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Finn let out a satisfied sigh and wiped his mouth as a heaping spoonful of a gooey, gold-and-white mass hovered temptingly above his empty plate.
“Another helping of sweet potato casserole, Finn? There’s plenty.”
“No thank you, Colonel Er-, uh, I mean, Colonel Sky-, um, Colonel And-, uh, Ma’am,” he finished awkwardly, blushing at the soft chuckle that sounded at his side. “I’m stuffed. Everything was fantastic.”
“Glad to hear it.” The woman’s hazel eyes twinkled at him from across the table as she put the spoon back into the casserole dish. “And Jyn is fine. Lieutenant Colonel Erso-Andor-Skywalker is more of a mouthful than Luke’s ‘surprise’ corn chowder.”
“And besides, Mum only makes us call her Colonel if we’ve done something wrong,” said Rey, polishing off her second helping of turkey. “Like if Dad leaves his dishes in the sink, or Papa doesn’t clear the garage after he finishes building something.”
“Which happened again yesterday. I thought Mrs. Fortuna was going to call the police. She just can’t get it into her head that Cass is not building a bomb out there.” Jyn looked bemused. “Of course, he doesn’t help matters by chuckling maniacally when she asks why he has detonator caps all over the driveway.”
“That is sort of a good question. What’s Papa doing with detonator caps? I thought he was working on a hovercar prototype?”
“Your granddad was stopping by. Cass likes to leave silly things like that lying around to see if he’ll notice. It’s turned into a sort of game they play.”
Rey chuckled again. “And you said Papa and Granddad didn’t like each other …”
“We didn’t. At least, not at first.”
Colonel Cassian Andor-Skywalker-Erso entered the dining room with Brigadier General Luke Skywalker-Erso-Andor at his side, both of them carrying covered platters.
"What made granddad change his mind?"
“He realized that I shared his appreciation for well-designed incendiary devices,” said Cassian, putting his dish on the table. “So we found common ground.”
“Yeah, you got lucky. Galen never got over thinking my father was an enormous asshole, so he’s still a little standoffish with me.” Luke grinned at Finn. “It’s true that my father was an enormous asshole, but a guy should get a break sometimes, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely, General – uh, Luke.” Finn smiled nervously, remembering the first day of his visit to Rey’s parents’ home and the bearded man catching him in a bear hug and insisting that Finn just call him “Luke.” Finn found it rude to refuse, especially since Luke had made the request while crushing him against his ribcage. Cassian had made it relatively easy for him by telling him he could call him Colonel or Cassian, as he preferred.
“A person should be held accountable only for their own deeds and misdeeds,” said Finn.
Luke gasped theatrically. “Hot damn, you’re a good soldier, son. I haven’t heard that old saw since I was at the Academy.” He gestured to the remains of the Thanksgiving feast that sat on the large table. “A lot better than cadet rations, eh? Hope you saved room for dessert. I made my ‘world famous’ pineapple-pumpkin upside down cheese-coffee cake.”
“World famous because no one else in the world would even attempt to have all that going on in one dish,” said Jyn with a snicker. “And your Papa made the Chocolate Triangle cake you like, honey.”
“I dropped the mold when I was putting it on the plate,” said Cassian glumly. “It’s more like a Chocolate Quadrilateral at this point, but put enough ice cream at one end and you won’t realize the difference.”
Finn looked at his empty plate. “Those both sound really good, but I’m completely full.”
“Me, too,” said Rey. “We’re going to take a walk around the ranch. I want to show Finn the old orchard and the tree you guys planted when we moved up here. Maybe we’ll go down to the lake. By time we get back, we’ll probably have worked up an appetite again.”
Jyn, Cassian, and Luke all traded meaningful glances.
Finn felt suddenly uneasy. It was if the three of them were communicating some message solely through blinks and lifted eyebrows, and he couldn’t help but feel conspicuous.
“Honey, the weather’s a bit bad for a walk,” said Jyn, turning to Rey. “It’s just started to snow.”
“Your mom’s right,” said Luke. “And it’s not the nice, clean, cute white flurries that dance around your face and melt on the tip of your nose and make everything look like a Rockwell painting. It’s that nasty, sleety crap that makes puddles everywhere and turns into ice sheets overnight.”
“Any type of snow is a nuisance, in my view,” said Cassian, shrugging. “But it is getting bad outside, and you’re just getting over a cold, love.”
Finn turned round to look at the large picture window in the living room. They were right. Fat, wet flakes tumbled from a slate grey sky, splattering against the window and making a soggy mess of the landscape.
“Then we’ll just walk down to the orchard.” Rey seemed unperturbed. “It won’t take long. And I wasn’t that sick. It was only a couple of days.” She twined her fingers with Finn’s. “Finn took great care of me. I’m completely fine, now, and we could use the exercise after such a big meal.”
“Well, if you want …” Luke looked unconvinced, then he brightened. “Babe, did you notice we remodeled your old bathroom?”
Rey looked wary of the sudden change in topic, but nodded slowly.
“Yeah, new paint and fixtures. It looks really nice.”
“Not just any new fixtures – a new towel bar, too. Nice and sturdy.” Luke looked at Finn. “You look like a man who’d appreciate a sturdy towel bar, Finn.”
“Um.” Finn wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Sure. Though in the bathrooms on campus, they have hooks, not bars. But, uh, yeah. Towel bars are cool.”
Finn shot Rey a what the hell glance, and saw her shrug slightly in reply.
“Come to think of it, we made some changes to the master bath on the third floor,” said Cassian. “We took out the old vanity and got a bigger one. Much more counter space. A lot of it we don’t even use. So it’s completely empty.”
Luke snapped his fingers. “That’s true! There’s about two or three feet of unused counterspace there. Just … well, complete nothingness. Zero.”
“The bathroom in the basement was just redone, too, come to think of it,” said Jyn, tapping her cheek. “And, you know, we just soundproofed the entire lower level.”
Luke and Cassian glanced at each other before fixing admiring stares on their wife.
“You’re right. The basement bathroom is … great. Roomy,” said Luke.
“Warm. Dry,” added Cassian.
“And soundproof,” said Jyn with a small grin.
“So, you see, Finn,” said Luke, “We have quite a few bathrooms in the house. But the basement one is … nice.”
“Very nice.”
“Mm hmm.”
Puzzled, Finn glanced at Rey again, and was astonished to see her blushing. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but then Rey turned to him with a smirk and inclined her head toward the kitchen.
“I’m in the mood for some coffee. You’ve got beans, right?” she asked. “Finn’s great at grinding …”
Finn noticed Rey’s parents went somewhat red in the face at that comment, but their expressions were largely unchanged aside from that.
“Can we make a pot to go with dessert?”
“Sure, honey,” said Jyn, her brow creased in concern. “You know where everything is. Just be … careful.”
“Careful? I’ve made coffee before, Mum.”
“What your mother means is, the countertops are a little grimy,” said Luke. “I spilled the giblets when I was getting the turkey ready. Things might be a little … slippery.”
“Thanks for that image, Dad.” Rey stood up and offered her hand to Finn, who got to his feet. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“No rush,” said Jyn, earning dismayed looks from her spouses. “Take your time,” she added, smiling sweetly at her husbands’ baleful glares.
“We’re, uh, gonna put on the football game,” said Cassian, looking everywhere except at his daughter. “There’s nothing like football on Thanksgiving.”
Rey stared at him. “Papa, you hate football.”
“Yeah, well,” Cassian mumbled before turning and walking quickly toward the living room with Luke on his heels. Jyn laughed at both of them and went for another helping of sweet potatoes.
Finn was utterly bewildered when Rey pulled him into the kitchen, the door swinging closed behind them.
“Uh, what just happened out there?”
“What do you mean?”
Rey was taking out the coffee grinder and a solid silver, antique-looking coffee machine from a cabinet. Aside from a few splotches here and there, the kitchen hardly looked like it had been used to produce the enormous amount of food that had emerged from it.
Finn helped her measure the roasted beans after pronouncing them to be top quality, and they watched the machine whir and grumble for a few seconds before resuming their conversation.
“Your parents were acting kind of weird, I guess. Maybe it was just me. They’re really funny. Like, the good kind of funny … not the holy shit I need to Tweet about this type of funny.”
“They really like you,” said Rey, kissing his cheek. “I don’t know why you were so worried that they wouldn’t.”
“Um, well, I’m a grunt and an orphan dating the daughter of three of the biggest heroes of the Greater War,” mumbled Finn. “Yeah, I had some concerns.”
“You’re not a ‘grunt,’ Finn, and my parents are the last people who’d hold the ‘orphan’ part against you,” said Rey, stroking his cheek. “Dad was super-impressed that you got a full ROTC scholarship to uni, considering how hard they are to get. Papa went to school through ROTC, just like you’re doing, so he was instantly a fan.”
“And your mom?”
“Mum was bowled over when I told her that you’ve maintained a perfect GPA while going through training,” said Rey, “but she was really impressed when she saw the pictures on my Instagram of us at Kay’s birthday party. She used the thumbs-up emoji about a hundred times. I told you that haircut looked great on you.”
Finn chuckled just as sounds from the football game wafted into the kitchen. The volume seemed rather loud to him, but he wondered if it was just the acoustics in the large, old home.
“But what really sold them is when I let them know that you didn’t bat an eye about … our family,” said Rey. “You didn’t ask strange questions or start getting weird or anything like that the way some people have in the past – and still do.”
“Why would I have … oh.” Finn looked wonderingly out toward the dining room. “People are weird about your family? I mean, to your face?”
“Are you kidding? Practically since I was born. Before that, even. God. It was awful.”
Rey leaned against the counter after checking for remnants of giblets.
“I mean, at first I was too young to understand, but when I got to school, I heard the whispers and saw the stares. Then I got to middle school and it was worse. I Googled my parents’ names and got some of the newspaper articles from back when the war ended. They were brutal.”
"Your parents were heroes. Their squadron helped end the war when it did! Why would the press have focused just on that?”
“It just was a big deal that they all ended up together, I guess.” Rey shrugged. “So many people treated them like they were swingers having orgies every night while I was up in my room studying my multiplication tables, instead of three people who fell in love with each other more than 20 years ago and committed to each other and raised a child together. Part of the reason why we moved out here is because Mum kept getting into fights with people who wanted to know who my father really was. They weren’t satisfied that Dad and Papa are my fathers. At a school board meeting, one of the parents made a smart-arse remark and Mum bloodied his nose.”
Finn grinned, recalling Rey doing something similar to an upperclassman who got ‘handsy’ with her at a party. Now he reckoned he knew where she’d gotten that right hook from.
“Out here, people never really bothered us about it,” said Rey. “People gossiped at first, but after a while, we were pretty much accepted just like any other family. But when I first got to university, when people found out who I was and who my parents were … it was rough. Do you remember Ned?”
“Ned Dooku? You went out with him freshman year, right?”
“Yeah.” Her face darkened. “He actually asked me to have a threesome with some random from his frat. When I told him to go fuck himself, he said he just figured being with more than one person was in my bloodline.”
Finn’s jaw clenched. Ned Dooku had graduated the year prior, but he had a sudden urge to look him up in the alumni directory and pay him a ‘friendly’ visit. With a ball-peen hammer and a shovel.
“It was just bullshit like that, or people not really knowing what to say and being weirded out by the entire subject,” said Rey. “But not you. I still remember your reaction when Pamich introduced us. I was just bracing for you to look confused or freaked out … and then you said, ‘Wait – Rey Andor-Erso-Skywalker? Holy shit! Your parents kicked ass in the Second Battle of Endor Junction!’”
Finn laughed. “Afterwards, I remember thinking I could have tried to come across as a little less of a fanboy, but since you gave me your number anyway, I guess I didn’t make that bad an impression.”
“Nope. I thought it was sweet. And refreshing. And not that looks are everything, but it did also help that you looked fit as fuck in your cadet blues.”
She gave him a gentle, lingering kiss. “That’s another thing – you’re Army, and so are they. So my parents were already predisposed to like you, and they really like you.”
“I’m glad,” said Finn. “But I’m confused about the bathroom business. What was that all about? Was I squirming? Did I look like I had to go?”
“Oh, that. No.” Rey grinned at him. “They were just giving us some alternative places to fuck.”
“Oh …”
Finn’s eyes popped open wide.
“Wait, what?!”
“You heard me.” Rey added the ground beans to a filter and fitted it into the machine. “I told Mum that you’d been on training rotation for the past two weeks, and then when you got back to campus, there were exams and then I got sick, so we really hadn’t had any alone time where we weren’t studying or I wasn’t coughing up a lung … and that I was looking forward to break because we’d be able to make up for lost time. I think she translated that into ‘Finn and I are going to bang every chance we get.’ She probably communicated that to Papa and Dad, and they may have thought we were going for a ‘walk.’” She made quotes in the air.
“So because it’s so nasty outside, they were just offering other areas where, theoretically, I could ride you without having to worry about the elements or catching another cold …”
Finn was momentarily speechless. “So all that talk about the towel bar and the counter space …?”
“Yep. My cousin Ben and his boyfriend broke the towel bar at my Aunt’s last Christmas, so I guess Dad kept that in mind when he was remodeling.”
Finn looked almost fearfully at the closed door. “They might think we’re doing that now …”
“Of course they do. Why do you think they have the football game turned up so high that people all the way in the Valley can probably hear it? That's also probably why Dad mentioned that the counter might be slippery, FYI.”
“Wow.” Finn was wide-eyed. “I guess I’m just … surprised. That they’d be cool with that, and all.”
Rey wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “They all remember being our age and having to, ummm, take the opportunities to be together when they presented themselves. There was a war going on, you know."
"So, that means they probably, um ... in their chopper? Once ... or twice ..."
"Oh my god. Uncle Han could make your hair fall out with stories about that. He keeps threatening to tell the real story about how Dad got that scar on his stomach." Rey shuddered. "If you want to really be thankful for something, it's that we didn't go to my Aunt's for dinner."
"Okay, but still ... suggesting something and knowing something might take place are two different things. You are their daughter." Finn wet his lips nervously. "Uh, they don’t have their service rifles in the house, do they?"
"You do know my Mum's the best shot of the three, right?"
"Yeah, but I also know that she wouldn't need a gun to mess me up."
"True!" Rey laughed, and stroked his cheek. "Yes, I am their daughter, but I'm also an adult. They trust me to make the right decisions for me. And they know I’m very much in love.”
Finn’s mouth curved into a wide smile as he gazed down at Rey. “Well, that makes two of us.”
They kissed again, pulling apart only when air was a necessity.
Rey briefly peered over Finn’s shoulder before resting her forehead against his.
“That coffee machine’s pretty old. It’s going to take at least 15 to 20 minutes to brew properly.”
“Oh. Okay.” Finn’s eyes drifted shut. “Should we, um, help clear the table or something while we wait?”
“Actually … I was thinking …” said Rey in a voice that made Finn’s eyes spring wide open again. “Maybe we could see how soundproof the basement really is ...”
end