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The desert nights are cold, even in the city.
Baze pulls the blanket up around their bodies; it scratches at their skin and whether that’s the material or the years of sand caught in the fiber it doesn’t matter. It’s still more than adequate. Chirrut shifts his body, elbowing the mattress and pressing closer, close enough to feel the heat of his skin but not close enough to press his body fully up against Baze’s. Baze throws an arm around his side anyway, traces his knuckles against the slope of Chirrut’s back. He squints in the low light; even if he rolled on top of Chirrut he still wouldn’t be within reach of a weapon. His spare blaster’s on top of the crate that serves as their nightstand; the cannon’s leaning up against it; they’ll both take more than a moment or two to get at. Chirrut’s stuff is even farther, and as usual he seems to have no problem with it.
“I’ll know,” says Chirrut, voice laced with the same stubbornness it had been the first time they’d had this argument.
“Even if you will, I want a weapon.”
“Not as agile as you used to be?”
Baze isn’t going to dignify that with a reply, but even without looking he’s sure of the smile splitting Chirrut’s face, fond and half-exasperated. Several streets over, someone starts yelling, slurred and guttural—they’d probably gotten kicked out of the bar early, and Baze doesn’t need to know the language or hear the words clearly to understand the sentiment. The sound fades, possibly around a corner, and Chirrut’s reaching out a steady hand to Baze’s face.
His fingertips land at Baze’s hairline, pushing between the roots of his hair and against his scalp, blunt nails scratching the dry skin, weathered by years of sun and wind and sand (once, he had been a young man with a soft face, staring at a crumbling future; it has fallen now and he still stares into it). His thumb sweeps over Baze’s forehead, to the furrow between his eyebrows, silently telling him to stop being tense (another argument they’ve had enough times to say without saying). Baze lets his eyes flutter shut; he’s not going to say this is already working. He’s never had to.
A noise like a muffled slap sounds from below them, a voice raised; Baze’s hand tightens around Chirrut’s back. Chirrut tucks a loose lock away from Baze’s hair, drags his thumb over the shell of Baze’s ear.
“You sleep, too,” Baze mumbles, but he’s already halfway carried off.
Chirrut’s gone by the time he wakes up, slipped out in the silence of knowing the feel of this apartment the way he knows Baze’s skin under his, opening the doors to bypass their squeaking the way Baze still hasn’t figured out. He probably wants Baze to imagine some sort of transcendental thing deeper than his astute powers of physical observation, but Baze knows Chirrut just pays more attention than he does.
(“I’ll know if something’s coming,” Chirrut has said, so many times.
The bridges of their noses have touched, and Baze has not been able to keep his body stretched, his arm within reach of a weapon, so he has acquiesced again, and they have lived through the night again.
“You’re just a light sleeper,” says Baze. “But what if—”
“No what if.”)
But he’d left the cannon on his spot in the bed anyway, the passive-aggressive asshole. Baze snorts, curling his hand around the body. He hadn’t noticed, but he never does. How he’d made it to adulthood sleeping so heavily—things haven’t always been this bad here, but you can never be too wary. Chirrut would tell him he trusts, and Baze would say he doesn’t trust. He does trust Chirrut, as foolish as that is, and as much as that chains him along to trusting the Force that Chirrut trusts so deeply.
Baze had believed in it, too, once, but now it seems all too convenient. Trust the Force, when they’re out begging on the streets, turning tricks, fingers on the trigger just in case. The troopers won’t know who shot, who shot first; they don’t have the means to arrest everyone right now and they don’t want to call in their superiors (it means they’ve failed, and probably a few dismissals—Baze has no firsthand knowledge, but he suspects that the imperials aren’t too forgiving).
Baze brings the canteen full of water, but Chirrut’s the one who gulps it down at lunch.
“Thirsty?” says Baze.
“Talking so much can affect your throat,” says Chirrut.
“Maybe you shouldn’t do it, then.”
Chirrut juts his chin out, squaring his shoulders, a protest. Baze holds out his hand, knuckles brushing the top of Chirrut’s knee. Chirrut places the canteen in his palm, loudly.
Baze scoots over so their legs are touching. In front of them, the city is in motion, vendors calling over one another and people hurrying this way or that, shouting in several languages. No troopers over here right now. Baze doesn’t look up at the destroyer, but he can see its shadow blocking the sun. He spits in the sand beside him, and takes a swig of water, swishing it in his mouth. He feels dry, not like the desert, but like a fossilized piece of fruit, crumbling to powder in the light. Everything here is wrong, and no matter what they forge ahead for themselves, for what’s left of the legacy of the temple—it doesn’t matter.
Chirrut’s fingers brush Baze’s, his fingertips hard and cracked. It matters to him, and that’s a difficult point to argue, so Baze doesn’t.
“I’m off,” says Chirrut. “I have to spread the word. Care to listen?”
“Dream on,” says Baze, snorting but not shifting his knee away quite yet.
Chirrut pats him, feigning clumsiness as he clamors down from the wall. “Won’t help an old blind man?”
“You’re no older than me.”
Chirrut turns, and Baze watches him go, off through the crowd at a familiar pace, impossible to lose.