Nocturnal Emiss- Submersions?

Night time was usually the right time at the tavern. The assorted locals usually didn't have anything better to do, and in their dingy booths you could find rumors, illegal goods, illegal work, and about anything you liked. Frequently all night long. Still, there was an established beginning of the workweek, and that meant the locals would all disappear, save the few who didn't have to worry about schedules or sleep, and everything settled into a pretty quiet kind of drudgery. Yana felt like she didn't even break a sweat that night, as she rarely had to haul more than two jugs of ale at a time.

She set a fresh one down at a table where two spacers were talking in hushed tones, and she sidled back up to the bar, finding a rag on the counter, and rubbing down a dirty glass with it, more out of boredom than any real cleanliness. The rag was dirty as the glass already after all. Mostly it was that she wanted something to do for the last few minutes.

The swarthy young woman stifled a yawn, and she glanced at the chronometer on the wall.

Her green eyes shifted neatly to her father, who was playing a dice game with an Ithorian, and chortling merrily. He'd be able to hold down the fort well enough. And she'd be able to slip away and he'd think nothing of it. It was settled then. She reached behind the counter and gingerly slid her worn backpack out and onto her shoulders. She moved past the booth TK was in, and she tapped him lightly on the shoulder and motioned for him to follow. Without delaying, she walked through the door and into the cold air.

She paused for a moment to let the white-haired man catch up, and she fished a long cloak out of the backpack, putting it around her lithe body neatly. The clothing was coarse bantha wool, scratchy and ugly, but damned warm and nigh impossible to wear down THAT badly. Nevertheless it still had a few patches in it. From under the hood, she stared up at the night sky overhead. It was precisely and exactly clear, the kind of starfilled night that was cold as sin but beautiful as anything else you could see. She smiled a little at it, then looked over her shoulder at her companion.

"I packed food and everything in here, we should be all set. And... I know it's probably not your thing, what with the Empire and the cloning and all, but I think you'll like the springs anyway."

Yana looked around after TK tapped her on the shoulder all quietly. She blinked a little because, in the first place, she had been about 99% sure that nobody was around. Secondly she'd doubted anybody was listening anyway or sober enough to really process that. Then belatedly as a third concern she realized that TK had basically talked about being a trooper with the Empire before telling her not to talk about it, which seemed a lot like three steps backward and one forward. Or something like that.

He was an oddball sometimes. The clone thing kind of explained it. A bit. It was all way irrelevant to her anyway, there was only one of him here. And given those problems he'd been fleeing, there probably weren't that many of the other hims left floating about that much.

Still he was weird about thing sometimes. He paid for everything, and sometimes was weirdly security-oriented, even after it was late. But gods-damn, he was gorgeous. She eyed him up again favorably in her peripheral vision, smiling slyly over how good-looking he was. Also well-adapted to the cold, moreso than the heat. Her feet kept resolutely trudging along through the dusty roadway, and she just nodded in response to his little eccentricity. Of course he didn't have anything to fear. It wasn't like she was about to jump on top of a booth in the market, and loudly yell MY BOYFRIEND'S A CLOOOOOOONE for the whole caldera to hear.

That would have been pretty pointless and stupid after all. No, this was their own little thing. And after midnight on the beginning of the week, there wasn't a soul around anyway. The spring was her own little private one too, as was one of the quirks of the caldera. It sounded surreal to most people new to the open area, but everybody had their own little unique locales. Party sites outside the caldera, abandoned shacks to have rolls in the hay in. There were at least twelve different spots she'd seen where the hot water bubbled up from the volcanic areas far below. Some of them were deep down in the exact center, some others were enclosed in buildings and used as proper bathhouses. But hers, it was close to the tavern, near the outskirts.

Even inside the Caldera there were bits and pieces of geological activity. Behind the tavern there was a gully, one that tended to fill with rainwater in storms, and it opened into what was essentially a very shallow box canyon, with assorted plants growing all around inside it. It wasn't large, maybe thirty meters long at most, but in the center was a spring of turquoise water, with the slight sulfurous smell and the effervescent quality of any decent hot spring. The pool was easily big enough to swim about in, and was up to Yana's nose in the center, something she'd carefully measured by experience. The water was also extremely hot, the kind of steaming bath that was unforgiving to put your head below, but was soothing in the extreme.

Yana gestured to it from the entrance to the canyon, beaming with pride.

"Welcome to my favorite spot."

Yana did a little turn, looking at all the canyon walls she liked so well, grinning at the reddish color of the worn stone, and the silly prideful feeling inside. And she nodded with happy vindication at TK calling it nice, but immediately paused, and looked at him, head tilted, trying to verify what she'd heard from him. Had it been some kind of comment about sleep? Or... Was it... Humor? Did he make a joke? The entire time she'd known him he was very literal, he was very procedural. He was hunky as hell, fitness-obsessed, brave, and she'd never had to complain about his lack of humor...

And now he'd suddenly grown one.

"Holy shit TK, did you just make a joke?" Yana blinked a few times, the astonished tone in her voice not dying down. "I-uh. Whoa that's a big deal. I didn't think you had a sense of humor or anything."

She managed to move from pure astonishment on to a broader grin, because it meant he was growing. Yes, that meant it was the sort of romantic special snowflake story of boy meets girl, girl changes boy, , live happily ever after. It was, in essence, the kind of thing that produced in the confines of her mind a brilliant light, harps, and an angel choir singing in ethereal fashion. It was in short, one of the greatest things he could do, and she was about five seconds away from gushing about how proud she was, and how amazing it was he could do jokes. It was only a thin sense of restraint for his dignity that kept her from it.

Yana internally squealed. The averted eyes, the sheepish embarrassed quality... it was the kind of mannerism that would have been completely forgettable or else tedious. Or annoying on an ugly guy. But by the virtue of being attractive, it was insanely cute and endearing, and she melted a little bit. He was midway through removing clothing when she kissed him on the cheek with a happy little laugh, and then sidled away to strip off her own clothing. Here the difference was readily apparent between the two.

The trooper neatly folded and stacked everything. Yana fumbled with the top laces, and kicked off her boots, leaving one upright, and the other tipped over a couple feet away. Her socks were left there too, her leather pants wadded up onto a rock. Her cloak lay in the dirt. Her tank top was somewhere roughly equidistant between all these. Bra and panties were haphazardly hurled into the strangest summoning circle any devotee of the occult could imagine. Then, in her birthday suit, the dark-skinned young woman moved gingerly up to the edge, shivering a little, and stepped into the water swiftly before more of her hairs could stand on end.

She was used to the hot water, and so Yana slid in with a divine sigh, sitting below the water on a smooth rock, and she leaned back, arms spread out behind her, fingers moving through the water gracefully. She lifted one foot up out of the water and waved a little with it.

"C'mon, the water's fine! Quit stalling!"

He might just freeze standing there stark naked in the cold. She giggled over the 'cold' realization.

Yana tried not to burst into laughter as she backfloated in the hot water, watching her pale companion sinking reluctantly, one sliver of skin at a time. He looked like he was forcing himself into a vat of acid, or more accurately it was like watching a dog trying to get peanut butter off the roof of its mouth. It wasn't just ungainly and awkward, it was also hilarious. Especially when he had the alarmed expression etched over his immensely-readable face as his junk hit the water. She had to bite her own lip then to stop from laughing.

Still, when he was actually properly settled into the water, his tune changed and he admitted it was nice. She almost had to laugh again though because he said he wished they'd 'had one' on the ship, which was pretty funny to her given how this was due to living over a volcano, and having all kinds of super-hot water bubbling up. Heat, gasses, it was how they kept warm at night and well-stocked with electricity. She was a fan of their weird little setting.

She lifted her head up, and her wet hair clung to her shoulders and her neck.

"It's so nice to come here after a long day. Or a short day. Or... Just any time really. It always feels really safe and comfortable to me. Like my own private little spot."

The only downside she could think of was that the odor was kind of head-ache inducing after multiple hours. All things in moderation though.

Well, except maybe feverish lovemaking with a hunky imperial.

Yana floated happily, angling her brown legs up out of the water slightly to keep her frame balanced correctly in the backfloat. It was something of a minor science, given how her frame had little buoyancy, and keeping herself on the surface of the water sometimes required a little practice. However as she was thinking the stars were very pretty, and maybe they could shag on that flat rock over there, TK asked her that question. Her concentration ebbed and she went under a little, and came up sputtering with a big mouthful of water.

Why did it have to be that question? It was the one youth counselors or teachers asked, or worse clergy. All those people who insisted you had potential and needed to work hard, or study, or just shell out a few thousand credits for these classes, and then magically your boring tedious job field is going to be miraculously self-fulfilling. She had this intrinsic distrust of that question. It was somewhat allayed when he was adamant about being with her, and put an arm around her. She moved a bunch of wet hair from her eyes, and came in close to him. It wasn't as if being flush with his muscular frame was any downside for her. Far from it, she could go anywhere with her hands on his washboard abs, from Palpatine's bedroom to Bakura and back. And if the hand happened to go lower...

Well that wasn't a tragedy now either, was it? Imperial engineers had definitely decided the Empire should be well-endowed for any measuring contests.

Both her arms wrapped around his midsection, her damp hair up against his cheek and his neck. She raised her legs up from the bottom of the pool, and floated there holding him, thinking long and hard about it. He deserved an answer. A genuine one, not a 'I never really thought about it' or a 'I don't know.' If it meant she needed a few seconds to get an answer, well that was that then.

"You wouldn't like it," She said finally. "Daddy was a pirate when I was little. I always wanted to get into that. Or something else cool, like lifting ships. Or I don't know, something bigger than smuggling. I always thought that had to be boring, but I guess it's better than this stuff here. I never really wanted to be working in a bar. But dad... He's just not been the same since mom died. I think he didn't want to do any of those things like the old days without her."

Yana was perpetually fighting a small-scale war against her hair. It was thick, wavy, sometimes greasy, and always more stubborn and uncooperative than she could be. It was only long enough to touch her shoulders, but it made up for it. Oh how it made up for it. Her arms were busy with him, so she just let the damp hair cover her face annoyingly, falling over her scarred eye.

She rested her pointy chin on his shoulder and listened carefully to what he had to say.

Surprisingly he was okay with it. It being piracy and stealing, though belatedly she realized that they were kind of the same thing. His concern though was pretty legitimate. Her dad.

Finn Ishale Sularen was a pretty tough guy. He could probably bend a knife with his skin. Or bite a blaster in two. Something like that. He was the best dad she could ever hope for, but he was precisely where she got her stubbornness from. They were so much alike, and he was hellbent on staying put in their nice cozy caldera, running a gin-joint with pleasure. Of course she wanted adventure. Or at least something more interesting on a daily basis. Dad... He wasn't gonna be keen on that though.

She bit her lip a bit.

TK was also right that her dad wouldn't take kindly to him being a clone. Hell, he'd be troubled enough thinking a roaming trader was slipping between his daughter's thighs on a regular basis. Add in the Empire bit and the clone aspect, and it was anybody's guess. Yana's first mental image was him running about with a cleaver and the murder-lust in his eyes.

"Yeah, I wasn't exactly planning on telling him that. Like, at all really. I mean, I don't know. Eventually like, aside from the trooper thing, we should probably tell him we're seeing each other. I mean, he's got to get used to the idea. Sooner or later. I just don't want to rush him."