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"So, what are you, really?" Alex calls from above, lounging half-off some rickety scaffolding. He gives Yassen credit for not even so much as flinching at the sound of his voice. They really must be meeting too often.
Alex takes in Yassen's tired sigh with a gleeful grin. "Pirate, bodyguard, now a bounty hunter... I'm beginning to think you might actually have a lightsaber under your robes too."
Yassen sighs again, much louder and more put-upon this time, but Alex swears he can see a flickering smile on the corner of his lips, swears. Yassen finally snaps his gaze up to him. "Hello, little Jedi."
Alex spares just a moment to flush over the word little. He doesn't know why he's started letting Yassen get away with it.
"And," Yassen continues, "I'm beginning to think you must have put a tracker on me."
Alex clutches a hand to his heart and slinks further off his platform, back arched and legs bent around uprights that, in all honesty, don't look sturdy enough to be holding him up the way they are. His blood was going to start rushing to his head rather horribly soon. "How could you accuse the Jedi of such underhand methods?" He admonishes with mock indignation. He shakes his head. "After all I've done for you!"
Yassen hums serenely. "Such as putting a bounty on my head in a half dozen systems, or costing me... three identities now, I believe?"
Alex feels a slight pang of guilt somewhere in his chest, but just slight. "Well..." He says, elongating the word until he gets a perturbed raise of the eyebrow from Yassen. Alex doesn't know what to say. Or rather, he does, but he really isn't in a mood for arguing this evening. Not when the sunsets were streaming so warmly in between the buildings around them, and especially not when he's managed to finally run into the other man not doing anything actively illicit for once. Having a conversation with Yassen that doesn't end with blaster singes on his robes is something he finds himself rather eager to experience.
Yassen tuts up at him. He somehow manages to make the noise sound patronizing. "Do you plan on coming down from there?" He reaches up to push a finger into Alex's chest, making him swing slightly through the air. The action would have looked childish on anyone else, but of course Yassen managed to make it look graceful and perfectly reasonable.
Alex flashes his best scoundrel grin. "Need me closer, bounty hunter?"
Yassen fixes him a look. Alex grins more, because he's missed that look. It's been months. Alex acquiesces eventually, because, well. Yassen didn't say no.
He flips off from his perch, still feeling Yassen's touch through his robes.
"Still a show-off, I see," Yassen says.
Alex takes him in, finally right-side-up. His robes are as dark and brooding as always, but this time fashioned much more for maneuverability and camouflage. Sturdier, too, no doubt hiding armour, and Alex makes note of all the discreet folds and pockets that most definitely hold an array of both close and long-range-weapons.
"Jedi don't show-off," Alex huffs in response after a beat, straightening his tunic and puffing out his chest.
"You must make a very poor Jedi, then."
Alex has to admit a little bit of a sting, at that. He tries to not let it show on his face. "For your sake I'll take that as a joke."
"I don't joke."
Alex tilts his head and purses his lips. "We both know that's not true."
Yassen glares back at him with challenge in his eyes, and Alex suddenly can very easily see this turning into one of their not-quite-fights, where the both of them end up mostly just—fine, yes—showing off with a not unsubstantial risk of bodily harm for both parties.
Then Yassen surprises him—his face softens from its perpetual disgruntlement and one of his shoulders comes up in a half-shrug. Then he makes a casual, noncommittal noise in response.
Alex's thoughts stop short. He doesn't know what to do with a Yassen that's... agreeable. If that's even what this is. A shrug is practically jocular for the man. It's all so unexpected and novel that it sends Alex's next words careening in the opposite direction than they were going originally, rather without his conscious consent.
"I am sorry."
Alex takes the silent seconds that Yassen spends just blinking at him to think a few good curses at himself for showing sincerity first. Oh, well. It would be more embarrassing to double back on it now, he supposes.
He meets Yassen's eyes. "About..." He trails off, hoping Yassen will track their conversation back enough to piece together what he means on his own.
Once it does click, Yassen quickly nods once in acknowledgement. Alex exhales. "Our meetings have been... level-pegging, as they are. I'm sure at this point it would be... hypocritical, for me to hold too many grudges."
Relieved more than he probably should be, Alex nods back slightly, lips twitching up.
"Except for my Beskar jetpack. That, I will never be forgiving you for."
There's a bit of a bigger pang of guilt at the reminder of that one, well deserved. But it really had looked brilliant exploding over the turquoise, crystalline hills of Christophsis.
Alex lets himself relax in his skin, a strange yet steady assurance in their temporary truce settling in his mind. Alex gives Yassen a small, apologetic smile and quiets the voice of his Master in his head, the one that tells him in posh phrase how utterly stupid he's being. He'd much rather enjoy the newness of the moment.
A brightly colored poster on the opposite wall of the alley catches his eye. Alex sets forth toward it, brushing past Yassen as he goes.
He fingers the torn, curled corners of the advertisement as he reads it. The Force hums around him as he does, and he's hyper-aware of it sparking excitedly around the man standing armed at his exposed back. Alex finds himself shivering at it, and at the fact that he was the one that put him there. He fights to keep his focus on the neon-print words in front of him, which were luckily for his sake in Basic. "Nebula Nightclub," he reads out loud, "Qw'lacking Competition, Winner Takes All." He barks out a short laugh. "Of course! That's why you're here." He spins on his heels to look back at the other man, a rush of relief taking over him for just a second upon seeing that he hadn't made to leave, or moved his hands to his blasters. Both had been equally probable.
The look that gets thrown his way tells Alex that Yassen might definitely be considering doing one or the other now, unfortunately. "Tell me, Jedi. Do I look like I enjoy Qw'lacking to you?"
"The answer could get me in trouble. Jedi training doesn't really cover trouble of the Qw'lacking sort." Alex takes it as a loud token of their newfound good-will that Yassen doesn't immediately stun him where he stands. "I know they all say it's impossible for such an evil and bad man like yourself to move as elegantly as these guys," Alex says, pointing to the rather lewd pictures of people on the poster, "but I dunno. I'm sure you're hiding quite the dancer's body under all that excessive synthmesh. One to rival the Hutts, even!"
The Force pulses around them again. It runs cold fingers down his spine.
"Neither does it cover tact, it seems," Yassen says lightly. In the next second, though, his face falls, drawn and narrowed. He looks into Alex's eyes, holding the contact longer than he had been previously deigning to. "The galaxy is not meant for easy categories, despite how much you Jedi convince yourselves it is."
Alex frowns at the tone, realizing that maybe there's more than just ill-will toward raunchy performing arts at play. He urgently runs back over his words in his head until he finds it.
"I know," Alex says at length, but even to his own ears it sounds small.
"I don't think you do," Yassen says, a rotten assurety in his tone that rolls Alex's stomach.
And see, Alex is a bit mad at that, because he does know, quite a bit more than most. He prickles at the assumptions Yassen is making about his life, about his family.
The abrupt switch in conversation has left Alex feeling unmoored, and he's suddenly very glad for the wide expanse he'd put between them. The illusion of escape is a welcome one, even with Yassen. Almost especially with Yassen. He feels silly to have let his guard down as much as he did.
He lets the ire overtake his mind and his tongue. "I'm here to establish peace and order, protect the innocent. You were just browsing your communicator for the highest wage to commit murder for. I know the difference between us."
Yassen stays silent. His eyes have moved away from his again, locked somewhere else on Alex's face.
"Anything to say?" Alex presses, the silence just making him more indignant, angry, though he can't say for sure what exactly about.
Alex wishes Yassen would look at him, if just so he could meet his glare. The idea of a fight now doesn't sound so unappealing, anymore.
Eventually, Yassen tilts his head. There is no anger in the lines of his face, no sharpness in his eyes. Alex realizes with something sick twisting under his ribs that what this is is worse than a fight, by millions.
"Not tonight, Alex," Yassen says so low under his breath that Alex can barely hear him. It is toneless. And with that Yassen turns back toward the mouth of the alley.
A punch of breath leaves his throat, something Alex didn't realize he was holding. His feet move and his hand shoots out toward Yassen's wrist.
It works—Yassen stops in his tracks with a rigidity that comes over his shoulders and the line of his spine like a flash-freeze. In the same moment Yassen snaps his head back toward Alex, and the second their eyes meet Alex feels like his hand is burning. He drops Yassen's wrist.
His anger has twisted into something else, and it races hot from his fingers up through his heart and sits heavy in his throat.
"I'm sorry," Alex says. Raw and quick. The fight is gone from him as quick as it came.
Yassen does not blink, and Alex cannot look away. "Don't be. Apologies only carry weight among lies."
Alex lets those words swirl and sear in his mind. There's little to say in return.
Yassen takes pity on him. "I am a bounty hunter, Alex. At least tonight. On other nights I have been much worse."
Maybe pity is the wrong word. Alex feels even more unmoored. In this quiet alley Alex's heart is racing with turmoil more than it ever has in his long, long life. He still doesn't know why.
"I have never taken you for a fool, Alex." And Alex swallows hard, because under that the shared knowledge, the choice had always been yours, is whispered silently.
Surprisingly, it's Yassen's words from before that he finds himself dragging like a blanket over himself. The galaxy is not meant for easy categories. Funny, how it sounds so much like Jedi dictum, when he repeats it to himself in his own voice.
Alex breaths until his heart is steady.
There is more being laid at their feet here than scorned pride and cruel accusations. Silent acknowledgment of it all will be enough. It has to be. For both their sakes.
"So," Alex says, because it is his choice, "you never answered me about the Qw'lacking."
Alex thinks that they must be more alike than he'd thought when Yassen almost laughs. He breathes again.
"If the day ever comes where you catch me doing anything as undignified as that, little Jedi, I give you full permission to kill me."
"I'm not sure the Order would be too pleased with that. I can promise to direct all your fellow bounty hunters your way, though. As a kindness."
"I'll take what I can get."
Yassen seems so serious about it all that Alex generously agrees to himself to even try and keep it to the select few humane bounty hunters. Well, at least the ones that don't use poisonous slugs as their assassination-weapon of choice. Death by those things were full of painful, full-body seizures and were horrifyingly long. Definitely above Yassen's rap sheet. At least he thinks.
The ridiculous imaginings make Alex ruminate over other things. The suns are throwing hazy purple shadows in smudged streaks across the buildings around them. "Despite, well, me," he asks after a moment, with a furrowed brow, "I don't believe you're really pressed for credits. Why hunt bounties this low on planets this... backwater?"
The calm expression on Yassen's face doesn't change. "There are allies to be made everywhere, little Jedi. The most useful ones aren't always the richest."
Alex accepts the philosophy for what it is. But the phrasing still leaves something tickling in the corners of his mind. "Building some skeevy friendships, are we? Ooh, or one big bad guy clan?"
He banks on the wording drawing more answers out of Yassen, toeing the line just enough for a candid reaction. Alex is beginning to realize he has the ability to get under the other man's skin.
And then Alex is wondering if that's truly a good thing, because the cold, heavy words Yassen speaks next dig under Alex's own skin like hammered nails, are laced with drip poison-surety they should not have.
"War is on the horizon, little Jedi. Can you not feel it?" There's something jaded in the last part, glazed wry and daring, a deceptively shallow pool that Alex has to fight to step over.
"Jedi don't fight wars," Alex scoffs, with quick assurity.
Yassen looks at him with eyes Alex cannot read. He inhales, and Alex watches as his lips part and curl with something that could be cruel.
Alex thinks of his grand-master's constantly pinched face, over the past few months. Of the out of the common missions turned frequent, increasingly volatile. Of how long it's been since he's seen his crèche-mates all together, much less all together and as playful and unburdened as they once were. Whispering in the Senate, whispering in the Council.
Alex does not like to think of these things. Only half-notices them. He breathes. He trusts his Master, he trusts the Force, and the dusty indigo glow of twilight is warm over them. Those thoughts are not for tonight, and they will continue not to be.
He does not answer. Yassen does not make him.
"Will this be the time you bring me in?"
The sudden question is enough of a distraction to pull the tension from his shoulders and the lines of his mouth. Alex shrugs. "Ian and I haven't finished helping set up the security department in this district yet, so..."
"I see. That's why you and your Master are here?"
Alex gives a mocking bow. "You have about three rotations before I'd find another backwater bounty, if I were you."
"Duly noted," Yassen says with inflection, and Alex takes it as permission to come a few steps closer. The light around them is growing dimmer.
"And for the record," Alex says, clasping his hands behind his back and leaning forward, "I've never put a tracker on you."
Yassen raises an eyebrow.
"The Force. It just wants us to keep meeting, apparently." Alex shows his teeth as he grins, but he hopes Yassen can hear the weight he puts in the words.
"The suns are setting, little Jedi." Yassen murmurs. Alex can smell the leather oils of his clothes, this close. The Force thrums in cascading sparks in the space between them. "I'm sure your Master will be calling for you."
Everything is quiet except for their breathing. Alex is thinking of too much and of nothing at all.
Then there's the beeping of a comm, the same chirp that had caught Alex's attention earlier that evening and brought him to Yassen in the first place. Alex exhales into the broken moment.
Yassen stays where he is, doesn't look down at his red-lit wrist. "Until next time, Alexander."
Alex takes in Yassen's face one more time before closing his eyes. He keeps them closed as he takes a long step back and gathers the Force around him, using it to push himself off the ground and up back to the safety of the rickety scaffolding. "Three days, remember," he calls down to Yassen. The man tilts his head down and smiles, one that reaches the creases around his eyes this time. He still hasn't checked his comm.
Alex pauses with his hands loose around the rungs of the scaffolding, twisting back around to look at Yassen just once more. "Thanks for not pointing a blaster at me this time," Alex says with a smile—a true one in return, and again he hopes Yassen can see the difference. Then he stretches down and drops a kiss on Yassen's cheek. A half-second, quick enough he can vault the rest of the way up the building and over the roof before Yassen can do anything in the way of responding, before Alex can do anything crazy like think about it.
The soft, dim glow of evening kisses his face as he breaks out into the open air. He breathes into it, heart beating wild and sharp in his chest. Alex chases the setting suns across the rooftops, a flush on his cheeks and air whipping through his lungs.
He laughs into the wind, knowing the Force will bring them back together again soon.