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[imthepilot]

Bodhi can't help but get up and fiddle. He's slept so much since the accident, he finds it hard to stay still for too long. Even if holding Galen in the afterglow is magnificent.

Instead he investigates Galen's little kitchenette, seeing what he might have to work with. He's starving!

Comments

[imthepilot]

"But you connected?" He asks softly.

And then pulls back a little. "Don't... don't let me push you, if you don't want to talk about it."

[galen_erso]

Galen closed his fingers around Bodhi's hand.

'No, I want to. And yes, we connected. No great fuss or drama: we came back from that expedition and were one, and made our plans and moves together after that. She was so beautiful to me -- strong and stern and regal in her solid boots and large warm coat, queen of all she surveyed."

He smiles -- a fond pun, and a terrible one.

[imthepilot]

Bodhi can't help but smile. The pun is awful and adorable at the same time. "It's wonderful, that love happened so fast and so completely."

He rubs his fingers over Galen's knuckles. "Twice."

[galen_erso]

"Oh yes," Galen says. "Twice. Necessary to the flow of the universe each time. Nothing big, I don't claim that -- but necessary like a smooth pebble in a stream lying just so."

[imthepilot]

"Necessary pebbles." Bodhi echoes. That he can live with. He can't see himself as more but as long as it means getting to be here, with Galen.

[galen_erso]

"There are millions of them, to one or two big dramatic rocks," Galen says, "but still, they make up the bed of the stream, and they must be there, each one."

[imthepilot]

"And in just the right place." Bodhi smiles, caressing Galen's hand. "Like we are now."

He loves Galen's hands. The dichotomy of them. By all rights they should be smooth and soft but Galen's hands carry a history of far more than a lab.

[galen_erso]

"Yes," Galen says. "Just so. So you see, it's not that strange that we fell so fast, or that Lyra and I did before. Just in the right place."

[imthepilot]

"It makes me wonder, if I'd never been assigned here. If I'd never entered the academy, would we have still found each other." Would he have ever known that he could feel like this.

[galen_erso]

"But you were, so you could be here," Galen says. "And I'm sure we would. You might have become a merchant, and I might have bought spices from you."

[imthepilot]

"Or a food vendor in some market town." Bodhi shrugs with a half smile. "If my grandmother had lived, that's what I would have become, I think."

[galen_erso]

"And there I would have found you, and come back again and again, for your food at first, then for your conversation, and then because I'd have fallen in love," Galen says.

See, they are meant to be.

[imthepilot]

Bodhi smiles, liking that thought. "Either way, I get to cook for you."

[galen_erso]

"You do," Galen says. "And I get to enjoy your cooking. And we get to share everything else."

[imthepilot]

"Everything I have to share. Past and future." Bodhi answers, almost as s promise. "Anything you want to know about me, just asks."

[galen_erso]

"The same goes for me," Galen says. "Never think anything is too painful, or too personal."

[imthepilot]

"I'd like to know about your life, before here. Before the Empire." He toys with Galen's fingers, "These aren't the hands of a scientist."

[galen_erso]

Galen turns up his palms. There are scars in there.

"The hands of an unskilled farmer," Galen says, "of an inept rock-climber, and of a father used to pulling his own weight in the household."

[imthepilot]

Bodhi traces them, studying them. reading Galen's history. "What did you farm?"

[galen_erso]

"Everything we needed," Galen says. "Subsistence farming, basically. It was bad times -- worse than even now -- and trade was often interrupted. So, no relying on cash crops."

[imthepilot]

"An outer rim world then?" Then shakes his head. "Don't tell me, if it would endanger you at all." He isn't sure how Galen came to be on Eadu, or what he still might hold in secret.

[galen_erso]

"Lah'mu," Galen says. "Just about as full of black stones as this place. Still, we managed to survive and thrive, and learn with time. It's amazing how things will just grow on their own if you provide the right conditions."

[imthepilot]

"And you child?" He frowns, trying to remember her name from their hazy conversations in the med-bay. "Jyn? She grew up there?"

[galen_erso]

"She did," Galen says. "She took to nature and the outdoors with the same unerring instinct as her mother."

[imthepilot]

It must have been quite a playground, even in the hard times. I never had the gift for growing things. My grandmother had that. And Jedha isn't a good place for outdoors."