Work Text:
Kleya had many talents she prided herself on. Sleuthing. Murder. Pissing off Vel Sartha.
Romance was not one of them.
A holiday devoted to love was not in her comfort zone or her skillset. This seemed like the kind of thing that was important to Mon, though, therefore she had to get it right. She was constantly aware of the risk that she’d mess this whole relationship up; Kleya had no idea what she was doing, most days, whereas Mon had two decades of marriage behind her. An unhappy marriage - which made it all the more important that Kleya did everything perfectly, so Mon knew how valued she was.
Unfortunately she was off to a rough start. She’d only found out about it all from Cassian, who informed her he’d be off-planet and uncontactable for a few days, so he wouldn’t be available for any ‘errands’.
“Going away for Nuv Day.”
“I don’t care,” Kleya said, re-examining some holocharts on her console. “Wait. What?”
She looked up at Cassian.
“Nuv Day,” he repeated. “You’ve never heard of it?”
Kleya frowned. “Nuv. That’s Ewok.”
“Sure, it’s from Endor, but now it’s everywhere,” Cassian said, with an amused laugh.
He eyed her curiously.
“You’ve never seen all the stuff around?” he asked, gesturing vaguely with his hands.
Kleya was caught between her desire to avoid all unnecessary conversation, her need to save face, and the nagging feeling she was missing something important.
“I didn’t realise people were taking trips around the galaxy for it now,” she said dryly.
Cassian shrugged, a coy smile on his face. “It’s romantic.”
Fuck.
Kleya paced her workroom for a while after he’d left, chewing over what the romantic requirements could be for Nuv Day.
She tried to recall that wedding on Endor just after the battle – there must have been some romantic traditions there? But all she could remember were a lot of swirling vines around the couple, her yearning after Mon, and getting very drunk with Lando.
The holonet was little more use, beyond confirming her suspicions that the Ewoks’ Festival of Love hadn’t become a galaxy-wide phenomenon until after the Empire fell. Kleya held no information on the holiday, then, which was the most infuriating thing she could experience.
Well, one of. Sharing bases with Rebel Alliance members for four years had done something to change that.
Kleya stood by her console, tapping her stylus. Absent personal knowledge or information in her databanks, her next tool would be either observation, or seeking intel from a trusted source. Observation was obviously out of the question, leaving the mortifying prospect of having to reveal both her lack of knowledge and her intentions to someone she knew.
The list of people she trusted to keep this secret and also give reliable romantic advice was very short. Cassian’s personal life was a disaster she tried her hardest to keep away from, so that was a dead end. Cinta always gave an air of confidence in her relationship, as she did with everything, but they were too uncomfortably similar to ever have become close, especially for conservations like these. Hera could be trusted for good advice, and she knew Mon very well, but she was off-planet and this wasn’t the kind of thing Kleya could face asking via holocall.
That only left one, dreaded option.
“Good afternoon Vel.”
Kleya smiled as pleasantly as she could, standing in the doorway of Vel’s work office. It was a cramp, utilitarian thing in the heart of New Republic military ops, with the chaos of pilots, officers, and techs all bustling down the corridor. She’d banked correctly on not being overheard.
“What do you want?” Vel asked, eyeing her sceptically from the corner of the room, holopad in hand and an enormous logistics chart on the wall.
“I am going to ask you to keep a large secret for me,” Kleya said sweetly, closing the office door behind her with a smile still plastered on her face. “In return, I will owe you one favour, no questions asked, to be redeemed within the next two years.”
“That must be a very large secret,” Vel said, putting her holopad down.
Kleya raised an eyebrow expectantly and Vel crossed her arms.
“Four years,” Vel said.
“Three.”
“Done.”
Kleya exhaled sharply through her nostrils.
“What do you usually do for Nuv Day?”
Vel’s expression did something interesting.
“The Ewok holiday?” she asked, a little too casually.
“Yes.”
Vel shrugged, glancing away bashfully. “Depends if we’re both on-planet,” she said, fiddling with something on her desk. “Cinta, uhm.” She cleared her throat. “She usually gets me flowers.”
Vel’s cheeks were now quite pink, which wasn’t reassuring. If the day managed to make that much of an impact on her, Kleya had a high bar to reach.
“What about taking a trip somewhere?”
“No, not really… although we’ve been to some nice restaurants.”
Kleya nodded. “Right.”
“This isn’t something to stress about,” Vel told her gently.
It cracked something a little in Kleya, who sighed and ran a hand through her hair.
“I don’t know what to do for Mon. I mean, I can’t take her to a restaurant, can I?” she said in frustration.
“Well, what about dinner in?”
“At home?”
“Yeah. You can cook something fancy. Get some champagne, some candles," Vel suggested.
“Okay. Restaurant dinner but at home,” Kleya said, nodding. “I’ve got it. And then should I give something to her?”
“If you want.”
“Vel, I think we’ve established that I want to cover all bases here.”
“How do you approach romance like it’s an ops mission?”
“Your cousin doesn’t seem to have any problems.”
“To my constant amazement,” Vel said. “Yes, you can give her gifts. Cards, chocolates, flowers. Take your pick.”
Kleya left with the beginnings of a plan and the feeling that her human intel, although it had come at a high cost, would guide her in the right direction.
Gifts, cards, chocolates, flowers. She repeated it to herself like a mantra as she walked back through the city to the senate building. What gift could she get Mon at such short notice? She’d taken months to find something perfect for her Life Day. Nothing could ever come close to what they’d had at the shop, and that was the problem, wasn’t it? Kleya’s resources looked much like she did; unrecognisable from what they were before Yavin, rebuilding themselves in a world Kleya had never expected to see.
Gifts were out.
Kleya couldn’t stomach a card. That meant writing down something sincere and meaningful, which was agonising to the point of being impossible. Perhaps it was a lifetime of aversion to putting valuable information in writing, or the mortifying prospect of watching Mon read her attempts right in front of her. Words were Mon’s arsenal; whether in speeches that rocked the senate or laws that laid foundations of the New Republic.
Chocolates had potential, although Kleya doubted there was enough time to run them through poison control. That left flowers, which held a lot more margin for error, but could be obtained and verified in enough time; their entire apartment building had toxicity sensors in the air vents. She’d overseen the installation.
Kleya slipped in a side entrance to the senate, was satisfied to find she still hit security guards, and made her way undisturbed up to Mon’s offices. More security, who waved her past this time. Concerning; they should know better than to assume she wasn’t an impersonator. She’d speak to the head of Mon’s detail later.
Erskin was installed at the large desk in front of Mon’s offices. The Chandrilan double doors were half open, and Kleya could hear Mon’s lyrical and unyielding voice from her meeting room inside. She gestured sharply at Erskin from behind a pillar, holding her finger to her lips, although he knew better from her expression than to call her name.
“What’s going on?” he asked in a whisper when he came over.
“Mon might have overheard your commlink,” Kleya said, by way of greeting. “I need some time in her schedule tomorrow evening.”
Erskin, to his credit, only twitched an eyebrow in response.
“I can be flexible,” Kleya added. “She’s supposed to be home by 8pm on weekdays anyway. Can you bring it forward an hour?”
“I’ll move some things around,” he said, pulling out his datapad. “Although next time, let me know you have Nuv Day plans a little earlier.”
Kleya opened her mouth to respond, her cheeks flaming, but Erskin just smirked.
“Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.”
By late afternoon the next day, Kleya was cursing Cassian for ever having opened his mouth. She didn’t usually believe in blissful ignorance, but this would be an exception. Anything would be better than the stress of organising the perfect romantic dinner.
Vel’s suggestion of cooking dinner was a useful one up until the point Kleya tried to actually cook. She was good with recipes, when she was interested in trying them; they were just instructions to decode. What she hadn’t gambled on was the pressure of the event reducing her slightly-above-average cooking skills to something served up in the Yavin mess.
Kleya cut this part of the operation ninety minutes in, when she’d failed to get yeast to rise for the third time and sliced her finger on a vegetable knife. She switched to her first back-up plan, which was ordering food from a trusted chef, but the time it took to locate someone both available and with sufficient security protocols ate into her schedule.
There was nowhere on Coruscant she could find high-quality flowers – at least natural ones – which meant a trip to the nearby moon of Hesperidium. Then there was choosing the flowers, which had her staring at walls of roses in silent horror, rocking slightly on her toes, until one of the florists jumped in to assist.
“Do you know what kind of flowers she likes?”
“No. Expensive ones.”
That got a laugh, and Kleya shot her a grateful smile.
“This is my first time buying flowers for someone like this. I have no idea what I’m doing,” she admitted.
“No one does. Unless they’re supposed to,” the florist told her.
“Well, I think I’m supposed to,” Kleya said, scoffing at herself. “You’d expect that of someone’s partner.”
“You’d expect that of someone trained in floristry. Which is why you’re here, asking for my help.”
Kleya had no response to that, but she made it back to their apartment with a large bouquet of flowers that somehow perfectly matched Mon’s essence, and arranged them into a vase just as the sun eked towards the horizon.
Their dining table was elegant enough – there were some luxuries Mon had been accustomed to that she allowed herself to pick back up, and Kleya was happy to enjoy them – but she added some new candles and placed a single flower stem on each plate. Then took the stems off, put them back in the vase, and adjusted the candles again. It would have to do.
She had just enough time to get herself ready before food was being delivered. This wasn’t something Vel had mentioned, but Kleya took it as a given; and besides, she loved the way she could drive Mon crazy by wearing just the right thing. After a lifetime of being meticulously invisible, she was the object of desire of someone she couldn’t admire more.
The seconds ticked by as Kleya nervously paced their apartment. The meal was being kept warm in a stasis box, the champagne was in the cooling unit, the candles were flickering under the dimmed lights.
Still, Kleya wasn’t prepared for Mon’s shock that morphed into disbelief that was overcome by joy when she walked in the door.
“Kleya…” she began, taking in the scene before finally landing her eyes on Kleya herself. Mon stopped, gaze darkening in a way that sent heat rushing down through Kleya’s body. Screw dinner.
“Goodness,” Mon whispered.
Kleya opened her mouth, then glanced down at her dress, smoothing invisible creases.
“Happy Nuv Day,” she offered, when she braved Mon’s eyes again. They were watching her with such a sweet expression it made Kleya want to melt. Possibly simply as a way to escape.
“The festival of love!” Mon laughed, walking towards her. “Oh Kleya, I really don’t know what to say.”
She slid her arms around Kleya’s waist, smiling down at her before pressing a warm kiss against her mouth. It morphed easily into something else, leaving Kleya a little breathless when they pulled apart.
“You cooked?” Mon asked.
“Hmm?”
“There’s food.”
“Oh, yes,” Kleya said, shaking her head slightly.
Mon watched her with a smirk and softly tucked her hair behind her ear.
“I’m suddenly very hungry.”
“Well… the food will keep,” Kleya said, running her hands up Mon’s back.
Mon laughed, leaning in to kiss her.
“But so will this dress,” she said against her lips. “And I’d really quite like to admire it for longer.”
Kleya acquiesced, reluctantly, and led Mon over to the table with a smile.
“These are gorgeous,” Mon said, running a long finger delicately over the flowers. “Where did you find them? They’re beautifully put together.”
“I went to a florist.”
“You did?” Mon said, her smile widening with surprise. “Kleya, you really… well, I don’t know what to say…”
She hoped that was a good thing, and by the time they were through their first course and half the champagne, Kleya felt more confident that it was.
“You constantly surprise me,” Mon said, running a hand over hers.
Kleya watched her with a smile, taking another sip of champagne.
“I never thought this would be something you’d care to celebrate,” Mon continued.
Kleya’s heart jumped nervously. She put her glass down and turned her fingers to entwine with Mon’s.
“I know I’m not always good at this – or at least I’m still new to it—”
“Kleya—”
“You were married for over twenty years, I think you can let me have that one.”
Mon gave a small sigh, rubbing a thumb against her hand.
“This seemed like something that would be important to you. It’s… romantic. Other couples… well I don’t want you to miss out.”
“Miss out?” Mon asked softly.
“On what you should have.”
“Kleya…” Mon began. “It’s enough just… there’s no expectations…” She pressed her lips together, mulling over her words. “I love who you are. What you do. That will always be enough.”
Kleya looked down at her hands, blinking away a sudden urge to cry. Why did that always happen now? God this was horrendous.
“I love all the ways in which you’re romantic,” Mon continued.
“I’m not romantic,” Kleya retorted, attempting a glare to recover her dignity.
“I heard you harangued my head of security today.”
“That’s not romantic.”
“Well it was romantic to me.”
Mon gave her a fond, deeply amused smile.
“You persuaded Vel into giving up her smashball tickets.”
“I enjoy bullying Vel. And smashball.”
“You hate smashball,” Mon reminded her.
“Fine, I hate smashball. What is your point?”
“That I love you,” Mon laughed. “And that you look absolutely incredible in that dress.”
Kleya smiled, shaking her head, then met Mon’s gaze again. There was so much easy love there. Mon did make it so easy, at least the things that could be.
With a squeeze of Mon’s hand, Kleya got up and carefully grabbed their plates.
“These can keep,” she said, with a silent apology to the chef, and took them over to the kitchen’s stasis box.
When she wandered back to Mon, her eyes were locked on Kleya’s.
“I’ve had a very stressful day,” Kleya told her, as she climbed smoothly onto her lap. Her arms slid around her neck, thighs pressed against Mon’s as she hovered just an inch above her.
“And I have a feeling you can help with that.”
Mon’s head tipped back, her lips falling gratifyingly open as Kleya smirked down at her.
“Tell me what you need,” Mon husked, slipping into a moan as Kleya ground down against her.
“You,” Kleya told her. “And whatever you’ve been imagining since you walked through the door.”