#yaej.writes

“Can’t sleep?” Howzer repeats past a groan as he shifts onto his side to face you. In the low neon lights of the Coruscant night, you can make out the ease of his features, his frown more of a boyish pout that carries with it a gentle insistence, concern. His fingers squeeze over the soft slope of your waist, and he yawns. “That’s no good.”

“It’s alright,” you say, and you punctuate your low murmur with a quick peck over the corner of his mouth. “You should go back to sleep.”

“Not without you,” he huffs in response. He takes the moment to shuffle closer, closing what little space lies between you to press close against your chest and bring his arms around your shoulders. You feel the tip of his nose press just above your hairline, and when he speaks again, his voice rumbles low and warm over your head. “What can I do, mesh’la? Tell me how I can help.”

“I’ve tried just about everything; I’m not sure there’s anything else left to do except to wait it out,” you sigh into his collar. With an insistent wiggle of your shoulders, you pull away just enough to meet his puppy-eyed consternation, soft with sleep and softer still as you bring your fingertips to the sharp lines of his jaw and offer him a lopsided smile.

For a moment, Howzer seems to take your defeat at face value, his expression deflating. Then, he makes a low noise that crinkles over the bridge of his nose and settles on the smile teased over his lips.

“I have an idea.”

Even with sleeplessness taunting you through the gaps in the blinds, you can’t help but laugh, leaning forward to gently nudge your forehead up against Howzer’s cheek. You know that look by heart, that coy glimmer finding home in his dark eyes as he pretends to fight his growing grin.

“Howzer, really, I’m fine,” you say, reaching up and stroking over his dark curls. “Go back to sleep. Besides, I’m off tomorrow.”

“We’re both off, cyare,” Howzer chuckles.

From under the covers, you feel him slide his hand from where it rests between your shoulders, battle-weary callouses no less warm as they drag over your form. He pauses where the hem of your shirt and the waistband of your shorts part, rubbing gentle motions into the exposed skin, comforting, grounding, seeking invitation.

You shiver under his touch. Anticipatory delight shocks up your spine.

“Let me help,” he implores.

“Okay.”

The last breath barely has enough time to pass through your lips before Howzer’s rising to his knees and pushing the pillowy duvet somewhere off to the side of the bed. There’s the careful composure of propping your head up against a second pillow and lifting your hips to tug your shorts down past your ankles. But rife through his gentle deliberation—tension, need, finds home in his posture as he squares his shoulders, plants his palms on your knees, and pushes your thighs open.

Your breath hitches as cool air rushes between your thighs. First instinct has always demanded a shy squeak, your hands itching to cover yourself as you lie spread open before him in the low light.

But you know better.

When Howzer’s shoulders drop with a quivering sigh, when his eyes flutter shut and open again with that precious disbelief that this was real, that this—that you were his, bashful chastity withers in the face of desire.

“So pretty,” Howzer breathes low, almost as if to himself, and swallows hard enough that you hear from the crown of the bed. A moment longer, he stares transfixed, then looks up to you with nothing short of a plea glittering in his eyes. “Please. Let me help.”

“Want you,” you whimper. “Howzer, I—”

Your voice cracks, reduced to a choked cry that swallows the rest of your words when, as soon as your assent reaches his ears, Howzer dips low, pressing a brief kiss to your clit before he drags the flat of his tongue from the fullest swell of your cunt and back up to press another kiss at the crown of your thighs.

“Good?” Howzer asks, his breaths puffing warm over the slick of his spit smeared over your throbbing cunt. No matter how many times you do this, you can’t seem to shake that delicious tremble as you feel the air between his lips and your cunt practically vibrate under his voice.

“Y-Yeah,” you mumble.

He responds by wrapping his lips over your clit, coaxing another stuttering moan from your tongue. But it’s not enough, with him it never is, and your hips buck up as he brings the calloused pad of his forefinger just under his chin, sliding it through your cunt. It only makes the growing core of want burn hotter when you feel his rumbling laughter shock through your skin.

Your eyes fly open at the first gentle push of his thick finger into your cunt, sinking into you with almost embarrassing ease. When his palm pushes up against your skin, he crooks his finger up, grinding up against the soft bundle of nerves that has you sobbing his name. Howzer only takes your soft noises as encouragement. He seals his lips over your skin and laps at your clit with a renewed vigor.

It doesn’t take long for him to pull his soaked finger from your cunt and push back in with a second. He finds a rhythm as soon as he fucks as deep as he can go, sucking over your clit while he curls the rough pads of his fingertips over the spot that makes your vision white out again and again.

Howzer sinks his fingers knuckle-deep, but instead of pulling back, the satisfying burn of stretch sears through your core as Howzer parts you open and lifts off of your clit with an almost comically wet sound. You know exactly what he’s going to do, but it makes it no less thrilling when his nose brushes over your clit, and he fucks the firm taper of his tongue between his fingers.

You arch off the bed with a wanton cry, barely coherent enough to understand the crooning words of praise Howzer slips in between fucking his tongue into your cunt and taking gasping breaths of air. You cry out again, and he moans into your cunt with you.

You feel blindly for him, and Howzer knows, he knows. He grabs your wrist and fumbles as he pulls his tongue from your cunt and continues to pump his fingers into you. Finally, the burning coil of desire cresting higher, higher in your gut, he finds purchase and slides his fingers between yours. You squeeze once, he squeezes back, and you moan as his tongue laps over your clit again.

He opts for a maddeningly fast pace, alternating between pressing his tongue deep as it can go into your cunt and rolling it over your clit. All the while, he keeps an unrelenting rhythm with his fingers, pulling you apart artful stroke by artful stroke as he rubs his thumb over the back of your hand.

He drinks you in like a man parched, head bobbing with each heaving swallow. His arm is your only anchor as you squirm under its weight and desperately grind back against his tongue. It’s toeing the line of overstimulation fucked dumb. And it’s all you could ever want as his tongue presses deep, as deep as it’s gone all night, and pushes you over the edge.

You come over his tongue with a shuddering cry, neighbors be damned, and squeeze your hand down hard over his. He squeezes back, groaning into your cunt, telling, promising, he’s here, he’s here, for you, for you as pleasure closes around you and swallows you whole.

At last, after a brief eternity of the kind of bliss that drives bone deep, Howzer pulls away, pressing one last kiss to your clit before pulling back and breathing in long and deep between your quivering legs.

He presses a soft kiss to the inside of your thigh, his lips warm, wet as they mouth silent appreciation into your skin. (They are words you do not think you will ever truly know, the ancient poetry of the warriors who came before him, but they reach you deep to your core.) When his lips still, and his eyes flutter open, Howzer lifts his chin just enough to meet your gaze.

“Think you can sleep now?”

As much as you want to laugh (because what kind of question was that with your heart beating loud enough for him to hear?), you’re too winded to do anything else but shake your head.

“Good,” Howzer laughs, running his tongue over the slick smeared over his fingers. The fluorescent brilliance of the Coruscant nightlife filters through your window, glimmering obscene over the mess of your arousal and his spit as he parts his lips and sucks them clean.

Your mouth waters.

Sugar sweet desire breaks over your tongue, though you might more aptly call it greed—in want of tasting yourself on him; in want of feeling his fingers dig into your skin when he pulls you close and licks over your teeth; in want of bending you, breaking you, then pulling you back together again, gilded kintsugi lacquered strong by a soldier’s hands.

Howzer pulls his fingers from his mouth with a loud pop and flicks his eyes to yours as you peer up at him through lidded eyes. Half-closed they may be, but they are far from heavy with the sleepy taunts of before.

You both know sleep is the last thing on either of your minds.

Rising up to his knees, he twists out of his shirt and flings it off somewhere into the far reaches of the room. One moment he’s standing tall at the base of the bed, the next, he’s leaning close and sliding one palm from where your thighs part up to where he kisses over your neck.

You whimper softly as you feel his fingers curl over your pulse, helpless in the best of ways as Howzer pulls back to sit back and admire your expression. In return, he offers you the smile you’ve come to love most, barely there on his lips, brimming in his eyes, adoration divine.

Then, soon in its place, always: hunger.

You turn your head, meeting the sergeant's piercing gaze with a weary half-grimace half-grin. There’s a glimmer of amusement dancing in his eyes—maybe incredulity—that he might be training a half-fledged jedi in the brutally graceful art of floorslamming an opponent over a shoulder while the others had taken Omega on a trip to meet the natives. It’s something you should know well, having spent your youth under the wild and unrelenting martial acrobatics of master Voss, but at the end of the day, you would choose swordplay over brute physicality without hesitation.

Especially if you’re facing off against an opponent who can and has hefted you high above his head and practically launched you across the training mat.

If Hunter’s amused at all by this knowledge, he only makes it known with a huff.

“Empire’s out for your head; you need to learn to fight in more ways than your fancy jedi training. That includes hand-to-hand just in case you lose your lightsaber. Again.”

“That was once, Hunter!” you whine, warmth spreading across your cheeks. But he’s right. Loathe as you are to admit it, no amount of force pushing would have gotten you out of that mess on Onderon, and it was a miracle (otherwise known as Echo) that you’d found your lightsaber at all.

It’s an embarrassing memory and, deeper down, a dangerous one that could have ended in more than stray blaster fire. Petulant as you would like to be, Hunter has a point. So you reach up, flapping your hand about until you feel Hunter’s hand wrap around yours, callused and firm, and yank you up to your feet. You stumble as you regain your footing, but as soon as you’ve collected your bearings, you’re shaking your hands out and bouncing on the tips of your toes.

“Fuck it. Let me try again.”

“Do you want me to go slower on the approach?” Hunter asks, this time, a sure note of playful teasing dancing over his tongue. The corners of his lips curl up, imperceptible to most, but you’ve flown long enough with the crew to pick up on his slight giveaways. You narrow your eyes, fixing him with an accusatory frown.

“‘Imps won’t slow down for you y/n,’” you parrot his words with a sour expression, begrudging theatrics complete with an exaggerated eye roll.

Hunter laughs, but he’s already drawing back into a low crouch, arms raised and muscles coiled, ready to strike. You take the brief moment of clarity between your warm up and readying stance to admire him, his hair tied with his bandana, piercing eyes set in a razor focus as his chest rises and falls, even, steady. The sharp clarity is made complete, authentic, with his garb. Having swapped his standard blacks for a sleeveless top, a sheer veil of sweat glimmers brushed over the toned muscle rippling under his skin. It’s an appealing point of motivation, a reward for the small price of being thrown around for the past hour.

“You’re learning,” Hunter smiles, small and crooked, but a smile that breaks past his stolid stoicism nonetheless. “Attagirl.”

Your heart flutters, and you lunge.

Two rapid steps, and you’re meeting Hunter in the middle as he rushes towards you. Right foot, anchor heel, pivot, and the sharp wind of his arm shooting forward nearly knocks the breath from your lungs as it just barely brushes past your cheek.

He’s fast. But you’re faster, you challenge, and you shoot your left arm up, closing your grip with your right hand and trapping his forearm in your hands just beneath the hem of his glove. And when you find secure purchase, confident enough that he can’t counter, you yank with a sharp, vindictive shout. For the first time today, your grip holds.

You feel him roll over your shoulder, guided by your hand, compelled by gravity, and you’ve won. After all the blocks and parries and attacks-turned-scrambling-defenses, you’ve got Hunter exactly where you want him. Hunter may have size, bulk, experience—well, everything other than the Force—that you don’t, but if he’s taught you anything during your time with the batch it’s that timing is king.

You whoop as you feel his back roll off yours, squeezing your eyes shut as you claim your victory into the empty cargo hold.

You forget, however, the unspoken and very important step of letting go.

As soon as the split-second of simple victory flashes through you, you yelp, pulled off your feet and centre of balance flung off to the far reaches of the room. You’re reduced to an ungraceful flail of limbs and panicked disorientation as you fall, bracing yourself for an imminent collision and a sure promise of a bruise the day after. But instead of the forgiving, plasticky foam of the floor, you land with a soft oof on something else, harder than the mat, damp, bony…?

When you open your eyes, you’re propped up on one elbow, your other shoulder dipped close against Hunter’s chest, and your nose just a breath away from his collar, and, Maker help you, you can see his collarbones, sharp and clean through his blacks, rising and falling rhythmically with his heavy, straining breaths. You lift your head just in time to meet Hunter’s eyes, lightly curtained by one single swath of perfectly mussed stray hair, pupils blown wide with pride, wonder, and—

Shit.

“Uh, yay me?” you offer weakly, hoping you can blame the tremble in your voice on bone-deep exhaustion, not the blooming heat roiling in your gut.

“Yeah,” Hunter says, eyes trained on yours, steady and still.

It doesn’t take force sensitivity to feel the tension buzzing high in what little space separates your faces, the boundaries of playful sportsmanship bowing under the weight of testing curiosity, circling, prodding. The breath that passes your lips quivers, of which you’re only aware when you see Hunter’s eyes flick briefly to your lips. He lingers a moment, and you swallow hard, almost audibly, when you catch a flash of his tongue darting over his lower lip.

It might be an adrenaline high—his dilated pupils, the wild thumping of your heart against your ribs. High velocity combat and being thrown flat onto your back would do that.

You hope it isn’t.

The silence is enough to steal the sound from your tongue, just low breathing as you hover above him. It demands to be broken, something to be the first push back into the rhythm of which you have become so accustomed, the comfortable banter and competition devoid of anything more than meaningless flirting. Because for his ruggedly handsome looks, his commandeering presence, an aura that had men and women sending him drinks from across the bar, you had never let yourself seriously entertain the idea of being able to have him.

It’s hard to entertain attraction, much less romance, when you and the batch are high priority on the Empire’s list to shoot on sight, but the possibility has kept you awake at night, fingers shoved between your thighs while he sleeps two doors down. The fantasy of having, breathing him in like air, makes you feel alive, makes you feel the rare and fleeting feeling of safety. You, exiled jedi. Him, one of millions, the dedicated soldier sworn to a cause.

And yet, here you are.

Hunter lifts one hand from the floor, reaching up to brush the hair from your eyes, and you find yourself having to bite down on the inside of your cheek to keep from turning your head and nuzzling into his palm, from pushing close and staying, indulging. And while your mind blurs in the frantic flurry of fighting it, he gives in freely, turning his wrist to run his gloved thumb over your jaw. It’s the softest you’ve ever found standard issue blacks to feel, but more importantly, it’s the closest he’s ever been.

“Yay you,” he whispers.

Hunter leans forward, sliding his hand across the side of your neck, his thumb soft at your ear as he curls his fingers into your hair and closes the distance. One moment there’s a vast breadth of space between you; the next, you feel Hunter’s nose brushing over your cheek, his breath ghosting over your skin for that last moment of separation. Then you’re moving with him, meeting his lips with soft motions pleading for more as you slide one hand up into his hair and press your chests flush.

He doesn’t taste quite like your dreams, all smooth, sweet freshness dancing over your tongue. Instead, there is raw exhaustion and strain bitter and heady on his skin as he licks over your lower lip. But no matter; it is real and present and Hunter all the same.

The training room silence is broken when he nudges a knee between your legs, pressing close between the want pooling low in your belly, as you barely manage to muffle a whimper into his mouth, breathy and high as you break away to gasp. Hunter grants you that moment of rest, and he’s pulling you back down against him again, holding you tight.

“I’ll stop if you want,” he mumbles against your lips. “We stop, and we forget this ever happened. But.” He pauses to nip at your lips. “You give me the word, and we take this as far as you want, y/n. Understood?”

You nod, too busy chasing his tongue to feel his gaze fixed on you. And, as always, your blissful ignorance does not escape Hunter’s watchful eye. You whine as you feel his fingers close around your chin and lift, pulling away just enough that you can see his dark eyes steady on yours.

“I need to hear you say it, sweetheart.”

“Please,” you whimper, reduced to little more than pleading submission, doe-eyed and dreamy as he slowly runs his thumb over your lip. “Want you, Hunter. Need you.”

“Attagirl.”

He makes a noise that sounds like quiet laughter, but all you care about is that he’s nuzzling against your skin and holding you close. Hunter kisses you with a trembling restraint that you practically feel vibrating under his touch, the excitement of being able to have, the roiling fear of intimacy, vulnerable and open under your palms.

It’s something you know well. You feel the same.

“We should really wash up,” he murmurs into your mouth.

“‘Fresher’s big enough for two,” you say a bit cheekily.

“You really want it all, huh?” Hunter chuckles, squeezing the back of your neck as he presses a fleeting kiss to the corner of your mouth.

“Never get anything if you don’t ask,” you smile against his lips.

“Can’t disappoint the lady, then, can I?” he grins, dropping his head back down onto the training mat. You sigh, resting your cheek on his collar for a single breath before you feel him shift beneath you, pulling you into his lap as he sits upright. Hunter offers you a final peck, a promise for more in just a short while.

You silently promise you’ll return to the hold come morning and clean up the mats before Echo can chew you out for any sloppiness, but cleanliness is the least of your concerns as you stumble with Hunter towards the threshold, all soft laughter and kisses strayed off their mark. Whatever concerns about anything other than the bliss of the now are even more obscured as the refresher doors slide shut behind you. You laugh as Hunter twists out of his blacks, which almost has you tripping out of your own, but he’s there to catch you, sturdy arms and warm skin to pull you into the stall and under a startling shock of cold water.

Maybe it’s that brief shock of cold before the showerhead runs warm that offers you a moment of clarity, the space and quiet to realize where you stand and take in the man before you. You’re no stranger to proximity, having spent more than one mission squeezed up against Hunter’s side, but closeness doesn’t begin to describe where you stand now, bared to each other beyond simple undress.

A smattering of scars stretches over Hunter’s skin, an organized chaos of milky pockmarks and slashes so often hidden under his armor. You recognize a few, blaster fire and frightened memories of blood and acrid fear, and the rest you save for a later night when you’ve sated the flutter in your chest as your eyes drift lower.

It would be embarrassing, how your mouth waters when you catch sight of his cock, half-hard and framed by a dark thatch of curls. But any need for shame is dismissed by the sheer gravity of want because he’s thick. You had always imagined him to be big—that isn’t much of a surprise—but your stomach churns delightfully at the thought of him stretching you open, making you feel him for days after.

“You’re staring,” Hunter huffs softly.

“Can you blame me?” you breathe.

Hunter laughs, rich and resonant over the patter of the shower spray, and he reaches that short distance forward, gently taking your hand in his and lifting your palm to his lips. You step backwards, letting him crowd you between the wall as you cup his cheek.

His hands, rarely bared to his brothers, let alone you, are strong and weary with scars of war, and he lets them follow the slope of your arm, tracing down your shoulder, your waist, and coming down to your hips, seeing in full clarity under his fingertips.

“Hold on tight.”

“Hunter, wait—ah!”

You yelp as he slips his forearms under your thighs without warning, hefting you up against the cool metal. In your hazy delirium, it occurs to you that you’re both exhausted from sparring and that him holding you up would only wear him down further. You want to tell him you’re perfectly fine on your feet. But whatever protest you may have had planned dies on your lips with a choked sob when you feel his fingers knead into the soft skin of your thighs and tug.

You arch off the wall, breath catching in your throat when you feel Hunter shift his hips forward and anchor you in place as he grinds his cock over your clit. Any hope of forming coherent words, let alone sound, is completely beyond you, now. Heat coils in your gut, all-consuming, white-hot tension pulled tight and ready to snap with each slow motion he makes.

And—the bastard—he’s good at it, too, leaving you squirming under his grip when he shifts away, cruelly aware of the brief moment just as your pleasure crests. Hunter lets you whine, filling the space with firm, insistent kisses over your collar: enough time for your high to ebb, enough time for him to stoke the frustration, the need tight in your core. Then he’s pressing your hips against the wall again and chasing you forwards, hips flush as he nips over your jaw.

All you find yourself able to do is dig your nails into his shoulders and sob.

“Shit, are you crying?” Hunter gasps, nearly dropping you down into a helpless heap under the warm water.

You shake your head wildly, locking your ankles around the small of his back as you keep him in place. It’s enough to startle him back into stillness, and he readjusts his grip on your thighs, the weight of his cock heavy against your throbbing cunt as you gasp for breath.

“I just—I’m fine,” you laugh, bordering delirious as stray drops of water catch on your tongue. “Just fuck me, Hunter. Make it better,” you breathe, chest heaving as you lick your lips. “Please.”

You know the expression that flashes across his face, the need to tease and prod, making gentle light of a dire situation. But this time, Hunter does not entertain it with his signature deadpan drawl, instead meeting you with a soft, imploring kiss.

“So pretty when you beg,” he whispers.

You open your mouth to offer a snappy retort; even in your desperation, there must be some dignity. Instead, your ears fill with the sound of your stuttering gasp over the water pattering against the refresher walls as, finally, finally, you feel the blunt head of his cock dip into your cunt.

Hunter pushes into you with a maddening slowness, one that reduces you to breathless whimpering broken between what gasps you can take. You dig your heels into his back and meet him with a straining moan because Maker, he’s even bigger than you thought, and it’s everything you’ve ever needed.

“Gotta breathe,” Hunter grunts, sinking deeper into you.

You’re not entirely sure whether it’s a reminder for you or for him, but you manage to slip in a gasping breath before he’s nudging up against a spot that has tears blurring your vision in dizzy euphoria. And when you come down from that high spark, legs jerking over his arms, he’s still pushing impossibly deep into you.

You watch him in a dazed trance, fixed on how his brows furrow with each quiet, flinching gasp that passes his parted lips as your cunt flutters around him. And how, through it all, his eyes never leave yours, boring into you with a fierce intensity, devotion, demanding your attention and pleading for your touch. It’s more than pure physicality, sex under the crushing uncertainty of a bounty and the shadow of conquest at your heels. He reaches for you, as open as he’s ever been, and you reach back.

“Hunter, I—”

Your words give way to a long, aching moan as you feel the sharp dip of his hips finally press up against your ass, filling you like you’ve always been meant to take him. (And you have, you swear, to him, to everything you know.)

“Gonna start moving, okay?” Hunter says through a shuddering sigh. He trails one hand up your side, thumbing over your chin while you tremble in his arms. “Cyar’ika, tell me I can.”

“Please,” you whimper.

And he delivers. You whine, feeling the slow drag, the toe-curling burn as Hunter eases almost completely out of you then pushes back in, just as slow as the first. He’s measured in his motions, and if you could see past the tears welling in your eyes, you’re sure you would see the razor focus over his features. There’s a tense edge you can barely make out from your slack-jawed disorientation, a restraint behind each careful thrust. He’s savoring it, you think as you bite down on the inside of your cheek.

But when Hunter jerks forward, punching the breath from your lungs as he drives up hard, pulling an obscene noise from your lips with a stuttering apology, you realize it’s not some way to draw this out as long as humanly possible. And as good as it is now, it’s not enough.

“H-Hunter,” you start. “Hunter, you—you don’t have to hold back—!” Your voice rises to a wavering pitch when you feel his thumb trail down your stomach, nestling close above where you part around him as he starts to rub gentle motions into your clit.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he rasps sharply with you when he presses deep again.

“You—you physically threw me across the cargo hold—like an hour ago,” you laugh through hiccupy sighs.

“That was different,” he chokes out a soft chuckle. “I want this to be good. For you.”

Trembling wildly, you muster the strength to lift your hand to his cheek, stroking over his wet skin as the refresher patters down around you. The aching stretch of Hunter’s cock between your thighs ebbs into something sweet, warming your chest when he turns his head to kiss your palm.

“You are good to me,” you whisper, brushing your thumb over his skin. “I want this. I want you.”

You hear him inhale sharp, holding his breath as he meets you with dark eyes, wide and searching. To his gaze, you offer him a soft smile. And it’s enough.

You barely have enough time to loop your arms around his neck and hold as Hunter shifts his grip, firm and high up on your thighs, and starts a brutal pace that has you near screaming into his neck. Your legs jerk helplessly with every relentless thrust, and you find yourself knotting your fingers into his hair, cradling his head for some—any—purchase you can find.

It’s reminders like this that while Hunter doesn’t have the imposing stature or towering height of his brothers, his sheer presence alone is overwhelming, surrounding you and consuming you whole in ways the others simply could never. The power is intoxicating, crushing in its pressure, the submission and release to pleasure it demands of you, and you sob, a whiny, choked sound you barely hear over the frantic, wet slap of Hunter’s skin against yours. It’s too much and not enough all at once, and it’s so, so achingly good.

“Fuck, I’ve always—” Hunter gasps, craning his neck to nuzzle up against your jaw. “I’ve always wanted to do this. To have you like this.” You turn your head, meeting him in a lopsided kiss, all tongue and shared breath. “Fuckin’ perfect.”

“More,” you whine, crying out when he pins you against the wall, just so he might reach between your thighs again and thumb insistently over your clit.

Even with the water showering over your skin, you’re distinctly aware of the tears streaking down your cheeks, only fitting for the overwhelming sensation building in your core, cresting in blinding heat with every drag, every ridge of his cock moving inside you.

He fucks into you with soft noises, low enough that they might be drowned out by the sound of water if you weren’t pressed so close. It’s fitting, that the stolid discipline of a sergeant might follow him off the battlefield and into the bedroom, but as characteristic of him as it may be, you can’t bring yourself to particularly care—not when he’s holding you up like a ragdoll and bending you to his pleasure. You cling tighter to him with a muffled sob.

It’s nothing like your nights alone in your bunk, wishing for a warm body and something more than hopeful fantasy. Where your fingers only offered you a shot of momentary bliss, this feels like you’re falling apart in his hands, utterly powerless in only the best of ways as the coil in your gut draws tight.

“‘m close,” you croak as the heat seeps bone-deep, spreading down your spine, blazing in the tips of your fingers, and finding home in the buzzing haze between your eyes. “Hunter, I’m—I’m so close.”

“Let go,” Hunter croons, bearing the rough pad of his thumb harder against your clit, pressing firm with every thrust forward, soothing as he draws back. Your cunt squeezes down around him with the spike in want pooled in your gut, drawing a low moan from his lips, and he meets you with a thrust hard enough that you squeal. “Doin’ so well, cyar’ika.”

Trembling, you bury your nose in the juncture of his neck, but you’re pressed backward instead, a light, unyielding pressure at your neck before the back of your head is guided against the metal wall. Hunter holds you at the throat, nothing but a hovering presence of his warmth over your skin, but enough that he commands your attention, steady gaze, pupils blown as he thrusts up against you, pushing you higher and higher against that mindless gap of pleasure with every intent to pull you apart.

“Look at me, y/n,” he murmurs, low and hoarse. “Look at me when you come.”

He drives into you once more, hard, and the tension mounting in your gut breaks like a dam, flooding over your tongue in sweet, simple pleasure that pulses and shudders through your core. You feel it like your body, your visceral pleasure, is not your own, floating in a mindless state of bliss no longer anchored to anything but your rapidly beating heart and the shivering tremors buzzing at your fingertips. Lips parted in a silent cry, your lashes flutter as you let yourself be swept up in the peak of your pleasure, swept up in him, his gaze trained firm, fond on yours.

And you’re too fucked out to do more than gasp, breathy, stuttering inhales as Hunter settles his hands around your waist and starts a pace impossibly faster than before. Somehow, through the aching tremor in your legs and your limp form pressed up against the wall, you manage to keep your grip steady and keep your arms wrapped snug around Hunter’s shoulders. He pulls your pleasure, agonizingly long with no end in sight, chasing his high as you whimper and plead unintelligibly into his ear.

“C-Close?” you manage, digging your fingertips deeper into the sinew of his back.

Hunter hums, a feeble attempt to keep what little composure he has left, but you feel his movements lose the steady rhythm he had maintained thus far, forgoing fluidity and grace for the raw and primal need to satiate. Lucid sensation beyond you, you simply let him take his fill, lazily running your tongue over his lips and holding him tight as he continues to fuck into you with erratic, stuttering thrusts.

And not a moment later, Hunter bears your hips down hard on his, gasping like he’s taken his first breath of air as his climax thunders through him. You squirm in his hold with a thready groan, reveling in the warm spurts of come filling your cunt and oozing down the curve of your ass onto the refresher floor. For all your exhaustion, you curl your fingers at the base of his neck, pulling him close into a slow, lazy kiss, more languid touches than an actual kiss, but a promise of intimacy all the same.

Hunter tips forward and shifts one arm to wrap snug around the small of your back, propping you both against the wall with the other as the tension drains from his coiled poise. He sags forward with a final, shuddering sigh, pulling out of you and setting you on your wobbly feet, to which you promptly pitch forward against his shoulder.

He laughs and catches you with breathless ease.

“I have no idea how we didn’t slip,” you gasp through heaving inhales, shuddering as you feel warm rivulets of come dripping down the skin of your inner thigh. As the pleasure subsides, you return to your surroundings in a haze, faintly aware of the running showerhead, the steam, and you drop your head forward, knocking your forehead gently against Hunter’s.

“Neither do I,” he laughs and nuzzles close. “Next time, we’ll pick somewhere with less water.”

“Next time?” you prod, knowing full well that neither you nor Hunter were particularly fond of mindless flings.

“Next time,” Hunter grins, tipping his head forward and brushing his lips over your brow.

“If you two are done in there!” Echo’s voice, exasperation weary and gruff, cuts through the patter of water against the metal paneling with a bang, nearly sending you and Hunter scrambling apart if the refresher stall wasn’t already so narrow. “We need showers!”

“What do you mean ‘you two?’” Omega chirps from outside the door. You have to clap your hand over your mouth to keep from laughing aloud as you watch the rosy pallor drain from Hunter’s face as you hear her muffled protests as someone (likely Wrecker) coaxes her away.

“Not it—you’re giving her the talk,” you quip, biting back a smile as you peck his cheek.

Had you heard him speak one short year ago, when you were fresh out of GARMC orientation and shunted straight onto the Marauder, you would have certainly taken the sniper’s curtness for frigidity. And you had, for your first few months with Clone Force 99, taken his flat intonation and pointed tone with a timid squeak every time he’d come in for a bacta patch or hypodermic needle.

But things were different, now.

There is no deflated resignation that he’s been discovered, hidden a good few paces away from where Tech sits entranced by the wizened green Jedi master. Nor is there icy snarl curling at the edges of his lips, that you might deign to interrupt his alone time with Darling (nobody got between Crosshair with a microfiber cloth and Darling, not even Wrecker). Instead, he acknowledges you in his cool nonchalance, beckoning in the most backhanded of ways. You grin, seizing your welcome and ducking under a thick loop of vine into the small clearing where he sits perched on a boulder.

“Was Master Yoda talking too much?” you laugh, dropping down onto the balls of your feet as you peer up at Crosshair (who still won’t tear his laser focus from polishing over the dark metal of his rifle). You wrap your arms around your knees and grin when he groans.

“General Yoda is fine; it’s Tech that keeps prattling on with him,” Crosshair mutters, scrubbing a touch more aggressively at the base of the scope.

“Oh, Cross, let him have his fun,” you chide playfully, finally earning you a disdainful glance and a raised brow. “It’s not every day that you get to interrogate one of the oldest sentient beings in the galaxy.”

“Did you just call the general old?” Crosshair snorts, flipping his toothpick from one corner of his mouth to the other.

“Crosshair, how dare you accuse me like that!”

“You said it,” he shrugs, and you catch a glimpse of a fleeting smile before he turns his head back down, away, towards his rifle.

You huff, and for a moment after, there’s silence. Mostly because you know that even your best retort would be effortlessly shot down, but in part to just indulge, to look quietly at the ornery sniper you’ve come to call a dear friend, to take in him and all of his tall, confident quietude. You both know that he knows what you’re doing, drinking him in, but he says nothing every time.

It’s in these brief reveries that you catch him in his softest, purest, state, methodically cleaning the firepuncher, disassembling, reassembling, replaying the soothing knowledge and practice that every piece had its rightful place. Things would align. Even with his chin turned down, his features nearly obscured by the shadows of the jungle canopy, there’s just enough light yet to make out the slight upward turn of his lips, a wry smile around his toothpick as he unclips his scope.

“So why are you here?”

The daydream is broken, and you flicker your eyes up to his with an embarrassed cough when you notice he’s been staring back. And if his smug half-smile has anything to say, it’s a triumphant and coy I caught you.

“Well,” you laugh, quietly pushing down the rising heat high in your neck. “I wanted to try to see the night sky on Kashyyyk before we leave, but I’m too scared to go alone.” You plaster on the sickliest of smiles you can, batting your lashes up at Crosshair in the way that would have Wrecker at your beck and call in seconds, but one that you know has no effect on his brother.

“Bullshit.” Crosshair rolls his eyes, but he’s already snapping the scope back onto Darling and sliding down from his perch. “Only things in the galaxy you’re scared of are porgs,” he says as he fastens his rifle into his pack and slings one strap over his shoulder, offering his free hand down to you.

“They—they have weirdly sentient eyes, okay!” you snap a bit hotly. You blame the warmth blooming across your cheeks on the fact that only Crosshair knows about your fear of the terrifying little fellows, not that he’s squeezing your hand and hefting you onto your feet.

“Why not ask Wrecker to take you?” Crosshair asks, letting go of your hand—to your relief and dismay all at once—and brush off whatever undergrowth sits dusted over your shoulders. “He’s sappy.”

“He’s busy making friends with the Wookiees.” And butchering Shyriiwook while he did it.

“And Hunter?”

“He’s also making friends with the Wookiees.” It’s not entirely untrue, if learning how to whittle blades out of branches counted as friendly bonding.

“Echo?”

“Also... making friends... with the Wookiees.”

You both know Echo has probably long since fallen asleep after a dose of painkillers for his fall during a particularly messy bit of the firefight. You could have actually told Crosshair the truth, but a part of you won’t take your chances—depending on Crosshair’s mood, he’d send you back to wake up his newest brother and return to shining up the stock of his rifle. But instead of calling your bluff, Crosshair simply shakes his head and sighs, extending his hand to you.

Mind suddenly and miserably blank, you stare mutely at his outstretched palm, an offering, then up at him.

“Come on, you said you were scared,” Crosshair teases, a lazy, sloping smirk curved over his features. He beckons you with a single flick of his fingers. Smug bastard, you think.

“My hero,” you snark back, but you’re quick to close the distance. Even if it takes bearing a bit of his snide sideswipes, you’re surprised at how easy it is to set aside your headstrong pride and simper for the sniper’s attention (though he’s giving it much more freely than you had anticipated). Palm to palm, the cool fabric of his blacks between you, you secure your grip around him as snug as you can.

Crosshair leads you quietly through the underbrush, going so far as to lift drooping vines and push aside especially tall ferns for you, all the while keeping as secure a grip on your hand as your grip on his.

It’s comforting, even while tamping through the darkness. You trust all of his brothers with your life, but maybe, just maybe, you trust Crosshair just that much more as he leads you deeper into the jungle.

After an short trek, you arrive at another clearing, the ground barren and drier than the damp, brush heavy terrain you had come to know during the Kashyyyk campaign. It’s no bigger than the armory floor spread on the Marauder, but as Crosshair pulls you into the clearing, you realize it’s not the earth beneath your feet that commands your wonder.

Crosshair nods his chin up, and your eyes are quick to follow. It’s the pearlescent glow of the three moons high above the treetops, shining clear and soft down through the canopy skylight.

Two moons float above in the bluish gray darkness of the galaxy, the third moon peeking from behind a few trees, in between them, a delicate freckling of stars, twinkling planets, comets ambling quietly through space. You’re barely aware of the grin spreading across your face as you soak in the night sky. It’s everything you had hoped it would be.

And with Crosshair at your side, it’s just that much more.

“Found it while I was scouting,” Crosshair’s voice comes, soft through the ambient silence of the jungle. Even in your rapture, you can feel his eyes on you, lingering on the green earth and watching your wonder far up in the sky.

“It’s amazing,” you breathe, and you squeeze his hand. You tear your eyes away from the starscape above to meet Crosshair with a smile. “Thank you, Cross.”

The sniper is quiet as you meet his gaze, trained on you with an indiscernible expression, a depth in his dark eyes you have only seen once before when you caught a glimpse of him at the helm, looking quietly into the expanse of space laid out before him.

It’s peace, you decide. A stillness, a calm, the quietest respite in the midst of this war. You gently rub over his knuckles.

“Close your eyes, y/n,” Crosshair finally murmurs, barely above a whisper, his gaze unwavering. And your eyes are already fluttered shut when you hear something hit the underbrush and a crunch of dirt under his boot as he steps forward and loops an arm around your waist. You squeeze your eyes shut a bit tighter as you press up against the battle-worn plastoid of his chestplate and feel his fingers splay over your hip.

Warm, rough fingertips gently pinch your chin and tilt your head up just so. A soft breeze wafts over your cheeks, carrying with it the woody musk and cloying pollen of the forest around you, and it is in that moment that you realize that he had dropped his glove onto the forest floor, had left it there and chosen to hold you in his bare hand, smoothing his thumb over your skin.

“There’s a good girl.”

The only warning you get is a ghost of a breath gently exhaled onto your skin before there is warmth, pulled close and steady and sweet as Crosshair gently tugs on your bottom lip.

He’s soft, you think mindlessly through the blissful haze between your ears. You faintly register the taste of the lavender balm you had bought him planetside on Crucival as he trails his hand up from your hip, over the dip in your back, and up to cup the base of your neck, pulling you closer.

All that teething’ll dry you out you had told him, and he’d scoffed something along the lines of soldiers—especially clones—not needing or wanting luxury goods. And yet you taste the telltale floral notes on his skin. You foggily wonder if he keeps the little tin on his ammunition belt as he kneads firm, steady fingers into your neck. You’ll gloat about it later.

There’s lavender, and then you taste him, just a trace, when he drags his tongue over the plush skin of your lips. At some point, you’ve brought your hands up to curl at the base of his head, threading through neatly cropped silver strands, and you part your lips. Finally, finally you can taste him on your own tongue.

He’s battle weary, laced with the slightest tang of synthetic wood treatment bleached into his toothpicks, anxiety bitten and jaw clenched. But here, now, only the faint residues of that tension remain in his impossibly gentle, unhurried motions. Running his thumb from your chin to the corner of your jaw, he tugs, tilting your head and gently tugging your tongue into his mouth.

Warmth blooms through your chest, steady and soft, a pulsar light glowing through the darkness, and you pull him closer.

He pulls away first, if only by virtue of your fervent wish that this moment might never end, nipping lightly your bottom lip in parting. And when the heat radiating off his skin is no longer close enough to warm you in the cool forest night, you slowly open your eyes, hoping that you won't wake to the durasteel ceiling of your bunk glaring down on you.

It's not a dream, Maker bless.

Crosshair stands before you, barely half an arm's length away and already flicking another toothpick between his lips as he smiles, open and soft in the moonlight. Without his persistent scowl, his piercing gaze, he looks so, so achingly young. And, if only for a moment, free of the burdens of war. Just a simple man bathing in the starlight in the jungles of Kashyyyk.

He's beautiful.

"Hi, Cross," you whisper, voice doing little to hide your lingering daze, and you watch, eyes wide with starry wonder, as Crosshair shakes with quiet laughter, eyes closed and shoulders sloped low.

"Hi, y/n," he chuckles. He fixes you with another unreadable look, this one different from the first. It's softer and mellow, vibrant in thrumming waves of bliss, content.

But before you can decide, he reaches down to pick his glove off of the jungle floor, tapping off the dirt on his hip and then, without hesitation, stuffing it into his ammunition belt. There's a brief flash of purplish metal in the pocket he chooses. The balm. You were right.

He catches your astonishment with a soft huff and clips the pocket shut.

"All that teething does dry me out," he teases, but there is only quiet acknowledgement, gracious and still as he extends his ungloved hand to you in the waning moonlight.

You stare at him, dumbstruck.

"The general probably knows we're gone. Come on," Crosshair's smile shifts, assuming a much more familiar smirk to accompany the sharp, snarky lilt that washes over him. He flicks his fingers at you, rolling his toothpick between his teeth. "Be a good girl for me."

There's the Crosshair you know.

"You're insufferable," you mutter, the heat blazing on the tips of your ears as you duck your head. But you reach for him anyways, reveling in the slow slide of your skin over his palm, your fingers finding home intertwined with his.

"Such a good girl," he chuckles, lifting your knuckles to his lips for the barest of chaste, fleeting touches.

"I will make your next hypoderm hurt like hell," you grumble.

(Un)surprisingly, Crosshair makes for a quick study. Beneath the stony, oftentimes sullen disposition, he’s a simple man. Of course, that simplicity didn’t necessarily limit himself from branching out into an actual person, but you could boil him down to one thing and one thing alone: control. Whether it was his genetic acuity that shaped him into the sniper persona or vice versa, control centered him, grounded him, tied him so close to his sense of duty and personhood that sometimes it was hard to tell the two apart.

So when you had offered two rotations prior to take the reins—offered both as something new and the hypothetical of release from, well, everything that kept him in a perpetually alert state of coiled tension—you honestly hadn’t expected for Crosshair to pause, rolling his toothpick thoughtfully between his teeth, and accept.

There’s certainly a part of you that hopes the manufactured brevity to your tone is enough to soothe the anxiety radiating from where Crosshair makes himself prim and small on your bed, smaller still without the bulk of his dark armor weighed over his shoulders. But, against your better judgement, a low-lying anticipation simmers at the base of your lungs when you finally shuck the day’s sweat and blaster smoke to the side.

He’s seen you undone under him time and time again, beads of sweat following the smug lines of his expression as he bent you to his—and, to be entirely fair, your own—pleasure. And as satisfying as that arrangement has proven itself to be, curiosity has always been that single, nagging vice at the back of your head.

Who can blame you for wanting a taste?

“You remember it, right?”

“Yeah,” he says, and you catch the heavy dregs of uncertainty (perhaps even bashfulness, ha) dragging at his voice.

“Then say it,” you prod. You gently nudge the point of your knee up against Crosshair’s calf and offer him a mirthful glance. And when that doesn’t seem to banish his withering hesitance, you drop down onto the bunk beside him, grasping his hand in yours and squeezing snug.

“I—” he clears his throat with a soft wince: embarrassment. “I don’t think I’ll need it.”

“Cross,” you warn. Because if you were going to do this, you were going to do this right.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters under his breath, scrubbing his palm over the highest points of his cheeks. You wonder if the warmth over his cheeks is the same as your own, desirous and shy as you venture into those dark, uncertain places hand in hand. “Tooka, happy?”

“Very happy,” you grin, and you lean close to press a quick peck to the corner of his mouth.

Crosshair leans towards you, lips parted to chase your touch, more, more. But he’ll have his fill, and you’re quick to dart away, leaving him even more disoriented than he already is, all wide eyes that seek you like fading light.

You’re tempted to indulge him because it’s not often that he looks like a kicked loth cat (and he does a damn good impression when he does). But you manage to stuff down the creeping sympathy, opting instead to reach into the pocket of your trousers and produce a well-worn headband.

“Please tell me that’s not Hunter’s.” The rosy edge of desire vanishes from Crosshair’s voice as he catches sight of the broad black swatch of fabric in your palm. In its place, the testing edge of judgement so often home in Crosshair’s snide play.

“Ew, no—what? That’d be weird. And gross. Who do you think I am?”

That seems to do what your previous efforts could not, and your heart jumps when Crosshair responds with a soft snort and shrugs. He’s not resentful, not in the slightest. It’s just trepidation, jumping into uncharted waters with nothing but the trust that your hand, snug over his, would hold fast.

But the laughter settles, drawing back to reveal something that hums quiet between the small eternity between you. Even with your thigh pressed close against Crosshair’s own, you feel him drawing away, hesitant and wanting all at once. You gently pull his hand between you, squeezing once.

“Trust me?” you murmur.

Crosshair offers you a tremulous look, more nervous than apprehensive. You suppose it’s only fitting of him that relinquishing his steady grip over control might be more appealing in concept than on the eve of practice. Nonetheless, when you meet his gaze, you find the kind of uncertainty that heralds excitement, careful but enamored all the same. He nods.

“Then let me take care of you.”

Finally, as you raise your hands to his temples, pressing the dark fabric over his eyes, the tension pulls away from his coiled muscles, dropping his shoulders and bowing his head as you reach around him and tie a knot over the back of his silvery hair. He exhales long and slow as the knot settles snug over his scalp, warmed by the creases left behind by your fingertips and the sudden comfort yet complete unpredictability that shrouds his senses.

Testing the waters, you bring one hand to his cheek, just barely ghosting your fingertips over the lean lines of his jaw, and you are rewarded with a full-bodied shudder that shocks through Crosshair’s form as his lips gently part around his toothpick. Without that precious ability to see, he sits in your palm at your every whim.

You lean forward, gently biting your teeth around the tapered free end of his toothpick, and you feel him swallow hard when you free it from his mouth and drop it to the floor.

“Trust me.”

Chest heaving, he nods again.

“Safeword?”

This time, there is no snark to accompany a begrudging response. “Tooka.” Instead, his voice dips breathy and low between the long breadths between his soft exhales, his beating heart.

“Good boy.”

You surprise yourself at how natural the praise feels, rolling from your tongue and rising over the ambient hum of the ship around you. It fills your chest with something like affection, bordered pride that only swells as you watch him shudder, his lips parting just a little wider to pass that barely-there whimper riding on his exhale.

The hard planes of his body, that star map you’ve committed to the deepest parts of your heart, are familiar terrain under your skin as you flatten your palms over the sharp jut of his collar and travel lower. You pause the heels of your palms over the base of his ribs, pressing softly against the quickening rise and fall of his chest. Satisfaction curls sweet and rich over the tip of your tongue as his stuttering inhale shifts the air around you.

With slow, firm force, you push him backwards onto the bunk, Crosshair’s elbows catching his slow descent over the dark grey sheets until finally drops his head back onto the firm mattress. His chest heaves.

Your fingertips pass over the sinew and soft scar of his abdomen, chasing how his breathing expands from his chest and leaches tension over the length of his torso. You’re certain this isn’t new, not when your intimacy has you stealing the other’s breaths between stuttering gasps. But to feel it under your palms, thrumming and deep—it sets your nerves on fire.

Control. It’s wholly and entirely yours.

You still as the pads of your fingers catch the faint ridge of his waistband. And a part of you is smug with the power of reversal, that it wasn’t Crosshair offering you a knowing smirk as he parted your thighs and pressed close, that it was you, privy to only the deepest intimacy Crosshair could offer.

But it’s exactly that which keeps the power from rushing to your head, stymying the teasing mischief for something warm in your stomach when you trail lower and gently cup over the straining bulge in his blacks. And it grows fonder when Crosshair’s legs jerk with a labored puff of breath, the same one he breathes into your ear when he finally pushes up deep inside you and presses his skin close against yours. He whines, a straining, soft noise through his bitten lips, and you’ve teased long enough.

Crosshair makes a soft noise, somewhere between a gasp and a whining moan, when you finally hook your fingers over the hem of the dark fabric and expose the curved strain of his cock. He’s so open, you think as you reach forwards (though, you suppose being deprived of the one sense that reigned king would do that to you).

You don’t need to be able to see the half of his face rising above the bridge of his nose to envision the soft knit of his dark brows, eyes squeezed shut and lashes fluttering with every soft noise that passes his lips. You don’t need to see the half of his face bound under that broad swath of fabric to envision how his expression breaks from restraint to unbridled euphoria when you trace the edge of your nail down the underside of his cock.

“Please,” you think you hear him whisper past a breathy moan.

Whatever he might have had prepared, the whole gamut of biting, bratty demand to wide-eyed pleas, tumbles back into his throat when you finally climb onto the bunk by his hips, lick the flat of your tongue over your palm, and wrap it snug around the middle of Crosshair’s cock. Instead, you watch with a satisfied awe as he jerks up into your touch, spit-slick lips parted in a silent cry.

“You want my hand or my mouth?” you croon, pumping slowly from the thick base of his erection to the ruddy tip. You want him to feel every quiver of your touch as you run your thumb over the pearly drop of precome beaded at the crown of his cock, reveling in his shudder beneath you. You want to be the only thing he feels.

“Mouth,” he chokes out. “Please.”

“You’re so polite today,” you muse, reaching up with your free hand to rub your thumb over the plush bitten skin of his bottom lip. Emboldened, you slip your finger past his lips, grazing over his teeth as you push the pad of your thumb over his tongue, all the while slowly working your hand over his cock. “The good boy gets what he wants, then. Right?”

For a brief moment, something like disbelief occupies the warm air between you—you, amazed at how easy it is to hold the reins tight; him, stunned that somehow, you in control was as good, if not better, than being the commandeering weight to push your face into the pillows.

Crosshair nods, trembling as you squeeze softly over the base of his cock.

“I need to hear it, mesh’la.”

The last line of his restraint crumbles at the sound: one only ever given from him to you, yet suddenly brought back to him with the full brunt of lust, affection, the secret words you’ve come to call your own. Crosshair bucks up into your hand with a low groan, gasping soft and breathy when you slip your thumb from his mouth and hold him down to the mattress.

“Yes, please.”

You smile and dip low.

Unlike the slow deliberation of your earlier touch, you seal your lips over his ruddy cockhead with one smooth motion, pressing your tongue flat against the underside and hollowing your cheeks. And the heady taste of salt, of trembling anticipation, of him, only sweetens when you flick your eyes up to catch Crosshair tip up his chin, dig his heels into the mattress, and sob.

You sink his cock deeper into your mouth, achingly slow while you continue to work your fist around the base of his cock, and close in a way that coaxes soft, whimpering noises from his lips as he turns his head and clenches his jaw.

Flicking your eyes upwards, a pang of regret shocks through your chest that you aren’t able to see Crosshair come undone from the slightest of touches, tame in comparison to some of your particularly energetic nights. But you do away with the thought as quickly as it comes as his blunt cockhead brushes over the back of your tongue.

His pleasure has always been yours, yours his, you think as you pull back, just until your lips part around the tip of his cock while he shifts and gasps beneath you. You’ll have your turn soon enough.

Before you can sink back down, swallow him as deep as you can, the air by your cheek shifts, and expecting the worst, you lift your chin. But where you expected some stifled yellow light, Crosshair’s fingers feel blindly around you until they find purchase over your cheek. His relief is palpable as his stuttering touch curls over your skin and holds you close.

You smile.

“Trust me?” you ask again, your lips mouthing softly over his cock, catching thick smears of precome over your skin.

“I trust you,” he whispers.

Crosshair cries out, hoarse and as loud as he’s been all night, as you drop your mouth near-midway down the straining length of his cock in one motion, lavishing your tongue under his pulse. His hand tenses over your jaw, blunt nails digging light into your skin as his fingers curl with that bone-deep shock of pleasure. And if the breathy, desperate noises he whimpers into the alcove of the bunk are of any indication, you have a good feeling he’ll want to do this again.

You moan around him in answer. It doesn’t matter to you that his brothers might hear, only a few panels of durasteel away and connected by the reverb of a narrow ship corridor. They probably do hear, but all that matters now is Crosshair, coming impossibly more undone under your tongue as he runs his trembling thumb over the skin of your cheek.

His hips buck up towards you, catching the back of your throat with a soft sting that reaches your nose. If you weren’t so desperate, you might have pinned him down harder or pulled away entirely to let him think about what he had done. But as much as you want to chase this power play, hearing him lose himself to you has you desperate for his touch.

You follow him with every uneven jerk and thrust up into the wet heat of your mouth, letting him take his fill. You simply stroke firmer as his skin warms over your tongue. It’s all so hot, the air heady and thick as you breathe in sharp through your nose and lean into his palm, and you wonder what it feels like, anchored to nothing but you, his sole light in a world gone dark.

His motions fall uneven, his hips twisting against your touch, his breaths becoming deeper, louder as they bounce over the steel ceiling overhead. He’s close.

You twist your fist over his cock, redoubling your efforts. You sink down so far over his cock that your eyes water as you crush the head up against the back of your throat. Heavy and thick, it muffles down a soft gag for you—it’s the deepest you’ve ever taken him. Crosshair notices, and he nearly wails.

He’s been good, you decide as you all but choke around him. He can take that coveted control back. You gently rub his hand, unspoken assent, and his hand slides up your jaw to finds purchase at the back of your head to fuck you down onto him in earnest.

And you take it, eyes blurring with tears and shallow inhales through your nose, holding still and letting him fuck over your tongue until he’s taken his fill. It doesn’t take long for him to spill down your throat, a low, hoarse groan passed between his lips as you struggle to breathe between every dutiful swallow of his thick come down your throat.

“Good boy,” you rasp as you pull the blindfold from over his head.

Crosshair meets you with unfocused eyes, full of wonder and a shaky haze that finds focus on you alone in the low light. Over the ache in your knees, you crawl up to meet him, collapsing down beside him with a soft sigh. He meets you with habit, practiced and true as he tips down his chin and presses his lips to yours, tasting himself on your skin when he swipes his tongue over your lip.

“How was that?” you whisper, breathing soft over his lips.

You tilt your head up enough to catch your nose over Crosshair’s. He still meets you with that same stupor, but you see it begin to mellow into something other than the shock of enjoyment in submission in a man who has only ever known control to be his. It’s quiet and raw, splitting open your chest with that rare kind of warmth that the broad expanse of space and war leave little space to grow.

Yours, whispered and cradled close between your beating hearts, yours alone.

“I’ll remember the safeword,” Crosshair says finally, his voice distant and soft as he still rises out of the aftershocks of his orgasm. But in that weary daze, you catch the rosy relaxation, vulnerable and yet increasingly less rare in your palms. Relief, pride, joy, honeyed goodness rises to the apples of your cheeks at the sound.

It hadn’t occurred to you that your roommate, who is nowhere to be seen, had been dressing up for her girlfriend, and that most people who had half a mind would wear something comfortable that could withstand a few spilled drinks and ash. So seeing the rest of the room in rumpled tees and sweats has you and your little black dress seeking out the nearest wall as you fiddle with your questionably sweet cup of margarita mixer.

You feel like a first year, and it sucks.

But for once, with everyone too busy mingling amongst themselves over the heavy thrum of some mumble rap beat, you manage to slip by unnoticed.

Every now and then, you dart your eyes around the ever shifting landscape of faces in the dim room, looking for even the vaguest familiarity that might let you feign being tipsy and join a group for the night. But every time you try, there’s no luck.

Fuck, you haven’t even seen anyone here before.

But there might be a god watching out for you yet when the crowd shifts just enough that you catch sight of the couch, and on it, someone you suspect to be one of the twins as he greets a few girls with a disinterested nod.

Emboldened, but mostly nervous that in the crowd of bodies and red solo cups you’re still helplessly alone, you push off the wall and squeeze past huddled cliques of conversation to make for the dark couch.

By the platinum bleached hair and big-name consulting group quarter zip, Crosshair—at least you think it’s him—lounges over the couch. He isn’t the only body on the suede seats, but he keeps to himself, his head dipped low as he works one hand over a small metal canister in his other palm.

If you weren’t having luck with the other nameless faces around you, maybe the Fett twin would keep you company—at least until your roommate came back to find you (if she did). And worst case, you’d just slink back to your dorm and mope until your roommate apologized to you with your favorite overpriced smoothie bowl the day after.

Mustering every ounce of courage you have, you plant your feet by the couch and finally speak.

"Is your name actually Crosshair?" you ask.

The man on the couch pauses, his motions stilling over the small metal cylinder in his palms, and he lifts his chin just enough to flick his eyes up towards the sound of your voice.

You always thought the girls in your droning 9AM gen-ed were wildly exaggerating his hype for their own devices, squealing over his (apparently) brooding charm and sharp looks to nip at his stash for free. But for all the vague haze surrounding your perception of the twins, you never thought that they were telling the truth.

If you had been in broad daylight under the incandescent glow of your creaky lecture hall lights, you might have called him cocky, almost haughty, how he meets you with an unreadable look for having interrupted him. But in the purple LEDs and heavy haze of vape juice and shitty tequila, he’s captivating, all dark eyes and perfectly lit skin, marked only by the needle-thin design tattooed over the right side of his face and a worn wooden toothpick bitten between his teeth.

You swallow down the dry lump in your throat when you catch him flick his eyes from your face, down the short length of your dress, and back up again.

"Smoke with me; maybe you'll find out," he drawls, toothpick bobbing as he speaks. He twists the cylinder once and offers you a wry smirk. And when you stay, speechless but there all the same, Crosshair scoots to the side and pats the narrow space between him and the couch arm, inviting you close.

"I've never smoked before," you admit a bit shyly as you drop down beside him. Your dress hikes up your thigh, and you shiver when your skin presses up against the soft denim of his jeans.

"Not even cigs?"

You shake your head. And you tell yourself that when he leans close and brushes his shoulder up against your arm, that he’s only doing it because someone’s boosted the bass, and you can’t hear him over the reverb.

"Well, good thing I'm here, yeah?"

He gives the metal canister a final twist and sets it down on the coffee table before you. Swapping the canister for a small brown sleeve, you watch in a daze as he pulls a semi-transparent leaflet from the folder and tears a strip of cardstock straight from its flap. He has pianist fingers, you think wistfully, neatly kept nails and slender grace, and you wonder if he’ll entertain you if you ask to compare your hand to his.

“What’s your name?”

You scrabble back to the present at the sound of his voice. “Uh, y/n,” you offer.

“Well, y/n,” he says with a soft laugh, having caught on to your daydreaming. “Step one, you fold your filter.”

You nod along absently as Crosshair artfully crimps the thick paper into a neat roll. As if there isn’t thirty-some odd people crammed into his apartment, he quietly takes you step by step, offering you the filter, the paper, then the contents of the canister (a grinder, he explains) like it’s a game of show and tell. But with every piece he places into your hands, you gravitate closer, closer, until you’re flush against his arm and practically hanging over his side to watch as he gently taps a line of bud over the paper.

“Here, let me give you a better look,” Crosshair says.

You expect him to bring the neat line of bud to you, but when nothing comes, you look up and find him waiting for you, one arm open in invitation as the other pats once on the dark denim of his thigh.

“Uh—”

“Sit,” he says as if you haven’t just met him fifteen minutes ago. “Front row seats if you want ‘em.”

On one hand, you barely know Crosshair outside of the rumors you hear on campus. On the other hand, he’s a genuinely pleasant person, careful to accommodate for your boundaries and offering a snide playfulness that’s banished your nerves from earlier in the night.

He’s also really fucking hot.

“Okay,” you murmur, and you let him wrap his arm around your waist and tug you onto his lap. And he’s right. Perched over his thighs, you see with perfect clarity (and without the strain in your neck) as he gently folds the paper over the mound of bud and carefully twists. It’s the prettiest joint you’ve ever seen—though it might be because it’s the only one you’ve seen.

"Final touch," Crosshair's voice rumbles over your back, shooting straight into your core as he lifts the paper's vellum edge to your lips. “Lick it for me.”

Since you sat down with him, you’ve only been the passenger, nodding along as Crosshair’s long, nimble fingers creased over filter paper and patiently pointed out things like the stray pistils in his baggie and the keef gathered at the bottom of his grinder for if you really want to get fucked up. And even though you aren’t doing much (because licking paper doesn’t really seem too crazy), it’s a step forward from the comfortable rhythm that had settled between you, and you twist around in his lap to shoot him an uncertain glance.

“Just,” Crosshair flicks his tongue over his lower lip, flashing a brief glimpse of a ball piercing towards your wide eyes. And if you weren’t so flustered, you might have recognized the coy playfulness in his gaze. “Give it a lick, right over the edge.”

“I—uh, what if I—” you stammer.

“You’re not gonna mess this up, darling,” Crosshair chuckles. If his hand squeezing brief over your waist wasn’t enough to bring heat searing over the tops of your ears, his next words, crooned low and breathy into your ear, certainly do. “You’re a smart girl. You can do it.”

"My brother giving you trouble?"

Another voice cuts through the din of the party, sparing you your stammering nerves as you whip your head up in its general direction. You’re greeted with the sight of his brother, peering down on you as he takes a sip from his cup.

“You’re such a killjoy,” Crosshair mutters, drawing his arm tighter around your waist as he jabs the half-rolled joint to where Hunter sprawls down onto the couch beside him. “No, I’m not being a creep. I’m teaching our pretty underclassman here how to roll.”

Oh.

Heat rushes over your cheeks, and you can’t decide whether you want to shrink into yourself or bask in it and beg for more.

He called you pretty.

“With her in your lap,” Hunter snorts into his cup.

“It was your idea to invite your entire fucking rugby team. Where else would we do it?”

“I’m so sorry he’s like this,” Hunter laughs, tilting his head and looking up at you through his (unfairly) long lashes. Where you thought Crosshair’s tattoo was bold, Hunter’s practically blows him out of the water, a well-worn swath of ink on the left half of his face, curving into neatly stylized teeth right at the edge of his lips. “I’m Hunter.”

Huh, maybe you do have a thing for tattoos.

“Y/n,” you squeak. “It’s, um—it’s nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine, sweetheart,” he says as he offers you an easy smile. “Has my baby brother been treating you right?”

“God, two fucking minutes,” Crosshair snaps. You hear the embarrassment seeping from the vitriol, and it strikes you like a shot to the head that he’s trying to play cool in front of you. “I come out two minutes after you and—”

“We’re fraternal, and I got all the oxygen in the womb. Explains why he has awful people skills,” Hunter fake-whispers loud enough for Crosshair to hear, and you giggle as the other man groans from behind you.

“No, he’s been really nice,” you say softly once you realize that you’ve been laughing a little too loud. “He’s teaching me about weed.” It sounds juvenile when you say it, awkward and clumsy on your tongue. It’s a dead giveaway that has Hunter’s smile mellowing into something soft.

“Your first time?”

“Mhm.”

“Well, Cross here’s high as shit at least four hours every day. Says it helps him do the math. I hate to say it, but you’re in good hands.”

“You try running a nonlinear regression sober,” Crosshair snorts. “Anyways, we were just finishing up this joint before you decided to kill the vibe.”

Crosshair lifts the half-rolled joint back up to your chin, and this time, he leans forward and presses his chest close against your back as the playful snark leaves his tone, in its wake, something patient and calm as his voice rumbles by your ear.

“You gonna help me finish the job, sweet girl?”

You surprise yourself when the initial trepidation vanishes as you tip your chin down and stick out your tongue. Maybe you’re showboating now that you have an audience, feeling Hunter’s dark eyes on your lips when you touch the tip of your tongue out over the edge.

Whether it’s your lip gloss or the fine crumbs of bud stuck to the roll paper that fills your mouth with something earthy and sweet, you can’t say. All you know is they’re both following you with that intense intent, the bass and blend of voices faded out around you; just you in Crosshair’s lap and Hunter pretending to care about the drink in his hand as you lift your tongue off the far corner of the paper and close your lips.

“Good job,” Hunter muses, and you’re pretty certain he’s not talking about the joint when you feel his gaze boring into you alone.

The smell of smoke pulls you out of Hunter’s gravity, and you look back in front of you to see Crosshair snap a scuffed metal lighter shut and toss it onto the coffee table. He brings the joint back down in front of you, blowing a neat stream of whitish gray smoke past your ear.

“You know how to pull?” Crosshair asks, and his chin brushes over your bare shoulder as he speaks. He’s so close. You can smell the burn, acrid and sour, but it doesn’t matter that it doesn’t smell like some bubblegum vape when you feel his breaths curling over your skin. You just want more.

Mutely, you shake your head.

“Mm, you know how to shotgun?” Hunter offers, and you hear Crosshair huff laugher from behind you. “Might be easier for your first try.”

You shake your head again.

“It’s,” Hunter pauses, and his brows knit close as he thinks for a moment. “It’s kind of like a kiss. But not really. I take a hit and you catch my smoke. That sound okay?”

You don’t think it matters that someone’s hit shuffle on the playlist, filling the room with a hard electronic beat that might have otherwise drowned out all sound. All you hear is your heart pounding in your ears as you nod and watch Hunter lift the filter to his lips and inhale deep, then pass the joint back to Crosshair.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, white trails of smoke curling over his upper lip as he lifts one hand to cup over the base of your neck.

“Open,” Crosshair whispers.

Wordlessly, you obey. Your lips part just as Hunter pulls close, so close you feel the heat of his skin spreading warm over your cheeks, and blows a soft stream of bitter smoke into your mouth. It can’t be more than a few seconds, but all the while, you can’t seem to tear your eyes from his.

“Breathe in, deep,” you hear Crosshair instruct as he begins to rub one thumb over the curve of your hip.

The smoke is thick, sluicing down your throat and filling your lungs like nothing you’ve ever felt before. It’s not bad, just new, and pressed between the twins over the couch, you think it just might have been worth being ditched by your roommate earlier in the night. But your lungs ache, and you slowly exhale, watching as your vision fogs with a loose cloud of smoke until your chest feels clear again.

“And you didn’t even cough,” Hunter smiles. His calloused fingertips follow the slope of your neck, lingering one moment more before he pulls away. And you aren’t sure if the low buzzing in your fingertips is the weed or their combined warmth as Hunter rubs over your knee and Crosshair leans his head against your neck. “Good girl.”

“Wanna do it again,” you whisper as the buzz begins to crawl up your neck, fizzling around your temples as you lean your cheek over where Crosshair nuzzles into your shoulder.

“With him or me?” Crosshair murmurs, his lips brushing over your skin.

“You,” you say dreamily, and Hunter laughs, a sound that suddenly seems so far away as you tip your head and press close against Crosshair’s silver hair.

Crosshair leans into your touch, pressing his cheek up against your neck one last time before he’s lifting his head and bringing the joint to his lips. You hear the hiss of his inhale, smoke curling up through the narrow body of the joint as the charred end glows warm beside you.

And instead of Hunter’s approach, level with you, Crosshair looms above you, meeting your wide eyes with something of a fond smile. Dragging his hand up your chest, he follows the line of your neck and holds snug over your chin. He squeezes softly, and your jaw falls slack, lips parted in a soft ‘o’ as he dips low. He's closer than Hunter as you feel his mouth just brush over yours and breathe smoke over your tongue.

This time, it’s easier.

You swallow down the smoke and hold, just a beat longer than before. But both Crosshair and Hunter notice as your lips stay parted, and they share a soft laugh that has you exhaling smoke and pride all at once when you finally relax your diaphragm and breathe out.

“Fast learner,” Crosshair muses, nosing up under your jaw as you sink back against his chest.

You mumble incoherently, chasing his touch as the high creeps heavy and warm from your chest to your collar and settles at the back of your throat. It anchors you, molding you up against Crosshair who feels nothing short of perfect as he circles his arms loose over your waist.

You turn your head to thank Hunter when you distantly register him pressing a cool cup into your hand (water, you think you hear him say), but the words slip back down into your throat, your eyelids suddenly unbearably heavy and coarse over your blurry vision.

“You wanna lay down?” Hunter offers, and his voice comes to you like you’re underwater, warped and bubbling past the din of the party around you.

You're pretty sure you nod.

For a few moments, you catch traces of an unintelligible exchange between the twins, only aware of the rumble of Crosshair’s voice at your back, and then you’re being lifted up off the couch, the music and raucous laughter fading behind you.

A door opens, squeaking half-shut, and you wince as a light clicks on beside you. Whoever was carrying you sets you down on something soft and cool, and you sway as the light dims and you settle into your seat.

You’re on a bed, you think.

Crosshair’s, judging by the shock of light hair that you can make out through your lashes. He helps you into a worn tee that reaches past the short hem of your dress, and you wiggle into it with a soft whine, holding it tight.

But where you expect a familiar weight to dip down next to you and pull you close, your eyes fly open when you see his figure turn away from you and towards the neon lights of the party outside.

“You aren’t staying?” It's the most coherent you've been through your first high.

“Not tonight,” Crosshair says softly. He turns back towards you and reaches up to fix the strap of your dress as you sit on his bed. “Baby’s first tokes got you all dopey. Right now, what you need is this,” and he presses a plastic bottle of vitamin water he’s seemingly produced out of nowhere into your palm. “This,” he adds, pressing your phone into your other hand. “And a good night’s sleep.”

“And what if I say I need you, too?” you pout.

Some part of you—the conscious part locked away in the back of your skull—bangs up against the hazy high at the crown of your head because when you’re good and sober and when Crosshair inevitably turns you down, you won’t be able to look at yourself in the mirror for the next semester.

But he breaks into a smile that crinkles at the corners of his eyes before he leans down to press his lips to your forehead. It’s just a split-second of warm, chapstick-soft lips on your skin, but it floods you with an indescribable good from the top of your head all the way down to your toes.

And as high as you are right now, you have a hell of a hunch that the flutter in your chest is going to stay, even when the room stops wobbling around you.

“When you’re all sobered up in the morning, we’ll make you breakfast, and we’ll figure it out from there,” Crosshair says after he’s pulled back, reaching up to smooth his palm over your hair. “Sound like a plan?”

You nod, probably with a little too much enthusiasm, but you’re rewarded with another low chuckle that’s practically music to your ears. His hand gentle and firm over your shoulder, Crosshair guides you down onto the bed and pulls the covers up to your chin.

“Now text your roomie so she doesn’t call the cops on us, get some sleep, and drink all of that, okay?”

“Okay,” you respond.

“Good girl.”

And when the lights click out, you curl into Crosshair’s pillow, breathing in cold, fresh notes of his cologne, and then you’re asleep.

You climb out of bed the next morning, your minidress rumpled under a long shirt. It's not like a hangover, no, you just find yourself a bit lightheaded and throat parched, and the disorientation makes your head spin as you’re greeted with the smell of fresh coffee and something savory—

Your roommate doesn’t wake up earlier than you, and she can’t cook for shit. And why were your sheets grey? Whose shirt were you—

Oh.

Fuck.

You practically burst out of Crosshair’s bedroom, and you’re not sure what you expected, but somehow you hadn’t expected to see Hunter sipping mildly on a mug of coffee while Crosshair pushes something around in a pan over their kitchen range.

“Mornin,’” Hunter offers you a small wave, and reaches for a third mug on the countertop. “Wasn’t sure how you liked your coffee so we just made it black.”

“What happened last night?” you gasp. If you weren’t so panicked, you’re certain the sight of them sporting nothing but grey sweats would have been your only concern, but you’ve just woken up with foggy memories and the slimy dread of anxiety that follows a blackout night.

“Easy, easy,” Crosshair assures you as he steps away from the stovetop. “Nothing happened after we smoked. You took, like, two hits, and you were so hazy you couldn’t remember your dorm number, so we put you to bed, and I slept out in the living room. Fetts are wild but we’re not scumbags, promise.”

And judging from the throw blanket sliding off the edge of the couch cushions, you’re fairly certain you can believe him. Relief floods your chest.

“Oh thank God,” you sigh, and your shoulders sag as the weight of panic sloughs off your back.

They both laugh softly, the sudden tension lifting from the bright morning light, and you can’t help but join in. And when that rosy relief gives way to silence again, it’s Crosshair who speaks next.

“So, you staying for breakfast?”

“Can I borrow some actual clothes first?”

You watch the whole spectacle as he gasps like a landed fish, grasping for wisps of coherence. And you can’t help the giggle that rises from your throat when he forgoes words entirely and trails off into a breathless half-whimper half-laugh.

“Can I—” he says at last, and his voice cracks hoarse through his sputtering attempt to regain what little composure he had. “Can I touch it?”

At your nod, Hardcase reaches forwards just enough that his fingertips barely brush over your chest. You don’t dare look down to where his calloused fingers meet the skin above your ribs, too afraid that if you take your eyes from Hardcase’s face for even a single heartbeat that you might miss a precious moment of the awestruck wonder in his expression. You find yourself as transfixed as he as you watch him trace the trio of royal blue ink arcing down your sternum and tapering off into twin circles that cradle the curve of your chest.

It’s what this whole evening has been leading up to—your grand reveal kickstarted by his signature lung-crushing hug on the hangar bay. You had braced for it harder than usual when he’d swept you into his arms and lifted you off the dusty platform steel, readying for the particularly bruising ache that comes with the week-old ink needled over the base of your ribs.

To be fair, it wasn’t possible to greet Hardcase without creating some sort of commotion. Even if it was just shy of a week on planetside escort duty, once the gunship was within a metre of the dusty landing bay durasteel, landing protocols be damned, Hardcase would hit the ground running, tossing his helmet behind him and swooping you into his arms. The sheer, unadulterated joy of reunion always found home in how he squeezed you around your middle and spun you about; it was always worth the solid smack over the back of his head (stern, from Rex and, gleefully, from Jesse) for throwing his bucket aside.

But when you had met him with more of a pained grunt than your usual tittering exclamation, Hardcase had dropped you so quickly you’d almost fallen backwards if not for his reflexes to steady you. When he’d stumbled over wide-eyed apologies (and braced past Jesse’s open-palmed whap over his head), you had only laughed and told him to wait until after you had run inventory with Rex.

His fingers finally pause their slow trace over the tattoo on your chest. He feels, sees himself, an emblem on your skin. And when he looks up, he sees you.

“Tats are sore for a bit, ‘Case,” you smile. His eyes are so wide you’re certain if you look just a little more, you’d see yourself in him. You and he, he and you, the same, the same, one. “‘s why I flinched a little.”

Hardcase’s lips open and part around soundless words a few more times, still floating in some limbo between processing disbelief and boundless excitement before he unevenly clears his throat and finally speaks.

“You—you got me inked on you?” Hardcase whispers. Each word has the corners of his lips curling higher as if he had to speak into realization what stood before him; as if his fingertips pressing tender divots into your skin were proof only of the flesh: a universal truth that only needed words to find home in his heart.

You nod, grinning.

“Wanted to have a part of you with me for while you’re away.”

And for a moment, Hardcase’s fingers are the only motion in a still room, stroking soft, repetitive motions over the blue ink of your—his—tattoo.

You silently brace for something loud and present, excited rambling, another crushing hug, affection swept wide and open before you. Instead, Hardcase lets free a single breathless huff and tugs you close.

“You know those are forever, right?” he laughs, his voice rising again.

“That’s why I got it,” you respond, and his laughter only grows brighter.

Hardcase buries his nose into your chest with a groan, and that precious crest of joy bursts over your tongue when you throw your head back and laugh. Gilded and honeyed light finds home in your chest.

“Mesh’la, I need you so bad right now,” Hardcase groans as he brings his arms snug around your waist. And his laughter joins yours this time, voices swelling together when Hardcase rests his brow against your skin and pulls you in close. You make quick work of the rest of your clothes, throwing them somewhere off to the bedside before you sit back down over the firm lines of his thighs.

“I mean, yeah, I sure hope so—was the whole point ‘Case,” you tease, and Hardcase groans, carrying something of breathless disbelief and affection and desire curled into a single whimpering sound.

And as soon as you’re squeezing over his shoulders, suddenly, you feel your gravity tilt, and you yelp as your back connects with the bedspread.

Hardcase cages you under him, one arm propped by your head as the other slips from beneath the small of your back and trails its way back to the centre of your chest, hovering just at the edges of your tattoo. He lingers, treading those shallow waters for a moment more. But where you expect the familiar drag of his blunt nails over the bold lines of blue ink, he dips low. Instead, you gasp when his fingers are replaced by his lips, warm, inviting, home as he presses a single, lingering kiss over the sigil branded into your skin.

“‘Case!” you giggle and kick out your legs at the sudden flick of his tongue over your chest. You feel him laugh into your skin, his breath wisping over where his lips just brush over the edges of the tattoo.

He ghosts one more touch, drawn long and yet chaste in how he nuzzles the tip of his nose into your chest. And the bubbling laughter of before wanes, complete, when he lifts his chin and meets you with the hushed whispers of a smile on his parted lips.

Because it’s him, finding home over the base of your ribs.

It’s him, reflected back into his wide eyes.

It’s you.

He doesn’t surge up to meet you. He doesn’t kiss you with that unabashed brilliance that crushes your lips together so hard your teeth clack. The breath catches in your throat as you watch him move in silence. There is no overexuberant joy when Hardcase shifts higher up on the bed to meet your eyes and slowly runs his thumb over your lower lip. Even then, his touch is so achingly still, deliberation held close and savored slow.

He blinks once, dark eyes full of the soft light only privy to early mornings and late nights when you curl close and bask in each other, bared and whole. You grant his request without hesitation.

Starting low, your fingers smooth over the faded lines of blue tattooed over Hardcase’s chin, the same sigils you keep as your own. Well worn and faded until the line between ink and skin disappeared entirely, the tattoos beneath your fingertips are nothing and everything like yours. You trace higher, following the crest of his lip, the high line of his cheekbone, the dip just beneath his eye where his tattoo begins anew.

He closes his eyes and lets your touch trail over his lashes until your fingers slope over his temple and still over the base of his head. And when he dips his head low, you meet him in the middle, catching his upper lip between yours as he slips one hand between you and thumbs over your tattoo. That touch anchors you as much as you think it must do the same for him, pulling you close and keeping you there while you lick over his lips and breathe him in deep.

Through the warmth heavy in your gut, you feel him slide his other hand down your side, over the contour of your hip, and lift your leg up against him. You hook your leg over the small of his back and tug awkwardly, sending him stumbling forwards, crushing his hand between your chests as he dips down and narrowly catches himself.

No amount of awkward maneuvering breaks the rosy air between you, even as you both tear away from each other to stifle the kind of laughter that lingers.

“This okay?” he murmurs over the waning sigh of a low chuckle, voice warm on your skin and drunk with your taste. He nudges his hips forward, sending a shiver shocking up your spine when you feel his cock brush up against the swell of your cunt.

“Always, Hardcase,” you whisper.

As soon as the words leave your lips, you barely have enough time to suck in another breath before you’re stuttering on your own tongue. The tension slumps out of your shoulders as Hardcase digs his fingertips into your thigh and presses forwards, stretching you out around him in the way only he knows how, setting fire to your nerves and coming home all at once.

No matter how many times you kneel before ritual—habit coming to you as natural and comforting as breath itself—you still find yourself slack-jawed and starry-eyed as Hardcase pushes into you.

That it’s the first time in his four month tour that he’s able to pull you apart and hold you together only makes it better.

It takes all of one long, shuddering exhale for him to push into you in full. The breath you share breaks that stillness, a gasping inhale as his hips connect with the soft curve of your thighs and has the blunt head of his cock nudging so deep in you that you swear you feel the pulse at the base of your ribs, right where your tattoo swells with your whimpering.

Hardcase drops forward with a groan, blindly twining his fingers with yours and leaning down to press his forehead close against yours.

You don’t have to open your eyes to see him as you squeeze his hand. The bridge of his nose flush against yours, you bask, exchanging the warmth of breath over the little space between your lips. With his brow pressed into yours, he surrounds you, warmth, warmth, warmth, a setting sun and the grass it kisses still glowing in its wake. He rolls his hips forwards and swallows your wailing moan with his tongue.

Hardcase starts slow, setting a pace that has you feeling every long drag inside you as he draws back then crushes back up against the soft spot inside you that curls your toes. It’s a far cry from the excitement of a welcome back or rendezvous reunion, swapping giddy haste to savor instead, to melt over his tongue as Hardcase slips his free arm under your hips and tugs you impossibly close.

Through the blissed-out tears beaded over your lashes, you can just make out his expression, tense with cresting pleasure, as he leans back and admires you, stretched out before him. And when your legs jerk this time, there is no achingly deep pressure of his cock heavy inside you—only his lips over the centre of your chest as he bows low and kisses your tattoo again, again, laying and sealing claim above the rapid flutter of your heart.

You squeeze his hand, and he lifts his chin to meet your hazy eyes with his own, full with intent, desire, the kind of loyalty transcendent above anything he could ever swear to his generals, to his cause. He squeezes back.

You drop your head back onto the bed when he picks up his pace again, moving his free hand out from under you to stroke his thumb over your clit and smearing the mess of your arousal and his precome over where you stretch around him. Chest heaving, you can only sob and grip tight around his neck as he leans back over you and nuzzles his nose into your collar.

It’s getting harder and harder to tell your breaths apart from his after one stuttering thrust gives way to another. The steady tenderness of before bows under the fizzling heat in your stomach, giving in to rawer need as Hardcase’s movements over your clit fumble erratic. He snaps his hips against yours and drives up hard against your pleasure, mumbling unknowable words under his breath. Desperate for more, you shift back to meet what thrusts you can.

When he leans forwards again, his brow unsteadily knocks against your nose before he can nuzzle over your forehead and press close. You might have laughed, taken the moment to catch your breath over the clumsiness of affections swelling high. But you’re too busy chasing your own pleasure, too enamored with the wet friction of his throbbing cock sliding into your cunt.

Hardcase comes first, thundering rigid through him as he buries his nose at the juncture of your neck and bites down over his own teeth, his jaw flexing against your skin. His tension spreads through you, holds you by your breath and seizes the mounting want in your stomach tight with each heavy spurt of come he grinds into you.

You nose up against his temple—a silent plea for touch even deeper than you already feel it—and he indulges you. Hazy in the aftershocks of his orgasm, Hardcase lifts his head from your collar and crushes his lips against yours. He breathes in your heaving exhales as he kisses you, all open-mouthed warmth coaxing your pleasure.

“So lucky,” Hardcase mumbles, his puffing exhales over your lips matching every thrust into your dripping cunt. “Maker, I’m so fuckin’ lucky.”

Before you can strain some half-hearted tease in response, you’re too delirious on your rousing high. All you can manage is a soundless cry that shocks straight to the white-hot heat welled low in your stomach. Hardcase rolls his calloused thumb over your clit one last time and pulls your orgasm heady and low beneath him.

Pleasure bursts over your tongue, thrumming through you hard enough you swear you black out. Nothing but paralyzing and indulgent sensation shocks through you. There is only Hardcase’s presence to anchor you to the moment in the most intimate signs of life: shared breath, fingers laced tight with yours, lips mouthing words that need neither name nor sound to find warmth at the bottom of your chest.

And when the moment subsides and the ringing in your ears fades, you open your eyes to him, glowing with exhaustion but beaming down on you all the same.

“Maker’s really lookin’ out for me,” Hardcase says at last, brushing his fingertips over the sweat beaded at your temple.

“Yeah?”

You tug him closer against your chest (as well as you can with the tremble in your arms). He follows your lead as you feel him softening inside you, and he settles his nose close over your tattoo, just beneath your beating heart.

“I mean, whatever it is, it got me you.”

“You got me you, ‘Case,” you say. Though the air between you is far from the kind of existential solemnity that demands silence, your attempt to laugh comes only as a soft whisper, hushed as your lips brush over the crown of his head.

Because whatever was up there, pulling those galactic tides and willing life into the universe, even if it had tied those fine red strings strong and true between you and the man curled around you, it didn’t matter. At the end of the day, it was you and him, brought together in a headfirst collision in the cold steel halls of a Jedi cruiser and bound tight over shy planetside advances and cheesy dates.

“Then I got you, and you got me?” Hardcase chuckles, lifting his head and meeting your fond gaze.

“Just us,” you laugh.

Hardcase makes a soft noise of affirmation, his arms pulling snug around your middle. He nuzzles close skin over skin, and when he kisses over your tattoo, the sting of ink and needles fades into a distant memory unknown—all worth the trembling touches he presses over the place you’ve carved out for him alone.

You receive a slightly disoriented chorus of ‘love you, too’s and ‘love you, cyar’ika’s from the brothers in the field, all blended together over frequency static and the sheer exhaustion of four rotations trekking through the marshy Balnab underbrush. Luck on your side, as navigator, you had escaped the dreary fate of noxious swamp gas and heat rashes in the unlikely case that the boys might need a quick exit.

But luckier still, Crosshair had stayed behind with you, citing your very real lack of combat training as grounds to have at least one of the brothers stay behind and stand guard. After all, volunteer corps boot camps could only teach you so much. And donning that trademark grin that made you either want to kiss him senseless or smack him upside the head (depending on your mood), Crosshair had innocently claimed that if he couldn’t see through the gaseous atmosphere, how could he know where to aim, much less shoot?

(You use your karkin’ scope, shitwad, Echo had said with the sickliest smile possible, and even he couldn’t help but join in when you and the boys all erupted into uncontrollable laughter.)

Suffice to say, Crosshair had spent the last two days holed up in the Marauder with you, a couple games of gin rummy, and a few steep new favors owed to his brothers’ grumbling.

For all the cool circulating air and dehumidifier settings in the Marauder’s helm, with the viewport fogged by the greenish atmospheric haze and your only task to wait for either a distress or all-clear signal, the little card games had gotten predictable after the second day. You had been tempted, out of some combination of boredom and fantasy, to prompt a game of strip poker (though Crosshair’s various bits of armour would have given him the indubitable upper hand, even with his horrible poker face).

Tempted, not even tried. You were all too aware of the uneasy stress of the mission outside, that low-lying tension and anticipatory dread staving off any coy desire to take advantage of your time alone with Crosshair.

But now, with the all-clear signal loud and clear through the comms, there’s little holding your inhibitions back when Crosshair reaches up and ruffles your hair after you click off his comm. Regardless of how innocuous his touch may be, heat rushes to your cheeks as you lean into his palm.

“Needy,” Crosshair chuckles, quick to catch on to your preening under his hand.

“I’ve been so patient,” you exhale a grand sigh, your voice carrying the petulant playfulness that never fails to pull Crosshair into the chase. And based on the lopsided grin twisting over his lips, you’ve got him exactly where you want him. “Don’t tell me you aren’t feeling at least a little bit of the same.”

“You’re insatiable,” he snarks. But he’s already rising to his full stature and crowding you back against the nearest surface, his hands firm and insistent over your waist as the backs of your knees meet the cool holotable steel.

“Right,” you retort, lifting your chin and baring your neck to him when he dips his head low to kiss over your pulse. The first touch is always careful—it comes with the territory, sharpshooting, all calculated movements with little space for error—but Crosshair’s intentionality is no less desirous, mouthing over your skin as you feel one hand drag slow and heavy up from your waist to your neck. “I’m the needy one.”

“You’re the enabler,” Crosshair mumbles into your skin, and you can’t help the dreamy sigh that passes your lips when you feel his fingertips knead soft, slow motions over the base of your neck. “I’m just running with the punches.”

“Maker, you suck at talking sexy,” you laugh, brighter still when you feel Crosshair’s soft exhale over your skin as he stifles laughter of his own.

“Then let’s not,” he says and lifts his head to offer you a wry smile. Before you can humor any more dry banter, Crosshair pulls you flush against the hard lines of his chestplate, one hand curled over the base of your head and the other sliding around the small of your back, and swallows any words you had with his tongue.

Second nature, you lift your arms to curl over his shoulders and anchor him close.

Crosshair takes your invitation with ease, pressing his tongue over your lips before he gently shifts you up to seat you on the holotable edge and slots between your thighs. It doesn’t take the firm weight of his hand to have you rocking forward to meet him in a slow grind, and you lift one knee, hooking your calf over the hard edge of his thigh guard and pulling him closer still.

He pulls back, and you respond with a petulant whine, weakly tugging on his hip with your leg. Crosshair laughs, little but a soft huff, but one that has equal parts desire and frustration rising in your chest. Seeming to have caught on, Crosshair only leans forward enough to meet you with a chaste touch of his lips, but, desperate for more, you take the brief window of opportunity to reach up and tug his head to yours.

“Don’t be a fucking tease,” you mumble insistently, punctuating your request with a soft nip over Crosshair’s top lip. You gasp when you feel his gloved fingers grab, twisting your hair tight under his fist and tearing you from his lips.

“Don’t be fucking rude,” he snarks back, his brows raised in playful challenge. “You take what you get,” he snarls, his lips curled up in a sharp grin as he yanks your head to the side and he dips close. You feel his breath fan over your skin, a brief and heady warning before he crowds you close and drags his tongue from the edge of your jaw to the highest crest of your cheek.

Desire, sweet and cloying, curls over your spine as he steps back, leaving you in a dazed sort of stupor as you watch him make quick work of the plastoid secured over him. It takes you a moment to collect yourself, ready to launch a snide remark his way, but whatever you intended to say is far beyond coherent thought, let alone expression. He finally closes that small distance between you, presses the hard lines of muscle and sinew close between your thighs, and your head falls back against the cold tabletop as you sigh.

He’s overwhelming, intoxicating, and you can’t get enough.

It’s different between each of them. There is careful intention with Hunter, playful and boyish glee in Wrecker’s arms, the stern edge of authority when Echo presses you against the wall, Tech’s rosy warmth when he kisses you sweet. But Crosshair offers you the snide challenge, the push and pull of teasing one-upmanship when he shoots you a smug grin, pushes your thighs open, and spits onto your cunt.

“Probably didn’t need to do that,” he says a bit mildly as he brings two calloused fingers up against your cunt and gently parts your swollen sex. You might have mistaken his soft exhale as laughter when you clench down around achingly empty space, but you know better. As he lifts his hand to your lips and pushes your own arousal past your lips, watching you take his fingers deep and suck, you know better. (It’s awe.)

“Fuck off, and fuck me,” you moan around his fingers, gently nipping over his skin.

“Are you really in any position to be making demands?” Crosshair snorts and pushes his fingers down against the flat of your tongue. You bite his fingers a little harder in response, and vindictive justice crows over the haze of lust in your chest when he hisses through a grin.

“Oh, please. You want this more than I do,” you roll your eyes, crinkling your nose as he smears your own spit over your lips before he pulls away.

Catching the slight part in Crosshair’s lips, you ready another snide retort. There’s an art to foreplay with Crosshair’s cynicism. But any coherent thought promptly dies on your tongue when, instead of a snappy comeback, Crosshair kneads one hand tight over your hip, presses the blunt head of his cock up against your cunt, and pushes.

It doesn’t get old—you don’t suspect it ever will—the satisfying burn pooling warm in your gut when Crosshair anchors you to the holotable and stretches you open. For that one, long moment, the clever, biting banter you share has vanished, leaving only slow, hitching breaths and the cresting ache of want to fill its place. You don’t hold the same playful joy of victory over his head when you open your eyes to see him groan, too enraptured by your own pleasure, by the gorgeous picture he presents you, his brows furrowed and eyes fluttered shut, to poke fun at how he bows over the table edge and braces himself over you with a stuttering inhale.

You cry out with him when you finally feel him press as deep as he can, the trembling muscle of his thighs molded up against your skin. Crosshair dips low, close enough that you feel his every heaving inhale brush against your chest, and you only see love, love, love, raw and tender and so, so good when you look through your lashes and catch the warmth in his dark eyes.

That this was it, that you were as good as it would ever get.

“Ready?” he whispers, play hinting at the edges of his voice as he strokes his thumb over your hip.

“Is that even a question?” you giggle.

Silent discretion isn’t necessarily something you strive for, not since the boys heartily accepted your trembling confession that one just wasn’t enough. You’ve long since learned to dismiss any flare of bashful embarrassment that might have you clap your hand over your mouth when Echo pulled you into the nearest room or Wrecker decided that he couldn’t wait for the few quick steps between the armory and the bunk hall. But it’s obscene, the sound that bubbles up from your throat when Crosshair abruptly pulls out of your dripping cunt and shoves himself back in full.

Too high on the euphoria heavy and thick in your throat, you barely register the soft kiss he presses to the corner of your mouth before he rises up and begins fucking into you in earnest. Your eyes flutter open when you feel his rough fingertips dig into the junction of your thigh and hip, trailing low for a brief, uncertain moment before he finds your clit and presses firm over where you part around him. And when you strain your ears above the breathy whines spilling from your lips, when you squeeze down around him with a soft sob, you hear him gasping with you.

This was really as good as you would ever need it to get.

“Wait,” you laugh a bit breathlessly, squirming under his touch. “Wait, let’s call them.”

Crosshair fixes you with something like morbid intrigue, his gentle, firm movements over your clit falling still so he can offer you the unspoken question behind a quirked brow.

“The area’s clear; they’re tired; morale’s low, you know. I think it’d be fun,” you rationalize as a coy smile grows on your lips.

“Is this what you’ve been thinking about this entire campaign?” Crosshair finally asks. Despite the almost disinterested drawl in his voice, you both know it’s a weak cover for the mischievous delight at the prospect of teasing desire in front of his field-weary brothers.

“Maybe,” you breathe, breath hitching as he rolls his thumb over your clit.

“So vulgar,” Crosshair chuckles, rolling his eyes when you blow him a kiss and fall back onto the tabletop.

But he’s already reaching for his discarded commlink and shuffling it back on. He secures the plastoid snug over his forearm, and when he shifts forward to steady himself as the locks snap into place, he shifts up and presses firm against the spot in your cunt that has you arching off the holotable with a low whine.

“Save it for them, yeah?” Crosshair chuckles, and he presses for Tech’s comm.

“Crosshair?” Tech mumbles groggily, apparently having just awoken to Crosshair’s impromptu call.

“So good of you to answer,” Crosshair drawls into his bracer. As much as you’d like to sit back up and swat his audible smirk off of his lips, the snark dies on your tongue when he shifts forward hard, the firm lines of his hips connecting firm against your ass as you sink your teeth into your arm to stifle your sob.

“Is everything alright?” Tech asks through a yawn. And you would laugh at his sleepy obliviousness if you weren’t quite literally seeing stars, blinding iridescent comet trails across your field of vision, when Crosshair slips his free arm under your waist, secures you tight, and pushes his cock impossibly deeper into you. All you can do is bite down over your uniform sleeve and wonder if your high whine reaches the comm feed.

“Fine, really,” Crosshair says with a breezy flippancy that you don’t currently have the mental capacity to find irritating. “Mind telling the others to pick up?”

“Maker, this better be for a good reason,” Echo’s frequency crackles to life, albeit somewhat sourly. Following his voice, you register a hearty yawn from Wrecker’s line, and not a moment later, Hunter’s light quietly blinks on.

“Is y/n on?” Tech asks.

“Mm, she is,” Crosshair punctuates his words with another sharp thrust that has your toes curling in your boots as your legs jerk over his arms. The saccharine tenderness of earlier gives way to the smug tone you have grown to (begrudgingly) adore. “Come on, say hello.”

“H-Hi,” you whimper into your comm, trembling as Crosshair digs his fingers over the soft skin of your thigh and slowly pulls out of your cunt, just until the ridge of his cock catches on your stretched lips. This time, when he thrusts forward there is no measured, careful deliberation—only raw and rapidly unraveling need as he sheathes himself inside you with one smooth motion and crushes up against that soft spot inside you that has you sobbing over your comm.

If they hadn’t heard your soft, muffled noises before, they certainly have, now.

The collective feed goes quiet.

“Holy shit.”

And then all at once, it’s a staticky blend of voices when the realization finally sinks in and exhaustion has all but been forgotten for the night.

You hear Wrecker groan just above Hunter’s gasping, flushed “oh,” and you’re fairly certain you catch Echo and Tech synchronize a low, drawn “fuuuck” as you sigh. But Crosshair gives you little space to register the sudden and raucous desire over the channel when he cants his hips forward and fucks into you deep.

This may have been your idea in the beginning, but whatever control you thought you had has long gone as you scrabble for purchase over the cold holotable top. The teasing game, dangling the possibility of having in front of the boys in the field, is now simply a show out of your hands as you moan into your comm.

“How does she feel?” Wrecker asks, his voice breathy and low.

“So fuckin’ wet,” Crosshair laughs, angling another sharp thrust against the spot that makes you see stars.

You grip tighter to the edge of the holotable with a choked moan. There’s something so indescribably rousing to hearing them speak over you as if you aren’t even there, rutting desperately back against Crosshair’s hips as you sigh and moan into the commlink clutched over your wildly beating heart.

“Our poor little cyar’ika went four whole days without being touched—she’s dripping. Tell them how much you needed this,” Crosshair croons, a mocking sharpness curling at the edges of the gentle tone of his voice. “Tell them how much you need them.”

You tremble under him as his hips meet yours hard enough to knock the air from your lungs, unable to do more than whine as you feel him snake his arm up your chest and curl his fingers around your neck.

“I—I need you!” you manage, your words only soft sighs pulled from what little breath Crosshair affords you through a steady, devastating pace. “Maker, I miss you so much—!”

Eyes squeezed shut, you fight the urge to quell every noise that claws at your throat. As obscene as it makes you sound, your boys are nowhere near as close as Crosshair, able to do little else but close their eyes and dream of you through the modulated channel frequency alone. It’s the least you can do, you think, and you moan as Crosshair shifts his hips up hard.

“He makin’ you feel good, cyar’ika?” Hunter’s voice crackles over the channel. “Pretty baby, you feelin’ good?”

“Mmhm!” you whimper, nodding wildly as if they’re not camped out a few hundred klicks from the ship, as if they’re there, bearing witness as Crosshair pulls you apart with every insistent, heady motion he makes.

“You’re a big girl,” Crosshair sneers, digging his fingers into the soft skin of your waist as he fucks into you sharp enough it punches the breath from your lungs. “Use your words.”

“So—” Your voice wavers over a gasp. “Feels so good!”

“Attagirl,” you hear Echo groan.

You can’t imagine how much of a mess you must look, jaw slack and eyes rolled back into your head, drunk on nothing short of hedonistic joy in its purest form, legs jerking over Crosshair’s arms when he fucks a particularly deep thrust into your cunt. Maybe you’ll try a call over the holo next time.

“Close,” you whimper.

But as soon as the words leave your tongue, you realize your mistake, panic flooding in your throat when Crosshair raises his brows, a wicked grin on his lips, and simply. Stops.

“Are you, now?” Crosshair chuckles, and if you weren’t there, dangling at that precarious precipice, so, so close to the kind of pleasure that wracks through your body so hard you forget your own name, you might have slung some acerbic jumble of words his way. But you are there, twisting your hips for any sort of purchase while Crosshair offers you a knowing smile.

“I’m going to kill you,” you hiss, only to be cut short, your words swallowed by your wailing moan when Crosshair fucks into you, a shallow thrust that pushes you closer, closer to the aching pleasure just out of reach.

“Oh, that wasn’t nice, was it?” Crosshair taunts.

The boys murmur over the channel, all soft laughter while they imagine your flustered desperation, wishing it was them back on the ship, stuck to lookout duty, blessed with the cool air of the helm and your warm cunt fluttering around them.

“What do you say?” Crosshair laughs breathily into his comm, dragging one slow finger over your throbbing clit, firm enough that it sparks want through your chest but too light to do little more than tease. You sob under his touch. “Does our girl deserve to come?”

“Let’s ask her,” Echo rasps, and when you squeeze your eyes shut, your mouth waters at the hazy mental image of the eldest’s lidded gaze, his cock fisted heavy in his hand as he whispers into his comm. “You think you deserve it, cyare?”

“Please,” you gasp. It’s more than a simple response, rather, a plea for something, anything, that little bit of more to push you over the razor thin edge between teasing pleasure and release.

“Gotta answer the question, little one,” Wrecker chokes out past a straining chuckle.

“Maker, you know what I mean—!” you whie, shuddering at the jolt of pleasure that laces up your spine when Crosshair wraps his arm over your thigh and presses deeper than you thought possible.

“Answer it,” Tech breathes.

“Fuck—I deserve it!” you finally sob, and your thighs clench when you hear Hunter groan over the channel. “Maker, I deserve it!”

You’re not sure if it’s your own confession ringing in your ears or the sensation of Crosshair squeezing his hands over your waist that finally tips that delicate balance between your excruciating anticipation and release, stirring wild and devastating from low in your stomach as you arch off the holotable and scream. It crashes over you in an endlessly overwhelming wave, swallowing you whole in nothing but simple, luxuriant pleasure fizzling at your fingertips and blurring your vision with euphoric tears while Crosshair shudders, head hung low as you clench down around him.

“That’s it,” Wrecker croons. Somehow, you’re still able to catch his adoring praise over the frequency, your focus turned to the way Crosshair continues to coax your pleasure, drawing it long and desperate with what thin strands of composure remain.

A final, stuttering thrust, and Crosshair drapes himself over you, burying himself as deep as he can in your fluttering cunt and groaning softly as he fills you with warm, heavy spurts of come. All you can do is whine and pulse around him, losing yourself to the mercy of every passing sensation that sparks delirious pleasure up your spine.

“We’ll be back soon, sweet thing.”

You weakly turn your head to face the blinking comm light beside you, reduced to a blurry spot of red muddled by the lingering tears in your eyes. It’s a miracle you can hear Hunter’s voice over the dull buzz in your ears at all, but even through your exhaustion, his voice strikes want, warm and deep, through your core.

You mumble something unintelligible to your own ears in response, little more than a sign of life as Crosshair steps back and clicks off your comm.

“Quite the show,” Crosshair laughs softly, leaning close to curl his palm at your jaw and thumb at the tears beaded over your lashes. He presses his lips to your temple, and you bask under his touch. “Did such a good job, cyare.”

“When I can’t walk in two days,” you rasp through the dry itch in your throat from your (retrospectively) embarrassing show of being as loud as humanly possible over the comms. “I expect you all to take turns carrying me everywhere.”

Crosshair snorts, tapping the soft skin of your inner thigh to carefully drag his fingertips through the mess of come and slick smeared over your cunt. “Two days? It took them four to get out to the mark.”

And he’s right. The soft, fluvial wetland outside was far from conducive for fast travel, even with a clear mark and sharp navigation. But all things considered, you wouldn’t be surprised if the boys were packing up and leaving camp now, all for the chance to board and throw you onto the nearest bunk a few odd days faster.

“Four credits they’re leaving right now,” you laugh.

“Let’s make it four credits they’ll make it back in two,” Crosshair offers. He dips low and brushes his forehead close against yours, sharing soft laughter as you reach up to stroke over the back of his head.

Crosshair lies like a corpse over the centre of your bunk, back rigid and ramrod straight, his deathly look complete with the ridiculous bandage criss-crossed over his hairline (courtesy of the simple joys of a ten metre human javelin toss and Wrecker’s miscalculated aim).

Where painkillers weren’t quite enough to keep the concussion headaches at bay, he’d somehow come to the conclusion that you would be. And who were you to turn down a sullen Crosshair mumbling awkwardly for cuddles at your door?

With careful hands and just enough of a firm touch to coax him onto his side without spooking him out of his moping, you maneuver him with his back towards the wall and gently push him further in before you climb onto the space beside him. He flashes you an uncertain look, and you offer him a wry smile in return.

“Relax a little,” you say, lifting his limp arm and slotting yourself against his side until your chests are flush. It’s less cuddling than it is you trying to mold yourself around the hard, firm lines of the tension etched into Crosshair’s muscle and poise. But if he was willing to put aside his standoffish pride to ask you for cuddles, you won’t deny him. Finally content with your arrangement, you lift your chin and fix him with a wry smile. “I can’t spoon a board.”

“Was that an insult?” he offers, a weak attempt at his usual wit that comes out as more of a whimper than bite. But to his credit, he’s listening to you, and you feel him shifting slightly in an attempt to make himself comfortable despite his somewhat unsettled expression.

“Maybe,” you counter. “Loosen your shoulders. Stop tensing. Cuddle, Crosshair.”

“I’m trying,” he mutters, and when you close your eyes to laugh, you barely miss the small upward turn of his lips.

When you wake up the next morning, you feel reborn, all loose-limbed, sated joy as you stretch your arms to your side, expecting Crosshair’s lean form curled close. Instead, you find yourself alone in your bunk, your covers pulled neatly up to your chin with no sign of your surly sniper in sight. You pull yourself together, albeit with a frown, throwing on a fresh set of clothes and readying yourself for a day of snarking (a bit spitefully) at Crosshair for leaving without so much as a thank you.

But then you see it. A small mug sitting on your desk: caf.

As you peer over the rim, you’re hard-pressed to mistake it as anything other than your preference made to perfection, and judging by the steam curling fragrant and wispy over its surface, it’s fresh.

Crosshair says nothing when you pass him in the helm, but when you flash him a grin, he huffs and offers you a lopsided smile back.

It takes the lesser part of one week for the headaches to abate. In between then and Crosshair’s begrudgingly clean bill of health, he comes knocking at your door four more times, each time gently loosening the deep roots of tension coiled through his bones more and more.

“You’re getting better at this,” you murmur into his shoulder on the fourth night, your leg thrown over his hip and your arms tucked securely under his. His first night in your quarters had ended in little beyond simply lying shoulder-to-shoulder. The next two had been (failed) attempts to spoon the entirety of Crosshair’s lanky form. And the night penultimate had been a slightly more successful endeavor in throwing all experimental caution to the wind and waking up chest-to-chest in an oddly comfortable tangle of limbs.

That night worked, and so you do it again.

“I had a good teacher,” Crosshair snorts, and he wheezes, his arms curling snug around your middle, when you gently jab him in the side.

You mutter something into his shoulder, but your own words do not reach your ears when you feel his chin settle atop your head. He shifts carefully until he’s curled entirely around you, the anchor in a still sea, a promise that you, together in shared space and breath, simply are. It’s funny how these things work, you think, breathing shallow and slow as Crosshair brushes his nose over the crown of your head and stays.

And then the concussion heals, and he’s gone.

It’s a bit startling how quickly you had grown accustomed to Crosshair’s presence in your bunk within the brief span of a week. You don’t expect to miss it, the easy nighttime habit as Crosshair quietly slinks to your room: a well-rehearsed ritual of playful snark before the gentler art of accommodation, pushing and pulling in tandem to find the sweet stability of your cheek laid over Crosshair’s collar and his palm warm over the small of your back.

You don’t expect to miss it so much that you find yourself lying in bed well past lights out, simply bracing to sling meaningless jokes thrown in the helm the next morning about how Crosshair’s gone soft, little baby brother Crosshair, like the week prior meant little but a favor to a friend.

The telltale knock sets him apart; four rapid, light raps on the durasteel that you’ve come to know so well, and you’re hauling yourself out of bed and slapping the door lock open as fast as you can.

“Cuddles,” Crosshair says as soon as he catches sight of you in the doorway.

He should be fine; he is fine, if Tech is to be believed. So there’s no reason for him to be waking you and requesting entry. But he is here. You stuff down the dizzying stutter in your chest and meet the mirth in his eyes with the best frown you can manage.

For all the stubborn fronting and the cold refusal you could offer him, there’s something you cannot bring yourself to resent when Crosshair—sour, cynical Crosshair—lets the word “cuddle” find home, curled soft over his tongue (lets himself find home in you).

“Will you make me caf in the morning?”

“Depends on how well you cuddle,” he replies, his tone a deadly calm, only betrayed by the knowing gleam in his eye.

“Says the man who didn’t know how to cuddle a few days ago,” you shoot back.

“The apprentice outdoes the master,” Crosshair shakes his head with a wistful sigh, and you laugh, reaching forward to twine your fingers with his, letting him take his rightful place as the doors close behind you.

—

He comes back home.

Wrecker tells you to give him space, Echo shakes his head when you idle in front of his closed door, and even Omega offers you a sad, apologetic look when Crosshair makes the rare, silent appearance outside of his quarters, a spectre and his bacta patch haunting the ship’s hull before he disappears again.

You listen to them for a few days, but it chews at you from inside—the gnawing thought that Crosshair had been alone for so long, that he’s still alone now. Even if his basest instinct had always been to withdraw and cope in isolation, you can’t stand the idea of leaving him by himself any longer. So when the others have long since fallen asleep, you creep to Crosshair’s room and knock four times in rapid succession.

Like you had expected, he’s awake. But when he opens the door, he keeps his unfocused eyes cast aside.

“Cuddles,” you whisper, testing, hopeful, and you open your arms to him as you stand on the threshold. “Just like we used to?”

Only then does Crosshair flick his weary eyes up, rimmed red with exhaustion, grief overdue. And after four long days, he finally meets your gaze.

You watch as his eyes linger under furrowed brows, peering at you as if he isn’t entirely sure if you’re real, if you’re really there. Watching him waver between your face and your open palms and back again, you imagine Crosshair thinking that it’s always been the other way around: him seeking you out at odd hours to wrap his lean arms around your shoulders, breathe deep, and simply bask in how close you were to his beating heart.

And now it’s you.

“Yeah,” he murmurs, stepping forward between your outstretched arms to gingerly place his chin over your shoulder and settle his lean arms at your waist.

All those times you spent curled, molded around him in the quiet darkness of your bunk—it’s honed you to know him like you know yourself, committing to indelible memory the way he breathes, shifts, fits with you.

And he’s different. A year’s worth of separation would do that, change. But where you feel some new muscle and sinew against your skin, there is undeniable familiarity in how he seeks you out despite the tremble in his hands and unsteadiness of his breath.

There is familiarity in finding home.

You reach up, looping your arms around his neck. And when you pull snug, you feel him squeeze your waist in return, holding tight and holding close.