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It’s strange to want to kiss someone.
Cassian leans against a wall, at the end of a corridor, looking out over the main hangar bay. The evacuation orders -- expected, planned for -- were given shortly before the awards ceremony, and a good third of Yavin’s personnel have already shipped out. The rest are scattered, rushing to pack up equipment and supplies. Most of it’s already been crated. Most of it’s never seen the outside of a crate, for that matter, but none of it’s going to move itself. He watches carts zigzag across the stone, dipping and bouncing from the weight they carry, hovering lower than they should. He watches droids and sentients stack goods in the bellies of transports, shimmering in the haze of engine heat. He watches a pair of ships tilt toward the sky and take off. He spots Jyn, and watches her, too, for just a moment.
She’s along the back wall, partnered with another Human (he mentally sifts through base records: Kassada Eren? ), loading crates onto a cart. Strands of hair have come free from her bun, slipped forward to join her bangs; she pauses to pull them back into place. Her face is flushed. Her lips are drawn. Her sleeves are pushed up to her elbows. When he makes his way toward her, her eyes lock onto him, and something flickers over her face. Surprise, at first, but after that… He doesn’t know.
She straightens. “Cassian.”
Eren’s head turns. She looks over one of them, and then the other, and then shakes her head, and goes back to work. Jyn takes a step.
“I thought you’d already left.”
He’s supposed to have. He counts as “injured.” In his opinion, so does she, but that isn’t his call to make, and he has to admit that she looks fine. But then, she’s good at playing things off. He wonders if she pushed to stay behind because she’d rather be doing something, anything, than sitting around and waiting, just like -- mostly like -- him. “No,” he says.
“Right.”
He glances toward the wall. Fifteen crates left. His gaze shifts back to her, and they’re close, very close, very suddenly. That seems to happen a lot.
She frowns. “You aren’t thinking of helping, are you?”
“I’d considered it, yes.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’re in no state for it.”
He’s in a better state than she knows, but she isn’t totally wrong. The thought of lifting something makes his spine ache. He looks down at her, at the slant of her brows and the curve of her mouth. She’s concerned, genuinely. He thinks of the way her voice had sounded when he’d been kriffed and she’d called out his name. Something clicks. Warmth, he realizes. Warmth is the thing he’d seen, and she’s directed it toward him, and he hadn’t recognized it at first, because he isn’t sure he deserves it. He swallows, and there it is again: he wants to kiss her.
It isn’t as if it’s the first time. It’s an old feeling, from a very long time ago, when he’d been very young. A kid, really -- burdened with more than someone his age should have been, but still a kid. He’s done a lot over the years that he knows would lower that girl’s estimation of him, and he’d made a decision, at some point, to not care about such things. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t what he’s for. He’s a soldier. He’s a spy. He’s a weapon. He needs to be, because someone needs to be, and he burns so badly to right what’s wrong that it might as well be him. There’s no room for anything else.
But he’s getting older, now. In the last couple of weeks, he’s seen something. And he’s felt something, in a way that’s seems a lot like scraping rust spots off the underside of a ship. He has a little bit of an idea what to do with it, the larger part of it, the part that’s yanking him back from the abyss (how had he gotten so close? How had he allowed it? He won’t let it happen again). But the personal want is something else altogether.
So often, now, she’s there, and he wants.
“I’m not going to do anything to undermine my recovery,” he says.
“Can’t imagine why you’re here, then.” She juts her chin toward the opposite end of the hangar. “There’s a transport that’s almost full. You should be on it.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Her lips twitch. She almost smiles, but doesn’t. “You know that isn’t it.”
He looks back over his shoulder, spots the ship she indicated. In truth, he has no idea what he’d planned to do. He only knows that he hadn’t wanted to be still, to be useless ( soldier, spy, weapon ), to be someone else’s burden. He knows that he’d thought of her, and had gone and followed an impulse that’s turning into a habit. “I’d have to go and get my things,” he says, turning back. Not that he has much in the way of personal possessions, but there are a few items it’d be a pain to replace. “I wouldn’t make it back in time.”
She does smile, then, in a small, barely-there way, and huffs. “I suppose I can’t convince you to get on the next one.”
“No. You can’t.”
Its remarkable that they’re still so close together. She’s leaning toward him, and that’s remarkable, too.The light is in her hair, and is glinting in her eyes, and he recalls the moments in the field when they’d been pressed together, or he’d gripped her waist, or she’d grabbed his arm, or she’d flung her own around or over him. He thinks of how it had felt when she’d held him at the end, how warm and crackling it had been, even with the pain, and he wants that again, under better circumstances, which is as strange as the rest of his desires.
“Why are you here?” Her voice is very soft.
Mirth tugs at the corners of his mouth, and he sort of shrugs. He knows how he wants to respond -- not with his drive, but with the voice in his head that screams Jyn -- but something slows him. She gives him a bemused look. He leans closer still.
“Because I wanted to be.”
Her brows climb, and her eyes drop down to his lips. He takes a long, slow breath, feels his chest expand, hears his pulse in his ears. Why does she look at him like this, like the way she does, when she knows so much about who and what he is? Why does she worry about him? Why does she seem to... She has to hit a limit, eventually, and realize that he doesn’t deserve it, isn’t made for any of it. He would, if he were her. Then again, she’s also a soldier, whether she’s spent several years denying it or not. Maybe that helps her to understand. He wants to give her more reasons to.
She makes eye contact again. The smile is gone. Her face is expectant. She’s so near, and he’d like to touch her hair, her face. He tilts his head, and she exhales, and her shoulders relax and drop, and her fingers bump into his. He’s not usually one for public displays, but it would be very easy, right now, to go ahead and do it. He doesn’t care much for formality these days, anyway.
There’s a loud thump ahead of him. The sound of metal, clanging and scraping. A drawn-out grunt. His gaze flicks above Jyn’s head; she peers back. Eren is dragging her hand across her forehead, and looking directly at them.
“Phew,” she says, a bit too loud. “Sure is tough lifting all these crates by myself. ”
Jyn looks at him and sighs. Well, that’s that. Time is short, and he can’t deny that they’re wasting it.
“You’d better get back to work.”
“Yeah.” She pauses. “If you’re sticking around, think you can handle pushing the cart? It’s light, with the stabilizer; it just needs to be directed.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Eren bends to lift another crate, rolling her eyes all the while. She moves to the rear of the cart. Jyn turns, watches her, until she’s obscured from view.
“Good.” Jyn swings back around. Slides her hand into his. What? “But first…” There’s a moment’s hesitation. He blinks. His heart pounds. He wonders if he should say something. He wonders if he should do something. Before he can decide, she draws herself up, closes the gap, and kisses him.
Reckless. Undisciplined.
It’s strange, he starts to think. And then he stops.