CW: chronic pain, hospital scene (mild) reference to injury, implied sexual intimacy
Ao3 Link
★★★★★★★★
You’ve been a regular at your favorite caf bar since they opened, walking distance from your little house on Gatalenta. You go in for a cup of caf and maybe lunch, get a little work done, say hello to other regulars. Today you’re at your usual spot near the bar when you hear the voice of a man you’ve come to loathe. He seems to know the town based on what you’ve overheard, but he must be new to the neighborhood because he first appeared at the caf bar last week. And every time he comes in he looks at you in a way that makes you want to crawl out of your skin.
Today, he sits right next to you. So you immediately start packing up your things to leave. The barista gives you a knowing look, but before you can step away from the bar, the man says, “Where are you going, sweetheart?”
Your shoulders tense up. “Elsewhere,” you say.
You haven’t even made eye-contact—it should be crystal clear that you don’t want to be bothered. But he insists: “You should stay. We could get to know each other.”
Then Brasso walks in, and immediately all the tension in your body washes away. Maybe the creep takes the smile on your lips as being for him, because he’s loudly telling you he’d like to take you out sometime when the barista interrupts him.
“This is so embarrassing for you,” she says.
Brasso meets your eyes as he quickly crosses the room, “Is everything all right, love?”
Upon hearing Brasso’s voice, the guy looks like he wants to jump behind the counter and hide. He’s clearly run into your husband in town before—your husband who is almost two meters tall and built like a load-lifter droid. When you show him your left hand, displaying your wedding ring, he goes pale.
Brasso takes your shoulder bag from you and kisses your cheek. Somehow the creep is still here, aghast, blurting out an apology—not for you of course, but for Brasso.
“Are you serious right now?” Brasso asks. And before the man can respond he just says, “Get out.”
If that man had a tail, it would have been between his legs as he rushed out the door.
“Thanks,” the barista says. “That guy is the worst but I’m not allowed to kick anyone out unless they’re starting a riot. Doubt he’ll be back anytime soon.”
“Happy to help,” Brasso says, reaching into his pocket for credits as she hands him his regular after-work caf.
“It’s on me today,” she says. “I owe you one.”
“Hardly,” he says.
When she insists on it, Brasso puts his fistful of credits in the tip jar.
“You don’t have to do that,” the barista says.
“He knows,” you say. “He’s going to do it anyway.”
He slides his arm around your waist as you leave the caf bar and you think that nothing in the galaxy could make you feel safer than this, the warmth of Brasso’s touch radiating through your body.
Brasso is wearing an oversized cable knit cardigan over a henley, a few of the buttons left open, with a pair of trousers that he must have had tailored—they fit impossibly well. He’d recently taken to leaving his work clothes at work, usually coming home in something more comfortable. And while you did find his overalls sexy, it’s been nice seeing him in the wardrobe of a man who has finally been able to make time for himself. To relax after years and years of uncertainty.
He catches you staring as he gets into the speeder, raises an eyebrow. “What?”
“You just look really nice, ” you say. “Very cozy.”
He shrugs, a bit bashful. In the back seat, you note a bag of groceries.
“Thought I might make us something special tonight,” he says. “Had to pick up a few things..”
“You don’t have to cook, Brass. I know it’s been a long day for you.”
A shipment that was supposed to arrive yesterday arrived late today, meaning two shipments had to be unloaded and taken care of almost simultaneously. He’d sent you a message earlier, letting you know not to expect him for lunch. But now he smiles as he starts the speeder, takes your hand in his, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.
“You know I have a full team, right?” he says. “It was a long day, but I’m more than happy to make us dinner. You’ve had a very long week, and you deserve something nice tonight.”
You don’t know what it’s like to live in a body that can do that kind of labor day after day and still have the energy to cook or run errands or take care of things around the house. To take care of you. And your week has been long, starting with straining your back at the market over the weekend, that strain just snowballing until you were panicking over whether you’d be able to finish your holonet orders on time. Brasso ended up sending a droid from the shop to help you—a little C1-unit with a curved, green dome who was more than happy to sit with you in your office and label packages, despite some sniffing and pawing from the two tooka residents of your home.
“Okay,” you say. “I don’t know how you do all of the things you do. Promise me you’ll rest tomorrow.”
“Anything for you, love,” Brasso says, pulling away from the parking space. “Absolutely anything.”
*
This wasn’t how it usually went for you. Usually when the two of you ended up at the med center it was you stuck in bed exhausted and hooked up to an IV. Usually Brasso was pulling up the chair to sit as close to you as possible, holding your hand, fretting as med droids came in and out of the room. But today on his way back from the spaceport Brasso’s speeder had been side-swiped. A hit-and-run. The med center had called you when he was admitted. And when you’d arrived, he’d insisted he was fine. But as soon as a med droid arrived to administer medications, you learned that Brasso had fractured three ribs and had severe bruising on his chest and shoulder.
You’d never seen him like this before, and you held back tears as you dragged that chair from across the room so you could sit next to the bed as you smoothed Brasso’s hair away from his face, revealing a cut he hadn’t mentioned.
“You hit your head,” you say. “Do you have a concussion?”
“It’s minor,” he said, taking your hand and kissing your wrist. “I should be able to get out of here soon.”
“I want to talk to the doctor.”
“I promise, love, I’m fine,” he said. “Nothing a little bacta won’t solve.”
“That’s what you said when you dropped an entire engine on your foot.”
“I should have been wearing better shoes.”
“But you weren’t. And I had to get Vetch to bar you from the yard until you’d healed properly.”
You’d never imagined that Vetch would be a regular part of your life but, after the war, the Urodel had reached out to Brasso, told him he was looking for work and he wasn’t keen to return to Ferrix after how things had ended for him there. He’d always been a bit of an outcast, a strange but sweet individual who—like you—had hoped that things would blow over on Ferrix far before they did. And when he ran, it was self-preservation—the fist of the Empire came down much harder on folks who weren’t human. You’d never been close, but he’d gone missing early on, and was one of the many beings that you thought about on those cold Ferrix nights wondering if you needed to leave before you disappeared too, hoping that every one of those missing beings had left on their own terms.
So you’d offered up your couch to Vetch for a couple of weeks, and Brasso had helped him find salvage work at another scrap yard. Soon he was back on his feet. And when Brasso was starting his own business, he’d asked Vetch to join his small team. Now, the Urodel was family. And when he’d told you that Brasso was trying to walk around on his broken foot just days after the accident, you’d asked him to do you a favor. Vetch was the only person you knew who could outmatch your partner in size and strength, so he was effective in making sure Brasso kept to the work he could do sitting down until the doctor cleared him to do physical labor again.
Brasso sighed, taking both of your hands in his. “I don’t want you to worry about me. This is not a big deal.”
The tears you’d been holding back began to spill over. “Brass, this is a huge deal. Do you know how lucky you are that this wasn’t worse? If I lost you—”
Brasso tried to sit up in bed and you put a hand on his shoulder to ease him back down. Maybe it was the pain in his ribs, but he didn’t resist. Instead he turned to his side and shuffled over, patting the cot. “I’m here,” he said. “Will you lay down with me? I just need to hold you.”
So you climbed into the bed with him, thanking the stars for its generous size due to the larger species that this med center also served. Brasso started to brush your tears away—but the familiar touch as he caressed your face with his rough hands somehow made you tear up again. And he pulled you close, wrapping his big arms around you, hazel eyes bright as he met your gaze.
“It wasn’t worse,” he says. “After everything, I’m not letting a speeder wreck take me away from you. It isn’t happening, all right?”
You nod, knowing he can’t actually promise this, but trying to believe him anyway.
“Those last few years,” you said. “Before you came back…I’d started to think you were dead. And for a moment when the med center called me—”
“I’m here, darling,” he said, touching his forehead to yours, his dark hair brushing your cheek. “I’m never leaving you again.”
He kissed you and for a split second you could almost believe you weren’t in a stiff cot in a sterile room. Running your hand through his hair, the ends just brushing his collar, you thought about all the silver strands that have come in, how many of your friends from Ferrix had never grown old enough to have a single gray hair. How lucky you were that he was still alive, this beautiful man whose face you’d seen on so many wanted posters for years, every day hoping he was safe.
“Say it again,” you asked.
“I’m never leaving you,” he said, his voice soft. “Ever again. I promise.”
*
It’s after dark when Brasso sends you to the couch to rest with a cup of tea. He’s rinsing dishes and packing up leftovers and rinsing dishes, the tookas pawing at his legs as they wait for him to put down a plate of scraps for them.
“Are you sure you don’t need—” you say.
“Of course I’m sure,” Brasso says. “You hurt yourself this week and you need to take it easy. Let me just finish up here and I’ll bring you something for your back, love.”
You sigh. He’s right. The pain isn’t as bad as the day before, but it’s still there and you know he sees right through you when you say you’re fine. He always has. “I just hate this feeling. Like one day you’ll wake up and it will feel like a burden, how sometimes I can’t help with even the smallest things.”
Immediately, Brasso is at your side, kneeling, one of his big hands resting on your knee. “Look at me,” he says. “I need you to know that that will never happen. I know there are things you can’t do, and that some days that will be worse than others. I knew that back on Ferrix, I knew that when I came to find you after the war, I knew that when I married you and I know that today. Darling, you could never, ever be a burden to me. I need you to believe me.”
“I don’t know what to say, Brass,” you say.
“Just tell me you understand.”
“I do.”
“Okay,” he says, pressing a sweet kiss to your cheek. “What needs doing is done. Everything else can wait until tomorrow. Let me get you the bacta spray. That’s been helping, right?”
“It has.”
He gets up and you can hear him rummaging around one of the drawers in the refresher, cursing under his breath as he nearly trips over the tookas chasing each other down the hallway. When he returns to your side he helps you apply the spray to your neck and shoulders, and then your lower back where the pain has been worst. You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding as you let Brasso pull you toward him.
“You’re too good to me,” you say, resting your head on Brasso’s firm chest as he wraps both arms around you.
“I think I’m just about the right amount of good to you,” he says. “Honestly I could probably do a bit better.”
You reach for his neck, the ends of his shaggy hair soft in your fingers, and he takes in a sharp breath that tells you exactly how he feels about this touch. When you ask him to kiss you, he obliges, his lips meeting yours with an unexpected desire.
“Do you want to go to bed?” you ask.
“It’s still early” he says. “But if—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s some really effective bacta. You sure?”
“I just want to be close to you.”
“All right, love.”
Brasso helps you up from the couch, leading you to the bedroom where he undresses you, his tender hands moving slowly over your body as he bends to kiss your neck, the stubble on his jaw brushing your sensitive skin.
“You tell me if I’m not gentle enough,” he says, easing the both of you into bed, under the covers.
“I would, but I know I’ll never have to.”
A stubborn lock of hair has fallen forward, obscuring his eyes, and you tuck it back behind his ear, eliciting a smile before he captures your lips with his, his deft fingers tracing the lines of your body, touching you in a way only he knows how. Because he knows you, loves you so specifically and completely that it was almost overwhelming.
As his fingers slip softly past your waist, you throw your arms around his neck and you whisper in his ear: “I love you.”
“And I love you,” he says, his hazel eyes catching the moonlight. “Always.”
★★★★★★★★
Some more Brasso comfort for y'all! Thank you for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.
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