#please forgive any errors bc im tired and q'ing this in the middle of the night ok ty

[izzyovercoffee]

Prompt number: 03. “Now? Now you listen to me?” Fandom: Knights of the Old Republic II Rating: T Warnings/Tags: uhh violence appropriate to kotor, ask to tag Summary: Bao-dur and Atton have a disagreement during a fire fight, and the Exile’s temper gets the better of her/them. Notes: This is probably OOC but at this point this late in fictober I really just want to finish all the prompts and leave time for NaNo prep sooooo this is q’d and don’t judge me? ty

##. he’s never paid for a drink in his life and he isn’t about to start now

  Nothing like blaster fire coming from every direction to wake a soul up first thing in the morning. 

“What did you do?” 

“Hey,” Atton snapped as he ducked behind another container. “It wasn’t me this time.” 

From one of the many shipping containers stacked atop one another, Atton could practically feel the disbelief through the comms. “Right.” 

“No, he’s telling the truth,” a softer spoken voice cut through between them. Atton looked over to his right and up one level---Bao-dur peaked around cover. “It was me.” 

“Bao---” Cut off by the sound of blaster fire against something hard near the Exile. 

A spark of something---anger, maybe, or jealousy---burned in Atton’s chest. Her tone never took its edge against Bao-dur, not like it did with him. Even when he’s the one who fucked up, this time.

Force. He hated that feeling. 

“Well, whatever you did,” Atton snapped, “it looks like you pissed off everyone down here.” 

“Just the two gangs,” Bao-dur said, placidly, as if he commented on the weather and not that the three of them stayed pinned down in precariously unstable towers of shipping containers. Atton had the benefit of being on the ground, at least---if he could even call that a benefit. 

“Oh good,” Atton’s tone twisted with his irritation, the dry sarcasm whinging his words. “You united them. Check that one off the list.” 

“I suppose I should have slept the day away, instead,” Bao-dur replied, the calmest jab lobbed at Atton he’d ever heard. He’d be impressed, if he wasn’t about to get his head shot off. 

“Constructive suggestions, please,” the Exile hissed.

“No, no,” Atton said, blaster hugged to his chest as he waited for a break in the however-many that wanted to kill him first, “Continue, Bao-dur. Just get it off your chest.” 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bao-dur replied as he stared directly down at Atton, and locked eyes with him even across the distance. “There’s nothing more constructive than gambling away our credits in Pazaak at the casino.” 

Atton’s eyes narrowed. 

“Because getting our heads shot off in the middle of the night is so much better?” 

Bao-dur pulled out a sphere that glinted in the low light, and lobbed it over the edge of the container he crouched behind. The ground shook with the explosion, and Atton took the opening in the lull of blaster fire. He whipped out of cover, nailed one-two-three Nikto between the eyes, and dove behind cover as the gang recouped. 

Great. Only about thirty more to go.

“At least I was---”

“You might as well throw the Exile off the tower,” Atton snapped.

“You know what,” the Exile hissed over their comms, “Great idea.”

“What?”

“What?”

Both Bao-dur and Atton looked up, to watch as a blur of armor and repurposed robes cut through the dark inner environment of Nar Shaddaa’s broken Refugee District. 

The air lit up and burned in the activation of two bronze blades, and she disappeared out of sight. 

She listened to him.

Now. Of all times.

Screams followed, and blaster fire redirected to inside the area where they’d come from before, and Atton vaulted out of cover without looking first. He could tell Bao-dur followed close behind, even as he ran into the smoking remains of the grenade the engineer had lobbed just a moment before. 

Acting on instinct, he fired into the smoke to the left of him. Hit someone, Kept running. Fired to the right and ducked. Metal pinged overhead. The smoke clouded everything---with an eerie, blue-gray glow that followed in his wake. Bao-dur’s arm lit the way, if it could be called that. 

But as they tumbled out the end of the entry tunnel container, the smoke filtering out above them and into passably-clean air, they found…

The Exile---a little charred around the edges and furious, hair a mess as if she’d been dragged kicking and screaming out of bed.

Technically, they all had been, but she, uh. 

She made it look good.

And then she spun and lifted one saber sharply up to the both of them. 

“Whatever your problems are with each other,” she growled, low, with the bronze saber illuminating the otherwise light-less ceiling-less container full of smoking bodies, “Work. It. Out.” 

Her blades withdrew back into their hilts. The muddled dark fell over the three of them, broken only by the glow of Bao-dur’s arm. The bubbling crisp that often followed the wake of lightsaber use on flesh cut through the silence with a sickening pull on his memories. Atton turned over numbers on cards in his head. 

“Where are you going?” Bao-dur’s voice cut through the fog, and he realized the Exile navigated around them, and back into the smoke.

“I don’t have time to mediate this,” her voice echoed over the comms. “I need to take a walk.” 

“A walk?” Atton asked. “Where?”

No answer. 

Pain spiked through his hand. He looked down---realized he gripped his blaster too hard, and holstered it. 

“I---”

“No,” Atton interjected as he turned towards him. “No. I don’t want to be an adult about this.” 

Bao-dur only stared at him with muted silence---as unreadable as the day they met. 

Atton pushed a hand through his own hair---already a mess made messier by his frustration and the sweat of the fight. “I need a drink.” He looked for the exit---one not filled with smoke. “You’re buying.”

“I’m not buying,” Bao-dur said, but followed him all the same. 

She listened to me. Atton didn’t know how to feel about that---considering how stupid listening to him was in the moment. Shit.