So when Cassian met her eyes across the classroom after the professor dealt his final blow, Jyn did her best to keep the panic off her face. It didn’t help, though, that he looked at her like he’d swallowed a bug. Their gazes met for one brief moment before he turned his head back to his notebook and brought his hand up to push back his hair, effectively blocking his face from view. Jyn frowned and faced forward again, too busy wondering what on earth that was about to pay attention to the rest of the class.

Afterward, though, she waited at her desk for him, knowing that she would simply have to suck it up and talk to him. She was not going to fail this assignment just because she had a massive crush on her partner. She was an adult, for fucks sake.

Nevermind that she’d never had a boyfriend, and that Leia had taken to describing her as “touch-starved.” It wasn’t that bad.

Cassian walked over and stopped next to her desk, his hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts.

“So…”

“Right,” she said. “Blue.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up.

“I did a quick Google search,” she continued, gathering up her notebook so that she didn’t have to look at him. “There’s a nature reserve just south of here, apparently it has lots of different native habitats. There are a few flowers that should grow there --”

“There should be a few birds, too.”

She paused and frowned at him. “Birds.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

She snorted and looked back to her backpack. “I don’t think birds are going to be blue enough to get us an A.”

It was his turn to frown.

“Seriously?” When she nodded and swung her backpack onto her shoulder, he laughed. “Right. I forget that you’re an exchange student, too. Do they not have blue birds in --”

“In London?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “None that I’ve seen.”

“Ah.” He pulled out his phone and punched something into it, saying, “Well here, we have these…”

And then he held up his phone and showed her a picture of a bird that was so stunningly blue her jaw dropped.

She stared for a moment, then said, “That’s photoshopped.”

He smirked at her and went to put his phone back in his pocket, but she snatched it from him to take a closer look. He laughed and plucked it from her hands.

“No it’s not.”

“Liar. What was that?”

“Um…” He glanced at his phone. “Eastern bluebird.”

“It’s fake,” she insisted. Nothing in nature could be that blue.

“Says here that it’s the state bird of Missouri. We’ll probably see one.”

She narrowed her eyes, doubtful, but shrugged after a second. “Whatever you say…”

They stared awkwardly at each other for a few moments, until Jyn cleared her throat and said,  “Is tomorrow okay? I’m out of class by 1:00.”

He nodded, shoving his hands back into his pockets. He avoided her eyes. “Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll, um… meet you here?”

“Sure. I’ll drive?”

He nodded again, and glanced up at her to say, “So… tomorrow then.”

She felt a little breathless all of a sudden. His expression was the same, but something in his eyes had changed and it made her knees go a bit weak. “Yeah,” she said, her voice higher than before. “Tomorrow.”

And then he smiled at her, something shy that tugged at the corners of his mouth and sent her heart racing in her chest. She gave him a timid smile back, and he turned and left the classroom. Jyn watched him go, trying not to stare at the way his shorts hugged his ass, or what there was of it -- she couldn’t figure out how a man with no ass managed to fill out a pair of cargo shorts, but dammit if he didn’t pull it off.

She took a deep breath and resettled her backpack on her shoulders, telling herself not to think about tomorrow and the multiple hours she would have to spend pretending like she wasn’t completely enamored of her partner. She shook her head.

Worry about it when it happens, Erso, and not until then.

The weather the next day was literally picture perfect: sunny and dry, with a smattering of clouds in the sky and a gentle breeze.

Cassian was also picture perfect: grey t-shirt with a v-neck cut so low it should have been illegal, the same khaki cargo shorts from yesterday, and a ball cap pulled down over his eyes. He hadn’t shaved, and Jyn was almost mad about it -- the scruff on his jaw looked too damn attractive, and she was supposed to be working on a project. How was she going to focus on taking pictures of flowers when that magnificent jawline was three feet away from her? She rolled her eyes, but unlocked the car doors so that he could slide into the passenger seat, and pulled out of the parking lot before he could even finish buckling his seatbelt. He gave her an odd look, but didn’t say anything about it.

She thought about making small talk as she drove, but her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth, useless. Instead, she cranked up the radio, not really caring what station it was on, but grateful for the white noise it created. He didn’t seem keen to talk, either.

They drove the entire trip without saying anything, which should have been awkward as all hell, but somehow it wasn’t. It was… comfortable. He fiddled with the settings on his camera most of the trip, clicking a few shots of his shoes or of the passing cars and then adjusting settings. Right before Jyn turned on her blinker to get off at the right exit, though, he turned his camera on her, and she heard the lens zoom and the shutter click before she knew what was happening. When she realized that he had just taken her picture, she shot him an open-mouthed look of shock, and he laughed.

“Sorry,” he said, breaking their 30-minute silence. “You just --”

She glared at him, and he grinned at her, but put his camera down, muttering “sorry” again as he adjusted the settings one more time.

Jyn rolled her eyes, but she could feel her chest growing warm with a blush. She hoped it wouldn’t climb her neck to her face. The last thing she needed was for him to know she was embarrassed that he had taken her picture. She was curious about why he had done it. “You just--” what? What had he been about to say? She didn’t want to think about it, because she was afraid of what the answer might be.

They pulled into the parking lot of the nature reserve a few minutes later and climbed out of the car. From the parking lot it didn’t look like much -- a lake down the hill, trees to the right, a field of tall gold grass to the left -- but Jyn had done her research. 2400 acres of woodland, prairie, glade, and riverside, all maintained to create the best examples of untouched native habitat. There were multiple trails they could take that would lead them through most of them. Somewhere out there would be her damned blue.

Cassian had grabbed a map from the bulletin board and was studying it. Jyn went to his side of the car and looked over his shoulder.

“If we start here and loop around through these trails,” he said, pointing to the colored lines on the map, “it should take us through the major ecosystems.” He looked down at her. “Should be about 5 miles.”

She realized he was asking her if she could handle five miles of hiking. She nodded at him. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

He smiled and folded up the map before tucking it into his back pocket. “Let’s go then.”

Jyn let him lead the way. It really was a beautiful day, and they were soon snapping photos of things that didn’t meet the requirements of their assignment but were too lovely to pass up -- the sun filtering through the tree canopy, the water trickling over moss-covered rocks in a stream they had to cross without a bridge, the snake in the middle of the trail that scared the shit out of Jyn when she almost stepped on it, sending Cassian cackling before he thought to put his camera to use. He had caught a couple shots of her, too, after that, which should have made her mad, but he was grinning at her, and it was all really rather ridiculous, but she was actually having fun.

They still didn’t speak much as they hiked, but there was an ease between them that surprised her. When they came across a plant that they didn’t know, he would pull up a field guide that he had downloaded to his phone, and they would bend over it to block the sun and scroll through until they found what they were looking for.

At the sight of their first bird, Jyn had smirked at him.

“Not blue,” she called, and he had rolled his eyes.

“Obviously,” he retorted, but took a picture of the cardinal anyway.

They moved through the habitats one after another, the landscape shifting every now and then as they wound their way around the nature reserve, but as the day dragged on, Jyn was starting to worry. They hadn’t seen anything yet that could be described as truly blue, not even a flower. A seed of panic began to sprout in her gut. What if they couldn’t complete the assignment? Had Professor Imwe tricked them? Were there actually no blue things to be photographed?

They were almost back to the car, shoulders slumped in defeat, when Cassian’s back went ramrod straight, and he froze in the middle of the path. Jyn ran smack into him, because she’d been looking at her feet, exhausted and dismayed.

“What--?”

“Shh!” He was staring at something in front of them. Jyn looked around him, squinting in the sun.

“What?” she hissed.

He lifted his hand and pointed towards the grass ahead of them. Jyn narrowed her eyes, searching, not sure what the hell she was supposed to be seeing, but then --

Her jaw dropped.

“No.”

Cassian was grinning again, bringing his camera up to his eye and zooming in so that he could start rapid-firing on the shutter. It took Jyn a moment to do the same.

It was a bird, the bluest bird she had ever seen, vibrant and beautiful and holy shit it was real. It was perched on the stalk of a dead thistle, head turned into the wind, and Jyn had the feeling that its tiny beetle-black eyes were fixed on them, as though it were photographing them. Jyn’s finger clicked repeatedly on the shutter as she crept a bit closer, crouching down a bit to get a better angle. The bird stayed put -- thank god -- and even began to sing, an excited warble of high-pitched notes that cascaded down like water over stones.

“Are you getting this?” Cassian whispered, and Jyn nodded, breathless.

They must have taken hundreds of photos, but the bird stayed even after they straightened and put their cameras down. They watched it as it sang, this time without a lens in the way, and Jyn tried to catch her breath. She had never seen anything like it. How? How could it be so blue?

The bird eventually flew away, leaving Jyn and Cassian standing in the middle of the trail with their cameras around their necks, and their hands --

They looked down at the same time to see their fingers intertwined. They jumped apart like they’d been electrocuted, faces flooding red and eyes on the dirt beneath their feet.

Jyn’s heart was pounding in her ears. Oh god, she’d held his hand. Oh god, why? Had she done it? Or had he--?

They stood in the middle of the trail in an incredibly awkward silence for a few moments, until Cassian adjusted the strap of his camera around his neck and cleared his throat.

“I think we’ve got our A,” he said casually, still not looking at her.

“Yeah,” Jyn agreed, eyes also still on her feet.

“Um…”

She snorted in uneasy laughter. “Yeah?”

“Want to head back?”

She shoved her bangs out of her eyes and turned to him, giving him a smile that was more confident than she felt. “Sure,” she said, and began heading down the trail. Cassian followed, just a step behind. She felt his presence behind her like a weight. He was staring at her, she knew it. She chanced a glance behind her, and when she met his eyes, she swallowed, because he was smiling at her in a way that made her breath catch. She turned away, but slowed her pace so that he could draw even with her. She let her arm drop from her camera, swinging it beside her, and his did the same, and she tried to keep her breath even, but then, oh, his knuckles just barely brushed hers, and then her fingers were tracing his…

They got back to the car without saying a word, but their hands only separated when they had to open the doors and climb inside. The ride back to campus was silent again, and they didn’t touch again while driving, but both of them glowed warm like the September sun, and when Jyn pulled up to his dorm, she grabbed a pen and his arm and scribbled her number on the back of his hand before he climbed out. He stared for a moment, and then his mouth curled into a slow grin. She grinned back, feeling giddy and a bit out of body.

“See you in class,” he said before he shut the door.

“See you,” she replied, and when he walked away, she collapsed onto her steering wheel and squealed like an idiot.

They got an A on their assignment.

After, he asked her out to dinner to celebrate. She said yes.