"It's okay," Kix whispers back hoarsely. "We'll figure it out.”
“Together?” Anakin asks, and cringes at how insecure it comes off as.
“I promise,” Kix says, meeting his eyes.
“Greetings, Knight Skywalker,” Master Ti says, flickering slightly. “And… Healer Kix.”
The pause is slight, and Anakin can’t tell if she’s displeased or simply surprised.
Kix tenses, and Anakin can feel his feathers ruffling, prepared to be an extension of his partner’s upset should the occasion demand it.
“I prefer Lieutenant, if you don’t mind sir,” Kix says quietly. Master Ti inclines her head.
“My apologies,” she says, and Kix relaxes against his side.
“Good to see you both, it is,” Yoda says, a definite note of amusement in his tone. “Stay for this debriefing, you will, lieutenant?”
It’s Anakin’s turn to bristle. “Kix can provide far more detail on my medical condition than either I or a hasty report could, and—”
“And I’d also like to know what’s going on with my–general,” he interrupts, gripping Anakin’s elbow tightly.
“That is fine with us,” Master Billaba soothes, a hand pressed to her shoulder, apparently putting pressure on an open wound. Her medic is also with her, for the purpose of bandaging her up rather than providing information to the meeting. “So long as you’re certain you’ll be okay hearing the full extent of the recent events.”
“Respectfully, sir, that’s my decision to make either way,” he says, leaning into the fingers Anakin has started tracing over the lightning bolts shaved into the sides of his head. “And I’m a battlefield medic. I’m not particularly worried.”
“Mm. It is as you say, trooper,” Ki-Adi Mundi says, fingers tapping impatiently on the portable holoprojector in his hand, shaking up the feed. “If we’ve cleared that up sufficiently, may we move on to the debrief? Commander Bacara believes that the next wave of droids will be on our doorstep in thirty seven minutes, which is not much time.”
“We’re ready when you are, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says.
He takes a deep breath, and then another, letting the pressure on his arm ground him. “Okay. It started three days ago, towards the end of our fourth battle since landing on the planet. I was fighting Dooku in one of the abandoned temples…”
It’s worse than Kix had been expecting, but not as bad as he’d worried it was. Which was, admittedly, a low bar, seeing as not eighteen hours before he’d thought Anakin dead the rest of them doomed, but. Still not great.
He had died, so Kix was right about that, at least, and wishing he hadn’t been.
Apparently he’d gotten better though, so there was that.
“I’m. Not sure I can die, actually?” Anakin says, and Kix untangles his arm from his boyfriend’s to press fingers to the bridge of his nose.
“...Why is that?” Master Windu wants to know.
“Um. So this glowy sort of person shaped thing showed up when I thought I was dead and was sort of like ‘it is not your time, my child, you still have more to do’ and I was like ‘okay but that’s stupid, a whole bunch of other people also died today that didn’t deserve it either’ and the light said ‘yeah but they don’t have my dna’. That’s when I figured out I was talking to a representation of the Force. So I went ‘okay, but if I was actually your kid, wouldn’t I have like, wings or something?’”
“Force,” someone whispers, vehement enough that it makes it through the comm. Kix elbows Anakin in the side for them.
He winces, rubbing at the spot, even though Kix thinks it bruised himself more than anything. “Yeah, so. In retrospect maybe a bad idea.”
“You think?” Kix hisses.
“Anyway!” Anakin says over him. “They were like ‘that can be arranged’ and then I woke up. Like this.”
Everyone takes a moment to process.
Then, like he already knows he’s going to regret the answer, General Fisto asks:
“Your mission report mentioned something about Count Dooku?”
“Oh!” Anakin says, snapping his fingers. It sounds like a tornado shearing off a tree branch. “Yeah, that. He’s a cat now.”
“A cat,” General Kenobi says flatly.
“Mhm,” Anakin confirms, rocking on his heels. “I woke up and he was still there and looked super surprised, but then he was gonna shoot me again, and I was wishing really hard that he was something cute and harmless that couldn’t hurt me, because Sith lightning hurts, and poof.”
“We had Commander Tano confirm its Force presence as the Count’s,” Kix says, taking pity on them. “And ran his DNA through a processor. He’s definitely a cat, but he answers to the name ‘Dooku’, and the Seppies on the planet with us seem to be freaking out over a leadership vacuum.”
“...Okay,” General Windu says, sounding almost as tired as Kix feels. “Alright. That should be all for now, Skywalker. Thank you, we’ll let you know if we need anything more.”
“Get some rest, Anakin,” Kenobi calls, and then the connection terminates.
Anakin slumps.
“What the fuck,” Kit says, once they’ve had a second for all the information to settle. Then again, with more venom: “What the fuck.”
“Excuse me,” Obi-Wan protests, even though there’s a spot above his eyebrow that’s pounding like he’s taken a blaster shot at point-blank range.
“I will rescind every single time I’ve ever said that about Skywalker if you can look me in the eye and tell me that wasn’t your first reaction too, Obi-Wan,” Kit shoots back, head-tails writhing themselves into a complicated knot.
“It wasn’t,” Obi-Wan says, holding his gaze. He lasts four seconds before cracking. “That was my second, after relief that he wasn’t dead.”
“Yeah,” Kix agrees, flumping back onto the bed. “Pretty much. You okay?”
“Define ‘okay’,” Anakin says, muffled by the twelve pillows his face is buried in.
“Not severely emotionally damaged and/or about to grow hooves,” Kix answers, stealing one of them and hugging it to his chest.
“...Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, and Kix knows he’s lying, because his wings twitch, folding inward. “I’m just. Gonna see you later, okay?”
He’s out of the room before Kix can get a word in edgewise, the doors hissing shut behind him.
“Fuck you,” Kix calls out after him, but the words bounce off the impassive metal and he’s grateful for it, after a moment. Still angry, though. He waffles over whether to go find his boyfriend and pin him down until he talks about his problems, or just leave it be for the moment.
The time blinking red on the chronometer makes his decision for him: 0200 hours, which means his next shift is in four. He rolls over, pulling the sheets with him. Anakin’s bed is marginally more comfortable than whatever puppy pile will be available in the barracks anyways, even if it’s only because Ahsoka gave him the absolute softest blanket ever for his last birthday. Anakin will just have to sulk elsewhere if he’s too angsty for naptime.
Kix is in the medbay when Ahsoka tracks him down, thirty minutes into his shift. He sets her to inventorying the remaining medical supplies before she can so much as open her mouth and starts logging test results as she talks.
“Skyguy’s being weird,” she says, polishing a scalpel with a microfiber cloth before restoring it to the case. “I think it’s because of something you said.”
Kix’s shoulders hunch. “Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean I automatically know the issue if he’s sulking.”
“No, but I followed him around guessing people he was upset with and he tensed and got all storm-wind-and-discordant-music when I said your name. He told me it wasn’t your fault, which was true, so I’m pretty sure it was something you said,” she tells him, finishing off the first box.
Kix hums. “Alright. It’s not your job to solve this, though. If Anakin has an issue, he knows he can come talk to me about it. Choosing not to do that is his decision, and you’re not responsible for solving his problems.”
“I know,” she says, exasperated, throwing her hands up. “But he won’t spar with me when he’s angsty and Elodie still won’t let me teach her lightsaber forms even though she wants to learn, so I don’t have a practice partner.”
Kix chuffs a laugh at that, typing in a categorization. “That’s fair, I guess. I’m on shift for another six hours, but I’ll see what I can do after.”
“Thank you,” she grumbles, tearing open the next box. “...Hey wanna hear what Hardcase told the shinies about Count Cattus?”
“Tell me,” he demands, swiveling.
There are people in the galaxy who would consider 1300 hours a more suitable time to be up and about for the day. Kix, after dealing with injuries ranging from stupid to gruesome on limited supplies for all the rest of his clinic hours for the week, does not agree. But he has a boyfriend to track down, so sleep will have to wait, again.
That doesn’t mean that food has to join it, though.
He carries the muffins in a basket tucked under his arm, so he can hold a pistol in one hand and a scalpel in the other. Lycord, the main chef in mess hall four, owed him a favor. He called it in for some of xir muffins, which are famously delicious but most well-known for causing the first and only brother-on-brother shanking that’s happened aboard the Resolute in all of her service.
Kix isn’t taking any chances.
He finds Anakin on one of the observation decks, wings curled around him like a shield.
“Hey, he says softly when Kix drops down beside him as a mess of sprawling limbs, too tired to sit in any reasonable way.
“The great general speaks,” Kix says, dripping sarcasm all over the place, and Anakin flinches slightly. “...I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”
It goes quiet, and Kix pulls the top off his basket and offers a muffin. Anakin takes it, smiling wanly at him.
“No, I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have–” he breaks off, looking frustrated, and takes a grumpy bite of his pastry. “Oh Force, are these Lycord’s? How the hell did you get xe to give you this many?”
“I have many talents,” Kix says, adding a bit of a leer to his voice, just for the fun of it. “Talking, though?”
“Right, sorry,” Anakin nibbles at his food a little more, thinking. “I guess. Kix do you think I look hot like this?”
Kix buries his surprise in muffin, buying himself a couple of seconds. “Can I ask why you want to know that?”
Anakin’s shoulders slump, but he answers anyway, which is progress. “Because. I’m not sure I can reverse this? And. I don’t know. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me.”
“Anakin, you having wings and horns isn’t going to be the dealbreaker for me,” Kix tells him, moving a little closer. Quite the opposite, he doesn’t say. “If nothing else you’ve done has scared me off, feathers aren’t going to. I love you because of who you are, not what you look like.”
Anakin curls up a little further, drifting out an ‘okay’ that’s the biggest lie since waterproof socks.
Time to pull out the big guns, then, Kix thinks.
“You know what, fine,” he says. “If I’m being completely honest, I would be zero percent opposed to you snatching me up in your claws and taking me back to your nest for some well-deserved cuddle time and making out. I think your wings are beautiful, and none of this is making me uncomfortable as long as you’re okay with it. But I also think you’re incredibly hot without any of this, and I need you to know that. I love you, Anakin. Nothing is going to change that.”
“...I don’t have a nest,” Anakin says, lifting his head.
“We’ll just have to build you one, then,” Kix tells him, letting a smile tug at his mouth. “Up in the rafters of Range 12 or something. You know, the malfunctioning one.”
Anakin—winces. “Uh. About Range 12.”
“What,” Kix demands, stiffening.
“So. You know how Fives wanted to start zero-g combat lessons for some of the shinies?”
“No,” Kix says. And: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I think it’s a good idea?” he says, more a question than a statement. “No, hear me out. It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last that we have to fight like that, not with our luck. No one’s gotten hurt, yet, have they?”
“Echo came in with a broken leg he wouldn't tell me where he got just last week,” Kix argues.
Anakin’s face twists up. “You really don’t want to know, trust me. It wasn’t that, I can promise.”
Kix drops into his side with a sigh. “Fine. But I want cuddles now, please.”
“I think we can arrange for that,” Anakin agrees, shifting.
And then he’s picking Kix up, and carrying him out the door.
“What are you doing?”
“”Stealing you away to my nest,” he says, with a grin Kix can feel in the movement of his ribs. “But I’m afraid a metric ton of pillows will have to do for now, though I can probably hunt down some sticks if you want.”
Anakin’s eyes glow in the dim light, and then they’re flying.
