Chapter Text
Sergeant.
It’s strange, after what feels like so little time, to have been pinned to a rank and its associated responsibilities. It has seemed to him, upon his arrival on Yavin, that the Alliance was attempting to do its best impression of a put-together military operation. They had at least the wherewithal to confiscate their weapons on arrival, little enough trust to be found in fresh faced strangers, though most were fresh only in the sense that they had come recently from the front lines. From pockets of resistance dotted across the galaxy.
For Melshi that had meant leaving Gallus behind. Rain soaked trenches and a front that seemed able to hold without the need for their outside agitation anymore. Many had chosen to stay anyway. The others he’d shared the three day transport over with had come from the northern boundaries. Not beings he knew, but ones who must, on some level, share with him that same pressing urge to move.
There was no one single reason on which Melshi could pin his grounds for upending his life once again; to start once more from the bottom rung of whatever army was rumored to be gathering on Yavin. Maybe it was too long in one place that made his skin start to feel too tight, or the stagnation of the fighting that left too much unspent energy to restlessly simmer in the soles of his feet. Maybe, it was a waterlogged long wave radio that cried out “ can anyone hear us?” before abruptly cutting to the static of the signal being lost
But it had gotten out, and now people knew, he knew, and he could no more sit idly by than when his shoe clad feet had touched solid ground again almost three years ago.
So maybe Yavin had been the only real choice. Or no choice at all in another sense, for what else was there but certainty when the options were to fight, or stop looking up. Certainty, and yet there was still a moment when he almost balked, as they cleared the exit ramp and were told to part with their weapons. Even as his chest jerked at the loss of handing over that blaster, which he’d held onto for far too long and yet could never bring himself to part with.
Of course it was never really just a weapon, but a physical reminder of long blurred together memories of white walls and orange streaked pain. That it had been real, not some distant hazy nightmare. That somewhere out there, someone else knew. A thread spanning three years and uncountable parsecs goes taut as the ordinance sergeant receives his blaster without remark.
If that’s the price of doing the only thing he knows to be right, what else could be done, but to leave the past behind him. Save that strange unsettled grief for after the war, because then he’ll never have to really deal with it at all.
Or so he had thought, right up until the moment the Corporal pulled the gun, and an entirely different feeling lodged itself in his chest.
They aren't the same people that departed from Niamos, how could they be? Keef is Cassian now, or was then too. It doesn’t matter. His arms still pull him in tight in the middle of the droid maintenance bay. His chest still moves the same as Melshi remembers from that night, where he didn’t have to strain to hear Keef’s breathing over the buzz of the floor.
He moves in, and he supposes it's not the first time they’ve lived together. Except this time there is no five feet of floor between them, and the wooden slats are so far from anything unnatural that it makes going around in socks alone less fraught. He teases, only once, at the collection of potted plants on every available surface, like there isn’t a whole jungle outside their door. Only once, because Cassian gets that wistful sad look he’d had on the day they had re-introduced themselves.
It’s an expression he’ll keep from Cassain’s face as much as he can, which, as it turns out, is not so difficult to achieve. He commandeers a ragged set of rianza tiles (at second choice because a complete sabacc deck is nowhere to be found, suspiciously lacking all but the sixty base cards) and suggests it might be useful to acquaint Kaytoo to human social behaviours. How quickly that falls into nightly drinking and betting, though Kay never quite picks up on the subtle nuance of lying.
How easily it comes, laughing as Kay berates them both for cheating, the rush of heat that flares as their hands brush, passing tiles under the table. Cassian, who nudges his arm at Kay’s incredulity, or leans on his shoulder as he goes to refill their cups. Cassian, who cooks when the mess hall's offerings are too strange and full of flavour. Cassian, who sits with him on the ‘fresher floor through the worst hangover of his life. Cassian, who he suddenly cannot imagine his life without.
There had been so much time. There had been other people. Melshi can feel the shape of her absence in the way Cassian talks and moves, in a bed half slept in, in an unfinished servo motor gathering dust in a corner, in all the living things Cassian carefully tends to. There has been loss and grief. There are all the things they cannot talk about. Not right now. Maybe one day, when the war is over.
He doesn’t regret the choice he made, back then. It was no choice at all in truth. Wouldn’t change a thing, if he could turn back the clock. But sometimes, late in the evenings, when the games are long over and they stumble out onto the deck to watch the blinking watchtower lights he wonders…
What if’s are a dangerous pastime, and still Melshi can’t help but think how different things could’ve been if they had gone together. Only, they wouldn’t be the same. They would not have been shaped into the people they have become. Melshi looks over, and is struck by bone deep familiarity as Cassian closes his eyes and sways in the dim evening light, lips upturned in a soft smile as his head lands on Melshi’s shoulder.
“That’s enough for you I think,” he says, laughing as he pulls Cassian’s arm around his neck and steers him back inside. It’s a good night. They have lots of good nights. As many as they can when tomorrow isn’t promised.
Two nights later Cassian and Kaytoo leave for Jenoport.
When they return, Kaytoo’s power reserves are almost depleted, and Cassian looks much the same. Exhausted. Haunted. Half-dead.
He has to bite his tongue as he watches Draven pull him up for debrief. Chews the skin of his thumb raw by the time he sees Cassian again, close to stumbling out of Dravens office. There’s hastily applied bacta patch peeking out from under his collar, a bruise blooming on his cheek and under eyes cast in deep shadows. He refuses to go to medical. Melshi doesn’t argue. They stop briefly to check on Kay, charging in the hanger before taking the poorly lit though well trodden path back to their home.
Cassian is silent, staring vacantly into the untouched cup of calming flower tea that Melshi had made just for something to do with his hands. It’s shock. His own hands tremor with it as he tries to breathe through just how close he came to losing Cassian tonight. Pushes his own chair closer so their shoulders are near enough to brush together, just enough to say I’m here.
He’s not sure how long they sit there, quietly existing in the aftershocks, before Cassian finally moves, reaching over to take one of Melshi’s hands and intertwine their fingers. The tea has gone cold, and the first signs of dawn are beginning to brighten up the horizon when Cassian says, “Thank you for being here.”
Where else would he be, could he be? It seems to him, as it so often does these days, that there was no other choice. Simple as that. Here. Yavin. Home. And of that last one he is certain, is no longer a single place, and instead, just wherever Cassian is.
He squeezes his hand, thumb brushing back and forth across Cassian’s own, warm and alive and here, right here.
“Whatever you need, Cass.”
He hears Cassian’s breath catch in his throat, watches him blink rapidly. There are no tears, though Melshi makes a silent promise to himself that he will be there when they come. That Cassian shouldn’t have to be alone. That it’s all he can hope for, to be there to pull him back from the ledge and the blinking red lights that make the option all too present.
Cassian turns, and for the first time in hours, his expression is something other than numb.
“Now?” he asks. Of course . But not just now. However long they still have left. Until the days roll down to zero. Whatever Cassian needs.
“Yes, always.”
“You.”
And in the next moment, Cassian’s mouth is hot on his and he’s clinging to him with the same kind of desperation Melshi remembers reflected in himself three and a half years earlier. Holding on, like Melshi is the only thing keeping him upright, frantic and urgent. And he can’t deny that he’s thought about this. Wanted this. All the same he pulls back, not far, Cassian’s grip on his shirt and arm would not much allow it, lets his eyes stay closed, foreheads pressed together when he asks, “Cass, are you sure?”
Cassian takes his face between his hands and says, quiet and raw, “We’ve wasted so much time already.” And they have, it’s more real than it's ever been that they could die anyday. That the galaxy is not unkind but uncaring. That they found each other at all, after all this time, should never be taken for granted. His hands find Cassian’s waist, push beneath the shirt and graze across his skin. Cassian shudders.
“Then let's not waste any more.”
For all the desperation, Cassian lets him love him slowly that first time. Wincing with the movement of his shoulder while Melshi is careful to avoid the freshest of bruises and abrasions. Works him open with all the care and attention they didn’t have time for on Niamos. Sobs at the overwhelming pleasure of Cassian being alive all around him, and Cassian cries in the release, at being reminded that he is alive.
It is less surprising than he had expected, how little really changes between them after that.
Life cycles much the same, exfils, ground ops, missions, the thing they have chosen to dedicate themselves to. Orders from above, Melshi’s entirely less flexible than Cassian’s. Yet somehow, there has been new life breathed into living. In the spaces between sundown and dawn where the hours are mostly their own.
In the time between when Kaytoo loudly complains that neither of them is concentrating on the rianza game anymore, and the comfortable bliss of sleep, the taste of salt and sweat still fading on his tongue.
Life cycles much the same, until Captain Sartha hands him a vest with a sergeant's rank and assigns him a new round of fresh faces to put through boot. He only manages to conceal his surprise because Vel is just as like to take that rank back if he should appear anything but totally competent, or otherwise show her up in a way that might undermine her authority.
Cassian makes no comment, when he shows up home that evening, badge freshly covered in a layer of dirt from ten rounds of hand to hand combat evaluation. Only smirks as Melshi peels off his sweat soaked shirt and asks him about his day, all too casually.
It was only when he had Cassian pinned to the mattress beneath him (though he was under no illusion that it was more to do with Cassian allowing this than his own skill in hand to hand combat), had he then accused him of putting in a good word for him. That only made Cassian laugh, and he assured him that he could no more sway any decision of Vel’s than he could bodily lift their half-ton droid companion.
Laughs, at least until he is reminded there are better ways he could use that smart mouth of his.
“Yes, Sergeant, ” and Cassian grins.
Bastard.