Spaceships and Stormtroopers

“Are you crazy? That amount of-“

“Yes!”

Quentin blinked at the sheer force of Tony’s interruption.

Tony’s chest heaved up and down, angry puffs of air coming from his nose like a scorned horse.

“Yes, I know! Lightspeed jumps can overpower the average pilot! But while following orders isn’t my strong suit, everyone and their mother knows I am not the average pilot!” Tony glared up at him, daring Quentin to deny it.

Quentin sighed, rubbing his chin and thinking it over. “You’re overcompensating. If you mess this one up, too, you’ll have escalated the situation from not only endangering those children to outright killing them.”

Tony peered up at him with wide brown eyes. “I won’t. Trust me. What other options do we have? We don’t have any other pilots available that can pull off half the shit I do!”

Quentin thought deeply for a few moments before growling and taking Stark’s obnoxious red and gold visor from the table, shoving it into his chest with a thump and a glare. 

“Don’t fuck this up,” He snarled. Tony had the audacity to salute and smirk at him again.

“Roger, roger,” He intoned before bolting from the room.

Quentin sighed and messaged the two bases to prepare themselves for immediate extraction. He fidgeted before sending it off without a signature, not wanting to be blamed for loss if it occurred.

He knew that Tony Stark was a good pilot. Anyone with an ear to listen knew it.

However, knowing of someone’s skills versus putting them to the test were two different things. If Stark was half the pilot the Resistance believed him to be, then the children would be fine.

If he wasn’t…

Quentin sighed and sat down, opening a link to Stark’s ship.

“I haven’t even reached the planet yet. I’m still in hyperspeed.” Came the immediate snarky comment.

Quentin’s fingers drummed against his thigh nervously. “You’ll have to excuse my caution. There’s a lot riding on this mission.”

“Oh, so when I tell you I’m planning my own mission, it’s ‘crazy,’ but when you do it, it’s an actual mission?”

“Stark,” Quentin growled.

Laughter echoed through the link, and Quentin relaxed a little at the confidence Stark displayed before tensing right back up again, thoughts whirling quickly.

What if he’s confident because he’s accepted his fate? He’s going to die. Of course he is, no pilot can make that many jumps in a ship like that. It’s falling apart. Those children are going to die.

Quentin let out a strangled growl, brushing back his hair and nearly pulling it out in stress. 

I miss not being able to think.

Quentin winced. No, that wasn’t quite true, he reflected. He liked having a choice in his life, intimidating as it was.

One of the new things he liked a lot was sitting and standing however he liked. He slouched, crossed his legs, leaned forward or back, even put his hands on his hips at times. It was a small thing to be thrilled about, but perfection and poise wasn’t necessary anymore, so Quentin got satisfaction from deviating from his original training. His growing hair, no longer squished under a helmet, spoke volumes of how he had rebelled.

Privately, Quentin liked to run his hands through it, and he knew very well that there were jealous members wishing it was theirs.

But sometimes, choice was intimidating. Was he supposed to just… have preferences? How much pressure was he supposed to put into handshakes? Why did people pretend to go in to shake his hand, only to pull him into odd embraces? Did it really matter whether or not he preferred the color green over the color red? Who cared about card games? He had never eaten those foods before, why would he have a favorite?

Quentin was scared of the new things he had discovered, especially things that were considered innate knowledge by many.

He was pulled from his thoughts when Stark spoke up again, having arrived at the first base. 

“You know, I expected more of the little bastards when I arrived. There’s only around twelve of them.”

Quentin nodded, typing that out in a report. “If that’s all of them, then it doesn’t matter the quantity, as long as they’re all on the ship and ready to leave. There’s a chance the rest were taken out already by other Resistance members.”

Stark gave a grunt of acknowledgement, and the flicking of switches was heard. 

“Oi, you little brats, settle down and buckle the fff- buckle up! We’re going into lightspeed and it’s gonna get bumpy!”

Quentin heard scrambling noises and turned his attention back to the messages he was sending to the other base. They had around thirty, and Quentin chewed his lip thoughtfully.

“Stark, how many more do you think you can fit in your ship?”

The pilot was quiet in thought for a moment before he yelled to the children. “You’re all fine with squeezing together, right? We still have a lot more to go.”

Quentin listened to the answers, wincing when he heard a few children say “yes, sir.” So they had had to endure some training, then. He recognized the monotone response well. Trying to ignore it, he turned back to message the next base to prepare for retrieval.

“Stark, you’re still sure you want to go in one run-”

“You and I both know it’d be obvious I was ferrying something if I split it into two. Now let me collect the little womp-rats and get ready to tend to them.”

Quentin sighed and sent an affirmative, mentally counting up the available bunks. Unfortunately for the Resistance but luckily for the children, more than a few members had been lost in a recent attack, so there were just barely enough to house them.

“Shit.” Came suddenly through the link. Quentin lurched forward.

“What? What is it?”

“I’ve got a tail. I need to commence the lightspeed jumps, but they might- hey, Quentin?”

“What?”

“Can you scramble my signal? Cover my tracks so they can’t tell where I’m going?”

Quentin breathed out, picking at his shirt anxiously. “I might be able to.”

“There’s no might. I know it’s difficult, but there’s a lot riding on this mission.”

Quentin couldn’t help the amusement that bubbled up from Stark parroting his earlier words.

“Okay, I’ll do it. Talk to me, though, tell me where you’re going.” Quentin cracked his knuckles and leaned forward, ready to muddy the transmissions.

“Got it, sir.”

Over the next fifteen minutes, though the tension made it feel like an hour with no respite, Quentin diligently fogged up Tony’s signals, screwing with the GPS and making sure the tail wouldn’t be able to follow.

He hated to admit it, but they worked efficiently together. A steady stream of rambling chatter was kept up by Tony, just in case the tail listened to his calls somehow. Quentin made sure that to everyone but him, the audio would short out and Tony’s inane babbling was made indecipherable.

It was different from his squadron back when he was still a stormtrooper, whose roles were always preassigned with no real motivation behind working and shooting other than following orders.

It felt good to use his skills to help, and by the end of the mission, both of them had developed a small amount of respect for the other.

“Landing soon.”

Quentin hummed and alerted some others that had been privy to the non-general approved mission to prepare to tend to the children. There were around forty, and each of them likely hadn’t had a decent meal outside of soldier rations. 

The high whirr of Stark’s ship suddenly pierced the air, and Quentin walked briskly out to greet the pilot.

The man’s hair was mussed and wild, and a bright grin was on his features. He almost looked expectant. What for, Quentin didn’t know.

Quentin offered him a hesitant smile, brilliant and rare. “Good work, pilot.”

Tony beamed after a short moment, saluting him and tucking his helmet under his arm.

“It was my pleasure, sir.” Quentin suddenly felt uncomfortable from the full force of Stark’s pearly white teeth flashing at him. An odd mix of joy and embarrassment thudded in his chest, so Quentin did what he did best.

He left to go do something else.

“Mr. Beck, are there any more fighting lessons here?” A young girl asked, swinging her legs from the bunk she had chosen. Quentin put down another mat on a cot to soften it. 

“No.”

The girl wasn’t satisfied. “I like the pilot man.”

Quentin chuckled, recalling the names Tony had used to describe the children as a whole. “Poor choice.”

The girl picked at her tunic. “I thought we were all gonna be ‘Troopers. Was scared of them.”

Quentin paused. “Well, you won’t be one now.”

The girl smiled brightly and chucked a pillow at his head, laughing in delight when he threw it back roughly.

Quentin rolled his eyes, unrolling another mat and getting smacked in the head by a pillow. The children present laughed and giggled.

“Womp-rats,” Quentin muttered under his breath, chucking it back one more time, privately delighting in the laughter he earned.

Tony slumped against the wall outside, patting himself on the back for a job well done. He rested his head against the bricks, closing his eyes.

The trooper had smiled at him.

Tony grumbled to himself, scratching his chin. It was just a thankyou. It wasn’t anything more, even if Tony’s heart stuttered a bit when he saw it. The man had absolutely loathed him just that morning, why was Tony so eager for approval?

Maybe it was because Tony only very rarely encountered people who didn’t like him, who weren’t swayed by his charm. Maybe it was that.

Maybe it was because underneath those furrowed brows, Beck was actually a good looking fellow. Tony was glad he ditched the helmet.

Shaking his head at the thought, Tony pushed off of the wall, walking tiredly to his ship for a drink and a nap, trying to ignore how loudly the children were laughing at whatever Quentin was doing.

Not my type anyway. He thought, unwillingly slowing down in front of where the door to the sleeping quarters was ajar, dull thuds from pillowing sounding out along with the ringing laughter of children.

Through the door, Tony could spy Quentin being pelted with pillows, weakly shielding himself with a startled and bemused look on his normally grumpy face, the same hesitant grin he had shot at Tony growing wider.

Quentin caught Tony’s eye through the gap, blushing in embarrassment and turning away. Tony couldn’t help but laugh quietly, walking off to his ship with a bounce in his step and a warm feeling in his stomach, pretending like his whole type hadn’t just shifted to feature a stormtrooper with a smile.