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“You are sleeping with Jyn,” K2 announces out of nowhere, and Cassian almost chokes. He stumbles forward against the control panel, smashing his hand on the buttons. The lights in the cockpit flicker.
“K!” he sputters, shaking out his smarting hand.
The droid turns to him, glancing down. “Did you mean to press that button? Is it too bright for you?”
Cassian slumps back, sucking at the new red welt on his left thumb.
“The brightness has never been a problem before. Do you need to get your eyes checked?”
“Just finish the coordinates,” Cassian grouses. He moves to secure his headset and thinks, not for the first time in his long friendship with K2, that meaning well and acting well are two very different things.
Once they’ve made the jump to hyperspace, Cassian lets the headset fall around his neck and stretches back into his seat.
“I’m not sleeping with Jyn,” he tells K2, trying to keep his voice as level as possible. Difficult, when the mere suggestion of it sets off a cascade of far too-detailed images behind his eyelids.
“That is incorrect. I saw you. You were sleeping. With Jyn.”
And yes, when K2 had come to Cassian’s cabin to wake him that morning, Cassian hadn’t been alone.
Yes, his arm had been draped—delicately, hesitantly—around Jyn’s stomach, his chin curved over the top of her head. Yes, he had fallen asleep to a prickling sensation in the arm slung beneath her neck, a sensation he had ignored because Jyn was there, in his bed: warm and breathing and there.
“Yes, but—” He breaks off, huffing. “That’s not the same.”
“How is sleeping not the same as sleeping?” K2 asks, and shit, this is not a path Cassian wants to go down with him. He closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Semantics,” he says, and he can hear the clink of bolts as K2 slumps a little. K2 has always been moody about that human tendency to say things that don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean, a tendency the droid finds “complicated” and “uselessly theatric.”
“Oh,” K2 says, voice dripping with disdain. “I see.”
“Yeah.”
“What would you call it, then? What you and Jyn were doing?”
Cassian closes his eyes.
He thinks about how some nights, long after he settles in for sleep, his door slides open. How he knows it’s her just by the soft fall of her feet across the floor. How she curls herself wordlessly into the space on the outer corner of the bed (he falls asleep pressed up against the wall, now, just to be sure there’s space if she needs it). How she doesn’t protest when he shifts, feigns a yawn, and slides his arms carefully around her—loose, like it might be an accident, so as not to startle her away. How she sighs, soft, before the tension in her shoulders eases and she settles into sleep.
He’s not sure what to call it. Not sure at all.
“We share a bed,” he suggests, then immediately shakes his head, flushing. “No, that’s not—uh, we sleep next to each other. Not all the time. Just, sometimes.”
“Why?”
Cassian looks down at his lap. He honestly doesn’t know. He’s worried if he asks, she won’t come back.
“It’s a human thing, K.”
“Ah,” says the droid. K2 has frequently found human behavior too unreasonable to be worthy of further study.
Cassian reaches over to pat K2 on the shoulder and then stands, moving for the back of the ship.
“Can I infer,” says K2, “that I should not tell the others that you are, quote, ‘sleeping with Jyn?’”
“Please don’t," Cassian mutters.
“Okay.” A pause. “I already have.”
Cassian lets his forehead thunk against the ship wall.
“K,” he groans.
“I told Bodhi,” K2 continues. “I was curious. He seemed flustered.”
“Oh, for the love of—”
“And then I asked Chirrut why Bodhi seemed flustered. Chirrut told me I should speak to you.”
“K—”
“He was laughing.”
“K! ”
K2 swivels to look at him, and while his mechanical eyes technically convey no emotion, his expression still reads as very clearly annoyed.
“I didn’t know,” he says, churlishly, “about the semantics.”
Cassian grimaces and closes his eyes, silently counting backwards from ten. It’s a tactic he’s used a lot since he’s known K2. (It’s a tactic he’s had to use a lot.)
“I know,” he says, once he’s finished. “I know that. Sorry.”
K2 turns back, seemingly satisfied. “You are forgiven.”
Cassian turns away, back to prep. But it’s difficult to concentrate on loading his blaster now that the thought’s taken root in his mind: Jyn’s lips rough and messy against his, her hands in his hair as he presses her back against his mattress and—
He shakes himself, a silent warning. He’s already promised he would not think about this. He’s already promised himself he would not do anything, anything that might scare her away.
When he slides back into the cockpit, K2 looks over at him.
“How long is this mission supposed to take?” K2 asks.
“Not long. Three days. Two, if we move fast.”
“Then let’s move fast,” K2 says, decisively.
Cassian glances at him. “Anxious to get back to base?”
It’s not in K2’s physiology to shrug, but he tilts his shoulders in what Cassian thinks is his closest approximation.
“I would prefer that you sleep more nights there,” K2 says. “You seem to feel better when Jyn is sleeping next to you.”
Cassian blinks. His mouth falls open. The sheer warmth he feels for K2 in this moment outweighs all past annoyances. He leans over and rests his palm against K2's arm, just for a second.
“How do you know that?” Cassian asks, pulling back, trying not to smile.
“I have known you a long time,” K2 says, like this should be obvious. “I have years’ worth of data.”
“You’ve been collecting data on me?”
K2 looks at him.
“Yes,” K2 says, pointed. “We are friends, aren't we?”
Cassian is unable to contain it this time; he laughs, leaning back in his seat.
“No, you’re right, K. We are.”
They move fast. Two days later and they’re pulling back into the frigid cold of the Hoth base air hanger.
Cassian disembarks to find Jyn and Bodhi standing by the ship. Jyn’s practically swallowed in the fuzzy hood of her coat, but he can see the way she relaxes at the sight of him, the slight lilt of her mostly-hidden smile. Freezing as he is—he’s still dressed for the mission’s warmer climes—he feels warmth flood his chest.
“Waiting for us?” Cassian asks, biting at his lip. He knows what her answer will be, but he can’t quite help himself.
“No,” Jyn says, predictably, at the same time as Bodhi chirps, “Yes!”
They glance at each other.
“We, err—” Bodhi starts.
Jyn clears her throat. “You’re back early. Did something go wrong?”
Cassian frowns. “That’s your first assumption? Not that we’re back early because we did well?”
Jyn shrugs; her cheeks are already pink from the cold, but Cassian could swear they turn a touch pinker.
“Thanks for the support,” Cassian says, feigning annoyance he doesn't actually feel.
Bodhi looks between them and then down at his toes. “Well, I was worried about you,” he mumbles.
K2 clunks down the ramp, stopping at Cassian’s side. “We were successful,” he announces.
“We heard,” says Jyn.
K2 nods, continuing on. But he only makes it a few feet before he stops and turns back.
“Bodhi, I was mistaken before. Cassian and Jyn are not sleeping together. I apologize for the misinformation.”
Cassian flinches. Jyn jumps. Bodhi stares at K2 in wide-eyed horror. Cassian is pretty sure in this moment, he wouldn’t mind if the ground swallowed him whole. He’s pretty sure he’s now the color of a tomato.
“Umm,” says Bodhi, shakily. “Thanks?”
Cassian glances at Jyn and finds her glaring daggers at the ground beside K2’s feet. He wonders for a moment if she’s about to try to tackle him to the ground. (He hopes she doesn’t. Jyn is strong, but K2 is a sheet of solid metal and, therefore, hard to shove over. Cassian’s tried.)
“You are welcome,” K2 says. He swivels his head. “Coming, Cassian?”
And as much as Cassian wants nothing more than to distance as much as possible from K2 in this particular moment, the droid is also giving him a way out of this unspeakably mortifying conversation. He can deal with this nonsense later. So he shoves his hands in his pockets, offers a little shrug to Jyn and Bodhi, and strides away.
“I think,” K2 says later, after the debrief, “that I may have made another semantic error.”
“You think?” Cassian grumbles.
“Yes, I think. That’s why I said, ‘I think.’”
“No, I—” Cassian sighs. “It’s fine, K.”
And then, in spite of his annoyance, he adds: “Thank you.”
K2 twists to him. “What for?”
“Just,” Cassian shrugs. “You know. Thank you.”
K2 looks at him for a long beat before he nods.
“You are welcome.”