You don't need a whole mission plan before getting started on the obvious stuff. On their first day free from the political arena—and it was their first day off since that picnic back on Yavin 4—Luke and Kess set forth on the project of unpacking.

The shipment had lost its organization of His and Hers before it even arrived, and now was in a complete tangle. Crates were everywhere, many lying open where someone had rushed to dig for something specific. Dresser drawers were a mix and match accident of whose clothes were whose. The Jedi database still had yet to be plugged-in and booted up. At first, the clutter had made them feel a little more at home, but the mess was starting wear on their sanity.

This was the first time they saw the apartment in the daytime. The morning sun shined almost sideways through the wall of windows and lit up the carpet to look like actual sand, which was kind of cool. For the first time ever, they didn't entirely get dressed for the day. He left his blue shirt unbuttoned over his white undertank and rolled his sleeves to his elbows. Kess went barefoot, left her long hair hanging unbraided, and wore nothing more than a thin layer of exercise clothes. They sent Artoo and Eye-D on errands just to get the droids out of the house. They shut down the commlinks and comm terminal and redirected all incoming messages to the mail. They sipped blue bottles of sweetwater and listened to a public channel of music as they began their work in individual corners of the great room. Conversation was light and punctuated with a few moments of humor.

While digging through the top of a stack of crates, Kess pulled out a chinkle tool she didn't own, shifted her eyes with confusion, and looked back into the box that was clearly her stuff. "I don't remember stealing this from anybody."

Squatted on his haunches over a different crate, Luke sat up quickly and snapped his mouth closed. "It's mine," he admitted. "I just tossed it in there when I was done with it." He watched carefully in case she reacted with understanding, and grinned secretly when she didn't.

Kess set the tool aside with a joke, "What, are we labeling our stuff now?" Such was the most common use for the thing.

Luke didn't answer, else he risked revealing more than he should, but his mind drifted when he returned to his own work. His own thoughts whispered at him from the back of his mind. What are you waiting for?

He didn't know. There was something in the way, but he didn't know what it was. Perhaps more of this 'resource organizing'—this 'unraveling of stress' they were now tackling together—perhaps that was all that was undone, and he hoped that was true, but the something on Force told him strongly that he needed to wait a little longer before he pulled that finished locket out of his boot sock.

His open senses detected her tension harden as she dug through that box. It was just some random stuff from her barracks, but the objects were probably reminders. The loss of so many friends was still so fresh. And Luke refused to use a marriage proposal simply as a means to cheer her up.

Luke eyed her in secret as her hand moved slower in the box. Her smile faded, staring breathless. Her fingers lifted out a custom-shaped oil valve gasket, one that was big enough for a Y-wing.

Tears emerged in her eyes. Brown eyes looked around the room, looked around at all their stuff, looked out the window at the foreign city beyond, and dropped her eyes back down to fidget with that gasket. Her eyebrows angled to stare at it.

Slowly, Luke rose to his feet and turned off the music as he stepped quietly over. He put himself in front of her, leaned his back against the crates, and he waited.

Eventually, Kess looked up to his eyes.

"What?" He asked tenderly.

She looked away at the mess and came back with a squint. "Did we . . . 'decide' something?" She looked around the apartment again. "Maybe I don't remember the conversation."

His murmur was gentle. "What are you talking about?"

She motioned to all the crates, the half-unpacked mess of His Stuff and Her Stuff mixed together, like it was one big household already. "We never talked about living together."

Luke rubbed his lips closed and looked at the floor.

Her voice was more confused than it was accusing. "I keep forgetting how long we've been here. So much has happened. It feels like we've been here for months already but—

"But it's only been a few weeks," he murmured, angling his head and blinking sadly at the air. Was he already getting her answer? Before he even asked? He remembered the last words Han said ever to him. "You have to get through this in one piece, because you have a more important mission after it."

And it was the toughest, longest, most important mission of them all.

Luke inhaled hard through his nose and realized he was falling down on the job. He lifted his eyes only to gaze out the window. The gold orange sunshine lit up the glassy exterior of the building next door. It was quiet in the apartment but the Force still ticked and hummed and throbbed from so many people on this planet.

Kess sensed his mood shift and assured, "Luke, I'm not saying I don't want to. I'm just saying we never talked about it. And it's already happening as if the decision was made without me."

He murmured dejectedly. "I didn't make any decisions, Kess. This all just . . . fell into our laps." He found her eyes with a sad sigh. "You and I have been a team a lot longer than we've been dating. We just fell into the habit of that teamwork. That's all."

"I know. And I like that about us but—" she looked around the room again and saw it all. "But it seems like the teamwork is all we are anymore." She cringed to point it out. "You haven't even kissed me since we left Yavin."

He flashed a smiling whine, "Well, you haven't kissed me either!"

She flashed a shy smile and nodded.

"We've been busy," he said again. "It's been an intense couple of weeks."

"I know. I know." She closed her eyes and tried to sigh away this discomfort. Somehow, what little strength and independence she had to talk about this stuff with him had atrophied again. "I'm not saying I don't want— I'm not asking for a big 'relationship discussion' or anything."

"Mm no." He nodded at the floor and grinned over at her with honesty. "No, I think that's exactly what you're asking for."

Kess flushed and hugged herself. "I'm sorry." Humbled, disciplined, she pulled herself together and returned to work. She turned away for a different box—

His fingers snagged her wrist to keep her from moving away. Kess glanced back as he gently pulled her to him.

Luke wrapped his arms around her sides and made her rest against him so he could look her in the eyes. He nudged his mouth over, as if to make sure he had permission before he kissed her. It was tender and timid, and slow, and sweet, the way their kisses used to be when they were still learning how to kiss each other. It ended with their lips still hovering with the dreamy intoxication of it.

Her eyes were still closed, stunned, paused as if waiting for him to come back.

Luke grinned at her expression, and he whispered. "So ask me."

She blinked her eyes open. "Ask you what?"

"Ask me for what you want."

Her eyes flashed open but she smiled bashfully and tried to sigh it away with, "Well. W-what do you want?"

He grinned cutely. "I asked you first."

She flushed, more so on the Force than in her face. She was too embarrassed to think about it consciously, and she was terrified to admit it out loud. Instead, she fed him a line that was mostly—but not entirely—bullshit. "I don't know. I guess you're right. We really haven't had the chance to think about any of this." Her eyes gazed over the apartment and the boxes, as if comparing this against her dreams and imaginings.

But her expression began to sour again. This didn't match her dreams.

Luke angled his head. "So let's think about it."

Big eyes opened on him.

He mouthed the invitation almost voicelessly. "What do you want?"

Kess stared at him but her fingers still fidgeted with the gasket. Her face somehow managed to change from a strong, wise Jedi woman and crumble quickly to a six-year-old girl who burst into tears. "I wanna go home!"

Kess dove her face in his shoulder and cried.

Luke held her closer. He wasn't expecting that at all. But the explanation came next, squeaking out of a tiny voice and soft blithering sobs. "I want my squeaky bed. And Joanne eating everything in the kitchen. And Kayla showing up just in time for dinner. And—

Luke constricted around her and held her even closer to let her wail. Now he knew he was right—they were not yet healed enough to have the clarity of mind for this kind of discussion yet.

Three weeks ago, their whole world had changed in an instant. One day, they were a secret and the next day they were the news. One day, they were in green humidity, and the next day they were in cold steel. From peace of Yavin to the madness of Coruscant. Surrounded by friends and family they'd loved for years and now half of those loved ones were missing. . . as if they had just lost them in the move.

She whimpered into his collarbone, "I want to get my hands dirty in the guts of an engine and to know it's yours so I take better care of it even when I try to decide not to because I'm trying to be mad at you about something."

Luke rested his mouth against her temple and smiled sadly.

"I want to go to the clearing in the middle of the day and—

She stopped talking, but she stopped crying too. She sniffed in his shoulder and began to stiffen.

Luke grinned more against her temple and whispered the end of her sentence for her. "Make love in the grass."

Her trapped breath escaped with a shudder. Her face curled deeper into his neck and held him tighter. "We never did that."

"But we should've."

He could feel her body press tighter against him as she thought about it, and he too tried to imagine it again. He had so many different fantasies about the two of them in that clearing that he couldn't hope to remember them all now. She began to calm as she remembered her secret thoughts of the same.

"It's still there, you know," he pointed out.

She pulled back only to look up. "What is?"

"The clearing." He smiled softly down. "It's still there. Maybe, when we get the chance, we can run back to Yavin 4 for a week and camp out or something. Take a real vacation."

Kess grinned at the idea, but the first thing that popped into her mind was her first day in Rogue Group. Luke and Wedge came in from the muster room, arguing about something about how Luke's vacations were never actually vacations. And Wedge peeped up with, "Is this quiz going to count against my grade?" Her secondary crush on Wedge started in that moment, shadowed only by the enormous crush she already had on Luke. She had so many memories in that managers' office, arguing at each other from different desks because they couldn't fuck each other yet, both trying to ignore the eye-rolls of Neilson and Ashten and Teak. . . and after knock-off, trying to dismiss the suggestive comments from Kayla and Joanne, Han and Lando. . . .

New tears sprouted, but she looked up with a humble grin. "You're right."

"About what?"

"We can't really talk about the future until were done holding onto the past."

"Yes and no," he said, considering it. "There's a lot about our past I don't want to forget. But maybe we just need to heal a little more, from all these changes." He looked around the apartment and the clutter within it. It looked like two lives trying to force themselves together too fast only create a deformed monster. He gestured at it. "This is not what I wanted for us." He shook his head at her. "This is not what I had in mind."

Her eyes gave her away. She tried to look innocent, and her voice grew tiny to try to speak with even more innocence. She was fishing for something she was too timid to mention. "What did you have in mind?"

Luke saw right through her ploy and had to force himself not to think about the locket or else she would detect his thoughts. His eyes smiled wistfully at her. Not yet.

She opened her mouth with a laughing groan. "Oh, you haven't given me one of those looks in a long time either."

"Like I said, we've been busy. It's been a tough couple of weeks." He sucked at his lips and added. "But maybe, now that things are settling down, maybe we can get back on track." He looked out over the apartment, "And in the mean time, let's treat this as nothing more than a temporary post."

Kess looked over the room again too, and began to see it in a new light, to see Coruscant and the Senate work in a new light. "Yeah. Okay. I can handle that."

With this teamwork agreement, they shared subdued smiles.

Kess whispered it first. "I love you."

And Luke didn't hesitate to whisper it back. "I love you."

That was it, exactly; that was her secret weapon against the stress.

His hands firmed his grip on her hips and pulled her back in for another kiss, but this time, his fingers snaked under the trim of her tank top and sneaked to touch the skin of her stomach.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself in to kiss him deeper. The move made it easy for him to wrap his arms hard around her waist. He practically picked her up from the floor as he continued to kiss her, as if using this tactic to mask the truth that he was already walking her backwards towards the bedroom.