second offering for @gar-romance-month !!
pairing: ARC trooper fives/captain rex
prompts: anal sex, biting, body worship, first time, keldabe kiss, and nervous
rating: explicit
warnings: cloneshipping, discussions of death and grief, angst, explicit sexual content, loss of virginity (rex), check additional tags on ao3
Summary: Arousal has always been just a bodily function to Rex. Touching himself is a perfunctory thing, about taking care of a physical need every now and again rather than pleasure. Desire is a foreign land to him and he doesn't have a map of the terrain. Which is probably why he keeps getting stuck in this same emotional quagmire…
OR: Fives finds out that his captain has never been kissed.
Fives can feel the music within his chest, the thump-thump-thump of the bass an undercurrent to his heartbeat. His first partner just wants to dance, and Fives moves with them, content to follow their hands where they’ll take him; they’re a good dancer and Fives not a bad one and sometimes Fives thinks this is what they were made for, this is their real purpose, moving and being moved to the beat of the music.
His second partner is a better dancer that’s not very interested in dancing at all.
By the time he sees Rex—flushed and laughing and surrounded by people, closing the back door behind him, crumpled pack of smokes held in one hand—Fives’s buzzing and soaked in sweat. Later, he’ll say it wasn’t planned, that he didn’t think: it’ll be a lie.
Because Rex is Rex is something—someone—Fives doesn’t know how not to want.
The drag of his partner’s hands down his side, the strength of their arms, the taste of their sweat and their skin: they push Fives across the dancefloor and towards the booth Rex’s sharing with his friends, to Rex’s lap.
Rex has exchanged his smokes for something sharp and not quite bitter that fizzes. Fives’s lips buzz when he kisses Rex on the cheek, the rasp of stubble wonderful and expected. He smells of cigarette smoke and cold night air, and Fives breathes it in, greedy in a way that makes him kiss him again, this time lower, on the edge of his jaw, his skin cool. Rex shivers, and he says something, Fives can’t hear it but he can feel it through his chest, and then his broad, warm hand is cradling Fives’s face, fingers tangling into his curls and pulling, and Rex licks into his mouth.
Fives shushes him again, his breath warm and damp against the back of Rex’s neck. It could be any of them, it could be any clone trooper in the army, but Rex knows him. He wraps his hand around Fives’s wrist, the delicate bones moving under the skin when Fives lets his hand rest on Rex’s chest. Rex’s shaking, shaking so badly he can feel the bed shift with him, but Fives is steady at his back, his body a bulwark he seems more than happy to let Rex to break against.
“You can’t help it. You’re the best of us,” Fives croons. He shifts closer, and his beard scratches Rex’s neck. “You can’t help but do as you’re told.”
“I’ll—”
“I know,” Fives says. “I know. I know you are sorry. I know you will remember. I know you will try.”
the song was king and lionheart, by of monsters and men. established relationship, g. takes place during the war.
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The door clicks. Rex wakes up with a start and blinks at the dark, shifting under his thin blanket. Jars’s berth is empty, the bed still made. Rex sits up and rubs at his eyes, clearing his throat. The door opens, revealing a thin slash of light. Fives steps inside the room, quick and noiseless, and then lets the door close at his back. Rex exhales, feeling his heartbeat start to slow down. He swallows, mouth dry, and watches Fives while he starts taking off his armour.
He smells of cleanser, the harsh kind they use in the hangars’ decontamination showers. Rex scowls and says nothing, fingers playing nervously with a loose thread, the plasticky feel of the thread cutting into the flesh of his palm.
There’s a small private fresher tucked to the right. Fives says nothing: he places his boots under the rest of his armour in Jars’s rack and disappears inside the fresher, closing the door behind himself. Rex crosses his legs and waits for him, stomach in a knot.
It’s too soon.
Fives leaves the fresher. Harsh white light hits Rex’s eyes, and he curses, looking away—he feels more than hears Fives muttered apology, his hand hitting the door sensor.
“Didn’t mean to wake you up,” Fives mutters, his voice hoarse. He shifts his weight, still standing in front of the closed fresher door.
The cabin is very small. Rex reaches out with his right hand and hooks his fingers in the waistband of his blacks. When he tugs, Fives sighs and closes the distance between them, stopping when his knees bump against the bed.
“You’re back early,” Rex says, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Fives sighs again. He kneels on the bed. The emergency lumas on the walls shine at his back, hiding the expression on his face, silhouetting his shoulders and his overgrown curls in pale blue light.
When Rex shifts backwards, lying back down, Fives follows him under the blanket with a grunt. They shift and settle until Rex’s lying on his side, back to the wall and Fives tucked against his chest, his head under his chin.
Seconds tick by. Rex grips the back of Fives’s neck, closes his eyes, and waits.
“Fourteen’s dead,” Fives says after a beat, voice muffled against Rex’s chest, lips moving against the scar there. He’s keeping himself very still.
Rex says nothing: he doesn't know what to say. He tangles his legs with Fives’s and holds on, quietly breathing out his grief and his impotence until sleep takes him again, Fives shivering in his arms.
hi len!!! i went with rexfives because i accidentally made them a thing in another fic and now they won't leave me alone 😔 established relationship, takes place during the war, 285w
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An errant elbow hits the closest shelf, and a half-empty box clatters its way to the ground with a loud noise that seems bigger than the room itself. Rex snorts, ugly and too loud, and Fives flushes, presses his lips tight, tries and fails not to smile, dark eyes dancing. He crowds Rex against the wall and leans in: dry, chapped lips find Rex’s cheek, his chin, the bridge of his nose, and then Rex’s tugging him closer, armour clacking ridiculously and the rough texture of his gloves catching on Fives’s short curls.
“Eager, sir?” Fives drawls, eyes bright, and Rex just smiles, shrugging.
“Yes,” he replies honestly, and enjoys the way Fives loses all his words for a beat before licking into Rex’s mouth, tasting stims and caf and blood and spit, wishing for more time and more space and less clothes.
Plastoid presses on him, the familiar weight of his pauldron dragging him down. Rex huffs when one of Fives’s pokes him in the face, and Fives snorts, stepping away until he can rest their foreheads together, eyes closed. His eyelashes are dark and damp, fanning darkly on his flushed cheeks, and Rex finishes tugging off his gloves and reaches out to cradle Fives’s face with one sweaty hand, smiling when Fives brushes a clumsy kiss on his palm.
Rex’s familiar with greed: he can’t remember a time he hasn’t wanted more of everything. But sometimes the ever-present yearning is harder to bear, harder to ignore.
Fives’s commlink beeps; half a second later, so does Rex’s. Fives pouts, and starts pulling away; Rex hooks his fingers on Fives’s belt and tugs at him until Fives gives in with a grin, young and wide and bright.
the!!!! possibilities!!! and the potential fucked up-ness ngl. (i'll elaborate on that next)
What are your favorite things about the ship?
i think there comes a time when fives realises that rex is a human being and not just his superior officer. i think there's a lot of hero worship going on on fives's part, especially at first, and then that becomes a crush, etc, etc. i think it's not until umbara when fives realises rex is fallible and that sometimes he needs taking care of
and then i think rex feels guilty but also trusts fives like he trusts very few people and admires the person he's becoming and also he's lonely and fives is there and he's charismatic and handsome and makes him laugh and
idk it's very. complicated and kind of ugly and a weird flavour of codependent i guess? but rex is really fucking weird and i think fives doesn't know how to care sanely or healthily about the people he loves: he's all or nothing, all the time.
Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?
i usually don't like how people write fives but that's because i'm the pickiest motherfucker this side of the star wars fandom.
also i don't really like pure fluff for the sake of fluff ngl.
