#fivesrex

Fives can feel the music within his chest, the thump-thump-thump of the bass an undercurrent to his heartbeat. His first partner just wants to dance, and Fives moves with them, content to follow their hands where they’ll take him; they’re a good dancer and Fives not a bad one and sometimes Fives thinks this is what they were made for, this is their real purpose, moving and being moved to the beat of the music.

His second partner is a better dancer that’s not very interested in dancing at all. 

By the time he sees Rex—flushed and laughing and surrounded by people, closing the back door behind him, crumpled pack of smokes held in one hand—Fives’s buzzing and soaked in sweat. Later, he’ll say it wasn’t planned, that he didn’t think: it’ll be a lie.

Because Rex is Rex is something—someone—Fives doesn’t know how not to want.

The drag of his partner’s hands down his side, the strength of their arms, the taste of their sweat and their skin: they push Fives across the dancefloor and towards the booth Rex’s sharing with his friends, to Rex’s lap.

Rex has exchanged his smokes for something sharp and not quite bitter that fizzes. Fives’s lips buzz when he kisses Rex on the cheek, the rasp of stubble wonderful and expected. He smells of cigarette smoke and cold night air, and Fives breathes it in, greedy in a way that makes him kiss him again, this time lower, on the edge of his jaw, his skin cool. Rex shivers, and he says something, Fives can’t hear it but he can feel it through his chest, and then his broad, warm hand is cradling Fives’s face, fingers tangling into his curls and pulling, and Rex licks into his mouth.

He smells of cleanser, the harsh kind they use in the hangars’ decontamination showers. Rex scowls and says nothing, fingers playing nervously with a loose thread, the plasticky feel of the thread cutting into the flesh of his palm. 

There’s a small private fresher tucked to the right. Fives says nothing: he places his boots under the rest of his armour in Jars’s rack and disappears inside the fresher, closing the door behind himself. Rex crosses his legs and waits for him, stomach in a knot.

It’s too soon.

Fives leaves the fresher. Harsh white light hits Rex’s eyes, and he curses, looking away—he feels more than hears Fives muttered apology, his hand hitting the door sensor.

“Didn’t mean to wake you up,” Fives mutters, his voice hoarse. He shifts his weight, still standing in front of the closed fresher door. 

The cabin is very small. Rex reaches out with his right hand and hooks his fingers in the waistband of his blacks. When he tugs, Fives sighs and closes the distance between them, stopping when his knees bump against the bed.

“You’re back early,” Rex says, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. Fives sighs again. He kneels on the bed. The emergency lumas on the walls shine at his back, hiding the expression on his face, silhouetting his shoulders and his overgrown curls in pale blue light. 

When Rex shifts backwards, lying back down, Fives follows him under the blanket with a grunt. They shift and settle until Rex’s lying on his side, back to the wall and Fives tucked against his chest, his head under his chin.

Seconds tick by. Rex grips the back of Fives’s neck, closes his eyes, and waits.

“Fourteen’s dead,” Fives says after a beat, voice muffled against Rex’s chest, lips moving against the scar there. He’s keeping himself very still.

An errant elbow hits the closest shelf, and a half-empty box clatters its way to the ground with a loud noise that seems bigger than the room itself. Rex snorts, ugly and too loud, and Fives flushes, presses his lips tight, tries and fails not to smile, dark eyes dancing. He crowds Rex against the wall and leans in: dry, chapped lips find Rex’s cheek, his chin, the bridge of his nose, and then Rex’s tugging him closer, armour clacking ridiculously and the rough texture of his gloves catching on Fives’s short curls.

“Eager, sir?” Fives drawls, eyes bright, and Rex just smiles, shrugging.

“Yes,” he replies honestly, and enjoys the way Fives loses all his words for a beat before licking into Rex’s mouth, tasting stims and caf and blood and spit, wishing for more time and more space and less clothes.

Plastoid presses on him, the familiar weight of his pauldron dragging him down. Rex huffs when one of Fives’s pokes him in the face, and Fives snorts, stepping away until he can rest their foreheads together, eyes closed. His eyelashes are dark and damp, fanning darkly on his flushed cheeks, and Rex finishes tugging off his gloves and reaches out to cradle Fives’s face with one sweaty hand, smiling when Fives brushes a clumsy kiss on his palm.

Rex’s familiar with greed: he can’t remember a time he hasn’t wanted more of everything. But sometimes the ever-present yearning is harder to bear, harder to ignore.