Chapter Text
Waking up next to Loren every morning was perfect.
There were the usual elbows in kidneys and cold feet on shins to contend with, but every time he woke up and remembered that he Loren were in their house in their bed and could stay there as long as they wanted, and just— be, and not worry about anything happening beyond their front door, he got something caught in his throat.
He woke up first, slowly, with Loren pressed all against his side, and spent a few minutes just looking at her in the thin line of light shining under the door. At her hair coming out of its braid, and the mark she always got on her face from sleeping on it, and the gold curve of her tattoo sparking as she shifted. As he brushed a strand of hair out of her mouth a chime echoed down the stairs.
Her eyes snapped open. “Damn it. They’re early.”
Davijaan groaned and buried his face in the pillow. “I said you should schedule it for—”
“Cody said he’d bring food, I thought—”
“That he wouldn’t intentionally misinterpret the time?”
Loren heaved a sigh. Propping herself up on an elbow, she stretched and scrubbed at her eyes, and he fumbled over the side of the bed for the lamp controls. She blinked in the sudden light, strands of blue hair in a fuzzy halo around her head. He rolled over on top of her and wrapped his arms around her waist and tucked his nose against her neck. There was a little bruise there. He nipped at it and she yelped and smacked his arm.
“Do not. I have to get up and let your brothers in.”
“Cody has the door code.”
“We have a meeting.”
“Bastard’s early. He can wait.”
“Davijaan.” She huffed something that might have been a laugh or might have been an incredulous snort. “My love, please?”
Davijaan grumbled, but let go. Loren crawled over him and out of their bed, disturbing their little bubble of warm air.
He sat on the side of the bed and watched her dance around getting dressed, in no hurry to do the same. He’d been covering some of Aron’s shifts at the Kyurem spaceport, and it wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy baiting the manager who kept trying to poach him from the Yangs, but this was his first real day off in almost two weeks and he intended to make the most of it.
It was supposed to be Loren’s day off too— and they were supposed to be getting ready to go driving over the tundra to see the stars and the sunrise— but she couldn’t find another time for this meeting. Since at this point in her career she created her own schedule, give or take a deadline, she’d decided to work today and have tomorrow off. But that was fine. Plans changed. At least they still got to spend the day together.
Shawl slipping off her shoulders, she finally stood still in front of the mirror to tie a scarf over her hair in place of re-braiding it. She gave her reflection a sharp nod and marched over to the bed, coming to stand in the space between his knees. His hands settled on her hips, and she tipped his chin up and kissed his cheek, perfunctory. “There. Good morning.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Is it a good morning?”
Some of the flustered franticness eased away, and she kissed him on the lips, apologetic. “A busy morning, then. And hopefully a good afternoon.”
The door chimed again, and she winced.
“Want me to bully my terrible brothers until they go away? Tell them to come back another time?”
To his surprise, she actually thought about it. “No,” she finally said, firm. “I want to get this project started sooner rather than later.”
He ran a hand up her side, smoothing down her shirt. “Want me to come up and make tea?”
“Please.”
She took a step back and he stood, hand slipping from her waist to brush carefully over the slight swell of her stomach that still sort of terrified him.
That little bump, and everything it meant for their future… had not been the plan. But it was happening, and the only thing he could do now was brace himself.
He threw a shirt and sweater on and followed her up the stairs, picking his way over the cold floor to the kitchen and putting the water on while she rushed to answer the door. When Cody and Rex finally came stomping over with numb fingers he handed them both a mug.
“Thank you,” said Cody, accepting his mug in his free hand with a charming smile like this wasn’t the hundredth time he’d invaded their home at way-to-fucking-early o’clock because he was excited about something.
Rex took his own mug reluctantly and with a muffled noise that might have been thanks, and then made a face at it when he thought Davijaan wasn’t looking. The caf versus tea debate hadn’t been a debate until Rex started visiting regularly, and Davijaan had not been pleased by the new tension in their previously nonexistent relationship.
Shutting the door against the snow and striding into the kitchen, Loren accepted the mug of weird-smelling pregnancy tea Davijaan handed her with another kiss. He kissed her back, because he could never kiss her enough, and then glared when Cody heaved an annoyed sigh.
“I’ve got all my hard copies of wartime articles down in the office, so we can get started as soon as we’ve eaten,” Loren announced, before violence broke out in her clean kitchen.
Cody thumped a crate stuffed with old GAR issue datapads down on the table with a sharp grin. “Excellent. The sooner the better.”
From the top of the crate he removed a covered dish and thrust it in Davijaan’s direction. He accepted it with a critical eyebrow. Food, he presumed. Probably an egg something. Cody’d been on an egg kick since he’d added nunas to the little farm he’d turned his house and land into.
“And what am I supposed to do with this?” he asked, flat.
Cody rolled his eyes and walked past him to turn on the oven. Loren snorted and started setting the table, and Rex quickly put his tea down to help.
Davijaan extracted himself from the chaos and carried the crate of datapads down to Loren’s office; one of the extra bedrooms they’d designated for the duty. The thin stacks of flimsi on the desk he presumed were the articles she’d printed out. He set the crate down and flipped through one of them, curious.
Loren and Cody were going to write a book. Or something. A compilation, she’d called it, of old news articles and military documents and interviews with former members of the GAR. After her article on the Marshal Commander had become sort of infamous in the core worlds, there had been wider demand for information on the clones. Davijaan thought it was good that most of the information in their book would come from the clones themselves.
He read a particularly inflammatory headline about the cost of the GAR, grimaced, and let the flimsi fall back into place.
“That’s the fear mongering stack.”
He looked up to find Loren hovering in the doorway, embarrassed. “I split them up according to the intention behind the article. You don’t have to read them, I know you don’t particularly want to be involved. Everything’s ready upstairs if you want to come eat.”
He ran a hand over the flat printed picture of a battalion of clone troopers under the headline; rank after rank of clean white armor. It might as well be a picture of empty sets on stands. “It’s not that I don’t want to be involved, it’s that I don’t have much to contribute.”
She had the skill and experience to write a book, Cody had the connections to provide the information. Namely, Rex, who’d volunteered to be their first interview. Davijaan now knew quite a bit more about writing and about what had happened in the Senate during the war than he’d ever thought he’d want to know, but not enough to help.
“I could interview you.” A cold hand slipped into his. “If that’s something you want.”
He ran a thumb over the back of her knuckles and gazed down at a blank visor and thought about it.
He’d lived though Kamino, lived through the war, lived through the mess of rebuilding. But so had many thousands of his siblings. His story wasn’t particularly special in that regard. But now he lived with Loren, who had very firm opinions about stories and why they mattered. After years of carefully talking around subjects until they were both ready to talk about them straight out, he knew she understood what she was asking.
Slowly, he shook his head. “No. At least, not right now.”
He looked up from the photo to find her smiling, soft. She squeezed his hand. “I didn’t think so, but I wanted to ask.”
He smiled back, and instead of saying thank you pulled her into a hug, and let himself be happy that he’d lived long enough to be able to hold her like this.
Maybe someday he’d be comfortable with an interview; with the idea of strangers knowing what he’d lived through and what he thought about it. But for now, his siblings understood. Loren tried her best to understand. And that was what mattered.
“Will you two stop being disgusting and get up here so we can eat?” Cody hollered down the stairs. "If this gets cold I'm not heating it up again!"
Davijaan stiffened and opened his mouth to yell that if Cody didn't want to see them being disgusting he could always leave, but Loren just started laughing, and took him by the hand and dragged him back up the stairs and into the day.