Work Text:
The first time Cassian noticed it, they were deep in the forests of Tython and being shot at. Cassian is not pleased, to say the least, but Bodhi seems extra distracted. Maybe because it was going to rain any minute.
“Bodhi, focus,” Cassian hisses at him, belly down on the forest floor, chancing a glance over.
Bodhi is staring down his rifle at nothing.
“Cassian,” he says after a minute of not firing. “We need to go.”
Cassian huffs, because if Bodhi was discovering new found reasons for dissension, now was really not the time.
“No, I mean, they have something,” Bodhi insists, and finally starts popping off shots.
Cassian feels like the most long suffering soul in the galaxy. “What?” A battering rain of blaster fire sweeps down again.
“Uh, I don’t know? But it’s big.”
“Big like an AT-AT?”
“No, it’s alive. It’s angry.”
Cassian is about to ask how Bodhi would even know, and that’s when the blaster fire stops, and the forest becomes eerily quiet.
There’s a crunch of underbrush and the ground almost seems to vibrate.
Bodhi shoots straight up, eyes wider than normal, and yanks on Cassian’s jacket. “Run!” he yells, and Cassian is swearing to himself this is the last time he pairs up with Bodhi on a mission, there’s too many factors going on, and stumbles after him. Cassian whips around to cover them, and that’s when he sees the large, angry, alive thing.
“Is that a Rancor?!” he shouts, but Bodhi is still tugging on his sleeve and Cassian almost trips in his haste to keep up.
The second time is more subtle.
Apparently Luke Skywalker, the farm boy from the middle of nowhere, has asked Bodhi to fly him to some other bum fuck nowhere planet, and Bodhi agrees, even though he’s clearly on Cassian’s squadron, not Luke’s band of freelancing Rebels.
Anyways. Cassian basically elbows his way onto the trip, insisting on some bullshit reason, that makes Bodhi frown and Luke smirk behind his hand.
They all fly out to Dagobah,and Luke directs them to a rocky patch of land that he insists will hold (how he knows, Cassian has no clue, because it’s all fog) and tells them to wait. “I should be back within 2 hours.”
Bodhi nods and he and Cassian both watch as Luke quickly disappears into the fog, and Bodhi shivers.
“It’s eerie, isn’t it?” Cassian asks, before turning to work outside the cockpit; there’s nothing wrong with the ship, but he needs something to occupy his hands.
“It feels weird,” Bodhi says. “Like, like being watched.”
“If you can’t see it, it can’t see you out here,” Cassian says, gesturing outside.
Bodhi hums, but doesn’t say anything else. They work in silence, and just as quickly as he disappeared, Luke comes back into view, picking his way over rocks and who knows what else, a thoughtful look on his face.
“This place always makes me feel alive,” Luke says, settling in.
“Most people go to the mountains, not the swamp,” Cassian says, knowing he’s being testy.
“Because it feels alive here,” Bodhi explains to Cassian unnecessarily.
“Bodhi, what do you know about kyber crystals?”
Bodhi stiffens, and Cassian absolutely does not loom. Bodhi is an adult, he tells himself.
“Quite a bit, why?”
“Oh, someone told me you might know,” Luke says, the opposite of casual, and Cassian knows this pipsqueak is lying. “I need to get a hold of one.”
“I mean, the Empire mined all the kyber off Jedha. You might need to speak with Chirrut or Baze, I think they’d have more intimate knowledge of it.”
“Okay, thanks,” Luke says, somehow bright and solemn at the same time. Cassian sighs. He should give the kid a break; after Han Solo was frozen, he’d been changed somehow. “I’m building a new lightsaber,” Luke explains to Bodhi, because Cassian couldn’t care less and is also still deep in the innards of the cooling system.
Bodhi laughs, and Cassian swallows. “I think the last one I saw was yours, but there were quite a few pilgrimages to my homeworld when I was a boy by force users.”
They keep up the conversation, Bodhi seeming more and more distant before Luke finally stops asking him questions.
The ride home seems interminable.
The third time Cassian is playing a card game with a blind man and losing. Chirrut, as always, is pleased by the turn of events, and keeps loudly asking if he has a good hand.
Bodhi is sitting next to Chirrut, whispering to him what he does and does not have. Baze is watching them from the kitchenette, making something that makes Cassian’s mouth water.
Bodhi lays down the third hand for Chirrut, and Cassian blows out a sigh. “You’re cheating,” Cassian accuses. “I don’t know how, but you are.”
Chirrut smiles, “I will step out of the game, then. Bodhi can take my place.”
Bodhi turns to him. “I was always lucky in cards,” he warns.
“Luck I can handle,” Cassian says.
“There is the downside of that,” Bodhi offers, “Unlucky in cards, lucky in love?”
Cassian very carefully does not freeze. “I’m not sure that if one is true, then the other must the opposite.”
“Well, that’s the pattern, anyway,” Bodhi says, and draws two.
“If it was so, then I should be more lucky in cards,” Cassian insists.
“Luck and love have nothing to do with each other,” Baze grumbles.
“On the contrary, my love, I’m lucky to have you,” Chirrut says.
Baze rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of a smile around his lips, and he brushes his fingers along the back of Chirrut’s shoulders as he walks around him to sit.
Bodhi freezes his cards in the playing field, and Cassian blinks. An almost perfect hand. “Maybe it was you who was cheating,” Cassian jokes.
“I did run a gambling ring on racers when I was young,” Bodhi shrugs. “Maybe it’s luck and experience that gives you a good hand.”
“Oh that cannot be true,” Cassian scoffs in delight. He tries to imagine a young Bodhi flitting around the streets of Jedha, but it is hard to imagine, as he did not have much of a childhood himself.
“Yeah, but I got caught. So, maybe it’s not luck.”
Cassian thinks. “Here,” he says, drawing a new card from the deck. “Is what I have higher, or lower, than the next draw?”
Bodhi tilts his head. “I don’t understand,” he says.
“If it’s experience, then you will not know,” Chirrut explains for him. “A sabaac deck is ever changing. There’s only the faces that stay the same. If it is luck,” He spreads open his hands, “then you will know.”
“That’s impossible.” Bodhi shakes his head.
“Try,” Cassian insists. “Slide the deck under the playing field; freeze it.”
Bodhi still looks hesitant, but does so anyway.
“Higher or lower?” Cassian asks again.
Bodhi squints up his nose, and Cassian feels the urge to lean across and kiss it, but refrains. That’s experience.
“Higher,” Bodhi says after a moment.
Cassian slams the card face up on the field.
Baze raises his brows. “A five of flasks,” he says.
Bodhi stares at the card. Then slowly flips the top card of the deck next to it.
Baze laughs while Bodhi and Cassian look in awe. “A four of flasks,” Baze crows.
“Must be luck,” Chirrut says, undercurrents of mirth and knowing in his tone.
They’re under fire again the fourth time. The upside is, they’re in the U-Wing. The downside is, Cassian’s been shot, and so is the hyperdrive and who knows what else. He’s piloting one handed while Bodhi is fixing whatever is making the ship’s alarms blare and the lights stutter. Kay is trying to calm him down, saying something about the likelihood of their getting out of this mess, and he keeps looking back to yell at Bodhi to fix whatever is wrong with the ship now.
He can’t hear what Bodhi is shouting back at him, not only because Bodhi is under the floorboards in the wiring, but because Cassian is about to pass out.
“Kay,” Cassian hears himself slur before slumping over in the captain’s chair. “Get Bodhi,” he says, but it sounds like ‘geh bowdehl’ but Kay understands, and scoops him up as the ship is shuddering from the fire power of the dozens of TIE fighters. Kay says something mostly likely discouraging, and lays him down on the cockpit floor before stepping over him.
Bodhi runs back in a few seconds later, eyes wide and panicked. “Cassian!” Bodhi kneels next to him and holds his face, looking for something. It’s wonderful and ridiculous because Cassian was clearly shot in the arm, not in the face, even if that’s what it feels like. Cassian closes his eyes and feels guilty for enjoying it anyway.
“I will fix the hyperdrive,” Kay says, “you must fly.”
“Is he okay?” Bodhi asks, already getting into the captain’s chair, switching toggles and maneuvering out of the way of the fight.
“Until we lose all life systems, which will be soon,” Kay starts.
“Go, Kay!” Cassian finds the strength to yell, and Bodhi snaps back towards the transparasteel and yanks hard on the controls.
The ship jerks up, and Cassian does his best to not slide out of the cockpit but there’s not much to hold onto, let alone his dignity. The ship is still being punched from firepower and jolts from side to side. Cassian doesn’t want to die, let alone on the floor of his own ship.
“Bodhi,” Cassian says.
“Hang on, Cass,” Bodhi calls back. There’s a distinct noise of systems shutting down, and then the ship turning too fast and Cassian thinks this is it.
“Bodhi I love you,” he says, almost conversationally.
The ship stops and all the lights go off.
“Cassian, I love you too, but I really need to concentrate right now, can we get back to this later?”
If Cassian had anymore energy to snap he would, but he tries to bask in the final thought that Bodhi loves him too.
When the lights snap back on and ship jerks back to life, Cassian can barely believe it.
“Hyperdrive is still out,” Kay informs them before stepping out again.
“Then I’ll have to out fly them,” Bodhi says, and Cassian is sliding forward back into the cockpit again.
“The kriff are you doing?” he asks, struggling to hang on to something before grabbing onto the copilot’s chair and holding on for dear life as they are flying sideways for whatever reason, and then there’s a bump, then nothing.
No swishing overhead, no lasers rocking the ship, and as far as Cassian can tell, the U-Wing is right side up.
“Am I dead?” he asks.
“No, surprisingly,” Kay says. “We should be.”
“I don’t want to get up,” Cassian moans. “Bodhi are you okay?”
“Were you serious?” Bodhi asks instead.
“I know I’m not dead,” Cassian says, letting go of the copilot’s chair to roll over to look at Bodhi. Bodhi, who outmaneuvered a dozen TIE fighters.
“I meant— never mind,” Bodhi says, looking forward again.
“Cassian loves you,” Kay assures Bodhi.
“Yeah, I do,” he says, starting to slur again. “Sorry my droid is more emotionally aware than I am. Maybe just more aware. I’m not sure how much blood I’ve lost.”
He might have passed out.
He feels a stabbing pain in his arm, and Bodhi is sitting next to him, Kay elevating his legs. Bodhi has a line from his own arm where blood is flowing in.
“You will live,” Kay says, sounding about as relieved as a droid can.
“Kay says you lost a little less than eighteen percent of your total blood.”
“Sorry I yelled at you Kay,” Cassian says.
“You will live,” he repeats sanctimoniously. “Our friend is an exceptional pilot.”
Bodhi ducks his head, and Cassian wonders at that.
Bodhi visits him in med bay the time Cassian finally says something about it.
Cassian feels ridiculous and delighted at the same time; they’re holding hands. Cassian will never let anyone but Bodhi know how he feels right now.
Bodhi is talking to him about the Rogue One crew, and Cassian drifts in and out but hangs onto Bodhi’s words as tightly as he can.
“I’ll let you get some rest,” Bodhi whispers.
Cassian tightens his grip, and tugs. “Come here,” he says. “Next to me.”
Bodhi huffs, but even with his eyes closed, Cassian can tell it’s a happy one. Bodhi’s warm body is pressed against his on the small cot, and Cassian for all he feels weak, has never felt better.
Bodhi leans up and kisses lightly across his cheek. The bed moves. Neither of them have. Cassian pulls back and opens his eyes slowly. “Bodhi did you just move the bed?”
“No, you did,” Bodhi says.
“Bodhi, you know you’re Force sensitive, right?”
Bodhi sits up, jarring the bed and Cassian too this time. “No. No!” He shakes his head. Then stops, considering. “The Guardians of the Whills did come talk to my mother when I was a child,” he muses.
“Kriff what am I going to do with you?”
Cassian relates the bare bones of it to Chirrut and Baze while Bodhi sits with him.
Baze looks like he’s going to burst out laughing, and Cassian finally asks, “What’s so funny? He needs training.”
“About that,” Chirrut says.
“You know recognizing Force adepts and sensitives are also a trait of the same, right?” Baze asks. He raises an eyebrow. “You’re Force sensitive too.”
Bodhi laughs, delighted. “I guess you know what to do with me now,” he says. “Come with me.”
Cassian can live with that.