Chapter Text
Being injured is frustrating enough. When Jyn knows she’s going to be put on the disabled from duty list as soon as they touch down at base, it’s maddening. And it’s not a wound that bacta can fix quickly, more or less; she’s pretty sure she’s separated her shoulder, because she can’t raise her right arm properly. She curses the piece of shavit gutter that gave way, yanking her joint almost out of its socket as she tried to cling to the roof, before K-2 reached down and grabbed her collar.
Jyn’s never been great at using her left hand for anything but punching. For the next who-knows-how-long, eating and getting dressed—doing anything—is going to be a slow, messy process. At the moment, she’s frustrated that taking down her hair one-handed is turning out to be impossible. It’s stringy, matted with dust and sweat, and not being able to deal with it is driving her crazy, but there’s no way she can do it on her own.
She bites her lip to hold back a scream and throws her brush at the bulkhead with a sharp crack. Maybe once they’ve landed, she can find Bodhi or Baze…
Cassian steps into the small cabin. “What was that?” The brush lying on the deck is apparently enough of an answer, because he looks from it to her and his cheek twists in the way Jyn’s learned means that he’s hiding a smile.
With a scowl, Jyn points at her useless right arm.
“Can I help?”
She should say no. She opens her mouth to refuse and then finds herself nodding.
Cassian moves quickly. Jyn doesn’t have time to feel self-conscious about her request before he’s scooped up the brush on his way across the cabin and is sitting down on the bench behind her, bracketing her legs with his. She tries to hunch forward, but that sends a bolt of pain through her shoulder so she holds herself stiffly upright, not leaning back against his chest.
His fingers search through her hair, finding and loosening the pins in the snarled knot at the back of her head. Each one is drawn out carefully, without snagging, and dropped on the bench beside his leg. Taking up the brush, he pulls it through her hair slowly and meticulously, section by section, detangling each knot from the ends up. Sometimes, if it’s very stubborn, he uses his fingers to tease the strands apart.
The rhythmic motion and sound of the bristles pulling through the strands of her hair is hypnotic. Jyn’s neck droops forward, her spine softening as she rocks back and forth with the slight tug and release of the brush. By the time Cassian’s methodically untangled each strand, her eyes are shut and she’s barely holding herself up. He puts down the brush and she sighs.
Then his fingers dig into her scalp, slowly working up from the nape of her neck to the crown of her head. Her chin drops to her chest and a thoughtless noise of pleasure, almost a moan, comes out of her mouth.
Cassian twitches, his thumb catching in the thong her crystal hangs from, but his hands keep pressing into the muscles of her neck. “Does that feel good?”
“Mhmm.” Her wordless response makes her body resonate against his.
He continues kneading the tight column of her neck and Jyn begins to wonder if she’ll be able to stand after this. She’s pretty sure her knees are too weak to hold her up. When Cassian stops at last, she can’t help sighing in disappointment again. She expects him to get up and return to the cockpit, but instead he wraps his arms around her and rests his cheek on the top of her head. His breath ruffles her hair. “Just relax, Jyn.”
This isn’t what Jyn would call relaxing—but there’s no denying it feels good. She stops resisting the instinct to get closer and lets her body lean into his. She’s practically in his lap now, using his chest as a backrest. Her head fits in the notch under his chin and she rests her hands over his where they’re folded across her stomach. She doesn’t think she’s been this warm in months; she knows she hasn’t felt this safe in years.
Jyn has a thing about touching and being touched. It’s never easy or unthinking for her. She was shocked to find herself reaching out to Cassian casually, before she knew him as anything more than a tight-assed Rebel officer. Shielding him in the middle of a firefight on Jedha was one thing—the rules are different in combat—but when she couldn’t stop herself from squeezing his arm in a crowded shuttle, she realized something was very odd. The look on his face when she did (half astonishment, half shy pleasure) made her wonder whether Cassian had constructed some of the same invisible forcefields around himself.
Of course, when she believed they were counting down the last minutes of their lives, there was no point in restraint. She clung to him, let him lean on her, and took comfort in simple touch in a way she hadn’t been able to since childhood.
Jyn didn’t want to give that up once they were back with the Alliance, but finding plausible excuses to touch Cassian when they weren’t in mortal danger was harder. Now he seems to have decided that excuses are unnecessary, and Jyn is happy for it.
She squirms around on the bench until she’s half-turned toward him, looping her good arm around his waist between him and the bulkhead. Cassian curls forward into her, his back curving out of its usual parade-rest vertical, and wraps his arms tighter around her, pulling her closer and more securely into his lap. A gust of air escapes her lungs, and her shoulders sag as if the weight of Baze’s repeater cannon was just lifted off them.
“Relax,” Cassian whispers again. “I’ll wake you when we come out of hyperspace.” Jyn closes her eyes and sinks into his warmth.