Chapter Text
Later, Ben would determine that this was all Tai’s fault; for now, he only wanted to be alone.
The evening meal was finished, and everyone was saying farewells for the night, discussing plans for tomorrow, making off to their huts or the library for private study or meditation time. Training had been particularly trying today, for reasons Ben couldn’t place and knew had nothing to do with the seasonal rains. While Luke was deep in conversation with Ketko’qu, Ben saw his chance to slip away before his uncle could pull him aside for one of the check-ins he no longer bothered trying to be subtle about.
Ben was not sneaky enough for Tai. He caught Ben just outside the door of the mess hall, drawing up beside him with loose, friendly ease.
“Good try,” Tai said as he fell into step.
“‘Good try’ what?”
“Skiving off without saying goodbye.”
“Didn’t mean to offend you, sweetheart,” Ben groused. He wasn’t in the mood to explain that he was trying to avoid Luke, particularly not to the one person who should have understood implicitly.
Tai ignored Ben’s churlishness and lowered his voice. “Some of us are planning to meet up at Hennix’s later. This weather’s only going to get worse. The noise will be good cover. Breeshey’s got some new technique she wants to try anyway—says it’ll keep any sound from getting out.”
“You really think Luke doesn’t notice when you all do this stuff after hours?”
Tai couldn’t be bothered. “Nice deflection.”
“I learned from the best.”
“You should come. For once.”
Ben snorted. If that was an attempt to guilt him, it was pretty piss-poor. He was silent for a few moments anyway, pretending to consider. Tai was usually satisfied if Ben made him think he was tempted by offers to socialize and mingle, and Ben couldn’t bring himself to turn him down outright. He was tempted; he just needed a reason not to be.
“Is Voe going to be there?”
“She usually is. But you don’t need to talk to her. Unless . . .” Tai slowed, then gave an affected gasp. “You want her to be there? Hmm?”
Ben’s gut squirmed. Tai knew how Ben felt about Voe—everyone did. Ben and Voe’s uncivil rivalry was mutual and immovable, despite Tai’s occasional efforts to build a bridge of peace between them.
“I’ll pass.”
“Oh, come on, man, I’m joking. Really though, there’s going to be a group of us, you can just ignore her. Osi still has that stash of stuff they sneaked off the trip to Naboo.” He prodded Ben in the side with an elbow. “It’ll be fun. Remember fun?”
“Sorry, what’s that? ‘Fun’? You’ll have to explain it to me.”
Tai gave a laughing growl and prodded harder at him, leaning his full weight into the elbow at Ben’s ribs. Ben twisted away, but he was smiling. Tai smiled back, hopeful and bright.
“Think about it, anyway,” Tai said, relenting as the path toward their huts branched. That smile was still plastered on his face. Ben’s gaze stuck on it, though he had seen it countless times. “Not like there’s anything else to do tonight, right?”
Ben rubbed at his sore ribs and imagined the bruise forming. “Yeah. Right.”
They parted ways. Ben went back to his hut. He mindlessly poked at some mod ideas he had for the Grimtaash , forced himself to read theory until none of the words looked like words anymore, and finally switched the datapad over to one of the comics that had arrived with his last communication packet from home—almost half a year ago, but he’d been making it last. He was pretty sure he was the only one here who was allowed to receive stuff like that. Luke probably thought it was good for him, or something, infrequent as the deliveries had become.
Hours passed, the rain fell harder, and a restless gnawing in his stomach grew. He thought of Tai, and the way Tai had smiled earlier, and the way Tai often smiled when he and Ben were together. Those smiles were sometimes a balm and sometimes provoked perplexing feelings that Ben usually ignored because his feelings weren’t very important. He began to wonder what Tai and the others were all doing. He so rarely joined his peers for anything outside of training exercises these days.
Why did Tai care so much? It wasn’t like Ben was the only one who had better things to spend his time on. Except he didn’t, really, tonight.
Tai doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I’ll be unwelcome.
Tai’s the only one who’d care if I showed up anyway.
They’ll just be waiting for me to snap.
Or maybe Ben would prove them wrong. Maybe it would make Tai smile.
Maybe . . .
He threw on his boots and cloak and left before he had the chance to change his mind. Though the journey across the complex was short, he was soaked through by the time he approached Hennix’s hut. Warm light shone through the narrow windows. He felt a peculiar shift in the air as he drew up to the door. The noise of the storm deadened as if behind thick transparisteel and was replaced by a sudden swell of chatter from within. Ben could pick out the familiar lilting tenor of Tai’s voice in the peal of boisterous laughter that followed, which filled him with a maddening mix of relief and anxiety. Something hit the floor with a hollow thunk. They were having a good time.
He stole a glance across the complex toward Luke’s hut, where it sat atop a slight incline—darkened windows and no signs of movement within. Breeshey’s Force experiment in sound concealment seemed to have been a success. Ben took a breath, ignored the urge to turn and go, and knocked.
There was another eruption of laughter. He’d give it ten seconds. If no one answered—
The door swung open. Light and warmth spilled over him as Breeshey peered out at him first in confusion, then in surprise.
“Solo?”
She stared, waiting for the punchline.
“Tai said I should—” This was a mistake. Ben’s eyes darted. “I heard you were all—”
“Yeah, he told us you might. We just didn’t think you actually . . .” She stepped back and beckoned him in, brown hair a frizzed halo. “Wow. Never mind. Get in here, it’s horrible outside.”
“It’s just a little water!” someone shouted back in protest. Hennix, from the sound of it.
Breeshey rolled her eyes and brushed past Ben to pull the door shut behind him. Visually, the interior of Hennix’s hut was hardly distinguishable from any of the other living quarters at the academy: a sparse, circular room with three windows, a sleeping pallet, a desk and chair, a nightstand, and a chest of drawers for storage. The most personal touch was a neat collection of smooth shells on a little shelf set into the wall just beside the door. The air was humid and tacky, though Ben couldn’t tell whether that was because there were now eight half-dried bodies crowded into a relatively small space, or because Hennix had done something to make the environment inside more suitable to his own Quarren sensibilities.
The others were sitting in a rough circle—Hennix, Tai, Tenal, and Pekko on the floor, Breeshey dropping back into the only chair, Osi and Voe perched conspicuously at the edge of the sleeping pallet. Ben ignored the less-than-enthused purse of Voe’s lips at his arrival, and the way she leaned over to whisper something to Osi, who only shrugged indifferently. Ben fixed his eyes instead on Tai.
“Ben! You made it!” Tai threw his hands up in the air as if he’d just emerged victorious in some unspoken contest. A slim, half-smoked cigarra joint was perched between his fingers, staining them bruisy purple as a tendril of smoke drifted from the lit end. Dried locap bud, judging by the dank, bittersweet smell. It was supposed to relax people; in Ben’s experience, he was immune to the desired effect. Naturally. “Sit down! Or don’t, you know, whatever you want.”
Some of them scooted aside to make room for him the way they all used to as kids waiting for instruction to begin. Ben sat between Tenal and Hennix. There were scattered greetings, most with a distinct note of utter bafflement at his presence, but none unwelcoming. Mere moments later, Pekko reached across Hennix to shove a bottle into Ben’s hand. More like a jug, made of smoked blue glass and carved over with intricate swirls. A strong whiff of alcohol rose from the tapered mouth.
“Chak-root whiskey,” Osi explained, ignoring Voe’s glare and waggling their dark eyebrows at him. “I’ve been saving it for the right time.”
“From Theed, yeah. I remember,” Ben said.
“We’ve all had a head start—you’ve got to catch up!” crowed Pekko, a usually soft-spoken Pantoran, tossing his thick, tidy braid over his shoulder.
Already the others were settling back into the conversation they’d been having before Ben had arrived. His being here was apparently perfectly natural—or at least inoffensive—and not the enormous disruption he’d imagined it would be. Still, he was happy to have the bulk of attention off himself so quickly. Better still when he took a sip—the stuff was strong, and he hoped no one had seen the way he winced as it hit his throat. It had a bite reminiscent of poorly distilled jet juice. But the burn receded to pleasant warmth and stopped his shivering from the rain, so Ben had a second, more careful swig before passing the bottle off to an eager Tenal, who flashed her sharp teeth at him in a Zabrak grin.
After that he began to relax. It was easier to observe, interject here or there if someone looked to him for input, which was admittedly rare. Ben lacked the ready camaraderie they all seemed to share. He didn’t understand it, though he knew it must have come from the same years of training and learning together that he had been a part of. They all clearly had favorites and preferences and inside jokes. Hennix, Voe, and Osi were close. Pekko was a quiet one, for the most part, and he seemed to get on with whoever grabbed his attention. Tenal and Breeshey were a bit harder to pin down, but both projected competent confidence that made them ready conversationalists.
And there was Tai, of course, always the natural peacemaker, always there with the right question or comment or understanding look, ready to make a friend of anyone. Ben would start feeling like an outsider, he’d become aware of just how little he truly had a place with these people—and then Tai would catch his eye, and he’d smile or he’d nod, and Ben’s mounting anxiety, the doubts that rose like a wave, would calm.
This was fine. It was normal. He belonged here, as much as anyone. The bottle continued its slow circuit, and so did the joint. The room filled with voices and smoke and a sense of togetherness Ben had rarely experienced since he’d come here with Luke nearly a decade ago.
He was just beginning to feel truly at ease when Breeshey cleared her throat until all eyes settled on her. “Now that we’re all here, we should play a game.”
“I’m assuming there’s a specific game you have in mind,” Tenal said through a delicate cloud of smoke.
“As a matter of fact,” Breeshey said, “yes I do, thank you for asking. It’s called ‘Bottle of Fortune’—my older sister used to play it with her friends. I was only eight, so they never let me play, which in retrospect was definitely for the best . . .”
She launched into an explanation that had Ben’s spirits sinking by the moment. The game was simple enough: take an empty bottle, place it in the middle of a circle of people, and give it a spin. Whoever is sitting where the neck of the bottle points when it stops spinning has to kiss the spinner—or be kissed by the spinner. Breeshey wasn’t very exacting on that matter. The point was, people were kissing, a lot, and it was all up to chance.
Everyone sounded enthusiastically into the idea, which was horrifying. Ben thought he might have a reprieve when Osi declared with righteous indignation, “Hey, the bottle is still half full, and I don’t support the idea of chugging this just to empty it out.”
“What about a substitute?” said Hennix.
He raised a hand, and a moment later his lightsaber flew from the nightstand to his waiting palm. It was a beautiful piece of machinery and, like all lightsabers, particular to its master. The hilt had a certain self-assured elegance, and the pommel resolved into the shape of a swirling spiked shell. Rather than activate it, Hennix stretched forward to place the saber in the middle of the floor.
“This would spin pretty well,” he said as he sat back.
“So it would,” Voe agreed.
Ben’s stomach spun too, straight into the floor.
“Saber of Fortune!” Tai cried, giving voice to the approval of the rest of the room, except Ben, who was now considering the best way to make his exit. His only immediate consolation was that Luke would unequivocally consider this an inappropriate, perhaps even offensive, use of the noble Jedi weapon.
Tai met his eye, and Ben felt that inconvenient twinge in his belly again, the same as earlier, and it was enough to keep his ass on the floor despite every other impulse screaming at him to abandon ship.
The game began. They’d added a new rule to take into account the unavoidable fact that all of them had a built-in way of cheating—no using the Force to coax the lightsaber into or away from a particular person. By some preternatural stroke of luck (or perhaps the Force was with him after all), Tenal volunteered to spin first. This meant that Ben would be spinning last, though even that didn’t guarantee he could escape finding the saber pointing his way as the game progressed. In which case, he’d just have to suck it up and deal with the consequences of the game he had somehow found himself playing and take comfort in the fact that he would, eventually, get Tai back for this.
Yes, this was all Tai’s fault. All of it.
Tenal’s first spin landed on Pekko, to whom she sauntered across, snickering the whole way, to plant a quick, friendly kiss on his cheek, to the disappointed jeers of their companions.
“Hey, no one said it had to be on the mouth!” she reminded them as she took her seat. “I’m protecting Pek’s Jedi virtue.”
“Second amendment to the rules!” Breeshey said. “Kisses must be on the mouth. Virtue has no place here!”
Ben choked on a laugh, not so much at the new rule as the fact that he knew, as they all did, that “Jedi virtue” had become a relative term around the academy over the last few years. It was to be expected. The youngest student, a Togruta named Samojay, was recently sixteen; the oldest students, including Ben, were nineteen. Even the most fastidiously applied Jedi praxis was no match for teenage hormones. Jedi weren’t supposed to have attachments, but none of them were Jedi yet, and sex didn’t necessitate attachment. Besides, Luke had never borne down too hard on the “no attachments” thing. Part of his updated, somewhat looser ideology.
The result was that people got creative, sneaked around, experimented, paired off, tripled off. It was discouraged, and if any of them ever got caught, it would probably result in serious trouble. There was also no way Luke didn’t know about it, but Ben couldn’t imagine him going out of his way to catch and reprimand any of them when he had artifacts to chase and a galaxy to explore. Thus was the weird impasse that most of the people in this room took advantage of.
Breeshey spun the lightsaber. It came to an agonizingly slow stop on Osi. Ben watched with disinterest as they kissed, complete with exaggerated lip smacking, to laughing catcalls. Next up was Voe, whose spin landed on none other than Tai. Something stirred in Ben as Voe leaned across Osi to lock lips with her target. It couldn't have lasted more than two seconds, and it was clear that neither Voe nor Tai had kissed one another before and that neither of them had any interest in kissing the other again outside of the game.
Still, Ben’s neck heated at the sight, and a sudden, shocking, heavy emptiness expanded in his gut. It felt like plummeting from a height while practicing Force falls—a feeling he had never much minded, until now. He would have averted his eyes, but it was too late.
He couldn’t stand Voe, that was all. She managed to make even a friendly kiss look self-righteous. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Tai any longer than it took to assure himself that Tai only found it all amusing. Lucky him. Not that it should have mattered.
Osi was next. They took their time, hovering their hand over the saber, humming thoughtfully, casting knowing glances around the circle, making awkward eye contact until Hennix asked if Osi was planning to spin the lightsaber or just spend the next hour fingering it. The ensuing burst of laughter lasted nearly the whole spin—just enough of a distraction to almost conceal the fact that Osi had very much just broken the “no Force” rule. Ben felt it, and so had Pekko: that little catch in the atmosphere, a subtle twang of energy in the Force that made sure the lightsaber came to a halt pointing too precisely at Tenal.
“Cheat!” Pekko proclaimed, jabbing an accusing hand at Tenal and Osi each. “One of you!”
“Osi,” Ben cut in through a feigned cough, his first willing participation in the proceedings.
Tenal shrugged as Osi crawled across the circle toward her with hungry eyes. “I’m just very magnetic, is all.”
What ensued was as much a performance as a genuine display of unfettered adolescent horniness. If anyone in the room had any doubts that Tenal and Osi had been meeting up on a regular basis long before tonight, they were dispensed with quickly as the pair engaged in a spectacular makeout session that would have put any number of holodramas to shame.
This had to be the stupidest game in the galaxy.
Ben didn’t get it. The appeal of this—participating, anyway. It was funny, sort of, to watch, in the excruciating way of secondhand embarrassment and mounting dread that his turn was coming.
But he was missing something; he’d been aware of this for some time. He’d known all of these people for nearly a decade. It was clear, seeing everyone here tonight, that they spent a lot more time thinking about kissing, and touching, and sex than he did. Aside from the most abstract sense, beyond the pleasure and relief he could achieve well enough on his own, it didn’t interest him very much. At least, he’d never felt such desire toward another person. Not really. Whatever compelled his peers to seek each other in dark corners and empty nighttime rooms seemed inconvenient—another impulse to worry about controlling, another appetite to moderate, another distracting need to navigate.
So it was good that he was this way. Snoke often commended Ben on how single-mindedly he focused on his training, on becoming stronger, on learning and bettering himself—to what end Ben still didn’t understand. Luke, too, would probably find some practical advantage for this quirk of Ben’s, say it would make him a better Jedi. That is, if Ben ever dared mention it. Ben could think of few topics he was less interested in discussing with his uncle than his own “sexual quirks,” or lack thereof.
The only person he could ever imagine himself talking about those sorts of things with was Tai, except, well . . .
He shut that line of thought down. Absolutely not. No. It wouldn’t be the first time in his life he’d felt like he was born with a crucial piece overlooked and left out.
Ben began to zone out; to call it dissociating would have been a bit dramatic, if aspirational. He pointedly trained his attention away when Tai spun, ignorant of how the saber landed beyond knowing that it hadn’t pointed to him and stifling the inexplicable sour taste it left in the back of his throat. A highlight came when Hennix’s spin landed him with Breeshey, who announced that she’d always wondered what it would be like to kiss a Quarren and did nothing to hide how delighted she was by the feeling of his facial tentacles palpating her chin and cheeks as their mouths touched. It lasted, in Ben’s opinion, far too long, and sounded far too wet. They’d no doubt be finding each other again after tonight.
Ben was still musing unhappily when Hennix gave his shoulder a rough shake. He jolted.
“Huh?”
“You’re on, Solo,” Voe said.
“Oh. That was quick.”
“It’s a fast game, mate,” said Pekko.
Ben stared at the lightsaber, willing it to combust. He had to be careful about that, actually, because experience dictated that if he really did start to think about that too much, it was likely to happen.
To hell with it. He could kiss someone. Any of them. All of them. Even Voe. He’d kiss her damn brains out. The look on her face might even make it worth it. Tai would think it was hilarious. They could laugh about it after, later, somewhere, together.
It didn’t matter. It was only a stupid game.
He leaned forward and spun the lightsaber. It was a good spin. Took nearly thirty seconds to stop. Ben knew, because despite his bravado of moments before, he counted each one.
It stopped.
It was pointing at Tai.
No room for debate.
Ben was going to throw up. Not because he didn’t want to kiss Tai. He did want to kiss Tai. He wanted to do more than that. It was a fact that was easy to forget, easy to bury and turn off the way he did most things. He had never been faced with the opportunity. Now it was all he could think about. The enormity and certainty of it was overwhelming, like drowning in a rush of feelings and urges he couldn’t begin to compartmentalize.
His heart was racing. He was sweating. His blood throbbed through his body. He couldn’t breathe.
He’d dealt with intrusive thoughts all his life; this was something else entirely.
“Ben, you okay?” someone asked. Someone else giggled. Voe, probably. She would.
He stammered uselessly. “Uh—”
He should have cheated, used the Force to give the saber a tiny nudge past Tai and over to Pekko. He didn’t want to kiss Pekko, but that was far better than grappling with how much he wanted to kiss Tai. It wouldn’t mean anything.
This couldn’t mean anything .
Tai was looking at him evenly. Kindly. Patiently. Of course he was. That was how Tai looked at everybody. Ben wasn’t special. Not to Tai, who would one day be the perfect Jedi, an endless font of compassion for people like Ben, who would never understand how they could deserve it.
Tai moved forward slightly, but then his composure wavered. Ben felt him reaching for him in the Force, trying to find out what was wrong before drawing away.
“Ben, you know, we don’t actually have to . . .” he began, as cautious as if he were approaching a startled animal. He sat back again, and his mouth tilted up in a small, reassuring smile.
Ben’s already failing self-control shattered. The jug of whiskey exploded where it was resting on the nightstand, spraying booze across the room and spattering everyone with tangy foam and glass so finely pulverized it looked like glitter and felt like ash.
“Damn, Solo, we get that you’ve got a lot of tension pent up, but that’s a little on-the-nose, don’t you think?” Voe said, shaking the ends of her hair out. “Next time just kiss him and have a wank about it later, why don’t you!”
People were laughing. A natural enough reaction to an absurd situation. Ordinarily, Ben could have recognized this, maybe even joined in himself, buried the hurt. It was such a petty, juvenile thing to say. Voe had unlikely truly meant anything by it. She was an annoying tryhard, but she wasn’t cruel.
But it was too cutting, too personal, and too real, and he just couldn’t right now. He jumped to his feet.
“Hang on, what are you doing?” Tai said. He, at least, had not laughed. “It’s no big deal. You think this is the dumbest thing that’s happened when we hang out? Have we got stories for you.”
Pekko waved a hand at him, sounding slightly less sincere than Tai. “Yeah, it’s fine, just—”
“I have a headache,” Ben bit out. He used to get headaches all the time. It was a tried and true excuse. Wasn’t like anyone was going to beg him to stay. “Sorry about the whiskey. I’ll replace it.”
Osi’s “But that was hand-blown glass!” and Tai’s protests were lost as Ben pushed himself through the door, past Breeshey’s silencing bubble, and back into the night. The rain had stopped, or at least slowed to a patter Ben barely noticed as he left the hut complex behind at a clip. He wasn’t sure where he was heading until he got there.
There was a sloping embankment behind one of the libraries, where a narrow stream flowed. The stream was swollen tonight from the rain, but there was enough grass and rocks left along the edges for Ben to sit.
He and Tai talked here sometimes. It was a good spot to talk. It was a good spot to be alone, too. To think.
Ben didn’t feel much like doing any of those things, but he’d come out here, and now he didn’t want to go back to his hut. He wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway, especially now that he really did feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. It hadn’t happened in a while. They’d gotten easier to handle once he realized what they meant—Snoke was trying to reach him. After he’d made that connection, it was simple to just answer, and the pain would melt into nothing as his distant confidant made himself known.
Tonight, Ben pushed the call away. What would Snoke have to say to him right now? What would he see in Ben’s mind, if Ben let him in?
He might see the way Ben sometimes found himself thinking about Tai in all the ways he’d never thought about anyone else before. What it would be like to touch Tai, to find out what his skin felt like, not just in the casual brush of limbs during a spar but real, intentional, and charged with emotion. How sometimes Ben would lose himself just looking at Tai, admiring more than his objective beauty, letting it stir him and wishing it could be all his. The way Tai seemed to care about him, and how it was totally lost on Ben because he had never done anything to warrant that, and he couldn’t bear the thought that it was nothing particular to him. How lately, when he touched himself alone in his hut at night, always in the dark, he struggled not to think about Tai, abstractly and then less abstractly, in lines and color, muscle and sweat, sound and smell, and how he could never, ever, let him know that.
Nothing good, nothing good. Ben was so, hopelessly, selfish.
The ache got worse until it was a tight, white-hot ball behind his eyes. Ben laid there curled up on the grass with his cheek pressed into the cool mud, waiting, wanting. When it got like this it meant the end was close. It would be worse next time, until he answered, but for now he would have his mind and the horrible secrets that were his alone.
“Ben?”
The grass rustled. Tai’s voice, Tai’s footfalls. The headache ceased. Ben lay very still, holding his breath. Trying to hide was hopeless, but he entertained the illusion that he could.
Tai stopped near his head and nudged him with a foot. “Hey.”
Eyes still closed, Ben asked, “How long have I been out here?”
“Twenty years. We’re all Jedi Masters now. Hennix is looking for a padawan, if you’re interested.”
“Tell him I’m saving myself for Voe.”
Tai gave a burst of laughter, then dropped into the grass beside Ben. “It’s only been thirty minutes. I went to your hut, then I checked the beach. Nice enough hike, but I should’ve known you’d come here.”
“We both know you could’ve felt me.”
“Suppose so.” Tai’s voice seemed to shrug. “You needed some time to yourself. I thought.”
Ben braced himself, expelled a long breath, and sat up. “Well, you were right. So. Thanks for that.”
“How’s the headache?”
“Gone, now.”
“Good.”
Tai reached toward Ben and brushed a hand over his cheek. It was so casual and almost tender a gesture that Ben wasn’t sure what to make of it—until he saw the mud on Tai’s fingers and felt the remnants drying on his own skin. His face must have been filthy. He scrubbed the rest away with his knuckles.
They were quiet for a while. That was one of the nice things about Tai. As much as he liked to ask questions (infuriating, uncomfortable ones) and share pieces of himself (which Ben never asked for but desperately prized when they were foisted upon him), Tai also understood the value of waiting in silence. He was a person Ben could share solitude with. People like that were rare.
“If . . .” Tai began, still in that careful tone he’d had in Hennix’s hut. Ben bristled, then tried not to. “If I made you feel like you had to be there tonight, even though you didn’t want to, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t. I wanted to go. I’m glad you asked me.”
Tai made a dubious sound. “Seriously?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. It’s fine. I went because I decided to go.” Because you were there. Ben sniffed and pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “It wasn’t that bad. It was . . . fun.”
“Hmm.”
“Parts of it.”
“Sure.”
“Ten percent.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Another silence, this one far less comfortable. Tai was nervous. Ben couldn’t remember Tai ever being nervous. It was weirdly reassuring.
“Ben?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t feel bad about the whole . . . lightsaber thing,” Tai said quietly. “None of it meant anything anyway. It was just a game, right?”
How jarring to hear Tai, for once, speak like he was trying to convince himself of something he didn’t believe. Ben’s stomach flopped, and his throat squeezed as if to keep the words in. He forced them out. “It’s not, though.”
“What?”
“It’s— It isn’t— It wasn’t just a game. I—” Oh, this was coming out terribly. It shouldn’t have been coming out at all. He spoke through gritted teeth as if angry. What the fuck was wrong with him tonight? “It meant something. It didn’t . . . don’t say it didn’t mean anything. Why do you think I—”
The pebbles under his palms trembled. He couldn’t finish. It all sounded so stupid, like he was blaming Tai when Ben was the one who had frozen, because he was afraid of finding out his feelings—the ones he’d spent the better part of a year pretending didn’t exist and finding every other possible explanation for—weren’t reciprocated. In the worst possible way, in front of everyone.
Because they would have known. Once Ben cracked, he was a flood.
Tai was just staring at him, his face a war of emotions. He was so close. Right there.
“Why do I think you what?” Tai asked.
A beat passed. Ben tipped forward, and he pressed his mouth to Tai’s, and a moment later it occurred to him that he’d made the decision to kiss Tai after all. He was kissing Tai. That alone should have been unbelievable, but then Tai kissed him back. For a rush of seconds, Ben felt worlds better. It was astounding to want someone else and not question why or how, to give in to something he’d never expected to feel. To give in at all.
Tai’s hands came to Ben’s shoulders, and he gave a low hum against Ben’s lips, and Ben fisted a hand into the front of Tai’s damp shirt to pull him closer still. Tai’s lips were dry, and his mouth tasted vaguely like bitter locap and that Force-forsaken whiskey, but Ben didn’t really care about any of it. He felt good, and happy. His body was flush with warmth; his fingers and toes began to buzz with unspent energy.
And then he hit the wall.
He shouldn’t be doing this. Not with Tai, or anyone. Where was it going to lead, anyway? Tai always said he knew Ben, really knew him. Tai was wrong. There was so much he did not and could not know about Ben.
Ben pulled away, furious with himself. “Sorry.”
Tai licked his lips, then pressed them together. “Why?”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You . . . could’ve asked first, sure.”
“At all, I mean.”
Some crickets began to chirp creakily. “Don’t. Don’t apologize,” Tai said. “It was nice.”
Ben raised his eyebrows. ‘Nice’ was not a word that had ever been ascribed to anything he’d done.
“Was it.”
“Yes. I—” Tai faltered. Doubt darkened his bright eyes. “Oh. Did you . . . not think it was?”
“I . . .” Stars, what was happening ? “Yeah. Nice. It. Well.”
Brilliant, stunning, articulate. Ben’s mouth didn’t want to make words. It wanted to kiss Tai again, the right way, whatever the right way was. But Ben didn’t think he could handle what his body was going to want— what it already wanted —if he kept going. It would lead to more awkward apologies, then. Instead he found the words he’d been unable to grasp before.
“I couldn’t sit there and kiss you,” Ben said, “as part of a game. Like it . . . wouldn’t mean anything. Not if it’s with you. It would have.”
Tai sat back a bit, sensing that if they did this again, it wouldn’t be right now. He stretched his legs out, rubbed a hand over his bald head, and squinted at the layer of glittering glass residue on his palm. That done, he looked intently at Ben. “You could have told me. You should have.”
“I didn’t know. Or I did, but I’d never . . .” Ben frowned. “This is new for me. All of it. Feeling this way. Wanting to . . .”
“With me.”
“With anyone. Ever.” Ben shook his head. “I don’t. I didn’t.”
“And now you do.”
“I . . . guess.”
“Mm.”
Ben tipped his head back. “I’m not explaining this very well.”
“You’ll get it.”
The clouds were thinning overhead to reveal a meager scatter of stars. Ben would have liked to thin out the same way until he disappeared into vapor. “I’m tired.”
Tai knew better than to push.
“It’s late.” He shifted, then brought a hand to Ben’s shoulder the way he often did, fingers squeezing gently. Except now it felt like it meant something else that Ben had never noticed before. “We can talk about it later. Tomorrow. Or whenever. We should, if you want.”
“I want to,” Ben said, because, just then, he did.
“I’m so happy to hear you say that.” A sly look crept over Tai’s face. “You never want to talk.”
Ben huffed a laugh that made him ache all over.
Tai leaned in to press his forehead to the back of Ben’s head. There was a smile in his voice when he said, “Goodnight then, Ben.”
“Goodnight, Tai.”