A Simple Equation
To most everyone, it was a perfectly ordinary day on Yavin 4.
Cassian walked into General Draven's office, K-2SO at his side but slightly hanging back in a pointed reminder that he was only here to make a nuisance of himself. He had insisted all morning that all probability calculations had told him there was no infiltrator. Cassian strongly suspected he was sulking that he'd played the dirty I'm-going-to-pretend-I-didn't-hear-you-and-do-what-I-want card. That was K-2's favorite card, but only if he was the one playing it.
"Sir," he said, "I have strong reason to suspect we are being sabotaged."
"He thinks we are being sabotaged," K-2 piped up at his side, sounding very cheerful and very, very smug, "I think he's just being clumsy."
Cassian shot the droid an affronted look. It was too early in the day for this and no, it didn't matter that it was afternoon.
K-2's face, in spite of being solid metal, somehow still managed to exude an innocent expression.
General Draven coughed pointedly until their attention returned to him. "If you're done flirting with your droid…"
Cassian felt heat flood his face. "I'm sorry, sir," he mumbled.
"I'm not sorry."
Draven's mouth opened. He hesitated, closed it again. Cassian could read the thought on his face – it would be satisfying, but it wasn't worth it. K-2 had that effect on people a lot. "If you're done flirting, what exactly are your reasons for believing we are being sabotaged, Captain Andor?"
They exchanged another long look.
"Well… There was the incident with the door."
"I don't see why we have to repair doors," K-2 had grumbled as he lumbered after Cassian like his overlarge, noisy shadow. He was carrying two large toolboxes and made sure to clang them against his legs with every step.
Cassian shot a disgruntled look over his shoulder. "Because we have no mission and we've got to make ourselves useful while on base."
"But why are we repairing doors?"
For that, Cassian had no answer either. They had been scheduled for routine maintenance work, the kind usually done by repair droids, and while not happy about it, Cassian had chosen to keep silent about it. If this was how the Rebellion wished to make use of their best spy team, well, it wasn't his call to make.
"Come along, Kay."
He guided them to the tiny storage room, more of a large closet than a room, whose locking mechanism was broken according to their to-do list.
The outside door panel seemed to be just fine, so they crammed into the small room to check the panel on the inside. There was no lamp inside the tiny space, which meant that K-2 had to come inside to hold a flashlight for him.
It took mere minutes for Cassian to find the scorched wires and solder replacements into place.
"See," he told K-2, "nothing to it. There's no need to be fussy, or did you swap processors with Senator Organa's droid while I wasn't looking?"
"I'm nothing like Threepio!" He felt K-2 shift against him as he straightened to his full height in indignation.
The room was so small Cassian's back was pressed against K-2's front. He felt pleasantly solid and warm; Cassian wasn't ashamed to lean back into him under the pretense of needing the extra space to move his arms.
"That was a cheap shot, Cassian."
Cassian ignored his protests and hit the button to close and lock the door. "Now let's see…"
The door shut seamlessly, there was a satisfying click as it locked.
"Done." He nodded in satisfaction and hit the button to open the door again.
Nothing happened.
Cassian's brows furrowed.
He hit the button again. A third time.
"Cassian," K-2 piped up, "what did you do?"
He twisted around. K-2's optics were impossibly bright in the darkness of the tiny chamber. "Nothing! I just replaced the broken wires. I fixed it," he insisted, defensiveness barely concealed beneath a grumble.
"You fixed it too well." His hands settled on Cassian's hips. "Unfix it."
"I didn't…!"
The door opened with a whoosh, showing them the face of a very amused rebel. "Hey, if you want to make out in the supply closet, keep it down, alright? I could hear you all the way down the hallway."
In the here and now, Cassian crossed his arms in anticipation of Kay admitting that he had been wrong.
He should have known better.
"That wasn't sabotage. When you checked again it turned out there had been another damaged circuit which you had overlooked."
Cassian shot him an annoyed look. "And I'm still saying the panel looked sabotaged."
"You're saying that because the Corporal told everyone she caught us in the make-out closet."
"Well, that doesn't explain the second time!"
"The one when your repairs triggered a short circuit?"
"There shouldn't have been a short circuit!"
General Draven harrumphed. "If that's all you have for me I'll reassign you to laundry duty and be done with it."
"Wait, sir! There was also the sprinkler incident…"
On that day, their task had been to help in the cargo bay.
They were both wielding datapads, and after meeting the frazzled logistics droid they were determined to do their best.
"That poor droid," Cassian murmured, "she sounded like she's going to shoot the Phoenix squadron's droids on sight if they ever again set foot into her cargo bays."
Chopper and AP-5's eternal quarreling was proving a trial for everyone in the Massassi Group, and it had only gotten worse when they ran into C-3PO and R2-D2. Honestly, Cassian had been worried that K-2SO would get suckered into their silly competitions, but when asked K-2 had noted that they were oddly cagey around him. He had put it down to civilian droids being wary around military models.
"I wonder what they were doing in here."
"I have no idea, but it can't be anything good. Keep an eye out for anything out of place, Dory mentioned that AP-5 has been insisting she rearranges her supplies. He might have gone ahead without permission."
"Good thinking, Kay. I'll pay special attention to it."
They got to work on the inventory. It was slow, mindless work but it needed to be done, and they could keep up a running stream of affectionate banter while they worked.
That was, most of it was K-2 saying whatever crossed his processor, while Cassian made a wry quip every now and then and tried his best to hide his smile. He really wouldn't mind spending more time on inventory duty. It was nice, with just K-2 and him down here it was almost like spending downtime together.
And then the sprinklers activated.
When the icy spray hit him, Cassian made a startled noise which he would later insist wasn't a squeak.
"Kay! What did you do?!"
"What did you do, Cassian?" K-2's voice came from the next row of shelves. "You know I don't like being wet."
"Well neither do I!"
He found Kay and then a terminal, which quickly told him there had been no actual smoke alert. The sprinklers had just activated.
"I know that sprinklers don't activate just like that, Kay!" he snapped when the droid insisted on a better explanation. "I can't tell you what happened, I'll need more time to check."
"First, turn them off."
Well, he had a point there.
Cassian deactivated the sprinklers and looked at the wet droid, before giving his own sodden state a grim inspection.
He took off his sopping wet jacket, leaving him only in the wet shirt that clung to his chest. He ran his hand through his hair and shook his head, sending water droplets flying everywhere.
"Watch it," K-2 protested, though he didn't even try to sound annoyed.
His optics rested on Cassian for long enough that Cassian felt strangely flushed under his regard.
"You are shivering, Cassian. You need to change into dry clothes; I don't want you to catch a cold."
Cassian grimaced. "My quarters are on the other end of the base."
"Well then. Come closer."
His brows rose in confused surprise, but he didn't hesitate to stand right in front of Kay. A moment later he could hear the loud humming of Kay's systems as he overclocked on purpose. His fans picked up, venting the excess heat at Cassian to warm him up. They had done this before when they had to spend cold nights huddling in a hideout; it always left Cassian feeling sheltered and cared for. Kay wouldn't be able to dry his uniform fully this way, he would still need a change of clothes, but for now, Cassian was content to bask in Kay's warmth.
He felt decidedly less content once Dory the logistics droid told him they'd be spending the next two days checking every single box in the cargo bay for water damage.
Meanwhile in another part of the base …
"It should have worked!" AP-5 insisted. "Ezra said kissing in the rain is a staple of organic romance."
Rolling to a stop at his side, Chopper swiveled his top dome angrily and waved his pincers around as he worked himself into an angry tirade.
"Why I never! We did not send you to matchmake an organic with broken romance subroutines!" C-3PO exclaimed. "We would not sink to sabotaging you. Unlike you."
The mood among the four droid co-conspirators turned distinctly chilly as the two pairs faced off.
Golden protocol droid faced blue logistics droid, white-and-blue astromech faced white-and-orange astromech.
"It is not our fault that you failed to clear the hallway when you locked them in," AP-5 argued, and Chopper chirred his support, complete with another angry wave. He had somehow acquired a wrench. He would much rather fight this out anyway. "It's not our fault if your matchmaking skills aren't up to the challenge."
"Says the droid who soaked a highly respected officer and a cargo bay full of supplies. You are going to get all of us scrapped for insubordination!"
"Just admit you suck," Chopper beeped.
R2 set off on a tirade of his own, starting with, "nerf herder" and not even done when he got to "eat slag, you kriffing bantha fragger!"
3PO stood there, quietly fretting to himself about their inevitable failure.
He had just been trying to do what Senator Organa had suggested – not that Senator Organa realized he had suggested it. When 3PO had complained to him about K-2SO's unpleasant mannerism he had off-hand remarked that lovesick people were grumpy, be they organic or synthetic.
He had thought he would be doing both K-2SO and himself a favor by playing matchmaker. After all, he was programmed to recognize romantic traditions from millions of worlds. There could be no droid better equipped for this task than a protocol droid.
It had been going fine at first with subtle interferences which Captain Andor and K-2SO remained none the wiser about. Then Chopper and AP-5 had gotten wind of his matchmaking scheme and…
Well, here they were.
"Your quarrel is irrelevant." AP-5 interjected. "We are now doomed to succeed. If we don't, Kaytoo Esso is going to destroy all of us when he learns we manipulated him and his organic."
Succeed or die?
3PO reflected on their non-existent progress and decided that yes, they were doomed.
"Cassian! We are being sabotaged!"
Already mid-air, Cassian averted his leap for his blaster on the nightstand. He landed awkwardly face-down on his bed and turned his head to glare daggers at K-2.
"No, really?" He picked himself up, seating himself properly on the edge of his bed as if that faceplanting had never happened. "I wish you would use the door buzzer. You know I'm twitchy."
"Because you think we have an infiltrator, I know. You almost shot Sergeant Melshi yesterday."
Cassian made a noise of disgust. "I did not. If I'd wanted to shoot him I would have."
K-2 stepped fully into Cassian's quarters, permitting the door to close behind him. "That is unimportant. Someone sabotaged my charging station."
Cassian leaped to his feet, eyes already searching the droid for visible damage as he reached for him to physically reassure himself of his well-being. "Are you hurt? Did you get a full check-up yet?"
"I wasn't damaged. But my dock in the droid bay is out of order for highly suspicious reasons."
His hand dropped before he could touch K-2's plating. His face, as his mood, was grim. "That's a problem."
KX-series droids came equipped with an Imperial-standard regular recharge port; social conventions aside he could use other vacant charging stations. But if there had been an attempt made on K-2's dock in the droid bay, it would be unwise for him to power down in the same place which had already proven unsafe.
Cassian's gaze flickered to the charging port by his work desk. He mostly used it to charge mouse droids he was practicing his reprogramming on or for other tinkering projects of his, though K-2 would sometimes use it for a quick recharge if their planning sessions ran late.
"Fine," he said, nodding to himself firmly, before adding in an even firmer tone, "you're staying here. I have a port. I'll watch over you while you're charging."
"Thank you, Cassian."
K-2 situated himself by the charging station, while Cassian sat at his terminal and combed through the log files of all their strange little incidents. He would hunt down the saboteur, no matter how long it took. It was how he spent all his free time these days, though progress was slow due to having to move carefully. It could catastrophic if the saboteur noticed they were being hunted.
His eyes kept straying to K-2. The hum of his machines had died to a barely audible noise, his optics were dimmed but not fully shut off.
It was nice having K-2 in here with him. It was nice in the same way in which it had been nice to lean against him while he worked in the small supply room, or stealthily not-cuddling against him under the pretense of drying his clothes.
His left hand found K-2's right arm, fingertips brushing over the back of his wrist and his hand. K-2's optics flared up before dimming again when Cassian returned to his work.
There had always been something unspoken between them, but these past weeks, with so many small incidents forcing them together closer than usual…
Cassian steered his mind back onto the task at hand. He had an Imperial to track down, this was no time to contemplate any possible tender feelings.
With K-2SO fully on board with the investigation, it took only two more days to pin down their saboteurs.
Much to their misfortune, it was mere hours after the last of the perpetrators had left Yavin 4.
"I can't believe them!" Cassian growled. "Threepio should know better!"
"Chopper should know better," K-2 said viciously, "I told him I would melt his legs if he ever caused you trouble."
Cassian's brows rose. "I'm sure there's a story to that," he muttered.
The black lenses in K-2's optics shuttered shiftily. "There is not. He is just too violent to be trusted around organics."
That didn't ring true to Cassian, but K-2 was a terrible liar, so it had to be at least part of the story.
"Thank you." K-2 looked surprised and curious; Cassian ducked his head in embarrassment. "For watching out for me." Even if he could watch out for himself.
K-2 slouched a little more to bring his optics closer to Cassian's eyes level. He placed a large metal hand on his shoulder and gave it a very gentle squeeze. "I will always watch out for you, Cassian."
Cassian found himself edging a little closer. They weren't touching, but they were close enough that he could soak up the warmth K-2's frame exuded. It almost felt like a hug.
"Cassian." K-2 waited till he met his eyes again. "According to my analyses, every one of their manipulations served the purpose to make us spend time together in close quarters."
Silence spread as they mulled over K-2's realization.
Cassian drew one of his own, but he didn't quite know how to put it into words.
"Corporal Madell did mention Threepio hounding her about human matchmaking customs," he ventured tentatively. His throat felt all closed up. He could feel his pounding heartbeat echo through him.
K-2SO was silent for a very long time.
"Did it work?" He sounded softer and more hesitant than Cassian had ever heard him.
Cassian looked up. His breath came in soft little puffs of air. "Did it?" he asked back, his voice just as soft and cautious.
K-2 broke the standstill first. He had always been braver when it truly mattered, thought Cassian, his heart full of fondness as he leaned into the hand that cradled his cheek with such exquisite tenderness. His eyes fluttered shut and he closed himself off to the galaxy and its worries, all except for the hum of K-2's fans and the metal fingers mapping the contours of his face.
His heart was racing. He was full of fear, of course he felt fear, he ought to be afraid, and yet… He didn't want to leave, didn't want to think of excuses. He knew for sure that he didn't want to be anywhere but right here.
He placed his own hand over K-2's in a wordless vow.
Yes, it had worked.