#and it can make cake crumb softer so i assume it would be the same for bread

[danandphilplay]

what the phuck would this bake into is the real question

[hollyhark]

The Night We Never Met

A small Kylux ficlet for @kyluxtrashcompactor​, since I didn’t finish the longer one in time-- HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jules!! Thanks for all the encouragement and commiseration and for always lending an ear <3 <3 <3

This ficlet is a glimpse of the alternate reality Kylo dreams about at the end of The Four Visitations -- Hux ending up in New Republic culture because Brendol was captured, Hux orphaned and lonely and resentful but working hard because it’s all he has left. Ben rejects Jedi training and becomes a pilot. After graduating from his flight academy he goes back to the bakery where the boy he had a crush on as a kid rose from bus boy to waiter to manager, wanting to see him again but not expecting him to still be there... This can be read as part of that story or as a standalone AU!

~

Ben isn’t expecting Armitage to still be working at the bakery in Tilmook, so he avoids it during his first few cycles back on Chandrila. He knows he should avoid it anyway. He’s been a pestering presence in Armitage’s life since he was ten years old, when he happened into what was then a tourist trap bake shop after leaving the transit station he’d randomly selected during his half-assed attempt to run away from home.

That particular dramatic gesture became a turning point in his life. When he returned to his family after almost a full cycle of using the Force to conceal his whereabouts, everyone assured him that he didn’t have to train to be a Jedi and that they would work with him on what he did want, within reason. Ben has wondered if his fixation on Armitage has to do with the bubbly childhood relief he associates with that time in his life, though when he first met Armitage he didn’t yet know that his running away gambit would yield anything but more misery.

It’s probably too generous to say that they ‘met’ that day. Ben was fighting back tears when he stumbled into the bakery, aware that he wasn’t going to get far unless he began to use the Force to trick everyone he encountered into giving him things for free, which was how he’d boarded the hover train that had brought him there from the city where he lived with his mother. He eyed the skinny, red-haired teenager working behind the counter with this in mind: that he would have to shove his way into the boy’s brain and root around cruelly just to get a free fizzpop and muffin. If he didn’t use his powers to make people give him what he wanted, he would have to turn to a life of slavery. Those were his options as he saw them at ten years old: turn evil or be enslaved. Jedi training would have been the latter, he’d decided.

He’d underestimated his parents’ ability to adapt. Just stammering out the words ‘pilot school’ in Han’s presence had been enough to convince him, and Leia was so frayed from spending a full cycle thinking he’d been kidnapped by a rival politician or a dark disciple of the Sith that she was ready to drop the Jedi boarding school plan as soon as he turned up in the lobby of her building, wibbling apologies.

Now things are good, better, and he isn’t even particularly anxious about being home for Life Day and seeing the whole extended family, Luke included. Luke insists he was never disappointed or hurt by Ben’s decision, just concerned about what the lack of training might expose him to. Possibly he’s still concerned, but: whatever. He has his school, his many students. Rey surpassed Ben in her powers by the time she was six. Luke is probably relieved that he didn’t waste his time on an inferior apprentice.

So maybe he’s still a little bitter. He’s not even sure where it comes from these days. He’s still a Force user, and the best pilot in the galaxy therefore. He’s met his potential in other ways, too, since leaving home for the flight academy. The last time he went to the Tilmook bakery he was just starting to fill out, still gangly with bad hair and subpar skin. Now he’s twenty-two, commanding in presence and clear of skin, his hair mostly fixed and at least strategically long enough to cover his ears.

He wants to show off, is the thing. After all those years of just showing up, peeking unsubtly at Armitage while he worked and occasionally mustering up the courage to mumble some lame attempt at small talk, he wants to show his childhood crush that he’s not a stammering adolescent anymore. As if Armitage cares, or will even be there. Ben is prepared for disappointment when he makes excuses to Leia and sets off on the train to Tilmook. He’ll bring back bread and cakes for the party they’re having tomorrow, he says. This bakery is the best in the galaxy, he promises.

The exterior of the bakery looks different. Ben stands across the hoverway from it for a while, absorbing the fact that he’s hurt by the changes. It’s sleeker, clean. From where he stands, Ben can see droids working behind the counter. His heart drops.

He goes in anyway. He did promise his mother to bring home some baked goods.  

The smell that hits him as soon as he walks inside is the same, at least, and it brings Ben right back to himself, in ways good and bad. He was a kid here, then a teenager, and it had felt just as intense as it does now to walk through the door. He always came alone and with a kind of mission that he couldn’t define clearly, one that he knew would fail. He didn’t think Armitage, four years older, cool and beautiful, would ever be glad to see him, let alone that any eye contact he managed to make would yield something more than a clipped question about whether he’d like to order something more. But he went there with such painfully ballooning, undeniable hope even so.

“There was a man who used to work here,” Ben says to the droid that tries to take his order at the counter. “He had, uh. Red hair, green eyes.” And a mouth that Ben still thinks about when he jerks off, and that accent. Imperial. A fucking Imperial war orphan-- Ben hadn’t meant to eavesdrop that deeply. He’d just assumed as much when he heard Armitage’s voice, and the Force had told him, yes.

“Our owner fits this description,” the droid says. “Do you require him?”

“I-- Your--”

Armitage emerges from the back room with flour on his cheek, frowning. He marches toward the counter as if he heard the word owner and was summoned thusly. He looks the same: slight but sure of himself, perfectly clean-shaven, angry. Lonely, but that’s more what his Force energy gives off than anything Ben could pin on his appearance. He frowns at Ben, then something changes. His eyes lighten, brows lift. He smiles, just a little, at the corner of his lips. Some flour falls off his cheek and onto his shirt when he does.

“Oh, I didn’t recognize you,” Armitage says. “You grew up.”

“I-- Yeah. I’m home from the academy, I graduated.” On his last trip here, four years ago, he’d muttered something to Armitage about going away for school. Armitage had been managing the place at the time, had transformed it from a sorry tourist trap that boasted only a highly-trafficked location across from the hovertrain station to an attractive and well-reviewed establishment. There were jokes in some of the reviews about how Armitage ran the place like an Imperial.

“Your hair’s longer,” Armitage says, that hint of a smile still tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“It’s to cover my ears,” Ben blurts, because this place had transformed him back into a ten-year-old.

Armitage smiles fully then, and Ben vows to endure any humiliation available if it brings that look to Armitage’s face again. He vows to stop pretending like he doesn’t know why he keeps coming back here.

“I wondered if I’d ever see you again,” Armitage says. “I never knew, back then, that you were Organa’s son.”

“Oh. Yeah, I am. Would you have kicked me out if you knew?”

“Not exactly. I’m due for a break, do you want to join me?”

“I, yes, sure, yeah--”

“What do you want? Pick anything, it’s on the house.”

Ben stares. He wants to reach over and brush the flour from Armitage’s cheek. Is he really asking, what do you want?

“From the case,” Armitage says, eyebrows lifting. He gestures to the pastries and cakes on display.

“Oh-- Nothing, I mean-- A twist bread.” Ben wishes he could bring up some holo footage to demonstrate that he’s not really like this anymore. He’s suave, at school, admired and easygoing. “For old times’ sake?” he says, not sure if Armitage will remember that this was his first ever order when he showed up here red-eyed and lost.

“Of course.” Armitage goes to the case and selects one. “Follow me,” he says. “Back through here. I’m the owner now, did the droid tell you that?”

“Yes. That’s incredible. You’re so young.”

“Ha. Thank you. I don’t feel young.”

Ben wants to ask what that means. He wants to know everything. In the flowering courtyard behind the bakery he shovels the twist bread into his mouth while Armitage smokes a cigarette, both of them sitting against the sun-warmed brick on the back wall of the building. The bread is better than Ben remembers: softer, less salty, more refined.

“I’ve never met someone my age who smokes those,” Ben says when he’s wiping crumbs from his hands.

“I’m not your age, I’m older.”

“Not that much older, now.”

Armitage sniffs and drags on the cigarette. It’s very bright out, high afternoon, and he’s squinting, blinking. Ben has always loved his eyelashes. He’s always had trouble not staring.

“I suppose it’s an Imperial vice,” Armitage says. He looks at Ben like he dares him to judge him for this.

“Ex-Imperial,” Ben says.

“In my case? Obviously.”

“So you’ve never been to a Life Day celebration,” Ben says, before he can stop himself.

“No, I haven’t quite acclimated to your culture to that degree. And here’s hoping I never will.”

“Aw. What’s wrong with Life Day?”

“Is that a serious question?”

They go on like this, like they’ve always known each other, like they’ve been waiting all their lives to finally have this mundane, thrilling conversation, until Armitage realizes some buns are burning and curses. He springs up and races back into the kitchen to try to rescue them. They’re lost, but he still agrees to come to Ben’s family’s Life Day party.

“Just out of morbid curiosity,” Armitage says.

Whatever his curiosity stems from leads him to swooning against Ben under a fringeberry sprig the following night, after asking Ben to explain what this flimsy bit of greenery signifies in his culture. Kissing, Ben says, dumbly, and Armitage grabs him by the front of the shirt like he can’t wait to try that, here. They’ve both had several cups of spiced wine.

The party is still raging noisily in the apartment’s busier rooms. The fringeberry sprig is strategically located over a quiet doorway, in shadow. Ben hung it there himself, never thinking he would be kissing a man who tastes like his destiny beneath it. But if he’d had to name a man who would taste this way he would have said, even years ago: Armitage, the baker, the redhead, the one who strolls through my dreams in crowns and capes and looks back as if to say: follow me if you dare.

**