Boba Smut Sneak Peek
You recognise the armour immediately. It is different to how you remember it, greener, smoother, brighter, but it is unmistakable. Even in the dim light and through the dense crowd filling the space between you. Even though the last time you saw it was through the wavering heat of Tatooine desert. Then, Cobb Vanth had been wearing it. It covered a lot more of the small-town Marshall than it covered of the half-concealed man lounging in the throne above the rabble. Months ago, now. Months since you’d seen Boba Fett too, since he’d pointed it out to you. The sound of his throaty chuckle still echoing in your ears when you’d asked him why he didn’t just take it.
You move around the edge of the room. Slip between the bodies filling it. Other Bounty Hunters, flesh workers, droids serving brightly coloured drinks. Humans and aliens all thronging together. Busier than you had seen Jabba’s place in cycles, not since the death of Jabba himself. You had been green then, new to collecting chips and bargaining for the price of lives. Between the crowd you can still see the figure on the throne, see the viewfinder turn towards a loud peel of high laughter near to the platform. The Zabrak in front of you shifts, and suddenly you have a clear line of sight to the new head of Tatooine. To the man taking over Jubba’s place. You see his broad chest, swelling out from beneath the armour, the tilt of his helmet. And then the crowds moves again, a murmur and swell of bodies, and he is obscured once more.
The anger burns hot, makes your hands shake, makes your legs shake. And yet you seem to exist somewhere in the middle of it, completely calm. Completely still.
You wonder where Boba is. If he is alive. Always wonder if he is alive in the gaps where you exist between knowing him. You think, dimly, that you should leave and try to find him. Use the code you had woken to find programmed into your wrist gauntlet instead of his body next to yours. He always leaves you a code, a new one each time, and you had never used it. You think you should this time.
Someone screams when they see the blaster in your hand. Everything moves quickly after that. The tide of the crowd washing away from you, parting as you stride towards the throne. Shouldering a man when he doesn’t move fast enough. There’s more screaming, people shouting, someone stumbling in the confusion. Harsh Huttese swearing comes from behind you, answered in basic and in binary. No one steps between you and the throne and as the crowd parts you can see him. The man wearing Boba Fett’s armour. And he does not move. Only twists his helmet around slowly to look at you where you stand, alone, blaster aimed directly at him. He’s slouched back against the throne, elbows on the armrests, one hand resting against the top of his thigh. The other fiddles with a small bronze piece of metal, a cog maybe. You don’t care, your focus on the space where you’re sure his eyes are looking back at you. He stares at you, through the visor of Boba’s helmet, and he shifts, let’s one of his legs drop wider open. And in the stolen armour, with your blaster pointed at the gap between the helmet and the chest plate, he seems at home on his throne.
“That armour,” you snarl. Tighten your grip around your blaster. “Does not belong to you.”
The man in Boba Fett’s armour tilts his head. You see someone from the corner of your eye move, but the man on the throne tucks the cog in his hand into his palm and holds up two fingers. Barely even raises his hand. And yet the scurry of movement to your left stops immediately. The whole room holding its breath.
“I said that armour does not belong to you.”
You don’t see the crowd move; you don’t see the bounty hunter move. But you know the feeling of the barrel of a blaster against your temple. The sound of it click as the safety latch comes off in warning. Feel the shudder of it in your skull.
The woman is only a shadow in your peripheries, her voice like smoke too. “That armour is none of your business.”
You don’t move. Don’t flinch away from the blaster against your head. Don’t look away from the man on the throne. And it is him that you talk to. “Take it off.”
“You’re not giving any orders here.” The woman at your side shifts around and you catch just a glimpse of dark hair in tight braids. She shoves the blaster hard against your temple, hard enough that it moves your head. Feel it bruise against the soft skin there. You only narrow your eyes, stare hard into the visor of the helmet. “Lower your blaster, or I blow a hole in your head.”
“Either you take the armour off,” you say. “Or I peel it off your dead body.”
The man on the throne tilts his head down, and you feel the weight of his narrow gaze along the back of your neck. You tighten your grip around the butt of your blaster. Pass your thumb over the back of it.
“That armour,” you say once more. “Does not. Belong. To you.”
The woman at your side tenses her arm, but again, the man on the throne holds up the same two fingers. You can feel her anger, this woman with her blaster at your head, see her turn her whole head to stare up at him as well. Slowly he curls them back down, and you see he is still holding whatever cog had been in his hand. Turns his palm up. And although you cannot see, and he does not move his head, you are sure he is looking down at it. Feel yourself begin to shake, that whatever piece of scrap metal in his hand holds his attention greater than your life. Greater than his own, with your blaster aimed at his neck. And then he chuckles, a rich deep sound, even through the vodocor in the helmet.
The sound of his voice wraps around your shoulders, rests along the back of your neck, coils the length of your spine and sits in the base of your belly. Low and deep. He flexes his thigh as he sits forward, leans heavy on his elbow, still sitting against the armrest. The blaster at your temple does not lower, but the woman eases the pressure against your head. You feel your heart pounding in your chest, in your tight grip on your weapon, in your ears. The room silent and heavy, suspended. On the cusp of something. That familiar voice, edged with a husk. And even though you know, even though you can feel it, that you know him, your mind is buzzing. Full of static, so full it is blank.
He chuckles again. Leans first one elbow against his knee, and then the other. And you know what his smile looks like beneath the helmet. Hear it in his voice. “That’s my girl.”
