#Turns out there was a minor continuity error in the snippet vs. the revised fic plot

[jessicas-pi]

Some people kill their darlings. Me, personally? I mortify my blorbos. sounds like a very interesting fic that would probably vaporize me with secondhand embarrassment easily, so im very curious about it

YEEEHAAA

Okay okay so this scene, which I have temporarily dubbed In Which Tristan Steals Half A Letter And Mandalorian Sibling Rivalries Get A Little Violent, is from the very beginning of Paint Bombs, Pixie Cuts, And Elopement, and it is only the first of MANY increasingly mortifying situations!!

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Sabine had been so distracted, she hadn’t realized she was no longer the only person in her library.

Tristan had breezed in, settled down in her abandoned spot on the lounge, and picked up the letter from Ezra.

“Hey! That’s personal!” she snapped, jumping up and snatching it from him.

Her brother looked up at her and raised an eyebrow.

“What does that mean?”

Sabine stomped back over to her desk and sat down, pulling out a second sheet of paper. “It means that it’s my business, not yours.”

“As your older brother, I think it is my business. After all, you’ve been sending a concerning amount of letters to him, and you won’t let anyone else see his replies.”

“Because it’s personal,” she repeated, not bothering to explain that out of the last six letters she’d sent, he only bothered to reply to the last one, and not very nicely, either.

“Which is exactly why we’re all worried.” She hunched her shoulders and focused on writing.

She was a few paragraphs in when he spoke again. “And it looks like I was right to be worried, because this, little sister, is a pretty compromising letter.”

Sabine blinked, bewildered. “Compromising?” She turned around in her seat and let out a furious cry. That letter—it had had two pages, and Tristan must have let her only snatch the first page without her noticing, because he had the second one in his hand now. “Tristan!”

“Oh, yes, very compromising. I quote—” He held up the letter and read aloud. “It was so nice of you to use all those tender words in your last message to me—have you been writing love notes?”

What she had been writing was a horribly rude letter where she called Ezra every name she could think of, and he’d got sarcastic over it in his reply, which Tristan had to know because the next sentence of that letter was a few of those phrases quoted, but he was apparently being a very selective reader now.

So, Sabine didn’t explain, and just stood, clenching her jaw. “Give me that, and get out of my library.”

He just reclined on the lounge, grinning and kicking his feet up. “You know, I’ve had a few… ah… romantic escapades, in my time. I can be trusted with a secret. So confide in me. Exactly what sweet nothings have you been writing to your adoring Prince?”

“Give it to me and get out, Tristan!”

“Should I make some guesses?” Tristan asked, jumping to his feet to avoid the sofa pillow she hurled at him. Sabine followed him, advancing slowly, fists clenched. “I bet he sends you long letters about his earnest and eternal love, and you send him back coquettish garbage acting like you don’t understand anything he says, so he’ll say it to you again.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped, snatching at the sheet of paper that he held away from her.

“Oh, no, it happens all the time. I’ve fallen for it myself. I still have the letters I got from my old sweetheart when I was your age, if you need proof. Or reference materials for the next time you write—I’m sure the little minx wouldn’t mind you borrowing a few of her shameless hints for your own flirtation.”

“It’s not a flirtation!”

“My bad,” Tristan sang, dodging around a chair so it was between the two of them, and moving side to side in time with her to keep it that way. “But in my defense, I had no idea you and he were serious.”

“We’re not!”

“When did you two first get an understanding?”

“We don’t have one!”

“Now that I look back—this all started last summer, when we were in Jedha, didn’t it? He must have been trying to win your heart then, and I can only assume you strung him along for weeks like the sadistic little witch you are, before you gave in.”

She cursed at him, no longer cold from the drafty walls but so warm she felt like she was crawling out of her own skin. She didn’t know if it was from the excitement of finally getting the letter, the heat of the fire, or the flustered burning in her face, and she didn’t really care.

“I may regret asking this,” Tristan said without a trace of regret, whatsoever, at all, in a million years. “But how did ol’ Prince Di’kut manage to woo you? Did he act gallant and noble and play at courting you? Or was this a…” Tristan wiggled his eyebrows and leaned in to whisper, momentarily dropping his guard. “A passionate-midnight-meetings sort of affai—”

Sabine’s fist connected with his nose.