Chapter Text
He seems nice enough.
Not just because he’s a good-looking man. And no, it’s not because of the sharp (three-piece!) suit, either. Yes, the monochromatic ensemble does seem a little ominous, and he does seem a little irritable at the moment, but by the overall looks of it, he must’ve just had a pretty rough day.
According to him, he supposedly didn’t even mean to end up on Jakku Street — said he just didn’t know his way around Tatooine City. He’s “just here on business,” he’d said, and the next thing he knew, he was smack-dab in the middle of the red-light district. It was a miracle he even made it anywhere if his inability to drive that limo was anything to go by.
And if he had any intention of murdering her by the end of the night, he wouldn’t have let her drive the car herself… right?
One of the many risks that come with what she does is her safety. She knows this. She signed up for this. She just hopes that her growing up in an orphanage with a bunch of touchy older boys has physically and mentally trained her enough for when the worst comes. Thankfully, in the past month since she’s started, she hasn’t had to make use of said training yet. She just hopes tonight won’t be that night.
When she’d approached this man’s limo on the side of the road, hoping to snag her first customer for the night, she was a bit disappointed when he’d rolled down his window only to ask for directions. But she recognizes an opportunity when she sees it, so she’d offered to take him there — at a price, of course.
After a few moments of contemplation, he’d thrown his hands up in surrender and said, “You know what? Fine. But if I’m paying, you’re getting behind the wheel. Can you drive a stick?”
She’d snorted at him, earning her a glare. Her little seduction attempt forgotten (bent over and leaned into the passenger window, elbows crossed over so he couldn’t roll it back up, arms strategically placed to squeeze her tits together), she’d said, “Can’t everyone?”
To which he’d huffed, his knuckles whitening over the steering wheel. “Not everyone,” he’d mumbled.
Which is how she ended up here, driving this man to his hotel. This man, whose name she doesn’t even know yet.
“What’s your name?” He asks, and when she turns her head to look at him, it looks like he’s been assessing her very carefully for the past few minutes while she’d been deep in thought.
“What do you want it to be?” She shoots him a half-lidded side glance, putting on her best seductive voice.
This time he gives her a bemused look, narrowing his eyes with a raised brow as if to say, really?
Tough crowd. She huffs, blowing on the blonde bangs getting in the way off of her face because it was starting to get itchy — she really should invest in a better wig.
“… Kira. My name is Kira.” It’s not.
She’s not stupid. Her job isn’t illegal, per se, since she was doing her "business" in the heart of the red-light district where it’s designated. But she literally doesn’t even know anything about this man. He could still be a serial killer, or worse — a cop. She is not willing to risk exposing her identity, which could result in her getting kicked out of university, and then inevitably lead to her VISA getting revoked… A shiver runs down her spine at the mere thought.
So she uses an alias.
And sure, she may be fairly new to the job, but she’s no amateur, and she’s not about to fuck this up for herself when she’s barely just begun. Her final year in university depends on this. Oh god, their rent, which is due this week, depends on this.
She’d almost run into their asshole landlord Plutt tonight — it left her no choice but to exit their building through the fire escape, thus forcing her to pull out the broken drop-down ladder (which she’d taken the mental note to fix once she finds the time).
She only hopes her roommates got out okay.
Jannah’s pep-talk runs in her head on a loop.
We say who, we say when, we say how much.
We say who, we say when, we say how much.
This man may be paying her to drive him to his hotel, but tonight could be just that, as she realizes he hasn’t explicitly asked her to come up to his room once they get there… Although she’d rather not go back to Jakku and have to explain to her roommates exactly why she’ll be returning practically empty-handed.
“Kira…” he says, like he’s trying out the taste of her name in his mouth. “I’m going to ask you a question you don’t have to answer.”
She narrows her eyes at him in suspicion. “Shoot,” she responds anyway.
“What kind of money do you girls make these days?” A question that should typically sound demeaning, but somehow doesn’t when it’s coming out of his mouth, as if he’s genuinely curious.
It’s easy enough to answer. “Can’t take less than a hundred dollars.”
“A hundred dollars a night?”
She smirks. “Per hour.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says, bewildered. Her eyes are on the road but she can imagine the look of disbelief on his face. Her smirk spreads to her other cheek.
“I never joke about money.” She looks at him again, only to find that he’s still assessing her with awed curiosity.
“Neither do I.” He smirks back, his first somewhat-smile of the night, she realizes. Tilting his chin towards the windshield, he says, “Keep your eyes on the road, sweetheart.”
Her head snaps straight ahead, trying to subdue the blush on her face at the realization that she’d probably been staring.
“Yes, sir.” And she swears she hears a chuckle but she’s too embarrassed to check.
Get it together. Don’t let a pair of pretty eyes distract you, for fuck’s sake.
… Though she’s only a woman. And he is attractive, albeit a little older than her for sure. But it is her job to make him feel desirable after all, is it not?
So focus.
“Hundred dollars an hour…” he muses. “Pretty stiff.”
Stiff…
She pointedly directs her gaze towards his crotch. Then her eyes trail up to make sure he’s watching her. “Not quite,” she croons, biting her lower lip as she glances back down. “… But it’s got potential.” Before she looks toward the road again, she only sees his reaction for a split-second, but she caught the slight darkening in his eyes and that was satisfying enough for her.
He clears his throat. “Must be dangerous… What you do for a living.”
She snorts. “You don’t say? I’ve met probably every single type of man imaginable, and who knows where half of them have been?” A shrug. “But I’ve been told more than once that I’m a ‘picky hooker,’ which is pretty ironic. When this is your job, you can’t afford to be picky.”
From her peripheral vision she can tell that he’s listening to her intently, and she realizes she’s being chattier than usual — it makes her uneasy.
Reverting the topic to get things back on track, she continues, “I live up to my reputation, though. I use condoms. Always. And I get tested at the free clinic once a month. I am clean as a whistle.” Then she looks him in the eye to say, “and I’m exceptional in the sack.”
The silence that follows fills her with glee. Checkmate.
After what feels like a few minutes of silence, he asks another question: “Where are you from, Kira?”
No previous customer of hers has ever asked this many questions.
And his attempt at conversation is amusing. Cute, even. But it’s not in her qualifications to make small-talk, especially not when the flow is drifting towards her personal life. She barely likes talking about herself with friends, let alone some stranger whose name, she realizes again, she still doesn’t know.
“Texas,” she deadpans, and he lets out a snort of cynicism beside her.
“Then that is the most unique Texan accent I’ve ever heard.” To her great relief, he doesn’t sound like he wants to press her on the matter any further.
So she turns the conversation around before he can think of asking her anything else. “My turn,” she says. “What is your name?”
A short silence. “Ben,” he says, like he was hesitating for a second there.
“Ben!” She exaggerates a gasp. “That happens to be my favorite name in the whole world!”
“No…” he feigns astonishment, playing along and leveling with her sarcasm. She can practically hear the smile in his tone, right as she’s about to cross through an intersection, and she thinks it’s a shame she can’t turn her head to see it.
“You know what I think this is, Ben?” She continues, not giving him a chance to answer her hypothetical question. “I think this is fate. Fate brought us together tonight. In fact, you just might be my soulmate, Benedict.”
“Benjamin.”
“What was that?”
“My Ben is short for Benjamin.”
A snort bursts out of her before she could stop it.
“Of course it is.” When she peers sideways he has the side of his mouth quirked and an eyebrow raised.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
The fact that he’s humoring her is a relief. She’s somehow succeeded at lightening the grump’s mood, and should she continue to play her cards right, she just might be able to make the most out of this after all.
Benjamin. That totally explains why he can’t drive a stick. If she had to guess, she would say that he was one of the types who went to those fancy, exclusive boarding schools and grew up with a nanny — nannies. Parents who gifted him a pony at some point as a child. A family that spent summers at their house in the French countryside.
Basically the opposite of her own childhood, if what she’d had could even be considered one.
“Just that your name suits you,” she responds, “and explains your incapability with driving a manual transmission.”
A pause.
“You’re a brat, aren’t you?”
Trying her best to hold in a laugh, she feels a grin creeping up as she ignores his playful jab and says, “We’re almost at our destination, Mister Benjamin.”
It’s now or never. She gulps, tries not to sound as desperate as she feels, and lowers her voice an octave for him as a final attempt at seduction.
“Would you like to make me sorry for being a brat? You can take me up to your room and do whatever you wish with me.” She glances sideways, and there it is, that heated gaze again. “Or do you want me to get lost? Either way, you never have to see my face ever again after tonight.”
There's silence. She looks ahead so as not to pressure him (even if she’s already dreading the commute back to Jakku and essentially starting the night all over again). Plus, she doesn’t feel like subjecting herself to the awkward eye contact once he does reject her, either. So she keeps her eyes on the road as they turn one last corner towards his hotel.
“I’ll be honest with you, Kira,” he sighs, “I’ve had a pretty rough day.”
That sounds like an understatement.
“I can see that,” she responds. With another surge of bravery, she continues, “and I can help you, Ben.” She finally looks over at him, and the heated gaze has been replaced with something else. Apprehension, maybe? “Let me take care of it for tonight.”
Another moment of silence practically suffocates her. Please please please say yes and I swear I will make this so worth it for you.
He takes a charged, deep breath. “Alright,” he decides, clearing his throat. “I’d be very pleased if you would accompany me to my room, Kira.”
Like she’d be doing him the favor.
She has to stop herself from thanking him for saying yes right then and there. Practically vibrating with excitement at the thought of coming home to her friends with her share of their rent, she takes an internal sigh of relief.
Looks like Plutt won’t have to kick them out this month after all. She drives the rest of the way with a renewed determination.