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open ✧ i was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars
Where: 4106, Casa de Disney (not actual) Princess
When: June 10-12
What: Jyn & Elsa's backyard has become a refuge for wildlife and thus an impromptu petting zoo
Warnings: There's innocent smooching, it's gross.
[Open]
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✧ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴇɴᴀɢᴇʀɪᴇ
Jyn and Elsa's house is on the very edge of the residential district -- a nice concession from whatever set up this whole place to give Jyn only one neighbor. This means, though, that when the creeping doom of the wall surrounding the woods makes the predators a little more bold, Jyn and Elsa find themselves with a small collection of woodland creatures seeking refuge in the backyard.
The first day, Elsa is still recovering from the camping trip from hell which Jyn completely understands, so she says nothing, going out to the bookstore to grab an armful of books about the native wildlife (birds, trees, small forest animals). When Elsa is feeling better, Jyn shows her the flock of deer that have taken up residence in the backyard along with a family of rabbits making a warren of their back deck and a family of groundhogs ruining the begonias lining the edge of the yard.
That's happening.
Jyn has always been something of a naturalist, thanks to her mother, but a lifetime of fighting and running from the Empire had left her little time to actually study the nature around her and no one to encourage her to do so after her mother died. Now she has more time than she knows what to do with, which is almost stifling, and the town she's found herself in seems determined to remind her of her mother's roots, shoving a petting zoo full of animals into her backyard. Well, okay, she gets the point. No need to hit her over the head with it.
Whether it's feeding fruit to the deer or scooping up wayward baby bunnies who have gotten caught in the lattice work under the deck, Jyn finds herself spending the majority of her time outside again, sun turning her shoulders and cheeks pink. More than once she can be found in the front yard with her hands on her hips, having a staring contest with a deer that thinks it can eat the flowers by the front door.
Usually however, she has her head in one of her books, trying to figure out how to deal with these animals making themselves at home in their backyard. The upside is that the deer are eating the grass so no one needs to mow the lawn.
( find elsa in a top level below )
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She steps forward to curl her free hand around his bicep, squeezing as hard as she can which is barely anything at all, but it's pressure.
"When you found me on the tower..." Her voice is soft, quiet in a resigned way, but earnest. This is just how their lives are meant to go. A series of unending losses and near misses. "I'd thought you died when you fell. And then I saw you there and you were so--" Breathing out a laugh, Jyn looks down at their locked hands for a moment before her gaze travels back up. "It was like the sun coming out."
She understands the fear, she'd seen him fall and held him as they died, but she doesn't want to be the cause of that fear.
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"I will do a lot of things you ask of me," he starts thickly, swallowing. Her confession deserves one in return, doesn't it? Isn't that how people tell each other the truth? He doesn't want to tell her how much pain he was in. He doesn't want to say how much he's regretting things he didn't say or do in the elevator, when there had seemed to be a chance, when the risk was being captured above being annihilated. "I don't think that leaving is one of those things."
His brow furrows. What they have is not perfect, not by far; yet it exists, blatantly ignored at times and refusing to be addressed in any comfortable space. He bites his tongue around her all the time to stop from saying things he doesn't think she wants him to admit and he doesn't know how to express how much her being here means when he'd spent those first few months wondering if he wasn't in some form of otherworldly punishment, or just living a bubble nonsensical life while his synapses fired for the last time.
It's not better, exactly. He still doesn't understand how it came to happen, or what exists beyond the wall, but Jyn is also here and he can't deny the importance of it to him even if he can't hope to explain it properly either.
"I would say I am sorry but I'm not." He shakes his head. "I just can't. Te amo."
He says it the way someone might say 'sorry' and it's a coward's move, but he squeezes her fingers. "I am better for knowing you. I won't walk away, if I think you're in danger."
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Instead she calls him stubborn and nods, accepting whatever he won't tell her in Basic.
He climbed twelve stories half dead and she'd seen it etched into the lines of exertion etched into his face when they had clung to each other in the lift. She already knows, even if she is too terrified to admit it or return the sentiment. Caring about people turns them into a liability and into leverage, she can't lose anyone else.
"I'll get used to you sticking around." That is a promise. "Let's go home."
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Not that he doubted, really, but the confirmation helps slow his heartbeat a little.
He focuses on that during the rest of their walk to his house. How Jyn's hands go from worrisomely cold to just standard Jyn temperature eventually. He does glance at her, openly, more than once, and if she looks back at him in annoyance or question then he'll just give her his little smile and continue forward.
It's not until they've reached the steps to the house that Cassian pauses, considering Jyn's face for a moment before leaning in and kissing her, softly. Not a very showy kiss, for one thing, and it's easily pulled away from, but.
He thinks about the elevator a lot. He doesn't want to make it a list of times he could have, and didn't.
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Jyn always has to look up to him, it's just how her diminutive height works and she is very used to it after all this time. (All this time being... roughly two months? It feels like so much longer, they'd been through so much, lost so much, how could it have only happened in such a short span of time?)
She's not used to that distance closing in any scenario that isn't Jyn hugging him on her tip toes and even then she's mostly holding herself up. Cassian is ducking to meet her now and her chin tips up automatically.
There's something tentative, gentle, about the way he kisses her and Jyn wants to reassure him, but any resolve to promise she's never been surer of anything in her life crumples beneath the lingering fear that she will lose him the way she's lost everything else she's ever cared about. Even still, she breathes in the taste of him, exhaling slowly as she takes a step back, eyes opening to settle on his expression, studying him.
"Do you have any more lemon cookies?"
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"I do, in fact, have more lemon cookies," he replies, already preparing himself for the idea that they won't talk about it. There's so much they don't talk about, and he's sure that given time he might manage to convince Jyn otherwise - but time is a weird concept, here, amongst the dead and the living and the 'found themselves who knows how far from home and should be dead but are, in fact, living' so. It's something he's willing to let go.
To be honest he'd let a lot of things go, in the name of keeping Jyn comfortable. "There is even the makings of a glaze." He starts to head towards the door but Jyn doesn't immediately come with, and so he stops to look at her again.
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Releasing his hand, she firmly presses that same hand to his chest so he won't move, circling around him until she is standing on the step above him, bringing herself eye level.
Her fingers fist into his shirt, pulling herself forward to finally return his kiss. It's late, but she doesn't think it's too late, and her mouth lingers against his, inquisitive and careful, feeling the coarse hair of his mustache and beard tickle her pale skin, the warmth of his hands on her face, thumb brushing against her cheeks. Fear sees her draw back again, swallowing past it to look at him with clear eyes.
The small fists release his shirt, absently smoothing away the wrinkles in the fabric across his chest. "My favorite."
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He loves her so much he aches with it, and the part of him that was terrified of outright rejection has settled in his chest. "Good, because I have plenty." And tea, which he presumes will be consumed either way.
"Thank you." Because she didn't have to kiss him back, actually, and because he already said that he loves her but he's not pushing it.
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She still pushes her way into house though so nothing seems to be able to get rid of her.
She heads right for the couch, because while yes, she does want cookies, she's exhausted and she wants to lay down also. Which is what she does, curling up on Cassian's couch and dragging the blanket off the back to cover herself. She doesn't leave any room for Cassian, but she doesn't tuck a pillow under her head either so he can feel free to be her pillow.
Once he gets her cookies.
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He goes through the effort of collecting cookies, making the glaze, making tea before he returns to her curled up on the couch. The plate of cookies is balanced on her stomach, the tea already sweetened and within reach on the coffee table ,and Cassian gently raises her shoulders and cradles her head high enough for him to slide into the corner of the couch. He'll leave her to figure out how best she wants to arrange herself but once she's settled, he will go through the slow process of untangling her hair with his fingers.
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When he settles the cookies right on top of her, she only shifts a little to curl on to her side, protectively around the cookies she settles in the space left on the couch, cheek resting against Cassian's pants. Prone again the exhaustion seems even worse and she can feel sleep licking at her like waves on the shore.
Naturally, she fights it. "I can't believe Sefla commissioned me. And you! You just stood there." Fucking traitor. Admittedly, he told her flat out that Cassian wouldn't do it, but she doesn't think for a second he didn't ask his Captain first. Pathfinders... what a load of cretins.
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Or you know. To stop others from thrusting that upon her.
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"It can't count if I didn't accept." It counted enough for the small band of rebels trying to make it right for themselves to accept her, it definitely counted.
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Even though she's only eaten one cookie -- irrefutable evidence she is beyond exhausted -- she pushes the plate onto the coffee table, slowly shifting a little to rest her hand against his leg and curl up more comfortably, drawing the blanket more snugly around her.
She's going to waste that tea but she's genuinely too tired to even think about drinking it.