WHO: Margo Hanson, Rey WHEN: Last Saturday, the 10th WHERE: Margo's bedroom. Oo lala. WHAT: Margo and Rey talk about the terms of their relationship. TRIGGERS: They're naked, but it's not discussed in detail. Sexual situations and innuendo. Cursing. Smoking pot. Talk about open-relationships.
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Rey hadn't crowded Margo. For as desperately as she wanted to be alone with her the first night she saw her again, alive and whole and very much not a Zombie, she'd known she wasn't the only one. Eliot's party had been transformed from a Halloween celebration into an excuse to cope and drink with loved ones. Margo had many who cared about her and though Rey had rushed to her, throwing her arms around her to hold her tight, she'd not tried to pull her away. She'd whispered against her lips, "I missed you," and that was the extent of a private moment with Margo as far as that night had gone. The rest of it, though occasionally in Margo's circle, was spent being social with all. She let herself be merry and thankful for this one time when Tumbleweed had reset its damage. Her friends were safe, she was in most of their company, and things were going to be okay.
However, even though Rey was capable of waiting, it didn't mean she intended to for long. Enough time had passed that when she met with Margo again, she felt no guilt at the idea of pulling her to seclusion and losing herself to all things Margo. For as much as she didn't want to allow the thoughts in, there'd been days of grief for Rey. And so her kisses and her embraces lingered just a little longer than normal, as if to convey emotions that were left unspoken.
You're here. You're alive. I care for you. Don't go.
And now she was laying on the bed, cheek resting against her crossed arms, gaze turned to look at the woman. She'd not said anything for awhile, just enjoying the space, and it being possible she might fall asleep right there. But instead she spoke in a whisper. "Space nun."
Margo was adept at post-coital marijuana joints, her fingers deftly filling up the paper, her tongue across the edge to seal it. She'd been pretending that everything was alright, but the truth was that she was using Ambien every night to get to sleep and smoking a little more weed than usual. Then again, that was nothing when you were talking about the woman who once tried to snort her weight in cocaine.
It wasn't the first time she'd died, but it was the first time she'd felt it. The slow decay, feeling ill, desperate to feel better. There'd been a point when she realized that she'd been infected and maybe she shouldn't go to the Cottage in case she got the rest of them too, but Margo could be a deeply selfish person, and she wanted her loved ones around her. They weren't all there, but it was a start.
So now, she lit the joint, took a puff and offered it to Rey. "Not just any space nun," she replied with a grin. "My space nun."
Rey lifted herself up with her elbows enough to take the joint when it was offered to her. It was a pass time she didn't indulge in regularly, and thus far, it was exclusively indulged in while in Margo's company. She took a drag from the end before holding it back out to Margo to take hold of.
And her face broke out into a wide grin. "Yes, your space nun," she reiterated. It had been a phrase that had been shouted out weeks before and one Rey had been wanting to circle back around to asking about. It had implications. Some of them were vastly incorrect. Nun, as a prime example, by their current state of undress. But she suspected that word wasn't ever spoken as a truth by Margo.
And it was the other implications that meant more to Rey. Specifically the 'my' aspect.
She shifted, moving to lay on her side. There was a curiosity on the implications as a whole. She didn't want to assume but yet...
Margo took the joint and held it. "Have you been waiting to bring that up again? I'm pretty sure it's been a month since I said that." She paused. "Eliot calls you that. Both of them now."
Careful not to disturb the joint's cherry, Margo turned to lie on her back, stretching out and enjoying the dimness of the room and the company. There weren't many people that Margo trusted with her softness which only came in short bursts anyway. Why would she waste it on some asshole who couldn't give it back?
She also wasn't an idiot. She knew that Rey had grown attached, and Margo was brutally honest with herself, she was too. She didn't want to be, but you didn't always get a choice in the matter, did you?
"It's been in the back of my mind," she offered up as a truth, as she propped up her head, fingers sliding through the strands of her hair. It was down completely this evening. There was a minor nod in acknowledgement. Of course it had originated from one of them. It sounded like something the man would say. "And there's been a lot this month."
After all, Rey'd given Margo space in the immediate aftermath of that day. And then there'd been the general necessity of their lives outside each others company. And then the zombies.
Space nun had stuck, even if Margo had never thought the Jedi were monks or nuns, depending. Honestly, she almost never gave it a second thought even if she was full of book and pop culture. It lingered in the back of her mind though, usually accompanied by the thought that it was stupid to limit someone's sexual or romantic desires because it often turned into shit like the Catholic Church's problem with wide-spread pedophilia.
"This month fucking sucked." Margo took another huff from the joint. She held it for a moment before exhaling. "Seemed like every time I turned around something new and shitty was happening."
"It really kriffing did," Rey agreed, as she thought back on it. Things hadn't been great for longer than a month, even. It certainly felt as though it had been kicked off by Leia's departure and just not stopped from there. But the days the week prior had been the worst of it all. "November really needs to step up its game," she added after a moment.
She held her free hand out as a silent request for the joint to be passed back to her, all the while still turning over the implications and assumptions in her mind. She had no experience with asking questions to get clarity. All she had was Margo and she was learning that as she went.
"I've never been called someone's space nun." She'd never been called someone's girlfriend, either, but it almost felt as though that's what it meant. Rey found herself wishing that to be the case.
Margo passed it along, using this opportunity to pull her hair out from under her and fan it out on the bed behind her and partially over the edge. Then she reached over to brush strangs of Rey's hair from her face, gentle and soft. Sometimes she felt that Rey pulled her hair into those tight buns as part of her armor. She'd been left for some time on a desert world and had to fend for herself. Every part of that image was constructed to protect herself. Margo knew what that was like.
"Sounds more like you've never been someone's."
Rey took it but didn't raise it to her lips. Instead, she shut her eyes and savored the feel of her hair being brushed back. There'd have been a time where Rey would have pulled away from an attempt, keeping a safe distance, not allowing anyone to touch her if she could prevent it. That barrier had begun to come down with the aid of Finn, followed by Leia and then countless others, but it'd taken her so many years to get to this point.
"I haven't." And there was a time where she wouldn't have considered allowing it. She'd seen too many of those she cared for wretched away by Portal. The idea of being this close with anyone felt like playing with fire. She'd told Leia she didn't want to tempt the portal or seek out that kind of connection willingly.
And yet here she was, over a year later, playing with fire. She felt she now understood how Ben and Poe and Finn were capable of tempting the portal themselves. "I tried not to be," she then offered up. Her own gentle confession.
"We don't always get what we want," Margo offered herself. Aside from Eliot, she'd never felt bonded to anyone else in the same way. Even now, there was still a small part of her that would always belong to Eliot, and though she didn't enjoy commitment, or the feeling of being beholden to someone else, she liked Rey. She liked Rey a lot, more than she cared to admit.
The problem was that Rey was soft in ways that Margo thought would toughen up if she was with Margo for too long. Margo wasn't soft when she was in love, nor was she soft when she was just fucking someone, and she didn't want to be the one to take that away from her. "Rey, I'm not a nice person. I'm a fucking bitch, and that's not just me talking from some bullshit society standpoint."
"Not always," Rey agreed, softly, but her eyes flicked up to look at Margo. There was vulnerability displayed across her face as she looked upon her. Rey wanted whatever could be offered to her when it came to Margo, even if it was solely her friendship, but that wasn't what they felt like anymore. They hadn't for a long while, even though Rey would consider Margo her closest friend outside of her own world.
Rey's head gave a slight tilt. "No one is always nice," she countered as she shifted to set the joint down in the ashtray by the bed. Turning her gaze back to Margo, "I know what you are like, Margo." She watched her closely as she said this, the gears turning in her own head. She'd known Margo for years now.
Margo had never been shy about who she was as a person. She always preferred that people hate her or be afraid of her than to think she was someone entirely different than what she was. It was part of her armor. Hit first, strike fast, then the other person wouldn't even try. Too many people had tried to break her, including her own father who was, ironically, the person who taught her to be like this.
"You wanna be my girlfriend," Margo stated, tipped as a question. Her voice had that harsh tone of sarcasm it almost always did, but her expression was curious. "You wouldn't like that. I'm hard on my lovers. I expect more out of them than anyone else."
There was a simple nod.
It was an easy enough question to answer for Rey. After all, it was so consistently on her mind. And the week prior, when she had been trying not to think of what came next in a possibility where Margo was gone, the sentiment of 'my friend' had felt underplayed. It was correct but it wasn't the whole of what they felt like they were.
"Shouldn't I be the one to decide if I don't like something?" She asked, though not harshly. Then she pulled in a breath, "Hard in what way?"
"I'm tough as shit on myself, and that extends to anyone who gets close to me." Margo grabbed the joint out of the ashtray and took another puff. Once that was done, she tapped the tip until the cherry was just out, then moved the ashtray to the floor. Margo was also notoriously bored when it came to partners. "I don't do monogamous."
"You've already been tough on me." Rey didn't view this as a negative. The most immediate example, which flashed to memory, was trying to save Rey from herself when they were aboard the Merlin. Yeah, Chewbacca had a hand in that as well, but Margo was the one helped intercept her. And Margo hadn't been afraid to speak her mind ever with Rey. "It shows you care," she offered as well, to emphasize her opinion on the matter.
She watched the movement as the words settled in. "I wouldn't ask you to." Rey had known Margo had other partners this whole time. And then there was Eliot. Or one of them, at least.
"That means you can have sex with other people too." Margo was careful to point out. It wasn't just about Margo's appetite, or her fickleness. She really liked Rey. A lot. She just knew herself well enough to know that when it came to sex, Margo wasn't the type to settle down to just one person. Not even Eliot got that once upon a time.
"Mm." She shifted, stretching back out on her back but bringing her arm up to rest under her head as a pillow. She'd been with one other person, ever, and while she'd enjoyed herself at the time, it wasn't exactly the same. "I'll keep it in mind," she said after a moment. Perhaps one day she'd find she wanted to with someone else but ever since that other encounter, she'd not sought out sex with anyone but Margo.
"Do you want to know when I do?" She asked, hand moving to seek out Margo. She hadn't ever felt a need to know herself but since they were discussing this, it felt important to ask.
Margo gave a sly grin, pushing herself up to hover over Rey as she relaxed on the bed. She threaded her fingers through Rey's hair, turning her hand into a soft fist. She leaned down and dragged her mouth down Rey's throat.
"In absolute and complete detail."
Breath caught in Rey's throat and it took all of her not to arch upwards towards Margo. Instead she wrapped an arm around her and tilted her head back. "I'll be very thorough," she promised in a breathy whisper before a whimper of "Margo" escaped almost as a plea.
Margo was very much done talking, despite the mild confusion that her space nun was officially her space nun. There was a tiny thought that she couldn't wait to tell Eliot(s), but that was quickly forgotten for the moment by the desperation in Rey's voice. Margo may not due monogamous, but she didn't do anything half-heartedly and she was determined to hear her own name more than a few times and louder.