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Jessika’s life gets six times more complicated when Finn’s Jedi friend comes back from training with Luke Skywalker. Before this happens, Jessika’s life is laid out just fine, with being second-in-command, learning new maneuvers that are impractical but look really cool, and making fun of Dameron and Finn, who are too oblivious for their own good.
And then the Millenium Falcon lands one day after training, and out walks the cutest human Jessika has ever seen.
“Is that Rey?” she hisses to Dameron, who just looks at her knowingly as he climbs out of his X-Wing. She immediately gets defensive. “What?! I’m just asking!”
“Seems someone’s caught your eye,” Dameron teases, and Jessika throws her helmet at him as he laughs.
Rey is looking around, a little disoriented, maybe looking for a familiar face. Jessika has a weird urge to go and talk to her, maybe show her around, take her out for lunch, but she doesn’t want to overwhelm her. Hadn't Rey grown up alone on Jakku? She probably wouldn't appreciate Jess running up to her and with her obnoxious and awkward flirting.
BB-8 rolls up to Rey out of nowhere, whirring excitedly. Rey crouches down to talk to the little droid, grinning and even laughing, and--wow. Her laugh is amazing. Jess kind of wants to listen to that laugh forever.
“Hey. Pava!” Dameron is snapping his fingers at her. “You’re staring.”
Jessika’s face flushes, and she hurriedly climbs out of her cockpit, sliding down the ladder in a way that always makes Arana glare at her disapprovingly. "You shut your mouth, Dameron," she warns him, pointing threateningly. With that, she retrieves her helmet from where she’d thrown it, steels herself, and walks towards Rey, ignoring Dameron's cackling from behind her.
Rey looks at Jessika when she hears her approach, and she’s even more intimidating and cute up close, but Jessika just takes a deep breath and smiles. “You’re Rey, right?”
Nodding slowly, Rey straightens up. BB-8 rubs against her ankles like a sleepy cat.
“I’m Jessika, I’m a pilot,” she introduces herself, then remembers the helmet under her arm and winces internally-- real smooth, Pava, you’re a real charmer, aren’t you? Of course you're a pilot. Idiot.-- ”You just looked a little lost. Do you need anything?”
“Do you know where Finn is? I promised I would find him.” And great, she has a cute accent too. She's out to kill Jessika.
For a moment, Jessika is so focused on this that she forgets to answer, but then she hurries to say, “Oh, yeah! Sure, he’s probably in the library, I can show you?”
Rey nods, and follows behind Jessika as they head out of the hangar. BB-8 rolls alongside her, making beeping noises that don’t sound like binary, more like the droid is laughing. With any luck, Rey won't notice that Jessika's a mess.
The next morning at breakfast, Jessika is slumped on the table next to Poe, mumbling things about how Rey is going to be the death of her. Poe is eating, only half-listening, but he laughs occasionally--”Yes, Jess, you did already mention her accent, only five times.”--and steals parts of her breakfast.
“Just ask her out,” Poe says, when Jessika stops for air. "It's not that complicated."
“Okay,” Jessika says into the table, “how well did that work out for you and Finn? Huh?”
Poe stammers, choking on his bite of food, which gives Jessika a bit of satisfaction. Once he's done coughing, he says delicately, “I’m letting him adjust to base first--”
“Uh-huh. Well. I’m letting Rey adjust to base first, too.”
Poe sighs. “You’re the worst.”
“Yeah.” With one last heavy sigh, Jessika sits up. Poe is smiling, having only wanted to rile Jessika up, but he looks tired. Knowing him, he doesn’t want her to point it out, so she files the information away for later. “I’m gonna be late to my class,” she points out reluctantly.
“You teach that class.”
Jessika snorts. “Your point?”
“Maybe if you spent less time talking about how beautiful Rey is--”
“Hey! Hey, hey, old man, have I ever made fun of you for always talking about Finn--?”
“You make fun of me every single day of my life, Pava--”
Jessika smacks him upside the head, and he returns the favor. They dissolve into almost-wrestling, which Jessika wins when she throws Poe’s toast into his face.
“Go to class,” he says cheerfully, wiping butter substitute from his nose. Jessika nods, ruffles Poe’s hair, and leaves the mess hall.
She runs straight into Rey, who startles and looks up at Jessika with half of a smile forming on her face, and Jessika almost melts, her face gets so warm. “Oh, uh, hey!”
“Hello,” Rey says, smiling politely. “I was just going to--get…”
Jessika realizes she’s blocking the entrance to the mess hall in her awful attempt to woo Rey. She practically leaps out of the way in her haste. “Oh! Sorry! Sorry. See you later!”
And then Rey’s gone, and Jessika slaps a hand to her forehead. Nice one! Very impressive with the ladies, as always! But there’s no time to wallow in how bad she is at talking to Rey now. That can, and will, happen in an hour, when her class is over.
It’s now or never, not because this is the last time Jessika has a chance, but because Jessika is never going to get up the courage again. She twists her hands together for a full two minutes, then grimaces and knocks on Rey’s door. Immediately, she regrets it, and is about to turn and run, but the door slides open.
Rey looks a little disheveled, like she’s recently woken up, and she’s eating a piece of some exotic fruit that smells really, really nice. Which means that Rey's mouth would taste like fruit and--wow. Jessika needs to chill. “Hello,” Rey says through a mouthful, which is adorable and utterly unnecessary.
“Hey.” Jessika smiles nervously. “I have most of today off, I was wondering if I could take you flying and show you a nearby system I thought you’d like? Just if you wanted a day off.”
Rey regards her with a sleepy expression, thinking about it. Then her face falls, and Jessika knows what the answer is going to be, already slumping and turning away as Rey says, “I can’t today, I have a meeting, I apologize.”
“No, it’s okay, I’ll see you at dinner,” Jessika tries to shrug it off. Rey has a legitimate excuse, after all, it's not like she has control over how the base is run.
“Some other time?” Rey asks.
“Yeah.” It’s hard not to sound defeated. Jessika's retreating to her room for the day to sulk. "I'm headed on a long mission tomorrow, I'll be back in like two weeks, can we talk then?"
"Of course."
A long beat of silence.
"See you later," Jessika rushes out, and then takes off.
Jessika barely has any energy left by the time she lands her X-Wing and pops the hatch. Her helmet seems impossibly heavy, but she has to take it off and walk all the way back to her bunk before she can go to sleep, so she sluggishly drags the helmet off of her head and then sits there in her seat, staring at the controls with eyes blurry from yawning so much. Two-week-long missions are not her cup of tea, especially not the ones where she has main responsibilities and has to stay up for days on end.
She turns her head a little to see Poe practically leap into Finn’s arms, and snorts to herself. Poe just doesn't want to walk across base to his bunk, so he’d gotten Finn to let him stay in his closet of a room. It’s a good plan, Jessika has to admit. It's times like this that she definitely wishes she had seduced Rey by now and gotten access to her nearby room, but she’ll have to settle for the floor for now. There are alcoves in every hallway, meant for maintenance, but if Jessika can't make it all the way to her room, they'll do for a night.
Slowly, Jessika coaxes herself out of her safety restraints and down the ladder, hands her helmet to the nearest droid, and then promptly decides she’s not going anywhere. She stumbles out of the hangar, chooses the nearest alcove, and then wrestles her flight suit off of herself and balls it up to use as a pillow. Her back’s going to be sore tomorrow, but she can’t bring herself to care.
It feels like seconds later that she’s rudely awoken by someone nudging her shoulder, and she groans at them before turning over. “Go away.”
“You don’t look too comfortable.” It’s someone with a really cute accent, and Jessika curses her luck.
“Joke’s on you,” Jessika mutters, curling up tighter and ignoring how much her back protests.
“Jessika.”
Jessika’s never heard Rey say her name like that before, so full of fond exasperation, and Jessika wishes it hadn’t happened when she was half-asleep and looking like death so that she could appreciate it more.
“Do you want to come use my bed? It’s just across the hall,” Rey offers.
Jessika makes an unintelligible noise in response, partially because she's not fully able to deal with the fact that Rey just invited her into her room, but mostly because she's too exhausted to do much more.
“Alright. Up you come.” Rey’s hands are suddenly pulling Jessika to her feet-- Rey is so strong and cute and Jessika’s literally two seconds from death --and gently guiding Jessika to a door a little ways down the hall.
Jessika stumbles, her eyes still adjusting to the harsh light of the hallway. She's not doing much to support her own weight, mostly leaning on Rey and drifting off as she moves.
“Do you often take to sleeping in the hallway?” Rey asks, vaguely amused.
“Uh.” Jessika can’t think of a witty reply quickly enough.
“I’m sure you don’t mind sharing the bed? I have training tomorrow.”
“Oh, no--that’s. That’s fine.” Hopefully, Jessika’s face isn’t as red as it feels. She turns to see if Rey’s noticed, but instead sees that Rey is suppressing a smug smile. This had been her plan all along. “You sly fox.”
Rey looks at her, mouth turned up on one side. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Jessika's sure that she's dreaming at this point, but she lets Rey guide her forwards anyway.