Faie’s so warm. He always is, even through his armor. Warm and bright in the Force and Quinlan holds him close, holds his face and presses a kiss to smiling lips.
“I love you,” he tells Faie. “So much, sweetheart.”
For a moment, Faie presses up into the hug, kisses him again, then pushes their foreheads together. Quinlan’s chest might burst.
Then, “How many times are you going to look me in the eye and lie to me?”
Quinlan stumbles back. They’re face-to-face now, and Faie’s armor is gone. His clothes are gone, too, he’s standing naked in their bedroom (Quinlan’s bedroom, no matter how much he likes to pretend, it’s just his bedroom) looking at him with tears in his eyes. “Faie… what?”
“I said, ‘how many times are you going to look me in the eye and lie to me? I know you don’t love me. You never did. You’re just using me.”
“Faie—”
Quinlan wakes up with Faie’s name on his lips, arms convulsing around nothing—no, not nothing. Faie’s curled up fast asleep in his arms, and Quinlan’s almost crushed him with his stupid nightmare-reflex.
It’s dark in Quinlan’s room. Of course it is, it’s the middle of the night. 02:56, the green-lit clock informs him. Too dark to see each other. Too dark to make eye contact, and too quiet to be ringing with the remnants of Faie’s heartbroken voice.
Faie’s still warm against him. That part of the dream had been real. He’s crushed himself as close to Quinlan’s front as possible, bare skin to bare skin and hot breaths on Quinlan’s collarbone and delicate eyelashes fluttering in his sleep. He’s got an arm around Quinlan’s ribs and the other bent up between them. Their legs are tangled together. Everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
(Faie wakes up just past three in the morning. He’s so close to Quinlan he can hear the beating of his heart. It’s slower than Faie’s. Faie’s hammers in his chest, beating bad idea, bad idea, bad idea in time with his stinging eyes. He needs to stop waking up like this. He needs to stop staying the night.
There’s no point in hoping, kid, Alpha’s voice rumbles in his memory. Some things just aren’t meant to be.
Carefully, gently, Faie disentangles himself from Quinlan’s arms. It’s cold. He does his best not to shiver.)
Fox has a migraine again. This one came on fast, burning up the back of his neck and settling behind his eyes before he had time to do more than shoot a message to Quinlan and hunker down on the shitty little couch in his office. Hopefully, Quinlan will bring a blanket. And turn the lights off on his way in. Maybe bring some meds, too.
Gods, Fox feels needy today. It’s hard not to, when the pain in his head is so bad he can’t see straight to stand up. Helpless.
He closes his eyes and tries his best to drift.
The knock on the door jars him out of his self-induced hypnosis, startling him so badly he jumps and tenses his neck and cries out in pain. “Come in,” he manages through the spasms shooting colors behind his eyes. “‘S unlocked.”
He might lose a moment there, because between his words and Quinlan kneeling in front of him, he can’t remember a thing. He tries to calm his heart. It’s just Quinlan, after all, and Hemlock will be upset if he sends himself into arrhythmia again. “Hey,” he croaks. “Can you turn the lights down?”
Quinlan looks so sad. Fox reaches out to smooth the lines from his face and he catches his hand halfway, bringing it to his lips and kissing the back of it. “They’re already off, sweetheart.”
“Oh.”
Quinlan tucks his hand back onto the couch. “I brought a blanket.”
He did. It’s Fox’s favorite, the purple and grey one he always steals from Quinlan’s apartment. It’s soft and heavy and smells of Quinlan’s soap when he drapes it over Fox. Fox curls up smaller on the couch and lets Quinlan tuck him in. His head pounds at the movement, and tears spring to his eyes when Quinlan moves him to climb up on the couch and put Fox’s head in his lap, but Fox knows he’s about to be rewarded.
Sure enough, the next sensation is that of Quinlan’s hands in his hair, massaging all his sore spots. He sighs and lets his eyes drift closed. Quinlan’s legs are warm, and the contrast between them and the cool leather of his gloves is delicious.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, baby?” Quinlan murmurs.
“Mm-mm.” This is perfect, he wants to say. This is better than being alone.
For a few minutes, he drifts on the edge of sleep. When Quinlan says, almost too quiet to hear, “I wish I knew how to make it stop,” Fox is too far gone to say what he needs to hear. He thinks it, though, through the haze of exhaustion and pain.
You do. You help so much. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Are you happy?” The question comes late one night, while Neyo’s sprawled out on his bed half-paying attention to whatever holofilm he’s been watching and Faie’s sitting on the floor nearby, drinking from a mostly-empty bottle of moonshine and working on a screen of dizzying lines of code.
Neyo pauses the movie. “What do you mean?”
Faie takes another drink of moonshine. His eyes are glazed over and his cheeks are red, and it takes him three tries to hit the correct button to power his ‘pad off. He looks up at Neyo. “Are you happy? With Rishh, I mean. And with Windu, and your rank, and everything else. Are you happy?”
Neyo’s too sober for this. He reaches for the bottle and takes a deep drink when Faie hands it to him. He can’t keep himself from pulling a face. Gods, but it’s awful. How has Faie been drinking this shit straight and straight-faced? “There’s something wrong with you, vod,” he says in response to Faie’s derisive snort.
Faie takes it back and takes another drink, making direct eye contact with Neyo the whole time. “So,” he says. “Are you happy?”
Already, he feels warm straight from his chest to his fingertips. He rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in his arms to hide from the heat. “I don’t know. Yes?”
There’s the sound of Faie chugging the last of the moonshine, then the bottle hitting the floor with a gentle clink. “I think I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be genuinely happy.”
Neyo sits up. There’s another bottle between his mattress and the wall, real whiskey, not moonshine. He reaches for it. “Did we ever know?”
Sarah’s just about to leave for the kitchen when she feels a little hand on her pant leg and hears Hunter’s AAC program read out, “Take me with you?”
She looks down. Hunter’s gotten up from the couch and now stands at her side, looking up at her with those wide eyes and a halo of curls and her heart nearly breaks all over again. How can this girl look so sweet all the time? She doesn’t stand a chance.
“Of course, kiddo!” She holds a hand down. “Want a ride?”
Hunter shakes her head, then frowns back down at her ‘pad. Sarah waits for a moment while she assembles the sentence, “I’ll help you make breakfast.”
Sarah smiles. “Sure! Let’s get started.”
Hunter’s too short to help her get any of the ingredients down from the shelves or counter, but she sets herself to work pulling a stool over and cleaning off the counters with industrious focus as soon as Sarah mentions it. She has the most adorable little frown when she concentrates, pulling her lower lip in between her teeth and furrowing her brow. Sarah’s heart melts all over again and she wonders for the millionth time how someone could ever look at this child and see a soldier. Then, Hunter turns and Sarah sees the scarring climbing up her neck from the back of her shirt and she has to return her focus to the recipe lest she get upset again.
She learned within the first day that Hunter could smell or taste or somehow sense whenever people got upset around her. Angry men got the worst reaction out of her, but anyone getting upset in any way made her tense up and drop into the people-pleasing routine Sarah and Cody were trying so hard to break her from. And, of course, as soon as the others noticed Hunter doing it, they’d all start. A typical Kamino reaction, Cody and Penchant told her. It didn’t make her feel any better.
CC-8823: You’re not supposed to be in here.
Unnamed Journalist: Well, technically—
CC: No. No “technically.” This is a secured area. How did you get in here?
UJ: It’s not like it’s a building or anything. We’re outside.
CC: It’s still a secured area.
UJ: Okay, but can I just talk to you for a minute? Maybe get a quote? You’re the first cl—the first person I’ve run into back here and I figured you might have something to say.
CC: You would have run into the security guards.
UJ: Okay, okay, yeah, but they just wanted my credentials. You look interesting.
CC: I look high-ranking.
UJ: Well, and the whole thing with Lord Vos…
CC: Like I said, you don’t belong back here. Leave before I have you taken out.
UJ: Wait! Wait!
*sounds of a scuffle*
*UJ yelps*
UJ: Seriously! Just one quote! What’s it like working with the Empire? What’s it like working with Lord Vos? What’s he like in person? Do you—wait, don’t!
*plastoid clunking, static, then silence*
Quinlan’s heard it called many things: dead eyes, the thousand yard stare, shell shock, checked out. He prefers “thousand yard stare.” Maybe “dead eyes” is more accurate, but he doesn’t like it. It makes his skin itch. Perhaps it’s a bit too accurate.
Whatever the word for it, Fox’s look hasn’t changed in the fifteen minutes since Quinlan’s arrived in his office. He’s stopped working, put the datapad down and moved to the couch at Quinlan’s insistence, but nothing about the nothing behind his eyes has changed. Quinlan’s starting to feel a little hopeless.
Just leave me like that, Fox has told him before. It doesn’t bother me. I can still work. And usually, he can. Usually, if Fox is dissociating, Quinlan more or less leaves him to it.
Usually, it’s not this bad. Usually, Fox is at least responsive.
Today, he’s just… gone. He was doing alright before Quinlan disrupted him, but now he’s sitting next to him on the couch staring from nothing to nothing and not so much as twitching when Quinlan calls his name.
“Fox,” he tries again. Nothing. “Fox, baby, come on. Give me something.”