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[seenitbefore]

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[seenitbefore]

But when he looks, Cassian isn't listening. He's just processed the fact that the big lumbering shape they just passed isn't another robot, isn't, as he initially told himself, some strangely bedizened beast of burden; he's registered the flare of what might be gills, and the faint, earthy, utterly foreign scent, and most importantly the cool curiosity of the glance it shot him out of one cocked... eyestalk...?

"Holy fuck," he breathes, when he can breathe at all (Grek, after the one quizzical look, has gone on their way unconcerned).

[callsign_rogueone]

As far as Bodhi's aware, Grek and Cassian don't know each other. He thinks the Ithonian's a structural engineer or something, only knows that much because they were both consulted about the charging stations at the rear docking bays when the Rebellion started hollowing out this moon. Cassian's area of expertise doesn't exactly overlap.

Not that it matters, since he wouldn't stare at a stranger like that. Nobody would. This slack-jawed, glassy-eyed balk reads more like a Core worlder stepping outside the Imperial bubble for the first time.

No space, no spies, no army.

"Hey, um," Bodhi clears his throat as Grek makes their ponderous way down the corridor. "Ey-eyes on me?"

[seenitbefore]

"Yeah," refocusing on him gratefully - he doesn't want to stare, he does know better than that, but it takes the sound of an almost-familiar voice to short-circuit his paralysis. "Sorry. I-- Coming."

Aliens among us! he can almost see Djem saying, along with the smug grin that accompanies the kid's worse jokes - but no, he's not thinking about that, no. He stumbles a little as he follows obediently after Bodhi, and tries to concentrate on not letting the shakes get the best of him.

[callsign_rogueone]

A million contingencies clamor for Bodhi's attention: what to tell Chirrut (and by extension, Baze), how to put K2 off without rousing suspicion, how to explain to Draven - a man who does not and never will like or trust Bodhi Rook - that his best and most reliable spy has had some sort of personality transplant, how to keep this from Jyn, how to plot a course through the base that will expose Cassian to the fewest possible nonhumans--

He never gets further than acknowledging the one issue before four more pop up, no time to actually push for a solution in any single direction. And then, there they are, outside the quarters of the other two surviving Jedhans.

(That's not a label Bodhi likes to think about, much. He's taken to defining himself in other ways. But with one of those metrics standing beside him at a loss, he falls back into bad habits.)

Bodhi knocks. "Chirrut? Baze?"

[forceofothers]

There is, beyond the door, some grumbling and miscellaneous night noises of the variety made by two people who have lived together for decades in circumstances where they are frequently rousted out of bed in the middle of their sleep cycle.

And then the door opens to reveal Chirrut, covering a yawn with one hand and leaning on the door control with the other. Baze is not immediately visible, which doesn't mean he isn't awake in there somewhere. Lurking. Keeping Chirrut covered.

Habits that kept you alive take a long time to fade.

"Bodhi," says Chirrut. "Good evening!"

[seenitbefore]

Cassian looks up cautiously. It's a moment before he registers that clouded gaze and realizes that Chirrut doesn't acknowledge him because Chirrut doesn't see him, and a little spark of relief he hadn't even known was there flickers out again. He draws in a slow, steadying breath, glancing at Bodhi again and then back. He's not sure what to make of this guy, but at least he's not unsettlingly familiar.

[callsign_rogueone]

"Good, um, yes," Bodhi is painfully aware it's well past evening, and less sure than he'd like to be that Chirrut's greeting isn't a sarcastic reminder of that fact. It can be hard to tell sometimes, when everything out of the monk's mouth ends in an exclamation point.

"S-sorry to dis--to bother you, both, but," he takes a short step to the side, revealing Cassian. Not that he makes much of a visual barrier, or that such things matter to Chirrut in general, but it's still only polite. Baze is still hovering somewhere, after all. "It's Cassian. He's."

How to put this? Can Chirrut already tell? What if there's nothing at all strange about Cassian in the Force, or whatever?

"He's not hi-himself?"

[forceofothers]

"Indeed?" says Chirrut. Headtilt. "And where is he? What does this 'not being himself' consist of?"

Mischief enters his face. "Are we going to break up an indecorous activity?"

[seenitbefore]

"I'm right here," Cassian says, a trifle nettled by both the remark and the muffled snort from inside the room. "And I am myself, it's everything else that's gone crazy."

(Though of course, to their ears, he doesn't even sound like himself, not exactly - he sounds paradoxically young, his voice more expressive and less precise. More than that: he's not a noisy presence, there at Bodhi's shoulder, but the controlled calm, the shell of stillness that's as much part of Cassian as the shape of his words and the weight of his footsteps, that's nowhere to be found.)

[callsign_rogueone]

Chirrut won't see it when Bodhi flings his arms out as if to say 'There!! You see?!', but Baze might appreciate it. Bodhi also hopes he's seeing the miffed crinkle to Cassian's face, because that's a first. He desperately needs someone else to acknowledge how alien the expression - all expressions, really - is, how out of place.

"Yes, he's, he's here," Bodhi sighs, almost apologetically. "But it's not--Chirrut, I don't. I don't th-think it's him."

He rakes a hand through his hair, goggles hanging loose and forgotten around his neck. "I thought, m-maybe, you could..." Do exactly what Chirrut had done, though indirectly: confirm that he doesn't recognize the man standing across from him.

[forceofothers]

Slow blink.

"Oh my."

He's just going to consider this one for a while. It requires some thought and some careful observation.

[seenitbefore]

Cassian exhales impatiently, shoving his hands in his pockets before they can change too obviously into fists. He is not panicking. "Do what, exactly? He's got a dimensional portal lying around, or what? --Sorry," catching himself. Being rude to the blind guy they've woken up in the middle of the night is hardly going to help anything, and neither is snapping at--

--at someone who's not his husband. He remembers that, belatedly, and flushes. "Sorry," he says again, more quietly. "I'm a little - I'm a little on edge here."

[callsign_rogueone]

"Right, yes, y-yes, of course you a--why, why wouldn't you be?" Bodhi pulls at his goggles, fumbling them over his chin and nose and shoving them back up his scalp. The tight pull at his hair helps, the way a shower and a clean set of clothes sometimes tricks his brain into thinking he can manage potshots from the universe. "Me too, I'm--I don't know, I just thought, see, Chirrut knows things sometimes."

Then, as though this is a universal concept that surely must apply even to bodyswapped aliens, Bodhi explains: "The Force sp-speaks to him. Sometimes he even, uh, shares with the, the rest of the class."

Baze's telltale snort echoes from the depths of their shared quarters like a blastershot.

[forceofothers]

"The Force is with me, I am one with the Force," Chirrut says, simply. Perhaps mostly in response to Baze, perhaps in prayer, which would still make it quite likely to be in response to Baze. Perhaps in acknowledgement of Bodhi. Disclaimer? Affirmation?

Impossible to tell from outside.

"So you are not at home," he says to Cassian.

[seenitbefore]

"I'm really not," Cassian says fervently. It's catching up with him now, the sheer scale of the strangeness, and he's starting to feel lightheaded. He plants his feet more firmly, before he can steady himself against not-Bodhi's shoulder out of reflex. "I'm only following about a third of this. I know Bodhi, sort of, I don't know you, I'm sorry. I don't-- I don't really get what's happening here."

God, now he's doing it. Maybe it's something in the air.

He focuses on Chirrut, to keep from thinking about any of the rest of it, on the rumpled robe and thoughtful expression. A stranger, a frankly kind of weird stranger, but a human one and not a doppelganger or a creature out of delirium. He can, he thinks, just about cope with Chirrut.

[callsign_rogueone]

Bodhi's mouth twitches in a bewildered smile, an expression he often wears around Chirrut. 'Not at home'. That's one way to put it. Earlier, when he'd tried to fill Cassian in on what he thought were the most pertinent details of their current situation, of his job, he'd simply shaken his head and said "No, that's not me."

Now, with Chirrut scalpling his way to the heart of the matter and Cassian stammering in confused agreement, Bodhi recalls what this sideways-Cassian had said next.

"We're p-partners, at his home," he blurts, a flush rising hot and dark in his cheeks and ears, visible past the stubble. Well, not to Chirrut. To Chirrut, it's probably a deafening gong or a bonfire flash, or however his uncanny Force perception works. "Jyn, too, and we have a--we've got a--a son."

Oh, yes. Still hung up on that.

[forceofothers]

Chirrut steps back and to the side, gesturing them into his and Baze's quarters and taking himself out of the way at the same time. It's showy, almost grandiose, and also partly lost in shadow because he forgets to hit the light plate until he's in the middle of doing it. “Clearly,” he says, “this is a matter to be discussed over tea. Baze!” Over his shoulder. “Would you mind putting on the kettle for our guests?”

“That you are not at home,” Chirrut says to Cassian, “does not mean you are not welcome. Please, come in. We secured a table and chairs week before last.”

This is true. Where exactly the table came from is uncertain – probably food service surplus – but it is just small enough to be shoved into the corner not occupied by a battered desk or two bunks shoved together as well. There are three chairs, an integrated heating element style kettle set pride of place on the tabletop, and a pretty painted tea tin beside it. (Cassian won't recognize the brand, but Bodhi might – it's Ithorian, packaged for export off planet but mostly bought by members of the Ithorian diaspora. A gift from Murr in Comms, whose cousin sent two tins in their most recent care package. He gave the Guardians the tin design he considers “the better one,” an aerial view of the Cathor Hills.)

And there's Baze, who doesn't actually sleep with his cannon. At least not on this particular base.

“You needn't apologize,” Chirrut says to Cassian, somewhere between a pronouncement and a confidence. “I myself am usually following at most two thirds of anything.”

[seenitbefore]

"That's reassuring," quiet and dry; but he does follow Bodhi inside. It's a room much like the other two, though crowded with furniture, and moreso with three - no, four men trying not to trip over each other within its confines. The air has a faint, not unpleasant scent, unlike the metallic tang that pervades Bodhi's space.

Cassian offers a small, uneasy smile to that fourth as he clears his path: middle-aged, thickset, long hair and a resigned expression. "Sorry about this," he murmurs.

In answer he receives a long, penetrating look. "Hmm," is all Baze says, however, before he turns back to his task.

[callsign_rogueone]

It would be nice, Bodhi thinks, to reassure Cassian that Baze is all bark and no bite, but he'd rather not start off by lying to the man. He offers his own apologetic smile, but gets only a flat stare in response. That's fair; he did interrupt their sleep with this latest impossibility.

The sight of the tea kettle settles the smile a little more comfortably on Bodhi's face. The tin of leaves is far from what he's used to - fat clay and pastoral landscapes where Jedhans hammered metal and enameled geometric arrays - but still occupies a practical ritual area within the living space.

(Every household in his neighborhood kept a pot on a warming brazier inside the front door, circled by matching thumb-sized cups. Theirs had been part of his grandmother's trousseau, patterned in green and yellow.)

"I can, um, the tea?" Bodhi offers, conscious of the host-obligation but also keenly aware of the night cycle, invading what little time Chirrut and Baze have alone together, and the strangeness of his own request. By rights, he ought to have come to their door with sachet of tea leaves as a preliminary exchange for the trouble, the least he can do is tend to the pot while Chirrut does...whatever needs doing.