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whiskygoldwings · 6 days

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Anecdotes of a Guard Life: Oh honey, honey

Senate Galas were one of the... Less interesting parts of Fox’s job. Stand around, look imposing yet approachable and pretend he’s not sneering behind his helmet at all the drunken Senators. Other then the approachable part, it’s a cakewalk.

That isn’t to say they don’t have their perks. One being that he’s not doing datawork. The other... Well...

The internal comms crackle to life. “The Prune’s approaching the soapbox, operation Flavour’s a go.”

Fox calmly turns and walks towards the podium, placing himself in full view to the left. He tucks his arms neatly behind him, grasping wrists and sets his feet perfectly apart in parade rest. The Chancellor passes him with a “Commander! How lovely to see you!” and Fox salutes crisply, before returning to position.

“Decoy in place,” he reports, and gets a “Received!” in return.

The rest of his role in the operation is simple. Stand there and be obvious. It’s not hard. He’s well aware of what he looks like. White painted chest armour a beacon against all the red. Helmet sticking out amongst all the uncovered faces. There’s always a few Senators who dismiss the Guard along with the rest of the serving staff, but if one is looking for them, he draws their attention.

He’s also strategically placed himself under the slightly brighter light near the podium. Carefully orchestrated by their best engineers.

He’s pretty sure this is not what the Kaminoans intended when they flash-trained them in Infiltration methods. But fuck ‘em. They also debated engineering out their tastebuds so they would eat basically anything. Instead they just fed them that anything and expected them to like it anyway.

This is their own fault, really.

Thorn casually walks around the crowd, helmet facing out, checking for any signs of trouble. The hand facing away from the crowd twitches in a series of handsigns and Fox sighs.

“Thorn, comms work just fine.”

Thorn’s sigh is heavier. “Fox, have a little fun once in a while.”

“No.”

Several different snickers come over the internal comms and a noise that is very clearly Thorn blowing him a raspberry.

Fox rolls his eyes, safe in the knowledge that no one around him can tell.

“You did get that we’re halfway done though, right?”

Fox groans, just managing to keep from tipping his head back in exasperation. “No, I forgot how to read hand signals.”

“It’s all that caf, rots the brain.”

Fox doesn’t even dignify that one with an answer. Not all of them can be all flowers and sunshine first thing in the morning.

Actually, he has absolutely no idea how any of them can be like that. Thorn is a freak of bioengineering. Somehow they got away with their blonde hair, but Fox isn’t sure how the Kaminoans missed the disgusting morning cheerfulness.

Clearly something had critically failed in their tube before decanting.

He nods absentmindedly at a Senator who’s approached and is drunkenly thanking him for his “fine service”. A click of the tongue sets his helmet to circulating internal air, but it’s not quite quick enough to prevent the stench of expensive red wine from getting through the filters. Great. He’ll have to sit with that for a while.

The man is just slurringly getting to the point where he’ll ramble about how his planet’s taxes are funding the Coruscant Guard’s efforts when Thorn speaks again.

“Fox, Taa on route to point Alpha.”

“Apologies, Senator,” he has no idea what the absolutely kark-faced Senator’s name is, but the title always works. “I am required for an internal matter.”

He doesn’t wait for the man’s wide-eyed enquiries, simply turns away and walks towards the buffet table at the other end of the hall. He can already see Senator Taa weaving his way towards the buffet table, taking advantage of the other guests being distracted.

There’s a saying. One about smart minds thinking alike or something. Fox is a little less then impressed to find Senator Taa thinking along the same lines as them. He would not bet on Senator Taa against a Kowakian monkey-lizard.

“Senator, may I have a moment?” He slides infront of him, standing like a barricade in the path of the man’s assault. Senator Taa actually jumps a good inch off the floor.

Fox probably shouldn’t be amused at that. He is though. He was also recording it. That’ll make for good viewing on a rough Senate duty.

“Ah, Commander, must it be now?” Senator Taa looks anxiously over his shoulder, and Fox calmly sidesteps to block his view of the buffet table.

“I apologise sir, this won’t take a minute.” Fox clicks his tongue at the end of that, switching the outward going comms off.

A crackle of internal comms then “Understood, troops, one minute.” from Thorn.

They could be efficient and professional, when the need was high.

What followed for Fox, was an excrutiating minute of going over security plans he was already very certain of, and manouvering himself to prevent Senator Taa from slipping round him. The Twi’lek Senator was... Persistent, would be a good way to put it. Fox was the taller of the two of them, which was fortunate, as the Senator kept rising onto tiptoes to try and look longingly over his shoulder. He’s never tilted his head so much in conversation and frankly, his neck hurts. He actually resorted to raising up on his own toes at one point.

The things he does for his troops. Force damn the little fuckers.

He can see them in his peripherals though. Casually moving towards the long table set with food, as if on a floating patrol. He’s pretty sure he spots Thire carrying away a whole roast bird of some sort, and if that’s actually the case he might have to promote the cheeky little shit...

Finally, FINALLY, Thorn walks up behind Senator Taa with a “Sir!”. The Senator jumps again, and sadly, Fox wasn’t recording that time. He’s not entirely sure how a man can be so completely oblivious to everything going on around him, but it works for their purposes.

“Commander?” Fox enquires, and as the Senator turns to face Thorn, flashes a slightly-more-emphatic than he intended THANK YOU hand signal.

“The Chancellor has requested a further perimeter sweep.” Thorn intones, voice carefully modulated to project bored professionalism.

“Understood,” Fox looks back to the Senator and nods at him. “Apologies Senator Taa, we can discuss this matter further later.”

“Yes yes, mustn’t keep you from your fine work, good job Commander,” the Senator waves dismissively at him, then heads over to the buffet table with an air of victory.

Fox watches him go, then turns back to Thorn.

“Do you think he realises you’re the one who stopped him?” Thorn asks, a thoughtful tilt to their helmet.

Fox just sighs, and walks away to the sound of Thorn’s snickers in his ear.

------

He’s only able to review their proceeds after the Gala is completely done and over, made sure everyone has left for their own homes, and checked Senator Deechi isn’t, once again, comatose drunk under a table somewhere. He marches back to the barracks (alone, because he isn’t making any of his troopers stay at one of these stupid events any longer than necessary) and makes his way straight to the second rec room.

The sound of laughter and joy hits him as soon as he rounds the corner to the hallway, and he lets go of the tension with a grateful breath. Pulling off his helmet, he strides into the room, where troopers in various mismatches of bodysuits and armour are sprawled around a lumpy pile covered in a white sheet with CG stamped in red in the corner.

“Took your time!” Thorn waves at him, grin wide and delighted. “Deechi wasn’t passed out again, was he?”

“Thank the Maker, no,” Fox rolls his eyes to chuckles from the others. “You waited for me?”

Thorn rolls their eyes right back. “Duh, get your shebs over here.”

Fox goes and sits next to them, then promptly gets back up when Thorn tries to side-arm him into a hug and goes to sit next to Comm who snickers at the pair of them. Thorn pouts. It’s a good pout, full and wide-eyed, but Fox has developed immunity to their banthashit and graces the attempt with a middle finger.

Thire sighs loudly and exasperatedly. “If the two children would kindly settle down, the adults would like to check out the spoils of battle now please?” He glowers at the pair of them, and Fox glowers back, showing him how it’s done.

Thorn reaches forward and grabs the edges of the blanket. “My friends, my family, my wonderful idiots! Enjoy!” They whip off the sheet with a flourish, and there’s gasps and noises of joy as even Fox feels his eyes widen.

They’ve outdone themselves. There’s little squares of delicate crisp bread with curls of meat pate. Glistening honey-coated carrots roasted to perfection. Candied nuts and fruit sitting powdery in a bowl. The roast bird he’s going to have to make Thire a commander over. And even...

“Is that sugar?” Fox breaths, picking up the beautiful ceramic bowl filled almost to the brim with beautiful, wonderful, white crystals of perfection...

Someone passes a steaming hot cup of caf over his shoulder and holds it out for him. “Commander,” Stone murmurs, a warm smile on his face as Fox turns to him. Comm holds out a small spoon, and Fox is not an emotional man, but he kind of wants to kiss the whole kriffing room at this point.

“Thank you,” he sniffles, taking the proferred mug (and decidedly doesn’t care that it’s the pink one with a Fox-head that Stone got him as a joke) and places it in front of him. With gentle fingers, he takes the spoon from Comm, gets himself a hearty heaped spoonful of sugar, and stirs it into the inky-dark liquid in his mug.

Reverently, he lifts the mug to his lips, tilts it gently and... Oh...

“Mesh’la,” he whispers, eyes closed and lips curving into a smile in the wake of the sweetened nectar of the little Gods.

There’s laughter all around him, and he opens his eyes to the sight of his family, all taking carefully selected pieces of food and trying them out with noises of glee and excitement.

Fox sits, sipping his delicious cup of caf, and thinks life doesn’t get much better than this.

#Mesh'la = beautiful #shebs = arse #I headcanon Fox having a sweet tooth #And sweet coffee makes life bearable #His troops always make sure to get him some #one way or another #marshall commander fox #coruscant guard #coruscant guard as family #star wars: the clone wars #fanfiction #my fanfic

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hitlikehammers · 2 months

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just the facts

rating: t ♥️ cw: Lady Applejack's enduring awesomeness ♥️ tags: established relationship, rockstar!eddie, teacher!steve, rockstar husbands, steddie in their 20s, erica sinclair, steve and eddie stay local until the entire party is safely graduated, slice of life, softness, canon fact: erica coins term 'dumpster fire' for the ages, SCOOPS TROOP FOR LIFE 🍦🍨

for @steddielovemonth day fifteen: Love is Co-Parenting (@shares-a-vest)

still the boys who grow into the husbands in je ne regrette rien but let’s roll back to the early 90s ♥️

“So, Stanford?”

She raises a brow around the straw in her mouth when Steve speaks and god: she’s grown up so fucking much, but that look, when Eddie glances back to the table as he listens in to their conversation: that look’s the first time he encountered the formidable half-elf a fucking lifetime ago when he was an asshole and she schooled him from the start—he should have been better prepared for the emotional whirlwind to come, at least, from there; or if nothing else, more mindful of the foreshadowing.

And he thought himself some masterful storyteller, Jesus fuck: he was both cocky and naive.

“When I go to law school it’s gonna be on the east coast, so,” she slurps noisily, unbothered, around the ice in the glass; “cover both bases.”

“Take the country by storm,” Steve nods with that warm grin that melts liquid in Eddie’s chest, every time, every day, never stopping: “very you.”

“Can’t run until I’m 35 which,” Erica shrugs, but then she flips her hair and shoots that grin that holds all the fucking secrets: “America without Erica is a travesty,” she’s got her thumb and forefinger pinched as she emphasizes the syllables hard, then snorts so derisively she might as well be the originator of the term; maybe, like, in a past life or something.

“I could run right this minute and do better than what’s there now,” she rolls her eyes and snaps her wrist decisively before stating, y’know, the obvious:

“Just the facts.”

Eddie catches Steve’s lips curl down, brow furrow as he words something out and he’s so fucking gorgeous, he’s so goddamn precious, and Eddie’s heart just kinda flip-flops around to watch him like this, relaxed and soft and happy and proud and a little bit piqued by the innocuous, and they all worked damn hard to get here, but, like.

Here is incredible.

“He just got into office in January,” Steve points out, and Eddie grins as he gathers their orders and arranges on the tray for balance, loves how he wasn’t even worried for what his partner was mulling over with the crinkle in his brow, didn’t even pause to think it was something bad and that’s such a…a new normal and Eddie wants to leap into the air and whoop for the joy of it, but: kinda got his hands full.

Maybe later.

“Plenty of time to impress me, and fail to,” Erica’s scoffing in reply before she huffs: “considering the dumpster fires that preceded him.”

“The what fires?” Steve asks, eyes so big, so fucking pretty.

“I said what I said,” Erica leans back in her chair, crossing her arms and…it’s so comfortable. It’s so innocent, the whole scene, the three of them here, and Eddie loves this, he loves them, he’s just…

It’s a life he never imagined, y’know? It’s a reality he didn’t even factor in when spinning the wheel of possibility in his head, and yes, okay, they went through hell for it, he almost died for it, but he found a family in it; he found the love of his life in it—on balance there’s no fucking question as to where he landed so far toward the good that ‘good’ seems kinda insultingly inadequate as a descriptor at all.

He needs to think up a better word, for sure.

“M’lady,” Eddie bows as he unloads the tray when he gets back to the table, presenting Erica’s five-scoop tower of ice cream with a flourish: “many effusive congratulations to you,” he settles the bowl in front of her and leans to drum his fingers on the cap with the floofy tassel they’d badgered her to bring for photos; “on to new adventures far afoot,” Eddie continues, unloading Steve’s banana split—a true treat more for Eddie to watch him eat than for Steve to taste himself, because fucking hell—and then his own hot-fudge sundae with whipped cream topped higher than the fucking glass, before he plops down next to Steve, the pair of them side-by-side across from Erica in the booth as he grins at her, because shit: he’s fucking proud, too:

“The denizens of Palo Alto will stand in awe of your grandeur,” he gestures with extra grandiosity with his spoon before he grabs the cherry, glances around for safety before offering it straight to Steve’s mouth, pulling the stem out teasingly when Steve bites and hiding the full stretch of his smile behind a big shovel-full of chocolatey-flakes on the whip.

And he and Steve are quiet, but don’t really dive in because they’re watching, waiting: Erica rolls her eyes at their antics, even if they were subtle, and goes for a bite herself, and okay, moment of truth—

Her eyes speak for her again, then, but to get very, very big as she stills, then slowly takes the spoon from her mouth and pins them with a stare:

“This is,” her mouth works around a whole lot of silence as she stares at her perfect quintuple-scoop array, because it’s all one flavor. And it’s all a flavor she mostly ragged on for being annoyingly on-brand that first summer, Eddie’s heard the stories, but still asked for extra samples of it every goddamn time, to when he and Steve had both been talked more than once to drive out to the nearest location and ‘fulfill the contract’ sworn that fateful July, a task that got more difficult every year as the chain thinned its numbers, until there weren’t any on this side of the state, then none on this side of the border, then just: none in the Midwest, period, and Erica?

She could try to hide it all she wanted, but she was sad. Because that girl had a favorite. And this, here?

Fucking U.S.S. Butterscotch? Hell yeah, it is.

“Called in a favor,” which Steve probably means to sound like he leveraged Eddie’s currently less-than-moderate celebrity or something, but what actually means he charmed the minimum wage high schooler in Portland, because Scoops Ahoy was out West now, and only had about 10 locations left—but he’d convinced the kid to let him buy a whole gallon, paid a premium for cold storage shipping, and then bribed the owner here with ample documentation of proper product preservation and transfer prior to sale, plus a couple crisp Benjamins, to convince the guy to sell it for one day, only to Steve and his guests—given it was a licensed product the parlor wasn’t a retailer for. The favor was the real power behind what passed for the Harrington charm for all those years and it was simply genuine and full-bodied Steve: charming, god yes, charming as fuck but good and kind and earnest and determined, pushy and snarky but more often wielded for the benefit of others than for himself—not to mention persuasive with those puppy-dog eyes.

Because, like, fuck: all these years and Eddie’s still weak for those goddamn eyes.

He lets himself stare at Steve and just, take him in for a little while until Steve feels his gaze—doesn’t take long, they’re aware of each other as a default mods—and lifts those impossible eyes for Eddie to drown in and feel warm inside his veins when they light up for the smile Steve flashes his way.

Fuck, but Eddie loves him.

“When are you coming to visit, then?” Erica breaks the spell; licks her spoon clean before aiming it at them pointedly. They glance at each other—she kinda means the world to them, they’ve grown close with her especially once all the other kids skedaddled, and Eddie thinks he’s not…he’s not surprised, and he thinks he knew she’d want them to visit. He thinks Steve knew that, too.

But he knows, like he knows his own heartbeat and Steve’s even better: Eddie knows Steve feels just as warm and touched and like, fucking moved a little by how she treats it like a given.

“When do you want us there?” Steve asks and yeah, he’s smooth about it, composed and shit, but Eddie knows his voice inside-out and backward. He can hear the emotion stayed back underneath.

“When are you planning to move?”

They don’t even really pause at the way she knows without them saying; she’s the only person who hasn’t outright suggested they get the fuck out of Hawkins, finally. Kinda like they never had to say they were staying until all of their family was accounted for and on their way in the world, safe and sound and whole.

“Nothing’s in stone, yet,” Steve offers, poking Eddie’s foot under the table.

“But you’re looking,” Erica, again, already knows; doesn’t pose it as a question.

“Yeah,” Eddie smiles down at his sundae, and links his hand with Steve between them on the seat; “we’re thinking Chi-town,” because that’s been the front-runner for a while, now, of the cities they’ve considered. Because it doesn’t even have to be forever, they don’t have to commit to a place and never leave—because the only forever-thing in all of this, in anything, is them. Just Steve and Eddie, them two: together.

Wherever they end up.

“Mmm,” Erica considers before scooping another spoon of mostly-butterscotch swirl: “I can see that.”

“You can, can you?” Steve volleys with a smirk, and she lets him goad her into laying out how she knows them, how she sees them, because…it’s maybe strange but then maybe not but it’s always felt special, with her. Maybe because she’s grown up more than any of them, for Steve and Eddie to watch. Maybe because she’s so goddamn smart, that her observations come out near-unchallengable.

Maybe because they both know she loves them, and she knows they love her, and it’s never been…awkward, like it had been in spots with the shitheads over time. It was just understood.

“Big but not huge,” Erica ticks off the reasons for her assessment; “music scene’s decent,” she nods to Eddie, who nods back gracious; “good schools,” she leans to Steve, and yep, that was a huge factor, whether Steve could love his job; “liberal…ish,” she eyes them, and how close they sit, meaningfully before tacking on: “familiar weather.”

Steve huffs a little laugh and Eddie just beams at her: not a single thing wrong there. She’s got them dead to rights, and he kinda loves that about her; so much.

“Semester ends first week of December,” she focuses back on her bowl and speaks with authority, like whatever she’s proposing isn’t a suggestion, just a notice: “if you guys are still here,” she shakes the full spoon in her hand and raises an eyebrow: “I expect ice cream.”

Steve just nods as she pops the spoonful in her mouth whole-on.

“Scoops Troop for life,” he agrees and Eddie perks, always ready when that label pops up.

“Plus honorary trooper,” he chimes in, and Erika grins around her spoon a little as Steve leans close and can’t kiss him here, but Eddie knows well what it means to feel Steve’s breath against the line of his neck like he’s jest stretching past him, like it could be innocent as Steve murmurs low—

“Always.”

And can feel the heat rise in his cheeks, and the flutter in his chest, because…because he’s in love, goddamnit, and it’s been one of the most incredible surprises to learn that he can love so big, and get love so big back in kind, that the feeling never fades, he can always feel weightless and boneless and overwhelmed in the best of ways for just this man near to him, just the pitch of his voice and the promise of his breath on Eddie’s skin.

“You’re cute,” Erika says, the judgement in her tone tempered low as her lips still quirk; “and this is delicious,” she points her spoon again at the remaining ice cream and the tiny puddle it’s melting between the remaining scoops. “So I’ll allow it,” she nods to their pressed-together shoulders and goes back to eating, but never loses the tiny grin and he and Steve both know how much that means, from her.

“But if you’re already there,” she continues when she starts collecting the saucer bits at the base of the bowl: “Chicago’s a decent layover spot, probably,” she shrugs; “but still, here or there,” and she pauses with intention before narrowing her eyes with intention:

“Ice cream.”

tag list (comment to be added): @pearynice @hbyrde36 @slashify @finntheehumaneater @wxrmland @dreamwatch @perseus-notjackson

♥️

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