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"It's been a while since we were out here together," Zeb said quietly, reaching an arm up to help Kallus settle down onto the ground with him. It had been a long while, the Ghost was up to her own usual antics and the freshly bestowed Glimmer was starting to get up to her own. He’d been away from base for some time, and he was tired. From the deep set of his shoulders, Zeb was tired too. Kallus sunk down and let Zeb tug him into place without complaint. Zeb settled him under his arm, lounging them against a felled tree. Not the best place for a stiff-legged human, but good nonetheless.
Kallus watched the warm Yavin winds dart through the trees at the edge of the hidden clearing, tangling the jungle vines like the thoughts in his mind. Kallus leaned into Zeb and inhaled slowly. He should be comfortable, steeped in a moment of relative peace and safety. But as the fur of Zeb's arm tickled the back of his neck, other, often darker thoughts seeped into the moment. He was always questioning if this was too much to ask of the universe. As if in answer, Zeb started rubbing his knuckles down Kallus’s arm.
“Did y’know you rock when you’re worrying?” he asked.
Kallus twisted around to face him, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, more like sway,” Zeb corrected, gently nudging him to demonstrate. “Like a boat, kind of.”
“Really?” Kallus settled back down. He wondered what Zeb saw in his mind just then. He had a limited knowledge of Lasan, and even then it was just tactical staging. Nothing beautiful. But he knew there were large, deep oceans. Had Zeb dreamed of being a sailor as a child before Kallus doomed him to wander the stars?
“There you go again,” Zeb sighed, “you’re so loud when you think like that.”
“I can think elsewhere,” Kallus offered. The Ghost’s last mission had been a near disaster and Zeb came out here to rest. Kallus wasn’t the type to give himself over to listlessness easily and he didn’t want to impose.
“Never said you had t’leave. I’d take you back to the Ghost with me if I could. Keep ya there,” Zeb wrapped a hand around Kallus’s forearm, anchoring.
Words stuck in Kallus’s throat, choking and sad. He let silence lapse again, allowing Zeb to tuck him tighter against his side, steadying himself by the rumble of Zeb’s breathing. The jungle around them continued its soft chittering, this rare moment stretching out and settling. Kallus was almost loath to break it, but he spoke.
“Why?”
That was all he found the courage to say. It was the longest sentence he could manage without running out of room in his brain. There had been months of meetings just like this out in the jungle, mostly sparring, sometimes not. They had dozens of comm calls, slowly sent, ping by ping, with excruciating care. There were kisses and meals and a terrifying fondness he still couldn’t understand.
“Why what?”
“Zeb,” he said flatly, “I am not a good man.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You rebels are good men.”
“Are we?” Zeb asked. “You’ve known more rebels than me. And you’re one, too. In case you hadn't noticed,” Zeb tugged on his jacket.
“That doesn’t answer why,” Kallus dodged.
“Sometimes there’s no answer, Kal. Sometimes things just are, y’know?”
“Things never just happen. There’s something that explains why you want to be with me. Why you never…”
“Why I never…” Zeb paused, flicking an ear. He looked down at Kallus, taking in the furrowed brow, the anxious turn of his mouth. “Oh stars, don’t say ‘why I never killed ya’,” he frowned.
“I wasn’t going to,” he replied honestly. That hadn’t been what he was thinking, his mind trailing more towards wondering why Garazeb hadn't looked for a better partner, but it was stuck in his mind now. “You should have, on Bahryn,” Kallus said, turning to look blankly into the space between two large redwood trees. He felt a harsh chill that wasn’t there. He felt the heat of a lightsaber in a closed office. He heard the high whine of disruptor fire.
“Hm. That’s what the moon’s called?” Zeb mused, purposefully oblivious, running a claw through Kallus’s hair just to make him shiver. He sighed when Kallus didn’t take his bait. “You can’t change the past.”
Kallus closed his eyes. “I know.”
“I can’t change it either.”
Of course he couldn’t. No one could change the past and there was damn little you could do to change the future. That seemed to be the point of his life, such as it was.
“Kallus?”
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
He did as he was asked, peeling away from Zeb’s side to be pulled into his lap. The men were silent, speaking with their eyes. It wasn’t a conversation either wholly understood, given that they couldn’t read each other’s minds. But all the same, Kallus searched the wide arc of Zeb’s eyes, finding them as warm as the surrounding jungle, soft at the edges.
Zeb held his gaze, unblinking. Kallus’s eyes were always fascinating to him. Most human eyes were, with their kaleidoscopic irises blooming in so many colors. The fractured amber of Kallus’s eyes was always hard to grasp, shifting like sand. Joy and happiness were chased by worry and fear; and the fire that burned picked its fuel from a deep well of anger. Zeb reached up to brush a thumb across the dark bags under Kallus’s eye, claw carefully retracted.
“I hate it when you do that,” Kallus frowned, flinching a little.
“What?” Zeb asked, hesitantly pulling the hand away from his face.
“Not that," Kallus said, "but staring for so long. It makes me nervous.”
“Think I’ll stare long enough to find something you don’t want me to see?”
Yes, actually. Zeb had a nasty little habit of coming very close to finding the more unseemly things.
“Like a Jedi mind reader?” Kallus scoffed instead of admitting it.
Zeb ignored the deflection. “You forget that I know you.”
“You know me,” he echoed. Zeb did not know him, would never know more than what Kallus allowed to float to the surface of his psyche. There was an entire man buried deep under his skin. Sometimes that man wasn’t a man at all, sometimes it was merely a boy, sometimes only the idea of a being. Kallus presented Zeb with a shallow cup, hoping it would be enough for him to drink his fill and be pleased or disgusted, sated either way.
Zeb reached out to pull Kallus’s face in close. “I know your head’s gone loud again.”
“You’re very good at knowing that,” he conceded.
“Course I am,” Zeb smiled, “I know you real well, and I lo—”
Zeb was cut off by a sharp glare. “No.”
“You’ll let me say it one day,” Zeb protested, ears drooping. Kallus shook his head.
“Not yet.”
Zeb rolled his eyes like Kallus’s reticence was just a bout of antics and not genuine. It was better this way, even if it meant only having things in half measures. Kallus knew not to settle deeply in anyone. Zeb would realize this, too, after the war. In the present, he shook his head, huffed a laugh, and leaned in closer.
“Can I kiss you at least?”
Kallus hummed and accepted the kiss, selfish man that he was. Their mouths slotted imperfectly. Zeb’s hands were too big around Kallus’s shoulders. Kallus’s nose was odd to maneuver.
They pulled apart and rested their foreheads together.
“You gonna ask me ‘why,’ again?” Zeb asked, pressing a thumb between Kallus’s shoulder blades.
“No,” he decided.
“Good, ‘cause I don’t have an answer,” he grinned and reached for another kiss. Kallus pressed his tongue into Zeb’s mouth and held him tightly, thighs tense.
“I ain’t going nowhere,” Zeb mumbled into his mouth, a hand coming to hold him down.
“Not yet,” Kallus repeated.
“Not ever.”