Out-of-Practice Writer

“We’re in route to you now. Should be with you in about five hours.”

I nodded from my place between Obi-Wan and Cody, the three of us staring at the holographic version of Anakin Skywalker in front of us. I heard Cody sigh from beside me as Obi-Wan responded.

“We’ll be waiting for you as planned.”

Anakin nodded. “I’ll keep you updated if anything changes.”

Obi-Wan nodded, and then a moment later, the hologram shut off.

“Cody, you know the drill,” Obi-Wan said, turning to face the two of us. “Prepare to link up with the 501st’s fleet five hours from now, and keep your communicator on for any updates or delays.”

“Yes, General.”

Obi-Wan gave us both a smile and a nod, then headed off the bridge. I moved to follow him, but Cody caught my arm before I could.

I turned to give him a raised-eyebrow look, only to find him looking much more visibly stressed than I’d seen him in a long time. And I’d seen Obi-Wan make him visibly stressed often.

“Are you okay?” I asked, brow furrowing as I took a step closer to Cody. I heard the door close somewhere behind us as Obi-Wan headed off to do whatever he needed to do, but my eyes never left Cody’s face.

We’d first met a long time ago, before I’d even been assigned to work regularly with Obi-Wan, when Cody had been visiting Coruscant on shore leave. We’d absolutely hit it off, and had been inseparable for the few weeks he’d been on-planet. When I’d been assigned to the 212th to assist General Kenobi, alongside Cody, I’d taken it as a sign from the Force that we made an unbeatable team, and nothing the Jedi could say would be enough to keep me away from him.

Although, we did a much better job of hiding it than Skywalker and his wife.

Cody sighed heavily, bringing me back into the moment as he looked away from the door Obi-Wan had disappeared through to meet my eyes.

“I’m fine, for now. But…” He shook his head, and I frowned, slipping my arm out of his grip to take his hand instead. “You haven’t seen the kind of chaos the 501st brings in the field yet, have you?”

“No, can’t say I have. I’ve heard some stories here and there, but… don’t tell me that’s what this expression is about?”

Cody sighed again. “Undeniably, they’re a talented group, and they accomplish things that should otherwise be impossible.”

“But? Is Skywalker really that bad in the field?”

“It’s not just him. He pulls focus, maybe, but Ahsoka, Rex, and every other member of that unit… they’re chaos magnets, and they’re happy about it.”

I snorted. “Cody-”

“I know you’re well aware of how insane it can get with us in the 212th. General Kenobi’s a lot more chaotic than his reputation, sure enough. But the 501st is always… so much worse. If we’re going to get through this with our ship intact, much less our General and our men… I’m going to need all hands on deck high coordination from you.”

“…Is it really that bad?”

Cody gave me an exhausted look I’d only ever seen from him once or twice, usually after Obi-Wan did something that made me seriously question how he got his reputation as calm, level-headed, or rational. I took a deep breath, then squeezed his hand.

“Well… consider me warned. I’ll be ready for whatever chaos the 501st bring. No matter what, we’ve got this.”

****************

“CODY! COME IN!”

“I’m here! Problem on deck seven is dealt with, I’m heading to you now!”

I paused for a split second, just long enough to close my eyes and let out a sigh of relief. We weren’t out of the woods yet, but Cody’s comms had cut out to static and shouting about five minutes ago, and I’d been toeing the line on panic the longer his radio silence stretched on.

I didn’t have time for a longer sigh of relief, though. We were nowhere near out of the woods yet.

My eyes snapped open, I ignited my lightsaber, and then I charged around the nearest corner to continue dealing with the chaos the 501st had managed to bring with them.

Somehow, in the five hours between our call on the bridge and the arrival of the 501st, they’d managed to fly their capital ship through a dormant fleet of vulture droids that had apparently lost contact with whatever Separatist apparatus had been controlling them. They’d been floating in space in a giant debris cloud, completely neutralized, until the 501st had flown straight through and managed to wake them all up.

They’d covered the remaining distance to us as quickly as possible, giving us a heads up about the problem about thirty minutes before their arrival. Now, like Cody had predicted, we were fighting just to keep our ship in one piece.

I shouted as I turned down a hallway where three of the droids had burrowed deep into our ship, and were actively trying to keep tearing in further. I rushed them, lightsaber flashing, and managed to take down the first one before the others even recognized my presence.

A second later, Cody appeared at the end of the hallway, blaster blazing. Like we’d been training for it all our lives, we synced up perfectly, making short work of the other two vulture droids.

“This is ridiculous!” I shouted, in lieu of a hello. “How did they even find these things?”

Cody just shook his head. “Like I said, they’re chaos magnets. Any updates on whether these droids reconnected to a Separatist control station?”

“No, but I don’t think so. They’re not acting with enough coordination for that. It’s like Skywalker and his crew drove their ship through the crowd and flipped every single droid’s switch to “destory as much as possible” at once.”

Cody snorted. “…I’m not sure I’d be surprised if they’d somehow managed that.”

I huffed a laugh, the sheer insanity of the situation getting to me. I made eye contact with Cody, and then I couldn’t hold back a wave of laughter anymore. Even Cody smiled, shaking his head like he also couldn’t quite believe the situation we’d found ourselves in.

“No wonder you looked so exhausted the first time I met you,” I finally managed, taking deep breaths to recover from the laughter. “I’d chalked it up to being Obi-Wan’s fault, but now I know the truth. And I know why he’s got such a shining reputation for level-headedness and anti-recklessness that doesn’t fit him. It’s because Skywalker, Ahsoka, and the 501st are absolutely insane outliers destroying everything in their paths.”

Cody snorted. “Well… on the bright side, lights are still on.”

As if he’d willed it into being, the entire ship went dark the split second the words had left Cody’s mouth. In the now-eerie glow of my lightsaber, the only light source on the entire deck as far as I could tell, I shot Cody a look.

“…Yeah. I should’ve known better than to say that out loud.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing again. This time, Cody actually joined me, shaking his head at himself. I managed to straighten up after a few moments, and I nudged his shoulder with my own, my lightsaber still casting a faint glow on both of our faces. He sighed, and leaned right back into me.

“Honestly, Codes, you don’t need to sweat it. Yeah, that wasn’t your finest move, but look around you. By comparison, you’re literally infallible.”

Cody snorted, then took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh.

“We need to get moving again. Let’s head down to the electronics bay with your lightsaber, see if we can’t get power restored.”

“Sounds like a good plan to me. Just give me one second.”

Cody paused, standing just over my shoulder as I lifted my arm to type something into the localized communicator and computer. I waited just long enough to see my message had sent, then looked up at Cody with a smile.

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

“…What did you do?” asked Cody, the two of us falling into step reflexively as we headed for the electronics bay. I shot him a grin.

“I just put in an official shore leave request for the two of us. Felt like we could both use a light at the end of this literal dark tunnel of chaos, you know?”

Cody barked another laugh, and even though he shook his head, I could see the somewhat rare grin that I absolutely loved on his face.

“That’s a fantastic idea. All the more reason to get this taken care of quickly, so we can get out of here.”

The two of us shared one last grin in the glow of my lightsaber, before our focus shifted to the bright red lights that had just appeared ahead of us, marking another round of vulture droids. Not even the chaos of the 501st stood a chance when Cody and I stood shoulder to shoulder, taking on all-comers, together.

****************

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Beneath The Snow Lies My Heart by @ladysongmaster

The mid-afternoon sun shone merrily through the windows, casting sharp contrast onto the faces of your students. A lazy silence had fallen over the room, its edges buffed by the crinkle of flimsiplast as they turned their pages, the shuffle of a child turning to lie on her back, the soft shhhhing of a metal water bottle being opened.

A breathy hum—a tune you didn't know.

You rose from your own spot at your desk and began walking to the far end of the room. Frell noticed you before you'd gotten even halfway there; his humming cut off the second he looked up from his book. He smiled sheepishly, and you gave him a small nod of approval. Next to him, Rioran tapped her leg restlessly. Now that you had risen, you had a good angle to look at her face, and her eyes were not fixed on her book, nor anywhere near it. You followed her gaze out the window, to the sea.

Wow, you thought.

It really was a shame that you had to teach the kids on a day like today. You'd much rather have let them loose to go play in the surf—though you were pretty sure that you would have found Frell reading on the beach, anyway. Rioran seemed to draw you into her reverie, and you let your eyes wander over the scene outside. Something caught your attention, far above the horizon. A dark speck, growing larger. Could it be…?

No, you hadn't heard from them in weeks. They were probably caught up in some hare-brained scheme or fantastical adventure.

But Rioran seemed to have noticed the same.

"Wid!" she whisper-shouted. "Look!"

You turned to see the Rodian girl perking up. Wid's antennae twitched, and though her pure black eyes made it difficult to tell where she was looking, you got the sense that she was scanning the scene. A moment passed before she jumped out of her seat with a whoop of delight:

"It's the Marauder!"

It was a good thing that quiet reading time was nearly over, because the room erupted into chaos, and you could feel your own adrenaline jump at hearing the name.

"Be polite!" you chided, as the children shoved each other to see through the window.

You could see it more clearly, now. The ship seemed to be diving sharply towards the sea. Tech was probably the one flying. You smiled a little as your mind's eye conjured up the image of Wrecker holding on for dear life as Tech threw them into his chaotic maneuvers. You'd only been on the ship twice, but that was enough for a lifetime. The Marauder spun through the sky; it flipped; it turned; it skimmed the waves and threw a spray of seawater into the air.

Show-off, you thought, with nothing but fondness.

The roar of the ship grew louder as it approached, and for a moment as it passed overhead, it was the only thing that you could hear. Then it faded, and the children began to chatter among themselves.

Rioran turned to you with that mule-stubborn look on her face that only ever spelled trouble. "You should let us go early."

You tried and failed not to laugh. "That is so not allowed."

"Please! We're not going to be able to focus for another"—she checked the clock—"hour and a half! It would be better to let us go now and see what they brought back, and then we can all go and read at home."

You sighed. "I hear what you're saying, but none of you would actually go home and read, and we—"

"Frell would!"

"—still have math after this!" You paused. "Okay, Frell would, but you would not."

Rioran pouted.

You pouted back at her. "And I'd get fired."

"…touché."

You laughed at that. Still, Rioran had a point, clever girl that she was—the children weren't going to focus for another hour and a half, not on reading nor on math. They got twitchy at the end of a normal day, and worse still when the weather was beautiful or the harvest in full swing; the return of Tech, Wrecker, and Phee was magnitudes more exciting than those.

"How about this: I'll let you choose what you want to work on until the end of the day, and then anyone who wants to go up to the plaza can walk with me. Deal?"

Rioran turned to her peers, and they whispered among themselves for a moment before she turned back to you.

"Deal. May we work on our rockets?"

You grinned. "Put your books away. I'll go get the tarp for the floor."

Rioran had chosen well, you thought, as the students chatted happily amongst themselves, tinkering with their little model rockets. The project had been Omega's idea, last year. All of the tenth grade students had to do at least one afternoon of community service per week, and she had chosen to volunteer as your teacher's aide. Omega was finished with her hours, but her influence remained, and this year's children loved their rockets just as much as last year's had.

What you hadn't considered was that the students were quite independent at this stage of their project, demanding little help from you, and so your mind was largely left free to wander. Nearly four months had passed since Tech, Wrecker, and Phee set out on their ill-fated adventure, and as selfish as the thought was, you didn't think the timing could have been any worse. Before their departure, Wrecker had settled into a routine of walking you to the school every weekday morning, and in turn, you had been helping him learn all of the ordinary skills that had been neglected in clone military school: cooking, mostly, but also the small repairs for which he didn't want to rely on Tech, woodworking, and net-weaving.

You didn't think yourself insecure in matters of romance, nor particularly timid, but you were pragmatic—Shep would call you cautious, and you weren't sure whether you could argue with that. There was all the time in the world, you had thought, to get to know Wrecker. You hadn't feel the need to push things along and tell him how you felt about him.

Then he was gone, and it only took a few days of his absence before you had regretted your caution very much. Would those gentle flirtations still be there upon his return? Had your affections been clear enough?

Not worth worrying about, you told yourself, and tried to focus on your lesson planning. You ended up writing down 120 as the product of 7 and 30, and resisted the urge to hit your head against your desk.

Finally, the end of the school-day was nearing, and the students rushed through their tidying faster than you had seen since the afternoon of the school-wide surfing competition. Phee's return to the island had always been cause for celebration in the past, as she nearly always brought home with her at least six crates full of goods that couldn't be found on Pabu. Since the clones became part of the community, the arrival of the Marauder had become something of an impromptu holiday, no matter when it occurred.

"Who's planning on going up to the plaza as a group?" you asked.

The majority of your students raised their hands. At the age of ten and eleven, they were largely left to their own devices after school, which made these sorts of miniature field trips quite easy. The island was as safe as any place in the galaxy, and it allowed the children a level of freedom that you'd never had growing up.

They clamored for their bags and spilled out of the classroom, so eager to go that Frell had to remind them to wait for you. You were just rounding the corner to the main entryway when you heard a child's voice shout:

"Wrecker!"

Wrecker?

You were standing in a sea of little beings, so it took you a moment to get through the door. Sure enough, there was Wrecker, tossing a tiny child into the air—Frell's youngest sister, if you weren't mistaken. Their family lived across the street from the Batch. By Wrecker's side was Omega, ruffling Rioran's hair and chatting animatedly.

Cheers and questions and exclamations of delight echoed around you, and you hung back, allowing the children to have their fun. Everyone on the island knew Wrecker, it seemed. Much of that could probably be attributed to the fact that he was simply unmissable, with his enormous stature, booming voice, and unusual knack for arriving just when something heavy needed to be lifted. But, you thought, there was also something about his character that drew people in like moths to a flame. People loved Wrecker. How could they not?

Omega was the one who spotted you first, shouting your name and beckoning you over. Wrecker's gaze found you almost immediately. His wide grin softened a little as his eyes met yours.

"C'mere!" he called.

The throng of students was thinning as the younger ones made their way to their relatives and the older ones set out either for the beach or for the plaza, but there were still a fair number crowding around Wrecker and Omega, demanding stories. You threaded through them, and as you approached the fence, you noticed a pile of boxes stacked next to Wrecker.

"Welcome back," you said. "What are these for?"

Wrecker's hands were occupied with balancing Frell's sister sitting on his shoulders—the kids always treated him like a jungle gym—but he greeted you by nudging you with his elbow.

"Hey, sunshine," he said. "Your delivery, remember?"

No, actually, you didn't remember at all.

"You said that it's hard to find colored pencils on Pabu, so we picked some up," he explained.

"I…" you trailed off, wondering when you had even told him that there was a shortage, and what you could possibly do with that many. There looked to be thousands of them.

"It's not all pencils," said Omega. "We also brought other things. Like calculators! Ours are all ancient."

"You, uh, you still need them, right?" asked Wrecker.

He was looking down at you with a bit of anxiety in his eyes. You smiled at him.

"Yes, we do. Wrecker, I don't even know how to thank you. This is incredible. The kids are going to be so happy."

The worry faded from his face, and the girl perched on his shoulders chose that moment to start playing his head like a drum. She let out a squeal as Wrecker lifted her off his shoulders and gave her a little spin before setting her down. It was the sort of thing that children were usually too heavy for before they outgrew it at heart, but forty pounds was like a paperweight to Wrecker.

"Can I take the things inside?"

"Oh, sure! Here, I'll take some."

As you reached for one of the boxes, Wrecker playfully swatted your hand away.

"Nah. I've got them," he said, and picked up all but one of them, which Omega scooped up immediately.

"Show-off," you teased.

"You know me."

The remaining children seemed eager to find out what was inside the boxes, but you knew that if you let them loose with a cornucopia of art supplies in the middle of the afternoon, they'd never want to go home.

"Alright, kids," you said. "Run along. I bet Tech has treats for you up at the plaza. And make sure your parents know where you're going!"

The children scattered, brainstorming possibilities for what Tech might have in store for them from this run.

"Tech does have treats for them, right?" you asked, suddenly nervous.

"Yep!" said Omega. "Some sort of crispy tuber. I thought they were a little odd."

"You've had two bags already," said Wrecker.

"And Phee said that you ate nine."

You couldn't help the smile that threatened to make your face cramp as you took Wrecker and Omega into the school, listening to them bicker good-naturedly. Most of the teachers were still packing up to leave, and Omega took it upon herself to go into every classroom, asking what each one needed. Wrecker would set the boxes down, and you'd help him pull out the requested supplies.

Jino, the upper-level math teacher, had done a funny little dance when you brought him the brand-new set of calculators. On your way out, he whispered your name, beckoning you closer to his desk as Wrecker and Omega left the room.

He tapped the set of colored pencils that he had swiped for drawing graphs. "Did you ask him for all of this?"

"No. Apparently I mentioned the colored pencils to him at some point, but I'm sure that it was mostly Omega's doing."

Jino gave you that look of his that he perfected on teenagers who tried to convince him that a tooka ate their homework.

"Okay, I get it!" you said. "I'll bring him a bottle of wine or something."

"Maybe give him a kiss for good measure. You know, as a thank-you."

"Stop it."

Jino's giggles followed you out the door.

After you had made all your offers to the teacher who hadn't yet left, and dropped most of the rest of the supplies off in the front office, you returned to your own classroom. Unfortunately, your cabinets and shelves were stuffed to the gills with rockets and their parts, not to mention everything else that a fifth grade classroom needed. You couldn't find space for half of your new supplies. As you were opening your desk drawers, wondering if you could rearrange everything to fit, you glanced up to see Wrecker putting a box on the very top shelf.

"Not up there," you said. "I won't be able to reach it."

"These are the extras. You won't need these for a while, right?"

"Well, no, but I hate having to find a stepladder."

Wrecker grinned. "Well, since I already walk you here, you can just ask me to get them down for you. I don't mind."

Your heart skipped a beat.

"Promise?"

"Promise."

Omega chatted your ear off as the three of you walked towards your house, listing the many goods that Phee, Tech, and Wrecker had brought back from their travels. At this rate, the island wouldn't need the Interstellar Postal Service to make deliveries at all. Wrecker had unloaded everything from the Marauder before they had come down to the school, and it was now Shep's job to distribute it, so Wrecker had no more work to do. He and Omega were going to grab their rods and go fishing.

"Do you want to come with us?" Omega asked you.

"Maybe another day," you said. "I'll let you two have your bonding time."

"You'll come to dinner though, right?"

You glanced at Wrecker for confirmation that Omega's offer had his approval, and he nodded. "We're having a big dinner with everyone."

"That would be lovely," you said. "What time?"

Omega shrugged. "Dinnertime."

"I'll be there at six."

"Hey, 'Mega," said Wrecker. "Go ahead and grab our tackle. I'll be there in a minute."

Omega gave you a high-five and turned up a side street. Wrecker walked with you to your house, and made no motion to leave, so you unlocked the gate and held it open for him, too. You both made your way to stand in the shade of your tree.

"I…" Wrecker shifted a little. "Ah, nevermind,"

"What?" you said.

"I didn't give you a hug, earlier."

You smiled and held your arms out. Wrecker's hugs were something of a point of fame for him. They were the crushing, joyous sort, where children could fling themselves at him and know for certain that he'd catch them, where even grown men might find themselves being lifted off the ground. This wasn't that, though. This was gentle, betraying him as the sort of man who knew his own strength better than he'd have you all believe when he was trying to bruise everyone's ribs with his affection. You pressed your face into his chest and felt a weight on the crown of your head that you were pretty sure was his face resting against it. The embrace lasted just a few seconds too long, a moment beyond the point of casualness.

Then he spun you around, and you let out an involuntary shriek of delight. There was the Wrecker you knew and—

Oh. Maybe you shouldn't finish that thought.

"See you at dinner?" he said, when he had set you down.

"See you at dinner."

The flutter in your chest didn't settle until he was long out of sight.

You heard the Batch's house before you saw it. Omega's definition of "big dinner" was what you would call a proper party, with people spilling out of the house and onto the large porch, crowded around tables meant for half as many, sitting in chairs that they had clearly brought from their own homes. Aromas mingled in the air, most of them recognizable to you, and all of them mouth-watering. Hunter and Wrecker stood at the edge of the porch, greeting people as they walked in. Wrecker waved when he saw you, and Hunter gave you a friendly nod.

"Am I late?"

"Nah," said Wrecker. "We're still on the appetizers."

"Glad you could make it," said Hunter, and he sounded like he meant it. "Has Wrecker here told you what they were doing for the past four months?"

You raised an eyebrow at them. "Not yet."

Hunter elbowed Wrecker in the side.

"Alright!" said Wrecker. "So, we kind of got arrested…"

As he began his tale, Hunter moved around him, making room for you to stand on Wrecker's right side. It was habit for you, at this point. It wasn't something he talked about often, but Wrecker's unilateral hearing loss frustrated him, especially when people spoke softly. You had seen the confusion and exasperation that crossed his face when he missed entire sentences because of it. Shep had tried in vain to convince him to learn sign language.

"Why should I have to learn a whole new language?" he had said. "Why can't people just be louder?"

You couldn't fault him, there.

The party grew, and you found yourself leaning closer to him so that you didn't have to shout, close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his skin and smell the saltwater from the docks that still clung to his shirt. When Omega announced that dinner was ready, Wrecker slipped his hand into yours and gently tugged you through the crowd to find seats. You found yourselves at the largest table on the porch, sitting next to Wrecker at the edge of the inner circle, as you thought of them: the Batch, the Hazards, and Phee.

Wrecker's story came to a close, the finale involving a great many explosions of which he sounded quite proud, and you could see Hunter grinning even though it was clearly the second time that he'd heard the tale. Conversation died down as you dug into your meal, but as you started on your second plate, a lively argument had sprung up between Wrecker and Crosshair.

"I don't understand why anyone would put a sweet sauce on meat," said Crosshair, disgusted.

"It's delicious!" Wrecker protested. "You're just picky."

You found yourself giggling along with Omega as the men squabbled. Wrecker "won" the argument by getting Crosshair in a headlock, and then it was Phee's turn to tell stories, heavily embellished by commentary from the rest of the group. You lost yourself in the scene. The sun set, and someone struck up a tune on a violin, and dessert was served, but you hardly processed it, drawn like a moth to a flame into teasing laughter and melodramatic reenactments. Underneath it all was the warmth seeping into your bones every time Wrecker looked your way.

The stars were coming out by the time you were all finished eating, and more instruments materialized to form a proper band. Half of the group got up to dance, and the other half watched with amusement as Omega and Lyana tried to make up their own steps and teach them to Shep.

"You aren't going to go dance?" Wrecker asked you.

"No," you said. "I'm rather enjoying your company."

He nudged your knee with his own. "You haven't told me what you've been doing since I left."

"Nothing much has happened."

"Tell me about it anyway."

So you did. The crowd thinned out a little bit, and the temperature began to drop, so the party moved itself inside. Wrecker had to pull himself away every ten or fifteen minutes to give someone a hug and say goodbye, but every time, he returned, asking you to continue your vignettes of everyday life on Pabu. It was a life he knew well, but still, he listened with rapt attention as if it were you who had gone on an adventure.

Evening turned to night, and someone dragged out the board games, which caused what you could only describe as a ruckus. You played a round of some game you hardly understood, you and Wrecker against Lyana and Omega. The girls trounced you, which only made Wrecker laugh and laugh as they swiped his pieces off the board.

"May I try?" asked Tech, as Omega congratulated you on a game well-played.

"You can sub in for me," you said.

"Oh, no. I was going to play one against two. It's only fair."

"Have fun," said Wrecker. "The girls are going to kick your butt."

"I doubt that," said Tech.

Omega grinned maniacally.

"What should we play next?" Wrecker asked you, as the two of you wandered away from the table.

Between the noise and the crampedness, you found yourself wilting at the suggestion. Games were fun and all—when they weren't being played after five hours of revelry.

"You okay?" Wrecker asked.

"You go on," you said. "I'm going to take a break. I'll be outside."

"Alright."

Wrecker pulled you into a half-hug, the casual sort of thing that he did with everyone. He called out to Crosshair, asking if his brother wanted to play that game with the starships, which made Crosshair roll his eyes, because half of the board games in existence involved starships. You slipped away through the side door, ignoring the pounding in your chest.

Twenty minutes passed before your solitude was broken.

"You like it?" came Wrecker's voice.

You dragged your gaze away from the flower-covered trellis on the porch to see him standing in the doorway, holding something small in his hand that you couldn't make out from where you were sitting on the wide railing.

"I do. Did you make it?"

"Sort of," he said. "It was Omega's design. I just helped the plants along."

He gave an affectionate pat to one of the leaves as he passed through the trellis and leaned against the railing next to you. Sitting up here brought you nearly face-to-face with him, and it struck you how close you were. You looked down at his hands; now you could see that he had brought two tiny cakes, both lumpy and lopsided.

"Leftovers," he explained. "They were ugly."

"I think they're cute," you said.

Wrecker held one out to you, and you plucked it from his palm, taking a small bite. Chocolate. You tried to eat it slowly and savor the taste, and Wrecker mirrored you.

"Hey, Wrecker?" you said, when you were finished. "When did I tell you about the colored pencils?"

Wrecker chuckled. "We were at the Reef."

Oh, no.

Well, that would explain why you didn't remember. The Reef was the island's only bar, and the last time you'd encountered Wrecker there, you'd talked his ear off for an hour. You hadn't drunk too much, so your memories of the night were mostly intact, but the details had slipped your mind.

"Ah," you said, huffing a nervous laugh. "I'm impressed that you remember that. Thank you."

"Any time."

A comfortable silence fell around you both as you admired the foliage above you. The vines were clearly woven into the trellis with care, and the lamplight cast a warm hue on the green leaves and violet blossoms, set against the dark and twinkling sky with a beauty you couldn't quite describe. You turned to ask Wrecker what sort of vines produced flowers as purple as that, and you found him gazing at you intently. Goosebumps prickled on your arms.

"What?"

"I missed you, sunshine."

You knew that look. Warm, open; light-hearted at the corner of his mouth; sincere to a point of aching around his eyes. It was something you'd seen in glimpses before, in the moments after you'd made joke, or the times you offered Omega help with her homework. You felt almost silly. All that time you spent fretting about his feelings, they were already sketched out on his face.

Wrecker cleared his throat. "I'm gonna go…ask Hunter if he wants help with the dishes."

Oh, dammit, you had been quiet too long. Wrecker was already moving away from you, and you panicked and did the only thing you could think of: grab his sleeve and keep him there.

"Can you just…" Tell me this isn't in my mind. "Stay? Please."

Wrecker's brow was pinched. He looked down at your hand where it gripped his sleeve, and you let go, face going hot with embarrassment. But he smiled, good-natured as always, and leaned back against the railing, resting his warm hand at the small of your back.

"How much of all that was Omega's idea?" you asked.

"I asked her what else she thought they'd need. Did the rest myself."

Such an innocuous statement, and yet, it sounded almost confessory. His good eye roamed over you, the deep brown taking on a golden tinge as it reflected the light.

From up here, perched on the railing at eye level with Wrecker, it was easy to lean in and kiss him.

Everything about Wrecker seemed explosive, at first: his voice, his job, his penchant for theatrics. You knew him better than that. This was the man you'd missed for many long weeks, gentle and patient and an endless ocean of joy. With one arm he braced himself against the railing, and the other he wrapped around you. The five foot drop behind you hardly registered in your mind as he held you fast against him, your arms around his neck, kissing you like you were the only two souls in the world.

When you broke apart, you could see a flush in his cheeks that matched yours. Movement behind him caught your eye, and you startled as you realized that it was Omega, now frozen in the doorway, staring at you. Wrecker turned around, his arm still holding you safely, and sucked in a breath.

"Oh, man," Omega whined. "I can't believe I lost to Crosshair."

Lost…?

Wrecker caught on before you did. "How much?"

"I didn't start it!" Omega protested.

"Omega. How. Much."

For a moment there was dead silence, Omega's eyes flitting between the two of you. Then she turned tail and bolted, leaving you alone with Wrecker, whose murderous expression melted into laughter.

"Your brothers need to clean up their gambling problem," you said.

"They always bet on the stupid things," he grumbled.

"I don't think this one is that stupid," you said, tracing a finger along his jaw. "We were taking forever."

Wrecker kissed you again, and you thought that you could lose yourself in him forever.

"We've got time to catch up."