Does Narinder Need A Bath?

Cody hugs his brother close, hoping it would be enough to stave off the nightmares. He knows it won’t, not when he can feel Fox’s fingers twitching against his chest, curling around his shirt in tiny bundles. He raises a hand to his vod’ika’s hair, brushing it back while shushing gently.

“It’s okay, Fox,” he murmurs quietly. “You’re safe now. It’s all okay.”

His brother’s hands never still but his breathing has evened out from the small gasping from before. Cody can’t help but tuck his brother’s face into his neck, pretending that the water on his face wasn’t tears. Maybe if he closes his eyes and wishes hard enough, he’ll wake up to them being cadets, before the war separated them, before Coruscant wore down his little brother to exhaustion, before they realized they were only pawns in a Sith’s play for power.

Cody wishes they could go back to when they were small, barely decanted for a day but already cuddling in a pile with their batchmates. At least then they still had faith in each other despite barely meeting for more than a couple of minutes, rather than distrust and hatred thrown around for no reason other than to separate them.

Cody stares across the medbay to where his other batchmates lay, wounded and exhausted from the fight but still alive. More alive than how they found Fox.

Wolffe sends a questioning look, a small sign with his hands and Cody nods. He squeezes his brother close and breathes out.

Fox’ika will be alright. Cody will make sure of it. After all, it’s his duty as Ori’vod and he has a couple of years to catch up on.

An alien desires to 'court' another alien, of the race called humans. The human is desirable in every way: talented in multiple skills, professional and domestic, with soft, squishy flesh and an eagerness to learn - the alien could go on and on, but people complain when the alien talks about their 'crush', as other humans call it

The problem is, the alien's species relies on scents and pheromones for communication. Their first meeting with the human was during a crisis, and their natural scent was strong, sweat mixing with that fabled human instinct to survive with all members of their extended pack alive, too. No other human smelled quite like this one. It sent the alien's hearts a-flutter, and shivers through their many wings.

But now? The human smells different, and not in a normal human way. One week, citrus and palm fruits from the black jungles of the planet Cerib. Another week, exotic vanilla from their origin planet, with something warm and spicy the alien can't place. Lavender and honey from Blackcurrant bees. Something juicy like apples. Something this, something that, and they're all beautiful scents - but it's not the human's scent, and they can't really smell their emotions through it. Frustrating.

One day, the alien sulks, watching their desired one rush past, tablet in hand. They smell like sweetened coffee and chocolate - the latter a romantic treat to humans, and a reminder of how far they are from that romance to the alien. The human next to them breathes in the scent, and smiles.

"Man, (name's) got some great perfume on today," they say.

The alien lifts their head. "Perfume?"

A little research later, and things suddenly make sense. They'd heard about perfume before, the human wasn't the only one to wear scents, but they'd been so lovelorn they hadn't used their brain. But that wasn't important. What mattered was that humans used perfume and similar products to draw in desired partners.

Two can play at that game.

Three days later, the alien walks in to their normal location. To their surprise, the human their hearts are set on rushes towards them, calling their name.

"I'm so sorry!" They apologize. They aren't wearing any scents today. "I didn't realize my perfume might be messing with your senses. I've switched it out with another type that you'll find easier to deal with. I was just trying to..."

They trail off. The alien waits, hopeful. A new scent spikes from the human.

"Is that... Cinnamon?"

"With a little bit of Ophelion flower, and Soljoiner lemon," the alien says, smiling like the humans do. "I got inspired by your choices."

A hesitation. "Do you like it?"

The human breathes in deep. From them, now the alien can sense what they've wanted. Interest.

"You smell amazing," the human says. The glow in their eyes as they look at the alien, well, the alien adds that to their list of all the reasons they want the human as a partner.

"Are you sure you know what you're getting into?" Another alien says later, at the communal garden. "Humans are hardcore."

The alien looks across the way to the human of their hearts. They are smiling, they smell a bit like the alien now, from their hug.

"For that one? It's worth it."

If you’re taking prompts, can you do something with Jimmy overworking himself to the point of exhaustion and the other empires step in? I love sickfics with hurt/comfort.

Did I write this in less than an hour? Yes. It was wonderful. I've also posted the oneshot here on my Ao3 account!! Thanks so much for the prompt!

Jimmy wasn't sure quite what had happened, but he knew that he hadn't been in his bed with his cats sleeping on him the last time he opened his eyes.

Even more, he knew that no one lived with him, so the sounds of people downstairs and the smells of food coming from his kitchen were unusual and somewhat startling. He didn't quite have the energy to panic about it, however. So he pulled himself out of bed and began padding down the stairs, Norman cradled in his arms as Flick scampered along behind him.

Coming down to the base of the staircase, Jimmy blinked as he took in the sight of Sausage and Scott cooking in his kitchen as Lizzie and Joel played with Hermes in his living room. Shelby, Katherine, and Joey were sat on his couch near them as they seemed to be repairing his armor, which caused him to realize that the familiar weight of the protective gear wasn't pushing him down. Pixlriffs and Fwhip were going through some sort of paperwork over at his kitchen table. False was tinkering with his elytra and chatting with both of them. Gem and Oli had joined Sausage and Scott in the kitchen, but instead of cooking, they were pulling things out of storage and putting them back, presumably to sort the items.

"What are you all doing here?"

"Jimmy!" The rulers seemed to clamor over themselves to acknowledge the sheriff, causing the man to pull back from the attention. As he stepped back, his ankle caught the lowest stair, causing him to slip backward and land on his butt, now propped up by the fact that he was sitting on the third stair up from the floor.

"Everyone give him some space," Fwhip instructed, the man's voice carrying an edge that they didn't often see from the admin. "Jimmy, I found you collapsed out by the train. We were worried."

"Collapsed?" After a moment of thought, the story didn't surprise Jimmy as much as it should have. He had been over near the train earlier to deal with a few tasks that had cropped up, but he couldn't remember ever leaving the area.

"Have you been feeling okay, Sheriff?" Gem asked gently, approaching slowly and putting the back of her hand on Jimmy's forehead. The cool feel of her hand was soothing and Jimmy's eyes slipped shut only for him to hear: "Oh, Jimmy, you're burning up."

"I'll be fine. I've got stuff to do, gotta finish Tumble Town."

Gem frowned, unseen by the man in front of her, "You shouldn't be pushing yourself, Jimmy. You need to rest. If you've got a fever, you're not going to get better unless you allow yourself time to heal."

"Don't have time though. Already behind, not going to finish at this rate."

"What do you need to finish? If we can help, then maybe you could rest?" Katherine offered.

Jimmy frowned, a moment of uncertainty as he tried to figure out what to say, "Need to... need, uh, I have a list. It's in my vest pocket?"

Shelby recovered the article of clothing from the pile of garments that she sat next to, pulling a set of papers out of the pocket. It was then that everyone realized that it was not one page, but several, filled completely with to-do lists and duties that the sheriff had taken on.

Flipping through the pages, the witch finally looked up at Jimmy with concern etched into her features, "When do you find time to sleep, Jimmy?"

"But I just did?"

"You passed out!"

"But, I was sleeping? I had things to do, empire to run. You know how it is," Jimmy's nonchalance only seemed to concern his fellow rulers more, which confused him greatly.

"Jimmy, look at me?" Pix requested, drawing the younger man's attention his way. "Your health is always more important than your empire. Or anything else. You were collapsed on the ground in the middle of the day in the mesa. That can be dangerous."

"I have to finish my work though?"

"Jimmy, most of us don't even do all the things on this list. And you have things listed to do in other empires to help us."

"I'm the Sheriff. I have to make sure that everyone else's empires are safe and their citizens are doing well. Chromia's had a pillager problem recently and there's a spider nest that I haven't cleared out yet near the Eversea."

“You apparently also check in on some of our villagers at least once a week. And you have a task listed here that just says ‘double food supply’. Has Tumble Town been having trouble getting food?”

“Doesn’t really rain a lot here, crops don’t grow super well. We’ve got enough, but there’s some new families that have moved in and Lyra and Sara both had children last season. We’ve got more mouths to feed, but it’s been a bad harvest so far. Not really looking good going forward.”

“Oh Jimmy, you know I’ve got extra food. Dawn had a good harvest this year, we could easily help you!”

“Right. Yeah,” Jimmy agreed, though the vibrancy seemed to drop out of his voice.

Scott blinked, set down the utensils in his hand, and left the kitchen. He grabbed Jimmy’s chin with just enough force to direct the man’s movements, but not enough to hurt, moving the man’s gaze upward.

“You are not failing your empire. You are not failing us. You are doing everything you can and that’s enough. You don’t have to do extra things to make up for whatever you think you’re not doing. Jimmy, you are doing so well. But we’re worried because you’re doing so much extra that it’s hurting you.”

Jimmy searched Scott’s eyes for some hint as to the level of honesty that the collector was showing. Finding no sign of a lie, Jimmy began to blink back the tears of exhaustion that were finally making their appearance, the sheriff unable to hold them back any longer.

“Scott, I’m so tired.” The sheriff's words were weak, but the admittance and honesty rang loudly through the already quiet house.

Scott smiled gently, “Go rest, we’ve got you.”

The thing is, with our skeletons the way they are, humans can bend. We make a point of becoming more flexible, bending this way and that and sometimes it for sure can look like we’ve got no structure. A lot of alien races are fascinated with how we move and bend because sometimes its so fluid. 

Especially in fights. 

They see us thrown against walls, flying through the air, our limbs bending in, what to us is unnatural ways, but the aliens don’t know we aren’t supposed to do that. To them, we seem like ragdolls, our bodies flopping and waving all over the place. They’re not gentle with us, throwing us over their shoulders in the rush to retreat and get back to the base, and even when not in a fight, they tend to throw us around with wild abandon (its usually no big deal, most humans think its hilarious and fun and no one really minds.)

And then they find out about our bones. 

Its a quiet, tense moment. A team had been dispatched to ‘ease the switch in political leaders’ on one of the more difficult inner planets and the current monarch was not having it. In a final attempt to keep control, the monarch had thought using one of the humans on the team as a  hostage was a good idea. They’re holding the human in a way that would look painful, arm twisting too far and the monarch is shouting, demanding that they be left in control. The others on the team are just grinning because if the monarch is threatening to break the human, they’re in for a big surprise. Humans don’t have a structure. They flop around as they please, held steady as simply a mass of meat!

The monarch, it seems, doesn’t like to be laughed at. The pull, and twist and-

SSS-NAP

And the human is screaming, their face contorted in pain. The monarch jerks the arm around. An audible -pop- fills the room, and the team hear it just over the screams of their friend. Then comes the other arm -SNAP- and the leg -CRACK-

The human is bent, but…its in a way that the others have seen often and isn’t that…isn’t that fine? Aren’t they supposed to do that? What was that horrible snap? As it turns out, one can’t hear very well the snapping of bones in the pandemonium of battle. 

Everyone’s a bit quiet, struck by the shouts of pain and sobs coming from their human before finally, mercifully, they pass out. Then all hell breaks loose. The rest of the team dispatch the monarch with unusual ease and entirely too quickly. Then, as gently and slowly as they can, they pick up the human. The angles of their limbs look sickening to them now, and they bring them back to the base where, for once, they actually stay in the medical bay to watch them be patched up and their bones reset. 

From then on, they are much more careful with their human companion and feel the proper amount of horror and concern upon seeing them thrown about in a fight. Still, it takes some time to convince them that yoga is an alright thing to do and that no, Susan is a contortionist, her body CAN do that. 

I am now in the dorms and am surprised at how well this came out. I already have an idea for the next few, so look out for those!

Thanks for the tag @chopper-base !

Uh-oh…..

No pressure tags!

@spicylasat @catawampuscorner @laelish @smhalltheurlsaretaken @tattycoram @padawansuggest

Quotev

Who Are Your Star Wars Parents?

Have you ever wondered who your parents would be if you where in the Star Wars galaxy? Well wonder no further! Now updated to include couple

I got tagged by @locitapurplepink! Thank you. I got Kanan and Hera as well, which not gonna lie, is very accurate.

Tagging but no pressure: @unstableskywalker, @zephyrmonkey, @kanerallels, @laughingphoenixleader, @accidental-spice, @sidesofmayo, @thirteenmyspacegirl and anyone else who wants to play!!!

Was a plo koon warmup initially as suggested by @pro-fangirls-unsocial-life when I encountered this dialogue idea from @totallycorrectjediorderquotes and it went overboard from there! The “Protocol” number is indeed a reference to something in star wars, so I’m curious to see if anyone figures it out!

Why is kallamar so hard to draw...

#I LOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THE 212TH #BUT ESPECIALLY THAT ONE THAT JUST JUMPS ON A SPIDER DROID #YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO GO THAT HARD MY FRIEND BUT I LOVE YOU FOR IT

RIP to my home boy Wolffe