He just wanted her to stop being sad; he just wanted to stop being sad, and his limbs were molten inside with saline and alcohol, his body so ready to be touched that his other hand has been rubbing up and down the arm he'd extended toward her, the old echo of what he wants but won't ask for.
When he gets it, when she responds the way he'd hoped, the way that says she still gets it, he realizes: he also just wanted to. Cassian and Casey, for moments at a time, stop being the excuse not to, become the excuse to.
But it's just an excuse. With her mouth moving against his, and her hand on his jaw, his own sliding down his arm to splay over her throat and hold her close, she isn't a substitute or a warm body. She's Jyn. She's a fierce light smoldering in the dark; she's not the warm spring but the reason it boils. Kira just wants to kiss her, while she's still here, still burning with anything at all. He can't keep waiting for the right time, for the grief to lift, for the right feeling behind it. People disappear, including himself. He spent the last year of what he thought was his life saying what he could to his family--he's only just started to say those things here.
Still, he eases back from the first crush of this feeling, forehead to forehead, brushing his lips up and down against hers in a soft, soothing break from stealing the other's air. "You don't have to," he says in a hush, for all he can feel the ease of it pressing right back against him. People can feel one thing and say another, rationalize it away, and that's just as important to know.
no subject
When he gets it, when she responds the way he'd hoped, the way that says she still gets it, he realizes: he also just wanted to. Cassian and Casey, for moments at a time, stop being the excuse not to, become the excuse to.
But it's just an excuse. With her mouth moving against his, and her hand on his jaw, his own sliding down his arm to splay over her throat and hold her close, she isn't a substitute or a warm body. She's Jyn. She's a fierce light smoldering in the dark; she's not the warm spring but the reason it boils. Kira just wants to kiss her, while she's still here, still burning with anything at all. He can't keep waiting for the right time, for the grief to lift, for the right feeling behind it. People disappear, including himself. He spent the last year of what he thought was his life saying what he could to his family--he's only just started to say those things here.
Still, he eases back from the first crush of this feeling, forehead to forehead, brushing his lips up and down against hers in a soft, soothing break from stealing the other's air. "You don't have to," he says in a hush, for all he can feel the ease of it pressing right back against him. People can feel one thing and say another, rationalize it away, and that's just as important to know.