Cables

Title: Cables
Author: Dr FooFoo
Rating: R
Fandom: Star Wars -- Last of the Jedi
Pairing: Ferus/Roan
Warnings: emotasticness
Disclaimer: I don't own Ferus or Roan. Just saying.
Note: Please excuse excessive run-on sentences or utter cheesiness. Was listening to Snow Patrol and emoing my face off onto my keyboard so it got a little sticky.

xxx

The day starts out early in the afternoon with Ferus and Roan chilling by a large circular fountain in the middle of a crowded square downtown. Roan doesn't remember the details from the start. All he remembers is the way Ferus looks at him from the corner of his eye, sun gleaming and streaking his dark hair with gold. There's suggestion in that look, and Roan agrees silently.

They chase each other down all the alleys and corridors in the city, avoiding pedestrians and tripping over fallen laundry under cables between apartment buildings. It's laughable how much this happens. They'll end up beside the river that runs next to the city, right beside the Welcome to Ussa sign, and Ferus will strip off his jeans and dive into the water. It's always much colder than it should be, and it seems to get colder every time. Maybe that should be a warning sign, but Roan doesn't take any notice of it at the time. Just jumps in after Ferus.

It's memories like this that Roan savours on the cool Belassan nights when Ferus is undercover on Samaria. He'll sit on his bed in his room with the blankets in a circle around his knees and scratch his shoulder or rub on an old scar and think of Ferus kissing him and rubbing on him and loving him. He always ends up curling into a ball in a nest of sheets and falling half-asleep and remembering when it was okay to go outside during the day, and when the most danger they ever faced was when an official grew suspicious of some of their ID docs...

xxx

Roan's back arches away from Ferus's touch, and his chest brushes Ferus's. He feels like he's in a movie -- one where they freeze or go in really slow motion on an intense scene to pack it into your brain as far as it can go. He feels like that, except he's in the movie, and the intensity's hitting him in waves of sheer terror and bliss and perfection. Ferus is perfection. Roan wants to tell him that but he can't get the words out fast enough. He'll open his mouth and all that will come out is a low growl or a string of words formed into a moan because they're coming too fast. Coming much too fast.

He can't control it when it starts. It's a rush of sounds and feelings and he can't stop panting. It's not unpleasant though, just inconvenient. This need to breathe. It gets in the way of kissing and licking and sucking and Roan is in way over his head if that is even an issue.

A scrape down his back and Ferus is mumbling something that Roan can't quite make out. It might be something like i love you or maybe go faster, Roan can't tell. He slides a hand across Ferus's collarbone and down an arm with a thin sheen of sweat wrapped around it like a lace sleeve. He slides it down and down some more and onto Ferus's hip, then his thigh. His hand is unstoppable, traveling a trail that's only been traveled by a few before him. The thought energizes him and he rocks forward on Ferus's lap, stroking back up to between the two tangled bodies.

Roan is captivated by Ferus's mouth. It hangs open just slightly, and malformed words spill out of it like they just can't bear to be trapped in there anymore. Roan catches them in his own mouth and lets them travel to his brain where he understands them all: i love you, i want you, i need you.

It doesn't matter that Roan is late for a drop-off. It doesn't matter that he can't see or feel or breathe, because he's with Ferus, and Ferus is inside him. In so many ways, Roan feels complete. Like he's been broken his whole life and this moment right now, this moment with Ferus is completing him like he's never felt before. It's so damn cliché, but this feeling is real, and Roan runs shaking fingers through Ferus's hair, spiky from the moisture in the air. Moisture from their own delicious friction. Moisture from their bodies moving so naturally together, like they were created like this and never knew anything different.

Roan needs Ferus like he needs air, and he leans in and whispers that next to his ear, and Ferus smiles against his neck and thrusts into him. Roan doesn't get off fast. It's slow and tortured and wonderful, and he wishes they could stay hanging in this moment forever. But he knows that tomorrow the world will still be the same, and the Imperial starships will still be circling the planet, waiting for the perfect moment to instigate a coup. It's just a matter of time.

xxx

Later, when Roan is lying in bed, an arm around Ferus's gently rising and falling shoulders, and sheets entangling his shins, he thinks about the waterfalls and forests in Belassan wilderness and the cotton blanket that Dona made. She's never found out what they use it for: that Roan and Ferus take it to a quiet lake just outside the border of Ussa. They lay it on the grass beside this one giant rock, and pretend they're out for a formal picnic. They even bring a basket sometimes, to feel more authentic. That was Roan's idea.

Ferus is always the first one to strip. Just a sock or jacket, but it comes off and he tosses it playfully at Roan. Roan lays on the blanket and stares up at the sky between the thick paper birch leaves. There are usually hardly any clouds, but on this particular day, they're like mayonnaise, spread in gooey clumps across the blue. Roan likes to watch them float lazily by, and touch Ferus's thigh or arm and think of how grateful he is that Belassa is such a peaceful planet. He's heard stories about planets under siege by the Trade Federation, and he even wrote an essay for school on the impractical approach the Federation takes to negotiating treaties. He doesn't think that could ever happen on Belassa though. No one in their right mind would want to destroy such a beautiful planet.

Ferus peels off his other sock and drops it in Roan's lap, and Roan smirks at the wisps of lost clouds, making their way across the sky. Ferus unzips his jeans and it's all predictable from there. Roan rolls his way out of his navy gray pea coat and disappears behind their big rock like usual. He's not modest, really, but he knows that Ferus is probably watching and it's more fun this way.

It's fall and the leaves are turning yellow then orange then red then gray and falling off, and the cool air stings when Roan pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the blanket before joining Ferus in the not-quite-frozen river. It's the kind of cold that you think you'll get used to if you're just patient long enough, but your toes are forever chilled and you can feel your insides tightening like they're preparing for war. Roan feels like he's preparing for war, and lets his toes sink in between the slimy mud-covered stones underwater. Ferus comes up beside him, and looks like there might as well be icicles in his hair, but Roan laughs anyway and grabs for his hand, splashing water and shivering despite himself.

There's a waterfall nearby and Roan can hear it spitting out curse words at the river it's tumbling into. It's loud today – probably because of the cold – and Roan starts swimming towards it, ducking his head under and spitting out water that bites his gums on the way out. Maybe today isn't the best choice for skinny-dipping as far as weather goes, and Roan doesn't like to be a sap, but as long as Ferus is with him, he can withstand anything.

Ferus is swimming after him, a few feet behind, and wincing away the cold. Ferus is strong. He always has been, and Roan admires him for it. Sometimes he wishes he could be more like Ferus – calm and collected in any situation: a trait likely picked up from his years of Jedi training. But Ferus has a dark side, just like anyone. Roan's seen it before, on nights when the moon is almost completely covered; Ferus sits by the window in their small bedroom back in Ussa and has such pain in his eyes.

He's never gone into too much detail about why he left the Jedi Order, and Roan knows better than to press the subject. He just leans on Ferus from behind, arms crossed over his chest, and kisses his hair or his ear, and Ferus sighs and the pain is gone.

Roan watches Ferus from near the waterfall and Ferus winks at him overdramatically. Roan smiles, and in this moment he's happy, despite the cold water freezing his extremities. Ferus swims over and pushes down on Roan's shoulders and he goes under, pulling Ferus with him. Ferus's skin feels even colder than the water against Roan's fingers, and he pulls him close, and then pushes off on a rock at the bottom of the river. They come up shivering and laughing and Roan holds Ferus and kisses his neck and shoulder, and Ferus pulls them towards the shore.

Roan is still shivering when they drag themselves up to where their blanket is patiently waiting, and Ferus wraps him in his jacket, which is still warm from earlier. It's almost sickly romantic, when Roan thinks about it later. The way they converge with each other and touch and move together. It's like another one of those bad movies, but when he thinks about it like that, Roan just smiles to himself because it doesn't even matter. Everything is perfect.

xxx

Roan dodges a blaster bolt and rolls to his left behind a barrel half full of dusty red apples, but the droids keep coming. They're blasting and destroying in waves, burning rugs and awnings, trampling produce and small furniture; razing the marketplace. The sound of blasters on repeat is ringing in Roan's ears as he huddles between the wooden barrel and a hard stucco wall, and cradles an injured arm with the other. He peels back his sleeve and bites his tongue to stay quiet. There's a deep gash across his bicep, worse than he's ever had before. It's still dribbling a thin line of bright red through the older, dried blood, and it stings like it has salt in it.

Strange, muffled radio transmissions and two B1 droids are picking through some wreckage nearby, likely looking for the injured or survivors to finish off. Roan takes a deep breath and tries to calm his breathing like Ferus taught him. He's no Jedi, but sleeping with one is useful.

When he hears more radio transmissions and rustling, he stands up suddenly and aims, then fires his own blaster and knocks the two droids out in three shots. There are more behind them, though, coming steadily towards Roan and the remaining few members of the Republic scattered behind him. Roan ducks into a hut with half of one wall blown off and squats down below a closed window to tend to his arm again. The intense pain in his shooting arm is not conducive to being very effective as far as holding off droids is concerned, so he figures he'll wait it out here for a little while, and maybe try to get back to the base where he can get it dressed properly.

From around a corner in the hut, he hears a small whimper, and he picks up his blaster and drops to his knees, then pulls himself across the floor and peers around the wall. There's a small child – probably no more than four or five years old – sitting against a half-destroyed sink hugging a stuffed bantha toy to his chest and sobbing quietly. Roan sighs quietly and moves closer to the kid.

"Hey…" he says and the little boy looks up at his face, then to the blaster in his hand, and whimpers some more. Roan frowns and sets the blaster down on the floor in a momentary lapse of reason, and reaches out for the kid. He puts a hand on the boy's shoulder and sits down next to him, and the boy leans into him and cries onto the front of his shirt.

Roan looks up and outside to the sky through a blasted corner of the roof and sighs quietly. This is not how he wants to be remembered...

xxx

All Roan can think about is being outside with Ferus; just the two of them, like old times. They'd go down to the marketplace together and look at used speeders and pretend they had the money to spend on them but nothing mattered because they were together. It didn't matter that Ferus was leaving the next day or that Roan couldn't even tell him how much he meant to him because they were together. They were together forever, and free when they were beside each other. Roan could say anything, he could do anything, and Ferus could do the same. They could forget everything, and everyone. Just look into each other's eyes and remember that there were still gardens somewhere on Coruscant. Somewhere. They could go there together if they wanted.

And oh.. oh... He needs that time again. He would give anything just to have that time back. All that lost time. He's nothing without Ferus. All he wants is to be wasting time with Ferus again, safe on Belassa, and maybe sitting on a rooftop and watching the speeders go by below them. He doesn't care, he just knows that there is nothing he can do to get that back and it hurts him more than he can know.

He and Ferus used to do everything together, always together. They could lay together on Roan's bed, just looking at each other all day, laughing and talking, and sitting in comfortable silence. All day, and nothing was awkward or strange, and they'd forget everything going on outside. They'd forget the war and the Empire, and everything bad, just for a moment, but that moment was enough. When Roan looks at Ferus, all he sees is love and something delicate hidden beneath an exterior built of metal and skin and bone. Ferus is strong. He wouldn't have survived what had been happening in the universe all these years if he wasn't, but he is also soft, so soft. Roan will try to find that softness whenever he can. He loves to touch Ferus all over; just touch and touch and kiss and ask would he please stay with Roan forever? And Ferus always answers yes, without ever saying a word.