Night Changes

Mission

To avoid too much free time you had begun working late any days that you could, making excuses to run diagnostics on your ship, tinker around or simply clean it. You left the maintenance to Ana, your lead mechanic, but knew enough to at least make yourself feel busy. The less free time you had, the less time you spent overthinking your life.

Today, you were both avoiding your thoughts as well as a specific person. Though truly there was nowhere on base he wouldn't be able to seek you out, and your hope that staying in your flight suit in the hangar would be enough of deterrent proved futile.

The healer still showed up.

At the sound of approaching footsteps in the otherwise quiet hangar, you turned your head and instantly felt like an animal trapped in a cage. At this point, just over a week since meeting the man, you'd run out of excuses to try and encourage him, as nicely as possible, to fuck off.

Healer Rush Derrin was...annoying. To put it lightly, that is. If you were being honest, he was easily the most irritating man you'd ever met, and also the most clueless. Your initial attraction to him felt ridiculous now that you had one-failed-date and too many follow-up conversations that showcased just how self-absorbed and uninteresting the man was.

He'd found you a few days after your initial meeting, in the hangar as you had suggested to him, just before you were going to leave for dinner. You had lit up when you saw him walking over, feeling a little excited not only for time with a handsome man but also the opportunity to just talk to someone. Poe was giving you an unusually sombre silent treatment, though he did finish off reprimanding you the day after your mission fuck up. And then he was just...silent.

And you weren't going to question it, because the less you said to one another, the better. It always felt like such hard work just trying to exist around Poe now, you were honestly grateful not to have to exchange jabs at one another. But it was also lonely; your only friend on base outside of Black team was Ana, your mechanic, who had long hours and limited free time. Temmin was always good for conversation, so you'd usually gravitate his way during the day when the opportunity arose, engage in friendly banter until Poe came along and you'd be forced to slip away. Kare was more content to give you a wide berth, treating you with respect and preferring the relationship was merely professional. You got along really well with her but could sense the lack of connection on a personal level.

So, lonely as you were, handsome as Rush was, you gladly accepted his offer to join him in the caf for dinner and treat it as a first date of sorts. At first, during the walk to the caf and waiting in line to pile your plates with dinner, you spoke casually enough that you felt the date was going fairly well. You weren't too hung up on whether or not it would lead anywhere; it wasn't like you were looking for anything serious at this point with anyone. You hoped it would lead to something fun, perhaps a few nights at the cantina drinking and dancing, and if you meshed well a couple of tumbles in between sheets.

But when you took a seat in a quieter section of the over large room, it was like a switch flipped for Rush and he went into 'date' mode and frankly, you'd wished he hadn't. The man did not shut up about himself. He spoke over you enough times that you considered jabbing him with your fork, and just when you thought he was going to start asking you about yourself-now that you knew his fucking life story-he launched into a rant about what he wanted to do once the war was over, and on and on it went.

By the time dinner had ended and the caf was much less crowded, you were about ready to hurl yourself out the second-story window, figuring you could probably manage to tuck and roll to avoid injury that would require him to treat you, and then maybe you'd just run into the jungle for a few days.

As you pretended to listen to him ramble, your mind had wandered and you realized that you hadn't ever needed to discourage any potential suitors before. Poe and Charlie had, in so many ways, made you set your standards high, high enough that not many dates ended up going anywhere, and you just never developed the ability to read other men, to be able to sniff out the bad eggs. Rush was a nice man, but he was also entirely not your type. And based on the way he occasionally bragged about mediocre accomplishments, you had a sneaking suspicion he would not be up to scruff in the bedroom.