Work Text:
Cassian doesn’t ask for much. Not from the leaders of the Rebellion, not from his friends, and not even from Jyn. She’d almost say he asked for nothing, but that would be a lie.
Some things he asks for, he asks on behalf of the Rebellion. Those asks are rare, perhaps as rare as a warm meal in Echo Base’s caf hall. But they exist, the smallest sign that Cassian is not a myth, though the stories make him sound like one.
They tell stories of how Cassian was able to steal the plans with little more than a ship and a few friends.
They tell stories of how he rescued the princess from the Death Star, running to her aid despite his broken ribs.
They tell stories of him encountering the last of the Jedi and recruiting Ben Kenobi and his padawan to the Rebellion’s side.
They don’t tell stories of the times he has gone to that same princess with requests for his troops. Ever polite, he keeps his asks simple, small, never demanding what he is due. He asks for supplies, for better armor for the troops.
Those requests are granted, as are any he would make to her. She offers him his retirement. He doesn’t accept, having never asked for it.
Jyn wishes he would take it. She tells him that one day, as they argue in the snowy hallway. “Retire, Cassian!” she snaps, wishing she could shake sense into him. How much more could he give? How many battles could he fight? “Come with me,” she says. “Somewhere safe. To rest.”
Instead, he asks for Jyn to stay.
Her heart soars, then crashes.
Because he hasn’t asked her for the right reason. Not for himself, no. He asks for Jyn to stay because the Rebellion needs her.
She stays, because Cassian needs her.
The space between those two reasons is the emotion neither of them will name. Not now.
The one thing he does ask Jyn is so small and so easily given by her that she finds herself cherishing the ask. It’s enough, she thinks, to be able to help, to provide what she can, to the man who has given so much to others.
Cassian has given her a purpose here, a home, and a family as well. Two things she had thought she’d lost forever. One thing she’d thought she’d never have.
As much as she brindles at the Rebellion’s rules, at its order, however ragtag, she stays, because the Rebellion needs her, and Cassian needs her, and she has longed for so long to be needed.
Time goes on, and still, Cassian asks for so little from her. Only those two requests, one huge, one minuscule.
To stay.
To ignore the dishes.
She does both.
The latter request, Cassian asks her, each time she comes to his room. She’s there almost as often as him, both in the secret cover of night and the boldness of day.
She’s there, because the home she found fits within the room’s tiny space.
As far as she knows, no one else has ever been in his room, save Kaytu, who lately has taken to spending his spare time in the warmest room on the base, citing aching joints, as well as a growing friendship with Threepio. That, no one on the base can explain, nor does anyone try.
But Cassian has explained to her that his room is too messy to invite Bodhi or the others over for dinner. He just doesn't have time to clean, he says, not now, not while there is a war and time is so short.
Jyn hates that, hates thinking any minute could steal him away forever.
So, she tells him she doesn't mind the mess, and when he challenges her with a raised eyebrow, she marches him to her own room, to show off her tangle of blankets and last week's clothes.
"Fine," he says, curtly, but with the ghost of a smile curving his lips. Jyn misses the smile this time, but over the next weeks, she'll learn to see it. "We'll use mine for the briefing. But please. Ignore the dishes."
She does.
Cassian's smile grows a little wider that day.
Time and missions tick by, each one measured not by any chrono or chart, but by the words success and failure.
Thankfully, every mission is a success, though their time management on base is a failure. Jyn's given up on hair cuts. Cassian remains unable to complete his tidying routines.
Neither of them is willing to give up the time they spend with each other, talking in the storage room or silently patrolling together, in that companionable silence both had looked for and never quite found with others.
But neither of them is willing to discuss what their time together means to them, or what it may lead to.
Not while there is a war and time is such a precious commodity.
“Jyn,” he says today,as she strides in, ready to take on whatever mission he’d decided he was going on alone. She’d heard from Kaytu that his ship was ready and time is short. Because, of course, time is always short, these days, and there is never enough when he is concerned.
Cassian looks up at her from his desk, where he had been reading the latest reports. To the left of him leans a stack of dirty mugs and plates, forgotten by a man with a sniper’s single-minded focus. “Please.”
“I’m coming with you.” The two of them were alone enough as it was, she wouldn’t let him add more loneliness on top of all that already kept them apart.
He seems to understand that, as he passes her a packed bag, as if he knew she would volunteer, and says only, “Ignore the dishes.”
The two prepare for their mission, moving in harmony like dancers, packing their weapons into worn belts and hiding their hearts behind battered walls.
They leave the base side by side.
They return days later, landing in a silent hangar and moving together back down the hall, their mission complete. The target had been neutralized. The Rebellion’s location remained secret for now.
Their hearts still beat, tired and aching as they were, and the walls between the spy and the rebel remained.
Cassian had not asked her to take the blaster shot for him. She’d done so anyway. Her shoulder burned, even now, despite the bit of bacta they’d smeared on it.
He never asked for much.
He deserved the whole universe.
“Don’t look at the dishes,” he mutters as they stumble into his room to patch their physical wounds and heal their emotional scars as best as they can.
“I’m not,” Jyn replies. She has eyes only for him, in that dark room on that frozen planet.
Suddenly, she finds that his eyes have met hers. As if Hoth’s atmosphere has wrapped around her, she is frozen in place.
She waits, full of hope for a thousand things she cannot ask him.
Her heart threatens to break when his fingers push her hair away from her face, ignoring the smear of dirt on her cheek. His palm is callused but his touch is gentle.
Jyn holds her breath.
“May I?” he whispers, shocking her with that small ask.
She nods.
His kiss falls onto her lips like a snowflake lands on a frozen lake. Lightly, so lightly it seems almost unreal. Perfect, and impossible to replicate.
A moment later, Cassian steps back, his cheeks flushed. The same warmth builds within Jyn. All frost melts away, replaced by the soft candle-like flicker of hope burning through her.
“If I stay tonight,” she begins, finding words easier now, with that kiss still lingering on her lips. “I’ll wash the dishes in the morning.” She hopes there is enough time for a morning for them, though she knows better than to dream of any lingering, lazy start to the day.
He laughs, a sound as brilliant as a leap into hyperspace. “If you stay, I’ll give you my spare blanket, but please, don’t do the dishes.”
“Cassian,” she begins.
He shakes his head, wrapping the mentioned blanket over her shoulders. “Stay,” he says.
This time, she realizes he has always asked for his own sake as well as the Rebellion's.
Just as she has always stayed for him, and for the cause.
In some ways, they are the same, after all.
“Please, don’t judge me for the dishes,”Cassian asks a year later, on another base, warmer, but just as remote, as they turn an evening with no duties into their version of a date; full of food and music, dancing on the small bit of floor between bed and kitchenette, laughing as they try Jyn’s latest disaster of a dessert. They’re both good cooks, in different ways.
Cassian is precise.
Jyn is chaotic.
His vegetables are neatly shaped, each one a perfect square or circle. His soup is always stirred in a clockwise fashion, and his timing is perfect.
Her bread is lopsided, her hands, as well as her clothes, covered with extra flour. Her kneading motions are never the same twice, though the sound of the dough hitting the counter is a steady percussion, sounding a great deal to her as it had when her mother had baked, long ago.
The bread is the perfect vessel to mop up the soup, their flavors melding together in harmony.
They are good cooks, both of them.
Neither of them like washing dishes.
The dishes remain unwashed, even long after the food is eaten and the wine is sipped.
The lights turn off, hiding the dirty dishes from both of them.
Cassian wakes, once, to sleepily tell her, “don’t wash the dishes. I’ll get them in the morning.”
“I know,” Jyn replies and kisses him, wrapping her arms around him until he rests once more.
There are some things more important to her than dishes, and chief among them is these small moments with the man she loves.
If she could ask, she’d request even more time from him, not minutes snuck away from meetings or nights cut short by skirmishes.
If she could, she’d offer him a home that would never crumble after a hasty evacuation.
But she cannot. All she can offer is the soft comfort of her steady breath and the warmth of the blanket.
For them both, for now, it is enough.
Time passes. The missions wind down, and yet, never cease. Slowly, they become less urgent. The war recedes, and as it does, free hours are revealed like shells left on the shore. The two chose to spend their time mostly with each other.
No one, on any base, is surprised by this.
No one, not even Kaytu, dares to point out what this means.
Instead, time passes and life goes on.
Cassian leaves for another mission, the first one since he returned from Jakku with sand in his boots and a scar on his cheek.
Tonight, she has had time to bake her bread and start chopping vegetables. Her pieces grow larger and more clumsy cut with every passing moment. The bread burns, only a bit, in the oven. Its crust is cracked and bitter, the way her heart threatens to to turn with each passing click of the chrono on his desk.
He’s not back. He should be.
Jyn knows all of these things and worse, knows that there is nothing else she can do. This mission, he needed to go alone. To chase after him, as she had countless other times, would only endanger him further.
She paces, her booted steps muffled against his thick carpet, until she decides that maybe she shouldn’t be wearing boots in the first place.
her gaze darts around the room, desperately seeking some sort of a distraction, a way to pass the minutes, (because of course it would only be minutes) until he returns.
Her eyes land on one singular thing and she freezes, much as she had that day he had first kissed her.
With a begrudging sigh, much like the one she made the first time he’d talked her into sitting at his table in the Echo Base Caf, Jyn pushed up her sleeves and began the impossible task.
Soak, scrub, rinse, dry.
Repeat.
And repeat.
The process of washing the dishes begins to sooth her, as the pile grew smaller and the remainder of the night grew shorter.
Sometimes, she thinks, things didn’t need to be asked for in order to be given.
When the door finally hissed open, she spins on her heel, holding the last plate. Their eyes meet, only for a moment.
Jyn swallows, hard.
She thinks, not of the dishes, but how she’d feel to wake in a room without them, but without Cassian as well.
“I love you,” she says, finally, though her voice nearly shatters.
He smiles at her, and it seems more brilliant than ever before. “I retired,” he replies.
Only a moment passes before she has thrown her arms around him, holding him tight, her head against his narrow shoulder. She realizes then that there is no military rank badge there to brush against her ear.
Cassian, as always, has meant what he said.
“Thank you,” she replies.
“I suppose that means neither of us can ignore those dishes any more, though.” His hand makes small, shy circles on her back, offering her comfort and whispering of what peace may be like.
“I washed them,” Jyn replies. “It’s not so bad, once you start.”
“No,” he agrees, kissing her forehead next. “It’s not. Starting is always the hardest part.”
“Consider the dishes permanently started by me, then,” Jyn retorts, a hint of her old defiance flaring. Even now, even with what she has said, she is still independent, and always will be.
“Then consider me in love with you,” Cassian replies. There is a mirth in his eyes that has not sparkled for as long as she has known him. It’s the sort of light that only peacetime could bring him. “Permanently.”
Jyn reaches up, to pull him close to her, kissing him with all the wildness of a summer storm, and all the depths of her longing. Everything she had never asked for, everything he had never requested of her, washed away in that kiss, dissolving as surely as soap bubbles.
That night, there is no need to worry about the dishes, or really, anything at all.