"Mm?"

It is six hours and four minutes after local midnight!

And the earliest thing she absolutely has to be at (a meeting with someone that's going to talk to her about local air filtration systems) is at ten hours after local midnight. So that would give her - if she skips her typical morning meditation - three and a half hours. She considers, briefly, and then glances at Miles.

"Do you have anywhere to be in the next couple of hours?"

"Nnno?"

"Well!" she says, lightly. "I have three and a half hours free, if you'd like to lend me your morning."

"Happily."

She smiles, and goes back to kissing him, because that's wonderful. At long fucking last she can finally get what she wants -

... So why is she kind of nervous, now?

(Maybe skipping the morning meditation isn't a good idea.)

"Oh damn it," she mutters, "if I lose out on getting to have sex with you this morning on account of my stupid hangups. I will be annoyed. I will be so annoyed."

"...Anything I can help with?"

"I - have precisely no experience with any of this, on account of awful power dynamics," she admits. "Because how could I expect anyone to be able to say no to a Sith Lord? So now I don't know what to do, which is abnormal for me, and this makes me anxious. Which is manageable, but that takes time to manage, and then my anxiety is being magnified by how we have a time limit. Meanwhile I'm objectively thinking, 'This is stupid, I definitely want to fuck him.' Because it is and I do. So. Ugh."

"We could schedule a longer block of time later," he says. "I'm happy to give you my morning, but I'm also... not in a huge hurry." Pause. "My approach to anxiety is usually to charge it head-on like an angry bull, but I'm aware that most people find more success with different methods."

Giggle.

"I certainly could just carry on regardless and ignore it, I have the discipline, but. This is perhaps not the sort of subject with which to ignore myself."

"Yeah. I've, uh - ignored myself on this subject a time or two, when I was younger and... more generally uncertain, and it tended not to end well," he admits.

She snuggles him, petting his hair.

"No, I imagine it wouldn't. I don't particularly want to ignore myself, that seems a recipe for disaster, but I'm a little frustrated. I know there's a balance between 'Sith it up and ignore my inconvenient feelings' and 'grumble and leave early to deal with my frustration via copious application of meditation.' I'm just not sure how to get to it."

"Well," says Miles. "I think... that depends what you want? The approach that seems most appealing to me at first glance, without a deep understanding of what's going on, is to just - not push it, not impose expectations on ourselves, and wait until a later date when we have plenty of time - because, hmm, how do I put this... I think it's a lot more important to be happy in the long term than satisfied in the moment. If we turn out to be as compatible as it looks, I plan on spending the rest of my life with you. We have plenty of time to get to know each other at a comfortable and convenient pace. I don't know, am I making any sense here?"

"Perfect sense, and I even agree," she says, attempting a small smile. "Yes, certainly, I prefer happy in the long term to satisfied in the moment, too. Just." She gives up on the smile, and goes with a sigh and a snuggle. "I sort of gave up on, ah, this front, a while ago. Since I have retrieved the part of myself starved for companionship I am quickly realizing that she was very starved indeed. And then there's the issue of - I did not, exactly, make a habit of thinking in the long term. Personally, I mean. I had no trouble arranging everyone else's lives to their future satisfaction where I could, but. I don't know. Some combination of expected future unhappiness and unexpected longevity. The best I had to hope for was that Occlus lived forever, and that the Sith Empire would peacefully collapse without taking too many casualties with it. Neither of which were - particularly stable foundations to base one's hopes around. I'm sort of used to waiting for everything I care about to unravel when I least expect it."

...Miles hugs her.

"I promise not to vanish unexpectedly," he says.

"Well, unexpectedly, maybe not, but. I don't know. I'm - complicated, volatile. Frankly kind of an emotional mess, on account of everything. Where I lived, what I went through - what I did. I wouldn't blame you for deciding you'd like someone with less baggage. Or if - it turned out that we had some subtle incompatibility, like an uncharted black hole, wandering through some unsuspecting hyperspace lane. Invisible until suddenly you're sucked in and vaporized."

"...I really genuinely don't think that's going to happen," he says. "Although I can see how it makes a compelling image. As for the other thing... I recognize that it's an option I have, and that it isn't even necessarily unfair although it sure feels that way, but it's just... not who I am as a person."

Little smile.

"Fair enough. You've given me no reason to think you'll vanish in a puff of smoke. I don't think it's so much my concern for how flighty you might be, or how likely it is that I might lose you, just. Built up psychological baggage that's being dragged along by a too-helpful assistant that does not take no for an answer and insists that 'of course we have to take this we might need it later!' Once I have time to, to get used to you, I believe I'll calm down." Sigh, snuggle. "Which I cannot neatly slot into my morning like some kind of administrative wizard. Pity."

Snuggle. "Now that would be a hell of a magic trick."

"It would be! But alas, it's beyond me. Unless you have some way to stop time for a while?"

"No, unfortunately."

"Well, do let me know if you find one."

She's tempted to kiss him again, but that might remind the part of her starved for companionship how, ahem, starved she is again, and she is quite sure that tackling Miles right now is not the sort of thing she'd like to do. As proven by how she sort of freaked out and then needed to talk about her feelings just now.

Sigh. Snuggle. "I'm sorry for - frontloading the emotional drama a bit. I realize it might be kind of stressful to deal with."

"Not a problem," he says, snuggling her some more.

"Okay. Do let me know if you'd like me to - taper it a bit? Give you space to just enjoy my company instead of making it so... painfully honest."

"I will let you know if any such preference occurs to me."