Chapter Text
1
Aerrow is deadweight on her as Piper drags and stumbles him across the hangar floor to where Stork is waiting. He’s an idiot (they both are) for trying to take Snipe on at the last minute, all red bravado and blue rage until the Cyclonian’s first swing sent him sailing through the air and into the terra’s solid rock cliff.
She doesn’t remember clearly what happened next, only rage and blood as she took up her role as second-in-command and ordered Finn to pull Aerrow back before she dove at Snipe’s head with the intent to hurt. As Finn is shooed out of the med bay, Junko quickly following Piper recollects that they had managed to drive both Snipe and Ravess only after he had managed to slash at her side and draw blood.
“Fucking dumbass,” she swears, shoving any bubbling feelings beyond anger and worry down her throat, “I can’t be the one dragging you to Stork everytime Snipe shows his face.”
Aerrow groans, in pain or at getting yelled at she doesn’t know, “You went after him too,” he manages, eyes blinking one at a time as his head sits heavily on her shoulder, “I saw you get hit as well.” As if in agreement, her own wound flares up in pain as they finally make it to the door frame of the med bay, Stork standing dutifully with needles and bandages in hand and resigned worry (and relief) on his face.
“Now you two,” he starts and Piper’s already flashing him an apologetic smile as she shifts her weight so Aerrow will stop slipping off her back and end up on the floor. The Merb narrows his eyes, tracking their bruises and cuts before landing on the growing blood on her shirt and his ears flatten fully.
“Oh you’re kidding me, a hit on the torso. You’re trying to kill me here.”
“It wasn’t my fault!” she snaps (really she shouldn’t have gotten hit in the first place), elbowing Aerrow so that he doesn’t pass out, “I had to block him from one of Snipe’s hits.”
The Merb grumbles, setting down the supplies in his hands before moving to the back of the room and opening the curtains to the bunk beds. Piper shifts again, startling herself with how close Aerrow’s face is to her’s as his concussion worsens and worsens. Trauma wounds are the worst, she bemoans to herself, the healing crystals in everybody’s bags are only strong enough for slashes and burns. Cracked skulls and broken bones take time to heal which no one can afford when they’re fighting for their lives.
Stork calls for her to move to the bottom bunk, ignoring Aerrow’s mumbles of wanting the top (he knows he’d fall off, she knows he’d fall off). Piper complies with little fanfare, Aerrow dragging his feet as he stumbles and falls onto the stiff mattress with an ‘oof’ and a giggle. Her frown deepens as Stork bustles in front of them, kicking open a crate of potent healing crystals and muttering something about ‘needing stitches’ before she turns back to Aerrow, still blinking slowly as though he’s fighting off sleep and not the blearing pain of getting thrown headfirst into rock.
Piper shuffles, clicking open her satchel of crystals and rummaging for the last healing crystals, half-used but still unbroken despite the amount of falls she’s taken with it. “You got hit in the head,” she says, shoving it in Aerrow’s face and grabbing his wrist as he attempts to push it back to her, “use the last of it so I can carry a conversation with you.”
Even half-conscious he still manages a confused frown, glancing down at the wound she sports in concern and pushing the crystal towards it, “No Piper, use it on the rib wound.”
Gently, her second hand comes up to push the crystal back, “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s no-”
Stork clears his throat, stopping them from a reverse tug-of-war as he drops two bright green healing crystals into their laps, “It will be fine if you sit still” he says, ears twitching before flattening with finality, “both of you probably need stiches and no flying.”
The Merb ignores their protests, hand flat on Piper’s shoulder as he pushes her to lie down and remove the shreds of her shirt with surgical precision. Both of them wince as the full extent of the wound is revealed and Piper grunts when Stork informs her that Snipe broke rather than bruised some of her ribs. Aerrow, his own healing crystal now haphazardly wrapped against his head helps Stork as they attempt to navigate cloth from flesh. Piper’s lost too much blood for colour to flush her cheeks nor does Aerrow avert his eyes as he scans the wound and only the wound. Growing up together leaves you completely immune to any embarssment about being undressed.
When the crystal is fully drained and her wound is still weeping the Sky Knight meets her eyes with a reprimanding look which she returns with a smile she hopes doesn’t look as pained as she feels.
By the time Stork’s sewn her back together and stopped the bleeding with fresh white bandages Aerrow’s barely conscious, his hand still gripping hers as the last of the stitches are finished and Stork stands, ordering both of them to sleep before he leaves to fix the skimmers. Piper closes her eyes, letting the tears she was holding back from the stitches fall and prepares herself for Aerrow’s tired scolding when she opens them.
True to her prediction Piper is met with Aerrow’s face, sombre and now fully healed as he looks at her wound before meeting her eyes with a twisted frown.
“Really,” she begins to try and lighten the mood (she hates getting the Leader talk from Aerrow, they all do), “we should just go back and beat Snipe up for putting us in this state.”
The joke falls flat (it always does) as Aerrow lets out a huff in frustration, “You could have told everyone to fall back instead of trying to avenge me.”
No she couldn’t, Piper thinks, because then they’d be running and Snipe would send Ravess to shoot arrows into their retreating forms. When she replies with that, Aerrow's frown deepens and she catches the beginning of a guilty look invading his face.
“No,” she says firmly, belatedly realising they’re still holding hands before she squeezes it to cement her point, “you’re not allowed to feel bad for getting wounded or getting me wounded. I made that decision so we could make them stop chasing us and wouldn’t need to worry about waking up with knives in our backs.”
Piper knows she’s won this tiny argument when Aerrow lets out a resigned sigh and gives her a tired smile, “That’s the 17th time you’ve had to carry me to med bay. You’re really setting a record for yourself here Piper.”
“Good,” she preens, “any record that beats Finn’s is a good one in my mind.” She tries to sit, already itching to stand and venture to check on the crystals she’s incubating before Aerrow’s smile flattens and he (lightly) shoves her to lie down again.
“Sorry,” he says quickly, “Stork told me your stitches had a risk of undoing themselves because he was rushing.”
Piper pouts but Aerrow pays her no mind (honestly it’s not fair that he’s better at it, she hasn’t counted a day where he flashed the puppy eyes at someone like Starling and they didn’t immediately do what he wanted). As she stares at the railings of the top bunk to pass the time, she hears the bed shift as Aerrow shuffles to remove his gloves and remove the little armour he has, setting it by his boots, first his gauntlets, then the chest before moving to the complicated clasps on his legs.
She startles when Aerrow’s hand rests against her wounded side, thumb brushing against the blanket as he asks to check the bandages. Piper raises her arm in compliance, shivering when the cold hits her skin as he lifts the blanket and traces the blood spot with concern.
“Stork’s still busy so I’ll change them for you,” Aerrow says, eyes trained on the rusty bandages as he shoves his boots back on, as the med bay door opens he gives her a half-hearted glare, “don’t move.”
“The sink is next door,” she replies, “I wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without you catching me.”
He returns moments later, sloshing water on the floor as he moves the bucket to the bed’s side and instructs her to (carefully) sit up. The next minutes (or hours, he’s so slow that Piper’s pretty sure she fell asleep) are in silence as Aerrow fiddles with her bandages, using a cloth and warm water to peel them back before making sure her blood isn’t going to stain the mattress. Eventually she feels him set her down on the bed again, bandages slightly tighter than comfortable but Piper doesn’t voice that in fear of sounding ungrateful. Instead, the mage finds his hand again giving it a squeeze in thanks.
To her surprise Aerrow squeezes back, thumbing over her knuckles as he speaks.
“We’re both idiots aren’t we?”
“Depends,” she replies, “sometimes you’re smart, sometimes I’m very smart. And then other times we do really stupid shit like today.”
He chuckles, eyes cast downward as he studies their interlinked hands as though it’s the most interesting thing in Atmos. Maybe to him it is, scars from the Binding Sickness still crawl on her hands, blackened veins that make her hands look close to rotting off contrasting against the white bandages around them. A permanent reminder that for all of her study and all of her skill she’s still so little in the face of whatever powers Skies know what have given her.
Piper almost falls out of the bed as he brings her bandaged fingers to his lips, soft (and teasing, the fucker) before panic flashes across his face and he drops it.
She stares at him unabashed, cheeks blazing as he seems to completely shut down, face going as red as his hair, “I-”
“Aerrow,” she interrupts, and maybe its the painkillers Stork gave her or the wooziness of today catching up (or maybe it’s love and trust built up from years of scraped knees and broken bones as they learned how to fly), “if you wanted to kiss me. Just fucking ask.”
Now it’s the Sky Knight’s turn to stare at her, eyes wide and ears red as his mouth opens and closes like a fish (god she’s staring at his lips this is so stupid). Piper purses her lips as he stares at her still in silence, clearing her throat as she speaks in her ‘Second-In-Command’ voice, “Repeat after me.” she instructs.
“Piper.”
“...Piper.”
“Can I kiss you.”
Aerrow freezes briefly, only broken out of his stupor when she finds his hand and squeezes it again as a prompt.
“Can I please kiss you?”
She grins (her heart is soaring), “Help me up then.”
+1
They’re fumbling in the dark. Shivering whenever a breeze passes by the tiny slit in the door. All hands and limbs grabbing and dragging themselves closer to one another (she wishes it was enough, it never is) sometimes grasping at air and others reaching their goal as someone lets out a satisfied hum and pulls and pushes themselves even closer. Aerrow’s hand in her hair (on her back? At her thighs?) is like a brand, white-hot and bruising as his other scrambles for purchase against the walls of whatever tiny closet she dragged them into inside the Council building.
The more rational, ( less horny) side of Piper is still impressed that he didn’t protest (playfully or not) when Starling called for a break so Harrier could grab the plans from his office. Normally Aerrow would actually take the older Sky Knight’s advice and drag the rest of the squadron on a walk down the halls to stretch their legs; a brief reprieve from windowless rooms to stare outside at the Capital’s perfect blue skies. Instead, he shared her grin, eyes alight as they dashed from hall to hall until they found a single door for the mage to shove him into and kiss.
The horny side points out that it’s technically Aerrow’s fault in the first place for getting her so worked up in the first place because he wouldn’t stop tracing circles in her thigh as Harrier and Starling traded barbs for a half hour.
Then the weird half-horny half-rational side pipes up, somewhere in-between Piper pushing Aerrow further into the wall and Aerrow pulling her closer. Terra Nimbus and every mission afterwards had simply cemented the fact that life’s short. Their careers have a contract with fine print highlighting that a squadron member’s lifespan is usually 20 years less than an average civilian. She knew that and Arrow knew that, it was the reason why that late-night talk devolved into muffled moans and bruising bite marks that they had to use Stork’s healing salves for.
Usually, Piper thinks to herself before pressing her knee between his legs and swallowing the moan he lets out, they’re less rushed than this. Tender kisses shared in the Condor, intertwined hands as they consider brute-forcing themselves into and out of a Cyclonian jail instead of tracing their way across a blueprint Starling stole. It had taken months for them to reach that milestone in the bedroom. Hesitant hands against skin with only the moonlight to guide them. Intertwined fingers and soft voices, still under the blanket as though someone could hear them through metal walls and empty hallways.
Stuffing moments like this into 5 minute breaks between Harrier getting up and sitting down with some antique plan hasn’t happened before. Aerrow likes savouring every moment he has with her almost as much as she likes savouring every inch of him she maps out, every prolonged glance at her or lingering fingers on her hand (if he wanted to hold her hand he has to fucking commit to it though).
She’ll blame it on their lifestyle then. The adrenaline rush of going into a mission not knowing if they’ll get out but with the confidence that they will must have leaked into how tightly she’s gripping the Sky Knight’s hair and takes and takes as he gives and gives. They’ve shared plenty of moments where all Aerrow wants to do is touch and feel to make sure that she isn’t a ghost from a stunt gone wrong or an enemy almost dodged (and she’s done the same, countless times). Every time the result is the same, sometimes tears and shaky hands but always bruising hugs (occasionally bruised lips) and a moment that lasts for an eternity before they break apart and go back to work.
“Piper.” Aerrow pants, breath mingling with her's and a string of spit still between their lips. The light from the hallway does little for her vision but she can guess that his pupils are blown out and hair beyond saving, “Stop thinking so much and kiss me.”
And how can she deny her favourite Sky Knight of such a simple wish?
The mage dives back into it (into him) with more vigour than before. Hands slipping from his hair to his neck and down his arms until she’s gripping his wrists as her teeth find purchase on his neck. Hands pinned above his head as she complies and gives as much as she takes. The power is definitely getting to her head, drowning out rational thought and any chance of overthinking; Aerrow writhes and pants and begs, hands not leaving the wall as she pushes down the neck of his shirt to leave more marks. It’s normally him doing this, she prefers leaving reminders on his thighs in the form of bruising grips rather than bites. Bruises that they don’t associate with fighting for their lives and wish would stay forever hidden beneath their clothes.
Without moving away, she opens her eyes to admire her work, catching the neon ‘10:20’ flashing at the clock nearby as she smooths her hand over blooming red.
Wait.
“Oh fuck, it’s been 15 minutes.”