Let's begin.

[groupon]

CONNECTION AT FIRST SIGHT


This isn't love. Not really. Not yet (if ever). Still, what you feel for this person when your eyes meet theirs for that first moment that feels like a life but is only a second, that's...something. Attraction. Connection. Destiny.

ou didn't choose the magnetism that draws you to them, them to you. What you can control?

What happens next.

HOW TO PLAY
- Characters. Preferences. The usual.
- Your characters both realize that significant importance lies in their meeting. What nature of bond will it be? Does benefit or destruction—mutual or on a cosmic scale—end their path?
- This doesn't have to be a shipping meme! Platonic or even antagonistic "life partners" and intertwined fates are more than valid.

Comments

closed to seenitbefore

[callsign_rogueone]

The phone is overwarm in his sweaty hand. Bodhi tips the screen up, checking one last time for a follow-up text from Jyn. Nothing. The latest (final?) message, timestamped 23 minutes ago, reads:

pileup on the beltway. no eta. dont worry, i told him youre still coming.

The part of his brain not paralyzed by anxiety - social and general - wonders at such questionable grammar from a published journalist. She must type like this on the regular, for her autocorrect to let it slide.

This meetup was Jyn's idea, the next step in supporting Bodhi's story. He trusts her plan, trusts her, but he can't help the paranoia drawing his shoulderblades tight. Jyn's as paranoid as he is, so it stands to reason he can trust anyone she deems safe, but his own wariness just won't hear it. Turns out there's no transitive property of trust when you've got a knife hilt sticking out your back.

Bodhi scans the bustling food court from his position beside the Dunkin Donuts kiosk. Jyn had said her friend would have a laptop out, but he spots at least four people typing away over their lunches. He should be able to wander between their tables without doubling back or looking too shady, but what's he supposed to do when he gets close enough to say 'hi'? Did Jyn describe him to her friend in turn?

He'll just have to hope so. Bodhi hefts his tray of styrofoamy lo-mein and strikes off into the crowd.

[seenitbefore]

Only after he's turned his phone off and put it back in his pocket does it occur to Cassian that he has no idea who he's looking for. Jyn Erso he knows by sight, can usually pick out of a moderate crowd - if nothing else, by the fuck-off huge messenger bag and the feral gleam in her eyes. But apparently Jyn won't be showing up to this meeting after all; just this guy she's decided to champion, of whom Cassian knows only his name and the fact that the US Army screwed him over. He hasn't even seen a photo.

Which is why Bodhi makes two circuits of the food court and has started on a third by the time he clues in.

(He was expecting... he doesn't know. Some lanky crew-cut white boy? Someone who looked like his uncles, i.e. tall, dark, and built like a brick house? Someone who wasn't a literal Disney prince, anyway.)

This time he catches the guy's eye and raises a tentative hand. "Sorry - are you Bodhi?"

[callsign_rogueone]

Midway through his second loop, Bodhi's grappling with middleschool flashbacks; he might as well be thirteen, craning his neck from the edge of the cafeteria in search of an inviting wave or welcoming seat, the awkward bookish kid with the weird-smelling packed lunch.

(things improved in highschool, especially once the braces came off, but it turns out middle school lingers somewhere in the psyche. wonderful.)

So, yes, he's extra jittery on top of the screaming paranoia when someone lifts their face in his periphery and calls out his name. Bodhi doesn't - quite - jump, but he jerks around so hard his Sprite tips over, flooding the tray.

"Ah! Sh-! Fffff! I'm--sorry, sorry about that," he fumbles in every sense of the word, but does manage to get the tray down on the table without upending soda all over the person's laptop. If a little lands on the tabletop, well, it was surely already sticky. "I'm--yes, I'm Bodhi R-Rook, hello."

He sticks out a hand, realizes he's clutching a wad of nonabsorbant cafeteria napkins, drops them, swipes his palm down his hip, and reextends the hand. Aquidah Rook raised a disaster human, not a boor.

As he properly acknowledges Jyn's contact for the first time, he realizes he'd noticed them earlier, but dismissed them as being 'too young for an alleged anarchist with vague but useful skills'. The plaid flannel overshirt and faded graphic tee left Bodhi with the impression of a student, possibly college, frazzled and desperate for a change of study venue. Now, taking in the 1-o-clock shadow and the faint lines at the corner of the other man's eyes, he's forced to throw that out the window.

[seenitbefore]

Alarmed, he makes a grab to steady him and/or the tray - good job, Andor, scare the man to death - but Bodhi more or less rights himself unassisted, and Cassian accepts a slightly sticky handshake instead. "Cassian. Sorry I didn't spot you right away. Didn't mean to startle you. You okay?"

He closes the computer with his free hand, half rising to push out the other chair.