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I LOST POE HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?
Hux had only a few seconds to read the hand-lettered shirt before the man wearing it fell into him. Trying to disengage himself before the drunk’s breath rendered him unconscious, Hux snarled, “Watch where you’re going!”
Arms grabbed at his waist as they both staggered.
“Get off me, you fool.”
“Sorry. *hic* It’s just …” Pushing off from Hux, the drunk nearly toppled over backwards. Hux found himself reaching out and grabbing the man’s black hoodie to keep him from tripping over the uneven pavement. “Thanks, man.” He squinted at Hux, swaying where he stood, and grinned. “Are you this drunk when I’m not this cute?”
Flabbergasted, Hux gaped at him. He was spared from trying to decide whether he should try to correct that sentence when someone else popped up at their elbows.
“Kylo! There you are! What did we say about wandering off?”
“Finn! Buddy! Where’d you go?”
“Sorry about this,” the other man told Hux, taking the drunk’s arm and slinging it over his shoulder.
“No harm done,” Hux replied.
“Finn. Pssst!” The drunk (Kylo, Hux reminded himself), tried to whisper to his friend, failing miserably. “Is he really really cute or am I really really drunk?”
Hux felt the blood rush to his face and cursed his pale complexion.
“Um. Both?” Finn grinned at him as he dug his phone out of his pocket, somehow managing to keep Kylo upright while he dialed. “Poe, I found him. …. Looks like he’s in one piece …. No blood, no. … Okay, we’ll meet you there.”
Hux reached out again to grab Kylo when he almost pulled the two of them over. Against his better judgment, he asked, “Do you need a hand?”
“I hate to ask, but he is a lot to handle. If you wouldn’t mind?”
Between the two of them, Kylo slung over their shoulders, they kept him moving in a mostly straight line.
“Sorry about this,” Finn repeated. “He’s just had a really rough time of it the last couple of months, so we figured we’d let him blow off a bit of steam.”
“You’re a good friend, Finn. And you’re great too, really cute guy.”
Finn snorted in laughter. “Hey, what’s your name, anyways?”
“Hux.”
“Hux!” Kylo shouted. “Rhymes with…”
“If you finish that sentence I will drop your ass so hard your spine will come out of your nose,” Hux snapped and Finn started laughing so hard he doubled over, taking Kylo with him.
“SHIT!” Hux felt himself going down too, Kylo’s arm across his shoulder a dead weight he couldn’t shed.
“Whoa there!” Another body threw itself into the fray, hitting Kylo from the sagging side and righting them all again. I’M POE , his shirt proclaimed. “Glad I didn’t wait by the door! You doing okay?”
The question was obviously not directed at Kylo, but he answered it anyways.
“I’m doing GREAT! POE! Look!” and he tossed his head in Hux’s direction, nearly toppling them all again. Hux found him torn between utter exasperation and wry amusement at his antics.
Even though it was fueled by seemingly massive amounts of lubrication, he’d never been so openly appreciated before. And Kylo did have a certain raw charm.
It was with mixed relief and reluctance that he ceded his place to this Poe fellow.
“Will you make it okay from here?” he asked.
“Yeah, our hotel’s just around the corner. Thanks so much for your help.”
“It wasn’t too much of a bother.”
“Wait, no, he’s not coming with us?” Kylo wailed as they pulled him along, looking back over his shoulder. “Hang on a minute!” Shaking himself free from his support, he stumbled towards Hux, arm outstretched. “Thanks, man. I know I’m not all that… I’m not … I’m drunk!”
“Yes, you most certainly are.” Figuring it was harmless enough, Hux took his outstretched hand, expecting a shake. Instead he found himself pulled into a crushing hug as Kylo babbled into his ear. It took some doing for Poe and Finn to extricate him but they finally got Kylo back under control (mostly).
He followed along to make sure they made it the rest of the way without incident. As he watched them maneuver Kylo through a revolving door he heard him say, “His name’s Hux. I can’t tell you what rhymes with or ….” The door spun, locking him in the little glass chamber and silencing the rest of his words. As Poe followed suit Hux waved, getting a wave in return from Finn before he, too, disappeared.
With that startling example of extreme intoxication fresh in his brain, he decided for an early bedtime. It was only the first day of his vacation, after all, and he was still a bit tired from traveling. His hotel was only a few blocks from here and he decided to call it a night.
When he walked into the diner across the street from his hotel the next morning, he was surprised to see a trio of familiar faces. Well, two faces and one head of familiar looking hair. Finn and Poe sat across from each other in a booth and Kylo sat slumped over the table next to Finn, head buried in his crossed arms.
He was in the middle of deciding whether he should duck out and try another spot for breakfast but Finn spotted him.
“Hey, man! Good to see you! Thanks again for your help last night.” He spoke louder than necessary and Kylo moaned, sinking down further in the booth and drawing his arms up to cover his ears. Finn winked at him, and Poe gestured him over, sliding over towards the window.
The waitress arrived with a pot of coffee as he sat and poured for all of them. Finn pushed a cup over to Kylo and poked him in the arm.
“Caffeine, Kylo.”
One arm unfolded and groped for the cup. When his fingers wrapped around it he drew it in, wrapping himself around it without lifting his head. Slurping noises began to emanate from inside his crossed arms, followed by another moan.
“Told you to drink more water, buddy,” Poe said, and a hand emerged long enough to extend a middle finger before disappearing again.
“Does he remember anything about last night?” Hux asked, more amused than he had any right to be at Kylo’s behavior.
“Not really, no. Which is a shame because we won’t be able to tease him properly for it once he recovers.”
“Yes, shame, that.” The strangest thing was, he actually meant it.
“But hey, let us buy you breakfast to thank you! It could have been a lot worse last night without your help.”
He’d have argued about it, but since his normal breakfast consisted of toast and coffee it didn’t seem worth protesting. He somehow ended up with extra slices of bacon as well, and the company was pleasant. Kylo never emerged from his cocoon of hair, and shortly after their food arrived his snores began making the table vibrate.
During the course of their conversation he learned that unlike him they’d been here for a week and were about to head home as soon as they finished breakfast.
“Well, good luck to you,” he offered.
“We’ve stocked up on water, Advil, and plastic bags. I think we’ll be good.”
“Nice to meet you, under the circumstances,” Poe said as they parted, and that was the end of it.
Or so Hux thought. And then the video hit the internet.
“Hey, Hux! This guy looks like you. Sounds like you too.” He’d barely walked in the door on his first morning back from vacation and that was Mitaka’s greeting. Mitaka beckoned him over to the group huddled around the water cooler, and as he approached, he heard his own voice coming from Thanisson’s phone.
If you finish that sentence I will drop your ass so hard your spine will come out of your nose.
“No!”
From the looks of it, someone had followed them and recorded the whole thing. He got Thanisson to start it over again and watched, amazed anew that they’d managed to keep Kylo upright and that no one had gotten hurt.
“Do you know these guys?” Mitaka asked.
“No, never met them before,” he replied.
“I recognize the drunk one, though. He’s got his own YouTube channel. He’s a gamer. Pretty popular too. This video had only about 10K hits this morning but it’s gone viral. It’s all over Facebook.”
“Really? Send me the link, will you?”
He tried to put it out of his mind after that, but after the third time someone popped into his office he put a note up on his door. “YES I HAVE SEEN THE VIDEO, THANK YOU. CAN I PLEASE DO MY WORK NOW?”
That kept the masses away for the rest of the day and he managed power through without further interruption, but after dinner was done and the dishes put away and he’d settled on the sofa with a glass of wine, his curiosity got the better of him. Clicking on the link in Mitaka’s email, he picked a video at random to watch from the guy’s playlist.
He had no clue what the game was about, but this Kylo’s patter was amusing, and he picked another at random after that, and another. The fourth one that he chose had been posted just a few days previous, and wasn’t a gaming stream. Instead, Kylo sat at a desk, talking into a webcam while he looked everywhere but at the camera.
“Um, hi, everyone. As you all noticed, I haven’t been online a lot lately. It’s been a rough couple of months, after my dad died. I kind of, well, wasn’t doing too well. I’ve got a lot of people to thank for helping me get through this, and I’m not all the way out on the other side yet, but it’s getting better.”
Kylo ran his fingers through his hair, looking up and staring directly into the camera for the first time.
“A lot of you have let me know about that video. I gotta say that night wasn’t my best point, but it reminded me of something I’d kinda forgotten. I’ve got some really great friends. Thanks, Poe and Finn, you’re the best. And also thanks to the random stranger that helped them out. Hux, whoever you are, I want to thank you too. Drop me a line and I’ll, I don’t know, send you lunch through Grubhub or something. Anyways, I should be back to making videos in the next week or so. Catch you later!”
This video ended as all the others had, with Kylo’s links to various social media accounts and his email.
He jotted off a quick message, proofreading it twice before hitting send.
Kylo,
I saw your video this evening. No need to do anything to thank me – your friends already bought me breakfast. Sorry to hear about your father. Hope all things continue to improve for you.
Sincerely,
Hux
He got an almost immediate response.
Hey, thanks for getting in touch. I just wanted to apologize – I didn’t really remember much of that night at first but the video jogged a few memories. I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable. I don’t drink much normally and I really got out of control that night.
He sent off another few lines of reassurance and called it a night, confident again that this was the end of it. Or it would be when the video died down and the something else became the next big thing. It’s not like they’d ever see each other again, after all.
Why he decided to go back to the same place for vacation the next year he couldn’t really say, except he was a creature of habit. He didn’t particularly like beaches on the whole, but there were lots of shady spots where he could read a book and enjoy a fruity concoction, and it was far enough from the big attractions that the town wasn’t overrun with families or teenagers. The last thing he ever expected was to hear a voice call out his name.
“Hux! It is Hux, right? It’s me. Kylo. I don’t know if you remember.”
“How could I have forgotten? Even without the video it was a memorable evening.”
“Yeah, right.”
He looked good. Better than in his video. Better than when he was drunk, too. Hux preferred his smile when it wasn’t fueled by alcohol.
“So, I guess you live around here?” Kylo asked.
“No, actually, I came here again on vacation.”
"Really? No kidding. Every year?"
"No, this is only my second time. Believe it or not, I had a pretty good time last year."
"Apparently I did too. I don't remember most of it, though, so I decided to try again, but sober this time."
"Big plans, then?"
"Not really, no. I thought I'd find a nice sunny spot on the beach and spend a lot of time reading."
"That's my plan too, except in the shade."
"Well, then maybe I'll see you around?"
Five days later, Hux stretched, yawning, and rolled over, cuddling in closer to Kylo.
"We should come here again next year," Kylo murmured into his hair.
"Why here? We could spend a week in bed anywhere."
"No, I like it here."
“Why here?”
“It’s where I met you. Twice now.”
Smiling into Kylo’s chest, he tried to snuggle even closer.
“Well, I can see how that might have its appeal.”
“So it’s settled, then.”
It seemed so.
“I’ll see you before then, though, won’t I? And not just on YouTube?” Hux couldn’t help but ask.
“Count on it!”