CW: chronic illness, chronic pain, anxiety, nudity, implied sexual intimacy
Ao3 Link
★★★★★★★★
You wake when you hear his speeder pull into the garage. You’d been at your desk, working on a spreadsheet for the upcoming weekend market, making sure your inventory was accurate and your supplies were ready to go. But it had been a long week, and at some point, you’d laid your head down just to rest your eyes, and fallen asleep.
He’s in the doorway staring at you when you finally look up from your work. You hate when he sneaks up on you. But you do love to see his face.
“You fell asleep at your desk again,” he says. “This is no good.”
Baze enters your office and helps you up from your chair. You lean into his chest. Long gone are the days of his heavy armor, the khaki overalls, the weapons he carried when you first met. Today he wears his dark red leather jacket with the fur-lined collar—a jacket with the symbol of the Rebel Alliance on one shoulder and that of the Guardians of the Whills on the other. A parting gift, he’d told you, from an Alliance tailor. One of many colleagues who had taken to calling him Uncle.
For all Baze’s gruff exterior, he seemed to befriend almost everyone he met.
With one arm around you, he guides you to the living room and brings you a heating pad for your back. On the living room table is a steaming container of dumplings—a favorite from Baze’s restaurant. He brings in dishes from the kitchen, takes off his coat, unpacks several sauces from an insulated bag.
“Here, little bird,” he says, handing you utensils. “You have to take better care of yourself. Eat.”
You put a plate together, inhaling the comforting aroma of this dish—not only a favorite but the first thing Baze ever cooked for you, long before a fellow Jedhan veteran had suggested opening a restaurant. Now, waiting for your dumplings to cool, you ask him, “How long were you walking around on a sprained ankle last week? Trying to pretend nothing was wrong every time I caught you limping?”
Baze shrugs, opens a bottle of seltzer and fills both of your glasses.
As you eat you think about the early days when you were slowly learning who he was, trying to figure out what he saw in someone so his opposite, back when the little voice in your head was still telling you that he would leave as soon as he felt inconvenienced by your disabilities. But he never did. He saw your heart as much as you saw his, and you learned that he loved you as a whole person—the only way he knew how to love.
You smile, sitting on this sofa that you’d chosen together not long after you’d moved into this little house on the edge of town. “Well, everything is ready for the market,” you say. “Tomorrow I’ll be resting. You should rest, too.”
“Perhaps,” he says, placing the last of the dumplings on your plate. “Perhaps I will.”
He rests one of his large hands on your thigh for a moment, tender, before returning to his meal.
*
You’d come to Chandrila only a year before the Battle of Endor, barely making it off of your home planet before Imperial occupation would have made it impossible to leave. Now, with the destruction of the second Death Star you had hope that some of those still suffering under the Empire would find some of the relief you had found—but you knew the war wasn’t really over. Chandrila had become the seat of the New Republic government and as such more and more Rebels were arriving, both as refugees and as recruits for the New Republic Navy. You felt safe here. Chandrila was well-defended, and Hana City had become your home.
But you were also aware that when you came here you’d done so with quite a bit of privilege. While you were living with chronic pain and anxiety, you were lucky to have an old friend in Hana City who helped you get set up in an apartment, and introduced you to one of the admins who ran the weekend market where you could sell your handmade goods. And you knew that so many others were not so lucky—especially the children who arrived on Chandrila alone.
Your health had made you unfit for combat, and there were times when it had been hard on your heart to not be able to contribute in that way. But, now, as you settled into your new home, you had enough energy to commit two days a week to the orphanage in your neighborhood, reading with the kids, braiding hair, kissing boo-boos, welcoming little ones to a cozy, safe home.
It was one such day when you were waiting on the landing dock with warm, new blankets and soft, cuddly tooka dolls that you looked up expecting to see children with your usual Alliance liaison, but instead you saw him—a large man with a broad chest and thick arms, dark curls falling just past his shoulders, and the saddest eyes you’d ever seen. His armor was imposing—bright red and battle-worn. But in his arms was a tiny, half-asleep Rodian boy. A Twi’lek girl who couldn’t be older than eight clung to his leg.
You knelt on the landing dock, told the little girl your name, asked her if she’d like to pick out a doll. She looked up at the man and he nodded to her.
“You are safe here, little one. These people will take care of you.”
“Are you leaving, Mr. Baze?” the girl asked, tears in her eyes.
Baze knelt, put the sleepy Rodian boy down. “I have to go now. But I’ll be back.” He looked straight into your eyes and repeated, “I’ll be back soon.”
While you distributed toys and welcome kits to the new kids, the orphanage director pulled Baze aside. Requisite forms were filled out, more children accompanied by Alliance soldiers filed out of the transport onto the dock and you greeted them all with smiles and open arms. But in the back of your mind, all you could think about was the man with the sad eyes. Baze.
*
Baze puts his empty glass on the living room table and pulls you toward him. You snuggle into his warm body, the soft fabric of his long-sleeved henley, his muscular chest rising and falling with his breath. He smells of ginger and cotton and his herb-y shampoo. You reach to caress his bearded cheek, tuck his graying curls behind his ear.
He’s a quiet man, and there was a time when you thought you would drive him out of his mind with your constant chatter. But after a while you realized that he liked listening to your stories, your wild ideas, your long-winded rambles. Tonight, though, you’re quiet, too, a bit tired from your long hours of work.
Baze reaches down and tilts your face toward his. “little bird, how did I get so lucky?”
“I don’t know,” you say. “From where I’m sitting, I think I might be the lucky one. I’ve managed to snag not only a beautiful man, but an endless supply of dumplings.”
He kisses you then, his lips fitting perfectly to yours, a hungry embrace, the bristly hairs of his beard familiar and comforting.
You know he holds onto guilt—the loss of his faith, friends he left behind both on Jedha and on the battlefield, lives he took with his own hands during the war. You know he doesn’t believe he deserves happiness. But he still loves with his whole heart. And you are determined to give him all the happiness you can, to prove to him that he deserves it.
You take his face in both of your hands, gaze into his dark eyes. “Every single day,” you say, “I wake up grateful that I met you.”
What he can’t say with his words, he does with his kiss. And soon you are making your way down the hallway to the bedroom, leaving the dinner mess on the table, both of you knowing the tooka cat that’s currently peacefully sleeping in the window will get into the mess you’ve left the second he wakes up.
*
Two standard months after your first meeting, you’d begun to get used to seeing Baze on the landing dock when you went out to welcome the children. Today, he arrived with a human girl’s tiny hand in his. He’d begun to downgrade his armor, perhaps softening into this role as the war deescalated.
“Go on,” he said to the girl. “You will be safe here.”
She chose a blue and red tooka doll from you, and then turned to Baze, who—with another Alliance soldier—was guiding children off of the transport.
But like so many of the children Baze brought to the orphanage, this little girl was taken with him. “Mr. Baze, do you want a doll, too?” she asked, her eyes wide.
“No, little one,” he said. “But thank you for thinking of me.”
You laughed, and the girl was ushered off with a small group by another volunteer.
“The director said you make these?” Baze asked you. “So many of them. Every time I see you, your arms are full with soft toys.”
You’d heard whispers about him from other volunteers, about his participation in the Battle of Scarif, his history at the temple on Jedha. But you wanted to know his story, to hear it from him.
“A lot of children come through here,” you said. “Many of them arrive with nothing. But every child should have something soft to hold onto, don’t you think?”
He took your hands then, turned them as if to examine your palms, ran his thumbs over your skin.
“Something soft,” he said. “Yes.”
And then he filled out his forms and left.
You didn’t see him for a while, but some months later he arrived dressed mostly in plainclothes, without armor, and with a dark red Alliance jacket you hadn’t seen him wear before. He came out to the landing dock not only with kids but with luggage. And a man you’d heard about, but never seen—Chirrut Îmwe, who had also been a part of the ground team on Scarif.
“Taking a vacation, Mr. Baze?” you asked, using the moniker so many of the children did, nodding at his suitcases.
“His rank is Captain,” Chirrut said with a smile.
It took only a cursory glance at Baze’s new red jacket to see his rank pinned to his chest, but you could tell discussion of his military standing made him a little uncomfortable. The other man was teasing him.
“My rank was Captain.” he said.
You raised an eyebrow in response.
“He declined a position in the New Republic Navy.” Chirrut said. “I’ve been stationed at the Chandrila base, so one might even think that he’s following me.”
Ignoring his friend, Baze said, “Can’t go back to Jedha, so I came here.”
“Well,” you said, surprised. “Welcome home.”
The corners of his mouth quirked up into a smile, and you felt your cheeks warm.
“I have not seen Baze Malbus smile in twenty standard years.” Chirrut said. “But there’s something about you.”
“You have not seen anyone smile in twenty standard years,” Baze grumbled.
Two days later, he asked if he could make you dinner.
*
You wake in Baze’s arms, his chest pressed against your back. You will never get over the pleasure of his embrace, even on days like this when you wake with your whole body aching.
You stretch a little, trying to release some of the tightness in your shoulders.
“Are you awake, little bird?” Baze asks, almost in a whisper.
“Definitely not,” you say. “I am very much sleeping.”
He runs a hand just under the hem of your shirt, ghosting his fingers over your tummy before pulling you closer. His hand is a bit rough not only from the years of battle before you met him, but from his continued practice of martial arts. It’s therapeutic for him, not only a place to put some of his more difficult feelings, but also a way of keeping Jedha alive. Like the dumplings you had for dinner the night before.
Baze kisses the curve of your neck. “I thought I might draw you a bath,” he says. “But I guess if you're sleeping...”
Part of you wants to stay in bed all day long, to rest here, with this man touching you tenderly with his rough hands. But a bath would be so nice for your sore joints and muscles.
“I could wake up for a bath,” you say. “Perhaps if you join me. I could be persuaded.”
You turn over to face Baze, run a hand through his hair, and press your lips to his. He caresses your back, his fingers along your spine, and deepens the kiss. The sun has risen enough in the sky that you know you’ve both slept in much longer than normal. It is a day of rest, and when Baze gets out of bed, you can hear him going through the bathroom cupboard, jars of healing salts and fragrant soaps clinking against each other.
When you finally settle into the bath with him, and he’s rubbing the knots out of your shoulders, you feel a sense of relief that you’d once thought impossible. A relief that you have grown accustomed to since falling in love with this man—not just because his hands on your body are miracles unto themselves, but because in Baze you have found a home.
“Stars, I love you, little bird.” he says, pressing a kiss to your shoulder. “Do you know that? How much I love you?”
“I do,” you say, leaning back into his chest. “I hope you know that I love you just as much.”
“I could never doubt that,” he says. “Never.”
★★★★★★★★
Thank you so much for reading! I really just had to get this out of my system, but I have more ideas that I could build on if you wat more Baze stuff!
Tagging folks who might be interested in this: @princessxkenobi @zinzinina @galaxtic-writings @r1-sw-lover @laserbrains @waterpancakeao3 @strwrs @phoenixhalliwell @maul-ologue
A/N: idk why but this just screamed at me to make it after the battle of scarif so let's pretend that the last half hour of Rogue One didn't happen Requested by: (I forget who Bc Tumblr like won't show me the ask I answered and I can't find it on my own blog ) -You had been away when Cassian and Jyn had picked up Baze and Chirrut. You were a merchant who usually set up shop near the temple, and on the side harvested kyber crystals to keep them out of the empires hands. You were away trading on a nearby planet when the Death Star launched an attack on Jedha city. -Your heart sank when you heard the news, you knew your partner and his best friend had been there, and you knew that they had to have perished. -Armed with a large supply of Kyber Crystals, and all of your credits from trading, you set course for the only place they would now be safe from the empire: the rebel base - He wouldn't be emotional on the outside, but inside he had been missing you so much. He would hope that you were safe and hadn't for some reason ended your trip early and gone back to the city -You had arrived at the base under much suspicion, as you weren't affiliated with either side, but anything to help and anything to piss off the empire was welcome. -Bail Organa, knowing the value of the crystals, and the powers of the force within them, welcomed you openly and gave you shelter for safe keeping of the precious rocks -As days went on, you grieved, but still kept Baze close to your heart. Anything you did now would be in his honor. -You had heard of a rebel fleet attack on an empire base, but you couldn't get a close look at the makeshift team going to fight. You secretly wished that Baze could see this. You knew that this was something he would do without question. Little did you know he was right in the middle of it, and also at the same base as you. -When the heroes come home from a mission completed, you feel compelled to go and thank them. You felt that this somehow honored Baze's memory. What you didn't expect was to come face to face with someone you thought was a ghost. -The second you see him you're stunned to tears. Overjoyed and crying, you sprint to him, dirty and bloody in the hangar, but you don't care and you throw your arms around him. -"You're so stupid, baby. I thought you were dead. I'm never trading off world or leaving your side again" -He is shocked, and overwhelmed with joy. The usually stoic man is picking you up and laughing and kissing all over your face. -Introductions and reuniting with Chirrut can wait until later, but immediately you drag Baze back to your quarters. -You don't mean to spend days in your room until you finally emerge, but the two of you had to make sure the other was always still there. -You spent those days cuddling, talking, making love, and reminiscing. You rarely left each other's sight or each other's grasp. Distance truly makes the heart grow fonder, but the two of you promised never to leave each other's side again. -------------- Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
Requested by: Anonymous Baze: King of giving you piggy back rides and picking you up all the time. You probably could just be carried everywhere from now on. He finds your height adorable and he loves to keep you super close to him. He would always have you on his lap. Bodhi: He always greets you with forehead kisses and kisses the top of your head at random times. Definitely uses the word adorable to describe you more than anything. He loves when you have to reach up to grab his face to get a kiss. Cassian: Cassian would love it. You're so small and he feels like he can easily protect you. He has a lot of anxiety about his loved ones getting hurt but when he snuggles with you and sleeps beside you he can easily wrap himself around you and it's just instant bliss for him. Chirrut: Chirrut makes jokes, uses you as an arm rest/head rest, etc. He always has a really goofy smile on his face when he's about to do this so usually when he comes close to lean on you, you just wrap your arms around his waist and hug him tight. He gives a lot of forehead kisses Jyn: Jyn isn't that much taller herself, so she understands. But those few inches she does have on you make a big difference. She lovingly teases you about how the weather is down there and asks if you need a boost when trying to reach something. She loves your height though because she has to look up at most others too. ------------------ Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
Rogue One Preference: Using Internet Slang with Them
Requested by: Anonymous Baze:"looks like a cinnamon roll but could actually kill you" First of all he would be like "..... yup I could kill you" and he'd be really proud of himself and his killing abilities but he would not like that you think he's "cute" and doesn't look tough. But he would sort of warm up to it. Sort of. Bodhi: "precious cinnamon roll" You'll have to explain it to him, in detail. But once you do he'd be like "okay, well as long as I'm your cinnamon roll that's fine!" And he would start to call you his cinnamon roll. So he kind of would ruin the context of it but it would be sweet. Cassian: "get rekt " After you beat him in combat training, you would be so excited and blurt it out as you cheered yourself on. He wouldn't get it and he would definitely be like "is that so?" And then come back at you full force. It would be rough and push you even harder in training. So for next time, maybe contain your excitement and he won't have the incentive to fight harder. Chirrut: "fight me!" Okay don't say this to Chirrut he WILL immediately spar with you. He will think you legitimately want to fight and he will have fun with it please know what you are getting in to!! Jyn: "mom" You'd call her mom and she would be so confused but flattered?? Especially after you explained that it meant you looked up to her. She would treat you like her kid/little sister and take you even farther under her wing. ----------------- Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
Requested by: Anonymous Baze: Baze would honestly think you've been talking to Chirrut too much, and his boldness had rubbed off on you. He would say no at first, but it did not take much convincing to get him to elope. He could never say no to that smile. He would want a quiet ceremony, however, and make sure that it was practical but full of love. You wouldn't have it any other way. Bodhi: Bodhi was your best friend, and you knew how the two of you felt about each other, but honestly hadn't acted upon it because of your jobs. But this was your chance. Galen was helping him leave, and you knew you had to go with him. At first when you suggested, he thought you were out of your mind. But he too saw the opportunity that you both had, and took it and ran. Galen married the two of you in the cargo bay and you flew off to Jedha, happily wed. Cassian: He's honestly angry at you at first. He loves you but he doesn't see the practicality of marriage, especially a daring and secret one, while in a war. He admonished you for not being serious about the cause, until you explain how you can't lose him, how you can't carry on in these escalating battles without knowing that you and he belonged to one another. Seeing how much it meant to you, he could never say no. The two of you marry undercover on your next mission. Chirrut: He would be all for it right away. He would sense your apprehension in asking at first, but practically force you to voice your feelings. Eloping is right up his alley because he loves spontaneity. Your first kiss as a couple is very passionate and the two of you return to the temple, with a new sense of passion and pride not only for each other, but for what the two of you stood for as a couple. Jyn: She would be skeptical at first, she hasn't exactly grown up in a setting she could trust, and thought at first it may be some kind of trap. You have to calm her down and explain your feelings. Once she realizes that this is genuine, she's on board, even dragging you down the aisle. She would finally have someone that wouldn't leave. Krennic: Krennic would at first refuse. Elope? Him? As a status climber within the empire he couldn't imagine such a scandal. But marriage? That was something he would agree to. While it wasn't the carefree and quick ceremony you had wanted, you had your husband, and that was fine. ---------------- Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
Requested by: Anonymous -As protective as he is of you, he is of the baby. He's constantly holding the baby to keep it close and safe -you totally get him one of those baby slings so he can hold your child while still having his hands free -At first he doesn't think it's funny, but you catch him using it and then he starts to wear it constantly -One time he let the baby touch his blaster as a joke and you flipped out until you figured out it was disengaged and essentially unusable at the time -Letting the baby nap on him and refusing to move because he doesn't want to disturb the lil thing -He would spoil the shit out of that kid. The baby would have Baze wrapped around their tiny finger -Uncle Chirrut loves to play with his but doesn't babysit him because the two of you often also have to watch out for Chirrut -He plays with the child constantly and always uses baby talk. You find this hilarious -The baby is the only one allowed to yank on his hair and he's okay with that -Being a cute little fam that snuggles up together on the couch and relaxes ---------------- Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
Requested by: Anonymous -He is so protective of you. You gain both a significant other and a body guard with Baze whether you need it or not -He watches out for you in Jedha when you walk around the city and always makes sure you're safe. -Not much PDA but he's very physically affectionate in private. The affection you'd receive in public would be sweet and witty comments along with watching you to protect you -He's a huge romantic. It's not about grand gestures with him but a constant small way to show love, such as dinners or making sure you're always stocked with your favorite things -He's very romantic in bed and loves to worship you and be slow and sensual. He takes expressing his love for you very seriously -He loves to do special things for you every once in a while and will have a nice night with you where you and he make food together and then make love all night -Anytime you make a joke in bed it's met with a groan and then shutting you up with a kiss -He likes to wrap his arms around you to sleep and snores in your ear -He loves it when you play with his hair and massage his scalp when he's tired and he often lays his head in his lap and will fall asleep there -He also loves it when you pull his hair if you know what i mean -He gives those awesome hugs where he picks you up and spins you around -He loves loves loves to snuggle you because he seems tough but he's a total softie -He's a wonderful storyteller and you love to snuggle up and listen to him speak -The two of you lay in bed and he often tells you, with great nostalgia, how the temple was before the empire came along - Your favorite past time as a couple is watching after Chirrut and attempting to keep him out of trouble --------------- Request anything you'd like to see! My ask box is open!
