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For a moment, Rex stopped breathing. For a moment, involuntarily, his eyes squeezed shut and his breath stuck in his throat as every muscle in his body clenched. He willed himself to draw air in, to open his eyes, to look.
Ahsoka slumped against the dark wall under the body of an inquisitor, red blade searing the skin of her throat. But the other end of the inquisitor’s double-bladed saber now protruded from his back. Ahsoka powered down the saber with a flick of her fingers and threw the body to the ground. She stared down at it, heaving breaths and trembling.
Rex rushed to her, needing to hold her, to press her living form to his. She clutched onto him, steadying her trembling hands by gripping his shirt, her ragged breaths ghosting over his face as they pressed their foreheads together.
The feeling of safety Ahsoka felt with Rex was profound.
“Soka, I thought I lost you,” Rex whispered, a thumb caressing her cheek.
Ahsoka’s grip tightened further and Rex’s stoicism cracked. All the walls he had built around his affection, his desire, his love —well, they’d deteriorated over months of hiding in close quarters, holding each other through grief, weakened by stolen glances, laughing together, unexpected heat as they sparred, quiet talks in the dark—and now they crumpled to nothing.
Ahsoka felt Rex’s surge of feeling with relief and before either was aware of making a choice to move, their lips met with a desperation born of immediate fear and slow-burning longing.
Ahsoka hardly had time to process the way Rex’s lips moved or the way the Force sang before the immediacy of their danger rose again to the surface.
“Rex,” she breathed, willing him to hear everything he meant to her in that one syllable, “we have to leave this planet. Right now.”
Rex nodded. “I know.” He cupped her cheeks and tipped her forehead to his lips, and then, hands clasped tightly, they ran again into the night.