Human: “It must be a dreary existence, unable to love, to eat, to sleep, to laugh… I feel sorry for you.” Robot: “I can laugh. I have a sense of humor, you know.” Human: “Really? I’ve never heard you laugh before.” Robot: “You’ve just never said anything funny.”
I have this unshakable headcanon that Cassian, while super (emotionally) reserved and detached (well, sorta – he’s really empathetic and uses that as a tool, but also has to cut himself off or it affects him too much) for what he has to do, is actually really really affectionate with the people he loves.
Mainly due to his upbringing, which I imagine him just being the darling of all the adults around. As the youngest kid in the neighbourhood he’s witnessed and been the subject of great fondness. Pats on the head, cheek squishes, lots and lots of hugs of course.
He’s also touchy and up in people’s personal space on the job. See how he interacts with Tivik, and even with Jyn at the start he’s already got a hand on her back and guides her way.
After all this, when he really likes someone he’s almost hesitant to express anything, verbally or physically. He’s said and done all these things before but he never meant it then. So how can he be sure they know he means it now? How can he be sure he means it now?
He can’t.
I ship him with both Jyn and Bodhi and you didn’t even specify romance or not, so how he gets past that mental block varies depending on context.
Jyn, equally reserved, not touchy feely but manages to hug him even in the end – they fumble through it together. Bodhi, I feel though he’s lost so much he hasn’t had to suppress himself in the same ways the other two have, as in while he’s had to suffer under the Empire, I doubt that lower level Imperial cargo pilots don’t share the jovial relationship that Rebel pilots do – he makes up the distance and lets Cassian inch forward.
Cassian’s bad with words, because he can paint the most beautiful pictures when he needs to, for the mission, for the cover, but they all seem to fail when it really matters.
He’s so painfully aware when people are in his personal space. They could kill him from a farther distance. His nerves are on fire. He can’t reach out.
He does things, instead. For them.
Actions, not words. Little favours they might not notice until they pile up, the realization smacking them in the face like you did all that for me?
(This is incidentally a theme for a fic update, wink wink)
Stealthy, silent, like the spy that he is. Right when and where he’s needed, but never noticed.
A cleaned blaster, if she doesn’t mind him touching it. Rewiring and the controls so he can fly more smoothly. Rearranging training schedules, rooms, supplies just so; so the Guardians have somewhere to pray, to practise. Knowing when supplies ship and when that fruit or this meat in stock, letting the right person know so that homeworld festival can be celebrated on time.
Most of it he’d learned with Kay. Tweaking his processors, offering the necessary but sometimes awkward knowledge the droid had needed to manuver a human world. Asking if he wants to power down for the night, so he can fix him, for the flight. Arranging oil baths, neatly filling in scratches, rapping him lightly on the chassis even though, as Kay reminds him, he has no tactical sensors. Cassian does it all, anyways.
Kay only said thank you the first few times, eventually learned to rebuke Cassian’s offerings with what he could’ve done better. Statistically speaking… Cassian would only smile in response.
Cassian shows affection with favours; but he doesn’t expect anything in return.
(Not because he doubts he’ll live to ask, even though that’s true, but because he frankly doesn’t care. You do things because that’s what you’re supposed to do. What he wants to do. Not out of expectation, never out of expectation. How else could he be in the Rebellion?)
Once they figure it out, though… he receives much.
Bodhi blinks and uhms before offering a wide grin and a hesitant hug, and Jyn leaves her thanks in forms of a plate scraped clean and a warm gaze when he stumbles home after a mission. Leia is always just what he needs, stubborn enough to spit out what he’d love to say (kriff that dim witted nerfherder, you’re right and they know it) but can’t. Baze is affectionate in the exact same way (cleaning weapons and mending clothes and offering a shoulder to rest on), their relationship is beyond speaking, honestly, but they know. They’re too similar, that way. Painfully so, but they bond because Cassian always loved languages, and between Jyn and Bodhi and the Guardians he’s now fluent in four major languages once spoke on Jedha. Chirrut knows all, sees all, is the first to translate Cassian’s love language but keeps the secret under lock and key. His appreciation is shown in his words of advice, and slowly Cassian learns to translate those as well.
He finds out Jyn’s prone to hugging almost as much as Bodhi is, only when nobody’s looking, and that is when the dam inside Cassian breaks.
He remembers his father’s touch in his hair, the aunties pinching his cheeks, his mother’s lips on his forehead. All of it comes rushing back.
So he gives, gives, gives it all away.
His dearest is lucky then; will always know they’re loved. Cassian’s hands are never far, always ready to reassure and to hold, be held, in the worst of it. His shoulders are to nap on. Pecks on the cheek and the forehead and the knuckles and the parting of hair; cuts and bruises and scars and insecurities. He loves tenderly, gently, reverently.
Passionately as well, there’s no doubts to the fervent depths of his love, as an empath the emotion builds between them like a wildfire and he could really lose himself in all that emotion – but it isn’t about being fire, all the time. This is a war, after all, they’re caught between extremes. It’s so much easier, nicer, special, to be gentle.
Based on a conversation about accents with @cassianandorjyn, and inspired by Finding Your Voice by @sleepykalena, I present to you: the K-2SO and Cassian Dream Team That Could Have Been.
Being that:
1. Accents are a piece of our identity. (As cassianandorjyn put it in their fic, heart as my compass; stars as my path, a man with an accent “carries his home with him.”)
2. The Empire is strongly associated with RP British accents.
3. Cassian freed K-2SO from serving the Empire and gave him free will.
4. K-2SO High Key hero worships Cassian,
then clearly, when he was reprogrammed, K-2 should have chosen a Mexican accent for himself, to sound like The Coolest Captain Of The Rebellion.
Which leads us to ask: who would then play K-2SO? We would need an actor who
1. is Mexican.
2. is good at many accents, because K-2 is supposed to be working with a spy so he should be good at fitting in in different places. (Also because in the inevitable prequel film, K-2 and Cassian: Before They Went Rogue, there will obviously be a scene during the reprogramming, in which K-2 tries out various accents – space!Chilean, space!Spanish, space!Argentine, etc – before choosing one that just happens to sound like his knight in shining armor.)
3. has a good rapport with Diego Luna.
I therefore humbly submit before you the retroactive fancasting of Cassian Andor and K-2SO:
Okay, so Everyone Lives canon divergent AU, the turning on happens first. Cassian’s out in the field, under fire, things are tight and he’s not sure what his out is going to be. Then Bodhi (who is healing really well, finally got some therapy, taking up old hobbies – including swoop-bike racing) sweeps out of ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE and like LANDS on the attackers, executing the neatest little turn Cassian has ever seen. Cassian jumps on the back of the bike and then Bodhi guns it, Cassian’s heart is in his throat and his blood is somewhere distinctly lower and more obvious.
They get back to the ship, get to safety, Bodhi can’t quite stop himself from teasing Cassian. Cassian decides that he’s been obvious enough about things that he might as well just go for it, and some DISTINCTLY NSFW things occur before they get back to the Rebellion.
Which then begins their Secret Relationship. Bodhi assumes this is because they are at War and Cassian must be Grimly Sacrificial, and sure, that’s fine, he’ll play it cool in public and have his fun in private, there’s a lot of storage closets. Besides, he gets these amazing soft moments now, cuddling Cassian after he sneaks into Cassian’s room, giving him little anonymous gifts. It’s good! Bodhi’s happy.
What Bodhi doesn’t know, is that their relationship is a secret even TO CASSIAN, because he thinks they’ve managed to fall into an oddly affectionate FWB situation, that he has Too Many Emotions about but he is going to be Chill because he is a responsible adult who can definitely handle casual.
Cassian doens’t figure out they’re actually dating until after Endor, at which point Bodhi proposes and Cassian has a lot of Relational Catching Up to do.
Rebellions are built on hope 