riverviewlogs | player-suggested mini-event: A STRANGER'S BED

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player-suggested mini-event: A STRANGER'S BED

who: everyone in Riverview!
what: Player-Suggested Mini-Event
when: August 26th - August 31st
warnings: please put any necessary warnings in the subject lines

a stranger's bed

As a lead in to September, Riverview's ♥ Month of Romance, this is a completely optional mingle that will cause affected characters to end up in each other's beds. There are various options for both established and new CR. While it's easiest for characters still living in Communal Housing, anyone who has moved to their own homes can be affected and end up finding their way to Communal Housing, or within their own housing.

Residents of the Quarantine may notice that various businesses selling food and drink - cafés, diners, bakeries, restaurants, and other such establishments - are heavily advertising a new flavor that's supposed to be the biggest thing since pumpkin spice. A flavor additive that's said to subtly change the flavor of whatever the diner is eating or drinking to optimize the dish, drink, dessert, or any other food item it is added to for each person's individual taste, it's been selling like wildfire and is the latest trend.

After the cause of the rash of amnesia was revealed to be plant-related, sellers are keeping the origin of the secret ingredient very close to their chests, since it is a derivative of a recently-discovered plant dubbed chameleonis. Depending on the method of ingestion, this additive can have a variety of unexpected side effects, but only once the person who has ingested it becomes sleepy. Methods of ingestion include:

● Ingestion: Beverage: When ingested as a flavor shot to drinks ranging from sodas to coffee to alcoholic beverages, it can cause a desire for closeness to a particular other person. Affected characters end up crawling into bed with that specific other character when they become sleepy.

● Ingestion: Food: When ingested as a flavoring added to a baked good or other meal, it can cause an intense desire for body heat when the character becomes drowsy. It won't matter to an affected character who is providing the body heat, so long as it's someone, and they will end up sleepily crawling into someone else's bed for warmth.

● Inhalation: When inhaled ether from a steaming hot beverage or soup, or as an essential oil or aroma from a bakery, it can cause disorientation when a character becomes sleepy. Affected characters either aren't sure which bed is theirs and simply crawl into the closest one, occupied or not, or become convinced that another character's bed is their own.

Feel free to post up a top-level for your own character either affected and invading a random bed or unaffected but open to having their bed invaded by affected characters, or tag around to other people's top-levels.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This isn't different from when he'd stayed in her room. And yet it was a lot less awkward sharing her bed somehow, it had been easier to be shoved up against him when the other option was tripping over him when he'd been laying on the floor. Maybe it's because she has somewhere perfectly acceptable to sleep -- the very comfortable couch -- but instead she's here.

When he shifts, she breathes more comfortably, but still... can't sleep.

Eventually, she gives in to her sleepy impulses and rolls over to face Cassian's back, familiar enough, almost like they're huddled in the cockpit again. Jyn's forehead presses against his shoulders, knees brushing against the back of his thighs, one hand curled between them, knuckles brushing where his injury had been without even thinking about it. Her other hand stays laying across her own body, but eventually, when Cassian doesn't pull away, Jyn drapes her arm around his chest, holding him like a teddy bear.

Now she is comfortable.

Edited 2017-10-04 17:37 (UTC)

Cassian doesn't know what makes it feel odd. It's not like they weren't sharing Jyn's bed for a few days already. Maybe it was the middle of the night frustration that allowed it in the first place, versus tonight where it's much more... quiet.

It's comfortable to feel her behind him, if not enough to sleep. But it's even better when she rolls into him, pressing her face into his back, knees into his legs, feeling the gentle touch on his spine and feeling safe instead of scared she knows where he was hurt. She's warm. She fits.

He should be awkward. He should stiffen. Instead it's a relief, and he lets her stay there and lets a small smile slip onto his face when her arm drops over him too. One of his hands carefully moves up, resting on and winding his fingers loosely through hers.

He could get used to this, maybe.

The way he shifts makes her nervous, a fleeting anxiety that she's done something not allowed and then he is holding her hand. Not to move it, but to hold on to it and that is a new feeling. He wants her there, like she wants to be there.

Usually that would be so terrifying to Jyn and yet now, warm and safe at his back, sleepy, she just feels... calm.

Absently, almost as if without thinking, she squeezes his hand, nestling closer to him, breath warm against his back. Maybe she should say something, but Jyn hates talking on a good day and she doesn't even know what she would say? Thank you? Cassian would brush it off. Good night? She already said. It doesn't matter, Cassian will know.

Welcome home.

He worries that maybe the hand holding will be too much, like everything else isn't a lot already, but all he feels is Jyn calm behind him. She even squeezes his hand and burrows in closer. To him. Because she wants to.

Part of him is terrified to have this much trust in a person at his back, but the other part is grateful to feel this safe for once. It's nice to feel like he doesn't need words. It's nice to know exactly what Jyn means even without a single sound.

They're not on Yavin 4, they're not even in the same galaxy, but welcome home still rings true, because it was never really about the place. It was them. It would be easy to brush it off as just welcoming her to the Rebellion, but deep down Cassian knows he meant them, together.

It isn't a dreamless sleep, Jyn still has nightmares no matter how comfortable she is, but now there is a thread of guilt in the dreams. Why her? Why does she get to survive when Baze didn't? When Bodhi didn't? When Chirrut and Tonc and Sefla and Melshi and all of the rebels died on the beaches of Scarif. Why her instead of Saw or Maia or her parents.

She doesn't toss as much bracketed against Cassian but her sleep is still not restful and eventually one nightmare draws her to consciousness with a gasp, a choked scream, the grip on Cassian's hand painfully tight.

"No!"

He sleeps easier with Jyn at his back, something he noticed the first few nights it happened while he stayed in her apartment. It isn't dreamless for him either, but it's enough to keep some of his own worse recurring nightmares at bay.

Cassian can feel her tensing against him and it stirs him, just before she jerks awake. The yell pulls him out of sleep immediately, alert like he wasn't even resting. He rolls over to face her without letting go of her hand, and he reacts without thinking. It's not the same as Bodhi's quiet trauma back on Jedha, but he still slips easily into dealing with it. He doesn't even question it with Jyn anymore.

"Jyn." Calm, careful, soothing. A name to remind her of where and who she is. His other hand reaches out to cover hers. "Jyn, can you look at me?"

Jyn jerks at her own name, breaths unsteady, eyes unfocused as she instinctively looks up at him. It doesn't take her very long to focus, blinking away tears that trickle down her cheeks. Her expression crumples when her mind manages to catch up and recognize Cassian, but she tries to straighten it out, force away the weakness.

"I'm fine." She is not fine, but she is conscious, she is cognizant, that is really all she can ask for right now, all she could hope for. She's not sobbing and she's not fighting him.

She's fine.

She is definitely not fine. There's a very small pinch of relief that she isn't thrashing or trapped in the dream, but it doesn't make her fine. He again moves without thinking, lifting that same hand and cradling her face gently while he still holds her hand with the other, uncaring about the wetness from her tears.

"Jyn." Name repetition, soft and steady, combined with the pressure of touch. It's not the first time he's had to pull her from her own head, but it's far gentler than before. They're in a bed rather than needing to run away for their lives, and he has the time to be so. "I'm right here. You are safe."

He is right there, she is safe. Isn't that how it's always been? For the brief period of time they'd known each other at least. Always seeming to slip out of impossible scrapes, together. At least until Scarif, but it was impossible they even made it that far.

Which brings her full circle to her nightmare.

He is right there, she is safe. She nods, slow and careful, licks her lips. "How did you get to the top of the tower?"

He'd fallen so far, she'd heard the crunch and crack of so many bones every time his body slammed into something hard and metal, she'd seen him laying at the bottom in a broken heap, still and unmoving, and she'd known that the man in white had done it again. Her mother and then her father (and Saw before that, she knows), and now Cassian.

But he hadn't and Cassian had somehow survived and saved her and how?

His mouth opens in a little 'o,' somewhat surprised by the question. It's not a memory he likes to think on, even though it fills his own dreams quite often. He resists the urge to reach back and check that his spine is fixed here.

He doesn't move his hands, still cradling her face with one and winding their fingers together with the other. "A lot of it is a blur," he admits. His thumb slides on her cheek idly. The entire memory of the trek is blinded by the pain of his broken body that the exact how is honestly still coming back in pieces. "I got out of the vault, and there was an elevator for the rest of it. I just thought... I am dead anyway, it did not matter how much more pain it took to get back up."

To get back to her.

Jyn frowns through his explanation, expression threatening to crumple when he admits what he was thinking as he carried on. Jyn has already imagined him to be dead, she doesn't want to dwell on it. Even if it had become part of their reality, together.

"I thought..." Of course he'd taken an elevator. Now that he says it, it makes complete sense. They were supposed to take the elevator up to begin with, but circumstance had changed their plan when K2 locked them into the vault and they'd been forced to climb.

She breathes out, slow, pushing down the swell of vertigo that threatened to overwhelm her again. He'd put into words, at least, how she'd managed to keep going after everything. There was no reason to let the pain get to her, it was going to be over soon anyway.

It's easier in the dark to keep so close. Logic would dictate he doesn't need to keep them like this, but he doesn't want to pull away. He can feel her settling piece by piece, but her expression is still very distraught, and he uses that to justify the way he still holds her face. For comfort. Her breathing steadies, slowly, and they're so close he can feel it fan out on his skin.

"Thought what?" If he can keep her talking aloud, she might not be drawn back into the nightmare. That's the goal here, to remind her they are safe, at least here in his room. Even if it means reliving some of the fall from the vault.

"I thought you followed me."

An utterly absurd thought in hindsight, especially after his fall. Jyn doesn't honestly know how she made it up there on her own after everything. Spite. Definitely some kind of stubbornness fueling her.

After a moment she breathes out another slow breath, settling more under his touch. "I'm... I'm okay."

"I did," he says, a very quiet admittance. "Not in the same path, but I suppose I did still follow you up."

He followed her to a lot of surprising places within a week of meeting her. She pulled at him, and she still does. Even though she says she's okay, Cassian still doesn't move away. He's not sure he believes her that she's okay, but it's not like either of them are really okay. "Do you want to try to sleep again?"

Makes sense if she thinks about it, but she doesn't want to think about it anymore. She tries not to think about Scarif at all, but her nightmares don't give her much of a reprieve.

Rude.

She nods at his question, lifting her hand to wipe at the wetness that lingers on her face still. "Yeah, sleep, alright."

Relatable, honestly. Cassian doesn't think Scarif is ever going to stop following him as long as they're here, no matter how much he avoids thinking about it.

They've slept wound up close before (fell asleep that way just tonight), but never really... facing each other like this. Still, Cassian takes the momentum of it and just tugs her in closer, like maybe that will help her sleep. "Get comfortable," he mutters gently. Maybe she would rather be looking outward. Maybe she wants to wriggle her arms free.

He just wants to find something that keeps Scarif away from both of them.

She does pull her arms free. Well, one. She doesn't let go of his hand, keeping it nestled between them as she scoots closer, tucking her forehead against the center of his chest. She feels too tired and too fragile -- disgusting -- to bother fighting the urge toward closeness, accepting it instead and trying not to think about it.

He's warm, he's safe, she's exhausted. Exhausted enough that once the warmth gets the better of her, it doesn't take long for sleep to drag her under. She manages to murmur, "Good night, Captain," before her breathing slows and soon after she's fast asleep.

For good this time.

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player-suggested mini-event: A STRANGER'S BED

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