#i love him.. materials girl... <3 smoke and dust and stars and water and rocks and BIRDS he is everything <33

[jadenvargen]

it’s all me

[jungdrizzydraco]

An O.C. for Your Asses!!!

I wanna see if the characters are legit before I move forward with this short story im working on (I'm a character first kinda guy, so I work inside-out) leave any form of constructive critique you wish, they are still works in progress, thanks!!

Augustine Harriet Andersson

Age:22

Sign: Gemini (sun) Cancer (moon) Virgo (rising)

Height: 5'8

Eye Color: Formerly dark-brown, bleached to a pastel-hazel because of some dark magic fuckery

Hair Color/Cut: dark-brown,q shifting variations of a fade, whose design changes somewhat based on his thoughts and emotions (yes, this is an enchanted fade)

Build: lean, lightly muscled from years lifting cauldrons in his grandfather's potion shop

Notable Features: Dimples; left-dimple is deeper than right, multiple piercings on each ear, artificial left eye (looks organic but to magical eyes, it looks otherwise)

"Have you ever been like...fundamentally angry? I feel that way...like at my core, there's this rage that seethes and coils at the pit of my stomach, everyday, like a python that can't quite squeeze his prey all the way to death. Everytime I think I've grown up, forgiven something or someone or myself, there's this anger that tightens right back up all over again...like it's reminding me of something. Somedays...I feel like that feeling will petrify everything I've ever loved about myself, and I'll just be another slave to outrage and ego and pain...just like everyone else...haha, then I'll really be a normie."  -August Andersson, on his depression and internal anger issues.

Augustine Andersson is a witch-boy. But you could probably already tell that from looking at him: the way his eyes are almost constantly fixed towards some unseeable infinity, the way air molecules hum with fresh, manic energy around him, how he seems to absorb sunlight and the way his brown skin would filter the glow as a result of his connection to the natural...it was all very off putting to others around him for most of his young adult life. And as we all know, no one likes a freak, so such years had a hand in building his current trust issues, feelings of great anger and inadequacy, and all the tics and tricks he uses to keep such feelings at bay. He's not at a total loss; at his core he is a humanitarian, deeply compassionate and available to those who have managed to capture his heart, as well as wild and humorous. However, he keeps a tight lid on his darkest feelings and insecurities, out of fear that they may be too much for those around him (also, he might accidentally call forth a vile arch-daemon on accident, but that's neither here nor there.) After finally having had enough of his mundane time amongst the humans, he vanishes from his college campus one day and takes to the open road, hoping that like the many young, angsty teens in the movies he loves, he will find himself in his own solitude. But the best way to deal with oneself is when confronting someone else, and after a close-call with a reckless (and very cute) motorcycle rider on an interstate, August will be forced to deal with every single part of himself, the good, the bad, and the strange...

A few more things about him...

1. His father is Afro-swedish, hence his last name.

2. Loves to travel and is nomadic by nature.

3. He gets a special kind of warmth out of being moderately petty at all times.

4. He loves open spaces and bodies of water, as well as hikes through mountains (ok so he only went once in Vegas, so sue him, he really liked it!)

5. Surprisingly low maintenance, really just likes being around people that are happy, and the feeling easily rubs off on him.

6. Both positive and negative emotions easily rub off on him.

7. Can get caught up in moments of warm content, given his unstable interior life, and can get lost in wasting/spending time.

8. Gets restless easily.

9. Budding film buff, faves include Kill Bill vol. 1&2, Her, Moonrise Kingdom, Gone Girl, Blue is the Warmest Color, Moonlight, & Mean Girls.

10. August's father is very engaged with politics and civil rights, so in honor of that, he decided that his son's middle name would belong to one of the greatest figures of the civil rights movement: Harriet Tubman.

11. Favorite new movie is The Favourite.

12. Due to a lack of acceptance of his full self and the full spectrum of his sexuality, he is judgemental of others and holds them to the same near-impossible standards he holds for himself. 

13. Things he expects from others: To read his mind and conjure what he wants without saying, to have his needs and boundaries respected without actually stating so, for others to fit in whatever box he thinks they should be in, for everyone's intellect to be slightly lower than his own, but high enough not to annoy him with silly questions, ect.

14. Listens to Lorde, J. Cole, Rex Orange County, Frank Ocean, Lana Del Rey, Tyler the Creator, Young Thug and assorted film soundtracks.

15. Enjoys playing into his double-sided nature when it suits him, and has a secret glee in melding into different roles depending on who's around him.

16. Is attracted to more eccentric personalities in platonic and romantic relationships

17. Smokes weed to escape boredom. (and his problems)

18. Smokes weed because he likes the feeling.

19. Is secretly a little ratchet, but he'll kill you if you say so, it'll fuck up his reputation as the quasi-sociopathic erudite.

Magic House-Thoth

Augustine is a member of the Sacred House of Life, witches whose magic is passed down from the Egyptian Gods themselves. August himself is a descendant of an African slave-witch, once known as Ashe. She was taken to Egypt as a typical piece of cargo from zealot raiders, and was sentenced to a life of building the pyramids. Or so she would have thought: Thoth, the God of Magic and Knowledge, took pity upon her and beguiled her to follow an invisible force into the desert one night. He then revealed himself to her in his ibis-headed brilliance and bestowed upon her a set of choices: he could free her now and set her loose across the desert with all the things she would need for survival, or he could give her secrets and wisdoms unknown to man at the time, but she would have to frequently return to him for lessons. Ashe always prized knowledge and growth over any material thing, or even something such as freedom (I prefer to disagree myself). And secrets from a God must count for that much more, right? She indulged in option two. Thoth grinned and whispered to her the mysteries of life, the secrets of the stars, and the riddles of worlds lost and intangible, he spoke magick into her very soul. She would then use her newfound knowledge to fool her captors, freed any slave that would believe in her, and with her wits about them, guided them across the desert to build a library-like sanctuary, in honor of Thoth. The former slaves then learned from the god's teachings, passed through Ashe, and became witches and educators in their own right, and Ashe came to lead this new coven of magi. This is how the House of Thoth became to be. 

Magick: As a member of house of Thoth, August has the ability to manipulate various aspects of the moon, writing, hieroglyphics, knowledge and sciences, and the progression of time. His particular specialty is the creation of Moon Dust, a substance used as a medium for most of his spells. By gathering various quantities of mineral, be it: crystal, rocks, pearls, aluminum, or even silvers and golds, he can channel his magic into them and break down and rearrange their atomic components into a corrosive, abrasive substance that also tends to stick to objects due to an electric charge. This dust is also dangerous to breathe in. He tends to carry around a pouch or two on his person, as trying to create some on the fly is nearly impossible given how much time and intricacy is needed to create the substance. (I mean, working with just a pile of plain old rocks would take a couple of hours to convert, let alone harder or more distilled substances.) Spells that he has mastered so far include...

Spell of Refraction: A spell in which the moondust bonds to whomever or whatever August desires (sans the harmful effects, it's enchanted in this state) and whatever is enveloped in dust turns invisible via light refraction.

Spell of Revelations: He can spread his moondust over an area and have the pieces cling to imprints of negative emotion or dark magick. A spell used for forensic work.

Spell of Retribution: An offensive spell that uses moondust to its fullest offensive powers and creates small funnels of dust to ravage the opponent. The largest funnel made could surround a fully grown man.

Golemancy:  Can create golems out of the moon dust he has formed, usually no larger than a human toddler. They tend to take form roughly resembling lego-men (he was a big fan of the Lego Expanded Universe as a child), but one can easily be fooled by their size: each golem has the strength of three men, and can combine to further power themselves up.

There are a few spells that don't require the moon dust...

-The Veil: A surface-level illusion layered directly over the skin. This allows the caster to look like whatever he wants to look like and sound however he wants, but can be broken if struck with bad intentions (like a slap from an offended woman on the street)

 -Somnus: A very old, yet practical spell. Also one that does not require moondust, this handy spell induces sleep.  Those affected by this spell will not remember being forced to sleep, but they will have active and vivid dreams for distraction. Also necessary for Dream Diving.

-Dream Diving:  A skill Augustine has yet to master, this allows the caster to astral project into one's consciousness for complete access to the afflicted parties mind, if the brain is distracted by dreams. August has gotten stuck in several public nude dreams, and it takes long hours to remove oneself from another's mind.

-Illusion Casting 

-Temporary Madness Inducement

-Script Magick: By writing down a word or phrase on any surface that can be sufficiently marked on, whatever has been written manifests somehow, just so long as it is within his power. He can't create miracles with it though.

Top 10 Roadtrip Songs

Sobriety- Sza

No Role Moldelz-J. Cole

Sacrifices -Dreamville, assorted artists

Grown Up Fairy Tails- Chance the Rapper, Taylor Bennett 

My Boy-Billie Eilish

U.N.I.T.Y.- Frank Ocean

West Coast: Lana Del Rey

Cruise Ship-Young Thug

400 Lux-Lorde

Let Em Know- Bryson Tiller

[lucidlucy]

COLLISION

Pairing: Hux / Rey Wordcount: 9100 (1 of 3)

For @darth-ej because she loves Stray Cat Hux. Not sure when I’m going to finish this (this is part one of three?) so I’m posting what’s available here so it stops collecting dust. 

“As wave is driven by wave And each, pursued, pursues the wave ahead, So time flies on and follows, flies, and follows, Always, for ever and new. What was before Is left behind; what never was is now; And every passing moment is renewed.”  ― Ovid, Metamorphoses

What does he know of falling? He’d never fallen before. He’d watched the weak fall over the years, one after another, usually at his feet. Their falls had never touched him, not really, yet the bloody red error lights of failing systems blinking across his vision with a scream tell him as much of falling as the blood of his enemies ever had. He’s falling to his death, he’s sure of it. A Captain - or rather, a General - always went down with his ship.

There were always casualties to a war, Hux just never expected to be one of them. Betrayal is a bitter pill. He runs from the bridge, unwilling to die without at least trying to live. Perhaps he’d be able to survive this, escape just in time. His feet carry him at light speed and he locks himself into the tiny escape pod, tightening his belts and punching in the button for ejection, but all systems have failed, and a particularly hard spin of his once mighty Star Destroyer rocks his insides as well as it rocks his one chance at escape. A screen screams that the pod is jammed. He’s falling to his death.

Ah, well, he’d go with the bodies of those already bouncing around the insides of the Finalizer. At least those he had killed could burn with him in the end. Hux looks out the small window, out the tiny sliver of space he can see, as his once beautiful ship sets on a collision course with a planet he’d only ever heard of. Jakku. A junkyard planet.

How fitting, then, that his ship would turn into a wreck for the vultures to pick at, much like his legacy would be picked over now. He closes his eyes, listening to the thunderous, otherworldly sound of metal rattling, the zoom of a ship hitting atmosphere, and tries to contain the bile that rises up his throat. He’ll be dead in moments anyway, but he would not die while soaked in his own vomit. His ship might go up in flames, but if he is to meet his Maker, he would do it without wearing his fear.

Hux stops breathing for a moment as the world rocks, as the Finalizer starts breaking into pieces, burning metal rushing to meet burning sand, and he sends up a prayer even though he’d never quite been a believer. There would be enough oxygen in the escape pod to sustain him for weeks, but he’d be crushed to death long before then.

Except he doesn’t. Not that he’ll know for another three days.

Perhaps his Maker had heard his prayer, after all.

On Niima Outpost, every single being stops their busy work to stare as whole trove of new treasure comes crashing into their backyard. It isn’t often that brand new technology makes it to Jakku’s surface for them to fight over. And they would, once the outer shell of the ship cools. Few would dare approach in such conditions.

Few except for a girl Hux won’t meet for another day, one who knows the virtues of being the early bird to the worm. But Hux doesn’t know that salvation comes dressed in rags and on light feet because his mind has whited out and in his mind he has died a thousand deaths, and they all look like fire and sand and betrayal.

When he finally wakes, it’s to a shaft of light that burns the back of his lids. He frowns, blinded and disoriented. He’s surely in hell. It’s certainly hot enough to be hell. His eyes open and hell has no form, just white and pain. He screws his eyes shut again with a hiss.

“Oh, Maker,” he hears a soft voice over him, bell-like. Hux lashes out, only to have his hands slammed with what feels like a metal stick. He falls back into his mangled seat with a pained yelp, breathing sharply, chest heavy as he grips onto the sides, looking for anything to find purchase as the soft voice utters apologies over hitting him.

“Sorry, sorry! It was a reflex!” The bell rings with alarm. two hands -- small hands -- reach out over him to try and remove the belts fastening him to his seat. Hux grunts, but if death were to come for him via this stranger, he surely would have been dead by now, so Hux stays still. His nose itches and burns with the smell of charred metal, and when he coughs there is only pain and grit. Sand.

“Can you walk?”

Hux tries to talk, hears himself croak; he pushes himself off his seat and vertigo takes him. A pair of slender, surprisingly strong arms prop him up. The bell-like voice sighs.

“You’ll die out here like this, weak as a happabore pup,” she grumbles, for surely the voice belongs to a woman. Hux grunts, but allows himself to lean into a slender body. “How did you end up here, anyway? Everyone else is dead. No, don’t answer that.”

Hux’s mind reels. Sure, he’d been the only person left alive on the ship as far as he knew, but the sting of charred flesh still hit his nose as he allowed himself to be dragged out of his escape pod isn’t a welcome reminder. He tries to speak again, and this time his vocal chords work just enough to grunt out a word.

“Where?”

An arm hoists him up, and he slumps forward slightly. Whatever body is pressed up next to his aching ribs is much smaller than he. She must have understood him well enough. That would have to do.

“Outside Niima Outpost,” she replies, dragging him out of the ship painfully slow. When hot air reaches him, tussling through his hair and burning his skin, Hux coughs again. He’s boiling inside his uniform. The girl guides him to sit, she tries to touch his chest, and Hux does the only thing he’s ever been programmed to do: he lashes out to defend himself. Again his hands are knocked away, though far more gently this time, by soft hands rather than hot metal.

“You’ll fry,” she says, opening up his coat. He intakes air, it’s heady and clogs his airways, but it’s air. He’ll take it. A rip of fabric startles him, he, who had never been startled, and Hux drowns in his shame at the reaction. It only lasts as long as it takes for him to feel fabric wrapping around his eyes. “There. I assume you can’t see well. Let’s not blind you further.”

He’s been reduced to communicating in grunts and croaks, but he tries to thank this perfect stranger for it.

“Night’s approaching. We should seek shelter,” she says, then hesitates. Hux turns towards the sound of her breath. Interesting, how his ears tried to compensate for his eyes.

“What,” Hux manages, it’s not enough, but his voice is slowly returning, working through the pain of coughing out smoke.

“The post is too far from here… even if I drove, we wouldn’t make it in time to find you shelter there, or a doctor,” She says, and he can almost sense her nibbling on her lower lip, feel her head turning, looking around their surroundings, see her gears spinning as she debates what to do with him.

“What,” Hux repeats, and perhaps it is the sound of his agony, weak and uncomfortably rough, that decides for her.

“Okay,” she says, more to herself than him as Hux feels a trickle down his temple, “Okay.”

He’s hoisted up again, then plopped on a piece of what he can only assume is a metal disk, before air rushes through him and he feels himself falling again. Falling, that might end up being the story of his short life. The falling, however, turns to a soft hiss as he slides. Sand blows into his nose, his mouth, and Hux is sure this must be hell. He’d heard of Darth Vader; who hadn’t, really? He’d known the man had come from a desert planet. Perhaps this is why he’d turned to the dark side. Sand was a horrible thing. Sand had been his salvation.

Hux’s ears pick up on the ‘shhhh’ of something else sliding, far, then close, until it rests next to him. Noise, stumbling steps, a hiss, and he’s being dragged while flat on his face on a piece of metal scrap.

“What,” he asks, a weak, mewling sound. He hears grunts for a response.

“You don’t look like you can walk anymore without falling on your face,” she grumbles, then lets out another huffy sound, “Maker, you’re heavy.”

So, he’s being hauled like so much salvage. Hux lets his head fall back on his arm, heat scouring his neck. He would have to thank this girl eventually, when he stopped only being able to say ‘what.’ Hux doesn’t remember the rest of the trip, not that he’d be able to place himself with a dirty bandage over his eyes. He’d have to trust that this girl wouldn’t gut him while unconscious. He falls asleep.

****

When he wakes next, it’s on a slightly softer surface, though not by much. He tries to open his eyes, but nothing comes, and so he tries to remove the rags from his eyes. His hands are once again slapped away like one would a fly, and he too weak to fight it. They fall with a flop. His fingers feel fabric, rough and threadbare, yet the surface is padded. Layers, then. Layers of scrappy material sewn together haphazardly, he decides, as his fingers try to memorize the stitching.

A damp fabric pillows on his forehead. It is not cold, it isn’t even the sort of room temperature he’s used to. It’s lukewarm, and for a second Hux muses that lukewarm feels heavenly. He thinks he hears her speak again, but he’s too feverish and too tired to concentrate.

“Who are you?”

The whisper carries him back to blessedly dark and silent sleep.

The next time he wakes, the lukewarm dampness comes not from fabric on his forehead but from a canteen being held to his lips, scraping against his stubble. He drinks greedily, and nearly moans when it is taken away, water spilling from his lips.

“Careful. I don’t have much,” the bell admonishes, and Hux tries to swallow on his spit, to coat his throat to speak instead.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, the words foreign on his mouth. He would say that word many times again, but Hux doesn’t know this either. The water is replaced with another semi-damp towel to his temple, wiping away whatever blood has crusted there, and he wonders where she’s getting all the water from, what it must cost her.

“Sleep,” she commands once her ministrations stop, so he does.

It will take two days, though he has lost track of time. Two days of delirious waking and sleeping, of being given water and what he can assume is a weak broth, before his senses return. His bandages have been removed, and Hux tries to open his eyes. Everything’s slightly blurry, but he can see at least. A small mercy. Hux twitches his arms, follows the feeling down his limbs to his toes. No appendages are missing. He breathes in the cloying heat and is thankful for it, taking in his current safe haven. The next cough hurts, but not as much, and he finds that his throat is lubricated.

Hux tries to lick his lips. Chapped but not crusted.  

He would have to thank the bell.

At the thought of the bell –– how he’d started addressing his savior –– he tries to sit up, looking around on a leaden head that barely swivels on his neck.

He spots her just as she turns at the rustle of tatty blankets. She rushes to him and Hux can just about make out an open face, a strong jawline, and two dots of greenish gold that must be eyes before his vision does a one-eighty, room spinning, that forces his stomach to roil. He closes his eyes.

“You’re up. I thought you’d die in the night,” the bell-like voice speaks, and he now has a sort of fuzzy image in his mind of its source. He tries to open his eyes again. The room sways, but it doesn’t turn. Safe enough to squint at her, then. “How are you feeling?”

He debates the merits of staying silent, but then realizes it’s too late for that. This girl had tended to him for what must be days, if the itch of his beard is anything to go by, and he owed her at least an answer.

“Like death,” He says, and though it’s still a croak it is not the grating of metal on sandpaper, but a semi-human voice this time. He coughs, trying to bring his fist up to cover his mouth. It only makes it half-way there before spittle reaches his fingers. Hux drops his hand.

“I don’t doubt it,” the girl says, and once again there’s a canteen to his lips. He remembers vaguely her words of not having much, so this time he is careful despite his thirst, drinking small gulps and not spilling a drop. When he looks at her, there’s a fuzzy smile there. Hux narrows his eyes.

She must take it for exhaustion, or squinting, when her hand pushes on his shoulder and forces him back down.

“I must go, the sun is just rising,” she hesitates again, and Hux tries to force his eyes to focus. They don’t.

“I must find food,” she sounds nearly apologetic, then her voice switches to a warning, “Do not touch anything or I will kill you. Do you understand?”

Hux nods. He can barely keep his eyes open, much less touch anything. As if.

She spares him one last glance and then exits the place, and Hux isn’t quite sure where he is still, but it’s dry and quiet –– so, so very quiet –– and safe. At least, he hopes it’s safe. He can only think of burning ships for a few more minutes before he sinks under once again.

****

It would be a week when finally his vision returns, and his strength, and he’s (mostly) no longer coughing up bits and pieces of the blackened gunk lining his lungs. A week and he still doesn’t know the name of the girl who has saved him, though since then he’s taken to staying as quiet as possible in the corner where she’s put him, smelling of his own sweat and feeling his beard stop itching and start growing.  The girl offers him meager slices of her already meager meals, looking at them begrudgingly before handing them over. For her graciousness, Hux in turn stays out of her way and does not dare touch her things.

“Tomorrow you must go,” she finally says on this last night, mumbling it into her food as she tears a piece of what must be synthetic green meat with her teeth. “You seem well enough now.”

Hux stares at her, a small piece of his own stuck between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He stops chewing. Of course. He’d overstayed his welcome, even if he’d been entirely unaware for most of it. Hux looks around what he’d come to recognize as the dead belly of an Imperial AT-AT  –– her home –– then back at her. Her expression turns to guilt the longer he stays silent.

“I can’t keep feeding another person,” she finally mutters, looking at anything but at him, but mostly at his plate. Hux nods. From what she’s mustered up for food, she can barely feed herself.

“I thank you for your hospitality,” he finally says, and the girl is startled that his voice has returned.

A small, habitual tug of his lip threatens to form into a smirk. It is the closest thing to a smile he’s ever been able to produce. He bites his cheek to stop it from blooming. Hux looks at what’s left of the meager rations on the cracked metal bowl and extends it towards her. She looks at it, frowns, then grabs it. He’d quickly learned she’s not one to waste food or water. The least he could do is let her have all she can. He looks at the AT-AT again. She’s taken care of it, but certain things still look horribly in disrepair.

He assesses his situation. He’s on a planet where he knows no one, with no credits and no way to leave, and no chance of contacting a soul. For all intents and purposes, he should be dead. He looks at the girl again. She’d saved his life. He owed her at least this much, and his mind would never stop working in terms of strategy.

“You didn’t have to help me, yet you did. Let me repay your kindness somehow,” he offers. It would allow him time, at least, and shelter. “I can fend for myself regarding food.”

She snorts then, and laughs, and Hux’s stomach clenches uncomfortably. “Good luck with that,” she says, giving him a once over. “A week ago you could barely walk.”

Hux tries to clear his throat but it only blooms in the form of a cough. How pathetic. The noise stops her short, though, and the girl whose name he does not know looks at him with just a hint of pity. She chews her lip, giving him a once over, and Hux hopes she’s reconsidering. He’s not particularly fond of the idea of stumbling out into a desert.

“I can help here,” he offers, “until I am better. I am not… unskilled.”

Hux could never tell her what he is, this stranger who’d sheltered him for a week, but he’s a man of his word. A little help around her home for her hospitality cost him nothing, not when he had no plans or life to get back to. Her eyes turn shrewd.

“Can you salvage?” She asks. Hux blinks.

“No––” he starts, and she cuts him off.

“Then you’re of no help to me,” the bell responds. He would need to learn her name soon.

Names could wait, though.

“I have other skills,” he says, tilting his head back and squaring his shoulders. Their conversation turns to bartering as she drills him about the skills he claims to have, and though he cannot give her leadership as a useful skill off his curriculum vitae –– not that leadership had proven helpful to him, either –– they discuss others until late into the night.

But Hux is a convincing man, and finally he gets her to agree on extending his stay by allowing him to help with repairing and guarding her home. She narrows her eyes at him, weighing him and finding him trustworthy.

“It never hurts to have someone else around,” she finally concedes, “the teedos keep trying to raid me at any chance they get.”

Teedos. Hux wracks his brain then remembers the ugly little creatures. He nods again. One more thing to cement his offer to stay. He’d stay until he recovered, then…

Then what?

The girl nods, the matter settled. He could appreciate that. Business was business. She finishes the food he’d pushed towards her.

“Tomorrow, then,” she says with a half-mouthful of food and Hux resists the urge to cringe. “Tomorrow, when I go salvage, I will find tools for you to help me build.”

****

Hux is busy inspecting a wall full of neatly made scratch marks, hands carefully kept to his sides, when she comes in. He’s finally forced his legs to get him upright, taking slow steps around the cramped space. Hux has to stoop just so to keep from bonking his head on the low hanging bits of metal and piping, but he’s too busy taking in the wall and barely notices her light steps.

A clanking of tools drops, clattering everywhere as he swivels, hands coming up and fisting immediately. The girl gives him an odd, amused look, then points towards the tools. He looks at them, rusty and well worn, then at her face. He makes to thank her, then realizes he still doesn’t know what to address her by. As if sensing his thought, her head tilts.

“I’m Rey,” she says, and that’s about as much of an introduction as he’ll get out of her.

His hands drop to his side, berating himself for being skittish.

“I’m Bren––” Hux stops. Giving her his full name would be a severe mistake. Everyone might think him dead now, but if his name started cropping up everywhere, he’d surely have others coming to finish the job. “Bren.”

Bren. His nickname from childhood, though that means little here. Rey nods, not inquiring as to whether he had other names. Perhaps she has none, either. Rey points to the tools, then to a bucket in her hands.

“Okay, Bren,” she says, shoving it his way. “Time to get to work.”

They spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning tools, and Hux makes it a point to only take a bite or two of his food, though he knows his body needs nutrients. He lets her finish the rest. In the morning, he’d set about figuring out how to get food for himself.

He basks in the silence, disrupted only by the scrub of metal cleaning pads on metal parts, ignoring as his fingers become scratched and bloodied with use. His were not hands used to scrubbing parts, though certainly not unfamiliar with pain. Rey notices. She grabs the pads from his hands and frowns at his fingers.

“You’re bleeding,” she says. Hux looks down at the streaks of red turning pink on muddy water. His nose pinches, but it’s not because of the blood. His eyes zero in on the dirt caked under his quickly growing fingernails.

“It’ll pass,” he says, taking the scrub back from her. Rey stares at him for the idiot he is but shrugs, returning to her work.

That night, while he sleeps, he dreams that his hands are cleaned and bound with thin strips of fabric as Rey mutters over his prone form about stupid gingers not knowing anything of the desert.

In the morning, his hands are stiff and bound. He stares down at the strips of fabric, then at the inside of the AT-AT. Hux lifts himself slowly from the bundle of rags she calls blankets, the cot she’s fashioned for him in a corner, and dares to walk outside for the first time.

Hux knows what deserts are. Theoretically, his mind paints them as dry and hot and empty. The reality is both terrifying and breathtaking.

There is nothing. Nothing but sand, and sand, and more sand, peppered with the bones of long-dead ships in the far distance. If he squints far enough, he can almost see the smoking rubble of his own magnificent vessel. His lips purse, squinting to see better, but there’s little more he can make out in the blinding searing whiteness of Jakku’s sun. It can’t possibly be anything but early morning, and yet he soon starts boiling. Hux slinks back inside, his pale skin quickly reddening. He sheds the dirty undershirt that had once been white, breathing a sigh of relief for a moment before wandering back to the small table where Rey had left their previous night’s work.

He stares at the tools, grimy and dirty by the grimy bucket full of grimy water, grimacing at what his life had become. He coughs into his bound hands, flecks of charcoal grey mixed in with whatever’s left in his lungs still. He’s weak, he knows, but at least this he can do. Hux picks up the wire pad and starts scrubbing parts, a small amount of satisfaction blooming in his chest as metal edges the color of desert rust start taking on a silver glint, taking his frustration on the bits and pieces he’s been left to work with in lieu of people’s heads.

A week. He could put his life on hold for a week. Until his strength returned fully, until he could formulate a plan.

Pink desert light filters into the AT-AT to herald a defeated Rey. Hux frowns. In her hand there’s what he knows as a quarter portion. His frown deepens, but he remains silent as she sets about making the meal. He bends over his work, scrubbing furiously, his hand bandages now soaked and grimy. Everything in his life had become grime, and the germophobe in him was rioting, but he’d quieted it long enough to look after his survival.

 It does not go unnoticed, her desire to share even as she starves, and he can’t make himself deprive her of her hard earned sustenance. He shakes his head when she pushes a plate towards him with a quarter loaf of synth-bread, a bite or two at most, and a strip of synthetic meat. He would not impose further than necessary, though anger bubbles in him at the thought of somebody having to exist on such meager military rations.

He doesn’t know the girl, but he’d made it a point in his life to ensure thousands of men and women he didn’t know were fed properly, and there was nothing proper about this. Hux finally sets his work down and looks at her.

“How do you… procure… your rations?” He asks, pushing the plate back towards her. Rey gives him a wary look, but after her own stomach growls, she finally relents and takes it.

She tells him. About a fellow called Unkar Plutt, and how she trades parts for rations. She tells him that what she’d traded that day had two weeks ago been two portions each, but Plutt had deemed the new parts no longer desirable, so a quarter portion it was. Rey seemed to take this all with resolute resignation. Hux narrows his eyes. He changes the subject, showing her the fruit of his labor.

When she smiles at the new shiny tools and parts, the satisfaction in his chest grows. She takes a few to trade, leaving the rest for him to work with. He’d promised to help her rebuild, after all.

In the following days, Hux knows hunger. A hunger he’d never known, as his insides twist on themselves to try and consume something, even if it’s the inner lining of his stomach. He stubbornly refuses anything but a small share of her meals, anything to keep his insides from devouring themselves, but by the middle of the second week, it’s either help finding food or starve to death.  

Hux stares Rey down.

“This… Unkar Plutt,” he says. “I would like to make his acquaintance.”

Rey arches an eyebrow. “You really don’t.”

“I’m not afraid of a junkyard trader,” he sneers, refusing to be intimidated by some boogeyman. He may have been weakened by his collision course with death, but Hux had never been a man to fall to another’s intimidation tactics.

Just as she’d done a couple of times, she gives him a once over in his now ratty clothes and shakes her head. “Fine, you’ll follow me. If you so much as say a word and ruin this exchange, though, I’m kicking you out.”

He makes to follow, only to be yanked back at the door.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” She asks, looking at him as if he’s grown a second head, or as if she’d just remembered something. Hux arches an eyebrow.

“Following,” he drawls. Rey rolls her eyes.

“You’ll bake,” she says, removing the long fabric she wears over her shirt to try and wrap around him. Hux tenses and steps back, glaring at the small woman who had saved him. Her eyes widen then narrow. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m perfectly fine,” he says, staring at the fabric in her hands. What does she think she’s doing?

Rey scoffs.

“Look, you’re obviously not from here,” she points at his hair, then at his awfully pale face.

“I’ll live,” he responds. It has nothing to do with a deep-seated distaste for being touched, he tells himself. A little sun never killed anybody. Hux refuses to be mothered.

He’s given a grand tour of Niima Outpost, a little shithole in the middle of absolutely nowhere held up by sticks and tarp, and Hux can’t help the curl of disgust at the bottom of his throat. This is what Ren had been so insistent to get to?

No. Ren was no longer his problem. The Force user could die in the pits of Mustafar, for all Hux cared; he certainly wished it.

Still, the junkyard has its silver linings –– or, to be specific, it had a couple of ships waiting to be traded for. He keeps to the shade as much as possible, though it’s not enough to help the radiating redness slowly creeping on his arms and neck. He ignores it, he’s felt worse in life, and follows Rey on clumsy feet, quickly discovering he’s not made for walking on sand.

They stand in line as Rey hauls a handful of parts for trading. When it’s finally her turn, Hux stands to the side to watch. The creature that greets them is revolting to say the least, sickly sweat stains over yellowed fabric making Hux’s insides turn, a greenish cast to an ugly, slimy complexion making Hux’s hairs stand on the back of his neck. Rey’s face is set in stone, however, as she offers up her selection.

He watches Unkar Plutt hem and haw over her offerings, notes the deliberate way in which sausage-like fingers try to graze Rey’s slender ones, how they turn the parts that even Hux knows are nothing more than conductors with little need to be so carefully inspected. He’d watched a creature be offered a portion for a similar piece.

“Half a portion,” Unkar Plutt announces with all the levity of a man passing judgment. Hux’s eyes narrow.

“But––” Rey begins, then her mouth clamps shut and she accepts. Hux’s eyes are near slits by now. When he steps forward to say something, her hand wraps around his burning forearm and tugs him back. Hux frowns at her, but she shakes her head, and he lets out a sharp exhale through flared nostrils.

He wouldn’t have cared any other time. This was not his life, he would have thought, except now it is, and his stomach grumbles. Brendol Hux, second of his name, reduced to scrubbing parts for a meal. He glares at Plutt, whose beady little eyes are most decidedly fixed on Rey’s shoulder blades, and sneers. He immediately hates the humanoid and the fact that he can’t pull rank here. Rey bodily pulls him away.

“You were played,” Hux clips, and Rey grinds her molars. She looks ahead towards her speeder, aware of the unfairness of the transaction, her knuckles white as she tries not to crush the portion to nothing.

“Life on Jakku isn’t about what’s fair. It’s about what keeps you alive.”

Truer words were never spoken. Perhaps she’d read his mind.

No, what a silly notion.

He gives her a long look before glancing over his shoulder at Plutt’s establishment. Yes, he dislikes Plutt. Severely, he decides. He’d have to do something about it.

That stops him short.

No. He would do no such thing. He’s staying as long as it takes him to figure out how to get out of here, as long as it takes him to repay this girl with a bell-like voice for keeping him alive, as long as it takes him to figure out how to get his power back.

“There,” she says, unaware of his machinations, “You’ve met Plutt. Happy now?”

Hux snorts. “Delighted beyond imagination.”

Rey smirks, and that would be the first of their banter. There would be more to come. He gets up on the speeder and carefully places his hands on her waist, just enough to not fall off the humming, shaking thing as she drives off into the sunset towards her home and his temporary dwelling.

By the time they arrive, the sun’s gone down, and Hux is simmering under his skin. Any hotter and he’d have live boils, he’s sure. He nearly drops off the speeder, throat parched, and when he nearly begs for water Rey rolls her eyes.

“I told you,” she admonishes, and he can just hear the end of a stupid redhead on her tongue as he takes a swallow from her canteen. Hux keeps his mouth shut. Dinner comes and goes as they sit outside on a blessedly cooling night, watching ships speed off. A Corellian freighter zooms off into the atmosphere, with nothing to prove it ever existed but a wispy tail of white on the pink-orange sky and a sad, wistful look on Rey’s face. He averts his eyes. They land on a helmet.

He can’t help himself. He picks it up, stares at it, and sees red.

It’s a resistance helmet.

Rey, unknowing of his past, watches him with an open expression. She takes it from his hands and plops it on her head, then turns to look at him as it bobbles and obscures her vision –– far too big for her –– and gives him a cheeky grin. The first he’s ever seen. It’s beautiful, or, at least, it would be if not for the rebel helmet on her head.

“Do you know what that is?” He asks. The smile slips from her face at his tone.

“It’s mine,” she replies defensively, taking it off. When she sets it down, she stashes it on the other side of her body, away from him. Hux stares out into the desert before he can say anything else. In the end, it had not been the Resistance who had ousted him and killed his Captain, but his own officers. What was on old, beat up helmet of a dead pilot to a group of traitors from within his own castle walls?

He looks at Rey. Angering his host would not do. He lets out a shaky breath as she gets up, and follows her inside.

Sleep would not come that night. Anything that touches anywhere on what had been exposed skin feels like needles and glass shards. He grunts, but no matter how he turns, it’s hellish.

He hears her mutter from the other side of the room.

“I told you so.”

“Noted,” he snarks, then rolls over and winces as the rough sheets scrape at the back of his neck. It must have been loud. Not two minutes later he hears Rey muttering again, stupid redhead having become her favorite insult for him. When she comes to stand by him in the dim moonlight peeking through the cracks in the ceiling, Hux’s body burns and aches everywhere.

“Sit up,” she demands, and Hux’s internal reaction is to stiffen at the command. He’s used to giving orders, not taking them. He turns his head slightly to look at her over his shoulder.

Rey kneels in front of him, eyes brooking no nonsense as she holds a little pot of something green and gelatinous in her hands, waxy and oily all at the same time. When he makes no move to sit, she arches an eyebrow.

“I refuse to hear you grunt all night,” she offers for an explanation, “though I should let you suffer and see if you learn to listen.”

Hux watches her for a long time, then finally snorts and gives in. He’d take her condescension if it meant stopping the sunburn for the night. When he sits up to try and take the salve from Rey, his hands are slapped away. She seems to do that often.

“No,” she replies tartly, “This is all I have and you’ll waste it. Show me your arm.”

He shows her an arm, red and angry and ten degrees too hot. Rey dips her fingers into her salve and brusquely sets to rubbing him down, and Hux almost hisses. It kriffing burns. Her fingers on him hurt, and maybe this is her teaching him a lesson, because she doesn’t ease up despite his discomfort. He grits his teeth through it and sucks it up like the trained soldier he is. Then it starts to cool where she massages, as if being dunked in ice water, and he sighs in relief.

It’s a weak little sound. He can’t be too bothered about letting it slip in the face of relief. Rey works down his other arm then forces him to take off his shirt. He stiffens again and she narrows her eyes. She’d touched him before while he was unconscious. With that justification in mind, the shirt comes off.

The salve gets massaged down his back, where the sun had beat for hours on that little speeder, burning him even through the fabric. There’s nothing friendly or careful in the way she slaps and rubs the stuff on, and Hux lets out a wince or two despite himself, but he can’t deny the absolute bliss that is not burning up when she finally administers it to the back of his neck.

“Perhaps you’ll do well to listen next time, hmm?” she says, relishing being right. Hux bites on his tongue to keep from barking at her. He breathes in, then out.

“Perhaps,” he agrees, the price for his pride having been taken out on his hide, and Rey hums.

She leaves him to dress then goes back to her little bed, and Hux finally succumbs to sleep despite his hunger and his sunburn. In the morning he wakes to her gone, a bucket of clean-ish water and a rag set by his side for him to wash.

He picks up the towel, ignoring the way it smells like her, and sets about to scrubbing himself down with the recycled water. A scrub is better than nothing in this hell-hole. That reminds him.

Water.

Hux walks outside in the rising sun and looks around. He’s not a mechanic, but he knows enough, and a small moisture vaporator shouldn’t be that hard to build.

He wanders back into the AT-AT, passing long-deserted rooms that Rey must have never walked into because they’re all covered in sand, looking for what he needs. He finds a few things. It’s not much, but it would do, and sets to working outside. When the sun peaks, Hux covers himself in fabrics he’s taken from his makeshift bed. It’s stifling hot, but at least it’s not burning. Everything gets covered, including his coppery hair that’s now turning golden from sun bleaching, until there’s nothing visible but his eyes.

By the time Rey returns, this time with two full portions in hands and a giant smile on her face, Hux pulls down the fabric and looks at her from under sweaty brows.

“What’s that?” she asks, tilting her head as if trying to decipher his work. He motions with a wrench.

“A moisture vaporator,” Hux says, then frowns at the thing. “Or, the beginnings of one.”

Rey crouches in front of it by his side and inspects it closely, humming to herself. He looks at her, waiting for her reaction.

“What do you need?” She asks.

Hux pops his neck, grumbling, “A manual would be nice,” then he lets out a soft, inaudible sigh. “Parts would be nicer.”

She gives him a small smile.

“I can get you parts.”

The next two weeks are spent with Rey bringing him parts and collected information on moisture vaporators from the outpost, and Hux working in the sun. By the end of it, he’s no longer burning to a crisp, more like toasting. It’s progress. He’d probably end up with a riot of diseases from sun exposure, but it was better than the alternative.

A month in already, and Hux’s plans for revenge slowly start rolling into the back burner while he works on repaying Rey’s kindness. It happens so very slowly he barely notices it.

On day one of the second month, Rey beams at him as the moisture vaporator roars to life. Hux squares his shoulders and stands just a little prouder, a little straighter, as a small amount of his debt to her is paid. The next day, there’s enough clean water for them to both drink and towel themselves down with, to fill not one but two canteens. Rey takes one with her, and Hux keeps the other.

Word of clean water on a desert planet does not take long to spread, however, and within days Hux finds himself having to defend his creation. Too bad the thieves are coming up against a trained officer of the First Order –– He used to be, he reminds himself –– and he hates thievery.

The first thief leaves with a broken arm, a broken nose, and a dislocated hip. The second has to be hauled away by its injured buddy, having had the pleasure of Hux cracking its skull. The creature would die, and Hux hoped the word would spread. He’d quickly fashioned weapons out of sharp metal for himself, and they were coming in quite handy.

The third time proves to be a bit more bothersome. He’d seen these creatures on the outpost that one time, and they’d come four to one. He has the upper hand, spilling guts and blood everywhere, until he finds himself pinned by the neck. Hux waits to have his head roll off his shoulders when the creature gets a heavy metal stick slammed on its head. It falls with a satisfying crack. This one would die, too.

Rey’s eyes are feral as she surveys the carnage, then her gaze lands on him and it softens. Just a bit. He notices it anyway. She lowers her staff and gives him a tiny smile, then walks into the AT-AT silently. In the morning the bodies are gone. Plutt, at least, takes care not to leave evidence of his greed.

Word does spread, after a fashion, and Hux and Rey no longer have to defend their water source.

Days later Hux sits itching at his beard, staring at his grimy nails, trying to pick out the dirt with the sharp end of what must have once been a fork, glaring at his clothes. He’s sure he looks like a vagabond, and the thought itches as much as his chin does. His hair’s already curling around his ears, at the nape of his neck, irritatingly warm in the heat of Jakku. He’d ignored it for as long as he could.

Hux makes a grab for what he knows is Rey’s little pocket knife, glaring at the dull blade. He’d cut himself, he’s sure, but it’s better than nothing. Just as he’s about to grab a handful of hair he hears Rey’s alarm.

“What’re you doing?!”

His hand stills. “What does it look like?” If he has to take one more day of this, Hux would go insane.

Rey glares at his hand, then at his hair, and she shakes her head. He thinks he hears her call him a stupid ginger again, before she drops the tools she’d been tinkering with. She comes to him and takes the knife from his hand.

“Would you stop trying to mother me?” He snarls. Rey arches an eyebrow.

“Would you stop doing stupid things?” She retorts, grabbing a fistful of his hair and yanking. Any other time of his life he would have killed for that, but she’d saved his arse once and...well… this was her home. “I can only clear an infection so many ways. Stay still.”

Hux sits stiffly, glaring at her as she sets the knife aside and digs in her belt bag. She pulls out the one thing he didn’t think she’d owned: a pair of scissors. They’re kept sharp. He breathes in deeply and watches as small bits of hair start falling off. It doesn’t get cut nearly as short as he would have preferred, but at least the hair’s off his ears.

When she reaches for his face, he pulls back. She grabs him by his now rather long beard hair and yanks him in place. The girl knows nothing of gentleness, he realizes. Not even once has she been gentle, not that he’d ask that of her, but getting yanked by the whiskers is rather uncomfortable.

She trims his beard. That, too, remains, though thankfully short enough that his skin can breathe. He finally itches at it, glaring in her direction, and wondering how his life had turned upside down into having him allow someone else to take care of this for him.

As if on cue, she grins. “You look good that way.”

Hux decides the beard can stay, though as to why he’s made that decision, he can’t fathom. Perhaps as a shield for the sun.

****

His first sandstorm takes him by surprise. Rey arrives earlier than usual, yelling about a sandstorm, and they hurry in securing their vaporator with tarp to keep it from drowning in the sand and from blowing away.

The rattle of old, creaky metal walls rumble around them just as Rey and Hux manage to push the heavy, unused access door to the AT-AT shut, covering the inside with a large tarp to keep Sand away. They’re locked in.

“Are they always this brutal?” Hux asks in the dimness while Rey fidgets with a small heater that will do nothing to keep the whole space warm, and with a battery powered light bulb. The cramped little room soon bathes in the dim, flickering glow of the old bulb.

“This is the desert, nothing here is anything but brutal.”

Hux tilts his head. There seems to be an awful lot of wisdom in the little woman, often about the desert, though he’d come to realize the witticisms could so very easily apply to life in general anywhere on this galaxy. He stashes this one away for later.

The storm would last two days.

On the first day, there had been nothing but quiet, quiet and the raging storm outside, of course. Hux had stared at the ceiling while lying on his back, counting the seconds, only to be disrupted by Rey’s bell-like voice.

“Where are you from, Bren?” She asks and his gut clenches. He’d never get used to the sound of his pet name on a stranger’s lips.

Then again, he’s been here over a month now. She’s hardly that strange.

“From a place far, far away from here,” he mutters, watching the flickering shadows dancing off the low ceiling. He laces his fingers on his chest.

“Is it green there?” She asks after a beat, and Hux tilts his head to look at her. She’s curled up on the half-moon corner where she’d fashioned a bed for herself. She’s staring at him from under a ratty blanket. What a strange little creature.

“It is,” he says, though the last time he’d seen his home planet he’d been but a child. He wouldn’t tell her just how much of his life had been spent inside the clinical entrails of Star Destroyer ships, where greenery could hardly survive unaided by artificial lighting.

“Tell me about it,” Rey whispers, closing her eyes. Hux examines her expression in the flickering lights, humming to himself.

He tells her of Arkanis’ green, wet rolling hills. Of the large lakes and clear blue skies on the off chance it didn’t rain. He skips out on the academy, a sour spot in his otherwise pleasant memories of the world, and his lips twitch when Rey’s curl into a smile. She sighs happily and drops off to sleep, and Hux returns to studying the shadows on the ceiling.

He breathes in slowly, listening to her shuffling as she tries to get comfortable, and to the raging storm outside. The little bulb illuminating the space dims when Rey’s makeshift timer goes off, and he closes his eyes. Lesson number one of a sandstorm: the wait for them to pass is slow and boring. Hux counts seconds.

Hours later he would wake, and not to the sound of raging storm, but to the sounds of Rey’s breathing. He almost turns to check on her, listening to the rapid rise and fall of inhaled breath as it hitches on the draw until––

A moan.

He turns all his muscles to stone, his eyes snapping open as he stares at the wall, facing away from her.

Another soft, needy huff, a mewling whine that Rey tries to stifle but fails in doing so, and Hux has to swallow hard when the sound of wet slapping reaches his ears. His body responds, what must be a left-over evolutionary trait, he muses, because immediately he feels himself hardening. It's hard, in more ways than one, to shut out the lewd sounds of wetness as he imagines her shoving fingers inside herself. The pace intensifies and Hux groans internally, refusing to attempt to touch himself. She’d find him out immediately, his being awake listening to her moment of vulnerability, and wouldn't that make it awkward for everyone involved? She might even toss him out.

So Hux does the only thing he can do, which is to grit his teeth and stare unblinkingly at the shadows on the wall while he waits for her to reach her orgasm. It takes a surprisingly long time.

When it finally comes -- and Hux tries not to think too hard on that particular turn of phrase in his mind -- all motions stop. A silent orgasm, perhaps, or one muffled by teeth sinking into a fist. He wishes he knew which. Instead he stares at the wall and waits. He waits for her breathing to even out, to slow, to soften. He waits until he's sure she's so far asleep his own movements won't wake her, even as his own arousal has become painful. Hux debates the merits of simply falling asleep with a boner when, after far too long, he finally grabs himself in hand with irritation and tries to make quick work of it.

One day down. Another to go. Lesson number two of surviving a sandstorm: find something to keep you occupied. Idle hands are the devil’s handiwork.

****

The second day of the storm finds them both hungry and cranky. They had split Rey’s meal, but two adults could not survive on a day’s worth of single portions, and it not only made him irritable with the situation but with himself. He decides to ignore Rey’s warning to behave and go to the outpost himself the second the storm passes, but first--

Hux wraps himself up with his threadbare sheets, walking in silent bare feet around the AT-AT to the deserted rooms he knows Rey has not touched, dry, cool sand squishing beneath his toes, digging under his toenails. It’s dark, so he guides himself with a hand to the cold walls-- funny how cold Jakku could become once the storm shielded them from the infernal sun. He inspects the rooms, taking in what cracks allow for the rolling storm to beat through, making a mental list of everything he could fix. He’d picked up quite a handy repertoire of tricks from building the evaporator.

Fix these rooms, pay his debt to her, get off Jakku. That seemed like a good enough plan. Hux returns to the middle of Rey’s living space, only to find her cursing, words too colorful even for him, and he's no delicate flower. He looks around. The tiny heater has run out of fuel, the build too rudimentary and the parts too expensive for her to install an ion power source. He purses his lips, returning to his cot.

The hours pass and it only gets colder. Five hours in they're both shivering, or, really, Rey's teeth clatter while Hux tries to stave off the goosebumps on willpower alone. It only works for so long. His military survival kicks in. He’d survived a kriffing ship crash, refuses to die from a bit of chill.

“You’re freezing. Come here,” he demands, this time with his General’s voice. Rey startles.

She eyes him warily. Up until this point the most bodily contact he's had with her has been when she's tended to him. Delirious men on death’s doorstep didn't cross personal boundaries, but fully healed men might.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she replies, even as the words slip through clattering teeth and a shiver rocks her body where she's curled up into a ball.

“And I’m sure you’ll be fine all the way up until you die, frozen,” he says, refusing to roll his eyes. The girl does not look like she’s ever been exposed to cold. “Now come here.”

Rey glares, but she loses the fight as she scurries over to him on still booted feet. He lifts his blankets, aware that his chest is bare. He was used to far worse on the Finalizer. “Body heat is the easiest way to survive conditions like these.”

Rey narrows her eyes at him then slowly works herself under the blankets. The temperature under them goes up a degree, but her teeth still chatter.

He regards her carefully.

“Better?” He asks, knowing what the answer will be and what must happen next. She shakes her head. He’d already figured as much, but it was easier to get her to agree after she admitted it to herself than to drag it out of her.

“Move closer,” he says, green eyes glued on hazel ones, “I promise I won't touch you inappropriately.”

Rey hesitates, but the idea of being cold must not be so appealing after all because she finally moves into his chest. It seems she, too, is hardwired for survival. Whatever it takes.

He wraps an arm around her instinctively and Rey sighs minutes later when the warmth of their shared contact cocoons them. She moves closer yet, pushing her head under his chin, wrapping her own arm around him and pulling him (or rather, his body heat) in greedily. Greedy little desert thing. His chest rumbles and he closes his eyes.

The end to this stupid storm couldn't come fast enough.