[but if the silence takes you, then i hope it takes me, too.] - CLOSED

[kestreldawn]

WHO: Jyn Erso/Cassian Andor
WHERE: De Chima #003
WHEN: Following Cassian's release from the hospital/medbay
WHAT: Jyn comes home to find Cassian there, to her surprise. Many feelings and emotions explode.
WARNINGS: It's Jyn and Cassian, so there'll be lots of mentions of death and war, probably. Will update as needed. ETA: And finally, a smut alert.

This strange, new life leaves something to be desired. There's a monotony to it, with Jyn waking to the obnoxious wailing of an alarm, going about her robotic morning routine, then going to work - a concept so entirely foreign she'd nearly opted not to go all together on the first day. Still, she forced herself - mostly out of lack of a better option, and partially out of proving to herself that she could do it.

She's nothing if not adaptable, after all.

Within a matter of days, she's already learned the ins and outs of the electronic system required for her position - Data Files Manager - and it's already begun to eat away at her proverbial Life Force. She often catches herself remembering, sometimes even wistfully, for her previous life. It hadn't been easy, and while she'd been in it, she'd wanted nothing but to get out of the damn thing, but now that it's gone - it seems that there's a piece of her that got left behind with it, back somewhere in the sands of Scarif.

Thoughts of Cassian sometimes trickle into her consciousness as though through a pinhole in a basin. It's often so unnoticeable and so natural that it's only when she remembers the warmth of his body against hers or the gravitation pull of his eyes, coagulated into the blasted image of his face somewhere in her mind's eye, that she has to forcibly shake her head, mumble words of discouragement, and demand he leave her alone. There's luckily no one around to hear these hushed ramblings, but if there were, they'd most certainly think she was mad.

This particular day, she's contemplating whether to stick with the job she's been given, absently scratching at the place where her glowing tattoo lurks beneath the surface of her skin. It's pink and lightly scabbed from how often she does this when her mind is distracted. She finds herself tracing her steps back to her house - a bizarre concept in itself - and wonders if the supposed room mates she has will already be there this time. She's yet to meet them and isn't even entirely sure they exist, but every time she's walked through the door she's prepared herself to see a stranger walking around.

She swings the door open.

Empty.

Or so she thinks. It's when she's walking up the stairs and towards her room that she hears movement - shuffling, a bit of grunting. She vaguely wonders whether it's a room mate or an intruder and how she could possibly know the difference between the two. She quietly approaches the room from which the noise seems to be originating, getting her face close enough to the door before bringing a loosely clasped fist up to rap her knuckles against the wooden surface.

"Hello? Is someone in there?"

Comments

[candor1]

His heart pounds under her ear. But it hears hers, too, and begins to sync.

His neck curves, arching into her touch, his head coming to rest atop hers.

His arms go around her, too. In trying to provide shelter from the storm for her, becoming them for himself.

It's dying down inside him… her words the…

…droid analogy unwelcome because the slicerspeak would be "kill code"

But his mind grasps at her words, more fumblingly, but no less gently than his hands finding the curve of her back and the nape of her neck. Resting there, welcoming her, thanking her.

It's a cheat… normal people wouldn't be able to—?

—Oh hush. "Normal" people, as if there were such a thing, might not need as much—have as much to overcome.

…It's just a slice. Minds able to circumvent bodily or verbal defenses. …Defenses that no longer have anything to defend and so have turned on themselves. Need to be cut through.

A slice may be considered a cheat, by some. But the Alliance knows how those can save the day.

In an echo of a voice—(yes, hers)—he murmured back to her, "…I'm not used to people sticking around…"

[kestreldawn]

A sound like a laugh rushes through her mouth, but it isn't quite so in a traditional sense. It's more the sound of an influx of emotion - joy and sadness and amusement and a myriad of others all at once, having no other escape except through the indescribable, vague spasm of diaphragm and vibration of vocal chord.

She wonders whether he'll understand its meaning - realizes that's no longer an issue, not with these .. powers they've been given. Not that it had even been all that much of a challenge before. How he'd been able to see into the very essence of her, how he'd seen the best of her - the parts she'd all but forgotten.

"Welcome home," she whispers in return, daring herself to inch up onto the balls of her feet, body trembling despite its best efforts, to press her lips to the side of his neck.

[candor1]

The words. Her kiss. He arches again into… all of it. Closing his eyes. Feeling every thread of it… contact, welcome pressure, warmth, tingle, life… … …everywhere…

It's not really a decision… not really a thought.

It hadn't felt right before. Fearing it would just be out of adrenaline rush, release from grief, euphoria at the impossible. He'd wanted to be more certain it was a decision.

But… now… as her lips disconnect from his skin, he turns his face to hers.
Holding back just shy of… so close to…
His eyes had been lowered. For a barest instant they flicker up.

[kestreldawn]

For a moment, she fears that she's overstepped - broken some invisible, unspoken boundary that neither had necessarily created on their own, but rather built as a result of necessity and the need to self-preserve, self-protect.

But then she feels the tilt of his muscles into her, somehow hears before seeing the descending of his lids. Feels the flinching of muscle beneath as they work together in perfect unison to move the bones and limbs underneath.

Her skin basks itself in the warmth of his breath and the heat of his gaze, a lizard under the desert sun - suddenly renewed and rejuvenated and brought back to life. Her tongue pulls itself backward as she forces a dry swallow, pushing it through the tightness of her throat.

Raises her eyes to meet his for the breath of a moment -

Inhales a quiet gasp through parted lips, tongue darting out to wet them in preparation of -

A destruction of space, a narrowing of seas and galaxies and mountains until lips press against lips and she thinks her limbs, her legs may have melted from underneath her.

[candor1]

Let them melt. He's holding her and she can never fall. Just as much as he feels like she's the only thing holding him up.

Again. And again. Stronger together than either alone.

He has fallen… against her, into her; lost all awareness of his body apart from hers; just the warmth… the empty spaces and alternating molecules gliding effortlessly between and inside each other; merged into one as they'd been in the kyber light. He sees the light behind his eyes. But this time it isn't a flashback. Isn't a nightmare. Doesn't make him recoil. Because it isn't encroaching. It's not death. It's from within. It's her.

Somewhere, he has hands. One moves across the curve of her waist, her spine, pressing her gently, holding her into him, following, moulding to her every shift. One finding the flowing landscape of her cheek, fingers trailing up her jaw, through her hair, thumb alighting in her cheek's hollow, riding its motions, other fingers tracing her ear and cupping her head…
as his mouth…

How can a first kiss feel so… …

How can they each feel so…


…like they are known

like this, of course; like this

And welcomed back

[kestreldawn]

She feels like every cell of her body is vibrating against his - here, and elsewhere, on some other plane, in some other life. She knows that the muscles underneath her lips are trembling, quivering with the unbearable fear of you're doing it wrong, you don't - shh, won't you be quiet? as one hand finds the bone at his hip, clutches on with desperation and fear of collapsing to the ground -

The other rises and sails across the seas of his body, charting the unknown territory of his back, the rise and fall of his mountainous shoulder blades, the valley between. Even in those last final moments, she'd clutched at the fabric at his neck and had never once dared to explore what lie beneath - though the thought had crossed her mind as the light grew closer, tangled and lost in the thousands of memories thoughts dreams futures she'd imagined.

Her hand seeks out the hair at the back of his head, endless fields like dark wheat she wants nothing more than to run between, feel in the webbing of her fingers, explore and know and memorize - a quiet, breath of a whispered moan leaping from the cavern of her mouth to his at the exploration of her body -

Willing, open, ready, receiving.

[candor1]

Like each part of him she's touched, he moves into her, against her, readily meeting her; hips pressing gently forward, into her hand, against…

Her moanlike breath draws one out of him, too. Their lips part to breathe.

He seizes the moment to try and remember… where they are.

…Planetside.

New life.

De Chima.

House.

Which room…

He slides one foot slightly.

Hard floor.

…Right. Kitchen.

All of which takes barely a moment. The next fraction in decision: stay in this moment (yes kriff please) or find the will to break it long enough to ask…

…what…

…no. Lying down with her would be… but not going to rush… not going to risk seeming to expect… This is an end in itself. No need to worry about next.

…But standing unaided is too difficult. Easiest available compromise…

Strategic brain finishes all this in the remainder of the second. Shuts up so he can focus on kissing her again.

It feels like breathing. The closeness. Not urgent. But essential. His jaw is rough but his mouth is not. It creates with hers… a place like the sea at Scarif but definitely not there. Someplace of rest and safety and gentle waves lapping them into everconcaving sand… Just as the way they were moving with and against each other, a kind of tide…

Both his hands slide across her back, now; behind her shoulders. She could lean back into them and be fully supported. He shifts his weight and angles himself. Not pushing her by force but suggesting a move. Backing her gently until the solid support, the cool marble, of the counter touched her back.

[kestreldawn]

Her lungs burn with the sudden rush of oxygen into them from their parted mouths, her lips tingling and bristling with the ghostly sensation of his, still there somehow though drawn away - skin branded and marked with a steady trail of embers left in the wake of his touch, glowing from underneath the fabric of her clothes (which feel all but singed and turned into ash underneath the heat of his hands and press of his body against hers).

His hesitation and series of doubts crowd themselves into her mind, and each atom of her being quivers out with a deafening "YES!" though she makes no sound other than the gentle whimpering of separation and breeze of working lungs.

The hand as his back loops around to find his jaw, feeling the edge of it like a cliff she'll willingly leap from, with nothing but hope and trust and this and love? to catch her, keep her safe, break her fall, keep her from shattering at the bottom.

Her legs and feet seem to catch his gist before the rest of her seems to catch up, and before she's realized it, she's moving back and back until she feels the touch of something so startlingly cold against her that it pierces through the fabric of her shirt and makes her shiver from crown to sole.

But even Hoth could not withstand the rising heat that flushes her cheeks and pools in her gut at the feeling of him against her.

[candor1]

Was it concern that made him fixate on her? …She dominated his thinking… Maybe it was the need he'd seen in Jyn, the fire that had carried her… It seemed obscene to leave that need unanswered…

It was her need for him now to hear, to understand that gave the message such clarity. It reverberated through every inch of his body: YES—!

His legs abruptly lost their strength. Pushed (or felt pulled) so hard against her, one of his hands slapped out to the round lip of marble and gripped onto it for life. His other hand slipped between the marble and her lower back, thinking only to be a barrier between her and the cold, but also pressing her… into… his own rising heat, blood making its own decision about where it was most required… over which he'd been exerted some control, utterly lost at her silently thrilling shout to keep going…

He started to pull (his lower half, at least) away from her again. Not consciously thinking about don't embarrass yourself, don't impose that on her, but the instinct probably having originated there. …But YES still rushing through him… in her body language, her hands, her mouth, the added gift of the shared mind…

You don't need to decide. You don't need to be in control. It's all right. Don't anticipate. Find out.

He shoves thoughts aside and relaxes. Stops his own forward momentum. But neither does he pull away. Just stays there. Present, not insisting nor hiding, available to her, to pursue or disregard as she likes.

His attention, meanwhile… he redirects…

Both his hands slide up from her waist, up her ribs, her sides, tracing back inward along her neck, cupping her face. His fingers trace the contours of her cheeks and jaw and mouth, framing the velvet currents of their kiss.

Lets the rest of their bodies attend to themselves. Or entrusted to her.

[kestreldawn]

The friction of skin and fabric has awoken something inside of her - something she'd always figured existed, always hurt the faint rumblings of somewhere in the deepest parts of her at various points in time, something she'd never once seen come alive or be violently pulled from its catatonic slumber -

And it seems as though it had been waiting for this - for him - for them.

It's a hunger, it's a growling in the pit of her stomach unable to be satiated or silenced by the gorging of food or drink not the very consumption of Cassian, his fire, his heat, his being, his touch. It is falling into a chasm for days, weeks, years with no catastrophic collision at the bottom for the bottom simply doesn't exist. It's wanting to defy all common sense and reason and meld together into one, singular creature - breathing with both sets of lungs but through one mouth, fueled by both hearts but with only one beat.

She feels the gentle tug of him away from her, her hand moving of its own consciousness and desire to sneak up under the hem of his shirt to find the warm slate of his back, pulling him closer and anchoring him against her.

[candor1]

Her hand, his skin… Lips part for deep pulling breath. And this parting he turns into something new; not holding back nor straining away, but not returning to her mouth either… instead his lips follow where his fingers had just been, caressing along her face and down the slopes amid the hollows of her neck. His hands on her back and ribs, seismic sensors reading her every quaver, seeking every where will resonate for her the most.

He wants what she wants. Or she does him… or both… being able to sense this in each other… feels so natural it's hard to believe it ever wasn't the case… their rhythms should sync, hearts and breaths and everything moving together, and more…

…it doesn't feel like he has a mind to read, this moment. Being only in this moment, beyond articulate… just beyond.

[kestreldawn]

Another rush of oxygen to dizzy her head, make her feel like the ground beneath her has begun to collapse and cave in on itself - a stark contrast to the lifting, levitating stone and rubble and sand of Jedha City after the beam had made contact - and she thinks she'll let herself be swallowed whole by the opening of the earth here, so long as Cassian's arms, lips, fingers are there to remind her that she's still alive.

Head tilts back as her open mouth lifts towards the sky as though in praise and congregation to whatever might be lurking above - the moon, the stars, the cosmos, celestial bodies colliding and exploding and birthing themselves into existence. Eyes shut, trembling vocal chords with non-sensical but desperate sounds reflective of her hunger -

The first cries of the beast now woken and starving inside of her -

Fingers crawling up towards his shoulder blades, expertly climbing over their summits and swimming in the tributaries of sweat that trickle between.

She wants to tear herself into digestible pieces, let him consume her and devour her for no other purpose than to simply be closer, until there is no room for breath or lightyear to separate them from each other.

[candor1]

The sounds she's making nearly bring him to his knees.

He hadn't thought specifically of this, on that beach. He wasn't sure he'd thought about this with her at any point in that lifetime. He'd just wanted for her; wanted her to have so much more and many things different than she'd ever been given in that galaxy.

This music from her now… let alone that it had anything to do with him

His fingers curl around her shoulders. Hanging on as if gravity were failing. But caring for her there too; compressing, smoothing, kneading the muscles in between her shoulderblades, at the base of her neck. His lips come to her face—kissing her temple, her cheek, one eyelid, the other…

The blood rush has brought him to the point of pain. Which is all right. A far cry from injury, its own kind of thrill. But with it, other comingled contradictions begin to drag at him too.

He wants this to last forever.
He doesn't know how much longer he can stay on his feet.
This doesn't need to go anywhere to be an end in itself.
He wants to let it keep growing and soaring and climbing as far as they both will
He wants to see where this will go without his forcing any direction, without planning or thinking of anything but this, now
If it is going to keep going…

…possibilities flicker momentarily through his mind… lifting her onto the countertop, staying standing or kneeling before her… sinking to the floor and inviting her with him… backing into a chair or onto the table…

…but he doesn't want it, anything, for the first time, with her, to be in this room of hard surfaces and survival tools. A far cry from a bomb-shaking bunker or deafening cargo hold but… again, with Jyn, their first… anything… They have more choices and it can be more for her, for them, than a hard countertop, mere austere availability, bounded too much like any desperate wartime come-in-the-face-of-death…

…the desire in his mind would be for her to step back and offer her hand and lead him…

…but that was the abdication, again. Making her responsible for him, for both of them. Not doing his part. This started because she'd asked him what he wanted. Fearing refusal wasn't respecting her, it was cowardice.

…So risk it, then…!


But it's really the last that provides the crux:

Don't break the moment, go with it, keep going, breaking it might make it stop entirely…

Oh.

—if so, it should stop entirely.

He didn't want them to fall into it from sheer momentum.

Not a crash. A landing.

Let it be a choice.


He finished kissing her face. Ending with one more quick, deep pressure against her lips.

Then he did pull himself back.



Not very much, in objective view. His hands are still on her, his forearms close around her, their legs alternating to keep them braced, triangulated between the counter and the floor, pressed together from waist to thigh. But it feels like a lot, leaning back just enough, despite breathing so heavily their chests may still touch. But it's what he needs in order to push her hair back from her face and look into her eyes.

The questions… the hopes… that fill paragraphs and caverns in his mind tangle together:

do you want
do you want me to
whatever you want, whatever you don't want
it's all that matters in what i'll do
it doesn't matter at all in how i'll feel
i'm yours either way, any way, always

He hopes she hears them… but he won't just leave it to that.

Even if he doesn't find much of his voice. It's important to speak. Seeking to phrase it that might accomplish what he wants it to… not for him to lead, not to force her to, but have it be both… it's ridiculously impossible to articulate…

What he manages at last is, "Stay here? Or go…?"

[kestreldawn]

She almost screams out before the chasm forms between them, feeling the pre-emptive twitch of muscle and polarization of bone before he even moves. For a moment she wonders, worries, panics that perhaps she's hurt him somehow - after all, he's still injured, isn't he? She hadn't asked after the extension of his injuries, even here in this new life with strange microscopic organisms illuminating underneath the membrane of their skin and repairing tears and ruptures before they can even coalesce into existence.

Her tongue sweeps across the searing, delicate flesh of her lower lip - nerve endings sparking with each touch of friction. Drags the plumpness of it underneath her teeth, bites down to keep the whimper of separation from leaking out like a faucet. Jade scans his face to watch for microexpressions of pain, of injury, of discomfort - instead blurs as his thoughts tumble in like the breeze.

I'm yours. When had she'd ever had anything, anyone of her own? She'd had her parents, she supposes - at some point in time. They'd been hers, and she had been so utterly theirs. But since? Even the blaster she'd clutched at the end had been Cassian's at first. The clothes on her back had been stolen, pilfered from a merchant's booth on Corulag.

The thought of he her them belonging to themselves and to each other without reservation and without ulterior motive makes her want to weep -

And she would, had the blood swirling in her body not been so gathered at the pit of her stomach - or lower.

"Upstairs?" she murmurs before the focus has returned to her eyes. When it does, she immediately seeks out the familiarity of his face. "Yours? Mine?"

[candor1]

His breath and heart froze in him, too… wonder, worry, panic along with hers, for the identical reflected reason… neither doubts their own feelings, just the other's, and how, why when they're literally sharing their minds…?

Maybe the fear and doubt never go away… maybe in these matters they never should. Never assume. Always discover. Always learn. Always ask.

And then it's all right, because she answers.

His breath rushes out of him again. A voiceless laugh of profound glad relief.

His hands squeeze and caress her, wanting to hug her tightly, though he keeps himself from pulling them together again, or they'll never managed to walk anywhere. And the sooner they get to where they're going, the sooner they can close the distance again…

"I don't remember where mine is," he murmured, balancing her body weight against him so he can start to move his feet, and provide guidance for hers, in a productive direction without parting from her an iota more. "So, yours?"

And then, to the shared thought, his forehead pressing to hers, but speaking it now, aloud: "And yes. I'm yours."

[kestreldawn]

How beautiful he looks in this moment, she thinks - radiant and brilliant and illuminated. A beacon, a sun, a star, a flame - in his eyes, in the crinkling of flesh by his eyes and at his cheeks, in the glittering of the darkness of his eyes that calls to her like water to a survivor of the desert.

May they share more moments like this - may he find more reasons to glow and gleam like this - may she do all in her power to loosen the creaking, rusted corners of his lips that have so often known pain and loss, to whittle away at his razor edges while never taking, never removing, never stealing any of what makes him who he is -

This man, his hands wandering her body like the depths of an ocean only he can endure.

This man, in whose voice Jyn hears the ringing of the universe, promises of tomorrow and beyond, light and softness and hope.

"Top of the stairs, end of the hall," she exhales in reply, surprised she can even remember the location of anything outside of their heaving breaths and shuffling feet.

A sharp, sudden inhale at his admission - so freely slipping from his mouth. She wants to press her lips against his again, let herself be consumed by his light. Instead, she echoes his voiceless laugh with one of her own - first one, then another.

"Me too," she breathes, "Me too. I'm yours - always yours.'

[candor1]

I'm yours, always yours

He lets out a quiet sound, almost a groan, perhaps of defeat… because, kark it, no, not him either, he can't not kiss her at that.

His arms close around her waist, one forearm fit to the curve of her spine, his hand splayed on her upper back, and he kisses her like ocean waves…

…and, now, they've agreed, they know they share an objective… so for this moment, he'll be more daring in helping them get to it.

Not breaking the kiss, by his arms around her waist, he hoists her up against him, taking her feet off the ground. And walks them both just like that, pressed upright together, to the foot of the stairs.

He sets her down on a step above him, raising his chin to finish the kiss. Before regretfully letting her go. He's not quite strong (nor indeed tall) enough to get them all the way up the stairs like that. …But also, as the smiling of his eyes suggests, he wants to see her— "Lead the way?"

[kestreldawn]

She murmurs a cacophony of wistfully delighted, euphoric sounds as vibrations against his lips, as an echo into the cavern of his mouth, at the collision of skin and lips.

How is it that they've spent so little time together (not even just in the grand scheme of things; this would've been too short a time for almost everything in the galaxy) and could be so uniformly in sync, connected - even without sharing one mind and a jumble of thoughts - as though scooped and created from the same mountain of dirt and mud and air?

A shrill of joy leaves her at being lifted off the ground (she remembers her Papa doing that, on occasion, when she'd still been small enough to do so with little effort) and thinks nothing of the ground beneath her as her physicality of floating matches the mental lightness and buzzing of her skull. She steadies herself at the feeling of solid ground again and sucks in a breath at being released again.

A bite of the lip, a clutching of hand, and she's all but whirled and rotated on her heel like a planet, stopping midway to forge the way towards her room. She'd part seas and sands and asteroid, if she'd know he'd be trailing so closely behind - tethered both in practice and in spirit.

Her room is hardly decorated, save for the crystal pendant she'd always worn in their previous life, which is now hanging on a peg by the mirror on the far wall opposite the door. She finishes her planetary rotation to turn back towards him, tugging on him by the gathered fabric of his shirt towards the left, where the bed rest - its head pressed against the wall.

[candor1]

He'd followed her before. Against his training, his protocols, the letter of mandate, every learned instinct, convictions and beliefs; over his own internal protests and self-reproof; where the right strategic move for the sake of himself and his cause and the universe would have been to leave her behind; he'd never been able to not do everything to keep her at his side or return himself to hers… Then the seismic shift, realizing what he'd been fighting had never been her at all; it had been resisting and suppressing and beating down himself, going back years, and only the mirror, the example, of Jyn Erso had let him free himself, since he could never have defeated the obstacles for his own sake, he could only do anything important for others… and in this case it was someone flying the same course he'd strained to follow… helping her on it was also saving him… Then he'd followed willingly, determinedly, never wanting or intending to go back…

Of course (with dizzying lightness and ease) he follows her now.

As she cuts a trail through the molecules of the world like a shooting star (-dust).

And now again, she pulls him exactly where he most wants to go, their impulses aligned, feeding one another, giving them exponential power.

He goes against her where she grabs him, gathering them together, digging his fingers in her hair, his other hand along her skin, wherever it's open to him. Kissing her like it's how he needs to breathe. Bracing one leg between hers while his other knee hits the mattress, and he levers them by it, to lower them (with a last vestige of control) gently back.

[kestreldawn]

Their hands, skin, arms link together like a connection from one database to another, and she feels and hears and knows the transmission of data from him to her like the plans they'd beamed to the sky with nothing more than a prayer back on Scarif. And, when the silent holovid has faded from her consciousness, she wonders again at whether she could ever possibly hope to be everything he seems to see in her, everything he seems to think she is.

Self-reflection signals that she's nothing more than an orphan, a small girl wrapped up in the cocoon of an older woman, surrounded by fortifications as high as the sun and as deep as the molten core. A girl who can't find and can't understand what it means to trust, to love, to believe -

Except when it comes to Cassian.

She exhales a quiet sigh at the press of mattress beneath her back, parts their lips only to allow herself to flutter her eyes open, stare up at him for the final signal of confirmation that she needs before curling her hands around the back of his neck and drawing him closer to her once again.

[candor1]

(If these thoughts are shared, he's not actually aware of it… but they're there nonetheless, ambient, in the deep: he would wonder what she thinks he sees in her beyond orphan, small girl who had to pretend to be an adult before anyone should have to be, never got to stop feeling like she was pretending, building herself into her own bastion equally her own prison, taught so clearly and harshly not to trust or love or believe… And who in spite of all of that still does those things. Even once. Ever. At all. Is that not enough? —what more could he possibly need to see, to abject himself in kinship and recognition and fierce loyalty and admiration and wonder and gratitude and…?

…the word neither can even quite think let alone say, but do they really need to?

…and their path leveled out. No longer building speed, clawing for altitude… velocity, orbit, achieved. Effortlessly, now, free-falling parallel to the planet… where its gravity will keep them following its curve, facing and circling… and they both go very still, and she opens her eyes to look up at him. Green eyes, black eyes… ocean staring at space… both momentarily awed and elated and frightened to see another such infinity… I thought I was alone… but… You…?

…Which planet was it… which world's creation myth… that all lands were the children of the sea and the sky…?

…many of them. So many of them.

It's hard to believe what's seen. It's hard for him to believe. That she's here, that they're together, and on top of all that, that she's lying beneath him, looking up at him like that, with that expression on her face and in her eyes, and as if he couldn't survive on that miracle alone, she's holding him closer and inviting him more.

Keeping his full weight off her with one leg still braced against the bed, but easing everything else to touch and cover every part of her with every bit of warmth and life he has to offer, he pressed his hand into the bed to slip beneath her, feeling immune to gravity, not just pressing her down but holding her up. And, as he'd found himself and his life transmuted before, utterly faithful, going where she guides and he would also wish, with her hands and her mouth, to kiss her lips and throat and face.

[kestreldawn]

The thoughts leak in like the morning sunlight, one after the other after the other. It seeks out and finds and fills in every crevice crack fissure hairline fracture she's carried since the moment she saw her mother's body fall lifeless to the ground; from the moment she'd last hugged her Papa in their home on Eadu and he told her that whatever he did, he did it to protect her; from the moment she'd burned her lungs into ash to find their Secret Hiding Spot; from the moment she'd curled in on herself, tighter tighter tighter, and felt the incessant dripping of water from the hatch overhead.

It's a wonder, she thinks, that she hasn't shattered into a thousand infinitesimal pieces by now - more break than wholeness, more missing than found.

But here - in the warmth of Cassian's arms, body, gaze, and now thoughts on top of it -

Like a withered seedling drinking up the sun, rejuvenated and remembering what it means to be alive. Remembering how to be alive.

A single tear journeys back towards her temple, towards the mattress, getting lost in the chestnut of her hair. She silences the whispers of darkness that hiss in her ear, instead listens to the sound of heartbeat, of lungs, of skin against skin, letting the symphony fill her beyond capacity, wondering how it is that she's able to never be filled and yet somehow be overflowing.

[candor1]

He notices, though. …Cause and effect utterly inextricable regarding the presence of one on his face, too.

His thumb brushes over the trail of her tear. He kisses her in its wake. Then, obeying the slightly changed tone of feelings now—he thinks in both of them, it's gotten nearly impossible to tell—but at least he knows how seamlessly he can find out the next, and what mind-reeling freedom in knowing it's all right not to know but to ask and to find out… to trust like that…

So, not certain it's what she wants but deciding it's all right to follow his own feeling for a moment, he shifts ever so slightly, so that their bodies are still pressed as closely and completely together, their faces close; but instead of being on top of her, he eases himself down beside her.

His arm is warm and almost protective across her chest; his hand momentarily pressing her shoulder, then returning to her face to brush the lingering tear from her loosened hair.

We can also talk, you know… but he decides not to change the dynamic that much, himself. Just stays with her, enfolding her with all he is, no longer dreading but glad that anything can happen next. They can go back to the forward drive of before and see where it takes them—where they want to take it. They can kiss and leave it there. They can talk. They can sleep. It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's with her. And she's glad of it too.

[kestreldawn]

Jyn feels a rush of - embarrassment? sheepishness? coyness? - at the feel of his thumb leaving a trail of wetness across her cheek, that he's noticed, that he's taken the time and moment and breath and energy to show her enough concern to not only rid her skin of it, but let it absorb into his. That he so willingly allows and welcomes and wants her him they - together.

She thinks for a moment that perhaps he's pulling away. Maybe his acceptance of her through transmittance of tear and the emotion behind it is conditional, short-lived, temporary.

But he doesn't leave.

He removes no part of himself from any part of her.

Instead, parallels his body and his being with hers, in the perfect physical manifestation of how they've been from the moment they'd met. Reflections of each other, different only in appearance and questions of anatomy.

"I .. I'm sorry," she murmurs quietly, gaze so helplessly and joyously lost in his. "I'm not upset," she attempts to explain.

[candor1]

Their faces are so close, she might not see the curve of his lips; but his soft exhalation and touching his forehead to hers get the point across. Beneath her, his hand slides between her ribs and the mattress, to curve around her back and press her gently against him, a full hug sent from his fingers.

It could be nice to joke. As well as he knew how to intimidate or persuade, he knew how to make people feel comfortable and safe. And he wanted her to feel that way, of course… but he also, for once, trusted that she didn't need him to put on a show, find humor that wasn't entirely true, play at being a normal lover (normal person), to get there.

"I'm glad you're not. Though I'd understand." He'd been an utter mess in her arms mere… hours? how much time has passed? …ago. As far as he could tell, he'd lost the ability to really cry—hadn't done so since Jenoport—or he'd probably have already done so more than once today. Relief, release, no matter how positive, could bring everything else along with it. Dams break… Which was why it could be necessary not to feel anything…

"Anything you want to talk about?"

(Worded that way since he understands how the options range from nothing I can actually identify to absolutely everything)