somethingwithturquoise | MHA #4; Tuesday Evening [02/01].

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MHA #4; Tuesday Evening [02/01].

Summer was pretty sure it should be illegal to have to have two sangria nights within less than a week of each other, but that was the dire state of affairs that they were in, and so they had to make the most of it. It did not take her long to know that she was going to be mixing up more of the now sacred drink for another session when she heard about John leaving, and she was determined to all but drag Rey here if she had to.

Thankfully, though, she didn't have to, and she had yet again foiled the cats' attempts to trip her as she brought a pitcher out to the living room in an odd sense of déjà vu, except for the fact that there was already a box of cookies from J,GoB on the table waiting this time.

What? That cookies-in-wine combo had been legit.

She wasn't sure Rey would be as onboard with it as she was, but, hey, it was good to have options.

[[ and for she who is mentioned in the narrative, although if anyone wants to poke at Summer before Rey in the timeline, I'm totes down for it! ]]

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Yeah no, Rey really did not need to be dragged out. So far she was stuck in a big empty apartment alone and she was already over it.

So there she was, knocking. She looked better than yesterday, too.

And, again, making that feeling of déjà vu even more complete, Summer habitually looked through the peephole at that knock, only instead of a glowy alien, it was an adorable Jedi, and instead of just inviting Rey in when she opened the door, she gave her a warning: "I am totally hugging the crap out of you right now."

And then went to make good on that warning, whether Rey liked it or not!

"Good," Rey said immediately, hugging her back tightly. She needed it and honestly, going two days now without physical contact was actually kind of weird now and she hated it and this helped. "Thank you."

And hug the crap out of Rey she did, especially with that response to it, giving her a good, reassuring squeeze. "Of course," she said, "don't even mention it," and let the hug linger just a little bit longer, right up to the point where she figured just hugging each other in the middle of her doorway was going to start feeling a little awkward, and then she pulled away, stepping back to make room for Rey to come in.

"I have sangria," she assured her, because, duh, obviously, "and cookies."

"The cookies are new," Rey noted as she came in. They were also appreciated, since she probably wasn't eating like she should be and there was going to be alcohol.

"Stark brought some when he came over the other day," Summer explained, all but ushering Rey over to the living room and then gesturing toward the cookies and sangria in question, then picking up the pitcher and one of the very large glasses that she'd argue were still too small for these occasions to get to pouring, "and now they are a necessity."

"They really are," Rey agreed, taking a seat. "To think I was just telling him how good you are at this."

"I'm not sure," Summer admitted, regretfully, as she handed over the probably-a-little-too-full glass to Rey, "it was as helpful as we were hoping it would be..." Things got a little more complicated, when helf the time you kind of wanted to just shake the sangria-ee, "but..." She picked up the other glass to give it the same treatment, before joining Rey on the couch, "we're not here to talk about that."

"It's not a fun talk," Rey warned as she took the glass, like that wasn't obvious. "It's still really new."

"Understatement," Summer noted, before shaking her head. "And it's not like I expected you to come walzing in here, singing about happiness and freedom."

Her brow furrowed as she took that tentative first sip, which was mostly a volume-regulation thing because, yeah, definitely got close to the rim there, Summer, and then she looked over at Rey.

"So," she ventured, all traces of her previous sarcasm vanished into something much softer, "how are you feeling?"

She didn't look great, but, also, she didn't look all that bad, either, all things considered. Which Summer had mostly expected of Rey, and that was why she was going to just ask directly.

"I'm okay," Rey said slowly, like she was still figuring that out even as she answered. "The answer could be different in half an hour. It was a really good breakup, I just... hate it."

"I feel like 'good breakup' is kind of an oxymoron," Summer noted wryly, with a slight roll of her eyes, "no matter how smoothly or...mutually," somehow, she was pretty sure that wasn't quite the right word for it in this situation, but it was as close as she had right now, "or whatever it goes. And, honestly, girl, you seem to be handling this, like, a million times better than I probably would in your shoes."

She'd be halfway to her second planet-ending apocalypse orgy with her grandfather by now, probably, because, yes, that was actually canon.

"I spent part of yesterday taking his furniture back," Rey said, sipping her drink. It was a pretty big sip, for her. "Mostly I'm trying to stay busy so I don't think."

"There are definitely worse ways to cope," Summer noted, in a complimentary tone.

See previous narrative statement.

She filled in the hesitation that followed with a large sip of her own before asking, "So what all happened?"

Rey was taking another drink before talking.

"When he first came here it wasn't by choice, but he got away from a war he didn't believe in so he didn't really try that hard to get back." Or at all. "His captain showed up at Parents Weekend and I knew what he said bothered John at the time, but he never talks about things so I didn't know how badly it was weighing on him. He called me over Sunday morning to tell me he had to finally see it through, being more like me, and then I stayed with him till his portal."

One of the good things about sangria nights was that it meant listening came with drinking, which Summer was doing as Rey talked, then let the drinking and the words settle a little before responding.

"Oof," she said, eloquently, still deciding which part of all that to focus on. "So...back home, huh?"

To war. In the, what, eighteenth century? NBD...

...although something was telling Summer it definitely wasn't exactly the same as Rey and herself flipping back and forth between here and their own various wars.

"Yeah. He's not coming back," Rey said flatly. "He has a life there."

She was absolutely sure he'd be okay. But she also was pretty sure he was just going to pick up where he left off.

Summer was definitely not concerned about whether John would be okay in this situation.

"He had a life here, too," she murmured into her drink, not really meaning to, but, well...she did have pretty complicated feelings about that sort of thing, and she sighed, taking that next drink and shaking her head.

"But...I guess," she added, feeling it was maybe a little unfair of her to hold against him what she had basically sympathized with Faye for, but somehow, this just felt different to her. Like she said, complicated, "if it was really what he felt he needed to do..."

"I can't even be mad," Rey admitted. "It really is what I would do. I never would have stopped trying in the first place, but still."

She'd checked every day during high school on whether she could get back to Jakku, where there had been nothing waiting for her.

"I kept trying to think up ways I could even go with him, but if I couldn't stay- and I couldn't- I think it would only have prolonged this."

"Yeah, you definitely have your own shit, too," Summer pointed out, knowing she really didn't need to, just like she didn't need to point out that, as far as she was concerned, Rey's shit was probably a whole lot bigger than whatever piratey shit was going on back in John's world. Like, not even from a biased perspective, either, but on the general scale alone...

She gave Rey a weak sort of smile. "I guess it..." A few things came to mind to fill in the rest of that, but none of them really quite fit. Was inevitable? For the best? Nice while it lasted? "...well, like you said...probably good, but ugh."

Paraphrasing, of course.

"It'll be okay," Rey said. "It will. But I don't know how I'm supposed to get used to this."

"You will," Summer assured her, with a confident insistence. "I'm pretty sure you can get used to anything, really, and this is no exception. It'll...definitely take time, though. And, hey, if you ever just need to get out of that space for a while, because...I mean...well...obvious reason, my door is totally open. Honestly, I would be a total mess in that apartment right now."

But her knee-jerk reaction to these things was to always just hit space, as soon as possible, and as far as possible, so....

"I'm thinking about going home for a bit," Rey admitted, thinking much along those same lines at the moment. "The whole place feels empty right now. I think I've spent more time in the warehouse than there the last couple days."

There was also more to focus on in the warehouse, probably, that wasn't John-related, too, and she nodded.

"Might not be the worse idea," she said, with a faint smile. "There's always something for you to do out there, something useful, too, which helps...

"But," she added, with emphasis, "if you do go out there, you have to A) come back or two, at least spare a day in the very near future for a little trip. Honestly, between you and Stark and with it being the worst timing with being February now," like, seriously, all this stuff, around Valentine's Day? Rude, "I am definitely going to see who I need to blackmail to see about squeezing us into a space spa day, because we are clearly in desperate need of one but the whole place has been booked solid."

But, hey, now this might give her something to focus on other than her own crippling paranoia about being next! Sure, sure, yesterday had definitely done a lot of good in walking her back from the edge, but it was a slippery slope they were on right now.

"I'll definitely come back. I've been here for training, not John." She almost definitely would have asked him to stay out there with her if she wasn't coming back to Fandom. "Let me know when? As long as they don't have me doing anything big I'll be back."

She had not thought about Valentine's Day. She was more than likely going to not be here for Valentine's Day.

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