(A/N)- Coming at y'all with some very self-indulgent Sabezra that I hope you enjoy. :)
I've actually had this one kicking around on the backburner since waaaaaaay back during... Season Two? I think it was Season Two. Anyway I finally got around to actually writing it.
Featuring some of the classic Sabezra tropes, set sometime nebulously in Season Three before "Legacy of Mandalore" but obviously AUish. Let's get to it!
Disclaimer: *bangs drum of "Disney when will you stop sleeping on Rebels, c'mon I want some MERCH."*
Finely Sculpted
Sabine considered the wall, standing with her finger pursing her lip in thought, her other hand around her elbow. She leaned back on her hip, assessing her work so far.
Needs some red, she decided, stirring.
She stepped aside to grab a spray can from her portable worktable, set up next to her in the galley, and shook it firmly, the cap rattling as she did so.
Carefully, she applied a thin veneer of bright crimson, blending it into the yellow-gold of the starbird design already present. It had been on the wall a while, but lately Sabine had been itching to perfect it, give it just that little extra pop and kick that would make it really stand out. She had already added trailing orange flames at the starbird's base, rising up triumphantly around the avian figure. Now she measured out her spray paint to give the icon some bold shading, swaths of the red color outlining the wings and talons, curling under its shoulders, adding some fine detail. She bit her lip as she concentrated, eyes narrow and focused on her work.
From behind, she heard the door hssshk!, soft footfalls and Ezra's discontent grumbles echoing to her from the hallway as the boy stepped inside.
"Did the medkit get moved?" he asked her. She glanced aside and noticed he was nursing one of his shoulders. "It's not in Kanan's room," he told her.
She looked back at her painting. "Zeb had it last. Should be in its normal spot in the kitchen," she offered.
"Thanks," Ezra said. He crossed the room, boots making a quiet tak! tak! against the floor.
"What'd you do this time?" Sabine teased as she sprayed paint in a careful arc.
"Nothing I wanna talk about," he replied back dryly, making her chuckle.
She heard him pass by behind her and enter the kitchen, footsteps tramping over the threshold. Sabine's ears took in the auditory information without really processing it, hearing his shuffles and muttered curses as background noise on her senses, as she carefully applied her spray paint.
The steady hiss was a soothing sound, lulling her into a bit of a stupor, though not so deep a trance that she missed Ezra exiting the kitchen area, medkit in hand, expression tired and frustrated.
"He put it on the top shelf again," he complained, moving to the dejarik table and setting the medkit there with a thunk!
Sabine almost snorted, but the stray thought entered her head.
Since when can Ezra reach the top shelf? she wondered, her mind flashing over the sounds she remembered from the kitchen, recalling no grunts of effort or sounds of strain, like she would have expected.
She figured he must have used the Force and put it out of mind, continuing to apply paint to the wall. Her revitalized starbird started to come into finer shape.
From behind, there came the soft rustle of fabric. Ezra hissed sharply, as if in pain, and Sabine idly let her eyes glance in his direction, drifting away from her work.
Her wandering gaze locked on Ezra as he finished tugging off his shirt and then... widened slightly.
Her head went oddly blank, the spray can's hisssssss sounding like empty background static in her ears.
Since when had Ezra's back been so... sculpted?
Her eyes traced the fine lines of his body, drinking in the sharp angles that made up his shoulder plates. He seemed so much more defined than she remembered, and her focus began to take up more and more with the swaths of skin normally hidden by his jacket.
He had a bleeding gash on his left shoulder, just out of fingertip reach, probably the source of his need for the medkit. A half-dozen other little faded scars made an interesting constellation of faint beige and white marks. But it was the way his tanned skin moved and shifted over the lean sinews underneath that had her most fascinated.
Sabine's eyes were drawn in, unthinkingly, watching the stretch and pull of his muscles as he wrestled his sleeves off his arms. She was having trouble reconciling her previous mental image of Ezra—as a skinny, scrawny, bean-pole like waif—with what she was presented with now, the effects of his Jedi training (and possibly a growth spurt?) evident in the curve of his biceps, the dip where neck met shoulder. She didn't know how many times she had watched him and Kanan running lightsaber drills but they had clearly paid off; even from the back Sabine could tell he was not over-muscled, but toned and athletic.
She wished vaguely for her charcoals, so she could sketch him. She would have killed for anatomy reference like this back when she was first developing as an artist.
Warmth seemed to be gathering in her face, particularly under her cheeks. She marveled with more than a little aesthetic appreciation at the canvas of Ezra's back and had the vague desire for him to turn around so she could see his front because wow.
Wow.
He did turn a bit, but only his head, glancing over his shoulder and then looking at her with some concern.
"Uh, Sabine?" he called.
Sabine full-body startled, twitching, face locking with mortification that she'd been caught staring.
"What?" she blurted, hearing her heartrate loud in her chest.
Ezra pointed past her towards her painting. "Did you mean to use that much red?" he asked.
Confused for a moment, Sabine looked back at the wall, then jolted as she realized while she'd been gawking her finger had stayed continually on the spray can button, slowly increasing the circle of crimson until it was bleeding down the wall in drips.
"Shavit!" she cursed, immediately yanking her hand away, releasing the trigger. The can slipped out of her grip, bounced awkwardly against her hands as she scrambled to catch it, fumbling an embarrassingly long moment. She finally managed to grab it and, panicking, flung it away, out the open hallway door—an indignant "Ow!" sounded from Zeb—then frantically grabbed up a cloth from the floor and began dabbing at the dripping paint streaks.
She rubbed and rubbed but the paint just smeared, red blurring her formerly clean-edged lines, looking like a gaping blaster wound. Sabine's face twisted with chagrin and frustration as she assessed the damage.
Nope, unsalvageable. She'd have to repaint over the whole thing.
Simmering, Sabine returned the cloth to the wall to continue blotting the wet paint, her momentary anger and dismay fading as she stole a glance back at Ezra.
His shirt was laying on the table now. His gloves were off as well, she noticed, as he snapped open the medkit and started rustling through it, and her eyes were drawn to the careful dexterity of his fingers, wondering when the callouses on his palms had happened.
Sabine swallowed, deliberately turning her head back forwards. But the lines of Ezra's figure had imprinted themselves on her brain; she couldn't forget them. Her mind spun in slightly bewildered circles. Had she really just been staring at Ezra?
His grunts of frustration grew increasingly agitated. Against her better sense she looked back, noticing that he was struggling to reach his shoulder wound. She watched him strain his arms in different configurations for a few moments. (And absolutely did not run her eyes over them as well.) Biting her lip, she dropped her cleaning cloth and stepped over.
"Here," she said, "lemme help."
She took the antiseptic swabs from his hand, and he paid her a grateful smile, which did something funny and unexpected to her insides.
"Thanks," he said. He turned forward, leaning slightly on his hands. "It looks worse than it is," he promised. "Stings like hell though."
Sabine took position behind him, raising one of the swabs and trying not to think about how smooth his skin looked. The gash in his shoulder did look pretty nasty, jagged-edged and fairly deep. She pressed the soaked cloth to the wound.
"Oww!" Ezra yelped, flinching in complaint. "That doesn't help!" he cried.
Sabine said nothing. Normally she might have responded back with a barbed quip about his pain tolerance, or a stern admonition to hold still. Not today though. Today, she just gently wiped the crusted blood away, carefully cleaning the wound, eyes fixed on her work, even as her focus drifted and fragmented, distracted by the patterns her eyes were drawing in his scars.
She dabbed softly, chewing on her teeth. Ezra made quiet little hisses as she tended to him, his face pinching.
Several moments passed quietly like this. Sabine eventually finished disinfecting the gash. She set the pink-stained pads aside on the table, and Ezra dutifully passed her a bacta patch. Her fingers tingled as his brushed hers, rough and warm.
She tramped down on the flutter that passed through her chest. Her mouth dry, she forced herself to concentrate on peeling the backing off the bacta patch. She lined it up and then carefully pressed it down, getting a soft exhale of relief from Ezra as the bacta began soothing at once.
Sabine smoothed out the edges of the patch, briefly letting her fingers continue on to trace one of his older scars. Thin and straight, small, like the nick from a kind of blade. A memory murmured back to her of Ezra bragging about having survived a street fight once; she wondered if maybe this scar was a souvenir from that. And this circular one across his spine to the right... was it from that blaster shot he'd taken in the back on their mission to Abafar their first year working together? Kanan had been so freaked out, wouldn't even let anyone near his bedside for two days. She stopped herself millimeters from touching it, her hand hovering over his tanned skin. Stopped herself from exploring every beautiful mark and curve and line.
Aware that her face was definitely flaming now, Sabine pulled herself back with an over-loud clearing of her throat, dropping her eyes immediately towards the floor.
"All set!" she squeaked. "I... gotta go... paint something," she stammered, leaving her worktable and spray cans and actual painting behind and fleeing straight out the door, brushing swiftly past Zeb as he trundled in.
Holding the sore spot on his head, Zeb paid her a curious look as she disappeared inside her room.
"What's with her?" he asked, thumbing over his shoulder in confusion.
Ezra looked equally as clueless, blue eyes staring after her. "Dunno," he replied, pushing up straight and beginning to pick up the trash.
-SWR-
Sabine pressed her hands over her cheeks, willing the heat in them to go away. Her mind was in disarray and spinning, dizzy from what had just happened.
Every time she closed her eyes all she could see was that moment that Ezra had pulled his shirt up to reveal the smooth browned skin underneath.
She groaned, leaning her head back miserably on the wall.
I can not have just been ogling Ezra, she denied, though her still-red cheeks and thumping heart seemed to confirm just that fact.
Slowly, she took in a deep breath. It had just caught her off-guard, that was all. She'd been so busy running missions for the Rebellion that she just hadn't noticed Ezra... growing up.
But... hadn't she? Hadn't there been moments when he surprised her with his maturity, reacted in a way she hadn't expected of him? Hadn't she watched his posture grow straighter, his bearing more stern and somber, over the years she'd known him?
How had she not noticed?
Sabine exhaled heavily, smearing her palms down her face. Her fingers itched to do something—draw, paint, shoot, whatever—all she knew was that she couldn't go back out there right now, not in this state.
She grabbed a sketchbook from under her bunk, found a stray charcoal from somewhere, and furiously scribbled, exporting her cauldron of emotions into sharp black lines on a blank page. It didn't wind up being anything but it seemed to help, and Sabine hoped whatever this onslaught of unidentifiable emotions and feelings was, it would be gone by tomorrow.
-SWR-
Sabine's internal crisis did not, in fact, abate the next day.
Nor the next.
In fact, now she was noticing other attractive qualities about Ezra besides his finely-sculpted back—something she appreciated on a purely aesthetic level, she told herself over and over.
Like the way his cheeks dimpled when he smiled. Or like how cute the serious scrunch of his eyebrows was. The lines of his jaw were sharper and more pronounced too, she'd noticed, and more than once it had distracted her while he was speaking.
It wasn't fair. Ezra was... Ezra, he wasn't allowed to be... attractive! He wasn't supposed to have shoulder blades that could cut glass or thin musculature that made him look agile and virile.
Sabine fumed more than once about the predicament she found herself in. As if it wasn't enough that Ezra had lost his former gangliness and filled out an admittedly appealing physical body, Sabine's mind was taking note of every casual compliment he paid her, every moment his blue eyes shone at her with a light that made her want to melt underneath its radiance.
Her tortured mind chewed itself to pieces and her sketches were more and more winding up being studies of him; his eyes, his face, his torso from every angle.
Even now, sitting and listening to what was supposed to be an important intelligence briefing, she found her eyes going back and forth from stealing glances at Ezra across the room—cross-armed and attentive, the definition in his back showing even through his jacket—to her doodlings of him on a scrap of paper, posed mid lightsaber swing with a cavalier expression.
When she realized that was what she was doing, instead of paying attention to Draven's agitated gestures at the holodisplay, Sabine groaned softly, put aside her pencil, and quietly excused herself to the 'fresher.
She splashed water on her face, which was—once again—embarassingly hot.
Get a grip, she told herself. You're not some tittering lovestruck bimbo. And that's Ezra.
Yeah, another part of her quietly argued back. Ezra. The boy she'd grown up with, who she knew more intimately than anyone else. The boy who was probably her best friend in the galaxy. The boy who could be so kind and brave and sometimes a big idiot but always with the most sincere of intentions.
The boy who, admittedly, had absolutely gorgeous back muscles.
"Kriiiiiiiiiff," she moaned under her breath, her hands clawing into her face. This couldn't be happening to her. What was she supposed to do now? Should she bury her feelings? Ignore them? Confess them? Were they feelings?
She cursed again, this time silently in her head. I need help, she realized.
-SWR-
Three days later she broke down and sought out Hera.
Carefully approaching the Twi'lek pilot when she knew Hera would be busy working on updating the ship's logs—and Ezra would be offworld—Sabine stepped nervously into the cockpit.
"Hera? Can I talk to you?" she began, already nervous, glancing behind at the open door as if Ezra was going to magically appear in the hallway and overhear.
"Mmmn?" Hera hummed, tilting an ear cone even though she didn't stop working. "What is it, Sabine?"
Sabine's face twisted as she wrestled with how to start. Her fingers wrung together in front of her, squeezing, agitated. "Have... you noticed anything... different about Ezra lately?" she asked, already regretting this conversation.
Green eyes landed on her briefly, as Hera darted them. "Different how?"
"Like..." Force, why was she doing this? This was embarrassing. "Any... physical changes... in particular?"
Hera smiled faintly, fondly, as she tapped on her datapad, glancing back and forth from her records to the report. "Well he has had a bit of a growth spurt and filled out a little," she said.
"Yeah, I... noticed," Sabine said with chagrin.
"Seems our efforts to feed him properly have finally paid off," Hera continued to comment. She glanced up from her work fully now, gaze on Sabine. "Why do you ask?"
Sabine's mouth went a bit dry at Hera's quizzical stare. "It's just... it-it's been..." she stammered. Her eyes dropped towards her nervously twisting hands. "...distracting," she finally muttered.
She could feel more than see Hera's eyebrow raising.
"Go on," Hera prompted, a new tone in her voice that Sabine wasn't entirely sure she appreciated.
Nevertheless, she steeled herself with a deep breath and began to properly explain her dilemma.
"What I mean is... I keep—" Sabine fumbled, "—staring at him like an idiot!" She began to pace in a tight circle, gesturing sharply. "He enters the room, I immediately look at him. He gets up to leave, my eyes follow him all the way to the door." Follow the shape of his back, Sabine's mind unhelpfully reminded her, making her face heat. "He could be two feet from me and I'll keep sneaking glances, as if I could somehow forget what he looks like in the 2.7 seconds I look away!"
Hera was turned around in her seat now, her datapad hanging casually in her hand over the back. "What are you looking at when you stare at him, exactly?" she asked.
"Everything?" Sabine's face squinched as she answered. "His hair, his eyes, his face, his back, his—"
She broke off, mortified that her head was continuing its visual catalogue of Ezra's assets right along down to a... lower area.
There was a keen and unusual gleam in Hera's eyes as she tilted her head, the corners of her lips starting to twitch up.
"Sabine, are..." she asked, curious and amused-sounding, "...are you... attracted... to Ezra?"
"No!" Sabine cried immediately, horrified, eyes wide. Her immediately panic abated and she started to shrink into herself, shoulders curling. "Maybe?" she amended. Her hands covered her face miserably. "I don't know, I just—!"
Hera watched, bemused, as the girl screamed quietly into her palms.
Sabine lifted her head and paced again.
"And it's not just that he's cute now—really really cute—" she admitted. "—but it's like he's a constant thought in my head. His smile makes me happy. I like watching him fight. I've drawn him so many times I've lost count." She kicked the stem of the passenger chair a bit as she continued. "I even like his stupid Loth-cat jokes."
"He tells Loth-cat jokes?" Hera chuckled, entirely too amused by this development than Sabine liked.
"Yeah. Terrible ones!" Sabine stopped moving, sagging deeply into the rear passenger seat with her hands once again pressed to her face. "I'm going insane, Hera!" she complained.
Hera straightened, turning forward briefly in order to set down her datapad. "Sounds to me like you just have a very normal crush," she said, turning back around and draping her arms across the seat.
"Yeah. On Ezra," Sabine emphasized, looking up from her hands with a glare.
Hera shrugged. "So?" she challenged.
"So what do I do?" Sabine wailed. "The Alliance doesn't exactly cover this in briefings!"
"Have you thought about... telling him?" Hera suggested, failing to hide her amused smile.
Sabine's features gawped even wider. "I can't do that!" she cried.
"Why not?" Hera pressed.
"He could like me back!" Sabine said, looking mortified.
"He could—" Hera straightened the chair underneath her. "Sabine," she said with exasperation. "Would it really be that terrible if the boy you like returns your feelings?" she asked.
Sabine struggled to answer that for a moment. "I..." She bit her lip, the front of her chest shuddering. Glimmers of actual fear and panic flickered across her face, as she wrestled with her words. "We... we're in the middle of a war," she squeaked out, finally.
"Never stopped Kanan and me," Hera pointed out.
"But that's different!" Sabine burst.
Hera raised an eyebrow in challenge. "How so?"
"It just..."
Sabine trailed off, chewing on her lip again, her hands tightening around her elbows self-protectively. A serious mood seemed to fall across the cockpit, the moment drawing out uncomfortably as Sabine stayed silent.
Sobering, Hera's lekku went slack and she paid Sabine a concerned, pitying look.
"What are you afraid of, Sabine?" she asked softly.
Sabine inhaled, sides shaking slightly. Her fingers gripped tighter around her elbows, all her doubts and worries brimming at the surface of her mind like unsettled water. "I... I'm afraid of losing him just when I... when we figure this—us—whatever this is out," she confessed. She dropped her eyes, staring towards her lap. "I'm afraid he'll think I'm leading him on, playing him for a fool."
"Why do you think that?" Hera nudged.
Sabine made a sour twist with her mouth. "Because I spent so much of that first year repeatedly emphasizing that I wasn't interested."
"Funny how things happen, isn't it?" Hera chuckled. Warming, the woman leaned forward, reached out a hand and placed it on Sabine's knee. "I'm not going to tell you what you should do," she said. "But if you want my advice? You should be honest with him." She squeezed Sabine's knee with motherly affection. "Take a risk. Try it out," she encouraged.
Sabine blew a puff into her short bangs. "I think I'd rather bury myself in the Atollon sand," she muttered.
Hiding her disappointment Hera shrugged, withdrawing and swiveling her chair back around. "Well, it's your decision," she commentated in a falsely over-the-top fashion. "I can't make your choices for you. You'll regret not saying anything though, mark my words."
Sabine paid the pilot a withering look. "I'm sure," she drawled. Heaving herself up she huffed, "Thanks Hera, this was... less than helpful. If you need me I'll be in my room, screaming into a pillow and probably drawing Ezra's profile for the millionth time."
Hera gave no heed to her snark, focusing very intently on her task. Sabine got the sense, however, that they weren't done talking about the issue.
She stood up and walked stiffly out of the cockpit, choosing to ignore the entire embarrassing conversation.
-SWR-
Two days after Ezra got back from his mission, Hera forced the issue, assigning both of them to dish duty after dinner.
Sabine's head screamed in incoherent dismay as she watched Ezra join her in the kitchen, already removing his bracers and rolling up his sleeves. Sabine grudgingly admired her view of his forearms, even as she stabbed dishes into the sloshing water and tried to pretend he wasn't there.
Things proceeded silently, and amicably enough, even though Sabine was hyper-aware of his presence, sneaking little glances at him from time to time.
Stars but he was so pretty! How had she ever failed to notice how the light caught the depths of his eyes just so, how smooth and defined the lines of his face were?
She turned aside with a blush, idly rinsing a plate and scraping food particles off it with her sponge.
She jolted a little as Ezra spoke up.
"So... Sabine," he said, "what do they have you up to these days? Feels like I haven't seen you in a while."
Immediately a sharp needle point of nervous anxiety pierced up through her head. "Oh! Well—" she fumbled. She tried for a shrug. "They've been keeping me pretty busy." Lie. "They had me reorganizing the munitions supply just last week." Another lie. "Haven't even had time to sketch." Blatant lie, Hera was going to kill her if she found out about this conversation. Sabine's fingers tightened on the plate edge, remembering the Twi'lek's urge for honesty, guilt shaving through her.
Ezra didn't seem aware of her internal crisis.
"That's good to hear." He grinned at her. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were avoiding me or something."
"Oh I definitely haven't been doing that," Sabine said under her breath.
"Sorry?"
"Nothing!" she quickly covered, brush scratching furiously at her plate for a few moments before she deliberately turned away from him, sticking her plate in the rack with jittery fingers.
Silence fell for a moment, and Sabine's cheeks heated, in spite of herself. She stole another peek at him, and dismayed at how her heart fluttered at the sight of his face.
"How uh... how's the shoulder?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
Ezra lifted his arm and rolled said shoulder a bit, almost causing Sabine a meltdown as she watched the muscles flex beneath his skin—definitely not the effect she'd been intending!—and said, "Still a little sore but healing okay. Thanks for helping with it."
His beam did things to her insides that had a growl building up from her stomach.
She let the frustration rise, let it became an aggravated groan as she jerked around to face him. "All right, Hera's right, I can't let this keep festering," she said. Her heart thumped heavily as she turned eyes up on Ezra, pinching and emotional. "You've... grown up a lot Ezra," she began. "In ways I didn't expect and... hadn't realized until now."
The eye contact proved too much for her and her gaze dropped, looking aside, shyly, the heat on her cheeks burning and uncomfortable.
Still, she pressed on ahead.
"I... I don't want things to change between us, I..." She swallowed. "I like being comfortable around you, how you put me at ease, how I know I can just always rely on you to be there for me..." The words were spilling freely now, unleashed. Sabine couldn't have stopped them if she tried. "I don't want to lose that."
She swallowed, a dry, thick gulp that panged on the way down.
"But I want more," she confessed.
She risked a look up at him.
His eyebrows were furrowing cutely, confused, his eyes were squinted, looking at her with a bizarre stare.
"Sabine, what are you saying?" he asked.
Oh Manda, he was oblivious.
Sabine huffed, stepped closer and jabbing a finger into his collar. "I'm saying I think I like you, idiot!" she snapped.
There was a long... awkward pause as Ezra processed that.
"...What?" he finally blurted.
Sabine snorted in a long-suffering fashion. "I like you, Ezra," she repeated.
She watched the gears turn in his mind, behind the clueless sheen in his eyes, saw the moment something clicked and he grew animated, agitated.
"Wait—" he said, his brain working overtime to comprehend her. "You... like me? As in, like me like me?" he asked for clarification, gesturing with agitated motions.
She sighed heavily.
"Yes."
"You like me?!" Ezra asked again, shriller.
"Apparently!" Sabine cried, throwing her hands out.
Ezra was staring bug-eyed at her. "Since when?!"
Sabine grimaced sheepishly. "Since a couple weeks ago?" She swiped her bangs out of her face, nervous. "I mean—That's when I noticed at least but..." The blush was curling pink up her cheeks. "...but it must have been growing for a while now."
"I..." Ezra's mouth opened and closed several times, his jaw slack, looking like a speeder had hit him full throttle.
Sabine waited in awkward apprehension as he tried to speak.
"I don't know what to do with this information," he finally confessed, reeling.
"What d'you mean you don't know?!" Sabine demanded. She got in his face, wide gestures stabbing out. "You were the one that spent half a year flirting with me and begging for my attention!"
"Well yeah, but you weren't interested so I stopped!" Ezra defended. Was it her imagination or were his cheeks turning pink?
"Well—" Sabine stopped, blustering for words, hands open helplessly. "I dunno what else to tell you, I'm interested now."
He added his own agitated open-palmed gestures to the mix, face squinching. "Okay but you see how this might be a little confusing for me—"
"Ezra!"
"Ilikeyoutoo!" he blurted, squeezing his eyes and fists closed, bracing.
The silence that followed washed over her with a soundless rush, giddiness spreading through her stomach. She stared, happily dazed, as Ezra risked peeking an eye open to gauge her reaction.
When it became evident that she was not going to slap him, he relaxed a bit, his shoulders uncurling from their tensed stiffness.
"I like you too, Sabine," he said, the soft warmth in the words almost heavenly, making bells clang in her heart.
A grin stole across her face, the giddy rush swirling around inside her head. "Never really got over your stupid crush huh?" she teased, smile almost cracking her cheeks.
He glanced off, bashful. One hand moved up and rubbed at his neck. "I still think you're the prettiest girl I know," he admitted, the edges of his cheeks blushing cutely. "But... that all took a backseat to just... knowing you," he said. "Being there for you. No matter what happened." His eyes lowered. "I wasn't... hoping for anything... I just..." The vibrant blues flicked up at her. "...wanted to be your friend."
Sabine's head was still spinning. Vaguely, she felt her hand reaching out, seeking his. "I think I was the opposite," she said. "I let you become my friend and... somewhere along the line I fell in love with you."
Her eyes lifted, met his. Their held gaze was full of so much unspoken.
The blissful moment stretched out.
Ezra coughed and cleared his throat, pulling his hand from hers. "So uh..." he asked, "...what now?"
Sabine was still adjusting, and it took her brain a minute to catch up. She looked down at her hands, fingers clutched together.
"Maybe... maybe we could... kiss?" she suggested. That was what boyfriends and girlfriends did right? Was that what they were now? She didn't care, but she did very much want to at least try it. Hera's admonitions to be bold and unafraid rang in her head.
Ezra, meanwhile, paled and looked like he was popping circuits like a malfunctioning droid.
"I—I mean—I—" he stammered, clearing his throat with effort, "I guess that's okay but—I mean—Are—Are you sure you—you want to?"
Sabine responded by just moving closer, letting her hands drift up to rest on his shoulders.
She closed distance, heart pounding with anticipation.
Very, very carefully, she leaned her head in, tilting her face. Ezra turned his own, trying to allow her space to get closer. She could almost hear his heartbeat, pounding loud in his neck.
She gently pressed her lips against his.
After several seconds, he relaxed into the contact, unsure what to do at first, but eventually putting hands around her waist, holding her softly.
She kept herself in place a long, pregnant moment, enjoying the warmth of him on her lips, the soft sound of his contented breath. She almost let herself sigh against him.
Finally she pulled back and broke the contact, recovering herself with a staggered breath and a long exhale, blowing into his collar.
"Uh..." Ezra mumbled, looking dazed. "Wow..."
Sabine giggled. A tingly kind of relief was flooding through her. After all her agonizing all it had taken was one short conversation. She gazed up at Ezra, her body settling, quiet contentment in her eyes.
His giddy blue eyes gazed back at her.
"Can we do it again?" he asked, grinning a bit too eagerly.
She stepped back, turning aside with a laugh. "Maybe in a little bit," she promised. "Let's finish up here first. Then there's this spot on the east ridge that I've been dying to paint." She looked over her shoulder towards him. "Be honored if you'd join me," she said, voice insinuating.
He nodded. "Of course, my lady," he said, giving an exaggerated bow.
Sabine burst into laughter, one hand grabbing the edge of the sink.
Ezra grimaced. "Too much?" he guessed.
Sabine tried to speak around her chuckles, holding her diaphragm until she'd composed herself. "It's sweet," she finally managed, "but maybe wait until after we've at least gone on a date first."
He shrugged. "Well I know this one plateau that gets an amazing view of the stars," he suggested.
"I'll bring the blankets," Sabine promised. She stacked the last of the dishes in the rack and pulled the stopper to drain the water.
Moving towards the door she let her hand drift out for Ezra to catch, and thrilled when his hand slid easily into hers.
"C'mon," she said. "I owe Hera a thank you."
They walked, hand in hand, into the open room and possibilities.
(A/N)- Drop me a review my lovelies, I love hearing from you!