Jyn whips off her shirt the moment the door’s closed.  She walks backwards, slowly, towards the bed, pulling him with her, and he’s helpless, caught up in her orbit, as she lies back among the pillows and shrugs out of her bra.

“You’re beautiful,” he tells her breathlessly. Because it’s true, but also because he doesn’t know what else to say.  Cassian doesn’t form attachments, not ever, and what they’re about to do is not something he makes a habit of doing.  It’s been years, in fact – something he suspects she can tell just by looking at him.

She smiles knowingly anyway, grabbing for his hands and pulling him down on top of her.

“Kiss me,” she murmurs against his lips, and he complies, unable to resist her, the feel of her body pressed up against his like drowning and being swallowed up by the sun.

Afterwards, as she lies dozing in his arms, he tells himself this won’t – can’t –happen again.  

But he knows that’s a lie.

—————

Jyn doesn’t leave after Princess Leia gives them their rewards.  

She enlists in the Rebellion instead, and follows him to Hoth.

Echo Base is the coldest place Cassian has ever been, but they find ways to keep warm.

She finds him in an out-of-the-way storage room one day, rummaging for parts Bodhi needs for the ship.  She quietly shuts the door behind her.

She doesn’t say anything, but Cassian is so attuned to her presence now he knows, before he even turns around, that it’s her.  

“Hey,” he says, swallowing thickly.  

But Jyn hasn’t come to talk.

She pushes him up against the wall of the storage room instead, undoing the top buttons of his shirt as her mouth moves up his neck and skims along the underside of his jaw.  All of Cassian’s nervous hesitation from before is gone now.  It’s still wrong, what they do to each other when nobody else can see. In his bed.  In this storage room.  

A small part of him still worries it will destroy him in the end.  

But she’s a force of nature, Jyn, and not something he has it in him to resist. He no longer has the strength to even try.  

He wasn’t expecting her this afternoon but he reacts quickly, spinning them so that now it’s her up against the wall.  His lips move urgently against hers, and no matter how many times they’ve done this he’s still unmoored by her, by the feel of her lithe body pressed against his, by the way her bottom lip feels between his teeth and against his tongue.    

She grabs him by the collar, wrenching a whimper from his throat, as she pulls him closer.

It doesn’t mean anything, he tells himself, as she works his pants down over his hips.  She sometimes stays away for days at a time with no explanation, only to climb into bed beside him just when he’s given up hope.  He has no real claim on her, and he never will.

Jyn pulls away from him and, without breaking eye contact, sinks to her knees.

He keeps his eyes open as long as he can, reminding himself it means nothing as he watches himself disappear into her lovely mouth again and again.

But by the end his eyes are squeezed tightly shut, and his hands grip her shoulders so hard there will be marks later.

It means nothing, he tells himself again, with much less conviction, as she stands up and readjusts her clothing, though if he’s being honest he knows it’s just another lie he’s been telling himself.

She smiles at him, and his heart clenches painfully in his chest when she lets herself out of the storage room and closes the door behind her.

—————

Cassian runs his hands through his wrecked hair in furious agitation.

He tries to focus on the flight logs in front of him.  But it’s hopeless.  Every time he closes his eyes the scene from earlier today plays over again in slow motion behind his eyelids.  The scene where Han Solo – that smug asshole – put his arm around Jyn in front of everybody at the debriefing, and then winked at her.

(Jyn had smiled at Solo in response. And then she’d       blushed. Jyn never blushes.  It had taken all of Cassian’s restraint – and a few stern reminders to himself that Princess Leia would be furious if he physically attacked Solo – not to launch the wrench he was holding directly at his damn head.)

Finally giving up on making sense of today’s missions, Cassian slams his binder shut and shoves his chair back from the table.  It makes a horrible squealing sound against the floor but he can’t be bothered to care what the people bunking downstairs might think about the noise.  

He walks the length of his quarters distractedly, hands clutched behind his back as he fumes and paces.

“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” he vows to himself. Then he says it again, out loud, for good measure, even though there’s nobody around to hear him.

He stops pacing when he gets to the bathroom.  He stares at his reflection in the small mirror over the sink.  

He has to tell her.  This dance they’ve been doing around each other these past few months is killing him.  Even if Jyn laughs at his confession, or slams her door in his face, it’ll still be better than lying to himself every time she leaves his quarters before dawn, her scent still lingering on his pillow.

Cassian straightens, and he nods at the haggard, tired man staring back at him from the mirror.

“I’ll tell her tomorrow,” he says, again, to his reflection.  

He only hopes that this time, he’ll have the courage to actually do it.

—————

The first thing Cassian notices when he comes to is a loud, rhythmic beeping coming from somewhere just a few feet behind his head.

With great difficulty, he slowly blinks open his eyes.

He sees, right away, that he’s in a room he does not recognize.  On Echo Base, if the chill in the air is any indication.  The ceiling is lined with fluorescent bulbs that cast an overly-bright, sickly glow over everything, including the very expensive-looking medical equipment all around him.

He registers, dimly, that his arms are wrapped very tightly with more Bacta patches than he’s ever seen in one time in his life.

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of activity and noise coming from just beyond his field of vision.  Some rustling papers, and then chair legs scraping loudly against the grey tiled floor.

“Cassian?” Jyn’s anxious voice. “Are you awake?”

More scraping sounds as the chair is pushed back further, and then a moment later Jyn appears.  She stands very close to his bed, practically hovering over him.

She covers his hand with hers and gives it a gentle squeeze.

He doesn’t remember what happened.  He doesn’t know why he’s here.  Obviously he was badly injured, or he wouldn’t be in the med bay.  He’s pretty sure whatever happened didn’t kill him, because he’s in far too much pain to be dead.  

Either way, it must have been a close shave, because right now Jyn is looking at him with eyes so wide it’s like she can’t believe he’s not a ghost.

She’s smiling at him all the same. 

“What happened?” Cassian asks.  His throat feels like it’s been rubbed down with sandpaper, and he winces against the pain.    

She shushes him, pressing a single finger to his lips. “Later,” she tells him.  Her voice is hoarse, too, and thick with tears.  Has she been crying?  She gently brushes her knuckles along the underside of his stubbled jaw.  “I’ll tell you everything later, I promise.  Right now, I need to go tell the medics you’re awake.”

But she makes no move to leave him.  She stays beside his bed, slowly running the pad of her thumb back and forth along the back of his hand.

“Welcome home,” she whispers, so quietly he might have imagined it.

Jyn’s presence, and the feel of her calloused thumb brushing softly against his sensitized skin is so comforting, so soothing, it lulls him back to sleep in seconds.

Welcome home, he thinks, as the lights go out.

—————

Endor is loud tonight with the clamor of fireworks and celebrations.  

Cassian spent most of the night celebrating too, laughing and drinking with the people he’s fought alongside his entire life.  But now he sits apart from the others, alone with his turbulent thoughts at the edge of a clearing, watching as everyone else enjoys themselves.  

Jyn finds him eventually, a drink clutched in her right hand.  He recognizes it immediately as the fermented garbage the Ewoks have been serving up for them all night.  It tastes terrible and smells worse, but he supposes drinking it gets the job done well enough.

She sits beside him on the cold hard ground.  Even though he hasn’t seen her in hours he’s not surprised she’s here with him now, at the end of all things.  He smiles, realizing that after all this time, there’s not much about Jyn that surprises him anymore.

“Why aren’t you celebrating?” she asks, her hand on his arm. 

Cassian shrugs.  Jyn looks at him, then slides her hand down until it covers his.  She gives it a squeeze.

He sighs.  “Jyn,” he says, then pauses.  He looks towards the party, trying to put what he’s feeling into words she might understand.

He knows there will still be work to do for years to come.  Isolated skirmishes will pop up, from whatever Imperial loyalists remain.  And he will be there, every time, to help snuff them out.  

But he also knows that with Vader and the Emperor dead and the Empire in tatters, the thrust of his life’s work is finished now.  He doesn’t know where a man who’s lived only for war since he was six years old fits into this strange new galaxy.

He turns to face her.  She looks beautiful tonight.  She looks beautiful always, of course, though he rarely lets himself think it.  Tonight, though, he decides he’ll allow the indulgence.  She’s beautiful, and she’s looking back at him, unwaveringly, because she’s Jyn and she never does things halfway.

He reaches out and tucks a wayward lock of her hair behind her ear.  She leans forward and kisses him, tenderly, on the corner of his mouth.  She says nothing, but something in the press of her lips and the look in her eyes makes it feel like nothing so much as a promise.

He kisses her back, not even bothering to hide his smile.

ooooooo

They spend the rest of the night outside, holding hands at first, and then each other.  They watch the sun come up over the horizon, saying nothing, preparing for whatever comes next, together.

Just after dawn Jyn guides him, wordlessly, into her tent.  

“Hey,” she says, as she sprawls out on top of her sleeping bag. She beckons him to move closer. “Come here.”