"Thought you said you were the boring one," the codebreaker said, massaging his jaw and looking her up and down like she was a walking banquet dinner.

Really, that should've been a sign.

-

She was the boring one, though. She always had been, and she was happy with it. Paige had been born a risk-taker. The day the First Order had come, she'd lined up to try to sabotage them. There had never been a moment when she'd hung back or thought, hm, maybe right now isn't the best time to kick a stormtrooper in the crown jewels. Paige jumped into a fight, and then she had real, true staying power.

But Paige was gone, and Finn kept pulling Rose into strategic talks, pointing out that she'd been a hero too. "She led the mission to Canto Bight," Finn would say, "and we didn't get what we went there for, but she's got a head for strategy, General, and I think we should use it."

Finn. The Finn. Even after everything, it was a lot for a girl to take in.

But she was still a tech, and she really did prefer it that way. "We need heroes in places other than the pilot's seat," she told Finn. He knew she was right - he'd been a janitor, after all - and so she got to stay there, when she wasn't being asked about new tech or ideas for sabotage. She was, in fact, down in the engine room when she heard the noise.

'Heard' wasn't quite the right term. She felt it, maybe, a minute shift of weight in an enormous ship, the kind of thing you learned to pick up after years of working in the guts of starships. She followed the not-quite-sound to a far corner of the engine room, where they stored the extra coolant.

She saw the pile of jewels and precious metals before she saw him. After that, she acted on instinct, and threw a wrench at his head.

-

"Thought you said you were the boring one," the surveillance tape repeated. Rose's thrown wrench was just off-screen.

Finn sighed. "They're going to let him go."

"But the jewels -"

"Stolen, almost certainly, but untraceable. We're calling it a donation."

Rose scowled.

"We need it, Rose. So badly."

And she knew that. Of course she did. But - "He's scum."

"Probably."

"He'll just double-cross us."

"That's why he's going to stay here for a few days, as our honored guest. Before we dump him in a system there's no way he could trace us from."

Rose wanted to protest: he'd still have details of the ship's movement, the members of the Resistance. But Rose was already a wanted criminal; the same was true of Finn and the General, and they were the only people the codebreaker had seen. So, it was more or less safe for him to sit there in his too-nice berth, waiting to be dropped off.

It didn't make sense. None of it did. Rose didn't understand, and no amount of assurances would make her think it was okay. She wanted to hear his lies directly from him, so she'd know exactly how he'd betrayed them when he inevitably did it again.

He didn't seem surprised to see her in his room. She stood in the doorway for an awful second, paralyzed by sudden awareness of her own actions: what was she doing here? What did she even plan to say?

The room was smaller than it had looked on the now-dark surveillance cameras. He sat on his bed, very close to her, looking at her like -

Oh, who cared what he looked at her like! She stepped forward, letting the door slide shut, and said, "I don't trust you. No one does."

"Mm, fair enough," he said. His tone sounded perfectly nonchalant, but every little look he gave her told exactly the opposite story. She pressed her hands together and thought of Paige, heroic and dead because of people like this.

"What's your play?"

"Pardon?"

"Your plan, your - idea. What are you going to do? I know you didn't just have a change of heart suddenly, so what are you getting out of this that's more valuable than half a ton of precious materials?"

"What if I did?"

"What if -"

"What if," he said, "I had a change of heart?"

"What if I became a Jedi?" she said. "I'm asking real questions, here. I want real answers." She raised her stunner.

He licked his lips, weird and awful - deliberately off-putting, she thought. That must be it. "Maybe I just decided I had a crush, huh?"

She zapped him.

He hit the far end of the bed with a satisfyingly solid thud. "Tell me why you're here," she said again, advancing on him.

He moved too smoothly, catching her off guard. She didn't fall completely, but his leg swipe brought her to her knees. He moved forward at the same time that she opened her mouth to yell at him, and so he kissed her open-mouthed and dirty, one broad hand clutching her shoulder.

Rose was the boring one. She always had been. She did logical things and she liked science and tinkering and thinking things through.

She had given him her necklace; she had stolen the fathiers. Now, just as impulsively but much more stupidly, she was kissing him back.

It was a good kiss, was the problem. Just like when he'd cracked the First Order's locks, he was all shaking hands and cold confidence, coaxing her closer and running a thumb over her hip, sucking on her tongue in a way that suggested -

Oh, boy. A lot of stuff.

Rose had only dated people who were like her, sensible and reasonable, good in bed but ultimately most valuable for their responsibility and level-headedness. This, though, was - different. Which was a delicate way of saying that when he grabbed her, pulled her onto his lap and tugged her shirt off, she felt thrilled down to her toes.

"Why are you here?" she said again when he moved down her neck, licking and biting. He was rapidly turning the slow build of arousal inside her into an inferno, but she wanted her answer and was determined to get it. "Listen, codebreaker -"

"DJ, actually."

"Whatever. Why. Are. You. Here?"

He pressed his thumbs against her nipples, rough scraping that send shivers through her. She could feel his dick against her leg, the tense muscles in his thighs supporting her. He looked up at her with smug desire, his eyes half-shut, his tongue just peeking through his lips.

"I was curious," he said, "and then I decided I wanted to get laid." His dick twitched as though to emphasize his point.

"Are you saying you knew I'd - no. You know what. Don't answer that." She was going to get up now and leave, with most of her dignity, or some of it, intact.

"Whatever you say, darling," he said, and kissed her neck, teeth scraping her skin.

She didn't get up. She grabbed him instead, pushing him flat on the bed, then smacking his shoulder. "Take these off."

He eyed her with that same speculative interest that probably should've alarmed her much earlier. "What'll you do if I don't?"

Make good choices, Rose told herself. Then she betrayed her own principles, again, by pulling out her Resistance-issue knife and cutting straight through DJ's shirt.

He cursed then, in a few languages Rose knew and a few more she didn't, arching his back and thrusting his hips. He looked desperate, and hedonistic in a way Rose rarely saw. He looked like something she wanted to hold and keep, but also slap some sense into.

She had really lost it. She tossed her knife aside and lowered herself on him, kissing him again.

He was the one who coaxed her up, got her breasts in his mouth and sucked them until she had no compunction about thrusting against his thigh, desperate for any kind of friction. Her head started spinning, and she felt so close to coming - just from ridiculous rubbing on each other - that when he stopped to finish undressing, she almost killed him.

"Hurry up," she said, kicking her own pants off and pulling him back down to her. She ached, she wanted him to fuck her, she wanted to fuck him, she didn't care anymore about being or seeming like the calm and reasonable one. She grabbed his wrist and guided his hand to her cunt. She'd known she was turned on, but this - she couldn't keep from moaning when he pressed his fingers inside. She, they, made completely obscene noises when he moved his fingers, ridiculous wet sounds that only made her spread her legs wider, pull him in deeper.

"One nice thing about codebreakers," he said against her neck. "Clever - clever hands." He curled the fingers inside her, tugging, and -

She came so abruptly that she couldn't hold back her scream. He kissed her through it, muffling the noise, but it was too late for any kind of nicety; she dug her fingers into his back hard enough to make him flinch, fucked herself on him as he watched. When she opened her eyes again, there was a moment when she thought he might pull back, buried as soon as she noticed it by him ducking his head and licking his fingers, saying, "Had enough?"

If she talked now, she'd probably run away and become a hermit on some distant moon. So she shook her head instead, hooking a leg around his and bringing him down to the bed, climbing on top of him. This way was simpler, she thought, less ambiguous. She could lower herself on him, bracing on his chest and watching as his eyes rolled back in his head, his expression going slack.

Some awful impulse prompted her to say, "Good?"

"Be better if you knew how to ride."

"Oh, shut up," she said, but she did know, and the way he watched her - arms stretched over his head, waiting, hard inside her -

It was so, so good. And it got better when she moved, undulating her hips, feeling him shaking beneath her.

"Touch me," she said. "Unless you'd rather I did it myself."

"You know, now that you mention it -"

It was easy to lean forward and clap a hand against his mouth, even easier to drag her nails against his jaw on her way back to touch herself. Her clit throbbed when she touched it, and she gasped at the feel of it, tightening around him. He moved, jolting her, and she shifted to keep her seat, bearing down on him even as she began to chase her own orgasm.

"There we go. You do know how to ride."

It shouldn't have been hot, but of course it was. Of course she was desperate for it, moving faster and faster on him, gasping when he gripped her hips, knocked her hand away so that he could be the one flicking her clit, edging her ever closer to another orgasm.

"What was it you told me? Hurry up? C'mon - c'mon -"

It was the worst dirty talk she'd ever heard, and it worked, sending her crashing over the edge, biting her own lip so hard it hurt.

He liked to watch, that much was already obvious. He stroked her sides, guided her hips, still hard inside her. When she opened her eyes, he winked at her and flexed his legs, propelling himself upright and scooting back against the headboard. "Here we go," he said, like his whole goal in coming onto the ship had been getting Rose like this, in his lap, pressed against him in every particular.

And it was - good. It was good, he felt impossibly deep like this, and he seemed happy to just sit there and move his hips in tiny little thrusts, breathing harshly in her ear.

When her breathing leveled out, he skimmed his hands up her hips, cupping her breasts. This close, she could see the flecks of color in his eyes as he played with her nipples again, pinching the soft skin on the underside of her breasts. She moved then, a weak almost-squirm that made him smile, moving his hands to her hips and -

Pressing. Guiding, really, moving them both together. She thought he couldn't be deeper and then he was; he pressed his fingertips into the curve of her ass and held her there as he thrust, hard jolts that sent shivering arousal up her spine, not enough to get her off, but impossibly hot all the same. He didn't stop her when she reached down to rub herself again. He whispered, "That's good, sweetheart, that's really good," and it was disrespectful, he sounded so - sleazy - he was such a jerk -

She came for a third time like that, held upright by the cage of his arms, clenching her thighs around his hips. She was still riding the wave when he followed, and it set her off again, long spirals of sensation that left her feeling scraped raw and empty.

"Hey," he said a few minutes later, as she frantically tugged her clothes back on, "I forgot to - to tell you something."

Rose was pretty sure she didn't care. "Oh?"

"Yeah, I got a j- job offer. I'll be stickin' around for awhile."

The whole world screeched to a stop. She stared at him, blood rushing in her ears. "You what?"

His lips, still red and swollen, curled. "Surprise."