#fox17

Maze sighs, eyes knowing and mouth twitching. “Commander Fox,” he replies, tone as blandly polite as Fox’s—ah. So they’re friends. That’s just wonderful. Seventeen folds his arms and waits them out while they exchange pleasantries, hyperaware of the other people in the hallway, of the troopers in white and red standing guard by the lifts, of the cameras and of the fact that Fox’s there, Fox’s there and they haven’t seen each other in weeks, in months.

Finally, Maze rattles vambraces with Fox and puts his bucket back on. He joins Zey by the lifts when the Jedi exits one of the meeting rooms as if he were waiting for Maze to be done, and then it’s Seventeen and Fox. 

Seventeen wants to touch. He doesn’t.

He follows Fox down the hallway and through a side door and up the stairs and down a ramp and through a second side door and into a small hallway and into another lift. Fox’s quiet, but that means nothing—he has always been quiet. His shoulders are stiff and his fingers keep twitching, and Seventeen so wants to touch.

But he’s waited and waited and waited, and Seventeen hates waiting, but—what’s waiting some more, after so many months.

So Seventeen waits, and he takes a seat behind Fox when he pulls him by the wrist towards the sleek, non-regulation swoop bike that waits at the landing pad when they go through the last door—Fox and his toys—and then Seventeen finds he’s tired of waiting. 

He clicks his radio on while Fox lifts off, the engine rumbling between his legs, and wraps his arms tighter around Fox’s waist, gloves scrabbling ineffectually at plastoid.

“Maze’s a shabuir,” he tells Fox. “Don’t believe anything he says.”

He almost stops him when Seventeen starts pulling off his bucket, but there’s something in the set of Seventeen’s shoulders that tells to let him be.

The room’s recycled air is a shock against his sweaty skin. Fox blinks, half-blinded, and listens to the careful thunk of his own bucket being placed on the table, to the hiss of the seal of Seventeen’s.

He looks old. Old and tired and more scarred. It shocks him, now and then: Fox has always known that Alpha-class troopers are older by almost a year, but there’s knowing and then there’s knowing.

“You look like shit,” he mumbles. He hooks the fingers of his right hand around Seventeen’s belt and watches him roll his eyes. Seventeen places his helmet next to his and starts taking off his gloves.

“So do you,” Seventeen replies. Warm hands cradle Fox’s face, and he lets himself be touched, feeling the way his heart starts beating faster.

This is easy. Despite everything—the war, the distance, the grief—this is still so very easy. It scares Fox, how easy he finds it. Sometimes he wonders if he should put an end to the whole thing: Seventeen might now spend most of his time away from the frontlines, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe; one of these days, Fox will make a mistake and he will get blown up or stabbed or simply fall to his death. The scar on his throat is still tender to the touch. Seventeen brushes it with his fingertips, lips pressed tight, and says nothing.

The silence worries Fox more than any insult would. He has never known Seventeen to be quiet. He opens his mouth, though talking still hurts, trying to find something to say, but Seventeen doesn’t let him.

His lips are chapped. Fox yelps, shocked, but then he’s returning the kiss, tilting his head up, tugging Seventeen closer by his kama until his cuisse rattle against the insides of Fox’s, brain blessedly empty save for the feel of Seventeen’s fingers in his hair and the rasp of his stubble against Fox’s lips.