im back and i got one actually in the spirit of the prompt this time !! reading comprehension !! casablanca w/ fox/fives/echo (or any combination thereof, there are many possibilities contained within that movie)
hiiii! thanks for sending this one, i've been in a writing funk lately and this was just what i needed ❤️
established relationship, fives lives au, 940w.
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They’re deep enough Fox can’t quite see the sky when he looks up. He approaches the edge of the landing pad and looks down instead—the void looks back. They’re on one of the dead levels, and the chute is dark almost all the way down. Now and then something flickers in the distance: Fox knows better than to use his bucket’s HUD to find out what it is, even if part of him wants to.
The small Corrie station set up in the abandoned hangar doesn’t exist. The shock troopers on shift aren’t actually there; neither is Fox. They are all ghosts haunting a place that isn’t real, and if Fox was a different man he’d ponder the weight of such an idea, but he isn’t, so he doesn’t. He stands with his hands linked at his back and his head tilted, his men’s quiet conversion filling the empty hangar.
The rumble of the swoop’s engines fills the quiet. Fox blinks and looks away from the flashing lights beneath his feet, his boots quiet on the hangar’s worn tarmac, and looks to his left. He exhales—just the once—before clicking open his comm channel with his men.
“Corporal. Movement half a click westward,” he says.
A beat, and then: “Understood, sir.”
By the time the bike lands next to Fox, Corporal Fee and Carrie are gone, and Fox is all alone in the hangar with the small freighter.
It also doesn’t exist. Fox can’t quite remember who used to be its owner: it doesn’t matter. It was, and now it doesn’t, it has just become a redacted or corrected line in an unread report.
Fives waits until Echo is off the swoop bike to follow. They’re both wearing civvies, and they both look remarkably comfortable in them. A few months with the 501st, ARC training, a year and a half of intelligence operations in Separatist-controlled worlds. They are younger than Fox by almost a year, but in a way he’s the greener of the three. He might have survived the first battle of Geonosis, but he then was sent to Coruscant, to stand guard in places that don’t exist.
Echo waits by the swoop while Fives comes closer. Fox recognises the stubborn tilt to his chin, and that’s why he doesn’t take off his bucket. He waits, hands linked at his back and heart beating hard in his throat, and when Fives stops in front of him, he doesn’t reach out.
“The ship’s going to Kuat,” Fox tells the two of them. “You should have enough fuel and rations to make it there. Name’s Cant. Everything’s as legit as I could make it, but be careful.”
Whatever happens next is up to them. Fox doubts they’ll be smart about it, but he trusts them—he trusts Echo—to be stupid in clever ways.
“Come with us,” Fives says then. Fox closes his eyes. He breathes in, breathes out. He pushes through the awful longing in his chest.
“No.”
Fives presses his lips together. He’s not done. Fox ignores him, looks at Echo over his shoulder—he can’t help it. He’s watching them.
Fox doesn’t actually know him—he didn’t have the time. He was dead, and then he was back on Coruscant, and now he is leaving again.
He looks better than he did that first morning when he sought out Fox in his office in the Rotunda. He’s filled out, not as pale—the harsh lines around his mouth have softened. His hair is starting to grow out.
“Fox—”
“It’s a two-seater, Fives. Crew of two,” Fox tells him, and he knows it won’t work, but it is how it is.
Echo approaches them then. He places his flesh hand on Fives’s shoulder and stays there, and says nothing. His eyes are fixed on Fox, and Fox finds he doesn’t like the way Echo looks at him—like he understands.
Fox steps around and away, shakes off Fives’s hand when it tries to close around his wrist. He needs to return to the surface—he can’t be missed. He’ll drive the swoop to the back of the Corrie barracks and take a transport from there after destroying the transponder.
“Take off your helmet, commander,” Echo says then.
Fox pauses. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t care what they think. If he doesn’t take it off they will know he doesn’t want them to see his face; if he does, they’ll—
The click and hiss of the bucket’s seal is too loud in the quiet. Fox blinks at the shadows within the abandoned hangar. The warm, damp atmosphere is a shock, as it is the stink of old tibanna and rotting garbage that seems to fill the whole level. Fox closes his eyes for a beat before turning to look at them, bucket held safely in the crook of his arm.
He raises an eyebrow at them. Echo’s smiling slight, the gesture quietly smug. At his side, Fives looks quietly heartbroken.
Fox looks away. He clears his throat. “Well?”
He expects Fives’s kiss: Fox sees him coming, and he closes his eyes and gives in to Fives’s warm hands, to the familiar taste of his skin, salt and GAR-cleanser and clean sweat.
He doesn’t expect Echo’s. He reaches for Fox with his metal hand, the crude prosthesis clacking against Fox’s pauldron, gripping the plasteel with terrible strength, and then Echo’s mouth, his chapped lips against Fox’s.
It’s clumsy and too short. Echo leans away and licks his lips.
“You’ll have to do better next time,” he says. Fives snorts.
They leave first; Fox waits until Fee gives him the all clear and then follows.
