Gary: Let’s go over this one more time. Just to make sure I understand the situation… You’re a girl?
Alanna: Yes.
Gary: Oh gosh darn it, I just don’t understand the situation!
Joren: What’s the matter? Don’t girls like doing pushups in the mud?
Kel: Is there any answer I can give that won’t result in more pushups?
*Joren and his cronies confer in whispers*
Joren: No.
This may be too many prompts, and you totally don't have to do all of them, but how about 23, 35 or 43 for Baze/Chirrut?
(Oh man, oh man. This is one late prompt. I apologize. I don’t know that this needs any warnings other than standard Baze has some self-doubt issues. And his faith is waning issues. On the whole, though, this one is pretty sappy. By my standards, which means I’ll likely still be making people sad.)
35. I hate trying to put my desire into words when my body knows exactly what to say. Come home. (You can’t start a fire without a spark.)
Baze Malbus is an imperfect man. He knows this well. He is quiet and solitary, preferring the edges of existence to being in the crush of the crowd. All of his favorite pastimes involve himself and his hands, working alone to create something or, more and more often, to destroy something, but that is the way of the universe these days and not entirely his fault. Baze has always tried to be an altruistic man, tried to put the needs of others before his own, though often from the sidelines and with no hint of recognition for it because deeds done for glory alone should not be done at all. In his mind, it is an act of being selfless even if others, especially those closest to him, have in irritated tones indicated that it is more like a martyrdom than anything else, that accepting a little pittance for a thing well done is not a blight on one’s character. These are words that Baze hears but lets slip over him like rain off his gear.
Even as a Guardian of the Whills, which he thought would always be his best calling, his faith has been put to the test and found wanting. More and more with every day and with every move the Empire makes, infringing on their life and their temple, his trust in the Force wanes, wavers, threatens to snap like the gossamer filament of the spider’s web when walked through. A thing can only be pulled so tight before it breaks and even Baze, who has been called patient and pliant and devoted, can only take so much before he cracks. It is another sign of being an imperfect man.
These things do not bother him. Much. In the light of day. By night when there is little else to think on, when the wind blows in through the windows and fills the halls and his ears with sighing, it’s hard not to linger on all the ways in which he is found wanting. Though it is always easier with Chirrut, warm, at his side. Chirrut with his smiles and his eye rolling and his endless stream of words. It is funny how a man who could get along very well without speaking falls in love with one who never seems to stop talking. Baze has always enjoyed listening and laughing. Chirrut is one of the few people who can get him to laugh and who always says things worth listening to even when they are nonsense. Baze would listen to Chirrut recite the alphabet. Baze would put his head in Chirrut’s lap and let him run his fingers through his hair while reciting every line from every Whills document in the archive even though he knows them all by heart. Baze would bend and break and melt if Chirrut asked him, hang the stars, destroy the sun, fill a dried up riverbed with his tears, which are numerous and gather in his heart and in the pit of his stomach, a sea that he dares not let loose even though Chirrut chides him that he will drown himself from the inside out at this rate. Baze Malbus is an imperfect man in love with a man who seems to have been created from kyber crystals, from the Force, but also from some hard, impenetrable, angry chunk of Jedha itself.
Baze Malbus is pliant and patient and devoted (and kind, too soft-hearted for his own good), but Chirrut Imwe is stubborn and angry and driven (and funny, gentle when necessary, fond of children and animals.)
They are both imperfect men, Baze supposes, as he wanders through the marketplace of NiJedha, a tall and intimidating figure always attempting to make itself smaller, less imposing, melt into the crowd and be left alone. Chirrut always remarks how much of a pity it is that a handsome man like Baze does not wish to be looked at, does not want to be seen, would rather sink into the ground and stones and be nothing more than the background of their moon itself. Baze always counters with the fact that he is only handsome to Chirrut, only wants to be seen by Chirrut, which makes the other man click his tongue, and shake his head, and sigh like Baze is possibly the biggest fool he has ever met. This is not true even by half. Of the two of them, Chirrut is the bigger fool, and the scars across his body that Baze touches in the night speak to the truth of this fact.
Baze Malbus is an imperfect man who is, day by day, failing his faith and his temple and his people and himself. All of the roles that he has carefully cultivated since he was young are being taken away, and he is molding himself into something new, a mercenary with a gun, a destroyer of the Empire instead of a protector of the Force. Baze has been called patient and pliant and devoted, and he does not necessarily think that he is losing those traits, just changing them to fit with the new way the universe is flowing. It is not easy, but he has never wanted easy.
A man who wanted easy would never have even gotten near Chirrut Imwe. A man who wanted easy would have fled the moment he discovered that he had fallen in love with the reckless, gorgeous, posturing fool, the glory of the temple of the Whills in his own eyes, the preferred foundling of the Force.
No, Baze has never wanted easy. He has only ever wanted Chirrut, which is why he is currently threading his way through the crowded streets of NiJedha instead of being at home, working on his blasters or the darning or baking. There are still a million things to do at the temple to keep it running, even if his faith is waning that does not mean he is any less devoted to his brother and sister Guardians, to the masters, to the younglings. They are the Whills, he is the Whills. Lack of faith in the Force does not mean he can stop being who and what he is to the people that he cares about. It just means that he sometimes feel empty inside, scooped clean like a melon without its seeds.
Chirrut is seated on the steps of a shop whose owners they are friendly with, his plate for collections on his knee, and he is smiling, gesturing, head canted off to one side, playing up the part of the blind man who cannot see but knows all. He is a good actor, his love, and he has always had the gift of getting the crowd to eat right out of his hand. No, this is inaccurate. He has always had the gift of getting anyone to eat right out of his hand, which is probably how he lured Baze in at the start, bit by bit, little by little, silver words and a smile to match, quick-witted, quicker footed, deadly and sharp. Baze has always liked a bit of danger, a little flash. Things that he lacks, he admires in others, and he admires everything about Chirrut.
He could cross the distance in seconds if he lengthened his stride, if he did not care about being seen, about pushing past people, but he does so it takes longer. It takes even that much longer because, even though they have been friends for nearly all their lives, even though they have been lovers since before the Empire, Baze is still sometimes shy about approaching Chirrut after they have had a fight. Baze is the one with the guns. Baze is the one who looks like he could wreak havoc through the marketplace and never bat an eye, but Chirrut is the deadlier of the two of them, made more so by the fact that one could never guess by looking at him.
By the time he has reached Chirrut’s side and leaning heavily against a pillar, the mass of people, pilgrims, and interested onlookers, has faded, potentially because of how he looks, a bear of a man covered in gear with messy, unkempt hair and a massive scar across his cheek. He knows how he looks. When even the orphans trained to rob people blind run from you, you have managed to become a monster. A farce, the largest of them all, Chirrut sometimes proclaims after the orphans who have avoided Baze flock to him and he picks them clean of all their winnings, chiding them not to judge people by appearance before handing everything back. At which point, Baze empties his own pockets to give them more, always more, always everything, never holding anything back, which makes Chirrut sigh and shake his head and click his tongue and tap his staff against the ground angrily.
This is one of the many things that they fight about, Baze’s willingness to strip himself bare for the sake of others, Baze’s continual attempts at martyrdom.
“Greetings traveler,” Chirrut says, and Baze knows that Chirrut knows that it is him and also that Chirrut knows Baze knows. They are imperfect and complicated men, but they have known each other too long now to not have figured out all the dusty corners and tucked away corridors of the other. Like Baze knows how to curl his fingers against the nape of Chirrut’s neck to make him sigh contentedly into every kiss.
“You’re still mad at me?” Baze does not mince words, not here, not in public. He knows words. He knows them all. He knows more languages and more words and more texts than Chirrut, and they have all been recited in the night when they are alone. Baze knows poetry that would make the stars weep. No one would ever guess that to look at him.
Chirrut’s mouth is a line as hard as any mountain on Jedha. “Yes.”
Baze blows his breath out through his nose audibly and shuffles closer. Chirrut turns his head, and leans away, an obvious indication that Baze is supposed to chase him further, ever further. Baze would follow him to the ends of Jedha, to the ends of the universe. Once he pledged to follow him into the Force, but he does not know if he would be welcome there any longer considering how his heart hurts with every thought he has about the power, whether it’s there, whether it cares.
It ought to care. He cares. That is another thing they fight about. How much Baze cares. How he doesn’t know how to turn it off when necessary the way that Chirrut can. Chirrut always excelled at mastery of the body, mastery of the will. Baze. Baze did not. He is a fountain, broken, unable to be turned off.
Chirrut moves away, Baze follows until he is kneeling on the stairs, his lips practically wrapped around the lobe of Chirrut’s ear, which is something the other likes that makes him twitch and groan, something Baze will hopefully do later, in private, to help apologize, to speak to him. “Come home.”
“Why?” Chirrut’s voice is pitched for only him but that is the only move toward concession he has made.
When Baze speaks, he uses a dialect of Jedhan that is uncommon, that is archaic and ancient as the statues in the sands outside the city. It is a language that he taught himself, pushed himself through night after night until he had perfected it, it is the language that Chirrut, foundling, changeling child of the desert, spoke when he first came to the temple. It is a thing, among many things, that they share, and it is always how Baze apologizes. “Heart of my heart, I cannot light a fire without a spark.” He presses a kiss to Chirrut’s neck because, sometimes, his words mean very little even though he has so few of them much of the time, but his gestures, there his heart has always been laid bare, open, and Chirrut knows that language better than anyone, better even than Baze himself.
“Perhaps I can help you attend to that,” Chirrut says, getting up quickly enough that the motion knocks Baze off balance and onto his backside on the stairs. Without a word, Chirrut offers a hand to help him up and does not release it even when he has found his feet again.
Hand in hand, they pick a path through the streets back home. Hand in hand, through the rush and the hustle and the bustle of the crowd, right through the center of it, where everyone with eyes to see can look at Baze even though all Baze can see, all Baze can ever see is Chirrut.
Armand: Everything reminds you of them! Louis, I am a man who needs one hundred percent commitment, okay?
*a shirtless man walks by, Armand pauses to check him out*
Armand: Okay, well, maybe not one hundred, but at least, like, twenty. You know, which is the percentage that your cell phone needs to stay in the green. So tell me now, Louis. Am I in the green?
