Chapter Text
Prologue:
The air was thick and clogging up her lungs, the usual jungle fug heavy with the reek of burning metal and oil and leaking hyperdrive fuel, and it was hot, as hot as the sparks erupting from the ship crouching above her. Sweat and grease was sticking disgustingly to her face and chest, and she paused in her tinkering and rested a bit on the hangar floor to catch her breath, wiping her brow with the hand holding the hydrospanner, her tired eyes watching the fireworks display from her friend’s welding job. The sparks flew vertical, and then drifted down like golden snowflakes, giving her a painful twist of memory she had tried so hard to repress.
He had tried to kill her, he had tried to kill everyone she cared for. He was bossy and petulant and half mad and a lost cause, and she hated him.
Still though, her brain went there as it often did, her favourite fantasy, the clean and noble one, where instead of checking he was still breathing, taking one last wistful, hopeless look and bolting, she dragged his unconscious ass to the escape shuttle, her back screaming at the weight of his stupid big body and his stupid boots and stupid hair...all that stubborn burden of him, dragging him back home to his mother, back home with her.
She was so distracted with assembling her pathetic alternative universe, she didn’t notice the vacuum of the Force opening, popping in her ears in warning, and she squeaked when her gaze cleared to notice a pair of familiar black, buckled boots standing beside her sprawled, messy form, then more black, concealing, immaculate layers over a lot of finely cut muscle that was also an unwanted star in her daydreams, then his interesting face, that shouldn’t be handsome but absolutely was.
She considered hitting him between his sad eyes with her spanner, but growled instead like a vexed Wookie.
‘Not this again.’
The noise in the hangar faded out, leaving just him and her, and she could hear him as clearly as if they were alone in her room in the dead of night, his deep, abrupt voice smoothed out, his melancholy black stare lightening with interest.
‘And what would have you done with me, once you had me?’
Great, she had been thinking about him so hard the Force was kind enough to conjure him up, giving him a good perusal of her most private thoughts as well. ‘I hadn’t got that far,’ she muttered, wishing she had enough space to leap to her feet and stand tall instead of lying on the duracrete all grubby and easy to stand over.
‘Don’t lie to me, Rey. I know you have,’ he almost purred. ‘I’ve seen it, but I’d like to hear it.’
Her sweaty face reddened and she struggled to sit up so she could spit at him. ‘Go to hell.’
‘Only if you come with me.’
She was as dense and bad at this as he was, but she was beginning to realise, after weeks of torment, that wanting to rule the galaxy together was only a very small part of what he actually wanted.
***
Nar Shaddaa:
She hadn’t moved though she had landed long ago, enough time that the droid loaders had finished loading the crates in the deck compartments and the tired old engine of her decrepit little ship had stopped ticking and blowing steam. She was frozen in the battered pilot’s seat, the springs poking her in various uncomfortable places, staring blindly out the window at the cluttered skyline, the lurid flashing lights promising various vices and oblivions, ribbons of smog and ribbons ship lights from take offs and landings scribbling across the livid planet rise.
She had always been careful in her life, stepping around pitfalls and traps, putting her hands and feet only where she could get the best purchase, never letting anyone close unless she knew she could best them in a scrap. Taking risks, placing trust, being stupid just meant you ended up dead, and she dearly wanted to live. The last few months had completely gone against her arid, deliberate existence, and today’s actions were the stupidest, most reckless actions of them all.
She sensed him out there, a scar in the Force, a mess of black and red wires she absolutely had to untangle or cut through. Relentless flashes of feeling, never weak, always strong, even stronger now he was metres away. Impatience, lust, worry, lust again, a stab of fear that she would power up and fly away. Lucky for him she didn’t feel any sense of triumph, or she would have let her sensible misgivings consume her and she would do just that.
He could likely also feel everything coursing through her mind, like a garish, tedious neon light, her mental shields as thin as ancient paper at the moment. Anger at him, anger at herself, the dark kernel of desire he had planted in her belly, curiosity, ridiculous hope, fear that he would hurt her, turn on her, capture her and drag her in front of another vicious tyrant.
I’m not going to do any of those things, she heard, a deep, rich whisper in her mind. Just come out.
She sighed, her tall boots swinging from the dashboard to the deck, standing and stretching the cricks and creases out of her body. In the window she checked her appearance, the dark grey skin-tight flight suit, the single braid down her back, the red short cloak, the stripes of camouflage cosmetics on her eyes and cheekbones, hard and glittery. The local residents couldn’t care less about the First Order or the war, but they were keen on collecting bounties, and hers was substantial.
She glared at herself in the transparisteel, pulled her hood up over her head, slung her satchel over her shoulder, and pivoted to the boarding ramp before she lost her nerve, the kernel in her belly blooming as she went to him at last.
Her hip was naked, the saber in useless pieces in her satchel, carried with her wherever she went until she could figure out how to repair it, but there was a blaster tied down on her thigh, to use against the local thieves and murderers, it would be worse than useless to point it at him. Her stance was tense, her fingers twitching where her saber should be. As she descended the ramp, amidst the fog of exhaust and coolant and ozone she could see him, his cloak not black but midnight blue in the strip lights of the launch pad, a slice of angry dark eyes and winged brows beneath his hood, swirls of annoyingly pretty hair flying in the filthy air.
Suddenly her legs loosened, like a knot in her spine was picked undone by a dexterous finger. His eyes, which told her a hundred things when his face said nothing, lit up from within, reminding her that they weren't black, but a brown as velvety as his voice. She came to a graceless stop, looking up at him as blandly as she could. She both loved and hated how he loomed over her, as implacable as a steel wall, making her feel tiny and dainty and desiring to bring him down, kick him and mark him and stand over him in victory.
His wide mouth twitched as he picked up on her resentful thoughts, and a finger reached out, smearing silver paint from her cheek. Of course the first thing he said was something rude.
‘I don’t like this stuff on your face.’
She instantly bridled. ‘My face is on holo posters and security servers all over the galaxy, thanks to you and your army of fascists. Today I’m Shalla the smuggler. Going to turn me in for the million credits?’
‘I don’t have to. I already have you,’ he said, his gaze moving greedily from her bared teeth down her throat to her meagre breasts, the secondhand flight suit opening in a deep v neck that she instantly wanted to tug at.
‘Not yet you haven’t,’ she said as calmly as she could, locking down the conflicting emotions in her head. She could do nothing about the flush of heat in her face, but hopefully the make up hid that well. It was overwhelming being with him in person, like every nerve under her skin was firing in anticipation. She held out her hand, palm up. ‘Give it to me.’
He scowled, and she instantly gained some ground. She was good with Kylo’s scowls, the rest of him was harder to grapple with. A gloved hand went under his cloak. ‘I don’t know why I should,’ he grumbled. ‘You have a blaster in your thigh holster.’
‘You can stop blaster bolts with your mind,’ she said wearily. ‘The blaster is for the locals. We talked about this. Give it to me, or I turn and leave and you can go back to pestering me across light years.’ She has no idea what the Force wanted with them, but she was sure it was something more pure and essential than aggravation and arguing and sheer sexual frustration.
Her glittered brows raised in enquiry, and his black wings smoothed out. She felt it in palm then, thick and heavy and too big for her small hand, the vein of red wire under her brushing thumb. She blushed crimson and turned away, but not before seeing his eyes flare like embers, his mouth curling in a frankly evil smirk.
She choked back a wild laugh and stalked back up the ramp of her scavenger ship, dropping the odious saber in a strongbox and locking it with a twist of thought. She heard his big boots clunking across the deck behind her, a stream of unguarded thoughts. Piece of junk…worse than the Falcon…she could have died flying here in this. I could give her a brand new ship, new everything, if only…
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him she didn’t want it, any of it, start a fight so she could free herself from the inevitable, but it was too late, she couldn’t do it, he was too close, his cutting mind and far too alluring body and raw, thrumming need beneath his snarky, dismissive exterior. He didn’t need to hide his face from the galaxy, since most of the time he’d worn that hideous mask, but she suddenly noticed his clothes, not his usual structured black, only his gloves, like he was still reluctant to touch anything soft and yielding, navy blue pants and a soft grey shirt that exposed his throat.
She stalled out in the middle of the floor, fists uncurling, letting herself drink him in, letting him get in close, close enough to tilt her chin up, close enough to count the sprinkle of moles on his face. He was so bloody tall her neck was canted at an uncomfortable angle. The nerves in her body turned to bubbles, decanting down her legs, making her wobble. ‘I gave you my trust,’ he said softly. Now give me yours.’
He was going to make her do it then, cross the last few centimetres of space between them. He’d fought her, fought with her, needled, shouted, seduced and pleaded with his depthless voice. She had laid beside him in her bunk, awake and slumbering, she had touched his naked hand, but he had never crossed that invisible barrier and kissed her. He wouldn’t give it to her unless it was in person, knowing eventually she would get so frayed around the edges she would give in.
She reared up on her toes, intending to make her surrender a bite hard enough to make him bleed for it, but as their lips melded she moaned like the traitorous whore she was, desperate and shaking and mindless as her body reacted like a spark in a fuel line. Soft, so soft, then hard with a flick of tongue, huge hands holding her trapped, but she wasn’t going to run, oh no.
She was weak, so weak, instantly wet and restless, knowing the poison was sweet but would kill her all the same, creeping through her veins and making her swoon like he’d waved a hand and knocked her out again. Her fluttering hands wavered between a slap and getting a handful of something, settling in his hair, as glossy black as corvid feathers, as satisfying to fist as she had imagined. Her tongue withdrew and traced his lips, and she swallowed a moan from deep in his chest. She bit him then, a little sharp nip, and she was brave enough to open her eyes. Skin that hadn’t seen the sun in years was flushed, like she had been fighting him in a rematch, and his eyes were pools of ink, not from his perpetual discontent but pure want.
She flinched, getting a vivid flash of exactly what he was craving. Her on her back, his gloved hand around her throat, her body bent in half. Hot, wet, tight, weeping in pain and pleasure. She’d seen that vision before, it was her own.
‘I can’t wait. Let’s go. Now.’
***
The speeder was as battered and nondescript as her ship, but the engine purred like a high quality retrofit her fingers itched to inspect. Her thoughts bounced around like a cornered vrelt, uncomfortable silence wrapped around her, as taut as the hand gripping her arm, not willing to let her go even when driving.
She thought of engines, the ugly sprawl outside the windows of hotels and cantinas and pleasure houses and casinos. She thought of the half-lies she told to get herself off base, a mission to pick up blasters and detonators from Nar Shaddaa, a highly suspicious gift from the slippery Hutts. She thought of the safety of her friends, probably holed up in a storage room right now with whisky and sabacc cards. She thought of anything but the glowering presence beside her, the plump, tender feeling between her legs, the twisting in her stomach, like starving but much worse.
She was spiraling now, so she took a deep breath, reaching out with the Force to centre herself. There wasn’t a single living thing on this moon except for vermin and worse, the endless babble of sentient minds; anger, lust, glee, despair, malevolence. ‘This place is horrible,’ she muttered. She was used to hiding out on low tech, sparsely populated planets or in the cold, indifferent beauty of space. She had never been in a place with such intrusive energy, the worst parts of sentient nature battering her defenses, inviting her to roll in the gutter and be a selfish, impulsive animal. ‘Why did you choose here?’
She slanted her eyes towards him, and she felt that feverish burn on her skin again. His hood was back and he was looking at her instead of the thick traffic. She had always wanted to kiss those two beauty marks below his ear. She could do it right now, she could do anything and he would let her.
‘Nar Shaddaa is an excellent place for rebels and other scum to buy weapons, no questions asked,’ he said coolly. ‘I gave you an excuse to be with me, and you took it.’
Her frown cleared as her too busy mind made the connection. ‘Weapons you paid for, that will end up pointed at you,’ she said dryly, and got a sardonic look in response.
‘I’m not threatened by a pitiful little ragtag of rebels. How many ships do you have now, a dozen?’
She didn’t rise to the bait, she was too busy snatching at threads of his thoughts below the superficial level of the obvious, all the things he wanted to do to her, interesting and alarming though they were. There was something else, something more than his cunning ruse to prise her loose from the Resistance, something about this place, he’d been here before, he knew it in his bones. Too late, he threw her out of his head with a flaring glare. ‘If you’re going to sift through my thoughts, let me in yours.’
Hell no, she had slammed her door as soon as she locked up her ship, she didn’t want him to know her highly vulnerable state, how needy she was, the limits of control over herself, it was obvious enough, he could probably scent it. Sure enough, completely ignoring the blaring horns and weaving speeders and swoops and skytrains out the windscreen, he dipped his head and inhaled, exhaled against the curve of her neck, long lashes fluttering, and she couldn’t help flinching.
‘You’re a pretty pink under that ridiculous make up. When we get to the apartment, I want you to scrub it off.’
‘Keep your eyes on the bloody traffic, you nearly hit a skytrain,’ she said tartly.
‘I can do two things at once,’ he said, amused at her huffing, but turned back to the canyons between the decrepit buildings, the hand on her arm relaxing to curl around her lower back. Silence descended again. Kylo didn’t do small talk. Flirting he was surprisingly adept at; insults and threats and politics and their destiny, those too, but she usually supplied the chatter whenever he appeared, in her bed, by her desk, when she was buried in the innards of her salvage project.
He seemed to find the trivialities she shared fascinating and comforting. She never shared anything of strategic importance, even when half asleep and desperate to distract herself from the body curled next to her in her bunk that just laid there, coiled around her like a watchful jungle cat, and never did anything. No wonder she had lost her wits and flung herself across space for a second time on a shining hope, only to get burned and wrecked.
It’s not worth committing treason for, she had told him one night, cheeks burning as she gestured dismissively at all that pale muscle, all that messy hair, that wide, soft mouth that was almost smiling as he listened to her lie. I’ve done it before and it was just…fine.
But not with me, he husked, and his hand found hers, engulfing it, fingers entwining, and the jolt of energy she received, the rightness of it, was awful in a very good way. A closet, his mind was like a closet with a widening chink of light around the door, the sense of him in her both burned and soothed. He would ruin her, or she would ruin him, but she thirsted to know all the same.
‘That ship of yours is a dangerous hunk of junk,’ she heard him say, and she shook herself back to reality, glad of the distraction of a potential quarrel.
‘I told you I could get it to fly, and it’s mine, not a gift, not borrowed.’ This was important to her, but he didn’t get it, however she didn’t snarl when she realised his list of criticisms meant he was worried about her safety.
‘Soro Suub’s are always fickle and break down for no reason. That hole you welded on the portside could blow out after a few trips through atmo…you don’t have enough cannons…’
‘It suits me, and the welds are good. Chewie did them, he’s used to working with pieces of junk.’ That shut him up, any mention of his living relatives usually resulted in stony, pained silence, but she kept doing it. ‘Not everyone can be a fancy dark lord with a fancy custom ship and credits to burn, my prince.’
‘Scavenger,’ his lovely lips curled around the oddly fond slur. ‘Or is it smuggler?’
‘I’ve come to the right place to be both,’ she smiled. The vista outside the windscreen was changing, more bars, more cheap food places, more parts shops and workshops, more colourful, tough guy characters strolling the streets, armed and dangerously casual. It made her heart ache suddenly, a memory of mutual agony, and she didn’t need to read his mind to know why he had brought her here. She shot an assessing look at him, but his face was its usual stoic mask.
The speeder ducked down an alleyway so narrow it nearly shaved steel off its sides, entering a courtyard that was thankfully free of piled garbage and people rutting and fighting, haggling and cursing. With nothing to distract her, she tensed up again as they parked up outside a bland apartment building that soared to the dirty sky. There was a pair of guards outside, non-humans she couldn’t identify, armed to the teeth.
Kylo jumped out of the speeder, tossing a credit chip at the nearest guard. ‘Kill anyone who touches this speeder, and we were never here.’
‘You never here,’ the guard replied in fractured Basic, pocketing the bribe, which worked as well as the Force. Now she was here, she was suddenly frozen, like she was a silly princess waiting for her door to be opened, which he did, handing her out elegantly but immediately clamping her upper arm in a possessive grasp. She dropped her eyes from his searching gaze, that starving sensation in her guts making her legs drag as they hustled through the gleaming lobby.
In the turbolift, a finger under her chin, making him see him and admit what was about to happen. His irises were near drowned in black, that slightly unhinged look she was well familiar with. Instead of evading she babbled.
‘Going to insult me again about my make up? My ship? My rebel friends…’
‘I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than I want you,’ he said, cutting through her paltry defense tactic. ‘I’ve been hard ever since I landed on this hellhole moon.’
‘Shut up,’ she moaned, and reared up on her toes to kiss him exactly where she wanted to, that sweet little spot below his ear, then the scar she gave him and didn’t regret a bit, then his lips.
That was where her assertiveness ended. She was picked up off her feet and caged against the wall, not able to even wriggle in protest, not that she would, she was dissolving with each dive of his tongue, each bruising suck on her lower lip, her hitched breaths stolen, the lift coming to a jerky stop with flick of a forefinger. He hadn’t lied, she could feel it trapped against her lower belly, intriguing and downright threatening. She had only done that a couple of times and she had no idea how it was going to fit, but she was flooding wet at the very thought of trying, enduring, submitting, a low embarrassing whimper muffled by his mouth.
He made a feral sound in his chest, breaking off to nip at her throat, and she struggled to shut down her mind again, one trembling hand writhing free to card through that tempting hair, dragging him to a spot over her pulse and oh…he bit her so hard she yanked at him and cursed.
Nothing was holding her up now except the heft of his big body and sorcery, his hands roaming everywhere like he owned her. She couldn’t keep hold of all her senses at once, there was too much, the wild pleasure of having him close made the golden strands of their connection sparkle and sing. She hated it, wanting to push him away with the traitorous Force and run. She loved it, wanting to peel off every stitch of clothing and be skin to skin and take him deep, pressed against the cold glass of the lift. They shouldn’t be doing this, no wait, they should have done it long ago.
A sucking kiss on the curve of her breast, near spilling out of the opening of her flight suit, the constant stroke of his hard, heavy length against the fork of her thighs. She groaned in pathetic protest, her dazed eyes opening to catch him smouldering up at her from her chest. His intimidating stare was rather spoiled by the smears of silver paint on his arresting face. She started to giggle half hysterically.
‘You’ve got glitter all over you, Supreme Leader.’
It started with a quirk of his swollen lips, then it broke across him like a binary sunrise, all teeth and creases and bloody dimples. A real smile.
She knew then that she was utterly doomed.