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The air that Boost’s life support systems are pumping into his helmet is starting to run thin.
Over comms, Sinker’s breathing has been speeding up steadily for the past few minutes. His gasps are rabbiting in Boost’s ears, high and reedy and entirely too loud, a testimony to his slightly more elevated metabolic rate that’s already cost him the pigments in his hair.
It might cost him much more, now. They all might be about to pay a steep price for needing to breathe, actually.
General Plo Koon’s silence is unsettling, though the sideways tilt to his head suggests he’s keeping an eye on Wolffe in the Force. For all that his chest is tightening further with every breath, Boost feels a pleasant sort of warmth spreading through it at the sight.
We’re just clones, sir. We’re meant to be expendable.
Not to me.
The general’s been nothing but good to them all. Even if it’s Wolffe’s, Sinker’s and Boost’s shared fate to die, Boost hopes that at least the general’s air might last long enough for him to survive and be given a new battalion to treat with the same unabashed kindness.
For now, though, they’re still alive, and Boost doesn’t know whether it’s his own faltering breath or Sinker’s that’s making his heart beat faster. His vision is going fuzzy at the edges, too, reducing what he can see to the red gas giant looming beyond the field of debris that used to be the Triumphant. The null-gravity of space is always disorienting, but Boost’s internal organs have never felt as queasily disoriented on a spacewalk as as right now.
And next to him, only two arm’s lengths away, Sinker is still audibly struggling to breathe.
Boost could turn off his receiving comms, or leave the channel entirely. So he doesn’t have to listen to Sinker losing it…to Sinker dying. So Sinker doesn’t have to do the same for him in return.
Instead, Boost wets his lips—it helps exactly nothing to make them feel less cracked—and croaks against the ache in his lungs, “Hey, Sink. Think you were right after all. I should’ve taken that bath—it really is getting hard to breathe in here now.”
At first, a wheeze that doesn’t sound very different from Sinker struggling to breathe is all that answers him. Then, Sinker’s caustic voice filters through his earpiece. “Oh, shut up, you. You know I liked you just fine even though you never shower.”
Liked. Like they’re already dead.
Boost’s head is starting to ache something fierce. He risks a glance sideways even though it feels like he’ll slip and lose his grip if he so much as lifts a finger. Through the white noise crowding his vision, he sees Sinker half curled in on himself, clinging to the escape pod. Despite Sinker’s hardshell armor, Boost can spot the frantic heave and sink of his chest, trying to pull in air that’s already wasted.
Behind him, there’s nothing but the deep, dark endlessness of space. It makes Sinker look so tiny, nothing but a fleck of starlight among the black, a dust mote trapped in a sunbeam.
Boost needs to catch him. Needs to hold him, needs to pull him back from this abyss for just a few heartbeats so it can consume the both of them at the same time instead of having to watch Sinker fall into it.
Boost reaches out his hand. And reaches.
And reaches.
Suddenly, Sinker is so very far away.
“Sink—” Boost presses out, and Sinker’s head snaps toward him. Boost catches a glimpse of Sinker’s eyes behind his visor, wide and bloodshot and looking about as scared as Boost feels.
Sinker flails toward him in turn, then, kicking out as he struggles to stretch that far. Boost doesn’t know what the general’s doing, if he’s watching. It doesn’t matter. The distance between them is closing, they’re falling toward each other like two stars caught in each other’s gravity well, and Boost just has to touch Sinker, touch him one last time as his thoughts fog over and his lungs seize up and his vision darkens—
Blinding white light pierces the dark of space and oblivion, slams into Boost’s cornea. Sinker’s fingers slip through his, pearling off the synthleather of his glove like water, and Boost cries out with what little air he has left in his lungs.
Reverberating down the comms, Sinker does the same.
A sideways motion almost makes Boost lose his one-handed grip on the structure of the escape pod. He holds on, clings to the hull with the last sparks of strength fizzing through his veins.
Then, gravity returns.
Boost’s grip slips and fails him. He hits the floor, hard. Next to him, Sinker does the same in a clatter of armor plating and limbs, while on the other side of the pod, it sounds like not even their Jedi general is doing much better.
But Boost only has eyes for Sinker. His fingers seize up as he moves, and he has to try twice to get them hooked under the edge of his bucket so he can disable the seal and lift, lift the suddenly unfathomably heavy and smothering thing right off his head. It clatters to the ground somewhere, unseen. Boost’s head spins with a sudden rush of clear, clean air, makes the world tilt on its axis around him. Through it all, he crawls over to Sinker—Sinker, who’s levering his own helmet off his head and slumping against the hull of the escape pod, breathing in galloping bouts.
Their breaths mingle when Boost reaches Sinker, folds his palm over the nape of Sinker’s neck and pulls until their foreheads meet, gently. Up close like this, Sinker’s lips are bloodless, almost ashen gray with a lack of air. Boost severely doubts that he’s looking any better himself.
Still, Sinker sobs out a single “Boost!” and presses forward, into the touch.
Someone—or several someones—is talking, standing over them. A med droid’s claw swims into view out of the corners of Boost’s eyes.
He keeps his attention on Sinker, who’s gripping him back with all his might.
They breathe together.
Until an unusually luminous grin splits Sinker’s face, and he mutters, “I was right. You smell awful. Tell the droid to give you a sponge bath later.”
Boost doesn’t bite the wounded noise in his throat back down. “I thought you liked me.”
“Boost…” His name is a soft exhale of precious air past Sinker’s lips, a gentle touch of Sinker’s hand on his elbow, squeezing. “I do.”
This time, when Boost’s air supply is cut off, he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t fight it. He just lets his eyes slip closed, threads his fingers into the pale hair at the nape of Sinker’s neck…and kisses back.