Just Don't Take Too Long
DISCLAIMER: I don't own a thing, this was written for the purpose of entertainment only.
This is a follow-up to "Before It Gets Better", "Cold Coffee", "It's Time For Me (to Fall Apart)
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[t=- 6,5h]
What a tiring game it is they are playing, he thinks and stirs in his cup. It's two in the morning and he's too exhausted to even be pissed anymore. But he can't just go to bed, he has to be sitting here when she comes back.
That's the rule. She doesn't come home so he sits at the table waiting for her, and he won't say a word when she finally drags herself through the door but he needs to be here.
He doesn't even know anymore if this is supposed to be some loving gesture or a silent reproach.
He just has to sit here when she comes home, because that's what they've become. He's absent, and then she disappears, and then he waits.
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[t=-6h]
When she opens the door, her steps are unusually light and sure, and when she comes into the kitchen her eyes look tired but clear. She's not usually anywhere near this sober at this point of their endless stupid dance.
Her line is You shouldn't have waited for me, to which he would reply in a quiet, careless voice: Come to bed, Jyn.
But tonight, she doesn't say it. She takes the cup of coffee out of his hands, pours the contents down the drain, then leans against the edge of the table for a moment, looking at him with an expression he's never seen on her before. He can't quite say what it is but it's threatening to break his heart.
"Do you think we deserve each other?" she asks in a strange, broken voice, and never waits for him to reply (which is lucky because it's not like he has some kind of answer to that.)
She threads her fingers through his hair and crawls onto his lap and kisses him, with enough desperation to suggest the world might be ending. He pulls her in, as close as he can, and thinks he's always cold when she's not there.
Thinks there's not even a trace of alcohol in her breath. Thinks it's sick that he finds that worrying. It shouldn't be cause for concern that his wife would come home sober and kiss him, but it is.
He is worried, and in a healthy relationship he would ask what's going on, ask if she's okay – but who are they kidding, damn it, they love each other, yes, that they do, but theirs is not a functioning marriage. There's just no pretending it is, not with the way they were the last few weeks. Not with the way they were fighting all the time and then it just stopped, like they just accepted they weren't going to resolve anything, and the shouting matches died down. Not with the way they fall asleep without so much as a word to each other, facing opposite directions, only for one of them to wake up in the middle of the night and pull the other close, and then neither one of them say a word about it in the morning.
There is just no way to call that functioning.
And so he doesn't bother – because he has a hunch, but he doesn't think he can bear to think that thought all the way through.
Her hands slip underneath his t-shirt, run across his back, cold fingertips barely touching, leaving burning traces across his skin. He trails kisses along her jaw and doesn't make a conscious note of the taste of salt in his mouth. Buries one hand in her hair instead and holds her in place just a little too firmly, adjusts her leg around his waist with the other.
Her hands make their way across his stomach to the waistband of his jeans and her pulse flutters against his lips underneath the thin skin of her throat.
Cassian decides the best way to spend the last night on earth is to forget how near the end is, and allows his thoughts to skid to a stuttering halt, and doesn't let his heart ache for anything but desire.
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[t=- 0,25 h]
When he wakes the next morning, the other side of the bed is already cold. He finds her in the kitchen, staring into her coffee. She fills a cup for him and shoves it across the table and doesn't look him in the eyes.
All this is more confirmation than he needs. He knows what last night was, even though he pretends not to because the weight of it threatens to suffocate him, but he knows.
It was goodbye.
He doesn't know how he finds the strength to say it, hell, he doesn't know why he says it at all, he doesn't quite get it right, either – but still, somehow, words come, in a voice he has never heard come out of his mouth before –
"You're leaving, aren't you?"
"I can't do this anymore, Cassian," she whispers, still looking intently at her hands. "You don't – you didn't even notice all my stuff has been gone for days, did you?"
He wants to say something, has a vague idea in his head he has to stop her talking, but there's just nothing to say that is true. He hasn't noticed, but damn it, she's right, that's why there was so much space to hang his jacket...
"That's how much you look at me, at this place," she says with a terrible little smile on her lips, and keeps going, the words just stumbling from her lips like she couldn't hold them back if she wanted to. "I can't do this. I can't take the way you look at me, like you're disappointed. Because I'm still just as fucked up as I was and I always will be, Cassian, I'm a train wreck, that's what you married, a fucking train wreck, and you..." Her voice trails off for a moment, and she makes a vague, tired gesture at him, her beautiful green eyes too big and too bright; the sight of it all is clenching his throat shut, cuts maybe deeper than even her words.
"You're never here and you keep things from me and you lie to me, about the stupidest little things, you're such a fucking liar, you always were..." She laughs, a little breathless laugh that has no anger in it, just resignation, and resignation is the one thing he's never ever imagined Jyn is capable of feeling. His chest burns like he's swallowed acid, and he still can't find anything to say.
"We can't change each other and you thought you could save me but you can't and now you know it. You... you can't ask me to live this, I can't stand the way you look at me. Not you. I've disappointed everyone, but I can't be reminded every goddamn day that I've disappointed you too. I can't do it. I'm sorry, Cassian, I tried but I – "
At this point, her voice just shatters and stops, and the only thing he finds himself capable of is reach across the table and take her hand in his.
He feels like he's been struck by lightning, can't get up, can't speak. Can't even cry.
It would be a lie to say he hasn't seen this coming just a little, but – hell, in the end, he's only known her for what, seventeen months, eighteen? What are one and half years, in the grand scheme of things, in the twenty-seven years of his life?
And still, still – he has no idea how his world should keep on turning without her in it.
He stares down at their entwined fingers, at the gold band shimmering in the morning light – he can count the times he's taken it off except to shower on one hand. He sleeps with the damn thing, doesn't take it off when he washes his hands; he's sure there's a small dent in his finger by now.
Her fingers are cold in his, and he holds them tighter to warm them, out of habit.
And despite the fact he doesn't think he's ever felt so fucking lost in his life, he somehow manages to get out a few consecutive words.
"If that's what you need, Jyn..." He swallows a few times, then resumes in an increasingly shaking voice: "Then I can't stop you."
Her fingers shake in his and he holds them tighter still. It doesn't do much good.
Her lips tremble just a little, but this time, the tears don't fall.
"Where will you –"
"Bodhi's, for now," she says, and he last two words cut like razor blades. For now, until I find a place of my own –
He can't let himself fully comprehend what that means.
"It's better this way, Cassian, for both of us," she mutters and for years to come, he will remind himself as he repeats this line that this was the lie that she started telling.
He nods, numbly, and pulls her hand towards him, presses his lips against her cold fingers. He concentrates on the texture of her skin, clears his mind from every thought. He feels numb, and that's a blessing.
"Call me," he says, in a quiet, toneless voice. "We need to talk this through properly."
She doesn't pull her hand out of his grip. "I – I need a couple of days, Cassian."
I need a lifetime, he thinks numbly, and says in a robotic sort of voice: "Yes. Of course."
He winds up staring into her eyes, drowns himself in the gold and green, transfixed. Home. That's what that colour is. Home.
With a strangled little sound, she finally pulls her hand away, staggers to her feet, not looking very balanced at all, and walks out of the kitchen, her pace quickens, the heels of her shoes – all this time, she was already wearing her shoes – loud against the tiles, then the front door thumps shut.
The sudden silence is ringing in his ears.
For over three hours, he just sits there, the clock on the wall ticking by the seconds, the untouched cup of – now cold – coffee on the table in front of him along with the half-empty one she left behind.
His phone rings – probably the precinct, he should've been there some two odd hours ago. He lets it ring.
At some point, he gets up, returns to the bedroom and crawls back underneath the covers, fully clothed, and sleeps until the next morning.
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[t=221 h=9,21 d]
In the end, she texts him, doesn't call – he can't blame her – and it's in a small coffee shop with sticky counters and terrible coffee that he sees his wife again, and this time he gets the question right.
"Are you leaving me, Jyn?"
Her eyes are too bright, and she bites her lip and doesn't answer at all.
(Cassian catches himself thinking they might be even more terrible at being a separated couple than they were at being a married couple.)
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[t=382 h=15,92 d]
For a week or so, he doesn't speak a word of it to anyone and shivers with cold from the moment he wakes up in a cold empty bed.
The sight of his wedding ring is even harder to bear than its absence, but the first time he leaves it at home he can't think of anything else all day. So after a night he spends staring at the ring on his nightstand in the dark, he puts it in an envelope with all the old post-it notes with her achingly familiar handwriting on it still stuck to the door of the fridge, and shoves it into the glove compartment of his car the next morning. In reach, but out of sight. He thinks he might be okay with that arrangement for a while.
(It's definitely a temporary solution, and he can't admit to this pathetic little secret, not to anybody, under absolutely no circumstances, at all, not ever.)
It takes over two weeks until he responds to Kay's inquisitive, worried sideward glances with anything other than a shrug. He looks up at the pathologist across the table in the morgue in the middle of his monologue and asks tonelessly: "How late is too late, Kay?"
Kay sighs and shakes his head and returns his eyes to the mangled body on the table.
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[t=53424 h=2226 d=6,09 a]
There's an old song playing from the scrappy speakers and Cassian is tired as all hell despite the four cups of coffee he has already ingested before he got ready for work, and he thinks that radio DJ has a greater sense of irony than he can appreciate at this time of the morning... playing fucking Boys of Summer, God, how he's come to hate that song –
...out on the road today, I saw a dead head sticker on a cadillac
A little voice inside my head said don't look back you can never look back
I thought I knew what love was, what did I know?
Those days are gone forever, I should've just let them go but –
I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun,
you got the top rolled down and the radio on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of summer have gone…
(It's funny how this is the last song he ever listens to in this car, he will think a few hours later, as he watches the fire brigade put out the last of the flames. Almost like the old thing that has carried them all the way to Corpus Christi and across the border to Tulum, the one that has seen him in his happiest moments as well as in the worst state he's ever been in, this faithful old Ford that carries his most prized possession when he can't bear to even look at it – it's almost like it was trying to tell him something.)
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[t=53430 h=2226,25 d=6,09 a]
Kay drops a battered white envelope onto his desk and something heavy and metal inside gives a soft clunk. Cassian stares at it for a moment, then raises his eyes to his friend in utter confusion.
His car burned out, he's just seen the wreck, there was hardly anything left of it, it burned hot enough to disfigure the hull, melt the tires –
He tries not to think about what would have been left of him if he'd been inside when it blew, it's not a good road to go down – he'll just end up wondering who the hell would even turn up to bury that empty coffin, if she would –
Stop it.
His eyes flicker back to the envelope, to that thing he's felt on his right hand like phantom pain in a lost limb again for the past five hours...
"How –"
"When Antilles's and Dameron's cars went up in smoke yesterday, I figured it would only be a matter of time before yours blew up, so I decided your, ah, treasure," Kay waves down at the envelope with unveiled exasperation, "would probably be safer with me for the time being. If only so we'd have something to bury, you know," he adds drily, a half-hearted attempt at his trademark dark humour that neither one can really laugh about right now.
Cassian swallows with some difficulty. "Thank you, Kay," he breathes and Kay sighs deeply.
"Six years, Cassian," he says with a hint of something that sounds dangerously like pity in his voice, "that's over two thousand days, you know?"
Cassian stares at the table and nods.
"Two thousand one-hundred and ninety-two, actually. Six years, and that thing is still the only thing in your possession you'd be sorry to lose." A pause, then –
"You know, I'd call you insane, but I called Bodhi last week, and he still has hers. And when she drunk-dials him these days he says it's usually to ask if he still has it. So I guess you're at least both pathetic."
Cassian freezes. He didn't think she'd keep it. He thought she'd probably thrown it into some river at some point, some early point in fact, on one of her drunken sprees – though come to think of it, that's probably why Bodhi has it. Because she threatened to throw it away and he thought she'd regret it and took it from her. Faithful, ever-patient Bodhi, that poor boy whose heart Jyn must've broken almost as much as his...
Of course he'd have it – who else?
"It was for the best," Cassian mutters, shaking his head. "We all think so, right?"
Kay grimaces. "Well, maybe we were all wrong."
That takes a moment to sink in. Kay admitting to being mistaken? Kay of all people insinuating he should have fought for his marriage?
He must have heard it wrong.
"It should've got better a long time ago, Cassian," he says matter-of-factly. "I faintly remember telling you this before," the sarcasm is almost palpable in his voice at this point, "but you need help."
"I'm fine," he says in a resigned voice, like he has a million times, and fixes his eyes at the table top again. "It's getting better."
"Like hell it is," Kay mutters and shakes his head. "Don't lie to me, Cassian. Not to me."
He doesn't reply, just nods. Like he has a million times before.
But Kay reaches across the table, picks up Cassian's phone and holds it out to him, motionless and without a word until his friend finally looks up at him.
"What?"
There is a strange smile tugging at Kay's lips, which is rare enough in and of itself, but there's something oddly... melancholic to it, and it looks foreign on his face.
"How late is too late, Cassian?"
And with that, he puts the phone down in front of him and walks out, leaving Cassian to stare after him in bewilderment.
Then he returns his eyes to the envelope on the desk, and after a moment of hesitation, he turns it over and lets the contents fall out onto the worn wood.
Most of them are post-its, their vibrant colour long faded. They're not loving messages or anything like that, not really, he can't say why he decided to keep them when they were still together – maybe because of that quiet voice in his head telling him that he didn't deserve such happiness and that, if there was any justice in this world, he would not get to stay with her.
They're mostly just little notes – shopping lists, put away your fucking dishes, Jyn; at least buy new coffee if you keep using it up, Andor; dragging Bodhi to a bar don't wait up for me; Jyn, I won't make it tonight but I made you dinner – just put it in the microwave, even you can't mess this one up I hope
I just missed you last night, don't worry I'm fine
You were already gone when I woke up, gone to have dinner with Chirrut and Baze, they told you to come but you probably forgot and you're not reading my texts and I know you won't make it anyway. I'll just tell them you're sorry, then
Hello stranger, Chirrut called for you again
Jyn, your charger is on the kitchen table, when you see this charge the fucking thing and call me stat! I'm worried
He sighs, gathers up the post-its and shoves them back into the envelope.
The last object shimmers in the neon light.
There's a reason he keeps the notes with his wedding band – to remind himself why he's not wearing it anymore. That reminder never really seems to work, though.
For just a guilty ten seconds, he slides it back on his right-hand ring finger. (Just to see if it still fits.)
It does, and he's forgotten – again – how much it hurts to do this. He wrenches it off like the gold burned his skin, and shoves it back into the envelope as well, then hesitates, gets it back out. Inspects the battered gold band like a piece of evidence.
Small for a man's ring, not solid gold, which makes it cheaper but also a little less liable to deformation. No engravings or stones or other decoration, just a thin gold band. Slightly scratched and dented, the usual wear and tear of a ring worn everyday, knocked against wood and stone and maybe teeth, but clean and bright, polished on a regular basis.
(If it was a piece of evidence, he wouldn't know what the counterpart looks like, wouldn't remember the splinter of onyx embedded in the gold.)
How late is too late?
Was it too late when he didn't run after her that morning? When he let her pay for her own coffee and nodded when she told him she wasn't coming back again? When he finally called a lawyer and signed that cursed slip of paper and she signed hers? That last time he saw her before she moved out of town? That time Bodhi called him and he said he wouldn't come? Was it too late when she got high and told Chirrut she would just die and get out of their hair for good, or last year when he somehow managed to leave her bedside even though every fibre of his being screamed at him not to?
How late is too late?
Six damn years. Two-thousand one-hundred and ninety-two days. He has to know. He has to try, just one more time -
He closes his fingers around the ring and picks up the phone. He doesn't quite know what gives him the courage.
"Cassian?"
"Jyn," he murmurs, his eyes falling shut against his will at the sound of her voice. Six years, damn it. "Is this a bad time?"
Oh God, did he really just say that?
"What's going on? Did something happen?" Her voice is clear and there's still so much immediate worry, still so much warmth, after all this time, six damn years –
"No," he says reflexively. You're such a fucking liar, you always were – "Well. Some idiot blew up my car, but –"
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, fine, wasn't even anywhere near it when it happened; Antilles's and Dameron's were rigged too, they blew yesterday so I knew... Everyone's fine."
"Good. Okay," she whispers, then, a little louder: "Then why are you calling?"
Oh, fuck it, he thinks, and six damn years, two-thousand one-hundred and ninety-two miserable days.
How late is too late?
He's silent for so long he's afraid she'll just hang up again, then when words come, they're inelegant, blunt even, no explanation, no softening the blow, just –
"Come home, Jyn."
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