Chapter Text
Fox stood at the foot of his cot. He flipped a large roll of tape in his hands and studied the shiny plastoid shell he’d arranged.
His phase two self.
News to him that the armor they’d been sporting this last decade was the first phase of anything. But Kamino’s armorsmiths had been as busy as Baktoid’s bugs, the DOD was making clones shed their carapaces, and it’d been a carousel of cargo vessels at every barracks on Corrie since the new year. K81 Operational Combat Plates Mk2 didn’t flat pack.
For all the logistical fuss, the plates weren’t all that different. Just more angles and fewer curves. Lighter, too, Force save their knees (steroid injections couldn’t now, and unless the Veterans Budget bill passed, they wouldn’t be getting those either). And there were new instructions for wearing spaulders upside-down that would exasperate sergeants for weeks.
Fox had been surprised to find his newly issued kit fit like a forgettable dream. After all the back-and-forth bellyaching between the corps’s QM, Procurement, and Kamino about the need for flexibility, the need for funds, and the need for reduced caloric intake, someone on the longnecks’ side had clearly folded — or someone was getting kickbacks. There were more than two sizes now; no clone’s gains would be limited by the armor he could squeeze them into, or the shimming he figured could safely get away with.
The helmet had borne the brunt of the overhaul. Its faceplate was more humanoid, in a skeletal kind of way. Fox still hadn’t decided how he felt about it, besides robbed. Clones didn’t have much to call their own, and nearly every brother loved his bucket like it held his last breath.
More importantly, how would she feel?
He glanced over at his old helmet — the face she’d smiled at first — and considered how badly he’d be reamed for misplacing it. Eloquently and with extreme prejudice, probably. Losing a damaged spaulder was one thing; the helmet was serialized and had to be handed back. The spanks were the same for all ranks where INFOSEC was concerned.
Fox returned his attention to the bed.
The new helmet still featured a mounted lamp and an enhanced comms and sensor array, but the polarized lenses rendered the visor redundant. Fox had requested one anyway: it made a complex HUD field easier to scan and incoming data feeds easier to triage in sunlight — and it was always sunny in Galactic City.
Finally, there was a stiff new kama. Fox had taken a fastcutter up the back and along the edges, and the lethris now cried for some trim. He couldn’t cannibalize the silk from his old one: it was utterly sky-shredded where not scalded from three weeks of near continuous down-draft. To his kama’s credit, Fox had burnt through more than one jetpack traversing a goodly part of the planet via its sewers, storm drains, and skytunnels in a quarterly sweep of the infrastructure. It was impossible to keep them totally clear of criminal elements, but at least a red wave could keep them from getting too comfortable.
Someone knocked. It was Floren, bearing caf and two cans of spray paint in the unit’s new color because continuity was for chumps.
“They give you any trouble?” Fox asked. The motorpool mechs were stingier than medics sometimes. Mostly with good reason.
“No, sir. There’s crates of the stuff. No repulsor threads for the larties, ‘course, but enough paint to make sure they go down in a blaze of fresh Corrie red.”
“Sell tickets and call it a lightshow.”
“I’ll put it to the ladies down at the RSO,” Floren replied, accepting Fox’s desk chair. He squirmed around in his seat for a minute, like a cadet newly graduated to hard plates. Or a grunt selected to play officer lackey for a day without really knowing why. “Still stumped, sir?”
Fox nodded.
To crown all this newness, the RAJ had decided there was no time like the present for a rebrand of the Guard. Gone was the Senate Sword from their largely uniform paint schemes. This suited Fox just fine: he was done being a poster boy for that cabal as it was now constituted. But the Corries had been made to adopt a saturated version of Kamino Security’s pattern and it seriously scalded their pride.
Fox understood the logic: KamSec had fielded standard phase two first, and it was just a matter of switching out the color cartridges to see all branches of the Republic Guard unified under the same stripes. Didn’t mean he had to like it. It was the Washouts’ pattern. And it was a lot of top-down change to swallow in one.
Which was why Fox was anxiously picking at tape and sending Floren to fetch sh*t for him. He wasn’t inspired. He wasn’t an artist. And he was up against the deadline.
Senior officers had been given some latitude in their adoption of the new gear. Hells, General Tiaan had even encouraged Fox to express himself in any way not service discrediting. But if he reported to HQ in the obsolete rig and threadbare kama one more time, Fox had a feeling her eyes would bleed and he’d be made to march out in nothing but his blacks.
“Any thought of saving yourself the angst like Commander Thire?” offered Floren, absently flicking through a copy of Bike & Rider Fox had rescued from a bin.
“He isn’t required to maintain the same operational visual recognition threshold for combined units,” Fox intoned. Read: his remit didn’t include going hot and hard alongside birthers at the drop of a stylus. Thire maintained the delicate security equilibrium of the sprawling Federal District from a series of integrated control rooms, leaving Fox to do what Fox did best: plot and hunt and strike with lethality.
“Don’t know how he stands it, if I’m honest,” Floren said.
“He plays mind games with birthers. And flirts with them. Often at the same time.” That was the crux of it, really: Thire flitted through life too captivated by other people’s appearance to have any special care left for his own. Just slap a pauldron on it, that’s distinctive enough for me, he’d said, signing out a pre-painted set like Floren’s. Besides, it’s cheaper. Ladies don’t fleece grunts for a feel.
Fox examined the paint cans, begging for some instruction. The new hue was altogether a better match for the current Executive colors. Fox preferred the Corrie's original maroon: it was closer to Pantoran plum. A staggering wave of sentiment rolled over him again. She’d pressed her love into that old armor — into every seal and seam and dent, till Fox sometimes fancied he carried her with him in the grip of his plates.
Riyo would know what to do. Riyo —
The idea surfaced fuzzily, suddenly tickled out from its secret den. Then it transposed itself onto his armor and snap-saluted in his brain. A subtle tribute to that crafted crystal creature in Riyo’s bedroom which would fit the bill perfectly. “Thank you, Nuyn!” Fox blurted, in this flashbang of satisfaction.
“Who’s Nuyn?” Floren asked.
“Nuyn of your business.”
Floren just looked scared. To be fair, it surprised Fox, too; and he’d have looked the same if stood in the presence of Jango, GAR, retd. and been lobbed a bad pun.
“That was humor, trooper. And since you didn’t laugh” — Fox threw a spaulder and a second roll of tape at him — “tape out the Corrie crest for me.”
“Wilco,” Floren replied, unbunching. “Whatcha thinking for the rest of it, sir?”
“That’s a surprise.”
This time, the guardsman was all monkey-lizard innocence. “For who?”
“Holster that grin and get to work.”
Fox spent the better part of the day taping and masking out the simple pattern on the rest of his armor to military precision. Asked to do it any other way, he and Floren both would’ve sat on their hands. But Fox was conscious that he was losing precious time with Riyo. They hadn’t seen each other privately in nearly a month, and she’d lately been off-world — far too late to take the edge off Fox’s nerves.
He’d begged her to go home in the aftermath of the grid bombing, when senators were being threatened, kidnapped, and otherwise roughed-up as the debate about the Army Enhancement Bill raged. Or, if she wouldn’t decamp to the back end of beyond, then at least to somewhere unexpected. Like a reinforced villa in the Western Sea’s Spiral Sands with Choruk Squad and a company of shocks; she’d have to stay inside and away from windows, but there was ground and foliage enough for an AA emplacement. Of course, she hadn’t, and she’d almost gotten killed a second time. And for a second f*cking time, Fox had General Skywalker to privately thank for her timely deliverance.
Well, the man had a sixth-sense for senators. The oftener it was deployed against assassins in the interest of Fox’s secret sweetheart, the better. Probably.
Fox supposed he might have done this at Riyo’s place. But the aerosols would’ve spoiled the floral freshness of her domed garden. And it was nice just working alongside a brother. Even if Floren was one of those guardsmen who clung to sir like a comfort blanket; like he might forget how to talk without it. They listened to the distorted, percussion-heavy music they both enjoyed and solved the galaxy’s problems like only soldiers who’d been pulling guard duty since decant knew how.
Eventually, Floren had to start his actual duty shift. And Fox, having eyeballed the proportional width and placement of various stripes until his eyes crossed, reminded himself that good enough wasn’t necessarily a ticket to reconditioning anymore.
He dumped his plates and armor stand into a hovercart and wend his way to the lift near the hangar.
The painting was the easy part. Fox just felt vaguely criminal upon finding a faint silhouette stretched like an inverted humanoid shadow on the barracks roof, where the breeze had only carried his overspray so far.
Hardly had he allowed it to cure before he unpeeled the tape and kitted up. He trusted the evening air whipping ‘round him to do the rest as he zipped straight for 1400 East Terrem.
Fox’s skin tightened as the glass wall opened to his command. The feeling never got old.
Senator Riyo Chuchi was difficult to seriously ruffle; but she was skittish and easy to surprise, and not always the smoothest operator. Some Icelilly, indeed. She'd proven more like one of those falconids on the Pantoran steppes: the ones that flew silent, but hit loud and hard, bewildering much bigger prey on impact.
His girl was especially twirrl-like today, barefooted and bouncing to see him. She discarded her watering hose to fly for him (doubling back mid-stride to turn it off) and landed in a swooping of yellow skirts upon his lap before Fox had killed his engine or gotten a hand to his helmet.
“Look at you, my love!” Riyo exclaimed, radiant as a sunshaft. “Or — I hope this is you, Fox, or we’ve all just made the biggest gaffes of our careers.”
Fox smiled, though she couldn’t see it, and his chuckles flowed like a stream in thaw. “It’s me, sweetheart.” He hugged her to him as he fumbled around under the back of her skirt, feeling for the ignition button.
“Look at your new armor!” she repeated. Gaped. “Is this — ” She stroked his white chest and ran her hands along his red arms. Then she canted sideways to look at his boots before leaning back, taking all of him in, her smile telling. “My vulptex?!”
How sweet it was, to be caught holding a secret idea with someone else. It was a marriage of minds he’d only known with brothers. Fox’s chest swelled beneath his new plates. Blood pushed back where it needed to go — and other places besides — in warm relief.
Riyo decided for herself. “Yes, it is! Look at your white snout! And your whiskers!” Her hands flew to the new aerators on his helmet. Fox soon realized she meant the white shock stripes. That wasn’t intentional. But Riyo had a knack for finding something poetic in the ordinary. And who was Fox to gainsay anything she chose to fancy?
“That’s right,” he said, grinning. “So you approve?”
“Oh, yes. This is altogether very striking.”
Fox’s hands covered hers, squeezing them before he popped his seals and placed his helmet on the back. “I was worried — ”
Riyo interrupted him. Clinging to his neck, she kissed him thoroughly, as if to drink down the rest of his cares.
Her soft lips succeeded. The city, the planet, the Republic itself fell away, leaving him in this bubble of bliss with her.
Fox anchored her to him between his cuisses. He cradled her perfect head in his hand. Before he could forget himself and buck her onto the bike's controls, he gripped Riyo’s bare thigh to scoop her closer. She moaned a thready little moan that tugged on his co*ck. His boots skidded off the pedals. Recovering, Fox grazed his gloved knuckles up the long inside of her leg until —
Until they met no resistance and found the warm pillow of her c*nt.
“Oh f*ck, Riyo — ” Fox whimpered into her mouth, shuddering.
How long had she been walking around like this, bare to the air? He pictured her slipping on her expensive panties, only to quickly slip them off again in anticipation of him.
Fox fattened fully. He wanted to rub Riyo stupid right there. Desperately. He wanted her stuck to his gloves for later. But he also wanted her under his nails and against his nose, making him forget the smell of paint — making him forget every damn thing under sky and REPINT, except how Riyo Chuchi smelled when she craved him as badly as he craved her, in the ripe fullness of the wanting that was sometimes more heady than the having.
Riyo shifted her hips. Fox’s fingers were sandwiched between her heat and the lethris seat. Probably smudging the new paint on his knuckle plate. He couldn’t find a single damn to give, and wasn't that just dangerously novel.
She fingered the straps across his heaving shoulders. “I don’t suppose they made any of this easier to remove?” she panted, arching against him.
“Not really. But — ” But Fox was so glad she’d asked. His co*ck had been leaking with excitement to show her.
There was one highlight of this new armor that had gotten rave reviews, from the plumbed barrack blocks of Corrie to the slit trenches of Belderone. One that Thire had kicked Fox’s own door in to demonstrate, like a perverted travelling salesman. Like they hadn’t just sat next to each other in a six-hour, death-by-holopoint briefing about the kit’s every spec and feature.
Fox gently extricated his hand. He’d only done this once and not one-handed. But the seals were only secure against blastwaves and blunt impacts, not a trooper off his face with lust. A few seconds’ fumbling with his new cod and he’d popped the cup.
Fox laced his fingers with Riyo’s. He guided her small hand down. He introduced her to the damp stiffie now accessible from a seated position and not bridled by any plastoid strap.
“Hello!” she chirped. She gripped the bulge in his blacks.
Then she gave a pull to rev a goddamn engine.
“f*ck!” Fox groaned, struggling to remain upright.
It took a moment for his spine to unspool in pleasure. The urge to f*ck her right there, balanced on his bike … resisting was like trying to maintain stealth in a silent clear, when everything was screaming at him to drop the hammer.
Fox clasped her wrist, his breath choppy. “It’s been a while, sweetheart. Trigger discipline.”
“I really don’t know what you mean,” she teased, clawing into his open crotch still. Stars, she was most pitiless today.
“Keep that up and I really won’t make it inside.”
Riyo just kissed him quiet and reclaimed his fingers. “Perfect.”
Fox departed the next morning sore, chafed, and chuffed as f*ck about it. Riyo had dried him out without even thinking about prepping the sauna. And she’d packed him off with generous yardage of red silk and the address of a designer who’d have his bespoke, red-bottomed boots ready before week’s end.
