#background tbb

Echo/Fi for the ship and "Exchange, Integrity and Trouble" for the word prompts! (You did say words, so hope 3 is enough!)

They sorta took the bit in their teeth and ran away with it, lol. prompts what prompts? 😅

“Hey, is that Ghez Hokan’s— I thought you died!”

“No, but didn’t you die?”

“You two…know each other?”

The commando in the grey beskar doffs his helmet and in unison two eyebrows on two different faces go up as they swing in incredulous unison to Hunter, as if questioning their acquaintance is the abnormal part of this encounter, and not an RC and an ARC somehow knowing each other on sight. Those groups didn’t usually play well together.

“How do you know each other?” Tech interjects.

The commando grins, brilliant and lopsided and says, “Well, y’see what ha’happened was, Eya’ka here—”

Echo promptly makes a rude noise over him. “Nuh-uh, you lost the right to baby-name me fair and square, Ei-Oh-One-Fi.”

“You cheated,” Fi slings back, immediately heated. At least one of the other commandos is laughing under his T-visor.

“You wish I had to—”

“—if I coulda proved—”

“—cheat to beat your ass.”

Echo’s smile is out in full force, cocky and blinding, dimples and all. Hunter glances at the rest of the batch to see if they’re seeing what he’s seeing. The commando’s squadmates look just as far behind.

Fi purses his lips and visibly decides to take the better part of valor on this particular battlefield. “Cadet 21-0408,” he resumes, “did not beat my ass. He had a gambling problem. He bet outrageously against my trainee squad on some trumped up bullshit dare, and then mercilessly extorted us for all we were worth when he won on a technicality.”

This must not be his trainee squad, then. Hunter winces internally, but Echo is shaking with silent laughter. “You sure know how to hold onto a grudge, Fi’ika,” he quips.

“That’s n-not all you held onto,” Fi grumbles, fondly disgruntled.

Echo is still smirking. “No, no it was not,” he says, and that’s—he’s flirting? With this asshole? It almost sounds like they had a fling… The commandos look like it’s news to them too, but not all that shocking. Good. Some of those cohorts could be real pricks about inter-unit relationships.

Wrecker’s picking up on it too. “You guys…?” He points from one to the other eloquently and then ruins it with a blatantly obscene gesture that means a lot more than fucking.

“No!” Fi squawks, but Echo is still laughing, so Hunter really doubts the veracity of his denial. “I meant his kama,” he tries to excuse.

But hadn’t Echo not gotten that until he’d passed ARC Training?

“Can hang onto that anytime,” Echo flirts.

The laughing commando in purple and brown beskar’gam leans over, even with his comms muted, obviously dying of hilarity.

“I never—” Fi protests, trying futilely to defend himself but only making it seem more and more likely to be true.

“Mmm, I seem to recall—” Echo says, gearing up to cause even more trouble no doubt, and Fi has had enough. He tackles him to slap a hand over his mouth. Echo stumbles and twists, Fi slips, and the entire audience of two squads starts forward abortively to try and help.

With a whine of servos, Echo manages to turn their fall into something less drastic, but they end up in a tangled heap of grey and red-edged kamas on the ground anyway.

“Osik,” Fi says, winded, “can’t tussle like tubies anymore, can we?”

Echo pats his ass. “A repeat of last time is right out too.”

“Everyone who witnessed anything that may or may not have happened is dead,” Fi says hastily, the grief being trotted out old and worn, barely remarkable. “You can’t prove a thing.”

“Just us left, old boy,” Echo agrees pensively, then turns wicked again, helping Fi sit up. “Bet I could make you make that noise again, though.”

The atmosphere shifts back from the precipice of grief to a much more pleasant sort of remembrance. The Mandos call that aay’han, Hunter recalls due to their current company.

“No! What noise? There was no noise. There was no noise!” Fi protests as around them the rest of their adopted squads join in the laughter.