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[sololoquy]

bangr

KYLO REN | 30

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YES <span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#33cc33;">✓</span>	NO <span style="font-family: times; font-size:40px; color:#CC0000;">✕</span>

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[sololoquy]

You're awake?

[Guess who missed the whole point of this exercise.]

[forcevisions]

Yeah.

I feel better.

[ Getting that out of the way first in case he decides to regard her as a ticking bomb. ]

Thanks for bringing me inside.

[sololoquy]

I did not plan to leave you there.
I was followed.

[forcevisions]

[ The fact that he jumps to clarify at all just roots her in Poe's comment, which had clarified the ways in which Poe had supposedly used her against him. It's complicated. Like ... Poe's telling of it had given her hope in Ben. And now she sees it here too — he's quick to clarify and correct a place where he worries she might misread him as apathetic.

He cares. Her opinion matters. ]

I'm not mad.

[ She'd figured he needed space. What happened on the beach was ... a lot. ]

Followed by who? Is everything ok?

[sololoquy]

He calls himself Shaw.

[Dodging that second question like Neo.]

[forcevisions]

Who?

[sololoquy]

He said he met you. Briefly.
He also saw me put you to sleep.

[forcevisions]

[ Well, there were a few people who she didn't exchange names with. It's not impossible.

Alright, near-stranger sees Ben put her to sleep. Ben, who probably still intimidates other people who aren't her. Then decides to follow. It makes sense. She'd probably have done the same. ]

And he made you leave?

[sololoquy]

[She's really going to make him say it, isn't she?]

He would not leave unless I did.
It was not my preferred solution.

[forcevisions]

You were going to stay?

[ She's tried to be low-key and not get her hopes up in that direction but here they are. They're up. ]

[sololoquy]

?
Yes.

[forcevisions]

[ ... cute. ]

Where are you?

[sololoquy]

Outside.

[Lynn is. Scary. What she can apparently do is scary.]

[forcevisions]

Don't move. I'll come find you.

[sololoquy]

Ok.

[That feels ominous, somehow.]

-> action

[forcevisions]

[ She hones in on his signature in the Force as she draws closer, separating it from herself with some conscious effort. It's strange. Once, he felt like an invader, something intrusive and shadowy in the corners of her mind. Now she's so used to him that he's practically a part of it. It's no wonder she'd so smoothly fallen prey to his twisted way of thinking.

It's not his fault. Not really. But they both have to work to make sure it doesn't happen again.

She heads out of the facility and approaches him with confident strides, a smile on her face as she greets him. ]

Hey.

[sololoquy]

[Kylo is standing in a patch of shade, leaning against the wall in an effort to protect his pale skin from the heat of the sun. He feels the vague tug of Rey searching for him and closes his eyes to fend off the sensation.

He's been in such close proximity to so many people the past few days that it takes quite a lot of energy not to resist.

She's smiling when she arrives, and he feels something uncomfortable settle in his stomach.]

You look better.

[Its the first thing that comes to mind -- an easy observation.]

[forcevisions]

Better than when I was unconscious?

[ There's a hint of teasing amusement in her voice. It's a bold mood to adopt and she knows it. They hadn't exactly handled the messiest parts of their conversation the night before. There's a lot still to dig at. But she feels better about it all. More at peace, knowing that they're at least on the same page. ]

I sure hope so.

[ She leans up against the wall beside him. ]

[sololoquy]

[Well, not really what he meant, displayed by an uncomfortable shifting of his weight and an awkward swallow. Her mood isn't quite as infectious as she might hope.]

Better than--before that.

[When she was struggling to resist the drugs slipped into her food. It hadn't been a pleasant memory to look back on, once he had realized what was happening.]

[forcevisions]

[ His mood is, though, as it turns out. The levity sapped away by the unfortunate implications of his clarification, Rey's smile dwindles and finally dies as she turns away from him and stares out instead over the ocean. ]

Oh.

[ There's no masking her disappointment. She'd thought there was no way he could be referring to that because, well, they both wanted each other, didn't they? It should simple things up. ]

It feels a little hazy at the end. [ Fortunately the escalation of her reaction to his touch had been steep enough that she didn't think she'd lost anything, exactly. But the memories had that wobbly surreal quality that the wedding had, and she'd lost parts of it, so maybe. ] I'm sorry if I did something that you didn't want.

[sololoquy]

[He's so incredibly good at this.]

You didn't.

[That kind of comes out before he has a chance to think about the implications of it, and when he realizes the implications, he has to pause before continuing his statement. Oh boy. Challenges.]

--but you were drugged. Your judgement was impaired.

[That's--probably fine to point out???]

[forcevisions]

[ Cool relief washes over her. But that means she has to parse out what he means but is struggling to articulate. She looks up at him again, searching his face. Digging through this statement of fact for what he's actually implying.

Obviously that was a problem. She'd asked him to knock her out for exactly that reason — alright, not that reason. More the concern that she wouldn't remember than that she'd do something she didn't want to do. But obviously he was more focused on the latter. Which meant —

Oh, this idiot.

She pushes away from the wall and turns to face him more fully. He'd said it was nothing he didn't want. Using that to drown out the doubts she feels, she reaches out to grab him by the front of his tunic and pull him down enough so that she can get on her toes and kiss him again. It's going to assert what she feels she needs to say much more clearly than any effort to actually articulate it. ]

[sololoquy]

[Oh.

Initially, he presses further to the wall out of instinct, like he is expecting retribution for his comments -- but then she grabs his tunic, and he clearly remembers what had followed that motion the last time. So when her lips press to his, he is more ready for it than he's been in the past.

He has to bend some, even with her on her toes, and so his hands come off the wall in preparation to brace himself so that he doesn't end up falling on top of her, but it turns out not to be necessary. As a result, his hands just sort of -- hover there.

Kylo Ren relaxes some once he accepts that the kiss is Happening, and that whatever heavy stuff they had talked about previously hadn't actually locked him out of contact with her. And that is when his hands finally fall to her waist.]

[forcevisions]

[ Kylo "Hover Hands" Ren leaves her in the lurch for a moment there, more hesitant than he'd been the night previous. But when his hands come to rest on her waist, she realizes she can't blame him for that. She'd let it get to that point without warning him that she'd been drugged when she knew it full and well, and it had clearly left him uneasy about how he should handle her advances when there was no clear way to tell.

He'd done fine, though. Exactly what he should have done. One of her hands strays to touch the side of his face, her thumb tracing the steep curve of his jaw. The air is warm with morning sunshine and the ambient ocean sounds soothe her. They're not cramped in some suffocating room in Drakstaden, fleeing the rain and themselves. They're in a paradise. Out in the open.

It's good. This is going to be good. Her lips part briefly, deepening the kiss for a moment before she draws back. She doesn't let it get as heated as it had the night before. ]

I would have made the same choice.

[ She looks up at him, searching his face. ]

[sololoquy]

[There's something...comforting(?) about the way she curls her hand around his jaw, a softness he hadn't known he'd enjoy in any meaningful way. But there's no expectation of this gesture, despite its intimacy. She'll never know how much he'll come to appreciate that.

She pulls back, but his hands stay where they are, his grip growing a bit more confident and possessive when he thinks that she might keep pulling back. Instead, she validates his choice -- which wasn't so much a choice as a fulfillment of her request.

He does that very well. Taking orders. Usually.]

I know.

[There's something in his tone that suggests he wouldn't have ever imagined differently -- that he's confused why she would feel the need to clarify.]