Content warnings: conversation about child abuse and child sexual abuse; sex generally
Description: Jax and Ridge talk about intimacy. Ridge is seeking advice from Jax, and Jax is coming to realizations about himself during this conversation, too.
___
Jax settled onto the low wall that made the barrier between the back porch and the yard, fine dust staining his pants. He’d deal with it later. What he needed now was to pop the tab on the canned juice he told Pai he wouldn’t drink. He had plenty of replacements in his bedroom in a spot she could neither see nor reach. Hers was just cold and readily available.
The back door swung open and shut with a creak and a rattle. The former ran like a nail against Jax’s inner ear, reminding him that that was one of many minor projects that had to be fixed around the house. He sighed, closed his eyes against the bright afternoon light. Kiki’s paranoia about droids was well-founded, stubborn, and delaying the completion of menial tasks.
Footsteps crossed the dusty back patio. “Jax?” Ridge said. “You busy?”
Ridge came into view, dressed in dark clothing as usual. Tension lined his limbs, his body language advertising an inner turmoil that he hid from his voice. When he came around the wall, he didn’t look at Jax, instead kept his dark eyes trained on the empty space next to him. He took the seat, his gaze glancing off Jax’s body to focus on the treeline some meters away. Jax would think Ridge was taking in the scenery if he didn’t know better.
“Something the matter?” Jax asked, swiping a hand against the back of his head where a bug had gotten a bit too comfortable. The sun prickled his scalp. He wondered whether Ridge felt or minded the heat, dressed the way he was.
“Nah,” Ridge said. His hands were loosely folded in his lap, but a twitch ran through them like a jolt of electricity seized his nerves.
Jax wondered why Ridge bothered lying. As the silence stretched between them and Ridge kept his flinty gaze on the distant trees, Jax cast an eye to the can of juice. Condensation beaded on the outside like sweat against a brow. In his peripheral, Ridge’s canine snagged his inner lip; his body went still not as if he was relaxing or zoning out, but as if he was hiding.
Jax knew a wall going up when he saw one. He responded in kind—relaxation met Ridge’s tension. Openness met spiny defenses, and Jax hardly moved as Ridge dodged and dove through memories of Kamino.
Ridge had a question. Jax waited.
There was barely-audible intake of breath. “Does what you went through on Kamino ever get between you and Kiki?” he asked, his words strained.
In the process of asking, Ridge angled his head toward Jax, his chin tipped ever so slightly in Jax’s direction. His eyes clung to the grass in the middle-distance. Tooth-white bugs flitted between the tall, yellowed blades. Somewhere, a creature buzzed. Inside Jax, he fought down his own memories of Kamino.
There was what Jax went through and what Ridge went through. There was no sense comparing and contrasting the violence, but the bloody overlap and the serrated edges of the venn diagram that made up their childhoods highlighted itself anyways. On the outside was the electric burn of a handheld tamer. Endless castigations for one, sickly-sweet praise for the other. Lures, isolation, traps. Knuckles cracking against bones, muffled by Kamino’s thunder; tears and pleas for mercy, muffled by the thick walls of a drill sergeant's quarters.
Predators. Prey. The sterile white cage that was Kamino.
Jax blinked. Sunlight stung his eyes. Heat warmed the back of his neck. The air smelled of summer and blooming flora, and the can in Jax’s hand was now room temperature. “No,” he said, his voice lighter than he felt.
Ridge looked down at that, at his bare hands and his crossed ankles. A crease formed between his brows, countless emotions storming his face at once. Jax didn’t bother trying to decipher them—Ridge still needed to feel like he wasn’t laid bare before someone’s eyes, despite the quivering vulnerability of the question.
Jax hazarded a step forward. “Is everything alright?”
Now discomfort was written plainly across Ridge’s features, and the awkward silence put a sour twinge in the air. Another twitch jolted his fingers. “I can’t perform,” he admitted.
Which Jax guessed, and which didn’t surprise him. The confession clung to the air before tumbling to the ground, dragging the rest of Ridge’s thoughts out of his mouth.
“I want to,” he continued. “And I try. I’ve been—we’ve been trying, and Ule’s always patient and keeps saying everything is okay, but I get a stomach ache when—”
A hand flew to his abdomen as if the pain was summoned by mere mention. Ridge’s words got cut off and he nailed his lips shut. Jax risked a worried glance in his direction, but when Ridge didn’t wave him off or bolt, he remained silent.
“In my head, I want to. I’m attracted to her, and I always have been,” Ridge said. His lips parted for a silent breath. “I want to be close to her. I can hold her hand, and I can cuddle most times, but I want more. I want more and my body won’t let me.”
Jax considered this for a few moments. “You said once that your body locked down whenever someone got too close after you left Kamino. Do you think it’s still trying to protect you? That subconsciously you’re still trying to protect yourself?”
Nausea flashed across Ridge’s face. His hand was still on his stomach. He gave one hard, steady blink. “I don’t want protection. I want—frankly, I want to be able to fuck my girlfriend without feeling like I’m throwing myself in front of a speeder.” He cast his eyes down to his feet. “You and Kiki look so natural.”
That surprised Jax. He didn’t think Ridge was studying them—rooting for them, certainly, especially in the beginning when Jax was too shy and lacking in confidence to properly pursue Kiki. Ridge had dating experience that the overwhelming majority of clones lacked. He was the one to be studied.
But what this revelation showed Jax is that both he and Kiki had smoothly crested a hurdle that Ridge could not. Kiki cried after the first time she and Jax had sex, then never again. They were actually quite active and healthy, which Jax was glad for. The idea that Kamino would rear its ugly head and get in the way of that aspect of his life wasn’t even something Jax had considered.
You wouldn’t, because you didn’t go through what Ridge went through. Jax folded and set aside the guilt he felt for being inconsiderate, the momentary lapse in judgement.
“We weren’t always,” Jax said, squinting against the sun. It had begun leaning into a downward arc across the sky. Soon, the types of bugs darting through the grass would change, and new animals would begin chirping. “When our relationship first started, Kiki was denying a lot of Jedi hangups, and I was uh. Clingy.”
Ridge made a surprised noise at the back of his throat. “‘Clingy?’”
Jax’s face warmed. “Her words. She said she just needed space. Thinking about it now, I can see how going from no relationships to always having someone by your side could be overwhelming.” Embarrassment was curdling Jax’s blood right about now, but he wasn’t going to hold back just because he used to be inexperienced and made a fool of himself. “I was big into gifts and grand romantic gestures and all the squishy things you’d see in a holomovie, and Kiki’s very…”
“Pragmatic,” Ridge supplied.
Jax nodded. “If she can’t eat it, wear it every day, or use it, she doesn’t want it.” He sighed. “But it wasn’t just me. She could be distant, and when she wanted to avoid hurting my feelings, she didn’t tell me when I was making her uncomfortable. And frankly, sometimes she just wasn’t putting in the effort.”
“Huh,” Ridge said. “I wouldn’t have expected that. She was always ready to cook for you.”
“And I was definitely glad for that, but there were plenty of other romantic gestures that I liked that she didn’t—and things she liked that I didn’t. We split, talked, and had to find a middle ground.” Jax recalled the devastation he’d felt when he asked whether she felt better not being in a relationship, and Kiki had said that yes, she had.
But then she said that she’d also missed him. She wanted more of what worked and less of what didn’t. She stumbled through her articulation, but ultimately came to the conclusion that she wanted to be with Jax. They just had to work at it.
“I remember when you broke up. It was weird,” Ridge said in agreement.
Jax leaned back a bit, now that he was sure that sudden movement wouldn’t scare Ridge off. “When we got back together, we talked a lot, worked through her Jedi things and my clinginess things. I figure it was…I don’t know. I didn’t have a lot of good physical contact as a child, or a lot of good attention. The war obviously didn’t help. I was trying to fulfill that need with Kiki.”
Which Jax had never confessed to anyone, not even Kiki. Maybe she intuited it. Maybe Jax only just finalized the realization himself, now. Either way, his earlier assessment was wrong. Kamino had gotten between him and Kiki.
Jax’s voice softened with the coming information. “Kiki was the awkward one with physical intimacy, at first. Not even necessarily sex—neither of us was ready for a few months. I mean just sharing a bed. Now that romance was involved, she said it was different from sharing a bed with Hahkin when there were no strings attached, and they were forbidden anyways.”
Ridge tested the waters around what information he could get from Jax. “How did you work through it?”
“Literally just taking it slow. Very slow, very deliberate steps,” Jax said. “She asked me to sleep over one night. And then the next and the next. It got less weird, and Pai absolutely loved waking up and seeing me first thing in the morning.”
Did Jax feel a special sense of pride that his daughter would try to launch herself out of her crib just to say good morning to him (before Kiki)? Yes.
“Then uh…one night she asked if I wanted to shower with her. Pai threw up on both of us,” Jax added hastily. “But I said yes. Obviously, I’m not offering more details than that, but it helped both of us.”
Ridge bit down on the corner of his thumbnail, his brow furrowed with concentration. He was at least moving more naturally now, which Jax saw as progress.
“You’re still in defense mode,” Jax continued. “I could be wrong, but it sounds like you’re trying to take the plunge when the last time you were in water, someone tried to drown you.”
Ridge flinched, and Jax tensed with apology. “Yeah…yeah,” Ridge said, his voice soft. “I’m…it’s hard, seeing you and Kiki and then having all this envy with no way to fix it. But we can start slow,” he said mostly to himself. He was no doubt making a list of things in his mind. For Jax, they went from sleeping together, to more cuddling, to showering, to making out and dry humping, to sex eventually.
Ridge sat up. “How long did it take you—”
Jax emphatically shook his head. “There’s no time limit,” he said, seeing exactly what path Ridge was about to head down. “Once you put a deadline on it, you either start rushing, or you crash when you regress or don’t meet your goals. Don’t do that. It won’t help you.”
Ridge, finally, looked at Jax. It struck Jax how much he’d grown, yet how much he hadn’t changed since they’d both fled the army. Ridge was taller, his voice pitched a shade deeper now that he was full grown. He was also still baby faced, and his eyes held a perpetual youth to them that the war could never stamp out.
“Thanks, Jax,” he said.
Jax offered him a soft smile, handing over the can of juice. Ridge popped the tab and took a sip. He grimaced. “This is warm.” He scrutinized the can. “Isn’t this Pai’s?”
Jax stood, stretching his arms above his head and popping every joint in his back. A damp spot had formed on the back of his shirt. “Eh, I’ve got more.”
Ridge laughed before chugging half the can, following Jax back inside.
They are on twitter trying to tell me that the clones actually aren't people and they're not human and since the narrative (erroneously) treats them as soulless meat droids then that means we should too
Coming out of my tumblr hiatus for this, I think it's really funny when people try and argue that the chips make the clones more like droids.
As if order 66 in the movie isn't the clones immediately following the order with no questions whatsoever or even verifying it or wondering who the hell this guy with a scarred face in a black robe giving them the order is.
And also like. The clones spent three years fighting with the Jedi. You're telling me they all immediately turned on and started killing the Jedi? All of them? At least all the clones serving under Jedi? Really?
It's weird how much a lot of these people want the clones to have unquestioningly and willingly committed a genocide.
Some people view it as a tragic yet valid ultimate act of volition in favor of their own liberation from the Jedi, but the Jedi don't own the clones. Killing the Jedi doesn't make them any less property of the Republic/Empire. And at that point, why go after the Jedi children as well? Across the series we see clones starting to question orders and struggle to rationalize things to themselves. Am I to believe that all the thinking stops?
Some people argue that the clone wars doesn't argue its point well, which fine I agree lmao. But there's also little in the way of the clones viewing the Jedi as their oppressors to the point of genocide besides the repcomm books. So where do we find that the clones collectively had enough *hatred* for the Jedi to want to off literally all of them, including all of their children, only to....continue doing the same thing they were doing before they killed the Jedi?
Yeah. Even if I agree the Jedi were still upholding the conditions the clones found themselves in, ultimately it's the Republic who has control of the slave army.
I think the only argument I've heard against the chips that I can at least understand the sentiment of was contrasting the clones to soldiers IRL and how often times, soldiers will absolutely do horrific things with little pushback, and as star wars is not at all shy about its influences from real life and it's parallels with irl politics. I can see where this person was coming from. But like. Let's use Vietnam as the obvious example. Even if a lot of the US soldiers were still drafted, I don't think it's comparable to the clones literally being raised from birth to be soldiers.
Even if I could buy that the clones grow up initially having a very gung ho I guess attitude and being taught to be patriotic to the Republic and all that, it's clear through TCW that even in the early war, the clones had their own personal feelings or thoughts about it even if the vast majority are still loyal to the Republic. And it's clear that at least the clones who served under the Jedi began to question their orders and status more and more and they clearly appreciate the Jedi as leaders, it's why Rex and Co are so surprised at Krell being the way he is because he's such a departure from other Jedi.
So like. Why would the clones just willingly immediately turn on and start massacring the Jedi? Including the children? They're just really gonna turn on the people they've fought alongside for three years and not at all question why they're being asked to kill them?
They are on twitter trying to tell me that the clones actually aren't people and they're not human and since the narrative (erroneously) treats them as soulless meat droids then that means we should too
Coming out of my tumblr hiatus for this, I think it's really funny when people try and argue that the chips make the clones more like droids.
As if order 66 in the movie isn't the clones immediately following the order with no questions whatsoever or even verifying it or wondering who the hell this guy with a scarred face in a black robe giving them the order is.
And also like. The clones spent three years fighting with the Jedi. You're telling me they all immediately turned on and started killing the Jedi? All of them? At least all the clones serving under Jedi? Really?
It's weird how much a lot of these people want the clones to have unquestioningly and willingly committed a genocide.
Some people view it as a tragic yet valid ultimate act of volition in favor of their own liberation from the Jedi, but the Jedi don't own the clones. Killing the Jedi doesn't make them any less property of the Republic/Empire. And at that point, why go after the Jedi children as well? Across the series we see clones starting to question orders and struggle to rationalize things to themselves. Am I to believe that all the thinking stops?
Some people argue that the clone wars doesn't argue its point well, which fine I agree lmao. But there's also little in the way of the clones viewing the Jedi as their oppressors to the point of genocide besides the repcomm books. So where do we find that the clones collectively had enough *hatred* for the Jedi to want to off literally all of them, including all of their children, only to....continue doing the same thing they were doing before they killed the Jedi?
They are on twitter trying to tell me that the clones actually aren't people and they're not human and since the narrative (erroneously) treats them as soulless meat droids then that means we should too
Coming out of my tumblr hiatus for this, I think it's really funny when people try and argue that the chips make the clones more like droids.
As if order 66 in the movie isn't the clones immediately following the order with no questions whatsoever or even verifying it or wondering who the hell this guy with a scarred face in a black robe giving them the order is.
And also like. The clones spent three years fighting with the Jedi. You're telling me they all immediately turned on and started killing the Jedi? All of them? At least all the clones serving under Jedi? Really?
It's weird how much a lot of these people want the clones to have unquestioningly and willingly committed a genocide.
They are on twitter trying to tell me that the clones actually aren't people and they're not human and since the narrative (erroneously) treats them as soulless meat droids then that means we should too
They are on twitter trying to tell me that the clones actually aren't people and they're not human and since the narrative (erroneously) treats them as soulless meat droids then that means we should too
Did a bunch of sketches to get a feel for my Nautolan OC, Oula Rhos-Adama. She’s hot and she knows it! But despite her appearance, Oula is not to be trifled with; she’s a talented con artist and not afraid to use her looks to get her way.
Two of the poses/outfits were freehanded and the others were referenced from images I grabbed off Google: 1 2 3 4
Neyo + Ahsoka Tano in the treetops of Kashyyyk from the latest chapter of The Way of All Traitors by @yellowocaballero ! I didn't get super detailed with this one but the general vibe is there lol
+ 2 more sketches under the cut, because apparently I'm a TWoAT fan first and a grad student second right now smh
Here's a younger Neyo and Stass Allie:
And here's Neyo's Ideal World, populated by adorable creatures like tookas and Threepio:
rest in peace marcia lucas </3, seen here with her oscar for editing the first star wars. her contributions to the film include putting the iconic trench run together and killing obi-wan kenobi. she was referred to as george lucas’ “secret weapon.” she also worked with martin scorsese. you can learn more about her here, here and in dale pollack’s skywalking
Did a bunch of sketches to get a feel for my Nautolan OC, Oula Rhos-Adama. She’s hot and she knows it! But despite her appearance, Oula is not to be trifled with; she’s a talented con artist and not afraid to use her looks to get her way.
Two of the poses/outfits were freehanded and the others were referenced from images I grabbed off Google: 1 2 3 4
