tushanshu_logs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Characters: Rey and Kylo Ren
Date: Late August
Location: Healer's guild, Kylo's room
Situation: Rey pays a visit to an unlikely patient
Warnings/Rating: None yet

Kylo Ren had thought there was little that could be worse than being seriously injured in battle by someone who didn't even have the Force, even if he had won the battle in the most final way possible.

When he looked up from the notebook in which he was practising kedan writing to check on the person who had just opened the door, he was proven wrong.

Here he caught sight of his impending doom and had to correct himself: there was probably little that was worse, and he had just discovered one of the things that were.

Kylo cleared his throat audibly to keep the scavenger from taking a too close look at the hospital room, or pay attention at all attention to the fact that he was in a hospital. As if it wasn't far too late for that.

He didn't have any personal touches here, as he still refused to consider that he might be here for a longer stay, and but there were several notebooks stacked by the bed. Studying material both for his studies in the artes, and the kedanese language, and thoughts about Force training, if he ever got to teach any of the Force sensitive kedan Galen Marek had discovered.

"What are you doing here?" he asked tightly, his face showing his displeasure at being caught in a moment of weakness. "Have you come to gloat or simply to finish the job?"

All of a sudden he felt more keenly aware than he had in a while that he was wholly without allies on Tu Vishan. If he was lucky Rey believed Hux and Phasma were still around, just laying low, but that was if he was lucky...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She felt him jerk against the connection, against where her hand gripped his, but Rey held onto him fast. She was determined to show him that he wasn't trapped by circumstance, here — that while in Keeliai and on the turtle at least, there were opportunities afforded to him. That he did have somewhere to turn, other than to chase Supreme Leader Snoke's ghost down that deep chasm into endless Dark.

Through the tenuous link between them she registered surprise at her tenacity, confusion...and then the barest sliver of something that felt to her senses like hope.

And then Rey sucked in her breath, experiencing with him the fleeting touches of that day, on his couch — how they'd given in to craving, fueled by the little crystals they'd partaken of. How demanding yet gentle his hands had been, the warmth and wet of his mouth against hers. She swayed on her feet, slightly unsteady with the force of the recollection, glassed-over eyes suddenly heavily-lidded.

She was aware, still, that Ren was licking his lips as he spoke; it was supremely distracting.

"...We could try, yes," she encouraged him quietly, her voice soft with the heaviness of memory. "If you believe yourself to be ready to."

His hand was still tightly clutched in hers, as she leaned into his space standing over his bedside; the draw to him was strong, the pull more potent in close proximity like this, and Rey didn't have the will to deny it.

"You once offered to teach me, before, but...perhaps we could learn from each other."

He had fantasized about it so often and in so many different ways - the day when she would come to him, admitting that she should have taken him up on his offer, when she would come and ask for his teachings, when she would demand it or even when she would just Fall and leave him to pluck his prize.

Reality was nothing like it. He didn't feel smug, not even triumphant. His heart raced, no, fluttered with how impossibly close she was all of a sudden both in body and in her presence through their bond. Her heat, her smell, and she was still holding on to his hand.

It wouldn't be defeating her, but then, could it ever have been? He'd once liked to think so, for he only thought in terms of victory and defeat, but now as they were so close that he could make out every darker fleck in her eyes Kylo realized that it could have never been like that with them.

"Together," he echoed solemnly. He raised his free hand, it hovered over her cheek uncertainly before his fingertips brushed over her hair, then back to her temple. So close. He ached to pull her closer. Taste her lips again. And Kylo felt through the bond that she drawn to him as he was to her, yet... If he pushed too fast, too far again, it would all shatter like a soap bubble.

He squeezed her hand. "We could do great things together, Rey." His lips curled into a smile. "You can be so much more than a scavenger and I..." His smile widened. "You can keep an eye on me."

When his fingers lifted to touch her hair, tentative and gentle, she was overcome by the strength of her emotional reaction to it. There was a wave of tenderness, both somehow solemn and playful, something sacred she'd never experienced before — at least not counting the stolen Lucid-fueled moments between them. Tenderness, Rey thought, was something she'd probably experienced in her childhood and had been long forgotten.

This close to him, leaning over him in such a way, it felt natural to sit beside him on his bed; she angled her backside to sit just on the edge so that she could lean further into his touch.

Which she took full advantage of, hovering now with her face just inches from his. "An 'eye on you'?" she chided quietly, something like a smirk threatening the corners of her lips as she looked down on him. "Am I to be your keeper, Ren?"

And now this was definitely something that he shouldn't be smiling about. Anything but. But she was still so close, and he was still overcome by the tender intimacy of Rey sitting at his bedside like this... such normalcy, like a little glimpse into a life which he had never thought possible for himself, and least of all for them.

"If that's what you want to be..." He arched his brows slightly, just a hint of mischief sparked in his dark eyes. "If I must have a keeper I couldn't ask for a lovelier one." His voice was kept carefully light, as if it were a joke, or even a hint of mockery, and yet it didn't feel like one at all. There was too much truth, too calmness, acceptance even that she might become a part of his life. Maybe tomorrow he would be fighting again to cling to the Dark Side, but for now he was at peace, and she would be able to sense it if she listened for it.

If anyone were to stand at his side, and indeed keep an eye on him, then it felt right for it to be Rey, the Light to his Dark. "Or can you think of anyone else capable of matching me step for step?"

This did feel to her as well like a glimpse of another life, an alternate reality to what they'd known before. Neither of them had grown to maturity with the sort of nearness they sought from each other now; both had been kept at arms' length and further from those they'd cared about, forcing them to withdraw themselves, to build impenetrable walls that shouldn't have been there in the first place. Not for them, two who were so very sensitive to the Force and to the connections forged between the living, that they felt everything much too deeply — every instance of scathing neglect, intentional or otherwise; every disappointed look, every instance of having been shunned.

To Rey in particular, who couldn't even remember if she'd known this sort of closeness even as a child, the thought of being his keeper and of not being alone was a draw she couldn't resist. The peace and comfort she felt emanating from him cinched it.

"I don't want to think of anyone else filling that role," she answered quietly, honestly. She should have been surprised with how easily she could speak the contents of her thoughts, how little effort it took, but she wasn't.

No more than she could have predicted how she leaned further into him and lowered her mouth to brush it against his, something unidentifiable burgeoning inside her chest as she did that felt a little like possession.

Edited 2016-09-21 17:32 (UTC)

It had always been obvious to Kylo Ren that romance would play no part in his life. Maybe things would have been different if he had never heard a voice whispering to him of powers only the Dark could give him, but the moment Snoke chose him the chance of a normal life had been lost. Even if he could have, as a Jedi, he had been far too caught up in the battle between Light and Dark warred within, not even he would have been selfish enough to pull a lover into the downward spiral of his life when he couldn't even fathom the worst he was capable of.

When he had his answer there was only Snoke, and the Dark Side, and chipping away at everything within him that didn't fit the picture of the dark warrior he sought to become.

And then there had been Starkiller. There had been Rey. Between her and his father, everything he thought he had known about himself was torn down, and at the same time she had shown him a different path.

Now here, far away from Snoke, from the First Order and Resistance, Jedi and Knights of Ren, and everything else that stood between them, it was only that path, that connection, which remained.

Just her closing in for a featherlight kiss that made his heart skitter. He reached out, placing a slightly shaky hand against the buns at the back of her head. His lips parted, tongue snaking out to lap at her bottom lip.

They shouldn't be kissing. She was the enemy. But it was so very hard to remember that when kissing her just felt right.

She wasn't sure just how long she was going to let it go on, this gentle meeting of their lips, something sacred and pure, something she'd yearned for — but when Ren's trembling hand cupped her head, attempting to hold her in place as she felt his tongue, Rey was suddenly aware that she was losing control of the situation.

Because in that moment, she didn't want it to end. She had a brief thought of parting her mouth further against his, as she'd done under Lucid's spell — licking the inside of his mouth, tasting him fully, and her visceral reaction was so physically powerful that she had to wrench her mouth away.

" — I just — " she stammered, backing away now uncertainly, " — wanted to see how you felt. Wanted to check on you." Her throat moved in a heavy swallow. "And now I have...I hope your recovery will be swift."

And then with another pull away from him, out from under his guiding hand that would have guided her closer into his embrace, perhaps, Rey rose to her feet and let her steps take her quickly out of his room.

It was only after she'd fled the Healer's Guild that she allowed herself to touch her lips with her fingertips, her mouth tingling where it'd met his and where she'd felt his tongue.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only