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Commander Fox is a naturally suspicious man. Cody used to say he’d been decanted too early and that made him paranoid, but Fox never thought that was a bad thing. He’s still alive, after all, which is more than can be said for a good portion of his vode, even before they left Kamino.
Coruscant, though…Coruscant etched paranoia into his bones, and made him pass on his suspicious ways to his men, willing or no. Every dark corner of the Senate Dome could hide an assassin; every sullen silence or bad mood from a Senator could herald a complaint, or a punishment, or even a decommission request. Fox hammers his more-than-should-be-healthy habits of overanalysis and paranoia into his men and pretends not to hear them mutter that he’s going prematurely grey from worrying so damn much.
Anyway. So he’s a little on edge, all the time. It had saved his life and the lives of his men more than once, thus Fox will just keep on glaring distrustfully at everything and everyone.
Right now he’s glaring distrustfully at the caff machine in the mess as it gurgles away happily.
“...Everything ok, commander?” says Stone, sidling up to Fox and following his gaze to the machine.
“Yes. That’s the problem,” says Fox. He stabs an accusing finger at the caff machine. “It’s full.”
“Ok, and?”
“It’s never full. I always make the caff, because no one else does, and now all of a sudden it’s full?” Fox takes a deep swallow of his caff and squints over the rim of his mug at Stone. “What did you do?”
Stone raises his hands, affronted. “Me? I just got here, and Thorn made the caff. It’s fine. Just - drink it. Sounds like you need it,” he says and walks off with one last raised eyebrow for Fox.
Fox watches him go and simmers with suspicion.
—
He gets to his office, second cup of caff in hand, and sits heavily into his very terrible desk chair. His desk is - clean?
That’s not right. There should be empty mugs and piles upon piles of datapads and ration bar wrappers, not nice neat orderly piles of ‘pads. Fox can see the actual color of his desktop: it’s grey. He’d almost forgotten.
Tapping at his comm, he calls Thire.
“Commander,” comes Thire’s crackling voice.
“Thire. You were on shift tonight. What in the Nine Corellian Hells happened to my desk.”
“I cleaned it. Ever heard of it?”
“Thire-”
“That thing was a health hazard, Fox, I found a literal knife buried in there. Just say thank you, Thire, it’s not hard.”
“Thire-”
“I’m not hearing a thank you!”
Fox grinds his teeth so hard Thire can probably hear it through the comm.
“Thank you, Thire. Touch my desk again and you’re on prison patrol for a tenday.”
“You’re ever so welcome, Commander,” Thire says cheekily, and Fox cuts the call.
Something is going on here, he can smell it.
—
He’s on his way to the elevator when he passes Hound, with Grizzer in tow. She wags her whole body at the sight of him, making the spines on her back sway back and forth as her tongue lolls out over her rows of sharp teeth. She looks ridiculous, not like a proper Guard massiff at all.
Fox drops to one knee and lets the silly thing lick his hand dementedly.
“Mornin’ Commander!” says Hound cheerfully. “Heading up?”
“Yeah, got a meeting with CorSec, apparently,” Fox says.
“Apparently?”
Grizzer has now flopped onto her back in a plea for belly rubs; Fox scritches her with one hand and she wriggles happily. “It just showed up on my schedule, like always. Would be nice to have some advance warning, but those bastards can’t even do that right,” he grouses.
Hound makes a grimace of commiseration; they all hate the Coruscant Security Force, mostly because they keep trying to make the Guard do their jobs for them. Fox gives Grizzer one last pat and straightens up. No foolishness allowed outside of the Guard HQ, not even petting the massiffs. It’s Fox’s own rule, and he won’t be the one to break it.
He flicks a parting salute to Hound and steps in the elevator. It’s small and dingy, not like the massive elegant pods that smoothly transport the Senators through the many levels of the Senate Dome. No, this elevator just goes down to the basement, where the Guard had been unceremoniously shoved at the start of the war and then left to rot. They’ve got better facilities over at the prison, but that’s not where the Guard barracks are; more than once Fox has wondered why military prisoners get better living conditions than the Guard themselves.
Fox stabs the button for the Senate elevator lobby, and the elevator blinks to life. It only travels one floor up, not even out of the Guard’s HQ, before it stops and lets out a chime like a dying bird.
The doors slide open and a figure rushes in, punching the button for the lobby as well. The man is tall and dark-skinned, with a sleeveless top and some fairly impressive biceps, not that Fox would ever admit that to-
“Vos?”
The man whirls around and grins, wrinkling the gold tattoo across the bridge of his nose ever so slightly. “Commander Foxy, hey!”
“Don’t call me that,” Fox says automatically. There’s not a ton of room in this elevator, what with Fox’s armor and Vos’ height, but they make do, both staring straight ahead as the elevator door closes.
It starts back up, and Vos sends a glance Fox’s way. “Doing alright, Commander?”
“Fine,” grunts Fox, “And you?”
“Well, it’s a little weird - Aayla sent me this message that I was supposed to meet her on this floor, but she wasn’t there, so I-”
And that’s when the lights suddenly blink out and the cab shudders, then stops completely. Fox stands there in the pitch-black dark for half a second and lets himself feel bone-deep vindication; this day had gone far too smoothly. Of course this would happen. Of course.
The next second, he’s flipping on his helmet spotlight and trying to raise the Guard on his comm. Hound picks up, surprisingly, sounding breathless and harried as he shouts, “Sorry, Commander! Grizzer got loose and must’ve chewed through the control panel for the elevator bank; she’s ok, though, she’s not hurt-”
“Of course she’s ok, Sergeant, she’s a massiff,” Fox growls. “Who left the fucking panel open in the first place?”
“Not sure, sir, but we’ll fix it. Just hold tight,” Hound says, and cuts the comm.
Fox lets himself have one deep, disgruntled sigh, then turns to Vos, who holds up his hands to shield himself from the spotlight on Fox’s helmet.
That won’t do. Fox takes off his helmet and clips it to his belt. “Right,” he says. “Vos. Did you bring your laser sword?”
In the half-light of the helmet light, Vos grins again, showing straight white teeth behind plush lips. “Don’t know about a laser sword, but I brought my lightsaber.” he says with a wink. Fox does not wink back.
“So cut us out of here,” he says blandly. Does he have to do everything around here?
“Right, right,” Vos nods, and pulls out his lightsaber. He sets the hilt parallel to the floor and right up against the doors, and presses a button. It ignites in a flash of green, glancing off his gold tattoo and the high arches of his cheekbones in a way that does not make Fox want to run his hands over them. Not at all.
Vos starts to burn through the doors, pushing the lightsaber up and around in a large arc. Fox is impressed at its capability; he’s never really seen a lightsaber up close besides on Geonosis, where the Jedi were mostly concerned with cutting up as many droids as physically possible. This is a little different; Vos’s hands are steady on the hilt, slicing through the steel doors with ease.
Without warning, the elevator cab lurches sideways in a screech of metal and sparks, and then twists and lurches again. Fox loses his footing, is thrown against the side of the wall and then into the corner as the cab shifts and shudders and the floor tips to a severe angle; the lightsaber pushes forward too, right at Fox’s throat-
It’s deactivated in an instant and a solid body collides with Fox instead. “Ow. Your armor’s really hard,” Vos informs him.
“What the hell did you do?’ snarls Fox. “Were you aiming for the stabilizers?”
“Stabilizers?” Vos says in shock. “Aren’t all the elevators hovertech now-”
“Not this one!” spits Fox, then suddenly cuts himself off as sensation begins to filter through the frustration.
There’s a body pressed up against his. A tall, muscular body, pinning him into the corner of the tilted elevator cab. A body that has featured prominently in Fox’s dreams, and maybe in some of his fantasies, but-
This is actually happening. Fox wills his body to calm down and averts his eyes from Vos’s. He has to think of something else. Think of something else. Think-
“You said General Secura asked to meet you in the Guard headquarters?”
“Yeah?” Vos says, with a shrug that Fox can feel. “She’s on leave right now, and she and Bly had to talk to Commander Thorn, I guess, so I came here.”
Oh, those motherfuckers.
Fox lets out a groan of pure, seething frustration and thunks his head back against the corner. Maybe if he hits it hard enough, he’ll knock himself out and won’t have to deal with Thorn’s meddling bullshit. Fox never should’ve gotten drunk with him and spilled about his crush on Vos, because this is what he gets: trapped in a dark elevator with the guy.
“I’m going to kill that waste of a cloning tube,” Fox mutters darkly, and Vos laughs.
“It’s not his fault the elevator broke!” he says. Fox just stares him straight in the eyes with a dead look on his face. “Wait. It is? Why?”
Fox isn’t about to answer that one; he breaks eye contact and wills himself not to blush. Vos doesn’t notice; what Fox can see of his face in the dim light has scrunched up in thought. It’s adorable.
“Wait, waitwaitwait, that means - Aayla’s in on this?” Vos exclaims.
“I assume so, sir,” Fox says stiffly. It’s hard to ignore the heat of Vos, the weight of him. Fox is wedged in the corner at a definite lean, and the cab’s at such an angle that they can’t even turn sideways. He’s stuck. At least his armor can contain his obvious reaction to Vos’ proximity; if Fox can just keep his mind blank and boring and stop replaying all the fantasies he’s had of Vos on top of him with much less clothing-
“I knew she couldn’t keep a secret! I’ve known that since she was twelve, why did I ever let my guard down for a second-”
Vos’s ranting peters off, and he squints at Fox in speculation. “Hold on,” he says slowly, “If Aayla is working with Thorn and Bly to set this up, and you’re here, then-”
Nope, nonono, Fox is not going to just sit here and let this train of thought continue. He bucks up to try and dislodge Vos, or just get some leverage. The sharp movement makes something shift, and the cab creaks dangerously. For all Fox’s efforts, Vos doesn’t even move. He just sinks down even heavier on top of Fox somehow. Fox tries not to shiver at the overwhelming sensation.
“Best not try that again,” Vos says, and his voice is lower, darker.
“You’re heavy.”
“Is that what’s got you all bothered, Foxy? I’m heavy?”
Fox chooses to ignore the mocking tone. “Just - can’t you fix this with the Force? Wave your hands and off we go?”
“I could,” purrs Vos, “But I’m not going to.”
Bastard.
“Because,” he continues with a grin, now only inches from Fox’s face, “I don’t think you want me to, Commander.”
Fox does not flinch, he does not twitch, he does not gasp, he doesn’t even blink.
He does, however, inhale just slightly. Just a tiny, infinitesimal intake of air, and Vos, the insufferable jackass, catches it. His grin widens, long and crooked across his handsome face.
“You wanna stay right here, don’t you,” he murmurs, and bends his head, black locs following the movement. Fox’s eyes widen, and-
He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for Vos to lean in and nose gently along his jawline. The warmth of his mouth scrapes along Fox’s stubble, leaving a burning trail of heat on Fox’s skin everywhere his lips touch.
“Don’t you,” Vos whispers into his neck, right below his ear, and look. Fox is a paranoid, ruthlessly repressed soldier with a reputation of being a stone cold bastard, but every man’s got his limits. It turns out Fox’s limit is a Jedi leaned against him, heavy and warm in the dark.
He might whimper, just a little bit, but Vos definitely hears, if the curve of his grin against the underside of Fox’s jaw is any indication.
“Words, Foxy. Use your words,” Vos says, so smug and full of himself and gorgeous-
Fox snarls wordlessly as he turns and smashes his lips against that shit-eating grin. Vos responds in an instant, opening his mouth to Fox and dragging him deeper. It’s heady and hot, just the slide of their tongues and Fox’s hungry, ungentle nips to Vos’ soft lower lip. The press of Vos against his armor is too much and not enough; Fox is desperate to touch him, to feel all of that smooth dark skin against his own, but the best he can do is run gloved hands up Vos’ bare shoulders; he digs his fingers in and holds on against the dizzying rush of the kiss.
Vos pulls back with one last drag of his lips across Fox’s. His own hands come up to cradle Fox’s face like he’s fragile, like he’s worth something. It sends a frission of heat down Fox’s spine, and he doesn’t resist the urge to turn his face into Vos’ calloused palm.
“Still want to kill Thorn?” the Jedi teases, and Fox groans.
“Vos-”
“I think,” Vos says with a lightning-quick kiss to the corner of Fox’s mouth, “You should call me Quinlan.”
“Quinlan,” Fox says slowly, testing the word in his mouth, and Vos- Quinlan’s smile glows in the half-light, so different from his sharp grins.
“Or I mean, you could always call me sir-” and Fox rolls his eyes and pulls his Jedi back down for another bruising kiss, if only to shut him up for once in his life.