He knows his grandmother and Jyn kept exchanging Christmas cards over the years, and it's comforting to know that's how she'd heard rather than a phone call he might have missed. Not that he suspects his abuelita from talking behind his back, but it's reassuring. "She has it framed on her mantle too," he sighs. And there's another in her room. Her house is littered with pictures of Cassian, but pictures of Sofia are popping up more and more too.
He tries not to think about the idea of Jyn having his picture though.
"She will be nine months soon." Which kind of baffles him, because how can it have gone by so fast, but also it feels like no time at all? As if she knows she's being talked about, Sofia lets out another chirping noise that turns into a very extended babble. She has very important baby things to say! "Yes, you, you're getting so big," he replies easily, brightly.
So nineteen months ago, Cassian was having sex with someone, good to know. Gah, why was that the first thing she thought! Why is she still thinking about it, oh god, abort, abort. She takes a sip of her drink to give herself time to craft a response that has zero things to do with his dick but she swallows wrong and chokes on it, coughing enough to make her go pale, which makes the blush creeping up her neck all the more pink.
"I'm fine, 'm fine," she assures him, gesturing dismissively with her drink. "Went down the wrong way."
He's so easy with her, so relaxed into parenting, it melts Jyn's heart a little, but it leaves her a little unsettled too. She'd thought about staying for a few months, heading back to South America at the start of the new year, it's why she bought the coffee maker. But all this reminds her that everyone here has a life, she doesn't really have a place. All by her own doing, of course, but she doesn't know if she can just come home and fit in here anymore.
At least with the coffee maker, she won't have to go out tomorrow.
Concern shoots onto his face immediately when she starts choking, but his hands are full and he has a few seconds of dilemma before she announces she's fine. With a blush crawling up her skin, still easy to see against how pale she's always been. He does a double take, because he can't think of anything he might have done to warrant it.
"Are you sure about that?" He is maybe... teasing, but about the choking. Which is very odd because it's been so long, but that happy sort of easiness that always came from being with Jyn is still there.
It's nice being home with all his old friends, but there's a disconnect born from the time he was away, and from Sofia being...born. Leia has babysat for him before, Bodhi and Luke buy her little toys, but he can hardly go out whenever he feels like it anymore.
Sofia, meanwhile, has not stopped staring at Jyn since she starting coughing, so entranced that she drops her little beluga into the space between her chest and her father's. She gurgles, the sound lilted almost like she's also concerned.
Automatically, Jyn rolls her eyes at him. Normally she would shove him too, but he has his precious cargo. Her stuff can be replaced, his cannot.
Catching Sofia staring in that curious, unblinking gaze babies have, Jyn switches her bag and coffee to one hand so she can boop the baby on the nose, careful to pull her hand back before the girl can latch on and grab her. "I'm fine, Sof, I promise. I won't die from something as lame as choking on coffee. Besides, bad things come in threes, you know, and my papa was number three so I'm perfectly safe."
You know, safe in flawed, superstitious logic, but weirdly Jyn has been clinging to that. She lost all three of her parents, zero family left to lose and that includes herself.
Smart move, because Sofia immediately lunges for Jyn's finger and ends up smacking her hands together in the empty space it just was. She makes a sort of bapaba noise of disappointment, then re-finds her whale to chew once more.
Cassian, however, frowns a little, because even though he recognizes it as a very Jyn-esque joke, it makes him wonder after what she's going to do again. She has Bodhi, but it's not like she's spent a lot of time with him in recent years either.
He wants to ask how she's doing, but that's sometimes a dumb question to ask Jyn even on good days. "How long are you staying in town for?"
"Honestly?" She shrugs, mouth slanting down in an uncertain frown. "I don't know. They offered me sabbatical, I could take it, but I don't know yet. I'm going to stay a little while, at least. Bodhi asked."
Another shrug, she scuffs her toes across the sidewalk, peeking over at Sofia out of the corner of her eye. She's not sure she's really accepted that Cassian has a baby, that Cassian opened up to someone enough to make a baby, but Sofia is so cute and so charming that she can't help being sucked in by her wide, dark eyes and the way she can see the ghost of a dimple that matches one she very familiar with. She looks so much like Cassian, it's... mind-boggling.
A little while. He's not sure how long that actually translates into, just like he's not sure why it makes him happy to know he has more time.
He huffs out a laugh. "I wasn't angling to ask you to watch her. Abuelita takes her, when I have work." His degree is collecting excellent layers of dust while he works part time in both IT for the local library and at one of the local mechanics.
"But..." Does he trail off because he feels weird, or because Sofia almost drops her whale again?? It's a mystery. "It is good to see you, and I mean that."
He can say that safely now that he knows she's not being overtly weird about his daughter. He has no idea what she's actually thinking, but she did invite him over to the farmhouse. Jyn hates company. But she keeps eyeing Sofia like she can't quite believe she's real, and he guesses that's fair. "You can visit us though, beyond just today, if you would like, since you are going to be here a while."
Jyn was his best friend for over half his life. Walking and chatting with her now makes him realize he really has missed her.
The frown softens into a tiny, tiny smile, but it's directed at Cassian entirely. None for Sofia this time.
"You can visit, too." A beat. "I know the house isn't baby proof or anything, but the backyard is and no one took down our old playhouse. She might not be big enough for the tree house, yet, but. Sorry, Sof." She doesn't think Cassian will take the offer because, as she said, it's not baby proof, and it would probably be easier to hang out at his place, but it's still there. They can still watch TV on her old couch, eat cereal on her old twin bed, watch the stars on her old roof.
She turns up the walkway, the familiar walk still second nature. "Although on second thought, I don't have any food so maybe... bad offer."
Oh. That's a smile he remembers. He finds himself smiling back, just as tiny and soft.
The farmhouse feels almost exactly the same, even though he hasn't been there since Jyn left. Sofia looks around curiously at this Brand New Place, babbling under her breath.
"There's always takeout," he offers idly. They got takeout a lot in high school, even if their respective guardians were the ones giving them food money at the time. "If I am being honest, most of the food I have at any given moment is Abuelita's leftovers."
Not that Cassian is incapable of cooking, but sometimes he just doesn't have the energy. He'll be a better judge on just how acceptable it is for Sofia once he's inside, but he kind of...likes the idea of letting her play in the backyard. He has an apartment, the downstairs part of a house. There's no real yard. "I would not mind though. It's nice to just... get out of the house sometimes."
The house looks exactly the same, a little more worn down with age but still with the familiar green door and huge porch with the broken porch swing no one bothered to fix. Jyn always thought it was a strange house for Saw to pick but that was before she'd found out her mother had picked it out before she died, had planned for Jyn to come here with Saw. Jyn suspects she'd planned herself into it as well but, alas.
Mounting the steps, she pushes the unlocked door open, shoving it until it scuffs against the floor so Cassian can follow her though the living room into the kitchen. Not much has changed since Jyn lived here with Saw, Galen hadn't left much of a mark, preferring to keep his daughter's presence around. Her heels from the funeral are flung across the soft rug, blankets strewn everywhere. The remains of a potted plant lay wilted in the corner and a pile of Jyn's old books are perched on one of the side tables. Hanging from the coat pegs are jackets from high school and her backpack and an old pair of converse. It's neat, clean, looks like Galen probably invested in a cleaning lady every so often.
"Key's still where I left it. No one ever moved it, so." He's welcome to stop by whenever. She dumps her bags on the counter, shoving them aside to deal with later. "Do you think... can I hold her?"
It's kind of like stepping back into time, with only little changes since the last time he was here. There's new pieces of Jyn and old ones. He feels nostalgic, and maybe a little sad, but he's able to stave off the latter at least by watching the way Sofia can't stop looking around her new environment. She starts to wriggle around in his arm, and he sets the coffee down on the counter so she doesn't buck into it.
"In a few minutes? There's a lot of new things happening, I am afraid it would too much stimuli."
People get weirdly entitled about holding babies, but he doesn't feel defensive or hesitant about being honest with Jyn. She wants to hold Sofia. He was going to ask her the same, but his little whale needs to settle first. Much like her father, she is almost creepily perceptive and aware, but it's much harder for her to process.
She shrieks and tries to bend backwards, but he catches the back of her head. "I see you still use about fifty blankets."
Jyn is about to agree when Sofia tries to backflip out of Cassian's arms and whatever she was going to say is interrupted with a peal of delighted laughter. "You know what, maybe I'll let her spazz out for a minute."
(If Cassian drops her, it's whatever, he's her dad. If Jyn drops her, it's bad.)
"You can get the rug if you want her to crawl around on something soft." Meanwhile, Jyn decides she will putter around the kitchen, pulling her stuff out of the bags and beginning to set up the coffee maker to see if she can make it work without asking Bodhi for help. She's always been kind of crappy at setting machines up. Using them, she's stellar at, they all had fake IDs at the tender age of fifteen. And lest he think she let the blanket comment slide, "Paying for heat is expensive, Andor."
She continues to throw herself backward like it's going to convince her father to let her fly, or like his waiting arms are merely a fainting couch and she is a tired Victorian lady, and Cassian just quietly laughs alongside Jyn. He adjusts his hold so she's dangling her legs in the air, and she kicks her little feet like that will let her fly instead.
"When she started crawling, she bumped her head into the couch I don't know how many times in the rush of moving on her own. The first time was very, very tragic, but now she just gets mad it's in her way."
He has been holding her a very long time though, and she probably does want to crawl around. He soars her over to the offered rug and sits down on it, but he only lets her dangle her feet against it first, holding her up while she does a jig in his hands and maybe tries to throw herself backward one more time. One day she will catch her papa off guard, but today is not that day.
"You and I both know the amount of blankets you have is not dependent on how high the heat is."
"A blanket is like a hug, Cassian Jeron Andor, and if you keep talking I will teach your daughter to like them as much as I do." Enjoy buying her five blankets every year for Christmas when Jyn is done with her. He'll need a trunk for all the blankets his daughter collects.
Now, at least, Jyn knows what she is buying Sofia for Christmas. And her birthday. For the next thirty years.
Satisfied once she plugs in the machine and it beeps itself to life, she shoves it aside and collects both their coffees so she can join Cassian on the soft rug, making sure the drinks are out of the baby's reach. She sinks down onto the cloud that is the rug, reaching out to tickle Sofia's round little belly, leaning over to stage whisper to her.
"I still know all your Papa's biggest secrets and where he's ticklish, he's fighting a losing battle and he knows it."
The weird part is he believes her, and the weirder part is the notion that she will be around long enough from here on out to have that kind of influence on his daughter. He's...okay with that. "She already has this fleece blanket she loves to burrow under, I am sure it won't be difficult."
He loves it. She lays on his chest and falls asleep with warm snuggles and it's literally the best.
Jyn's right though, probably. Sofia is going to have him wrapped around her finger forever. The baby giggles when Jyn tickles her, a completely pure sound. "Don't give her any ammo. She is learning plenty on her own already."
He sits her down on the rug at last and her expression goes wide, baffled by the fluff suddenly beneath her. She reaches out and plants her hands in the fabric, pawing at it almost like a kitten while she stares down tunnel-visioned. Cassian practically beams at her. "What is that, conejito? It's so soft, isn't it?"
Jyn lounges down on her side, making an impromptu barrier between the baby and the rest of the house, prompting herself up on her elbow, chin in hand. It's weird, that Cassian has a baby, but she's such a sweet, cute baby. And she loves Jyn's rug.
She has good taste.
Stretching forward, she slips her fingers through the fluff until her hand glides over Sofia's, grinning at her surprised jerk. "You're the cutest thing this rug's ever seen and that includes your papa's cute butt." This rug has also seen a prolific amount of making out considering Saw was something of an absent foster father, always away for work and leaving Jyn to handle herself during secondary school. She didn't mind, if meant her house was always full of their high school gang.
It's a good barrier. Sofia likes to zoom away without warning. Fortunately, the rug seems to be occupying her attention. She smacks at Jyn's hand with a delighted laugh when it startles her, then smacks at the rug, going back and forth between the two textures with pure glee.
Cassian ducks his head, not really shy, but it does very much remind him of all the making out this rug has seen between the two of them. It was one of Jyn's favorite places, and it wasn't like Cassian ever put up much arguments over where to make out. He was a teenage boy who was super in love with his then girlfriend.
Who still thinks he has a cute butt, apparently. Sofia shrills again and laughs at how soft the rug is, pushing down on Jyn's hand like she wants her to feel it too. Jyn's right though. She's really fucking cute, he's still not over it months and months later.
He leans down to kiss the baby's forehead and she jumps a little from the affection, but she's still too focused on the rug. "She might have a new obsession."
It's a well loved rug. Sometimes she thinks the rug is why her mother chose the house. Even now when she is alone in the house she finds herself lounging on the soft rug in front of the fire, reading or watching movies on her tablet.
Jyn draws her hand back slowly, wriggling her fingers to entice Sofia to follow. Look, Cassian said that Jyn could hold her once she's settled. If Jyn coaxes the baby into her arms that's the same thing as waiting until shes settled, right? Right. It's Sofia making the choice anyway. Here little baby, come to auntie Jyn...
"The Organas must love her." Especially since Leia and Luke haven't given them any grandbabies.
It's kind of nice that the rug is still here. It's so soft, so nice, he honestly missed it sometimes. Good to know his daughter is already in love with it too.
Sofia's eyes dart to the moving fingers, and she stares like a cat on the prowl. She reaches out for them in a lurch and almost falls on her belly, tilting sideways with a shriek instead. "You did this," he tells the baby and leaves her there while she jerks around to roll herself over properly onto her hands and knees.
"They do, when they see her at least." Cassian is still very anti social, okay. He doesn't like to take her around for too many visits with old friends, even if they're as wonderful as the Organas.
Sofia gets distracted from Jyn's fingers by the rug again, letting out a soft ooo sound. But she seems much calmer for the most part, if ready to start crawling, so. "You can pick her up now, if you'd like."
Aha, success! Jyn scoops Sofia up immediately, but merely shifts the baby so she's laying on her belly... on Jyn's chest, beaming at the tiny baby suddenly so close as Jyn settles more comfortably on her back.
"Oh, she's so warm." Little space heater. "I'd want to hoard her as well. I can't blame your papa for keeping you all to himself, little Miss Andor. You're very charming, I wouldn't want to share either."
Lest he think she's not going to butt into his business now that she knows there is a baby afoot, Jyn fawns over the baby for a little bit before she looks over at Cassian again. "Leia did say you'd been distant."
Completely left out the fucking baby part of the story, but she'd made a point to tell Jyn that Cassian wasn't as social as he used to be, like she was trying to let Jyn down easy. Bodhi had said much the same thing, though now Jyn understood why he'd been so soft about it, she'd thought it had just been her grief and his that stuck the apology in his tone but now she knows it was because everyone knew Cassian had a baby daughter and not a single one of them bloody told her.
There's basically zero time between telling her she can hold Sofia and Jyn actually doing it, and he almost laughs, but the sight of Jyn with his child kind of steals it away instead. He's so distracted by it that it takes his brain a moment to catch up to what she's said.
"She is like a personal blanket." Holding her close is very good and very warm. Even in the summer months he just dealt with the extra heat. He hadn't kept to himself for selfish baby reasons (even if it was busy and she does eat up a lot of his time), but it wasn't like he was keeping her from people, as much as he does like to hoard her.
The truth is he didn't really want to talk about any of it. Sofia, her mom, why he came back - he knows he could have easily, that all of their friends would have been an ear, but then Sofia would spit up all over the couch and he didn't want to talk to anybody. He was never big on heart-to-hearts anyway.
It's odd with Jyn that he doesn't feel like running from the conversation. Sofia reaches out and smacks her hands against Jyn's cheeks with a delighted laugh and Cassian smiles so softly at them.
"I am sure you remember how nosily well meaning our friends are." Oh look, apparently talking about it with Jyn isn't as big a deal. But the were always that way, weren't they? Besides, he did ask her if she wanted to catch up.
"I felt like I did not really know what to say. I had a baby. I moved back alone. I thought it was pretty self explanatory at the time. I could not be as social as before with an infant, but I... may have played it up a little."
Oh how easily he breaks and comes clean with Jyn, even now.
Jyn is listening, but her attention is riveted to the baby, making faces and sticking her tongue out and breathing in the delicious baby scent, catching her hands and in one swift movement, lifting her own knees and rocking Sofia back to sit up with her head nestled against Jyn's knees. She doesn't seem nervous about manhandling a baby.
"I think part of you is using her as more of an excuse than you're admitting. Yes, you, ballenacita." As always, Jyn is blunt when it comes to her opinions. Since this is an opinion about Cassian as a person and not his child rearing practices, she doesn't feel bad calling him out.
"You've always been rubbish at opening up." It's not sharp, but it's pointed. She knows she's toeing a line she might not be able to leap back over but when has that stopped her? She's always pushed. "You hate having weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you don't have a level four backstory, Cass, you've got a level 312 backstory. Sofia is the perfect buffer." She wriggles the baby's arms in a way that shakes her whole body, grinning at the peal of laughter. "Can't talk, can't go out, can't open up because now you've got a baby to think of."
Called? The fuck? Out? It really shouldn't surprise him, because Jyn was always like that. She always saw right through him. It's been years, they've been talking for maybe an hour at most, and she already does it again.
There are a lot of things he really should unpack when it comes to Sofia and her mom and literally everything, but he doesn't want to dump it all on Jyn immediately. Even if she is absolutely wonderful with Sofia, what the fuck? He knows his daughter is very easy to entertain, but Jyn is so easy with her that it kind of pinches at his heart.
"Maybe," he admits, biting back a sigh. He should not keep talking because it doesn't feel fair when they haven't spoken in years, but Jyn pokes and prods and she wouldn't if she wasn't trying to get him to spill something. "It isn't anyone's business what happened between me and her mother. She is not going to be involved. If I go out, what else is there to talk about besides my daughter?" Sofia is basically his life now. Is he using that as an excuse??? mAYBE!!!!! "I work, I sleep, I take care of her." He feels boring. "I don't need to open up. You of all people should not be telling me to."
He doesn't say it meanly, but it is definitely a counterattack on her own inability to be open.
"Maybe if you said that?" Dummy. "You work, you have interests, you probably still watch football and binge seasons of Netflix and you always know everyone's fucking gossip before it's gossip, I will stop swearing in front of her, I promise."
If he just told them that he didn't want to talk about Sofia's uninvolved mother, Jyn knows most of them wouldn't press it. Leia might, but Jyn knows Cassian is the least likely person to give into her demands.
"Look." She sits up, legs sliding flat, Sofia squealing with absurd delight at this exciting rollercoaster that is Jyn Erso. "Yeah, they'll probably ask you about Sofia, the same way you'd ask Bodhi about Luke if Luke weren't there. Then you'd ask about work and then you'd both start talking rubbish about how Luke can't handle spices and then you'd talk about your teams and then you would have someone to talk to that can actually talk back. Someone that isn't your grandmother."
She leans over to tickle Sofia's belly and pointedly ignores his comment about her. She specifically moved away so she'd never have to open up again. It's not her fault he didn't have the good sense to do the same.
There's a pause. "I have watched so much Netflix." More than he ever thought he would, ever thought possible, but Sofia slept so much as a newborn, there wasn't much else to do!
He would rather just keep watching Jyn play with his daughter than talk, but at least it's Jyn, who always makes it easier to do that. "It's not that I do not want to see them, I suppose, even with a strange disconnect. I just feel like I should be with Sofia. I made the choice to take her."
Mutual agreement, but he'd wanted her, once he found out she was about to exist at any rate. But Jyn has a point in that good god does he miss having adult conversations, and he doesn't even like having conversations normally.
"This would be more effective if you did not ignore what I said too."
Yeah, don't think he didn't notice that avoidance, Jyn Erso.
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ohnofeelstho2017-11-27 11:07 pm
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He tries not to think about the idea of Jyn having his picture though.
"She will be nine months soon." Which kind of baffles him, because how can it have gone by so fast, but also it feels like no time at all? As if she knows she's being talked about, Sofia lets out another chirping noise that turns into a very extended babble. She has very important baby things to say! "Yes, you, you're getting so big," he replies easily, brightly.
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"I'm fine, 'm fine," she assures him, gesturing dismissively with her drink. "Went down the wrong way."
He's so easy with her, so relaxed into parenting, it melts Jyn's heart a little, but it leaves her a little unsettled too. She'd thought about staying for a few months, heading back to South America at the start of the new year, it's why she bought the coffee maker. But all this reminds her that everyone here has a life, she doesn't really have a place. All by her own doing, of course, but she doesn't know if she can just come home and fit in here anymore.
At least with the coffee maker, she won't have to go out tomorrow.
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"Are you sure about that?" He is maybe... teasing, but about the choking. Which is very odd because it's been so long, but that happy sort of easiness that always came from being with Jyn is still there.
It's nice being home with all his old friends, but there's a disconnect born from the time he was away, and from Sofia being...born. Leia has babysat for him before, Bodhi and Luke buy her little toys, but he can hardly go out whenever he feels like it anymore.
Sofia, meanwhile, has not stopped staring at Jyn since she starting coughing, so entranced that she drops her little beluga into the space between her chest and her father's. She gurgles, the sound lilted almost like she's also concerned.
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Catching Sofia staring in that curious, unblinking gaze babies have, Jyn switches her bag and coffee to one hand so she can boop the baby on the nose, careful to pull her hand back before the girl can latch on and grab her. "I'm fine, Sof, I promise. I won't die from something as lame as choking on coffee. Besides, bad things come in threes, you know, and my papa was number three so I'm perfectly safe."
You know, safe in flawed, superstitious logic, but weirdly Jyn has been clinging to that. She lost all three of her parents, zero family left to lose and that includes herself.
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Cassian, however, frowns a little, because even though he recognizes it as a very Jyn-esque joke, it makes him wonder after what she's going to do again. She has Bodhi, but it's not like she's spent a lot of time with him in recent years either.
He wants to ask how she's doing, but that's sometimes a dumb question to ask Jyn even on good days. "How long are you staying in town for?"
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Another shrug, she scuffs her toes across the sidewalk, peeking over at Sofia out of the corner of her eye. She's not sure she's really accepted that Cassian has a baby, that Cassian opened up to someone enough to make a baby, but Sofia is so cute and so charming that she can't help being sucked in by her wide, dark eyes and the way she can see the ghost of a dimple that matches one she very familiar with. She looks so much like Cassian, it's... mind-boggling.
"So I guess if you need a babysitter, I'm free."
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He huffs out a laugh. "I wasn't angling to ask you to watch her. Abuelita takes her, when I have work." His degree is collecting excellent layers of dust while he works part time in both IT for the local library and at one of the local mechanics.
"But..." Does he trail off because he feels weird, or because Sofia almost drops her whale again?? It's a mystery. "It is good to see you, and I mean that."
He can say that safely now that he knows she's not being overtly weird about his daughter. He has no idea what she's actually thinking, but she did invite him over to the farmhouse. Jyn hates company. But she keeps eyeing Sofia like she can't quite believe she's real, and he guesses that's fair. "You can visit us though, beyond just today, if you would like, since you are going to be here a while."
Jyn was his best friend for over half his life. Walking and chatting with her now makes him realize he really has missed her.
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"You can visit, too." A beat. "I know the house isn't baby proof or anything, but the backyard is and no one took down our old playhouse. She might not be big enough for the tree house, yet, but. Sorry, Sof." She doesn't think Cassian will take the offer because, as she said, it's not baby proof, and it would probably be easier to hang out at his place, but it's still there. They can still watch TV on her old couch, eat cereal on her old twin bed, watch the stars on her old roof.
She turns up the walkway, the familiar walk still second nature. "Although on second thought, I don't have any food so maybe... bad offer."
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The farmhouse feels almost exactly the same, even though he hasn't been there since Jyn left. Sofia looks around curiously at this Brand New Place, babbling under her breath.
"There's always takeout," he offers idly. They got takeout a lot in high school, even if their respective guardians were the ones giving them food money at the time. "If I am being honest, most of the food I have at any given moment is Abuelita's leftovers."
Not that Cassian is incapable of cooking, but sometimes he just doesn't have the energy. He'll be a better judge on just how acceptable it is for Sofia once he's inside, but he kind of...likes the idea of letting her play in the backyard. He has an apartment, the downstairs part of a house. There's no real yard. "I would not mind though. It's nice to just... get out of the house sometimes."
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Mounting the steps, she pushes the unlocked door open, shoving it until it scuffs against the floor so Cassian can follow her though the living room into the kitchen. Not much has changed since Jyn lived here with Saw, Galen hadn't left much of a mark, preferring to keep his daughter's presence around. Her heels from the funeral are flung across the soft rug, blankets strewn everywhere. The remains of a potted plant lay wilted in the corner and a pile of Jyn's old books are perched on one of the side tables. Hanging from the coat pegs are jackets from high school and her backpack and an old pair of converse. It's neat, clean, looks like Galen probably invested in a cleaning lady every so often.
"Key's still where I left it. No one ever moved it, so." He's welcome to stop by whenever. She dumps her bags on the counter, shoving them aside to deal with later. "Do you think... can I hold her?"
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"In a few minutes? There's a lot of new things happening, I am afraid it would too much stimuli."
People get weirdly entitled about holding babies, but he doesn't feel defensive or hesitant about being honest with Jyn. She wants to hold Sofia. He was going to ask her the same, but his little whale needs to settle first. Much like her father, she is almost creepily perceptive and aware, but it's much harder for her to process.
She shrieks and tries to bend backwards, but he catches the back of her head. "I see you still use about fifty blankets."
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(If Cassian drops her, it's whatever, he's her dad. If Jyn drops her, it's bad.)
"You can get the rug if you want her to crawl around on something soft." Meanwhile, Jyn decides she will putter around the kitchen, pulling her stuff out of the bags and beginning to set up the coffee maker to see if she can make it work without asking Bodhi for help. She's always been kind of crappy at setting machines up. Using them, she's stellar at, they all had fake IDs at the tender age of fifteen. And lest he think she let the blanket comment slide, "Paying for heat is expensive, Andor."
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"When she started crawling, she bumped her head into the couch I don't know how many times in the rush of moving on her own. The first time was very, very tragic, but now she just gets mad it's in her way."
He has been holding her a very long time though, and she probably does want to crawl around. He soars her over to the offered rug and sits down on it, but he only lets her dangle her feet against it first, holding her up while she does a jig in his hands and maybe tries to throw herself backward one more time. One day she will catch her papa off guard, but today is not that day.
"You and I both know the amount of blankets you have is not dependent on how high the heat is."
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Now, at least, Jyn knows what she is buying Sofia for Christmas. And her birthday. For the next thirty years.
Satisfied once she plugs in the machine and it beeps itself to life, she shoves it aside and collects both their coffees so she can join Cassian on the soft rug, making sure the drinks are out of the baby's reach. She sinks down onto the cloud that is the rug, reaching out to tickle Sofia's round little belly, leaning over to stage whisper to her.
"I still know all your Papa's biggest secrets and where he's ticklish, he's fighting a losing battle and he knows it."
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He loves it. She lays on his chest and falls asleep with warm snuggles and it's literally the best.
Jyn's right though, probably. Sofia is going to have him wrapped around her finger forever. The baby giggles when Jyn tickles her, a completely pure sound. "Don't give her any ammo. She is learning plenty on her own already."
He sits her down on the rug at last and her expression goes wide, baffled by the fluff suddenly beneath her. She reaches out and plants her hands in the fabric, pawing at it almost like a kitten while she stares down tunnel-visioned. Cassian practically beams at her. "What is that, conejito? It's so soft, isn't it?"
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She has good taste.
Stretching forward, she slips her fingers through the fluff until her hand glides over Sofia's, grinning at her surprised jerk. "You're the cutest thing this rug's ever seen and that includes your papa's cute butt." This rug has also seen a prolific amount of making out considering Saw was something of an absent foster father, always away for work and leaving Jyn to handle herself during secondary school. She didn't mind, if meant her house was always full of their high school gang.
And making out with Cassian.
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Cassian ducks his head, not really shy, but it does very much remind him of all the making out this rug has seen between the two of them. It was one of Jyn's favorite places, and it wasn't like Cassian ever put up much arguments over where to make out. He was a teenage boy who was super in love with his then girlfriend.
Who still thinks he has a cute butt, apparently. Sofia shrills again and laughs at how soft the rug is, pushing down on Jyn's hand like she wants her to feel it too. Jyn's right though. She's really fucking cute, he's still not over it months and months later.
He leans down to kiss the baby's forehead and she jumps a little from the affection, but she's still too focused on the rug. "She might have a new obsession."
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It's a well loved rug. Sometimes she thinks the rug is why her mother chose the house. Even now when she is alone in the house she finds herself lounging on the soft rug in front of the fire, reading or watching movies on her tablet.
Jyn draws her hand back slowly, wriggling her fingers to entice Sofia to follow. Look, Cassian said that Jyn could hold her once she's settled. If Jyn coaxes the baby into her arms that's the same thing as waiting until shes settled, right? Right. It's Sofia making the choice anyway. Here little baby, come to auntie Jyn...
"The Organas must love her." Especially since Leia and Luke haven't given them any grandbabies.
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Sofia's eyes dart to the moving fingers, and she stares like a cat on the prowl. She reaches out for them in a lurch and almost falls on her belly, tilting sideways with a shriek instead. "You did this," he tells the baby and leaves her there while she jerks around to roll herself over properly onto her hands and knees.
"They do, when they see her at least." Cassian is still very anti social, okay. He doesn't like to take her around for too many visits with old friends, even if they're as wonderful as the Organas.
Sofia gets distracted from Jyn's fingers by the rug again, letting out a soft ooo sound. But she seems much calmer for the most part, if ready to start crawling, so. "You can pick her up now, if you'd like."
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"Oh, she's so warm." Little space heater. "I'd want to hoard her as well. I can't blame your papa for keeping you all to himself, little Miss Andor. You're very charming, I wouldn't want to share either."
Lest he think she's not going to butt into his business now that she knows there is a baby afoot, Jyn fawns over the baby for a little bit before she looks over at Cassian again. "Leia did say you'd been distant."
Completely left out the fucking baby part of the story, but she'd made a point to tell Jyn that Cassian wasn't as social as he used to be, like she was trying to let Jyn down easy. Bodhi had said much the same thing, though now Jyn understood why he'd been so soft about it, she'd thought it had just been her grief and his that stuck the apology in his tone but now she knows it was because everyone knew Cassian had a baby daughter and not a single one of them bloody told her.
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"She is like a personal blanket." Holding her close is very good and very warm. Even in the summer months he just dealt with the extra heat. He hadn't kept to himself for selfish baby reasons (even if it was busy and she does eat up a lot of his time), but it wasn't like he was keeping her from people, as much as he does like to hoard her.
The truth is he didn't really want to talk about any of it. Sofia, her mom, why he came back - he knows he could have easily, that all of their friends would have been an ear, but then Sofia would spit up all over the couch and he didn't want to talk to anybody. He was never big on heart-to-hearts anyway.
It's odd with Jyn that he doesn't feel like running from the conversation. Sofia reaches out and smacks her hands against Jyn's cheeks with a delighted laugh and Cassian smiles so softly at them.
"I am sure you remember how nosily well meaning our friends are." Oh look, apparently talking about it with Jyn isn't as big a deal. But the were always that way, weren't they? Besides, he did ask her if she wanted to catch up.
"I felt like I did not really know what to say. I had a baby. I moved back alone. I thought it was pretty self explanatory at the time. I could not be as social as before with an infant, but I... may have played it up a little."
Oh how easily he breaks and comes clean with Jyn, even now.
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"I think part of you is using her as more of an excuse than you're admitting. Yes, you, ballenacita." As always, Jyn is blunt when it comes to her opinions. Since this is an opinion about Cassian as a person and not his child rearing practices, she doesn't feel bad calling him out.
"You've always been rubbish at opening up." It's not sharp, but it's pointed. She knows she's toeing a line she might not be able to leap back over but when has that stopped her? She's always pushed. "You hate having weaknesses and vulnerabilities and you don't have a level four backstory, Cass, you've got a level 312 backstory. Sofia is the perfect buffer." She wriggles the baby's arms in a way that shakes her whole body, grinning at the peal of laughter. "Can't talk, can't go out, can't open up because now you've got a baby to think of."
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There are a lot of things he really should unpack when it comes to Sofia and her mom and literally everything, but he doesn't want to dump it all on Jyn immediately. Even if she is absolutely wonderful with Sofia, what the fuck? He knows his daughter is very easy to entertain, but Jyn is so easy with her that it kind of pinches at his heart.
"Maybe," he admits, biting back a sigh. He should not keep talking because it doesn't feel fair when they haven't spoken in years, but Jyn pokes and prods and she wouldn't if she wasn't trying to get him to spill something. "It isn't anyone's business what happened between me and her mother. She is not going to be involved. If I go out, what else is there to talk about besides my daughter?" Sofia is basically his life now. Is he using that as an excuse??? mAYBE!!!!! "I work, I sleep, I take care of her." He feels boring. "I don't need to open up. You of all people should not be telling me to."
He doesn't say it meanly, but it is definitely a counterattack on her own inability to be open.
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If he just told them that he didn't want to talk about Sofia's uninvolved mother, Jyn knows most of them wouldn't press it. Leia might, but Jyn knows Cassian is the least likely person to give into her demands.
"Look." She sits up, legs sliding flat, Sofia squealing with absurd delight at this exciting rollercoaster that is Jyn Erso. "Yeah, they'll probably ask you about Sofia, the same way you'd ask Bodhi about Luke if Luke weren't there. Then you'd ask about work and then you'd both start talking rubbish about how Luke can't handle spices and then you'd talk about your teams and then you would have someone to talk to that can actually talk back. Someone that isn't your grandmother."
She leans over to tickle Sofia's belly and pointedly ignores his comment about her. She specifically moved away so she'd never have to open up again. It's not her fault he didn't have the good sense to do the same.
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He would rather just keep watching Jyn play with his daughter than talk, but at least it's Jyn, who always makes it easier to do that. "It's not that I do not want to see them, I suppose, even with a strange disconnect. I just feel like I should be with Sofia. I made the choice to take her."
Mutual agreement, but he'd wanted her, once he found out she was about to exist at any rate. But Jyn has a point in that good god does he miss having adult conversations, and he doesn't even like having conversations normally.
"This would be more effective if you did not ignore what I said too."
Yeah, don't think he didn't notice that avoidance, Jyn Erso.
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