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“Hey, do you need anything?”
Rey tries not to startle noticeably--she’s still getting used to occupying the same space as other people, not quite to the point where she’s accustomed to others talking to her--but she must fail, because Jess apologizes before repeating her previous question.
Looking up at Jessika tells Rey that she’s just come out of a training session. She’s wiping her forehead with a towel and grinning and her face is flushed, bright with exertion. Her smile is even brighter, even from across the room where she stands in the doorway, and Rey feels like she’s watching a sun. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been meditating for six hours.” Jessika enters the room completely, not caring that she hasn’t exactly been invited in, and the door slides shut behind her. She flops onto the bed, maneuvering so that she’s hanging off the side and watching Rey upside-down. “You wanna go get lunch or something?”
Rey shakes her head and smiles. “I’ve only been meditating for three hours, and I ate right before.”
Jessika gestures with her hands, conveying no specific information. “I’m asking you if you want to get lunch, Rey.”
“I heard you. I don’t want to right now.” It’s kind of weird, the preoccupation that some of the people on the base have with eating constantly. Rey used to go for days with no food, but the last time she’d mentioned that, Poe had seemed worried and Finn had gone quiet and Jessika looked a little angry. Rey doesn’t bring up things like that anymore. “Maybe another time?”
“Okay.” There’s a beat of quiet where Jessika is squinting at Rey, as if trying to decipher something, and Rey looks back at her with equal confusion. Jessika sits up and makes a retreat, citing a forgotten report due and some sort of maintenance she needs to complete. “Just wanted to check in. I’ll see you later?” Jessika all but flees, giving off waves of some heavy emotion that Rey can’t begin to comprehend.
Rey stares after her, wondering what she missed.
They’ve been spending more time together after Rey had offered up her bed for Jessika to crash in after a mission, but apparently that hasn’t done anything to prevent incidents like this--Rey isn’t sure what will, because sharing a bed seems to be a big deal among the other pilots. Later that afternoon, Rey asks Finn if she said something wrong, but Finn just says “Hell if I know” and goes back to the book he’s reading.
“Finn,” she pleads.
“You really think I’m the expert here, Peanut?” Finn doesn’t give himself enough credit, he’s listened every time Rey has complained to him about botched attempts at communicating with Jessika. Sure enough, he finally relents and says, “She probably wanted to spend some time with you, and you shot her down.”
“I wasn’t hungry.”
Finn shrugs, already giving up. “You should probably just ask her what was up, she’ll tell you. You’re both bad at talking to each other.”
Rey resists the urge to smack the book out of his hands, and walks off to find someone more helpful. She’s not going to embarrass herself by admitting to Jessika that she has little to no concept of social nuance.
It seems the universe wants her to do exactly that, because in her wandering of the base, she finds herself in the hangar, where the pilots are doing their weekly maintenance check. Rey stops by the door, watching the scene instead of diving in, trying to decide what approach will be the least humiliating.
She spots Jessika with her usual rowdy group, congregated around one of the X-wings out on the landing strip--it's Poe, Karé, Snap, and Jessika clumped together. Jessika’s giggling, grease streaked up the side of her face, listening as Karé Kun loudly discusses the details of some flying stunt she’s pulled off, full of flips and spins. Rey goes about halfway to her before sitting down on a crate to watch, waiting for a lull in conversation to try and talk to Jessika. BB-8 rolls up to her, chirping, then settles by her feet.
“Ten credits says you can’t do it,” a voice that’s distinctly Poe Dameron’s says to Jessika, and Rey looks up from where she’s been fiddling with BB-8’s antennae, now interested in what’s going to happen.
“Fuck you, I’ll do it twice,” Jessika says, and she’s already hastily setting up a ladder to climb into her X-wing.
“You’re just gonna dare Pava to do it, huh!” Karé puts a box of tools down, wipes her forehead with the end of her tunic. “You’d think the finest pilot in the Resistance would at least give it a try.”
“Yeah, uh, that’s why I’m doing it, Karé?” Jessika calls down to her. Karé flips her off.
Snap ruffles Poe’s hair, working who knows what amount of grime and oil into it. “We know you’re too scared, Dameron.”
Poe scoffs, not about to be goaded into doing whatever Karé had described. “You’re scared of moths , Wexley, maybe you should think before you try and step--”
“ Hmm , says the one scared of bats.”
Jessika turns sideways to heckle Poe as well, causing her improperly-secured ladder to wobble and start to tip, and there’s an expression of panic on her face--that emotion, Rey can identify. Rey lurches forward and stretches out her hand, finally using her training for something better than getting things off high shelves as she steadies both the ladder and Jess.
The group lets out a breath they probably didn’t know they were holding. After the accident is prevented, the banter immediately starts up again and Jess shrugs off her worry and looks over to where Rey is sitting. “Thanks, lady!”
Rey drops her hand, trusting the ladder to stay up at this point, and gets up to make her way over to the group. The fall wouldn’t have even been that bad, Rey is being a little overprotective. Jess doesn’t seem to mind. “My pleasure.”
Snap is putting Poe in a headlock and largely ignoring her, but Karé addresses Rey. “You wanna watch her do some sweet flips?”
Rey nods, looking up at Jessika where she’s putting her helmet on. Jessika pauses long enough to wink at Rey and promise, “It’s gonna be super cool.”
“It’s basically just pulling a flip while also barrel rolling, as close to the strip as possible,” Karé explains as Snap helps Jessika ready for takeoff, as if X-wing maneuvers are things that normal people do all the time. “You’re a pilot too, right? Finn says you’re good.”
“I’m amazing,” Rey says.
Karé laughs in a way that at least appears to be delighted. “Pava, I’m starting to see why you like her so much!”
“Back off, Kun, I called dibs.” Jessika points a threatening finger, and then the cockpit closes.
As soon as the hatch is closed and the jets are beginning to fire up, three pairs of pilot eyes snap to Rey, all equally suspicious. She doesn’t shrink back from the sudden attention, but she’s not exactly comfortable with it, either.
“You like Jess, huh?” Snap asks.
Which wasn’t what she was expecting. Rey waits for Poe to help her out, but she finds him watching her for a response as well, his eyes narrowed. She swallows. “Yes--? Yes, I do.”
“Interesting, seeing as how you turned down her invitation to a lunch date,” Karé says, stepping a little closer. Rey’s gaze flits from her to Jessika’s ship to the faraway exit to BB-8, who bleeps at her in a disparaging way that isn’t helpful in the slightest.
“Yeah, what was that about?” Poe asks. He doesn’t sound as accusatory as Karé, but she still isn’t sure he’s on her side in this--whatever this is. Interrogation?
Rey tries to remember the conversation she’d had with Jessika, but she’s spent such a long time overthinking it that she can’t be sure which things Jessika actually said and which things Rey imagined to make herself feel better. Rey is missing some vital information on how things are supposed to work, but she doesn’t know how to ask without looking stupid, at this point.
Yards away, Jessika’s ship lifts off, heading upwards to get the speed and altitude needed to pull off the trick. Rey clears her throat and finally says, “I didn’t realize what she was asking,” which seems to be the most diplomatic way of putting it.
Karé and Snap both raise one eyebrow at the same time in unison, clearly skeptical.
Poe, however, nods. “She must’ve been super vague about it, huh?”
Rey nods back, relief washing over her. She doesn’t know why Poe has her back, they’re more friend-adjacent than actual pals, but he at least seems to understand that Rey is very similar to Finn in terms of missing social cues.
“Going out to eat is the most low-maintenance and low-risk date in the world,” Poe explains. “Jess is hedging her bets because she’s a coward.”
On instinct, the rest of the squad’s heads turn in Jessika’s direction, waiting for her to fight for her honor, but she’s hundreds of feet in the air and didn’t hear the insult, so Poe gets away with it.
“You’re off the hook this time if you go and make it up to her,” Snap decides, and then he does the weird pointing-at-his-eyes-with-two-fingers-and-then-pointing-at-Rey-with-them thing that he does a lot because he heard that Han Solo did it once. Poe rolls his eyes and BB-8 beeps mockingly, but Snap doesn't look ashamed.
Jessika’s ship swoops low, turning over and over in a barrel roll, and all four of them duck, Snap instantly forgetting his beef with BB-8 in favor of not getting his head ripped off.
“Sweet flip!” Poe cheers after the ship, and Rey sees Jessika yelling too as she speeds upwards to do it again, though nobody has any clue what she’s saying.
When Jessika’s done with her second flip, she coasts back into the landing spot that she’d taken off from. She pops out of the cockpit and wrestles her helmet off, throwing it at Poe and grinning like a maniac. “Your credits are mine, Dameron!”
“Fuck you, you’ll have to catch me first!” Poe says, and throws the helmet back to her before bolting back towards the hangar. Karé sticks her foot out, and Poe’s foot catches, sending him flying and tumbling over himself. Jessika cackles, her face flushed from adrenaline, and she’s beautiful. Rey forgets to look away in the normal amount of time.
After Jessika’s climbed down and gotten her money, Snap and Karé start making threatening gestures in Rey’s direction. They aren’t subtle about it. It’s a lot of swiping a finger over their throats like they’re going to murder her and jerking their heads in Jessika’s direction.
Rey sighs, levels a helpless look in their direction, and turns to Jessika, who’s just slid down the ladder and is taking off her gloves. “Would you like to get dinner together?”
Jessika beams, her expression somehow even brighter than before. “Is this an apology for earlier?”
“No, it’s a--a date.” Rey glances back at Karé, who’s unabashedly laughing at her. “And, yes, I suppose also an apology.”
“Well, you know I can’t say no to a pretty face,” Jessika sighs, over-the-top and still smiling like a buffoon.
“Yeah, we know, you’re whipped!” Poe interjects, and next to him, Snap makes a “which-ah” noise and pantomimes cracking a whip, because he thinks he’s funny.
“Step off, we’re having a moment,” Jessika says, and takes Rey’s hand. “Let’s continue this elsewhere, my desert flower.”
Rey wrinkles her nose at the pet name, but is all too happy to oblige.