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Wedge is in the college bookstore when he sees the new guy for the first time. He immediately knows it’s the new guy because nobody who has lived in the coastal forests of Corellia for longer than a week would be caught dead wearing a tunic. Wedge’s first thought is Huh, that guy must be from somewhere real dry , and his second thought is Oh, wait, that must be the new professor. The new professor has simultaneously been the talk of the town and a complete enigma for the last few weeks, talked about infrequently but in depth, but nobody had expected him to show up this early in the year, before the first semester has even started. And yet, here he is. In the flesh. Sandy hair and tanned skin and more freckles than there are stars in the galaxy.
At least, Wedge thinks it’s him. What he’s about to do is embarrassing enough; it’ll be unspeakably worse if he goes up to this guy with zero pretext but that they’re both professors at Corellia University and then it turns out that isn’t who he is. Then again, all he knows about the new professor is...well, he doesn’t know anything about the new professor, except that his name is Luke Skywalker and he has a doctorate in biomedical engineering with a focus in prosthetics.
Wedge may or may not have run a slightly stalkerish Google search on him a while back, and may or may not have come up with nothing but a few academic profiles devoid of any pictures from the last five years. But staring through the science and math section of the bookstore and into the cafe, where possibly-Luke-Skywalker is giving the barista a soft yet impossibly bright smile as he makes his order, Wedge can sort of see the resemblance.
And either way, the guy is really attractive. And clearly new around here. He could probably use some help navigating the town, maybe in the form of a coffee date, and if not he could most definitely use some fashion advice. (Not that Wedge, in his neon orange windbreaker, is one to speak. But no matter how much of an eyesore it may be, that windbreaker has gotten him through some of the worst rainy seasons of the last decade almost completely unscathed. Also, he likes the color orange and nobody can change his mind about that.)
Wedge diverts his gaze back to a selection of overpriced textbooks and the newest in mainstream scientific literature, already plotting his next trip to the (in his opinion, far superior) used bookstore a few blocks down from here, and simultaneously constructing a plan on how he’s going to approach this man.
He’s an astronomy professor, for fuck’s sake. He spends the bulk of his time in a white-walled lab, the spacious old classrooms of the science department, and more often than not up in the telescopes under dim red lights. His communication skills were good enough to get him a PhD and tenure, but he’s severely doubting in his ability to ask someone out on a date, or even introduce himself in a non-academic setting.
Ah, that’ll do it.
He can make it into an academic setting, which is sort of already is. The coffee here is divine, though the cinnamon chai is endlessly better, but the majority of the literature in this shop is relevant to school and to school only. It’s the college bookstore for a reason. Wedge has reasons other than coffee to be here, and he sincerely hopes Professor Skywalker does as well.
Once again, he is making the assumption that this is, in fact, Skywalker.
A laugh floats across the divide between checkered cafe tiles and hardwood bookstore floorboards, and Wedge looks up again to find possibly-Skywalker taking his order, thanking the barista with that same bright smile on his face, and... oh, hells, is he leaving now?
Wedge has to admit he visibly relaxes as he realizes that the man is simply taking his drink to a window seat, where he drops a worn messenger bag at his side and pulls out a leather-bound book. His drink, contents indistinguishable from this distance, steams gently in its mug. Fog has gathered on the window, and Wedge―who has an almost unsettling level of cold tolerance―wants to shiver on this man’s behalf. It’s not even the cold that bothers him so much as the knowledge that the humidity level here stays consistently high enough that the man’s tunic will no doubt be soaked soon enough. For a desert, it would be ideal, but this man needs to acquire some cable-knit sweaters and a good windbreaker if he wants to maintain homeostasis when the frosts hit. Just now, in the middle of August, it’s raining lightly outside.
Wedge comes to the concrete realization that this man, who is almost surely Luke Skywalker―nobody new ever comes to Corellia save for the college students, and very few of them look to be entering their forties―is new here and does, in fact, either have no idea what he is doing or simply doesn’t care to dress for the weather. This realization is what prompts him to leave the section of the bookstore that he has been firmly planted in for the last five minutes, cross the divide of the shop, and enter the cafe.
He considers going to order a drink, just acting like nothing is up and his path does not need to cross with that of this man. Inevitably, they will meet again sometime soon, even on the off chance that this is not Skywalker. But Wedge is nothing if not an opportunist, and he’s in his early forties too, and he’d be making the biggest joke of all time if he said he wasn’t looking for some change in his life.
Wedge crosses the cafe and approaches the man, who looks up from his journal. It’s a journal. Wedge doesn’t catch what he’s writing, but his script is somehow messy and coordinated at the same time, like an organized scrawl. His drink is the cafe’s hallmark cinnamon chai, reddish-brown spices floating in the milky layer of white that coats the top of the creamy beige liquid. Wedge already likes him, and this feeling grows exponentially as he looks up, one arm resting over the pages of his journal in a gesture both casual and defensive, blocking whatever he had been writing. His eyes are a light shade of blue, impossibly bright and intense and kaleidoscopic. He smiles, and it reaches those eyes even before his lips. Wedge is fairly sure the smile in his eyes was already there to begin with.
“Can I help you?” he asks, and Wedge finds himself smiling slightly, if only to compensate for his resting face and not instantly make himself look like a grumpy asshole.
“Do you mind if I sit?” Wedge replies, gesturing to the unoccupied chair across from the man, and he nods, looking at Wedge expectantly as he sits down.
“Are you Luke Skywalker?” he asks, and he swears he sees a flash of distress come over the man’s face, that smile fading to something from the past for a brief moment. He only sees this because he, too, knows what that’s like. He knows that feeling very well, and he won’t pry. And anyhow, he can’t come up with a good explanation for that response to such a simple question without some deep thought, so he’ll leave that for later.
“Ah, yes. I am. I must admit, I didn’t expect much of a fanfare for my arrival.”
Wedge shakes his head. “Don’t worry. No fanfare. I’ve heard your name thrown around for the last few weeks, just because you’re apparently going to be my new colleague.” He puts out a hand. “I’m Wedge Antilles. Professor of Astronomy over at Corellia Univeristy.
Luke puts down the pen he’s been holding, and Wedge notices something strange, as if he’d been holding it almost too tightly, like he thought it was going to fall out of his hand. He’s shaking Wedge’s hand now, and Wedge swears his hand is ridiculously cold, but, well, that’s nothing out of the ordinary.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Wedge. I’m Luke Skywalker, but you already know that. I’m the new Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and I assume you already know that as well.”
Wedge grins, folding his hands on the table as Luke picks up the pen again, beginning to fiddle with it. “Pleasure to meet you too, Luke.”
“If I may ask,” Luke says after a moment of hesitation, “how did you figure out who I am?”
“That tunic,” Wedge says. “Fantastic fashion choice for a desert. Not so fantastic for here. I sincerely hope you’ve invested in a windbreaker, because otherwise you won’t make it a week.”
They both glance out the window, and then back at each other. Luke throws his head back and laughs; quietly so as not to bother the cafe’s other patrons, but still with power. It’s a lovely sound. He brushes back sandy blond hair and smiles again―he just seems to have an endless capacity for smiles, Wedge remarks to himself, like some sort of human ray of sunshine.
“I appreciate it, I really do. But don’t worry. I came prepared, but you know how it is.” Luke waves a dismissive hand in the air. “Plans change. I had to come early, and I already had everything packed up because I wasn’t expecting to have to leave when I did. I got here yesterday and haven’t yet been bothered to unpack.”
If you need help, let me know, Wedge wants to say, but that’s too forward.
“Oh, I feel that. I travelled so much during grad school. As much as I love this windbreaker, it doesn’t exactly stack up during a blizzard,” he says instead.
“Same, actually. Believe it or not, I spent a good portion of grad school in Hoth. And then Bespin. So, you know. I can be prepared for the cold. Sometimes.”
They both chuckle, and Wedge is given a momentary reprieve from the constant mental stress of planning out the next thing he’s going to say. It might be just because he’s always been a hopelessly anxious bastard, and it might be because the hopelessly romantic part of him desperately wants to make a good impression on Luke, but he’s on his toes today.
Wedge finds himself staring almost mindlessly across the table at Luke, who is still smiling. For a moment, he forgets that he has any responsibilities at all. He could just stare at that hesitant grin and those sky-blue eyes for hours on end.
But he’s only human, and it would also be extremely weird and creepy if he did that, so he looks back down at the table and begins to fidget with the zipper of his windbreaker after just a few moments gazing at Luke.
“So,” Luke says, “anything I should know about Corellia?”
It’s Wedge’s turn to laugh now. “Oh, there’s plenty. I could go on for days.”
“Well, that certainly doesn’t help,” Luke says. “You know, big cultural things that will get me a weird look if I don’t know about them―”
“Like dressing for the weather?”
Luke blushes. He fucking blushes . Wedge has to force himself not to blush too, because it’s cute , and he is far too old to be calling something cute, but here he is.
“―yes, like that. Or, I don’t know, old town lore. Any cults here?”
Wedge cocks his head in slight concern, but he’s smiling.
“You want to join a cult?” he asks, half joking.
“Oh, no, I’m asking for a friend,” Luke says with what Wedge hopes is heavy sarcasm, and then breaks off into laughter. “No, I just wanted to know. I’ve never been here before.”
“Not even to scout out the job posting?”
“Nah. It looked good enough, and I was looking to move somewhere new, so I figured why not take a chance for once. I’ve heard there’s plenty of lore around here, though.”
Wedge smirks. He senses things unsaid in Luke’s words, some more secret reason to suddenly pack up and move to Corellia other than the promise of tenure. “Oh, there is. No cults...recently. Unless you count the Empire.”
Luke curses under his breath. “They’re everywhere, aren’t they?”
“Everywhere,” Wedge affirms. The Empire, one of the most prominent crime rings in recent years, had spread their filthy hands everywhere from Corellia to Coruscant, and even to more remote and inhospitable places like Hoth. They aren’t terribly present in Corellia, but they are around if you know where to look.
Luke shakes his head. He spins the pen in his hand. “But seriously, the lore. I want to know this place.”
“That comes with time, my friend,” Wedge says, and he suspects Luke already knows this.
“True,” Luke says.
“Is this you asking for me to be the one who shows you the lay of the land?”
Wedge is fairly sure that is what Luke had been asking, because it might just be him projecting, but hell, he’s always been good at reading people. And anyways, Luke seems to latch onto the idea almost immediately, face lighting up, so. It’s a win in Wedge’s book.
“Damn, you figured that one out pretty quickly,” Luke says, and Wedge mentally pumps his fist in the air in triumph. Instead of letting out a whoop like he wants to, he just grins.
“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Luke says.
“That makes two of us.” Wedge is caught up in conversation with this enigmatic man, who is like the quintessential tall, dark, and handsome stranger in every way except actually―he’s handsome, for sure, but he’s blond and also only appears to be about an inch taller than Wedge. Well, he has the energy, for sure. Someone new, crashing into the small-town enclave of Corellia with little to no fanfare: one day he’s only there in the form of a whisper, and the next he’s left footprints.
But that’s exactly the point. He’s so fascinating in every way, and Wedge is so caught up in this, that he doesn’t realize someone is calling him until he takes note of Luke listening for the slight vibration of a cellphone. Hells, that man must have phenomenal hearing.
Wedge snaps out of whatever fantasy this is, half expecting to blink and find that he never moved from the bookstore to even greet Luke in the first place, and looks at the caller ID. It’s his boss.
“Ah.” He bites back a curse, and decides to be brave. “I’ve got to take this. If you ever―what are you doing?―if you ever need help or a friend or anything, I mean anything , just let me know.”
Luke looks up from where he has been rapidly scribbling something on a torn piece of paper. He thrusts it into Wedge’s free hand and grins up at him as Wedge stands up.
“I’m making sure I can let you know,” he says. “Shoot me a text whenever.”
It’s his number. Wedge stands there, feeling rather idiotic, buzzing phone in one hand and the slip of paper with Luke’s number on it in the other. He pulls himself together as quickly as he can, and nods at Luke.
“I will. Thanks. It was great to meet you, Luke.”
“And you, Wedge. I hope I’ll see you around soon.”
Luke is spinning that pen in his hand, and then he’s back to writing in the journal with a now-ripped page, and Wedge feels like he’s floating as he walks away and out of the cafe, standing under the awning where he’s out of the rain to finally answer his boss’ call. It’s a quick call, just checking in about allotted telescope usage time, and when Wedge hangs up he looks back into the cafe. The fog on the window, quickly gathering on his windbreaker, hair, and phone screen the longer he stands out here, forbids him from making out more than shapes, blurs of color inside the cafe, but he could swear there’s no longer anything where Luke was just a few moments ago.
Wedge didn’t notice him exit, so either he’s extremely stealthy in addition to appearing to have extrasensory abilities, or he’s just gone to look at the books.
Either way, Wedge still has Luke’s phone number written down, and he’s punching it into his phone contacts now. Wedge hesitates, and decides to send him a friendly text: hey, this is wedge!
Are they on a first-name basis? Sure. They are. This isn’t too forward. Wedge stares down at the condensation gathering on his screen, not bothering to wipe it off, wondering if Luke is going to blow him off, wondering if he hallucinated this whole thing, and then three dots appear.
His heart actually skips a beat, and the jolt is enough to make his throat close up and his breaths more labored. But it’s an excited panic, a feeling of anticipation.
That was quick, Luke replies, and then he adds a little smiley face to the message: =) .
Wedge hasn’t seen that one since he couldn’t legally drink, but there’s something endearing about it. He types out a hasty reply about not wanting to get his phone wet as he walks home, and how he hopes he can see Luke around soon too, and he’s buzzing with happiness even more than his phone with an unanswered call as he zips up his windbreaker, pulls up the hood, and begins the trek home through the light rain.
The first semester passes by insufferably slow, but at the same time it’s all too fast. Wedge gets lost in grading papers and spending long nights hunched over the telescopes―that is, when the rain subsides for long enough that he can actually snag enough viewing time to get any usable data. One of his grad students, Rey―who is also in his advisory―becomes a TA. She gets her name on a paper for the first time that semester, and Wedge is proud of her as if she were his own daughter―never mind that she’s an orphan, and has now spent more time making it on her own, or in the astronomy department, than she ever did with a foster family.
Wedge and Luke make it a weekly habit of getting drinks together―cinnamon chai, of course―and before they know it, they’re dropping into each other’s time and homes and, soon enough, hearts.
Well. At least, Wedge knows Luke has dropped into his heart and made himself comfortable. He can only hope the feeling is mutual, but he knows they’re good friends already, and that’s a start.
Once, Luke finds him in the midst of a panic attack after fucking up some data that’s going to take far too long to collect again, and somehow manages to talk him down from it and reassure him enough that he feels he might be able to talk himself down next time his breath gets short and his palms go sweaty. His medication only helps with so much, so usually he just waits it out.
Once, Wedge walks into Luke’s office, heavily decorated with souvenirs and prototypes and an entire bookshelf that wasn’t there before he moved in, to find Luke with a knife slid under his skin, up to the hilt in his wrist. As soon as the initial panic has subsided, Wedge manages to get out something along the lines of Hey, what the fuck is going on, and why aren’t you bleeding? , and Luke responds by jerking the blade so that the sleeve of synthetic skin over his right hand peels away and slides off.
Well , Wedge thinks, unable to shake the feeling that he’s walked in on something he isn’t supposed to be seeing, I guess that’s why he went into prosthetics .
“Oh, okay,” is what he says, and Luke grins innocently up at him, only looking moderately perturbed.
“I need to check one of the joints,” Luke replies. He doesn’t ask Wedge to leave, seemingly having accepted that he doesn’t care if Wedge sees this.
“How―” Wedge cuts himself off before he can get invasive, but Luke, once again, doesn’t seem to care.
“My dad cut it off,” he answers, completely nonchalant, as he lays his hand on the desk and begins to examine it under a pair of glasses that Wedge has never seen before. Wedge is torn between thinking about how good he looks in glasses and thinking about whether he’s joking or not.
The next day, Luke’s synthetic skin is back, and Wedge doesn’t mention it again. If Luke wants his students to know that he has a prosthetic hand, and what looks to be an advanced one at that, he’ll say it himself.
Wedge starts to get used to this new presence in his life, slowly but surely melding in as if he had always been there to begin with, and Luke starts to get used to the rains. They find a balance, a harmony, each of them complete on their own, but Wedge can’t help but feel that they work so well together, submerged in each other’s lives, a single unit of two moving parts.
Once, Wedge is working a late night up at the big telescope, the dim red lights of the astronomy building roof testing his night vision. It’s one of those rare dry nights, a winter chill beginning to carry in on the air from the north, and Luke is with him tonight. It’s a Saturday night, just a few days before the winter holiday break begins, and it’s late; Wedge is trying to handle a lot of data that he can’t deal with on his own, but he knows his grad students are going to want this time to do what they will. Study, party, sleep, he doesn’t really care as long as they attempt to take care of themselves and they don’t skip their last few classes of the semester. And Luke offered to come help him anyways, and he wasn’t about to let down that offer, so here they are.
He likes working with the telescopes. It’s quiet, the distant sounds of Corellia overtaken by the humming of the generators up here, and the sound of the telescopes recalibrating to focus their gazes on different parts of the universe is relaxing to him. That is to say nothing of the lights, dim and red and beautiful, so that human operators can see without interrupting the processing of the telescopes. This telescope in particular, the biggest on campus, has a building of its own, and is separated from the more urban part of the city. It’s up on a hill, the highest point in Corellia if he doesn’t count the not-so-distant mountains, and it’s more than a bit of a trek back to the main part of campus if he factors in the cold. He lives close enough, a purposeful choice on his part, but he knows for a fact that Luke lives all the way on the other side of campus.
So. There’s that. It means a lot to him that Luke, knowing this, came out to help him anyways, and he makes sure Luke is aware of this fact.
Luke’s response is to pull down the hood of his own windbreaker, a utilitarian one in a simple shade of black. It’s new, but well made; it’ll last him a long time for sure. He looks up from his drink―coffee, because he was running late―as it rapidly loses heat in the midnight air, and widens his smile at Wedge. That smile has persisted the entire night, only occasionally replaced by a look of melancholy brooding when he’s deep in thought, in between transcribing the waves of data that are coming in.
With his eyes through a tiny viewfinder, hands on the controls, looking at hazy but colorful images of the universe, Wedge can’t look away for long enough to get more than the occasional stolen glance at Luke, but the casual, off-and-on conversation they keep going is nice. He can see this sort of thing happening frequently, even every day and every night if he’s being brave. He can see them living like this, if he focuses hard enough, but right now he’s only supposed to be seeing what this telescope is seeing, so he keeps looking through the viewfinder and he keeps talking.
They finish collecting data a little bit past midnight. Luke’s coffee is nothing but a ring of cold brown at the bottom of his cup, and Wedge’s own drink is long forgotten. Wedge’s hands are beginning to go numb, and Luke’s cheeks and nose are painted red by the onset cold.
Wedge is too sleep-deprived and distracted to remember how they came up with the idea of both crashing at his place, but, well, it made sense then and it makes sense in hindsight, when he wanders into his kitchen at nine in the morning and stops dead in his tracks upon spotting Luke passed out on the couch.
He blinks weariness out of his eyes, half expecting this to be a hallucination, but no, Luke is right there, fast asleep, one arm hanging off the couch and one folded over his chest. Both of their windbreakers are inside out where they’ve been thrown over the back of the couch, and Luke’s outer layers of clothing―shoes, jacket, pants, messenger bag―are thrown in a pile at the foot of the couch that makes Wedge’s chest pang with something resembling longing. He’s asexual; he’s never had an interest in sexual relations, but he’s not averse to romantic attraction, and on the rare occasion that he feels it...well, it’s strong, to say the least. All-encompassing, and call him domestic, but he yearns , and ardently at that. Part of him wishes that Luke were lying in his bed instead of on his couch, that he could voice the feelings that have become increasingly apparent to him throughout the last half a year, but it’s too soon. They’re not there yet.
The moment ends, Wedge snapping himself out of his thoughts, and he walks the rest of the way to the kitchen, where he stands in silence and watches the coffee brew. He’s made twice as much as usual, but it doesn’t feel out of the ordinary. It’s a welcome change, if anything.
The coffee steams as he pours it into two mugs, making his own the way he always takes it: black, no sugar. He pauses, then, realizing he isn’t sure how Luke takes his coffee, realizing that he’s about to file this information away in the ever-growing portion of his brain that’s dedicated to Luke Skywalker, realizing after his feet have already begun to carry him back to the living room that he’s about to ask.
Wedge stops in the doorway. Luke is still lying on the couch, and he seems to sense Wedge’s presence this time, his eyes slowly opening. Evidently, he has an at least semi-clear memory of last night, because he doesn’t startle at realizing where he is.
“Good morning,” he says groggily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand―the organic one, Wedge notes―and Wedge realizes two things: one, Luke has horrendous bedhead, and it’s a work of art, and two, he really, really wishes he could hear that voice greeting him like this every morning.
“Morning,” Wedge replies. “How do you take your coffee?”
Luke, who has slowly been making progress towards his goal of sitting up, groans loudly as he flops back down onto the couch. “Milk, sugar.”
Of course he does, the damned goblin of a man.
“Thanks, man,” Luke manages as Wedge retreats back into the kitchen, shaking his head all the way. He’s smiling the whole time he makes Luke’s coffee, and he’s still smiling when Luke, now fully clothed but still bearing that bedhead of his, stumbles bleary-eyed into the kitchen.
Luke stays the morning at Wedge’s place, the two of them nursing their coffees at the coffee table in his living room as they watch the fog disperse outside. Their windbreakers are still thrown over the back of the couch, but turned inside out they’re nearly identical. Luke’s shoes and messenger bag are still on the floor. The two of them sit maybe a little closer together than they need to on the couch, and they don’t talk, except for when they do. It’s nearly domestic. It’s nice. Wedge is used to spending his weekends at work, or on long walks along the shore or through the forest, and sometimes just sitting alone in his house and reading, but this is another nice change. He considered getting a dog or a cat once, just for company, but he’d never be able to take care of an animal in a way that mattered with his schedule and, well, he’s never been the type to hit up bars or dating websites or any of that stuff. He prefers to know someone, to really know them first, almost as well as he knows himself, and that rarely happens.
He knows he should bring it up to Luke sometime, not continue to let this strange new thing, whatever it is, just drag along behind him until it is inevitably lost or forgotten, but he doesn’t feel ready. Or really, what he should be saying is that he doesn’t feel that Luke is ready.
So they sit there in not-quite-silence, until long after their coffee mugs are empty, and then they sit there some more. Wedge doesn’t want this to end, but it’s Sunday, and they both have work they’ll have to do at some point, and too much of anything―even a good thing―can hurt. He’s not sure how that applies, or if it even does, to this relationship, but he can’t deny the fact that the old thrift store clock on one wall is continuing to tick, reading a time deceptively late considering how thick the fog outside still is.
Just for the sake of moving around, as if it will somehow dislodge the murky thoughts getting stuck and clustered together inside his mind, Wedge rouses himself to stand, and picks up their empty coffee mugs to bring them to the kitchen. Sets them in the sink. Runs some water in them so the leftover sugar doesn’t crust over.
And he walks, slow and trancelike, back to the couch. Luke has retrieved his journal and a pen from his messenger bag on the floor, and is beginning to write. He doesn’t attempt to hide it from Wedge this time. Wedge doesn’t bother to pry, anyways, so it doesn’t matter. As Luke flips through pages, he spots the visibly ripped one, though, and recalls that he’s fairly sure the rest of that page is still crumpled up in the pocket of his windbreaker. And it’s no matter, anyhow; the lines of communication between them, the connections they have, are far more than a phone number now. It’s a college campus, it’s windbreakers turned inside out and indistinguishable from one another on the back of a couch, it’s the ocean air blowing in on a cold night, it’s pictures of things light years away, it’s some unseen force drawing them into orbit like a binary star system.
Wedge thinks about this, a fleeting glimpse of something he cannot comprehend, for just a split second. Gravity is the weakest of the four universal forces, and yet it ties planets into their orbits, it holds stars together, it keeps his feet firmly planted on the ground where he stands. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but he isn’t sure what it is, so he just sits down again and lets himself sink into the couch cushions. Beside him, Luke is still scribbling away.
Luke leaves, eventually, after momentarily stepping into another room to take a call; packs up his messenger bag and goes home to prepare for tomorrow’s classes. He grabs a windbreaker turned inside out, thanking Wedge for the coffee and letting him sleep on the couch, all the while with that smile warmer than all the heat of the sun from millions of miles away. The sun doesn’t seem too hot here, not through all this fog, but still. Still, it’s remarkable just how powerful a blazing ball of gas and fire held together by its own pressure, rocketing through space almost too quickly for a human to comprehend, can be.
It’s only hours later, when Wedge is making sure he has everything he needs for a long Monday, that he turns out the windbreaker still lying on the couch and finds that it’s black instead of orange.
It’s Monday afternoon the next time Wedge sees Luke, and maybe he’s selfish, but it feels like too long spent apart. He makes it through his classes and meetings as usual, still riding on the wave of Sunday morning’s happiness even though he’s unable to shake the feeling of something missing, and Luke’s windbreaker remains neatly folded up in his backpack the entire day.
He sticks around for his usual extra help hours, because he may be barely keeping his balance on the edge of the slippering slope into pining, but he has his duties, and it feels more boring than ever. A few students come in to ask miscellaneous questions, and they all go by quickly. Rey comes in last, dragging her friend Finn along with her. They’re both TAs, but Wedge already knows that they’re not going to use this time to talk about that. Rey flops down onto one of the chairs in Wedge’s office in a manner that is most definitely not good for her spine. Oh well, she’s in her twenties, young enough that her spine is probably malleable enough. He won’t stop her. Finn, for his part, sits normally, but kicks up his feet on another chair.
Rey groans. “Professor Antilles,” she starts, because she insists on treating him with the same amount of respect the rest of his students do even though he might as well just start signing the adoption papers at this point.
“Rough weekend, Rey?” Wedge asks.
“I keep telling her she needs to get a therapist instead of bothering you on your off time, but she won’t listen,” Finn says.
Wedge shakes his head. It may be stereotypical, but Corellia University is a liberal arts college in all but name, and it’s small even with a thriving graduate program, and when someone says that everyone knows each other, it’s true. For Wedge to treat students like they’re his extended family isn’t out of the ordinary at all. Although Rey may actually need a therapist; he can’t really speak on that one.
“First of all,” Rey says, pointing a finger up at the ceiling from where she lies on her back, barely managing not to fall out of the chair, “the freshmen in your fucking thermodynamics class don’t understand basic lab safety! I know they all took the lab safety seminar, hells, I must have taken it at least seven times by now, but they! Do not! Understand! ”
“Rey,” Wedge says, holding back laughter, “you need to report this to EHS. They’re called Environmental Health and Safety for a reason.”
“Yeah, okay, I did , I just need to scream about it, and also ―” Rey rolls onto her side to look Wedge in the eyes, expression ever fiery despite the obvious discomfort she faces sitting like this “―Rose Tico is going to be the end of me.”
Finn sighs deeply, and Rey’s head snaps around at almost inhuman speed.
“Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t come to me with the exact same bullshit about Poe Dameron,” she teases, and this time it’s Wedge’s turn to sigh, because Poe is the son of an old family friend, and he’s been around Corellia long enough that Wedge knows. Oh, he knows .
The two of them sigh in unison, and neither looks like they want to move anytime soon, so Wedge begins to pack his bag. It doesn’t take long, and he makes sure he takes out the windbreaker to place it on his desk before he’s jamming his laptop and some assorted papers back into his backpack. Of course, Rey and Finn both hone in on it instantly.
“New windbreaker?” Rey asks, “never thought I’d see the day.”
“Nope,” Wedge says, only half paying attention, “Luke left it at my place. He accidentally switched with me.”
He stops, hand hovering over the zipper of his backpack, as he realizes what he’s said. And then he lurches back into the movement, zipping up his bag, because the only thing wrong here is the way he reacted to this realization. There’s nothing inherently telling about his having brought Luke to his house―Rey and Finn have both been there before, along with his entire advisory. Hells, his boss was even there once.
But Rey and Finn both are nothing if not intuitive, and they know what’s up in the same way a particularly perceptive child might. Except, unlike a child would, they have the exact vocabulary to articulate what they’ve seen.
Instead of articulating, they both laugh―Finn chuckles softly and Rey lets out a sound that’s all but a cackle.
Wedge sits back and silently levels both of them with a look, and they give him matching innocent smiles in response.
“Whatever you say, Professor Antilles,” Rey mutters under her breath, and then she’s popped up onto her feet again, Finn behind her.
“Don’t go getting into trouble, you two,” Wedge says as they begin to leave, “and, Rey? Just tell Rose you like her. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.”
Rey stammers. “Even if she rejects me?” she squeaks, and Finn puts a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Wedge smirks. He may not have as much experience with romance as most people his age, but he’s seen the way those two look at each other when they think nobody is watching. He can make an educated guess.
“Better to try than to never know.”
He waits until the two of them are gone before he begins to lock up, but he walks quickly, knowing that he has a mission, as he heads to the engineering department.
Luke’s door is ajar, and Wedge raises a fist to knock, but then he hears a voice coming from inside, rapidly being raised just enough to convey a barely contained rage, and he can’t help but stand there and listen.
Okay, he absolutely can help it, but he wants to know what’s happening, and it’s probably a student anyways. It’s like a car crash―he knows he should either move on or stay and call for help, but all he can make himself do is stand there, strange shapes flickering in his retinas, as he stares into the hypnotic flames.
“ Listen ,” Luke says, and Wedge can hear his usual determination taken to another level, to something approaching vengeance, “I know you can take care of yourself, but whatever he does, I’m not fucking letting him get his hands on Ben. If he wants to get to Ben, he’s going to have to go through both of us first.”
A pause. Silence. Luke must be on the phone with someone.
And then, softer: “Him? He’s a problem too. Yes, I know he’s getting in our way. Why do you think I left so early? No, he doesn’t know. And he’d better not find out.”
Before Wedge can stop himself, he begins to fabricate things that the rational part of him knows aren’t true, but oh well, that’s one of the faults of human reasoning: even the most illogical premises can be twisted into something that seems true, if only one wants them to be.
Yes, this must have to do with that call Luke took just before leaving Wedge’s place yesterday. Wedge doesn’t know who Ben or the person trying to get to him are, but he’s sure the person getting in Luke’s way must be none other than himself. He can see it so clearly inside his head: Luke knew, yesterday, that he wanted to confess his feelings. Luke’s lover back home called, curious about what he was up to, and Luke realized that Wedge was getting in the way of whatever preexisting relationship he has. Yes, and Luke must be saying he can’t know because he doesn’t want to hurt Wedge’s feelings. Wedge has to commend him for that.
But he’s an astronomer, for fuck’s sake! He of all people knows to look at data in context , knows that even the extrapolations and theories and assumptions that seem so surely to be true can easily be proven wrong by one new discovery, one small change.
“Okay, I’ll see you soon,” Luke says, and then, tenderly, “I love you too.”
Wedge’s phone buzzes with a message from Luke just a moment later: Hey, can I come over? We need to talk .
He’s never liked those words. He’s still standing in the doorway, phone in one hand and Luke’s windbreaker in the other, when the door to Luke’s office swings all the way open, and they regard each other in distressed silence for more than a few moments.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?” Luke says after a moment, resigned. There’s something tired in his eyes, more than his usual dark circles, as if he didn’t sleep right yesterday night, as if he’s dreading something to come. Wedge can already pinpoint the panic beginning to rise in his chest, shrinking his lungs and slicking his palms with sweat. His hands and breath alike are beginning to become shaky, but he forces himself to remain at least appearing as stable as he can muster.
“Yes,” Wedge admits with uncharacteristic formality, bowing his head in defeat. He’s expecting some sort of an explanation, from a simple I’m sorry to It’s me, not you , or some long-winded excuse, but all he gets is a sigh.
“I have to leave for a while,” Luke says, and his voice contains none of the emotions Wedge had expected, but at the same time it’s exactly what he saw coming. Wedge wants to ask who he was talking to, has the words on the tip of his tongue, but they won’t come out. Panic will do that to him at the most inconvenient of times, and this is one of them.
“I can’t say much about it, and I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I hope it’s quick. I’ll keep in contact with you.”
There’s something hiding behind his words, for sure. But it may not be Wedge’s place to find out exactly what that something is, and his usual courageousness has been replaced by sheer panic, so he stays silent.
Wedge wants to do something, say something, anything to break out of this horrible feeling that’s seized him, but he’s trapped. He just nods. Hesitates.
“Take care of yourself, Skywalker,” he says, and then his feet are carrying him away before he can convince himself to do otherwise.
Luke’s windbreaker is still neatly folded under his arm.
Luke doesn’t text until Wednesday, when Wedge is in the middle of classes, and when he does it’s quick and tantalizingly personal:
Hey, you probably won’t see this for a while, but I hope you’re doing alright. I know I already said it, but really, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll explain everything when I get back. By the way, I just realized I took your windbreaker on Sunday, and I still have it.
Wedge doesn’t see the message until that afternoon, when he’s in advisory listening to a first-year rattle off about exams, occasionally punctuated by Rey rapid-fire texting Rose and then complaining about how difficult relationships are, but he can’t help but smile a bit at that.
He considers replying with something joking, but then he thinks back to the stress and anger in Luke’s voice when he was on the phone with that mystery person, that person who Wedge knows nothing about except that Luke loves them and isn’t afraid to say it.
glad to hear from you, he replies, and then types out another set of messages:
i hope you’re doing ok too, and as for the windbreaker, keep it if you want
if not, i’ve been holding onto yours
see you around
Wedge’s informal style of texting, his one reprieve from the slew of academic language he finds himself so often using both in writing and in speech, is a strange contrast to Luke’s, but it’s not too strange. At least he doesn’t habitually keysmash, unlike some people (at this thought, he glances over at Rey to find that her ears are bright red, and she is staring somewhat more intensely than usual down at her phone. Normally, he wouldn’t let her be on her phone for this long in advisory, but normally, he wouldn’t be on his phone either. Well. It is the last meeting before break, so there’s not much to do.
Wedge shuts off his phone and sets it face down on the table, sighing deeply. Rey and the other student―Hucks? Hugs? Is that his name? He almost never shows up, and all Wedge remembers about him is that he’s a business major―the only two in his advisory who haven’t either busied themselves packing for break or just already left, look sidelong at him.
“You alright, Professor Antilles?” Rey asks.
Wedge shakes his head. “I will be. Don’t worry about me. I’ve got some things going on right now.”
Rey looks like she wants to say something, but thank the stars she’s mature enough to know not to.
Wedge is still carrying that inescapable feeling of melancholy with him for the rest of the week, even after the end of the last-minute exam crunch and the hectic mess of nearly everyone packing up to depart from campus like the flocks of geese that stopped flying overhead the month before. He doesn’t do much over holiday break, usually invites those students and colleagues of his who stick around campus to come over at some point for whatever feast he can put together in his free time, or sometimes finds himself at a more extroverted colleague’s place for the same thing. He tends to hike more than usual, now that he has the time, and he does that this year, too.
A week passes. It’s Sunday, the Sunday after Luke was in his house, and he tried to send a few messages here and there, but they all went straight to delivered . He’s starting to wonder if Luke will ever come back, so he checks in with the dean of faculty, and yes, apparently he expressed no plans of leaving his job or Corellia for more than a temporary stretch of time, but Wedge can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong. He wants to reach out, across the multidimensional web of spacetime, wants to stretch and fold the very atoms that make him up and find himself entangled, across the universe, seeing Luke clearly. He wants to blink and find that he is simultaneously here and with Luke, if only to make sure that Luke is alright.
A few more days pass. Wedge gets a message that Hux―so that was his name―appears to have ties to the Empire, okay, he already knew that Hux’s dad was in on it from the start, but apparently the kid is expressing an interest in whatever cultish mobster shit they’ve worked up. And then, on the news, late on Wednesday night, something about a prominent Imperial and a fight with a higher-up: a reactivated investigation, someone dead, someone in prison, a senator and lawyer who has Luke’s nose in her photo, more information as story progresses .
Wedge doesn’t sleep that night. He rolls over, feeling sick to his stomach as he stares out the window and then up at his ceiling, panic dancing around his esophagus and slicing his trachea. The too-bright blue glow of his phone screen reads 23:48 when he finally laces up his boots, throws on Luke’s windbreaker over his warmest sweater, and heads out to the big telescope.
He doesn’t even have much data to run now, he’d made sure most of the research tasks he had to do over break were nonessential and, well, boredom and stress combined had already driven him to finish most of them, so he just spends a while watching the universe, no strings attached.
He always forgets how beautiful the moon is up close, glowing so brightly from nothing but reflected sunlight in an otherwise dark sky.
Wedge is so tied up in his observations of the universe that he almost doesn’t hear the door from inside opening. In fact, he doesn’t hear it so much as see it, because the lights pouring out onto the dark roof are bright and harsh, and they burn through the dim red to irritate his eyes as he turns around.
The door shuts, but that silhouette he saw illuminated there for just a moment...he would know those hands, those shoulders, that particular way of carrying oneself, anywhere.
Luke is wearing Wedge’s orange windbreaker, the two of them standing there with a part of each other, and they stare at each other in silence, as they seem to be making a habit of doing these days.
“I was starting to think you wouldn’t come back,” Wedge says, so quietly his words are nearly carried away by the bitter midnight breeze, and Luke’s expression of hoping, reaching, yearning, whatever it is , that expression morphs into one of pain. He steps closer, just a single step towards bridging the gap between them, and for the first time, Wedge makes out the scrapes and bruises marring his face. They’re recent, but not quite fresh. Luke has begun to heal―but has he really?
“I won’t lie, I thought you were off to elope or something, but...what the hell happened to you?” Wedge asks, and Luke looks away.
His eyes are bright and pained when he looks back, and this time Wedge is the one to step forward.
“When you heard me on the phone last week―that was my sister, Leia.”
Oh . Wedge feels ridiculous now, but he’s long since over that. And he recognizes that name, that was the senator in the news, that― oh .
“Our father is in with the Empire. He’s been trying to leave, but his boss―Palpatine―” fuck, Wedge has heard that name before, too many times, and now everything is coming together with the news article and why Luke left so quickly and what he meant when he said his dad cut off his hand. The hand.
Wedge looks down, and Luke stops in the middle of his sentence, following Wedge’s gaze. His right hand is gloved in black leather, and he meets Wedge’s eyes as he pulls off the glove to reveal that the synthetic skin that once covered his cybernetic hand is completely gone. A burn scar pokes out of his sleeve, and the knuckles of his organic hand are bruised and cracked.
“So you weren’t joking,” Wedge says.
Luke shakes his head. “Palpatine convinced my father to try and come get me, back in the day. It’s why I moved around so much, why I came here. Ever since my father had a change of heart, Palpatine has been trying to get Leia’s son to join, threatening to take him away from her if she tries to help our father leave. And, uh, my father was going to try to leave, file for witness protection, but Palpatine got to him first. Everything went to shit, and he died, and Leia forced me to go back home so I wasn’t next.”
For a moment, Wedge realizes just how close Luke might have come to death―or worse, to being irrevocably lost. He doesn’t want to entertain either of those concepts, so he steps forward again. The space between them may as well be negligible now.
“Anything you need from me,” he says, “I’m here.”
He starts to step forward, to step past Luke despite what he knows he wants, and Luke puts out a hand to stop him.
“Thank you,” Luke says, and then, softly, “wait. We have a lot to talk about.”
Wedge sighs, drawing back.
“I know,” he says. Luke’s hand is still on his shoulder, and he wants Luke to pull him into a hug, but he’s not the one who should have the burden of both of their emotions, not right now, not after all the hell he’s been through in the last week, so Wedge makes the jump.
He wraps his arms around Luke, and Luke just sort of falls into the embrace, head on Wedge’s shoulder, and oh . Oh. He’s crying.
Wedge could say it right now. Just say it, tell Luke how he feels, and it would be done. But he can’t, because he’s determined to be what Luke needs him to be, and that might not match up with what either of them want him to be. This is Luke’s moment, not his.
It’s okay , he almost says, but then he stops, because it’s not okay, and that’s okay.
“I’m here,” he says instead, “you’re not alone.”
Luke is shaking now, his entire body in tremors, and if Wedge didn’t know better he might think it’s just the cold, but then again it might have something to do with that, too. Luke needs to cry right now, needs to get all the pain he’s feeling out of his body and out into the world, where it can begin the slow and steady process of dissipating. He’s clutching at Wedge, nails digging into his shoulders, and Wedge holds onto him until he loses track of time, until all he is aware of is Luke’s heart beating up against his own, and both of them panicking a little in their own way (okay, maybe it’s more than a little), and the cold touch of everything in the universe that is not them surrounding everything that is them, that is what they are, trillions upon trillions of atoms all packed together to make something separate from the rest of the universe, separate from each other, and yet...
And yet the two of them fit together in each other’s arms, and if Wedge deludes himself well enough, he can almost believe that they’re lying horizontal instead of standing up, that their knees aren’t locked to stay steady and their hands aren’t numb from the midnight chill, that they’re embracing because this is what they always do instead of because Luke’s last week has been full of unspeakable horrors.
After Luke’s tear ducts and fresh pain have run dry, after they’ve pulled apart both shaking, both numb, neither of them want to be alone. They go back to Wedge’s place, and Wedge guides Luke to his bed because hells, the last thing he needs right now is to wake up with a crick in his spine, but Luke grabs his wrist and asks him―silently, and then with words―to stay.
Wedge isn’t sure what this means, isn’t sure if Luke actually feels the way he does, if Luke knows how he feels, if Luke is just reaching for the nearest comfort he can latch onto or if he’s holding onto Wedge’s wrist so tightly because it’s Wedge , but he’s been here before, afraid: to be alone, of his thoughts, of the past attempting to worm its way into the present.
Wedge looks wordlessly at Luke, down into those uncharacteristically terrified blue eyes, and suddenly he doesn’t care how this―his longing, yearning, his own ridiculous feelings―turns out, as long as he sees Luke smile again.
“As long as you need me,” he says, “I’ll stay. And then I’ll...stay some more.” He looks away as he lets out these last few words, hiding the blush that’s fighting to rise on his face, and Luke’s hand slides down from his wrist to his hand. It’s his mechanical hand, cold but somehow having an almost organic level of feeling and life to it. Then again, it is connected to Luke’s brain.
Luke squeezes Wedge’s hand, and Wedge squeezes back, tightly, before he pulls away to go change out of the windbreaker―once Luke’s, maybe now his, definitely now tear-stained.
He gives Luke space when he slides under the covers, each of them occupying one side of the bed, but when Luke―already asleep―instinctively shifts closer to Wedge, he doesn’t push him away, nor pull him closer.
Soon enough, Wedge is asleep too, and despite the anxiety still pulsing in his bloodstream, he can’t help but feel that this may just be the most relaxed, the most comfortable, the most right he’s felt in a long, long time.
Wedge wakes up to find that Luke has shifted closer to him in the night, and hells , the man is cold. It makes sense―he’s from a hot, dry place, so of course his blood would run cold, but Wedge jolts a bit when his bare leg brushes against an icy foot.
Luke is also still out cold, and has somehow managed to shift even closer to Wedge in the night (not that Wedge is complaining), which makes the prospect of extracting himself from the bed seem a bit difficult, to say the least. One of Luke’s arms is draped over Wedge’s side, and if Wedge concentrates he can hear past Luke’s slow, calm breathing to his even calmer heartbeat.
Wedge’s hand is hovering over Luke’s arm, ready to pull it off him as gently as he can, ready to just get out of bed and start brewing a coffee, but then he resigns himself to his fate and simply sinks deeper into the mattress instead.
Does he really need to be getting up right now, moving fast, always towards the next moment, when now of all times he has the opportunity to really savor the moment?
Luke shifts closer to him yet again, head now on his chest, and his blond hair flops over his forehead. His brows furrow themselves for a moment, and then his forehead smoothes out again, face back to its former tranquil expression. It’s not a smile, but it’s close enough; he’s getting there.
Wedge reaches out to brush a lock of Luke’s hair behind his ear, and it’s then and there, one hand on Luke’s back and one on his cheek, that Luke’s eyes flutter open.
He groans softly, and Wedge’s heart momentarily stops, doing what all good (computer) systems do when they stutter like this: it turns off and on again. Well, not really, because Wedge isn’t a computer, but it certainly feels like his heart restarts there.
“Morning,” Luke says, and Wedge is struck by two distinct feelings: a ridiculously strong sense of deja vu, and an even ridiculously stronger sense of being deeper in love than he has ever been before, except perhaps with the universe itself.
He has known this for a long time now, of course, but the words find themselves in his brain now: he loves Luke ardently, passionately, violently, with all the burning of a thousand stars. He loves Luke like the galaxies he snaps pictures of, like the celestial bodies so shrouded in darkness that he cannot see anything of them but numbers, data on a page. He loves Luke like the moon, bright and soft and adoring, and he loves Luke like the sun, hot and fiery, giver of life.
“Morning,” Wedge echoes. “You doing alright now?”
Luke stretches undoubtedly sore limbs without making a move to separate himself from the embrace he and Wedge have found themselves twisted in.
“Never been better,” he says, and Wedge can’t tell if he’s joking.
“Is this...okay?” Wedge asks. He doesn’t feel like moving his hands from where they lie to gesture at the situation, doesn’t even know what he would gesture at amongst all this, but Luke seems to understand.
“It’s more than okay,” he says, and smiles at Wedge. There it is. Wedge wants to capture that smile like a rare, once-in-a-lifetime space photo, like a snapshot of a comet passing by, never to return until centuries in the future, but maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe that smile can be like the sun: ever-present, even at night, even when it is only there in the reflection of something else.
“Wait,” Wedge says, and they both falter. “I need to know. Why? Why me? Why this? Is this just because you need comfort, or because you’re appeasing me? Because if it is, if this isn’t you making this decision independently, in the right frame of mind, I need to know now.”
“ Wedge .” Luke’s voice is soft and pained. His hand is clutching at the fabric of Wedge’s shirt now, grasping desperately from where it lies over Wedge’s side.
“I’ve wanted this for so long. I...when I was here, last Sunday, when I left my windbreaker, I was going to tell you. And then I couldn’t work up the courage, so I was going to find another time, maybe when we went to get drinks, but then my sister called and, just. Just. You know.”
“I’m sorry,” is all Wedge manages.
“Don’t be,” Luke insists, “it’s all in the past. We have now , and we have the whole future in front of us.”
Something flashes in his horizon-blue irises at that, some realization that this applies to him, too, not just to Wedge.
They’re both smiling, now, in unison. Wedge cups Luke’s cheek in his hand.
“Then let’s move forward.”
“Gladly,” Luke replies. Wedge could kiss him now, he really could, but then Luke turns his head to the side to let out a yawn, and, well, the prospect of coffee is promising.
It’s only now that Wedge pulls himself out of Luke’s embrace, out of bed, and this time he doesn’t have to ask Luke how he takes his coffee, because he already knows.
He leaves the mugs at the kitchen counter this time, because perhaps they can stand and move around while they drink, instead of sitting back, and he’s standing there, slightly groggy, staring out the window and into the icy fog, when Luke appears in the doorway.
They’re both partially dressed now, Wedge in his most horrendous (they’re orange and purple plaid) flannel pants and an old T-shirt, Luke with the same shirt he was wearing yesterday pulled over borrowed sweatpants, and the hardwood floor is cold against Wedge’s bare feet.
Luke’s footsteps are near silent as he pads up to Wedge, leaning on the counter and resting his head on his elbows. He looks up, sidelong, as Wedge takes a pensive sip of his coffee, and he reaches out with a single cybernetic finger to stir his own coffee with the spoon sitting in its mug.
Wedge sets his mug down on the counter and places his hands in the small of his back, stretching his spine. His shirt rides up as he does so, but Luke watches his face the entire time.
Outside, the fog is beginning to lift. Luke pulls away from the counter and leans towards Wedge, and then his lips are on Wedge’s. Wedge doesn’t realize that he hasn’t actually imagined this moment before until he, kissing Luke back, comes to the conclusion that he had no idea what to expect, but this exceeds all possible expectations he could have had.
The kiss is as slow as it needs to be, but chaste, and tender, and they stand there with foreheads touching for a long moment after they both break away.
Wedge reaches up, and for the second time that morning, brushes a lock of Luke’s ever-messy hair behind his ear. His bedhead isn’t as bad as when he slept on the couch, but it’s still there.
“So,” he says, as Luke’s hands find their way to just above his hips, like they’re about to start slow dancing, “is this going to be something we never talk about again, or do you want this to be a reoccuring thing?”
Luke hums softly, head on Wedge’s shoulder. They’re rocking back and forth now, slowly, in a dance to music that is only in their heads.
“You are remarkably willing to put up with concepts that you really shouldn’t have to,” Luke says into Wedge’s collarbone. “Of course I want this to be reoccuring. Don’t think I never saw the way you look at me when you think I’m not paying attention.” A pause, and then, softer: “Don’t think I never look back at you the same way.”
And then he laughs, gently, quietly, at something only he knows. “Our coffees must be getting cold by now.”
“To the couch, then?”
“Of course.”
They finish their coffees with legs tangled, and they stay like that long after their mugs are empty. Outside, the fog has cleared, and the ground is coated with a fine layer of snow. It must be below freezing, but the sky is clear and the sun is out in full force―a rarity for this season.
Wedge inhales cold, sharp air when he steps outside later, Luke at his side. In this weather, windbreakers have been exchanged for Wedge’s leather jacket and, for Luke, a borrowed denim jacket that didn’t quite fit Wedge anymore (and, well, it looks better on Luke anyways, so it’s no huge loss). The sun hits his face, exciting every atom in his body with the promise of warmth, and Luke’s eyes are brighter than his smile in this light.
Their footprints melt behind them as the sun begins to go to work on the predawn snow, and Luke’s hand―the organic one―finds Wedge’s as they walk.
Wedge doesn’t know what the future holds, his light is still travelling outwards into the universe to where he’ll someday see it, someday understand it, but this. This.
This is the start of something good.
