More from Beautiful Strangers.
—-
She calls his com.
“I’m about 5 minutes from your place, and I need a medpac.” She tries to keep her breathing level but she can hear it rasping down the line all the same. His concern is immediate.
“What’s happened?”
“Just some sleemo with a vibroblade. Don’t worry. But I’d rather avoid a med centre right now, for obvious reasons.”
She hears him swallow. Even across this distance she feels the incandescent surge of rage that flares up, before being quickly snuffed.
“I’ll meet you at the lifts.”
True to his word, when the elevator doors slide open he is there, pacing lightly, face tight. That doesn’t abate when he catches sight of her; she can only imagine how she must appear, tunic half-soaked with blood, slightly dazed with pain and her best Force-suppression attempts.
He puts a gentle hand to the small of her back - barely any pressure, just a suggestion of a touch, really - and guides her swiftly to his door.
Once inside it’s down to professional military gestures. He seats her sideways in a straight-back chair and carefully cuts at the seam of her shirt with shears. She’d take the time to complain - she liked this tunic, damnit - but keeping the pain at bay requires the bulk of her concentration and everything else is vaguely fuzzy. She’s missed what he’s saying just now, too.
“Huh?”
He gestures to her back.
“The wrap. Is it ok if I...?”
Oh, her bra. Well, under the circumstances. She reaches back to untie it for him and her shoulder wound screams in fresh firey protest. It’s sharp enough that her vision blurs and her stomach turns briefly with nausea.
“Stop.” His voice is a steady light of comfort through the choking haze of pain. “I’ve got it. Just sit still.”
He doesn’t ask her any more questions after that.
Once the bacta is on, mercificully cool and numbing, he delivers a shot to her arm and reaches for the bandages. There’s a memory now of herself as a child, open wound to her leg, asking for a dressing in tears. “No”, her minder had told her. “We do not cover our failures, child.”
But the thick blanket of dressing over her wound feels good, as Luke’s careful hands tape it in place. The painkiller is starting to take hold, and she risks drawing back from the Force a little, enough to allow her thoughts to clear a little bit.
Enough to realise she is topless in Luke’s dining room and he now has the warmth of his palms against her back, and he isn’t moving.
“Uh. Luke?”
He shushes her in response. He’s lucky she’s too tired to object.
She turns to look at him but his eyes are closed and his shoulders soft. “Healing” he says with the exaggerated shortness used to convey an air of concentration.
Oh, right. She closes her eyes and reaches out to see if she can join him.
A little while later she opens her eyes. Dusk has fallen and her shoulder feels about a million times better. She could even sleep on it, if she needed to.
Luke comes round too, yawning and stretching.
“How do you feel?” He asks her, and she looks over a shoulder and graces him with a smile.
“Better. Thank you”
He nods in acknowledgement. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Reaching for her wrap, she awkwardly shrugs. It hurts. Perhaps not quite as healed as she’d imagined, then.
“Not much to add. Some huge reptile with a back-up posse grabbed me by the main shuttle line. By the time I’d cleared the hired muscle he’d pulled a vibro, and you’ve seen the rest.”
“He just got in one lucky swipe” she grouses as an afterthought.
Luke nods, takes the ends of the wrap from her fingers and begins to wind it around. His hands brush the curve of a breast by her right underarm, and she suppresses a shiver.
“So you’ve no leads on who they were?” His anger is quiet but palpable.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” With a smirk, she leans forward gingerly to snag her utility belt form where it rests on the table. Rifling through a pocket she retrieves a small black wallet, which she opens and quickly flicks through before pulling out a data card.
<Character name>, resident of <planet> she reads aloud. Handing the the card to Luke she adds, “quite the looker, isn’t he?”
Luke looked from the card to her face and back again.
“You swiped his wallet?” He shakes his head in resignation. “Of course you swiped his wallet.”
“What, you thought I let him slice me for the fun of it? A little credit please, farmboy. Now we have a duracrete lead.”
His face lights up and he moves forward as if to hug her - then thinks better of it, instead he offers her a warm smile and says, “you’re brilliant.” The smile drops and he adds a rough punch to her good shoulder.
“Ow! What the hells?”
“That’s for putting yourself in danger for it. Don’t do that again; you’re not invincible. Now, I’ll get you a shirt.”
And still quietly glowing with pride in her, he begins to tidy away the medical kit on his way to the bedroom.
