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Cassian is in a meeting when the power cuts out and the room plunges into darkness. He can feel the shift in temperature almost immediately, the hint of an icy chill to the air.
Beside him, Chirrut sighs. “Something ate through the wires,” he says, decisive.
As it turns out, he’s right: some furry creatures have burrowed beneath the snow have cut off all power to the south quadrant of Echo Base, temporarily sentencing a quarter of the rebellion’s work and living spaces to frigid blackness. It’s unlivable—like so much of Hoth, really—and requires a mass relocation while things get fixed.
Cassian hears the news from Princess Leia, after he’s finished briefing her on his and K2’s recent scouting mission.
“We’re short on rooms,” Leia explains, as they walk down the hall. “We’re asking people to double up. You won’t mind sharing with your wife, I assume?”
Cassian just barely avoids walking straight into the wall.
“My what?” he manages, stumbling a bit.
“Your wife,” Leia repeats, like she really doesn’t have time for this conversation.
“I don’t have a wife.”
“Jyn Erso.”
Cassian’s ears are ringing. “Not my wife.”
Leia stops. Cassian stops, too; when Leia stops, everyone stops. She looks at him, skeptical.
“Really?”
He swallows. His skin is on fire.
“Uh, yes. Really. Ma’am.”
She cocks her head, quickly giving him a once-over. “My apologies,” she says, sounding thoroughly unimpressed. “Your droid implied otherwise.”
Cassian groans. “K2? He told you that Jyn and I—”
“Well he didn’t say you were married, exactly,” she says. “But he did say you were ‘partners’ and ‘closer than any two people he’s ever known.’ I extrapolated. I guess I should have wondered why you weren’t living together in the first place, but...” She shrugs.
“He, err—he doesn’t really understand…” Cassian trails off. This might be the most mortifying thing to ever happen to him. His vision is literally blurring.
Leia gives him this look, like she’s simultaneously bored by him and trying not to laugh at him.
“Sure,” she says.
“You talked to Princess Leia about me and Jyn?” he demands when he finally tracks down K2, flushed and accusatory.
“Yes,” K2 says, sounding quite proud of himself. “And I did not tell her you two are sleeping in the same bed. Because I’m not supposed to.”
Cassian slams the back of his head so hard against the door, he sees stars.
“That looked like it hurt,” K2 notes, helpfully.
“Have you seen Jyn?” Cassian asks.
Bodhi slides out from underneath his ship, wrench in his hand and soot on his face. He shakes his head.
“Not since breakfast.”
Cassian scowls, shoving his hands even farther into the pockets of his coat.
“Well if you see her, tell her to come find me.”
“Something wrong?” Bodhi asks.
“No,” Cassian says, sharp. Even though his entire body is itching with the thought of someone else finding her first, telling her hey, you’ve been reassigned to bunk with your husband. She might knife him.
“No?” Bodhi echoes, full of worry.
“Not really,” Cassian allows. Bodhi’s a ball of anxiety on a good day, and he’s not about to add to that. “It’s just...they want us to bunk together, while they fix the heat.”
“Oh. Why?”
“They, uh—” He swallows. “They thought we were married.”
“Oh,” Bodhi says. “Okay.”
Cassian stares at him.
Bodhi stares back. Then slowly, his mouth droops, eyes widening.
“Oh,” he says, fast. “Oh. I mean, um—that’s...weird?”
Cassian growls, and Bodhi quickly slides himself back under the ship and out of sight.
To be honest, Cassian doesn’t mind the prospect of living with Jyn.
(To be even more honest, it’s something he wants more deeply than he can bear to admit.)
But he’s not at all sure she’ll feel the same way. She may spend nearly every night in his room—in his bed, in his arms—but she always leaves before the crack of dawn, escaping without a word. That intimacy is finite, confined to dark spaces they don’t speak about once the sun rises.
He’s fine, giving that to her. If she only needs him when the rest of the world is asleep, well, at least she needs him at all.
So he’s thoroughly surprised when he gets back to his quarters after dinner to find Jyn stuffing the contents of her backpack into his closet.
“What are you doing?” he asks, as though he can’t see what she’s doing clear as day.
“Unpacking,” she answers, chucking her snow boots onto his bottom shelf. “A droid informed me that I live here, now.”
Cassian swallows. Shit.
“Yeah, I was actually trying to find you to talk about that. Where have you been all day?”
She shrugs, which is not an answer. “I’m going to fold up your extra coat and hang mine, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Wait, you’re...okay with this?”
She pauses. When she turns to him, her eyes are steel, unreadable. “Are you?”
“Yes,” he says, faster and with more force than he means to. “Yes, of course.”
She studies him for a moment before she turns away. “Then I am, too.”
“Okay,” he manages, completely at a loss. “Good.”
She keeps unpacking, and after a moment he realizes he’s just...standing there, staring at her. The room feels so small all of a sudden, now that it’s no longer just his. He wonders if it’s big enough for her, if she feels stifled, squeezed in amidst the pieces of his life. That room down the hall was barren and cold, but it was hers. He doesn’t want to be responsible for taking away anything that’s hers.
She looks back over at him and he shakes himself, trying—and probably failing—to pretend he wasn’t standing in awe, just taking her in.
“Well, that’s all my stuff.”
“Okay.”
She looks down at her toes, shuffles a little. It’s a strange thing to witness: Jyn, who so often masks her discomfort behind fierce eyes, refusing to look at him.
“I’m going to shower,” she says, gesturing to the small corner bathroom.
Suddenly his throat is very dry.
“Okay.”
She leaves, and as soon as she closes the door Cassian’s legs practically give out beneath him. He sinks onto the bed, a little dazed. He hears the sound of the water start and digs his fist into his side to crowd out the image that immediately springs to mind.
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.
It’s not like he could have said no, really. Because you don’t say no to Princess Leia, but even more so because if there’s a chance to be there for Jyn, to reminder her that she’s wanted here amidst the rebellion she ran from for so long, he’s going to take it.
He refuses to make her uncomfortable—this living arrangement may be temporary, but this is her home. Still it’s a struggle, when it’s all he can do not to brush the hair from her face and curve his hands against her cheeks and press his lips to her skin, show her just how precious she is to him.
Cassian changes quickly—best to do it while she’s not in the room—and then sits back against the headboard, pulling out some briefing memos to distract himself. The line between sleeping with Jyn and sleeping with Jyn is firm; he will not cross it. He won’t even approach it.
After all, he wants her to stay.
He’s almost managed to concentrate on the description of the Imperial infiltration of a small desert moon when the door opens and Jyn reemerges. Mercifully, she’s changed into sleep clothes in the bathroom, but her hair is damp and her skin is a glowing pink and predictably, Cassian’s weak, weak heart starts speeding up at just the sight of her.
She looks at him, and for a long moment neither speaks.
“Should we go to bed?” Cassian asks and then immediately bites his lip, grimacing at the implication. Jyn doesn’t move.
“I mean, to sleep,” he corrects, but shit, that just makes it worse. There’s that stony gaze he’s used to, that staunch refusal to let him know what she’s thinking.
“Okay,” she says, after a beat.
He scrambles over onto his side of the bed while she moves to turn out the lights. He holds his breath until he feels the mattress dip as she settles in beside him, back to him. He’s about to shift forward when he jolts at the sudden touch of her hand on his arm. Her fingers close around his wrist and pulls until she’s wrapped his arm around herself.
He smiles into the darkness, pulling her closer. “I was going to do that.”
“My hair's not dry,” she mumbles. “I’ll get your pillow wet.”
“That’s fine.”
Her hand is still locked around his wrist, and he shifts a little, sliding his fingers tentatively between hers. To his immense relief, she grips back, tight.
“You sure?” she asks.
“I’m sure.”
She pulls their clasped hands to her chest; he can feel her breath on his knuckles.
“Thanks,” she mumbles.
He stiffens. He should be the one thanking her: for being here, for staying, for letting him take care of her, even in just this one, small way. He can’t stop himself from leaning slightly forward, pressing his lips to the damp hair behind her ear. He catches some skin, still soft from the water, and Jyn takes a breath that Cassian feels like a hot arrow to his chest.
“Goodnight, Jyn,” he whispers.
If he’s not mistaken, she clutches his hand just a little bit harder.
“Goodnight.”
The next morning, Cassian wakes alone; Jyn’s managed to slip out before the sun has barely risen.
He tracks her down in the canteen, sitting across from Chirrut and Baze. As he approaches their table, Chirrut lays his hand against Baze’s arm.
“Let’s go,” he says. “These two want to be alone.”
Jyn looks up at Cassian and shrugs.
“Not particularly,” she says.
Baze glances up at Cassian, then over at Chirrut. “I’m still eating.”
Cassian holds up his hands. “No, it’s fine, you can—”
“Let’s go!” Chirrut repeats, smiling as he stands. He snags Baze’s tray—Baze lets him, although he does grumble I said I’m still eating!—and strides away.
Baze looks between Cassian and Jyn, then sighs.
“You really don’t have to leave,” Cassian tries.
“There’s no more food,” Baze says, gruff. But he pats Jyn’s arm rather tenderly before pushing back to follow Chirrut.
Cassian sits in the vacated seat, and Jyn looks at him, expectant.
Cassian sighs. “Look, you don’t have to leave first thing in the morning, okay? You don’t have to run.”
She bristles. “I’m not running.”
“No, I mean—look, it’s your space, too. You should actually live in it.” He leans forward, painfully aware they’re in a crowded canteen, and brushes his fingers against her hand. “I’d like it if you would.”
Somewhere, off to the side, he thinks he hears someone whoop. (It sounds suspiciously like Chirrut.)
Jyn smiles, quick and uncommonly soft.
“Okay,” she says, shrugging as though this isn’t a big deal at all.
To hell with the crowd; Cassian catches her hand in his. She breaks eye contact, turning to look down at the table. But she doesn’t pull away, and that’s more than enough for him.
“Let me see if I understand,” K2 says later, seated across from Cassian in the U-Wing cockpit as they wait to receive the all-clear to depart. “I should not refer to you and Jyn as ‘partners.’”
“Right,” says Cassian.
“Because the word partners has multiple connotations,” K2 continues.
“Exactly.”
“And I should also not broadcast that you and Jyn are living together,” K2 says, sounding very bored by this whole conversation. “Because that has multiple connotations.”
“Yeah, K. Thanks.”
K2 sighs. “This is all needlessly complicated. You never used to require this much decoding.”
Cassian glances out the window, down to the tarmac where Bodhi and Jyn are standing, waiting to see the ship off. They’re talking about something, and Jyn pushes at Bodhi’s shoulder, light and teasing. Cassian smiles.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “Things used to be much simpler.”
“What can I say, then?” K2 asks.
Cassian turns to him, confused.
“I would prefer to stop speaking about this altogether,” K2 clarifies. “But I keep getting asked.”
Cassian huffs a laugh. “Yeah, okay. You can just say we’re friends, K.”
K2 tilts his head; his joints creak.
“That seems insufficient,” he says, and Cassian swallows a laugh at that that biting piece of accuracy. Whatever they are, friends doesn’t quite cover it.
“Well,” Cassian says with a shrug, “it’s true.”
K2 stares at him for a long beat.
“Okay.”
Cassian lifts an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Yes. If it means I can stop talking about this, I will perpetuate your lie.”
Cassian laughs. “Well, thank you. You’re a good friend, K.”
K2 nods, turning back to the dashboard.
“I know.”