lean in.

“Hello? Anybody here?”

It’s warm and dry inside, lit with glowpanels set into the walls. You take a few steps, the floor softened with layers of rugs, breath bated. There are shelves of medical supplies, interspersed with jars and small plasticrete boxes. A low, wide counter stretches along one wall, with a little transceiver crackling out some kind of Braccan heavy metal. A woman’s voice, deep and smooth, calls from somewhere behind the shelves.

“Sit down somewhere. And don’t touch anything.”

You lower yourself onto an overturned crate, crossing one knee over the other. It’s impossible to tell how deep the room goes; the shelves reaching all the way to the low ceiling. Quiet footsteps sound, and you glance up. Two women step out from around the shelves, both dressed in layers of warm, practical-looking clothing. One is young, much younger than you, with a pretty, pointed face and wild curls. She rests one hand on her gigantic stomach, clutching a little brown jar as she listens intently to the other woman, who’s speaking in the low register you’d heard a moment ago.

“Don’t take it more than twice a night. If you still don’t feel any better, we’ll try something else. But I have a good feeling about this one.”

The younger woman nods, smiling shyly to reveal an endearing gap between her front teeth. She glances at you and startles slightly, hurrying past without meeting your gaze again. The door beeps as it releases her out into the drizzling day.

“Take your hand off the blaster,” the remaining woman says. She isn’t looking at you, her back turned as she steps onto a low stool to replace a jar on a shelf behind her. You hadn’t even realised you were touching it, and you sheepishly place both hands flat in front of you.

“I’m not here to cause any trouble. I need supplies.” Her head is still bent, now flipping through a stack of pouches behind the counter thoughtfully. “I heard you might have raw compounds.”

Her head straightens as she finally looks up at you, and you get to see her properly. She’s older than you’d expected from her litheness and rigid posture; her close cap of tightly coiled hair run through with grey. Her skin is a deep, rich tone, darker than Boba’s and creased around her eyes and mouth. She’s striking; high-cheekboned and long-limbed. Perhaps most startling of all is the directness of her gaze. She’s staring at you like she could see right through you, her full mouth pressed into a tight little line. It’s uncomfortable, and you shift, uncrossing your legs awkwardly.

“Which compounds do you need?” she asks. You rattle off the names of several, and she’s unblinking as she considers you. “Some of those are illegal,” she responds. Her tone is flat but conversational, and you note the clipped cadences at the edge of her speech. She’s not from here either, you realise. She sounds like a Core Worlder.

“I won’t tell if you don’t.” You offer her a little smile, which she doesn’t return. “And I can pay. Credits aren’t a problem.”

Her gaze flicks away dismissively as she returns the handful of pouches to some hidden spot under the counter. “They’re a problem for me. Imperial currency is trackable. I don’t deal in it.”

You frown. “Look, I… know people who deal in credits all the time. Involved with much shadier shit than some tax-evading pharmacist. Nobody cares enough to go to the trouble of tracking it.”

She leans against the counter, tapping her index finger on the polished surface. “How long will you be here?”

The question catches you off guard, and you aren’t immediately sure how to answer it. “Maybe… a week? My ship’s damaged. However long it takes to get it repaired.”

She nods, her voice sharp. “Then you can work for me. I need another pair of hands. Be here by dawn tomorrow.”

You open your mouth, and shut it again, indignant. What the fuck? Does she think you look like a shopkeeper? You aren’t going to carry her heavy boxes around for her, either. If she knew the kind of work you normally do, she wouldn’t dare. But then you remember the position you’re in. You’re stuck here, and there’s nowhere else for you to gather supplies. Maker knows how long it’ll take for Boba to repair the damage; you’re guessing those extensive customisations on the Slave aren’t quick fixes. So you scowl at her, and tilt your head to the side. You’re unable to keep the edge of derision completely out of your voice.

“Any other demands?”

This seems to get the warmest response out of anything you’ve said so far. Her lips finally turn up at one side, and it’s a hard, humourless expression. She tosses you a bundle of canvas from under the counter, and you catch it to your chest reflexively, shaking it out. It’s a poncho; the waterproof fabric crinkling under your fingers. “Wear that. I don’t want you dripping all over my floor.”

 

-

 

By the time you make it back, it’s almost dark. You follow the dim red glow through the treeline until the ship comes into view, tarps covering one side of the hull. There’s a small fire burning under the cover of the side fin, throwing light around the little clearing. It’s oddly cosy; the smell of the damp wood mingling with the bitterness of the fuel. Boba steps down from the ramp, an empty weapons crate in his arms.

“Any luck?” he calls, setting it down beside the fire. You hurriedly duck under the cover of the fin, grateful for the poncho’s cover as you show him your armful of spoils.

“I’ve got food. Looks pretty good too, they had bread and fish and - look, fresh kibla greens. I’ve never had them when they haven’t been freeze dried.”

He helps you unload, setting everything down beside the ramp. “What about the rest of it?”

You huff. “About that. You might be on your own with these repairs. I got a job.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t think there was a Guild outpost here.”

“Not a job-job. A job. At the apothecary.” He stares at you like you’ve grown another head.

“Why?”

You lower yourself down to a crouch, opening your palms in front of the fire’s warmth. Red light plays across your cheeks, and you glance up at him as you answer. “She won’t sell me what I need. Seems jumpy about credits, said I can work for it instead. Did you get a chance to pull out the hyperdrive? How are we looking?”

He crosses his arms, brows furrowed as he looks past you into the darkened forest. “Might take me longer than I thought. Could be a few weeks, even longer. It’s best if we avoid using any comm signals; could be someone listening out for our frequency. It’s not just the hyperdrive; I knew I shouldn’t have left that stuck landing sequence go for as long as I did. And the shield generator’s fucked.” His slow, flat twang lists each problem with a mildness you don’t share.

You sigh, closing your eyes. It’d be just your luck that of all the planets you’d be stuck on, it’d have to be one as cold and rainy as this. Something heavy settles over your shoulders, and you open your eyes. Boba’s draped his cape over you, and he slides the crate closer to the fire with his knees, gesturing for you to sit.

“Stay here. I’ll get bowls.”

The food is simple, but warming. You’re both quiet as you eat; the first time in a long time you’ve actually enjoyed the taste of food. Ration packs are sufficient to keep a person alive, but there isn’t a being in the galaxy that enjoys the flavour. Stomach pleasantly heavy, you stretch your feet out toward the fire, leaning your head on Boba’s shoulder. You can feel the warmth beginning to seep through the soles of your boots, but your toes are still numb and you shiver as you try to wriggle closer.

He exhales in a low rumble. “Give me your feet.”

You comply, twisting until your legs lay across his lap. He pulls your damp boots off, tossing them to lay close to the fire, expression inscrutable. His hands wrap around your freezing toes and you almost moan with the warmth as he holds you there, waiting until you warm up. It feels incredibly tender; his rough palms firm and close, the crackle of the fire under the muted sounds of the dripping forest.

You’re nodding drowsily when he speaks again, barely above a murmur. “Try to get blankets in town tomorrow. It’s colder inside the ship, and the generators aren’t an option since I had to pull them out to check the fuses.”

You yawn comfortably. You’re touched with this; that he’s concerned with such a basic human comfort as blankets when you’ve seen him fall asleep in the pilot’s seat of his ship, arms folded. “You going soft on me, Fett? Or just worried I’ll keep you awake shivering to death beside you?”

He chuckles, an indulgent sound as he presses his thumbs into the arches of your soles. “Well. You’re no good to me dead.”

 

-

 

You don’t bother knocking this time, opening the door panel and stepping straight inside. “Good morning,” you call, pulling the dripping poncho off to lay beside the door.

There’s no sign of the apothecary. As you step toward the shelves you startle violently, raising your blaster and nearly shooting a hole through a wall as a loud, broken scream shatters the silence.

“Back here,” comes the woman’s voice, and you hurriedly wind your way through the shelves until you reach a doorway to another, smaller room. Windowless and bright, a young man is laying on a table, moaning low as he attempts to sit up. The apothecary motions toward his legs, her hands wrapped around his forearm.

“Hold him down.”

You lean your weight against his knees, pinning him in place. The apothecary is doing something up by his side, and he screams again, struggling to get up. Your stomach catches when you see it. The mess of splintered, broken meat at the end of his arm appears to be all that’s left of his hand. Blood is pulsing slowly through the apothecary’s fingers, her grip on his wrist slipping against the wetness as she attempts to examine the raw churn of bone and tendon. She glances up and meets your gaze.

“Give him something for the pain. This has to come off.”

You’re already reaching for your belt, withdrawing one of your last remaining canisters before you realise the strangeness of her order. There’s no way she could possibly know you had something like that on you, you think, nearly missing the injection point at his elbow as he thrashes again. He’s kicking the air out of your lungs as you lean across his body, and you grunt. You consider then that maybe she meant for you to go back into the shop and find something else to give him, wondering why you’re wasting one of your last precious doses. You try to refocus, depressing the serum, and he slumps back onto the table, breathing heavily.

His eyes are slipping shut, and you can’t tell if he can hear you as you murmur to her. “What do you want me to do?”

Her thin, dark eyebrows are pinched together. “There’s a plasma saw behind your head. On the wall.” You hurry to assist, standing close as she bends to concentrate on removing the flayed remnants below his wrist. The smell of burning bone and flesh sears at your nostrils, and you focus hard; keeping your grip on his shoulder in case of a reflexive jolt. You wordlessly pass her the rag she points out, watching as she wipes her bloodied hands before handing it back. She works fast and clean, and it takes less time than you’d expected. The young man’s breaths are deep and even as she wraps his cauterised stump in bacta-soaked gauze.

Wordless, she lowers his arms across his chest and motions for you to join her. You stand side by side, scrubbing blood from your hands in a low basin at the back of the room. Your mind whirls with scraps of memory.

“Not your first time with this type of thing,” she says. It doesn’t sound like a question, and you don’t answer until she looks up at you.

“No.”

She nods approvingly, turning to lead you back into the shop. “He’ll be okay. You need a drink.”

You sit across from her behind the counter; the cup of spiked caf warming your palms. Your shakiness has nothing to do with the graphic nature of the injury. You’ve seen worse. You’ve probably caused worse. No, your uneasiness has more to do with the familiar layout of her tiny makeshift theatre. You feel like a child again, remembering helping with similar procedures in your mother’s almost identical workroom. The image pops into your head of rows of smuggled vaccines, shattered on the floor under the boots of stormtroopers. You haven’t thought about this for a long time.

The apothecary is leaning on her elbows against the counter, tapping something into her datapad. You swallow before speaking, your voice thick.

“What happened to him?”

She answers levelly. “Accident at the Academy.”

You watch her face. It’s perfectly smooth as she types, not a single emotion betrayed. “The Academy doesn’t have its own medbay?”

She glances up at you. She doesn’t need to say a word, her direct gaze shutting down your next comment. You take another sip of your drink, the warmth comforting all the way down your throat.

“Finish your caf. I’ll need help cleaning the equipment when you’re done.”

The rest of the day passes comparatively uneventfully. You help clean down the blood from the improvised operating table. You help her sort through piles of unlabelled packets of medication, distributing capsules and powders into smaller jars. People walk in and out of the shopfront: a soft-spoken Rodian collecting several large unmarked boxes, a woman with a tiny baby that doesn’t stop screaming the entire time she’s inside, an elderly married couple - both men having caught the same harsh-sounding cough at the exact same time.

Sometime in the late afternoon, a young man and woman appear in the shop. Your practised eye doesn’t miss the blasters at their hips, or the edgy way the woman stands by the door, arms folded. You stare silently at her while the man follows the apothecary into the back room. She has a long, pale face under short brown hair, fringe cut messily in an angle across her forehead. She stares back at you. Her clothes remind you of your own; well worn and with old, faded bloodstains. She’s about as Imperial as you are, you think. Less, probably, considering the dispensation Boba’s contract has afforded you.

It’s then that you notice a tiny tattoo under the edge of her vest. Barely one side is visible, but it’s enough for you to recognise the shape. She sees you looking and adjusts her neckline. 

Her companion staggers out from between the shelves, the uninjured arm of the unconscious young man around his shoulder. The two figures struggle to balance the third, his weight flopping between them as they carry him up the stairs and out of sight. The whole thing is unmistakably covert, and you raise an eyebrow as the apothecary ignores you, writing something on the side of a small box.

“Do you get many offworlders visit?” you ask lightly.

“A few.”

“What kinds?”

“Pilots. Traders, refugees, smugglers. The odd bounty hunter.” She looks at you pointedly with this last, and your lips turn up in an uncomfortable little smile. She has no way in hell of knowing who you are. You can’t let your paranoid brain run away with you.

“But they don’t stay long.”

“No. Especially not the bounty hunters. They don’t live long.” You’re sure you aren’t imagining the hard, ironic edge of humour under her voice. She finishes writing and straightens up. “That’s enough for one day. Be careful in the woods. There are boar-wolves.”

You nod, heading for the door, but her voice pauses you.

“Cere,” she says. You look up at her in confusion.

“What’s that?”

“It’s my name. Be back here the same time tomorrow.”

 

-

 

The first week passes into a second, then a third in a blur of rain and blood. Each day you trudge into town, cold and miserable, working in the apothecary until mid-afternoon. Cere keeps you busy, helping her with everything from lancing boils to setting broken bones. You surprise yourself with how quickly fall into an easy rhythm, though she still seems decidedly cautious around you; sometimes speaking low into a comms device as she shuts you out of her back room. You only catch simple, provincial-sounding words; something about a harvester. It all seems innocuous enough that you begin to wonder at her paranoia.

She leaves sometimes for hours on end to make deliveries, taking her datapad with her; and your snooping uncovers nothing of interest besides racks of pharmaceuticals. Each night you return to the ship, the progress excruciatingly slow. But you find you don’t mind. There’s something quietly comforting in the returning, waiting for the thrill of seeing him again, the lazy way your bodies welcome one another in the dark hold of the ship. You drag parts back as you’re able to source them, Boba insistent on carrying out every detail of the work himself.

Two more injured Imperial cadets appear during this time; a girl and another boy. Their injuries are almost identical; hands crushed and mangled beyond recognition. The most recent boy’s injury seems to be less severe than the previous two, and between yourself and Cere you manage to save nearly the whole hand; only losing the smallest and ring fingers. He sits with his wrapped hand held against his chest, glaring at you while you clean the table around him. He looks every inch the Imperial kid, you think derisively. Smooth-skinned and haughty. And as with each previous case, you watch as another furtive-looking pair comes to escort the injured cadet away, caps drawn low over their faces.

“They have a lot of accidents at this Academy,” you comment one afternoon, testing the water. “The injuries are... thorough.”

Cere is paring a joganfruit with a tiny knife, no longer than your thumb but curved with a wicked edge. She hands you a slice, and you pop it into your mouth, dangling your feet over the side of the counter. You’re warm in your thick, rough spun tunic; one of several pieces of clothing she’s given you. You’d stopped bringing the blaster with you at the end of the first week, but haven’t found any reason to part with your vambrace. The smooth edge peeks from the cuff of your sleeve, subtle as a bracelet.

“Brendol Hux is known for his unusual methods of training,” she says slowly, biting into a slice of her own.

You hum, nodding. “Yeah. I’ve heard the name. Used to be friends with Atton Tervus. They must have had similar… proclivities. Tervus liked hurting girls.”

She shoots you a hard glance. “Used to be?”

“He died. On Canto Bight. It’d be... oh, a while ago now. Months.” She’s still staring at you with that searing, stripping gaze and you meet it, unblinking. “Heart failure. I heard.”

She doesn’t respond, leaning back against the counter beside you. There’s a particular grace to the curve of her neck as she looks down, cutting another small sliver of fruit and balancing it on the blade as she holds it out to you. The silence stretches, both of you chewing companionably, until you break it. “You’re taking a risk with these kids.”

She sighs, and wipes her juice-stained hands on the legs of her trousers, tucking the paring knife into her pocket. You continue, sounding more vehement than you intend. “They’re not going to change their stripes overnight just because of what happened to them. They chose to enlist. They’ve probably still got family and friends in that Academy, or working in Destroyers offworld. There’s nothing to stop them from selling you out the first chance they get. You, and your friends with the Starbird tattoos.”

She takes a long, slow breath, looking up at a blank spot on the wall before turning her head to face you. You kick your feet against the counter, unsure why you feel so impatient. Her deep voice is emotionless as she gives you a hard little smile. “I believe in second chances. Most people only do terrible things because they think they don’t have a choice. But they do. Doesn’t matter what you’ve already done. It matters what you do next. I’m not worried about those kids.”

She’s staring directly into your eyes as she talks, and you feel a coldness drop out of your stomach. You feel attacked somehow, naked and small. You can’t meet her gaze as you speak, looking down at your hands.

“You don’t think you’re just delaying the inevitable? The Empire will kill every last person in that Rebellion, you know. You don’t think it would be safer just to… accept the way things are?”

She straightens, walking towards the back room. Her answer drifts between the shelves over her shoulder. “This galaxy fell once. I’ll see it fall again.”

 

-

 

Your boots are nearly destroyed, you think sadly, breaking through the line of trees. The constant damp has made them feel loose and crumbly on your feet, and you wonder if Cere has an old pair she’d sell you. So far she hasn’t accepted any money for the clothes or food she’s given you, but you’ve been thinking of exchanging some credits into Calamari flan and hiding them around the shop so she can’t refuse the money. There seems to be a pretty big population of Mon Calamari here, so you imagine she’d surely be able to make some use of the currency.

You pause at the edge of the forest, basket of food over your arm, watching Boba work with his back to you. He’s rebuilt the entire shield generator with his hands; painstakingly using a macrowelder to rejoin each of the small sections. His sleeves are rolled up to expose the taut lines of his forearms, and you watch as he lifts a power coupling into the gap over his head. Even through his shirt you can see the thick muscles in his back working under the weight of the metal.

Both your bodies have begun to soften in the weeks you’ve been here. For the first time in years, you’ve both actually taken the time to enjoy eating every meal; food, real food, not freeze-dried ration packs. Standing in the haze, watching him work, you let your imagination drift. Just for a moment, you can see it. You think about him older; the way the lines around his eyes and lips would deepen. The way his middle would thicken, if he were allowed to live slowly enough to know the pleasure of simple comforts. Your own hair would earn its silver, and you imagine the two of you lazy and happy, with fresh bread and vegetables for the rest of your lives. The way you’d sleep, knowing the small distinct joy in reaching out a hand in the darkness and knowing exactly where to find him.

A chill breeze winds from between the trees and you shiver lightly. Your gaze is drawn to the exposed skin at the back of his neck; his arms, his legs. His face. He looks incredibly vulnerable without any of his armour, and Cere’s words from weeks earlier bob to the surface of your thoughts.

“Especially not the bounty hunters. They don’t live long.”

He turns and catches sight of you, his head raising. “Did you get more of those spicy sea herbs?” he calls, hopeful under the roughness of his usual drawl, and your heart squeezes. You force yourself to tamp down your frown as you close the distance back to him, showing him the latest small things you’d discovered in the town, listening as he outlines the work he’d finished and what still remains to be done. “Another week at the most. Then we’ll be out of here.”

You barely follow, mind still trudging through darker thoughts. You’re distracted with the remembered image of him bleeding on the floor of his ship while you’re preparing the sea vegetables and spice in a comforting broth. You won’t let anybody touch him again, you think to yourself, as you lean close against his body, your hands wrapped around the warm bowl of food. As soon as you can, you’ll get his contract settled. Whatever it takes. Then you’ll be free. Nobody will ever bother either of you again.

This refrain doesn’t leave your head as you climb up over him in the darkness of the ship later that night, dragging your teeth across his chest. You feel lightened with the tangible comfort of his close body, the heat solid and safe underneath you. Your hand reaches down to pump his cock, rougher than you’d intended in your haste. He groans, his arms coming up to wrap around your waist, trying to drag your hips lower as he thrusts up into your loose fist.

“Impatient tonight,” he breathes, amusement creeping through his drawl, and you are, desperate to feel him inside you, rolling your spine down. His cock slides through the folds of your cunt as you drag against him, and he palms your breast, ducking his head down to wrap his lips around your sensitive nipple. You shiver; bare skin cool in the dark ship. The low roar of rain on the hull muffles the sounds of your whimpers as he bites down gently, mouth hot around your breast.

“I missed you today,” you tell him. He growls low.

“I can tell. You want to show me how much?”

Your breath escapes in a quiet little huff as he hooks both arms down under your thighs, and you brace yourself on his chest before you overbalance. He drags you up, forcing your knees over his shoulders until your aching cunt is inches above his lips. You burn for a moment with the intimacy you have in this position when his hands wrap firmly over the tops of your legs and force your weight down, his tongue plunging inside you.

You gasp. Your palms press up at the wall above your head, holding yourself steady as his hold on you tightens, his fingers digging hard into your flesh. He grinds you down onto his tongue, his forearms braced over the tops of your legs so you can’t move an inch. His tongue works inside you, dragging and lapping against your g-spot and your thighs tremble around his face. The heat and wetness are exquisite, as fuck, he buries his tongue so deeply inside you that your walls clench. He lifts your weight easily with his spread hands, raising your hips and forcing them down again as he fucks up into you with his mouth.

It feels incredible, liquid ecstasy creeping up from your cunt into your lower stomach, and you curl over him, burying your fingers in his hair. You don’t know if he can hear you, with his ears pressed against your inner thighs, but you murmur breathily anyway.

“That’s so good, oh… fuck me, that’s good…” and as his open lips wrap around your clit, you’re drunk on the power of this; driving your hips down. He’s so fucking good as this, you think, so good at looking out for you, at making you feel like this, making you forget about all of the danger and terror when his tongue is inside you. Mindless, you hear yourself hiss out a low, jagged-edged, “Good boy,” as your fingernails rake against his head between your legs.

The growl it rips from his throat is feral. He withdraws his tongue, lifting your hips slightly. His hand drives up from between your spread thighs, his fingers sinking knuckle-deep with a sharp wet glisten. Your inhalation is close to a squeal, as the savage motion of his fingers pistoning inside you forces your hips to rise and fall with your clit against his tongue faster and harder than before. It’s brutal and you’d fall onto your face if he didn’t have such a firm grip on you, the tightness of your cunt catching around his fingers as your muscles clamp down. You’re blinded, everything below your waist unraveling in a hot burst of pleasure as your orgasm forces the air from your lungs. You cum for an eternity; eyes rolled back in your head as you brace yourself against him, writhing and clawing, coming down slowly. You realise with a start that the high, short whimpers filling the space are coming from you.

Wobbly and soaked, he drops you onto your back with a rough little whumph. “What was that, little one?” he murmurs, dangerous as he hovers over you in the dim. He seizes your knees, forcing your still-trembling legs wide.

“I didn’t - it just sort of... slipped out. Did you not like me saying that?”

“You can call me whatever the fuck you want. Just remember next time what happens when you do.” And he reams into you, his cock driving through the wetness of your cunt so hard and deep you feel a catch in the base of your throat as he bottoms out. You keen, arching up into the stretch, and he lifts your hips off the tangle of blankets to deepen the angle, hooking your ankles over one shoulder.

He fucks you with unrestrained fervour, snarling and cursing low as he does. It’s almost too much: the stretch and pace ripping up through your chest. Your fluttering cunt is still oversensitive; and you know he knows it, but he seems to only be spurred on further by your sobbed little gasps, watching your face with a hard focus. You reach clumsily up, trying to find a part of him to hold onto as he pounds into you, and he catches one of your searching hands in his own, pressing it to his lips.

You can feel your own arousal slick on his mouth against your fingers as he kisses them, and your head tilts back limply. Every soft part of you is driven upwards to bounce back under each thrust; and he leans over you, his fingers digging hard into your jaw to hold your face still.

“Look at me,” he hisses, harsh and low, and you do, your teeth cutting into your lower lip. “I need you to cum for me again - need to feel it, feel your hot little cunt,” and you can’t form words to answer him, a hitched wail escaping instead before you manage to cut it off.

He releases your face, curving his neck to look over your body spread out beneath him. He sucks air through his teeth before leaning down and spitting on the place where your bodies join; the heat of his saliva running down through your cunt to coat his own cock as it stretches you open. His fingers work through the slip at your clit, and you’re already shuddering, spine curving as you writhe upwards.

You cum loudly, louder than you ever have before; a broken, rasped cry ripped from your lips as your palms smack flat against his chest. Your walls squeeze him; his cock twitching inside you at the pressure, and it pulls him over the edge along with you. His rhythm stutters and as he cums it completes you; aching and hot and filled, his panting warm across your face.

You both follow the other’s breaths until they slow, the sheen of sweat on your body beginning to chill as it cools. He eases himself out of you and you wince at his withdrawal; your cunt tender. His low chuckle is warm against you as he gently pushes the hair from your face, drawing one of the heaped blankets out from underneath you to wrap over your entwined bodies.

“Good girl.”

You fall asleep to the sound of the rain; comforting as it washes the hull of the ship clean.

Notes:

As always, I really love hearing your comments, criticism, questions, anything you have to say. x

 

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Chapter 11: Prize

Notes:

Thank you so much for your patience with this update; I'm finding that the closer I get to the end, the slower I want to go. I guess I'm not ready to say goodbye to this story! I'd also just like to say that I'm so incredibly grateful for the wonderful feedback you provided for my last chapter. It really means more to me than I can express that people are a) reading this, and b) enjoying it enough to want to write such lovely responses.

Some specific warnings for this chapter include: descriptions of oral sex (m receiving), graphic descriptions of violence, injuries and death, poor ethics, and loss of consciousness. If you feel I haven't adequately flagged anything, please let me know. x

You’re daydreaming about taking his cock deep enough into your throat to make your eyes water, a rag in your hand as you absently wipe a bottle free of brown oil. Cere keeps sighing loudly, like you’re doing something to irritate her, though you’re working as fast as you can.

You pick up the pace, twisting the rag smaller so it fits into the neck of the bottle and cleaning the last residue from the sides before reaching for another. Tonight, when you get back to the ship, you’re going to ask him to fuck your mouth from a standing position, you muse dreamily. He’ll be better able to reach your breasts while you do; his rough hands can cup them while you work him undone. You like the sounds he makes when you press your tongue to the underside. He may even be able to reach your cunt as you do; he could stretch you open around his fingers as you swallow him.

She coughs, shooting you a filthy look. “We need to take some supplies out to a customer. You can carry the crate.”

You blink, returning to your surroundings. This will be the second time she’s trusted you to accompany her on a delivery; the first being two days ago when she’d made sure you waited outside while she conferred quietly with the recipient of the boxes. It’s a nice change from sitting in the shop, you think, and you drop the rag onto the counter eagerly.

“I left those ledgers out the back,” you tell her as she drags a sealed crate out from beside the door. “I know you said not to bother with them, but it didn’t take me too long. And I know you would’ve stayed here all night working again if I hadn’t.”

She drops the crate in the middle of the floor with a grunt and straightens, resting her weight on one hip. “I’ll be here all night anyway. I still need to relabel those xapax canisters before I forget what date we filled them.”

You point a bossy finger at her. “I can do that when we get back. You need all the rest you can get at your age.”

She arches her eyebrows. “Could still kick your ass, kid.”

You snort, leaning down to refasten your boots. They’re still a little stiff; the waterproof opee leather not yet shaped to your feet as softly as your old ones had been, but they’re well made and sturdy. Cere had left them on the counter for you one morning, pretending not to know where they’d come from despite the fact they still had a tag on one sole and were in your exact size. You’ve hidden a handful of flan coins in a jar behind the counter, hoping she doesn’t discover the money until after you’re gone lest she tries to give it back to you.

It feels good to be doing something physical again. Your shoulders burn under the weight of the heavy load; and as you follow her out of the twist of streets, you lift your face up into the cool mist of rain. People nod as you pass, most of the faces at least vaguely familiar by now.

A hulking Devaronian man chops tentacled chunks from a giant tetrapod at a stall in the marketplace; blue guts grimed up to his forearms. He waves the bloodied cleaver in his hand as he shoots you a smile from beneath the shadowed canopy of his horns. You tentatively return it, remembering stitching up the nasty gash on his arm two weeks earlier. Unconsciously, you shift to put yourself between him and Cere - your habitual return to guardedness making you wary of her small stature in comparison to his.

She leads the way out of town, her lengthened strides covering the ground faster than you would have expected. The crate presses against your ear as you balance it on your shoulder, muffling the sounds of the forest so you can only hear the white roar of rain from one side. This part of the woods is wilder than the area surrounding your campsite at the ship; rocky outcrops grown over with bright lichen, twisting alongside the path and giving the impression of a maze. Cere barely looks around as she walks, and you hurry to keep up with her.

“Feels like you’ve got bricks in here,” you grumble, boots nearly slipping on the wet carpet of leaf litter. She picks her way easily over the path.

“Just don’t drop it,” she tells you, and you roll your eyes behind her back, smiling despite yourself. Her flat, dry sense of humour has started rubbing off on you in the short time you’ve known her, and you have to bite back an equally deadpan response.

The gnarled trees form a natural tunnel, the watery light lissom and wavering. You blink away a swarm of tiny white insects before you realise they’re minuscule reptilian birds, a species you’ve never seen before.

“How’d that tincture do for your sleep?” Cere tosses over her shoulder.

“It… uh, helped. Although… I’m not sure if it’s the tincture, or just the quietness here,” you confess. You watch the back of her head bob as she nods.

“Probably. Trying to sleep in sublight never worked well for me, either. Too much vibration from the engines.” You decide not to say anything about your own theory; that it’s more likely to do with the fact that the blood you’ve washed off your clothes for the past month hasn’t been spilled by your hands. You’re sure there’s some kind of allegory to be read there; patching wounds rather than causing them; pouring blood back in to bodies and stitching them closed, sending people walking free, but you aren’t examining it that closely.

You fall into a comfortable silence as you walk, and the roar of the rain broadens into a deafening wall of noise as you crest a rise and spot the ocean between a break in the trees. The path twists down the cliffside toward a fairly morose-looking town perched on the rim of the bay.

The great churning expanse of grey water stretches and blurs into the misted horizon, a messy combination of fishing and magna craft ships bobbing in the bay. Rust-leeched durasteel shelters dot the shoreline; blurred shapes clarifying into figures moving among the docks with armfuls of fishing equipment as you trudge into town.

Cere heads directly for a structure right at the edge of the precipice, banging with the side of her fist before letting herself inside. You kick out a boot to stop the hinged door swinging into your face, muscling your way in as the crate wobbles precariously on your shoulder.

It looks like a workshop; several burly-looking Quarrens standing around a plasma-net generator, tools in hand. Cere’s already at the other end of the room, and you hurry to follow her as she disappears down a concealed stairway, open to the stinging salt spray.

You nearly drop the crate as you reach the base of the stairs; reaching the edge of a covered, secret jetty. It’s invisible from the cliffside, hidden underneath the edge of the structure. Several ancient-looking ships are moored here; bodies moving in and out with armfuls of supplies.

People glance up at you curiously, and a few give you interested half-smiles as they pass. You stand there stupidly for a moment, unsure where to go.

Cere motions you over to where she confers with a Twi’lek woman, pointing toward a stack of similar crates. You add yours to the pile, groaning quietly at the release of the weight as you roll your freed shoulder. The Twi’lek glances over at you, her bright green eyes shrewdly appraising before she nods at Cere, turning to walk up the ramp of one of the opened freighters. You can see piles of equipment inside; haphazardly piled weapons crates, explosives, portable turrets…

Arms crossed over your chest, you shoot Cere a questioning look as two men hurry to seize the crates from the stack and carry them into the ship. “More friends of yours?”

She purses her lips, leading you to a quiet edge of the jetty. “Let’s talk.”

 

-

 

You sit side by side, legs swinging over the edge of the churning water legions beneath as she passes the open vac-flask to you, running the back of her hand across her mouth. She speaks with no preamble, her words clipped and direct.

“You’ve got passage offworld. They’ve done this before; they can protect your identity. Keep you hidden. From whatever it is you’re mixed up in. You could disappear, or you could do some good. They need help; fighters, medics… you’d be useful.”

You swallow the mouthful of warm caf slowly. Far out, an emerald-furred rock squawks with birds, fighting over the remains of some dead, current-dashed creature.

“It might… not be that easy,” you hear yourself saying. You don’t even know how to begin to explain to her - the contracts, your Guild status, Boba. Your mind is roiling as turbulent as the sea below. “I’m… pretty trackable.”

She takes the flask from you, screwing the lid back on. “That crate you carried here has data slicing keys, and Imperial access codes. Those kids from the Academy… well, as far as any records are concerned, Imperial or otherwise… they’re dead. Nobody’s coming looking for them. They’re just faces in the crowd now, completely anonymous.”

You glance at her in surprise. You don’t know why, but she’s telling you everything. This is beyond sneaking injured kids away from school, it’s outright treason; if you reported any of this, none of these people would ever see the light of day again. She gazes out at the sea, impassive as she continues, waving a hand in your direction.

“That thing’s beskar, isn’t it?” Automatically, you reach to stroke your hand over your vambrace, protective. “Worth a lot of money. You could go anywhere you wanted.”

Your words are sharp. “It’s priceless, actually.”

She meets your gaze then, a tiny upturn at the sides of her lips. “He could come too.”

You blink, eyes darting between hers, trying to gauge exactly what she’s saying. “I… don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The man you’re travelling with. Whatever he’s done… as long as you vouch for him, I’ll take your word for it. You can both start over.”

The feeling between your ribs is bright as a blade, and you stare at her for a long moment. She can’t know what she’s offering you. She can’t know how cruel this is; this impossible chance.

You can still smell his skin on your clothes from when he’d wrapped his hands in your hair and crushed your face to his chest that morning, holding you before you’d left. The thought fills your head; that vision you’d had watching him working. The two of you getting old, lazy and happy, scars healing. Falling asleep with your hands pressed against the heat of his skin for warmth. Waking in the morning to his lips on the inside of your thighs.

There are no words for this, so you can only shake your head, stiff and cold. She watches your face for a beat before turning back out to watch the horizon, the two of you quiet as the activity continues at your backs - the figures familiar with one another, calling each other names and joking as they load the ships.

 

-

 

Neither of you have said a word as you begin the trek back. The rain has picked up into a driving sleet; obscuring everything in front of your face. You can barely hear the sound of your boots on the ground, and you’re grateful Cere seems to know where she’s going, because you’re completely blind. If she wanted to lead you into a tree, she could.

You’re thinking about this just as you smack face-first into her back, air escaping in a little huff of surprise. “Hey, some warning would’ve be-“ She holds a hand up to silence you, and your words bite off in your mouth.

Squinting around in the blurred air, you can’t see a thing. You can’t hear a thing beneath the flat static roar of the rain. But standing close to her like this, you can feel the tension rolling off every alert line of her body. Something’s wrong.

Your head swivels, sheeting water stinging your eyes as you reach for your belt. And it’s at the precise moment you realise you’ve left your blaster behind that a monstrous bellow shatters through the blanket of sound, the ground disappearing from underneath your feet.

You’re on your hands and knees before you realise what’s happened, mud in your mouth as you push yourself up. The huge black shape charges up out of the gloom faster than should be possible, and you catch a close glimpse of jowls pulled back from yellowed fangs. You roll to miss the punch of an enormous, heavy foot as a spray of mouldering leaf litter blows up into your face. Panic forces you to move fast, and you manage to launch yourself toward the lowest branch of the nearest tree, your palms screaming from the roughness of the bark as you pull your legs up.

The creature bellows again, and you get your first good look at it. You’ve heard of these things; but nothing could have prepared you for seeing a fully-grown boar-wolf in the wild. It’s nearly double your height on all fours. Thick black fur stands matted along its muscled haunches, blowing wildly from its snout as it throws its massive head around, stamping at the softened ground. You hold your wrist firm, aim steady as you fire off a stim from the vambrace, but the canister glances harmlessly off its leathered hide, disappearing beneath its feet.

“Cere!” You can’t see her anywhere, but you’re hoping she managed to get out of the way before you did. You fire off another shot, and the monster roars as the dart lodges over one eye. Far from slowing it down, it only enrages it further and it throws itself forward, lowered head smashing into the tree. A shower of loosened drops pound onto your head and shoulders and you nearly fall off your branch, clutching panicked at the trunk.

“Fucking, fuck,” you hiss, jabbing at the comm panel on your vambrace. He said not to use the comms, but it’ll hardly matter if you’ve been smeared into a pulp on the forest floor. “Boba,” you pant, your voice ragged, “I’m sending you a ping, I need backup, I-“

It charges again, and this time the tree splinters right up the centre, the crack echoing back into your ears as loud as a lightning strike. Greenery explodes around you, and you barely manage to frantically throw yourself free of the mess before anything can smash into your head.

You hit the ground hard, twigs tearing at your skin on the way down. Scrambling to regain your balance, you watch in horror as the creature lowers its head, steam pouring from both nostrils. But it doesn’t charge at you; its attention drawn to the opposite side of the clearing. You follow its gaze and your stomach drops.

Cere stands motionless, her brows drawn together, a look of perfect concentration folded across her russet features. She’s not even running; she’s going to get herself killed, you think grimly, forcing your legs back underneath yourself.

You fire off two more darts, managing to lodge them around the soft skin of the creature’s mouth like a grotesque parody of its whiskers, and it whips its head around, squealing. Disoriented, it doesn’t appear to recognise which direction the darts are coming from as it takes several more steps toward Cere. Your shout is hoarse, but it’s enough to draw its attention back toward you. Its eyes meet yours and you see blind, crimson fury as it bares its fangs, thundering forward. You aim one final shot, depressing your fingers into your palm - and nothing happens. You’re out of darts.

You tumble backwards, falling flat as it lurches up toward you... and over you. Time suspends as you watch, uncomprehending, as it hovers over your head, feet kicking in the air above your face. How the fuck - but then your eyes focus, and understanding blooms.

Cere’s feet are braced into the muddy ground, legs apart, her hand outstretched and eyes closed. The tendons on her shaking arm stand out against her skin with the effort of holding on, and you watch as she grunts, pushing the monster away. Bright energy surges around her, unmistakable.

The monster’s squeal is close to a shriek, shoved hard into the broken point of the tree behind you. Shearing through deposits of fat and muscle, the spear of the trunk pierces clean through its body. Frothed blood bubbles from its punctured lungs, and it hangs suspended, its legs flailing uselessly. The tiny muscles in its snout twitch spasmodically before it stills, hanging dead.

“Kid. Kid? Are you hurt?”

You’re breathing hard, the roaring deafening in your ears.

“Here, get up.” She seizes your hand, pulling you to your feet. You feel like a puppet with its strings cut; gazing at her face, unblinking. “Did it hurt you? Are you alright?” Sweat stands out on her forehead, running from the tight steel of her curled hair. She’s frowning, looking you up and down.

The danger is gone, but your pulse continues to kick up faster and faster, blood racing beneath your skin. The roar grows loader, blocking out everything else.

If you’d stopped to consider what you were about to do, she probably could have stopped you. But you don’t think at all. The movement is automatic as you bring up your vambrace, her eyes widening for a fraction of a second before you’re smashing it into the side of her head.

You realise distantly that the rain has slowed to a gentle mist and the forest is quiet, though the pound of white noise is louder than ever before in your ears. You can’t feel your face; cold and stiff as you stand there, looking down.

She’s just an old woman again; curled in the damp litter. Her slight form seems reduced even further as she lays at your feet, a trickle of blood from the darkening bruise at her temple.

When he arrives, frantic and half-armoured, this is how he finds you: standing motionless, warm and protected from the weather in the soft woven tunic she’d given you several days earlier.

 

 

-

 

 

“Like this,” he’s grim as he presses her limp hands into a parody of a prayer and binds them in place, ungentle. “You don’t want them to be able to use their palms. It’s how they concentrate their magic.” You stand in the doorway of the prisoner cage, watching. Cere’s body is laid across the floor, her head leaning back against the wall of the cell. You’re jumpy; ready to throw yourself into action at the slightest twitch of her closed eyelids.

Boba straightens, looking up. He seems wary, armoured pieces at his chest and back looking out of place, only the vambrace on his right arm fastened. The way his hair sticks messily around his face feels incongruous in this circumstance; deceptively relaxed when you’re both anything but. “She won’t be able to hurt you. Just remember: don’t free the hands.” You nod shortly, arms folded across your body. He’s frowning at you, and his body looks almost as tense as you feel.

“Hyperdrive’ll be back online as soon as I reconnect the power cells. It was the last thing to do. The attachments were burnt through, I need to rewire the whole thing, but… if I work through the night…” he exhales, running a hand across his jaw. The line between his eyebrows looks deeper than usual. You still haven’t moved, but you hear yourself speaking, hard and flat.

“She had parts at the shop. Under tarps, at the back… I don’t know exactly which ones, or if they’ll fit… but she won’t be needing them now.” His mouth twitches like you’ve surprised him, but he responds evenly, gruff words stretched into a drawl.

“We’ll wait until dark.”

You nod again, wordlessly turning and stepping quickly back out of the prisoner cage and making for the ladder out of the hold. He follows, movements slow, like he’s waiting for you to burst into flames. Standing behind you in the dim cockpit, he tentatively rests a hand on your shoulder.

“You good?”

You swivel to face him, your voice steady. “Why wouldn’t I be? This is what we’ve been waiting for.” His face is inscrutable as you shrug out from underneath his touch, dropping into the co-pilot’s seat and drawing your knees up close to your chest. He stands motionless in your periphery for a moment before turning to head back outside, the distant hum of welding buzzing up from outside the hull of the ship.

The hours pass in lurches and swells, and you find yourself looking for individual raindrops on the viewport, trying to memorise their locations before you squeeze your eyes shut, trying to find them them again after they’re all blurred together. Your brain produces strange, disconnected thoughts: the delicious way the spicy stew your mother used to make burned the roof of your mouth, the lavender-gold sunset on Coruscant glinting off rows of passing speeders, the feeling of blood on your hands, stiffening as it dries, darkened and clotting in the creases of your palms.

You don’t move until the grey wash of light across your face darkens thick and close.

Pulling your jacket tight around your body, you quietly reload your darts, jaw clenching as you concentrate. You focus hard on every minor movement, thinking each thing you do as loudly as you can. Now I am withdrawing the empty cylinders. Now I am unsealing the tops. Now I am depressing the solution inside. Loaded and dressed, your spine is ramrod straight as you climb down to the hold.

The sound of your name gives you pause. And every cell in your body screams not to, but you do it anyway, glancing over to the prisoner cage.

She’s awake. Despite the runnel of blood at the side of her face, her gaze is steady and calm.

Your feet freeze, even as you consciously tell yourself to place one foot in front of the other and walk down the ramp. Instead, you find yourself walking closer to the cage door, vambrace nervously half-raised.

You stare at each other for a long moment, something warm bubbling in your stomach.

She speaks again, her deep voice hard. “You aren’t capable of this.”

Your breath escapes in an incredulous little huff at the pity in her expression. She’s your prisoner, and she’s feeling sorry for you? Your nausea clarifies into emotion, and the word delineates in your head: hatred. You hate her. The realisation startles as you stare at her, face smooth. You hate her for what she’s making you feel. For pretending you have any choice. You didn’t want to talk to her, but your lips move before you can stop them, acid in your voice.

“I thought you were supposed to be all-knowing. Guess those magic powers aren’t as infallible as the stories say. You said anonymous, right? Faces in a crowd? You have no idea. He’s a clone. A fucking clone. Tell me where in the galaxy we could go and not be recognised. I already made my choice, go ahead and read my thoughts: this is it. And I will be fucking happy to hand you over.”

She shows no sign of being surprised by the coldness of your tone, but a quiet sound behind you makes you turn quickly. Boba stands near the top of the ramp, armoured and waiting. He’s perfectly still, the helmet inclining toward you. You wish you could see his face, unsure how much he heard. But his low gravel sounds through the modulator, breaking through your thoughts.

“We need to get moving.”

You nod, hurrying to follow him. You don’t look back at her as you leave, chin raised.

 

-

 

The town is deserted this time of night; a small mercy. You don’t particularly know how you’d explain the absence of Cere or the presence of the armoured hunter at your side if you were to run into any of the locals you’ve become familiar with. You lead him quickly through the narrow maze of streets, forcing your legs faster.

When you reach the top of the staircase down to Cere’s shop, you’re halfway down the steps before something catches in your throat, and you throw out a hand to balance yourself as you stop. The control panel beside the door has a distinct scorch mark in the centre. It wasn’t there before. You freeze, and you’re about to turn and warn Boba when the door slides open and you’re face to face with a scaled, yellow-eyed nightmare under a curled horn.

“Thanks for the ping,” Makarial hisses, grinning to reveal rows of teeth. You nearly trip on the stairs, scrambling backwards in a hurry as the sound of blaster fire punctures the silence behind you. Dashing up to street level, you make it up in time to watch Boba draw fast and drop a figure from the rooftop opposite. As you spin to press your back to his, you watch as more shapes melt out of the darkness, weapons raised.

“So this is where you’ve been hiding.” The figure steps out into the light, and you see the mismatched glint of his eyes; one dark and shining, the other milk-pale over the flaps of his jowled face. A Sullustan, you think. A scar spiders outwards from the blind eye, and he smiles as he speaks. “Making lots of friends, sweetheart. Everyone in this town was very helpful in directing us to your little side job here.”

You lick your lips. “Still after me? I’m flattered but... come on. There are thousands of hunters in the Guild.”

His eyes crinkle warmly. “As lovely as you are, it’s Fett I have unresolved business with.” He shifts his gaze, addressing the figure at your back. “You owe me for lost revenue. Losing Kopollo’s cost me thousands.”

Uneasily, you shift closer to Boba’s side. A Kerglic leers at you from the shadows, inching forward. Boba’s voice grits through the modulator.

“If Kopollo’d been able to keep his mouth shut, he’d still be here. You pick scum for your crewmates, Surat.” You watch his gloved fingers twitch toward the flamethrower controls at his vambrace, and you tense, waiting.

Surat chuckles. “Fair. But there’s still the matter of payment.” A light flicks on in a window nearby, and you can hear the quiet murmur of voices. The whole town’s going to be awake soon.

Boba’s response is flat. “Hard up just at the moment.”

Now the Sullustan looks positively delighted, cold, sadistic glee leeching into his voice. “I wasn’t talking about credits. Blood’s as good a payment as any.”

You catch it just as it happens; the flash of silver from the end of his arm; and you manage to twist your body as the blaster bolt glances off Boba’s chestplate. The junction explodes into chaos, the Koorivar woman snarling as she leaps at you, catching you around the waist. Your ribs are still tender from being launched through the forest earlier that day, and a pitiful little yelp escapes as you both tumble down the stairs toward the shop door.

Somehow, miraculously, you regain your footing first. You kick out as hard as you can into the control panel, and it makes a distorted, low-pitched tone as the door slides open. Makarial follows you as you dash inside, her hands catching around the back of your jacket. Nearly tripping, your feet pound as you sprint for the back corner of the shop; a random mass of wires and parts stacked beside a row of prosthetic limbs. You barely stop to think, yanking a small connector cell from the stack and slipping it over one arm like a bizarre parody of the dainty purses women in the Core carry over their shoulders.

Makarial hisses, and you can hear her harsh breathing somewhere several aisles away. Mind racing as you crouch behind an arm big enough for a Besalisk, you gauge the distance from here to the door. And make your decision.

Standing smoothly, you throw your entire body weight forward, into the shelving unit in front of you. It goes down with a crash of glass and metal, hundreds of precious, tiny medicine canisters shattering into glittered fragments before it smashes into the next shelf, and the next, the whole shop thundering with the sound of destruction.

You don’t wait to see whether she makes it out. You’re already leaping for the door, still open to the street and flashing with the light of the fight outside. Fire flashes warm across your face as you make it up the stairs, Boba’s back is covering the entrance as he faces out, firing into the darkness.

“Got it,” you shout, shooting a canister out as a Trandoshan looms up out of the darkness at your side. Blaster bolts fly wildly in your direction, and you catch a glimpse of terrified faces watching from above the street level. Boba keeps his back to you, swivelling to fire as you both turn to run back out the way you’d come. The street is scorched black, the smouldering remains of some unfortunate soul twisted beneath your feet.

You run for a laneway at the side, leaving the cacophony behind as Boba’s boots pound behind you. And you know not to; that it’s more important to get away than to look back, but you can’t stop yourself doing it anyway - glancing back just in time to see Surat Nuat’s features twist with commingled pleasure and violence as he fires three shots in quick succession behind you.

The first misses, plasma shearing into the wall beside your head and loosing a small cascade of duracrete pebbles. You throw your arms over your face, shielding your eyes from the rubble as it sprays around you. You can hear a scream from one of the windows overhead, and you wonder distantly if the locals can recognise your face in the dark.

The second shot punches your left leg out from underneath you, knee buckling as heat sears straight through the muscle of your upper thigh, deep as bone, your ankle rolling under your weight. You’d have fallen to a heap if not for Boba’s arm firm around your waist, and you fight to keep your other leg moving as he drags you forward, limping wildly. At first you think you misheard the third shot when it doesn’t land, sure it must have flown wide over your heads and disappeared into the air.

It's then you realise you can’t hear anything, and your chin drops to take in the blackened burn just below your heart. The thought plonks hollowly into your head, only mildly interesting; you have no idea why you have a wound at your front. He’d been firing at your back. It went the whole way through, you think, impressed. You crumple.

Boba rips his helmet over his head, his lips drawn back from his teeth, eyes blazing. He catches you as you fall, one arm around the small of your back just as your limbs melt into disobedient softness, and you register distantly that you don’t feel any pain. You probably should, you fell hard enough into his hold you’ll probably have a vambrace-shaped bruise on your back.

But you don’t feel anything; your body cold. The last thing you hear is your name, raw and frantic, torn loose from his chest before your eyes roll closed.

Notes:

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Chapter 12: Prevail

Notes:

We made it to the end! I have some more notes this time, but I'll save them for the end.

I do want to quickly share a few supplementary treats I hadn't linked previously here.
This is the NSFW Alphabet I wrote to support my characterisation of this specific iteration of Boba.
This is a gorgeous piece of artwork based on AMA that my sweet friend Ellie created as part of a birthday collaboration organised by my beautiful Tumblr pals.

I listened to Bloodflood pt.II by alt-J and Islands by The xx while finishing off this chapter, just in case you're anything like me and enjoy having a bit of a soundtrack.

Warnings for this chapter include: descriptions of violence, graphic descriptions of injuries, mention of past death, PTSD, loss of a parent, references to murder, descriptions of unconsciousness, thigh riding, oral sex (f and m receiving), PIV sex, consensual somnophilia. As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you think I’ve missed anything.

“Stay out of sight, son.”

He was ten years old when he pressed his forehead to his father’s empty helmet. The metal had been cool below the heat of the day around him; hot rust-coloured soil baking beneath his knees as he crouched. The tender undersides of his small fingers had cut into the lipped edge of the metal from how tightly he’d clutched at it.

Those were the last words his father ever said, but it was not the last time Boba Fett heard his voice. He’d heard it even as he seized Jango’s body under the arms and dragged it to cover, his young body fuelled only by sheer terror. He’d heard it every day in the Republic detention centre when he was moved from his cell to the cafeteria. Hundreds of times, thousands. Hard, officious…subservient. On the streets, in transport ships, on Holonet broadcasts. “Yes, sir! This way, General!”  

He hears Jango’s voice now, telling him to watch his corners. Not to panic. Warning him that losing focus is the only sure way to be defeated. His jetpack is still hot against his back as he rips open a medkit, staring down at the unfathomably alien shapes inside.

He learned a long time ago that mindless anger is rarely productive. Better to be cold, patient. Wait for the best moment to move. But now he throws the whole kit as hard as he can, and it smashes against the prisoner cage. The grating rattles, the lid landing near the tangle of offcuts from his ship repairs. The ridiculous thought occurs to him to try the hydraulic parts. The welder; or the valves. At least he knows how they work, unlike the contents of the medkit. One of these coolant tubes could replace the burned mess of her lung; her laboured breathing a low, burned-dry crackle in the small space. It could work in theory. If he just knew how to do it.

But he never learned how to fix a person. He should have learned. He promises himself he will learn. The thought means nothing right now.

He drops to his knees beside her limp form on the floor of the ship and shoves her arms roughly off her chest. Her hands flop uselessly to her sides, the curve from wrist to thumb exaggerated in the limpness of their movements. Everything he does seems desperately slow—seconds passing faster than he can force his body to move inside them. Seizing handfuls of ash-dusted fabric, he rips her shirt open right down the centre. Exposed to the air the extent of the mess is inescapable. If this were a job, he’d already be mentally calculating the payment cut he’s about to take for bringing in a cold quarry.

The stretch of silence grows in length between each intake of her breath. A sliver of white shows under the edges of her eyelids, half open. Somehow this is worse than if they’d just been closed. Even as he knows the futility of the movement, he seizes a tiny macrowelder from the pile of parts, gloved fingers edging around her torso. He can’t tell which parts have been damaged. It all looks the same.

“You know that won’t work.”

He drags a thumb around the wound, feeling. It matches the one at the top of her thigh, a crater of skin, the fibres in the fabric of her clothes melted to the flesh. She doesn’t even flinch as he presses down, though he knows it should hurt. There’s something wet underneath the blackened burns, bubbling up from her lungs and rattling loosely. He can’t think of a single solution to this. He doesn’t know what to do. So he just holds his hands there, wrapped around her ribcage, his own breathing loud in his ears.

“Listen to me.”

He is a child, unable to carry all of the pieces of armour balanced in his arms. He is too small. But he still takes off every piece. He’s careful as he unlatches the plates, laying them beside Jango’s body, trying not to look too closely at his father’s neck even as he’s ashamed of his own cowardice. He’ll be reminded of this every single time he takes a hit to an unarmoured spot on his legs; the pieces he’d been forced to leave behind in the red dust.

“Boba Fett. Listen to me.”

His head snaps up. The woman is on her feet, her hard face against the bars of the prisoner cage. The Jedi. He’d almost forgotten she was there. But as awareness slowly returns, a new thought occurs to him, urgent and sharp. It breaks across his mind like hitting ice water from a great height. He yanks his blaster from its holster as he stands, stepping carefully over her body. The Jedi stands firm as he smashes the latch open with one hand. She doesn’t flinch when he raises the blaster to her face.

“You can help her.”

Her mouth is a hard line, and she doesn’t answer him. Furious terror sparks in his head. He pushes her forward. His voice sounds strained, uncontrolled.

“I know you can help her. Use your magic, or something. Do it. Now!”

“Threats won’t work on me.”

He roars, panicked heat rushing under the surface of his skin. Raising the blaster to press against the side of her head, he bares his teeth inches from her face. His stone-roughened voice breaks, but he finds he doesn’t care. “I burned your fucking town to the ground. I listened to them screaming. Don’t think I won’t do the same to you.”

She eyes him coolly, her posture rigid. If his words disgust her, she masks it well. “I know where you’re taking me. I have nothing to lose.”

His anger melts into useless, benumbed desperation as he recognises the naked truth in her words. He has nothing to threaten her with—he is weaponless. He could scream at her until the blood vessels in his eyes burst, break every bone in her fingers, all while the damp-quietened breaths on the floor behind him weaken and catch. He doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

The rain picks up again and hammers overhead. Taun We’s calm, slow voice calls him back from the water-dashed viewport, where he watches his father’s ship pulling away from the landing platform. Small toy starships litter the floor of the sterile white apartment, abandoned. “Boba, it’s time for your check-up.” The metallic crunch of a helmet cut free, striking baked soil and rolling away. He blinks.

The Jedi woman is staring at him hard, and his skin prickles. He has the loose, unimportant urge to find his helmet where he’d dropped it on the floor and shove it back on. He wonders how many times she’s seen his face. Whether she hid from it, whether it tried to kill her, at the end of the war. He wonders whether it scares her. He hopes so. Every cell of his body vibrates with this wish. And yet.

He feels hot and small in his metal skin. There’s too much space between him and everything else.

“You’ll grow into it. One day this armour will be yours.”

Silence has fallen behind him. He speaks without thought, as naturally as waking suddenly from a dream.

“I’ll let you go. Save her, and I’ll let you go free.”

She doesn’t betray a thing. Dark, sharp eyes meet his own and her voice is smooth when she speaks. “Maybe this time. But this’ll happen again. There’s no stopping it. Not if you keep going the way you have been.”

He doesn’t answer, but he knows that she reads his response anyway. He thinks of cold toes pressed against his legs. Upturned palms.

“Nobody in this galaxy is going to help you, Boba. We can only trust each other.” A string of hunters, using him for their own ends. Taking advantage of his anger and his young age, empty promises of revenge and meaning. Teaching him to become harder with every betrayal.

But he doesn’t think of any of them. And he’s not thinking of the Jedi woman, still analysing his features. He’s thinking of her, kneeling in front of him, packing gauze into his leg. A syringe in her hand, asking permission, wary and gentle. He remembers this more vividly than anything, more than the anger and the blood and the terror: her hands. They were steady, but her eyelashes trembled as she worked. The line of concentration between her brows. Her body, sighing and stretching out on a narrow cot. Waking up to the soft, sweet smell of her skin.

He looses the Jedi’s hands.

 

-

-

-

 

You drift, your limbs as loose as the swaying watergrass surrounding them. Looking up, you can’t quite see through to the world beyond; barely able to make out tiny scraps of sky wavering between the gaps in the scum-skinned layer coating the surface. Your lungs are like stones in your chest, and you burn for breath. But you don’t feel any panic. It’s cool down here, and dark. You roll languid inside your own skin, letting time pass slowly. You haven’t slept so deeply in years. It’s restful, until it isn’t.

Eyes twitching open against the light on your face, you don’t immediately realise what you’re looking at.

Your head is tilted to the side, and you can see out into the cockpit from the small bunk enclave. Blue streaks across your face, and you register the vibrations of the engines underneath you; recognising from the numbness of your fingertips that the rumble has been present for some time. You’re warm, heavy; sleep-soft and cocooned in blankets.  

It takes a few slow heartbeats for you to recalibrate to your surroundings. You furrow your brows, squinting into the gloom. You can see the back of Boba’s head bent over his carbine rifle, adjusting something within. But you feel like you’re still dreaming; his hair is gone, shorn close to the scalp. The cockpit looks oddly bare, as does he. He turns to look up at you, his face hard.

“You’re awake.”

You bring your hands up to your face, fists scrubbing at your eyes. You feel like you’ve been asleep for years, your mouth dry and sour-tasting. “How long was I out?” Your voice scratches your throat on the way out, and you wince at the sound of it.

He turns back to the work in his hands, inflectionless. “Two day cycles. Nuat shot you in the chest. Your leg was pretty minced as well.”

His words bring it all back in a burst of phantom pain, and you peel back the blanket to look down at your body. You’re wearing one of his shirts; soft and threadbare over your bare legs, the same one you’ve slept in countless times now. You sit up, raising your knees into a curl as you stare down at your legs. There isn’t a mark on them. But you can feel the memory of it—the heat in your muscle, ripped open to the bone. Confused, you slide your hands up under the shirt and run your fingers over your ribs, along your sides, cupping your breasts. There’s not much between you and the air; just his shirt, and your underwear. Your skin feels smooth, not even the raised outline of scarring where you know it should be.

You’re still muddled, but even in the haze of your bewilderment you know this isn’t possible. There were barely any ampules of bacta left on the ship; and even an entire fucking tank of it still wouldn’t have been enough to fix the level of damage you took. You saw it. You’re sure you did—you felt as the embers bit at the skin between your fingers.

It hurts to think about. Sliding one weak leg out of the blankets, you shift until you’re perched on the edge of the bunk. He watches you warily, the rifle balanced on his knee as you slowly stretch your limbs. Everything feels…good. Better than it has in a long time.

As you peer out into the light of hyperspace, you realise this is first time you’ve ever seen the cockpit free from the usual clutter of ammunition and ration crates. It’s immaculate. He’s even removed the scoring from the control dash; the displays gleaming dully. Your head is suddenly filled with the image of him spending hours in here while you slept, looking for something else to fix or polish, running out of tasks. And then your attention is drawn to a tiny dark shape swinging overhead.

You don’t immediately recognise what it is, because the light is gone. The puck hangs innocuous against the bulkhead. You blink hard at it, trying to clear your vision. You’ve never seen that happen before. You wonder how it’s even possible. The pucks don’t deactivate if the target dies; the theory holding that bringing in the body of a dead quarry is better than not bringing them in at all. You know you missed the last job, and this one must be long overdue by now, but…

“What does that mean?” you croak, pointing at it.

He doesn’t look up, his attention focused on the weapon in his hands. There’s a quiet click as he draws back the scope and tightens it with his fingers. You wonder if he didn’t hear you. But then he breathes slowly. “It means you’re dead,” he finally says.

You snort, and he looks back at his hands. You stare, waiting for the punchline. “If that were true, I wouldn’t be so fucking hungry. I could eat an entire bantha. Please tell me we have something better than veg-protein.” You aren’t sure how full the ration stores are; hazily, you remember a plan to pull in for supplies after the last job but it feels like it all happened a long time ago now. You half want to go back to sleep, but something nags at you. It’s important, whatever it is.

Beneath the bunk, his armour sits stacked in an orderly pile on the floor. Like everything else, it’s been cleaned within an inch of its life. Beside it, your boots are laid side by side.

And then you remember: Cere.

“No,” you breathe. You lurch out of the bunk, your legs shaky. He reaches to steady you but you brush past, swinging heavily down into the hold and landing awkwardly in your hurry. The prisoner cage stands empty, and you slump against the internal gyroptic wall, suddenly cold. His boots ring behind you, and you turn in time to see him follow your gaze.

“Where…?”

His face is hard, the fine lines on his forehead accentuated without the shag of his hair to cover them. His drawl is slower than usual. “I let her go.”

This time your snort bursts into a loud, loose laugh. But you know he would never joke about this; Fett has never let a bounty go in his life. The stories are legendary in the Guild—no amount of threatening, begging or bargaining has ever budged him so much as a millimetre. Not for anything.

“That was the deal I made.”

He watches as several expressions cross your face faster than you can taste the emotions underneath them. You’re furious, and terrified, and relieved, all of it wrapped in absolute disbelief. You hold the two conflicting thoughts together, the wild urge to turn the ship around and catch her before she gets any further, and the hope that she’s hidden herself well enough by now that you never see her again.

“We were nearly there.” You both hear the lack of conviction in your voice. “What are we going to do now?”

He raises a hand to run through his hair, remembers that it’s gone, and lowers it again. “We’ll reach Tiferep Major in another sixteen standard hours.” He enunciates each syllable in that low, gravelled tone like he’s wary of the sound of his own voice.

“What’s on Tiferep Major?”

He’s not looking directly at you, his attention focused somewhere behind your left ear. “An insurgent cell.”

Your brows draw together. “O-kay…” you answer slowly. It’s not a bad lead. If one Jedi was involved with the Rebels, it’s fair to assume that same thread would be fruitful a second time. “She might’ve tipped them off. We’ll need to be careful they don’t just blow us to pieces the second we hit the atmosphere. But I guess it’s as good a place to start again as any.”

He’s still standing stiffly in front of you, and your intuition crawls. There’s more that he isn’t telling you, and you have a horrible, dizzy moment of precognitive terror; the ship dropping out from under you and leaving you floating free.

“Tell me.” You deliver it flatly, no question at the end, and watch as he finally looks at your face. His eyes rake over you, from your forehead to your chin and back again. Something softens at the edges of his scowl, even as your own expression shuts down.

“They’re not going to shoot at us. They’re expecting you.” You wait, blood slowly draining from your face. When he speaks again, he sounds perfectly calm. “You don’t have to stay with them if you don’t want. Once they replace your chain code you can go anywhere you like.”

It is not lost on you that he stopped using plural pronouns as soon as his words hit the point of the rendezvous. Your first impulse is to try to ignore this. But you need him to confirm it. “What about you?”

“I have a job to finish.”

His studied neutrality is bordering on coldness as your face begins to burn all the way down to your neck. He’s getting rid of you. Or, he has gotten rid of you. Words return to you, muffled through memory and sea mist: as far as any records are concerned, Imperial or otherwise…they’re dead…faces in the crowd. The deal he cut with Cere. It wasn’t only to save you. It was to kill you, too.

You sound wheedling even to your own ears. “She lied to you. I sold her out; she’s probably already put me on an alert for every fucking hit in the galaxy.”

But you know the lightless puck hanging from the bulkhead confirms it. It’s already done. It rushes up to you: he’s cutting you free from his deal. He’s going to keep going, probably until he gets himself killed. You take a step toward him.

“No. I’m not letting this happen. I know why you think you’re doing this. You’re wrong.” Bounty hunters don’t live long. He knows this better than most.

He silently folds his arms across his chest as you advance on him, your righteousness crackling into desperation.

“You—you can’t. Fett, for fuck’s sake. You don’t get to do this without me. We had a fucking deal.” You press your hands to your sternum and feel nothing as you close the last few inches between your bodies. “I love you.”

And as he stares across at you, you see the moment something is released in the furrow between his brows. His dark eyes crease upwards at the corners, the lines of his expression spread all the way to the tops of his cheekbones. It isn’t a gentle smile; nothing about him is, but it isn’t hard either. It devastates you. You wish you could have seen this earlier. It seems terribly cruel that you may never see it again.

“I know you do, little one. That’s why I’m doing this.” There’s salt on your lips as you listen to his slow drawl, each word breaking in a new wave inside your chest. “Just give me some time. Once it’s done…I’ll have something better to give you than all this. One day.”

You both hear what’s between those words. The knowledge that nothing is guaranteed. That hunting rarely gets anyone truly ahead; often it only barely keeps you afloat. Even for the best of the best. It could take him another ten years to get clear. Even longer, because he’ll be on his own, having to supplement his income with standard jobs again. You remember that unspoken promise: that he would give you anything. And right now that’s a shot at a future. Maybe not the one you wanted, but better than nothing.

You fumble over the words, your tongue thick with sorrow and the unfamiliar cadences of the language. “Gar…dinuir darasuum.” You have given me a chance.

He exhales roughly and steps forward, catching you as you plow into his chest. Big hands cup your head, and you press your wet face to his neck. You don’t bother muffling yourself; you’re too angry. You claw at him, and he lets you. You rip the shirt he’s wearing, your nails drawing blood on the soft parts of his abdomen. Pulling him down with you, climbing over him on the dirty grated floor of the hold—all while he gently coasts his hands across your back. He’s a patient man. Irascible hunters make mistakes. He doesn’t; he’d wait a lifetime if he had to. Which is why everything he does is so slow. Even as you sink your teeth into his shoulder, his hands continue their steadily smoothing movements.

You push him flat onto his back as your hands fumble for his pants. You know it’s too late to change anything, but you let yourself pretend it isn’t. That maybe if you just made him forget about it, he’d let you stay. His eyes drift shut as his chest slowly rises and falls, a little trickle of blood running from the mark on his stomach. Licking a stripe along his cock, it twitches and stiffens as you clumsily take him in hand and stroke, pressing your lips to the tip as you do. His low groan betrays his perfect calmness as you sink your nails into the muscle of his thick thigh, and as you wrap your mouth around him you can’t tell whether the salt you taste is from his arousal or your own blurred eyes.

You don’t stay there long. You’re focused, just waiting until his cock feels hard enough to stretch your lips before you’re shakily dragging yourself up over him, leaving him wet and needing with your saliva. He watches inscrutable as you straddle him and rest your weight on one of his thighs, your knees cold against the ground. You’re still weak from days of unconsciousness, so your savagery is tempered. Probably a good thing, lest you rip him apart in your urgency. It doesn’t stop you from rolling your hips down, riding into the ache of your clit through your thin underwear. He shifts his weight under you, muscles flexing as you gasp, stretching and lengthening your torso with each inhalation.

His cock strains up toward you, but you ignore him for now, needing to feel the warmth of his body underneath you. You press your hands to your face as you ride his thigh, trying and failing to hold yourself together as the soft flame of desire rolls up into your stomach. Leaning over, you brace a hand on his chest as you crawl over him. He doesn’t take his eyes off your face as you grasp his cock, wrapping your fingers around him. You hook your underwear to the side, too impatient to wait, splitting yourself down onto his thickness.

Your head bows, your chest seizing with your breaths as you sink your hips down to take him whole. Fucking yourself as hard as you can onto his cock, deep enough to pinch, your gasps turn into sobs, pleasure cresting even as your face crumples. You cry freely, not caring, just wanting to feel him. His hands cup your thighs as he lets you take whatever you can, driving yourself further. It feels just as incredible as if it were the first time, or the thousandth time—just…right. Your bodies slotting together perfectly, hitting precisely to the places you need.

Your thighs shake as you reach a keen point of pleasure, slumping over him and grinding yourself down. It’s inelegant, and you know that with you leaning close down and tight like this it’s probably for your benefit only, but he sighs all the same, thrusting up shallowly, helping you. Your cunt soaks him as you clench around him, biting back a wail as your muscles contract and release. You need to feel it more than once, and you don’t slow your movements even as your legs begin to turn to liquid. Chasing it down again, and again, losing track and exhausting yourself past the point of coherent thought. You were weak before you even began, but now you feel almost immaterial wrapped around him: a mind without a body.

He waits until you’ve spent every shred of energy from yourself, gently cupping your thigh as you shudder. Your torso is slick with sweat as you lay over his chest, and he cards his fingers through your hair, his lips at your damp temple. Waiting until your breathing steadies, he gently shifts you as he sits up and his rough hands grasp under your legs as he stands. Your fingers dig into the skin around his upper arms as he lifts you heavily up into the cockpit, still moving slowly, infuriatingly calmly.

Laying you out in the bunk, he supports his weight over your body on his hands and knees. His thumb is careful underneath one eye as he catches the stream of salt there, kissing it off your cheeks, silent and cold before he finally begins for himself.

He draws the wet scrap of underwear off your thighs, tossing it out into the cockpit and lowering himself down to your aching cunt. You’re too drained to move, barely able to lift your hips to help him as he eases his palms under your legs and raises your hips up. His tongue moves slowly between your aching folds; overly sensitive from how carelessly you’d ridden him. Your cunt is tender and swollen, so the heat of his mouth soothes even as he draws you slowly up to another gentle climax, sucking at your fluttering hole.

His thoroughness seems bent on committing this to memory, as the sound of his lips shaping around your wetness drifts up to you loud and obscene. You reach to seize a handful of his hair and your fingers meet only the hot, closely-shorn prickle of his scalp. He’s missed patches and you can feel the roughness of tiny scabbed-over scratches where he’s nicked the skin. This little detail makes your heart lurch anew. You wish you could have done this for him. You could have cut his hair if he’d asked, keeping him clean and cool, ensuring that he didn’t hurt himself in the process of doing it. But it feels like more than a utilitarian change; a representative type of severance, designed to remind you both.

When he hooks your knees up and drives himself inside you, you try your hardest to roll your body up to meet him. Not that he needs it; he wraps both arms around your back and drags your loose body up close, his face in your neck as his hips buck into you without restraint. It feels inexperienced, though you know he decidedly isn’t. There’s no rhythm to it, no art—just need. His thrusts are sharp enough that your head jerks on your neck with each snapping movement, hard and deep and resolute.

When he comes, he doesn’t withdraw from you. He just pants, holding you still on his softening length, mouthing at your damp skin. Your muscles clench around him at the feeling of hot, thick spend leaking from the place where you’re joined, and you feel his cock twitch in response, hardening again. When he moves, he begins again slowly. You’d never thought to truly test his stamina before; always both tired and bloody and in need of rest before the next job. But now it’s incredible to think that he’d ever truly been satisfied before this, seeing his hunger for you. You’re too tired to keep crying, your fingers helplessly dragging at his back, his neck, his arms, doing their own small, ineffective part to keep the two of you pinned together.

He keeps you wrapped close, even as you drift away at moments, your body awash in pleasure and exhaustion and soreness and never-ending want. At some stage his lips on your shoulder move, speaking something into your skin. You’re too far gone to understand a thing, but the meaning is clear. He chants silently against you as his hips cant, his cock squelching loud through your commingled climaxes as he fills your cunt anew with every driving thrust. The bunk is a mess, cum all over your thighs and the sheets, drying across your wet legs.

When you wake up, he’s finally still, heavy arms tight around your form as he breathes evenly in sleep. It isn’t particularly comfortable; it’s far too hot, and you’re sticky and sore. The smell of sweat and sex lays thick over you both, and you itch to get up and shower. But instead you nestle closer and try to fall back to sleep.

It stays with you, this specific image of him. Standing alone in the ‘fresher, clippers in hand. He scowls at his familiar face while his hair falls around his feet. Cutting and cutting away at all that remains.

-

-

-

 

Tiferep Major is a blue planet, covered in softly swaying grassland dotted with distant rocky outcrops. Thin white clouds scud overhead, the field bowing as the wind combs through it. The grass is a deep shade of green, unlike the sun-drenched gold of Lothal, but the calming effect is the same. You’ve stepped back in time. You wonder if he knew it would be like this, or if it’s just a coincidence.

Your vambrace glints in the gentle light as you step down the ramp. Sloping paths lead out into the distance, and you double check to be sure you have the coordinates of an encampment only a short walk away. It’s beautiful: sunny but shaded, cool enough that walking at a brisk pace won’t warm your limbs past the point of comfort. Your bag lays heavy across your body. You don’t have much to take with you; just a handful of empty vials, some clothes and ration packs. One of his old shirts to sleep in. And enough credits to buy a brand new ship twice over.

He’d insisted on giving you the money, and you’d nearly punched him in the face for it. “You’ll need that more than me,” you’d told him, ready to threaten him if he declined. “You’re gonna be making up for lost time. And I’m not taking any of your fucking handouts. It’s insulting.“

His tone had broached no argument. “It’s not a handout. You earned it. I don’t take money I didn’t fucking earn. Don’t insult me.”

You’d glowered at each other. But then you’d remembered the flan you’d left behind the counter at Cere’s, probably smashed underfoot along with everything else, the shards ashes now. You doubt you’ll ever see her again, even if you decide to keep working with these people. But you owe her. For the clothes, and the boots. You tell yourself that’s what you need to fix, to make the whole thing right. Easier to place it into those simpler terms than the ones you can’t grasp. If you can’t give it to her in person, you’ll just have to use it for something she would have.

You’re thinking of this as you stand and gaze out at the day, listening to his slow spurred footsteps ringing behind you. You’re already planning it; maybe a little Class-2 corvette…or a Republic-era shuttle, retrofitted as a medship. You’re confident you can do most of the work yourself, and you have more than enough credits to hire help with the parts you can’t. Although the thought of asking for it is uncomfortable. You don’t know how much the people you’re meeting know about you—what Cere had told them. You do know that Tiferep Major is only the starting-point; that once you’ve arranged the details, you’ll be moving on again. With a new name, new credentials, a new job…you’ll be untraceable. Even for him.

He doesn’t say anything when you turn to look up at him, his helmet under his arm.

You can think of a million things to say. Promises, lectures, warnings. Telling him to get proper food, not just those ration packs. To sleep every so often, and make sure he doesn’t do it in the pilot’s seat because you’ve seen the stiffness in his back when he does. To watch that fucking leg.

You’d like to tell him that you won’t blame him if he doesn’t come back for you. That he doesn’t owe you a thing; he can do whatever he likes. Even if he wipes all of his debts and finds himself with the entire galaxy at his disposal. Even though it hurts, it seems like it would be a generous thing to say, something selfless. This would be your gift; the only thing you can do for him at this stage.

But all you do instead is lean up and kiss him, chaste and closed-mouthed. You pull back before he can react, not wanting to draw the moment out any longer, turning fast.

And you’d thought it’d be harder to do but in the end it’s movement like any other. A step, and then another, until you’re walking.

 

-

-

-

 

Boba Fett wakes before the palace stirs. It’s a habitual remnant from his time living among the Tuskens: rising from their bedrolls before the stars have faded fully from the ink-stained sky. As he eases himself to his feet, his skin stretches tight over his joints. The pit’s acid had burned deep, and the ache penetrates to the bone sometimes. Bathing helps, as do the slow stretches when training in the mornings. He’s still strong, though he is no longer a young man.

Stepping out into the cool air of the morning, the last of the night breeze settles around him. The scar-thickened bands of his skin are dulled from sensation, the nerves long dead. There isn’t much feeling left, but this he can still feel: the soft wind as it fingers around the sensitive slivers remaining, the small parts of undamaged skin in between.

The dunes dwarf everything. From here it’s impossible to tell what’s out there; dim shapes moving under the sky, Jawas, scavengers, sand skitters. A man staggering half-dead from a hole in the sand, a woman alone on her side.

One sun rises moments before the other. It hangs alone in the sky in the time before it is rejoined by its partner, and the desert holds its breath.

He waits.

Notes:

I just want to get a little bit sappy for a moment. When I started writing this back in February, I was looking for a creative outlet to help deal with some tricky personal life things. I never could have imagined anyone would read this, or that I'd end up interacting with so many people across different platforms and that I would make so many incredible friends. I just want to thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for coming with me and sharing this. Even if we've never chatted personally on Tumblr, the fact that you're here means the absolute world to me. The people who've left beautiful, thoughtful, supportive comments: you have no idea how much I treasure your words. Like I really do come back to reread them because they feel so special.

If you're one of the people I see in my stats who has been back with every update but we've never spoken, please don't be too shy to say hello on Tumblr (anonymously or otherwise) so I can say thank you properly.

I'll see you all on the next one! x