“I wasn’t – I didn’t bring that up,” Matt said over her, sitting up too straight and too suddenly in his seat to maintain his cool veneer any longer. And if that didn’t give him away, well, the mild, defensive panic raising his voice by degrees sure gave him away. “Okay? You brought that up!”
It felt very important to point that out just now, for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate even to himself. Maybe on the surface because it was so unexpected for Lydia to bring up the thing he’d been positive she’d try to avoid… and maybe, deeper down, because she’d put it out there before he had a chance to do it himself. He wasn’t consciously saving a mention of their confusingly desperate and desperately confusing kiss at the party for the precise moment he needed it to fluster her out of All Business Mode, but now that the opportunity was gone, he had to admit himself that he’d sort of been counting on it. One of the many bad Solo habits he just couldn’t break.
Later, once his stomach was back where it was supposed to be and not all the way up in his throat, Matt would remember to be impressed. Two seconds into this conversation, and she already neutralized his most obvious weapon. God, she was smart. Smarter than his dumb ass, anyway.
He always loved that about her.
Sometimes Matt got the upper hand with Lydia, but never for very long. And only, he’d long suspected, when she let him. Such a realization might have wounded a lesser man’s pride. Not Matt’s, though. Instead, figuring out Lydia trusted him enough to let her guard down around him like that made him feel… honored, somehow. Like she’d given him a medal only the two of them could see. With that on his shoulders, with the two of them here on the Falcon together, back when things were good, he didn’t need the fight or the sky or any of the things he thought he needed to survive. He just needed her.
And then he’d gone and ruined it. Of course.
That’s what this was, really, this heading him off before he could play his and Han’s old game – another reminder that the trust between them was long gone, and a hot minute in a supply closet wasn’t going to change anything. No wonder it threw him for a loop. It felt like the slap in the face he deserved but Lydia was too dignified to give. All Business Mode had an edge today, and that… well, that was probably for the best.
… And then, a thousand seconds or maybe two too late, the words she’d said as he spoke over her finally registered.
“What – a job? What job?” Matt couldn’t help it. He laughed and ran a hand through his messy hair, half relieved and half incredulous. So this visit really did have nothing to do with that or with them, whatever kind of them they were anymore. But if Daniel wanted to offer Matt a job, he could’ve come out here himself or caught Matt the next time he happened to be at the castle. Sending Lydia was not exactly the best way to get him to accept said job offer. In fact, it was kind of the worst. Daniel had to know that.
He laughed again, lower this time, and leaned back in the seat. Meddlers. They were surrounded by meddlers. This was just like the stupid closet, well-meaning people trying to get them in a room together to... what, talk it out like grown-ups? Like that was ever going to happen.
Certainly not if Matt had to be one of the grown-ups.
“You’re joking, right?” Matt shook his head, a crooked smile lingering at the corner of his mouth. For now he ignored the thought of Daniel sitting in his office with his particular brand of benevolent smirk and concentrated on the woman in front of him. As if his every molecule hadn't been focused on her since she walked in the room. “Last time I checked, I was already on the Morgan-Evans payroll.”