In Autumn, rain turned the forest floor slick with mud and rot. It drowned kindling, ruined roads, and made the hounds restless. It crept beneath collars and cuffs, cold and persistent, until even the finest velvet felt like a second skin made of discomfort.
Rain in Autumn was not beautiful.
It was inconvenient.
It was another thing to endure.
So when the skies over Adriata darkened halfway through negotiations, Eris felt the first thread of annoyance coil behind his ribs.
Not enough to show, of course.
He sat perfectly still at Tarquin’s left, one ankle crossed neatly over the other, spine straight, expression carved into the sort of mild interest that had made older, crueler males underestimate him for centuries.
Across the table, Tarquin spoke of trade routes and border protections with the easy grace of a High Lord who had never needed to raise his voice to be heard.
That, more than anything, irritated Eris.
Summer was too bright.
Too open.
Too warm even with storm clouds gathering over the sea.
The palace smelled of salt and citrus and rain-soaked stone. The windows had been left open to catch the breeze, sheer curtains lifting and falling like slow breaths along the walls.
In Autumn, windows were closed before storms.
Doors were barred.
Fires were fed.
Here, no one seemed concerned that the sky had begun to split itself open.
A low roll of thunder passed over the city.
One of Tarquin’s advisors glanced toward the balcony and smiled.
Smiled.
As if rain were a guest.
Eris looked back down at the parchment in front of him and reminded himself, again, why he was there.
Beron wanted information and he wanted weaknesses.
Beron wanted to know whether Summer’s young High Lord had grown comfortable enough on his throne to become careless.
Eris had been sent to watch and listen.
To smile when necessary and remember everything.
He had not been sent to think about the way the people in the courtyard below laughed when the first heavy drops began to fall.
He had not been sent to notice how no one ran for shelter.
He certainly had not been sent to wonder what it must be like, to live somewhere a storm did not make everyone flinch.
“Lord Vanserra?”
Eris lifted his gaze.
Tarquin was watching him from the head of the table, mouth curved in something that was almost polite. Almost amused.
“Do you find the proposal disagreeable?”
Eris let his own smile answer first.
A careful thing.
Court-trained.
Empty where it needed to be.
“Not at all,” he said smoothly. “I was merely considering whether your merchants would honor the same protections on Autumn roads.”
“They would,” Tarquin said.
“So confidently?”
“My people do not break agreements made under my name.”
A simple statement.
No threat tucked beneath it.
No sharp edge.
Eris inclined his head. “How fortunate for them.”
Tarquin’s smile did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
There was the High Lord beneath all that summer charm after all .
The meeting continued.
Rain tapped against the balcony tiles. Then it fell harder. Then harder still, until the open windows filled the room with the sound of it, steady and endless.
Eris could hear the city beyond the palace.
The distant call of vendors covering their stalls. The delighted shriek of children somewhere below. Music, faint at first, then rising in uneven bursts as if someone had taken shelter under an awning and decided the storm was reason enough to play.
He ignored it.
He was very good at ignoring beautiful things.
Beauty was often a distraction.
A polished blade. A painted trap. A pretty smile hiding a clever mouth.
Another laugh rose from below.
Bright and young.
Several voices this time.
Tarquin paused.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps.
But Eris did.
The High Lord’s attention shifted, just briefly, toward the balcony. His expression softened in a way Eris had no name for.
Then one of the advisors near the door chuckled.
“She must have made it back from the lower district.”
Another answered, “Of course she did. The children would have dragged her by the skirts if she tried to stay away.”
Tarquin shook his head, but there was no reprimand in it.
Only fondness.
Open and unashamed.
Eris looked from one face to the next, filing the reaction away.
There it was.
A weakness, perhaps.
Or at least something worth knowing.
“She?” he asked lightly.
The conversation stilled by half a breath.
Not with fear. With surprise.
As if the idea of him not knowing was stranger than the question itself.
Tarquin leaned back in his chair.
“My sister,” he said.
Eris kept his expression pleasant.
“I was not aware Summer had another royal figure so involved in trade negotiations.”
“She is not involved in trade negotiations.”
“No?”
“No,” Tarquin said, that sharpness returning beneath the warmth. “She is a healer.”
A healer.
Eris almost lost interest.
Then the music below grew louder, joined by clapping. Children’s voices rang through the rain, chanting a name.
Her name, he realized.
Again and again.
Not milady.
Not Lady.
Not some polished title set carefully behind rank and distance.
Her name.
Spoken like a blessing.
Spoken like a favorite song.
Something in Eris went very still.
Tarquin noticed.
Of course he did.
“My sister is well loved here,” the High Lord said.
It sounded casual.
Eris smiled faintly. “So I hear.”
A child shrieked with laughter below, so loudly that even the eldest advisor at the table looked toward the balcony.
Tarquin sighed, but the sound had no irritation in it.
Only resignation and what Eris could only assume to be affection.
Then he stood, the room shifting with him.
“I believe we have earned a pause,” Tarquin said, gathering the signed parchments with one hand. “The rain will make the eastern docks difficult to inspect until it passes.”
Eris rose with the others.
“How unfortunate,” he said.
Tarquin glanced at him before gesturing to an arch way that seemed to lead to the square in the town below.
Eris followed the High Lord of Summer, curiosity about this ‘she’ getting the best of him.
“Do you dislike rain, Lord Vanserra?”
“I dislike most things that make a mess.”
That earned a quiet laugh from one of the advisors.
Tarquin only smiled.
“Then Summer may prove challenging for you.”
The next few minutes passed in silence.
Or what would have been silence, if not for the rain and the music in the square before them.
Eris looked toward the square.
Beyond the rain-slick stone, Adriata gleamed beneath the storm. White buildings curved toward the sea, their golden rooftops dulled beneath silver rain. The bay beyond them was restless and shining, waves folding over themselves beneath the dark sky.
People had gathered.
Not fled, like they would in Autumn, but gathered.
Children splashed through puddles. Women lifted their skirts and laughed beneath awnings. An old man played a fiddle with a pipe clenched between his teeth while two younger males clapped beside him.
And at the center of it all was her.
Eris knew before anyone said it.
She stood barefoot in the rain, skirts soaked around her ankles, darkened by water and movement. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, healer’s satchel still hanging crookedly from one shoulder. Flowers had been tucked into her hair by small, clumsy hands, and more were scattered in the puddles around her feet.
A little boy stood in front of her, one knee freshly bandaged, tears still drying on his cheeks.
She bowed to him with all the solemn grace of a court lady greeting a king.
The child giggled.
Then she offered him her hand.
The boy took it, and she spun him once, carefully, mindful of his injured knee. He laughed so hard he nearly tripped, and she caught him before he could fall, laughing with him like the rain had washed every bit of rank from her shoulders.
Another child ran forward.
Then another.
Someone threw more flowers.
They landed in her hair, against her shoulders, in the puddles, bright petals scattered over rainwater like pieces of sunlight the storm had failed to drown.
Eris did not move.
He should have looked away.
There were too many eyes.
Too many witnesses.
Too much softness in the scene, and softness was dangerous when seen by anyone who knew how to use it against you.
But he could not look away.
She danced as if the whole city knew the steps and she had merely remembered them first.
A baker took her hand, spinning her beneath his arm.
An old woman swatted him aside and stole the next turn, laughing when the healer kissed her wrinkled cheek.
A guard in Summer blue bowed deeply, one hand pressed over his heart, and she rolled her eyes before letting him lead her through three dramatic steps that made the children howl with delight.
Then Tarquin appeared at the edge of the square.
Eris had not realized the High Lord had moved.
She saw him immediately.
Her face lighting up.
Not with duty. Not with practiced respect.
With the kind of joy Eris had only ever seen children give freely before someone taught them better.
She crossed the square in three quick steps, seized her brother’s hand, and dragged him into the rain.
Tarquin protested.
Badly.
No one stopped her.
Not the children chanting louder. Not the advisors watching from the edge of the square with Eris. Not the guards pretending not to smile.
Certainly not Eris.
Tarquin allowed himself to be pulled into the dance for one full turn before catching his sister by the waist and spinning her away from him. She laughed, head tipped back, rain clinging to her lashes and flowers slipping loose from her hair.
And Eris forgot, for one terrible second, where he was.
No wonder, he thought.
The words came unbidden.
Unwelcome even.
No wonder they love her.
She was not beautiful in the way Autumn preferred beauty.
Not arranged or contained, not polished into something cold enough to admire from a distance, not quiet and unseen like his mother.
She was rain-warm skin and bare feet on stone. A healer’s hands and a royal spine. A laugh that made children brave enough to reach for her. A face turned toward the storm like she trusted the sky not to strike her down for daring to be happy beneath it.
In Autumn, joy like that would have been punished.
In Autumn, someone would have told her to lower her voice.
To fix her hair.
To remember who was watching.
Here, they only loved her louder.
Eris felt something ancient and foolish twist behind his ribs.
A memory, perhaps.
Or the ghost of one.
There once had been a boy who looked like him.
A boy with a wandering mind and a heart too large for the house that raised him.
A boy who had looked out rain-streaked windows and imagined roads beyond the forest. A boy who dreamed of seas he had never touched. Cities where no one knew his father’s name.
That boy had been corrected.
Sharpened and buried.
And yet, watching Tarquin’s sister dance barefoot in the rain with flowers in her hair, Eris felt the earth shift over the grave.
As if something underneath had heard the music.
As if something dead had remembered it had once wanted to live.
Then she looked up.
Straight at him.
The dance continued around her, but her steps slowed.
Only for a breath.
Only long enough for their eyes to meet through the silver fall of rain.
Eris held her gaze.
He did not smile. He did not bow. He did not let a single piece of himself reach for the strange, impossible warmth blooming in his chest.
But she smiled.
Not politely.
Not because he was a lord from another court and she had been trained to offer pleasant expressions to dangerous males.
She smiled like she had caught him standing too far from the music.
Like she knew. Like she could see, somehow, that he had forgotten how to step into the rain.
Then a child tugged on her hand, and she turned away, laughing as she was pulled back into the spinning heart of the square.
Eris remained where he was.
Dry beneath the awning above. Perfectly composed.
Untouched by the rain.
Yet somehow utterly ruined by it.
He had lost sight of her.
For one brief, foolish moment, Eris hated that he noticed.
The square had shifted again, bodies turning with the music, children cutting through the spaces between adults like bright little fish through water. Flowers floated in the puddles and collected along the edges of the stone streets, petals bruised beneath dancing feet.
Tarquin made his way back to Eris with rain dripping from his curls and a grin he did not bother hiding.
It looked strange on a High Lord.
Joy being worn so openly. Being given so carelessly it would have been a death sentence anywhere else.
“You survived,” Eris said.
Tarquin glanced down at his soaked sleeves, then back at him. “Barely.”
“You may want better guards.”
“My sister is more dangerous than most of them.”
Eris looked toward the square before he could stop himself.
Tarquin noticed. Of course he noticed.
But whatever he might have said was stolen by a burst of laughter from the crowd.
The music changed. Faster now. Brighter. Hands clapping in rhythm beneath the rain. Someone called out a count, and the children answered too loudly, their voices tripping over each other in their excitement.
Then the crowd parted. Not dramatically, or out of fear.
Simply because people made room for her the way flowers turned toward the sun.
She stepped out from between a laughing pair of fishermen, cheeks flushed from the dance, hair damp and curling around the flowers tangled there. Her healer’s satchel had been abandoned somewhere. One sleeve had slipped loose from where she had rolled it, and a child’s ribbon was tied messily around her wrist.
She looked less like a milady than she did a story the city had agreed to keep telling.
Eris went still.
She came toward them. Not toward Tarquin, but toward him.
Each step splashed lightly through the rain-slick stone. Close enough now that Eris could see the droplets clinging to her lashes. Close enough to see the small scar near the base of her thumb, pale against wet skin. A healer’s scar, perhaps. Or a child’s accident. Or something sharper.
She stopped just beyond the awning.
Just far enough into the rain that reaching for her would require him to leave the shelter.
Clever, he thought.
Then hated that he thought it.
Her eyes flicked over him, not rudely, not with the cold assessment most courts favored, but with something warmer. Curiosity, perhaps.
As if he were a puzzle someone had left unfinished.
“Lord Vanserra,” she said.
Her voice was softer than he expected.
Eris inclined his head. "Milady."
Her nose wrinkled.
Tarquin huffed a laugh beside him.
“No one calls me that here,” she said.
“I gathered.”
“Then why did you?”
“Habit.”
“Well, we all have our bad habits.”
Eris’s mouth almost curved.
“That is a bold accusation from a female standing barefoot in a storm.”
She looked down at her feet, as if only just remembering the rain existed, then back at him with a smile that made something in his chest tighten in warning.
“It is only water.”
“In Autumn, water usually becomes mud.”
“In Summer, it becomes music.”
As if to prove her point, the crowd behind her clapped louder, the rhythm rolling over the square like a second heartbeat. Children shouted her name again, begging her to return.
She did not look back, instead she held out her hand.
Rain slipped over her knuckles and down the lines of her palm.
Eris stared at it.
The offer was simple, and that was what made the whole ordeal so unbearable.
There was no courtly trap. No demand hidden beneath sweet words. No watching nobles waiting to see whether he would make a mistake they could sharpen later.
Just her hand.
Open, an invitation being presented patiently. As if she had all the time in the world.
“Dance with us,” she said.
Tarquin went rigid beside him..
The square seemed to breathe around them.
Eris could feel every possible answer arrange itself behind his teeth.
A flirtation. A refusal. A clever remark. A cruelty. Anything to put distance between him and the feeling in his chest.
He had always known how to make distance.
It was one of the first things Autumn had taught him. How to keep space between himself and anything soft enough to bruise. How to turn longing into disdain before anyone else could see it. How to look at an open door and convince himself it was a cage.
Her hand remained between them.
Wet from the rain.
Flower petals stuck to the hem of her dress.
He did not take it.
“I do not dance in the rain,” Eris said.
The words came out smooth.
A lie dressed well enough to pass inspection.
Her smile did not falter.
That was the worst of it.
She did not seem embarrassed. She did not withdraw as if rejected. She did not look at him like he had disappointed her.
She only lowered her hand slowly, fingers curling back toward her palm.
“That’s all right,” she said.
Eris waited for the pity. The teasing. The little cut that would make this easier.
It never came.
Her gaze softened instead, and somehow that was far more devastating.
“Not everyone knows how to dance in the rain.”
The sentence struck with no edge at all.
Still, Eris felt it land.
Beneath the mask he had so carefully put on that morning. Beneath the cruel words and glares he gave others.
In some forgotten place he had stopped guarding because he had assumed it dead.
Tarquin looked away.
A kindness, perhaps.
Eris held her gaze and gave her nothing. Not even the truth.
If he had been younger, perhaps he would have taken her hand.
If Autumn had not already carved him into something they deemed useful.
But he was not younger.
He was a Vanserra.
The next in line to be High Lord of Autumn.
“Then I will leave the talent to Summer,” he said.
She nodded once, as if accepting that too.
Then she turned, stepping back further into the rain as if returning to something that had never once questioned whether she belonged.
A little girl darted toward her immediately, clutching a fistful of yellow flowers. She bent to listen, serious as any general receiving orders before battle.
Whatever the child said made her laugh.
The sound slipped under the awning.
Eris hated how easily it found him.
The girl thrust the flowers up, and Tarquin’s sister accepted them with a bow before pressing one behind the child’s ear. Then she kept one for herself, twirling the stem between her fingers while the music rose again.
She did not return to the center immediately.
Instead, she stood with the others at the edge of the circle and clapped along.
A young mother leaned close to say something in her ear. She listened, brow knitting with concern, then touched the woman’s arm gently. Whatever answer she gave made the woman exhale as if she had been holding worry in both hands.
A boy tugged at her skirt.
An elderly male kissed her knuckles.
A guard bent his head so she could scold him about the bandage wrapped beneath his sleeve.
Loved, Eris thought again.
Not admired. Not obeyed out of fear.
Loved.
And she wore it like rain.
As if it had never occurred to her to be afraid of what people might do with that much of her heart exposed.
“You are staring,” Tarquin said quietly.
Eris did not look at him. “I am observing.”
“Is that what Autumn calls it?”
“Among other things.”
Tarquin’s gaze remained on his sister. His face had softened again, but the High Lord beneath it was still there. Watching. Weighing. Deciding how close a male like Eris Vanserra was allowed to stand to something so clearly cherished.
“She asks everyone, you know,” Tarquin said.
“To dance?”
“To join in.”
Eris finally looked at him.
Tarquin’s expression was unreadable now.
“She believes most people want to,” he continued. “Even when they pretend otherwise.”
Rain dripped steadily from the awning between them.
Tarquin watched his sister clap with the crowd, flowers in her hand, head tilted toward another child who had begun speaking animatedly at her side.
“She claims it’s freeing. I suppose that would be worse in Autumn than it is here.”
Eris said nothing.
There was no useful answer to that.
The music softened eventually. Not ended, not truly. It only loosened its grip on the square, becoming background noise again as vendors returned to their stalls and children were gathered by damp, laughing parents.
Tarquin gestured back toward the palace.
“We should finish the agreements before the docks flood.”
“How practical of you.”
“I do try.”
Eris followed him back beneath the archways, away from the rain, away from the music, away from her.
He did not look back.
Not once.
That, at least, was something he could control.
The rest of the meeting passed as meetings did.
Ink dried. Terms were adjusted. Tarquin argued with irritating fairness.
Eris smiled when expected, countered when necessary, and tucked away every detail Beron would demand from him upon his return.
Trade routes. Dock schedules. Guard rotations. Names.
Weaknesses.
He should have counted Tarquin’s sister among them.
The beloved healer.
The lady who walked barefoot through storms and made an entire city soften around her.
She was an obvious vulnerability.
A thread that, pulled correctly, could unravel a High Lord.
Eris wrote nothing of her.
When he returned to Autumn, the rain followed three days later.
It came in the evening, cold and gray, tapping against the windows of his private rooms like impatient fingers.
Eris stood before the glass and watched the forest darken beneath it.
Mud gathering between roots.
Mist curling through the trees.
The hounds shifting restlessly in the kennels below.
Rain in Autumn was not beautiful.
It was inconvenient.
It was another thing to endure.
Still, when thunder rolled over the estate, Eris thought of golden rooftops dulled beneath silver light.
Of flowers in puddles and a hand held out just beyond shelter.
Not everyone knows how to dance in the rain.
His fingers curled at his side.
For one strange, impossible moment, he wondered what would have happened if he had stepped forward.
Then he turned from the window.
In Summer, when the rain returned to Adriata and the city gathered again near the bay, Tarquin’s sister paused at the edge of the dancing crowd.
Tarquin’s sister paused at the edge of the dancing crowd.
Across the square, beneath the awning, there was a flash of red and gold.
There for a breath.
Then gone.
She smiled anyway.
And when the children called her name, she stepped into the rain.
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You refuse to be outdone by Maul in any capacity and that mindset is also applied to gift giving. A quick once over an old book about Mandalorian prosthetics should be enough to help repair his legs, right?
cw. gift giving, sexual tension, making out, self harm, but the reader doesn't view it as such, inaccurate mechanical repairs, accidental stimulation, dense reader, don't worry they figure it out, enemies to whatever that hell you two have going on, i think we are officially in the whatever the hell you two have going on portion, religious guilt, beta read, Darth Maul speaks Mando'a, force visions, play fighting, that's all these bitches do honestly, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post order 66
wc. 6.2k
an. Hello There ! Quick disclaimer I have no idea how repairing anything with wires or mechanics works I just wanted to get in there and fix that guy's leg okay sue me. That being said I hope all of the engineers who stumble across this fic don't have their immersion ruined with the amount of times I write...uh...you strip the wires...okay YAY!! Hope you enjoy !
mandatory notice I give every chapter that this is part of a series and if you like those check the rest of the chapters out as well ><
You felt your fist make contact with the bark of the tree. The shock of the hit traveled up your arm and settled in your shoulder. You rolled them and started again.
It had been a while since you practiced any desensitization training but it seemed like you and Maul would be stuck on this planet for longer than usual. Something about the bounty hunters guild and missing pucks, he had told you. Honestly, it was a treat to get to spend so much time in one place. Being on the run like you two were had its fair share of shortcomings of course, but what you missed the most was a sense of familiarity on the planets you went to.
Drawing back you felt the gentle breeze lap at your knuckles, now bloodied and torn apart by the constant battering you had just put them through. In an odd way it centered you more than any meditation could have. A small blue glow atop your folded towel drew your attention. It was the talisman. Maul was back from the market.
You dabbed at your hands and realized quickly that they were a lost cause. You'd just deal with them in the shower later. That was another nice thing about staying in one place. You had constant access to water and could use as much of it as you liked, given that you were willing to wait for it to be properly filtered first.
You wandered around the other side of the ship and sure enough, there he was. Maul's cloaked figure slowly approached. He carried two sizable looking boxes with him.
"Force above! What did you buy, an entire store front?" Your voice is rife with amusement as you make your way to him. Without asking you take one of the boxes in your own arms.
"Hm, nearly. There was a stall dedicated to tea. I may have over indulged." Maul replies with no clear guilt in his tone. You hum in an understanding way.
Slowly, you were starting to learn more of the little details about Maul. He could see in the dark exceptionally well and his eyes glowed—though it was unclear to you if that was a marking of him being a Sith or a Zabrakian trait—, when in a market he much preferred to talk with droids over their owners, and that he’s incredibly fond of tea. So much as to the point he had a specific set to engage in tea ceremonies. You weren't sure when he had bought it but you had walked in on him from time to time in the middle of one. It was honestly interesting to watch. Or maybe you just had very low standards for what counted as interesting these days but still, you enjoyed it even if you didn't fully understand.
On the ship you began to help put away the supplies. Simple things like bacta gel, toiletries, food that could be easily stored. You came across what seemed like disassembled electronics and frowned.
"Is your leg acting up again?"
Maul nods but doesn't look at you, preferring to continue unpacking the goods.
"My legs were not built to last." It surprises you when he says it. Why would a prosthetic not be made for longevity? It seemed inconvenient. Sensing your further confusion he sighs and finally turns his head towards you.
"When Pre Vizsla gifted me my new legs he did so with the idea that I would only live for a year longer. Therefore they require near constant maintenance to keep them in optimal condition. With the work that the two of us are involved in, it's necessary if I wish to keep up." Seemingly satisfied with the answer he had given you, he went back to sorting through the items he had bought.
Instinctively, you wanted to apologize, but you didn't. Maul hated when you apologized to him, especially if it came from a place of pity or sympathy. It was irksome but not even the worst of his traits so you let it slide.
"Well jokes on him, he's dead now and you're not." You huff, setting down the now empty box by the ship's main door. A small ghost of a smile flits across Maul's face nearly too fast for you to see it. But you were starting to notice details like that about him too now.
"Yes, he is. Come here." He gestures towards the small sitting area that this part of the ship housed. Hesitating momentarily, you make your way to the couch and sit down. The chances Maul would start an ambush sparing session were very low, but you could never be too careful. As you sit you notice the bundle of vibrant cloth in his hands.
He reaches and grabs your hands. You hiss and pull back when he grazes your knuckles.
"Ow! Be careful!" But your reprimand falls on deaf ears as he rolls his eyes and reaches out for your hands again. Though he is more considerate with his own hand placement this time. You watch as he analyzes your beaten hands with mild curiosity.
"It looks worse than it is honestly. I know I flinched just now but it was mainly because I'd forgotten about it, so it surprised me more than anything." You tell him, trying to assuage any of his worries, just in case he had any. His mouth is set in a hard line as you speak and you wondered what you had said wrong. Probably nothing, Maul was just weird and always looking for a fight.
"You must stop this. I didn't take you for such a brute." You yank your hands away from his, appalled at his apparent disdain for them.
"I will not! If you get to practice your forms all day, it's only fair I get to practice my own." Your eyes are narrowed now, daring him to challenge you on this.
"I am unfamiliar with any Jedi practice that requires you to beat yourself bloody."
"Oh, yes, because you of course are the end all be all when it comes to Jedi practices. Real quick, what was your knighting mission's task? And when did the Council ascend you to be a Jedi Master? Oh, that's right, they didn't. That's me we're talking about." Perhaps you're being too clipped with him but it always drives you insane when he tries to act like he knows more than you about the Jedi. Studying an ideology and growing up in it were very different despite his constant belief otherwise.
He grips the fabric in his hands tightly and closes his eyes, clearly annoyed. Then after a moment he sighs and bows his head.
"You are correct." Oh, you wish you had a holorecorder so badly right now. "I did not mean to offend. In fact, I come bearing gifts."
He sits down besides you now and you are not unaware of how his leg presses against your own. Unraveling the length of fabric you finally see it for what it really is.
"It's a wrap for your hands. I've noticed this past week that you've been training and it has damaged them significantly. This should help. May I?" He manages to speak so earnestly you can't find any sort of deception in his words.
Well now you felt like a dick. Maul had been trying to gift you something to avoid injuring yourself further and you had just told him that he could fuck off moments prior.
'He hates unearned apologies, he hates unearned apologies.' You chant in your head to keep yourself from slipping up.
Sliding your hands into his open one you have to look away. It shouldn't have been so embarrassing, you'd had your hands wrapped countless times before, but like this it felt so intimate for some reason. Maybe it was the close proximity. Maybe it was the thoughtfulness of his gift. In actuality, it was probably just the guilt you felt for being so rude before.
He cleans your hands gently with a damp towel he had brought over seemingly just for this. You try to stay as still as possible while he does, only flinching when he brushes over a particularly raw spot. When he's content with his job, he applies the barest amount of bacta gel to the wound. You're left wondering just when he had planned all this.
Looping the wrap around your thumb he begins to meticulously guide it around your hand, taking extra care to cushion the areas that seemed worse for wear. You don't know where to look. Looking down at your hands was too overwhelming and looking away made you seem just as embarrassed as you felt. You settled for watching him instead, searching for any little micro expressions you could find.
Maul is unwaveringly focused, you come to find. There is no annoyance or displeasure as he tends to you. It makes it hard to breathe. Harder so when you feel his fingertips graze the underside of your wrist as he smooths the wrapping there. He continues to trace down your arm as he applies the wrap and you feel your skin burn in each spot he touches. He glances up at you and you nearly bolt, rooted in place by his gaze alone. The silence seems to stretch on for an eternity.
"Your other hand, please." Without looking away, you press the unwrapped hand in his. He runs his thumb over your fingers before starting again. You look up at the ceiling this time and recite the Jedi Code twenty times over in your head as adequate punishment for your less than chaste thoughts.
He finishes and takes both your hands in his own, inspecting them quietly. You join him and find that he's done quite an excellent job. They were snug but comfortable and would provide the proper padding where it counted. Just as you were about to thank him, he shocked the words right out of your mouth by lifting both hands to his lips and placing a gentle kiss on both of them.
It wasn't like Maul hadn't kissed you before, in fact it wasn't even like he hadn't initiated anything before! But this was different. This was unlike the slamming against walls and the clacking of teeth. This was intentional with every moment, every glance. The sincerity of the action stunned you into place and even through the layers of fabric you could feel your hands tremble at the sensation.
"You are very strong, laandur'ad. I'm impressed. Still, needn’t hurt yourself over something so simply avoided."
"I wasn't…it wasn't…" you can't get your sentence out. "Thank you, I'll go practice right now!"
Scrambling out of the ship you pointedly do not look back at what you're sure is a very smug looking Maul. In just a few minutes, he had seemingly undone all your hard work at centering yourself. You groan and find yourself walking aimlessly as you try to calm down. The small town that you two had landed near was approaching in the distance, so you decided you'd make your way towards that.
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It was a charming little marketplace. The stalls were decently stocked with things you needed and it was always lively whenever you came by. Despite having to dodge the few children running amok, you liked it. It reminded you of home.
"Two appearances from the strangers in one day! How fortunate we are!" A voice calls out to you and you have to look down to see who's speaking. A small older shistavanen woman sat in a rocking chair waved you over. You wave back politely and make your way towards her.
"Hmm." Without asking she reaches out and grabs your hands, inspecting the wraps. Satisfied, she gives out a howling laugh and grins wolfishly up at you. "So he delivered his gift to you then. Good. That boy spent nearly half his time here at Merruk's stall trying to pick out ones you'd like. She thought he'd be too shy to give them to you, but I knew there was some steel in him yet."
You feel your face grow hot and you laugh nervously, hiding your hands underneath the long sleeves of your cloak. Alright, maybe a different downside of staying on a planet for too long was becoming a part of the local gossip.
"They're very nice. I'm honestly shocked he even thought to get me them." You reply, indulging the older woman. "I don't know how I'm going to make it up to him."
She nods and chews on the lip of her pipe thoughtfully.
"Well, tea is off the table. He spent the other half of his time here just on that." You laugh again and agree with her. "Alright, how about his legs?"
"I've thought about it." You sigh. "But I don't know the first thing about fixing prosthetics like that. It seems like a bad gift to have him teach me how to help. Too self serving, you know?"
She waves off your concern and lights the end of her pipe.
"Aye, but you could learn without him. Here, you go down to my nephew's house and you tell him Auntie Shen sent you and that you need to borrow one of his books. He's got a whole collection, he does. Honestly, I'm worried about that boy! All he does is read." You respectfully listen to Shen prattle on about her concerns for the boy, nodding and saying 'of course' when prompted. It wasn't the first time you'd humored an older woman while out shopping and it was far from the last. Later rather than sooner, you're exchanging goodbyes with her and making your way towards where she had directed you.
Fennric, as you had learned his name was, was a young, very shy togruta male which had surprised you upon meeting him. What surprised you even more was that he had exactly what you were looking for.
"I didn't even know they made books anymore." You run your hands along the flimsi, glancing over the words written on it.
"It's very rare! But I pride myself on collecting them when they pass through here." Fennric responds anxiously. You hand it back to him and retrieve your datapad from your bag.
"You wouldn't mind if I scanned a few sections, would you? There's just a few things I'm curious to learn more about." He nods hastily and makes his way over to a table where you can both sit.
You spent a few hours like this, making quiet conversation when he asked questions. It was very clear to you that he had been supplied a script by his aunt and was trying to get as much information about you and Maul as he could for her. You just considered it your payment. After a few polite goodbyes, you finally made your way back to the ship.
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Maul was disassembling the few electronic parts he had gotten earlier that day when you made your way inside.
"You were gone for quite some time." He notes with his usual indifference.
"Sorry! Got carried away with a project of sorts." You explain while rummaging through one of the storage compartments on board. At this he looks up at you curiously. Quickly finding the tools you need, you walk over to where he's seated and kneel right in front of him.
"I found a book all about your prosthetics!" Holding up your datapad you swipe through a few of the pages you had scanned that referenced his legs specifically. "Well, really, a few of the locals helped me find it but that's besides the point."
"You wish to assist me?" Maul asks, seemingly baffled by the concept alone.
"Yes, if you don't mind guiding me slightly. I'm a fast learner but they're your legs. You'll have to tell me if I'm hurting you." You rest a hand on his knee and hear something clatter atop the table.
"Don't drop those! I'll probably need them later! Now turn this way." You reach out and grab his hips to assist in moving him towards you. He's actually lighter than you expect. When he's completely facing you, you push both his legs apart and settle yourself in between them. You place your datapad down and arrange your tools properly next to you.
"Okay, so what seems to be the issue?" Maul doesn't respond immediately and you look up, confused. He seems to be staring unblinkingly across the ship. You nudge his knee.
'Is this alright, Maul?' You ask in his mind. The last thing you wanted to do was make him uncomfortable in an attempt to try and help him. Your question seems to snap him out of whatever trance he was in and he coughs, nodding once.
"Fine. I'm fine. It's my knees. The spacers and pistons in them are always the first to go." He says it a little louder than needed for the small quarters but you hum affirmatively and swipe on your datapad to the section that noted those issues.
Your fingers find the rubber cap that secures his knee plate to his leg and begin to gently twist it off. Setting it down you push the cloth of his pants up a little higher on his thigh so you can better see what you're working with. You whistle when you see the amount of wear on the metal underneath.
"Well, with how flashy you are in combat, I'm more surprised that these haven't completely snapped off." You reach down for a welding torch and some scrap solder. "Now that I know what to look for, I'll help you try and find more parts when we go out."
Maul for his part stays surprisingly quiet at the jab and the offer. You hadn't really done anything yet, so it was unlikely he was in pain but still, you were worried. Grabbing his hand, you place it on your shoulder.
"If anything feels wrong, squeeze here and I'll stop." Maul gives you another curt nod but it doesn't lessen your concern. "Speak, please."
"Yes. I will." He blurts out, like he can't get the words out of his mouth fast enough.
"Thank you." You tap the metal of his shin appreciatively and continue with your work. It was easier than you had expected in some aspects. As long as you managed to avoid accidentally sealing together the joints of his legs, reinforcing the metal was simple. Taking a small cloth, you lightly wipe down the areas you had just fixed and do the same for his knee plate, reattaching it and making sure it fits snugly.
"Alright, the other one now." You turn and run your hands over the identical right cap of his knee and he lurches forwards to stop you.
"I'm fine. You don't have to—" You shake him off and give him a quick glare.
"Yes, I'm aware I don't have to, Maul. I'm here because I want to be. Now, have I hurt you at all?" He groans but shakes his head no. "Then leave me alone and let me work in peace."
You continue and solder quietly for a few minutes, only stopping when he flinches as you travel to the lower end of his knee. You press a hand to the afflicted area and look up at him, immediately repentant.
"What's wrong? What did I do?" Maul just shakes his head at your worry and sinks back down into the chair.
"You did nothing, laandur'ad. It's only a fault of my own. I've put off replacing the wiring for too long." Now you notice the worn rubber skin that rests just underneath where his knee plate would lie and the fraying wire that accompanies it.
"Maul! How long is too long? This looks awful." How long had he been in pain and not told you? Technically, there was no reason for Maul to tell you if he was struggling, but something about his reluctance to do so made you feel uneasy. You would just have to keep a better eye on him.
"I'm fine." He repeats the words from earlier, this time annoyed with your concern. "I've clearly been through worse plights, I will more than manage."
Force help you. You had never met anyone who could irritate you as promptly as he could. You sit up some and grab for the parts he had dismantled on the table, scanning for the wires you would need.
"You don't have to ‘manage’ anymore, Maul. We more than have the supplies to keep up with this. It doesn't make you honorable to go limping into a fight just because you were too embarrassed to ask for help. The next time I do this I better not see anything as bad as this or I swear—"
"The next time?" Maul cuts you off with a stunned look. You roll your eyes. There was that irritation again, growing inside you.
"Well, obviously I'll be in charge of taking care of your legs now. Why would I trust you with them? Look at the state they're in!" You grumble.
"Then I will be in charge of your hands." He says it so matter-of-factly that you fumble with the wires you had been stripping for a moment.
"What?"
Maul leans forward and trails his hand over your wrapped one. You swallow involuntarily, all of your previous edge gone in an instant.
"Why should I trust you to wrap them? I'm sure you'll regard it as a waste of time, impatient as you are, and go off without them. No, that won't do." He clicks his tongue and you want to hit him. You don't, only because you're sure he'd let you and then scold you for your temper afterwards. Oh, you did not like how well Maul was starting to know you.
"Fine. It's a deal. Now focus because I'm afraid this part will actually be painful, intentional or not." You shift your position again to sit in front of his leg. With a pair of cutting pliers you snip away the worn rubber.
"If I were better at this I would remove your legs and then fix the wiring, but I'm afraid if I do that it could damage some of the sensation you have left. I'll go slowly but I'll need you to be honest with me and tell me how it feels. Do not lie to me, Maul, it will only end poorly for the both of us." You fix him with a stern look. He rolls his eyes but signals for you to begin.
This part was, in theory, even easier than the welding bit. You had spent a lot of time in the past few months adjusting and detailing your lightsaber, so you had no issues when it came to wiring. But for the first time, you didn't want to risk hurting the Zabrak. At least, not when he was like this and being openly vulnerable with you.
You snip the first wire and hear his sharp intake of breath. You wince and rub your hand on the underside of his calf. Attaching the new set of wires and connecting them properly is a slow going process. In between each one, you make him twist and flex his leg to make sure it’s working correctly. You trail your finger down the largest one and feel his body shudder at the sensation.
"Painful?" You ask apologetically.
"Something like that." He says through gritted teeth.
"I have to replace it. It clearly connects to too many parts of you for me to ignore it." Maul sighs but acquiesces.
"What's your favorite color?" You ask him suddenly as you begin to work at disconnecting the wire.
"What?" His voice is deeper, muffled behind one of his hands that he's resting on.
"I'm trying to distract you. Talking might help. Now, tell me what your favorite color is?"
"I don't have one." He replies honestly.
"Well, then just pick one you think is nice!" Sorting through your miscellaneous wires, you find one that matches up perfectly as a replacement and begin to fit it into place.
"Do you have a favorite color?" He flips the question back on you but you let him. It's still counted as him talking.
"Hmm…" you think to yourself quietly, stripping the wire inside his leg, "I guess I would say red."
"Alright, mine is red as well, then." You frown and spare him a quick disapproving glance. You nearly drop your tools when you see him staring down at you with clear mirth in his gaze.
"That's cheating, Maul."
"You can cheat at having a favorite color?" You note that he's using that clueless tone of his that he only brings out when he knows he's been caught in a lie.
"Well, no, but I'm sure you could find a way to do it, you bastard." You tap the side of his leg and he twists it to give you better access.
"You wound me." Then after a moment he asks, "Why red?"
The force vision that lead you to Maul comes back in full swing. It's grown more complete over the time you've gotten to know him. You can see a cloaked figure walk towards you, his red eyes peering out at you from underneath the hood. He says nothing but activates both blades of his lightsaber and swings down. You don't flinch anymore, because you know he's not aiming for you. The chains that had enveloped your arm in the vision slide off now and you look up to see his face perfectly illuminated by the glowing red light of his sword.
"No reason in particular. It's just…comforting now, I suppose." He scoffs at your response but doesn't press you for further details. "You're doing very well, Maul. Just a little longer."
"Don't speak like that." He sounds gravely serious as he talks.
"Oh, you are such a baby. You can't handle a single compliment. All of it is true. This has to be at least slightly uncomfortable and you're handling it exceptionally well. You've sat still and everything. I'm almost there now." You wrap the final wire and reach over for the small jar of contact cement.
The scrap rubber you have lines up well enough with the false skin but is thicker than you would have liked. You rock his leg back and forth and feel no points of awkward tension but still want him to confirm it for you.
"Maul? Look down here please. Does this feel alright?"
"It feels fine." He says briskly, refusing to look at you for some reason. Wow, he really couldn't handle a compliment. You felt no guilt for being nice to someone. Applying both the knee plate and the cap to hold it in place, you pat both of his legs and stand up while offering your hand out to him.
"There you go!" You say somewhat cheerily. Maul doesn't take your hand but you don't take it personally. He stands, bending both his legs as he inspects your work.
"Thank you. I think I'll go mediate alone now. Adjust to them properly." He's halfway out the door by the time he finishes speaking, barely giving you any time at all to process what he's saying to you.
"Maul, wait! That doesn't even make sense!" You rush outside after him, trying to catch up with his purposely long strides. "If you really want to adjust to them then we should spar."
It would both help you find out where the weak points in your fix had been and give you some peace of mind that his legs weren't going to snap off at any given moment.
"I left my lightsaber back on the ship." You pause, stunned by his confession. Since when did Maul leave his lightsaber anywhere? You unclip your own from your belt and toss it to the ground.
"That's alright, hand to hand should suffice. And it'll help me make good use of your gift." You clench and unclench your fists to show off the wrappings. Maul finally stops walking and turns to face you.
The pull of the Force is instant and if you hadn't slammed down your foot as soon as you had felt it, your face would have made direct contact with his fist. Alright, technically that was cheating but if you didn't want a black eye you should probably focus on blocking his attacks rather than on his ethics.
You put your arms up in front of you to block another punch of his and swing up with your left arm, trying to hit him. He dodges and you press the advance, aiming for the lower portion of his torso now. Hitting the metal wouldn't slow him down but it messed with his balance which was always helpful in a fight.
You're too focused on that goal to see him kicking out to sweep your legs. Falling to the ground you feel the wind get knocked out of your lungs but have no time to gasp as he tries to slam his foot down on you. You roll out of the way and lunge at him, shoulder slamming into his midsection as you lock your arms around him and throw him down to the ground.
"Okay, good sweep. Get up. Let's go again." You pant the words out and ready yourself in a defensive stance. Maul groans but clambers his way up and readies himself just the same.
You strike out with your fist and he knocks it back with his forearm, matching your punch instantly. You grab his extended arm with one hand and tug him closer. With your other hand, you use your palm and slam it into the center of his chest, sending him stumbling back. Maul breaks out into a coughing fit and you pull back into your original stance, poised for his next move.
Glaring, he charges at you and you brace yourself for a hit that never comes. Using the Force to propel himself he makes a clear leap over you and lands behind. You try to spin but you're too slow and get clocked in the jaw. Pain sparks across your face and you shuffle backwards.
He tries to hit you again but you crouch and dodge it. Reaching up, you yank underneath his upper arm and grab at his side. In one swift motion you lean back and suplex him into the ground.
He reaches for your leg and pulls harshly, sending you toppling to the ground after him. He tries to roll over on top of you but you hit him in the throat with the side of your hand and press up on his shoulders while he's stunned. You use the momentum to push him back and throw yourself on top of him.
Grabbing his wrists, you pin both of them on the top of his chest and lean down to effectively trap them between you both.
"That jump seemed solid." You tell him, happy to see that his legs had held up to his weight. Maul's breathing is heavy underneath you now and the sense of pride from before dissipates as you wonder if you had somehow actually hurt the man.
"Maul? Are you alright?" You sit up a little to give him more breathing room. As soon as you lessen your grip on his hands he reaches out to grab your hips, keeping you anchored in place on top of him.
"Don't move." He refuses to look at you while he speaks. Suddenly, the past half hour of your interactions with him click into place.
"...Maul, are you turned on right now?" You can't stop yourself from asking the question as it enters your mind and the embarrassed groan he lets out confirms your suspicions. Raising your hand to your mouth you have to muffle a laugh.
"I fail to find the same humor in my situation." He grouses from underneath you. His petulance makes you want to laugh even harder but you compose yourself for his sake.
"Well, what would you like to do about it?" You ask gently.
"What?"
You grin and lean down again, caging your hands around his head. His wide eyes meet your own and he twists his head to the side to avoid them. Humming, you press a light kiss right at the junction where his neck and jaw meet and delight in the feeling of him shuddering underneath you.
"I can leave right now." You tell him and feel his grip on you tighten. "I'll get up and go back inside the ship and pretend this never happened if you want. But I don't think that's what you want, is it, Maul?"
A growling sound tears itself from his throat and he shakes his head. You click your tongue and sit back up, grabbing his chin.
"No, none of that. Don't be a brat, Maul, I'm trying to help you. Now tell me what you want or I'll go." Your ultimatum has him narrowing his eyes and baring his teeth at you, but it was very hard to be scared of him like this when he was just so pliable underneath you.
"You. I want you." You rest your other hand on top of his chest and slide your fingers underneath the lapels of his shirt.
"Excellent start. I'll give you another chance at asking before I leave you here, just because you're showing so much promise. What do you want? And be specific."
You can feel the sudden lurch of fear in him at the prospect of you leaving him like this and it grants you a sort of sick pleasure to be so in control of him. You'd probably feel guilty for it later but for now you enjoyed watching him squirm. When he lifts a hand to cover his face you can't help but coo at him.
"Could you kiss me?" His voice sounds so small when he asks, how could you not indulge his request? Taking his hand into your own, you uncover his face and place a chaste kiss on his lips. Maul whines and chases after your mouth as you part from him.
"More specific." You remind him.
"Harder. Please. Just more, please. Anything you'll give me I want." He reaches up and pulls harshly on the back of your neck now, pulling you down closer to him. Thank the Force he'd given in so quickly because you honestly weren't sure how much longer you could keep denying him.
Slamming your mouth against his own, he groans and rolls his hips up to rock against yours. You bite down and slide your tongue into his mouth and Maul is more than willing to let you.
"You're so handsome, you know that?" You whisper, hardly pulling away from him to speak. He keens at the praise and it only encourages you further as you move your attention to his neck. "Seriously, it pisses me off sometimes."
You hate that you can't really leave marks on the tattooed black of his skin. It wasn't fair in the slightest. You move your other hand up to rest on his neck and find comfort in the dips of your own bite mark that's now permanently etched on his skin.
'Mine.' Something hungry in your mind snarls at you and you jump, your hand closing around his throat. For a moment it's all you can do to not accidentally strangle him at the thought. Maul shivers and presses his own hand atop yours down harder.
A hedonistic groan leaves your own throat as you lean down and sink your teeth into his neck again. You don't go so far as to draw blood from him this time and can feel his dissatisfaction with your self control. Laughing against him, you tilt your head up to kiss his jaw.
"Let's go inside, Maul." Your voice is rougher now, even as you whisper to him. His hands grip at your waist again with a terrifying speed and you nearly wince.
"I do not wish for this to end." He says with such stillness in his tone as if he wasn't half undressed and out of breath underneath you. Again you wanted to laugh but decided better of it at the last moment.
"Neither do I. But I would be throughly annoyed if the first time I got to properly fuck you was interrupted by a wandering townsperson." With great difficulty, you pull yourself to your feet and stare down at him. "Now can we go?"
"Yes. Immediately." Maul scrambles to his own feet and walks towards the ship in what must be a record breaking pace. His eagerness has you biting back a smile and if you weren't so desperate yourself you'd probably tease him for it.
Well, you'd still tease him for it, but much later on, when it was later in the day and easier to hide the truth from one another. The possessiveness you had felt before still lingered but you shook your head and left it outside. There were more important things to attend to right now than leftover guilt from a dead religion.
"You are being unreasonably slow." Maul’s voice breaks you from your somber trance and you're thankful for the intervention.
"So needy." You huff under your breath as you jog to the ship.
Yes, many more important things indeed.
an. A HUGE shout out to my beloved cowriter weirdfreak for helping me both edit and come up with ideas for this chapter, I already have a lot of fun writing these but she's made it infinitely better ! I hope you guys all liked this chapter!! Something a little sweet for whats about to happen in the next one <3
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
tag list: @bexeris @ashes-136667 @aninnai @maulsdear @thelittlebats @the-reas0n-is-y0u @moldy-bread-slice
SOFT!MAUL even though he has sharp teeth that would bite into you if you do the wrong move or say the wrong thing tbh
i can't believe we have reached loverboy maul!!! he's so sweet and so thoughtful (and still so unsure) with his gifts. at first, his collar which allows the reader to always find him, even when away. and now the wraps because he saw they weren't taking care of their hands (i'm sobbing at the thought that he spent a lot of time trying to find one they'd like). we have gotten so far from his tantrums where he started attacking after he got caught cheating
and the reader trying to give him back something he'd appreciate almost as much as the wraps, and it's taking the time to learn and to fix his legs!!! at the colors conversation, i had to take a break and look at the ceiling for a few seconds because i couldn't stop giggling
then the fight happened and sub!maul entered the scene? that was it. the moment i said okay, we have officially reached the whatever these two have lovers part of the story
i am sure the phrase "anything you'll give me i want" will haunt me everytime i close my eyes, because you ate with that
so happy to read this story, and as always, it's a pleasure to read anything you write!!! sending you much love and inspiration <3333
In which there’s no escaping the will of the Force, no matter how much you kick, scream, or bite.
cw. first meetings, fighting, can you two stop growling at each other for two seconds, grand theft auto, but for a space ship, that’s not how the force works, force visions, inaccurate stab wounds, yeah there’s stabbing in this one whoops, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post order 66
wc. 5.7k
an. Hello everyone and welcome back to my YouTube Channel. Anyways I had fun writing this one bc it had been cooking for a Minute in my brain. THANK YOU to the wonderful weirdfreak1338 for beta reading this and for literally having the worlds best ideas ever 🙏🙏🙏 hope you all enjoy!!!
Unlike all my other fics this is actually the perfect fic to read first because it’s their first meeting! Yay!
You sighed and slumped down the wall of the underground passage. Every part of you ached and you wanted nothing more than to fall asleep right there, but as you closed your eyes the red blades of a double sided lightsaber appeared. It yowled at you in a language you couldn't understand and slammed down right on top of you. Gasping you stood to attention, hand on your blaster even if you couldn't sense anything harmful.
You hadn't been able to sense anything harmful that day either, why start taking chances again?
"Easy. It's just me." Quinlan's voice echoed through the hallway and you relaxed. "Are you alright?"
"Just a recurring vision." You brush off his worry and pull him into a hug which he readily returned. "They've all made it?"
"All of them are on the ship now headed towards Mapuzo. They'll be alright thanks to you." He reassures you but it does little to soothe the unending ache in your heart. You pull away from him and nod frantically.
"Right, I'll go out and find more then. You have my comm and it's encrypted, but I'll change the frequency again in a few hours. Don't respond if—" Quinlan grabs your shoulders and shakes you lightly, stopping a rant that he's heard countless times before over the last year.
"You need a break." You scoff at the insinuation and roll your eyes at your fellow Jedi. Quinlan's hard stare doesn't falter as you do so.
"I don't deserve one." You say plainly. Your expression is blank but you feel a twinge of regret when you watch the man's face fall. It was true though. You hadn't done nearly enough to consider stopping now.
When Quinlan had appeared in your life and told you about the Hidden Path, you had done everything in your power to collect any youngling or force sensitive you could find and guided them all to him. But on days like this, the loss of life that you had let slip through you fingers seemed so much greater than that which you had saved.
During your moping, he reaches to grab your hand and pries the comlink out of it. You barely move.
"Rest. You're wearing yourself thin."But as he speaks he can tell his words don't get through to you. He sighs deeply and reaches up to cup your face, brushing his thumb over your cheek. "With you this tired you wont be any use to anyone, especially yourself."
You nod again, tears falling down your face freely now. With a remorseful look Quinlan sweeps you into a warm embrace and lets you cry quietly for as long as you need.
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The cantina was fine as far as cantinas went. It was filled with its usual seedy characters and had seen better days—though that might have been a stretch now that you thought about it—but it provided you with a warm meal and a bed for the night, so you wouldn't complain. You pulled your hood down tighter over your face and nestled farther into the booth, trying to avoid any unwanted attention.
The door of the bar swung open. It was a fairly quiet noise that was easily misplaced in the ruckus within the room, but after months of being on the run you had attuned yourself to little sounds like that. You could never be too aware of your surroundings. But this time you don't even have to look at who walks in, you can feel it.
It was as if the air had been punched out from your lungs, your blood running cold at just the sensation alone. The dark side was suffocating and it grew to envelop the entire room as the cloaked figure entered. The bar grew eerily quieter as they pushed through the crowd.
You raised your spoon to your lips and pretended to eat, even if now the food felt had turned to sand in your mouth. Sitting in the booth your confusion brewed inside you as you tried to better understand their presence.
This was no Inquisitor. With your few encounters with them, you remember the overwhelming fear you felt when dealing with them. Fear for your own life, but also the fear they had for their own. Like caged dogs being forced to fight. There was no fear here, only a sickly hot sense of rage.
Still, it was clear that there was a dark side user here and they were, to put it lightly, pissed. You would take your chances elsewhere tonight. Shutting your eyes you waited for their Force signature to slink away from you while doing your best to conceal your own. When it was far enough away from you, you opened your eyes and readied yourself to leave.
What you hadn't been expecting was for them to be sitting right across from you. Unable to still the terror that flooded your senses your eyes widened as you stared at the man. You couldn't see much of his face but you could make out the red and black lines of his skin and felt your heart stop. No, he was dead, wasn't he?
"Oh, I assure you I'm very much alive." His voice is cool as he speaks to you. It feels like warm water running down your back but you still shiver. You look down hastily and push away from the table, trying to run. Before you can even see it, he reaches over the table and grabs your wrist with a bruising force. The sudden pain shocks you so much you can't move, nor do you dare. He has you now.
"Do you know who I am?" He asks and you let out a shaky breath. However, when you go to speak his name he shushes you.
'Speak.' He says, his words rattling in your skull. Your stomach lurches at just how easily he managed to make his way inside.
'Darth Maul.' It unnerves you how quickly he let you in his own mind and you are not unaware of the connection it now forges between you both.
"Good. Very good. Now, you're going to help me." He releases his grip on your mind but not on your hand. You know that you must be imagining it but it feels like it burns the longer he touches you. Despite your fear, you scoff.
"Why would I do that?"
"It's simple. I'll kill you if you don't." A sense of relief spills over you.
"You think I value my life much more than I do." You yank your hand away from him and he scowls at you. "Kill me, fine. All you'll do is reunite me with the Force faster than I'd anticipated. You on the other hand, lose whatever you need in me and have to waste even more time searching for it again."
Standing to leave you can feel him following close behind you. Good. It was partially true what you had said. There was no death, only the Force. Your own demise meant very little to you but that did not mean that you wanted others to suffer. You didn't know Darth Maul well enough to predict what he would do. Getting him away from the public was your best bet at limiting causalities.
Weaving your way through the streets and crowds you eventually settle on an alleyway that's empty enough for you to stop walking.
"Alright. What do you want?" You rest your hands on your hips, trying to seem bigger than you were. It's also conveniently where your blaster and vibroblade were settled, though you weren't really sure what help they would be in a fight against the Sith Lord.
"You." He responds simply and you frown.
"What?"
"The Force has guided me to you. You are angrier than you let on." He stalks towards you now and you feel your breath hitch in your throat. "Everything taken from you in a single day, wouldn't you like to know who's responsible for your suffering? For their suffering?"
"I'm guessing you know then?" You slide a foot back to try and make room between you both but he just as quickly covets it.
"Oh, yes. He was my master after all." You actually begin to feel sick at his admission.
"Lovely. What a darling little pair the two of you must have made." You joke but the words feel thick in your mouth and there's no humor behind them. Maul hums, seemingly amused and begins to circle you. "I still don't understand how I'm involved in this."
"I will train you. Together we will grow strong enough to defeat him and avenge those who has wrongfully slaughtered. Imagine the peace it would give you. No one would ever bear than pain you and I share ever again." His voice is like silk and you find yourself biting the inside of your cheek to keep yourself focused.
"I don't need a master Maul and there's no way in hell I'd ever be your fucked up version of a Padawan. I'm too old for that kind of manipulation. You should really know your audience better." You glare at him when he passes in front of you again.
"Perhaps not. But do not deny your rage, Jedi. Though, how long has it been since you could last call yourself that?"
It's clearly an attempt to taunt you, really he couldn't have made it more obvious if he tried. You still find yourself regulating your breathing until you've calmed down. Well, as calm as you could be in the proximity of a man who seemed to kill for fun.
"Alright. I'll give you something Maul. You're right. I'm angry." As soon as you finish speaking you flip the vibroblade from your hip into your hands and lunge at him.
He deflects easily, blocking you with a swift sweeping motion of his arm. The sound of his lightsaber activating makes you duck as he swings at you. You feel the heat of the blade just above your head. You twist on your side and kick one of your legs out, making contact with the metal portion of his torso. He stumbles back but isn't winded like you had hoped.
"Force above, how much of you is machine?" You grumble while flipping your vibroblade in your hand. You knew the blade wouldn't stand up to a single hit from the lightsaber so you had to be smart about how you utilized it.
Maul straightens up and enters a stance that you recognize but can hardly remember the name for. Was that one defensive or offensive? Suddenly, the world seems to shift around you as you feel him pull you closer, the instant vertigo making it hard to focus. What you do know is that if you don't act now, you'll be speared on the end of his sword.
Breaking from his hold is hard but you manage to do it with just enough time to dodge. His lightsaber sheers through your cloak and cuts into your side but you pay it no mind. Using the momentum of his pull, you reel back your fist and aim straight for his face. By only a split second is he able to avoid your punch.
The concrete of the wall splinters around your hand and a large crack appears in the foundation of the building. You pull back and shake out the stinging sensation from your now bleeding knuckles. It's quickly replaced by the pulsating, searing pain that emenates from your torso. Gasping you press your uninjured hand to the burn.
Maul stares unblinkingly up at the wall and huffs.
"Finally, something impressive." With a deep roar he charges towards you again. You push your back to the wall and brace yourself. This time when he slashes down at you, you reach up and catch the top hilt of his lightsaber. It helped that it was a ridiculously long build.
You pull the saber closer to you, trying to adjust your own vibroblade in your hand as you did. Maul growls and pushes harder against you. The metal of one of his legs digs painfully into your hip and you hiss.
"Surrender," his calming tone of voice is raspy now, "surrender and I won't kill you here. Together—"
You cut his speech off with a guttural scream of your own. He doesn't flinch but he's clearly surprised by the action the way lessens the pressure against you. It's finally the opening you'd been looking for.
Hooking a leg behind his own, you risk raising your hand that's wrapped around your vibroblade and stab it into his shoulder. He shouts in pain and you twist the blade deeper, knocking him off balance. You fully turn both of your bodies and slam him up against the wall.
"I'd shut off that lightsaber if you enjoy having both arms, Maul." You can barely recognize the words as yourself. He scowls, baring his teeth at you, but does as you say. With the blade between you gone, you shove all of your body weight on top of the knife now and feel him writhe against you.
You pull away and watch him grab for the knife but he's unable to do anything. His body must be too exhausted and he has to be fighting back shock to even stay aware right now. You didn't blame him, you were in a similar state. The muscles in your arms cramped and it hurt to get a full breath in with your side like this, but you couldn't stay here. You weren't going to kid yourself and act like you were a better duelist than Darth Maul of all people, so you ran.
Maybe it was a coward's move. You didn't care. Honor meant little to you nowadays.
-------------------------------------------
There wasn't a single available comlink anywhere for you to contact Quinlan again. You groaned. Really it was your own fault, you shouldn't have let him take yours. When he had earlier you'd just been so exhausted that you hadn't thought anything better of it.
You could probably easily pilfer one from a random passerby but it felt wrong and in all actuality wouldn't get you very far. Too many of them were now programed to work in tandem with the user's chain code and the last thing you needed now was to be arrested for something as minor as petty theft.
No, you would just have to make your way to a past meet up spot and wait. That you could manage at least. You hadn't felt Maul's presence since the alleyway but remained on high alert anyways. If he had managed to get in your head so effortlessly then it wasn't a stretch to believe that he could now search specifically for your Force signature. You weren't sure if you believed him when he said that the Force had guided him to you, but in all fairness you had been focused on not dying at the time so you excused your lack of investigation.
The gaggles of people thinned as you wandered further into the depths of the city and you cloaked yourself well enough to avoid any particularly rough looking individuals. There, underneath a small overpass, you finally sat down. It was too out in the open to risk sleeping but you could meditate to pass the time. Crossing your legs, you began to recite the Jedi Code in your mind, giving yourself into the whims of the Force.
A searing pain shot through you.
If you hadn't been sitting you were sure you would have doubled over from the shock alone. Where was it coming from? You grabbed at your shoulder where the pain seemingly emanated from but there was no sign of injury, nor could you remember anything having happened to you.
Wait. No. It hadn't happened to you per say, but you had definitely been there for a shoulder injury, hadn't you? You shake your head and the pain dissipates but the unease—and also a fair bit of annoyance—does not go away.
"What a vindictive bitch." You mutter as you roll your arm out. Well that was no good. You still couldn't sense him nearby but if he had managed to pull of a stunt like that then you couldn't imagine him to be far away either. Pulling yourself back up again was a struggle but you had to move. If not to be caught by him, then to not reveal a meeting place of the Hidden Path.
A ripple of movement from the corner of your vision caught your attention. You wouldn't have paid it any mind if two stormtroopers weren't chasing after it. You tuck yourself against the wall and cover your face as they grow nearer. Only when the rattling of their plastiod armor was far enough away from you did you even think about breathing again.
"They'll be fine." You whisper to yourself. "You can't save everyone. Let it go."
Before you can stop yourself, you're rushing towards the squabble without a single plan. What you would do when you got there, you weren't quite sure. Killing them seemed a bit dramatic and you weren't a good enough liar to make up an excuse for both you and their target on the spot. You're choices were basically nonexistent, but you kept running anyways.
Something was wrong the second you threw yourself down that alleyway and you knew it.
For starters, the troopers nor their target are here. You pant and try to catch your breath and find it harder to breathe with each inhale. When had it gotten so cold? Why did the air feel like static? And then, there it is. That fear that you had prattled on about earlier fills each and everyone one of your senses.
"Found you." The modulated voice grates on the underside of your skin as it somehow worms its way inside you. You twist your body and grab for your vibroblade—but it's missing. The slip up gives the Inquisitor enough time to unsheathe their lightsaber and swing down. You dodge but you know its ultimately useless. It was a dead end. Grappling with your blaster you aim and fire a few shots, which they deflect with ease.
They throw out a hand you feel the will of the Force shift as it tightens around your neck. You gasp and scratch at your throat, feeling your feet slowly lift off of the ground.
"So, which one are you then? There's like…twenty of you, right? Does that make you Inquisitor number seven?" You wheeze out the words, just able to make out the mask that they were wearing as your vision flickered.
"So funny. So kind. It will almost be a shame to watch you die here." They respond to your barb clearly unbothered.
A swath of red light cuts over you and they drop to the ground, releasing their grip on you. Your body crumples to the ground as you sputter, unable to adjust to the now overabundance of air.
You hear the familiar crash of lightsaber blades against one another and—you hear the what?
Looking up you can't believe what you're seeing. The Inquisitor was now fighting a different Inquisitor, or at least that's what you thought. The malevolent glow from the double sided lightsaber would have been hard to mistake as anyone else. Great, now there was two homicidal maniacs instead of one. Still it gives you an opening to escape and you take it.
Rushing past them both you sprint to the opening of the alley and hide behind the wall, unable to look away from the battle as much as you wanted to. It was like watching a speeder crash.
The Inquisitor that had cornered you before was struggling to keep up with their opponents movements now. Their adversary dealt their blows with such grace that it hardly surprised you when they gained the upper hand. They swung the blade out and a screaming shriek of the plasma against plasma jolted you from your trance.
A sinking feeling grew in your stomach as you watched the blades clash against each other again. You shut your eyes and listened. That sound was too familiar.
You hadn't put much thought into your vision, brushing it off as a nightmare. There were much more pressing things to worry about then your constant fear of being killed by the Empire's dogs. But as the cloaked figure parried again with their lightsaber you could hear the weapon itself scream in a horrifyingly poignant way. A way that you could trace all to easily to your dreams as of late.
You felt your hands grow heavy and your feet became rooted in place. It couldn't be true. There was a million reasons and explanations for how Maul had gotten in to your head and a million more for why he would choose to lie to you. Unfortunately, you didn't have the luxury of weighing out each of those options now. You raise your blaster and fire.
The Inquisitor dropped dead.
"So, you weren't kidding?" You walked closer to him, blaster still raised. Maul pulled down the hood of his cloak and clearly regret the movement, teeth gritting together in pain as soon as he did.
"You will learn I have a very poor sense of humor." He says, shutting off his lightsaber. You don't pay him the same courtesy of disabling your weapon.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Look I haven't decided what I'm gonna do with you yet but we have to get out of here now. With them dead, troopers will be swarming this place in minutes and neither of us are in the proper shape to deal with that."
So what if you two had alleged Force visions about each other? Big deal. There was no time to think about that currently if you wanted to stay alive which—in direct contradiction to your previous statement—you really did.
"By all means, lead the way." Maul bowed slightly.
"There's a space port nearby, come on." You wouldn't be able to tell Quinlan where you had gone but that would be fine. As soon as you got rid of Maul at whatever planet the two of you landed on you'd find a way to contact him.
"You have a ship?" He asks.
"Not exactly."
-------------------------------------------
Hiding behind a wall of shipping crates the two of you watch the band of Stormtroopers walk past. Clearly you had been too generous with your original estimate of when they would arrive. It looked like a whole Star Destroyer fleet had been deployed in the time it took from you to get from the backstreets to here.
"There's too many. We can't get through them without being seen." You murmured, trying to look for a opening as they made their rounds but having no such luck deciphering one.
"So we will forge our own path." Maul moves to stand and your already hastily pulling him down by his collar.
"Are you insane?" You hiss and his bares his teeth at you in a perfect mirror of your own disgruntled expression. "You're injured and I only have a blaster! There is no galaxy in which we survive a 'guns blazing' approach."
"You are wrong."
"Really? I fail to—"
"You have more than a blaster, Jedi."
His words shock you into silence. Brushing your hand over your hip, you feel the sturdy hilt of your own lightsaber resting dutifully against it.
"I…" The longer you hesitate to speak the more shame fills you. Maul's gaze burns as he looks at you with barely concealed contempt.
"Hiding has made you craven. You've already allowed them to take from you what is most important."
"Oh and what would that be? Please, enlighten me." The words come out with no lack of acerbity.
"Your own identity." He lays out the truth too easily. It's nearly too much and you weren't sure when you started breathing so hard or when your throat had become so tight. Shaking your head you unsheathe your lightsaber and stand.
"You know nothing about me. Don't talk to me like you do. Unless you'd prefer another wound on your shoulder to match." Maul says nothing at your threat but you can feel the flicker of triumph from him through the Force and you shudder.
Staring out into the veritable field of ships, you point at one of them and nod.
"The EML 850?" Maul moves closer to see what exactly you were looking at. You frown and shrug.
"Is that the one that looks like a really shiny box? If so, yes."
"You don't know the classifications of ships?" He sounds appalled when he asks. You honestly had never paid much mind to that sort of thing when you had been employed by the temple but suddenly you were starting to wish you had, if only to avoid his further judgment of your character.
"I can't fly them either." You admit sheepishly. Well, okay you probably could figure it out but not without severely damaging the integrity of the hull. "Still glad you sought me out?"
"You deem me to be dishonest." Maul replies in a hushed voice now. If it had been anyone else you might have felt guilty for the doubt you regarded him with but one look into those golden eyes and it was quickly forgotten.
"Of course I do. You know, if you really want this to work you should stop expecting me to be an idiot." Sighing, you lean against the crate and shut your eyes. The vision doesn't appear but the unintelligible howls return all the same and you gasp. Looking back at him you saw the very blade that had been haunting you now alight.
"Say what you wish. In fact, believe what you wish just as well. The truth always has a way of making itself known." He stalks towards you and you steel yourself, readying yourself for a fight. He doesn't even spare you a glance as he throws himself into the ship yard.
The sound of blaster fire is instantaneous and it has you fumbling for the ignition switch of your lightsaber. A pang goes through you. Something that used to be so second nature, discarded as soon as it was of no use to you. The body of a stormtrooper crumpling to the ground frightens you out of your self disgust.
Blocking a barrage of blaster fire you push yourself through the tarmac, following Maul's lead. Truth be told you hadn't really kept up with your lightsaber training after the fall of the order and it was painfully apparent when you compared your forms to his. Alright, well if they had already seen your lightsabers it wasn't far off that they knew what you were or suspected at least which meant that using the Force wasn't off the table.
Using the Force to jump back, you throw out your hands and imagine grabbing two of the ships on the runway. The phantom touch of cold metal glides under your palms. Slamming your hands together the creaking sound of them breaking off of their supports is deafening. Their hulls grind into the pavement and you have to strain your arms to pull them together. A few of the troopers manage to avoid your temporary blockade either by way of rushing forward or staying behind but you can feel the loss of life from the unfortunate few that don't make it through.
Slumping over you realize too late that you over estimated your abilities. Those behind the ships wouldn't be able to get through but for the ones that had, you were now too exhausted to fight back against properly. A whirlwind of red appears in front of you, blocking any of the attacks that the stormtroopers try to carry out.
Gawking up at Maul—who honestly, despite everything that had happened in the last few minutes, you had forgotten about entirely—you watch him deflect their fire with ease. This was now the second time tonight he had saved your life and you did not like how much you were starting to owe him.
'Get to the ship and start it. I will meet you there.' Maul spoke in your mind without looking back. You were also starting to hate that. There was a lot to dislike about Maul apparently, who could have guessed?
The access panel to remove the supports from the EML 850 was locked and was requesting some sort of access code from you. There was no time for that. With your lightsaber you sheered the panel from its podium and watched the ship's doors open. In the back of your mind you hoped that the owner had insurance. Then you thought even further back to the two ships you had just forcibly made into a barricade and settled on hoping everyone had insurance and felt a little guilty for the insurance broker who would have to deal with all of this in the morning.
Luckily the layout of the ship is straight forward enough and you're able to find the cockpit with ease. You grimace when you see the control panel full of blinking buttons and switches. Would it be a gross misuse of the Force to call upon it to tell which one of these damn things actually turned the ship on? Probably. You did so anyway since you preferred the idea of not dying tonight.
Slamming down your hand on a few of the flashing lights the ship whirred to life and you let out a startled laugh. Glancing out of the windows you saw Maul, still engaged in combat. You could technically leave now. Inputting coordinates to a safe house wouldn't be hard and this thing had to have autopilot on it somewhere. There was no reason to stay.
Throwing yourself into the pilot's seat you navigate through screens trying to find the controls for the laser turret you had seen mounted atop the ship. A small holo pannel lights up with schematics. You yank the yoke of the ship to the side and aim in what you hope is the proper direction.
The explosion is instantaneous. Shielding your eyes from the blast you can't see what happens to Maul. As soon as the smoke subsides you press yourself to the glass trying to see what your little stunt had managed and you gape when you see the sizable crater in the runway.
"That was a poor attempt at killing me." Maul's voice emanates from behind you and you jump, slamming your head into the roof of the cockpit.
"I wasn't trying to kill you!" You groan, rubbing the top of your head. "I was trying to save you!"
He regards with a look of disbelief and rolls his eyes, shoving you out of the way and taking your spot in the pilot's seat. He begins to press buttons and pull levers you weren't aware of on the ship's control pannel and it begins to sway as it takes off from the ground. Scrambling for purchase along the walls you throw yourself into the co-pilot's chair and strap yourself in.
"Do you even have a destination in mind?" You shout over the roaring engines of the ship.
"One that's away from here."
"Maker help us."
The ship keens under the attacks from the heavy artillery that the Imperials have now taken aim at you with. You really hoped this thing wasn't here for maintenance and was in top working order, or at least that it's shields were fully in tact.
It's a surprisingly fast ship for its size—or maybe it was just your adrenaline that was making everything move by so quickly—and Maul manages to pull you out of the atmosphere and into the stars in what must be a record time for some pilots. It makes you a little dizzy but you refuse to show any sign of discomfort around him.
He punches in some coordinates into the nav computer and the blinding lights of stars blur past you as you enter hyperspace. You unclench your hands from the straps of your seat and your fingers ache from how tightly you'd been holding on. There was of course some palpable relief from escaping Imperial clutches, but now you were trapped inside a very small metal box with a man who practiced the same ideology as your sworn enemies. You really knew how to pick your battles.
"You did wait for me. Why?" Maul's voice wakes you up only slightly from your post-adrenaline slump. Sighing, you rub at your temples and rest your head in your palms.
"Couldn't fly the ship without you."
"I do not believe in your claims of inadequacy when it comes to—" Maul is cut off by you hitting the wall of the ship with your fist.
"Ugh, fine! It would have been rude!" Standing now you leave the cockpit in search of the crew's quarters. Much to your dismay you hear Maul follow after you.
"You were worried about appearing rude?"
"Yes."
"Even though earlier tonight you stabbed me in the shoulder and left me pinned to wall with your blade?" Your ears grow hot at the clear contradiction in your values and you spin on your heel to yell some obscenity at him, only stopping when you see him holding your vibroblade out to you. Tilting his head he gestures for you to take it when you hesitate and it only amplifies your embarrassment. If Maul notices he does not say anything and that only makes it worse. Mumbling a quiet 'thank you' you continue your search.
You never thought you would be so happy to see a military grade bunk in your life. You lie down on the plastic sheets and drag your hands down your face, some part of you hoping this was just a really elaborate alcohol induced dream never mind the fact that you hadn't had a single drop earlier at the cantina. You peak at Maul through your fingers and wince.
A really, really elaborate dream.
an. Fun fact the EML 850 is actually like a niche and rare ship because its hull is entirely made of durasteel! Which makes it hella tough and also hella hard to produce. I did two seconds of research to pick one that would have enough room for Maul and the Reader and was like. Good enough. The ship ALSO has a name but that will be revealed in time 🙏🙏 thank you for reading!!
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
tag list: @bexeris @ashes-136667 @aninnai @maulsdear @thelittlebats @the-reas0n-is-y0u @moldy-bread-slice
I can't believe they met in a cantina lmao and maul just sat in the same table like yeah help yourself
And they stabbed Maul and left him pinned to the wall !!! And then he goes back to help them escape from the inquisitors. There were moments where I thought omg he's so thoughtful, and he just went to the male manipulator school
There's so much banter between them that it's so funny and entertaining seeing them interact. They are so doubtful of their actions, and always with good intentions (I laughed at the insurance comments like, yeah, I think the empire's ships are probably covered), and Maul always assumes the worst
I can't wait to keep reading this story and I'm so happy for this update :D
What if you wanted to have a nice depression meal and then the force sent you a mortal enemy. What then.
Maul is the most thoughtful manipulator ever because he doesn’t think he’s manipulating you <3 sigh. We gotta give this guy therapy but after we stab him a few more times
They are genuinely the duo that’s like “someone will die” “of fun!”
Thank you so much for keeping up with the series as always!!
My work can include heavy themes (such as sexual assault, abuse, panic attacks, death, toxic behavior, self-doubt, a little bit of smut, etc). Each chapter and fic will have their own warnings, but if anything might trigger you, be cautious!
If you are interested in reading the Bucky fics I loved on this app, check out my list of fic recommendations on my other blog @buckbuckbarnesstuff
If you'd like to support my work, here is my ko-fi ♡ (this is entirely optional, please don’t feel pressured)
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𐦍 𝓓𝓻𝓪𝓫𝓫𝓵𝓮𝓼 𐦍
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In which there’s no escaping the will of the Force, no matter how much you kick, scream, or bite.
cw. first meetings, fighting, can you two stop growling at each other for two seconds, grand theft auto, but for a space ship, that’s not how the force works, force visions, inaccurate stab wounds, yeah there’s stabbing in this one whoops, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post order 66
wc. 5.7k
an. Hello everyone and welcome back to my YouTube Channel. Anyways I had fun writing this one bc it had been cooking for a Minute in my brain. THANK YOU to the wonderful weirdfreak1338 for beta reading this and for literally having the worlds best ideas ever 🙏🙏🙏 hope you all enjoy!!!
Unlike all my other fics this is actually the perfect fic to read first because it’s their first meeting! Yay!
You sighed and slumped down the wall of the underground passage. Every part of you ached and you wanted nothing more than to fall asleep right there, but as you closed your eyes the red blades of a double sided lightsaber appeared. It yowled at you in a language you couldn't understand and slammed down right on top of you. Gasping you stood to attention, hand on your blaster even if you couldn't sense anything harmful.
You hadn't been able to sense anything harmful that day either, why start taking chances again?
"Easy. It's just me." Quinlan's voice echoed through the hallway and you relaxed. "Are you alright?"
"Just a recurring vision." You brush off his worry and pull him into a hug which he readily returned. "They've all made it?"
"All of them are on the ship now headed towards Mapuzo. They'll be alright thanks to you." He reassures you but it does little to soothe the unending ache in your heart. You pull away from him and nod frantically.
"Right, I'll go out and find more then. You have my comm and it's encrypted, but I'll change the frequency again in a few hours. Don't respond if—" Quinlan grabs your shoulders and shakes you lightly, stopping a rant that he's heard countless times before over the last year.
"You need a break." You scoff at the insinuation and roll your eyes at your fellow Jedi. Quinlan's hard stare doesn't falter as you do so.
"I don't deserve one." You say plainly. Your expression is blank but you feel a twinge of regret when you watch the man's face fall. It was true though. You hadn't done nearly enough to consider stopping now.
When Quinlan had appeared in your life and told you about the Hidden Path, you had done everything in your power to collect any youngling or force sensitive you could find and guided them all to him. But on days like this, the loss of life that you had let slip through you fingers seemed so much greater than that which you had saved.
During your moping, he reaches to grab your hand and pries the comlink out of it. You barely move.
"Rest. You're wearing yourself thin."But as he speaks he can tell his words don't get through to you. He sighs deeply and reaches up to cup your face, brushing his thumb over your cheek. "With you this tired you wont be any use to anyone, especially yourself."
You nod again, tears falling down your face freely now. With a remorseful look Quinlan sweeps you into a warm embrace and lets you cry quietly for as long as you need.
-------------------------------------------
The cantina was fine as far as cantinas went. It was filled with its usual seedy characters and had seen better days—though that might have been a stretch now that you thought about it—but it provided you with a warm meal and a bed for the night, so you wouldn't complain. You pulled your hood down tighter over your face and nestled farther into the booth, trying to avoid any unwanted attention.
The door of the bar swung open. It was a fairly quiet noise that was easily misplaced in the ruckus within the room, but after months of being on the run you had attuned yourself to little sounds like that. You could never be too aware of your surroundings. But this time you don't even have to look at who walks in, you can feel it.
It was as if the air had been punched out from your lungs, your blood running cold at just the sensation alone. The dark side was suffocating and it grew to envelop the entire room as the cloaked figure entered. The bar grew eerily quieter as they pushed through the crowd.
You raised your spoon to your lips and pretended to eat, even if now the food felt had turned to sand in your mouth. Sitting in the booth your confusion brewed inside you as you tried to better understand their presence.
This was no Inquisitor. With your few encounters with them, you remember the overwhelming fear you felt when dealing with them. Fear for your own life, but also the fear they had for their own. Like caged dogs being forced to fight. There was no fear here, only a sickly hot sense of rage.
Still, it was clear that there was a dark side user here and they were, to put it lightly, pissed. You would take your chances elsewhere tonight. Shutting your eyes you waited for their Force signature to slink away from you while doing your best to conceal your own. When it was far enough away from you, you opened your eyes and readied yourself to leave.
What you hadn't been expecting was for them to be sitting right across from you. Unable to still the terror that flooded your senses your eyes widened as you stared at the man. You couldn't see much of his face but you could make out the red and black lines of his skin and felt your heart stop. No, he was dead, wasn't he?
"Oh, I assure you I'm very much alive." His voice is cool as he speaks to you. It feels like warm water running down your back but you still shiver. You look down hastily and push away from the table, trying to run. Before you can even see it, he reaches over the table and grabs your wrist with a bruising force. The sudden pain shocks you so much you can't move, nor do you dare. He has you now.
"Do you know who I am?" He asks and you let out a shaky breath. However, when you go to speak his name he shushes you.
'Speak.' He says, his words rattling in your skull. Your stomach lurches at just how easily he managed to make his way inside.
'Darth Maul.' It unnerves you how quickly he let you in his own mind and you are not unaware of the connection it now forges between you both.
"Good. Very good. Now, you're going to help me." He releases his grip on your mind but not on your hand. You know that you must be imagining it but it feels like it burns the longer he touches you. Despite your fear, you scoff.
"Why would I do that?"
"It's simple. I'll kill you if you don't." A sense of relief spills over you.
"You think I value my life much more than I do." You yank your hand away from him and he scowls at you. "Kill me, fine. All you'll do is reunite me with the Force faster than I'd anticipated. You on the other hand, lose whatever you need in me and have to waste even more time searching for it again."
Standing to leave you can feel him following close behind you. Good. It was partially true what you had said. There was no death, only the Force. Your own demise meant very little to you but that did not mean that you wanted others to suffer. You didn't know Darth Maul well enough to predict what he would do. Getting him away from the public was your best bet at limiting causalities.
Weaving your way through the streets and crowds you eventually settle on an alleyway that's empty enough for you to stop walking.
"Alright. What do you want?" You rest your hands on your hips, trying to seem bigger than you were. It's also conveniently where your blaster and vibroblade were settled, though you weren't really sure what help they would be in a fight against the Sith Lord.
"You." He responds simply and you frown.
"What?"
"The Force has guided me to you. You are angrier than you let on." He stalks towards you now and you feel your breath hitch in your throat. "Everything taken from you in a single day, wouldn't you like to know who's responsible for your suffering? For their suffering?"
"I'm guessing you know then?" You slide a foot back to try and make room between you both but he just as quickly covets it.
"Oh, yes. He was my master after all." You actually begin to feel sick at his admission.
"Lovely. What a darling little pair the two of you must have made." You joke but the words feel thick in your mouth and there's no humor behind them. Maul hums, seemingly amused and begins to circle you. "I still don't understand how I'm involved in this."
"I will train you. Together we will grow strong enough to defeat him and avenge those who has wrongfully slaughtered. Imagine the peace it would give you. No one would ever bear than pain you and I share ever again." His voice is like silk and you find yourself biting the inside of your cheek to keep yourself focused.
"I don't need a master Maul and there's no way in hell I'd ever be your fucked up version of a Padawan. I'm too old for that kind of manipulation. You should really know your audience better." You glare at him when he passes in front of you again.
"Perhaps not. But do not deny your rage, Jedi. Though, how long has it been since you could last call yourself that?"
It's clearly an attempt to taunt you, really he couldn't have made it more obvious if he tried. You still find yourself regulating your breathing until you've calmed down. Well, as calm as you could be in the proximity of a man who seemed to kill for fun.
"Alright. I'll give you something Maul. You're right. I'm angry." As soon as you finish speaking you flip the vibroblade from your hip into your hands and lunge at him.
He deflects easily, blocking you with a swift sweeping motion of his arm. The sound of his lightsaber activating makes you duck as he swings at you. You feel the heat of the blade just above your head. You twist on your side and kick one of your legs out, making contact with the metal portion of his torso. He stumbles back but isn't winded like you had hoped.
"Force above, how much of you is machine?" You grumble while flipping your vibroblade in your hand. You knew the blade wouldn't stand up to a single hit from the lightsaber so you had to be smart about how you utilized it.
Maul straightens up and enters a stance that you recognize but can hardly remember the name for. Was that one defensive or offensive? Suddenly, the world seems to shift around you as you feel him pull you closer, the instant vertigo making it hard to focus. What you do know is that if you don't act now, you'll be speared on the end of his sword.
Breaking from his hold is hard but you manage to do it with just enough time to dodge. His lightsaber sheers through your cloak and cuts into your side but you pay it no mind. Using the momentum of his pull, you reel back your fist and aim straight for his face. By only a split second is he able to avoid your punch.
The concrete of the wall splinters around your hand and a large crack appears in the foundation of the building. You pull back and shake out the stinging sensation from your now bleeding knuckles. It's quickly replaced by the pulsating, searing pain that emenates from your torso. Gasping you press your uninjured hand to the burn.
Maul stares unblinkingly up at the wall and huffs.
"Finally, something impressive." With a deep roar he charges towards you again. You push your back to the wall and brace yourself. This time when he slashes down at you, you reach up and catch the top hilt of his lightsaber. It helped that it was a ridiculously long build.
You pull the saber closer to you, trying to adjust your own vibroblade in your hand as you did. Maul growls and pushes harder against you. The metal of one of his legs digs painfully into your hip and you hiss.
"Surrender," his calming tone of voice is raspy now, "surrender and I won't kill you here. Together—"
You cut his speech off with a guttural scream of your own. He doesn't flinch but he's clearly surprised by the action the way lessens the pressure against you. It's finally the opening you'd been looking for.
Hooking a leg behind his own, you risk raising your hand that's wrapped around your vibroblade and stab it into his shoulder. He shouts in pain and you twist the blade deeper, knocking him off balance. You fully turn both of your bodies and slam him up against the wall.
"I'd shut off that lightsaber if you enjoy having both arms, Maul." You can barely recognize the words as yourself. He scowls, baring his teeth at you, but does as you say. With the blade between you gone, you shove all of your body weight on top of the knife now and feel him writhe against you.
You pull away and watch him grab for the knife but he's unable to do anything. His body must be too exhausted and he has to be fighting back shock to even stay aware right now. You didn't blame him, you were in a similar state. The muscles in your arms cramped and it hurt to get a full breath in with your side like this, but you couldn't stay here. You weren't going to kid yourself and act like you were a better duelist than Darth Maul of all people, so you ran.
Maybe it was a coward's move. You didn't care. Honor meant little to you nowadays.
-------------------------------------------
There wasn't a single available comlink anywhere for you to contact Quinlan again. You groaned. Really it was your own fault, you shouldn't have let him take yours. When he had earlier you'd just been so exhausted that you hadn't thought anything better of it.
You could probably easily pilfer one from a random passerby but it felt wrong and in all actuality wouldn't get you very far. Too many of them were now programed to work in tandem with the user's chain code and the last thing you needed now was to be arrested for something as minor as petty theft.
No, you would just have to make your way to a past meet up spot and wait. That you could manage at least. You hadn't felt Maul's presence since the alleyway but remained on high alert anyways. If he had managed to get in your head so effortlessly then it wasn't a stretch to believe that he could now search specifically for your Force signature. You weren't sure if you believed him when he said that the Force had guided him to you, but in all fairness you had been focused on not dying at the time so you excused your lack of investigation.
The gaggles of people thinned as you wandered further into the depths of the city and you cloaked yourself well enough to avoid any particularly rough looking individuals. There, underneath a small overpass, you finally sat down. It was too out in the open to risk sleeping but you could meditate to pass the time. Crossing your legs, you began to recite the Jedi Code in your mind, giving yourself into the whims of the Force.
A searing pain shot through you.
If you hadn't been sitting you were sure you would have doubled over from the shock alone. Where was it coming from? You grabbed at your shoulder where the pain seemingly emanated from but there was no sign of injury, nor could you remember anything having happened to you.
Wait. No. It hadn't happened to you per say, but you had definitely been there for a shoulder injury, hadn't you? You shake your head and the pain dissipates but the unease—and also a fair bit of annoyance—does not go away.
"What a vindictive bitch." You mutter as you roll your arm out. Well that was no good. You still couldn't sense him nearby but if he had managed to pull of a stunt like that then you couldn't imagine him to be far away either. Pulling yourself back up again was a struggle but you had to move. If not to be caught by him, then to not reveal a meeting place of the Hidden Path.
A ripple of movement from the corner of your vision caught your attention. You wouldn't have paid it any mind if two stormtroopers weren't chasing after it. You tuck yourself against the wall and cover your face as they grow nearer. Only when the rattling of their plastiod armor was far enough away from you did you even think about breathing again.
"They'll be fine." You whisper to yourself. "You can't save everyone. Let it go."
Before you can stop yourself, you're rushing towards the squabble without a single plan. What you would do when you got there, you weren't quite sure. Killing them seemed a bit dramatic and you weren't a good enough liar to make up an excuse for both you and their target on the spot. You're choices were basically nonexistent, but you kept running anyways.
Something was wrong the second you threw yourself down that alleyway and you knew it.
For starters, the troopers nor their target are here. You pant and try to catch your breath and find it harder to breathe with each inhale. When had it gotten so cold? Why did the air feel like static? And then, there it is. That fear that you had prattled on about earlier fills each and everyone one of your senses.
"Found you." The modulated voice grates on the underside of your skin as it somehow worms its way inside you. You twist your body and grab for your vibroblade—but it's missing. The slip up gives the Inquisitor enough time to unsheathe their lightsaber and swing down. You dodge but you know its ultimately useless. It was a dead end. Grappling with your blaster you aim and fire a few shots, which they deflect with ease.
They throw out a hand you feel the will of the Force shift as it tightens around your neck. You gasp and scratch at your throat, feeling your feet slowly lift off of the ground.
"So, which one are you then? There's like…twenty of you, right? Does that make you Inquisitor number seven?" You wheeze out the words, just able to make out the mask that they were wearing as your vision flickered.
"So funny. So kind. It will almost be a shame to watch you die here." They respond to your barb clearly unbothered.
A swath of red light cuts over you and they drop to the ground, releasing their grip on you. Your body crumples to the ground as you sputter, unable to adjust to the now overabundance of air.
You hear the familiar crash of lightsaber blades against one another and—you hear the what?
Looking up you can't believe what you're seeing. The Inquisitor was now fighting a different Inquisitor, or at least that's what you thought. The malevolent glow from the double sided lightsaber would have been hard to mistake as anyone else. Great, now there was two homicidal maniacs instead of one. Still it gives you an opening to escape and you take it.
Rushing past them both you sprint to the opening of the alley and hide behind the wall, unable to look away from the battle as much as you wanted to. It was like watching a speeder crash.
The Inquisitor that had cornered you before was struggling to keep up with their opponents movements now. Their adversary dealt their blows with such grace that it hardly surprised you when they gained the upper hand. They swung the blade out and a screaming shriek of the plasma against plasma jolted you from your trance.
A sinking feeling grew in your stomach as you watched the blades clash against each other again. You shut your eyes and listened. That sound was too familiar.
You hadn't put much thought into your vision, brushing it off as a nightmare. There were much more pressing things to worry about then your constant fear of being killed by the Empire's dogs. But as the cloaked figure parried again with their lightsaber you could hear the weapon itself scream in a horrifyingly poignant way. A way that you could trace all to easily to your dreams as of late.
You felt your hands grow heavy and your feet became rooted in place. It couldn't be true. There was a million reasons and explanations for how Maul had gotten in to your head and a million more for why he would choose to lie to you. Unfortunately, you didn't have the luxury of weighing out each of those options now. You raise your blaster and fire.
The Inquisitor dropped dead.
"So, you weren't kidding?" You walked closer to him, blaster still raised. Maul pulled down the hood of his cloak and clearly regret the movement, teeth gritting together in pain as soon as he did.
"You will learn I have a very poor sense of humor." He says, shutting off his lightsaber. You don't pay him the same courtesy of disabling your weapon.
"Yeah, I'm sure. Look I haven't decided what I'm gonna do with you yet but we have to get out of here now. With them dead, troopers will be swarming this place in minutes and neither of us are in the proper shape to deal with that."
So what if you two had alleged Force visions about each other? Big deal. There was no time to think about that currently if you wanted to stay alive which—in direct contradiction to your previous statement—you really did.
"By all means, lead the way." Maul bowed slightly.
"There's a space port nearby, come on." You wouldn't be able to tell Quinlan where you had gone but that would be fine. As soon as you got rid of Maul at whatever planet the two of you landed on you'd find a way to contact him.
"You have a ship?" He asks.
"Not exactly."
-------------------------------------------
Hiding behind a wall of shipping crates the two of you watch the band of Stormtroopers walk past. Clearly you had been too generous with your original estimate of when they would arrive. It looked like a whole Star Destroyer fleet had been deployed in the time it took from you to get from the backstreets to here.
"There's too many. We can't get through them without being seen." You murmured, trying to look for a opening as they made their rounds but having no such luck deciphering one.
"So we will forge our own path." Maul moves to stand and your already hastily pulling him down by his collar.
"Are you insane?" You hiss and his bares his teeth at you in a perfect mirror of your own disgruntled expression. "You're injured and I only have a blaster! There is no galaxy in which we survive a 'guns blazing' approach."
"You are wrong."
"Really? I fail to—"
"You have more than a blaster, Jedi."
His words shock you into silence. Brushing your hand over your hip, you feel the sturdy hilt of your own lightsaber resting dutifully against it.
"I…" The longer you hesitate to speak the more shame fills you. Maul's gaze burns as he looks at you with barely concealed contempt.
"Hiding has made you craven. You've already allowed them to take from you what is most important."
"Oh and what would that be? Please, enlighten me." The words come out with no lack of acerbity.
"Your own identity." He lays out the truth too easily. It's nearly too much and you weren't sure when you started breathing so hard or when your throat had become so tight. Shaking your head you unsheathe your lightsaber and stand.
"You know nothing about me. Don't talk to me like you do. Unless you'd prefer another wound on your shoulder to match." Maul says nothing at your threat but you can feel the flicker of triumph from him through the Force and you shudder.
Staring out into the veritable field of ships, you point at one of them and nod.
"The EML 850?" Maul moves closer to see what exactly you were looking at. You frown and shrug.
"Is that the one that looks like a really shiny box? If so, yes."
"You don't know the classifications of ships?" He sounds appalled when he asks. You honestly had never paid much mind to that sort of thing when you had been employed by the temple but suddenly you were starting to wish you had, if only to avoid his further judgment of your character.
"I can't fly them either." You admit sheepishly. Well, okay you probably could figure it out but not without severely damaging the integrity of the hull. "Still glad you sought me out?"
"You deem me to be dishonest." Maul replies in a hushed voice now. If it had been anyone else you might have felt guilty for the doubt you regarded him with but one look into those golden eyes and it was quickly forgotten.
"Of course I do. You know, if you really want this to work you should stop expecting me to be an idiot." Sighing, you lean against the crate and shut your eyes. The vision doesn't appear but the unintelligible howls return all the same and you gasp. Looking back at him you saw the very blade that had been haunting you now alight.
"Say what you wish. In fact, believe what you wish just as well. The truth always has a way of making itself known." He stalks towards you and you steel yourself, readying yourself for a fight. He doesn't even spare you a glance as he throws himself into the ship yard.
The sound of blaster fire is instantaneous and it has you fumbling for the ignition switch of your lightsaber. A pang goes through you. Something that used to be so second nature, discarded as soon as it was of no use to you. The body of a stormtrooper crumpling to the ground frightens you out of your self disgust.
Blocking a barrage of blaster fire you push yourself through the tarmac, following Maul's lead. Truth be told you hadn't really kept up with your lightsaber training after the fall of the order and it was painfully apparent when you compared your forms to his. Alright, well if they had already seen your lightsabers it wasn't far off that they knew what you were or suspected at least which meant that using the Force wasn't off the table.
Using the Force to jump back, you throw out your hands and imagine grabbing two of the ships on the runway. The phantom touch of cold metal glides under your palms. Slamming your hands together the creaking sound of them breaking off of their supports is deafening. Their hulls grind into the pavement and you have to strain your arms to pull them together. A few of the troopers manage to avoid your temporary blockade either by way of rushing forward or staying behind but you can feel the loss of life from the unfortunate few that don't make it through.
Slumping over you realize too late that you over estimated your abilities. Those behind the ships wouldn't be able to get through but for the ones that had, you were now too exhausted to fight back against properly. A whirlwind of red appears in front of you, blocking any of the attacks that the stormtroopers try to carry out.
Gawking up at Maul—who honestly, despite everything that had happened in the last few minutes, you had forgotten about entirely—you watch him deflect their fire with ease. This was now the second time tonight he had saved your life and you did not like how much you were starting to owe him.
'Get to the ship and start it. I will meet you there.' Maul spoke in your mind without looking back. You were also starting to hate that. There was a lot to dislike about Maul apparently, who could have guessed?
The access panel to remove the supports from the EML 850 was locked and was requesting some sort of access code from you. There was no time for that. With your lightsaber you sheered the panel from its podium and watched the ship's doors open. In the back of your mind you hoped that the owner had insurance. Then you thought even further back to the two ships you had just forcibly made into a barricade and settled on hoping everyone had insurance and felt a little guilty for the insurance broker who would have to deal with all of this in the morning.
Luckily the layout of the ship is straight forward enough and you're able to find the cockpit with ease. You grimace when you see the control panel full of blinking buttons and switches. Would it be a gross misuse of the Force to call upon it to tell which one of these damn things actually turned the ship on? Probably. You did so anyway since you preferred the idea of not dying tonight.
Slamming down your hand on a few of the flashing lights the ship whirred to life and you let out a startled laugh. Glancing out of the windows you saw Maul, still engaged in combat. You could technically leave now. Inputting coordinates to a safe house wouldn't be hard and this thing had to have autopilot on it somewhere. There was no reason to stay.
Throwing yourself into the pilot's seat you navigate through screens trying to find the controls for the laser turret you had seen mounted atop the ship. A small holo pannel lights up with schematics. You yank the yoke of the ship to the side and aim in what you hope is the proper direction.
The explosion is instantaneous. Shielding your eyes from the blast you can't see what happens to Maul. As soon as the smoke subsides you press yourself to the glass trying to see what your little stunt had managed and you gape when you see the sizable crater in the runway.
"That was a poor attempt at killing me." Maul's voice emanates from behind you and you jump, slamming your head into the roof of the cockpit.
"I wasn't trying to kill you!" You groan, rubbing the top of your head. "I was trying to save you!"
He regards with a look of disbelief and rolls his eyes, shoving you out of the way and taking your spot in the pilot's seat. He begins to press buttons and pull levers you weren't aware of on the ship's control pannel and it begins to sway as it takes off from the ground. Scrambling for purchase along the walls you throw yourself into the co-pilot's chair and strap yourself in.
"Do you even have a destination in mind?" You shout over the roaring engines of the ship.
"One that's away from here."
"Maker help us."
The ship keens under the attacks from the heavy artillery that the Imperials have now taken aim at you with. You really hoped this thing wasn't here for maintenance and was in top working order, or at least that it's shields were fully in tact.
It's a surprisingly fast ship for its size—or maybe it was just your adrenaline that was making everything move by so quickly—and Maul manages to pull you out of the atmosphere and into the stars in what must be a record time for some pilots. It makes you a little dizzy but you refuse to show any sign of discomfort around him.
He punches in some coordinates into the nav computer and the blinding lights of stars blur past you as you enter hyperspace. You unclench your hands from the straps of your seat and your fingers ache from how tightly you'd been holding on. There was of course some palpable relief from escaping Imperial clutches, but now you were trapped inside a very small metal box with a man who practiced the same ideology as your sworn enemies. You really knew how to pick your battles.
"You did wait for me. Why?" Maul's voice wakes you up only slightly from your post-adrenaline slump. Sighing, you rub at your temples and rest your head in your palms.
"Couldn't fly the ship without you."
"I do not believe in your claims of inadequacy when it comes to—" Maul is cut off by you hitting the wall of the ship with your fist.
"Ugh, fine! It would have been rude!" Standing now you leave the cockpit in search of the crew's quarters. Much to your dismay you hear Maul follow after you.
"You were worried about appearing rude?"
"Yes."
"Even though earlier tonight you stabbed me in the shoulder and left me pinned to wall with your blade?" Your ears grow hot at the clear contradiction in your values and you spin on your heel to yell some obscenity at him, only stopping when you see him holding your vibroblade out to you. Tilting his head he gestures for you to take it when you hesitate and it only amplifies your embarrassment. If Maul notices he does not say anything and that only makes it worse. Mumbling a quiet 'thank you' you continue your search.
You never thought you would be so happy to see a military grade bunk in your life. You lie down on the plastic sheets and drag your hands down your face, some part of you hoping this was just a really elaborate alcohol induced dream never mind the fact that you hadn't had a single drop earlier at the cantina. You peak at Maul through your fingers and wince.
A really, really elaborate dream.
an. Fun fact the EML 850 is actually like a niche and rare ship because its hull is entirely made of durasteel! Which makes it hella tough and also hella hard to produce. I did two seconds of research to pick one that would have enough room for Maul and the Reader and was like. Good enough. The ship ALSO has a name but that will be revealed in time 🙏🙏 thank you for reading!!
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
tag list: @bexeris @ashes-136667 @aninnai @maulsdear @thelittlebats @the-reas0n-is-y0u @moldy-bread-slice
I can't believe they met in a cantina lmao and maul just sat in the same table like yeah help yourself
And they stabbed Maul and left him pinned to the wall !!! And then he goes back to help them escape from the inquisitors. There were moments where I thought omg he's so thoughtful, and he just went to the male manipulator school
There's so much banter between them that it's so funny and entertaining seeing them interact. They are so doubtful of their actions, and always with good intentions (I laughed at the insurance comments like, yeah, I think the empire's ships are probably covered), and Maul always assumes the worst
I can't wait to keep reading this story and I'm so happy for this update :D
ROUGH HANDS, STRAWBERRY KISSES & OTHER SOFT THINGS
18+ | MDNI - masterlist
PAIRING: farmer!bucky barnes x teacher!reader
SUMMARY: navigating your first relationship feels overwhelming at times; every touch, every question, every new feeling makes you wonder if you’re doing things right. thankfully, bucky loves you with enough patience and gentleness to turn every new experience into a reason to hold you a little closer. or, a collection of moments in which your boyfriend teaches you that love was never supposed to feel frightening—not when it’s held in careful hands like his.
WARNINGS: pre-established relationship; older!bucky (he's just mentioned to be older than reader & have a salt-and-pepper stubble, but both age are unspecified); gentle!bucky; protective!bucky; insecure!reader; reader is mentioned to wear skirts & dresses; size difference (author likes her men tall & beefy); non-sexual & light d/s dynamic; pet names feast & praise festival (this man is disgustingly whipped); reader uses "jamie" a lot bc the author finds it cute & intimate; domestic fluff; tooth-rooting romance; light angst; one (1) small argument; discussion about dealing with arguments in a healthy way; toxic family dynamics (reader's parents mentioned); brief discussion about the future & having kids; smut; big dick bucky organization (🙂↕️); soft dom!bucky; scent kink & possessive behavior; nipple play; pussy pronouns; pussy inspection; oral (f receiving); fingering; sex in public places; unprotected sex (I imagined reader to be on the pill but nothing is mentioned); rough & primal sex; multiple orgasms; overstimulation; squirting; creampie.
WORD COUNT: 26.2k
A/N: so... I won’t lie, I’m a little anxious. this story is extremely self-indulgent and stems from a deeply personal place. I know it might not be many people’s cup of tea but writing this was actually therapeutic after my friend gave me a sort of reality check about my love life lmao. one last thing, the order is not chronological. hope you’ll enjoy!
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU WANT TO WEAR MATCHING CLOTHES
Sitting cross-legged on your bed, your laptop is balanced precariously on your thighs. The cursor has been hovering over the same cream-colored sweatshirt for almost twenty minutes now, your eyes flicking uselessly between the product picture and the tiny sizing chart beneath it as if either one could help with the actual problem here.
Because unfortunately the problem is not the hoodie per se, but that Bucky owns the exact same one. Well, almost exact. His is a beautiful shade of forest green, faded slightly at the cuffs from use and permanently smelling like fresh air, and the cedar and rose body wash he keeps in his shower. You saw it weeks ago, the first time he picked you up to drive you to work because you had planned to grab dinner together later. His broad shoulders easily filled the doorway of your house, holding two coffees and wearing that stupid hoodie that somehow made him look even larger. You remember trying to subtly peek at it while he drove, only to end up staring shamelessly at the way the sleeves strained around his forearms every time he turned the steering wheel.
And now here you are, thinking about matching clothes like a sixteen-year-old girl with a Pinterest board titled someday. It’s embarrassing enough that you need to physically close the laptop for a couple of seconds, before opening it again with a sigh.
You don’t even know why this matters so much. You have never done this before—the soft, easy parts of a relationship. You have never had someone long enough to build small habits with, someone steady enough that you could easily picture yourself sharing jokes only the two of you could understand over morning coffee, or reaching for their hand in the grocery store without spending days working up the courage first. You are still learning how to ask for things without feeling guilty afterward. Still learning how to want openly. And Bucky... God, Bucky makes it so much worse by being so impossibly patient about everything. From the very beginning.
Your first date had barely even started before he showed up with flowers hidden awkwardly behind his back, his left hand rubbing at the back of his neck almost sheepishly when he handed them to you.
“Before you say anything, sweetheart, my mama raised me right and she’d come back from the dead to beat my ass if I showed up empty-handed.”
Your laugh was so loud and unexpected that he stared at you for a good moment like he had just been entrusted with a beautiful, precious gem.
Then there was the second date. And the third. And somehow every single time, he never failed to surprise you with his sweet thoughtfulness. Sometimes it was wildflowers from his property he’d personally tie together with twine. Sometimes big yet tasteful bouquets of stargazer lilies that you would immediately put in a vase and proudly display on your dining table. Once, peonies so full and soft they had shed pink petals all over the inside of his truck.
He opened every door without making it feel performative, always guiding you carefully with one warm hand on your lower back as if that had become instinct before he even realized it. And then came the night of your fourth day, when he walked you to your door, lingering awkwardly while you fumbled with your keys.
You remember smiling nervously. “So… what exactly are we doing here?”
Bucky had taken a long moment to look at you, blue eyes softening under the faint light of your doorstep. “I was hoping I could court you properly.”
Court you. Who even says that anymore? Apparently, James Buchanan Barnes.
You stared at him while your heartbeat climbed into your throat. And because silence had stretched a little too long, he had immediately stepped in to reassure you.
“Only if you want me to, sweetheart. No pressure.”
No pressure. As if he had not already made your entire understanding of men shift off its axis.
Sometimes, it frightened you how naturally Bucky fit into your life. It started with warm drinks and pastries between classes because, “my pretty girl shouldn’t have to survive on burnt coffee from that old thing in the staff room”; with calling you every night just to hear your voice before bed, and taking you out on dates every Friday. Yet he could not stand going the rest of the week without seeing you, which was how sunny Sunday walks around his property became routine, along with Wednesday lunches at the little diner where his aunt’s friend, Pat, worked and spent the entirety of your meals watching the two of you with the sort of fondness reserved for people who are obviously in love yet keep shyly tiptoeing around each other.
Bucky loves intensely in all the quietest ways, which somehow makes asking for things complicated. Because what if one day you asked for something silly enough that made him realize how inexperienced you really were at all this?
Your eyes land back on the hoodie again as you chew at the inside of your cheek. Before you can overthink yourself out of it, you click purchase.
The first time you wear it around him is for movie night next Saturday. You have been shaking with excitement for weeks over the special twenty-fifth-anniversary screening of The Lord of the Rings. Bucky had agreed to come with you without even letting you finish explaining why it mattered so much, only to follow it up with an amused, “don’t gotta sell it to me, doll. I’ll take you wherever you wanna go.”
You almost change three times before he arrives. By the time his truck pulls up in your driveway, your stomach is churning so badly you feel like throwing up. It’s a hoodie that just happens to be like his, so what? People wear hoodies every day, they’re such a common piece of clothing... This is not a confession of undying love.
Still, the moment you pull open your door and find Bucky waiting on the other side like he’s been standing there just long enough to start missing you, you realize the sweater has perhaps not been your most emotionally neutral decision. His eyes find your face immediately, his default frown melting at once. But before he can even say hi, his gaze drops on the cream-colored fabric. You watch with horror the exact moment recognition settles in.
There is a brief, heavy pause, and then that slow, familiar curve of his mouth appears—not teasing in any cruel sense, never that. Just quietly pleased, enough that heat crawls all the way up your neck. And because your brain seems biologically incapable of letting you experience vulnerability like most people, you blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
“I thought the color looked nice.” The words tumble over each other so quickly they barely sound coherent by the end of the sentence.
Bucky blinks, clearly caught off guard by your sudden defensiveness, before one dark eyebrow lifts, amusement flickering across his face in the gentlest possible way.
“Nobody said it didn’t, baby.”
You promptly look away as if the floor might offer some kind of mercy, pretending to be preoccupied with the sleeve of your hoodie while internally mourning what little dignity you have left. Bucky doesn’t let you sit in it alone for long, though. Taking a step closer, his warm presence is grounding enough that all the static noise in your brain fades. His hands naturally find your waist like they have always belonged there, before he softly nudges you forward.
“C’mere, sweetheart. Let me say hi properly.” He murmurs, leaning down to press a slow kiss on your lips, grinning at your unguarded, little giggle when his stubble tickles your skin.
The cold evening air makes you shiver, and you instinctively tug your sleeves further over your hands while Bucky leads you to his pickup truck, parked beneath a flickering streetlamp. You can sense his quiet amusement, though he is kind enough not to mention the hoodie outright. Still, every now and then you catch him glancing at you from the corner of his eye with that same smitten expression reserved for you only.
Once you reach the passenger side, Bucky opens the door before you can even think about touching the handle yourself, one hand braced against the top of the frame while you climb inside.
“Watch your head.”
You duck obediently beneath his arm, trying very hard not to think about how quickly you have fallen into these tiny routines with him.
As Bucky rounds the hood and slides into the driver’s seat, your heart finally starts calming down. You might survive the evening with minimal humiliation, after all. But then, he just has to reach across and smoothly pull the seatbelt into place for you—the way his knuckles brush your thigh briefly through the fabric of your jeans still manages to send your thoughts scattering again.
“You’re fidgeting.” He mentions quietly, eyes flicking toward your hands where they are twisting nervously in the sleeves of your hoodie. “What’s going on in that pretty head, hm?”
You shake your head, far too quickly to look convincing.
“Nothing. I’m just a little cold.”
Bucky hums under his breath like he doesn’t believe you for even a second, yet doesn’t comment and instead lets his gaze fall on your sweater one more time before returning to your face. The smile that spreads slowly across his lips is so openly fond that your cheeks start burning.
In a careful movement, he leans over the center console and kisses you, his calloused fingers cupping your jaw with impossible tenderness.
“You look lovely tonight.”
That almost makes your heart explode out of your chest.
The next time he picks you up for lunch on your day off, your breath hitches as you freeze on the threshold. Because Bucky is leaning against the hood of his truck in his dark green sweatshirt, looking so boyishly handsome with his sunglasses pushed up into his long hair.
His expression loosens when he sees your features fall in realization. God, he looks so unfairly gorgeous when he gets that look in his eyes, the same one that suggests every sharp edge exists only for the rest of the world, never for you.
“There’s my pretty girl.”
Your stomach flips violently as he pushes himself off the imposing vehicle to cross the short distance, his hands easily settling at your hips the second he reaches you. He bends to kiss you hello, unhurried despite the cold, and your palms unconsciously come up to touch his chest.
“I missed you so much, baby.”
You are still too busy internally combusting to softly point out that you just saw each other two days ago for bowling night with your friends, Natasha and Darcy. Your fingers curl tighter in the fabric, and Bucky notices instantly.
His thumbs stroke once the curve of your waist. “You okay?”
You nod eagerly.
“You wore it.” The words slip out of your mouth before you can stop them, gaze still lingering on the hoodie in pure wonder.
Bucky glances down at himself, and then at your own sweater before meeting your eyes, the right corner of his mouth lifting adorably.
“Thought we’d look real cute if we matched.”
You feel dizzy at his effortless answer, devoid of any trace of irony or hesitation. And that’s the thing about Bucky, you realize again as you stand there trying to steady your pulse: he doesn’t treat these moments like anything out of the ordinary. He simply folds them into the shape of his care for you.
Before you can collect yourself enough to answer, he is already guiding you forward with an arm around your shoulders, opening the passenger door ahead of you with that same practiced care. The warmth of the truck hits you almost dazedly after standing still in the cold.
“Heat’s been on for a bit.” He remarks at your blink of surprise as he settles into the driver’s seat, his chin lightly nodding at the backseat, where two of his heavier jackets are folded neatly, placed with deliberate care so they will not shift during the drive. Beside them a fuzzy blanket sits just as methodically arranged.
“I know it’s not the warmest of hoodies.”
When you look back at him, he sends you a small wink. At your stunned silence, his fingers gently move beneath your chin to have your complete attention, your heart already beating too fast for you to pretend otherwise.
“You alright there, doll?” He asks with a small crease between his brows.
You nod too quickly, not entirely sure what words would even hold up under the weight of everything you are feeling right now. Bucky lets out a low sound that might almost be a laugh if it were not so gentle, and then he is leaning in just enough to press a peck to the corner of your mouth.
“Y’know, I think I’m getting attached to this whole matching thing. Sends a pretty clear message.” He murmurs against your skin.
From that point on, it’s an unspoken agreement that has tenderly carved its rightful place between you both. It never turns into a conversation so much as it becomes a habit for the two of you. A jacket chosen to match the tone of your skirt, a top swapped for a darker color, small details that only make sense when you realize he’s genuinely paying attention to you, building your relationship one quiet choice at a time.
And months later, there are mornings when he is sitting at the edge of the bed with coffee in hand, his eyes lazily following you move around his room as you get ready. They eventually land on your shoes.
“You wearing the brown boots today?”
You glance down at your outfit, confirming it with a small nod as you keep applying your mascara. Bucky hums once in acknowledgment, already pushing himself up with a low groan to reach for his own pair in the shoe rack.
“Then I’ll wear mine.” He mumbles casually.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU WANT TO TAKE A CUTE PICTURE TOGETHER
The local café is a half-forgotten hole-in-the-wall tucked between a bookstore and a florist, the kind that only feels busy because the tables are close enough that conversations blur into one another in a soft, overlapping hum. Today it’s warmer than usual for the season, sunlight spilling lazily across the pavement outside almost indulgently after days of grey skies and persistent rain. It coaxes people into lingering longer than they probably intend to as though no one is in any particular rush to leave.
You are sitting across from Bucky at a small round table on the patio, your cups half-full and an empty plate sitting between you, remnants of the slice of red velvet cake you shared earlier still scattered across it. He stepped away only a few minutes ago, murmuring something about the restroom and brushing his knuckles briefly against your shoulder as he left.
In an attempt to occupy yourself while you wait, you take out your phone, your thumb moving absentmindedly across the screen as you scroll through whatever comes up. Until a specific post catches your attention so suddenly it stops you entirely.
It’s one of those photos you have seen countless times while looking for outfit inspirations on Pinterest, clearly curated despite its effortless appearance. A girl sits on what you assume must be her boyfriend’s lap while the camera is angled downward just enough to capture their shoes together, his heavy worn boots resting beside her delicate heels. The entire image is framed in warm light that makes it look like wanting something and simply having it without hesitation.
The contrast is cute rather than discordant.
You find yourself stuck on that picture as your chest tightens, because there are still so many small things that you don’t know how to ask for yet, things that feel too silly to voice even though they linger in your mind longer than you would like to admit. A lap. A picture. His boots beside your pretty Mary Jane heels… It feels ridiculous to desire it this badly, yet you keep staring at your phone as if hesitation could soften the sting of being dismissed. Or worse, laughed at.
You don’t notice Bucky returning until the chair across from you shifts under his weight, the scrape of it pulling you sharply into the present as you instinctively place your phone back on the table a tad too quickly for it to look natural. He sits down pretending to not have noticed any of it, reaching for his coffee.
“Alright, lovely?” He asks, voice unbothered.
You open your mouth, then close it again almost immediately, your mind caught between embarrassment and the awareness of how easily he always seems to understand you. Bucky notices your uncertainty, but doesn’t push, instead loosely rests his forearms on the table to lean closer.
“Hey,” his voice lowers just enough to gently pull you out of your thoughts. “What were you saying before I got up? About yesterday’s meeting?”
It’s such a simple question yet it almost disarms you completely. People don’t usually do that—they interrupt you to start new conversations, change direction, lose track halfway through and then forget about it entirely. But Bucky is looking at you like your words were simply waiting there for him to return to them.
So you blink once, a little startled, then slowly exhale as memories come back with a sharp pang. About that stupid staff meeting. About Ms. Cox.
The words come out carefully at first, testing how much space you are allowed to take up, but the more you speak, the clearer Bucky can see frustration still fresh beneath your composure.
“There is this student, Mark. Ms. Cox keeps insisting that he’s lazy and just—” You exhale tiredly. “She believes he doesn’t care about school.”
His jaw subtly tenses as he nods for you to go on.
“And I tried to explain that it isn’t that simple,” you continue, your fingers fidgeting on your lap. “Because it’s true that he struggles with math, but he works really hard, always does his best. He just needs time. And she… well, she went off on me.”
His brows draw together. “Went off how?”
Your eyes fall on the table before you adjust in your seat, as if moving could shake off the discomfort.
“She accused me of inflating grades to make myself look like a good teacher.” You admit quietly, the accusation leaving behind an ugly taste of shame on your tongue despite your innocence. “Because students do well in English. Including Mark.”
You can practically sense Bucky biting back his irritation, his frown deepening as he watches you shrink just talking about it.
“And the principal just let it slide?” His voice roughens slightly at the edges despite his effort to keep it even.
You huff out a small breath that resembles a laugh, devoid of any humor. “She has been teaching there forever. They just don’t deal with her anymore. Alice described her as—ah, sorry. Alice is the—”
“The art teacher.”
You finally look at him, blinking in surprise.
“Yeah.”
He gives you a small nod, a brief smile crossing his features.
“I remember.”
“Oh.” You have mentioned your colleagues only once since you started going steady, your meager dating experience having taught you that nobody was really interested in your life—especially your job. They focused more on meaningless, polite conversations punctuated by some generic compliment about your eyes, or your dress, that could guarantee them some sort of reward at the end of the night.
“Um.” You clear your throat, trying to ignore the intensity of his gaze. “So, Alice described her as a vindictive woman and since she’s close to retirement, they let her do whatever she wants because it’s easier than arguing with her.”
You hesitate for a second. “Years ago, there was this new physical education teacher...” Your voice lowers a little as if she might appear out of thin air and point her condescending finger at you. “She refused to approve his one-day school trip unless it was on her day off, because she didn’t want her schedule disrupted.”
Your jaw clenches briefly. “He told the principal… and after that she kept filing complaint after complaint about his ‘lack of professionalism’, until the school ended up not renewing his contract the next year.”
“What the fuck?” He mumbles under his breath, his lips pressing together tightly. “Wait—and they just expect you to take it?” His nostrils flare with a slow exhale.
“Pretty much.” You shrug, though it feels heavier than you intend.
For a moment, Bucky just sits there with his jaw tight as he chooses to not push his annoyance outward yet, mainly because he is waiting for you to let it all out. It’s in that pause that your eyes move unconsciously to the side of the table. Your phone is still there, the screen dark now, but not locked properly. You realize it too late, when a notification from that stupid teachers’ group chat—the one filled with nothing but good morning texts, good night wishes, and painfully unfunny memes—briefly wakes it and reveals that picture again, bright and candid.
Bucky’s attention promptly lands on it too. He doesn’t comment, which only makes your stomach tighten further as you hastily reach for your phone, turning it face down with too much force.
“What was that?” He asks casually, quiet curiosity dancing in his eyes.
“Nothing.” You answer too fast and his eyes narrow slightly, more observant than suspicious.
“That didn’t exactly sound like nothing, sweetheart.”
You hesitate, then deflect again, weaker this time. “Just a random picture.” You shrug, hoping to appear disinterested. “I was on Instagram and forgot to close it.”
That earns a pause from him, his head tilting just a fraction as he studies you more carefully.
“A picture you don’t wanna show me?” He asks gently.
You shake your head, eyes shyly falling on his arms. At that, Bucky simply shifts in his seat, his hand crossing the small space between you—not to take your phone, but to find your wrist and gently guide it to his lips. When you peek through your eyelashes, you almost flinch at how close he is now, his thumb reverently stroking your knuckles before his other hand cups your chin deliberately.
“You can tell me anything.” His voice is steady in a way that doesn’t leave room for pressure, only reassurance. “Y’know that, right?”
You shiver at the proximity. You do know, that’s the problem, how could you forget when Bucky stands before you, always so careful and sweet? And still, you are never entirely sure how to stop the words from breaking in your mouth.
“I just… saw something,” you confess weakly. “That I thought would be cute to recreate together.”
Bucky’s expression softens instantly.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
You swallow thickly, fingers flexing once under his hand. Then, barely above a whisper, you manage it. “I’d like for us to take pictures like… couples do.”
He observes you silently, expression unreadable, until a small smile pulls at the corners of his mouth, patient and knowing all at once. He nudges his chair back a little farther to make room for you, patting his thigh once.
“C’mere.”
You blink. “What?”
He nods toward his lap.
“C’mere, doll.” He repeats quietly, reaching for your wrist before you can overthink yourself into refusing, to guide you around the table.
The realization of what you are doing hits in one overwhelming wave of self-consciousness the second your weight fully sinks on his lap. Bucky is bigger than you in every conceivable way, broader and heavier with muscle, solid where you are soft. His thick forearm dusted with dark hair keeps you close to the warmth of his chest, and his strong thighs spread comfortably beneath yours. When his palm settles on your knee to keep you balanced, the rough heat of his skin bleeds straight through the thin fabric of your stockings, and a small involuntary shiver runs through you. It’s humiliating how dizzy it makes you feel, because Bucky appears completely at peace behind you. You are trying not to implode from his touch and there he is, sitting back and holding you as if that’s exactly where you are meant to be.
Your unsteady hands finally reach for your phone, trying to angle it properly, breath catching a little when his fingers flex against your waist.
“You’re thinking way too hard.” He murmurs near your ear, his salt-and-pepper stubble faintly scratching your skin.
“I’m not.” You insist weakly.
Bucky hums low in his chest, unconvinced, the sound of it vibrating through his body into yours.
“Baby,” he calls out gently, mirth lying beneath his words. “You’ve taken six pictures of the table.”
Your face burns.
“I’m trying.” You mumble horrified, sighing in relief when you finally manage to frame your shoes correctly while he chuckles behind you.
“I know. You’re doing just fine, sweetheart. Take all the time you need...” He releases a slow exhale, then under his breath, “I’m definitely not complaining right now.”
The faint rasp in his voice and the way his thumb strokes the skin of your knee only make your pulse stumble harder. Finally, after another moment of fumbling and readjusting yourself against him, you manage to take a few proper photos.
The knot in your chest loosens gradually as you look through them. They are good. Not overly posed or awkward as you feared, but cute and intimate in that effortless way you had envied earlier. His scuffed work boots are beside your neat Mary Janes, your knees tucked between his jeans-clad ones, the edge of his large hand visible against your thigh like a quiet reminder that the man holding you is very much real, and that’s him.
A coy smile brightens your features. It’s a small, absent-minded gesture, yet Bucky is completely enraptured.
“There she is.” A comment under his breath, meant for himself.
You feel him lean closer to look over your shoulder, his chin brushing your cheek as his gaze settles on the screen, and the expression that crosses his face afterward is so openly proud that you feel the sudden urge to squirm out of giddiness.
“They came out pretty nice, huh?”
You nod before turning back to properly look at him, still smiling.
“Thank you, Jamie.”
The words leave your mouth instinctively, sincere. Still, Bucky furrows his brows at you. His hand leaves your knee to curl delicately around your chin, guiding your face until your eyes meet properly.
“You don’t need to thank me.” His voice low but firm—a fact rather than a suggestion. “I love spending time with my girl. Y’hear me, baby?”
Your next breath catches in your throat so fast you almost choke on it. His expression softens further at whatever he sees on your face, his thumb stroking once your bottom lip before he closes the distance between your lips.
“You ask me for something, I’m gonna give it to you if I can.” He adds quietly against your mouth.
You swallow thickly, answering with an imperceptible nod that makes him hum, pleased. For a while, it’s just you and him. Tucked against his chest with the phone still loose in your hand, you sit sideways on his lap, his arm tightening around your waist the more your body grows pliant. The initial embarrassment melts into pure bliss once his forehead comes to rest on yours, his blue eyes fiercely glinting with devotion as they trace your pretty features.
You would probably stay here all afternoon if you could: no talking needed, just the safety of his arms. Eventually, though, duty creeps back in enough that you stiffen slightly, and Bucky loosens his hold at once, watching you get up. The hand on your thigh lingers for one last meaningful squeeze, goosebumps prickling across your covered skin.
The second your feet touch the ground again, you suddenly become aware of your slow breathing; of how his touch made you completely forget that you were sitting in your boyfriend’s lap, making out in the middle of a café situated on the main street, for anyone to see.
“I should probably go.” You mumble, smoothing your flowy dress unnecessarily to avoid his eyes.
A small smirk tugs at his lips at your clumsy attempt to regain composure.
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
By the time you reach the parking lot, your embarrassment has faded into a fuzzy tingle in the back of your head. Bucky opens the driver’s side door for you without breaking stride, one large hand resting automatically against the top of the frame while you climb inside. Your movements are a little languid as you place your palms on his chest for another kiss—quick and sweet and still a little flustered—but before you can pull away fully, his fingers close gently around your wrists.
“Send me those pictures later.”
You almost flinch in surprise. “You want them?”
That earns you a look.
“Sweetheart,” he starts slowly, like the answer should be painfully obvious by now. “Of course I want the pictures we took together.”
You promise you will do that once you get home, and Bucky lets you go only after one last heated kiss that has you sighing dreamily the entire drive back.
Later that night, long after you have changed into pajamas and curled beneath your blankets, your phone lights up with a message from him. It’s a reel of a chubby orange cat dramatically rolling onto its back for belly rubs. The giggle that falls from your lips is immediate, because you know how much Bucky loves these silly videos.
Still smiling, you tap back to reply but your fingers freeze, because his profile picture has changed. And there, framed in a tiny circle at the top of the screen, are your shoes beside his boots.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU WEAR HIS CLOTHES FOR THE FIRST TIME
Bucky’s bedroom smells like him. Not cologne, or any sharp, artificial department store fragrance sprayed onto stiff collars and wrists... but a scent warm and lived-in. Cedar and clean detergent tangle together with fresh air drifting in through cracked windows, traces of earth and hay and early morning breeze clinging stubbornly to heavy fabrics, no matter how many times they are washed.
The whole house smells like sun-warmed wood floors and open fields after rain. Like stepping onto his farm and understanding right away why he belongs there.
The shower is running somewhere down the hallway after a long day spent driving deliveries back and forth across town, leaving you curled near the headboard with the remote in your hand, halfheartedly scrolling through movies while waiting for Bucky to come back. Your attention drifts eventually, pulled away from the television by the sight of one of his flannels folded over the chair near the dresser. It’s clean, probably left there after laundry day, thick dark fabric softened with wear. Before you can really stop yourself, your gaze lingers.
There is something strangely intimate about wearing someone else’s clothes. Not just in the obvious sense. It’s like stepping quietly into the shape of their life, wrapping yourself in something that has spent time caressing their skin, that carries their warmth and scent and the evidence of their existence in every seam. And maybe that’s exactly why your heart flutters at the thought. You stare at the flannel for another few seconds before finally setting the remote aside and climbing off the bed, moving almost cautiously toward the chair like it might bite you halfway there.
With a meaningful glance toward the door, you listen to the muted sound of running water, before carefully lifting it from the chair. The moment you pull it closer, his scent fills your lungs completely, clean and grounding and unmistakably Bucky. Without thinking too hard about it, you peel off your own sweater and slip his shirt on instead. The sleeves hang long past your wrists as the heavy fabric settles warmly around your body, and suddenly you are standing in front of the mirror near his dresser, turning slightly from side to side while smoothing your hands absently over the front buttons.
You feel ridiculously happy. Safe, somehow. Because it reminds your body that it never needs to stay on guard if he is there.
For a moment, you simply stand there smiling privately at your reflection. You are so entranced by it that you barely notice the bathroom door opening.
“Hey doll, did I tell you that yesterday those sneaky ducks nearly knocked over—”
Bucky stops mid-sentence. The silence that follows is sharp enough to make your stomach drop.
You glance at him through the mirror with wide eyes and freeze. He is standing just outside the bedroom doorway with his hair still damp from the shower, a grey henley stretched across his chest while he drags a towel over the back of his neck, but all movement stops the second his eyes land on you.
On his flannel wrapped around your body.
His gaze languidly follows your curves like he is trying to commit them to memory, scared you might vanish like some beautiful, cruel dream. Because his girl is standing barefoot in his bedroom wrapped in pieces of his life. And Bucky looks at you like he just forgot how to breathe.
“Oh my God,” you whisper, heat rushing into your face as you turn around. “I’m so sorry, I—I saw it there and—”
The towel drops forgotten onto the end of the bed as he carefully shortens the distance. The closer he gets, the quieter you become, until the only sound left is the faint clucking of the chickens outside.
Up close, you swallow at his gentle eyes, though there is something else lingering beneath them, proud and possessive.
“Are you apologizing for wearing my shirt?” He lifts an eyebrow.
Your lips part unhelpfully, but they close again on a second thought. Bucky’s eyes flick toward the sleeves swallowing your hands before he reaches out, large fingers carefully rolling the cuffs back for you one at a time, movements unhurried and practiced despite the roughness his hands are used to.
“There,” he murmurs. “Better.”
When he finally glances back at your face, there is a spark of amusement dancing in his gaze. “You keeping this one, sweetheart?”
“What?” The question catches you off guard enough that you huff out an embarrassed chuckle.
“The shirt,” he nods at it, still delighted. “Think it’s yours now.”
“Bucky, no. I can’t just steal it.”
“Sure you can.” He shrugs easily.
Your eyes widen. “What—no!”
A real smile finally breaks properly across his face, devastatingly fond.
“Angel,” he murmurs patiently, hands warm against your waist. “You’re standing in my bedroom looking happier than you have all week. Think I’d be pretty stupid to ask for it back.”
You awkwardly tuck your chin down, studying your socks.
“You’re exaggerating.”
A quiet laugh falls from his lips. “You were twirling around in front of the mirror.”
Your head snaps up at that, your jaw dropping indignantly.
“I was not!”
“You absolutely were.”
“I was simply checking how it fit.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Before you can argue back, his hands slide a little more securely around your back to pull you closer, eyes dropping briefly to the flannel.
“Looks better on you anyway.” He murmurs.
“That’s a lie.” You focus on a spot on his neck, too shy to meet his gaze.
“Ain’t.”
“It’s your shirt.” You retort weakly.
“Not anymore.”
The certainty in his tone makes your stomach flip. Bucky watches the reaction happen in real time, something unbearably tender crossing his face at your attempt to further hide from his gaze, before he leans just enough for his forehead to touch yours.
“Y’know,” he starts casually, thumbs rubbing slow circles on your sides through the fabric. “I like seeing you in my clothes a little too much to complain about it.”
Your chest warms at the sincerity in his voice, yet you keep stubbornly staring at his chest, trying and failing to stop the grin tugging at your mouth.
“I think that would get out of hand very fast.” You mumble, finally meeting his eyes.
He smirks down at you. “Would it now?”
“You have a lot of nice flannels.” Your arms wrap around his neck, prompting him to get impossibly closer.
“Mhm.”
“And your hoodies are comfortable.” The tip of your nose brushes his.
“That so?” His brows shoot up playfully.
“And your jackets smell good.” You admit before you can stop yourself.
That finally earns you a proper grin. Far too pleased with himself.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he drawls. “You’re in real trouble then.”
You groan tiredly, throwing your head back in despair but his arms don’t allow you to stray too far from him.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you.” His hands settle more firmly. “Just thinking I oughta start keeping extras around.”
His brows then lift as though he has just reached a very reasonable conclusion.
“Actually,” he corrects himself, voice thoughtful. “Might need to make a rule.”
You squint up at him suspiciously. “A rule?”
“Yeah.” He nods once, completely serious despite the subtle, teasing smile. “Think the second you walk through my front door, you’re legally required to put on one of my flannels.”
“Legally required?” You ask unimpressed.
“Mm-hmm.”
You shake your head pensively. “I really don’t think you can do that, Jamie.”
“Sweetheart, I own the property.” His expression turns impressively solemn, his lips grazing yours as he speaks.
“Means I make the laws around here.”
A laugh bursts out of you before you can stop it, bright enough that Bucky beams at the unguarded sound.
“No exceptions either, baby. Could be ninety degrees outside, I don’t care. Flannel goes on.” He hugs you tighter, his next words nothing short than a low murmur in your ear.
“Don’t even need to wear anything else underneath.” A squeak unexpectedly falls from your lips as his palms land briefly on your ass, squeezing the soft flesh before sliding back on your waist.
You sigh fondly despite the heat crawling up your neck. “This is the dumbest rule I’ve ever heard.”
“And yet,” his eyes drop briefly to the flannel before returning to your face. “Here you are.”
At some point, Bucky doesn’t announce it anymore. The moment you step inside the farmhouse, he’s already reaching for one of his flannels and holding it out—doesn’t matter if you’re staying for hours or just long enough to share a meal and a quiet evening that doesn’t demand anything from either of you. And then he’s crossing the distance between you in a few unhurried steps to pull you into his chest. He lowers his face into the slope of your neck, and breathes in deeply, again and again, like he needs the second breath more than the first.
Something unmistakably you—familiar, layered with the faintly sweet body cream you always use—mixes with his own scent that lingers in the weave of the flannel, worn-in and musky. His shoulders drop every time unfailingly, the tension he carries out in the world has no choice but to disappear.
His obsession for your scent doesn’t stop there, it only exacerbates when you are finally lying on his sheets, the two halves of the flannel crumpled at your sides as Bucky pants against your chest. He kisses you desperately, clutching your bare thighs until you are left warm and moaning under his roaming hands caressing your body with reverence. His palms map the dip of your waist, stroking along your ribs, until they encompass the swell of your breasts, gently kneading the skin as his lips trace a wet path from your mouth to that sensitive spot behind your ear that makes you whine so sweetly.
Your lips part around a breathy squeak the moment the calloused pads of his thumbs delicately circle your nipples, a low hum vibrates unintentionally in his chest at how fast they harden.
“Wanna hear you, princess.” He murmurs against your collarbones. “Let me hear how good it feels, c’mon.”
Bucky takes his time. You feel as light as cotton candy in his arms, sighing at every brush of his lips against your nipples. His mouth is hot and his tongue eager against the tender surface.
“Jamie!” You gasp as he starts sucking. His hand fondles the other breast, whimpers filling the dark room as his fingers playfully tug and flick your nub until your back arches so beautifully. His other hand grasps your thigh, leaving behind delicious reminders of his lust.
The gentle licks soon turn into harsher suckles, and your hands shoot forward to anchor yourself—one of them twists the sheets until your fingers hurt, the other sinks into his locks. Bucky exhales sharply at the light sting when your fingers pull at his hair, loving how the wet sounds bounce off the walls.
“Prettiest tits I’ve ever seen.” He growls.
“Jamie, it’s—oh my God.” Your head falls back when his lips take care of your other nipple, the one left behind now damp and tingling.
“Mhm, I know princess, they’re so sensitive. You gonna come in your cute panties?” You nod eagerly. Bucky’s dark eyes stay fixed on your crumpled features like a predator observing his prey, his mouth wicked on your poor abused nubs. Until the pressure in your belly is just too strong, and to your sheer surprise, your orgasm hits you out of nowhere. Your breasts are tingling with sensitivity, your hips frantically humping the air as your pussy throbs painfully at the lack of stimulation, clenching around nothing.
“That’s it, my needy girl. Look at you, coming just from having your tits sucked.” He grits out, giving your breasts one last, little smack a harsh squeeze.
Your skin is sticky and your lungs burning as Bucky finally moves between your shaky legs, peeling off your ruined panties with a swift, practiced movement. His calloused hands are firm on your thighs as they spread you open, silently watching your pussy as it pulses and drips, the unbearable ache mixing deliciously with the embarrassment of being this exposed for him—not a single ounce of shame in Bucky as he inspects it more thoroughly.
First, it’s his thumbs gently spreading your folds, his eyes devouring the way it tenses under his intense hunger. A shiver runs down your spine when his index finger slowly traces the tender slit, marveling at the way your slick sticks to his digit.
“Jamie...” You whine, your body—still so sensitive—lurching at his delicate teasing.
“Look at the pretty mess you made.” He whispers amazed, leaving a soothing kiss on your hipbone. You hear a sharp inhale as he buries his face into your core, his eyes rolling back at how strongly your scent hits his lungs. With blissful serenity written all over his face, his tongue starts lapping at your clit with lazy strokes. A strangled gasp falls from your lips at the sensation, your hips moving helplessly under the arm that blankets your stomach as Bucky hums satisfied at the drops of sweet arousal blessing his senses.
You almost choke on a delirious moan the moment a long finger slips inside, the hand grasping his sheets shooting down to grasp his wrist instead.
“Gonna bury my face here every morning, sweet girl.” He mumbles, a second finger joining the other inside you. “Make you soak my beard so I can smell your pussy all day at work.”
“Shit!” You almost scream, thighs snapping close around his head.
Bucky growls at the pressure, hungrily nursing on your throbbing clit as his nostrils flare. It’s so messy, with his saliva dripping down his chin and the insatiable need to please you driving his hips wild against the mattress. You can feel its intensity from the way his starved tongue laps at you, every flick sending biting sparks down your spine.
When he momentarily pulls away with a wet squelch, he groans in delight at the intoxicating taste. “C’mon princess, time to make a mess on my face.” He rumbles, mouth already latched back onto your clit, sucking with a steady rhythm as his fingers hit your sweet spot at the right speed.
Your body shakes from the unbearable pleasure washing over you, but Bucky refuses to stop, only pressing himself further into your clenching pussy, his tongue insistent as he pumps his fingers quickly.
“‘M gonna—Jamie!” You sob, hips jerking up as he pushes you right over the edge for a third time, this orgasm just as powerful as the others. Thoroughly consumed by him, you tremble and writhe, wailing when you squirt all over his face, soaking the sheets and your inner thighs as well. Bucky is not doing any better, resting his forehead on your mound. He tries to regain his breath after almost coming in his boxers as if touching a pretty, naked woman for the first time.
When he finally has a steadier grip on his self-control, he licks his lips with a low hum, shifting both of you until you are straddling him, your head lying limply on his chest as he plants sweet, little kisses on your forehead.
“Breathe, angel.” He murmurs, voice still rough with arousal. “You did so good for me, lovely.”
You blink, still spent and disoriented, but as his arms gently pull you higher, your sensitive core accidentally brushes against his erection. Bucky is still kissing you, noticing your little shiver but not thinking much about it—he knows you must be sleepy and tired. Yet he couldn’t be far from the truth.
Your hips gently rut against his thigh, squeaking under your breath when it finally touches your naked clit. Bucky’s body goes rigid for a heartbeat, suddenly catching on what’s going on in that pretty head of yours. You keep moving your hips, now thoroughly and shamelessly humping his thigh. His arms squeeze your waist hard, eliciting a surprised gasp out of you.
“What are you doing, doll?” He rasps out, his voice heavy with lust. He planned to take care of himself in the bathroom, maybe paint your tits with his cum if you insisted on helping... But how can he keep his composure with such a beautiful, sweet woman in his arms, so desperate for his touch?
Your head lifts enough for you to meet his gaze. “Please, Jamie.”
“Please what?” One of his hands grasps your jaw. “Use your words.”
You moan shamelessly, the warm tingle in your core impossible to ignore now. “Your cock... please.”
“You’re making a mess.” He mutters absently, his chest heaving at the sweet sight. And suddenly, his tongue is slowly tracing your bottom lip. A whimper escapes you, before his fingers tighten on your jaw as he thrusts his tongue in your mouth, just like he would with your pussy.
“You need my help, baby?” He reiterates, his gaze marveling at your fucked-out expression. At your eager nod, Bucky swallows thickly, fingers digging into your hips until you are forced to stop the desperate rocking motion of your hips.
It takes a single look at your big, shiny eyes and suddenly you are on your back, his cock so thick you start to tear up. “I know, I know. baby girl. It’s big, hm?” He coos, carefully kissing your cheeks and licking up the little tears like a ravenous beast.
“Eyes on me, princess… There you go, that’s a good girl.” Your mouth falls open into a perfect round shape, squeaking as his hips thrust forward leisurely. Bucky takes in the sight of your pussy stretched nicely around his length with pride burning hot in his chest. He would be lying if he said he isn’t getting impatient himself, unable to ignore anymore the fervent urge to see you unravel on his cock.
“Hold on to me.” You obey, eagerly wrapping your arms around his neck, your breasts pressed against his soft torso dusted in dark hair.
Once his cock slams right back into you, you gasp, nails digging into his back as he sets a brutal pace. The sounds of your skin slapping against his fill the room obscenely along your little whines of Jamie.
It only spurs him on because, “Fucking hell—yes, baby. Your Jamie.” Before searching your lips to pull you into a filthy kiss.
His calloused fingers dig into the plush of your ass, keeping you anchored to him just to see your eyes roll back at the delicious friction between your clit and his pubic hair.
“She’s so tight.” He grunts. “Keep clenching like that and I’ll make you leak for days.”
Your legs squeeze around his waist, drawing him impossibly deeper. “Please.”
He takes note of the way your eyes start to roll back as your pussy flutters eagerly, even if you do your best to keep them on him just like he told you... His pretty angel is always so good for him.
“Jamie...” You breathe out, body squirming between his sturdy arms built by years of hard work in the fields rather than gym. “’M so close—oh my God, yes right there!”
“I know, princess.” He mumbles, never breaking his rhythm. “Fuck, can feel her squeeze me so good, wanna keep me there forever, huh?” His lips twist smugly. “Don’t worry sweetheart, this cock’s all yours.”
Your breath stumbles in your throat as though there’s not enough air. Bucky is right there with you, brows pulled in concentration when he feels the familiar ache in his belly. His thrusts grow deeper, more purposeful, almost primal in their intensity, and you can tell by the tension in his jaw and the slight tremor in his arms, that he’s fighting for control. Even lost in pleasure, he is always putting you first.
“Tell me when you’re close.” He grits out, leaning down to steal a wet kiss that is more tongue than lips. “So I can fill my pussy up. That’s what you want, right princess? Wanna feel my cum drip out of you while you sit all cute watching me cook, hm?”
Your words come out in a warped, pathetic moan as he stuffs your mouth with two thick fingers. Your tongue is already playing with them, a sad whine clawing out of your throat when Bucky takes them out. It’s not even seconds later that you are tossing your head back, your words barely coherent as you tell him you are coming, his two wet fingers rubbing your clit at the right speed.
“That’s it.” He drawls through his teeth, his rhythm clumsily faltering at the thought of your pussy completely covered in his white cream. “Just like that, beautiful.”
Your vision blurs at the edges as pleasure consumes every single crevice of your body until your brain only knows how to scream your boyfriend’s name. Until there’s nothing but the delicious shape of his cock. You clench so tight his hips can barely move, pulsing and shaking around him as your hazy eyes cross, before rolling back.
Bucky follows moments later, pressing deep inside you as a full shudder travels down his body. His face is insistently pressed into your neck, trying to muffle the roaring groan that rumbles through his chest. The contact grounds him as his cock twitches and swells inside you, borderline animalistic in the way his fingers clutch your hips when he finally fills you up—the thought of leaving a part of himself inside you only prolonging his orgasm.
“Oh, my pretty princess.” Bucky pulls you tighter against him like he cannot bear the thought of letting go yet, both your hearts still hammering in sync as the aftershock pulses beneath your skin. His warm breath tickles your collarbones, and although his limbs are trembling with exhaustion, his hips still thrust lazily inside you to make sure not a single drop goes to waste.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU START REACHING BACK
By the time Bucky introduces you to his friends properly, you have already learned something important: everyone else gets a different version of him than you do.
You begin noticing the pattern before he ever points it out himself. People straighten when he walks into a room, some of his new employees still stumble over their words when he speaks to them, and children stare at him in open fascination because he is broad and carries himself with grounded confidence without appearing arrogant. And honestly, you understand it. Bucky looks like someone built to endure anything. His hands are coarse from years of work, permanently marked with small scars and callouses from repairing machinery, hauling feed, and spending entire days beneath brutal weather conditions without complaint. His voice settles low and gravelly in his chest, and whenever he frowns in concentration—which is often—he appears unapproachable to anyone who doesn’t know him well enough to recognize that his silences are rooted in reflection rather than coldness.
Then there is the version of him that exists around you, so quiet in its devotion that you only begin noticing it gradually, through dozens of tiny moments. He automatically slows his pace to match yours whenever you walk together—just enough that your shorter steps never have to hurry to keep up with him. On the nights you stay over, he reaches past you to test the shower water before you step under it.
And somehow, it extends to even the smallest, most ridiculous things. Like the time you gasp at the sight of a spider near the kitchen sink and instinctively dart behind him before you can stop yourself. Embarrassment burns on your cheeks at your own reaction as you quietly ask him if he can please take it outside instead of killing it. Bucky only glances back at you, visibly amused by the fact that you are clinging to the back of his shirt like the spider personally declared war on your bloodline. Then, he easily cups it beneath a glass, slides paper underneath, and carries it out onto the porch with all the patience in the world. And when he comes back inside, there is a faint smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as you mumble a sheepish thank you from the safety of the hallway.
And maybe, the thing that affects you the most is how instinctive all of it seems for him. His care exists in reflexes. In the quick appearance of his hand over the sharp corner of an open cabinet before you can bump into it while bending down. In the way he reaches for your hand whenever a crowd grows too dense around you, thumb constantly stroking your knuckles in reassurance before you even realize you needed it. In the way he notices your social battery draining only by the slight slump of your shoulders, then gently finding reasons to get you home before exhaustion fully settles into your bones.
It feels less like being looked after and more like being... considered. Constantly. Carefully. Which becomes a problem eventually. Because the safer you feel with him, the more affection you want to give in return. And unfortunately, loving someone openly without constantly doubting yourself is still difficult for you.
Despite how naturally Bucky seems to exist inside your life now, there are moments where you feel painfully aware of your own inexperience. You want to reach for his hand first, sit beside him in diners instead of across from him, kiss his cheek whenever he starts rambling about the farm with that subtle enthusiasm that makes him look so unfairly adorable. You want to curl into his lap during movie night and play with his hair and bury your face into his chest whenever he hugs you.
Every little touch from him feels so dangerously addictive now that you know what it’s like to be handled with genuine tenderness. But every single time you think about doing any of it, your brain betrays you. What if he thinks you are clingy? What if you interrupt him? What if he only tolerates it because he knows you have never done this before?
So instead, you hesitate. But the thing about dating someone who observes the world as methodically as he does is that very little escapes him for long, especially when it concerns you. Therefore, he just starts making things easier. When the two of you sit together somewhere public, his hand begins resting palm-up beside yours on purpose—an open invitation without forcing you before you are ready. He starts pulling you gently against his side halfway through movies, and sometimes, while talking with Steve or Sam out on the porch, he pats his thigh absentmindedly without interrupting the conversation at all, silently inviting you closer. Eventually, sitting on his lap is expected and anticipated. And every single time he notices your hesitation before kissing him first, his head tilts downward before you can even decide whether to ask.
But it’s the first time you meet Steve and Sam properly that you understand how clearly his devotion to you reads to everyone else.
Dinner happens at a small place near the edge of town after one of Bucky’s longer delivery days, rain clouds gathering thick and heavy outside while the restaurant buzzes warmly around you.
You keep squirming nervously beforehand despite Bucky reassuring you the entire drive there.
“Baby, believe me, you’re worrying over nothing. They already like you.” He repeats patiently while turning into the parking lot.
You glance over suspiciously. “They’ve never met me.”
Bucky snorts under his breath, one hand settling on your thigh to give it a comforting squeeze.
“Sam’s heard about you so much he already acts like he knows you.”
“That’s not reassuring.” You mumble, sinking a little lower in the seat.
A beat passes in which the car slows as he searches for a parking spot, and you take the opportunity to dramatically exhale like your entire future depends on this night going well.
“You’re meeting my friends, not attending a parole hearing.”
“They could easily be the same thing.” You insist. “Meeting your partner’s best friends is basically like meeting... I don’t know—their adoptive parents.” Bucky snorts, shaking his head.
“Don’t laugh! I’m serious. There’s judgment involved. Silent scoring. Probably some kind of test I don’t know about yet.” You hastily list with your fingers.
That pulls a chuckle out of him, warm and low in a way that only worsens your dramatic suffering.
“Baby—”
“No, because what if they hate me?” You whine, already spiraling. “What if I say something weird? What if I accidentally make Steve uncomfortable? He looks like the kind of man who says ‘language’ unironically.”
Bucky laughs harder at that, shoulders shaking slightly.
“Steve absolutely says language unironically.”
“See? I’m going to swear once and he’s never going to recover from it.”
His grin only grows as the car comes to a stop, but he doesn’t turn it off yet. Instead, Bucky leans back slightly in his seat, head turned to watch you with that infuriatingly entertained expression that makes your anxiety feel personally mocked.
“You’re one to talk anyway.” You quip before he can say anything.
His eyes go wide. “Excuse me?”
“Because let’s talk about the first time you met Nat and Darcy.” You smile innocently, straightening up. “You kept me on the phone for forty minutes because you didn’t know what to wear.”
There’s a beat of silence, before his entire posture shifts.
“Hey, I wanted to make a good first impression.” He frowns.
“You were debating a tie,” you repeat slowly. “For bowling.”
“It was a new environment.” He shrugs.
Your eyebrows shoot up. “It was bowling!”
He simply shakes his head dismissively. “You don’t understand the social dynamics—”
“You were spiraling,” you cut in, now completely turned in your seat to face him. “I remember it very clearly. You kept throwing clothes on your bed that I’ve never seen you wear to this day.”
“I was being thoughtful.” He answers quickly.
“That’s anxiety.”
“That’s being prepared. And my first impression went fine.”
“Yeah, because I talked you out of the tie.”
You lean back in your seat, absolutely delighted now despite your earlier panic.
“I see how it is. I don’t need to worry about meeting your friends, but you needed a forty-minute emotional support phone call about whether you needed a tie for a bowling alley.”
Bucky exhales through his nose, clearly trying not to laugh at being exposed so thoroughly.
“It was a valid concern, I wanted to be respectful, sweetheart.”
“To who? A bowling ball?”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, having run out of arguments to defend himself.
A grin takes over your lips as you nod in victory. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Bucky laughs properly at that, fondly shaking his head at you. The sound makes the knot in your chest loosen despite the anxiety, and when his hand eventually reaches over the console to intertwine your fingers together, you finally feel like you can breathe a little more easily.
“Steve and Sam are gonna like you. That’s not even up for debate.” He says anyway, quieter now.
You purse your lips, the teasing softening just a little.
“And neither is the fact that you’re still nervous about a tie.” You add gently.
His head briefly falls forward as he sighs dejectedly. “It was a good tie.”
And that, somehow, makes you laugh all the way out of the car.
Inside, Steve and Sam hug you instead of shaking your hand, and within less than twenty minutes, both men seem to realize something deeply unsettling about Bucky Barnes.
Namely that he becomes ridiculously, unbearably soft around you. For starters, his hand settles automatically against the back of your chair while you sit down. At some point, he subtly pushes your drink closer because he knows you forget to hydrate when too engrossed in a conversation, his attention entirely shifting on you whenever your lips part, no matter what topic.
And then there is the hand-holding “incident”.
You are talking about your disastrous attempt at baking banana bread last weekend, when your eye briefly catches Bucky’s hand resting near yours on the booth seat.
His large, warm palm tilted upward.
Your gaze keeps drifting toward it despite yourself, because you want to take it so bad. God, you need to feel his skin against yours. But... What if you are misinterpreting it and he is ashamed of being affectionate in front of his friends? What if Steve and Sam think it’s excessive?
Without looking away from Sam, who is now complaining about boat repairs, his hand moves another inch closer until his knuckles brush lightly against yours.
Your heartbeat quickens embarrassingly fast at how obvious he makes it for you.
Hoping nobody is going to notice how you keep squirming in your seat, your hand moves before you can change your mind. Bucky’s fingers close around yours like he had been eagerly waiting for you all night. His thumb strokes once over your knuckles as he replies to his friends, completely unfazed.
Across the table, Sam goes still. Steve, on the other hand, is trying very hard to hide a smile behind his beer. Because the thing is, they have both known Bucky for years. They know him as reserved and controlled and difficult to read most of the time. Yet, what they are witnessing now is essentially an imposing Anatolian Shepherd collapsing happily onto its back because someone finally understood that looking scary doesn’t mean hating cuddles.
Once you are back at the farmhouse, rain is crashing heavily against the roof, therefore Steve and Sam help Bucky move a few things into the barn before the weather worsens further. Afterward, everyone ends up scattered throughout the kitchen while you make lemonade because inside it feels warm from all the damp clothes and humid air.
You are standing near the counter slicing lemons when Bucky walks in, settling beside you after washing his hands.
His gaze automatically drops to the knife, then to you. Then back to the knife.
“You’re holding it wrong.”
Your chin snaps up, eyes blinking at him in confusion.
“What?”
Instead of answering verbally, Bucky steps behind you until the softness of his belly is touching your back. One hand covers yours around the handle while the other steadies the cutting board before showing you a safer angle to hold the knife.
“There,” he murmurs near your shoulder. “Less chance of slipping.”
The entire interaction lasts maybe twenty seconds, yet the butterflies in your stomach go absolutely feral. The worst is that Bucky doesn’t even seem aware of what he does to you half the time. To him, this is simply how he loves, through guidance and care.
A little later, after his friends disappear into the kitchen for more lemonade while loudly arguing over the score of some recent football match, you end up curled beside Bucky on the couch, on the brink of dozing off to the soothing sound of rain tapping against the glass. Your head rests on his chest while he absently rubs slow circles along your arm, and eventually your fingers find his hair without much thought.
You expect tolerance at most. Maybe amusement. Instead, the second your nails lightly scratch his scalp, Bucky goes completely still, before his eyelids flutter shut. A deep, slow breath leaves his nose, his posture slumped as he leans unconsciously into your touch. His expression is so devastatingly content that you feel a mix of pride and joy burn hot in your chest.
From the kitchen doorway, Sam witnesses the scene in horrified fascination.
“Steve!” He whispers sharply.
The other man can’t help but burst into helpless laughter because there, curled around you in complete bliss, sits the same man who once made a grown mechanic squirm just by staring at him too long during an argument over tractor parts. Meanwhile Bucky, fully aware you are being watched, slowly opens one eye to glare at them with pure annoyance.
“What.”
“Man, you know your imaginary tail is wagging so hard I can practically hear it from here?”
Bucky silently stares at Sam for exactly five seconds, and without any shame whatsoever, tightens his arm around your waist to pull you closer.
“Yeah,” he rasps out. “And?”
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU NEED HIM THE MOST
Bucky simply moves through your life with the quiet assumption that if something can be made easier for you, then of course he will do it.
One freezing morning in late November, you walk outside expecting the usual miserable routine of scraping ice from your windshield before work while trying not to freeze your fingers off in the process, only to stop short at the sight of your car already running softly in the driveway, pale exhaust curling into the cold air while warm light glows through the windshield.
And there he is, leaning casually against his pickup truck with two cups of coffee in his hands. Wrapped in his heavy work jacket, Bucky looks entirely unbothered by the bitter cold biting at his skin this early in the morning. You stare at him with wide eyes before glancing at your car. Then back at him.
“Did you come all the way over here just to start my car?”
His eyebrows pull together, genuine confusion touching his face.
“You hate being cold, sweetheart.”
Bucky never treats care as some grand romantic gesture that deserves applause. To him, love exists in maintenance, in noticing and remembering. It exists in the way he arranges himself around the sharp edges of your life without ever making you feel ashamed of needing help.
By the third month of your relationship, he already knows you forget meals whenever work gets too stressful, so he begins leaving containers of food in your fridge after particularly exhausting weeks, usually with little notes written in neat handwriting.
Eat something besides crackers today.
This one’s got vegetables in it. Don’t roll your eyes.
At first, a mix of embarrassment and old habits makes you protest.
“Jamie,” you sigh one evening while unpacking groceries he absolutely did not need to buy for you. “I can feed myself.”
“I know you can.”
The answer comes calmly, his attention never even leaving the frozen peas he’s putting away in your freezer.
“Then why are you doing all this?”
That finally makes him look at you, blue eyes steady and open.
“Because yesterday you had cereal for dinner and called it a balanced meal.”
Heat floods your face instantly. “It was one time.”
“It happened last Tuesday as well, baby.”
Your eyes squint at him betrayed. “You remember way too much.”
“You tell me things,” he shrugs lightly, shutting the fridge with his hip. “And I pay attention.”
Yes, Bucky pays attention. To everything. He notices the way your head starts to ache more than usual after difficult meetings at work; the moments you shrink because someone talked over you while discussing something important; the days you’ve had too much coffee and not nearly enough water before you’ve even registered it yourself. Once he recognizes a pattern, he simply starts building small routines around it—never demanding, or controlling. But guiding you so tenderly that by the time you notice, he’s already taken the weight you carry and made it easier to bear.
“Three coffees, baby.” He reminds you one afternoon after spotting the suspiciously large iced drink in your hand during lunch.
You promptly clutch the cup closer to your chest.
“This is tea.”
Bucky stares at you for a long moment, before his eyes lower meaningfully to the giant logo on the side of the cup.
“Sweetheart,” he starts patiently. “That thing smells like melted tiramisu.”
Your smile is sheepish. “It’s been a hard week.”
The teasing falls from his face at the exhaustion in your voice, concern replacing it so quickly it makes warmth bloom beautifully behind your ribs. He steps closer without hesitation, one broad palm settling on the back of your neck while his other hand cradles your cheek—a gesture so instinctively soothing that your entire body loosens before you can acknowledge it.
“I know, princess.” He murmurs softly. “Still need water though.”
And somehow—impossibly—you find yourself listening. He never makes care feel humiliating, because every reminder sounds far from correction and more like loving you so much it physically pains him seeing you not taking care of yourself the way you deserve. However, having someone pay attention to you this reverently is still complicated when, for your whole life, you’ve been used to being the responsible one, the accommodating one, the person who notices everybody else’s needs before they can become problems. Teaching only sharpened instincts you already had mastered long before adulthood: constantly anticipating, organizing, soothing, fixing. Somewhere along the way, taking care of yourself became secondary to making sure everyone else was never burdened by you.
Then Bucky arrives and begins undoing those habits piece by piece without ever criticizing you for it.
There is one particular parent-teacher night that leaves you painfully exhausted and miserable, so much that your eyes burn with unshed tears the entire walk to your car. One parent spends twenty minutes speaking over you every time you attempt to explain their child’s struggles in class; another openly questions whether you are “experienced enough” to manage disruptive students, because “you definitely don’t look like you are”. And Ms. Cox still finds enough energy afterward to criticize your “overly emotional teaching style” in front of half the faculty before finally leaving for the night.
By the time you make it home, you feel like an empty shell. You sway on your feet while eating half a granola bar in the dark, then drag yourself into bed wearing one of Bucky’s old sweatshirts—the same ones you shyly asked to have for particularly hard nights where his absence presses heavy on your heart. Yet, you spend nearly two hours staring miserably at your ceiling because exhaustion apparently does not guarantee sleep.
You and Bucky already said goodnight earlier. Normally he insists on calling before bed no matter how busy either of you are, but tonight he could feel how drained you were by text alone. Still, sometime after midnight, loneliness finally outweighs guilt. And even as you beg him to stay in bed and rest, insisting it’s late and he should be sleeping, he still replies with two simple words that make your heart flutter.
Already driving
12:22am
Twenty-five minutes later, headlights sweep across your curtains and you get out of your bed with a pained groan, your legs heavy as you shuffle into the kitchen in fuzzy socks. Bucky is already inside, carrying a paper bag in one hand, concern settling visibly between his brows the second you appear.
“Hey there, princess.” He whispers, leaving everything on the counter so he can pull you against him.
And that’s the moment your body goes frighteningly limp as you realize how badly you needed Bucky to hold you, knowing he would never ask for anything in return.
“I’m okay.” You quickly try to reassure him, but don’t do a very good job when your words come out slurred against his jacket.
His low hum expresses clear disagreement, one hand smoothing slowly over your back before he pulls away enough to cradle your cheeks.
“You ate dinner?”
The hesitation on your face answers for you.
His jaw clenches slightly. “Sweetheart.”
“I wasn’t hungry.” You blurt out, dangerously close to tears.
“I know, angel.” His voice turns to a whisper in front of your distress. “But you had a long day.”
There is no irritation in his voice, only concern wrapped in gentle firmness that somehow makes embarrassment crawl up your throat anyway. But before shame can take you away from him, Bucky leans down to press a long kiss on your forehead.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “I’m not angry.”
Your shoulders visibly lower a little.
“Sit down for me while I make you something warm, okay?”
And there it is again, that tingly sensation spreading low in your belly whenever he speaks like that, calm and assured and already prepared to handle things for you before you can break.
You curl beneath your favorite blanket on the couch while he heats soup and makes some chamomile tea. Watching him in all his composure as he takes care of you, moving around your house, and opening cabinets without needing directions because he already memorized where everything belongs months ago... Well, it nearly undoes you completely.
“You always think about me like that?” You ask feebly once he finally appears with a tray that he momentarily places on the coffee table.
Bucky glances at you from where he’s adjusting the blanket around your legs. “Like what?”
“Like… this.” You swallow, not liking how your throat is starting to tighten. “Taking care of things—of me, before I even notice what’s wrong.”
“‘Course I do, princess.” He answers quietly.
Tears dangerously sting at the back of your eyes, but your teeth promptly sink into your bottom lip before you can succumb to them. There is a brief moment suspended in time in which Bucky’s eyes search your expression, before he moves to kneel on the floor in front of you, palms already reaching for your jaw.
“You spend so much time looking after everybody else.” He starts under his breath. “I just want... somebody looking after you too.” His thumb strokes the skin of your cheek and that’s when you notice the lonely tear that escaped the last thread of your control.
“I wanna be your safe place. Want you to know you can come to me. Always. You don’t gotta hold it together with me.”
“And when it gets too much out there,” he adds after a beat. “Or here,” his knuckle gently brushes your temple. “I’ll be right beside you. I’ll catch you. Every time.”
You built a relationship based on care and mutual trust, something you never had before but deeply craved. For quite a long time, those sleepless nights spent wondering when it will finally be your turn, soon turned into cruel reminders that maybe, after all, you just were not built for that kind of love. So you kept running yourself into the ground for everyone else without anyone actually noticing how much that cost you. Some people though, Bucky said, weren’t even worthy of those pretty eyes looking their way, let alone your kindness. Still, a small flame of hope kept burning in your heart—the hope that someday, someone would truly see you. Nobody has ever tried to earn your trust enough for you to hand over your vulnerability. But with Bucky, you bloom so easily in the warmth of his love.
Rain has turned part of the farm path into thick mud after a storm, and despite Bucky repeatedly warning you to not wear your pretty shoes near the fields, you ignored him confidently right up until your foot sinks deep enough into the mud to trap you completely. Bucky turns at the sound of your horrified gasp, and immediately starts laughing.
“Bucky!” You whine while trying unsuccessfully to yank your shoe free. “Stop laughing.”
“Sweetheart,” he says through obvious amusement while walking toward you. “Why’re you wearing those heels out here?”
“I didn’t think it would be this bad.”
“Mhm.”
You narrow your eyes at him. “You’re being mean.”
His grin only grows as he reaches you.
“Far from it, princess. C’mere.”
Before you can ask what he means, both hands settle firmly around your waist and suddenly your feet leave the ground entirely. A startled squeak escapes your throat as your boyfriend lifts you effortlessly out of the mud like one of those bags of fodder he so easily carries around the farm.
“Bucky!”
“You were getting stuck.” He smirks.
“I could’ve figured it out myself.” You mumble shyly.
“I know you could.”
His words are tinged with mirth as he carries you back toward solid ground, one arm secure around your waist while your hands instinctively clutch his shoulders.
“Doesn’t mean I’m gonna stand there watching you struggle.” Your chest tightens in a way that has nothing to do with guilt anymore, your hands instinctively curling a little tighter into the collar of his jacket as the real meaning of it sinks deep in your heart.
This becomes another habit somehow. He lifts you onto kitchen counters while cooking because otherwise you “hover too much.” Carries you inside from the truck whenever you fall asleep during long drives home from town. Sometimes, after particularly exhausting school days, he simply hooks an arm beneath your knees and picks you up before you can properly protest.
“Jamie, I can walk.” You mumble sleepily against his collarbone.
“I know you can, baby.”
“Then put me down.”
“No.”
The answer comes calm and completely immovable while he adjusts you more securely against his chest.
He looks down at you. “You’re tired.” As if that is enough of an explanation.
You squint at him, but he raises one eyebrow before your overworked brain can elaborate something witty to retort with.
“You gonna keep arguing or you gonna let me hold my girl?”
Being with him has a way of quieting the constant vigilance in you as your body learns—gradually, unconsciously—that Bucky’s strength never asks you to fear it. All that’s left is a fuzzy, unfocused warmth you can’t quite name. And over time, you begin realizing that what affects you most is not the carrying itself, but what it represents. Around him, you are allowed to take up space without apologizing for it first. You are allowed to keep him company as he works, to cling to him through difficult days and cry without trying to make yourself smaller afterward.
The first time you break down in front of him happens after a bad argument with your mom. You spend nearly ten minutes apologizing between sobs. Bucky listens quietly the entire time before finally reaching up to tenderly wipe your tears with his thumbs, brows drawn together in soft confusion.
“Princess,” he asks gently. “Why’re you apologizing for being upset?”
You open your mouth, but then close it again helplessly. Because once again, you were about to slip back into the bad habits you are carefully working through together. Bucky’s expression morphs instantly in silent understanding.
“C’mere, baby.”
And just like always, you go.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU WANT TO BE PART OF HIS WORLD
For a long time, you are convinced that helping Bucky with work will only make things harder for him. Not because he ever said that—quite the opposite, actually. But he moves through the farm with effortless capability, making everything look so easy. He knows where every tool belongs, which fence post is beginning to loosen before anybody else notices, the sound each engine is supposed to make—immediately catching when something is wrong.
Meanwhile, you once managed to stall your own car three times in a row trying to leave the school parking lot because your brain was too tired to function properly. So naturally, the idea of “helping” him feels laughable. Standing in the middle of his world feels strangely similar to trying to communicate in a language you don’t speak fluently yet. Still, that doesn’t stop you from wanting to try. Loving Bucky means wanting to understand the shape of his days and exist inside the life he built long before you arrived in it. You want to know what his mornings look like at sunrise, learn the routines his body slips into automatically after years of repetition, and more than anything, you want to stand there beside him without feeling like a guest.
His blue eyes catch the golden afternoon sunlight so prettily as he glances up from where he’s crouched in front of the fencing, near the south pasture.
“What’s up, lovely?” One corner of his mouth lifts when you linger there without answering right away, your hands fidgeting against the wooden post as if looking for something to ground you.
“What?” He teases lightly. “My girl misses me already?”
You huff a quiet laugh through your nose, eyes dropping briefly to the tools scattered beside him.
“Maybe a little,” you mumble. “I just wanted to see what you were doing.”
His expression softens instantly at that. “C’mere, then.”
You step closer without thinking.
“You wanna help?”
You hesitate under the weight of the question. “Only if I’m not gonna be in the way.”
The offended look Bucky gives you makes you chuckle lightly. He frowns, standing to full height while wiping his hands against his jeans.
“You being here is the opposite of in the way.”
And there it is again—that wonderful ache in your chest. You shift your weight from foot to foot, head ducking a little at the sheer love in his words. His rough fingers slowly hook beneath your chin to tilt your face back toward him.
“You wanna stay with me while I work?” He asks softly.
You nod silently.
“Then stay.”
Simple as that. No sighing. No tolerating your presence to avoid arguments. No making you feel like affection must be earned through usefulness.
After that, he begins finding small ways to pull you into his world. Nothing overwhelming that leaves room for you to panic about messing things up.
“Hold this for me.”
“Pass me that small wrench, pretty girl.”
“Sit over there where I can see you, and watch your step.”
At first, your help is mostly symbolic. You hand him tools, hold flashlights, keep him company while he works beneath trucks or repairs broken equipment in the barn. At some point, Bucky quietly sets up a small table near his workbench for you, sanding the wood smooth and making sure to buy a comfortable pillow for the chair so you can sit there for hours grading assignments and planning lessons while he moves around you.
One afternoon, while you are perched on the workbench as he works beneath the hood of his pickup truck, you accidentally hand him the wrong tool three times in a row. By the third attempt, you groan dramatically. Your face falls into your hands.
“I’m fucking useless.”
Bucky leans back enough to look at you, expression deeply unimpressed.
“Hey.” The single word lands firmly enough that your head snaps up at once. “You ain’t allowed to talk about my girl like that.”
You simply stare at him as he reaches out to squeeze your knee before taking the wrench from your hands.
“Besides,” Bucky adds casually. “You’re real cute when you boss me around with the wrong tools.”
You burst out laughing despite yourself, shyly looking away once you notice he has been busy admiring you with a smitten grin.
Every single time insecurity starts curling around your throat, ugly and uninvited, Bucky is there to loosen it with his careful hands before it can choke you. Dismissing insecurity is far too easy, yet that’s what most people do. It makes them uncomfortable and impatient, so they wave it away with empty reassurance. They joke about it, call it overthinking... They turn vulnerability into a shameful weakness. Because acknowledging it properly would require them to sit inside someone else’s discomfort for a while. But Bucky never treats your vulnerable moments like inconveniences he has to endure. He looks at them directly in the eye until they stop feeling quite so monstrous inside your head.
The way you feel warm all over has nothing to do with the late afternoon sun spilling gold across the land. He had sounded genuinely insulted, because loving you also includes protecting the way you speak about yourself. He cannot stand cruelty directed at you even when it comes from your own mouth.
Your pulse flutters embarrassingly beneath your skin.
His attention returns to the engine eventually, muttering something under his breath as he reaches deeper beneath the hood. Your eyes focus on the rolled sleeves exposing his strong forearms slightly soiled with grease, then slowly travel up the faded flannel stretching across his broad chest, before noticing the crease between his brows. The low hum he gives every now and then when something cooperates correctly makes your pussy throbs, your mind clouded with memories of your thighs around his head.
Your legs swing idly as you sigh, watching him work for another silent moment.
“You know,” you murmur thoughtfully. “For someone who says he likes having me around, you sure are ignoring me right now.”
Bucky snorts softly without looking up.
“I’m working , sweetheart.”
“Mhm.”
He glances at you briefly, one eyebrow lifting. “What?”
You exhale dramatically, leisurely looking around the shed. “I think you’re pretending to fix the truck because you secretly enjoy making me suffer.”
A low chuckle rumbles out of him at that, though he still turns another bolt calmly like you are not trying to derail him on purpose.
“You surviving okay over there, pretty girl?”
“Barely.”
“You’ll make it.”
The problem is that he sounds entirely too entertained by this. Your eyes narrow slightly at his tone. Then, after a moment of consideration, you shift a little closer along the edge and let your thighs part slightly, your hands landing on the wooden surface by your sides to slightly push your chest forward.
Bucky notices immediately from his peripheral vision, but all he gives you is a low, “Careful, doll.” Without any real heat in it.
You stare at the side of his face for another second, then toss your head back enough to deserve an award.
“Mhm...” You hum mournfully. “If my boyfriend really loved me, he would stop fixing stuff and pay attention to me.”
This time Bucky laughs unguarded, the sound rough around the edges as he finally leans back enough to look at you.
“Oh, so that’s what this is?”
You try to appear unbothered. “What?”
“You being a needy girl.”
Heat crawls immediately into your cheeks, still you keep your eyes on his.
“I am not needy.” You insist.
His mouth twitches, incredibly amused. “No?”
“No.”
“Mhm.”
You huff softly, crossing your arms while he turns back toward the engine with entirely too much satisfaction for your liking. And unfortunately—for the both of you—you are an incredibly stubborn woman. Which means your brain immediately decides to make things worse by jumping down the bench and silently approaching the vehicle until you are leaning down the edge of the hood, right beside your boyfriend.
“Maybe there are more interesting things you could be doing with your hands right now.” You murmur, eyes dragging slowly over the length of his body.
The wrench stops turning at once. For one very dangerous second, the entire world seems to go still with it. Bucky exhales slowly through his nose before straightening to his full height, wiping his palms across his jeans with deliberate calm that somehow feels infinitely more threatening than any other reaction.
“Oh, you’re trouble today.”
You try to hold his gaze without shrinking under it, but that becomes significantly harder once he starts edging closer to you, the stupid tool that confused you completely forgotten. The light teasing in his face has shifted into something heavier, a kind of seriousness that has your panties completely ruined.
“Looking at me like that while I’m trying to behave...”
You swallow. “Maybe I don’t want you to.”
His nostrils flare for a brief moment, one large hand sliding around your waist while the other braces on your hip, and before your brain fully catches up, he is backing you a few slow steps toward the side of the shed. The wall presses lightly against your back, Bucky’s frame crowding you back into stillness, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from him through every layer between you. His thumbs stroke your sides rhythmically as he studies you with an expression that almost makes you forget how to breathe.
“You’re playing with fire, doll.”
You tilt your chin up despite the way your pulse stumbles. “I just wanted your attention.”
Bucky’s jaw flexes once. “Oh, you got it.”
His mouth claims yours like he is afraid you will disappear if he doesn’t, the hand on the curve of your waist tightening possessively while the other traces the length of your neck, until his fingers dig into your jaw to keep your head tilted exactly how he wants it. A small, unintentional whimper is muffled against his mouth as your fingers curl tight into the front of his shirt, and Bucky exhales softly through his nose like the sound nearly undid him too. It is rough, urgent... Too much and still not enough.
When he finally pulls back, it’s only far enough for his forehead to rest briefly against yours. Both of you breathe a little unevenly, his palms still heavy on your skin, as though he has no intention whatsoever of letting you wander too far now that he finally has you pliant and whining for him.
“Tell me to stop.” His voice is rough, gaze frantically going back and forth between your hazy eyes and your lips glinting with his spit.
“I need you, Jamie.”
And he is kissing you again, slower this time but no less distracting, and you are just beginning to melt properly into him when his hands slide beneath your sundress, harshly grabbing the back of your thighs.
“Jamie—”
“C’mon, up sweetheart.” He rumbles in your mouth, already pushing you higher against the wall.
Your giggle dissolves into a wanton moan when his tongue slides back between your lips, fervent and eager, your fingers tangling into his hair while his grip tightens instinctively on your ass.
“Fuck.” He pants wrecked, his bulge pressing insistently against your covered core.
“Jamie, please.” You toss your head back as his lips frantically move over your neck and cleavage, more lapping and biting at your skin than actually kissing.
“So fucking sweet.” He grunts, humping you like an animal right in front of the open door of the shed.
See, Bucky is… well, particularly insatiable. It’s not enough to spend Sunday mornings slowly grinding into you until you are begging him to make you come, tears staining your cheeks as he coos at you. It’s not enough to bend you over the kitchen counter and thrust his cock into your pussy from behind, his warm and heavy body pressing you down as you hold onto the edge of the wooden surface for dear life. It’s also not enough for his fingers to not-so-subtly slip beneath the hem of the blouse you just spent ten minutes adjusting to your liking, just to squeeze your tits because “They’re missing me, doll”.
And he never seems to care if you are late for something, or how long it takes... or where you are. Like that time he pulled into the deserted parking lot of a random mall on the way back from your cousin’s engagement party because one of her friends had flirted with you a few too many times—even with Bucky standing just a couple of feet away, talking to your aunts while openly glaring at him. He growled an amused, “Try not making a mess on the seats, princess” before you ended up squirming and moaning in the backseat of his pickup truck, still fully clothed as his hand slid down the front of your unbuttoned pants. He was three fingers deep inside your pussy, his other hand gripping your jaw to keep your eyes on his as he whispered how good he was going to fuck you later in his bed, and how good he’d make you cream all over his cock. His dick was straining against the confines of his pants, painful and throbbing because you were so pretty with your lips parted around your little, unrestrained whimpers, your half-lidded eyes staring hazily at him, and then… the bright flash of red and blue lights blinded you both in an instant.
By the time the two police officers knocked on the window car, you were both just about composed—his jacket lay on his lap to hide the impressive bulge while you leaned against his shoulder, carefully performing a convincing enough bout of nausea to explain why you had been parked there so long. They told you that someone had reported a vehicle acting suspiciously nearby and Bucky quickly chimed in, matching their story just enough. However, the car in question disappeared down the road the moment you parked. A brief, measured silence followed, until one of the officers glanced at you. Then at Bucky. Then back at his partner, clearly deciding that whatever they might have walked in on was not worth pursuing further.
Or that time your first picnic date turned into Bucky keeping a hand on your mouth as he fucked you right in the middle of the blanket you had so carefully arranged, imagining quiet naps beneath the trees and lazy kisses. Instead, you had squirted all over it after Bucky had growled into your neck that you needed to be quiet, or else one of his employees might catch you. Still hard, he hastily lay between your thighs for his earned “dessert”.
You have always managed to get away with it before—never caught, never interrupted, always just out of reach of consequence. Until now.
The wall rattles with a particular hard thrust of his hips, loud enough that the sound travels straight through the large space, followed immediately by a sharp, unceremonious clatter from somewhere above your head. Before either of you has even processed what’s happening, something tumbles from the nearby shelf and lands directly on Bucky’s head with a force that makes you both flinch at the same time.
Your boyfriend jerks back instantly, a harsh curse slipping out under his breath as one hand flies up to the exact point of impact, while his other arm tightens around you, still holding you close out of reflex even as he recoils.
“Oh my God—” You gasp, eyes widening in horror as you register what just happened. “Bucky!”
“’M fine.” He grunts automatically, though the tight set of his jaw and the faint squint in his eye suggest otherwise.
You wriggle out from his hold with anxious urgency until he sets you back on your feet, quickly reaching for his wrists as though you can physically prevent any further damage. He keeps muttering under his breath about “fucking shelves” and “the motherfucker who put that damn thing there.”
“Sweetheart, it was just a flashlight, not a bullet.” He grits out to reassure you.
“Who cares, it hit your head!” You argue frantically. “Move your hand, let me see.”
There is a long, theatrical pause, during which Bucky clearly considers refusing out of principle alone, but eventually he exhales through his nose and lowers his hand with exaggerated reluctance, revealing nothing particularly dramatic beyond a faintly annoyed expression.
“There,” he sighs. “Still alive.”
You stare at him with genuine devastation shining in your eyes.
“Oh, baby.”
And that is the moment everything shifts. Because your tone changes completely, your panic dissolving into something softer and infinitely more dangerous as your hands come up to his face without hesitation, cradling him with careful precision while your thumbs brush lightly over his cheeks. You inspect him with big, worried eyes, pouting at him like he has just survived something far more dramatic than an ambush by a shelf.
Bucky, for his part, goes still in a way that has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with your attention. It’s almost humiliating how quickly his entire focus narrows down to you. The way your thumb absently brushes his cheek. The way your voice drops into a gentle, breathy coo every time you ask if he is alright. The way you keep smoothing your thumb over the bruise like it physically pains you to see him like this. And somewhere in the middle of it, a thought forms with unsettling clarity—he really likes this.
“You poor thing,” you murmur mournfully. “Does it hurt?”
Bucky blinks once, twice. “A little...” He admits slowly, though the word feels less like an answer and more like an experiment he is conducting purely for the sake of seeing how you respond.
You frown. “Oh, Jamie.”
He leans into your soft palms without thinking, eyelids lowering in complete bliss.
“Mhm.”
“Do you feel dizzy?”
“... Think I might now that you mentioned it.”
The crease in your brows deepens at once, fingers sliding into his hair as you begin checking for other bumps, your touch careful and thorough in a way that turns his brain into pure mush.
“You need ice.”
“Mhm.”
“And water.”
“Probably.”
“And you should sit down for a minute.”
At that, something entirely too satisfied slips into his expression, subtle but unmistakable. Because you are standing in front of him on the verge of tears, treating this huge, rough man like a wounded woodland creature.
“You’re real sweet when you worry about me.” He murmurs, smitten.
You roll your eyes even as your hands stay on his face. “Someone has to take care of you.”
That’s all it takes. He is not going to discourage this behavior in any way, shape, or form.
Bucky lets you guide him toward the chair beside the workbench without resistance, lowering himself into it with slow obedience. The moment he is seated, you are immediately between his knees, hovering, checking, fussing, entirely focused on him as though nothing else in the world currently matters. Which, unfortunately, becomes the highlight of his entire week.
“There’s a bump.” You murmur to yourself, brows drawn together in concentration.
“Mhm.” He agrees gravely, as if this confirms a deeply unfortunate outcome for his future.
“You could’ve been seriously hurt.”
And Bucky just watches you, completely lost in the way you move around him with anxious care, your hands never quite leaving him. There is something recklessly addicting about being the center of your attention that settles into him far too easily, like it has always been waiting there for you to unlock it. It goes to his head faster than the flashlight ever could.
“Are you still feeling dizzy?” You fret.
Bucky tilts his head slightly as if genuinely considering it, though the truth is he could not care less about his symptoms.
“…Little bit.” He decides finally.
Your eyes widen. “You do?”
“Might need mouth-to-mouth.” He adds, entirely deadpan.
You stare at him in disbelief. “James.”
“What?” A pause, thoughtful. “I got a concussion, sweetheart. Have some compassion.”
“You don’t have a concussion.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Your voice briefly cracks with amusement.
He sighs as though genuinely disappointed by the medical community. Still, he looks unbearably pleased with himself.
“Stay still,” you mutter pensively, already turning toward the small freezer tucked away nearby. “I’m getting ice.”
Bucky watches you go with an expression bordering on lovesick, his lips twisting into a soft curve. By the time you return, he has already shifted slightly, spreading his knees just enough to make space for you again. His hands find your hips as soon as you’re close enough, steadying you, holding you in place while you press the ice gently against the bump, your face still pinched with concentration.
“Too cold?” You ask softly.
“Nah.” Then, after a beat, entirely too casually, “Still think you should kiss it better, though.”
You roll your eyes, yet your small smile betrays you. “You’re enjoying this way too much.”
“Can’t believe you’d say that while I’m injured.” He retorts, tone solemn. “I got hit real hard, doll.”
“You said it was a flashlight.” Your eyebrow raises skeptically.
“Still could’ve knocked loose my precious brain cell.”
That finally does it, a laugh slipping out of you despite the anxiety still lingering in your stomach. It’s soft and breathless and completely unrestrained, and Bucky’s hands squeeze your waist, as though he is physically anchoring himself to it.
“What am I going to do with you?” You sigh, fingers threading carefully through his hair. It occurs to you with a fond, helpless kind of clarity that you have accidentally created a monster. One who is absolutely going to treat every minor inconvenience like a life-threatening injury, if it means being doted on by you.
This time, there is no hesitation when he answers, voice quieter but absolutely certain.
“Keep spoiling me like this.”
The words come out lazy and teasing, yet they land heavier than either of you anticipate. Because he means it a little. Maybe a lot. Your expression softens in response, the final threads of panic melting away into something far more vulnerable. Then, much to his delight, you lean down and press a long kiss to the top of his head.
“There,” you murmur. “Better?”
Bucky goes still beneath you, before his arms wrap more firmly around you, pulling you just a fraction closer until his chin can comfortably rest on your torso.
“Yeah,” he whispers, reverent eyes looking up at you. “Way better.”
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU SPEND YOUR MORNINGS TOGETHER
The two of you are stretched across his bed after a late dinner and a movie downtown, the television flickering low pale light across the room. One of Bucky’s older hoodies hangs from your shoulders, and the comforter pooled around your legs still carries faint traces of that comforting earthy scent that always seems permanently stitched into everything he owns.
You are trying very hard to stay awake. The week has been horrible: your students restless from too many rainy recesses indoors, paperwork piling endlessly across your desk, and parent emails arriving faster than you could answer them. By the time Bucky picked you up earlier that evening, your body had already been aching with fatigue. Still, you are determined not to fall asleep here. Because despite the fact that Bucky has never once made you feel unwelcome in his space, there is still a nervous little part of you convinced that accidentally crossing invisible boundaries will somehow ruin everything. Falling asleep in his bed feels far more intimate than kissing him does, strangely enough, because it means trusting him enough to stop monitoring yourself.
So every time your eyelids begin slipping lower, you stubbornly force them open again. Unfortunately, Bucky notices the way your responses slow down halfway through conversations and the increasingly delayed reaction every time he asks you something about the movie. Your body keeps unconsciously curling closer and closer toward his warmth before you catch yourself and straighten again. At one point, your head dips toward his chest for too long you abruptly jerk yourself upright.
Bucky glances at you, his hand leisurely rubbing along your arm, and one corner of his mouth already threatens to lift.
“You don’t gotta stay awake for me, doll.”
His voice comes low and soothing beside you, yet your eyes widen abruptly.
You open your mouth but nothing comes out, your eyes fluttering shut in defeat when you realize you absolutely set yourself up for that.
Bucky’s chest shakes slightly with restrained laughter at your weak glare.
“I’m serious.” You slur, shifting upright again beneath the blankets with all the determination of somebody seconds away from losing consciousness. He hums patiently, still rubbing slow circles against your sleeve.
You try very hard after that. You focus on the movie, ask questions about the actors… You even sit up straighter just to prove you are perfectly fine. Then Bucky’s hand slides absentmindedly beneath his shirt to rub slowly along your bare hip instead.
And honestly, after that, you never really stood a chance. Bucky glances down after a couple of silent minutes and finds your body curled into his side while your breathing evens out gradually beneath the faint sound of the wind outside. And something about the sight hits him so deeply it hurts. Because he knows this is not easy for you yet. That you are still learning how to be yourself around another person without feeling like an inconvenience.
Your boyfriend slowly adjusts himself against the headboard so you can settle more comfortably on him, one hand pulling the comforter higher around your shoulders before he lowers the volume of the television. You stir faintly at the movement, brows pinching briefly in your sleep, but his hand promptly strokes your back with gentle movements.
“There you go,” he murmurs quietly. “Go back to sleep, pretty girl.” The tension melts from your muscles so quickly beneath his touch that Bucky’s eyes linger on you in silent wonder for a long moment. He presses one long kiss on your forehead, and sometime later, sleep finally finds him too, quiet and unguarded with you tucked safely against his side.
The next morning, you wake feeling unexpectedly well-rested. For several peaceful seconds, your mind drifts lazily through the hazy border between sleep and awareness. It’s only when your body stirs with a slow, languid stretch that you realize you are pressed against something solid.
Solid, pleasantly warm, and… moving?
Memories crash into you all at once—the dinner, the movie... Bucky’s bed.
Your eyes fly open.
Early sunlight catches along the broad expanse of his bare forearm where it rests heavily around your waist, like he fell asleep making sure you were always close throughout the night. Mortification hits you like a punch in the stomach. You can’t believe you were careless enough to fall asleep in his bed without discussing it first, the surprise quickly curdling into guilt as you picture him stuck with you there, too kind to wake you up.
Trying to not be swallowed by panic until you are completely alone, you carefully shift beneath the blankets only for Bucky’s hold to tighten automatically around you. A sleepy hum leaves him, followed by his voice a second later, raspy and deep.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
You turn carefully enough to find him already watching you through heavy-lidded eyes, hair messy from sleep and jaw still shadowed with yesterday’s stubble.
“I’m sorry.” The words come out before you can even think about it.
Bucky blinks slowly, his soft smile falling at once. “For what?”
“For falling asleep here.”
“You were tired.” He frowns.
“I know but… I didn’t mean to bother you.”
The second the words leave your mouth, something in Bucky’s expression morphs into painful understanding. You genuinely believe this inconvenienced him.
“You silly girl,” he murmurs fondly, pulling you closer by your waist. “You fell asleep during a movie. That ain’t exactly a crime, y’know?”
You stare down at the comforter instead, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. “I just didn’t wanna impose.”
Long fingers are already sliding beneath your chin, guiding your face back toward him with impossible patience.
“You think I’d rather have you driving home exhausted in the rain at midnight? Hm?”
Your lips part slightly. “Well—”
“No, baby.” His thumb delicately brushes your bottom lip. “I’d rather have you here with me.”
It feels hard to breathe properly when faced with the certainty in his voice.
“I liked waking up next to you.”
The confession lands directly beneath your ribs.
“You did?” Your eyes observe him wide with hope.
“‘Course I did.” A sleepy little smile tugs at his mouth. “I...” He huffs out an abashed chuckle, and you recoil a little, completely caught off guard. Because Bucky has never once looked this flushed since your first date.
“I’d really like it if you stayed over more.”
“Really?” It’s nothing short of a whisper.
“Mhm.” His hand drifts slowly along your side as his gaze lingers on your face with devastating devotion.
“Don’t really like the idea of you driving home late all the time anyway, and…” He pauses briefly, almost thoughtful. “I wanna wake up with you in my arms.”
The room suddenly feels far too warm. Bucky shifts slightly closer again, his other arm coming under you to anchor your body to his, his nose teasingly grazing yours.
“Wanna have my mouth on you before either of us even gets outta bed, and be late because we inevitably get carried away with our little kisses.” He whispers lazily against the slope of your neck, pressing a peck on your collarbone that makes you shudder.
“Wanna make breakfast together and watch you steal half the bacon off my plate after you said you weren’t hungry.” His mouth barely brushes your cheek. “Wanna sit at the kitchen table while you talk my ear off about your day before it even starts.”
Nobody has ever spoken about wanting you in their life as a fantasy too fragile to touch. But Bucky has already made space for you in his future without hesitation.
And then he completely ruins you by adding under his breath, “You look good here, sweetheart. With me.”
The same hesitation holding you back melts completely after that.
“I liked waking up next to you too.” You whisper, cheeks warming up at your own brave confession. But the bright smile he gives you is completely worth it.
Staying over becomes less of an exception and more of a habit neither of you wants to break. Soon enough, pieces of you begin appearing around the farmhouse: a spare toothbrush beside his sink; a brand new box of your favorite strawberry lipgloss that Bucky bought for you to specifically use when you stay over; your favorite cookies tucked into one of the kitchen cabinets—because Bucky noticed you always look for them first in the mornings.
He never rushes you into the day. Even when he has technically been awake for hours already, he moves through the morning with a steady, unhurried ease, as though the world itself knows it can take a break around him.
Sometimes you wake to find him already watching you quietly from the pillow beside yours, one arm still draped across your waist while pale sunrays spill across the sheets between you. Most mornings, you simply cuddle closer for a little while, listening to him breathe, memorizing the warmth of his arms around you, letting yourself exist without urgency for once.
“Morning, baby.”
His voice still sounds rough around the edges from sleep when he leans to meet you halfway, pressing a slow kiss on your mouth that lingers far longer than necessary because neither of you is in any hurry to separate yet.
Downstairs, the kitchen already smells faintly of coffee he started earlier. You are halfway through pouring cream into your mug when dread hits you like a bucket of icy water. Bucky notices immediately from his seat at the kitchen island, where he’s reading the newspaper like every morning.
“What happened?”
You sigh softly, your head falling back with a groan. “I still have to finish prepping activities for today.”
Instead of looking disappointed that your attention has shifted elsewhere, Bucky simply studies you thoughtfully for a moment before setting his mug down.
“Show me.”
You turn in surprise. “What?”
“Show me what you gotta do.”
“You wanna help me lesson plan?” Your eyebrows raise in amusement.
“Correction, I wanna spend my morning with you.”
So eventually you spread everything across the wooden surface: worksheets, glue sticks, colored markers, laminated reading cards, paper cutouts for today’s classroom activity. Bucky watches the process unfold with intense concentration, a deep crease between his eyebrows while he studies your materials.
“This all for one class?”
“Mm-hmm. Reading exercise, drawing activity, vocabulary review…” You point at each group of items.
Bucky gives you a slow nod, despite still looking vaguely overwhelmed by the amount of paper involved. Without thinking much about it, you hand him a stack of cut-out shapes that needs to be organized by color. He takes them at once, no hesitation whatsoever. Several minutes later, you glance up and nearly snort out loud when you realize he’s sorting them not only by color, but by shade. After that, he busies himself with other simple tasks, like passing markers to you in color order because he noticed you unconsciously arrange them that way yourself, and flattening laminated sheets carefully beneath one rough hand while you cut around them.
At one point, Bucky picks up one of the worksheets and studies it with intense concentration, his brows slowly knitting together the more he reads through the page. You barely pay attention at first, too focused on cutting out paper stars for the reading activity, until silence stretches suspiciously long. When you are done, you find Bucky still staring at the paper as if studying a government document.
“These kids gotta circle the adjective?”
You blink once. “Yes?”
He glances down at the paper, then back at you. “They know what an adjective is?”
“Most of them.” You chuckle at his genuine curiosity.
Bucky shakes his head like the information has sincerely overwhelmed him.
“When I was their age, I was eating dirt behind the barn.”
“Bucky.”
“I’m just being honest, sweetheart.” His finger taps the worksheet once. “These little kids are out here identifying pronouns and shit at eight in the morning.”
You are laughing too hard now imagining a smaller, frowning Bucky eating dirt and running around the pasture hugging lambs probably larger than him. Bucky watches you with obvious satisfaction, until his eyes narrow at another page on the table.
“Is that a frog?”
You grin at him. “That’s the reading mascot, Sir Ribbits.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “The frog helps them read?”
“He encourages them.”
Bucky stares at the cartoon amphibian for another long moment before giving it a satisfied nod.
“Good for him.”
After hunching over papers for what feels like hours, you stretch your arms with a tired little moan. Bucky is already rounding the table to rub your stiff shoulders, and instead of flinching, you simply lean back into it.
By the time everything is finally packed away, the kitchen table is covered in marker caps and paper scraps. He gathers the last stack of worksheets into neat piles before you can even reach for them.
“You’re weirdly good at this.” Your teeth sink into your bottom lip as you prop your elbow on the table and rest your chin against your knuckles.
Bucky glances up from the papers. “You let me into your world,” he says simply. “Figured I should learn it too.”
He never expected you to abandon pieces of yourself to fit into his life more easily. Instead, he stepped gently into yours, observing every detail with patience and the kind of love that makes ordinary mornings feel sacred without either of you even realizing it.
A strange heaviness weighs in your body on Thursday morning but Bucky is so warm, and still dozing beside you with one of his large hands resting on your stomach. So you yawn, lazily letting your eyes blink at the window just enough to not abandon that pleasant, fuzzy state of drowsiness. But then they accidentally land on the clock on your nightstand and the realization is like electricity in your veins.
“Oh no.”
The words catch painfully in your throat while you scramble upright so fast the mattress shifts violently beneath you.
“No, no, no, no—”
Bucky wakes with a jolt at the desperation in your voice, his brows pulling together while he pushes himself up on one elbow, still heavy with sleep but already alert.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
You are throwing the blankets aside, heart hammering painfully while you frantically open your closet. “I’m so fucking late.”
He glances once toward the clock and sits up fully.
“Okay.” He says calmly, rubbing one hand briefly over his face before standing. “Hey, sweetheart. You need to breathe.”
But your thoughts pile over each other in a chaotic succession to acknowledge the note of seriousness tinging his voice. Stumbling around your bedroom, you mentally list everything waiting for you at school, and fuck! You still need to print the spelling worksheets—
Suddenly your chest feels too tight for your lungs.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” you whine shakily while yanking open dresser drawers with far more force than necessary. “Why didn’t my alarm go off?”
Bucky watches you for approximately three seconds before deciding this has gone on long enough.
“Sweetheart.”
You barely hear him.
“Where are my tights? Fuck—”
The sound of your name in his low voice is like an arm dragging you out of the fog. You look up just in time to see him step directly into your path, his palms settling carefully on your upper arms before your nervous pacing can continue.
“Sit down for me.”
The words are not sharp, but there is enough firmness in his voice that your body pauses anyway.
“I don’t have time to sit down.” You argue weakly, still breathless.
“You got thirty seconds.”
“Bucky—”
“Thirty.” His thumbs stroke once over your arms. “Then you can go back to panicking all you want.”
And somehow, despite yourself, a tiny startled laugh almost escapes your throat. Your spiraling does not scare him, he has already decided he can handle it.
Reluctantly, you fall back on the edge of the bed, your right knee already bouncing anxiously. Meanwhile, your boyfriend moves around the room with military efficiency despite being startled awake not even five minutes ago, opening drawers you left hanging crooked and pulling out clothes with far more success than you had managed one minute earlier.
“This sweater okay?” He asks, holding up the brown-colored knit you wear most often to school.
You nod quickly. “Yeah.”
“What about bottoms?”
“The dark jeans. Not the—no, the other ones.”
A sleepy smile pulls at his mouth. “Doll, you own six pairs of those.”
“They’re different.”
“Mhm. I’m learning.”
He lays the clothes neatly beside you before his eyes meet yours.
“I’ll get the shower running.” You are already half-way up but he stops you promptly with a hand on your shoulder. “You stay put for one minute and focus on your breathing.”
Your body slumps back on the mattress dejected. “I don’t have one minute.”
“You do,” he calls back over the hallway. “You just decided you don’t.”
And annoyingly enough, hearing him say that steadies your heartbeat embarrassingly fast. Bucky never meets your panic with more panic, but with this quiet expectation that life will go on if you slow down to take a breath.
By the time you finally hurry into the kitchen twenty minutes later, still trying to button one sleeve, you stop short at the familiar sizzling of the pan. Bucky is standing near the stove in grey sweatpants and an old dark henley, hair still messy from sleep and posture relaxed while he slides scrambled eggs onto a plate.
“Sit.” He says after spotting you hovering on the threshold.
“Bucky—”
He turns toward you fully then, watching you with that deeply patient expression of his.
“C’mere.”
You comply with a sigh as he slides the plate in front of you alongside a toast, some jam and a travel mug of coffee already prepared exactly the way you like it.
“You need protein.”
You massage your temples to soothe the impending headache. “I’m gonna be late.”
“You’re already late,” he points out calmly, leaning against the counter. “Now, you can either be late and fed or late and miserable.”
You stare at him and he promptly raises one eyebrow. “You done fighting me on this or you got another argument ready?”
That finally pulls a reluctant laugh from you. “You’re bossy in the morning.”
He shrugs easily, now understanding why you arrive home every afternoon looking like somebody has been ruthlessly peeling pieces off you since sunrise.
He then helps without making a performance out of it. Your coat appears folded neatly over a chair, and your keys get placed directly beside your coffee as you try to eat faster. When your lunch bag nearly gets forgotten on the kitchen counter, Bucky simply hooks two fingers through the strap and places it near your coat.
“Every morning you skitter through this part like a startled little thing.” He murmurs eventually.
Your answer is a tired sigh. “Because I’m always running behind.”
“Nah,” he corrects gently, stepping behind your chair to put his hands over your shoulders and press a kiss to your temple. “You just got it in your head that if you ain’t running yourself ragged, you’re not working hard enough.”
The words hit uncomfortably close to home, leaving you staring down at your empty plate in silence. Bucky promptly kneels beside you, intertwining his fingers with yours.
“You hear what I’m saying, princess?” He mumbles softly.
“A little.” You nod reluctantly.
“You don’t gotta earn rest by wearing yourself thin.”
Your throat tightens unexpectedly, not used to have your exhaustion treated like something deserving tenderness instead of expectation. Before the moment can settle too heavily inside you though, Bucky glances toward your bag where papers are sticking halfway out.
“You got everything?”
You finally look up, straightening just a little. “I think so.”
“That usually means no.”
You groan softly. “Please don’t start.”
He chuckles under his breath before walking over to the bag for a checkup, clearly having observed this exact routine unravel before. Within seconds, he pulls out your half-empty water bottle.
“You forgot to fill this.”
“Oh.” You frown.
“And your portable charger.”
“Oh.” Your shoulders slump.
“And doll?” His eyes lift to you knowingly while he holds up the folder with all the notes for your lesson currently bent sideways. “This thing’s fighting for its life.”
Exasperated, you hide your face behind your hands while he fixes the folder carefully before zipping everything properly closed. But the bag is too full and when your fingers close around the handle a few minutes later, the zipper gives away anyway, and frustration spikes sharply enough that your eyes sting.
“Why won’t this stupid thing—”
Before you can fight with it further, Bucky steps in and takes the bag from your hands. One smooth motion and the zipper slides perfectly into place.
“There.”
Your entire nervous system settles slightly from that tiny act alone.
You finally make it to the front door—still flustered, still behind schedule, still trying to mentally catch up with the day waiting outside. But you are no longer drowning in it.
You grab your car keys, expecting some hurried goodbye while Bucky cleans the kitchen. Instead, he is standing directly in front of the door, and without a word, his hands reach down and fix your collar where it folded awkwardly.
“Text me when you get there.”
“I will.” His eyes search your face for another moment, cradling it between his warm palms.
“You did good.”
You stare at him incredulously. “I overslept by almost an hour.”
“And you still got up,” Bucky comments simply. “Still got dressed. Still ate breakfast. Still remembered your stuff. That’s what matters, baby.”
He never measures your worth through perfection, only through effort. Through whether or not you are being gentle enough with yourself while surviving difficult days.
He leaves a long kiss on your forehead, completely unbothered by the clock ticking loudly behind you.
“Now go teach your little gremlins.”
“They’re not gremlins.” You roll your eyes fondly.
His left eyebrow raises in skepticism. “One of ’em tried to lick glue yesterday.”
“He said he wanted to know if it tasted like blueberries because the bottle was blue.” You mumble defensively.
“Mhm.” He presses one last kiss to your lips. “Tiny gremlins.”
You shake your head, chuckling as you reach for the door. And while walking to your car, you realize with pleasant surprise that your breathing is a little steadier. Controlled. Because Bucky stood beside your panic and refused to let it carry you away.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN YOU ARGUE FOR THE FIRST TIME
Pickup was already chaotic: one of the first graders had burst into tears after losing her glitter-covered pencil somewhere near the cubbies, a little boy had refused to put on his raincoat because he insisted it was “for babies,” and by the time the middle school students started flooding the shared hallway, you already felt like hiding beneath your blanket and sleeping for two days.
That’s when the shouting starts—two eighth graders near the front doors, chest-to-chest, yelling loud enough to make half the younger kids stop in place.
You don’t even think before stepping in.
“Hey!” You call sharply, moving between them before either could swing properly. “That’s enough.”
One of them backs off immediately. The other glares at you. He is taller by several inches, angry in the ugly, reckless way teenagers sometimes become when they realize they can intimidate adults physically now. His face twists the second you tell him to step away from the younger students.
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I absolutely can,” you answer promptly, trying to keep your voice collected because several of your students are staring with huge frightened eyes. “Go cool off in one of the classrooms.”
He laughs, a sharp and bitter sound, before stepping closer.
“You think because you teach stupid little kids that you can boss everybody around?”
You ignore that part. “Watch your language.”
That only makes him angrier. “You gonna write me up?” He mocks. “Go teach somebody the alphabet or something.”
He starts talking over you, muttering insults under his breath, waving his hands too close to your face while you try to de-escalate things without frightening your students more than they already are.
And then Bucky walks in. He has come to pick you up because your car is still at the mechanic after the tire issue earlier that week. The second he steps through the school doors and sees some teenage boy towering over you while a crowd of scared children has shrunk back against the wall, something in him visibly sharpens.
Once the boy swings one hand again while barking the umpteenth insult aimed at you, too close to your shoulder this time, Bucky is there in seconds.
“That’s enough.”
His voice cuts through the noise so coldly that even the younger kids go quiet.
The boy freezes. Honestly, anybody would in front of a six-foot-something man wearing rough work clothes still dusted faintly from the farm, and a face that rarely softens around strangers.
“You’re done yelling at her, and you better start showing some respect to your teachers.” He continues evenly. “You understand me?”
The boy mutters something under his breath about you not being his teacher, prompting Bucky to take a step closer. The younger snaps his head up, before taking a step back.
“Try again.”
Silence.
Then finally, begrudgingly, “Yes, sir.”
The principal arrives not even a minute later after hearing the commotion, quickly pulling the boy away while apologizing profusely to you both, and the altercation ends as quickly as it started. At least physically. Emotionally, it’s heavy as a boulder on your shoulders, because the entire drive home, Bucky is quieter than usual, so tense that you feel the need to tentatively reach for the handle at your side and roll down the car window for some fresh air.
His hand still rests on your thigh, he still opens your door, and asks if you have eaten. But there is something bothering him underneath all of it. And eventually, while he is cooking dinner later that evening, it finally surfaces.
“You shouldn’t have stepped between them like that.”
You look up from where you are sitting at the kitchen island grading some assignments. “What?”
Bucky keeps stirring something in the pan, shoulders tight beneath his henley. “He was bigger than you,” he continues carefully. “And he was already angry.”
“He’s a kid.”
“He’s fifteen.”
“He’s still a student.”
His jaw clenches briefly. “And if he had hit you?”
With a slow sigh, you decide to put your pen down—these are all signs that you are not getting out of this conversation anytime soon.
“He wasn’t going to, I had it under control.” You rebut tiredly.
“Didn’t look like you did.”
The second those words leave his mouth, something ugly inside your chest twists painfully. His voice is controlled, far from cruel, but those words feel like a knife ruthlessly stabbing an old scar that refuses to heal properly. And suddenly, you are twenty-two again, standing in your parents’ kitchen while your mom frowns at your teaching degree paperwork.
Teaching little kids? What are you gonna do with that?
You’re wasting your time, this won’t pay bills.
“Well, I handled it anyway.” You look back at the paper in front of you, quietly.
Bucky exhales through his nose, still focused on the stove.
“Sweetheart, I know you were trying to help, but—”
“I did help.” You frown at his back.
“You can’t just jump between two angry teenagers.”
“I’m a teacher.”
“And I’m saying you don’t gotta throw yourself in front of people to prove that.”
That one hurts too. It tastes like doubt, criticism... disappointment.
“I know how to do my job.” You croak out.
Bucky finally turns then, brows drawn slightly.
“I didn’t say you don’t.”
But his voice is firmer now, frustration slipping through the cracks of his apparent composure despite himself, and when he gestures with the wooden spoon in his hand, his tone rises just enough to make you flinch before you can stop it. The movement is barely noticeable, more out of surprise than anything. Except Bucky freezes.
You don’t even realize your eyes have dropped somewhere on the counter in front of you until his voice changes completely.
“Sweetheart.” A soft, tentative sound, but you are already shaking your head.
“It’s okay.” Your voice sounds wrong and dismissive even to you and Bucky’s expression shifts into painful realization.
He sets the spoon down without another word, turns off the stove, then gingerly walks toward, still keeping his distance so you won’t feel cornered.
“C’mere a second, baby.”
You hesitate, because your body already knows the shape arguments are supposed to take, even if your mind is trying to remind itself that this is your Bucky. Your Jamie.
Still, somewhere deep inside you, disagreement has tied to punishment long ago, to that awful tightening in the air that used to settle over rooms after somebody got upset. You are used to conversations turning cold the second emotions become inconvenient; to silence stretching for hours or even days because you were the one expected to smooth everything over—apologize first, speak softer, take up less space. Growing up, anger always came with withdrawal attached to it. Simple disagreements morphed into slammed cabinets and heavy sighs and someone suddenly acting as though your mere presence had become irritating. And even though Bucky has never treated you that way, your instincts still brace for him to go quiet in that unbearable way that turns a home into a suffocating prison.
But his hand rests on your back as it gently guides you toward the couch, settling beside you but still leaving enough room to breathe. Bucky does not like the way you move cautiously around him, the way you slowly lower yourself onto the same couch that has held you both through late-night talks that stretched until early morning, and movie nights that ended in soft, unhurried kisses.
“We’re not doing silence, okay?”
Your eyes fall on the floor. “I wasn’t—”
“Yes, you were.” His voice stays gentle. “You started disappearing on me halfway through that conversation.”
“I was listening.” You stare at your fingers fidgeting on your thighs.
“No, angel.” He shakes his head once, his eyes never once straying away from you. “You got quiet because you thought I was gonna turn into somebody I’m not.”
The stinging pressure behind your eyes becomes unbearable. Bucky braces his forearms on his thighs, leaning forward with a slow exhale instead of pressing closer.
“I’m not mad at you.” He adds in a whisper. “I was worried for you.”
You swallow around the lump in your throat. “I know.”
“Do you?” His tone is impossibly feeble now, because suddenly this is not about the hallway anymore, but a habit that was acquired through mortification and fear. Bucky studies your face for another second before speaking again.
“Ain’t no reason for you to be scared to talk back to me, sweetheart.” His brows pinch faintly. “And if I say something that hurts you, I need you to tell me.”
You let out a shaky breath, your voice coming out weaker than you intend to. “It wasn’t just that.”
Bucky straightens at once at the first crack in your armor, unconsciously getting closer.
“Then help me understand.”
Eventually, with trembling hands and wet eyes, you open up. About your mom and how every time you came home exhausted during your first teaching year, she would look at you like you were failing at life itself. About how your dad used to scoff whenever you talked about your students, because “Teaching kids how to write their name isn’t a real career”. About how even the tiniest mistake sounded like proof you were incapable.
And the more you speak, the worse Bucky looks. By the time you finish talking, it feels like a weight has finally been removed off your chest, yet he looks genuinely sick with guilt.
“Baby,” he mumbles, reaching for your hand. “I wasn’t doubting you. I would never do that.”
You shrug weakly. “I know you weren’t trying to.”
“But I still made you feel that way.”
That’s what finally breaks you, because he’s not defending himself, nor minimizing it.
Tears spill before you can stop them, and your Bucky is already there with open arms to catch you.
“C’mere, babygirl.”
You climb into his lap without hesitation, burying your face against his neck as his arms wrap around you securely. One large hand slides slowly up and down your back, and you try really hard to swallow down your sobs, but you only end up making a bigger mess of his shirt.
“I’m so sorry, princess.” He whispers against your temple. “And I should never’ve raised my voice at you.”
“You weren’t yelling.” You answer shakily.
“You still flinched.”
The shame in his voice makes your heart ache. His hold tightens around you instinctively at your whimper.
“I wasn’t angry at you.” He mumbles urgently. “I was angry at the whole damn situation. At that kid thinking he could talk to you like that after nearly starting a fight in front of your students.” His jaw tightens briefly before he continues. “Couldn’t stand there listening to some mouthy little bastard trying to scare you in front of those little kids.”
Your eyes close in sorrow as the image of their startled faces comes back cruel and still fresh.
“They were terrified.” You sniffle and his arms squeeze you just a little tighter.
“I know why you stepped in.” he sighs. “You love those kids like they’re your own for eight hours every damn day, and you can’t stand the idea of any of ’em feeling helpless in a place that’s supposed to be safe.” His palms cradle your cheeks to slowly coax you out of his chest, the urge to see you so strong it pulls hard at his heart.
“You walk into that school every morning and spend your whole day teaching them how to read and write and believe in themselves. And you’re so fucking good at that, angel. You teach ’em how to be brave enough to admit when they don’t understand something. How to speak up without being scared of failing. How to be kind with each other when the world already gives them enough reasons not to be.” A faint, helpless sort of admiration softens his face then, like he still can’t believe he gets to love and be loved by someone as precious as you.
Your lips shake as you give him a pained smile, tears still sliding relentlessly down your cheeks.
“Years from now those kids probably won’t remember every worksheet you gave ’em, but they’ll remember how you were patient with ’em. That you listened.” His teeth clench when his voice wavers a little.
“So yeah, I know exactly why you did that. But that boy still thought he could stand there and talk to you like you were nothing.” He exhales slowly, forehead leaning against yours. “And baby… I got scared too.”
Your chest heaves, something akin to panic swirling in your stomach, because you have never seen your boyfriend look so devastated.
“You matter to me more than being right in an argument,” the words come out rough, his throat working hard around the tight knot lodged there. “So if I get scared and it comes out wrong sometimes, I need you to remember it’s only because the thought of something happening to you tears me apart.”
You nod slowly before folding yourself back against him, arms wrapping tightly around his neck as you bury your face in the warmth of his chest. And then you simply exist together for a long while, curled into him with your cheek pressed against the soft fabric of his shirt while his strong arms hold you safely close to his heart.
The living room has gone quiet around you, the stove forgotten for the moment, as your breathing gradually evens out. He is the one who breaks the silence first, clearing his throat lightly as his lips brush your forehead.
“We’re gonna argue sometimes,” he murmurs carefully, almost reluctantly, like the thought alone upsets him as well. “I can’t promise we’ll never get frustrated with each other.”
Your arms tighten around him at that.
“What I can promise you,” he continues softly, pulling back just enough to look at you properly, one hand coming up to cup your jaw with impossible tenderness. “Is that I’m not gonna stop loving you when things get hard.”
A fresh set of tears settles at the corners of your eyes, because that’s the part you never learned growing up—that the love of the people close to you was not supposed to be conditional.
Bucky’s thumb brushes beneath your eye. “And I’m really, really sorry, sweetheart.” His voice full of genuine regret. “I hate that I made you feel small for even a second.”
You shake your head urgently, not liking his expression. “You didn’t mean to, Jamie.”
“Yet I still did it.” He shifts slightly beneath you then, settling you more comfortably against his chest before continuing quietly.
“Next time one of us gets too worked up, we stop.” His tone is thoughtful now, already trying to build something safer for you with his bare hands. “Nobody keeps pushing the conversation just to win it. We sit down, we breathe, maybe hold each other if that’s what you need, and then we talk when it actually feels like us again instead of our anger. How’s that sound?”
You nod eagerly, before letting out the tiniest watery chuckle against his shoulder.
“That sounds very therapist of you.”
Bucky huffs a soft laugh of his own through his nose. “Probably because I’m thinking real hard how I never wanna be the reason my girl cries like this again.”
A sob threatens to spill out at the pain beneath his words, so you press your face against his neck insistently—as if that could physically stop your own anguish. Bucky plants a gentle kiss on your temple.
“And if I ever get loud again,” he continues with quiet embarrassment, brows pinching in guilt. “You tell me straight away, okay? There are no excuses for it. Don’t sit there holding it on your own while I’m thinking everything’s fine.”
You nod slowly. “I can do that.”
“Promise?” He mumbles, teasingly pushing the tip of his nose against yours.
“Promise.” You leave a tiny peck on the corner of his mouth and only then does some of the tension finally leave him.
His hand slides upwards, fingertips scratching lightly at your scalp just how you like, a soft sigh escaping him at the feeling of your body melting against his.
“You okay now, babygirl?” The whispered question comes out so sweetly, so sincerely worried, that it nearly brings you to tears all over again.
He gets a simple nod as an answer, and that’s enough for him to understand you are still quite overwhelmed to communicate with words. Bucky considers your body for a moment, his eyes moving carefully over you like he needs to be absolutely certain before he believes it. Your shoulders are no longer drawn up near your ears, and your hands have loosened, clutching lightly at his shirt instead of gripping it desperately. Your breathing has finally settled as well, slower and steadier against his chest. Even your eyes have lost their heat, no longer shiny with panic but tired and present in the moment. Only when he seems fully convinced that you are no longer bracing for something awful to happen does his expression finally ease.
“I got you,” he murmurs quietly against your forehead. “Even when we get things wrong, I still got you.”
Later that night, long after your chagrin has faded and dinner has finally been eaten cold straight from reheated plates, you lie on him with your ear resting directly over his heartbeat. Usually Bucky melts into the sheets whenever you cuddle him like this. Tonight, he stays strangely rigid beneath you.
Lifting your head slightly, you look at his handsome features kissed by the dim, warm light coming from the lamp on his nightstand.
“Jamie?” His fingers pause where they have been tracing absently along your spine, eyes fixed emptily on the TV screen.
“Hm?” He blinks once, hastily turning toward you, like your voice had suddenly pulled him out of whatever thought he had disappeared into.
“You alright?”
The silence that stretches afterward allows anxiety to creep onto the edge of your ribs, before he carefully maneuvers the both of you so you are lying on your sides, facing each other.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Always.” His jaw clenches before he meets your eyes.
“Were you scared of me?”
You almost flinch back. “What?”
“Tonight.” He grunts, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Or before. At any point.”
You stare at him in genuine disbelief. “Bucky—”
“I know I ain’t exactly…” He huffs. “Mr. Friendly with strangers.”
You snort softly because the statement sounds so painfully sincere.
“I’m serious, doll.” His gaze absently lands somewhere on your collarbone. “Most people think I’m angry before I even open my mouth.”
You frown at the tinge of sadness in his voice.
“And then tonight happened,” he continues quietly. “You flinched when I raised my voice and—”
“That wasn’t because of you.” You quickly correct him.
“But I can’t stand that your body reacted like that around me.”
You push yourself upward, cupping his face between your hands until he finally looks at you properly. “James Buchanan Barnes,” you whisper solemnly. “I have never been scared of you. And never will.”
His expression softens at the full name.
“You’re the only person who’s ever made me feel safe.” His eyes still refuse to meet yours, but from the blush settling high on his cheeks, you reckon it’s out of shyness rather than bitter insecurity.
“You know what I see when I look at you?” He shakes his head once. “I see a good,” you murmur softly. “Gentle, patient man.” Your voice lowers even further at that, warmth blooming through your chest when he finally looks at you.
“You always reach for my hand before we cross a street without even thinking about it. You remember which side of the bed I sleep better on; you peel oranges for me because you know I hate the smell on my fingers, and you always turn the porch light on before I get to your house so I never have to walk up in the dark alone.” An adoring grin tugs at your mouth then. “You look at me like I’m the prettiest girl in the world. All the time—even when I’m exhausted and cranky and covered in glitter glue from school projects.”
“So no, Bucky. I don’t think there’s anything about you to be scared of.” You sigh dreamily, lying back down. “You’re my Jamie.”
He swallows hard, jaw tightening for a moment as he fights for control over the tears threatening to spill.
“I love you.” He whispers abruptly, like he can’t hold it back anymore.
Your breath hitches, and then your smile breaks open so wide your cheeks start to ache. “I love you too, Jamie.”
The second the words leave your mouth, Bucky is pulling you over him for a feverish kiss that steals the oxygen from your burning lungs.
That night, he carefully rolls until he’s the one resting on your chest, his arms locked securely around your waist. And for the first time in your life, disagreement ends with someone offering silence as a space to settle instead of weaponizing it.
ᥫ᭡. WHEN HE THINKS ABOUT FOREVER
You are sitting with crossed legs on the couch in one of Bucky’s flannels and thick socks, Alpine dramatically sprawled on your lap as one tiny paw stretches lazily beneath your chin. Her purring is loud enough to vibrate through your ribs every time your fingers drag slowly through her white fur. She arrived in the middle of January wrapped inside one of Bucky’s old flannels, small enough that at first you mistook her for some white bundle of fabric against his chest. You still remember the way he had stepped through the front door that evening with rainwater clinging to the shoulders of his jacket and damp locks at the nape of his neck, one large hand carefully cupped beneath the trembling kitten like he was afraid she might dissolve if he held her too tightly.
“Found her near the south fence,” he had explained quietly while you fretted over them, your heart already breaking at the sight of the little thing. “No collar. Could barely stop shivering to eat.”
Alpine had looked miserable then, all wide blue eyes and soaked fur, but the second you reached for her, she had pushed her tiny face straight into your palm with a desperate little squeak that made Bucky huff a soft laugh. And that was it for you.
Months later, Alpine rules the farmhouse like she personally pays the mortgage. She follows Bucky everywhere when he is home, winding around his boots while he cooks or trying to climb directly into his lap whenever he sits down for more than five minutes. But with you she turns even softer, almost spoiled in the way she melts instantly against your affection. The moment you walk through the front door, she is meowing to be picked up, trotting across the hardwood floors before you even have time to take your shoes off. Sometimes she is eagerly waiting on the back of the couch like she somehow heard your car turn into Bucky’s lane.
He pretends to find it deeply offensive.
“Think she likes you more’n me now.” He had grumbled once while watching Alpine stretch shamelessly in your arms instead of his. You laughed, finding him extremely adorable.
“She sees you every day.”
“Exactly,” he had replied, narrowing his eyes at the cat like she had personally betrayed him. “And apparently that means nothing anymore.”
Tonight is no different.
“There’s my pretty girl,” you murmur as your hands delicately cradle her face. “Yes, there she is. Sweet baby.” Alpine answers by shoving her tiny face directly beneath your chin.
“Oh, you want more attention?” You gasp theatrically. “What a shocking development!”
From the doorway, Bucky watches the entire thing unfold in silence with the shadow of a fond smile lingering on his lips, one shoulder leaning against the frame separating the living room from the kitchen and thick arms crossed loosely over his chest. There is dirt still faintly smudged along one forearm from work outside, his flannel pushed up to his elbows, hair still slightly messy from where he dragged his fingers through it earlier. But all of that roughness fades beneath the look in his eyes. Because you are sitting there treating that tiny stray kitten like she hung the moon. Carefully kissing her head. Adjusting the blanket around her. Holding her with such tenderness, like this is the only language your body knows how to speak.
“Needy thing.” You murmur affectionately before pressing another kiss between her ears.
“You say that like you’re any better.”
The sound of Bucky’s teasing voice makes you glance up immediately. Alpine notices him too, her ears perking instantly before she lets out a tiny chirp of recognition. Still, she makes absolutely no attempt to leave your arms. The floor creaks softly beneath his boots as he finally pushes away from the doorway and walks toward the couch. You give him a sweet smile before your attention drops back to the kitten currently trying to chew on the sleeve hanging over your hand.
“Your daughter is biting me again.” Bucky snorts quietly as he lowers himself beside you, one arm immediately stretching around your shoulders.
“My daughter?” He repeats, pulling you closer. “That cat stopped being mine the second you started baby-talking her.”
“Mmh, that’s not true.”
“Princess, you carried her around this house for three hours yesterday because she sneezed once.”
You frown. “She was sick.”
“She had dust on her nose.”
You gasp softly in mock offense while Alpine flips onto her back, completely unconcerned with the argument happening over her custody. Bucky watches you scratch carefully beneath her chin, your entire face softening without restraint every time she purrs louder. Something in his chest pulls so hard it almost feels unfair, because you have no idea how gorgeous you look, and that he could stand there for hours just watching you pour your love out so freely.
Bucky reaches down then, scratching gently beneath Alpine’s chin until the kitten practically melts in your lap. “She sits in front of the door when you leave, y’know.”
Your eyebrows lift in surprise. “She does not.”
“Mhm.” His mouth twitches faintly. “Walks around crying for twenty minutes like her entire life just fell apart.”
“That’s dramatic.” You tell her with an exaggerated pout.
“Says the woman holding her like an actual infant.”
You look down instinctively. She has, in fact, moved to lie against your chest beneath the blanket with only her tiny head visible. “… Okay maybe a little.”
Bucky chuckles softly, the sound settling warm and deep inside your chest. You eventually notice his silence as somewhere deeper in the house the dryer hums low and steady. The air smells faintly like coffee and detergent and the water lily and sheer musk candle you lit earlier before sunset. When Alpine decides it’s time for the second round against the buttons of the flannel, your smile fades gradually as you become aware that Bucky’s still looking at you.
“What?” You ask softly. He blinks once like he has to pull himself back into the room.
“Nothing.” He murmurs automatically, though it’s very clearly not nothing.
Your eyes narrow a little. “James.”
His expression shifts then, softening even further until it almost looks thoughtful, his gaze drifting toward Alpine.
“I keep picturing something,” he breathes out absently. “Not in a big, dramatic way. Just… small things stacked together.”
Your breath catches quietly.
“Waking up,” he continues, almost like he can see it somewhere in front of him. “And not having to rush outta bed right away. Coffee that gets cold because neither of us remembers it’s there. A kitchen that’s too full of noise for how early it is.” His frame moves with the faint breath of amusement that slips through his lips, but it never breaks the softness of the moment.
“And coming home at the end of the day knowing it doesn’t matter how it went out there,” he adds more quietly, finally meeting your eyes. “Because there’s still you here.”
You can barely breathe now, your heart doing a strange little stutter. He says it so easily. Like these thoughts have existed inside him for a long time already. Like he’s visited them before and kept coming back to them over and over again.
Bucky shifts slightly closer on the couch without even seeming aware he is doing it, his free hand settling warm on your knee, his thumb brushing back and forth on your bare skin.
“I don’t know all the details yet,” he whispers, eyes moving from your eyes to your lips. “But I know it keeps coming back to the same thing. You being here. That’s the part my mind doesn’t change.”
Bucky leans closer until his forehead finally rests against yours. “If someday you decide you want kids, I’ll build something bigger for us. A place with too much noise, toys everywhere and muddy boots by the front door.” His smile grows almost boyishly giddy now, soft laughter warming his words. “Maybe a little boy with your eyes... and a little girl with your smile.”
Your chest rises sharply, your love for this sweet man soaring so suddenly in your heart it almost hurts. Tears burn hot behind your eyes before you can stop them.
“And if you don’t want that,” he continues gently, certain that every path still leads to you anyway. “Then we’ll keep the farmhouse just the way it is and spoil every animal we’ve got. Those damn ducks already act like they’re running the place anyway.” A watery laugh escapes you despite the lump in your throat, and Bucky smiles at the sound, his nose brushing lightly against yours.
“You wanna travel? We’ll travel. You wanna stay here forever teaching little ones while I complain about tractors and rain?” His hand squeezes your knee once. “Fine too.” Then the teasing fades from his expression entirely.
“Any future is right if you’re in it.”
Your vision blurs completely to the point a few small tears escape anyway, Bucky reaching up almost instinctively with his rough thumb to carefully brush away the wetness beneath one eye.
“I love you,” he whispers, thick with emotion. “I just need you.”
You stare at him for one helpless second before you finally cup his face.
“I love you too, Jamie.” You manage shakily, chuckling at how wobbly your voice must sound.
And yet, you couldn’t care less, because his lips are on yours—soft, reverent. One hand moves on your waist while the last rays of sunset spill warm gold across the walls around you.
Alpine promptly puts her front paws on your chest halfway through like she refuses to be excluded from this sweet moment. You feel Bucky laugh gently against your mouth at the feeling of fur brushing against his neck, but even then, he stays close enough that your foreheads still touch.
“Everything else,” he murmurs quietly, like a promise made as much to himself as to you. “Can figure itself out around that.”
END NOTES: as I mentioned in another post, nowadays it’s hard to find someone who is willing to put real effort into a relationship, but with this story I wanted to focus on the more positive side of dating—especially how someone like this reader, kinda insecure and with little relationship experience, might navigate certain situations for the first time + the degree of trust it takes to let yourself be vulnerable for the first time with someone. honestly there was so much more that I wanted to write, but because of the 1000 blocks limit, I had to cut out many scenes, shorten the smutty parts and make longer paragraphs (hope it doesn't look bad). I also intend to further explore the non-sexual d/s dynamic in other stories, because this one-shot was just a collection of moments so I thought it'd be better to keep it pretty tame. what was your favorite moment 🥰? thank you so much for reading 💕
Rating: E
Warning/Tags: smut; graphic depiction of violence; angst; hurt/comfort; touch-starved
Word count: 4.3k
Summary: Maul is forced to confront the painful memories of his past, and you get hurt in the process. Left vulnerable and struggling with guilt and fear after the incident, he becomes convinced that he has lost your trust. You prove him otherwise.
Read on ao3 ⎜ Part 1
Brother, I’m an unworthy apprentice.
Normally, Savage’s voice came to him as a source of comfort. There was a familiarity to it, something that pulled him back from the isolation he had endured since his upbringing under Sidious. It stirred a longing for a place he hadn’t had the time to get fully acquainted with. Home, with his brothers. Life on Dathomir would have been perilous—it may not have been a life at all, he suspected—but in his head, every other scenario seemed gentler than the torments he had been subjected to for years on end.
I’m not like you. I never was.
Grounded, that was how his kin’s voice made him feel, a reminder of what was but mostly what might’ve been. But not this time. This time, it rang like the prelude to a very somber memory. Maul sensed the vision his mind’s eye was about to conjure before it fully materialised. An inevitable tragedy, one he had seen unfold many times before. First on Mandalore, and then regularly in his slumber, like a perpetual haunting.
Savage lay in his arms, the yellow in his eyes fading into a warm ocean green. He looked like a boy, the brother Maul thought he remembered from his past. Yet the recollection was so distant that he wondered if he may have fabricated it entirely.
Behind him rose a wretched and sickening sound: the cruel laugh of his master. Taunting and mocking him as he had so many times throughout his training. That voice, sinister and venomous, reminded him just how unworthy he was, how feeble, in body and mind.
Remember, the first and only reality of the Sith: there can only be two. And you are no longer my apprentice. You have been replaced
That was the final humiliation. The last deliberate step by which Sidious stripped away what remained of his humanity. He was not even good enough to serve as a tool, cast aside without a second thought. But it was not simply dismissal. The monster wanted him dead. Maul had forgotten his station and overplayed his hand. Even from the shadows, his master had sensed the betrayal, the challenge implicit in Maul’s relentless pursuit of vengeance against all those who had wronged him. What a mistake it had been to try and fool a master of deceit. He would pay a hefty price for it.
It didn’t matter how many times it had happened; each strike of his master’s lightning hurt as much as the first. Begging only made it worse. It didn’t matter what he would beg for, mercy or death, there was no difference. Of all things, Sidious despised weakness above all else, and he answered it with punishments born of such cruelty and malice that they defied comprehension. For the moment, however, Maul’s tormenter satisfied himself with basic discipline.
Have mercy. Please. Please!
After years of excruciating training, Maul had become a very powerful being. There were few things he feared, and even fewer people. But when it came to his master, none of it mattered. In those moments, he was the child he had once been on his home planet: scared, innocent and helpless. The only difference between then and now was that he did not cry anymore. He knew what happened when he cried. There was only one man who got to see him at his most vulnerable—broken, on his knees, stripped of all pretence of strength. Only one man who could instil such dread within him. But one was enough, and unfortunately for Maul, Sidious very much enjoyed it.
There is no mercy.
On the modest couch of your apartment, Maul felt the electric current course through his body ceaselessly, frying him from the inside. He felt every single burn vividly, as if the events were unfolding in real time. He was still deeply asleep, but his body reacted to the imagined assault. He wanted out. His head thrashed violently from side to side as if to shake himself awake. All the while, Sidious’s incessant cackling went on.
Living alone had many perks—namely, the ability to notice when something was off. Whether it be a suspicious sound or a misplaced object. In this case, though, you suspected that even the most oblivious person in the galaxy would have noticed.
You nearly fell off your mattress as the first scream tore through the night. Without even bothering to turn the lights on you rolled out of bed, bare feet hitting the floor as you rushed to the living room in long strides. The large windows bathed the space in the neon glow of the commercial panels outside, casting enough light for you to see clearly.
What you saw was a man in agony. His body spasmed as if possessed, hands clawing at nothing, and his horns had pierced through the blanket you had given him earlier. You had seen nightmares before, occasionally experienced them yourself, but this was sheer terror, unlike anything you’d see before. Maul seemed to be speaking to someone, pleading or begging, but you didn’t sit around to find out. After barely dodging one of his flailing arms, you gripped his shoulders with steady hands and started shaking him hard.
Sweat poured out of him, his teeth bared as he kept screaming. You had suspected the man carried demons—whether he was running from them or chasing them—but you had never imagined it was that bad. In addition to your vigorous movements, you started calling out his name, although you were unsure if he would actually hear you over the sound of his own voice. It took several attempts before your efforts finally paid off .
Maul jolted awake, but before you could even catch your breath or ask him if he was okay, his hand shot out, seizing you with force. His fingers dug painfully in your collarbone, and a pained grunt escaped you, suddenly aware of just how brutally strong he was. His eyes were glowing in the darkness, piercing through you like daggers. However, it was not anger that filled them. Only fear. Whatever he had faced in his nightmare had left its mark, and Maul had not completely snapped out of it.
You wrapped both hands around his wrist and tried to pry him off. To no avail. Even half-awake, he was much stronger than you.
"Maul," you managed, your voice strained with pain. It didn’t reach him. His gaze was fixed on you without really seeing, as if in a trance.
"Maul," you tried again, more urgently. "You have to let go." Panic began to rise in your chest. If he didn’t release his grip soon, you feared he might just snap your clavicle.
Then, something shifted.
His eyes flickered, as if he finally registered what was happening and where he was. The fear dissipated from his eyes, slowly replaced by recognition. He released you immediately. You stumbled back, clutching your collarbone where his fingers had been only moments ago. Maul instinctively went to reach for you, then seemed to think better of it. His hand hovered awkwardly in the air for a brief moment before curling back into a fist at his side. He doubted you wanted him anywhere near you after what just happened.
"I’m sorry," he said quietly, a hint of shame in his voice. "I didn’t mean to."
You were still catching your breath, a little under shock, the ache in your shoulder throbbing when you pressed against it.
"Are you alright?" he asked with genuine concern. You nodded, and the movement made you wince.
"I’ll be fine." It wasn’t a lie. Actually, now that you were free from his grasp, you found yourself more worried about him. "You okay?"
Maul hesitated, then gave a short nod. Evasive, as always. You didn’t press for now, it would be a slow process for him to open up, if he ever did.
He looked around the room. Most of the pillows had been knocked down, and the cover was ruined, torn and ripped. He grabbed it and looked at you apologetically.
"I—"
"It’s fine, it’s just a blanket," you said honestly. "At least the couch survived." You offered a small smile to ease the palpable tension and keep him from dwelling on what he had just done. The nightmares clearly weren’t new to him. Despite how disoriented he had been upon waking, he had regained control rather quickly, all things considered. What he was troubled about was what came after, how he had hurt you. It was so easy for him to inflict pain on people, he was very gifted at that. He may even enjoy it under the right circumstances. Sometimes he wondered if he was capable of anything else. Sidious had nurtured the hatred inside him, but the violence… it might have always been there in the first place.
At this very moment, hurting was the last thing on his mind. He wanted to help you the way you so often did for him, to soothe the ache he had caused. To touch you gently, instead of violently, if you would even allow it now. The thought of frightening you bothered him deeply, especially after the trust you had slowly built between one another. He had hurt you, and even if you had waved it off, it would very much stick with him.
The most frustrating part, though, was that despite all his powers, there was nothing he could physically do to for you right now. Of all the abilities the dark side had granted him, healing was not one of them. Ironically, he almost envied the Jedi for that. Almost.
You saw the cogs turning in his mind, he was angry with himself, that much was obvious, and there was probably very little you could say right now to make him feel better. It was wiser to give him a minute to collect himself. Besides, you needed to tend to yourself anyways.
"Don’t worry about the blanket, really. I’ll… I’ll be back." You cast one last glance at him before making your way to the bathroom. Maul remained where he was, silent and brooding, but you missed the way the hand that instinctively reached for you flexed uselessly at his side, as though mourning the feel of you there.
You let out a long breath as you leaned over the sink. Life certainly was never dull with Maul around. Without preamble you pulled your nightshirt over your head and examined your reflection in the mirror. A sizeable crimson bruise had already begun to form across your skin. You grimaced and grabbed a flask of bacta gel from the shelf. It came in handy when you injured yourself at work, which happened more often than was probably reasonable, judging by the half-empty container. You spread it thoroughly over the bruise and the tender skin around. It wouldn’t erase the mark entirely but at least it would dull the pain.
As the gel began to take effect, you thought back on the events of the night—to the fear, the confusion, the look in Maul’s eyes when he hadn’t recognised you. There was no point sugarcoating it. For a moment, you had feared for your safety. But fear was not the feeling that had prevailed. It was concern. If anything, you wished to know how he felt. Something terrible must have happened to provoke such a violent reaction from him. If only he could help you better understand what troubled him so much that it followed him into his nightmares. You didn’t even need the details, just a little insight would do.
The sound of Maul’s durasteel legs echoed in the corridor, growing closer and closer. He stopped somewhere behind you. You didn’t bother covering yourself, didn’t feel the need to. Instead, you looked up in mirror and found him standing in the doorway, head lightly tilted as he observed you in silence. He wasn’t staring in the crude sense, nor did he seem embarrassed by your state of undress. His eyes roamed the expanse of your back and shoulders, as if searching for additional damage he might have caused.
Maul had always had a very practical approach towards you, which is why this situation didn’t strike him as odd. You had seen him shirtless countless times before while patching him up. Now the role were simply reversed. Still, you found that you liked being watched by him, even if his attention stemmed from curiosity rather than want. There was something strangely intimate about it.
He looked different when survival wasn’t hanging over him. Whenever you had cared for his injuries in the past, he had always maintained a stoic facade. Even when the pain broke through, he worked his hardest to appear completely unmoved. Now the harsh lines of his face had softened. You had no idea how old he was, but he certainly looked younger like this. And his golden eyes, which had looked so menacing earlier, were now so kind and caring. And they were watching you.
A little reluctantly, you cleared your throat, breaking the moment before addressing him.
"Do all Zabraks make a habit of staring at half-naked people, or is it just you?"
Maul blinked slowly.
"I was…waiting to see if you required assistance." The sincerity of the answer pulled a genuine grin from you. His species must have had a very different perspective on nudity for him to miss what you were getting at. His brow furrowed and an almost child-like confusion passed over his face.
"Have I offended you?" There was that uncertainty again in his tone. This was more than casual conversation to him. Your relationship was still fragile, unfamiliar ground. He seemed perpetually afraid to say or do the wrong thing.
"No, Maul," you shook your head. "It’s just… you’re staring at me while I don’t have my clothes on." Better to speak plainly.
His eyes widened in realisation. Truthfully, it had never once occurred to him that the situation was strange, or even unusual. He had never thought anything of being undressed around you either.
"Right." He rubbed the back of his neck, considering your words. Before coming up with a rather interesting conclusion.
"Would it help if I removed this?" He suggested, vaguely gesturing at the top of his tunic. You genuinely couldn’t tell if he was serious or humouring you, but as your eyes met his in the reflection, you realised he was absolutely sincere.
"You’re a strange man, you know that?" That only deepened his confusion. He felt like he was losing the hold of the conversation, somehow making everything worse. For the life of him, he couldn’t understand how uniting the biggest crime syndicates in the galaxy had felt less complicated than this.
"I can leave if you pref—" You raised a hand to stop him.
"That’s not what I said." You turned around slowly, and not a single of part of you felt uncomfortable doing so. His gaze immediately fixed on the nasty bruise, the lines of his face tightening once more.
"I can tell that you’re settled on the belief that I’m afraid of you." That was not a question, and he didn’t deny it.
"I hurt you." He said matter-of-factly
"You didn’t intend to," you countered, and he smiled bitterly.
"It does not change the fact."
So he wanted to be stubborn. Fine. You could work with that.
"You’re right. So, what should we do about it?" He didn’t have an answer. This was not the kind of problem-solving he was skilled at, and it was beginning to unnerve him.
"You talked about trust earlier," you said, deciding on a different approach. "Come here."
He stared at you questioningly, already considering refusal. Yet against his better judgment, he took a step forward, then another, until he stood only inches away from you.
Progress.
Without a word, you slowly reached for his hands and guided them upward. You waited for him to get the hint and open his palms. When he did, you placed them carefully on your shoulders, so that one of them covered the bruise.
Maul’s entire body tensed up. He had not expected this at all—not you allowing him to touch you again so soon. Deep down, he hoped you were not forcing yourself through this, carrying the burden of reassurance for both of you. You had already showed him more kindness than he thought he had ever properly earned, let alone returned.
"You won’t hurt me," you said with certainty. "Not if you can help it. And that’s enough for me. Because I trust you." You squeezed his wrists reassuringly before sliding your hands under the length of his arms, all the way to his chest. You placed them flat where his tunic parted, over his twin hearts. You lingered there, breathing together.
The air in the room shifted. What started as an attempt at reassurance turned very intimate, you both felt it at the same time. Maul’s eyes drifted downward, taking in the rest of you below the neck. But this time, it was clearly not the same look as before. A pleasant sensation ran through his entire body. He may have not been particularly experienced in matters of intimacy, but it wasn’t his first day on the star system either. He recognised the feeling for what it what.
Desire.
Not the gentle sort. This was want. Need. Oh, yes, he was very much staring now. The way you started tracing the black ink down the column of his neck did nothing to ease the hunger building inside him.
You were deep in his personal space now, foreheads nearly touching. With quiet satisfaction, you noted the tension had finally left his body, the weight of his arms resting comfortably against you. Your gaze dropped to his mismatched lips—the upper one black, the lower one red. You leaned in closer, pulled in by the urge press your mouth against them. Maul not puling away gave you the last bit of courage you needed.
The kiss was a bit clumsy at first, just the time for him to reciprocate and move in sync with you. He moaned appreciatively against your mouth as his hands came up to cradle the back of your head with surprising gentleness. It didn’t take long for his tongue to come pushing insistently between your lips, and you gladly let him in. On your end, your fingers had slipped beneath the soft fabric of his tabard, exploring the smooth skin of his chest. You found that he was already running hot beneath your touch. Maul pressed you flush against him, his teeth grazing the side of your neck, alternating with slow licks and kisses.
By the time you broke apart, both of you were breathless—and nowhere near satisfied. Maul needed no encouragement when you led him silently to the bedroom. He was already stripping off his gloves and gauntlets as he crossed the threshold, letting them drop to the floor. Next he undid the magnetic clasps of his large utility belt and sash. Once they came off, the rest of the layered tunic parted naturally, and he slid it down his muscular arms. You reacquainted yourself with the familiar scars on his chest and stomach. Some you recognised as wounds you had personally treated, others older, though there were so many that you couldn’t tell them all apart.
Maul watched you watch him with hungry eyes. But he was nothing if not disciplined, and waited for you to decide what came next. You made quick work of your night pants and stepped out of them, now completely bare. His gaze darkened instantly.
You claimed his mouth again and savoured the feel of his now bare hands on your skin. One of them wandered across your chest, rough fingertips brushing your nipple in slow circles making you gasp in his mouth. He squeezed your ass and pressed his hips against you firmly enough for you to feel something hard against your front. You held him at the waist, tracing the surgical scar where flesh ended, then lower still over the matte durasteel already visible over the hem of his pants.
"May I?" you asked between heated, open-mouthed kisses.
"Please," he breathed against your lips, the word rough with need. "Touch me."
The trousers came off and Maul kicked them unceremoniously towards the pile of clothes on the floor. Then waited.
You paused for a moment, openly observing—admiring—what had just been revealed to you. As expected, everything below was a blend of durasteel and carbon-weave plating, bordering on artistry. And between his legs lay a cybernetic cock, unmistakably machine yet sculpted to mimic the appendage of an organic body. The durasteel was seamlessly merged into red synth-flesh and threaded through with faint bioluminescent crimson veins along its length. You tried not to stare too long, but it was difficult not to. From a mechanic’s perspective alone, the craftsmanship was exquisite.
When you wrapped your fingers around it, you found that it was warmed to body temperature, likely through internal coils. You shook your head, that was enough cataloguing. Instead you focused on Maul. His jaw hung open in pleasure, eyes squeezed shut, confirming that his prosthetic was very much functional and sensitive.
He obediently let himself be pushed onto the bed, and grabbed your hips as you straddled him. You moaned in unison as you started rubbing your slickness against him, the friction deliciously novel. Maul surged upward to hold you closer as the heat started to build up.
"Please," he panted in your ear as he rolled his hips desperately against you, trembling with restraint. "Let me in. Let me make you feel good."
You didn’t need to be told twice. You aligned him to your entrance and sunk down slowly until he was fully buried inside. You started riding him at a slow pace, feeling every inch. Instinctively, your hand slid up the back of his head, your fingers spreading carefully between his sharp horns to hold him close. Maul buried his face in your neck, breathing hard against your skin as he thrust up to meet you.
You kept this rhythm going for a while, enjoying the deep and intimate drag, before seeking more intensity. None too gently, you shoved him back against the mattress, and pinned his wrists above his head. Part of you was curious to see if he would resist, but Maul was surprisingly pliant. He had no issues letting you take control; as a matter of fact, he would have let you do just about anything to him right now.
This time you quickened the pace, chasing you own pleasure, though you couldn’t ignore the rough edges of his cybernetic hips and thighs digging into your soft skin. Maul watched you with fascination, his yellow eyes reflecting the neon lights that danced over your skin as your body moved on top of him. His head eventually fell back in pure bliss at the new angle. He was, you realized, impossibly beautiful like this. Neck corded, veins standing out as strained whimpers spilled from his lips.
You cursed as you thighs began to get sore from the constant friction against durasteel. Observant as always, Maul noticed immediately. In one smooth motion, he flipped you over as if you weighed nothing, handling you with gentleness still.
"Let me," he murmured, voice low and rough. He guided your legs further apart. "That’s it… just like that."
He slid back inside you from behind. Slow at first, watching the way you stretched perfectly around his cock, completely transfixed. After a few measured thrusts, you begged for more, and Maul obliged. He pulled you back flush against his chest and fucked you like this, with one strong arm wrapped securely around your midsection, his other hand reaching between your legs. It didn’t take long for you to come apart in his hands, clenching hard around him. Not long after, your felt his cybernetic cock pulse inside you, the internal circuits growing even hotter than before.
Maul caught you before you could collapse on the bed, easing you down with him so your head rested on his chest. You both lay there catching your breath. Beneath your ear, you could perceived the twin rhythm of his hearts beating fast.
"How was that for a show of trust?" you asked, nuzzling into his neck. You felt the vibration of his chuckle.
"Quite convincing," he replied as he kissed the top of your head. "Thank you."
You tilted your head up to look at him. "You know that’s not the only reason I slept with you, right? I wanted this," you needed him to hear it. "I wanted you."
He nodded immediately, his fingers tracing slow patterns along your spine. "I know. I know, I simply…" he paused, searching for the right words. "I’m aware I can be… difficult. Thank you for seeing past that. For trying. Not many do." You squeezed his hand and pressed it to your lips.
The two of you talked more afterwards, the conversation circling back to his earlier concerns about involving you too deeply in his dangerous life. You were both reasonable enough to understand the reality of things. Whatever existed between you was not going to be some everlasting romance, and neither of you needed to pretend otherwise. Still, Maul knew there were pieces of himself he couldn’t keep from you. It would take time, but one day, he promised, he would tell you more about the nightmares, about his life. About the man who had taught him everything and successively taken everything away from him.
But for now, he would enjoy the warmth of your body against his, counting the steady rise and fall of your chest as you drifted off in his arms. And tomorrow, he thought with a small private smile… well, tomorrow, perhaps he would stick around, maybe even brew you a cup of Cassius tea. The idea sounded almost absurdly domestic, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest.
Well, there you go, hope you enjoyed this little story! Thank you so much for reading; as always, don't hesitate to let me know what you think :)
(And thank you for all the love you guys showed for part 1, it was truly unexpected <3)
Banner by @carnally-mauls !!
@lainey-laines @darthmaulshispanichousewife , dinner is served!
nooo my love you can come sleep in my bed when the terrors attack you
THIS WAS INCREDIBLE i cant explain it !! this will be on my mind for the rest of the day because soft maul ? soft vulnerable maul? yeah that's going straight to my heart
Rating: M (will evolve)
Warning/Tags: angst; comfort; touch-starved; feelings but everyone is bad at feelings
Word count: 4.8k
Summary: After an intense fight against Devon Izara and her Master Eeko-Dio Daki, Maul finds himself injured and separated from his crew. He has no choice but to pay a visit to an acquaintance of his in order to get patched up. And perhaps a little more...
Read on ao3 ⎜ Part 2
It had been a slow day at the repair workshop so you had decided to go home early. You straddled your modest speeder and took the usual route. As the vehicle started to pick up speed, you threw a quick glance down at the spaceport, located just a couple blocks away from your workplace.
The docking bays were buzzing with people, spaceships of all sizes coming and going. With a recent regain of violence and crime syndicates becoming more daring, some people in Janix City had feared that trade and business would be impacted. Not dramatically, but enough to disrupt the economy in the capital at least.
However, business was booming, by the look of the traffic this evening. You smiled as you stirred the speeder higher in the air. Like most mechanics in the city center, you got paid per unit. More ships coming in meant more work. Not to mention, the atmosphere around Janix was difficult to manoeuvre, especially for newcomers. Their ships would often get minor damage just from flying in, making the repair shop their first stop on the planet.
As you often did before dipping into the lower levels, you admired the skyline and neons glowing around you, the hovering skyscrapers reflecting the last lights of the day. While one half of the city prepared to retire for the evening, the other came to life. Casinos, races, fighting rings—some of them more legals than others—there was plenty enough to entertain oneself from dusk till dawn.
Like all planets, Janix had its issues, but at least it remained mostly untouched by the Empire. You’d only heard a couple stories from nearby systems. Censorship, abuse of power, mass surveillance; nothing that sounded too appealing. Sometimes you wondered if the mid-rim planet had just escaped their notice or wasn’t deemed profitable enough. A part of you feared that this tranquility wouldn’t last, but each passing day with a sky devoid of imperial ships proved you wrong, and you were certainly not mad about that.
The door to your modest apartment in the lower level slid shut behind you and you leaned against it with a thud, rolling your sore neck and shoulders. The job was fine and you were good at it, but it definitely took its toll on your body after a few years. A sigh escaped you as you pushed yourself off the door and walked to the small kitchenette. Perhaps you were just getting old.
There was some cold caf left on the counter, and you didn’t feel like cooking at this hour. Besides, there wasn’t much to look at in the fridge. It would have to do. As you went to pour yourself a cup, there was a movement on the other side of the room. It was minimal, but you definitely saw it in your peripheral. With the speed of someone used to handle weapons, you grabbed your blaster from under the counter and aimed it at the shadow in the corner of the room. Two bright yellow eyes were fixed on you, unmistakable. You slammed the blaster down as you flicked the light on.
He was sitting in your armchair, seemingly unphased by the fact that you had just pointed a weapon straight at him. You pinched the bridge of your nose. There went your quiet night. It was not often that the zabrak showed up on your doorstep, but when he did, it was rarely for Corellian brandy over a game of dejarik.
"Kriffing hells, Maul. You could’ve—"
"Knocked?" He interrupted in that insufferably calm voice of his. He wasn’t wrong, knocking wasn’t really his style. If you were being honest, this was one of the most acceptable entrance he’d ever made. The first time you had met him, he had quite literally flown through your window and threatened you with his lightsaber until he had deemed you trustworthy enough.
All things considered, this wasn’t so terrible. Regardless, he expected to be reprimanded some more. Seeing it wasn’t happening, he continued on.
"I require some assistance." You looked at him without saying a word. Truth is, there wasn’t much to say. After multiple encounters with Maul, you had come to understand just how powerful he was. Powerful enough to never have to ask for anything. What he wanted, he took, and even though he never had had to force your hand for anything, you had no doubt this rule applied to you as well.
For a brief moment you wondered what he would do if you said no. Not that you wanted to. After your first encounter, he had always been decent with you, respectful of your time and space, thankful even, but the thought creeped into your brain anyhow. You made nothing of it, and waited for him to elaborate.
Maul pushed himself out of the arm chair with visible effort and began to limp towards you. Electric sparks flickered from his right leg, accompanied by a faulty mechanical whine your trained ears recognised instantly. Reflexively, you pulled a chair out for him and crouched down to have a closer look.
Maul had grown used to your presence by now, comfortable enough that you no longer needed to ask for permission to touch him. Still, there was something oddly fragile about the closeness. Not unfamiliar, but not entirely easy either. You were aware of him in a way that went beyond the task itself.
You noticed because you were used to the opposite—a quiet, solitary life here on Janix, working alone all day on machines. It had never bothered you. And yet, you had noticed that every time Maul came back, there was this strange warmth in your gut. You found yourself waiting, hoping for his visits more often than you cared to admit.
Because of that, you felt the proximity twice as strongly now. A part of you wondered if he felt it too. You suspected that the closeness was as novel to you as it was to him. But the progress was undeniable. You had vivid memories of how difficult it had been at the beginning: his stubbornness, the way he resisted, how he had practically refused the help he had come here to seek. Things had changed, but you couldn’t quite tell whether the line of necessity had been crossed on his end.
Better to focus on one problem at a time.
The cybernetic legs had always seemed very high quality to you, very sturdy and heavy. But after a quick glance and feel, there was no doubt. The wires had been disconnected, if not severed, and the complex mechanism inside completely busted. Whatever hit him there had struck true and hard, harder than should be humanely possible. That, or his leg had been crushed under something big. Either way, you were gonna need some tools to fix it.
You rose with a huff. There was something you were curious about.
You had never tempered with his cybernetics before, but you had had the opportunity to have a good look at them. It was clear that someone operated maintenance on those on a regular basis. With material as intricate and expensive, it was not only recommended, but mandatory. His presence here more or less confirmed that Maul left the tech part in the hands of someone else. So why come to you?
"I assume you have people somewhere, people who could fix this," you said nonchalantly. A poor attempt at fishing information from him, one he didn’t fall for.
In your defense, he never gave you much. If his recurring injuries were any indication, you imagined him to be part of a gang of some sort; stars know there were plenty operating on Janix. That or a pit fighter perhaps. You had heard of multiple events taking place clandestinely in the bowels of the city. Apparently they were quite popular in the underworld.
Maul cleared his throat. "My people and I were…separated." Well that was a kriffing start. "Hence my presence here." He searched your eyes, uncertainty passing briefly through his own. Could it be that you truly were his last resort?
"Can you fix it?" He asked, his voice less assertive than usual.
You nodded, "Yeah. Yes, of course, just give me a minute." He watched you disappear in an adjacent room as he pulled two extra chairs from under the kitchen table. One to extend his leg on, and one for you. He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and placed it carefully on the table.
Maul would never admit it, but he had indeed come here a little out of desperation, and frankly, he didn’t have a plan B. That Jedi master got him good, he had felt it as soon has the kick had landed. Walking all the way to your apartment had hurt, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this vulnerable. He hated it. He didn’t tolerate weakness, and that extended especially to himself.
You came back with a little tool bag under your arm and a pocket lamp. A light smile pulled at your lips seeing how quietly and patiently he waited for you, hands in his lap. You sat down and leaned towards his leg. First you got a good feel of it, the durasteel cold in your palms. Your fingers slid along the alloy, searching for a slider or a screw. There had to be a way to get a look inside this thing.
Sure enough, you found a panel on the inside of the upper calf, so seamless you almost missed it, and clicked it open.
Without a word, you pressed the pocket lamp into his hand and guided it over the open panel to get a clearer view. Your physical forwardness surprised him a little, but what unsettled him the most was the lack of instinctive pull to shake you off. And when your fingers closed tighter around his wrist to adjust the beam, he let you.
The content of the panel was fairly standard; actuators, wires, and servomotors, though the materials were very high quality as you suspected. You pulled the essentials out from the bag: pliers, calibrator, screwdriver, soldering tool, and a data-probe for good measure.
Once the probe was plugged in the output, you read the information on the small reader connected to it. From the corner of your eye, you could tell that Maul was leaning over to look at the data as well. Whether he could understand it was a mystery to you; either way, he didn’t ask.
You picked up the soldering tool and gave it a moment to warm up before getting to work. Every so often, you asked Maul to move the light closer, higher, or at a different angle. He complied silently each time, eager to assist you. You glanced up at him every now and then, only to find his attention fixed on your hands, assessing. He caught you looking a couple times, his eyes flicking up to meet yours before dropping again.
It was difficult to know what went through his mind most times. The man was a complete wall and gave nothing away. On the rare occasion you had managed to draw something out of him—if one could call it that—he had shut down just as quickly as though he regretted the lapse. It unnerved you. Not that he owed it to you, but you had saved his life, for kriff’s sake, more than once; would it really kill him to talk to you. There was no use dwelling on that right now, you focused back on the task at hand.
Some of the wires would need to be replaced entirely. Luckily for him, you had plenty lying around. The rest was straightforward enough. A few recalibrations here and there, and a little soldering to finish the job.
Sparks flew as you sealed the connections, and a little smoke and smell of heated alloy escaped from the panel. As you got closer to the central interface, you felt Maul starting to tense up, which was curious. Before you got to ask any questions, a zapping sound emerged from the circuitry.
Without warning, Maul’s leg spasmed between your hands and his arm snapped out to grab at something, probably to ground himself, but he only ended up knocking his lightsaber from the table. You jerked back instinctively, heart pumping, holding your tools up firmly. Your eyes flicked towards Maul, then to his leg. He let out a curse you did not understand. His hand was still half-curled where it had struck out, fingers tense, like he hadn’t fully come back from the reflex.
Your brows shot up at the realisation.
"You can feel that?" You exclaimed, surprised, but mostly curious. So this conveyed much more than just mechanical feedback. Fascinating indeed. Maul simply shrugged.
"Well, I suppose it must be connected to something."
"Right, right. Your nervous system," you nodded enthusiastically. "Can you feel this?" You zapped him on a random wire this time, right below the knee joint, and he flinched again, slightly less intensely.
"Must you—" he groaned, more out of exasperation than actual pain.
"How about this?" You cut him off, poking at his ankle now. Part of you was genuinely interested in the circuitry and technology. And another guilty part of you enjoyed seeing him react.
You wouldn’t claim to know the man, as it were, but you had interacted with him enough times to suspect that he was the strong silent type. Even when you had cauterised a wound and offered him nothing more than spice rum to dull the pain that one time, he hadn’t said a word. And had refused the drink too. Something about staying lucid he had said. At least now you had proof there were things he could actually feel.
"I did not come here to be experimented on." There was a little fury in his voice now, one that you’d seen before and that urged you to stop playing around.
"Which brings up a very interesting question, why do you come here?" He blinked. If he wanted to play cold shoulder with you, then that was exactly what you were going to give him. "You walk into my home uninvited, occasionally bleed out on my floor, let me patch you up and then disappear for weeks without so much as a sign of life. Rinse and repeat."
"And I appreciate that," he said through greeted teeth.
"Oh, I’m sure you do." You sneered, not really believing a word of it. "You can lie back, I won’t poke you. Not more than I need to anyways." You added purely out of pettiness, and enjoyed the annoyance painted all over his face.
He did relax eventually, and extended his arm to retrieve his lightsaber. The object flew directly into his waiting palm, and you watched in quiet awe just like you had the first time he’d done that in front of you.
Once you were satisfied with your work, you clicked the panel back into place. Then, you gave the knee joint a quick inspection. In order to test it, you guided his leg in a slow circular motion. Each time you bent it to a ninety-degree angle, Maul grunted and clenched his fists tight. If he wanted you to stop, he gave no indication.
You grabbed your calibrator and worked your magic. After a few minutes of surprisingly cooperative work—you making the adjustments, him letting you know how they felt—you finally got to the point where he couldn’t feel any pain at all. You finished the repairs in silence after that. Sound of servos twitched and adapted until the movement became smooth and natural.
"There. Should be good as new." You said with assurance as Maul kept moving his ankle in all directions.
"So…how did that happen?" You asked tentatively, gesturing towards his leg. You were genuinely curious, but asking also felt like the right thing to do—the normal thing to do. After all, you had been spending more and more time with him, repairing his body, tending to the organic parts first and now the mechanical ones. For better or for worse, you had come to care. The frustrating part was that he didn’t. Or didn’t seem to.
What bothered you was not that he didn’t care for you, it was that he didn’t care about himself. Sure, he payed you a good sum for good service each time but that was purely transactional; it had nothing to do with actually taking care of himself. Someone who so willingly and repeatedly placed himself in harm's way couldn’t possibly give a damn about what happened to him. Perhaps Maul found it particularly easy to be so cold and detached; you most certainly did not.
"Did you fight a gorog or something?" You tried one last time before he would inevitably rise from that kitchen chair and disappear through your window again. His eyes were fixed on you, head lightly tilted to the side, but he said nothing still. You smiled bitterly to yourself, defeated once again.
"Right. I don’t even know why I keep bothering with questions. Might as well be talking to a faulty protocol droid."
"Why are you being difficult?" He said out of the blue, seemingly irritated as well. That struck a chord, that he would only speak to you to scold you. He had no right.
"Difficult? I’m the difficult one?" You shot up to your feet, taking a step back and away from him. Not out of fear, but necessity. Every time you tried to get close, it came to smack you right back in the face.
"You wanna know something? Last time you came here, you lost consciousness right here on the floor. Long enough for me to consider what I should do with your body. And I didn’t kriffing know because you don’t tell me anything. You come here and place your life in my hands for reasons that—" you scoffed, "are frankly beyond my comprehension. You give me a reason to care and then act like it don’t mean shit to you." Your voice had risen significantly louder, and you could feel your heart thrumming in your chest.
"You don’t get to walk in and out of my life and then treat me as a stranger, Maul. You don’t get to do that. I have tried to give you space, I’ve tried to be patient, but every attempt just ends up with you shutting down even harder. And maybe I’m doing something wrong, but if I had even a little help from you, I—"
You sighed, the words dying on your tongue as you realized none of them would reach him. It all felt so pointless.
"In case you haven’t notice, I’m not good at this. I fix things, that’s what I do. Not people. And, holy fucking shit, you have a whole lot that needs fixing… and I don’t just mean physically." By then, you were out of breath, pacing the room without even realising it. Maul remained ever silent.
So that was it then, back to square one. Screw that, and screw him, there was no use making this last any longer than necessary. Without so much as a glance in his direction, you began shoving your tools back into the bag. You zipped it up, ready to sling it over your shoulder when you heard the scrape of his chair against the floor.
Maul stood up, very slowly, and took a step closer. You kept your gaze down, avoiding his stare. To you, there was nothing more to say.
He hovered over you for a moment before reaching for your hand, clenched tight around the bag’s straps. His gloved fingers brushed yours, the touch gentle, urging you to let go. It was an odd feeling. Until now, you had always been the one to touch him, never the other way around. You had long assumed those hands served only violence; Maul had never given you reason to think otherwise. The unease it initially sparked quickly dissipated into one of comfort. Enough for your grip to loosen, the bag slipping from your hold.
Was this what he was doing, comforting you? It was hard to tell with someone like him. Honestly, you had half expected him to get up and leave after your little berating. It had been positively reckless to speak to him like this, now that you thought of it; who knows how he could have reacted. You didn’t think he would go as far as hurting you, but then again, there was much you ignored about Maul. Maybe the passive reaction was a good thing in his book. He had always been very economical with his words around you, which is why what happened next surprised you. Both.
"Trust." He said as he removed his hand from yours, but remained exactly where he was. Immediately, you felt the loss of his touch and mentally slapped yourself for it. Were you so alone these days that you had come to crave the touch of a man you hardly knew. He was still standing so close, close enough that you felt his breath brushing your neck.
Usually, it wasn’t difficult for Maul to spill a yarn when he needed to. He had grown quite good at it over the years, actually, and it had served him well in his many endeavours. After all, he had been taught by a master of deceit. At the moment, however, he found it incredibly hard to get the words out. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean them—he did, more than he cared to admit. But he was exposing himself to a degree that scared him.
In hard times, he had only the force to turn to, meditating in silence for long hours in the dark. When that failed, he unleashed his wrath upon whatever unfortunate soul crossed his path. And that worked. He never spoke on his concerns or fears. He acted on them. Turning to others had never been an option. Until now.
If there was ever a time for Maul to speak plainly, this was it. You had given him the opportunity—the question was whether he was ready to take it. Truthfully, there were many things he wished to express, many feelings that needed to be addressed. More than that, you deserved honesty from him. But how to proceed? Where to even begin. His brain was nothing but a blender of pain, and quiet torture, of hatred and repression—yet beneath it all lingered a desperate need to be heard, to be understood. If even he couldn’t make sense of those thoughts, then how would they sound to you?
He had to start somewhere.
Trust.
"That is why I come here," he continued, confidence slowly building within of him. "I feel…at ease in this place. Around you. A rare occurrence, I assure you." Your palms still lay flat on the table, your gaze fixed on them. But you were listening, that was the important part.
"It is why I have kept coming back ever since. Often times when other options were presented to me. I did not want the other options. Not after you made it clear that you were comfortable with all of this. That you weren’t afraid… of me." He paused, searching for the proper way to express what he truly wanted to say.
"I can sense that there is more you wish to know about me. I simply—" he shook his head, hoping you would see that the frustration was aimed only at himself. Why was this so kriffing complicated?
He raised a hand hesitantly towards you, stopping just inches away, terrified at the thought of you flinching away again. When you didn’t, he let it rest fully on your shoulder, gently turning you so that you finally looked at him.
"Listen to me. The things I do… they put me in precarious situations, with dangerous people. I hurt them and they try to hurt me in return. Given the opportunity, they would no doubt come for the people who—" He stopped himself, as he always did when the confessions became too personal. "I don’t wish to involve you."
As the words left his mouth, he heard them clearly, and practically winced. By all accounts, it sounded like a patronising cop-out, an excuse to remain avoidant. The easy way out.
You lingered on his words, turning them over in your head, and realised just how bittersweet the truth was. He cared, the poor fool, even if he didn’t know what to do with it. And at the same time, there was this self-imposed duty to keep you at arm’s length, because his was a life of violence, with death lurking at every corner. You saw it every time he came to you, in the severity of his injuries. To take offence would make you the greater fool.
You chose to be understanding. This was abysmal progress for Maul, and that was what mattered.
Maul both saw and felt your body relax slightly, an encouraging sign that brought some relief in him too.
"For what it’s worth… I believe you’re quite good at fixing people." He said with a hint of caution, as if trying to win you back over.
Maul wanted you to know that he was grateful. Grateful for your care, but mostly for your patience with him.
Over the years, he had come to understand that people did not trust him, wanted nothing to do with him, unless he threatened them with death or have them work for him. Every alliance he’d ever attempted, every peace offering, had been batted away—sometimes agreed upon only to end in betrayal.
Building this…companionship with you had taken months. It had required patience, occasional head-butting, and genuine effort from both sides. He didn’t want to lose that.
There was a more burdensome and unsettling truth beneath all this. One Maul didn’t want to name. The way he felt when you put your hands on him, caring, mending what could be mended. To him it was so much more then simply treating his injuries. It was a true refuge from anything else he knew.
You were right. There were wounds inside him that simply would not heal. Not unless he faced them instead of trying to place them in your hands. It had been selfish of him, to ask for so much while giving so little in return. It had almost costed him this. Nearly cost him you.
You responded to his shy compliment with an equally shy smile, and briefly covered his hand with yours. A language, you both understood.
"How’s the leg?" You asked as a way to break the palpable tension—which Maul was grateful for.
He walked around a bit, testing his balance. He crouched down, then stood back up, relieved to find no lag or malfunction. Every movement felt like his own again.
"It’s…good. Very good. Thank you." He looked as though he remembered something and reached for some credits in his tunic to place them on the table. With one glance, you could tell there was much more than usual.
"Maul," you said with intent. "This means more than credits to me." Your eyes held his, you truly needed him understand that.
He exhaled longly, then mirrored your earlier smile.
"For me as well." He answered, and this was the most open he had allowed himself to be around you yet. Sometimes, he needed the reassurance too, you were starting to see that.
Usually, this was the point where he bid you farewell and you went back to your very ordinary life. But you stood there facing each other in comfortable silence. In the span of a few minutes, you both had spoken more than you ever had during all your encounters, it had certainly knocked down a few necessary walls; some you had trouble navigating around before.
"You can stay the night if you need," you offered, suddenly remembering his predicament. If he hadn’t been able to reach out to his crew, then he probably couldn’t go back to wherever it was they stayed. "The couch’s not much to look at but it’s, um…" you scratched your head has your eyes landed on the tired old piece of furniture.
"It’s perfect," Maul finished for you.
You brought him a light cover, just in case, and told him there were a couple of rations left in the cupboard if he was hungry. Then you bid each other goodnight—and it felt strange, and so natural all at once. Funny how things unfolded. A couple hours ago, this would’ve sounded impossible.
Maul waited until you had retreated to your bedroom before laying on the couch. He folded the cover under his head to protect the cushion from his horns, then starred at the ceiling. He had really opened up tonight, and, strangely enough, he didn’t feel weaker for it. It was a nice feeling, albeit foreign, like a weigh had been lifted from him.
He allowed himself another smile, warm this time, and flicked the light off with a wave of his hand.
Next chapter: more hurt but also more comfort! And, yes, smut.
Click here for part 2
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it. Let me know what you think, I love reading your comments!
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A Force vision leads you and Maul to a planet that has something to offer the both of you.
cw. self-esteem issues, fluff, ooc Darth Maul, but is it really ooc if we r slowly domesticating him, gift giving, possessive Darth Maul, jealous Darth Maul, briefly but very much there, play fighting, that's not how the force works, kyber crystals, i dont super know how lightsabers work but i also dont care, Darth Maul speaks Mando'a, enemies to whatever the hell you two have going on, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post-order 66
wc. 5.1K
an. How I feel knowing I was supposed to post this on Friday but I actually hated it so bad I deleted half of it and rewrote it while adding on like a thousand words, anyWAYS...thank u guys for ur patience as always and i hope u guys enjoy!!
only tagging as ooc maul just in case this is the first part of the series u read! i promise we worked so hard to get him to be this domesticated please we used a spray bottle of water and everything
"Remind me why we're visiting a planet with no accessible trade route again?" Maul calls out to you from the cockpit of the ship for the nth time. You halt the maintenance on your lightsaber and glare at him.
"Because," you sigh, "I had a vision, said vision involved this planet, and it counts as your official apology for your previous self mutilation."
"That was two weeks ago." He grumbles.
"Yeah, and I still can't get scorch marks out of the paneling. Besides, you like being in control of the ship. You barely let the thing auto pilot itself outside of jumps."
With a satisfying click, the hilt of your blade reassembles itself and you smile. It drops slightly as you eye the two kyber crystals on your lap. You tuck them away carefully into your bag. Finally satisfied with your work, you make your way up to the helm of the ship and drape yourself across the passenger's chair.
You were by no means a pilot but you knew that navigating an asteroid field like this was extremely difficult at the best of times. Without a sufficient map or droid co-pilot, it was near impossible. Luckily-or insanely depending on who you asked-you had complete faith in Maul to get you there.
As stars and rocks alike whiz past the ship, you took your time to admire the man sat just across from you. You were allowing yourself to spend longer amounts of time just staring at him ever since whatever fucked up reconciliation had happened that night. Who could blame you? He was nice to look at.
"Are you going to sit there idle for the entirety of the trip?" He doesn't spare you a glance as he chastises you, too focused on the debris outside. You stretch and cozy yourself further into the seat, much to his dismay.
"I offered to recalibrate your lightsaber and you said no, so I didn't. I'm finished with mine." You shrug and can feel the exasperation pouring off of him in waves. "You do not want me to co-pilot this thing Maul, trust me. Flying isn't my strong suit."
"I'm starting to realize that same idea applies itself to every vehicle with you." You childishly stick out your tongue at the jab.
"Well, it's convenient that you seem to know how to use literally all of them."
Before he can respond you jolt upright in your seat.
"That's it! That's Ossus!" Flying ships may have been difficult for you but imputing coordinates was easy enough.
"I believe we're going to an old Jedi temple." You watch Maul grip the yoke of the ship tighter.
"It will be crawling with Imperials."
"No, not likely. Hey, how good are you at flying through lightning storms?"
"What?"
-------------------------------------------
Ossus was as barren. The landscape was harsh and jagged with an overcast sky to match the gloom. And, as you had told Maul earlier, it was as if the planet was afflicted by a never ending lightning storm. Despite the scenery, you couldn't have felt happier.
Maul had gone unusually stoic on your descent downward but you'd just chalked it up to him being upset that you were right. There was no evidence of the Empire being here at all. In fact, besides the ruins of the Jedi temple that you two were approaching, there was very little evidence of life at all.
The temple had been clearly built into a mountain side at some point. It's build uncomfortably mirrored that of the Sith temple, but you ignored the lingering fear you felt. This was not a Sith temple, this was a place that could have once been called home. Though clearly not in recent memory judging by the dilapidated state of the building.
"We should leave." Maul spoke suddenly, stopping your intense study of the edifice. You frown, bemused.
"What? No. We need to be here, I need to be here. I just need to find us a way inside but—" Lightning scorches the ground near you. You jump. Less so from the atmospheric display and more from Maul, who uses the Force to send you stumbling back from where it had struck the ground.
"Maul! What…" You trail off your sentence as you look up at the Zabrak. A moment ago he had stood behind you, composed and quiet. Now, his chest heaved violently and he had ignited both ends of his lightsaber, holding it in front of him in a protective stance.
"Maul?" You called out quieter. He did not turn around. You reached out gently with the Force. If you touched him when he was like this you'd risk losing a limb or worse yet, your life.
'Maul.' You spoke inside his mind. 'It's okay. Let's get inside now.'
After a few seconds he shut off his blade but his stance did little to relax. He didn't move. His eyes were still scanning the horizon, searching for a threat you couldn't see. Walking closer to him, he still didn't react. You slip your hand into his unoccupied one and tug lightly. He finally acquiesced.
Hidden by the far end of the destroyed temple there was a small enough entrance for the two of you to squeeze inside of. It must have been a hallway at some point, but you don't point this out to Maul. It seems like the wrong time to talk about historical architecture.
"I'm sorry-"
'I apologize-'
Both of you stare awkwardly at one another as you cut each other's sentences off. It had been even weirder, considering the fact that Maul had attempted to apologize inside your mind while you spoke. You clear your throat and gesture to him.
'You first.' He nods but takes a moment to respond. He's decidedly not looking at you while does, choosing to wander further inside. You follow beside him.
'I apologize.' He continues, 'I should have been more in control of myself.'
It's a short apology but you accept it nonetheless. There's a fork in the hallway. You take a step forward and guide both of you down the left path, where you begin descending the staircase within.
'Thank you for apologizing.' You reply cordially, your hand brushing against his as you walk together. 'I'm also sorry. I didn't know you were afraid of lightning. Does Iridonia have a lot of storms?'
He stiffens at the mention of the planet.
'Dathomir. No, it did not.' Maul doesn't elaborate further and you don't push him to do so. You both return to walking in silence more peacefully now.
A bright light emerges from the end of stairwell. You light up along with it.
"This is it!" You grin as you make your way into the cave. Hundreds of thousands of gems gleamed back at you.
"Kyber crystals?" Maul asked, sounding confused.
"Close. These are like an off shoot of them. They're pontite crystals!" You ran a hand over them, each of them making a soft chiming noise as you did. Your other hand fell to your lightsaber and your smile faltered.
Stepping back from the cave wall, you reached into you bag and fished out your own kyber crystals that you had removed from your lightsaber earlier. In one of them, a large red split was visible within the stone. You grimaced at the sight.
"You bled your crystal." He isn't asking when he says it. It's clear enough to anyone who understands the basics of a weapon like this.
"It was…an accident." But your defense is weak. Saying you didn't mean to use the dark side didn't get you very far when you had an obviously damaged crystal to prove you wrong. Your regret hung heavy in the air.
"Did you enjoy it?" His question makes the hairs on the nape of your neck stand.
"At first, yes." You admitted. There was no use lying to him, not here. "Then I realized what I had done."
The stones felt cold in your hand as you stared down at them.
"This was the last thing I had and I ruined it. For what? To feel like I was in control?" You laugh, but it rings hollow. "Force above, I'm a sorry excuse for a Jedi aren't I? Impatient and sentimental. Yikes."
"You aren't very self assured either." Maul adds. You glare at him.
"If we weren't on sacred ground I'd hit you now."
"I don't doubt it. For what its worth, you'd have made a terrible Sith. You think too much about how your actions affect others and do your best to try and help." He moves to stand over the small pond inside the cave, watching his reflection in the still water. "No, I believe you make a much better Jedi."
That was one of the nicer things he'd said to you. Sure, he'd technically insulted you at the same time but still, progress was progress.
Looking back at the wall, you focused yourself and searched for two crystals that spoke to you. To your surprise, you'd found three. The all seemingly buzzed to life in your hands as you touched them and wedged them out from the wall. Walking over to where Maul stood, you sat down.
"I need to attune myself to them. It might take awhile." Unattuned crystals meant that you could risk blowing apart your lightsaber when put together.
"May I join you?" You're surprised when he asks but nod. He sits cross legged and pulls out his own blade. Splitting it in two, he removes all four crystals from it. Each of them is a brilliant red and seem to all share a uniform cut to the gem.
"They are synthetic." He answers your question before you can ask. "It took four days for them to finally be created. I did not eat or sleep as they were made."
"Aren't they unstable?" You asked. You knew very little about synth crystals besides the fact that they had a history of exploding no matter what weapon they were used in. Even now, if you hadn't been looking at them with your own two eyes you aren't sure if you would have believed Maul's claim.
"Very. In fact, I suspect if anyone else was to try and use my lightsaber for a long enough time it would be very detrimental to them. My rigorous meditation is what has made them obey me." There was an apparent pride as he eyed the perfectly symmetrical gems.
You hum, still uneasy at the prospect.
"Wait, four days? How old were you?" You concern for the stones was disregarded as you thought back on what other information Maul had just told you. You yourself had been ten when your master had decided you and a few of your fellow padawans had been ready for the journey. You couldn't imagine Maul to be much older.
"Eight." He replies too calmly for your liking. Your heart sank. He must have sensed how horrified you were but no part of him showed it. After a brief bought of silence he spoke up again.
"You're thinking very hard. It won't do any good for your attunement. Speak or forget." He looks out to the water again and shuts his eyes.
"I'm thinking an average amount! It's just," you pause, trying to find the right words, "I wish that none of that had ever happened to you. I wish the Jedi found you first."
You try to imagine him younger. Smaller. More scared. Your stomach turns at the thought of hurting something so little and defenseless.
"The Jedi did not go to Dathomir. The Nightsisters ensured that. I would have grown up as a Nightbrother and when my time came, I would have either been chosen as a mate or killed." He spoke so factually, like he had already considered the prospect of what would have happened to him if his master had never taken him. "In a way, Sidious offered me my freedom when he found me."
"That's not right." You tell him ruefully.
"Not much of my life is, but it has happened. I cannot change it, no matter how much someone wishes for it to be different." Now the bitterness crept into his words. Maul's path had always been doomed, always lined with loss and pain, and no one understood that more than the man who was reminded of it every time he looked at himself.
You dip your hands into the water. It's freezing. Thankfully, it distracts you enough from the disaster of a conversation just now. You hum in amusement as another terrible thought enters your mind.
"It really doesn't matter if we had met in any other way. Even if you had been found by the Jedi and we somehow ended up at the same temple, we never would have been friends. I was a nightmare of a child." At this admission, Maul finally gives some indication that he's listening.
"I've been adept with the Force from a young age and that skill eventually lent itself to my hubris. Try telling the seven year old that aces every single class of theirs that they can't be a Jedi yet, dank farrik! I'll still be apologizing to Master Tee'hara on my death bed for that outburst." A hand slid over your face as you were forced to relive the embarrassment all over again, cool drops of water coming along with it.
"Was that the name of your master?" He asks, interrupting your self flagellation. You pause, grabbing instinctively for your old kyber crystals.
"No. No, her name was Kua. Master Kua Behtal." You spoke her name softly. It had been awhile, since even before the order.
"She was…something." Despite how heavy your body feels, a smile makes it way to your face. "Actually, I brought her out of retirement."
"Jedi retire?"
"Well, less so retiring and more so getting to old to go out on as many missions. It varies species to species. She was an Ardennian and well into her fifties at the time. If I hadn't been such an issue, she likely would have been sent to serve on the Jedi High Council. Instead, she spent her last decade and a half knocking some sense into me. Force knows she had enough arms to do it." The laugh that leaves you is involuntarily and you cover your mouth to muffle it. You can feel Maul watching you now and the embarrassment from before slowly creeps back in.
"Sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I? I just haven't spoken about her for a while. It was nice to introduce her to someone new."
"You loved her." Maul says, but there's a sense of perplexity in the statement.
"Yes, very much." You assure.
"Despite it being against your code?"
"I told you, I am a very bad Jedi. She took me in when everyone else had declared me a lost cause. I was an angry, stubborn thing and she cared for me anyways. Any love or kindness I have ever shown has all been in part to her guidance." Tears burn your eyes. You clutch the damaged crystals to your chest and take in a shuddering breath.
"What a disappointment I must be."
"You don't regard your survival with near enough fanfare. Swaths of your people were killed over night due to an order and the rest of you are being hunted to extinction. Yet, you persist. At the very least your master should regard your resourcefulness with pride."
You blink up at Maul. He stares back.
"We really need to work on your pep talk skills."
He rolls his eyes and moves to stand. You latch onto his arm, snickering as you hold him in place.
"I'm joking! Mostly. Thank you."
"May we finally mediate and leave this accursed planet?" He doesn't acknowledge your thanks but you nod nonetheless and begin to focus on your attunement.
-------------------------------------------
It's unclear to you how much time passes in the cave. The lanterns flicker endlessly, the light from them jumping off onto the gem encrusted walls, creating a kaleidoscope of colors that dapple the rest of the grotto. You hold the pontite crystals in your hands and squeeze them gently. Each buzzing feeling aligned with every part of yourself now.
"Ready?" Maul asks from somewhere behind you. At some point he had moved to stand and was practicing lightsaber forms with his blade shut off.
"How long have you been doing that?" You groan out the question as you body starts to finally show signs of protest from you continuous meditation. Rubbing your neck, you pull yourself to your feet.
"I've only made my way through the first two forms. The others would be pointless to practice in here without a partner."
"How efficient of you." You tease. You open your lightsaber with ease and slip the two new crystals inside. It ignites as if nothing had ever changed. Playing with the balance of it in your hands, you look up at Maul and grin as an idea flits into your mind.
You stand to attention and bow before fortifying yourself in a defensive stance.
"Ready?" You echo his previous words. He eyes you curiously but still matches your stance.
"I thought you had said this was sacred ground?"
"It is. So don't injure me or break anything and we should be forgiven."
A red glow spills over the room as he activates his lightsaber, but the harshness of the light does little to hide the slight smile that graces his lips. He attacks first and you parry easily, moving to swing at him with an underhanded motion.
There wasn't a lot of room in the cave but that just meant you would have to be on your best offense. You readjust to slam down at him with a two handed strike. Maul doesn't falter but he does have to step back to handle the aggression of your attacks.
"You've improved." He notes, dodging one of your attacks to easily for your liking. Maul and you were nearly evenly matched when it came to fighting, but when it came to a proper sparring match, he was a much better duelist. It made sense, he'd been trained to fight his entire life and you typically regarded all the seven forms as a mere suggestion when it came to lightsaber duels. Still, it was irksome to watch him so effortlessly predict your attacks.
"Yeah, yeah, now stop running away. I'm trying to kick you." You complain, trying to edge yourself closer to him. Maul was now unfortunately all too familiar with your preferred method of close combat and made sure to keep enough distance between you both because of it.
He slid down and away from another attempted strike of yours, reappearing behind you. It forced you to contort your body awkwardly to defend against his blow, off setting your balance as you swung a hand out to try and keep yourself steady. You were nearing the wall of the cave now, a less than an ideal position to be in. However, with the pressure he was putting on you now you wouldn't be able to move away without giving him the perfect opening to attack.
"I still don't understand how you use that thing!" You eye the hilt of his lightsaber with contempt. Maul has the audacity to smirk at you and ignite the other end. Using the Force he pushes you back, causing you to topple over. You sit up quickly, scrambling to hold your blade in a defensive position again but what you see makes you pause.
"You've gotta be fucking joking." Just a few feet away from you, Maul has two blades now. "You can separate them? How long's that been a thing?!"
He doesn't answer, choosing to attack instead. He swings both sabers down on you with a ferocity that's hard to counter. You can feel yourself losing your hold on your lightsaber's grip, unable to balance the uneven weight he presses down on you now. Slowly your blade inches closer to your own body.
"Do you forfeit?" He asks. Maul shows no signs of struggle in pining you down like this.
"No." You reply stubbornly, narrowing your eyes at him.
"Typical laandur'ad, you never know when to quit." He mocks and you scoff.
"Says you!"
You shift your body to lay flat on the ground now and Maul follows after you, unwillingly to lose his advantage. But he's just slow enough for you to get a hand up and reach it behind his neck. Yanking him down towards you, you lean up and kiss him.
It's a clumsy movement and a dangerous one at that, neither of your lightsabers are shut off, but it's a risk you're willing to take. Traveling with Maul for so long had made you into something of a sore loser.
He reciprocates to your surprise, leaning in to make it easier for the both of you. For a brief moment you forget your initial plan and stroke his cheek, content to just be there. You pull away and grin when he looks at you bewildered.
"Well, that didn't work." You laugh quietly and feel your face grow hot. "Alright, I concede."
Both of you press the ignition switches on your lightsabers and the heat from your shared weapons dissipates. His hands now rest near either side of your head as he remains above you.
"May I inquire as to what exactly your plan was?" Maul questions. You notice how his brow furrows when he's like this. It was an endearing look on him. Joining both your hands together now, you rest them gently on the back of his neck.
"Last ditch effort. An attempt at distracting you." You reply honestly. He seems unimpressed.
"You cannot have seriously thought that to be a viable choice." You laugh again at how genuine he sounds.
"Meh, it was a win-win situation. Either it worked in my favor or I lost, but either way I got to kiss you." You run your fingers over his collarbone now, delighting in the way he tenses up.
"Ridiculous." He pushes his body up from you and helps you to your feet.
"I don't know, I think it would have caught someone else very off guard." You stretch both your arms out in front of you, taking great care in rolling your wrists out. They'd be a little sore tomorrow but you'd live. An abrupt wave of nauseating jealousy washes over you, then the feeling was gone as soon as it came. You blink and look back towards Maul who seems very interested in his lightsaber suddenly.
"Are you-?"
"We should leave now, if you have everything you need. It's been quite some time and I do not look forward to flying us out of here in the dark." Maul interrupts, walking past you.
You watch him walk away. Sighing, you shake your head and follow after him.
-------------------------------------------
It was a rough flight out of Ossus like Maul had said but he had done it. The two of you hadn't spoken much on the way back to the ship and the tension had only gotten worse the longer you were both outside. You wanted to pretend like it didn't bother you but it did.
However, you were learning to pick your battles when it came to Maul. He wouldn't be forced into talking about anything so you would wait. It was an irritating test of patience but one that you would commit yourself to nonetheless.
You sat on the small cot of your bed as you played with the extra pontite crystal absentmindedly. Three of them had spoken to you, but why? You tried to ponder that question instead of thinking about Maul.
Pontite crystals were similar to kyber crystals in the way that they could help power a lightsaber, but the also had different qualities to them. You remembered vaguely something about them being calming and helping the user focus. Frowning, you held up the gem and squinted at it.
"Okay, I couldn't have been that in need of guidance." You speak aloud to no one in particular but as you speak you see the bed opposite of yours. Maul's own area was extremely tidy compared to the small nest of blankets your cot housed but it was only because the Zabrak usually never slept. It wasn't like you didn't know why, you had witnessed his night terrors first hand, but it still couldn't have been good for him. You looked back to the crystal.
"Oh." You realized. "You're not mine, are you?"
You set to work immediately. Finding an old leather vest of yours that had seen better days, you took your vibroblade to it and began to sheer it into small strips of fabric. It was easier than you would have expected but you were not unaware of the gentle guidance that the Force was currently giving you. You wanted to bat it away, it could be so overbearing sometimes! But you also wanted the pendent you were making to look decent, so you let it offer you wordless instructions and allowed it to guide your hands.
As you finished the final wrappings you pulled lightly on the crystal to make sure it wouldn't unravel from it's bindings. It held securely to your contentment.
"What have you made?" Maul's voice startles you out of your near meditative state and you hide the necklace against your chest.
Making a gift was one thing, having to actually gift it to the person you had made it for was a whole other beast. You would have to of course, it wasn't like you could just leave it on his bed and feign innocence about it. Only the two of you lived on this ship.
"Um, it's a pendant." You hold it out for him to see. "A charm really. I only needed the two crystals but ended up with three so I ended up making this."
Maul walks over to you now and you offer it up to him. As he inspects it you prattle on about the qualities of the pontite crystal, albeit too nervously for your liking as you avoid revealing your true intentions. He hums approvingly and hands it back to you.
"Oh, no." You say, cringing at how awkward you sound. Maul looks equally as confused as you felt. "It's yours. I mean, I made it for you. To help you sleep, well, it should help you sleep. Actually I don't know if it will or have any proof to believe it will but I'm decently sure. I mean the Force literally lead me to them it would be a little ridiculous if they didn't help but still it's just…"
The more you ramble on the deeper your mortification grows so you stop yourself. Clearing your throat, you attempt to regain at least some of your composure. You place your hands on his and fold his fingers over the pendant.
"I made this for you with the intention of helping you sleep better. It worries me when you don't. You don't have to wear it! But at least keep it by your bed, please. It would make me feel better."
After that brutal bit of expressing your feelings to him is over, there's a brief second where you consider opening the air lock of the ship and jumping out. Thankfully, Maul is kind enough to be polite and accept the pendant, ending your torment for now. You pointedly do not watch him walk over to his side of the room, refusing to see what he does with it. Laying your head back onto your pillow, you crush your hands to your eyes and let out a soundless scream while his back is turned to you.
"Here." You jolt again at the sound of his voice.
Looking up you see him holding a different necklace. It had a round piece of engraved metal that acted as the pendant and it was all strung together with a beaded cord. You sat up and cupped your hands.
"Thank you." You reply genuinely.
"You don't even know what it does."
Ah, no, you didn't. Honestly it didn't have to do anything you would be happy all the same. Still, you waited for Maul to explain.
"It is a talisman of finding." Maul sits beside you now, the bed dipping underneath his weight. "I was…very lost once. My mother gave this to my brother to help aid him in finding me. It is imbued with my blood. As long as you have this, I can never be lost to you."
As if to verify his statement, he takes both of your hands still clasped around the talisman and presses it against his chest. The engravings on it glow a bright blue color as it comes near him and you gasp despite yourself.
"Well, may I say thank you now?" Maul sighs at your cheerful impudence but nods nonetheless.
"Go on."
"Thank you Maul." You lean forward a place a chaste kiss on his cheek. Gingerly you put the pendant on and tuck it underneath your shirt. The cold metal rests comfortably against your skin.
"How much longer until our next stop?" You ask.
"A few hours." He says quietly, his eyes never leaving the spot where the necklace falls on your chest. You hum and rest your head against his shoulder.
"Sleep with me?"
"The ship-"
"The ship is on auto pilot. You can't do anything for it now. It'll be alright." Your reassurance must get through to him somehow because he allows you to pull him down onto the bed with you. Tucking yourself against him, you sigh contentedly. Maul goes completely stiff.
"What?" You ask, mumbling the words into his chest.
"I'm not sure how to properly say it." He whispers above you. Nodding you wrap an arm around him and begin to trace random shapes on his back.
"That's alright. Are you uncomfortable?" You try to help him find the words.
"Yes and no. I'm very comfortable and it's making me uncomfortable."
"Seems confusing." You reply sympathetically, your eyes growing heavier despite yourself. It only worsens when he raises a hand to stroke the back of your head.
"It's very difficult, yes. You're making me soft." He sounds revolted when he says it and you giggle helplessly into him.
"I'm so sorry."
He waits until your breathing evens out and your eyes are fully shut to speak again.
"It's alright." He presses a light kiss to your forehead. "I'm growing fond of it."
an. How i feel throwing a random oc in there just to give the reader more depth. Hope that's amenable to the fans. ANYWHO I think this one was just really cute which is what i'm aiming for bc I have lowk been putting these mfs through the wringer YIKES !!! As soon as I saw Maul still holding onto the pendant that Savage used to find him it was over bro I cried and needed to include that somehow. Also his trauma with lightning! Yay! Soon he's gonna have a crazy breakdown and tell the reader more things BUT next up I get to be self indulgent as fuck and write their first meeting YAYAYYAY!! (i say this like this isnt self indulgence the series but like...shhh)
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
tag list: @bexeris @ashes-136667 @aninnai @maulsdear @thelittlebats
O M G i was so busy these last days, and the fact that this fic was updated was always on the back of my mind, and i am so glad i waited to have some time and lay down beacuse this was the sweetest thing ever !!!!
i can't believe how soft maul is getting compared to the beggining lmao (but still never being truly soft, just learning to accept nice things and comfort), and the sudden moment of jealousy i am cackling like no silly they aren't planning to kiss anybody but you
and the cuddling moment omg i need him in my bed
i love this story so much and i can't wait to see where you take us
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You can't prove it, but someone has been in your apartment
Stalker/Serial Killer!Simon x Reader.
You can't breathe.
The rain is preventing it, filling the space between your mouth and the sky so that every breath you drag in is half air and half water, and your lungs are working at a deficit, pulling overtime.
You're running. You've been running. And it feels the way running feels in dreams, the legs churning, the ground stretching, the distance between you and anywhere safe expanding with every stride like the earth is being fed through on a belt beneath you, and no matter how hard you push it is not enough. It has never been enough.
The rain has soaked through everything. Your shirt is a second skin, plastered to the curve of your spine, dragging at your shoulders, heavy and sodden, pulling at the hem. Your joggers are worse. Waterlogged from the thighs down, clinging to the backs of your knees, catching with every stride so that each step is between momentum and drag.
You're still in your slippers- your fucking slippers- because you didn't have time for shoes, didn't have time for anything except the door and the stairs and the rain, and the soles are tearing apart against the wet ground. Every stone and root and divot rips through what's left of them. The cold stopped being pain a while ago. Now it's just absence. Your feet belong to someone else.
The field behind your apartment building is open and dark and the grass is slick and knee high in places, whipping against your shins as you crash through it, and somewhere behind you something is moving at a pace that doesn't match yours.
You're sprinting. The thing behind you is not. The thing behind you is covering the same ground at a walk, maybe a jog, the unhurried gait of something that understands the end of the pursuit better than you do: that your speed is borrowed from adrenaline and adrenaline has a half life and the distance between you is a loan you're taking out against a body that will come to collect.
The tree line. You can see it in the lightning, ragged dark mass, oak and ash and whatever else grows in the scrubby, unloved patch of urban woodland the city council hasn't developed yet. You've walked past it. You've never been inside it.
The dark between those trees is absolute and unknowable and you are running toward it anyway because the open field is killing you. Open means visible. Visible means found.
You hit the trees and the world changes.
The rain doesn't stop but it fractures, breaking against the canopy and reaching you in fat, cold drops that fall from leaves instead of sky, landing on the back of your neck.
The ground goes soft. Mud swallowing your foot to the ankle on the first step, the earth making a sound around your slipper that is wet and when you wrench free the shoe stays behind. You keep going. Barefoot on one side, the mud pressing between your toes.
You can't see. The canopy hides the lightning. What was blue white and blinding in the field becomes a dim, grey flicker in here, enough to show you shapes, trunk and branch, before the dark closes back over.
You navigate by collision. Bark under your palms as you bounce off trees you don't see until you're hitting them. Your shoulder clips an oak hard and something tears and you catch yourself on a low branch and the bark strips the skin from your palm in a hot, wet line, blood bubbling between fingers, and you keep moving.
Behind you, a branch breaks.
Something heavy stepping on something small, and the crack travels through the trees with a clarity that cuts through the rain and the thunder and lands in the base of your skull like a nail. You don't turn around. Turning around means slowing down.
A root catches your foot- the bare one, the one with no slipper- and you go down hands first, and the mud is cold and deep and your fingers sink into it to the second knuckle and the impact jars through your wrists and into your shoulders and your chin catches a root knuckle and the pain is bright, a flare of white behind your eyes, a copper bloom across your tongue where your teeth meet the inside of your cheek. You're on your hands and knees in the mud and the rain is hammering the canopy above you and the thunder rolls through the ground beneath your palms.
You push yourself up. Your hands slip. The mud gives and doesn't give back and your arms are shaking, not fear, not just fear, but the muscles beginning to fail, the glycogen stores emptying, the body starting to make panicked desperations your brain won't: how much farther, at what cost, for how long.
You get up. You run.
The woods thicken. The trees are closer together now and you're weaving between them with a gait that's barely controlled, pinballing off bark with your forearms raised to protect your face, and the branches catch you everywhere else, across the collarbone, the bicep, the soft skin at the inside of your wrist, leaving lines of heat that surface as welts, thin red marks that swell and sting in the rain.
Your bare foot finds something sharp. Glass, maybe, or a stone with an edge, and the pain blooms upward from the arch and you feel the skin open and the heat of blood mixing with the cold of mud and you don't stop. You can't stop.
The trees thin. You stumble out of the dense growth and into a gap in the canopy where a tree came down years ago. Rain returns full and direct, hammering the crown of your skull and running into your eyes. The ground is more leaf litter than mud. Your feet find traction for the first time in minutes.
You stop.
Not because you decide to. Because your body stops. The quadriceps seize, the calves lock, and you stand in the centre of the clearing bent double with your hands on your knees and your mouth open and the rain pouring down your face and into your gasping mouth, and the sound of your own breathing is the loudest thing in the world, ragged, wet, the desperate bellow pump of lungs operating past their margin.
You listen.
Rain on leaves. Thunder, further now, rolling east. Wind in the upper canopy, moving through the branches with a long, low hiss. The drip of water from a broken trunk to your left, rhythmic, metronomic, almost soothing.
No footsteps. No branches breaking. No displacement of air or weight behind you. The woods are empty. The dark between the trees is just dark. You turn, slowly, a full rotation, and every shadow is a shadow and every shape is a tree and the clearing is a clearing and you are alone in it.
The seconds pass. Ten. Twenty. The thunder moves further east and the lightning becomes occasional, distant, a flicker on the horizon rather than a detonation overhead. The rain eases from hammering to steady.
The breath comes out of you.
Not a sigh. Something deeper, something that originates in the locked down muscles of your lower back and travels upward through the ribs and the shoulders and the clenched, aching vice of your jaw. Your hands unclench and the tendons in your fingers straighten with the slow, creaking reluctance of something that's been locked too long, and your shoulders drop a quarter inch, and the shaking changes, less adrenaline, more cold, the tremor shifting from survival to exposure, and you straighten up and push the wet hair off your face and you breathe. In. Out. The rain is cold and clean and tastes like nothing and you stand in it and let it hit you.
You're out. You're alone. Whatever was behind you is gone, lost in the trees and the dark and the rain, and you're going to find the edge of the wood and a road and a light and-
The hand comes from behind you.
It covers your mouth and nose in a single motion, a seal, the palm wide enough to close over the entire lower half of your face with no gap, no sliver of clean air, and the cloth against your skin is wet and cold and sweet in a way that is immediately, viscerally wrong. The other arm locks around your waist, and your back meets his chest and the air leaves your lungs in a scream that doesn't make it past the cloth.
His cock is hard. Pressed against the base of your spine, unmistakable, the obscenity of it, that this is arousal, that the chase and the catching and the feel of your soaked body pinned against his is doing something to him. His breathing doesn't change. That's the worst part. The breathing stays steady, metered, controlled, even as the evidence of what this is doing to him presses against you with a bluntness that is almost conversational, almost casual, like a fact stated without shame: this is what you do to me. This is what catching you does to me.
His arm around your waist tightens, a fractional shift of pressure that brings your hips flush against his, and the adjustment is small and deliberate and possessive in a way that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the specific, private, unhurried pleasure of a man pressing a caught thing closer because he can.
The cloth stays where it is. The chemical is sweet and heavy and it's in every breath now, saturating the fibres, filling your sinuses, coating the back of your throat with a taste like overripe fruit left in a closed room.
Your hands are on his forearm, both of them, gripping, pulling, nails digging into skin that doesn't give, and the strength in the arm is not reactive, not straining, just there. Your feet are sliding in the mud and you're pushing backward, trying to use his weight against him, but his weight doesn't move and your weight is leaving you, draining out through the soles of your feet.
Your knees soften, the tension that holds you upright dissolving. The chemical is fast. Faster than it should be, which means the concentration is high, which means the dosage was calculated, which means someone did the math on your body with an accuracy that implies knowledge of measurements you've never shared with anyone.
Your arms drop, fingers uncurling from his forearm one by one like petals off a dead flower, and your hands hang at your sides and your weight shifts backward into him and he takes it. He takes all of it. The arm around your waist becomes the only thing left in your body, the single point that keeps you vertical while everything else goes soft and dark and far away.
The rain is still falling but it sounds like it's happening to someone else, in a room you've already left. The thunder is just vibration. His chest behind you is just warmth. The cloth is just cloth and the chemical is just a taste now, fading, everything fading, the clearing going grey at the edges and then dark and then nothing, and the last sensory information your brain processes before the dark takes the rest is not the storm or the cold or the pain in your foot or the blood on your chin.
It's the smell of cigarette smoke. Old, stale, ground into the skin of the hand over your mouth- the same smoke that you swore you could smell inside your flat for weeks. And underneath it, faint, almost imagined: your own shampoo. On his skin. In the creases of fingers that have been inside your home, your bathroom, your bedroom, opening and closing around objects that belong to you with the slow, ritualistic patience of a man cataloguing a collection he hasn't finished building.
The dark doesn't fall. It rises. Up from the ground, up through your feet, up through the muscles and the bones and the blood, filling you from the bottom like a vessel being submerged, and the last thing you feel is his mouth against the crown of your head and then the vessel fills and the dark closes over the top and there is nothing left of you that is yours.
Simon Riley lifts you out of the mud.
The storm covers the sound.
No one sees him leave.
***
Several weeks ago…
Finding your address takes Simon Riley eleven minutes.
You don’t exactly do anything to hide your social media presence after all. Two photographs from your public account, backgrounds cross referenced. A corner shop's CCTV feed he shouldn't have access to and does and he has everything he needs. The flat number. The floor. Which windows are yours.
He parks the truck across the street one evening and doesn't move it for three nights. Doesn't need to. Does it anyway. Watches your lights. Learns the routine of your evenings- when you eat, when you shower, when the last light goes out. Flies it all away, memorized completely, until it's as indistinguishable from the air.
He waits until he sees you leave for your shift. Watches the way you pull the door, checks the handle twice, a thing you probably don't know you do. Watches until you round the corner and are gone.
Then he crosses the street.
The lock takes nine seconds.
(Wet ground. Gravel digging into a bleeding back. A sky the colour of poured concrete, no depth, no distance, just grey pressing down. The sound his own breathing made when the next one becomes a question of ‘if’ not ‘when’.)
The flat smells like vanilla lotion and laundry still holding warmth from the dryer and coffee that brewed hours ago and hasn't fully left the air. He stands in the doorway for a moment longer than he needs to. Just breathing it. Then he closes the door behind him, cock twitching, heat pooling low, infatuated hunger.
He moves through the living room slowly. No urgency. Your place is small, everything in reach of the sofa, everything angled towards comfort for a person who comes home tired and wants to stop. An empty mug on the coffee table, lipstick on the rim. He picks it up. Holds it for a moment, turns it in his hands, brings the stained edge to his face and runs his tongue across the porcelain.
Sets it back in the ring of condensation it left.
(Pressure. Hands. Small, delicate. Pressing down. Warm against his skin.)
The bookshelf. He runs a finger along the spines without pulling anything until he finds the one with the broken spine, the cracked glue of a book read too many times in the same place. He opens to the bookmarked page. Reads filthy words about a man taking what he wanted. Hums when he imagines you touching yourself, fingers sinking into your cunt while you fantasize about strong hands pinning you down.
Every room feeds the obsession and he’s rock hard by the time he reaches your bedroom, the air thicker here, soaked in your scent. The bed is unmade on one side only, the pillow still holding the impression of your head, the duvet pushed back, the small evidence of a morning abandoned to the alarm. He stands beside it and looks at it for what is probably too long and then he steps inside.
(You hadn't spoken to him the way people speak to someone who might be dying. No performance of calm. No hollow reassurance. Just looked down at him like his death was just a minor inconvenience in your day.)
He finds the vibrator tucked inside your nightstand, still faintly sticky. A low, guttural groan rumbles in his chest. Naughty thing, fucking yourself after a long day. He turns it on for a second, the quiet buzz making his cock strain against his pants, before switching it off and returning it as if he was never there.
He opens the hamper, his own little treasure chest, and finds a worn pair of your panties- soft cotton, crotch still damp and stained with your slick, makes his mouth water. He brings them to his nose and huffs deeply, eyes rolling back.
(Stay with me. Maybe you said it. Maybe he built it later. Memory at the margins of consciousness is unreliable, the brain filling negative space with what it needs. But the hands he would know. Would know the specific weight and purpose of them anywhere.)
“Fuck…,” he mutters, voice rough and depraved, takes a step backwards, then another, another, until he’s sitting on your unmade bed. He lays down, presses his face into your pillow, grinds hips until he’s rutting against your bedsheets, imagining you beneath him.
Pulls out his thick drooling cock, veins pulsing on the underside, and fucks your pillow hard enough that the headboard taps onto your wall. Imagines your face right there, flushed and needy, lips pulled wide around the head of it, so pretty under him, taking every inch down your throat every night. Pre smears across the fabric and his breath comes heavier, more animalistic, huffing your panties again, again as he chases the high.
(You hadn’t looked scared of him. He remembers that specifically. Whatever you’d seen when you found him- the mask, the gun, the scars- you’d moved past it in about a second and a half. Inconvenient details. Not your problem.)
The pressure builds fast. He grabs the bottle of lotion from your night stand, the one you slather on your soft skin every night- He wants his teeth in that skin. Wants to bite down to the bone and hold on- and unscrews the cap with shaking hands.
At the last second he pulls his cock off your pillows, presses the swollen head onto the bottle and cums, ropes spurting heavy. He milks every drop, stroking himself through the aftershocks, watches his cum mix with the bottle you’ll use later, rub onto your skin without even knowing, carry him with you.
(The way you'd sighed through your nose. Not fear. Not shock. Just the exhale of a person whose evening had just become more complicated and who was already calculating the cost.)
He straightens up.
Tucks his dick away. Buttons his trousers. Stands in the centre of your bedroom for a moment, just looking- the pillow, the nightstand, the lotion bottle returned to its exact position- and something in his chest settles.
He checks the room once. Twice. Leaves nothing out of place. Tucks your panties in his pocket and leaves.
(Civilian hands. No calluses in the right places, no muscle memory of this. Tearing fabric without being asked to. Figuring it out as you went.)
He lets himself out. Pulls the door closed behind him until the latch clicks soft. Stands in the corridor for a moment, existing in spaces he was never invited into.
Lights a cigarette on the way down the stairs.
He doesn't smoke it inside.
He's not a fucking animal afterall.
***
The man outside the pub doesn’t know Simon Riley exists.
That’s fine. That’s usually how it goes.
He's been watching him long enough to understand what kind of man he is. The type. Broad in the shoulders and soft in the middle, who moves through the world with the loose, unexamined confidence of someone who had never once been made to feel small. The kind who followed women to their cars and called it a compliment. Who'd saw you existing after a late shift and had decided that constituted an introduction.
Simon had watched him outside the chippy a week ago. Had watched you clock him from twenty feet out, the way your pace adjusted, fractional, barely perceptible (How loud. How fast. How much trouble.) Had watched the man's hand close around your wrist for just a moment, fingers wrapping with the casual presumption of someone who had done this before and found it went fine, before you'd pulled free and he called you a fat bitch in response.
(The torch in your teeth while both hands worked. The angle of your head. Completely absorbed. He'd been a problem to be solved and you were solving him and the indignity of it had been the most alive he'd felt in years.)
You hadn't reported it. Simon had waited three days to be sure, watching for the signs of someone who had- the variation in route, the hypervigilance, the particular flattened stillness of a person who has filed a thing and is waiting to see what happens to it. Nothing. You'd absorbed it and kept moving.
He understood that too, in a way he couldn't have put language to, couldn’t have articulated.
He follows the man from the pub at closing. Last out, loud with his friends until he isn't, splitting off at the corner with the bac slapping ease of men who don't think about walking home alone at night because they never have to. He navigates with the rolling gait of someone three pints past sensible, loose in the joints, nodding to himself about something, unbothered.
The night is cold and damp, the pavement still wet from earlier rain, the street lamps doing that particular thing they do where they light the ground directly under them but not the spaces between.
The man doesn't look up. Doesn't look behind him.
(You'd told him to stay still in the tone of someone who expected to be listened to. He had- god he had- a soldier through and through.)
The man makes a sound, at the end. They usually do. Something small and bewildered, the realization a person makes when they understand all at once that the night has a different direction than they thought it would go. Simon holds on until the understanding passes.
Then he steps back.
(The quality of your silence. Not frightened silence. Not careful silence. Just… you had nothing to say, so you said nothing. He hadn't known what to do with that for weeks.)
The van is parked at the alley's far end. Simon had left it there this afternoon. He'd known, by then, how the evening would go.
The man is breathing when Simon puts him in the back. Zip ties at the wrists, tape across the mouth, a canvas hood that smells like other jobs in the city. Simon closes the doors without urgency.
He drives for forty minutes.
The lockup is on an industrial estate that stopped being used for anything legitimate around 2019, the kind of place that gets planning notices taped to the fence for months before anyone acts on them. Simon has used it several times before. It has a drain in the floor and the walls are thick enough.
(At some point you’d sat back on your heels and just waited. Watched the wound. Your breathing had been even throughout. His hadn’t.)
The man is awake by the time Simon drags him out of the van. Awake and making sounds behind the tape. His eyes above the tape are blown wide. Simon looks at them for a moment.
Finds he has nothing in particular to say as he drags him inside and straps him down.
It's quiet work. It always is.
(Afterwards, you wiped your hands on the back of your jeans, methodical. Then you’d stood up and that had been that.)
Checks his hands. His jacket. Rolls his neck once, the vertebrae popping in a slow sequence from the base up. His breathing hasn't changed. It never does, the body learned a long time ago that this doesn't warrant elevation, settled it into the same category as any other task completed, any other problem resolved.
He looks at what’s left of the man for a moment; eyes above the tape still blown, chest still instead of panicked, a body now and not a person.
And finds he has no particular feelings about it.
(Left without waiting to see if he'd be alright. He'd watched you go from the ground. Decided something then that he hadn't put words to until later.
Hadn't needed to.)
***
Present…
The first thing that comes back is smell.
Cold metal. Old damp. Something chemical underneath it, industrial cleaner, thick and lives in the back of the throat and doesn't leave when you swallow.
The second thing is the surface beneath you.
Not soft. Not a bed. Something hard and flat and slightly raised at the edges, the metal seams pressing into your shoulder blades and the backs of your thighs through your wet clothes, and the cold of it has been working its way into you long enough that you can't feel the distinction between the table and your own skin anymore. Just cold. Just hard. Just the weight of a body that hasn't been moved in a long time.
You open your eyes.
The ceiling is wrong.
High. Concrete. A single bulb on a wire, the light it throws pooling down onto you in a jaundiced circle and leaving everything past its edge in deep, pressurised dark. Something hangs from the rafters. You blink. Focus.
Chains. Heavy gauge, looped through iron rings bolted into the beam above you, hanging in loose coils, some ending in hooks, some ending in nothing. Just chain. They catch the light in segments. They don't move.
You sit up.
Too fast. The room tilts, the chemical still moving through your blood in slow pulls, your vision lagging behind your head by a half second, and you put both palms flat on the table and look at your hands and think: table. You're on a table.
You look down at it.
Metal. Stainless steel, or close enough. Dull with use and age. A drain at one end and channels running toward it, worn smooth, the edges of them a colour the rest of the surface isn't.
The walls.
You make yourself look at the walls.
Covered. Arranged, and that's the thing that takes a moment to process, that it isn't chaos, that there is a system here and someone maintains it. Metal implements on pegboard hooks. Shapes you have names for and shapes you don't. Coils of rope hung in neat loops. A length of heavy plastic sheeting folded into a rectangle with creased edges. Zip ties in three sizes on three separate hooks.
Your brain moves through it. Moves past it. Files it somewhere it isn't going to open right now.
You get off the table.
Your bare foot touches the concrete floor and the cold shoots upward through your ankle and you remember the wood and the root and the skin opening on the arch and you look down. Someone has wrapped it. Gauze, tight and clean. You stare at it for a moment longer than makes sense.
You wrap your arms around yourself. Your clothes are still damp, stiffening now as they dry wrong against your skin, and the cold is bone deep and total.
Somewhere behind you, a door opens.
You turn.
He's bigger than the room should allow for. That's the first coherent thought- not fear, or not only fear, but the lizard brain focusing on the right thing or the wrong thing or the only thing that matters in that half second delay. Tall. Broad. The balaclava still on, the eyes above it catching the yellow light. He's not moving fast. He's not moving with urgency at all. He steps inside and closes the door behind him and stands there for a moment, looking at you.
You say nothing.
He says nothing.
The chains hang in the space between you. The drain sits at the edge of your vision. The table presses cold against the backs of your thighs and you are standing in the middle of all of it in stiff damp clothes with a wrapped foot and a mouth that tastes like chemicals and copper and your heart in your chest is doing something loud and relentless that you are not going to think about right now.
He takes a step toward you.
You take one back and your hip catches the edge of the table and you stop, your hands coming up not quite in front of you, not a fighting stance, just the instinctive, trying to make yourself account for the space it needs.
He stops. Looks at your hands. Looks at your face. Something in the set of his shoulders changes, a small adjustment, a fraction of something releasing that you couldn't have explained if asked.
"Sat up on your own." His voice is low. Manchester flat, the vowels worn down, consonants that don't waste themselves. The voice of someone for whom speaking is a tool and not a pastime. "Good."
You stare at him.
"Where am I." Not a question. The grammar of a question with the punctuation of a statement, because some part of you has already decided that the answer is less important than the act of speaking, of making the room contain your voice as well as his.
He looks around the space briefly. Back at you.
"Somewhere no one's lookin’ fer you."
"That's not an answer." The chains catch a draft from somewhere and shift, a soft metallic sound, barely there. You don't look at them. You keep your eyes on him and your hands where they are and your back against the cold edge of the table and you breathe.
In. Out.
"No," he agrees. He says it without apology, without particular interest in your objection. Just a fact acknowledged and set aside.
The rain outside hammers the corrugated roof in waves, loud then quiet then loud again, and the single bulb swings a half inch in the draft and the shadows move and then settle.
He takes another step toward you.
You don't move this time.
"You wrapped my foot," you say.
He says nothing.
"Why."
He looks at you for a long moment. The pale eyes move over your face with the same unhurried attention he brought to the room, to the door, to everything. Like assessment is just how he exists in the world. Like everything he looks at is being filed.
"Didn't need it gettin’ infected."
"You chloroformed me in the woods."
"Mmm."
The flatness of it. Not defensive. Not guilty. Just the confirmation of a man who sees no contradiction between the two facts and isn't going to pretend otherwise.
Your hands are still between you. You lower them slowly. Not because you've decided anything. Just because holding them up is starting to feel like a performance for an audience that isn't here.
"What do you want," you say.
He takes another step. You stay where you are this time, hip against the table, and he stops close enough that the space between you is no longer large. Close enough that you can see the pale of his eyes properly now, the way they haven't moved off your face since he came through the door.
"You know what I want," he says.
Your heart does the loud thing again.
"I don't," you say. "I don't know you."
Something moves across his expression. Not quite a smile. The ghost of something that might have been one in different circumstances, on a different face.
"You've known fer months."
The rain. The chains. The single bulb throwing its yellow circle down onto both of you now, the shadows pressed back to the edges of the room.
You look at him.
He looks at you.
The table is cold against the backs of your thighs and the gauze on your foot is tight and professionally done and the room smells like metal and old damp and somewhere underneath all of it, faint and almost imagined, cigarette smoke.
You don't say anything.
Neither does he.
The silence stretches, thick and charged, until the air between you feels like it might snap. The single bulb sways overhead, dragging yellow light across the sharp cut of his jaw beneath the balaclava, across those pale eyes that haven’t left your face once. Heat rolls off his massive frame in waves, bleeding into the cold of the room, into the cold of your soaked clothes, until your skin prickles with it.
Your heart slams against your ribs like it wants to crawl out and hand itself over. The metal table bites into the backs of your thighs, the gauze on your foot is tight pressure, but none of that matters when he finally moves.
One big hand curls around your wrist, rough calluses scraping over your racing pulse. His thumb strokes once, like he’s tasting the fear and the want underneath it and then he lifts you like you weigh nothing and slams your back down onto the table.
The impact jars through your spine, cold steel shocking against your skin as your soaked shirt rides up and your joggers bunch at your hips. He’s on you in the next breath, caging you completely, the thick, heavy ridge of his cock grinding hard against your cunt through the wet fabric.
You gasp- half protest, half broken moan and his mouth crashes down on yours, claiming, devouring. The balaclava is shoved higher now, just enough for his lips and teeth and tongue to bite through your skin, blooming blood against your tongue. He tastes like stale tobacco and rain, and he kisses like he’s starving, tongue fucking into your mouth in time with the harsh, obscene roll of his hips.
His cock is massive even through his trousers- thick, burning hot, the fat head already leaking and smearing precum against the soaked seam of your joggers.
One massive hand shoves under your shirt, palm rough and scalding as it palms your breast, callused thumb dragging over your nipple until it’s aching and peaked. He pinches hard, twisting just enough to make you arch and whimper into his mouth, tears splashing down your cheeks and then he’s yanking your joggers down your thighs, wet fabric catching at your knees; he doesn’t bother pulling them off all the way. Just rips them down far enough to bare your dripping cunt to the cold air.
“Fuckin’ hell,” he breathes, pulling back just enough to look. Two thick fingers drag through your folds, spreading the slick mess, circling your swollen clit until your hips jerk helplessly. “Soakin’ already. Knew you’d be a greedy lil thing fer me.”
He frees his cock with his other hand, the thick, veined length springing out heavy and flushed dark, the head glistening with precum, a fat drop beading at the slit.
It’s obscene how big he is, how it throbs in his fist as he strokes himself once, twice, smearing the wetness. Then he’s lining up, the blunt head nudging against your entrance, stretching you open before he even pushes in.
Your eyes widen, panicked. “Wait-!”
He drives in, bottoming out in a single stroke that punches the air from your lungs in a high pitched whine. The stretch is vicious, burning, your walls forced wide around the thick girth of him until you feel every vein, every ridge dragging against your insides. A broken cry tears from your throat as he bottoms out, tears spilling, balls heavy and tight against your ass, the head of his cock kissing so deep you swear you feel it in your throat.
“Christ, tha’s it,” he groans, hips grinding deep, holding himself there so you can feel every inch of him pulsing inside you. “Takin’ every fuckin’ inch. Been dreaming about this tight cunt swallowin’ me whole.”
He starts to move slow at first, dragging out until just the fat head is stretching your entrance, then slamming back in so hard the table creaks beneath you.
Every thrust is wet and filthy, slap of skin on skin echoing off concrete walls, your arousal coating his cock and dripping down to soak the metal beneath you. His hips snap harder, faster, the thick head battering that spot inside you that makes white hot sparks explode behind your eyes.
Your hands fist in his jacket, nails digging in as he pounds into you. One of his hands pins your wrists above your head, the other grips your thigh, yanking it higher so he can drive even deeper. His mouth finds your throat, teeth sinking in.
Your orgasm crashes over you, walls clamping down around his cock so hard he snarls. Your back arches off the table, cunt gushing around him, soaking his balls and the metal beneath you as wave after wave rips through you.
You’re crying out, shaking, tears leaking from the corners of your eyes, and he fucks you through it, chasing his own release.
“Fuck- good girl, squeezing me so fuckin’ perfect- ” His rhythm stutters, turns sloppy and desperate. He buries himself one last time, grinding deep as his cock pulses and throbs inside you. Thick, hot ropes of cum flood your cunt, spilling deep, so much it leaks out around his shaft and drips messily down your thighs onto the table.
He stays buried inside you, heavy and twitching, one hand sliding up to cup your tear streaked cheek almost tenderly. His thumb brushes the wetness away as his breathing slowly evens out.
The chains overhead sway softly in the draft, clinking like they’re keeping count.
***
Several weeks ago…
You can’t prove it, but someone has been in your apartment.
You stand in the doorway of your own flat for a long moment. Coat still on. Keys in your hand.
Then you step inside and close the door behind you, and you don't change anything about your face.
You notice the mug first.
Not displaced… that would be too obvious, and whoever came through your door is not obvious. It's the ring. The condensation ring on the coffee table is wrong, slightly, the way a thing is wrong when it's been lifted and replaced by someone who understood the importance of replacing it but didn't account for the fact that you always set it down on the same quarter inch of worn lacquer, the same groove. You've been setting it there for two years. The ring is two millimetres off.
Your shampoo. The bottle on the shower shelf that you could swear was turned slightly. And underneath all of it, you stop in the middle of your bathroom and just stand there, breathing in something like cigarette smoke. Old. Ground into skin.
You are not scared. That's the thing you keep examining, turning over, looking at from different angles. You have every reason to be scared and the feeling that surfaces instead is something more like… recognition. The specific recognition of something that has been true for a while finally making itself legible. Someone has been watching you and the part of you that should be running is instead sitting very still and watching back.
You think about what kind of person does this as a matter of course.
You think about this more than you should.
(And then you stop thinking about it altogether when your landlord- the one with the master key and the habit of using it “accidentally” when you’re showering or laying on the couch with your vibrator between your legs- goes missing on a Wednesday and turns up dead in a Birmingham car park on a Friday, and the police use words like opportunistic and random and you use no words at all, just stand at your kitchen window with your mug and watch the street below and breathe. And then the man from HR who cornered you in the stairwell stops showing up to work, and a week later someone finds him in a canal in Leeds with his wallet still in his pocket. And you stop thinking about it when the pervert who harasses women on the way to work and who rubbed himself against your ass for seven stops isn’t on the bus one morning and doesn’t get on it the morning after that either. You think “huh” and stop looking for the stories in the local paper after that)
You put this information somewhere quiet inside yourself and you close the door on it.
Then you make decisions.
The next morning you put on lipstick before your coffee. Not the lipstick you wear to work, the dark one you only put on when you're going somewhere worth the effort, a rich, specific red that leaves a clean mark on porcelain. You drink slowly. You set the mug down in its groove. You leave it on the table when you go. (Smeared now when you come back)
You buy a new book. Cracked the spine yourself, deliberately, over the place you wanted him to open to. Bookmarked the right page. (And the book mark is not exactly where you measured it when you put it in the pages, tucked down three millimeters more.)
The panties took more consideration. You stood in front of your drawer for a long moment, the particular cold logic of the thing settling through you. Then you put on the soft cotton ones, the worn pair, and you wore them for a full day, and you touched yourself in them until the gusset was soaked, and you left them near the top of the hamper. (Gone when you change out of your work clothes and go to throw them in the dirty laundry)
Rewards, you were beginning to think of them as, for the ledger that someone was keeping on your behalf, without your asking, without your knowledge of the specific terms, but not, you were becoming increasingly certain, without your participation.
You hadn't asked for any of it.
You hadn't not asked for any of it either.
This is the part you sit with. The part you turn over in the small hours when the flat is quiet and the street below has gone still and the cigarette smell has faded but not entirely left.
You are not innocent. You are not sure you want to be. You put on the lipstick and you left the mug and you walked close to the city drunk long enough that the message was legible, and three days later he ceased to be a problem.
The ledger exists. You are on it. The question you haven't answered- the question you keep not answering, keep setting aside- is whether you are the subject of it or the cause.
The night you saved his life is the night the ledger tips.
You don't think of it that way at the time. At the time it is simply a matter of logistics: a man bleeding out in the alley behind the Tesco Metro, the specific dark of blood, a wound that is going to kill him in four minutes if someone doesn't intervene, and you are there with your hands and your knowledge and the particular absence of panic that your colleagues have always found slightly unsettling in you.
You don't think about the balaclava. You don't think about the gun- empty, or he'd have used it- that you'd stepped over to get to him. You think about the wound and the pressure and the count.
Stay with me.
He lives. That's the metric.
Afterwards when the sirens got close and radio chatter from the paramedics were nearby, you stood up and wiped your hands on the back of your jeans and the calculation is already running somewhere below the level of words: he owes you something now. Not gratitude… you don't want gratitude, gratitude is soft and symmetric and what exists between you is neither. What exists is something that runs deeper than the ledger of your landlord and the others, something that reorganises the terms entirely and you’ll take advantage of it for as long as he’ll allow you and you’ll reward him for it for as long as he does.
He watched you go.
You knew he was watching.
You didn't look back.
(And you do not let yourself think about what happens when crumbs stop being enough. When the man who has been living on the edges of your life decides the edges are no longer satisfying and wants th full thing, everything you can give to a man like him.)
The storm comes on a Thursday. You've been watching the weather for two days, the way the pressure dropped, the way the air went close and electric and tasted faintly of iron- meteorological preconditions for a power cut in this part of the city, the grid unreliable, the substation two streets over that goes out whenever the rainfall hits a certain rate.
You go to bed with your phone charged.
The lights go out at half past eleven.
The thunder is already overhead, close enough that the flash and the crack arrive almost together, and you sit up in the dark and breathe and wait for the backup on the hall light to kick in the way it usually does and it doesn't kick in this time, and the flat is completely dark, and then lightning fills the window for a single white second-
-and there is a shape in your bedroom that is not furniture.
The thought arrives lie lightning does: total, white, gone before you can hold it. Whether your name was always on the ledger too. Whether you were ever the one keeping it.
Your body moves off the bed, through the door, navigating your flat entirely by memory because the dark is total and the thunder swallows the sound of your feet and somewhere behind you something large and patient shifts its weight and doesn't rush, and that is the worst of it, the not rushing, because it means he already knows how this ends-
You hit the stairs. You hit the rain. Your slippers begin to fray.
You can’t breathe.
artwork for this piece by the lovely @auberghyn I’m crying it looks so pretty. The woman is actually me! I sent the artist pictures of myself and everything. It should not be used to indicate Reader’s race though! Go view her post for the uncensored version. :]
When your day off is interrupted by your partner in crime who would rather bleed out on bathroom floor than come to you from help, how do you get your frustrations out? A fight to the death should do the trick.
cw. inappropriate use of a blowtorch, NOT IN THAT WAY, minor character death, that's not how the force works, cage fights, force healing, jealous Darth Maul, Darth Maul redemption, showering together, blood and gore, not super bad but also it's a little bad, hurt/comfort, confessions, kinda, no use of i love you but we get PRETTY close, character development, finally, force choking, enemies to whatever the hell you two have going on, Darth Maul speaks Mando'a, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post-order 66
wc. 6.2k
an. This is absolutely the most self indulgent one I've written so far. On the bright side with the new Maul episodes I finally feel confident enough to write about his backstory!!! HE NOW HAS FOUR DIFFERENT BACK STORIES. Which means I get to combine all of my favorite bits into one!! Yay!!
Yeah I gotta level with you at this point you should read the other parts of the series before reading this one there's character development in this one that will have little to no pay off if you dont know what these freaks are going through together
Going to the laundromat was always an interesting experience. Neither you or Maul had much in the terms of clothes, so your trips were usually short but you enjoyed them all the same. It was fun to people watch and eavesdrop on conversations between strangers that you'd likely never see again. Here look between the sounds of washers tumbling and the scent of detergent, you could pretend for an hour or so that everything was normal again.
You fell into the routine almost naturally now. It was an unspoken chore that the two of you traded off on. Today it was your turn for simple house keeping-or really ship keeping-and his turn to go find whatever constituted as the local guild of this place and collect more bounties for the two of you to follow after.
You were eagerly listening in to a Trandoshan's story about a cheating boyfriend when something rough grazed the underside of your palm. Frowning, you looked down at the fabric of the shirt and recognized it to be Maul's by both the cut and color of it alone. He didn't own anything that wasn't black.
There was a clear stain darkening the already dark fabric along the side of the shirt. Curiously, you took it over to one of the sinks near the back and ran water over it, trying to identify what it was. Slowly, the walls of the sink started to become tinted with a reddish hue.
It was blood.
Panic grew inside of you nearly too quickly for you to school your expression. Lightsabers instantly cauterized any wound that they made, so the chances of this being the blood from one of your past quarries were slim to none. Had Maul been hurt? You tried to think on if his behavior in the past few days had been any different but nothing appeared out of sorts in your memory.
All chances of a mindless chore day were gone now as you rushed back to your pile of clothes and shoved them all in the washer. As you waited anxiously, chagrined at how idly the clothes spun, you realized that the Trandoshan and her friend had left. Which meant that there would be no conclusion to her previous gossip. You sighed and leaned your head back. It was going to be a long day.
-------------------------------------------
The ship was quiet when you returned but you could still sense him, even if his signature was dimmer than usual. Unceremoniously dropping the basket of unfolded clothes to the ground you hurry to the back of the ship.
"Maul?" You call out to no response. As you make your way towards the refresher—the only place in the ship that has a door-you notice it's closed. But even with the door sealed, the scent of burning flesh is one that's hard to hide.
You slam your fist into the control panel that accesses the door and it slides open, but before you can step inside you feel a hold around your neck. Instinctively your hands shoot up to claw at your throat but you find nothing there.
'Are you fucking kidding me right now?' You hiss at the Zabrak in your mind. He doesn't release his hold on you. That was fine. Two could play at that game. With astonishingly little effort, you reach a hand out and imagine grabbing his face. When you feel the phantom touch of his skin, you jerk your hand as hard as you can to the side.
There's three quick sounds that happen in succession. You can hear Maul's head smack against the wall, some sort of metal tool clamor against the floor, and your own desperate gasping for air. You stick a hand out and pull the tool towards you. It was a welding torch.
"No." You don't believe it, that is until you crawl into the refresher yourself and see Maul sat on the ground clutching his head with half of his side horrifically burnt together.
You want to yell. To hit him or shake him or just do something that would manage to knock some sort of sense into him. In what world was the answer to being stabbed stitching yourself up together in a ship bathroom alone with a blowtorch.
"I can't fucking believe you." You gape at him for a moment before tossing the torch aside and making your way over to him. He growls when you come nearer and grabs your wrist before you can touch him. Without thinking, you slap him across the face with your free hand.
"Stop that! Right now!" You fix him with an intense, bordering manic, glare and he has the audacity to look back at you surprised. You rip his hand off of you and get to work fixing his wound. Concentrating, you steady your hand over the still open cut and call upon the Force to help you close it.
"I can't fucking believe you…" You murmur, repeating yourself, still in disbelief at what you had just seen. You watch the red of his skin knit itself back together under the surprisingly gentle touch of your abilities. When the cut is at least closed now, you huff and stand up.
"Stay!" You give the command without sparing the Zabrak a second glance as you grab a hand rag and run it under some water. Opening the medicine cabinet more harshly then was needed, you reach in and grab the little amount of bacta gel and bandages the ship had stocked.
"What is wrong with you? Genuinely?" You're so angry with him and you can't seem to narrow down why. It just frustrates you more. You dab away the blood that blends in with his skin before smearing the bacta onto the burned portion of his body.
"Stitches wouldn't have worked? You couldn't mediate? Were you dying? Do you know how easily this could have gotten infected? How easily this could have killed you?" Somehow throughout your ranting you manage to get the bandage secure around him. You pull it considerably tighter than you need too.
"I don't need a lecture." Maul snarls at you, pushing himself up against the wall as he tries to leave. Both of your hands slam down onto his shoulders, keeping him pinned.
"Are you sure you don't? Because this was the stupidest thing I think I've ever seen in my life and I hate to admit this to you, but you are not stupid! I don't get it!" You're yelling at him now. His glare is back in an instant and he grabs both of your wrists with a force that couldn't be defined as anything other than bruising.
"My apologies. I hadn't realized your ego required me to come to begging for your help at the slightest inconvenience." His tone is ice now and it grates against your already frayed nerves.
"That's-!" You grit your teeth and dig your nails into his shoulders now, "That's not what I'm saying! At all!"
"So very Jedi-like of you. Helping out the poor and unfortunate-"
"Why won't you let me take care of you?!" You cut off him off with a shout. Your heart rate is erratic, your breathing uneven, as you tear your hands away from him. He lets you slip through his fingers with no resistance.
You have to grab the frame of the sliding door to steady yourself and to your surprise, you felt your eyes burning with unshed tears. You rub at your face harshly. After a moment, you speak up again.
"I don't get it. You get to care, I have to be vulnerable, and the second it's anything but that you try to kill me. I can't do this!"
You take a deep breath to try and calm yourself, though it does little to help.
"Do you know what I would do if you died on me?" There's no chance you would risk looking back at Maul, not like this, not now. But you can feel his eyes on you just the same and it's enough for you to continue. "Because I don't."
There had been times in your tumultuous relationship with Maul where you had inwardly thought about killing the Zabrak, though you were sure he knew this. Just as you knew that he had considered the same thought when it came to you. But now, the very notion of your life without him in it in some capacity was unthinkable. It was a sickening revelation you had made some time ago, a passing thought you had ignored in favor of staying sane. Seeing him on the floor of your shared refresher nearly bleed out because he would rather suffer in silence than ask for your help it…hurt. It hurt because unlike the shared thoughts you'd had about killing one another, you knew that the way in which you cared for Maul now he would never return.
The door slides closed behind you as you leave. The interaction couldn't have been more than a few minutes but it felt like hours. Wandering to the small common area of the ship you spy a few of the bounty pucks that he must have picked up earlier today and grab one at random. It seemed local by the looks of it and that was more than enough for you. Fastening your lightsaber to your belt you make your way out of the ship and into the back alleys of the city.
-------------------------------------------
It was honestly hard to say if you had seen worse bars than this. Exposed and torn wires hung from the ceiling and some tables appeared to be made out of the leftover wreckage of ships. In the middle of it all was the only fully intact structure in the room, a giant glass cage.
You stood and watched from the edges of the crowd at the fight emerging from within. In a gruesome display of violence, you watched the larger fighter twist his opponents arm back and pop it from the socket. The group cheered and you winced. Your puck vibrated and you looked down at the little metal box. It activated and displayed a holo-photo of your target. A roar sounded from the fighter and you glanced up to see him now separating his opponent's lower jaw from his face.
"I know how to pick 'em…" You mumble to yourself and push your way though the sea of people.
There's a table near the front with various people placing bets and counting credits. It was as good as place as any to start asking questions.
"How do you get in?" You have to shout to be heard over the throng of gamblers all anxious to place their own bets, even though the droid you're speaking too is just a few feet away.
"The starting bet is 50 credits." It replies with automated enthusiasm.
"No, I mean, how do you get in? Like in there. With him." You point upwards to the cage where it was now being cleaned and prepared for the next match.
"I'm terribly sorry, but we do not allow late entries! You are welcome to apply for the next tournament." Well, that would be a problem.
"How many credits do I need to get in now?"
The Twi'lek that had been counting credits silently beside it let out a snark of laughter.
"You're eager to die, ain't 'cha?" They grin, still not taking their eyes off the creds. You regard them silently before speaking again.
"You run this operation?"
"What's it look like babe?"
Now that gave you a little something to work with. You brace yourself on the table, cloak draping over your arms to obscure the rest of your body. Immediately the paid muscle around the Twi'lek tense and take aim for you. You don't budge.
"Let me in next round. I'll make it worth your while." The Twi'lek seems utterly unconcerned and unconvinced.
"Have you ever heard of kyber crystals?" You reach down for your lightsaber at your belt and unclip it. "Got this off a Jedi I killed once. Two of 'em are inside this thing. They run for about ten thousand credits a piece."
Of course, you were lying on multiple fronts. You had no idea what the market price of kyber crystals were and you certainly wouldn't actually part with your lightsaber, but the less they knew the better. And by the way the lights of the bar danced in the Twi'lek's eyes, you knew they were more than happy to accept.
"Yeah! You're up next or whatever! Who am I to deny a death wish?" They cackle again and swipe your blade from your hand. It should have felt odd to part from it, but you knew you'd have it returned to you soon enough.
The armed guards escorted you down to what equated to a shabby locker room as you waited for your turn to be put into the cage. Sitting on a unpleasantly sticky bench, you cross your legs and try to meditate. Key word, try.
You just narrowly dodge the punch thrown at you and reach out to grab your attackers arm, twisting it harshly when you find purchase. He hisses but a swift elbow to your gut has you releasing him and gasping for air.
"If that is what it takes to incapacitate you, this will be a short match indeed." At the sound of the all too familiar voice, you grimace.
Maul.
He was fully clothed now but you could still see the wrappings of his bandaged chest peak out from beneath his shirt. The look he was regarding you with was one that was infuriatingly calm, like he hadn't been bleeding out earlier today.
"It will be a short match either way. Either I will die, or I will kill him. Though I do prefer one outcome over the other." You sit back down and resume your intended goal.
"You cannot use the Force inside there." Maul continues. You pointedly shut your eyes and don't look at him. "Your lightsaber is pointless as well."
"That's fine, I don't have it."
"You left it?"
"I gave it away."
"What?" Now, the slightest betrayal of emotion made its way into his words.
"Needed money. How else was I supposed to get into the match?" You reply calmly.
"You are—!"
"You're hiding your Force signature from me." You cut off his angry rant, eyes still shut. "You were hiding it on the ship as well. Why? Why don't you want me to find you?"
Maul goes silent. His lack of answer is honestly more disheartening than if he had yelled at you instead. A bell rings, signaling the next fight. You stand and make your way towards the door. Maul lunges for you.
"You cannot go. Tell them that I will fight in your place." He grabs your arm with the same bruising force that he had used on your wrists earlier. You pull away harshly, still refusing to look at him.
"I have fought against you without the Force before. I won." You remind him of the first sparring match you two had had against each other.
"But more importantly," twisting on your heel, you slam the palm of your hand into the center of his chest. Maul falls to the ground, clearly not expecting the blow, "you are injured. Now stay here, I'll be back soon."
The ramp up to the cage was rickety and the Twi'lek from before was waiting for you at the end of it. They glanced past you to see Maul—who was now being lead away by what counted as security here—and they grin.
"Boyfriend upset with you?"
You must visibly wince at the word because they burst out into ear piercing laughter at the sight of your discomfort. Looking down, you see your lightsaber hang from their belt. Right, well now it felt odd. You shake your head, trying to clear your thoughts.
"He can be upset all he wants. It's his fault I'm here in the first place, good for nothing, son of a—!" They cut you off by literally shoving you towards the cage.
"Wow! Okay I don't actually care I was just being a jackass. Now get in there."
They usher you inside the enclosure and you can hear it seal shut behind you. Across the way you see the behemoth of a man you were meant to fight. He watched you enter the cage in a way that was all too familiar. Your skin pricked with irritation.
"All right!" A voice boomed from the overhead speakers. "You all know the rules! Bets have been placed and are set in stone. As for our fighters, anything goes! Even, drum roll please, death! Okay, have fun!"
The chipper voice wasn't one you recognized but it didn't much matter. You weren't given any time to deliberate who it might have been because as soon as that bell sounded over the intercom, he was on you. He landed a punch square across your jaw that sent you tumbling down to the ground. You were able to roll backwards and recover but only just before he struck another blow down where you had been tossed.
For the first few seconds all you could do was dodge your opponent's oncoming attacks, much to the chagrin of the crowd around you.
"Do something!" A muffled voice made its way to you through the glass barrier of the cage and you rolled your eyes before sliding behind the man.
"Yeah, well I'd like to see you in here!" You shouted back before twisting your body and delivering a sharp kick to the base of his spine. It hurt more than it should have. Your stance was fine, but it was as if you were attacking solid metal.
The man roared and lunged at you with his massive arms but it was getting easier to understand his patterns, which in turn meant he was getting easier to avoid. Jabbing your hand in quickly you hit his throat and felt flesh. He coughed, which confirmed that he had felt it in some capacity, but the phlegm that left his mouth was dark and discolored.
Metal and oil bound by human skin. Lovely! You had no weapons on you, a heavy oversight on your part considering you had left the ship to go bounty hunting, but there would be time later to berate yourself for your short comings. For now, as you dodged another swing from him, the makings of a plan formed in your mind.
"Okay big guy. Follow me." You moved backwards slowly, breaking off into a full sprint when he got close enough to you. You weren't dull enough to believe you had more stamina than him but you certainly could move quicker. You ran to one of the corners and waited. Scanning the horde of jeering faces, you found Maul easily. His eyes shone even brighter under the darkness provided by the hood of his cloak.
"Oh, so now you want me to find you." You shook your head and pressed hard against the walls. There wasn't anything to grab onto but there was still enough leverage for you to physically push yourself up and climb.
The man rushed in behind you and as you'd hoped, knocked his head into the wall, unable to stop his own momentum in time. While he was dazed, you dropped down onto him. It was like trying to ride a feral animal. He bucked and grabbed at you, desperate to try and get you off. Your arms grappled around his neck while your legs wrapped around his torso but the movement was too much, he wouldn't stay still.
With a frantic look, you eye the walls of the cage again and grimace. This would hurt.
Moving one of your hands to his hair you yank it backwards in time with your body as you lean back. The new off centered weight causes him to stumble back, slamming you both into the glass. The air is forced from your lungs. A bright white light of pain momentarily blinds you but you stay focused.
Moving your way up slowly, you open your mouth and push his head to the side. When his throat is exposed, you bite down. A sickening sound echoes throughout your skull as you hear the flesh being ripped apart by your very doing but if you pull away now you may not get this chance again. Your other hand comes up to find the hole you've made and pulls harshly to tear him open. You bite again, pushing your face in deeper. A metallic mixture of blood and oil fills your senses, you can't even breathe like this.
The vibrations of what must be his vocal cords rattle against your nose as he tries to scream. A large hand grabs your leg and drags you to the ground. Pieces of him come with you.
You feel the gore smeared across the near entirety of your face and look at your hand to see the viscous black mixture covering it as well. You realize now, rather unsettlingly, that you were not horrified with what you had done. Neither were you scared. There was adrenaline coursing through you, yes, but no fear. No hatred either. In fact, there was an absence of emotion.
'How very Jedi-like…' The words echoed in your mind—not for the first time tonight—and you knew they were not your own.
Your opponent crumples to the ground, clutching at his throat, as a puddle of his blood grows around him. You search the crowd again for Maul and just a simply as before, you find him. Sensing his astonishment you're mildly offended. He truly thought so little of you?
Before you can feel any sort of victory however, the man on the ground stirs. Still present in the Force, you can sense no life from him but his body arises anyways. His head drags terribly on one side, exposing the array of metal tubes and wires that control him even after death.
You sigh and break off from Maul, you'd expected this after all. This wasn't a human you were fighting, you knew that much from the oil and metal inside of him, so it stood to reason that killing him like a human wouldn't have worked. He was off balance making him even easier to avoid than before. You dodged lazily and stared out at the masses.
"Where are you?" You whispered. The Force gently nudged your head to the side and you spotted a very flustered looking Twi'lek. You grinned.
"Found you."
Bracing yourself now, you made your hands into a point and waited for the man to come charging towards you again. He did so without fail. You breathed in and speared your hands into the soft flesh of his stomach. It parted too easily but everyone watching would be too distracted by the gruesome display to notice. It was eerily cold inside of him. You groped around blindly in his chest cavity searching for what you wanted. The harsh edges of a metal box brushed your hand.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you, but no one deserves this. May the Force guide you from here." You speak to the lifeless body and rip the box out from within him. For a second time, he collapses. Every part of him spills onto the ground beneath you. The cheering from the crowd is near deafening but you ignore it in favor of throwing the control unit against the wall as hard as you can.
The reinforced glass shatters. That one would be harder for everyone to ignore, but you weren't planning on being here much longer. Screams sound as the crowd rushes away from the broken glass. The Twi'lek watches you approach, stunned.
You fish out the bounty puck from before and activate it. It displays a flickering one to one image of them.
"Te'sant Junta. Wanted on counts of gambling and cheating and suspected murder." You read the charges aloud with a monotone voice.
"Hey! We can work something out, man! I'm sure I got something you want!" Their voice shook but you didn't delight in the wildly apparent fear that they displayed. It annoyed you, actually. You stepped to the side as another person rushed past you.
"Yes, you do." You nodded and looked down to your lightsaber. They practically threw it at you.
"There! Okay, we're even now! You got to be a maniac and your special space sword is all yours again, so we can just—" Igniting the blade, you chopped off their left hand. They stared at the new stump in disbelief.
"The pain always takes a second to set in with a lightsaber wound. Give it a moment."
A moment indeed was all it took for them to start screeching and writhing against the floor. You crouched down to place a hand on their shin.
"I cannot fathom the amount of hurt and trauma you put that poor man through to act as your puppet, but rest assured, I will return it on to you ten fold now. I can only hope this act cleanses you enough to bring balance back to your soul so that you may die peacefully." As you grip them, something like lightning surges through you. It was not the guiding hand of the Force, but something much more sinister.
You jolt back as if you'd been burned. What were you doing? The Twi'lek screams in agony and a newfound horror spills over you. What were you doing?
Standing to attention you immediately reignite your blade and cut their throat, silencing the noise. Your heart is racing and you can't breathe through the choking smell of ozone and death around you. You lean against the panel of the wall and vomit. A hand touches you and you jerk back, elbowing whoever was behind you in the chest. Maul groans.
"Maul!" You yelp, instantly grabbing at his shoulders. Only then do you notice your blood soaked hands. There wasn't time to cry, you both needed to leave here and fast.
"Come on, let's go." You grip his hand and begin to run. You could feel the ache of every muscle in your body starting to settle in. You push through and ignore it. Nothing but getting back to your ship and off world mattered now.
-------------------------------------------
It had mostly been a blur when you arrived back to the space port. Maul had rushed himself to pilot the two of you away from here and you had just fallen onto the floor, exhausted with everything that had transpired tonight.
The calm glow of hyper space travel filled the ship and you felt yourself finally breathe. You were safe now. Both of you. You could hear Maul come to stand above you. Wordlessly, you patted the ground next to you and he sat. You placed a hand on his chest and felt him stiffen.
"Does it hurt? I hit you pretty hard. Twice now." You mumble, trying to check for any sign of bleeding. Unfortunately the blood on your own hands made it hard to tell.
"You can't be serious." He grabs your own hand, forcing you to stop.
"I absolutely am. Just because I could stitch you together in the moment doesn't mean it held. I'm not adept in Force healing you know?" You huff, shutting your eyes and allowing yourself to find comfort in the warmth of his hands.
"You're nearly dead and your stuck rambling about a minor scrape—"
"Hardly minor! You were gonna use a blowtorch to fuse yourself back together! You absolute moron!" Your other hand comes up to slap his leg in reprimand.
"It was—"
"No!" You cut him off again, and despite your body's protest, you force yourself to sit up. When Maul tries to push you back down you slap both his hands away as well.
"Why wouldn't you come to me?" You ask, sounding more heart broken than you would have liked. He knits his brow together in remorse and when he tries to look away from you, you grab his face and turn it towards you.
"You are not weak Maul. I have never thought you to be such. But you don't have to be strong constantly either. You can rely on me. I want you to rely on me." Through the Force you can feel him protest and squirm underneath each of your words. You continue speaking.
"I care about you. Not because I need you to protect me or because I gain something from it, I just do Maul. I worry about you because I want you to be safe. I want you to be okay. You're my partner in all of this. You're my constant." The adrenaline is back and you feel both of your hand shake as you speak. It was slightly nauseating to be so honest but you drug yourself through it, letting him peer into you as deeply as he wished so that you could prove to him that there was no deceit as you spoke.
"I am not a kind man. You cannot mold me into something you deserve. It's too late for that. For me." He says quietly and you can feel his belief in the words. You smile.
"I know." You brush your thumb over his cheek. "But despite this I am loyal to you, Maul. Please, let me be loyal to you."
He surges forward to kiss you and you reciprocate instantly, wrapping your arms tighter around him. Your teeth clash together in the ferocity of the kiss and you laugh into it. However you can taste very little of him in the kiss due to the overwhelming amount of viscera that still adorns your person. You attempt to pull away but he chases after your mouth. He hardly relents when your turn your head away from, moving his affections to your neck instead.
"Maul, stop." You tap the back of his head. "I'm covered in blood, this is gross."
"I disagree." He mumbles into your skin, biting down gently in a way that he knows you like. "I find you very attractive like this."
"Freak." You huff but don't protest when he slips a hand under your shirt. "I ripped a man's throat out tonight, you know?"
Unexpectedly, you feel the Zabrak shiver with delight underneath you.
"I know. I was nearly moved to jealousy." He moves his hands down lower to toy with the waistband of your pants. You slide a hand up to his neck and squeeze experimentally. He groans and leans back. Golden eyes stare at you through the dark of the ship.
"Jealousy? You'd have no objections to me ripping out a man's throat, as long as it's your throat?" The incredulous look you give him does nothing to stop him from speaking.
"It's more so because someone else got to feel your mouth on them laandur'ad." Maul reaches up to grab your wrist and make the pressure on his neck heavier. "As you are to me now, I am to you. I am loyal to you."
Embarrassingly enough, you feel your heart jolt at the words. You rub your thumb over the pulse point of his neck and hum thoughtfully.
"You would let me do what I want with you?" You ask quietly.
"Yes." His prompt response surprises you. At this apparent shock, he pulls you closer, desperate to prove it to you. "Do what you wish."
"I don't think you could handle it." You tease, laughing when he frowns at the jab.
"I am sure you have misjudged me."
You smile and lean in closer, pressing a light kiss to the side of his mouth.
"Ask me to take care of you then."
"Use me—"
"No." You tap the column of his throat in reprimand. "Ask me to take care of you."
Now you feel him stiffen. You grin and lean back, enjoying the near bashful expression on his face.
"Take care of me." His words are clearly forcibly strung together.
"Say please." You taunt.
"Take care of me…please."
"Good boy." His eyes widen at the praise and you press another gentle kiss to the other side of his mouth now.
"So willing. How sweet of you." You trail your mouth alongside his jaw now, never biting, only using delicate touches as you went.
"Patient too. You're doing so well." You guide him to rest against the wall of the ship. He does so with no resistance. Slowly you help him remove his shirt and take your time admiring his broad chest. You trace a finger over the tattoos that litter his skin and smile when you feel his breathing quicken slightly.
"You're so beautiful. You don't even realize it, do you?" Lowering your head you place two kisses on his sternum, one for each of his hearts.
"So handsome." You hum, trailing your hands down to his waistband. Unexpectedly, he grabs both your wrists.
"I'm—I'm not…" he trails off and you can sense an underlying fear in his voice.
"Maul, it's alright. I know you have prosthetics. It's okay." You soothe him, removing one of your hands to hold his face again. He leans into your touch and despite yourself, you swoon at such a simple gesture.
"So darling." You whisper, leaning in to kiss him again.
"It's…too much." He mumbles against your mouth. You frown, a little confused.
"I haven't even done anything yet."
"I know!" He groans, shutting his eyes.
"Maul, would you like to stop?" He doesn't answer but you can feel the shame radiating off of him. The both of you sit in a tense silence. Leaning away from him, you stand up. It was harder to ignore the blood that had drenched you previously now.
"Let's go take a shower, okay? We're both filthy." You grab both his hands and pull him to his feet. He follows dutifully behind you.
The blowtorch is still on the floor of the refresher when you walk in. With a flick of your hand, toss it towards the hallway with the Force. Both of you strip down as you wait for the water warm up, a rare luxury that you had decided you could both afford tonight.
You step instead and gesture for him to join you. He hesitates a little too much for your liking, causing you to reach out and pull him in with you.
"Force above, I'm probably gonna be tasting metal for weeks." You mumble, focusing on removing as much of the gore as you could from under your nails.
"I apologize." His voice startles you and you look up at Maul, who seems to find the shower floor very fascinating at this moment. You scrub both of your hands and arms now, humming as you wait for him to continue.
"I should have been able to handle it. I've experienced much worse without complaint. There was no reason for me stop you." You knit your brows together in confusion and shake your head.
"Wait, are you apologizing for not having sex with me?" He winces and that's all it takes for you to confirm his intentions. You sigh and with clean hands now you grab his face again. You gently begin to wipe away the blood that you had daubed there earlier.
"Maul, I literally don't care. You're allowed to say no to things like that. Besides, it really would have been gross. I'd much rather fuck you when I'm not covered with the insides of another person." He scoffs at the crudeness of your statement but you consider it an improvement from his previous withdrawn temperament. Now he just needed to insult you and the two of you would be right as rain again.
"You still need to apologize about the melting yourself together thing though." You rest your arms over his shoulders languidly. "That was actually horrifying. If you ever do that again, oh Force above I swear I'll—!"
"Alright! Yes, I apologize for that as well then." He rolls his eyes, his own hands coming to rest on your hips. Still, you frown.
"Wait, no, I only need one apology from you. I already told you to take back the other one." Maul gives you a bewildered look and it takes a lot in you not to grin at the sight of it.
"You would like me to un-apologize to you?"
"Yeah. Though I guess I could just keep it as insurance for the next time you piss me off." You tap a finger to your lips in mock thought at the prospect.
"You are never satisfied, are you?"
"Not true, you're just a bad listener. If you just did what I asked the first time we wouldn't be in this mess and I'd have less blood lust. Genuinely being around you has increased that in me tenfold, I'm a little concerned—" He kisses you, effectively stopping your rambling. Now you allow yourself to smile.
"That's only gonna work like the next three times you do it, you know that right?" You whisper against his mouth. Even without the Force you could have felt his exasperation.
"Yes, well, I'm sure I'll find plenty of other ways to shut you up."
"I'll hold you to that."
an. I have a crazy hard time writing any form of intimacy without freaking out. I don't know where this issue arises from specifically but I blame the catholic middle school arc in my life for now. Anyways despite this I hope you all enjoyed!! It think its miles more intimate to revoke consent and have your partner actually respect those boundaries than having sex MY BAD ! Especially for someone like Maul who has never had the option to say no before!! Yippee!!!
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
oh maul you always have to do things in the difficult way don't you
this was so intense !!! i could never guess what was going to happen, not from the laundrymat (such a fun concept to exist in space lol), to maul injured, and the bloodlust on them
so happy to keep reading about these two (i'm so attached to them already) and loving this
thank you so much for sharing your talent and story !!!
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You and Maul’s shared ship needs repairs. Luckily, you find a room for the night. Unluckily, there’s one bed and one of you is prone to nightmares.
cw. that's not how the force works, that should just being a given for me and any Star Wars fic at this point, there was only one bed, nightmares, Darth Maul speaks Mando'a, Darth Maul needs therapy, Reader-Insert needs therapy, who knew being raised to fight in a war would result in you guys being weird. haha, cuddling, enemies to whatever the hell you two have going on, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post-order 66
wc. 1.6k
an. This is a part of my series but I think you can still read this one by itself!
"You're not a child. Stop pouting in the corner." You put down your scuffed holo pad to glare at the Zabrak across the room from you. Maul was sat neatly against the wall with his legs crossed and his eyes closed.
"Do Jedi not know what it looks like when someone is meditating? How surprising." He replies calmly, though you can sense the prodding irritation that resides in him through the Force.
"Shh! Not here!" You grip the thin blanket the hostel had provided you with and your eyes sweep over the room anxiously. Shame immediately overtakes your fear. To be afraid of being associated with something so dear to you, so integral to what you are. But you can't be that. Not anymore.
Your eyes land back on him and you're startled to see him staring back at you. The gold of his eyes nearly glows in the dimness of the room. You know that look. Whatever Maul was searching for, he's found it now.
"No. Not tonight. Literally anywhere else, at any other time. But for now can you just be normal?" You rub at your temples, trying to assuage your oncoming head ache.
"I haven't said anything." The shrug of his shoulders when he speaks does a decent job of making him look clueless if you didn't know who he actually was.
Did you even know who he actually was? No, you didn't. You had heard stories about him, repeated so many times that each one had a different version of him all together. But here, months after the order, you'd actually gotten to see past the gossip.
He was even more spiteful than anyone had ever told you. Well spoken with a quick fuse and a penchant for trouble. There was a twisted charisma about him and in the lighter moments when you weren't so struck by grief, you could have even imagined leaving him to make your own path towards your revenge. However, here in a cramped twenty credit room, it just wasn't feasible.
"You don't have to. That makes it worse." You sigh and shut your eyes. You feel the bed sink under his weight as he joins you.
The reason the room was so cheap was entirely because of the size and sleeping accommodations, but with your ship currently docked for repairs you both had little choice other than to make do for tonight.
"I'm in your head, aren't I hut'uun?" He taunts, using that stupid name he's gifted you. It's not Zabraki. You'd tried searching for it to no avail. You weren't going to embarrass yourself by asking either. Besides, you knew cruelty when you heard it.
"And if you know what's good for you Maul, you'll leave it. Now." Your threat held little weight in terms of actuality but it seemed to quiet him for now. Absentmindedly, you rubbed at the mark on your neck. It was healing, but you could still feel the small divots in your skin.
"Does it hurt?" Maul doesn't sound guilty when he asks but his words are still enough to surprise you.
"Does the wound from where you bit me hard enough to draw blood and leave a scar hurt? Are you being serious right now?" You grant him an incredulous look only to find him sprawled out on his side of the bed, looking up at you with his head propped up on one hand. The scene is so oddly domestic that you feel your stomach churn.
"Yes. It hurts, jackass."
"My apologies."
His apology only infuriates you more. You groan and sink into the bed, turning away from him.
"And now, it's your turn to sulk it seems." He teases you too casually for your liking. You flip around, raising a hand to hit him which of course he catches with ease.
"Would it make it up to you if I let you mark me as well?" As he speaks, he trails your fingers down his neck. Pressing your hand against his skin, you can feel how unnaturally warm he is.
It would be so easy to choke him and Maul seemed oh so willing. You pull away and glare at him.
"I'll pass. I have no interest in joining you in whatever this is."
And just what was this? You didn't even know yourself and trying to apply any sort of name to it made you feel nauseous. The first time you could have maybe blamed on proximity, but then it happened again and it was very hard to use the same excuse twice and not wince while doing so. You fall into a dreamless sleep trying to ignore the warm body beside you.
-------------------------------------------
A thrashing besides you wakes you up.
"No! No, no, no, stop! I-I'm sorry!" Through the grogginess of sleep it's hard to tell who's speaking because you're certain that you've never heard such a voice before.
"I hate you. I hate you!" Ah. No, that was definitely someone you knew.
"Maul. Wake up." You put your hand on his shoulder and shake him lightly.
He doesn't respond but his face looks pained. His brows are knit tightly together and his teeth are barred, making you a little nervous for when he wakes up. It wasn't like he hadn't bitten you before.
"Maul, it's okay. Wake up." Jostling him a little harder, you glance around the room and he wails. The walls were relatively thin here and you were sure people could hear him. The last thing you needed was to be kicked out in the middle of the night because of some bad dream he was having.
Sighing, you sit up against the headboard and manage to heft the larger man's writhing upper body onto your lap. You breathe slowly and center yourself.
"You're okay." You tell him, using the Force to try and calm him somewhat, "You aren't there anymore. You're here. We're safe here. Wake up."
It was partially a lie, of course. With how the galaxy was now, it was likely the two of you would never be safe again. But for now, in a rundown room with the sobbing Zabrak in your arms, you would have to believe it for the both of you.
He wakes with a gasp, his grip on you is bruising and you hiss in pain but don't move to push him away. You press a hand to his head and stroke his back.
"You're alright now. Try to breathe." Both of you sit in a silence that's only broken by your gentle shushing and the few shuddering noises he makes.
"Are you okay?" You ask when his breathing finally evens out. Maul doesn't answer right away and you nearly think he's fallen back asleep.
"Why?" He asks and you can hear the sincere confusion in his voice. It reminds you of the sap cakes.
"You were having a nightmare. Why wouldn't I wake you up?"
He huffs and wraps his arms around your waist, burying his head as best he can into you without poking you with his horns.
"What do you gain from it? You are not dull enough to think I'll trust you now." He murmurs.
"You should be more careful, Maul. That was nearly a compliment." You tease, absentmindedly tracing patterns on his back now.
"I lied. You are very dull if that is what you believed I was saying." A small laugh escapes you and you flick the back of his head lightly in reprimand.
"Well for one, I gain a bed partner who is not screaming bloody murder. Two, we remain housed for the night and not stranded on a ship with no heating. Three, if I have the ability to fix a situation why should I not?" You list the reasons plainly.
He goes quiet again but with the Force around you like this you can sense he is still displeased with your answer.
"Back in the temples, when I was younger," you start, the emptiness of the night letting you feel more whole than usual, "the younglings would have nightmares a lot. It can be hard at first with the Force. Sometimes it shows you things you can't understand yet and it's scary, especially to smaller minds. After awhile you get better at comforting them."
You would kill for something as routine as that again. But what good would more blood do?
"Are you comparing me to a child?" He asks incredulously and you roll your eyes even if he can't see it.
"You are very dull if that is what you believed I was saying." You echo his words back to him.
"Do you pity me?" His question catches you off guard.
"No, I don't think so. I don't really understand you enough to pity you." The answer you give is honest if nothing else. "Do you want pity?"
"No." His voice is harsh when he says it.
"Then you will not have it."
The room goes quiet again. You try to move him off of you but he growls in response.
"I need to sleep to, you know? I'm not going to get that done if I'm sat up like this all night." Reluctantly he parts from you after sighing dramatically.
He waits for you to get comfortable laying down again and as soon as you stop shifting he wraps his arms around you and tucks you under his chin, undoing all of your efforts.
"You run so hot, how are you alive?" You groan and move to put some sort of space between you both. He says nothing but kicks the blanket off of the bed.
There were other issues with the arrangement of course but you were tired now and thoughts like that could wait till later.
"Goodnight Maul. If you have another nightmare and bite me, I'll leave you on this rock."
"I'd like to see you try." Then, much quieter he adds, "Goodnight."
an. I genuinely debated tagging this with a slow burn because technically you two are NOT in a relationship but also technically you two have fucked (IMPLIED) so like. Does that count. Why am I going backwards with intimacy rn. What’s that say about me. Diagnose me in the tumblr replies quick.
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
When I learned it was canon that Maul has nightmares I literally was ecstatic (WHICH SOUNDS SO EVIL) bc one it let me write the one bed trope and have an excuse for it and two actually shows the effects that his trauma has on him !! I love dissecting him like a little bug it’s so fun
Also maul has never been quiet before in his life this mf LOVES to talk (and I LOVE to listen)
my poor baby can't even have a proper night of sleep, but the potential this has for stories !!! like yes baby you can come cuddle with me i'll scare the nightmares away
You learn that Maul doesn’t know how to skip stones. He reacts accordingly to you offering to teach him, of course, by attempting to kill you.
cw. biting, sparring, damn no one ever taught this guy joy and whimsy and he can't STAND it, enemies to whatever the hell you two have going on, sexual tension, that's not how the force works, Darth Maul has issues, Darth Maul speaks Mando'a, blood, marking, you aren't like actively drinking his blood but yeah it gets in there, GN!Reader, Jedi!Reader, post-order 66
wc. 2k
an. I think this can be read as a stand alone but it is a part of my series and will give like the worlds briefest context to like three scenes !
"I think that we should consider it." You say, skipping another rock across the lake.
"You would have us become bounty hunters? May I remind you that both of us actually have bounties and are actively being hunted." Maul rests on the stoop of your shared ship and you can feel him watching you. It's not easy to ingnore persay, but you've gotten so used to feeling his eyes on you that it would honestly be more concerning if he wasn't looking at you. You search for another flat stone on the beach.
"We're both skilled at using the force to cloak our presence and don't have chain codes. Besides each time they do find us we deal with them." You brush off his concerns with ease.
"We do not 'deal with them.' You run away. It would be far more effective to elimate the threat all together." He huffs.
"That's too short term of a solution. Needless deaths will just drive up our bounties and send even more people after us. Lying low is better." Your reprimand is met with another sigh.
"And collecting bounties won't raise the price on our heads? If I didn't know you better, I would say you were just looking for a reason to get into a fight." He moves to stand and you hear the crunch of the pebbled shore beneath his feet as he approches you.
"I don't need someone to fight. I fight with you plenty. It just a better way of getting us credits."
It was easy enough to launder the new Galatic Empire's credits through a few tweaks at any automated banking structure, but transactions like that left a trail. It wouldn't hurt to have a way to make honest money. Well, as honest as blood money could be.
Spotting a smooth stone you reach down to grab it, only for Maul's gloved hand to take it before you could. It forces you to look up at him. His brow was furrowed and his mouth downturned; a typical look of his. You didn't think that you'd ever seen the Zabrak have a pleasant expression on his face.
He was searching for something—he was always searching for something when he looked at you like this—but this time you couldn't figure what it was. You also didnt care enough to peer into his mind to try and figure out. Instead you stood and stuck your hand out to him.
"My rock, please." At your ask, Maul rolls his eyes and turns towards the lake. He throws the stone quite harshly and it's a miracle it doesn't immediately sink. In fact it skips suspiciously far.
"So then, we are to be thugs for hire. How very un-Jedi like of you." His words come out in that drawling tone that he uses specifically to annoy you. It was a shame really. He had a great voice, he was just never saying anything that was worth listening to. You completely ignore his taunting.
"Did you use the Force to skip your stone further?"
Maul was someone who had spent years controlling every part of his nervous system. Even when fighting for his life he was in control of every aspect about himself. Yet now, for the briefest moment you watch him falter. You couldn't help but laugh at the silent confirmation.
"Wait! Maul, come back!" You hide your raucous grin behind a hand as you follow after him. "Do you not know how?"
"My master made little time for me to indulge in such childish nonsense, which is to say there was no time for it at all." He hissed, not looking back at you while he stalked off to the ship. It was your turn to roll your eyes.
"Just say no next time." You grab at his sleeve and tug him back towards you. It does little in terms of quelling his anger but he does stop walking. "I'll teach you."
Your offer is sincere and perhaps it's that sincerity mixed with the fact that you know something that he doesn't that causes him to lash out the way he does.
The smell of ozone is nearly unfamiliar to you but the heat of the blade pointed at your chest is more than enough to realize what's happening. A light saber like his in close quarters seems like a bad idea for both parties, but Maul does not show any hesitation in his threat.
"I see." You say, the words stick to your throat and have to be pulled from your mouth as you're forced to remember just who you've partnered yourself with. You won't apologize—there's nothing to apologize for besides maybe a poor sense of judgement on your part—but you do feel a sort of embarrassment. Like somehow you've over stepped an unspoken boundary. Your hand slides off of his robes. He does not lower his blade.
"Are you going to release me?" Narrowing your eyes at him you don't even attempt to reach for your own light saber. You keep it tucked away in the ship for safe keeping, too afraid of losing it now. Maul had scoffed at you for doing so and in this one moment you were inclined to agree with him.
"No. In fact," he tugs you closer to him, adjusting the sword just so that the heat of it nearly becomes unbearable, "I think that if we're going to be forced to hunt for a living, that you should get some practice in."
With no warning, he shoves you back with the Force and you stumble onto the shore. A second later your light saber is chucked at your feet. You ignite it just quick enough to stop his downward strike.
You slide a leg underneath his own and while you know you cannot topple him like this, you can at least try to offset his balance briefly. It works and you take the opening to roll away from him and stand up into a readied position.
"I should have expected you to cheat." Maul is unaffected by the insult. His grin is vicious and you feel yourself, not for the first time by any means, unsettled by the Zabrak. He couldn't actually mean to kill you, could he? However, relying on anything with him other than his ongoing conquest for revenge was a stupid idea.
You had fought before of course, there was hardly avoiding it with the war. But it had been months since you had to rely on anything but your wits, a blaster, and perhaps if you were feeling especially centered that day, a guiding hand from the Force. The practice was certainly needed but with Maul as your partner? A sinking feeling dragged your heart into your stomach.
"When defeat is conceived in their mind, your opponent has already lost." He lunges at you while delivering a lecture at the same time. Lovely, if he was as adept at giving unhelpful advice as he was with his weapon you actually might die here.
You barely manage to get your saber in front of you to block his oncoming blow. It feels like there's an electric current coursing through your body as you try to keep up with each of his attacks. Your mind is too clouded to focus on the Force, to ask it for any help.
Maul, of course, was yet to show even a slight sign of exertion. In fact, when you swing at him in a wide arc he has the audacity to grab at your wrist and pull you down towards the ground. He tsks, positioning himself above you all too easily. If you hadn't been so scared, you maybe would have been able to feel embarrassed for being overwhelmed so easily. Instead you were trying to make sure his blade didn't sever your head from your body.
"Look at the state of you." He sighs, parrying another attack from you with ease. "And you wanted to be a hunter. Pitiful."
He drops down, his knees on either side of your hips, and leans his full weight onto you now. Your own lightsaber cuts into the bottom side of you jaw and you yelp, trying to squirm away from it to no avail.
"What now? Come on. Figure it out." His words are so soothing it makes you sick when you hear the undertone of glee beneath each one. This is possibly the most content you'd see him and it was just about when he was going to kill you. One of your hands scrambles against the rocky beach looking for something to grab.
Finding something that feels heavy enough, you reach up and slam it into the side of his head as hard as you can. It hits one of his horns but does the job well enough as he hisses and is thrown off balance once more by you. Using the momentum of the moment, you push him to the ground and scramble to be on top of him. Effectively flipping your pervious position.
Slamming your blade down near the junction where his neck and torso met, Maul stops you only just. He doesn't seem phased by the pain or the new arrangement unfortunately and you can feel the opposite end of his lightsaber inch closer towards your thigh. In doing so he'd hurt himself too, but it was obvious he didn't care what damage he did to himself as long as you went down with him.
Recklessly, you flip the ignition key off of your weapon. You press the still warm handle directly to his neck and feel your heart trying to escape from your throat. Neither of you could move without the other killing each other. Maul's grin returned.
"How…dishonorable." It was true. To shut off your blade in order to get closer to your opponent was frowned upon in both Jedi and Sith teachings.
"I hardly think honor matters when someone is attempting to kill you." You try to even out your breathing, thankful that your voice doesn't waver as you speak. "Besides you attacked me without my former knowledge. It was never going to be a fair fight."
He concedes at this at least and shuts off his own blade. You don't relax, keeping the hilt of your lightsaber on his throat. Maul pays little mind to this, his hands coming to rest atop your hips. It's an act of familiarity that has your stomach turning.
"How can you even use that thing?" You ask.
"It is a weapon that is as dangerous to it's opponents as it is to its user." He replies proudly. "Would you like me to teach you how to use it?"
His choice of words does not go unnoticed by you and the gleam in his eye reminds you that before anything else, Maul is a bastard. Before you can think better of it, you lean down and bite his neck. Hard.
The taste of copper explodes in your mouth as his blood leaks out of the sides of your lips. He scruffs the back of your neck and yanks you back, hissing between gritted teeth. Those yellow eyes fix you with a glare that might paralyze others with fear, rightfully so. Instead, you lick the corners of your mouth and don't miss how his gaze follows the movement.
"Just returning the favor." You mumble, sneaking your hand up to trace the edges of the bite now. You have no problem prodding at the tender flesh and when Maul groans at the sensation, you want nothing more than to deepen the wound.
His hand sneaks up to your lips and you part them enough for him to slip two fingers inside. You can feel him move over every ridge of your teeth and you have half a mind to bite him right there. He pulls away before you can give into the urge.
"Are we even now, hut'uun?"
"Hardly."
Something darkens in Maul's gaze as he looks up at you.
"Good."
an. Anytime I learn anything about this guy I feel physically ill btw. What do you mean Palpatine kept you in a cage. What. What the fuck. Anyways learned about the inappropriate use of lightsabers tag. Hmm. Good to know.
dividers by @angeliicide and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump !!!
Palpatine did not teach bro frustration tolerance 🙏 do NOT play uno with this mf he will kill you
One of my favorite things about Mauls character is that bro is so fucking funny it kills me like why do you act the way you do bro….love him tho so I forgive him for the atrocities
the way he acts, and makes the same mistakes multiple times. like silly grow up !! you're repeating cycles !! it's kinda your fault for expecting different !!!
