Author's Note: The last segment of this chapter is NSFW.

War Stories

The party started at ten.

Nine should have been there five minutes ago, except that even despite the caf she fell asleep at her desk reading dossiers and woke up with the outline of the console buttons imprinted into her left cheek. Wearing her armor to the party's one thing- Theron's joke aside, she's only got two sets of armor, three training suits and a few pairs of running shorts and she's not going to the party in an undershirt and trainers; all her formal outfits were on her ship, long gone to scavengers with the rest of its contents, or in her closets on Dromund Kaas- but she's the Commander. She ought to at least try to look presentable.

So with a compress held against her face she stands in the 'fresher, letting the water run over her body and ease the tension in her neck and back. After a few minutes she removes the cloth, running her fingertips gently over her cheek.

No indentations. It'll have to do. Only two minutes of hot water left, anyway.

(If time and water supply permitted she'd stand here forever, but until the last generator's finished they're all on timers. At least she gets a proper water 'fresher. Downstairs they're all stuck with sonics.

Perks of being the boss, she guesses.)

She picks broken strands from between her fingers as she washes her hair- the carbonite turned it brittle as old wire, prone to snapping at irregular lengths, and she really ought to cut it short but can't quite bring herself to do it- and scrubs the rest of her skin with the compress cloth before the stream of water cuts off with a click. As the drying jets activate she surveys her fingernails and her newest scars: both are studies in texture, her nails brittle as her hair and slashed across with deep horizontal ridges and her scars burned flat and shiny in spots and raised and puckered in others, outlined in faint squares with remnants of bacta patch adhesive.

At least they've stopped itching, which is something. Slow progress is still progress.

Her stash of patches, smuggled out of medbay to avoid gossip about her wounds (most of the recruits beyond the few who'd left Asylum on the Gravestone don't know how badly she'd been hurt and it needs to stay that way), lives in her bathroom cabinet, but when she opens the mirror the space behind it's empty but for her comb and her toothbrush, which she grabs. She must have used the last of them this morning.

Damn it.

"Vanity, my dear?"

When she closes the mirror Valkorion's standing behind her, his face reflected to her left in the half-fogged glass. He's intangible, as always, but still she can almost feel the chill metal of his breastplate against the bare skin of her shoulder, the faint brush of silken hems at the backs of her calves.

She doesn't move. He isn't real.

"I'm not your anything, you old lech, and this 'fresher's occupied." She looks pointedly back toward the door and activates her toothbrush, the high-pitched sonic buzz nearly drowning out his voice. "Get out."

"You misunderstand me." His lips curl up in amusement. "I simply find it interesting. You retain old scars-" he lifts his hand, an outstretched finger tracing the faded line beneath her left eye; she keeps her face perfectly motionless- "though I assume you could have had them removed years ago. Yet my son's handiwork upsets you."

"Upsets? Hardly," she mutters around the brush handle. "Vanity's for the decorative. I'm invoicing. Arcann owes me damages, and I plan to collect in full."

Valkorion nods. "Your anger does you credit. Still, you focus on minutiae, on frivolity, while my son consolidates his power."

"What, you don't like parties?"

He hisses and for a moment her eardrums ache, his voice a low snarl echoing in the hollows of her skull. "We are wasting time. This celebration-"

She spits into the basin. "-is important. One can't torture or brainwash all one's allies into compliance, hard as that may be to believe. I'm not sure your Council ever learned that lesson."

"They were a failed experiment, yes. Not one worthy of inheritance among them, not in a millennium. I had hopes that my children would be-"

"More successful?" Opening the mirror again means she doesn't have to look at him. She sets her toothbrush back on the shelf. "One dead, one insane and the last a fratricide who loathes the very idea of you. Heirs to your empire, indeed. Now leave me alone. I need to dress."

She knows without seeing that behind her Valkorion's folded his arms across his chest, his nostrils flaring and face contorted in seething silent fury; his image is sharp and clear as a holo in her mind's eye. He isn't real. Why-

Real enough, little Cipher. Real enough.

She doesn't need to turn to feel he's gone, and when she shuts the cabinet and catches sight of her own face there's a trickle of bright blood streaming from her nostril, running down her chin to drip drop by drop into the sink.

After some consideration she leaves her guns and generator and vibroknife locked up in her quarters, though she tucks a backup blade into her boot sheath; it's not likely to be that kind of party. Parties are easy. She's plied her trade at a thousand of them, from the masques of Alderaan to the backrooms of Hutta and every place in between, and tonight she even gets to wear her own face, her own name. Parties are easy, even if her new title chafes like a too-tight dress.

All told she's half an hour late, with her hair put up still damp and her lipstick matched to her nosebleed (just in case).

There's still a length of scarlet ribbon stretched across the stage at the back of the cantina, but judging by the number of empty bottles already on tables the party's gotten well underway without her. Lana, perched on a stool at the near end of the bar with a wineglass balanced in one hand, waves her over with the other.

"You're late," Lana tilts her head toward a pair of shears on the bartop. "We've been waiting on you to get started properly, and if the band doesn't go on soon Senya's threatened us with a performance."

Senya, leaning against the counter, smirks. "Fine, fine. See if I offer next time." She lifts her empty glass, though, and clinks it against Lana's, and when Koth uncorks a fresh bottle he slides it down the bar in her direction.

"You two seem on better terms tonight." She arches a brow at Koth, now lining up a row of glasses and pouring a rather messy stream of something that looks like water and smells like engine degreaser into each. "And how'd you get stuck bartending? I thought we'd hired someone to do that."

"She's relaxed, for once- no fangs and claws. It makes her a little less intimidating. Sort of a 'hey, maybe I'll hunt you down tomorrow but tonight that'd ruin my mood' vibe." He shrugs. "Same way Lana gets, you know?"

(She does know- she's seen Lana that calm exactly once, on their last day on Yavin. She doesn't really do relaxed; like her, Lana works better under pressure, their instincts sharpest with their nerves stretched to the breaking point.

Which begs the question: how does Koth know?)

"And I'm just filling in. Bartender's down there," he points to a fine-boned Twi'lek wielding two cocktail shakers like paired swords at the far end of the counter, "but she's got her hands full and I was getting tired of the whining."

As if on cue, Tora elbows her way up to the bar. "'bout time, Captain. I'm thirsty. One of those is yours, boss- we need to get you caught up." Shoving one of the glasses into her hand, she grabs another and holds it aloft. "Bottoms up."

From the way it burns going down, she's not sure that it wasn't engine degreaser; she coughs and sputters and swears until Theron, two seats down, looks up in alarm from whatever he's reading and springs out of his seat, thumping her squarely between the shoulder blades until she holds up one finger and he pauses.

"I- cough- I'm okay. Breathing, at least."

"They got you with that shit, too?" He reaches back down the bar and snags the datapad. "And I thought the caf here was lethal. It's apparently some kind of Zakuulan specialty."

"Normally I'd say they were hazing us, but they seem to be drinking it just fine." Out of the corner of her eye she can see Tora and Koth at a nearby table, handing out the nearly-full glasses to the rest of the Gravestone' s crew. She shifts her attention back to Theron and the still-lit screen in his hand. "You'd better not still be working. If I have to relax, so do you."

He closes the cover over the screen, shoves it into his pocket with a wry smile. "Okay, okay. You know me- workaholic. Done now, though. Promise."

"Good. I-"

Before she can finish the sentence Lana's got her by the arm, dragging her doggedly toward the stage as she squawks in protest, and she lifts her free hand and signs at him.

HELP.

Theron did try, to his credit. Everyone wants to talk and drink and dance with her, though, and she's pulled from table to table to dancefloor and after an hour she loses track of him. After two hours and entirely too many shots- it's poor diplomacy to say no when the toasts are in your honor- she's still dancing near the bar.

After three hours, she's dancing on the bar, which will probably be a terrible idea in retrospect but it's Lana's terrible idea; once she stops laughing she lets Lana pull her up onto the counter and they dance the next three songs around a minefield of half-empty cups and bottles.

"And to think I thought you were a killjoy." She grins, hips arcing a figure-eight in time with the music.

"Of course I'm a killjoy. At the moment, however-" Lana wobbles a bit, catching at her arm to keep herself upright as someone wolf-whistles and another round of drinks somehow find their way into both their hands- "I'm a very drunk killjoy."

"Good. I think we've earned the right to let loose a little, don't you?" As she downs the shot a flash of light down the bar catches her attention: the backlit glow of a datapad, Theron's face illuminated as his eyes flicker across its screen. "Speaking of which- he had better not still be working. He promised."

"I've been trying to get him to take a day off for two years." Lana peers around her shoulder. "I'd have thought that with you finally here… ah, well. Go and make him stop, hm?"

The last drink's hitting her cerebral cortex like a blunt weapon, so that sounds like an amazing idea. "I think I will."

She never thought she'd hear a Sith Lord giggle (not in actual amusement, anyway- Darth Zhorrid used to laugh like a schoolgirl in the aftermath of her concerts, but none of that was funny to anyone but Zhorrid), but Lana's laughing, nudging her down the long counter toward where Theron sits with drink and datapad in front of him. "Good luck."

She covers the distance to him in half a dozen steps, pausing directly in front of Theron with one booted heel poised over the still-lit screen. "Ahem."

"Um." He blinks up at her, snatches the datapad out from underfoot. "Hi?"

"Why are you still working?"

"Why are you standing on the bar?"

"Lana and I-" When she looks back Lana's already down behind the counter, her expression innocent. "Never mind. It's called a party, Theron. You should go to one sometime."

He sighs. "I thought I was. Had a date and everything, but I think she stood me up to go dancing."

(It's a knife through her ribs, straight into her heart.

She knew he'd be the death of her. She'd just never thought of it in metaphor.)

She considers her next words carefully.

"Maybe she got held up. Or maybe she didn't realize it was supposed to be a date." She holds out her hand to him. In the strobing light from the stage she can only half-read his expression, but he reaches up to brace her, fingers round her wrist as she steps off onto the seat of a vacant stool; when she jumps down he catches her, keeps her upright until she's steady on the ground, and when she slides onto the seat beside him he angles toward her until their feet brush together along the rail. "Just to be clear, we are skipping the pistols at dawn part, right?"

He laughs; she breathes.

Theron reaches over the bar for a wax-sealed bottle and two glasses, breaks the seal and pours two fingers' worth of amber liquid into each glass. "Guess I'll have to be more obvious next time. I did bring this bottle, though. Seems a shame to waste it."

She takes the glass as he pushes it toward her. "You didn't have to wait for me, you know."

"Yes," he says, "I did."

They've been talking for at least an hour and she can tell there's something he wants to ask, but even half a bottle in he still won't say it. It's making her nervous. She needs to clear her head.

"What time is it?"

Theron pushes one sleeve back to check his chrono. "Nearly three. Getting tired?"

"I was thinking of going for a walk. I could use the fresh air."

He nods, stretching his arms up over his head. "Mind company? We could walk up to the observation platform, or- hey, you still up to that tour? Now's as good a time as any."

"If you like." She stretches, too; tomorrow her thighs'll be sore from dancing. "I should probably take a rain check on the shakedown flight, though. Right now I'm fairly sure we'd crash."

"Probably not the best idea, yeah. We've still got this to finish anyway." Theron hands her the half-empty bottle, scoops two clean glasses from behind the bar. "I did promise you the whole thing."

"You did." She looks around at the remnants of the crowd- the band's long since stopped playing, but there's a small contingent still dancing near the jukebox. Tora's curled up on top of one table, one hand dangling down toward Len, who's half-hidden beneath it. She hasn't seen Senya for ages. Koth, with the precise focus that she knows from experience comes from somewhere between three and five drinks too many, is tidying behind the bar, and Lana's resting her head on her arms, her glass empty and her face half-hidden by the drape of her scarf. "Come on. I doubt anyone will even notice we've left."

Theron slides off his stool. "Lead the way."

She's only a little wobbly when she gets up, bottle in hand.

They take the footpath around the back of the War Rooms instead of cutting through military HQ. At this hour the paths are dark and nearly deserted save a few patrolling guards on middle watch, and before long they're at the landing pad with her ship a black gleam in the floodlights. She doesn't need to see the keypad to enter the codes, its contours familiar under her fingertips; the ramp opens and she starts upward.

"Permission to come aboard?" Theron calls up to her from the bottom of the ramp. "Or is this still Imp territory?"

"We're allies now, remember? I think it's allowed. Besides," she says as the door slides open, "didn't you fly her here?"

He shakes his head. "Just got enough of a look to make sure I had the right ship, but she was in rough shape. I had her towed from Corellia."

"Corellia?" She runs her hand over the doorframe. "Not my favorite place. I wonder how she ended up there."

"No idea. She'd been there for three years at least, computers all wiped clean. No record of how. Or who."

"That would have been too easy, I suppose." As they pass into the common room she turns, gestures broadly with an empty hand and the whiskey bottle. "Welcome to the Nightshrike. X70-B Phantom class, restricted use by Imperial Intelligence- or Sith Intelligence, or whatever we're- they're- ugh." She pulls the cork of the bottle free with her teeth. "Come on."

Theron hands her a glass.

The grand tour doesn't take long. Her 'shrike isn't a big ship, with bunk space for five- or six, technically, with two in the captain's bed- and it's quiet without her crew. In her mind's eye she can picture Kaliyo, arms folded, against the wall across from the engine room, Temple leaning over the control panel on the bridge, even Two-Vee, ever vigilant-

"You ok?"

She blinks. They're standing back in the main room and she must have been staring at nothing; Theron has his hand on her forearm. "Sorry. I'm fine. Just... nostalgia, I guess."

"I bet. This must be-" he stops himself short, rephrasing. She can tell he's getting closer to what he wants to say by the way he's pulling his jacket sleeve down, curling his fingers around the cuff. "You've been through a lot."

"No more than any of you. I took a long nap in the middle of a war. All of you had to fight it."

"Before all that, I mean. With…" He perches on the back of the long couch, balanced carefully on the frame. "You remember on Ziost, our conversation about old ops?"

She nods. Where's he going with this? "In the Tower? Yes. Why?"

"I talked to Chance."

If she digs her nails into her palms she can keep her hands from shaking.

"I'm sorry."

Of all the things he could have said-

Her heartbeat rises into her throat. The room goes fuzzy, wavering lines across her field of vision until she sits down hard on the couch and rests her elbows on her knees, interlaces her fingers across the back of her neck. She needs to breathe. Oh, stars, she needs to breathe.

Concentrating on the pauses between her heartbeats, she times them out: one breath for every six beats, steady and slow and even. The couch shifts as Theron moves, around from the back to the cushion next to her, but except for the sound of liquid splashing into tumblers he's silent.

Minutes pass; slowly, she uncurls,

He's looking straight ahead, not at her. "I just wanted to say it. You deserve to hear that once, at least."

"You don't-" she reaches out for the right-hand glass, emptying it in one swallow. "Did you read the files?"

"Yeah."

"So you know what happened. What I did. What they did to me."

"Enough to be sorry I asked. Enough to be sorry on behalf of the entire fucking SIS. What they did-" He drains his own glass, then refills them both. "I shouldn't even have brought it up. We don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

She never talked about the Castellan restraints, about Hunter and Chance and Ardun Kothe, not really. That was the problem. While it was happening she couldn't talk about it, not even when she wanted to; the words were locked away, replaced by comfortable lies in the same way that her traitor body danced to their song when they pulled on her strings. Afterward, it was easier not to. Medical Division had people on hand for trauma debriefings, but Medical Division had programmed her in the first place. A stray word in the wrong ear… it wasn't safe. It would never be safe.

Except-

There's no time like the present.

"What if I do?"

"You sat through half my life story on Rishi. The least I can do is return the favor." Theron turns toward her, settling cross-legged on the couch. "I'm listening."

Chance had been sorry, too, Theron said. That was strange to hear.

It is easier not to watch his reactions, easier just to lie on her back on the couch, drink in hand, to stare at the beams crisscrossing the ceiling and let the words come as they please.

Somehow no one on the Republic side had known about the Star Cabal- their files mostly stopped after Quesh and when she talks about what happened after that, on Corellia and at the end of it all, he fills their glasses again, wordless, and lets her curl against his side. By the time she's done talking the bottle on the table's all but empty and still her mouth is dry.

He shifts as she sits up.

"So," she says, one corner of her mouth canting upward, "am I a monster, do you think?"

He rubs his eyes. It must be near daybreak by now. "Lot of monsters in that story. Not you, though. Definitely not you."

"That's nice of you to say."

"Also, that might be the creepiest case of hero worship I've ever heard."

She smiles despite herself. It is a little funny. "I don't know that I'd call it hero worship. Hunter didn't want to be like me. I think she wanted to skin me and wear me like a suit."

He shudders. "Now there's a mental image I didn't need. Like I said, creepy. And I can see why you don't like Corellia much."

"Rather like Rishi for you, I'd imagine, though I'd almost rather have dealt with Revan. He seemed less prone to punching me in the teeth than Hunter's people were."

"Not that much less. You saw the bruises."

"Yeah." That was a stupid thing to say; she tucks her legs up tight against her body, wraps her arms close around her shins. "Sorry. It's not as though it was a competition. I shouldn't complain about it, really- I did go voluntarily. You didn't get a choice."

"I don't think that makes it any easier," Theron says. "You had a whole cover story to keep straight. I just had to keep my mouth shut and try not to die."

Something about the way he says it makes her laugh and once she starts she can't stop, helpless mirth welling in her chest until she's hiccuping and wiping tears from her eyes. Theron must have thought she was crying- she feels his hand brush her shoulder and he clears his throat, but when he sees her expression he stops and waits for her to quiet.

"For fuck's sake." She shakes her head after one last hiccup and rests her feet back on the floor. "That's working in Intelligence in a nutshell, isn't it? 'Keep your mouth shut and try not to die?'"

He snorts. "Story of my life, for sure." The last dregs of the bottle split between their cups, he hands her one and lifts the other into the air. "One last toast- to trying not to die."

"I"ll drink to that." She raises her glass to his, taps them together with a sharp clink.

"Anyway," he says, swallowing, "if it had been a competition, you'd have won. Twenty hours- I barely made seven."

"They wasted two hours on truth serum, so technically it was eighteen hours and thirty-two minutes. Long enough."

"The serum didn't work, I take it?"

"I trained in the Imperial Academy." She eyes him over the rim of her glass. "I put truth serum on my pancakes. Of course it didn't work."

Theron grins. "Filing that away for future reference. They didn't do any permanent damage, clearly. I've seen you work."

"Not much, no." It's a short catalogue. Her torturers weren't especially creative, preferring repetition of the same tools again and again and again. "Broken fingers, broken nose, broken ribs. Teeth survived somehow, lucky for me. Lots of bruises. Nerve damage, healed now. Some scars from the electricals- feet and back, mostly. Here, see-" she turns away from him and unclasps her belt, lifting the skirts of her jacket and pulling her undershirt up to expose two neat rows of burn scars in the arch of her back, raised dots like tactile messages on either side of her spine. "A few souvenirs."

He traces them carefully with a fingertip. "I remember these from before. But what's-" he pushes her hand aside and slides her shirt up higher even as he says it, outlining the margins of the saber wound on her mid-back. "This looks new. And bad. When did you get this?"

"I thought you knew I'd been injured on Asylum."

"Lana told me you got hurt, but I'm getting the impression she may have understated things." When she looks back over her shoulder he's studying her scar, bent close enough she feels his breath against her skin. "Exit wound? No. Would've had to have been a cannon to leave an exit like that. You should be patching this."

"I'm fine, Theron, honestly. And I've been patching, front and back. I'm not an idiot."

He sighs. "Of course you aren't. I just- wait. Front, too?"

"Front, too."

"Let me see."

Before she can stop him he's got his hands on her shoulders and turned her around toward him, reaching for the fastenings of her jacket; she bats his hands away in irritation. "Would you please stop fussing? I'm fine."

"Liar. Let me see."

She scowls and undoes the buckles, lets the jacket fall open. Her undershirt's spotted red at the front, and when she folds it up beneath her breasts she can see the scab across her belly wound's cracked, a slow trickle of blood oozing downward.

"And you're bleeding- like hell you're fine." He stares at it for a second before his eyes go wide. "No. No way. That's impossible."

She forgets, sometimes, how much of his life he must have spent around Jedi. Of course he would know what it was.

"That's a lightsaber wound. You took a saber straight through the gut and you're still sitting here and-" Theron takes a deep breath. "Nine. Who- how?"

"Arcann's blade," she says. "Valkorion's fault."

His jaw clenches.

"Lana and I-" he takes her by the wrist and pulls her toward the medical bay- "need to have a long talk later. Come on. There should be some bacta patches in the cabinet. I had the repair team restock it for you."

"Theron, would you stop- "

Stars, he looks like his mother when he's cross.

The medbay feels empty without Lokin's research bench taking up half the room and it's laid out all wrong; whoever rebuilt it must've worked on Republic ships. She pulls off her jacket and sets it on the examination table and while Theron rummages through the storage cabinets above the counter she scrubs dried blood off her stomach with a damp towel. The reopened area isn't as bad as it looked at first glance, probably just too-energetic dancing and the friction of her clothing. It's definitely looked worse. "Lana probably didn't want you to worry about me," she says.

"She knows damn well I'm going to worry about you anyway." Her back feels fine but he's laying a patch along it regardless, his hands warm along the edges of the cool gel. "She knows- oh, forget it. Turn when you're ready."

The front patch stings when he applies it but after a few seconds it settles into place, the bleeding quelled. She wonders what it is that Lana knows.

He smooths out the last of the wrinkles. "There. Done."

"Thank you. I could have done that myself, but thank you." She leans back against the workbench, letting her shirt back down. "And here we are again. What is it about us and medbays?"

"Wish I knew. Maybe if you'd stop getting into lightsaber fights-" As she rolls her eyes at him Theron rests his hand on her belly, over her shirt and the freshly-applied patch, but still her skin feels hot under his touch. "Sorry. Not funny."

"It's alright. At least you don't have head trauma this time."

He grins. "For once. Me and my idiot question- I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

She takes a deep breath and his fingertips move with the rise and fall of her ribs and oh, Force, she remembers the way he kissed her then and oh, Force, she's drunk and maudlin from too much whiskey and too many war stories and her timing's terrible but she can't think of another way to do this.

"Actually," she says, "I was hoping it's not too late to change my answer."

Theron's still opening his mouth to respond when she kisses him. It's a whisper of a kiss, a shadow of something lost to darkness five years ago that despite itself clung stubbornly to the hope of light, to the hope of a rebirth that by rights should have never come. She kisses him, and he breathes his reply between her parted lips. "That depends." He lifts his hands, palms pressed to the sides of her face. "Will I like this one better?"

If the first kiss was a hesitation mark, the second cuts down to the bone.

When she moves on him this time he's ready for her, her mouth a greedy, seeking thing on his and his response its equal, countless frantic kisses that knock the air from her lungs and distill her thoughts to laser-narrow focus.

(In thirty-two years she has wanted so many things. Even now she wants- wants Arcann dead, Valkorion gone, to not have to run and not have to fight and not have to lead an army into a war that may kill them all. But this?

She cannot remember anything she has ever wanted more than this.)

When his hands drop from her face he cups the nape of her neck to keep her forehead close against his, his fingers winding into her hair, lacing through and gripping hard enough to make her gasp, to angle her chin up toward him. If that's how he wants it- she grins and catches his lower lip between her teeth, tugs at it until he moans and leverages her backward with the pressure of one of his thighs between hers. Her back hits the top counter of the workbench, her hips tilting, grinding against him and letting the friction build to feverish heat.

Theron's got his other hand up beneath her undershirt. He's still far too clothed for her liking but she can't find purchase on his jacket; her palms slide under its open edges, up his chest and along his collarbones, trying to push it back over his shoulders. After a few unsuccessful attempts he finally seems to catch on- he lets go of her for a moment, slips his arms free of the sleeves and it falls to the ground behind him. With his collar gone she can finally get at his neck, teasing at the pulse point with a flick of her tongue that she thinks she remembers that he liked, that first time on Yavin-

If the noise he makes is any indication, she recalled correctly; he sinks his teeth into the top of her shoulder and his fingertips into her hipbones, muffling curses against her skin.

"If you keep doing that-" he says, his grip tightening- she'll have bruises at this rate but oh, she doesn't care- "I- damn it, Nine-"

She remembers the trick to his belt buckle better this time, though her fingers still fumble a little with the clasp because she's working blind, still worrying at his neck to hear the noises he makes, the way he says her name when she mouths along the angle of his jaw. When she feels it give way she lets it drop- he wasn't carrying his blasters either- and unfastens his waistband, curls her fingers around the length of his cock.

Before she even moves Theron's hard in the circle of her hand.

He breathes in sharply when she starts to work at him, her free hand slipping under the hem of his shirt to rake her nails down his back, and he lets her hips go, twists to grab both of her wrists and holds her still.

She blinks- too much? Not enough?- but in the split second her eyes are closed he kisses her again, hard and deep and tongue pushing past her lips to seek hers out. When she looks again his eyes are open too, locked on hers, the look in them familiar and oh, stars-

"Here-" she turns her back to him, undoing her own fastenings, shrugging her trousers and her smalls down low over her hips as she bends, back arching, one hand bracing against the counter and the other reaching back to guide him- "here, Theron-"

He pulls her back upright with his hands cupped over her breasts, turns her again until she's facing him. "No," he says, and lifts her onto the benchtop, perching her just on the edge, "I want to see you. Not like that-" he unbuckles one of her boots as she does the same for the other, pulling them off to join his jacket on the floor, the rest of the clothing on her lower body quickly following suit. He slides one hand along the inside of her thigh, parting her with two fingers that come away slicked with wetness.

"Like this?" Catching his hand in hers, she raises it to her mouth and draws his fingers in.

He enters her so hard that the back of her head hits the cabinet behind her.

She locks her ankles together behind his waist and he cradles her head and her lower back, holds her close against him as they find a rhythm. They won't last long, not at this pace, not after five years without for her (and, she suspects, just as long for him), and he must know it too; after a minute or so he slows, moves his hand from her back in between them, the pad of his thumb finding the sweet spot between her thighs and circling in a steady counterpoint to the way he moves inside her.

Oh- oh, Force, Theron-

She doesn't even realize she's saying it out loud until she hears him, too, murmuring encouragement in her ear, wanting to hear her come apart, to hear her say his name again, wanting, wanting-

She gives him what he wants, crying out as she comes, spasming around him, and he follows her over the edge.

In the minutes that follow they barely move. Her hand's still fisted in his hair; she relaxes her hold but he doesn't pull away, just presses another kiss into the side of her neck with a scrape of teeth on skin that sends an aftershock straight through her core.

Finally, he brushes his lips against her ear, whispers something she can't quite hear.

"Hm?"

"I was just thinking," he says, "I wonder what would have happened if that had been your first answer."