scavenger.

10 - creep

Jace awoke slowly, sweetly, basking in warm sunlight and the faint sensation of something—someone—tracing the lines of his face, dipping into the contours of his cheekbones and smoothing over his eyelids. Curling all around his skin. Painting him.

At first he wondered if he was back on Naboo, if this was all a dream, if he was a kid again and his mother was coaxing him out of sleep like always, but then—

Anri, he realized, consciousness flooding back into him. This is Anri.

He didn't open his eyes. Guilty as charged, he didn't want her to stop or shy away as he knew she would. He wanted to lay like this a while longer. Just like this.

God, what a sucker he was. What a creep he was.

But if that made him a creep, then what was she?

Suddenly she pulled away, and despite the burning sunlight, Jace felt a little cold. He pried open one of his eyes and found her sitting up, pin straight (her posture was always impeccable), her hands on her knees, squinting off into the distance.

For a minute longer he pretended to be asleep, and then, he pretended to wake up.

Anri glanced at him and gave a weak smile. "Morning, captain. Sleep well?"

Actually, he really, really did. "Yeah."

"I think I see the bounty hunter coming this way," she said.

Jace stifled a groan. That guy really got on his last nerve. Sure, he'd only known him for a day, but—Stars. Stars, that guy was a bastard. Just a bastard.

He hadn't missed the slight look of hurt in Anri's eyes when the hunter'd left them the night before to go back to the cantina.

She deserved better.

What the hell am I thinking about?

He hadn't missed the way she grinned at him the night before, bathed in pink, her dark hair whipping around her face but never obscuring it from view.

Plump lips stretched over square teeth. Dimples dotting ruddy cheeks. Eyes like glinting emeralds that never lost their luster even when the moon was high in the sky and they were laying half-asleep, side by side, atop her ship.

He'd wanted her.

Shut up!

Jace ran a hand down his face, propping himself up on his elbows. The sun was still close to the horizon—good, they hadn't slept in too much. Well, he hadn't. Anri never slept in, it seemed. Casual and cocky as she was, she had discipline that would've put the highest-ranking officer in the rebel forces to shame. Walking hours straight in the sweltering heat, lugging around one of the heaviest bags he'd ever held—because he'd had to force her (force her!) to let him carry it instead—nonstop, every single day of her entire life, alone as far as he could tell. Aside from some rare help from the hunter, she'd practically brought a ruined ship from the dead—alone.

And she still had the energy to smile.

She and Bheema would've gotten along splendidly, Jace thought.

Jace's chest tightened at the thought of him.

He ought've been here instead.

"Captain," Anri said softly. "Don't go there."

Jace turned to her, stunned. "Wh—"

Immediately, without giving any sort of explanation, she gathered to her feet and jumped—yeah, jumped—off the top of the ship, and landed smoothly on the sand, giving a little grunt from the impact.

Jace did the same, but his landing was much more clumsy. Get it together! Bheema's cackling voice echoed in his head. You're a soldier, for fuck's sake! He quickly brushed it off, because luckily, she wasn't watching.

Unless somehow she was.

Her sharpened senses were getting odd.

Was no one going to bring up the fact that rooms shake when she's drunk?

"Iye!" Anri called, cupping her hands around her mouth. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

The bounty hunter's reply was unintelligible to Jace, but Anri seemed to have heard it fine. She turned to Jace, her eyebrows raised. "Says he's gonna help."

"Help?"

"With the ship. He rarely does this. Well, I rarely let him, because he's usually so tired from, you know, his living, or he's too drunk so I don't trust him," Anri's voice was just a little bitter. Just a little. "Anyway, I can't reject him now, since he's all the way out here, and it'd be weird if I let you and not him."

She was just thinking out loud at this point, chewing her lip. For someone so enigmatic she certainly read like an open book.

Jace was starting to feel weird about admiring her so damn much. Studying her so damn hard. Nothing really had changed. She was exactly the same person she'd been when he met her, what, a solid week ago?

He couldn't stop thinking about her even though she was right there.

The bounty hunter was nearer now, at least to where Jace could see his face. It was absolutely blank, though. Guarded.

But then he grinned brilliantly.

"Hey, Anri," he said cordially. Nodded to Jace. Jace nodded back.

"Hey," she replied, crossing her arms and arching a brow. "What spurred all this?"

The hunter shrugged. "I was alone in a cantina feeling useless."

"Did you walk all this way? You could've rented another speeder..."

"I wanted some fresh air." The hunter mirrored her expression. "What, you worried?"

Jace swore he detected a hint of hope in that gruff tone of his.

"Pshyeah," Anri snorted, and then went to lower the ramp.

"To be honest, I was also pretty curious to see how the ship's coming along," the hunter continued. "What with Jace helping you out and all."

"It's actually coming along better than ever!" Anri said with sudden enthusiasm. "It was already, like, three-quarters ready before he arrived, but now it's more like two-thirds." Anri paused, calculating in her head. "That's how that works, right, cap? Thirds are more than quarters?"

"Yeah, that's right," Jace assured her.

"I'm good with numbers, bad with fractions," she laughed musically, starting up the ramp. As usual, it seemed Anri was doing her best to alleviate the tension that seemed to float around the bounty hunter, hang heavy in the air between him and Jace.

Jace resisted rolling his eyes at the thought. Not at Anri, of course, but at this hunter's strange need to compete with him for a place in her world. Didn't he realize Anri would just ditch Jace the second she'd seen him back to the alliance?

That was the deal.

She and the bounty hunter could frolic around the galaxy as they pleased after that.

Jace found himself clenching his fists. He stretched out his fingers, wondering what came over him.

"Iye, Captain!" Anri yelled from inside the ship. "You comin' or what?"