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#It was the scar touch/almost touch that pinged my memory but realizing that the language Katara uses parallels Song too set me off
jicklet · 1 year
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2.02 || 2.19 Zuko at the beginning and end of Season 2 Bonus:
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#avatar#atla#avatar: the last airbender#atlaedit#zuko#katara#song avatar#v posts things#v watches avatar#It was the scar touch/almost touch that pinged my memory but realizing that the language Katara uses parallels Song too set me off#Zuko starts the season so stuck in his own pain#Song tries to connect and he's closed off because nobody can possibly understand him you see#until she shows him her burn and it shocks him#this girl who has been nothing but kind has one too. she can't have deserved it#what can that mean for Zuko who is going to need another season and a half to be able to say that what his father did to him was wrong#right now he still doesn't know how to acknowledge any of this to himself much less someone else#to reconcile it with how he still believes if he can just go home everything can be okay#but then he travels the earth kingdom and sees what the war and his nation's pride did to all these regular people#and finally finally he ends up back here again#though Katara is understandably not reaching out so much as lashing out#but this time Zuko is able to reach back and not only connect and empathize with someone else#but the fact that he can admit that the fire nation was responsible for one of the biggest losses of his life is a big step for him#and whether Katara and her spirit water would have been able to heal is scar is almost irrelevant#because ultimately it isn't about the scar but what it represents#he thinks people look at it and see all his shame. like if it wasn't there people wouldn't be able to look at him and Know#he doesn't get that people look at it like Song did#that here's someone who was hurt#and whatever he might have done he couldn't have deserved THAT#and it isn't until he goes and makes an actual shameful mistake of his own that he starts to see the difference
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hansoulo · 3 years
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whisper scarcely breathing
part four of “Pillar of Salt”
Pairing: Boba Fett/Princess!Reader (she/her pronouns, no Y/N)
Warnings: NC-17, NSFW, explicit language, mentions of canon-typical violence, fluff, hurt/comfort but without the hurt, bathing and/or being bathed, choking, female-receiving oral, loss of virginity, unprotected M/F intercourse
Word Count: 6.1k
Image Credit: (x) by @/365filmsbyauroranocte, not meant to be a representation of the reader
A/N: this one is for the boys with the boomin’ system 😩💦
༓ series masterlist ༓
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The datapad that you’d left in the garden was thrust back into your possession one morning by the hurried hands of a maid. Truthfully, you had forgotten all about it. The mind, when faced with matters as pressing as the press of a mouth, tends to forget about inconsequential objects.
You’d never met the girl standing in front of you before, and she avoided your eyes while passing over the small screen. She seemed eager to be rid of it. You couldn’t say you blamed her. “‘S yours, miss. The bounty hunter said you’d lost it.”
Did he, now?
“Thank you,” you replied sincerely, careful not to let the datapad drop to the floor as you tucked it back into the deep brocade of your gown pockets. You didn’t have the wherewithal at first to ask her when he’d found it or found the time to return it. But you also didn’t have the common sense to keep your mouth shut. “Could I ask when he gave it to you?”
The servant ducked her head. “This morning, your Highness. I- I was in the loading bay when they left, think he was tryin’ to get a hold of you but didn’t have the time, told me- told me to keep quiet ‘bout it.” A bob of her throat signalled a nervous swallow. “Princess.”
Poor girl, you thought to yourself absentmindedly. Boba probably scared her half out of her wits.
“Really, I can’t thank you enough.” You touched a soft hand to the servant’s shoulder in an misguided attempt to soothe. She returned the action with a nervous smile, eyes still downcast and trying not to shy away.
You never realized how afraid they all were. Of you.
The realization made your tongue tangle in your throat, tripping over some lie about a fever and champagne-induced amnesia as explanation for your exchanges with a man so ill-acquainted.
Hopefully, the maid didn’t make a habit of gossip.
Hopefully, you stopped making a habit of Boba Fett.
⫸———————————————— ⫷
A chaincode, a datapad tracking number, and the rest of your life flashed in backlit neon. You silently cursed yourself for not putting an opening passcode on anything, including the datapad that you now held with slightly tremoring hands.
In your defense, it’s not like it held anything of interest. Mostly just holonovels and some pictures of things you found intriguing enough to want to paint or draw.
But now there was a thing of veritable interest stuffed into a new folder titled “Your Highness” and glowing in galactic basic.
BF-18378-3263827
You stared at the numbers until they morphed into a strong, stern-featured face, muddy in your imagination against the ink night invading your bedroom. Boba left his tracking number there for you. If you wanted to, you could use them to message him or comm him or leave a holoprojection message. Whenever you wanted. Right now, even.
When did he even find your datapad? Why he found it (and why he returned it with the aforementioned numerical contraband) was probably a more apt question.
There was quite a lot to think about. Best to take stock of the present moment, lest you lose your head and go completely mad. As if you hadn’t already.
The facts repeated themselves in a half-conscious mantra, screen slipping out of your hands and onto the pillow beside your head. Facts. Facts were good. What were the facts, again?
Boba Fett was arguably the most dangerous bounty hunter in the galaxy.
Boba Fett was not much of a talker.
Boba Fett was a piss-poor dancer.
And Boba Fett was an unfairly good kisser.
The beginning three points held little negative sway, with the first adding much more appeal than it should, the second a welcome relief, and the third being… sort of endearing.
It was on the last point that your mind lingered the longest.
You didn’t even realize you’d copied numbers into the screen’s communications system until its microphone crackled to life.
One breath, two breaths, stuck in your sleep-thick throat. No words from either side yet. Did you get the tracking code wrong? Maybe. Maybe.
Maybe you were dreaming already, imagining the wind outside to be the quiet, husky inhale that sounded from the other end of the receiver.
“Not falling asleep are we, princess?”
Your eyes shot open. “No. No, I’m…” the words croaked themselves out as you fought down a yawn, “I’m awake.” His low chuckle. “I called you didn’t I?”
“That you did,” Boba assented. Quiet amusement colored his accent. “And you called because…”
“I wanted to,” you said simply, without room for teasing. You were too sleepy to be ashamed of admitting you sought out his company, as foolish as doing so was. No use in hiding what both parties knew to be true.
He let out a noise of soft approval and it rumbled a pleasant sunburst between your ears. “You seem to want a lot of things, don’t you?”
Makes me want… want…
Want what, Princess?
Want you.
You can have me.
The memory snaked a fever flush down your neck, over the still-tender skin and lightly mottled marks. Boba was remembering it just as well as you were. You knew he was.
It gave you a rush, a weird sort of power trip. Because as stupid as you felt doing this, wanting this, he wanted it too. Enough to let your hands thread through his hair and around his arms, then to the scar above his left brow and across his mouth. Enough to let you do it again at the risk of being caught. Enough to leave you his tracking number, like you were two teenagers trading love letters and not legal adults with judgement better enough to do otherwise.
You stayed on the comm for two hours, and only went to sleep because Boba threatened to cut your link off if you didn’t.
⫸———————————————— ⫷
It had been almost five standard months since the first time you’d spoken. Typed words continued to be exchanged under your covers, day after day, night after night. Sometimes you’d fall asleep talking, peppering him with questions about his ship and his job until your throat ached with the effort of keeping yourself awake. Sometimes you did more than talk.
He never fell asleep. Never seemed to sleep, period.
What a strange man. Strange, dangerous, interesting man.
You often missed each other by a hair’s breadth. Courtly flurry and galactic bounty hunting didn’t make much space for private conversation. Boba was still taciturn. You were still naive.
And yet…
You liked him. He listened when you talked about botany and painting, neither of which you imagined interested him. He was arrogant and cocky and insufferable sometimes, but he listened. He told you about his job and regaled your sheltered curiosity with lurid, gory details. He told you about his father.
And one day he somehow, miraculously, had a set of Nabooan watercolors left for you in the garden.
Biting down a juvenile grin with every new message, you watched the quiet ping! of the datapad.
hi
Hello
are you busy?
In a way
how so
Had a brush with Hutt’s rancor
poor thing
Don’t get soft on me now
wasn’t talking about you
Very funny
I’m very, very sorry
Should be. The bastard nearly tore up my flight suit
… show me?
⫸———————————————— ⫷
BF-18378-3263827 HAS ATTACHED 3 FILES
⫸———————————————— ⫷
HOLOCALL DURATION: 02:45:35 HOURS
SAVE CALL RECORDING? PRESS YES/NO TO CONFIRM
Your damp hands tremored.
YES
⫸———————————————— ⫷
Six months, four days, and 20 hours. That’s how long it took for you to see Boba Fett again.
You’d started to think the entire ordeal was a mirage, an illusionary experience your brain conjured up for you as a one-time brush with what your life could have been. Who it could’ve been with.
But you did see him again. Foolhardy, reckless, and unplanned.
You didn’t listen to his explanation about having to leave in the morning, taking some third-rate bounty as an excuse to come back to Quas Killam for the first time in what seemed like ages—practically eons since his mouth had last been at your neck. He appeared on your bedroom balcony near midnight like an apparition, mounted by a still-burning jetpack that shut off with an arc of smoke.
You’d been sleeping, albeit fitfully, and woke the minute his knuckles rapped against the glass. You didn’t remember ever telling him where your bedchambers were, but given… everything… you couldn’t say you were surprised he knew. When he crouched down to shed the helmet, it made a soft thump on the plush carpet.
And then you kissed. And kissed. And kissed.
Boba’s fingertips dragged fire across your prickled skin with every pass. Whose breathing was whose didn’t matter. It was hard, heaving, and shared. Eyes closed, lips raw, every part of you dizzy. Dizzy.
The sneeze that left you was loud enough to knock his forehead against yours. Hard.
Feet stumbling until your legs hit the bedspread, you let your weakened knees carry you down into a sitting position atop the covers and tried to catch your breath. Boba only chuckled, seemingly unperturbed by the mild injury.
Of course your body had picked today to come down with a cold. And of course you’d forgotten to tell him.
In your defense (you seemed to do a lot of self-defending these days) you didn’t know Boba would be coming tonight. When you asked him a week ago—the last time you’d spoken—he’d said “soon.” Whatever “soon” meant, you hadn’t anticipated it being now. Your rumpled nightgown and deteriorating personal hygiene was evidence enough of that.
The day had passed in fitful naps, with you waving away all attempts at help until the servants who usually tittered about decided to give you a wide berth until tomorrow. They’d left the door locked and your curtains drawn, thank the gods.
“A hello would’ve been nice,” you mumbled. The lingering taste of him in your mouth mixed with the bitter medicine that you’d forced down a few hours ago.
Boba didn’t answer at first, only stalking forward with his silhouette glowing in light of the full moon. You brought your knees up to your chest to make room for him to stand in front of you. Every movement was bathed in slowness, in the reverence of caution and night-time silence.
His gloved hand brushed against your chin and tilted it upwards, thumb rubbing a small circle into your jawbone as he moved your face in one large grip. Left, inspecting a swollen mouth and puffy eyes, then right. Up to see the column of your exposed neck. Down to meet his bare, dark face.
He kissed you again, more gentle this time. “Hello.”
A soft whimper left your throat.
Oh, you hated it. Hated the way you sounded when he touched you, small and pathetic. Needy.
The balustrade doors were still open, and this fact was made known by a particularly biting gust of silver wind.
“You’re cold,” the man standing close to you noted with a deep downquirk of his mouth. Boba never had to conceal anything; his helmet did that for him. But when it was off, every thought flickered past his face in evening technicolor.
Your hands paused in their run up your arms to hold petulantly at your elbows, covered only by the thin fabric of your shift. Goosebumps rose against your neck with a new breeze and you fought down the urge to shiver.  “M’not.”
“And stubborn.”
You glared at him, but it held no real venom.
“I appreciate the concern,” you sniffled again and your body trembled slightly. “But I’m the picture of health. I really have never been—” here you sneezed rather violently, crumbling any remaining sense of composure and making the final words thick with congestion, “—any better.” Boba hooked two strong arms underneath your knees and around your shoulders. “Wh- what are you doing?”
“C’mon,” Boba grunted and lifted you to his chest in one swift, easy motion. “Up.”
“I’m already up,” you grumbled, a headache you’d thought was all but gone now throbbing from the quick movement. Armor pressed to your cheek and you let yourself go pliant, curling up into Boba’s broad chest. He smelled nice. Like the outdoors. The real outdoors—not manufactured gardens or stone courtyards. No, dangerous things. Like deserts and leather and guns.
You queried him as he walked in long strides across the room. “Where are you taking me? Should have you—” another sneeze burned your airways, “—have you arrested for treason. A high crime or misdemeanor of some sort, kidnapping royalty...”
He only scoffed, shifting your slack body into his one-armed grip when he arrived at the entrance of your adjunct refresher. The door opened with a soft click. “You talk too much.”
Your head rolled back to face him, pressed so close already that the attempt made you cross-eyed. “And you,” a polished finger jabbed lightly at his chest plate, “are up to no good.”
You were only joking, but Boba didn’t deny it.
Green was your favorite color, even before you met him. It was the color of gardens. Of mint leaves. Of insects and jewels. Of him.
Gods, he was beautiful. Did he know that? Would he ever believe you if you told him? He was achingly, painfully, humanly beautiful. It hurt like needles.
The man set you down to your immediate protests. Funny how quick you seemed to change your mind. “Don’t whine,” he chided when you did just that, pushing you forward by the small of your back.
You walked into the refresher confused, that same confusion compounding when Boba strode over to the marble bathtub in room’s center with a surety that belayed the fact he’d never once stepped foot inside here. Were all bounty hunters this self-assured? Or was he just so full of bathroom bravado that your sprawling floor-plan didn’t faze him?
Whatever the case was, said bounty hunter was now crouched down on the tile floor and twisting the tub faucets until they sprayed out a gush of hot water, quickly filling the room with heady steam.
 “Hot water helps.” A still-gloved hand dipped an inch into the filling tub and deemed it acceptable. “The steam’ll clear up those sneezes of yours. And the headache.”
“How did you know I-” your mouth opened and closed before you realized you didn’t do a great job of hiding your symptoms. Maker knows you looked a sight, all mussed and tired and sticky with cold sweat. He should make a run for it now, you half-joked to yourself. He’s only ever seen me stuffed into a corset and done up half to death.
He got up with a grunt and turned back towards you. Beskar and durasteel and tactical fabric suddenly made you feel, for the first time in your life, underdressed. “‘S not hard to tell, princess.��
“Oh,” was your only response as you pushed off the sink counter, fisting the fabric of your nightgown in an unconscious display of hesitancy.
Boba’s heavy boots made for the door.
It was probably just to leave you some semblance of privacy, but you panicked, not wanting to be left alone now that he was finally here. “Wait!” you burst out, reaching a palm onto his shoulder before he could exit. “Wait. Can— can you stay?” Of course he won’t stay, you dolt. He probably came to sleep with you, not babysit you. “Please?”
Both of his hands curled into themselves when he turned back to you, their leather squeaking in the tight flex. Then, they released limp by his sides. Each word was carefully measured, slow-simmering like a pot about to boil over. Like a trigger finger twitchy on a blaster. “If you want me to.”
You answered with a bobbing nod and a swallow. “I do.”
⫸————————————————⫷
Boba Fett had long since forgotten he was a man. Instead, he was armor. He was a code, a set of  strict (albeit grey) morals, the steadfast honor he’d been imbibed with from the years with his father and then the years of tearing emptiness after.
Bounty hunters had no time for attachments. They couldn’t afford to humor every batting eyelash with more than a self-serving flirtation, and he’d had his fill of those already. He’d overflowed his cup ten times over with shallow pleasantries and quick release.
But those days were long-gone. Had been for years now. Now he was practically puritanical.
Had been, anyway.
He didn’t like thinking of himself as impulsive, wanting to leave the trait behind in his younger years but not being old enough to shake it off completely. But he wasn’t impulsive anymore. He wasn’t.
You were going to destroy him.
Low-ranking royalty on some Imperial-occupied factory planet; sheltered and pretty. You had the brightest eyes he had ever seen and a temperament that took no prisoners, and you were going to destroy him.
Boba thought you’d make him leave, but you didn’t. You wanted him to stay and told him so.
So he stayed. His armor was peeled off in your presence for the first time— carefully placed on a chair in your bedroom—and he walked back into the refresher to see you untying your flimsy nightdress like it’d done you a personal wrong.
When it dropped beside your feet, it took every ounce of self-control Boba possessed to stop himself from eating you whole.
He heard you kick it to the floor (his eyes had since been very determinedly fixed on a fascinating piece of groutwork near his left foot) before you stepped into the bath, sighing in a way that made breathing a work harder than it should’ve been.
His looking away wasn’t a request on your part, you didn’t seem to mind either way, but he didn’t trust himself to do otherwise. Not until the sounds of splashing had subsided somewhat, signalling your stilled motion. “Boba?”
Now there was permission to walk. Look down. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, the clawfoot of the bathtub. He had reached his destination.
A wet hand tugged at his belt loops and he finally allowed himself to look, meeting the sight of you sitting bare in the clear-blue water with legs pulled up to your chest. The arm not touching him was roped around your calves. Your chin rested on the wide, curved lip of the tub.  
If Boba had any self-respect, it had been snuffed out the first moment you opened your mouth, six months ago in that cavernous palace hallway with your failed attempt at bravado. It was haughty, short-lived, and adorable.
Maker, you were beautiful. Did you know that? Would you ever believe him if you told you? You were blindingly, effervescently, humanly beautiful. It hurt like needles.
The position of your chin forced your lips into a slight pout. As if you needed another weapon in your arsenal of ways to make him question his judgement. “Could you bring me the tray on the counter?”
Of course he could. He could bring you anything you liked. He would bring you a rancor, a dozen rancors, a fucking sarlaac if it meant you would smile all soft-like the way you just did when he answered yes.
Boba Fett, mercenary feared farther than he would ever live to travel and hunter too expensive for the Imperial payroll, was now a bath attendant. It was torturous in its sensual irony.
The tray was brought over in short order, cluttered with tiny vials of Maker-knows-what and bars of who-knows-how. Individually they probably all smelled nice, but crowded together the heavy scents only made his head spin. He set the tray down on the floor with a rattle and held up each mystery soap for your inspection. No. No. No. No, not that one. Gods, you were picky. No. No. Yes, please.
You were Miss Manners tonight apparently.
“It’s floating archidia,” you told him, mind running through an endless backlog of plant indexes as he handed over the soap. You sounded clearer now, less congested and more alert. Needed to drink water, though. “The flower that this is made with, I mean. Native to the planet Nubia, rumored to have euphoric properties.” You snorted and ran a thumbnail along the bar’s waxy edge, bringing up a curled pink piece. “Whatever that means.”
“Do you think it does?”
“Have euphoric properties?” you hummed, considering it for a moment. “Maybe. But maybe it’s just wishful thinking.”
“Wishful thinking,” Boba parroted.
The meaning of words can change when they’re repeated. Neither of your minds were on flowers.
His jaw tensed when you reached your other hand to his forearm, baring the rest of your body to the dim orange of the refresher lights’ night settings. The water rippled, warm now instead of steaming, and your fingers curled around the scarred skin of his wrist. “Take off the gloves,” you echoed, your voice suddenly desperate and distant as you traced over pale leather seams. “Please.”
He had refused the first time simply to toy with you. You weren’t used to being told no, and it showed. But he let you take off his helmet in a moment of thoughtless self-indulgence, scratching the part of his subconscious that itched to be touched, stroked, held. Shedding the helmet in front of someone else didn’t really mean anything in an honorable sense—at least not to Boba. Nothing tied him to the habit except a desire to keep himself and his motivations unknown. It was easier that way. Less messy.
He acquiesced. "Since you asked so nicely."
Wrinkling your nose, you guided newly-bare palms to knead gently at your shoulder blades. The skin there was soft and warm, pliant under his sandpaper touch. "Keep mentioning it and I'll go back to being difficult."
The soap made foamy bubbles across your back, over your arms and the velvet slope of your hips. Fingertips ghosted through the space between your jaw and ear, where he remembered sucking in a soft bruise.
He liked being known by you.
⫸————————————————⫷
You clambered out the tub with all the grace of a baby krugga deer and about as much shame. Which is to say, none at all. The subsiding cold had left you tired, bones like jelly and mind sloshing its thoughts around with no real order. Boba was here. Had stayed. Was standing in front of you now, watching tiny water droplets trail down your feet and letting you balance on his arm to keep you from stumbling.
A towel was wrapped around your shoulders. The press of his hot mouth against your forehead followed close behind. “Go sit on the bed.”
For some reason, you didn’t mind listening to him this time. Chalk it up to moldable exhaustion, you thought. Definitely not the fact that his voice sounded especially nice tonight, or any number of other questionable reasons.
He was going to ruin you. Or you would ruin yourself. Any way it was construed, Boba would play a part.
Still only in a towel, you drank the stale tea that sat on your bedside table and watched in mild interest as the mercenary’s shadow emptied out tepid bathwater with the thick glugluglug of the drain. It washed down soap and all your shared secrets.
Was it wrong that you still wanted him? More, now that he’d done this for you? Now that it wasn’t just cruel kisses and groping hands? What sort of a person did that make you?
Your mind whispered it when Boba walked back towards you. Someone lonely.
He helped you slide a new chemise on when you asked him to, quick and steady over the thin linen ties. I bet you do that with all the girls, you’d teased. No, he answered simply. Just you.
He was going to ruin you.
“Do you have to go yet?” you asked quietly and climbed under the covers. They were green today. Life enjoyed coincidences like that.
Boba crouched down on the floor beside your lying figure and shook his head. A wide fingertip smoothed away the crease between your brows. He was doing lots of touching. You were not complaining. “Not ‘til morning.”
“You might as well then,” you mumbled and lifted up the embroidered blankets with a sleep-slack hand. “No one’ll bother us, I promise.” you answered the empty air, too heartsick to comprehend any possible insinuations and too tired to realize the fingers tracing your brow bone had paused. “I told them all not to come back until tomorrow.”
His shirt and pants were shed in an unceremonious pile. You were already half-asleep when he climbed into the other side of the bed, slotting his legs against yours like puzzle pieces. Two question marks curled into each other, his chest to your back and his lips brushing your head.
“Goodnight, princess.”
⫸————————————————⫷
You were dreaming about him.
He was the burning sun that every single one of your thoughts had orbited around for the last six months and now he was invading your subconscious, dream-talons taking the form of dark hands rubbing soft circles against you and then invading your open mouth.
In your dream, Boba touched you softly and not at all, a tease even in your self-serving imagination.
Then you woke up, and it wasn’t a dream anymore.
Two thick arms encircled your waist with a grip unyielding in their strength. They’d pulled you impossibly close, pressed up against his sleeping body until every ridge of his muscled stomach could be felt against your back. Something else was against your back.
Your head reeled in its effort to sludge through the fog of sleep and reach the reality of masculine hips. They shifted in an unintentional grind against your legs until you couldn’t bite back the gasp that bubbled out from your voicebox, the sound quiet, keening, and lost in the shuffled sounds of fabric. It was still dark out. The water-clock in the corner of your room read 01:25:02.
You hadn’t put on anything underneath the new chemise. Why bother, when he’d already seen everything? Your body had grown to be a thing for display, a clothes-hanger and object to be prodded by strangers, and you’d long since rid yourself of any precocious modesty.
But this was different.
When Boba touched you, it wasn’t to sew flowers in your hair or drape a sash over your chest. It was simply to touch. The thought made you light-headed with newfound embarrassment, wiggling in his grip until you turned to face his sleeping form.
All the heavy things he carried on his shoulders during the day were gone now. His bottom lip pillowed out when he slept and he looked younger, the perpetual downturn of his lips now settled below the black hair at his temples. You felt a sticky sort of fondness settle in your chest.
“Boba,” you whispered, two hands placing themselves on his tanned cheeks. They traced the divots of scars and premature lines with all the reverence of worshipfulness.
“Mmm,” his voice rumbled with eyes still closed. A warm mouth kissed the side of your palm.
“Boba,” you repeated, more desperate this time but not knowing what you were desperate for. The space between your legs already knew what it wanted, hot and pulsing with a familiar dampness. Traitor.
“What do you need?” The question wasn’t accusatory, nor annoyed at your waking him. It was known that he would give you whatever you liked. Eventually.
You. Just you.
“I don’t,” you huffed, the fabric sticking uncomfortably to your now overheated body as you squirmed, “I don’t know.” Lie.
“Think about it and tell me,” he whispered, eyes opening in their dark, heavy-lidded expectation. The moon and stars suspended outside offered light enough to see the smirk on his face. His skin was the color of burnt earth and of gods. Somewhere, far away in the canopy of carefully pruned trees, a single lark let out its warbled cry.
There was an old adage about being like a lamb to the slaughter. You’d never touched a lamb. Never seen a slaughter. But somehow, you knew it was true.
This lamb, dumb and tender-hearted, was willingly sacrificied.
"I...'' the word left you in the arc of your exhale, one whoosh of air that rattled your chest already wracked with fevered tremors. "I- want you to-"
"You want me to what, pretty thing?" His voice was low, dangerous. It made every part of you want him more. "Say it."
You weren't used to cursing. It was never tolerated and you barely ever heard it, but you'd learned enough to know what he wanted you to say. Which word he wanted to hear, and what it'd mean he would do.
"F-fuck. Me." you choked out, biting your lip to muffle the embarrassment of having to speak it out loud. The word was filthy and raw between your teeth. "Please?"
⫸————————————————⫷
You were dying. Possibly had already died. Were ascending up or barrelling down, you didn’t care as long as his wet mouth stayed between your legs and never, ever stopped.
Wide hands cupped at your skin and kneaded wherever they could reach, simultaneously rough and supplicating. Every pass of his tongue was enough to make you feel possessed. He was killing you.
“Good. Good girl.” he said against your swollen skin when your hips arced off the bed, your spine and toes stiffening for what seemed like an eternity during the damp lightning finish. It sounded like a growl, animalistic and vibrating. A burning, sweet hurt.
Some people call it “little death,” a lady’s maid once whispered underneath her hand in a giggle. “Little death?” you repeated incredulously. That seems a bit dramatic, don’t you think?
You understood now.
Boba didn’t let up, never once letting his touch waver even as you buckled and swayed, all sense lost and all sensation compacting.  “Another,” he ordered. Your body listened, bending to his touch without complaint with eyes rolled back into your head.
You were dying.
⫸————————————————⫷
Boba let you lay against him in the downturn, rubbing mindless shapes into the bone of your wrists as you struggled to breathe. Your neck was cradled in one of his broad, bronze palms. It gave one tiny, imperceptible squeeze. An accident. A test.
You pawed at the hand resting heavy on your nape until it moved to leave completely, but was caught instead by your fingers and guided—slow and curious—to cup at your bared throat.
“Dirty,” the man noted in a dark rasp and rolled over to face you. There was a slight smirk in his voice, but that could’ve just been your imagination.
“I don’t see you...” your voice trailed off into a wheeze as Boba’s thick fingers pressed into the sides of your neck, “—see you complaining.”
He kissed you. And kissed you. And kissed you. An eternity was spent opening the seam of your mouth while he choked you softly, baring your pulsating soul with only your bedroom walls as witness to the present depravity. The air was filled with begging and grunting—simple noises that stuttered and left your sheets ruined.
You wanted more. You couldn’t help it.
His chuckle morphed into a groan when you reached down to touch him with widening eyes, squeezing him curiously after pulling down his boxers. “You’re a brave little thing,” Boba noted with a hint of greedy pride. “Never done this before, have you?”
Your own hands served as poor substitutes all these years. You shook your head no.
“D’you want to?”
Of course you did. This was the only thing you wanted. The only thing you would ever want, over and over until your body turned to dust under him. A million grains of fizzy, burning blaster powder. A million comets passing by a supernova.
You nodded and tucked your face into the space between Boba’s shoulder and neck, rolling onto your side and hooking a leg over his hip. Your chests met, damp with sweat as cool air flowed over bare skin. The covers had long since been pushed aside. “Safe,” you said in a heady moan over the shell of his ear. “Implant.”
Thank goodness for modern medicine.
⫸————————————————⫷
It hurt a little at first, but most of the discomfort melted away as he whispered to you, sweet and cloying praises alongside filthy things that you’d be hard-pressed to repeat in public. They wove together in an endless stream of baritone vowels, lapping over each other like ocean waves until everything was a gyrating, syrupy playback.
He let you move against him, mouth open and sloppy against your temple when you whined at the stretch. The hands at your back didn’t push. Only placated. “I know, I know,” Boba assured you with fingers rubbing sympathetic desire into your flesh. It would bruise, but you’d come to like the marks. Your hips bucked at their own accord when he pressed up against something tight, the friction burning a bright, numb spark. “Slow down,” he mumbled into your hair, “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Never in your life did you think this was how it would be. Your first kiss, more of a battle than it was a kiss, served as fuel for the expectations of your first time. Never in your life did you think he would be the one telling you to go slow.
It was for your sake, you knew that. But it was still surprising.
You huffed and bit the shell of his ear in childish revenge, blowing a puff of air where you knew it would tickle. Boba only growled and tightened his arms around your waist, rocking into you slow and deep. “Don’t tease,” he warned.
The new movements robbed you of the ability to speak until all you could do in response was lift your head from where it had rested on his shoulder, meeting impossibly dark eyes in lust-addled vision as a building pressure colored the entire world in shades of black, red, and green.
In a moment of complete and utter lack of propriety, you leaned forward, smiling like a woman deranged, and pressed a kiss to his nose.
Boba came undone the same minute you did. It was a rush of wet, rocking pleasure, spreading like thick webs of lighted fire from inside your blood and out to fill the room with quiet devotion. Panting, bursting, close, messy. You’d never felt so whole.
Your foreheads met and you went cross-eyed trying to look at him again. That’s all you wanted to do. Look at him. Uttered underneath his jaw, where the skin was smooth, was your finishing admission. “I love you.”
You didn’t say it to hear it repeated. It was just to give it a shape. Make it concrete. Said more to yourself than him, really.
But Boba did repeat it. Over and over and over. In the tangle of your arms. I love you. In the kiss to your breasts. I love you. In the towel brought between your legs. I love you. In the settled silence of new sleep. I love you, I love you, I love you.
⫸————————————————⫷
The watery light of dawn melted through heavy curtains and you awoke, body weighed down with lead and gold. Sweet soreness had made its home in your muscles and you were loath to get up, but the man you’d been using as a pillow had very rudely left his post.
“I have to go,” he said, already awake and standing sentry by your bed. You raised your head up from the pillows in groggy protest to meet his blurry figure. If you squinted, there were three of him standing there at once.
A shake of your head rid your vision of the doubles, leaving the lone man. He kissed you—quick and dirty, with tongue—and squeezed your exposed breast, prompting a low moan to tumble from your mouth before he slipped his blaster into the holster at his hip. It wasn’t even 6 in the morning and you were thoroughly debauched. What a scandal, you thought (not for the first time) with passing amusement. A bounty hunter and a princess.
Watching in a dim haze as Boba finished strapping on his amor, you tracked the reflection of the sun in the metal’s lazy movement.
He leaned over you. “I’ll be back soon.” Soon. What did soon mean? Another kiss, slow and careful on the bow of your mouth. One more on the slope of your forehead. For luck, you supposed. Whether it was for you or him didn’t matter much. “Promise.”
Slowly, as he climbed out onto your balcony and was gone with a flash of jetpack light, you wondered if it was a mirage; a dream, maybe. The entire night a hallucinatory haze, a figment of your overactive imagination and reckless romanticism.
But the towel left discarded on the floor and the pulsing ache between your legs was very, very real.
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