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You had never seen Crosshair so relaxed. He lay stretched out in the sun, his long, toned body on display to feast your eyes on. So very rarely did you get a chance to see him relaxed in only his blacks, much less without most of his clothing. Oh, he still had his trusty Firepuncher by his side. Cross was too paranoid to part with that. Yet he was the one who decided the two of you needed this vacation in the first place.
A private beach on Naboo saw just you and him on a three-day shore leave from the Empire. You’d both earned it, as squad mates and partners. Cross was your best friend. At least, you considered him to be. You weren’t sure if he thought the same way as you. Truth be told, you’d like it if there was more between the two of you, but you took orders from him so didn’t think that would ever be likely.
He didn’t even seem to be stealing any glances at you in your bikini as you stretched out at his side.
“Cross?” you asked, and he just responded with a lazy, “Hmmm?”
“Can you put this sunscreen on my back? I can’t reach.”
“Sure, doll. Hand it over.”
You did so, and he sat upright, grabbing the bottle from you. Reaching back, you untied your bikini top and let the loose ends hang as you faced away from him, your bum in the warm sand sticking in your crack.
Cross quickly looked away. “Put it back on,” he said tightly.
“I just thought you could slather it on this way for even coverage.”
“I said put it back on,” he repeated, more loudly and demanding this time.
“Fine, sorry. I just don’t wanna burn if the straps slip while I’m swimming or something.”
You tied it up and he handed the bottle back to you over your shoulder. “I changed my mind. You’re just going to have to do without.”
“Come on, man. Don’t be that way.”
“Don’t be what way?”
“Afraid of some skin. Shit. We’ve seen each other naked in medical more than once. What’s the big deal?” You had him there. He couldn’t argue with that.
This was somehow different. It was voluntary. If he touched your skin when it wasn’t absolutely necessary, he was giving in to a deep, base desire he had no further interest in looking at for proprieties sake. Still, he couldn’t refuse your challenge and grabbed the bottle, squirting a bunch noisily onto his hands and wiping it messily all over your back.
“Come on. At least spread it evenly.”
He spent a little more time rubbing his fingers over your fair skin, up and down the toned muscles in your back, admiring the slope of your shoulder blades. Before his mind could go too far into the gutter he withdrew. “This shit is slimy. Next time pick some different sunscreen.”
He wiped the sunscreen on a towel off his hands and laid back out again.
“Just because you don’t burn doesn’t mean the rest of us have the luxury of finding some high-end shit that sprinkles on evenly without a mess.”
“Ah, can it,” he told you good-naturedly.
You wondered why he refused in the first place but put the thought out of your head.
“I’m going swimming.”
“Don’t let the sharks get you,” he teased.
“There are no sharks out here.”
“No but I read something about a powerful riptide current if you go out too deep, so stay close to shore and don’t wade in past your shoulders.”
“Alright, I won’t. See you in a few.”
He just hummed again, glad for some peace and quiet.
You splashed around in the private bay, having a ball in the warm, clear waters, chasing fish with your hands and marveling at the colorful shells that lined the shore. Maybe you’d take one back with you for a memento.
You were wading about waist-deep when you stepped on something sharp. Immediately you yelped and picked up your foot, seeing that something had cut into the bottom and sliced a nice gash in the bottom of your foot. Hopping on one foot, you felt yourself drifting out a little way until you were up to your neck, and suddenly you hit the drop-off, forcing you to let go of your foot so you could try and swim toward shore.
Crosshair heard your cry and immediately sat up, shielding his eyes from the bright sun overhead. He saw you swimming out further than you should have been. Running to the shoreline, he shouted, “You need to come in, it’s not safe that far out!”
Either you couldn’t hear him or weren’t listening because it appeared as if you were swimming further and further out in the bay. Or maybe you were being dragged out by a rip current. Racing back to his Firepuncher, he aimed the scope at you and realized your arms were flailing with traces of red surrounding you. Something was definitely wrong.
A burst of fear tangled in his heart, and he froze for a moment. What if he couldn’t save you? What if he never saw you again? There was no one else around to help. With renewed determination, he made a few adjustments and set a grappling line in your direction. Your body had gone limp and was now simply being rapidly pulled out to sea.
He aimed the scope, overshot by a small amount, and fired. Right on target, the grappler took hold of your still form and he pulled you in hand over hand, to shore. You were face down and there was blood everywhere. Where in the world were you bleeding from?
First, he had to make sure you were breathing. When he checked for a heartbeat, it was thready but there. You had no breathing ingoing or outgoing, however, so he began maneuvers on you. It took a minute before you spluttered and puked up water, rolling onto your side and gasping for breath. He pounded you on the back and made sure you didn’t inhale sand as you caught your wind.
“Where are you bleeding?” he asked as soon as he thought you could answer him and you pointed down, weakly lifting your right foot. He was on it in a second, pulling the medkit he’d stowed away in the supplies out of its place and opening it to take care of the gash. It took him several minutes and was painful as fuck, but he ended up putting seventeen stitches in the bottom of your foot. You had lost some blood and he needed to get you to a med center for a possible transfusion, so he radioed the nearest emergency trauma center for a pickup at the private beach on his frequency.
“Help is on the way. You’re gonna be okay, kid.”
“I thought I was going to die. I would have missed you,” you admitted to him and smiled.
His heart nearly broke at the joy that filled his heart and the terror of imagining life without you. It wasn’t until you were almost gone that he realized how much you meant to him. The word love never entered his mind, but something just as strong took root as he mustered the courage to tell you what you meant to him in so many words. As his fingers drew across your brow a tender look and misty-eyed countenance came over him and he stuttered, “I – I almost th-thought I’d lost you-you too. I don’t know what I’d have done without you annoying me all the time.”
That was about as good as a love confession as you were going to get out of Crosshair because the med transport was inbound and about to land a few meters away on the sand.
“I had to come back just to be a pain in your ass. Who else is gonna put up with you the way I do?” you joked back, and he just cracked that tiny, lopsided grin he saved for the rarest of occasions. No one else got to see Cross like this except for you. You knew it was special and treasured the show of emotion.
“Pack up our shit. Head back to the beach house and meet me at the med center. I’ll catch you up and we can have dinner at the local cantina.”
“Gotta get the sand outta your crack first,” he chided, and you laughed weakly.
“You just like looking at my crack,” you shot back at him, and he didn’t dispute it, simply gave some information and instructions to the medics and watched them whisk you away. Then he began packing up your things to take back to the beach house.
The vacation almost ended in tragedy, but thankfully was chalked up as one more misadventure for him and his squad mate, and best friend, he amended in his mind. Although he’d never admit it aloud under the pain of torture.
And perhaps you meant something more in the depths of his grumpy, cold heart. Only he would ever truly know.