#<- just tagging that to be safe though obviously this is pure self-indulgent invention

[elwenyere]

Reentry (Andor, Melshian, 336 w)

Author's Note: A wee ficlet in honor of this weekend's potato crumbs, set sometime during season 2 and inspired by approximately 2.5 seconds of grainy bootleg footage. We are so back.

.....

Cassian waits until they’re approaching Dantooine before he leaves Kay at the controls and goes back to check on the prisoner they’ve sprung from detainment - on Melshi, who’s dozing against the bulkhead, his shorn head listing over one shoulder.

Cassian crouches in front of him, taking a moment, after the shock of reunion and the rush of escape, to assess the status of his unexpected passenger. He’d forgotten so much more of Melshi than he’d realized: the flurries of movement in his fingers, the slip of space that softens his mouth in surprise, the way the skin around his eyes looks scored with effort - the thin, radial grooves pinching like spread foils, even in sleep.

“Hey.” 

The word’s out before Cassian can form the intention to voice it. He shouldn’t. He should let Melshi rest: he’d been hard to rouse, when they found him - limbs leaden with long exhaustion, skin so sallow he’d looked almost -

“Melshi.” 

Cassian speaks again anyway, finds that something under his breastbone unsnarls when Melshi’s eyes open, his gaze settling on Cassian and his lips parting.

“We’re almost there,” Cassian says.

Melshi straightens, his attention drifting to scan the hold of the ship before it returns to take in Cassian’s unshaven chin, the insignia on his jacket, the blaster at his hip.

“Sorry,” Melshi says. “Thought for a moment I must be dreaming.”

Cassian reaches for a line that would compose the expression on his face and finds nothing - nothing but the words he’d said when he’d punched the hyperdrive, when he’d hauled Melshi to his feet in his cell, when they’d clung to a cliff face, years earlier, or when he’d watched the bunk across from his and prayed never to see a broad-shouldered form silhouetted against the dark walls, toes curled over the edge: hold on. 

As the ship drops out of hyperspace, Cassian’s still watching Melshi’s face, so he feels it: the moment they settle into orbit - that sideways slip of forward motion and gravity falling back into balance.