A/N: Welcome back! This is the sequel to Tension/Balance and starts about five minutes after it leaves off.

10/28/35 ABY: The Supremacy

"Chewie's helping me set it up. I don't think the Resistance is too keen on it, but…" Rey's not sure what to tell Kylo about what his mother is doing. Not sure how much he wants to know. Not sure how much is a violation of the Resistance.

"You teaching new… Force users isn't part of the master plan to take down the First Order?"

"Apparently not."

Rey's in the bath, with Kylo, sitting in his lap, talking about today. He did scrub her back for about a minute, but neither of them is in any particular need of scrubbing, and her shoulders are yelling at her for the huge pile of rocks she moved today, so getting them rubbed is winning out over scrubbing.

Kylo's never rubbed anyone's shoulders before, but it's not that hard. Grab, squeeze gently, repeat. Keep doing it in the spots where Rey makes happy noises, do it a lot more gently when she jumps like a fish out of water. Poke tender spots with his thumb, and then hold his thumb there. He's probably not good at it, but she's also never had her back rubbed before, so it's a learning experience for both of them.

Mostly though, he's just happy to be holding onto her, real, live, here-in-his-arms, her, while they talk.

Usually the end of his day means silent meditation, and the chance to have a real conversation with someone, without having to guard every word, fear that he might be offering up a chink in his armor, or let too much slip, is proving to be significantly more relaxing than he'd expected.

He's watching his hand on her shoulder, seeing how his palm spans from her neck to her shoulder, and her neck, how easily it fits in just one hand, aware of how small she is next to him, and just sort of drifting along.

She's paused, and he can feel he's supposed to say something, but he wasn't exactly paying attention to the last few lines.

"Uh…"

"Kylo!"

"What?" He's trying not to sound annoyed, but his voice is sharp… he can feel her wave of annoyance aimed at him for not listening, and his immediate response to any hot emotion directed toward him is to hit back with it, usually multiplied by a factor of ten.

"You weren't listening to me!" She's turned around, facing him, glaring, a little. She's annoyed, not angry.

There's an instinct to lash out, to hit her with something like, 'If it'd been interesting, I'd have been paying attention,' lift her from annoyance to anger, because anger makes him feel alive and real and… But, some little voice, maybe the child who felt his parents argue, a lot, squashes that response, flat. "I was paying attention to your shoulder and neck."

"It's just a neck."

"It's yours." He touches the string of the token. "And it's my turn for that."

She blinks, and then takes it off, handing it to him, placing it over his head. "Apparently, it a token in a game."

He nods. "Junjan. I've played it."

"Were you good at it?"

He shrugs his shoulders. He always had more 'talent' to bring to the game than anyone else. "Enough. Even as a child I could make the token spin faster, better, longer, than anyone else."

"Oh."

He nods again. "So, what did I miss by watching your neck and shoulder?"

She settles herself in his lap again, this time facing him. "Your name… I was thinking about what I'm going to call," she touches the token on his chest, "this. I've got nothing. How did you come up with your name?"

He runs his fingers through his hair, and sighs… "That was a long time ago."

"When you were a child?"

"No. I was an adult, young one, eighteen, nineteen, something like that. Still with Luke. It's not silly or embarrassing, just not anything I've thought of recently. Kylo. I wasn't Ben. I never was. And never was going to be. It started to chafe, feel really wrong about the time he was beginning to consider if I was ready for Master. 'Master Ben.' Imagine, if you will, six Padawans calling me that. I could only take it for a year. I changed my name before I left him. But I'm still a Skywalker, and a Solo, for better or for worse. So, Kylo. And Ren just sounded good with it. Probably some part of me liked it because it rhymed with Ben."

"Familiar but different."

He inclines his head a little. "Remembering where I came from, but changing where I was going. Does that help?"

"Deji?" She winces before he shakes his head, but only by a second.

"Diej?" He shakes his head at that one, too. "It'll come."

She nods, wrapping her arms around his neck, holding him close. In his lap, they're face to face, lips to lips, and she kisses him, smooth and easy.

He smiles into the kiss, hands falling to her hips, keeping her close. She wraps her legs around his hips, rocking against him.

"Eager?"

"Yes!" Since they've been sitting around talking, she's hit a second wind, and feeling a lot less tired, she's got some interests that'd like to be satisfied.

Just hearing her say that makes his body rise. And with it, a niggling memory of some mostly asleep thoughts from the morning.

His hands close on her hips, holding her still, so he can keep thinking with his brain.

"Are you on a preventative?"

She's looking at him like he's speaking gibberish, and a slow, and horrifying though crosses his mind, no school, no family, no close friends… No conversation about this before… He's got no idea if she even knows that sex makes babies. He almost chokes on it.

Now she's gone from looking at him like he's speaking gibberish to utter confusion. She's more than close enough to feel his mind whirling around fast trying to figure out how to digest this and what to do next, but she doesn't know the context.

Finally she says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

He nods, briefly. "I could feel that…" He rubs his face, afraid that he's about to make a fool of himself, or worse, her, and then says… wincing at having to do it… "You know… this," he rocks his hips a bit, getting across what this he means, "can… make babies, right?"

And yes, that gets her looking at him like he's a blathering moron. She licks her lips and says, dryly, "I've heard some rumors to that effect."

He just looks at her, and sees it snap into place in her mind. "Oh… Preventatives. Scum sacks…" Her mouth opens into an O as she gets what exactly that means. Yes, she knows the basics of where kids come from, and… She's putting together what she swallowed the night before, with scum sack and… "Oh! I'd… heard of them…" She thinks a bit longer… Some of the traders had them… They didn't much seem to value them, but for the women at Niima Outpost, they were worth almost their weight in water. She knows the women bought them, but… She overheard more than a fair share of gossip while cleaning her different finds, so she also, sort of, she hopes, knows how they work. She just… didn't quite know how men worked. "Wait… Why would you ask if I was using one? Aren't they for you?"

"That's a temporary option," he's assuming a scum sack is what local vernacular to the Supremacy refers to as a slick. "They're a one-time thing. And yes, they'd be for me." He's sure he's blushing, but he keeps going. "There are longer term options. They'll last for years, and make it impossible to make a baby unless you want to."

"And you don't want to?"

His eyes are very dark, searching hers, and his voice serious as he says, "Not now. If it happened…" he can only feel his life and hers, but he also knows that they won't know for sure for a while.

She catches the faint hint of disappointment as he only feels two lives. The sense of something desired, deeply, intensely, passionately, even though it's not right or good, now. She feels the part of him that wants to burn all of this and just cuddle into her and a family and the part that wants more. The part that knows there isn't a version of this where the two of the just run off and shed the wider galaxy. The part that knows that if he's going to get that family, he's got to secure a time and space for them, and the only way to do that is to get through now. She gently strokes his face, and lets him feel a similar confused disappointment. Then she nods. "If it happened… Otherwise, no, not now."

He kisses her shoulder. "I have some slicks… scum sacks… that's a terrible name." He's seeing a whole new light on the idea of calling someone rebel scum, and is wondering if that's what Hux meant by it.

She shrugs. That's just what they are, in her world. "Why slicks?"

"You can see in bit?" He'd rather show than explain that they're lubricated, hence, slick. He's also realizing that for anything longer term, he's either got to get to a medical droid, or she does. And he's thinking it's unlikely she's going to find a first class medical droid in the middle of whatever planet she's on right now. And it's even more unlikely that he's going to take her through the Supremacy to the infirmary.

Which means he's got a trip to the infirmary, soon. "For right now, the slicks will do, and in the next few days, I can get something better, longer lasting, and… um…" He's absolutely blushing now. "Uh… more comfortable…"

"They hurt?" She's rethinking what she knows about how they work.

"No! They're just… not as good as without one."

"Oh."

"You've got to stop and put them on, and they don't taste or smell very good, and you can't feel as much through them."

She traces his lips… "Why use them then?"

The not-having-babies-when-you-don't-want-them-thing seemed self-evident to him, so he's not sure what she's asking.

Then she leans closer and nibbles his bottom lip, laying a long, wet lick along it. As she's kissing him, she takes his hand in hers, and gives his fingers a gentle squeeze.

And suddenly he gets what she's asking.

She pulls back, looking at him, a glint in her dark brown eyes. She stands up, water streaming off of her, and looks over to his bed. "I kiss you, you kiss me, and your slicks can… stay wherever it is you keep them?"

And that sounds like the best damn idea he's ever heard.

He stands up, fast, and scoops her up, hoisting her over his shoulder, and she shrieks at it, half-surprised, half-delighted, and he almost slips in the pool, because she jerks a little when he does it, but between his own balance and Force control, he keeps standing.

From her position over his shoulder, she's got a great view of the whole of his back, which she hasn't seen all the much of. She's never given much thought to the backsides of men in general or Kylo in specific, but watching him walk, naked, dripping wet, gleaming in the soft blue-gray light of his rooms, stepping out of the pool and then across his room, is hypnotic. His ghost pale skin, and the light gray shadows of each muscle flexing with each step is something she could watch for days.

Her eyes are drawn to his bottom, and the little sway with each step. And for the first time ever, she's thinking how much she'd like to get him to lie down and let her just stroke, pet, and kiss every inch of him.

Twice.

At least.

He plops her in the center of the bed, not very romantic, but fairly efficient, and stands at the edge of the bed, looking. He likes looking. At all of her. He feels like he could stay here for weeks, staring at her skin, the shape of her body, all of her curves and straights.

She wriggles a little, a tinge uncomfortable at him just looking but he lets her feel how much he enjoys it, and that tinge fades.

"You're so beautiful…" he gets the sense no one's ever said that to her, at least, said it and didn't have a threat behind it.

He lifts her ankle to his lips, laying a gentle kiss against it. She leans back, weight on her elbows, watching him nibbling along her leg. Her eyes dance over his skin, from the width of his shoulders, to his narrow hips, the ripple of his stomach as he breathes, and his shaft rising between his legs, to his huge hands against her calf, the flex of the muscles of his arm and back as he shifts weight, shifts his hold, and kisses her calf.

"You are, too."

He smirks a little, deflecting that. "No, I'm not."

"I get to decide what I consider beautiful. Not you."

He nips her leg.

"None of that. I like looking at you," Rey says, eyes dragging from his knees to his eyes.

He tries smiling this time, and again lays his lips to her leg, just at her knee.

They hold eye contact, as he lightly licks along the inside of her knee. Rey feels her breath speed and her heart pick up to go with it. She rubs her lips together, and says, "So beautiful. Beautiful Kylo."

His eyes slide shut at that, and he hisses he inhales so fast at it, but she knows that's the sort of hiss that goes with pleasure, not pain.

"You like hearing that."

He kisses a little higher up this time, midway up her thigh. "Don't you, beautiful Rey?"

She smiles a little, she does like hearing it, but it's not the same visceral reaction he had to it.

He's kneeling on the floor, between her legs, realizing he likes talking to her. Just having another voice, and the moans make him happy, but… He wants words, too. "What do you call this," he says, smiling at her, palm resting on her delta, cupping the whole thing.

She blinks, not expecting that. "Uh…"

"Local slang. Something nicer than scum sack, hopefully?"

He wriggles his fingers, gently combing them through her hair. "Delta, that's more or less the whole thing. Muff…" he gives her hair just a gentle tug… "That one was popular when I was young."

"Uh… Maomao…"

"What's a maomao?"

"They're…" she's blushing… "little desert creatures. Some people keep them as pets. They eat the littler creatures that get into the food. They've got a long tail and pointy ears, and are soft and furry, and if you pet them right, they purr."

He grins, liking that, a lot. He kisses her delta, and says, "Maomao," between kisses. "If I pet it right, will you purr?"

She smiles at him. "Try it and see."

He does, palm of his hand gently pressing against her while his fingers ripple.

She does offer up a little purr. He lowers himself, nuzzling along the line where leg becomes pelvis, stroking his hand over her delta. That gets a louder purr.

He purrs back, enjoying having her laid out before him, making happy noises at something he's doing.

"What's a muff?"

"Uh…" that stops him dead in his tracks. He looks up at her. "It's…" He's thinking hard, it's got to be something else, right? "I don't actually know. Maybe it always meant this."

She sits up, pulls him to join her on the bed, and flips around, so they're facing each other, but tops to tails. She props herself on one elbow, and strokes his shaft. "Shaft, joystick, wankwand, buggerstick, pocket rocket, old one eye…"

"You've got a lot of names for this."

"The traders tended to call each other versions of it, a lot."

"Soldiers do that, too." He drags his own fingers up himself. "Shaft, usually. Tool sometimes. 'Get your tool serviced…' 'I've got the tool you need…'"

She sniggers a little at that. "Have you ever actually said that to someone?"

"Not before five seconds ago."

"Good."

Her fingers ghost after his and he shivers slightly at it. Then she circles the tip. "This bit?" She's looking intensely at it. "It changes. I mean… it all changes, but… when you're soft, it covers the whole top, and right now it's only got most of it, and last night it was… gone… but it can't do that, right?"

He grins. "Cap or cowl." He takes her hand in his, and gets a firm hold and slides her fist down him, and it pulls back with the friction. "It moves. Now, and when I'm getting hard, you can slide it up and down. When I'm really enjoying it, close to spurting, it tends to stay down."

"Does it feel good? The sliding?" she's gently rubbing her hand up and down, watching it creep over the head of his shaft.

"Yes." He doesn't exactly whisper, but there's a breathy quality to his words. "The tip… head… is really sensitive, so sometimes it's nice to feel it through the cap."

Her finger slips over the naked tip. "Is this okay?"

His eyes are closed, and he's breathing a little heavier. "It really is. Just… like last night, slow, gentle, wet, get to know it, and we'll get to harder and more force."

She giggles a little at that. He takes her hand, dragging it down, further, so it's cupping him. "Stones, balls…" He's looking at her, waiting for her to add her own words, and she shakes her head.

"I can't."

He can feel that even the idea of this word scandalizes her. "Why not?"

"It's a really bad word. You only say it when… when things are…" She shakes her head again. "You don't ever call anyone that. They'll cut you for it."

Kylo's certainly run into some serious cursing over the years, but he can't think of any one word that would get that sort of result. "Really?"

She nods.

"Well… what would you call them if you… didn't want to start a fight?"

It's clear that's not an idea she's ever run into before. "Why would you need to?"

He'll admit it's not exactly something that comes up in daily conversation, especially if you don't happen to personally have a set of them, but… He's holding her hand and shows her how to give them a very gentle little tug. "Because touching them feels good."

"Oh." She gives him another gentle little tug. "Kissing them, too?"

His mouth opens as just the idea of that stutters through him electrically. "I… don't know… but I bet it would."

She shifts down a bit, and lays a gentle, closed mouth kiss against the right one. It feels nice. The little lick that goes with it feels better. When she opens her mouth and lightly sucks it, he just about levitates off the bed.

She grins at him as she pulls back. "I'd say that felt good."

"Good doesn't begin to…" he lifts her leg and scoots closer. Her body's spread out before him, wet and pink and open and fragrant and… Gods, it's everything he wants. And right now he wants to feel good touching her and feel good with her touching him. He trails his finger over her lips, keeping the touch light, reveling at how slick she is against his skin.

"Lips."

She makes a little mmmm… sound. Apparently not much caring one way or another what he calls any of this.

He strokes up to where they come together, and then gently presses, the pad of his finger just above her jewel, and rubs over it. "Jewel or pearl. Pink pearl, sometimes."

She moans at that. "I don't care what you call it, just keep…" her voice stutters as he rubs again. Then he stops, waiting for her.

"I don't have a word for it. The whole thing is a maomao! That's just it."

"The whole thing is beautiful, it, you, and I want to…" he bows his head, laying wet, open mouthed kisses all over her.

She groans, enjoying it, enjoying the feel of him doing it as a matter of physical sensation, and the feel of him doing it in his head. How much he's enjoying the taste and the feel of her wet against him.

And she knows what would make it better.

Shallow, easy, just get to know it. She paid attention last night and starts with licks, getting everything wet, tip to stones, and hears him hiss again, and feels the jolt of pleasure through him.

He licks back, faster, tongue sliding against her, and she shudders as he gets her right there.

She closes her mouth around him, sucking gently on the tip, hand cupping his stones, and he groans, loud.

Her hips jolt as one of his fingers slowly eases into her, adding a welcome stretch to go with the wet glide of his tongue.

It's almost too much sensation all at once. She's a mouth sucking, and that's one set of feelings. Smooth, so smooth, hard shaft, sueded-velvet on her lips and tongue… The feel of kissing, good kissing, wet and slick against her lips. She's a maomao being licked, wet and slick and electric, the glide of his tongue and the fullness from his fingers and the grind of her hips looking for more. Balancing between those two points is difficult enough. But she's not just feeling it through her body, her senses, she can feel it through his skin, his mind, too.

She can feel him slip between her lips, the gentle press, wet and tight lips around him, and then breach, hot and shuddering wet all over. The drive to thrust, to bury her-himself between her lips, seeking hot and wet and sucking. The feel of her body around his fingers, hot and cling, the taste of herself on his lips and tongue, and wet and slick against his lips, and more motion, wet, gliding, friction, slippery seeking more touch more motion more more…

His tongue is right right right right there and there and…

And where she ends and he begins is slipping away, melting into two points of pleasure, blending outward…

And like last time, she's growing tight and unraveling. Muscles tighter, faster, less coordinated as her mind and senses spin outward, loose and eager.

She doesn't know where the wave starts, her, him? Doesn't matter. It starts, a long, slow swell building like a sand dune, and crashing down, fast, hard, jolting through both of them, again and again and again.

He's laying with his head on her thigh, body still twitching slightly, blissed-out and extremely pleased that she had this idea. His voice is soft and low as he says, "We should do this, a lot, too."

She gently kisses the tip of his shaft, licking the last little drop of spurt off, and says, "Sounds good to me." And then yawns. "Later."

"Later is good."

Later, he wakes up, and she's on top of him, rubbing, wet and slick against him, and all he wants to do is cant his hips just a little, go from her rubbing on him to him rubbing in her.

He groans at the feel of it. "More?"

"Yes." More a heavy exhalation than a word.

He swallows hard, and rolls over, opening the first of the drawers under his bed. He feels cold with her body not right on top of his, and he's missing the sweet pressure of her body on his, but he's fairly sure that once is safe enough, but twice is just spitting in fate's face and daring it to slap you. And he does enough of that in the rest of his life, that he doesn't need to do it, here, too.

He doesn't keep much in the drawers under his bed. Mostly protein bars. Some vitamin mush. Extra data pads. And a few slicks. He grabs one, and rolls back onto his back, cracks the pack, pulls it out, tosses the pack aside, and rolls it down. He hasn't done this often, only once in the last year, but enough he's got the moves down.

Rey's pulling at him, trying to get him on top of her, but he's sleepy and dreamy and really liked what she was doing before. "You on me," he says.

He sees her get what he's saying, that what she was doing before works… he shudders, the feel of her on him slithering through him as she slides onto him… almost exactly the same.

Almost… She keeps pulling off every few strokes to glide herself on his shaft, and that's good for her, but not as good for him.

It takes him a moment to figure out a solution, so that the part of her that most wants to be touched, and the part of him that most wants to be enveloped, both get what they want.

He worms a hand between them, pressing it to his pelvis and low belly, and then she can glide and grind on his fingers and he can keep his shaft in her and very soon they're both having an excellent time.

After, when he's got to extricate himself from the slick, he remembers a lot of what he doesn't like about them. She's blissfully asleep again before he's gotten the damn thing all the way off, tied, and thrown… hopefully, into his wastebasket.

The rumors begin, as they often do, with the cleaning staff.

Kylo was not, on any level, expecting there to be any gossip. Droids, if programmed for secrecy, cannot tell what they know, so his secrets, like his tendency to vanish from the Supremacy, or his nocturnal guest were safe with C8.

Likewise, the medical droid who will set him up with a long-acting preventative later that afternoon, could not, even if it wanted to, (though it also couldn't want to) tell anyone about the two small injections to render him sterile for as long as he needs.

What Kylo did not take into account is that all of his servants are not droids.

And that, even very discrete human interactions leave certain… telltale signs.

Every day, when Kylo is in his throne room, dealing with whomever or whatever needs to be dealt with, a very trusted, highly-cleared member of the janitorial team empties his trash.

Every day, he removes three protein bar wrappers, two tubes of vitamin mush, and nothing else from a sleek black wastebasket that sits next to Kylo's bed.

Today, he removes three protein bar wrappers, two empty tubes of vitamin mush, two used slicks, and two slicks packs. He mentally chuckles. After all, it wouldn't do to make noise. He also says to himself, No wonder the bastard's been in such a good mood recently.

A/N: So, I also update this series on Archive of Our Own, and though I love FF, it's a tad limited in some of it's applications. Namely, the AO3 version of Rumors/Gossip is illustrated. So, if you'd like to see the pictures to go with this (and yes, a lot of them are NSFW) wandering over there may be a good plan.