Chapter Text
Cassian’s path out of the manufacturing center shouldn’t have taken him anywhere near the shipping bay.
He’d been undercover as an Imperial facilities inspector for two days, gathering intel about the sudden demand for quadanium in the Tapani sector and waiting for the Pathfinder team that would be sent to cover his extraction. He hadn’t particularly liked the second part of the plan: he preferred to manage his own exfils - no moving pieces to consider beyond his own tolerance for risk and, more recently, Kay’s calculations coming through over his comms. But the manufacturing plants on Calipsa had been cracking down on security, and Draven didn’t want to take any chances with Cassian’s cover being blown by a detected data breach. They would need some way to track down any leads he uncovered, and the right combination of code cylinders for the role hadn’t come cheap.
So a team effort it was. Cassian would secure the data, and the Pathfinders would be there to draw fire while Cassian slipped out.
According to the mission timeline, the team should have arrived on planet at 0800 Imperial standard time. When the signal fire from the east wing of the building started, he was supposed to head directly to the extraction point, five klicks away on the other side of a sparsely forested ridge.
But when the chrono on his wrist hit 0930, Cassian didn’t hear signal fire from the east wing. Instead he heard the concussive boom of an explosion, the floor under his feet shuddering as the impact rocked through the rest of the facility.
Cassian paused - putting his hands over his ears so it would look to any observers like he was bracing from the noise - and switched on his discrete comm, straining to pick up any chatter from the team on the ground.
He could hear nothing: no voices, no clicks of someone tapping out the all-clear. Silence, then the vicious swear he let out under his breath, then the first shouts of confusion coming from the corridors around him.
Cassian flexed his fingers against his temples to ground his focus. He shouldn’t be lingering. He should be halfway to the speeder bay by now. The Pathfinders were there to create a diversion, and for all he knew that was exactly what they were doing. Everything might still be going according to plan, plus or minus a few improvisations.
And in any case, there would most likely be nothing he could do for the team even if it weren’t.
“Fuck,” he said again, louder this time, and then he hung a left down the next hallway, heading toward the east wing at a brisk walk.
Three meters down the corridor an alarm blared over the P.A. system, a modulated voice ordering all non-security personnel to evacuate the building. Moments later the hallway around Cassian flooded, a stream of bodies and whirring droids rushing past him, and Cassian put his hand up to his ear again, pretending to listen for orders that would explain why he was moving directly against the current.
Ten meters further he picked up the first smells of the explosion: acrid and coppery, turning the air into a bitter film against his tongue. The corridors were growing clearer of traffic as they grew thicker with smoke, and Cassian risked a pause to reach down into his boot and extract his vibroblade from its sheath.
Intelligence had planned the extraction to coincide with the morning hours, when half the security staff got diverted to escort the chief operating officer from his private residence to his office on site, but there would still be five guards on duty, and Cassian would bet good credits he wasn’t lucky enough for them all to have gotten caught in the blast.
Sure enough, he heard a yell of alarm a moment later, followed by the sound of blaster fire and three quick pulses of plasma lighting up the haze of smoke ahead.
He paused at the edge of the doorway to the shipping bay, ducking his head around the corner before returning to cover and reviewing what he’d seen: one Rebel still on their feet, crouched behind a low stack of crates five meters to Cassian’s right; two security guards on the upper levels moving around to flank; one guard on the ground, left-handed, rifle barrel pitched too far forward on the forearm, peripheral head sweeps shallow at 150 degrees.
Cassian adjusted his grip, counted a beat, and then sprinted into the bay, dropping his shoulders so he came up under the approaching guard’s right side.
He drove his blade between the ribs as he twisted around, hauling the guard’s arm over his shoulder so he could use the man’s back as a shield against the blaster fire from above. The guard jolted with the impact of a bolt, and Cassian took the opportunity to wrench the rifle free from his other hand. He tucked the barrel against his own chest as he dropped to his knees, letting the guard’s body slump over him for one last bit of cover until he could roll sideways, landing on his back beneath the durasteel platform of a loading dock.
Cassian’s interference had given his fellow Rebel an opportunity to jump out from behind the crates and exchange fire with the guard who’d shot at Cassian from above, so Cassian leapt back to his feet and ran along the side of the dock at a low crouch, visualizing the angle of approach and calculating the distance the other guard must have reached before he ducked out and fired two shots up at the second floor - heard the loud thud of a body hitting metal girders, hard.
A second later, another thud - from the ground floor this time - and Cassian cursed as he spun around to catch the final guard with a shot to the chest, not bothering to wait for confirmation of the kill before he sprinted toward the shipping crates where the Rebel had gotten hit.
He knew before he got there that he was too late. The body was still, thrown over a fallen crate at a jarring angle with a blaster hole visible in the upper torso. Cassian stopped to close the man’s eyes before scanning the rest of the shipping bay for any other signs of life.
None greeted him. The bay was silent now, and though he could discern the make-shift uniforms of a small Pathfinder team littered around the floor, no limbs stirred. Many of them appeared to have been caught in the initial explosion, and even if there’d been time to call in a medical team - even if Cassian hadn’t been under twenty minutes from missing the extraction window - he wouldn’t have needed Kay on the line to know how low the odds were that he could save anyone but himself.
Cassian let out a slow breath through his nose, setting a mental clock for three minutes, and then he made his way among the fallen figures, stooping to press his fingers against wrists or necks, finding everywhere the same emptiness he’d expected: no pulse, no pulse, nowhere to even look for a pulse, and then -
He paused, a meter away from the next slumped form, something in his stomach lurching sideways like a ship losing an engine.
He couldn’t move. He wasn’t sure he could breathe. Because there was something about the crooked angle of the fallen body’s hand, the wiry slope of the shoulders, the way the shadows pooled to make a pocket of darkness underneath what was visible of the eyes, the lines of a face Cassian hadn’t seen in years.
“No,” he said aloud, less like a protest than an involuntary exhale: the wind that got knocked out of the lungs when there was no time to prepare for the blow.
It wasn’t possible. It shouldn’t have been possible, and for one wild moment Cassian thought he might bolt for the door. Because if he never turned the body over, he would never have to know it was true. If he didn’t try to shake life back into them and fail, then he could go on imagining the eyes under those lids still filled with restless, watchful sadness - go on picturing them as he’d seen them last: sweeping over a stretch of open water before they turned back toward him, a question forming in the crow’s feet crinkled at their sides.
He could walk away now and keep pretending he would still meet that gaze somewhere else someday. On some world where Cassian had never been before - a place where no trouble had ever followed him.
But Cassian didn’t walk away. He lurched forward: three quick strides, a fall to his knees, and then he was curling a hand to support the back of the man’s neck, rolling the figure toward him as his heart jabbed a series of sharp, relentless upper-cuts against his throat.
“Melshi,” he said, because it was Melshi - he’d known it was Melshi - and the second syllable cracked as he pressed his fingers to the place where a pulse should have been. “Come on, Melshi. Not like this. Come on.”
Please, he didn’t dare say out loud. But he thought it anyway, squeezing his eyes shut as if he could will more sensation under his hands by blocking out his sight. Come on, Melshi. Don’t do this to me. Come on. Come on.
A moment later he felt a flutter, a jump of life against his skin.
“Melshi,” he said again, moving his hand up to cup Melshi’s cheek, stroking a thumb across his jaw. “Melshi. Wake up.”
Melshi’s chest rose, a huff of air brushing over Cassian’s hand, and Cassian felt his own lungs empty in a rush - the relief so sudden he almost had to brace himself against the ground.
“That’s it. That’s better. Come on. Come back to me. Just breathe for me, okay?”
Melshi let out a low, reedy sound, his brows furrowing for a moment before his eyes blinked open. He searched the space in front of him, his gaze unfocused.
“That’s it,” Cassian repeated. “That’s good, Melshi. I’m here. I’ve got you now.”
Melshi’s lips twisted into a grimace of pain, and Cassian frowned, trying to decide which hand to move so he could search for its source, but then Melshi identified it for him:
“Keef,” he said, his voice so taut with hurt that Cassian froze in place, aching as if he’d been kicked in the gut.
“It’s me,” he replied when he could speak. “It’s me, Melshi. I’m here.”
Melshi blinked again, his eyes finding Cassian’s at last and holding them as a deep, wet breath heaved through his lungs.
“Oh,” he said thickly, and then, a moment later: “Am I dead, then?”
“No.” It came out sharper than Cassian had meant it, so he tried to soften the edges by brushing his fingers across Melshi’s cheekbone, sweeping away a smudge of char. “You got caught in a blast - knocked out, but you’re okay. You’re going to be okay now.”
“Mmm,” Melshi hummed, and Cassian wasn’t sure if he’d heard Cassian’s words or not: his eyes were losing focus again, his breathing shallowing out. “Wondered if I’d see you. Before I went. Thought if I saw anything - anything nice, you know - it’d probably have to be you.”
“Melshi,” Cassian said firmly. “You’re not dying. I’m going to get you to medical. You hear me? You’re going to make it. You’re going to be fine. Just stay with me.”
“Glad you came, anyway,” Melshi continued. “Hope it’s a long time before you join me.”
His eyes made one more effort to focus on Cassian’s before they were rolling back in his head, his eyelids fluttering shut.
“Fuck,” Cassian swore, and then he drew in a slow breath and set his shoulders.
Because Melshi was alive. Melshi was alive, and he was here, his skin still warm under Cassian’s fingers, and Cassian was going to keep it that way.
He made himself release his grip on Melshi’s face and neck - lowering Melshi’s head carefully to the ground so he could scan his body for injuries.
There was an angry red line across Melshi’s left temple, just underneath his cap: a blow to the head, maybe from catching debris, since there were lacerations across his left shoulder as well. Moving lower, Cassian found another gash - deeper and more worrying - stretching from his left hip back toward his spine, a sliver of metal visible through the gouge that seemed safer to leave in place.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said out loud, wrapping his hand around one of Melshi’s wrists and allowing himself to wait long enough to feel the tremble of a pulse. “Try to stay passed out for this part.”
And then he hauled Melshi over his shoulder, getting a solid grip around one of his thighs and settling his own weight under the load before he made his way to a nearby haul ship, his steps as quick and gentle as he could manage.
**
It wasn’t until Cassian got back to base that he was able to piece together what had happened. It wasn’t until Melshi was stable - until Cassian had seen him lowered into the bacta tank with his own eyes - that he could muster enough focus to try.
The exfiltration team had gotten an emergency comm just moments before the explosion, Draven explained. The Pathfinders had infiltrated the facility as planned, and the ground unit - to which Melshi had been assigned three days earlier, for his first deployment since being transferred to Yavin IV from a smaller cell - had been setting charges to leave behind in hopes of sabotaging shipping after they’d pulled off planet.
That’s when one of the security guards had walked in for what could only have been an unscheduled break. The last, panicked recording from the comm had caught fragments of what happened next: shots fired, someone yelling to take cover, the sound of a grenade hitting the ground, an explosion of duracrete and metal.
Nine of their own were dead on site. Melshi would be in recovery protocol for at least two weeks for a severe concussion, internal bleeding, a perforated bowel, and a kidney that had needed to be partially regrown. And Cassian couldn’t stop himself from poring over the contents of the slim data stick he’d snuck out, looking for any emerging narrative or tactical hunch that would be worth the high costs they’d paid to obtain it.
“You’re fixating,” Kay had told him, the fourth time Cassian had asked him to project the number of additional starfighters that could be built with a given marginal increase in quadanium production. “The implication that my estimates will have changed over the last four hours is both illogical and insulting.”
And Kay was right. Cassian knew he was right. But still, there had to be something they were missing. So he shut down the screen and paced out of the room, telling himself he’d just stick his head in the med bay on his way to the mess.
Cassian had tried not to spend too much time looking in on Melshi while he was under sedation. Melshi had been delirious during their reunion - for the few moments when he’d been conscious at all - and it felt strange to take too much time learning the new lines and scars and flecks of gray Melshi had gathered during their years apart when Melshi had no opportunity to turn away from the scrutiny or to return it with a gaze of his own.
But he’d been by often enough, apparently, that the medic on duty - a young Twi’lek called Nenobe - looked unsurprised to see him now.
“Captain Andor,” they said, gesturing him forward, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just getting ready to take Private Melshi off sedation. He’ll likely be disoriented at first, and it might help to see a familiar face.”
Cassian made a vague sound of acknowledgement, though he wasn’t sure the familiarity of his face would be likely to clear up Melshi’s confusion about where he was or how they’d both gotten there.
Then again, if Melshi did remember any details about what had happened in the shipping bay, it might help him absorb the shock Cassian had already had time to process if he could see the proof of their paths crossing for himself.
Nenobe moved around the side of Melshi’s bed to adjust the levels of propofol in his IV drip, and Cassian walked forward to perch on the edge of the thin mattress where Melshi lay, letting his eyes rest for a moment on Melshi’s face before he focused on Nenobe’s movements again, watching the display for Melshi’s heart monitor to see the valleys between beats shorten.
“It may take a few minutes for him to wake up,” Nenobe said. “I’ll be nearby, if he needs anything. You know the concussion protocol?”
Cassian nodded, and Nenobe inclined their head.
“I’ll be nearby,” they repeated, and then Cassian was alone with Melshi for the first time since he’d found him bleeding onto the floor of an Imperial manufacturing facility.
He’d thought he might feel uneasy about the close proximity after so long apart, and it was indeed a surprise - not entirely soothing - to realize he could recognize the sound of Melshi’s breathing without reflection.
The first night they’d ever spent in each other’s company, Cassian had listened to that sound: mixed in with the sighs and snores and scuffles of the longer floor, but already particular, somehow, because Cassian could match its cadence to a voice that had called him by name - to a face that had stepped out of the regulated arrangement of the prison to look Cassian straight in the eyes.
It hadn’t lost its distinctness, he found. It still sounded like a signal beacon, transmitting its quiet code: I’m here - I’m ready. I’m here.
Melshi made a soft noise now, and then a louder groan. His eyes pinched shut, shot open, searched frantically around him, skipping over the forms of the room without seeming to take anything in.
“Hey,” Cassian said, scooting closer on the bed so he could grip Melshi’s hand. “It’s okay, Melshi. You’re okay. I’m here.”
Melshi’s hand spasmed in his, his breathing speeding up before he made a visible effort to calm it. His gaze roved over Cassian’s face for a long moment and then trailed down to focus on the Alliance stripes across his vest.
“It’s me,” Cassian told him, hesitating before adding: “It’s Cassian. My name is Cassian.”
Melshi squeezed his hand, shutting his eyes and opening them again, as if to check his vision.
“I know,” he replied after a moment, his voice croaking with disuse, and Cassian frowned.
“You called me Keef,” he pointed out, “when I found you. You sounded -”
He broke off - the note he’d heard in Melshi’s voice feeling unbearably private all of the sudden - and Melshi winced, rubbing the first three fingers of his free hand over the furrow between his brows.
“Must’ve been a wee bit disoriented,” he said. “Might have asked you if I was dead?”
He looked at Cassian for confirmation, and then his lips tugged up at one side: a wry twist that seemed more like an internal memo than an attempt at outward expression.
“I found out about Cassian Andor just after we left Niamos,” he explained. “Saw the bulletins from the ISB hanging up the first place I landed, and when they stayed up at the next place and the next, I hoped that was good news. That you were still free somewhere. But when I heard your voice again, it had been so long… I must have gotten confused.”
He was holding himself very carefully, and Cassian couldn’t tell whether it was the pain coming through the sedation or the topic of conversation, so he resisted the urge to press.
“How the fuck did you find me, anyway?” Melshi continued. “Can’t remember much of anything before you were there.”
Cassian took a breath, looking down at the hand he still had wrapped around Melshi’s - deciding, after a moment, to leave it in place.
“You were on a mission,” he said. “Diversion and sabotage support for an Intelligence agent: that was me. There was an explosion after your team entered the shipping bay. You caught a large piece of shrapnel in your back and took a blow to the head. I found you, and I got you to the extraction point.”
Melshi watched him as he spoke, his eyes searching.
“Just me,” he said finally, not quite a question, and Cassian pressed his jaw shut, biting down on the memory of a salt breeze on his face and the weight of Imperial credits in his bag.
Not enough, he’d said then.
He managed a nod now, and then he looked away - fixing his gaze on the floor and watching the shifting, aqueous pools of light filter through the bacta tanks as he gave Melshi time to count his losses.
“Thank you,” Melshi said finally, and Cassian huffed a laugh, sharp and derisive.
“For what?” he asked. “For helping plan the mission that almost got you killed?”
“For saving my life?” Melshi suggested, his eyebrows rising. “I’m no Intelligence officer, but it seems you had a bigger hand in pulling me out of that mess than you had in putting me in it.”
Cassian shook his head.
“I wasn’t supposed to be in the shipping bay at all.”
Melshi hummed, a small smile forming on his lips.
“I figured,” he replied, and suddenly Cassian could feel every warm bend and point of pressure in the knuckles of Melshi’s hand - the way his own thumb had settled into the crease of Melshi’s palm.
“So,” Melshi continued, “you think you can bust me out of here?” His eyes crinkled around the sides, and then he added, “Cassian,” his voice tracing the contours of the name like a current rolling over stone.
Cassian suppressed a shiver, releasing Melshi’s hand to smooth his own along the surface of his thigh.
“I have a plan,” he confirmed.
Chapter 2
Notes:
Thank you to Taste_is_Sweet for the sharp eye on this chapter. Thank you to geniusbee for the inspiration in thinking about Melshi's relationship to food and Cassian's response through cooking. And thanks to all of you for reading. <3<3<3
CW for this chapter: alcohol consumption
Chapter Text
It had been three standard years, two months, and twenty-five days since Melshi had made himself walk away from the man he’d known as Keef Girgo.
Under other circumstances, Melshi might have been able to include the number of hours in his count. But he’d lost some irretrievable amount of time after he left the shore on Niamos, unable to do anything but keep walking in as straight a line as the streets allowed, the muscles in his legs shaking with the effort of refusing to turn around - of resisting the urge to retrace his steps, return to the only person left who would understand why every bump of his battered toes against the canvas of his shoes made the next breath hitch up against his throat, like a frightened animal scrabbling to put something solid at its back.
He hadn’t turned around. He’d kept walking. And the first day he’d woken up with no Keef in sight, Melshi had told himself he wasn’t going to watch that number either.
Objectively, he knew it made even less sense to keep that count than it had to rely on the flat display posted on the door of his cell. At least the shift counts had pretended to mark the time until, to structure the world around something that would arrive.
But by the fifth month of his freedom, when Melshi had finally replaced the slip-ons Keef had snatched for him on the beach and been able to name exactly the number of days he’d worn them, he stopped kidding himself about losing track and let the time he had left arrange itself as it wished.
It was strange, maybe, that as high as the number got, Melshi had never really imagined he’d meet Keef - or Cassian - again, at least not in the flesh. So it was hard to wrap his mind around the quiet shock of looking at him now: not a dream or an end-of-life apparition, but just Cassian, his lips pursed into a frown and his brows knit together in concentration, cooking breakfast in the mess kitchens on Yavin IV in the middle of the night.
“Has that egg offended you?” Melshi asked.
Cassian looked up from the stove, his forehead furrowing deeper - as if he were unsure where the voice was coming from - and then his expression smoothed as he took in the sight of Melshi leaning against the door.
“You shouldn’t be up,” he said, picking up the handle of the pan and tilting it to redistribute the oil under the egg.
“It’s three in the morning,” Melshi pointed out. “No one should be up.”
Cassian shot him an unimpressed look, and Melshi offered a compromise, picking his way across the room and settling into one of the chairs at the end of the long center table.
The truth was, standing up did hurt a little. It had been just three days since Cassian had walked him through the halls of the temple and helped him settle back into his bunk. If Melshi concentrated, he imagined he could still feel the curve of Cassian’s shoulder under his own, the line of Cassian’s arm stretching across his back toward the place where his fingers had curled against Melshi’s ribs.
Those were the places where he felt the deepest ache now: a less tractable pain than the physical one the shrapnel had left behind. The pills he swallowed dutifully every eight hours took the edge off the headaches and the throbbing in his lower back. But they did nothing to dull the reawakened muscle memory of matching his pace to Cassian’s stride, the way it realigned the whole distribution of his weight.
Some portion of his thoughts must have shown through on his face, because Cassian was still staring at him, his eyes scanning Melshi’s posture as if looking for signs of hidden discomfort.
Melshi raised his eyebrows, making a show of propping his feet up on a chair so he could relax the muscles of his back.
“Better?” he asked mildly.
Cassian scowled, but he returned to his cooking, placated enough to resume pushing eggs around the pan.
Melshi settled back to watch him, noting his easy familiarity with the cupboards and drawers. He pulled a jar of something red and granular from a crowded shelf and unscrewed the lid, pausing to sniff the contents before he shook a dash of it into the pan.
The first day Cassian had spent in Narkina, Melshi remembered, he’d absorbed all the information they’d thrown at him in near-total silence. He’d been quiet when table five got fried, quiet as they let the shakes and sweats and stiffness run their course afterwards on the bridge. And though Melshi had tried to give the new man as much privacy as possible to break down during his first night, he’d been quiet then too - not making any sound loud enough for Melshi to discern from his bunk across the hall.
Only once had Cassian interrupted to ask a question of his own, and it had been about the food.
Melshi had noticed it at the time, wondering if Keef Girgo had already done time in Imperial prisons that were less utilitarian about inmates being well-fed and labor-ready. And he thought about it again now, as he considered how many of Captain Andor’s missions for the Rebellion put him in positions where he didn’t control his own access to food.
Cassian looked at ease at present - or as close to it as Melshi had ever seen - lifting the cooked eggs out of the pan with a flick of the spatula and settling them onto a large plate containing what looked like chopped tomatoes, minced herbs, and fried tatties.
He brought the plate over to the table and set it down between them, taking up a chair across from Melshi’s spot.
“Got back late,” Cassian said.
It was an indirect answer to a question Melshi hadn’t actually asked. But then, Melshi had already known Captain Andor had missed his first two check-ins before confirming he was en route from Raxus Prime. It was why Melshi had been walking the halls of the temple in the first place, trying hard not to count any length of time at all, until he ran into Cassian’s partner, K-2SO - or Kay, as Cassian called him - who’d told him, a little scathingly, that Cassian had declined the med bay and chosen the mess instead.
Melshi didn’t notice any obvious signs of injury in Cassian’s movements - maybe a little stiffness in his shoulder as he scooped a small stack of food onto his fork and reached out to offer it to Melshi.
Melshi plucked it from his fingers, cupping his other palm underneath to be sure he wouldn’t drop anything if his hand shook, and Cassian watched the progress of the food all the way to Melshi’s lips.
The zing of the tomato hit his tongue first, then the eggs and the potato: a carmelized crisp followed by a mellower, vegetal fullness. And though it was more flavor at once than Melshi had tasted in weeks, he held it in his mouth longer than necessary, trying to concentrate on each note in turn.
“I’ve been trying to find something to do with the roots that grow near the enclave,” Cassian explained, watching for Melshi’s reaction. “The texture’s not bad, but the taste needs work: something a little brighter, I think.”
“Tastes dead brilliant to me,” Melshi told him. “Though you’ll find better judges, I’m sure. My diet’s a bit limited.”
Cassian looked at him consideringly, his head tilted to one side.
“The paste?” he asked, and Melshi felt his lips twitch, his smile rising to the lure of Cassian’s quickness.
“Aye,” Melshi confirmed. “Was never used to more than your basic scran anyway, but after a few years eating from a tube…”
He’d felt reluctant to admit it, seeing the pleasure Cassian clearly took in his cooking, but if anything Cassian looked more eager than before, his eyes flitting over Melshi’s face as he turned the problem over.
“Something with mashed roots might work all right for you. Light on the herbs - just to bring out the savor.”
Melshi couldn’t speak for a moment, too busy breathing through the arm’s length of phantom pressure across his back.
“Happy to test the theory for you,” he said, when his chest had opened up again. “Not much else I can do, anyway, until I’m cleared for duty again.”
“Good,” Cassian agreed. “I’ll come by tomorrow, and I can show you where the herbs grow around the south wall. There aren’t too many that do well in the shade, so I’ve had to experiment. Though that’s not the big problem with the flavor, really.”
He looked over at the stove, his expression thoughtful, and for a moment his gaze seemed to widen, focusing on something beyond the walls of the base.
“The problem?” Melshi asked eventually, and Cassian blinked, then gave a small shake of his head.
“It’s the pan,” he explained. “It’s not seasoned properly.”
And Melshi nodded, because he didn’t know much about pans, but he knew about making do with what could be had in a hurry.
He knew what it was like to wonder what you could taste if you had more time.
**
True to his word, Cassian showed up at Melshi’s bunk the next day, and for the next two mornings after that, ready to walk him out to the edges of the jungle around the base.
It didn’t take long for Melshi to form the suspicion that he was being maneuvered into physical therapy. Cassian did bring a set of transparisteel vials - slipped into the place of the code cylinders he’d been carrying in sewn-on sheaths on the inside of his jacket or the thigh seam of his pants - and he made a point of stopping to collect pinches of herbs as they walked. But he also kept track of the distance they’d covered, the difficulty of the terrain, pushing each excursion just long enough that Melshi felt slightly out of breath and then finding an excuse to lead them back to the barracks again.
Melshi said nothing to disturb the ruse. Starting the day with Cassian was so easy it was excruciating, and Melshi - Force help him - marked each morning, storing them in the quiet pockets of his own mind.
The fourth day, Cassian was gone for another mission: undercover work on Samovar, which was as much as he’d been able to tell Melshi without compromising op-sec.
Melshi hadn’t been able to form any firm idea of what he would do with his morning alone, and he was surprised - and then not surprised at all - when the imposing form of a KX-series security droid appeared in the doorway of his bunk room.
“Cassian said you need to take a walk,” Kay announced.
Melshi considered him, pushing up off his bunk and straightening his back experimentally.
“I’ll make you a deal,” he proposed. “I’ll go get some caff. That way you can tell Cassian I stretched my legs and didn’t keel over. And then I’ll trade you any favor you can think of if you read me some of the data from the Calipsa mission - anything that’s not classified. I’m not allowed to look at screens or data pads for another week, and if I don’t have something to do with my mind, I’m going to crawl over the temple walls.”
Kay agreed to the arrangement: faster than Melshi had anticipated, but then, maybe his days got a little too dim without Cassian on base as well.
And that was how the two of them ended up commandeering an empty briefing room, Melshi tapping a finger over and around the knuckles of his left hand as he tracked the quantities of quadanium, dolovite, and doonium Kay recited.
The data trickled into a mental stream of raw materials and shipping lanes, and it was moving fast. Fast enough to make something itch at the back of Melshi’s mind.
He held his hand out in front of him, trying to visualize a star map - the hyperspace lanes crossing the flex lines of his palm.
“The labor for the mining,” he said finally. “It’s got to be an expanded pool, with the volume they’re pushing over those distances. Do we have any data on what’s happened to prison populations in Tapani? About new facilities?”
Kay paused, his servers whirring.
“I can create a simulation. I’ll need to correct for the lack of reliable death records.”
“We could look for changes in the ISB arrest quotas,” Melshi suggested. “More pressure to make arrests means a higher rate of attrition in the camps, which means -”
“An increase in labor demands beyond biological capacity.”
“Exactly.” Melshi flexed his left hand.
“I can show you the simulations tomorrow,” Kay told him, “after you’ve walked long enough to raise your heart rate to at least sixty per cent of its maximum level.”
Melshi suppressed a smile.
“It’s a deal.”
It wasn’t a bad way to pass the time, he discovered. Running scenarios with Kay kept his thoughts occupied with something other than the lingering fatigue and the waves of nausea that still hit him if he shifted his focus too quickly from near objects to more distant ones. And the walks were having their effect as well: Melshi still woke up stiff with cramps in the morning, but his endurance was improving, and he thought by the time Cassian returned he could make it to the heavier tree cover, where Cassian had thought they might be able to find wild mushrooms.
The night after Melshi’s fourth morning with Kay, he even felt well enough to say “yes” when a handful of new recruits in his bunk room asked him to join them for a pint.
The mess was busy when they arrived, and Melshi found a seat at the bar and let one of the Pathfinders from his new unit hand him a mug of something amber and smoky.
He thought he’d been sipping the drink slowly, but either someone had topped him up along the way or his tolerance was lower than he thought, because when General Draven walked in some time later with Cassian trailing close behind him, Melshi’s heart made a decidedly unsober leap toward the front of his chest.
The lines on Cassian’s face were taut, his back stiff as he stood at Draven’s side and exchanged words with General Merrick. He seemed to be holding himself in place, clasping his hands so tightly behind him it almost looked like they’d been bound. Melshi found himself wanting to release the loaded spring of his shoulders - find a catch in the muscles of his back that would allow his limbs to swing freely again.
He wrenched his focus away with an effort, turning toward the bar to stare down at his folded hands.
He could wait to call Cassian over, he reasoned with himself - or he could catch up with him tomorrow. That would probably be better. He was feeling a little unsteady, now that he thought about it, and he wasn’t sure he should risk speaking. Or close proximity for that matter.
“You found the bar,” Cassian said from somewhere near Melshi’s elbow.
Well, so much for that plan then.
Melshi looked up and caught Cassian’s gaze head on, the warmth barrelling through his chest until his stool seemed to sway slightly underneath him.
“Hello,” he said, in what he thought was an impressively neutral tone.
“Hello,” Cassian repeated solemnly, the sides of his eyes crinkling as he took in whatever was happening on Melshi’s face. “It’s a good night then.”
It is now, Melshi didn’t say, giving himself a mental pat on the back for his restraint.
“Can I get you something?” he asked instead. “Think I’ve owed Keef Girgo a drink for over three years now.”
Cassian settled in next to him, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders as he leaned against the bar.
“What’s good here?” he asked.
“Ah, you’d probably know best.” Melshi gave the drink in his hands a pensive squint. “Not entirely sure what this is, actually. Someone passed it to me.”
“Someone passed it to you,” Cassian repeated. “And you just drank it. No questions asked, just -” He waved his hand dismissively. “- took it and drank it.”
“Is that strange?”
Melshi thought maybe he should feel embarrassed - realizing they’d probably just tripped over another habit of captivity he hadn’t managed to kick - but he could tell he was starting to smile instead, his lips quirking at the note of consternation in Cassian’s voice.
“It’s dangerous,” Cassian retorted, but he was smiling now too. “Melshi, anyone could hand you anything. Tell me you’re more careful when you’re not on base. Tell me -”
“Hey Captain,” a man interrupted from Cassian’s other side.
Melshi turned to follow the voice, and then his stomach sank. Corvin Drask. Drask, who was bunking down the hall from Melshi. Drask, who’d been sharing meals with Mendev and Harashi, two of the Rebels who’d gone to Calipsa and hadn’t come back.
“Drask,” his companion said warningly, but Drask was plastered. Melshi could smell it: sour and cloying, the scent almost as thick on his breath as the grief was in his eyes.
“Back from another mission, Andor?” he continued, undeterred. “Lucky man. Luckier than some of the men in your command.”
“Drask, leave it,” his companion tried again, at the same time that Melshi called over, “Why don’t you just sleep it off, brother?”
“I’m just talking,” Drask shot back. “Just making conversation with the returning hero over here.”
“And I’m just having a drink with a friend,” Cassian replied. “Maybe you should do the same.”
His voice was quiet and taut, each word coiled in place like a finger on a trigger. Anyone with half their senses intact would have recognized the warning.
Drask did not have half his senses intact.
“You’ve got a real knack for walking away when no one else does,” he pressed, leaning in to jab his finger toward Cassian’s chest. “Quite the survivor you are, And-”
Whatever clever finish Drask had in mind, Melshi never heard it, because between one syllable and the next Cassian had grabbed Drask’s extended arm and twisted behind his back, using the momentum to slam him face-forward into the bar.
Shit , Melshi thought to himself, and then he pushed out of his own stool to stand at Cassian’s shoulder.
“You had something to say to me?” Cassian whispered, leaning over to speak the words into Drask’s ear as Drask struggled futilely against Cassian’s grip.
One of the other Pathfinders - Besch, Melshi thought - moved forward as if to grab Cassian’s shoulder, and Melshi threw an arm across his chest to head him off.
“Don’t,” he said in a low voice, “touch him.”
The sound of his voice seemed to filter through to Cassian, who eased back far enough to cast a quick glance in Melshi’s direction. A second later, his gaze flitted away, tracking movement at the edges of the mess: a flash of uniforms in motion that Melshi suspected meant they had caught the attention of Draven’s table.
Cassian shifted his jaw back and forth, his eyes going flinty for a moment before he shoved away, his lips curling into the derisive mockery of a smile.
“You’re not worth it,” he told Drask, who was coughing as he slipped off the bar and scrambled back to his feet. “Come find me when you’ve seen enough action to finish what you start.”
Cassian adjusted the sleeves of his jacket and turned toward Melshi, giving him a tight tilt of his chin before he started toward the door.
“Touched a nerve, didn’t I?” Drask muttered to his companion, pitching his voice just loud enough to be on the edge of Cassian’s hearing. “Someone’s feeling awfully sensitive about letting so many men die to save his a-”
And Melshi never heard the end of that one either: this time because his own hand was tangled in Drask’s shirt, holding him in place so he could deliver a punch across his jaw. Drask swung back as he stumbled, landing a sloppy blow to Melshi’s ribs before Draven’s voice cut through the tumult.
“Corporal Drask! Private Melshi!”
“Present,” Melshi replied, only vaguely aware of the fabric tugging against his fist as the man he’d needed to punch tried to come to attention.
Cassian let out something halfway between a snort and a sigh behind him.
“Let me handle Draven,” he said, reaching forward to clasp the hand Melshi still had wrapped in the offender’s shirt.
And judging by the difficulty Melshi was having convincing himself to release the shirt - and by the fact that he couldn’t currently think of any name to call the owner of the shirt that didn’t start with “c” and end in “t” - he supposed Cassian’s suggestion was for the best.
“A fucking cunt,” he told Cassian, needing to get it on record, and Cassian squeezed his hand before peeling it loose from the fabric.
“I know,” Cassian agreed, and then, turning to Draven, who was glaring back and forth between Melshi and the cunt: “Just a misunderstanding about a sabbac game. I can report for Private Melshi: he got the wind knocked out of him. He really shouldn’t be talking right now.”
He cast a significant look in Melshi’s direction, and Melshi took the hint, plastering what he hoped was an appropriately breathless expression on his face.
“Fine,” Draven said, though his eyes narrowed in a way that suggested Melshi’s performance had been less than convincing. “Melshi, get checked by medical tomorrow.”
“Sir,” Melshi replied - which, as he realized a moment later, was almost certainly what he was supposed to have said instead of “present.”
He should get out of there before he could make anything worse, he decided, so he slipped out of the cantina, through the corridor, and into the open air of the temple terrace.
The nights on Yavin IV were temperate, and though Melshi would have welcomed a cooler breeze in his current state, he set to pacing the length of the mossy stone, trying to spread out the coals of anger still pooling in his gut.
He couldn’t stop seeing the sticken flinch on Cassian’s face - like a deflector shield shivering under fire before slamming back into place - there in the moment Drask had called him a “survivor,” and gone again by the time he had Drask pinned against the bar. The look had stung something deep in Melshi’s chest as well, smarting against the memory of Keef’s face on the shores of Niamos, so full of an agony Melshi hadn’t been brave enough to draw out.
He hadn’t wanted to punch Drask, exactly, but he’d needed to stop his words before any more of them could reach Cassian. He’d needed to break the ugly, false mirror Drask had been trying to hold up to Cassian’s loss.
After a few circuits, Melshi could feel the fresh heat of his adrenaline ebbing, leaving a bed of embers in its wake. He slowed to a stop and sat down on the low wall at the temple’s edge - to wait for his head to clear or for Cassian to appear, whichever came first.
A few minutes later, Cassian did, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket and an abstracted frown tugging at his lips.
“All right?” Melshi couldn’t help asking, and he watched as Cassian diverted his path to join him by the wall.
“You got hit,” he said, “in the side.”
Melshi blinked up at him, and then he shifted his weight where he sat, as if to test the accuracy of the observation: sure enough, he felt a twinge of tenderness around his ribs.
“Barely felt it,” he replied, truthfully, but Cassian looked unmoved.
“Let me see.”
It wasn’t phrased as a request, but still he waited, and Melshi allowed himself to hesitate over the exposure. Because even though they’d seen each other undress dozens of times, Cassian had never had this look on his face when it happened: like he was watching something that it was clearly his interest to look after.
Melshi swallowed and tugged his shirt free from the waistband of his pants, pulling up the hem to reveal his right side.
Cassian crouched next to him, tracing his fingers over the lines of Melshi’s ribs before he wrapped his hand around Melshi’s wrist, raising his arm slowly out to the front and then to the side to test his response.
“Any pain?” Cassian asked, his eyes moving back up to Melshi’s face.
“None to speak of,” Melshi replied, because the sensation of an Imperial walker stepping on his sternum had nothing to do with the punch he’d taken at the bar.
Cassian shifted back to his heels with a huff, lowering Melshi’s arm again and tucking it at his side.
“Stupid,” he muttered, and Melshi wasn’t sure whether he meant the fight or Melshi wading in or something else entirely, so he decided to respond to a version that made sense to him.
“The man’s a cunt,” he said, and was rewarded by another huff from Cassian, softer this time. “Fancy a trip to the kitchens? Got a horrid taste in my mouth after listening to that bastard talking absolute mince.”
Cassian looked into his eyes, and Melshi’s heart made another dash against the walls of his chest.
“Okay,” Cassian agreed. “But you’re going to put some ice on your ribs while I make the food.”
“Aye, Captain,” Melshi replied, and he tried not to think about how right it felt, how easy.
Chapter 3
Notes:
Thank you to geniusbee's delightful Hoth comic for inspiration for this chapter's first scene.
CW for this chapter: alcohol consumption, brief hallucination
Chapter Text
The morning after Melshi punched Drask at the bar, Cassian found him engaged in a mutinous stand-off with his storage unit.
He was standing over the squat module when Cassian arrived - one palm pressed against his lower back - and he was already fully dressed except for the bare feet he’d shoved into a pair of slippers.
“Can’t see why they put the fucking things so close to the ground,” he told Cassian, directing a baleful frown at the unopened bottom drawer. “How’s a man supposed to bend that low before he’s had time to stretch out his limbs and all.”
“Mmm,” Cassian hummed. “Sounds serious. Someone should really investigate who decided to store your socks in such an inconsiderate manner.”
Melshi must have heard the smile in his voice because he looked up from the drawer, and whatever he saw in Cassian’s expression made his scowl deepen.
“Oh, my suffering amuses you, does it? Well if it’s the will of the Force that I live the rest of my days as a sockless man, I’ll be glad to know the prospect of seeing me running into the trenches in nothing but my slippers puts a shine on your day.”
“It does,” Cassian confirmed, crouching to slide open the bottom drawer and retrieve a pair of light wool socks. “I’ve never felt shinier.”
He knelt in front of Melshi and tapped the back of his calf to indicate he should raise his foot. Melshi hesitated for a moment and then complied, lifting each leg to let Cassian pull the socks onto his feet and ease the leather boots over his heels while Melshi braced himself gingerly against the railing of his bunk.
“There,” Cassian announced, rising to his feet after he’d finished with the laces. “That’s better. Now come on: let’s get you out of here before you pick a fight with your fresher sink.”
“Sinks are installed at multiple heights,” Melshi muttered as they set off, the tips of his ears slightly pink at close range. “Some manufacturers of drawers could learn a thing or two about flexible design.”
They walked their usual route around the edge of the temple, and since Melshi seemed determined to press further than on their previous excursions, Cassian led them down a path that intersected one of the streams near base.
Along the way, Cassian told Melshi about the mission to Coruscant he was due to begin that evening, and for once he could share the full extent of what he knew, since he’d been told almost nothing about the parameters himself.
“I’ll get the instructions en route,” he said. “Which means something sensitive. No idea if it’s connected to any of the threads you and Kay have been pulling.”
Cassian had felt pleased when Kay had told him about his strategy sessions with Melshi - and then he’d felt something else, a little too uneasy to be pleasure.
He’d tried to shake it off, sliding it to the back of his mind as Kay walked him through what he and Melshi had uncovered. It was natural to like the idea of Kay and Melshi getting along, he told himself. It would be strange not to feel satisfied that two people he spent so much time with were enjoying each other’s company. The two of them getting along would make things easy. Convenient.
And it might well turn out to be a tactical boon to the Alliance, judging by how quickly the two of them were making headway on the data Cassian had acquired.
“We’d just gotten through a new batch of simulations before you got back,” Melshi told him, as if picking up the thread of Cassian’s reflections. “Prisoner transfers this time.”
“Anything interesting?” Cassian asked, dragging his focus back to the terrain.
“Well, for one thing, they’ve stopped storing the data directly, which is terrifying enough.”
Melshi paused to let Cassian spot his elbow as they stepped over a fallen tree on the slope down to the steam. Melshi’s stride was steady - not the smallest waver as he threw his leg over the trunk and resettled it on the forest floor beyond - and Cassian gave his own waiting hand a flex before returning it to his side.
“There’s no record of the volume of transfers or their destination,” Melshi continued, “not even internally. We had to work back from the maintenance and fueling records for the worker transport vehicles at the sites the Alliance has breached. But the pattern’s still clear. The number of prisoners being moved from solitary incarceration to mining and manufacturing camps has doubled - at least - over the past five or so years.”
They’d reached the edge of the stream, and Cassian bent to fill his canteen, turning on the UV sterilizer while Melshi settled himself on a boulder nearby. Cassian watched him stretch out his legs, making note of the lack of tremors in his thighs, the greater range of flexibility in his hips.
Melshi was nearing the end of his recovery protocol, Cassian realized with a start - and a moment later he felt a frown tugging at his lips.
“What is it?” Melshi asked, and Cassian looked back down at his canteen.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he dodged. “Manufacturing new starships at that rate: what’s the benefit? The Empire’s already got more than enough naval power to overpower the Rebellion in any pitched battles, and volume alone doesn’t help them with our hit-and-runs.”
“Could be getting ready to make some kind of statement,” Melshi suggested. “Like the PORD or the arrests on Christophsis.”
“A deterrent or a morale breaker then.” Cassian considered it. “Something new, if they want it to be really effective. So we’d be looking for a fresh demand for raw materials they haven’t extracted in the past.”
“And for expansions in research personnel,” Melshi added. “Chemists or biologists. Architects. And engineers.”
Cassian felt his frown return, the tug of uneasiness at the back of his mind refusing to settle back into calm.
The light at the top of the canteen flashed, then went dark, and he turned to hand the purified water to Melshi.
“You could put in for a transfer to Intelligence, you know,” he observed. “I could talk to Draven - get this made into a case for you to work on.”
Melshi’s eyebrows raised as he took the canteen.
“I think you and I both know I’m no spy.” He gave Cassian a small smile, but it looked more exploratory than expressive. “You had to prompt me with my alias about every three hours on Niamos.”
“You could be an analyst,” Cassian pointed out. “Work here, from base. You’ve always had an eye for systems. You’d be good at it.”
Melshi’s face softened in understanding.
“I appreciate the thought,” he said. “But I’d be no better at sitting behind fortified walls than you are. Not when there are so many people out there losing their last chances - and people who would've had something to go home to as well.”
Cassian reviewed Melshi’s words, turning over the back end of the statement and finding himself thinking suddenly of Niamos: about the carefully blank look Melshi had given him near the comm banks, when Cassian had asked him if he had any calls to make himself.
“Home,” Cassian repeated. “You’ve never - since we left Narkina?”
He left the question hanging and caught the grimace Melshi made in response, so tight around his mouth it looked like he was pulling something out of view.
Cassian thought maybe he should leave the subject there - and he would have, probably, after a different night than one when Melshi had thrown a punch at someone for getting under Cassian’s guard. Or before a different tomorrow than the one that might send Melshi back into the field.
But Cassian was going to leave in a few hours, for a purpose and a length of time that had been prearranged for him on an encrypted data stick. He wouldn’t know how long he’d be gone until he was already radio silent. Melshi could be redeployed while he was away, and then who knew when both of them would be back, or if either of them -
Melshi held out the canteen, and Cassian stepped forward to take it, lingering near the place where Melshi had settled his hands over his knees.
“Did you ever want to?” he asked. “Go home?”
Melshi sighed, his shoulders hunching up toward his ears as he leaned his weight forward onto his arms.
“I dream about it,” he allowed. “And sometimes, in the mornings here, after a long rain, I catch a whiff of it: the way the damp used to settle into the peat moss. Like the sea tide coming in through the soil.”
His lips twisted, as if he were going to reel the words back, but Cassian wanted to keep them - wanted, fiercely and suddenly, for the small landmark Melshi had shown him to be drawn on both their maps - so he started speaking, returning the offering before he could think about the exposure for too long.
“I’ve had other names than the ones you know,” he said. “Not just as aliases. Naming was… Where I’m from - on Kenari - people give each other many names over time. As you grow up - as big things happen to you, or as you happen to other people - you’re called by new names. And sometimes you stop using a name. If someone who shared your name leaves the community. Or if the person who gave you a name dies.”
He looked up, watching the wind weave through the leaf cover overhead, the small green surfaces twisting to reveal a patter of sky-patches, like silver-gray footprints racing through the trees.
“There was a name my sister gave me,” he said. “I still don’t know if I can use it anymore.”
**
The mission to Coruscant was a success.
Cassian hit all his targets, retained his cover, left no incriminating traces, and by the time he dropped out of hyperspace and started his approach to Yavin IV, the familiar, crushing thread of desperation was wound around his rib cage like barbed wire.
He tried the flask of Ithorian Mist he kept stashed in the med cabinet for these situations, but he’d known before he unscrewed the lid that the wire was too tight this time for substances to do more than turn it molten at the edges.
He didn’t need to take anything more in. He needed to get something out - to wretch or vomit or scream. To evacuate something, somehow - expel some part of himself that would free up room to breathe around the panic.
He made it through the conversation with the landing crew, though it would have taken him some time to recall what words he’d used to assure them of the ship’s condition - or to answer Kay’s questions about his own.
Kay, he was certain, had been far from satisfied with his performance, but he must have seen something in Cassian’s face that made him decide on a tactical retreat, because he let Cassian stride away from him into the interior of the base.
The urge to move was overpowering by that point, so Cassian let himself stop fighting it. He let his legs carry him farther from the ship and the mission and the silencer and the sightless eyes staring up from the carpet of a cheap Coruscant motel. He put enough force into his strides for the impact to jar him, every time, all the way from his heels up to his jaw, and he didn’t consciously register where his feet were taking him until he was nearly at Melshi’s door.
A renewed twinge of panic seized him when he realized where he was - and what that had to mean - and he’d barely had time to suck in a sharp breath to steady himself before the panel leading to Melshi’s bunk room slid open and Melshi was standing in front of him.
“Kay commed to tell me you were back,” he said, the beginnings of a smile forming on his face before it slid off abruptly, his brows furrowing with concern instead. “Shit, Cass. What is it?”
It was the first time Melshi had used the familiar form of his name, and it was too much - too close to home and too far away from where he’d just been. It snapped taut against the grip Cassian was keeping on his anger, like the recoil from an overcharged blaster held too tightly to the chest.
“I have to go,” he managed, turning on his heels and setting off in the opposite direction.
It didn’t take long to hear Melshi had followed him - quietly and at a distance - and Cassian’s feet faltered for a moment as he neared a fork in the corridor.
He couldn’t be around Melshi when he was like this - he should turn around and tell Melshi to back off. But Melshi had already seen enough to raise concern. He wouldn’t go down easily now. He might leave for the night, if Cassian asked him to, but that would only mean a longer conversation later, and Cassian didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted it and everything to do with it as far away from Melshi as he could get it.
He kept walking, pressing through the rest of the barracks and into the kitchens, counting his strides to keep his mind from wandering anywhere else.
He stood over the stove, but only for a moment. Some nights he could work open the knots of pressure in his chest with a knife blade against the cutting board and a searing heat across a pan: the rhythm of the preparation, the grounding of the smell and taste, the proof that what had pierced and burned could also beautify.
But he was past that point tonight. He reached for a bottle of vodka instead, clenched his jaw, and then he turned to face the table -
- and had to grind his teeth together to avoid calling out in shock.
Because Melshi was sitting in his usual chair. Cassian was almost positive that Melshi was sitting in his usual chair, because Cassian had let him get close enough to have a usual chair. But for a horrible moment he was also slumped to one side, his face pallid, his blank eyes the color of a garish Coruscanti carpet, his back torn open not from a piece of shrapnel but from a blaster shot Cassian had put there.
And Melshi couldn’t be dead, because he was right there, sitting in his usual chair. But it didn’t matter, because Cassian could still feel the weight of Melshi’s head in his hands as he lay unconscious on a factory floor, the stiffness of Melshi’s blood drying into the fabric of Cassian’s pants as he held his body in his arms.
Because Cassian couldn’t shake the certainty of what he’d known then, what some part of him still refused to unknow, no matter how many days he spent trying to walk Melshi back from what had almost been his grave. That someday, some danger was going to come looking for Cassian, and Melshi was going to be where it hit him first.
“Cassian,” Melshi said, his voice steady despite the pinch between his brows. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“What are you doing here?” Cassian demanded. He took a drag from the bottle of vodka - more for the way it burned against his throat than for any hope it would take the edge off his anger. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“You were walking to my door,” Melshi pointed out, calmly - so calmly it made Cassian’s jaw ache. “Do you want me to leave?”
“You would already be gone if you knew what was good for you,” Cassian shot back, pulling out the seat across from Melshi and dropping into it like he was settling into a crouch. “You keep leaving yourself open, all the time, acting like you’re safe. But you’re not safe - not with me. You heard what Drask said -”
“Drask? Cassian, come on. Drask’s a roaster. He was steaming that night -”
“And what word of what he said about me was a lie? Huh?” Cassian leaned forward, into Melshi’s space. “He was right, Melshi. You of all people should know how many people I’m willing to leave behind. To burn through just to make the plan work -”
“Oh, that’s a fresh load of kark,” Melshi objected, his voice registering a shade of anger for the first time. “Those men chose to fight, to free themselves - to do one free thing, and damn the costs. You gave them that choice, but you don’t get to take it away, not even in your own head. And you didn’t leave me behind. Not then, and not on Calipsa. You’re the one who got me out.”
“Yeah, you and who else?” Cassian retorted. “One person, one time. Do you have any idea how many times it’s gone the other way? How many bodies I’ve left behind me? It will never balance, Melshi. Because I’m the guy they send in when they need someone dead, not alive. I saved you one time, because I could do it without blowing the mission, but you’d be a fool to count on that from me. With different orders, it could be me who’s pulling the trigger.”
Melshi raised his eyebrows incredulously, and Cassian felt a thin smile curling at his lips, pulling his mouth into a mask.
“You don’t think I’d do it? If some handler said you had to be cut loose, for the good of the Rebellion, you don’t think I’d snap the cord myself?”
“Cass,” Melshi said, but Cassian ignored him, some of the coiled wire in his chest finally unwinding as he spit out the words - shoved them into the space between his anger and Melshi’s concern.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” he said. “You could be any one of the people I’ve killed: unarmed, with their backs turned, in their sleep. You think after all the blood I’ve spilled for the cause I’d be able to stop just because it was you?”
Melshi paused, considering him, and then he reached into the holster at his hip to pull out a blaster. No. To pull out the blaster, Cassian realized: the gun he’d last held on Niamos, back when he’d thought it would be the last thing ever to be touched by both their hands.
Melshi set it on the table now, pushing it toward Cassian, grip first.
“You gave me this,” Melshi said. “Why?”
Cassian hesitated, probing the inside of his cheek with the tip of his tongue.
“You didn’t have a weapon,” he tried.
“No,” Melshi replied, tilting his chin to one side, “you gave me this. Pre-Mor-issue, as you knew I’d find out when I had to replace the cartridges. Serial number filed off, as you knew I’d notice even sooner. And at least some part of you must have realized that as soon as I saw the first ISB bulletin with the mug shot for Cassian Andor, I’d put two and ‘Keef’ together - right before I saw the sizable reward for any evidence leading to your conviction - and yet you didn’t use this to shoot me and leave me in a back alley. You didn’t ‘snap the cord,’ even though you knew they could use it to hang you. You gave it to me to use as protection. Why?”
Cassian stared at it, his lips pursed, keeping his silence long enough that Melshi let out a small sigh. He picked the blaster up - grip angled at Cassian’s hands and barrel pointed toward his own chest - and Cassian had to fight the sudden urge to wrench it to the side or knock it to the floor.
“You think you could kill me,” Melshi said calmly. “Maybe. Maybe there are days, in some version of the future, when you’d pull the trigger for the good of others. Maybe there are days when I’d thank you for making that call. Is today one of them?”
Cassian set his jaw, glowering at him. His heart was beating quickly, his chest tight. For a moment it felt horribly like he might burst open, somehow - into shouting or pieces or tears - anything to change his position, to be anywhere other than looking at Melshi down the wrong end of a gun.
Melshi nodded.
“Then I’m willing to take my chances,” he said.
“And if I’m not?” Cassian retorted.
Melshi curled his fingers in succession, as if his hands were shrugging around the barrel.
“Then don’t,” he replied. “Walk out of here and never knock on my door again. I’ll let you go. But make that choice and stand by it. Don’t try to goad me into doing it for you by talking absolute shite.”
Cassian stared at Melshi for a long moment. He let himself think about the longer moment he’d spent waiting for Melshi's body to breathe again on Calipsa.
Then he reached up to wrap his hands around Melshi’s, lowering them to the table along with the gun. Melshi followed his lead, laying the blaster on its side and letting Cassian turn it to the side, until it pointed toward the far wall, away from Melshi’s chest. Cassian let out a slow breath, and Melshi twisted one of his hands up in invitation, waiting until Cassian took it and then tangling their fingers together over the grip.
“I’m tired,” Cassian said finally. “Sometimes I’m so tired of always walking away.”
“I know, Cass,” Melshi replied, holding his hand tighter. “I know.”
Chapter 4
Notes:
CW for this chapter: brief description of PTSD
Chapter Text
“What if it’s not for multiple units?”
The question came from Cassian: the first thing he’d said since slipping into the briefing room where Melshi and Kay were holding their final strategy session before Melshi was redeployed to Lothal. Melshi was careful not to register surprise. Cassian had been quiet since the confrontation in the kitchens two nights earlier - not distant, exactly, but inward. Concentrated.
Melshi had tried to give him space. It was what he’d promised to do: let Cassian decide whether he could keep his commitments to the Rebellion and have Melshi close at the same time. Melshi was ready to accept the judgment either way, he told himself. He’d always been better at tolerating a clear privation than a false comfort, and not having Cassian would be easier to live with than having a part of him that wasn’t there by choice.
But when Cassian had appeared at the door a half hour before Melshi was due to leave, Melshi’s heart had still stretched out to greet him, recalcitrant as ever.
“Not for multiple units?” he repeated Cassian’s words now, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees as he considered the possibility. “Just one build. That would have to be all nine hells of a project. A military base of some kind? It’s not the right manufacturing profile for anything administrative.”
“Something that large would be hard to conceal,” Kay reasoned, “which might explain the inefficient use of space. They’ve diverted substantial resources to building labor camps but made no attempt to centralize mining and manufacturing.”
“No, and they wouldn’t, would they?” Melshi mused, scrolling through the projections Kay had pulled up on the data pad. “They’d spread it out.”
“Compartmentalize the records,” Kay agreed, “which would reduce the danger of security leaks at the lower levels by eighteen to twenty-five percent.”
“And make them less vulnerable to sabotage or labor disruptions at any one location,” Melshi added. “They’ve learned from experience there, no doubt.”
He looked over to catch Cassian’s eye - readying a wry smile as proof he was sticking to his story about Cassian’s role on Narkina - but he stalled when he realized Cassian was already staring at him: an expression on his face that made Melshi feel like he’d missed a step going up the stairs.
“I’ll run a new batch of simulations,” Kay offered. “It will give me something to do when Cassian’s in a bad mood while you’re away.”
Cassian looked over to scowl at him.
“Well, that certainly proves me wrong,” Kay observed, managing to create the effect of rolling his photosensors without moving them at all.
“Just save some of the fun numbers for me,” Melshi said, getting to his feet and stretching to retrieve his pack. “Or at least make a good show of pretending not to have put the whole thing together by the time I get back.”
“I’ll simulate my best gasp of surprise when you figure it out,” Kay promised. “And Ruescott Melshi -”
He paused to let Melshi groan his protest at the first name.
“- I will consider your favor repaid if you manage to return with all your organs intact this time.”
“I’ll do my best to make us even then,” Melshi agreed. “Take care, Kay.”
He finally gathered the courage to look back at Cassian, who had moved on to staring at the floor.
“I’ll walk with you to the hangar,” he said, rising from his perch on the edge of a holotable and falling in at Melshi’s side.
They walked in silence through the halls, Cassian’s arms crossed over his chest and Melshi gripping the strap of the pack over his shoulder. Melshi risked a glance at Cassian’s profile as they rounded a corner, remembering, suddenly, how Cassian had turned toward him on the platform on Narkina - how Melshi had never since been able to disentangle the look he’d seen on Cassian’s face from the sensation of feeling the sun on his own again.
It wasn’t until they arrived at the edge of the hangar that Cassian stalled, Melshi hovering with him as their eyes met again.
“You’ll be careful,” Cassian said, half command and half question, and Melshi nodded.
“I won’t take any drinks from Imperial agents without asking what’s in them first.”
Cassian scowled again.
“I’ll be careful,” Melshi said. “Sounds like a bit of a blue-milk run anyway, to be honest. I think they’re easing me back in.” He paused. “I could - ah, I could send an encrypted signal when we arrive?”
It was an effort to keep the hopeful uncurling of his heart from registering on his face, and he wasn’t entirely sure he succeeded in the end, but Cassian nodded, his expression clearing.
“Good,” he said. “That’s good. And you’ll be back soon.”
There was a flicker of something in his eyes - an intensity like the one Melshi had seen in the briefing room - and Melshi missed another step, taking Cassian’s hand in his before he’d had time to register the impulse.
Well…in for a credit, he reasoned, and then he pulled Cassian’s hand up until he could press it to his heart.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “And hey: just think of all the things that had to go terribly wrong for our paths to cross this many times. We can probably count on a few more disasters, given the state of our luck.”
“Very comforting,” Cassian observed, but his eyes crinkled at the sides, and he pressed his hand more firmly against Melshi’s breast. “Come back. Soon. In one piece.”
“Aye, Captain. Until we meet again.”
**
It turned out to be two standard weeks until they did meet again.
What had been designed as a non-combat mission had picked up some combat after all, as one of the teams sabotaging vehicles at an Imperial armory complex had been detected by perimeter security during their exit.
Melshi had hardly been involved in the action - beyond helping to lay down some cover fire and then needing to spend a solid hour in his cot that night breathing through the snarled loop of a dead man’s voice yelling “get down” before a hundred phantom grenades went off against his back - but the Empire’s response had been swift and vindictive, and Melshi’s team had had to wait around an extra five days before risking the trip off planet.
They’d stopped on Akiva to resupply en route: enough time to send a delayed “all clear” code to Cassian, though Melshi knew that if he weren’t off base himself he would likely have heard the news already from someone else.
When Melshi finally stepped off the transport ship on Yavin IV, he discovered the former was true. Both Kay and Cassian had been gone for just under four days on a mission to Jedha. It was more of a blow than he wanted to look at too closely, but Sefla assured him Captain Andor was due to return that night, so Melshi joined his team for a drink before heading back to his bunk room to change out of the rest of his gear.
He’d just finished unpacking his bag and had turned to shove his jacket into the storage unit when he heard the door panel slide open again.
“You’re back early,” he said, waiting a moment before he turned around to confirm it was indeed Cassian, looking a little mussed and tired but not too much worse for wear.
“How did you know it was me?” he asked, his lips curling slightly as he tipped his head to one side.
“Didn’t,” Melshi replied seriously. “I’ve said that to the last three lads who walked in here, actually - just hoping to get lucky eventually -”
“Oh shut up,” Cassian muttered, his smile widening enough to reach his dimples. He looked Melshi up and down, his eyes lingering over his lower torso before returning to his face. “You look good.”
“In one piece, as promised,” Melshi said.
He turned away before Cassian could see the heat that had risen to his cheeks, busying himself with his tac boots while Cassian gave him the run-down on what he’d missed.
“Kay and I were tracking down a new lead on Jedha. A fresh demand for raw materials, just like we talked about: kyber crystals - stripped from the old Jedi temple - though we’re still figuring out why. It could be unrelated, but the timing fits too well with the quadanium. Might be worth getting another insider in Guerrera’s camp to keep an eye on things. Kay said maybe -”
And Melshi had thought he was following the progress of Cassian’s thoughts, but he must have been more distracted than he thought, because it wasn’t until he finished shucking off his vest that he realized Cassian had trailed off mid-sentence.
“Cassian?”
He turned around to see Cassian standing by his storage unit, staring at the small clay pot Melshi had set there for safekeeping, an inscrutable look on his face as he traced the edges of a green serrated leaf.
“Oh,” Melshi said. “That.”
It had felt like a risk, buying it, and not just because of the impracticalities involved in shepherding a potted herb across hyperspace. It felt showy: a gesture too singular and deliberate to be disguised as a friendly press of hands or even a tipsy punch in a bar.
But it had been three standard years, three months, and thirteen days since Melshi had made himself walk away from the man he’d known as Keef Girgo. And Cassian wasn’t the only one tired of always walking away. If there was a chance Melshi could mark his time with something other than the days left to fight or the distance from his desire, he didn’t want to wait any longer to find out.
“I saw it at a market when we stopped for supplies,” he explained, tipping his head toward the herb. “It looked a little bit like the ones you talked about - the ones that did okay with more shade - and the gent at the stall said it would travel well. I know you’ve been looking for things to try with the tatties. If it’s not the thing, of course -”
But he didn’t finish the sentence, the words dying in his throat when Cassian twisted toward him, one hand coming up to cup Melshi’s jaw.
“Melshi,” he said, his voice so full it felt like a physical weight tipping onto Melshi’s chest, and Melshi curled an arm around him on instinct, holding the sensation close where it couldn’t fall to the ground.
“Aye,” he managed. “It’s yours, Cass - all of it. It’s been yours from the start.”
Cassian made a sound that might have been a growl, and then he had his fist in Melshi’s shirt, pulling Melshi in and kissing him fiercely enough that Melshi stumbled back a pace, catching himself against the bunk so he could keep them both upright.
Melshi wasn’t even sure what noise he made in response, too busy getting his hand wrapped around Cassian’s waist, raising the other to tangle it in Cassian’s hair - letting himself be kissed breathless as Cassian crowded him against the bed.
The first time Melshi had fallen into step with Cassian, it had been like discovering the use of a reflex that had always seemed vestigial - the appearance of the right stimulus finally revealing some unfocused restlessness inside him as a purposeful response. Cassian had tipped his chin up across the table, Melshi’s shoulders had leaned toward him automatically, and it had felt just like kissing him felt now. Like a hammer hitting the patellar tendon, like limbs leaping back in an action they’d always known: oh.
That was what the movement inside of him was for.
“Small gods,” Melshi panted, his head falling back against the durasteel bunk frame when Cassian shifted his attention to his throat. “That’s - fuck, Cass.”
He swayed suddenly, and then Cassian had an arm around his back, taking some of his weight and pulling back to scan his face.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice tight with concern, and Melshi nodded, a small laugh escaping over the buzzing of his lips.
“Great. I’m fucking grand. I’m just - a little lightheaded.” He pulled in a slower breath, pausing to brush a strand of hair out of Cassian’s eyes and smooth his thumb over the furrow in his brows. “Sorry. Just. Got overwhelmed there for a moment. Holding you like that.”
Something happened on Cassian’s face that was too fast for Melshi to track, and then he was curling forward onto Melshi’s chest, pulling the hand Melshi had at his hip around to circle his lower back.
“You have me,” he said. “And we have time. We can take as long as we want tonight.”
Melshi let his forehead drop forward to rest on Cassian’s, nestling his fingers deeper into Cassian’s curls.
“Luaidh mo chèile,” he whispered.
Cassian shivered, and then he craned his head up to kiss Melshi again, working his mouth open with long, searching drags of his tongue, until they were both panting against each other’s lips and hard against each other’s hips.
“Maybe we should find a spot with a little more privacy?” Melshi offered. “I’ve, ah, got some ideas. About that time you mentioned taking. And they don’t happen to involve my bunk mates getting back from dinner and finding me sucking you off.”
Cassian’s gaze dropped to Melshi’s lips.
“That’s a good idea,” he said. “Those are two very good ideas. Let’s go to my quarters.”
“And I can suck you off there?” Melshi asked. “Just to clarify.”
Cassian kissed him once, fierce and hungry, sliding a palm over Melshi’s cock and swallowing the groan he let out in response.
“You can do whatever you want to me,” he promised. “As long as you fuck me at the end.”
He kissed Melshi again, softer this time.
“Because I missed you.”
Another kiss, a hint of teeth.
“And now I want to feel you for days.”
**
Melshi woke up the next morning to the tip of Cassian’s nose burrowing against the crook between his neck and shoulder, and the sensation sent such an ache of pleasure arching through him that he might have thought he was dreaming - except that it was also cold. Too cold, given how warm and slow everything else around him felt. So he made a noise of protest, looping his hand around Cassian’s wrist and pulling his arm tighter, where it could tuck up against Melshi’s chest.
Cassian made an answering noise, much more content, and then he nestled his knees behind Melshi’s, pressing their legs together under the blanket.
“You leeching my body heat, Girgo?” Melshi asked sleepily, and he felt Cassian smile against his skin.
A thought occurred to Melshi then, and he rolled over to face Cassian across the pillow.
“Has anyone ever called you ‘Keef’ while in the throes of passion?” he asked solemnly.
Cassian grimaced.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” Melshi decided, and then he made a vague sound of disappointment. “Guess I’ll have to wait to find a pet name of my own to whisper to you amorously when the occasion calls for it.”
Cassian hummed, brushing a finger almost tentatively over Melshi’s cheekbone
“What you called me last night,” he said. “In your room. I liked that.”
“Luaidh mo chèile,” Melshi repeated, a soft smile blooming on his face when Cassian shivered at the sound again. “Aye, that’s you to me.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means ‘love of my life,’” Melshi explained, settling deeper into the pillow as Cassian traced the line of his jaw. “Someone very dear - a source of light. It means you found me in a place where 'day' was just a name for the shifts they stole, and you led me out. You still lead me out, all the time - you show me where things can grow.”
Cassian stroked Melshi’s cheek again.
“A source of light,” he repeated, turning it over.
“It’s okay?” Melshi asked, and he rested a hand inquiringly on Cassian’s hip, because he meant more than just the name.
Cassian slipped deeper into his hold, tangling their knees and ankes like roots.
“It’s good,” he assured him. “It means we can do more than just survive.”
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