⋆⭒˚。⋆ For The Act ⋆⭒˚。⋆
🌹 Pairings: Echo X F!Reader
🌹 Word count: 2.3k
🌹 Written for @gar-romance-month with the prompts: fake relationship and friends to lovers
Warnings: None (other than thing bring cringe and rushed so I am sorry if it isn't up to my usual standard) Plot Summary: The Batch (mainly Wrecker) keep trying to set Echo up with a date at every stop. In order to help Echo get his squadmates off his back, you agree to be in a fake relationship. After weeks off performing a relationship, the two of you can't tell the difference between the act and the real thing.
It started because Wrecker couldn't keep his mouth shut.
"I'm just sayin’," Wrecker announced to no one and everyone, dropping onto one of the Marauder's cockpit seats, "that Nola from the supply depot was askin’ about you, Echo. Specifically. By name."
Echo didn't look up from the console he was running diagnostics on. "No."
"You didn't even let me finish!"
"You were going to ask me if I wanted you to set something up." He turned a dial. "No."
Wrecker looked at you. His grin was enormous. You looked back down at your work, because if you made eye contact with him right now you were going to laugh and Echo would know you were on Wrecker's side, which you weren't.
This was a recurring event. Every port, every depot, every settlement with more than four people in it, someone decided Echo needed a partner.
The thing was, it had taken the squad an embarrassingly long time to find Echo's weak spot. Hunter got his by mentioning any amount of effort he put into his hair. Tech's was any implication that he might have gotten something wrong. Wrecker didn't really have one, which was deeply unfair. Echo had been impervious to everything until three weeks ago when someone floated the idea of setting him up with a contact on Felucia and something in his expression cracked. Wrecker, of course, grabbed onto that immediately.
Since then it had become the squad's favorite sport.
"She has great aim," Wrecker offered. "You like aim."
Echo picked up his tool again. "I'm done talking about this."
Wrecker caught your eye and mouthed he likes aim with visible joy.
You smirked and pressed your lips together to keep from laughing, but took the moment to assess Echo’s less-than-pleased expression.
You knew Echo hated it. He'd actually told you once, sitting on the ship's ramp while everyone else was asleep. He said it made him feel like people were looking at him and only seeing what was missing. Just like the scomp where his hand used to be. The cybernetic legs that carried him with a soldier's posture regardless, back straight, chin level. His body, whether human or machine, still remembered the Republic even when everything else had changed.
You sat with that thought for a long time after.
You brought it up the next morning, when the ship was quiet and the two of you were running inventory in the cargo hold.
"I have a solution to your problem," you said.
Echo looked up from the crate he was logging.
You set down a supply kit. "If you tell everyone we're together, they'll drop it."
He looked up. His brows pulled in slightly and he set the datapad down, eyes on your face.
"That's going to create other problems," he said.
"Like what?"
The corner of his mouth moved. "Hunter will see through it."
"Hunter sees through everything and doesn't say anything. He'll let it go." You shrugged. "It stops the setups. You stop getting that look on your face every time Wrecker opens his mouth. Everybody wins."
"What look?"
"The one you're doing right now." His jaw was tight and his eyes had gone somewhere flat, the look of a man waiting for something unpleasant to be over.
Then he looked up at you, and the tension in his jaw eased a little. "You'd actually do that for me?"
"Yeah," you said. "I would."
He nodded slowly. "Alright. Thank you."
You decided to tell them at dinner.
It felt like the lowest stakes version of the thing. Everyone was tired, Hunter was focused on the nav charts, Tech was eating with one hand and datapad-ing with the other. Wrecker was the only one fully present, which was either ideal or the worst possible scenario depending on how you looked at it.
You were sitting next to Echo already. You looked at him, a silent whenever you're ready, and he looked back at you for just a second before turning to the table.
"We're together," he said. Simple.
You shifted closer to him and wrapped both hands around his arm, the way you had seen people do. Easy, natural, like you had done it before. It was for the room. You knew it was for the room. His arm was warm under your hands and solid in the way everything about Echo was solid, and you looked at the table and told yourself to focus.
The ship hummed as the eyes of the rest of the Batch all fixated on two two of you. Your heart was doing something stupid and fast in your chest that you were hoping wasn't visible.
Wrecker put his fork down. He looked at Echo. He looked at you. He looked back at Echo.
"CALLED IT," he bellowed, loud enough that Hunter's head came up sharply and Tech's datapad slipped out of his hand. "I called it, I said it, nobody listened to me—"
"You did not call it," Tech said, retrieving the datapad from the floor.
"I implied it."
"You implied nothing, you were actively trying to set him up with someone else yesterday—"
"That was a test."
"That was not a test, Wrecker. A test is a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something. You have no idea what a test is—"
You felt Echo exhale beside you, slow and quiet, and when you glanced at him his eyes were closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. When he opened them he looked at you, and the corner of his mouth pulled up just slightly, and something in your chest stopped racing and went warm instead.
You shifted your hold on Echo's arm and leaned your head against his shoulder, because Wrecker was watching and you were supposed to be convincing. Echo went still for half a second. Then his posture shifted, just slightly, making room for you.
"See," Wrecker said, pointing at the two of you with his fork like he had just proven something in to the Galactic Senate.
"Eat your food," Echo said.
Hunter looked at you both across the table. He didn't say anything. He just nodded once, like he'd already known and had simply been waiting for you to catch up, and went back to his charts.
Omega leaned over and grabbed your arm with both hands. "I knew it," she whispered, delighted.
"Wrecker's rubbing off on you," you told her.
From across the table Wrecker was still going. "I want everyone to acknowledge that I saw this coming—"
"Nobody is acknowledging that," Echo said.
The table got loud again with Tech and Wrecker going back and forth, and you lifted your head off Echo's shoulder. He didn't say anything about it. Neither did you. But you were aware of the warmth his shoulder had left behind and you focused very carefully on your food for the rest of dinner.
The plan you set into motion worked immediately and completely.
Wrecker celebrated by making himself as involved as possible. He started referring to you as a unit, saved you adjacent seats without being asked, and physically relocated Tech once so you could sit next to Echo at a briefing, which Tech objected to at length while Wrecker ignored him entirely.
The briefing was the first time it felt like actual pressure. Hunter was running through the Genosis job, holomap lit blue in the centre of the room, and you were aware of Wrecker and Omega watching the two of you. Echo must have felt it too because his arm came up along the back of your seat, loose and easy, like it was nothing. Like he had done it a hundred times.
He, of course, hadn't, but you kept your eyes on the holomap. Hunter was talking about entry points. You retained next to none of it.
At some point Echo leaned forward to point something out on the map and the arm dropped. When he sat back he didn't put it up again. You didn't know whether you were relieved or not, but you forced yourself to not think about it.
"This is getting out of hand," Echo said after a few weeks of doing this dance they did. The two of you were standing in the Marauder's small corridor while Wrecker's voice carried through from the cockpit, loud and pleased with himself.
"Yeah, two rooms,” he told their contact, “One for the squad and one for my brother and his girl."
You and Echo looked at each other.
He moved toward the cockpit first. You followed, and by the time you got there Wrecker had already ended the comm and was turning around with the expression of someone who had done something very generous and wanted credit for it.
"You're welcome," he said.
"I didn't ask you to do that," Echo said.
"No, but I did it anyway. You're together now. You need your own room." He paused. "You're welcome," he said again, since the first time hadn't landed.
You stepped around Echo and touched Wrecker's arm. "That was really thoughtful," you said, and it came out warm. "Thank you."
Wrecker's whole face opened up. "See," he said, pointing at you and looking at Echo. "That's how you respond."
You turned back to Echo. He was looking at you with an expression that was doing its best to stay neutral and not entirely succeeding. You gave him a small smile and mouthed it's fine.
Something in his shoulders dropped half an inch.
"Thank you, Wrecker," he said, with the energy of a man who had lost a battle gracefully.
Wrecker clapped him on the back hard enough to stagger him. "That's what I thought."
Genosis was loud and warm and the streets from the landing pad to the depot were packed enough that you and Echo moved close together without forcing it.
Omega was just behind with Hunter and Wrecker was somewhere further back, loudly narrating the market stalls to Tech, which meant the whole squad had a clear sightline and you both knew it.
Echo's hand found yours. You looked straight ahead and matched his pace and told yourself this was the job.
A vendor called out from a stall to your left and you instinctively turned to look. When you turned back a strand of hair had fallen across your face. Echo reached over without dropping your hand and tucked it behind your ear, the scomp tracing a cool, careful line along your cheekbone. Sure, you guys had this act going on, but you hadn’t been this close to his face before. You could see the faint scar at his jaw, the steadiness in his eyes, the unusual absence of self-consciousness in what he'd just done.
Then he was looking ahead. Just keeping up appearances.
You faced forward and said nothing.
The room Wrecker had booked was small, which you suspected had less to do with the depot's availability and more to do with Wrecker specifically requesting it. There were two narrow windows, a table, and one bed.
Echo stood in the doorway and took it in without expression.
"I'll take the floor," he said the moment the door swung shut.
"Echo."
"It's fine. I've slept in worse." He was already moving toward the corner, pulling his jacket off and folding it with the automatic precision of someone who had spent years making do with whatever space a bunk or a battlefield offered.
His jaw was tight.
You sat on the edge of the bed and watched him arrange nothing in particular in the corner and felt something pull at you that you'd been ignoring for longer than you wanted to admit.
"You don't have to sleep on the floor," you said.
"Well, I'm not putting you on the floor."
"That's not what I said."
He stopped. His back was still to you. He stood there long enough that the street noise outside filled the room, someone laughing below, music drifting up thin and distant, and then he turned around.
"This got complicated," he said.
"I know."
"I don't want to make things strange between us."
You looked at him. "Things are already strange. They've been strange since I suggested this mess."
He crossed the room and sat on the other end of the bed, forearms on his cybernetic knees, eyes on the floor.The silence stretched long enough that you started to regret opening your mouth.
Then he said, "I stopped pretending a while ago."
You looked at him.
"That's why I didn't want things to get strange between us." He kept his eyes on the floor. "Not because of the cover. Because I didn't want you to find out and have it change everything."
"When did it stop being pretend for you," you asked.
He was quiet for a moment. "The briefing. You had your head on my shoulder and I spent the whole time trying to remember what Hunter was saying."
You laughed once, short and surprised. "Me too."
He looked up at that, eyebrows raised.
"I kept telling myself I was helping a friend," you said. "And I was. I meant it when I offered. But somewhere in the middle of all of it I stopped having to pretend to want to be close to you, and I didn't know what to do with that." You looked at your hands. "I didn't want to lose you over it. You're my friend first. That mattered more than whatever this was."
The room was quiet.
"Is," he said.
You looked up.
"Whatever this is," he said. "Not was."
He reached over and his hand covered yours, warm and steady. He didn't say anything else for a moment. With Echo, you had learned, silence usually meant he was making sure he got the next part right.
"I don't want to pretend anymore," he said. "I want the actual thing."
You turned your hand over under his.
"That's what I want too," you told him.
Outside the city kept its noise and the music floated up from somewhere below. The two of you stayed in the room that night, and none of it felt like pretending.
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