Chapter Text
“So...what, it’s like, an actual film set?”
Rey was excited as she set a plate of hot wings down in front of Finn that she was probably going to comp for him in exchange for the tip about a possible new temp gig. It didn’t really matter tonight - the circular bar that dominated the middle of the eclectic space she worked in was packed because of March Madness. She’d have a good night for tips, and for once she could afford to buy her best friend a meal.
Well...an appetizer, at least.
He was going to get her a job in return. In the movies, no less. Unlike many - or most, it sometimes seemed - young women working in the Los Angeles service industry, she was certainly not an aspiring actress. But damned if it wouldn’t be absolutely wicked to work on a film.
She worked two days a week at Plutt’s repair shop fixing people’s fancy phones and tablets, and two days a week at Maz’s Place bartending until all hours and still wasn’t making enough to afford both her rent and essentials - like soap. And food.
She was barely scraping by and certainly wasn’t saving what she needed to continue pursuing her graduate studies - or anything else. She hated L.A. with a passion. She just didn’t fit in, and at this point she was done trying.
Finn hesitated as he stared at his plate, then scratched his neck and replied hesitantly, “Well...sort of. It’s not exactly feature film work. That’s why they don’t care so much about unions and stuff.”
“That’s fine,” Rey waved him off, nodding to acknowledge the bloke down the bar who wanted another round, “As long as it’s legit and they’re good for their paycheck.”
“No, they are, it’s just that it’s - really unconventional.”
“Like artsy, avant-garde stuff? Are they student filmmakers, or what?”
“Umm…” he fell silent, staring at his wings, and muttered, “I should have thought this through more carefully. I’m starting to get heartburn and I haven’t even had a wing yet.”
Rey frowned, trepidation and curiosity fighting for dominance in her gut as she demanded, “Why? You’re making me nervous now...”
Finn sighed and closed his eyes, holding up his hands in surrender.
“Okay, I’m just gonna say it. It’s porn.”
Rey stared at him, and then burst out laughing.
“Come on, Finn.”
“I’m serious,” Finn said, looking her in the eye, “Professional, nothing shady - I mean, they’re legit in the business and everything. A real studio, a well-known production company with big-name actors - well, big names in porn. All legal, safe…”
“Wait,” she stopped him, her eyes widening, “Are you serious? Porn? All this time, you’ve been working in porn?”
He shrugged, clearly embarrassed, and replied defensively, “Jesus, keep your voice down! Yes, and it’s been pretty steady. It’s not what you think - well, okay, some of it is, but it’s not any dirtier than it has to be. Everyone’s really professional, it’s organized and efficient…and I’m learning things about my trade, which is going to be good if I ever do want to break into mainstream stuff, which I eventually do...”
Rey, still incredulous, exclaimed, “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were messing with me! Why didn’t you ever tell me what your job was all about? When you told me you worked on short shoots, I thought you worked in commercials or something! Were you afraid I’d think you were morally bankrupt or what?”
“No!” he protested, then amended, “Well, I was pretty sure you wouldn’t. I mean, I personally don’t have a problem with porn, as long as it’s produced legally and all consensual and stuff. But some people do have an issue with it. And I wasn’t sure where you stand - it, ah, never came up in conversation.”
Rey opened her mouth to answer, then slowly became aware of someone behind her. She turned to find Maz, her boss, standing there looking very amused.
“If I had a nickel for all the things I’ve overheard in this place…”
“No, it’s not what it sounds like…”
“It sounds like Finn’s trying to convince you to come and work with him on a porn production. Not the most shocking thing I’ve overheard, by the way. If the money’s good, do it. Never turn down an opportunity unless it has the potential to hurt you. And what could this hurt?”
“Well...my girlish sensibilities?” Rey quipped, and Maz snapped her bar towel at her.
“Gotta grow up sometime, kiddo.”
Rey laughed lightly, then looked back at Finn. “So...just one day?”
“Well, these shoots aren’t very long, and I know Friday is the only day you’re not working.”
“I am working. Here, at night.”
“Yeah, but this would be during the afternoon. And if I were you, I’d call in at Plutt’s to work two days on set, maybe three. The money’s better.”
Rey looked dubious and murmured, “I don’t know…”
Finn shrugged said earnestly, “Look, just think about it - it’s a quick buck, and you can either swear it off forever afterwards if you’re really weirded out, or you can come back as a temp for the next one if you’re not. It’s really a lot more boring than you would probably expect.”
She pressed her lips together and, even though she couldn’t believe she was even considering it, promised,
“Okay. I’ll think about it.”
~~
Oh, God - I should have thought harder .
It was the thought going through Rey’s head as she took in her surroundings - which, currently, consisted of the set of a soon-to-be-shot porn flick and all the trappings that came with that.
“You okay?”
She was staring at a pink couch in the middle of the fake, luxurious-looking living room. Was that where they were going to do...it?
“Rey!”
She snapped out of her thoughts and finally realized Finn was talking to her, one hand holding a boom mike and the other holding out a cup of coffee for her to take. She grabbed it and took a sip, scalding her tongue.
“Ow, shit! Yeah, yeah...I’m fine. Just trying to wrap my head around this.”
“It’s just like any other movie, Rey - it’s fake. Don’t get caught up in the gory details.”
“I know, but...it’s freaking me out that it’s just so...normal? Like, everyone’s walking around as though there aren’t going to be people going at it right in front of us in a few minutes.”
“Everyone’s used to it, that’s all. You’ll get there too, if you keep coming back.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
He grinned at her and excused himself, issuing one last command to relax before walking away from her. She spent the next several minutes running various small errands for various people - makeup, wardrobe, the director. Who, incidentally, was about the farthest thing from a porn director that she could think of - skinny, pale, with orange hair and sporting bushy, perpetually scowling eyebrows.
Finally, they were ready to start, and Rey’s stomach clenched in secondhand nervousness - which she was sure she was the only one feeling - as the actors came out. At least, she assumed that’s who they were, by the way everyone was treating them.
She sidled closer to Finn and whispered, “Are those the actors?”
He nodded and said, “Yeah - that’s Tori Silver, she’s big in the industry. Pretty cool lady, actually. Down to earth.”
She nodded, then frowned, “And the guy?”
“He might even be bigger than her. Usually the men don’t make huge names for themselves like the women do, but this guy is pretty well-known. Name’s Kylo Ren.”
She stared at him, then said, “He’s...unconventional-looking.”
Finn smirked at her, knowing what she really meant, and replied, “He’s magnetic, which makes up for the sort of unconventional looks. Plus, he’s got a massive dick.”
She choked on her coffee.
“Shh! My God, Finn!”
“Sadly, he also IS sort of a massive dick, personality-wise. Just keep your distance if you can and spare yourself the trouble.”
He wasn’t kidding. About any of it.
As the scene started, Rey’s nervousness began to die down as she watched everyone fall into their places, taking it as seriously as anyone else would take their jobs.
The dialogue actually wasn’t terrible, for a porno, and she was surprisingly engrossed when suddenly the male lead leaned in to kiss his buxom costar, setting off the physical aspect of the story - and it escalated fast.
Really fast.
Rey wasn’t sure if the scene actually did progress in a matter of seconds or if that was only the case for Rey, but it seemed like no time at all between the initial kiss and the moment the lady - Tori - sank to her knees in front of Kylo Ren to pull him out of his trousers for a blow job.
Finn really, really wasn’t kidding. It was the largest cock she’d ever seen.
She actually averted her eyes.
The scene ramped up as Tori went to work, and just when Rey felt like she knew where it was going next, the director - Hux, his name was - called cut.
Rey blinked as the two actors stopped what they were doing and allowed themselves to be readjusted, and then Hux yelled action and they were back at it.
This happened over and over, no matter what the actors were in the middle of doing. It was mind-boggling, and Rey thought with wry conviction that this experience might be ruining porn for her forever.
Before she knew it, she was actually standing there watching Kylo pound into Tori from behind, listening to the slap of their skin and their moans and smelling the thick, unmistakable musk of sex mixed with sweat permeating the air, and feeling completely detached.
It was all so... fake .
She was strangely proud of how well she was handling it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so crazy to make this a regular gig. After all - a paycheck is a paycheck, and if they needed gophers, who was she to say no to an extra hundred dollars a week?
~~
“Cut!”
In a flash, Kylo Ren pulled out of his costar, quickly grabbing the base of his cock as he did so. He had been just about to come, and grit his teeth against the pressure as he forced his orgasm back down.
“What the fuck, Hux?” he snarled, panting.
“The angle isn’t working. We need to reset. And I think I want a position change at this point.”
“Shit,” groaned Tori, drawing out the word dramatically as she reluctantly disentangled herself from him and reached down to cradle her cunt, “I’m sore as fuck. I thought it was almost over.”
“It was,” Ren grunted, still gripping his erection with one arm braced on the bed as he tried to work through it. Over his shoulder, he asked, “How long is this gonna take?”
“Yeah, I have to be somewhere,” Tori said, screwing the cap back on her water and gingerly crossing her legs as she handed it back to the PA with a smile.
“Look, it’s either get it done now, or do it on Monday. You really want to take a two day break in the middle of a key scene?”
“Actually?” Tori mused, her eyebrows raising, “Yeah. I would. I’m supposed to babysit my niece. If we have to wait for the reset and then wait for him to get it up again, we’ll be here another hour at least.”
“Fine,” Hux said, clearly displeased but not yet past being reasonable, “That’s a wrap for the day, then. See you all bright and early on Monday morning. Tori, take a sitz bath.”
“Shut up,” she replied, getting into her robe and hurrying off the set without a backward glance.
Ren practically ripped his robe away from the PA that was holding it out to him, throwing it over his shoulders and not even caring to close it fully in the front as he stormed back toward his dressing room, his still-hard erection poking out the front of it.
He slammed the door of his makeshift dressing room behind him, walking over to the table and bracing one hand on it while the other flew to his cock. In the end, it only took about thirty seconds of frantic pumping and he was spurting his release all over the surface of the table. He straightened, breathing heavily, and shrugged off the robe. Dressing quickly, he grabbed his bag and walked out without so much as giving the mess a once over with a towel.
Fuck them, he thought bitterly. They signed up for their shitty jobs, same as him.
His phone chose that moment to vibrate, and he froze as he slid his hand into his jacket pocket to grab it. He knew who it would be - there weren’t a lot of people who would be calling him to begin with, but considering that they’d wrapped early and Hux was a weasel, there was only one real possibility.
Talking to Snoke was the last thing he wanted to do right now, but ignoring it wouldn’t make it any better for him later. His jaw clenched as he brought the phone up to his ear, knowing that the head of First Order Studios didn’t mince words. The older man’s deceptively aristocratic voice was booming in Kylo’s ear before he could even mumble a greeting.
“I hope you’re about to assure me that the need to wrap early today was an isolated incident.”
Kylo stared straight ahead, his voice flat as he answered, “It wasn’t my call. The scene wasn’t going the way Hux wanted it to.”
“And the problem?” Snoke growled.
“A few things. The angles weren’t right, Tori was sore, there wasn’t enough…”
Once again, Snoke interrupted him.
“I gave you a start in this business for a reason. You are the one with creative vision, not Hux. If the scene isn’t going well, I expect you to find a way to fix it. Is that clear?”
Kylo ground his teeth together. “Yes.”
“You sound...irritated. Do you disagree with my expectations?”
Kylo drew a breath and forced himself to maintain a neutral tone as he replied, “I’m grateful for the guidance you’ve given me.”
There was a tense silence on the other end of the line before Snoke purred, “You certainly don’t sound grateful, Kylo Ren. Do I need to remind you that if I hadn’t offered you this option and agreed to help you bury your past, you would most likely still be languishing in prison?”
Kylo clenched his fingers around his phone so hard it’s a miracle it didn’t break as icy fingers gripped his guts. He quickly deflated, mumbling deferentially,
“No, sir.”
After a moment, he heard Snoke sigh.
“By the end of the day on Monday, I want that film finished. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Kylo responded numbly.
He stood for a few minutes, the phone still at his ear, after Snoke unceremoniously hung up. He felt numb, trapped - but there was nothing he could do about any of it. All he wanted now was a shower and dinner. Short-term goals were good distractions when he was feeling hopeless about long-term ones.
As he stalked to the main exit, he caught a glimpse of the PA who’d handed him his robe - she was on her phone, crouched in a corner, her face split open in the toothiest grin he’d ever seen as she laughed boisterously at whatever the person on the other end of the line was telling her. Obviously having a much better phone conversation than he’d just had.
He slowed for a second, staring, and then quickly shook himself and proceeded through the door and out into the evening.
No one should have teeth that bright. They were probably whitened, he thought bitterly as he climbed into his car.
Everyone was fake.
~~
He went home, as he always did, to decide what to do with his evening. Not that it ever really varied that much - or, at all.
Every night, he stayed in and ordered food and a movie. He rarely, if ever, went out. There were several reasons for that, but they basically boiled down to not wanting to socialize with other people. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how, or was afraid - he just didn’t particularly find anybody very interesting.
Also, when he went out, it was inevitable that he would be approached by at least one woman looking for a hook-up. He wasn’t particularly attractive, but he was very tall and fairly muscular. Some of them even recognized him from time to time, which led to them approaching him with bright eyes and vibrating with excitement at the thought of going home with someone they assumed would be a god in bed.
Ironically, he had absolutely no interest in that. Ever.
His job revolved around having sex and, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t something he did because he loved sex. If anything, his profession had tainted his view of the whole thing - he had fucked countless people, men and women, for years. Thousands, in every way possible. There was probably not a sex act in existence that he hadn’t done, and he rarely failed to get the job done. Get to set, get hard, stay hard for hours and deliver a carefully-timed money shot.
But it was perfunctory, emotionless and mechanical. A job - and if he didn’t even have much interest in doing it in that context, he certainly had no interest in doing it outside of work. Needless to say, it had crippled his personal life, but he was generally alright with being alone.
People tended to dislike him, anyway.
Sighing and walking to his fridge, he pulled out a bottle of beer. Unscrewing it and tossing the cap in the trash, he took a long swig before dropping onto his couch and flipping on his rather impressive TV to watch the news for a minute before picking a movie.
His condo, at least, was spectacular. He’d had a decorator come in when he’d first bought it, so overwhelmed with the large space that he thought it would be helpful for someone to help him furnish it properly. In the end, though, he’d lived in it for a month before deciding it felt like he was living in someone else’s place. So, he’d sold half of what she put in there and bought replacements where necessary - as a result, the overall style was sort of a mash up between tasteful and his own mess of things.
Settling in, he opened the drawer of his coffee table and pulled out the large stack of well-worn menus.
God, I’m so sick of everything , he thought as he thumbed through. Pizza, Asian...he was tired of it all.
Sighing, he threw the menus back in the drawer and thought for a minute. There was an old pub a few blocks away that he’d never been to - it had been there for ages. He’d recently read a write-up in the Reader that said they had excellent gumbo.
For some reason, that sounded really good to him. Not only that, they were bound to have baseball on, and he had missed the last two games because of work.
Standing and throwing his coat back on before he could talk himself out of it, he turned the TV off and headed out the door.
Something a little different couldn’t hurt.
~~
“But do they actually make the beer out of oatmeal?” the man asked, and Rey thought to herself that he looked a lot like Danny DeVito.
“Well, they add oats to the mash during the brewing process. Makes the beer really smooth.”
“Does it taste like oatmeal, though?”
“It’s really dark,” Rey explained, “Bitter, but if you like that kind of thing then I say try it! Personally, I think it tastes a bit like…”
As she was speaking, she saw someone come through the door out of the corner of her eye. Her eyes bugged out and she actually crouched down behind the bar as she recognized him.
“ Shit! ”
“That’s a ringing endorsement,” Maz drawled, her eyes still on the tapper as she poured the first half of a Guinness and set it down to settle.
“No, I just...oh, God, you’ve got to be kidding me!”
Maz turned, frowned and then looked down, spotting Rey practically lying on the floor.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“The guy that just walked in, he...uh, I know him from...work.”
Maz pushed her thick glasses up the bridge of her nose and squinted at the newcomer, who was peeling off his leather jacket and checking out the baseball game that was on the far TV.
“And you don’t like him, is that it?”
“Well, not exactly. I don’t really know him. We never even spoke to each other, but…”
“But?” Maz asked, frowning down at Rey, who looked back up at her meekly and finished,
“I’d just really rather not mix that job with this one.”
Maz scrutinized her for a full thirty seconds before she glanced back over at Kylo Ren and inclined her head in his direction.
“Go on, pour him his drink. You set the tone.”
“Can’t you take him?”
“Sorry, kiddo,” Maz shook her head, turning back around to finish the Guinness, “This is my last pour of the day. I’ve got a date with Netflix and fuzzy slippers.”
Rey sighed, resigned, and slowly rose from her hiding place. Trying not to look any more pathetic than she already did, she began to walk away when the customer she’d been speaking to before her little panic attack stopped her.
“Hey, um...I think I will try that stout. When you get a second.”
Rey blinked at him, uncomprehending as the fog of dread still circled her brain, and then quickly pulled herself together and replied, “Sorry, I was...I’ll, um, get it for you. Do you want a glass?”
“Sure.”
That man was eyeing her as though she was a basketcase, and she couldn’t blame him. Flashing him a smile, she made her way over to where Kylo Ren was sitting, his eyes still on the TV, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his large hands resting on the bar in front of him.
She prayed he didn’t recognize her. He’d been...preoccupied, after all, and she was only a PA. Even if he didn’t, she would have to stop internally cringing about the fact that she had spent the day watching this guy have sex not ten feet from her long enough to serve him as though he were any other customer.
When she finally stood in front of him, he turned his attention to her - and froze, almost imperceptibly.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Hi,” she croaked, blindly grasping for a beer list. She figured it was better to just not acknowledge the elephant in the room unless he did first, because he obviously did remember her, and just get on with taking his order.
And to not think about the fact that she knew exactly what his erect penis looked like, even though they’d never exchanged so much as a tepid pleasantry, much less a conversation.
When he didn’t respond to her greeting, his face carefully blank, she gamely asked, “What can I get you to drink?”
For a moment, she thought he might stand up and walk out, but then she figured he must get recognized sometimes. In reality, lots of people watched porn - Rey herself did too, on occasion. Still, being recognized by a fan and running into someone who had just spent a day on set getting a live show were probably two very different things.
She couldn’t even wrap her brain around what that would be like for him, so she simply stood there as he mulled things over.
Finally, he muttered, “Just a Budweiser.”
“Draft, or bottle?”
“Draft.”
It was brief and brusque, and that was more than fine with Rey. She reached behind her and grabbed an oatmeal stout for the guy around the other side, almost tripping over the spill mat in her haste to get away, and then set about pouring Kylo Ren’s beer.
She felt him watching her as she worked and had to restart the pour three times because it just kept coming out with too much head. Either they’d just changed the keg, which was the likely explanation, or else whatever deity controlled the universe was bent on punishing her for something.
Maybe both. These two possibilities weren’t mutually exclusive.
She carried the pint back to where he was sitting and tossed a coaster in front of him before setting it down. Work , she coached herself. She knew how to work, and that’s all she had to do. She could do this - he was just a person.
Even if he had unwittingly trapped her into talking to him.
“Did you want a menu?”
“Is it worth looking at?” he asked flatly, his eyes on the TV.
“Sorry?”
He brought his gaze back to her and said, “Tell me about the gumbo.”
She shrugged, annoyed with his attitude, but tried to answer his question, “It’s got peppers, sausage, rice…”
“Is it any good?” he interrupted, his brows furrowed as though he was annoyed with her. She could feel herself start to bristle.
“It’s spectacular.”
He eyed her and took a sip from his beer before muttering, “You would say that. You work here.”
“Then why did you ask me?” she snapped, and then quickly backpedaled as he leaned back, his frown deepening.
It wasn’t her place to get nasty with Maz’s customers. She needed to tone it down. She didn’t get a chance to say anything, though, before he was speaking again, almost to himself.
“More hair than wit,” he mumbled under his breath.
Rey saw red. It wasn’t the insult that made her angry as much as the assumption that she would have no idea what he was talking about, as though she was some uneducated twit just because she worked odd jobs. As if he was one to judge.
Well, he had another thing coming.
Raising a brow and trying to look imperious instead of enraged, she shot back, “And you have more faults than hairs. Which is saying something.”
He couldn’t have looked more gobsmacked if she had actually slapped him in the face. Emboldened by his reaction and feeling quite smug, she spun on her heel, addressing him over her shoulder as she went.
“I’ve got to check on my other customer. When you decide whether or not you want to try the gumbo, let me know.”
She grabbed the gentleman on the other side of the bar another drink and about three minutes later, she saw Kylo Ren get up and stalk out the way he’d come in. When she went back, fully expecting that he had walked out without paying, it was to a settled check.
She frowned and picked it up - his pint had cost four dollars. He’d left her twenty.
Grimacing as she stuffed the twenty in her apron, she cleared his spot and wondered what the hell it was going to be like the next time she walked onto his set. She didn’t want to think about it, and so was inordinately glad when a party of ten revellers celebrating a birthday walked through the door and kept her busy for the rest of the shift.
I don’t have bad interactions with customers, Rey thought to herself, but of course when I do, it would involve trading Shakespearean insults with a porn star.
If someone else had been telling her this story, she wouldn’t have believed them.