Chapter Text
One drink
“Did it hurt when you fell from Cloud City?”
The heavy drawl accompanied with a clumsy wink that went completely over his head brought Kylo out of the internal monologue that had distracted him from his drink. He’d crashed in this stupid pseudo city that might as well be called someone’s backyard, with little less than a few credits, a busted car and a raging headache that could only be nursed with hard liquor. Except the tiny hovel that doubled as a bar in Jakku only served root beer and played continuous reruns of matches of some mundane sport. And instead of feeling better Kylo Ren found himself plotting his own demise while cradling a battered mug in his hands, his seat constantly being jostled by the restless wraith occupying the seat to his right.
And now to add insult to injury the Force had decided to send some creeper to hit on the girl and now he was going to be stuck in a game of drunken seduction.
Kylo glowered darkly at the man who’d sauntered up to lean against the bar at his elbow, waggling thick eyebrows suggestively. If only the girl would hurry up and answer so they could run off to some bathroom somewhere and continue with their obscene flirtation. His chair lurched as the girl undoubtedly bumped into him yet again, and a quick glare in her direction revealed that she hadn’t so much as bothered to acknowledge him or her eager suitor. She swiveled in her seat once more, slurping on a straw, eyes glued to the screen of the holovid screen suspended across the room.
The man at his elbow cleared his throat expectantly.
Kylo spun around, barb ready at his lips to tell the man to back the fuck off, when he realized that excited leer that was also clearly suffering from intoxication, was entirely for him.
Kylo Ren.
Most feared man in the galaxy.
Maybe the city state if he was being humble. But he wasn’t. People hated him- they crossed the street when they saw him come by, and he liked it that way. You didn’t become a crime lord’s second hand man by doing charity work for the orphans rotting in the Outer Rim.
He was a being of the darkness. He commanded fear and distributed pain. He’d shot men in cold blood, threatened and overpowered people of power and was blacklisted by the Republic as public enemy number two. And he did not get hit on by filthy scavengers in an outback shithole where he was stranded for the rest of his life probably. The very thought made him bristle. Anger came to him easily these days and that was a small mercy.
“Get lost, scum,” he growled articulately, scowling for extra menace.
The man was obviously undaunted. It was probably all those root beers he’d borrowed courage from. The scowl usually worked on lesser minds.
“C’mon, pretty face,” he crooned. “Anyone tell you that you’re hotter than the flames of Mustafar?”
Despite himself, Kylo felt his jaw crank open in awe. Just how stupid did one have to be to think these sleazy one-liners even worked? He’d heard them at least a hundred times and it only took an idiot like Hux to make them work and that was because the only company he kept was paid to be there.
“Listen bitch-face,” Kylo mocked, mind seething with thoughts of the ginger-haired weasel he had to work with, before stopping short with an embarrassing yelp as the other man’s palm shot up to cover his lips in a sticky sweaty embrace.
“Shhhhh, beautiful. You can scream all you want when I have you,” he said in what the fool probably thought was a sexy baritone but truly was only a garble short of sounding like an overweight Hutt.
Ren felt the flames of anger that had stirred in his chest slowly loosen its vice like grip over his heart and dissolve into disgust and exasperation.
“This… isn’t working you know,” he mumbled awkwardly behind the hand on his face, resisting the urge to bat the arm away immediately.
Drunk people were like children, if Hux was anything to go by, and if he talked to it gently it might go away.
The man seemed to understand, taking his hand back slowly (thank the Maker, Ren added silently) and nodding with a smile. Wait… why in the name of all the moons was he smiling?!
“Playing hard to get are we?” he smirked lopsidedly, looking far too pleased for someone who’d been subtly turned down.
Kylo felt that flare of anger stoke in his lungs with a crushing heat. He lurched to his feet unsteadily, exhaustion and annoyance throwing him off balance for a moment. His fingers clenched into a fist and the bar blurred around him until all he could see was the imbecile before him who had the audacity to look fucking smug. He’d show the bastard. It’s hard to smirk with your teeth punched so far inside your face. And with that grisly image fuelling his rage, Ren threw his arm out in preparation for a good roundhouse- and smashed his elbow into something solid that screamed.
“Hey!” the wraith seated to his right bolted out of her chair- drink soaking into the cheap wood floor of the cantina, fingers clutching at her head in between ridiculous top knots.
They looked stupider than his mother’s signature hairstyle. The thought made him momentarily forget he’d elbowed her in the skull and fed the hate roiling in his chest. He watched her eyes squint at him, brown eyes challenging- waiting for an apology, and he’d just decided to let her wait it out, until someone coughed behind them. Ren grit his teeth and attempted to refrain from turning around, refusing to pay attention to the slobbering fool who’d dared disturb his already shitty day. But he felt the man’s smirk and before he could stop himself he’d spun on his heel and leveled him with a dark full body scowl.
“Who’s your friend?” the man asked, voice whiny and needy.
What an idiot.
He might as well dub him the Idiot for the rest of the day but he was hoping the fool wouldn’t stick around for so long. Kylo raised a brow at the man’s voice without meaning to.
Was that envy he detected? Was the Idiot jealous?
Of course he was, Ren glowered.
Just his luck.
A complete stranger who was jealous over yet another stranger. Brilliant.
He paused.
Brilliant.
It was stupid, and a little reckless- but oh so brilliant. He marched as close as he dared, forcing the man to peer up at him in an unnecessary show of dominance.
“That friend over there?” he muttered, nodding discreetly at the girl as he watched Idiot gulp.
“Yeah, the one you hit.”
Ugh. Ballsy. He hated ballsy people. He hated drunk people. He hated people so much.
“That’s my girlfriend, fucknut,” he growled darkly, stumbling over the unfamiliar word. “Now leave us alone.”
He didn’t even have the chance to revel in petty victory before he realized things had only begun to go south. He should have known. He should have fucking known. When he’d been a boy under a different name with a different life, people had told him he’d be favored by the Force, Fate and all sorts of superstition- that he was a great man in the making. They’d all lied and he knew that now. Fate hated him and he was as sure of that as he was of the fact that his plan had very perfectly backfired on him even though he didn’t know exactly how. The girl was peering at them, eyes flickering from his tall frame to the other man’s stubby visage, frowning at the odd scene. He saw Idiot take her in, scowl at her as she appraised him in return- the two scouting each other for entirely different reasons.
“Which one of you is paying for my drink?” she asked as Idiot garbled, “So you two, huh?’’ in the stupidest voice possible.
Kylo wanted to melt into the ugly floorboards and be stomped over by a horde of giggling Twi’lek. The girl stared, hand dropping from her messy hair as she took in the scene before her with surprising perceptiveness. She frowned at Idiot’s aggressive stance, meant to intimidate her, and let her eyes travel to Ren’s own figure that no doubt looked like a kid caught with his hand in his hypothetical Wookie uncle’s hypothetical toolbox.
And then she smirked.
And Kylo knew he was done for.
“Oh yeah, buddy,” she said through her shit-eating grin. “We go a long way back… uh, Bob and I.”
“Bob, huh,” Idiot deadpanned, looking crestfallen.
Kylo grimaced. “Yeah,” he added lamely. “You can go now.”
Idiot seemed eager to obey by some twisted hand of Fate, but she held him back.
“No, no, by all means stay!”
Kylo wanted to strangle her with both hands. That glint in her eyes did weird things to his stomach. Also the way she scrunched her nose when she smirked was stupid. But the Force and all things his mother believed in had let him down since he could remember and he soon found himself wedged in between Idiot and the girl who’d created yet another ring of hell to add to the day, exclusively for him. For the nth time that day, he wished he was anywhere but here.