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uwingdispatch · 11 months

Text

Devotion

Notes: Brasso/Reader, established relationship, gender neutral reader, post-rebellion/post-war, hurt/comfort, chronically ill/disabled reader

CW: depression/mental health struggles, active shooter

Ao3 Link

★★★★★★★★

“What’s going on?”

You’re in your pajamas, standing at the end of the hallway that leads to your bedroom. It’s 3:00 in the morning and you’ve woken to find Brasso sitting at the kitchen table, fiddling with something in his hands.

Startled, he looks up. “How long have you been standing there?” He asks, running a hand through his dark hair, his grays hidden in the shadows of the dimly-lit room. In this moment there’s a sadness in his eyes that he doesn’t often allow you to see.

“Not long,” you say.. “I woke up and you weren’t there. I had a feeling…”

“I made you anxious,” Brasso says, pushing away from the table. “I’m so sorry, love.”

You insist that you’re fine, but he’s already wrapping his big arms around you and you can’t help but sleepily lean into his embrace.

“I got a message from Wilmon today. Did you know it was the anniversary of Rix Road?”

“I should have remembered.”

“No, darling,” he says, kissing the top of your head. “No, I’d rather not remember that day. Most of it, anyway.”

“Are you all right?” You ask.

“I will be,” he says. “Last time I was on Ferrix, Xanwan’s niece was cleaning up his old store front, getting it ready to sell. She gave me this keyfob of his that she found in a drawer. It’s just a festival trinket from an old holiday but…there are pictures from that day. The old gang, you know? Before I met you, even.”

“You’re thinking about Xan?”

“And everyone who didn’t make it out that day. How things could have gone differently if I’d just—”

“If you’d just what? Let fascists steamroll your entire community? Brasso, people did get out because of you. And I’m sure I’m not the only one you warned away from town that day.”

“You’re not.”

“And you got Wilmon out.”

“I did.”

“Bee. Bix. Jezzi.”

He answers with a sigh.

You step back so you can see your partner’s face, tucking a few strands of hair behind his ear so you can look into his eyes. “You’re one man, Brasso. A very good man, but still just one. How were you going to stop anything that Maarva Andor started?

He laughs a little, remembering the woman who had been so much to so many people. You’d never been a Daughter of Ferrix, but it was Maarva who invited you to join in on some of the community projects anyway. It was people you met through Maarva who had encouraged you to start selling your handmade goods, who had told you how much they’d enjoyed the things you’d made for fundraisers over the years. And it was the Daughters, so many now spread throughout the galaxy, who’d helped you leave Ferrix and find a place on Gatalenta. Who’d told you that Brasso would find you when the war was over, because surely someone knew where he was, even if it wasn’t safe for you to know yet.

In the hallway, Brasso hands you the keyfob. There’s a year etched on the back and it is indeed before you’d met Brasso, but you’d been in town then. Back after finishing your degree, trying to feel out what was next. You’d made jogun fruit jam that year for the festival these pictures were taken at. And you’d only been at the stall for a few hours each day, but in the background of one of the pictures, there you were.

“Brasso,” you say. “That’s me.”

“No kidding,” he says, zooming in. “Beautiful as ever.”

“You can barely see me.”

“I can see enough.” Brasso kisses your forehead, his lips soft and warm on your skin. “Let me get you back to bed, darling. Enough of my troubles for the night. I never should have woken you in the first place.”

“You didn’t wake me,” you remind him.

But he has your hand in his and is leading you back down the hallway to the bedroom, the keyfob left behind.

There were a lot of things you loved about Ferrix, but the time grappler had never been one of them. He was a nice enough man, and you didn’t have any quarrel with him personally. But you’d never been a morning person. And nothing about Ferrix was going to change that. You’d occasionally pick up a morning shift at the café where you worked if someone called out and they needed help. But other than that? You needed the rest. So you jammed a pillow over your head while the time grappler struck the beskar steel in the tower at the start of each day until you could go back to sleep.

You’d known Brasso for a few years when he showed up with a basket of fruit a few hours after dawn, banging on your door like the galaxy was collapsing. You crawled out of bed and put on a robe, sure that there was some kind of maintenance emergency in the building.. But when you opened the door, it was Brasso, all two meters of him with a desperate look on his face. And…the fruit.

“What’s wrong?” you asked, the annoyed tone in your voice unmistakable.

“Thank the stars,” he said, pulling you into his arms. “You’re all right.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

“Someone opened fire at the market this morning. Not even from here…at least nobody I can think of matches his description. Someone called Morlana-1. Corpos showed up and all they managed to do is chase him to the café.”

You knew without asking that he meant your café, and at the word of corpos, you stepped back to let Brasso in. His cheeks were rosy from the early morning cold, his eyes bright, and his work clothes were crisp and tidy before a long day at the salvage yard.

“Is anyone hurt?” you asked.

“There were some injuries at the market,” Brasso said, running a hand through his hair. “But the café…we don’t know yet. They won’t let anyone near the building. I came to see you as soon as I heard.”

You didn’t live far from your work—just a few blocks. And as all of the information you were receiving began to solidify in your brain you felt your nervous system kick into high gear. You tried to steady your breathing as you asked, “What’s with the fruit?”

“The Daughters dropped this off for my mum the other night. But you know how she’s allergic to meilooruns—won’t eat anything that’s touched them out of precaution. I thought I’d leave it for you on my way to work…and then someone commed me about all this…I’m just so glad you’re safe, love.”

This was the first time he’d ever used that term of endearment with you, and you weren’t sure what to make of it, but it warmed something inside of you that you knew you’d never shake, even as you felt yourself giving way to panic.

Brasso pulled you close again. “Hey,” he said. “I’ve got you.”.

It’s all you needed to hear.

“I know you don’t do mornings. I’m so sorry to wake you…I just…they don’t have the guy in custody yet. Do you mind if I stick around for a bit? You don’t carry a blaster and…”

“I’ll make us some caf,” you say, turning toward your little kitchen.

“No,” he said, his hands steady on your shoulders. “You sit down. I’ve thrown off your day, the least I can do is make you breakfast.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Unless you want to go back to sleep. I can leave if—”

“No,” you said, your breath shaky. And, when he took your hand in his, it felt so right that for a moment you forgot that everything about this morning was unusual. “Stay,” you said. “Please.”

“All right,” he said, his eyes searching yours for something neither of you seemed to quite grasp.

You snapped out of your haze and went to get yourself cleaned up and dressed, allowing yourself in your sleepiness to think thoughts about this man, your closest friend, that normally you pushed away. He was right there, after all. In your kitchen. If you let yourself feel what you felt, if it came burbling out of you in a groggy delirium…you couldn’t bear the thought of anything changing between you. Of losing this closeness. Because somehow it hadn’t occurred to you that he felt those feelings about you, too.

You wake to the sound of clattering in the kitchen, a string of curses on Brasso’s tongue. There’s not a lot that can get you out of bed quickly but, after last night, you’re a little worried that he’s not just upset about a broken dish.

You slip into a robe and hurry into the kitchen where you find your husband sweeping up broken glass.

“It’s early, love,” he says when he sees you. “You can go back to sleep.”

“No, I can’t,” you say. “Some anniversaries you just feel in your bones. This is one of those for you.”

Brasso is washing his hands. You can’t tell if he’s ignoring you or if he just doesn’t know what to say.

“Brass?”

“I don’t know why it’s hitting me like this,” he says. “It’s been so long.”

“You told me last night you heard from Wilmon. Is he all right?”

“He is.”

Brasso drops a towel on the counter and you take his hand. You’ve both had more than your fair share of grief. Grief for loved ones lost. For futures that could never be. For safe places that would never feel safe again. And with the Imperial occupation of Ferrix you lost your home as you knew it. But you’d moved there as a teenager. You didn’t have generations of history there like Brasso did. His roots there were different. And when he chose to stay on Gatalenta, it was partly because could never go back to the place he left—not for more than a visit. Because too much had changed for it to feel like home for him.

“Let me make us some caf,” you say.

“Nonsense,” he says. “I’ve spoiled your sleep again, I’ll just—

“Brasso.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “I hear you.”

He’s always been the kind of man who takes care of everyone else and struggles to let others take care of him. It’s not that he doesn’t know how to ask for help, it’s that he doesn’t want to burden anyone. Even after all this time, he hesitates to tell you when something is wrong that he thinks he can handle on his own. You usually figure it out anyway, and he usually gives in to your care. But it hasn’t always been easy.

As you grind the caf beans—a blend he’d picked up at the market last week—you think of all those afternoons after you’d first met, when he’d turn up at the cafe on his break. It had been the best part of your day. You’d later learn that he’d been pretty loyal to a caf bar closer to his place until the day he stopped in on his lunch one afternoon and recognized you, the person he’d helped with the spilled groceries just a week or so before. Soon, he was a staple, falling into an easy routine with you. The two of you started taking your breaks together, soon becoming so close that it seemed like you’d always known each other. The first time he walked you home, on a night when the end of your shifts coincided, you had a feeling that maybe—just maybe—when you got to your apartment he was going to kiss you. But the moment passed. And you let yourself push the thought of a romance with Brasso to the back of your mind for the first time.

When you put a cup of caf in front of Brasso today, he takes your hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

“Tell me what you need,” you say.

“Just sit with me, love,” he says. “All I need is you.”

Brasso was the kind of man who didn’t know how not to be busy. He’d been in your apartment for all of ten minutes before he’d sliced up some of the fruit to go with eggs and toast for breakfast. You’d known him long enough to know that this was just what he did. When he was upset, he took care of other people. So you should have known that when you’d sleepily mentioned that your refresher sink had been leaking that he was going to have to try and fix it. Now, a few hours later, he was in there with the tools he’d meant to take to work before the trajectory of his day had changed, leading him to you instead.

“You don’t have to do this,” you told him. “I can call the building manager and have him come take care of it.”

“It’s a simple fix,” he said. “I’m almost done.”

It was noon. Word was out that the scene had been cleared at the cafe, luckily with only some minor injuries. But nobody wanted to go out while the corpos were still around. And Brasso hadn’t said anything but you could tell he didn’t want to leave you by yourself either. Ferrix had always watched out for their own, and there was no telling what these off-planet police might do while they were here. Who they might bother. They didn’t know Ferrix and they didn’t like it any more than it liked them. So the streets had emptied. Places of business were closed. And Brasso was still with you.

“Finished,” Brasso called out from the refresher. “Good as…well as good as it was when you moved in here at least,” he said.

Not a lot on Ferrix was brand new. You liked this about your home. When you first came to Ferrix, you hadn’t known what to make of it. But now—now you felt there was something cozy about it. It was comforting to think about all the lives that had touched everything here.

You smiled as you heard Brasso taking off his tool belt and putting it with his boots by the door. When he came to sit with you, he’d unzipped the top of his coveralls and tied the arms around his waist, the black tanktop underneath accentuating the muscle of his chest, his broad, freckled shoulders. His hair was a bit mussed, and you fought the urge to reach out and touch it, to smooth it back in place.

He noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” you said. “I zoned out for a moment. Probably just tired.”

“Things are changing around here,” he said. “It’s setting people on edge. I can’t remember the last time I had a day where I just felt at peace. Where things felt normal.”

“I wish there was something more I could do.”

“You’re here. That’s peace enough for me today.”

You yawned then, and he put his arm around you.

“Come here,” he said, grabbing the knit blanket you kept thrown over the back of your couch. “Close your eyes. Just rest.”

So you did. You let yourself relish in that closeness, in his clean, familiar scent, the secure warmth of his strong arms, the steady rhythm of his heart. It wasn’t the first time you’d fallen asleep in his arms. And you did still wonder, sometimes, if there was something there that neither of you dared to speak about. But you had seen Brasso’s affection with other friends as well. And, at the end of the day, you were grateful for what you had with him, even if it wasn’t quite what you wanted. He made you feel safe, even on days like this, and given the state of the galaxy, that was a considerable feat.

“Would you want to go out today?” Brasso asks.

He’s just woken up from a nap, and he’s wandered out of the bedroom looking delightfully mussed in his favorite pair of sweatpants. You’ll never get used to the fact, even after all this time, that this beautiful man has chosen to spend the rest of his life with you. You’d been answering holomail, but you put down your datapad, ready to do what you can to ease your partner’s stress.

“Are you up for it?” you ask. “There’s that food festival downtown, you know. In the park by the spires. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to go.”

“That sounds nice.” He sits on the sofa next to you, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I think I need some fresh air.”

“I think you do, too.”

You smooth his hair away from his face. Even as you say this, a part of you wants to just sit here like this all afternoon, resting your head on his chest, tracing the lines of the tattoos he collected in his travels, before he came home to you. A part of you wants to just stay here, like this, for the rest of the day. Still, you tell him to go get dressed, that you’ll be ready to go when he is.

Soon you’re in the park, a soft blanket laid out over the grass beneath you, paper containers of hot treats waiting to be opened—things from a few different food carts, because neither of you could choose.

“Now this,” Brasso says to you, “this is something I want to remember.”

“Hm?” You’re trying to open a bottle of a fizzy drink you hadn’t seen here before.

“Love,” Brasso says, one finger under your chin as he eases your face toward his. “Today is the day I first met you. Did you know that?”

You have to admit you didn’t remember the date. But he isn’t the kind of person to be upset over that. He knows his memory is better than most, and that you have a tendency to forget anything you don’t write down.

Still, you say, “I’m sorry,”

He smiles, leans in to touch his nose to yours. “No need,” he says.

There was a time when you never could have imagined Brasso would be the type to kiss you this way, out in the open for everyone to see. But whatever part of him that maybe had been too bashful for that kind of intimacy was gone with the war. With all the years he couldn’t hold you or kiss you at all. And under the bright sun he pulls you toward him, bringing your legs over his lap as he leans in to kiss your forehead, and then your nose, and then your lips, a kiss rich with devotion as he cradles your cheek in one of his big, rough hands.

You reach for his face, caressing the scruff of his short beard before threading your fingers through his hair, now collar-length, the silver strands catching the light. He still doesn’t believe you when you tell him you’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than him. But you’ll never get tired of telling him this, of telling him that from that day you met him there was nobody else in the galaxy who stood a chance to win your affections.

Today, you tell him: “I love you, you know. So much.”

“I know,” he says, a sparkle in his hazel eyes. “I can remember these things for the both of us.”

He kisses you again, a bit deeper, lingering, and you whisper, your lips brushing the shell of his ear, “People are staring.”

He laughs, running his fingers softly over your jaw before his hand comes to rest at the nape of your neck. “Let them,” he says.

And so you do, letting yourself enjoy this closeness as a warm breeze comes through the park, the sky in this moment seemingly full of possibilities, his kiss an infinite canvas for you to complete. You make a note of the date, and think to yourself that you won’t forget this time. You couldn’t possibly forget an afternoon like this.

★★★★★★★★

Hopefully it won't be so long between fics next time, but I hope you enjoyed this! Thank you for reading! I hope this fic made you feel seen and loved.

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