How To Tell If You're Alive

Chapter 3

"Cassian."

Han's voice reaches him sluggishly, making its way past the roaring of Jedha and Scarif's destruction, past the dying screams of his comrades. Most of these dying screams he'd never heard outside his nightmares, they died at the beach or in the sky while he was in the tower. He doesn't need memories. He's heard enough dying screams that his nightmares can deduce what his friends' would have sounded like.

"Cassian." Han's arms tighten around him. He pulls him up, into a sitting position, and murmurs nothing but soothing nonsense as he lets Cassian bury his face into the crook of his neck.

He rocks him gently, and Cassian digs his nails into his back till he draws blood.

There are fingers in his hair now, their tight and clumsy grip betraying that Han is as foreign to such affection as Cassian is, but he is here, he is trying, and that is the only thing that matters.

He feels sloppy kisses pressed to the top of his head, and smiles a little – a little bitterly, too, because Han is never quite so affectionate when Cassian isn't falling apart. Of course, any other time, Cassian wouldn't permit it. They are at war, and he can't afford weakness.

But late at night weakness is all he has, and he lets Han hold him, lets his voice wash over him and drown out the screams.

They lay in darkness for the longest time, Cassian's eyes wide open though there is nothing to see. He listens to the pounding of his own heartbeat, studies the shortness of his breath, the sickening tightness in his belly that is all pure dread. Acknowledges the panicky need to run away from his own thoughts, escape his body, his mind, his fears, and the certainty that no matter how far he runs, he will never run far or fast enough to escape them.

You can't escape your shadows. He knows. He has tried.

Han pulls away before Cassian gets the chance to push him away. He does so on most of these nights, and on most of them, Cassian can convince himself that he does it for his comfort, or manages not to think about it at all.

Han flicks on the lights.

They're too bright, illuminating the small space of Cassian's crew quarters in harsh light that makes his temples ache. He doesn't dare close his eyes, too afraid what he might see in the darkness, and tells himself that he welcomes the pain. Physical pain he knows how to handle.

He places his bare feet on the deck plates, lets the faint hum of Home One's engines resonate through them. Cassian makes a conscious decision not to remember K-2SO's frame hum under his hand, or wonder how the ship would have thrummed with Bodhi Rook at the helm.

"I saw them again," he says quietly, his voice still hoarse with the screams he's holding back. He's been holding them back for a good long while now, and they only keep growing louder.

Cassian sits on the edge of the bed, hunched forward, forearms resting on his thighs, while Han pours them Corellian whiskey. That, too, is tradition

Han grabs the glasses, takes another look at Cassian and fetches the bottle instead. Cassian doesn't comment on it.

"I should have died on Scarif. They say Jyn went there to die, but that's a lie. I'm the only one who should have died on Scarif."

He can read on Han's face how much it still hurts him to hear that, but it's the truth, and there is no more deception in Cassian. Not in his body language, not in the words he chooses, not even in merciful omissions.

They've both taken the plunge, and Cassian doesn't back out once he commits himself.

Han had done it when Cassian told him he could only ever let himself love a rebel, and sent him packing. He'd left.

On the day he'd returned, Cassian had vowed there would be no more lies.

Sometimes he wonders if Han wishes he had asked for something less dangerous.

Han sits next to him and wordlessly hands him the bottle.

Cassian lets the whiskey burn down his throat. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. There's only a faint tremble left now. "I still hate your Corellian swill."

"We'll find you some Festan swill then."

He looks to Han, who says it so matter-of-factly as if Cassian weren't in the middle of yet another breakdown betraying just how broken he is. He looks at him, and marvels, and then he laughs. He blinks against the sting in his eyes. "I'll hold you to that."

"Sure."

He watches Han drink, watches how he tilts back his head, the motions of his throat as he swallows. He takes the bottle from Han, empty now, and drops it to the floor. His lips take its place against Han's.

Tonight, Han can make him forget.

In the morning, he will be leaving with the Millennium Falcon. There are too many blockades to run for the best smuggler ship in their fleet to ever sit idle, and Cassian will go back to drenching his hands in blood as if Scarif had never happened. Whatever sins he had hoped to wash away with the Death Star's destruction, it feels like he's collected twice as many since.

A spy can't succeed on undercover missions anymore once every Imperial agent knows his face. But he can still pull a trigger.

"We have tonight," he says, then moans when Han bites down hard on his neck. Hard enough to leave a mark.

"Not just tonight, I'd hope. I didn't let you put me into that ugly uniform of yours for a single night," Han scoffs. As if they haven't had many nights already, and Cassian's cause hasn't become his own. As if Cassian could love him if it were otherwise. Too many things in his life are conditional. After everything he's lost, he couldn't survive it to love conditionally.

Cassian climbs onto his lap, and rolls his hips slowly, sweetly against Han's till his breath comes in short little gasps, and he's hardening against him. "Let me think about it while you're away."

Han smirks and opens his mouth, and oh, Cassian has no doubt it would have been witty, but he pushes and twists, and has Han on the bed, face down, arms pinned behind his back, before he has so much as uttered a single syllable of his wittiness.

"Still weak without your blaster," he rasps into his ear, and then he nips the earlobe hard. He straddles Han, hard cock nudging against his ass cheeks, before he slips off him, and just sits there with a smirk while he watches Han gather his wounded scoundrel pride.

"You play dirty."

Cassian gives him a pointed look. "Spy."

Their eyes meet, and they laugh until their laughter is silenced by a kiss, and then Han yanks and twists and it is Cassian pinned to the thin mattress, and Cassian who has, "and I'm a scoundrel," breathed into his ear with the air of smug victory.

Arousal floods him, burning hot and dizzying, and he bucks up into Han, not to throw him off, not even to fight, but just because he can, because he loves Han's raspy, cocky laugh and the delicious illusion of surrender when Han pins him down with all his body weight.

"Jerk," he hisses.

If this were a training exercise he would turn it around, or at the very least make Han pay a high and painful price to keep his victory. But this is not battle, it's not even the rough, brittle sex of Cassian's earliest days after Scarif, after Han delivered a princess and a Jedi to Massassi Base, and before he had committed to anything, least of all to Cassian. They had been vicious to another in these days.

Now here is Cassian growling, but only to encourage the slick fingers breaching his body. Now he is pressing his face into the pillow to stifle his moans just a moment longer, for Han's cockiness will become unbearable if he gives in too easily.

For now, he can't hear the screams.

It's not getting better.

Tomorrow Han will risk his life out there, and Cassian will take other lives, and the war will rage on around them.

Tomorrow night, Cassian will wake to the dying screams of everybody he's ever loved and lost, and Han won't be there to remind him why he should be glad to have survived.

But this moment belongs to the living, and if he holds on firmly and closes his ears, he can believe that he, too, feels alive.