Chapter Text
I.
As it was wont to, in the late afternoon the sky over the Massassi great temple darkened and rain crashed down loudly, settling in a comforting rhythm that Cassian felt more or less was incorporated in his internal clock. Something far better than the painkillers that numbed his broken body wrapped itself around his bones and lulled him into a sense of calmness, though not into sleep. On very hot days, it rained on Yavin IV like this from one to five hours straight, the sound of the water clattering onto earth, durasteel and stone so deafening at times, talking was nearly impossible and when it happened late at night, sleep eluded a lot of people. He took comfort in the noise. It silenced a lot of his ghosts.
On the bed next to his, Jyn had been reading from a datapad, brows scrunched in a little frown too endearing for words. He knew he didn’t look much different: tiredness and pain lined her eyes and the edges of her mouth, and seeped away the color of her cheeks. Like him, she was also stubborn, also taken to fighting the drugs that should have put them both to sleep. Like him, she was probably also afraid of what she would see if she closed her eyes.
He cleared his throat to speak, knowing it would take some effort to talk over the loud rainfall, but she turned in his direction before he could even open his mouth, eyebrows raised.
It figured, he thought.
He shook his head, fighting a smile, but said anyway, “you should sleep.”
The matter of fact look her eyes turned on him was exactly what he had been expecting deep down, so he painfully scooted sideways in his rather wide medbay bed, “do you feel like you can come here?”
Her green eyes, so green under the weird lighting of the medbay, looked blankly at him for a second. Then she painstakingly moved forward, sitting up and closing her eyes as she maneuvered her legs onto the floor. Her injuries weren’t as bad as his – her muscles were battered and bruised, she had cracked a rib at some point and her ankle had torn ligaments - and this was only reason he was suggesting this. She limped over to his bed and his senses were overcome with the smell of bacta and disinfectant but the whiff he caught of her hair was hers and his brain nearly shorted out at such closeness, the first since they had sat on that strip of sand and waited for the light to engulf them.
She settled oddly next to him, her legs – her foot in a splint –, lying awkwardly next to his, much shorter of course and probably not feeling like they were dead weight like he did his. She looked at him, once more without saying anything, but a question in her eyes nonetheless.
He lifted his arm – this wasn’t the side where he had been shot, so it didn’t actually hurt – and she wordlessly moved to fit under it, her own arm snaking carefully over his abdomen and stopping just short of touching the bandages on his side.
“Good?” Jyn asked in a whisper and when he looked down at her, he could see something tinged pink over her cheekbones and in the hollows of her ears.
“Yes,” he rasped, because now they were close enough the sound of the rain wasn’t enough to engulf their words.
He fumbled for the small remote with which he could change the settings in the bed and leaned it backwards a bit, so they were lying down, but not in anyway that would have the fluid he knew was still in his lungs choke him.
Cassian turned his head over hers, his chapped lips just short of touching her hairline, feeling his cold chin against the skin of her forehead. The sound of the rain was relentless outside, the warmth Jyn brought into the bed more comforting than any blanket. He felt his eyes drooping shut. He opened them and turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were closed, too.
“Sleep,” he muttered.
“You, too,” she sighed back.
They did.
~*~
II.
Jyn stepped off the ‘fresher feeling slightly relieved. She felt clean for the first time after three whole days and she was wearing fresh underwear under the clothes she just put through the sonic. If there was any reason she regretted not joining the Alliance sooner it was this.
As the particular thought - the relief of feeling fresh and clean synthcotton against her skin – intruded her mind, she caught sight of another reason behind her staying with the Rebellion, slumped over the bench in the main hold of the freighter Bodhi had picked them up with, which was hurtling through a hyperspace lane and getting them the hell away from the Albarrio sector as fast as possible. He was buried under his parka like it was a blanket, curled in a way that was probably wreaking havoc on his back. She sat down next to him in what little space there was left. Like her, he slept lightly and when startled, would wake up with a blaster in his hand. And Cassian had very good aim, one that had admittedly saved her life more than once.
“Cassian,” she whispered softly, running a careful hand over the furred edge of the heavy coat.
His eyes opened, sharp as always, but he moved his mouth slowly, getting rid of the dryness, the only tell that he was actually deep asleep and one she knew he allowed because she was the one waking him up.
“What?” he grunted, moving a bit in his seat and not disguising his discomfort.
“You’re lying there all crooked,” she scrunched up her nose to keep how worried she actually was at bay.
He sat up, more or less, and shoved the parka down. He had used the ‘fresher already, as a trade-off for her putting a bacta patch on the blaster wound that had glanced off her right arm. His hair was falling over his eyes, mussed, and she had to steel herself not to reach out and run her fingers through it.
“Don’t you want to lie down in one of the cabins?” she asked instead.
He swallowed, ran a hand over his face, “I have to write my report.”
She rolled her eyes, “you can do that tomorrow. You can’t be comfortable here.”
“Bodhi might need me,” he argued.
Stubborn, stubborn man.
“All right,” she said, resolutely, “we’ll stay here, then.”
Without waiting for his response, she marched off in the direction of the crew quarters, opened the door to the first one and grabbed what she could in the way of pillows and blankets. When she got back to the main hold, he was leaning back in the bench, his eyes nodding off even as he had a datapad in front of him. She unceremoniously plucked it out of his hands.
“I was reading that,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, I can see that. Get up.”
“Jyn.”
She glared at him hard enough that he finally acquiesced. She sat down with a pillow on her back, perched her legs on a small crate that was lingering nearby that she magnetized to the ship’s floor, and put a pillow on her lap.
“Come on,” she said, patting the pillow.
It was really telling of how tired he was that he silently did as he was told, grunting when he bent his legs in a ninety degree position on the bench, so his back was elongated and comfortable.
“Is your arm all right?” he asked, as she covered him up with the blanket.
“It’s fine,” she said and finally allowed herself to wind her fingers through his hair. She had no choice, it was right there on her lap.
He reached up and grabbed her free arm, bringing it close to his chest and she swore the gesture didn’t overwhelm her.
“Just a quick nap,” he mumbled, seemingly already out of it.
“Sure,” Jyn replied, feeling the day’s exhaustion finally catch up to her, “just a quick a nap.”
~*~
III.
She jolted awake with a scream lodged in her throat but seconds later realized that the noise she heard was her alarm. She was fine. Cassian was fine. They were aboard Home One, in his officer’s cabin, which was small, but far better than the barracks where she belonged. Normally she supposed her being there would be frowned upon, but they were, well, them, and after the Death Star no one seemed to question any weird behavior on the survivors’ part if it didn’t mean any harm (to others or themselves).
She felt his hand on her arm, sticking from under the soft plush blankets – she had brought hers over months ago – and she eased back onto the mattress. Jyn turned her face to look at him and saw that he still had his eyes closed, eyelashes shadowing his cheeks, hair all askew.
“You were told to rest,” he still didn’t open his eyes.
He was right. She had come in the night before, battered and bruised from a mission with the Pathfinders, limping on her bad ankle and with a pain on her knee that felt like it was going to shatter the bone from the inside. She had also cried on the way back. A lot. Their extraction unit had taken too many losses this time, enough to have her remembering other men and women whom she had survived in one particular mission.
Cassian had rushed from Intel onto the hangar with wide eyes that turned wider when they were alone in his quarters and he saw the purple and swelling where her tendons had been ripped apart for a second time. He had fussed. She had fallen asleep grumbling about it.
“Why aren’t you up already?” normally he would be. He was insufferable like that.
“Draven gave me the morning off,” he was silent for a beat and then it came out, a quiet admission, “apparently I was making a nuisance of myself when I heard what had- happened.”
Dameron had told her back on the shuttle that his communication line with whoever it was in Intelligence that was monitoring the op had broken pretty much right from the second they had fallen into the Imperial ambush.
She could only imagine what Cassian had gone through. He probably hadn’t slept, which explained the fact that he still had his eyes closed.
Something that was still foreign to Jyn swelled around her heart and she reached out a hand, curled the stubborn wisp of hair that was over his face back and around his ear. She laid down closer to him, eye-level to him, and she caught the shade of a smile on his lips when he sensed her movement. He felt warm and soft, so different from the rough fatigues, the calloused fingers and the determined set of his mouth. She was already acquainted with this softness, of course, but it was something so private and rare she still marveled at it.
It reminded her of his eyes in a turbolift and of a beach singed with blaster fire.
He reached out, pulled her closer, like he had on that occasion, when they thought they were going to die.
“You want to stay in bed?” she asked, voice low as if it would somehow disturb their little cocoon of warmth and quiet.
Before he answered, though, she reached forward, drew his body flush to hers and pressed herself against his chest, her head fitting perfectly under his chin. He sneaked a hand under her clothes, warm and grounding.
Cassian never answered her question. When he had her squeezed in his arms to his taste, Jyn almost immediately heard his breath evening out in sleep.