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By Cassian's best guess, they'll have about ten standard minutes before there's a ping on someone's comlink — and all things considered, that isn't a lot of time. It'd be smarter to wait until after the debriefs are done, when he and Jyn will both be guaranteed at least a few uninterrupted hours before the next orders come in, but after weeks apart, holding out for that seems like an impossibility; his work often requires patience, and he's good at exercising it, but it always starts to fray at the moment here eyes catch his across the hangar.
And now, he'd never dream of stopping Jyn from hauling him away from prying eyes and into their quarters, from pressing him against the wall once they're behind closed doors and standing on her toes to kiss him past the point of burning lungs.
Not when missing her has been an ache worse than anything his bad back could ever throw at him, and the want of having her close, the need for a tangible reminder that she's here and alive, overpowers everything else.
They only pause when they’re forced to catch their breaths, and Jyn draws back just far enough to step out of her pants and shift their positions, backing into the wall herself this time and pulling him with her. Though his hands fumble on his own belt, they steady as they return to her, ghosting over her face for one indulgent second before moving to support her as he lifts her from the floor, bringing her to a height that's easier to reach; they might have been more comfortable on the bunk, and might've accomplished something more efficient had they moved to the shower, but like her, he can't wait that long for either.
Can't wait that long before pressing his lips to the pulse point at the base of her jaw, the shiver from her moving through him, too, rendering the ache of want as tangible and real as her.
He has just enough wherewithal to spare to muffle the noise clawing out from the back of her throat with his mouth — the walls on this base are thin, so there’s no telling what anyone walking the corridor will be able to hear, still in peak hours of foot traffic like this — and she melts into him as her legs wrap around his waist, drawing him in. Sinking inside her is easy, right, like he’s being aligned back in orbit and it’s the most natural thing in the galaxy.
But there isn't any time to linger in that, the wonder of it, because Jyn bucks her hips up into his, and — well, Cassian can take a hint; he sets a pace, relentless until she comes apart in his arms, and his own release isn't far behind.
Borrowed seconds are slipping out of their grasp, he knows, yet they’re also completely outside of the moment, filled only with breaths and the sound of two heartbeats that haven’t quite stilled. Slowly, he sees her lift a hand from his shoulder, and reach for his face; her thumb settles just under his chin, covered by a beard that’s grown in the weeks-long absence of reliable access to a razor, and her fingers come to rest against his cheek. When her eyes meet his, there’s a strange look in them — one he can best describe as longing, contemplative, maybe awed? — as she drags her bottom lip under her teeth, as she stills for a time before leaning into him once again.
He likes to think he can read Jyn reasonably well by now, but this is completely eluding him.
In any case, the shrill of the inevitable echoes from the other side of the room, where he’d left his comlink.
Beep.
"Fuck," she groans against his mouth, and he can't help the ensuing snort that escapes him as she says what at least more than a part of him is thinking; he can't help but allow himself one last lingering kiss before he gently lowers her until her feet are touching the floor again and steps away toward the refresher, as well as, eventually, a change of pants.
He can't help one last glance over his shoulder at her as he steps through the doorway, equal parts fond and assessing.
It doesn't help him lock any missing pieces into place.
Several hours later, after the last debrief concludes and he’s been dismissed until the following morning, after he’s returned to their quarters to find Jyn waiting for him, he doesn’t receive any further hints. He welcomes how she picks up exactly where they’d left off, taking him by both hands and leading him toward the shower for another round, certainly, and he welcomes her warmth at his back, her breath on his neck, once they’re curled together in the bunk, but long past when the living quarters go dark, he’s still awake, still fixated on earlier.
There are a million other things to expend mental energy on, in the middle of a war, but unanswered questions, in whatever form they come, have a tendency to lodge themselves in and take root.
Something finally clicks into place, though, when he feels Jyn shift behind him, and in that shift he feels her fingers return to his face, tracing the outline of the beard. Because — that’s it, isn’t it?
She likes the beard. He’ll have to test the hunch, of course, to be sure that it’s absolute fact, just like any decent intelligence operative would, but —
A breath huffs out of him, somewhere between disbelief and out of body amusement.
Whenever he thinks he can’t love her more, her and everything she brings to his life — trust, safety, the ridiculous, the soft, the light that can still flicker even in the darkness — she always somehow manages to find a way to surprise him.
There’s another shift behind him, and what had been a light feeling in his chest turns heavy, sinking; she’s as light of a sleeper as he is, and even if he’d been quiet, it would’ve easily been enough to wake her.
Not fully, given the barely coherent “Mm?” being hummed into his ear, but enough.
Still, he can salvage this.
“It’s all right, Jyn,” he whispers into the dark, as softly as he can manage, his hand catching the one that’s come to rest on his stomach and lacing their fingers together. “You can go back to sleep.”
She flops back down onto him, trusting. “Mm.”
Before long, her breathing has evened out, like nothing had happened at all. That’s good, he thinks as he settles back into the safety of her arms around him, just on the verge of following, because he has plans.
The best strategy for anything isn’t to play all of one’s cards immediately, so when the night cycle shifts to the day, when the uninterrupted hours have run out and they have to part for their own respective tasks, Cassian doesn’t do so. He simply pulls Jyn in for a kiss just as they start for the door — but before she steps away, he leans into her, making sure his beard noticeably brushes against her skin, and says, “Later,” low and hot into her ear.
If he’d had any lingering doubt about his hunch from the night before, the way she shivers against him, the way he can hear her breath hitch, is all a confirmation that the doubt is dust.
Something small, barely there, tugs at the corners of his mouth as he watches her walk away; her steps are a little tighter than they usually are, just like the tension she’s holding in her shoulders. Rarely has stumbling across such a crucial piece of intelligence ever been so satisfying.
He even allows himself one more indulgence just outside of the mess at midday.
Because they’d rather keep the specifics of their relationship private among bored people desperate for gossip, they rarely so much as brush hands outside of their quarters when they’re on base, but today, he gently tugs Jyn toward him around the corner, and presses another kiss to the side of her head — one that he makes sure to allow to linger. Against him, he can feel her muscles pulled taut, can practically feel her vibrate under her skin.
Maybe it isn’t fair, playing dirty like this when he’s already sussed out an advantage, but he isn’t thinking of fair. For the rest of the day, he’s only thinking of what will happen when they’re finally, finally alone again.
Cassian leaves his last meeting as quickly as is respectable to, moving through the corridors with purpose until he reaches their door — where Jyn happens to be arriving at the same moment. He’s barely finished punching in the code on the keypad to let them inside before she’s grabbing his arm, pulling him through the doorway with a force that nearly causes him to stumble.
Before she’s colliding into him with a force that could create a supernova, bracketing his face with both of her hands and bringing him toward her for a bruising kiss.
This is what the cards he’s played so far have dealt — and he’s not complaining about this result in the slightest — but he’s saved his best one for last.
When they’re forced to emerge for air, he presses a gentle finger to her lips. Says, in the same way he had earlier, just before they’d parted, “Let me.”
Her gasp is sharp as it catches in her throat, and her eyes, beautiful in any light, darken with want. Still, he waits for her nod before walking her back toward the bunk, his hands slipping under her shirt and lifting it over her head once there.
He starts with a kiss to her temple, then runs a slow line of them down her jaw, dragging over her skin between each one so that the friction created by the coarse hairs of the beard turn it red; between each one, her breaths become shorter. As he turns to her throat, she hooks a leg over his hip, sinking down into the mattress on her back, with him on top of her.
It’s easier like this, to take that slow line of kisses and continue them down the length of her body, lingering wherever he pleases no matter how much she squirms — over the spots he knows are most sensitive, over scars that he doesn’t need to know the origin of to give his attention to, as a reminder that he’s here for all of her.
The frustration she huffs is obvious when he pauses just above her hip, delaying the inevitability of anything further. His smirk into her skin is equally obvious, intentionally so, and it’s only when he can feel her reach for his head, tugging on his hair with both hands that he obliges again, unfastening her pants, sliding them and her underwear down her legs.
She’s so wet, he finds, that she’s dripping onto her shaking thigh.
Part of him could stay there, continuing to tease, but he’s done enough of that. No, now is the time for mercy — his mouth over her cunt, working her methodically with his tongue as she writhes under him, before going for the killing stroke of sucking on her clit.
She comes with an intensity that might knock him back, if not for the fingers in his hair, tugging, tethering him in place.
After, as she stills against the mattress, hands falling away, boneless, he raises his head just enough to press a kiss to her stomach. Tells her, "I'm shaving it tomorrow."
In the periphery of his gaze, Jyn lifts a brow. "If you do, I’ll kill you in your sleep.” In a voice that shows all the rasped signs of her still trying to catch her breath, there’s no heat.
He hums mildly against her skin. “That’d be a shame for you.” Another kiss. “You’d never get to see if I might grow it out again. Think of what you’d miss.”
Absently, her fingers return to his hair, stroking it. “Shut up and let me mourn.”