maul week: piercing/chains
summary: Devon pesters Maul about his piercing and later decides she wants one of her own.
word count: 1,365
cw: none. just fluff and crack.
a/n: my submission for day 1 of maul week! @maul-appreciation-week
i girldadify maul because the horrors persist, yet i remain silly
Devon noticed it on a Taungsday in the middle of hyperspace.
Maul had been her master for the better part of a year, then. She trained with him, meditated with him, handed him tools while he added another unnecessary modification to his speeder. Living with Maul was surprisingly easy— both of them long accustomed to the few creature comforts their lifestyle afforded. So it was mildly embarrassing that she hadn't noticed the piercing until it caught the light of the blue kaleidoscope of stars.
Devon stared at it, openly. A simple, silver stud on the upper cartilage of his ear. She had a vague idea that Zabrak tattoos were ritualistic in nature, but this seemed intentional.
"What's the story with the piercing?"
Maul rose from the pilot's chair without looking at her. "There is none."
"Yes there is."
He didn't respond and left her alone in the cockpit. So, there definitely was a story, Maul just wouldn't tell it. Which made Devon all the more determined to figure it out.
She started with the obvious theories.
"Is it a Sith thing?"
They were elbow deep in the freighter's port engine— or rather, Maul was elbow deep in it. Devon was stuck on tool duty. Again.
He held out his hand automatically for the hydrospanner without looking. "No."
"I'm surprised you actually answered," she said, handing him the tool. "That's one theory down."
"Give me the thermal coupling."
"A Nightbrother thing?"
She asked this one over dinner after completing a successful mission for the Shadow Collective. They sat together in a corner of some shady cantina, eating sandwiches of dubious meat.
Maul stared. Chewed, swallowed, and reached for his drink. "No. And do not speak with your mouth full."
Devon smirked and wiped her fingers on the napkin.
"Were you drunk?"
Maul glared at her over the logistics readout displayed between them.
"It's an honest question."
He turned off the projection and walked away, leaving her in the dark.
"Was it a dare?"
"Devon."
"C'mon, you were young once. How old are you again, by the way?"
"The fuel lines will not flush themselves."
"That's not a no," she sang, flushed the line, and felt triumphant when Maul sighed.
The last one she saved for the quiet. When Maul was, not in a good mood, because he was never in a good mood, but a temperate one. They were grounded on some backwater planet, waiting out a typhoon before their rendezvous with the First Light. Maul poured over intel on his datapad, while Devon watched the wind whip thick sheets of rain across the viewport.
"Did someone give it to you?"
He didn't answer for a long time, but he didn't leave either, and his presence remained calm in the Force.
"Will you ever let this incessant probing rest?"
It wasn't a no, or chore assigned as punishment. His question sounded like it cost him something, and Devon, who was almost seventeen and not stupid, responded in kind.
"If it bothers you that much, I'll stop."
And true to her word, she didn't ask again.
The woman was so beautiful that Devon forgot what she was sent for.
She was a Twi'lek, older, maybe fifty, with skin the same shade of rose pink as Devon's own, dusty and weathered at the tips of her lekku. The woman haggled over a bag of spice melons with an easy confidence. A fine silver chain traced down the cone of her ear to a stud on her nose, and sparkled in the light when she laughed.
Devon wondered, briefly, if that was what her mother looked like.
She stared openly, cradling a bag of fuses she didn't remember paying for. The woman noticed and smiled. She waltzed up with her melons in a bag, and tossed one, which Devon caught with ease.
"Here you go, honey," the Twi'lek said, her voice low and coarse, from what Devon decided was years of smoking. "Eat more of these, and one day you might grow tall like me."
She grinned, the nose chain moving with her, then wandered off.
Devon watched her leave and decided, with sudden and total clarity, that she wanted that chain.
The needle came from the medkit, because Devon wasn't old enough to buy a proper needle. It soaked in a cup of rubbing alcohol, while she pored over the "How to pierce your own nose and not bleed out" forum for the fifth or sixth time.
Devon set up in the refresher with the door open, because she had nothing to hide. She had a mirror, a marked dot on her right nostril, a cup of ice, and a mostly sterilized needle.
She lined up the needle and pressed, then stopped. Breathed, and lined it up again.
"What are you doing?"
Devon did not stab herself in the face, which she would later consider one of the greatest feats in her apprenticeship. Maul stood in the doorway, arms crossed and brow ridge raised. Heat crawled up her neck.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" she asked indignantly.
"Like you are about to bleed all over the floor," Maul drawled, eyes cataloguing the arrangement on the counter. He crossed the refresher and plucked the needle from her hand, holding it up to the light.
"This is dull." Maul tossed the needle in the trash and pointed to the counter. "Sit. I'll be back."
Devon propped herself up on the edge of the counter, expecting a lecture. What she got was Maul returning with a sealed needle from the med stores, actual antiseptic, gauze, and gloves. He arranged them next to her on top of a small drape sheet.
"You're gonna do it?" Devon asked.
"Yes, because you were about to mutilate yourself."
Maul washed his hands, thirty seconds, Devon counted, and slipped on the disposable gloves. He cleaned her nose with something strong that stung her eyes. The marked dot, apparently, was not to his liking, because he re-marked it a few millimeters to the left. Devon crossed her arms, feeling like a youngling being fussed over by a nanny droid.
Finally, Maul had the needle in hand, tip pressed against her nostril.
"Breathe in and do not move."
Devon inhaled.
"I had a friend, many years ago," Maul said. "Her name was Kilindi. She pierced my ear for me."
The needle went through, a quick, hot sting, and Devon blinked back the water in her eyes. She stared over his shoulder, while Maul worked with oddly gentle hands. He slid the needle free and seated the stud. It was quick, practiced, as though he had done this a thousand times before. And Devon had a million questions, most of them the kind she promised not to ask again.
"Did you pierce her ear too?" she asked instead.
Maul pressed the gauze to her nostril and held it there longer than necessary.
"No. She was a Nautolan."
Devon laughed a little. "So how did you get good at this then?"
"Well, live as long as I have and you learn a thing or two."
The stud healed clean. Maul inspected it every few days, nagging at Devon when she didn't clean it enough, and snapping at her when she touched her face. She sighed and rolled her eyes, but complained only once.
Six weeks later, she found a box on her bunk. Small and plain with no note. Inside, coiled on a square cloth, was a delicate silver chain, one end fitted with a tiny cuff for the cone of her ear, the other with a clasp sized exactly for her nose stud.
Devon stood there for a moment, box in hand. She had journeyed alone to the market all those weeks ago, when she had seen the older Twi'lek. Which meant Maul hadn't bought this on a whim, and he must've followed her.
She smiled to herself and slipped the chain on.
Later, when Devon joined him for drills, she caught Maul's eyes shifting to the chain for exactly one second.
"There's no story behind this," she said, touching the chain. "In case you were wondering."
"I was not."
"Good."
The chain moved with Devon's grin.
taglist: @lady-aires@purechickenwing@deluliaa@shitty-pigeon-nest39@p-arapsychology@timeladymorsillon@limousinecatblog@erenstitanweave@thelilypadlounge@lady-bess@ninthqueen@weoweo8@night-erudite @anishinew@kimbasfanfics@lindseybaby@and-bone-appetit@jayleeslasher@aneccentriccatgirl @ive-made-so-many-mistakes
