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Connix doesn't say anything when she finds the crumbling ration bars shoved down Rey's extra pair of boots in their shared locker.
Rey can tell they've been moved -- but nothing's been taken. She doesn't say anything either.
When they told her she'd be sharing a room, the fear had sat heavy in her stomach: the only experience she has with sharing is being stolen from. Even with nothing to lose, she can't shake the anxiety.
Everything she owns -- everything the Resistance has issued to her -- she divvies up between every piece of clothing with pockets, keeps it on her whenever she can.
Kaydel Ko Connix, with her shiny hair and soft hands and round pink cheeks, hardly looks like a threat. Not the sort that Rey's ever met, anyway. Drop her on Jakku and Rey can't imagine she'd last ten minutes.
Still, fifteen years of trusting no one versus a pretty face: Rey had trusted Finn out of sheer adrenaline-fueled panic, and now Finn's laying unconscious on his stomach in a clinic bay, and Rey is having time to wonder if even he is worthy of that trust. She's known Connix longer than she'd known Finn, at this point.
It's the sort of thing she thinks about when she can't sleep at night.
What happens if he wakes up and things aren't like they were before? He came back for her, but even if he doesn't let her down, what if she lets him down? Even worrying about the kind of person he might be is less horrifying to Rey than the alternative: what if he doesn't like the kind of person that she is?
He's the very first person she's ever considered a friend, and just to imagine losing him is like a kick in the ribs.
It's two weeks after Rey takes the empty cot in Connix's room and two days after she finds out Connix knows she's hiding rations. There's a small bag of dried burrfruit tucked into the pocket of Rey's coat, hung over the end of her bed.
Rey turns it over in her hands. She can immediately tell how many portions it would be worth on Jakku. Connix shouldn't have given away something this valuable.
She wonders if there's any way it was a mistake -- if Connix thought it was her own jacket, or... Connix isn't stupid, though. She's one of the general's aides, and Rey has seen the flimsi sheets of numbers and figures she brings back from meetings sometimes, marks over and corrects late into the night.
Like the numbers, this had to be calculated, and Rey feels like she doesn't know how to make the figures make sense.
::
Confrontation, though. Confrontation is a language Rey speaks, and when Connix slides her ID at the maglock door and comes in that night after dinner, Rey is waiting for her.
“Did you put the fruit in my jacket?” She asks.
Connix blinks, and crosses to her bed, sets down an armful of folders and datapads that nearly reaches her chin. “Um, yes? Do you not like burrfruit? I wasn't sure if you had any allergies--”
“I don't know what that is,” Rey says, helplessly, distracted enough to lose her edge.
“Allergies?” Connix wrinkles her nose.
Rey crosses her arms. “I know what allergies are! I've just never had a burrfruit.”
“Oh.” Sitting down on the edge of her bed, Connix folds her hands awkwardly, picking at the edge of one pink-painted nail. “I'm sorry. Um, burrfruit is just… a fruit? I dunno, my mom always packed it in my lunch for a snack, but it keeps for a long time so some people use it as like, a trail mix or for long flights.” She glances across at Rey, and shrugs. “I just thought it might make you feel more comfortable if you had something around. Just in case.”
Rey stares right back at her. Connix knows that Rey already has a stash, but she isn't acknowledging it. The subtlety grates at Rey, but from Connix’s tone that wasn't her intent. Maybe this is what people do: pretend not to notice each other's fear.
And give each other gifts.
Rey thinks of Finn’s leather jacket, and how it used to be Poe’s.
“I don't have anything to give you,” she blurts out, horrified.
Connix’s eyes are as big as twin moons. “What? No, you don't have to give me anything! That's not why I did it.”
“It's how gifts work,” Rey says, just in case Connix thinks she doesn't know that.
“Not always,” Connix says, equally serious. “Sometimes they're just because.”
::
Rey is late to the posted lunch hours but she makes it into the mess hall in time for a plate of hot food anyway, and singles out Connix in the crowd.
She fights her way through the full room to set her plate down opposite Connix’s, and puts a fistful of flowers between them on the table.
“Just because,” she tells her.
Connix’s cheeks go as pink as the buds of the bouquet.