M/M slash in later chapters. Please don't read if this isn't your thing! This was supposed to be PWP for clicketykeys but it instead became a full and proper story in its own right. This is from Corso's POV.

Arkanesh is incredibly nimble, scrambling up the steep hillsides like he was born to it. I'm hard-pressed to keep focused on the climb when all I want to be doing is watching the way his muscles move under his tight pants. I bite the inside of my lip and force myself to concentrate. It's quite a fall if I lose my grip.

Above me, Arkanesh scrambles up over the lip of the ridge and then his hand is reaching down to help me up. I grip his wrist and he leans back, hauling me up the last couple of feet. We both pause at the top, panting softly as we catch our breaths, and look out at the valley spread below us.

The spaceport and Drelliad village are behind us and to our left. Fort Garnik is straight ahead, with the road snaking along the base of the cliff we've just climbed. It twists through a series of jagged hills, but we're above it all. Arkanesh scrambles forward, hopping over crevasses and dodging boulders and I tag along behind him, rifle out. I don't think we're in danger of finding any Seps up here. We scoped it out pretty good from the ground and didn't spot anybody. I guess they didn't want to put the effort into the climb when they could hit their targets just as well from the lower hills.

Arkanesh has stopped ahead of me. He motions for me to approach and I do so quietly. He stretches out on his stomach under a low, scrubby bush and I wiggle in beside him. He points down and I see three men in a tumble of boulders ten feet below us. One of them has a sniper rifle, and the other two have rifles. They're talking and laughing, their voices carrying easily up to us.

"Did you see that last one?" the one with the sniper rifle laughs. His blond hair is pulled back in a messy tail and his nose is sunburned. "It was like a ripe melon. Pow!" His hands shoot outwards, pantomiming an explosion. The other two men laugh with him. I feel Arkanesh tensing beside me.

He turns his head and presses his lips to my ear. Despite the danger and the anger coursing through me, I feel a shiver at his closeness. "I'll take the sniper, if you can keep the other two off me," he whispers, a bare breath of air against my cheek.

I nod, not daring to look at him. He's so close that I'm sure my lips would brush against his if I turned my head. I can still feel his breath on my skin and I swallow convulsively. His lips touch my ear again but he doesn't say anything. I have to bite my lip when he pulls away. This is really not the time or the place.

Arkanesh squirms slowly out from under the bushes and I shift carefully to bring my rifle to bear on the Seps below us. They're making enough noise that any sound we make is covered. I'm trying really hard not to listen to what they're saying.

I feel fingers grip my ankle. "Ready?" Arkanesh murmurs from behind me and I nod, flicking the safety off. I take aim at the nearest man. He's got brown hair, cut short, and is wearing a pair of goggles with tinted lenses but he has them pushed up on his forehead. They're not doing him any good up there - he's squinting against the sun. He doesn't seem real smart.

I hear a faint scuff from behind me, then Arkanesh takes two running steps and launches himself off the ridge. That was definitely not what I was expecting. He hasn't even drawn his pistol. He's got a vibroknife in his right hand and I can hear it hum to life as he lands on the sniper. The man shrieks in surprise and pain before Arkanesh's knife cuts through his throat. There's a bright splash of blood and the sudden silence is deafening.

I shake myself out of my surprise and squeeze the trigger as Goggles starts to move. My blaster bolt catches him right in the face. I'm swinging my rifle to my next target before he even falls. The other Separatist, a young dark-skinned man with a shaved head and a series of pale tattoos on his scalp, is lifting his blaster to take a shot at Arkanesh. The captain is too far away to close the distance with his knife, and the tattooed man is already squeezing the trigger.

My rifle bucks against my shoulder, but the tattooed Separatist fires before the bolt hits him. He collapses in a heap but Arkanesh is down too. His vibroknife clatters to the rocks and he's down on his knees. One hand is pressed to the sun-baked stone to support him, and the other is curled protectively over his ribs.

"Captain!" I jerk myself free of the clinging branches and skid down the steep cliff. I nearly fall but somehow manage to make it down without breaking my neck and crouch beside Arkanesh. My hands hover over him, not sure what to do. "Are you okay?"

"More or less," he grits out and I cautiously settle one of my hands on his back. "Help me up."

I let him sling his free arm over my shoulder and pull him to his feet. He hisses and straightens up as much as he's able. "Let me see," I tell him, pushing his jacket open. There's a hole burned through it, and his shirt beneath, but the blaster bolt looks like it just skimmed the left side of his ribs. A red stain is spreading across his white shirt. "That doesn't look good," I tell him.

"I've got a kolto patch," he says, blood-stained hand fumbling at one of his pockets. I maneuver him down to a seated position a few feet away from the bodies so I have both hands free. I blush a little as I dig into his pants pocket but I find the plas-wrapped packet and hand it to Arkanesh. I push his jacket open again and carefully pull his shirt up. The skin around the wound is an angry red and Arkanesh hisses as I try to wipe away some of the blood with my hand.

"Sorry," I whisper, but he shakes his head.

"Do what you've gotta do," he grunts. I take a quick look up at his face. He's pale, but determined. "Grab my knife," he says, gesturing for his fallen vibroblade. "My shirt's ruined. Use that to clean it up."

I nod, scrambling for the blade. It's sharp enough that I can just use it as a regular knife. I slice the bottom couple of inches away and fold it into a thick pad, then carefully wipe at the blood still seeping from the wound. "Hold this," I tell Arkanesh, grabbing his hand and pressing the cloth against his ribs. He hisses but holds it in place while I wipe my hands on my pants and tear the kolto package open. It's a self-adhering bandage with a dose of kolto in it, and it's just barely big enough to cover the whole burn. I tug his hand aside and press the bandage into place quickly as blood wells up again. I smooth my fingers around the edge of it, sealing it to his skin, and pull his shirt carefully down over it. It's a bit short now, with a few inches of the hem missing, but it doesn't look too bad.

"Thanks," he grins faintly up at me and I smile back.

"No problem." I let him relax for a few minutes, cleaning his knife and handing it back to him, then going to collect my rifle and the sniper's gun. I rifle through their pockets but don't find anything of interest.

Arkanesh has put the blade back into his ankle holster and has his head tipped back against the rock, eyes closed. He looks tired and pale, but he glances up at me as I approach. "What next?"

I sling my rifle over my back and crouch down next to him. I prop the sniper rifle across my knees and pat the barrel gently. "I take this up there," I jerk my thumb at the cliff to my left. "And see if I can't find the rest of them before they can hurt anyone else. Then I get you to a proper doctor. The kolto will slow the bleeding, but you need to see a medic."

He chuckles faintly and pats my knee. I like the way his fingers linger there. "I'm not going to argue with any of that. I'll cheer you on from down here."

I grin shyly at him and dare to pat his hand quickly. He fumbles for my fingers and gives them a squeeze before letting go so I can climb back up to the ridge. I think about the feel of his hand on mine the whole way up.

I settle back into the same spot as before and shift some rocks around so I can brace the sniper rifle in front of me. I adjust the scope and peer through it. It could use calibration - the whole gun needs a good cleaning, really. I hate when people don't take proper care of their tools.

The other snipers are about as well-hidden as the one Arkanesh had killed. I see two more between us and the Fort. The advantage of height makes me pretty certain of my count. I don't see any other places where a man might be properly hidden so hopefully there's only the two of them. These two seem to be alone, unlike the first one. That's good, because I don't think I can shoot fast enough to get more than one at a time. I'm a good shot, but I'm not an experienced sniper.

I wiggle a little and pull a sharp-edged rock out from under my hipbone, then press my eye to the scope and line the first shot up. This man looks like a pro, dressed in tan and brown clothes that help to conceal him against the rocks he's hiding in. I don't have much to shoot at, but he needs to keep his head visible if he wants to look for targets, so that means I have one too.

I breath out slowly and tighten my finger on the trigger. The shot echoes off the rocks a fraction of a second after I see the man's head explode in a spray of red in my scope. I wince a little, even though it's no worse than what I did to Goggles a few minutes ago. I swing the gun around quickly, looking for the last one.

The man is an idiot. He's half-standing, leaning out of cover to look towards the other sniper's spot. I line him up quickly and pull the trigger. My shot catches him in the left eye and he falls backwards out of view.

I slide back down the cliff and nod to Arkanesh. He breaks into a grin and holds out a hand for me to help him up. "Nice work," he says. I wrap my hand around his wrist and haul him to his feet as gently as I can manage. He still hisses with pain but there's not much else I can do.

I leave the sniper rifle there - I hate to do it but I can't really carry two guns and still help him; it would be way too awkward. Arkanesh hooks his right arm over my shoulders and I wrap my left one around his back and grip his hip. "Ready?" I ask him and he nods, jaw set determinedly.

I go as carefully as I can, but every step jars him. He grunts occasionally but doesn't complain. I try to take as much of his weight as I can and soon we're both panting and dripping with sweat. "Need a break?" I ask him, swiping a hand over my face.

He squints up the roadway. "Are we even close?"

"Sorry, Captain," I say and he grimaces.

"Keep going," he says. "I already feel like I've got a target painted between my shoulders. I don't want to stop."

"I know how you feel," I mutter, shifting my grip on him. The muscles in my left arm are shaking from the strain but if he's not going to stop, I won't either. It seems like an eternity later before we come around the last curve and I can see the bulk of the Fort above us. The dusty road widens and turns into poured duracrete slabs that form a broad courtyard, then a durasteel walkway zigzags up the hill to the walls of the Fort.

I hear a shout from above us and squint upwards. A soldier is waving at us from the barricades in front of the open gates, then he cups a hand to his mouth. "Are you all right?"

Arkanesh rolls his eyes at me and I have to stifle a laugh. "Captain Vere'k was shot by Separatist snipers," I call back up to him. "We need a medic."

"Stay there," the soldier replies. "We'll come down to you."

I shuffle Arkanesh over to a boulder at the side of the road and sit him down. We both groan quietly. He hunches over and tries to catch his breath, while I massage the kinks out of my left biceps. I keep a careful eye on the activity above us. I can see three - no, four - soldiers, and a man wearing a medcorps arm badge. They make their way slowly down towards us. The soldiers at the barricades have their guns trained on us. I don't like it, but I understand. They don't know us, and it could be a trap.

I hold my hands up to show them they're empty once the soldiers and the medic get closer. "I'm Corso Riggs. I'm with the militia. This is Captain Arkanesh Vere'k. The Drelliad spaceport was attacked by Separatists and his ship was stolen. We were on our way here, but Blyes told us there were snipers in the hills. We took out three of them, but the captain was wounded."

One of the soldiers is talking on his communicator and studying something on a datapad, then nods to the medic. I suppose they've got my info on file, and Arkanesh must have had to file a flight plan. They probably have holopics of both of us.

I step out of the way of the medic and he crouches in front of Arkanesh. "I'm Doctor Aden Frost. Tell me what happened."

I notice Arkanesh is light on the details and doesn't mention leaping off the top of a cliff. The doctor nods absently as he rolls up Arkanesh's shirt and peels the kolto pad aside to examine the wound. "You need a dermal regenerator." He waves to one of the soldiers and the man comes forward with a folding stretcher. "And you've lost a lot of blood. You shouldn't have moved him," he says sternly to me.

Arkanesh meets my eyes and then turns back to the doctor. "It was either that or chance the Seps finding me. Blood loss is easier to fix than a blaster bolt to the brain." The man frowns but doesn't respond, busying himself with the stretcher. He gets Arkanesh arranged to his satisfaction and activates the repulsor unit. The stretcher levitates smoothly to hip-height and Doctor Frost taps the control box. He and the soldiers head back up to the Fort, Arkanesh's stretcher floating in their midst, and I trail along behind them.

I feel pretty useless when they take Arkanesh straight for the med building. I'm not allowed in with him, so I'm left cooling my heels in the waiting room. At least they give me a kolto shot that fixes my bruised cheekbone but I guess I'm pacing and fidgeting too much because one of the nurses behind the desk finally asks me to wait somewhere else. I tell her to let Arkanesh know I'll meet him in the cantina and hurry outside.