8. Chapter 8

            There is no welcoming party, no grand assembly this time when Rey and Hux return to the Conquest II. Rey wonders about this at first, thinking surely if Kylo Ren makes everyone line up to receive him, Hux would too. Then again, Hux probably doesn’t want anyone knowing that his Supreme Leader sent him on such a frivolous errand in the first place.

            Instead, Kylo Ren awaits them personally, flanked by two robed attendants and no other guards. He watches Rey step out of the shuttle, inscrutable. Not only can she not read his expression, but she can’t sense his feelings at all. She frowns. She’s been able to feel him in some capacity since Hays Minor. He has to be actively closing her out of their bond. Usually, that’s her role. Why is he blocking her now? What doesn’t he want her to know?

            Rey shakes it off. She stands there, back in her handcuffs, waiting for Hux to emerge from his side of the shuttle. Kylo looks her over, just briefly, but unsubtly. In the tailor’s shop on Cantonica, she’d changed into one of her new pairs of trousers, a light black undershirt, a sleeveless jacket that made of heavy, rigid black fabric that flares at the waist and tapers out to points at the sides, and the shorter of the two pairs of boots. Her hair is still tied in its low bun at the nape of her neck, although it had loosened over the course of many fittings. She feels as though someone had glimpsed her from a distance and then rendered her as a silhouette of her normal self: the shape of her is right, but all her lines have been shaded in black.

            Hux circles around the shuttle and comes to stand next to Rey, looking at Kylo, then at her, then back at Kylo. “As you see, Supreme Leader, this little endeavor was a success.”

            “I trust she didn’t give you any trouble, General,” says Kylo to Hux. “You both seem to have made it back in one piece.”

            “Oh, no.” Hux folds his hands behind his back and turns his head to give her a meaningful look. “No trouble at all.”

            It would be the perfect opening for Rey to contradict him, and he knows it. He has such an arrogant certainty that she won’t. And he’s right. She won’t, but not for the reasons he thinks. There’s Ordula’s voice in her head telling her to use his false perception of her as armor. Let Hux think she fears Kylo Ren’s wrath enough that she’ll keep his secrets. He’ll come to regret the day he underestimated her. So Rey only nods, and says nothing.

            Hux’s mouth turns up at the corners, and he straightens to face Kylo again. “May I return her to your custody and resume my post on the Finalizer, then?”

            “Yes. Go.”

            With a last glance at Rey, at his “handiwork,” Hux leaves, starting across the hangar bay to presumably find another shuttle to take him back to his own Star Destroyer. By his pace, he can’t get off the Conquest II quickly enough.

            Kylo directs the attendants to bring Rey’s new things to his chambers, then he regards her. He seems to forget his words for a second or two before he just says, “Rey. With me.”

            Rey bristles at being called to his side like a pet, but she truly has nowhere else to go and this is not the place to make a stand. Besides, no one’s dragging her around this time, so all things considered it’s a slight improvement. She walks over to him, and he turns on his heel and heads toward the elevators with her trotting to keep up.

            He calls the elevator, and they both step inside. She still can’t hear his thoughts, but she knows he’s also thinking about the last time they were in an elevator together, alone. The words that were exchanged, the possible futures they’d shared with each other. How his eyes had fixed on her face when she stepped close to him and offered her help in turning back to the Light. How the floor momentarily dropped out from under her feet when he said he knew who her parents were. How both their visions came to pass, but not in the way they’d anticipated.

            A minute of silence follows, and then he is the first one to speak. “Your new clothes,” he says. “They suit you?”

            At first she doesn’t recognize that as a question and thinks he’s trying to give her a compliment, but then she turns her head to see him looking at her, expecting an answer. She glances down at herself. It’ll take some getting used to, but that’s more revealing than anything she wants to admit to him. “Yes,” she replies.

            He responds with a nod so slight that it’s almost imperceptible, then looks back at the elevator doors. And so does Rey.

            It’s a long elevator ride, and they’re alone. She wonders why he doesn’t touch her. That was very nearly the first thing he did when he got her alone yesterday, take off her clothes and touch her. Today he hasn’t so much as made another request for her to go to bed with him. He stands a step or two behind her and keeps his hands to himself.

            Beneath her clothes, Rey wears one of the plainer sets of underthings from Ordula’s, one that had shifted to match her skin tone when she put it on. She revisits all of the things Ordula had said about Kylo Ren. Rey knew he hadn’t ever taken a lover, obviously, but she hadn’t known he had opportunity. Many opportunities. It makes sense that power and prestige would draw people to him, people who want a share of that power, or want a favor granted, or want to advance socially. Maybe people who just— find him attractive. Those must exist. The point is, if he wanted sex, he could have had it. He likely could have had it when he was Kylo Ren and not Supreme Leader yet, or even when he was Ben Solo, with someone drawn to the promise of his bloodline. Or to him.

            So Kylo doesn’t just want release, but Rey thinks she knew that already. Sexual desire is not the root of their relationship. It’s just a symptom. She doesn’t know how well she can apply the moral of Leia’s Huttslayer story to him. Maybe he doesn’t know everything she’s learned since they last fought side by side, but he doesn’t underestimate her strength. He is drawn to her because they are both equals and opposites.

            The first elevator slows and stops. When its doors open, Kylo takes her arm and escorts her to the next one, not roughly but not particularly kindly, either. Two Stormtroopers pivot to stand at attention as they pass. Kylo has to punch in a code to call the second elevator, so they remain in this hall for a good minute or so. Rey wonders what they must look like: him, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, holding her, a smartly-dressed yet still-restrained prisoner by the arm, as they both wait for the elevator. She’s not sure if the officer who’d come to inform Kylo of the fate of her clothes that morning had caught a glimpse of her, but if he had, half the ship has probably heard about them by now. In her three years with the Resistance, Rey has learned how quickly rumors spread in close quarters.

            The second elevator arrives, and they step inside, turning almost in unison to face the doors again. And then all is quiet but for the workings of machinery. Rey isn’t going to be the one to break the silence.

            “Join me for dinner,” Kylo rumbles at last.

            That is not what Rey was expecting. Wary, she twists at the waist to look back at him, but he’s keeping his expression as neutral as he can and keeps himself closed off to her. Nothing helps her read his intent.

            “That, obviously, is your prerogative,” she replies, somewhat testily, “seeing as I am your prisoner.”

            “So you will.”

            “That’s what I just said.”

            “Hm.” He looks her over again, briefly. “Good.”

            And she gets to ponder what that means until they reach his floor.

            Rey expects him to lead her to a new destination, but they go to the main entrance of his chambers. She waits there while Kylo enters the code. He conceals it from her, of course. There’s something inherently comical about the de facto ruler of the galaxy standing in the hallway entering his own door code. It seems like the sort of thing he would have someone do for him, a person posted here specifically to open his doors. Maybe he likes doing things himself. He’s certainly a more mobile and aggressive Supreme Leader than Snoke had been.

            When the doors open and she steps inside, Rey is startled to notice that there’s a new opening in the wall of the sitting room, across from the washroom. A section of the smooth, dark paneling has slid back to reveal an aperture the size of a standard doorway. She cranes her head to look at it.

            “How many other secret doors do you have?” she asks him.

            Kylo flicks his fingers to unlock her cuffs, since she hasn’t yet. “What?”

            “I feel like everytime you come in here you open more doors. Closet doors, doors to entirely separate rooms—”

            He frowns. “They aren’t secret doors.”

            “Not to you. You know where they are.”

            “I can tell Skywalker trained you,” he says in a low voice.

            “What does that have to do with anything?”

            “He, too, was blind to what was in front of him.”

            With different delivery, it might have been a joke. Rey just says, “You said something about dinner?”

            He nods and starts toward the new doorway in the wall, and she follows. When she reaches the threshold, though, she has to stop and take it in. This room is a narrow private dining chamber taken up almost entirely by a very long black table. The ceiling isn’t particularly high, but dangling down from it, over the center of the table, is a small chandelier made of translucent black crystal which soft white light shines through. There are only two chairs and two place settings at this table: one at the far end, at the head, and the other immediately to its right. The rest of it is completely bare.

            While Rey takes this all in, Kylo walks over to the chair to the right of the head and pulls it back a bit. He turns his head to look at her, purses his lips, and, when she only looks back, makes a noise that’s a bit like clearing his throat.

            “Oh, should I- come over?” asks Rey, deeply confused.

            “Yes.”

            “All right.”

            Rey doesn’t have much occasion to eat in real chairs. The tables in the Resistance mess hall have benches. She’s certainly never had anyone pull a chair out for her before and wait for her to sit in it. She walks over, looks down at the seat, looks up at him — she might be able to intuit what to do from him if he weren’t closing her off from his thoughts! — then makes a guess and stands between the chair and the table. This, apparently, is the right guess. He pushes the chair in behind her so that when she sits, it’s a reasonable distance from the table, then goes to sit at his own place, a scant foot away from her if that.

            Now that Rey’s seated and contemplating an empty plate, she realizes how utterly ravenous she feels. She hasn’t eaten a real meal since before she left for Hays Minor, and in the intervening day or so she’d blown up a munitions depot, been dragged around Cantonica by Hux, had… she glances at Kylo, who is watching her closely, then down at her place setting. She has a good excuse to study it. There’s more cutlery laid out here than she’s ever seen. Some of it seems completely pointless. Why would you need more than one fork, much less three? What’s the use of such a small dull knife? It can’t be to keep her from having a potential weapon; there are other, real knives laid out on the table too.

            An attendant enters and fills their glasses with water. There are glasses with long stems, which Rey recognizes as wine glasses, that go unfilled. Kylo looks across at her. “Wine?”

            “Um, no.”

            He nods and looks to the attendant, who collects both their wine glasses and leaves, then re-enters shortly with a small basket of rolls, so new from the oven that steam rises from them. The smell goes straight to Rey’s empty stomach. The attendant barely has a chance to set the rolls and the accompanying butter dish — filled with real white-yellow butter — on the table before Rey is leaning across to take one. She doesn’t care that the roll’s still a little too hot; she tears it right down the middle, plucks two pats of butter out of the dish, and sandwiches them between the two halves. She bites into it with relish, such a large bite that she brings her hand up in front of her mouth as she chews, a contented noise welling up in the back of her throat.

            For a moment she forgets Kylo Ren is even there. How often does she have the occasion to eat real food, fresh food? Much of the Resistance diet is derived from non-perishables by necessity, and on Jakku? Forget it. Butter was a mere abstract concept for the first twenty or so years of Rey’s life. And this butter! It’s so rich, so silky, melting perfectly into the roll’s airy crevices. Better than any she’s had. She devours the roll and reaches for another.

            “So you like it.”

            She pauses. Kylo is watching her. He’s taken his own roll, but most of it remains on that small plate in the corner of the place setting; he has a piece of it in one hand, and is using that impractical dull knife to spread butter onto it. That’s probably the proper way. Of course he would know the proper way. She can’t tell whether he’s mocking her for not knowing, or for bypassing manners in her pursuit of food, or whether he’s stating a sincere observation.

            “It’s good,” she says. She’s not about to lie, not about food, and not when her enjoyment is so obvious. She wonders if he appreciates how good it is. She takes a second roll and rips it only half-open this time, then drops another pat of butter inside the resulting crevasse.

            “Good,” says Kylo. “I’m glad.”

            Rey pauses again, this time with the roll halfway to her mouth. “You’re... glad.”

            “I am.”

            “Well—” She doesn’t know how to respond to that. He doesn’t look any more glad than usual. Maybe there’s a softness to his eyes, but she could be reading too much into it, searching for something recognizable in him. And she won’t make that mistake a second time. “Okay.”

            “You shouldn’t starve.”

            “Right.” Rey takes a bite of her roll, and says, still chewing, “That would be unseemly.”

            “An unseemly way to kill a prisoner? Yes.” He considers this for a moment. “Although sometimes it’s an effective way to extract information. To barter. But a true death, whether in combat or execution, should be quick, painless, and personal. There’s honor in that.”

            Rey swallows her mouthful of buttery roll and says, “I didn’t think the Dark Side cared much for honor.”

            “You and I are not so unalike.”

            That is not what she was getting at. She shifts in her seat. Something about what he said nags at her. “Quick, painless, and personal.”

            “The type of death that comes at the end of a lightsaber’s blade.”

            “The death that you gave your father,” she says quietly. “Wasn’t it?”

            He says nothing.

            “The death you would have given Luke Skywalker. That you would give me.”

            “That I will give you.” His brows knit together slightly, as if he can’t believe she would think otherwise. “Because I’ll look in your eyes, before the end, and you’ll be seen. Truly seen. That’s the most you can ask from an executioner. It’s something you would give me, too, were our positions switched. I know that about you.”

            “You don’t— know that.”

            “But I do.”

            “You don’t.” Rey takes another, slower, bite of her roll. She imagines that he hasn’t had much casual company over the last few years if he thinks this is an appropriate topic for conversation over the best bread to have ever been made. She just shakes her head, and keeps eating.

            Before she can take a third roll, the attendant reappears with a wide, shallow bowl and sets it down atop the large plate nestled between all the cutlery. The bowl is filled to the brim with a thick red soup; Rey’s mouth waters at the sight of it. The attendant brings another out for Kylo, then vanishes.

            Rey does pick up her spoon for this. She’s not completely uncivilized. She folds her legs under herself so she can better lean over the table, and once the first spoonful of soup touches her lips she completely forgets about Kylo Ren once more. The soup is somehow tangy, creamy, and savory all at once. It’s smooth and it soothes her throat in a way she didn’t even know she needed. She’s not made of infinite patience. She eats about half of it with her spoon before just taking the bowl in her hands and drinking the rest.

            It’s only when Rey is licking the bowl clean, determined not to let a single drop of soup go to waste, that she notices Kylo staring at her again.

            At first she doesn’t register why. She initially assumes he finds something appealing in her undisguised delight at the deliciousness of the soup, and it curdles her mood a little bit to think he might read something filthy into her enjoyment of something so pure. Then she has the realization that, oh, where he comes from people probably don’t lick bowls clean, just like they don’t stuff whole rolls in their mouths. Rey has certainly never seen Leia do either thing. Her friends don’t either, really, but they also never criticize her habits. Finn’s taken to sometimes emulating her and mopping up extra sauce with his fingers, wearing a wide grin.

            And it occurs to her that if Kylo knew her at all he wouldn’t be surprised by her manners. If he knew her at all he’d know she’s a messy eater. That’s something anyone who’s spent any time around her knows. That’s something anyone who’s ever sat down for a meal with her knows.

            But they’ve never shared a meal before. All of the conversations they’ve ever had sum to a number of hours she could count on only one hand, don’t they? In that sense, they may as well be strangers.

            It feels wrong, though, to think of Kylo Ren as a stranger. They’ve touched each other in ways that no one else has. They’ve crawled around each other’s minds, left marks skin-deep and deeper. And he was inside her, of course. But she doesn’t know the things about him that she knows about Poe and Rose and Finn. What food does he love, or hate? Are there objects that are important to him beyond that lightsaber? Would he rise early or late if given the choice? What shape do his days take? He doesn’t know the shape of her days, and he has never seen her smile, but he has known her greatest fears. He knows everything and nothing about her.

            What are they to each other, then? Enemies, certainly. They’re entrenched on opposing sides of an ideological conflict and neither one of them is budging right now. You don’t need to know someone to kill them, as he has sworn to destroy her, as she someday must destroy him since he is determined to continue down this chosen path. Equals and opposites. But what had they been, friends? No. Not ever friends. Once confidants, but never friends. Strange, because usually confiding is predicated on friendship. Usually you’re friends first, before you start spilling your secrets.

            So are they lovers, now? Not quite, she thinks, although their bodies have done what lovers’ bodies do. He’d like that, though. He’d like them to be lovers. But what does that even mean? How can he be her lover when he knows nothing about her? When he doesn’t know her habit of eating with her hands or her sense of humor or what her smile looks like? Why is he not considering what would happen if he learns of those things and doesn’t like them?

            And why should she care?

            Rey reaches across the table, takes another warm, flaky roll from the basket, and tears it with her hands so she can stuff a piece in her mouth. It’s good. Stop thinking.

            That’s difficult, though, when he’s sitting just there, close enough that they might bump legs under the table if they’re not careful. It grows ever more impossible to ignore him when the silent attendant reappears to remove their empty bowls and dirty spoons and leaves them alone with each other. And he’s right here, saying nothing, shoulders rigid, dark eyes fixed on her fingers as they tear the roll apart, still blocking his half of the bond so she can’t tell what he’s thinking.

            Maybe he’s wondering how he could ever want a wild desert creature — a feral thing, as Hux had called her — whose fingers are now sticky with crumbs. The thought makes her cheeks prickle with irritation. It’s not embarrassment at being judged by him, but the notion of being judged in the first place. What right does he have, to look at her with disbelief that she would lick every drop of soup from that bowl? How can he scrutinize the way she eats when she’s certain he’s never gone hungry in his life? More people in the galaxy live like her than they do like him. It rankles. Easier to be rankled by him than be anything else. She clings to that sense of annoyance like a lifeline.

            The attendant returns moments later to set down small plates piled high with greens that are dressed with some sort of purple syrup. Rey reaches for the fork closest to the plate so she can begin attacking them.

            “It’s this one,” Kylo says, reaching across his plate to point out the correct fork on her place setting, his gloved hand nearly brushing her wrist.

            As admonishments from him go, it’s gentle, but Rey has already been mentally arguing with him on this topic for two minutes and she couldn’t care less which fork is right. “By the Force,” she snaps aloud. “If you ever want to take me to bed again you’ll leave my table manners be!”

            Kylo withdraws his hand as if she’s stung it, and something like hurt flickers in his eyes. For a moment he is still, and Rey is still. Then he averts his gaze from her and, with something like a grunt, slams his far hand down hard, rattling the tabletop. His glass overturns and cold water races down the length of the table, which breaks his focus on blocking her out just enough for her to feel how much more the spill upsets him.

            Then silence.

            Rey breathes, and she has to force herself to relax, little by little, even though she was expecting a reaction the moment she saw him freeze. She keeps her eyes on her own plate, both out of learned instinct and because he doesn’t deserve to get a rise out of her. If her too-harsh reaction had warranted an apology, he’s definitely un-earned it now.

            The legs of his chair scrape across the floor, and in her peripheral vision she sees him stand. He breathes too, harsh, hard, and leans forward to plant his hands on the table. He swallows audibly and says, in a low voice, “I am sorry.”

            She looks up, but he’s already halfway out of the room. The attendant reenters to sop up the spill without comment.

            Rey opens her mouth, although to what end she’s not sure. Not to call him back, surely. She does have half a mind to go after him, and she blinks at the door to the sitting room for a minute or so. He’s hidden by a corner, so she can’t see what he’s doing. She can sense him, though, simmering at the edges of her consciousness, can feel enough of what he feels to know that he’s upset, but not with her. She didn’t know he was capable of shame.

            The anger is present, though, even if self-directed. And Rey does know anger. She knows her own, and she’s known the wrath of others, some of the particularly cruel scavengers she worked under as a child. Kylo Ren is not like them, not exactly, because they would only show their anger to things they deemed lesser, taking it out on her, on luggabeasts, on objects nearby, but turning slick and sycophantic whenever they needed to make a trade or cut a deal. Rey doesn’t think Kylo capable of that deception. Whatever’s happening within him always seems determined to force its way out, through his eyes or his mouth or his hands. But it’s anger all the same, and she knows how anger works. It demands either an outlet or time to cool.

            She gives him that time by finishing her greens, which are fresh and crisp in a way she rarely experiences and doesn’t have the self-control to savor like she should. Her enjoyment is only slightly dampened by the dressing, which is a little too sickly sweet for her palate, and by her constant wondering about Kylo Ren. She picks her plate clean before long, and when the attendant comes to collect it she gets up and heads back into the sitting room.

            He’s not there. She peers through the glass panes that separate the sitting room from the bedchamber and sees him sitting at the foot of his bed, head bowed. He’s no longer blocking her out. She can feel everything, all that shame, that anger, and that disappointment. In himself.

            Rey moves closer, but keeps her distance, standing between two of the panes. Her time with Nara Ordula had imbued her silhouette self with a renewed sense of clarity and purpose, but it had not been enough to put her entirely at ease. She can tell by the way she assumed the worst and snapped at him.

            She decides to lead with a different tactic. Changing the topic, disengaging, had worked when he was wallowing before. “Thank you,” she says.

            He looks up at her.

            “For the meal,” she clarifies.

            “You’re finished?”

            “I had soup and greens and three rolls. I’d say that’s finished.”

            He frowns. “There’s more.”

            “Finished enough, then.” She leans against one of the glass partitions. “I assume you’ll have me removed to my cell now.”

            “To your cell.”

            “To spend the night.”

            Kylo blinks at her.

            “I do have a cell,” she prompts. “Don’t I?”

            “Why should you?”

            “Why should—” Rey closes her mouth, clamping down on her disbelief. “That’s where prisoners go.”

            “Not you.”

            Rey can’t help the incredulous laugh that escapes her. “There’s only one bed. Your bed.”

            “Right.”

            “Kylo, I’m not— spending the night next to you.”

            He exhales through his nose and she glimpses that same flicker of hurt again. This time, she also feels it. “Then I’ll arrange for extra blankets and sleep in the next room.”

            “What?” Rey stares at him. “It’s your bed. If anything you should make me sleep in the next room.”

            “I won’t do that.”

            “Why not? I’ve had worse.”

            He deflects. “What’s so despicable about prospect of sharing a bed with me?”

            Rey doesn’t know how to answer that, so she doesn’t reply. Shouldn’t it be self-evident?

            He looks up at her, still seated on the edge of the bed, slouched forward with his elbows resting on his thighs. “What are you afraid of?”

            “Kylo.”

            “It isn’t me.” His eyes search her face. “No, it isn’t me.”

            Rey exhales. She can feel him reaching out through the Force to probe her mind, but now that he’s no longer closing off their bond it barely matters whether he’s looking for answers or not. He can already feel what he’s seeking.

            “Wanting me,” he continues, quietly. “Embracing that want. That would be the very worst thing for you.”

            “Stop.”

            “Come here.”

            She stands her ground.

            “Come here,” he repeats. One of his hands tenses, as if to curl around a rope that will pull her toward him, but then he thinks better of that and relaxes it. “I won’t— make you.”

            That, coupled with his unprompted apology from before, intrigues Rey enough. She moves away from the glass, taking a few steps toward him, and comes to a stop a couple of feet in front of where he sits, arms folded defensively. She’s within arm’s length, if he chooses to reach for her. He cranes his neck up to look at her, eyes bright with anxiety, and she thinks, as she has before, how remarkable that such a powerfully-built man can look so pitiful, and how wide a gulf there is, still is, between pitiful and pitiable.

            Kylo sits up, picking up his shoulders and straightening his spine, and then he does reach for her, with open, gloved hands. Rey flinches like she had in the washroom and isn’t proud of it. She turns her face away, expecting another eruption. But this time he just pauses briefly, then says, his voice straining for some far-distant cousin of compassion, “Don’t fight it.”

            “I won’t stop fighting you.” There’s strain evident in her voice, too. Her breath isn’t coming quite right.

            “But don’t fight this.”

            He lays his hands, hesitantly, on her waist. Rey inhales sharply, expecting the ground to lurch under her again, expecting the Force or the universe or whatever power it is that drives her into his arms to kick in. And it doesn’t, not the way it did when they touched hands, when they kissed, when he was between her thighs. She thinks, for that, they need bare skin-on-skin contact. Still, her heart flutters behind her ribs like a trapped insect, and there’s that knot of fire in her belly that won’t untie itself. She wants so badly for him not to be right.

            And yet.

            Kylo Ren pulls her forward, into him, and with a couple of stumbling steps she’s standing between his legs, startled into uncrossing her arms. Before she can say or do anything else, he presses his face to her abdomen, beneath her breasts, and all of the air is forced out of her lungs.

            “You lie to yourself,” he mumbles into the fabric of her new jacket. “It’s what you do. You lied about your parents, and you’re lying about wanting me.”

            “I want no part of this,” she hisses, her cheeks stinging with the falsehood, with humiliation, with chagrin at the knowledge that he isn’t wrong about her this time.

            He falls quiet for a moment, just breathing against her, his face hidden from her sight. She can only see his dark hair, which dried in soft waves after the shower he took earlier, and his shoulders, taut with anticipation. They’re going to boil over again, she knows. The two of them, together. They’re going to end up intertwined, a tangle of limbs on the floor or in the bed. Coming here was dangerous, but not for the reasons she’d thought.

            Then he says, “I want to put my mouth on you.”

            Rey, her thoughts interrupted, can only manage to say, “What?”

            “Taste you.” He nuzzles into her.

            “No, I… I know.” What she doesn’t understand is why. She knows this is something people do; Poe mentioned it in his list of all the sex acts she could reasonably anticipate between human bodies. However, he’d also told her that the odds Kylo Ren would do something like that were astronomical. It’s selfless, Poe had said. You do it for your partner’s pleasure, not yours. And a lot of people drag their feet even when asked to do it, complain about the taste, how long it takes, how nothing’s in it for them. It’s not in Kylo Ren to be the person who’d set those things aside. It just isn’t.

            Curious, she looks in his mind, past his surface feelings which already swirl within her through their bond: apprehension, arousal, an undercurrent of nervousness that he would deny. He, too, is thinking about the way it feels when they have direct contact, the rightness of it, how everything goes quiet in his unsettled mind, how his lips on her skin would give him that back. But he’s also thinking about how it felt to be inside her, moving with her, to be enveloped by her, to get lost with her hands on his skin. It was better, he would never admit aloud, than any of the times he’d contemplated taking her by force, his lightsaber blade crackling inches from her neck. No, what they’d actually done was better, his own performance aside, and she doesn’t want to give it to him again. But this, maybe this—

            Kylo jerks his head once, roughly, to the side. “Out.”

            Rey is annoyed by how, in this intimate moment, an apology comes so quickly to her lips that she has to bite it back. “All right,” she says softly.

            He looks up at her, chin resting against her abdomen.

            “We can do that.” She brings her hands down to his shoulders, even though what she really wants is to run her fingers through his hair. Too close, though. Fingernails dragging across his scalp might reactivate that compulsion to meld with him. “But just that. Nothing else.”

            “Hmm.” He studies her for a moment, and then he sits back and grasps at the hem of her jacket, pulling her closer to the bed. He tries to yank it up, and she covers his gloved hands with her bare ones.

            “No,” she says. “There’s no reason for me to undress all the way for this.”

            “Rey,” he says, clearly annoyed.

            “Unless you want to undress too.” She reaches out and unfastens his cloak. That’s only practical. It’d just get in the way. “Then we’d be even.”

            He exhales loudly through his nose and shifts his grip on her waist to pick her up and toss her, near-effortlessly, onto the bed. That would be a no, then.

            Rey does sit up briefly to get rid of her stiff jacket, just for her own comfort, but doesn’t remove the shirt underneath. Then she pushes her way up the mattress so she can recline on the pillows and leaves the rest to him. He crawls onto the bed after her and begins unlacing her boots. She’s a little surprised, impressed, at how quickly his thick gloved fingers are able to navigate those knots, but he’s probably had so much practice undoing his own buckles that this is easy for him.

            Before long, he yanks off one boot, then its twin, and then his hands are back on her hips, pulling down her breeches and her underwear together, casting them aside with her socks. Rey is privately relieved that he’s keeping his gloves on for now. She wants as much time as possible to prepare herself for the moment when they finally touch.

            The air on the ship is cold, constantly filtered and blown about, and her bare skin is chilled by the exposure, the fine hairs on her legs standing on end. When Kylo Ren reaches up and smooths his hands down her thighs, over her knees, down her shins, she outright shivers. They didn’t take much time to undress before and he doesn’t seem all that inclined to tarry, but now that they’re going into this with intent there’s a little room for admiration. For her part, she marvels at how, when he looks down at her legs and hips with such naked want, there’s a delicacy to his features she never noticed before, in his downcast eyes, his eyelashes, his long hair, and his lips. It must come from his mother’s side, whatever that quality is. Rey is too stubborn still to acknowledge it as anything close to beauty.

            He shifts up a little further so that he can lay down with his face above her belly, and then he just stays there, hovering a few inches out from contact, as he wonders so loudly how to begin that Rey can sense it without probing. She doesn’t know either, but she too is frozen, just staring at him, suddenly struck senseless with anticipation.

            Kylo lowers his mouth to her skin at last, kissing her just below her navel. And it's as if the ship jerks, the galaxy itself jerks, suddenly set to rights. Rey fists both her hands in his sheets, the embers of want within her reigniting once again, and she gasps.

            That was the difficult part, getting started. As soon as he’s touched her they both know they need more of that, more touching. He wraps his hands around her thighs and starts kissing a trail down to her pubic hair as she tries desperately to keep still. When he reaches it, when he’s finally down between her legs, he just buries her face there, not quite using his mouth just yet, but breathing her in, dragging his nose through the coarse brown curls. Scenting her.

            There are so many conflicting urges inside Rey—to close her eyes, to open her mouth, to clamp it shut, to move with him, to stay immobile, to run a hand through his hair, to keep her hands to herself—but nowhere in her heart of hearts does she want him to stop. She keeps her eyes open, and she’s glad she does, because just for a brief moment he opens his too and looks up at her from between her legs, igniting the very air between them.

            Then he lowers his gaze once more and presses his lips to her, closed-mouthed. It doesn’t contribute to any new stirring sensation, but it’s also not bad, not nearly objectionable, far from it. He does this a few times, changing the placement of his mouth, before having the idea to kiss her down there like he kisses elsewhere, parting his lips and pressing his tongue to her. And that—that!—that bit of inspiration makes all the difference. Again, there’s no immediate spark, but the added warmth and texture that the contact provides makes her hips wriggle of their own accord.

            So more of that. He gets the message. He hears it from her loud and clear. He tries a few things, tries swiping his tongue inside her, which is strange and exciting and heady for a minute before it doesn’t really go anywhere. When he realizes that no longer works, he moves his mouth up on instinct and sucks and oh, yes, this. Her clit, she knows, she has recently learned, but she’d completely forgotten about it until just now when he somehow found it again. No, not somehow. There’s no mystery. The connection between them has strengthened enough that her body might well be his again.

            And his body, too, is hers. Rey feels him, hard, how very nearly painful it is to be that hard, as he pushes his hips into the mattress for some slight release. She knows this is the time to touch him back, and she acts on that earlier impulse to slide her hand into his hair and grab. Pull. Yes. The wonderful pain from his scalp, her scalp, the subsequent rush of adrenaline. Yes. He moans into her and the vibration coupled with the sonorous depth of his voice makes her writhe.

            He picks his head up, then, and she does too, to look at him, unable to suppress the small utterance of “no” that falls from her mouth. If he were anyone else, he would smile at that. But he just keeps looking at her, at her flushed face glowing with a fresh sheen of sweat, and she can feel, for once, for the first time in so long for him, how deeply pleased he is. He doesn’t wrench his gaze from hers as he unwraps one hand from her thigh and bites the index finger of his glove so he can peel himself out of it.

            Rey inhales through her teeth, not knowing why that gesture shakes the very core of her, just knowing that somehow it does.

            Kylo keeps watching her, for her reaction, as he slowly slides a finger inside of her. It’s only now, now that he’s been working at her with his mouth for—How long? A few minutes? Forever?—a while, that she realizes how tight the fit had been the first time he did this and how much more accommodating her body has grown. He moves his finger back and forth, experimentally, just trying to learn what it feels like to be in her, and then he curls it and brushes something and Rey’s body jerks up off the bed and his jerks too, but the opposite direction, pressing into it. More of that, he knows without her having to say. More.

            He lowers his mouth to her clit again but keeps moving his finger, and as Rey’s head arches back into his pillows she wonders how he can possibly stay coordinated with everything swirling inside her, inside him, with his own desperate need sated only by the friction of the bed against the fabric of his trousers. She feels as though she’s falling through the very center of the galaxy itself as he keeps licking, sucking outside, stroking her inside with his finger, somehow finding room to add another as they both draw closer, closer, ever closer to the end.

            Rey had thought before coming here that she wouldn’t mind returning to Ahch-To, to see the waves breaking against the cliffs, wearing down the sandy beaches. She thinks now that this must be how it feels to be one of those waves, rushing to the end of a thousand-mile journey to landfall, cresting, exhilarated, the culmination of an endless aching crescendo. She presses her pelvis up, hard, against his mouth, and can feel him grind his own hips reciprocally into his mattress as they both crash and shudder for an endless moment, and then wash, exhausted, back into the sea, together.

            A moment to breathe, that’s all, and then he’s scaling her body to kiss her on the mouth this time, still needy despite their shared climax. She knows. She needs it too. When she twists her tongue around his she tastes something new, salty, musky, otherwise deeply indescribable, and she realizes that’s how she tastes in his mouth, and that she could more than stand to taste it again.

            She fumbles at his clothing. That single remaining glove has to go first, and then his jacket, his shirt. He can’t kick his boots off since they’re still fastened, so she can’t remove his trousers all the way, but she pushes them and his underwear down to his knees as they kiss. She finally allows him to yank her shirt off over her head, and then he fumbles with the clasp on the new brassiere she’s wearing, taking absolutely no notice of it whatsoever except that when it’s gone they can press chest to chest, like their hearts could somehow merge if they just got close enough.

            Gradually the need to kiss ebbs, although the need to stay connected does not. The kisses grow slower, less forceful, less desperate, as they fall back into themselves, as they really, truly, come down. She sighs into him, and he responds with one more lingering kiss before nuzzling the side of his nose against hers, uncharacteristically tender but characteristically animalistic.

            “You’re vocal,” he says at last, against her mouth.

            “Hm?”

            “You vocalize. You moan when I touch you, when I put my mouth on you.” He grazes a hand down her side. “Even when we just kiss, you hum, like you know some secret song that’s barred to me.”

            Rey blinks. She hadn’t realized she was saying or doing anything, and she certainly hadn’t meant to. “Oh. All right.”

            “It’s good.” He nods to himself and kisses her neck, then says again, “It’s good.”

            “Thank you,” Rey says awkwardly, unsure of how else she’s supposed to respond. She turns to rest her cheek against the crown of his head. “So that execution you promised me, is it tomorrow?”

            “I haven’t decided yet.”

            “Okay.”

            “It’s very possible.”

            “I understand that.”

            “Good.” He picks up his head to look at her, mouth pressed in a firm line. “I wouldn’t want you get the wrong idea about what this is or isn’t.”

            Rey barely has time to think that she’s not the only one who lies to herself before they’re kissing again.