Summary: "I don't like being in love. It's a distraction I can't afford, and it makes everything confusing." Cassian's young, he's scared, and doesn't even know his relationship status. Or: When confessing your feelings was the easiest part.
Notes: Written for spacehairdresser for Space Swap. Thank you for the fantastic prompts! I had a lot of fun writing this story (though I regret I couldn't fit logistics of human/droid smut into it, only a few hints to it.)
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Calculated Risks
by Artemis1000
Nobody who knew him could deny that Cassian Jeron Andor was a thorough young man.
Cassian liked his life to be neat and orderly; he liked his spare uniforms properly folded in his footlocker, the report flexis neatly stacked on his desk, and people following regulations to a tee.
If anybody pointed out the irony of such behavior in a former anarchist, he would just scoff. In Cassian's opinion routines and predictable things were to be treasured, for very little in his life had ever been predictable. Someone had once said that no battle plan survived the first encounter with the enemy, and this went twice for spies.
In Cassian's mind, unpredictable equaled danger.
So he strove to control the things he could control, and if he had no control, well, then he just had to hope for the best.
All this had made him a meticulous soldier, and he applied himself with the same systematic – others would call it pedantic – attention to detail to every aspect of his life.
There were a few people on base who speculated that this would make Cassian an excellent lover. If asked, most would have bet on boring.
The truth was somewhere in the middle, but right now it came with a generous dash of terrified.
The briefing was taking far too long, as they usually did when politicians were present, and Cassian's eyes drifted from the holographic display to the towering dark shape of the droid standing by his side. Like so often these days, Cassian's eyes lingered on him, and as soon as he caught himself, he felt a little bit sorry for himself, too.
Cassian's life had been simple. It had been predictable. It had been safe.
And then he had gone and fallen in love.
Having gone straight from wild child teenage anarchist to crotchety old veteran, Lieutenant Andor was at 20 years old already an up-and-coming prodigy of rebel intelligence. His heavily-classified personnel file was filled with evaluations praising his single-minded focus and complete, self-sacrificing dedication to the cause.
Now, he was terrified. He had had a blaster put into his hands and taught how to shoot, and in the grimy back alleys of Fest's undercity he had learned to kiss another's lips while you still shook with the adrenaline of a too-close brush with death.
He didn't know how to do both. Nobody had ever taught him how to make a place in his life for both.
Nobody had ever taught him if droids could love you back.
"Lieutenant!" General Draven barked, and Cassian's face heated up with mortification.
"I'm sorry, sir. I was listening."
The General's sharp glare showed he knew it for the lie it was, but he let it drop, and that was good enough for Cassian. He could handle public humiliation, just as long as he didn't have to confess to the truth.
.
.
He didn't know how he made it through the rest of the briefing, let alone how he managed to pick up all the pertinent details.
"You were distracted," K-2 declared as they made their way back to Cassian's quarters.
They would discuss the mission details in private, and work out a plan. If a mission was urgent they could do it on the way, but for once there was no hurry. The mark wouldn't even arrive on Naboo for another five days. If things weren't so awkward these days Cassian would have been excited for the chance to plan a mission exactly as thoroughly as the Intelligence handbooks recommended.
"If you are malfunctioning you ought to tell me now, before you get yourself killed."
Cassian's cheeks burned all over again.
"I'm not mal… getting sick," Cassian protested as soon as the doors closed behind them. He looked at the tip of his boots, and slowly lifted his eyes to Kay's brightly glowing photoreceptor units. "I was watching you." He studied his boots some more. They were in need of cleaning. "And thinking." He looked up. "About us."
"I understand," K-2 said.
Cassian just scowled at him, stifling a bark that no, he did not understand, or he would be just as bothered as him.
He had always thought himself the last person to whine, but it was just plain unfair that he would be tying himself into knots over this thing between them while K-2 wasn't the least bit ruffled.
Somehow Cassian had thought that confessing his feelings would be the hardest part. He had been wrong.
Confessing had been rushed and desperate, there had been no time to think, and no worry about consequences since he thought he's about to die. Confessing had been easy. It was always when he started to overthink things that the problems began.
He remained by the door, keeping his back to it as if this were enemy territory and he worried about being snuck up on, while K-2 stood halfway between the door and his bed. In Cassian's tiny quarters that meant he could touch him if he stretched out his arm. "I made a list." He gulped. "Why we shouldn't be dating."
K-2's metal face remained expressionless, of course it did, but he tilted his head, and his shoulders hunched slightly. Cassian suspected it showed insecurity, but though he had known him for two years, he still found K-2 hard to read. Sometimes, when he felt particularly compromised, he couldn't tell for sure what was real and what was him projecting his human emotions onto him.
Cassian had done a lot of reading on the dangers of anthromorphism ever since he first realized that one nice word from K-2 could send his heart racing like it was doing the Boonta Eve Classic. The extra knowledge had done nothing to reassure him, but provided him with plenty of new concerns.
"By item 37 I had depressed myself so much that I deleted the list."
K-2's shoulders slumped further.
Cassian ground the tip of his boot into the floor as if he were crushing something beneath it, and grumbled, "You could say something, you know."
"I don't know what to say, Cassian." There was a small pause before K-2 added, "Have you changed your mind about your feelings?"
"No?" He rubbed a hand over his scowling face. "No! I've just changed my mind about telling you being the hard part." Cassian felt immediately better for having given voice to that, even if he wanted to cringe at his own naivety. Somehow he'd clung to this childish hope that you just had to be madly in love and everything else would work itself out. He needed such a magical fix-it, it wasn't like he knew the first thing about romance.
K-2 stepped closer, and Cassian tilted his head back to keep meeting his eyes. "I don't want to make you unhappy, Cassian."
"I'm not." K-2 didn't need a human face to show his disbelief, so he amended, "Kay, I'm not unhappy. Trust me. I'm just worried. There's a difference." He scowled. "I don't like being in love. It's a distraction I can't afford, and it makes everything confusing."
K-2's photoreceptors dimmed slightly. "It does."
Cassian peered up at K-2, and thought about how hard this must be for him, if Cassian already had such a hard time. Security droids weren't supposed to fall in love, either.
"I'm sorry, Kay. I'm already bad at being…" He trailed off, and just waved a hand around. If he could just figure out what he was to K-2, it would be a huge step in the right direction.
Boyfriends. He was pretty sure they were boyfriends, but he found himself loathe to come out and say it first, just in case he'd misunderstood. You could be in love, but not want to be together. There was a difference between these things, too.
Maybe he shouldn't have confessed to K-2 while he was bleeding out in an imperial interrogation chamber. It made for terrible where-do-we-stand conversations.
"You are frustrating," K-2 said, his mechanical voice very clipped. "Your physical and emotional responses indicate your interest in romantic interactions, but you keep pushing me away." He straightened, forcing Cassian to tilt his head back farther. "Your behavior is contradictory and irrational." And then, "Are you sure you aren't malfunctioning?"
Cassian's face flickered through a number of expressions from annoyance to embarrassment, before settling on a sheepish little half-grin. "I'm not. There are plenty of people who'd say I have a critical programming error."
"This is not the time for sarcasm, Cassian."
His lips twitched, and the grin grew a notch. "That's my line." There it was, the cherished familiarity of their banter, just barely within reach and reminding him of everything he stood to lose if he messed this up. Cassian's smile faltered.
K-2's fans hummed to life in a way that struck Cassian as very deliberate, and just as annoyed. "You are smiling. Now I'm certain you are malfunctioning."
"Kay." He gave K-2 a moment to focus fully on him again, the whirring of his fans gentled. His grin faded fully away. His belly felt all twisted and tangled, but he'd dedicated himself to this course. "Kay, are you my boyfriend?"
The droid didn't exactly rear back, but there was a small traitorous shift which betrayed how taken aback he was. "If you want me to be."
Cassian's jaw clenched. "This is what I was afraid of." Before K-2 could grumble, he raised a hand. "Let me finish. I've been thinking about this all the time I was stuck in medbay." He took a deep breath. "I don't want you to be with me because you think it'll make me happy. It can't be an obligation, like watching out for me on missions, or running our analyses."
K-2 reared back for real this time. "Protecting you isn't just a chore to me." He sounded hurt, how could that synthetic voice even sound hurt. But it did.
Cassian stifled a cringe. "I worded that badly."
"You did."
"And I'm sorry," Cassian said briskly, taking a deep breath and bracing his shoulders to portray confidence he didn't feel. He did that regularly, usually when he was the Intelligence officer accompany Pathfinders or Spec Ops, and they didn't take him seriously because of his young age. It didn't feel right to fool Kay, not even in such a small matter. He kept going anyway. "But my point stands. You can't be dating someone just to please them." He couldn't let them get off track now, or it might be weeks till he next found the courage to broach this topic. Certainly that excused dipping into his fount of mission behavior.
K-2 straightened indignantly. "I have never done anything just to please you!"
And here came the next cringe. This was going even worse than he had expected. Maybe he should have let K-2 change the topic. "Maybe not, but…"
He looked at K-2, eyes narrowing with what was quickly growing into genuine annoyance. "Are you deflecting, Kay? That is my job, too."
K-2 shifted back into his normal slouching posture. He stayed stubbornly silent.
Cassian just looked at him, and felt at a loss. He had counted on K-2 doing the chasing. He would have been more comfortable with him doing the chasing; he was worried enough that he was pushing him into something a droid wouldn't even want on his own. This was a terrible time for K-2 to copy his avoidance strategies.
"I'm scared, too, Cassian."
His eyes widened at the quiet confession, and the implication that he was scared. It had almost been drowned out by the hum of K-2's fans, but he still didn't like being called out, and pressed himself back against the door.
"You told me you love me, and then you told me you're dying."
Cassian didn't point out that he'd only found the courage to confess because he was dying. It was easier to be brave when you believed you wouldn't have to face the consequences.
"But you got me back to Dantooine in time," Cassian grumbled, his voice rough with emotion he refused to let show. The huskiness made him sound older, he just didn't feel it.
K-2 tilted his head. "I don't like how fragile organics are. You die very easily."
He gulped again. It sounded very loud to his ears. "Everybody dies easily in our line of work."
K-2's photoreceptors dimmed, and lit up brighter. "That is true."
They looked at another without a word.
Something had to give, Cassian knew that very well. If they were both too scared to own up to their feelings unless their lives were in danger, then it would never work. He wanted it to work. He thought he wanted that. He wanted K-2, that was, he just didn't want all the things that made having him complicated. Or all the talks about their feelings that preceded having him, for that matter.
"I wasn't going to tell you. Every simulation predicted you would reject me."
"Every simulation of mine said the same."
And back to awkward silence.
This was so much easier when there was less talking involved, Cassian thought morosely. When they were on a mission they did just fine, they would tease and banter and quarrel on the ship, and they worked together perfectly in battle. Until his stupid ill-timed confession they'd done just fine outside of missions, too.
The beeping of Cassian's commlink was incredibly loud in the silence of his quarters.
He was ridiculously relieved to be called back into General Draven's office, and while he didn't run, he walked very fast.
Cassian had almost made it to the General's office when he realized that he still wasn't sure if they were dating.
.
.
After that spectacular failure at talking it out, life went almost back to normal.
They spent both their training and free time together as they always had since K-2SO came into Cassian's life, and they talked, too. Just not about this one thing that always lurked at the back of Cassian's mind. It suited Cassian just fine, he had always preferred to run from his feelings.
This here, it was the one problem he couldn't solve, his impossible heist.
He was almost ready to accept that K-2 wanted him, too.
He still didn't like it. It remained an easily exploitable weakness, and was already proving a distraction.
The crux of the matter was this: he would be compromised either way, the damage was done. But would he be more compromised with K-2, or without him?
Naboo couldn't come too soon.
.
.
Cassian hated missions which only had a single mark, and an outcome that required a body bag. But the Imperial bureaucrat they were targeting deserved far worse than the fate he was getting, and Cassian found himself relieved for the simplicity of doing something he knew he was good at. That included the pain to follow. He was good at hating himself, too.
He hated himself a lot. By day routine kept him busy, and he could pretend nothing had changed. At night, when he was alone in the dark with nothing but his own thoughts to chase away the silence, it became a lot harder to pretend.
He wondered what they would do, as a couple, and if they would do anything differently at all, since they did most things together anyway. He was sure they would still spend long hours in the training rooms and pouring over mission details, and K-2 would still be insufferably smug in pointing out Cassian's mistakes. Maybe he would be a little less enthusiastic in calculating the likelihood of Cassian's death. That would be a nice perk.
Would Cassian be expected to do boyfriend things? Romantic things? The idea intrigued and repelled him in equal measure. He had never been sent on missions which involved operatives pretending to be a couple, let alone on those that involved seducing a mark. He had been too young when he joined Intelligence, and by the time he was old enough to be thrown to the wolves General Draven understood that he was better suited to being a bowcaster than some gilded chalice of poison. As of now, he still had a hard enough time with long-term undercover missions as an Imperial, though he was getting better at using what amiability he could fake to recruit for the cause.
So Cassian did worry about his lack of seduction skills, but he didn't worry about what would follow it, if they could ever make it past the seduction hurdle, and if K-2 was interested at all. It had been a good long while since Cassian's faceless dream lovers were made of flesh and bone. It didn't surprise him anymore that he awoke, still feeling the phantom touch of cold, hard metal in places breakable organics normally wouldn't yearn for metal. No, he didn't think that would be any weirder than the first time with another species always was.
It was more the romance part that concerned Cassian. He knew about romance in theory, of course; he was a spy, he was observant, and he had read all the honeypot field guides - twice. And yet the prospect of applying his theoretical knowledge to romancing K-2SO was nothing short of daunting.
He added that concern to his new list of reasons they shouldn't date, and then he moved on to sheepish fantasies of the reasons they should be dating. There were K-2's long arms, for one, which had held him only in his most desperate moments, but he thought he would like hiding within their embrace whenever the world became more than he could bear. There were fingers that had ruffled his hair only mockingly, yet he suspected their touch could become soothing.
He tried to think of things he could offer K-2, and never came up with anything that wasn't tainted. This, he listed under why they shouldn't date.
Thus the days and nights passed, until Naboo was finally upon them.
.
.
It should have been easy.
Go in. Assassinate the mark. Get out.
He should have known better than to believe in easy missions.
Cassian remained still as K-2 applied bacta patches to the blaster burns on his back. He kept his gaze stubbornly focused on the ceiling above his berth. There was a scorch mark whose origin he had yet to decipher.
"At least I'm not bleeding this time," he ground out through gritted teeth, "I'm getting better at almost-dying."
K-2's vocoder gave a staticky noise. "Your death isn't funny to me, Cassian."
"It isn't funny to me, either." It wasn't. He was in a lot of pain, nothing about that was funny. Cold sweat beaded his forehead, and his hands still felt shaky. It had been close, though not as close as last time. Last time, he'd passed out right after K-2 returned his dramatic confession and not awoken until he was back on Dantooine.
He tried to reach for the med kit without jarring his blaster burns too much, an impossible task on which he gave up as soon as a fresh wave of pain made his head feel woozy. No more dramatic fainting for him, thank you very much. "Kay… the painkillers…"
"I know." K-2 straightened indignantly. "If you stopped trying to undo all my hard work I could give you some."
Cassian watched K-2 silently. He had been furious, but his touch was so gentle that he would never be able to tell. Cassian couldn't tell if he was still angry at all.
Once he was done K-2 turned to leave, even though their ship was already in hyperspace, and he wasn't needed elsewhere. So much for not knowing if he was still angry.
"Kay?" he murmured.
The droid turned slowly, making a big show out of being reluctant to stay any longer, and Cassian suspected he was doing so out of spite.
If he was trying to hurt him, it was working.
Cassian licked his lips. Stay, he wanted to say. It almost crossed his lips, but only almost. Not because he wasn't sure what he wanted; he didn't have the strength left to keep lying to himself. Not even because he was uncertain if K-2 shared his wish. But talking had never worked before. He had just made things worse when he tried to talk it out like normal people did.
Maybe he should stick to what we could do.
He didn't say anything, just kept looking at K-2 expectantly. Hopefully.
K-2's fans whirred. "You are infuriating."
His lips twitched. "I know."
He stomped back to Cassian's bedside, and perched primly on the edge. If moving didn't hurt so much Cassian would have laughed – never before had K-2 held such resemblance to a prim and proper protocol droid, and if Cassian had given voice to that thought, he'd surely have been twice as outraged.
Not for the first time, Cassian yearned to reach for him. In the past he wouldn't have considered himself a tactile person, but in the past he hadn't had anyone he wanted to touch, and be touched by.
This time, unlike every other time, he decided to go ahead. He reached out, his hand still shaky from too many stimulants and painkillers and pain, and brushed the back of his fingertips against K-2's knee. He heard him go very still. When Cassian raised his gaze to K-2's, he found his photoreceptors already focused on him.
Cassian twisted his hand around. His fingers curled around the round piece that was K-2's knee joint, and his thumb slipped into the hole in the middle. The metal was smoother on the inside, unworn, while the outside was rough from years of wear and tear. Both were a completely alien experience, he had touched K-2 so many times during repairs or just casually, but now it felt like it was the first time. Even after all these dreams and fantasies it still made his mind stutter a little, something in his brain insisting that you shouldn't be able to stick a finger into your lover's knee. Cassian acknowledged it as surreal, and moved on.
The anaesthetics were hitting him hard now, turning the world soft and fuzzy at the edges. All Cassian knew was that he didn't feel sleepy yet, and that was good enough for him. He wasn't ready to go to sleep. Maybe everything would be back to awkward when he next woke up, but for now it felt like he had been given exactly what he wanted with K-2.
Maybe he should have never tried to figure it out with words. He wasn't any good with them anyway.
K-2's hand covered his. He still had bacta clinging to his metal fingers, and other things Cassian would rather not be thinking about too closely.
His heart rate slowed. So did K-2's fans. Their almost inaudible hum softened to a background noise, like a lullaby. Cassian thought he wouldn't mind falling asleep to it.
The list why they shouldn't date was still longer than the one why they should, but he added the hum of his fans to latter list.
"Kay?" He waited patiently for K-2 to meet his eyes again, his attention had drifted to their hands. "You could stay."
K-2 gazed at their hands once more. His fingers nudged Cassian's apart with gentle insistence, and interlaced with his. "I would like that."
Cassian smiled.
The End
End Notes: The last thing Cassian added to the list why they should date: he never chose caution anyway.