#aphelion

Sometimes the Wolf

“You know that they’re not going to let her past the gates, right, Captain?” Vel snaps from her place against the back of the cab, her hands resting on the rifle slung low across her waist, right foot braced against the wall of the truck bed. She indicates Jyn with a pointed look. “Twenty four hour quarantine.”

“Yeah, Major,” Cassian says roughly, dreading it already. Now that the worst of the danger has passed and the serum has been administered, the full extent of his exhaustion is hitting him like a fucking rockslide. He sighs, knocks the back of his head against the wall of the truck bed. “Yeah, I know.”

“And they’re not going to give Jyn any supply to camp. Any weapons to protect herself,” Vel continues. Her eyes are hard, worried. “She’ll have to barter for it. Or borrow it.”

Beside him, Jyn shifts, looks up at Vel with a wry twist to her mouth. “I guess it’s a good thing I have friends like you, Vel.”

Vel rolls her eyes, annoyed that Jyn is very much correct in assuming that she isn’t going to let Jyn Erso, witness to her own marriage to Cinta, spend a night alone in the wide, dangerous world without supply and shelter. Even if it meant the potential loss or damage of her precious camping gear that she coveted above maybe even her priceless rifle.

Aphelion

Lah’mu had been the one place she had remembered her and her family to be truly happy. Safe, hidden, simple. Quiet. It’s not her birth planet, but if ever pressed to name one, she would probably consider it her home planet, if such a thing exists for her.

Strange that, Jyn thinks sardonically to herself. Most beings would probably list their birth planet as their home—

She gasps, realization dawning.

She stumbles back to the wet and rutted main road, searching out and quickly finding what she needs: a holonet-cafe.

It’s fucking risky. She knows this. The more time she spends on this planet, the more time the Imps have to catch up with her. The more time Cassian does not have. And to make matters worse, she’s sure she will have to do some slicing to get into the databases she needs to find the information she seeks. She knows she will not have the time to crack into any Alliance records. And, even then, a search for Cassian Andor cannot possibly yield much more than sending out a host of red flags.

She doesn’t know what the fuck else to do, though.

So, she hunches her shoulders, hood slanting further over her brow, and steps into the tiny cafe.

The place is not much more than a circular pavilion sheltered with a tiled roof, extended with mildewed tarps and patched up sun shades. Jyn sidles up to the rounded counter in the centre of the ramshackle establishment and orders a caf and an hour on the holonet. Hopefully it won’t take her that long to find what she’s looking for, but it couldn’t hurt to pay for a bit more time.

If only she could do the same for Cassian.

Twelve Days in Yavin, Wyoming

Jyn gulps her refreshed drink, realizing that she doesn’t really have any way out of this. She is a private person by nature, though she does deeply understand the paradoxical inclination for nosiness. And, honestly, she kind of owes Leia in the worst way— Jyn has endured many a sexual recounting of Leia and Han’s escapades over the year she’s been here. Or, perhaps, Leia owes her. Now, that’s a satisfying way to look at it.

But, horrifyingly, Jyn also might be reluctant to, well, gloat.

“Okay, okay… I’ll help you out,” Leia declares magnanimously. Maz sighs, moves the stool so that she is next to the right armrest of the chair, sensing that Leia would not be turning back toward the mirror anytime soon. “How many orgasms?”

Jyn takes another large gulp of her drink, sighs as she lowers it back into her lap, twirls the fine crystal by the faceted stem, smacks her lips. “Last night or this morning?”

All the women (and even Luke, trying to make himself inconspicuous on the bed), shriek and whoop in unison. Jyn wants to be scandalized. Thinks that maybe she should be… but just isn’t. She sits among this envious chaos in indulgent satisfaction.

“You fucking slut!” Leia cries.

“Oh my god!” Rey declares.

“Good for you, dear!” Maz exclaims with a devilish little grin.

“Okay, okay…” Leia soothes, hands curling over Jyn’s forearm. “Last night?”

“Two,” Jyn answers, heat flushing up her neck… because she knows what Leia is liable to ask next and she knows the answer to that question is going to cause a fucking uproar.

The women all nod in deep approval.

“Not bad, not bad,” Leia assesses. She quirks a brow at her. “And this morning?”

She bites her lip, hesitates. “Five.”

“FIVE?!” Leia screeches. Beside her, Rey nearly falls out of her chair. Maz’s eyes look as though they might pop clear out of her skull. Behind them, Luke shifts off the bed to come closer.

Lights, Camera... Love?

He flips back through his very long day like filtering through a filing cabinet. Truth be told, there had only been two dates that evening that could have been categorized as, well, disasters: the one woman named Dedra who sounded as though she were smelling something unpleasant and might have just slightly implied that he was in the country illegally. And then, of course, the shock of discovering Bix Caleen, his old high school flame, was sitting on the other side of the glass, certainly had not been ideal. But they’d pulled it out… they were adults. Hell, him and Bix still kept in touch via the occasional social media message or comments on vacation photos or the like. It hadn’t been that bad, their awkward… date. At least he hopes so.

His less than stellar dates had simply been the product of the strange format of the show, the general circumstance of being on television, he assumes. Niya had been so nervous that Cassian had been vaguely concerned about her health. Sabine had been so uncooperative with the whole ordeal it was a wonder that she was here at all (she might have also balked at Cassian’s age— not that he could blame her as she was much too young for him anyway, but it still stung a bit). Enza had been so frigid he could almost imagine the glass between them frosting over. Windi had been gregarious and flirty, but frightfully dull.

Cassian’s best dates had been with Kleya, the aspiring diplomat. They’d almost immediately struck up a slightly combative rapport that reminded him of his relationship with his younger sister… so he’s inwardly hoping Bodhi isn’t planning on honing in on her. Shara Bey, the airline mechanic-slash-private-airline-pilot had been confident and funny. And Leia had been another gem… smart as a whip and just about as cutting. Her philanthropic and political aims definitely interested him as well.

And then there had been Jyn.

His brain catches on that name like a thorn. His eyes drift from his notes to the page right beside it:

”Probably not from Greenland.”

It’d been his last date, his last obstacle before meeting with his crew contact and then he could finally be free to retreat into his room and end this fucking day. His patience and energy had been long since tapped as he’d settled in for bachelorette number ten. He hadn’t held out too much hope that this date would go very smoothly at all. And, if he were being totally honest… at the time, he could barely conjure enough energy to care.

The encounter floats back through the sludge of stress and exhaustion and information overload weighing down his nervous system like a singular ray of sun. Pale and weak, but promising. Offering some warmth.

Jyn had been funny and smart. Extremely and brazenly herself in a way that felt bracing and refreshing rather than discordant. Especially after all the artiface he’d attempted to pry away from some of the other women— an exhausting task and one that was not always met with enthusiasm. Hell, she’d even been a bit mean… downright morbid at times. His lips quirk, remembering her offer of a messy death via vehicular homicide as a viable alternative to small talk.

“Uh… Mr. Andor?” Bodhi prompts uncertainly.

You Will Not Take My Heart Alive

(it took me a really long time to find an excerpt that was SFW lmao)

She cannot even form words, can only reach for him, whining pathetically in her tightening throat. Her climax is so close she can taste it on her tongue. Cassian leans over her, the shadow of him as real and weighty as a fine, heavy flight suit. He wraps a hand over her knee, spreading her further. His other hand cups her jaw, slow and reverent, and then falls over her throat.

He applies no pressure. His thumb braces the hull of her chin, his broad hand and thick fingers encase almost the whole front of her neck. His eyes do not leave her. Her throbbing blood drums hard and frantic under his calloused palm.

Jyn gasps, feeling impossibly delicate under him just then. The potency of his Rut curls like steam through her blood, transferred with his touch. When he clenches his fingers over her trachea, just ever so, his eyes are intense, yet soft. Loving and yearning.

She knows what he’s doing even as the smallest whip of fear has her breath catching in her chest. He’s assuring her. He is a bright and burning thing, his Rut heady and delirious, but he is acutely, painfully in control. All his vigor and power is wound up like a spring, tensile with potential energy, and yet tooled perfectly, reserved only for her pleasure.

She has never been so fucking turned on in her life.

“I trust you, Cassian,” she whispers, giving him what he sought. “Come here, please.”

The Fox & The Kestrel

FROM CH. 3:

She’s seen the king, well… not dressed up, she supposes, but in what she assumed to be finer traveling garb in order to present himself as kingly, but not ostentatious. She’d thought him dashing, of course, if not a bit… pretty.

But this must be the king’s regular garb, for he dons it as if he were born into it. He wears a rust-red leather brigadine coat, meticulously maintained and fitted. The bottom hem is longer than what’s conventional, falling to the middle of his thighs. The skirt is slit to the hips for ease of riding. Obviously a custom garment for fighting on horseback. She inwardly thinks she might like one comissioned for herself.

Underneath this handsome coat is a high-collared gambeson the color of a robin’s egg. He wears black leather riding trousers and boots, gloves and the same heraldic vambraces from the Hall earlier. His sword and a strange, curved knife about the length of a dirk hang from his broad belt, stamped with stylized icons of the fox after which he was so named.

His hair is also different— half of his hair twisted into a plait and gathered in quite an intricate knot at the base of his neck. The rest left loose, curling in the Wrean humidity. The effect this small aesthetic detail has upon her really is quite ridiculous.

But, perhaps most importantly, the king’s colors are matching her own. Or perhaps she is matching his own, but she supposes it does not matter as surely they did not plan this.

The king’s eyes sweep over her and his brow furrows.

“Well, isn’t that a happy accident, hmm?” Shara chirps, attempting to break the bewildered tension that has thickened since Cassian’s arrival.

Jyn is not wearing anything particularly special… plain riding trousers and her calf-high boots that had been washed of the mud from earlier. She wears a plain chemise, over which is fastened a laced kirtle the color of the dawn sky. Upon her shoulders she bears a broadcloth riding coat, almost the same russet red as the king’s brigadine.

The king’s expression softens, his face clearing in understanding. He smiles. “Like a kestrel’s wing.”

Jyn nods, warm to the tips of her plainly braided hair. “Aye, my lord,” she confirms, grinning back as she inclines her head to him. “Stone and sky?”

He bows, reverent. “Red brick is our stone in Ferrix, Your Grace, you’re correct.”

Oh, by all the gods, her chest tightens and her knees actually wobble. How serendipitous could that be?

FROM CH. 4:

“Well, this night is going rather well for you, isn’t it Cass?” Vel calls with a smirk across from him, sipping her own brew. Her eyes shine with affection, even approval. Cassian says nothing, only shrugs. Vel glances over her shoulder, where Lady Shara and Jyn are standing in line in front of the kegs, chatting and giggling. Shara is trying, and failing, not to toss too many looks their way.

“I like her,” Vel declares, turning back to him.

“The Lady Shara doesn’t strike me as your type,” Cassian quips, frowning.

“Ha, ha,” Vel deadpans, chewing on a crust of bread. “You know who I mean.”

He warms, sobering. “Aye, I know,” he returns softly. “That’s saying something, coming from you,” he says through a laugh, lifting his empty tankard to her. “Just don’t go stealing her away.”

Vel snorts, rolling her eyes. “Not sure I could, even I desired… the queen is quite taken with you.”

His grin fights it way free and spreads slow and real over his face. He huffs, cheeks warming. “You think so?”

Vel only hums, lifting her eyebrows, drains her ale.

“Thank you, my friend,” Cassian murmurs, barely audible over the clamor of the patrons and the raucous band. “For joining me tonight.”

The woman shakes her head, waves it off with a frown. “By all the gods, Cass, of course I would come with you. I’m your friend, after all… and anyway, who’s going to watch your back here? Bloody Kes?”

Cassian barks a laugh. “He’s the one standing guard!” he points out, waving a hand to the front entrance, where Kes is positioned, watching the milling crowd and nursing a cup of wine.