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i.
“I don’t know what you see in him.”
“Really?” Orun’s eyes gleam in the lowered lighting. “He’s wealthy, powerful –– willing to eat a lot more than dessert . . . ”
Blink. “Really?” All right, so he didn’t see that one coming; given his own rather gangly figure, it could present something of a problem. “You –– ah –– you find the . . . plush . . . look attractive?”
Orun opens her mouth, shuts it again. “No,” she says, not quite looking at him. “That’s –– it’s slang for . . .”
“. . . oh!” Niall can feel himself blushing, has to swallow twice before he can speak. “Right, then.”
He’s made her smile, after all –– not quite the way he’d planned, but he’ll take it. “Ah . . . so . . . are the two of you, y’know, a steady thing?”
This time when she grins Niall can feel it deep in his chest, like the echo of a shout that hasn’t happened yet. “Off and on.”
ii.
“Let’s go to the gallery opening,” he says, bouncing on his toes beside her in those absurd sneakers. “There’s one in the Senate District, commemorating depictions of civil war. It’ll be very intellectual. We should go.”
Ridiculous man, always asking her to go somewhere. “I was there,” Ryn reminds him, feeling like laughing for reasons she isn’t entirely sure she wants to examine.
Niall swivels on one heel –– he’s such a gawky man, but there is something oddly graceful about his feet –– and turns to walk backwards just in front of her, all ill-fitting suit and giddy grin, his arms flung manically wide. “All the more reason you should see it from the outside!” He sobers slightly, enough that Ryn can tell whatever he says next is meant to be taken seriously. “See the perspective of some of the people you helped to save.”
“Or failed to save,” she says, remembering –– well, all of it, really. Not everyone had wanted to be “saved” from the Confederacy, after all.
Sometimes “liberating” planets had felt a lot like conquering them.
“Or that,” Niall says, but he’s lost some of his buzz and his warm brown eyes are concerned now instead of bright with enthusiasm. He reaches for her hand. “Hey. I didn’t mean to . . . bring up bad memories. It was stupid of me. We can do something else, though. Anything else. Go to dinner, maybe. There’s a great little Corellian place near ––”
“Corellian makes me sick,” Ryn says, and then catches herself up; it does, but she doesn’t generally tell people that.
“What, really?” Niall’s eyebrows go up, and he’s so surprised he actually drops her hand –– it’s not until Ryn registers the oddness of this that she realizes just how consistently Niall seeks contact. He’s never grabby, not that; he never holds her when she wants to go. But he brushes her arm or tries to pat her shoulder –– or, like just now, grabs her hand. “I never knew that.”
And I don’t know why I told you.
Ryn shrugs. “It’s the grease.”
Niall nods, slowly, and Ryn winces inwardly because she can’t feel what he’s thinking –– his shields are still, mysteriously, too good –– but she’s pretty sure he’s processing what it means that she’s shared this small, personal piece of information, and drawing some of the same conclusions she just did.
“Okay, then,” he says, the smile coming back again with a little less mania, “what kind of food do you like?”
She’d meant to say something trademark-Ryn and unhelpful, but what comes out when she opens her mouth is: “Dex’s.”
Niall catches her hand again. “Then you’ll have to educate me about Dex’s,” he said. “I’m new in town, after all.”
Damn it. But this time she’s grinning, too.
iii.
“. . . and sources close to Prince Niall confirm that he left the soirée in the company of the famously single Commander Orun, whose ties to both the Jedi ORder and the Skywalker-Naberrie family make her a frequent figure at diplomatic functions. Will Orun’s charms be enough to tame her fellow singleton? HoloNet News awaits!”
“As if courting a woman who’s still hung up on another man wasn’t hard enough already,” Niall mutters, and drops his plan of sending an extravagant bouquet in favor of quietly pinging her comlink.
iv.
The news of their relationship breaks the holo-channels before they even really have a relationship to break. It’s awkward, and it makes everything harder, because suddenly they can’t just have dinner in private without the galaxy keeping tabs on the outcome.
Niall finds a disguise and sneaks into her apartment building anyway, with wine and sandwiches and the cheesiest holovid he can lay hands on in a hurry.
Ryn makes popcorn.
v.
“Is he –– you know –– the one that got away?” Niall can’t look at Ryn, or at Anakin, either, as he asks the question. He’s pretty sure he shouldn’t be asking it at all, but he thinks maybe the answer makes a difference.
About a lot of things, really.
Ryn sighs down into her glass. “I don’t know.”
Niall thinks what she means is I don’t want it to be true.
Well, it’s something to work with, anyway.