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starqueensthings · 2 months

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WARNINGS: elusions to a traumatic past and an accompanying verbalized dislike for the opposite sex (June). Medical anxiety (Howzer). Moderately graphic descriptions of medical injuries, corrective procedures (incl what a cauterization might look/smell like), needles, the beginnings of an anxiety attack (June). RATING: 16+ for mature themes, mild to moderate whump, mild angst (and a heavy dash of fluff because why the heck not lol). WC: 3500ish. (This chapter and the previous were never intended to be separated but they accumulated to nearly 8k words, and snipping certain aspects of this encounter in the name of brevity would only do a disservice to the story, so I apologize for how abruptly this chapter transitions from the last). PLEASE ENSURE YOU’VE READ THE FOREWORD BEFORE PROCEEDING FOR AN IN-DEPTH DESCRIPTION OF WHAT DEGREE OF CONTENT YOU CAN EXPECT THROUGHOUT THIS STORY.

Foreword | Prev | Next

Howzer’s eyes had thankfully done away with that ablaze and piercing stare in her temporary absence, though for how much of the intensity they’d lost, that twinkling set of amber had retained all of the warmth they seemed unable to entirely shed.

“Don’t know if I like the look of those,” he jested, though the way his eyes darted between her purple hands grossly betrayed the relentless facade of that feigned poise.

“Doesn’t warm them up, unfortunately, but at least you won’t catch my cooties,” June chuckled, hoping a dash of humour and a quirky wiggle of the fingers might soften the emotional toll she knew would accompany her next assertion. “Captain… I need to give you a pain injection.”

The sfotness of his expression hardened near-instantly, jaw tensing and forcing his lips into a frown that nowhere near-suited him as well as its round cheeked counterpart, and June could only grimace apologetically as he cocked an embittered eyebrow at her.

“We can’t use topical numbant on broken skin,” she beseeched in response to his silent disapproval. “The risk of trapping bacteria in the bloodstream is too high when the wound is as… open… as yours is. We can rawdog this if that’s really what you want, but you’ll have to try and sit still while I'm working. Or you can let me give you an in—”

“I can sit still,” he argued instantly, offering a shrug of the shoulders that was simply too passive for him to have understood the severity of the imminent procedure. “I’m great at sitting still.”

“While someone burns your skin back together with a kriffing hot needle?!”

Watching her words disintegrate that iron-clad intransigence would have been near-comical had his eyes not widened to something that too-closely resembled a trauma response, and despite knowing her brutal honesty was likely the quickest method to ensuring the full comprehension she needed from him before proceeding, her heart sank to lay with her stomach as she watched her words initiate an arrant downturn in his demeanour.

“Well geez, doc,” he grumbled, shirking from her pleading gaze by hanging his chin to his chest. “Why don’t you just give it to me straight…”

“I’m sorry,” she spoke quietly after swallowing the snort that near-followed his unexpected sardonicism. “Would it maybe help if I showed you the injector? You can see how it works and how tiny it actually is?”

“Maybe.” His response was near-silent, eyes flickering upward to hers only long enough to betray the decorum to which he still ardently clung.

Finally acceding to that inexplicable need to comfort him, and forsaking her better professional judgment, June clambered backward onto the bed beside him, that hovering cot momentarily swaying under the addition of her weight as she shimmied backward until they sat shoulder to shoulder.

“This is the actual USI tool,” she advised him, pulling the Universal Serum Injector from the previously collected pile of tools behind her and a small, orange-capped, crystal vial from her breast pocket. “And this lil guy is the Nociceptor Blocking Agent, or NBA serum. The vial clicks into the injector like this—” she snapped that tiny clear tube into place and pulled a small trigger to eject the cap, “—and the little orange top protecting the needle just kinda pops off. After that, it's as simple as poking it gently into the supraclavicular space right here at the base of your neck and waiting a moment for it to work.”

“And that’s it?” he asked, jaw shifting under the duress of how aggressively he continued to grind those teeth while his eyes remained affixed on the dinky little pin that would allegedly bring forth an excruciating death. “That’s all?”

“I promise.”

“Alright,” he finally conceded, shifting his attention upward to her eyes. “I trust you.”

Her stomach lurched at the way his gaze bore into hers, softly… acceptingly… unassertively… granting her the gifts of both his agency in that moment, and the degree of trust to which these always-suspecting soldiers notoriously only offered each other. Bottom lip nestling itself between her teeth to bridle the atypically bashful smile threatening to emerge, she simply nodded her gratitude and turned away from him.

“I’ll count down from three,” she cautioned, sneakers slapping atop the steel floor as she leaped somewhat ungracefully from the bed and oriented herself in front of him. “Three—” she kept the injector hidden at her side. “Two—” a gentle hand placed on his shoulder to brace his skin for impact. “One.”

The span of a tense blink over those amber eyes saw her expertly plunge the tiny needle home and release the entire vial of that magical serum. By the time his gaze returned to hers, one eye at a time, she’d deftly retracted the empty container and chucked it into the “sharps” bin beside the bed.

“Are you kidding me?” he demanded, the grin peeling across his lips surprising her enough to still her hands as they reached for the bottle of disinfectant. “That’s all?!”

“That’s all,” she answered with a small shrug.

“Maker, I am going to murder Gauge when I see him.”

“Who?” June asked, as she unscrewed the lid and peeled back the sanitary foil sticker put in place over the mouth of the bottle to prevent any unwanted microbes from contaminating its contents.

“Gauge. He’s my medic,” Howzer explained with eyes crinkled to near-closed, shoulders shaking beneath each huff of his amusement. “He’s in for it, now. Kriffing sadist jabs that thing into us like it's a spoon.”

“A sadist combat medic?” June snorted, screwing the cap back into place. “That’s a very worrying combination. You better try and stay on his good side.”

“He better stay on mine,” Howzer asserted, shaking his head.

The all-consuming (and mouth watering) recognition of his partial nudity did not make an appearance in her awareness until she sat back on her heels, eyes quickly scanning the position she’d meticulously positioned him in after climbing onto the cot beside him. By leaning him on an incline away from her and resting his arm innocuously atop his head, she’d unknowingly provided herself with both optimal wound access, and an unobstructed view of his remarkable physique. The only thing darker than the smattering of hair south of his navel was the brown of nipples near-perfectly perched on either side of the most divinely-crafted chest she’d ever seen. And rivaling every ridge, every contour of that muscular torso, were arms so immaculately sculpted that the only fight she could wage against the heat boiling below her skin was to strip off her now smothering labcoat and toss it onto the chair next to his armour.

And though she continued to cling to that necessary professionalism as fervently as he’d initially clung to his own stubborn refusal for pain control, there was absolutely no preventing her eyes from hungrily roaming atop the ripples of his ribcage as she scooched into position behind him, and attempting to stay focused as she squeezed that plastic bottle of saline overtop his wound was near impossible as those defined ridges of muscles continued to revolt against every drop of cold liquid trickling down his abdomen.

Something near relief pulled a sigh from her lips when that bottle finally emptied. Patting the wound dry with clean gauze in her right hand, she deftly pulled the medscanner from her pocket with her left and spun the dial on the front to reach the Hematology menu. Once that tiny infrared beam had confirmed there were no lingering signs of any foreign cells or bacteria, she stowed that invaluable tool on the bed beside her and reached, instead, for the cauterizing pen now emitting tiny puffs of white smoke.

“So what happened to you?” she probed moments later, ensuring Howzer’s eyes had deviated from that smoking needle before carefully touching it to his skin. “Get in a fight with a vibroblade wielding droid?”

“I wish,” he snorted. “It was… well, pretty stupid. The guys and I were transferring possession of our base to the relieving battalion. I gave the okay for the gunships to take off and then got distracted catching up with a buddy I haven’t seen since graduating. One of my men saw me getting left behind and decided shooting a grappling hook at me would be the best way to get me on board.”

“Maker have mercy,” she scoffed, brows furrowing in concentration as methodically guided the white hot tool atop that separated skin. “That’s idiotic.”

“Might have been cool if it worked,” Howzer answered. “Geo’s a smart guy, but doesn’t always think things through before he acts. He’s on my list after Gauge for the next time I feel— what's that smell?!”

She barely had time to disengage that red hot pin before every muscle in his abdomen contracted under the urgent and desperate effort of sitting up.

“Don’t look!” she snapped at him as he hastened to peer under his arm in her direction. Clamping one gloved hand atop that crisp and darkened line of fused skin she knew would likely make his stomach turn, she attempted to block his view with the palm of the other. “Trust me, it’s a sore sight right now, especially if you’re squeamish.”

She peeked around her palm, lips pursing to keep from smiling at the sight of him perched up on his free elbow, nose scrunched in utter repugnance as the putrid smell of burnt flesh continued to waft upward into his nose.

“Is… is that the smell of—?”

“Sure is,” she answered curtly. “And it smells as crispy as it looks so while you’re working on not looking, maybe try not breathing too.”

“‘Try not breathing…’” he repeated in little more than a whisper, dropping carefully back onto his side, and June was relieved to hear a chuckle supporting his words. “I know you’re the doctor, but I feel like breathing might be helpful here…”

“My boss would absolutely lay an egg if he heard me offer such heinous medical advice.” Her eyes narrowed under the embrace of genuine amusement as laughter poured from her lips, the image of Challa’s newly introduced perma-scowl forming as clearly in her mind's eye as if he’d been standing at her elbow. “That and the daily reminder of all the cold-hand complaints he has to field from my patients…”

Flooded with a wave of foreboding, June remembered the meeting Challa had requested in his office upon completion of this procedure, and the implications of what his request undoubtedly meant had her eyes near-rolling and the smile yanked from her lips. Challa didn’t often demand a private audience… at least, not with her. The last adventure into the intimidating confines of his windowless space had included a harsh castigation for the excessive overtime she’d shouldered over the last few weeks, and to request that she start walking around between surgeries with her hands nestled into her armpits so he could get through a day without having to apologize on behalf of her poor circulation.

After permitting a sigh laden with repressed dread to pass through now frowning lips, she sat back and peered down at the result of her handiwork. Despite having to battle the distraction of the dimples teasing her from the base of his back, she’d managed to complete a remarkably clean repair job; the cauterized edges of what used to be that oozing laceration were both crisp and dark, indicating the ideal clinical end point for such a procedure. After powering off that trusty tool and placing it back beside the computer, she retrieved the tub of burn salve perched only inches from her hip.

“Can I tell you something now?” Howzer spoke suddenly as she uncapped that pot of that sulfur-smelling ointment.

“Sure,” she answered while scooping a generous amount of the orange paste from its container and beginning to smear it carefully atop his side.

“Your fingers are freakishly cold… but anyone who complains about the hands that saved their lives, maybe doesn’t deserve to have been saved in the first place.”

Whatever distant presumption she’d formulated in that microsecond between granting him that unnecessary permission and hearing his opinion voiced, it was nowhere-near matched the unexpectedly profound admonition that left those now-smiling lips.

She paused, hands stilling in their motion of reaffixing the lid back on the tub as she fought to wrangle the dozen or so fundamental reasons why she did not agree with him… and the one reason she did.

“Doesn’t everyone deserve to be saved?” she settled on asking, collecting one of the several bacta patches she’d grabbed earlier.

“Do you actually believe that? Or is that something they tell you to believe?”

His challenge came so simply… so earnestly, it was as if she’d somehow offered him the exact response that he’d expected, and despite the bold nature of his rebuttal, there was no sign of regret lingering in those charmingly superficial lines around his eyes; his gaze did not shift to timidly follow the movements of her hands as they proceeded to tear off the paper backing from that patch but, instead, remained intently searching her eyes for the truth.

”Well, there’s an exception to every rule,” June explained, feeling her cheeks begin to flush under the duress of the vulnerability he had suddenly requested from her. “But surely everyone deserves the same chance at life?”

He offered only a contemplative hum in response, watching her lower that clear polymer patch onto his skin, and ensuring its complete adhesion by pressing firmly around its perimeter.

“Who’s your exception?”

She’d barely begun to crumple the backing paper when he spoke again, pushing himself back to a seated position so quickly that his return to such close proximity nearly froze the breath in her lungs. Yet, more paralyzing in that moment was the audacious probes into her personal beliefs; his brazen yet polite demands for clues as to who she was beyond this already untraditional doctor-patient exchange. And as her gaze flickered upwards from her rubbish laden hand, attempting to find even a glimpse of derision or contempt between those dark, relaxed brows was a feat near impossible, as those honeyed eyes had upheld much of the same twinkle that had already proven held the power to dismantle her.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she answered atop an artificial chuckle.

It was the most she could offer on the small waft of breath her lungs had managed to thaw, and how close she’d come to conceding his tacit request… to actually uttering her truth… to divulging that forbidden secret… unsettled her more thoroughly than any inexplicable degree of attraction had since stepping into 18-S.

“Yes. I would.”

He leaned ever closer, eyes dancing across her features, each lagging blink wordlessly communicating that he’d sit there for eternity if it promised him even a glimmer of her being behind the guise she upheld with a labcoat; that there was some unidentifiable quality about her that he found equally as enamoring; that perhaps if he poked carefully enough at certain spots in this facade of hers, he may actually truly see her.

“Another time, Captain,” she whispered, wrenching her eyes from his and climbing hurriedly off the bed.

“Will there be one?” he asked before she’d even taken a step.

She looked downward to her shoes and the floor firmly beneath them, eyes unfocussing, heart thumping heavily in her ears, lip twitching beneath the sudden urge to hide itself between her teeth lest she say more. She swallowed.

“Keep trying to grapple your way into a gunship and there might be.”

She didn’t turn to watch that grin peel across his lips, instead making a direct line for the Cleanser Tube to retrieve his long-forgotten shirt. Unable to meet his eyes again, she simply tossed it in his direction, muttering a “you can get dressed,” before hurrying to the safety of her near-hidden perch behind the holocomputer and jabbing it back to life.

A prickle erupted atop her skin entirely different from the series of others that had accompanied each bashful smile since the beginning of this somewhat atypical encounter. She was suddenly uncomfortable; suddenly sweating as if she’d just been thrown center stage and was attempting to hide from the beaming spotlight that she’d never asked to be in; suddenly yearning to have her labcoat back on; suddenly and horrifyingly unable to refute the fortuitous connection to this person that she had once tried to label as mere pity, and suddenly desperate to escape it.

Most dismaying was the nearly irrepressible urge to allow him. To tell him. To share. To accept. Blind and potent attraction to someone was one thing; pity was another… but this superseded all other aspects of this precariously flirtatious conversation despite having not been flirtatious in nature at all, and for the first time in a long time, she felt unequipped… unprepared…

‘You hate men,’ she reminded herself, hoping that long-chanted mantra may hold the power to simply erase Howzer from both this room and her awareness.

“Layer two subdermal laceration–” she typed near frantically as he stood to redress. “–Located quadrant 6... 18.4 cm in length… full thickness separation. Hematology shows no evidence of infection or foreign cells. Patient may experience slight hypertrophic scarring. Treated in situ with precision cauterization, Nifuran burn cream, and bacta patch. Escharotomy is not required at this time. Aftercare discussed. Patient discharged forthwith. Care to be continued by CM.”

Piece by piece, his armour clicked back into place, years of practicing those repetitive yet crucial motions had evidently rendered him a near-master at recladding that broad frame in record time, and chancing even the most fleeting glance in his direction saw her increasingly disappointed in herself; the image of his semi naked form now utterly eradicated by the sheer majesty of seeing his tall figure encompassed in that dominating kit.

She could delay no longer, and feigning ignorant of his perch by the door where he stood patiently waiting with her labcoat draped atop the cleanest section of his arm, dwindled in credibility with every extended second she took to type and retype those same treatment notes.

“There in one sec,” she told him without offering him the respect of eye contact, powering off the computer and stalking back toward the storage cupboard to collect a series of other necessities.

He smiled as she approached moments later, eyeing the assortment of supplies she’d clamped somewhat awkwardly in her still purple hands.

“These are for you,” she told him, the desperation to leave his presence and seek the respite of her office intensifying with every second that he cast a smile in her direction. “This little tub is burn cream— it smells like rotten eggs but it’ll help exacerbate the healing process. That patch needs changing every 24 hours, and sooner if the area gets wet so here’s a bunch more. Twist a corner to rip the paper on the back, and then press hard around the edges to activate the adhesive. It’s in a bit of an odd spot, so Gauge may have to help you. He can access my treatment notes using any MedBay computer if he needs them.”

He took each product with a nod of understanding, turning each over in his hands briefly before pocketing them in a cargo pouch nestled on his lower back. Unable to withstand another moment with the undulation in her stomach, she offered Howzer one last smile before turning toward the door.

“Don’t forget this,” he said as she prodded a button on the control panel to free her.

“Oh, right,” she scoffed, collecting her lab coat from his arm with her lip between her teeth and pulling it back over her shoulders.

“Uh– doc?” Howzer probed as she pivoted to enter the chaos awaiting her across the threshold.

“Yeah, Captain.”

“Er… thank you for– you know. It was really nice to meet you. And— and I’m happy you’re not a droid.”

Though his hands uselessly shifted that battered helmet tucked below his arm, he upheld the integrity of his gaze as she peered over her shoulder at him.

“It’s June.” She answered without thinking, the confession swinging a right hook in the direction of both her professional and personal judgment. “My name’s June.”

She left 18-S without another word, without lingering to digest his reaction, without bothering to offer the proper valediction that she should have. She needed her office, she needed to breathe air that wasn’t polluted with the undeniable connection to this random man, and she needed it now.

Foreword | Prev | Next

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