sleepykalena:

Because I was talking to @crazy-fruit about how I wanted to put in a scene of Jyn eating fruit in chapter 5 of Tension, I scrapped up this scene and it didn’t turn out half-bad. Not sure how much of this I’ll use (if any) in the next chapter, but I think it might be worth a read either way:

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Jyn looked like she had something on her mind, but Cassian could only venture a guess as her eyelashes fluttered and her lips parted just enough for him to see her front teeth peeking out. Her lips formed a shape that he only imagined seeing in the darkest reaches of his mind, accessible only at nights and when he found himself alone and frustrated, and-

There was a dribble of juice leftover from the fruit she ate, and she hadn’t yet noticed.

She tilted her head. “Cassian?”

His fingers twitched, and he tried to fight with his own instincts, which were urging him to reach out and touch her lips. He wanted to, but he couldn’t. He could just tell her to wipe her mouth, joke that perhaps she hadn’t learn proper table etiquette, but now…

“Is there something on my face?” she asked, and no sooner had she said that did she start reaching around for a napkin.

Failing to find one, she made herself ready to turn away from him to ask someone to give her one of their own, but before Cassian could tell himself to stop doing it, a part of him witnessed, in slow motion, his hand reaching out for her face. His hand cupped her cheek, and she froze as he gently nudged her face to turn back towards him.

Stupid, stupid, why did you do this? Cassian asked himself, but the urge was too strong, her eyes already so wide, eyebrows raised, lips parted in surprise yet again as her plump lower lip glistened a faint pink from the momo stonefruit nectar, and he just couldn’t help himself. Don’t you dare, he warned himself, trying to suppress his urges, feeling his resolve ironically weaken each time he told himself to show some restraint, because that’s what superior officers do, because that’s what partners do, because he owed Jyn that amount of agency.

But then she tilted her head again, her check nuzzling into the palm of his hand, and his body fought harder against his mind. It desired more- he wanted to lick her lips, to suck on the juices there, to bite down on it like the stonefruit that made her messy, and as the sound of Jyn’s elated squeals from eating the fruit bounced around in his mind, his mind wandered yet again as he fantasized what she’d sound like, taste like, feel like, if he devoured her lips the same way.

His methods of self-restraint managed to compromise, however, and his thumb brushed her lower lip to wipe the juice off her lower lip.

“I got it,” was all he could manage to say, having been winded from the battle inside his beating chest, but the words came out breathlessly, something he wouldn’t have noticed if not for her eyelashes fluttering and the small gasp she let out in surprise.

Cassian finally managed to get his brain and his body working in tandem, and he quickly dropped his hand and turned away. “Sorry.”

Jyn was bound to be upset at him for what he’d just done, so he walked off before she could get her hands around his throat for invading her personal space so blatantly. A tiny, minute part of him felt hopeful, however; he wasn’t sure if it was the lighting, or the fact that they were just eating momo stonefruits, but he could’ve sworn that, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her cheeks go flush in the same patterns as the fruit they just indulged in.