CW: chronic illness, mention of depression, sexual intimacy
Ao3 Link
★★★★★★★★
You still remember the day that Brasso left Ferrix. How he’d come into the little café where you’d worked, and asked if he could talk to you in the back room. How you’d broken the rules to allow this, because the look in his eyes was dire and it was so early in the morning that nobody else working was awake enough to care.
“I think the way things are going to go today,” he said, “I’ll have to leave Ferrix for a while.”
Your heart sank, your unspoken feelings for this man bubbling to the surface as you tried to hold back tears. For a long time now, you’d relied on Brasso perhaps more than you should rely on a friend. You’d never considered that a moment like this would come, even with the Empire pressing its boot to Ferrix’s proverbial neck. But you wondered now how you’d never once told him how you really felt. How many times had he sat with you in the clinic during a flare up, making sure the doctor heard you when you said you were in pain? How many times had he left work early to make sure you were taking care of yourself when he knew you’d been struggling with anything from a little cold to a difficult depression or a debilitating migraine? But that was just Brasso. He was like that with so many people. Today he was taking care of Maarva Andor who had recently passed after losing her son to…you weren’t quite sure what but there were a lot of stories about Cassian.
“I need you to stay here. Or even better, go home. Tell the boss you’re having a migraine, maybe. Actually...do you think you could leave town, maybe stay with your cousin for a bit? If you need credits to get there—”
“Brasso, slow down,” you said. “I know the Imperials have been been relentless, but this is a funeral. You really think—”
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
He took your hands, his palms rough from all the years of grappling in the scrap yard. From decades of being the one to take care of all the strays who ended up on Ferrix—be that tooka cat, droid or lonely neighbor. And something about his touch that day was different—an affection came through in a way you hadn’t felt it before.
“Okay.”
You took off your apron and got your jacket, told a coworker you had a family emergency and needed to leave on the next shuttle. Brasso walked you back to your apartment, your hand in his, the crisp cold air of Ferrix the only thing keeping you from combusting. When you finished packing your bags, he slipped a few credits into your coat pocket despite your insistence that you didn’t need them. And then, delicately, he touched your face.
“You are so precious to me,” he said. “Do you know that? I never…” he trailed off for a moment, closing his big hazel eyes, taking a deep breath. “I never had the courage to tell you how much I love you, but if something happens today and I never get to see you again—”
And you must have started to weep because you felt the wet of your tears on your cheeks, followed by Brasso’s calloused thumbs wiping those tears away as he begged you not to cry.
He leaned in, touched his nose to yours, and, almost in a whisper, asked, “May I?”
When you nodded, he brought his mouth to yours, pressing a sweet, lingering kiss to your lips. He whispered your name, as he wrapped his big, muscular arms around you, and you reached to touch his face in a way you’d only dreamed about, let your fingers slide into the close-cropped hair at the back of his neck. You knew in just minutes you might lose him forever.
“Don’t go,” you said.
“I’m sorry, darling. I made promises. But I’ll make another promise to you.” He paused, taking a deep breath before saying, “If I make it through today, I will come home to you. I don’t know when, or how, or even where home will be. But I will find you.”
He kissed you one last time, and you tried to savor it, to etch it into your memory, knowing it might be a while before you saw him again. Having no idea that when he walked out your door that this would be the last time you saw him for ten years.
*
When you got the message, you thought it was a cruel joke. It had been six months since the Battle of Jakku and you’d long given up hope of ever seeing your friend again. Your friend? No. Brasso was the man you’d loved since the day he’d stopped to help you pick up a bag of groceries you’d dropped walking home from the market. When he’d introduced himself, you were charmed. But you immediately thought that he was a bit older than you and, besides, you didn’t usually go for men built like a loader droid. Certainly he wouldn’t want to waste his time with someone who came with your kind of baggage—things not as easy to deal with as caf beans and meilooruns. But there was something about Brasso, how his face had flushed that day when your hands touched, how he’d walked you the rest of the way home, carrying your bags for you despite your insistence that you could do it yourself. How he’d pegged that as a lie immediately but never teased you about it. Not that day, and not any other.
And tonight as he stands in the doorway of your little house on Gatalenta, you’re so overwhelmed that you drop the teacup in your hand, the warm liquid splashing your ankles as it hit the floor.
“You’re alive,” you say, your breath sharp in your lungs.
“Somehow, yes,” he says. “You didn’t get my message?”
“I did. I just thought…”
He’s nervous. It radiates off of him—that half-smile, his hazel eyes full of questions. You invite him in, and when he steps over the broken teacup, you let him take you into his arms, relishing the warmth of his body as it envelops you, the familiar hug from all those years ago, the softness of his sweater. He bends to kiss your forehead and you feel the tickle of his dark hair, now laced generously with silver, grown a bit shaggy and falling soft around his face.
“I thought of you every day I was gone,” he says. “And if it’s too late…that’s okay. But I made you a promise. So I’m here.”
“Brasso,” you say, “There has never been anyone I loved like I love you.”
He drops his bags on the kitchen floor and there are tears in his eyes when you step back, leading him into your home. You remember how he told you not to cry on the day that he left, how you never made it to your cousin’s house but sobbed for days in a hotel room before the smoke cleared enough for you to go back to your apartment. You never felt safe on Ferrix again, but you held tight to the rumors that Brasso had escaped the planet despite the warrants out for his arrest.
So when he kisses you, and you taste the salt of his tears, you are so overwhelmed that you can barely stand. You help him out of his jacket, and then his sweater, and now in his undershirt you see scars you know he didn’t have before the war. But also new tattoos. Among them, on his left arm: flowers native to your homeworld, where your family had lived before you came to Ferrix as a teenager with the hope of starting a new life distant from the conflict.
And as you trace the lines of the blossoms, Brasso whispers, “I always kept you with me.”
“I thought I’d never see you again,” you say.
You touch his cheeks, the stubble along his jaw, and when you rake your hands through his hair he shivers.
“I’m here,” he says. “And I’ll never go anywhere as long as you’ll have me.”
His hands are at your waist and you guide them under your shirt and soon the both of you are underneath the blankets of your bed, his skin hot against yours, the scent of him intoxicating, his kisses escalating from soft and sweet to near desperation. You think that if you could only spend the rest of your life wrapped like this in Brasso’s strong arms you would never want for anything ever again.
“We can wait,” he says, “We don’t have to—”
You hush him with a kiss and tell him, “I don’t know about you, but I’ve waited long enough.”
His deft fingers slip into your undergarments as he kisses your neck, your shoulders, your sternum, your tummy and it’s both too soon and not soon enough when he ducks under the covers to taste you. With your hands in his hair you swear you can see stars, your tears finally spilling onto you cheeks, and beyond this perfect moment of pleasure you know that the home you’ve always dreamed of is finally manifesting itself in your bed, with no plans for the future other than a simple promise. And that’s enough.
★★★★★★★★
Thank you so much for reading! Something came over me and I had to write Brasso, like, immediately. So I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.
I have a taglist now! Sign up here if you want to be tagged in future fics. (And choose if you only want to be tagged for certain characters.) In the meantime, I’m tagging my taglist as well as some folks who have been reblogging my fics. Love y’all!
CW: chronic pain, anxiety/depression, reference to injury, implied sexual intimacy
Ao3 Link
★★★★★★★★
You knew you wouldn’t be able to hide your injury from Brasso, but you hadn’t expected him to pick up on it almost the second he got home from work. He’d just come through the door and had barely hung up his coat before he asked, “What did you do to your wrist?”
When you asked him how he knew, he said you were holding your datapad funny, then went to get the first aid kit—a very complete kit. Maybe it was all his years of physical labor, or maybe it was his time on the run during the war, but you’d learned that Brasso kept himself prepared. The first aid kit was one of the first things he’d purchased your household when he’d moved in with you after the war—he’d kindly told you that you scattered supply of bacta sprays and disposable bandages weren’t going to help if either of you had a real emergency.
Today, as he gingerly wraps your wrist in a cloth bandage and a makeshift splint, you’re grateful for this preparedness. And for his hands, the tenderness of his touch as he secures the brace. And you know what’s coming next.
“I know you don’t want to go to the clinic,” he says. “But you’re going to be miserable in a few days if you don’t get this looked at. Get a proper treatment.”
“I’m sure this is fine,” you say.
You’d had this kind of injury before—inevitable for anyone who works with their hands as much as you do, but especially for someone with your chronic condition. And Brasso is right—he’s had similar injuries himself, and though his good health means he recovers better than you do, he’s overdone it at the shop before, even around the house with some of his projects.
You remember back before the war when he’d hurt his knee in the Ferrix scrap yard, how he’d tried to go back to work injured and made it so much worse. When you heard about this from a mutual friend, you’d gone over on your day off with a hot meal, just to make sure he was taking care of himself.
From the look on his face when he saw you standing in his doorway that day, you should have known how he felt about you. You’d called ahead, so he’d been expecting you—but there was something in those bright eyes of his. At the time, you’d told yourself it was relief. That he’d been stuck inside by himself for a few days and was just glad to see anyone—even if that person was going to hound him about resting. But you know now that it was yearning, that you could have asked him that day to quit his job and take you to the Outer Rim and he would have started packing a bag.
“Love,” he says, cradling your injured hand in his. “Are you sure you won’t let me take you, just to see a med droid tonight?”
“You know how I feel about clinics.”
“I do,” he says. “I also know how you feel about me when I’m being stubborn about getting medical care.”
With your good hand, you reach for his face, the bristle of his short beard familiar as he instinctively leans into your touch. So many times, back on Ferrix, he’d been the one to sit with you in the waiting room, to bring you a meal at home when you weren’t doing well, to stop whatever he was doing to come get you from wherever it was that you were having a panic attack. Some men would use that to their advantage, to make you feel small or guilty—maybe somehow beholden to them. And Brasso never did. That just wasn’t him.
“Fine,” you say. “Just…give me a minute.”
Brasso gets up and puts away the medical supplies, packing them into the first aid kit before storing everything away under the sink in the refresher. He comes back with his jacket on—the jacket you’d gotten him for Life Day, green to match his eyes, custom tailored for his broad chest and shoulders, lined with fur for cold evenings in the yard. And he was beautiful in it—you stood to wrap your arms around his neck, kissing his cheek.
“What was that for?” he asks.
“Just for being you,” you say.
He smiles before putting on his winter hat and helping you into your coat. You’ll never get used to the fact that his are the hands that care for you in moments like this. That as long as you’d loved him, he’d been loving you, too.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ll pick up dinner afterward.”
You pause, just inside the garage. “I thought we were going to have the rest of that stew you made tonight? I took it out of the freezer earlier.”
“It will keep for another day or two,” he says, opening the speeder door for you. “You deserve a little treat.”
*
It had only been a few weeks after Brasso had arrived on Gatalenta when he’d asked you, “Why did you never tell me how you felt?”
You were in bed, and it was late, but you couldn’t sleep, the pain in your back keeping you awake. You’d told Brasso plenty of times that he didn’t need to stay up with you, but he’d refreshed your heat wraps more than once, fetched pain pills, and was now holding you as you lay face to face, the moon shining into your bedroom through a break in the curtains.
When you didn’t reply right away, he kissed your forehead. “It’s all right, we don’t have to talk about it. But you’ve never been one to keep that sort of thing to yourself. So I’ve been wondering.”
“Honestly,” you’d said, “you always did so much for me. I felt like I couldn’t offer you a lot in return—the way my health has always been, you know?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
With one of his big, gentle hands, Brasso caressed your cheek. “Who used to bring me hot caf at work every time it got out that I was stupidly hungover?”
“Brass, I lived spitting distance from your job.”
“And who made sure I ate when my mother died?”
You remembered the comm from Salman, asking if you could come collect Brasso. That he hadn’t been sure who best to contact in this situation, but he knew the two of you were close. He thought you might be able to handle him like this. You’d assumed “like this” meant “too intoxicated to be in public.” Nobody had told you about Brasso’s mother.
“I thought I was going to have to peel you off the floor of the cantina when I got that call,” you said, “And I wasn’t sure how I was going to do that. But when I got there— ”
“I was a mess.”
“Of course you were.”
“And you slept on my couch that night. Made me breakfast.”
“I didn’t want you to be alone.”
“You had a sandwich for me almost every time I saw you for two weeks.”
“You took care of everyone, all the time. Someone had to take care of you.”
“I’m glad it was you.”
You sighed. You knew where he was going with this. “We were friends,” you said. “That’s what friends do.”
“But it’s not,” he said. “Listen—I’ve always had plenty of friends. But I’ve never known anyone else who can stand to be around me when I’m grieving. Who can even tell when I’m having a hard time. Who remembered even back then not only precisely how I liked my caf but what I’d named the tookas that lived in the alley by the yard.”
“When you put it like that…I had no idea you were that lonely.”
You brushed his hair away from his face with your fingertips and he caught your hand in his, brought your palm to his lips for a kiss.
“I was, and I wasn’t. But stars, you changed everything for me, darling. I loved you immediately. Because you saw me.”
Brasso closed his eyes, his nerves perhaps coming to the surface when he realized how much he had just said out loud.
Cupping his cheek in the palm of your hand, you told him, “I love seeing you.”
He smiled, tenderly placed a hand on the small of your back. “Is the medicine working? How is your pain, love?”
“Better.”
“Do you want me to make you a cup of tea? The herbal one, for bedtime.”
“No,” you said. “Stay here with me. I think I’ll be able to sleep soon.”
He kissed you softly, his lips brushing over yours like a whisper. “All right, love,” he said. “Just tell me if you change your mind.”
You let Brasso pull you closer, breathing in the scent of him as you felt yourself drifting toward sleep, blinking back tears. Because as much as you’d always seen him, you knew that from the day you’d met, he’d always seen you, too.
*
It’s late when you finish at the clinic, Brasso still visibly upset at the dismissive human medic who had refused to treat you before you demanded to see a droid who would actually look at your wrist. The droid had immediately identified tendonitis and given you an injection and a prescription to pick up tomorrow at the pharmacy.
“I should have gone in with you,” Brasso says as he drives toward home. “I can’t believe so many doctors are still like that.”
You take a deep breath, your anxiety still high after the clinic visit. You’d told Brasso not to worry about you. It was such a routine injury—you figured you’d be in and out without incident. You’d been wrong.
“At least now we have dumplings,” you say.
Soon you’re home on your sofa, takeout bags on the living room table, tooka cats underfoot as Brasso plates one of your favorite comfort meals.
“You know,” he says, “I’ve been to a lot of places, but I don’t think I ever visited a world that didn’t have some version of this.” He hands you a container of sauce. “Every time I was served dumplings, no matter where I was, I always thought of you. Of that little place on the edge of town where we used to go.”
“You always knew when I was having a hard time,” you say. “I know gossip used to spread fast on Ferrix, but sometimes…sometimes you’d show up at my door and ask if I wanted to get dumplings and it was like you’d read my mind from across town.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever read your mind,” Brasso says. “But any time I asked you to have a meal with me I knew that you were joining me because you wanted to be there. Not because you needed a favor.”
“I also just really liked riding on the back of your speeder bike.”
You loved every second of those rides—it was almost better that your favorite spot for dinner was so far from town. You relished the way it felt to be pressed up against Brasso’s warm body, the wind on your face, how the world faded to the background when you were there with him. Even on cold Ferrix nights, you always said yes to dumplings, if only to be close to him
That should have been another sign as to how Brasso felt about you—the man asked you to dinner often enough, listened as you gave him the tedious details of a recent project you were working on or a rough day at work or even the echoes of an old trauma that had come back to the surface. You trusted him so quickly, and he seemed to genuinely want to hear what was on your mind.
As you eat your dinner, you think about that first day, when he’d helped you with your groceries, you’d been sure you’d never seen him before. But soon it was like he was everywhere—the cantina, the café, the corner shop, even just out for a walk. And, when you’d asked a friend about him, she’d told you that he’d always been there—you just hadn’t looked up long enough to see him. Maybe you’d been stuck in the fog of your depression. But the day you met Brasso, the fog started to lift. On some days, just a hello was enough to make things feel a little less dire.
And his eyes lit up when he saw you, too. You were just too afraid to read anything into that. Because the idea of losing him as a friend was too heavy on your heart.
“I thought you hated that thing,” Brasso says.
“The bike? At first, I did,” you say. “It made me anxious. Because I’d never ridden on a speeder bike before. But you always made me feel so safe. Even that first time—when you realized I was anxious about it you said you’d borrow someone’s landspeeder if I wanted. Something about that made the anxiety just melt away.”
“I was so nervous even to ask you,” he says. “I was talking myself up the whole way over to the café. I wanted to meet you when you were getting off your shift. But when I got there you were crying in the alley out back.”
“It was supposed to be a date? The first time we got dumplings—Brasso, you never told me.”
“That day it seemed like what you needed was a friend.”
“You were wearing that sweater—it was so soft. And you smelled nice. I remember wondering if you were wearing cologne”
“I wasn’t going to ask you out for the first time in my overalls, covered in grease.”
On any other day you might have noticed that Brasso had actually walked home after work, then come back on his speeder to see you, changed and cleaned up. The way the denim trousers he wore that day accentuated his thighs, his chartreuse sweater hugging the curves of his muscular chest. But you’d had a rotten shift and your knees were so sore you could hardly stand so you were trying to get it together before walking home. And then Brasso was there, pulling you into his arms, telling you it was going to be okay.
“That was a date,” you say, almost in a whisper.
“I wanted it to be,” Brasso says. “But then it wasn’t…and I didn’t really know what to do next. Not until the day I knew I had to leave.”
“Brass…I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
You lean in to kiss him then, cupping his face in your hands. Something tense in Brasso releases as he kisses you back, one of his hands cradling your neck, his mouth urgent against yours as he pulls you closer. You find the hem of his shirt, soon helping him out of it, letting your hands wander over his soft tummy, his toned chest, the strong arms that have always known exactly how to hold you. Brushing his hair away from his face, with the tips of your fingers, you kiss his jaw, and then his throat.
Almost breathless, Brasso asks, “Can I take you to bed, darling?”
“What about the dishes?”
“I’ll get them later. Right now I just want you.”
You follow him down the hallway, and he undresses you slowly, pressing his lips softly to your skin as he goes. When he finally has you in bed, and his clothes, too, are on the floor, he says, “I have always loved you. From the day we met. On your bad days and on your good days. Whether you’re healthy or not.”
“It’s tendonitis, Brasso. I’m okay.”
He touches his nose to yours, and this close you can hear his heart beating. “I still think about the time you told me you didn’t think you could offer me much,” he says. “But you know you’re enough, right?”
“Brasso—”
“You’re so much more than enough.” Gently, he traces the angle of your jaw with his knuckles. “You are everything to me. And I love you. All of you. Always. I need you to believe that.”
“I know that now,” you say, tucking a just-long-enough lock of hair behind his ear so you can better see his hazel eyes. “And I love all of you, too. Every day.”
You hear the rain start to fall outside, the droplets hitting your window as Brasso’s fingers make their way to precisely where he knows you want to be touched, your arms around his neck as he kisses you, and you run your thumb over your wedding ring, thinking how lucky you are that on that day you finally looked up and saw this man. That he was always looking right back at you.
★★★★★★★★
Another Basso fic in the books. Thank you for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.
I have a taglist now! Sign up here if you want to be tagged in future fics. (And choose if you only want to be tagged for certain characters.) In the meantime, I’m tagging my taglist as well as some folks who have been reblogging my fics. Love y’all!
