"What?," Jyn, Bix and Brasso blurted at the same time, looking at him with surprised faces. When Cassian was going to reply, the waitress came to their table and interrupted the charged moment.
"Hey pals," she greeted breezily. "How are you, lot? Been a long time. And you are new around here, are you not, sweetie?," she added, addressing Jyn, who blushed at the sudden attention and at the cloying moniker.
"Hi, Lana. We've been a bit busy. Ale would be good to me, thanks," Cassian cut the nossy and tactless woman. Lana blabbed and gossiped constantly and had been trying to flirt relentlessly with himself and Brasso every time they'd attended the bar in the past months, what luckily hadn't been often. Cassian hadn't ever been interested in her, not even for hooking up, and he knew that she wasn't Brasso's type either. In addition, Lana also irritated the hell out of Bix, but the three of them had liked that bar for years and an irksome waitress wasn't going to scare them away.
"To me too, thanks," Brasso inserted quickly.
Lana lifted a tattooed eyebrow. "You sure you don't want anything among our selection of rums and whiskeys? Such tough guys like the both of you are so sexy with a tumbler of strong booze in your hands." Cassian and Brasso cringed, whereas Jyn and Bix almost snorted and tried to hide their impulse to laugh at the poor attempt at innuendo, Cassian observed. At least the ridicule situation was helping Jyn to forget her previous anxiety at whatever was bothering her.
"We're good," Cassian cut once more.
"A pity," the waitress said in a fake regretful tone, apparently never taking the hints or giving up. "And you, ladies?" Her tone was cooler with female customers, as if she considered them all potential rivals. Not that they have to make much of an effort to achieve that, Cassian thought mercilessly.
"I'll follow your suggestion tonight, why not," Bix said wryly. "A Corellian whiskey, please."
"That's my girl! Let's teach these craven guys a lesson. And you, dear?," Lana asked Jyn with a glance that suggested that dear was not an epithet she'd apply to any female if she could help it.
"I'll follow your suggestion too." Cassian saw the mocking challenge in Jyn's green eyes, and he almost groaned, both because the fire in her irises almost took his breath away, and because he wished for the earth to swallow him whole.
"Great! We girls are always braver than these chicken men." And with that and a wink from a too much made up eye, Lana turned around and walked away with an exaggerated sway to her hips.
"Wow, she doesn't ever give up on you chicken guys, does she?," Bix teased. "You sure you don't want to sample her strong liquors?"
Cassian made a disgusted face. "Ugh, Bix. Not in a million lifetimes. And that's too crass, even coming from you."
Brasso agreed eagerly. "If I were that desperate, I'd be screwing Jabba the Hutt himself by now."
The women snorted loudly enough to draw the attention of the surrounding people and burst in raucous laughter. Cassian didn't know if he was pleased or mildly worried to see Jyn and Bix exchanging an amused and conspiratorial glance. The two of them conspiring together would be too much. But he was glad that the pair were getting along.
When the guffaws subsided, Bix got serious again and resumed the topic they had been distracted from with Lana's appearance. "You were telling us about your sister."
Cassian felt the thrill on his spine. "I've seen her. She's well. It turns out she's also been searching for me. But in such a vast galaxy, you can imagine it's not easy to locate someone. Now I'm so glad I've never stopped trying." Cassian hesitated for some moments about his next words, but he came to the conclusion that it was safe to reveal to his friends a portion of the truth. "She said she's going to contact me through you, Bix."
The aforementioned raised her eyebrows in astonishment. "Through me?" Then the implication seemed to dawn on her. "She knows the buyer, doesn't she?"
"The buyer?," Brasso interspersed, confused.
Jyn on her part looked as lost as Brasso, also lacking context.
Cassian reflected briefly on how much he could disclose."Yeah, it's a longer story. The buyer is someone who sometimes buys goods from Bix. I had something valuable to sell, he was interested, and we agreed to meet. And he happened to bring Kerri with him. They know each other. They came here for two reasons: because he wanted to do business with me, and because she wanted to see me." It wasn't entirely true, but he couldn't let out that a complete stranger known as The Fulcrum was aiming to recruit him for a mysterious rebel organization to which his sister belonged. He'd given Kerri his word about not divulging those bits of information. "The important thing is that now I have her back."
Bix, who in all probability had been dealing with the buyer for long enough to suspect that there was much more hidden behind the businessman than what he showed off, had the good sense not to pry, and Brasso, always prudent, followed suit.
"I'm happy for you, Cassian," Jyn said with touched sincerity in her tone. "Having a loved one returned to you must be a blessing."
He fixed his stare on her green depths, reading a great grieving there. She'd told that she had been completely alone before he found her. How many loved ones had she lost? It had been excruciatingly hard for him to cope with Kerri's loss. It must have been even harder for her to carry on with her life without any family or friends to rely on, and at such an early age.
He swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. Right that moment, Lana came back with their orders and after some more unrepentant flirting and dreadful innuendo, she finally let them be, to everyone's relief.
Bix, always perceptive, the Force bless her, and having no doubt sensed that the issue of lost family was very delicate for Jyn, changed topics discreetly to safer and more cheery grounds, telling some silly anecdotes from the Salyard, making everybody chuckle. Afterwards, Jyn talked about Peg and that made Cassian and the other two Ferrixians around the table, who had also known Peg for years, recall funny memories from their youth regarding the peculiar woman.