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“I like the earring,” the old guy says.
Armitage’s hand comes up automatically to touch the diamond stud on his right ear. He brushes his fingertips over it, then covers the nervous twitch by smoothing his vest down. “Yeah? I mean, it’s dated…”
“Nah,” the guy says easily. He winks, his weatherbeaten face creasing as he offers Armitage a lopsided grin. “Diamonds never go out of style, and it suits your…aesthetic.”
“I’m just the bartender,” Armitage says. “I’m not sure I have an aesthetic.” It’s a harmless lie—Armitage definitely has an aesthetic, and he looks fucking good. Kylo had cajoled him into keeping the longer hair and the beard—and, as it turns out, they pair remarkably well with the black vest and white button-up shirts he wears these days, along with tight black jeans, though he’s traded the oxfords in for bright red Converse. No reason not to—nobody can see them when he’s behind the bar, and they make him happy every time he catches a glimpse of his own feet. “You want another?”
(His phone vibrates in his back pocket, and he smiles to himself.)
The customer—his only customer, on account of everyone else is still playing cards in the back—looks up at him, cocks his head, and then grins roguishly. “Aw, hell, might as well.” He digs in his pocket, pulls out a worn wallet, and then digs a twenty out of it that’s just as grizzled as the rest of him, slides it across the counter. “Get one for yourself too, if your boss lets you drink on duty.”
Armitage rolls his eyes, but pockets the twenty and pulls two pints anyway. Lager for the old guy, and a wood-aged stout for himself. He swaps the fresh pint out for the empty glass, sets the empty down in the bus tub, and then leans back against the stool he keeps behind the bar for this very purpose. The beer sits nicely on the shelf that juts out under the place where the rotary phone used to be—they’ve gone digital, now—and it leaves his hands free to dig his cell out of his pocket.
“Not a terrible beer,” the old guy says.
Armitage raises an eyebrow without looking up.
Kylo: miss youu
Armitage can hear the sleepy slur in Kylo’s voice, and he smiles in spite of himself. Even the typo is enduring.
Armitage: Miss you too. I’ll be down here till the cards finish up in the back, but thinking of you regardless. Wish I’d had a chance to come up and give you a kiss goodnight, but I was getting slammed out here.
Armitage: Wish I was getting slammed by you. It’d be much more enjoyable.
When he pockets his phone, the old guy is still watching him carefully. “Girlfriend?”
Armitage snorts at the thought. “Future husband,” he says, holding up his left hand, black silicone ring snug on the base of his fourth finger.
“Jeez,” the old guy says. “You should have said, I woulda scaled back the flirting.”
Armitage grins at him. “If you didn’t notice the ring, that’s hardly my problem.”
The old guy chuckles. “Sure, take advantage of a lonely old man.”
“It can’t be all that bad,” Armitage says. He takes a sip of his beer, settles back on his stool, and busies himself with rerolling his sleeves so that the cuffs are straight. “You came in here with a fairly large crowd.”
“And you’ll note,” the guy says, gesturing with his hand, “that not one of them bailed me out when I took a couple bad hands in a row.”
“True,” Armitage says. It had been an early elimination too, comparatively…and all he’d said when he sat down at the bar had been told you I had a bad feeling about this.
“My luck’s shit anyways.” The guy takes a long drink of his beer, looks around the bar. “So, while you’re stuck out here with me, I meant to ask…what’s with the art in this place?’
Armitage’s hackles immediately go up—and he forces himself to take a swallow of beer before he answers, makes an effort to use his bartender voice instead of his clipped how-dare-you voice. “Why?”
“It’s fucking weird,” the guy says, gesturing with his pint. “Kind of thing my kid would love, I think. He was always cutting the weirdest shit out of magazines, tacking it onto his bedroom walls. Got so’s you couldn’t breathe in that room without something coming loose from one of the surfaces.”
Armitage can picture it, too—some crammed kid’s bedroom, covered with cutouts from magazines and anatomy textbooks alike, bits of red string connecting a conspiracy theory of body organs and vintage rifles alike. His childhood bedroom would have been the same if he’d been allowed to put things on the walls. As it was, he had a battered notebook that he carried around in his backpack, burned the old one when it got full and he’d snuck enough change to be able to afford a new one. “Well, we rotate the artwork as often as we can.”
“The artist local?”
Armitage shrugs one shoulder, noncommittal.
“Like, if that’s all one artist, they’re pretty prolific.”
Armitage makes a dismissive sound, because this guy doesn’t know the half of it. He and Kylo had spent a whole morning hauling Armitage’s half-finished work out of the back room so they could host cards back there. It’s all piled up in the apartment now, even though there isn’t enough room for it. Bala-Tik bitched the entire time that they should rent a studio, but he was just salty that they’d opted to store everything here instead of hauling it over to Kylo’s—which, on reflection, is also full of art, and maybe Bala-Tik is onto something, maybe they should be renting a studio space…it’s just that if they do that, it’ll be three places between the two of them, which means the whole place-to-live conversation will have to happen, and Armitage doesn’t have that one penciled into his therapy sessions for another six weeks, at least.
He’ll have to just keep painting in the back room here, work on the canvasses at Kylo’s when he’s there, and keep up the charade that nobody knows who does the artwork here until Armitage has run through his other hangups, and has some mental space to start working on this one.
“Well,” the guy says, “as soon as the game winds down in the back, I’ll introduce you to a buddy of mine—he does some dealing on the side.” The guy clears his throat. “Art dealing. He might be interested in a couple of the pieces here. If the artist wants to sell.”
“The artist may be interested in selling,” Armitage allows, mentally wondering if he can get away with asking Kylo to pretend to be his agent. Probably not at—oh, hell, it’s four in the morning. Definitely not at four in the morning, it’d be absolutely cruel to make him get dressed just because Armitage still can’t talk about his own fucking work. He can sell the installation art at a moment’s notice, but the traditional stuff is still a fucking mess in his head. Fuck, though. A sale would be nice. Kylo’s been eyeing up some designer clothes when he thinks Armitage isn’t paying attention—that is, when he wanders away from his laptop without remembering to lock it first, leaves the websites right up on the screen where anybody could see them—and Armitage knows he damn well spent a pretty chunk of change on the sex toys he bought Armitage last month, which is probably why Kylo’s been dicking around, putting off ordering anything for himself.
Fuck, okay. If he wants this sale, he’ll have to sort it out himself. Pretend to be his own agent. Alright. He takes another drink of his beer, slides off the stool and busies himself wiping off the counter, trying to distract himself. Tries to think about what he’d even want for any of the pieces, because he has no clue what the fuck anybody would ever pay for—okay, no, that’s not a productive line of thought, people obviously would pay for them, and if he doesn’t like the number he’s offered, he’ll just laugh it off and pretend he’s unable to get in touch with the artist—he doesn’t have to sell if he doesn’t want to sell, it’s just that if he gets an offer he likes he can, and that’d probably make him a real artist—well, no, he’s already a real one on account of—fucking hell.
(He swipes his phone open, taps visual art and value re: being person/installation artist/useless wanker/poser into his therapy document, and then closes it again. Lets the thought go. He can discuss it next week.)
There’s an uneven thud from upstairs, and Armitage looks up by instinct, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the bits of crap that always fall from the ceiling every time anybody so much as moves up there. Even Millicent sets it off—though, admittedly, she’s a bit heavier now on account of the rats she keeps snagging in the alley. After the thud, the floor creaks, footsteps heading in the direction of the bathroom. Definitely Kylo, then.
“Sounds like you need a carpenter,” the old guy says.
“Might,” Armitage allows, “but it lets me keep track of him, so there’s that.”
“Well, I know a couple of guys, I can probably get you a deal—”
Armitage is saved from that particular awkward conversation—he’s an installation artist, he can shore up a ceiling if he’s motivated—by a sudden round of cheering as the door to the back room opens, and drunks start spilling out, talking loudly about whatever the hell happened in the tournament that’s now, apparently, over. He snaps his head back to jolt the last of the miscellaneous ceiling bits out of his hair, and then gives the counter a quick wipe before everybody makes it up to the bar, crowding in elbows first in order to get another round or two now that the card games are done.
(Legally, last call was an hour ago, but it costs Armitage nothing to pour another couple rounds unless the cops come by, and then he’ll just pay for it out of the extra cash that he knows Bala-Tik skims off the top, tucks into a small cubby under the bar.)
“Hey, shove over,” Bala-Tik mutters, ducking under the pass-through and nudging up against Armitage’s shoulder. “Christ, you take up three times the space you should back here.”
“I’m also pouring four times the drinks you are,” Armitage notes mildly, laying out glasses underneath the taps, and pouring the pints as quickly as he can, one after the other, giving each glass a quick rinse with beer prior to filling them completely, handing over the pints and vanishing the money from the counter into his apron.
“I’ll look after the shots, then,” Bala-Tik says. “If you’re that efficient.”
Armitage snorts. He’s dying to know what their take was—based on the general jubilant atmosphere of the room, there were definitely a couple of big winners. One of them might have been the guy in the cape, chatting with Armitage’s customer from earlier. If that’s the case, maybe Armitage can commandeer that into a fairly large tip as they’re closing things out at the end of the night, because the guy with the cape is supposedly the one covering the other guy’s tab and—
“Shots on the house,” Bala-Tik calls. “Though don’t crowd my bar, you fucks, you’ll knock it over—here, come with me to the back, I’ve got the good shit with me, let’s give Armitage some space!”
Armitage rolls his eyes, finishes off the last four pints he was pouring and sets them to the counter, where they’re immediately snatched up. Watches Bala-Tik head to the back, his walk a little hitched on the one side like his leg is bugging him. Maybe it’s time the bar looked into health insurance, or at least figured something out so Bala-Tik isn’t standing all night while he’s dealing. It can’t be that hard to—
He turns, and collides with a solid mass of—oh. He inhales deeply, burrows his face into Kylo’s shoulder. Kylo smells like sleep and laundry detergent, ever so slightly of Armitage’s shampoo. Not at all like the sex they’d had earlier, and Armitage will have to fix that later, because Kylo smells best when Armitage can smell himself on him. “Mmm,” Armitage breathes. “You should have gone back to sleep, babe.”
“Heard there were kisses,” Kylo rumbles into his ear. “Sat at the top of the stairs waiting for everybody to clear out so I could come down and get them.”
Armitage tips his face up, lets Kylo kiss him. “Should tell you that everybody’s still here, just in the back,” Armitage murmurs against Kylo’s lips. “But I’m not objecting to the kisses.” He puts his hands on Kylo’s hips, hooks his fingers into the belt loops of the tight jeans that Kylo has poured himself back into—who does that at four in the morning?—and gently moves him up against the bar. “Here I thought I was going to have to wait until we closed up. Thinking I’d have to sneak upstairs, pull back the covers, slide my naked body in next to yours—”
“Don’t tell me anything else,” Kylo murmurs, face warm. “Save the rest of it for upstairs.” He tucks some of Armitage’s hair back behind his ear, and then flicks the diamond stud with his thumb. “I like this one. It’s pretty. You should let people see it.”
“Really,” Armitage drawls. “I should just let people gawk at me.”
“Yeah,” Kylo says, “you’re gorgeous.”
Somebody yells out something unintelligible from the back of the bar, a gruff, low voice—and Kylo completely stiffens underneath him, face going pale.
“Babe?”
“Shit,” Kylo says under his breath. “Fuck, I—” And then, before Armitage has a chance to react, Kylo is hauled bodily over the bar, and Armitage—Armitage freezes up like he always does, pulse hammering in his throat, and hands completely still, body frozen to the spot. He should be moving, he should be—doing something, he should be—
“Uncle, uncle,” Kylo is saying. His face is bright red, and he’s trying to wriggle away from the grasp of a man who is much, much taller than Kylo, and broader besides, with long hair and a massive beard—
“Holy fuck,” says Armitage’s customer.
Armitage thinks he’s in shock, maybe. His ears are ringing. He’s backed up against the back wall of the bar just staring. His hands are numb. Kylo has his head buried in the hairy guy’s neck, says something that sounds an awful lot like missed you too, and the only reason Armitage is able to hear it is because the bar has gone completely fucking silent, remains silent when the guy lets go of Kylo, sets him back down on the floor, and the first thing Kylo does is immediately turn to Armitage—
“Shit,” Kylo says, and he vaults over the bar, strides forward, takes Armitage’s hands in his, rests their foreheads together. “You okay?” Kylo says softly.
That’s the part that—that’s the part that chokes Armitage up completely, the part where Kylo’s just been accosted by a complete stranger, except maybe it’s not a stranger, and now Kylo is just—
The bar is still dead silent.
“Fine,” Armitage manages, finally. “Scared the piss out of me,” he adds, after a moment. “It’s, uh. Fine. Though.”
Kylo turns on the big guy, snaps something out in a language Armitage doesn’t recognize. The big guy shrugs his shoulders, gestures at Armitage, and then back at Kylo, says something again.
Kylo sighs. “He says he’s sorry. He didn’t mean to startle you, he just thought I’d bolt. Which is fair.”
The big guy growls something else.
“Also, congratulations on our engagement,” Kylo adds.
“You’re fucking shitting me,” the guy sitting at the bar says. “Ben?”
Kylo winces, turns to Armitage’s customer, and points at him. “No,” he says, voice a deep rumble. “Absolutely not. You don’t get to do this. That’s not how any of this works.” He reaches back, fumbles for Armitage’s hand, turns back to the hairy guy. “Armitage,” he says calmly, “this is my Uncle Chewie. Uncle Chewie, this is Armitage Hux, my fiancé.”
Armitage steels himself, grabs Kylo’s hand tighter, and takes a few unsteady steps forward. Shakes Chewie’s hand while keeping the bar between them, because it seems safer that way—but, also, Chewie has warm hands, and kind eyes, and even though he’s frightfully tall, he’s grinning underneath the beard, and maybe this is alright. His therapist would say that his reaction was reasonable, considering his past, but Armitage feels like it was maybe a little out of line, since Kylo isn’t acting like this guy is a threat.
The guy in the cape snorts with laughter.
“What,” Kylo says flatly, without looking over. “If you’ve got something to say, say it now.”
“Well,” the guy in the cape says smoothly, walking over, and extending his hand. “If I’ve got the right of it, I believe I’ve just won a bet about how a…colleague’s nose got broken.”
“Oh god,” Armitage says weakly. Because of course the guy in the cape would be a business associate of Brendol Hux’s, of course—
“Don’t mistake me,” the guy continues smoothly. “I’ve no love lost for your father, I just didn’t think—your fiancé had it in him, that’s all.”
“My name’s Kylo,” Kylo mutters. “And I’m not shaking your hand over that, I’m not proud of it.” He sighs, gestures to the man in the cape. “Uncle Lando, my fiancé, Armitage. Armitage, my uncle Lando.”
Armitage shakes hands with him perfunctorily, because now that all of this is starting to sink in, something else is bugging him. He leans over, speaks low into Kylo’s ear. “Please don’t tell me the guy at the end of the bar is one of your uncles too.”
“One worse,” the old guy says. “I’m Han Solo.” He takes a deep drink of his beer, sets the empty glass down on the counter. “I’m his father.”
“Oh, fuck,” Armitage says.
Kylo just sighs, reaches under the counter for a glass, and pours himself a beer.
*
When it’s looking like Kylo is going to make an effort to have a conversation, Armitage offers his stool to Kylo, watches as Kylo warily pulls it closer to the bar—and then, seeing the way Kylo hunches his shoulders up to his ears, he makes the executive decision to join him. He flips back the pass-through, goes out into the bar proper to retrieve another stool, and makes a show of dragging it, legs screeching on the floor, behind the bar next to Kylo’s.
Kylo looks at him, confused. "You have work," he accuses in a whisper.
"It'll wait," Armitage says coolly. "What are we talking about?"
"Nothing much," Kylo says, at the same time as his Lando says, "Oh, his entire adult life."
Kylo tenses. Armitage puts his hand on Kylo's lower back, and then thinks better of it, pushes up the hem of Kylo's sweater to rest his palm on bare skin. (Underneath his sweater, Kylo's skin is cold and clammy, and once they endure this, Armitage is going to lick every last droplet from Kylo's body, swallow his cock back and make Kylo forget any of this ever happened.)
"You never told me," Armitage says—soft enough it's not intrusive, but loud enough to still be perfectly audible, "that having illustrious connections like these is why you wiped the floor with me when I was teaching you poker."
"It was—” Kylo retorts immediately, before cutting himself off, and going even redder. "I wanted to win," he finishes.
(It had been strip poker, and Armitage would consider both of them winners—Kylo for the cards, and Armitage for everything that followed.)
Both of Kylo’s uncles burst out laughing.
"Got a poker face like his mother, I assume?" Lando asks.
"Probably,” Armitage allows. “He caught me off-guard.”
Chewie says something Armitage doesn't catch.
“Uh, a bit,” Kylo says.
"Should have come and played tonight," Lando offers. "Maybe you’ve learned something since the last time I beat you.”
"I was ten,” Kylo points out. “And I’d planned to be asleep tonight.”
"Whatever happened to that place of your mom's?" Han asks, still sounding sulky.
Armitage glances at Kylo, at the pinkness of his ears, and heads that line of questioning off at the pass. "We use it as an art studio," he lies blithely. "The natural light from the windows is stunning.” His nails dig into his pants under the protection of the bar while he searches for a lie to cover his own involvement. “Kylo needs to practice.” And fuck, that wasn’t what he meant either. “He’s in the honours program.” And there goes his fucking heart, because none of this is a lie, but he can feel the lies coming and he swore he wasn’t going to do that anymore, he swore— “Double major.”
Kylo’s arm nudges into his gently. “Hey, it’s alright,” he says softly, but loud enough that all three of the men across from him can hear. “None of their goddamn business how many degrees I’m doing.”
His uncle Chewie rumbles something, and Kylo offers him a shy grin—the first Armitage has seen from him all night. “Yeah,” he says in response. “That’s true, I didn’t think she’d tell you, but, uh, yeah.” He darts a quick look at Armitage. “Mom mentioned my upcoming exhibition.”
“Oh,” Armitage says. “That’s good, I’m glad. It’s going to be good.” He wishes, suddenly, that some of Kylo’s own art—any of Kylo’s art, honestly—was displayed here, because it would feel a lot better if he could show off Kylo’s work, instead of just hoping that none of the men sitting across from them re-open the conversation about whose work is actually displayed here, because it’s all Armitage’s. The glazed donut hanging right at the entrance, the still life on the opposite wall, the rope art on the far wall, the artistic and elaborate portrait of Brendol’s grave right in the back corner (Brendol, of course, didn’t have the decency to be dead yet, but it felt good to celebrate his eventual death anyway) and then the mismatched painting in the back corner, right above their regular booth. Kylo’s half of the painting is on campus right now, getting evaluated, so there’s only Armitage’s contribution hanging there—nothing horny in this one, just the beauty of a night sky illuminated by stars in the exact pattern of the moles on Kylo’s back, thin constellations traced out between them.
(To be fair, the shadowed figures leaned up against the tree in the foreground are fucking, the taller one pinning the narrower one up against a tree, but that’s hardly visible from a distance unless you’re right up close.)
Armitage forces himself to take his hand away from the leg of his pants before he actually picks threads out, puts his hand on Kylo’s thigh. He can feel the tension that Kylo’s carrying there, so he just rubs gently with his palm, tries not to think of any of the countless things he’s terrified about—Leia finding out that he and Rey have been building a pinball machine in the bar, Kylo’s uncles either liking or hating him, the part where Kylo’s dad had been flirting with him and Armitage hadn’t known, therapy next week—and just focus on the things that are okay, like listening to Kylo’s sleep-deepened voice rumble his way through stilted small talk, and the patrons that are finally starting to file their way out of the bar, the pile of money that Bala-Tik is jamming into the deposit bag—
Armitage scowls. He absolutely refuses to spend another evening re-counting the deposit in the parking lot of the bank, but unless he extracts himself from this conversation—
“Go,” Kylo says softly, patting Armitage’s hand. “Sort your deposit out, I’m good here.”
Armitage hesitates—but the casual way Bala-Tik is stuffing bills into the bag is stressing him out, and if he sorts the money quickly, he’ll be able to be back here before things derail too badly. Without thinking about it, he presses his lips to Kylo’s hair as he stands. “Thanks, babe.”
Kylo’s ears go bright red.
It’s pretty goddamn adorable.
*
It’s not like the tension actually lessens at the other end of the bar, but by the time Armitage has most of the money counted and banded, ready for deposit, Kylo is at least smiling on occasion, and not just in Armitage’s direction. His father still contributes little to the conversation, but between Chewie and Lando, there’s more than enough visiting and recollections to go around. Armitage ducks into the back briefly to get the deposit bag, and by the time he comes back out to the front, the bar is empty but for a sizable tip that more than covers the drinking that had been happening, and a lot of other things besides.
Armitage looks around to see where Bala-Tik is, but can’t see him. Shrugs, halves their pay for the night, and shoves half of it in his back pocket, tucks the other half under the bar for Bala-Tik to find when they open the next day. He’s just considering locking the deposit in the safe for the night, dealing with it all in the morning, when his phone buzzes.
Kylo: come rescue me now
Kylo: out front, Han wants to keep drinking
Kylo: it ’ s five am, I ’ll walk you to the bank.
Armitage: On my way.
It’s just Kylo and Chewie standing out front when Armitage leaves the bar, locking the door behind him.
“There you are,” Kylo says, sounding relieved. “Sorry I wasn’t helping.”
“It’s alright,” Armitage says. He checks the door one last time, pats his coat to make sure the deposit is secured in the internal pocket. “The others take off?”
“BT was showing them another bar,” Kylo says. “Chewie and I were just catching up a bit.”
Chewie warbles something.
Kylo winces. “Yeah, that too.” He scrubs his hand back through his hair, dislodging a few strands from his bun. “Being pissed at my dad doesn’t mean I needed to stop talking to my uncle,” he explains for Armitage’s benefit.
“Mmm,” Armitage says noncommittally—and he’s completely startled when Chewie thrusts a hand in his direction, shakes on instinct.
(It’s slightly less scary, now, than it was when Chewie had hauled Kylo over the bar, but it’s still not great, and it’s not going to be great for a while.)
“I, uh,” Kylo continues. “I’ll let you know what I figure about the opening, Chewie. And, uh. I can get in touch with the artist, if Lando is serious about buying some of that art. Text me a reasonable number, no bullshit, and I’ll see what I can do.”
Chewie nods, grins at the two of them wolfishly, and then lifts his arm in farewell, heads off down the street. Armitage watches him go, still feeling a little adrift. He knew he’d meet more of Kylo’s family at some point, be introduced to them as a fiancé, but he hadn’t really been prepared for it tonight, still feels a little bit like he’d made an ass of himself for no particular reason that he can isolate. That’s probably another therapy thing, he thinks. Fuck, he’ll be there forever at this rate. The rate never changes. He keeps going to sessions and the list of things to work on just keeps growing, and he’ll be in his seventies and still carting his elderly ass halfway across the city in order to sit on a couch and—
“You okay?” Kylo murmurs in his ear. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to—” Armitage starts—and then he stops, thinks about it. “I’m alright,” he says, after a moment. “Are you okay?”
Kylo shrugs. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I, uh. Maybe thought I saw Chewie here last year anyways. So I kinda figured…yeah. Matter of time.” He rakes his fingers back through his hair again self-consciously, takes out the ponytail holder, and falls into step beside Armitage, stretching the elastic between his fingers like a fidget toy. “…was my dad an asshole?”
Armitage’s hand goes to the deposit envelope in his pocket while he thinks about it. “No,” he says hesitantly, trying to work out whether there’s anything else he wants to say.
“Hit on you, didn’t he,” Kylo grumbles.
Armitage looks over at him, but Kylo isn’t looking at him, just staring straight ahead. Armitage reaches for his hand, and Kylo takes it.
“A bit,” Armitage allows. “Uh, within parameters. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just, you know.”
“He recognize you?”
Armitage stops walking. “Did he—god no, why would he?”
They’re not standing directly under a streetlight, but they’re close enough Armitage can see how pink Kylo’s cheeks have gotten.
“My room,” Kylo mutters, staring at his feet.
“Pardon?”
“Your picture was in my room. When I was a teenager. From the, uh. The bridge stunt.”
Armitage snorts, tugs at Kylo’s hand so they can keep walking to the bank. “Huh,” he says, as they round the corner and the bank comes into view. “He was saying that his kid would love the art in the bar, said he always used to have weird stuff cut out from magazines and posted on his walls.”
“Oh god,” Kylo says softly.
“Guess I’m pretty honoured my picture is—”
“Aaaaaand, we’re here,” Kylo interrupts, his face bright red illuminated by the exterior lights of the bank. “Would you look at that.”
Armitage chuckles, unbuttons his coat and tugs out the deposit envelope. Doublechecks that the slip is inside before he yanks open the slot, jams the bag in, shuts the slot. Opens it again to check that the bag is gone, and then rubs his hands together and turns back to Kylo.
Kylo’s face is still pink.
Armitage raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t need to worry about it,” he says softly, kisses Kylo on the jaw before he takes Kylo’s hand again, starts walking them back to the bar. “It’s flattering. And I find it funny that your old man is so hilariously out of touch with your entire life.”
“Ugh.”
“Honestly, you don’t need to stress about it.”
“I’m not stressed,” Kylo objects. “I’m dying of embarrassment. This is why I don’t make an effort to keep up with him, he’s just so—I mean, he’s nothing like a father—fuck.”
Armitage lets go of Kylo’s hand, slides his hand into Kylo’s back pocket instead. “Did you wanna talk about it now?”
“…no.”
“Alright.” Armitage squeezes Kylo’s ass. “I’ll check in with you tomorrow?”
“Mmm,” Kylo says absently, sticking his hand into his right front pocket to adjust himself. “Sure, yeah.” He puts his arm around Armitage’s shoulder, tugs him in close. “I might have another problem you could check in on tonight, if you’re not too tired.”
Armitage grins, glances down at the bulge in Kylo’s jeans. “Pretty sure I could muster something.”
*
It’s six am.
It’s six am, and Kylo is balls-deep in Armitage, fucking him against the wall of the apartment over the bar. Armitage’s cock is rubbing against Kylo’s abs, and his hands are on Kylo’s biceps, feeling the muscles shift and flex as Kylo holds him there, fucks up into him.
“Sure I’m not—scraping up—your back?” Kylo’s voice is rough, face right next to Armitage’s, hot breath against Armitage’s neck.
“S’fine,” Armitage murmurs, nuzzling his beard along the side of Kylo’s face and then starting in on his shoulder again, sucking another bruise next to the one that he already made. Both bruises are lower than the necklines on Kylo’s shirts so he doesn’t have to worry about them showing in class next week, which is good, because they’ll be a beautiful, livid purple by Monday. “I like having you scratch me up, I like feeling it when I stretch.”
Kylo scoffs, hoists Armitage up a little higher, fucks up into him. “Nearly there,” he says breathlessly. “Make it worth your while after?”
Armitage chuckles, the breath punched out of him as Kylo drives in deep. “Al—ah, ah! Always, Kylo.” He shifts his hands, clings onto Kylo’s back, bites down on the place where Kylo’s shoulder meets his neck. “Love you,” he whispers.
Kylo groans, presses Armitage against the wall, hips twitching erratically as he comes, and then shudders through the aftershocks. While he’s waiting for Kylo to recover, Armitage reaches between their bodies, strokes his own cock. The space between them is damp with sweat and precome, and it’s gloriously filthy. Armitage loves it.
(Armitage feels loved.)
“Sorry, I’ll move in a sec,” Kylo murmurs in his ear. “Still coming. My fucking arms are shaking.”
“Don’t drop me,” Armitage warns.
Kylo squishes him tighter against the wall in response, pants into his neck. “Won’t.”
Armitage can feel Kylo’s forearms shaking under his arse. He hugs Kylo’s neck tightly, shifts his legs. “Let me down, doll.”
Kylo exhales, shifts, and gently pulls out, lowers Armitage to the floor. Armitage shudders as his feet touch, and some of Kylo’s come slides down his thigh.
“Fuck,” Armitage breathes. He sags against Kylo’s chest, makes a half-ass effort to lick at one of Kylo’s nipples in an attempt to disguise how wobbly his knees are. He hasn’t even come yet, and he feels unsteady as all hell, his entire body alight with sensation and woozy from the strength of Kylo’s attention.
“Christ, I’m sweating all over you,” Kylo mutters. “Here, lemme get you on the bed.” He steers Armitage away from the wall and back to the bed, guides him down gently.
The sheets smell like Kylo’s skin, like the couple of hours sleep that Kylo got in here was enough for him to make everything in this tiny apartment smell like him, and that’s everything Armitage wants about the place that he lives. He just wants it to be the place that Kylo is, too. He just wants Kylo to be here.
(It still doesn’t feel real, but there Kylo is, swiping at the sweat on his forehead and trying to get his hair pulled back into a ponytail to keep it from sticking to his face.)
“You wanna watch me?” Armitage asks. He brings his hand back to his cock, shudders at how sensitive he is. Even just dragging the tips of his fingers along the underside of his cock is sending shivers up his spine, and he edges himself carefully, tries to assess how exhausted Kylo is so that he can time his own orgasm, finish before Kylo falls asleep. “You don’t have to participate.”
Kylo shakes his head, kneels down and rummages under the bed. “Close your eyes, sweetie. And don’t be ridiculous. I’m not just abandoning you.”
Armitage smiles, shuts his eyes. Rolls his face into the pillow, tilts his own hips into the loose grip of his hand—and then Kylo’s hand is there too, stroking the back of his thigh, pressing gently on his bare leg.
“Wanting to look, huh?” Armitage murmurs, and he pulls his knee up to his chest so Kylo can see, shudders at the cool air on his wet hole. “There you go, sweetheart. Look all you like. Look at the mess you made of me, how nice you opened me up with your big fat cock.”
“Fuck,” Kylo mutters. There’s a dull clank from underneath the bed, and Kylo inhales sharply. “Shit, spoiled the surprise.”
“Not really, I still don’t know—” And then Armitage gasps in a quick breath as something wide and slick presses firmly against him and then in, angling expertly up at his prostate. “Jesus, which one is—”
“Pink and gold marble,” Kylo says, voice low. “And you’re taking it like it’s nothing.”
It doesn’t feel like nothing, not the way that Kylo’s pressing it inside him. It feels like he’s being stretched open, made into something new. He pictures Kylo’s big hand, wrapped around the base of the toy, pressing it inside Armitage, his mouth slack and his eyes glazed over because he can’t stop looking at Armitage, he can never stop looking—
When the vibrations start, Armitage chokes on his own spit, pressing the side of his face into the pillow and groaning incoherently.
“That’s good?” Kylo asks. “It’s not too much?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Armitage gasps, slamming his closed fist onto the sheets, and then reaching out blindly. “Hold me.”
Kylo clambers up onto the bed, tugs Armitage against his chest one-handed, the other hand still holding the vibrator steady inside Armitage. “You can open your eyes now,” he says softly. “If you want. You don’t gotta.”
“God,” Armitage says, rubbing his palm against Kylo’s sweaty chest. “I just—fuck, that’s good, it’s—I should let you sleep, I—”
“Don’t wanna sleep till you’re done,” Kylo says. “Doesn’t matter, I don’t have anything to do today anyways. I’ll study in the evening.”
“S’posed to be—your place tonight.”
Kylo shrugs, shifts his wrist, pressing the vibrator firmly into Armitage’s prostate. Fuck, it’s overwhelming in the best way—he’s not even stroking himself, just holding his cock and gritting his teeth through the waves of pleasure, holding onto Kylo like Kylo is an anchor—and he is, he is, he’s everything Armitage ever needed, and nothing he deserved, but maybe something he’s learning to deserve, learning to accept and appreciate and cherish and love and—
His voice cracks as something inside him breaks, shatters, disintegrates. He comes all over his own hand, across Kylo’s stomach, dripping down onto the sheets, mind going blank with static, shorting out with pleasure and desire and love and affection and all the things he thought he’d never have or deserve. He thinks his mouth is open when he muffles a sob in Kylo’s shoulder, but doesn’t realize he’s crying until Kylo shuts the vibrator off and he can hear his own wet sobs echoing in the too-small apartment. “Christ, I just—”
“Hey, s’okay,” Kylo says, voice soft and slow, hand gentle as he eases the vibrator out of Armitage, strokes at his hole with his thick fingers like he’s trying to put Armitage back together again, make him whole after having taken him apart completely. “I’ve got you, baby. Fuck, that was hot. Holy shit.”
Armitage rubs his wet face on Kylo’s pec, sighs against his skin, and reaching down with his wet hand for Kylo—
“Nah,” Kylo says, shifting on the bed. “I’m good, I’m fucking exhausted.”
“You sure you don’t—”
“I don’t even wanna clean up,” Kylo says. “I’m totally okay with just pulling a blanket over this. I can fall asleep with this hardon, it’ll go away in a minute.”
Armitage opens his mouth to protest, and then realizes he doesn’t particularly want to. He’s bone-tired, more than ready to just close his eyes and get some damn rest while he’s still warm and happy and sated, sleepy in the aftermath of his orgasm. “Sorry about snotting all over your chest.”
“Pft, don’t care,” Kylo says. “C’mere, I wanna snuggle.” He tugs the blankets up over both of them, shifts around until he’s got his pillow balled up under his head the way he likes it. Pulls Armitage in close, stroking random patterns on Armitage’s back with his fingers. “Gonna come sleep too, Millie?”
The dissatisfied mrowr comes from the other side of the apartment, and doesn’t come closer.
“She’s got one of your shirts,” Armitage murmurs. “Stole it out of the laundry bin and made a bed out of it.”
Kylo chuckles sleepily. “Sounds comfy.”
Armitage shifts, curls in close. He can feel lube and body fluids starting to dry and go tacky on his body. He probably reeks of sex, and the sun is going to start rising any minute now, but everything is pretty goddamn okay. He’s happy. “Lemme know what that offer on my art is if you get it. Sorry, I should have dealt with that myself.”
“I can do it,” Kylo murmurs. “’m falling asleep here…you can hold my cock if you want.” He yawns into Armitage’s ear. “G’night, Armitage.”
Armitage chuckles softly, tilts his head and presses a kiss to Kylo’s jaw. “Goodnight, Kylo. I love you.”
“L’you too.”
He falls asleep with his fingers loosely curled around his fiancé’s hard cock, and Kylo’s steady breathing in his ear.
Armitage falls asleep happy, and well-loved.