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Warm breeze through stiff grass. High, grating laughter cutting into darkness. A fire too hot for the already sweltering air.
“Go on, Ben, it’s your turn!” A boy urged.
“He won’t do it, Hennix. He’s scared!”
More guffaws, and a tendon in his forearm bulged. The stone was cold against his clenched fist, tucked and hidden at the base of his spine.
Ben swiped the pad of his opposite thumb across his chin. Seemingly overnight, his jaw grew into a wasteland of prickles and pockmarks. Even he shuddered when touching it, but he couldn’t quit picking at it, either. Betrayed by his own skin, how typical.
“Let’s go already Benny!” Someone from the back bravely sporting their anonymity yelled.
These cretons weren’t going to let him rest until he spun the cursed thing. Fine.
When Ben finally reached for the horizontal practice saber, its solid certainty under his palm so unlike his now-churning gut, the chittering of his peers blessedly stopped. In its place was the more familiar noose-tight silence that choked any rare attempts to socialize. He preferred it, but only slightly.
He inhaled, then leashed it. The breath clawed at his lungs but he didn’t relent until adrenaline took over.
He could do this.
Compared to shielding his thoughts whenever Luke’s piercing gaze landed on his shoulder, this was nothing. Just a single moment, not even romantic. Only a kiss, people do it all the time. He didn’t have to like it in order to do it: the main lesson he’d learned at the Academy.
With a soft flick of Ben’s wrist, the saber spun, smoothing ripples in the dirt. After a drawn moment, its rotation ended with a half hearted wobble, landing on the one person he’d prayed it wouldn’t. Ben was tempted to use the Force for escape, but they’d all seen the saber stop. It was too late now to cheat.
He felt the collected eyes of his fellow Padawans drill into him. If it had just been the trio he was closest to - if you could really call it that - maybe this wouldn’t have seemed so unbearable or obviously unlucky. But all the students in a two year range were gathered, eager to take their turn for what small entertainment was available on the remote planet. Especially entertainment involving petty rebellion and public shame.
Damn their sanctimonious white robes.
Ben’s spiral was interrupted when Voe wrinkled her nose, the tip flattening in disgust. “Kiss Solo? You’ve gotta be joking!”
Tai snorted and raised her a smirk. “What’s the matter, Voe? Afraid you might like it too much?”
After snapping to, Ben sprang like a bouncebeast whose tail was yanked by a careless youngling. His eyes, caf brown in the dark, squinted shut.
“This is stupid.” Firelight cast pointed shadows across the straight bridge of his nose, held defensively aloft. He was 17 for Maker’s sake. He’d read holocrons more interesting than this. Many, in fact.
Hennix’s topmost tentacle twitched in his direction, his voice maddeningly calm. “You agreed to the rules, Ben. One spin for everyone who plays, no exceptions, no arguing.”
Retreating to sulkiness, Ben folded his arms over a bony chest. “I’m not going to kiss someone who doesn’t want to be kissed. It’s not…what a Jedi would do.”
Voe groaned as if the words stabbed her ears. “An ethics lesson? From ‘Mr. Who cares what some ancient force ghost thinks?’ You’re just whining about not getting your way, as usual. Of course I’m not happy about it, but I’m not going back on my word because I’m reliable.” She paused for an extra punch of superiority. “That’s what a Jedi does.”
Ben’s frosty glare froze over fully. He hadn’t done anything wrong, not truly, he was just…testing things. They were always taking what he said so literal. “That situation was different, Voe. This is just a puerile game.”
Hennix leaned into Tai, his tentacles gathered behind his palm to hiss at his friend, “That means childish.”
“I know what it means, Hen,” grumbled Tai, setting off a few more titters from the passive mob.
Scowling and predictably mercurial, Ben switched tactics from avoidance to feigned nonchalance. Clear to everyone, however, this was clearly just duress in disguise.
“Fine.” The lanky teen snapped. His arms unbraided before he loped the two long steps around the bonfire towards Voe, perched cross legged on her stump.
Resentment for what seemed his very existence wafted on her force-aura, her disapproval sour and mud gray.
Of course his first kiss couldn’t be with someone who actually liked him - he was just carrying on a Solo family tradition if his parents were any indication.
And while Ben didn’t know for sure if Luke had ever kissed anyone, he didn’t believe the man had even explored his own body, let alone someone else’s.
At least he enjoyed pretending that was true because imagining the alternative? Kriff.
But further nauseating thoughts were not a great idea, what with his stomach already rocking side to side. Better suck it up before it got much worse.
Resolving not to hesitate further, Ben swooped down, as fast as a mission-bound X wing and pressed his lips to Voe’s.
She squeaked at the swiftness, a puff of indignant air forced from her mouth into his. It was warm moisture, granting a slight glide to his forceful motion. Unexpectedly soft, for such a hard girl.
Ben lingered one second longer than he should have, just to keep feeling that thick disdain mingled with her surrender. It crackled under his skin in a way he didn’t understand, but wanted to.
Then small, angry hands thrust against his breastbone, two bumping thuds enhanced by a force push. Ben stumbled back, his front tooth snagging his lip with a sudden pinch. Shit!
As quickly as he’d dipped toward her, she was rejecting him. A tidal flash of rage covered over his humiliation. But though he’d never considered Voe anything beyond a pale rival before this moment, it equally hid exhilaration. Ben couldn’t have named it, but he felt it, and that cut through with sharper authority.
This inexplicably fascinating mixture was punctuated by an echoing slap, hard enough to make his eyes water.
“Get off me, you smelly bantha!” Voe shrieked, pulling away.
“What the hell?” Ben growled, once more rubbing his cheek, now shallow-blooded and stinging. “All I did was play along with these ridiculous rules!! You practically goaded me into it, Maker damn you!”
Voe’s arms clamped around her chest. “Sorry,” she mumbled, realizing the hypocrisy but still seething for some unknown reason. Her cheeks were nearly as rosy as the one of his she’d struck.
Tai and Hennix’s expressions couldn’t have been more opposite. They grinned insufferably, voices ringing melodically. “Better not let Master Luke know you two have the hots for each other!”
The crowd ate this like ripe jogan fruit, squeezing for every drop. More “playful” jabs piled on, a few students extending it to imitations of their primly strict headmaster.
Confusion and fury rushed to both ends of Ben’s taut body. Voe clearly hated him, and he hated himself for whatever he was feeling at the moment. It was their one meaningful thing in common.
“I’m going to bed!” Ben stomped off with a roar, not caring that they’d soon be making jokes about him needing to “meditate” at a most convenient juncture. It wasn’t about that, and he absolutely didn’t care if they thought it was.
What a wreck-heap of a night. So much for his long-delayed first kiss. That’s what he got for letting them pressure him into going along with the crowd. He feverishly hoped Snoke hadn’t heard any of that nonsense. His mysterious friend wouldn’t jeer at him like they did but Ben didn’t even want to acknowledge such a lapse in judgment. Snoke thought he was too mature for such things and he was.
To the force with all of them. He didn’t care what anyone on this irrelevant rock thought. Not about his growing powers, or his disgustingly amazing family, or the patchiness of his beard for that matter.
He was basically alone in the galaxy and probably always would be, but so what? That was just one less person to try and appease all the kriffing time. Snoke said he didn’t need them and he didn’t.
Ben flung back the hut door without touching it and flopped onto his mat. The dried reeds creaked below his spine while he tried to find a comfortable way to tuck his limbs.
Faintly he heard the Padawans hooting in the distance, thankfully having moved onto their next victim.
…What if he did have another kiss someday?
It would be different, he vowed. It would be with someone who made his pulse race—much like it had earlier—but for the right reasons this time.
Only an idiot or a weakling feels a stirring for someone who despises him, after all, and Ben was neither. Well, maybe Ben was sometimes but Kylo? Kylo definitely would not be.