candor1 | IC contact

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Fulcrum; go
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[OOC—update: Just specify in subject line which game!]

don't blame you for not waking me. you had no obligation to me. you'd already went above and beyond what any other stranger would've done there.

plus, probably would've been terrible company afterwards, anyway.

i lingered for the bulk of the next day, after you'd gone. couldn't really move much without groaning or seeing stars, but felt weird taking advantage of the kindness you'd already showed me. eventually hobbled my way back to the rented room, once i remembered where i was.

[Commander Solange hadn't even batted an eye at seeing Jyn in her purpled state the following day. Jyn hadn't ever felt quite as expendable as she had in that moment - at least, until she'd landed on Wobani.]

you are? brt.

[She takes a few extra moments to regain something of her composure before taking the lift down to the main level and walking out the front door, dabbing at her sniffling nose with her knuckles. She glances around for him, finds him, and walks over - looking a bit shy and perhaps embarrassed at the revelation, and her current reactional state.] I don't remember seeing you at Five Points after that. Though not long after, I was apprehended by one of the gambling lords, Pso, and forced onto a ship to do his dirty work.

[He waits, watches, and listens attentively when she speaks. Gives a tiny shake of his head in answer.]

I was Sward for a year. Then a few months on Fest. Then… things were picking up nearer to Jedha.

[Then he shows behind the curtain of his composure to take and frame her face in both his hands and stare searchingly into it.

He's come to know her face and every inch of her body so intimately. But he looks at her now as if he didn't.

His fingertips trace the ridges of her cheekbones, her brow, her nose, her lips—places he'd gently wiped free of blood, applied disinfectant and numbing agent, however many years ago that was now. She'd been so swollen and split, he hadn't even mapped her underlying bone structure. Nor had he registered the green eyes that caught him by throat on Yavin 4 and he's come to love. One had been swollen closed, the other too bloodshot, and too hard to keep open from exhaustion and pain and despair.

But it was so obvious now.

Her face still in his hands, his shoulders and chest curved toward her as if to hold her with everything, he bent abruptly forward to kiss her. Gentle but fierce.

Moves slightly back, still holding her face, still touching her forehead with his—creased from the forcefulness of his closed eyes.

His voice is soft, low, but… had… rage]

I should have known you my whole life.

The war should never have happened to either of us.

We should have had all that time.

Edited 2017-06-09 03:54 (UTC)

[She murmurs a confirmation tone at his explanation; she recalls the memories he shared with her with vivid clarity. Her lips part to offer some sort of response when his hands lift to cup her face so delicately, she felt fragile enough to break.

Never in her life had anyone touched or treated her with such tenderness, such care, such consideration. Even when her Papa had brushed the hair away from her eyes and kissed her forehead, or when her Mama plaited her long strands of hair into two braids that slapped against her back as she ran, there'd been some semblance of roughness to it. Sometimes out of being rushed and hurried - like Mama needing to get her day started but needing to tend to Jyn's hair first - or out of exhaustion - like when Papa would sit at the side of her bed after a long day's work to tell her goodnight.

But the way Cassian's fingers practically vibrate and tremble against her skin makes her feel an incredible surge of love and humility. And, for perhaps the first time in her life, she feels like the young girl she could/should/would have been, had everything turned out differently.

A quiet noise rumbles in her throat as he kisses her - a choked sob or an exhaled laugh that never quite escapes. Her hands find his waist, rest there gently, returning the reverence he's showing her with her own. Chews on her lower lip as he speaks.]

I know. I know. Should, shouldn't, should. There are so many of them. [Her fingers tighten around the bones of his hips.] But we can make up for it now. We can have that now. We have a second chance to do that.

[she's right
he knows
he does and part of his mind runs through it

had he stayed
she would have wanted none of him
she was bereaved
he was a stranger
it would have gone badly
or never at all

but even if they found each other
recognized their reflections
stayed allies then friends then who knows more

he would have been deserting the Rebellion
abandoning Kay

and someday the Death Star would have destroyed not only Alderaan but Yavin
those he had loved, so many more
and somewhere inside he would have known he could have done something
and what would they be then

they never could have done anything but live out those lives

but it doesn't matter because it finally found him
(long cheated, long overdue)
the kyberradiation
splitting him to dust
he burns in it, consumed
and even her presence against him isn't enough to overpower the grief and loss
they could have had years

the loss of her before he knew her on Fivepoints
losing her just when he'd started to know her on Scarif
the utter theft of both their lives

I know
I know

we can have it now

He needs to feel…
something other than this
something not disintegration and fury
needs to be reminded—re-believe this is real

he wants to feel her
bear her up against the wall
wrap her legs around him
part her lips
lock inside
feel her hold him
her heartbeat through all

—but he's suddenly terrified that this is a violent desire.
The creature he might always have been, not in training but instinct, wanting to dominate and control, in the face of all that he can't…

but the radiant warmth of her
the quantum song
distant sunlight on the child she never was
the vulnerable honor of her trust

he could go down on his knees before her
close his eyes against her stomach
beg her to let him serve

all he feels is devotion and protectiveness, tenderness, longing, faith
he doesn't want to dominate her
he never never wants to hurt her

but this still…
he shouldn't be thinking that she is refuge
she is home
she is light
and need her to outshine the afterimage behind his eyes

That's not what… she's not a means to… she's not here for him,
she's Jyn—

(No
don't put that on a person
dont ask her
it can't be right
don't be an addict
it can't be right for him to need
so
badly

—make me remember
—make me forget

don't ask her)

…He's spent all control.

He bows his head against her shoulder.

Whispers,]

Can we go somewhere?

[I'm sorry
I'll stop if you ask me
I'll leave if you tell me
I'm sorry to make you tell or ask me

please let me feel
you
alive]

[She's alarmed at the sudden influx of - destruction. emptiness. loneliness. regret. sorrow. anger. fury.

The hands at his waist immediately lift to mirror his actions moments ago, gently supporting and outlining the curve of his jaw. Her gaze unsteady and unclear as his thoughts pelt her like a hailstorm. Somewhere underneath the detached exterior, she's screaming inside. Feels his need, feels his yearning - takes it, changes it, adapts it for herself. Feels it, too.

Wants it him them, too.

Feels a strange warm at her core - a hunger, a desire, a craving. Can't understand it, can't unravel it, can't decipher it in its entirety.

Simply feels it, knows it, acknowledges it.

Comes back into herself and into her eyes, blinks away the haze, and throws her arms around his frame to pull, hold, keep him close to her.

One hand comes up to rake through the strands of hair at the back of his head, face buried into where his neck meets his shoulder, the other clinging tightly like a cinch around his waist. She nods against his body.]

Anywhere.

Always.

[And then, smaller still:] Don't leave me.

[it's all right
she makes it all right
once again
by needing him too

A lightning surge passes through him. Pushing his body full against hers, throwing his head back up to kiss her fervently.

Voiced and thought, he answers her plea-command (don't leave me) vehemently,]

Never.

[I'm yours
you're in me

Fused to her by her hand in his hair and at his waist, he mirrors both: cups her head, grasps her waist, kissing her until he sees spots like bruises inside his lids.

Then he can't not solve the problem a moment longer. His strategic brain locks on, shunting everything else to standby.

He raises his head, looks around. They're in an alley beside her office building, off the main street. Not secure enough. There are fire escapes. Could climb to a rooftop. Suboptimal: would require letting go of her too long. Doorways, antechambers, stairwells, could lockpick any, but being mid-day no guarantee of desertion. Then he spots the broader doors, ramp and signage that indicate loading dock.

His human brain resurfaces long enough to meet her eyes. Seek consent. Tighten his arm around her side.

Strategic brain back in charge and launches operation. Holding her tightly, he walks them to it, reaches around her body to pull the rigid wire he'd seriously considered not secreting there out of the seam of his sleeve, using it to open the industrial but frankly below-security doors and: yes, it's a freight elevator. One of those bizarre universals: they tend to look the same and operate uniformly on so many planets for so many species. You need a key to make the doors close again, except you don't if you can use a wire.

He hauls shut the inner grate which closes the outer door and switches on the light. Throws the lever that locks their position, keeps them here no matter if someone tries to summon the machine elsewhere. Then slung the wire and his computational mind both uninhibitedly to the floor. Grabs her in both arms, lifting her off her feet, kissing her like it's how he needs to breathe, pressing her back into the wall.

Edited 2017-06-09 18:19 (UTC)

[Jyn's mind comes in and out of fog and light and clarity, the warmth at her core continuing to burn, to consume like a sudden inferno. She feels like dry kindling; never had a chance against its licking flames and burst of heat. She feels the pulse in her neck, feels it in her chest, against his body, down below. He could lead her into the pits of whatever this world's version of hell could be, into the darkness, into a screaming volcano, and she would follow. She would trust him - does trust him - with her life.

So his gentle but hungry urging is enough to make her trail closely at his side, mind fogging as the blood in her body begins to heat her from the inside out. When she figures out where he is going, she is unable to hide the smile that lights her features - eyes flicking to his with an innate understanding and hint of mischief and understanding. She takes in the surroundings only briefly, head snapping back at the ruckus of the doors being shut, before allowing herself to be - no, not overtaken. That would imply an imbalance, that she isn't just as willing or just as in it as he is. But she isn't carrying the shield. She isn't wearing the mask she often does with others. Even if she did, even if she wanted to (which she doesn't), Cassian would see through it anyway.

She emits a groan - no pain, all pleasure - at feeling the rough firmness of the wall at her back. She uses her hands to discover the skin under his collar, urging him forward, closer still, before dropping her hands to the hem of his shirt to explore the expanse of his abdomen, his back, fingers fumbling with the seal of his trousers with an insatiable hunger.

[As her fingers found him, his found her; plunging through cloth layers, curling inside her.

Then even as he kneels before her to pull down her clothes and put his mouth where his hand had just been…

…this is different than he's been with her every time until now. Even when he would accept dominance, it would be accepting it: taking only as she gave, wanting to be led, to be invited, needing a level of clarity and confirmation that would sometimes protract… not wanting to focus on himself, wanting to throw everything into serving her. This…

…he's not waiting… not checking and rechecking every signal… just…

…more like how it might have been for him in the past? With others, in wartime…?

…No. No. This level of… roughness, perhaps… even forcefulness… never painful, never against her, but… lacking finesse, abandoning technique, not trying so hard to craft and control. Letting himself feel and be driven by… need.

This is only possible with her. The level of trust they've built. Knowing the moment it isn't mutual it will stop, and they'll both know if that moment occurs.

But instead of preventing it, risking it.

…and even in that. Even on his knees, fingers digging into her thighs, what he's doing less like kissing as it's been before but… like this, too, is something he needs, the taste and feel of her… wanting her to fill his senses and drive everything else away.

It's swearing himself to her, still.]

[Jyn throws her head back, arching into his touch, as his fingers crawl underneath the fabric of her trousers. Fingers tangled and tugging on his dark strands of hair, pleading with him with sounds and urging muscles to continue, to take her wherever he might lead her, to undress her down to her bare bones and the galaxy she has swirling within.

Every reaction, every bend into his touch and against his mouth is her consent. Is her invitation. Is her asking for more. One hand's fingers try to dig into the wall behind her without success, the other rakes through his hair, pushing the strands away from his forehead, grip tightening as the quakes jolt down to the soles of her feet. She braces herself against the steadiness and solidity of the wall behind her, teeth digging into the plump flesh of her lower lip to try to stifle the sounds bursting forth from her mouth like an eruption.

She tosses her head forward to gaze down at him, eyes on fire as they burn down towards him. Cheeks flushed, breath in spurts. The hand that had pressed into the wall comes up grip her breast from over her shirt.

Her voice quivers like the rest of her body.]

Cassian ... Cassian, please ..

[One of his hands left her hip to do something fast and rough, impatiently dextrous, to his own clothes. Then both hands were back, fingers curving around her thighs, palms flush with her skin, kneading her flesh, pushing himself up her body to his feet. His hair, his face, as he rose, rippling a wake in the fabric still covering her stomach, abdomen, chest; his hands sliding up her legs to grasp and hoist her up. All part of the single movement, he was in her as his head reached her neck. Lips and teeth found hinge of her jaw. One hand fisted her shirt in the low hollow of her back. His other hand struck the wall behind her to brace his tremortaut arm—as he pushed into her, full.

For an instant he freezes, running all his senses over her like a diagnostic. Making sure there's no pain response.]

[Jyn exclaims a cry of hedonistic surprise at the speed of his movements, at the feeling of being filled, at the strength behind the thrusting of his hips. Her arm hooks around the back of his neck, the side of her fist pressing into her mouth to try and mute the knee-buckling whimpering and groaning she can't seem to contain.

When she feels his stagnancy, she loves him for it - loves him for the consideration he's showing her even now - and murmurs a confirmatory sound with a erratic nod of her head.]

Yes, please .. [It comes out more like a breath, one bent knee rising to rest against his hip, the other locking into place so as to keep her from collapsing the way her muscles threaten, awash with adrenaline and desire. She tugs him away from her enough to look at him, make sure he could see her eyes and the hunger burning behind them as final confirmation.]

[there are times he wondered who he would have been if one thing had changed

he couldn't imagine away the war. that would change everything.

he couldn't indulge any idea too far or too long. that was insanity.

but something. a handhold. an... insertion. when a memory couldn't be tamed. when there was no way to save or stop who he had been. he could send someone else back as a thought.

mostly that would be kay. someone who wouldn't have to change to be there or come back. whose own 'life experience', personality, trajectory, mortality, mission, choices, would be unaffected. as isolated a variable as one could wish.

kay could have helped him limp back to base.
kay could have guided him so he could keep his eyes shut.
kay could have steadied his shaking hand.
kay's photoreceptors could break up the dark
kay could keep him from being utterly alone

...kay could never take the shot for him. cassian wouldn't allow... wouldn't do that.

if he'd known kay since cassian was a child
perhaps he would have mimicked droid functions more than he even does now
how he manages his own mental processes in tech model
perhaps he might also have aspired to impermeability
never registering pain
nor doubt
nor love

Cassian has so… forebode, forbade— In their intimacy: that if he took his mind off Jyn, if he stopped focusing fiercely on the present, on giving to her, he would default.

The droid mode he slipped into when he had to survive combat.
Had to inflict damage.
Had to desert an innocent.
Had to find an exit. Complete a task. Steady his hands. Clear a path. Choose a method. See details. Commit murder.

And in that mode, would he harm her somehow
not physically hurt her
she could take him if she needed to
she was better unarmed than he was
he was pretty sure a blow from her would wake him up

but what would she think of him if he was… gone, like that
looked into his eyes and saw just shell looking back
would she fear him
would she feel violated
would she be angry
would he be deserting her
and what with?

Here's the answer.

She pulls him to look at her. His eyes feel like chasms looking back. He loves her, he knows her, he's with her… but he fears too distantly, too far down, too infinitesmal amid everything else that's been allowed to storm up inside…

But her eyes don't… she's not searching. Not looking to him for reassurance. She's giving it. Wants him to see that she's there. That she's with him, she's willing, she's wanting, he's wanted. She understands and she's staying and he should go on.

He hasn't made a sound… but something breaks from him. A shudder. He kisses her hard.

Doesn't linger… his mouth moves from hers to her cheek, her jaw, her neck; he seizes her body in his arms, scraping the backs of his wrists against the metal wall, not caring, as long as, if her chest against his can staunch the rupture; thrusting inside her until he'll only feel her, reach her from the depths, make everything else stop…

her

looking at him with the first brightness he's seen in her eyes, outgleaming the crystal at her fingertips
pushing herself suddenly aft, away from bodhi and kay, and catching cassian's arm
and both start, feeling the jolt through their bodies, blindsided at how after so many collisions, so much navigation, so much invasion of one another's space, their proximity suddenly feels entirely different
but she goes to tell the others in the hold that they're coming through the shield gate
and he clamps his hand to the grab bar to look out at scarif and put any such thoughts far, far out from mind

stabbing at him with her crystalshard eyes though she never shouts, her voice never raises, no bluntforce trauma but precision to pierce
looking for his armor
looking to shatter it
looking to cut through the curtains and mazes and lies of a terrible mess of ambiguous universe to find something real
he was a liar and a murderer
he'd lied to her and meant to kill her father
and by the force that had to mean something
they'd failed, they'd failed in everything
there had at least to be this
but he couldn't or wouldn't give it to her in his own failure and pain and rage
and because on some level he needed her to surmount it
for somebody's sake
needed the truth as badly
for both of them
it had them and they had to keep going

looking up at him from the shuddering floor
the planet literally splitting around them
kicked and battered
all her walls shown the ram
that what they'd been built on could be simply pulled away
and leave her foundationless
looking at him with open emptiness
and need
if he can't convince her to follow him now
she'll let it all fall around her

looking across at him, the green schematic and monitor lights flaring heightened in her eyes
jaw and shoulders and everything hardened from a life he's just barely glimpsed as data and can now see he hasn't grasped at all
but he meets that look with the full weight of his own
seeing someone who's decided only to survive
and wondering if he can bring her to where he'd instead decided to go
and must take her now

limp and broken and so profoundly struck, like she can barely find the will to keep breathing and doesn't understand why she must, but still and quiet, no flinch, barely a shiver, as he cleanses her wounds
crawling under the covers he held up for her, resigned or uncaring if she's about to feel him push himself against her, perhaps that's the price of his help the alternative to which was dying, or perhaps she's so far inside herself now she's not aware of him at all; but he didn't, he was never going to, he folds the blankets around her and turns away, silently finishes packing for the morning, then folds himself down to a shadow in the chair and watches her all night
until he made himself simply leave, knowing a second longer would change the life that wasn't his own
and though she'd been too hurt, outside and in, to make him even imagine such a thing when he'd been near her
every time in those first few months with aune
sometimes he would try to think
(minus her injuries, though he had no mental image of her likeness without them, just the notion—the shadow of her)
of that woman instead

He couldn't throw off their circumstances. Not one of those times.

When if he could, he would have gathered her in his arms and held on for the rest of his life.

He can now. He does it now. Exerting inside her, as if friction, nerves firing, can imprint her on him for good, send him back to hold her all the times he hadn't, generate from their stimulation a Force to shatter and replace that universe with one they bring to birth; and none of that even matters as long as he can stay with her wherever the hell they are, stay in her and hold her tight.]

Edited 2017-06-10 09:04 (UTC)

[Something in Jyn realizes that - on the peaks and ranges of pleasure and sorrow - the intensity of memory, of secondary thought ~~stolen~~ borrowed from someone else is blinding. Searing. As hot white bright as the light had been on Scarif as she felt the disintegration of epithelial cells and all that lie underneath, as she felt the calcium in her bones liquefy and float into the ether, becoming one with The Force or the Universe or maybe Nothingness in its purest form.

She isn't consciously aware of the difference, not while distracted and focused so intently on the sharp press of his hips against hers, the sudden bluntness at his being met with their limit of being able to go no further, no deeper. The friction inside of her consumes her much like the light on Scarif - reminds her vaguely of the same heat, the same brilliance - and she vaguely wonders whether they won't simply explode or implode or something-plode at the culmination of all of their efforts, at the highest peak before the fall, before the crash, before the delicious descent.

Jyn remembers the blossoming of color and heat in her cheeks as her fingers gripped his arm, the way his bone and muscle shifted beneath her hand, the immediate pull of both of their eyes to the source of contact and the agony she felt pulling herself away. The lingering, aching, gnawing pain in her chest as she alerted the others, trying to focus on the mission, on the words she knew they'd needed to hear from her in that precise moment, all the while trying to ignore the burning sensation in her hand and the stronger heat at her core. She remembers forcing herself to stay in the hold, finally beginning to feel the oppressive weight of what she could lose in those moments, on that kriffing planet, and knowing all of it lay in Cassian's eyes, the way he looks at her, the way he makes her feel. And ignoring it. Swallowing it. Knowing the sound of his footsteps coming down the rungs by instinct alone, and wanting nothing more to drown herself in his eyes while pulling away at the same time, falling into old practices of self-preservation and fear. Dislodging her tongue from its cocoon in her jaw and using the lingering warmth left by his gaze to fuel the words that came next: "Saw Gerrera used to say one fighter with a sharp stick and nothing left to lose can take the day."

Jyn remembers never wanting to so acutely rip someone's throat out as she had Cassian's after Eadu. Body and bone and soul drenched, quivering, frozen. Fingers and hand still blazing with the evaporating heat of her father's body in her lap, her cheek streaked with blood and ash that only she could see where he'd reached up to touch her face. "It must be destroyed." "Look at you. I have so much to tell you." She needs someone, anyone to blame for the way her father's presence had been ripped so violently out of her life, not just then - not just on the platform, but all of it. From the moment she'd been born on Vallt, to the weeks he'd go by without even acknowledging her, to the toys she'd wake up to in her bed as though it could substitute for his embrace and affection, to hiding in a bunker and praying for Papa to come and find her, save her, hold her. "Everything I do, I do to protect you. Say you understand." Empire, Rebellion, she doesn't care who'd done it. She doesn't care who'd been the one to ultimately clench its fist around her father's throat 'til all the air had been squeezed out. And Cassian's there, an easy target. With those infuriatingly dark eyes, the quick manipulation of his tongue to turn her words against her and discredit her reaction. So she spits out her acid, she aims straight for his heart, for his core, for his essence, and is unapologetic about it. She lets him get close, can feel the breath on her face, and resists the urge to slam skull against skull and do something with the black hole she has inside. She crawls away, into the cargo hold, and - finally alone (again, always alone) - begins to cry.

Jyn remembers feeling drunk on the sound of her Papa's voice. It's been years since she's last heard it, and she's always wondered if her memory of his face, the vibration of his vocal chords, the tension of his mouth is as accurate as she recalls. He looks so tired. He looks so empty. He looks like a man who's lost everything and more, who's only been fueled and driven by the revenge into which he's placed all faith he still carries, all memories of his wife and daughter, all memories of the life he'd never been able to have. The life he had stolen away from him as much as she had had. She remembers the sharp pain of her knees hitting the stone ground, no longer able to support her sinking weight, pulled down first by the pit in her stomach and her heart close behind. She remembers a hand at her wrist, looking up and expecting to see Papa or Saw, the way she'd hoped and dreamed in both of those kriffing bunkers, years apart. But finding Cassian's face instead. Somehow saved and pulled by the desperation in his tone, his pull. Unable to drag herself out of the darkness, but willing to go to follow his light.

Jyn remembers the spark of recognition and familiarity, the glow of the lightboards casting him in a pallid color that could never do him justice. Unable to place the connection, unable to draw the line from the clean-shaven man with the closely cropped hair, struggling against a beast who wasn't going down without a fight, from whom she'd stolen the next week's meals straight out of his pocket to the hardened, broken man before her who looks well beyond his 26 years of age, from a lifetime of war and fighting and death and fallen comrades and fortified defenses; instead, sees flickers of the boy she once loved with dark, endless eyes and long tendrils of coal-black hair that she loved to run her fingers through. She wonders, silently and somewhere out of her consciousness, what it might be like to do the same to Cassian.

Jyn remembers the darkness. She remembers the bursting flame of adrenaline and its almost-immediate extinction, aware of every bone and vessel and ligament being broken torn destroyed shattered under their fists. Orbital bones and zygomatic bones go first, a sound that rattles her teeth and breaks their knuckles. Mandible displaced, broken; masseter muscles torn. Nasal fracture, most likely causing long-term damage. Teeth loosened. Platysma over-stretched and mostly likely torn. Calculated injuries, torn ligaments and tendons, ruptured vessels, shattered bones; easier to focus on and easier to measure than the hole where her heart had been, the bleeding and bloody fragments of whatever might've been left still oozing, dripping with the blood rushing from both nostrils, split lips, lacerated skin. She remembers nothing except the gentle embrace of a bed. Sharp stings of something being applied to the cuts in her skin, wondering if there's any skin left. In and out of consciousness, of awareness, thinking maybe Hadder had shown up after all and found her and would be there when she woke. If she woke. Waking up to an empty room, eye still swollen but still intact and still where it should be; fuzziness, motion where they shouldn't be, lurching nausea and pain and fried up nerves from too much damage. Faint whiff of sterilization, not only from her injuries but - from something else. She knows the smell. Knows the scent of Imperial uniforms and cleaning standards. Remembers the mix of it with her Papa's clove aftershave. Had he found her? Had he found her and left? Could he have done such a thing? Staring into an empty room, no trace of whomever had been there, whomever had saved her, except the lingering smell of antiseptic and the heat of her skin where he'd touched her.]

I love you. [Her voice rings out clear, purposeful. Still coated in the throes of pleasure and passion, arms and limbs still clinging to him as though it might keep her from disintegrating like back on Scarif, but still cutting through the air - words she will never say without clear intent behind them. She repeats.] I love you, Cassian. [Make no mistake of who she is talking about; make it clear that it's him. It's them. No matter of what they couldn't change or who they couldn't be. They are here now, together, despite (in spite?) of it all.]

Edited 2017-06-10 22:31 (UTC)

[The side of his face presses in hers. Soft and weathered skin, abrasive shadow, sharp bones, yielding hollows; cheek to cheek but his face slightly turned toward her, eyes closed at her skin and hair, breathing her, too…
His arms vicegrip around her, but also shield her, taking any jolting of their bodies against the wall, so she only feels the vibration, not the cold, not the strike.
His feet and legs are braced as hard as if he were putting his shoulder to a stalled tank… and the motion of his core in hers is… digging. Laboring, plunging them both to some… expanse…

Her words, the reverberation of her throat against his throat, both their chests, her lips on his skin…
He doesn't come, but… he… stills.

Not an ending. Not a withdrawal. A… moment of… suspension.

Full weight and force of his body keep pressing her to the wall. Muscles quavering with the strength of his grip on her. Sharp cliffs of breaths pressing his chest to hers, heartbeat thudding louder. As hard and deep in her as solid bodies could be, without molecules permeating magnetic fields.
Yet for all of that… the sudden stillness isn't itself violent, or resistant, or angry, or surrendered, or… anything in of itself… it's…

…he'd been clawing, fighting, to get himself back to her.

She just threw him a tether and pulled him to her the rest of the way.

He's reached her. At last.

He slowly, slowly, shifts his weight, sliding legs and feet, turning just slightly in her silken flesh. His arms don't release a breath of her, but his fingers uncurl from white-knuckled grip of her shirt, to pressing, smooth, full against her. Not hanging on for dear life. Feeling her.
And after a moment, head bowed beside hers, struggling for breath, for life, for now, them, this, he lifts his face
(wet with perspiration and possibly more)
to meet her eyes
just as they had in a different turbolift
at the end of a different life

And the axis of their planet has shifted
just a little
from all that they had known in that moment they would never have
to…

…returning to that moment, somehow, as a start, not an end. Letting the timeline split there.

From I wish I could know you
I wish we could have time

to…

…there you are

It'll be the first time he fails to say it back… his throat's too tight for words… but it brings him back, in his eyes on hers, his body no less hard, not ready to stop, but… able to… take a moment. Just experience the full reality of her. Relish it, let the stillness give him every quiver and ripple and flex of her body, until it moved his again. His forehead ducking for him to kiss her clavicles and throat, an attitude of weeping though he isn't, and in thrall to her; fealty and gratitude and relief. It's not restraint, he's not holding back, and won't necessarily shift gears to subservience now. No need to force anything, not gentleness either; roughness can be loving too. But something… the desperate fury… falls away. Here you are. I love you too.]

Edited 2017-06-11 05:19 (UTC)

[Jyn's begun to learn to not immediately leap to thoughts and feelings of fear whenever there's stagnation in Cassian's movements. There's still a tiny tremor in her lip, in the tips of her fingers, but it doesn't toss her around like a doll in an earthquake anymore. She's learnt to trust, understand, learn, know his reactions, his processes.

She remembers, then, how short of a time they've really been in each other's lives - how so much of it had been so hyperfocused - like a light beam through a crystal, setting the world on fire - on the mission, on the Rebellion, on Jedha, then Eadu, then the Council, then Scarif.

The time they've shared like this - outside of war, outside of death, outside of destruction - is barely a breath in the grand scheme. They've explored the insides of each other's minds, wandered the labyrinths of grey matters and folds to exhaustion, and yet -

There's so much still to learn.

And where it might have frightened her once, it exhilarates her now.

So when he pauses, when he shifts and pulls away, she doesn't begin to shrink back into herself the way she had the first time they'd shed their clothes like second skins and used their bodies like flint to set their demons aflame. Instead, she waits; she listens; she breathes; she trusts. Her galaxies repeat, reverberate the words still echoing on her tongue - again and again until she's certain he's not only heard them, but is starting to learn to trust them, too.

And when he returns, she welcomes him back, welcomes and basks in the scrape of stubble against her chest, her neck - allows his lips to trace invisible patterns along her skin she'll remember for the rest of her days. Hand again sowing the fields of his hair, the other snaked under his shirt to press assuredly against his back. Allows the pinhole focus of her attention to blur its edges, spread out and feel every part of him against, in every part of her.

Even the Force couldn't keep me away.]

Edited 2017-06-11 07:27 (UTC)

[… the first time they'd shed their clothes like second skins and used their bodies like flint to set their demons aflame …

That was why he changed his coat so often in the U-wing, you know… yes, adapting to different temperatures… switching wet for dry… range of movement for carrying vs. fighting vs. piloting…

But really it was to force himself out of the last moment into the next. Shed that skin. That being. Be who he needed to be now, not dwell on who he'd been just before. Someone he almost invariably deplored.

Curious. He's still fully clothed, right now.

…He doesn't think of this consciously. But… in the stillness—her allowance of it, her priceless trust—he cranes back his head again to meet her eyes. His face is expressionless—not hiding anything; the opposite, not putting anything on to fool her, not feigning to project—but his eyes are hers once more. And he shifts them, gently now, no less decisively, so the framework of his legs holds her up without also needing his arms; and he keeps them fully locked below, but deliberately disentangles his arms, arches back from the waist, so he can strip off his jacket. Give her access to what's below.

Then, eyes still fixed on hers, slides his hands up beneath her remaining clothes, shifting them loose, doesn't matter whether they stay on or come off, but he's replacing them most closely against her now with the flowing warmth of his hands on her skin, her ribs, breasts, everything.

And begins to move in her again; longer, slower, more deliberate strokes. That roll and propel her higher up and back against the wall. But unhurried now, and no danger of her hitting painfully against it.

He's with her now. Freed from anguish and need. So he knows what he wants next.]

Edited 2017-06-11 08:17 (UTC)

[Her thumbs perch themselves on the sharp edge of his jaw, like little fleshy underlines to the perfection, magnificent arrangement of his face as he angles backwards, then hovers them as he peels the jacket away from his shoulders, slides them down his arms. She gently rests her palms against the wall of his chest, fingers wiggling with elation at being able to feel him more readily, before being overcome with hunger and need and sliding down to crawl underneath the hem of his shirt. They coil around towards his back before one loosens and dislodges itself to press back against her own body, flatten itself on top of his hand at her breast.

Not only for the nerve endings singeing with electrical spark under his touch, but for the pulse coming through her thumb, beating through her wrist. Syncing percussion and vibration down to the molecular level.

The resuming tidal flow of his hips, his driving force, pulls sounds out of her like a staccato thread - grunt and groan and plea on the searing heels of each of his thrusts. She feels the heat again beginning to blossom and unfold like silk, like the quickening movements of a bird's wings as it prepares for flight; a growing flame spreading out from where he's buried himself inside of her. Eyes, incandescent, brand every angle shadow peak hollow of his face like fire to leather.]

[His hand moulds beneath hers, welcoming her pressure, her warmth; and fully taking her message. Carrying her hand on the back of his, his hand dedicates itself entirely to her breast. Running immersively like water over its swell and curves. Fingertips like kisses, then harder runs and rolls, against the pebbled knot at its peak. His knuckles are an ocean under her palm.

They've revelled and ecstasied in seamless sharing of control. Just now, she'd given him the space, safety, freedom to be uncontrolled. Now… empowered by her… he takes his and her permission to stop avoiding what he'd learned too well to do. See if it could be used for love not war. Control.

When he cranes his head to claim her jawline with his mouth; when his other hand moves flat against her inner back; even his twisting his torso beyond propulsion of their labor to flex his muscles, to surge up to greet her palm against him. Everything is, greedily yet self-possessedly, to take every millisecond, every micromotion, of all of this. Inhabit it fully. And do with it exactly what he most wants it to be.

Which is not so different from how he's been all along, because crucial to what he wants, to what stimulates him the most, is her pleasure and confidence and care.

But… now… his own side of those things, left (while he still needed to trust and believe that he wasn't inherently hurtful or manipulative to her) determinedly out of it… he finally lets come to bear.

To try to explain might seem like a distinction without a difference… but to be in it and feel it, for him, and seems also for her… is a whole new level.

The fingers of his right hand roll and fold on her nipple; then his palm splays again to hold the whole of her breast, cupping and compression. His left hand moves up her back to her shoulder blade, dragging his nails marklessly up her flesh; traces and follows the sculpted muscles of her shoulder, her bicep, down her forearm as far as he can reach, before drawing her arm out from around his back… to clasp her hand in his; continuous, liquid, extending their arms, to pin her hand above her head against the wall. Their fingers still interlocked, pliably, to run and rub his between her own. The shifting sinews of his forearm playing with hers, too. His other hand shifted inside her shirt, over her chest stretched open, sculpting her breast brought up and forward by the stretched muscles of her captured arm, and continued to work her over.

His lips and whisper tingle in her ear. Breathed, rhythmic, enforcing and enhancing the surging tide, the cresting of their hips.]

That's it…
I've got you…
¡…!
Come for me, Jyn

Edited 2017-06-11 18:35 (UTC)

[She wants to keep drinking him in, keep imprinting his image on her as it burns through her retinas and up into her brain, but the reflexive and overwhelming response to shut her eyes, part her lips is too much to ignore. She willingly loses that battle, neck curving back as the base of her skull rests itself against the metal of the wall behind her, fingertips digging into the softness of his flesh and the hardness of the bone and muscle underneath - until dragged out, elevated by his hand.

Her tongue feels thick and heavy in her mouth, the tip of it running along the ridge of her teeth as breaths give way to pants, as grunts give way to moans. Her fingers curl down and tighten, grip like iron, as the tension at her center begins to contract and pull every muscle in her body, like an imploding supernova, focal point distinctly at where they're fused.

The velvet of his voice is what finally does it, though - it's the final push to explode her body and atoms and molecules out of the stratosphere and into the orbit of her swirling head. She comes in tremor and spasm - wave, after wave, after wave - knees and legs trembling like branches in a breeze, ribs reaching for his, shoulders rooted firmly into the wall to keep her from collapsing to the ground. Her head bucks forward to crash into his shoulder, fingers of her free hand clutching his shirt on the opposite shoulder so tightly it's a wonder it doesn't melt together. Her body quivers and flinches as electrical spark and ravaging embers course through her veins like blood, murmurs of sound released to his chest in desperate huffs of air and warmth.]

[The soft-tissue-covered muscles of her core, milking and sheathing him, rippled, swallowed, gripped his flesh, with sublime slickness and strength. He braced all his muscles to anchor her, pelvis and abdomen rock solid and straight. As her body's spasms, gulping on him threw back his head, exposing the pulse in his threat, pulling air out of him that groaned itself up from below.

Excruciating… exquisite

…But he kept himself on the brink.

Didn't let the crest break.

His head came back down, bringing his chest and arms inward, enfolding her, to catch and caress her as she shivered apart. Holding her head to his heart, his fingers pouring into her hair, he cupped her head and kissed its crown, murmured words punctuating their heavy breaths.]

amor meu
meva vida
my love
my life

[He held her, held them both, throbbing and breathing, against the wall.

Then he craned back his head. His eyes… had a new spark in them. Adoration, maybe mischief.

But also… the look of a drill sergeant.

He drew one foot back. His hands moved down her body, finding points of leverage. Bracing her on one thigh, he bent his other knee, bending her back and himself down with perfect balance and suspension. Laying her meticulously down on her back—with a quick graceless grab to pull his discarded jacket under her shoulders, bunched to cushion her neck, before they met the floor. Laying himself down with her.

His flesh never came out of her. Unyielding.

The beauty of her orgasm could have brought him to one too. He'd chosen not to.

Hands now braced on either side of her breasts, looking at her down the length of his arms, he gently pressed his leg inside hers to urge her further open. And began to slide gently up in her again.]

Beautiful, [he murmured. Pushing up in her to rub her sweetest, densest nerves.]

I think you have more.

Edited 2017-06-12 07:42 (UTC)

[The rushing gusts in Jyn's ears and the drunken ethereal whirling of her planetary head delay the signals between one transmitter to the next, and she ripples and melts like molten metal in his hands, gladly blindly blissfully travelling wherever he might lead her. The press of cold metal against her bare skin and through the thin fabric of her shirt is a seismic shock from head to toe, but almost as quickly, the heat of her body fueled so exquisitely by his thaws any chill, leaving only fire in its wake.

She reaches up to rake her dampened fringe from the perspiring skin of her forehead, before pressing the back of her knuckles to the plumpness of her cheeks as she lets out an enchanted laugh, glowing as one does in such a transcendental state. It's one rumbling, delirious giggle then another and another, until she rediscovers her longing and hunger, lifting her hands to mold to the sides of his face to pull him down, crashing their lips together with a ravenous appetite.

Her hips surge beneath him as her knees bow outward, her teeth coming down to press gently into the soft flesh of his lip. One hand finds the small of his back, reaching up under the hem of his shirt, delicately tracing the muted range of his spine up towards his shoulders. She pulls her mouth away from his enough to fill her lungs again, eyes narrowed with desire as she flicks them open and up.]

Then come and find it [she purrs, the corner of her lip hooking up with mischief.]

[This time, a reversal: he kisses her mouth the way he had her core. Wanting to find every softness and curve and plump of flesh and lavish it.

His body contracted, bending forward at the waist, abdominal muscles tightly shaking. He came down onto his elbows so his hands can frame her face. One hand trailed downward, wrapping around her throat, pressureless but so firm, sliding with agonizing slowness down all of it. At its base, his nails curl inward; rake, maddeningly light, down clavicles and breasts. Nipple, areole, mound. Then, with the perfectly controlled, painless, swift decisiveness with which it had wrapped her throat, he fills his palm with her breast, and his whole body arches, simultaneously bringing his mouth above his hand, and, the fabric of his pants (open to allow connection but still up around his waist) rasping her inner thighs, his smoother body coursing and furrowing her velvet warmth.]

Edited 2017-06-12 08:55 (UTC)

[Jyn sucks in a breath, heaving her chest up at the careful, meticulous trail Cassian's following with his hands. Feather-light touch across the vast expanse of her skin draw up its rippled, goosebumped terrain, nerves simultaneously set on fire and chilled into a state of ecstasy. She hums a quiet noise of being teased, of relishing in the attention, in the stimulation of his hand.

She cries out at his sudden propulsion, back arching itself away from the ground and towards him. Her heels dig themselves into the cold, hard metal underneath, providing opposite friction for his forward momentum. Each thrust of his hips is another spark, another inferno, another combustion of heat and electricity in her body - and she's unable to control or tamp down the sounds he's drawing out of her, as though he reached down into her lungs and pulled them out himself.

Her fingers grip the fabric at his shoulders as she hooks one leg around his thighs, allowing him to burrow deeper.]

Edited 2017-06-13 01:41 (UTC)

[Her flexing, bracing her legs reverberates onto him. His hand on her cheek slid to cradle beneath her neck. He turned his face on her breast to kiss its swell, hear her heartbeat, and struggle for breath.

Sliding inside and working around one another's clothes has had its own sweetness, but now he needs her flesh on his. Craning up his neck, straining back his head, he kisses her neck under jaw. Then props himself up on one forearm, palm braced to the ground, to start working at finally, fully removing her shirt and bra—his fingers a bit less dextrous than they'd been earlier. His lower body, still sheathed to the hilt, falls still for the effort, but every thrum and squeeze from her gets an answering jolt and shiver, inside and out, from him.]

Edited 2017-06-13 21:17 (UTC)

[It takes less than a second for Jyn's mind - however clouded and foggy it might be in her distracted state - to figure out what it is that his hand is doing. She loosens the grip on his shirt and aids him in the removal of hers, lifting her body off of the ground at the waist and then at the shoulders as the fabric is tugged off. She twists her arms around to her back to unfasten the bra next, sliding the straps down her arms and shuddering at the sudden exposure to the air.

She picks up her head and leans forward to lavish his neck, collar bone, shoulder with kisses and grazings of her teeth as she reaches her hands down to unfasten his belt and the button of his trousers, to allow him more freedom of movement. She uses her heels with care and precision to help side them further down his legs so they bunch at his ankles, mirroring her own. His shirt is next, her head falling back to the jacket under her head as she tugs up on the hem of his shirt towards his head, hands and fingers greedily, hungrily stealing any touch of him that they can manage along the way.]

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