"Yes, there's love if you want it
Don't sound like no sonnet, my lord."
Sonnet- The Verve
She would have been lying if she had said that being in an small, enclosed space with Atton Rand was something she wasn't remotely interested in, but now that she found herself in such a place, she couldn't stop fidgeting; digging dirt out from under her fingernails, gazing listlessly out the window, staring at her booted feet, adjusting the drawstrings on her jacket; anything to keep herself from focusing on the fact that if she reached out slightly to her left and set her hand down, it'd be resting on his leg.
There was a lot of space between the two of them on the Ebon Hawk; the co-pilot's seat was at least four feet away from the pilot's, and the two were separated by a bulkhead. Sitting in this tiny vehicle in such close proximity to her pilot was making her feel uncharacteristically shy.
She cracked her window open enough to slip her fingers through and let her cigarra butt fly into the night.
"You sure got quiet." Atton observed. "Not a fan of sport class speeders?"
"No, no. This is great." She said, still gazing out the window as they sped through over other speeders and between buildings. "I just… uh. Here I am again. With you."
"You just can't stay away." Atton remarked casually, looking over his shoulder quickly before shifting the speeder left and diving down a few city levels. "Admit it, I'm way more fun than blondie."
Meetra nodded. "Mical is… he's sweet. He's also very smart and well-read. He has a very interesting way of looking at the universe… not unfounded, entirely, but perhaps a little idealistic: I actually enjoy being around him."
"Uh-huh." Disinterest defined Atton's voice.
She smiled privately to herself and brought her hand up to her mouth to nibble on the corner of a fingernail distractedly as she spoke.
"You though, you're… I don't know. You're indefinable. Mical follows me around, practically handing every nuance of himself to me for safe-keeping, but you seem determined to make me work for that right."
Atton sighed and adjusted his grip on the controls. "I always did say that Jedi read too much into things."
"Hmmm?" She hummed from behind her fingernails.
"Stop that." He laughed gently, reaching over to tug her hand away from her mouth. "That sound makes me shudder." The corner of her mouth twitched when instead of letting go, he wormed his fingers between hers, using his left hand to control the speeder.
Yeah, alright fly-boy. I see what game we're playing now. Didn't you compare me to a spice-whore less than a week ago?
The thought crossed her mind, but she didn't pull her hand away. Maybe he was trying to seduce her. Maybe he just wanted to finally be able to say he had her. Or maybe he was trying to tell her something. Regardless, despite her suspicions that he was Jil's brother, the evidence she had seen that he was not just a speeder-thief, and his peculiar seeming disgust for just about anything to do with Jedi teachings, she chose to just… relent to the Force and let whatever was going to happen, happen.
It was a simple realization, actually: The more she struggled for control, the more Atton was going to push her away, and she found herself not wanting that. She was drawn to this man, when all evidence should have repelled her and yet…
Be honest with yourself, and with him.
If I like him (which I do,) being coy and flighty is a betrayal to not only myself, but to him as well.
Show him that: What reason would I even have to keep something like that to myself? I don't think this cold, distance thing is really fooling him at all, actually it's just making things weird.
Distance can be good, but can't it also be incredibly rewarding to be close with people? I've become close with Mical, and there's no resistance or guilt there.
I should stop being so stupid.
So inch by metaphorical inch, she let go: She forced herself to relax and compose herself the way she would around anyone else she called a friend, and molecule by molecule, granted herself the peace of mind to finally look Atton's way and give his hand a squeeze. He didn't say anything, but she could tell by the curious way he was smiling and gazing forward that he was satisfied that she had returned the simple token of affection.
"You're not so bad." She mentioned.
"Yeah, you have your moments too." He said, and they didn't speak anymore, content with pop music and each other. She glanced out the tinted window and broadcast her halcyon smile into the smog-filled horizon, relieved at the peace she felt when he lightly brushed his thumb over her own with a tenderness that caught her off guard.
Questions bombarded her mind, as instinctually she was inclined to seek out the root and the cause of this seemingly mutual attraction that had become suddenly so tangible between the two of them, but she pushed the questions away as quickly as they came; she didn't want to know. Not right now: The curious tingle of energy that seemed to be based at the back of her neck told her that at this moment, this was good, and it didn't need to be anything else.
By the time they pulled into another speeder-park, and Atton cut the engine, she was positively bursting with unspoken admissions and things she wanted to say: She wanted to tell him how his lingering scent in the cockpit… an aroma of cigarras, fuel and some sort of cheap aftershave, had become unmistakable to her. She wanted to mention how much she liked the way his lips curled up at the corners, and the shape of his hands, how being in a room with him and knowing that things weren't good between them made her feel physically nauseous, and how she'd always been tempted to give Kreia a smack anytime she referred to him as anything other than the understatedly bright, talented individual he was.
Instead of saying anything at all, she instead contented herself with undoing her seat belt and leaning across the narrow console to press her lips against his. In an instant, they were on Dantooine again, sitting on the roof of the Ebon Hawk, drinking whiskey and philosophizing about what the stars meant. Those same blue waves roiled around them again as he took her lips with a fervor that left her feeling warm and unburdened inside. His thumb brushed her cheek and his fingers wound themselves in her hair: Hair that although being tangled and greasy from her earlier ordeal, was soft and natural, not the coarse, thick ropes she had been famous for in the past.
She felt the corners of his mouth lift against her lips, and then they were gone, accompanied by a low chuckle.
"Take it easy, sweet thing. We're not where we need to be yet." He punctuated his sentence with one more quick, yet equally sensual brush of his lips on hers before squeezing her hand and swinging the door open.
She willed her feet off of the floor of the speeder and onto the hard duracrete floor of the parkade they were in. She stood and felt herself wobble a bit, so she rested a hand on the open door until the ground stopped spinning beneath her.
"Where are we?" She asked Atton, who had disappeared to rifle around in the speeder for anything valuable.
"Hey, look! Spice, and a blaster in the glove compartment." He remarked, standing up and holding up the two items. "Bet this belongs to someone in the Exchange."
"And that means?"
"It was probably already stolen before I took it, and if whoever we stole it from finds out we stole it from them, we're in big trouble." He threw the blaster back into the speeder, but pocketed the spice. "Good thing we're almost done wandering around public places, huh?" He threw her a wolfish grin before slamming the door shut and walking down the corridor of parked speeders that surrounded them.
"Yes, but where are we going?" Meetra pressed: They had been driving for nearly an hour, and by her reckoning, were a good distance away from the refugee sector and the Ebon Hawk. This sector of the moon, or what she'd seen of it out the window seemed to be a bit newer and a bit cleaner (though not by much.) There appeared to be more flashing neon and running speeders and a generally better sense of upkeep than what she'd seen of Nar Shaddaa so far.
Atton's answer was only his arm over her shoulder and the words, "You'll see."
He lead her up a stairwell and down a hallway before they got into a glass lift that flew up the side of the building they were in; she pressed a hand against the glass and looked quizzically at Atton.
He shook his head and jammed his hands in his pockets. "You remember how I mentioned wasting your life? When I found work lifting speeders and finally made enough cred to not sleep on a dirty mattress in a shipping container like every other refugee, I thought it'd be a good idea to blow a bunch of money on an apartment: You know, a place that I could call my own and didn't smell like a Gammorean's bathroom." He looked a bit disdainful as he continued to speak. "I bought a ship too, and ended up spending way more time living in that thing as I went from planet to planet, dropping stock off for whoever wanted to pay the most for it. I think I've actually only slept here a handful of times. I should of known better; never was good at staying put in one place."
Meetra shrugged, "It's good to know that at least you didn't spring out of some hole in the ground: You have a past. That's a good thing, because it also means you have a future."
"That's one way of looking at it."
"What can I say? I'm the eternal optimist." She grinned at him. "Please tell me that it's at least better furnished than the last apartment we occupied." She stepped away from the glass wall of the lift and allowed herself to break that wall of personal space between the two of them. "And please tell me it has a shower." She said quietly, standing on her toes to whisper in his ear. "I'm covered in blood again."
If she was as naïve and inept at the concept of seduction as most Jedi seemed to be, she would never have said or done such a thing. Or if she had done it, she wouldn't have had the slightest idea what such behavior tended to do to a man.
Feigned ignorance was future bliss.
"Shower yes. Furniture… can't promise much. I'll be surprised if the place hasn't been looted."
"How about a drink?"
"That, I can guarantee, doll." He flashed his teeth at her before bringing his lips to hers again.
"Ow!" Meetra howled, stumbling back a few steps when his nose collided with her own broken one. She blinked away the tears that flooded her eyes of their own volition and brought her hand away from her nose to see fresh blood glistening on her fingers. A few choice obscenities rushed out of her mouth as her vision swam.
And then he started laughing at her.
"Can't you just heal it?" He snickered, watching her wipe blood on her pants.
She tilted her head up and gingerly pinched the bridge of her nose. "Healing is a talent I was never blessed with. I was always better at dressing injuries in the field with gauze and forceps. Ugh." She finished her sentence with a groan and leant against the railing of the lift to steady herself.
"Poor Jedi." Atton teased, draping an arm over her shoulder when the lift came to a halt. "Got roughed up by a few Mandalorians and now your entire day is ruined."
"Stop it." She grumbled, her voice muffled behind her hands as he lead her out of the lift and into the hallway as she continued to try and curb the flow of blood. "'S not funny. I was really having fun kissing you." See, stupid woman? Honesty isn't that hard… even with a busted up face: It really is a damn shame that noses tend to get in the way.
Atton paused momentarily to dig around in his pocket. "Me too." He said, putting a medpac in her hand. "It won't set it, but it'll sure take the edge off."
Meetra crammed the medpac in her coat pocket and smirked; men – boys – they were all the same: If making out was even a vague possibility, they would fan those flames with all they had, in what they thought were the subtlest of ways. "Did you give me that out of genuine concern for my well-being, or for fear of missing out?"
"Maybe a bit of both." He said casually.
All she could do was shake her head and smile a little as they walked, footsteps muffled by soft sea-foam green carpet. She took in her surroundings as they passed suites and wall hangings; this was actually a fairly nice looking place, as far as living on Nar Shaddaa was concerned. She didn't doubt for a moment that most of the people who could afford to live in a place like this were involved in some sort of illicit activity that generated enough money for this sort of living.
The paint on the walls was clean and recent, and there were no weird smells eking out from under doors and mingling strangely in the hallway. Large mirrors were placed every few meters, and Meetra wondered vaguely who had set about procuring such an impressive collection of paintings to just leave in a corridor.
She felt a bit uncomfortable in her silence; without even stepping foot in Atton's suite, she could already tell that this place was nice. Maybe not Coruscanti-marble fountains and gold-plated cherubs in the bathrooms nice, but it was a bit daunting all the same.
She never lived anywhere that could have been classed as "nice." She'd always either existed in the confines of the academy, on a battle-cruiser, or in a camp on a planet somewhere. During her exile, she drifted aimlessly, the only occasion to experience such opulence was the unfortunate and embarrassing period of time she had been unwittingly forced into a wardbrobe of exquisite dresses and some sort of arranged marriage agreement after crash landing on an ass-backwards planet where people hadn't even discovered electricity yet.
Meetra Surik never put much stock in nice things: She had a bed-roll and a change of clothes, and whatever couldn't be carried with her in a rucksack was of no enduring material value to her. Throughout her exile that was one of the tenets of the Jedi that never did fully wash away: Possessions and tangible material were fleeting, unimportant distractions that brought temporary meaning and value to life, but that value was fickle and would change like the weather, being given meaning only by the essence of the person who had decided to do such. Life was much more straight forward when things weren't important. She couldn't imagine ever actually owning something like a home.
Apparently Atton Rand couldn't either, for the stale dusty air that her filled her nose when he opened the door was reminiscent of the abandoned hovel they found on Telos. It took him a minute, but when he managed to remember his security settings to gain entrance to the suite, it hit her exactly how little he occupied this place.
It was well kept enough, she decided when the lights came on: It was simple and despite Atton's earlier prediction, appeared to be entirely intact. A plain beige couch was set against the wall, and in front of it, a holo-vision that had never even been taken out of the box it came in. Apart from that, there was really nothing in the apartment. A kitchen table with one chair, and an eating bar and a blanket over the window. The only thing decorating the wall on the far side of the room was some sort of ancient looking poster. Meetra kicked her boots off and wandered over to it, squinting at it curiously: Some sort of withered and cloaked figure holding a light of some sort and a staff on a backdrop of blackness.
"What the hell is a Led Zeppelin?"
"You must be joking." He said, as he started digging through cupboards in the kitchen; those were nice too, Meetra decided: Some sort of dark, well polished wood… also dusty. "Tell you what, you go clean yourself up. I'll keep looking for something for us to drink, and I'll even put some Zeppelin on for you."
Meetra finally let her hand fall away from her face and smiled despite what a frightening sight it must have been.
"Why you gotta be like that?" She asked him.
"Like what?"
"So ahh… different. I mean to me. Why me?" The words slipped out before she could stop them, but she found no regret filled their absence in her mouth.
He didn't answer her right away, he only turned from the kitchen looking vaguely amused before disappearing briefly down the hallway, returning moments later with a black towel.
"I'm still trying to figure that out." He said, pushing the soft terry into her hands. "Don't think I've ever even used that one. Brand new." He smiled, although she thought it to be rather bitter… possibly a little self-conscious.
"Thanks." She said, hugging the towel to her chest. She just looked at him for a moment, and he cleared his throat sort of awkwardly, and she rolled her eyes and kissed him quickly before bustling down the hall, in search of hot water.