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Chirrut wakes him with a foot to the small of his back and his name stretched out like a hiss. If anyone else did this Baze would punch them in the face, roll over, and go back to sleep. Of course everyone else in the temple has common sense, and Chirrut must have missed the day the Force was giving that out. Knowing his friend, he was probably somewhere filling his pockets with mischief and learning how to be the most annoying person on their moon. It is late, and Baze wants to sleep. They will have to be up earlier than he likes--he has been here for years and is still not used to it--so he does not want a late night adventure. The pressure on his back, the stretched out sound of his name, however, are not going to relent.
No one has ever taught Chirrut how to give up. In this moment, Baze considers teaching him that lesson, but he finds himself unable to tell the other no. It's a terrible condition. It's a wonderful thing. And, really, perhaps it is for the best that Chirrut never learns it. Even if it does mean that Baze is going to be perpetually sleep deprived and cranky, complaining gruffly when Chirrut inevitably has to elbow him awake during lectures. He will only become fully aware in the training room when they spar, which is when Chirrut turns into a blur of long limbs and flashing staff and the tinkling sound of his voice because he uses his words everywhere and always, but he loves to try and throw people off by bantering at them while fighting the most.
“Baze,” the voice comes again, and the foot taps, lightly, against his skin. It is cold, and that is enough to wake him up a little more.
Baze reaches back, slowly, trying to wrap his fingers around the ankle, but it’s pulled away before he’s even halfway there. And there is the familiar, light snickering. “What is it this time? I was asleep.”
“I know.” The voice has shifted, moved, which means that Chirrut is probably leaning against the door, waiting, having moved swiftly and completely silently. “You’re always asleep. Get up. I want to show you something.”
Even though it has been proven that Chirrut is only slightly Force sensitive, that he can gain impressions, listen to the kyber, and feel things that he shouldn’t know, Baze often wonders if there’s not something more to it all. If Chirrut hasn’t somehow tapped into the bigger world of Force wielding. Because maybe that would adequately explain how stealthily he can move, how quietly. He’s not positive if the Force works that way, but he is not going to assume that he knows everything about it either. That’s the path to danger, the Masters say. The Force does what it wills. Perhaps it wills Chirrut to be a jerk at all hours of the night.
“Do you ever sleep?” he asks, rolling onto his other side so that he can peer through the darkness, find the slim form of his best friend leaning right where he expected it to be, against the door.
The figure shrugs. It’s quick and lanky and awkward. Chirrut is tall and thin. It seems like he grows more every day. This annoys him because it throws off his balance, and he has to readjust everything in training to compensate. Baze isn’t complaining, however, as he is finally winning when they spar. If he is growing, it is slower, as slow as the wind and the sand etching away the walls of the temple. Everything about him holds steady, and this is fine with him. Baze likes to be able to count on things, solid, steadfast things.
Plus he likes the winning. It will not last for long.
There’s a motion in the darkness that Baze thinks might be Chirrut twirling his staff, but he’s not sure because of the lack of light and the heaviness of his eyes. “I sleep as much as the Force wills me to.” Chirrut likes to win arguments by stating that such and such a thing is because of the Force. Baze is not sure that the Force works that way, either.
“I try to sleep as much as the Force wills me to, but someone has other ideas,” he grumbles back, swinging his legs off the bed, toes scrambling around to find the shoes he tucked beneath the frame before going to sleep.
Chirrut does not move to help. Instead he hums, tunelessly and pleased. “You just sleep through it. You can’t hear it over your snoring.”
Baze can hear the smile, wide, pulled too far, full of teeth and gums. A trickster smile, his sister once told him when she met Chirrut. She had also told him to be careful of the younger initiate, though she wouldn’t explain why. Baze couldn’t understand the warning. It was just Chirrut. He might be annoying, but he was loyal and kind when he wasn’t being a brat. Nothing about it had made sense when considered together with the words, “Be careful, Baze. I don’t want you to get hurt.” Silly words.
Baze would ask her, but his sister left Jedha years ago and no one has heard from her in so long. Sometimes he thinks about asking the Force to find her or asking Chirrut to ask the Force, but that seems presumptuous. The Force has an entire universe to keep running. It would be selfish to ask it for something like that.
“You once said I should be able to hear everything because my ears are so big,” Baze reminds him as he finds his shoes and toes them on.
“Your ears are so near your mouth that they probably just amplify the snoring.” Here Chirrut pauses to mock his snoring, making an awful, low, rumbling noise, though he ends up choking and coughing after only a few moments of doing so.
Shoes on, Baze reaches for his set of heavy robes. It is cold on Jedha at night, and that chill sinks into everything. He’s positive that Chirrut has taken no such time to do anything in the way of preparation. No, he’s sure the other is barefoot and probably clad in his training clothes, which are completely inappropriate for this hour.
“Force,” Chirrut sighs, scuffs a foot across the ground, sounds like he is at his wit’s end, “are you ever coming? It takes you longer to get moving than the old Masters. It’s no wonder that you cannot best me when we spar.”
After a moment, Baze grabs one of his lighter robes and folds it over his arm. There is no doubt in his mind that Chirrut will get cold later, if he ever slows down enough to feel the chill. Maybe the Force keeps him warm. Baze wouldn’t be surprised. Sometimes he thinks that Chirrut is a kyber crystal made flesh. It would explain how bright he burns, how little he sleeps, how much he just knows. And then, other times, Baze just sees another initiate, one that tries too hard, and sleeps too little, and maybe senses too much. So much so that he has trouble sleeping in the dormitories and focusing with so many other people near.
Also he’s a bit of a brat. A kyber crystal would be better than that, wouldn’t it? Maybe. He’s not sure.
Instead he just sighs, weary and sleepy, wanting nothing more to crawl back in bed and maybe make Chirrut lie down as well. There are nights when he manages to get them both back to sleep by whispering stories to his companion, giving him something to focus on. Baze knows a lot of stories, not just the ones about the Force and the Jedi that all the initiates know because he wanders throughout the entire library, reads everything he can get his hands on. Baze reads, Chirrut explores. They meet back up after a few hours to trade their information before setting off together again. It is easy to divide tasks up like this, and they both need occasional alone time.
Too much time spent together and they begin to function as a single person, words mingling, having entire conversations with just a look and a shrug. It is. It is somewhat unsettling sometimes. How close Chirrut can be, how much he can seem like just an extension of Baze’s own body. Baze isn’t quite sure what to think of it, how to handle it. So they divide and come back together again. They try to maintain a distinct line, but the edges get blurred almost every single day. That is okay. It is alright to fail if something is gained from the attempt.
Plus it is Chirrut.
Baze has been quiet for long moments, lost in his thoughts, hands brushing over the fabric of his robes, both the one he wears as well as the one that he carries. As though knowing where he is, Chirrut doesn’t interrupt him, just stands there and continues to make that noise that is and is not a song.
“I know,” he says after a beat, as though he has caught everything on Baze’s mind. Perhaps he has. Those are other things that they don’t talk about.
There’s a lot of things they don’t talk about. They come closer in the dark, and yet still manage to just circle the really complicated ones. Maybe when they’re older they’ll have figured out more details about all of this strangeness. Perhaps when they’re both Guardians, they’ll understand. It might just be a test. Baze doesn’t know. He reads so much, studies so hard, trains constantly, and still answers elude him.
If Chirrut knows, he doesn’t say. Baze wonders if Chirrut knows and this is why he sleeps so little. Part of him wonders if he should ask. It’s dark. No one else is awake. The temple is so quiet, so still. It feels like they are the only two living beings on the moon right now. If he asked, would Chirrut answer. What would he ask, though? How can he boil down all of his questions into words when they feel so much bigger? Bigger than Jedha even. That’s so big. That’s too big. Even for Chirrut.
“Did you fall asleep on your feet again, Baze?” Chirrut asks, breaking the moment, and Baze could hug him for it. His best friend knows how lost Baze gets in his own thoughts, how difficult it can be for him to surface, find the words he needs. Sometimes Chirrut finds them instead and sometimes, like now, he just tugs them past the stopping point.
“No. I was just thinking about how I beat you today.” Only because the other had tripped himself up on his suddenly too long legs. “Remember?”
Chirrut clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and his staff clacks against the stone floor. On someone else these noises might be a hint of aggravation. From Chirrut, however, they are light, pleasant, teasing. They are back into familiar territory and out of the maelstrom of Baze’s feelings and strange thoughts. “That was the past. The past is gone. You have not bested me today. That’s all that matters.”
Baze just groans and starts towards the door, finally propelled into action and ready to see whatever it is Chirrut wants to show him this time. “We’ll see who wins today then, Chirro.” It’s an old nickname, one that Baze has used intermittently since they were small, and it never ceases to pull the tiniest of smiles from his younger friend. Not that blazing trickster smile that his sister warned of, but the little, shy one that is almost infinitely better.
“I’d like to see you try,” Chirrut says as he pushes the door open, stepping into the hall, which means that all conversation has to stop so that they do not rouse anyone else. It leaves him with the last word on the situation, which makes Baze roll his eyes as he follows because there’s no way that wasn’t intentional.
The halls are quiet and dimly lit, but Baze was right about Chirrut’s choice in clothing. No shoes and the light weight training clothes. Where Baze walks at a steady pace, Chirrut tends to pull ahead, almost dancing down the hall, before falling back to walk with him for a few moments. No words are exchanged as they wander, and none are needed. This way, that way. The twitch of Chirrut’s staff hand gives away the directions as well as his footsteps. Baze wonders if they could navigate these halls with their eyes closed, find each other in complete darkness if separated by a larger space than the span of the quarters. As though having overheard the thought, Chirrut glances over his shoulder, smiling broadly and nods, once.
It doesn’t take them long to reach the courtyard, which is when they can be more boisterous. Baze tosses the extra robe he brought with him at Chirrut, meaning to cover his face with it, but the other is too quick for this and simply catches it. Catches it but does not put it on even though it is cold in the darkness. All of the heat from the sun has long since been sapped from the stones, and the winds are rushing in, a steady chilled breath blowing over them. And Baze has no way of knowing how long Chirrut was out in it before he came padding back to the room to wake him. “Put that on,” he gruffs out, tries to make his voice stern and commanding.
It is only met with a laugh, that trill of Chirrut’s that sounds like an amused bird flying over them, as he waves the robe in the air. “Mother henning me again, Baze?” he complains, though there is no bite in it. There is a heavily exaggerated sigh, one of being put upon again and again by someone who simply has his best interests in mind, as he pulls the robe on. Thanks to the growth spurts, it is too short at the hem and at the wrists. Truth be told, it looks rather ridiculous, and Baze cannot keep the smile off his face.
Chirrut, catching the smile, waves his arms, thin little bird wrists dancing as he spins his staff and taps his feet, wheeling around on the heels, dance fighting. Moving quickly, almost faster than the eyes can follow, is what he’s best at. Right now, dressed in flapping, short robes with that goofy grin, he looks like the marionettes one of the Guardians uses to entertain the city children once a week. He tells them stories with the marionettes, mostly about the Force, but sometimes other things. Baze knows every one of those stories and all the movements used in their telling. There was a time when he considered asking to assist with that duty, but that was before they all learned that Baze is terrible in public, shy and standoffish and oddly intimidating at the same time. These days he has accepted that the only person who will ever hear his stories is Chirrut, and this is fine. Crowds of people make him anxious anyway.
“I just didn’t fancy you stealing my robe when you get too cold. Since you couldn’t be bothered to dress properly,” he scolds when Chirrut stops, just the slightest touch out of breath, in front of him. Chirrut reaches a hand out to pat his hand against Baze’s cheek, and his fingers are cold enough to pull a curse from his companion.
“Brother Malbus,” Chirrut intones in his best Master voice, clicking his tongue again, that trickster grin still too big and too bright. Baze knows how many teeth Chirrut has because he once spent a day counting them, and maybe that is strange but he enjoys knowing little things like that.
Either the fingers have warmed or his flesh has cooled because he cannot detect much of a difference when he brushes the contact away after it starts to feel. Not unwanted exactly or uncomfortable but. Baze doesn’t have a word for the feeling. It’s a twist in his stomach that makes his heart speed up a little. He doesn’t know what it means, and if the Force knows, or if Chirrut knows, neither of them are saying anything.
“Did you just want to show me the courtyard? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m familiar with it.” His voice is a little harder than it should be, tighter, as though something has lodged in his throat, and this sound makes Chirrut tilt his head ever so slightly. It’s a habit he has when he’s considering something intently, Baze knows. Normally that amount of attention from his friend wouldn’t make him bristle, but he is tired. He is tired, and everything is strange. He feels too much. Perhaps he woke up wrong, perhaps his mind is murky and short. Perhaps the Force is strong with him tonight. There is no way of knowing. So Baze tips his head down, nestles his chin against his chest, looking at the ground, although Chirrut is there, too. Bare feet and bare ankles and then the flap of the too short robe.
“You’re petulant tonight,” Chirrut says after a moment. “I think I would have let you sleep if I’d known you were going to be this insufferable.” Baze’s eyes are still averted, but he doesn’t need to look to know that there is a frown on Chirrut’s face, a crease on his brow, and his dark eyes are probably taking everything in, looking for hints. They have known each other so long that Baze thinks he can pinpoint everything the other will do in any situation. Most of the time it’s something insane.
Baze is tired. The idea of going back to bed hangs at the forefront of his mind, and it is a very real temptation. Part of him wants to suggest that they both go, and he will tell Chirrut stories until they fall asleep together. Most of him, though, knows that once his friend has set his mind on something, that it is going to happen. Suggesting anything else would be fruitless; it would be a waste of breath. So he just sighs and looks at Chirrut and shrugs, a light smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “Take it up with the Force for not warning you.”
Chirrut, always with his mercurial moods, settles into another round of laughter, reaching a hand out to catch Baze about the wrist as though he is either excited or concerned that the other might decide to slip away of his own accord. Or maybe it’s to steady them both. Baze doesn’t pull away from the contact. It’s not as strange as the fingers on his face, and not as cold either. “Come on,” he prods, practically pulling Baze behind him as he walks, the staff held off the ground in his other hand.
“And then sleep, Chirro?”
There is no answer other than a tuneless hum and the flash of teeth over his shoulder. Baze considers planting his heels in the dirt, making Chirrut drag his greater weight, but he would be able to do it easily. They both know this fact. Baze is broad and heavy and solid, but Chirrut is a powerhouse who knows exactly how to move him in every meaning of the word. Together, they take the stairs that wind around the outside of the temple, climbing higher and higher. Chirrut murmurs as they go, pointing out this geographical feature or one rooftop after another as if Baze has not seen them before, as if they have not both grown up here, together, looking at the same world with each other. Baze doesn’t mind, though. He likes to listen to Chirrut’s voice, which speeds up when he is excited about something, and wavers a little when he is unsure. Once Chirrut stops with all the teasing, he can be wise. It’s just that getting him to that point can be difficult.
Finally they reach the balcony that Chirrut wants and stop. Chirrut’s fingers drop from Baze’s wrist, and he feels like he has been burned in reverse, chilled to the core, when the warmth drops away. The residual heat remains like a bracelet that he tries to commit to memory as if Chirrut will never do it again. Chirrut snaps his fingers in front of his face and whispers, “Come back,” as though he knows that Baze has slipped away, floated back into whatever world his mind spins.
Maybe, Baze thinks, that is his way of communing with the Force, though it doesn’t feel the same as meditating. When he meditates, Baze tries to clear his mind of thoughts and become one with the world, the universe, around him. When he drifts, he is commonly just in his own mind. What a selfish connection with the Force that would be.
“All is as the Force wills it,” Chirrut says, seemingly out of the blue, one arm draping over Baze’s shoulders, pulling him closer and to the balcony railing. He is too tall to properly settle his head against Baze’s shoulder as he did when they were children, and this is the first time that Baze keenly resents the fact that Chirrut is taller than him. Instead Chirrut just leans bodily against him, and for so thin a thing, he is heavy. Like the weight of a boulder, but Baze would support him always.
“Chirrut, I have seen this before,” he says gently, not complaining because it’s hard to complain when Chirrut is warm next to him and they are alone in all the world with Jedha stretched out in front of them like a dream and it feels like his mind and soul have been laid bare for his friend to wander through like a garden. Baze just doesn’t understand why this view, why tonight. He cannot see whatever it is that Chirrut has seen that made this a priority. Sometimes Baze feels like he is always five steps behind, too slow in understanding to make the leaps in logic that everyone else can. Too Force blind. Or too doubting in the Force. He can never decide which one it is, and the explanations other people give him don’t make sense of it.
He’s asked Chirrut, but he always stops the questioning, tells him that the Force is a personal thing. The unsaid undercurrent of those words is that, no, Baze isn’t doing anything wrong when it comes to the Force, but Chirrut can’t help because they aren’t going about things in the same way. Which is frustrating because Baze would willingly go wherever the other leads. He doesn’t want something to be separate. That knowledge is scary in itself, and he doesn’t know where to put it other than at the back of his mind with everything else.
His mind garden. That is how Baze thinks of it. Well, it’s one of the ways that he thinks of it. A garden, a library, a storage room. Baze likes to organize things. It helps calm him when the day has been busy, and he is unsettled. Physical objects, emotions, thoughts. All of it kept tidy and in its place until it can be dealt with later. If later never comes, that is fine with him, too.
Chirrut turns another one of those trickster smiles on him, with all of those teeth that Baze counted and sometimes continues to count just to make sure he was right the first time, and shakes his head. “Fool, you’re not looking properly.” The arm on his shoulders moves, fingers tracing across his back and then down his arm to circle his wrist again.
“Tell me what you want me to see then.” Left to his own devices, Baze is certain he will go out of his mind trying to spot the difference.
“Okay,” Chirrut leans his staff against the wall of the balcony, the thumb of his other hand, the one circling his wrist, has started to brush gently across whatever skin it can reach and that action makes Baze wonder whether it has a mind of its own because Chirrut has not acknowledged it. He points to the sky, which Baze had not really looked at yet. “Start just there,” he points at a particular star and then drags his hand down and across in an arching motion before swinging back up at the end, “and it ends there.”
Baze has no idea what is happening, and he frowns at the stars in confusion. They are stars. They are stars that he has seen all his life, hanging there in the sky, but he has no idea what it is that Chirrut is pointing out. They are not planets or a system that he remembers from their studies, not a common trade route, especially not with those arches as it would make no sense. “Chirro,” he starts, and there is the undercurrent of frustration in his voice, the one he gets when he isn’t even sure how to begin to understand something.
“I met a traveler in the marketplace,” Chirrut cuts him off, knowing that an explanation is needed as quickly as possible if he hopes to keep Baze’s mood buoyant. He rushes through the words so that there is not an opening for Baze to scold him about going into the marketplace on his own without permission, which happens more than it should. Most of the time, Baze will go with him just so he can keep an eye on him. More of that mother henning as Chirrut says, but Baze will always follow. “They were telling me their stories about the stars.”
Oh, this is not something new. Baze knows about these. There is a book about it in the library, but he has not read much of it yet. There are so many other things to learn. It amuses him that Chirrut has beat him to this knowledge, and he is silent, waiting. Waiting and trying not to pay attention to the thumb that keeps sweeping over his skin as though petting him. This is not one of Chirrut’s normal tics so he is not sure how to define it.
“Stories based on birth date.” His finger traces the same pattern again. “That one is yours.”
Baze stares at Chirrut’s profile, transfixed. The smile on the other’s face is neither the small one from youth or the trickster grin. No, it is something completely other. This is a smile that Baze has not seen before, and he isn’t completely sure how to process it either. Just like the rub of skin over skin. He clears his throat, trying to dislodge all the words that seem to be gathering there. He’s not sure where to put this kind of information. Yes, he has questions. About what the pattern in the sky is supposed to be, what it means. Baze wants information constantly even if it seems contradictory to his outward appearance. At a glance, people probably think Chirrut the scholar and him the troublemaker. “Where’s yours, Chirro?”
The pressure around his wrist slips down. For a moment, Baze internally panics that Chirrut is taking his hand back, but then their fingers are sliding together in a much more companionable way, and the press of Chirrut against him seems to be even heavier. “Mine? Mine is,” the finger goes up again, finding another star point and then dragging down. Baze imagines a line, shimmery and blue, that dances between the stars in the arcs and whorls of the fingers, “just like that.”
Baze tilts his head. “Show me again. Both of them.” His tone is more demanding than he means it to be, and it takes him a second to realize how impolite he has been. “Please.”
Chirrut’s laugh is tinkling and pleased. “Yours,” he traces it across the sky. “Mine.” And then he turns his head so that he is looking at Baze now instead of the stars.
“They overlap?” Baze says more of a question than a statement because he wants to be right about this, but he cannot trust himself to be. He worries about seeing things that aren’t there, interpreting them incorrectly because he is slow and ponderous and the Force is a mystery to him.
“They do. The traveler said it was a good sign.” Chirrut is still looking at him as he says this, and it is hard for Baze to not squirm a little under that gaze when it is so steady, so determined. There is such intent in Chirrut’s eyes, and Baze is not always sure how to read it.
“For what?” He realizes that he is currently the perfect height to rest his head on Chirrut’s shoulder and does so. It is not soft or yielding. There is no excess flesh anywhere on Chirrut’s body, especially right now. Despite that, though, it is still comfortable and comforting, and his friend makes no attempt to move.
“Companions,” Chirrut answers, but the word is little more than a whisper. In fact, Baze isn’t even positive that it was spoken aloud because of the way his head seems to thrum with it, fills up with light and a crushing feeling that he doesn’t know what to do with. So he does nothing but hum, a sound similar to the ones that Chirrut makes but much deeper, a rumble within his chest.
Baze wonders what all the word entails. It bubbles like a small stream inside of him, trapped beneath layers of rock. In his mind, it feels like a flower unfurling, a book that will not be close, a box that has no limit as to how much it can be filled. He doesn’t know what it is. At fifteen, he is both too young and too old to understand what is happening, but as long as they’re facing it together, he thinks he can deal with it.
Chirrut, younger than him but so much wiser, leans his head down to kiss him. The angle is awkward and weird, the touch of lips so light that Baze isn’t sure whether it counts as a kiss, but he is going to count it. No matter what, he is going to count it. There is a moment when neither of them know what they are supposed to do now. Baze almost panics, and he can feel the same thing radiating from Chirrut, which is scary because Chirrut always has it together even when he is being troublesome. There is always purpose in Chirrut. Baze says nothing, he just squeezes their hands together tighter. The breath that Chirrut releases is the sweetest sound in the world, and it calms him. By degrees they calm and reassure each other without another word, with the hand holding and the full body lean of one against the other. They support each other.
Later, after they have managed to slip back into their room without being seen, and Baze has whispered stories into Chirrut’s ear to ease him into sleep, Baze wonders if maybe this is how the Force works, in quiet moments in the middle of the night between people.