bodhi rook week day 2: anxiety! i just uh . i just did things idk
The first time Bodhi put his hands back on a ship, it was
just to do repairs. That didn’t matter, because they were shaking. They shake
as he smooths a hand over the nose, they shake as he tries to pull apart the
steering column to fix a wiring issue, and most dangerously, they shake as he
tries to fix the wiring issue. He struggles with it for the better part of an
hour and manages to burn a small bit of skin right above his wrist, where his
gloves don’t quite reach, before he gives up.This never used to be a problem.
His hands don’t shake if he takes a shift in the mess hall
serving food and they don’t shake when he’s in the garden with Baze and Chirrut
trying to meditate. He’s fine if he’s playing a game of sabacc with Cassian and
Jyn, which is good because he has a reputation to uphold.They shake when he’s trying to go to sleep. They shake if he
thinks people have been looking at him too long, even if he knows they haven’t,
even he knows they’re only looking at him because they want the next serving of
their meal.Chirrut has a habit of folding his hands over Bodhi’s when
they start to shake, which Bodhi likes. Jyn will usually make faces at him and
stick out her tongue, which is so surprising on Jyn’s face that it makes Bodhi
laugh and forgot and then his hands stop shaking. Cassian would tell bad jokes,
and throw his arm around Bodhi’s shoulder. K2 isn’t good at comfort much, but
Bodhi appreciates that.He tries to reason with his hands, sometimes: “It’s just a
ship,” he’ll whisper. “You’ve been flying ships for forever.” His hands will be
above him, working on wiring, and enough mechanics and pilots talk to their
ship that no one gives him a second glance. This is an old clunker that no one
will be flying anyways, it was just for him to work on while he was recovering.
His left leg is still aching whenever he walks, and he thinks it will probably
twinge forever, even though the doctors say he should have a total recovery.
But his hands haven’t recovered so why should his legs.So he whispers to his hands, “It’s just a ship” and “We need
to do our part” and “please” but they really have a mind of their own. “Please,”
he says, one last time. His leg is aching more than usual, because he had to go
to physical therapy, but he’s full, because he was just at the mess hall with
Cassian and Baze. “Please, you love to fly.”He’s probably not the only mechanic or pilot who’s cried
while under a ship trying to fix her, but that fact doesn’t make it any less embarrassing.
No one mentions it, but at least a few people around him have to have heard.
Even if he is quiet, and he’s not sure he is, the warehouse echoes a little
bit.Even more embarrassing is the fact that the next two times
he tries to fix this ship, he cries again.
He misses flying but no one wants to a pilot with unsteady hands and Bodhi used
to have the steadiest hands around; even when he was scared or upset or crying,
he never faltered. He misses flying and he misses having something to do and a
routine and he misses his sister.He misses Jedha.
The fourth time he’s crying under this rusty cargo ship, because
he’s apparently incapable of doing te proper thing and crying in his room, Luke
Skywalker (the Luke Skywalker!) slides
in next to him.“Hey,” Luke says, casual as can be. He probably has a
million things to do, or maybe he doesn’t, who knows what the hotshot pilot of
the Rebellion does on his off time, but he’s here, under a rust bucket in the farthest
back corner.“Hi,” Bodhi says, then he hiccups.
Luke pointedly doesn’t look at him. “It’s bad, huh,” he says.
He folds his arms behind his head, even though there isn’t a ton of room. As
is, they’re lying side by side. “I miss Tatooine.”Bodhi takes in a big gulping breath and let the wrench rest
on his chest, giving his hands a break. “You’re from Tatooine?” He didn’t know
that. It was odd to find a similarity here, two boys from desert planets. They
must both find the rain so strange and unpredictable.Luke sighs. “Yeah, and I couldn’t wait to get off it,” he says.
“Now I miss everything. The sand. I miss the kriffin’ sand.”This Bodhi understood. “My mom used to scold me from tracking
it in,” he says. It always managed to coat him and stick to him, although most
of the whole front room had sand on the ground. “I miss that.”Luke nods. “I’m sorry about Jedha.”
“I’m sorry about Tattooine, too,” Bodhi says, because even
if Tattooine is still a planet, going back is impossible. Luke’s had it cut out
from his heart the way Jedha has been carved out of Bodhi’s flesh, leaving only
the gaping memory of what used to be. Neither of them can go home.Luke reaches over and put a hand over Bodhi’s. “Don’t let it
take more from you,” he says, and it’s so soft. No one has been soft like this,
everyone has told him to keep going because of anger, revenge, spite, but Luke
seems to want it for Bodhi’s sake and Bodhi’s along. “They can’t have more.” He
gives Bodhi’s hand a clumsy pat then made to slither out from under the“And,” he adds, ducking down on all fours to peer under the
belly of the ship. He looks ridiculous, and Bodhi smiled. “I want you on my
squadron, Bodhi.”“Oh!” Bodhi says, “No, I couldn’t!”
“You named it,” Luke says, grinning. He looks like a boy. “You
should be part of it!”“I – no.”
“We’re waiting,” Luke says, then he stands up and his boots
disappear.Bodhi reaches back up to the wiring of the ship. He breathes
in deep – he used to be so much better at putting aside everything. He used to
be able to fly no matter what fears. He wants that again. So he breathes deep
and thinks about Luke’s faith and Cassian and Jyn and Baze and Chirrut, the entirety
of the friends he’s made at the rebellion.His hands are steadier this time. They still aren’t
perfectly still but they get the job done.
Tag: fanfic
Ooh, this is such an amazing prompt opener. I wish you would write a fic where Jyn and Cassian stay up all night together for some reason. Curious how you’d write them sleep deprived but also together.
Thanks so much for the prompt!
Here goes…
“There has never been ‘permanent peace’ in human history. But, there have been plenty of ages with decades of peace. In short, my hope is, haughtily enough, for a few decades of peace in the future.” – Legend of Galactic Heroes
2 ABY, Felucian Jungle
When they started, they tried to be smart about this. They reasoned that if they had to be walking through the night, their best bet was to pace themselves, stay alert for rancors and gelagrubs and troopers, and reach the tiny port by daylight before the last transport off planet for months. With the imperial presence on Felucia what it was, the Alliance couldn’t risk sending in another ship for them.
Of course, they originally meant to make the journey during the day, but after a scuffle and hasty retreat from their last place of residence (involving a bartender with an eye for bad credit lines, the head of an amateur militia, and a very angry tee-muss), they were delayed and had no choice but to walk through the night.
Jyn supposes the one advantage is that it’s much cooler at night, and she feels somewhat more energized without the humidity of the day closing in around her.
But that’s the only advantage. Hiking through the jungle in the dead of night is mostly just miserable, their headlamps bobbing ahead at the never-ending path to the spaceport, always too many klicks away.
The plan at first is to rest every two hours, but the trail turns steep ten minutes in and they find themselves stopped after one, breathing heavily and swatting at flies.
“How’re your ribs?” she said. She turned her head so her lamp is on Cassian’s face, hoping he won’t lie if she can see him. She’s right, or maybe he decides it’s not worth it at this point.
“They hurt.” He shrugs and his hand creeps up to rub the right side of his chest, where the tee-muss clipped him in the village. “But I don’t think they’re broken.”
“Good.” Jyn nods and turns away, hoping he won’t ask–
“Your shoulder?”
“Nothing’s broken.” Not a lie, but she definitely pulled something, or several somethings. It throbs with every step and doubts she’ll make it through the night without any sort of painkiller, but she won’t admit that yet.
Cassian accepts her answer and settles his gaze on the trail ahead. “Ready to continue?”
Jyn re-adjusts her pack. “Whenever you are.”
When they stop at hour two, Cassian actually puts down his pack and leans against a tree, adjusting the clothes sticking to his skin.
Jyn bounces on her heels with impatience. “Ugh, don’t do that. Then I’ll put down my pack and sit down and then I’ll fall asleep.”
He looks up. “You’re tired?”
“No more than you are.” She glares. It’s the middle of the night and they’re walking through the woods. Of course she’s exhausted. “Come on, let’s just keep going.”
“If we don’t pace ourselves, we won’t make it in time.” He takes measured sips of water from his canteen and makes no move to pick up his pack.
“Fine.” She lets her pack slide to the ground, grunting as the strap slides off her bad shoulder.
Of course, Cassian notices. “Are you sure you don’t need something for that?”
“I’m sure.”
“Jyn.”
“I’ll need it more later,” she snaps.
Cassian’s lips press together in a thin, disapproving line, but he doesn’t say anything.
They stand in silence for the next few minutes, taking small sips of water and catching their breath.
So back in the eighth grade (a good eight years ago) I thought of this scenario where the Marauders wanted to find a loophole for the ‘No students out of bed at night” rule. And I came to the conclusion that they would absolutely sit on their beds and levitate them throughout the corridors so that they were never actually technically out of bed. And it’s been eight years and I just remembered this headcanon and I still think that they absolutely would have done this.
someone please write a fic where they debate the technicalities of this with McGonagall
“Out.” McGonagall was practically vibrating, the tip of her hat quivering like a compass needle; from yearly observation, Sirius was reasonably sure its four Cardinal Directions were What Is Going On Here, Stop, Ten Points From Gryffindor and Detention, and there was no doubt the wind was currently blowing a strong North-North Detention. He grinned. Knowing they were going to lose eventually didn’t make this any less amazing; there wasn’t even room in the corridor for all four beds to float abreast, and Peter’s was behind his, listing like a boat in rough waters with his inevitable nervousness. Peter hated detention – the rest of them pretty much took it in their stride at this point. Besides, Sirius thought impatiently, he was enjoying it a minute ago. It was probably him giggling that woke her up. Or Remus, bouncing the end of his bed into one of the portraits by accident. That guy must have been pretty square in life; he went off like a roman candle.
Like always, in trouble, he felt giddy; it would be bad, but the consequences here were so easy compared to what he’d left behind that he could never help the hysterical weightlessness that came hot on the heels of the scandalised gasp of a teacher. Fifty house points still hurt a lot less than fifty other things. But James was talking.
“- and it’s good practice,” he was saying, leaning precariously forward over the edge of his bed, an earnest ship’s figurehead in striped pyjamas. “A simple levitation spell wasn’t strong enough, Professor, we had to do research.” The bed between them shook a little; Remus, laughing, trying to cover it up with a cough. James said research the same way Slughorn might say diet. Peter’s bed bumped into the back of his and it almost set him off, too. He bit the inside of his mouth, tried to focus on something not funny – James’s thin ankles, poking out of the ends of his pyjama bottoms, that would do. Guaranteed to stop him laughing, that was.
“Research,” said McGonagall, not at all the way Slughorn might say diet. “We did,” Remus protested evenly from a nest of blankets – nobody was seeing his ankles. “We spent four hours on it in the library. In a way, this is just a practical experiment.”
“Yeah,” said James, “Those are encouraged. Professor Flitwick was just talking about it on Monday.”Remus looked at Sirius; Sirius looked back. On no account, Professor Flitwick had said on Monday, do any practical experiments outside of the classroom. He could feel Peter getting ready to say it, too; they both could, both turned to look at him at once. He’d been raising his hand. Sirius shook his head once, both discouraging and also giving him up as a hopeless case. For being the one who’d come up with the word marauders in the first place, Peter was awfully coy when it came to doing any actual marauding.
Being a person confronted with four large pieces of floating furniture suddenly seemed to become too much for McGonagall, and she snapped again, “Get down. Get out of those beds at once.”
“But Professor,” James explained patiently while Sirius’s stomach did that swooping drop thing again, “Then we really will be breaking the rules. No students out of bed. But we’re in bed.”
“Out.”
“Of bed?”
“Out of her favour where I am in bed,” Remus murmured and Sirius let out an unnecessary and, in retrospect, unwise shout of laughter. (They’d done a dramatic reading of the play when Remus brought in a battered Complete Works after the last holidays; James still occasionally greeted bemused students with Do you bite your thumb at me, sir? and they’d got a good amount of mileage out of Swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, as well.)Later, the rules were amended to read or out of their bedroom, and they did all have detention, and there was a miserable business with a Howler, and they lost a significant number of house points – but it was worth it, for the looks they got when they explained what they’d done, and for Remus quoting Shakespeare in the middle of a crisis, and for James’s wretched ankles and his scruffy, innocent face as he almost fell out of his hovering bed. And for being one of four, Sirius thought, looking around at the others in said detention: Remus’s hair in his face, the way he gripped his quill like it was trying to get away from him; James frowning in concentration as he tried to clean up the inevitable ink stains he always left on the desk; Peter’s misbehaving roll of parchment that wouldn’t stay flat unless he leaned all of his weight on it. It was always worth it for being one of four.
@basada-en-la-esperanza requested: The smell of freshly baked bread + sniperpilot
Maroon curtains dance lazily, their intermittent swaying allowing Jedha’s star to set the golden stitches of his mother’s kameez aflame. Her bangles catch the same sparkle as she pulls the tray from the oven.
These new fangled nanowave ovens are more finnicky than the stone ones we used when I was your age, she laments. His sister rolls her eyes; being the elder child she’s heard every complaint to cross their mother’s lips a thousand times at least, or so she claims.
Bodhi, however, ignores their troubles and is preoccupied with the aroma wafting from the tray. The sweet warmth fills the air, his nose, his every thought. Already he can taste the syrupy sunburst dates, the soft flavoured dough melting in his mouth.
So far ahead of yourself, beta, his mother chides, shooing him away from the piping hot tray and imminent burns. What did I tell you? Patience. All good things come to those who wait.
Bodhi nods, soundlessly stepping away. She prods the loaf with a fork. He doesn’t bother to catalogue every minute detail, as he will later in life; because now he thinks there will be many more loaves to slice and cashews to roast and cold almond milk to wash it all down with.
He’s forgotten the scent of the oils in his sister’s braids and the pattern of his mother’s dishcloth. He can’t remember what their kitchen even looked like; nor can he recall his mother’s voice. He only recalls her hacking coughs and delirious rambles; the hoot of watchful birds and the crackle of stormtroopers’ commands.
Bodhi does remember the recipe, and as he pulls the tray out of the oven he thanks the almighty for granting him that sole mercy. God-willing it will taste just right, or close enough.
Close enough is just as valuable as perfection, these days.
The scent wafts up to his nose, and the mere hint of cardamom manages to clear away years and years of stale cockpits and musty quarters.
“That smells fantastic,” Cassian says, leaning over Bodhi’s shoulder.
Bodhi sets the loaf down to cool and turns to regard his companion with a slight smirk. “You’ll have to wait for it to cool,” he says, brushing flour off the bridge of Cassian’s nose. “Good things come to those who wait.”
Cassian cracks a smile at that, one of his not-as-rare-anymore ones that reaches his eyes and makes them twinkle.
Then his expression shifts, the dark brown of his eyes growing mischevious, and Bodhi has half a second before Cassian’s arms are around his waist and face burrowed against his neck. He thinks about playfully swatting him away, but the loaf has to cool and they have time, so much time, so he sighs, shifting his weight to rest against Cassian.
Cassian’s stubble brushes against Bodhi’s pulse.
“I know a thing or two about waiting for good things.”
“Oh?”
Bodhi grins, the heat spreading to his face; and he’s soon reminded Cassian’s lips are capable of a sweetness outshining measly sunbursts.
a nugget of a treat for @sniperpilot-prompts: 3: My cute neighbor goes all out with the Halloween decorations. It’s going to look great if he doesn’t kill himself first.
Bodhi is on his roof.
Cassian is not surprised.
Bodhi is not wearing a harness.
Cassian pinches his nose. Safety hazard! his mind screams. Not that people around here don’t regularly sit on the rooftops, especially while drunk.
Still. Nobody’s holding the ladder resting precariously on the edge of Bodhi’s front steps, either. It’s all a disaster waiting to happen right outside his window.
Naturally, Cassian’s response is to shut his laptop, shrug on a jacket over his worn green hoodie, slip on his boots, and head outside.
The chill nips at him immediately. October’s end is showing it’s ugly fangs, and Cassian shoves his hands into the depths of his pockets. The jacket is sort of overkill for the season, but Cassian has always preferred being too warm over being slightly cold. The socks Jyn attempted to knit him are a proof of that – for all their wretched appearance he wears them regularly every day after the first 0-degree night.
“Do you need any help?”
@dasakuryo requested Bodhi + Dust floating in golden sunlight
Behind his eyelids eternity dances, sparkling.
His curtains still swaying after his mother yanks them to the side, letting Jedha’s early morning engulf his room in golden flames.
The ray of golden afternoon light teasing him as glare on his datapad’s screen. He scratches away at his homework, the tape holding his stylus together rubbing against his middle finger.
His sister leaving him to do all the housework, his mind wandering as he sweeps up the dust that settles on every free surface. It’s the construction, they all say, but his mother believes he’s just being lazy.
In the pilot’s seat, the setting star renders the scratches and dents of his viewport in painful clarity. Riddled with imperfections, but the speeder is good enough to win. Flying over sand dunes, the shoddy appearance doesn’t matter, only the love he pours into its parts.
Red and gold and yellow and orange and a thousand different shades of brown all brought alive by starlight. On Jedha even a measly fleck of dust looks ethereal. Glitter. Like stardust.
Here the Force lives, thrives, sings, touching every thing.
The Empire is black, white, grey. Pristine, no room for golden air. Just ventilation that leaves a metallic taste in Bodhi’s mouth. Like blood.
He hurtles through the vaccum of space. Fumes and grease that he scrubs and sweeps but never leaves. Chilly but not like home. No light, just warnings that blink on and off. Unnatural, erratic, like his breathing.
Then, Jedha again, so changed with a coating of something that settles everywhere. He’s lazy. It’s his fault. His fault. In the cell, catching in his eyelashes. Then sparks, real ones, not motes caught by the sun.
Jedha again, only for it to be swallowed by light. Caving in, dust becomes dirt becomes sand becomes soil becomes the whole entire moon.
Bodhi opens his eyes, and Jedha is gone.
Stardust. Bloodied, burnt, stardust.
He can’t shake the image out of his head. He can close his eyes and pretend he’s still warm in bed, sunlight orange against the back of his eyelids. Mother pulling the curtains back. Dust motes trapped by sunlight. Stardust made from flecks of stars, lit by stars.
It’s all gone. Now, nothing. Become nothing. Is nothing once again.
The Force touches everything on Jedha, has touched him, bound him into it. So he follows its call, soon after, and is stardust.
Bright, glittering, caught in the Force like his cocoon of blankets.
It’s all gone, yet here once again. Tiny, insignificant Bodhi, set aflame, grows, becomes, a star.
7-7-7
tagged by @cynical-harlequin
The rules are as follows. Go to page 7 (or paragraph 7, if not that long) of your WIP then go to the 7th line, share 7 lines and tag 7 more writers to continue the challenge.
Bodhi crossed his arms, eyes narrowed. “And what if I just wanted to ask how you are?” he asked with all the indignance he could muster.
“Feel free to ask me now.”
Bodhi could almost hear the raised eyebrow in K-2’s tone, despite K’s lack of eyebrows. He faltered. “Er… How are you?” he asked awkwardly.
“I am perfectly neutral, thank you. And you?”
I never tag people though, not because I don’t want to hear your beautiful things but because I don’t want anyone to feel pressure. But all my lovely mutuals, feel free to add on!
What if, when Petunia Dursley found a little boy on her front doorstep, she took him in? Not into the cupboard under the stairs, not into a twisted childhood of tarnished worth and neglect–what if she took him in?
Petunia was jealous, selfish and vicious. We will not pretend she wasn’t. She looked at that boy on her doorstep and thought about her Dudders, barely a month older than this boy. She looked at his eyes and her stomach turned over and over. (Severus Snape saved Harry’s life for his eyes. Let’s have Petunia save it despite them).
Let’s tell a story where Petunia Dursley found a baby boy on her doorstep and hated his eyes–she hated them. She took him in and fed him and changed him and got him his shots, and she hated his eyes up until the day she looked at the boy and saw her nephew, not her sister’s shadow. When Harry was two and Vernon Dursley bought Dudley a toy car and Harry a fast food meal with a toy with parts he could choke on Petunia packed her things and got a divorce.
Harry grew up small and skinny, with knobbly knees and the unruly hair he got from his father. He got cornered behind the dumpsters and in the restrooms, got blood on the jumpers Petunia had found, half-price, at the hand-me-down store. He was still chosen last for sports. But Dudley got blood on his sweaters, too, the ones Petunia had found at the hand-me-down store, half price, because that was all a single mother working two secretary jobs could afford for her two boys, even with Vernon’s grudging child support.
They beat Harry for being small and they laughed at Dudley for being big, and slow, and dumb. Students jeered at him and teachers called Dudley out in class, smirked over his backwards letters.
Harry helped him with his homework, snapped out razored wit in classrooms when bullies decided to make Dudley the butt of anything; Harry cornered Dudley in their tiny cramped kitchen and called him smart, and clever, and ‘better ‘n all those jerks anyway’ on the days Dudley believed it least.
Dudley walked Harry to school and back, to his advanced classes and past the dumpsters, and grinned, big and slow and not dumb at all, at anyone who tried to mess with them.
But was that how Petunia got the news? Her husband complained about owls and staring cats all day long and in the morning Petunia found a little tyke on her doorsep. This was how the wizarding world chose to give the awful news to Lily Potter’s big sister: a letter, tucked in beside a baby boy with her sister’s eyes.
There were no Potters left. Petunia was the one who had to arrange the funeral. She had them both buried in Godric’s Hollow. Lily had chosen her world and Petunia wouldn’t steal her from it, not even in death. The wizarding world had gotten her sister killed; they could stand in that cold little wizard town and mourn by the old stone.
(Petunia would curl up with a big mug of hot tea and a little bit of vodka, when her boys were safely asleep, and toast her sister’s vanished ghost. Her nephew called her ‘Tune’ not ‘Tuney,’ and it only broke her heart some days.
Before Harry was even three, she would look at his green eyes tracking a flight of geese or blinking mischieviously back at her and she would not think ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’
A wise old man had left a little boy on her doorstep with her sister’s eyes. Petunia raised a young man who had eyes of his very own).
Petunia snapped and burnt the eggs at breakfast. She worked too hard and knew all the neighbors’ worst secrets. Her bedtime stories didn’t quite teach the morals growing boys ought to learn: be suspicious, be wary; someone is probably out to get you. You owe no one your kindness. Knowledge is power and let no one know you have it. If you get can get away with it, then the rule is probably meant for breaking.
Harry grew up loved. Petunia still ran when the letters came. This was her nephew, and this world, this letter, these eyes, had killed her sister. When Hagrid came and knocked down the door of some poor roadside motel, Petunia stood in front of both her boys, shaking. When Hagrid offered Harry a squashed birthday cake with big, kind, clumsy hands, he reminded Harry more than anything of his cousin.
His aunt was still shaking but Harry, eleven years and eight minutes old, decided that any world that had people like his big cousin in it couldn’t be all bad. “I want to go,” Harry told his aunt and he promised to come home.
Prompt: ‘We can’t have a crisis. My schedule is already full.’ Riff away! ;-)
yay! Thank you so so much for sending me a pdf of that fic I lost~ this is the best thank you I can give!
Nar Shaddaa, 6 ABY
“If you stop to shop one more time, I’m taking off without you,” Jyn says into her comm, heels up on the Falcon’s dash because she knows Han hates that.
Han snorts. “Like she’d allow you to fly her.”
“Really, Solo? She?”
“Hey, I know the heart of my ship. And so would you if you were worthy to fly her.”
“I appreciate your faith– Oh come on, not another clothing store. Don’t you have enough vests?”
“Quit stalking me, Erso.” Han glares at the security cam he knows she’s tapped into and goes back to picking through the sale rack.
Jyn shrugs and zooms in on a zit on Solo’s temple on the datapad propped on her knees. “I’m on a timeline here, and you’re easily distracted.”
“I’m trying to act casual. You know, so the thousand bounty hunters here don’t get suspicious.” He steps out of the camera’s range.
Jyn switches feeds. “Nice try.”
“Karking hell are you tapped into every feed on the planet?”
“Security in this sector is a joke. Which is how I managed to finish my half of this quickly and you’re somehow still 2 klicks from the hangar.”
Apparently finished, Han leaves the shop without buying anything and steps onto the narrow street. “Hey, you had it easier,” he mutters. “Hutts don’t move as fast.”
“And yet I still managed to frame one for murder in less time than it took you to steal three datachips.”
He huffs. “What’s the blazing hurry anyway? You’d better not be bleeding out in my cockpit.”
“Don’t be stupid, you know I have a flight to catch.”
He grits his teeth and she smiles. “It’s my flight. I’m taking you and Andor to Takodana.”
“At this point I think it’d be faster to get a public transport.”
“Public transport? Geez Erso, are you that thirsty after 2 weeks you can’t wait another hour or two?”
“Just get here, Solo.”
He laughs. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
It isn’t from the prompt list, but I’d love it if you did something about slow, sensual, tender massage. Doesn’t have to go into full-on explicit, but full of feels and intense connection between our heroes.
His back doesn’t hurt him all the time, but it aches now, aches from the cold. Some injuries heal with a scar, some are deep wounds in your soul, but his back… His knee is good with a brace, his shoulder just needs lotion after a shower, but his back… It aches, and he’s useless with it. He wants off this planet, stupidly hopes that the Empire will discover Hoth before the month is out, but until then, he feels utterly useless.
“Relax,” she whispers into his ear, and he’s trying to, he really is, but it’s hard to relax when everything just hurts. Jyn had done this, so long ago, when he was first released from medical. They had both rubbed the soothing balms laced with bacta into the other’s skin, but Jyn’s skin had healed. His issues were deeper, all the way to the bone.
And she had learned. He had never asked, but she had learned, had studied old texts, had asked questions, had gone to every appointment. She had spent time, so much time, learning his back, his muscles… He never had to ask. She would just give him a look, like she knew, because she did know. She knew when his back ached, knew just where to push, just how hard and how long, and without fail, he felt like a new man.
Rebellions are built on hope 