If anyone asked, Matt would say he didn’t actually live in the desert. It was just where he parked his ship. Not a whole lot of options out there to safely and secretly dock the Millennium Falcon; Matt had to make do with a patch of wilderness over an hour outside of Albuquerque. He'd promised the Agency to keep her hidden and grounded, which she was, most of the time. Sometimes, though, a pilot just needed to fly.
Like this morning. There was only so much maintenance a guy could do before the perfectly clear skies proved to be too much of a temptation to resist. Without a co-pilot, he never went very far or very fast – just enough to get a feel for the Falcon, and for all the things he and Han had been missing since the Air Force cut them loose.
Missions for Camelot rarely took him airborne, which chafed more than he liked to admit. Gabe had his cars to make up for it, while Matt had these stolen flights, barely more than an hour from take-off to landing, never higher than the tallest peak in the mountains to the west. It was a waste of the Falcon’s potential, and it hurt every time he didn’t take her to the stars, but it was better than just leaving her to sit in the sand, slowly falling apart.
Which she was. Yet another one of Matt’s flimsy excuses for taking her up: to see how she was holding together. The answer was typically not well. Never in the greatest shape, even a grounded Falcon needed constant repairs, and the short flights told him what was urgent and what wasn’t. Fixing the ship gave him something to do while he waited for the next mission. Kept his mind occupied too, which was what he really needed between missions. Now more than ever, after what happened at the Camelot solstice party.
Not that it actually worked. No matter what he did, Lydia was never very far from his thoughts.
He thought he'd had it bad after the break-up. Now was even worse. That kiss had been incredible – incredibly hot, incredibly confusing, incredibly impossible to forget. Lydia, in a nutshell. Before he could throw himself into his missions for Camelot, knowing he barely had anything to lose, but now? Matt wasn’t hopeful, given the way the party ended, but he wasn’t not hopeful, either.
And, hip-deep in a faulty heat exhaust vent, it was still driving him crazy. Plenty of spots on the Falcon brought back memories – why this one made him think of the time he’d left the stove on and accidentally set fire to the galley because he and Lydia had just had one of those fights while making dinner that took them halfway across the ship before the fight abruptly switched gears and Matt was making it up to Lydia against a wall in the rear cargo hold… Anyway, it wasn’t like this exhaust vent was anywhere near either of those places, so why was he thinking about that little adventure now? Or that, if he was lucky, one day he might be able to repeat it?
“... Right.” Matt let out a weary sigh, wiping a rag over his drenched face. The fire suppressant system ruined their fun that day. Just like it ruined his mood now.
At least it works, he thought bitterly, then hoisted himself back up to the Falcon’s upper hull. He paused for a moment, hearing the sound of Gabe’s car in the distance, then headed over to the edge of the ship, unruffled but curious. It could only be Gabe, after all, but usually he gave him a head’s up before making the drive out here. Then again, Matt didn't have his phone on him. He probably just missed the call.
Drying his hands on the rag, Matt peered over the Falcon, only to see Gabe… driving away? That didn’t make any sense. His frown deepened, until he spotted something left in the car’s wake. Someone, actually.
Matt’s face slackened, and before he could stop himself, he hit the deck. As if the woman standing by the boarding ramp was some kind of Resistance assassin and not just his ex-girlfriend whom he’d been thinking about only moments before. Body pressed flat against the warm metal of his ship, he knew who he’d prefer to see right about now.
And it wasn’t Lydia.
Softly, Matt banged his head against the Falcon. Already this was a disaster, and she hadn’t even seen him yet. Probably. Hopefully. God. What a nightmare.