Back to Business

Disclaimer: see previous chapters.

…Before long, to everyone's regret, things went back to business; the tropical ocean shore was left behind and they were all back in the jungle, once more doing scientific research and the like.

That said, things weren't entirely back to normal – Rose, for one, wanted something else, something different, as she commented to Ben as the two of them sat one day in his office, while outside, an atypically strong wind was blowing through the jungle, coming down the mountains.

"I find myself strangely wanting," Rose told Ben. "I don't like rushing, yet lately, when I'm starting to work, I am founding myself going through the motions as fast as I can-"

"Phasma isn't going to have a repeat of the toucan incident, will she?" Ben asked, not unreasonably.

"No!" Rose snapped. "I'm not like Paige, let alone Poe! I take pride in my work and skill! There is not going to be any misfiring harnesses on my watch! That said," she added, cooling down as quickly as she had fired up, "where is Phasma working slash researching today, this week? I don't think it's birds anymore…"

"No, it's some sort of a tree frog with a special home for its' tadpoles," Ben twitched. "Did I mention that I don't really like them frogs and the rest of the amphibians?"

"You seemed as cool as a cucumber with the anaconda…"

"An anaconda is a snake, which means – a reptile, which means that it's not an amphibian – for further details, ask Phasma. She explained it to me and Hux a long time ago, whether we wanted it or not-"

"So, the three of you are good friends?" Rose pressed on.

"Don't know about me and Hux, but yes, the relationship that three of us has is the closest that any of us would consider to be friendly by conventional standards. You?"

"Me?"

"You have any friends?"

"No, but I have my sister, and she has friends, and that was good enough, and that sounds a little sad, so now I have you and your friends?" Rose spoke in a single rush, (but she was feeling as if she was rushing herself a lot lately). "Sorry if I sound rather pathetic-"

"No, you're not!" Ben snapped, as he rubbed Rose's back just as intensely – the wind was unusually strong and brisk for the tropics, but Rose was shivering from entirely different reasons. "You're anything but, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they're so wrong! Just call us, and we'll beat them up-"

Rose stood on her tiptoes and kissed Ben straight on the lips. Ben responded in kind, and for a while they just ignored everything else, including the passing of time, cough.

"…So, do you- dislike anything else?" Rose pressed Ben, when the two finally came up for air, metaphorically speaking.

"Yeah. Sunsets."

"Of course, ask an emo Goth-"

"I'm not an emo Goth anymore, we outgrew this phase a long time ago – just ask Phasma," Ben pinched his nose. "Or at least I did – I'm not sure about Hux, whether he had outgrown it at all, or what."

"Hux was also emo-?" Rose did not know if she was horrified or fascinated by this revelation.

"He jelled his hair; trust me, this was bad," Ben winced. "He also started me on my own path of self-discovery, but sunsets have nothing to do with that – I never liked them from the start."

"Oh? Why?" Rose allowed herself to be distracted from the mental image of Hux with jelled hair.

"I don't know, I just don't," Ben admitted. "I've no problems with days or nights or sunrises, but sunsets always creep me out for some reason, you know? People always say that the night is brightest before the dawn, but the flip side is that the day is brightest before the dusk, and the two statements make equal amount of sense-"

"Ben, you're ranting," Rose said gently and kissed him again. Naturally, Ben responded in kind, and the two just stood there, in his office, doing nothing, but then again, Rose was on her break, and Ben was the leader, so he had some benefits, and there was that.

"…Glad to see that you're relaxing after working yourselves to exhaustion," Phasma commented with some sarcasm, as she got into Ben's office, followed by Hux.

"Yes, well, I already did half of my chores by now," Rose rolled her eyes.

"Half? I did everything!" Phasma rolled her eyes right back.

"Really?" Rose did not back down.

"Anyways, getting back on track," Hux spoke up suddenly and loudly, breaking the two women up, "I'm guessing that Ben has been rumbling here about as to why sunrises are good, sunsets are bad, but both are really the same?"

"Yes-?"

"Well, the counterstatement to his proclamation is that people want to be cheered up, not depressed-"

"Are you still pretending that the Star Wars prequel trilogy doesn't exist-?"

Hux facepalmed and glared at Ben through the fingers, while muttering something decidedly nasty beneath his breath.

"You people like Star Wars?" Rose blinked.

"Sure do! Run a small semi-online private club and everything," Phasma agreed, readily enough. "I'm the president, Ben's the treasurer, Hux is the secretary. Want to be the vice president?"

Rose blinked and looked at Ben. "Meh, I have no problems with that," he told her plainly. "Hux might, though-"

"We'll talk about this later," Hux, uncharacteristically for him, glared at Phasma.

"Sure we will," Phasma snorted and ruffled his hair. Considering what she had heard about it and Hux earlier, Rose could not help but to giggle.

Something snapped in Hux, and he tackled Phasma, shoving her out of the doorway of Ben's office.

"In other news," Ben said brightly, "my parents have learned about you and, well, us, and want to meet you when we return from the tropics. Are you game?"

"…" Rose blinked by the sudden change of topics. "Seriously," she asked, "seriously? Your sense of tactics and social skills suck."

"Mmm," Ben grumbled noncommittally. "Is that a yes or a no?"

Something snapped in Rose, she closed the door shut, not that Phasma and Hux were coming back anytime soon anyhow, and the two of them had angry sex immediately.

And then Rose agreed to meet his parents, but that was another story.