#im laughing ur description was so cute anna

[aenaxes]

memories of a shooting star

[fives x f!reader] what answers can a falling star offer you when it dips into the atmosphere and calls you home?

warnings: none

w/c: 1.4k

a/n: for my sweet @murdertoothpick, “i am an aries, afab, my favourite time of the day is that time between 7-8pm (is that weirdly specific? maybe), i’m an introvert but i hc myself as an extrovert (don’t ask, or do; okay maybe i’m actually an ambivert), and i have no preference of n/sfw *lip bite*” i match you with (best boy) fives! i feel like he'd admire your energy, quiet as it may oftentimes be, and he'd have a knack for picking up on your comfort levels and knowing the right time to tug you close or nudge you further.

Sometimes, you allow yourself the luxury of letting your mind wander in the pressurized stillness between silent dogfights in space. When the brothers have gone to sleep and the generals take perch in high places in the turret towers, you sit over your flimsy army-issue blankets and summon the courage to wonder about breaking every regulation humanly possible.

What would a shotgun wedding look like in neutral space? What would it be like to tap Fives awake in the dead hours of night and hotwire an escape pod? What would it be like to look war in the face and, instead of bowing your head low and slowly breaking bone after bone under its weight, what if you simply refused?

If you squinted into the galaxy, could you see the dregs of another lost battle memorialized in light speed?

What would it be like to live?

How did it end up this way? You wanted to see the stars, those little specks in the night sky, so small you thought you might be able to scoop them into your palm if you reached out far enough. When did joining the war machine become a part of that dream?

They’re big questions.

So you start small, chasing the shadows of uncertainty with a grin as you lift a lighter to the smuggled sparkler stick pinched between Fives’s teeth.

Funny, how it was up to regulation to sleep against a plasma torpedo with enough firepower to knock a small moon out of orbit. But a thin stick of old-fashioned gunpowder and crude metals warranted something a little harder than a slap on the wrist.

But you see Fives grin around the wooden end of the sparkler he’d paid a merchant nearly triple for when he’d tugged you from the waterfront to the night market vendors. But you see him nearly drop the sparkler when he smothers down his laugh at your struggling attempts to get the stick to actually catch; you see him nearly drop it again when, finally, it begins to fizzle and pop soft yellow sparks between you. But you see familiar lights begin to dot the shoreline behind him; you hear Dogma yelp, Echo laughs, Jesse and Hardcase whoop over the fuzzy wavesound.

The stars don’t seem so far away anymore.

Fives reaches up to pluck the sparkler from his lips, offering it to you with a giddy triumph that trembles over his smile. You grin back, and you wonder if Fives sees the sparks in your eyes the same way you do his.

“That was in your mouth!” you laugh and twist your lips into your most convincing display of disgust as you shoo him away. “I thought that was going to be yours!”

“Baby, yesterday you literally asked me to spit in your—”

“Nah-ah-ah!” you cut him off. Briny air fills your open-mouthed grin, and you wonder if this is what the sparkler trail of a shooting star tastes like, warm with the retreating rays of twin suns sinking beneath the horizon, warm with Fives’s easy joy reflected over the gentle waves. “I’m not going to let you sneak an indirect kiss in while the boys are here.”

“Oh, baby girl, they know we do more than indirect kissing—” Fives starts.

“Ah-ah!” you tut, laughing as he reaches the sparkler towards your free hand.

You skirt his touch with a giddy shriek when you feel his knuckles brush over yours. It’s playground flirtation, it’s tag as Fives lopes after you, but the wind feels like you could call this little planet home when the war ends, when the Jedi step back, when you can look up and see the stars unobstructed by the shadow of a cruiser crusher overhead. For all that keeps you up at night, tonight, there is a warm breeze and Fives and the promise that if you turn your head, you will find family in the brothers lighting the shoreline with fizzling dots of light.

So you throw your head back. Your hair catches in your mouth and brushes over your nose as you backpedal over the sand. And when Fives, backlit by the late glow of the sunset, reaches for you, though you might be pretending to run from him, you reach back and close your fingers around gilded rays of light.

It had been a funny question to ask when you were younger: what does a star feel like, cradled in your palm? Would it consume you in its orbit? Would it be so hot it felt like you were freezing? Would it be nothing at all, just asteroid dust and the memories left behind?

It still feels a bit strange to ask, but now you have your answer.

The starlight is calloused and rough. It is young in light and yet ancient with memory. It is tired. It wakes up at 0400 to run bed checks and steel itself for another day in an ocean with no shore.

But it’s soft, too. It is the quiet, forgiving love of the dawn that crests over the waves without fail. It kisses your cheeks with honeyed warmth and lets you tug it back into bed for five more minutes. It opens itself to you and invites you to hold it close, starstreaks finally in your grasp and so, so warm in your palm as you lace your fingers with Fives’s and let him swing you up into his arms and close against his chest.

Fives brings his arms around your neck, wrangling you into a hug as you laugh and wriggle in his embrace. The sparkler crackles a few centimetres away from your cheek and showers you with cool embers as Fives dips his head low and nuzzles his beard against your cheek. Far behind you, Rex’s laughter crests with Tup’s and dips into wavesound.

By the time your laughter dies down, you realize you’ve chased each other to wobble ankle-deep in the warm ocean waters. Seafoam laps at the edges of the rolled hems of your pants, and it just feels right to wiggle your arms around Fives’s waist.

Your star skims the atmosphere and grazes close over the water’s edge, wrapping its iridescent tail around your shoulders and offering you a half-spent sparkler stick. And when you still your heart to look your shooting star in the eye, you find deep brown eyes and a boyish grin mellowing, softening with the steady burn of the sparkler’s waning lights.

Without thinking, you rise up to your toes. Sand slips over your feet, and the wind cools over your skin as you squeeze your hands over the small of Fives’s back and press your lips against his. You distantly register Jesse shooting a low whistle your way, followed by more laughter. But the warmth that spreads from the base of your ribs to the top of your head in the glow of the sparkler beside you is far from embarrassment.

“I thought you said no kissing?” Fives teases with a wry smile after you pull away and settle your heels back into the sand.

You shake your head, and you aren’t sure if you’re grinning because of the warmth in your chest or if the swell between your ribs makes it impossible to hide from his light. You squeeze your arms at his side and crane your head to peck over his beard.

“No indirect kissing,” you correct.

Fives rolls his eyes, but his teasing facade breaks with a yelp as the sparkler flame grazes over his thumb. The stick drops into the shallow waters and rocks in place where the waves lap around your ankles. Dogma yells something about littering before he dissolves into laughter with his brothers.

Reaching around into his pocket, you pull a fresh stick from its little bundle and tap it against Fives’s nose. His expression scrunches, but it doesn’t hold. Fives acquiesces with a soft huff and completes your exchange by tugging the lighter from the loose curl of your fist.

The stars are still in the sky tonight. But maybe one has pitched its orbit planetside and grazed closer than before. Maybe you make peace with the questions and the rules and everything you may never know. Maybe you reach a little further this time.

You close your hand over Fives’s as he lifts the lighter to your sparkler. Golden light spills between your chests. And when you hold a star in your palm, it glows.