Cody/Fox but someone beat me hahaha
Fox/Fives?
“You have to sleep, Fox,” Stone says, quiet.
Fox ignores him, ignores the tightness in his throat, in his chest that feels like the start of panic as he sorts through forms, through deployment orders, through battlefield summaries that he shouldn’t have but can't make himself stop reading. There's something left undone. He knows it, feels it itching in the back of his skull, and if he leaves the office now, it’s going to drive him insane all night.
“Fox,” Stone says, more firmly, but if he thinks that tone is going to make Fox listen to him, he got his brain rattled too hard in that last crash. Fox snorts, but keeps digging, keeps reordering, because there has to be something, he knows it, he’s karking sure—
A hand in a heavy gauntlet catches his, stilling it with a warning squeeze, and it’s only then that Fox realizes his hands are trembling. Shaking, just faintly, visible without his gauntlets.
He should be wearing gauntlets. He’s out of uniform, and Fox is a good soldier. He follows orders.
It’s just—hard to remember where he left his gauntlets. Every time he pulls them on, he feels the recoil, the kick—
“Fox,” Stone says, quiet. “Maybe you should talk to one of the Jedi.”
Fox barks out a laugh, jerking his arm away. The room spins a little, but—he stood up too fast, that’s all.
“The Jedi?” he asks, mocking. “Just because you're putting Vos facedown over your desk on the regular doesn’t mean—”
“This has nothing to do with Vos,” Stone says, instead of getting annoyed the way Fox hoped he would. His voice is perfectly even, maddeningly reasonable as he watches Fox. “Windu would make time for you.”
Fox’s stomach turns over, the start of nausea. Like hell he’s going to talk to any Jedi, but especially Windu, so devoted, so perfect. He makes Fox’s skin crawl. It’s hard to spend any time around him at all, like a biological reaction is driving Fox away every time.
Stone just got on duty. If he’s going to be like this the whole time—
“Kriff, fine,” Fox snaps, and pushes away from his desk, dodges around Stone, and heads for the door without looking back. His skin crawls as he waves the door open, stalks out into the darkness of the midnight hallway, but—better than sticking around. Better than Stone’s whining. Fox can't deal with that. He has a headache.
His hands are still shaking. It’s just—stress. He’s been taking a lot of shifts recently. Once he sleeps it will go away.
The barracks below the Senate are quiet too, all but deserted with most of the troopers asleep or working. Fox itches to make noise, to shout, something to break the hush that makes his heartbeat rise. It feels like mourning, and he hates it, he hates it, he hates it—
But when he shoves into his bunk, seals the door behind him and locks it, that terrible hush only gets heavier.
Fox’s breaths are coming too fast, and he hauls his helmet off, drops it with a too-loud clatter. Squeezes his eyes shut, rubbing a hand over them so hard that lights spin behind his eyelids, and tries to remember the last time he slept.
But there's a body in his bunk, and every time Fox goes to bed, no matter whose bunk he steals or where he tries to just close his eyes for a little while, it’s there.
A shudder crawls through Fox, makes nausea burn in the back of his throat, but he grits his teeth, strips the rest of his armor off and leaves it where it falls. He’ll clean it in the morning. Right now—
Right now there are breaths in the darkness, and another person’s heartbeat, and Fox is going to be sick.
He stumbles over his own feet as he approaches the bed, just able to make out the shape on the far side of the mattress. Leaving him the door side, just the way he likes, but—that’s just more proof that this is a hallucination. A bit of madness. Just a reaction to stress, even though Fox is a perfect soldier, shouldn’t have one at all.
But when he jerks the blankets back, there's a soft, throaty sound, a stir, and dark eyes slide open. The clone Fox killed looks up at him, sleep-dazed and soft, his dark hair growing back with terrible, tempting curls that Fox wants to slide his fingers into. His mouth is a plush, tempting thing in the low light, and his eyes settle on Fox without hesitation, crinkle at the corners.
“Finally back?” Fives asks, rough with sleep, and Fox swallows down the wounded, ragged sound that wants to crawl out of his throat. For an instant he almost turns right back around, goes to find an empty bunk in another room, but—
It won't matter. Fives will be there when crawls under the covers, no matter where it is, and that knowledge shakes through Fox like a tremor.
“You're dead,” he says, harsh in his throat, and some seed of desperation or maybe just sleep deprivation makes him crawl up onto the bed, grab Fives’s shoulders, slam him back into the pillows. Fives jerks just like a living person would, gasps and grabs for Fox’s hands, but Fox doesn’t care. He wraps his fingers around Fives’s throat, tightens until he can feel the mad flutter of a pulse beneath his fingertips, puts all his weight on Rex's damned ARC trooper who tried to kill the Chancellor—
Fox’s breath shudders out of him on a fractured sound that isn't apology. Can't be apology. He followed orders. He did what he had to.
“Fox?” Fives breathes, winded, alarmed, like the normal part of all of this is that he’s in Fox’s bed, that he’s looking up at Fox with those dark eyes, lips parted as he tries to drag in breaths. Like it’s normal when Fox curls down over him, another tremor running through his muscles, his head spinning, his heart racing too fast.
“I followed orders,” Fox gets out, raw. “I followed orders, I followed orders. You wouldn’t stop. You were going to kill the Chancellor and I stopped you—”
Fives’s fingers curl around Fox’s wrists, long and deft and golden, not trying to wrench them away. He squeezes, gentle, and leans up, and Fox remembers the scattered glimpses of him in 79’s, back before that last attempt at flight. Handsome, laughing, steady and clever and tempting, and Fox had watched him across the bar and thought next time, next time, next time, right up until the moment he was entirely out of time.
“It’s okay, Fox,” Fives rasps, and he slides his hands up Fox’s arms, catches a breath as Fox’s grip on his throat tightens. When he tugs, though, Fox can't resist the pull, like there are magnets beneath their skin dragging them together. He folds down over Fives, a structural collapse more than a conscious movement, and Fives’s arms curl around him. The breath shudders out of Fox on a broken curse, and he shoves his face up under Fives’s jaw, the tremor in his hands spreading to every limb, every muscle. He presses his face to warm skin, to that fluttering pulse, and the gentle slide of Fives’s hands in his hair makes Fox’s chest crack right open down the sternum.
Fives smells like cordite and ozone, the burn of a blaster’s impact, and there’s a spot of too-sharp heat burning in his chest, so hot it sears Fox’s skin.
“I killed you,” Fox says, right against that warm skin, against Fives’s quick pulse. The words feel like a kiss, and Fives reacts like they are, his breath catching, his body arching up into Fox. Fox wants, so vast a thing that it’s swallowed him whole, and he presses his mouth to the hinge of Fives’s jaw, bears down on him until every inch of their bodies is pressed flush. It’s still not close enough, because Fives is bare and giving beneath him, and Fox wants wants wants, a greedy and craven thing.
Fives laughs, just a little, and the feel of it trembling in his chest lodges itself in Fox’s bones. “I got better,” he says, and Fox can't see his smile, but he can feel it, pressed against his regulation-length hair, his temple. “You brought me back here, Fox. I don’t know what you did, but you saved me.”
Saved him. Nausea turns, tangles with the hope that rises in the wake of those words. No one else can see Fives. But—
No one else knows where Fox hid his body, locked in a cryochamber in the Senate’s old, abandoned infirmary. No one else is allowed to know. Fox still doesn’t understand why he did it, but—it was probably an order. Fox follows orders. Fox is a perfect soldier.
“I killed you,” Fox says again, raw, and it sounds like a plea even in his own ears. He turns his head, breathing Fives in, pressing his mouth to warm skin, and tries not to shake right apart at the taste of sweat and sweetness. “I had to stop you. You were going to kill the Chancellor. I had to stop you.”
“It’s okay,” Fives whispers into his hair, even as Fox gathers him up in his arms, clutches him so close there's no space at all between their bodies. Fox’s hallucination, his secret, his. “It’s okay, Fox. You can still fix the mistake. It won't even take much. You're meeting with him tomorrow, aren't you?”
Fox is. He can fix it. He stopped Fives before he could kill Palpatine, but—he can fix it.
But if he does, this hallucination might go away.
“I’ll be here,” Fives promises, stroking Fox’s hair, and it’s a gentle thing, makes Fox’s skin crawl with how gentle when Fox can still feel the recoil of his blaster, can still hear the sound of Fives crumpling to the warehouse floor. “Once you're done, just get me out of the chamber and it will all be fine.”
Fox breathes, and breathes, and turns his head. He kisses Fives, brutal, bruising, because he’s not gentle the way Fives is even with his killer. He wants, and Fives is his ghost, his madness, his delusion, but—
He’s right. Fox can fix it. And in the morning, he will.
