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ruby-red-inky-blue · 6 years ago

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CHRISTMAS REPOST: In den Herzen ist’s warm (Food Travel AU) now with pictures

Germany welcomes them back with a dark sky like wet concrete and light drizzle soaking the specks of snow still left on the grassy patches by the motorway.

“Well, that looks fucking inviting,” Shara says darkly, frowning through the windshield at the big building to the right. “How isn’t it lighter? It’s like two PM.”

Kes groans and rolls his shoulders with a slight grimace. “Where are we again? I lost my schedule.”

“Keeping it professional, Dameron –“

“Dresden,” Cassian says, and after brief consideration digs a scarf out of his backpack.

“This is the one with the Christmas market, right? That looked really nice.”

“Not in this weather it won’t,” Kay says indignantly and pulls the zipper of his jacket shut.

“Where exactly are we?” Shara asks, frowning out through the fogged-up window. “I’m buying a fucking umbrella right now.”

“We’re at the main station,” Draven says, getting to his feet and making his way to the door. “The weather is said to be better tomorrow, so we’ll tape the main bits on the market then. We quite liked the footage we got from you guys just exploring, so we’re giving you the rest of the day, just run around, see what you find. I’m gonna have to borrow Shara and Kes for a bit tonight, but otherwise –“

“Alright.” Cassian nods. “I’d quite like to get some lunch, actually.”

“Maybe go to the old town,” Jyn says. “I’ve seen pictures, it should look nice on camera.”

“Again, not in this weather,” Shara repeats, tucks her hair underneath her hood and steps out of the bus with a face like she was about to brave a hurricane.

Cassian shrugs. “We’ll find something.”

The cold drizzle feels just as unpleasant as it looked from inside the air-conditioned bus, and there’s also a sharp wind that he was absolutely not prepared for within the confines of the city.

“Hotel is that way?” Kes asks, turning to Draven.

“No, that way.” The director frowns at the grey sky in annoyance, then makes his way around the building with long steps.

“By the way, remember how they’ve thrown some of the footage from the last few weeks together for the first trailer?” Luke asks, his usual chipper mood unaffected by the unpleasant weather. “It looks like it screened really well with our test audiences –“

“Yeah, that was all me,” Kes says with a smirk, which actually elicits a scoff from their director.

“We edited all of your abysmal camerawork out, of course, Dameron.”

“Yeah. Never change careers, Kes,” Jyn says, and Cassian smiles faintly into his scarf while Dameron rolls his eyes at her.

“You just don’t want to admit you have a natural talent in your midst –“

“Guys, I wasn’t finished,” Luke says loudly, laughing. “So it did well with the screen audience, and we’re about to drop the trailer probably tomorrow.”

Cassian nods slowly. “This is the trailer you showed to us in Munich?”

“Yeah, they put some music over it and stuff, but yeah, that’s the one.” Luke buries his hands in his pockets and adds with a grin: “So I need everyone to be a little more active on twitter and stuff, okay?”

“By everyone you mean –“

“Our main man, mostly,” he says pointedly, throwing Cassian a look. “And Jyn, too. People like you, Erso,” he adds when Jyn groans, “the posts with you in did way better than the others! So can you do that, please?”

Jyn just throws Luke a sour look, and Cassian sighs. “Yeah. Sure.”

The main station looks much prettier from the front, but still, his first impression of the city isn’t necessarily impressive – a lot of grey, somehow, though that might be the weather; generic glass buildings, drab blocks of apartments, wide streets lined with trees that look a little sad all wet and with the last few dry leaves clinging to the branches.

“Are you planning to get food afterwards?” Kay asks, catching up with him without any hurry with his ridiculously long legs. “I have read up on the city –“

“Of course,” Cassian says, more to himself, and Kay, as ever, doesn’t pick up on his drop in mood.

“- and there is a historical bridge that might be interesting, a change of scenery, and there is a farmer’s market nearby that should be open for another few hours. It would give you a few nice shots, provide information on local vegetables and such –“

“Yeah,” he mutters absent-mindedly, watching Jyn who’s walking by herself, fallen behind Luke, Shara and Draven. Shara’s and Kes’s needling is annoying when they do it in private, but the fact that they’re not only doing it in public but that people are actually enjoying that so much is clearly not cool with her. He can’t say he’s wild about it, either, but that’s show business, and unlike her, he chose this, and he’ll live with it.

Still. He likes her, even though that’s probably not a productive sentiment, and even though he’d bite off his tongue before he’d admit it – he doesn’t want this to make things weird between them.

(Probably too late for that, now. Goddamn it.)

The farmer’s market is tiny – according to Kay, or more precisely Google, there is a bigger one somewhere else, but it’s on Fridays. Jyn still insists very pointedly on shooting a little footage – he has a feeling she is trying to remind everyone that she is here as a camera operator first and foremost – that he is quick to tell her looks really good.

(Because it does.

Not because he thinks she needs to hear it. It is good. She is a really good camera operator.)

It’s a nice place to shoot, though – many more old houses here, narrower streets and the small cobbled square leading down to the river, with the bridge high above them.

[I forgot they decorate the place too *facepalm* this is the view FROM the bridge, sorry it was too dark for the bridge itself]

It’s called the “Blue Wonder” because it was, supposedly, a striking shade of bright blue once, but it looks fairly grey to him now, which seems to be a bit of a theme in this part of the country. It looks nice, though; the bridge was built around the same time as the Eiffel tower and the architecture does remind him of it. And the view from it down the river is pretty spectacular; the river bank opposite is lined with beautiful villas and little castles far above the water, and the river meandering off into the distance between the green hills makes for a nice sight in and off itself – he can’t tell what direction it flows, so he is left to wonder if he’s staring back towards the Czech Republic or to where the river will eventually lead to the North Sea via Hamburg.

For a moment, his attention is drawn by a small plate on the balustrade. It’s all in German, but the year mentioned – 1945 – catches his eye. He is halfway through slowly entering the text into Google translate when Shara stops a young woman and asks her what it says. After a little back and forth they learn that the bridge, like apparently all other bridges in the city, was supposed to be destroyed at the end of the war in a last-ditch attempt to stop the Red Army from taking the city, but two local men on either side of the bridge decided to risk their lives and cut the fuses to stop the famous landmark from being sacrificed for a lost cause. Of course, Cassian knew that Dresden, simply by virtue of being a big city in Germany, must have been deeply influenced by the war, and he did notice that most of the buildings they passed around the central station looked to be from the sixties or after, but this little plate for the first time makes him realise the weight of it. He wonders how much this bridge must have meant to that generation, if people were willing to risk their lives to preserve that last bit of familiar architecture left standing, and if this bridge still holds that place in people’s heart here now. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Jyn glancing up at the metal structures with a ponderous expression on her face, and he feels like they are thinking the same thing.

There is a big restaurant by the foot of the bridge that serves traditional local cuisine – it looks pretty touristy, there’s a beer garden attached to it, conveniently situated right next to the big bike lane by the river side; but they’re all cold and damp and hungry, so they decide to go for it anyway.

“Soljanka,” Luke reads out, dropping down on a chair with a menu in hand, frowning. “What’s that?”

“Well, it’s listed under soups,” Jyn points out, leaning over his shoulder to get a better view at the menu in his hands. There’s an easiness to that, to the sudden closeness between them, and something twitches in his stomach at the sight of it… he should really get something to eat.

“’sup-ee? That mean soup?”

“We should just ask for an English menu,” Kes says.

“Why? We’ll just point on something and see what we’ll get,” Shara replies, nudging his shoulder. “We can all afford to live a little more dangerously, right, Jyn?” she adds with a wink.

Jyn sighs and absent-mindedly rubs at a spot on the table top, shaking her head.

“That name doesn’t sound very German, right?” Cassian says hastily, which is a very uninformed statement – the only thing he’s gathered about the language so far is that, even though they supposedly spoke German in Munich and they supposedly speak German here, the people sound nothing alike. He wonders if they’d understand each other at all. It’s funny how the language is so different when the cities are only some three-hundred miles apart; if he asked Kay about that he’d probably have some annoyingly logical explanation, but he’s not sure he wants one. It adds to the mystical vibe he gets from this place, somehow. He likes that.

“Nah, sounds kinda Russian, right?” Shara muses, craning her neck to get a glance at the menu.

Kay gives the exasperated sigh Cassian has been somewhat waiting for since they’ve sat down. “Well, yes. It probably is Russian.”

“I’m not great at geography, but aren’t we kinda far from Russia right now?” Luke says with a mocking little grin and Kay throws him a long-suffering look.

“Yes, they don’t share a border with Germany. But Dresden was in Russian-occupied territory after the war, and it was the third-biggest city in the GDR, a state that was extremely closely affiliated with the Soviet Union. Putin was actually stationed here in the Eighties, for the KGB. And there is still a big Russian community here, so yes. That’s probably Russian soup.”

Luke, who has blushed slightly at the callout, rolls his eyes and sits back in his chair. “Thanks, Captain Exposition,” he mutters and hands the menu over to Jyn. “You wouldn’t happen to know what’s in it, too?”

Kes reaches over to the next table and fishes another menu off it, then a triumphant smile tugs at his lips as he flips it open and reads out:

“Soup with beef, ham, sausages, chicken, tomatoes, onions, pickled cucumbers, served with lemon and sour cream.”

Luke frowns. “Okay. So, like, all the meat, basically.”

Jyn smiles faintly and again there’s that twinge in Cassian’s stomach. It hasn’t been that long since breakfast, really.

“Leftovers,” Cassian says with a shrug. “That’s probably what it was at the beginning. Can I see the menu?”

Luke winds up with the soup, mostly because Shara was gearing up to tease him the moment he started looking at other things, and despite the odd combination of ingredients, everyone but Kes agrees it tastes pretty good. Kay and Kes stick with schnitzel and fries, causing Cassian to roll his eyes at them; Shara gets a thick potato stew with sausage in it which is supposedly also a regional classic. Jyn’s dish turns out to be a small ovenproof bowl filled with stewed chicken, mushrooms and a white sauce covered in melted cheese. The young waiter who brings it to their table – presumably their original waiter has sent someone with better English – explains it is traditionally served with Worcestershire Sauce and lemon, and warns her not to touch the hot china with a smile that Cassian finds slightly too friendly. Jyn returns the smile for a moment, too, which makes things worse.

(Aren’t Germans supposed to be closed-off and unfriendly, anyway?)

Jesus, Andor, get a fucking grip, he tells himself and shakes his head, trying to get rid of the thought, and does his best to return his attention to the food.

Because the food is why he’s here.

He notices both Luke’s and Jyn’s meals taste pretty sour, both due to the lemon and the vinegar in the dishes, perhaps so they can be stored longer without going bad; and then there’s the small amount of ingredients in most of them. He doesn’t know much about the history, but he vaguely remembers reading something about unavailability or shortage of certain foods in the GDR, and about how several traditional German recipes now have an Eastern variation because the original ingredients weren’t at hand during the Cold War.

Cassian gets a meal composed of meatballs in béchamel sauce and capers, boiled potatoes and a small salad that he shoves over to Jyn after a glance at her tiny, though very tasty, dish. The first bites of his food are fairly bland, and only after a little while and a mental reminder of the fact that most spices he grew up with don’t grow in this weather and therefore obviously aren’t used in the traditional cuisine does he get over the slightly underwhelming first impression.

“Well?” Luke says, pointing the camera of his phone at him, a brow raised. “What’s the verdict?”

“I like it,” Cassian replies slowly. “It’s very… I don’t know, refined? Simple, though. It’s good.”

“I really like mine, you need to try it,” Jyn adds, even attempting something like a smile for the Instagram viewers. A few more weeks, and she’ll completely upstage him.

(It’s not like he minds. In fact, he sympathises – it seems he can hardly take his eyes off her either.)

They take a trip to the New Town via the – thankfully much less complicated – public transport. No subway in Dresden, just packed tramways; but he enjoys the view of the Old Town from the bridge as they’re crossing the river, and earns an approving grin from Luke when he gets out his phone to film a small clip for Instagram. The New Town was recommended to them for its more international and individual vibes and its general status as the more trendy part of the city. It immediately feels like that, too, filled with graffiti and small kebab joints and little bars and young people. Paradoxically, for the most part the buildings seem older to Cassian than in the Old Town on the other side of the river, and it takes him embarrassingly long to realise that this place probably just wasn’t hit by as many bombs as the other side of the river.

They decide not to get dinner in this part of town as it’s mostly fusion cuisine, but they find a cute little café where they stop for a traditional German coffee-and-cake session. Cassian still isn’t convinced by the overall infatuation Germans have with litres and litres of drip coffee, but the slice of cake he gets – something called Eierschecke, apparently a type of cake the region is famous for – is absolutely delicious. Generally, he decides that so far, this region has mostly been best for cake; Jyn’s slice of apple pie is a perfect balance between sour and sweet, Shara’s poppy seed cake is neither too soggy nor too dry and Luke’s cake, a mixture of cheesecake and chocolate cake that is called Russischer Zupfkuchen but that according to the internet isn’t actually Russian, tastes far better than Cassian expected from that combination.

They return to the Old Town as night falls, and catch a glorious first glimpse of the Christmas markets in every available square, glittering through the damp night as they walk across the bridge. After a little bickering, Kay gets out his camera to film them as they make their way through the crowds by the baroque church dominating the skyline. The building towers over them, warmly illuminated from inside and casting light across the old town square. They pass stand upon stand of food, hot drinks, vendors selling wool items and furs and pottery and traditional wooden and glass Christmas decoration.

The smells around them make their mouths water, sweets and roasted almonds and spices and mulled wine and meat and potatoes and vegetables roasting over open fire, and in the end, despite all the food they’ve already had, they decide to each get a little something. Jyn buys a bowl of steaming hot goulash soup, Cassian winds up with a traditional German bratwurst with mustard in a roll, and Luke finds a dish called lángos which they guess might be Czech or Hungarian, which turns out to be ham, garlic and an obscene amount of cheese on a soft dough, deep fried in oil, and even though they all agree it’s probably the least nutritious thing in the world, it tastes amazing.

“What do you say, Jyn?” Luke says, grinning, and almost actually shoves his phone into her face as a big group of tourists pushes past them.

“It’s so good,” she says, through a mouthful of it, grinning back. “’s amazing. But you guys need to try my soup.”

Some part of him knows Luke will turn the camera to him any moment and catch him just standing there with his food in hand, staring at her like a besotted puppy. He can’t help himself, she looks so happy. There’s that quick flash of bliss and the fascination and the satisfaction that he thinks food should bring to people, and it brings something out in her that he just… he can’t help being affected by it, and he can’t really understand how it doesn’t affect everyone else in the same way. It’s like a light has been turned on inside of her, and it’s glowing through all the cracks and paper-thin spots of this fierce, quiet, damaged woman, and she’s beautiful.

God, he’s in such trouble. He shouldn’t be having these thoughts, he just shouldn’t; she’s already uncomfortable with Shara’s and Kes’s stupid jokes as it is, and besides, he’s supposed to be a professional. They work together, and that’s supposed to be all.

(As much as he catches himself wishing it wasn’t - that’s supposed to be all.)

Her green eyes suddenly find his, and the smile on her face catches, just a little, and in the middle of all these people and this beautiful old foreign town and all the smells and the music and the lights – it stings.

The next morning, he wakes up feeling stiff and cranky and neither well rested nor in a mood for Christmas-time, despite the fact that they’ve had an objectively good time the previous evening, and a pretty early night. Draven had found an opportunity to sneak them into rehearsals for a Christmas concert in one of the churches. Jyn and Kay seemed to recognise what they were playing; according to Kay, the actual concert took several hours and was, apparently, a Christmas classic. Jyn hadn’t said anything, but the melancholic little smile on her face led him to think that she too had heard it before. Cassian doesn’t know a lot about music, let alone classical music, so he’d had no clue what they were listening to, but he’d liked it; there was a something calm and solemn about it, the same quiet festivity as to the other traditions they’ve been introduced to so far.

Still, he’d gone to bed feeling a little down somehow, and it hasn’t gone away overnight as he’d hoped. Maybe a coffee will fix it, and if it doesn’t – he’ll just have to walk it off. They’re taping, and there’s no space for him to not feel like talking to strangers and smiling and laughing at feeble jokes.

(And the memory of Jyn with her sad little smile, leaning against the pillar in the semi-darkness between the dark corners of the church and the warm light from the chandelier – there most certainly won’t be space for that, not for a very long time.)

He shakes his head and splashes some more cold water in his face before he makes his way down to breakfast with the others.

The rain has ceased, which is good for the equipment, but the sky out the window is still of a very unappealing shade of grey, dark wisps of clouds rapidly drawing closer.

Shara thinks it’ll rain again, Kes, of course, says it’ll blow over. Jyn gives a quick glance at the sky and says:

“Maybe we’ll get some snow.”

There’s something in her voice, hopeful – wistful almost. It tugs at something in Cassian’s chest, and he tries his best not to let it show and pushes past the others towards the buffet. He really needs to stop this. Concentrate on the goddamn food, would you, he tells himself firmly, but the buffet doesn’t offer any help on that front; it’s the usual rolls and slices of toast and bread they’ve seen in Munich, jam and honey as well as cheeses and ham, some fruit and vegetables, scrambled eggs and a sparse selection of sweet pastry and a few slices of cake so dry he’s pretty sure it’s at least a day old, probably two. The only thing vaguely exciting it offers is Hungarian salami – and the coffee he’s been hoping for, thankfully of the stronger variety.

Since the main attraction in Dresden as far as the show is the Christmas market, which by all accounts is best enjoyed after sunset, they have the next seven hours for themselves. Shara, Luke and Kes have resolved to make a trip to the nearby national park, but while Cassian can see the appeal of that fairy tale-like landscape they’ve seen on postcards around the city, covered in mist and specks of snow – there’s no way he will climb a slippery rock needle in this weather.

these were taken in mid-Oktober, there’d be less colour in the forest now (also please excuse my godawful phone camera)

Jyn looked intrigued by the idea yesterday, and as it comes up again, he has to swallow down the urge to make up some stupid pretence to keep her around. It’s not just that he generally enjoys her presence, though that’s an embarrassingly big part of it – he feels like she is more attuned to this place than he currently is, more receptive to the magic of it, and as much as he appreciates Kay’s sudden and unnervingly detailed commentary, that’s what he needs most to make this into the enjoyable segment it should be.

The thing is, with Kay back in the picture he has lost his one legitimate argument to keep her around, and besides – she’s a free woman, for God’s sake, he has no right to tell her where she should or shouldn’t go, no matter how much he wants to ask her to stick around.

“I’d love to come,” she says with a shrug and pours herself more tea, “but I didn’t bring the kind of clothes for that. What are you guys doing?” she adds before Cassian has the time to process the information.

“I believe I will see the painting exhibition in the Zwinger,” Kay says and takes a sip of his tea. “The Sistine Madonna is on display there. I would not mind anyone coming along, but I do mean to go see the art and not hold a lecture, so if you are in the mood for conversation, I suggest you stick with Cassian.”

“Right,” Jyn says slowly and Cassian throws her what he hopes to be an apologetic smile while he gets to his feet to refill his cup.

“He means well,” he mutters and she scoffs a little, and Cassian registers a sad spike in his mood because of this, which is a lot more than all this coffee has so far managed to accomplish.

God, when did he turn into this? This is not what he’s like with women. He’s had girlfriends, yes, and he was in love with them, too, but it is not like him to develop this sad, weird fixation. He needs to cut it out, and fast.

(Even thought that’s easier said than done, probably, since he’s currently trapped in what is probably one of the most annoyingly romantic locations he’s ever been to.)

More coffee will fix it. It has to, because it’s that or heavy drinking.

“So, do you have any plans for the day yet?” Jyn asks, sipping at her tea.

“I thought I could go into the Green Vault before lunch, and see from there.”

“Sounds like you’re about to rob a bank,” she mutters and throws him a faint grin, and again, he feels far too accomplished because a girl smiled at him, like he’s twelve years old or something, god damn it. “What is that?”

“It is the largest treasure collection in Europe,” Kay says before he has time to answer. “The collection of the Saxonian kings.”

Cassian sighs. “It’s in the palace, in its original place. Apparently it hasn’t been restored long, and it sounded cool.” He takes a sip from his cup and adds in what he hopes to be a nonchalant tone: “Want to come?”

Shara and Kes share another of their stupid little glances, and oh for God’s sake, he could –

Jyn shrugs. “Yeah, why not?”

He’s not happy to hear that. No. It’s fine, it’s whatever.

Kay throws him a pointed look and he sighs into his coffee. Not even fooling his friend then, apparently. That’s just great.

When they leave the hotel, they are greeted by a harsh wind blowing up from the river. The sky seems a little lighter, turned to a strange glowing white that accentuates all the grey around them.

Cassian bristles a little and turns up his collar, but Jyn smiles faintly.

“This is a really cool light,” she says, fiddling with her hand-held camera. “We should try to get a few shots in. Which direction is the museum?”

“Old town, near the opera –“

“Oh, can we stop by there first? It’ll only take a few minutes, and it’ll look really good, I promise,” she says, excitedly bobbing up and down on the balls of her feet, and he bites back the fond smile just a tad too late.

“Sure. We should get a few shots of the Zwinger in daylight as well while we’re on it.”

She frowns at him. “I… is that sarcasm, or…?”

“No! Come on, you do your job,” he says with a laugh. “You say it’ll look good, I trust you.”

“It will. Really,” she says with a grin, tugging her scarf into her collar. “Like, the stone they use here with the colour of the sky and the green roofs and the trees against it, it’ll look so good.”

She sounds so pleased. He manages to contain himself a little more this time, but – fuck, it’s so cute. And… no, maybe cute is the wrong word. He’s fascinated by it, by her enthusiasm and her passion. He feels so understood when she acts like this, because it tells him she’d never be the kind of person who’d stand next to him going, dude, it’s just chicken soup, why are you so excited about this. Kay is focused, too, and he loves his work, but not like this. He doesn’t seem to grow a few centimetres because the clouds set off so nicely against the rooftops.

They walk past the palace to the theatre square and though Cassian is the first to admit he doesn’t have her eye for visuals, the opera does look stunning against the pearly white sky. Jyn laments they only brought the small camera, but as the material will probably only be used as transition shots, he doubts it’ll make much of a difference. The Zwinger, while also gorgeous, leaves Cassian slightly disappointed; the courtyard enclosed in the beautiful baroque building isn’t really much to look at, just a few shut-off fountains in the middle and a lot of red gravel, and the biggest archway is covered in scaffolding due to restoration work.

Still, on the small screen of Jyn’s camera it looks perfect.

Semper Opera

When they enter the beautiful entrance hall of the museum – that had probably once been a courtyard and had just got a big glass ceiling in recent times – Jyn suddenly slows her steps.

“Is that the name of the museum?” she asks slowly, pointing to the headline of a poster nearby.

“I think so, yeah. I think it means something like green cave or something?” He shrugs. “The Wikipedia article said it was to do with the colour of the marble inside.”

“Green vault,” she corrects softly, coming to a halt.

Cassian frowns at her strange expression. “Is… are you alright?”

“Yeah, no, I – I just remembered,” she replies in an absent-minded tone, taking another look at the place. “My mother talked about this place. My dad took her.”

He faintly remembers her saying her parents had passed, so while he isn’t quite sure how to interpret her tone, he’s pretty sure this is a bad thing.

“Okay, are you… we can go somewhere else.”

“No, no,” she says, shaking her head and putting a wobbly smile on her face. “Let’s see it. My mum liked it,” she adds in a more certain tone. “She was a geologist, she… she was really impressed by all the different stones they had. I just… I wasn’t aware that this was in Dresden, that’s all.”

“Okay,” he replies slowly. “I’ll get the tickets.”

The interior of the museum, far more still than the entrance hall, feels like an entirely different world despite the masses of tourists shuffling through the rooms around them. The intricate ceilings, the black-and-white tiles, the columns set with marble and the mirrors and the windows… he doesn’t need the hundreds of priceless glittering treasures nestled into the glass cabinets around them to feel like he’s stumbled into The Hobbit or something out of a fairy tale book. The decadence surrounding them is dizzying, but also undeniably beautiful.

“How much you think the stuff in this room is worth?” he asks quietly, eying an intricate statue inlaid with countless precious stones, and Jyn shrugs.

“Nothing. How’d you sell this without getting caught?”

He grins. “Good point. Still though…”

“It is… it is pretty,” she concedes softly, stepping closer to the cabinet – and thereby also him, though he has just enough sense left to know that she didn’t do that on purpose. It’s still a lot more than he was prepared for, somehow, with the glittering jewels and all the moving figures in the old mirrors and the faint daylight filtering through the cracks in the blinds in front of the windows catching in the grey and green and gold of her eyes and…

He shakes his head to try and clear it of these dumb thoughts, and walks over to the next cabinet like the oddly shaped goblet in it was the most interesting object in the entire world.

Come on, Andor. He’s a professional. He is. He can be professional. He’s too old to be acting like this, not to mention he’s probably coming off as the height of creepy. She is a brilliant, young, attractive woman who has absolutely no reason to be interested in some nerd who stars in a niche Mexican food show, and she’s here because it’s good work and she gets to travel and she’s getting paid for it, and his weird crush is probably the last thing she wants or needs and he can honestly not blame her.

No, he needs to stop this.

He buries his hands in the pockets of his jacket and makes his way to the next exhibition room, bypassing about twelve objects without so much as a glance, and doesn’t wait for her.

“Did you see those ivory thingies? I don’t get how you’d make these tiny holes without breaking it,” she says lightly, walking up to where he’s leaning by the elevator near the exit.

“Yeah, no idea,” he mutters, pushes off the wall, slides his phone back into his pocket and walks towards the doors. “Should we get some lunch?”

“Definitely, yeah.” Jyn rolls her shoulder with a little grimace. “I need to sit down for a while.”

The camera equipment she is lugging around with her probably isn’t helping, and he’d gladly carry it for a bit, but – no. Leave her alone. Don’t be creepy.

“Okay.”

She adjusts the strap of her bag and catches up with him. “You have your eye on anything?”

“Hm?”

“If you have your eye on anything?”

“Have my eye on what?”

She rolls her eyes. “Food,” she snaps and buries her hands in her pockets with a huff. “Christ, sorry. You don’t have to talk to me.”

Great, now he’s being rude. There has to be a state of being between creepy and rude for him, for Heaven’s sake, it can’t possibly be that hard. He’s a normal person, and she’s a normal person, and they can spend time together without it being… whatever this has turned into.

“Sorry,” he mutters, shaking his head and forcing a smile that doesn’t feel like it comes out great. “Not really, no. Let’s just find a restaurant nearby.”

She sighs. “Won’t they be pretty touristy around here?”

He shrugs, and tries to ignore the fact that she’s very pointedly not looking at him – which is, after all, kind of what he was aiming for. “Yeah, probably. But I could do with a chair, too.”

They march past the long mural that Kay ranted to them the night before (the largest porcelain artwork in the world, supposedly, which Luke somehow got really excited about and had them all take pictures in front of the procession of Saxonian kings), and Cassian feels deeply annoyed with himself. How is him trying to behave like a professional, or really just a normal, functioning adult, ruining the comfortable silence they usually have?

Predictably, they run straight into the early Striezelmarkt crowds. He isn’t in the mood to fight his way across the Neumarkt, and Jyn doesn’t look like she is, either, so he turns left into the narrow alleyway leading down to the river.

“Maybe over there? At least it’s got a German name,” he mutters, and she gives an absent little nod.

They wash into the slightly overheated restaurant along with a handful of other tourists and miraculously find a small table nestled into a corner, and he is flooded with relief at finally being able to sit down after the three hours spent crouching in front of glass cabinets.

Until he fully realises that this table is very small and she’s sitting at arm’s length from him whether she wants to or not.

“Is… is this okay?” he asks, probably too quiet for the noisy room.

Her green eyes flicker up at him and for a moment, he isn’t sure if she knows what he means, but then she nods.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” he mutters, and quickly drops his gaze onto the menu.

After far too much deliberation, he decides on duck with the traditional side dishes.

“The trailer dropped half an hour ago,” he says after another awkward moment of silence once the waiter has left. “Do you wanna watch it?”

“Nah, it’s too loud in here anyway,” she replies with a shrug, then smiles faintly.

“What?”

“Luke’s gonna be pissed at us.”

Cassian frowns. “Why?”

“Well, the lighting in here is shit,” she says. “The food will not show up well on camera at all.”

“We could ask if we could take it outside for a moment.” He feels a faint grin tug at his lips at the thought, and Jyn scoffs.

“You can ask that.”

“Or we just film it for Instagram and blame the lighting on my phone camera.”

Jyn grins. “Yeah, sure. Let’s blame your fancy iPhone camera, like that’s gonna work, you bloody snob…”

The waiter returns with their food and Jyn leans back in her seat. “Well then, let’s see your camera skills, Andor.”

Cassian rolls his eyes at her and fishes his phone out of his jacket. “Okay, Jyn, this doesn’t show up at all, so tell us what you’re eating –“

“Nothing, the food just got here,” she says, still with her little mischievous grin, and Cassian throws her a pointed look.

“Okay, I have shashlik and pepper lecsó,” she concedes with a shrug. “That’s not exactly German, but it smells amazing,” she adds, leaning closer to her plate and inhaling deeply.

“It’s okay, I have the traditional food covered here,” he says, panning down onto his own plate. “You guys probably can’t see that but that’s a duck roast with potato dumplings and red cabbage, and it looks pretty amazing.”

He ends the video and stuffs the phone back into his pocket with a smile. “There. Done. Now Luke can’t be mad at us.”

“I took a few pictures in the exhibition,” she says, cutting her meat loose from the wooden skewer. “I can upload them later.”

“Perfect, he’ll love that.” He takes a bite of his dumpling that’s deliciously salty and soaked in perfectly seasoned, greasy gravy, and sighs. “This is amazing. Like, I would die if I had to eat it for three days in a row, probably, but it’s amazing.”

“That one dumpling doesn’t look great,” Jyn says, frowning at his plate. “It looks kinda grey. Is that on purpose?”

“They’re made with some raw potatoes as well as cooked ones, and if they’re left out for a while before cooking, they oxidate, that’s why it looks like that.”

She throws him a pointed look. “Do you just know everything about food?”

“No, I googled this last night. It’s traditional Christmas food,” he says with a grin. “Oh, and I saw a desert on the menu that I really want to try, it’s a local speciality… but we’ll have to share that because it’s made with potatoes too so I don’t think I could finish it on my own.”

“A potato desert?”

“Yeah, it’s a dough made from potatoes and curd, and flour and eggs obviously, and fried? Kind of like a pancake, but –“

He breaks off and frowns at the small window behind Jyn.

“What?”

“Nothing, I just… I think it’s snowing.”

“Really?” She immediately drops the skewer back onto her plate and whips around in her seat, edging closer to the window. “It’s been ages since I’ve last had any snow,” she mutters, staring at the tiny white dots swirling down onto the people in the street with a glowing little smile tugging at her lips.

Damn it, he wasn’t going to stare at her.

“Why are you so determined for it to snow?” he asks, and hopes it doesn’t sound like he’s mocking her, because he’s just genuinely curious – he doesn’t see much advantage in semi-frozen water seeping into every crook in his clothing and into the equipment later when they’re out on the market.

“Because it’s what’s missing from this place!” she says, green eyes glinting at him across the table. “This is – this is fairy tale land here, okay? And you need snow for winter fairy tales. That’s just the law.”

He grins down at his duck. “If you say so.”

Jyn shakes her head and returns to her food. “You’ll see what I mean.”

By the time Cassian drains the last coffee from his cup, their conversation has returned to normal, and for a few minutes they even seem to have found back to their comfortable silence. He feels a little drowsy despite the caffeine, not helped by the warm air in the room and the swirling flakes of snow outside the window and the soft clinking of Jyn’s spoon against her teacup.

“So, what’s the plan for tonight?”

“Well, we have an appointment with a baker who’s going to tell us about how he makes the… that Christmas bread with the hard name,” he replies with a shrug, “and we’ll talk to someone about gingerbread, I think, and there’ll be candied nuts and so on and some traditional Christmas decoration stands to look at, and apart from that I think we’re supposed to get drunk on various mulled wine specialties.”

Jyn grins. “Sometimes I like this job.”

He scoffs and gets to his feet. “Come on, we should probably see if the others have made it back yet.”

“Kes probably fell down a rock so Shara could come rescue him,” Jyn says with a scoff, wrapping her scarf back around her neck, and Cassian grins.

“Bad strategy. She might leave him there.”

“She wouldn’t really,” Jyn replies and zips her thin jacket shut. “She’s so done for, poor dear. She just thinks she can keep him from finding out.”

“This is them trying to hide it?” he mutters, shaking his head, and pushes open the door. A waft of crisp, cold air and a few snowflakes blow into his face before he’s even set foot onto the street, and he can’t deny it’s pleasant after the stuffy air inside.

The sky has cleared a little, now a pale blue with broad strokes of greys and whites, and the sun is already low over the roofs of the city, tinging the bright stone around them in washed-out pink.

(did I forget to mention the weird hole in the old town right behind the church? Yeah. Here it is. Welcome to a bombed-out historical centre (I think there actually was a building here, but they’re planning to replace it with one that is more historically accurate to pre-war state))

Not a lot of snow has fallen, just enough to cover the rooftops and the stone steps leading up to Brühl’s Terrace in a thin layer of white, the rest shuffled into the cracks between the cobblestones by the feet of the tourists. But as they head back towards the Frauenkirche and the little stands and huts scattered across the market, with the little lights gleaming from the Christmas trees and the torches flickering in the wind, he can’t deny it adds a final touch to everything.

“Okay, yes,” he says softly, “I do see what you mean.”

Jyn grins at him from behind her handheld camera with a happy gleam in her greyish eyes, snowflakes already clinging to her dark hair.

He really hopes he’ll get her in front of a camera too tonight. She looks like she belongs into this place, and he doesn’t think this is a sight anyone should be deprived of.

“I can’t wait to see what it looks like in the dark,” she says, still smiling, and stops to film two little kids near the church trying to catch snowflakes, and he nods absent-mindedly.

“Yeah,” he mutters, then finally manages to tear himself out of his thoughts – staring again, damn it, Andor – and turns away, disoriented for a moment. “I guess our best chance of catching the others is at the hotel?”

Jyn had, in some ways, been right about Kes falling off a rock, as it turned out.

“He’s upstairs, taking a shower,” Shara explains when they meet her and Luke in the lobby. “That idiot tripped over a root and landed in a big puddle, so we had to listen to him whine about how wet his left foot was the whole way back.”

There’s a fond grin on her lips the whole time, so he doesn’t really buy any of what she is saying.

“Have you guys seen the trailer yet?” Luke asks, bobbing up and down in excitement.

“Not yet,” Jyn says, setting down her bag on the couch and dropping down beside it. “Guess I could watch it now, though, if that’ll make you happy,” she adds drily when she sees his disappointed face, and he grins.

Shara rolls her eyes, then plops down on the sofa next to Jyn to get a better view of her phone. “He wouldn’t shut up about the damn thing for a minute, and he kept complaining there was no reception. In a national park.”

Cassian sighs and leans against the wall.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the trailer. No, it’s well made, well-edited; it has some great shots of their previous stops, the food looks amazing all around and nobody is caught at an unfavourable angle. It is pretty much the same one Luke’s showed them when they returned from Munich, as promised, and he likes the music they’ve put over it as well, it’s not too dramatic or too cheesy. It’s just…

It’s the way he’s looking at her, caught on tape. More than once. More than twice. And, well, he knows it’s probably showing, somehow, which is why he’s trying to stop doing it, but… he wasn’t aware it was that obvious. It’s painful to look at.

It’s not that he’s embarrassed, really. Well, he is a little, but that’s not quite it. Mostly, he feels bad for her sake, because he can already picture the position this might wind up putting her in, and he’s trying his hardest not to be angry at the editing team for putting any of that footage in. That’s unreasonable, of course – it’s perfectly good footage of them trying food, which is, after all, the kind of footage this trailer needs, but still…

Damn it.

He throws the group a small glance when he recognises the music that plays near the end, and catches Shara throwing him a sympathetic glance. Luke doesn’t seem to have caught anything out of the ordinary, which he has to admit doesn’t really surprise him. Jyn’s eyes are still fixed on the screen.

She doesn’t look mortified, which he supposes is a start.

“Well? What do you think?”

Shara shrugs and leans back in her seat. “We all look good, which is the main thing.”

Luke throws her a pointed look and she shrugs. “What? You can’t tell me this show has never been about making Cassian look unfairly handsome.”

“That’s not the –“ Cassian says, but she interrupts him.

“That’s what you say, Andor, but I’ve seen it and you can’t tell me that’s not what’s going on. C’mon, Jyn, you’ve seen it too, help me out here.”

“No tv show tries to make their host look ugly, Shara,” Jyn replies curtly, then throws Luke a thin smile and adds: “I like the music.”

Luke nods. “People are really liking it so far. And I think it’ll air on tv later tonight, so that’ll hopefully give it a boost as well.”

“Great,” Cassian says, which is all the enthusiasm he feels like he can muster, and pushes off the wall. “You know what, I’m gonna go get a shower too.”

“Yeah, I’ll see if I can get another coffee here somewhere,” Jyn mutters and grabs her bag.

“Can I get more excitement next time?” Luke calls after them, and Cassian catches Jyn throwing him an odd little glance before she turns the corner.

If Cassian was appreciative of the snow before, than he’s head over heels in love with it when they leave the hotel to finally have the filming session they’ve come to Dresden to make. Prague Street is, despite its less-than-pretty commercial architecture and the unromantic McDonald’s ad on the building across the square, a magical sight, and the slight awkwardness that has been hanging in the air for the last two hours disperses in the first gust of wind that blows snow from one of the trees around their heads.

There are baubles and wooden ornaments and paper stars adorning the sprigs of fir crowning the roofs of the booths, and the few snowflakes still whirling through the air are caught in the glow of the fairy lights strung up everywhere. The air smells of mushrooms and roasted bread and garlic and grilled meat, and over the chatter of the hundreds of tourists shuffling their way through the narrow paths between the little huts, goddamn Last Christmas is clanging from a speaker somewhere.

This is a level of cheesiness that his besotted-puppy-look in that trailer could never hope to compete with, and he loves this place for that fact already. Nobody is going to notice. Not here. He’ll be overshadowed by the sticky-sweet, picture-perfect romance of this place, and this realisation is a huge relief.

Then again – there’s still a strange look sitting in Jyn’s eyes.

“I thought this was supposed to be the least busy day of the week?” Kes asks lightly, trying to squeeze past a group of foreign tourists without losing them and tearing Cassian out of his thoughts, and Draven sighs.

“It is.”

“Well, it’s good that my job isn’t too easy,” Kes mutters, shaking his head and shaking snow out of the hood of his jacket. He and Draven, Cassian has come to realise, are mostly united in their disgruntlement for the cold and the snow, and seem to be the most immune to the atmosphere of this place – well, Kay is pretty immune to the romance of it all as well, but he spots a historical landmark every five steps, so he too seems to have taken an unreasonable liking to the city.

They fight their way up the crowded shopping street, serenaded by a children’s choir on the Altmarkt and Kay’s muffled cursing as he tries to make his way through the crowds without shaking the camera too much – Jyn has reluctantly agreed that he is the more sensible choice for camerawork in the situation at hand. The foot he has on her gives him an undeniable advantage.

And for the next few hours, despite the tourists and despite the fact that their director’s sour mood needs to be handled with a lot of mulled wine, and despite the fact that his phone pings with twitter alerts every minute much to Luke’s delight until he shuts the damn thing off, the job goes exactly the way it’s supposed to. He immerses himself in the smell of the spices and the fires, talks to a baker about Christstollen and about how the dough is decreed to have tons of butter in it and how much of a luxury these foods were throughout the history of this place, and Kay catches Jyn as she tries the finished Stollen and gets a look on her face that describes better than any of Cassian’s words how perfect it is, somehow, sweet and satisfying even though it’s strangely hard and they technically know how much butter there is in it. They try their way through regular Glühwein and mulled white wine and hot eggnog with cream and Feuerzangenbowle, which is mulled wine that for some reason has a big sugar cube mounted over it that is soaked in rum and lit on fire and that definitely is nothing more than a fancy way to get drunk more quickly. They try different types of German gingerbread, including but not limited to the local Pulsnitzer Lebkuchen, and have potato pancakes and freshly made Pfannkuchen, a type of stuffed doughnut, and candied nuts, until Cassian feels like he is on far too much of a high to still be in front of a camera and he stops feeling the damn cold and the snow glows in the light of the lanterns a little more than it should.

At some point, hours later, he skips out on the next round of mulled wine – he just feels like he’s sobering up again – and makes his way up the steps to Brühl’s Terrace with the vague hope to stare out onto the river and perhaps clear his head a little, because this whole place is too beautiful and feels too much like a warm, fuzzy dream for him to be this drunk and not do something stupid at some point.

There’s a little wind blowing up from the water and the snowfall has finally died away completely, and between the trees it is suddenly very quiet and still.

(this is not from where Cassian is standing AT ALL, he’s actually right in front of the big illuminated housefront there, the one that doesn’t have a tower. But the shot from this bridge is just so pretty.)

And apparently, he’s not the only one who’s needed that.

“You’ve… you’ve seen the comments, right?” she asks softly, and he doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about.

“Yeah, the, uh… the tweets and all were pretty hard to miss.” He sighs and idly brushes snow of the wrought-iron balustrade.

“Has… that kinda think happened to you before?”

“Yes, once or twice, when I was still doing telenovelas,” he replies with a shrug. “It was a little different then, though, I mean… it was further away. In the papers and on tv shows, not… not like this. I don’t really remember Social Media being that big a deal back then.”

“How long did that last?”

“Most of it went away a few months after I left the show, but… I don’t know, people have brought it back up over the years. But yeah, the worst of it was while the show aired.”

“So that means a year of this?” she asks in a strangely flat voice, staring out at a train that passes over a bridge down the river.

He doesn’t really have an answer for that.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” he says instead, after a while. “I should be the only one who has to deal with… with that side of things. Not the crew.”

“You didn’t start this,” she gives back darkly, and he sighs.

“They didn’t mean…”

“I know. I know they don’t get why it’s a big deal, but…”

He gets it. He gets that she’s been alone for a long time, and that she doesn’t need anyone else but she’s still lonely, and that it sucks to be needled about something you don’t have. Especially if some part of you wishes that you did.

“It’s not an excuse,” he says softly. “But I guess it would’ve happened with or without them, so… you should probably blame me. I’m… I’m supposed to be far better with having cameras pointed at me.”

She laughs a little, staring down at the ships below them. “You know, a few of those commenters were convinced you’re actually just a really, really good actor. Like, that you staged this for ratings.”

He feels a strange smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think I was ever that good. There’s a reason I stopped doing it.”

“Yeah, I didn’t really…” She sighs softly. “I wasn’t saying I believe this is about the show.”

She doesn’t sound like she buys into the theory, but he’s seen her write messages to her friend earlier when they were standing in the elevator. Long messages, and there’d been the trailer attached to one of them, so he has a feeling maybe Bodhi does buy into it.

“No. This is about…” He takes a deep breath and thanks God for the abnormal amounts of sugar and alcohol he’s consumed tonight, because he doesn’t think he’d get the next sentence out under different circumstances. Still, even though he tries to force himself to look up at her, his gaze flickers back to the lights dancing on the dark water below before so much as another word crosses his lips.

“I like you, and that shouldn’t be a big deal and it shouldn’t be anybody’s business, but now it is and…” He runs a hand through his hair that feels damp with molten snow. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see that she wants to say something, so he hastily adds: “I wasn’t… I wasn’t going to say any of this, because we’re supposed to work together and this is not professional behaviour and… I honestly wasn’t going to say anything, I was trying to cut it out, but… but since everyone’s already saying you’re being used for ratings, I thought I should…” He breaks off, closes his eyes, exhales, grips the cold rail with both hands. “I’m sorry. Maybe I’ve had too much to drink, or...”

He trails off, and she’s quiet for so long that his brain has run through about forty useless strategies to try and back out of what he just said before she speaks again.

“You… like me,” she repeats, and somehow, miraculously, there’s a small grin tugging at her lips. “Like? Are we in fifth grade or something?”

He laughs. “Actually, that would make this a whole lot simpler.”

“You and I remember fifth grade very differently, then.”

He sighs and leans against the rail, but he manages to look at her this time around. “Seriously, I… I kind of wish we could’ve met somewhere else,” he says softly. “Without all this.”

“What, you mean without the mood lighting and the snow and the baroque skyline and the music and the hot wine?” she gives back lightly, her smile turning a little bitter. “Where’d be the fun in that?”

He smiles and shakes his head at her, then turns to look back at the lanterns of the Augustus bridge reflecting on the dark water. “Without the attention.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly after a moment. “I could’ve been a tourist, or like, shooting artsy footage of swallows over the skyline or something.” She sighs and absent-mindedly starts drawing patterns into the snow on the rail with her finger. “Do you even have swallows in Mexico?”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a type of bird. Kinda smallish, they fly really high up and they sort of glide, you can… wait,” she says, fishing her phone out of her pocket. “Okay, Wikipedia says they’re called hirun- God, no, I won’t even try to pronounce that,” she says with a headshake and holds out her phone to him. “That bird.”

“Oh yes. Yes, we have those,” he says after a quick glance at the screen, then says slowly, in a voice that betrays more than he would be comfortable with if he were sober: “I would’ve liked that. I could’ve shown you around. Teach you how to say that word,” he adds with a grin, and she laughs.

“I don’t know anything about birds. Nobody would pay me to do that.”

“I would.”

“Okay. Okay, next time I’m out of a job, I’ll hold you to that.”

He nods and stares out into the darkness for a while, then turns back to look at her. Her eyes are soft and dark in the faint light, and he feels like they find his a little too easily. They have always seemed to do that, really, and always seen just a little too much.

“You don’t sound like you’re angry with me.”

She scoffs and pushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. “No, Cassian, I’m not mad that you like me. I –“

“You really don’t have to say anything just because I –“

“Well, you’re being pretty dense about this so I feel like I have to,” she gives back flatly, which shuts him up. “I’m not mad that you like me. I just…” She gives an angry little shrug and resumes in a slightly defensive tone: “It’s like you said. This… this makes everything… weird. And I kinda wish it wasn’t.”

There’s an implication in this, and it takes him a while to compute what she’s trying to say.

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So… you can stop trying to not talk to me or whatever you were trying to do this morning, because that was awful, and besides it’s not like…” She scoffs and gestures towards him. “Have you met yourself? It’s pretty hard to imagine that anyone would be appalled at the notion of you wanting them around. So, since I’m…” She pauses, takes a deep breath and resumes, very quietly and fixing the tips of her shoes: “People already have all the wrong ideas, so I guess… I guess we could at least stop threading on eggshells around each other because… because I… I like having you around, too. And I guess you can tell me if at some point, the rest will… get less weird.”

It would really help if there was a little less light, because then maybe he wouldn’t see her furiously blushing through that last part and then maybe he wouldn’t feel like there was pleasantly warm liquid pooling in his stomach all over again.

She looks so pretty with her ruffled hair with the snowflakes in it and her lips that are stained red from the wine and – damn it, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that he gets to stand here with this woman in a moment this beautiful and kissing her would be the very worst idea he could have. It’s not fair.

“If it doesn’t, we can always fall back on the bird documentary,” he mutters and she smiles a little.

“We… we should probably get back to the others.”

“Right. I guess I owe you another drink at least, too.” He shoves his hands into his pockets, takes a small breath and makes his way towards the church, but at the top of the stairs, she catches him by the sleeve, that strange little smile still on her lips.

“Look, I’m… I’m glad to be here. Don’t think I’m not.”

She’s so close now, and the lights from the street catch in the green of her eyes. It’s not fair.

But it’s far more than he’s hoped for this morning, and all the days before that.

[Ao3]

#my words #bringing this back #with pictures!#rebelcaptain food travel au #food travel show au

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callioope · 6 years ago

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At the Confluence of History and Hope

The next episode of the rebelcaptain food travel AU, set in Istanbul and Cappadocia, Turkey!

Jyn confronts ancient memories she thought she’d properly buried, learns a little more about Cassian’s history, and is forced outside her comfort zone. Plus some mutual pining.

“Is that where we’re going?”

Cassian’s voice jolts her out of it and her camera jolts, too. She’s focused on the Hagia Sophia now and that’s where he’s pointing.

“No, not today, at any rate.” She stops recording and turns to face him. “That’s the Hagia Sophia. Originally built as a cathedral in… I want to say the sixth century? Later converted into a mosque when the Ottoman Empire finally conquered Constantinople. Now it’s a museum. We’ll be heading that way.” She points to Süleymaniye. “Not even half as old, but—”

“Still old and impressive?’

She smiles. “Yeah. Still impressive.”

“Just like you,” Cassian says, so quietly she barely hears it, barely allows herself to admit he really said it. She grips her camera a little tighter, resists the urge to capture that look in his eyes, because she is not some swooning fangirl bent on documenting—whatever this is. “You know a lot about Istanbul,” he adds, louder, more casual.

She tries to shrug, like a liar, like she’s not thinking about Mama. “I lived here for a little while.”

“I’m beginning to think you know Europe better than me,” he says, grinning. “Maybe you should be the one hosting the show.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” she admonishes, glancing back past their balustrade barrier for Luke. “Someone might get ideas.”

Keep Reading

#rebelcaptain #rebelcaptain food travel au #my writing #finally!!!#more visual aids to come #for now enjoy this panorama of the bosphorous and the golden horn that my hubbie took from galata tower #(which is literally the view cassian and jyn are looking at in this scene!)#yay

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andorerso · 6 years ago

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In continuation of the infamous @rebelcaptain-food-travel-au the crew travels to Serbia, celebrate the Orthodox New Year, and Jyn and Cassian find more excuses to NOT kiss each other. OR:

She knows how this goes. She knows they’ll be teased and egged on, and she know she’ll spend the whole time pretending it’s fine. It’s not fine but it's the way it always goes.

“Sure,” Cassian says and Jyn nods because she knows there’s no getting out of it.

“Cool. We can hit up some pub, get drunk, watch the fireworks. Unless you guys have other plans?”

One of these days, she decides, she’s going to punch one of them.

read it on ao3

#rebelcaptain #therebelcaptainnetwork #my fics #rebelcaptain food travel au #in which i suck at settings

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rebelcaptain-food-travel-au · 6 years ago

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hey yall

so i have been strangely super busy as of late and honestly, this project kinda fell off my radar a little ahjsdhjfhjf. now that i’m checking back in on it, i’ve noticed that a lot of people can apparently no longer do their chapters for whatever reason

and it’s totally fine if you can’t anymore! (or if you want to change the date) just hoping we can please get a sound off of those who can or want to still write their chapters? just so i know whether to continue the project or not? tagging everyone below

@imsfire2 - Greece - Sunday 2nd September @callioope - Turkey - Sunday 16th September @captainandors - Serbia - Sunday 30th September @lrthreads - Hungary - Sunday 14th October @skitzofreak - Croatia - Sunday 28th October @polynesianhermione - Italy - Sunday 11th November @sunnydalecalifornia - Portugal - Sunday 25th November

thanks guys, honestly i love what this project has turned into already <3

#rebelcaptain food travel au #authors #not a chapter

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doptimous · 6 years ago

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Vloeistofmechanica en chocolade (Fluids mechanic and chocolate) – A RebelCaptain Food Travel Show Collaboration

A huge thanks to @moonprincess92nz for the organization and the beta. It was supposed to be one chapter for two destinations, it’ll be two chapters for three cities because I couldn’t escape Brussel and it became a bit of a monster. Sorry not sorry? Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter one – Netherlands

Amsterdam was cold and so incredibly humid Cassian was pretty sure he may lose a toe or two if they stayed outside any longer. After Scotland, he honestly thought no weather could really get him but he was wrong. Very wrong. At least Scotland had some mystery, a charming side that warmed you up the moment you walked in a building. Amsterdam was just cold everywhere, people were incredibly rude and there were bikes everywhere. Of course, tourists were the worst: a bunch of stoners who only came here to enjoy coffeeshops and girls in underwear behind their window. Pathetic.

“Hey, loosen up, hombre! It shouldn't be long.”

Kes’ arm wrapped on his shoulders and Cassian fought the urge to shrug it off. He was having a bad day but the team wasn't responsible so he wouldn't blow on them. Plus, Kes was having a hard time too because of all those damn bikers, so really, Cassian knew he had to behave. Bloemenmarkt, the flower market, was a must see in the city and if he wasn't so cold, maybe he would have appreciated all the stalls full of bulbs and seeds of every known decorative plants. At least, some of the stalls were a bit warmer but Cassian couldn't linger. They had a show to film and even if it would be nice to have some shots of the popular sites of the city, it wasn't the main purpose of their presence here. Or at least, it wasn’t why he was there.

Glancing around him, Cassian caught Jyn's eye as she was waiting for Draven's signal and he wondered how she could stand being there, in the middle of the street with nothing more than a sleeveless jacket and a scarf over her shirt. He had a huge parka line with fur and he was freezing! Finally, they managed to get a clear shot of the place and Cassian could ask for the famous herring sandwich he was supposed to taste. The Frens Haringhandel was a very small wooden box just on the south side of the Singel, the first canal around the heart of Amsterdam and it was a good place to get fresh fish but it was a cold meal and truly, Cassian wished he had something hot to at least warm his hands.

But the smoked fish was pretty good, the pickles crunchy and the sauce, soft and creamy wasn't too heavy. The taste of dill was a bit too much for him but it went pretty well with the rest of the ingredients. After doing his part and talking with the people in the restaurant, he watched with envy as Wedge picked something akin a fish 'n chips that looked awfully greasy but hot and when he saw Jyn stealing a nugget out his cup, he truly regretted going for the local especially when he could have had a hot meal and something to share with his camerawoman. But at least Draven was happy with the shooting and since he wasn't needed outside any longer, he crossed the street to the Starbucks he'd found a block away.

“Already feeling homesick?” Shara joked beside him in the line and he shrugged because unlike her, Starbucks wasn’t something he really enjoyed at home. “You know, I saw a nice Argentinian place near the station earlier and since we don't have anything scheduled for tonight, I thought we could go. Do you wanna join us?”

“Who is us?” Cassian asked because he saw the looks exchanged between Kes and her and even if it was nice of her to propose, if he had to be the third wheel between a newly formed couple, he'd rather stay alone in his room. Or he could go to a pub with Wedge and Kay, or maybe try some of the city museum.

Shara grinned at him and pushed his shoulder to signal him to place his order, which he did without really thinking. He wanted something hot and since he had no idea what the drinks were called, he just chose a plain coffee with double cream while Shara took some spice latte with lots of extra. As they waited by the register, she told him Jyn would be here too, because like him, she didn't have anything to do for the evening and Cassian may have stopped listening to whatever she said after that because suddenly his hands where blissfully full of warm cardboard cups for the whole team.

Apparently, Shara wasn't ordering a very fancy drink but many drinks for everyone, so she used Cassian to help her carry everything. As she went on her free time for the afternoon and the evening, Cassian wondered why they even had to stay so long in this frigid town if they didn't film anything else and he must have been too loud about his recrimination because suddenly both Draven and Mothma were pulling him to the side.

“Look,” Draven began in a stern voice, “we all know that Netherlands aren't the good place for food, right? But we're doing a family food show so we can't just have you drinking beers and eating a round of space cakes, even if Skywalker seems pretty eager to make photos of all the kind of weeds available here. And after all you ate in France, it couldn't be that bad for your blood system to take it easy for a few meals.”

He eyed him carefully and Cassian could only nod, because honestly, he was quite pleased with the slowdown in the calories intake. He just found this town tiring.

“We've only got two days here and we've already did one, at least for your part. We'll meet with Luke and Kay who went to get some pictures for the social media and for editing later but we don't need you. Tomorrow we have a typical breakfast and a fancy Indonesian place and then, we’ll move to Belgium,” Mothma said in her most appeasing voice. “Try to enjoy your free time here, maybe go out with your friends. I can ask Jyn to come with me for the outdoor filming instead of Kay, that way, you two could catch up.”

“No, it's okay.” He spoke a bit too fiercely and both Draven and Mothma raised their eyebrows at him. Cassian cleared his throat and added, “I don't want to mess with your schedule. It's okay. I'm tired anyway so I'll just go back to my room and catch some sleep. Thanks.”

Shara smirked behind her cup and mouthed at him with a wink, “See you tonight.” She seemed awfully pleased but Cassian refused to think about it.

--–

tellmewhatyoueatofficial Welcome to Netherlands! Ready to enjoy the ride?! #tellmewhatyoueat #Amsterdam #Netherlands #Bikes #biking #streetfood

@K2SOff Please, don't smoke and drive, even if it's just a bike. You're dangerous and some of us are working just there on sidewalk

@Jynserso erh, @K2SOff, you may want to rephrase your contribution, it can be misleading...

@walkstheskies BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!

The Argentino Luna was a small place on the ground floor of a nice red brick house and all the windows were covert with fairy lights and old ivy. In summer the place must be gorgeous. It still was in late November but with the grey sky and the grey street all around, it lost a bit of its southern charm. At least, since it was on one of the few roads of the center, there weren't too many bikes. And the moment Cassian passed the door, he felt better.

The smell, the music, the decoration, everything spoke of Latin America. There were soccer player's jersey on the wall and lots of black and white photos along the bar that showed tango dancers and singers. And the waiters all spoke in Spanish and even if their accent wasn't quite right, it was better than anything he heard in days. Dutch was truly an awful language and even if all the people he had to interview spoke English easily, they all had that heavy accent that made things difficult for him to understand.

Here he could speak easily. It was warm and dry and the light was soft, and when he went to the bar and found Kes and Shara already sharing a bottle of red wine. He would have felt bad to intrude on them if he didn't see Jyn in a corner sipping a beer by herself. He took a glass to pour himself some wine before making a tour of the small room to read the menu on one of the slate hooked on the wall.

He must have been still for too long because he felt Jyn move beside him and when he turned to face her, she asked, “Aren't you a bit too hot?”

Cassian frowned a bit but the question died on his lips when he saw Jyn flush.

“I mean, your parka isn't necessary here, right?”

Realization helped him relax and with a chuckle, he admitted, “I may be a bit of a nesh.”

Jyn smiled at him and his heart fluttered dangerously.

“Yeah, I've seen that. But I agree with you, it was cold this afternoon.”

“Say the girl who stays outside for three hours with only a scarf. That's nice of you to spare my feelings but it's okay. I'm totally conscious of my dislike of cold weather.”

She smiled again and turned her head to the side, looking for something, someone maybe, and he didn't know what to say anymore. If she was as uncomfortable as he felt maybe he should spare her the boredom of his company. Then she surprised him by taking his arm and leading him to the window.

“Come on, we've booked a table, you can at least get rid of that coat. If not, you’ll really feel cold when we leave.”

He saw she had her vest and scarf down on a chair and he chose to put his parka on the one right beside it before sitting down.

“How many are supposed to be coming?”

Jyn sat across from him, leaving all her mess next to him and she shrugged. “I'm not sure. Luke said he'll join us later but he may be a bit-” she made a gesture with her hands in the air and smirked slightly, “and maybe Kay would want to come since you're here.”

It was more of a question but Cassian hadn't any answer so he looked back at Kes and Shara, still talking in hushed tones by the bar and he asked, “Do we wait for them to remember they're not on a date or do we order without them?”,

Jyn looked at to the couple but before she could answer her stomach grumble and she flushed some more.

“Okay, they obviously have forgotten about us, I'm hungry and if I have another of this devil drink without eating anything, I'll make a fool of myself. So...”

He peaked at her bottle and saw a white snake wrapped around something red but it couldn’t read more than Mamba on the label so he didn’t know what to expect. When a waiter arrived, Cassian exchanged a few words in Spanish with him but he didn't get any real advice on the food. It was a steakhouse with good Argentinian beef but nothing out of the ordinary. So he picked a mix of grilled meat with potatoes and Jyn followed him, ordering the same.

“I have no idea what you said but I suppose you know your stuff, right?”

Cassian smiled at the compliment and explained to her briefly what he chose then he asked her about her strange bottle. He was pleased to listen to her when she began a tirade on the different beer brews the restaurant had to offer.

“I’m not an alcoholic, you know,” she said suddenly without looking at him in the eye and with her lips nicely pursed.

“That’s totally the kind of thing an alcoholic would say but I believe you.”

“How nice of you! No seriously. I usually don’t drink much even if since we started working together I may have had more than my share and…”

Cassian put his hand on her wrist to calm her and he was surprised by how warm her skin was under his fingers.

“Don’t worry about it. This job is crazy and from what I got, beer is the only thing Dutch can do.”

She pouted and stopped picking at the label of her bottle.

“And that’s why we’re here, amigos!” Kes said loudly behind him.

“Oh nice of you to remember us!”

“Yeah, well, I wanted to let you enjoy the very good company of miss Erso all for yourself for once!” Kes winked heavily at both Cassian and Shara who shook her head fondly.

“Well, they have nice cheeses too. But for now, meat!” Jyn’s smile brightened when she saw the waiter with his arms full of huge plates of grilled steaks and Cassian shared eagerly her enthusiasm.

---

When Luke and Wedge arrived, they were already waiting for their dessert but he didn't seem to notice. Kay, on the other hand, looked peeved no one waited for him but didn't say a word about it. Jyn saw Cassian tensed a bit, probably prepared for an earful at the first occasion but for now, the Social Media Manager was high, both on weed and excitement so it was difficult for anyone to do more than listen to his rambling.

“I love this city!” He was bouncing on his chair and Kay had to intervene two times to prevent him from falling while Luke related their trip in the Red Light district. He showed them the photos he took and Kay and Wedge commented here and there about the shots he made to get a bit of the atmosphere but Luke kept on interrupting. Kes seemed fascinated but tried to play it cool because Shara was watching closely but the poor guy lost it when Luke told them about the weird condom shop he found.

“Why would anyone wear something like that?”

“Hey! I love condoms!” Shara must have had a glass or two too much because she was speaking way too loudly, especially for such a topic but Jyn refused to acknowledge anything around her and she kept looking for the waiter. She missed some exchanges but was suddenly brought back into the conversation when Shara grabbed her arm and asked, “Don't you too prefer when men have condoms? I mean, it makes things so much easier... No mess around, no stain on the sheet...”

Jyn blinked at her and she regretted her choice to face Cassian because he was looking directly at her and she didn't know what to say. Luckily Kes saved her by saying proudly, “I'm sorry, Bonita, but if your partner does his part right, it's not him who would make a mess and stain the sheet!”

Shara gaped at him and as if it wasn't embarrassing enough, he had, “Don't you agree with me, Cassian? It's your role as a man to make sure your partner is a mess before you even need a condom!”

Cassian looked as horrified as she felt but at the same time, Jyn really wished he voiced his opinion on the subject. Not that she even contemplated the eventually of needing a condom in her very professional relationship with Cassian Andor, but it was always good to know. On a very professional and informational way.

“That's the most nonsensical statement you could ever utter, Dameron. If you engage in a sexual encounter with a partner you need to protect yourself from, you can't really do anything that would involve fluids without being protected. The notion that a condom is sufficient to prevent infection is fairly biased. Most STI can be caught without intra-vaginal sex and-”

“Thank you, Kay,” Cassian cut brusquely, “we already know. Do you want something to eat?”

Kay sniffed, clearly offended at having been interrupted but he was also clearly hungry so he focused on the menu and let the topic drop. Kes was more difficult to deter but Shara did a pretty good job to grab his attention. So they could finish their night without glitch and it was only when they stepped outside that Jyn noticed how late it was. Maybe the idea of ordering another White Mamba hadn’t been such a good one because the world around her was swaying and she was fairly sure she was still on the ground and not on the canal.

“Are you going to be okay tomorrow morning,” she asked Kay and Cassian on the way back to the hotel.

“Of course,” Kay scoffed, “I'm used to getting up early and I'm perfectly able to function properly with minimal sleep.”

Jyn blinked, a bit stunned by his prissy answer but she saw Cassian shake his head and smiled when he told her in a conspiracy tone, “He's always more uptight when he's tired, don't worry about it. And thanks for your concern, but we'll manage. What about you?”

She shrugged and put her scarf a little higher on her nose. The night was colder than she thought and as they went along the canal, she caught in a freezing wind that made her shiver.

“I napped nearly half the afternoon today so even if we start early tomorrow, it’ll be okay.” She shivered again at a crossroad and suddenly, felt something heavy on her shoulders.

“You look cold,” Luke whispered in her hair as he wrapped his arms around her. “You should have put a coat or at least, something with sleeves.”

“Maybe it's just her way to get someone to heat her up,” Kes suggested before getting punch in the arm by Shara.

“Well, sorry to disappoint, then,” Luke answered with a laugh but before he could move, Jyn grabbed his wrist and said, “Actually, I think I prefer it that way.”

“Oh, come on, girl! You wouldn't say that if Andor were the one trying to warm you up and...”

“Cassian is always cold,” Kay cut, “so he won't be of any help.”

“That wasn't what he meant,” mumbled Shara but Jyn glared at her so she closed her mouth and made sure Kes get the message too. Suddenly Jyn didn't feel cold anymore but she still walked briskly, without Luke, just to avoid looking at Cassian. Her heart in her throat, she didn't say a word till she bid the whole team goodnight, praying for the low lights in the lobby to mask her burning neck.

---

tellmewhatyoueatofficial Careful, Amsterdam is very humid! Don't forget to take cover if you're going outside! wink wink!#tellmewhatyoueat #Amsterdam #Netherlands #Safe love #humour #Red Lantern District

@sharathebae I love those condoms, they're all so colourful and fun! Stay safe people and have fun!

@bodhitherook oh please, please @walkstheskies, @jynsereso bring me some green stuff!

@jynserso YOU WANT WHAT?! I'm shooked, mate!! Did you meat someone when I'm not here?! We totally need to talk!!

---

If Cassian thought English breakfasts were greasy, heavy things, he had to admit it was nothing compared to the traditional Dutch breakfast. He was sitting in front of sausages, cold meats and a soft-boiled egg but mostly different slides of dark bread, some buttered some not and he had a variety of toppings, from various cheeses to chocolate chips called vlokken, and even colourful aniseed sprinkles. And yes, he was supposed to put the candy on the buttered bread and maybe he was a bit of a prude but he found it weird. Really weird. And honestly, it tasted even weirder.

Although he was used to cocoa in his meal, here it wasn't just cocoa, it was real chocolate, sugary and heavy with butter and cream and to put on very buttered bread, it was... something. But he had to try and to make it look good on camera. After three bites, Jyn put down her camera to Draven's chagrin, and she smiled sympathetically at him.

“Maybe you should just have some cheese. The orange one, the mimolette, is quite good. Not too strong, it tasted a bit like cheddar. Or the other one with cumin seed in it. It's quite good.”

As if to prove her point, she took a slide and rolled with some kind of ham, or maybe smoked fish, he didn't know, and put it all in her mouth.

“It's good, I promise,” she said while chewing and Cassian felt his smile grow. Trusting her was easy and he didn't see Luke with his phone out to take pictures of them nor did he see Draven mentioning for Kay to resume filming while he tried bit after bit, following Jyn's advices.

When finally, the filming was over, he moved to thank Jyn but she waved him off with a smirk.

“Honestly, I don't get why we're here. It supposed to be a food show and...” Her face was priceless when she looked at the horrendous amount of food on the table. Kes was having a good time with the vlokken and kept on teasing Shara to taste it but he was clearly the only one.

“I can't tell you. Draven himself told me yesterday that it wasn't a good place for local food so I don't know. Maybe that's why we have an Indonesian restaurant-”

“Actually, it's because Indonesian used to be part of the Dutch kingdom,” Kay cut in crisply and Cassian couldn't help but roll his eyes. For once, he was able to have a conversation with Jyn and of course, his friend had to interfere. But then he saw Jyn's teasing smile and they shared an amused look while pretending to listen to Kay's impromptu history lesson. It wasn't so bad until she announced, “Well, since you know the subject so well, I'll let you do the shooting. I want to enjoy a bit more of the city before we move. Because even if the food is pretty lame, the buildings are really great and I want to see more of it.”

She packed up her camera and went to tell Draven about the change of plan. He didn't seem pleased but when Luke suggested they take more outside photos, he relented and Cassian couldn't do anything but watched them go, a heavy feeling on his stomach that had nothing to do with his horrible breakfast.

---

Part of her knew she was acting like a brat but some other part was quite pleased with herself. Luke wasn't difficult and he went on his merry way without asking any question, as if he perfectly understood her mood without a word from her. So she was free and alone at last and even if she regretted leaving Cassian like that, he would be glad to work with his best friend again and she needed time for herself. The days in France had been hard, reviving too many memories she thought she had buried and the worst was she didn't have time to speak to Bodhi. The only free time she had had been in the middle of the day when he was working so she couldn't have a real conversation to maybe sort out some of her feelings.

Crossing another bridge, she stopped to look down at the water moving lazily under her feet. Amsterdam was peaceful and truly beautiful. Every house was different, some of red brick, some yellow stone, other forest green with huge windows and white timbering... It looked right out of a fairy tale book. And since so many people traveled on foot or bike, it wasn't noisy like other town its size.

Taking a deep breath, she turned to lean on the railing and looked up at the sky. Maybe it was the only drawback of this place. The sky was always grey, even if the sun tried to peak every now and then. On the other hand, it was the last days of November so maybe summers were better. With nowhere to go and nothing to do for half of the day, Jyn wandered the city by herself and she was quite happy to sit down in the back of the bus later that evening when they had to move to their next destination.

Cassian went to sit beside her and she couldn't repress her smile even if she saw how he mostly did it to avoid being with Draven and Kay any longer.

“Long day?” She asked in a hush tone and she enjoyed the slight flush of his neck when she came closer.

“You have no idea. And you? Had fun with Luke?”

She chuckled and whispered in his ear, “I ditched him at the first canal. All he wanted was to go back to the Red District and I couldn't care less about girls in windows. Plus I'm pretty sure they don't work before noon, at best.”

He chuckled too and she felt warm all over at listening to the sound. He stayed pressed against her and kept his voice low when he said, “Maybe he found love, you know.”

“In a bong of pot, yeah. I'm pretty sure his luggage is full of glass.” She smiled brightly then looked very pointedly at Kes and added in the same hushed tone, “But he's not the only one, and at least, Luke didn't try to get into anyone pants.”

“Did Kes hit on you?”

The question caught her of guard and she blinked stupidly before laughing out loudly. “No, I'm not talking about me. Nobody in their right mind would want to...” She shook her head and missed the confusion on his face. Then Shara's voice interrupted whatever she could have added by saying, “Hey, lovebirds, do you want some beer? I picked a few bottles earlier and I think we should try them to train our liver.”

“Why is that?”

“Because we're going to Belgium and from what I get in the planning, we'll be drinking a lot. Or at least, you will.”

She beamed at Cassian and made her way to the back of the bus and showed them an impressive collection of beers and a few snacks all shove haphazardly in her bag. Jyn chose one for her and one for Cassian and she rummaged through her own bag to get a small packet of dry waffles line with chocolate.

“Aren't you the thoughtful one”, Shara teased with a wink and Jyn felt her neck burn but before she could say anything Cassian answered with a smile, “Don't be jealous, you already have someone who looks out for you so go back to him and let us enjoy some calm for once.”

He waited for her to be out of earshot to apologize without looking at her and Jyn mumbled, “It's okay,” before taking a long gulp of her beer. It wasn't long before she started regretting it. Even if her T'IJ IPA was a light blond beer, she saw too late it was at seven percent so that explained why it quickly made her head spin. And after a day walking outside, she was tired and now in the back of a slowly moving bus, her eyelids felt more and more heavy. She tried to stay awake. She tried to make small talk with Cassian because he seemed to really enjoy being here with her and he asked questions about the placed she'd seen, what she'd liked and she couldn't focus.

She felt herself fall but she also felt Cassian catch her and when her head rested on his shoulder, her body curled against his, she didn't feel embarrassed at all.

Cuddling Cassian felt dangerously like home.

#rebelcaptain #rebelcaptain food travel #rebelcaptain food travel au #food travel au #jyn erso #cassian andor #amsterdam #netherlands #my fics

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pingou7 · 7 years ago

Text

Nous allons enfin nous régaler! (Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are)

the food travel au

3 ½ month film schedule. 31 countries. 24 episodes.

2 people who might just fall in love along the way.

Chapter 3: France : Paris-Lille

Author:

@pingou7

(Read on AO3)

They arrive in France on schedule and thankfully the whole crew has pretty much recovered from their stomach bug by then. Shara Bey looks a bit queasy in the morning perhaps, but everyone is still curious about what their short trip to the country of Haute Cuisine will entail.

Everyone but Jyn that is, and despite his growing anxiety — because this was France, people! — Cassian can’t help but notice that she has grown more subdued since they’ve picked out their luggage at the airport.

Okay, she’s in a mood and her French is infinitely better than what he personally recalled from High School. It’s true what they say about French being bad at languages, by the way: It’s not that people don’t bother, exactly, it’s more than they’d best not to, their accent makes it hard to understand.

Honestly, he just gives directions in Spanish and there the taxi driver gets it, easier for everyone. Until Jyn stops looking by the window and engages the conversation!

“Nous ne sommes pas en vacances. On est une équipe de tournage."

The driver seems ridiculously overjoyed to hear her speak his language and grins at her in the rear-view mirror.

"Vraiment? Pour le cinéma?"

"Non, la télévision, c'est un programme culinaire."

"You speak French?" Draven interrupts, interest picked. "I didn't know that, it wasn't on your resume."

"Now you do," she shrugs, turning back her attention on the driver.

"La cuisine française est la meilleure du monde, vous aurez de quoi filmer!"

"C'est l'idée. Mais la France n'est pas notre seule destination, on visite plusieurs pays."

Okay, all of this is so quick and fluid that Cassian can't follow. But he can see Draven's brain gear turning as he insists:

"What did you say?"

"Nothing important, I'm not disclosing anything, don't worry. We're doing a food show for TV, we do several countries. Our friend here thinks French food is the best, obviously, and that we're gonna have a lot to cover."

"It's a given," Cassian smiles, impressed by her proficiency, "it's nice of you to speak up, though. Might facilitate the dialogue, too."

"It's nothing to get excited over," Jyn grumbles, sighing, "I've been to France before and have a knack for language, this is just idle chat anyway."

He can’t explain why but there’s something unsettling for her, that has nothing to do with food poisoning. He's curious, but drops the matter when they make a mandatory stop in a boulangerie, where Cassian marvels about the variety of breads and pastries offered, not to mention the cakes...

Mothma actually volunteers, Luke is already taking out his smartphone and since Jyn has already proven her ability to speak French, she too is put to contribution. The two other cars choose to proceed however, waiting at the hotel.

Cassian, Mothma Jyn and Luke are originally sent to get some crusty golden baguettes, of course, their white crumb, thick and soft. Yet a man before them prefers a boule de campagne, round shaped and thicker still, browner and earthier too.

Fascinating.

Honestly Cassian feels perplexed yet eager to order and the seller is amiable and smiling has she suggests viennoiseries.

"We have to take at least a croissant and a pain au chocolat each for everyone," Jyn declares immediately, strangely bossy all of sudden.

"Can we get a brioche too?" Luke asks, eyeing the one in the counter with barely concealed longing.

"Sure, if you want," she agrees easily, translating the order.

"Oh, there's chouquettes too," Mothma exclaims delightfully, legit clapping like a little girl. Thus a small bag of choux buns with sugar pearls joins the order.

Like she was on a mission, Jyn finally asks for different types of croissants too:

"The regular type is made of fresh butter," Jyn explains, "but we will take the almond version too."

"Would you like some of our savoury version," the seller asks helpfully, "it's with cheese and ham."

While in English he'd known the pains au chocolat to be called chocolate croissant — even if the chocolate is hidden within — he gets primly chastised by Jyn:

"Contrary to popular belief, it's not the same thing."

"Sorry, I had no idea. How do you all even know this?"

"My sister Leia likes posh bakeries," Luke says as only explanation.

"Me too, though it's been years since I've had chouquettes," Mothma adds.

But to his frustration, Jyn doesn't say anything has she asks for the total. He commits as much information as he can to memory and Mothma actually has to chime in with a few Euros of her own since she, Jyn and Luke kept adding some douceurs to taste. Clearly they are more familiar with French pastries than they’d let on, but he doesn’t mind being educated on the subject!

In fact Cassian grins wilder as the demeanor of other clients goes from neutral to slightly amused. He even catches something akin to respect on the face of an old lady behind them, as she glances at the pile of sweetness.

Unfortunately, it’s an improvised stop and they can’t film on a whim right now — photos will have to do. That’s a shame, for Monica Mothma isn’t a woman prone to expansiveness and it would have been nice to catch this unscripted madness, even if just for themselves.

Eventually they buy enough to feed an army or for everyone to develop diabetes, at the very least. It’s all for the greater good of the show, of course... They actually film a tiny clip back at their hotel and post a few candids on Instagram.

Kes teases them for their sweet tooth, saying he should have come with just to protect the bakery’s supplies and Draven rolls his eyes, but both are getting their faces stuffed with croissants and pains au chocolat so... Though far from constituting a balanced diet, their purchases become the entirety of their evening meal.

To be fair, who knew there was so much type of stuffed viennoiseries to begin with? It’s almost maddening!

Rationally he knows he shouldn’t indulge so much on the first day but the bread is crispy, the brioche is sweet but light... choosing is a lost cause and truthfully nobody seems to care.

Jyn is seated across from him though and a tiny speck of chocolate stays struck at the corner of her plush lips. He starts to ogles her mouth and reflexively licks his own — just in case a crumb of his own is there, too — but thankfully she doesn’t pay much attention to the people next to her.

Instead, she keeps staring at an invisible point in her plate. No pastry deserves to be looked at with such sadness unless it got prematurely rotten, and he says as much, eliciting a chuckle from the guys. She momentarily meets his gaze as she bites in her pain au chocolat again but her spirits have not lifted. Failed attempt then... He hopes his heated cheeks are the result of the two glasses of red wine he had before dessert, he’s not usually this awkward.

But she intrigues him, he wants to know her better! She’s unpredictable too and rather enticing. She proves to be an asset to the show and not just as a Camera Operator. But of course there is no way he’s going to say it. Besides it’s wine and sugar load talking and they have to focus on the French schedule within the next hour.

"Last time I was here, I was 15," she finally reveals, "but there's water under bridge."

If he weren't focused on her, he might have missed it, but like a private oath, she whispers next: "Saw has no place on this job, nor in my life. Paris doesn’t change that."

He's the only one to catch that, but before Cassian can figure out the meaning of this comment, everybody’s head snaps up at hearing Draven clearing his throat:

“By public demand, we will be setting this episode slightly freelance, as we go up North. About the capital, Cassian has an appointment at “Au Doux Raisin” tomorrow. It proposes a panel of traditional French dishes that would be interesting to foreign viewers.”

Draven enumerates this in a flat voice, looking bored as usual, yet Cassian starts to freak out internally: France was renowned for its Cuisine. He even follows French cooking shows in his spare time! How is he supposed to do his own thing despite the legions of stuff available?

“Sorry to interrupt Sir, but how are we supposed to squeeze several sets in so little time? As far as I know, most traditional French recipes involve spending quite a bit of time if not the whole day over the stove.”

“Don’t fret Andor,” the Director retorts impatiently, “it’s not like you’re be the one doing the cooking, right? So spare me the nerves. Thanks to our split filming teams, most material will be easily covered too. You just have to taste and judge, not really a hardship for you, I suspect.”

No, perhaps not. But Cassian doesn’t like the way his Director is handling things tonight. Tension increases a bit in the room but he keeps his trap shut, not wanting to spark things off on their first night here. The traveling show was already bumpy enough as far as he’s concerned so better not add to the man’s frustration.

“I wanted to see the sights a bit. It’s the city of lights, it’s every lover’s dream,” Kes mumbles.

Unfortunately, it seems that he's not discreet enough.

“Dameron, if you want to play the tourist, plan a romantic vacation for your fiancée AFTER the rush. We’ve got no time for that and moreover, I don’t care for your personal life,” Draven chastises in a clipped tone.

Cassian suppresses a sigh but the case is closed, crew eventually dismissed for the night. He’s pretty sure Draven was a military at some point before going into production or he is one in an alternate universe, with the way he’s usually behaving...

The next day, the crew did some sightseeing before their appointment — they could not be here and not pause in front of the Eiffel Tower, couldn’t they?

"Come on, we gotta have a picture with all of us! It's Paris guys, you can't be more French than that!"

"We won't all fit on a single one," Wedge Antilles says.

"You already had me posing in London, Skywalker, I'm not doing this again. Besides, Cassian is the one that should feature, he's the face of the show."

"Please Jyn, it'd be a group pic, not just you this time. A memento. Don't you want to show this to your friend Bodhi?"

Damn Luke and his boyishness... Everyone caves, elbows and shoulders squeezed together awkwardly. As Kes and Shara are the only couple, they also strike a cheesy pose for prosperity, likely adding some "romance" to the collection.

They ignore people seeking them for money or whatever petition they wanted to get a signature for though... Some details must be glossed over.

"We're not airing on a discovery channel," Draven says, already checking his watch, "most of the tedious editing falls on Kay’s team anyway. Let's get going."

Of course, for professional purposes Cassian forgoes lunch, preferring to nimble on a sandwich so he’d be famished when the time to shoot arrives.

And arrive it does.

A van comes to pick them up and their materials for the intended point of rendezvous between the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Jardin Des Plantes, in the 5th Arrondissement. Quite a pretty place and Luke already mumbles about some hashtags and photos he’d like to take afterwards.

When they finally enter the brasserie called “Au Doux Raisin” (At the sweet grapefruit) — a little before the opening, obviously, for the team has to settle — they instantly find themselves in a typical homey Parisian environment. From the very first second Cassian knows why the production chose this establishment in particular:

The meals offered represent just as many potential discoveries, yet not always the cheapest — within reasonable price range nonetheless. The brasserie sets a real atmosphere with portraits in black and white of old famous actors, an old-fashioned counter and something in the air so uniquely French that he’s surprised the staff doesn’t wear berets with white striped shirts.

Truthfully, everyone is excited, including Jyn who looks oddly happy to be there.

“We’re somewhere straight out of the movie Les Tontons flingueurs,” she says, watching their surroundings with sparkling eyes. At the lack of response she gets, she prompts: “You know, Crooks in Clover, also known as Monsieur Gangster? Ring a bell?”

To be honest the actors look familiar, Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura most of all, but nobody shares her excitement and she automatically returns to her defensive stance:

“What? I’m a cinephile and actually did study film making, you know? These actors are legendary among French cinema, you must have at least heard of some of them!”

“Somewhat. I'm more interested in the fact that this is the first time that I've caught you smiling since we’ve left England.”

Cassian only wished to put her out of her misery as they prepared the set. He gets a bit jittery before the beginning of each filming session so he likes to see people enjoying themselves, it calms him down. Yet somehow it was the wrong thing to say and her lit-up face turns stony as she replies:

“Yeah, well, let’s get this done.”

Smooth, Andor, well done, he thinks sarcastically as Draven yells action and a waiter gives him the menu. Most of the crew will stick to plates of charcuterie and cheese but he has a few possibilities to consider. Of course the list has been communicated beforehand, but ultimately Cassian always has the final choice, to stay as genuine as possible and because he prefers to eat whatever strikes his fancy. It’s more digestible in case of several takes.

Finally he chooses a “Bourguignon meal”: traditional snails then beef and wine stew, a plate of cheese and some crème brûlée to finish. Plentiful but really appetizing. Of course, if it weren’t for the show, he’d just stick with some of the various grâtins and be done with it, but the place calls for gluttony and as a presenter he has to make sure viewers will be satisfied.

If the French can stomach as much in one sitting, so will he.

(Still, he’s thankful Kay’s not currently with him or he’d be sure to get an earful...)

The preliminary speech done in a single take, the first course comes quickly. Famous escargots, classic of the French to eat snails, so the occasion was too good to pass on.

Cassian already had some experience tasting snails in the French way, had enjoyed it so he thought he didn’t have to mask his facial expressions.

He was wrong.

The promised “Gros Escargots de Bourgogne” come in front of him and truth be told they look appealing enough. But what the heck is he supposed to make of the... unusual cutlery... that the waiter brought along? It looks more like a surgical instrument than anything Cassian has ever used.

This entrée should come with warnings, explanatory note and step by step tutorial included.

For a split second Cassian blinks owlishly at the camera then he recovers, a consummate professional. Should be easily enough, really, right? A circular plate with six stuffed snails in their shells... a tiny fork with two tines... and pliers of some kind? It has a spring with a round extremity, obviously meant to keep the shell in place while with the fork he’s supposed to stab what’s inside.

Alright, I’ve got it, he reflects after a few nano seconds of appraisal.

He doesn’t bother with explaining his course of action yet, focused on the task at hand while he states that the snails are cooked with a butter mixed with chopped garlic and parsley.

He looms over the snail closest to him, lift it slowly from his dedicated hole in the plate... but he hasn’t got the chance to use the fork. The damned thing escapes from the contraption and literally flies several feet away from his stunned face.

Nobody moves, not even Draven says cut, yet Cassian stares dumbly at the ruined snail on the floor, hidden two tables away from his. From the way Jyn angles the camera, he guesses she’s zooming on it too...

Fucking French!

It takes three tries for him to master the so called “pince à escargots” — to the utter delight of the crew around him, as they personally try some pâté de lapin à l’ancienne, saucisson sec or saucisson à l’ail and smelly cheese like Camembert or Roquefort.

By the time the Bœuf Bourguignon is served, he feels oddly proud to have won against the perfidy of posh Gastronomie, despite his bruised ego. Thankfully the beef stew is not as challenging, with a regular, universal and most of all reliable knife. Not that he really needs to cut anything, mind you: from what he knows of the process, the beef has macerated in red wine for hours to get this tender. The serving is pretty generous too, and it comes with boiled potatoes, mushrooms, onions and carrots. Thyme and laurel too, to perfume the whole.

He’s full when the four types of cheese come next but he explains the different milks each of them were made of. He actually has flash cards ready on his knees like a cheating schoolboy but their filming time turning short calls for desperate measures. At the dessert he struggles to get through. It’s delicious, it’s just that he reached the peak of his sugary intake. After a few spoonfuls immortalized on film, he hands the rest to Shara’s extended hands.

Overall, good stuff, really. Two glasses of red wine to complete the meal and footage aside, Cassian is more than satisfied with his Parisian trip.

They wrap it up, shake a few hands but take their time calling it a night. Paris is bewitching in the evening and the company is boisterous as they go along the shores of the Seine. Cassian uses it to his advantage, walking his meal off and doing his best to ignore the taunts made over the snail incident.

"I couldn't believe the famous Cassian Andor got bested by a snail. One that was already dead and cooked too," Jyn teases.

"Hey, I succeeded eventually, and it's not the snail as much as the tool that's to blame."

"Still, I thought you'd have more dexterity."

"Sorry to disappoint you, I'll do better next time."

It’s all in good sports really, but while Jyn snorts, Antilles sniggers and Luke stumbles, slamming against his back, blushing inexplicably. What has gotten into them? But she's still smiling as they drive back to the hotel and suddenly he doesn’t mind the French and their peculiarities so much. The production duo have still a decent amount of work before going to bed, but everyone else goes to sleep.

(Maybe Kes and Shara got MIA along the way but the contract doesn’t bind them to a curfew and Mothma turns a blind eye).

Cassian only wishes he had that much freedom as the so called star of the show. But it has been a long day and he would have nobody to share a nightly tryst. Cassian Andor is reasonable, professional and single to boot, so it doesn’t cost him much.

His dreams are fitful and slightly disturbing though. Jolting awake only five hours later, the only image that stays with him is of Jyn, replacing Nicole Kidman’s part in the Moulin Rouge! movie. She looked tantalizing in his subconscious and very not herself: less pragmatic and more eerily sexy.

He shakes the feeling away as he dresses himself. He has a long day ahead and can’t afford to fantasize about the only unattached woman in his crew. She’s a pretty thing and kinda mysterious too, but he is awake now and the dreamy bullshit has no incidence on his job.

He decides to tiptoe in the free area, seeking a cup of herbal tea. Whether mint or ginger should help with the food overload from the night before, surely such things could be found on the table set for self service?

He forgets all about beverages the instant he sees Jyn awake over an hotplate, her back to him. As her name stumbles from his lips, disbelieving, she stiffens visibly and spins slowly around.

Her voice is still sleepy and his annoyingly raspy as they greet each other. In November, the sun isn’t up so early and won’t be for quite some time, unfortunately and the bleached out white neon lights accentuate the exhaustion on her face. Very far from a dreamy cabaret dancer, his mind evaluates worriedly. Has she even slept? She’s dressed in her usual clothes already and ignores the elephant in the room as she asks why he too is already awake.

“I ate too much,” he answers.

“Well of course you did, not everyone can eat as much as the French do just before going to bed. Stomachache?”

“No, just energy of the calories pumping through my veins.”

“How do you plan to work it out then?”

He represses a smirk. With her velvet morning voice, it sounded a lot like an opening for innuendo. She realizes this a second too late and just purses her lips. They are not yet close enough to tease each other, so he throws her a lifeline and gestures to the food he interrupted.

“Isn’t it what you’re doing in the kitchen Jyn?”

“I wish. It’s just... I needed an outlet and I thought I’d best do something useful. Couldn’t wake my best friend.”

He wanted to ask her about what she needed an outlet for, yet people keep appearing and she visibly closes off. Obviously Cassian isn’t the only one awake as the self-service kitchen fills in slowly with the rest of the team. Fat chance, again. He sits, rubbing the back of his neck and mutters a hello.

“What’s the delicious smell I can sniff?” Luke asks, entering the room, nose upturned and honest to God sniffing the air like the human puppy he usually personifies.

“The bread and brioche won’t keep for much longer. So I’m making pain perdu,” Jyn answers, sending a fleeting smile in his direction.

“Lost bread,” Kes translates confusedly, eyeing the slices browning slowly browning in the pan, “what is lost about it?”

“Dunno, it’s just the name,” she sighs, repeating the process to make enough for everybody.

Or maybe the food isn’t the lost thing here, Cassian muses, she is, her tired eyes and forlorn attitude hinting as much. Then, realizing how stupid his thoughts are, he mentally slaps himself and hands the coffee pot to Wedge Antilles, who is blindly reaching for it, like a drowning man and a lifebelt, a junkie and his fix.

Seriously, besides Luke and himself, Cassian wonders how these people can do this work and NOT be morning people. Like, never ever. Kay has complained he had to put with them grumping and groaning until the clock reached 8 AM in the past, but at the time, he thought his friend was being his usual pessimistic self. But as he considers the bunch of sleepyheads around, he has to admit there was some truth to it.

When a plate arrives in front of him, with icing sugar or cinnamon for him to add on if he so wishes, he’s pleasantly surprised.

“You told me you didn’t how to cook,” he says, mildly accusatory.

He leaves the first slice bare, adds sugar on the second and cinnamon on the third, to have the full tasting range. As soon as he tries the first, the goodness dissolves on his tongue, creamy and buttery, the two variations making a perfect combination between sweetness and a tad spicy. He knows various ways to save stale bread, but somehow this tastes different. Besides them Luke was already helping himself with a second serving, grinning.

“Please, this isn't cooking Cassian,” Jyn shrugs. “I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve had this.”

“Not like that, though, this is unique. How did you do it?”

Most of all he wants to know what prompted her to fix this at six in the morning. But even if he had the nerve to ask, she likely wouldn’t answer. So, asking for her recipe was as close as he was willing to go.

“I made the slices my own way. More often than not people use eggs where I used milk. Once the slices suck up all the milk, getting slightly spongy again, I put them in a salt-buttered pan. Easy, not haute cuisine.”

Easy perhaps, but her wistful tone speaks of something more. He knows preparing food can reveal a lot about a person — hell, that was the reason he got enrolled in all this cooking stuff in the first place… — and… well, he remembers their stunt at the Lahmu Restaurant in London. Clearly her relationship to food is… personal.

God, why Kay isn’t here to smack the corniness out of his head?! He almost feels like using a pan on his own skull if that could just stop his brain from overanalyzing a mere breakfast plate.

He doesn’t even have time for this, with the shooting schedule they have to maintain. After all, he might envy other people’s low functioning brains, they are saved much trouble.

Draven announces their Parisian Interlude is over and satisfactory — praise the Lord for that — but he still has a surprise in store...

“A… bus?”

“Yes,” Draven confirms, ”we should be grateful, it’s fully furbished too, functional, and a bit cheaper.”

“Whatever spares us a flight,” Dameron says in relief.

“You don’t like flying?” Jyn asks, surprised.

“If I have to take hop on a plane, I will. It’s way quicker, after all. But yeah, if I have to choose, road’s better. Plus, we can build team spirit or whatever. It’d be like a school trip.”

“Oh yeah,” Luke cheers, absurdly enticed with the idea, “I’m sure our followers would dig that kind of thing, you know?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jyn shrugs, “I never went on school trips, or I was so young I don’t remember. It’s weird.”

“It’ll be a new experience for you then,” Cassian encourages.

“I guess, but why do you care so much?”

(Good question.)

“We’re all in the same train wreck, we gotta stick together.”

(What was that nonsense... for sure if Kay ever heard him talk like that, he would deck him so hard his face wouldn’t be filmed for weeks!)

They take the A1 highway up North, chatting, napping, playing on phones... and yes, to Draven’s utter dismay, there are stupid songs involved at some point. Dameron started, Cassian picked up, and soon everyone was at least humming along. Perhaps because the driver couldn’t take it anymore, they stop in a rest area about midway until they reach Lille, the northern city that ends the French episode. As if the crew’s sugary consumption weren’t already high, they picked sweets again, albeit regional:

Two metal boxes, one with some minty ones called the Bêtises de Cambrai and the other containing toffee-like Babeluttes du Nord, to have a foretaste of their next local cuisine.

If they’re still alive to document it because Cassian swears he’s gonna die of hyperglycemia before they reach Amsterdam!

They have just one day left to shoot in France when they arrive in Lille two hours later, but they make it work. The city, nicknamed “the capital of Flanders” is picturesque in a different way than Paris, of course, but just as pretty. Places with fountains, houses made of red bricks and old cobbled streets, it’s nice.

As they have little time to spare — yet again — the rushes get more hectic than in Paris. It’s much less representative after all.

The people there talk pretty funny, with words even Jyn has a hard time deciphering, but all are very accommodating and helpful. A few wave at the camera and suggest a dish to try. It’s much more easygoing and Cassian relaxes pretty soon.

Not wanting to spoil any Belgian discovery by choosing a dish similar to what can be offered further North, he decides to try « a Welsh ». Like its name implies, this is not originally a French recipe but it became one of the easiest specialty to eat in Lille:

It is a sandwich composed of bread soaked with beer, cheddar cheese and mustard, covered with a slice of ham, dipped into a cream of cheddar cheese, heated in the oven in a ramekin. Not the most elaborate of the establishment they picked’ but it works perfectly with their thematic for the French episode and their lack of time.

Indeed, La Chicorée (The Chicory) is a brasserie like the one in Paris. Except it’s actually an hundred-year-old brewery, not just for the fancy name, and it’s open pretty late, until 4:30 AM. They are told it’s renowned, too, and Cassian can believe that easily.

For dessert, because apparently the mad guys around him have an insane tolerance for sugary treats, or really want him to die on the job, they have some stuffed waffles with cassonade. This version is thin, thankfully, crunchy, though the garnish of vanilla and brown sugar is most likely rich.

“I hadn’t had those in ages,” Jyn says drowsily, waiting for the Lille-Amsterdam flight a while later. “I bought some for my best friend, but I’m not sure I’ll resist the temptation for long. I’ll have to send them to him.”

“Really? How come? It’s good, but it’s not like it’s so addicting,” Cassian asks, because he still feels curious — perhaps sleepy Jyn is more inclined to share anecdotes?

“Wrong, they are addicting. I loved them as a young girl. I’ve spent some time in France over the years, but none so much as northern France. We were British, after all, so crossing the Chanel was easy and Saw... I mean, I’d known an old lady, Louise, who did such waffles for me.”

Yep, oversharing, he thinks with a smile, and there she is talking about a Saw again. More like eluding but it’s more talk than he ever heard from her. The schedule must take its toll on her, same as anyone else.

"You’ve spent holidays in France then, growing up?"

"My guardian actually had a job in France for a time. He was stationed not so very far from here for about a year, before we moved again."

"So the wanderlust goes way back? It explains why you took on the travelling show."

"Maybe. Saw and I never stuck around for long anywhere, but I've been happy there, it brings good memories for once."

At her conflicted expression, he guesses such good memories are far in between. He recalls her enigmatic whisper from a few days ago and surmises she must have had a falling out with her guardian. Cassian doesn't pry further though when she doesn't elaborate, but he stores the information for later.

He’s almost snoozing when Draven — no human has the right to be this operative at 3AM... — hands him his phone, mouthing Kay’s name:

“Hello, Kay?”

“Cassian, did I wake you?”

“No, but that was close. Not everyone can be focused on the show 24/7, like Draven, or you. I feel like I’m slowly losing my soul to the cause.”

“Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear. And you’re as dedicated as the rest of us, you’re just being unusually whiny.”

“Well, you’re not here yet to keep me in check so I can be as petty as I want. I’ll feel better after we leave the country and get some sleep.”

“I’ve seen the first French rushes, actually, to see if they could be easily edited with ours. I have to say it’s fairly entertaining to witness your culinary struggles, Cassian. Especially the snail fetching.”

“Thanks a lot, Kay,”

“I’m serious, honestly it should make the final cut.”

“Did your illness kill your brain cells? What part of the first try should be included? The moment the snail flew across the room or the framing on my butt as I had to get on my knees under the table to retrieve it?”

“Well, I’ll leave it for Draven to decide,” his soon-to-be former friend replies wryly. “But just so you know, it could bring in more female viewers.”

“You’re insane.”

“I’m realistic Cassian, you have a very nice bottom apparently and judging from the people’s enthusiastic reaction on social media, you’d better use it.”

“I... don’t even know what to say to that. Do you even hear yourself?”

“I’m referring to the show’s ratings, not your sex life Cassian Jerón Andor! You know what, we will speak later, once you’ve put your mind out of the gutter!”

“I love you too man,” Cassian smirks.

Only the dial answers him.

#rebelcaptain #food travel au #rebelcaptain food travel au #fanfiction #pingou writes #chapter 3 #sorry I'm passionate about it #so proud #french #star wars #this gives me life #c'mon guys #love and reblog #pretty please #cassian x jyn #cassian andor #jyn erso

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sleepykalena · 7 years ago

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Do you by chance know if there’s been anything posted about that food travel rebelcaptain au that a lot people were writing for? I can’t remember who any of the writers are now to check their blogs.

I...holy shit you’re right, that topic just kinda disappeared from our radars, hasn’t it?

Can anyone out there hit us up and let us know what’s going on with that? Maybe @moonprincess92nz might know something? I feel like you might know. LOL

#ask sleepy #WHO WAS THE ONE THAT DECIDED TO DO THE THING?#signal boost #rebelcaptain #fanfic #food travel au #littlebitojoy

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b-else-writes · 4 years ago

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the tiger shark and the sun

New chapter posted for my Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender RebelCaptain fusion AU!

Read on AO3 | Read from the start

Pairings: Jyn/Cassian, minor Han/Leia and Baze/Chirrut, random minor background pairings

Rating: T

Summary: Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender fusion AU. When exiled firebender Jyn Erso lands on his doorstep the day Cassian, last southern waterbender, meets the Avatar, she seems just another obstacle in ending the War against the Fire Nation. An obstacle he would willingly remove. But as their paths keep crossing, and the twins discover that destiny and balance are more than they expect, Jyn and Cassian find that they are more alike than they ever thought possible.

Snippet under the cut! Read the full thing on AO3!

Jyn ate and slept and spoke to no one as they travelled. Saw, Saw who had loved her in the only way he could, was dead. She hated herself a little for sobbing. She sat next to Bodhi often, holding his hand. She did not know if it helped. But the warm weight seemed to ground him. He began to eat after the third day – what little food they had, anyways. They were living hand-to-mouth, going through the desert. On the fifth day, he spoke. Cassian looked at her, sometimes, as though waiting for some explanation, but he let her keep her vigil. Why are you letting me stay, she wanted to ask. But that seemed the wrong question.

Why am I staying?

Jyn sat on the rickety sand-sailor, stroking Bodhi’s hair as he slept. The A – Luke and Leia, were training with Chirrut right now. They were learning quickly under the powerful, though chaotic, master. She watched idly as Chirrut tossed rocks at them. As Cassian finished the meal, he cleared his throat. The twins stopped, the group assembling for dinner. Jyn shook Bodhi awake.

“So, what now,” Luke said, his voice flat. “Is it too late now?”

Jyn felt Bodhi’s hand on hers. “No, it isn’t," she spoke up.

“Seems pretty late to me,” Baze said under his breath.

“Saw read me the message before…” She hurried on, before Bodhi or Baze or Chirrut could speak, “My father told me about the Death Star.”

“So, it’s real and he built it.”

The comment was neutral, but Jyn’s temper flared. She rounded on Cassian. “Only because he knew they would do it without him. There’s a trap inside. On the Day of Black Sun, the first day of the eighth month, when a solar eclipse happens, the Fire Nation will be vulnerable to attack for eight minutes, right? We can destroy it then!”

“What kind of trap?” It was Baze who spoke. She turned away from Cassian’s unblinking gaze. Those silver-coin eyes – he would always put his friends before himself, before his own life. And she was not one of them.

“He said,” Jyn recalled, pushing her fears aside, “He said the cooling systems are unstable. A disruption to the ventilation system will bring the whole thing down.”

“And did he say what the Death Star is?” Leia said, folding her arms.

“No…I…I’m not sure. I don’t have the scroll and…” She looked back at Cassian’s face. “And Saw was the only who could read it, and I…”

“He chose to stay,�� he said, unexpectedly gentle. “But I’m not the one you need to convince.”

“I believe her,” Chirrut said. She could see the group considering. Luke spoke up lowly. “No matter what, we need to tell the rebels about the Day of Black Sun.”

Cassian nodded slowly. “I agree with Luke. We need to find a city to establish contact.” Cassian smiled at him, and Luke’s face softened.

“You’re thinking like a spy,” Leia said, “If we’re going to invade the Fire Nation, we need more men. To the East is Mon Cala, right?”

Han nodded. “Seat of the Earth King.”

“We head to Mon Cala,” Leia said decisively, “We need to speak with the Earth King to gather his forces. So that…” Her voice broke for a split second. Han touched her shoulder gently. Rallying, she finished, “So that Jedha’s destruction was not in vain.”

Each member of the group raised a hand in agreement. Then, tentatively, Bodhi raised his hand too. Jyn hated how scared she sounded. “You’re going with them?”

“Jyn,” Bodhi said. It was the same way he had spoken to her at the North Pole. She dropped her gaze, bile in her throat. “You’re the only one of us who actually heard that message. You need to give your testimony about the Death Star. Afterwards, you can leave again…”

“You don’t mean that.” Stop sounding like a child, she told herself.

“No,” he admitted, “I don’t. But I’m going to do right by myself now, Jyn. I have to listen to what’s in my heart, and make it right.”

What do you want?

The gap of his shirt exposed the beginnings of Vader's burn on his chest. Saw was dead. Tana and her daughters, who had looked at her as monster, pale-faced horror of their nightmares. She could not leave Bodhi to this danger. She allowed herself to know that much. Anything else was a revelation she was not ready for. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll go.”

It was decided then. Jyn lay on the ground and wondered where her father was. He had built her into a weapon, and loved her. She rolled over and tried not to think of it.

#rebelcaptain #dailyrebelcaptain #jyn x cassian #jyn erso #cassian andor #star wars #au: atla #my fic

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imsfire2 · 6 years ago

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Food/Travel AU continues!

Just posted chapter one of the Greek leg of the Food/Travel AU:

Epiphany and cake.

Cassian, Jyn and the team arrive in Athens for the next stage of their journey. At least in the daytime it’s rather less cold than it was in Germany, and our heroes are starting to spend more time together. Both pining and eating happen...

#rebelcaptain food travel au #my writing #Athens leg of the filming tour is underway #moonprincess92nz #@rebelcaptain-food-travel-au

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moonprincess92 · 7 years ago

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Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are

the food travel au

3 ½ month film schedule. 31 countries. 24 episodes.

2 people who might just fall in love along the way.

(read on AO3)

Chapter 1: London Author: @moonprincess92nz

It’s her first fucking day and she’s late.

“SHIT, SHIT, SHIT–” Jyn dodges through suitcases, around security guards and even leaps right over an empty bench at one point as she races throughout Heathrow Airport. She practically slams right through a holidaying family and nearly bowls into a couple of kids with giant backpacks on their backs, but nothing slows her down because if there is anything worse she can do than being goddamn late on her first day, she can’t think of it. Her rep is bad enough, she needs this job –

ARRIVALS, the sign blares.

Her poor battered suitcase screeching to a halt next to her, Jyn stops to stare around at the hordes of people pouring out of the arrivals gate. The production crew is flying in mostly from USA, she thinks she is one of maybe three people who are from the UK. They told her to meet at the airport, and she checks the email on her phone for the billionth time before scanning the crowd once more.

Finally, she catches a familiar face.

He isn’t so much familiar because she knows him, but rather because she may or may not have binge-watched Cassian Andor videos on YouTube for about eight hours the previous night. Thing is, Jyn honestly wouldn’t call herself a foodie. She knows how to scramble eggs and burn chicken nuggets, but that is about the extent of her cooking skills. Half the time she doesn’t know how she even ended up getting this job, but there she was balls deep in some popular Mexican cooking show because apparently, his face wasn’t so bad to look at. It was only when her roommate barged unceremoniously into her room at four in the morning to ask, “Don’t you have to be at the airport by like, 7am?” when she figured that she might have a bit of a problem.

(“Shut up, Bodhi,” she threw back at him).

Operating on as little sleep as she is, seeing Cassian Andor in person kind of makes her ovaries feel like exploding.

SHIT.

Luckily, before she says something and makes herself look ridiculous, it appears that someone notices her. She hastily says her name, and she’s pulled into the sea of formal introductions by who is apparently their production manager, Mon Mothma. Jyn has never been good at this part. Sometimes, she thinks that she chose the wrong profession entirely – she should be working in a lab or office, somewhere with as little human interaction as possible – but rather unfortunately, she’s chosen a profession where it’s impossible to get by without kissing arse and playing nice with others.

She’s learned over the years how to put on a polite mingling face, but Jesus, it takes it out of her.

“Hi! I’m Luke, the social media manager!” a bright-eyed blonde says.

“Wedge Antilles,” their sound engineer introduces. “Looking forward to working with you!”

“… Kes Dameron. Sorry, I haven’t had coffee yet,” It turns out their head of security is about as sociable as she is this early in the morning.

Honestly, she’s doing fine until suddenly she’s face to face with Cassian Andor and that’s about when it strikes her what she’s really gone and gotten herself into. She’s standing in front of an honest-to-god celebrity, here. She’s never worked on something on this large a scale in her life! It doesn’t help that there’s really something about his jawline as well, but either way she is a professional, goddamn it. She holds out her hand and says,

“Jyn.”

Cassian quirks an eyebrow.

“Is that… your favourite drink, or…?” he asks in confusion.

“What? Oh, bugger,” Jyn curses as he tentatively shakes her hand. “I don’t mean gin, I mean – it’s my name, Jyn with a J – and a y – apparently my parents hated me as a child,” She tops it off with a slightly awkward laugh.

God, she is bad at this.

“Oh. If it helps, I often get called Caspian whenever I go to Starbucks?” Cassian offers.

“Well, that was your first mistake going to Starbucks.”

“What’s wrong with Starbucks?”

“Talk about commercialisation!” Jyn points out. “Whatever happened to supporting your local businesses?”

Incredibly, he laughs. “I’m sorry, you’re the new camera operator, right?”

“Right, right – I was offered the job a little last minute.”

“Of course – Kay unfortunately got sick – that was the guy who was originally hired.”

“Ah, I see,” Jyn tries to lean casually on her suitcase. “I wasn’t given any details, just a contract and a place to meet – sucks to be him, amiright?”

Cassian frowns. “He’s my best friend.”

Jyn blinks. Of fucking course he was his best friend.

She just gestures vaguely behind her somewhere. “I’m gonna…” she says, weakly. He smiles politely back.

If it was at all appropriate for the setting she would be SCREAMING.

“… so all in all,” Jyn eventually says through Skype later that night. “within the first minute of us meeting, I convince him I’m an alcoholic, criticise him for going to bollocking Starbucks and also somehow manage to insult his best friend!”

Little Bodhi through the screen shakes his head. “Oh my god, Jyn…”

Oh my god, Jyn sounds about right. She snuggles down into the hotel bedsheets and is at least thankful that she’s on a production that can afford actual stars underneath their accommodation. The last time she had a job, she was put up in a student hostel, and she’s pretty sure she’s still washing fleas out of her hair to this day. Most of day one was dedicated to production meetings with only a few establishing shots being filmed that evening. After hours of listening to Mon Mothma drone on and on (3 ½ month film schedule, tight deadline, 31 countries, 24 episodes, etc., etc.) Jyn was thankfully able to clear her head down by the Thames. With only her and the essential crew, she was finally able to breathe as she captured her city by sunset.

She honestly doesn’t know what this job is really going to entail. The travelling she is relatively familiar with thanks to her job, but even then she technically hasn’t been out of the country since she was 16, and she mostly tries to forget her time with Saw anyway. She might not have had a family for a long time, but she’s at home here in London as much as she’s ever been. It’s the only place she’s ever felt truly safe, felt like she has ground beneath her feet and she’s a little (a lot) terrified to actually leave it.

But hell, bills need to be paid and a T.V. show needs to be filmed.

“What am I doing, Bodhi?” Jyn mutters underneath the blankets.

“I believe it’s called ‘flirting’,” Bodhi smirks back in their flat on the other side of the city. “and, if I might add, you’re not doing it very well.”

“Fuck you, mate.”

“Just calling it like it is.”

“Seriously,” Jyn stresses, then. “what am I doing here? I’m working on a travelling food show and I barely know how to cook!”

“You’re the camera operator, not the bloody caterer,” Bodhi says, exasperatedly. “I’m fairly certain you don’t need to know.”

“But–”

“Jyn, listen,” Bodhi cuts her off. “Lord knows I’d prefer to just wrap you up and bring you back home, but honey, you gotta stick with this, ok? No more flaking! You think you don’t fit in, fine – fake it until you do. Go get bloody lost in Germany or finally learn how to make pasta or something, I don’t care, just get out and do it, because we both know you’re not really living here.”

“I’m living!”

“You’re existing,” Bodhi sighed. “and I know your life has had its fucked up moments. I know. It sucks. But it’s time, Jyn.”

She snorts. “You know, when I called you it wasn’t for another therapy session. How much do I owe you this time?”

Her best friend rolls his eyes. “A lifetime of free pancakes.”

“You know I can’t make pancakes.”

“Lifetime supply of Jammy Dodgers, then.”

“That, I can do,” Jyn points at the screen.

Bodhi laughs, only it quickly turns into a violent yawn. “BLIMEY, I’m tired.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll take the hint,” Jyn smirks. “but, um, before you actually do go – on a scale of 1 to 10, exactly HOW bad was the flirting?”

“Minus 5,” Bodhi deadpans. “Don’t insult his friends next time.”

“Yeah,” Jyn grimaces. “I’ll do that.”

He grins. “Love you, Jyn.”

“Yeah. Love you, too.”

tellmewhatyoueatofficial check out that view! #tellmewhatyoueat #london #tower bridge #filming #cinematogropher #travel #sunsetwiththecrew #bts @jynserso

bodhitherook JYN BABE U MANAGED TO MAKE IT ONTO THE OFFICIAL INSTA ACCT

bodhitherook also how the fuck are u not wearing a jacket

tellmewhatyoueatofficial @bodhitherook i confess we might have asked her to take her jacket off for the #aesthetic

bodhitherook WHO RUNS THIS ACCOUNT JYN BC CLEARLY THESE PEOPLE ARE TRYIN TO KILL U IT’S OCTOBER

jynserso pfffft sun was out, was a solid 15 degrees that’s basically sunbathing weather

jynserso but still calling you out @walkstheskies his name is Luke Skywalker go stalk him

Jyn manages to corner Luke Skywalker in the hotel hallway.

“WHY ME,” she despairs. Her phone is open on the show’s official Instagram page, and it’s pretty clear what she’s talking about, although she quickly adds, “and before you say anything, I KNOW signing the contract means technically I consented to my image being used on multiple forms of social media, but still–”

Luke just shrugs happily.

“I belong behind a camera, not in front of it,” she protests.

“Hey,” Luke counters. “you look beautiful in that shot! Also, I should be the one complaining, after you sicced your best friend on me.”

“Oh good, Bodhi did his job then,” Jyn says. She steps out of the way hastily as several of their fellow crew members run down the hall between rooms, someone cheering something about shots in the background.

“He’s sent me about a dozen messages insisting that I look after you and treat you right,” he laughs. “Nice guy!”

Jyn just smirks slightly before eyeing down the hallway once more. It’s been two days, and their insane shooting schedule is already starting to hit them all. Quite frankly, none of them have any business still being awake at this time, but it was a long day and apparently they are all still so hyped that trying to sleep with the racket they’re making would be fruitless anyway.

“We should get out!” someone calls enthusiastically from one of the open rooms, and Jyn turns to see their lighting director’s face beaming when she notices her. Shara Bey dashes over and clings hold of her shoulder. “Hey! Where should we go?”

“What’re you looking at me for?” Jyn asks in bewilderment.

“Well, you’re the local girl,” Shara points out.

Jyn stares at the over-tired, wired and enthusiastic faces all staring back at her. They’ve all spilled out of their rooms, nodding and asking and between this and the Instagram post, Jyn isn’t sure she’s been on the receiving end of this much attention in her life. There’s a reason she stays behind the camera! She glances at Luke, although the man just shrugs at her in response.

“I’ve never been to London! Where do we get good food around here?” he asks.

Shit.

“Uhhhh... I know a place that sells killer fish and chips?”

“It’s an adventure and it’s happening - c’mon, guys!” Shara leads the way.

She ends up bringing them to The Cantina, of all places.

A fun fact to rattle off is that there are literally thousands of pubs throughout London, and somehow she always ends up here. Her and Bodhi almost haunt the place at this point. It’s objectively not the most popular in London nor even relatively famous, but in Jyn’s opinion it captures the very heart of British pub culture (you know, getting shit-faced and yelling about football). It’s kind of what the entire show they’re filming is supposed to be about, so… yeah, here they are. The place is always dark and a little shady, the music always slightly too loud and the lights slightly too piercing, but Jyn feels almost relaxed here.

“I moved back to London when I was 16,” she explains as they approach. Shara Bey has already filmed several snapchat videos of herself by this point and now seems to be flirting with the security guy. Most of their group is hanging onto her every word and she adds, “We’d come here on the weekends with our fake I.D.s and get hammered.”

“My kinda party,” Luke grins.

They all pile inside The Cantina, Jyn dutifully avoiding Cassian’s eyes. Honestly, she had no idea that he was even coming - did famous T.V. presenters even do that? - but someone called out to him just as they were walking out of the hotel doors to go catch a train and he dashed out to join them. After embarrassing herself so spectacularly, she figures the only way to handle tonight is the true British way: ignore all emotions and pretend everything is fine.

She notices a gap at the bar and she manages to quickly order two shots as everyone piles into the pub. She thought she had avoided all scrutiny as her colleagues get caught up in which drinks to order, but apparently nothing gets past the social media manager. Luke gives her a look of bemusement from over his shoulder and Jyn bites at him,

“What?”

“Steady on,” he says.

“Shut up,” Jyn accuses.

“You know, if you want to talk to him all you have to do is open your mouth and start saying words,” Luke says, slyly.

Jyn glares. “What d’you know? You know nothing.”

“I know that look! Trust me, I get it. I’m a huge fan too.”

Jyn finally meets his knowing gaze.

“You also watch three seasons in eight hours?”

“Without subtitles!” Luke nods. “My Spanish got a LOT better.”

“Stalk on Instagram?”

“I’m a social media manager,” Luke scoffs. “Raise me something actually valuable.”

“Imagine marrying someday?”

Luke laughs. “Jyn, we all know that he’s out of both our leagues, but with you… ehhhhh, there’s potential.”

“I’m sorry, EHHHHH?”

“I also said potential!”

Jyn was going to offer one of the shots to Luke, but with that statement, she keeps them both for herself. It’s true, she’s been filming this man for the last two days and she still technically hasn’t had any kind of one-on-one conversation with him that isn’t to do with camera angles. Besides the disastrous first attempt, that is. She isn’t even sure what’s stopping her at this point. It’s not like she’s kidding herself that something is going to happen – they’re on a schedule, they’re going to be travelling in a tight knit group for months without space to get away, and who even looks at her like that anymore? – so it’s not even the fact that he’s hot that makes her like this.

She’s just never done anything on this kind of scale before. These people all have established careers, been featured on Ellen, have followers on Twitter… this is the first time Jyn’s worked on a project where the director isn’t some uni student filming a sex scene in their parent’s garage. Bloody hell, what could she even say to him?

“Ok, look,” Luke sighs next to her. “exactly how many shots is this going to take? Because I will literally buy them all if it will get your ass over there.”

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “but at least one more.”

tellmewhatyoueatofficial rumour has it that somewhere round here you can get some killer #fishnchips! @theofficialcantina #tellmewhatyoueat #bts #london #camden town #camden market #london pub #the cantina #filming #cinematogropher #travel

Her ass inevitably did not end up over there.

“Ok, we’re going for the casual ‘we’ve just stumbled upon this place’ feel,” Their director, Draven, is running backwards somewhere behind her, trying to keep up with the action as Cassian walks down the street. She’s aiming for the vision of him being in amongst the crowd, just one with London, which is kinda contradicted by the fact that they have blocked off one side of the entire stretch of street outside the restaurant they’re currently featuring and their security guy is letting through a controlled amount of people to walk through their shot. Still, she gets to watch Cassian stroll down the footpath with his hands in his pockets, contently gazing around the streets, so she’s probably got the good end of the deal, here. Voiceovers will be added in later, so literally all he has to do is walk and smile as Draven yells out direction.

“Ok! You reach Rebel Rebel,” he calls out. Cassian pretends that his eye is caught by the actually previously chosen restaurant, glancing up at it. She zooms in on his face.

Yes. Definitely has the best deal, here.

“CUT,” Draven yells. “Perfect, we’ll shoot it once more, then head on in.”

They take a break before moving into the restaurant to do more filming and she listens to Draven rave to their producer about how big they’re expecting their audience to be for this particular episode. She probably doesn’t try hard enough to hide her scoff, but she’s exhausted from being up until 2am that morning and still too pissed off at herself to care. Despite all of Luke’s encouragement, she still hadn’t managed to get herself over to the table where Cassian had been sitting. She had an opening and alcohol, and yet…

“Look, I’ve worked on this show before and I’m yelling you,” Luke nodded at Cassian last night. “He’s a good guy! He’s worth getting to know.”

She was sure he was. It was just getting to the point of knowing him that worried her. She glances bitterly up at Rebel Rebel. Honestly, of all fucking places in London, they just had to choose the most cliché.

“Why do you not like this place?”

She whirls around in a slight panic, heart practically leaping into her throat. Cassian’s watching her curiously, water bottle in hand and please Jyn, please remember what proper words are.

“Who – who says I don’t like it?”

“That expression on your face,” Cassian points out.

She’s almost impressed that he noticed. “Is filming going to be this forced the entire time?”

For a moment she isn’t sure if he’s going to give her a real or diplomatic answer. She supposes his job’s on the line, but just as that thought occurs he admits, “A lot of things are pre-shot filming this kind of show. It’s like reality T.V., we pretend it was all filmed on the spot when actually we planned the entire thing. But the food and the reactions, that’s going to be real. You can’t fake taste.”

“What if you don’t like something? Are we allowed to include that?”

“Usually depends on who I’m allowed to piss off,” he mentions.

“Well, I dunno who chose Rebel, Rebel, but this place sucks,” If he can figure it out from the look on her face, then there’s no point denying it. Jyn points out the restaurant that is technically one of London’s top places to eat. Recommended on Trip Advisor, stars and celebrities were known to dine there and even Jamie Oliver did a special there once, but as far as Jyn is concerned the entire place was overrated.

“How do you know that?”

“Like I couldn’t possibly know great food,” She winces a little at the tone. Blimey, she needs to work on not sounding so defensive.

“Show me,” Cassian suddenly challenges. “After filming today, take me to the good food.”

He can’t be serious. Surely he isn’t? They have a schedule, they have deadlines, they can’t just go bloody rogue! Yes, fine, she does have somewhere in mind. She might consider wine and a can of tinned soup a decent meal, but that doesn’t mean she can’t recognise great food when she sees it. The memories suddenly hit her, of meat sizzling, of swinging on vinyl chairs and knives clinking against plates. She remembers being allowed to stand on a stool behind the counter to take customer’s money and running through the kitchens trying not to get caught by the chefs. Whenever she hears classical music she’s taken back and they’re literally only around the corner, but…

It’s a stupid idea.

She shrugs. “I think Draven’s gonna burst a blood vessel if we don’t get back to it.”

JUST TAKE HIM TO THE FUCKING RESTAURANT JYN DO IT DOOOOOO IIIIITTTTTTT

FKJDJFKJDFJKFJKDF KILL ME Also are u still harassing luke to be nice to me bc honestly bodhi

Im just lookin out for mah gurl Also turns out he’s kinda funny so But not the point, just take him Jyn seriously

But it’s such a personal place and we barely know each other

Don’t make it about you then. Just say u know a place that’s better, bring ur camera and film the magic. Oooooh, get baze to make his special, that shit is GOOD Plus this way you’ll get to know each other eeeyyyyy

I’m going to regret this

No u wont

It eats at her, until eventually Bodhi manages to make her snap. Damn it, it will not leave her alone and apparently, her way of asking people out these days is just turning up at their hotel room door and demanding them to come with her, since the moment Cassian answers her slightly too hard knock on his door she blurts out,

“Get your coat on, we’re going somewhere.”

Cassian blinks slightly, but seems entirely non-phased as he ducks to the side to grab a jacket and follows her out the door. “Where are we going?”

“To the good food.”

It’s a bit far to walk and she’s still not used to the T.V. glamour of being able to take taxis everywhere, so she drags him out into the cool, drizzly evening and onto the tube. Taking the Piccadilly Line into Covent Garden, the night is fresh and just starting to buzz when they climb up into the street. She wasn’t going to get her camera out until they reached Lahmu, but the side street they cut down is strung up with multi-coloured lanterns and his face is honestly too good to not try and capture.

“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure if we’re even allowed to do this,” Jyn admits, as she points out the way. “Like, filming outside of scheduled shooting. Have I just violated my contract or something?”

“Depends if Draven likes what he sees,” Cassian answers her.

“I’ll delete it later, then,” Jyn says, walking sideways as she filmed and hoping that nothing got in her way lest she accidentally go flying. “No one has to know a thing. And if you talk, I’ll kill you.”

He laughs a little into the camera. “I’m starting to think I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“But anyway, welcome to Covent Garden again,” she makes a deal out of saying, ensuring that she can still see his face through her lens. He pauses under a lamp post and thankfully, no one seems to recognise them in the dark and without the addition of an entire film crew. To someone else, they could literally be any random YouTube vloggers or something. “Naturally, this damn show only brings you to the touristy side of London, but there are some admittedly great places to eat in this area. Not fucking Rebel, Rebel though, I mean shit that’s actually edible.”

“We might want to edit that last part out.”

“Yeah, post can handle that,” She would wave a hand if she had one to spare. “Tell me, superstar Cassian Andor, how are you enjoying London so far?”

He smiles a little against the backdrop of lit restaurants. “It’s cold.”

“Of course it’s cold, it’s fucking England.”

“But it’s exciting,” he adds. “There’s so much history here, buildings that have been around for hundreds of years… it’s great to see.”

“You’re supposed to say you love the food, stop going off script.”

“Sorry – I love the food.”

“Good,” she says. “because if you don’t love where we’re going, then I’ll buy the next round of drinks.”

“Where exactly ARE we going?”

She points across the street and she films him turning and seeing the lit up sign of Lahmu. Owned for the last fifteen years by Baze and Chirrut Malbus-Îmwe, it’s known for its wildly eccentric yet still somehow delicious menu. Jyn leads Cassian there, waving to the matire’d on their way in and asking if Baze is around.

“You’re a regular?” Cassian asks.

“Kind of,” Jyn hedges. “it’s weird to explain.”

She doesn’t rest until they find Baze in the kitchen, the co-owner and chef shaking Cassian’s hand vigorously like any person who was vaguely familiar with food would. Jyn keeps the camera rolling the entire time until finally, he tries Baze’s famous Secret Special and the unearthly sounds that come out of his mouth Jyn deems a little too inappropriate for their G-rated show.

“This is fucking amazing,” he practically moans.

“I’m glad,” Baze says warmly as Jyn hastily cuts the recording.

“And you seriously won’t tell me what kind of meat this is?”

“Of course not, that’s the secret part.”

“It’s not going to have me arrested, right?”

“No. Well… I don’t think so, at least.”

Cassian just shrugs. “Good enough for me.”

Carefully working on packing the camera away in the bag she has strung around her neck, Cassian continues to enthusiastically shovel whatever mystery meat it is into his mouth. Over by the kitchen bench, Baze leans in and squeezes her shoulder.

“So can I expect to actually get on T.V. here, or not?” he asks in undertone.

“Probably not,” she admits.

“Ah, well. It was a nice idea while it lasted,” Baze sighs, gruffly.

“You guys are still doing well, right?” Jyn asks, casually.

“Stop worrying. We’re fine,” Baze shoots her a look. “Exposure never hurts, however.”

“Just let Cassian tweet about this place,” Jyn points out. “You’ll have people coming in hordes.”

Cassian cuts in to scoff, “I’m not THAT popular.”

“When you have a follower count with 5 digits or more, you’re considered popular, mate.”

Cassian protests, but honestly they’re mostly silent after that as he apparently just savours the flavours Jyn knows have to be hitting his tongue. She realises at one point that she’s closed her eyes and she hastily snaps them open because Jesus, Jyn, get a grip, she can listen to the boiling soup and scraping of pots without looking weird about it. It’s only when Baze moves away to carry on directing his kitchen, however, when she finally says,

“Look. I think we got off on the wrong foot when we first met,” she says. “I swear I usually know how to talk to people normally. I’m a big fan?”

Thankfully, he laughs and she lets out a slow breath of relief. “I’m honoured.”

“No really,” Jyn points out. “I don’t even speak Spanish, and I watched all three seasons of your last show.”

“That’s dedication.”

“Sorry again.”

“Hey,” he shakes his head. “It’s fine – I’m a big fan of yours too.”

“Piss off,” Jyn says before she even stops to think whether that might offend him or not. “I film obscure niche documentaries and indie films that lose money rather than make money, there’s no way you like any of that shit.”

“No really, I looked you up when we knew you were coming,” Cassian points out. “Or, ok, Kay sort of insisted that we look you up, he was feeling a bit territorial. But we watched a little of that one documentary you did on the abandoned insane asylum?”

“Oh god,” Jyn shivers. “that place was creepy as all fuckin’ hell. I had nightmares for weeks.”

“But the camera work was beautiful! Wait, exactly how creepy?”

“I’m pretty sure that one of the film crew got possessed.”

“You’re not serious?”

And it’s weird, but he finishes his Secret Special and she tells the quite frankly terrifying story of when one of her crew members had gone a little nutty and claimed that they were having visions of dead people and it kind of… goes well. Her heart is still pounding, but they’re finally talking. It at least makes her feel a little more grounded, a little more like she actually fits into this project that until this point made her feel like she was just floundering under water. This isn’t another weird documentary about haunted buildings, this is something that will eventually air on prime time British television…

“So how did you end up as a T.V. presenter, of all things?” Jyn asks once his plate is scraped clean.

“I started in regular journalism. Believe it or not, but I’m not the best cook.”

“Shut the hell up,” Jyn insists.

“No really,” Cassian says, earnestly. “I can appreciate good food, but I still cannot make anything like my mother can.”

“Well, I burn toast so together, we’ve got this show covered.”

“Thank God, I was starting to worry.”

She laughs. Fucking laughs. But he’s laughing too, so she hopes it’s ok and he asks her then, “How did you get into camera work?”

“The professional answer is that I have always appreciated the entire filmography of whoever happens to be employing me at the time,” Jyn says. “The real answer is that I was running out of time to pick an elective at uni and I chose this random media studies paper on a whim.”

“So we pretty much started in the same place.”

“I guess, yeah,” It’s hard to imagine herself having literally anything in common with the celebrity, but what the hell does she know in the end? They’re quiet for a moment, Cassian moving to wash his own plate and Jyn pretending that she isn’t watching. It’s only when he’s finished and everything is put away when he turns back to her and says,

“So what’s the story?”

“Sorry?”

“The story,” he reiterates and Jyn’s chest thuds painfully. “about why this place. Don’t try and tell me there isn’t a story.”

It’s true, there is one. And she honestly wasn’t sure whether she was going to say it when she first brought him in here, but there’s something that makes her want to say it now. She takes a deep breath and answers,

“My father used to own it.”

He nods, but doesn’t say anything else. He waits, clearly willing to let her talk when she’s ready, and she eventually sighs in exasperation. “Fine, my father owned it and it’s how he met my mother,” she adds on. “I practically grew up here, but they died and it got sold when I was eight and it’s never felt exactly the same since. I guess I still try sometimes, though.”

It’s a very glossed over version of the story, but it will do for now. He nods in understanding before gesturing to her camera once more. “Do you mind?”

She frowns. “What do you want to film?”

“I have an idea – just roll with it?”

She humours him, once again pulling out the camera. She’s at least thankful that the kitchen lights are kind of perfect for filming as she sets it on top of an upturned saucepot in lieu of a tripod. She prompts, “What are you thinking?” and Cassian looks up right at her through the lens.

Blimey.

“We’re going to be taking Europe by storm, right?” he says, and she almost thinks his words aren’t even intended for the camera. “The idea is that we experience multiple cultures and different kinds of foods, but I love that there’s one thing that seems to be universal. No matter where you are in the world, food has this ability to connect things. We associate food with the places we come from, certain celebrations, smell with memories, a restaurant with home…” Her heart is definitely somewhere up around her throat and he smiles at her. “and that’s pretty awesome.”

tellmewhatyoueatofficial rumour has it if you order the #SecretSpecial you’ll become a changed person! #tellmewhatyoueat #restaurant #food #filming #locations #london #covent garden #bts @lahmurestaurant

k-lara7 omg I love this place!!!!

yavemiel @ pingou7 we are so going here next time you come visit me

bodhitherook I had no idea they were filming here @jynserso??????

doptimous Definitely would recommend @lahmurestaurant. The owners are so nice, you’re never waiting long and it’s honestly a great experience every time we go.

In the end, Draven loves their side project so much that it turns into his idea.

They were all supposed to be on a flight to Cardiff at this point, but the network has apparently let them delay by twelve hours to allow them to shoot additional footage and anything that gets her favourite restaurant exposure is fine with Jyn. But despite their filming obviously fake candid shots outside the restaurant, Draven’s admitted that there’s a lot of charm in the real candid-ness of what they filmed the previous night and hopefully, a lot of their original footage will end up being used in the final cuts.

“I’m going to miss London!” Luke says cheerfully as they wait at the airport. Definitely not a big enough production for a private jet, they get a few looks waiting amongst everyone else but luckily at 4am not many people care all that much about the moderately famous food show host and crew. Jyn is attempting to sleep in her cold, plastic chair but it’s kind of hard when Luke won’t stop chatting.

“Do you ever stop?” she asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” she mutters. She gets up and leaves Luke to his cheerful trawling through Twitter and notices Cassian slumped down near the phone charging station. With his hoodie pulled over his eyes it’s difficult to tell if he’s awake or not, but he stirs when she sits down next to him.

“Naturally the network couldn’t wait for tomorrow and literally had to book us on the next flight to Cardiff,” she says. “Who the hell even flies to Cardiff at this time in the morning?”

“Right?” he smiles a little. Then, after pausing he adds, “Hey, um… I’m sorry if I stepped over a line or something before. When we were filming at Lahmu. I know you didn’t really intend on it being a part of the show and it got kinda personal so I just wanted to make sure you’re…”

“It’s ok,” Jyn says softly.

She isn’t sure what it is. It’s 4am in an airport, it’s one of those liminal spaces where time stops existing and only vacant expressions and stress endures. But she turns to glance over at him and he’s looking at her and shitballs, her stomach twists itself inside out. She still doesn’t know what to expect from this entire project and she certainly doesn’t expect anything ever from him, but a part of her is really, really pissed off to know that they have to part ways at the end of all this.

But then again also, they have 30 more countries to go.

Finally, the announcer is declaring that their flight is beginning boarding. All around, tired people stand and yawn, stretching and picking up suitcases and rousing sleeping children. Cassian sighs before pushing back his hood and giving her a determined look.

“Let’s go to Wales,” he says.

“Let’s go to Wales,” Jyn agrees.

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#rebelcaptain #rebelcaptain fanfic #dailyrebelcaptain #rebelcaptain food travel au #food travel au #chapter 1 #WHAT UP BTICHES I FINALLY DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#JADED THIS IS FOR YOU #i honestly hope yall like this pls reblog me i love yall xoxoxo #my fanfiction

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