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Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard likes to consider himself a pragmatic man.
He’s never been one for poetry, never been one to ascribe some grand design to the universe. Even the concept of The Force gets a little fuzzy around the edges for him when he thinks about it too hard (he’d be hard-pressed to say that it doesn’t exist, all the same). But, as far as he’s concerned, the universe is, at its core, rather straightforward.
He’s considered, off and on, that his overabundance of rationality is the exact thing that got his ass planted on Coruscant in the first place. Which means, really, that his own damned personality is at least partially responsible for two things that have become equally weighted yet entirely different sources of stress for him.
The first is, of course, the now-late Chancellor. A good portion of that whole mess is–as a strange amount of people have taken to telling him in the last few weeks–not his fault. That he can admit. No amount of his own sensibilities was going to be enough to stop an actual Sith Lord from using him as a strange mix of a glorified errand boy, a disregarded punching bag, and a little puppet he used to enact his evil whims.
That is done, now, though. One Jedi Master Windu took care of that for him and now he gets to deal with the end of the war, the reshaping of the galaxy, and a new and overwhelming lack of purpose.
Which is, of course, where Quinlan Vos comes in.
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Fox meets Quinlan Vos in his drunk tank which is–all things considered–one of the least romantic settings to begin any sort of tryst.
The Jedi smiles at Fox as he comes in and Fox resists the urge to bang his head, bucket and all, against a wall until he gives himself enough brain damage to never have to worry about existence or Jedi again. He makes a valiant effort to convince himself of it but, alas, his (aforementioned) overactive rational side takes over.
“General Vos,” he greets. The Jedi’s smile widens and Fox wishes that Thorn was not so damn nosey and stupidly curious and that he hadn’t started to chat up the Kiffar who had been brought down and was claiming to be a Jedi. It would have, at the very least, delayed this a little bit. Maybe long enough that Fox would have some Caff in him before the nightmare began. “It’s not often we get Jedi here.”
“In your drunk tank or in the Coruscant Guard Headquarters?” Vos asks, tilting his head to get a better look at Fox. Later, the idiot will wax poetic about it all, but Fox will always know he didn’t look all that impressive at that moment. Case in point–the next thing Vos asks is, “Did you dust right before this?”
“No,” Fox says, suddenly quite aware of the dust on his boots and kama. He’d been running a patrol three levels down, that’s what, and Coruscant is the closest thing to hell he thinks anyone could create. “And yes, on both counts. So, what are you doing here?”
“I was simply enjoying a drink when a very polite Commander by the name of Stone told me that public intoxication is a crime and then subsequently informed me that he would be taking me to a drunk tank. Then, upon processing, I informed another Commander named Thorn–who is also quite polite, I may add–that I am a Jedi and that I need him to contact the Jedi Temple, so they can pick me up. And then I told this all to another Commander whose name I have yet to catch…” He bats his eyelashes at him. Fox feels his eye twitch.
“Fox,” he says, despite his own better judgement. Vos gives him a bright grin and Fox realises, with some detached apathy born of just how god-damned tired he is, that this is probably a bad thing. But hey. No going back now.
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And thus begins Commander Fox’s personal hell.
Quinlan Vos makes it his life mission, so it would seem, to find every button on Fox and push it. He’s loud and he’s tall and he’s obnoxious and sometimes he looks at Fox with an expression that has his stomach doing flips as he stares back at the Jedi and considers homicide.
“He’s smitten,” Thire chirps at him one day, boots up on his desk, his cup of caff clutched protectively to his chest. Fox narrows his eyes at him and Thire throws his head back and laughs and Fox reminds himself that Thire is his favourite of the idiots who call themselves Commanders that he’s been saddled with. “He asked me about your favourite candies, yesterday.”
“You keep this up and I’ll put you on permanent Senate Rounds,” Fox says from between clenched teeth, but the whirring of the coffee machine drowns out the bite so Thire just laughs again. Fox somehow doubts Thire would have been intimated anyway. He also somewhat doubts how much he means it, but he knows for certain Thire sniffed that hint of doubt like a mastiff. Little shit.
“Come on, Fox,” Thire says, leaning precariously back in his chair, taking a long sip of his caff. Fox watches him from the corner of his eye, making sure he doesn’t fall. The caff is still fresh, after all. No good burning your face because you spilt hot caff all over yourself while leaning back in a chair and terrorising your older brother, “What’s so bad about him?”
“He’s annoying,” Fox says. The caff machine stops whirring.
Thire gives him a look that Fox just knows he got from him. And the gall of the brat to use it against him! His brother gives a pompous sniff and says, “So are you.”
“I know where you sleep and have full control of your schedule, Commander,” Fox says, grabbing his cup and turning to his brother, who looks at him with a look that is now coming from the unholy trio that is Stone, Hound, and Thorn. You’re supposed to be better than this, Thire, the undignified part of Fox (which is normally consigned to being shoved into a box in the back of his mind) whines. Fox ignores it wholeheartedly.
“Okay, what else?” Thire asks, finally sitting forward again and placing his caff down on the table. His eyes sparkle as he looks at him. “You find Thorn and Stone and maybe even me annoying sometimes and you still love us. He’s nice. He helps us out. So why don’t you like him?”
Fox thinks, for just a heartbeat, about The Chancellor and the bruises under his armour and his blacks. Then he presses the thoughts back, locking them away for some indefinite later that will come crashing back down on him soon enough.
Instead of saying anything in response, he just raises a brow and replies, “Sometimes?”
“You live with us, Commander,” Thire reminds him. “Can’t hate us wholeheartedly.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” Fox replies, waving his hand through the air in a dismissive gesture that does little to quell the look in Thire’s eyes. Force help me, Fox thinks. He’s going to start a hobby, at this rate.
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Commander Thorn is very willing to engage in gossip. After all, its like caff: incredibly central to the continued survival and culture of The GAR and thus is something to be regularly observed and upheld. And who cares what certain uptight commanders who will not be named think? Thorn has a little something called free will!
So when Stone comes saddling up to him, one Quinlan Vos in his shadow, both of them with twin grins on their faces, all he does is lean forward eagerly. Stone’s smile morphs into something close to unhinged and unmitigated glee and Thorn just knows he’s about to have some fun.
And fun he does have. Because the first thing Quinlan Vos asks him, fingers splayed out across his desk is, “Now, Stone here tells me you and Fox have known one another for a while, so I’d figured I’d ask–what’s he really like? Behind that armour, you know?”
See, Thire has shared his Theory of The Romance, as Hound called it in one of their little no-fox-allowed meetings that Fox is not supposed to know about but probably does because he’s Fox and here on Coruscant that's a synonym for paranoid bastard. But The Theory is plain and clear to Thorn and he’s watching it get proven right here and now.
And he loves Fox, yeah? Respects him, would go to hell and back for him, would die for him if he had to. That does not mean that he is suddenly above being a brother to the one person who seems content to live in their own little ball of misery and isolation. So, he tells all he can to a very interested Quinlan Vos.
He’s so engrossed with it he doesn’t hear the slam of familiar footsteps against the floor until it’s too late.
“Vos,” a cold, gravelly voice calls from the doorway. Thorn’s mouth stops moving. Stone presses against the wall on instinct, as if he can actually become his namesake and thus, become the wall as well. Quinlan Vos just smiles.
“Foxy!” He calls. Thorn’s eye twitches as he watches Fox’s expression shudder into something dangerous. Thorn does not look at Stone. If he moves, Fox will see him and Fox will Have Words With Him. Thorn would like to belay this, thank you very much.
He loves his brother. He’s also like. The second scariest person he knows. (Behind Bacara, of course.)
“What are you doing here?” Fox asks, voice flat, eyes narrowed, shoulders set. But Thorn knows his brother. This isn’t an angry Fox. This is a Fox who has been wound up and is about ready to let loose and judging by that easy grin on The Jedi’s face, that’s exactly what he wanted.
“Oh, nothing!” Quinlan says with a wave of his hand that has Fox’s eyes narrowing even more as he regards the Jedi. Quinlan makes his exit then, clapping Fox on the shoulder as he says, “Just getting to know your Commanders.”
And then he is gone, leaving Stone and Thorn to their fates. A long silence stretches.
“You,” Fox finally says, turning to look at Thorn. He slowly raises a datapad, hoping it will be some sort of shield. Fox’s expression passes through many complicated emotions before finally settling on a familiar and not world-ending one: exasperation.
(well, not world-ending on the larger fox-is-going-to-do-something-that-might-get-him-decommed scale. but it’s definitely world-ending on the thorns-sanity-and-safety-and-security scale. hence the shield remaining up.)
“You’re an idiot,” Fox finally says, sending him a warning glare that promises Violence in the near future before he goes stalking off after the Jedi he claims he is not in love with, just like he claims he does not have a caff addiction.
Thorn looks towards Stone, who is still attempting to become one with the wall. His brother just shrugs and grins and Thorn settles back in his chair. He’ll pay for it now, but hey, maybe this will be at least a push in the right direction.
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Fox is not a fool. He has made a career of it, actually. He’s alive because he’s not an idiot.
So, that’s to say he knows what Vos is doing. He knows what those smiles and those nicknames and all of his bullshit are in pursuit of and well–
He’s not Cody or, god forbid, Bly. He will not be seduced, thank you very much.
But, at the same time–
Fox thinks he’s going insane. Just a little. He maybe even deserves to go a little insane because well, he’s working in The Senate and he has the express misfortune of having Palpatine for a boss. That’s grounds for insanity in most cases, but he is not most cases and he is not going to desert because when Cody inevitably drags his shebs back to reality, he’ll have to explain why and well. Cody does not deserve that because Cody is a bitch.
Vos keeps popping up more and more by the end. Sitting on the edge of his desk and sipping from his cups of caff and looking down at him with eyes that seem to say he knows the whole of Fox. He calls him names that have something rising up in him, an emotion he cannot name, a feeling he does not dare to face.
Marshall Commander Fox of The Coruscant Guard is pragmatic. He is rational. He has self-control–fucking hell, he’s the model of control. Kamino bred and born and yet! And yet this Jedi can somehow make all of that disappear in an instant, rendering him an idiot–
Fox lays in bed and considers it all. Wounds he has no memory as to the origin of dance across his skin, smarting with every movement. This is the first time he’s been anything but vertical in thirty-six hours. In some six hours, he’ll be back up at it again, slaving away for a Republic he was born to die for. Pressed under the thumb, thrown into the machine, beaten and spewed out again and again.
A headache presses at the corner of his mind. Inarticulate voices whisper meaningless words in the back of his mind. A weight settles at the base of his spine, a tremor runs up it and through his hands. He presses closer to his bed, trying to smother his thoughts–or himself. Sometimes he can’t tell.
Vos returns to his mind. He knows what this Jedi has done to him. He knows it well, knows it in his heart, but he cannot face it. This is no matter of will or strength. It is a matter of rightness. It doesn’t matter what he wants, or what Vos says when it's just the two of them in his office, a bottle between them, some walls broken down in a moment of intimacy that will go unspoken of forever more.
Marshall Commander Fox of The Coruscant Guard is just that. A commander. A servant of the GAR.
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Three days later, Mace Windu decapitates Fox’s boss some six feet away from him.
Fox, lying bloody and prone on the floor, mind slowly unscrambling itself as it (as he later learns) attempts to function against a very damaged inhibitor chip and the residue of a Sith Lord in his mind, blinking sluggishly at the site of the very dead Chancellor. Jedi are all around him. He’d been fighting them. Why had he been fighting them?
Fox looks down. His nose is gushing blood and now the front of his armour is covered in the stuff and Fox thinks, with no small amount of apathy born of shock and being pretty much wholly detached from reality at the moment, that it’ll be a bitch to clean up.
Someone comes crashing in at his side. Oh, it’s Quinlan, Fox thinks and the startling casualness of that is enough to start having the sane part of Fox begin to crawl back to the front of his mind. But not quite quickly enough because Vos is holding his face in between his hands, shouting orders that Fox cannot hear, given the fact that the world sounds like it's all underwater.
Fox reaches up, latching onto Vos’s wrist. The Jedi looks down at him and gives him an easy smile, but Fox has somehow learned how this man smiles and he can see the tension behind it. His mind is clearing, the weight and implications of everything beginning to come over him. He attempts to sit up, attempts to move but his body ignites with enough pain to make his vision blank out for a moment.
He groans. The sound reverberates around his skull like a blaster bolt ricocheting around a room and he bites his tongue to distract from that awful sensation. He’s still clinging to Vos’s hands but the sound of new voices around him has him looking anywhere but The Jedi.
He meets Cody’s eyes. His brother gives him a soft smile and reaches out to brush a sweaty curl from Fox’s face, the pads of his fingers lingering over a spot on his temple for just a moment. Then Cody leans forward, presses a kiss to his brow and Fox remembers nothing else.
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“Hey, you,” Vos says as he sits at Fox’s bedside, giving him an easy smile that has Fox rolling his eyes on pure instinct because god, this Jedi. “Good to see you awake, Foxy.”
Fox glares at him and huffs, not really wanting to say much of anything. Because his lungs are fucked up. Because his ribs are fucked up. Because everything is fucked up and he’s sat here wallowing in a soft bed in the Jedi Halls of Healing, trying to come to terms with everything that’s happened since Windu decapitated Palpatine and Fox passed out in a pool of his own blood that was–shockingly enough–not just from a very strong bloody nose.
Who would have thought?
Even still, Fox manages to mutter in a more than put-out tone, “Don’ call me tha’.”
“Okay,” Vos says, just like he always does before inevitably coming back to it in the end because he’s awful and annoying and–and he’s holding Fox’s hand in his, careful not to disturb the IV line there. Good, The Commander in Fox (who is very beaten down and tired but not dead, thank you very much) thinks, don’t you make The Healers mad, or I’ll fucking gut you, Jedi or not.
“How you doing?” Vos asks. Fox just shrugs, closing his eyes. This is wrong. He’s supposed to be at this man’s throat, bitching at him and telling him to get out, or sitting in a darkened office with him, sharing booze and words that need no repeating. They’re not supposed to be like this–hands intertwined in a hospital room, the sun streaming in on golden rays. This isn’t– no.
But still, Fox does not pull away. He lets Vos intertwine their hands a little more, the leather of his gloves soft under Fox’s calloused hands. Fox can feel the tantalising pull of something beginning to settle in his stomach, but he presses it down with what strength is left in him.
He has things to retain. A life to rebuild. He does not need this Jedi to come sweeping in and spinning him into his schemes, does not need whatever it is. Contrary to the ache in his heart, contrary to midnight longings, contrary to his own honest self. Contrary to it all because the world ended a week ago and Fox doesn’t know where to go next.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry, for all of it,” Vos finally says. Fox’s eyes fly open, locking onto the Jedi who looks at him with pity– no, not that, Fox realises a heartbeat later. No, it’s not a pity. Fox would hate pity, but he could live with it, swallow the bile and press on. But this is love and care and sorrow and Fox cannot swallow any of it, cannot make his mind put itself back together.
Fuck you, Quinlan Vos, for what you have done to me, Fox thinks. Quinlan’s grip tightens on his and Fox tries to speak again, but all that comes out is a strangled noise that has the Jedi bringing their intertwined hands up, has him holding Fox’s hand in both of his, has him pressing a kiss to the bruised and bloody knuckles, has Fox–
“‘s not your fault,” Fox manages to say.
“I know,” Quinlan says softly. “Doesn’t mean it’s not worth saying.”
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“Fox,” Cody says in a despairing tone from where he’s sat on his bed, watching Fox pour himself some caff. When the Jedi had asked him if there was anything they could get him, Fox had–being so incredibly spaced out on drugs–simply said a caff machine. And all of his men were in similar states and none of his batchmates were there so no one said no or thought it through until it was too late. “Have you ever considered that you might have a problem?”
“I don’t care,” Fox says primly. Cody exchanges an exasperated look with Bly, who is sitting at the provided desk. The Jedi Temple, man. Beds big enough to stretch out wholly. Desks that aren’t covered in paperwork. Personal caff machines! Fox is kinda mad Palpatine kept him from this…among all the other reasons he’s a little ticked off with the dead bastard.
Cody and Bly look back at him in tandem. Fox takes a sip of his caff and watches the eyes of the brothers who have the unfortunate pleasure of being on babysit-Fox-duty twitch. He thinks he deserves to make some people antsy. He spent three years under the personal control of a Sith and now he’s got a nice fucked up mind to go with it.
One of the senior Jedi healers had said, upon hearing about the caff machine, that too much caffeine was bad for him. But when they’d attempted to see it removed, Fox had been annoying enough that it stayed. And oh, had he been gloating about it.
He narrows his eyes at the pair of them. Maybe…just maybe they were sent here by the Jedi to bar Fox from the truest joy he has in life. (Or maybe they’re just here because they love him, Cody would protest, but Fox doesn’t care about his opinions because he’s a bitch. As previously mentioned.)
“Fox,” Cody says, fond exasperation on his face. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
“Yeah, well,” Fox says with a little more hurt in his voice than he means to put in, “Can’t let Coruscant take it all, you know?”
Cody and Bly exchange another one of their looks. Fox suddenly wishes it was Wolffe on babysitting duty (for some god-awful reason, he’ll later reflect), because Wolffe wouldn’t waste time on this shit. He’d just bitch and moan and all would be right in the world.
“What’s this I hear about you and General Vos?” Bly finally asks in some attempt to shift the mood and to break the strained silence that has fallen over the three of them.
Fox throws an empty cup at him.
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Fox is supposed to be peacefully resting on this very comfortable bed. His brother–bitch, bastard, awful human being all around–has other ideas, though. “Can I give you some advice?”
Maybe he’ll learn how to become one with his bed and his pillow. That way, he won’t have to deal with this fresh new hell. “No.”
“I’m going to give you some advice.” Motherfucker.
Fox turns to look at his brother then and Cody just gives him a grin that has Fox’s blood pressure rising at an exponential rate. Cody is cruel to ambush him like this, ambush him while he lays in bed, in a place where all Cody needs to do is sit next to him and rest a hand on his back to render him immobile.
“I hate you,” Fox mutters, turning to shove his face into a pillow. Cody’s laugh echoes, his fingers on Fox’s back beginning to tap a staccato rhythm.
“Okay, so here’s the thing about Jedi,” Cody starts to say, clicking his tongue when Fox tenses and shifts, ready to throw something at his brother or throttle him. Or maybe even both, depending on where Cody plans to go with this. But his brother pushes him down and so Fox can only listen.
“They’re well…Jedi. They all know one another, right? They feel what one another feels, especially when they’re close. So, if say…a certain Jedi liked someone in a purely not platonic way, their close friends would know.”
“Cody,” Fox groans. His brother ignores his pleas.
“And Obi-Wan is–if you didn’t know–one of Quinlan’s closest friends. And Obi-Wan tells me everything because–”
“I don’t want to hear about your carnal relationship with a Jedi, Cody,” Fox says, finally turning to pin a glare on his brother, who just brightens under the look. Fox scowls and says, “I hate you so much.”
“All I’m saying, Fox, is that it’s not such a bad thing if you let it be something, in the first place. And Obi-Wan likes Quinlan and I know your Commanders do as well. And don’t pretend like I’m an idiot, okay? Wolffe and I have both seen how you look at him.” Fox is blushing. Cody is killing him. He’s going to kill Cody, at this rate. “He’s smitten. You’re besotted.”
“And you’re a mistake,” Fox replies airily. Cody’s laugh echoes through the room.
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“I should have left you in my drunk tank to rot,” Fox says sharply as Vos gives him a wily smile. He shoves the Jedi away and tries once more to go into his office, only to be thwarted for the fourth time by Vos stopping him. This time, by grabbing his arm.
Fox whirls. Vos uses his advantage while he has it and pulls him in, leaning in, dangerously close. Fox feels himself swallow with a wet click as he studies Vos’s face. Then he feels his world be turned completely upside down and turned inside out and maybe blended up a little as Vos loosens his grip on Fox’s hands and rests his hands on Fox’s belt.
Fox makes a choked noise. Quinlan smiles at him.
“One of these days,” Fox says from between gritted teeth, grunting as Vos tugs on his belt a little, sending him off balance enough to make him grab onto the Jedi’s arms for stability. Fox makes a frustrated noise and meets the Jedi’s eyes and finishes his damn sentence, “I am going to murder you. Violently. Slowly.”
“It’s a date,” Vos says in that lecherous way of his, leaning in a little. Fox bares his teeth, but even he knows it's weak. He can feel his heartbeat, after all. Feel his own madness in the wake of his frayed sanity, feel all the things he so desperately wants to ignore come crashing in. Fuck you, Vos, he thinks.
Vos is looking at him like he knows the whole of him. He’s still got his hands on his belt and Fox places his hands on his chest, ready to shove him away the second Vos’s guard is down, and well, maybe they were just tempting fate.
Vos leans in a little more. Footsteps sound down the hallway and they both go still, turning to look at the newcomer. Fox feels his stomach bottom out as he registers the armour and as he realises that he’s just completely fucked himself over, all because of this stupid Jedi–
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Hound says, looking up as he registers the presence of someone else. Then he seems to register what is happening here–Vos, his hands on Fox’s hips, Fox’s hands on his chest as he tries to shove him back in sudden horror, the empty hallway–and then he smiles in a way that has Fox silently apologising to Grizzler for what he’s about to do to this man. “Sorry Commander. I’ll leave you to it!”
And then he’s off with a lazy salute. Fox glares after him then finally manages to shove a smiling Quinlan Vos away, ignoring how his heart hammers in a damning rhythm against his chest. He sends the Jedi a glare but it, of course, does nothing. Because Quinlan Vos sucks.
He shoves said Jedi back at last. Vos is laughing. Fox feels like he’s on fire.
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Quinlan Vos finds him lying on the floor of the refresher, shirtless and sweating, still in the throes of a nightmare he cannot remember save for the phantom weight of pain upon him and the acidic taste of death in his mouth. That’s more than enough to leave him lying here, really.
Vos sits next to him, looking at him with his dark eyes that pick him apart and know all of him. Fox’s mind spins into a hundred disjointed memories and he grits his jaw against the agony of memory.
“How can I help?” Vos asks.
“Stay,” is Fox’s whispered plea. It will not be spoken of. It will fade into the rhythm of all the other moments that none but the two of them know of, moments where there were so few walls, where they could dream, where they could maybe believe in the possibility of something real. Something true. Something that was theirs alone.
“You drive me up a wall,” Fox says without any reason behind a loose tongue and broken inhibition, leaning his head back, relishing the brief relief of the cool tiles pressing against his sweat-soaked curls. His fingers flex aimlessly against the tile floors, seeking purchase. His throat is bared to Vos and he runs his tongue over the bottoms of his teeth, catching on the canines he sharpened as a kid with Wolffe, a lifetime ago.
Vos is looking at him like he knows his soul. And maybe he does. Maybe that’s why Fox is doomed.
“You don’t leave me alone. You annoy me. You sit in my office and spew nonsense.” Fox is rambling. He should bite off his own tongue. He does not. He should not look at Quinlan Vos and see the desire in those eyes and he should not want like he does. And yet, he does. “But you’re everything I’ve ever wanted. You know me better than anyone else. I cannot have you. I cannot want you–”
And yet– these are the words that finally catch in his throat. He pants for breath, feeling cool beads of sweat run down his face and his spine. Vos is right there and a hundred aching memories come back to him–lonely nights in a bed that felt so empty, endless patrols where the whiskey from the night before still burned in his throat, a quiet moment in a sunlit room.
“The world has changed, Fox,” Quinlan Vos says. Fox closes his eyes, trying to reel himself back in. Pragmatic, rational, sane, Commander Fox, that is me. The mantra runs through his mind and through his blood and yet it does not fill the hole that his aching want has left within him. “What’s to say we cannot?”
Fox thinks of red blood on unpainted plastoid. Of a corpse and a burning beacon of purple. Of missing moments, of the blood on his hands, of a kiss placed against his brow, the breathless prayer of his brother.
Change, he thinks. Every part of him recoils, beaten back by fear. Change is the rolling tide, change is the unknown, change is inescapable and unbeatable. It is not something he can cradle in his hands and make his own and maybe that is what makes it a shadow in his mind, makes it the block in the road.
Fox shakes his head. Vos leaves, in the end. Fox lets him go.
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And so Fox turns away. He’s shown Vos his underbelly. He’s said it all, said too much and burned it all down. He could have said those three words and it would have been less a wound than this. But no, he didn’t. He said so much more. And now he runs.
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But Quinlan Vos finally corners him in the snow, on a pretty day, in a park near the place Fox sometimes gets his caff from, when he needs to avoid the prying eyes of people who can and will track his routine visits to the caff machine. You know. The one he bought for himself. With his own money. As a reward for surviving the war off of shit caff.
Traitors, the lot of them. Idiots, too.
But none of that matters now. Quinlan Vos is standing so close to him, intoxicating and undeniable as he smiles at Fox, cheeks flush from the cold, eyes bright. Fox is clutching his cup of caff to his chest as a sort of makeshift shield, not that it will do much.
That evening on the refresher floor seems like a lifetime ago. The shadows have receded. The world is back in focus, somewhat.
“Come on,” Quinlan is saying about something or another. “It’ll be good for you.”
“I know what’s good for me,” Fox says. They both absolutely know there’s evidence to the contrary, and judging by the way the Jedi’s brows furrow, he’s considering calling that part out. Blessedly, he does not. Worse, though, his expression softens in a way that Fox knows too damn well.
So, Fox looks away. And maybe that’s what leads to it all.
Quinlan steps closer. The caff is no shield and it’s basically empty anyway. Maybe Fox does have a problem–many problems really. The caff one, of course. And the one that he registers when Quinlan takes the cup from his hands and he doesn’t even stop him, watching as Quinlan sips the last dredges of the cup away and throws it in a nearby trash can with a perfect shot. All Fox can do is watch, unmoored and unforgotten.
Fox still isn’t looking at him. But then he is, eyes fixed on the Jedi’s, mind barrelling on at a hundred miles a minute as Quinlan Vos gives him a smile that has his blood boiling.
“Whatever you are trying to do,” Fox finally manages to say, dredging up what strength and resolve and rationality is left in him, “It’s not–no. If you’re trying to seduce me, make me your whore or something–”
“Seduce, maybe,” Quinlan cuts him off. “Can’t help that one. But it won’t be anything if you don’t want it to be. I just need to know before we both lose our minds.”
But, the thing is, you’ve already made me do just that, Fox thinks. He tries to say something, find the fire and the bite, but nothing rises to his tongue. Clever as a Fox, that’s how he got his name and now it all abandons him in a rush as he meets the eyes of this Jedi. Eyes that pick him apart with ease and comfort, like this man knows him inside and out.
“What do you want, Fox?” Quinlan says, hands coming up slowly, waiting to see if Fox will stop him. He does not. His hands land on his shoulders, warm weights that root Fox to the spot and make it impossible to think.
A thousand barbed words rise to his lips. He tries to make them form in his mouth, tries to find the way to push it all out with his practised care and that streak of sanity that has kept him hanging on this long, those things that have drawn this chase on so arduously. But, to his horror, the truth slips past in the form of a breathy whimper that cannot be mistaken.
And then he says, against the screeches of what he likes to think is his better judgement, “Whatever you can give.”
Quinlan does not wait. His hands move to dig deep into his curls, allowing the Jedi to tug him in the rest of the way. Their lips slot together in a sudden movement. Fox feels his brain screech to a halt, heart missing a beat, hands hovering uselessly in the air, all rational thought finally removed from him.
Quinlan pulls back, looking far too smug for his own good. Fox can feel the heat in his cheeks, feel the way his body is getting tingly all over, feel the way he’s just been entirely turned inside out. Quinlan still has his hands at the nape of his neck and the heat of them is more than enough to make whatever thoughts Fox attempts to conjure up fizzle out before they can form.
“Come on, baby,” Quinlan says, mouth quirking up into an uneven sort of grin that has Fox’s mind finally catching back up to reality. “Let yourself live a little.”
Fox does just that. No one could ever accuse him of being someone who didn’t rise to a challenge when it was given, after all.
So, he grabs Quinlan Vos by the lapels of his stupid jacket, kissing him on his terms now. But what control he had is rapidly taken back as Quinlan cradles his face and deepens the kiss with a laugh that reverberates between them both as they kiss, as Fox forgets how to breathe. Fox’s hands find their place, clinging to the Jedi’s arms like a limpet.
Quinlan’s tongue makes an intrusion. Fox’s sharpened teeth meet it. Quinlan, insane as he is, laughs and pulls back just enough to let Fox see that he’s got a giddy expression on his face. “Teeth already, Fox?” He teases, fingers digging in as he leans in, forcing Fox to hold on tighter to him.
“Fuck you,” Fox says–because he’s the reason Fox has been losing his mind, because he’s the one who chased him down this path, because he has no way to conceptualise just how much he’s wanted this–and then he pulls the Jedi–his Jedi–in for yet another kiss.
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–°✧°–
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“HA! I KNEW IT!” Thorn shouts, slamming his hands down on Fox’s desk with a noise of triumph. From where he’s buried his head in his hands, Fox can just about see the cup of caff on the edge of the table give a precarious jolt at that. His second in command is characteristically oblivious to this and Fox finds himself wishing the caff had spilt over him. Just because.
“Can I say I told you so, yet?” Thire asks from where he’s sat on the other side of Fox’s desk, boots propped up on the desk.
“And can I plan your wedding?” Stone adds on. Fox digs his fingers into his curls and prays for a patience he does not know if he has.
Hound makes a delighted noise at that, mimicked by Grizzler, who Fox is pretty sure he said was not allowed in his office after that time she ate some (thankfully completed and scanned and uploaded) paperwork. But whatever. It's not like these idiots are going to listen to him, not while they’re all lording their supposed wisdom over him.
“I am not afraid to demote all of you, ship you off to Bacara, and let him do what he wants with you,” Fox says, the threat somewhat muddled by the fact he’s speaking more into his hands than anything else. There’s a beat of silence where they all hopefully weigh his words, but he knows they’ve gone down the wrong path when they start speaking all over again.
Stone is the first, spewing some nonsense about a wedding–“Red or white flowers, commander? Or–ooh, we could do both. Corrie colours! And maybe some yellow, on account of Vos’s tattoo–”
And Hound, now–“Can Grizzler be a flower girl? I’ll train her!”
Thire is grinning like a madman and now they’re talking about a guest list. Fox regrets ever letting them in.
Fox slumps further down on his desk. Thorn barks out a laugh and slaps him on the back, before leaning over him like some overgrown shadow or some shit. Someone’s boots–Stone’s, probably, because he’s sat next to Thire and Hound is on the couch–come up next to Thire’s, so dangerously close to that cup of caff.
A cup that Thorn takes the liberty of making his own with a hearty sip and laugh. Fox’s idiot brother pokes him on the back of his neck and then on his back and asks, “First, we should know if we should, you know…chat with The Jedi. Make sure his intentions are right.”
“If any of you attempt to try and Talk to Quinlan Vos because you think you need to defend me from a Jedi, I will kindly remind you of my prior threat and the fact that I can indeed beat a man into the ground, Jedi or not.” He finally looks up at them all, with that.
And then Fox lets himself smile. Wisely, they exchange nervous looks at that. “And anyway, Cody and Wolffe already beat you all to it.”
They take it how he expected, of course.
First, it’s Thorn with an, “Oh, come on!”
Then Stone, whining and indignant as he says, “That’s not fair, they always see Jedi, they have an advantage!”
Hound, flat and oddly serious when he says, “I hate your batchmates, commander. Respectfully.”
And lastly, it’s Thire, who slams his feet back down on the ground, throws his hands up and says, “Bo-ring!”
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Private Chat: The Sane Ones
CC-6454 “Ponds” [tylenol plug] & HG Mace Windu [headache connoisseur]
headache connoisseur: ponds
tylenol plug: yessir
headache connoisseur: can i ask you something in an unofficial capacity
headache connoisseur: that may or may not have to do with the rumour of the week
tylenol plug: oh no
tylenol plug: is this about fox
headache connoisseur: this is about fox.
tylenol plug: okay shoot
headache connoisseur: how
headache connoisseur: how the fuck has quinlan vos pulled that off
tylenol plug: okay
tylenol plug: so
tylenol plug: um
headache connoisseur: theres a lot more to this, then?
tylenol plug: yes
tylenol plug: right okay fox is clearly not the only clone to go head over heels for his jedi
tylenol plug: i mean us
tylenol plug: but also cody and bly and theyre like actively gross
headache connoisseur: mhm
tylenol plug: i can sense your sarcasm
headache connoisseur: no no go on
tylenol plug: but also w/ cody and bly while they took a bit but that can be blamed on their general emotional immaturity right
headache connoisseur: ill refrain from the commentary they would pin onto us but yes
tylenol plug: thanks
tylenol plug: and like i can get why theyre smitten
tylenol plug: and i can get how it works
tylenol plug: cody likes smart men, bly likes muscular women, yadayada
headache connoisseur: im sensing a but
headache connoisseur: i did not need to know that btw
tylenol plug: cope
tylenol plug: but fox is
tylenol plug: okay look i do love my brother first off
headache connoisseur: yes indeed
tylenol plug: okay so fox has a very thin patience
tylenol plug: like microscopic
headache connoisseur: ive noticed that, actually
tylenol plug: and from what i have seen, Vos likes to push every button he can find
headache connoisseur: intriguing
tylenol plug: so, to answer your question: i have no idea how the fuck quinlan vos has managed to seduce my brother
tylenol plug: does that answer your question?
headache connoisseur: not really
tylenol plug: great.
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–°✧°–
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Fox is supposed to have self-control.
He laments this to himself again and again as he finds himself in bed with one Quinlan Vos, shirtless and certainly bound to soon lose the rest of his clothes as well, inhibition and restraint finally slipping away from himself the longer this Jedi keeps wearing away at him.
“I am going t–” he starts to say. He never gets to finish his sentence as Quinlan swallows his words with a slow and languid kiss that has Fox attempting to knee him in the gut, just because. Quinlan tilts his head to deepen the kiss and Fox finds himself powerless to (and more than a little unwilling to, not that he’ll ever say it out loud) stop him.
Quinlan pulls back at last. But Fox is given no respite as Quinlan tucks his hands under his thighs and presses close to him in a way that has the threads of Fox’s sanity fraying at an exponential rate. If he knew that this Jedi would be able to do this to him, he’d have left him in that cell to rot, he thinks. All the same, he makes no protest. Funny, that.
“Is this okay?” Quinlan asks him–ever kind, ever considerate, ever bound to wind Fox up like yarn and then cut him loose in just a moment. Fox knows the man is well aware of what he can do to him, knows all those months of pushing his buttons means that Quinlan knows exactly how to break through every wall he’s ever built in a moment. Knows how to undo him in a second.
Case in point–right as Quinlan asks it, he presses their brows together and presses down in a pair of movements that has every single thought that Fox has ever had careening away and spluttering out until all he’s left with is a single blank spot in his mind that leaves him gaping stupidly.
Quinlan Vos, of course, smiles.
“I am going to kill you,” Fox finally manages to say, and Quinlan catches the accompanying hiss with a kiss that has Fox bucking, fingers digging into his thighs. Fox teases Quinlan’s lip with the sharpened edges of his canines and to that, Quinlan laughs again and just holds on tighter, presses closer, undoes it all with these small movements that should not be enough to send Fox spiralling.
Somehow, they are though. Because Quinlan Vos is fucking insane, that’s what.
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–°✧°–
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Fox wakes up in a full bed. There’s an arm on his waist. The sun streams through the curtains and the world dips in and out of focus as sleep tries to take him back under the waves. But he has enough in him to turn a little and look at the face of the man beside him.
Quinlan Vos smiles at him. Fox, for once, does not snarl or glare. He doesn’t even move as Quinlan reaches up to brush his bare hands over the bridge of Fox’s nose. And when he drags him in for a kiss, sheets moving around him as he moves so he’s leaning above Fox, he just digs his fingers into the Jedi’s arms and lets the tide flow as it wants to.