Summary: K-2 is trying to catalogue Cassian's micro expressions, Cassian is trying to get them alone time, birds are being jerks. Nobody's getting laid here, and nature is overrated.
Notes: So this fic is basically me making fun of my own inability to get them laid. Every time I start a story telling myself "there will be smut" and then there is none. I have vague ambitions of making this a 5 Times thing, but for now it's a one-shot. This story takes place on Dantooine, the rebel base prior to Yavin 4.
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Exposure
by Artemis1000
There was nothing more intriguing to K-2SO than Cassian Andor.
He had catalogued all his micro expressions and the tiny variations in his body language. He hadn't pinpointed the full meaning of each of them yet, but he had them catalogued, and he was working on labelling all of them.
There had been a lot of cataloguing to do lately.
Humans displayed completely different, additional behavior patterns with their mates, and that had been endlessly frustrating at first. K-2 had spent years studying Cassian, only to learn he had been holding out on him all along.
Cassian could be terribly inconsiderate like that, and when K-2 voiced his legitimate outrage, he hadn't even been sorry.
He would have been upset, except that Cassian laughed his favorite laugh, the one where the corners of his eyes crinkled, and he looked at K-2 with undisguised affection.
"I'm sorry, Kay," he said, and his fingertips brushed over the hatch on his chest beneath which lay the sensitive systems which Cassian had plugged into all these years ago when he reprogrammed him.
K-2's systems rewarded his gentle caress with louder humming and Cassian's eyes lingered on his optics, his teeth catching on his bottom lip.
"You should be," K-2 declared with all the primness of a protocol droid. Well, maybe half the primness of a protocol droid, but he had tried. "Do you have any idea how much processing power I have spent on flawed simulations?"
"Incomplete," Cassian protested. "Not flawed."
Dantooine's sun was burning down on them, and Cassian sat on a rock, eagerly perched forward as if there was nothing unusual about sitting around on rocks in the middle of nowhere.
Hiking had been his idea, and K-2 still thought it strange, but he had gone along with a lot of strange ideas over the years just to see Cassian smile. This one was bizarre, though; Cassian didn't even much like being out in nature. He was vocally proud of his urban Festian origins, and that suited K-2 just fine.
But now he was giving K-2 a cheeky grin, and now he was biting down harder on his bottom lip to stifle his grin, and maybe K-2 didn't care all that much why they were sitting around on rocks in the middle of nowhere.
"Cassian, why are we here?"
He didn't care all that much, but he still cared. More grit was getting stuck in his vents with every minute.
Cassian froze. He was a good liar, much better than K-2, but K-2 had zoom vision and heat sensors, he could replay a memory file and run it through the multitude of analysis software he had written solely to better understand Cassian.
Cassian called that cheating, by the way.
"I wanted to be alone with you."
K-2 pointedly looked around. Somehow, Cassian had taken a planet of lush forests and grassy green plains and found the single dreary, dried-out brown steppe for them to visit. There's nobody around. Not even larger animals would want to spend their time here.
"You have succeeded," he said mildly, and preened a little for having been so nice and supportive and only mildly sarcastic. Never let it be said he couldn't be nice to Cassian.
Cassian flushed and averted his eyes. How odd. Maybe K-2's positive reinforcement needed some more work. Cassian clenched his jaw, but in his frustrated-with-himself way, not his frustrated-with-Kay way. "I just wanted to be alone with you, alright? It didn't matter to me where. There's no privacy at the base."
K-2 shifted his head forward eagerly, suddenly keenly interested. "Are we going to do something which requires privacy?"
Whenever he had tried, Cassian had smacked away his hands with reprimands of I'm busy or someone could hear us or we are on a mission. None of these applied now.
Cassian's flush darkened.
"Not like that!" he snapped. K-2 took that as a yes.
He reached out, hand hovering in the air in indecision for a moment before he brushed his fingers over Cassian's cheeks, and down along his clenched jaw. His facial surface temperature was above normal parameters, but remained within parameters for blushing. His stubble, the product of Cassian's valiant but fruitless attempt to grow a beard and look older than his early twenties, rasped along the sensors in his fingers, sending pleasurable little jolts of input to his processor. It was a matter of course that K-2 would keep mocking him for the fluff on his face, but he decided that he enjoyed the roughness.
"I like privacy," he announced.
Cassian's eyes flashed, and he surged forward, arms wrapping around K-2's neck. "I missed you."
K-2 thought of pointing out that he had been right there at his side all along, but he understood. He had missed Cassian, too. Warm, soft human fingers caressed his neck, and Cassian pressed his forehead against Kay's. He was sweaty from their hike, and Dantooine steppe dirt clung to his fingers. K-2 didn't mind so much anymore that he would be picking it out of the intricate pieces of his neck.
"Kay," Cassian breathed, puffing warm, humid air right into the grille of K-2's vocoder. Humans were a very wet species, K-2 knew that mostly as a source of frustration, but it was a little bit endearing, too.
He wrapped his arms around Cassian, one hand placed low at the small of his back, while he placed the other in the middle of his back. Cassian made a noise which K-2 knew to indicate happy, content, unidentified and hopefully replaced the latter with interested in sexual activities.
Cassian's lips moved along K-2's jaw, his tongue mapped the intricate pattern of individual parts and vents and seams that made up this part of his head. They lingered on the left sensor pin on his chin, and his hands started to explore Kay's frame, triggering sensors with the precision he strove for in every part of his life.
K-2 had been designed with the ability to feel pain; until Cassian he hadn't realized that the same sensory input on lower rates could parse as pleasurable. Caressing hands sent the same tactile data as a punch, strictly speaking. But strictly speaking, there was a lot security droids hadn't been designed for, and K-2 did anyway.
"I've been thinking," Cassian murmured, "you enjoy it when I touch you, right? I want to find out just how much you can enjoy it. I have some ideas…" He leaned his forehead against K-2's again, and then he was straddling him properly, soft human body pressed flush against his. It didn't seem to bother him that K-2 was all metal with hard, sharp edges. If he registered it at all it only excited him further, for Cassian pressed himself even closer as if he hoped to crawl under his frame.
K-2 rewarded him by slipping his hands under Cassian's uniform shirt. His skin was warm beneath, a criss-crossing pattern of soft and rough where scars marked his body. Muscles flexed under his caresses, he mapped far too fragile ribs and couldn't help but recall where they had been broken before. Cassian felt maddeningly delicate under his hands, K-2 could have crushed his ribcage without even trying, but he knew him too well to think of him as a pretty fragile thing which should be kept behind transparisteel and only looked at, never touched. Cassian was as deadly as him, it was one of the things K-2 liked best about him.
"I want to learn everything about you, Kay," he whispered breathlessly, and even with his incomplete-not-flawed data K-2 knew he wasn't talking of studying blueprints.
He tilted his head, optics shifting in interest. "I know you do. You are very thorough."
Cassian flashed him a grin he would have called giddy on any other human; no file K-2 had studied had mentioned that euphoria was a side effect of arousal as much as of cerebral hypoxia. He was still debating whether he should question Cassian on the likelihood of unconsciousness, when Cassian ground his hips against him and made a soft whimpering noise followed by a whine of, "Kay!"
Maybe questions could wait for later.
Far above them, a bird shrieked its call, and Cassian's hand jerked to his blaster.
Cassian cringed away, his face flushed and pupils dilated in a way which K-2 knew to indicate arousal, but also with his jaw clenched in a way which K-2 knew meant he wouldn't be acting on it – again.
"We can't," he ground out. His voice was tense and clipped again, though it was still husky. "Not out here…" He pointedly looked around, and said, "It's too exposed."
K-2 tugged his hands out from underneath Cassian's shirt. He tried very hard not to feel disappointed. "You wanted to be alone."
Cassian gave another cringe and muttered, "I did… but I hadn't thought it through."
He nodded. He still felt disappointed, he missed how soft and eager Cassian had been, and his feed of sensory input felt strangely incomplete without Cassian's caresses. But now that Cassian had pointed out how exposed they were he couldn't help running simulations on all the dangers of getting caught up in another out here, and he didn't feel safe anymore, either.
"We will find someplace alone, but easier to defend," he promised, and ran his fingertips once more over Cassian's cheek.
He hummed his agreement, and his eyes lingered on K-2's face plates for so long that he was beginning to wonder if Cassian had changed his mind again. But all he did was shake his head, and stand up. He tried very hard to smooth his sweat-damp hair and tuck his uniform back into place as if nothing had happened.
"Cassian?" He waited until he looked up to him and announced, "You're wasting your time. I have perfect recall."
The disgruntled glower he got was one of the funniest expressions Cassian's face could make. It also happened to be one aimed at K-2 most of the time. "Smug doesn't suit you."
"I disagree. Smug suits me well."
Cassian's lips twitched into a reluctant smile, and K-2 felt his own processor respond with a very tender kind of happiness. "It does."
They started walking again.
"So…" He faked a cough. "Since we're not going to do anything else, what do you say we use all this wide, open space for a little shooting competition? I brought my sniper kit, and you keep telling me that your targeting systems are better than mine. I say it's time to put your money where your mouth is."
K-2 straightened indignantly. "I don't have a mouth." He let one of Cassian's heartbeats pass. "But my targeting systems are better than yours."
Cassian tried to hide his laugh behind a huff. It didn't work. K-2 had catalogued his responses far too well.
The End