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“I’ve heard enough. This ends now.”
Cassian startles, glancing at Jyn. Possibly because she just barged into his practice room uninvited. “Um, hi Jyn. Something wrong?”
“What’s wrong is half an hour ago I walked past here and you were still working on that same passage. You still don’t have the phrasing?”
Rolling his eyes, Cassian gestures in the air with his bow. “This isn’t our piece, don’t worry.”
“So you don’t have it.”
“I’ll get it,” he insists, beginning to play the passage. But he’s grimacing, and Jyn can understand why. It’s disjointed, accented in odd places, the transitions between some notes rough. She knows he’s capable, but he’s obviously gotten fixated on these few measures and lost the feel for it.
When he falls silent, Jyn says nothing, just raises her eyebrow.
Cassian sighs. “Fine, let’s hear it.”
Sitting at the piano, Jyn grabs his score, then swears. “Oh, fuck, I forgot. Alto clef. God, you violists are the worst.”
“If you can’t read it…” Cassian begins, a touch smug. That won’t do. Jyn takes a second to find the starting note, then launches into the passage. And maybe she’s playing more than ear than by reading damn alto clef, but she’s not going to tell him that. It’s not quite right on the piano, though; she can’t indicate the warble of vibrato, can’t build a note up the way she could with a bow. Breaking off in frustration, Jyn glances around, eyes landing on his viola.
“Can I borrow that for a sec?”
In response, he holds it closer. Ass. “Why?”
“I’m going to start a bonfire. What do you think?”
Surprise scuttles onto his face. “You play?”
“Yeah.” Sort of. Before she switched to piano, she was pretty damned good at violin, and tried viola as a teen. It’s just cello that never took. It’s been a while, but she can probably pull this off.
Still stunned, Cassian hands over his viola, the wood of its neck warm from his grip. Jyn tucks it under her chin, and lightly touches the proffered bow to the strings, reminding herself of how this goes.
‘Here goes nothing,’ she thinks.
It’s not perfect. She’s adjusting to the spaced-out fingering of the viola, so she’s not hitting all of the notes perfectly, but she concentrates on letting the music sing through her while she plays, eyes fixed on the score. The vibrato warbles, that one note builds just so. Perfect or not, she’s gotten her point across.
“See? Like that,” she retorts, finishing.
Silence. She glances up, finds him staring at her with an odd expression.
“What?” she questions.
He clears his throat. “Uh, I’m just…” Is he…blushing? No, can’t be. “…surprised. That didn’t completely suck,” he quips, but it’s a bit weak.
“Gee, thanks. I’ve gotta run, lesson with Baze. We’re practicing tomorrow, yeah?”
Cassian nods. “Yeah.”
Jyn squints at him. Almost asks. Wants to ask.
“Okay, bye!”
One more thing she’ll deal with later. Avoidance is great!