Work Text:
Bly finishes painting his armour with a careful sweep down the side of his vambrace, retouching the marks already there.
The others are doing the same around him, all of them using the downtime to touch up their paint and take care of and replace any of the armour that needs it.
It’s nice, something to help them all relax and Bly keeps a careful eye on his men, making sure they’re okay.
He can’t always check on every single one of them, and even now, the troopers in this room are only a small portion of the troopers under his command, but he will take the check in’s where he can get them.
It’s as Bly is setting his armour aside to let it dry that he hears a quiet commotion.
It starts as just the usual quiet ribbing before there’s a burst of laughter and Bly looks over, eyebrow raised, just in time to see Shiv, paint on his forehead and playful revenge in his eyes, paint a stripe across Pike’s nose.
Pike splutters and waves his brush frantically at Shiv and ducks behind Rue with an exaggerated cry of “Cover!”
Bly snorts, and Shiv turns to face him, blinks and smiles, perfectly innocent and a complete lie, “Commander.”
Bly gives him the most judgemental stare he can as he bites back his laughter and Shiv doesn’t even flinch, radiating innocence out of his shebs like the lying liar he is.
“There a problem?” Bly asks and Shiv shakes his head, smile like sunshine.
“No, Sir!”
Bly shrugs, bites back his own grin, and says evenly, “Well, alright then. Carry on.”
Shiv gives him a vicious grin that Bly can feel, deep in his soul, means everything is about to go to shit in a spectacular fashion.
Shiv turns and with a righteous flick of his hand, splashes paint into Pike’s hair. It splatters onto Galle’s face and Galle gives a shout. His paintbrush falls onto Razor’s blacks and Razor growls and lunges for Shiv.
The paint splatters on another vod and soon there’s paint being flung everywhere, the armour set aside and out of range.
Bly sighs, lips twitching up and he shakes his head in mock disappointment, “Delinquents,” he laments, “the lot of you!”
Galle snorts, flicks a rude hand sign at Bly and he snorts, “Oh go kark yourself, Galle.”
“Oh sure, Sir!” Galle calls back cheerfully, avoiding Razor’s hand, “Right after you clean that paint up!”
Bly has a second of thinking, ‘What paint?’ before the hair on the back of his necks stands up and he moves just in time to avoid getting a faceful of paint, gets it on his blacks instead, curses viciously.
“Oh!” Bly hears, jerks around to see Aayla blinking, paint covered, and staring at the lot of them in shock and something shading towards amusement.
Aayla grins, brings her hands up to wipe at the paint splattered across her cheeks and arms, and Bly holds his breath.
She looks at them all, an amused glint in her eyes and takes a step towards them, “I must say, it looks like we will be in need of more paint if the Shinies have any hope of getting some soon.”
Bly scoffs as Galle cackles out from behind him, “Don’t worry General! There’s plenty of paint left for the kiddos.”
There’s a squawk, and Bly looks back just in time to see Tase—one of said shinies, and fresh out of their first engagement—duck the arm Galle tries to throw over their shoulders.
“Oh c’mon LT, I just said—”
Galle grimaces, “Right, sorry Shiny, I’ll remember next time.”
Tase shrugs, twists their fingers in a Thanks, and then frowns, “I’m not a Shiny anymore!”
Galle laughs and Bly huffs, “Until we get more shinies, you still count Tase.”
Tase groans as the others laugh.
They turn pleading eyes up to Aayla, “General?” they ask, all hope and innocence and tooka eyes to try and sway her to their side.
Aayla laughs, high and clear, “I’m sorry Tase,” she says, humour clear, “But it seems like it’s already been decided.”
Aayla turns back to Bly, a smile on her face and she lets out a quiet laugh, “Oh dear,” she says, steps into Bly’s space like a question, waits for Bly to nod before following through with the movement.
She brings her hands up and cups Bly’s face in her small hands. Her smile bright and eyes glinting with amusement, her thumbs settled gently on his cheeks.
“You have some paint,” she says, and sweeps her thumbs up his cheeks, “right there.”
Bly blinks, looks at her paint covered thumbs and realizes what happened.
“General!” he squawks, and Aayla laughs, that bright clear note ringing out as she dances away from him.
The men around him all laugh and Bly can’t help the grin that spreads across his face.
(On their next leave, after they’ve landed on Coruscant and Bly has been dragged to a tattoo parlour by his brothers after a drink or two, he remembers the feeling of small hands on his cheek, and the sweep of thumbs is like an imprint upon his skin in his memory.
When he takes his helmet off for the first time afterward, after it’s all healed and they are back on deployment, Aayla does a double take.
Her eyes widen and she blinks, eyes on the sweeps of gold on Bly’s cheeks.
Bly doesn’t look at the rest of his men, knows already that they are going to be insufferable when they put the pieces together, but Bly doesn’t regret it.
Can’t, when Aayla has that look on her face, precious and awed.
For this, he doesn’t mind being teased, not when he only has eyes for her.
She steps up to him, and in a replication of that moment full of laughter and warmth and love in the middle of a war, she cups his face in her hands, thumbs ghosting over the sweeps of gold on his cheeks.
He grins, knows his cheeks are flushed and can’t bring himself to care when she looks at him like that, like he is something to be adored.
“You got a little something there,” she whispers, voice breathy with laughter and something else.
Bly laughs, nods, “Figured I might as well get something that meant something to me if I was gonna get a tattoo.”
The look on Aayla’s face is all happiness and Bly grins, brings a hand up to hold one of hers, squeezes it gently.
The look on her face makes it more than worth all of the teasing.)