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Cassian awoke. Not with the start he was so accustomed to, but with a steady float toward consciousness. No alarm blared, no red lights blinked in the dawn. Dawn. The sky outside the window lightened of its own accord.
Free. For now. Perhaps even safe, however precarious, and he'd learned the hard way exactly how precarious they were for beings like him.
Nothing he wanted to consider as he swept the grit of sleep from his eyes and brought his companion into focus.
Melshi frowned in his sleep, his body curved to accommodate a sleeping platform too short to stretch out in. Unnecessary in the luxurious bed that fit them both with enough room for a bantha left over. Yet they’d ended up face to face, barely an arms' breadth between them all the same.
Close enough to see the mesh of blue veins that crisscrossed beneath Melshi’s eyelids, and the greyish tinge of days old stubble that crept along his jaw. Cassian wondered when, before yesterday, Melshi had last felt sunlight?
Cassian tried not to shift, though his legs ached from exertion, feet throbbing despite being freshly healed. They'd left blood-smeared footprints on the Narkinian's ship. The pain that flooded in as the adrenaline ebbed had left them half-crippled and hobbling. He could have dropped on the beach and slept like a corpse in the sand, if not for the anxiety that kept him running in place, until there was finally a locked door between them and the world outside.
It was still early. He should try and sleep a little longer; there was no knowing when he'd next get the chance without someone to watch his back. Not that either of them had kept watch last night, both unconscious before they hit the pillows, but there was still something reassuring about another body beside him. Even an equally vulnerable one.
Apparently keeping watch hadn't been necessary. Or maybe they'd just gotten lucky.
If it was luck, he hoped it continued to hold.
He studied the familiar shape of Melshi's sleeping body and the sound of the rise and fall of his chest. Melshi had always slept curled toward the wall, the way so many of them had, desperate for any small sliver of privacy. Now he and Cassian curved toward one another, and Cassian cataloged the details of Melshi's face. Lines radiated out from the corners of his eyes. Laugh lines, they were called, and Narkina had never given much cause to smile.
For an irrational moment, Cassian wanted to know where they came from, what stories Melshi lived to leave them behind. He wanted to know what it sounded like when Melshi laughed. Who he'd been before Narkina and who he might be after. What kind of beings they might be together, beyond the walls of their incarceration. He wondered if he'd ever get the chance to know.
Perhaps he wondered too loudly, as Melshi began to stir. He frowned, then blinked Cassian into focus. They stared at each other. It took a surprising moment before Cassian remembered staring was actually rude, more than a little intrusive.
"What?" Melshi asked before Cassian could look away. His voice was thick with sleep, and easy like they'd been waking up beside one another for years. He twisted his head against the pillow as he stretched his legs.
"Used to you being up over there," Cassian said. He inclined his head to gesture at the far side of the room.
Strange to feel this at ease after living packed in and exposed in that hard, sterile place, where they learned to take what small privacies they could. Maybe privacy between them didn't matter anymore. Or maybe it was the intimacy they'd already shared, finding solace and companionship in the twitching of hands and the solemn expression of someone who had long since come to terms with their lot; a confidant to his frustrations.
A tugged earlobe. He won't listen.
Fingers crossing over knuckles. Ease off.
A shrug. I told you so.
"Ah," Melshi agreed soberly, "should've got us a place with bunk beds."
"Sorry," Cassian said with a shrug and grinning. "I always share beds. Force of habit."
Melshi looked him over very seriously, and then the corner of his lips twitched upward. "Careful, Keef, I might think you were trying to seduce me."
There was a second where Cassian almost thought about what that would be like, seducing him. Almost considered what might happen if he reached out and traced those laugh lines with his fingers. He closed his hand, propped himself up on his elbow. He raised an eyebrow. "Is it working?"
Melshi sized him up for a long moment. "Mmm, you should take me out to dinner first."
"I did buy you dinner, you puked it up all over my shoes."
Melshi barked out a laugh and flipped him off. Then he rolled onto his back with his arms at his sides over the sheets. He looked like he'd been tucked into a hospital bed.
"You sleep okay?" Cassian asked. He lay back down on the thin pillows, studying the smudged shadows under Melshi's eyes. They'd been there as long as he'd known him. He thought they were slightly lighter now, maybe.
"Yeah." Melshi was running his fingertips over the sheets. "It's nice to have bedding again."
Cassian nodded in agreement. They'd only had the paper thin uniforms to sleep in, and the hall got cold at night. There'd been no way to get comfortable on the hard flat pallet, or with the white noise thrum of the hot floors.
"We don't have to get up yet," he said, but Melshi shook his head.
"I don't think I could sleep more if I wanted to." He shrugged. "Still on shift time."
Cassian winced. He felt like he could sleep for days, and frankly Melshi looked like he needed it. And in the same breath he knew he wouldn't be able to either. His legs already felt restless just laying there.
"What do you want to do then, with your first day of freedom?" He watched Melshi worry at his lip, hands twisting and untwisting in the sheet.
Eventually he said, "I don't know." Cassian caught the faint tremble in his voice.
He knew that feeling. Too many options. After Mimban his only thought had been getting back to Ferrix. When he finally crashed on Brasso's couch he'd slept for a week before he'd felt capable of doing anything. And then, though he'd never admitted it to anyone, it'd been easier when Brasso had told him what to do. Get up. Shower. Eat. And eventually, go home and finally talk to Maarva. Orders to give him a path to march when freedom felt overwhelming.
If Melshi needed a path, Cassian could give it. He sat up and started to get out of bed. "C'mon, let's go get breakfast." When Melshi grimaced at him he added, "something bland, I promise. I want to feel the sun again."
The sheets were clean; none of their cuts had split open in the night. They both spent too long under the shower spray, so it was later than he would've liked before they finally left. The room was booked for another night, but they wouldn't be coming back. They'd packed up first. It hadn't taken long. He had only his lockbox. By some miracle no one had discovered it in the month it lay hidden above the shower unit.
Melshi only had the clothes on his back.
They'd burned the uniforms in one of the open pit fires on the beach after sundown. They turned to ash in seconds; nothing but orange embers carried on the wind. Cassian made sure not to see the way the flames caught in the tears on Melshi’s cheeks.
The streets were beginning to fill so they stuck close to one another. Melshi was blessedly less jumpy than the night before, but Cassian kept their pace lazy, stopping to glance over the set up stalls, heavy and laden with their wares.
He felt Melshi’s lips close to his ear after the third stall. The wind was up, so no one heard him ask, “what are you doing?” That was good, but Cassian played it off anyway.
“Anything for you.” He beamed, throwing down half a cred on the table and swiping up a necklace of carved wooden beads.
He stood on his tiptoes, fastening the necklace about Melshi’s neck. He pressed his own lips close to the shell of Melshi’s ear. To anyone else they might look like lovers.
“We’re just tourists,” he whispered, letting his hands drag down to smooth over Melshi’s shoulders. “We’ll just blur into the crowd.”
When he stepped back again Melshi was smiling softly. He touched the beads with his fingertips. “Thank you,” he said, perhaps because it was the only thanks Cassian couldn’t refuse, “I love it.” A golden bead caught the sunlight, just for a moment.
They ate unflavoured porritch topped with nuts and fruit (though Melshi spooned those into Cassian’s bowl) on plastic chairs at a wobbly table, both of which had seen better days. Melshi sipped a mild and sweetened tea while Cassian inhaled a mug of bitter caf.
After, they climbed down the promenade steps and jumped the last small drop to the beach. Melshi immediately kicked off his shoes and wiggled his toes into the sand.
"What are you doing?" Cassian cocked an eyebrow as Melshi scooped up his shoes with one hand.
"Feels good." He shrugged. All Cassian could think was of was the scrape of sand between his toes after Narkina 5. And then he thought of years on cold metal floors and just smiled back at him. And there was something so peaceful about the lines of Melshi's body as he stood, relaxing into the sand; such calm in the way he closed his eyes, head tilted back against the wind, that it was impossible for Cassian to begrudge Melshi anything.
After a while they walked out onto the strand, and Cassian had to take his shoes off anyway when the seawater rose up from the ground and soaked them.
They stopped at a rockpool, crouching to peer at the ocean creatures as they furled and unfurled, or snapped at their fingertips with their brightly-coloured shells. Melshi asked him what their names were. Cassian didn't know. He hadn't thought to care, between all the drink and stimms and sex. He'd been trying so hard not to think about anything.
He watched Melshi's quiet wonder as a fish darted out from under an overhanging rock and swallowed an insect at the surface. And he thought of all those years he'd wasted in selfishness and anger, while Melshi had worked shift after shift after shift, every one the same, building the same parts over and over.
His guts felt tight. It was just the food, he told himself. He wasn't used to it.
The tide began turning and they got up to leave.
"Race you back to the wall," Melshi said, grin in his voice. He was already running.
"No, wait!" Cassian's feet slapped against the sand. The case bounced on his hip so hard he knew he'd be purple with bruising.
Melshi threw his head back and laughed. It was like sunlight on water. Cassian’s chest ached. "Don't!" He grabbed Melshi's arm, yanked back so hard Melshi slid, nearly fell. He sucked a lungful of air sharp with salt. "Don't kriffing run!"
Melshi looked at him, panting through a smile crooked with confusion. "What's wrong? It's just running. It feels good. Why can't we run?"
Cassian gripped both his arms and shook him. "Because they'll pick you up for anything! Anything! They got me for looking around too much! Don't give them an excuse to throw you straight back in!"
"Hey, okay. We're fine. No one saw us, we're fine, no one saw us." Melshi's hands were on Cassian's shoulders, his eyes soft as his smile had been. "We're just a couple of tourists right?"
Cassian swallowed. He'd stopped shaking Melshi but his hands were shaking on Melshi's arms. He had to stop them before someone noticed. "So was I."
Melshi blinked, then his eyes widened. "Oh," he said. "Oh, Keef." He put his hand on the back of Cassian's neck, ducked in close until their foreheads were touching. "Hey, it's okay. Nobody saw us. We're safe. It's okay. We're okay."
"We're okay," Cassian repeated. He gripped Melshi's arms, breathed with him: in and out until Melshi's breath filled his lungs like the sea salt and the tide came in and soaked their shoes. And in that moment, they were free and safe, precarious as those were. This ephemeral, transient moment, before the rest of their life began again.
But right then they were free and safe in the warm glow of sunlight, and the moment held.