Surprise!:

Never Too High Stables

Tezza smiled at Cody when he came to lean on the fence beside her, propping his hip against it and facing her fully. His helmet was still tucked under his left arm, leaving him free to type on his comp. She turned too, her heart thumping a bit faster in her chest. A quick glance to where Cody and his brother used to be standing in the alleyway between paddocks showed her only the retreating backs of Rex and Artoo.

Where are they going? she typed out quickly into the translation program.

His answer in Aurebesh came back a few moments later, but while he was typing, she stole the time to memorize his face. His features were so pleasingly put together and just seemed to scream 'alpha male'. She absolutely adored his golden brown eyes, and this close, she could see the thick lashes that shadowed his defined cheekbones as he looked down in concentration. Whoever painted his scar on did an amazing job. It looks so real. And sexy.

As he looked back up at her when he was done typing, she turned her gaze back down to her comp quickly, cheeks warming, hoping that he hadn't caught her staring at him like an adoring fangirl. It took her a few seconds to process the words he'd sent her. Ostensibly, they are going to watch the sleeping policemen, but it's really just an excuse for us to have some time alone. We can join them if you are uncomfortable with that.

"No!" she said before she could even think about it, shaking her head. Cody raised a brow and she quickly clarified. No, we can stay. I… don't mind spending a little time with you. Her cheeks were definitely hot now, and the way he smiled at her in relief and approval wasn't helping.

That's good. Because I don't know if you feel it too, but I'm hopelessly drawn to you, he admitted.

She inhaled and forgot to let it out for a few seconds. Oh god. Did he just say that? She read the words on her wrist comp again. Yes, yes he did. Then she looked up into his eyes and got hopelessly lost in them again, just like in the bathroom.

Cody's heart was racing in his chest and he swore his hands were sweating in his gloves. But that was only noticed in the back of his mind. The rest of his brain power was taken up with searching the depths of her gem blue eyes, looking for who knew what, but it felt like he was finding it. His free hand rose and he was touching her face with the barest glance of his fingers. Her pupils dilated, for sure this time, and a hint of a groan escaped from what felt like the depths of his soul. "Tezza," he murmured. "So beautiful."

His eyes flicked down to her pink, soft, bow shaped lips. And she licked them, her little tongue making the briefest of appearances. "Frag, Tezza, tell me no," he whispered as his head descended towards hers in a rate that gave her eons of time to pull away.

Tezza went perfectly still, heart barely beating, lungs barely moving, as he tilted his head down towards hers. Her hormones were screaming 'yes, yes, yes!' and her heart was saying 'oh, stars, yes please'. Her brain had pretty much shut down as well, but it only gave one spurt of caution before blinking out too. "Yes," she whispered back, and then rose a bit on her toes to meet him.

His hand tightened around her cheek and jaw, holding her still, and then his lips were touching hers, softer than anything. Their eyes met for half a moment, and then they both fluttered their lids closed. "Yes," he whispered against her mouth, his breath warm and sending shivers through her. And then he was pushing against her mouth with a firmer pressure that made them both moan.

Cody could barely believe that he was actually kissing a female for the first time in his life, but he didn't regret never having done it before, because it felt so right that this girl was his first ever kiss. Their mouths fit perfectly together as he caressed her petal soft lips with his own. His larger nose brushed against hers and over her cheek with each movement of their mouths. Her skin felt like satin. He wanted to feel more of it.

Groaning into their kiss, he dropped his helmet and tugged off his gloves, letting those fall as well. And then he was cupping both sides of her face and kissing her harder, licking at the seam of her lips, asking for entrance and pretending he knew what the kriff he was doing. (All those raunchy holomovies his brothers watched were finally being useful.) She opened on a whimpered inhale and he dove his tongue into her. She met him with her own and they were both groaning in moments as electric sensations raced through them at the daring contact.

Tezza trembled with desire in his grasp as his long fingers tightened in her hair and tilted her head just a bit to explore a new angle that made everything even better. Her hands had ended up on his hard chest armour at some point, but she wanted more. So she snaked them up around his neck and pulled him down even closer to her.

Cody's answer to that was to move one arm down to her waist and basically pick her up, pressing her closer to his chest.

She approved wholeheartedly, making more noises she had no idea she could make into their unbreakable kiss. Her toes were no longer touching the ground, and his strength made her feel like she weighed about as much as a pillow. It was an incredible turn on.

The first and last time she'd been kissed was by an American boy she'd met at a horse show back when she was sixteen. She'd thought Nero was super cute and they'd spent most of their spare minutes together for four days straight. And then it was Sunday and the last day of the show and they'd realized that he was going back home and they wouldn't be able to see each other again for who knew how long. So they'd found a quiet corner in one of Never Too High's tack stalls and found themselves suddenly kissing.

It had felt like she was being kissed by a fish.

The boy had obviously been turned on, panting heavily and clearly enjoying it, but Tezza had been left feeling cold and seriously disappointed. Everything she'd thought kissing was supposed to be was missing and she'd pulled away after a minute and told the poor boy that it would never work between them, with how far apart they lived and her not having time, blah blah blah. She'd felt like a bitch and a tease at the hurt expression on his face, but she just couldn't pretend when there was no chemistry.

But kissing Cody? Now this is chemistry. Holy cow! It feels like I'm going to combust.

And then there was a heavy breath across the top of her head and large curious lips covered in ticklish whiskers waffling across the tops of their foreheads.

Cody dropped her and practically leapt backwards in surprise, nearly falling down as he tripped over his helmet before he caught himself with a loud, "Kark!" that needed no translation.

Tezza burst into laughter, turning and hugging her mood killing horse around the neck as he hung his head over the fence. "Oh, buddy, you have terrible timing, you know that?" she whispered against his cheek between giggles.

But her mirth quickly subsided as she realized her horse's curiosity at what they were doing was probably a good thing. Things had gotten way too intense way too quickly. Wasn't I just telling myself that I wasn't going to act like a slut? And what was I doing?

I was about two seconds away from wrapping my legs around his waist and riding him like a cowgirl while playing tongue tag, that's what I was doing.

Shame on me.

Tezza blushed fiercely as she peeked at Cody from under CeCe's head. He was looking almost just as flustered as she felt, which made her feel a tiny fraction better. Maybe he wasn't expecting to react like that either?

One thing's for sure; I want more time to actually get to know him first before we do the whole mindless passion thing again.

But after that?

I want more of those heart melting, mind blowing, and shiver inducing kisses.

Cody had no idea that kissing could be so overwhelmingly wonderful.

His senses were still full of Tezza, even after he had let her go. Her intriguing scent was permanently etched into his nostrils. Her every gasp and moan and whimper would haunt his dreams for years to come. Her taste soared along his taste buds and jumped through his bloodstream like a drug. The feel of her silky skin and hair under his hands was still sending tingles up his arms. And all he wanted was to drink in the sight of her for the rest of his days and never close his eyes again.

And if that's just the kissing part, what is the rest of it going to be like?

The insistent throbbing in the mid region of his bodysuit said he had bloody well better find out or something was going to revolt.

Fortunately, he wasn't ruled by his unruly body. Because he doubted that Tezza would take too kindly to him going all caveman on her and pushing her down into the grass and tearing off her clothes as fast as humanly possible.

But, kriff, I think I would give up caf for a year if it meant that I could see her naked for even a minute.

Huffing, he rubbed a hand over his short hair in frustration, and then pushed the worst of his riotous emotions back into the box they usually lived in. (A defense mechanism that had been trained into from a young age and was the only way he could send his brothers out die in battle after battle after battle.) Bending, he picked up his gloves and helmet again, and then stepped forward and patted the surprisingly velvet soft nose of the large beastie that had nearly given him a heart attack a minute ago; CeCe's whiskers had honestly felt like a spider or something crawling along the top of his head. (Having experienced more than a few instances of the real thing while camping on the battlefields of various planets, Cody had developed a bit of an aversion to them.) Honestly, I don't think I've been on a single planet yet that didn't have a spider type insect of some kind creeping around and waiting to pounce on me.

Tezza was still flushed and beautiful as she unburied her face from CeCe's neck. He gave her a dopey smile, his joy in her sneaking right back out of the imaginary box. "Tezza," he rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest. He had so many things he wanted to say to her - things like, 'would you like to be mine for ever and ever?' or 'you taste like heaven and I want to kiss you until our eyes cross and our souls merge' – but he didn't think those would be appropriate to put on a computer that Rex and Artoo would read too, and then inevitably tease him about until they finally kicked the bucket. And... he wasn't sure if he could take the rejection if she laughed at him if he were to write something so vulnerable.

So he settled on just leaving it with her name only and staring at her with all of the longing that had jumped right back out of the box as well. I really need to get a better box.

Much to his satisfaction. She flushed a little more as she glanced at the grass shyly for a moment, and then her eyes popped right back up. "Cody," she breathed. His name on her lips sounded absolutely perfect. He wanted to hear her moan it, and scream it, too. Her hand raised, hovering in the air just above his heart for a moment before she settled it on his chestplate. And then she shook her head, an apology in her eyes.

His heart almost broke until she quickly raised her other hand as well and quickly typed into her little computer, Too fast, too soon, but not a no, okay? More talking first? I want to know more about you.

He read it right off of her computer as she typed it, since it was right under his nose, and for the first time, he saw that she was using a translation program that changed symbols that he didn't recognize into Aurebesh ones. The same symbols were in the digital keypad of the computer that covered about a hand's worth of her wrist and lower forearm, making it clear that Aurebesh was not her native alphabet. I could learn her language with this! It doesn't look all that complicated.

He was distracted enough by the thought that his joy at her non rejection was tempered slightly, but not much. Cody beamed at her and quickly typed back into his own comp, Okay.

They smiled at each other like happy fools, the moment not ending until her comp beeped with another incoming message from Rex. The policemen are starting to twitch.

Coming! Tezza typed in, then gave her beast one last pat and said something to it before taking off at a swift jog.

Cody followed, of course.

At that point, he was pretty sure he would follow her anywhere.

NASA Headquarters

Administer Alex Champilo was juggling what felt like a hundred different conversations at once, between the technicians in the Command room with him, the information coming back from the ships sent up to the wormhole, and the updates from Gibson's retrieval team that were still delayed at the Niagara Falls border crossing because the Canadian Air Force had decided that they were going to escort the NASA ships to the crash site whether they liked it or not. Not that I blame them, I would do the same if the situation was reversed, but still… It's bloody annoying.

"Sir, one of the ships has found what looks like writing on one of the pieces of debris! It looks like a door!" Letty Evans, who was in charge of the cleanup crews, said excitedly.

"Put it up on the screen."

"Yes, Sir."

The big screen at the front of the room that had been split into twenty or so boxes of recordings being sent back from ships and probes was suddenly filled with two groupings of symbols.

The room went silent in only seconds as eyes widened in shock.

"Not possible," Alex breathed.

"Is that…"

"Aurebesh?" someone else finished the sentence that Gibson had started.

Being NASA, of course there wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't a Star Wars nerd. Even closing in on two hundred years after the first movie had been released, the franchise lived on. Something like forty movies and live-action shows, a couple dozen cartoon series', and countless comics and books had been made about the galaxy from far far away, spanning a 6000 year time frame, but everyone still loved the original trilogy's era the best and all the people who had lived in that timeframe, from Luke Skywalker to Cad Bane to Ahsoka Tano.

Alex stared and stared at the familiar symbols, easily translating the words. Never had the unique letteringbeen such a welcome sight to him, except for maybe that time at Star Wars Con when he'd gone on a frantic search for a door labelled, 'Mens Refresher' because his innards had decided to have a bad reaction to the extra large Rainbow Berry Blue Milkshakes he'd had three of because they tasted so freaking good.

He was hit by something of an epiphany as he stared at the symbols with somewhat bugged out eyes. Holy shit. Is it possible that everything that we've invented about another place was actually real? Does that mean the Force is real too? Have the creators of Star Wars been having visions all this time?

"Somebody pull up the image of the intact ship that came out of the wormhole again!" he barked.

In seconds, a grainy photo filled the wall sized screen and everyone stared at it like they'd just seen a ghost.

"How did none of you not notice that that thing looks almost exactly like a bloody Y-Wing?!"

"Ummmmm…" his people looked at each and cringed.

They were saved from Alex's wrath by Gibson.

"Sir, the Canadians just received a 911 text from the crash site. Apparently our visitors didn't take kindly to authorities sneaking up on them. They have two police officers unconscious and a girl in a possible hostage situation."

"Fuck. Get your men there yesterday! I don't care if the Air Force has arrived to escort them or not!"

"They all just left the border," Gibson reassured. "ETA, fifteen minutes."

He wanted to growl. He really did. Instead, Alex spit out through gritted teeth, "That will have to be good enough, I suppose."

Movement caught his peripheral vision, so Alex turned to see Evans practically bouncing up and down in an attempt to get his attention. "Yes?"

"Another large piece of whatever got wrecked just emerged from the anomaly!"

"On screen!

They all watched as a massive wedge of tangled metal flew out of the wormhole and barreled towards one of the salvage ships that wasn't even a tenth of the size. The salvage ship dodged out of the way just in time and the cameras followed the mountain sized piece of what he assumed used to be the majority of a very big spaceship as it spun and tumbled on a course that would eventually have it crashing into Earth.

"Bloody hell! Tell them to catch that before we have a city sized crater in Africa!"

"Already did that, Sir," Evans said, even as the cameras showed three ships chasing after the wreckage.

Everyone watched with bated breath as grappling cables were shot at the potential threat to Earth and exhaled in relief and then cheered as they caught and the powerful ships dragged the debris to a stop with plenty of room to spare. It hadn't even passed the imaginary orbiting line of the space station yet.

"Sir!"

"Now what?" Alex snapped.

"You have to see this, Sir."

The room hushed once more as the screen changed back to a view of the wormhole and what had just flown out of it. And in this case it was definitely flown out, not spit out.

Alex's breath caught in silent awe at the sight of the gleaming, arrow shaped ship that soon came to a halt in space.

"Oh. My. God," Gibson said for pretty much everyone.

"Amidala's ship, right?" Evans said, turning around and looking up at Alex. "Please tell me that looks like Amidala's ship to you too."

"It looks like Amidala's ship to me too," he said in a strangled monotone, too close to having a complete meltdown to let any emotion show in his voice at all.

The people in the room remained quiet as they all waited for something to happen. When nothing did after a minute, and Alex had kick-started his brain back into command mode and out of fanboy nerd mode, he barked, "Surround it. Based on the situation in Canada, we can't assume that they are friendly."

"Yes, Sir." Evans started giving rapid orders into her headset and Alex watched the salvage ships move accordingly. Fortunately, they weren't just salvage ships, but all-purpose exploration spaceships with shields and weapons. Not having cracked the science yet for hyper or warp drives, NASA's manned explorations into outer space hadn't gone further than ten solar systems in any direction, and those still took decades with the speed they had managed to get out of their spaceships. (But they had sent probes to every corner of the galaxy long before the spaceships had been built, so they did have a pretty good idea of what was out there. And so far, another intelligent species wasn't included.)

Once the Nubian yacht had been surrounded on every side but the wormhole's, Alex said, "Hail them."

And then they waited for what felt like an eternity before an image of a young man appeared on the big screen. He was wearing black Jedi robes and was almost breathtakingly handsome, with collar length, wavy, dark gold hair, piercing blue eyes, and a scar that ran along the edge of his right one from mid-forehead to cheekbone. He smiled at them appealingly and spoke some words that not a single person recognized.

Anakin Skywalker! It's freaking Anakin Skywalker! Alex was close to hyperventilating again as fanboy mode kicked back in. He wasn't alone. Nearly every single woman in the room sighed, most of the men cursed in surprise and awe, and Evans looked like she might be on the verge of having a private moment right at her desk.

Aside from instantly recognizing what he was pretty sure was one of the most iconic and polarizing Star Wars characters ever, Alex came to another conclusion. I think the faint hope that English and Basic is the same language has just been crushed like a bug.

So... Now what?

Other Star Wars languages!

"Does anyone here speak Huttese?!" Alex said almost frantically.

"I do," a tech said from the bowels of the large, multi-leveled room. Alex peered down at the scrawny, twenty-something boy who literally personified the term 'nerd'.

"Whitely, right?"

"Yes, Sir." Whitely beamed at being recognized.

"Start by welcoming him to our galaxy."

Whitley nodded and then turned back to the screen.

"Chowbasa tah Earth doma toma."

Huttese translations:

Chowbasa tah Earth doma toma – Welcome to Earth space.

A/N: And that's it! This story is done!

Haha, just kidding. I couldn't resist, considering it's April Fool's day. But really, I think the joke's on me, because I have once again underestimated how much writing it takes to explain what I think is a short plot bunny. Also, I woke to 3 inches of fresh snow on the ground that had been almost completely bare yesterday. Blah.