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“What is all this?” Cassian Andor’s voice called to him from somewhere behind the Fondor’s cockpit.
“‘All of this’ could be a number of things,” Luthen called back, still engrossed in his datapad.
He could hear the boy rummaging through his things but didn’t scramble back to stop him. He needed to maintain an illusion of nonchalance. And he needed to stop thinking of Cassian Andor as a boy, a habit his subconscious had picked up as though the moniker alone made Andor less dangerous. It didn’t.
Luthen looked up at the sound of footsteps and the shadow Andor cast in the doorway.
“You have… a costume department on board.”
“Ah.” Luthen set the pad down on the flat part of the console meant to hold it
“Who are you?” It was a question Andor had posed frequently since they left Ferrix. This time it was said with more amusement than anger. Luthen supposed this was progress.
They were still several days out from Coruscant; more time than Luthen generally liked to spend in space with unpredictable strangers, but surely Andor could have killed him several times over by now if that were his plan all along. He assumed Andor knew the same to be true of him. But Cassian Andor needed him. Cassian Andor had nothing left save the credits to his name, his blaster, and a miles-long Imperial rap sheet.
The real question, Luthen’s louder, more cynical interior voice kept asking, was did he need Andor? Did he need this protracted Corellian standoff with a boy— with a young man who had nothing to lose?
“No really, who are you?” Andor repeated. He was gripping a drapey purple surcoat with gold piping. His hands were filthy.
“That’s a very expensive piece of cloth you’re mistreating,” Luthen replied.
Andor looked down at the fabric clutched in his fist as though he were seeing it for the first time and had the decency to look abashed.
“Sorry.” He thrust the surcoat at Luthen. “I just grabbed whatever.”
“I know.”
Luthen folded the garment into a tidy package and held it on his lap. Andor watched him. His dark, sad eyes following the way Luthen’s hands smoothed the seams and draping weave together with practiced ease. He looked like a man who had never been smoothed.
“What was the first thing I told you? When we met?”
Andor’s brows drew together. He had a very expressive face. It was a wonder he’d only been arrested several times considering how much he gave away with his eyes, with the distasteful moue his mouth became when he disagreed with something or someone.
“In the warehouse,” Luthen prompted.
“You asked if I was carrying a comm.”
“That’s right.”
“You said, ‘rule number one, never carry anything you don’t control.’”
“Very good.”
“So?”
Luthen smirked. Andor was so ornery. So quick to annoy. His emotions were at a constant roil. Luthen felt a vague longing to tame him, but loathed the idea of snuffing out that bright internal spark. Over 15 years he had learned to shutter his mind to the impressions others made in the Force. He’d willfully forgotten his training, the pathways you could find into each mind if you had the ability and wished to pry. Out of necessity, Luthen had shut himself off from the web that bound all living things together. It was the most difficult thing he had ever done. He had chosen to sever a limb, to scoop out pieces of his own consciousness and plunge himself into an unending dark. And yet….
Cassian Andor created ripples that Luthen found almost impossible to ignore. He’d felt it from the moment he saw Andor, standing in that deathtrap warehouse cloaked in greed and desperation, ready to strike out at anyone who tried to stop him, an angry little loth-cat, so certain of his own superiority. The kind of superiority that could only be born of having suffered, survived, and kept clawing onward.
This one will do, had been Luthen’s thought at that moment. This is who I’ve been looking for.
Bix had left much unsaid, when he’d called looking for a seventh man for the Aldhani heist. She’d promised Luthen an accomplished conman and exceptional pilot; someone who wouldn’t be missed if he didn’t return, someone who would do anything if the price were right.
Luthen had done his research. Enough research to be compelling and enigmatic when the expected pushback came. Miss Bix hadn’t mentioned that Cassian Andor was so angry. She hadn’t told Luthen that her suggested operative had a death wish ten parsecs wide. He’d had to find out that Cassian Andor was beautiful on his own too.
“Am I boring you?” Andor asked. He tilted his head in that sullen and appealing way he had. It looked a bit like a plea.
Stars, Luthen found him compelling. That was the problem from the very outset, wasn’t it? Kleya and Vel would see right through him. Kleya was going to give him a piece of her very sharp mind.
“Not at all. Only thinking on how to proceed.”
“Why do you have such nice things?” Andor wheedled.
Luthen had to laugh at that. He stood and pressed past Andor into the Fondor’s main cabin. He did not linger, but his body reminded him that it was the closest they had been since their speeder ride on Ferrix, him clinging to Andor’s back while they buzzed roughshod over sand fields and paddies. Luthen’s exterior had been calm, but his body was humming from the fight, from his burgeoning fascination with Andor. He remembered his scent, the heat of him, how even through the canvas coat he could feel that Andor had a dancer’s build, the kind of body that allowed a good spy to fit in anywhere. He was assessing Andor’s usefulness even then, even without knowing whether Andor would provide the return expected of him.
Had all people become tools for his potential use? No different from the objects in his shop: appraised for their value, their beauty, their salability?
That line of thinking led down a path Luthen didn’t relish trodding. For years, he had been an ascetic, eschewing worldly pleasures, hewing to the trappings of his calling with unmatched passion, as though enthusiasm could drown his baser urges, his desires. That world was gone now; snuffed out by the enemy he fought. In this one way, this singular, shameful way, the Empire had actually set Luthen Rael free.
So: perhaps selfishness and a lifetime of self-abnegation had led him to a disguise reliant upon the amassing of nice things and beautiful people. Glittering, monied people. Young, smart people.
Andor made an impatient sound. He wasn’t good at waiting around. As far as Luthen knew, if his charge wasn’t out thieving, on the run, or variously incarcerated, he was occupying someone’s bed.
Luthen didn’t say, “did you want to be one of my nice things? Isn’t that why you’re here and not dead?”
Instead, he sighed loudly as Andor joined him in front of his custom built wardrobe, full to its capacity with his Coruscant finery, and made a show of unfolding the surcoat and placing it back on its rightful hanger. He let himself fret, he let himself fall into the character he played when these were the garments he wore. Luthen stroked one of the more luxurious coats in his collection and met Andor’s gaze in the vanity mirror.
“What was rule number two?”
“Build your exit on the way out,” Andor supplied without hesitation.
“Which you’ve clearly internalized already. And now—" Luthen took on an affected, affluent Coruscanti tone, “Rule number three: you must learn to hide in plain sight.”
“Is that what you do?” Andor asked. He held Luthen’s gaze. “Is that what this is?”
“Every role requires tools.” Luthen pushed a hand through his hair. He pressed his lips together. Thinned them. Considered how dry they were. How his clients might fret if he looked any less than finely tuned.
Andor watched, rapt. He kept his body very still and Luthen was again reminded of a loth-cat. Timid, temperamental, sharp-toothed.
“No one where I come from thinks fancy clothes and useless jewels are tools.”
“Maybe people on Ferrix lack imagination,” Luthen tossed off, just to see Andor bristle, and to distract him a little while he pulled his wig from its drawer and drew it over his scalp and into place.
“Don’t say tha—” Andor blinked at him, at their shared reflection. “I wouldn’t know you, if I saw you.”
“Point proven.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
“You’d have to see it eventually.” Luthen shrugged and did not flinch. “Am I so hideous?”
Andor’s expression took on a flinty, calculating quality. “Have you decided to kill me after all? Is that it?”
Luthen laughed, his fake laugh, the one he wielded like a knife. “Maybe I’ve decided you’re worth more to me alive.”
“You’re not the first man to come to that conclusion.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I gave myself up to you. How could it bother me?”
“You chose to die.” Luthen parried.
“I didn’t think there would be an alternative.” In the mirror, Andor’s eyes never left his.
Luthen pulled on a set of rings. He had the contents of this vanity memorized. Each thing in its place. There was no need to break the torrid eye contact when he draped a chain across his throat and Andor helped with the clasp without having to be asked. His fingers brushed Luthen’s nape and left goosebumps behind.
“We’re going to Coruscant,” Luthen said. “I’ve already made myself too vulnerable to you for a man in my position. Sometimes, the only way forward is to go all in. Go wash your hands.”
The command was meant to unbalance. To break the tension climbing down Luthen’s spine into his gut. He resisted the long-stifled urge to brush Andor’s mind and see if he felt it too. That would be a bridge too far even for someone who had fallen to the depths of immorality as he had.
Andor lingered, then did as he was told. He had a funny kind of grudging obedience about him. He’d been born to yield; he’d learned to resist.
Luthen heard the sonic go on, then the patter of real water in the steel sink. He unbuttoned his tactical jacket and took down his suspenders; hung the jacket and placed the suspenders in a drawer. Then he pulled off his black undershirt and dropped it down the laundry shoot. He considered his bare form in the mirror: his stomach rounded with age, his once toned chest honed from years of training. The smattering of age spots he barely noticed any longer, the scars.
When Andor came back, he was wiping his face on his worn shirt, then his hands on his trousers. Luthen watched his eyes travel the plains of his naked back. For once, his expression gave away nothing, his mouth a neutral line.
Luthen drew a clean, gossamer blouse over his head and hoped disappointment wasn’t bleeding off of him. What had he hoped would happen?
“Help me with this?” He passed Andor the same surcoat he'd been pawing before and held out his arms as one might for a steward. His hands were trembling.
“Are you bringing me to Coruscant to be your body man?” Andor asked. His mouth quirked into a half-smile that said, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ but he took the offered clothing gently and shook it out with care.
“You’ve done worse work.”
Andor hummed in assent.
“You would be kept.”
“Kept?”
“Kept safe,” Luthen amended. He kicked himself mentally. Foolish, selfish old man.
“I won’t be caged.”
“There will be rules. Limits. You’re part of it now. Something larger than both of us, something that requires careful tending to bloom. A delicate garden which I will not let you trample.”
“You people always speak in metaphor.” Andor rolled his eyes. His hands smoothed the seams along Luthen’s back, palms warm and sure. Skimming over his frame. “I’ve gardened for you before. Turn.” He was not asking.
Luthen turned. His heart did something dangerous. He handed the cufflinks he held to Andor, who popped one between his teeth. He tugged each of Luthen’s sleeves into place and then slipped the piece of jewelry he held through the left cuff. When he went for the other arm, Luthen caught hold of his wrist.
“If you hadn’t noticed.” His voice was rough; he sounded parched. “You are one of those people now.”
Andor took the cufflink from his mouth. It glistened with saliva. Luthen tightened his grip.
“I guess I am,” Andor said. “Does that make me your equal?”
“It makes you my ally.”
“Let me.” Andor tried to pull his wrist back. “Or is this all for show?”
“Everything is for show.” Luthen eyed him speculatively. He dropped Andor’s wrist to gesture at himself. “These clothes. This hair. The exotic bird I return to Coruscant with, the one with sad eyes, and a lovely face, who will no doubt make a favorable impression on my customers, friends and foes alike. A bird who will need a new name and nice things of his own. At least until I’ve found a way to keep the cage unlocked and the bird safe.”
“Your plan for me?” Andor picked up his right arm and didn’t meet his eyes. He put the other cufflink in its place.
“For now.”
“Did you ask this of Vel?” Andor’s face darkened and he looked momentarily disgusted with himself. “Of Nemik?”
The shift in tone caught Luthen like a hook to the sternum. Andor breathed out through his nose.
“What do you think I am asking of you?” Luthen stepped back and rested both his hands at his waist. He knew it would read as a threat, that it would only further the illusion he’d been building to. Andor was half-right, but Luthen had thought, for a moment, that Andor might have been amenable, adaptable, to the half he would never demand, and had no right to.
“You expect me to play the whore.” Andor’s tone did not soften.
“Play being the operative word. Let there be no misunderstanding between us. I would never ask you to sacrifice your autonomy. I harbor no expectations on that front. My only goal is a path forward where you are useful to me, to my various enterprises, and you do not jeopardize my goals. Our goals.”
“You paid me to go on a suicide mission.”
“You survived.”
“Only to be hunted.”
“I am sorry about your mother, Cassian,” Luthen said. “She made quite the impression.”
Andor laughed, and it had a slightly hysterical tinge to it. He knocked Luthen’s hands away from his belt buckle and stepped closer, then he started to undo Luthen’s belt and Luthen held his breath.
“Did you intend for me to come to you?” he muttered.
“I thought you might. I thought it might be easier than chasing you.”
“Did you always intend to kill me?” Andor slipped the belt tongue from its buckle, he didn’t look away from his hands.
“I…I went back and forth on it.” Luthen breathed out slowly. One of his hands found its way to Andor’s shoulder and held on. “I hoped I wouldn’t have to.”
“Because one of your other little birds would do it for you.” Andor pulled the belt through its loops and dropped it to the ground. He flicked open the button at the top of Luthen’s trousers, placed his hands on Luthen’s waist, and at last looked up. “You hoped you could hear about my death over subspace, in code, then have a nice hot bath. Do whatever it is that men of leisure do to relax.”
It was troubling how close he was to the truth. Andor squeezed his waist.
“You wanted me to be a name ticked off your list. A loose thread cut from your favorite tunic.” He leaned in and put his mouth at Luthen’s ear. He smelled the same as Luthen remembered. His stubble scratched Luthen’s cheek.
“Cassian.”
“You’re right,” Andor breathed. His breath felt like a caress, feather light and damning. “I don’t make it easy.”
Andor pulled back. He squeezed Luthen’s waist once more before releasing him and stepping away, taking the warmth Luthen felt building with him. Andor gazed at him consideringly, his eyes drew a line from Luthen’s wig to his half-open trousers and the erection that must have been visible, to his out-of-place boots. Luthen realized he was half-costumed and felt all the more revealed for it. He fought the urge to cover himself while Andor seemed to come to some conclusion.
“You’ll have to take me shopping,” he said. “I wouldn’t know what to buy.”
“Of course.” The ground felt unsteady under Luthen’s feet.
“And I’m not paying,” Andor added. He turned and went back to the cockpit. Luthen heard him ask the computer how far they were from Coruscant.
It was possible, Luthen conceded, that he was ever-so-slightly in over his head. It was possible he didn’t mind.