Chapter Text
Cassian Andor could accurately be described as a hundred pounds soaking wet, a theory Brasso tested at two in the morning when Cassian showed up in the rain. His fist rapping on the four-inch pane of glass above Brasso’s head was eventually audible over the storm, and Brasso slapped the inside of the window to tell Cassian he’d come to the back door.
There he was, shivering and pathetic in a sodden hoodie, clutching his own elbows. When he staggered, Brasso elected to simply pick him up and carry him to the showers. Brasso would be lying if he said he didn’t consider popping Cassian on the scale first to check if it even pipped seven stone.
Even by Cassian standards, this was an unusual form of greeting. Brasso, starting to feel the chill himself now that Cassian’s dampness was transferring through his shirt, planted him against the wall under the second-to-last shower, which was always the quickest to heat, and cranked the tap. The pipes shrieked and shuddered, and if Brasso were still asleep the boiler’s chorus would have woken him with this. Water sputtered out cold as the rain for the first minute, during which Cassian didn’t talk, which was actually more worrying than him showing up in the wee hours of a downpour. He hunched less as the water heated up, making a miserable shuffling movement until his trainers sloshed off.
If they’d been illuminated by anything more than the exit lights, Brasso would have seen the blood. As it was, he had to ask: ‘What happened, Cass?’
Cassian’s eyelashes flickered. His fists were bundled inside the sleeves of the hoodie. Brasso sighed.
‘Come here,’ he muttered, grabbing the shoulders in his fists. Cassian scrunched himself even tighter, which was initially more difficult, but then he wriggled free shirt-and-all, the hoodie smacking the shower floor with an echoing schlop. This seemed to prompt Cassian to strip off trousers and socks, so he was huddled naked in a swamp of his own clothes under the needling mist.
Brasso mussed Cassian’s hair with his palm, working the rainwater out of it. He hoped it was a brotherly kind of gesture, meant to ground them both. Because his own shorts were catching plenty of the stream and starting to cling in ways that left him just as exposed as Cassian. Without the heart-pounding crackle of sparring to explain the charged air between them, there was no good excuse.
Brasso shut the water off and went for a towel. Xan bleached them so thoroughly that it practically crunched on contact with Cassian’s head. Cassian pressed himself unhelpfully into Brasso’s chest. Brasso tried drilling his thumbs through the towel into Cassian’s collarbones, the way Cassian liked to do when he was in the ring. Cassian sank deeper into him with a puff of air against Brasso’s sternum. When Brasso reached the small of his back Cassian finally took the hint, extracting himself and nudging the towel about until it was damp and knobbly and he was as dry as anyone ever got in these showers. The steam was starting to settle when Brasso stripped and gave himself a cursory towel-down, leaving him clammy as he tucked it around his waist.
‘C’mon,’ he gave Cassian a pat on the hip. They padded down the hall, and Brasso had to shove his door open with a shoulder before the two of them could file in. Brasso offered Cassian a shirt that hung off him, and foraged for tracksuit bottoms for each of them. There was no avoiding knees to respective soft parts in such a small space, and nowhere to sit except Brasso’s bed. They sat.
‘Where’ve you been?’ Brasso asked, too tired to properly brace for how concerning or fictional the answer could be.
Cassian fidgeted with his nails. ‘The worksite.’
‘At two in the—?’ Brasso let his head thump back against the concrete. ‘No, I don’t want to know.’
‘I wasn’t looking for copper.’
‘You’d not be able to carry much on foot,’ Brasso agreed. ‘Why didn’t you drive?’
‘I can’t use the car,’ Cassian said.
‘The axle finally give up?’ Brasso guessed.
‘No,’ Cassian said. Then he said: ‘I had to put him in the boot.’
Brasso ought to have realised earlier that he was not getting any more sleep that night.