Waking up with Jason's arms wrapped around you, feeling him breathe into your hair, letting out the occasional snore. His hand is under you, pressed into your side, and you feel him squeeze the flesh of your waist to make sure you're still there, a habit he developed when things started getting serious, constantly searching for you, even in his sleep. He squeezes a little tighter, his breath suddenly quickening at an alarming rate. You try to turn to face him, fear settling in your stomach, wondering if something was plaguing him in his dreams again.
When you shift ever so slightly, you feel the other arm lying over you tighten, pulling you flush against his body. A chill runs down your spine as you feel him exhale a particularly strangled breath, and you force yourself out of his grip, sitting up to get a better look at the man next to you. His eyebrows furrowed, hair flat on one side of his head from laying in one position the entire night. One of his hands reaches out to your pillow, searching for you in your sudden absence, and when it's met with nothing, Jason jolts upright. He turns his head frantically, blurred vision searching for something, for someone, for you.
His shoulders drop in relief when he finally stops long enough to notice you barely a foot away from him. You watch his chest rise and fall as he tries to calm his breathing, and you're not sure which thing caused it, the nightmare or the fear that you had left him. "What are you doing up?" he asks, voice laced with sleep. "You were having a nightmare," you say quietly, sliding a little closer to him and settling back into your spot on the bed. "I was just trying to make sure you were okay." confusion is etched across his face like the concept of him having a nightmare was foreign, and you develop an equally confused expression upon seeing his own. His face drops suddenly, and he clears his throat, "Right, a nightmare." he shifts beneath the covers, seemingly uncomfortable. "I'm all good. Just go back to sleep, okay?" he sends a reassuring smile your way, his attempt at trying to make you forget this whole debacle and coax you back to sleep, but it was too late; you were already wide awake.
"Was it him again?" your hand finds the scarred expanse of his back, lightly grazing your fingers against old wounds and trying to ease his angst; his body tenses at your touch, and a groan leaves his lips. "it wasn't-" he pauses, running his hands through his hair and sighing. "it wasn't him again. It wasn't even..." he trails off, turning away from you and sliding off the bed. "wasn't even what?" You ask, more confused than ever, watching as he lifts his arms above his head, back muscles flexing while he stretches before crossing his arms. He just stands there, back towards you, and all you can do is sit in silence while he seemingly contemplates something. "It wasn't what, Jason?" you ask one more time. He turns his head slightly to look at you only for a second and lowers his eyes when he sees you in the same spot you've been this whole time. "It wasn't a nightmare," he says, turning around to face you, this time allowing you to see his whole body.
His face is flushed a bit out of embarrassment, and your confusion starts to reach its peak. That is until you do a once-over of him and notice the patch of dark gray on his otherwise light sweatpants. Your mouth gapes a bit, and all you can manage is a quiet "Oh." his eyes find the same spot on his pants, a tent growing beneath the soft cotton. "Yeah. Oh."
5K notes
·
View notes
thinking about fox getting his first poll card after the vode get citizenship. the guard scattered after sithsplosion day, but he and a score or so that were functionally useless without each other, like nervous space greyhounds with military training, all ended up bundled together on some planet in the mid rim.
he’s been working on a book about his years at the senate. no one knows about it aside from thorn, who has been checking his basic, and advising him where he needs to wind the reveals back a little because libel. the rest of the time he does payroll for a number of small businesses, picking and choosing his hours, and delighting in sending invoices for his business: the shiny security fund, he’s called it, to continue the tradition in a more official manner.
(when they’d been on triple zero, the fund had been for rations. blankets. bacta. they’d conned credits from tourists and stolen them from senators and turned those credits into hope for the poor bastards shipped to the city that ate shinies before they could ever earn paint. these days, the fund was for whatever his guard wanted. aside from a pony. fox couldn’t figure out where hound would keep the pony.)
the book had been born from two lists. one was the blackmail and gossip the guard had collected during their stint on coruscant; that was where thorn needed to check for dangers, but since most of those senators had died in sith-related incidents, or had been jailed when the media got hold of their dealings, all fox was doing was providing context.
the other part of the book was fox’s List. thire sometimes called it a manifesto, because he had been studying for his degree and liked to show off occasionally. the list was a suggestion of changes to the republic, some small, some large. it was a silly fancy of fox’s, as the whole book was, but if he couldn’t indulge himself in his own karkin’ book then they might as well have punted him off the high levels back on coruscant.
yet for all that he’d settled—and paid taxes, even—fox hadn’t felt part of the citizenship of the planet. then the poll card had arrived. and suddenly he mattered in a tangible way. just like the bothan baker next door did. just like the twi’lek downstairs, the one with the noisy kriffin’ speeder, did.
thorn found fox in the kitchen, still staring at the scrap of card. he rapped his knuckles on the doorframe.
“you okay there, chief?” he asked. he’d been trying out alternatives to ‘sir’. “noise complaint again?”
fox shook his head. he didn’t look up. “voting thing. there’s an election.”
“oh! yeah, we got ours yesterday. are you— what’s that face you’re making. i don’t think i like it.”
fox raised his head and gleamed his smile at thorn, who backed away slightly, one hand drifting to where a blaster once hung. fox’s eyes felt very wide. he jabbed the poll card like a vibroknife.
“do you know what this means?”
“democracy comes in two postal batches?”
“no! well, yes, apparently, and that’s inefficient, but— no!” fox jabbed the card again. “this means i am a citizen and i am about to make that a senator’s problem. where’s my manifes— list, thorn? it’s time for an update.”
711 notes
·
View notes