pineslog | open ✧ a head full of stars, just not in constellation yet

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open ✧ a head full of stars, just not in constellation yet

Who: Jyn & y'all
Where: Home & Around (Go Ask Alice, work, running)
When: June 28-July 3
What: Surprise Jyn's not dead anymore
Warnings: Mentions of past character death in passing

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✧ ʜᴏᴍᴇ & ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏᴡɴ

Jyn doesn't venture very far that first day -- between Cassian's house and her own is about the size of it -- but once she is home she settles on the front porch with a cup of tea (hot, she doesn't believe in iced tea) and just looks at the town from her porch.

The days following finds her more adventurous, returning to her normal business. She goes back to work with Peter's exterminator business, cleaning up what remains of the carcasses of rodents around town. It's disgusting. She drops in Go Ask Alice for her lemon cookies that she suggests they just rename "Jyn's Lemon Cookies", settling at a table by the window to carefully construct elaborate and downright absurd mathematical puzzles for Mary. Not a single one of them is age appropriate for a seven year old but it doesn't seem to stop Jyn from designing them with what she learned from her father. She starts her daily runs again -- morning and night -- though now she actually does steer clear of the woods, observing the mess of the town as she passes, sneakers pounding against the pavement steadily.

It's business as usual.

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Silence isn't unusual from Jyn, her utter lack of answer when he is still curled around her and warm and alive and reminding her that she is cold and alive is not a cause for worry. Sometimes she doesn't answer direct questions. She does hum a little noise to indicate she's still listening, somehow making it sound grateful. She is, very thankful she didn't have to walk home in a hospital gown.

But then he's pulling away and even if he doesn't go particularly far, she misses the warmth of him immediately.

At his question, she shakes her head, matching him. An update can wait. If anyone else died she doesn't want to know right now, she doesn't want to be useful or productive or helpful. For a few brief moments she just wants to live without obligations or threats or fear.

"Can I say something first?"

Cassian's arms are somewhat situated near her waist and he doesn't really want to let go, the same way in which he didn't really want to put her down, the day that he kissed her the first time. If things were closer to perfect, he thinks, they could just go somewhere warm, and quiet, and he could catch up on missed sleep in snatches, waking up to her there, cold toes and all.

There are a lot of steps, literal and figurative, to that point and each one is one more than he'd had with her yesterday so he's just gonna...he'll be okay.

He nods, a little too sharp, and swallows. Jyn usually just says things, or says nothing. He's not sure he's ever heard her ask permission before.

"Yes."

Once she has his full attention, she finds she doesn't want it -- it's too much attention and she squirms uncomfortably before stepping out of his arms and instead taking his hand. They can walk and talk.

She's quiet as they pass a handful of shops on the way home, Jyn giving the aftermath of the attack far more attention than it deserves. This kind of destruction is what she's used to. Hollowed out homes, deserted businesses, bloodstains on the street, that is just life in the galaxy under Imperial control. Nothing strikes her as particularly out of place which is oddly comforting.

It's a shame that she's comforted by the familiarity of war.

The silence is too long to be fair to Cassian, she can feel his brain working next to her as they walk and so she steps the the side, pulling him with her against the shadowy side of a building.

Just looking up at him in the shade is enough to pull a muted smile free from her always solemn mouth and something settles in her shoulders. "I love you, too."

He's certain that whatever she intends to say likely is not some variation on 'go away', considering...well, considering that she's holding his hand even as his brain is trying to fill the silence with any number of other ideas. Half of them are dismissed as improbable, because they directly relate to things she's probably not aware of (Poe moving in with him, Dr. Rousseau and her "revelations", Caroline in a coma), another quarter dismissed as unlikely due to disconnect to the current reality, and then?

He tosses the entire idea out. Cassian has never been good at predicting the future in specifics when it comes to Jyn, or mindreading in general. And he's obsessing, it's probably not a good look.

Fortunately Jyn saves him from finding another thing to obsess about in the silence, pulling him aside as he raises his eyebrows. Her smiles are so small, he thinks, and wonders if it is a blessing or a curse to not have been given the memories of a fake, happy life here.

"Oh." Okay, terrible answer. Start again. Ignore the fact that your ears are on fire, it feels like. "I'm glad the feeling is mutual." Obviously. He squeezes her hand and brings it up to his lip to kiss the back of it.

"Does this mean I get to kiss you in front of other people?" He can even promise not to be ridiculous about it.

Cassian's surprise actually makes Jyn's smile widen, a burst of mirth because she knows that in a few moments he's going to realize that Jyn had somehow translated what he'd told her weeks ago. The surprise itself isn't unreasonable: he'd said it in Spanish and he'd said it two weeks ago, it would surprise anyone to finally have the sentiment returned.

"No, it does not mean you get to kiss me in front of other people," she protests, a breath of a laugh as she pulls him closer, feeling her heart flutter helplessly at the imprint of his lips against her knuckles.

"Well." Her head tips to the side, considering. "Maybe if the people aren't nearby." Like now. He can kiss her again right now. Maybe he can kiss her at work or in front of Elsa and Poe, things like that. She's willing to negotiate. Baby steps.

Cassian makes a bit of a show of leaning away to look left, than right, as if concerned there might be eavesdroppers or peeping toms about. As if either of them needed to crane themselves around for several full seconds to get an impression of the area.

"No one's nearby right now," he informs her helpfully with his own matching grin. Which means he can't be blamed if he goes in for another kiss, right? That's the logic and he's sticking to it.

It's soft and quick because he's decided, right now in this moment, that he wants to kiss her entire face until she laughs, or pushes him away, or hopefully both.

(Also because he didn't before, and Cassian is good at fostering regrets for the things he didn't do.)

The more he looks around, the wider her smile, entirely amused with his antics and then he is kissing her, peppering them across her face and even if she wanted to, she can't contain the laughter that escapes her as his beard tickles her skin.

"Captain Andor!" She does shove him away, but not hard enough to make him go anywhere, smile spread wide across her face. She was dead probably only a couple of hours ago but that doesn't seem to bother her, looking so impossibly happy.

After pushing him away, she reels him right back in, fingers clutching his shirt. "You look happy."

"Miss Erso," he replies, because calling her by rank would make her sullen and remind her of all they've lost, and he's putting that off for as long as possible.

Also, she's smiling, and he doesn't get to see that as often.

"I am happy." That's true, actually. He's happier than he's been in a while. Jyn is here, she loves him, and they're alive.

Everything else is a lot more complicated, but there they have it. "Are you happy? You look happy."

"I am happy," she echoes, even if the feeling is practically foreign. Even if they're still trapped on some strange backwater prison planet, even if they're dead, even if finding away out of this means Jyn and Cassian die again... Right now, with her back against a wall and Cassian caught in front of her, she's very happy.

She had thought, on the beach in Scarif, that if they'd had time... Now they have time and it's still a little too much for her, but she's grateful that she was right. Across galaxies and universes and time itself.

Suck it, Empire.

"Poe is going to be impossible, you realize that, don't you?"

"Good," is Cassian's reply to that, both her being happy and Poe being impossible; the latter has been rooting for them since the moment he met them, Cassian is pretty sure, and unlike Jyn? Cassian hasn't had to defend his position to anyone this whole time.

So he's less put out by the idea as a whole. In general.

It's nice to have something about himself he doesn't have to hide, by definition.

He leans in and kisses her again, still soft; his hair has started to curl into his face and he huffs, after, reaching up to push it away from his brow.

"What do you want to do now?"

Um, she wants to keep kissing him, actually, sighing against his mouth. Her eyes stay closed a handful of moments after he draws back and she doesn't try to hide the stupid look on her face.

She should probably offer something to do.

"You need a hair cut." That's what they can do. He hasn't dealt with his hair since he'd arrived and combined with the overgrowth of his grief beard, he's starting to resemble a hobo. It's still very attractive, but also he needs a hair cut. "They use scissors here too, right?"

He's rather fond of that 'stupid look', okay? No one has ever looked that way because of him, and he dives back in for another kiss because he can't help it.

"I do need a hair cut," he answers when he pulls away again, because he can't lie about that. It's a hot mess and he knows it. "I also need to shave. I don't think they have laser knives or anything like that." Not that he wouldn't trust her with them if they did, but. "So scissors it is."

Look at the two of them, making out like teenagers on the street. There's probably an ordinance about that.

Jyn very faintly remembers her mother cutting her father's hair in the grass outside their house on Lah'mu, before Galen has decided to grow it out. Lyra had cut Jyn's hair also, and she was no doubt far more difficult to keep still, but Jyn doesn't remember any of those moments. She's sure the can manage trimming Cassian's hair. She won't mention that she used to cut her hair with Saw's knife like a fucking barbarian.

"I can do it." She stretches up and kisses his chin, nose crinkling up as that hobo grief beard tickles her nose. "If you'd like."

There probably was, but #fuckthepolice.

Also he wouldn't be at all surprised if she used knives to cut her own hair. It seems like a very Jyn thing to do. As it is, Cassian's mouth does a small, twitchy thing, because his face is unused to smiling for real and the muscles feel funny and it's like every physical sensation he normally has around Jyn is amped up, coating his exhaustion like a chocolate shell.

Or something.

"I'd like that." He nods. He kisses her again. "We need to get going or I'll stand here all day."

Contrary to Jyn's aversion to PDA, she doesn't think she'd mind if they spent the rest of the day here. She hums an agreement against his mouth anyway. Yes, they should get going. They should not loiter kissing even if the idea of moving is too much.

"Yeah." With a gentle shove, she nudges him back enough to slip out and take his hand again. "It's strange, but I'm still tired." She's been out for a week, she has no reason to be tired, except maybe the stress of her entire life catching up to her.

"Home? You can update me now."

"Alright." Home it is, then, which gives him a good segue into bringing her up to speed. He makes sure not to walk too fast, letting her set the pace, but their connected hands do swing a bit of an arch between them.

"Personal: I moved Poe in with me. He lives in the extra room now." He'd been more or less unofficially there, but now it was settled. "Caroline got hit with one of the bullets for the...strangely evolved humans and is in a coma."

Both of her favorite men in town in one house, that's good. Caroline's in a coma, that's bad. Her mouth turns down into a frown, forehead wrinkling in concern.

"Poe must be a wreck." Cassian himself looks like he hasn't sleep in days and she knows that he keeps so much inside just like she does, but Poe is the opposite of them: buoyant and effusive and irritatingly share-y. Not to mention how conflicted his feelings for Caroline already are.

Aside from that though, "How is she still alive? Those bullets were taking them down when it wasn't even a kill shot."

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open ✧ a head full of stars, just not in constellation yet

✧ ʜᴏᴍᴇ & ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ ᴛᴏᴡɴ

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