Vhiran had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.

It wasn't anything to do with Emelie. Sure, things were a little odd between them still, but if anything being wrapped around her little finger and at her beck and call was about the only thing on Cloud City that did feel comfortable. It was everything else that felt weird. It was wandering around the white and swanky upper levels of Cloud City, feeling perpetually out of place with the same scruffy hair and scruffy outfit that he always wore. It was the food. The restaurants. The fact that there was a Biscuit Baron or an Apollo's Caf joint visible at all times. It was the Byblos vibe of the architecture and the social set-up, but populated by the assorted dregs of the Outer Rim. It was the fact that they were standing on a Force-damned flying city, instead of having solid ground beneath his feet.

Even down here in the lower levels, Vhiran felt out of place. He half wondered if Emelie had picked up on things, and brought him down to Port Town out of sympathy. Surround him with the kind of scummy grime and crime he was used to. But even that didn't help; even that didn't feel the way it was supposed to feel.

Maybe it wasn't even the place that was wrong; maybe it was just him. Maybe it was the fact that he had to remind himself not to case the joint, because Emelie actually owned all this stuff. Maybe it was the fact that he wasn't supposed to constantly be working on an exit strategy, because this wasn't some con that he might need to bail on. Maybe it was the fact that he had been wandering around the city the last few days being himself; it had been so long since he'd done that in public that he wasn't even sure he remembered who that was.

He wondered if Emelie felt any of this: if it was weird for her having him around, or if she was just so at peace and settled in the nest of security and authority she'd built for herself that none of it really mattered. He wondered how much of today - of her offer to show him around and help him settle in - was really about Vhiran's own peace of mind, and how much was about Emelie's own secret insecurity, showing her oldest friend the empire she was building for herself, and hoping that he would approve.

He almost snagged her hand as they stood there, gazing around the interior of Elysium: the same Emelie-owned nightclub that Vhiran had stumbled past when he first arrived. That was what people did, right? Held hands to offer comfort and reassurance? That wasn't really them, though. The kind of woman Emelie was, she'd probably rather his hand was up her blouse than wrapped around hers. It was a relief and a worry in equal measure. When the doors were locked and the clothes were off, he knew exactly the kind of man that Emelie needed and wanted him to be. The rest of the time, though? How was any of this even supposed to work?

If any part of Emelie really was looking for his approval, it certainly got it. Vhiran had kept tabs on her enough to know that this wasn't her first boozary - there was some dive back on Coruscant, and maybe something about a vineyard? - but this was something else. What must have been an empty box, a warehouse or something of that ilk, had turned into the kind of stylish venue that Vhiran had spent half his life in. Industrial facets of Cloud City's construction and operation were woven into the design, steam pipes, coolant conduits, giant gears and mechanisms gracing the walls and ceilings, breaking the club down naturally into the kinds of zones such a place was meant to have. With the lights full up, the space seemed fairly benign; but in the dimness of night, with thumping music and crowds of half-sober patrons milling about, it was riddled with the kinds of nooks and blindspots that any good nightclub needed, so that the requisite drug use and inebriated friskiness could all go down.

"You had me worried," Vhiran muttered, fighting against the urge to grin in order to keep some semblance of a stoic expression in place. "Thought that between your swanky penthouses and your legitimate businesses, you might 'ave gone and got borin' in your old age."