Chapter Text
As soon as Rex walks away, Yara sees something in Zihv's posture shift.
"Z?" she asks softly and touches his back. She's a full foot shorter than him, even with the extra inch or so the peak of her lekku add, so the highest she can easily reach is his lower back.
He tenses under her touch. "Yara," he says softly and turns to her. "It's nothing."
Yara raises one brow, the pale pink spot there quirking into a stranger oblong shape. "It doesn't seem like nothing. Every time we talk to Captain Rex, you end up... Weird."
Zihv wraps one muscular arm around her shoulders, steering her towards the tapcafe. "Nothing weird about me, dear," he says in that lofty, lyrical voice of his. Yara snorts and tosses a long lekku over her shoulder as Zihv bumps their hips together-- Well, his hip. Her waist.
"Stop, stop," Yara laughs and squeezes Zihv again. "I'm not trying to pry, I just want to make sure it won't impact how we work with him," she says. It's mostly the truth-- She cares that Zihv seems twitchy around the officer, but for a couple of reasons. It would suck if he had any issue with the team leading any of his rebellion missions, but also… Zihv is her friend. Since they ended up on the very end of the alphabetized list for rations right when Yara managed to get to the Rebellion, they’ve been relatively close, and when your friend is as relaxed as Zihv tends to be, things like this stand out more than ever.
She looks up at Zihv and sees the tail end of a deep sadness fade off his face. When he looks down to meet her eyes, he’s smiling again, but Yara can tell. She feels that same sadness all too often— When she thinks of Ryloth, her parents— She sees it in her mentor, Captain Syndulla, all the time.
“It won’t,” Zihv promises and it comes out ringing true. Yara nods and squeezes his side again.
“Alright. Let’s go get a drink, then.”
-
Zihv drinks more than he normally does, that night. Typically, when he and Yara and whoever else was joining them that night hit the tapcafe, Zihv would imbibe just enough to get a little louder, maybe take up a bit more space than usual.
Tonight, he was quiet. After three drinks, he turned to Yara and grabbed her wrist.
“It’s not Rex.”
“Mmm?” Yara murmurs and turns to Zihv. They’re tucked away in a small corner of the bar— The others they were drinking with have retired by now, but Yara doesn’t have anything to do tomorrow, and Zihv is clearly drinking to think— or not think.
“It’s not Rex. It’s…” Zihv scrubs a hand over his face, messing up his normally impeccable mustache. “He was in the 501st. There was an ARC trooper, one of his brothers, just under him. His name was Echo.”
Yara shifts closer to him on the bunk. She doesn’t speak, and Zihv doesn’t seem to expect her to. The larger man smells like mirialan whiskey and cologne.
“I loved him,” Zihv finally says after a long pause. “I never told him, but I did. Back maybe a decade ago, I met him. We talked— Fucked. I gave him my number. I never gave anyone my number.”
Zihv lets out a humorless laugh and rests his cheek against Yara’s lekku.
“He died on some top secret mission. It took his brothers weeks to tell me— They knew about me, I know they did. Echo told me they teased him about me,” he says quietly. “When Fives finally sent me a holo, it was pre-recorded. He tried to give the message, the I’m-sorry-your-loved-one-died script… But he broke down. Started crying.”
Zihv takes a long sip of his drink. When he speaks again, his voice is muffled in Yara’s skin.
“I don’t blame him, or Rex. They lost a brother the same way I lost my… My Echo.” Soft brown hair cascades down over Yara’s bare skin, her lekku draped over her shoulder to avoid from being sat on in the booth. “He’s never brought it up, and I don’t plan on it either, it’s just…”
“Hard to forget, when they share a face,” Yara offers, and Zihv nods.
"He changed my life. I didn't think he would, when I took him back to my apartment that first night, but... He was so..." Zihv trails off and presses his nose against Yara's skin. "You don't want to hear about my dead ex."
Yara huffs a breath and shifts so her legs are draped over Zihv's lap, the two of them curled in the dimly lit corner booth of the small, dingy tapcafe.
"To be honest, Zihv," she says, "I'd actually really like to."
Zihv looks at her, tugs her lekku out from where it was trapped between their legs, and sets it gently on her thigh. "Why?"
"You loved him, I love you," Yara says and reaches out to smooth his mustache down. "In a platonic, you're my gay brother kind of way." Zihv snorts. "Tell me about Echo."
Zihv smiles. It isn't the dazzling, showman's smile he puts on for the rest of the rebellion, or the toothy, predatory smile he shows Stormtroopers and Imperial sympathizers. It's a small, honest smile, and Yara thinks it looks nice on him.
"The first night we met, he had just been promoted," Zihv begins.
They don't leave the tapcafe until the sun begins to stream through the windows, painting them both gold in the early morning light.