- clonehub -

Locks walks through the halls of the ship, his boots echoing against the metal ceiling. The ship’s walls hum with air current, electricity--overhead, water in a pipe gurgles past an air bubble.Locks stops, scrutinizing the ceiling. That’s not supposed to do that. He and Uru would have to check that out once they landed on the next planet. Lucky them they just got a decent haul on a job, so they won’t have to shortcut the fix until a bigger check comes in.Lock turns left, passing through a short hall and entering the cockpit. Uru doesn’t turn upon his entering; with how big his montrals are, he may have sensed Locks’ vibrating footsteps from beyond the door.
Uru is also not a very talkative person in general, but lately he’s been quieter than usual. Normally his mood would lift the more credits they get on a job, but his mercenary partner has taken to longer and longer stretches of silence, marked by the occasional grunt or sigh. More than once, Locks has seen Uru sit as still as possible, his eyes closed.
Uru flips a switch on the panel before him before sitting back, taking his star-white lekku and flipping it over his right shoulder, the end of it slapping against the back of the pilot’s seat. Even without seeing his face, Locks can tell Uru’s got his eyes closed again--and based on how he tips his head back by just a few millimeters, he’s trying to relieve pain in his neck.“What?” Uru mutters, fitting a broad hand under his other lekku.Locks’ face grows warm. “You alright?”“Fine.” But Uru grunts and rolls his neck, inhaling sharply through his nose.Seeing Uru roll his neck makes Locks get the urge to roll his own shoulder. He rubs the top of it, flinching when he agitates the muscle underneath--muscle he’d pulled hauling all two and a half meters of Uru one-handed back over a ledge he’d nearly tumbled over.
Locks suppresses the shudder that wants to rack him. Uru is alive and they have the money. No sense in dwelling what could have been.
Locks’ eyes train on Uru’s struggle to relieve the pain in his neck. The cockpit isn’t large; it only takes a few steps for Locks to stand behind Uru’s chair. He can feel the soft heat radiating from Uru’s montrals and lekku, a nice contrast to the cool air around them. They both tense.“I could help, if you wanted,” Locks offers.Uru seems to consider Locks’ offer for a moment before silently consenting, flipping his white lek back over his shoulder and leaning forward.Locks removes his gloves and presses his thumbs into the muscle at the base of Uru’s neck, massaging the taught mass of muscle there.
“A little higher,” Uru mutters, his shoulders beginning to slouch. Locks adjusts his position, pressing harder where Uru’s lekku start to meet his skull.Locks never realized how much pain Uru must have been in--his breathing slows and evens out like the lull of a tide, some of the gruffness leaving his voice when he guides Locks’ hands to a new position on his neck. Locks doesn’t stop, even when his hands start to hurt and he’d like a break to tend to his own shoulder.
Uru reaches up to scratch his right lek, something he’s been doing more and more lately.This close, Locks can see other problems lining Uru’s lekku: a small bruise at the base of the right one, and dryness spreading over the broader parts of his lekku and montrals. With how much time they spent in exposed, un-ideal weather and how uncomfortable Uru clearly is now, Locks would’ve thought he’d take better care of his lekku.
Locks even tried to help. Lekku oil was inexpensive if a bit difficult to locate in more remote parts of the galaxy. There are plenty of substitutes, though, so Locks acquired a bottle and placed it in the galley, where it went ignored. Then he put it on the shelf in the shower, where it went ignored again. Then next to Uru’s bed. It’s still there, unopened.Locks places a palm on Uru’s back lek. Under his hand, he can feel both velvety smooth skin and the dry patches that have been bothering Uru for ages. “I could get the oil?” he offers, coming around Uru’s side.
The speed at which the man avoids Locks’ eyes surprises him. His hand flies back to the spot on his neck, but Locks hasn’t pulled his hands away so their fingers brush. Locks snaps his hand back. “Unless you want me to stop--”“No,” Uru says. “Get it--please.”
Locks is back in less than half a minute. The bottle is opened and the surprisingly sweet smell of the oil fills the cockpit. Locks wastes no time in pouring some into the palm of his hand, careful not to spill any. The oil is thick and gold-hued, but it gets a little thinner as Locks’s hand warms it ip.“Don’t use too much,” Uru warns, holding out a cupped hand for Locks’ excess.Locks gets to work on Uru’s back lek, fanning his fingers out to evenly spread the oil. With almost imperceptible delicateness, Uru leans into Locks’ touch. The latter can pretend that Uru’s just enjoying the much-needed relief from the oil, but he can’t ignore the small shudder that runs through Uru’s broad shoulders.“How’s that?” Locks asks.“Good,” Uru sighs, finally sounding content. “Thanks again.” He hasn’t once opened his eyes--not that Locks minds.The pair spends the next few minutes in amiable silence. Eventually, Uru’s hands slip from his lekku to rest in his lap, palms turned up like he might actually fall asleep here in the pilot’s chair.Instead, something rumbles. Locks thinks it's another problem with the ship at first, so his mouth starts to twist into a sharp frown before he realizes that the sound is way too close to be mechanical.It’s Uru. He’s purring.Locks knows that Togrutas can purr when they feel safest and most comfortable, but the cockpit of a mercenary’s ship is the last place Locks would have expected to draw this feeling out of him.The short purr stops as soon as it started. Locks, a little disappointed, slows the movements of his hands on Uru’s neck.Then it starts again, lower and slower but almost more confident, like Uru has subconsciously made up his mind about the cockpit, about the massage--about Locks. His purrs are a soft rumble flowing from deep inside his chest. Locks wants to ask if he’s doing alright, but he fears trying to get Uru to speak will stop the purring. Locks won’t act like he isn’t thoroughly enjoying it himself, his own skin growing warm with each stretch of the purr that’s now filled the small cockpit.Uru’s eyes pop open--not that Locks sees it. It’s Uru’s sudden head jerk and the sharp cut of the purring that alerts him. Locks’ hands stop, a question forming on the tip of his tongue.“Your shoulder,” Uru says. “You pulled it--is it okay?”Locks’ lips work before he can speak, his hands still resting comfortably on Uru’s neck. “It’s alright,” he says.“Let me see.”They trade places, Locks’ face passing barely a centimeter by Uru’s chest. Beating down the skip in his heart, Locks takes the pilot’s seat, bracing his hands on his knees. “It’s nothing bad, Uru,” Locks says, straining for a casual tone and not quite reaching it.Uru just grunts, his heavy hands landing on Locks’ shoulder. He flinches, pulling a light chuckle out of Uru. “‘Nothing bad’, huh?” Uru teases.Locks takes a breath. “I’ve been through worse.”Uru silently fits his hand on Locks’ inner bicep, the backs of his fingers pressing against Locks’ ribs. The other hand rests on Locks’ shoulder. A slight nudge from Uru gets Locks to raise his arm, elbow bent--testing his range of motion. Locks flinches and hisses when his arm goes too far; Uru “hms” in response. A few more tests get the same response out of Locks.“It’s sprained.”“I could have told you that.”Locks gets the distinct sense that Uru didn’t actually have a plan as far as medical care went--but neither of his hands have left Locks’ shoulder, and he’s finding he doesn’t he doesn’t mind the warm weight of them.“I could try and massage it for you,” Uru says a little stiffly. He even squeezes Locks’ shoulder as if to prove it.That just makes it hurt more. “I’m good, thanks.”Uru doesn’t move for a moment. “There’s an icepack in the medkit.”
Locks has barely given the okay before Uru’s out of the cockpit. He returns a minute later with both an icepack and a sling. “I’ll help you,” Uru says, planting the icepack on top of Locks’ arm and placing Locks’ hand firmly on top of it.Locks could laugh, but he keeps his mouth shut, letting his partner guide him into the sling. If Uru’s hands weren’t lingering before, they are now, and they reluctantly slide off his shoulder to rest on the pilot’s seat.
“Thanks,” Locks says, meaning it. He stands, wary of the pack on his shoulder.But Uru doesn’t back up, at least not in time--Locks nearly collides with his chest. He looks up to both apologize and ask Uru to move out of the way.
Their eyes lock so suddenly Locks’ request dies in his throat. He catches sight of Uru’s pale lashes fluttering down at him, the snap dilation of his pupils--then he’s smoothly stepped aside, giving Locks the space to leave.He almost doesn’t move. Feeling like he’s been let loose in outer space, his senses spinning, Locks leaves the cockpit, Uru following close behind.

Warm, smokey air filters through Urudyck’s veil, filling his nostrils with the scent of wood smoke and his own sweat. The night sky is dark enough that the puffs of smoke blend almost seamlessly with the black expanse. He pauses compulsively to look at it even though he knows the speckled galaxy above him will be distorted by the veil.Taking a sharp breath through his nose, Uru runs his hands over his lekku, from around his jaw all the way down to the rough, near-numb ends. His stomach flips, bringing with it the sharper smells of smoke so thick it clogged his lungs, of the serrated edge of apologies and prayers forcing their way out of his mouth over and over and over.
Uru’s palm stops at the end of the white lek, its color that of stars and a portender of bad luck, of inevitable doom handed to him before he was even more.That would technically make it his parents’ fault, not his, but nobody in the colony would dare even whisper such a thought. Urudycks’ father would find out. And he would have recompense.Bile crawls up Uru’s throat, but he chases it down, forcing his hand off his white lek as though it had burned him.Shuffling quickly along the edge of his family’s compound, Urudyck is careful not to let his heels crunch to loudly on the dead leaves the litter the ground. His veil shuffles around his shoulders and he wants nothing more than the rip the thing off, to subject it to the same fate faced by the end of his white lek--but at the same time, the mere idea of pulling it off in the open air makes him nervous.There’s hardly any light this far into the back of the compound, where various sheds stand against the back wall. As much as his father preferred and pursued perfection, he either did not know about or had nothing to say about the old, lopsided shed shoved off into the corner. He didn’t know about the hole in the side of the shed that was just the perfect size for a teenaged pariah to slip through, veil and all.The shed doesn’t smell like smoke. It smells like dust and old wood, like oil spilled from a broke maintenance machine somewhere outside his field of vision. A hole near the ceiling lets in some slivers of sharp moonlight, but otherwise it is dark. Enclosed like this, Urudyck feels safe enough to pull off his veil, tight fisted in one hand.He waits.In two short minutes, grunting and scraping can be heard from the opposite side of the shed that Uru came in through. A set of powderly blue montrals pokes into the small building from somewhere near the ground, then arms, then more grunting and swearing before a full figure comes into dim view. Locks, covered in dirt but looking quite proud of himself, carefully steps over discarded tools and machinery to get to Urudyck. He was getting broad in the shoulders and forming shorter, thicker lekku that made it all the more difficult to get into their secret hiding place.Uru has the impulse to hide the veil behind his back, but Locks already knows about it, of course--everyone in the colony does.“Hi,” Locks breathes, his eyes already crinkling with a smile.They do what they always do: nestle into the space between two massive tools, arms and shoulders and legs and calves touching and generating heat between them. They talked--rather, Locks spoke and Uru listened. Uru was rarely asked to speak in his own home and so has difficulty managing more than a few words at a time. He thinks he might have dedicated more of the words in his life to prayer and apology than real conversation.“Are you alright?” Locks asks suddenly, the softness of his question jerking Uru back to the present.“Fine,” he says hastily. The veil, wrapped tightly around his knuckles, cuts circulation off from his fingers. Looking at it fills Uru with a sudden burning rage, one that constricts his chest until he feels he’ll crack. HIs fang dips into his lower lip, drawing forth pain that normally breaks Uru out of these sudden rushes of adrenaline and hatred.It doesn’t work. The veil gets so tight Uru stops feeling his fingers entirely--the awful fabric isn’t choking his knuckles, it’s cinched his father’s neck, pulled taught against the jugular till all that can be heard are the pops of hard-fought air, as sluggish and desperate as cracks from a doused fire--Locks hand closes over Uru’s fist, once again dragging him back to the present. Uru can’t breathe. Locks works his fingers into Uru’s fist until he relents, relaxing his grip--then locks pulls the veil away, tossing off to the side somewhere. Their fingers fit together.Warmth floods Uru’s hand, spreading from his fingertips up his arm through his chest, replacing the burn that had been there. Uru refuses to remove his eyes from their entwined hands--the blue against white, the way Locks hands are softer than anything he’s ever felt.The hitch in Locks’ breathing forces Uru’s eyes up--forces a new slam of his heart against his ribs.To Uru’s dismay, Locks breaks their hands apart, leaving it bereft and cold again. His palm comes to the left side of Uru's face, hovering just before making contact.Dread consumes him. “Don’t,” Uru says. “You’ll get hurt.” Locks would be stained and then the only person in this entire colony who cared for him would be a pariah as well.
Locks is silent a moment, his dark eyes running of the whiteness of Uru’s montral, his lek, the side of his face. “No I won’t,” he murmurs. “You could never hurt me.”His hand rests on Uru’s face--on the pale side, on the cursed side. The side that was always regarded with revulsion.But Locks holds it with a tenderness Uru had only seen reserved for newborns, his thumb tracing Uru’s brow and sweeping down to his cheekbone. Uru’s heart clatters up his throat.Locks comes in close enough for Uru to feel the heat radiating off him. Their foreheads brush, their noses touch, and just when Locks is able to relax enough, they kiss.A soft shiver sweeps under his skin. The taboo of their kiss pounds against the back of Uru’s skull, but so does excitement--so does the sense of freedom in this stolen moment.When Locks finally pulls away, his dark eyes wide with an emotion Uru can’t name, he puts his hand again on the white side of Uru’s face. Uru finds he doesn’t mind its presence.A little dazed, Uru leans back against the shed’s wall, folding his lips in. Locks takes his hand again, curling up close to Uru and pressing their heads together. His eyes flutter closed; the shed falls silent.
He purrs.
Uru almost jerks, but he controls himself because he knows a sudden movement will stop the purr. It sits low in l\Locks’ chest, emanating out of him like light from the sun.
It rolls through Uru’s montrals, bringing a rush of calm that drags the tension from his shoulders. Just beneath his sternum, the muscle there loosens, an almost shy purr coming forth.
Locks purrs louder, encouraging him. The vibration in his montrals alone is enough to open Uru up to a purr that’s just a tad quieter than Locks’. His head filled with the sound of Locks’ comfort, Uru isn’t hiding in a shed in his father’s compound. There is no fire, no smoke, no heat save for the soft warmth of their lekku slowly twining together.

It's just them and the open sky above them.Normally the sun would feel like an overbearing eye on their brows as they trekked out into the semi-wild, but with Locks' arms around Uru’s waist they both feel a different type of heat.Two weeks beforehand, the stranger named Locks had appeared on Uru’s doorstep, old boots caked in dirt and his flimsy hat clutched between his hands. He’d walked a mile from the outermost fence just to offer to fix it for nothing--a place to sleep and a hot meal.Uru had gotten the sense the stranger would have slept on the dirt pile beside his porch. Uru himself isn’t a man of hot meals, but something about this man’s face compelled him to break out the skillet the way the sun is compelled to arc across the sky and scorch the earth.
The fence was mended and mended well. The sun had just begun its dip beneath the horizon, the earth releasing heat when Locks came back, hat in his hands again. He washed them by the water pump and absolutely devoured the small meal Uru set out for him.He had the look of someone who needed three times as much as he’d gotten, but he thanked Uru like his belly was full. Then he looked out at the barn.“The barn’s got a hole in the roof,” Uru had said. “Supposed to rain tonight, too.”Locks only gave him a uniquely humorous smile, flashing the hat.
“Mat and blanket are in the chest next to the door,” Uru said without looking at him. "Fire in the hearth's died down by now, but it's better than nothing."Locks paused only a moment before he passed by him; he carried a smell of ash, and when Uru looked closely, he could see small holes where embers had burned through parts of his shirt, black like the sky at night.
The stranger hadn’t asked anything of Uru, and Uru would do the same of him.Two weeks. The fence, the barn--then the water pump, a porch step, and then the migration.Locks was not from anywhere nearby. Uru spoke little, but the man who was becoming less a stranger and more of something else easily filled the gaps. The first night, he’d given one detail about himself: he was not trying to return from whence he came. He had plans to leave in the morning.Uru did not sleep.The pair amble their slow way across the plains now, companions only to the sun and sky, the cattle, and each other. Uru has one horse, who’s gait Locks has to work get used to.The stranger keeps both arms wrapped comfortably around Uru’s waist, something that he had to learn quickly if he favored avoiding falling off the horse. His arms tense with the intermittent uneven jolt, but otherwise he sits comfortably behind Uru, his chest and stomach close to Uru’s back.Uru had hauled him up one-armed since Locks clearly didn't know how to get on. Uru took secret pride in the impressed noise of surprise that came from the strangers’ mouth.The sun dances directly above their heads before contemplating its descent below the horizon. Behind him, Uru hears the pop of the water can and the light swish of the liquid sliding out.They stop for the night. Locks accepts Uru’s proffered hand to get help stepping down. Once his boots hit the ground, he curves back, yawns, and pops all the joints in his shoulders.“Riding will do that to you,” Uru says. Locks’ forehead had pressed against Uru’s shoulder on more than one occasion, the sun and long hours of silence dragging it down until it rested comfortably against his shirt. Uru still feels the ghost pressure of it, the empty weight of where Locks’ hand would rest against his stomach while he used the other to drink.
Locks wordlessly starts the fire. Its glow plays off his skin, warming it. Uru is a safe distance away, elbows braced on his knees and attention focused on the stars hovering just above the horizon. There’s barely a wind to stir the dust and dirt that surrounds them, barely a sound to accompany the crackle of the fire and the two men.“Where are you from?” Uru asks.
Locks stares into the fire; its smoke is dark, curling into the sky and blending seamlessly with the black expanse. His hair almost resembles it, dark curls with no distinct beginning or end. He throws in a twig.“Far.”Uru knows better than to pry. They dip into companionable silence again, Locks’ chin dipping past the border of his broad shoulders, his hands steepled before his mouth.
He speaks--not about where he’s from, but about anything and everything. He only makes as much noise as dry grass blown by the wind, his voice blending with the edges of night around them.Uru pulls out a flask. The heady scent of whiskey fills his nostrils, its burn sharp. He lets the bitterness sit on his tongue, his head turned away from the fire. Its metal opening rests momentarily against Uru’s lips before he tosses the flask to Locks, who catches it easily.“How long you been by yourself?” Locks asks, twisting the cap off the flask contemplatively. He sniffs it.“A while.”Uru knows the answer isn’t enough to satisfy him.“Any friends?”“Depends.”Their eyes meet, Locks’ dark and openly unreadable. He takes a long draw from the whiskey flask, unflinching at the bitter taste, his lips lingering on the opening like he was tasting more than just alcohol.The sky is open, the lopsided moon a dull eye starting down at them. Uru unfurls his mat. Locks unfurls his right beside him.