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“When was the last time you did more than slap a bacta patch on yourself and call it a day?” you ask, looking over at your traveling companion—or rather, your rescuer. It’s a complicated story, and you didn’t ever think that you’d owe any sort of debt to a bounty hunter, but here you are—your manly pride diminished but your awe and prospects of survival increased.
He doesn’t exactly… fidget, but you are a fairly skilled medic with an unfailingly keen eye, and so you notice that he would like to be fidgeting. You notice that even with that beskar helmet that he always has on.
“Bel, I’ve been fine. I did what I had to do, and now we should part ways so I can pick up my next bounty,” the reticent Mandalorian insists. He gestures toward the ramp from his ship, which leads down to a rocky planet you’ve never heard of, but which has a couple small outposts for you to catch a ride yourself back to wherever you decide to go.
“Let me stitch you up,” you press back, insistent to the end. You won’t go, not yet. “I have a medkit here—literally on my hip, right now. Let me pay you back, for the fuel of landing and taking off, at the very least.”
The Mandalorian—you didn’t ask more than once for his name, and he didn’t answer you—is silent for a few moments. And then—“If I let you do this, you’ll let me get back to my business afterwards.”
It’s not a statement, and while you don’t love that he’s treating this like an imposition, but you can’t deny that something about his brusque manner does something for you.
To be fair, you know yourself well enough to know that you’d fall for nearly anyone who showed up to kick ass just as you were being accosted by pirates, regardless of whether they meant to save you while collecting up a whole group of bounties all at once. You’ve always had your heart open and unguarded like that, even in a galaxy that’s dangerous and unpredictable.
“Sure, sure,” you reply flippantly, standing from the crate you’d petulantly put yourself upon while trying to cajole him into accepting medical care. You’re at his side in a flash, inspecting his wounds in the few gaps in his armor. “Take off this piece, and that one too, please.”
The Mandalorian does so silently, and his skin is a nice tan underneath all of the patchwork armor. He stretches his arm out toward you, but he flinches when you touch him.
Like he’s not used to being touched, or at least not used to being touched gently. You’re veritably tender when you hold up his forearm for your examination, the blood of the small gash from the only hit you saw him take welling up in a small, red line that contrasts with your green skin. He probably doesn’t get this kind of touch often, out amongst the galaxy with most of his prolonged contact being with people who want to kill him or run away from him.
Your soft heart squeezes, but not quite in pity. More in longing—you wish he were the kind of man to
“It’s pretty deep,” you comment, settling on a box next to the one he’s sitting on, nearly so close that you can feel the heat of his body. “You might’ve had some nasty side effects just using bacta on the opening. Here—” you fumble for the local anesthetic, your needle and the bio-dissolvable thread you use on patients you don’t think you’ll see again—“just hold still for a minute.”
His silence would be disquieting, except for that he hasn’t spoken more than necessary since you met the man. He takes the anesthetic with some amount of hesitation, like he’s nervous you might stick him with something heavier or put him under. But with the area numbed, you set yourself to work.
The knife from that pirate really had gone deep, but the wound is clean. You’re both lucky that it wasn’t a vibro-knife, you think to yourself as you pull your needle through his skin and tie it off, over and over.
You have to do two rows of stitches, but it’s really no trouble even if he spends the entire time staring at you, completely impassively, through the dark visor of his helmet. The most reaction you get out of him is the natural slight cringing most sentients get when they have to slowly watch their flesh be pierced with something sharp over and over—his control over himself is better than most, though, but then you’re not surprised that he doesn’t mind sharp things going in him. He hadn’t cared about the knife either, instead just punching the offending pirate in the solar plexus and downing her in one go.
You dab the excess blood away with gauze when you’re done, and then slather the top with bacta from a tub you keep in your hip pack. His wound takes up all of the remainder of what you had, and you make a mental note to get more when the Mandalorian inevitably kicks you off his ship.
“I have bacta,” he comments, as you scrape the bottom of the tub with your fingers just to get that last little bit out to make sure there’s a full coating.
“And I have bacta right here,” you reply, running your fingers gently over the closed gash. You paste a bandage over it, so that it won’t dry out or rub bacta all over his fancy armor. “There. That should keep you going for a while yet.”
You’re both quiet for several moments. You notice that he has not pulled his arm away from your hold, and that you likewise have not dropped his arm though you have nothing else that you could possibly do to it, other than things he would probably punch you for.
Finally, after far too long, the Mandalorian shifts his legs and speaks, still without pulling his arm away.
“What do I owe you for the treatment, then?”
You notice that he has not mentioned you promising that you would get off his Razor Crest. Hope flutters somewhere deep inside your chest, maybe around where your second heart is.
“Oh, nothing! I owed you first. My whole life, almost.” You wink at him, hoping you’re not coming off too strong. “It was really my—my pleasure to tend to you.”
“I’ll take you wherever you want to go, then. If we’ve got any luck there might be another big bounty on the way and you can patch me up again before we say goodbye.”
You smile at him, and gratefully settle down on your box as the ramp pulls up to seal off the ship again. “Only if you get me some more bacta. I’m practically useless without it, didn’t you know?”
There’s a soft sound that comes from beneath his helmet, almost like a laugh—wait, was that a laugh? You didn’t know he could.
“I think I can handle that,” he says, finally, gingerly taking his arm back from you. He stands up, makes his way over to the ladder that leads up to the cockpit.
You follow, your second heart still fluttering irrepressibly in your chest.