#fox spent his entire time on kamino telling cody he was the smart one and cody was the pretty one

[rooksunday]

when the coruscant guard toured their new barracks, they immediately clocked a problem.

“where are the rest of the bunks?” stone asked, looking between his datapad of assignments, and the last of the dozen bunkrooms.

even sleeping two to a pod, with four pods to a room— even hotbunking, like they were going to have to if the ‘suggested’ shift schedule was correct— there simply weren’t enough beds.

thorn grimaced. “we could give up the rec room and mess.”

“and eat where? and we need at least one room for sitting in and staring into the middle distance,” stone countered. they’d been doing a lot of the latter that day already.

with a conceding shrug, thorn turned to fox, who had been increasingly stiff and silent as the inspection had continued. stone couldn’t blame him. the building that the senate had ‘generously provided’ appeared to be held together by force of habit and spite; stone could relate, but he didn’t want to spend a war there.

“what are you thinking, sir?” stone prompted fox. the vod was always thinking something. that was his problem.

fox shook his head slightly, as if stepping out of deep water. he hummed.

“i saw something on the holonet… leave it with me,” he said.

after fox had left—marching with determination toward the broom cupboard he’d claimed as a an office—stone turned to face thorn, who was already looking at him with a particular tilt to his visor.

“on the holonet?” thorn repeated. “have you got any idea what he’s talking about? all he looks at on there is conspiracy theories and pictures of tookas.”

stone slowly shook his head. “i’m sure it’ll be fine. i’m sure it’ll be… fine.”

the guard moved in. they made it work. what other option did they have?

six weeks after landing on coruscant, fox burst into the commanders’ shared bunk with something fluorescent streaked across his armour and the stench of burnt feathers in his wake. he’d lost his helmet somewhere. stone had been cleaning his armour and threw the cloth at fox in instinctive reaction, but fox just batted it away.

“what the kark, sir?” stone spat out, heart thick in his throat.

“whuzzat?” thorn mumbled as he rose to a sit. “fox, you stink.”

“of victory,” fox countered. he stalked across the room and thrust and vial of smoking … something… to stone. “here, drink this.”

stone’s eyebrows rose. “no? sir?”

“is it tasty?” thorn asked, sleepily.

fox produced another vial from his utility belt and held that one out to thorn. he popped the cap with his thumb. smoke boiled out, glittering like dust motes. this vial was presented to thorn.

“i put honey in yours,” fox said.

of course he did.

but if fox was handing mysterious vials to thorn, he probably wasn’t planning to kill them all. probably. besides, it had been a long assignment and the war wasn’t going anywhere. the chancellor wasn’t going anywhere. stone took his vial, and saw thorn take his.

“well. cheers, i suppose,” he said, catching eyes with thorn, who rose his vial in turn.

between them, fox danced from foot to foot like he’d drank too much water before a long shift. his attention flickered between stone and thorn as they drank. his eyes were bright and he kept making and unmaking fists at his sides. he looked like a tubie waiting for their first live fire drill.

stone drank.

“huh. that doesn’t—“

then things got really kriffed up.

cody rubbed at his comm as if that would help comprehension.

“say again? some interference on my end,” he said.

the tiny blue rex rubbed the bridge of his nose. “tookas, vod. hundreds of tookas. they’re all over the senate building. they’ve herded the chancellor into his office and are blocking the hallway. no one can move them. the optics would be terrible.”

“where did they come from? can’t the coruscant guard take care of it?” cody didn’t want to assign fox to animal crowd control, but wasn’t protecting the senate his job? an invasion probably counted.

“that’s the problem. one of the tookas… it knows dadita.”

“excuse me, captain. did you say there’s a tooka that knows dadita?” general kenobi asked, leaning in to see rex. he’d been working on the other side of the office on the negotiator; sound didn’t have far to travel.

“that’s right, sir.”

“fascinating. what did it have to say for itself?”

rex shifted his weight. he looked off-camera. “it said, ‘tell cody i’m the kar— i’m still the smart one’. sir.”

silence weighed heavily in the room. cody scratched his nose and turned the message over for a second time. a third. an eleventh.

“therefore you believe that this tooka—“

“is commander fox, sir, yes,” cody said, so rex didn’t have to.

“fascinating,” kenobi said again.

“yes, sir,” rex said, his tone implying that fascination wasn’t really the problem. “and also— excuse me, sirs, one moment.” his voice became louder as he looked off-cam again, and his brow furrowed. “did someone give fox’ika a lightsaber? why is it red? what do you mean, you found it in the chancellor’s office?”

cody met his general’s eyes, and suspected his own were as wide.

blast it, fox was the smart one.