runaways

hollyhark:

kyluxcantina:

Please reblog with your response to the above prompt, or submit to the kylux cantina!

(they’re 18 here)

*

Ben did the charming
while Hux did the thieving. As much as Hux would have liked to laugh
at the thought that Ben Solo could ever charm anyone, Ben’s father
had trained him in con artistry, and he could be convincingly human
and even likable when he wanted something. This was part of the
reason Hux was slipping a package of hot dog buns under the hem of
his baggy sweatshirt in a convenience store off of Interstate 15,
just outside of Vegas: Ben had wanted something, Hux had opened his
legs, and now here they were. Partners in petty crime.

“I couldn’t find
lube,” Hux confessed while they walked together back to their camp
in the desert, Ben having successfully kept the old man at the
counter occupied with his sob story about needing to use the land
line to call his mom. The suggestion that Ben would ever speak to his
mother again was the height of irony, but Hux didn’t mention this
when Ben chose that as a cover.

“You could have at
least grabbed some lotion,” Ben said. His gaze was on the horizon,
and every now and again he checked back over his shoulder.

“We have lotion,”
Hux said.

“Yeah, a kind that
sucks. You’re the one who’s chafing.”

“I’m not
chafing!” He was, though. Hux knew he should stop letting Ben fuck
him, but at night, under the stars, there was nothing else to do. And
it felt good, chafing or not. “I got Vaseline,” Hux muttered.
“And band-aids, for your feet.”

“What I need is
new socks.”

“Well, they didn’t
have socks! Maybe we should move camp.”

“Yeah.”

They were tired
after the long walk, Hux sweating like mad even as the temperature
dropped, the sun sinking. Instead of moving camp, Hux tugged the
sweatshirt off, spread the loot out on top of it and sat bare-chested
on the ground, watching Ben make a fire and cook the hot dogs on a
stick.

Hux was so sick of
hot dogs. But at least they had buns tonight. He ate three and then
felt sick, crawled into the tent to moan and shiver in his underwear
as night came on and the coyotes started up in the distance. Ben
howled back at them like an idiot.

“Stop doing that,”
Hux said when Ben came into the tent to drape all over him, smelling
like hot dogs and smoke from the fire he just doused.

“Doing what?”
Ben licked Hux’s neck. They were both filthy, but both appreciated
the stale taste of each other’s dried sweat. There wasn’t much
flavor in their current lifestyle otherwise.

“Howling,” Hux
said. “I won’t help you when they show up and attack. It’s what
you deserve.”  

“They won’t
attack me, they’re my friends.”

“You’re so– ah, wait.”

Hux rolled onto his
back and looked up at Ben, not sure what he was asking Ben to wait
for or what either of them were ever waiting for or even doing
anymore. He only knew that he couldn’t face Brendol yet or maybe ever again, and that he never saw
Ben’s eyes like this at home: alive, unafraid, dangerous with
overspilling, unrestrained joy.

“Tomorrow we
should hitch back toward the strip,” Ben said. “I have an idea
about that girl with the monkey.”

“You’re going to
rob the pathetic monkey girl?”

“She’s not so
pathetic. She’s got a monkey, doesn’t she? I’m only going to
steal her tips. Not the monkey.”

“Then what?”

“Then we shower in
a motel and start working on bigger marks.”

Hux moaned at the
thought of showering and let Ben lick and nip at his throat again.
All of this was folly but it was an adventure, maybe the only real
one Hux would ever have. Eventually he would return home and join the
Air Force to get away from Brendol. That was the real plan, which he
didn’t tell Ben, because he knew Ben had no similar escape route.
Because he didn’t want one.

Ben wouldn’t go
home. He’d run off with the coyotes. Hux would see him someday,
maybe, from across a casino floor, but Ben wouldn’t recognize him.
He’d have gone feral by then, without Hux to hold him at least
adjacent to civil society by way of his body. Meanwhile, Hux opened
his legs again, still planning to keep Ben squeezed between them for
as long as he could.