Work Text:
The mess hall is busy tonight. You’re serving up stew as fast as you can from behind the counter, but it seems like the line will never end. There are techs in oil-stained jumpsuits, admins in their neat khakis, pilots with their hair always tousled just so. The familiar faces blur together as everyone moves along, carrying trays loaded with food for their dinner.
There’s one face you’re looking for, though, that you could never miss in the crowd. Tonight he’s one of a group of pilots. They’re all laughing as they jostle each other, almost-but-not-quite knocking trays out of each other’s hands. He’s got a smile for you, eyes meeting yours through the steam over the hot stew pot. You smile back and then he’s gone, darting around the pilot in front of him to snag the biggest slice of beetsugar pie and neatly dodging every attempt to grab it away.
His friends’ laughter surrounds him as they go off to find a table.
“Hey, some of us are hungry here!” The line is starting to back up, everyone waiting for you to pay attention to your job again.
“Sorry!” You grab up your ladle and get back to dishing out stew.
Later, when most everyone has been fed, had their pie, and gone back to work or to the recreation areas or off to their quarters, you wipe down the serving counter and go into the kitchen. It’s orderly and calm in there, a nice change after the bustling dinner service.
The other cooks are cleaning up, too. Your friend Tessa is humming a song from her homeworld. The loudest sound is the automatic dish cleaner, chugging and sloshing as it sanitizes round after round of trays, plates, and utensils.
The water will be filtered through the recycler, the food scraps caught, compressed, and saved for compost. When you joined the Rebellion, you’d never thought about how food might be managed on a ship like this one. Now, you know that some of the transports that leave the Remembrance are carrying fertilizer, not fighters. There are farming colonies where compost is more valuable than credits.
Something else you never imagined is your own job here on this huge military ship. It’s been eight months since you left your home planet. You snuck onto an Alliance shuttle with one tiny duffle bag over your shoulder, wedging yourself behind the passenger seats until the shuttle was past atmosphere and had made the jump to hyperspace. It’s the scariest thing you’ve ever done, crawling out from your hiding place, climbing to your feet in front of three armed fighters and two finely dressed diplomats, and saying--voice barely shaking--”Please let me stay. I want to help.”
The truth was, you had no idea how exactly you were going to help the Rebellion. Your family always teased you for being clumsy. You could trip over your own feet on a flat walkway. You’d never even fired a blaster.
When the shuttle landed on the main deck of the Remembrance, the soldiers turned you over to a woman with intricate braids and a pretty face. She looked you up and down and said, “What can you do?”
The first thing out of your mouth was so embarrassing, you wanted to climb back onto the shuttle and let them take you home. Because you didn’t say, “I can fight.” You didn’t say, “I could be a spy.” You said the only thing you’ve ever really been good at. You said, “I can cook.”
The woman with the braids didn’t laugh. She nodded. Then she called out to a man in uniform nearby.
The man snapped to attention.
“Take her to the mess hall.” To you, she said, “Let’s see how you do in the kitchen.”
And now, eight months later, you’re wiping down counters and thinking about tomorrow morning. Because you’ve earned a place for yourself here. You know you’re a good cook. It turns out you’re also efficient, and you’re calm, and you’re creative enough to keep coming up with new meals from the limited supplies the Remembrance can keep on board. Your hard work’s been noticed.
The head cook left this morning for a new assignment.
Tomorrow, you’re going to be in charge of the entire kitchen staff. And you are not ready.
The other cooks have become your friends. How are you going to be their boss?
One by one, your friends finish up their work and say goodnight. They all wish you good luck tomorrow. “You’ll do great!” they say. “See you in the morning, Boss!”
And now that you’re alone, you’re so nervous, you can feel your hands start to shake. You’re going to mess it up, you know you are. You’ll end up being too strict, or too easy-going, or too something, and pretty soon everyone will be mad at you, and you won’t have any friends at all anymore. And Princess Leia, who got you this job in the first place, who comes by sometimes to check on you, who’s always so kind… She’ll send you home.
You don’t even want to think about what Luke will say. You’re not even quite sure that you’re dating him yet. You’ve only gotten together a couple times outside of work, and it’s never gotten past him putting an arm around you or holding your hand when nobody else is there. You’re just the silly, clumsy, plump little mess hall cook, and he’s--
He’s the best pilot in the galaxy.
You’ve learned the different codes that go out on the ship’s overhead comm, and that includes the one that calls Rogue Squadron to their hangar bay. Sometimes, if you’re not at work, you sneak over there, to the high-ceilinged chamber with eight X-wing starfighters parked in neat rows. You stay back in the shadows where you don’t think anyone ever sees you, and you watch Luke and the other pilots come walking in, heads high, laughing at whatever danger they’re flying out to face. They climb tall ladders into the high-up cockpits, speak a few words to the techs checking the safety gear, and wait calmly while the canopies lower into place.
Luke’s the leader of the squadron. His ship always takes off first, rising smoothly from the durasteel deck. The sound of the engines rises in volume, taking over from the repulsorlifts, making the deck vibrate under your feet. The other fighters follow, one by one. Exhaust ports flash red as the ships curve away into star-studded darkness.
What’s it like out there?
There’s a part of your heart that wishes you could find out. But you don’t have the reflexes for it. And you need your corrective lenses even to measure ingredients. You’re pretty sure that you’d never even be able to get a starfighter out of the hangar, let alone survive a dogfight against a couple dozen TIEs.
But you like to watch them heading out, watch the pilots laughing bravely, watch the X-wings moving with precision. You like to think that maybe, someday, you could be as useful to the Rebellion as they are.
The counters in the kitchen are all spotless. You’ve unloaded the last plates from the dish cleaner and put them away behind metal cabinet doors.
You should go, get some rest, get your head ready for morning, but you’re too nervous to think about sleep.
Every cabinet on the Remembrance has a latch to keep it shut, so things won’t go flying if the ship takes a hit. Inside the kitchen cupboards, dishes and cups sit in neat grooves or behind screens that hold them in place. You open one of the pantry doors and consider the containers, all lined up and neatly labeled.
Fine-milled grain, cressnut oil… On the next row down, there’s a jar of crystallized fruit drops. You think for a moment, then take a vacuum-pack from its spot in another cupboard. The preserved meemfruit mash won’t be as good as fresh, but it should be fine for cookies.
You make the recipe up as you go along. Mix some oil into the grain until it looks like fine crumbs. Stir in the fruit mash to make a soft dough. Add a handful of crushed fruit crystals for an extra burst of sweetness, then a splash of sour extract to balance out the sweet.
You fire up the heating element in one of the huge ovens. While it heats, you scoop out spoonfuls of dough and roll them in your hands, then set them in straight lines on a flat metal sheet.
The whole kitchen is starting to smell like baking cookies and you’re just putting away the last of the ingredients when there’s a voice from the other side of the serving counter.
You’re so startled, it make you jump.
At the end of the counter is a perfectly good door from the mess hall into the kitchen, but Luke doesn’t bother. He boosts himself up to the countertop and slides across, jumping back down on the other side. “It smells amazing in here. Whatever it is, do I get to try some?”
You can’t help but smile. “Two more minutes,” you tell him.
What’s he doing here? You’ve been getting to know each other, sure, but it’s late and he should probably be resting. He was probably just looking for a snack, anyway. He couldn’t have been looking for you, you’re not that important.
“Nervous about tomorrow?” he says.
He remembered?
The last time you and he talked was a whole week ago. You mentioned it then, that you were being promoted, that you weren’t sure you could handle it. “You’ll do great,” he said, and then the two of you got to talking about something else, and it didn’t come up again.
Anyhow, when you think about what Luke faces every day, about how he and the other pilots volunteer to go out and face laser cannons and torpedoes, you feel silly for being nervous.
Here you are terrified about a new job running a kitchen, and you’ve never even seen Luke look afraid.
The oven chrono buzzes to let you know the cookies are done. You leave Luke leaning against the counter and go to pull on a pair of thermoprotective gloves, then lift the tray out of the oven. As you slide the cookies onto a cooling rack, you’re remembering the first time you and Luke were alone in here.
It was late in the evening then, too, not long after you’d arrived on the Remembrance. Luke turned up in the dining hall with a couple other pilots, all of them looking disheveled and tired. They’d just gotten back from a mission that went far longer than expected, and they’d missed dinner.
In fact, one of the pilots (you found out later his name was Wedge Antilles) explained that none of them had eaten anything but protein bars since yesterday, and if they didn’t get some real food they were all going to collapse right then and there, and you didn’t want to see that happen to three heroes of the Rebellion, did you?
You would have fed them anyway, but you couldn’t help but be charmed by the twinkle in his eye. You heated up some leftovers and brought them out, making sure they each had a healthy serving of meat and vegetables, and you cut some big slices of sweetcake to finish off their meal. They all ate like they hadn’t seen food in a week.
You didn’t think much of Luke at first, barely noticed him actually. You certainly had no idea he was Luke Skywalker. He was just another pilot, the quietest of the three, thanking you for the food and then eating in tired silence. When they’d all finished off every crumb, he insisted on staying behind to help you clean up.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” he said, as he stood at the big utility sink, washing up the small stack of dishes with the cloth you’d handed him.
You wondered how he knew. Why would a pilot even notice the kitchen staff?
“Leia mentioned you,” he said, when you shyly admitted that, yes, it was only your second week. You didn’t know her name back then. “You met Leia when you first got off the shuttle. The one with the braids?”
You were immediately embarrassed all over again, remembering that day. Your words--I can cook--echoed back in your head. So much important work to be done for the Rebellion, and that’s all you had to offer.
But Luke didn’t seem to mind. “Leia said you wanted to join the Rebellion so badly, you stowed away on a shuttle.”
You nodded, still feeling silly about the whole thing. “I snuck away,” you admitted. “My parents wanted me to stay in school. They said that was more important.” You picked up a microterry towel to dry the dishes that Luke had set on the counter. “I thought they were wrong.”
He studied the plate in his hands, scrubbing extra hard at a spot of stuck-on food. “You’re brave. I didn’t leave,” he said, eyes still directed at his work, “until they took my family away from me.”
You waited to ask until the dishes were all dried and put away, and he was still sort of standing there, looking uncertain, not making any move to leave. “Where are you from?”
When he said Tatooine, that’s when it clicked--blue eyes, sand-colored hair, pilot’s uniform, oh my gosh. But by that point you’d already started to think of him as just another young person who’d left everything behind. The chance to share your own homesickness overcame any intimidation you might have felt.
The two of you ended up sitting together on the kitchen floor, far into the night, trading memories of your homes.
“These are good!” Luke’s speaking through a huge bite of cookie, and you laugh at him for talking with his mouth full. “Sorry,” he adds, after he swallows. “Couldn’t help it.”
He’s sitting on the counter now, boots dangling off the floor, looking like an overgrown kid. You hand him another cookie and take one for yourself. They’re warm and crispy, with just the right amount of sweetness.
“How do you do that?” Luke asks, after he finishes another bite. “I bet you made that recipe up, didn’t you?”
“It’s not hard,” you say. You used some basic ingredients and added things that sounded good. Anyone could do it. “It’s just baking.”
“Just baking.” Luke shakes his head. “You’re amazing.”
“I’m not,” you say. “And everyone’s going to find that out tomorrow.”
He tilts his head, looking at you. “You’re really worried.”
“Yeah. I mean, I know it’s not a big deal. It’s not like what you do, or anything.”
Luke pats the counter next to him. You’re not as tall as he is, so it’s a bit of a struggle, but you manage to boost yourself up to sit beside him.
“May I?” He asks before he puts his arm around you.
Heck yeah. You nod and his arm settles across your shoulders. He pulls you in to lean against him.
“I was scared, too,” he says. “When they gave me Rogue Squadron? I’d never been in charge of anything in my life. Well, droids, I guess, but they don’t argue back much.”
“Don’t they?” you say, remembering some of the stories he’s told you about the droids he brought with him from Tatooine.
His shoulders shake a little as he chuckles. “Besides Artoo and Threepio, I mean.”
“I should close up here,” you sigh, thinking about how late it is and how early you’re going to have to report to your new job in the morning. “I need to get to bed. I just don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”
“Want me to come with you?”
Whoa, what does he mean by that? You haven’t even kissed yet! If we’re ever even going to, you think, not wanting to take anything for granted. You still can’t quite believe you’re becoming friends with Luke, let alone… anything else.
He must have realized how it sounded, too. “I just mean, I might be able to help you sleep.” He stops. “That sounded worse, didn’t it? I just, maybe I could, I don’t know. Tell you a bedtime story or something?”
A bedtime story. That sounds nice.
But, you can’t. “I’ve got roommates. They’ll already be asleep.”
“I don’t,” Luke says. “It’s nothing fancy, but…”
It’s awfully tempting.
“I didn’t sleep at all the night they made me Commander,” he says. “I wish I’d had someone to stay with me.”
Luke’s room is amazingly nice, compared to yours. The Remembrance is a huge ship, but there are a lot of people on it. Kitchen staff share bunk rooms, a dozen beds stacked three high. You have a bunk, a locker for clothing, and one small cabinet for personal effects. It’s cheerful enough, everyone’s got pictures on the walls and some people have brightly-colored blankets from home. But privacy is a thing of the past for you.
You stand awkwardly in the middle of Luke’s room while he stands, equally awkward, next to the narrow bed. “I should have thought,” he says. “You’re going to need something to wear to sleep in.”
You haven’t thought that far, either. You’re still too astonished that you’re even here in Luke Skywalker’s room.
“The refresher’s down the hall,” he says.
Of course, that’ll work. The refresher rooms are stocked with soft, casual shirts and trousers in different sizes. When you’re off duty, you can toss your uniform down the laundry chute and always have something comfortable to change into. You’ve heard that the official idea is to promote staying fit. You’re supposed to wear the clothes to the rec deck and work up a sweat on the track or treadmills. But everyone uses them for lounging around, too.
A few minutes later, you’ve gone and washed your face, cleaned your teeth, switched out of your work clothes, and dropped the towel and sonic toothbrush into the appropriate automatic sterilizers. Luke opens the door right away to your knock. He’s changed into a soft grey t-shirt and drawstring pants. He looks… You probably shouldn’t be thinking about how he looks.
He offered you a bedtime story, and that’s all you’re going to expect.
He leads you over to his bed.
Am I really doing this? Apparently, you are.
You settle stiffly onto the edge of the mattress, not quite sure what to do.
Luke climbs past you, plumping up the pillows to lean against them and then pulling you right into bed with him. Suddenly you’re sitting between his legs, back up against his chest.
You’ve been on the Remembrance eight whole months. You’ve found your way around the ship, you’ve figured out how everything works in the kitchen, you’ve made new friends, you’ve shared daily routines and laughter. This the most comfortable you’ve been since you first arrived on board.
Luke’s arms are resting around your waist. He tucks his chin over your shoulder so he’s speaking into your ear. “You ok?”
You are more than ok. He’s going to have to kick you out in the morning, because otherwise, you are never going to leave this spot.
Luke reaches up to carefully pull the frames with your corrective lenses from your face, folds them, and sets them on a little shelf beside the bed. Then he settles back again, drawing you with him so you’re still snuggled against his chest and belly. It’s warm and cozy, but now you have another reason you’re not going to be able to sleep. You don’t want to miss a minute of this!
“I thought,” he says, voice soft, “that I’d tell you a story from Tatooine. Like the ones my Aunt Beru used to tell me, when I was little.”
You know about his aunt. He’s told you about what the Empire did to her and his uncle. You know how much he misses her.
Luke reaches over to press a switch on the wall and the overhead light dims. His arm settles back around you.
“Tatooine doesn’t look like much,” he says. “It’s all rocks and dirt and sand. It doesn’t look like anything should grow there at all.
“But things do grow there. From insects, all the way up to banthas.”
You close your eyes, trying to imagine the desert and the insects. You’ve never seen a bantha. You wonder what they look like.
“They’re not native to Tatooine,” Luke admits, “but they’re all over the place now. They’re huge,” he says, “taller than a person. They’ve got four legs and big curly horns, and long fur that hangs down almost to the ground. The Sand People ride them,” he adds, but you don’t know what Sand People are, either. “I’ll tell you about them another time, ok?”
Cuddled up to him like you are, you’re sure he can feel it when you nod.
“OK,” he goes on. “So, when I was very small--”
You’re lost for a moment, picturing what Luke must have looked like as a child, huge blue eyes under a mop of fluffy hair. His voice brings you back to the story.
“When I was very small, my aunt used to tell me about the first settlers on Tatooine. They weren’t very lucky, those settlers. The man who sold them the land wasn’t a very good person. He told them that Tatooine had a perfect climate for farming. He said the land they were buying was all rich soil and beautiful pasture. They were just regular people who thought they could trust the man they gave their money to.
“When they arrived, all they found was a desert. Nobody else lived there, so there was no one to help them. They’d spent all their credits for the land and a great big starship and exactly enough fuel to get them there.
“Pretty soon,” Luke says, “they were running out of supplies. Their mechanics figured out how to rig the ships’ moisture reclaimers to draw down water from the sky, but there wasn’t anything to eat besides what they brought with them. They’d been expecting to plant crops right away. They were going to graze their animals on nice rich pastures. They only had enough food with them for the first few months.
“There were men and women and families with little children. Everyone was hungry.
“The leaders put their heads together, but all they could think of was to send out a distress call and hope somebody came to rescue them.
“Nobody knew what to do, except somebody that nobody even thought about.
“His name was Jerba Eisley, and he was the cook.”
Luke hugs you a little tighter for a moment, then goes on.
“He wasn’t in on the planning meetings. He barely even knew the leaders of the group. He’d signed on because he needed work and the colonists were hiring. He’d never even had a job before, let alone cooked for an entire starship full of people.
“While everyone was worrying and trying to figure out what to do, Jerba put on a hat and wrapped a scarf around his face to keep off the sun. He went out into the desert every morning and he looked around. He dug into the sand. He looked under rocks. And he found little bost-beetles and squimworms.”
You’re too comfy and cozy, sitting there in Luke’s arms, to bother to ask what bost-beetles and squimworms look like.
Luke continues. “Jerba gathered up some of the bost-beetles and squimworms and brought them back to the ship’s kitchen. He mashed them up and baked them and fried them and dried them. He tried every which way to cook them until he found a way to make them taste less terrible.
“While he was out collecting more bugs, he saw a lizard climb up out of the sand to come and eat them. He caught the lizard and brought it back to the kitchen.
“He kept on going out into the desert. He spent whole days gathering up bugs and catching lizards. He noticed that there were bigger lizards, too, that sometimes waited nearby to eat the smaller ones.
“Pretty soon, he was adding bost-beetle powder and lizard meat to the daily rations, and the settlers were a little less hungry.
“Other people started going out into the desert with him.
“He had each person walk beside him, at first, so he could show them what he was doing. Then, he started assigning each of them to go a different direction from the ship. He figured out just how many bugs and lizards they could gather at a time and still be able to find more the next day. He figured out how to preserve lizard meat, too, so they could store any extra.
“It wasn’t long before everyone had plenty to eat. And it wasn’t long after that before the leaders started inviting Jerba into their meetings and listening to what he had to say.
“And you know what?” Luke shifts behind you, leaning forward to rest his chin on your shoulder again. “Jerba Eisley never thought he was very important, either. He never imagined he could do the things he did. He was just someone who decided he wanted to help.
“And now there are families on Tatooine who have been there for generations, and a whole big spaceport called Mos Eisley.” He kisses your cheek, then settles back again, arms gentle around you. “And all because of the cook.”
“Did that really happen?” you ask him. You’re kind of suspicious. It’s an awfully specific story for this particular night.
“Would my Aunt Beru make things up?” Luke says. But you can hear the smile in his voice. “Does it matter?”
No, you think, feeling warm and safe and even a little bit sleepy, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re here with someone who believes in you, who wants you to believe in yourself. When you left home eight months ago, you hoped you’d be important to the Rebellion. You never imagined you’d also be important to someone like Luke.
“Thank you,” you tell him.
“Can you sleep now?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“Good,” he says. He stretches his arm out again to turn the dim light the rest of the way off, then nudges you over onto your side and wraps himself against your back, still hugging you close. “You’ll do great tomorrow,” he says, planting a kiss on your shoulder.
You’re still not so sure, but you definitely feel better. Whatever happens, you’ve decided to trust yourself.
You’ve made it this far. You’ve done well enough that they’ve promoted you. You’ve made friends who like you and believe you can do this new job. And the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy is falling asleep in bed with you.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s all going to be ok.