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A figure in the orange flight suit of the Resistance was standing completely still in the hangar, head tilted up to stare at the Falcon as it landed. Pilots, engineers and astromechs hurried along the pedestrian lanes, everyone bent to their tasks. Sure, a few people paused to look at the legendary ship - bucket of bolts or not - but this particular person hadn’t moved since Rey was close enough to see her.
“Chewie, do you know who that is?”
“Rrrrrrharnghrrr.”
“I don’t, either.” She set the ship down with a single, gentle shudder, and grinned.
It had been a pretty good landing, even if Rey had to say so herself - Chewbacca was never happy with her landings and usually said so - and even if the sublight engines were venting a weird green smoke in little puffs that had absolutely no business coming from anything on her (admittedly incomplete) mental schematic. Which meant that either the engines had developed entirely new problems or that there was yet another modification back there that Chewbacca hadn't told her about yet.
With the Falcon , one was about as likely as the other. Maybe the pilot in the flight suit was waiting for the old freighter to explode - running away would have been a more practical response, but people were strange that way.
The pilot reached up and took off her helmet, spilling a few fine strands of brown hair out of her practical twist in the process, and then waved at the cockpit of the Falcon. So probably not waiting for an explosion, then.
Rey snorted in amusement and waved back, a single sweep of her hand, and then finished the business of putting the Falcon to bed.
“Any idea what caused the green smoke?”
“Kkrrraagnrr.” Chewie looked simultaneously pensive and slightly offended. Maybe her suspicions were less well-hidden than she’d thought.
“No, of course you know it better than anyone. It just worried me because I didn’t think there was anything on any kind of ship to make smoke that color.”
“Aahrrrn.” There was already a toolbox in Chewie’s hand as he climbed down the ramp, and he was climbing the hull before Rey even had her staff in hand. Once she did, she realized she was smiling again, and it stayed on her face as she strode out into the landing bay.
The pilot was still there, though she at least had struck up a conversation with Chewie and wasn’t just standing there like a statue. Flight suits had a way of erasing most of the lines of someone’s body, but she was a trim woman an inch or so shorter than Rey and she talked with her hands in spite of juggling her helmet. For someone who’d stared at the Falcon, she certainly didn’t seem particularly awed by Chewbacca - usually (in Rey’s admittedly limited experience) the two went together.
“Have you thought about installing the new engines off the YT-2100? Better start-up time, more power to play with, and they’d fit in the same housing with a little ...”
“RAWWR!”
“Okay, okay! It was just a suggestion. If it works for you, it works for you.” And then, maybe because Chewie was still up on the hull or maybe because the pilot was a crazy person, she laughed. It really shouldn’t have sounded so nice - it made Rey think of the wind through the trees on Takodana.
Rey had been told that it wasn’t polite to just stare at people until they blurted out information or sidled away. She supposed that it was probably a good idea to at least try to be polite to a Resistance pilot, crazy or not.
“Hello. I’m Rey. You’ve met Chewbacca?”
“A couple of times, but I was younger then. I’m not sure if he’d remember me.” Since she didn’t look much more than Rey’s own age, that might or might not have been a joke. Sometimes it was hard to tell. The smile was as nice as the laughter, though, and the pilot held out a gloved hand. “Syal. I’m new with Red Squadron, but I already know that the Commander and his friend won’t shut up about you. I guess the Falcon ’s in good hands.”
Under the glove were slim, strong fingers. Rey’s face felt strangely warm.
“Thanks.” She realized she was still holding Syal’s hand and let it go. “So was it just the smoke that got your attention, or...”
“The ship, actually. My dad told me stories about her for years when I was growing up, and it’s only the third or fourth time I’ve actually seen her in person. Hard to believe she’s still flying, after everything she’s been through, but I guess you could say the same thing about the Resistance.” The smile didn’t go away as readily as the hand contact had. Neither did the heat in her face. “Have you eaten? The food’s not much, but it’s hot and I’m coming off a patrol.”
Rey hesitated. She had only just gotten comfortable eating with Chewie, Finn and Poe. The mess hall and its dozens of people was almost always too much for her to do anything but sit in stony silence, focused only on her meal.
“Well, I...”
“RrrrrHHHHRRR.” Chewbacca said, gesturing suggestively with his eyebrows.
“Mind your own business up there!” Syal shouted, smile splitting into an enormous grin. “Ignore him. Wookies are terrible meddlers. But if you wanted to do me a favor, I could grab us something from the mess and we could eat on the Falcon. It’d only fulfil every childhood fantasy I ever had that didn’t involve an X-wing.”
“Hrrrffh,” muttered Chewie. Rey glared at him, even as she felt her smile widen and the tension ease from her shoulders.
“I’d like that. No fish, please.”
“You had a bad experience with fish?” Syal asked, eyes twinkling.
Rey shook her head. “It doesn’t taste like food to me. I grew up on a desert planet.”
“I’ll remember that. ‘No fish.’” Syal mimed writing it in an imaginary datapad, then winked. “I’ll go see what I can do.”
The flight suit didn’t do as much to cover things up when you were looking at someone from behind. Rey’d noticed that before when it was Poe wearing it, but not as much as she did now.
Chewie laughed, which sounded a lot like a malfunction in the power converters.
Just this once, Rey didn’t tell him to shut up.
“.... So we come around and sound off - nobody’s taken much damage from taking out the patrol - and then a Star Destroyer comes swinging around the horizon of the planet. One of the old Imperial models, but still enough to make your heart jump. And Commander Dameron says ‘Well, I guess we won’t be stopping off for take-out after all.’” Syal, out of her flight gear but still in the bright orange jumpsuit, finished the last of her bottle of ale and grinned. “Testor gives it a beat. ‘You’re just saying that because it’s your turn to buy. It’s just one Star Destroyer - how bad could it be?’ Then the second one comes around the planet, right over the pole, and starts dumping TIES. The Commander doesn’t even give her a moment before he’s back on the com. ‘You had to say something, didn’t you?’”
Syal’s impression of Poe’s exasperated tone was perfect. Rey had to suppress a giggle into something more like a snicker. Neither Poe or Chewie would let her live down a giggle. It must have slipped out a little, though, because Syal’s smile turned immensely satisfied. “You should laugh more. You don’t seem like you get enough chances to laugh. My uncle Wes says having a good time is the only way you know you’re actually alive, so you have to make time for it.”
Rey felt a flutter in her chest. “Well, if your Uncle Wes says so.” She smirked. “Let’s have a race.”
“You’re on. Speeders? Starfighters? Anything except the Falcon - if you’re going to pick that, I’ll just concede up front. Either you’ll win and it’ll be no surprise to anyone or I’ll win and then Chewie will feel obligated to tear my arms off to defend her honor. I like my arms.”
Rey, thankfully privately, agreed.
“Speeder bikes. Matching.” She was grinning now. “To the lake, three laps, and back.”
“Done. I’ll pull two from the pool. We’ll call it a training exercise.” Syal bounced to her feet, barely pausing to scoop up the plates from the mess and dump them in the cleaning rack on her way to the gantry. “What do I get if I win?” she called over her shoulder.
Rey paused, remembered the bottle of Kashyyykan spirits she’d been saving for a special occasion, and thought it would probably get her off the hook with Chewie. “You can fly the Falcon to our next muster point.”
The way Syal’s whoop of delight carried back up the ramp, they must have been able to hear it clear across the hangar. Rey felt her face grinning again.
It took Rey half the length of the hangar to bring her speeder to a full stop, but that was all right - she’d probably have taken it for a couple of victory laps if it’d stopped any easier. Syal was only half a meter back through the door, but she spun the bike to the side and tilted it in a way that used the angled repulsors like a friction surface to stop (a trick Rey’d have to remember for next time) and wound up angling in at the other side of the speeder pool - she had to jog the distance between them before she could talk without shouting.
“You have got to teach me that jump trick you used on the second lap,” Syal informed her, almost laughing with sheer excitement. “It was beautiful! I didn’t think you could make a speeder bike do that without blowing the gyros entirely.”
“You have to cut the stabilizers at the right moment,” Rey explained, setting the borrowed helmet back on the rack. “Can’t blow something that isn’t on.”
“I think you’re my kind of crazy.” Syal racked her helmet next to Rey’s and grinned, throwing an arm over her and squeezing a moment before she let go. “We’ll do that again?”
Rey wished she hadn’t let her arm fall away but smiled anyway. “Sure. But only when we can afford to replace the power cells.” Speeder bikes, luckily, didn’t need that much, but she’d only had an actual income a very short while.
“My treat,” Syal insisted, her smile softening into something that did strange things in Rey’s chest as they walked back in the vague direction of the Falcon , more inertia to it than purpose. “I guess I’d better pay up, hadn’t I?”
Rey stopped walking. She hadn’t even asked about her winnings beforehand. It was entirely unlike her to ignore half a deal before she agreed to it.
“Oh?” She tried to keep her voice casually teasing. “Something equivalent to a flight in the Falcon, of course.”
“I don’t think I have anything like that, but how about the rarest thing I have instead?” Syal’s voice stayed light and teasing as she doubled back to stand in front of Rey, a hand on her hip and her eyes dancing. “That seems fair.”
Poe or maybe even Finn would have had an appropriately light-hearted yet funny reply to that, but the words were too close to Rey’s bones. She felt the grin slide off and stilled, feeling her face open distressingly, but she couldn’t bring herself to move or laugh or do anything but look down into Syal’s blue eyes. The pilot’s smile softened, a strange sort of gentleness that didn’t seem like it ought to belong in a woman who flew starfighters into battle; Syal peeled the flight gloves off her hands, shoved them into her pockets, then leaned up and cupped Rey’s face in those almost delicate fingers. Held her eyes another moment, close enough that they were sharing breath, and stroked her fingertips over the back of Rey’s jaw.
Kissed her.
If Syal’s laugh was the wind in the trees, her kiss was seeing the green for the first time - soft and lush and alive and a whole state of being she’d never dreamed existed. She knew she should probably be doing something - that was the impression she’d gotten, anyway, that people liked to be kissed back - but all she could do was reflexively wrap her arms around Syal’s waist and hold on.
It probably only lasted a few seconds. Rey felt like she’d been running for an hour.
“Oh,” she breathed out, almost into Syal’s mouth.
“That was the idea,” Syal whispered, as if agreeing with something Rey hadn’t heard herself say. “Again? Since we don’t have to pay for power cells for that.”
Rey inhaled and leaned down. “Show me how.”
“All right...” Syal’s fingertips moved gently against her jaw, shifting her head a fraction to the side, and she could feel how that fit the way Syal’s head tilted to offer her own mouth. “There’s your angle. Then you just ease in until you make contact. Easier than docking.”
Rey’s laugh bubbled through them both. She pulled back, tried again. “Was that right?”
“It was good.” Syal’s eyes almost gleamed with delight, and her tongue very slowly traced her lips. “You can be a little less gentle next time. But if we’re going to keep practicing, we ought to stop blocking traffic. Got a bunk?”
Startled into her full height, Rey looked around frantically. No one else was in the hangar. Her terror melted away and she glared at Syal.
“Not funny.”
“It was a little funny,” Syal laughed, leaning up and kissing Rey’s mouth again lingeringly. “And it won’t stay empty long. The Falcon ?”
Rey nodded. She hadn’t even seen the garrison bunk she’d been assigned. She was still for a moment, and then she decided that maybe Finn had the right idea and took Syal’s hand.
Chewie gave them a dry look as they walked up the ramp together.
“Tshhhaaarr arrr,” he elaborated, and grabbed his own go-bag.
“Don’t stay out too late!” Syal called after him as he left. She waited until he was (probably) most of the way down the ramp and then pulled Rey’s arm around her waist with a lithe little twist of her wrist and hips. “We’re definitely moving up into my teenage fantasy list now.”
“Um. I hope that fantasy involves a lot of rookie mistakes,” Rey laughed nervously. She trailed the fingers of her other hand through Syal’s hair. It was so fine that practically slid over her knuckles.
“Just think of me as your first flight simulator,” Syal murmured, leaning up and pressing a kiss under her jaw. “I’ll walk you through it.”
“My flight sim and you do not belong in the same category,” she said. “I’ll just think of you as you.”