Work Text:
The last thought Vildar Mac has before he dies is, “oh, fuck”. This isn't a rare last thought, but usually what you're swearing about is a rapidly bleeding wound, the rapidly approaching ground, or the rapidly decreasing amount of oxygen in your lungs. For Vildar Mac, it was more like, “oh, fuck, it's this guy?”
And then he dies.
It turns out the guy — thief, dark sider, murderer, whoever he is — is less proficient at Morichro than he thought, because Vildar wakes up. He's got a pounding headache and staggers when he stands, feeling distinctly unsteady, but the worst part is that the handprint in the middle of his chest is uncomfortably warm. As if he needs the reminder that the guy who just tried to kill him is his soulmate. He's traced the grey tattoo-like soulmark so often that he knows exactly where its boundaries are. Every time someone has put their hand to his chest (which hasn't happened often, but once or twice), he's been acutely aware of the size of their hand and how it didn't quite fit his mark. And now this little purple kriffer fits it exactly, just at the moment that he tries to murder Vildar.
Right now, Vildar isn't thinking about the implications of his soulmate trying to murder him. He's thinking about the fact that they need to catch him before he strikes again. The soulmate thing he shoves down inside him as far as it will go, because something is wrong in this city, and it might be the man whose trail they're chasing.
Vildar is not having as much success as he hoped with putting the fact that Tey Sirrek is his soulmate out of his mind. It keeps interfering with his decisions, because a soulmate is someone the Force sends you who’s meant for you. Out of all the innumerable beings in the universe, that person will make your life better. Make you better. So how could his soulmate be a murderer? When the Guardians of the Whills are so quick to jump to the worst conclusions about Tey, he tries to push back on it. He tries to convince himself that it’s because Tey deserves the benefit of the doubt, but in truth, it’s because he doesn’t want to think about what that would mean for him. What kind of person has an inveterate thief and murderer as a soulmate? It’s exactly the kind of selfish thinking that the Jedi are above, but he’s never been a good Jedi.
At least he successfully avoids touching Tey in return. Tey hasn’t reacted to him as if he knows they’re soulmates, so Vildar is trying to postpone that revelation as long as possible. At least until everyone is out of mortal danger. But then the tunnel under Enlightenment collapses, and he grabs Tey’s hand without thinking, right where his soulmark peeks out from the wraps on his arm. He sees Tey’s eyes flicker from his face to his hand and back again, momentarily speechless. Of course it’s this that shuts him up. Thank the Force that his silence lasts long enough for Vildar to tell Matty to return to the tapbar, because he can already tell Matty will be insufferable if she finds out. When she finds out, honestly. Vildar knows that Tey will probably tell her — and she seems like the kind of person who stumbles over people’s secrets by accident half the time, anyway.
“Are we going to talk about this?” Tey finally says as they run down the tunnel towards the Final Protector, where Vildar prays they’ll find Oliviah and Leebon.
“Not now,” Vildar says. “Ask me again when—” He comes to a stop, horrified first by the statue in the sand but then far more by the fact that he can see Oliviah lying in front of it. Completely still. “Saber’s grace.”
From there it’s a whirlwind of horror that Vildar has trouble remembering afterwards, tainted as it is by the distortions in the Force caused by the Leveler. Master Leebon’s death, Tey’s use of the Hand of Siberius, Vildar’s use of the Hand of Siberius, capturing the Herald, seeing the wreckage of the city… a whirlwind where the only stable point is Tey. Through it all, Tey is there, reminding Vildar who he is.
He tries to convince himself that advocating for Tey to get a seat on the Convocation is purely for the good of Jedha, and not because he keeps thinking of that moment inside the vault where Tey made him take off the Hand of Siberius. I know what you are. Who you are. And this isn’t it.
What if he forgets who he is again?
The reasons he gives the Convocation are far more sensible. It’s clear just from the reception he got when he arrived on-planet that the locals don’t trust the Jedi or the Convocation. If the Convocation is going to truly fulfil its mandate by bringing peace between all the different Force sects on Jedha, that has to include the non-sensitive population as well. It’ll break down the stereotypes that linger about the different sects: the misapprehension that some of them touch the dark side, that the Jedi still seek to rule, or that they don't care about the common people. And it will remind them all that their work cannot remain inside the Convocation chambers — it has to be in the streets, too.
For all that he was initially worried, Vildar discovers that Tey can be considerate and waits until they're alone a few days later before finally broaching the subject of their soul marks.
They end up in Vildar’s office, where Tey immediately sits on top of his desk, as if there’s not a perfectly good chair available. Vildar should be annoyed about it, but he can’t quite muster up the feeling as he watches Tey’s legs swing back and forth.
“So how does your flavour of Force-botherers do soulmates?” Tey asks. “You seem like the sort to be weird about it.”
“Jedi aren’t ‘weird about it’,” Vildar protests. He has no idea what being weird about it would entail, admittedly, but Tey thinks everything about the Jedi is weird. Or maybe he just says that to wind Vildar up.
“If the Jedi aren’t weird about it, you certainly will be,” Tey says with far too much confidence for a man who only met Vildar three days ago.
“We think soulmates are just as important as everyone else does,” Vildar says, though he knows that’s an utterly meaningless statement. In some societies, soulmates are considered literally the same person in the eyes of the law. In others, unbonded people are segregated until specific days of the year when it’s considered good fortune to meet your soulmate. There’s definitely at least one planet where once you meet your soulmate, you’re obliged to fight them to the death because both of you being alive at once is an offence to the gods.
Tey gives him a sceptical look that Vildar is willing to concede that he deserves.
“I’ve never heard of a Jedi getting married,” Tey said. “I know not all soulmates are romantic, but you can’t tell me no Jedi have had romantic soulmates. I've never heard of a Jedi with their own children, either.”
“Jedi usually don’t get married,” Vildar confirms. “We generally avoid taking vows that might conflict with our own. And we don't have children, either.”
“Don't have children or don't have sex?” Tey asks. Vildar frowns at him for a moment — Jedha isn’t so far from the Core that it doesn’t have birth control, surely. Or does Tey think the Jedi don’t allow that?
“Don't have children. Both sex and romance are allowed, though individual Jedi will have their own interpretations of what that means and how they choose to live a life dedicated to the Force.”
“That’s a lot of words to avoid talking about what you want from your soulmate,” Tey says, his eyebrows raised.
“You didn’t ask about me!” This whole conversation makes Vildar feel like he’s on the back foot, and he wishes he could skip it entirely, or at least that the soulmate bond would ensure they were already on the same page. Tey makes him feel like he’s reading from a whole different book.
“I’m not the soulmate of any other Jedi,” Tey says. He’s smiling, as if he’s scored some kind of point.
“I haven’t thought about it before,” Vildar says shortly and looks away.
“Yeah, right. Everybody thinks about it at least a little bit. Besides, I can tell when you’re lying, it’s a Sephi thing.”
“Banthashit. Sephi don’t have the magical power to tell if someone’s lying.” Vildar has looked up Sephi on the holonet since the whole Morichro misunderstanding. Tey won’t be able to get that one past him twice.
“Maybe you’re just bad at lying,” Tey says.
Vildar is lying, but only partly. He thought about his soulmate, back when he was younger, but that was back when he thought that having a soulmate would fix him. But then his master died and he got knighted and the nightmares never stopped, and he gave up on the idea of being fixable. Before he met Tey, he mostly just ignored the possibility of meeting his soulmate entirely.
“Unless you have some desperate dream of leaving Jedha, I don’t see why we can’t continue on exactly as we are now. My posting here doesn’t have a strict limit on it, especially now that Jedi Zeveron has to return to Coruscant to recuperate. Once I inform the Council that you’re my soulmate, they’ll try to avoid recalling me to Coruscant if you don't want to leave. They try to make it as easy as possible for Jedi to remain able to serve as a Jedi while staying with a non-Jedi soulmate.”
“So you’re not keeping this a secret?” Tey asks, raising his eyebrows. “Seems like you want to, Mister I-don’t-hug-in-front-of-people.”
“I can’t,” Vildar says. “I have to inform the Council — it’s procedure. But that doesn’t mean people on Jedha have to know.”
“So you do want to keep it secret.” Tey has clearly been taught to shield his mind — perhaps in his time as a Guardian — but Vildar can still feel the brief sense of hurt he gives off before reigning it in.
“No, it’s… private. It’s the Council’s business, but no one else’s.”
“What if I want to make it other people’s business?” Tey asks. He doesn’t say it like a threat — instead, he still sounds hurt.
“I… can’t stop you,” Vildar says hesitantly.
“You can’t stop me, but you’re ashamed,” Tey says baldly, and Vildar flinches.
“I’m not—” Vildar starts, but he can’t meet Tey’s eyes, so he starts again. “The people on the Convocation will judge me for it before I establish my own reputation. They were so quick to assume the worst of you.”
“So were you.” Tey’s no longer trying to hide how hurt he is in the Force, and Vildar slumps a little in despair. He doesn’t want to hurt Tey, but he’s not sure how not to.
“That was before I knew you. I didn’t believe you set the bomb, or that you planned to steal anything from the vault at the Final Protector.” Well, he’d been willing to give Tey the benefit of the doubt, unlike everyone else except for his Padawan. Surely that counts a little.
“And what’s your excuse for keeping it from Matty?” Tey challenges.
Vildar feels more secure here, confident that this is a reason that won’t hurt Tey. “Matty will be far too enthusiastic about it. I don’t want the concentrated power of Matthea Cathley targeting me.”
Tey smiles a little bit at that, at least. Vildar’s not sure if he’s forgiven, but it’s something.
“Of course you don’t. I don’t think you’ll be able to keep it secret from her forever — if Matty wants to find something out, she will.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” Vildar says, making a face. He already knows he would die to protect Matty, if the situation called for it, and he admires how comfortable she is here, but… he’s also a little afraid of her. Outside of the current circumstances, he would never have considered taking her as a Padawan, but maybe she’d been right in the tunnel, and it would help him grow. He just isn't sure he wants to grow that quickly.
Tey heaves a theatrical sigh and slides off the desk. “Fine. I won’t tell anyone, but I don’t want to be your dirty little secret forever. I look forward to working with you, Maccy-boy.”
Before Vildar can protest the description of ‘dirty little secret’, Tey leaves, and Vildar doesn’t chase after him.
Two months after the Festival of Balance, they get a new arrival: Jedi Knight Aida Forte, who was grievously injured in the fighting on Dalna and wants to spend time on Jedha healing spiritually from her ordeal, now that she no longer needs round-the-chrono medical monitoring. Matty, of course, is thrilled. She claims “There’s only so much time I can spend watching you two bicker” and “Maybe I can convince Aida to go to bars with me” and “It’s not that Convocation work is boring, it’s just that there’s no one my age here”. When Vildar points out that there’s still no one her age because Aida is six years her senior, Matty ignores him.
He tries not to show it too openly, because Force knows what it would encourage, but he’s happy for her — she’s as relentlessly chatty as she was when Vildar first met her, but she falls into spells of despondency periodically that Vildar doesn’t know how to comfort her in. It’s always when she’s reminded of Leebon, and whenever it happens, Vildar feels wholly inadequate as Leebon’s replacement. It’s Tey who helps them both: cheering up Matty and reassuring Vildar that it wasn’t a terrible mistake on his part to take a Padawan when he never planned to.
All three of them meet Aida at the spaceport. Tey claims it’s because he has nothing to do, which Vildar knows is not true — Tey hasn’t submitted his response to the latest proposal by Susalee to engage the public by creating more opportunities to celebrate different religious festivals. No one can stop Tey doing something he’s already set his mind to, though, so Tey is right next to him as the ramp comes down on the small Jedi ship Aida has just landed in. He’s standing closer than Vildar perhaps would have liked, but Vildar can’t seem to convince himself to step away so their sleeves aren’t brushing.
As the ramp meets the ground, Aida appears, using a hoverchair and wearing her formal white robes, clearly unprepared for how impractical that will be with the sand everywhere. She’s smiling, but her scales are dull and the sense Vildar gets in the Force is that of brittle shields letting only a wisp of her exhaustion leak through.
“Welcome to Jedha,” Vildar says, bowing. “I am Knight Vildar Mac, and this is my Padawan, Matthea Cathley.”
“Call me Matty,” Matty immediately interjects.
“And since the big guy is apparently not going to introduce me, I’m Tey Sirrek,” Tey adds, giving a sweeping bow complete with a fancy hand twirl that makes it extremely clear that he’s mocking them.
“I was going to, before Matty interrupted,” Vildar mutters. At normal volume, he says, “Tey is one of my colleagues on the Convocation.”
“Yeah,” Tey says after a beat. “A colleague.”
“I’m Aida Forte,” Aida says to Tey, nodding her head in lieu of a proper bow. “I regret that I won’t be working with you — I’m just here to recover from… well, I hear they’re calling it the Night of Sorrow.”
“I’m sure we’ll see plenty of each other,” Tey says. “Matty here has been talking me and Vil’s ears off about you since we got word you were coming. And I’ve got a lot of ear to talk off.”
Matty’s cheeks flush magenta. “I just think having some more company will be fun,” she says.
“I’ll try my best,” Aida says.
“Oh, I’m sure you won’t have to try at all,” Matty says as they walk the short way back to the speeder they took to the port. “I heard you were stationed on Vendaxa when they had that huge plague of land squid…”
Matty keeps talking at a klick a minute and Vildar lets her voice fade into the background as he drives them home. He tells himself that he’s just keeping his eyes on the road and absolutely not avoiding looking at Tey in the passenger seat.
By the time Vildar comes into the kitchen the next morning, Matty is already up and making panna cakes. “What’s the occasion?” Vildar asks as he makes tea with the water Matty has already boiled for her own caf. She’s vibrating with excitement in the Force, and can’t keep the grin off her face as she turns from the stove to face him.
“I’ve found my soulmate,” she says, bouncing on her heels. “It’s Aida. She was screaming last night in her sleep, so I went in to see if I could help her and we hugged and we’re soulmates!”
“Congratulations,” Vildar says, unable to keep a smile off his face at Matty’s joy. “Where is the woman of the hour?”
“She’s still asleep,” Matty says. Aida hasn’t spoken much about what happened to her on the Night of Sorrow but it’s clear already that she tires easily now. He’s not surprised to hear that she’s having night terrors — Matty had them so badly when they first returned from Dalna that neither of them got a full night of sleep for a fortnight. It’s the one thing that Matty doesn’t like to talk about.
Matty turns back to the stove just in time to rescue the last panna cake from burning, and sets the stack on the table before sitting down. After shovelling an inadvisably large amount of panna cake in her mouth, she asks something too garbled for Vildar to understand.
“What?” he asks, and Matty exaggeratedly chews and swallows before trying again.
“Have you ever thought about who your soulmate might be, Master?”
The question takes Vildar off-guard. For all that he doesn’t want to answer her, he won’t lie, either. “It’s Tey, actually,” he replies, trying to make it sound like it’s unimportant. The way he says it is as casual as telling her where she left her pad when she inevitably asks (it’s always fallen behind the left-hand cushion on the sofa).
Unfortunately, his carefully light tone doesn’t work. He didn’t expect it to, because this is Matthea Cathley, who is incapable of being normal about anything.
Matty goes so far as to put her knife and fork down completely before she says, “What? When did this happen?”
“During the Battle of Jedha,” he admits.
“Why didn’t you tell me! Why haven’t you said anything to anyone! Does — no, Tey knows for sure,” she says, frowning a little in concentration as she decides. Vildar doesn’t know what makes her decide that Tey knows, but he doesn’t like that she’s come to the conclusion so quickly.
“He knows,” Vildar confirms. “I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t important.”
“Not imp—” Matty begins to repeat, shaking her head. “Master. Of course it’s important. He’s your soulmate. And you haven’t even done anything about it, have you?”
“What is there to do about it? We already see each other almost every day, and we work well on the Convocation together.”
Matty opens her mouth to say something and then shakes her head again, deciding instead to resume eating. Glad the interrogation was over for now, Vildar does the same.
Once she’s put her plate in the sink, Matty announces that she’s going out and then leaves before Vildar can ask where. Usually, whenever she doesn’t tell him, it means that she’s going to meditate at the fallen statue of the Sentinel, but when that happens she doesn’t announce her departure, either.
Vildar isn’t normally bothered by not knowing where his Padawan is, since she’s more than capable of looking after herself (and once was more than enough to make him conclude he never wants to be in the same bar as her), but the way she’s done it instead of asking him more questions about a topic he knows she must be dying to hear more about… well, Vildar has a healthy fear of whatever Matty’s planning. He never thought that he would develop that sense for his Padawan doing something unwise that all Masters seem to have, but this time he definitely has a bad feeling about this.
Matty then proceeds to make Vildar feel like his hair will start going grey any day now by doing nothing. He makes it two days before he jumps at a chance to spend a week on the other side of the planet: a community of anchorites needs help with cataloguing their archive after a storm partially destroyed their settlement. It’s the exact sort of task he should probably send Matty on, but he’s not above fleeing situations he’s afraid of. She doesn’t even fight him on it, which unnerves him even more.
Telling Matty has made the soulmate thing real in a way he didn’t expect. He’d been nervous after that first talk with Tey — worried that Tey would tell someone, but if he has, Vildar has never found out. There's been no need to bring it up again.
It’s enough that Vildar’s happy when he sees Tey at work, he’s happy when Tey smiles at him for buying one of the overly-sweet pastries Tey likes, and he’s happy when Tey bullies him into going to one of the bars that Matty won’t/can’t go to (Enlightenment never seems to stick to their bans, but other bars do). Tey forces him to do things that are uncomfortable, but Vildar does it because he knows Tey won’t let anything terrible happen. On one very memorable occasion, Tey even got them kicked out of their drinking establishment for starting a fist fight in Vildar’s honour.
The heckling hadn’t even been anything out of the ordinary — there are plenty of Jedhans who still didn’t like Jedi, and Vildar has got used to it — but it was the anniversary of his Master’s death, and one of the jabs made him flinch. Next thing he knew, they were all three of them outside, Tey with a split lip and the other guy stumbling away with much worse than a split lip.
Vildar couldn’t condone the violence, but he smiled back at Tey’s triumphant grin anyway, his eyes caught on the blood on Tey's teeth.
Now, Matty’s you haven’t even done anything about it keeps rattling around his head as he helps the anchorites. What is he supposed to do about it? He’s doing exactly as he’s supposed to, guided by Jedi teachings. Tey’s presence is a gift from the Force, and he knows it. Isn’t the knowing enough?
The break from Jedha City is a cool balm after the battle and the hostility from the residents. The walls of the hall where they keep their artefacts are covered in elaborate murals that he watches the residents reverently restore. The murals incorporate glyphs common to many Force groups from the Lonto to Zeffo as well as great swirling patterns that remind Vildar of gentle winds. They don’t have any power themselves, but nevertheless feel holy in a way that Vildar has rarely experienced.
The work he’s assigned, handling artefacts so ancient that he can’t even read the text inscribed on some of them, isn’t difficult, but it requires training in the Force that few of the anchorites have, as the majority of them aren’t Force-sensitive themselves. When he asks, he learns that there used to be more Force-sensitives in the sect, and they expect for there to be a similar number at some unknowable point in the future: it waxes and wanes, always returning eventually to an equilibrium.
It’s an honour for Vildar to learn from the anchorites as he works, and he’s even allowed to copy some of their records to take back. There are quite a few anchorite sects on Jedha, and the Convocation has a policy of respecting their privacy and not contacting them unless they reach out.
Tey would hate this assignment, but Vildar’s mind keeps straying to him anyway. One of the prerequisites of joining this sect, Vildar learns, is that your soulmate must be dead. Killing them is forbidden; he’s mostly working alongside long-lived species whose soulmates simply grew old and died. He does not tell anyone that his soulmate is a Sephi. They never ask.
Matty continues to be mostly normal upon his return, though she spends more time than she usually does with Vildar and Tey when they work together on tasks for the Convocation. She still doesn’t ask him any more questions about his soulmate situation.
The other shoe finally drops a week later, when he walks into his office to find Tey already sitting on his desk. (Matty complains that she isn’t allowed to sit on the desk, and Vildar can’t articulate why that’s the rule. Perhaps it’s just that Matty will obey him when he tells her to get off, and Tey won’t. He’s stopped even pretending to be annoyed when Tey does it.)
“Matty has pointed out that if I try waiting for you to admit your feelings, I’ll be waiting forever, so: I think we should kiss.”
“What?”
“You. Me. Kissing. Ever done it?”
“I—” Vildar feels a little dizzy. “Yes?” He hasn’t kissed anyone since he was a Padawan, but he’s hardly going to admit that it’s been thirty years since his last kiss.
“That was the least confident ‘yes’ I've ever heard.”
“I have, it's just been… a while.” That, and Vildar is still trying to adjust to the idea of kissing Tey. Does he even want to? Vildar experimented as a Padawan, as most Padawans do, but he found it pretty underwhelming. It was never romantic, either — both participants knew this was an experiment between friends, nothing more. Kissing had been part of it, but he hadn't felt the desire to do it outside of those experiments.
But with Tey? Vildar looks at him as he sits on Vildar's desk, smirking. He can imagine it: Tey would pull him down so he could kiss Vildar without standing on his tiptoes, curl one of his perpetually cold hands around the back of his neck, and then laugh at him when Vildar wasn't sure where to put his hands. (It's been thirty years!) Maybe he'd put Vildar's hands where he wanted them and then put his own in Vildar's hair, hopelessly mussing it up. Matty would definitely notice later and tease him about it.
But — but it’s a bad idea. Attachment leads to fear, fear leads to anger, and anger leads to losing control. He's seen what happens when someone like him loses control, and he knows he's not strong enough to toe that line. That's why he chose Jedha instead of the Togruta front.
“I can't,” he says, and Tey raises his eyebrows.
“So you do want to,” Tey says, and Vildar closes his eyes briefly in despair. If he'd said he didn't want to, Tey would have respected that, as long as he didn't realise Vildar was lying. “Why can't you? You literally said it was allowed. Is it something about having a Padawan? It would be weird if it is, because I have been called by bar employees multiple times about Matty getting caught having sex in the bathrooms again.”
“What?” Vildar says, completely distracted by this revelation. “No one's ever called me about…” He trails off, shaking his head. “Does she really have sex in bar bathrooms?”
“She's never claimed it was a false accusation,” Tey says. “No one calls you because she always gives my comm code. They know she's a Padawan, so they're trying to get her in trouble with her dad, I guess, even though she's an adult. Doesn't matter to them who she calls, though, as long as I look appropriately disappointed when I pick her up. I've suggested she just take these women home, but I keep having to pick her up anyway. Maybe the thrill of getting caught is her thing.”
“I…” Vildar starts, but has no idea what to say next. He doesn't care about Matty having sex as long as it's consensual and she's being safe but that doesn't mean he wants to know about it, and he absolutely doesn't want to think of her getting off on the possibility of getting caught.
“It's not about Matty,” he says at last. “I don't…” Surely Tey knows? Surely he sees it? He has seen it — he was there the whole disastrous Battle of Jedha. “I'm not strong enough. I already touched the dark side because I thought you were dead, and… I can't lose control. When people like me lose control—”
“And how will kissing me make you more likely to lose control? That's shutting the gate after the fathier's bolted. You said it yourself, when we barely knew each other you were willing to use a dark side artefact to avenge me.”
Vildar feels his face crumple. Tey’s right. Drawing the line at kissing is a banthashit attempt to pretend he has any control, when really he doesn't. He should return to Coruscant, hand Matty over to another Master and swear as a Wayseeker to retire to one of the anchorite enclaves. He can't be trusted.
“Hey, hey, big guy, wait,” Tey says, jumping off the desk and cupping Vildar's cheek with his hand. “I didn't mean to — kriff. Vildar, I didn't mean that you'd already failed. You didn't use the Hand to kill anyone, because you stopped. You were strong enough to stop, and you still are.”
“I wouldn't have, if not for you,” Vildar whispered.
“Vil, what do you think soulmates are for? Matty said the Jedi think they make each other better. So let me. I brought you back then. I'm willing to do it as many times as you need. I think you’re so used to denying yourself that you don’t even recognise it — I've seen the way you look at me. Tell me you don't want to, and I won't mention it again.”
Tey waits, his hand not leaving Vildar's cheek, and Vildar lets himself lean into it for a moment. He'll need to talk to the Council. Maybe he'll go back to Coruscant, but just temporarily, so Masters wiser than he is can guide him in the Force as well as with their words.
Resolved, Vildar leans down and kisses him. It's almost exactly how he imagined in terms of what Tey does — his hair will be a disaster later — but where previous kisses had been nothing to write home about, this one lights him up from the inside, feeling right in a way those ones never had. Tey nips at his bottom lip and laughs into his mouth when Vildar gasps at it.
“Master, do you know where — oh,” Vildar hears behind him. He disentangles himself from Tey and spins around to meet a delighted Matthea Cathley. “You might want to close the door next time,” she says before he works out what to say. She's grinning like Life Day has come early, and Vildar's heart sinks.
Tey sees his face and laughs before smooching him loudly on the cheek. He hadn't even considered how bad the both of them together would be about this.
“Also, don't be late for dinner, because we're having cake to celebrate this. You too, Tey!” she announces and then turns around and leaves, whatever she wanted to ask forgotten.
Tey snorts, then closes the door after her and says, “So where were we?”
Vildar is going to have to deal with all of this eventually, but for now, there's nothing stopping him from letting Tey back him up against the desk and kiss him again.