Forces of Attraction and Repulsion

[Untaaura Verratoa]

The pent-up energy returned to the Major's right knee, which began to tap up and down slightly as she looked around her half of the dining room. It was dark and intimate, and felt like the right kind of ambiance to take someone to get a memorable meal. Looking behind her, Untaaura could see a door plaqued by STAFF ONLY. No restroom there. She began to mentally rewind, trying to recall if she'd seen one coming in. She didn't but there had to be one up there. That seemed like the most plausibly deniable option. Go to the restroom, get another look at Beck (and the person she was with) and then...what?

Untaaura frowned. She hadn't really filled in that part of the plan. What was she going to say?

Before she could figure that out, Lieutenant Tenjun arrived. Damn. Why did he have to be punctual? Untaaura nodded as he clocked her, gesturing to the seat across from her, which would leave his back to anything in her field of view.

"Rrjight on tjime." She rose from her seat, stepping down from the ludicrously-tall chair with as much grace as she could muster. "Go on and orrderr. Make ssurre sshe knowss jyourr on mjy tjicket. jI' gotta hjit the head."

Tenjun, who had already brandished his datapad, looked a little disappointed in the sudden jilting, but he shrugged it off. "Sure thing, Major. I'll have everything ready to go over when you get back."

"Take jyourr tjime." She gave a curt nod, and walked on by.

Well, no more procrastination. What was the plan here? She would head to the restroom, head out, then see Beck by accident. Did that pass the smell test? Tenjun was here. Her alibi was airtight. What about this other person? Was she on a date? Goddess, that would be her luck. She didn't get a good look before, but the person at the table seemed about the same size. That ruled out that joker Abaddon thankfully. Beck would never be seen with a goon like that on her own time. Held captive at work, sure, but that was a totally different thing.

Quickly, she put her gloves back on and unconsciously adjusted her hair. She picked up on Beck as she made the turn around the accent wall. Too bad that her bad ear was closest, so she could pick up nothing as far as conversation. Just before she got to a spot where she might get a good look at the other person, a waiter in Corellian attire passed by, completely blocking her view.

"Fuck." Untaaura quietly hissed, not daring to break her stride to turn back. Maneuver first, then attack. Get it together, Marine!

Fully making the turn, the sign for the restroom was easy enough to see, and close enough to make it easy to have a chance encounter on the way out. Untaaura made her move.

[Codename: Abaddon]

"jYou rread mjy mjind."

The more time we spent together the more she seemed to just dig into my brain and know exactly what I'm thinking. She knew when I was hungry and would become a magician pulling snacks out of her sleeves. She didn't try to cramp my style or tell me what to do. She was warm and inviting. Oh fuck, is she everything my mother isn't? That's not a particular line of thought I want to go down right now. Anyways, we are on the same wavelength now. I don't know if I've ever felt so connected to another person since Tiaanna died.

Even in situations like this I was always on edge. Always watching out of the corner of my eye for danger. A lifetime of making lifelong enemies over simple misunderstandings and mistakes, not to mention dodging mother, had ingrained that in me. So naturally I saw the waitress coming back from the other side of the room long before anyone would have clocked it. She brought a bowl of breaded, deep fried nuggets and a bowl of dipping sauce that, according to the menu was spicy. I had my doubts. She also laid out a glass with my drink, and I was so relieved to finally have alcohol within arms reach. I'm sure it's gonna be weak sauce, but anything to take my nervous edge off would be super cool.

"Here we are. Are you ready to order, rrou'a?"

"Yeah. Can we get the bonelessss wjingss and the kababss? Djid jyou want anjythjing to drrjink, babe?"

I let my hand slip underneath the table edge and rest on top of her hand on my leg, and gave it a little squeeze.

[Tamera Beck]

It was a reassuring sign, and Tamera leaned into it.

She smiled at the server, canted her head slightly to the side, and flashed her most big-and-oh-boy-oh-boy smile.

"One of those bubbly fiz shakes," she had to think for a moment, remembering that this place had a fully-functioning shake bar, "... the sagri fra* one."

The server hesitated a moment.

"Sagri fra? Are you sure?"

"Oh I'm sure."

She gave a confident nod. She remembered the last time she'd had a sagri fra shake, and it'd been absolutely divine.

A final (and reluctant) nod, and their server headed off to put in their order.

Moments later she looked to Ori. She bit her lower lip, and finally gave a tentative smile.

"You and me," she started, but seemed to lose any grasp on the proper words to finish the sentence. Ori's hand on her own was then taken up fully, palm-to-palm.

Tamera regrouped, pulled in a breath, and let it out slowly.

"Are we... well... "

Their lovely dinner hadn't even started, and she was on the verge of possibly ruining it all. And in the next instant, she barreled ahead while hoping for the best.

"... can we be a thing? And not just some station booty call, you know? But like a real, live thing. A thing that's just you and me?"






* - Sagri Fra - Foie Gras

[Untaaura Verratoa]

The head offered a bit of a cooling off point, and Untaaura spent five minutes in front of the basin and mirror, just giving herself a moment to relax and think this through. She splashed a little cool water on her face, blotting dry with a towel before carefully tidying any errant shocks of hair. Good enough. If there was anything wrong now, five additional minutes in front of the bathroom mirror wasn't going to fix it.

When Untaaura left, she mentally reminded herself to stay on course for her table. Make the connection accidental. People bump into each other on space stations all the time. Just act like you've got something else on your mind. Which, to her credit, she was able to pull off, right up until the point that she was close enough to see not only Beck, but the person sitting next to her. A woman. A Cizeri woman, with a docked ear. The sheer unexpectedness of it caused Untaaura's casual gait to falter. And in that moment, they both made eye contact.

No plan survives contact with the enemy.

"Beck?"

[Codename: Abaddon]

Woah. Sagri Fra? Damn, this girl was wild and freaky. I considered myself a bit of a snack snob but she blows me away with the variety of foods and snacks she's tried. In my defense, I usually cannot afford more than canned synthetic insta-beef.

Oh man, the way she's holding my hand and smiling at me. I don't know how I'm not just melting into a puddle. She's just so perfect. This is such a perfect moment. Nothing could tear this away from us...

I chose a poor time to take a drink of my water, and choked a little as her question came out. "Hrrm, ahem. Babe, jI thought we werre alrreadjy to-"

"BeCk?"

A familiar voice pulled my attention away from the hot momma next to me to bright and shiny uniformed person. Oh hey, the cute shortstack is back, and looking like the shiniest corporat in the verse. I would almost admit it was a bit of a glow up for her, but I was too busy being incredibly annoyed that this annoying person from earlier in the day was back and bothering us again. It took everything I had to not tell her to go fuck off right into the sun, but I was equally horrified of the intrusion of Abaddon's words in my head, and not wanting to rock the boat for Beck. The complete lack of recognition in the soldier's eyes made my soul crawl back out of my ass and back into my chest. She didn't realize who I was. That's good. I don't need people knowing what Abaddon looks like on the inside. I gots too many enemies for that.

In the meantime I would settle for flattening my ear against my head and grimacing.

[Tamera Beck]

Now??!! Of all times, now?! Now now?!?!

Her expression had frozen as that singular word ran laps through her interrupted thoughts.

Now?!

Of course, the voice of the person saying her last name was enough to eventually elicit a furious few blinks, and finally she slowly turned to face the speaker.

Major Verratoa. Because of course it was the Major.

Out of sheer instinct, the brunette held tight to Ori's hand, making sure the other woman didn't pull away.

"Major!"

Of course, seeing the major here, now, sent her thoughts spiraling back to their previous encounter. Had Little Man blown out yet another CAN?! Surely not. She had made sure to personally fix that poor guy back up, and had even installed a feedback dampening jumper to take on the processing load. Of course, there was always that not-zero-percent chance that he'd managed to blow out even all of that.

Still holding tight to Ori's hand, Beck gave a quick smile, and reaching up with one hand she pushed her glasses up just a tad since they'd slid down a little.

"Don't tell me that Little Man shorted himself out again... ?"

[Untaaura Verratoa]

"What?"

Caught off guard, Untaaura scrambled, trying not to notice the clasped hands on the table, but also maintain eye contact. Project strength, Marine!

"jI, uh, no actualljy."

Her tail switched in choppy motions as she triangulated, and when she spoke, it was with a casual tone. Or at least casual for a Marine. "Actualljy, jI wanted to thank jyou forr jyourr worrk."

There was a flush to Beck's expression. Was that for her? Or for her?

"Lookss ljike the pathjing jintegrrjitjy on that MSSE unjit jiss holdjing. Whateverr jyou djid sseemss to have done the trrjick."

This wasn't getting any less awkward. Untaaura stole what glances she could of Beck's companion without lingering. It was like looking into a mirror. Maybe that's her fetish. Maybe that feeling of energy she picked up earlier in the day wasn't just vibes but tied up into whatever this was.

And what this was, probably wasn't her business.

"Anjyway..." she continued, covertly smearing sweaty palms against her bloused trousers, regretting leaving her white gloves at the table, "jIt'ss a ssmall sstatjion. Good rrunnjing jinto jyou. Majybe we'll talk agajin laterr."

And yet her feet didn't move. They felt like lead weights. What was she waiting for, to be dismissed?

[Codename: Abaddon]

Holy shit. It was taking everything I had to not saying something snarky at the clown in the uniform. I could see her trying not to look at me. The classic staring straight ahead but actually focused out of the corner of your eye. I know, because that's my move! Usually when I'm trying to eyeball a low cut torpedo mama while not wanting to draw attention. Having a helmet on really upped my game. You just had to remember not to tilt your visor right where your looking. Easy peasy.

Wait a minute. Is she not looking at me because she's trying to scope me out without being obvious? Does she think I'm hot and made conversation with Beck to get a closer look? She's never seen me outside of the armor. Damn. Maybe Abaddon was wrong all these years. I go out without the armor on and suddenly I have two hotties on my lap. I mean, Beck is way hotter and the uniform is really not doing it for me, but it feels solid as fuck to suddenly be so desired. I don't even know what to do with this cursed knowledge. I guess I can lean into it. Just a little bit. For fun, and to see how uncomfortable I can make the Major.

Without letting go of Beck's hand I adjusted my sitting position to angle out more towards the Major. I didn't have much to show off with the body the Goddess gave me, but I had spent years in heavy armor and constant trips through space didn't give me much to do but watch cartoons and pump iron. My half-shirt left most of my abdomen exposed; stripes, scars, muscles and all. So I flexed my abs in the biggest show of dominance I've ever attempted outside of my armor. That must be what she was attracted to, right? I didn't have many other physical qualities to show off other than blaster holes and muscles.

I looked her right in the eye. The same eyes that were trying to hard to focus on Beck and not look at me.

Game on.

[Tamera Beck]

Tamera took the parting-yet-not-really-leaving phrase for what it was, and nodded.

"Small station for sure," she grinned before switching her eyes to Ori. Who to be honest, looked like some barely pent-up rathtar ready to eat its' prey. The brunette gave a conciliatory laugh that seemed to just bounce off the table and into the crackling void between the two Cizeri women. It dissipated, fizzling out.

"So, yeah... "

Trying to latch on to the Major's last words while still doing her best to mitigate the look she could easily recognize in Ori's eyes, Tamera bit her lip for only a moment before turning a wide smile to Major Verratoa.

"I bet we'll see each other at some point for sure."

Her free hand reached out then, to give a reassuring pat to the woman's arm.

"I hope you have a good dinner - I hear the food here is wonderful."

[Untaaura Verratoa]

She had a good peripheral sense, so Untaaura quickly clocked the look coming from Beck's friend. She'd seen that look before with Kuurramaai, but that was different - charged with emotion and shared history.

"Do jI know jyou?" Untaaura asked, regretting ignoring her opening to leave. Now she was meeting eyes with someone who was obviously attractive, but was too uncannily similar to be okay. More to the point, this doppelganger was open and direct about her intentions, and Untaaura was jealous of that.

[Codename: Abaddon]

"Not jyet..."

The Major was still here. She wanted something, but she wasn't giving away just what that was. It was a bold strategy to insert yourself into a private dinner and then play hard to get. I can respect the game, but I don't know how the hell she thought this was going it play out. Still, could be useful experience for my own little black book of strategies. Even if just to know what to never do. Thinking on it, this did seem like the kind of thing Abaddon would do to try and get someone's attention.

"jI'm Orrrrji."

I couldn't help but ham up my accent with all the blue blood embellishment of the Cluster. Mother had always wanted us to speak like nobles, because that was what she envisioned as the future of the family. I'd never laid it on this thick for Beck. I hated my accent and had spent years learning to hide it. But right now, right here, it felt like a great way to fuck with this weirdo. Oh damn, maybe I should have gone with no accent? That might have been even weirder. Oh well. Too late for that.

"Cool sscarrss."

Reaching up I pushed my hair behind what little remained of my ear.

[Tamera Beck]

The sudden deepening of Ori's accent made her stop, blink, and lick her bottom lip. It was... hot. It was enticing and attractive, and even if Ori hadn't meant it, it was just the sort of thing that would make their evening sofa lay-abouts turn into nights of nothing but grabby-hands and five-fingered bum-squeezes. Among other things. It was the thought of those 'other things' that made her partially blush, and Tamera pulled her hand right back from the Major, going to scratch at a suddenly very interesting spot behind her ear.

Ori's mention of scars only made things more poignant, and Tamera cast her eyes to the Major as if realizing for the first time that she was looking at a very nearly carbon copy of her girlfriend. Her. Girlfriend.

Beck was usually socially clueless, but she had her moments, and had certainly picked up on Ori's vibes right before being interrupted by the Major.

Ori and Beck. Beck and Ori. They were a THING. They were TOGETHER.

And Tamera wasn't about to squander the sweetest, most pure, most unorthodox relationship she'd ever had.

She held her tongue however, and kept her eyes on the Major.

[Untaaura Verratoa]

She even spoke with a Carshoulis accent. Of course she was from the mother world, just like her. Living most of her life in the mountains of Taltimant hadn't shaken Untaaura of her city accent, but This Ori was laying it on like a spectacle. It was arousing and deeply weird at the same time, and Untaaura couldn't help but feel like she was playing a game that nobody bothered to tell the rules.

"jI'm..."

Untaaura unconsciously tidied her hair, again using her peripheral vision to this time take a read on Beck, who looked increasingly uncomfortable.

"...overrsstajyjing mjy welcome."

With that, she felt untethered, and able to take a few steps back to try and physically end the conversation.

"Njice to meet jyou" was added for Ori's sake, the conversational equivalent of a bacta patch on a severed arm. Untaaura turned before her own blend of shame, embarrassment, desire, and jealousy threatened to blossom, and retreated.

[Codename: Abaddon]

Two lionesses enter, only one leaves. The Major blinked first, and walked away defeated. Shit, I have never felt anything like this. My heart is racing. I thought she was going to play me back and call my bluff. I don't think I had any other moves to play after that. Well, at least no moves I want to play with Beck watching. There's definitely some interesting, and steamy, places that could have gone. But I'm going to keep that to myself and work it into the next fanfic I write.

Once the Major was a comfortable distance away I immediately shifted my attention back to Beck and gave her hand a squeeze. I switched back to my usual speaking light accent. That posh shit was exhausting. The rest came out as low volume word vomit but I seriously had to get all of this our right now because it was choking me out from the inside since we were interrupted.

"Fjirrsst, thrree thijngss: That wass ssuperr wejirrd, rjight? What wass that all about? Alsso, duh. jI thought we were alrreadjy togetherr-togetherr. jI've been prractjicalljy ljivjing wjith jyou and jI love jyourr cute facce and sstuff. Um... jI guessss jI djidn't have a thjirrd thjing..."

I could feel my stupid face blushing, but it felt good getting it all out. Kind of like throwing up, but cute, and stuff.

[Tamera Beck]

Cute face. Practically living together. Even just those two things were enough to make her inwardly swell up, and Tamera puffed herself out. A 'smooth' shoulder-tilt in to Ori, and a forehead-to-forehead interaction that left no doubts for either party.

"You know what I think?"

She was still stuck on the accent, even after the Major had made her exit. After all, it only made it easier to push in to that amazingly tantalizing inflection that Ori had stashed away in her linguistic repertoire.

"I think, that Ori needs to use her accent more."

And as if to punctuate her sentence, Beck angled her head over, giving the most delicate of kisses to her partner's cheek.

[Untaaura Verratoa]

Returning in discrage to Tenjun at least allowed Untaaura to phone their meeting in and not think about things too much. The issue with the Imbrisi gas hauler was every bit as routine and procedural as she expected. For Tenjun's sake, he at least didn't try to give the entire thing a glow up and package it as the case of the week. He came, talked business, got a bite to eat, and left her with the bill...which was a bit more expensive than she wanted to let on. The entire thing was a concussion grenade that had gone off in her face.

No crying over spilt milk. Scrape yourself off the floor and regroup. So what if there's not enough lesbians in the cluster to fill a star cruiser, and so what if she found one that could pass as your stunt double. Wait, which one would be the stunt double? She looked like she worked out, and looked like she'd taken enough punches and worse.

The more Untaaura thought about it, the more it absurd and pathetic it was. Even if she didn't have uncanny competition, she didn't have a plan for talking to Beck. Thanks for fixing my droid, can we just spend a few hours talking about where we came from, because I feel like I need to know you. She didn't need to be reminded of how lucky she'd been to have met someone like Kuurramaai, even if it took years for that moment to be cultivated.

"Wajitrresss, Correlljian whjisskjy ijaaikan'rri, and the bjill, pleasse."

With her half-eaten plate of food taken away, Untaaura was at least determined to squeeze a cocktail's worth of enjoyment out of this fiasco, even if she was mixing business and pleasure by using idle time to process payroll on her data pad.

Why are you trying to find romance? Just getting laid is hard enough as it is.

With her own thoughts betraying her, Untaaura shut off the pad, gingerly massaging the bridge of her nose as she tried to figure out how she'd even gotten here today.

[Codename: Abaddon]

"The best I can do is no accent." I said using my most flat voice I could in a mimicry of the many mid-rim sitcom bootlegs I watched as a teenager. I could barely keep the smile off my face. I sounded ridiculous. It was the kind of voice you expected to sell you Asteroid Insurance.

I wasn't a huge fan of my natural accent. My mother had driven that into me and my sister when we were kids. It had not been a great time. I had spent so many years since trying to distance myself from that life and from my actual racial identity. The armor helped with that. But like, I mean, come on. It's not like I could ever tell Beck no. Look at that face. And just below. Bam! Torpedo mama. And I ain't hiding my eyes like the cowardly Major.

"jI'll tell jyou what. jI'll do jit jusst forr jyou. jIn prrrrjivate."