Work Text:
The senator for the Morlani system shook his scaly fist in Commander Fox’s faceplate. “This is outrageous! I’m a chairing member of the mining committee, which sits in five minutes, and I’m late enough as it is!”
“Your timekeeping is your own concern, sir. But this platform is for the exclusive use of the sitting senator from Pantora.”
“I’ve been parking my speeder here every Taungsday for weeks!”
“It’s been noticed.” The man’s inability to respect Senator Chuchi’s polite refusals to join him for happy hour at the Cosmix Club had also come to Fox’s attention. “It stops today.”
“And who are you? Captain of the Stupid Rules Brigade?”
Fox was hoping he’d ask. He loved introducing himself. “I’m the Marshal Commander of the Republic Guard. And besides threatening me, you are violating three distinct Federal District bylaws. Would you like me to enumerate them for you, or do you have a committee to chair?”
Shock and indignation swilled across the senator’s green face. He’d obviously not counted on the clone army he’d voted for having any jurisdiction over his own selfish lawlessness. “I will be advising the Adjutant General to give you more pressing assignments than handing out parking tickets.”
“Go right ahead. In the meantime, I’m going to have to insist that you relocate your vehicle to your assigned platform.”
The senator fancied himself some kind of hot rod and took pride in motoring around the Federal District in a souped-up S&K turbo-speeder; if he had adopted the usual senatorial practice of employing a driver, he might have been well inside by now. Instead he’d have to personally fly a tedious designated pattern back around the Annex complex.
Both men turned back to their own vehicles. The senator made his displeasure known in his hasty departure. Fox was forced to slap a hand over his copy of Bike & Racer, open on the seat of his own flash 74-Z, to prevent it from being blown away in the powerfully rude engine wash.
With some private glee, Fox comm’d Floren, already stationed on the Morlani platform, and told him to prepare a ticket for anti-social use of a class-3 vehicle.
. . . . . . . . .
“Commander Fox, ma’am,” came the assertive introduction as the clone officer marched into Riyo’s sunlit office. This was followed by thunderous glances at the aides milling around the room. “You wished to see me.”
“Yes, thank you for coming, Commander.” Riyo looked meaningfully at Jere and Sibi, a silent prompt that they might want to take their caf break now. Then she gave Fox what she hoped was a welcoming smile.
He maintained his post at a deferential distance from her desk, helmet under his arm and chin somewhere north of natural.
“Will you take tea?” she asked.
“No thank you, ma’am. I understand you wish to discuss some element of my service.”
Riyo replaced the kettle on the marbled tray. “Straight to business, then? Very well.” She hadn’t known him long, but she understood Fox to be a stern, withering sort of person. He had as little time for flowery nothings as a sapling stuck on a rock face. He was never late for a committee, rather obviously resenting even the five minutes necessary to get bums in seats; and he had a standing policy to return protection requests unread if anyone among your staff had lapsed vetting certificates or outstanding Federal District fines.
Befriending him would be an uphill sledge. Nevertheless Riyo intended to try.
She came around her desk and turned the chairs for a tête-a-tête. “Please be seated.”
The instruction loosened her visitor somewhat: Fox approached, placed his helmet on the carpet, and sat down with a refined drape of his skirt’s tails around his thighs so as not to crease the leatheris. None of this flamboyant flicking like a concert musician, nor the clumsy disregard of a youth in his father’s borrowed suit. Riyo’s private opinion of him continued to climb.
“You must allow me to thank you for the great kindness you did in driving off Senator Fjillip,” Riyo began. She raised a hand, anticipating Fox’s gallant dismissal of the business. “I learned of it, though you were of course discretion itself. And as I intend to make my gratitude material but not awkward, I need your advice.”
“Ma’am?”
“What can I give you? What do you need?” These questions came out with a consciousness of their being very stupid. Perhaps she ought to have properly rehearsed with Jere. Riyo knew what a clone officer needed: he needed the liberty to walk out of that room and never trouble himself with petty Federal feuds again. She hoped Fox would be generous enough to indulge her need for propriety—as she saw it anyway.
“I understand this may be highly irregular,” she went on, feeling herself bungling this, “… to be thanked—”
“Are we still talking about the parking dispute?”
Riyo laughed weakly and almost threw up her hands. “Well I can’t exactly repay you for all the times you’ve saved my life, can I?” If she had to hear just doing my job, ma’am one more time, she just might scream.
Thankfully Fox chuckled too. A smile surfaced across his face, a white cresting of friendly feeling above unknowable depths of character. “You know that’s my favorite part of the week, ma’am,” he said.
“But yes, that’s my concern!” Riyo employed a dramatic whisper: “It happens so frequently that I’m beginning to think I’ve offended the gods. I’ve too long neglected the gold-giving and they have blown curse after curse down upon my head.”
“I see … so it’s a Pantoran thing.”
“Indeed so, yes!” Riyo was relieved to have stumbled upon this excuse, this cultural backstop not even a Marshal Commander could withstand forever. “As I sense we will get nowhere weighing up the value of my life in shellings and pearls, your modesty must suffer my thanks for this smaller service instead. It might save me considerable distress, and save you quite a lot of trouble.”
“Your thanks really is more than enough. I promise. It’s … rare,” Fox said.
“I am sorry for it. And only more determined to bestow something upon you.”
There—a warm flush of the cheek, a bashful dip of the head. Riyo could tell she had flustered the commander and she wasn’t sorry for it. Stars and glimmerflies, he was handsome. She also knew the best gifts were often the ones you didn’t know to ask for.
Of course, she explained to him, she would suggest nothing immoderate. She had given this some thought. But he needn’t settle for a trifle. Perhaps a new pair of ceremonial gloves? The issued synth-hide was dreadful and would fall to pieces in a month; calf-skin would wear longer and no one impertinent enough to question how he’d gotten them would notice the difference. She could also source any number of delicacies—weren’t his men were extremely fond of sweets? She would not condone tobac products, but wines of any vintage and spirits from any system would be no trouble to acquire, provided he had someplace private to enjoy them. In the more experiential line, the Pantoran Embassy had a box at the theatre and a suite at Uscru Stadium, and she kept a wine locker at the Skysitter, too often unsampled—Senator Amidala had recently made reservations there for some of his brother officers and it had hardly been remarked upon …
Riyo noticed Fox regarding her with some gentle dismay and her ideas soon petered out.
They were back to silence.
“Have I gone too fast?” she asked, feeling suddenly shy.
“No,” said Fox. “I’m just sorry you put yourself to so much … angst about this.” He braced against his knees as if preparing to stand and leave. “Truly, ma’am, your kind notice is enough.”
Riyo pinned her hand upon his, too full of embarrassment to mind compounding for more. “Please, Commander. Is there nothing you will have? Nothing at all? Remember, I am on an errand from the night sky and all Pantora’s ancient worthies.”
“I don’t know your gods that well. They might resent my choice.”
“Let me worry about them,” Riyo replied. She sat back and released his hand. “You need only name your reward and Sibi will arrange everything.”
Fox likewise relaxed back into his chair—as far as he could anyway; he was a broad man in thick plates, and it rather forced him to perch like a narglatch in a travelling circus. But his legs lost their strictly decorous attitude and amusement began to ripple in the corners of his broad mouth as he stared outside, clearly working himself up to say something. “If you insist … but I don’t think your staff will need to get involved.”
Riyo urged him to go on. She didn’t believe him capable of any real infamy even as heat raced up her neck.
A similar self-consciousness seemed to overcome Fox. It was through lamblike lashes that he looked at her and finally named his wish.
“Well, ma’am … I’d just like a curl of your pretty hair.”
Later Fox would say it was the way her tattoos seemed to glow from the flush in her purpling cheeks that made him want to flatter her again and again, and then forevermore.
All Riyo could think—if thinking it could be called—was that one of the most senior soldiers in the Republic wanted to go home with a piece of her in his pocket.
A curl of her hair? Wherever had he gotten that idea? It was an elegant solution, admittedly: no god could sniff at such a gift, nor any real lady refuse to clear her debt by such a means. Riyo wondered if her guest wasn’t better read than he let on.
But only an admirer would make such a request.
And godspeed to the girl who could say no.
Riyo smiled and stood. To be admired by such a man was a prospect most interesting; she wondered she hadn’t indulged in the possibility before. She produced a pair of dainty scissors from her desk, the sort used for loose threads and tack stitching.
She sat down again and held them out, hoping that Fox could fit even his fingertips through the pearled handles. It wouldn’t be quite the thing if she had to do this herself. “Please take what you’d like.”
Fox seemed surprised to meet no resistance. His face was pure slack-jawed wonderment. After a moment’s hesitation, he wrestled off his gloves and accepted the scissors. “You’re very trusting, ma’am,” he remarked with a grunt.
“Do take what you like,” Riyo repeated. She draped both braided braids over her shoulders for his inspection. “It’s not one of my wigs and my dressing droid loves a challenge.”
“No—I mean … ” Fox mimed, as mildly as possible, a cut across his throat.
“Oh. Oh! I hadn’t considered … well I suppose that’s my personal safety training null and voided for the year.”
He smirked. “I won’t mention it if you don’t.”
“Agreed.”
Fox reached between his legs and pulled his chair forward, bringing him very near to her. “And I know it’s your real hair,” he added, his tone tipped with the faintest reproof.
Riyo felt herself grow warmer still. How could she have missed this officer’s notice of her? As she sat with her knees between his, with his face but inches away, it likewise became impossible for her to ignore the fine detail of him. The creaking bulk of his plated body; the shards of light glinting off the hastily polished imperfections; the dusting of freckles across his brown cheeks; the pink scar that cleaved through one of his eyebrows, agate-like in its striations of colour; even the warm yet minty waft of his measured breathing, nothing like the rank bucket breath she’d been primed to expect.
Riyo had almost forgotten to breathe herself when Fox finally scooped one of her thick braids into his hand. He fanned and stroked the ends between his bare thumb and forefinger, apparently lost in thought for some time.
Then he slid his palm up her hair until his fingertips grazed her nape. There were some tendrils there that inevitably escaped an up-do or a wig. It appeared Fox meant to have one.
Riyo’s eyelids fluttered at his touch, so close to the quick drumbeat of her pulse. She forced herself to stare over his shoulder at the plaster peaswans above the door to the kitchenette. Just a normal day at the office, she told herself. Though if Jere or Sibi walked in, she was sure her ink would melt straight from her face into a puddle at Fox’s boots.
Fox brushed her braid out of the way. A painless tug told Riyo he had the strands he wanted. He brought the scissors beneath her ear. “If you’ll permit me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she almost gasped, trusting him implicitly. Like an otta pup knows the water will give way to her fall.
Riyo had been squeezed against Fox’s armor before, even pinned beneath his body, as the commander protected her in moments of acute danger. But nothing compared to the intimacy of this moment, as her skin buzzed beneath the warm proximity of his hand and as her very blood seemed to sing for his touch.
It was over too soon. A whisper of steel against her neck, a quiet schick of the blades, and Fox was finished.
He pulled away and regarded the pale wisps he’d cut with a fond expression.
It was not at all what Riyo would’ve given him, so downy and colourless and likely to be blown away by the flap of a glimmerfly’s wing. But if he’d wanted something subtly and authentically her, down to the perfume that clung by atoms to the strands, he could not have chosen better.
His strong fist closed around his prize. He politely bowed his head. “Thank you, ma’am. I should probably get going.”
Riyo was incapable of making a very rational farewell just then. Blood above, she was so aflutter she couldn’t even look at him. In her distraction, she noticed Fox’s gloves on her desk. How was he going to manage those and his helmet and her hair? He could hardly walk out of her office barehanded—how the interns would talk!
“Wait! One moment.”
Riyo stood suddenly—Fox had to save his own chair from toppling backwards in his reflexive quickness to do the same—and she scurried behind her desk. She flicked on the wax warmer and found a sheet of linen flimsi to fold like Papu had taught her, for collecting sippór petals and wildflower seeds. Her heartbeat calmed over the task and her thoughts ordered themselves. She offered the open pouch across the desk. “Perhaps put it in here?”
Fox pinched the curl together and placed it inside.
Once sealed with the official Crescent of Sirkku, Riyo returned it to him. “There. Now officially presented to Provost Marshal Commander Fox by the Pantoran Delegation, with esteem and gratitude.”
Fox flipped the packet in his hands a few times. Then he stashed it out of sight down the lip of his white chest plate. “Thank you, ma’am. Will your gods be satisfied, do you think?”
“Are you?”
“Yes. But I—” Fox stopped. He seemed to recollect his helmet, picked it up, and kept looking down as if to find what he meant to say in the swirls of the carpet. Nervously he scratched the back of his neck, a picture of boyishness. Riyo wondered how she’d ever lost sight of the young man in the marshal commander.
She came back around her desk, hoping to look less officious. Less like Senator Chuchi and more like Riyo, the girl whose hair he now held against his heart. “Go on?” she prompted.
“Well I’d like to come back for that cup of tea, if you’d receive me.”
Gods, he had a smile even Grandmama would spoon-feed. Riyo beamed back at him. “I’d be very disappointed if you didn’t! My door is always open.”
Fox gave a wry chuckle. “Yeah, about that … I need to have a word with your staff.”
“Oh dear …”
Riyo rather liked Fox too much now to let him loose upon her unsuspecting aides.
She was about to tell him so when he leaned in and added with the most winsome grin yet, “Wouldn’t want to find Senator Fjillip sitting in my seat.”