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The first time that comfort was sown in the way he held her was on an Outer Rim system, in a rendezvous that lasted as long as the blink of an eye. That time did not matter as much as this, but dismissing it is like dismissing the rain before a storm, or the calm before it.
This time, it is she who drags him from a walkway in the Coruscant Federal District, dragging him under a bridge. Her hands fist themselves around the loose sleeves of his tunic and remember the coarse feeling against the pad of the fingers. There, where the clip-clopping of others sets the metronome for their meeting, she bridges the gap between them with her lips, his opposition unwelcome to a woman who spent her existence fighting for everyone else’s.
Her name is a parting and pushing of his lips. It is a revered word between them: even thinking it could bring them both danger. He says it, eyes blown wide, and his lips curl into a smile.
She reciprocates it.
It’s been too long. Neither of them say it, can say it, need to say it, because it does not need to be said.
Each word said brings them a step closer to the precipice of danger. The feeling of one another is enough danger for them both.
There is never time to plan here, never enough time to get into plainclothes, to forge new identities for themselves in the Uscru District. She does not have enough time to remove the flowers from her hair, to unweave the braids pinned up tight, pushing against her scalp. He does not have the time to sheathe his lightsaber for a slower draw. A sudden ignition had almost killed them once, so perhaps the urgency of more care has never been an issue.
Here, underneath the bridge, they are strategists. They clothe themselves in the identities the Republic gave them - Senator, The Negotiators, Delegation of Two Thousand, Jedi Council Master - and work through Coruscant. They always had nimble fingers, silver tongues, but it is nothing against the heightened senses of 500 Republica’s other inhabitants. She goes first, and he follows five minutes later.
He rushes through the door to her apartment and she rushes into his arms, and this second ceremony of their meeting bleeds red into the sun. The sun is setting and a timer begins. Relearning is an exercise in restraint: her thighs splayed on the sofa, his tongue brushing her clit deliberately, the curl of her wrists around his cock - images that they yearn to forget and repeat in tandem ad infinitum.
One final thrust and he comes inside her, frazzled chestnut locks draped across his chest. She cries out too, with the third (fourth?) burst of ecstasy fraying her nerves. They collapse. They breathe. They regroup.
Night falls and the timer ends.
They pray that there is a next time, and they will have more time then.