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tropes-and-tales · 5 months

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Mending Fences

Day 15: Virginity (Rhett Abbott x F!Reader)

(For the 2023 Kinktober event that I created on my own because I am boring and basic and am trying to keep it simple this year...found here!)

CW: Childhood friends; yee-haw angst; idiots in love; pining; smut (PiV, protected and unprotected); 18+ only.

Word Count: 6954

AN: This is a sequel to this, and it was requested for Kinktober by an anonymous type!

AN2: Believe me when I say this is not beta read and has not been edited at all. Shitty first drafts, all. Shitty first drafts foisted into publication.

Rhett doesn’t see you again for three years.

Wabang remains largely the same. Maria leaves town and Rhett despairs to have missed his chance. He throws himself into the ranch, into rodeo. He drinks. He scraps with the Tillersons.

Perry and Rebecca make him an uncle, which delights him. Royal makes his disappointment in his younger son no secret, which hurts Rhett deeper than he’ll admit to anyone.

Three years. Cecilia mentions you from time to time. When she runs into your uncle in town, she gets the news, which she conveys over the dinner table to the rest of the Abbotts. By the time it trickles down to Rhett, it’s just facts: how you like college, how you’re getting good grades.

Rhett doesn’t think his mother knows about your falling out. He thinks your uncle can guess at it: when Rhett sees the man in town, he’s met with a stony stare, curt words.

He hates the way he left it with you. Every time he thinks about it, his stomach twists and cramps at the wash of shame that courses through him. There are many times during those three years apart that he thinks of you, that he has the idle thought to reach out. He has your number, your email. He could reach out. He could apologize.

He always thinks of you when he’s working on the lower field of the Abbott Ranch. It butts against your family’s ranch, a quarter mile of shared fencing, and part of the reason why his mother and yours had been such good friends—and why you and Rhett had been childhood friends too. There’s a section of fencing with a gap perfectly sized for a child’s body, and both you and Rhett had squeezed through it plenty of times as you went to each other’s houses.

He doesn’t know why your friendship faded. You used to be inseparable as children, the best of friends. You used to play in the Abbott barn with Rhett until Royal shooed you both away. Rhett used to sleep beside you in a tent in your backyard, your mother within earshot and ready to usher you inside if either of you lost your nerve after a night of telling each other ghost stories.

And when your parents died, Rhett did everything he could to help, in his own childish way: he clowned around to try and coax a smile from you, he offered awkward hugs when you cried. Once, he even baked you cookies (with Cecilia’s help).

The drifting apart came in middle school, he guesses. That’s when the boys and girls started to separate. That’s when Perry made sly jokes about you, called you Rhett’s little girlfriend, and Rhett bristled at the taunt while you looked hurt at Rhett’s bristling. You spent less time together: Rhett fell in with the other boys who drove their trucks outside of town for bonfire parties on the range and dreamed of rodeo and buckle bunnies while you turned inward, studied harder, started dreaming of life outside of Wabang.

When he works on the Abbott ranch’s lower field, he sees the gap in the fencing and marvels that he was ever small enough to squeeze through it…and yet it gives him a pang to see it, to remember those golden years of his childhood he spent with you.

He could reach out. He could apologize. He could, after an opening salvo, express his own confusion and frustration about why you had asked him to take your virginity in the first place. He guesses that you trust him—or trusted him—but he can’t pretend it didn’t unnerve him all the same.

He could reach out, but he doesn’t.

Rhett doesn’t see you again for three years.

-----

It comes with no warning, the next time he sees you. There’s been no chatter about you returning to Wabang for the summer. You’ve spent other summers at college, working internships and taking classes, so Rhett didn’t expect to see you this summer.

Rhett sees you in the town proper, just like that, like it’s just another day. Which it is, except there you are: standing outside of a restaurant, balancing a flat box of pizza in one hand while a six-pack of beer dangles from the other hand. You’ve been cornered by one of the older Wabang residents, the mother of one of your high school classmates, and judging by the expression on your face, Rhett guesses you’re calculating how to extricate yourself from the situation.

He's idling in his truck and only has a moment to study you. You look exactly the same—same face, same hair—yet you seem completely different. It takes Rhett a long moment to realize why; he doesn’t piece it together until he’s pulled away and is driving towards the ranch.

You seem different because you seem taller—because you’re standing straight. Perfect posture, shoulders back. Rhett’s never seen you stand like that before: as a teenager, you had a way of walking bent over a little, your shoulders rounded over and in like you were trying to pull in on yourself.

-----

He catches glimpses of you here and there. He hears people mention you—college girl back from the great wider world—and Rhett can’t quite account for the feelings your name or face stir up in him. Sometimes it makes him duck his head, slink around guilty, like others could read those terrible words his said to you the last time he saw you.

Pity-fucking the town orphan, he had said. The words are seared into his memory, as permanent as any tattoo.

Other times, though, the mention of your name or a glimpse of you fills him with a lightness, an airy feeling he remembers from your childhood together. Like all he has to do is slip through that gap in the fencing to go find you, to take your hand in his for some adventure.

-----

It’s funny how some of the stringent cliques of high school soften once everyone graduates. Rhett still hangs out with his friends from then, since none of them have left Wabang, but interlopers come and go and are no worse for wear for it.

The bonfires still occur out on the range but there’s less stridency about who does and doesn’t belong, who was and wasn’t invited.

You never went to a bonfire in high school. You weren’t exactly friendless back then, but you hung with similarly quiet and studious girls. Girls who spent their Friday nights sleeping over at each other’s houses, watching movies and dreaming about lives far from Wabang. But one early summer night, you turn up at the bonfire, in tow with Billy Tillerson and his girlfriend and a handful of other friends.

That riot of feelings. Guilt and hope in equal measure. The beer Rhett has already drank doesn’t help. He’s just tipsy enough, his thoughts just fuzzy and sluggish enough that when you turn up in the circle of firelight, he openly gapes at you, and it draws your attention.

Three years after that terrible fucking night at the hotel, Rhett Abbott is finally looking you square in the eye.

Pity-fucking the town orphan, his memory hisses at him, and a sick wave of shame washes through him.

But if you’re remembering the terrible thing he said, Rhett can’t tell. You stare at him in the flickering firelight, but then you tip your head at him, a scant nod, and the corners of your lips curve into a semblance of a smile.

It’s been three years, so it’s better than nothing.

-----

He sees you again in the next few weeks, here and there. At the bar, around town. Each time, you exchange nods of recognition but little else.

Cecilia gets wind of you being back for the summer, and she spends a Saturday morning baking up a double batch of your favorite cookies—pumpkin chocolate chip. She underbakes them a shade so they stay soft in the middle, just as you and Rhett always liked them best when you were kids, and then she thrusts the foil-covered platter into her younger son’s hands with the directive to deliver them to you.

Maybe Rhett never gave his mother enough credit. Cecilia seems to know about the rift between you after all.

“Life’s too short to stay mad,” she tells him before she sends him on his way.

“Who says anyone’s mad?”

She rolls her eyes, a universal expression that all mothers seem to have that says I’m your mother, you’re not pulling a fast one on me.

“Her mom and I were best friends, but we had our spats. We never let it turn into a cold war, though. Talk it out, yell if you have to, but work through it.” She pats his shoulder, and her eyes have a film of tears as she remembers her best friend, your mother, dead now for these long years. “Life’s too short.”

-----

Something about his mother’s words make Rhett take the old path to your house—through the lower field, to the gap in the shared fencing, though he has to climb over the fence now that he’s too big to squeeze through the narrow space between the posts.

Each step towards your farmhouse brings back a million memories. There’s the overgrown bank of Rocky Mountain iris. Rhett remembers how you cut a bouquet of them (uneven, stems weeping sap) for when his childhood dog died and was buried behind the Abbott barn. There’s a wide fire pit where your father used to patiently supervise as the two of you caught marshmallows on fire for s'mores. There’s the flat patch of prairie where your parents pitched a small pup-tent that you and Rhett used to sleep in during warm summer nights.

It baffles him that he used to sleep right beside you, tucked in his Power Rangers sleeping bag while you slept in your Sailor Moon one beside him. It baffles him how childhood can be so completely innocent, and how it can slip away in an instant.

The house looks the same from the outside, and when Rhett knocks at the back door, he finds that he’s…not excited, exactly. But not dreading it. You were his best friend, and his mother is right. Life is too short.

Your uncle is the one who answers the door, and the cool expression on his face pulls Rhett up short. But he says nothing other than “c’mon in, then,” and once Rhett steps into the house, your uncle hollers for you somewhere deeper in the home. Tells you that you have a visitor and that he’s heading into town for supplies.

Then Rhett hears the familiar cadence of you running down the stairs, and it tugs at something in his chest—you ran down those stairs the same way as a child, hitting the top three carefully, then rushing down the rest. You must meet your uncle near the front door because he hears the two of you murmuring, but he can’t make out the words. Then the door slamming, the roar of your uncle’s truck’s engine, and then you’re standing in front of him, the same semblance of a smile from the bonfire.

*****

The two of you sit outside near the fire pit, the platter of cookies between you. You have no idea what bit Rhett’s ass, but after the barest bit of small talk (“How’s it going?” and “How’s college?”), he immediately launches into the big shit.

“I hate how we left it,” he starts. “That night. You know.”

You bite back a snort, and you pluck another cookie from the platter, break it in half, pop it in your mouth. You chew slowly, give yourself time for that old wash of shame to course through you, then ebb away. It still makes your face burn hot, three years later. Every time the memory surfaces, you shove it down, but not before you remember the mortification of getting cold feet, of standing in front of him half naked while he called you the town orphan.

“Yeah,” you reply.

“I should have never said it.”

You shrug. “S’fine.”

“It’s not.” He sighs, takes his ball cap off and swipes his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I shoulda said it sooner. Should have apologized that same night.”

You glance over at him. You take in his profile: his jaw twitches at how tight he must be clenching it, and his blue eyes are fixed out in the field, the stretch of land between your ranch and his. He’s so damned handsome, but you often forget the fact because you still think of him as just the boy next door, your childhood best friend, and you didn’t think of him in terms of “handsome” or not back then.

You shift your gaze back to your shoes. “I should have apologized too. I should have never put you in that position in the first place.” A beat, and you add, softer, “I’m sorry, Rhett.”

You hear movement beside you and feel his eyes on you. “You don’t have to apologize for that.” He sounds surprised, and it makes you turn and look him in the eyes for the first time since you sat down.

“I do. It was awkward, and I made it more awkward, and it was stupid.” You shake your head, huff in frustration to remember the girl you’d been three years ago. Not that long, really, but you’ve grown up a lot since then. “I was an idiot.”

Rhett chances a smile. “You’re a lot of things, but idiot isn’t one of them.”

“Yeah, but it was stupid to ask you.”

His smile slips a bit; he leans back a shade. “It wasn’t stupid—”

“I mean, I put you in a weird position. That’s all I mean. And it was stupid for me to be so worried about it. It’ll happen how it happens. We aren’t…I mean, we weren’t…” You trail off, huff in frustration again. “We used to be best friends.”

He sighs too. “Yeah, I know.”

“And then we weren’t.”

“I know.”

“And I guess I was getting nervous about leaving Wabang, and nervous about going away to college, and I missed my friend and had this…this problem, I guess, so…” You hold up your hands, helpless, and it makes Rhett smile again.

“Not everything is a problem that you need to solve,” he says, and he sways towards you, elbows you in the side just like he used to do.

You laugh a little. “That was, though.”

“It really wasn’t.”

“Says the guy who never had that problem.”

He laughs, elbows you lightly again. “You give me too much credit.”

That makes you remember the tenor of the situation three years ago. High school. Rhett pining over Maria. She left Wabang, you heard.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him now. “I heard Maria left town.”

He shrugs but doesn’t say anything about it. He reaches out for another cookie and eats it, licks a crumb off his thumb.

“Anyway, I accept your apology, and I’m sorry I made things so weird,” you add.

He chuckles, elbows you a third time. “I accept your apology, and I’m sorry I made things fucking awful.”

You elbow him back finally, the answer to his outreach, the old call and response from your childhood. “I missed you, you know. In high school and in college both.”

“I missed you too,” he replies, and it feels good, like you’ve excised some old wound together, and now you can perhaps be friends again.

*****

The two of you don’t go all the way back to childhood, but you build something else. Tentative at first, stilted moments of conversation when you see each other in the wild, but each time feels a little easier.

You’re interning with the town veterinary clinic, and you join the old doctor as he makes house calls from ranch to ranch. You help steady horses while he vaccinates them. You smear on paste for ringworm, hold his instruments when he cleans a hoof abscess. You help him birth breech cattle; you stroke the muzzle of an old dog when it’s put to sleep.

Rhett sees you when you join the vet at the Abbott ranch one day. Royal’s favorite mare has a bad back hoof, and it makes Rhett smile to see you so professional. You question Royal about the horse’s diet; you question the vet about what he thinks. The vet asks you for your opinion, and you pause before you answer, look off into the distance thoughtfully before you tell him that a supplement of copper and zinc will help.

Cecilia invites you in afterwards for lemonade, and you accept gratefully. The two of you chat, and Rhett is left as a third wheel so he gets to look his fill of you. You seem more…comfortable with yourself. He noticed it that first day when he saw you again in Wabang. You sit up straight; you don’t curl in on yourself like you want to be invisible. He remembers you from high school, how you always seemed to be mid-cringe…and it reminds him of that night in the hotel, how you had cringed away from him, shirtless as he got frustrated because you had been nervous.

He knows he apologized and you apologized and it should all be behind you, but it still makes him feel queasy with shame. Pity-fucking the town orphan.

“Your mom would be proud,” Cecilia tells you, and you duck your head, mumble something, and just like that, you’re that high school girl again. It makes the queasy wash of shame cede to a wave of protectiveness in Rhett.

Then you stand up and thank her for the lemonade, and she makes you promise to join them for dinner soon. When you nod at Rhett, you try to step past him but he blocks your path.

“Hug tax,” he says, but it makes you burst into laughter. Your mom used to do that: block yours (and his, when he visited) path, demanded hugs as payment for passage.

“I smell like horse manure and sweat, Rhett Abbott.”

“I guarantee you I smell worse, but rules are rules.” He holds his arms open, and you laugh again, step into them for a moment. When he whispers “you stink” into your ear, it earns him a squawk of outrage and a pinch to his side, but you laugh the whole way back to your truck.

-----

You join them for dinner a few nights later. You get to meet the newest Abbotts, Rebecca and Amy, and you break up the general tension that radiates off of the dour Royal like a miasma.

The dinner is largely uneventful. Rhett catches you matching faces across the table at Amy, which makes the little girl laugh. Cecilia asks about your years at college so far, and Perry jokingly asks if you’ve had any boyfriends since Rhett.

“No, none,” you reply simply, but it makes Rhett think. It makes the gears start to turn. He always assumed your so-called problem was solved while you were away, your virginity shed in some dorm room or apartment or at a party. But he searches back to that conversation you had when he brought you the peace-offering cookies. What did you say as you stammered out your own apology?

It’ll happen how it happens.

Present tense, not past.

-----

He verifies it over that same weekend. There’s another bonfire. You turn up with the same crew as before—apparently you’re friendly with Billy Tillerson’s girlfriend. Now that you and Rhett are back on good terms, he approaches you halfway through the night, and the two of you peel off a little separate from the rest.

“Big fan of the Tillersons then?” he asks, his tone mock-disgusted. You hear the underlying playfulness and laugh.

“There’s a certain brand loyalty there, yeah.”

Rhett pulls a face, which makes you elbow him. “Why?”

“Well, their cousin Drew took me to the winter formal sophomore year.”

“So?”

Another elbow to his side. “He was my first kiss.”

“Gross.”

You laugh again. “It could have been worse. He popped a mint beforehand, at least.”

Rhett grunts at that, but he lets the moment lie for a beat before he asks, in a tone he hopes is casual, “did Drew Tillerson help you with your other problem too?”

You laugh again, but there’s less merriment in it. “Negative, Ghost Rider.”

Maybe he shouldn’t push it, but he’s had a few shots of Fireball chased by plenty of beer, so he plunges head-first. “Someone at college, then?”

That doesn’t elicit a laugh. “No,” you reply, and now there’s an edge of tension in your voice. A tread lightly edge. Which…Rhett Abbott rarely treads lightly—he more often charges headfirst like a bull, and that’s exactly what he does now.

“Someone I know?”

“No.” He glances at you, catches your narrowed eyes fixed on the fire. “Leave it, Rhett.”

He doesn’t leave it. He plunges head first. “So it’s still a problem?”

It must be. You must still be a virgin because you’re so discomfited. You obviously hear judgement in his voice—judgement that doesn’t exist, of course—because you hike your shoulders up around your ears and hunch away from him. You look so much like your high school self, suddenly insecure and cringing, and you mumble something about it not being a problem for you, so it shouldn’t be a problem for anyone else, and then you duck away to go find someone else to talk to.

-----

The two of you hang out through the summer. He works at the ranch and you have your internship, but you fall into the habit of spending the evenings together. The weekends. You go to the rodeo with him, watch from the stands. Sometimes you sit with Perry and Rebecca when they come, and Perry makes sly comments to Rhett afterwards. He calls you his girlfriend, just as he had teased when you were kids, but it hits Rhett different now.

Things with you feel easy. Low stakes. You’re friends again, and you slowly open up to each other. Rhett tells you a little about Royal, their difficult relationship that has only grown more strained the older Rhett has gotten. You talk about college, how lonely it can be since you are so focused on your studies. Veterinary school is more competitive than med school, you tell him, so how can you make time for friends?

The corollary is how can you make time for love? How can you make time to lose your virginity?

When you asked him to take your virginity three years ago, he had been confused and a little uncomfortable about he. He couldn’t understand why you’d ask him, but with three years’ worth of added life experience, Rhett guesses that you asked because you trust him. Wabang isn’t that big of a town. There’s a dearth of available men you could have asked, especially back in high school.

Three years later, the memory makes a million emotions flit through Rhett. A nostalgia for when life was slightly easier back then. Shame that he had said what he did, sadness that he didn’t reach out sooner, that he let the bad feelings lie for three years.

But you had trusted him, even back then, so he wonders if you trust him now. Would you ask him again, if you weren’t so embarrassed? What if that evening in the hotel room had gone differently? What if, instead of getting frustrated with how nervous you were, he had been a gentler man—what if he had handed you your shirt, pulled you into a hug, laid down on the bed with you and watched a movie instead? What if you had fallen asleep together instead, just like when you were kids?

He has to wonder if that disastrous evening has made your virginity an even bigger deal. That you had a plan to lose it, and that plan had gone horribly, so now it’s more of an issue.

Pity-fucking the town orphan. The memory stings. There were so many kinder things he could have said.

Well, he has a semblance of a second chance now. He sees you nearly every day. You laugh with him again, have long chats. Maybe he can do it over again, better the second time around.

-----

He’s the one who asks, the second time around.

The two of you are in his truck, driving back from Wabang. Your truck is in the shop, so Rhett picked you up from work, but he takes the long way home. You fiddle with the radio, scan through the static until you find the old country station out of Jackson. There’s an old Loretta Lynn song playing that you hum along to, and you seem to be in a good mood, so Rhett plunges headfirst into it.

“If you wanted to try again,” he says, and his voice is rough at the edges. “I was gonna offer…”

He trails off, and you stop humming along, and Loretta finishes her song, gives way to Merle Haggard singing about how his mama tried.

“Rhett,” is all you say, but his name is both a sigh and a warning.

“I’m just saying.” He swallows, tightens his grip on the steering wheel. “I messed up before. Ruined it.” He glances over at you, but your face is turned away from him. You’re looking out the window at the Wyoming dusk as the sun sets.

“Rhett, c’mon.” Less a warning now, more a plea.

“I want to,” is all he says, and you don’t reply. You don’t say anything else other than to murmur your thanks for the ride when he drops you off, and he doesn’t talk to you again until you call him days later and say, “okay.”

-----

Three years later, he does so much better.

He keeps it simple this time. He remembers all those sleepovers in the pup tent, your parents within earshot of any nighttime terrors. He remembers sleeping beside you, waking up to dawn bleeding in through the nylon of the tent, dew coating everything when your mom would unzip the little door and tell you that there were chocolate chip pancakes ready for the two of you.

You’ve never been a high maintenance sort of girl. You’ve always loved the wilderness around Wabang, the endless sky and wild storms and purple mountain ranges in the distance. Where better than to do this than under the night sky, out on the range?

Rhett lays down a thick bedroll in the bed of his truck, then covers it with blankets. It’s a banner night in Wyoming: cool but not cold, the warmth of the summer day bleeding away to a comfortable coolness. The bugs are few. The sky is a velvety blue-black above you, the stars a scatter of diamonds tossed across it. The faintest band of orange glows in the west, the last bit of sunlight before it’s full dark.

You’re just as nervous as before, but Rhett keeps his head this time. He’s not a boy masquerading as a man this time; he’s older, smarter, has more experience. Three years ago, Rhett only had a handful of sexual encounters to his repertoire—a handful of disappointing moments, drunken rendezvous with girls from high school, a couple of flings. Nothing deep or meaningful.

He smooths his hands over your arms, then reaches up and cups your face. He studies you a moment, takes in the unsteady way you’re breathing. You’re his oldest and dearest friend, and he feels a weird twinge in his chest. He chalks it up to nervousness on his part, but he’ll wonder later if perhaps it is love.

“Okay?” he asks, and you nod.

He bends his head and kisses you, and it’s the same as before. You’re tentative with each other, but you warm up to him quickly: you kiss him back, tease at him with a shy little sweep of your tongue, and when he opens his mouth to deepen the kiss, you’re right there—sighing against him, sinking your teeth lightly into his lower lip before you suck against it.

You must have kissed, at least, in college. You’re better at it now. The thought should encourage him—he won’t be your only experience—but he feels an odd wash of jealousy. He pictures you making out with someone better than him, better looking and smarter and on track to being more successful.

He takes it as slow as you need. He lets you set the pace. He strips you out of your clothing, and he allows you to strip him out of his, and you don’t cringe from him this time. It’s likely because it’s dark outside; Rhett can’t see much, but you feel amazing under his searching hands, soft and warm. When he trails his fingertips over your bare skin, he feels how you break out in goosebumps, and he marvels at how sensitive you are.

Rhett’s learned a lot in the intervening years. He’s no longer an eighteen year-old fumbling through sexual interludes. He has a better understanding of women. He spends a long moment stretched out beside you in the bed of his truck, working his fingers into your tight heat, feeling how wet you get as he eases you into this. He pushes one finger, then a second. He scissors them inside you, feels the slick muscles of your core push back against him.

“Just relax,” he whispers against your neck, and he kisses you there. He feels your pulse under his lips, and he nuzzles against you, takes in the scent of your skin. A moment later, he feels you relax a fraction, the tight grip on his fingers released just a bit.

He can feel you relax more as he kisses you, as he fingers you. You’re warming up to the moment, pushing past whatever insecurities you have. The setting helps, he thinks. It’s not some anonymous hotel room with beige carpeting and the faint scent of old secondhand smoke. It’s outside, the open range of your home that you love so much. A waning moon and a million stars burn above you. It must be a million times more magical than a three-star hotel by the interstate exit.

It's certainly better for him. It takes him no time at all to get hard, even if he’s nervous. You’re his oldest, dearest friend, and he’s never thought of you as a woman, really. He’s never considered you as a sexual being, so it’s a revelation to see your naked body under the faint moonlight. It’s a revelation to touch you, to cup your breasts and to put his lips against your pebbled nipples, to grind his cock against your bare hip to relieve the tension that coils tight and hot in his belly.

Rhett stretches out on the bed roll. He fumbles for his discarded jeans, finds the foil packet. He scrambles to roll a condom onto himself, and then he encourages you to take charge, to take your first time into your own hands.

“You’re in charge,” he murmurs. He takes your hand, threads his fingers through yours. He tugs you towards him until your face is pressed near his, and he brushes his lips against yours. “Just like ridin’ a horse.”

You snort softly. “Am I gonna need a riding helmet for this?”

He grins up at you. “I won’t buck you off.”

He guides you as you straddle him, grasps the softness of your hips as you settle over him. He grips the base of his cock, gives himself a couple of strokes, then holds himself steady as you lower yourself, slide against his length, and even through the latex he can feel how warm you are.

Then you reach down and take him in hand, and it should feel weird, his best friend wrapping her fingers around his cock, but it doesn’t, and Rhett doesn’t question why because you may be a virgin but you understand the mechanics of this, and you notch the blunt head of his cock at your entrance. When you start to slowly lower yourself onto him, every blessed thought drains out of his head, and every bit of his attention focuses on where he’s entering you—the unbearably tight grip you have, the way your hands settle on his chest as you brace yourself. You take it slow—so goddamned slow—stilling, taking a breath, then pushing onwards.

When you’re settled onto him, when you’re sitting flush against him, Rhett breathes out a harsh, punched-out breath, and he asks if you’re okay. His voice is rough. His throat feels too dry. It feels unreal. His oldest, dearest friend, the girl he used make s’mores with and trade ghost stories with…you’re naked, you’re nodding at his question, you’re sitting on him, and his cock is buried in your depths. He’s just taken your virginity, and his throat feels too dry and too tight, and his brain struggles to think of the perfect thing to say to you, but your body starts to move above him and he never has a chance to say it.

Your rhythm is clumsy at first, too fast, too jerky. Rhett grasps your waist and guides you gently. He sets you in a slower, more even rhythm; you ride him steadily and you make the cutest little whimpers each time to settle back on him. Each time you do, the coil of tension in his lower belly tightens more, and Rhett breathes carefully to avoid coming too soon.

He slips one hand from your hip and reaches to where you’re joined to him. He finds your clit, slick and swollen, and he traces an infinity symbol there, around and ‘round with his thumb that makes those cute whimpers turn into outright moans. He senses that you’re holding back, but you’re in the middle of nowhere.

“No need to be quiet,” he tells you. “Lemme hear it, baby.”

You moan louder at that, the command or the sweet-talking nickname or both, and he notices that you start to pick up the pace, riding him faster, so he does the same—he rubs against your clit harder, faster, because he feels his own orgasm coming up fast at him. His balls feel heavy and taut, and he’s so damned close—

“C’mon, let go,” he growls, but his sedate passivity crumbles. He sits up underneath you, jerks a squeal from you as he sits up and wraps his arms around you. He pulls you closer to him, and the change in position grants him another quarter-inch into you, and it makes the base of his cock grind against your clit with each bounce in his lap.

“Let go,” he orders; he mumbles it against your lips. “I wanna feel you come, baby. Wanna feel you come for the first time,” he says, but when you open your mouth to respond, he kisses you, shoves his tongue into your panting mouth, licks against you as you whimper from deep in your throat.

Then he feels it. He feels it—the way your orgasm breaks through you, the hard snap of your hips as you arch against him, as your cunt grips him: your breasts pressed against his bare chest, your arms tight around his shoulders. You drop your head on his shoulder, and he feels your mouth there. You stifle the sounds of your pleasure against him, and he’d admonish you, but as your orgasm tears through you, he feels the sharp bite of your teeth into his skin, and it unlocks a kink Rhett never knew he had because the sting of pain is what makes the tension in him snap. He groans out your name, manages a shit—fuck—baby, then he comes too, ropes of his cum spilling in the condom as you tremble in his arms.

-----

In the end, Rhett Abbott claims your first time that night on the range, under the stars.

He gets your second time too, later that same night: him on top of you, you with your legs wrapped around him, making good use of the spare condom he brought along.

He gets your third time as well, the next day. It’s a quick moment, a bona fide quickie in the Abbott barn, the scent of clean hay and sweat as he bends you over the railing of an empty horse stall. He pulls out in plenty of time, pants as you turn around to grasp him and jerk him off the rest of the way, his cum spilling over your warm palm.

And your fourth time. He sneaks into your bedroom, and though your uncle is out of town for the night, Rhett still pretends you need to be quiet: he spoons you from behind, hikes your leg over his and slides into you. He breathes quietly as he fucks you gently, and he clasps a hand over your mouth as you come, and when your teeth nip into his calloused palm, he groans and comes too.

The next morning, your fifth time as you sit on the kitchen counter and wrap your legs around his ass as he drives into you.

Rhett never examines his feelings around it. When he’s alone—baling hay, fixing fences along the ranch parameter—he doesn’t let his thoughts ruminate over you too much. There’s a truth there, buried under all the sexual interludes and underneath all the shared history and hurt, but he doesn’t excavate it.

He only lets the facts stand. You’re his oldest, dearest friend. You are sexually compatible. End of story.

*****

You have plans to meet Rhett in town, at the bar. You’ve had a long day at your job, deworming a flock of sheep, and you smell terrible, so you stop home to shower and change your clothes. You stare at your closet critically; you’ve suffered for lack of a mother in your formative years. You don’t quite understand how to be a woman—you know there’s different lengths of skirts, for example, that work best depending on one’s height or shoes, but you’re damned if you know what those rules are.

Still, you want to look nice. You want to look nice for Rhett. Under torture, you’d probably admit it, but you can barely even admit it to yourself: you’re in love with him. You have been for a while. You loved him when you were children in that vague, puppyish way kids love each other. You loved him when you were in high school, pined from afar and moped over sad songs on the radio because he never looked your way.

And now here you are. Hope bubbles up in you from time to time, when you’re alone and considering what your future might hold. You always had a deep, bleak dread that you’d always be alone—sudden orphanhood can warp a psyche, you guess. But for the first time, you have tentative moments of hope.

You find a sundress, the cotton a little faded but in the low lights of the bar, no one should notice. You pull on a pair of strappy sandals. You dust your face and neck with some of your mother’s old luminating powder, and the scent of it makes a sharp blade of melancholy lance through you.

Then you drive into Wabang, and your stomach gets those fluttery butterflies as you park, slip your keys into your purse, and walk in.

It takes a moment to find him. He usually posts at the bar when he’s waiting for you, the door in his line of sight, but when you enter the din of the bar, he’s nowhere to be found. Maybe he found a buddy and is chatting with him. Maybe he’s in the bathroom.

If your hope bubbles up in you, effervescent, then your hope is easily popped when you find Rhett. He’s not in the bathroom and he hasn’t found a buddy, but he’s found Maria Olivares. The wayward dream girl has returned, and she’s as gorgeous as ever (she must understand skirt lengths, you guess), and her lovely face is tilted towards Rhett as she laughs at whatever he says. And worse, his handsome face is lit up like a damned Christmas tree, laughing too, and your hope is popped and burnt to the ground and the earth around it is salted because Rhett has never looked at you like that.

“It’s okay,” you whisper to yourself, and you turn on your heel and fast-walk out of the bar. The path back to your truck shimmers, wavers in front of you. You realize it’s because your eyes are full of tears, and when you realize it, they break free, start to course down your face.

“It’s okay,” you tell yourself, and you repeat it over and over: as you get into your truck, as you turn the ignition, as you peel out of the parking lot and as your tires throw up an arc of gravel. You repeat it like a mantra, and you fix your attention on the road. You drive home; you leave Rhett at the bar, and it’s a confirmation when he doesn’t text you until the next morning asking where you’ve been.

By then, though, you’re already halfway gone. It’s August, after all, and school is starting again soon, and leaving Wabang a few weeks early is easy enough.

#rhett abbott #rhett abbott x reader #rhett abbott imagine #outer range #tropes and tales #kinktober 2023

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orbitalmirror · 29 days

Text

Grand Days and Small Gestures

Pairing: Hunter x Reader

Word Count: 9152

Warnings: Language, canon-typical violence.

Prompt: “Why can’t you just be normal?”

Summary: You didn’t expect to end up in Separatist prison cell. You definitely didn’t expect to be accidentally rescued by a squad of clones.

A/N: This fic is a gift for @ladyanidala, who gave me SUCH a fun prompt!! I’m gonna be honest with you, this got rather out of hand…I’m not used to writing romance, and then this pesky little thing called plot got involved. It’s not the most traditional reader-insert fic, but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was my first foray into a second-person POV, and it was so fun that it inspired me to start dreaming up a (possibly fluffier?) sequel. Thank you so much to @cloneficgiftexchange for creating this event!

Today isn’t the worst day of your life.

Granted, the bar is pretty low; the worst day of your life was probably that time you were undercover in a sect of fascist insurrectionists on Brentaal IV, and you discovered that your encrypted comm was irreparably fried. You were stuck in that hellhole for nine weeks before somebody back in the Corellian intelligence HQ thought, “You know, maybe she didn’t suddenly go dark on purpose.” By the time they came to rescue your ass, you had finally decided to quit this job and go become a baker or something. Then you got back to Corellia and…didn’t quit. Didn’t even draft your resignation letter. Nothing in the galaxy makes you feel quite as alive as espionage does—what else could you do?

So now you sit on the concrete floor of a detention cell, your tailbone aching and your fingers stiff from the chill, and you remind yourself, today isn’t the worst day of your life. The idea spins itself into a sort of mantra: It could be worse. It could be worse. It could be worse.

Your stomach growls in dissent.

Hours have passed since the battle droids caught you, and you don’t know why it’s taking so long for a real Separatist officer to arrive for an interrogation. Clearly there are no living beings in the compound, which means clearly your intel was wrong. The datapad you’re after is too valuable to leave in the clumsy, three-fingered hands of droids. The B2s guarding your cell left about twenty minutes ago, and you’ve spent the past ten minutes trying to pry open a panel on the wall with your little transparisteel knife, the only weapon of yours that wasn’t found by the droids and their metal detector.

The panel finally pops off, and you almost groan in dismay. The only things visible in the wall are a thick bundle of electrical wires and some pipes. The pipes look too sturdy to be damaged by you and your little knife, and anyway, flooding your cell probably wouldn’t do anything except electrocute you. Cutting the wires might cut off electricity to your cell door, but that’s just as likely to leave the door locked as it is to open it, and it also might electrocute you. You’re no technician. It isn’t worth the risk.

It could be worse.

The passing of time is almost visceral now, like the ticking of an analog clock in your ribcage. You shove the panel back on the wall. Time for the ceiling. The cell’s metal bench—you can’t even call it a cot—is just tall enough that you can reach up to pry around the edges of the ceiling tiles. You start on the one in the corner, hoping that there’s a ventilation shaft above it. The left edge is just starting to come loose when—

Click.

Darkness.

That definitely wasn’t your doing.

Half a second passes, and then a loud pneumatic hiss heralds the miraculous opening of your cell door, and the adrenaline really kicks in. Has someone finally come to collect you? But why…

You listen. No footsteps.

You hop down from the bench to peek out the cell door. Nothing to see, either.

Another hiss startles you, and you dart into the hall just as the door suddenly closes again, deafening in the eerie silence. The overhead lights are still off, and only the weak blue emergency lights lining the corridor offer you any sense of direction.

You’re free, and nobody is around.

Well, this just got interesting.

~~~

As you make your way through the base, you quickly realize that something very strange is going on. That something strange is probably best exemplified by the droids lying in scrap heaps all over the place, most of them burned through with blasters, but some of them dismantled in a way that you can’t even identify. Whoever or whatever is in this base with you, you do not want to meet them.

So, of course, you meet them less than ten minutes after escaping your cell.

You’ve picked up a blaster from a fallen B1, and are carefully scouting out the control rooms, looking for anything that can help you find your confiscated ship. Unfortunately for you, the walls and blast doors of the compound are so thick that they’re effectively sound-proofed, making it difficult to tell what lies behind each door before you open it. Despite the fact that you haven’t yet run into any functional droid or living being, you feel a spike of adrenaline every time you enter a new room or hallway.

The next one, you think, opens into the hallway where the main control center is housed. If you were paying enough attention while the droids frog-marched you through the base.

When it opens, you don’t find droids.

You find clones.

There are four. Their armor looks different from the clones you’re used to seeing on the major core planets: all of it is painted a dark grey, their helmets heavily customized. Two of them immediately turn to look at you. One is holding a pistol. The other is holding the scariest sniper rifle you’ve ever had pointed at your face. (And you’ve had quite a few sniper rifles pointed at your face.)

Nope, you think. Not happening.

Immediately, you dart around the corner and slam the button to close the door. Shouts ring through the hallway. You shoot the access panel for good measure. Corellia may be a member of the Republic, but that doesn’t mean you want anybody working for the Senate to know what you’re doing here, least of all soldiers.

Time has suddenly become far more pressing.

You abandon some of your previous caution and take off at full speed through the compound. A few active battle droids wander the halls, their tiny electronic brains seeming utterly flabbergasted by whatever turn of events lead to a group of at least four clones carving through an entire Separatist base. You pick them off with ease. They’re not the enemy you’re worried about.

Where are the rest of the clones?

There’s no way in hell a squad of four men could do this much damage…right?

But there are more pressing matters. There’s no signage in the base, which means you’re relying on memory and educated guesses to make your way to the airfield where you know a wide array of starships are parked. You’ve finally made your way up to the ground level of the base, only minutes away from where you think the airfield is.

Unfortunately, the stars are not on your side today.

Footsteps—organic ones, by the sound of it—are coming towards you down the hall.

You duck into an alcove in the wall and press yourself as deep into it as you can, hoping desperately that you’re hidden from view. A few moments pass, and then a clone in that strange grey armor sprints past you. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth.

A few seconds pop by, and you’re about to peek out of your alcove when a grey helmet pops back into view, startling you so badly that you bang your elbow against the steel wall.

“Who are you?” the clone yells.

“Who are you?” you retort, for a lack of any better things to say.

“Sergeant CT-9901. Call me Hunter.”

You blink at him. He tilts his head at you.

You say nothing.

“Hunter! We need to go!” a voice shouts.

“Are you a Separatist?” the clone called Hunter asks you.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then come on!” he exclaims, motioning you to follow him.

“Where are you going?”

“We’re escaping.”

“You’re going the wrong way!” you exclaim. “The airfield is in the direction you came from.”

“Yeah, and we just rigged the airfield to blow. Now come on!”

Well, shit. What other choice do you have?

Hunter takes off running, and you follow as closely as you can. The tall clone with the sniper rifle is waiting for you at the end of the hall, and he says something to Hunter that you can’t quite make out. They’re probably talking through their helmet comms, you realize. The three of you make your way away from the airfield, through a part of the base that you don’t recognize. Here and there, you catch glimpses of the other two clones up aheads, but they don’t seem to be slowing down at all. Metal carcasses of battle droids are strewn around you.

Finally, you break out of the compound and into the sunlight. It seems to be early afternoon, if you’ve been tracking both the passing of time and the cardinal corrections correctly. The base is located in a valley between rolling mountains, surrounded on every side by thick forest and strange rock formations. You follow the two clones to a large boulder, where the other two clones you saw earlier are standing. One is tall, with goggles in his helmet. The other one is even taller, so tall that you could reasonably call him a giant.

“Who is this?” asks the one with goggles.

“Not a Separatist,” says Hunter. “Which is good enough. Wrecker, are we good to go?”

The giant—Wrecker, apparently—gives Hunter a thumbs up, and hits a button on his vambrace.

The airfield behind you blows up. Somehow, it’s one of the most normal things that’s happened all day.

“That should keep them distracted for at least thirty minutes, which is long enough for us to escape the range of their scanners,” says goggles.

“I don’t want to take any risks. Let’s get moving,” says Hunter. He turns to you. “Alright, Miss ‘Absolutely Not a Separatist’. You coming with us?”

“Is that an option?” you ask.

“As long as you don’t shoot us.”

“Didn’t even occur to me,” you say, honestly. “But where are the other clones?”

“What other clones?”

…you’re joking.

“You did all of that yourself?” you ask, utterly incredulous.

“Sure did!” Wrecker exclaims. “It was fun, too.”

“We specialize in smaller operations,” says Hunter. “Wrecker’s our munitions guy. Tech is pretty self-explanatory. Crosshair’s our sniper. We’re Clone Force Ninety-Nine.”

There’s so much information to be taken in right now, you don’t even know where to begin.

“Alright,” you say, because really, you’re completely out of options here. “I guess I’m in.”

~~~

Cool air burns in your lungs. Everything hurts. Everything hurts. Keeping up with the clones’ long strides has forced you to jog in places, and even then, you’ve fallen to the back of the group. Twenty minutes have passed since the airfield was blown to bits, and in that time, you’ve finally made sense of the incredible influx of information you’ve been given. You’ve also developed a veritable laundry list of questions. Chief among them:

“Where are we going?”

Crosshair turns around, and though his helmet covers his face, he’s definitely glaring at you. “To our cache. Keep up.”

“How much farther?” you ask, trying—and mostly failing—to keep the despair out of your voice.

Crosshair says nothing.

Such a conversationalist.

“What’s going on?” calls a low voice—Hunter’s. All four clones are looking at you now, peering through their unreadable masks.

“I asked where we’re going.”

Hunter pauses, tilts his head. Then he starts making his way back down towards you, his posture tense even as his steps are light and fluid. You eye him closely; despite Crosshair’s rifle, and Wrecker’s size, and Tech’s explosives, you’re getting the feeling that Hunter is the dangerous one here. You just haven’t figured out why, yet.

You straighten as he approaches, expecting him to size you up. Instead, he walks right past you, and sits on a fallen tree.

“When was the last time you drank something?” he asks.

…what?

The question sounds downright concerned. You say nothing. The duration of your imprisonment is not information you’ll give out willingly.

Hunter is unclipping something from his belt, now. It’s a small bottle with a colorless, slightly cloudy liquid inside. He holds it out to you, and says, “Drink.”

“What’s in it?” you ask.

“Water, a mild stimulant, electrolytes, and sugar,” Tech rattles off.

Helpful.

Hunter shoves it towards you a little further, and you push it back. Poisoning is not on today’s agenda…not that literally any of this was on today’s agenda.

“You, first.”

Hunter nods, and pulls his helmet off of his head. His face is…not what you expected. His skin is a light brown, dotted with a few faint freckles on the left side, and dominated by a dark tattoo of a skull on the right. His nose is aquiline, his jaw is strong and rounded, his cheeks ever so slightly hollowed. Dark curly hair falls in a tangled mess to his shoulders, held back only by a red bandana tied across his temple. A few flyaways have escaped its hold, as if yearning for freedom.

You’re a professional. You do not ogle the handsome soldier. Instead, you watch closely as he lifts the bottle to his lips and takes a small sip. Swallows. Your eyes follow the motion of his throat.

Satisfied, you nod, and take the offered gift. The liquid is sweet and a little salty, but otherwise bland. A faint bitterness lingers on your tongue when you’ve finished taking a few gulps.

When you hold the bottle out for Hunter, he waves you off. “All of it.”

It takes you a minute, but you finish the bottle, and thank him as you hand it back to him. He nods silently in response. What a repartee you’ve established.

“You feel better?” Wrecker asks.

“Sure do. Thanks.”

“We stowed the rest of our gear at a spot fifteen klicks away,” Hunter says. “Can you make it that far?”

Now that’s the real question. The fluids and the short rest have certainly helped, but your legs still ache, and the mountain in front of you is only getting steeper as you climb. Fifteen klicks is just a very long walk over normal terrain. Fifteen klicks now…

“Definitely,” you say, with confidence. “Shall we?”

Hunter motions the group forward, and you fall in behind him.

What a day.

~~~

Time starts to blur, after that. Your world reduces itself to the diffused ache of exhaustion in your legs and the tree roots under your feet…and Hunter. More precisely, the mud-splattered heels of Hunter’s armored boots, as you follow close behind. The clones’ pace is almost punishing; you start to worry how long you’ll be able to keep up, as the soldiers plod along without complaint. Well…almost without complaint.

“I’m hungry,” Wrecker groans, only for the fourth time in the past ten minutes.

“With only three ration packs left, protocol dictates that we reserve our food supply until we restock, or until nutrition becomes an immediate concern,” says Tech.

“This is immediate,” Wrecker insists.

“Your appetite has been an ‘immediate concern’ since we were three years old,” says Crosshair.

Your own stomach growls in affirmation, as if feeling left out of the conversation. When was the last time you ate? Hours have lost their shape. At this point, you feel like time is being measured by the number of feet you’ve climbed.

Abruptly, Hunter halts. Without saying a word, he swings his rucksack to his front, pulls out a foil ration pack, and tosses it over his shoulder. It sails through the air in an elegant arc, right into Wrecker’s waiting hand. You try not to be too impressed.

(You fail, because it was impressive. Actually, you’re not even sure how it was possible.)

There’s a pause as Hunter’s hand hovers over his rucksack.

Then: “Catch.”

The warning seems only an afterthought, delivered as the ration pack is already airborne. You manage to catch it anyway, and you turn it over in your hands. It’s cold-start, the kind that’s mixed with water to form a vaguely edible mush. Hunter is already moving forward again.

“Do you have any more water?” you ask.

This time, he doesn’t even bother with a warning as the metal canteen comes hurtling at your head. It stings your hand as you catch it. You tuck the ration pack into your belt so you have a hand free to open the—

To open—

To—

What the hell?

“Is this sealed?” you call out, even though the canteen is clearly half-empty, and you remember him drinking out of it just minutes ago.

Hunter turns and starts to make his way back down to you. Not for the first time on this bizarre trek, you wish that you could see his facial expressions. His body language betrays little, his movements as elegant and efficient as a supersoldier’s should be. When he reaches you, he holds out his hand. You drop the canteen into his palm with a little more force than is really necessary, but he doesn’t react, simply twists open the lid without any visible effort.

“The ration,” he says, holding out his hand again.

“I know how to mix a ration pack,” you grumble.

But you’re tired, and your hands are stiff from the cold, and you’re starting to wonder whether this is an elite super-soldier’s equivalent of kindness. You won’t bite the hand that feeds you. With a nod, you hand over the ration pack. Hunter mixes it with the sort of automaticity that betrays a thousand repetitions of the motion. Your fingers brush when he hands it back.

One swig of the stuff makes you wonder if it’s not too late to go back to the Seppie prison.

“Urghh,” you groan.

Hunter makes a sound that’s almost…oh stars, he’s laughing at you. You’re dying of hunger and thirst and trying to drink what tastes like cardboard in puréed form, and he’s laughing at you.

“Never had GAR rations before?” he asks. “They’re not like what you civilians get for your backpacking trips.”

“That was…rude, I’m sorry,” you say, kicking yourself for reacting that way when he just offered you help.

“That’s the usual reaction,” he says. He swings his rucksack over his shoulder and turns back up the mountain. “Come on, we’ve got a long way ahead of us. Drink it while we walk. You’ll get used to the taste.”

“Stars, I hope not,” you mumble.

Hunter’s rumbling laugh floats back to again, and you smile despite yourself. For a moment, you wonder if you’ll get along after all.

~~~

It turns out rations for six foot tall super-soldiers are really energy-dense. With a stomach full of food—if you can call it food—the day starts to feel a lot less like a catastrophic mission failure and a lot more like a strange little side quest. Wrecker seems to feel the same, a bright levity emerging in his booming voice.

“Did I ever tell you about the time Hunter took on three regs at one time because they were picking on Crosshair?”

“When would you ever have had time to tell her that story?” Crosshair asks.

“There were only two,” Hunter corrects, “and they were almost a year younger than us.”

“What are regs?” you ask.

It’s a can of worms that you’re glad you’ve opened.

Wrecker seems to delight in having an audience, and the other three can’t help but contribute to the conversation. Their stories are all out of chronology, and the discussion is frequently derailed by your complete lack of knowledge about the Grand Army of the Republic. The Senate wants it that way, you know. Honestly, it’s incredible how much intel you’re getting right now…not that you feel like you could use it for anything productive. It paints an ugly picture that the clones don’t seem to realize is ugly, a tale of forced conformity and a brutal life.

The landscape goes by. You learn that most clones like them are considered defective and relegated to maintenance duty. You learn that, although the clones as a whole view themselves as brothers, there’s nasty people in any group. You learn who “regs” are, and about the ones who picked on the 99s—Crosshair especially, who grew up tall but unusually thin, unable to develop the impressive muscle mass that most of the clones possessed. You learn that Hunter, the only one not visibly defective in some way, learned to bridge the gap between his squad and their other brothers.

(You learn that, when his diplomacy failed, he was always willing to throw punches in their defense.)

A story unfolds, of four boys who turned into four men, all so different in temperament that it seems impossible for them to be held together by anything except circumstances. Wrecker starts fights because he thinks they’re fun, but cares far more about what other people think of him than he’s willing to let on. Tech simultaneously lives in his own head and is inextricably steeped in the world around him, every phenomenon looking more colorful through his goggles, every system of nature a machine that can be disassembled. Crosshair is a cynic, through and through, but his loyalty to his brothers runs so deep that you wonder if it might be affection, rather than a sense of duty, that drives him. Hunter…

In all of their stories, none of the other clones truly describe Hunter to you. There are no off-handed compliments that he’s brave, or that he’s kind, or that he’s level-headed. Wrecker tells you, “Crosshair is the best lookout in the entire galaxy.” Hunter tells you, “Wrecker has this habit of offering to help people at very inconvenient times,”—an amusingly brotherly way to say that Wrecker is a generous soul. Crosshair tells you, “Tech saved our mission because he read a book about karking butterflies.”

But still, in between the tales of rescues and hijinks, you weave together the threads, and you find yourself looking at a very different person than you thought you had met when your day began. Hunter’s facade of gruffness is hastily constructed and easily chipped away, and beneath it he is not a complicated man. Above all else, he is singularly devoted to protecting others, and everything else about him seems inconsequential in comparison.

Evening falls, and you make it to the place where the clones have stored their gear. Their ship, Hunter explains, is another twelve klicks away, near a small outpost that they initially investigated, and then decided not to infiltrate.

After you’ve finished your dinner—which includes some real food this time, even if it is canned—you find yourself sitting by a tiny brook, too small for anything to swim in it. A day’s worth of stories tumble around in your mind.

You only hear Hunter coming when he’s a few feet behind you.

“I won’t ask you what you were doing in a Seppie detention cell.”

Smart man, you think.

“But,” he continues, “whatever it was you did, they’re going to be after you as much as they’re after us. You need to be able to protect yourself.”

You resist the urge to respond with a dry, “Yeah, no shit, Sergeant.” Instead, you offer a non-committal hum.

“I’ve got a spare DC-17 pistol. You should learn how to use it.”

You turn to look at him. He’s standing with one hand on his hip and the other holding his blaster, empty of a power cell. He looks very serious.

You try to resist the urge not to laugh. You’ve had a blaster in your hand since you were twelve years old.

Instead, you say, “Sounds like a good idea. Now?”

“No better time,” he says.

He makes his way over and sits down next to you, and you find yourself leaning in to watch as he turns the blaster over in his hands.

“So we’ll start with assembling it…”

You’re only half paying attention to the actual words tumbling from his lips. Like a sweater catching on a bush, your mind catches on the low, rumbling timbre of his voice. The sound buzzes in your ears. The sun is going down, but you could swear it’s getting warmer. Was he always that—

“Were you paying attention?” he asks, breaking your reverie.

“Yes,” you lie. Well, half-lie, because you were paying attention…to other things.

“Repeat back what I just told you.”

Well, that definitely isn’t happening. In lieu of an answer, you pluck the blaster and its power cell from his hands. Your conscious mind is barely engaged as you assemble it with steady hands, as quick as you reasonably can without jamming it. A DC-17 isn’t your preferred style of pistol, but the principle is the same.

And if you’re not mistaken, the subtle arch of Hunter’s brow means that he’s impressed.

“Good. Now, this blaster handles a little differently than the ones you’ve probably used…”

Maybe it’s the smooth confidence in his voice, or maybe you’re just desperate to learn more about the man, but you find yourself going along with it. You nod as he explains the kickback of the weapon, its effective range, its possible styles of blaster bolts.

Finally, he stands behind your left shoulder, and quietly instructs you to aim the weapon. It’s as easy as breathing. His hands come up to adjust your grip; his fingers are warm and rough, heavily calloused by his own use of weaponry. The heat lingers even as he pulls away, apparently satisfied with the positioning of your hands.

You immediately slide your grip back to where it was.

“My hands are smaller,” you explain, even though you don’t owe him an explanation, because you’ve been doing this at least as long as he has. You almost tell him that, too, but it would reveal more about you than you actually want him to know.

“Mmm,” he hums, his face now tantalizing close to your ear. “See if you can hit that hollow tree.”

The tree is maybe thirty feet away. Half of you is wildly offended by the suggestion that you couldn’t hit such an easy target. The other half of you is ruled by the pounding of your own tyrannical heart, Hunter’s mere proximity throwing you out of your disciplined calm.

You breathe in. Breathe out. Aim. Squeeze.

There’s now a burning hole in the center of the dead tree.

“Good!” Hunter says, and good heavens, could he not stand so close? “Now—”

Fweeoo.

Maybe you should feel bad about cutting him off. You don’t, at all.

Fweeoo.

Hunter is silent, now, just standing there watching you draw a neat little line of smoking holes in the tree. The petty part of you is winning your internal war, so you line up a sixth shot, turn your head to meet his gaze, and pull the trigger. His dark brown eyes flicker away, then back to yours.

“You’ve made your point,” he murmurs.

You glance at the tree, where a wisp a smoke rises from a knot in the bark. It’s not a perfect bullseye, but a victory nevertheless.

“I’ve made better points,” you retort, smiling. Four precious seconds pass before Hunter finally steps away.

“So, no target practice for you, then. I set up your bedroll. You should get some rest.”

“Which watch should I take?”

Hunter frowns slightly. “None of them. I’m going to scout out the area for a bit longer, then I’ll take first watch. Crosshair and Tech take second and third.”

“Do you want a second pair of eyes?”

“Don’t need them.”

You nod, and suddenly realize what an awkward thing that was to say. “Well then, I’ll head back up to camp.”

“Goodnight,” says Hunter, softly.

You don’t manage to summon a response.

(Your heart still pounds against your ribs.)

~~~

Despite the food, rest, and water, the morning’s trek is harder than yesterday’s. The terrain turns rocky and the foliage becomes sparse, leaving you exposed to the cold wind. The group’s pace slows as you make your way down the mountain, carefully stepping around loose stones that could send you tumbling. Your eyes are once again trained on Hunter’s heels. You trust him more than you trust yourself to pick out a safe path on the treacherous slope.

Still, the difficulty of the endeavor doesn’t seem to dampen the squad’s mood. Hunter’s helmet is off, strapped to the top of his pack, and he often tilts his face towards the sun. The wind blows his curly hair in every direction, until the bandana is only keeping half of it out of his face. Tech is delivering a detailed lecture about geology. You have no idea what he’s talking about. Wrecker seems as confused as you are about the subject, but while you simply let the words wash over you, Wrecker eagerly interjects with questions and commentary. Their dialogue is far from socratic, but it starts to intrigue you, and you can’t help but smile at the exchange. Every once in a while, the conversation is punctuated by a comment from Crosshair, dripping with sarcasm and yet received with good-hearted laughter. Hunter’s contributions, frequent at first, begin to taper off. The other three don’t seem to notice, but then again, it’s not their job to study people. It’s yours.

You’re about to ask him what’s wrong when he answers your question preemptively.

“Someone’s in the ship,” he says, turning around to face the group.

“Clankers?” Wrecker asks.

“No. I would have felt them if they were droids. I’ve been sensing something else: comms, or another type of small electronics. But just now, they turned on power in the ship.”

The cogs in your head are turning. Did you hear him correctly?

“How do you know?” you ask. “What do you mean, you felt…”

You trail off as Hunter holds up a finger to silence you. His brow is drawn into a tight scowl and he closes his eyes, tilting his head as if listening for something.

Tech makes his way over to you. Quietly, he explains, “Hunter can feel electromagnetic frequencies. He can sense droids, or the electronics that people carry on them if they’re quite close. When the electrical power on the ship is turned on, those frequencies change, so he can feel those, too.”

“How could somebody turn your ship on without a key fob?” you whisper.

“The ship has no key fob. It would be dangerous to rely on a small object, which could easily be lost or damaged during a mission, to access our only means of escape. One can enter the ship and activate some systems with no restrictions, and the engine can be started with a key code.”

“And somebody just got on your ship?”

“Apparently, yes.”

You glance up at Hunter. His right thumb is rubbing absently at the scuffed paint on his vambrace.

After a long moment, he says, “There are definitely no droids. I think there are locals here, and we didn’t realize it. We need to move. The ship is only a fifteen minute run from here.”

“Should we leave the packs?” you ask.

“Leave everything except weapons and combat gear. We’ll put the explosives and grappling hooks in Wrecker’s pack.”

“Aww, yeah!” Wrecker cheers, albeit quietly. The rest of the group is in motion immediately, rearranging their burdens and leaving all by the necessities tucked under a rocky outcrop. You have no rucksack, so you help Wrecker in carefully repacking the explosives into his. You’re almost finished when you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder.

“You’ll want these,” Hunter says. He hands you two spare power cells for your blaster.

“Two? But you only have three spares.”

“I’m hoping we can reason with the locals,” he says, “or scare them away. But if things got really bad, I’ve got this.”

There’s a metallic hiss as he slides a vibroknife out of the sheath on his forearm. He twirls it in his fingers a few times, a display of skill so casual that it feels almost unreal.

Wait.

“Back in the base, did you stab those droids?” you exclaim.

Hunter grins, a full smile that seems so out of place in your current situation. And yet, you find yourself mirroring it right back at him.

“Let’s go get our ship back.”

~~~

Jagged rock digs into your skin as you lie on your stomach on a ridge, peering out at the clones’ ship. Hunter was right; you can vaguely make out the shapes of at least three humanoids milling around it. From where you are, though, you can’t see any more details than that. The group’s only pair of binoculars is currently in Crosshair’s hands.

“Three outside the ship,” he says. “Armored, helmeted, and carrying blasters. These might be more than just locals.”

“Anything else?” Hunter asks.

“They’re waving their hands at each other.”

Hunter holds out his hand for the binoculars, and Crosshair hands them over.

“Sign language,” says Hunter. “Either they don’t want to be heard, or they can’t hear. I can’t feel how many there are. The ship is interfering too much.”

“Are they doing anything to the ship?” you ask.

“Not from the outside. Who knows what they’re doing inside of it.”

“I have encrypted all information present on board our ship,” says Tech from next to Crosshair. “It would be nearly impossible for them to elicit any intelligence from its databanks.”

“I’m more worried about them gutting it,” says Hunter darkly.

To your surprise, he does not hand the binoculars to Tech next—he hands them to you. Nodding in thanks, you take them, and try not to think about the way his shoulder presses against yours. You fine-tune the focusing knob until you have a clear view of the people standing in front of the ship.

Then you almost drop the binoculars.

Hunter notices the jerk of your hand immediately. “What’s going on?” he asks, alarmed.

What’s going on? What’s going on?

What’s going on is that you are never getting that ship back, and you’re all in deep shit, and you’re starting to wonder if you really will quit your job this time.

Kark. This.

“Those are Third Hand,” you say.

“Third Hand?”

“Mercenaries. They’re…” you trail off as you watch one of the distant figures make a wide sweeping motion with his right arm. You wrack your brain trying to remember what it means, but it’s been years since you’ve encountered one of the Third Hand. Usually, the correct response to encountering one is to run very fast in the other direction and pray to anybody who will listen that they don’t follow you…and not to ask them for sign language lessons. The only reason you even recognize them is because their appearance is so distinctive: Ubese filter helmets and cortosis-weave plate armor, painted in swirling multicolored hues with jagged black symbols on top, studded with spikes. The effect is like a monstrous creature emerging from a beautiful supernova. These ones have relatively few spikes each—a good sign, but not a great one.

“What?” Hunter asks.

You refocus yourself. “They’re Ubese mercenaries. Very good ones. Usually contract with the Spice Cartel.”

“So what are they doing out here?”

“Nothing good. If there are six here, there are probably at least twelve in the area.”

“How do you know there are six? Can you see them?”

You’ve mentally catalogued everything you’ll be able to learn from looking, so you hand the binoculars back to Hunter.

“Third Hand always travel in groups of threes. There are three outside, so there will probably be three inside.”

“Six is manageable,” he says.

…manageable? He’s joking. He has to be joking. The man who used to start fist-fights to defend his brothers would not turn them into target practice for the Third Hand.

But his voice is deadly serious.

“Six against four?” you ask, incredulous.

“Six against five.”

“I’m not wearing armor. I’m not a soldier. I don’t count.”

“I’ll still take those odds. We need to complete the mission, which means we need to scout the other large bases on this moon. And for that, we need our ship.”

“They’re armed to the teeth and don’t shy away from killing people like you do.”

“We’ve had worse. We need to complete the mission,” he repeats.

“Hunter, what is wrong with you?” you whisper-scream, utterly furious but fully aware of how exposed your position is. “Do you actually think it’s a good idea to take on six extraordinarily well-trained mercenaries just for a ship? Any sane officer would turn his men around right now and send for evac!”

“We don’t need an evac!”

“Stars help us, Hunter, stop trying to be a hero! Why can’t you just be normal?”

Hunter goes deathly still.

Silence falls upon you; the air seems to turn brittle. You glance between the men. Crosshair is staring at you coldly. Wrecker is fidgeting, his eyebrows raised in alarm. Tech is glancing between you, Hunter, and the display on his Hud, his fingers still tapping against his wrist comm.

Hunter isn’t looking at you.

“We have never been normal,” he mutters.

The word seems laced with poison, and your chest clenches. Of course you had to go and put your foot in your mouth. Of course you picked the one adjective that would feel so personal to him. His expression is angry, but somehow you get the feeling that it runs deeper than that.

“Hunter,” you say, softer this time. “This is a suicide mission.”

“Then don’t come.”

Stubborn man! “Has it not occurred to you that I don’t want you to die? Any of you?”

Hunter does look at you now, his face a mix of so many emotions that it’s become unreadable. You meet his dark eyes and hold his gaze, willing him to understand. Willing him to trust you.

“We’ll be going home with one less ship and no information,” he says. Damn him. “We don’t even know where the datapad is, now.

Something about that sentence catches in your mind. You don’t even know where the datapad is. You don’t…

…no, you do.

It all clicks together.

“Yes, we do.”

“What?” the men chorus, sounding more alike than they ever have.

“You told me that there’s a small outpost near here, right?”

“That outpost was far too small and poorly-manned to contain the datapad we’re looking for,” says Tech. “The Separatists would never leave something so valuable so vulnerable.”

“But what if it is well-guarded? Just not by droids.”

Hunter shifts, turns to look at you for real now. The anger hasn’t entirely faded from his face, but there’s something else there now, a new glint. “Are you saying that the outpost is guarded by these mercenaries, and the datapad is actually being kept there?”

“It’s the best explanation. How much do you know about the outpost?”

All four men glance at each other. Wrecker grins.

“Well,” says Tech, “when I sliced into the Separatist servers…”

~~~

The plan is insane.

The plan is so utterly insane that you wonder if it wouldn’t be better just to take on six mercenaries in a firefight to get the ship back.

The outpost is less than an hour’s hike from the ship; the clones were able to land close to it because it lacks the long-range ship detection system that the large base had. The mercenaries have only been at the ship for twenty minutes or so, and based on what you know of the Third Hand, they will pick it apart piece by piece before they’re satisfied. That takes six men out of the running, but the second the alarm sounds at the base, your countdown will begin.

Hunter and his bizarre superhuman abilities prove invaluable. From this range, he can tell you that there are somewhere around forty droids, and that they’re remotely controlled. Tech has been able to override certain models of remote-control battle droids in the past, and he’s confident in his ability to do so here.

Crosshair will set up on the hill overlooking the outpost and cover Wrecker, who will launch an artillery attack against the east end. You, Tech, and Hunter will sneak in through the north entrance, where Tech will slice into a terminal and take control of the droids to attack the mercenaries. You and Hunter will look for the datapad, and once you have it, you’ll steal a ship and escape.

So, just normal Taungsday things.

“If anything goes wrong,” you say, “we scrap the mission. If their scanners are strong enough to detect us, we quit. If the droids are the wrong model, we quit. If there are more than fifteen men, we quit.”

Tech, Wrecker, and Crosshair agree.

Hunter just glares at you.

The trek to the base is made in silence. Your trigger finger is itchy, and you startle at things that shouldn’t bother you: small animals darting between the rocks, your foot sinking to deep into mud, Crosshair clearing his throat. The group walks in single file: Hunter, Tech, Wrecker, you, and Crosshair. You can’t see Hunter from here. It’s better that way.

At one point, Wrecker falls back a little to walk side by side with you. He leans down a little, as if to whisper conspiratorily. The effect is comical—he really just ends up hovering far above your head.

“We, uhh…we failed our last two missions. It was bad. The Admiral said that Hunter made a bad call, and if we couldn’t do the next one, we’d be sent back to Kamino. Said if we couldn’t function like a normal squad, we shouldn’t be here.”

“So if you fail…”

“Tech and me go to maintenance. Hunter and Crosshair have to teach the cadets. Hunter doesn’t mind it”—you remember his careful instruction with the blaster, and a smile flickers across your face—”but he’d rather be out here.”

“Well, then,” you say, shoulders straightening. “We better not fail.”

~~~

The first ten minutes are a dramatic, spectacular victory.

There’s more firepower packed into Wrecker’s rucksack than you could possibly have imagined. The ground shakes when he begins his assault, and a small part of you worries that he might do his job too well, and send the outpost crashing into a pile of rubble. But, though Wrecker might not always come across this way, you spent much of yesterday listening to stories about him: the man is brilliant with explosives. What you wouldn’t give to be watching the display through Crosshair’s scope right now.

Tech, Hunter, and you manage to sneak into the base with little issue. All of the alarms in the base are already going off, so your illicit entry adds nothing new to the cacophany. Quick as a flash, Tech slices into the outpost’s computer system, and then the real fun begins.

The droids are only B1s, but the great strength of B1s is their numbers and their complete disregard for their own safety. Through the outpost surveillance system, you watch the Third Hand mercenaries scramble to deal with the chaos wrought by explosions on one side and traitorous battle droids on the other. There seem to be nine of them here, and before you and Hunter even set out to look for the datapad, four are already dead or seriously wounded.

(Although you know that they’ve all killed more people than you could count, you still wince at the carnage.)

When all of them seem sufficiently occupied, you and Hunter set out, blasters locked and loaded. After three turns—right, left, right—Hunter motions down a narrow corridor.

“You go that way, look on the west side. There’s nobody there, and there’s a communications room about fifty feet down. I’m going south, this way.”

You resist the urge to argue with him, as much as you want to. He took a chance, trusting you, and now you need to do the same for him.

“Comm me if you find anything,” you say.

“I will.”

You’re sprinting down the hallway when you hear him call out, “Be careful!”

One by one, you sweep the rooms off of the hallway. Most of them are small storage rooms or engine rooms, with one small dormitory. At last, you reach the communications room. Knowing that this is the room most likely to have people in it, your heart pounds as you open the door as fast as you can, blaster raised. It’s empty.

Adrenaline keeps coursing through you as you search the entire room, looking for the datapad. There’s nothing. On your way out, you notice a box of empty data sticks. It’s not what you’re here for, but you shove one of them in the nearest console and wait for it to download the basic schematics of the computer. There’s no time to go searching through the computers for information—there’s probably nothing useful on them, anyway—but you’re hoping that knowing what kind of tech the Separatists are using might help somebody back at HQ.

Bzzz. Your comm goes off.

“Hunter?”

“I found the datapad. It’s at the end of the south corridor I went down, at the very end on the left.”

“On my way,” you say.

In the privacy of the empty room, you allow yourself a sigh of relief. This is not your standard sort of operation. Explosions are still shaking the compound, though they’re beginning to slow down, and you eject the datastick even though it’s not quite finished. You’re here for one thing, and Hunter has found it. Only a few more minutes. Then you can all get off of this planet.

Luckily, you encounter no mercenaries during your sprint to where Hunter is. When you arrive, you find him leaned over a datapad that’s been detached from the main console, a strange-looking datastick plugged into its main port. Hunter glances back and nods a greeting at you.

“Almost done,” he says.

You fiddle with one of the datasticks that you swiped from the communications room, ready to switch yours with his the moment that his download is finished. The next twenty seconds feel like eternity.

Then: green light.

Hunter yanks his datastick out of the console. Then, wiith a flash of movement so fast you can barely processed what just happened, he sinks his vibroblade into the datapad and tears it down the center, splitting the machine into two sparking hunks of ruined metal.

~~~

Here’s the thing:

You’re a spy. Spies have rules. Perhaps chief among those rules is, “Don’t trust anyone.” Especially, “Don’t trust foreign special operatives who you just met yesterday.”

Here’s the thing:

That intel was kept on an encrypted datapad that could not be accessed remotely. It was not backed up. And Hunter just destroyed it beyond any hope of recovery. While his mission is safe and secure in his pocket, yours is a complete loss. And he did that on purpose.

Here’s the thing:

Until five seconds ago, you actually liked him.

It takes a moment before your brain truly catches up, and by then he’s moving towards the exit.

“Let’s go!” he calls.

You hate your traitorous legs for the way they heed his order without question, pounding against the concrete floor as the two of you sprint through the halls of the compound. You hate your traitorous hands for firmly gripping your blaster, not once reaching out to grab him by the shoulder and stop him. You hate your traitorous voice for not crying out in protest, for not calling him a liar and a cheat and a terrible excuse for a human being.

You hate yourself for doing as he says, even as his betrayal lies in a smoking heap behind you.

Your body moves automatically, dodging behind a corner when you see a mercenary. Hunter strafes in the opposite direction and takes a few shots at the man. By the thump you hear, you presume that one of them landed.

“Bet you’re glad you don’t have a ‘normal’ soldier with you right now,” Hunter quips.

Anger rises in your throat. Is that really what he’s hung up on? Your single comment, that’s what made him destroy that datapad, ruining your mission? Maybe you’d understand better if he’d done it for the sake of the Republic, but this just feels like a low blow.

As you round the next corner, Hunter pulls off his helmet and tilts his head, apparently listening for something. Briefly, his eyes flicker to yours, and he gives you a cocky half-smile.

Asshole, you think. It’s a petty word and a petty thought, but your anger is pulsing through your body with every beat of your heart, every memory you’ve formed in the past day suddenly tainted. Quieter, but just as poignant, is a deep feeling of shame. Were you really fooled by a handsome face and a few acts of kindness? Is this the man he’s been all along?

You shake your head to clear the thoughts away. Right now, you need to focus. This is the final leg of the plan: you and Hunter have to get to the far north-east side of the compound, where three ships are kept in a tiny hangar: two fighters, and one shuttle.

Hunter is yelling at Tech through comms: “Tech! Open the door into the hangar and get over here!”

You can see the door slowly open up ahead.

So close.

You’re nearly to the door, making a beeline for the nearest fighter, when you hear Hunter shout.

Then something slams you into the wall. Heat envelopes you, carried on a strong gust of wind. You struggle to take a breath.

One second passes.

The sound of blaster fire rings in your ears.

Two seconds pass.

You finally realize what’s happening. Hunter is pressed against you, his arms held up to protect your head. It wasn’t a something that threw you against the wall just now; it was him, pushing you out of the way of what seems to have been a grenade.

“Got ‘im!” Wrecker yells over comms. The sound rings in your ears, tender from the sound of the explosion.

“If my counting was correct, that was the last of the Third Hand,” says Tech.

“Not the last,” says Crosshair. “I see the other six. They’re on their way here. Four minutes.”

Hunter shifts away now, and you try to take a full breath through the smoke.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

You nod. Your voice feels too raw to work right now.

“Come on, we don’t have much time.”

Emotions are bouncing around your head like a damned pinball machine, and you push them all away, focusing on the task at hand: you need to get to a ship. You need to escape. So you follow Hunter through the door and into the hangar. The wind has changed, blowing the smoke of Wrecker’s explosions away from you, and you breathe deeply as you run.

To your surprise, Hunter doesn’t make for the shuttle. He makes for the nearest fighter, instead. Across the hangar, you can see Wrecker wave.

“Wrecker!” Hunter yells. “Start the shuttle!”

“On it!” Wrecker calls back.

“I thought you were all going together,” you say.

“We are. I need to give you this, first.”

Hunter takes your hand and presses something small and hard into it. The tips of his fingers are warm and calloused, and though you could count on his hand the number of times you’ve touched, he feels as familiar as a home.

“Here,” he says. The warmth is gone as quickly as it came as he pulls away, ducking around the fighter to look around the hangar, scanning for enemies.

All you can think to say is: “What?”

“You can access it with the code 223-228-24!”

“What is it?”

“The datastick. Don’t access it until you’re in a secure position.”

“I don’t understand. You destroyed the datapad.”

Hunter turns to look at you and cocks his head. “I got a copy first.”

“Just one, though.”

“I downloaded it to my wrist comm. This is the original.”

Oh.

Oh!

You want to sigh-laugh-sob with relief. Hunter was never leaving you out to dry. His comment about being a normal soldier…that was teasing. You were running for your lives, being shot at, and he was teasing you.

“Thank you,” you whisper, because your voice can’t be trusted in full.

Hunter only shakes his head. “Don’t thank me. We’d have been dead men without you.”

“Not…not the datastick. I just…”

Words stick in your throat. There’s an ocean between you and Hunter that you can’t seem to cross, the crash of its waves inaudible over the pounding of your heart. There’s an ocean between you, and it’s only an arm span across. Words stick in your throat, but your feet…

Your feet are as light as ever, and you find yourself standing in front of him, looking up into dark eyes that finally seem readable. Hope and fear flicker across them in equal measure.

You move slowly, telegraphing your movement to give him a chance to pull away, but he doesn’t. The world stills, and you brush the gentlest kiss on his left cheek, where ink meets blank skin.

(If it were quieter, you would hear his delicate inhale as your lips touched him.)

“Thank you,” you murmur.

You start to step away, hoping—praying, maybe, to all the stars that will listen—that your message was received and decoded. Then a warm hand, calloused from war and gentled from compassion, takes yours. This time, there is nothing for him to give you; there is only an affection that feels so out of place and so, so right. His other hand tilts your chin up.

When he kisses you, all you can think is, finally.

It’s everything that the past two days haven’t been: slow, unsure, and tender. You feel yourself smiling despite yourself. You feel him smile back, and the kiss is broken in the best way possible: with soft laughter.

Time is slipping like water between your fingers.

You kiss him again. And a third time. You’re starting to wonder whether you’ll ever tire of it when the rumble of a ship tugs you from your bliss. It’s Hunter who pulls away first.

“You’ll be okay?” he asks.

The ghost of a smile still lingers on his face, but his brow is knit together with concern.

“I’ll be fine,” you reassure him. “Really. I’m a professional.”

Hunter snorts. “We found you in prison.”

“Occupational hazard!”

Hunter’s laugh is brighter than you’ve ever heard it, and sadder all the same. You brush a finger along his jaw, as if you can catch that laugh in your hand and tuck it in your pocket.

“I’ll see you around, Sergeant,” you say.

Hunter nods. “I’ll see you around.”

The way he turns is abrupt, as if forcing himself to move before he changes his mind. You waste precious seconds watching him sprint across the tarmac and up the ramp of the ship,

Hunter doesn’t look back, but as you watch the ship’s engines ignite, you can almost feel his gaze still lingering on your face.

Time to go.

Somehow, it doesn’t feel like a goodbye.

#clone fic gift exchange #sergeant hunter #tbb hunter #hunter x reader #hunter x you #the bad batch #the bad batch fanfiction #TBBE24

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forfucksakesniall · 10 months

Text

“Hearts on Hold” - a draft

a sequel to Car's Outside after part 4

𝐌𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ*.·:·.✧ ✦✧.·:·.*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

Pairing: Lewis Hamilton x Driver!Reader

Word Count: 1,692

A/N: This might be the only part for now. Not sure if I would continue it but I will be doing drabbles about it

The day you left was tough. It was a step towards your personal growth and independence. Yet, deep down, you wanted to be by his side throughout the entire winter break. Your mind was filled with conflicting thoughts.

Why did we leave?

Because we need to rely on ourselves and not depend on others too much.

So, does that mean our emotions stem from past issues?

No, not necessarily... maybe. I'm not really sure but that is why we're doing this.

You constantly debate whether you made the right decision or not. However, all doubts disappear when he sends you a text message. Each day, his words bring comfort and kindness. You don't respond much because thoughts of him make your mind race.

You don't intentionally ignore him, but there's a certain pleasure in having alone time, where you can fully immerse yourself in the moment. You've grown typical of being alone, and it feels like home. Some may see it as a lonely existence, but they can't grasp the experience of being solely on yourself.

You found yourself in the Czech Republic, a land rich in history and culture. It's a place that fosters personal growth and development. With its stunning architecture, like the iconic Prague Castle, and its vibrant arts scene. You felt like a princess, wandering through the city in search of love or simply a new adventure.

As you sat at a charming café, savoring your evening coffee and engrossed in a book, it provided a familiar and comforting feeling.

Suddenly, your phone buzzed, breaking the tranquil atmosphere. You glanced down to see one of many of Lewis' daily text messages.

A day ago, 5:06 PM:

Lew

Good morning! You better manage to squeeze in some workouts today, haha. They already miss you - my niece and nephew. I miss you too, but you already knew that...

Yesterday, 5:44 PM:

Lew

Hey, just checking in to see if you're doing alright. Text me when you can. I miss you. I'll see you soon.

Today, 5:04 PM:

Lew

Still missing you, and Roscoe was looking for you.

Today, 5:10 PM:

Lew

Coachella was absolutely wild! Wish you were here. They kept asking if you were coming. I told them you were off doing something way more exciting. Maybe you'll join me next year, haha.

He persisted in texting you, as he could see that you had received and read his messages. Gosh, he deserves someone better, you thought, prompting you to finally respond.

You

Hey Lewis, sorry for not replying earlier. I'm actually doing really well. Sometimes, I do get a little lost, but that's what makes the adventure exciting, right? I won't tell my current location, haha. I hope I don't run into you here, following me around. I'll see you when I return to Monaco.

You reread the messages you sent, caught up in overthinking the entire situation. Just as you finish, he responds.

Lew

I'll see you back at home.

That familiar, tingling, warm feeling rushes back. You suddenly blush, feeling slightly embarrassed by your public display of emotions.

"Ughhh," you mutter to yourself.

Feeling compelled, you text him once again.

You

I miss you too

You quickly type and send it before locking your phone and slamming it onto the table. Frustrated with yourself, you feel like a silly schoolgirl texting her crush.

Lost in your embarrassment, you're suddenly interrupted as someone taps your shoulder. Your heart starts pounding, echoing in your ears.

You slowly turn around and find yourself face-to-face with none other than Mick Schumacher.

"Mick! W-what brings you here?" you stammer, taken aback by his sudden appearance. You were seated outside a café, with only a wooden fence separating you from the bustling street. Somehow, he still noticed you sitting there while riding his bike.

"Oh, umm... I was giving my friends a tour around Europe, and then I saw you sitting here... I should ask what you're up to," he explains a hint of curiosity in his voice.

You giggle, finding him endearingly cute. You and Mick are friends, or at least colleagues working for the same team. You often have chats and occasionally hang out after training, but you wouldn't say you're incredibly close.

"Yeah, well, it's a long story. In short, I'm on a little adventure for myself, taking a break from everything and just trying to relax. It's really nice to see a familiar face," you reply, feeling a sense of comfort.

"I know, right? Who would have thought?" he responds, sharing your amusement.

"Right?" you giggle in response.

"I should get going. It's great to see you again. I'll catch you at the factory then?" he suggests.

"Yeah, definitely!" you affirm with a smile.

He waves goodbye and starts pedaling away, leaving you with a mix of excitement and warmth in your heart.

✧*̥˚ Timeskip *̥˚✧

Weeks had passed, and it felt like an eternity. Finally, you arrived in Monaco, your home. You had managed to keep a low profile at the airport, although a few people still recognized you. The gossip pages had already spread the word about your return. You had considered texting Lewis, but it seemed unnecessary now that the Instagram gossip pages had made the announcement.

Now, you were in your cozy apartment, a place you called home. It felt warm and comforting, and it was all yours.

During your soul-searching journey, you had disabled all the apps that connected you to the outside world - Instagram, Twitter, emails, and more. Now, you decided to open them again, and your phone buzzed incessantly with notifications. Choosing to mute it, you placed it under your pillow.

"Some people sure missed me," you tell to yourself, looking around the house to find your laptop. It was exactly where you had left it, in the living room.

You opened your emails on the laptop instead and saw several team-related messages about an upcoming meeting. You stared at them for a while, realizing it was time to return to work and face reality.

A tinge of sadness and nervousness crept over you, but you pushed any negative thoughts aside. You didn't want to dwell on the idea that they might not want you or anything pessimistic. It was time to move forward.

A knock interrupts your thoughts, causing a small jolt of surprise.

"Why do people keep scaring me?" you mutter to yourself.

The knocking persists, growing slightly louder.

"I'm coming!" you call out.

Excitement builds within you as you jog to the door, eagerly unlocking and swinging it open without hesitation.

"Hey,"

"Hey..." you respond, your tone revealing a lack of enthusiasm.

"Well, that sounds like you weren't happy to see me," the coach remarks.

"Because I wasn't," you reply, adding a touch of sarcasm to your voice.

He was your performance coach, and truthfully, you were never thrilled to see him. His presence meant returning to rigorous training. You had been working together for a year now, and while there was still a connection, you had been avoiding it since last year due to past issues.

However, you had undergone a transformation and were now a different person.

"Are you ready to get back out there?" the coach asks.

You gaze at him, newfound determination shining in your eyes.

"Hell yeah," you declare, a wide grin spreading across your face.

Throughout the day, you engaged in scheduling and planning, a common practice among Formula 1 drivers and their performance coaches. You both discussed training sessions, physical workouts, and practice sessions to optimize performance on and off the track.

Despite feeling exhausted from the earlier flight, the overwhelming flood of missed notifications, and the planning for upcoming races, your determination remained steady.

As the evening grew late, the coach suggested that both of you grab a meal together. You ventured out and decided to go to "La Marée," a renowned eatery in Monaco.

Stepping out of the car, a swarm of people immediately surrounded you. Cameras flashed, videos recorded, and requests for autographs came from all directions. It was the familiar scene you had missed—the support and admiration from the fans, which warmed your heart. With a wave of gratitude, you bid them farewell and entered the restaurant.

And there he was once more, Mick Schumacher, but this time accompanied by Toto and Susie Wolff. You greeted them warmly and approached closer.

"You've got to stop following me, man. It's becoming quite obvious," you playfully remarked to Mick.

"I could say the same to you!" Mick replied with a grin.

"Well, well, it seems like you two have been keeping tabs on each other," Toto chimed in, joining the conversation.

"Yeah, it certainly seems that way," you said, winking at Mick as he reciprocated. "So, are you guys heading out or...?" you inquired, curious about their plans.

"Yeah, we were just discussing... contracts," Mick added.

Contracts? Already? Why haven't they mentioned anything to me... you wondered, feeling a bit surprised.

Toto's hand gently squeezed your shoulder. "If you checked your emails once in a while, you would have known about yours already," he reassured you.

A sigh of relief escaped you. Thank goodness for that, you thought, realizing you had left your phone under your pillow and hadn't retrieved it before leaving with your coach.

"I had such a great vacation that it completely slipped my mind," you laughed awkwardly.

"We'll be expecting to see you at the factory, alright? We need everyone there," Toto emphasized the importance of your presence.

Then it hit you—Lewis. Where was he? You still haven't texted him.

After conversing for a while, you and your coach went to eat.

You enjoyed a pleasant dinner together before finally parting after arriving at your apartment.

Waving him goodbye, you made your way upstairs to your apartment. As you opened the door, you noticed that the living room was illuminated. Have you forgotten to turn off the lights? Perhaps your coach had left them on.

As you approached to switch off the lights, you froze. There, laying on your couch, was someone unexpected.

It was Lewis.

Lewis Hamilton had fallen asleep, patiently waiting for your return home.

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