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“I warned you.” Ezra huffed, grunting as he hauled Thrawn’s uncooperative ass away from the patch of towering flowers he’d just had to examine, “I warned you they’d be screwy but did you listen to me, oh no, you just had to stick your face right up in one, didn’t you? Just had to get a closer look, and now look at you. Pollinated! I’m not a doctor, Thrawn, and I know less about chiss than I do about math! If that pollen is like poison to you, we’re both boned, you know that!?”
Thrawn didn’t respond, and honestly Ezra didn’t expect him to. He’d been dazed and clumsy from the moment that weird flower had puffed its weird pollen all over Thrawn’s weird face, yellow spores settling across the blue skin like really prominent freckles as he tried and failed to cough them out of his lungs, and now Ezra was stuck hauling him back to camp himself because the damn chiss was too loopy to even walk by himself.
“Don’t…” Thrawn’s quiet voice startled Ezra slightly, hoarse and low and sounding vaguely confused, “I…” Ezra felt a pang of pity that he ruthlessly shoved down. Even if Thrawn was deserving of his pity, which he wasn’t, he was an arrogant bastard who was only in this situation because he’d thought he’d known better than Ezra. As per kriffin’ usual.
“Easy.” he said gruffly, maneuvering them around a snake burrow as he fought to keep Thrawn upright. If Thrawn passed out on him now, he was gonna use the Force to leave him in a tree until tomorrow, “I’ll get us back, just.. I dunno, think happy thoughts.”
“Eli…” he breathed, something fragile and reverent in his voice, and Ezra went still, eyes wide as they snapped down to the man who didn’t seem to notice that they’d stopped. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard the name Eli, it occasionally slipped out when Thrawn was asleep, but for that to be the first thing to come to his mind when told to think happy thoughts? Ezra’s curiosity grew.
“Nope, Ezra. Close though.” he said slowly, knowing it was fruitless and that Thrawn wouldn’t recognize a wampa right now if it walked up to him and saluted, “Eli isn’t here.”
“I didn’t want… I didn’t mean to leave you.” Thrawn mumbled as if he hadn’t spoken, making absolutely no sense at all as he listed to the side, forcing Ezra to correct him before he toppled over, “It was Bridger, I… I was kidnapped, I’d never… never have gone where you cannot find me…” Shit, he didn’t even know where he was right now. He was somewhere far away with someone who definitely wasn’t Ezra. It was actually pretty unnerving to see Thrawn, normally so put together and unflappable, acting this uncoordinated and tongue-tied.
“Blast that pollen.” he scowled, tightening his grip on the insufferable alien as he thought of the long walk they still had ahead of them, “Karking blast it all, and kriff you too, Thrawn!”
“Oh Eli… Eli, don’t be angry with me…” If Ezra didn’t know any better, he’d call Thrawn’s voice plaintive. Vulnerable. Pleading, even. And Ezra’s anger went out like a candle in a twister despite his best efforts.
“Kark, you’re on a whole ‘nother planet right now, aren’t you?” he sighed resignedly, “Look, let’s just get back to camp and then I can take a proper look at you to make sure this pollen isn’t gonna like, give you brain damage or something.
“Eli.” Thrawn shook his head as if to clear it, staring blearily ahead as if not really seeing anything at all, “Eli… Eli… Eli…” Oh hey, the anger was back. Ezra wanted to shake him.
“Who the kriff is Eli?” he growled, and Thrawn scoffed in a way that almost made him seem like his normal self again. His eyes cleared somewhat, but not nearly enough. Maybe having something to focus on helped, but it didn’t seem to give him much more than a paltry boost of clarity.
“What a foolish question. Eli is… everything.” he said easily, his voice going softer as he slumped further into Ezra’s hold, “Everything...”
“Everything.” he echoed blankly, eyes narrowing as they scanned Thrawn’s face, trying to hazard any kind of guess as to the nature of this Eli person. Who was he? Why did Thrawn’s thoughts keep returning to him? Why did his face change to something almost familiar when he said his name, almost like… almost…
…almost the same way Kanan always looked when he called Hera’s name.
Holy shit. Holy shit, was Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Great and Terrible, in love?
Oh, this was far too good an opportunity to pass up.
“We’re almost back to camp, just another hour or so.” he grinned, shamelessly taking advantage of Thrawn’s compromised state, secure in the knowledge that Thrawn would do the exact same to him were their situations reversed, “Tell me about him, your Eli.”
And tell him Thrawn did. In great and excruciating detail.
Ezra learned that Eli was from the wooded side of Lysatra and grew up in a little town called Kepler, that he had a Wild Space accent that was usually thick and honeyed but Eli disguised it to avoid ridicule, which Thrawn found to be a shame. He learned that he had dark brown eyes that held the stars in them, and a small tattoo on his collar that Thrawn had obsessed over for weeks when he first saw it, a Lysatran flower that a teenage Eli had woken up with the morning after he and his hooligan friends had broken into his uncle’s moonshine one night. He apparently had a beauty mark just behind his right ear, hair like spun chocolate that never quite obeyed him, freckles that kept Thrawn up at night, a habit of tapping rhythms out when he was bored, an analytical mind to rival the great Kenobi, a deep voice that got deeper when he was angry (anger that was apparently ‘resplendent’ to witness), and played Dragons & Derelicts with coworkers on Tuesdays where he played a elderly chaos wizard named Randy (the mention of which led to a second smaller tangent about how disappointed Eli would be that dnd night was ruined because of that philistine Kallus defecting and leaving the party down a bard).
He learned that Eli loved order and numbers and rarely needed to write inventory down because his memory was just that good. Eli was good at restraint but still had the occasional emotional outburst, and during one such outburst he threw a fist-sized Pantoran sculpture at Thrawn that gave him a black eye, for which he was apparently very apologetic. Eli smelled like pumpkin and apple cinnamon, like a Lysatran autumn, and the scent drove Thrawn wild, which Ezra really didn’t need to know but whatever. Eli hated his own laughter, too high pitched and cackling, but Thrawn adored it, and would go out of his way to cause more of it just so he could listen. He liked rock music, and Thrawn most decidedly did not, but he still sat and listened through every single album Eli mentioned liking so he could analyze it and try to guess what about it appealed to him.
Ezra also learned that a part of why Thrawn had gunned for Hera so hard was apparently because Eli had made an offhand comment about her being pretty, which Ezra found both hilarious and disturbing, but Thrawn wasn’t done. He went on to talk about how Eli played an instrument called a fiddle, but had to be bribed and plied to play it for Thrawn, excepting the one time he’d played it at an imperial gathering and got a bunch of people dancing. How Eli had a decent singing voice better suited to quiet nights than loud performances, but he never sang if he knew anyone was nearby, so Thrawn had to be sneaky in order to hear it. How Eli was fluent in six languages and was learning a seventh, even if his accent leaked into each language, which Thrawn saw as a bonus. How Eli could do complex mathematical equations in his head faster than any protocol droid, and Thrawn subtly got rid of any lowbrow bully who dared refer to him as ‘his droid’.
As dear delirious Thrawn told it, Eli was the cleverest man in the world, the most beautiful, the most fascinating, the most amazing, the most perfect, and Thrawn was the luckiest man in the galaxy to have seen him and called dibs before anyone else did. Eli Vanto deserved nothing less than the galaxy on a plate, but Thrawn was selfishly pleased that no one else seemed to grasp how important and perfect he was because that meant he got to keep him for himself.
Ezra’s heart panged a little when Thrawn spoke of how he had fallen in love with Eli one unremarkable evening when the human was moved by an art piece Thrawn had shown him. It was a Lothali piece on imperial brutality that Thrawn had disliked, but the message had spoken to Eli in a way art almost never did, and Thrawn had realized the depth of his feelings when he glanced over to see tears in Eli’s lovely brown eyes.
Ezra was learning a lot about Eli Vanto today, but even more about Thrawn. He was learning that the man who’d made his life hell was secretly a teenage girl pining at her locker like a Hosnian romcom. The fearsome Grand Admiral was a lovesick puppy hiding behind a mask of stoicism, the biggest threat to the rebellion pining after his secretary of all people, and Ezra had the hilarious image of him lying on his bed like a schoolgirl doodling ‘Thrawn Vanto’ into his diary with a bunch of little hearts. He didn’t bother to stifle his laughter, but Thrawn was lost in the pollen’s haze and didn’t seem to notice.
“Well it sounds like love.” he drawled with a roll of his eyes, reminding himself that Thrawn’s Mister Perfect was still an imperial and was likely just as morally bankrupt as Thrawn was, “Two outcasts hand in hand, the whole galaxy against them, how nauseatingly cute. Eli must be a hell of a dude to put up with you for so long.”
“He is.” Thrawn nodded, eyes lidded as he gave a besotted little smile that Ezra never ever wanted to see again, “‘Hell of a dude’, indeed…”
“Stop copying me.” Ezra said halfheartedly, squinting against the sun to gauge how much daylight they had left.
“Stop not being Eli.” Thrawn replied snootily, and Ezra was this close to dumping his blue ass on the ground and leaving him there, “Eli wouldn’t have let me get into this mess. Eli would have built us a shelter and cooked the dinner I caught, and we’d huddle by the fire and look up at the sky together… and he’d be much more pleasant and much more useful than you. And he wouldn’t have kidnapped me with space whales, you… you… space whale kidnapper.” Well at least he was able to hold a conversation now, one that wasn’t just repeating Eli’s name over and over again. Either the effects of the pollen were fading, or they came in waves.
“Well if you love Eli so much, why don’t you marry him?” Ezra sniped, and Thrawn made a sound between a groan and a sigh.
“Believe me… I am trying.”
“No kriffing way.” Ezra snorted, “No kriffin-Dude, if you get married, I demand an invite because this I gotta see.”
“He just… doesn’t get it.” Thrawn’s face shifted again, belligerence melting into uncertainty, “I craft him a beautiful dagger out of the strongest ice, to show that I am strong and stalwart but in his hands I would melt, and he compliments it but then doesn’t show it off to his peers. I hunt down a krayt dragon, slay it, and gift him with the scales to prove that I am more than capable of protecting him and providing for him, and he’s all ‘why is there a pile of scales in my quarters, Thrawn, clean your garbage up’. I fill his room with Lysatran flowers to show that I can adapt and am considerate of his background and customs, and he loves them but assumes that someone else did it and spends the week fretting about some secret admirer.” That sentence ended with a bitten off little snarl, and Ezra would have laughed if he wasn’t so taken aback by the turn of events.
“My dude.” he was honestly starting to feel bad for the guy, in an distantly amused sort of way, “None of that equates to marriage in literally any way, most of it doesn’t even equate to courting, except the flowers, but even friends give each other flowers all the time. Honestly, you should have just told him it was you.”
“…What?”
“Yeah, if someone did all that to me, I don’t know if I’d get their intentions either, especially not all that unsaid stuff about proving themselves to me or whatever.” he pulled Thrawn up when he stumbled, waiting for his knees to stop wobbling before the continued, “I don’t know if he knows chiss customs, but I’d assume that the reason he’s not responsive to your proposals is because he doesn’t know you’re proposing.” Thrawn seemed to think about that, his steps growing more and more clumsy as he forced his sluggish mind to work as best as it could in its current state, and Ezra found himself hoping for one wild second that it was true and it wasn’t just Eli being too polite to refuse his closest friend.
“Then… how would you court a human you were desperately in love with?” Thrawn asked, and Ezra had to wonder if Kanan was in the Force somewhere laughing at him, kicking it with Billaba and the gang just pointing and laughing it up.
“Well…” kriff he couldn’t believe he was giving romance advice to Thrawn of all people, “Start by being upfront. Try taking his hand, looking him in the eyes, and saying ‘Eli Vanto, I’ve been in love with you for years, I would be the happiest man in the world if you would marry me’.” Thrawn blinked slowly, his hazy mind struggling to comprehend Ezra’s words.
“That’s… it?” he asked, looking almost young, “But… What about proving that I can provide for him, protect him, make him happy? Words are cheap, anyone can make promises… How will a mere request be anywhere near acceptable?”
“Well, kneeling might help, like a knight before his prince.” he grinned cheekily, thinking back to those romance novels he’d never admit he devoured in his youth, “But seriously, humans don’t need all that. All we need is love and someone to be there for us, and if this guy really loves you, he won’t need all those vows and declarations and proof of worth or anything like that. He just needs you to love him and be loyal to him, and that would be enough.”
“That would… That would be enough…” Thrawn looked as if he’d had a revelation, like Ezra had unlocked an entire new world for him. Ezra let him sit on it for a while, watching the sky as he wondered for the millionth time what the hell he’d gotten himself into. Thrawn was silent, but as they walked his gait began to grow clumsier again, so Ezra figured he was right about the pollen’s effects coming in waves.
“How you feeling?” he asked when he felt enough time had passed for Thrawn to have processed his advice, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t wanna hear some more wild shit.
“Eli once told me…” Thrawn seemed to be trying to go into Lecture Mode, but he was too kriffin’ zooted to do so, “That without sauce a man is lost… but the same man can also become lost in the sauce.”
“Uh huh…?” Kriff, he wished he had his holorecorder, this would have been blackmail material forever.
“Eli is… my sauce.”
“…I am going to laugh about that exact sentence for the rest of my life.” he said with a blinding grin, “I am never going to let you forget this, and when I meet Eli I am gonna tell him everything that happened today. Let me hear this allegedly ugly laugh for myself.”
“I miss him.” The simple admission stopped Ezra in his tracks, bringing them both to a halt as Thrawn lurched with momentum, nearly falling over if not for Ezra’s grip, “I miss him so much… I ache for him… When you launched us into the unknown, all I could think about was him…”
“Thrawn…”
“Why does it hurt so much?” he sounded resigned, miserable, “Why does it feel like… like I left my heart on the other side of the galaxy?”
Ezra didn’t feel guilty. He didn’t feel guilty, he didn’t feel guilty, he didn’t feel guilty, he didn’t feel guilty, he didn’t feel guilty, he didn’t feel…
“We’ll get home.” he found himself saying, “We’ll get home together, and we’ll get me back to my family, and we’ll get you back to your Eli. You’re a total bastard, Thrawn, but… but you’re a bastard that’s gonna be able to collapse into your man’s arms one day, and I’m gonna be there to see it and make fun of you.”
As he dutifully started walking again, he was surprised to find that he meant every word.