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On Frozen Wings - Ch 1

Pairing: Crosshair x Hunter

Rating: 18+ only, Explicit

After Hunter nearly lost everything, his family is slowly piecing itself back together. Omega is safe, Echo might stick around for a while, and Crosshair... Well. Crosshair never makes things easy, but sometimes, he does make them simple. Crosshair wants him. Unfortunately, Hunter has no idea what to do with this information.

AO3

Hunter wasn’t sure how it was quieter with more people on the ship, but somehow, it was.

The tension on the Remora was a far cry from what it’d been on their way to Barton IV. That flight had been filled with a crackling thickness that forced a subdued atmosphere and silent ride.

This was different. Something had changed on the planet, and it wasn’t just that Hunter and Crosshair were on speaking terms again, though that was a small miracle itself. And to think, it had only taken Hunter nearly being eaten by an ice wyrm to make that happen.

Considering how their fights usually went, this one went rather smoothly. No black eyes, no broken bones. No one had even thrown a punch. Hungry beasts were tame in comparison.

Maybe that explained the strange space between them now. Strange, because it was peaceful. Deceptively so. Hunter once again found himself focused on Crosshair wherever he was in the ship, tracking him by scent, sound, and that unique bioelectric signature that belonged only to him.

But he wasn’t going to follow Crosshair like a lost pup, or the shadow Crosshair accused him of being. He wasn’t.

He just… happened to find himself in the same part of the ship as Crosshair. That’s all. Hunter wasn’t thinking about the questions left unanswered. When had Crosshair’s chip actually been removed, why had he killed an Imperial officer, and what had really happened back on that ice planet.

Hunter had watched him place the helmets one by one, arranging them on the crate like a memorial. Something… significant had happened there, and the way Crosshair held one particular helmet wrapped in old bindings filled Hunter’s chest with both a dull ache and a sharp, cold sting.

Hunter refused to think about how he’d never seen Crosshair so tender and careful before. These were strangers to Hunter, but not to Crosshair. He’d lived a whole other life, away from them.

Away from Hunter.

No, he definitely wasn’t thinking about that. He was not thinking about it so hard that he failed to notice Crosshair right in front of him in the corridor, a brow raised at Hunter’s errant wandering.

Or, perhaps, not so errant.

“Following me again, Hunter?”

Hunter scowled, but it was out of embarrassment rather than annoyance as he glanced away from where Crosshair stood conveniently in his path.

“No.”

The brows rose even higher.

“Really.”

“Yeah. Really.”

The silence begged for something to fill it, and Hunter did with a grumbled, “Was just… walking the ship.”

“Uh-huh.”

Hunter’s gaze snapped to his, but Crosshair’s expression was one of vague amusement. There was no resentment or anger. Hunter could admit it was a nice change.

Hunter relaxed, giving a half shrug and a little smile to acknowledge his answer was, perhaps, ridiculous.

“Our ship’s not meant to hold so many people. Guess I wanted to stretch my legs while I had the chance.”

“Didn’t get enough of that with the wyrm trying to bite you on the ass?”

A chuckle startled out of him. He’d missed Crosshair’s sharp tongue and scathing wit, especially when it was used for amicable teasing rather than ripping him to shreds. Oh, how Crosshair excelled at targeting all of Hunter’s weak points.

“That? That was nothing compared to some of the creatures we’ve come across,” Hunter said. “Last one almost swallowed the Marauder whole.”

Crosshair rolled his eyes, his own posture relaxed as he leaned one shoulder against the corridor wall.

“How did you ever survive without me?”

Hunter’s humor faded. Not very well, he could admit to himself.

Crosshair’s amusement also vanished, studying Hunter’s face with closer scrutiny than he was used to. None of the others looked at him that way, or when they tried, like Wrecker had been the last few months, Hunter simply skirted around the observation and pretended everything was fine.

It hadn’t been, for a long time. Only within the past day, the past few hours, did Hunter realize his hope hadn’t been completely extinguished.

“Come on.”

Hunter blinked out of his daze, but Crosshair didn’t wait for him, slipping down the hallway until he disappeared from view. And like a second shadow, Hunter followed.

They ended up in the cargo hold, mostly empty due to Echo being between missions for Rex. There were a handful of crates around, and one was growing a collection of armor as Crosshair was in the middle of stripping off pieces.

Hunter stared, dumbfounded. Clearly, he’d missed a very crucial part of their conversation.

Crosshair looked over his shoulder and gave an amused huff at whatever face he was making. Hunter certainly couldn’t guess.

“How long’s it been since you’ve properly sparred with someone?”

Oh. Sparring.

“Well…”

He tried to think. They hadn’t had much downtime to begin with, but after Omega had been taken and Hunter had focused everything into finding her, he’d had too much time on his hands during their stints in hyperspace. Too much time to think about all the mistakes he’d made and the ways he’d failed. A distraction had been sorely needed, and sparring would have been perfect.

But since it had been only him and Wrecker, and they hadn’t been able to spar with Wrecker for years because of his enhanced strength, something they’d learned after he’d accidentally broken Tech’s collarbone…

So, not since Kamino. Not since… they’d left Crosshair.

“A long time.”

Crosshair hummed, the tone of it not indicating his thoughts one way or another.

“Here’s your chance,” Crosshair said. “Sounds better than pacing the ship, doesn’t it? Especially if we’re just going to keep running into each other.”

Hunter could hear the amused tint of the words, the way Crosshair’s mouth curved even if he couldn’t see it, and it was the kind of teasing that used to drive Hunter mad. He didn’t realize how much he’d missed it until he no longer had it.

Crosshair bent down to slip off his boots, and he chose that moment to look back at Hunter and catch him staring. Now that he’d been staring at anything in particular, he was just—

“Are you going to strip, or do I need to do it for you?”

Hunter looked away, grinding his teeth together.

Little shit.

Sparring did sound like a good way to get rid of this odd tension he couldn’t identify. It wasn’t a bad sort of tension, not the kind he felt after seeing Crosshair again after so long. That shock had been a punch to the gut, especially after the bone-deep relief of having Omega again.

To have her back, and on the heels of that, Crosshair dropping back into their lives had been like a plunge out of hyperspace with a broken hyperdrive.

Reconciling with Crosshair had been what they needed, and everything should be fine now, right? So why did his gut tighten whenever they were in the same room?

Yeah, maybe this was what he needed. A distraction and a way to work off excess energy.

Hunter hadn’t taken off his chest plate since the ice planet, and he did so now, along with his one remaining pauldron. It was hard to imagine all that was left of his old armor was his cuirass, helmet, and greaves. Even his bandana hadn’t survived the blood and violence he and Wrecker had waged for any scrape of information they could find.

His mind had wandered again—he didn’t even notice that Crosshair had moved closer, only a few feet away and stripped down to his blacks. His arms were crossed, but there was a lightness to his face, bordering on mischief.

“How many layers are you wearing?”

Hunter glanced down at himself. He’d gotten past the green vest, and the tan undervest, which left the brown long-sleeved shirt and his bicep pads—

“It’s protection,” Hunter muttered.

“There’s something else that does a better job of that,” Crosshair said, his eyes bright with silent laughter. “You may have heard of it.”

“Katarn-class armor isn’t exactly for sale at the local market.”

“So, you decided to go without? That’s much better.”

Hunter purposefully glared as he stripped the rest of his outfit. It was a good thing they were going to spar soon, Hunter would happily throw the first punch. Though with the amused tilt to Crosshair’s mouth, he wondered if that was the point.

Hunter pulled off his gloves and gauntlets next, making a show of the exposed armor under the maroon bindings. Crosshair rolled his eyes.

“Well, thank the Maker, your arms have protection.”

Little shit, Hunter repeated as he fought down his own smile.

The running commentary didn’t stop when Hunter removed his gun belt, and Crosshair said, “Didn’t realize you like to live so dangerously, Hunter. That thigh-strap is awfully close to your—”

“Are you going to do this the whole time?”

Crosshair released a sharp breath that wasn’t quite laughter but was close enough to fill Hunter’s chest with warmth. He still scowled at the boots he pulled off his feet, though.

“Not if you’d hurry up,” Crosshair purred. “We’ll pick up the reg before you’re even halfway done.”

Hunter let out a soft growl and turned away. His hands kept fumbling with Crosshair staring at him like that, lips slanted in unending delight at Hunter’s discomfort, but his eyes too narrow and watchful, as if each revealed layer required new scrutiny. Hunter fidgeted like a bug under glass.

He hesitated before pulling off his pants. The armor plating was attached to them, so he couldn’t leave them on. Traditionally, they always sparred in their body gloves, it was fairer and prevented any serious injuries besides what they could cause with their own bodies.

He sighed. It wasn’t anything Crosshair hadn’t glimpsed in the communal shower or even in their old barracks. It was fine. It wasn’t strange.

Hunter kept telling himself that as he shucked off his pants and pulled off the last layer of his upper body. What he wore underneath was… a very truncated version of a black body suit. The upper portion only covered his chest and his shoulders, leaving his arms and hands bare.

The bottom half was even more lacking, only covering his groin and upper thighs. It kept him from overheating with all the additional layers, but that wasn’t much of a reassurance when he felt Crosshair’s sharp eyes taking him in from head to foot.

“What?” Hunter folded his arms across his chest—not because he was trying to shield himself from that piercing stare. Definitely not.

“Nothing,” Crosshair said in a way that meant he had many thoughts he could share, none of them he would.

“Right.” Hunter rolled his shoulder, trying to shake off the new tension that had crept up on him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been such a bundle of raw nerves, but it had probably involved Crosshair. It always did. “Any rules?”

“No killing each other.”

“Thought that went without saying.”

Crosshair’s small but toothy smile reminded him of a predator whose hunger had been piqued.

“Just want to be thorough. Other than that, no boundaries.”

Against anyone else that might be good news, Hunter was deadly in close quarters, but Crosshair fought dirty. Suddenly, his bare skin felt a lot more exposed.

“Sounds good to me,” Hunter said, and he hoped none of his trepidation showed. Hunter might be more prone to biting under stress due to his enhancements, but Crosshair was more than happy to dig his teeth into body parts that got too close to his mouth.

Yeah. Hunter was probably coming out of this bloody.

They moved apart nearly at the same moment, their postures slipping into old fighting stances, comfortable in their familiarity. Too many of their battles these days involved blasters or short, brutal fights that relied on aggression rather than finesse.

Hunter was eager for this, he realized, but at the same time… he held back, hesitant, as they circled each other. The last time he’d fought Crosshair, he’d been trying to kill Hunter, cut him open with his own vibroblade. It wasn’t something he could forget, even if he’d forgiven Crosshair.

And he had. His resentment and bitterness had been buried in the snow of Barton IV. But that didn’t mean he knew where they stood now. The hope felt fragile, and he was afraid to break it with a wrong move or misspoken word.

If Crosshair was feeling any hesitation, he neglected to show it. He rolled his eyes and drew Hunter’s attention to the wide space between them.

“I thought we were sparring, not dancing.”

“Come over here, then.”

Crosshair’s lips twitched upward.

“You first.”

It was an invitation if Hunter was ever going to get one. Crosshair was okay with this, really okay with this, even if it got violent. Which… Hunter wasn’t actually interested in. Not that he ever was, but when it was Crosshair trying to force him into submission, all fists and teeth and lanky limbs, it lit a blaze in Hunter that made him more animal than human—

Air exploded from his lungs as Crosshair’s shoulder hit him hard in the gut, dragging them both to the ground. Apparently, the sniper got tired of waiting.

Hunter was quick, flipping Crosshair over his head and scrambling for him, less than graceful on the metal slats instead of their usual padded mats. He might have been hesitant before, but he wasn’t now, driving Crosshair back to the floor with a combination of thrown weight and gravity.

It was a messy, tangled struggle after that. Nearly all their sparring matches devolved into a contest of who could pin the other fastest. Hunter usually won if he didn’t allow Crosshair to grab him from behind. His height and longer limbs gave him the advantage when Hunter couldn’t reach him, though a jab to the ribs and a hook around his ankle almost always got them back on even ground.

Hunter should have won this round too, but there was an intensity to Crosshair that caught him by surprise, and when the sniper pinned him flat on his back, he stayed there. Mostly because he didn’t want to move and lose sight of Crosshair’s peculiar expression.

It was focused, as it usually was, but layered with a dark intensity that made Hunter’s mouth run dry. Crosshair straddled his hips, his fingers curled around Hunter’s wrists, holding them above his head.

Something about this felt… familiar. Back in their cadet days, sparring matches tended to be most often between them, as Tech wasn’t interested and Wrecker was getting too big for them to do it safely.

Not that anything Crosshair and Hunter did could be labeled safe. Their matches would quickly escalate to black eyes, bruises, and bite marks. Until one day it had escalated to something else.

Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. They had just been going through the unpredictable swings of hormones during adolescence, a fact they only knew because Tech gave them almost daily updates on his own bodily changes, and Wrecker would enthusiastically contribute with his own.

Nothing had happened, except two sweaty cadets accidentally brushing their aching erections against each other. And then doing it again. Neither of them speaking about these accidental touches, and if they both hurried off to the showers separately afterwards, that didn’t need to be mentioned, either.

So Crosshair leaning forward and rubbing his hard length against Hunter’s equally stiff erection was a shock to his gut, equally familiar and not. They were no longer naïve cadets, and this was no accident.

“Crosshair,” he choked out.

“Yes?”

Crosshair purred around the word, but his eyes were watchful, nearly to the point of wariness, waiting for Hunter to speak. But he had no idea what the hell he wanted to say, frozen like the proverbial nuna trapped under the nexu.

“I…” Hunter finally stumbled out. “What… are you doing?”

Crosshair’s eyes narrowed.

“I thought it was obvious.”

A comment like that might ordinarily earn Crosshair a glare and sharp retort, but Hunter struggled to find where all his air went.

“We…” He swallowed to get his dry throat some relief. “We can’t…”

Hunter’s appeal for Crosshair to see reason might have been more effective if he didn’t groan when the sniper rolled his hips and rubbed their clothed erections together.

“We can, Hunter.” His eyes blazed, staring straight through him and leaving all his old yearnings exposed. “We can.”

But will you? was the unspoken question Crosshair didn’t voice. Hunter didn’t have an answer to that, either. He was still reeling from the idea that Crosshair even wanted him in this way.

And then Crosshair leaned down, so close that Hunter thought he might kiss him, and he held his breath, frozen. Hunter could—and had—faced down battalions of battle droids without flinching, but the sight of Crosshair’s lips hovering over his might be enough to earn his surrender.

At the last moment, Crosshair changed course, his lips tracing over the dark lines of Hunter’s tattooed jaw until his breath warmed his ear.

“Say yes.”

Hunter closed his eyes. He wanted to, stars, he wanted to. Every inch of his body ached with the need to say yes, but he couldn’t. They’d just gotten Crosshair back. He couldn’t do anything to risk that, wouldn’t do anything that might eventually make him leave.

There had been reasons why Hunter hadn’t given in to temptation when they were cadets or troopers. He could have, oh he could have, so easily with Crosshair. Or possibly with regs who had reminded him of Crosshair, but he hadn’t.

The reasons were different now. He didn’t have to worry about pissing off some Kaminoans with their frigid ideas of “appropriate interpersonal conduct,” and he was no longer a sergeant. No longer a soldier. He wasn’t even their leader anymore, not really.

But he couldn’t… they couldn’t…

The noise that came out of him when Crosshair pressed his mouth to Hunter’s neck was embarrassing, startled and needy.

“Say yes,” Crosshair growled against his skin. Hunter’s ability to think, let alone speak, was shot to hell when he sucked on the spot just under his jawline.

Hunter kept his mouth firmly shut as he tried to find the words to explain why this was a kriffing bad idea, but then Crosshair released his wrists and instead dug his fingertips against Hunter’s chest. He used the leverage to grind down harder, and Hunter could practically see stars.

He knew it then. He wouldn’t say no. He couldn’t deny Crosshair anything, not really. And he wouldn’t deny him this, not when it took all of Hunter’s strength not to flip them over and rut against Crosshair like an animal in heat.

So he kept his hands firmly at his sides, and even that was dangerous with them so close to Crosshair’s long, coltish legs.

Hunter tilted his head further to the side, a show of surrender. It was the best he could offer when a part of him still insisted this was the wrong decision, that neither of them were thinking clearly and Crosshair would regret his actions later. Wasn’t that how they got here to begin with?

But that was only a small part of Hunter. The rest of him relished how Crosshair purred in victory and sucked one last spot on his neck before he sat up. His pupils were blown, and his lips were slightly swollen from the rough treatment to Hunter’s neck.

They looked damned delicious, but before Hunter could consider what would happen if he kissed him, Crosshair shifted upright on his knees. He separated his body glove and tugged the lower half down just enough to free his cock.

He was longer than Hunter but not as thick, and he was already leaking copious amounts of precum. Hunter’s mouth watered at the sight, the scent of Crosshair’s arousal even more potent now, and it was a miracle he could keep his hands to himself and simply watch.

Crosshair pulled down the waistband of Hunter’s suit and pulled out his length. He stared at it with a devouring expression that reminded Hunter of what sometimes happens when he gets too close to Crosshair’s teeth.

And then he’s not thinking anything at all as Crosshair wrapped his long fingers around their shafts and thrust forward. The noise that Hunter made sounded almost painful, a ragged groan and gasp, and he failed to keep his hands frozen at his sides, instead gripping onto Crosshair’s calves as if to steady himself. Or keep him firmly on the ground before he floated off into space.

Crosshair kept going, setting a pace that was neither gentle nor slow. Hunter would have thought he’d been more teasing, drag it out just to watch Hunter squirm, but something in his movements were almost desperate. Frantic.

It was all Hunter could do to brace himself, pleasure zipping up and down his spine at a speed that would leave him ruined. Crosshair’s warm hands, the calluses against his skin, the shock of friction between their lengths.

Yeah, he was ruined.

The buildup was quick after that. Too much time apart, years of unanswered yearning and buried desires, Hunter wasn’t going to last long. His bandana came loose, and Crosshair tugged it off, twisting his fingers in the freed locks of his hair, and pulled.

It was nearly enough to hurt, dancing the line between pleasure and pain until they melded, and Hunter arched his back. He gripped Crosshair’s legs and thrust up once, twice, and spilled over Crosshair’s skilled fingers. Fingers that shook when holding a weapon but were steady now as he carried Hunter through his trembling orgasm.

Something gave way inside him, a dam burst after a lifetime of holding back. The grief of losing Crosshair, the piercing ache of rejection and betrayal, the agony of trying to keep Crosshair at a safe distance upon his return, none of it remained intact. The relief shuddered through him, a soft hitch like a sob in his throat.

Hunter didn’t feel the tears until they trickled into his hairline. He wasn’t… crying… or maybe he was? He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried, possibly when he was a cadet. But something within him had cracked, and the released pressure made him feel boneless, warm, and wonderfully brittle.

It was good. Hunter knew that much. The tension was gone, his senses thrummed in a way that was almost overstimulation, and Crosshair—

—was looking at him with a wide-eyed expression of horror.

Hunter blinked stupidly. Not understanding when Crosshair pulled away, hastily rearranging his body glove to cover himself—and things certainly weren’t clearer when the sniper grabbed his gear and practically fled the room.

Hunter stared at the doorway, half-expecting Crosshair to come back. And wasn’t that a painfully familiar feeling?

He dropped his head, the back of it thudding against the floor, and reluctantly, he put away his softening cock. Hunter grimaced at the stickiness that coated the upper half of his suit, and then he stared at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the ship, waiting for Crosshair’s soft footfalls to return.

They didn’t. Hunter’s heart sank in his chest.

What had he done?

Next Chapter

#Hunter has no idea what to do with this information is an excellent abstract of the series tho #crosshunt #crosshair x hunter #fanfic #cloneship

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