(Prompt request: 91. "Can I hold your hand?")
I thought you'd never ask
Her birth certificate- wherever it is now, purged from the Imperial database long ago with the rest of her records- may have said Dromund Kaas, but Nar Shaddaa feels like home.
The thoroughfare around them hums with life, with shouts and whispers and the roar of speeder engines, the soft whoosh of hovercars passing overhead and the low thump of bass from the cantinas on either side of the street, and Nine takes a deep breath in and smiles. Turning to Theron, she-
Where did he go?
When she looks back over her shoulder he's a dozen paces back, scanning the menu posted outside a café. Whatever he sees, it doesn't appeal; with a shake of his head, he starts back in her direction.
"Nothing you like?" She doubts he can hear, but he reads the shape of her mouth and shrugs as he draws even with her..
"Menu's okay," he says, "but I'm pretty sure someone just got stabbed in there to judge by the noise and the blood trail, so-"
Dodging out of the way of a chirruping astromech, she nods. "The next block over's quieter. Fewer bars, fewer murders, better food. Come on."
The alley on their right goes straight through to the street she means and it's mostly safe by Hutt space standards- not one she ever would have picked to use as a dead drop or a meeting place, too wide and too well-lit for bad behavior. Ducking around the corner, she reaches back for Theron, to pull him along with a tug on his sleeve; instead, her hand finds his and her fingers slip through the spaces between his, unthinking, a comfortable reflex born of enough nights spent in bed, now, curled around each other in waking and in sleep, that she's grown used to it.
This isn't her quarters, though, or the cabin of a shuttle. This isn't hiding. This is standing in the middle of a Nar Shaddaa alleyway, in full sight of the street, hand in hand.
(She never cared before him. But she's not sure it ever mattered before him.)
She freezes.
In the next second an armor-clad Nikto almost barrels her over and she has to let go to keep from pulling Theron down with her.
"Out of the way, lovebirds. Some of us got places to be."
Before she can answer the Nikto's halfway down the alley and she doesn't bother replying, just straightens up and brushes invisible dust from her clothing to cover her awkwardness.
"I-" she starts to say- "it's this way. I didn't mean to-"
"He came out of nowhere. It's okay."
She wrinkles her nose. "I meant that I ought to have asked you before I did that. We're out here in the open, and I just-"
"Are you asking me," Theron grins, looking down at her hands now pressed against her waist- better there, or they'll do something unwise of their own accord, probably- "if it's okay to hold my hand?"
It really does sound stupid when he says it like that, but- "Possibly. Yes."
"Possibly? Or yes?" His smile broadens; she's never quite sure, when he looks at her like that, whether she wants to punch him or push him up against a wall or both in variable order. Mostly both, she thinks.
"Yes."
"So-"
She sighs, reaches out toward him again. "Can I hold your hand? While we walk?"
"I thought you'd never ask," he says, and laces his fingers through hers.