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Jyn strode in the cantina and spotted Cassian immediately. Tucked in a corner booth as usual, quiet and unassuming as usual. If she’d been anyone else, she would have overlooked him entirely.
She slid into the booth next to him and said, “Hi,” head cocked, smiling through her lashes.
Except for a momentary tension in his brows, he reacted in kind. “Well, hi there.”
She estimated she had about thirty seconds to change her appearance.
She yanked the tie out of her hair without a care for the stray hairs she ripped out with it, and shrugged out of her coat, shoving it deeper into the booth, behind his back. She shoved her fingers through her hair, shaking it out of its bun-crimp, and leaned into him, smiling flirtatiously enough to knock a Gundark silly at thirty paces.
He played along, putting his arm around her. It settled warm over her shoulders, and although she was still in deep, she relaxed at its weight.
As the cantina door swooshed open and a set of thudding footsteps carried through, she caught a loose strand of hair and twirled it round her finger. “What you drinking?”
“Banever ale. Have you had it?” Just another couple flirting in a cantina. Nothing to see here.
“Mmm, no. Is it good?” Her eyes flicked past him for a split second, checking the mirror, then locked back on his.
“Pretty good. Want a taste?”
She bit her lip and then smiled. “I’d love a taste.”
He tipped his glass toward her. She pursed her lips, shook her head and said, “No, more like this.” She leaned up against him and pressed her mouth to his.
She felt the shock in the lines of his body, but he was too good to give into that for more than a split second. Then he kissed her back.
He kissed.
Her back.
His stubble scratched her chin and his hand pressed firmly into the small of her back and his lips moved on hers and she thought, Oh, this was a bad, bad idea.
He pulled away as if he’d heard, but only an inch or so. Her breath shuddered out of her lungs.
Did his as well? Or was the echo of her uneven breathing just that loud?
Then she registered that the stormtroopers’ heavy tread had retreated, and the cantina’s front door was swishing closed.
He’d noticed. She hadn’t.
He didn’t let her go.
“Five minutes?” he murmured.
She knew he was asking if they should stay in the cantina longer. She was an idiot for hoping he meant more kissing.
“Give it ten,” she said, and turned her nose into his neck, just like a woman cuddling her lover.
Later, Jyn found him in the front room of their safe house, just switching off a comm. “Retrieval?” she asked, plopped down cross-legged on the floor.
“At dawn,” he said. He seemed distracted. He’d been distracted since the cantina.
Come to that, so had she.
“Why can they never retrieve us at the crack of noon?” she groused.
He smiled a little and put his comm away.
“Listen.”
“Mmm?”
“That - earlier. You know. At the cantina. You know.”
His eyes moved to hers.
“That was just to sell it,” she said quickly. “And - and camouflage myself. That’s all.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was good thinking.”
“Right,” she said. “Just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“I did,” he said.
“Well, good.” She got to her feet. “I’m turning in. Got to be sharp at kriffing dawn, after all.”
She left him behind and curled up in her bed, cursing herself for being disappointed.
FINIS