There's a set of familiar coordinates in the message that flashes across the commlink, nothing else. Later, there will be a second message. A place, a room number. This time a mid-level hotel on Coruscant. This is where they begin.
The room is cool and dark when she opens the door. There is no need for lights; the floor-to-ceiling window on one side of the room allows the lights of Coruscant to illuminate the long rectangular conference table in front of it in splashes of different colors. It's there that she sees his silhouette. The helmet is out of sight, and she can feel his dark, sharp eyes on her from across the room. There is a heat and weight to that gaze that she would know in pitch black, across the room or across a field. It's a terrifying thing in battle but here, it pulls at something low in her body.
His lightsaber is clearly visible on the opposite end of the table from where he sits, the only confirmation she needs as to what this meeting is for. Hers joins it as her own white flag; her acknowledgement of his.
"How long?" She asks quietly, by way of greeting as she slowly approaches him.
"Not long." He answers.
He stands, his taller, larger frame looming over her as he cups her face. She lays her hands on his shoulders, bending him down to her and their foreheads touch. His breath across her lips, her air in his lungs. He is calmer already by her touch and vicinity, freed from the fear of seeking her out like this, from the worry that she will not come to him. He must know by now she will, but he does not easily ask for this.
"Down." She coaxes. It is a suggestion, not a command; there to guage his mood.
When he yeilds, she feels it, like rings on water, traveling outward from the sudden calm at the center. He sinks to one knee because he can never conceed her both, his hands settling on her hips as he looks up at her.
Her hands drop to his hair, pushing it back from his face in a gesture that is soothing and familiar to the both of them. She slides her thumb over the raised pink flesh of the scar that bisects his face- the one she hadn't wanted to give him. Her leg twitches at the thought of the similar scar he had left her during their second encounter. It was a fight she would have lost, had he not been content with immobilizing her. She remembered the long weighted look he'd given her while her blood pattered to the ground beneath her.
"And now you'll wear emmy/em mark." he'd said.
Anger stiffened her whole frame.
"Don't," he entreated.
Fabric whispered as large, strong hands drew her skirts up and warm, soft lips trail apologies along the path of that scar from the inside of her knee to her hipbone with a tenderness that was in direct contrast to the nature of it's existence. A direct contrast to him; to who he was to everyone else, who he was outside of this room. She blinked that thought away, a stillness settling in her.
emNo. Not here./em She is the light surrounding him; the dark will not touch him here.
She startles as his breath glides across the skin beneath her navel and for a moment she thinks of how, if he just turned his head a little, he would be at the juncture of her thighs. He stills as if she has spoken aloud, but her thoughts move forward. He is not here for sex or else she would likely already be bent over the closest available surface. His energy is too subdued for that to be his intention, and she takes his hands in hers and pulls him up, leading him to the bed. She strips him down to his pants and pulls his boots, kicks off her own, and uses a light hand on his broad chest to push him down on the bed. She drapes her body along his, throws a leg over him and pulls the covers around them. They talk in low voices of innocuous things with his arm curled around her and her fingers tracing invisible shapes on his skin until he sleeps; then she pushes halcyon thoughts at him through the Force, through where their skin is connected until sleep takes her too. She doesn't know if it works, but she will give him what she can until he can find it for himself.
She awakens to his body shifting under her and she grabs at empty air as he rises to dress. She props herself up on one elbow to enjoy the view, and she's pretty sure there's some extra flexing in there for her benefit, because when he turns to look over his shoulder at her, there's a tiny curl to his lips that suggests he knows what it does to her.
"Yes, scavenger?"
She shouldn't ask, she emdoesn't/em ask, but he knows her question anyway because it is his own and they both know there is no real answer.
"Soon." He says.
When he stands to leave, he cups her face in his hands and bends down to her, their foreheads touching. Her breath across his lips, his air in her lungs. This is where they close.