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Jesse is hungry. He’s hungry, and he can’t go get lunch because he drew the short straw today. No, all of his time and credits have to go towards the communal contraband fund—booze and junk food that technically none of them are supposed to have. Jesse had known that the few unlucky clones that had to waste their stipend on the rest of the battalion also had to sacrifice getting a good meal while on their shore leave, but he has a new appreciation for their efforts.
“Kriffing… Kix,” Jesse mutters, tossing a bag of some kind of candy into his trolley, now filled with enough confections that his teeth hurt just looking at them. “All I should be exempt, because I don’t drink. ” He rounds the corner and pauses. This aisle isn’t empty, and the only other occupant is doing that thing that people do where they definitely caught him doing something embarrassing but are too polite to say anything about it.
They’re also incredibly, distractingly attractive, so much so that Jesse’s pretty sure that if they did decide to make fun of him for talking to himself, he wouldn’t even notice. He certainly doesn’t register at first that he’s openly staring at them, either, although he does notice them getting kind of frustrated with him.
They sigh. “Are you just going to stare, or are you going to say something?”
Jesse blinks, then shakes his head to try and come back to himself. “Sorry, that’s…rude, sorry.”
They nod slowly. “Yeah, it was.” They smile, though, so Jesse doesn’t think they’re actually upset. They look down at his trolley. “Are you…having a party?”
“Oh, no, I’m. Stocking up. Don’t spend much time with easy access to this sort of thing. You know.” He’s not wearing his armor, just an old pair of blacks that are so faded they’re closer to grey, but there’s no way he’s the only clone they’ve seen without a bucket.
“Yeah, me too,” they say, and oh. They don’t recognize his face. “Um. For what it’s worth, this Kix guy sounds like an ass?”
Jesse blinks. “Um. Yeah, yeah, right?” He grabs a packet of cookies, the kind of cookies that nobody but him likes, because if they’re going to make him use his stipend then he gets to pick out whatever he wants. “You know, he does drink, actually, it’s just that nobody believes me because oh he’s such a good person, he’s the medic, he’s got to be on call all the time!” Jesse has seen his batchmate so messed up, he’s just really good at pretending.
His beautiful stranger smiles. They smile, and Jesse never wants them to stop. “Well, I believe you.”
Kix buys Jesse a late lunch. Says something about not needing any of his brothers to get in the habit of skipping meals, but Jesse knows it’s because he would have been the one giving up his stipend if he’d only been a team player.
“You’re an ass,” Jesse tells him, as they sit down at a table and wait for the waitress to come to take their order. “Don’t drink, you kriffing liar.”
“Ah, but who would believe you?” Kix asks, kicking his feet up onto the bench beside Jesse. “I hold my liquor so well.”
“The beautiful stranger I met at the market believes me,” Jesse tells him, shoving his feet off. “Agrees that you’re an ass, too.”
“Oh, well, what have you been telling them?”
“The truth?” Jesse leans back and folds his arms over his chest. “That you’re an ass who says he doesn’t drink the same night he gets drunker than the rest of us combined? And you get away with it, Maker knows how.”
“It’s because, and I cannot stress this enough, I hold my liquor better than you.”
Somehow, miraculously, Jesse has a few credits left over. Not enough to buy anything substantial, but enough that he can get himself something inane and stupid. He doesn’t know what he wants that something to be, because he’s never had that sort of freedom, but he definitely knows that he doesn’t want to give any of these credits back when he gets back to the Resolute.
He finds himself staring, inexplicably, at some socks. Thick, fuzzy ones that he wouldn’t be able to wear with his boots, but would warm his toes during cold nights in the barracks.
“You again?”
Jesse looks up from the racks of socks to find the person from the grocery market, holding a multipack of plain white socks, staring at him just as openly as he’d stared at them earlier. They’re just as beautiful as they were, then, too. “Hi.”
“Hi.” They smile at him again, bright and charming and Jesse might be in trouble. “You know, the ones with the little grippy dots on the bottom are the best for around the house, but if you’re planning on wearing them with shoes you definitely want them without.”
Jesse hadn’t realized that those little circles were for grip. “Oh, um. Thanks.” He reaches out and grabs one of the pairs with the grippy dots and realizes that he doesn’t have enough credits for them. He can’t really afford any of the grippy dots, it looks like, but he’s got to admit that they’d be much better for the slick metallic floors of the cruiser. “How far do you think I could slide down a hallway if I got one without the grips?”
“Depends,” they tell him. “What’s the floor made of?”
“Durasteel.”
They smile even wider. “Oh, so far. Get a running start and you’re going straight into the wall.”
Oh, the rest of Jesse’s squad is going to owe him so much money on the next shore leave. He’ll be able to buy so many more socks. It’ll totally be worth the inevitable broken nose that Kix will refuse to give him a bacta strip for.
Jesse decides to stop through 79's before going back to the Resolute for longer than it took to deposit his spoils in the designated if Rex doesn't ask what this room is for then he doesn't have to know closet and he runs into his beautiful stranger for the third time in one day. He rounds a corner and finds them in an abandoned alleyway, a shortcut to the clone bar that Jesse had taken because he's running short on time if he wants to enjoy the atmosphere for longer than it takes to order a drink. They look up at him and arch their brow when they recognize him.
"You know, following me doesn't leave a very good impression," they tell him, and they don't sound very serious but Jesse can see behind their eyes, even in the dim light of the alley, that they're a little annoyed and more than a little…disappointed?
"Who said I'm following you?" Jesse asks, because he isn't, this is obviously the Force pushing them together. "In fact, who's to say you aren't following me?" After all, they're the one who approached him at the shop, and they're the one directly in his path to get to a bar specifically for clone troopers.
All the disappointment disappears from their eyes in a flash. "Stars, you're serious, aren't you?" they ask, voice full of wonder.
Jesse blinks. "I…I mean, no? I don't actually think you're following me any more than I'm following you. At least, I'm not actually accusing you of anything."
And they laugh. "Name's Ala," they tell him, stepping forward and holding out a hand for him to shake.
"Jesse."
Ala grins at him as they shake hands, and then, "Hey. Wanna go grab something to eat?"
And Jesse was on his way to a clone bar, where he doesn't have to pay because clones don't get paid, but anything Ala has to show him must be much better than anything he could get at 79's.
"I'd love to!"
Jesse’s been to 79’s, and he’s been to Dex’s diner, where the Besalisk doesn’t only offer to feed them for free, but refuses to take any payment at all from any of the clones. Jesse’s been told that Dex is a friend of General Kenobi’s, and he feeds the army as a favor to him.
The place that Ala takes him is neither 79’s nor Dex’s, and Jesse never realized that places like this were an option.
There’s a friendly-faced half-Twi'lek standing behind a podium in an entrance hall, looking up at them and smiling widely. It doesn’t strike him as particularly genuine. “Hi! Just two?”
Ala nods, smiling back at the worker. “Yes, please.”
“Right this way!” They’re led behind a curtain, and Jesse finds himself in a brightly lit room with a bunch of better dressed people than him, chatting and eating food that looks like something he’s seen in old holofilms. Much better than the greasy food at Dex’s or the tasteless rations on board the Resolute .
They weave in between the tables until they get to one tucked into a corner, out of the way and easy to be looked over. “How’s this?”
“It’s perfect,” Ala says, while Jesse looks around in awe. “Thank you!”
The two of them sit down, and the host sets down two menus for them. “Someone will be by to take your drink order shortly.”
Drink order? As in, the two are separate?
Jesse’s glad that Ala’s taking the lead here, because he hasn’t got a clue what the kriff he’s meant to be doing here.
He gets over his shock and looks back over at Ala, staring at him with an amused arch to their eyebrow. “Have you…never been to a restaurant like this before?”
Jesse shakes his head. “Can never afford to,” he tells them honestly. They’d already called him on not having enough money to buy himself dinner and had told him not to worry about it, so there’s no reason to talk around the fact that he usually goes to free places. “Usually go to this place down in CoCo Town.”
“Dex’s, right?” At Jesse’s nod, Ala grins. “Dex is fantastic. I’d love to go more often than I do, but my job doesn’t really let me go there that often.”
“And what job is that?” Jesse’s job hardly lets him go to Dex’s all that often, either, but that’s just because he’s rarely ever on Coruscant.
Ala leans forward, setting their elbows on the table. “What’s yours?”
Jesse blinks. Even if they don’t recognize him as a clone, they should at least recognize the Republic symbol both on his shirt and on his face. “You’re joking, right?”
“No. Are you?”
By the time he makes it back to the Resolute , he feels full and warm and…and floaty, like he’s adrift in space, or like the mag-grav has been turned off. He makes his way to the barracks almost in a daze, and he absently notices the sound of someone humming. It isn’t until he registers a couple weird looks shot his way that he realizes that the someone is him.
The door slides open, and Fives, Kix, and Hardcase are on the ground, playing sabacc. “What’s got you in high spirits?” Fives asks, looking up at him.
“I’m in love,” Jesse sighs, collapsing backward onto his bunk.
“Oh, come on, Dex’s food’s good but it isn’t that good,” Kix snorts.
“Who said anything about Dex?” Fives asks, shoving Kix lightly.
“Well he wasn’t at 79’s,” Kix explains. “I didn’t see him.”
“Wasn’t at Dex’s, either,” Hardcase says, because Jesse’s still too out of it to explain.
All three of Jesse’s brothers are quiet for a few seconds, implications and realizations setting in, before all three of them clamber to their feet and flock around Jesse, demanding answers to questions they hadn’t initially realized needed to be asked.
All they manage to get is a name and that they took him out to dinner, and that it was the single best meal that Jesse’s ever had in his life. None of them can figure out if that’s because the food was actually good or if it’s because he’s apparently in love. None of them can really figure anything else out, because Jesse’s completely useless beyond talking about Ala’s hair and eyes and their perfectly charming smile. The way that they laugh and it completely disarms him.
“Force, you’re hopeless,” Hardcase mumbles, knocking on his head. “Nothing in there but how pretty this person is, huh?”
“They’re so kriffing gorgeous,” Jesse says dreamily. “Did you know they make thick fluffy socks with grips on the bottom so you don’t slip and slide on the durasteel?”
“What are you talking about?”
The door slides open again, and Echo stalks in, grumbling under his breath about something that Jesse doesn’t fully hear. He catches a few Huttese swears scattered in his tirade, but he hasn’t got a clue what any of it’s about.
“What’s gotten into you ?” Fives asks, standing from where he’d been sitting on Jesse’s bunk.
Echo doesn’t answer, just grabs his blaster rifle from its spot right beside his bunk and stalks back out again.
“I’ll, um. Go check on him.” Fives follows him out.
The mood’s a little more serious, now, but it’s not enough to fully bring Jesse back down from feeling like he’s floating. He’s not really sure that anything possibly could.
“So, I take it you got their comm code?” Hardcase asks, poking Jesse in the face.
Okay. One thing.
Echo’s mood doesn’t pick up much over the next few cycles, and Jesse still has a pair of incredibly slippery socks and endless durasteel corridors. It’s simple math.
There’s one particularly long stretch of corridor, a straight shot that Captain Rex enjoys using for Punishment Suicides, that Jesse thinks he could slide all the way down. He gathers himself a crowd of brothers, all off duty and with nothing better to do, and he lays out the terms for the bets.
“Whole stipend if you break your nose!” one of them calls, still shiny enough that Jesse can’t immediately place his cadence and buried in the crowd that’s gathered on the edges. There’s a chorus immediately following the declaration, some agreeing and some refusing to give up their own stipends just because Jesse did something stupid.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Jesse holds up his hands, and he isn’t expecting it to work but then it does, everybody gathered quieting down immediately. Is this how the Captain feels? Jesse feels important. “Nobody’s full stipends. I am not an asshole.” This is a lie. “Betting pool. Five credits apiece, go mark how far you think I’ll get.”
“Where are you starting from?” Hardcase calls, down towards the back of the crowd.
Jesse studies the stretch ahead of him. He hasn’t got a clue what the right answer to this is. “About a quarter?”
There’s a general murmuring of concession among the gathered brothers, so that seems like the right answer. Or, more probably, none of them know any better than Jesse does. They disperse, standing along the wall at various points, making sure to stay clear of where Jesse’s aiming to go. Nobody wants to be barrelled over.
“This is stupid,” someone mutters. It’s probably Echo, who this whole thing is kind of for, since Kix isn’t even here. Kix’s absence is something Jesse had carefully orchestrated; if he does manage to plow into the wall and break his nose, he might actually be able to get a bacta strip for it if everybody keeps their mouths shut and nobody tells the medic what actually happened. Jesse has his entire story laid out.
“How many attempts do you get?” Fives asks, standing beside Echo with his arm slung around his batchmate’s shoulder. “Or, actually, wait. We’ll decide.” He raises his voice just enough that it becomes clear that he’s speaking to everybody present. “How many tries do we give him?”
There’s the expected smattering of just one that Jesse would have absolutely taken, but the general consensus seems to be something like three.
“How about this,” Jesse offers, because he’s got this figured out. “Three practice rounds, and then you all get to change around where you think I’ll end up based on how that goes.”
“Nah, you’ll throw the first three!”
“Sounds reasonable to me!”
“Two practice rounds!”
“One practice round!”
“This is so stupid.”
Echo’s really just been in the worst mood since their last shore leave.
“I think three practice rounds is fair,” Fives agrees. “I know for a fact you haven’t had the time to practice, because we’ve been on duty together the whole time you’ve had those socks. You’re not gonna be capable of throwing the practice rounds like that.”
A wave of agreement flows through the crowd.
“Three practice rounds, a reshuffle of bets, and one real run it is!”
Jesse backs up to the wall and starts running.
The socks are much more slippery than he’d accounted for, even when he factored in how much he’d slipped as he walked over here. He makes it two steps before his feet slide out from under him, sending him falling to the ground face first.
Fives, the only brother who chose to stand before what Jesse had named as his starting point, throws up his arms in victory.
Ala had lied to Jesse, or at least had forgotten to warn him that running in the non-grippy socks wasn’t the good idea they’d led him to believe. Get a running start, they’d said, like running in these was going to be easy.
“That’s one!”
Kriff, it is one. Jesse has severely miscalculated. He should have found the time to practice this. He hauls himself to his feet and backs up to the wall again, quickly recalculating and finding a new way to do this.
He goes again, sliding his feet instead of picking them up, and it works. It builds up speed, but not the same as properly running would have but enough that he’ll still be able to launch himself, and he makes it to the quarter point and he slides. Not very far, but progress is progress.
One more.
He needs a way to build up more speed than skating across the surface the way he’d just done, but without falling flat on his face the way running had made him do. He runs a couple steps on his way back to the wall, stumbles, then tries to find a different way to run. Everybody watches him carefully, trying to find a way that will get him launched to the end of the corridor.
He doesn’t want to break his nose, because that would hurt, but it would also be fucking hilarious.
Alright. Alright, last practice. He can do this, he can figure this out.
He tries running again, a more careful run that doesn’t involve quite as much slip-sliding, and he stays on his feet long enough to make it to his launch point, and he makes about half the remaining stretch before he comes to an uneasy stop. He still falls over, but at least it’s on his ass this time.
“That’s three!” There’s a lot of noise and shoving as they all rearrange themselves, vying for the best spots. There’s a surprising amount of people down towards the end, even farther than he’d just gone, and Jesse can’t believe the faith they’re putting in his ability to improve.
Fives, the asshole, stays right where he was. So does Echo, but Jesse doesn’t actually think Echo’s playing the game right, anyway.
The final run starts well enough; Jesse even manages to pick up more speed than the last time, and he figures out how to shift his center of gravity so the initial slide is even faster, and he’s still got plenty of speed as he gets to the midway point he’d made it to on his last attempt. It really does look like he might make it to the far end, even if he doesn’t hit hard enough to hurt himself, when someone turns the corner and places himself directly into Jesse’s path.
Jesse can’t slow down or stop himself, and he plows directly into General Skywalker.
He catches him off guard enough that they both tumble to the ground, and Jesse winces when he hears the dull thunk of his kriffing General’s head banging into the durasteel floor. Jesse is going to be in so much trouble, even without Captain Rex staring down at him with all his Captain-ly disapproval.
“I’m so sorry, sir, I—” Jesse tries to scramble up to his feet to stand at attention, but he yelps as his feet slide back out from under him, unable to gain any kind of traction on the slick floors. “So sorry, I didn’t- I wasn’t—”
“That was so wizard!” General Skywalker cuts him off, getting to his own feet and reaching out to help Jesse catch his balance. “Did you start from the other end of the corridor? You made it so far!”
Jesse will never, no matter how long he’s with the 501st, get over how lenient General Skywalker is.
“Snips, Snips, go get your socks, I wanna do a race. Oh! Oh, I have to go grab mine. Wait here, we’ll be right back!” The General grabs the Commander by her arm and runs off towards the officers’ quarters, leaving Jesse standing in the middle of the corridor with no idea if this counts as not being in trouble.
“Do I even want to know what you were all doing?” Captain Rex asks, in a tone that says that he already knows that he doesn’t want to know but also that someone had better tell him anyway.
“We wanted to see if Jesse could break his nose, sir,” Hardcase explains, which is definitely not the answer that Rex was looking for.
Rex closes his eyes and takes a deep, metering breath.
“Sir, I noticed that some of our brothers have been a little upset lately,” Jesse explains, not wanting to completely call out Echo by name because he knows that Echo wouldn’t appreciate it. “I only wanted to cheer them up.”
Rex sighs. “Well, seeing as the General wasn’t hurt and seems to have no issue with this stunt, I do believe that any disciplinary action would be undermining his authority.”
Jesse will take that.
Okay, Jesse has a plan for the next shore leave on Coruscant, a way to find Ala without them thinking he’s some weird creepy stalker. This is a fine line that he has to walk, and he will do it with its due diligence.
Things he knows about Ala: where they do their grocery shopping, they like fluffy socks, and they can afford to eat at the nice restaurants that don’t even think to ban clones from being allowed in because they’re too nice for clones to be able to afford. None of these are particularly helpful, since the odds that they’ll be getting groceries or socks while Jesse just happens to be on Coruscant are slim to none.
Things that he can use:
…
Nothing.
He doesn’t have anything that he can use, because he’d only had the one day with them and then he’d forgotten to get their comm code.
The next shore leave on Coruscant is three days, and Jesse would love the chance to spend those three days with Ala. And maybe he would, if it weren’t for the fact that he doesn’t have their comm code. So, instead, he has to waste time trying to find them, and then hope that it works out from there.
Jesse and Hardcase drag Echo down to 79’s, because he looks like he’s on the verge of just not leaving the ship for the full three days and that just won’t do, but he’s immediately stolen away by some pretty boy with white-blond hair. Well, stolen might not be entirely accurate, since Jesse and Hardcase both just cheerfully waved him off. This was probably that person that Echo’s been complaining about, and they probably should have done something, but Jesse is of the opinion that the ARC needs to lighten up a little, and this is probably the way to do that.
“He’s gonna be pissed,” Jesse laughs, elbowing Hardcase in the ribs. “Never gonna forgive us.”
“Eh, he’ll forgive us when it works out,” Hardcase shoots back.
Okay, okay, now that Jesse’s gotten drunk and then ditched by Hardcase of all people, he’s got a plan. A plan that’s not at all like Echo’s really annoying friend, since that hasn’t been going particularly well for him, if Echo’s immediate agreement to help is any indication. It’s not what Jesse would call an Echo-approved plan, normally, which probably means that Echo’s just taking whatever excuse he can take to be considered busy.
How unfortunate, then, that Jesse betrays him and lets him be stolen away again.
Oops.
He didn’t really need Echo’s help anyway; it’s more of a Hardcase-style plan when he gets right down to it.
The plan’s not even necessary. Jusse bumps—literally bumps —into Ala at midmorning, something like 0930 local, and kriff they’re just as gorgeous as he remembers.
“Jesse, right?” And they remember him!
Jesse grins, and he’s not going to make that same mistake twice. “Ala! I was hoping to run into you again!” He nudges Hardcase, trying to get him to take the hint and leave. Of course, Hardcase is usually about as subtle as his favorite blaster, so it doesn’t work.
“Were you now?” They seem largely amused. “And what’s the plan now that you’ve found me?”
Jesse hadn’t actually gotten that far. Learn from Echo’s dumb friend’s mistakes. “Well, that depends. What do you want the plan to be?”
Hardcase figures it out eventually. Mainly because Jesse whispers a harsh now’s where you leave, dumbass into his ear, but the point is that he goes off to do whatever it is that Hardcase does when left entirely unattended.
And Ala takes him to the most wonderful places, grabs him by the hand and leads him through the upper levels of Coruscant, showing him all their favorite parts of the city. They buy him lunch again, too, in a place where he gets a bunch of dirty looks just for being a clone, but nobody tries to tell him that he can’t be there, and Jesse’s much too happy to have found Ala again that he can’t bring himself to care about the looks he’s getting.
“You know, I’d never seen one of you without a helmet before that day at the store,” Ala says idly, as they wait for the waiter to come and take their drink order because that’s still a separate thing from a food order. “Didn’t expect the clones to be so cute.”
“Well, you know, you definitely got lucky. I’m obviously the cutest.”
Ala laughs. “Oh, of course. I’ve really hit the jackpot, huh?”
They invite Jesse to stay the night at their apartment. It is a nice apartment, upscale and bigger than he’d known a Coruscanti apartment could get. He still doesn’t know what it is that they do for a living, what their job is that they don’t get much more access to sweets and booze than Jesse does but lets them live somewhere like this and go to places too nice to bother setting anti-clone policies. He isn’t sure that he should ask. There’s probably a reason they haven’t told him yet, some reason they don’t want him to know. He’d imagine that’s the case, anyway.
Their bed is softer than Jesse’s used to. It makes it surprisingly hard to sleep.
Ala rolls over, wraps an arm around Jesse’s waist and pulls him close. “‘S this okay?” they ask sleepily, so close it’s mumbled into Jesse’s shoulder.
“Bed’s real soft,” he whispers back, intertwining his finger’s with Ala’s, where they lay slack on the mattress on his side. “‘M not used to it.”
“Mm, I can help tire you out,” they offer, and it’s a great plan if not for the fact that Ala already seems more than half asleep.
He presses a soft kiss to their hair and mumbles, “I’ll be okay.”
“Mmkay.”
“No, no there’s this great breakfast spot in CoCo, I go there way more often than I’m supposed to, you’ll love it!”
“Is it Dex’s?” Jesse asks, as Ala drags him down to one of the lower levels of the city. “I’ve been to Dex’s.”
“No , it’s not Dex’s. I’ve been told I’m not allowed to go there anymore, actually, not that I ever actually listen. But that’s fine, Dex never tells anybody that I’ve been there.” Jesse can’t imagine why Ala wouldn’t be allowed to go to Dex’s, of all places. Doesn’t know why they aren’t supposed to go to wherever they’re taking him as often as they do, either.
“Almost sounds like you have more rules than I do,” Jesse says, instead of asking who it is that lays the rules out. “All these not supposed to things.”
“I’m on a very strict diet of boring healthy things,” Ala confides, even as they lead him to a diner that isn’t quite as greasy looking as Dex’s but comes very close. “And people get upset with me whenever I cheat on my very strict diet of incredibly boring healthy things.”
“I think this is where boring healthy diets go to die,” Jesse says, glancing around at the interior as they step inside.
“Nah, they’ve got some things I’m allowed to eat. None of them are any good, so steer clear of those, but the fact that those options are available is the only thing that keeps me allowed to come here in the first place.”
It’s more like Dex’s than the other places that Ala’s brought Jesse to, so he feels a little less out of his depth. And the food’s great, more variety than Dex has and so he gets to try something new.
“I have to leave tonight,” Ala tells him, when they’ve finished eating. “Guess we got real lucky to have found each other yesterday, right?”
“Guess we did,” Jesse agrees, and he tries not to be too put out. They’re right, they were lucky to have found each other. They found each other, and now Jesse has a second chance to get their comm code. Speaking of which: “Before I forget again, can we exchange comm codes?”
Ala looks like they deliberate, like they don’t actually know if they want Jesse’s comm code, and Jesse feels something like lightning down his spine at the possibility that he’s somehow managed to completely misread this entire situation.
But then something in their eyes softens, and they smile up at him with their enchanting smile, and they say, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d love to.”
It’s a while later, a few tendays’ worth of cycles, that Jesse makes the dicey decision to go into the recreational room while Captain Rex is in there.
And it’s not that Rex disapproves of anything that goes on in the rec room (or, well, he’d probably disapprove of a lot of the shit that goes on in there), or anything of the sort. It’s just that if Rex is in the rec room, it’s because he’s watching boloball.
He gets agitated when his team isn’t doing well, and nobody wants to be in the same room as an agitated Captain Rex.
But there’s a recreational holopad in the rec room and Jesse wants it. Kriffing shiny bastard beat his high score on one of those dumb games, and that’s Jesse’s high score and he’s proud of it. This is time sensitive and will not wait until the Captain’s boloball game is over. Jesse has done the calculations and has deemed it worth the risk.
Rex ignores him, and is surprisingly easy to ignore in return. Jesse tentatively sits down on the sofa beside him, his favorite place to sit while playing the holopad game, and is only a little startled by the occasional outburst from the Captain right beside him. The sportscasters are easy enough to ignore as well, and Jesse would be surprised if he didn’t emerge from this experience a legend for managing to coexist peacefully with Rex during his game.
“Another stunning play by Jerikko!”
“YES!”
Okay, that one gets him. Jesse startles so bad that he messes up what he’s doing and he loses, he was so close. “Kriff,” he mutters, and he doesn’t glare at his Captain because that would be suicide. He glares at the holoscreen, instead.
Tries to, anyway.
“Wait, wait, wait, that’s—”
There, on the screen, hair mostly tied back but with some loose locks hanging limp and sweaty in their face, is Ala. That’s. That’s definitely Ala.
“Siala Jerikko, best boloball player in the galaxy!” Rex finishes for him, not that Jesse really needed him to.
“Is…Is this live?” Jesse suddenly has some questions, okay, and he’d maybe appreciate some answers, but obviously if Ala is preoccupied, he won’t be able to get those answers.
“Nah, this is from last week,” Rex says, but he’s already distant again, more focused on the game than Jesse. “Only just getting to watch it. Been busy.”
Right. Yeah.
The shiny can have the high score for another cycle or two.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Jesse begins, and then winces, because that’s not exactly a good start to any conversation, and certainly not one that he wants to end well for the both of them.
“Oh, well, that’s reassuring,” Ala mutters, and yeah, okay, Jesse messed that one up.
“No, not—” He sighs. “Did I tell you that my Captain watches boloball in his free time?”
The other end of the line is tensely silent for a few moments. “I don’t believe you mentioned that, no.”
Right, of course not. Jesse had known that the answer to that was no, because there wasn’t exactly a point where it would have come up. Why, why would he have said anything about what his Captain does in his free time? Why would Ala have cared? “I do, for the record, typically steer clear of the rec room when he’s in there, because he’s very…invested. In the outcome. It’s safest to stay away from him, really.”
“So what changed?” They sound more curious than anything else, and Jesse’s just grateful this seems to be working out okay for him.
“Well, there’s this holopad game that I have worked very hard to maintain the high score on, but then some shiny with delusions of grandeur seems to have momentarily surpassed my score. Naturally, I needed to fight back.”
“Naturally.” Now they sound amused. This is going remarkably well. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Jesse shrugs, even though this is an audio-only transmission. “I get the feeling I might know why you didn’t,” he concedes. “It was just. Surprising. To see you on a holoscreen.” Kriffing sexy, too, although a quiet corridor on the Resolute where anybody could walk past is probably not the best place to be having that conversation. “Is…Is this why you looked upset when you thought I might be following you? The first day we met?”
Ala sighs. “Yeah. Yeah, it. It happens fairly frequently, actually. Someone will pretend not to recognize me, and then they follow me all around and keep pretending it’s chance even though it’s obviously not.” They’re silent for a moment before adding, “You were different, though. Very clearly not pretending anything.”
“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don’t give a single fuck about sports.”
Ala laughs. “One of my favorite things about you, actually.”
Jesse doesn’t do research, because that’d be weird and also probably directly counterbalance any favor he’s earned by sheer force of ignorance, but he does do a little bit of poking around the holonet. He’s curious, okay, he’s just learned that the object of his affections is a celebrity, he wants to know how famous they are. Answer: extremely. Like, it’s impressive that Jesse’s never at the very least seen Ala’s face anywhere, famous.
It also looks like Rex wasn’t exaggerating when he said that they were the greatest boloball player in the league, because literally every article and clip that the holonet shows him is some new trickshot or impressive play, and it really just further cements how little he knows about the sport. It’s like every word is in some language that Jesse’s never even heard of, not a single one connects with any kind of meaning in his mind. It’s all very impressive, and Jesse can’t fully appreciate it, but he can appreciate it enough.
“Aw, did the Captain get you roped into his stupid sportsball game while you were busy failing at reclaiming your high score from Slide?” Fives asks, leaning over Jesse’s shoulder to look at the holopad in his hands. “That’s great. Better you than me, honest.”
“Wait, hang on.” Hardcase cranes his neck to look at the pad, too. “Wait, that’s Ala, isn’t it?”
The barracks go deathly silent, the realization settling over its occupants like a heavy fog.
“You’re dating a member of the Captain’s favorite sports team?” Kix asks, and Jesse can’t tell if that’s awe or fear in his voice. “Does he know?”
“No, and we are not telling him that I’ve so much as seen them, alright, we are keeping this under lock and key and we’re burning the box we’re burying it in, do you understand?”
“Your metaphors got a bit jumbled at the end, actually,” Echo points out. “So I’m actually very unclear on what we are and are not telling the Captain.”
That’s banthashit and Echo knows it.
“Tell him about Ala and I’ll tell him about yours,” Jesse snaps, jabbing a finger at Echo threateningly. It’s a low blow, given that Echo doesn't actually want anything to do with the light-haired man following him around on shore leaves, but he is absolutely not above following through.
Echo stares at him for a few seconds before something in his eyes darkens, and the next thing Jesse knows, he’s being tackled off the bunk and onto the ground. Nobody tries to save him from the angry ARC suddenly trying to kill him, which he thinks is mostly uncalled for.
“Okay, okay, I get it, Echo, kriff, get off,” he wheezes, as his wrist slams into the metal frame of the bunk.
“Alright, enough,” Kix declares, and Fives spurs into motion and hauls Echo off of him. “Are you dead?”
“In spite of his best efforts, no,” Jesse grumbles, getting to his feet while cradling his now sore wrist to his chest. “Ala likes me because I didn’t recognize them. I still don’t know a thing about their career, none of it makes any sense to me. May as well be in binary for as much as I got from it. If we tell the Captain, then they lose that anonymity with me. I can’t do that to them.”
“Yeah, well, nobody’s telling the Captain anyway,” Kix reminds them all, “because there’s only one person in this room that doesn’t have a case against him for illegal relationships, and that one person is Hardcase, who has a case against him for just about anything else.”
Echo starts for Kix next, but Fives gets a good grip on him to stop that disaster in its tracks. “A case ,” Fives repeats. “In the world of revenge, that’s all that’s needed.”
A lot of things start to click into place, now that Jesse’s aware that Ala’s a professional athlete.
Things like their diet, and the massive apartment, and the workout equipment that was in their apartment that Jesse had noticed but hadn’t asked about. Their hesitance, when he’d asked to exchange comm codes, even. A long con that they hadn’t really thought Jesse had been pulling, but probably couldn’t help but feel that small bit of doubt all the same.
Why they’re off Coruscant just as often as he is.
“Usually, we travel to different planets for the games,” they explain to him one cycle. “But with the war on, the whole league decided it was best to host all matches and events on Coruscant. The Guard can protect the stadium, and nobody gets stuck behind a Separatist blockade or anything like that. Even still, we don't actually train on Coruscant, because there isn't enough space for every team in the league to practice enough.”
“What would happen if a team did get trapped behind Seppies?” Jesse asks, and it’s hard enough to be on the lookout for Rex while he talks on a comm, but it’s even weirder that he’s more paranoid about Ala’s secret than his own.
“Best case, match is postponed. Worst case is a forfeit. Or, well, guess it’s worst case for the team trapped behind the blockade. Best case for the team that wins by default.”
“Well, the good news is, if your team did manage to get caught behind a Separatist blockade, I believe the Captain would singlehandedly take it down out of sheer rage,” Jesse offers. That would be a sight to see.
“Your Captain sounds great. Hate to meet him someday.” A pause, then, “I’m almost afraid to ask, but you’re not actually serious about that, are you?”
“Oh, no, I fully believe that he would. Unsanctioned, even. We could be on the complete other side of the galaxy and he’d be there in an instant.” Jesse grins. “Have I told you that the official 501st color is blue? It’s a shade that bears a striking resemblance to the color of your team’s uniform.”
“That’s…almost a little terrifying, actually.”
“Finally gonna be back on Coruscant,” Jesse mumbles into his comm, a stolen moment on his way to the fresher after a double shift. “Am I gonna see you there?”
“I think I should be able to fit you into my crazy schedule.”
Jesse doesn’t get dragged all around Coruscant this time; Ala doesn’t have that kind of time, even though they both wish that they did.
“I have something for you, though! It’s back at my apartment, come on!”
It’s a pair of fluffy socks, the same shade of blue as the paint on Jesse’s armor, the same blue as Ala’s uniform. They have little grippy dots on the bottom.