Rila: ...I set myself apart in the fact that I love the Classic books. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Black Beauty, Anne of Green Gables, The Lost World...Cookies to who figures out where the quote came from. :3 Very, very, very close to Order 66. As in...days before the Order goes out. So. YEAH FOR AWKWARD FIRST KISSES! Blame The Call by Regina Spektor for this fluff.
Disclaimer: Because it is very awkward when the opposite gender goes from 'gross, cooties' to '...whoa.'
Word Count: 1,037
Chapter Description: B-bmp, goes her heart. B-bmp, goes his heart.
It was not the first time she had found herself entertaining thoughts that were the furthest thing from what they should have been. They should have been of battle, of how they were finally making some headway in the war, of how strange her Master was acting lately - but they weren't.
Her thoughts were on boys. A part of her said that it was normal, as Anakin had talked to her about it before, after Onderon ("You know you can tell me anything, right? Except for boys. It's better to avoid them." "Master, you're a boy." "You know what I mean, Snips.") but she had not entertained it often, knowing that even if she were to actively pursue that sort of thing, she would have to end it before it began - the Code forbade attachments, and she got the feel that the boy in question (whoever he might've been) would have ended up skewered on the end of a lightsabre.
But as of recent events, given with her Master's strange, erratic behavior, she had found her thoughts focused on one male in particular - Rex. A part of her thought it to be some sort of childish infatuation - he had, after all, been one of the first people she met after her arrival on Christopsis, but another larger part of her said that it ran deeper than just childish infatuation.
He was, after all, her best friend. The one she could turn to and tell everything that she didn't tell her Master, the one who, as of late, she found herself accompanying more so than not. Somewhere, now that she thought about it, she had once entertained the thought of liking someone like Rex.
But now that it was a reality - the twisting of her stomach and heart when she thought about him, when he looked at her just so - she knew that it was something deeper than just liking him. She was afraid to give it a name, she would not give it a name - it would make it real, solid, and she couldn't do that.
She was forbidden from doing that.
It didn't mean she didn't want to. And she wanted to - especially when she found herself staring at his lips, wondering if they were as soft as they looked, or when one of his hands would swing by his side, the impulse to grab it with one of her own ending with her curling her hands into fists and locking her arms across her chest. But she wouldn't - she couldn't.
But she had never responded well to being told what she could and could not do. Which, she supposed, was what she could blame her actions upon when thinking about it later. That, and in her state of exhaustion, her mind was not working as it should have been.
The bars that had been placed tightly over her own feelings towards the Captain were gone at the moment, and that was the only reason she could find to explain why she did what she did. One moment he was beside her, escorting her to the medbay - her Master was nowhere to be found, and so he had taken upon himself to see that she was tended to after the battle - and the next he had stopped, halted by her hand gripping his.
"Ahsoka?" His tone was curious, questioning and concerned as she turned, her hand still joined with his as she searched, making sure that they were truly on their own. Her sensitive hearing could not pick up the sound of boots, whether they be her Master's or Rex's fellow clones. It was a moment of silence.
And though it should have been soothing, it made her stomach twist further into a pit of anxiety, fueled further when Rex's hand closed around her own. Would he think any less of her for doing this? Would he hate her? Surely not, they'd come too far, been through too much to lose everything over something like this.
But the fear was there, and she bit her lower lip before glancing back up. It was, she decided, now or never. Taking tiny, hesitant steps to close the distance between them, Ahsoka's heart-beat picked up, and when she came to a stop, she was nearly certain that he - and anyone in the immediate vicinity - could hear her heart.
B-bmp. B-bmp.
It was a steady beat, if not a little faster than usual as she stared at him, trying to convey what her words could not, words that she could not find and would not - could not - say. Not now, but perhaps, eventually.
She was not sure who closed the gap first - but that was unsurprising, considering that as soon as there was the soft touch of lips against her own, her mind went blank. Any and all thoughts, half-formed and now incoherent, fell from her mind like stars. Blank - but pleasantly so, as they were replaced with a swell of relief and a happy stutter of her heart.
The touch was brief, chaste, dry - but it still made the chevrons on her montrals darken to a near charcoal black, and she was pleased to see the brush of color on Rex's cheeks. Steeling her nerves, she tugged on his hand - a silent question. His face neared hers again and then stopped, just before contact. "If we're caught-"
"Frankly my dear," she murmured, voice low and soft, "I don't give a damn."
The distance closed.
