Chapter Text
“I am knowledgeable of seven different recognised languages, and adept at picking up derivates of them,”
“Way to blow your own --”
“And in none of them have I found the proper way to convey the complexities of my emotions surrounding you.”
That had been three months ago now. Sure, getting massively drunk with Thrawn wasn’t the best idea he’d had, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary for them to do so.
They hadn’t had the chance to take a night in for a while, and it was starting to physically irritate Eli.
Sure, Thrawn was important, getting whisked away to some event or another with Tarkin or Krennic, or that Pryce woman, but he hadn’t been this far from the Chiss for as long as he could remember. The man could be sat across the room from him, and he’d still feel lightyears away.
He missed the Academy, loath as he was to admit it. He held distain for their classmates, but the shared resentment of the Wild Spacer and the Chiss was a unifying force between them. Now, Eli just cursed himself whenever he’d get excited that Thrawn was brought into some political scuffle, knowing that the man would seek out his companion for counsel.
Eli resented him, really. He resented that his life was derailed so quickly, but so absolutely that there was no running back to the safety of what he knew. The only path was forward, in the wake of a resolute blue figure with red eyes that sought to learn and know everything in their path.
Everything, that is, except for Eli, anymore.
Thrawn settled back into his seat, eyes beginning to strain at the long hours spent peering at the holos and datapads.
The civilisation they’d be heading into within a matter of days was complicated, yet logical. There were four distinct periods of recorded history, and the patterns laid themselves out before him the more he researched. He could see everything , yet…
He frowned, attempting to determine why there were two different, overlapping tableaus projected in front of him. The engravings weaved in and out of focus, so he glided a finger to the control pad, clarifying the image. Nothing seemed to do the trick. The vine motif was moving, curling around its half-twin, almost forming words he could read. If only he were able to see…
“Oh, sorry sir, I thought you’d have finished up by now.”
Thrawn blinked slowly, brow knitting further as the phantom twin faded from view, leaving one projection of the tableau. The slightly blurry brown shape of his aide in the doorway made a soft blue by the light of the projection.
“This has been taking longer than I would have liked,” Thrawn nodded, voice slightly rough, as he signalled Vanto to enter the room, “I apologise for my lack of attention to the time.”
Vanto laughed quietly, “‘s alright, sir, just making sure you’re still alive.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Thrawn mused, steepling his fingers together. Vanto cleared his throat.
“Figure of speech, sir.”
“Ah, forgive me.”
“No worries, sir.”
Vanto walked across the floor, datapad held flush to his chest, steps efficient as he made his way to Thrawn’s desk. He passed Thrawn the datapad, which was showing a manifest Thrawn vaguely recalled requesting. Had that been hours ago already?
“Klerna told me they were working on getting more artefacts for your review, but the cargo is disorganised and they’re the only person on the job qualified enough to sort through them.”
“Please pass on my gratitude to Lieutenant Klerna, I shall be paying them a visit within two hours.”
“Very good sir. And, uh, sir?”
“Yes, Vanto?”
“Are you… do you need help with that?”
Thrawn looked down to see that his foot had gotten quite stuck in the looped arm of his chair from where he’d sat with his legs folded. In trying to get up, the sensation in his leg seemed to have drained out of it, and he was admittedly awkwardly positioned, half out of the chair. He hummed in thought.
“Sir, have you had a break today?”
“Certainly, only just an hour ago.”
“Nice try, sir. Thrawn, you haven’t left your desk for thirteen hours.” Vanto huffed, depositing the datapad on the aforementioned desk and circling Thrawn to offer an elbow.
“Ah,” Thrawn accepted the elbow, looking intently as he extracted his foot from the chair. Now that it was on the ground, it began to feel similar to how it felt to hold carbonated water in one’s mouth and the bubbles began to press against the sinus. He quirked a corner of his mouth at the almost-amusing feeling.
“Thank you, Vanto,” the Chiss said, releasing the shorter man’s arm in order to rub lightly at his sore muscle. He watched as brown eyes scanned him.
“Sure thing, shall we get to the mess hall? Should be open for at least another quarter of an hour-”
“I thank you, but I will have to decline for tonight. There is much for me to do--”
“Thrawn--”
“-- including reviewing Klerna’s findings, responding to queries from Pryce, and Deof had mentioned--”
“Sir--”
“--possibly--”
“ Thrawn. ”
Thrawn peered at the human, who had propped his fists on his hip bones, as he was prone to do when agitated, particularly with the Chiss.
“Yes, Vanto?”
“Respectfully, I can’t let you do that. You’re of no use to the ship in this state.”
“I am perfectly alright, thank you--”
“You have been up for over a cycle now, and you’ve been speaking in Sy Bisti this whole time.”
“... have I?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.” Thrawn reluctantly followed Vanto from his office, allowing himself to be lead back to his quarters. A twinge of amusement ran through him, memories of Vanto chastising him for overworking himself while they shared a room at the Academy. You’re damn sure to break your eyes, reading like that, the man had said on one memorable occasion when he’d found Thrawn reading from his datapad, the backlight on the device at its lowest setting while he sat in the dark, not wanting to interrupt the man’s sleep cycles. He had tried to protest, then, but much like now, the human was hearing none of it. He found himself at the door to his quarters, which boasted an adjoining bathroom with Vanto’s quarters, and followed the man as he punched in the access code, heavy doors hissing open.
Eli sighed as Thrawn stumbled through the door. It wasn’t unheard of for him to have to corral Thrawn back into his room when he was on a particular kick-- this time, architecture from one of the systems they’d be visiting within two standard days. And it really was funny to see the composed man bumping into things like a newborn bantha, a convincing partially-blind creature stumbling through a furniture maze of his own making.
He rolled his eyes as he watched Thrawn. The man was determined to work until he snapped, and then keep working after that.
“You are aware you aren’t any good to the Empire when you’re not thinking properly, right?”
Thrawn made a soft, yet sharp exhale, which Eli recognised as a huff of laughter. “You may have brought it up before.”
“Yeah, and I’ll bring it up again. Sit yourself down, I’ll bring you tea. Bacta?” Eli motioned to his own forehead and eyes, and Thrawn nodded gratefully, sinking down onto the caf table. Eli frowned, resolving to deal with that when he got back.
Ducking quickly into his quarters, he checked the chrono by the wall, noting that it was nearing the ‘midnight’ of their night-cycle. He let his muscles guide him as he prepared two cups of tea, one at his preferred hotter temperature, and one of an egregiously low temperature that Thrawn secretly preferred. It wasn’t that bad, just nearing the ‘hot’ side in opposition to Eli’s near durasteel-melting temperature of preference. Once the sachets were deposited in the cups, and the water poured over them, Eli removed his tunic and took a moment to roll his shoulders out, the standard issue undershirt clinging slightly more to his skin after the hours of wearing it. He wrinkled his nose at the thought, even though he was fairly sure he didn’t smell yet.
Thinking for a moment, he decided that the “ fuck it ” mentality was where he was comfortable at the moment, and poured a very healthy amount of whiskey into his tea, keeping the emerald bottle in between his pointer and middle finger as he carried the three drinks back into Thrawn’s quarters, noticing with no slight amusement that the man was still seated on the caf table. He nudged the leg of the table with his foot, and Thrawn blinked before looking up at Eli, accepting the tepid tea with a nod, and a pour of the green whiskey with a more vigorous nod.
He was about to turn to return to his quarters when a cool hand circled his wrist. Turning over his shoulder, he waited patiently for Thrawn to give an explanation. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, for Thrawn to reach out before his thought was completed. It was likely due to his mind moving at lightspeed, as per usual, but having to take a moment to articulate the ever-increasingly-complex revelation. Eventually, Thrawn blinked again, face looking slightly more alert. He glanced up at Eli, then down to his hand circling the human’s wrist. He frowned lightly to himself, forehead crests wrinkling minutely as he processed. Eli felt a smile pinch at the corner of his mouth.
“Goodnight, Vanto.” Thrawn said eventually, looking down to his spiked tea, releasing Eli’s hand.
“Goodnight, sir,” Eli answered, smiling bemusedly as he crossed into their shared bathroom, closing the door behind him with a soft click , then the other door. He glanced back, waiting for a moment.
Thrawn sank down onto his bunk, enjoying the scent of the tea and whiskey as he cupped the mug near his face. It was comfortably warm, but not scalding. It had taken only twice for Vanto to figure out that the Chiss preferred to not have his tea the same temperature as the human, him being more oriented to cooler temperatures anyways. After a cautious sip -- not trusting his gague of the temperature -- he sighed quietly. The human had a fantastic sense of balance when it came to beverages, and he had, as always, gotten the tea to whiskey ratio perfectly balanced with little to no effort. The scent brought him back to the Academy days, remembering an occasion where Vanto had made him a similar drink when he wasn’t feeling optimal, bundled in blankets with the drink as he listened to the gentle clack of the datapad keys as Vanto finished up a paper.
Thrawn was grateful that the human had interrupted him and instructed him to stop for the day. His head felt as thought it were in a durasteel vice, a sharp pain behind his eyes and a stinging, dry, feeling to his eyeballs as a whole. He really was in no position to be working like this, continuing on would have cost him more time in the longer run, given that he was disoriented as is and, more so, not seeing properly through the fog of exhaustion that had taken up residence behind his skull.
Before drifting off, he wrote a quick note to himself for morning review to thank Vanto, and to consider the tableau -- that he had been looking ‘at’ more than looking ‘in to’ -- as belonging to the counterculture movements existent in the third age of the society it belonged to…
He frequently pictured him in fields, when he was dreaming.
Somewhere beautiful, secret. Where the light was soft and careful, and where the dawn was forgiving. The breeze, he could almost feel it now, was cool against his skin, dancing through wildflowers and through hair.
Thrawn couldn’t remember where he’d seen this field before, nor could he remember how long he had been dreaming of it.
It was one of those landscapes where it felt effortless. Familiar and always something new on the other side of that glade. He watched brown fingers trace the stalks of the flowers, stems a faded green, flowers bursting with pastels. He could smell only the whisps of home from the man, desperate to breathe it all in, but hesitant to breathe at all, least he shatter the sanctity of the scene.
He was always Eli, here.
Looking at him made him even more aware of the pale golden light, the very colour seeping into his skin, into his bones, warming him to his core in the most pleasant of ways.
The human was looking to the horizon, but Thrawn dared not follow his gaze. That would be wasting the time he had here to look, to memorise, to understand so completely he couldn’t fathom of being able to in any other circumstance.
“What’re you looking at now, then?” Eli said, the golden twang to his words sending echoes of something cascading about Thrawn’s chest.
“You,” he answered truthfully. The human smiled, ducking his head before tossing it back a bit, unruly hair bouncing out of his eyes.
“Sap,” he laughed, picking at his Imperial uniform, the grey looking lovely against his skin, but at odds with the environment around him. Thrawn wished silently that he could picture Eli in anything else, but he was bereft of visuals to draw upon. These dreams were only half of his own design. The fields hadn’t been his input, but he wished to recognise them, to walk them alongside the man.
Not for the first time, he wondered what Eli would say should they find a field such as this. Whatever the words would be, he was eager for the sound of them. More, he wanted to rest his palm against the man’s chest as he said them, so that he might feel the reverberations there as well as hearing them. He wished to experience all of Eli’s words, be them pertaining to supply lines, the weakness of the caf in the break rooms, or words that Thrawn dared not think about, dared not give shape to.
He leaned back, resting back on his elbows as he gazed at Eli. He sought to memorise the way the light caressed his nose, made a small dusting of melanin deposits look akin to stars across the skin there. He could not touch him, not here. To touch him would be to shatter the image, to cross lines he had no right to cross, not even in his imagination. Instead, he breathed in the crisp air, and let his eyes do the wandering, feeling at peace, if for only but a moment.
Despite not groaning aloud, an internalised noise of resentment was the way Eli Vanto preferred to greet the new day. His bones always seemed to be sore when he woke up, and his joints popped terribly when he moved them. It didn’t cause him pain, but the series of cracks and pops that followed his movements made him wince self-consciously. He slapped blindly at the chirping chrono, and burrowed his face deeper into the pillow. This wasn’t shaping up to be his day.
But then again, it never seemed to be so at first.
Eli tugged the datapad out from beneath the second pillow on his bed, once again noting how pathetic it seemed that the beds were always too large for one person to complain they were cramped, but too small to reasonably require the second pillow. Blinking the words into focus, Eli set about going over all of the new “highest priority” and “urgent” messages that had filled Thrawn’s (his, really) inbox. He categorised them on a scale from “actually somewhat important” to “this doesn’t need to be a meeting,” and dropped them into a list for Thrawn’s briefing.
Eli didn’t necessarily like waking early, he just loathed feeling underprepared, so he started doing his tasks before he exited his bunk, letting his body slowly come back to itself while allowing his brain to come back online from last nights’ inebriation. Kriff, he was going to have to cut back on the recreational plants before bed. Felt great at the time, but he was always drowsy the next day, or whenever he happened to sober up next.
After a quick shower in the ‘fresher, a glass of water, and another check at the datapad notification centre, Eli knocked on the door separating the bathroom and Thrawn’s rooms. Eli had to be careful about the volume, because his first instinct was always to wince at the loudness of the knock, but the second thought was that the small living space separating Thrawn’s bedroom and the bathroom where Eli was stood now wasn’t small enough to allow a gentle knock to alert the Chiss. Usually.
He opened the door, mindful of the hiss it made as it swished open, before crossing to the small chair he usually took up residence in, propping a foot up on the caf table Thrawn had seemed taken by last night. He sipped at the remaining water in his cup as he watched Thrawn emerge from his room, at precisely 0653, exactly four minutes after his alarm was due to go off for their 0800 shift.
It wasn’t unusual that Thrawn was this quiet in the mornings, it likely happened once or thrice a week, but the carefully non-deliberate avoidance of eye-contact was much more out of place for the Chiss.
But, then again, it wasn’t his business to pay that close attention.