(no subject)

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie is feeling pleasantly sore in places and ways she hasn't in way too long. Paul's gone to work, and she's letting herself out so she can get some cigarettes, some condoms, and a candy bar. Her clothes — which are actually his clothes, because she'd gone to his apartment in a bikini — are haphazard on her body, but she doesn't even care.

As she locks the door behind her, she looks up to see who else is moving around. It's not early, but it's still early enough that Jillie's surprised to see anyone else in the hall.

Then she realizes what apartment the other woman is coming out of. Paul's neighbor. She can't help a smug little grin.

"Hey," she says.

Comments

[nextchance]

She has, at least, stopped sneaking out at dawn, before Cassian wakes up, the way she used to when she would spend days on end here and leave when it started to feel like too much. Granted, she's pretty sure a part of her is always going to miss that a little, still not thrilled about schedules and having to make plans instead of dropping by whenever she feels like it, but it's worth it. It's a hell of a lot better than the alternative, which Jyn has learned for herself the hard way. This time, she isn't going anywhere, no longer convinced that she has to leave before she can be left.

Instead, she sticks around long enough to drink some coffee, dressing herself in last night's clothes and saying that she'll come by later tonight before she heads out, knowing that Cassian will be leaving for work soon enough. Maybe it's out of habit that she isn't expecting to run into anyone else in the hallway. Once she notices that she isn't alone, though, and the apartment the other woman has left, it doesn't take long for her to piece together who this must be.

Suddenly, it's all she can do to bite back a laugh at the sheer absurdity of it. Better to be amused, at least, than embarrassed, even if she'd never admit to any chance of the latter.

"Morning," she replies, one corner of her mouth curling up. Evidently, she isn't the only one of them who's figured out who the other is, which is strangely relieving, makes her a little less self-conscious than she might otherwise be. Instead, brow arched, she adds, "I take it you had a nice night?"

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie doesn't even bother to try to suppress her grin. She lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

"Doesn't sound like it was any worse than yours," she points out.

She has her sarong around her waist, but Paul's shirt doesn't do much to hide the fact that she's not wearing a bra. She's too busty for that.

"You're not a booty call, right?" she asks, nodding towards the door she's exiting. It's possible she sounds indignant on the woman's behalf.

[nextchance]

She's not wrong, and Jyn tilts her head to the side in acknowledgment of it, her own smile noticeably a little bitten back. This is inherently awkward, or it should be, but it helps just a little on that front that they probably each heard just as much from each other last night. Were it just one or the other, she suspects she'd feel a lot weirder right about now. As it is, there's a part of her that still feels a little intrusive, a part of her that wishes she'd kept her damn mouth shut last night, but she doesn't see the sense in getting hung up on either. Both of them being in the same position, she may as well try to laugh it off.

At the question, she nearly does exactly that, startled enough that a short laugh escapes her before she shakes her head. "No, nothing like that," she says. She's had her share of impulsive one-night stands, and she assumes Cassian has, too, but it's hard to imagine him having someone to fill a role like that. Even when they were trying to convince themselves that there was nothing more to what they were doing than just sex, they were close in other ways, their sleeping together practically incidental. "He's... We're together."

It seems like the best way to put it when they haven't put a name to what they are, descriptive enough without an actual label. "And you two?"

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie takes in the woman's body language as she parses through how to answer her. It's kind of nice, to see someone struggling to find words the way she herself tends to. She grins a little when the question is turned back to her.

"Nah. Paul's too much of a prince for that. We've been together for months, and finally slept together for the first time last night." She pauses, then adds, "And second, third, and fourth times." She grins wider, looking very proud of herself.

[nextchance]

It's a difficult thing for Jyn to imagine, but charming somehow, the thought of someone holding out like that. Maybe it's just because, before Cassian, she hadn't been with anyone who was interested in more than one thing. Maybe it's because the two of them did things so completely backwards, and likely the only way they would ever have been able to. At least, based on what she heard last night, all those months don't seem to have gotten in their way at all.

"Must've been a good first time, then," she says, as close to teasing as she'll get with a stranger, as if she isn't already perfectly aware of that fact. "We were... sort of the opposite. Started sleeping together months before we figured out that we both wanted something more than that."

It is, again, far more that she would usually admit to someone she doesn't know, or, for that matter, someone she does know, but with what they've both overheard, it doesn't seem quite as personal as it otherwise might. "But I guess that explains why I hadn't heard all of that before."

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie nods, tipping her head to the side. "I'm Jillie, by the way," she offers. "Since we know how each other sounds when we come, we should at least know each other's names, right?" She grins, shrugging a little.

[nextchance]

"Might as well," Jyn says, laughing a little despite herself. This should probably be weirder than it is, she thinks, and while it definitely is that, and not a position she would ever have expected to be in, it's not as bad as it could be, either, maybe because neither of them is trying to pretend like it didn't happen. It did, and they both heard plenty, and there's no sense in ignoring that. "I'm Jyn."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Jyn, that's such a cool name. Is it short for anything?" She knows this entire thing should be awkward, but Jillie is pretty good at not being awkward when she should be, and being pretty fucking awkward when she shouldn't be. But standing here, talking to this woman she'd heard having sex not a few hours ago, is actually kind of fun.

[nextchance]

"Nope, just Jyn," she replies, shaking her head. If there's any meaning or significance to it, she never found out what that is. It's come to mean enough on its own, anyway, when she avoided the very fact of it for so long, trying to be anyone other than who she really is. Even if that doesn't matter here, it seems significant all the same that she's used it here. "It's not bad, when people aren't using it to make awful puns."

[hebeimmortalized]

Jillie frowns a little, then tilts her head. "What, like, 'Jyn and tonic'?" she asks, and rolls her eyes. "My brother's name is Jack. So, we got a lot of 'Jack and Jill' jokes growing up." She shakes her head a little.

[nextchance]

"Exactly," Jyn says, letting out an exaggerated sigh along with the word. "As if they're all so clever that no one could possibly have made that joke before." It makes her a little grateful for all the years she lived under aliases, a teenager on her own. She may have been more than well-equipped to defend herself, but she suspects it would have caused all the more potential trouble back then. "What's Jack and Jill? I don't think we had that reference, where I'm from."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Ugh, it's this dumb nursery thing," she says. She quotes the rhyme to Jyn, then rolls her eyes. "As we got older, it turned into this weird thing that kids would say to make it sound like Jack and I were fucking each other."

[nextchance]

Jyn may not understand what the point of the little rhyme is, but she makes a face at Jillie's explanation, that much telling her all she needs to know. "That's disgusting," she says, then pauses a beat. "Did you punch them? I'd've punched them."

[hebeimmortalized]

"Oh, yeah," she assures with a laugh. "I'm pretty sure that's about the same time my parents were like, 'uh, let's get her into sports so she doesn't kill people.'" It'd been a nice way to channel her aggression, at least, until the schizophrenia had gotten the better of her. She wonders, briefly, if Jyn's noticed her scars, and then decides abruptly that she doesn't care.

She realizes, sort of suddenly, that they've just been standing in the hallway, and gestures vaguely for Jyn to follow as she starts to walk. She needs cigarettes, and apparently coffee, if her brain is only now catching up to this fact.

[nextchance]

Jyn lets out a laugh of her own, deciding against mentioning that the closest thing she'd had to a parent had her doing exactly that. While she may not be much for pulling her punches either physically or verbally, it isn't exactly the greatest thing to drop into a conversation shortly after meeting someone that she'd been a child soldier, and had, by sixteen, known a variety of different ways to kill someone. At least Saw made sure she was well-trained and capable of defending herself — and then some — before he abandoned her.

Following along easily as Jillie starts to walk, she just about smiles, the expression crooked but genuine. "Did it work?" she asks. "As an outlet, I mean. I've always been... angrier than anyone really knew what to do with."

It's half a lie — Saw knew — but it's close enough to the truth. She sure as hell doesn't know what to do with herself now, when she's all aggression and there's no longer a war to fight.

[hebeimmortalized]

"It did, yeah, til I went crazy," she says with a shrug. Sometimes, it's easier to just blurt it out and get it into the open. She doesn't watch Jyn's face for her reaction. Instead, she looks steadfastly ahead of them as they walk, uncaring of the way her tits bounce under Paul's shirt, or the way people look at her because of it.

[nextchance]

"Yeah?" Jyn asks, brow raising, though she doesn't seem particularly fazed. Crazy could mean a lot of things, and nothing about Jillie has seemed noteworthily unusual to her so far. Then again, given the circumstances of their meeting, that's a bar set fairly low. It isn't every day she strikes up a conversation with a woman who'd been having sex next door the night before, both of them fairly audible. "Crazy how?"

[hebeimmortalized]

"Oh, uh, I hear voices? I'm schizo, and sometimes it's a little out of control. For the most part, I'm good, though." She shrugs a little, adjusting the shirt and looking to Jyn for her reaction to this new information.

[nextchance]

Given how different the galaxy she lived in tends to be from the world most people here are familiar with, Jyn isn't actually expecting to hear a term she's familiar with. Maybe it's for that reason that she doesn't find herself particularly fazed. "Well, that's what counts," she says, and shrugs. "There are worse things than being crazy. I'm glad you're good, though. For your sake."