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He wakes.
There's a roiling in his stomach and a sharp pain in his head and the warmth of someone's hand hovering several millimeters above his nose. He's exhausted, sleep soft and warm and welcoming a tantalizingly short slip away, but someone shakes his shoulder in a way his mind understands to mean Wake up, Bodhi. Wake up now.
His eyelashes brush against the pads of Chirrut's fingers as his eyes flutter open. Bodhi feels more than hears Chirrut's huff of relief.
"Finally." Chirrut sounds put out, but Bodhi knows it's all for show. Even if he didn't know from experience, he could read it easily from the way Chirrut's grip softens on his shoulder.
"What—"
White-hot brightness from the light stick on the ground several feet away stabs into his eyes, and the pain in his head peaks in agony. Bodhi takes a calming breath, tries to swallow, fails, and vomits.
Chirrut rolls him onto his side and puts the palm of his right hand under Bodhi's head so it doesn't smack against the ground when he heaves.
They walk.
It feels like there's a vice screwed onto his head, and every jarring steps that Bodhi takes clamps it down another inch. His throat burns and his teeth ache and his eyes press up against their lids like they're going to burst. There's dirt wedged in between his fingernails and his nail beds, from when he tried to hold himself up when he was being sick, and Bodhi's shirt still reeks of bile; the wet front flap of it smacks against his chest when he stumbles.
Chirrut, at his side—with his left hand holding his staff and his right arm gripping Bodhi's waist securely, Bodhi's left arm looped over his shoulders--never actually says that they can't stop for rest, but his face has a tight, enigmatic smile on it. It's the same one he puts on every time he has to talk with General Draven for what he considers an excessive amount of time. Bodhi doesn't even have to look at him to know he's got it on. It's a smile that means there's nothing coming up but obstruction and obfuscation and no way this will end except for Chirrut getting what Chirrut wants, one way or another.
And right now, apparently, what Chirrut wants is for them both to find their way out of the underground tunnels they're lost in and meet up with Baze and the others back at the ship. Chirrut wants it very, very much. Bodhi doesn't have to ask to know that, either.
So, as soon as Bodhi can stand up without falling over, they walk.
Chirrut's eyes glitter in the light from the stick he's tucked into the fold at the top of his robe, enough of it hanging out that Bodhi can see the path. Chirrut hasn't been talking as much as he usually does--actually, he's barely been talking at all--probably having noticed, somehow, the way Bodhi squeezes his eyes shut every time there's a loud sound.
Bodhi didn't think he'd flinched, but Chirrut can always tell when one of them is hurting--and if it's serious, he always re-prioritizes, no matter what's at stake.
Bodhi wonders, in the back of his mind, what Chirrut's list of priorities looks like right now. Is it Baze at the top? Fear that Baze might have gotten into a fight without Chirrut to back him up? The rest of the team, who are skilled and ruthless when it comes to fight but still so easily injured by stray blaster shots? The data, which could lead the Empire straight to several double agents in its ranks? Bodhi himself, who's walking well enough but might be dying of a brain bleed for all they know?
Bodhi doesn't ask, and Chirrut, for once in his life, doesn't share unprompted.
"What happened?" Bodhi asks when he can swallow without feeling like he's going to be sick again. He doesn't remember much of anything past landing on the planet. It's an old Alliance base, a secondary location that the Empire discovered some few months back. Rogue One came back to salvage some hidden data when it looked like the Empire had gone.
Chirrut cocks his head, and his mouth twists. His voice when he speaks is soft. "You don't remember?"
Bodhi remembers landing, following Cassian into the cave with a toolbox in his hand. The next thing he knows is waking up in the tunnels, Chirrut beside him, several dead Imperials lying behind them. He shakes his head.
Chirrut's arm tightens around Bodhi's waist, and his eyes narrow as if he's focusing on something in the dark, impenetrable distance. "You saved my life. Stepped between me and an Imperial I had my back to."
His head feels so heavy. Bodhi lets his chin dip down to his chest, hoping it'll take some of the weight off his neck, but it just makes the space behind his eyes feel uncomfortably tight again. He shuts them and tries to remember what Chirrut's talking about, but there's nothing, and—him, watching Chirrut's back in a fight, taking a blow meant for him? "Doesn't sound like me."
What follows takes place in just a few seconds. Chirrut stops, lets his staff fall into the crook of his arm, grabs Bodhi's wrist with his right hand, and smacks the top of Bodhi's hand, hard, with his left. Before the sting makes it all the way from Bodhi's nerve endings to his brain, Chirrut grabs hold of his staff and resumes their pace.
"Of course it does," he says.
Bodhi's chest feels tight.
The light stick, jostled when Chirrut moved, slips a couple of inches down into the folds of Chirrut's robe, and the light it casts dims. There's still enough that Bodhi can see directly in front of his feet, and it gives his eyes a rest, so he doesn't mention it. Chirrut must be worried; the man usually has an uncanny sixth sense about objects and space and his relation to anything that might be useful in a fight. Bodhi's only ever seen him so unaware of his equipment once before, when they visited an ancient Jedi Temple on a moon in the Harloff system. Then, on seeing the ruins—a holy place, sacrosanct, where the words you spoke echoed with the sound of ghosts before they melted away—Chirrut had accidentally whacked Kaytoo on the chest with his staff from lack of attention, his friend and the reach of his weapon both forgotten for the moment in the presence of the sacred.
Now, though, Chirrut is just tense, his carefully measured steps just a little faster than Bodhi thinks they would be if Bodhi's head were the only consideration.
“Are you cold?” Chirrut asks after a while.
It is chilly, this far underground, and Bodhi is aware of the goosebumps on his arms and the cold, clammy way the sweaty hair at the nape of his neck sticks to his skin, but it's not a great discomfort. Cold? Cold is a desert in winter, where the winds whip themselves up to a frenzy in the hollows of the hills outside the city and blast across houses with thin walls and thinner roofs and families inside huddled around heaters where mothers and fathers pass down the stories of their ancestors to squirmy little children who fall asleep at the boring parts.
"Bodhi."
Right. Bodhi lifts his right shoulder in a shrug. "I don't mind the cold."
"Yes," Chirrut says. He pauses, was like he's going to speak, and stops himself. "Eadu had terrible weather."
They both know he's not talking about Eadu.
They walk some more. Bodhi doesn't ask to rest, and Chirrut shifts so he's taking a little more of Bodhi's weight on his shoulders. He rolls them, once, and sighs.
"I'm getting too old for this," he mutters, and continues on, pinching Bodhi's side when Bodhi slows.
He stumbles.
His steps have started to turn into staggers as the minutes and the meters pass them by, and his head grows heavier and heavier, and then--just for a moment--his vision grays out, and he doesn't see the rock in his path until his foot hits it. He stumbles, lurches forward, and sags over Chirrut's arm when Chirrut sets his feet and arrests Bodhi's fall.
The sharp movement twists Bodhi's stomach, and he leans forward with his free hand on his knee and tries to take a steadying breath.
"Are you--oh." Chirrut cuts himself off mid question, and something in his tone makes Bodhi look up. He's smiling, head cocked as if he's listening to something that Bodhi can't hear. "Here. Let's sit down. Rest.”
When Bodhi makes an inquisitive grunt, Chirrut suits words to action and sits himself, back against the stone wall, then eases Bodhi down beside him. “They'll be here for us soon,” he says.
Bodhi doesn't ask. Doesn't have to. Chirrut's smile is different now than the one he had on earlier, but Bodhi is familiar with this one too; it's the one he wears every other day at lunch, when they're waiting together at their table in the mess for Baze to join them when the hand-to-hand class he teaches inevitably runs late. It always comes on--never fails--right when Baze walks through the doorway. Even before anyone else spots him and says 'Oh, there he is', Chirrut's lips never fail to curl up the minute Baze steps foot inside the mess.
It's never a smile that lasts for very long, though.
Now, Chirrut guides Bodhi down to sit beside him, takes his weight when his knees buckle and set them down, back against the hard rock wall, light and easy. Bodhi's stomach still flip-flops, though, hands curling into fists on the hem of his shirt as his head jars at the movement and pulses with hot throbs of pain.
"Here." Chirrut puts his arm around Bodhi's far shoulder and pulls. Bodhi freezes for a moment, but Chirrut is insistent, and he brings Bodhi down until Bodhi's head rests on his thigh. "Rest. Just don't fall asleep."
Nimble fingers tug at Bodhi's hair tie, and as the strands come loose the pressure on Bodhi's head eases, just a little bit.
It's almost as good as a dose of the strongest painkillers the rebellion has to offer.
"Better?" Chirrut asks when Bodhi briefs out a soft hum of relief. Chirrut slips his fingers gently under the strands of hair that fall over Bodhi's forehead and brushes them back. "Baze can't stand his hair pulled back whrn he has a concussion, either."
The smile still there. Bodhi can hear it.
"Get a lot of them?"
Chirrut huffs a laugh. His thigh jerks at the movement, and Bodhi catches his breath but doesn't yelp. Chirrut makes a soft, mollifying 'hmm' and starts massaging the base of Bodhi's neck and shoulders with his thumbs.
"It's Baze," he answers after a moment. "What do you think?"
This stiffness in his neck melts away, and Bodhi has to blink to keep his eyes from drifting shut at the relief. He forces himself to take a deep breath and rubs one of his torn knuckles into the ground. "He hasn't since you joined the rebellion."
"Give it time." Chirrut's thumbs pause, a tiny hiccup in the firm, muscle-soothing motion that Bodhi just barely notices. "We are better, though, at fighting, than we used to be. It's been a long time since we started training together."
And just like that--like it does every time--the smile disappears from Chirrut's voice.
It never fails. There is always that moment, a cramped space that takes up the breath between the moment Chirrut senses Baze and the moment Baze looks back--that unobtrusive instant of focus when Chirrut's gaze flickers up and cursorily lands in the vicinity of where his husband stands--where Chirrut's smile falters—where his lips fall flat and the crows feet at the corners of his eyes back into hiding. Bodhi always looks at Baze to see if he notices, and by the time he looks back, Chirrut always has a brand-new smile on, gentle and steady and fond.
Chirrut once told Bodhi, when Bodhi started making notes for his dasa about the Temple, that when he senses people standing near him it's like he's a man alone in space. All around him are bright, blazing stars: some new, some old, some long-exhausted giants starting to fold in on themselves and die. The Force burns brighter around some than around others, but the first time he saw Baze was like looking at the sun at noon on Jedha.
He didn't say what it was like, looking at Baze now, with the heavy, crushing weight of years and brothers gone before them, and Bodhi didn't ask that either.
"Don't sleep," Chirrut says, and digs one of his thumbs into the skin below the wing of Bodhi's right shoulder blade.
"Sorry." Bodhi blinks his eyes again. They water, the tears hot like magma flowing from behind his eyeballs. "'M tired.”
Chirrut sighs. He moves, sets his hand under Bodhi's head and holds it still so he can stretch his legs out and settle back against the rocks more comfortably. That done, he returns his hands to Bodhi's neck and gets back to work.
"Did I ever tell you," he starts, slipping into a low Jedhan dialect, "of the time Baze broke us out of prison with a shrieking mouse tied up in a scarf?"
He aches.
He holds on to Chirrut's voice like a man diving for treasure follows a deeply anchored rope. Waves of nausea come and go, and one time there's a loud noise somewhere in the distance, like a blaster shot, and Bodhi jumps in surprise and dry heaves as a result for a good minute and a half. The fire in his head, which he'd thought better, comes roaring back when he chokes out what little bile is left. He groans and squeezes shut his eyes, but forces himself to open them again so he doesn't give into the calm, sweet oblivion that nips at the edge of his consciousness. He takes in Chirrut's legs and Chirrut's boots, robes and laces liberally covered in a fine, white dirt that looks a garish gray in the dim glow of the light stick. On Chirrut's other side lies his staff, a few precise centimeters away from Chirrut's leg, carefully placed so Chirrut can have it ready and steady in his hands the second he hears trouble coming.
Minutes pass, then an hour, and Chirrut's voice holds steady all the while. He passes from the story of the prison escape to the story of the summer Baze decided to grow his hair out to the story of the time they stole a decrepit old spaceship from an Imperial collaborator in Jedha and sold it to a young smuggler with an affinity for hideous capes.
Story after story after story, with only the occasional pause to drink from one of their canteens. Bodhi listens, and takes deep breaths, and scrapes his knuckles across the dirt when his eyelids start to weigh too heavy to keep propped open continuously.
He's thinking of apologizing in advance for not managing to stay conscious—because Chirrut doesn't like it when instructions aren't followed, and he gets tetchy and spars with Baze and polishes his staff in a silence that in anyone less dangerous would be called sullen—when there's a loud series of booms some fifty feet down the tunnel and a hole explodes in the rocks.
Bodhi squeezes his eyes shut and swears internally. When he opens them again, Cassian is climbing through the hole and jogging towards them, blaster in hand.
“Can he walk?” he asks Chirrut. “There was, uh. A landslide. We need to go.”
Cassian's eyes shift like they always do after he does something particularly terrifying. Somewhere outside in the distance, Bodhi can hear Kaytoo and Jyn arguing about something that Kaytoo's calling 'a stupid idea', and—honestly, Bodhi doesn't want to know, he just wants to get some painkillers and find a bed with soft blankets and fluffy pillows to fall on.
It's Chirrut stiffening that draws Bodhi out, makes him look up and see. There it is, on his face, head cocked, the hand still splayed over Bodhi's head momentarily stiff, all anticipation. It's just a second—less, even—and then Baze walks in, and—there: a tiny, barely-noticeable blip, the smallest of wavers, and Chirrut's face settles back into the fond, knowing, eyebrow-ready-to-be-raised expression he usually wears around his husband.
“What did you do now?” Baze rumbles as he joins them. He's taken off his armor, but his favorite blaster still swings at his side. His long strides outpace Cassian, who's stopped to fiddle with a radio, and he crouches by the two of them and looks them over, one hand squeezing Chirrut's in greeting before he turns to poke at Bodhi. His eyes are soft and kind and worried, and his fingers on Bodhi's scalp are warm and gentle for all his hands are rough.
What does your soul look like? Bodhi wonders.
“He hit his head,” Chirrut says, as Baze's fingers freeze, and Bodhi realizes it's possible he said that out loud.
Bodhi doesn't have to look to see Baze's eyebrow lift, so he doesn't. His face feels hot.
“He hit his head very hard.” Chirrut pauses, then slides his hands back under Bodhi's head and shoulders and starts to move. “He watched my back.”
“Best get him back, then.”
Chirrut slides out from under Bodhi, stretches and sighs in relief, and then—in the jostling, while Baze is easing Bodhi back up—Bodhi sees Chirrut's right foot hit the end of his staff and knock it away, and Chirrut doesn't even notice.
Chirrut doesn't notice because he's looking at Baze. Chirrut doesn't notice until he reaches out to grab his staff and realizes it isn't where he left it.
“Time to go,” Cassian says from ten feet away.
Bodhi's knees buckle when he tries to stand, so Baze and Chirrut each loop an arm over their shoulders and take the bulk of his weight. They wrap their arms around his waist, one on each side, and their hands on his back are indistinguishable from each other, worn and strong and calloused both from decades of training and fighting and scrabbling in the sands of Jedha to survive.
“I know what my next dasa's going to be,” Bodhi says. It's going to be about the sun and a moon that looked on each other every day. The moon, from its place, saw the sun sometimes through clouds and sometimes through clear skies that made the land so hot it was difficult to walk outside, and the sun, in return, saw the moon sometimes in full and sometimes shrouded in the shadow of its planet, but every day they saw each other and knew they were home. “'S going to be good.”
“Think he'll wait until he stops seeing double before he asks for pen and paper?” Baze asks over his head.
Chirrut sighs, deep and heartfelt and caustically skeptical. “Hope springs eternal,” he says.
They carry him. They care for him. They take him home.