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countessofbiscuit · 4 years

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If you're taking potential prompts...Fox and Riyo discuss tattoos in their respective cultures? Maybe while one gets a new design or a touch-up?

Fox didn’t set the Republic military standards, but he sure as heck has to exemplify them. So it’s my headcanon that he doesn’t have any tats until Riyo’s affection works on him and/or the shittiness of the rest of his life strips his uptight grain. But I like to think this still fits the bill! Thanks for the prompt : )

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Inked

2k. Teen. Also on Ao3.

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The Senate concourse never slept, but most of the Dome’s regulars had long since made for their beds when Fox spotted Senator Riyo Chuchi waiting for the Annex hovertram. She stood alone on the platform, arms wrapped snugly around herself and engrossed in the floor's marbling. The hour was far from social, but Fox had both an apology to make and thanks to offer. And there was no time like the present.

“Good evening, Senator Chuchi,” he greeted from a polite distance. Natborns, especially politicians haloed round by ego, took personal space seriously; brothers wouldn’t give both ears unless someone were right on top of them and they still might not pay any heed.

She straightened up, almost startled. But then — a diplomatic smile. “Commander Fox. Is everything alright?”

Species and biographic profiles popped across his display. Fox blinked them away.

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry for the disturbance. I wanted to apologize for not addressing you properly the other day, when you kindly held the lift for me.” For him, the discomfited idiot, who couldn’t bring himself to enter the public turbolift he'd subversively called when faced with a mere Senate guard and a pretty woman. “And to thank you — for that, and for not giving me away to Senator Robb.”

They’d only just been formally introduced yesterday by the Security Committee Chair — and Senator Chuchi had not let on that Fox had recently broken a Dome directive. Ignorance or indulgence, it mattered little. The effect on the fresh-off-the-transport commander was the same: he was very grateful.

“Oh! Of course. You’re most welcome,” Senator Chuchi answered mechanically. Diplomatically. Stalling for understanding with a squint behind her smile.

“My database wasn’t synced to my input feeds yet,” Fox clarified. He’d been plagued by a deep need to reassure her that he took professionalism seriously. That he wasn’t chronically cavalier with protocol. “I didn’t know who you were, at first. But I’ve modded the software, so I —”

The tram approached. But it was Senator Chuchi’s blue hand on Fox's gauntlet that really stopped his thoughts short at the brainstem. She was very petite and looked about as warm as a silk petal in a breeze; but Fox’s skin prickled strangely under the plastoid.

And she wasn’t cutting him off: she was holding him in place. When the tram doors parted, she did not let go. Senator Chuchi meant to keep him with her. Closely. As no one else was around — especially as no one else was around, Fox had no argument against overstepping another rule if the Senator condoned it.

The tram was reserved for senators whatever time of day; when Dome-bound platforms were busy, and certainly when a vote was called, no mere aide, intern, attaché or privileged tourist could expect passage. The tram droid would spot you at fifty paces, bleat and wail with flashing lights, shame you into the permacrete. Clones were just supposed to walk — or, in Fox’s case, bike.

“Truly, you’re very considerate,” Senator Chuchi replied once they were onboard. “But I didn’t notice. I forget that my face doesn’t always give me away.”

It certainly gave her away as being very beautiful. Fox killed his display entirely. He even indulged the idea of removing his helmet, the better to appreciate her. But that would be quite forward: she hadn’t asked and the Guard had a lids-on policy handed down by the executive office.

Fox cocked his helmet in silent encouragement.

“Chuchi tattoos.” She touched two fingers to her cheek. “Obvious to Pantorans.”

Fox cast his mind back to cultural modules. He remembered certain trivia and understood that this was a situation which called for small talk. “I've read about Pantoran ink. Is there really aurodium in yours?” he asked in a carefully modulated voice, though there was no one to overhear.

“Yes. It’s still common practice for — among certain families. Impossible for the layman to tell, however.”

Fox mentally calculated about twenty seconds until arrival. The time begged another question. “Did it hurt?”

“The first time. But everything is unbearable to a child. They were filled out when I came of age and it wasn’t so bad.”

“Who did yours?” Fox found his questions coming as naturally as her answers. This wasn't so bad. Not at all.

“Someone my Grandmama knew. They decide these things. And they keep the rakes.”

“Rakes?”

“The tattooing tool. Usually the bone — well, it’s … it’s customary to keep an ulna and radius of one’s mother to be fashioned into rakes, and then into button hooks or hair pins once they’re worn down.”

Wasn’t the oddest natborn tradition he’d ever heard. And just the other day Stone reported that a detachment of MPs had cut their teeth over Ohma-D’un breaking up a brawl about some cursed finger of Jango’s. A few units claimed to possess one. Everyone deferred to Geonosis vets, and really, what was the harm? Well, until they came to blows over it. “Huh.”

“Do you have any?” she asked.

“Ma’am?”

“Tattoos?”

Thankfully, the hovertram was slowing into the station. It allowed Fox a transitory moment to consider why she’d care and to gather his conflicted thoughts on the subject as they disembarked.

Strictly speaking, tattoos were against regs, at least for clones. The RCMJ prohibited any bodily ornamentation that might bring discredit upon the galaxy’s preeminent military, but culturally significant tattoos and jewellery were permissible for natborns — the unspoken being that clones didn’t have a culture to claim.

“No, I don’t have any. It’s, uhh … not allowed in the Guard.” Not that Fox hadn’t seen some. Even before deployment — back before it was his problem to punish — the occasional itch to differentiate, to distinguish, had defied the longnecks’ surveillance, at least until the next quality control inspection.

Some experiments with filched hypos and med-markers had lasted longer than others. Stars and heavens help the bastards who’d inked themselves and paid for it in sweat and blood and punishment tours, only for the artistry to fade. Or for the shine to quickly wear off their youthful love of Coruscanti opera or the Galactic Senate. Or for the limb get plain blown off.

“Oh. On what grounds?” she asked.

In the main, Fox liked the RMCJ: it accorded a comforting set of guardrails, standards, and norms in a new and overwhelming operating environment. But he sensed a rebuke of the hard facts of life forming in the good Senator’s mind.

No point clouding the issue for her sensibilities; the regs only referenced what the Military Creation Act made plain in Section 3: all of clonedom, from marshal commanders to the lowest and last trooper on the production line, belonged to her federal government. Down to the dermis.

“Defacement of Republic property,” Fox offered as he followed her onto the Annex slideramp, since she hadn’t dismissed him yet.

Senator Chuchi did indeed frown up at him. “Does it really say that?”

“Yes. In the uniform code.” In a number of articles, actually — like the ones about mistreatment of service property and punishments for desertion. “There’s a certain leniency out in the field, I gather,” Fox added lightly, though privately he marvelled how any officer could sufficiently shake that feeling of a cold finger hovering behind their ear and get inked; would he even recognize himself without observational stress? “But it’d be nice to have it codified — or, err, uncodified.”

While he’d made it widely and painfully understood that facial tattoos would be burned off before they could be flagged as culturally insensitive, Fox wasn’t wholly a rule-bound, stuffed suit of armor. He was slightly more practical than purist. The Guard’s plates needed to be uniform and finer than dinnerware, sure; but so long as you were fit to fight, what happened under your blacks was between you, your sergeant, and your capacity to endure barracking.

Fox chose not to see a lot of things and liked to figure what natborns couldn’t see couldn’t hurt them.

Problem was, natborns liked to see fucking everything, especially politicians curious about how fully organic their new army was. Inspect, his shebs — bother, interrupt, and gawp at, more like. Guard Central off the Executive Thoroughfare was hardly incognito and not necessarily off-limits if you could nab some natborn logistics lieutenant with the most basic clearance.

It was only a matter of time before a guardsman got his favorite dancing girl slapped across his back in glorious color and some peeping bureaucrat kicked up a stink about a gross lack of standards in the locker room. Fox could do nothing about General Tiaan or other top brass, but at least they trumpeted a few hours before their arrival to ensure the proper pomp and ceremony — and they didn’t care about the showers.

Senator Chuchi had gone quiet as they reached the main Annex lobby. Fox’s neck dampened to think he’d lowered her spirits or given her cause to regret his company.

He also believed guilt helped no one. She didn’t seem pompous or presumptuous, just unfailingly polite. Maybe he had a chance to make a real ally. “If I may request a favor, ma’am,” he ventured, steepling his hands at his navel like he’d seen the Chancellor do when putting forth a sensitive proposition. “For my own ... err, family.”

This time Senator Chuchi arrested Fox with both hands on his gauntlets. He couldn’t have moved if Corrie’s axis pitched. “Certainly,” she said. “I like to think I’m a public servant. And not only for Pantorans.”

Fox had been primed to make a short speech about clone personhood and the need for senatorial sympathy. He was damn tired, though. And moonstruck. Enough to make him chuckle and ask instead, “If you could maybe … I don’t know, discreetly put it round that it’s gauche for politicians to drop into the barracks unexpected? The men don’t get a lot of privacy and the shower block’s the closest thing to a spiritual retreat they’ve got.”

Senator Chuchi’s bright eyes widened, his display registering a sharp increase in her pulse and temperature. “Of course. You have my word. I’ll see if can carefully address this matter of … discretion. And I’m sorry you had to ask.” Her knuckles paled as she squeezed his armor; he felt nothing but her sincerity.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Fox was so flustered, he nearly invited her to drop by his block anytime, which would’ve been the height, depth, and breadth of stupidity. Instead he said something else that was only marginally short on sense. “It’s very late. May I escort you home?”

“That’s kind of you, Commander. But my driver will be here now.” Her driver — of course: she was as rich as Koros, she possessed a smile literally finer than gold, and she wasn’t touching him anymore. Fox bowed his head low — a head that had almost outgrown his helmet in a moment of unprofessional conceit.

He had to walk back down the Thoroughfare to fetch his bike. As he did, Fox wondered what might bring him to patronize that closet in the barracks he wasn’t supposed to know about. What he’d ask for, if he ever forgot his station enough to ask. What could ever stir his heart so much, that he’d wish to mark the spot.

Hypos and hypotheticals: Fox, senior commander and paragon of the Guard, didn’t have time or liberty for either. He tried to forget all about it.

#foxiyo #commander fox #riyo chuchi #coruscant guard #biscuit fic

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