Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Echo always wakes up first. Rex has tried to be the earlier riser of the two, something about how the commander of the entire clone underground ought to be the first to wake and the last to bed. But Echo likes it better like this, watching Rex resettle against him in his sleep while Echo pulls down the datapad on the overhead arm. Rex installed it for him after watching him try to scroll with the same hand holding the datapad.

Not that it takes Rex long to wake. “Already?” Rex grunts, his eyelashes fluttering against Echo’s bare chest as they open.

“I didn’t start looking at the mission reports yet,” Echo says, pushing the datapad back up with a smirk. “Don’t worry. Just looking over some mission statuses.”

“Oh yeah?” Rex only shifts enough to be able to look up at Echo, the arm thrown over his waist pulling him in tighter. “Anything for today?”

“Got a rescue hopefully making it back. Didn’t seem to be an Imperial extraction.” Echo plants a chaste little kiss on Rex’s shorn hair. “Must be a brother who’s been roughing it a while.”

“Well, we’re no Scarifian resort, but I think he’ll like it better here.” Rex’s hand drifts lower along Echo’s hip. “What time is it?”

“Too late for what you’re thinking,” Echo says, tapping Rex’s hand through the thick blanket. “Less than ten minutes before we start looking at mission assignments.”

“You don’t think I can’t take you apart in under ten minutes?” Rex scoffs.

“What would you do if I said I didn’t?” Echo says, as offhandedly as he can manage.

“Prove you wrong. Obviously.”

Ten minutes and twenty-two seconds later, Echo’s cum drips from Rex’s smirking lips, the latter rising onto hands and knees from between the former’s thighs. “I told you,” he says, and Echo finds just enough energy to tug down the datapad and flip it around. Rex’s smirk flips into a frown as he processes the chrono reading. “Dammit, Echo, you can’t let me have this?”

“No. Never. Come here,” Echo says, licking Rex’s lips clean into a kiss as he obeys. “I should leave you wanting, just for trying to beat the clock.” His hand wraps around Rex’s cock anyway, and Rex rocks into it gently.

“Are you going to?” Rex asks, voice husky as he looks down.

Echo knew the answer before he even made his threat. The weight of Rex’s erection feels natural in his only hand, like his fingers are drawn to its heat, to the glide of his foreskin. Without the time to draw it out, it doesn’t take Rex long to take the reins back, rutting into the juncture of Echo’s hip and thigh. When he comes, splattering semen onto Echo’s lower belly, Echo arches into it, groaning with each stripe of cum.

“I was ready for my day before you got ideas, you know,” Echo says, drawing a line through Rex’s cum as the other sits up. “Now look at me.”

“I always am.” Rex flops onto his back in the narrow space between Echo and the wall, running fingers along Echo’s short inner arm until he pulls the end of it closer. He kisses the empty port as if it’s only more flesh and blood, long gone. “Now you have an excuse to use the shower.”

“You mean you have an excuse to follow me to the shower.”

“I’ll behave,” Rex says, eyes twinkling with a promise to very much not behave. Except that as the commander of the entire clone underground, yes, he’s aware of the water rations on the space station. The water recycling system still needs some help, once they’ve rescued themselves a little more manpower. So Rex behaves himself after all, hoisting Echo out of the bunk they share and carrying him to the private refresher.

If it were anyone else, Echo would accept no more help than being passed his legs if they’d fallen over in the night. His legs are water-resistant, or at least water-resistant enough for a shower, but his thigh stumps don’t really get clean that way. And so, Rex leaves his legs hung up on the wall to take him straight into the shower stall, and sets him in the shower chair that used to live in Echo’s own private officer quarters, and Echo lets him. Trusts him. Rex has been trying to get him a hover chair, but in moments like these, Echo doesn’t see the rush. They share their water ration “for the good of the troops,” and Echo lets Rex dry him, too, as well as carry him back out. In order, Rex hands him his scomp, his headpiece, then each of his legs, before he sets about dressing himself at last.

“Ready for another day of it, Captain?” Rex asks, stepping into a fresh set of blacks and tossing over a set for Echo.

“More than I’m ready to hear that rank aimed at me.” Echo catches the top, the leggings slipping past him and landing on the bunk. “Ready, Commander?”

Over a breakfast of instant caf and ration bars—Rex prefers to leave the better food to the others, and Echo prefers bland and easily digestible—the two of them look over upcoming missions in the command room, on a display much larger than a datapad. The entire organization is never on base, a previously-abandoned space station hanging in the edges of Wild Space; Teth was a hard-won lesson in the dangers of gathering too many clones in one location. So Rex and Echo rotate clones off-base on a tight schedule, even mandating leave on Pabu (and only Pabu) once any group of clones have completed a certain number of missions. And they rarely take missions together.

“You know, I don’t think you’ve been on a supply run mission in…” Rex counts off on his fingers, trailing off as he gives Echo a meaningful look. He taps the display in front of them. “Another scoop job? Careful, someone might accuse you of being a risk taker.”

“What’s a little adrenaline if it gets brothers out from under the Imperial eye?” Echo sips his caf with an innocence they both know he hasn’t earned. (The caf is diluted, a concession for his diminished body mass.) “Plus I know you don’t like dealing with the Imperials aboard the transports.”

Rex, too, avoids giving a real answer by way of caf. Rex will do what he must for the good of other clones, including killing Imperial natborns, but Echo more than anyone has clocked his quiet discomfort with executing the officers. Something about his very specific experience with Order 66, perhaps. Echo feels no such compunction, and so he takes on those missions more often than not. A bolt through the head or heart of an enemy natborn treating his brothers like cattle isn’t even on the list of things keeping him up at night.

“Tell me if this is pure fantasy,” Rex says instead. “We give Gregor the keys to the place for 72 hours galactic, give or take, and fuck off to Pabu with the next round of boys on leave. Get a little house all to ourselves. No screens, decent food, no schedule.” He puts his caf down, mouth tilted in a rakish smile. “The slowest, most drawn out sex you can imagine.”

Echo nibbles his ration bar, Rex’s already long-since horfed down. He doesn’t want it to be fantasy. As much as he values the work they’re doing here, the only time he and Rex find for sex that can’t be qualified as a “quickie” is dependent on how much sleep they’re willing to sacrifice, and never any earlier than the last hour of the day. Echo’s seen what life on Pabu is like, knows perfectly well it would do wonders not just for their sex life, but for Rex himself.

“Gregor, though?” Echo snorts. “Are you sure about that?” He’s only kidding, of course; if there’s anyone to whom he’d trust the underground in the event of his and Rex’s deaths, it’d be the only clone he knows who’s survived more explosions than he has.

“Sure, I’m sure. What d’you say, Echo? We mandate leave for the others, why not for us too?”

Echo exhales hard, leaning back in his chair as he taps his scomp against his caf cup. “Alright. After this next pair of missions.” A scoop job for Echo, a supply grab knocking over a freighter for Rex. “I promise.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Rex says, grinning wide as he clinks his cup against Echo’s.

They smooth out a handful of details for each mission, and a few more besides. They’ll have Gregor be a fresh set of eyes later, to catch any holes in their planning. From there, Echo and Rex separate; Rex to check on the various sectors of the space station, starting with the clones doing inventory, and Echo to check communications.

Communications are purposely sparse at the space station. Once squads go out for missions, there’s no communication with home base until they’re out of hyperspace on the return trip. As harrowing as it might be to never know if a squad will make it until they already have, it keeps the base safe, and it keeps comms clear for the S.O.S. calls.

So far, there’s never been a false call for help. Before his death Tech had implemented a great deal of security for the clone underground’s communications, and Echo had learned them inside and out in the interest of letting Tech and the rest of the Batch live their lives. Now Tech’s security lives on at every base they establish. Non-clone messages tend to be misfires, harmless messages meant for a frequency just a few numbers off, but Echo listens to each one diligently regardless. Wrong number calls are exactly the kind of nonsense some underhanded Imperials might use to lull their target into a false sense of security before an ambush.

There’s a new S.O.S. now. Echo listens for accent, for cadence, anything that might give the speaker away as a clone impersonator. The caller claims his natty commanding officer wanted him to fire on civilians, and that it felt like “waking up” somehow, as if everything had been fuzzy for a while before realizing he very much did not want to aim his blaster at unarmed Halaisi. He got away with firing into the dirt, he thinks, but it won’t be long until this either catches up with him or he’s asked to fire on innocents again. He signs off with his location, though he’s smart enough not to give up his designation.

In Echo’s experience, only the newer generations of clones, barely graduated from cadethood as the war entered its final months, shortened natborn to natty. The fuzziness also lines up with other clones’ descriptions of the fading effects of the inhibitor chip, though none of them ever knew about the chip at the time. He decides this is a legitimate call for help, and tosses it onto the list with other clones begging for their help. They’re getting stretched thin; Echo’s going to have to see who makes it back from some returning missions before he can assign anyone to this shiny’s extraction. He hopes the kid can wait.

Rex is speedy in his check-ins, and doesn’t leave Echo waiting for long. “Meeting next?” he asks, with a quick peck to Echo’s cheek.

“With Control, yeah,” Echo confirms. “Ready?”

“As ready as I ever am to deal with Control,” Rex says, grimacing.

Sometimes it still astounds Echo how many clones they’ve rescued, recruited, or otherwise taken in. Even with their rotation policy, plenty of clones are bustling through the halls of the station, greeting Echo and Rex as a single unit as they pass. Almost none are clones he knew during the war, and those he did meet prior to Order 66 were acquaintances at best. Now he’s familiar with the bulk of them, the only exceptions the newest members of the underground, and it gratifies him to feel that sense of widespread camaraderie he hasn’t truly felt since before the Citadel mission.

They enter the medbay. That sense of widespread camaraderie vanishes as they come face to face with Control, their self-appointed CMO. He’s a skilled medic whose astronomical success rate goes back to the early days of the war, and true to his name, he runs a tight medbay—tight enough that clones keep trading off medbay duty. He’s insisted numerous times he doesn’t need the staff numbers Rex keeps assigning him, but it’s the best way they’ve found to keep Control’s abysmal bedside manner away from most of his patients.

“Commander. Captain. You’re early,” Control notes, his usual sour expression focused on the pair entering his domain.

“The morning has been a smooth one,” Rex says, with a short incline of his head. “No reason to dally.”

“My schedule is not made on a whim.” Control sighs, rolling his eyes, then gestures to the back of the room. “Luckily for you, I’ve also had a smooth morning. To my office, shall we?”

The clones working their medbay shift watch them walk the floor in silence, never stopping their tasks. The core staff of medics who never trade out barely glance up, but the newbies’ stares seem to communicate Save us every time Echo catches them. He suppresses a snort at their expense, keeping his face neutral and saluting them quietly.

Control picks up his data pad and starts speaking before Echo and Rex have even sat down, the door only closed a second ago. “I’ve sent you a list of medical supplies of which we are in dire need,” he says, as clipped as ever. “I received no response so I will go over it again. This operation will not function if our men succumb to infection and disease, sirs.”

Echo and Rex glance at each other. “By all means,” Rex sighs.

Control rattles off his list without ever looking up from his datapad. Once he reaches the end, he barrels straight into detailing the statuses of his handful of patients, and his intended treatment plans for those not quite on the mend. There’s something about it that makes Echo a little queasy, and Rex gives his thigh a reassuring squeeze. He’s been given the option to skip meetings with Control before, but Echo always refused; he won’t let his issues burden Rex, not when they’re this manageable.

Just as Control takes a breath for another volley, the door to his office whooshes open, a smooth-faced shiny with wide eyes on the other side of it. “Commander Rex! Captain Gregor said to come quick to the hangar!”

Immediately Rex is on his feet, powered by urgency. “The hangar? What’s wrong?” He motions Echo to follow. For once Control doesn’t have anything tart to say, simply saluting them out the door.

“It’s the new arrival, sir,” the shiny says, leading the way at a brisk pace. Rex’s entire body vibrates like he wants to break into a run instead. “He said you needed to see.”

The very same new arrival they’d discussed that morning. “Is he hurt? Do we need Control to come with us?” Echo says, from the back of their small pack.

“No, Captain,” the shiny says. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong, but—Captain Gregor made it sound very important. Especially for Commander Rex.” The constant formality only underscores the shiny’s youth. “Look, almost there.”

At the end of the long hallway, one double door leads into the hangar. There’s a cluster of clones around one of the shuttles, but at the sound of the door they all turn, see Rex enter, and part like curtains to reveal the new arrival.

There, next to Gregor—

“Cody?” Rex croaks.

The clone who stands at the bottom of the shuttle ramp looks like he’s been living rough, his armor a scuffed-up hodgepodge that makes him look like a bounty hunter. His hair is an awkward length and full of dust, curling into an unkempt beard.

Rising out of that beard, though, is a scar just about any clone trooper would recognize. It pulls at the clone’s crow’s feet when he tries for a weak smile, and says, “Hi, Rex.”

“It’s you,” Rex breathes, walking toward Cody so slowly it’s like he thinks he might scare him out of existence. “Isn’t it?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.” Cody takes his own steps toward Rex, until their toes almost knock together. There’s a choked quality to his voice, behind the roguish confidence he’s trying to exude. Rex lays a delicate hand along the side of Cody’s face, tracing the scar with only the lightest touch, and Cody sucks in a sharp breath. That and Cody’s suddenly much shinier eyes are the only hints he’s feeling anything but cool neutrality, but Echo knows how to spot emotions too big to name, at least on a clone’s face.

“I kept hoping,” Rex whispers. And he had. From the moment he’d learned Cody was no longer in Imperial service—whether the Empire reporting him AWOL was true or not—Rex had never given up hope that Cody was still alive, whether or not he ever found him. Echo never disabused him of that hope, either; what if Cody had done the same when Rex first suspected Echo had survived the explosion?

“Well, Captain,” Cody says, with a nearly imperceptible swallow, “good job. Your wish came true.”

“That’s Commander, now,” Rex says, grinning as he runs fingers through Cody’s beard.

“But not Marshal Commander, I see,” Cody says, smirking in return.

There’s something about standing so close to Rex and Cody that feels like looking into a warm building while standing in a blizzard. Saying Cody is important to Rex is like saying Kamino is wet, though, and Echo had always reassured Rex this day would come, had always held some hope himself. After all, he knows that if Fives walked out of the shuttle next, he’d be a lot less reined in than Rex is being.

Rex clears his throat, camouflaging the quick sniffle that follows, and straightens. “We ought to get you to medical.”

“Medical?” Cody asks.

“Alright, you lot!” Gregor bellows behind them. “Back to your stations, that’s enough!”

Usually, new arrivals are escorted to the medbay by the trooper who brought them in, but Gregor just flashes Rex a thumbs up. Rex walks so close to Cody he keeps bumping shoulders with him, but Cody doesn’t tell him to back up, or otherwise comment on his suddenly poor spatial awareness. What he does say is, “I’d rather you show me a sonic than the medbay, you know. I’m fine.”

“It’s just a quick check,” Rex says. “You never know.”

“I’m telling you I’m fine. My biggest problem right now is the dust in my crack. My second biggest problem is how ripe I am. None of that is medical.”

“It’s protocol,” Echo interjects from behind them. The hallway isn’t quite wide enough for three clones in armor to walk abreast.

“Oh?” Cody glances over his shoulder, arching an eyebrow. “There’s a surprise.”

Echo wills himself not to snap in return. “I don’t know what you mean,” he says, in full cognizance of what Cody means. Cody smirks, like he’s still looking at the regulation-obsessed shiny he met on Rishi Moon.

“Echo’s right, though,” Rex says, pulling Cody’s attention back. “This is just how we do things, alright?” A softer way of saying it’s protocol. Echo rolls his eyes.

“I see the new arrival is not blown to bits or rampaging through the station,” Control says in the medbay, looking Cody up and down. He flaps his hand at Echo and Rex. “You can leave now.”

“Rampaging through the station, huh?” Cody says, mostly to Rex.

“Comm me when he’s done?” Rex asks, only to Control.

“If you insist, Commander. Now please leave.” Control turns to Cody. “Strip, soldier.”

If Cody has a comeback for that, Echo doesn’t hear it as the medbay door shuts behind him and Rex.

“Slap me,” Rex says, the moment they’re more than a few meters from the door.

“What?”

“Slap me so I know I’m awake and this is all real.” A giddy little smile is fighting to become a big giddy smile on Rex’s face. “Fuck, where’s Gregor? I didn’t get his report.”

“Because he hasn’t submitted it, yet. Because it’s not even been ten minutes,” Echo says, though he can’t help but crack a little smile, too. For all that he’s seen Rex satisfied, proud, cracking wise, filled with lust, and all the other tiny positive feelings that pepper in between harrowing missions and losses, he hasn’t seen this kind of pure, untainted joy. “Let him do his job.”

“Right. Right.” Rex grabs hold of Echo’s hand as they walk down the hallway, squeezing tight. Echo thinks he can hear the bones of his hand creaking in protest. “Damn! Why did we rush him to the medbay? What if he was hungry?”

“Medbay has rations, and Control will give him a nutrient drip if he thinks it’s necessary.” Echo squeezes back, trying to stretch his squashed knuckles back out in the same motion. “Stop worrying. Control will comm when he’s ready. We’ve got fresh intel to go over, remember?”

“Of course.” With a shake of his head, Rex’s grip on Echo’s hand loosens to something more comfortable, thumb stroking over his, and he sighs. “Thank you, Echo. I don’t mean to be so—” He gestures at his face with his free hand. “Thank you for grounding me.”

“Only returning the favor.” Echo pulls Rex’s hand up to kiss the back of it. Rex has been his tether to reality more times than he’d like to admit. There are the big things, like holding him through the vivid aftershocks of nightmares, or the bouts of enormous agony that wrack his body with annoying regularity. Sometimes Echo’s grief finally spills out over the high walls he’s built around it, and Rex mourns with him. But more often than not, Rex simply tugs him back to solid ground when everything gets a little too irritating, his baseline pain level knocking against a mission plan that won’t come together, or against a young trooper asking “too many” questions, or Control’s attitude.

Rex stops them in the hallway, swinging Echo around to press him to the wall of the empty corridor, and kisses him. “Thank you anyway,” he murmurs when he pulls away, stroking a hand over Echo’s studded scalp.

The intel comes from a Raxian spy, masquerading as a stormtrooper stationed at an Imperial “processing facility”. The discovery and destruction of Tantiss was a great victory for clones, but with each passing year of the Empire’s reign, it seems like there are more pockets in the galaxy into which clones are being disappeared. Some of them, or so it seems to Echo, by way of the very legislature Senator Chuchi pushed through to give clones a semblance of civil rights.

“Processing facility” is an unassuming name for a place where, by this spy’s reports, the Empire deals with dissidents and other undesirables outside the so-called justice system. People go into a municipal-looking building on a Mid-Rim world with no particular reputation, and they don’t come out. Clones in particular, the spy has noted, have been shipped in for “decommission paperwork”. Sullen troopers in their grays march into a waiting area, sit for hours as each one is called in for their turn with an appointed clone trooper coordinator down a long hallway, and by the end of the day the entire group has vanished. From her post in the waiting room, she can’t see where they go, but she’ll look to trade posts with a squadmate and see if she can’t get into that hallway.

“Not much we can act on yet,” Echo says, leaning against the holo table as the message ends. It’s scratched and dented, lifted from a Republic ship scrapyard much like Bracca, but it works. “But I don’t like it.”

“I’m not one to trust the Empire, not by far, but there’s a chance this is legitimate,” Gregor says from across the table. “The clone retirement package is under Senator Chuchi’s eye.”

“She’s not there in person to make sure, though.” Rex taps his chin in thought, then glances at the door. “Would be good to get Cody’s eyes on this.”

“Well, Cody’s eyes are currently busy being in that dickhead Control’s medbay, along with the rest of him, poor bastard,” Gregor says.

“We’d all be in deep shit without Control,” Echo says, obligated to defend their spiky CMO. “We should pass this on to Chuchi’s people.”

Rex hesitates, like he wants to wait until Cody can give his opinion first, but ultimately nods. “Agreed. Echo, can you send it on?”

After Echo has sent the intel to Pantora—encrypted, and pathed to ping off so many relays he almost worries it’ll arrive corrupted—Gregor brings up mission reports on the holo table next. He stares Rex down like he dares him to bring up the mission report he has yet to submit; when Rex only waits expectantly, Gregor opens a particular report to go over.

Five minutes into the discussion, Rex says, “Cody will want to see this.”

Echo and Gregor lock eyes across the holo table, a disbelieving look from both men. Again? “Sure, Rex,” Gregor says. If there’s a connection to Cody in this mission that took their men to Krystar, Echo doesn’t know it.

At the very least, Rex doesn’t mention Cody through the rest of the mission report meeting. Gregor taps out to go write the report Rex has been so anxious to read, leaving Echo and Rex alone in the command room. Echo closes the mission reports, and brings up the schematics for an Imperial prison.

“That old chestnut,” Rex sighs as the miniature prison flickers and rotates. “Let’s just hijack a light cruiser, ram it through the side and call it a day. I’m sure all the prisoners inside will figure it out.”

“Right, I’m sure they’ll all love being smashed to bits,” Echo says, giving the holo a slow turn with a thoughtful look. “Historically, clones don’t last long in Imperial custody. We need to figure this out.”

“So no votes for just barreling through the halls with blasters firing?” Rex asks, grinning tiredly.

“Mostly because Wrecker isn’t here.” The remains of Clone Force 99 are firmly retired, and Echo intends to leave them that way. They’ve earned their peace. He taps the holo, and the prison’s exterior melts away, making it into an evil dollhouse. Echo would swear he’s considered every entrance, every exit.

…For people. He zooms in at the bottom of the prison, below where even prisoners enter. “Rex, what about—”

“Maybe we should wait until Cody’s out of medical,” Rex says, eyes unfocused, arms crossed. “We need fresh eyes on this, and he’s always been the best for that.”

“Rex. Look.” Echo gives the back of Rex’s calf the lightest of kicks. “I think I found a way in.”

“What?”

Echo swallows his annoyance. It’s the newness of Cody’s reentry into Rex’s life, into their lives, that’s all. Especially after such a long absence. In time this obsessive behavior will fade, they’ll incorporate Cody into their command structure, and the clone underground will be better for it.

At the very least, Rex acknowledges that Echo’s new plan is a good one, once he understands it. They open up the mission assignments, slotting in a mission to free these prisoners at last, and open the roster to start assigning. Echo reaches to assign himself—

“What did you agree we’d do after our next two assignments?” Rex reminds him.

Echo looks at the assignments. “What if I put this mission before the scoop job?”

“You run the risk of being too worn down for the scoop, and that one’s timing can’t be anything but perfect. That was the whole point of growing our numbers, remember? Not just rescuing brothers, but not having to do it all ourselves.”

Echo sighs. “You’re right. Gregor can lead the prison mission, and it’ll overlap with Howzer’s return.”

“Good man.” Rex claps Echo on the shoulder, then leans in to kiss his cheek.

Dinner is a little heartier than a calorie-dense ration bar. Echo steers Rex toward the mess to eat with the troops, where they can eat real, hot food in a place where Rex will have more to focus on than Cody’s status in the medbay. He sends Rex to get their plates while he looks for a table, finding them seats with a squad of clones he’s been assigning to his own missions more and more lately. They’re a reliable bunch, mostly generation 2 and 3 with a fun collection of scars, including one heavy hitter who lost two of his fingers.

And it works. Rex doesn’t utter Cody’s name through the entire meal, instead prompting the squad—who tell Rex, much to his delight and Echo’s embarrassment, that they’ve named themselves Reverb Squad—to tell their stories, new and old. Some of their stories, unfortunately, include details Echo hadn’t exactly kept from Rex, but certainly hadn’t volunteered in the mission reports. Did it matter if Echo put his life at risk with another batshit idea, if the results were positive for the mission?

“So that’s why your reports are so bare bones,” Rex says, eyeing Echo over the rim of his cup. “Interesting. Maybe I should order Paragon here to submit auxiliary reports after working with you, hm?”

Paragon shrugs and grins when Echo glares at him. If clones are bad liars, Paragon’s even worse—he doesn’t even think to try.

“Thanks for snitching, boys,” Echo sighs a little while later, Rex picking up his mostly-empty soup bowl to bus it with his own tray. “I ought to take you off that scoop job and reassign you.”

“Aw, Cap, don’t be like that, Paragon didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Zigzag says, fluttering his eyelashes. “We’ll be good. We’ll blindfold Paragon so he doesn’t see all the ways you almost die, sir.”

“Keep talking like that and I will take you off,” Echo says, already knowing he doesn’t mean it. “See you, soldiers.”

Across the hall from the medbay is a little room that’s slowly transformed into a waiting room over the past months, filling up with chairs and side tables salvaged from different worlds. There’s even a water cooler and a half-depleted tray of snacks, now; Echo makes a note to have one of Control’s boys restock. Here is where Rex decides to spend the rest of his evening (as it were), waiting up for Cody with the door locked in the open position. Echo can’t bring himself to leave him to it, sitting right alongside him even as his hips begin to ache.

The medbay door whooshes open. Rex would never admit to dozing, but he bolts upright at the sound.

“I told you I would comm you, sir,” Control says, exasperation clear. “Here. I’ve cleared your precious new arrival.” He steps out of the doorway, and lets Cody through. He looks and smells significantly cleaner, his hair and beard at least tamed, though there’s a telltale shorn spot toward the back of his skull, centered around a neat bandage. His bounty hunter armor sits jumbled in a box Cody holds on his hip, Cody himself dressed in fresh blacks.

“Echo, did you let this idiot wait up for me?” Cody says, eyes firmly on Rex and brimming with a fondness that leaks into his voice. “I promise I wouldn’t have run off in the night, you know. You could have gotten some sleep, seen me next morning.”

“Don’t act like I control any of Rex’s actions,” Echo says, watching Rex stand within centimeters of Cody and pretend as if he doesn’t want to wrap his whole body around him. “Anything to note, Control?”

“No. Everything was routine.” Control scowls. “I’m going to my cot now, Captain, if I may.”

“Thank you,” Echo says, stifling a laugh and a yawn in one. “Goodnight, then.” The medbay door slams shut without another word from their CMO, and Echo does laugh.

“Think that’s our cue, too,” Cody says, one arm circling Rex’s waist. “Show me where I’m sleeping.”

“The men usually—” Echo starts. Usually hot bunk, he meant to finish.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Rex growls. “Not again.”

“Oh?” Cody’s nostrils flare, his pupils widening. “Giving me your bunk, Commander? How generous.”

“You know damn well I’m not just giving you my bunk.” Rex pauses, and the hungry expression being aimed at Cody drops as he looks at Echo. “Echo, will you—”

“It’s fine.” Echo waves them off with his scomp, ignoring the numb feeling sweeping through his body. “I’ll see you in the morning, if Cody survives sleeping in the same bunk as you.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Rex asks, one indignant hand on his hip, but Cody laughs, pulling Rex’s face closer to kiss the side of it.

“If it hasn’t killed me yet, it won’t kill me now, but I appreciate the concern, Captain Echo,” Cody says.

Echo’s quarters aren’t far from Rex’s, occupying the same corridor. It would be awkward, of course, to walk together now when they’ve already said goodnight. “I’m just going to check on something,” Echo says, with nothing more specific in mind than walking in the opposite direction to take the long way back to his room.

“Check on what?” Rex wants to know.

“I said goodnight, Rex,” Echo calls back.

It takes him longer than he expected to get to his quarters the long way round; maybe he doesn’t remember how big this space station is. Or maybe he’s not used to walking it alone for this long. When he opens the door, the smell of stale air hits his nose like a mallet; he hasn’t been in here in months. In terms of size and layout, it’s no different from Rex’s quarters, down to the water/sonic combo shower in the refresher. Unlike Rex’s bunk, though, which is inviting with its warm blanket and also generally being full of Rex whenever Echo sees it, Echo’s bunk is covered in…stuff. Tools and spare parts for maintaining his prosthetics, armor polish, blaster oil, all of it unfit for a bed.

Echo moves everything off the bunk, a little more roughly than it all deserves. He doesn’t remember where he left his blanket, neatly folded…somewhere. At least there’s a pillow. He locates the blanket in a drawer under the bed, though when he unfurls it, a spider skitters out quickly enough to startle him. “How the fuck did you get all the way out here?” Echo asks, but the spider is already running across the room as if it knows where the door is. Echo hits the door panel, watching the spider leave in dumb silence.

His armor gets stacked at odd angles in the corner, some pieces rolling away from the pile. When he checks for any kind of sleeping clothes, all that’s left is the top half of a sleep set, tunic-length. There’s not even spare underwear for wearing something other than blacks and armor.

He doesn’t sit on the bunk so much as he drops onto it, metal legs stretched out in front of him. Frustration makes his fingers clumsy as he works to disengage them from his stumps, and he stops, pressing the heel of his hand into his forehead. Why is he acting like this?

It had just been a surprise to have to sleep elsewhere, that’s all. He’s adaptable. And he’s happy for Rex, and for Cody. He’s happy for himself, too, he reminds himself; he had always liked Cody.

Echo takes a deep breath, and goes slowly this time as he removes his legs. Each one goes up against the wall by his pillow, leaning precariously without the wall mounts Rex had put together for them. His headpiece goes on the shelf set into the berthing at the end of the bed, and his scomp—the most laborious piece to disengage—goes on the floor, within grabbing reach of his only remaining whole limb.

He feels so small as he lays down, pulling the blanket up to his chest. It’s not as good as the one in Rex’s, if only because Rex went out of his way to procure it so Echo wouldn’t be cold. The single pillow, too, is flatter, putting more pressure on the ports in his skull. The bed feels huge—and of course it does, it was designed for someone with legs. Somehow the room beyond feels even bigger, empty, the only sound the mechanical hum of the space station’s slow rotation. On a space station built by and for natborns, the command quarters are spaced out both from each other and the barracks for privacy and sound proofing, but for a clone all it means is being isolated from their brothers. No evidence of other living beings.

Echo hums himself to sleep. He’d never been able to do that on Skako Minor, after all.

Chapter Text

The morning begins with aches. Whatever’s going on with the pillow doesn’t just put pressure on his ports, but shoots pain down his spine, and sets his hips at a bad angle. He reaches up blearily for his datapad and swats thin air.

Right. He’s in his own quarters.

He hadn’t brought a datapad in here at all, actually. His personal one is still on the arm in Rex’s room, right where he left it. Echo sits up, rubbing the crust out of his eyelashes, and stares at the refresher door.

No Rex to carry him. No shower chair to hold him. He reaches for his scomp, and resigns himself to a prosthetics-on sonic.

He feels itchy as he takes his breakfast of a single ration bar in the command room. Rex always made the caf, claiming Echo couldn’t make caf if his life depended on it; this morning the caf pot is empty, still dry from yesterday.

“Isn’t this a sight,” Gregor says from the doorway. “Thing 1 without Thing 2.”

“I’m Thing 2, per chain of command,” Echo points out. “Can you make decent caf?”

“Been told I’m a fair hand at it.” Gregor crosses the room to the little side table, immediately busying himself with the caf-making process. “I don’t think making caf takes two hands, you know.”

“Rex said my caf is like drinking poison,” Echo mutters, bringing up mission assignments on the main screen.

“Those closest to us can be the cruelest,” Gregor chuckles, setting the pot to heat. “Where is Thing 1, per chain of command, then?”

Echo shrugs as he looks at the screen. “Huh. Cody’s already been added to the roster for mission assignments.”

“Sounds like the Commander,” Gregor says, ambling over and leaning a hand on the back of Echo’s chair. “Can’t even wait 24 hours galactic before he’s declared himself fit for duty.”

“Where did you find him, anyway?” Echo asks, twisting to look up at Gregor. “Don’t you dare tell me to check your mission report.

“I won’t, because there’s not much to it,” Gregor says with a grimace. “Rex is going to be pretty disappointed.”

“Rex can get it out of Cody himself. Tell me.”

“Well,” Gregor says, already heading back to the caf pot, “I thought it was going to be a standard S.O.S. pickup. You probably remember, that one was a little garbled, and all brothers sound the same on long range transmissions, anyway.” Echo does remember. “The coordinates were on this awful planet. Not just covered in garbage, but with orbital rings of junk, too. Thought I’d never get the smell out of the shuttle, truth be told,” he snorts. “And Cody was just…there? Waiting for me casually. Wasn’t surprised to see me, just a ‘Hello, trooper, good to see you,’ and then he was climbing into my ship.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Gregor says, pulling the caf pot and pouring two cups. “Whatever happened to him between the end of the war and yesterday, he didn’t talk about it on the whole flight back. Here.” He passes Echo one of the two cups.

“Oh.” Echo looks at his reflection in the inky caf. “Sorry, I should have reminded you—I can’t drink it straight. Only diluted.” He gestures at his body with his scomp. “Not enough of the actual me to handle it.”

“Should’ve remembered,” Gregor says, diplomatically, as if every other clone doesn’t just drink caf black. “I’ll fix it.”

“Don’t waste it.” Echo hands it back. “Just take it to someone else, I’ll fix my own cup now that it’s made. Thanks, though.”

With Gregor gone, Echo turns back to the main screen, and realizes that Cody’s been assigned to Rex’s supply mission. That, and there’s a notification from Rex for all available clone underground leadership to attend a meeting later today.

“There you are,” Rex says from behind him, some minutes before the meeting. He wraps an arm around Echo’s waist to pull him in tight against his side.

“What do you mean, here I am?” Echo wants to know. “I’ve been in all the same places I always am.”

“Well, yeah, but I was with Cody this morning. I thought you’d come to us.” Rex kisses Echo’s temple and releases him. “Gregor finally submitted his report, but it was pretty sparse. Cody’s going to debrief us.”

“Debrief us about what?” Echo asks, but Rex is already walking away.

Cody enters the room, sporting the high-and-tight he favored during the war, a clean-shaven face, and a freshly-changed bandage over his incision. The bounty hunter armor is gone, replaced with one of the unpainted, scuffed kits they keep for clones who don’t get to bring their own. There are only a handful of clones in the room, including a tired-looking Howzer who arrived on base about an hour ago, but they fall into respectful quiet as Marshal Commander Cody heads to the holo table, all of them saluting. Even Echo finds his scomp rising. For a second, it’s as if the war never ended.

“Officers,” Cody says, giving a sharp salute back. “It’s been a long road for me to get to you. I don’t think your operation was quite off the ground when I deserted the Empire. But I’m glad to be here, and to give you any information you may find valuable.”

Cody delivers his story without frills. A mission on the formerly Separatist world of Desix was the final wakeup call that shook him loose from whatever had been convincing him his duty was to the Empire. Desertion as a clone who couldn’t quite blend in was difficult at first. “I think some of you know about that,” Cody says, with a meaningful look at Echo, who only nods stiffly.

“The truth,” he tells them, “is that I’ve been working as a bounty hunter most of these past few years. Once I heard rumors Rex was alive, bounty hunting gave me the chance to bounce from world to world looking for him, for all of you, without scraping for credits just to buy a drop of fuel.”

“And nobody recognized you as a clone?” Howzer asks.

“Bounty hunters don’t get asked too many questions,” Gregor answers. “Bet he kept his helmet on.”

Throughout all this, Rex hasn’t said a word. Every time Echo sneaks a look at him, he’s entranced by Cody, with a blissful expression Echo’s only ever seen in afterglow. If he’s looked anywhere else during the debrief thus far, Echo has yet to see it.

The rest of Cody’s debrief covers observations he’s made and intel he’s dug up in his time as a bounty hunter. It’s all the kind of information the underground has been trying to get, and naturally Cody simply went and got it. That’s how it feels, anyway, listening to him rattle off crucial facts one after another.

By the end of it, the shape of the clone underground’s intel has entirely changed, and the officers all agree that multiple future missions require reworking. Even now, a couple of active missions look a little endangered, but Echo insists on maintaining communications protocol. He deliberately keeps his eyes off Cody and Rex as he says it.

As the officers disperse, Echo heading to the refresher with plans to return, he realizes Rex has taken Cody to the main screen, with mission assignments pulled up. And Cody is making changes, fingers moving rapidly over the controls.

What Echo finds when he returns to the empty command room is that Cody has reassigned every clone from Rex’s scoop job, leaving the scoop job limited to only Rex and Cody. He’s made other changes, too, though he notices all his own missions have gone untouched.

He turns away from the main screen, and brings up the prison schematic on the holo table to refine his team’s path to victory by himself.

“You’re up late,” Rex’s voice says, hours later. Echo tries to pretend he doesn’t startle at the sound.

“Just making sure the plan is set for this mission,” Echo says, his scomp plugged into the table as he turns the schematic. For all the downsides of his post-Techno Union body, the ability to download his own plans straight to his brain is not one of them. He looks up; of course Cody is standing just behind Rex, as if neither believe the other will keep existing if they lose sight of each other. Echo hunches over his work.

“That mission is two whole days away. It can certainly wait until tomorrow.” Rex cocks his head. “I thought you assigned Gregor that mission, anyway. He can work out his own plan.”

“You’re telling me you don’t want a meticulously formed Echo plan for Gregor to follow until everything goes to shit?” Echo has the way in plotted, and he has no intention of leaving a single prisoner behind bars, clone or not. Any enemy of the Empire is no enemy of his, at the very least. He just needs a way out that lets him—Gregor, he means—load up the twenty or so clone prisoners onto a freighter, basically as soon as he—Gregor—opens every cell, while keeping the natborns out. They’re no enemy, but natborns are rarely friends, either.

Then again, it’s not right to just leave them outside the prison to be recaptured, no transport of their own and no other structures for klicks in every direction. There just isn’t room for an entire prison’s worth of passengers on any one ship in the hangar, even if Gregor only takes the natborns as far as the nearest spaceport. Echo rests his chin in his hand as he puffs his cheeks, wishing he still had his other hand for drumming his fingers.

Rex opens his mouth, and Echo is tired enough to admit that what he expects him to say is Come to bed. As if the past few days never happened.

“Cody and I are turning in,” Rex says instead, in a voice too soft for what he’s saying. “You ought to as well.”

It’s impossible, at his current level of exhaustion, to translate what he’s hearing with any level of succinctness. Something about staying away, maybe something else about being no replacement for Cody. Cody who doesn’t need accessories just to function comfortably, or at all. Cody who Rex has been waiting for, every year since the end of the war. Cody who’s staring at him with the very same cryptic expression Echo never quite saw on Rex’s face earlier.

“Goodnight, then,” Echo says, turning his attention back to the holo table. He hears but does not see the almost-synchronized steps of Rex and Cody walking away.

It’s beyond late by the time Echo wraps up his plan for the prison. Sergeant Sickle, Gregor’s second in command, will follow in a second freighter, taking a completely different hyperspace path on the way out. It’ll be a tight fit, but the natborns can get dropped on Nar Shaddaa for all he cares, and two transports means double the chances of at least some clones surviving whatever chase the Empire gives.

He turns off the holo table and unplugs his scomp. Tomorrow he should work on getting those medical supplies Control requested yesterday. It’s only a few hours before his usual wake up time, and he feels it behind his eyes, in his back and hips.

Echo hits the door panel for his quarters. He stares at his bunk, perfectly made to G.A.R. regulations. No datapad arm, no wall mounts for his legs, no—

The light of the main screen in the command room feels harsh on his tired eyes. He finds the shiny S.O.S. he’d added to the board yesterday, and assigns himself to depart tomorrow morning. Gregor and his Foxhole squad get thrown from the prison break mission to a 72 hour leave on Pabu; Echo doesn’t check their mission counts. Echo assigns himself to the prison mission, set to depart roughly 30 hours galactic after tomorrow’s departure, and adds in the grizzled Gundark squad, freshly returned from leave. He knows himself, trusts in his skills as a soldier and a mission leader; he’ll make it. And he’ll make it to the scoop job right after that.

He tells himself, as he turns off the screen and reclines his chair as far as it’ll go—which is not much—that he worked too hard on the prison break plan to dump it on someone else. And Gregor deserves a break. And that shiny in need of a pickup probably can’t wait.

He tells himself, as he crosses his arms and wills himself to sleep to the faint sounds of clones patrolling nearby, that every second he spends dicking around on base could be another dead clone. He’s only doing for his brothers what they once did for him.

Morning hurts, more than it did the day before. Three hours of sleep means his eyelids feel like they have sand trapped under them, means his bones feel like they’re splintering into his muscles. He groans as he tips himself out of the chair, nearly slipping as he braces himself on a headrest that’s further back than usual.

“My caf is fine,” he mumbles, tearing open a pod with his teeth and setting the caf to brew. “Not poison.”

“Agree to disagree,” Howzer says, entering the command room. He’s by Echo’s side faster than he expected, already canceling the brew program.

“How? It’s a pre-portioned serving and a button. What is there to ruin?”

“You can’t just dump it all in the center. You have to spread it evenly through the—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Echo sighs. “Fine. You make it.”

“Already am, Captain,” Howzer says, smirking as he futzes with the caf powder. “You look like you need good caf, anyway. Not the fucking kessoline you make.”

“Careful, Captain, that almost sounded like you weren’t saying I look like shit.”

Howzer keeps his expression carefully bland as he sets the caf to brew. “I would never.” He nods at the mission assignments, which Echo doesn’t remember bringing back up. “Headed out this morning?”

“Soon’s the caf is brewed.” Echo pulls a travel jug from a lower shelf below the cafmaker, bracing it against the countertop to flick the lid open. He ignores the way Howzer wrinkles his nose when he starts to fill the jug with distilled water.

Echo passes the Remora in the hangar; it’s too big for picking up one clone with any kind of stealth, as much as he’s come to prefer the freighter’s handling. She belongs to the entire clone underground, anyway, and Echo insists he lays no claim to it. The Blurrg, on the other hand, is Echo’s by default—no one else is much interested in laying a claim, even before someone had slapped that name on it.

“Alright, old girl,” Echo murmurs, patting the hull of the dingy Toscan starfighter. His change to the schedule was too last minute for anyone to have prepped it, and he knows that, so he runs the checks himself. Refueling is his least favorite part, at least with only one hand.

He checks the chrono inside the ship as it powers on; almost the usual time he and Rex would be heading to the command room, most days.

Echo scomps in, and takes off.

By the time he finds his pickup—not at the stated coordinates, but nearby, which Echo tries not to be annoyed at—Echo’s drunk his caf and taken a hyperspace nap, in that order. It doesn’t mean his pain feels much better, but it does mean he doesn’t bite the kid’s head off when he stares at Echo’s scomp and headpiece.

“Does it, um,” the trooper starts to say, sometime later in hyperspace. The Blurrg might be a roomier starfighter than most, but it’s a lot closer quarters than any shuttle.

“What’s your question?” Echo sighs, rooting around the console for the sabacc deck he would swear he left in here.

“Does it hurt?” the trooper asks.

“Which part.” It comes out flat and Echo doesn’t really care. Once he gets this latest addition to base, he’ll be Control’s problem and blend into the small herd of younger clones that bounce around the space station.

“Getting your chip out.”

Echo looks up, sabacc deck held in still fingers. What an asshole he’s being. His pickup even gave him his name—Phase—and Echo’s still been thinking of him as the trooper or the shiny or even the kid. He stands, leaving the pilot’s seat to sit across from Phase in the cramped hold. “The actual surgery? Didn’t feel a thing. Barely sore afterward.” Echo holds out the deck. “Couldn’t tell you much more than that, though. My chip never properly fired, on account of all the,” Echo gestures at his headpiece with his scomp, “you know.”

“Oh.” Phase takes the cards. There isn’t a table in here, with good reason, and Echo suddenly feels silly having handed them over.

“Those would work better if we had better than the floor to play on, wouldn’t they?” Echo says, smiling sheepishly. He pauses. “How’d you learn about the chip? Most brothers we pick up don’t know until they hit our medbay.”

“Word’s been spreading, though I’m not sure where it started. Just can’t talk about it in front of any of the natties.”

That doesn’t tell him much. “Well,” Echo says, salvaging this conversation as best he can, “our medic will have your chip out by the time you’re ready to hit the rack tonight. No natborns, no hiding, just clones helping clones.”

Phase finally smiles for the first time since Echo met him. “That’s all I want, sir.”

Echo rolls the Blurrg back into the hangar before his projected arrival time. He drops Phase off with Control, his request for Control to “go a little easy on him” falling on deaf ears, and he takes himself back to—

He’s standing in front of Rex’s quarters. Echo draws his hand away from the door panel.

In his own quarters, where he still has no spare blacks, Echo allows himself the luxury of another prosthetics-on sonic. He misses his shower chair, but he’s vowed to let Rex and Cody have their time to themselves and he’s going to abide by that. His blacks feel gross to slide back over his skin; he’s been spoiled living out here, far from the days of living with his own stench and everyone else’s up in Cid’s cramped spare room. And he’s not going to waste the spare blacks they’ve been stockpiling for new arrivals by cutting any sleeves in half. With his armor strapped on, a ration bar jammed halfway into a utility pouch, and a hydropak hanging from his mouth, Echo bolts back to the hangar.

Gundark squad is waiting for him between the Remora and another freighter. Like Reverb squad, they have their fair share of scars and permanent injuries, but unlike Reverb, their sense of humor about the whole enterprise is basically nil. Half of them are from the original Gundark squad during the war, and the rest came from the Imperial prison cell they shared. They all remind Echo a little bit of Crosshair, if he’s honest.

“Alright, men,” Echo says, “this is an easy job, because I’ve made it easy. Imperial prison break, natborns and all. We go in together, we leave separately. Dump the natborns soon as we can, and make it back to base. Can you lot handle that?”

Sergeant Ghoul, the most dour of the bunch, nods slowly. “Yes, sir, Captain, sir.” Gundark squad salutes. Over their shoulders, Echo spots what looks like Cody and Rex talking to each other, except Cody’s bounty hunter armor is back, and Rex is wearing bulky civs, a cracked stormtrooper helmet tucked under one arm. A quick mental review reminds Echo that today’s the day for Rex’s supply grab with Cody, and only Cody.

Echo climbs into the Remora with an agitated speed, Sergeant Ghoul taking the helm of the other freighter.

The prison break does not go off without a hitch, because nothing ever does. Echo busts into the control room to scomp in, opens every cell, and instead of gladly rushing to their escape the natborns choose to riot, creating a current of bodies against which the clone prisoners must swim. It makes Echo grind his teeth, thinking of all the fuel wasted to save people who value teaching their captors a lesson over escaping with their lives, but—could he say he wouldn’t consider the same, given a clear path to Wat Tambor and his cronies?

Some of the natborns choose escape. Echo lets them board until they have the last clone prisoner; any natborns who haven’t taken the opportunity yet just don’t want it bad enough. The final number of passengers only barely justifies the use of two ships. Echo dumps the natborns not on Nar Shaddaa, but a spaceport that certainly reminds him of it. The clone prisoners aboard his freighter seem woozy in the aftermath of their escape, many of them distressingly thin; still, he doesn’t doubt many of them will be clamoring to be put on the roster before they’re actually fit for combat. It’s what he did, after all.

“How dare you,” Control says, when Echo brings his pack of ex-prisoners to the medbay. “This is going to fill up every cot, after what Ghoul brought me. Weren’t you on the same mission?” Despite his words, their CMO is diligent in making sure each new arrival is seen and processed, triaging double time.

Echo didn’t catch a single wink on the way back, and he feels groggy, a mild nausea swirling in his belly. “Don’t make me have to take a look at you, too,” Control says with a growl, pressing something into Echo’s hand. One of his disgusting nutrient jellies. “Drink this or else.”

The slurry feels like an added punishment. “Come on,” Echo groans, holding the jelly pack back out. “I don’t need this. I’m fine.”

“Don’t tell me what you need or don’t need. I’m the medic, not you.” Control pokes the jelly pack against Echo’s chest. “Medic’s orders. Do it. Before you go on your next mission, and then I’m putting my foot down.”

“About what?” Echo asks with a wry look, biting off the cap to the nutrient jelly.

“Less than an hour between missions is not how the schedule is supposed to be run, and you know it.”

“We’re stretched thin,” Echo says, not for the first time. “And you saw the state of those troopers. They wouldn’t have lasted much longer in that place. If I spaced them out—”

“Ugh! Whatever. Burn yourself out for all I care, and then I can tell you I told you so all I like when you land in my medbay anyway. I have patients to treat.” Control sucks his teeth in disapproval, and disappears back into medical.

Control is blowing shit out of proportion. Besides, now Echo’s running behind his projected schedule, and Reverb squad is already waiting for him while someone from their tiny mechanic pool is refueling the Remora. Cleaning off all the carbon scoring will have to wait.

He tries to be present on the trip out. Reverb is raucous about the way they pass the time in hyperspace, just as excited to go over the mission in detail as they are to trading off with each other in playing balaans. They plead for Echo to join them, especially when Paragon and Biscuit “discreetly” disappear into the cargo hold. It’s Sergeant Felix who gets them off Echo’s back, taking watch at the instruments as he strongly suggests Echo take a nap in one of the handful of cabins.

As fitfully as Echo sleeps, it still means he’s a lot more alert for the actual mission. He takes the controls back just as the freighter starts dropping out of hyperspace, channeling Tech’s wild flying as they ambush the Imperial light cruiser they’re targeting. He knows this pattern in his sleep, disabling the ship with pinpoint shots to the engine and hyperdrive, and rapidfire enough to punch through the shields.

Adrenaline surges through Echo—who was Control to tell him he was burning himself out?—as he and Reverb swarm the ship, dropping every stormtrooper in sight. It used to take a little more thought when clone troopers were still mixed in with their shit TK troops, precious seconds spent checking targets and switching back and forth between live fire and stunners. Now the only other brothers onboard are in the brig. What he can download from the ship is substantial, but another good chunk of it is corrupted. It’s only when the commanding officer activates her suicide shocker that Echo stops, an eerie familiarity to this pattern.

At least these clones seem a lot healthier than the ones from the prison, for the most part. One brother is running a fever, and Zigzag does his best with his basic medic training on the way back to base.

Echo strides into the command room in the dead of night, by the space station’s clocks, less than five minutes after docking. He let Felix take the intercepted clone prisoners to Control, not hardly in the mood for the CMO’s attitude, and instead scomps into the holo table to upload his findings. The ship came from, as best as Echo can tell, a Mid-Rim planet with no particular reputation beyond its Imperial municipal buildings.

The report can wait until tomorrow. Echo opens a blank report form anyway, and starts typing.

Echo’s fresh intel means Rex mandates an all-command meeting the next day. He lets Rex stand with Cody on the opposite site of the holo table, expanding on his report; they haven’t heard back from Pantora yet, but the planet may be worth investigating beforehand. Echo himself plans to interview the clones he and Reverb intercepted, once Control releases them from medical, though he’ll take any help another officer wants to give. Howzer is quick to volunteer, as someone who was brought in just the same way.

From the corner of Echo’s eye, he thinks Rex might be watching him, a cryptic expression pulling at his features. He thinks maybe even Cody keeps glancing at him. Whatever it is Rex or Cody might be thinking, Echo doesn’t wait to find out, and slips out to circle the space station. The room is cleared upon his return.

Alone in the command room, Echo opens assignments. Rex should have the leave he wanted, and the space he needs. Besides, Echo can’t even fathom stepping away now. Not when there’s so much to plan. He wipes his name from the next trip to Pabu, and manually adds Cody’s in its place.

It’s easier than it should be for Echo to simply exit Rex’s life without exiting the clone underground. If Rex is in the room, so is Cody. And with the exceptions of meetings, if Rex is in the room, so won’t Echo be. It’s simple, alarmingly so, to simply slip into the corridor and find somewhere else to be, something else to do. There are so many clones on this space station at any given moment, even with how many are shipped out; at the rate their operation is growing, they may actually outgrow the space station within the year. They may need to find a second base, and split leadership.

That’s not the biggest reason Echo assigns himself to so many pickup and rescue missions, of course. He’ll always be the first in line to free a brother from imprisonment and oppression, and bolstering their ranks only furthers that goal.

He doesn’t want to be away from Rex. It was only a few weeks ago that waking up in Rex’s arms was his normal; warm, satiated, as safe as any treasonous clone trooper might hope to be, and secure in his place in the world.

Perhaps he always knew, though, that he was only a placeholder for Cody.

It’s not that Echo doubts Rex’s love for him. By clone trooper standards, Rex is generous with his emotions, freely expressing his deep feelings for Echo through touch, through action, sometimes even through a few carefully chosen words. Echo has never felt a lie in any of it; Rex is too honest for that. Even beyond that, Echo has rarely met a monogamous clone. Even Waxer and Boil in Ghost Company were said to share, and every clone who met them considered them as close to the natborn concept of marriage as troopers could get.

But Cody came first. Cody was there in Rex’s earliest battles, and in countless campaigns afterward. Even Echo’s first time meeting Rex meant meeting Cody, too—a package deal. One never quite complete without the other. Whatever Rex means to Echo, it’s clear that Cody means the same to Rex.

Rex’s feelings for Cody are just so enormous that they eclipse everything else, and Echo finds himself shivering in their shadow.

There are moments, in the breaths between missions and throwing himself into work on base, where Echo is weak enough to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to return to his former squad on Pabu. He knows immediately that Hunter, Wrecker, Omega, and even Crosshair these days, would welcome him back without question. He knows just as immediately, though, that he would be just as restless as he was when he first peeled away from them to join Rex’s cause. Probably more, now that he’s so entrenched in the operation. It’s too important, especially when pitted against his personal peace and contentment.

After nearly three weeks since Cody’s arrival, Echo has fallen into some kind of miserable equilibrium. He assigns himself to mission after mission, mostly solo S.O.S. pickups to avoid burning out any of the men, and intersperses it with on-base work planning more missions, receiving and interpreting more intel. The unremarkable Mid-Rim planet turns out to be a bureaucratic black hole into which clone troopers disappear, and Echo is actively working on how to make it stop.

His skin also never feels quite clean, a baseline invisible griminess that makes him squirm if he sits still too long. He’s a soldier, not some Chandrilan aristocrat who faints over a speck of dirt, but after the luxury of so many real water showers, and getting to bathe his thighs properly, weeks of sonics and re-wearing the same set of blacks have been wearing him down. He’s taken to wearing civs every so often, just to camp out by the laundry and wait for his blacks to come out clean. He could use a round of that now, actually, the sensation of half-clean skin and grody blacks coming together for maximum irritability.

More than that, his hips and lower back ache from never taking off his legs for longer than a few minutes, and his shoulders and the rest of his back constantly twinge from only sleeping upright in various chairs around the station. As much as Echo wants to believe he’s used to pain, his baseline has been lower since—well, since establishing the space station base. Since he essentially moved into Rex’s quarters, actually.

Footsteps in the doorway to the command room announce that Echo isn’t alone. “Yes, trooper,” Echo says absentmindedly when the other person doesn’t speak, poking at a datapad as part of his latest futile effort to get the schematics of that one Imperial processing facility.

“Echo,” says a cold, commanding voice.

Echo turns.

“I know that you’ve been avoiding Rex,” Cody says.

Chapter Text

The hangar of the space station is dim, its high ceiling dotted with blown-out lights in need of replacement. His pilot—Gregor, he called himself, and it sounds familiar enough—is shooing a handful of clones away from the end of the ramp, which Cody supposes he appreciates.

Except it’s not a handful. Cody makes it off the transport and the truth is that there are dozens of clones waiting to see him, none of which he recognizes. There’s a sort of awe emanating from the crowd that makes Cody want to scuttle back up the ramp, or at least jam his ugly helmet back on his head. Gregor leans in to whisper something to a trooper, some fresh-faced thing who looks barely graduated from cadethood, and the trooper takes off out of the hangar.

“Sorry, Commander,” Gregor says, with a sheepish grin. “Normally we’d walk straight out of the hangar, but, ah… Well, you’ll see.”

“No commander here,” Cody says, agitation building as the gaggle of clones all stare at him, murmuring to each other. “Are they just here to look at me?”

Gregor snorts. “Please, sir. You’re a legend. Be kind and let the rank and file have a gawk, eh?”

“They can have a gawk after I’ve had a sonic, I think that’s a better deal.” Cody shifts his weight to one leg. “Why are we standing here, remind me?”

“Captain!” someone shouts, voice full of urgency as the door to the hangar opens—something Cody can only hear and not see.

“Step aside, lads,” Gregor says. The troopers all turn toward the newcomer, shuffling back to let them through—

“Cody?” Rex whispers.

All the murmurs from the crowd are drowned out by the sudden roaring in Cody’s ears. Rex, it’s Rex his body sings, a choral joy that paralyzes him with how long he’s waited, how close he’s come to giving up. But he’s here. His armor in worse repair than Cody’s ever seen, his captain’s pauldron gone, but here. Standing, breathing, looking at him.

Cody tries for a grin, the corners of his mouth faltering. “Hi, Rex.”

“It’s you,” Rex says, breathy as he takes slow steps forward. As if he’s trying not to frighten off a small animal. “Isn’t it?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.” The paralysis breaks, and Cody closes the distance between them. For all that he tries desperately to come off casual, like he hasn’t been daydreaming this moment for years, the truth leaks into his voice anyway and makes it tremble.

Rex cradles Cody’s face with a single hand, against his outgrown hair and unruly beard, his thumb stroking the thick keloids of Cody’s scar. It’s not his bare palm but Cody hasn’t felt this in so long, either—the very specific weave of a clone trooper’s glove, pressed tenderly to his skin the way Rex has done so many times before. Rex’s fingers trail down the length of the scar, and Cody sucks in a sharp breath despite himself.

“I kept hoping,” Rex whispers. His eyes lock with Cody’s, and the world shrinks even tighter around them.

“Well, Captain,” Cody says with a swallow, “good job. Your wish came true.” I never stopped hoping, he’d meant to say. Because he hadn’t, from the moment he’d found Wolffe’s report of rogue clones striking against the Empire. Finding Rex became his only mission, the bounty hunting only a means to that end.

“That’s Commander, now,” Rex says with a grin. His fingers find their way into Cody’s beard, tangling gently in its wiry curls, and Cody leans into the touch without even thinking.

“But not Marshal Commander, I see,” Cody says, smirking as he resists the urge to kiss the wrist so close to his mouth. Truthfully he wants to kiss Rex right here in the hangar until they both suffocate; a part of him actually wants to tear Rex’s clothes off and fuck him right through the floor. He has just a touch more decorum than that, though.

Rex clears his throat as if he knows what Cody is holding back, blinks his very wet eyes, and stands straight. “We ought to get you to medical.”

“Medical?” Cody doesn’t remember reporting anything in need of medical attention to Gregor, much less being in any actual medical distress. He wants to be clean and he wants to eat something recognizable as food.

“Alright, you lot!” Gregor is like a foghorn clearing out plastoid-armored seabirds. “Back to your stations, that’s enough!”

It’s also like a foghorn for Cody’s awareness, which suddenly expands past Rex’s face. Echo stands a good couple of meters behind Rex, his expression a strange mix of pleased, anxious and irritated that Cody doesn’t know how to interpret. When he realizes Cody is looking at him, it all melts away and Echo flashes him a brotherly smile. “Good to see you alive,” he says, saluting casually with his scomp.

Cody chooses not to respond that it’s a miracle to see Echo alive. Echo had survived the Techno Union, yes, and the Kaminoans who needed to vet the “third party modifications” on their product, as well, but the Echo who came out of that pod on Skako Minor had never seemed well to him. To see him not just survive but alert and on his own two feet—more or less—feels like the definition of beating the odds. “I could say the same to you,” he says, and then Rex ends the conversation by tugging him toward the door into the rest of the space station.

Rex’s shoulders keep thumping Cody’s. If he were less charmed, he’d tell Rex to just hold his damn hand and stop tripping all over them both, but as it is he just bumps him back as they walk down the corridor. Once they’re far enough from the hangar, Cody says, “I’d rather you show me a sonic than the medbay, you know. I’m fine.”

“It’s just a quick check. You never know.”

“I’m telling you I’m fine. My biggest problem right now is the dust in my crack. My second biggest problem is how ripe I am.” And yes, in that order, because Cody’s unfortunately gotten more than used to his own stench, but the grit chafing between his asscheeks makes him want to put his fist through a wall. “None of that is medical.”

“It’s protocol.” Cody had almost forgotten Echo was trailing behind them, and of course this is how he chooses to remind them of his presence.

“Oh?” Cody glances over his shoulder and finds Echo glaring back at him. “There’s a surprise.” Once upon a time, Echo had been annoyingly fanatic in his adherence to the reg manuals. Watching him grow into a trooper who could weaponize every regulation and every loophole between them, often to Rex’s deep consternation, had been entertaining in more ways that one. He gets that from my side of the gene pool, Cody had once joked, before narrowly avoiding Rex’s fist.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Echo bites out. Whatever he’s done to survive, it’s apparently made him a grumpy little bastard with a gravelly voice, far from the shiny he met on Rishi Moon. Cody smirks.

“Echo’s right, though,” Rex says. “This is just how we do things, alright?” Cody thinks he might see Echo rolling his eyes at the edge of his vision.

“Alright, you win,” Cody says. “I’ll go to the medbay and be right back out again when your medic sees how healthy I am.”

The medic does not do that. His name is Control, and it seems there’s no irony in that, watching him direct harried-looking clones to do his bidding. When Rex calls for his attention, he takes in Cody’s appearance with an expression better reserved for a pile of rancor shit. “I see the new arrival is not blown to bits or rampaging through the station.” Control shoos Rex and Echo toward the door. “You can leave now.”

“Rampaging through the station, huh?” Cody’s going to have to remember that little tidbit to harass the context out of Rex later.

“Comm me when he’s done?” Rex asks, pointedly dodging the way Cody’s staring at him.

“If you insist, Commander. Now please leave.” Control turns to Cody, Rex and Echo clearly dismissed. “Strip, soldier.”

“You can burn these clothes once I’m out of them,” Cody says, already unlatching his armor as the door shuts behind Echo and Rex. “I’ll keep the armor, though.”

“Don’t care. What you do with your personal belongings is not my business. Do you need help shelling off, trooper, or can you move with some urgency?”

There’s something refreshing about a strange clone talking to him without the awe he unfortunately seems to inspire, even when stripped nude as he currently is. (The curtain pulled out on one side of the examination table is more lip service to privacy than the real deal.) On the other hand, Control is brusque in everything he does. He manhandles Cody rather than ask him to move in any specific way, and does not share anything he notes on his datapad unless it stands a chance of sounding critical, like a particular vitamin deficiency he expects came from a diet poor in greens.

“How long since you removed yourself from the Imperial Army’s service?” Control asks, once he’s taken physical stock of Cody’s body. Something that included gently scraping dirt off his skin and into a vial, at one point.

“Three years, give or take.”

“Give or take,” Control mutters, snorting. Cody frowns, but the medic barrels on. “What planets have you been on for longer than 10 local rotations?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I was a bounty hunter—”

“No…records…kept,” Control says, clearly typing the words into his datapad. “What rank did you hold in the Grand Army of the Republic, and did you keep that rank in the Imperial Army?”

“Marshal Commander. And yes.” For all the good it did him. The advent of the Empire felt like a demotion for all clones, once the newness had worn off.

Control stills. “Marshal Commander?”

“Yes.” Cody waits for the recognition, the tiresome change in attitude. The genuflection.

But Control only snorts, even less impressed somehow. “You’d think you’d answer my questions more thoroughly, then. So much for the reputation of the commander class.” He rolls his eyes. “Did you at any point, during your three years, eat any plants or animals unfamiliar to you?”

And just like that, Control completely blows through Cody’s expectations, continuing to denigrate him for his dietary choices, “poor” memory, and lack of record-keeping.

“Do I get to clean up anytime soon? Maybe put on some clothes?” Cody asks, as Control holds some kind of scanner up to his head. Like with most procedures, he hasn’t bothered to name the device he’s holding or state how he’s using it.

“Yes.” Control pulls the scanner back, views its display with a blank expression, and sets it aside. “Now, actually, and then we can begin surgery.”

“Wh—” Cody jumps up from the examination table, nearly walking into the privacy curtain as he shuffles a few steps away. “Surgery? What surgery?”

Control sighs, and begins rattling off a collection of words that sound rehearsed to death. “Within the head of every clone trooper ever made is an inhibitor chip. This very chip was responsible for the immediate mass compliance with Order 66 by all clone troopers, and compliance with many immoral Imperial operations thereafter. Though your chip may be degraded, it is still too dangerous not to extract. My surgical rate of success thus far has been 100%.” The medic regards him flatly. “Any questions?”

It’s not the first time Cody’s heard about a “chip” or some other device controlling clones’ actions. It’s just the first time he’s heard it discussed as simple fact, and not a rumor Cody assumed was meant to assuage the guilt that had started manifesting in some troopers.

“I deserted the Empire of my own free will. I’ve felt no desire to return, I certainly feel nothing about—” Execute Order 66. The words had rung in his head like an otherworldly bell, silencing every other thought he’d been holding about the battle on Utapau. “—About the Jedi!”

He knows full well Obi-Wan escaped him. Wherever he is, Cody wishes him well. Rex has just been his only priority for years.

“Are you saying you won’t submit to the surgery?” Control asks, his voice at its softest yet—and its most dangerous.

“I don’t need brain surgery. I’m fine. I promise you.”

“The promises of a chipped clone are worth less than you think. It’s not your fault, but it’s the unfortunate reality.” Control taps something on his datapad, and the door panel beeps to confirm it’s locked.

“No. Nothing and no one controls my actions but me. I can believe what you’re saying about these—” Cody waves a frustrated hand, “—inhibitor chips, but I am not experiencing any effects. I don’t need a fucking knife in my head. Unlock the door.”

Control suddenly bullies his way into Cody’s bubble, centimeters from his face. “I will blow you out the airlock before I let you near any other clone with an intact chip in your head,” he growls. “I will space you and I won’t even apologize to Commander Rex about it, who seems to be really hung up on you for reasons I don’t care to know. Because I’m not letting one former Marshal Clone Commander’s ego compromise all the hard work he’s accomplished to bring us all here. To save us.” He jabs a finger into Cody’s sternum and grinds it against the bone. “If you give a damn about even one other clone on this space station, as I suspect you do, submit to this surgery. If you’d rather die, tell me no again.”

Well. When he puts it that way.

The surgical table doesn’t feel quite so cold beneath Cody, his skin scoured clean by a decently maintained sonic, and a fresh set of blacks protecting him from the cold of the durasteel. The space station has no functioning med droids, but Control doesn’t seem worried, calling over one of the few level-headed clones working the medbay to play assistant. Cody gets no say in any part of the procedure, like preferring local anesthetic to getting put under.

When he wakes, he’s been transferred to a cot in some other corner of the medbay. He touches the side of his head almost immediately, finding a clean, flat bandage in a newly-shorn patch of scalp.

“Don’t touch that.”

Control is at his bedside as if he’s teleported. “Don’t disturb that bandage. The bacta it’s infused with is not easy to come by.”

“Yes, sir,” Cody mumbles, dropping his hand at his side. “Can I go?”

The medic purses his lips. “Twenty minutes observation time. Then I’m releasing you to Commander Rex.” He thrusts a ration bar at Cody. “Eat this.”

Cody sighs, taking the bar. Maybe he’s lost track of the Coruscanti calendar these are usually dated by, but he’s pretty sure this one is expired. “Fair enough.”

“I told you I would comm you, sir,” Control says into the hallway, twenty minutes later. “Here,” he says, waving Cody and his box of mismatched armor over. “I’ve cleared your precious new arrival.”

Rex stands just outside the medbay, still wiping the sleep out of one eye but perking up immensely the moment he spots Cody. Cute, Cody can’t help but think. Less cute is the fatigue radiating off Echo behind him; frankly, Cody is surprised to see him here.

“Echo,” Cody says, “did you let this idiot wait up for me?” Rex snorts, cheeks flushing, and Cody grins. Funny of Rex to play bashful when he’s the one standing so close Cody feels his every breath on his face. “I promise I wouldn’t have run off in the night, you know. You could have gotten some sleep, seen me next morning.”

“Don’t act like I control any of Rex’s actions,” Echo says, before turning to the medic. “Anything to note, Control?”

“No. Everything was routine.” Control scowls, already stepped back into the medbay. “I’m going to my cot now, Captain, if I may.”

“Thank you,” Echo says, his one hand over his mouth to cover a yawn. “Goodnight, then.” He chortles when the medbay door slams shut; good to see some sense of humor has survived.

“Think that’s our cue, too,” Cody says, snaking his arm around Rex’s waist, though he can’t exactly pull him any closer. “Show me where I’m sleeping.” He expects to be shown whatever they’ve turned into barracks. Honestly, he could use a little time surrounded by clones, as much as he wants Rex naked beneath him.

“The men usually—”

“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Rex growls, right over whatever Echo was about to say. “Not again.”

“Oh? Giving me your bunk, Commander?” They’re only one step from Rex just pinning him to the wall, and Cody contemplates taking that step just to pull Rex with him. The urge to simply eat Rex alive is a powerful one. “How generous.”

“You know damn well I’m not just giving you my bunk.” Rex pauses. All the animalistic, possessive behavior floods out of him as he turns toward Echo, and what replaces it is something much—well, sweeter, despite an undercurrent of worry. “Echo, will you—”

“It’s fine.” Echo waves them off with his scomp, shaking his head. With a wry little look, he adds, “I’ll see you in the morning, if Cody survives sleeping in the same bunk as you.”

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Rex asks, planting a fist on his kama, and Cody laughs as he kisses Rex’s cheek. He can’t help it, not now that he finally gets to be this close to Rex’s indignant little pout he’s always refused to acknowledge.

“If it hasn’t killed me yet, it won’t kill me now, but I appreciate the concern, Captain Echo,” Cody says. If anything he plans on potentially smothering Rex to death, if that’s what it takes to catch up on how many times he’s imagined kissing him breathless.

“I’m just going to check on something,” Echo says, heading back in the direction of the hangar door.

“Check on what?” Rex calls after him, stepping forward as if his body instinctively wants to follow.

“I said goodnight, Rex.” And Echo disappears around a curve.

Rex watches the place Echo was for a good moment or two before Cody gives him a shake. “No surprise that one’s still a workaholic. Come on, then, Commander. Stop worrying so hard about your favorite problem child, and show me how generous you are.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Rex says, even as he kisses the corner of Cody’s mouth.

The officer quarters on the space station are separate from the barracks, designed by natborns who Cody supposes must have liked the silence and loneliness of deep space. Each of Rex’s captains have their own room as well, though they’re full up now—if they grow their ranks enough to warrant adding more officers, the captains will have to start doubling up.

“What a punishment,” Cody snorts. “Two clones having to share a bed wider than shoulder-width? However will they recover?”

“We’ll have to try it for ourselves to find out,” Rex says, tapping the door panel to his quarters. “For the good of the men.”

“Of course. The good of the men.” Cody follows Rex inside, and finds a bunk room just a little bit bigger than his own had been, back on the Negotiator. Certainly the bed is wider, enough to fit two unarmored clones side by side with a few centimeters between them. So long as they kept their arms glued to their sides, anyway. Plenty of storage drawers, a miniscule desk with a utilitarian chair, a weapons rack, and a pair of armor racks that don’t quite fit into the corner where they’ve been placed. The bed has a pair of obscenely fluffy pillows, and a blanket that’s a far cry from the thin synthwool squares they’d been allotted in the military. There’s even a narrow door that Cody suspects leads to a private refresher.

“I think you’d recruit every remaining Imperial clone if you showed them this,” Cody says, walking up to the twin armor racks.

“There’s a bait and switch, showing them officer quarters and then throwing them into the barracks,” Rex says, racking his blasters across the room.

“What a convenient number of armor racks,” Cody says, casual as he sets his haphazard box of bounty hunter armor in front of one of the racks. “If my armor weren’t so dusty—”

“Oh, the second one is Echo’s.” Rex comes up behind him, nipping at Cody’s earlobe even as he unlatches one of his vambraces and steps up to the other rack. The sensation lightning bolts its way straight down to Cody’s dick, which means he doesn’t immediately process Rex’s words.

“Thought you said nobody was doubling up yet.” Cody watches Rex remove his armor, the planes of his body revealed piece by piece, and starts unlatching some of it himself.

“Echo has his own quarters. He just keeps that here,” Rex says, angling his throat as Cody presses up against his back. Cody takes the invitation with gusto, teeth scraping just above the collar of Rex’s blacks. He’ll bite for real when he has Rex completely bare. “You didn’t think I exiled one of my captains to the barracks just for you, did you?”

“As a matter of fact, for a moment,” Cody murmurs, fingers finding the latches for Rex’s codpiece, “I did.” He flips the latches open and lets the plastoid clatter to the floor. “Sloppy, soldier. Pick that up and rack it.”

“Yes, sir,” Rex says, mockingly. He starts to squat and Cody pulls his hips back up, forcing Rex to bend from them. “That’s not good form, sir.”

“It’s a regulation stretch, you’ll find. I said pick up that armor and rack it, or you’ll be on latrine duty for the next week.”

“Not latrine duty, please sir, anything but that,” Rex pretends to plead, before finally bending all the way down to pick up his codpiece. The moment Rex’s fingers touch it, Cody thumbs open the latches to his skidplate and bowls it into the codpiece to spin it out of Rex’s reach.

The cleft of Rex’s ass is split open by the deep bend and Cody grinds his cock into that space, their blacks the only thing keeping him from smearing precum against Rex’s taint. Rex groans, spreading his feet to let Cody in. “It’s been too fucking long,” Cody growls, fingers digging into the lean meat of Rex’s hips, and grinds hard again. “Too long without you. Too long thinking you were dead, too long only hoping you weren’t. Too long alone in this shithole galaxy.”

“I kept looking for you,” Rex says, pulling away only so he can stand straight and turn. He crowds Cody against the wall the bed is set into, his hands skimming down the other’s body until he finds a hem he can tug at. “Echo even had a program set, looking for you.”

“Did he now,” Cody says, lifting his arms. It doesn’t take long for Rex to whip the elastex over his head and into the far corner, his hands immediately cupping and squeezing at Cody’s pecs.

“But you found us first.” Rex presses his hips tight to Cody’s, sliding his clothed erection along the other as he kisses Cody’s throat. “Of course. Of course you did.”

“All that matters is you’re here. And I’m here.” Cody buries his face in Rex’s neck, screwing his eyes shut tight as he waits out the burning in his eyes. Rex is real, heavy and warm against him, and Cody will never let him go again. There are no generals to keep them in different quadrants of the galaxy, there are no natborn officers determining when they get to be with each other. He throws his arms around Rex and squeezes him close. “You’re alive, Rex. You’re alive.”

“Couldn’t die before I found you, obviously,” Rex murmurs, kissing just behind Cody’s ear. Not far from his incision site. He wraps himself around Cody, and for a moment all they do is hold each other.

Cody pretends he doesn’t sniffle as he straightens, yanking at the elastex still keeping Rex’s body from him. “Get this shit off, Rex. I didn’t survive three years without you just to dry-hump like a cadet.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Rex says with a grin. With them both committed to it, their blacks are off in a flash, and Cody barely gets a look at the entirety of Rex’s naked body before he’s being pushed down onto the thick, plush blanket on the bed.

“You got new scars,” Rex says, his fingertips finding them. He can’t even express surprise that Rex has mapped out his body so well he can recognize the new amid the old, not when Cody’s done the same. “Without me.”

“You did, too. I don’t want to hear it.” Cody shifts backward until all of him is on the bed; Rex reaches over and under him to pull the blanket back until Cody’s ass is on shockingly smooth sheets. “No more scars without me, understood?”

“Understood,” Rex agrees, crawling between Cody’s thighs. There might be new scars on both their bodies but Rex’s cock is just as he remembered it. On the face of it, no different from his own, or from almost any other clone’s, but Cody remembers the exact curve of it, the arrangement of veins along the shaft. He’d swear he even remembers its weight in his hand down to the milligram, but there’s no room for math in his head right now. Just the feeling of taking that cock in hand, pumping the foreskin gently as his sense memory reawakens.

Rex pushes something up and away, just above Cody’s field of vision, and leans down. They kiss languidly, feverishly, languidly again, Rex slowly fucking the tight circle of Cody’s hand. “Don’t have enough hands,” Rex mutters, one hand braced against the mattress as the other tugs at one of Cody’s nipples. Cody arches into that touch, inhaling sharply. He’d thought life as a bounty hunter would be no different from life as a soldier, but he learned quickly that keeping absolute quiet was in his best interest, even when—especially when—jerking off to another imagined reunion with Rex. Now it’s hard to break that habit, as much as he wants to moan under Rex’s touch.

“Rex,” he says, raggedly. “Rex, move up. Come here.”

“What do you want?” Rex asks, sitting up just enough to loom over him. “How do you want me?”

“That’s a loaded question,” Cody laughs, breathless and a little desperate. There had been something specific he’d wanted—something to do with sucking on Rex’s tits and then coming all over them, maybe—but Rex’s question knocks it out of his head. “I want you face down, ass up, drooling into the pillow. I want you on your back with your knees next to your ears. I want you on top of me, under me, in me, I want you to fucking splatter your cum on me, I want you to fuck my mouth and I want you choking on my cock.” He covers his face with one hand, a few hysterical laughs still slipping out. “Don’t make me choose, Rex. I can’t. Because I want you in every single way I can have you.”

“I think we can manage most of that before either of us dies,” Rex says, and it takes Cody a moment. He punches Rex square in the shoulder. “Ow!”

“Nobody’s dying,” Cody says with a scowl. “Don’t you put that into the universe.”

“What, like the Force?” Rex snickers.

“No, not like the Force,” Cody says, rolling his eyes. “Just—” He runs his thumb along Rex’s eye, along the puffy lower lid. He’s tired. Probably was set to have a long day even before Cody crashed it. “Okay. Let’s do this, for now. Where’s your lube?”

“Well, I can try to Force-summon it, but—ow, okay, I get it!” Rex twists to open one of the drawers beneath the bed, Cody holding his hips in place, and returns with a bottle of lube that’s seen plenty of use.

“Lonely, were you?” Cody says, arching a brow.

“Not hardly,” Rex scoffs, pressing the bottle into Cody’s hand. He doesn’t have any further sassback, though, quietly watching Cody pour lube into his hand.

Cody wraps his hand around his own cock, hissing faintly at the cold of the lube as he strokes himself slowly. Honestly, he could come like this, jerking off to the reality of Rex sitting hard and wanting between his legs. Even just thinking of splashing Rex’s stomach with his cum, and lying limp in the afterglow while Rex returns the favor, Cody’s balls draw a little tighter. But he opens his hand back up, the lube good and warmed, and brings his and Rex’s cocks together. Rex moans through closed lips at the contact.

This time Cody doesn’t move his hand. His free hand grabs ahold of Rex’s ass, nudging him forward until Rex gets the idea. His cock slides against the underside of Cody’s as he thrusts, and Rex puts his hand around Cody’s which only adds to the pressure, and Rex puts his mouth to Cody’s jaw, to his ear, and Rex, and Rex, and Rex, and Cody thought he could hold out—

He comes, only a few minutes into it, which finally rips a long groan out of him as he stripes Rex’s belly with cum. He could stop to be embarrassed, or he could throw himself halfway down the bed and swallow Rex’s cock from below, and Cody chooses the latter without a second thought. Rex yelps in surprise, but Cody gives him no quarter, cheeks hollowed as his tongue twists and laps at him. When Rex comes, nearly as quickly, Cody swallows every drop, licking Rex clean until a hand literally pushes his head away.

“Fuck,” Rex pants, minutes later from his spot on the bed, flopped over next to Cody. For his part, Cody’s managed to writhe his way back up the bed, about as lively as a dead fish. “Cody.”

“What.”

“It’s like you missed me, or something,” Rex chuckles. He rolls over to kiss Cody, dried cum shining on his stomach, and Cody doesn’t let him have more than a peck before he finally rolls to his feet.

“You need a wipe down,” Cody says, fastidiously looking for something to clean them both off without looking at Rex.

“Oh. Uh, in the ’fresher.”

“Right.” Cody knew that door was a refresher. He stops for a piss, and turns to clean his hands only to catch sight of the shower stall. A real water shower with an aftermarket sonic attachment, he notes first. What it says about the original builders of the space station, cody isn’t sure, but it seems to say a lot. What he notes second is a chair.

“Rex,” Cody calls over the sound of the sink, which also dispenses real water, “why is there a chair in your shower? You getting tired in your old age?”

“That’s Echo’s,” is all the answer Rex gives. Cody even waits a beat, thinking Rex might expand on that, and gets nothing. He grabs a rag out of yet another Force-forsaken drawer, runs the corner of it under the tap, and heads back into the main room.

Cody is all business as he sits on the edge of the bed and cleans Rex up, perfectly aware of the way Rex is watching him work. He thinks of saying That’s two things of Echo’s just sitting in your quarters but Rex takes a breath, the kind that always precedes words.

“What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” Cody looks up, blinking hard. “What do you mean, wrong?”

“If you didn’t miss me and you’re just happy to be back, that’s alright, you know.” Rex turns on his side, taking the rag from Cody’s suddenly motionless fingers. The way he wipes Cody’s flaccid penis is somehow just as tender as his voice. “I know I missed you. Every damn day since the end of the war. Probably even before that, actually. When I shipped out to Mandalore—”

“Stop.” Cody takes the rag from Rex, wadding it mess-side-in and setting it on the shelf over the pillows. He takes Rex’s hands in both of his. “Don’t say that.”

“I did miss you. I won’t apologize for that.”

“No, I mean—” Cody squeezes Rex’s hands. “Don’t say I didn’t miss you.” His eyes are burning again, and this time he doesn’t think he can just will it away. “Rex. I had a fucking hole in my heart until I saw you in that hangar today.” His voice cracks. “I’ve gone through commander class training. I’ve been the commander of the entire 7th Sky Corps. I’ve been the best bounty hunter in more than one sector.

“And nothing, nothing was as hard as being apart from you. Thinking you were dead, then only hoping you were alive.” He brings Rex’s hands up to his mouth, kisses them despite the way his own hands tremble. His face is hot, and wet, and his throat hurts. “Of course I missed you. You fucking idiot.”

They’re the last words he manages to get out before something in him finally breaks, and he starts sobbing. Loud, ugly sobs that don’t befit a man of his background. Rex gathers in his arms, holding him close and kissing the top of his head. He’s saying something soothing but all Cody gets is the rumble in Rex’s chest, his own crying too loud in his own ears.

It takes a humiliating 20 minutes for Cody to gather himself, though he only knows that after the fact; in the moment it feels like hours. By the time his crying jag subsides, he feels more worn out than he did on some of his most grueling bounty jobs. Rex plies him with a hydropak, then another. Cody doesn’t quite remember falling asleep. All he knows is he’s clean, warm, dry—and with Rex.

And nothing else matters.

Chapter Text

The morning begins slowly. After a lifetime of waking up fast, whether for duty or for danger, Cody feels uneasy being only half-awake.

Until Rex’s arm squeezes tighter around him.

“Good morning,” Rex says. He kisses Cody’s temple, his lips curved in a smile. “Good to see I didn’t dream you up.”

“You’ll never be rid of me, actually.” Cody stretches with a little grunt, coming into full wakefulness. Rex’s face fills his vision, crow’s feet crinkling, and Cody can’t help but kiss them. He kisses Rex himself, and even savors the gross taste of morning breath—all of it is Rex. All of it means Rex is here, and real.

Also, he needs to piss, now that he’s actually awake. Cody sits up—

“Ow!” Cody flops back down, looking for whatever hit him. A datapad, of all things, hanging over the bed on a hinged metal arm. “Rex, what the fuck is that?”

“Oh, it must have drifted down a little in the night,” Rex sighs, pushing at it. “I ought to tighten the joints.”

“Are you so unable to clock out that you’re doing work even in bed?” Cody looks at it again. “And you can’t just hold the damn thing?”

“I don’t. Echo does, and he can’t hold the datapad and use it at the same time,” Rex says. “I thought you had to piss?”

That’s three things associated with Echo in Rex’s quarters—so far. Cody comes out of the refresher and stands in the doorway, really surveying the room.

“Come back to bed,” Rex says, not moved from his spot under the blanket, but Cody’s found another inexplicable thing, and he points at it.

“And what are those?”

“What’re what?” Rex rolls over to get to the edge of the bed, flipping up the covers and exposing his ass, which almost distracts Cody. “Oh. Wall mounts.”

“Wall mounts for what?” They look like they’re meant to hold something vertically, two somethings in fact, and they’re about hip height. Cody has a good guess; he just wants Rex to say it.

“Echo’s legs.” Rex rolls back into place, patting the empty space beside him aggressively. “Don’t tell me you want to get dressed and start working, Cody.”

“Working?” Cody scoffs, planting his fists on either hip. “I just got here. I’m not even on your roster.”

“We can change that.” Rex pulls the datapad back down as Cody clambers back into bed. “See?” A few pokes of the screen, and then he angles it to show Cody that yes, he’s part of the roster now. No rank, no other information added, but he’s there.

Rex pauses. “You do want to be on the roster, don’t you?”

“Don’t be stupid. Of course I do. I’m not going to sit on my ass while you risk your life do-gooding all over the galaxy. Someone needs to watch your back.”

“We usually don’t let officers share missions.”

“Well, I’m not an officer, am I?” Cody says, idly stroking Rex’s chest. “I’m just Cody. Says so right on your datapad.”

“And what are you going to do when I promote you, hm?” Rex glances down at the hand circling his nipple, though he doesn’t comment.

“Petition the commander to change the rules, obviously.” He tweaks Rex’s nipple just to watch him twitch.

“I’d like to see how you intend to do that. Rules are made for a reason.”

“Oh? You want a demonstration?” Cody flings back the blanket, revealing Rex’s half-hard dick. “Are you sure about that?”

“How else am I supposed to decide,” Rex says, arching gently into the trail Cody’s fingers make down his body, “if the petition would work or not, otherwise?”

“Ah, you make a good point.” Cody drags a single finger down the length of Rex’s rapidly filling cock. “I have a few ideas for my proposal, but one really strong one I think really drives the point home. Would you like to hear the thrust of it?”

“I’ll send you back to that junk planet if you don’t stop.”

“No, you won’t. You haven’t heard the meat of my proposal yet.” Cody finds the lube bottle stashed on the same shelf he put the (now absent) rag last night, and snaps it open. Rex’s cock is fully hard now, twitching against his belly, but Cody only gives it a few cursory strokes to spread lube onto it, and he straddles Rex’s waist. He ignores his own hardening dick, too, squirting lube onto his fingertips.

“Cody,” Rex says, but the indignation is draining out of his voice, replaced by a different kind of heat. His hips flex behind Cody’s ass, and his hands find their way onto Cody’s thighs.

“Yes, Commander.” Cody braces himself with a hand on Rex’s thigh, too, leaning back until he’s sure Rex can see his hole. Lube smears against Cody’s ass on its way to being pushed inside on his two fingers; Rex’s short nails dig in, his pupils widening as he stares.

Cody rarely fingered himself, out there in the cold galaxy by himself. Masturbation could never be dragged out into something truly sensuous, and was usually a five minute affair under a thin blanket or in a refresher. Any money he made that wasn’t used for food went into fuel to make sure he could keep looking for Rex, never accommodations. So his hole is tight, and two fingers are too much to start with, but Cody relishes the stretch if it means Rex’s cock can replace them all the sooner.

“My proposal,” Cody says, pulling his fingers out after only a few short pumps, “goes something like this.” He brings Rex’s cock up until the tip kisses his hole, watching Rex’s enraptured face—and sinks down.

“Oh, fuck,” Rex gasps, hips immediately bucking, and Cody bites his lip. He hasn’t been fucked in years. He’s had others approach him for sex, sure, and he’s not so uptight he didn’t suck a few strange dicks or let a few strange mouths suck his. But his ass was always in reserve for Rex, and now Rex feels bigger than he remembers. Longer, wider, filling him until he can’t remember what it feels like to be empty.

“I kept,” Cody says, as he pins Rex’s waist to the mattress, “kept imagining this.” He plants his feet to either side of Rex’s hips, knees spread wide, and Rex’s hands find a new home on his hips. “Kept imagining this moment, not just seeing you again but being fucked by you again. Feeling your cock inside me again.” His first bounces are slow, controlled rises and falls. The hand not being used to brace himself pulls his balls up, the better for a grunting Rex to see where his cock disappears into Cody’s body.

“But nothing I ever imagined came close,” Cody continues, speeding up just enough to draw new noises out of Rex. “To the real thing. To you, Rex.”

“Cody,” Rex sobs, apparently incapable of saying anything else. Cody puts both palms flat on the ceiling of the bunk, meets Rex’s dark eyes, and rides him like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.

Cody pants as he fucks himself on Rex’s cock, but he can barely hear himself over Rex’s ragged, open-mouthed moaning, or the sound of skin on skin as Rex drives his hips up to meet Cody’s ass, over and over again. His leaking cock keeps bouncing, slapping wetly against his stomach. Rex tries to take it in hand but he can’t time his thrusts and keep a steady hold on a moving target, much less stroke it through the foreskin, and Cody bats him away.

“Close,” Rex wheezes, which Cody only takes as an invitation to speed up. He has no plans to let this be the last time Rex fucks him, after all.

“Come inside me, Rex, come on, come, you can do it,” Cody babbles, watching Rex’s eyelids flutter as his irises roll back. “Come for me, Rex, come in me, fill me up—”

Rex yanks Cody down his cock to the root, white-knuckled hands holding him in place as his hips spear up. His cock pulses inside Cody, his cum hot as it spurts deep. Cody almost comes, too, on the edge just knowing Rex finished inside him. Rex only thrusts a few more times, grinding in deep with each one, before his hips finally drop and his whole body goes lax.

Cody only gives Rex a minute of post-orgasmic bonelessness before he reaches for his dick, fully intending to paint Rex’s abdomen with cum. Rex tries to knock his hand away, mumbling something about not getting a chance to touch Cody yet.

“Fine,” Cody snorts, and he curls Rex’s hand around his cock, only to close his own around it in turn. Rex lets him, his arm loose as Cody uses his hand to pump his foreskin. With Rex’s cock softening inside him, and Rex’s besotted face in front of him, it doesn’t take Cody long to come; the furthest shots hit Rex’s slack lips, and his tongue darts out to lick it off. If Cody weren’t already coming, he’d come again just for that.

Rex’s cock falls out of Cody’s hole, cum trickling out in its wake. He knows he ought to get up before that mess gets on the sheets, but he only has enough energy to fall forward into a different mess, crushing Rex beneath him.

“You’re a menace,” Rex says into Cody’s shoulder, minutes later. “By now I’m usually dressed and going over mission assignments.”

“That doesn’t sound true.” Cody urges his body to get the fuck up, which his body ignores. “And even if it is, you can’t blame it on me. I’m just Cody, remember?”

“I’m going to space you.” Rex pushes at Cody’s chest. “Let me up.”

“All you clones are the same,” Cody tuts, finally forcing himself upright. He stands quickly, Rex’s cum already running down the back of his leg. “Workaholics all.”

“Right, you had such a good, healthy relationship with your working hours during the war,” Rex says, hauling himself to his feet. “Funny, I’m having a hard time recalling.”

Cody responds by smacking Rex’s ass and shoving him toward the refresher.

The shower stall isn’t quite big enough for both of them, not with the shower chair taking up floor space. Cody doesn’t mind the squeeze, taking any opportunity to be annoyingly close to Rex. What he does mind is feeling like Echo is haunting the shower.

“Is Echo going to come by to shower here?” Cody asks, at one point.

“Maybe?” Rex says, lathering his pits. “Why?”

Cody drops the subject. Even when he rifles through Rex’s various drawers looking for a fresh set of blacks and finds numerous sets with a right half-sleeve, all in one drawer. Whatever’s going on here, Rex is either better at playing dumb than Cody remembers, or he’s legitimately not thinking about it.

“Cody,” Rex begins, latching on his armor in the corner, “would you be ready to debrief my captains today?”

“Debrief?” Cody considers his own armor, still dusty—and frankly, still a little smelly—and decides to leave it where it is. He finds another drawer full of blacks, these unaltered.

Rex clears his throat. “Gregor’s report on your pickup was…scant, let’s say. And you being you, I suspect you’ve kept your eye on the Empire in ways we couldn’t. Might be you have some intel that would really help the operation.” He’s still facing the armor rack, clasping on his cuirass.

Cody hums, walking over to stand behind Rex. He feels clearer-headed than he has in a long time, though he can’t exactly say whether that’s the effects of the surgery, or of finally seeing (and fucking) Rex. “I can handle that,” he says, throwing loose arms around Rex’s waist and pressing his cheek to Rex’s jaw.

“I’ll schedule it, then,” Rex says, smiling as he turns to kiss him.

Rex shows him a few other things before the debrief. Their supply of spare clone trooper armor, for one, all of it unpainted and most of it in B-grade shape, but certainly serviceable. For two, the mess hall that serves real food when they can, complete with caf-maker. Cody slurps caf with abandon, beyond grateful for the stimulant.

For three, the sets of barbering supplies one of the squads managed to scrounge up. Cody did think a lot of the clones he’s seen so far are awfully clean-shaven for a bunch living off the grid, as it were.

Rex gives him a haircut. Nothing fancy; the same high-and-tight most clones adhered to on Kamino, and that Cody favored until his desertion. Rex shaves his face. Close to the skin, careful with the blade. And even this feels so intimate, Rex’s hands tilting his head this way and that, shearing away the visual evidence of time spent away from him, that Cody’s eyes feel wet again.

With the last bit of lather wiped away, Rex leans over Cody and kisses his forehead. “I’ll get things set up for you,” Rex whispers. “Come into the command room when you’re ready.”

He doesn’t know what ready means when Rex says it like that. What he’s ready for is to be back in Rex’s presence, not sitting on his ass in borrowed armor by himself. When he heads toward where Rex said the command room is, he’s only been alone for a few minutes.

A hush falls the moment he enters the room. Rex’s captains salute him as he enters—even Echo. Cody doesn’t quite know why he’s surprised; Echo doesn’t dislike him, and he’s always thought Echo was a good soldier and a better man.

“Officers,” Cody says, saluting back as he reaches the holo table in the center of the room. “It’s been a long road for me to get to you. I don’t think your operation was quite off the ground when I deserted the Empire. But I’m glad to be here, and to give you any information you may find valuable.”

And so he recounts his story, starting from the moment he accepted the Desix mission as an Imperial commander. He’d already been having doubts, plagued by the moment everything had changed on Utapau, and each new mission only underscored the truth he struggled to accept: something was wrong. And with the Imperial victory on Desix—ending in corpses displayed in the capitol’s square—Cody knew he could no longer follow orders.

It was hard to disappear, in some ways. With the war so fresh, a clone trooper’s face was always a recognizable one, and Imperial forces were everywhere. Worse, Cody’s face with its distinctive scar was even more recognizable. Every near miss with the Empire felt nearer than the last. “I think some of you know about that,” Cody says, looking at Echo; Echo’s response is to give him a single stiff nod and then to look away.

He tells them, truthfully, he’s been working as a bounty hunter for most of his time away from the Empire. It was the only way to consistently put fuel into whatever hunk of junk starship he was flying at the time, always searching for Rex. For the movement he kept hearing Rex had started.

The captains have questions and commentary, but not Rex. Rex watches Cody with a face—well, not unlike the one he made after Cody came all over him just this morning. Echo keeps glancing at him; Cody doesn’t call either of them out, tucking the information away.

The rest of the debrief is less about himself and more about what he’s seen and learned during his bounty hunting gigs, some by accident and plenty on purpose. Now is when Rex gets involved, he and his captains all asking their questions and connecting dots. The holo table flashes as Rex adds Cody’s intel, rapidly moving pieces of information around it and plotting courses on galactic maps.

“Some of these missions are looking a little fraught,” a captain points out. Captain Vik, if Cody remembers right. “Maybe we ought to bring ’em home.”

“No.” That’s definitely Echo, frowning as he cuts in. “We don’t break communications protocol. Nothing in or out with away teams.”

“These men might die,” Vik argues.

“We all know and accept the risks, the moment we make the jump away from base,” Gregor says. “Echo’s right. We don’t want another Teth.” He sighs. “You weren’t there for it, Vik. It was a nightmare.”

“I don’t think calling in a few active squads is going to—”

“I said no!” Echo thumps his fist against the holotable, the projection flickering under the impact. “I don’t like it either, but I’m not sacrificing hundreds of clones for ten soldiers who signed up to put their lives on the line.”

“Now hold on, I respect you, Echo. But you don’t outrank me, you’re just—”

“That’s enough.” Rex’s voice brings the argument to a halt. “Echo doesn’t outrank the other captains, no, but he and I didn’t set these protocols lightly. All we can do for the men on those missions is hope they make it back. The same way we do for any squad.”

Echo doesn’t look at his commander. He doesn’t look at anyone, in fact, his eyes on the far wall as if he were the one being admonished.

“Apologies, Captain Echo,” Vik says, with a slow nod.

“None needed, Captain Vik.” Echo returns the nod with much less grace. From there the meeting resumes without much issue, but it doesn’t last much longer, either. Rex shuts the holo table down, and the officers—Echo included—disperse.

“Cody,” Rex summons, while the officers are still in the process of leaving. “Come here, I want to show you something.”

What Rex wants to show him is the mission assignments on the main screen. “Usually I take a look at these in the morning,” he says, “but we were a bit occupied. I want your thoughts on these assignments.”

“Rex. I don’t know any of your men.” Cody finds himself reading the list anyway.

“You know Gregor, don’t you?”

“He seems familiar, I just can’t quite pin down from where.” He squints. “Rex, did you—”

“Foxtrot Group! He was their captain, attached to the 212th battalion. Didn’t Ghost Company work with them a few times?”

Cody blinks. “I can’t believe I forgot that. He’s the one with the…?” Cody taps the side of his head.

“The brain damage, yeah,” Rex chuckles. “Blown up twice.”

“How could I have forgotten that voice,” Cody mutters, before he remembers what he’d been about to say. “Rex. You added me to a mission already?”

“What? Oh.” Rex pulls up the mission in question. “I can take you off. I only thought Just Cody might want that chance to watch my back.”

“I get to make that joke. You don’t get to make that joke.” Cody frowns as he looks at the squad layout and the mission brief. “Rex, do you really need this many soldiers for a smash and grab?”

“I mean—”

“No, no.” Cody’s hands fly over the controls, throwing every clone besides himself and Rex into the pool of unassigned troopers. “A mission like this, the fewer the better. We can do this ourselves, and this squad can be put to much better use elsewhere.” Cody minimizes the supply grab, sifting through the other missions. “Like here. Squads can be broken up from time to time, it’s good for them.” He scowls. “Rex, stop smirking at me just because you tricked me into doing the thing you wanted me to do.”

“Trick you? Never.”

Cody rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. You don’t have to keep these changes, though, understood? If I make a wrong choice, you have to fix it. You have to put it back. Don’t risk these men because you want to kiss my ass.”

“Oh, of course,” Rex says, but he’s still smirking.

Cody is quick, only editing a handful of missions. He opens another mission that could use some refining in its staffing, and his hand hovers over the controls before he closes it. “My mistake,” he says, and closes the whole thing. He’s not touching a single one of Echo’s missions.

“Come on then. I’ll show you how I do my rounds.”

“By walking, I expect,” Cody says, snickering when Rex thumps him in the chest. They’re already headed down the corridor when Cody glances behind them, just in time to see Echo dart back into the command room. Another mental note, tucked away for later.

Hours later, Cody’s met so many clones in such a short span of time he sincerely doubts he’ll remember them all. Rex’s day is full of meetings, not all of them engaging. They visit the mess hall again, taking a meal with Gregor and his favorite squad. He wonders if he’s told them where the name Foxhole comes from.

“I should check in the command room,” Rex says, right after saying it’s about time to rack out.

“For what?” Cody asks, but Rex doesn’t answer, speeding down the corridor.

Inside the command room, Echo sits awkwardly at the holo table, posted up on a crate with his scomp plugged into the table’s side. The schematics for a building that looks a lot like a prison flicker gently on the surface. Echo himself looks run down, though Cody is starting to wonder if that isn’t just how Echo looks now.

“You’re up late,” Rex says. Echo flinches.

“Just making sure the plan is set for this mission.” Echo gives the schematic a short turn to look at it from another side. It takes him a moment to look up, though when he spots Cody he immediately looks back down.

“That mission is two whole days away. It can certainly wait until tomorrow,” Rex says. His brow quirks with concern, and he takes a step closer to the table. “I thought you assigned Gregor that mission, anyway. He can work out his own plan.”

“You’re telling me you don’t want a meticulously formed Echo plan for Gregor to follow until everything goes to shit?” Echo squints at the projection, one finger drawing a path between two points.

Rex sighs. His body leans toward Echo as if there’s an invisible barrier between them, and in a soft, wistful voice he says, “Cody and I are turning in. You ought to as well.”

Echo stares at Rex as if he’d spat on him. He only glances at Cody for a second before turning back to his work, a sharp turn of his head as he shrinks into his shoulders.

“Goodnight, then.” That’s all Echo says, a clear dismissal.

“Come on,” Cody says, a murmur in Rex’s ear as he tugs on his elbow. Whatever’s going on with Echo, it’s clear he wants to be alone.

To his credit, Rex doesn’t take much coaxing to leave the command room, but it’s up to Cody to remember which way the commander’s quarters are, because Rex is walking like a man who just watched his whole squad die.

“Snap out of it,” Cody sighs, once the door to Rex’s quarters closes behind them. “Come on. You knew he was busy.”

“I—right. Yeah.” Rex wanders to the armor rack, clunking random pieces onto the rack at odd angles. Cody takes the next piece of armor from Rex before he can rack it the same haphazard way, sliding it into place before looking up at the other clone. “Sorry,” Rex mumbles.

“Don’t worry about it. Just slow down, will you?” Cody sets about undoing the rest of Rex’s armor, until Rex shakes his head as if to reset himself and takes over. Cody huffs fondly, finally shucking off his own borrowed armor.

Down to blacks, Rex drops onto the edge of the bed, sliding his hand over his face and scalp as he sighs. “You’re right. It’s fine. Echo’s never been one to turn off his brain.”

Cody takes a seat next to him, flush to his side. He’s always felt better with the grounding touch of another clone, and Rex is no different. “I don’t see you worrying after your other captains like this, you know.”

“I know. I know. I shouldn’t baby him. He can take care of himself.”

Privately, Cody has his doubts that Echo knows how to take care of himself in any way other than out in the field. He knows his type: neglectful of the basics of food, water and sleep because everyone and everything else comes first. Clones don’t come out of Kamino thinking that way, but time in the field can really reshape a trooper’s priorities.

“That’s not quite what I meant,” Cody says, slow and careful. When Rex looks up, Cody widens his eyes meaningfully. “This room is full of Echo. He’s more than just one of your officers, isn’t he?”

Rex’s expression can only be described as incredulous. “Of course he is. I love him.”

Cody does his best to not physically rock back in surprise. “And you—you didn’t think to mention that?”

“Did I need to?” Rex shifts until he’s facing Cody, one knee up on the bed. “It doesn’t reduce how I feel about you. You both mean everything to me.”

“Rex—” Cody slaps a hand over his eyes, groaning as he drags it down his face. “I’m not saying this because I’m jealous. I just don’t understand why you’d be so fucking cagey about it.”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

This time, Cody doesn’t bother restraining the way he recoils, jumping to his feet so he can stand over Rex. He takes a deep breath, studying Rex’s surprise, and says, “Fox is still alive. I’ve been fucking him before and after my desertion.”

“You—” Rex blanches. “You what?”

“You heard me. We’ve gotten very close, he and I. He saved my life a bunch of times, I saved his, we swore to protect each other forever, and I sucked his dick every night until the day I was finally able to send you a transmission.”

“And you just—” Rex’s eyes practically cross as he processes this. “You just weren’t going to tell me any of that?”

“Rex!” Cody shouts, grabbing his stupid blond head between both hands and shaking it. “Exactly my point!”

“That’s not the same, Echo is right here—”

Cody shakes Rex’s head one more time, clutching his cheeks until his lips part like a fish mouth. “If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. Because I care so fucking much about you.” He sighs, releasing Rex at last, and adds, “Is that so much to ask? To not be compartmentalized away from the rest of your life?”

Rex’s eyes soften, even as he massages his cheek. “No, I suppose not.”

“Oh, you suppose.” Cody retakes his seat on the bed.

“Fine. You win.” Cody sees it coming, but he lets Rex suddenly throw him back and pin him by the wrists anyway. “What else do you want to know?”

“This isn’t me interrogating you, Rex, just tell me things. Every time I asked about something in here that belongs to Echo, you acted like I was asking if Kamino was wet.” Cody flexes his wrists, but he doesn’t break the hold. “But I haven’t been here. I’m asking because I don’t know.”

“Oh.” Rex chews his lip. “What you said about Fox—”

“I was only making a point.” Cody grimaces. “Fox has been dead for a few years now. I checked.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know that you really are, but it’s fine.” Cody wriggles his hands again. “Are you going to let me up, or are you going to do something here?”

Rex takes the bait. “You sound like you want me to do something.”

“If you don’t do something quick, Commander, I’m gonna do something instead.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

Cody flips them with ease, parting Rex’s thighs around his hips and pinning Rex by the backs of his knees instead. “Get all this fabric out of my way and you will.”

It’s so easy to leave the hard conversations for an eternal “later” when Cody wraps himself up in Rex. Fox’s death, Cody’s bounty-hunting years alone, whatever is going on with Echo and Rex—all of it fades away when Rex is naked beneath him. Rex is even louder than this morning when Cody plunges his cock into him, face pressed so hard into the sheets the wrinkles leave an impression on his cheek.

There’s nothing to think about but fucking Rex until he comes from his prostate alone, cock jerking wildly as he spills all over the wet spot made by his precum. All there is is Cody fucking his cum into Rex, as deep as he can get it, thrusting until his cock is too soft to keep going. Even after cleanup, with Rex balling up the soiled sheets into the laundry chute and banishing Cody to the refresher while he fits on a fresh set, Cody slips his re-hardening cock into Rex’s ass one more time as they spoon beneath the blanket, and falls asleep.

Cody wakes up with his dick soft and dry, as if Rex had managed to clean him up without waking him. Rex is sitting up beside him, frowning at the datapad pulled down in front of him.

“What’s got you in such a tizzy this early?” Cody mumbles, throwing an arm over Rex’s hips on top of the blanket.

“The mission assignments were changed.”

“Yeah, I did that yesterday, remember?” Cody stretches, hauling himself up to mirror Rex’s position and get a look at the screen himself.

Rex flicks his ear. “I do remember. Someone changed them again. Look.”

Cody flicks Rex’s ear back, ignoring Rex’s hypocritical Ow! as he angles the screen his way. “What am I looking for?” He doesn’t remember enough about the missions he didn’t change to immediately spot the difference, except that he’d left all the missions led by…

“Echo’s gone. He wasn’t assigned to any missions until an interception of an Imperial prison transport carrying clone prisoners, and that’s not for days. Now he’s on an S.O.S. pickup that’s already left, then he’s leading the mission I watched him assign to Gregor, and he’s still assigned to the interception mission.” Rex groans in frustration. “That’s all cutting it too close. He’s going to be exhausted by the time he makes it to those prisoners, if he makes it to them.”

Cody purses his lips in thought. “And where’s Gregor been reassigned?”

Rex taps the screen a few times until he finds it. “He’s been assigned…leave? The other men originally assigned to the mission, too. Departing before Echo’s due back from the pickup.” A few more taps, and a few more, before Rex sits back, apparently astonished. “Echo made all these changes.”

“Have you ever known him to like sitting still?” Cody tries, watching something that looks dangerously close to rejection flit across Rex’s face.

“He doesn’t sit still on base, either! This is—I don’t know what this is!” Rex throws his hands up.

Cody reaches up to pull those hands down. “Alright, well, he’s not here for you to ask him, and he’s the one who made a big deal about your communications protocols yesterday, so let’s just get on with the day, hm? Commander Rex and Just Cody.”

“I thought you didn’t like that joke.”

“Where’d you get that idea? I made the joke. It’s a great joke. But only when I make it.” Cody kisses him, a firm, closed-mouth kiss. “When you make it it’s all wrong.”

“It’s the same joke,” Rex protests, but Cody is already climbing over him, pushing the datapad out of the way. “It’s the same—” Rex yanks him back by one wrist, Cody flailing as he falls back into Rex’s lap with a yelp. “I don’t think you heard me. It’s the same joke.” He leans down, probably straining his back just to kiss Cody properly, tongue slipping past Cody’s teeth.

By the time they’re finally ready to face the troops, Rex blames Cody again for their late start, even though it was Rex who put his hand on Cody’s cock to jerk him off as they kissed, and Rex who licked the cum off his hand and Cody’s belly, and Rex who slicked Cody’s inner thighs to fuck them, cock hot against Cody’s taint and bumping the back of his balls, and even Rex who took Cody’s dick into his mouth until he was hard again and spurting down Rex’s throat. Cody only laughs at the accusation.

Cody thought a day on base without Echo lurking might be a little more peaceful, but the agitation in Rex that sex had helped quell keeps building up all day. Even still, Cody likes the routine Rex shows him. Going over clone underground business over caf and rations in the morning, taking meetings, socializing in the mess, analyzing intel and mission reports; Rex doesn’t want to look at mission assignments, and Cody doesn’t particularly want to push him to look, either. Instead he shows Cody all their personnel files, and Cody teaches himself all the other captains’ names properly. Howzer, Vik, Seeker, Combo, Proxy. It’s a healthy roster that Rex has amassed here.

“I’ll just talk to him when he’s back,” Rex says, thumping the side of his fist into his palm with resolve as he sits in bed that night. “It’s fine.”

“I thought that’s what you’d already decided,” Cody says with a yawn. Even with the baseline arousal he constantly feels around Rex, he’s more sleepy than horny. “And don’t we have a mission tomorrow? You’ll catch him when you catch him, it was his silly choice to stack himself with that many missions.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Go to sleep or I’ll smother you with one of these ridiculous fluffy pillows.”

“You like the pillows.”

“Yeah, for how good they are for smothering. Sleep!” Cody rips the pillow out from under his own head and wallops Rex in the face.

Rex’s mouth twists as he looks at the stormtrooper helmet in his hands. “I’ve never liked the TK look.”

“It’s not about what you like. It’s about what keeps you from being identified as a clone. I’m surprised you lot don’t do more to keep incognito.” Cody’s swapped his borrowed trooper armor for his bounty hunter kit, though he’s painted up a few pieces—he’s in no mood to be recognized by any former employers.

“Clone armor works,” Rex says, turning the helmet over. “This one’s damaged, see? My helmet’s never been damaged like that.”

“Yeah, and you’ve never taken so much damage to your helmet you died, either. Get over it and let’s go.” Cody taps the side of the freighter they’re taking—and catches a glimpse of Echo scrambling into the cockpit of a ship a few rows over, as if he’s in a rush to get out of sight.

“Someone died in this? And you want me to wear it?” Rex holds the helmet out, oblivious to what Cody’s seeing. “How do you know it’s not compromised? How do you know any of the filters still work?”

“Rex.” Cody puts a flat hand on the crown of the helmet. “Would I give you something like that? Have I not expressed to you in every way I can that I’m very invested in you being alive?”

Rex puts the helmet on without further argument.

Cody was right to think that the mission didn’t require anything more than the two of them. Rex and Cody, Cody and Rex, two halves clicking back together. There’s no rust in their teamwork as they board the vessel. It’s not Imperial, belonging to the company who makes the supplies onboard, which also means their opponents aren’t exactly trained combatants. They’re armed, and certainly resourceful, but they fight like pirates.

For most thieves, that might still present a challenge. For the former right hands of two of the most reckless Jedi Generals in the Grand Army of the Republic, it’s less than nothing.

On their return to base, Rex rides the high of a completed mission all the way to the command room, where he officially adds Cody—still rankless, still bare bones—to the list of clone underground officers. Echo isn’t back yet, but the assignments haven’t changed and Rex swears patience.

It’s such a familiar routine, these days on the space station with Rex. Minus a few big points—like the lack of Jedi, almost never seeing the same paint color twice, and always starting and ending his days with Rex—sometimes Cody feels like he could be back on a Venator.

Except, of course, for the Echo issue.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Rex fumes, gesturing violently at the main screen in the command room, where mission assignments are pulled up. Vik is in the room, too, and he glances up from the terminal he’s working at. Rex lowers his voice to just above a whisper, and says, “He took himself off leave.”

If Cody were speaking to a rational, calm person, he might ask Was he due for leave? or perhaps Did you check to see if he just added himself to the next group? Instead Cody waits quietly, his eyebrows arching Rex’s only cue to continue.

“We agreed to take leave together. Just me and him in one of the little houses they have on Pabu,” Rex says, as if Cody has ever seen this “Pabu” all the men keep talking about, “to just be completely unplugged.” Rex glances at Vik, who’s doing a very good job at looking uninterested. “You know.”

“I mean, I don’t, but let’s pretend I do. When was this little agreement made?”

Rex sighs. “A few hours before you arrived.” He points. “Look. He added you in his place.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve already earned a vacation,” Cody snorts, but Rex isn’t in the mood for it. He deletes both his and Cody’s name from the next leave with an angry flourish, nostrils flaring.

“That’s it. I’m going to hunt him down to talk to him.” Rex brings up the rest of the mission assignments, scanning them for Echo’s name. “Unbelievable. Look how many missions he’s assigned himself to.” Rex scrolls. “We don’t need a captain for this many pickups.”

“So reassign him.”

Rex freezes. “I’m not going to override him like that.”

“Why not? You’re his commander, he of all clones understands chain of command.” Cody moves the controls into place for removing Echo from a mission at random. “So reassign him. Reprimand him.”

“No.” Rex immediately moves the controls back. “I’m not doing that.”

“You want to talk to him, don’t you?”

“Not as a soldier! As—” Rex stares at the screen. “I’m not going to force control on him. He’s had enough of that.”

More than any moment of finding all the ways Echo is braided into Rex’s life, this is the one where Cody feels the most lost. He knows, distantly, what Echo survived between being marked KIA on Lola Sayu, and his rescue on Skako Minor. His body is the evidence of his captors’ cruelty, just as much as it is evidence of his resilience, his refusal to stop fighting. Cody asked Rex, once, where the rest of Clone Force 99 was, and the answer, whether it was “retired on Pabu” or “dead”, still boiled down to “out of the fight”.

But he doesn’t know much else. He doesn’t know Echo’s specific traumas, or how he handles them. He doesn’t know what Echo needs to get through the day, since it doesn’t seem like any of the paraphernalia in Rex’s quarters fall under that. If Rex so vehemently doesn’t want to exert the control over Echo that he’s granted by his rank, then Cody won’t push it.

“You’ll talk to him, then,” Cody agrees. “When he gets back.”

Rex calls an all-command meeting on Echo’s return. Echo arrives with all the other captains, standing across the holo table with a neutral expression as he presents his new intel. Everything about the way he conducts himself during the meeting feels normal, to a degree; he’s not cold, or angry, nor is he complacent or quiet.

He just also barely looks at either Rex or Cody. And when Rex calls the meeting, Echo does such a good job of vanishing from the room that Cody wonders for a moment if he imagined him. The rest of the evening doesn’t help dispel the idea, either, Rex surging out of the room with Cody close behind him to find nothing but regulation troopers in a long, curving corridor.

The next day isn’t any more fruitful, Rex struggling to focus on his important work between his searches of the space station. Surely he must be on base somewhere; he’s not listed as having shipped back out.

“Have you talked to Echo?” Cody asks that night.

“No, I haven’t been able to find him any damn where,” Rex answers, scowling.

Echo ships out. “Did you talk to Echo before he left?”

“No, I couldn’t find him in time.”

Echo returns to base. “Did you talk to him?”

“He was scomped in really deep, and he can’t be disturbed when he’s like that.”

“Well, did you wait for him?” Cody wants to know.

“For about thirty minutes. Then Proxy needed me for something.”

Rex tries another all-command meeting. Vik presents this time, though Cody doesn’t catch it all from his place just outside the command room. When the meeting adjourns, Echo leaves in a clump of other captains. Cody calls his name, but his commander’s voice seems to turn every clone’s head except Echo’s. In the time it takes for everyone to look at Cody then back to Echo, Echo’s already rounded the bend and into a spoke of the station, double time.

“Well,” Cody says a few minutes later, “I know you didn’t talk to him this time.” Rex groans.

Echo ships out. Echo returns to base. Echo works on base. Echo ships out. Echo returns to base. And over and over again, Rex does not manage to pin him down and talk to him, his stress building by the day.

“He’s one clone. He’s one clone with metal legs and skull implants, even. How do you lose him?” Cody asks, but Rex’s only answer is a miserable little noise before turning over in bed.

To be fair—which Cody doesn’t like to be—he hasn’t spotted Echo himself, but he also hasn’t been actively looking, the way Rex is meant to be. So he tries a different tactic, and looks for a much more easily found clone.

“How much insight would you say you have into the goings-on around here?” Cody asks Gregor, Rex currently trapped in a medbay meeting with Control. (Cody’s had his fill of the base’s CMO, personally.)

Gregor looks up from the terminal at which he’s working. “This has something to do with Rex and Echo, hasn’t it?”

“So the answer would be a lot of insight, then.” Cody leans against the wall, crossing his arms. “Have you seen Echo?”

“Seen him? Plenty.” Gregor has a brothy bowl of noodles resting precariously between his cuisses, and Cody breathes a mental sigh of relief when he lifts it for slurping. “Just never around you or the commander, which I’m guessing is the issue.”

Cody chuckles. “I’ll cut right to it, then. What’s going on?”

“I mean, lots, all the time, at this station.” Gregor sets the bowl back down, making Cody tense up again. “But I’ll say this. Echo and Rex had a routine, and now you and Rex have that same routine. You’re Echo, now.”

“I’m—” Cody’s eyes flick down to the bowl, dangerously close to spilling at the angle Gregor’s got it at. “Soldier, pick that damn bowl up and put it somewhere flat.”

“Didn’t know you were a ranking officer again,” Gregor sniffs, and he only picks it back up for another loud sip of broth. “For what it’s worth, Echo doesn’t seem to be taking care of himself all that well. Keep finding him asleep upright in chairs when he does sleep, don’t think that’s good for a metal spine. He’s always put himself on the frontlines, too, but never like this, never so many missions back to back. And I hate to say it but sometimes, kark, he’s a little ripe.”

Not a detail Cody expected, but his brain is already making connections. “Anything else I should know?”

“Well, he won’t listen to me, and he clearly won’t listen to Rex given they’re never in the same room if it’s not mandated, so all I can say is good luck. But do your best, will you? I don’t wanna be the one to tell the fella he needs to change his blacks more’n once a week.”

Cody thanks him, leaving Gregor to the impending disaster of his noodles, and heads back out into the corridor, weaving easily between friendly brothers even while deep in thought. Echo won’t sleep in a bed; because he doesn’t have access to Rex’s bed. Echo is a little malodorous; because he doesn’t let himself have access to the stockpile of altered blacks in Rex’s drawers, or because he doesn’t let himself have access to the damn shower chair that Cody keeps stubbing his toe against.

Echo won’t be part of the routine, because Cody’s ousted him from it. And Rex let it happen.

Cody slams the door panel when he arrives at the medbay. Control looks up and rolls his eyes, the bastard, but he waves Rex off while saying something about being done anyway.

“Am I glad to see you,” Rex mutters, already walking toward him. “Had just about enough of our beloved CMO, especially at this hour. What d’you say we get—”

“To your quarters, Commander,” Cody says, in a crisp voice he hasn’t asserted since before his desertion. “Now.”

Rex’s eyebrows pop up. “Oh, is this what we’re doing tonight?”

“Double time.” Cody clears the door, gesturing that Rex should lead the way.

“Have I done something wrong, General?” Rex asks with a sly smile, on the other side of his closed door.

“Stop. I’m not being sexy right now.” Cody’s tone wipes the smile off Rex’s face, and he drops into the desk chair, eyes wide. “I thought we talked about you telling me things, Rex.”

“I—I did, I am—”

“When were you going to tell me I quite literally took Echo’s place?” Cody snarls, looming over the other man. When all Rex gives him is stunned silence, Cody says, “Do I have to actually interrogate you? Do I need to torture the truth out of you? Simulate a fucking war crime just so you’ll tell me what Echo means to you?”

Rex opens his mouth.

“Don’t you dare tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Cody says, in a low voice loaded with menace.

Rex closes his mouth.

When he finally speaks, because Cody refuses to fill the silence, all that comes out in a tiny voice is, “I didn’t want to confront it.”

“Confront what.” Cody feels bad, speaking to Rex so pitilessly, but not bad enough to stop.

“That—that Echo really is avoiding me. He’s not just busy. That whatever I fucked up, I fucked it up bad enough that he’s done with me.” Rex looks small, hunched over in his chair.

It’s enough to break Cody of his merciless commander persona. In an instant he’s kneeling in front of Rex, curling a hand around the back of his head. “I don’t think that’s it, Rex.”

“I don’t know what else it could be. I only asked him to give you and me one night, but maybe this was his chance to get away.” Rex breathes out hard, shaky and long. “I thought I was giving him space in return.”

“But you were going to talk to him.” Cody strokes the short hair under his fingers, unable to help himself.

“He’s made it very fucking clear he doesn’t want that.” Rex screws his eyes shut, pressing the heel of his hand into one eye too hard. “I just don’t understand why he wouldn’t talk to me first! Echo has never been one to run away!”

There’s only so much melodrama Cody can take. “From battle, Rex! He’s never run away from battle, but this is not that!” At least this time he stops himself from shaking Rex’s head. “This is—this is feelings, and they didn’t teach us about that on Kamino. We have to figure that shit out ourselves!”

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” Rex murmurs, leaning into Cody’s arm. “You can’t tell me you think he won’t find a way to avoid me some more if I go looking for him now.”

Cody takes a deep breath. “You’re right. I can’t.” He stands, running his hand over Rex’s scalp one more time. “So I’ll go find him.”

Rex frowns. “Won’t he just—”

“I’m Marshal Commander Just Cody. If I want him found, he’ll be found.” He plants a kiss on Rex’s forehead. “Don’t move. Wait for my comm, and then come to my location immediately.”

For a moment, it looks like Rex might protest. Then he flattens his mouth and nods once. “I’ll be here.”

Despite how obvious it is, Cody checks Echo’s quarters first, once he’s found them. What he finds is a room that looks utterly unlived-in. To his eye, it looks usable, if sparse, but after all the little improvements he found around Rex’s quarters, he can guess how uncomfortable it might be to Echo. Not that he’d ever admit it, the little suffer-in-silence shit. Usable or not, there’s still no evidence of anything personal beyond a collection of tools and spare parts that have colonized the perfectly-made bed.

There are plenty of other places Cody could try that are easier for Echo to hide in. The mess, the barracks, the communal sonics, the hodgepodge rec room, even the hydroponics some of the clones have been rebuilding. Gregor’s quarters might be worth checking.

Cody snaps his feet together, and walks toward the command room with his best approximation of a patrolling CT’s gait.

“Yes, trooper,” Echo’s elusive voice rings out. Cody enters the command room proper, finding Echo slouched over a datapad and tapping at it incessantly.

“Echo,” Cody says, at his coldest, his most commanding.

Echo turns. And freezes.

“I know,” Cody says, staring Echo down, “that you’ve been avoiding Rex.”

Chapter Text

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Echo turns back to his datapad, despite the ice flooding his veins. Everything in him screams to face Cody, to stand at attention and take his dressing-down from a commissioned officer.

“I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.” Cody crosses the floor to stand behind Echo, the cold light of the command room throwing his shadow long over Echo’s work. “Or did Gregor lie to me when he said you’re out of your routine?”

“There’s no routine out here. All there is is whatever gets the work done.” Echo tries to focus on the datapad, but his fingers tremble as they hover over the screen.

“Cute aphorism.” Cody’s little laugh is scornful. “Let me be direct: Rex is the most important person in my life. And all you’ve done for the past few weeks is upset him.”

Echo stares at the datapad, willing his eyes to focus on the screen and failing. “He’ll be alright.”

“Alright isn’t good enough,” Cody says. “Not for me. And I know it isn’t for you, either. Cut the shit and go talk to Rex.”

“I’m busy.” Echo makes clumsy taps across the screen, keeping it to himself when he accidentally closes a file. “If he needs someone to talk to, he has plenty of options.”

“So you just, what, don’t love Rex at all? Is that what this is?”

Echo stiffens.

“That,” he grits out, “is none of your concern.”

Because it’s not a matter of how he feels about Rex. It’s not about how much he misses Rex’s touch, or his warmth, or hearing his name on Rex’s tongue.

But the way Rex had lit up seeing Cody—and the way he’d so easily made a place for him, in the place Echo had woken up that same morning—

“If it’s Rex’s business, it’s mine.”

Cody’s voice is one of the least distinguishable amongst the many clones Echo’s known, and yet in this moment Echo’s never heard a more grating sound. “I’m happy for you.”

“Echo. Fucking stop it.”

“I think you should go, Cody. Rex is probably looking for you.” If Cody stays any longer, Echo’s not going to fucking hold, he’s absolutely going to lose it. He gives up on the datapad, weight braced on his scomp at the console as he buries his face in his only hand.

“I can guarantee you he’s not. He knows exactly where I am. Or well,” Cody says, just before the quiet beep of his vambrace, “he will in a moment.”

Echo shoots up from his seat, adrenaline powering his long strides toward the doorway. “No you don’t,” Cody says, lunging to intercept him. Echo lands a hit, his scomp scraping across the other man’s already-scratched white armor. But this version of Cody fights dirty, and he fucking clotheslines Echo so gracefully that he doesn’t even hit the floor, Cody’s arm looped around his waist. It’s with that arm that Cody starts to drag Echo back toward the chair he’d just vacated, and Echo starts to seriously consider how much he’s willing to injure Rex’s one true love.

Cody throws him back into the seat before he finishes his consideration, immediately pinning him in place with a forearm across his collarbone. He’s too close to Echo’s face when he makes eye contact and says into his vambrace, “Cody to Commander Rex, report to command room post-haste to debrief with Captain Echo.”

“Get off me,” Echo warns, glowering up at Cody.

“Make me,” Cody says, with a face that tells Echo the ex-Commander sees no threat.

“What are you even doing this for?” Echo says, all the while considering his best angle of attack. “To make up for lost time? Because you’re pissed I was here and you weren’t? Because he’s all yours.”

Cody’s eyes flick to Echo’s, then back to his vambrace. “No. Because I’m here now, aren’t I? You’re the one who hasn’t been around. And I don’t like what that’s done to Rex.”

Echo huffs. “Oh, please. What’s it done to Rex? My work gets done.”

Cody’s forearm slides up hard, micrometers away from pressing into Echo’s windpipe. “You think this is about work? You think this is about your worth as a soldier? You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

“Smart one of what?” Echo spits back, and for once, Cody’s expression stutters, and softens. Whatever he might say, though, about Rex, about Fives, about all the brothers Echo has somehow outlived, Echo doesn’t hear it because he takes his moment to wallop Cody in the gut.

“Echo, what—” Cody coughs, just as Echo slithers out from under his arm to the floor. “Don’t you do it!” he shouts, but Echo is already bolting for the door.

Where Rex is standing.

“You’re here,” Rex says, eyes wide. Lips parted, fists clenched at his sides. “Echo.”

Echo’s pulse is like an ocean crashing in his ears. His body trembles against the gravitational pull of Rex’s presence, against the simple desire to drape himself all over Rex and his warmth. It was so easy, just a few weeks ago. Something Echo could do without a thought.

He only nods, dropping his gaze like a coward.

“So now you won’t even talk to me.” Rex steps forward. “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. You’ve never been afraid to call me out on my mistakes before, and now I don’t even know what mistake I’ve made.” Another step. “Please, Echo.”

“No mistake,” Echo mumbles. He takes his own step backward and Rex immediately advances two more. “I’ve just been busy. Doing the work.”

“You know I’m not stupid.” Rex keeps closing the distance between them, and when Echo tries to back away he smacks into the hard plastoid of Cody’s chest. With a look over Echo’s shoulder, Rex shakes his head at Cody; don’t. But in the couple of seconds it takes for Cody to process that and move away, Rex takes Echo by the hand and scomp.

He doesn’t know whether to be grateful that Rex won’t let him be boxed in, or irritated that Rex used it to trap him in a new way. Because Rex’s thumb brushes softly along the inside of Echo’s palm, and he feels weaker by the moment. “You’ve always been busy,” Rex says. “You’ve always done the work. But you know this is different.”

“I just want to be,” Echo starts, mouth dry. He licks his lips, tries again. “All I want is to be what you need. And I’m adaptable. If I don’t fit somewhere anymore—”

“What do you mean, you don’t fit?” Rex’s hand squeezes tight around Echo’s, leaning in close with a surprised frown. “Fit where?”

“He’s saying there’s no room for him with you,” Cody translates, from a polite few meters away. Echo risks a glance; Cody’s expression is easy to read as impatient, but he knows the ex-commander just enough to recognize it as—concern. Concern for Rex, Echo can only assume, and whatever agitation he’s worked up to be this worried over him.

“With me—what, because Cody’s here?” Rex guesses. Suddenly Rex’s other hand isn’t on his scomp but on his jaw, wrenching his head forward to face Rex. “Stop trying to ignore me. I never want to control you, but enough is enough. If you’re going to be angry at me, then tell me what you want, Echo.”

Echo swallows against Rex’s hand. “I’m not angry with you. I’ve never been angry with you. I just know that you’ve been waiting for Cody, all this time. I know what he means to you. And I want you to be—” He swallows again into a grimace, eyes darting away for only a second. “To be happy.”

“How the hell am I supposed to be happy with you running out of the room every time I see you? And that’s just when I do see you!” Rex releases Echo’s jaw only to yank him in close, their armor ricocheting off each other. “Of course I’ve been hoping I would see Cody again! Of course Cody means everything to me! But so do you!”

Rex’s shout bounces off the hard surfaces of the command room, the only sound other than his roughened breathing as he glares at Echo.

And Echo can only stagger back, held up by Rex’s grip on his upper arms.

“Tell me you still want me,” Rex says. “Or tell me you’re done with me, tell me you never want to see me again, but whatever it is, tell me something.”

“Of course I still want you,” Echo says. Plaintively, because it’s the truth. Because he’ll always want Rex.

Rex catches his breath, inhaling deeply before looking Echo in the eye again. “If Fives came back, right now, would you want me gone?”

Echo recoils, shock coursing ugly and stinging through him. “That’s completely different! Fives is dead!” Rex himself had held Fives in his last moments. He knows just as well as Echo does that there is no hope to hold out for Fives’s return.

“You were dead!” Rex bellows, tinged with desperation as he shakes Echo by the shoulders. “The moment I found you alive in that cryopod on Skako Minor, it was like—it was like color being restored to my vision, color I hadn’t even realized was gone. Do you hear me?” Another shake, smaller this time, as Rex’s eyes glisten wetly. “I can’t lose you again. Don’t make me go through that. Please.”

“I don’t want to,” Echo says, after a silent, stunned moment. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just—there’s been no place for me, Rex.”

“Just tell me what to do,” Rex whispers. “Tell me what I need to do so you never feel this way again.”

“If Echo knew that, I think he would have actually told you,” Cody says, a sudden reminder that he never left the room, and just as suddenly much closer behind Echo. “But I have at least one idea.”

“And what’s that?” Rex asks, though the realization that sparks in his expression makes Echo think he might already know.

“Tell me if you agree with this idea, Captain,” Cody says, his breath hot against Echo’s neck, just before pressing his mouth to that same skin. Echo does a shit job of suppressing the soft little gasp that escapes him. He locks eyes with Rex again, and finds them darkening with interest.

“Well?” Rex asks, one hand sliding up the other side of Echo’s neck to stroke a nonchalant thumb across his jaw. Cody puts another kiss a little higher, just under Echo’s headpiece. “Is it a good idea, Echo?”

The least civilized part of Echo’s brain is already shouting that of course it’s a good idea, without even fully understanding their plan. That part of Echo will readily admit he’s been touch-starved since Cody’s return and can only imagine two pairs of hands to be an even better cure than one.

“Don’t make me into a toy,” the rest of Echo fights to say, in the most level voice he can manage when pressed between two strong bodies. “I can’t—I won’t do that.”

“Never,” Rex swears. “Never. You’re never that to me.”

“And that’s not my intention, either,” Cody says, bringing a hand to Echo’s hip. “If it’s important to Rex, it’s important to me. And you’re important to Rex.”

He doesn’t answer right away, considering Rex’s expression. Under the earnest hope, he finds what he’s always found, before the mess of the past few weeks. Desire. Trust. Something he thinks might be love, though they’ve never put it to words.

His oldest living friend.

“Let’s see this idea of yours,” Echo says, and Rex instantly grins wide.

Rex kissing him feels like instant relief, just as much as it feels like the past few weeks never happened after all. Echo melts into it, propped up by Cody as Rex’s tongue re-maps the inside of his mouth. He slings his left arm around the back of Rex’s neck, kissing back fervently.

“We’re not doing it here,” Cody says, pushing Rex off Echo. “Come on.” Rex chuckles, and the pair of them lead Echo out of the command room. There’s still no room for three armored clones to walk side by side in the corridor—so Rex marches Echo and Cody in front of him.

“Your quarters,” Echo says, when he realizes where they are. Cody hits the door panel, ushering him inside.

“They’re not really just my quarters, though, are they?” Rex says, suddenly a little sheepish as he follows them in. “I know you’ve got your own, but—”

“Oh, Echo wasn’t using them,” Cody said, blowing up Echo’s spot completely offhandedly.

“What do you mean, Echo wasn’t using them? Of course he was, he stayed in his quarters the first few days after we got life support back up on the space station.”

Cody pauses, shooting Rex an unbelieving look. “…The first few days of how long since then?”

“About a year and a half standard,” Echo supplies, interrupting the verbal slingball. There’s something here he’s not privy to here, but for once he’s enjoying it as he watches Rex shrivel under Cody’s stare.

“So Echo lives with you in your quarters for a year and a half, galactic standard time, minus a few days, and you think his assigned quarters have seen any use? Rex.” Cody tilts his head with the kind of disappointment Echo struggles not to laugh at.

“He’s independent! You’re independent!” Rex insists, first to one then the other. “If you haven’t been staying in your quarters, then where…?”

“Chairs,” Cody says, before Echo can admit it. “I’m speedrunning this little communication sim because watching you two stumble through admitting how badly you need each other is going to take us all night. And I have much better plans that that,” he adds, already shelling off.

“Chairs?” Rex repeats, flabbergasted. “That’s terrible for your spine especially!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Echo snorts. “It hurts right now.”

Rex’s face softens with worry. “Where else hurts?” he asks, because he knows Echo never has just one hurt.

“I mean, the usual,” Echo says, except—they’re here to be honest. “Shoulders. Hips.” He looks at the floor. “Haven’t taken much time without my legs.”

“Echo.” Rex walks over, cupping his face with both hands. “Get this armor off.”

“Because we’re getting in the refresher,” Cody says, already down to his blacks. “Since I’ve also learned Echo’s been rewearing the same set of blacks for almost three weeks.”

“Because you didn’t want to come in here?” Rex asks him. “You didn’t have any spares anywhere? You could have just trimmed a set.”

“I wasn’t going to cut down on our supplies just for my own benefit,” Echo says.

“What happened to ‘get this armor off’, hm?” Cody interjects, suddenly next to them both. He reaches for the latches to Echo’s cuirass—

Echo hasn’t been shy in a long time. He’s more or less settled into the mess of a body he works with now, and he’s been on the space station around the same core group of brothers for months. But Rex has been his only sexual partner since leaving Hunter, Wrecker and Crosshair on Pabu, only being the operative word. Cody has only seen Echo’s naked upper body once, and at the time Rex was personally sweeping him off the Marauder and straight to medical on the Anaxes base. He doubts Cody got more than a blurry glimpse of the port-studded reality of Echo’s new body.

He flinches away, and Cody lets his hand drop, doing a very good job at keeping a neutral face. “The point of the shower is to get at what’s under the armor, if you didn’t know,” he says, voice tight and a little too even.

“Cody,” Rex says, a tone that admonishes as much as it soothes. He turns to Echo. “Do you trust him?”

Echo contemplates Cody. Not just his stern, closed expression, and the way he falls into parade rest under scrutiny. Before Lola Sayu, Echo had always trusted Cody, both in his strategy and on the field. It had been Cody, in fact, who had put Echo and Fives forth for ARC trooper training—not Rex.

It had also been Cody, or so he’d been told, who stood by Rex when he argued that Echo was alive, dammit, and he was worth the mission. It had been Cody to play Clone Force 99’s liaison and advocate, and Cody to sign off on the flimsiwork declaring Echo fit for combat, despite how much of a mess he’d still been. Which means Cody saved him from decommissioning—real decommissioning, euthanized for a final autopsy.

Echo nods, presenting the closure of his vambrace to Cody. Cody watches him carefully as he reaches for it, easing the vambrace off and setting it on the armor rack. Cody’s armor, Echo can’t help but notice, is stacked neatly beside it.

He lets Rex and Cody work together in getting his armor off, though Echo is more than capable of doing it himself. It’s easier knowing that he won’t be immediately exposed, his blacks a final barrier between Cody’s eyes and the truth of Echo’s tortured body. Rex slides his hand over each new expanse of elastex he reveals, kissing Echo’s face and mouth gently with every one.

Rex is the one to peel away the top of Echo’s blacks. Cody’s gaze snags on each cluster of metal; on his chest, on his lower abdomen, even a handful along his forearm, where the vitals monitor cuff had plugged into him. The Kaminoans had reduced some of the bulk of his exterior augmentations, but the ports themselves could not be removed—not without killing him, apparently. Wherever a simple rivet came out, a scar remains, like the ones on either side of his neck, or marching down each side of his spine.

“You’re a survivor,” Cody murmurs, pulling Echo’s intact arm up. He kisses each port, despite the cold, unfeeling metal. “I know I can’t tell you to stop worrying anymore than I can tell Rex, but I can promise you the only thing I think about these,” he says, reeling Echo in by the arm until the ports on his sternum are flush with Cody’s naked chest (when had that happened?), “is that you beat the odds, the way you always do.”

Echo swallows, and Cody mouths at his bobbing throat.

Despite himself, Echo is already half-hard when he steps out of his leggings. All of his armor is neatly racked; Rex’s armor hasn’t all made it to the second rack, pulled off in a hurry to join the other men in their nudity. Cody is eager to get to the refresher, as evidenced by him standing in the doorway and saying Come on, the both of you, but Rex shakes his head. “One more thing,” he says, and knocks Echo onto the bed with the push of a single finger to his chest.

Echo is always the one to take off his prosthetics. It’s just a matter of dignity, for all that he’s been happy to privately be carried like Rex’s big doll to and from the shower. But Rex kneels at his metal feet and there’s nothing undignified at all about the way his hands slide up to the locking mechanisms. He doesn’t feel anything but worship as Rex undoes the first leg, waiting the requisite few seconds it takes for them to fully disengage with his nervous system—something he told Rex once, years ago. Either Rex has remembered that tiny detail all this time, or he’s memorized the way Echo takes off his legs each night they spend together.

His thigh stumps are the same length, evened out by Techno Union butchers who only wanted to install one model of droid leg on him rather than let him keep one knee. And so, where one leg ends in a whorl of scar tissue inflicted by the shuttle explosion, the other ends with an intentional neatness. Rex raises each thigh, kissing the very tip of each stump.

Cody approaches, watching intently as Rex’s fingers move to the metal on Echo’s bicep, never moving faster than Echo can say no. Echo only leans in closer, giving Rex easier access to the locking mechanisms for what constitutes the majority of his right arm. When Rex pulls his scomp away, the port cover automatically sliding into place, Cody says, “And where does that go?”

Echo glances at Cody—and then doesn’t look away, realizing Cody’s already put each leg on the corresponding wall mount. He’s holding his hand out, too, patiently waiting for the scomp.

“The drawer under the bed, usually,” Echo says, watching this piece of his body change hands just so Cody can be the one to put it away. It takes him a moment to get the drawer shut; the top of the prosthetic is almost too bulky for the space, and Cody mutters something about installing something better.

Both Rex and Echo are so absorbed in watching Cody that Echo's headpiece is still on when Cody takes a tentative seat on the bed, sitting so far back he’s almost behind Echo. “How,” he starts, and Echo has never heard him sound so unsure. Cody takes a breath, fingertips brushing the skin just below the headpiece. “How does this come off?”

Asking permission, in his own Cody way, to be part of this ritual Rex has made.

“Here,” Echo says, reaching with his remaining arm to guide Cody’s hand to the mechanisms that will disengage the headpiece. “Don’t pull it off right away, give it a few seconds.”

“Got it.” Cody is a quick study, because of course he is. The headpiece is designed for Echo to be able to remove it himself, all the controls on his left, and shallow grooves on the top and bottom of the back where he can grasp it without digging into his skin. His second gift from Tech, years ago, if the first gift was his freedom.

Rex shows Cody where to put the headpiece, by which Cody is similar unimpressed. “I promise,” Rex says, with vehemence as he kneels between Echo’s thighs and wraps his arms around his waist, “I promise I’ll find you that hover chair soon.”

“I’ve got a perfectly good hover chair right here, I think,” Echo says, throwing his arm around the back of Rex’s neck. Rex stands with barely a grunt, despite Echo’s weight; all the metal inside him makes him dense.

Cody leads the way into the refresher, turning on the water and fastiduously adjusting it while Echo stares. “You didn’t move that out of your way?” he asks, nodding at the shower chair.

“I mean, it’s yours,” Rex says, ducking his head in embarrassment. “I kept thinking at first that you’d still come by and use it, and then I just didn’t want to move it.”

“No matter how many times I banged my legs on it,” Cody chimes in.

“You could have just collapsed it,” Echo chuckles, kissing the corner of Rex’s mouth.

“Oh.” As if Rex hadn’t been the one to source the chair to begin with, which would have meant collapsing it for transport.

“Water’s ready,” Cody says. “Come on, don’t waste it.”

After weeks without a real water shower, the spray feels luxurious. Rex deposits him gently in the shower chair and Echo submits himself to both men working to bathe him. Rex lathers Echo’s thighs, working his way up from the scarred ends to just shy of Echo’s dick, which is already rising in renewed interest. Cody scrubs the skin usually covered by his headpiece, as if removing it gave him a responsibility to the area. They soap the rest of his body together, big hands constantly moving against his skin that Echo arches into. Even when one breaks off to scrub down with perfunctory speed, the other never stops touching him.

“Think he’s clean?” Rex asks, standing over Echo to talk to Cody. His cock hangs so close to Echo’s hand, heavy and dark and almost completely hard. He missed Rex from an emotional standpoint, yes, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t miss this dick, too.

“I can think of at least a couple more places that need cleaning,” Cody replies from behind him. Before Echo can act on his impulses, Cody leans down and wraps a soapy hand around Echo’s cock, pumping in long, sure strokes even as Echo yelps in surprise. Without feet he doesn’t have much leverage to thrust into Cody’s tight grip, but his hips flex anyway, just in time for Cody to pull his hand away from his now completely erect cock.

He gets no time to recover from Cody’s strike tactics, Rex squatting to spread soap along his taint and across his hole. Cody reaches again and rolls Echo’s balls in lather, all while Rex slips two fingers inside Echo. “Gotta clean everywhere,” Rex says with a smirk, and moves out of the spray to let it rinse Echo clean, lifting his balls to make sure everything is rinsed. He crooks his fingers a few times, saying some other bullshit about scrubbing him inside and out, and pulls out.

Echo is panting. All that work to clean his cock, clean his hole, and he’s already leaking, precum trickling down his shaft to pool in the cleft of his balls. “Let me guess,” he manages between breaths. “I’m still not clean.”

“Of course not.” Rex lifts him out of the chair, and a plastic clap against flextile sounds like Cody collapsing the shower chair as Rex faces the shower, water cascading down Echo’s back to rinse off more soap. Rex’s hands hook under Echo’s thighs to hoist him high, presenting his ass to Cody, who’s walked around. Cody’s hands are slippery as they each cup one side of Echo’s ass in soapy, circling strokes. Each time he spreads Echo’s ass, Echo’s cock twitches against Rex’s stomach, and twitches harder when Cody plunges his own two fingers into Echo’s hole.

“Rex, you left soap in here,” Cody tuts, pumping his fingers into Echo at a steady pace. “You should know better, soldier.”

“Oh, I defer to your expertise,” Rex says, his grin audible in his voice.

Echo groans. “Stop being cute about it and get on with it, you two.”

“Did you hear that?” Cody says, Echo’s request completely backfiring. “He wants us to rush. He wants us to potentially overlook something. Like soap in his hole.” Cody spreads his fingers wide, letting water splash into the space between his knuckles before he punishes Echo with a faster pace. The water makes obscene noises as Cody rinses him from the inside.

“You’d better check you got it all,” Rex says.

“Good lookout,” Cody replies, and suddenly Cody’s fingers withdraw and are replaced by a hot, flat tongue pressed against his hole. Cody’s hands join Rex’s, bringing his hips up higher as Cody’s tongue muscles its way into him, slick and probing. Echo’s single arm shakes as it clutches at Rex’s back, and he huffs open-mouthed as Rex kisses his shoulder.

Cody pulls away, Echo’s hips falling back into place against Rex’s belly only to be squashed tight as Cody presses against his back. “You kept saying you don’t know where you fit,” Cody says, his cock poking up against Echo’s taint. “What do you think now, Echo?”

“Might need further convincing,” Echo says, breathy even as he smirks over his shoulder. Cody rolls his eyes and smacks Echo’s ass with one hard strike, muttering something about ARC troopers and their hotshot attitude as he turns off the water.

There’s a lull in the mood as Rex dries himself and Echo, taking them through the beginning of their usual post-shower routine. Cody exits the refresher completely, and Rex takes their moment alone to murmur, “I really am sorry.”

“I know.” Echo plants a kiss on Rex’s forehead. Fair is fair, though, and he adds, “I’m sorry, too. For being, you know.” He circles his stump, waggling his head as he grimaces; if he still had his right arm, he’d be drawing circles around his temple. “Not sorry for hitting Cody, though. In case that comes up.”

“Echo, you’re not—wait, you hit Cody?” Rex frowns, just as Cody pops his head back in.

“Not as hard as he could have, which was disappointing,” he says, and thumbs over his shoulder. “Are you done?”

Cody’s pulled back the thick blanket. Rex lays Echo on the clean sheets, on the mattress Rex over-padded himself, on the soft pillows that cradle his neck, and he groans just from the relief of it against his joints. He yanks Rex down on top of him, kissing him ardently the moment Rex regains his balance. There’s a little more leverage to be had on a bed than in the chair, humping Rex’s thigh where it slots between his, until Rex puts a stilling hand on his hip, panting as he breaks the kiss. “And to think just an hour ago you didn’t want to speak to me ever again.”

“That wasn’t it,” Echo says, closing his eyes against his past self’s obstinacy. “I just didn’t want to beg, Rex.”

“I’ll beg,” Rex says, kissing his jaw. “I’ll beg as much as I have to if it means you stay.”

“Rex, catch.” The bottle of lube that Cody tosses Rex isn’t the same one they were using when Echo was last fucked in this room, and some small part of Echo twinges at the sight. Of course Rex and Cody had sex, he’d known they were going to have sex the moment Rex insisted Cody share his quarters after medical. And being gone for as long as he has, of course they would have finished the bottle. Of course they would have made inroads on a new one, and they have. It’s not the sex that’s the issue; it’s that Cody is stronger, warmer, certainly more mobile than Echo who needs machine parts for something as simple as riding Rex’s cock. Without those parts Echo is more like—more like—

“I see you burrowing into your own head, you know,” Rex says, sitting up between Echo’s thighs. “You know I know what that looks like.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Echo says, parting his thighs invitingly. He can do that much.

“Not this again,” Cody says. “You have to talk to at least Rex, or we’re just going to go in circles.” He snatches the lube back from Rex, looming over them both from the bedside. “Nobody gets fucked until you talk.”

“Cody, just leave it—”

“I can’t just have a stupid thought in private?” Echo grouses.

“Not when your face makes it not-private.” Cody dangles the lube bottle like bait. “Talk, Echo.”

Echo exhales hard, cheeks puffing with it. “All I was thinking,” he forces out, “is that Cody must be a great lay. A very whole lay with a lot of mobility.” He glares at Cody, unfairly. “There, is it better that I said it out loud instead of getting on with things?”

Cody cocks his head as Rex sputters. Rex says, “What difference does any of that make?” while Cody climbs onto the bed behind him, crawling up to lie next to Echo.

“I do have all my limbs,” Cody acknowledges, touching the skin just above Echo’s scomp-arm port. “I don’t think that’s what Rex likes me for, though.”

“Don’t baby me.” Echo pulls his stump away, knowing full well he’s spoiling the mood. “See what good it did saying any of that out loud?”

Cody grabs Echo by the chin, forcing him to face him. “I’m trying to be nice,” he says, “but if you don’t like nice, try this: Rex wants to put his cock in your body very fucking badly. Frankly, I want to put my cock in your body. Before I showed up, Rex certainly wanted to fuck you, but even after I showed up, he still wants to fuck you. Stop,” Cody says, giving Echo’s head a firm shake, “finding reasons to be cruel to yourself. It hurts all three of Rex’s precious feelings.”

“Hey,” Rex protests, weakly.

Echo wants to be fed up, pushing back against Cody telling him how to feel, of all things. He wants to humble Cody, make him realize he’s not always right.

He’s also tired of feeling bad.

“Can we go back to the part about cocks in my body?” Echo asks. Cody grins, smug and self-satisfied, and Echo does not punch him.

“If someone would just hand me the lube a second time,” Rex says, looking pointedly at Cody, who slaps the bottle into his palm.

Rex wastes no time slicking up his cock, or in angling Echo’s hips up to hook his hole open with a thumb and pour the lube straight inside. He smears whatever didn’t make it in until Echo’s hole must be glossy with it, the hair around it slicked down.

“I missed you, Echo,” Rex says, fondness and lust together making his eyes dark and hooded, and he sinks his cock into Echo’s ass in a single steady stroke.

Echo groans, thighs spreading to pull Rex in deeper. It’s only been three weeks—he’s had missions away from Rex that lasted longer—but the misery and loneliness made it an eternity of thinking he would never feel this again. Never feel Rex’s thick cock stretching him, filling him, putting back a piece of him that he thought he’d never get back.

“Move, Rex, fuck me,” Echo says, trying to make it sound like orders but his breathlessness turns it to pleading.

“Give—give me a second,” Rex says, leaning down to prop himself up on his elbows. His hips are still flush with Echo’s ass, his balls heavy just below Echo’s taut hole. “Stop squeezing me, Echo, or I’m going to fucking come a lot faster than you want me to!”

“Can’t help it,” Echo says, petting Rex’s shorn hair as he tightens up one more time around Rex’s dick. “As it turns out, I missed you, too.”

“I know how to get him to stop,” Cody says, kneeling near Echo’s head. “He just needs something else to focus on.” He takes his dick in a loose hand, holding it over Echo’s face. “Like this.”

“I won’t say no to that,” Echo says, already reaching for it.

“In your mouth, brother,” Cody says, just as Echo touches the shaft. He pauses, glancing up at Cody’s face. Where Echo expects more of the same smirking confidence, what he finds instead is lust, as naked as any of them. He tugs Cody down, and down again, until Cody lies on his side at the top of the bed, cock level with Echo’s face. With Rex still buried in him, he twists at the waist to grab Cody by the ass, kisses the tip of his cock, and swallows it nearly whole.

Cody huffs as Echo bobs his head, tongue laving over the underside of his cock and around the head. Whatever insecurities Echo may never beat, he knows he’s been a bigger slut than Cody ever has, and he’ll always know how to render a brother speechless with his lips and tongue.

Rex starts moving at last. Slow, at first, just enough to draw a groan out of Echo that reverberates into Cody’s cock, who stifles himself with a hand over his mouth. That won’t do; Echo opens his throat, taking Cody in until drool runs down his chin and his nose fills with the other clone’s pubic hair. Rex moves faster, his cock dragging against Echo’s rim even with all the lube, and Echo moans with the head of Cody’s cock being squeezed by his tonsils.

Cody moans, loud before he cuts it off as if surprised by the sound, and breathing raggedly in the wake of it. Echo pulls off, showing Cody his swollen lips and shiny chin. Only for a second, though, before he starts kissing and licking at his cock. His hand moves from Cody’s ass to fondle his balls instead, or move in short strokes around the base of his cock.

“Look at you,” Rex says, kissing at the hollow of Echo’s throat as he pistons his hips. “Look at you.” Echo moans loud just for the attention, for the way Rex smiles against his skin before kissing it again. Rex twists one of Echo’s nipples with a violent flick of his wrist, the only way to pull sensation out of his chest anymore, and Cody’s cock falls from Echo’s mouth as he yelps, his cock twitching between their bodies. “There you are,” Rex says, kissing Echo’s newly-vacated mouth as if he means to eat him. When he breaks the kiss, leaving Echo dizzy beneath him, he takes Cody’s cock between his lips next, bobbing his head in time with his thrusts into Echo. Cody repositions himself to thrust back into Rex’s mouth, giving Echo a front row view of Cody’s cock fucking Rex’s throat as Rex fucks his ass in turn, and he’s so close to being overwhelmed.

It’s Cody who breaks them all apart, right as Echo’s only hand finds its way to his own cock. He could come happily like this, Rex spearing into him while blowing Cody centimeters from his face, but Cody appears to have other plans. Rex sits up without pulling out.

“Remember what I said,” Cody says to Echo, “about wanting to put my cock in your body?”

“My mouth is part of my body,” Echo says, before sticking his tongue out and wagging it, an invitation for Cody’s cum.

“Don’t get cute,” Cody chuffs, pressing his fingers on that tongue until Echo swallows around them. “Let me be more specific, then. You see where Rex’s cock disappears into you?” he says, taking his hand back and trailing a wet finger along the edge of Echo’s flushed rim, where Rex’s cock stretches it wide. “I want in there, too.”

“I suppose marshal commanders don’t believe in waiting their turn,” Echo says, eyeing Cody’s cock and imagining choking on it as Cody comes down his throat.

“It’s less about turns,” Cody says, curling the tip of one finger around Echo’s rim until it slips in next to Rex’s cock, “and more about making space.”

Somehow, Cody’s managed to find a sex act Echo’s never tried.

“I don’t think that will work,” Echo says, even as his cock leaks profusely at the imagery his mind brings him, like an animal back from the hunt. He’s never been stretched so wide before. He’s never had a pair of clones so desperate to be inside him they did it together, their cocks rubbing against each other in the tight confines of his hole until they filled him with a double load.

“Oh, I think you want it to work,” Cody says, the corners of his mouth lifting in a wicked curl. “I think you’re imagining it right now.” He slips a second fingertip inside, and Echo winces at the sting. “Two thick, heavy cocks filling you up together because we both need to be inside you so badly.”

“I think he wants it,” Rex says, caressing the side of Echo’s flushed face. “Don’t you, Echo? Don’t you want us to fuck you together? Don’t you want us to fuck twice as much cum in you?” Of course Rex knows. It doesn’t take the Force for Rex to know exactly what will set Echo off, and he whines at the words, panting as he throws his head back against the pillows.

“It’s not like taking one big cock,” Cody says, fingertips tugging at Echo’s hole. Each little tug hurts, but the future it promises of being sandwiched between Cody and Rex, split open on their cocks, dulls the ache into something sweeter. “I can’t just ram in next to Rex now.”

“If you say—ah—so,” Echo says, rutting as best he can into Cody’s fingers. It means he’s rocking himself onto Rex’s cock, too, and Rex’s resolve doesn’t look strong as he looks down at the tableau Cody’s making of Echo.

“Of course I say so.” Cody adds a third finger, curling his whole hand from the wrist now as he pushes his fingers in deeper, side by side. “Tell me if I’m going too fast, because if I hurt you none of us are going to be happy.”

“What if we just try?” Echo says, panting again. “What if you just—you can go slow.”

“You want it that bad, huh.” Cody’s fingers speed up, testing Echo’s will, and Echo responds by arching his back, hips rolling into it until Rex groans. “What do you think, Rex?”

“I think Echo knows his limits,” Rex says, grinding his cock against Cody’s knuckles as he slowly starts fucking Echo again. “He’s a fine soldier. A good captain.” On a particularly hard thrust, Rex adds, “A skilled slut.”

“You’re the authority on Echo and his hole,” Cody says, pulling his fingers out.

“I’m the authority on my hole,” Echo says, which is the last thing he says before Rex takes him by the backs of his thighs and bends him in half to fuck him hard and fast. Echo shouts in surprise, single hand clawing at Rex’s back as he kisses him roughly through the fucking.

Only minutes later he relents, a snap transition from being kissed and fucked into a pocket dimension to Rex pulling out and backing away.

“Wh… Why,” Echo tries to say, just as Cody starts manhandling him. He pulls Echo, limp and trembling, into his lap, his broad chest flush with Echo’s back as he settles against the pillows. His cock slips inside easily, almost like an afterthought, except Echo doesn’t want to grind an afterthought deeper into his hole. Cody’s cock is like most any clone’s cock, which means it feels good, a length and girth just shy of pornographic. The problem is that posed like this, Echo is back to having little leverage. He leans back against Cody to try for any at all, and Cody rewards him by pinning his hips with one arm and spiking his cock up hard, just once.

“Fuck, you feel good,” Cody mutters, leaning his forehead against the back of Echo’s neck. “I bet this is Rex’s favorite place to be, isn’t it? Balls deep in you.” He reaches around Echo’s waist, hand dipping down; he stops to give Echo’s balls a light squeeze, but his intentions are made clear when he shoves four fingers into Echo’s hole without pulling out. Echo writhes, grabbing at Cody’s hip as he groans. “Do you keep his cock warm while the two of you do your incredibly important work? Do you milk his cock for cum while you decide which of you will go on the most dangerous missions?”

“S-sometimes,” Echo admits, and Cody swears.

“I wasn’t being serious,” Cody says, and the way Rex is looking over Echo’s shoulder makes him think he’s being stared at. “Rex! Really?”

“Echo is…” Rex crawls next to them, kissing Echo’s shoulder, his throat, his mouth. “He loves cock. And I’m happy to oblige him, always.”

“You’re happy to spoil him, you mean.” Cody brings his four fingers together, pushing them in until his thumb kisses Echo’s rim, and Echo isn’t just panting anymore, big breaths in and out that verge on hyperventilation. “Echo. Relax.”

“I’m—” He swallows on the inhale, barely breaking his huffing and puffing. “I’m trying, I’m trying. It’s a lot.” And he is trying, bearing down and putting every skill he’s learned as a consummate bottom to use, but Cody pushes the tip of his thumb inside and is this close to just fisting him. And Cody isn’t moving his hips, but the motion of his hand thrusting into Echo’s well-abused hole rocks him back and forth, just enough to remind him of how deep Cody’s sunk into him.

“Do you want it?” Cody asks in a low voice, right into Echo’s ear. “Do you want to feel us inside you, together?”

“Yes,” Echo croaks. Controlling his breathing is making him just as dizzy as the breathing itself. “Do it. Fuck me together.”

“Oh, Echo,” Rex says from somewhere to his left, and a warm hand on his cheek turns his face until he’s being kissed again, deep and slow. The kissing ends, replaced with something else nudging at his lips; an open hydropak. Echo sips obediently, his breathing finally settling something closer to normal.

Cody pulls his hand out at last. Despite Cody’s cock never leaving Echo’s hole, suddenly he feels not quite full enough. His head lolls on Cody’s shoulder, and Cody kisses his bared neck as he takes hold of Echo’s stumps to pull them apart. He pulls them apart a little too wide, Echo wincing as his hip joints twinge; Rex says something he doesn’t quite catch, and Cody corrects the angle.

Rex crawls up to the pair of them, his eyes sweeping up and down as bliss flowers in his expression. His jaw works, his lips parting more than once as if he means to say several things, but he never does. He knows as well as Echo does, and probably Cody as well, that he doesn’t need to put his happiness to words. Not for them, not right now.

The cap of the lube opening feels loud in the little room. Rex pours a fresh drizzle on his own cock, on what he can reach of Cody’s cock. Cody lifts Echo until his cock falls out, leaving Echo helpless to do anything but whine at the emptiness of his hole. Rex shushes him, You’ll have what you want soon enough, his knuckles nudging Echo’s ass at the end of each long stroke slathering Cody’s cock with more lube. Echo is last, shivering as Rex simply brings the open cap to his hole and squeezes. The lube is warmer than expected, as if Rex had been keeping the bottle between his thighs.

Echo drops back onto Cody’s cock, an easy glide with how stretched out and slick he is now. Rex knee-walks the last tiny distance between them, trailing a reverent hand where Cody and Echo’s bodies connect. The head of his cock nudges the top of his rim, a barely insistent push as if he’s afraid to be too rough. As if he’s not actually sure he’ll fit.

“Rex,” Echo whispers. He reaches to grasp at Rex’s cock as the other man looks up, just barely touching it with thumb and forefinger but pulling it toward him anyway. “Show me how we fit together.”

Rex nods, licks his lips, and nods again.

And pushes his cock inside.

It’s so much more than Cody’s fingers. Rex hasn’t even bottomed out and Echo is already gasping, his hand curling into the meat of Rex’s shoulder until his short nails dig in. “Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” he keeps saying, all breath and no voice. There’s still an edge of pain to the stretch, but Echo’s entire existence is some degree of pain or another, and none of it promises the pleasure of two cocks pumping in and out of him.

“Is it okay? Echo, are you alright?” Rex asks, starting to sit back like he means to pull out, but Echo yanks him forward by the shoulder.

“Don’t you dare,” Echo snarls. “Don’t you even think of—haah—pulling out. I said fuck me together, and I meant it.”

“Shouldn’t underestimate a greedy bottom,” Cody says from behind him, with faded bravado. Echo can’t see him but he can feel Cody’s puffing breaths against his ear, feel his core jumping against his back. “Fuck,” he adds, in a much smaller voice as he tucks his face into the nape of Echo’s neck.

“You’ve been so damn quiet,” Rex says, “ever since you got back. This isn’t some bounty hunter watering hole, Cody. Let us hear you.”

“Hard habit to break,” Cody mumbles.

“W-we’ll see about that,” Echo says, wheezing through his nose as he grits his teeth. Despite how overstuffed he feels, he squeezes around their cocks, but Cody still doesn’t do more than huff.

Rex groans as he finally seats his cock in Echo to the hilt, one hand clutching at Echo’s hip and the other splaying over the ports in his lower stomach. “Look, Echo,” he grunts, and lifts his hand like a lid to reveal a bulge just below the ports. “Look.”

It’s Rex’s cock, pushed in so deep and so much higher inside Echo’s hole that the head is poking up under Echo’s skin. Something Rex confirms when he rolls his hips experimentally and the bulge moves with him, and confirms again when Echo strokes the bulge with a quivering hand.

“You’re going to kill me if you don’t fuck me,” Echo pleads, his cock aching as it spasms against Rex’s belly. “Please, Rex, please—”

There’s no more caution as Rex starts thrusting, no slow pace building up to something faster. He takes Echo by the hips and plows into him, over and over, while Cody’s arms wrap around Echo’s waist, almost too tight as he plants his feet and thrusts up. There’s no rhythm, no pattern Echo can try to get used to; only two cocks frotting against each other inside him, filling him tighter than he’s ever felt. The room fills with the wet, lewd sounds of two men fucking one sloppy hole, woven through with Echo’s desperate sobs and Rex’s groans.

Rex leans down to kiss him as he speeds up, one hand between them to pin Echo’s cock against the place where Rex’s keeps jabbing up. He’s a poor kisser when he’s like this, shaking too much for any finer coordination than to grab at whatever part of Rex he can; not that Rex seems to care, happy to tongue his slack, drooling mouth. He doesn’t remember starting to cry, but there are overwhelmed tears in the corners of his eyes anyway, and Rex licks the saltwater off his face before returning to kissing him.

Echo doesn’t remember, either, when Rex’s hand against his cock is replaced by Cody’s. Cody takes him fully in hand with long, wild strokes, his other hand braced against the bottom of Echo’s ribs with fingers weaving between his ports. Precum pours from Echo’s cock and eases Cody’s way, his fingers deft as he twists his wrist, his mouth hot as he pants soundlessly against Echo’s back.

It’s all too much.

His orgasm hits him like a proton warhead. If he shouts, he doesn’t hear it; all he hears is the roar of his own hammering pulse, his whole body tensing as he arches into it and all but crushes the cocks still pumping into him. Distantly, there’s the wet warmth of his own cum spraying up his belly and chest. Rex moans into his mouth, his hips stuttering and grinding, and heat blooms inside Echo as Rex comes, too.

Rex thrusts a few more times, but Echo is still in the aftershocks of his own orgasm when he pulls out. Echo only gets a few seconds to process this before his world spins and he lands on his stomach, still skewered on Cody’s cock.

Cody drapes himself across Echo’s back, legs bracketing Echo’s thighs and elbows propped to either side of Echo’s ribs. “You’re a mess, trooper,” Cody says, his voice low and guttural as he speaks the first words anyone’s said in several minutes. “Feel that?” He rolls his hips, pulling out just enough for Echo to hear that, too: Rex’s cum is now Cody’s lube, his hole sticky and wet as it overflows with Cody’s smooth thrust back in.

“Don’t make me wait, Commander,” Echo rasps. His softening cock feels too sensitive even against the sheets, into which his own cum is being ground and smeared under Cody’s weight, and still he pushes his hips back as best he can. “Come inside me.”

It doesn’t matter how loose Echo feels, his hole relaxed around a single cock. He still knows how to wring the cum out of any brother who fucks him, squeezing tight and rhythmically as he rocks back into Cody’s thrusts. “That’s not fair,” Cody pants, and retaliates by slamming his hips down until Echo is flattened under it and whimpering. He bites at the back of Echo’s neck, dragging his tongue across rivet scars before biting again.

A re-energized Rex reenters the fray, pulling Cody by the chin to kiss him. It’s the distraction Echo needs to take back the reins, milking Cody’s cock for all he’s worth even as he leans into the hand Rex gently curls around his face.

Cody comes, fucking Echo’s hole with fast, violent thrusts as he glues his chest to Echo’s back. He gasps through it, his voice on the edge of each breath—and finally, finally groans, as the last of his cum joins Rex’s.

Echo should mind being crushed under Cody’s floppy post-orgasmic weight, his own cum drying between his skin and the sheets until he’s stuck to them. The fabric beneath his pelvis is soaked, and everything between his legs is sticky. Mostly what he feels is exhausted, loathe to move even for his own comfort.

It’s minutes later, though Echo can’t tell if they’ve only been a few or several, when Cody finally pulls out. A finger dabs something cold around Echo’s rim, and he hisses even as he recognizes the faint smell of bacta gel. A pair of hands maneuvers him until he’s being held in a bridal carry, wrapped in a towel that’s been through the sanitizer too many times. Fluid leaks steadily from Echo’s ass with the change in gravity, but the bacta works quickly to re-tighten his hole.

Echo glances up, a little more lucid. He’d being held by Cody, as it turns out. Huh.

Which means Rex must be the one who changed the sheets, dry and clean when Cody lays him back down. He expects to be on one side of Rex, Cody on the other, but the pair of them surprise him by lying down on either side of him. Rex pulls up the blanket before Echo can even shiver, kissing languidly along his neck. Echo turns his face toward him, offering his parted lips, and Rex takes him up on it by kissing him slow and deep.

A light hand on his jaw surprises him. Rex props himself up on his elbows to watch as Echo turns to face Cody, instead. There’s a faint bob of Cody’s throat, the only outward sign of any nerves, and then he, too, leans in to kiss him just as lazily. His tongue slips past Echo’s teeth, making an unhurried exploration of his mouth.

The three of them make a tight fit in the bed, even without Echo’s legs or arm in the mix, but there’s nothing so comforting to a clone as the proximity of another, and his exhaustion makes a renewed bid to be heard.

Just one thing first.

Echo reaches up, pulling down the datapad he left here weeks ago. “Are you seriously working right now?” Cody grumbles into his shoulder. “You and Rex are both insufferable.”

“Only technically working,” Echo says, tapping until he brings up assignments. He nudges them both until they look up at the screen. “I’m assigning all three of us to the next round of leave on Pabu.”