Stardust
“Sit.” The word cut through the room, calm and absolute.
Din froze.
Boba saw it immediately. The instinctive obedience. The shame that followed it. The way Din seemed to resent himself for responding before he had chosen to.
Interesting. Dangerous.
Boba softened his voice, but not the command beneath it.
“You are not in my throne room,” he said. “You are not in your covert. I am not your Armorer. If you want to leave, the door is there.”
Din did not look at the door.
“If you stay,” Boba continued, “you sit down and let me check the wound you are pretending not to favor.”
A pause.
Then, slowly, Din sat.
Boba said nothing about the victory.
He crossed the room and crouched in front of him, scanner in hand. Din stayed painfully still as Boba moved the device along his side. There it was: bruising beneath the ribs, a poorly sealed burn near the shoulder, strain through the right arm.
Nothing fatal. All ignored.
“Not injured,” Boba repeated dryly.
Din said nothing.
Boba set the scanner aside. “You make a habit of this?”
“What?”
“Bleeding quietly.”
Din’s helmet tilted down toward him. “It is not important.”
Boba’s hand stilled over the clasp of Din’s pauldron.
There were answers to that. Sharp ones. Cruel ones. True ones.
He chose the simplest.
“You are.”
Din stopped breathing.
Only for a moment.
But Boba heard it.
He unclasped the pauldron with careful hands, giving Din enough time to stop him. Din did not. The beskar came free with a soft metallic sound and was set respectfully on the table.
Piece by piece, Boba removed only what he needed to reach the burn.
No more.
He did not ask for the helmet.
He would not.
That mattered. He could feel the moment Din realized it mattered.
The silence shifted again. Less brittle now. Not safe, not yet, but no longer sharp enough to kill.
Boba cleaned the wound. Din’s gloved fingers curled against his thigh, but he made no sound.
Of course he didn’t.
“You can react,” Boba said.
“I am.”
“No,” Boba said, pressing the bacta patch into place with more gentleness than his reputation would have allowed. “You are enduring. There is a difference.”
Din’s visor lowered toward him.
Boba looked up.
For a strange second, he wished he could see his eyes.
The thought came uninvited. He pushed it aside.
My first time writing about BobaDin (my first time trying to make a fic), this is a fragment of the story I'm writing.
