Author's Note: This takes place before "I Could Fall In Love (in Corpus Christi)". In my head, this is how Jyn and Cassian met in my tragic, tragic AU. I am sorry if this one is a bit off. I am not at all skilled in writing happy stories and this borders on being fluff. Who would've thought!
The story is gifted to guineapiggie and Raphale who have been incredibly generous and supportive of this series. Happy Valentine's Day, guys!
And remember. Reviews are (almost) better than Bodhi and Jyn as besties. So please leave one (or several) if you can.
Happy reading!
I would rather be looking at you
than all the portraits in the world.
Frank O'Hara
You go to my head
And you linger like a haunting refrain
And I find you spinning round in my brain
Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne
.
.
.
She sits in the interrogation room like she is preparing for battle - arms crossed, lips pursed, head tilted up a little in a prideful kind of way, her foot tapping deliberately (annoyingly) on the floor like a deadly metronome.
She is shorter than Cassian has expected, and prettier too - if he could only allow himself to dwell on the thought for too long. There is something about her that draws the eye. If pressed, he would say that it is the way she holds herself like she doesn't give a fuck even when her eyes burn and scorch like she does. (And maybe far too much.)
"All yours, Andor."
The detective who just came out of the interrogation room hands Cassian the file with a smirk and a shrug of the shoulders that Cassian interprets to mean 'good luck with that.'
"Where did you grab her from?" he asks.
"Her flat downtown," says the other detective. "Nearly didn't catch her in time. She's small, but a feisty little thing, no doubt about it. Her roommate put up a hell of a fight too."
"Roommate?" Cassian frowns, looking up from the file that he's been flipping through. "What roommate?"
"Dunno. Some middle eastern British guy."
"Oh, yes. Him." Cassian remembers seeing a man of that description on his way into the precinct earlier. The man - bearded, jumpy and nervous-looking - has been sitting in the waiting room since before five in the morning. "She gave a statement?"
"She told me that she did nothing wrong and that I should go fuck myself. Is that considered a statement?"
Cassian bites back a bizarre desire to smile. He closes the file and tugs it under his arm.
"Good enough. I'll see what I can do. And get me Kay from forensic."
The man makes no attempt to hide his frustration. He glowers at Cassian as though he would rather drive pins into his eyes than do what he's being asked to do.
"This is an interrogation, Andor. Detectives only."
"I am the best detective we have," says Cassian, the neutral tone of his voice turning hard. "Would you like to take the matter up with Inspector Draven?"
"No." The glower turns into a grimace. He shoves his hands into his pockets. "No. I'll get Kay."
"Good," says Cassian. He is about to open the door of the interrogation room when he turns around again, a thought coming to him. "Oh. And bring the new guy too."
"The new guy."
"Yes. What's his name? The one who sits two desks down from me."
"Kes Dameron? Seriously?"
"Yes. Dameron. Bring him too. About time we have some brains on the force."
Her eyes explore him slowly, trailing up from his boots before finally resting on his face. A crease appears on her forehead and she shifts a little in her seat, her foot ceasing its tapping.
"You don't look like an idiot," she remarks like it is the most obvious thing in the world.
He is about to take his seat opposite hers and he pauses at her words.
"Excuse me?"
She shrugs - a gesture all laced with confidence.
"Am I wrong?" she asks.
He thinks that this must be a trick. But what kind of trick… well, he is not so sure. What he is sure about, though, is that he is treading on dangerous grounds with this woman.
"Jyn Erso," he says, sitting down and opening the file. "That is your name, isn't it?"
She flinches a little as though the name is an insult. The syllable comes out like a bite: "Yes."
"British citizen. On your own from when you were fifteen years old ever since your family passed away. Here in the United States on a green card but with no solid record of employment anywhere. Impressive, to say the least."
"'Impressive' is a relative term."
He ignores the glib response, keeping his eyes trained on the paper in front of him.
"Your records are clean - no charges filed against you, no major arrests, not even a DUI. And yet I have sources that have mentioned a woman of your…" He allows his gaze to quickly sweep over her face, across her eyes, her lips, her overall infuriating expression. "…your likeness having been involved in armed robberies and high-profile cases of art and identity thefts."
"I have one of those faces," she says, barely missing a beat. "I'd describe it as common."
I wouldn't, he thinks, but he makes sure his eyes immediately return to the file. He pulls out a couple of photographs and slides it across the table to her. The pictures are not of the highest quality - grainy, blurry, with distinct watermarks - but there is no mistaking the woman in them. She is half-facing the camera, with her balaclava scrunched down around her neck.
Jyn barely glances at them. "That's not me."
The audacity! He swallows down the urge to laugh and says: "It sure looks a lot like you."
"Like I said. I have one of those faces."
"Miss Erso," he forces a sigh, running a hand through his hair, "let me tell you a little story." He reaches over and takes back one of the photos. "These were taken by a security camera a month ago on Friday the fourteenth of March at the New York Metropolitan Museum. The next morning, several of the museum's prized portraits were reported stolen. Two weeks later, they showed up on the black market, being sold by one of the biggest gangs in the city. Then, three nights ago, the museum was broken into again."
"I don't know how - "
"It is unlikely that you were personally responsible for the latest break in. But I have it on good information that the robbery was conducted based upon your involvement back in March. Suffice to say, your previous employees, whoever they are, took matters into their own hands and did the job themselves this time."
"I take it back. You are an idiot," she says, frowning and glaring at him. "This is all unsubstantial evidence. You have no real proof that I did anything wrong."
"I have sources - "
"Sources who are willing to go on record?"
"Sources who are reliable."
He has avoided answering her question directly because, of course, his sources will never go on record. But from the way her eyes are gleaming, he is certain that she sees right through his little deflection.
Again. Dangerous grounds.
"It's a free country," she says easily, recrossing her arms. "I have a right to go to museums."
He raises an eyebrow. "In a balaclava?"
"What can I say? It's what the cool kids are wearing these days in London. I'm a follower of fashion, you see."
He almost smirks, because despite his limited knowledge of fashion, he doubts that what she has on now makes her statement true in any kind of way.
"What are the kids wearing where you're from, detective?" she asks. She's said the word 'detective' in a mocking tone, and her lips curl. "Actually, where are you from?"
"Where I'm from has nothing to do with the issue at hand."
"If I were to guess, I'd say Mexico. Curious." She turns her head to the side, appraising him with a look that says the ball is now in his court. "Why did you leave home to become a detective in the States, I wonder? What did you hope to find here?"
Penance.
He brings his hands together, lacing his fingers into a fist. He cannot tell her the truth, he knows that, but he has to tell her something.
"We all have our stories, don't we, Miss Erso?" he says, and he is glad to hear that his voice sounds calm and collected. "I think that you have a few of your own."
She does not respond - she just looks at him with those hard, determined eyes. She is good, very good; no one has ever managed to keep him on his toes in quite this way before. If he were to be honest with himself, he would admit that he doesn't know what this actually means. He needs to play the ace now, he realises, before things get even more out of hand.
So he pulls out another photograph and tosses it over to her.
This time, he gets the reaction that he is looking for. Her eyes grow wide and her smile slips when she picks up the photo.
"What is this?"
"His name is Pedro Gonsalez. He was forty two years old. He had a wife, a daughter and a son. As you can see from his uniform, he was a security guard at the museum."
The playfulness has disappeared from her expression. Her lips become a thin, unforgiving line.
"I don't understand."
"When your previous employees robbed the museum three nights ago on your information, they came across Mister Gonsalez. It's fair to say that your employees came out of the encounter more…alive than Mister Gonsalez did."
He knows his description of the crime could be less inconsiderate, but he has been a detective long enough to know that subtlety usually gets him nowhere. Sure enough, upon hearing his words, she bites her lips, her eyes blazing with fury.
"I don't know what went wrong," she says tightly and stubbornly. "I wasn't there."
"I know." He produces another photograph of the corpse and slides it across the table. She catches a glimpse of it and turns away quickly. "But I bet you know the people who were. We need names."
She stares at him, her right hand curling into a fist. She doesn't say anything. She doesn't even move, but her gaze alone manages to chill him to the bone.
It is a strange sensation, he thinks, to be afraid of something but still wanting to be close to it at the same time. Is there a word for this?
Foolishness, says a voice in his head that sounds remarkably like Kay's. Foolishness and naivety.
"I'm not a murderer," she says finally and he catches the plea behind those syllables.
He swallows down his better judgement. "I believe you."
"So let me go then," she says, her eyes still boring into his and making him notice how green hers are. "Let me go and I'll give you the names."
"Don't let her go," says Kay. He has his arms crossed and he is looking through the one-way glass at Jyn with a truly distrustful expression on his face.
"I say let her go," says Kes Dameron. He is leaning against the wall, an amused smile on his lips. "You can trust her. She likes you."
Cassian avoids responding to that by taking a gulp of his hot coffee.
"You can't be serious, Dameron," says Kay. "The woman is as honest as you are funny. Which is to say not at all."
Dameron does not look offended. Instead, his smile widens into a grin.
"Don't you detectives have a method for this kind of interrogation?" asks Kay. "The carrot and the stick or something similar to that?"
Cassian scoffs and his gaze passes briefly over the woman behind the glass.
"She is the type of girl who would break the stick and then bite off the carrot and spit it in my face."
"My kind of woman," says Dameron, who seems to be enjoying this much more than Kay is.
"I can't make any of the charges stick," says Cassian, shaking his head. "She's right. There's not enough evidence."
"The minute you let her go," says Kay, glaring at him, "she's going to disappear without telling you anything."
"I disagree," says Dameron.
Cassian knows that it is up to him to make the final decision. So he looks back at her again, still sitting in the room and glaring in their direction like she knows that they are there.
Of course she knows that they are there, he corrects himself quickly. This is definitely not her first rodeo.
"Give it another hour," he says, taking another sip of the coffee. "I'll talk to her again in an hour. Maybe she'll change her mind by then."
Dameron shrugs carelessly, but Kay shakes his head at Cassian like he is the most foolish person in the world.
Cassian puts the cup down in front of her before taking his seat.
"What is this?" she asks, lifting an eyebrow sceptically.
"Coffee. Obviously."
"I didn't ask for a coffee."
"Did you want tea?"
"I didn't ask for anything at all."
"Oh, but that's not true, is it, Miss Erso?" He takes a drink from his own cup and smiles. Two can play that game. "You asked for me to let you go."
"In exchange for information."
"Based on your word."
Her eyes narrow piercingly. "You don't trust me."
"I trust you as much as you trust me."
A small, brief movement as her hand twitches a little. She gets the message alright. He trusts her as much as she trusts him, which is to say not at all. She looks quite amazed by it - as though she is surprised that he has managed to figure it out.
"What is your name?" she asks, her voice dropping to a curious whisper. "You know mine. The least you can do is give me yours."
Cassian can almost feel Kay's gaze burning holes in the back of his head from behind the glass.
"You can address me as detective," he says, keeping his expression impassive.
Her eyes does not leave his face.
"Well, detective. Do you know that trust goes both ways?"
And surprisingly, to Cassian's horror, his chest tightens at her question. It takes an age for him to respond. He swears she can hear how fast his heart is pounding. It is that word. Trust.
(For him, the word has always been laced with memories, littered with bullets and bloodstains, yet it has sounded so simple and honest when uttered from her lips.)
"Cassian," he says. "My name is Cassian."
"Well, Cassian." (His name rolls off her tongue much easier than he'd thought it would.) "If you let me go, you can trust me to keep my end of the bargain." She reaches over, taking the cup he has set down for her. She takes a sip and grimaces. "I'd even buy you a cup of coffee, come to think of it."
He finds the offer appealing, he realises with regret. But he lifts a hand to scratch at his beard, making sure that he looks as uninterested as possible.
"There is always your roommate," he says carefully. It is a last-ditch attempt and he hates himself for it. "We can always charge him with assault against a police officer. I heard he put up quite a scene."
She tenses immediately. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," she says, and there is a steel to her voice that he has not heard before.
"Are you threatening an officer of the law?"
"I bloody well am."
"Who is he to you then? Friend? Boyfriend?" He hesitates a little. "Husband?"
A hint of a blush creeps up her cheeks, but it disappears as quickly as it came. Her anger, however, does not fade.
"He walks," she says sharply, her fingers digging into the surface of the table. "If you use him as leverage, you can forget about making deals altogether. And I will personally make sure that this god awful cup of coffee is force fed into your blood stream in the most painful way possible. Are we clear?"
"Make the deal," says Dameron, sighing as though the whole thing has become very boring.
"Don't make the deal," says Kay, glaring at Cassian. "I don't know what is wrong with you. It is painfully obvious. She cannot be trusted."
"She seems like she wants to make an effort," says Cassian softly.
Kay's glare hardens even more. "She offered to buy you coffee, Cassian. I could buy you coffee. Dameron could buy you coffee. Even the bloody queen of England could buy you coffee. The difference is that the three of us would not slit your throat and leave you with no leads afterwards."
"I have no other choice."
"Do the case without her."
"I can't," says Cassian, his voice rising a little.
Kay's expression shifts and he looks worried for the first time that day. "Why not?" he asks, his arms dropping to his side. "Why not, Cassian?"
There is a tinge of desperation to Kay's question, an almost heartbreaking need to understand. Cassian looks away from his friend and he feels guilt rising up in his chest.
What did you hope to find here?
Trust goes both ways.
"Kay," he says finally, and with a heavy note of apology in his tone, "I just can't."
Kay blinks once. Twice. He looks at Cassian as though he is seeing a complete stranger.
"Suit yourself then," he mutters eventually, his voice cutting through the air like ice. "Do what you want. And after she has spat you back out, don't come crying to me for help."
He walks behind her as he escorts her out of the precinct. He can see how tense her shoulders are - how she keeps looking from left to right as though she is expecting to be stopped at any moment. He feels a dreadful urge to reach out and put a hand there at her back. To reassure her, maybe, or to let her know that he has every intention of keeping his word. But before he can do anything, a voice rings out.
"Jyn!"
It is her roommate - the one Cassian has spotted this morning on his way into work. The man runs up to them, his face wrecked with both relief and exhaustion.
"Bodhi!" cries Jyn, and she tugs Bodhi in close to her, wrapping an arm around him in a tight, hurried embrace.
"Jyn, are you okay? I thought - I thought - "
"I'm fine. Don't worry. Why are you still here? Bodhi, there was no need - "
"Of course there was! I didn't know what was happening and they wouldn't tell me anything! And Jyn - " Bodhi suddenly notices Cassian and his eyes widen in surprise. "Who are you?"
"Bodhi," says Jyn, disentangling herself from her friend and throwing Cassian a look he can't read properly, "this is… this is Cassian."
"Who is Cassian?"
"He's a detective."
"A detective?"
Cassian nods. "I'm trying to help," he says.
Of course, this is not entirely true, but he feels a strange desire to appease them both - to let them know that he is not trying to catch them out.
"We're going for coffee," says Jyn.
The way she's said it makes the heat rise in Cassian's face. Bodhi, however, just stares at them in disbelief.
"Coffee?"
"It's a work thing," she says quickly. "It's for…work."
"I don't - I don't understand," Bodhi stammers.
"It's part of a deal."
"There's nothing to worry about," Cassian cuts in, feeling like he really needs to explain himself. "I'm not arresting her. I just need some information."
"Valuable information," says Jyn, nodding. "Very valuable."
Bodhi's eyes flicker back and forth between Cassian and Jyn, and he looks extremely uncomfortable when he asks: "Is that - is that a euphemism for something?"
"Oh no!" gasps Cassian immediately. "Oh god, no!"
"Oh, well, that's good. It's not like I thought it was, it's just - "
"Of course it's not!"
"I'm sorry, I was - "
"Bodhi, it's fine," interrupts Jyn. She reaches out a hand, touching him gently on the arm. "Trust me. We talked it out. It's a good thing."
"A good thing? How can it be a good thing?"
Cassian sees her faltering; her eyes don't quite meet Bodhi's.
"I'll tell you about it later," she whispers to him. "It's a long story. You wouldn't like it."
"I'm not sure about - "
"Go home, Bodhi, okay? I know you haven't slept the entire night."
"I'm good, Jyn. Really."
"No, you're not. And I'm fine. Alright? I'll be…" Her eyes find Cassian's again and she looks away very quickly. "I'll be safe."
Bodhi stares accusingly at Cassian for a moment too long before his gaze returns to Jyn. He sighs, and his thumb rubs circles on her arm.
"Okay," he says. "Okay. But be careful."
Her lips twitch into a smile. "I'm always careful."
Bodhi snorts but pulls her in for one last embrace. Then he nods stiffly at Cassian before taking his leave.
After Bodhi has gone through the door, Jyn lets out a long sigh and turns around to Cassian once more. She looks cautious, almost fearful, when she asks: "So what now?"
Cassian finds himself smiling at her question. Something is fluttering inside his chest, glowing and struggling desperately to get out. He is not used to this. He is not used to this at all. But somehow, maybe for the first time in his life, he allows himself to enjoy the sensation for a moment longer than he knows he should.
"Well, now we have coffee."
"Ah, yes," she says and she moves a step closer to him despite the cautiousness that's still dancing in her eyes. She looks up into his face and the entire precinct seems to shrink in all around them. "But I suppose the question is…who's buying?"
"I thought you were offering."
"Was I?"
"I'm pretty sure your exact words were, 'I'd even buy you a cup of coffee'."
Her eyebrows quirk up. "Been remembering, have you?"
"A little bit," he admits because he can't quite help himself. "The thing is, Jyn Erso…" He moves a step closer too and he can see the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the way her hair moves gently across her face. "I think you're quite unforgettable."
And if he takes pleasure in the way she blushes at his words, or at the way she can't quite meet his eye afterwards, he doesn't let himself admit it until much, much later.
Though I'm certain that this heart of mine
Hasn't a ghost of a chance in this crazy romance
You go to my head
You go to my head
.
.
.
Author's Note: Cassian is crushing hard, guys. Thank you to Billie Holiday's "You Go To My Head" for the lyrics and the story title. And for those who have seen Luke Cage, I'm sure the idea of Jyn and Cassian 'getting coffee' means something more to you. *wink wink*
Again, not one of my best, I have to admit, but please still let me know what you thought!