#lululeite

[rxbxlcaptain]

The Crystal (Acts of Intimacy #1)

Author’s Note: Here’s the first in my responses to the Nonsexual Acts of Intimacy prompts! This one was requested by @lululeite and I had a lot of fun writing it! I hope you all enjoy (Because, trust me, I’m continuing to write these prompts!) Check out this post to see what I’m working on next. 

Other stories in the series: Next Work

Prompt:  ♠: One character adjusting the other's jewelry/neck tie/ etc.

Words: 1392

AO3 / FF.net / Below the Cut!

“Your room is just down this hallway, sergeant.” Sergeant. Jyn wondered how many months it would take before she would respond to that title. Probably about the same time she finally learned her way around the maze of the ziggurats that made up the Rebel base. “Door 1015. Passcode is 2128.”

“Thank you,” Jyn told the poor ensign Draven shoved her off on after completing her enlistment process.

“Is there any other way I can assist you tonight, ma’am?” Jyn shook her head. People offering to be helpful: another thing she would never get accustomed to. “Then I’ll get back to my post. You’ll report to Senator Mothma at 0830 tomorrow. Good night, Sergeant Erso.”

Jyn watched the ensign walk away. Jyn loathed to admit it, but she wanted nothing less than to be left alone. She spent years of her life on her own, fending for herself and relying on no one, but that was before.

Before the Rebellion. Before Jedha. Before Scarif. Before the Death Star.

Less than a week had passed since the Battle of Scarif, less than a week since Alliance bombs killed her father, and the images of destruction burned in her mind.

Jedha City collapsing around her. Her father’s body, broken and bleeding. Cassian falling twenty feet onto a metal platform. The echoing smack as he landed and the subsequent shattering of her heart.

Jyn had seen Cassian Andor, alive and recovering well, just a few hours before, but she knew the thought of him dying, the way time seemed to stop and ice had gripped her heart, would haunt her nightmares. The last week in medbay hadn’t been a problem; her drugs dropped her into a sleep so deep even the most stubborn nightmares couldn’t haunt her and Cassian himself, lying in the bed next to hers, soothed her during her waking hours. Together, they endured bacta treatments, panicked over the loss of the plans they had fought so hard for, breathed a sigh of relief when the plans had been found. Listened with anxious ears as the Death Star loomed above Yavin IV, released a long held sigh of relief when Luke Skywalker fired a direct hit against the reactor.

Medical droids cleared both Rogue One leaders earlier today, but Draven sent them in different directions almost immediately. Since Jyn’s wounds had recovered satisfactorily, Draven demanded she make a decision: officially enlist with the Alliance or take the next transport out. Cassian, ever the spy, kept a perfectly blank face while he waited for her decision. When she declared her intent to enlist—how could she not after she had gone toe to toe with the Empire after all these years? After so many had died following her on Scarif? After she knew what could be done with the Rebellion?—his neutral expression slipped slightly, bringing the edges of his mouth up in a quick smile.

Unfortunately, Draven must have noticed, too.

“Captain Andor, you’re with me. You need to be caught up on a week’s worth of briefings.”

And that was the last Jyn had seen of Cassian.

She pictured him now, perhaps celebrating with the other officers, offering a toast to the successful defeat of the Death Star. Or perhaps he lay alone in his room, eyes open but unseeing, feeling the keen loss of their fellow rebels on the beaches of Scarif, reliving the death of K-2SO.

Either way, Jyn shouldn’t bother him. She punched the code into her room’s keypad, berating her codependency. How many years had she lived on her own? Surely she could manage one more night.

A single bed with a lumpy mattress, a desk holding only a lamp, and a small wardrobe greeted her within the blank walls of the room. The bed stretched the entire length of the room, leaving Jyn only a few feet to walk around in. She dropped her singular rucksack of possessions onto the bed. Nothing within it would personalize the bland room around her, since it held only a spare change of clothes, her scarf, Cassian’s blaster (Jyn still marveled that the Rebellion returned this to her), and her mother’s kyber crystal.

The kyber crystal.

When she first noticed it missing upon waking in medbay, Jyn panicked. Only when the droids assured her the necklace had been saved with her personal effects had she calmed down. She couldn’t lose her mother’s last gift in her struggle to complete her father’s life work. If Jyn couldn’t have her mother, then she wanted—no, needed—the crystal. She removed it from the bag now, allowing the necklace to dangle from her left hand. It caught and reflected the light of the lamp. Small patches of light danced over the bed and onto the wall, mesmerizing Jyn.  

A knock at her door startled her from her reverence of the crystal.

She opened the door, her heart warming at the sight of Cassian Andor leaning against her door frame.

He stared at her for a moment with those dark eyes and Jyn was transported back to their elevator ride on Scarif. Unaware of Bodhi landing one of the last remaining Alliance transport ships outside, their silence spoke a million unspeakable words.

Thank you for believing me.

I couldn’t have done it without you.

Stay with me as it ends.

I could have loved you.

Cassian cleared his throat quietly, moving his eyes away from hers. “I wanted to make sure you got settled okay.”

“Luckily there isn’t much to settle,” Jyn smiled at him, walking further into the room, hoping he understood the invitation inside. She exchanged her kyber crystal for her rucksack, busying herself with placing it in the wardrobe. Doing something, even something completely useless, beat awkwardly staring at Cassian, dancing around how they were ready to die wrapped in each other’s arms. “How did you know where my room was, anyway?”

“Officer’s privilege, sergeant.” Jyn didn’t need to remove her head from the wardrobe to see the smirk on Cassian’s face.

“Don’t you dare use that as an excuse to boss me around.”

When he didn’t respond, Jyn moved her head from the wardrobe to glance at him.

“I worried you’d lost this,” Cassian murmured. Her kyber crystal dangled from his hand as he kneed next to her bed. “You didn’t have it in medbay.”

“They removed it for my bacta treatments, but I got it back when they discharged me.”

Cassian looked up at her. “Do you sleep with it on?”

“I never really take it off, honestly,” Jyn shrugged.

“Turn around, then,” he instructed, standing up and moving beside her. “I’ll help you put it back on.”

When she didn’t immediately turn, he gave her shoulder a slight push.

“Your shoulder…”

“My shoulder is fine,” Cassian reassured her, “Let me do this for you.”

Again, his eyes held the same raw emotions as in the elevator. She only turned away with reluctance. Cassian stepped closer to her, reaching forward to brush the hair away from her neck, his fingers leaving a heated trail across her skin. He brought the cord of the necklace around her head. No one, Jyn reminisced as Cassian’s fingers expertly tied a knot, had done this since her mother all those years ago. Never had another person seemed so worthy of the position.

When he finished, he turned her around again, fingers never leaving the necklace. Jyn gazed at him as he examined the crystal.

“It was your mother’s, wasn’t it?” Cassian’s voice stayed between them, coating the bleak barracks in a warm, intimate tone.

“She gave it to me before just before she died.”

His eyes met hers from under the fringe of his hair, delicately placing the crystal back against her neck. Fingers traced the cord back along her neck. When he reached the knot he just tied, his hand expanded, grasping the side of her neck and pulling her close.

“I’m glad you didn’t lose it, then,” he whispered against her hairline, lightly brushing his lips against it.

Jyn pulled herself closer to his warm body, feeling the stress of the past few days wane. Holding Cassian in her arms meant he wasn’t lying, broken and bleeding and dying, on a metal platform where she couldn’t reach him. Holding Cassian meant the world kept moving, and she could keep moving with it.

[rxbxlcaptain]

@lululeite: “Do you think maybe you could do one of jyn and cassian working out? Like going for runs or hiking and one watching the other work out inside like in a regular gyn and later training together for combat. I think it suits them to work out on their free time.”

This is a beautiful idea!! I’ll add it to my list :)