#15 for whoever you feel like! Congrats on finishing finals! *throws confetti*
Thank you!! I'm already so bored. Also I nearly screamed when I saw which song this is because this is one of my Foxiyo playlist songs, so I had to do them!
#15 Devil's Backbone by The Civil Wars [X]
Riyo was out of bed the moment she heard the door to her apartment slide open, letting her datapad tumble to the floor, all but forgotten. Something was wrong. She could hear it in the way Fox had opened the door, in his footsteps. Something had gone wrong. When she rounded the corner to the living room she found Fox still in the entryway, holding his helmet in his hands and staring into the black visor as if it held all the answers.
She crossed the short space to him and rested her hands over his. "Fox?"
He raised his eyes, as empty as his visor, to meet her gaze. "Riyo. I fucked up."
"Let me put some tea on." Her father had always made tea for her when she was younger, back when life was far less complicated and all the games she played were low stakes. Not wanting to separate Fox from his helmet, she stepped to his side and reached up to kiss the side of his cheek before stepping into the small kitchen. As she programmed the automatic kettle, she watched Fox set his helmet down on the foyer table and slowly make his way to the couch as if in a trance.
When there were two cups of warm tea in her hand, hot enough to have been brewed but cool enough to no longer burn, she made her way to the couch and settled herself beside Fox, pressing one cup into his hands. They sat in a silence only broken by Riyo's light sips until Fox raised the cup to his lips then spoke, his gaze fixed on some speck on the wall across the room.
"I followed orders today, Riyo. Orders that I now think were wrong."
With Fox opening up to her, Riyo remained silent but leaned further into his side, wrapping an arm around his waist.
"I did what I had to do for the Republic, but I don't think that's right either." Fox shook his head slowly, still distant. "It was him or my men, then it was me or my men, and I couldn't-." He stopped and closed his eyes when his voice began to shake, taking another small sip of the tea in his hands. "I couldn't let them carry such a burden."
"Then you shouldn't either." Riyo set her cup down on the end table beside the couch and brought her hand to Fox's cheek, turning his head so that he faced her. "Give me the burden."
Fox met her eyes for a moment before he closed them, unshed tears wetting his lashes.
"I don't care what you've done, Fox." She continued, beginning to stroke her thumb across his cheek. "You, as you are, are all I want on this forsaken planet. Good and bad."
"Will you hold me?" The request was so quiet that had she not seen his lips move to utter the words she would have thought that she'd imagined it.
"Of course. Nothing could take you from me, Fox." She let her touch fall from his face down to his hands and guided them up, forcing him to sip further at the tea. Fox was horrible at staying hydrated even on the best of days, and she highly doubted from his disheveled appearance that a drink of anything had been on his mind recently.
When his tea was half drunk, Riyo rose, extending a hand to guide Fox after her. She took his plastoid-armored arm in her own night dress velveted one and tenderly led him to her bedroom, where she made him stand as she disassembled his armor. She wasn't nearly as fast as Fox was at disassembly, but tonight it was more ritualistic; each plate removed and replaced with a tender kiss to the area that it had covered.
"Can I remove your shirt?" She asked once the rest of his armor had been squared away on her dresser in order of assembly. Receiving a nod of permission, she gently detached the shirt of his blacks from the pants and brought it up over his head, letting him pull his arms loose. The shirt folded and placed alongside the rest of his armor, Riyo took hold of his now-bare arm and gently pulled him to her bed, burying the both of them under the thick sheets before pulling Fox to her.
Melting into her touch, Fox nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck and lay still, the slow rise and fall of his chest the only indicator of the life within him.
Riyo let her free hand run across his bare shoulders until it draped across his torso and she could feel his breath under her. When his breathing evened out, she whispered under her breath in a prayer. "Goddess, don't take him from me."