Chapter One: Breathlessly Anticipating the Unknown


Location: the Grand Ballroom of the palace


At any given moment, Jyn's bra could start vibrating.

She could hardly stand it.

This was it. This was everything. The suspense of this momentous moment was about to put her in an early grave.

If any of the other guests at the ball notice her squirming, they're too proper to say anything. She's the Princess, after all. No one would dare reprimand her in public.

"The introductions shall begin in a few minutes. Please form an orderly line"

Krennic, the official majordomo for the royal family, makes the announcement and Jyn feels her heart sink. They've only just begun. This party could go on for hours. She was supposed to in bed by now. Safely aware from the gossiping eyes of the guests and the ever-vigilant glare of her personal security guards.

Now she's going to be too late. She's going to miss her window of opportunity and all of this will have been for nothing. It's enough to make a weaker woman burst into hysterics.

Not Jyn, though. She not any ordinary woman, she's a princess for… goodness sakes. She can make anything possible.

Princess Jyn clasps her hands ladylike in front of her, steadies her breathing, and concentrates on the feeling of hard plastic pressing against her left boob.

Come on, Cassian. Please call. Please please call. Get me out of here before I lose my mind...


Princess Jyn Erso's Never-Ever-Have-I-Ever (But I've Got to at Least Once Before I Die) List: Items One and Two:

1) Have a secret lover

2) Sneak out of the palace for a night of doing whatever the hell I want


"My Lady, allow me to introduce Count..." a pause long enough to be significant and make Jyn feel a flush of sympathy for her majordomo, "Count… Ergoawkkrieggrekstein."

Jyn is far too well trained to flinch, but Count Erwhatshisname has a look of tangible pain in his eyes as he bows to kiss her hand, silently telling her that's not even close to how his last name is actually pronounced.

"Charmed to make your acquaintance," Jyn curtseys, tipping her chin down in a display of politeness that also allowed her to check on the placement of her phone hidden in her décolletage.

Nope, nothing yet. No titillating tingle to tell her it's time.

The palace ballroom was full of people, many of whom were visiting dignitaries that somehow managed to each surpass the other with an even more outlandish and unpronounceable name. What she, Princess Jyn Erso of Vallt, should be doing is paying attention. Some of these people could become her people one day and in the very least she should be trying to memorize their breathtaking names to avoid the inevitable awkwardness in the future.

That's what she should be doing. What she actually was doing was pretending to pay attention while secretly holding her breath and counting the seconds until Cassian gives her the titty-vibrate she's been waiting for.

As soon as he calls, she'll faint. Figuratively. She will feign her faint. Then, once she's safely been taken back to her room and the lights turned out, it will be go-time.

"Your Highness, I present Lord and Lady Esse."

S? Is their last name just one letter, or did she mishear it? Either way, she's 'delighted that they could come'.

Could come for the questionable honor of watching her stand in creeping discomfort for the next few hours. Then, when the party begins in earnest after all these dreadful introductions and ceremony are taken care of, she'll be safely swept away to bed before even a glimpse of potentially scandalous behavior could taint her eyes and ears.

Life is so unfair.

A soft hum comes from behind her. Jyn realizes that she had been caught scowling by one of her attendants. She immediately schools her expressions and bends down slightly, extending her hand low so that the vertically-impaired Lord Sczkzyrzk can kiss it. Ugh, germs. Vile habit carried over from the days of old. She can't get out of here fast enough.

Then, as she starts to pull back, disaster strikes.

Her phone vibrates with the call right at that moment, the one second she hadn't been anticipating it. It oscillates silently, but it startles her nonetheless. Her hand flies up, clipping Lord Sczwhatever in the chin, and causing him to spill the drink in his free hand on her dress.

The uproar is intense and ridiculously out of proportion. Jyn is immediately surrounded by her attendants. They're fluttering over her, trying to pat her dress dry so that the delicate antique silk won't stain, and she has to keep pushing their hands back so they don't feel her phone while all the while accepting Lord Shishakbob's apologies and her parents are going to hear about this and she'll have to endure a lecture from Kay and her father and-

Her phone slides out and lands by her feet.

Somehow it had squivveled its way down the front of her dress during all the ruckus and now it's sitting there between her satin heels. Fallen in plain sight and if anyone, anyone were to glance down it would all be over.

No. Unacceptable. Absolutely intolerable.

There's only one thing she can do about it. Jyn hadn't planned on fainting until the champagne made its first round, but now this dreadfully proper or just plain dreadful evening has left her no choice.

She collapses strategically. Blinking rapidly for preliminary effect then starting to swoon. Her majordomo is by her side in instant, trying to keep her on her feet but she dodges while hiding the move with a dramatic palm to her forehead. The other hand happens to fall under her butt as she full-on collapses, the shocked gasps and cries of the room full of onlookers coloring her face red but at least making it look more convincing.

Then it's simply a quick matter of grabbing her phone and shoving it into one of the long sleeves of her dress before faking her ruse completely and closing her eyes.


Location: a quiet street a few blocks outside of the palace


Cassian couldn't stop gripping the steering wheel. It was almost like his life depended on it, which in a very real way it did. Or at least his sanity.

The gesture was also entirely superfluous, considering that the engine isn't even on, but it helps him feel more in control of the situation. Plus, if his hands were free, he knows that he'd be fiddling with his phone nonstop, obsessively checking it to make sure the battery, screen, signal, and everything else was functioning correctly.

"Chill out, Cas. You're making me nervous."

The pointed look Cassian shoots to his partner in crime is ignored completely, bouncing off the man's thick mental shields as effectively as a fish colliding into the glass walls of its aquarium.

"Bodhi, did it ever occur to you that you should be nervous, too? I'm not just in this alone. I go down, you go down."

Bodhi shrug and reaches down to the side of his seat, setting the lever into full recline. He crosses his hands over his stomach, staring up at the elegantly marbled leather of the car's ceiling like he's stargazing. Cassian has to fight the urge to sucker punch him in the gut.

"That's where you're wrong, my friend," Bodhi says. "You go down for this and I squeal louder than a damn stuck pig. I'll throw you under that bus so damn fast It will be like this-" He swishes one of his hands through the air, skipping it quicker than the eye can track and Cassian's knuckles pop against the steering wheel.

"So that's how it is, friend? Good to know you've got a knife for my back when I need it."

"Plea deal," Bodhi sounds far too smug. "That's what I'm all about. You get hard time, I get the plea deal. Guaranteed. And do you know why that is?"

Cassian glares sidelong at the phone. The screen remains black. He's not sure which irritation in his life annoys him more right at this moment.

"Don't tell me. You're going to tell me, but don't. Fight the urge."

"Because you're the mastermind in all this. You're the one who started texting the Princess. Started flirting with your special, fancy Lady. I'm just your idiot friend. A patsy in all this."

Cassian's eye starts to twitch when Bodhi pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers him one.

"First off," he says, "you're not my friend. And second you better be damned well blowing that out of the window. Stink up Mon's car with that crap and no 'plea deal' in the world's going to save your hide from her mounting it on the wall."

Bodhi snorts, pushing himself half-upright onto his elbows before lighting his smoke and taking a drag. Cassian lets go of his death choke on the steering wheel for only long enough to turn the key halfway into the ignition and roll down his not-friend's window.

"I can't believe we stole Mon's car," he mumbles, scratching his chin as the twitching begins to migrate down the side of his face. "I can't kriffing believe it. We're dead. She catches us and we're dead."

Bodhi obligingly exhales out the window and Cassian's eyes bug when a few tendrils of smoke still manage to curl their way inside and caress the ceiling upholstery.

"Mon told us to get a hot story or not bother coming in tomorrow, Cas. That's exactly what we're doing. We've just… borrowed the company car. She'll understand."

"Yeah, no, Mon definitely won't. We get the story and she may forgive us and not fire us on the spot. We're still going to get lectured for hours. No escaping that. Maybe even demoted to the editing room."

"Beats being homeless which is at the back end of the domino effect if we show up tomorrow empty handed."

"So you keep saying. Have you ever even been to the editing room? It's terrifying and I hate it in there. There's literally only one light bulb and the everyone's hunched over their proof desks looking at me like my name's Esmeralda."

Bodhi snorts and shrugs, a portrait of insouciance. Sometimes Cassian envies him. To be so simpleminded and not have a care in the world, even when faced with the looming cloud of highly probably incarceration hanging over his head.

"They'd bitchify you in ten minutes," Cassian mutters, finally giving into the temptation and checking his phone. The background image of the Princess, a 99% sweet and 1% saucy selfie she had sent him last night, brightens up the screen.

"Nothing?" Bodhi asks.

Cassian shakes his head.

"I guess that's a good thing, then. She said she send a message if she needed to call the whole thing off. No message and it's still a go."

That's the plan. Pretty much all of the plan, unfortunately. Princess Jyn doesn't call soon, that means a green light. Come midnight he'll call her and…

"Got any kriffing idea how we're going to get her out of there?"

Bodhi flicks the stub of cigarette number one out the window and immediately starts on its brother in line. This chain smoking the only outward sign he's given all night that maybe, just maybe, he's a little worried about how all this is going to go down too.

"Princess says she's got that figured out. 'Have the engine running and I'll be there'. Her exact words."

"And if she doesn't show up?"

Bodhi shrugs. If he does that one more time Cassian really will punch him in the gut.

"Then we wait here until our asses fall asleep in the seat and then we sneak Mon's car back, go home, and start polishing off our resumes."

It's a grim thought. If Cassian's resume had anything worth polishing, he wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. Not to mention, dare to dream, he might actually have made enough money to have his own car and not have to steal his boss's chic ride

With nothing else to do, he fidgets, tapping his fingers against the dashboard. Smacking the pad of each digit three times against the polished surface until Bodhi stops him with a nudge of his knee.

"Fingerprints. Don't leave a mark. And also, that's annoying."

Cassian stops. Waits three seconds Four. Five. Then he checks his phone again.

"11:56," he announces.

"Four minutes to go."

"I don't want to wait four minutes."

Bodhi shrugs. Grunts when Cassian drops the phone onto his stomach from a good height.

"Then call her, my friend. Fortune favors the brave. Or-" Bodhi picks up the phone by a corner, swinging it from side to side like a pendulum, "Or I can call her. Pretend to be you. I'll write something really sweet and beautiful, too. Promise."

Cassian snatches the phone away. His thumb hovers over the contacts.

"This is.. this is our last chance to bail," he offers. "We can still walk away from this."

Cigarette two gets flicked out the window and number three gets shaken out of the box.

"Cassian," Bodhi gives him a simpering look, reaching out and tugging on his sleeve until his hand gets slapped away. "You are my friend, my coworker, my roommate, and my platonic life partner, so I mean it when I say this-"

Cassian rubs his temples, wincing over how much wrong there is in his life right now. Oh dear gods Bodhi please shut up.

"Go on," his friend continues. "Make the call. Go get your girl."

No point in taking a deep, steadying breath or counting to ten. They wouldn't have made a difference. Bodhi, for all his uncountable flaws, actually did give him a pretty decent pep talk right now.

Cassian presses her name and taps out a simple, to the point message.

11:58. Close enough will have to do.

Now it's time to wait and see what 'his girl' has in store for the evening.


The first time Cassian sees his Princess in real life is when she bounds up to him, throwing herself into his arms, and then promptly crawls into the trunk of his boss's car.

"Hi," was all she'd said, but her smile had stretched wide enough to make dawn come early.

Cassian, being the suave and gracious gentleman that he aspires to be, had been sufficiently caught off guard by her presence that he could only stammer out an apology before she'd dived out of sight.

"Try not to hit any potholes!" she'd chirped, her voice coming from below all muffled and tinny. He and Bodhi exchange a look of great significance.

"That was easy," he comments, hands fumbling briefly with the door to the driver's side.

"Yes."

"Too easy."

"Absolutely."

The drive off the palace ground was fraught with white-knuckled tension, barely two words spoken, and constant, obsessive glances at every mirror, rear view and sides.

And it went off without a hitch. Cassian could later swear that he felt five years of his life leaving him as they were stopped by the security at the front gates. An elaborate story had been prepared and at the ready. Both he and Bodhi were on the same page of exactly what they were going to say if there was trouble. They were reporters covering the evening's meet and greet but, unfortunately, her Majesty had taken unwell. Yes yes, of course, our name's on the list. We've booked this weeks in advance, but if you must call our supervisor to check, her number is-

"ID."

Many people would make the mistake of thinking that a royal palace would feature a state of the art, almost Fort Knox level of protection complete with armed guards, watchtowers, and perhaps even roaming packs of highly trained security dogs.

Instead, the graveyard shift gate attendant is a weedy old man well past the standard retirement age. He couldn't be bothered to get up out of his chair and so Cassian has to half-crawl out, half groin himself on the driver's window edge to reach over enough to hand him their press IDs. They are given no more than cursory glance, followed by a frowning at Bodhi's unnecessarily wide grin on his ID which just so happened to match the expression on his face right now as he waved. Without another word the gate opened, the Princess in the trunk stayed pitch silent, and Cassian has to fight ever instinct in his body to burn rubber out of there.

And he's completely sure he doesn't breathe once on the whole ride back.


Location: Cassian and Bodhi's humble apartment


"So how did you do it?"

Bodhi fills Princess Jyn's glass with champagne, cheap champagne, and her eyes light up as the honey colored fizz froths up right to the edge of her glass.

"I pretended I was asleep and then crawled out though the open window."

"That's it?"

She shrugs, smiling over the rim of her glass and Cassian can't help but notice that she's subtly been avoiding looking at him, only ever at his not-friend. Whenever she does, whenever she risks a peek and their eyes meet, the prettiest of flushes tints her cheeks.

Maybe the cheap booze might have something to do with that as well, though Cassian prefers to think it's more than simply that.

"I would have thought you'd have to put on a disguise or drug your personal security phalanx. Nothing though? Makes the story a bit dull if you ask me."

She laughs then, a bubbly champagne sort of giggle. Apparently she's much more amused by Bodhi's attempt at wit than Cassian was.

The, when she looks at him for another second, there's a twinkle in her eye.

"This isn't the first time I've sneaked out of the Palace, you know."

Cassian shoulders Bodhi aside, elbowing him subtly in the ribs enough times to earn him a dark look as his unspoken message gets received.

"Got to make a phone call," Bodhi mutters, shoving the whole bottle of champagne into the Princess's eager arms. "You two crazy kids try and keep your hands off each other while I'm out."

Princess Jyn presses her lips together firmly, the corners of her eyes crinkling as if she was trying very hard to not grin.

A silence falls between them as Cassian struggles to find something to say. This was his idea. He'd started this all those months ago, never daring to dream that it would culminate like this: with a blushing Princess in his humble living room, clutching a Brand:Generic champagne bottle to her chest and looking so damn pretty that he's left at a loss for words.

When it becomes clear that her shy beau isn't going to do much more than stare at her, the Princess herself takes the initiative.

"Sooo… what's on schedule for tonight? You've got a big night planned for me?"

She steps forward, unhugging the bottle and wiggling it suggestively as she closes half the distance between them. Cassian can feel his heart rate start to spike when he can see Bodhi in the background, lurking outside the windows to the patio with his phone in his hand as he brazenly films them. If she were to turn around, she'd see him.

That snaps Cassian out of his pretty-girl induced paralysis. The other half of his personality, the smooth, swift talking operator who's been known to charm their assignments into perhaps revealing more than they had in mind, springs into action.

Deftly he takes the bottle from her, holds her glass and his right next to each other and fills them up together at once without spilling a drop. Princess Jyn's grin widens, her pretty little teeth sinking into the corner of her pretty little bottom lip before she takes her drink from him with a gracious tip of her head

"Tonight, Princess," he says, "we're going to do exactly what I promised you: we're going to do whatever the hell you want to."

He plays up his accent on those last six words, hoping and winning at making her champagne-flush deepen. Maybe it's because she's two drinks in now, but she's not looking away so much.

Or maybe it's because Bodhi's finally taken a hike, albeit not very far.

Jyn sidles forward, bringing them into a conspiratorial closeness.

"You know," she whispers, "there is something that I've always wanted to try."

Her smile changes, turning more sly than open and earnest like it had before. In the background their voyeur gives him a thumbs up. Between those two Cassian is more than just outnumbered, he's downright outclassed.

Somehow he has a feeling he's not going to like what she's about to say, but he has to ask it anyhow.

"Go ahead, Princess. I'm all ears."


Author's Note:

You ever write something and you have absolutely no idea if it's any good or not? Random doubts aside, Roman Holiday is one of my all-time favorite films. I'm hoping to touch on all the right tropes but still give it a modern twist.

Next chapter is up and ready. I was going to publish them as one but it was getting kind of long.