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If Maximilian Veers ever found out who had first come up with that cliché about plans and first contact with the enemy, he was going to punch them in the face for not specifying that it was about battle strategies. It was not supposed to apply to stag night.
And yet.
Piett groans from the holding cell across the hall and it results in a surge of pain in Veers’s skull, originating from the headache that is two thirds his concussion, part the expected stag night hangover, and the rest from the knowledge that either one of their subordinates or worse, Lord Vader, was going to have to bail them out of the local jail.
“Boba is never going to let me live this down,” Piett says and kriff. Perhaps there is a worse option than Lord Vader coming to bail them out. Please let it be Lord Vader.
“We were supposed to be the ones having a quiet stag night,” his friend continues, rolling onto his side on the bench.
“I checked with the ISB before picking the planet,” Veers grumbles, slinging a forearm over his eyes to block out some of the piercing white of the overhead lights. “I checked specifically against the list of organizations you gave me that have a bounty on your head, which is still alarmingly long Firmus, for the record, and none of them have a noted presence here. I even checked about the Rebellion and there wasn’t any activity noted in the entire sector.”
“Well. Clearly that intel was inaccurate.”
“Or there was a mole in the ISB.”
“Or there was a mole in the ISB.”
Veers had spent a month planning stag night after he’d been told about Piett’s engagement, which Piett had just barely managed to tell him about before Lieutenant Geffery had barged into his office with the news. He had headed off the large party planned by the bridge crew, the more intense one proposed by the Herd, and the even more raucous one Admiral Motti had been going on about.
Okay, so his plans were really more of a stag day, but he’d put a great deal of his attention into it. Though not to the point of hyperfixation, no matter what Lamoure said.
He’d arranged for leave for both of them with Lord Vader, picked a nice beach planet even though he wasn’t overly fond of the sand, and rented Piett an old fashioned sailboat to take a turn about the waves in for the afternoon. Then he’d found a quiet bar in that timeless wooden aesthetic his friend liked so much and reserved a booth in the calmest section. The plan had been for them to spend a quiet night drinking a selection of good liquor, including that spiced Axxilaan vodka that always made Piett laugh when Veers made faces at the spicy burn of it.
He had checked with the ISB, some of Piett’s old Anti-Pirate fleet acquaintances, and Fennic Shand to make sure that Piett had no enemies on this planet.
Next time, he’d scour the damn place personally. No rebels here, his ass.
Piett sits up abruptly as heavy boot steps start down the hall. “Shit,” he hisses.
Veers groans. “Why did it have to be him?”
“Things like that make me think I should ask for a refund on your bail, general,” Boba Fett says, a smug smile on his face as he comes to a stop between the cells. His helmet is tucked under one arm and the paint on his armor is disgustingly pristine and polished.
Veers bites his tongue on a reply because this is the man his best friend is going to be marrying and he made a promise to himself that he would at least try to be civil with Piett’s fiancé.
“Cródallón!” Piett says, stretching an arm through the bars to brush against the plastoid vambrace he’d given Fett, “it’s not what it looks like.”
There is a soppy little smile on Piett’s face and it makes Veers sigh in to the crook of his arm.
“It looks like you and Veers got arrested for being drunk and disorderly, cyar’ika,” Fett says, tucking two gloved fingers under Piett’s chin fondly. “And here you were worried about what Hondo, Fennec, and I were going to get up to for my stag night.”
Ugh. Hondo. If Veers ever sees the weequay pirate again anytime soon, he swears to the Force he’ll do something drastic.
“As I recall, ner kar’ta,” Fett continues, pressing himself up against the bars until Veers can no longer see Piett, “You asked us to keep property damage to a minimum.”
Piett grumbles something that quickly becomes unintelligible as Fett dips his head, presumably for a kiss. Veers sighs. His skull throbs. He’s too hungover and too concussed to watch them flirting like this. He’d throw a shoe at them if he didn’t know they were absolutely the sort of assholes who would keep it afterwards.
“We only broke a couple glasses,” Veers mutters, trying to remind them both of his presence before they start making out in the prison.
“And five bottles,” Piett says, breaking away from Fett with a sheepish set to his shoulders.
Fett did not turn around to look at Veers or seem at all embarrassed. “And three chairs, tables-”
“And a porg in a Naboo pear tree,” Veers interrupts.
Piett snorts and then looks as though he immediately regrets it, wincing. Fett makes a soothing sound and smooths a gloved thumb along Piett’s hairline. “I saw the security footage, mesh’la,” the bounty hunter continues, as though Veers hadn’t spoken at all. “From the bar. You were magnificent, ner kote. You fight so wonderfully with that knife of yours. The rebels didn’t stand a chance. The way you broke that man’s wrist when he tried to grab you-”
Oh for kriff’s sake. How many pet names could a man fit into a single conversation? And did Veers have to be here to listen to all of them?
So much for his tentative plans for a painkiller and sleeping off his headache in his bunk. And the bruises. If he was lucky, the pain around his knee would go away before his majors noticed it during the campaign planning meeting scheduled for later in the afternoon and made him go to a medic.
Could he even sleep off a concussion? Wasn’t one supposed to stay awake through it? Eh, the local security force hadn’t seemed too concerned about it when they’d let him pass out in the back of the speeder.
It’s what he got for headbutting a dug without a helmet, likely.
“- just watching made me want to be there so I could be the one to propose to you, cyare-”
Was Fett still going? Really? Had they both forgotten he was still here again?
Piett jumps when Veers clears his throat and Fett turns to look at him, looking a little irritated. Then again, Fett looked irritated whenever someone spoke to him that wasn’t Piett. Perils of not wearing a helmet when you usually used one to hide your expression. “You paid our bail,” Veers says, ignoring the bounty hunter’s expression. “Can we go now?”
“Yes,” agrees one of the security force officers, finally scuttling into the hallway. “Can we please get them out of our cells now, Mr. Fett, sir?”
“Very well,” says Fett, stepping away from the bars.
Veers staggeres out of the cell just in time to see Fett wraps a casual arm around Piett’s waist and tugs him against his side. Piett examines his fiancé with the same expression as a tooka that’s debating shoving a different tooka off a shelving unit. Fett swears vulgarly as one of Piett’s pointy elbows digs into a gap between his beskar armor plates.
Veers didn’t bother hiding his smirk. Drunk or hungover Piett was always hilarious, because instead of becoming adventurous or emotional as Veers does in turns, his friend just gets belligerent.
Honestly… Perhaps it had been a mistake on Veers’s part to neglect to plan for a bar fight during stag night. Though he’d thought he’d headed that problem off with all of his research into the planet’s supposedly nonexistent underworld. Something to remember the next time to remember the next time they went out drinking.
“Cyare,” Fett sighs and stalks after his retreating fiancé.
Veers follows after them, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other as his head swims. He would not puke in front of Fett or this simpering security officer.
He ignores the rebels jeering at him as he passes, Fennec’s smirk and Hondo’s exultant cry of “my good friend Veers”. Veers narrowly escapes a kidnapping attempt by threatening to throw up in the weequay’s hat if he tries it. Kriffing Hondo. If the kriffer yells in his ear one more time he’s going to do it anyway.
This occupies his thoughts as they collect their things and climb into the speeder Hondo had procured from… somewhere he probably should have kept better track of, probably.
He does start paying attention to Piett and Fett again though when his friend says, “What do you mean you bought our mugshots, Boba?!” and Fett’s friends start laughing.
Kriff everything.
Next time, he’ll just let Motti plan stag night. At least that way, he’ll go into it expecting to be arrested.