#his big ears and bumpy forehead and his hairline and all?

[fauchart]

have you drawn skinner?

Now I have!! Well, I did have one doodle of him in a past sketchdump but it's old and small, so here's a proper one for him :] Hope you like it!

[sinningsquire]

Cut Your Losses

A modern-au Kylux fic, written for @twistedsardonic

(Chapter 1 - 1996 words)

Ben stares at the flight tickets. Boarding pass, seat 14F. Ten hours flight eastwards, into the future. God, Leia is serious.

“Mom, you can’t be serious.”

“I am. I take your wellbeing very seriously, Ben. And it wouldn’t have come to this if you would, too.”

She hands him a suitcase. Ben almost expects, in his surprise-stunned, this-isn’t-happening haze, that it would be already packed for him. A half-hysterical giggle escapa him when he finds it still empty.

“You’ve picked up three fights in the last two weeks, Ben. I am tired of parents threatening to sue me. If you want to come back to that school in September, we’ve got to work on this.”

“But - you can’t just send me away for the whole summer! I got friends here!”

“These ‘friends’ are the ones who get you in trouble, and make sure you’re standing front and centre when it goes down!”

Leia takes him by the shoulders. She hasn’t been able to stare him down for the past three years now, remaining small and getting seemingly smaller with every inch and every trouble Ben grew into. But God, her eyes didn’t lose any of their strength even from this angle.

Ben doesn’t know what to say. It stings with shame but he knows she was right. One of the reasons he is so quick to throw punches is that he isn’t good with words, and couldn’t lie if he tried. His ‘friends’ are assholes. But it is either them or…. no one.

“I can’t just drop my training, Mom. Couch Snoke wants me–”

“That psycho,” Leia snarls through gritted teeth, “only wants to exploit you. You’re his best boxer now, when you listen to him telling you to rely more on rage than technique and discipline, but how long can you keep it up before you burn out? He’ll toss you away when you’re no longer useful to him. You could be so much more, Ben. I agreed to let you do boxing when I thought it would help with your anger management issues but Snoke only makes it worse.”

“Please, Mom. Don’t take this away from me.” Ben wishes he could punch something now. Snoke - yeah, maybe he is a bit creepy but he also is the only one who keeps telling Ben he can when everyone else seems to say he shouldn’t.

“I’m not. It’s only for the holidays. It’s up to what you want, and what you want to do with your life, but I want you to make the decision after the holidays. That’s all I’m asking for. Take a little time away from all the things that keep making you angry. If you still think Snoke hung the stars when you come back–” she draws a long breath, “–then I’ll step back. Promise. But now I want you to get some perspective.”

“By sending me away?” Ben hates how small it sounds. For fuck’s sake, he’s almost nineteen.

“Oh, Ben.” She huggs him tight, ignoring the roll of his eyes. Thankfully not commenting on the way he returns the embrace, clinging to her like a child. “You won’t be alone. I spoke to the school counsellor. She suggested you should spend some time somewhere quiet, preferably with animals.”

“Mom, I’m not going to therapy to pet dogs and cats all day–”

“I know darling. That’s why I’m sending you to Luke.”

“Oh God.” Ben groans. He hasn’t seen his hippie Uncle in ten years, Leia maybe in five. “Old bat’s grown tired of his hermit cave in Greece? So now he’s running an animal shelter in what, Transylvania?”

“He’s having a go at organic farming somewhere in Czech Republic, actually,” Leia says primly. Ben suspects she disapproves a little of her brother’s bohemian ways, too.

“Somewhere,” Ben parrots after her. “So you don’t even know the name of the middle of nowhere place you’re sending your only child to. Splendid, Mom.”

“Hush,” Leia pats his cheek. “I’m sure it will be a lovely place.”  

*

The ‘lovely place’ is a decrepit mouldy farmhouse surrounded by seemingly endless muddy fields, with nothing but earth closet and no cell phone signal. The farm’s only connection to civilization is a unkept bumpy road and a bus connection, operated twice a day by a loud, dilapidated, overheated trashcan driven by a smelly, grumpy driver. Not to mention that said civilization is a sleepy hollow of a town where nobody speaks English and everything is hopelessly closed on Sunday. Including the only café with a free wi-fi.  

Ben is hunched over his phone under a convenient balcony, trying to shield the screen from the obnoxious drizzle that’s been dampening his clothes and his mood alike since– well, forever. He shivers. It’s July but this country seems to have no concept of summer. It’s been raining, pouring, or at least drizzling every day since Ben came here and it doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon.

The sharp trill of a bell behind him startles him so much that he almost drops his phone into a puddle. His phone - the only thing keeping him same in this organic farming hell. He growls and turns, about to tell whoever startled him where exactly they can stick their stupid bell - not that he hopes anyone would actually understand him - when his eyes catch on a flash of ginger, the colour as bright and shocking as sunshine in this dreary weather - and the indignant reproach dies on his lips.

A young man with gorgeous fiery hair and icy glare is standing in the half-opened glass door, an expression of angry disapproval written all over his freckled face. He’s saying something, it sounds like a rude question from the lilt at the end of it. For all Ben knows of Czech, he could be saying anything. Ben tried - contrary to what he sometimes lets people think, he can be smart when he wants to - but there’s probably a special circle of hell set aside for this language. To be fair, this man could be wishing him a nice day. Ben’s experience with locals has taught him that they tend to look as if someone got their knickers into a twist every morning without actually being cross with anyone.

The man keeps talking and Ben suddenly notices he’s been blocking the door to a shop. His gaze flicks up to read a sign: Kadeřnictví Kroutilová. There are big glossy photos of artfully arranged hairstyles in the shop window. A hairdresser’s saloon, then.

The air coming through the crack in the door is warm, smelling of shampoo and cologne. Ben hasn’t seen a boy his age - well, one that wouldn’t be doggedly driving a tractor on weekdays and mindlessly driving around a badly tuned car on weekends - in so long and he has nothing better to do. He smiles.

“Could I get a haircut?”

The hairdresser shuts up and frowns. Oh, right. No luck with English here. Ben shrugs and points at his hair, fingers snipping in an imitation of scissors. It’s been getting a little into his eyes lately, anyway. Even when he won’t be able to chat, he can still get an eyeful of good looking guy.

The hairdresser replies with something that sounds a little more polite and steps aside, holding the door open.

It’s a little saloon - two revolving chairs, two sets of tools, and one old woman dozing off on a flower-patterned sofa in the corner, with dye applied to her thinning hair. Ben folds himself into the narrow chair by the washing stand and tries not to be too obvious in staring at the nice ass that presents itself when the redhead bends to sweep away the hair clippings left by previous customer.

He thinks he catches a smirk when the boy straightens - and wouldn’t that be finally something worth his time in this awful place - but then every last hope of a change of luck is squashed when the boy lifts an elegant, finely-boned hand and plucks a piece of straw from behind Ben’s ear.

Ben feels his face burn in anger at the unfairness of it all. It doesn’t matter that he comes from a city with more people than live in this whole goddamn country. Here, in front of this gorgeous, sharp, clean-shaven man, Ben is the country bumpkin, with straw sticking out of his hair from when he was helping Luke muck out the stables this morning. Hell, he probably still reeks of manure.

He looks away, eyes sweeping over the yellowed photos decorating the walls, hairstyles that were last in style in the eighties, and heaves a long-suffering sigh. One of the perks of being an American in a Czech country town is that he can let his thoughts run loud and freely whenever he likes.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know how but if you could make me look something other than your great grandfather, that would be nice,” he huffs. As predicted, the hairdresser shows no sign of offence. He simply adjusts the water temperature and begins to massage Ben’s scalp with his fingertips, and… well, it feels fucking amazing.

Ben is a bit sorry for his pettiness. The boy is probably doing his best, stuck in a town where every man wears the same haircut their father wore. Not much chance to practice the hipster lumberjack sweep around here.

Hair dripping, smelling nice and hopefully free of any straw, Ben relocates into the revolving chair. The mirror in front of him is a bit rusty around the edges and when Ben ducks his chin a little, he can see the reflection of the other mirror on the opposite wall. The hairdresser is quite tall, so tall that he has to lean forward a little every now and then to clip the hair around Ben’s ears and hairline, and his ass in the mirror is a masterpiece.

The quiet snip snip snip and the light touches, tilting his head here and there, lull Ben almost into a trance. He snaps into focus only when the cloth around his neck is pulled off, and for the first time since he sat down, he takes a look at his own reflection.

He looks… good, actually. More than. He never thought his locks could look this good parted on the side, with the layered haircut letting them fall over his forehead in a lazy, self-confident wave. Behind him, the hairdresser, sporting an intense look of concentration, is running his fingers tacky with some waxy product through the locks, making sure they stay the way the should. Ben is impressed.

“Um...thanks, I think,” he scratches his neck, itchy with the fine bits of hair that always get under the collar no matter how many towels he’s wearing around his neck. The boy gives him a quick smile. He looks very pleased with himself. Well, Ben thinks, he should be.

The hairdresser rings him up using a honest-to-God calculator and Ben leaves, lighter of a considerable sum of money and feeling better than he had in… forever, truly.

Which lasts exactly until the next morning when he climbs down the stairs to get breakfast and Luke greets him with raised eyebrows:

“Did you try cutting your own hair using a bowl?”

Still bleary eyed and only half-awake, Ben snatches the first mirror he can find and freezes.

The parting on the side is gone, his hair having reverted to its natural down-the-middle parting it’s grown into for the past nineteen years. With no product to keep the hair falling forward, it’s taken to fall backwards and around, as his locks usually do….

...and it looks like a bowl cut.

The fucking hairdresser gave him a fucking bowl cut.

For a moment, Ben wants to think that the boy simply made a mistake. Small town, not much practice… Then he recalls the small, self-satisfied smile on those full, pink lips.

That asshole knew precisely what he was doing.  

To Be Continued 

Link to AO3