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“If I kissed you now, would you punch me?”
It’s the suddenness of this inane question that finally manages to break Quinlan out of his breathless stupor. He looks down—and right into CC-1010’s eyes, even darker than usual bathed in the shadow of his civilian cloak’s hood.
His chest is heaving. His snug black leather ensemble, his usual go-to disguise for Korto Vos’ persona, has started sticking to his back with a cold sweat.
He doesn’t know what triggered the flood of agonizing echoes that just washed over him. A mere heartbeat ago, they were shadowing a suspect in the bustling throngs of a souk—‘they’ meaning Quinlan and the clone commander he’s been assigne d for the duration of his mission on Coruscant.
Maybe his fingertips brushed someone’s sleeve in passing, or it’s that he happened to stray a little too close to one of the stall displays, which are known to show off wares that aren’t always produced by free beings or obtained by honest means. Maybe it was simply a smell in the air.
Whatever the reason, they’re not standing on the souk’s main thoroughfare anymore. The walls of a back alley loom up around them, out of the light mist that seems to pervade every nook and cranny of this level of Coruscant. Quinlan’s got his back pressed against just one such wall. When he goes to flatten his palms against the grimy duracrete, grounding himself, something catches his left elbow.
He looks down. It’s a hand, its short but sleek fingers wrapped firmly around his arm. Bare. Meticulously kept nails. It’s the first time Quinlan notices that his clone commander must’ve chosen to go hands bare for this mission, abandoning his usual black, army-issue gloves.
The sight makes the question from before swim back up in his mind. The question, and its sheer audacity.
“Yes,” he hisses and tugs his elbow from the clone’s grasp—or tries to, at least. CC-1010’s grip is firmer than it looks. “I’d probably punch you. And I definitely will if you don’t let go of me, right now.”
Even through the thick, rugged leather of his street clothes, he can feel the clone’s unique single-mindedness seeping into his skin. Follow orders. Win the war by way of violence. Dogmatically and at any cost, if necessary.
It makes the Jedi in him mourn for these beings who are all but lost to the Force. Far worse, however, is the heat squirming low in his guts. The part of him that finds itself intrigued.
“Oh, I don’t know…”
The hand doesn’t fall away. If anything, CC-1010’s grip only tightens further.
“I just think you’re looking a little tense, Korto. Let me lighten the mood.”
Quinlan is a Jedi. He’s fought Morgukai warriors renowned for being Jedi hunters. He’s battled Sith apprentices under the powerful thrall of Dooku. And worst of all, he’s faced his own darkest fears and come out of them on the light side of the Force, all obstacles be damned—time and time again.
But he’s too weak to stop CC-1010 from leaning up while pulling Quinlan down toward him at the same time, too slow to pull back from the soft mouth searching for his own.
CC-1010—Fox, he calls himself Fox, Quinlan remembers at the most inopportune of moments—tastes of stale tea, spiced warra nuts, and street dust. A scar, invisible to the eye but very tangible on Quinlan’s bare skin, rasps against Quinlan’s lower lip, but otherwise CC-1010’s mouth is softer than it looks, and gentler, too. Not that Quinlan’s given it much thought before, of course.
He’s too late in bringing up his hands, setting the heels of them against CC-1010’s narrow but muscular shoulders and pushing the clone bodily away. Already, emotions that aren’t his own are tangling with the heat churning in his belly. He’s not sure whose chest blooms with hunger—if it’s his, or CC-1010’s, or a mutual feeling. Uncertain whether the sudden tightness in his pants is an echo or a call.
He tells himself that he’s imagining the trembling in his fingers as he pushes Fox away, even though his hands ache to grip onto the fabric of the commander’s cloak to pull him impossibly, implausibly close. CC-1010’s mouth parts from his with a wet rending sound. Then, the clone is stumbling back across the grime-streaked floor of the alley.
The all-consuming heat in the pit of Quinlan’s belly remains. Still, he balls his right hand into a fist and swings it at CC-1010’s jaw.
There’s no sickening crunch as his knuckles connect, but a thin rain of blood splatters across them anyway. CC-1010’s lip has burst open. Quinlan wonders briefly whether he’s re-opened the scar he felt just a few seconds ago.
He banishes the thought, but its imprint keeps thrumming through his veins as he spits, “Why did you do that? I told you I was going to hit you!”
His knuckles are starting to ache. CC-1010’s jaw is sharp and solid, despite the fat padding his cheeks.
Cheeks that are being dimpled by a grin. Fox bunches the sleeve of his ratty civilian-issue shirt in his hand and dabs at the blood painting his lips.
“You said ‘probably’,” he gives his muffled answer from between red-stained teeth. “I was willing to take that risk. And anyway—I could’ve done a lot worse than your little love tap.”
Quinlan should be bristling—and he is, in a way, drawing himself up to his full height instead of hunching against the alley wall, even though his knees still feel far too unsteady. Nothing about him is…little, or lovely.
But CC-1010 keeps smiling at him even as beads of his blood continue to well up from the cut on his lip. Keeps looking at him like that.
Dark-eyed. Heatedly, heavily. Knowingly.
“Red looks good on you, Vos,” he says when Quinlan keeps just standing there, head spinning too much to grasp at any coherent thought beyond rage, confusion, fear, arousal.
A nod from the commander’s pointed chin brings Quinlan to glance down at the knuckles of his right hand, where the clone’s blood has seeped into the bandages wound around his palm. It’s darkening already, congealing into spots that will be difficult, perhaps even impossible to get out.
It would be best if Quinlan simply burned the entire length of stained fabric the moment he gets the chance, of course. But he already knows he’s not going to do that.
“We—” He swallows in a dry throat, wets his lips with his tongue and tries to ignore the way Fox’s eyes flick to follow the motion. “We should get back out there. Our suspect—we might’ve lost their trail already. They feel distant in the Force.”
“Oh, don’t worry.” Fox pulls the edge of his hood back down over his eyes, until Quinlan isn’t sure how he’s even able to see anymore. Then again, he isn’t nearly level with the ground like his very short mission partner is. He doesn’t voice the thought and simply listens as the commander continues, “I know Triple Zero like the inside of my codpiece. If you’ll just follow my lead, we won’t be having any trouble catching up to them again.”
And there it is again, that unbearable smugness. Quinlan doesn’t like the way it makes his golden clan tattoo straddling the bridge of his nose itch with heat—not at all.
Apparently, he takes too long to agree to Fox’s oh-so glorious plan, because suddenly there’s a hand at the small of his back, leading him toward the mouth of the alley with gentle pressure. Before he even gets the chance to bristle, the commander flashes a smile up at him that makes the cut on his lip reopen.
“You were looking a little unsteady there, Korto. Just stay close to me, alright?”
Quinlan merely nods. He doesn’t shake off Fox’s hand, doesn’t walk faster to pull away from the touch, doesn’t even tense. He’s weak. So weak. And the clone’s hand is so heavy, so warm, even through the leather of Quinlan’s sleeveless sleek bodysuit.
He doesn’t know when CC-1010 turned into Fox in his mind. He’s not sure he wants to know.
The smells and sounds and sights of the souk engulf them as they step out of the alley and back onto the main thoroughfare, and Quinlan isn’t even surprised when Fox pulls him even closer once they begin weaving their way between people and stalls. His hand wanders, from the small of Quinlan’s back, across his waist, to the jut of his hip bone, where it grabs a tight hold. To anyone passing them by, following them with their gaze, they might look just like a couple severely mismatched in height, who got a little too hot and heavy with each other in the semi-private gloom of a back alley.
Quinlan regrets to admit that the fast pounding of his heart can’t be solely attributed to the thrill of the chase anymore.
“Well.” They’ve all but reached the middle of the stream of civilians, all bumping hips and jostling shoulders, so Quinlan belatedly cranes his neck down until his mouth is at least a little less far away from Fox’s ears. “Lead the way, then.”
The arm around his waist tightens, and Quinlan feels Fox’s answering purr in the entire length of his body. “With pleasure.”
As he’s led along through the crowds, Quinlan gets a feeling that the ache in his knuckles and the blood on Fox’s lips might only have been the first drops of an entire sea of troubles.