[ It takes more time than it really ought to, with how long her hair is. She's not great at this. She points it just … at her scalp and expects it to dry efficiently at times, and then the ends wind up getting frizzy and all over. Once or twice she thinks it's all the way dry, turns off the blow dryer, combs her fingers through it, and realizes it's not.
But eventually she gets it under control, and heads back into the 'fresher to return it under the sink.
She's pulling her hair over her shoulder and running her fingers through it thoughtfully when she returns from putting hairdryer away. It's softer than she's ever felt it, and full, and shiny, and it smells like him because of the shampoo she'd used in there and — It's a whole lot to process for a girl who was like. Newly introduced to shampoo two years ago.
She's not exactly a convert to all the effort that just went into that, but she's at least noticing that it has an effect. It's also probably the first time she's felt it while it's down and dry and clean at the same time.
This time she stops at the edge of the bed and doesn't climb in. Like she's waiting for gatekeeper Kylo Ren to decide she's suitable to lay on his sheets or something. Sorry not sorry for being a filthy sand gremlin? ? ? It's not like he didn't know what he was getting into. ]
Well?
[ She gives up smoothing her hair and gestures out with her hands at her sides. ]
[He observes from where he is sitting, uncertain by the implication of her throwing her arms out like that. Its not like he made her do it, even though it wouldn't have made sense for her to ignore his council, as far as he is concerned. His brow knits to accompany his confusion.]
Do you not feel better?
[He couldn't imagine laying down with a wet head, honestly. He's way too sensitive for that nonsense. Aside from all the obvious discomfort, now she wouldn't be freezing. Its a win-win all around.
[ She rolls her eyes because, well, yeah. It feels better. But that's not the point. The point is that he's bossing her around and she's just trying to live her life. On the other hand, annoyance seems to have cut through the awkward tension. She knows how to do this kind of frustration. ]
Don't pretend it was for my sake. You're too used to people obeying you.
[ But even as she says this, Rey takes that question as invitation now, crawling onto the bed beside him. He's pulled the pillow away from his chest so it's just out there for her to notice now, and that kind of makes her miss the cold wet hair because at least it was cold.
Settling onto her side facing him, she actually has a surprisingly easy time keeping her attention on his face because — well, because she's trying to overanalyze his reactions, honestly. ]
Is this alright? [ Just gonna acknowledge the awkward now that she has partially saved herself from it. ]
[Well, she's not...wrong, exactly. He was very used to being obeyed. But she had the option not to obey him, and she chose to. So what exactly is she trying to prove to him? He doesn't get it.
He doesn't have much time to think about it though, because she's crawling back into bed beside him ans asking him strange questions.]
Is what alright?
[He looks down at the covers and then back up to her eyes uncertainly. This? Them? What's the real question here?]
I don't know. [She doesn't like when he gives that answer, he knows -- so he tries again.] I don't want you to leave.
[ Right. It's a little like dealing with a child. She hasn't recognized that fact until now — the way she has to sometimes simplify complicated emotions to get him to understand them better. But he's able to push through it to something basic. And he does that for her, she's sure. So she's grateful. ]
I won't.
[ Start there. ]
Do you … [ She's trying to address the fact that he elicits these anxieties now, even with her in the bed with him. Is he worried, even now, that she'll be gone when he closes his eyes? She can hardly blame him for that. If this were the bond, she might be.
Contact, maybe, would help that. He'd be able to feel her presence. But when she'd kissed him before, he'd frozen. She's still not sure if he'd wanted it. She doesn't want him to freeze up on her again. She wants to be wanted. Welcome. Invited. It's startlingly emotional for her to spell these things out, and it thickens her voice accordingly. Her eyelids flutter in an effort to suppress it.
She can't find the right words. Despite being ostensibly better than Ben with them, she's still running on a lifetime alone. She holds out her hand between them, an offering for contact. Maybe she's already too close, though. Maybe he'll refuse her. She draws in a breath, holding it, reaching into the cramped space between them anyway. ]
[She asks a question that he doesn't quite see the end of. He searches her eyes, and feels her hand shift under the blanket. There is only a moment's hesitation before he finds himself reaching for it, clasping it and pulling it closer to his chest. Beneath it, a muscle spasms, and his heart beats slightly faster as he becomes conscience of it.
The intimacy of it clearly has made him uncomfortable, but the act of having someone to share the discomfort of it all opens him up to exposing himself to it. The sort of promise of mutually assured destruction -- that is something he can trust.
And yes, maybe some part of him fears that he is going to fuck this up -- or that she's going to leave him once there is a better path. He's just discovered...whatever this is, and he doesn't want to lose it. He doesn't want to endanger it, and he doesn't want to show it to anyone else.
He just wants to keep it, in this dark space where only they can see it. An extension of the bond, in the physical.]
[ She exhales sharply when her palm flattens against his chest, the hastening thump of his heart reverberating into her, synchronizing with hers. It occurs to her over and over again, every step of the way, that this is a closeness like she'd never had, never imagined having.
And despite his discomfort, despite his unease, he drinks it in with her.
Each breath that follows comes out shuddered and loud, heaving in her chest. Her eyes flicker across his face, searching him. She's keenly aware of every inch of her body, in that moment. and the current that runs between them from that point of contact. It's exhilarating in a way that she knows means sleep will evade her. But it's the thrill of something new, something she doesn't quite understand, that keeps her from minding much.
The whole thing feels surreal. Like any minute, Rey will wake up, or the Force bond will snap and they will be separated, or — Stars, she hardly knows. But it definitely feels like some distant, parallel universe to be cuddled up in bed with Ben. Already she was warm enough under the covers to miss her wet hair and wish it could cool her down.
She wants to kiss him again, but not without knowing if he wants it. So she stays quiet, breathing this in until she's sure she can let go of that. Then, finally, ]
Can you feel that?
[ She's almost scared to ask. She doesn't know what to name it, though. This tension humming between them, this gravity. Is it the bond or something else? ]
[He would have to be numb not to feel it. It tugs at him, and he thinks that if he were any weaker of will, he might be trembling from it. He can feel how deeply it runs through Rey, and him in turn. Not to say there wasn’t some origin of this...feeling within him as well — there was. She is simply better at letting the feeing happen where part of him fears where it might be taking him.
His grip on her hand shifts some, forcing it open against his bare skin rather than leaving it trapped in his hand, He covers it with his own, but that makes it worse. He swallows down the rising anxiety he feels — but its not just anxiety anymore. There is adrenaline that comes with it — he recognizes it. The same sort of hunger he feels at the center of battle, the sort of initiative that drives him to act.
It doesn’t have a place here, he thinks — but its there, hovering.]
Yes.
[He sympathizes with that feeling — that they are existing outside of the reality they’ve mapped out for themselves. But there is a certain peril they’ve both suddenly shared that demands acknowledgement. They certainly aren’t under threat of death yet — but sometimes it feels like it. That this fragile peace they’ve eatablished could so easily be broken by someone else.
Maybe that’s what drives him so recklessly forward; the danger that anything could change in the next 24 hours.]
[ It's there, mirrored back at her from his expression. A hunger. The kind she's only seen in him when he's fighting. Maybe she had summoned it there; maybe the bond had just transferred it, and it didn't belong to him at all. This connection has proven a slippery thing, has made it hard for her to sift them apart from each other.
Her hand slides down across his chest, feeling the slope of muscle. His skin scorches her hand as she searches over the scar she'd given him — a crescent, puckered burn. Then down around the side of his ribs where he'd taken the blow from Chewbacca's bowcaster. That arm wraps solidly around him as she shifts closer to him, eliminating the last of the distance.
This is a lot all at once. But she's been knocking so long on this door that now that he's opened it, she doesn't know how to stop herself. She tries to use the embrace as a way to stamp down some of the desire clawing its way up her dry throat, to settle for the insinuation of his body against hers.
They need to stop. She lets out a single huff of breath, trying to steady herself. To make this something decisive, to settle into, not to move on from.
But in that effort, it feels like she's ten years old again, her fingers trying to grab for a metal ledge she'd thought she could reach for before they finally gave out and she plummeted. She'd broken her arm then. What would this break? ]
[She is holding something back, even as she moves in to claim the rest of the space between them. He can’t quite follow that train of thought to its completion —and he doesnt want to. This, the part where she settles against the warmth of his embrace — that’s what he had wanted, without realizing it.
As if she were the pillow he had abandoned, he wraps his arms back around her securely, so that she may absorb his presence as he believes she desires to. Both arms cross at the center of her back. His eyes drift closed slowly, chin resting at the top of her head. He can feel the way her heart stutters now, the adrenaline still running thick in his veins and the way her heart scrambles for — something else.
She is in some kind of peril, but he can’t place its origin. It stokes at some of that anxiety that is always at the root of his emotions, but then he feels her breathe against him and it slowly evaporates away in a manner he didn’t know was possible. There is still that presence of mind that keeps them both from sleep — but at least his own thoughts aren’t quite so loud.
Instead, he has her’s. He’s tuned in now, searching through the Force without asking verbally. He gets the sense that might be a little too much to deal with, right now.]
Edited (edits eight million times) 2018-04-10 05:38 (UTC)
[ When he encircles her in his arms, surrounds her, she feels a kind of peace. But it's not the kind of peace that suppresses the electrical crackling that leaves her whole body feeling like one raw nerve. Rather, it's like an exhale. Like dust settling. Like coming home. She lets her fingertips trace the column of his spine, up and town, breaking the plane of the other scar she'd left him with, in Perdition's Rest.
She tries to force her breathing to settle, an easier rhythm, something that can calm down and sleep, but it's still hitched with the desire to map his skin.
The acute probing sense of him trying to coax her mind and feelings open to him across the bond startles her, sharpens her next inhale. At first she clams up, an instinctual response, and it lasts long enough to be conscious too — she's afraid to let him see. She tries to hold him out.
But she turns her head and tilts it up to try and get out from under his chin, to look him in the face. His eyes are closed, but hers are dark, pupils wide. The way their focus darts between his eyes and his mouth reveals both her fear and something else.
He's not searching for a weapon. He's not trying to hurt her. And she wants him to understand.
She opens to him.
Like her mind is sprawling out, stretching, beckoning him in. It's a flood. The tail end of that memory, fingers slipping and bone snapping. And in the darkness where she fell, something yawning and superheated and ready to swallow her. Like plasma, humming in her veins.
It's been there all along, lurking under the surface of her mind. This moment has just woken it up, brought her hunger for him to the forefront of her mind and made it impossible to ignore. It sticks in her throat, silences her. Her hand curls against his back, nails scraping briefly as she makes a fist to restrain it. ]
[The flood of her memories coaxes his eyes open as he digests them. They are without context, but he recognizes the anxiety that comes with them. He feels her nails drag across his lower back, and it stirs something deep in his stomach that he instinctively forces down without even stopping to think what emotion it might be. She is running from something — her desire to touch him, he thinks after a moment of analysis.
This is a fear he actually finds relief in. The sort of contact he was engaging in was — already quite a lot. Anything else feels...excessive, and maybe something he didn’t deserve or...
The ideas don’t totally make sense, but he has them.
He feels her head shift upward, and he glances down, leaving their foreheads pressed to one another from how close they already were. Now that discomfort rises again, the recogition of intimacy. He wants to ask her what is wrong but...he also doesn’t really want to know.]
[ A spark flares and dies in him. She can't quite place what caused it, but it's probably for the best for them both that it was short-lived. One of them needs self control here. She shifts, barely, not enough to move out of his embrace or even really disrupt the contact between their foreheads. But she can't quite get comfortable at this point. It's a restlessness, of sorts.
Her breaths start to slow and deepen as she directs more energy into composing herself, finding some kind of meditative calm. There is no respite or comfort for her in the island anymore. Nor Jakku. She reaches instead for the waters of Chandrila that he had shown her, synching her breathing with the lap of the ocean on the shore.
But his discomfort nags at the edge of her awareness. He's keenly attuned to her hesitation, to the way she wrestles with holding herself back. ]
This is enough.
[ Don't worry, she tells him this softly, but it's also for her to hear aloud. It's more than enough, so much more than she'd have ever asked for. No matter what she wants right now, what she can't ignore, she's learned not to push him. He'll come to her. Given time, given assurance, he'll come to her.
Her voice rasps a little when she voices the fear that drives that thinking, that conclusion — if she asks for too much, she'll lose what she does have. ]
[Kylo follows suit, peeling his trenchcoat off and laying it over the back of one of the chairs, leaving him in only his soaking wet pants and angular zipped tank top. He turns just in time to spot Rey peeling her shirt off to reveal the burn.
He freezes, caught between instincts. On the one hand, the wound is not life threatening but it is clearly very painful. On the other hand, it wasn’t too long ago where she was trying to cover herself up around him, and he doesn’t know how to react now that she is seemingly unafraid of bodily exposure.
So he stands, staring both awkwardly and silently. When he eventually offers words, they come far too late. Maybe she won’t notice if she hadn’t caught him staring behind her.]
[ Four months ago, covering herself up had seemed like the obvious answer because they were still so … afraid of each other. He's spent more time since then in the company of her bare legs than he'd spent with her total, period, back then. She's not even thinking about it tbh (which is a feat, since Rey has now gone two weeks in Drakstaden without time to herself; someone give her a medal for bravely occupying Ben's space this long). ]
Yeah?
[ She throws the shirt down on top of her jacket with another wet squelching sound. The shivering grows worse, as it often does before it gets better. She tries to twist to get a look at it, but it's at the back of her ribcage, and turning her torso just tugs at the irritated flesh. Instead, she touches her fingers to it briefly, hissing. ]
That sounds about right.
[ Aka it feels painful too thanks for noticing. She pulls her fingers back, forcing out an exhale. Just gotta keep moving long enough to get the rest of this off. Will the warm water put her in shock like this? She's not positive how that works. She's never had enough water to worry about it, but she's Heard Things.
She tries to lean over for her boots and regrets it. Alright, no full body bend without stretching the ribs. She settles down against the table and pulls one boot up onto the chair to start prying it off like that instead. The movements are stiff to get her there. ]
[Rey starts contorting herself to continue to undress and Kylo Ren comes to terms woth the fact that he isnt quite ready to watch this display. So, he quietly swallows and disappears into the refresher before Rey can finish undressing and closes the door behind him.
Inside, he stares at himself in the mirror — pale, gaunt, and clearly anxious. His eyes look more sunken than usual, and his nose has turned red from the outdoor abuse. He watches himself swallow a few more times before he refocuses and washes his face with a quick splash of hot water. He then grabs one of the many towels to run it under the faucet. He wrings it out carefully and opens the door again after steeling himself for what is likely on the other side.]
Stop moving. You’re making it worse.
[He holds out the towel, wet and drapped between his hands in both offerinf and asking for permission.]
[ To his great fortune, in the time he took in the bathroom, Rey managed to remove … her boots and a single sock. So she's standing by the table, one foot up on the chair with the sock still attached, her plain bra and a pair of soaked-through black pants sparing him from further discomfort.
His words take a moment to sink in simply because their intent is so foreign, coming out of him. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. She takes care of him. (What a wild and wacky world they live in from the offset, where that's a sentence accepted as normal.) He doesn't understand the utility of that kind of sentiment, so he eschews it, and she has to beat him into taking care of his own damn body, which is only about half as counterintuitive as it sounds. But this is him offering it to her in kind.
Maybe he has been paying attention.
Her gaze drops to the towel in his hand, and reluctantly, she pulls her foot off the seat of the chair without removing her sad remaining sock. She nods to him her assent, but she's left not quite sure what to do with her body when he'd told her to stop moving and he's so much taller than her in the first place.
So she just stares up stupidly at him, looking the part of a drowned cat, her shivering making her look small. ]
[Don’t give him too much credit, Rey. He has to live with you still.
He also hadn’t expected her to listen so well, so there is a long moment where he forgets where he was going with that command. But, eventually, he pulls over a seat from the sad dining set and nods to it. Its not a perfect fix, but he isn’t going to stand there and hold a towel for her while the burn heals. He hands her the warm towel (imagining that it would dull her shivering some) and turns to fetch another. This one, he wets in the sink with cold water.
When he comes back, he pauses to look behind her, wondering how to even...voice his idea. Why is he doing this? Even he isn’t totally sure — it just feels correct.
So he mistakenly does not use his words when he kneels down to press the cold directly to the burn at her back, doing his best not to look at her face qhen he does it.]
[ He pulls the chair over and shoves the towel into her hands and then he's just … gone. Somehow it's bewildering and makes perfect sense at the same time; it's so stunted and awkward, but that's just … how Ben Solo is. She settles down onto the chair, the warm wet towel in her hand, and she presses it to her shoulders to soothe away some of the bone-deep chill that has hit her.
It's not a shower, but it's a nice middle-ground given that she should probably wouldn't want the shower spraying directly on the burn like this anyway. She's minding her own business like this when she feels him approach, turning to look up at him.
When he kneels, it's a little alarming. Humbling in a way — on his part, not hers. It makes her feel … she doesn't know what. But there's something tight in her chest to see him crouching to attend to her; he's not the ominous, looming monster that everyone wants to make him out to be. That he wants to make himself out to be.
The cold compress touches her skin and she sucks in a breath, both at the temperature and at the direct contact with her injury. Goosebumps prickle across her skin, and she straightens a little, reacting bodily to the sudden contact. Her fingernails dig into the warm towel in front of her and the act squeezes drops of warm water out into her lap, soaked up immediately by her pants.
That inhale comes from something else too, loaded with sudden awareness of his proximity and her bare skin, like there's some complex formula that factors in his closeness and the surface area of unclothed skin and right now it's all out of balance. ]
Cold.
[ She utters reluctantly, as though afraid admitting as much will make him pull his hand away. Reaching one hand up, she summons the mostly dry towel he'd handed her in the elevator into her hand and pulls it around her shoulders. There. Maybe that'll help on multiple fronts. She thinks this, but glancing down to watch him, she doesn't believe it. ]
[He feels her react, and he further detaches as he so often does, refusing to engage the intimacy of what he’s done or the intent behind it. Its just easier not to think about any of it at all.
But what he gets instead is him simply...staying there for a few silent seconds, too caught up in the corner he’d pinned himself in. He’d been so high on anxiety that he had forgotten to think before reacting and now Rey was reading into it. He could sense it without even needing to look for it.
He awkwardly clears his throat.]
Yes. Its a burn.
[Helpful as ever. His voice is quiet, and he very suddenly feels the need to pull away — like a child who had approached a large animal for the first time and suddenly wants to be very far away from it.
So, he rearrages the towel some so it rests against both the burn and the back of the chair and starts to pull away, tucking his long legs underneath himsef so that he can stand.]
She exhales, flooded with both relief and disappointment. The grip she holds on the towel around her shoulders loosens. She slumps a little back into the chair, using her weight to pin the cold towel in place even as the coarse fabric of the towel now irritates the sensitive skin of her burn.
Some part of her wonders over whether she should apologize, but she doesn't know what she did wrong to make him withdraw, or if it's even a matter of right moves and wrong moves. More likely he'd never even thought about it at all.
That thought makes her chest tighten in stifling denial.
There is still the matter of the pain. It's not just the burn; she can feel that. There's bruising under it that the cold is helping to suppress but not correct. It's probably not broken. Probably. ]
I can wait. [ She reaches up to indicate the towel around her shoulders as she turns to look up at him. ] If you want to use the 'fresher. [ Giving him a task seems like a kindness, but for who? She's taking mental inventory. She has sterilizing wipes and painkillers still. They'll help with this once the cold towel has sufficiently numbed her. ]
[He nods once and moves toward the refresher as relief floods through his veins. As it turns out, her instincts are correct — the task is simple and merciful, perfect for a man who can’t seem to come down off his anxiety high.
Really, it hardly has anything to do with her. A lot had happened today — they’d nearly been caught, he was on the run for the first time ever, and he’d managed not to kill anyone.
The water doesn’t turn on for some time even after he disappears behind the door. Something is eating at him, something he can’t pinpoint or define, and its causing him to lapse in memory. But eventually, the water comes on with a groan of the old pipes, and he goes through his usual routine (its mostly conditioning all of that hair).
But once the automatic shut off triggers, he stays inside and sits in the basin to brood to himself, uncomfortably picking at hang nails and listening to someone speak on the level below him. Eavesdropping mundane conversations with the Force]
[ While he's inside, she busies herself. Slowly she peels off her other sock and her toes wriggle, grateful to be free of the damp. Maybe she won't get hypothermic after all. She drops it into the pile of her wet clothes. The pants go next, and she leaves the wet towel behind to head to her bag for something to wipe the injury down with.
When it's clean, she pops painkillers and … stews.
It's a lot to process. At least she's alone now, so when she feels the shuddering exhale of relief that she's not captured and on her way to a quiet and forgettable death, she knows no one can see. Maybe she's not so unlike him, hiding her weakness until it's easy for her to process.
She wrings her hair out on the pile of clothes and then wraps the mostly dry towel around her, as much to dry her undergarments and body as to anticipate the fact that she'd heard the water shut off.
Not that it'd make a difference to him if she hadn't.
And then he doesn't even come out anyway. She settles back onto that chair, trying to keep the skin of her ribs from stretching even though any way she sits seems to make the wound itch. At least the worst of the pain is fading, between the numbness and the painkillers kicking in. ]
[Somewhere in between all of that, Kylo had begun to bite his nails while brooding over his own thought process. The mission wasn’t even close to done as far as he could see; they hadn’t even found the shard yet. How much longer were they going to try and help? How soon before he could escape this moral conundrum?
Eventually, he reimerges. Given the fact that he is kicking out his wet clothes with one foot, and both hands are holding a towel at his waist, he hadn’t really thought this whole process through. He’ll...address that once she is out of the room. He doesn’t look much more at ease in spite of the relaxation time he supposedly took — in fact, he almost looks worse.
He should probably ask if she needs more help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he engages in a staring contest, waiting for her to take the room he had left open for her.]
[ She gets to her feet when she hears the door open and then it's staring contest central. In fact, make that double because Rey is trying very hard to keep her eyes on his and not anywhere else. Her lips part with the intent to make sound but none comes out.
For a moment, at least.
Then she shuts her eyes and shakes her head to dismiss … all of that. It's not the real matter at hand here. And Ben, he doesn't look great. He's clearly out of it. Has been since he'd thrown those guards into the wall. ]
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no subject
[ It takes more time than it really ought to, with how long her hair is. She's not great at this. She points it just … at her scalp and expects it to dry efficiently at times, and then the ends wind up getting frizzy and all over. Once or twice she thinks it's all the way dry, turns off the blow dryer, combs her fingers through it, and realizes it's not.
But eventually she gets it under control, and heads back into the 'fresher to return it under the sink.
She's pulling her hair over her shoulder and running her fingers through it thoughtfully when she returns from putting hairdryer away. It's softer than she's ever felt it, and full, and shiny, and it smells like him because of the shampoo she'd used in there and — It's a whole lot to process for a girl who was like. Newly introduced to shampoo two years ago.
She's not exactly a convert to all the effort that just went into that, but she's at least noticing that it has an effect. It's also probably the first time she's felt it while it's down and dry and clean at the same time.
This time she stops at the edge of the bed and doesn't climb in. Like she's waiting for gatekeeper Kylo Ren to decide she's suitable to lay on his sheets or something. Sorry not sorry for being a filthy sand gremlin? ? ? It's not like he didn't know what he was getting into. ]
Well?
[ She gives up smoothing her hair and gestures out with her hands at her sides. ]
no subject
Do you not feel better?
[He couldn't imagine laying down with a wet head, honestly. He's way too sensitive for that nonsense. Aside from all the obvious discomfort, now she wouldn't be freezing. Its a win-win all around.
Don't be such a brat, Rey.]
no subject
Don't pretend it was for my sake. You're too used to people obeying you.
[ But even as she says this, Rey takes that question as invitation now, crawling onto the bed beside him. He's pulled the pillow away from his chest so it's just out there for her to notice now, and that kind of makes her miss the cold wet hair because at least it was cold.
Settling onto her side facing him, she actually has a surprisingly easy time keeping her attention on his face because — well, because she's trying to overanalyze his reactions, honestly. ]
Is this alright? [ Just gonna acknowledge the awkward now that she has partially saved herself from it. ]
no subject
He doesn't have much time to think about it though, because she's crawling back into bed beside him ans asking him strange questions.]
Is what alright?
[He looks down at the covers and then back up to her eyes uncertainly. This? Them? What's the real question here?]
I don't know. [She doesn't like when he gives that answer, he knows -- so he tries again.] I don't want you to leave.
no subject
I won't.
[ Start there. ]
Do you … [ She's trying to address the fact that he elicits these anxieties now, even with her in the bed with him. Is he worried, even now, that she'll be gone when he closes his eyes? She can hardly blame him for that. If this were the bond, she might be.
Contact, maybe, would help that. He'd be able to feel her presence. But when she'd kissed him before, he'd frozen. She's still not sure if he'd wanted it. She doesn't want him to freeze up on her again. She wants to be wanted. Welcome. Invited. It's startlingly emotional for her to spell these things out, and it thickens her voice accordingly. Her eyelids flutter in an effort to suppress it.
She can't find the right words. Despite being ostensibly better than Ben with them, she's still running on a lifetime alone. She holds out her hand between them, an offering for contact. Maybe she's already too close, though. Maybe he'll refuse her. She draws in a breath, holding it, reaching into the cramped space between them anyway. ]
no subject
The intimacy of it clearly has made him uncomfortable, but the act of having someone to share the discomfort of it all opens him up to exposing himself to it. The sort of promise of mutually assured destruction -- that is something he can trust.
And yes, maybe some part of him fears that he is going to fuck this up -- or that she's going to leave him once there is a better path. He's just discovered...whatever this is, and he doesn't want to lose it. He doesn't want to endanger it, and he doesn't want to show it to anyone else.
He just wants to keep it, in this dark space where only they can see it. An extension of the bond, in the physical.]
no subject
And despite his discomfort, despite his unease, he drinks it in with her.
Each breath that follows comes out shuddered and loud, heaving in her chest. Her eyes flicker across his face, searching him. She's keenly aware of every inch of her body, in that moment. and the current that runs between them from that point of contact. It's exhilarating in a way that she knows means sleep will evade her. But it's the thrill of something new, something she doesn't quite understand, that keeps her from minding much.
The whole thing feels surreal. Like any minute, Rey will wake up, or the Force bond will snap and they will be separated, or — Stars, she hardly knows. But it definitely feels like some distant, parallel universe to be cuddled up in bed with Ben. Already she was warm enough under the covers to miss her wet hair and wish it could cool her down.
She wants to kiss him again, but not without knowing if he wants it. So she stays quiet, breathing this in until she's sure she can let go of that. Then, finally, ]
Can you feel that?
[ She's almost scared to ask. She doesn't know what to name it, though. This tension humming between them, this gravity. Is it the bond or something else? ]
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His grip on her hand shifts some, forcing it open against his bare skin rather than leaving it trapped in his hand, He covers it with his own, but that makes it worse. He swallows down the rising anxiety he feels — but its not just anxiety anymore. There is adrenaline that comes with it — he recognizes it. The same sort of hunger he feels at the center of battle, the sort of initiative that drives him to act.
It doesn’t have a place here, he thinks — but its there, hovering.]
Yes.
[He sympathizes with that feeling — that they are existing outside of the reality they’ve mapped out for themselves. But there is a certain peril they’ve both suddenly shared that demands acknowledgement. They certainly aren’t under threat of death yet — but sometimes it feels like it. That this fragile peace they’ve eatablished could so easily be broken by someone else.
Maybe that’s what drives him so recklessly forward; the danger that anything could change in the next 24 hours.]
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Her hand slides down across his chest, feeling the slope of muscle. His skin scorches her hand as she searches over the scar she'd given him — a crescent, puckered burn. Then down around the side of his ribs where he'd taken the blow from Chewbacca's bowcaster. That arm wraps solidly around him as she shifts closer to him, eliminating the last of the distance.
This is a lot all at once. But she's been knocking so long on this door that now that he's opened it, she doesn't know how to stop herself. She tries to use the embrace as a way to stamp down some of the desire clawing its way up her dry throat, to settle for the insinuation of his body against hers.
They need to stop. She lets out a single huff of breath, trying to steady herself. To make this something decisive, to settle into, not to move on from.
But in that effort, it feels like she's ten years old again, her fingers trying to grab for a metal ledge she'd thought she could reach for before they finally gave out and she plummeted. She'd broken her arm then. What would this break? ]
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As if she were the pillow he had abandoned, he wraps his arms back around her securely, so that she may absorb his presence as he believes she desires to. Both arms cross at the center of her back. His eyes drift closed slowly, chin resting at the top of her head. He can feel the way her heart stutters now, the adrenaline still running thick in his veins and the way her heart scrambles for — something else.
She is in some kind of peril, but he can’t place its origin. It stokes at some of that anxiety that is always at the root of his emotions, but then he feels her breathe against him and it slowly evaporates away in a manner he didn’t know was possible. There is still that presence of mind that keeps them both from sleep — but at least his own thoughts aren’t quite so loud.
Instead, he has her’s. He’s tuned in now, searching through the Force without asking verbally. He gets the sense that might be a little too much to deal with, right now.]
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She tries to force her breathing to settle, an easier rhythm, something that can calm down and sleep, but it's still hitched with the desire to map his skin.
The acute probing sense of him trying to coax her mind and feelings open to him across the bond startles her, sharpens her next inhale. At first she clams up, an instinctual response, and it lasts long enough to be conscious too — she's afraid to let him see. She tries to hold him out.
But she turns her head and tilts it up to try and get out from under his chin, to look him in the face. His eyes are closed, but hers are dark, pupils wide. The way their focus darts between his eyes and his mouth reveals both her fear and something else.
He's not searching for a weapon. He's not trying to hurt her. And she wants him to understand.
She opens to him.
Like her mind is sprawling out, stretching, beckoning him in. It's a flood. The tail end of that memory, fingers slipping and bone snapping. And in the darkness where she fell, something yawning and superheated and ready to swallow her. Like plasma, humming in her veins.
It's been there all along, lurking under the surface of her mind. This moment has just woken it up, brought her hunger for him to the forefront of her mind and made it impossible to ignore. It sticks in her throat, silences her. Her hand curls against his back, nails scraping briefly as she makes a fist to restrain it. ]
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This is a fear he actually finds relief in. The sort of contact he was engaging in was — already quite a lot. Anything else feels...excessive, and maybe something he didn’t deserve or...
The ideas don’t totally make sense, but he has them.
He feels her head shift upward, and he glances down, leaving their foreheads pressed to one another from how close they already were. Now that discomfort rises again, the recogition of intimacy. He wants to ask her what is wrong but...he also doesn’t really want to know.]
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Her breaths start to slow and deepen as she directs more energy into composing herself, finding some kind of meditative calm. There is no respite or comfort for her in the island anymore. Nor Jakku. She reaches instead for the waters of Chandrila that he had shown her, synching her breathing with the lap of the ocean on the shore.
But his discomfort nags at the edge of her awareness. He's keenly attuned to her hesitation, to the way she wrestles with holding herself back. ]
This is enough.
[ Don't worry, she tells him this softly, but it's also for her to hear aloud. It's more than enough, so much more than she'd have ever asked for. No matter what she wants right now, what she can't ignore, she's learned not to push him. He'll come to her. Given time, given assurance, he'll come to her.
Her voice rasps a little when she voices the fear that drives that thinking, that conclusion — if she asks for too much, she'll lose what she does have. ]
Please. Don't let go.
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i got you this lame tag you're welcome
thanks
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[Kylo follows suit, peeling his trenchcoat off and laying it over the back of one of the chairs, leaving him in only his soaking wet pants and angular zipped tank top. He turns just in time to spot Rey peeling her shirt off to reveal the burn.
He freezes, caught between instincts. On the one hand, the wound is not life threatening but it is clearly very painful. On the other hand, it wasn’t too long ago where she was trying to cover herself up around him, and he doesn’t know how to react now that she is seemingly unafraid of bodily exposure.
So he stands, staring both awkwardly and silently. When he eventually offers words, they come far too late. Maybe she won’t notice if she hadn’t caught him staring behind her.]
That looks painful.
[Nailed it.]
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Yeah?
[ She throws the shirt down on top of her jacket with another wet squelching sound. The shivering grows worse, as it often does before it gets better. She tries to twist to get a look at it, but it's at the back of her ribcage, and turning her torso just tugs at the irritated flesh. Instead, she touches her fingers to it briefly, hissing. ]
That sounds about right.
[ Aka it feels painful too thanks for noticing. She pulls her fingers back, forcing out an exhale. Just gotta keep moving long enough to get the rest of this off. Will the warm water put her in shock like this? She's not positive how that works. She's never had enough water to worry about it, but she's Heard Things.
She tries to lean over for her boots and regrets it. Alright, no full body bend without stretching the ribs. She settles down against the table and pulls one boot up onto the chair to start prying it off like that instead. The movements are stiff to get her there. ]
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Inside, he stares at himself in the mirror — pale, gaunt, and clearly anxious. His eyes look more sunken than usual, and his nose has turned red from the outdoor abuse. He watches himself swallow a few more times before he refocuses and washes his face with a quick splash of hot water. He then grabs one of the many towels to run it under the faucet. He wrings it out carefully and opens the door again after steeling himself for what is likely on the other side.]
Stop moving. You’re making it worse.
[He holds out the towel, wet and drapped between his hands in both offerinf and asking for permission.]
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His words take a moment to sink in simply because their intent is so foreign, coming out of him. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. She takes care of him. (What a wild and wacky world they live in from the offset, where that's a sentence accepted as normal.) He doesn't understand the utility of that kind of sentiment, so he eschews it, and she has to beat him into taking care of his own damn body, which is only about half as counterintuitive as it sounds. But this is him offering it to her in kind.
Maybe he has been paying attention.
Her gaze drops to the towel in his hand, and reluctantly, she pulls her foot off the seat of the chair without removing her sad remaining sock. She nods to him her assent, but she's left not quite sure what to do with her body when he'd told her to stop moving and he's so much taller than her in the first place.
So she just stares up stupidly at him, looking the part of a drowned cat, her shivering making her look small. ]
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He also hadn’t expected her to listen so well, so there is a long moment where he forgets where he was going with that command. But, eventually, he pulls over a seat from the sad dining set and nods to it. Its not a perfect fix, but he isn’t going to stand there and hold a towel for her while the burn heals. He hands her the warm towel (imagining that it would dull her shivering some) and turns to fetch another. This one, he wets in the sink with cold water.
When he comes back, he pauses to look behind her, wondering how to even...voice his idea. Why is he doing this? Even he isn’t totally sure — it just feels correct.
So he mistakenly does not use his words when he kneels down to press the cold directly to the burn at her back, doing his best not to look at her face qhen he does it.]
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It's not a shower, but it's a nice middle-ground given that she should probably wouldn't want the shower spraying directly on the burn like this anyway. She's minding her own business like this when she feels him approach, turning to look up at him.
When he kneels, it's a little alarming. Humbling in a way — on his part, not hers. It makes her feel … she doesn't know what. But there's something tight in her chest to see him crouching to attend to her; he's not the ominous, looming monster that everyone wants to make him out to be. That he wants to make himself out to be.
The cold compress touches her skin and she sucks in a breath, both at the temperature and at the direct contact with her injury. Goosebumps prickle across her skin, and she straightens a little, reacting bodily to the sudden contact. Her fingernails dig into the warm towel in front of her and the act squeezes drops of warm water out into her lap, soaked up immediately by her pants.
That inhale comes from something else too, loaded with sudden awareness of his proximity and her bare skin, like there's some complex formula that factors in his closeness and the surface area of unclothed skin and right now it's all out of balance. ]
Cold.
[ She utters reluctantly, as though afraid admitting as much will make him pull his hand away. Reaching one hand up, she summons the mostly dry towel he'd handed her in the elevator into her hand and pulls it around her shoulders. There. Maybe that'll help on multiple fronts. She thinks this, but glancing down to watch him, she doesn't believe it. ]
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But what he gets instead is him simply...staying there for a few silent seconds, too caught up in the corner he’d pinned himself in. He’d been so high on anxiety that he had forgotten to think before reacting and now Rey was reading into it. He could sense it without even needing to look for it.
He awkwardly clears his throat.]
Yes. Its a burn.
[Helpful as ever. His voice is quiet, and he very suddenly feels the need to pull away — like a child who had approached a large animal for the first time and suddenly wants to be very far away from it.
So, he rearrages the towel some so it rests against both the burn and the back of the chair and starts to pull away, tucking his long legs underneath himsef so that he can stand.]
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She exhales, flooded with both relief and disappointment. The grip she holds on the towel around her shoulders loosens. She slumps a little back into the chair, using her weight to pin the cold towel in place even as the coarse fabric of the towel now irritates the sensitive skin of her burn.
Some part of her wonders over whether she should apologize, but she doesn't know what she did wrong to make him withdraw, or if it's even a matter of right moves and wrong moves. More likely he'd never even thought about it at all.
That thought makes her chest tighten in stifling denial.
There is still the matter of the pain. It's not just the burn; she can feel that. There's bruising under it that the cold is helping to suppress but not correct. It's probably not broken. Probably. ]
I can wait. [ She reaches up to indicate the towel around her shoulders as she turns to look up at him. ] If you want to use the 'fresher. [ Giving him a task seems like a kindness, but for who? She's taking mental inventory. She has sterilizing wipes and painkillers still. They'll help with this once the cold towel has sufficiently numbed her. ]
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Really, it hardly has anything to do with her. A lot had happened today — they’d nearly been caught, he was on the run for the first time ever, and he’d managed not to kill anyone.
The water doesn’t turn on for some time even after he disappears behind the door. Something is eating at him, something he can’t pinpoint or define, and its causing him to lapse in memory. But eventually, the water comes on with a groan of the old pipes, and he goes through his usual routine (its mostly conditioning all of that hair).
But once the automatic shut off triggers, he stays inside and sits in the basin to brood to himself, uncomfortably picking at hang nails and listening to someone speak on the level below him. Eavesdropping mundane conversations with the Force]
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When it's clean, she pops painkillers and … stews.
It's a lot to process. At least she's alone now, so when she feels the shuddering exhale of relief that she's not captured and on her way to a quiet and forgettable death, she knows no one can see. Maybe she's not so unlike him, hiding her weakness until it's easy for her to process.
She wrings her hair out on the pile of clothes and then wraps the mostly dry towel around her, as much to dry her undergarments and body as to anticipate the fact that she'd heard the water shut off.
Not that it'd make a difference to him if she hadn't.
And then he doesn't even come out anyway. She settles back onto that chair, trying to keep the skin of her ribs from stretching even though any way she sits seems to make the wound itch. At least the worst of the pain is fading, between the numbness and the painkillers kicking in. ]
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Eventually, he reimerges. Given the fact that he is kicking out his wet clothes with one foot, and both hands are holding a towel at his waist, he hadn’t really thought this whole process through. He’ll...address that once she is out of the room. He doesn’t look much more at ease in spite of the relaxation time he supposedly took — in fact, he almost looks worse.
He should probably ask if she needs more help, but he doesn’t. Instead, he engages in a staring contest, waiting for her to take the room he had left open for her.]
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For a moment, at least.
Then she shuts her eyes and shakes her head to dismiss … all of that. It's not the real matter at hand here. And Ben, he doesn't look great. He's clearly out of it. Has been since he'd thrown those guards into the wall. ]
What's wrong?
[ Yep. They're doing this right now. In towels. ]
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