Chapter Text
Isaac doesn’t let Fox so much as get out of bed, the day after the Chancellor dies. As soon as Fox agrees to what Isaac had called a lazy day, primarily because Stitches had threatened to break both of Fox’s legs if he caught wind of him being outside of his apartment (not that Fox believes that Stitches would actually follow through, but he does believe that the medic would certainly make him regret testing his luck), Isaac had pressed a quick kiss to the corner of Fox’s mouth and gotten up to make breakfast. You stay right there, he’d said, leaving the door open so that they could talk through it.
“Hey, how scared should I be of Stitches today?” Isaac asks, popping his head in through the door. “Because I know what you’ll do if I do what he says, so I’m trying to figure out what he’ll do if I don’t.”
“Nothing to you,” Fox assures him. “Nobody can threaten you, remember?”
Isaac laughs. “I think he’s already come close,” he admits. “I just got a message from him, his exact words were don’t you fucking dare let Fox have any caf today. There’s like, a threat of a threat, somewhere in that, I think.”
It’s bad enough Stitches is refusing to let Fox leave his own fucking apartment following the death of the Chancellor of the Republic (the fact that Fox is the one that tripped him down the stairs notwithstanding), it’s another entirely to try and remotely refuse to let him have any caf. “What Stitches doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“Stitches is very good at finding things out, as I recall,” Isaac points out. But he grins and disappears, and the smell of caf floats into the bedroom a couple minutes later anyway.
Sure enough, Isaac comes back into the bedroom, a plate stacked high with sausages and sweetbreads in one hand and a plate with two cups of caf in the other.
“I put a little bit of cream in yours,” Isaac says, handing him his cup. “Considering how much you liked my caf the other day.”
The other day, like shopping with Isaac doesn’t feel like an entire lifetime ago. Like so much hasn’t changed in just two days. “Thank you.” It’s nowhere as sweet as whatever Isaac had ordered at the shop, not that Fox had expected it to be, but it’s still far better than the black caf that Fox has been drinking this whole time. He still can’t believe he never bothered to try it sweetened or with cream before, or even thought to put some cocoa in it like Cody does. “So you decided to risk Stitches’ wrath?”
Isaac shrugs, taking a sip of his own caf. “It has occurred to me that I don’t think you’ve gone a day without caf since you started drinking it,” he says, setting his cup on the bedside table. “And the Guard’s probably similar, which means that none of you are unfortunate enough to have ever gotten a headache from a distinct lack of caf.”
As a matter of fact, Fox has gotten headaches from plenty of sources, but he thinks that Isaac must be right. He’s never gone without caf for long enough to have felt any kind of pain from it. “Is that better or worse than a Thorn headache?”
“I’m willing to bet worse,” Isaac says. “But only because a Thorn headache can be treated by getting rid of Thorn. Caffeine headaches are evil and do not simply go away with the addition of caffeine.”
Fox grimaces into his cup. Stitches definitely doesn’t know about that, or at least doesn’t realize the severity. He has trouble believing the medic would demand anything that would cause Fox more pain.
“He’ll probably forgive you, then,” he assures Isaac. Not, he thinks, that Isaac would need an excuse anyway. Stitches would probably forgive him for just about anything.
Really, Fox would forgive him for just about anything. He’d have probably even forgiven him if he’d agreed to refuse to give him any caf at all.
After breakfast, Isaac still doesn't let Fox get out of bed. He gets up himself for just as long as it takes to take the dishes to his sink and rinse them off, before he crawls back into bed with him, datapad in hand.
They end up watching something on the holonet, not that Fox really knows what they’re actually watching. It’s some kind of holofilm, something nonsensical and ridiculous that Isaac seems to enjoy. It’s far from the first time that Fox and Isaac have watched a holofilm together, not even the first time they’ve watched one while Isaac has his arms wrapped around Fox’s waist and his head resting on his shoulder, but it is the first time that Fox isn’t multitasking, doing paperwork on his own datapads.
“Is there any reason we can’t be watching this on the holoscreen out in the front room?” Fox asks, maybe about two-thirds of the way through the film.
“Sofa’s bad for lazy days,” Isaac says, like that explains anything. “Been meaning to fix that. Haven’t gotten around to it.”
They’re about halfway through their second holofilm when the front door chimes, alerting them to a visitor. Isaac seems halfway back to sleep already, even though he hasn’t been awake for all that long. He grumbles something into Fox’s side before lifting his head and checking his comm.
“Nobody said they’re coming over,” he says, rubbing his eyes.
One of Fox’s brothers, then. They’re the only ones who ever just show up. “Probably Stitches,” he figures. “Coming to make sure I’m still in the apartment.”
Isaac grins up at him. “Or he figured out I gave you caf,” he suggests playfully. “Maybe he’s here to threaten me.”
Fox scoffs. “You know what, you’ve managed to keep me from so much as getting out of bed this morning, I think he might forgive you for giving me a cup of caf.” Interestingly enough, Isaac hasn’t done much more than insist on being the one to get up to make breakfast and put the dishes in the sink; if Fox were to say that he’d rather move to the front room and the sofa that is, apparently, no good for lazy days, Isaac would probably agree.
Isaac hums. “Good point,” he concedes. “Would you like me to go get rid of him?”
Fox is willing to let Stitches wait, make him comm Fox and demand to know if he’s left the apartment or not, but the door chimes again and Isaac gets to his feet anyway. He comes back a moment later, sticking his head in through the door. “It’s Cody!”
Probably checking in on Fox, then, considering the last they saw each other, Fox had needed an escort home so that he didn’t have a panic attack on the concourse somewhere. “No.”
Isaac giggles. “He said it’s important,” he offers.
“No.”
Unfortunately, it looks like Isaac has already invited Cody into the apartment. His face appears over Isaac’s shoulder, looking far too amused. “What happened to you?” he asks, taking in the full image of Fox, still in Isaac’s soft woven pajamas, still in bed with Isaac’s datapad still playing whatever holofilm they’d been watching. Isaac’s seen it enough times, apparently, that he didn’t need to pause it.
“We’re having a lazy day,” Fox explains. Cody seems to find the prospect hilarious, because he snorts, loud and ugly. “Stitches threatened to break both my legs if I left the apartment.”
Cody nods. “Right. Because you only agreed to spend the entire day in bed with your husband because of the threat of violence.”
“What do you want, Cody?”
Isaac steps further into the bedroom, clearly content that Fox isn’t going to try to kick his brother out of the apartment. Immediately, now that Cody isn’t hiding behind Isaac, Fox notices that Cody isn’t wearing his normal bracer on his left arm. In fact, he’s not even wearing a bracer that’s fully compatible with a trooper’s kit. In fact, it looks suspiciously like the bracer that his Jedi General normally wears.
“Cody. Is there something you want to tell me?” he asks, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow at his brother.
“As a matter of fact, Fox, yes, there is something I wanted to tell you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Is it about that bracer on your arm that I’ve definitely seen on your General’s arm?”
Cody crosses his own arms. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “Are you still in shock? Did you hit your head on something? Is that why you’re still in bed at almost eleven-hundred?”
Deflecting. Cody’s well aware of what trading bracers means; the earliest Command batches like theirs had all been taught some of the Mandalorian customs, still close enough to Prime that Prime had felt like they needed to know. His refusal to acknowledge what it means tells Fox that he’s simply in denial over the whole thing.
“I’m talking about Kenobi’s bracer on your arm, dumbass.” Now that Fox is thinking about it, Cody was probably wearing Kenobi’s bracer yesterday, too, and he’d been so preoccupied by the fact that he’d tripped Palpatine down the stairs that he hadn’t noticed.
“This is my bracer,” Cody argues. Trying to play the same trick he’d pulled on 17 when they were Cadets. Had somehow managed to con Fox into it a couple times, like when he’d stolen Rex from his own batch. “The General still has both of his bracers.”
“Both of his bracers?” Fox repeats. “Or one of his and one of yours?”
“They’re both my bracers, Fox,” Cody repeats. “I do not know what’s so hard about this to understand.”
“It’s got the elbow guard attached to it, Cody, it isn’t a part of a standard kit, who the fuck do you think you’re kidding?”
Isaac climbs back into bed beside Fox. “Is…Sorry, I don’t understand, what would it mean if it was Master Kenobi’s bracer?” he asks, settling back into Fox’s side.
“It’s a Mandalorian wedding custom,” Fox explains, at the same time as Cody says, “It doesn’t matter, because it’s my bracer.”
Isaac hums. “Well, congratulations. Or not. Is it supposed to be a secret because he’s a Jedi or are you just having fun pretending not to know what your brother’s talking about?”
Cody scowls. “Do you want to know what I’m doing here or not? Because I’ve got some news regarding the war that I had assumed you’d like to hear from a brother and not from the holonet.”
“Are you about to ruin my lazy day, Cody? Because I’d really rather you just left me to it.”
“Grievous is dead,” Cody tells him. “And Dooku’s been captured. The war’s pretty much over. Only thing we’re waiting on is an official surrender from the Separatist Senate.”
The war’s over. It’s over and the Republic won.
All of Fox’s brothers are going to come back to Coruscant, where they’ll stay until they decide to leave. And Fox has spent the entirety of this war trying not to think about all of his brothers, scattered across the galaxy and fighting just to survive, never mind trying to win a war that only ever seemed to feel more and more hopeless. Fox has seen them off at the end of so many shore leaves wondering if they’d ever make it back, while he’s been stuck on fucking Coruscant, babysitting Senators and getting his chip activated from the so called leader of the Republic.
And now his brothers are coming back, and Fox doesn’t have to wonder how much longer before they get picked off by the neverending waves of clankers.
“Over?” Isaac repeats. “Just…Just like that?”
“Palpatine was the Sith lord,” Cody explains. “He was playing both sides, luring us into traps. Now that he’s not feeding our movements to the Separatist army anymore, taking down the other two primary leaders for the army was pretty easy. Now that all the major leaders are out, there’s not really much of an army left.” He grins at Fox. “You’re a war hero, Commander Fox. Wouldn’t have done this without you.”
“The old bitch fell.” If Cody wants to pretend that he’s not wearing his General’s bracer on his left arm, then Fox won’t admit that he tripped the Chancellor down the stairs. “I’m not a war hero because I wasn’t able to save him from a loose runner.”
Isaac snorts. Cody rolls his eyes.
“Alright, I’ll leave the two of you to your…lazy day.” He waves lazily as he turns to go. “I can see myself out.”
They’re just starting their third holofilm when Isaac’s comm chimes with an incoming transmission. Isaac groans as he sits up, reaching out for his comm. He’d been well on his way to falling asleep with his head on Fox’s lap, too.
“Oh, stars, I’m in trouble,” Isaac mumbles, looking down at the incoming code.
“You said Organa gave you the day off,” Fox reminds him. He doesn’t know why Isaac would be in trouble with the Senator, but he hasn’t got a clue who else he could possibly be in trouble with.
“What? No, it’s not the Senator,” Isaac tells him, shifting so that he’s sitting up more properly.
Fox is about to ask Isaac who is on the other end of the comm when Isaac answers it, and a hologram of Isaac’s parents appears in front of them. They don’t look upset in the way that Isaac seems to have been dreading, but they definitely don’t look particularly happy, either. “Hi Mom, hi Dad,” Isaac says, already bracing himself for whatever he thinks is coming. “I was going to comm you this afternoon. We’re taking a lazy day because it’s been a long week.”
“Oh, a lazy day?” Isaac’s mother repeats. “That sounds lovely!” She doesn’t particularly sound enthusiastic.
Hurt. That’s the kind of upset that Fox would call them. They look hurt.
It’s been a long week. It’s been a long week, and Isaac hasn’t had the chance to talk to his parents, not with how busy Organa’s had to keep him and the time difference between Coruscant and Alderaan. He’d had the day off two days ago, sure, but they’d spent most of the day at the shop, wandering through aisles and aisles of clothes that Fox hadn’t even bought.
And Isaac hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell them in person anyway, because Fox hadn’t given Isaac any advance warning before deciding that he wanted to get married right there in the Senate building, with the camdroids still broadcasting to the masses. And they’d have been watching, because they’ve known that Fox and Isaac have been together for most of the time that they’ve been together.
“I’m sorry I haven’t had the chance to tell you, yet,” Isaac says, and he certainly looks sorry. Sorry and immensely guilty. Isaac adores his parents, he tells them everything. It had been hard enough for him not to tell them about the chips, well aware that It wasn’t a good idea to tell anyone not immediately involved in the whole ordeal about it. Not having the chance to talk to them about being married has obviously hit him harder than Fox had realized.
“It’s my fault,” Fox admits, because it kind of, a little bit, is. “It was all sort of sudden.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Isaac’s mom assures him. “You can’t be expected to be responsible for remembering to give us a comm once or twice a week!”
“And we know how busy you must be, son,” Isaac’s father continues. “Keeping all the Senators safe after the bill passed can’t have been easy, right?”
“And the whole mess with the Chancellor,” his mother adds. “Oh, no wonder they let you stay home, that must have been so terrifying for you.”
Right. Terrifying. “He only fell down some stairs. We weren’t attacked or anything.”
Isaac’s parents give him matching sympathetic looks. “You were still there when it happened,” his father points out. “And there must have been an investigation following.”
Right. It isn’t public knowledge, yet, that Palpatine was a Sith lord that had been feeding Republic intel to the Separatists. Of course there would have been an investigation, if Fox hadn’t immediately gotten Cody and his Jedi.
“It was a very short inquest,” he says carefully. “We record everything while we’re on duty, it was pretty clear that he tripped.” And also, he had two red lightsabers, and the Jedi didn’t particularly care after that how he had died.
“Either way,” his mother says, “you can’t blame yourself just because Isaac didn’t comm us.” But she softens as she turns back to her son. “I do understand that it’s been a long week, honey, but you know it’s never too late to talk to us.”
“Especially not when it’s something like this,” his father adds. “We get that you couldn’t tell us ahead of time, but we were almost certainly still awake when you came home.”
“Or when you woke up in the morning.”
Isaac nods. “Yeah, I. I know, I promise I know. But everything got so hectic, and I hate having to rush through talking with you and I wanted to make sure we had time and I just haven’t had any of that.”
“Oh, we don’t like it any more than you do,” his mother agrees. “We miss you so much, honey.”
“You know,” Fox says, shifting around and wrapping an arm around Isaac’s waist. “We’ve been talking about going to Alderaan when I’m allowed to leave Coruscant.”
Isaac whips his head to look at him. “Yeah?”
“Newlyweds are typically expected to take a honeymoon,” Isaac’s father points out. “I’m sure it’ll take some time to get the time off organized, since it is rather last minute, but we’d be happy to have you.”
Stitches would almost definitely throw some kind of party, if Fox decided to take a proper vacation. “We’ll get right to work on that,” he says. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing it.” He’s only seen Kamino and Coruscant, really, and he’s heard so much about Alderaan and its greenery and mild summers that he can’t help but wish that he’d gotten the chance to visit earlier.
“We’re looking forward to getting to meet you in person,” Isaac’s mother says.
Fox smiles, rests his chin against Isaac’s shoulder as the conversation moves on to more inconsequential things, Isaac’s parents' neighbors and things that Fox can’t fully follow along with. At some point, Isaac’s hand finds its way back into Fox’s hair, absentmindedly playing with the loose curls until Fox has to fight to keep his eyes open.
Curled loosely around his husband, the beginnings of a plan for Fox’s first vacation settled into place, Fox lets himself drift off, the vibrations in Isaac’s chest as he talks lulling him off to sleep almost as much as the hand in his hair.
The rest of his life can be this, spending days off in bed with Isaac and watching holofilms and drifting off to an easy sleep because he doesn’t have anywhere else he needs to be today.
For maybe the first time in his life, Fox is looking forward to his future.