in my hobbie feels
Oct. 31st, 2025 07:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
youmynockI've been spending a lot of time the past couple days thinking about hobbie as one does and my capacity for writing new words is 0, so instead let's all enjoy some old words.
these are a few Hobbie POV scenes from the girl Wes universe that I wrote as an exercise to figure out what the heck was going on inside Hobbie's head, when I was writing Loud And Clear. I don't think I've quite got his internal voice down yet but I do love his perspective on girl Wes.
A few he's closest with come through medbay to say goodbye. Biggs, of course. Wedge. Jek Tono Porkins, who lingers by Hobbie's bed and asks, if he doesn't make it but the rest of the Rebels somehow survive, if Hobbie would keep an eye on Janson for him.
Janson, he's vaguely aware, was supposed to transfer to Red Squadron instead of Porkins. Dreis was annoyed about it: the kid's some hotshot, an insane kill count already flying with a training squadron, but he got sick and the Tierfon base sent Porkins.
Hobbie likes Porkins, no quarrel, he's a damn nice guy and doesn't deserve the shit he puts up with. Of course he worries about the kid who got him sent here to die.
"It's okay," Jek says. "I'm not afraid. It's worth going if it means the kid doesn't have to. But I'm sorry to leave her alone. I'm scared what'll happen if she's alone."
Too damn nice for this.
Hobbie doesn't say something stupid like you're not going to die. He just says, "Well, I'll keep an eye out for'm if we're not dead by sundown."
Then it's three days after and everyone's dead but Wedge, who asks at breakfast, bone tired, if Hobbie'll settle in the new kid this afternoon. So he goes and waits in the hangar until a supply shuttle clatters down, groans open, and spits out Wes Janson into his life.
Somehow he didn't realize Janson is a girl. Porkins said she, come to think of it, but it didn't sink in, probably because Hobbie was exhausted from almost dying of--jungle fungus? what?--and then saying goodbye to Biggs--Biggs wouldn't kiss him, not in medbay where anyone could see, and now he's fucking gone--and also the Death Star was coming to kill them all, so.
Janson bounds down the loading ramp, stomping her boots against the shaky metal in an unholy racket, and this hotshot gunner Porkins died for is a teenage girl. Not much shorter than Hobbie and wide across the shoulders and equipped with an attitude that takes up more space than someone twice her size, but still, no way she's hit twenty yet. She clocks him and her baby face dimples explosively when she grins, big brown eyes flashing over him with a gleam of humor but something else tucked away underneath.
What's she see, looking him over like that? He's barely twenty-one but he's already got a tired scarred-up face and his broken prosthetic arm isn't fixed yet and he's leaning on a crutch, waiting too for a prosthesis for the space below his knee--he doesn't feel any sort of way about it, really, not the first piece of himself he's lost, and Biggs is gone and the entirety of his chest cavity is scooped out and scraped to the bone--and it's kind of poetic, isn't it, how the outside of him is shedding parts until it matches the inside.
"Afternoon," he says. "Lieutenant Hobbie Klivian, Red Squadron. Captain Antilles asked me to get you settled in."
She offers a salute so charmingly sloppy and inappropriate that no one could reasonably expect him to return it, even if he had a spare hand to do so.
"Lieutenant Wes Janson," she says. "Your name's really Hobbie? Did your parents not like you?"
Well, no, actually.
But he's heard that one before, so he replies easily, "They actually named me Derek. So probably not."
"Their loss." She beams with those dimples locked fully in attack position. "Well, I'll like you plenty. It's my new mission. I've needed a hobby."
Oh no, she's a flirt. Biggs was a flirt. Biggs teased him mercilessly for his inability to cope with flirting. His face commences defensive manuevers and twists into a scowl. He can feel his ears going red.
Wes does not look deterred by the scowl. Her face is about to crack open in delight. Her dimples might have their own kill count.
"I'm in love with you," she declares. "Show me our home, Hobbie Klivian."
She's so scared, he realizes, while he watches her bullshit around in the barracks, all profanity and cheer. That's what it is, behind the laughing eyes. That same fear that Jek shared with him, a few days ago.
'S'alright, Janson, I've got room. Crash with me 'til you find somewhere better.
*
He finds her out on their usual cliff, swinging her boots against the sheer gray face of rock, smoking like a downed fighter spiralling through atmo. It's too windy up here for the smell to carry far, but it slams into him as soon as he sits next to her, thick and foul. He holds out his hand.
She lights another cigarette off of hers and hands it over. The thing tastes like getting punched by battery acid but the sweet wave of nicotine smooths everything over.
"We're all going to grow lung tumors," she predicts. She's wrapped up in her giant old utility jacket that belonged to Porkins-- it was too big on him to begin with and she resembles a kid in her dad's clothes. She wiggles an arm out of one sleeve and arranges half the jacket around his shoulders. If they huddle a little closer it just about works.
"Nah," he says. "Won't live that long."
He puts his arm through the loose sleeve and nudges Wes to show her. She laughs, which he was aiming for, and slips the hand not holding a cigarette around his waist. If she sat on his lap they could zip it up around both of them. He's not gonna suggest it, especially if it hasn't occurred to her to make a dirty joke about it.
For once she misses the opportunity for profanity. Instead she says, "Fucking grim," referencing their predicted life expectancy, and lights a new cigarette off the remains of the current one. There's some piece of scrap metal she's using as an ashtray. Wait, actually, it's half the casing of a thermal detonator, full of cigarette stubs.
She catches him looking at it. Grins, sparking with mischief, the cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth and the smoke a hazy halo around her. Her cheeks are pink and her hair is mussed from the wind. He's terrified of the day she climbs into her fighter and doesn't make it back down.
"Some bounty hunter threw it into the Falcon, but it was a dud," she says, holding up the casing. "Han let me steal it."
"Wow, whatta guy."
Hobbie would like to punch Han Solo but Wedge says he can't do that again, so he settles for picking up a rock and hurling it as far over the side of the cliff as he can.
Wes rolls her eyes, puts out her cigarette, and tucks her head right up against his neck, still cheery. "C'mon, Hobbs, you can have dibs on the next handsome smuggler that comes along. Let me have this."
Despite being more intelligent than people give her credit for, Wes has a massive fucking blind spot when it comes to Han Solo. Cannot fathom why anyone would have a problem with him. Her new theory is that Hobbie's animosity comes from thwarted desire. The only thwarted desire Hobbie has related to Han Solo is the deep, unfulfilled yearning to chuck him off a cliff.
Such is his distaste that he doesn't bother trying not to scowl. Given free reign, his face contorts, no doubt in the way Wes calls his Han grimace. Hobbie doesn't like the idea of having a Han anything but Wes does have an excellent catalogue of his facial expressions. He'll never cede the point aloud.
"Again," he says, sinking into the grimace, "I really, truly, unequivocally do not want to fuck Han Solo."
"Unequivocally, huh. Big words, Klivian."
"Some of us went to school as children," Hobbie informs her. "A school is a place where people gather to learn things, like how to string together three words without profanity."
"Gee--" all wide-eyed with fake astonishment-- "Do they have a place where they teach you to fly for three fucking minutes without fucking crashing?"
Well played, Janson.
"Walked into that one," he deadpans, setting her up for the joke.
"Flew into it, you mean."
She presses her face into his neck, cackling. He pulls her a little closer under the jacket, one arm slung around her, and buries his nose into her hair, and pretends not to smile. "You're a terror."
"I know," she says, still laughing, muffled. Her hair smells like rancid cigarettes. "It's a fucking art."
*
He knows from the start there's something. No one, not even Wes, bothers hiding there's something. Porkins alluded to it when he said she shouldn't be alone. Wedge knows about it, because once in awhile they all get drunk and Wes tries to goad him into talking about it as some twisted self-punishment. Inevitably Wedge tells her to go fuck herself and things devolve from there.
And, well. Hobbie has guesses. Sees the shape of it outlined by the reactions of other pilots when they get to a new posting, by her discipline in combat and her unending stream of shit talk on base. She doesn't walk alone at night. She checks her flight suit too carefully, every time, checks it over and over until Wedge orders her to hurry up with calculated force.
Some asshole, must be a new transfer to Echo Base because Hobbie's never seen him, lines up behind him and Wes in the mess. This guy and Wes reach for trays at the same time, make eye contact. Hold it a second long in the way of two people recognizing each other and remembering old dislike. Wes doesn't blink. Hands him a tray first, staring him down.
The asshole takes the tray and holds up like a shield. "Don't shoot," he says, nasty.
Wes doesn't flinch. She's in combat. She doesn't flinch in combat.
"Yeah, nice to see you," she says, takes a tray, and walks off. Hobbie watches her find Dak up ahead and bully him into letting her cut the line.
He turns to his new least favorite person on base and stares, calculating the damage he can do within the limits of what Wedge would let slide.
His face isn't emoting right, because the asshole's talking and not pissing in fear. "Watch out for Tits over there," this absolute shitstain says, "That cunt's so cold you'd get frostbite on your dick."
Luckily for the shitstain, Hobbie's rage is so intense it temporarily immobilizes him, delaying long enough for Dak to grab him by the arm and drag him away. Wes must've anticipated the need for an immediate extraction and sent him over.
"Who the fuck is that," Hobbie says, once Dak shoves him into line next to Wes. There's grumbling from onlookers about cutting. Dak lays down cover by flipping off everyone behind them. Wes is a terrible influence on him.
"One of my many admirers from Tierfon," Wes says. She's flipped a switch. Grinning again. Blowing a sarcastic kiss at the shitstain. She's so full of it.
"I'll kill him," Hobbie says. The line moves. Dak rolls his eyes and shoves them forward to collect their horrible lunches. "Please tell me I can kill him."
Wes laughs. It's very convincing. "That's sweet, Hobbs, but I can do my own killing."
Dak pokes Hobbie to get his attention, and then makes a face of wide-eyed alarm. Yeah, Ralter, copy that, I noticed.
There's a thing. He doesn't know the thing and he dislikes his theories. He can't ask about the thing, because if Wes wanted him to know she would tell him. Does Dak know the thing? He trained on Tierfon with Wes. It's gotta be a Tierfon thing.
Hobbie does not like when everyone knows a thing but him. It's itchy.
To make Hobbie's day more delightful, Han Solo is sitting among the cluster of pilots at their usual table. Fucking great. He's tempted to veer off and sit alone in a corner, but he's not a twelve year old in a school cafeteria, so he sucks it up and follows Wes to the table.
Tycho slides down the bench to make room for him. "You look like a womp rat shat in your soup," he says.
"Yeah, I didn't notice "til I drank it," Hobbie says, to make Tycho wince.
Solo is leaving for a supply run soon. He's taking requests for contraband. Wes pipes up with, "Lube. The muja flavor one."
"I'm allergic to muja," says Han, leering.
"Dealer's choice then."
An assortment of eyerolls, catcalls, and sniggers all around the table accompany this exchange. Hobbie shovels down rations to distract himself from murder.
"Wedge says we can't kill him," Tycho reminds him.
Tycho might not realize Wes is actually hooking up with Solo and not only flirting outrageously. Hobbie isn't about to fill him in. Once he got over the initial shock of everything about Wes, Tycho has come to terms with her as an honorary kid sister. He's protective. He'll flip his shit.
It's good she has Tycho. She needs a big brother and hell knows neither Hobbie nor Wedge feel any brotherly sort of way about her.
Dak offers, "I'll help you kill him," partly out of devotion to Wes and partly out of sheer bloodlust.
"He's not that bad." Yeah, Tycho definitely doesn't know.
"Please can I kill him." He's pleading. When he pleads he only sounds more sour than usual, so it's not very effective. "Please, Tych, it's my birthday."
It isn't, but it's worth a try.
"C'mon. It's cold, I don't want to bury a body." No question they'd ask and no question he'd help. A damn loyal friend, Tycho Celchu.
Right around now's when Wes finishes being vile with Solo and turns her attention to them. Without a falter in her grin she says, "Oh, c'mon, I already said you don't have to kill that guy."
"Oh, no, we've moved on to Han now," Dak says, while Tycho narrows his eyes and says, "What guy?"
'What'd Han ever do to anybody."
Astounding.
"Excuse me, what is this second murder I'm just now hearing about," Tycho says, undeterred.
Wes deploys her dimples. Amps up the charm. "Oh, you know. An old friend professed his undying devotion and Hobbs got jealous. I have that effect on people."
Dak, a feral prison child with no subtlety, says point-blank, "Some asshole we know from Tierfon said something."
Tycho goes fucking black.
"Who."
Damn it. Tycho knows the thing. It's only Hobbie Wes doesn't--what, doesn't trust? doesn't care?--to tell.
"I don't kiss and tell," Wes says, which is ridiculous. She's told Hobbie about every single person she's kissed for the past three years in lurid detail.
"Who."
Wes scowls, false cheer falling away like a dislodged panel. "Fuck off," she tells Tycho, and stomps away.
In an alternate reality where Hobbie's a better man, he follows her. But he's himself, a bit shitty, in this reality that always leans a bit shitty, and he doesn't.
She finds him later, because she always has to find him, because Hobbie's first defense when things are shit is always hiding. He learned it too young, can't beat it out of him, people've tried.
It's getting late. They'll close the blast doors soon. He's sulking in a corner of the hangar, fiddling with a speeder that won't run in the cold, even though that isn't his job, and she sneaks up on him while he's half underneath the damn thing. Kicks him in the prosthetic shin, because she doesn't pay attention to which one is real. It's both nice and not. The prosthesis isn't real. It doesn't feel the same. He doesn't like input that isn't real, even though he's had the prostheses for years now.
He's pissed at her, though, and what's he gonna say, hey I want to suffer organically so please, inflict the violence of your entire self on the other leg? Not fucking likely. He stays under the speeder and ignores her, knowing she won't leave.
About three seconds later she slides underneath, next to him, too close. She's his best friend, they sleep crammed three to a bunk with Dak out of necessity against the cold, but this feels too fucking close. And yet no force in the galaxy could move him, right now.
He thinks about muja fruit flavored fucking lube, and that shitstain calling her Tits. And then about all those nights on Yavin IV they spent sitting up at the top of the Great Temple, how beautiful she looked, back when they were drinking down the Death Star and he was too deep in grief for Biggs to think about her being beautiful.
"I killed a man," she says.
Well, yeah.
"No, really?"
She kicks him again.
"No, you dope. My squadmate. I killed a squadmate, on Tierfon. When I flew with the Yellow Aces. That's why they all hated me."
Wes joined up before she turned eighteen, flew with the Yellow Aces almost a year. She was so, so young, on Tierfon. Dreis was mad they sent Porkins to Yavin instead of her, because her kill count was already insane.
"An accident," he says. "Like a training accident."
Wes laughs and it's horrible, not her laugh, something else, that something that she hides behind the gleam of humor in her eyes.
Not an accident, then.
"His name was Kissek Doran," she says. "He got spooked and ran. Almost gave away our position. They ordered me to shoot him down and I did."
Wes.
"Lotta people gave me a lotta shit about it. So."
No need for her to fill in those blanks. A teenaged girl, surrounded by men whose friend she killed. Pretty clear image.
"Wes."
"I don't feel guilty," she says. The edge in her voice isn't guilt. It's a warning. "Not for him. Not for anything I've ever done."
No shit. I know. I know you.
She continues, ruthless, "I'll shoot you down, if Wedge orders me."
Not if they order it. If Wedge orders it. Well, he knows that too.
"Guess I won't desert, then."
"Hobbs."
"Fuck you for not telling me sooner," he says. "Fuck you. Everyone else knows."
"Not Luke. You think he actually read our records? Wedge does all the work."
"Cut the shit."
Luke's not relevant. Luke's something else. A friend, sure, she does love him despite all her bullying, but she only follows him because Wedge does and everyone knows it.
"I can live without everyone else," she says.
Don't fucking say that, Janson. Not about anyone. Especially not him.
"Yeah, even Wedge. Sure."
"Could if I had to, I reckon. Wouldn't be pretty, but I made my own decisions for almost two decades without him, so."
"Wes."
"Me and Wedge is what it is. You and me is what it is."
The fuck's that mean. "Yeah, what is it."
They don't talk about this. They never talk about this.
Wes laughs again. "Fuck if I know. Something."
Something.
these are a few Hobbie POV scenes from the girl Wes universe that I wrote as an exercise to figure out what the heck was going on inside Hobbie's head, when I was writing Loud And Clear. I don't think I've quite got his internal voice down yet but I do love his perspective on girl Wes.
A few he's closest with come through medbay to say goodbye. Biggs, of course. Wedge. Jek Tono Porkins, who lingers by Hobbie's bed and asks, if he doesn't make it but the rest of the Rebels somehow survive, if Hobbie would keep an eye on Janson for him.
Janson, he's vaguely aware, was supposed to transfer to Red Squadron instead of Porkins. Dreis was annoyed about it: the kid's some hotshot, an insane kill count already flying with a training squadron, but he got sick and the Tierfon base sent Porkins.
Hobbie likes Porkins, no quarrel, he's a damn nice guy and doesn't deserve the shit he puts up with. Of course he worries about the kid who got him sent here to die.
"It's okay," Jek says. "I'm not afraid. It's worth going if it means the kid doesn't have to. But I'm sorry to leave her alone. I'm scared what'll happen if she's alone."
Too damn nice for this.
Hobbie doesn't say something stupid like you're not going to die. He just says, "Well, I'll keep an eye out for'm if we're not dead by sundown."
Then it's three days after and everyone's dead but Wedge, who asks at breakfast, bone tired, if Hobbie'll settle in the new kid this afternoon. So he goes and waits in the hangar until a supply shuttle clatters down, groans open, and spits out Wes Janson into his life.
Somehow he didn't realize Janson is a girl. Porkins said she, come to think of it, but it didn't sink in, probably because Hobbie was exhausted from almost dying of--jungle fungus? what?--and then saying goodbye to Biggs--Biggs wouldn't kiss him, not in medbay where anyone could see, and now he's fucking gone--and also the Death Star was coming to kill them all, so.
Janson bounds down the loading ramp, stomping her boots against the shaky metal in an unholy racket, and this hotshot gunner Porkins died for is a teenage girl. Not much shorter than Hobbie and wide across the shoulders and equipped with an attitude that takes up more space than someone twice her size, but still, no way she's hit twenty yet. She clocks him and her baby face dimples explosively when she grins, big brown eyes flashing over him with a gleam of humor but something else tucked away underneath.
What's she see, looking him over like that? He's barely twenty-one but he's already got a tired scarred-up face and his broken prosthetic arm isn't fixed yet and he's leaning on a crutch, waiting too for a prosthesis for the space below his knee--he doesn't feel any sort of way about it, really, not the first piece of himself he's lost, and Biggs is gone and the entirety of his chest cavity is scooped out and scraped to the bone--and it's kind of poetic, isn't it, how the outside of him is shedding parts until it matches the inside.
"Afternoon," he says. "Lieutenant Hobbie Klivian, Red Squadron. Captain Antilles asked me to get you settled in."
She offers a salute so charmingly sloppy and inappropriate that no one could reasonably expect him to return it, even if he had a spare hand to do so.
"Lieutenant Wes Janson," she says. "Your name's really Hobbie? Did your parents not like you?"
Well, no, actually.
But he's heard that one before, so he replies easily, "They actually named me Derek. So probably not."
"Their loss." She beams with those dimples locked fully in attack position. "Well, I'll like you plenty. It's my new mission. I've needed a hobby."
Oh no, she's a flirt. Biggs was a flirt. Biggs teased him mercilessly for his inability to cope with flirting. His face commences defensive manuevers and twists into a scowl. He can feel his ears going red.
Wes does not look deterred by the scowl. Her face is about to crack open in delight. Her dimples might have their own kill count.
"I'm in love with you," she declares. "Show me our home, Hobbie Klivian."
She's so scared, he realizes, while he watches her bullshit around in the barracks, all profanity and cheer. That's what it is, behind the laughing eyes. That same fear that Jek shared with him, a few days ago.
'S'alright, Janson, I've got room. Crash with me 'til you find somewhere better.
*
He finds her out on their usual cliff, swinging her boots against the sheer gray face of rock, smoking like a downed fighter spiralling through atmo. It's too windy up here for the smell to carry far, but it slams into him as soon as he sits next to her, thick and foul. He holds out his hand.
She lights another cigarette off of hers and hands it over. The thing tastes like getting punched by battery acid but the sweet wave of nicotine smooths everything over.
"We're all going to grow lung tumors," she predicts. She's wrapped up in her giant old utility jacket that belonged to Porkins-- it was too big on him to begin with and she resembles a kid in her dad's clothes. She wiggles an arm out of one sleeve and arranges half the jacket around his shoulders. If they huddle a little closer it just about works.
"Nah," he says. "Won't live that long."
He puts his arm through the loose sleeve and nudges Wes to show her. She laughs, which he was aiming for, and slips the hand not holding a cigarette around his waist. If she sat on his lap they could zip it up around both of them. He's not gonna suggest it, especially if it hasn't occurred to her to make a dirty joke about it.
For once she misses the opportunity for profanity. Instead she says, "Fucking grim," referencing their predicted life expectancy, and lights a new cigarette off the remains of the current one. There's some piece of scrap metal she's using as an ashtray. Wait, actually, it's half the casing of a thermal detonator, full of cigarette stubs.
She catches him looking at it. Grins, sparking with mischief, the cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth and the smoke a hazy halo around her. Her cheeks are pink and her hair is mussed from the wind. He's terrified of the day she climbs into her fighter and doesn't make it back down.
"Some bounty hunter threw it into the Falcon, but it was a dud," she says, holding up the casing. "Han let me steal it."
"Wow, whatta guy."
Hobbie would like to punch Han Solo but Wedge says he can't do that again, so he settles for picking up a rock and hurling it as far over the side of the cliff as he can.
Wes rolls her eyes, puts out her cigarette, and tucks her head right up against his neck, still cheery. "C'mon, Hobbs, you can have dibs on the next handsome smuggler that comes along. Let me have this."
Despite being more intelligent than people give her credit for, Wes has a massive fucking blind spot when it comes to Han Solo. Cannot fathom why anyone would have a problem with him. Her new theory is that Hobbie's animosity comes from thwarted desire. The only thwarted desire Hobbie has related to Han Solo is the deep, unfulfilled yearning to chuck him off a cliff.
Such is his distaste that he doesn't bother trying not to scowl. Given free reign, his face contorts, no doubt in the way Wes calls his Han grimace. Hobbie doesn't like the idea of having a Han anything but Wes does have an excellent catalogue of his facial expressions. He'll never cede the point aloud.
"Again," he says, sinking into the grimace, "I really, truly, unequivocally do not want to fuck Han Solo."
"Unequivocally, huh. Big words, Klivian."
"Some of us went to school as children," Hobbie informs her. "A school is a place where people gather to learn things, like how to string together three words without profanity."
"Gee--" all wide-eyed with fake astonishment-- "Do they have a place where they teach you to fly for three fucking minutes without fucking crashing?"
Well played, Janson.
"Walked into that one," he deadpans, setting her up for the joke.
"Flew into it, you mean."
She presses her face into his neck, cackling. He pulls her a little closer under the jacket, one arm slung around her, and buries his nose into her hair, and pretends not to smile. "You're a terror."
"I know," she says, still laughing, muffled. Her hair smells like rancid cigarettes. "It's a fucking art."
*
He knows from the start there's something. No one, not even Wes, bothers hiding there's something. Porkins alluded to it when he said she shouldn't be alone. Wedge knows about it, because once in awhile they all get drunk and Wes tries to goad him into talking about it as some twisted self-punishment. Inevitably Wedge tells her to go fuck herself and things devolve from there.
And, well. Hobbie has guesses. Sees the shape of it outlined by the reactions of other pilots when they get to a new posting, by her discipline in combat and her unending stream of shit talk on base. She doesn't walk alone at night. She checks her flight suit too carefully, every time, checks it over and over until Wedge orders her to hurry up with calculated force.
Some asshole, must be a new transfer to Echo Base because Hobbie's never seen him, lines up behind him and Wes in the mess. This guy and Wes reach for trays at the same time, make eye contact. Hold it a second long in the way of two people recognizing each other and remembering old dislike. Wes doesn't blink. Hands him a tray first, staring him down.
The asshole takes the tray and holds up like a shield. "Don't shoot," he says, nasty.
Wes doesn't flinch. She's in combat. She doesn't flinch in combat.
"Yeah, nice to see you," she says, takes a tray, and walks off. Hobbie watches her find Dak up ahead and bully him into letting her cut the line.
He turns to his new least favorite person on base and stares, calculating the damage he can do within the limits of what Wedge would let slide.
His face isn't emoting right, because the asshole's talking and not pissing in fear. "Watch out for Tits over there," this absolute shitstain says, "That cunt's so cold you'd get frostbite on your dick."
Luckily for the shitstain, Hobbie's rage is so intense it temporarily immobilizes him, delaying long enough for Dak to grab him by the arm and drag him away. Wes must've anticipated the need for an immediate extraction and sent him over.
"Who the fuck is that," Hobbie says, once Dak shoves him into line next to Wes. There's grumbling from onlookers about cutting. Dak lays down cover by flipping off everyone behind them. Wes is a terrible influence on him.
"One of my many admirers from Tierfon," Wes says. She's flipped a switch. Grinning again. Blowing a sarcastic kiss at the shitstain. She's so full of it.
"I'll kill him," Hobbie says. The line moves. Dak rolls his eyes and shoves them forward to collect their horrible lunches. "Please tell me I can kill him."
Wes laughs. It's very convincing. "That's sweet, Hobbs, but I can do my own killing."
Dak pokes Hobbie to get his attention, and then makes a face of wide-eyed alarm. Yeah, Ralter, copy that, I noticed.
There's a thing. He doesn't know the thing and he dislikes his theories. He can't ask about the thing, because if Wes wanted him to know she would tell him. Does Dak know the thing? He trained on Tierfon with Wes. It's gotta be a Tierfon thing.
Hobbie does not like when everyone knows a thing but him. It's itchy.
To make Hobbie's day more delightful, Han Solo is sitting among the cluster of pilots at their usual table. Fucking great. He's tempted to veer off and sit alone in a corner, but he's not a twelve year old in a school cafeteria, so he sucks it up and follows Wes to the table.
Tycho slides down the bench to make room for him. "You look like a womp rat shat in your soup," he says.
"Yeah, I didn't notice "til I drank it," Hobbie says, to make Tycho wince.
Solo is leaving for a supply run soon. He's taking requests for contraband. Wes pipes up with, "Lube. The muja flavor one."
"I'm allergic to muja," says Han, leering.
"Dealer's choice then."
An assortment of eyerolls, catcalls, and sniggers all around the table accompany this exchange. Hobbie shovels down rations to distract himself from murder.
"Wedge says we can't kill him," Tycho reminds him.
Tycho might not realize Wes is actually hooking up with Solo and not only flirting outrageously. Hobbie isn't about to fill him in. Once he got over the initial shock of everything about Wes, Tycho has come to terms with her as an honorary kid sister. He's protective. He'll flip his shit.
It's good she has Tycho. She needs a big brother and hell knows neither Hobbie nor Wedge feel any brotherly sort of way about her.
Dak offers, "I'll help you kill him," partly out of devotion to Wes and partly out of sheer bloodlust.
"He's not that bad." Yeah, Tycho definitely doesn't know.
"Please can I kill him." He's pleading. When he pleads he only sounds more sour than usual, so it's not very effective. "Please, Tych, it's my birthday."
It isn't, but it's worth a try.
"C'mon. It's cold, I don't want to bury a body." No question they'd ask and no question he'd help. A damn loyal friend, Tycho Celchu.
Right around now's when Wes finishes being vile with Solo and turns her attention to them. Without a falter in her grin she says, "Oh, c'mon, I already said you don't have to kill that guy."
"Oh, no, we've moved on to Han now," Dak says, while Tycho narrows his eyes and says, "What guy?"
'What'd Han ever do to anybody."
Astounding.
"Excuse me, what is this second murder I'm just now hearing about," Tycho says, undeterred.
Wes deploys her dimples. Amps up the charm. "Oh, you know. An old friend professed his undying devotion and Hobbs got jealous. I have that effect on people."
Dak, a feral prison child with no subtlety, says point-blank, "Some asshole we know from Tierfon said something."
Tycho goes fucking black.
"Who."
Damn it. Tycho knows the thing. It's only Hobbie Wes doesn't--what, doesn't trust? doesn't care?--to tell.
"I don't kiss and tell," Wes says, which is ridiculous. She's told Hobbie about every single person she's kissed for the past three years in lurid detail.
"Who."
Wes scowls, false cheer falling away like a dislodged panel. "Fuck off," she tells Tycho, and stomps away.
In an alternate reality where Hobbie's a better man, he follows her. But he's himself, a bit shitty, in this reality that always leans a bit shitty, and he doesn't.
She finds him later, because she always has to find him, because Hobbie's first defense when things are shit is always hiding. He learned it too young, can't beat it out of him, people've tried.
It's getting late. They'll close the blast doors soon. He's sulking in a corner of the hangar, fiddling with a speeder that won't run in the cold, even though that isn't his job, and she sneaks up on him while he's half underneath the damn thing. Kicks him in the prosthetic shin, because she doesn't pay attention to which one is real. It's both nice and not. The prosthesis isn't real. It doesn't feel the same. He doesn't like input that isn't real, even though he's had the prostheses for years now.
He's pissed at her, though, and what's he gonna say, hey I want to suffer organically so please, inflict the violence of your entire self on the other leg? Not fucking likely. He stays under the speeder and ignores her, knowing she won't leave.
About three seconds later she slides underneath, next to him, too close. She's his best friend, they sleep crammed three to a bunk with Dak out of necessity against the cold, but this feels too fucking close. And yet no force in the galaxy could move him, right now.
He thinks about muja fruit flavored fucking lube, and that shitstain calling her Tits. And then about all those nights on Yavin IV they spent sitting up at the top of the Great Temple, how beautiful she looked, back when they were drinking down the Death Star and he was too deep in grief for Biggs to think about her being beautiful.
"I killed a man," she says.
Well, yeah.
"No, really?"
She kicks him again.
"No, you dope. My squadmate. I killed a squadmate, on Tierfon. When I flew with the Yellow Aces. That's why they all hated me."
Wes joined up before she turned eighteen, flew with the Yellow Aces almost a year. She was so, so young, on Tierfon. Dreis was mad they sent Porkins to Yavin instead of her, because her kill count was already insane.
"An accident," he says. "Like a training accident."
Wes laughs and it's horrible, not her laugh, something else, that something that she hides behind the gleam of humor in her eyes.
Not an accident, then.
"His name was Kissek Doran," she says. "He got spooked and ran. Almost gave away our position. They ordered me to shoot him down and I did."
Wes.
"Lotta people gave me a lotta shit about it. So."
No need for her to fill in those blanks. A teenaged girl, surrounded by men whose friend she killed. Pretty clear image.
"Wes."
"I don't feel guilty," she says. The edge in her voice isn't guilt. It's a warning. "Not for him. Not for anything I've ever done."
No shit. I know. I know you.
She continues, ruthless, "I'll shoot you down, if Wedge orders me."
Not if they order it. If Wedge orders it. Well, he knows that too.
"Guess I won't desert, then."
"Hobbs."
"Fuck you for not telling me sooner," he says. "Fuck you. Everyone else knows."
"Not Luke. You think he actually read our records? Wedge does all the work."
"Cut the shit."
Luke's not relevant. Luke's something else. A friend, sure, she does love him despite all her bullying, but she only follows him because Wedge does and everyone knows it.
"I can live without everyone else," she says.
Don't fucking say that, Janson. Not about anyone. Especially not him.
"Yeah, even Wedge. Sure."
"Could if I had to, I reckon. Wouldn't be pretty, but I made my own decisions for almost two decades without him, so."
"Wes."
"Me and Wedge is what it is. You and me is what it is."
The fuck's that mean. "Yeah, what is it."
They don't talk about this. They never talk about this.
Wes laughs again. "Fuck if I know. Something."
Something.
