ninefox | anchorage

Usually when he wakes abruptly--from dreams or nightmares--it's still and silent, he learned that lesson young, but this... it's neither. The sudden shift in his environment, Jedao's weight disappearing from his chest, the sound of his breathing suddenly snuffed out, registers as an imminent threat, and Fives jerks upright, instantly awake and rolling to reach for the twin blasters he's taken to leaving at the bedside. He doesn't register the change in himself until he's standing at the bedside, blasters in hand, and looking for the threat. Or for Jedao.

And it's then he realizes the blasters feel strangely large in his grip, and glances down at hands slightly smaller than they should be, missing the scars across the knuckles from where he'd hammered at a battle droid's head, trying to keep it off him until Echo could put a blaster bolt through its head. That the bottoms to his blacks are hanging too loose at too narrow hips... and the tattoo of Rex's hand is gone from his chest.

"Jedao?!" He's not loud about it, he doesn't know what the kriffing hell might be going on, but he at least needs to find his vod.

I'm here, he says, and it's - it's easier, a little, to pull himself to together when he has someone else to worry about. He can't panic about whether this will really be over next week, he can't slam himself into the double-snare of trying to calm himself down with breathing or any other absent physical mechanism.

Breaking in a new anchor is important, and it's something he knows. He shifts into Fives' line of sight, the shadow's spread tails waving slowly.

I can't hear you think but I can see you and hear you speak. I'm okay.

Edited 2017-08-21 05:40 (UTC)

He freezes at the voice, only his eyes moving, flicking to the corners of the room, blasters held loose and ready to aim in any direction. And then the familiar shadow appears, tails waving and eyes bright even in the brightness of the well-lit room.

"You're anchored-" He stops, frowning, thinking it through. "... to me?" Because there's no one else in the room, so that's really the only option. Except it makes no sense. Jedao should be here, solid, with him, not a ghost and a shadow. But he should be... probably two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier and half again as scarred. "Kriffing barge," he mutters, and lets the blasters' barrels tip towards the floor.

We were due for something, he says dryly, his low voice sounding right inside Fives' head. This is basically agreement. Some kind of physical timeline slide, it looks like.

On the plus side, now you really can't get rid of me.

Fives sighs and leans to set the blasters back on the bedside table, since there's obviously no threat here. "Yeah, some kind," he agrees, reaching up to scrub a hand along his chin, bare and smooth with just a wispy hint of facial hair that probably wouldn't even rate depilation, if cadet grooming standards weren't so strict and uniform.

"Like I was ever going to try." He rolls his eyes and snorts as he turns to pad silently to the bathroom, needing to both check the mirror and assess just how far back into adolescence the Admiral has booted him, and take a leak since he's up and moving. "It'll just be temporary, these things always are," he adds.

Disgruntled is always cute on Fives, but it's almost unbearable now, with the ineffable freshness of youth on his face, with his usual athletic ease transposed onto the leaner, coltish frame. But he can't help looking, and he also can't currently get caught looking, and also he's a hawkfucking shadow again, fuck everything very much, so he lets himself enjoy it.

I know.

Will you be okay with this?

Fives waves the bathroom light on and just... stops and stares at the mirror, startled by Jedao's face staring back at him. "Well, that's something, at least." He reaches out to press his hand to the cool glass over the reflection of Jedao's chest. "Be happier if I could touch you, but... I'm fine," he adds, dropping his hand again. "Probably should be bothered hearing your voice in my head, but-" He shrugs. "I'm not really.

"Just how young do I look?" he asks, since Jedao is apparently the only one who can see him in full, though he does tip his head down to give himself a more thorough examination. Younger, leaner, wiry with muscle instead of heavily padded with it, all the battle scars along his chest and arms and shoulders gone, though that still leaves the liberal assortment of scars he'd collected in training.

He runs a hand down his chest and belly and sighs, exasperated at how gangly he feels. Force, he'd thought he was so hardboiled back as a cadet. "Can't be more than eight or nine, I don't think," he adds, scratching absently at the thin trail of hair disappearing beneath the sagging waistband of his blacks.

He watches - appears to watch - from the mirror, grinning in amusement.

"You look like a day-old calf, you're all legs," he says, instead of getting into the hideous injustice of Fives looking about sixteen and knowing that's actually older than he is, even as a hardened soldier.

Edited 2017-08-21 07:08 (UTC)

"Mir'sheb," he grumbles under his breath, knowing Jedao will be well aware he's been called a smartass. "And I'm still bigger than you," he points out, smoothing his palms lightly over unfamiliar skin, letting his fingers trail along scars, or the places they should be.

"Didn't get my last growth spurt until after we deployed." His armor had been a little loose those first few weeks at Rishi station. "But I think I was taller than this, at least." He scrubs both hands up over his face and then steps over to the toilet to take a piss, less than unbothered by Jedoa's ghostly presence as he shoves his blacks out of the way.

Watching Fives touch himself - easy and attentive and exploratory - is. Difficult. Even though he knows it must be disturbing, to have so many scars and his tattoos gone, even though it's a perfectly reasonable reaction for Fives to have. It's just. An image.

Getting his dick out for something as routine as relieving himself is relatively easier to deal with.

"Technically, right now you are exactly as big as me. You're the only body I've got, so that's how big I am." If he's going to be a smartass, he might as well get his money's worth.

Fives gives his hands a perfunctory wash when he's done and then pads back out into the main room. "You can't sleep like this, can you?" he asks, heading for Jedao's tea accoutrements. He actually stumbles on thin air halfway there, cursing under his breath as he catches himself. "I wasn't this kriffing clumsy when I was supposed to be this size," he grumbles, maybe a little defensive. "It's just going to take some getting used to."

"No, but that's alright," he admits, before getting distracted by the motion question. "You're actually managing unusually well. Although maybe that's because the admiral didn't actually have to drug you for the procedure."

He wonders what will happen if they end up in a combat situation. He's never had an anchor with reflexes at least as good - but different from - his own, before.

"No, it's really not," he answers, brusque and clearly annoyed, whether it's at the situation or the answer is hard to tell.

"Unusually well?" He's made it to the tea service now, and he sets about preparing a cup the way he's watched Jedao do it so many times. It's something to do with his hands while he adjusts and thinks. "Do they make a habit of shrinking people with medical procedures where you're from?" It hasn't yet occurred to him that Jedao might mean the process of becoming his anchor.

He laughs, bright and warm.

"Well, maybe the Andan do, who fucking knows. Most of my anchors are rather disoriented after getting a extra soul implanted."

"Huh." It hadn't occurred to him that that might be part of the clumsiness, he'd just chalked it up to losing two inches of height or more along with a good deal of muscle... and being that gangly, awkward, in between growth spurts size again.

He settles onto one of the cushions at the low table with his tea, once close enough to the wall he can shift it around and lean against it, and stretches his legs out in front of them. "Can you bring your shadow back?" he asks, not quite plaintive as he cradles the cup in his hands without drinking. "It feels at least a little more like you're actually... here, talking to it."

If he had breath it would catch; if he had a chest it would ache. No one ever wanted to see the Ninefox Crowned with Eyes, the sign he personally transmuted into a harbinger of insanity and disaster. Even the anchors who weren't maneuvered as blatantly as Cheris was, who were fascinated or ambitious enough or both to be glad of his assistance were still wary of him.

Talking to him was always a risk, not a comfort.

"I'm here," he says, the shadow leaping into shape at Fives' feet, amber eyes wide and bright. His throatless voice sounds a little hoarse. "I'm with you, I promise."

Tension that hadn't been quite as clear in his narrower, leaner shoulders eases at the physical proof of Jedao's presence. He doesn't mind the voice in his head, but it's no more tangible than a voice over the commlink in his bucket, and he smiles faintly at the gracefully waving tails with their unblinking golden eyes.

"Thanks." He takes a sip of the tea to clear the hoarseness from his own throat, then sets it on the table so he can return to the assessment he'd started in the bathroom. He can't see himself, so he'll have to settle for mapping this strange-familiar body by touch. "Wish I could touch you," he adds, as he trails his fingers along a scar running just above his hipbone, angling down towards his groin beneath his blacks, and remembering the scare that had given him at the time. "But the shadow's... nice."

Between the soft skate of Fives' fingers over the skin of his hipbone, and Jedao's own turbulent feelings, and the wistful sincerity of Fives' regret, he's swamped for a moment with affection and desire, wordless and thoughtless, a wave of feeling he can neither express nor - it turns out - entirely contain.

He wants. There isn't anything in him or of him but wanting.

"Jedao?" The ninefox is still there, Fives knows Jedao's not gone, but there's a catch in his voice at the lack of an answer nonetheless.

Or maybe it's at the sudden awareness of heat pooling low in his belly, of the realization that he's back at the physiological age when all it had taken was a stray breeze or a stray thought or, Force, sometimes even a punch in the kriffing face to get him hard. When he'd been a giant, seething ball of hormones and all he'd wanted to do was fight or fuck, or sometimes both at once... and he'd been surrounded by brothers who felt exactly the same way.

But right now he's, at least physically, alone, staring at Jedao's shadow and straining to hear his voice as he stills his hand where it's just barely dipped beneath the waistband of his blacks.

"Sorry, I'm sorry," he - doesn't gasp, he isn't short of breath. He says, with whatever scraps of equanimity he can muster, which isn't much.

The shadow's gone still, curled into a small tight shape, but every yellow eye is still fixed wide and clear on Fives.

"Are you-" Kriff, he can't keep from shifting his hips restlessly, even the faint drag of his blacks over the head of his dick enough to drag a quiet gasp from him in punctuation. "Are you all right?" The sound of Jedao's voice and the way the many-tailed fox shadow has curled in on itself is concerning, even if his body has decided to be as kriffing frustrating and uncooperative as he remembers it from when he'd been this age, not just looked it.

"I'm a bastard, but I'm fine," Jedao growls, frustrated with himself, with the sheer depth of how little he wants to explain and knowing Fives deserves better than surprises and secrets about his own body, especially with how little control of it he's been given in his life. "It's me, it's my fault, I just -" I wish you could touch me too, he thinks, even though he knows Fives meant it innocently, knows how often and how easy touch is a simple comfort between them, even if Fives has offered more before.

Edited 2017-08-21 09:20 (UTC)

"You're not kriffing fine," Fives snaps, even as he feels arousal singing along his nerves like a living force. It's more frustration with himself, with his body's completely inappropriate reaction to the situation, than with Jedao's response, though the clear self-loathing both irks and concerns him. "And there's no fucking thing about this that's your fault," he adds, using Jedao's favored obscenity for emphasis. 'You just what?"

Edited 2017-08-21 09:38 (UTC)

He can't stop looking. He literally can't, has no ability not to see the small, hitching motions of Fives' hips, the stutter as he tries and fails not to move, the twitch in his jaw as he growls and curses. It's hypnotic, and a terrible feedback loop, and distracting, which Jedao is going to blame for not being able to think of anything to stop Fives blaming himself except blurting out the truth.

"You are feeling my feelings," he hisses, "Because I am in your head."

Fives barks a laugh, hoarse and a little choked. "You think this-" He shifts his hips with more purpose now, giving up on trying to fight the arousal down and instead pushing the heel of his hand against the head of his cock. "You think this is all you?"

There's a little shock at the idea that any of it could be Jedao, a little confusion and even hurt at the memory of how many times Jedao has put him off, but mostly it's frustrated amusement at Jedao trying to lay claim to the situation at all. "Did you miss how kriffing old I am right now? All it takes to get me hard is a stray breeze." He lets his eyes squeeze shut and gives in entirely, the thought of Jedao watching him and wanting too much to resist as he shoves his hand down his blacks and curls it around himself, shuddering at the touch. "Your kriffing voice is more than enough, all on its own, vod."

Edited 2017-08-21 09:58 (UTC)

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