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“Why did K2 think we’re sleeping together?” Jyn whispers peevishly into the darkness, her back flush to Cassian’s chest.
Cassian bites down on his lip, forcing back a laugh. He shifts a touch closer—he can’t resist—so that his nose brushes up against her shoulder.
“Hmm,” he murmurs into her skin. “I wonder.”
She nearly decks him with her shoulder, wriggling into the mattress, and Cassian moves back to his normal distance, to the space they’ve both silently agreed on as acceptable. He smiles, warm and fond, knowing she can’t see.
“He never thought we were, uh...” he says, trailing off; she’ll understand the implication. The room is dark, and cold, and it already feels like a dream to have her here like this, warm beneath his sheets. She rarely speaks when she’s here; she rarely confirms this is real.
“He just didn’t understand the phrase,” he tries, instead.
“Still he felt the need to tell everybody,” Jyn mutters. She puts up an admirable front, Cassian thinks, pretending she loathes the droid she would readily step in front of blasterfire for.
“He means well,” Cassian reminds her, the refrain he’s found best apologizes for K2’s less-than-polite behavior.
She’s quiet for so long, he’s almost settled into sleep by the time she speaks again.
“He’ll stop now, right?”
“Stop what?” Cassian mumbles drowsily.
“Telling people. That we’re sleeping together.”
Cassian opens his eyes, awake now. There’s something her voice he can’t fully recognize, something small and aching. He can’t see anything but the shadowed curve of her shoulder, the dark tangle of her hair against his pillow. He wishes he could see her face, even if he knows she’s only speaking because he can’t.
“He should,” Cassian says. “He knows, now. He knows this is different.”
Jyn releases a long breath; Cassian feels it in the brush of her abdomen against his fingertips. All of a sudden the room seems darker than before, quieter. All of a sudden he can feel the heat of Jyn beneath his arm.
“This is different,” Jyn repeats, like a private reminder. She shifts, and Cassian’s body burns where it touches hers.
Bodhi won’t make eye contact with him.
He looks down at his tray until he’s almost finished his breakfast, even though it’s just the two of them sitting there, at which point Cassian decides he’s had enough.
“Bodhi,” he says.
Bodhi twitches. Mouth full of peas, he looks up warily.
Cassian sighs. “It’s fine, Bodhi. You can stop...whatever it is you’re doing.”
Bodhi swallows. “I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re avoiding me.”
Bodhi looks back down at his tray, somewhat miserably. “I just...I feel like I’ve invaded your privacy. Like I know too much.”
“You don’t know too much.”
“But—
“ We’re not— ” Cassian breaks off, huffs, brings his voice back to a canteen-appropriate volume. “We’re not sleeping together.”
Bodhi’s ears are bright pink. “You are...sleeping in the same room, though, right?”
Cassian does everything in his power to keep his frown steady, to keep a flush from creeping up his neck. There’s no point in lying about it now, thanks to K2.
“Yes,” he says. “Sometimes.”
Jyn chooses that exact moment to enter the canteen, flanked by Chirrut and Baze. Chirrut waves an eerie hello in their direction—how does he know? —and Jyn strides towards the food station, deliberately not looking his way. His eyes track her as she crosses the room.
“Yeah,” Bodhi says, shaking Cassian’s gaze back to their table. “I definitely know too much.”
Cassian is lucky his glower still works on Bodhi, since it barely affects any of the others anymore. At least he gets some enjoyment out of the way Bodhi slinks sorrowfully down into his seat, like he’s hoping to fall through the floor.
Later, after a slew of meetings, Chirrut falls in step next to Cassian in the winding corridors of the Hoth base. Cassian doesn’t even realize he’s there until he speaks.
“My friend,” Chirrut says, and Cassian jumps nearly half a foot off the ground.
“Chirrut,” he manages. “Hello.”
“My friend,” Chirrut continues, unperturbed. “I have been hearing a lot about you these days.”
Cassian knows that smile. He groans.
“It’s not what you—”
“I know, I know,” Chirrut laughs, stepping out of the way of a droid he should not have been able to anticipate. “K-2SO corrected his earlier appraisal of the situation.”
“Well, err—” Cassian swallows. “Good.”
“Good?” Chirrut echoes.
“Yes. Good.”
Chirrut laughs, warm, and claps Cassian—a tad too hard—across the back.
“My friend,” he says, “you are not very bright, are you?”
Chirrut strides around the corner, leaving Cassian alone and scowling in the hallway.
He doesn’t expect her to come that night. She rarely stays two nights in a row, and with all the madness K2 has wrought, he was honestly wondering if that might be the final straw, if she might stop coming altogether.
So when his door slides open sometime after twenty-three hundred hours—he leaves it unlocked, now, even though it goes against his every soldier’s instinct—his heart starts to thrum against his ribs.
He waits, listening to the sounds he’s grown strangely familiar with: Jyn setting her shoes by the door, shrugging off her coat. Her feet padding across the concrete floor.
Once she’s lowered herself into his bed and he’s shifted to curl around her, he allows himself to exhale. It feels safer like this, with his arm bracketing her. Like maybe, he could actually keep her.
“You’re here,” he mumbles against her hair. He doesn’t usually speak—or move, or breathe, or do anything that might call attention to what they’re doing, lest she slip through his fingers. But he’s tired and caught off-guard, and all day he’s been tormented even more so than usual by the thought of her in his bed. He needs to know she’s real.
But this seems to be the wrong tactic. Jyn stiffins.
“I could go—” she starts, shifting forward. Cassian closes his grip around her with something like panic, pulling her more firmly against his chest.
“No,” he breathes. “No, don’t.”
He concentrates on the sound of his own breath, harsh in the quiet of the little room, until she relaxes against him. He realizes that in his haste to keep her close, he’s wedged his hand beneath her; her shirt’s ridden up and his fingers are flush against the pale, warm skin of her hip.
He swallows.
“Okay,” Jyn whispers. Her hand curves lightly around his forearm, and Cassian closes his eyes, grimacing with the effort it takes not to press his lips against the base of her neck.
He won’t. He won’t taste the skin of her throat, or run his palm along her ribs, or turn her to face him and kiss her until he loses himself in it.
He will do this, whatever this is. He will be this, whatever it is she needs him to be.
The next day, after slipping out of his room in the early twilight hours, Jyn reappears at breakfast and sets her tray across from his. This is a rarity—she usually stays far away after they’ve spent the night together, as though her closeness quotient has been filled—and Cassian hides a smile with a bite of bread.
And then K2 sits down at her side.
Cassian immediately blanches. This can’t be good.
“What are you doing, K?” he asks, attempting to sound lighthearted. Jyn keeps eating, seemingly unruffled. But she doesn’t know K2 as well as Cassian does.
“Sitting,” answers K2.
“It’s breakfast,” Cassian says. K2 stares blankly at him, so he continues: “You don’t eat.”
“True,” K2 says, sounding quite proud of this. “I am not here for food. I am here on business.” To Cassian’s horror, he swivels his head down to Jyn. “Jyn, I have some questions for you.”
Jyn glances up, still chewing on her bread. She looks like she’s considering whether it would be worth it to pretend he’s not here.
“Will you listen to my questions?” K2 asks, after a beat. Cassian tries to shoot Jyn a look that says you don’t have to do this, leave while you still can, but Jyn just shrugs.
“Fine.”
“Excellent. Do you always have those bags under your eyes?”
Jyn drops her fork. Cassian drops his head into his hand.
“Excuse me?”
“The question was: do you always have those bags under your eyes?”
Jyn looks from K2 to Cassian, incredulous. Cassian shrugs: I tried to warn you.
“I don’t know,” Jyn grits out.
K2 nods. “Alright. Second question: last week, you yelled at a sargent for failing to properly switch off the fuel gauge on Bodhi’s ship. Is that type of violent outburst common for you?”
Jyn bristles. “What?”
“K—” Cassian warns.
“The question was—”
“I heard the question,” Jyn snaps.
K2 pauses. “I think I will take that as a yes.”
Cassian has been witness to a lot of failed human-K2 interactions, but this one might top them all. He’s strongly considering just getting up and walking away; he would, if he thought Jyn would ever forgive him for it.
“Question three,” K2 continues. “On the nights when you are not sleeping in the same bed as Cassian, are you sleeping alone or in the same bed as someone else?”
Shit.
“K!” Cassian shouts. “Enough!”
Jyn’s gaping at K2, flushed and furious. She pushes to her feet; K2 has a solid two feet on her, but even with her neck craned to a comical angle, she looks downright ferocious.
“What the hell ?”
K2 looks from her to Cassian, then back again. “Have I...said something wrong?”
“That’s not—” Cassian starts, but Jyn interrupts him.
“No,” she growls, poking at the metal of K2’s chest, “I’m not. Just Cassian. Happy?”
Cassian is filled with such warm relief that he almost forgets they’re having one of the world’s most uncomfortable conversations in the middle of the crowded canteen. His mouth hangs open rather stupidly, caught somewhere between a smile and a frown.
“I’m neither happy nor unhappy,” K2 says, unfazed. “I just needed to gather some preliminary data.”
“Data?” Jyn asks, folding her arms across her chest. “Data for what?”
“For you,” says K2.
Jyn blinks.
“What?”
“I have known Cassian a long time,” K2 explains, “but I do not know you very well yet. To conduct a similar study, I need to be able to better classify your behaviors as normal or eccentric.”
“Similar study?” Jyn echoes.
“Similar to Cassian’s.”
Jyn turns to look at him, frowning. Cassian sighs.
“He thinks that I, um—” This is not something he was hoping to tell her like this, her eyes clouded with anger and K2 looming nearby. He takes a breath. “He thinks that I feel better when I’ve slept beside you.”
Jyn stares at him.
“For what it’s worth...” Cassian adds, softly—privately, just for them. “I think he’s right.”
Jyn’s face betrays nothing. For a perilously long moment she stands there silent, and he wills himself not to crackle under the fire in her eyes. Then without warning, she turns back to K2.
“Is that it?” she asks, clipped. “Are those all the questions you have?”
“Well, actually—”
“K,” Cassian says, a gentle warning.
K2 pauses, reassesses. “That will be sufficient, thank you.”
Jyn nods, curt. “You’re welcome.” And then she’s stalking off without a single glance behind her, her breakfast only half-finished. She almost bowls over a sleepy Luke Skywalker on her way out the door; he just barely manages to scramble out of her way, looking quite astonished.
K2 looks back at Cassian, tilts his head. “This is why I asked about the violent outbursts.”
Cassian sighs, slumping back in his seat.
“Was that normal behavior?” K2 asks. “She seemed angry.”
“She was, K.”
“I just wanted to see whether she derives the same benefits of sleeping beside you as you do sleeping beside her. I was trying to be friendly.”
“I know.”
“Have I made another error?”
“It’s fine.”
“That is not an answer to my question.”
Cassian feebly pushes some food across his plate. “People don’t generally appreciate being asked point blank if they’re, uh, sleeping with other people. It’s considered impolite.”
“For both kinds of sleeping together?”
“Er, yes.”
“Oh.” K2 drums his fingers across the table, considering. “You humans are awfully sensitive.”
Cassian huffs a laugh. “I know. Look, can you do me a favor, K? Can you stop talking to Jyn about this?”
K2 nods. “I have the data I need. I will refrain from follow-up questions at this time. May I ask you a favor as well?”
Cassian blinks at him. That’s not something he hears from K2 very often. “Sure.”
“Please get this in order. It is annoying and a waste of everyone’s time.”
Cassian snorts. He tries his best to hide the bulk of his laughter with a bite of toast; he knows much K2 hates it when people laugh at him.
“I’ll try, K.”
K2 nods, seemingly satisfied. “Good.”
That afternoon, Cassian is looking over some charts with Baze in the quarters he shares with Chirrut when the doors open and Jyn walks in.
“Baze, do you have—” She stops, blinks.
Cassian blinks back.
Then she turns sharp on her heels and marches away.
“Uh,” Cassian says, deflating in his seat, “that was—”
“Stop,” Baze interrupts, holding up his hand. “I don’t want to know.”
Baze stands, moving for the door.
“You’re leaving?” Cassian asks, surprised. They still have a lot of work to do.
Baze shrugs like it can’t be helped—it absolutely can be helped—and walks out the door after Jyn. Alone, Cassian crumples forward until his head thunks onto the desk.
He’s nearly positive she won’t show up that night. He’s been trying to find her all day, to talk some of this through, but it’s been futile. Jyn’s a person who knows how not to be found.
So when she bursts into his room at not quite twenty-one hundred hours, he’s entirely unprepared.
“Hey!” he yelps, clutching his nightshirt to his bare chest. He’d just been about to put it on.
Jyn doesn’t seem to care; she stalks towards him, all fire and fury, and shoves her finger in his face.
“Are you having K2 keep tabs on me?” she growls, and Cassian can only gape at her.
“What? No!”
“Seems like you are.”
“I’m not!”
“That’s not how this works, Cassian. You don’t have control over what I do, you don’t get to brag about this, you don’t—”
Cassian drops the shirt, reaching out to grasp her shoulders. He shakes her once, gentle but firm; she needs to hear this.
“I would never,” he insists, “do something like that.”
She’s still glaring up at him, but she says nothing. Cassian leans in closer, his breath heavy.
“I won’t police what you do, Jyn. You could spend every damn night here and you would be more than welcome, but believe me, I don’t think I’m entitled to any piece of you.”
Something flashes sharp across Jyn’s face.
“And I do not brag,” Cassian continues, urgent. “K2 doesn’t understand the concept of boundaries, that’s it. I would never—this is between us, Jyn, I know that. This is just for us.”
The hard anger on her face has faded, replaced by something not quite distressed, not quite tender. Slowly, she drops her gaze from his eyes to his neck, down to his chest, and Cassian’s suddenly aware of just how close they’re standing, of how unclothed he is.
He steps back quickly, dropping his hands.
He’s halfway through fetching his shirt from the floor when Jyn speaks again.
“K2 doesn’t need to study me.”
Cassian pulls the shirt over his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s—” She breaks off, bites her lip, frustrated. “He doesn’t need to examine whether I feel better after I’ve been here. I already know that I do.”
Cassian’s eyes snap to her. She’s frowning at the floor, eyes hidden behind her bangs.
“You do?”
She shrugs, still not meeting his eye. “Yeah.”
The urge to draw her into his arms is so strong, he has to clench his fists at his side, digging his nails into his palms to stop himself.
“Well, good,” he breathes. “Me too.”
He hears her exhale, and then they’re standing in silence beneath the flickering overhead light.
“Okay,” Cassian murmurs. “I’m going to go to bed, I think. Are...are you staying?” He stops, shakes his head. He needs to stop acting as though she is a happy accident, as though her sleeping safe in his bed isn’t something he wants more desperately than anything he’s wanted in a long time.
“Will you stay?” he asks instead. Jyn finally looks up at him. She manages the barest glimmer of a smile.
“Okay.”
He switches off the lights and climbs into bed, listening as Jyn fumbles with her shoes and belt. When he feels her settle onto the bed beside him, he instinctively moves closer, only to jolt in surprise: for the first time, she’s turned herself to face him. Her lips brush up against his collarbone, and his whole body freezes.
“Jyn?”
Unthinkably, her arm slides a white-hot path across his side, her hand coming to rest against his back. Gently, she pulls him closer so that her body is flush with his. His breath catches.
“Before,” she says, her words muffled by his chest. “You said that I could spend every night here. Did you mean that?”
He’s still in shock, but he manages to curl his fist into the back of her shirt. “Yes, of course.”
“Every night is a lot,” she whispers. “You’ll get sick of me.”
Cassian tugs her closer, until her face is pressed into his neck. “I won’t,” he says, fierce. “I really won’t.”
He presses his lips to her forehead, and he can feel her smile against his skin.