For your writing prompt stuff, Cody/Fox and something with Force Sensitivity? OR Cody/Fox, Cody investigates the Guard because Fox joined a military with somewhat obvious (clones recognize when one of their own is injured) injuries
okay i wanted to write a bajillion about mashing up these two prompts (and reserve the right to do so! and encourage others to as well!) but in the interest of actually finishing something… [eta: now on ao3!]
They called it a knack, after Bly had overheard one of the trainers commenting on their group’s test scores to another trainer. Seems one of yours has quite the knack for sniping, the comment went. Consequently, the comment—a compliment, they’d decided—had went around the pods. A knack. Something more than a talent, which was arbitrary, and less than a skill, which was down to diligent training.
Much later, and in no time at all, they’d learn the true name for the thing that Fox and a handful of others had found at the bottom of their decanting jars. But, as with much of names in the wider galaxy, truth came in the telling.
Fox dodged the volley of wild blasts from the smuggler who had chosen to fight instead of living another day. Didn’t the fool know that Fox had things to do? Expelling a breath through his gritted teeth, he ducked behind a slumped loader vehicle, paused, then popped out to return fire: a single shot. The smuggler went down with a cry, crates clattering on top of her as she fell. Fox holstered his blaster after treating himself to a little twirl of the weapon.
“Showing off, sir?” Thorn commented dryly over comms, from his position behind another decrepit loader.
“For you? Always.”
Thorn didn’t put his mic back on, but Fox saw his shoulders shake and heard the snort all the same. Behind his helmet, Fox let himself grin.
Checking for any other idiots lurking in the warehouse, and finding only those whose armour matched his own, Fox signalled his team to stand down. Thorn, Widget, and Cosine all unfolded from their covered watch positions; Cosine went to check on the downed smuggler, with Thorn at their back, while Widget crossed over toward Fox.
“Will I be getting practice writing reports, sir?” Widget asked, already tapping at his comm as he walked.
Widget was one of Fox’s favourites.
(They were all Fox’s favourites.)
“Exactly right, trooper. I’ve got a meeting—“
Without looking away from his own work, Thorn yelled, “You do not!”
“—and will check on your report later. Commander Thorn,” Fox raised his voice, “would be delighted to assist with documenting the site. Diligently. With great attention to detail. He might need to measure things.”
“We have droids for that!”
Continuing to ignore Thorn’s interjections, Fox retained his attention on Widget, whose shoulders were raising towards his audials. Being caught between two commanders was no one’s ideal location, in fairness, but Widget was made of the same stuff as the rest of them, after all.
After all, too, Fox had never been particularly fair. With a brisk nod at Widget, who saluted in response, Fox turned and left the scene of someone else’s crime. He had a very important meeting to attend.
Cody had brought snacks.
“You’re my favourite,” Fox declared, as he lowered himself to sit beside Cody on the edge of the level, their legs hanging down.
“You say that to everyone.”
Fox shrugged. “I mean it, though.”
Below them, speeders zipped back and forth, as Coruscant’s crowded skies thrummed with traffic and lights, like insects on worlds Fox had never seen. Fox blotted a large, expensive speeder with his boot, just for a moment. Squish.
“I know,” Cody said, bumping Fox’s shoulder with his own.
When Fox looked sidelong at him, Cody was smiling guilelessly at the traffic and holding out a pastry toward Fox, not looking at him. Taking a breath, Fox took off his helmet and hoped the evening air might cool the heat in his cheeks. He relieved Cody of the proffered pastry and tore it in half, handing back one piece before devouring the remaining share. Cody accepted his half and ate it with a quiet, happy hum. Their boots kicked back and forth in synchronicity.
Sqiush. Squash. Squish.
“Do you think you could hit a speeder from here?” Cody asked, abruptly.
He had crumbs on his lower lip. Fox licked his own lips, distracted, before the question registered. He huffed a laugh, not surprised Cody’s thoughts had been running somewhere aligned with his own. Squish, indeed.
“Planning an assassination? Or just a casual Centaxday murder?”
“Just wondering.”
Fox hummed. “Sure, with sufficient motivation. So could you.”
Something rustled as Cody fished through the bag by his side. With a triumphant noise, that none of his subordinates would ever believe he’d make, he produced a pot of grapes. He held the pot toward Fox like an offering.
“Go on, then,” he said, eyes and teeth gleaming.
“What?”
“Get one of these into a speeder. Into… that speeder.” Cody pointed to a vehicle several levels below; a Besalisk in a lurid yellow open-top speeder. “Before they reach the turn.”
“What do—”
“They’re getting farther away,” Cody interrupted. His eyes flashed and his smile turned sharply mischievous. “Do I need to dare you?”
my solstice exchange gift for @preludianstaves ! inspired by the moodboard but also by a terrible pun. i can only apologise. the notion took hold and did Not release me.
"I don't understand. Are you trying to make a joke?"
When Cody had finally caved and visited Fox for advice when the 212th cycled to Coruscant—Fox being the clever one, as he had insisted since decanting—he had anticipated the inevitable gauntlet of mocking he'd have to suffer through, but he hadn't anticipated the genuine puzzlement that now wrinkled Fox's nose. The little crinkle between his brows that meant the puzzlement wasn't feigned.
It's not that Cody missed the mocking, but he had never enjoyed his plans going awry.
"It's not a joke," Cody clarified, with what he felt to be top-tier patience.
Fox squinted and leaned forward. They were alone in Fox's office, with his desk and its scrapyard of datapads, caf mugs, and partially dissembled blasters forming administrative topography between them. Cody leaned forward in turn, trying to traverse the terrain.
"Show me again," Fox demanded.
Silently, Cody held up his left hand and stretched the bit of his brain that did The Thing. Immediately, ethereal golden flames ignited in an almost runic pattern beneath his skin before bursting into life and flickering from his palm and spread fingers like a two-credit holo manip, except they were actual flames on his actual hand. The side of Cody's face felt hot from proximity, though not as hot as if he were close to a genuine fire; in contrast to that heat, his hand felt cool, almost as if the fake(?) flames were generating a breeze with their dance.
Fox recoiled, as he had the first and second times Cody had performed The Trick for him. One of Fox's eyebrows had been sacrificed to the first experiment, leaving him looking more startled than the usual careful schooling of his face would betray.
Cody hadn't mentioned the eyebrow thing. If Fox made him do the trick a fourth time, he was planning on aiming for Fox's remaining eyebrow.
"Well." Fox folded his hands across his stomach and leaned back in his desk chair. "That's not something you see every rotation, is it?"
"No. No, it is not," Cody said, as he closed his fist and snuffed out the flames, though he'd been seeing the flames every rotation for the better part of a month. He carefully placed his hand on his thigh plate.
His flames hadn't melted plastoid.
Yet.
They hadn't done much of anything beyond inconvenience him, keeping their burn for things that were not-Cody, but—
Yet.
"And it happened… how?" Fox asked.
"Force nonsense."
Fox groaned and spun his chair around. Scuff marks on the wall behind him betrayed how often he'd repeated the motion. "Among the things I don't miss from the front, that's chief among them. I ever tell you how I lost—"
"My hand is on fire, Fox," Cody cut in, more sharply than he would've permitted himself with anyone else. Command meant speaking softly and carrying a rotary cannon, and never ever betraying how close one had come to filling one's flightsuit.
Fox, having endured the same training as Cody, seemed to realise he'd ambled down the 'if you're deflecting, no one knows you're panicking' track, and stopped his spin. Another scuff mark. He drummed his fingers on his desk as he returned to face Cody. Recalibrating.
"Right. Hand on fire. Anyone else affected? Do you still have the– What would it be, some kind of device?" Fox asked, as he reached for one of his datapads.
Cody shook his head. "Friendly fire incident." Waxer had been very apologetic about knocking the glowing rock thing off the shelf and onto Cody's head. He'd attempted to make up for the accident by shooting the rock to scrap. "Somewhat less friendly fire subsequently destroyed the item."
Fox grinned knowingly. "One of your boys shot it to bits?"
"That isn't what my report says."
"It never is." Fox scratched his jaw, his gaze returning to Cody's hand. "What about your general?"
"He's sent a query to the temple healers— Don't look like that. What else was he supposed to do?"
"Not that?"
"Fox."
"Never admit anything a superior officer doesn't already know. Thus spake Alpha-17."
Cody permitted himself an eyeroll. "General Kenobi was literally there when it happened."
"Hallucinations."
They would never agree on the Kenobi Approach so, as with myriad other things they'd never agree on, Cody chose to be the bigger clone and ignore Fox's incorrect opinion. He flexed his hands on his thighs.
"Are you going to help or not?" he asked. He tried not to sound desperate but, well. He was already in Fox's office, asking for advice. Desperation went as read.
Recognising the impasse re: Kenobi—he could be taught—Fox hummed thoughtfully. His gaze flickered from Cody's hand to Cody's face, to something over his shoulder, as if looking through the galaxy for a deeper truth. Bly had dubbed it Fox's dead-eyed villain stare when he got like that. Cody had usually rejoined that as long as he's on our side, we're okay, and, a war later, he stuck by the assessment. There was a reason he'd quietly requested R&R on Coruscant, after all. There wasn't a corner that Fox couldn't think around.
"I'm cogitating," Fox said, unnecessarily, and pulled one of his datapads close, beginning to scroll through something or other.
Cody settled back in his uncomfortable chair as best he could and wondered if he could nip out for a caf from the Coruscant Guard mess hall. Maybe he'd go if Fox started singing under his breath; that indicated they'd be in for a long cogitation.
He raised his hand—currently not alight—and looked at the palm that had become strange. It looked just like his hand had always looked. Like Fox's hand looked. He wiggled his fingers.
"Catch," Fox suddenly said.
Startled, Cody jolted his head up and snatched the flung item that had been aimed for his face with his left hand. Glaring at Fox, Cody pulled his hand back, preparing to return it with force—
"Wait!" Fox yelped, holding both his hands in front of his face. "There's a reason!"
"To attempt to concuss me with— What is this?"
"A puzzle cube from Tiikae."
The 'puzzle cube' was approximately the size of a caf mug—a normal sized caf mug, not one of Fox's monstrosities—and made from what appeared to be some kind of finely carved wood. It was the manner of thing Cody would expect to see on a senator's desk; he wondered idly if that was where Fox had liberated it from. The grain of the wood slid smoothly beneath Cody's thumb as he admired the craftsmanship of the item.
"Not a projectile weapon then," he said, wryly.
"It's a toy," Fox said, either ignoring Cody's tone or oblivious to it. "You enter a phrase into—turn it around—into that bit, there, and a tune or holo plays when you unlock it. Sometimes they're used by syndicates to convey drop locations."
"Then this is a work-related toy?"
"Aren't we all," Fox muttered. Before Cody could begin to unpick that remark, Fox continued. "Do me a favour, dearest darlingest Cody, and flame on, would you?"
"We're not calling it that."
Fox smirked but conceded to the correction with an airy wave of his hand. Cody thought again about eyebrow sacrifice but reminded himself that he really had run out of options regarding The Thing; if the Jedi healers didn't have any ideas, then he'd be looking down the barrel of Kamino sooner or later. Only luck had kept him from igniting at an inopportune moment thus far. If and when the holos caught him, Cody was cooked. If Fox had an idea… Well. It was one more idea than Cody had.
He grimaced.
He flamed on and hoped that Fox's office had some kind of fire suppressant system should Cody set the cube alight.
Ethereal flames burst from Cody's hand and danced around the puzzle cube. Cody stretched his arm farther from his face—closer to Fox's—and braced for ignition, but all that happened was the puzzle cube gave a delicate chirrup of song and opened in his hand, the top part lifting away on a hidden hinge. Surprised, Cody snuffed the flames and blinked at the revealed contents.
Fox leaned up from his chair, braced on his desk, to peer within the cube. He reached inside and withdrew what appeared to be a wrapped sweet. The rustling as he unwrapped it seemed cacophonic in Cody's numb ears.
"Starblossom," Fox declared, as he popped the sweet into his mouth. He sat down again. "My favourite."
"Fox."
"Bail has been holding that box over me for—"
"Fox."
Hamstering the sweet into his cheek, Fox blinked at Cody. "What?"
Cody gestured with his right hand toward his left, where the open puzzle cube still sat on his palm. He felt wild-eyed. He didn't like feeling wild-eyed. The blasted Marshall Commander of the blasted Seventh Sky shouldn't feel wild-eyed about his own blasted hand!
Some of Cody's feeling might've escaped containment, as Fox had recoiled slightly into his desk chair. He crunched the sweet between his teeth and swallowed, then gently reached out to take the puzzle cube from Cody's palm, setting it on his desk out of Cody's reach.
Probably for the best.
Cody carefully resettled his hands on his thighs. He took a breath.
"You know something," he said.
"I have a guess," Fox amended, as he reached for another sweet, before seeming to think better of it.
"You're going to tell me your 'guess' or I'm going to tell Alpha-17 you're being recalcitrant."
They were grown clones. They shouldn't have to threaten one another with tattling to their trainer. And yet.
Fox tugged one of his datapads closer, flicked to a screen, and flicked again to display a holo for Cody to see. The image of a severed humanoid hand rotated between them, rendered in gory detail. Each digit had a single flame flickering from it, like the hand had been used as a candlestick. Cody wrinkled his nose.
"What's this?"
"I think it's a pun," Fox said, gazing at the holo.
"I'm not laughing."
"This sort of thing is a legend among the syndicates, and beings like them. The breaking and entering kind of beings, I mean. I heard about it from— It doesn't matter who from. Legends say that this thing, this hand, can unlock anything. Doors, safes—"
"Puzzle cubes?"
"So it would seem. Silly as it was, the story stuck in my mind because the name made me laugh." Fox rested his cheek on his fist, his elbow braced on his desk and glanced at Cody sidelong. "Do you know what this is called?"
Cody held onto his patience with both hands. "You know that I don't."
"A hand of glory."
It took Cody a moment. It had been so long since he'd been Named that he'd forgotten the impetus behind the syllables he'd softened. Kote. Mando'a for glory.
A hand of blasted glory.
"You're telling me… That the Force… Has inflicted me with this for a pun?" Cody bit out. His hand was beginning to smoulder on his thigh plate.
Shrugging, Fox just reached for another sweet. He waggled his lone eyebrow.
"Want to help me break into the Senate snack cupboard?" he asked.
Cody narrowed his eyes. Fox huffed, then pushed the puzzle cube toward him, as if a peace offering. With great dignity, Cody took a sweet.
"No," Cody said, crunching the sweet between his teeth. "But you can help me slice the Separatists."
always a sucker for wingfic! putting cody in the jar and shaking him for @drowninginmytbr [eta: now on ao3 here!]
Overall, the most challenging element of the entire situation was the disappointing lack of professionalism in the conduct of his fellow officer.
After the third full minute of laughter, Cody’s patience had thoroughly expired. He took a deep breath through his nose, manfully refrained from rolling his eyes, and let the breath out again.
“Whenever you’re done, captain.”
The unspoken which had better be soon evidently managed to filter through the fluff Rex held between his ears, as Rex finally—finally—exerted some decorum and began to literally smother his giggles, pressing his hands over his mouth like a tubie. He remained doubled over, the side of his face pressed into Cody’s bunk where he’d partially collapsed, his helmet abandoned during the first wave of laughter. Rex’s eyes were bright and his cheeks stained with tears. He’d been weeping at Cody’s misfortune. Weeping!
They were at war and Rex was laughing in Cody’s face.
If anyone in Cody’s vicinity should be weeping, it was Cody himself.
“Sorry, Cody. Sorry,” Rex said, only to break off with a hiccupped giggle. He wiped his eyes on Cody’s bedsheet. “Sorry. I’m stopping.”
“You’re on laundry duty. Forever.”
“I know.” Another hiccup. Rex rolled his lips between his teeth. “Whew! I’m done.” He coughed and straightened to standing, where he smoothed down his chest armour as if it had become creased. He cleared his throat. “Done. I’m done.”
His gaze remained fixed on Cody’s face, determinedly so, like a shiny confronted with their first Twi-lek.
Cody arched a brow. The one on the scarred side, so Rex knew he meant business.
“Are you sure?”
A nod. “Very much so.”
“Then if I do this” –Cody twitched one of his new appendages and the tiny, useless wing sent a waft of sparkles billowing over Cody’s shoulder, straight at Rex’s smirking face— “you’ll be… That’s what I thought.”
Rex collapsed to the floor with a howl of laughter. Multicoloured sparkles stuck to his eyelashes and joined the constellations of shiny Force-knew-what already caught in his hair. Cody sighed. It had been an hour since he’d returned from the planet with the ancient temple, trailing a slug trail of sparkles throughout the Negotiator, and he had yet to devise a stratagem for recovery, because his second couldn’t stop laughing about it.
And they hadn’t even gotten to the part about General Kenobi.
“Do you think he’ll be much longer, Commander?” Kenobi asked, his voice nearly lost beneath Rex’s cackling.
Cody tapped the collar of his armour, nudging against the tiny hands holding on the rim. Kenobi hadn’t wanted to ride in Cody’s utility pouch, and had instead requested the view from Cody’s shoulder; as a result, he’d become nearly invisible within the plastoid. Rex had yet to notice him.
Finally getting his general into armour had not been worth the price.
In response to Kenobi’s question, Cody shook his head. Toeing Rex none too gently in the side, and getting only a red-faced giggling squirm of clone in response, Cody mentally wrote off the rest of his afternoon. He found himself wishing that General Skywalker were around, instead of off adventuring with Commander Tano.
That was what the situation had reduced Cody to: wishing for Anakin Skywalker to fix a problem.
Cold horror washed through Cody.
“I think I’m going to check in with the medics,” he said.
i have no explanation for this other than barometric pressure and a very longggg day in the office
23 - vampire au 👀 for @ruposa (who should definitely dabble - i’m have a riot!) [eta: now on ao3!]
“Then there’s nothing to worry about,” Rex said firmly, after Kix had finished speaking. He rose from the medical cot and began putting his gauntlets back on. “If that’s everything, I’ve got a debriefing to attend.”
Kix’s eyes flashed and his mouth drew a tight line. He stepped bodily in front of Rex and jabbed Rex in the chest plate with his datapad. They were alone in Kix’s office—a perk, such as it was, of command—so Rex let the intrusive thoughts win and slapped at the datapad, only to get a swift retaliatory smack in return, hard enough that he had cause to be grateful for his armour.
“I thought you were a medic?” he complained, rubbing his dinged chest plate.
“I thought you were smarter than tube sludge, so I guess we’re both disappointed! Which part of ‘you have an unknown marker in your blood and it’s multiplying’ sounded like ‘nothing to worry about’ to you, exactly?” Kix snapped.
“Kix…”
Clicking the end of his stylus—they didn’t even need to be clicked—Kix raised his eyebrows and held the stylus pointedly over his datapad.
“Well? Should I schedule a hearing check in addition to the bloodwork, Captain?”
Rex didn’t roll his eyes; Cody had bullied him into knowing better than to betray such weakness like that. Instead, with a sigh that conveyed precisely what he thought about Kix’s overblown medic power trip, Rex resumed his seat on the foldout cot and took off the single gauntlet he’d managed to don.
“I can hear your nagging just fine,” he said.
Kix smirked. “That’s what I thought. Now roll up your damn sleeve.”
What Kix hadn’t known—what neither of them could possibly have known then, shortly after Rex had schlepped into medbay with a weird bug bite, Kix, some kind of spider I think, doesn’t hurt but it’s itchy as all heck—was that whatever had happened to Rex would destabilise the Republic.
But all that happened later.
First: a comm call.
“You look like something the tooka dragged in, old boy,” Cody said, wrinkling his nose at Rex’s projection.
He did. Even over holo, Rex was an unpleasant, washed-out colour, everywhere apart from the dark indigo around his eyes. He’d lost weight in his face, too, from the hollows of his cheeks, but Cody hadn’t heard anything about ration shortages in the fleet. When the 501st rejoined their betters on the Negotiator, he would stuff ration cubes into every pouch on Rex’s belt, and possibly in his ears. Just in case.
“Weird, because I feel great,” Rex drawled, then immediately hacked wetly into his balled fist.
Cody snorted. “I trust the troopers are doing better than you, at least.”
“No one else has reported a bite to Kix.”
“And you always report to a medic?”
“No one else has spent the last three rotations within two feet of the nearest ‘fresher. It’s just me.”
“That’s something, at least.”
Nothing that Cody liked, but something.
“Don’t give me that Alpha-face. I’m at the other side of whatever this is. Less yacking up black goo—”
Cody started. “There’s black goo?”
“—and now I’m simply hungry all the kr— all the time.” Rex’s jaw audibly cracked as he yawned. Something odd happened to the holo connection as he did, as his jaw seemed to stretch wider than it should’ve, and then he blinked blearily at Cody again. Same old Rex. “Sorry. Been a long ‘lane, but we should be back soon.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Cody promised. Threatened.
After Rex signed off with a wan grin and a casual salute, Cody opened the relevant documents on his datapad. They were going to need a lot of extra ration cubes.
Rex woke in Tup’s bed. He knew it was Tup’s bed, because he could smell the fruity conditioner that the shiny went through by the vat. The fruity conditioner and something else, something compelling, like hot metal and liquor… what was it… what…
“—x!”
Besides, no one wailed quite like Tup.
“—ake up please sir! You can’t die in my bed!”
“Against regulations,” someone muttered. They smelled like armour polish and charcoal. Dogma.
Rex opened his eyes. As expected, though not predicted, he was on his back in Tup’s bed, with Tup crouched over him and shaking Rex by the shoulders, his eyes huge and wet. Dogma stood next to the bed, and behind him crowded every blasted trooper on the ship, it looked like.
“Uh,” Rex said, his eyes feeling very wide. “I should… I should not be here.”
To his relief, a quick glance along his body showed he wore all his armour, barring helmet. At least he wouldn’t have to write himself up for anything other than idiocy.
“You’re not dead. Thank the little fishes,” Tup said, bowing forward over Rex, his hair flopping over his face in a sweet cloud. His hands were still fisted around Rex’s pauldrons. “I’m too young for that kind of trauma.”
“And you only have one set of bedsheets, since you used the other set for the toga party,” Dogma pointed out.
Tup sniffed and cuffed his eyes with the back of his hand. “And we can’t even have the party now we don’t have the fancy drink!”
Rex didn’t know about any party. He frowned. “What toga—”
“Medic coming through! Move or be moved!” came Kix’s clipped command, as he mowed his way through the gathered crowd like an aiwha through chum. “You! Shiny!”
“Tup, sir.”
“Shiny Tup, please remove yourself from Captain Rex’s person.”
Tup’s cheeks darkened and he scrambled off Rex with alacrity, nearly kneeing Rex in the balls as he did. Thank you, armour. Rex tried to roll to his feet, with the optimistic hope of rolling straight out of the room and into a black hole, but Kix stayed him with a hand—effective—and a glare—debilitating. Taking advantage of Kix’s distraction, Tup and Dogma retreated, leaving Rex to suffer Kix’s tender mercies alone.
“You, stay there. It’s time for another checkup,” Kix said. He smelled stressed.
Rex hadn’t realised that stress had a smell.
“I feel fine,” Rex tried, though no one within a klick of the Fett gene could lie for kriff.
Kix snorted. Clicking his penlight, he began his checkup while speaking. “‘Fine’, he says. By all accounts, you sleepwalked in here, sniffed out then drank Shiny Tup’s entire bottle of whatever engine-brewed moonshine he picked up on the last world, and then did your best impression of a corpse for a few hours. Fairly standard for that amount of booze, I suppose, but no one could wake you and, what was it?” Kix grabbed hold of Rex’s chin to force eye contact. “You weren’t breathing.” He dug his nails into Rex’s cheeks. “For two hours.”
“Uh.”
“While I contemplated how I would explain to various generals and commanders that our captain had committed suicide by crème de moron, I took the opportunity to examine what remained of Shiny Tup’s moonshine. Do you know what was in it?”
The scent of hot metal and liquor. Rex shook his head. His hands were trembling and he tucked them beneath his thighs.
Kix’s jaw flexed. “Blood.”
“Blood?”
“Do you know what else?”
“I’m still kind of hung up on the blood thing—”
“That insect bite on your neck has completely disappeared.”
“—and that’s why Kix is sending me to Coruscant. Apparently, his batcher in the Coruscant Guard came across something similar with one of their troopers, and they have a line on a remedy, but they need to run some tests first,” Rex explained, as he shoved a clean undersuit into his duffel.
“Kix can’t run the tests and fabricate the remedy with what we have here?”
Rex shook his head. “Gristle—that’s the batcher—reckons I’ll be fine, but the kit is off-spec and requesting it would raise some flags. The Corries have… other avenues. Better to go to them.”
Cody was pacing as they spoke, and his holo kept bumping up and down. It made Rex feel queasy. He turned away from his comm, which he’d left on his bed, and ducked beneath the bunk to find his last matching pair of socks. If he couldn’t be fancy on Coruscant, where could he be?
“I don’t like this, Rex.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled, Codes.”
“What did Skywalker say?”
“Nothing.”
At the judgemental silence, Rex ducked back into view, settling on his knees in front of Cody’s holo like a cadet at storytime. He ran a hand through his hair and grimaced. He needed to shave soon.
Cody’s eyes had narrowed.
“You didn’t tell your general?”
“We’re going to Coruscant for supplies. It’s a short hop from—”
“OPSEC, Captain.”
“—here,” Rex stressed, pointedly. He waved one hand vaguely. “I need to pick up new kit for our ARCs, anyway, and you know that Stores are fussy about officer-level signoff for that. The general only asked that I bring back a few extra protein rations from the Temple for the commander while I’m out there. A hop and a skip, and I’ll be back before you know it.”
Cody’s eyes flickered as he read whatever story had been written on Rex’s face by the stupid insect bite and everything that came after. Rex scratched the side of his nose as he waited, more than used to the scrutiny, and knowing better than to predict what conclusion Cody might draw. Truth was that Rex didn’t mind the jaunt to Coruscant, and wasn’t worried about whatever Kix’s batcher might discover: Rex hadn’t felt as good as he currently did since… Since he couldn’t remember when. He felt as healthy as a Null.
“I’m telling Fox to keep an eye on you.”
Rex groaned.
Then: Coruscant.
Rex spluttered. “Did you say ‘vampire’?”
“Sure did!”
Commander Thorn spun around in his desk chair, kicking his feet as he did. His long blond curls whipped around his head like streamers. After two full rotations on the chair, he made a screeching sound with his mouth, then kicked his foot to spin his chair the other way. His grin was bright and sharp.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Rex said, holding onto the desk with the tips of his fingers.
Abruptly, Thorn slammed his foot to the ground and leaned forward over his desk, placing his cool hands on top of Rex’s. They were both room temperature. Apparently, that was another side effect of the bite. Of vampirism.
Medic Gristle had been very straightforward with Rex’s diagnosis. After explaining the procedure, they’d tested a sample of Rex’s blood on a machine that appeared to have been constructed from speeder parts and spuct tape, made a few notes on some flimsi, nodded, then commed Thorn.
Commander Thorn has the same condition, they’d said. He will be able to explain.
Then they’d kriffed off.
Rex would’ve loved to have kriffed off, too. As pleasant as Thorn was—he’d always been the sugar to Fox’s bucket of salt—his blasé explanation of oh it’s a Taung throwback thing activated by the nibble of that leech critter don’t worry about it! had held rather less gravitas than Rex would’ve appreciated, had he been able to custom order an ideal So! You’re Dead! explanatory pamphlet.
Rex knew about vampires, of course. Every cadet who’d attended Storytime With 99 did, because 99 loved monsters, and cadets had loved his stories. Rex had played vampires with Keeli, he distinctly remembered, because Keeli had spilled meiloorun juice all over Rex's blues when pretending to bite him.
“It’s going to be okay, Rex,” Thorn said, earnest and sober. His eyes were huge and dark. “Once your fangs grow in—”
“Fangs!” Rex echoed weakly.
“—and you can do the stuff with shadows—”
“There’s stuff with shadows?”
“—then Fox has a plan for what we should do next!”
“Oh kriff.”
A Fox plan. Rex hadn’t thought there could be anything more ominous than surprise vampirism, but once again the galaxy had surprised him.
Thorn beamed. Sharp and bright. He patted Rex’s shoulder.
“Fox always has a plan,” he said.
“I’m still not clear how all this ended up with you and Thorn eating the Chancellor of the Republic, old boy,” Cody said, squinting at Rex through the holo.
ohhhh... for the prompts. how about fox and 14, De-aging? :3c
TWO GREAT TASTES 👌 i looooove de-aged blorbos but i don’t think i’ve ever written one! [eta: now on ao3!]
“Thorn, you have to take a break at some point. You can’t go on like this. You’re not sleeping,” Thire said, trying to sound patient instead of desperate. He suspected he didn’t succeed. Probably because of the desperation. “Just let one of us take over for a bit.”
Thire took a step closer to the bunk, but paused at Thorn’s venomous glare, still fierce despite the bags beneath his eyes.
“No,” Thorn said. Ordered.
Thire took a steadying breath. He wasn’t scared of Thorn—no sibling could ever fear Thorn, he of the suplex hugs and giggle fits—but no one could ever dissuade him from his chosen course of action, either.
That was, no one except…
In the dimly lit commanders’ bunk room, Thorn sat at the head of the lower bunk on the right of the room, hunched in a way that had to be agonising for his back after spending so long in the position. He held a blaster across his lap, and Hammer had been tucked beneath the bunk, but in concession to the sleep space Thorn wore only the lower part of his armour. His plastoid-covered legs were stretched out in a guardrail between his charge and the rest of the planet.
His charge. Currently observable solely as a pile of blankets with a tuft of wild curls smushed against a stack of pillows flatter than Stone’s arse, there was nonetheless nothing more precious to be found anywhere on Coruscant. Each tiny snuffling snore held more worth than kyber. Every single Coruscant Guard trooper would have thrown themselves between that bunk and the galaxy, if given half a chance.
Thire dragged his eyes away from the curls and back to Thorn. The man looked like a parsec of rough road as he blinked heavily, like his eyelids were weighted. Even his blond curls seemed faded, hanging limply around his face.
“Please, Thorn. At least let someone share shifts with you. You don’t even have to leave the room!” Thire tried.
“No,” Thorn repeated, almost bored.
“Don’t make me do this.”
“If you think you and Stone can make me leave—”
“Kriff no,” Stone muttered, extremely unhelpfully, from his place in the doorway. He’d refused to enter any further into the room, or as he called it, dangerous frenemy territory.
Thire delivered a flat look over his shoulder, getting only a shrug and a ‘your target’ handsign from Stone in return. He gave Stone a significantly curter gesture in response and returned his full attention to Thorn and the package.
(That’s what Thorn had said over the radio. We’ve received a package. Commanders’ bunks asap. Thire had thought— bomb? But there hadn’t been an order to evacuate. There hadn’t been anything but that tight panic in Thorn’s voice, that Thire had felt like a fist around his heart, until he’d slammed open the door to the bunkroom and then—)
The next little snore had a whistle on the end. Thire rested his eyes on the mound of blankets for a moment, steeling himself for what he had to do. He felt Thorn’s attention on the side of his face, curious at first, and then with urgency.
“No, don’t—!”
Thire did. He cleared his throat and spoke, firmly but unhurriedly, with every gram of officer materiel he possessed.
“Commander Fox. Wake up, sir. Commander Thorn needs you.”
The snores immediately cut out. Thorn and Thire both froze in place. Stone muttered something unintelligible about leaving a tooka in the ‘fresher and fled.
Blankets trembled with impact from a quake caused by wiggling limbs. There came first a snuffling, then a decisive snort.
Thorn’s hand went tight around his blaster, but it was too late for retreat as a hand shot out from between the blankets to grab hold of his; the difference in size made no matter to the effect. Thorn wouldn’t move for all the silk on Naboo with that hand on his. Despite himself, Thire’s shoulders relaxed at the presence of a superior officer.
Then he tensed all over again as the familiar glower of Commander Fox emerged from beneath the pile of blankets, rendered no less effective by the addition of cherubic, sleep-flushed cheeks and a wild mop of salt-speckled curls. That familiar honey glare first went over Thire’s shoulder, as if noting the absence of Stone, then to assess Thire himself, and finally to Thorn, where it lingered.
“You haven’t been thleeping,” Fox declared. He wrinkled his nose briefly at the lisp caused by his still growing-in canine teeth. “You’ve gotta th—sleep. Lay down. Properly.”
Not even forming a token protest now that his commander had spoken, Thorn put aside his blaster and began removing the last of his armour without complaint. Sure, he gave Thire poisonous looks the whole while, but that still counted as success in Thire’s book. Future Thire would be paying the moment back with laps for the rest of his life, but he was a clone. How long could his life possible be?
At last, Thorn was disarmed and disarmoured and he shuffled to lay more fully next to Fox, who had generously permitted Thorn a blanket and a pillow from his hoard.
“Better,” Fox declared, once the two of them were situated.
Thire turned to go.
“Thire.”
Thire closed his eyes and grimaced where Fox couldn’t see him. Then, composing his expression, he turned back around.
Fox sat upright in the bunk, wrapped in his blankets, while Thorn curled around him like a comma, his back to Thire. Ever a wall between Fox and the world. Fox had one hand on Thorn’s upper shoulder, gripping a fistful of fabric, as if ready to yank Thorn to safety and dive on top of him if needed. They were both such idiots about each other.
Thire would have already stepped in front of the blast before it got anywhere near either of them.
“Yes, sir?” he asked, as blandly as he could.
The patented CC-1010 Eyebrow of Judgement on that little face should’ve been absurd.
It was not.
Thire had the urge to comm his tube and apologise for everything he’d done since deployment, up to and including interrupting the commander’s naptime. Maybe he’d start with that and work backwards toward decanting. While doing those inevitable laps for Thorn.
“Well done for recognising when you need the,” Fox’s nose wrinkled as he carefully pronounced, “ass-is-tance of a thenior officer. Kark. Senior officer.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I wasn’t done.”
“No, sir.”
Thorn’s shoulders shook. Oh, now he found the whole thing funny. Now it was Thire’s turn for a dressing down, Thorn had returned to being the cheerful arsehole Thire knew and loved.
That Fox loved, too; Fox’s lips quirked in a grin that briefly lit his entire face like an explosion, a tubie entirely too pleased by having made his friend laugh, guileless and young. It was like being gutshot with a slug thrower. Thire wanted to press his hand to his stomach. He wanted to cart Fox over his shoulder and flee Coruscant. He wanted to pen a thank you I hate you novella to the darksider who’d left that trap to destabilise the Coruscant Guard.
(Ha. Joke was on them. The Coruscant Guard had been uniquely unstable since about three hours after deployment. If anything, the addition of Cadet Commander Fox had given them a rallying point, and their battle cry was you will have to go through every single one of us first.)
“Commander Thorn will sleep for a full shift—yeth, you will, or there’ll be no pudding—while you investigate the security breach at the Senate,” Fox told Thire.
“Security breach, sir? I haven’t heard about any security breach.”
“That is what Commander Stone is in charge of,” Fox explained. He projected his voice in the way Thire hadn’t yet managed to imitate. “Isn’t that correct, Commander Stone?”
“Yes, sir! Absolutely, sir! Breaching security now, sir!” Stone shouted back, from along the corridor.
Fox’s gaze returned to Thire. When he smiled again, nothing of the cadet remained. There sat a soldier and a strategist, and the blade that Coruscant had honed. There sat Thire’s commander.
Coruscant beware.
“Maul told me a lot while he set the trap, you see,” Fox explained, as he patted Thorn, almost absently. “So, when Commander Thorn is fully rethted, he and I will meet up with Maul then make our way through the chambers and ath— ath— for kriff’s thake— ass-ass-i-nate the Chancellor.” His smile turned warm again as he dropped a kiss onto Thorn’s curls. “Okay? Okay! Sweet dreams.”
Then he flopped to his side and fell asleep between one breath and the next.
Slowly, so slowly, Thorn twisted to look wide-eyed at Thire over his shoulder.
Assassination? he mouthed.
Thire held up his hands, palm out, in surrender. Hadn’t Fox just praised Thire for recognising when he needed the assistance of a senior officer? Assassinations were definitely the purview of someone—anyone—other than Thire. Perhaps it was time he respected Stone’s attitude. He had a lot to teach, did Stone.
“I left the massiff on the fabricator,” Thire said, and fled.
oh my gosh this became a beast! echo and hanahaki disease for @earlgreyci [eta: now on ao3]
cw for hanahaki disease and associated imagery!
Echo had heard about the 'affliction of the flowers' from Fives, back on Rishi, when they'd had little to do but train and delve into various dusty corners of the holonet. Fives had never explained to Echo exactly how he'd stumbled across knowledge of the illness, but he'd delighted in sharing information Echo hadn't needed to know, and holos that Echo definitely hadn't wanted to see. Cutup had been fascinated, Echo remembered, to such an extent that Echo had kept an eye on him for stray petals, just in case.
That there was no one to keep an eye on Echo, now that he'd actually started coughing up foliage, struck him with… maybe not with irony. With something as bitter as the seeds that burst between his teeth in increasing frequency.
It had been a long time since Rishi. Since Cutup and Fives had curled together over the single battered datapad they'd smuggled off Kamino, and made grossed out sounds over holos of vomited-up flowers. A long time since Echo had laughed to himself about beings foolish enough to get themself into such a situation. What a judgemental little kriffer he'd been back then, with the entire galaxy ahead of him, and no idea how fast things could change.
Spitting out another petal into the sink—slender and lilac, and partially chewed—Echo eyed his grey reflection in the mirror of the Havoc Marauder's tiny 'fresher. That shiny CT-1409 deployed to Rishi Moon had never seemed more like a stranger.
He rolled his eyes at himself and shook his head reprovingly at his own nonsense.
"Even Fives didn't get this dramatic," Echo whispered, and flipped on the sonic to wash it all away.
The problem with occupying a ship the size of the Marauder—apart from it being impossible to escape the smell of Crosshair's socks—was that privacy didn't exist even as a polite fiction, as it had in Echo's other postings. It was like being back on Kamino, but without the ability to hide in another squad's bunk for five blasted seconds of peace.
"Was it the bantha kebab?" Wrecker asked, when Echo returned to the bunk room. The big clone patted his stomach with a wince, and made Lula, on the bunk beside him, pat her tiny stomach in turn. "We've been feeling rumbles in here all day!"
Echo shook his head. If only. "My stomach is fine. I'm just feeling a little tired."
On the bunk above Wrecker, Tech leaned over the rail and peered down. "Are you having difficulties with your cybernetics? I have designs for improvements that may alleviate some of your—"
"No alleviation is required at this time," Echo cut in, more sharply than he'd intended. He shifted, and tried to soften his posture, though all the durasteel made such things difficult. "Thank you, Tech. Just… Not right now."
A nod, and Tech retreated. "You will let me know when it is convenient."
Despite his discomfort with the whole thing, Echo laughed softly. Imperious little prick. Strangely endearing, all the same.
They all were. Endearing, that is. That was the entire problem.
Resisting the urge to sigh, Echo gestured over his shoulder with his scomp. "I'm gonna go rustle up some rations, since we're still a while out from Kamino. Either of you want anything?"
"It is Hunter's turn to cook," Tech said, not stopping at the tap-tapping on his datapad.
Wrecker nodded, looking excited about the prospect. "Sarge said there's gonna be dessert!"
Of course Hunter cooked. Of course he did.
Echo affected a cheerful expression that probably missed the mark as wildly as some of Domino Squad's early range scores.
"Really? Then I'm not getting in the way of that! I guess I'll go see if Crosshair wants relieving in the cockpit—"
"I wouldn't recommend that course of action," Tech interrupted.
He was echoed by Wrecker's succinct, "Nope!"
Even Lula shook her head.
Tech continued, "Crosshair has threatened bodily harm to whomever next interrupts him. I would suggest leaving him be."
Of course even that narrow avenue of escape had been closed. Closing his eyes, Echo suppressed a spiky hiccough as something tried to slither up his throat. He swallowed before anything could blossom. It felt like swallowing thorns.
"Echo?"
Echo waved off Wrecker, turning as he did, so the clone's keen eye wouldn't read anything from his face that Echo didn't intend to reveal.
"Received and understood. I think I'll go and contemplate nature in the hold."
As the door closed behind him, Echo heard Wrecker's plaintive but there's no animals in there and smiled. Then he spat out a glob of bloody petals into his palm.
Fierfiek.
"You're sure you've got nothing for me?" Echo hated how desperate he sounded, but he'd left any remaining dignity back with the rest of his original parts on Skako Minor. "A blue milk run is fine. Anything you've got."
On the comm, Rex shook his head. The holo flickered over the poor connection.
"The best place for you right now is with Clone Force 99. I know they might seem a little rough around the edges—"
Echo spluttered a laugh. "'A little rough'?"
Rex smiled slightly in concession. "Fine, maybe more than a little. But they're good guys. Cody trusted them, and so do I. Give them a chance, Echo."
Working his jaw around the words he couldn't say, and petals he couldn't reveal, Echo nodded. He'd do as his captain ordered.
No. That wasn't fair. Rex wasn't ordering anything; he'd found Echo an opportunity to contribute when every other hyperlane would take him straight to the recycler. A damned miracle that the Batch had given Echo a chance at all! It wasn't Rex's fault that Echo had been put back together wrong. Some secondhand jigsaw of a person.
"I will," he promised, meaning it. "Thank you, Rex."
"Trying to get rid of us, reg?"
"Kriff! Crosshair, I've got more circuitry than arteries in here, stop creeping around!" Echo clutched his chest, where something fluttered alarmingly.
Crosshair frowned, his sharp gaze flickering between Echo's face and his hand.
"What? Are you being serious? Weren't you cleared for combat?"
Echo took a deep breath through his nose. "I'm fine." He quirked a grin, waving off Crosshair's frown. "Really."
Looking over Echo's shoulder, toward where he'd been talking to Rex at the other end of the hold, Crosshair's frown deepened. He removed the toothpick from between his teeth and jabbed it in that direction with the air of someone proving a point.
"Is that why you're trying to leave us? For your heart?" he asked, eyes narrowing.
"Crosshair, I'm not trying to leave—"
"Then why are you calling Captain Rex like some cadet crying for their alpha?"
"That's not how— For kriff—"
Echo interrupted himself with a cough. A little one, a throat clearing, but then something caught in his chest and he knew he was karked. They'd seen cacti, him and Fives, during one of those holonet deep dives, and it felt like Echo had one lodged in his oesophagus. Spikes and hooks jutting and reaching, impossible and agonising, and all he could taste was blood.
Trying to leave for the sake of his heart?
Like always, Crosshair hit his mark.
Echo tried to laugh, but he couldn't do anything but choke.
"Reg? What— Echo?"
Echo grabbed onto the hand that wavered near his face, even as he doubled over to cough a thin stream of blood. He gasped a breath of ground transparisteel. He couldn't breathe. He felt his heart thud sickly in his ears. Was it slowing?
"Echo?"
"What's happening?"
"I don't know! He just started choking on nothing—"
Still clutching onto that hand, Echo hacked out a mouthful of something that splatted to the deck with a sickening slop. Through watery eyes he saw pink blossoms floating on a pond of blood and bile. It stank. He was gonna do it again.
"Is that flowers?"
Echo held onto the hand that gripped him desperately back. He hadn't had a hand to hold on Skako Minor. He'd be damned if he went out without one this time.
"Echo, is that—"
"It is formally called 'hanahaki disease', though it is sometimes translated as 'affliction of the flowers'." Tech.
"No prizes for guessing why." Crosshair.
"But why didn't he say anything if he's sick?" Wrecker.
Expectant silence, as the Batch awaited an explanation from their sergeant. An explanation that Hunter couldn't possibly give.
"The only cure appears to be confession and the hope for reciprocal feeling. Platonic feelings can often send the disease into a dormant state—"
"I think he's waking up! Look, he's hugging Lula real tight!"
"There are indeed indications of waking activity on his monitor. Let me…"
Beeping.
"What should we do?" Crosshair, his voice pitched low, beneath the beeping of machinery. "You saw the diagnosis. We all did."
Crosshair must be sitting close to the bed.
Why was he sitting close to the bed?
Beeping. Higher. Faster.
"Someone get—!"
"We can get you back to Rex. You just have to ask."
Echo blinked blearily at the lights in the Marauder's medbay-slash-stowage. They needed to replace one of the bulbs. He'd made a note somewhere about it, hadn't he? When he'd been trying to be useful. Trying to distract himself from—
"You know you can ask us for anything, Echo. We might not be able to supply it, but you can always ask." A soft sigh. "Rex is easy enough. For you, anyway."
When Echo managed to coordinate himself to lay on his side, propped on his scomp, he found Hunter sitting on the floor beside his cot. The lopsided smile on his face made even the skull tattoo seem soft. Echo traced the ink with his eyes before he could stop himself, and when the line ended at Hunter's mouth, those lips curved wider. Echo snapped his gaze to Hunter's.
"Back with us?" Hunter asked, wryly.
"For now," Echo said, then immediately ducked his head to cough against his arm. "Ugh. I guess I owe Tech one. I thought for sure I was on my way out."
"You are."
Echo stared. "What?"
From Hunter's attitude, Echo had thought— What had he thought.
Hunter's lips twisted. "There's no cure for hanahaki disease other than confirmation of reciprocal feelings. There's a surgical option—"
"No surgery."
"Tech said you'd say that. Plus, it doesn't work most of the time, anyway. We figure that if we get you to Rex—"
"He'll, what? Find me a jedi?" Sure, maybe the Force could cure Echo of being an idiot.
"You have feelings for a jedi?"
Echo coughed again, his diaphragm spasming as if in protest at the absurd notion. With a sinking heart, Echo plucked a small flower from his tongue, gagging as he drew the long stem from his throat. It was the first full flower, and it had red and black petals. Cute. He crushed it between finger and thumb.
Hunter was still staring. Had he seen—?
"A jedi?" Hunter prompted.
"With the Force. A cure," Echo explained, feeling like surely Hunter knew that part. Hadn't it been his idea?
"There isn't a cure," Hunter said, slowly, like he thought the flowers were growing in Echo's ears as well.
Exhausted, Echo flopped onto his back on the bed. The missing bulb annoyed him. He supposed he'd die being annoyed by it.
"Then drop me off on the next empty moon. But replace this kriffing bulb first!"
"Echo…"
Is there an Echo in here? Not for much longer, apparently.
"Go away, Hunter."
"I don't understand. We can take you to Rex— Heck, Tech's probably already programmed the destination, though I said I'd speak to you first. In case… I don't know. In case you wanted to die horribly, I guess," Hunter finished with a mutter.
Echo could picture his face, the way Hunter would've wrinkled his nose at the idea, at what he thought of as Echo's sacrifice play. Echo had only been with the Batch a short time, but he could so easily imagine Hunter's expression, or Tech's narration, or Wrecker's reception, or Crosshair's assessment. The four of them had stepped through a door in his heart that Echo hadn't realised he'd left unlocked, and planted themselves there, growing roots before he'd known the soil had been… tilled… or whatever. Whatever people did with soil that made them grow enormous, nonsense flowers that were going to kill him.
If only Echo had been clever enough to love Rex. He would've told Rex in a heartbeat. Rex carried a torch for Commander Cody, as bright as a thousand suns, but he respected Echo. Respect, and close proximity, might've been enough to send the disease into a dormant state. Get Echo a few good years.
But Echo hadn't fallen for Rex, had he? When he'd been put back together, someone had put extra pieces in his heart.
He sighed. "It's not Rex."
Hunter made a sharp intake of breath. "What?"
"It's you. All of you. All four of you. It's your ridiculous hair routine, and Wrecker's bone-crushing hugs, and Crosshair's snarky asides, and Tech's infodumps. It's the way you know pink ration bars are my favourite, and that I can't have anyone in my blind spot. It's that stop we made on the last mission because I said it reminded me of— It's the way you've all made space for me. I didn't think I'd ever fit anywhere ever again." Echo closed his eyes. "I've fallen in love with all of you and I'm mad as hell about it."
"Reg, you're an idiot."
"Crosshair…"
Echo opened his eyes to glare at the skinny streak of sniper who had appeared out of damn nowhere on loth cat silent feet. Needed to put a damn bell on him.
"I might be in love with you, but I'm still going to kick your ass," Echo bit out.
Crosshair sneered. "Get out of bed and say that to me, reg. I didn't let you crush my hand just so you can give up now."
Hunter put his hand on Crosshair's shoulder. "You're not helping."
"I disagree. I think this is going to be a most helpful exercise," Tech said, because of course Tech was there as well, shoving himself just behind Hunter to peer over the sergeant's shoulder. "Get out of bed, Echo."
"I'd love to but—"
"Come on! Lemme help!" came Wrecker's offer, as he loomed over Tech.
Echo cut his eyes at Hunter, looking past a still-taunting Crosshair. "They all heard that, did they?"
Hunter tilted his head and shrugged with one shoulder. "It's a small ship."
"Too small for your drama," Crosshair said, grabbing Echo's attention again. He curled his lip. "Get out of bed. Kick my ass. Unless you're too feeble for—"
Whatever Crosshair had intended to say next was lost until Echo's roar as he launched himself from bed, shoving Crosshair over and landing atop him, his scomp braced across Crosshair's throat. Someone shouted, and someone else cheered, and at least two somethings were knocked over in a clatter, but Echo didn't care. He cared only about Crosshair's slender hips between his thighs, and the sense of victory in getting one over on the little kriffer. Crosshair's eyes were wide, and his cheeks darkly stained in a blush. He wasn't even attempting to wiggle free.
Which was…
Well.
Crosshair put his hands on Echo's thighs and, arching one eyebrow in challenge, squeezed.
"What… Uh. What are you doing?" Echo asked. He felt suddenly like something other than a figh was happening.
"Helping Tech prove a theory," Crosshair rasped.
"Which is?"
"Reciprocal feelings. As a cure. For your stupid disease."
Another squeeze.
Stunned, Echo raised his scomp slightly from Crosshair's throat—noting the small unconscious noise of dismay that Crosshair made as he did—and looked wildly at Hunter, who nodded, his gaze dark. Then at Tech, who inclined his head as if admitting a point in debate. Finally, he looked at Wrecker, who beamed and waggled his eyebrows, making Echo laugh in startled delight.
Then he hiccuped.
The entire room seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of an avalanche of flowers. Echo's heart ricocheted in his ears and he waited to cough a garden of lies, but… Relief. Only relief, and an impossible, astonished sense of hope.
He looked at them all again, one by one, and his heart began to bloom.
for @gutterandthestars some wingfic with wolffe/fox and a soupçon of The Yearns [eta: now on ao3]
Wolffe spotted the comb among the rubble of a semi-collapsed building, where he and the pack had been searching more than they’d been rescuing, on a day made more wretched still by the close, muggy air of the jungle world where they’d been deployed. Sweat dripped down the neck of Wolffe’s undersuit, gathering in a pool where his wings were wrapped against his back, and his visor kept misting, the internal conditioning as tired as Wolffe.
The comb, then, spotted when Wolffe had permitted himself ten seconds to stand still and breathe. At first glance, he’d thought the pale shard to herald a body he’d failed to rescue and his stomach had knotted, before releasing as he focused and realised what he was seeing. Then the comb was in his hand.
A pretty thing, carved from the bone of some animal or other, and decorated with flowers that had been carefully stained purple and pink. The tines were wide spaced and flat, and when Wolffe tested one with his thumb, it had the expected amount of give. A wing-comb, definitely, though Wolffe hadn’t seen any being on-planet with wings.
For a pet, maybe? A big damn pet. The thought made him laugh, imagining something as big as a clone in a cage, singing or twittering on a perch.
He sobered. If what Fox had insinuated about Coruscant was true, then maybe the idea wasn’t as far fetched as Wolffe would have hoped.
Fox. Wolffe pressed the tines with his thumb again. Everything made him think of—
“All clear over here, sir?” Sinker asked, ambling toward Wolffe with an easy stride that the twitching tips of his wings belied. “We’re about done if so, General Koon says.”
“Ready to go,” Wolffe confirmed, as he slipped the comb into a pouch on his belt.
He felt Sinker’s attention linger on the action, the pouch, but for all Sinker’s ebullience, he knew when to keep his questions behind his teeth. Wolffe adjusted his shoulders, which did nothing to ease the ache from the weight of his sweaty wings, and nodded sharply.
“Let’s get out of this blasted greenhouse.”
Aboard ship, after debriefing with General Koon, and sticking his head into the trooper’s rec room to make sure everyone had their wings on straight, Wolffe made a tactical retreat to his bunk. There, for the first time in what felt like cycles, he shed his armour and unbound his wings, groaning with relief as he did. A handful of speckled grey feathers scattered to the floor; Wolffe swept the deadfall under his bunk with the tip of one wing. The droids could sort that later. He had better things to do than clean.
For once, Fox answered his comm on the first try. Wolffe used to try and figure out the time on Coruscant before calling, but Fox’s schedule made no sense, so Wolffe had abandoned the brief charade at politeness and called whenever he could.
“You look like haran,” Fox greeted, grinning with all his teeth, his face for once bare. Movement and jostling as he got comfortable in— Wolffe had lucked out! Fox was in his bunk. “Everything copacetic?”
“Long and sweaty day. We can’t all be tasked with top secret canapés and mission critical opera.”
Fox barked a laugh. “Shut your kriffing face about my canapés. You’re just jealous.”
Every day, Wolffe longed to receive a search and rescue mission for Coruscant, with orders to pull his siblings out of the city planet and take them anywhere else at all. Whenever the 104th cycled through to 000, he’d whisper to Fox about extraction, pressing promises and kisses into Fox’s impeccably groomed feathers, still somehow softer than down. Fox only laughed. Every time, he laughed. Wolffe didn’t take the reaction personally; anything other than laughter would’ve been too vulnerable to voice on Coruscant.
Wolffe could be vulnerable enough for both of them. He couldn’t do much for Fox, not from out in the black, but he had learnt that. Like he had learnt how to show Fox how much and in what ways that Wolffe thought about him, wished for him, when they were separated by parsecs upon parsecs.
On his bunk, Wolffe curled one of his wings in front of his face so that Fox could see the spread feathers. Then he raised the new comb toward the comm, as if offering Fox the handle.
“Got this today—“
“‘Rescued’, was it?”
“—and thought of you.”
Fox’s mouth snapped shut. Wolffe couldn’t confirm due to the low resolution of the comm, but he imagined Fox’s pupils dilating, the way he’d seen—the way he’d caused—so many times before. Fox licked his lips and shifted, as if settling more fully for the show, and tilted his chin. Even the poor resolution of the holo didn’t disguise the hunger in his gaze.
“Go on, then. Show me what you think of me,” Fox said. A challenge. A plea, if he had been any other vod.
Wolffe bared his teeth behind the shield of his wing, and touched the tines to his feathers.
"There are too many non-cooks in my kitchen!" Fox shouted, breaking out his Chef Voice for the occasion. "Anyone not wearing an apron, get out!"
Fox had been taught to project by Dexter Jettster, who had commanded his own kitchen with a marvellous bellow, and Fox might've been a foot shorter than his teacher, but his voice had certainly equalled the other man's after Dex's diligent tutelage.
I have nothing more to teach you, Dex had said, on the day he'd declared Fox ready to set forth and bake on his own. Then Dex had grunted. Because no one is gonna be able to teach you patience.
A sensible man, Dexter Jettster.
