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It was a few days before Ben Organa-Solo’s parents were due to visit him and his fiancé. Final arrangements were being made over the phone.“Armitage could pick you up.”“Listen, son, we’ll get a taxi. Your mom’s still boycotting Uber.”“I’ll book you one if you like.”“We’ll just hail one.”Ben rolled his eyes. “It’ll be cheaper if I book it”“How much?”“I don’t know, I gotta look at the online thing.”“I was all about getting the tube but your mom said no. She doesn’t like me pretending I’m younger than I am. I said, listen, if we only had carry on bags, but she gave me a look.”“Yeah, I don’t blame her. It’s about sixty or seventy pounds.”“That sounds fair. I’ll pay you.”“Look, don’t worry about it, I’ll pay the cab fare. Christ.” *** “I spoke to my dad. Good news, you don’t have to pick them up from the airport.”“But you did offer on my behalf, didn’t you?”“Might have done. But he didn’t go for it. I knew he wouldn’t.”“Hmm.”“But you would have done it, if they had said yes please.”“Yes, of course I would have done. With your dad criticising my driving the whole way.”“He wouldn’t!”“He’s a former racing driver; of course he would.”“Ah, come on.”Armitage shrugged. “Alright, alright.”“Well, anyway, I booked a cab, I have the reference number, I’ve emailed mom the details, on Friday morning about eleven, they’ll show up here.”“I shall gird my loins.” *** It was the day before the visit. Both Ben and Armitage had booked the Friday off work. Armitage got home first. He had already given the living room another tidy and pushed a dusting mop around, before realising that he was still in his working suit.“Do things in the right order,” he muttered to himself, and went into the bedroom to change into T shirt and sweatpants.He set about making one of the easy pasta sauces from one of Ben’s cookbooks, and made a start on the Pinot Grigio. Ben texted “on my way home” and Armitage took that as his cue to start the water boiling for the pasta. It was good timing: before the pasta was done, he heard the key in the door. Ben was home.“You just made it in time — thought I was going to have to leave it in the pan for you.” Ben came through and gave Armitage a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, sugarplum,” he said. “Hey babe. Just thought you’d make it out earlier.”“So did I,” Ben said. “But there’s always something.” He took off his suit jacket and loosened his tie, then headed off into the bedroom to change. “Had to finish a quick report on one of our risk models, and you know.”“Was the scream pillow in play?”“No, not today.”Ben came back in in comfy clothes, and poured a small glass of wine.He took it to the dining table, and Armitage saw he was wearing the T shirt with “Stochastic Asset Model”on the back, with an arrow pointing downwards to his arse.Armitage dished up, and brought the plates to the table.They ate. It wasn’t quite as good as when Ben made it, although Armitage would have sworn he’d done nothing different.“Look, tomorrow,” Armitage said, “It’s going to be alright, isn’t it?”“Yeah, nothing we can’t handle.” “Nothing outside of parameters.”“Listen, My family are my family, you know? If I’m too much, then they’re probably going to be too much.”“You’re not too much. I mean, not exactly.”“So stop fretting.”“I’m not fretting. Just, you have got enough stuff for them to do? Cos I’ve got stuff for them to do, potentially — I made a list in my notes app.”“It doesn’t have to be all planned out like a military campaign. They’ll be happy to see the neighbourhood, walk round the park, see a few of the sights. All I really have to do is keep my dad out of the dodgier pubs”——“There is a dodgy pub literally up the road, he won’t be able to miss it.”“Yeah, true, true.”“I tided up.”“Oh. Yeah. Was I supposed to notice?”Armitage sighed.“OK, look, I’ll wash up. And then we’ll take it easy.” *** The day had come. Armitage woke up not long after the alarm would normally have woken them for a work day, and lay in bed waiting for the intended wake up time. After a while he got out of bed and made two cups of tea.After breakfast, Ben’s phone buzzed with an alert. Han and Leia’s plane had arrived.Han texted Ben from arrivals and again from the cab.“Cab driver has an ‘interesting’ driving style, apparently,” Ben said. “Rides the clutch a lot.”“See, told you,” said Armitage. “Do you know where they are?”“They’re off the M25 and he texted a little bit ago so they should be… I dunno exactly where they are but I’d guess ten or twenty minutes away.”“Have you got him on find my friends?” Armitage reached for Ben’s phone, and Ben batted him away.“I’ve got this.” He ran his hand through his hair and made a thinking face. “Should I go down out front of the hotel to meet them?”“I’m sure they’ll be fine.”“Yeah, but they’ve got suitcases. I’ll go down. That was the whole point of them staying literally around the corner.”“You want me to come down with you?”“No, you stay up here, put the kettle on.”“Right. Or they might want to freshen up.”“OK, so you can pace up and down and wear holes in the laminate.”“Good, excellent, will do.”“Look, it’s just my mom and dad.”“I know, I know.”“Right, okay.” Ben pulled on a coat and grabbed the keys to the flat. “I’ll text you soon as I know what we’re doing.”Fifteen minutes later, Ben was in touch again. Ben: Got them settled in. Taking a shower and changing clothes.Armitage: OK. When are you coming back over?Ben: Give us 10 minutes. And don’t fret. Armitage fretted, because it was in his nature to do so. He tidied everything in the kitchen again, and opened the fridge to look at the things they’d got for lunch. They should really have pre prepped some of the lunch stuff, but it hadn’t worked out like that. IT didn’t seem right to be leaving it all to Ben, but he was the better of the two in the kitchen. He looked at the stack of thin aubergines and remembered how Ben often told him that he always messed up “eggplant,” and decided to leave well enough alone. *** There was the door. Armitage rushed to be there as it opened, and Ben ushered his parents in. Han looked a little older than when Armitage had last seen him, though the family resemblance to Ben was still strong. He still wore the same jacket and jeans combination that he’d had on in even the oldest family photos. He gave a warm handshake, a brief manly hug, and a “how you doing, kid.”Leia was elegant in a high collared short trenchcoat and a pair of rather well cut pants. She accepted a kiss on the cheek, and squeezed Armitage’s arm tightly. “So good to see you,” she said.“So this is the apartment,” Ben said.“And very nice it is too,” his mother said. “Hey Ben,” she added in a stage whisper, “Won’t you take your mother’s coat?”He took the coat as she shrugged it off to reveal a splendid cobalt blue sweater, and hung it up.“So show us the view,” Leia said, and they all went over to the picture window in the lounge area.Han and Leia agreed that it was “very nice”“You can see where we work,” Ben said, pointing to Canary Wharf, “and there’s the O2.”“There’s so little high rise around here — it’s kind of sweet that you two found one of the few tall buildings to live in.”“Yeah, I guess.”It was surreal but pleasant to actually be welcoming Ben’s parents into their home. Armitage fixed coffee for the Organa-Solos and tea for himself, and distributed them accordingly. It was good to have something to do.“Good journey?”Apparently it had been a perfectly good journey. TSA fast track worked as advertised, the flight was uneventful, a good movie had been watched, and they’d got through customs without a very long queue. Han had a little anecdote about being recognised in arrivals — two motor racing fans had come over and said hello and taken a selfie with him. He told the story in a gruff, self deprecating way, but it was obvious that he was actually pleased as punch.“So we’re having lunch here, right?”“Yeah, I’m gonna make a quick lunch for you. Though I guess for you it feels more like dinner.” Ben went to the kitchen and started pulling things out of drawers and cupboards and out of the fridge.Han offered to help, but was rebuffed.“How’s your mum and dad getting on, Armitage”“I think he’s finally got used to retirement.”“Took him a while, huh? I guess we’ll be the same, if we ever get around to it. I keep telling Han to slow down, but you know.”“Slow. I can’t do slow.”“Anyway so he still pops into the school from time to time for sporting events and the like. He likes to go and shout at the rugby team. And he sees old colleagues for lunch sometimes.”“That sounds pleasant.”“Mother keeps me briefed. She’s trying to get him to go on a big holiday.”“I’d love to go on a big vacation,” Han said. “So much travelling, but never a vacation.”“He’s supposed to be dialling back the travel, now he’s ‘taken a step back’ from the team, but he still goes to most races.”“I guess I just can’t keep away. And Chuy doesn’t mind.”Chuy, Armitage knew from Ben’s occasional impromptu rants and explanations about his childhood, was Jesús “Chuy” “El Vaquero” Martínez Acosta, Han’s long term right hand man and now the official team principal of Solo Racing. He was as tall as a basketball player, as strong as an ox, had won Le Mans twice — the first Mexican to do so — back in the days before racing drivers had to be compact and petite.“No, well, you’ve always been as thick as thieves.”“He will keep the Falcons going strong, I know that. He knows everyone I know, and honestly they listen to him more than they do to me. I just like to stick around sometimes.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You ever watch any sports car racing, or is it just Formula One?”“I stopped watching Formula One when it got boring, to be honest,” Armitage said. “I was quite into it about ten years ago, but it just isn’t the same.”They could smell delicious things happening in the kitchen.“What is it?”“Something with eggplant. And I think there are pine nuts?” Armitage turned to the kitchen. “Anything you want me to do? Set the table.”“Yeah, you could do that. And cut bread. It’s in the oven heating up.”Armitage quickly assembled knives and forks and plates, and set a bottle of water from the fridge on the table.He went to get the bread out of the oven, and found Ben in his way. “Could you fucking shift,” he hissed, and then immediately regretted it. He was supposed to be on his best behaviour while Ben’s parents were here. No snarky comments, no bitchiness.“Christ. I’m just stirring the thing,” Ben said. “You have to keep stirring it.” “Shit, sorr-ee,” Armitage whispered sarcastically. Bugger.Ben brought the pan to the table and set it on a trivet. “Eggplant and oregano,” he said.“Well this is lovely,” Leia said, sitting herself down. “It’s always good to taste my son’s cooking. How are you in the kitchen, Armitage? I barely ever boil an egg.”“I can cook,” Armitage said, “from recipes, but I don’t have it down like Ben does.” *** After lunch, they went for a stroll in the park.“We watched the Olympics on TV,” Han said. “Never thought my kid would end up living next door.”“Well, here it all is,” Armitage said. “The legacy.”“Lot of building work been done,” Han said, “although let’s be honest, it’s mostly for the benefit of rich guys like you.”“We’re not that rich, Dad,” Ben cut in.“You ain’t that poor either.”“Well, no, true. You have to make a fair bit in this city, it’s fucking expensive.”“New York’s fucking expensive.”“Yeah. It’s comparable, is what I’m saying.”“Hey, I’m not trying to dig at you, son. It’s just a whole world different to where I came up from. Your mom can probably relate more.”Ben reached over to his father and swiped a hand across his shoulder.“What’cha doing?”“Sweeping off the Han Solo chip from your shoulder.”“Ah, get off,” grumbled Han. “So,” he said, changing subject. “That’s where, what, West Ham play now?”“Yeah.”“You into soccer?”“Not really. A bit, but not really.”“Armitage is way too posh to be into soccer.”“Oh, shut up. Yes, I went to private school, yes we played rugby and hockey instead of football, sorry, soccer, and I was alright at hockey and terrible at rugby, but I have watched it. I’m just not massively into it.”“Seems a waste with the stadium right there.”“Yeah, I suppose it kinda does, but that’s just how it is.”Leia strolled along next to Armitage and chatted to him.“So about this wedding.”“Well, yeah. There’s a lot to do.”“I wish we could do more to help, but we’re all the way across the pond. And your folks don’t live so close.”“No. Which is almost a relief in some ways.”Leia laughed.“No, I’m joking really. But my dad would absolutely want to take over if he could. He’d find it hard to stop himself.”“Okay, I see your reasoning”.“If he was still at the school, he’d be talking them into lending him the Combined Cadet Force kids for the day, and piling them into a minibus to come and form a guard of honour.”Leia laughed again. “He wouldn’t actually do that.”“Thing is, I don’t know. He’s an absolute menace sometimes. He means well, of course, but sometimes you just have to realise that you are unwittingly part of one of Brendol Hux’s Grand Ideas.”“Alright. Well I can promise you I won’t pull anything like that. But if you ever want advice on anything, a second or third opinion, or just someone to vent to, you call me or email me. Any time.”“Thanks, Leia.”“Listen, you’ve made my son the happiest he’s ever been.”“Oh, thank you.”“It means a lot.” *** The idea had been to try to stay on London time as much as possible, but by the early evening Han and Leia were both tired, and retired to bed.“This means they could be around early in the morning,” Armitage said, reclining on the sofa.“It’s possible. They’ll text us before they show up.”“Yeah, okay. Just as long as we’re not, you know, normal Saturday morning plans.”“My God, are you going to have to reschedule the sex? However will you cope.”“Well, when are you free, Mr Solo?”“I dunno, Mr Hux. I mean, I want to relax a bit.”Armitage grinned and waggled an eyebrow at him. “I could help you relax.”“Oh, could you, you horrible little minx?”“I am your betrothed and one and only, and I am not a horrible little minx.”“I’m going to have a shower, anyway, so, you know?”“There might be a gap in your schedule after that,” Armitage said, endowing the words “gap” and “schedule” with some attempted erotic weight.He heard the shower come on, and he lifted himself off the sofa and went through into the bedroom. Shoes off, clothes off and correctly distributed to the chair and the laundry hamper, and he slipped into the en suite shower room.Ben was rinsing his hair and body, cascades of water pouring off his beautiful shoulders and back.“Come in to watch?”“Yeah. You know what I’m like.”“I sure do.”“I’ll get in after you, give you time to dry your hair.” Ben switched off the shower and got out. Armitage watched him wrap a towel around his middle and another around his hair.“I shall dry my hair, and get in bed and get all nice and comfortable,” he said. “Don’t be too long in there.”Armitage showered quickly: hair and pits and balls and arse and the exfoliating stuff and rinse and out and towel. Dab of body butter on the dry bits, face moisturiser, towel dry hair and out to the bed where his love was waiting for him.The lights were already on low. He slid under the covers and into Ben’s arms. “Hello babe.”“Hello,” Ben said, his voice low and warm and lovely. He kissed him slow and soft, and held him close to him with his strong warm arms. “I’m so glad I’ve got you.”“I’m glad I’ve got you,” Armitage said. “You’re just right. I love you so much,” he said, then kissed him with short sweet kisses that blended over time into one. He stroked his arms and his shoulders and his back, then down to his hips and his thighs. Ben sighed in pleasure. Armitage rolled his hips against him, and felt their erections bump and nudge together. He pushed harder and held himself tighter against Ben. “Darling,” he whispered.“Shall I tell you what I want?”“Yeah, go on.”“I wanna lay down on my front, and you can stroke me and touch me all over if you like, and then I want you to fuck me. Real nice and slow.”“I can do that for you, darling. I can always do that for you.”He wriggled over to the side of the bed and opened the bedside drawer to fetch out a bottle of lubricant and a condom. When he turned back, Ben was already lying face down with his thighs slightly spread. He was beautiful like this, always, and had been since the first time they took each other to bed, with Armitage hardly able to believe his insane luck that the hot American guy with the long nose and the cute smile had actually gone for him, and wanted to go with him. And later on he’d wanted to be with him as an ongoing thing and now a forever thing. He stroked his back with fingertips and palms and listened to the sounds of approval coming from underneath him.He moved to his buttocks, stroking them in circles, pulling them apart, then kissing the small of his back, his shoulders, his arms, and his back again. He took the lid off the lube and dripped a little onto the crack of Ben’s arse.“Not too cold is it?”“No, it’s fine.”He massaged it onto him with his thumb and his two fingers.“That’s good, babe, that’s really nice.”He added a little more, and pushed a finger in, then a little more and another. He manipulated his fingers and listened to the lovely breathy grunting sighing sounds. It was like he was playing him. His other hand went to his own cock, just to hold and gently squeeze.He slipped his fingers out and wiped them on a tissue, then tore open the condom packet and rolled it on.“You ready for me?”“Yeah, I’m ready.” He gathered some of the pillows under his front, and raised up his hips.Armitage knelt behind, added more lube, got in position, and pushed very slowly in, just barely getting the head in before sliding out and then pushing so slowly in again.Ben made choppy little gasps.“You want more?”“Mmm, yeah. Want more.”And he gave him, slowly, biting his lip in concentration, slowly, eyes feasting on the sight before him, the whole length.Ben panted.Armitage set himself a slow rhythm, just like Ben had asked for, concentrating, holding onto his hips, feeling himself going in to a sort of trance with the repetitive motion and the hot silk clutching onto his cock and the man he loved most in the world sighing and moaning and looking so wonderful.He moved his position, bringing one leg up a little to give himself more depth. Ben groaned in delight.“Fuck, give me more of that. Fuck me like that.”So he gave it to him in the long deep thrusts that he knew he liked, over and over.Ben’s noises were getting more insistent, moving more towards something. Armitage moved a little more quickly.Ben reached underneath himself, started to stroke himself.“You want my hand too?”“Yeah, I want your hand.”And so they joined their hands on Ben’s cock, which was hard and hot and just about ready to go, Armitage could absolutely tell.“You’re nearly there, I know.”“Yeah, so nearly, just so nearly.”Just a few more strokes and he was there, groaning and spurting. Armitage left his hand there and fucked him hard, feeling Ben’s body help him along and before long he was there too, leaning forwards over him, feeling suspended in the white light of pleasure.“Fuck. Fuck. Oh my love. So good,” he mumbled. He pulled out and sat back on his ankles. Ben found the tissues with his clean hand and passed one back to Armitage, and they both wiped off.With the condom off, tied off and in the bin, and a couple of little spots on the bed wiped off, the mess was minimal, and they could just lie back for a little while, with Armitage’s head on Ben’s shoulder.“You’re good, you know,” Ben said. “I know I tell you that, but it’s worth saying.”“Aw, thank you. I love you.”“I love you too.” *** “Did you put your phone on to charge?”“Fuck knows.” *** They all met up again in the morning.Armitage knew that there had been a period in Ben’s youth, pre-college and maybe a little afterwards, where he and his family hadn’t seen eye to eye. But they seemed to be getting along perfectly fine now.“How’s work treating you?” Han asked.“It’s pretty good. Busy, stressful sometimes, but I’m good at it so it’s fine really.”“Still surrounded by a bunch of Chads?”“Ha, yeah, kinda like that, although they’re more Jeremys and”——“Ruperts?”“Not so much the full Rupert.”Armitage laughed and then suddenly stopped. “Look, my name’s Armitage, which I admit was a bold choice on my father’s part, so if you want to start anywhere.”“Ah, no, I’m just kidding with you guys,” Han said. “And at least you’re not like a Chad.”“I am not like a Chad.”“We’re all Marys at work anyway.”Han nearly choked.“Get a grip on yourself, Solo,” muttered Leia.Ben rolled his eyes. “Not like that, fucking hell, dad. Marys as in quants. It’s rhyming slang.”“Huh?”“Oh, never mind. I don’t spend nearly enough time in the gym to be the other sort of Mary, anyway.” *** “Do you get a family visa after you and Armitage get married?”“Well, now there’s the question. See, I could do, but I don’t have to.”“What’s the pros and cons,” Leia asked. “Okay if I convert the work visa to a family visa, I could leave my job and go and work somewhere else, if I wanted to. Which I don’t necessarily at the moment, but it’s good to know the option’s there if something comes up.”“Okay.”“But! I’ve been here for three years already. Which counts towards my five years before I can apply to settle — the indefinite leave to remain.”“Uh-huh.”“And if I change the visa type, that turns the clock on that back to zero. So I’d have to stay five years starting from that date before I could apply to settle.”“Right.”“Which is annoying enough,” Armitage said, “and now there’s fucking Brexit.”“Which throws everything up in the air, especially for us in our jobs.”“That’s because of the single market, right?”“Exactly,” Armitage said. “If the UK stays in the single market, then we can keep financial passporting, which is basically the reason our jobs are here. But if they don’t, then that’s it.”“And we still don’t know how it’s gonna go because the government here are so fucking useless.”“Yep, completely useless. They do nothing because they’re too useless to do it, and they’re scared of the Hard Brexiters — I mean why, they’re just a bunch of fuckwits — so they keep not committing to anything and the clock is ticking.”“Which means,” Ben said, “our jobs are probably going to move to Paris. Or maybe Frankfurt. But probably Paris.”“Paris is nice,” Han said.“I’m sure it’s fucking lovely,” Ben said. ”But, shit, I’ve been through the whole immigration shit once to get here, and now we’re going through making sure I have the right papers if I want to stay here longer than two years, yes even if we’re married, everything’s got to be stamped and paid for, only to find that we’ve got to do the whole thing all over again, for both of us, fucking both of us because Armie’s gonna be a non-EU citizen too, to go and live in France. Plus learn bloody French.”“I’m sorry, boys,” Leia said. “Again, if there’s anything I can do, with getting you the right lawyers.”“I know, mom. It’s just a fucking hassle any which way up.”“Have your work given you any indication of how they think it’s gonna go?”“They’re kind of hedging it by moving staff to Paris now, both in preparation of having to move most of us, or just to spread things around. They don’t know what the government are going to ask for in the negotiations any more than we do.”“Because it keeps changing and it keeps being nothing,” Armitage said. “They kept farting about pretending they were going to get a magic deal just for financial services until the EU had to tell them that 100% wasn’t happening because you can’t have sectoral deals. But they’re still pretending it’s not a disaster. And they say one week they’re open to staying in the single market or ‘full access to the single market’ which is meaningless anyway, because they think that’ll stop businesses panicking, and then the next week they’re all about how we’ve got to leave the single market because ‘that’s what people voted for’ even though before the referendum most of the leavers were wanking on about how we were going to be ‘just like Norway’ and be in the single market without being in the EU and everything was going to be milk and honey somehow, but heigh ho, eight percent reduction in growth is fine, it’s all fine.”“Geez, kid, take a breath,” muttered Han.“I mean, Christ!” he said through gritted teeth.“Oh god, it’s got to the point where he’s saying ‘christ’ through gritted teeth,” Ben said.“Says the man who keeps a pillow under his desk at work for screaming-into purposes.”“Oh, you still have the pillow?” said Leia.“It isn’t the same one, I don’t think,” Ben said. *** “There is a potential way around some of the Brexit stuff,” Armitage said to Leia, later. “But it’s yet more form filling and applications.”“If it’s worth it…”“See, the thing is, there’s my birth mother. I told you my family’s complicated.”“You want complicated families, you came to the right place,” she said.“Okay, well, I grew up thinking of my mum as my mum. I mean, Maratelle. I knew there was someone else, but I just grew up with a mum and a dad until I found out that she wasn’t my actual, I mean my birth mum.”“I understand.”“And she, my birth mum, Susan, was born in Ireland. Which means I would be entitled to an Irish passport.”“I’m starting to see where you’re going with this.”“I do have contact with her now, we’ve met, she’s really nice and I see where I get some things from that always made me somewhat different as a kid. But anyway. Part of me feels that it would be wrong somehow to use this connection, when I haven’t had contact with her for most of my life, like she’s only relevant when it gains me something. But the other part of me says hell no, go for it, take it, take it.”“Have you spoken to her about it?”“She brought it up to me before I brought it up to her.”“So she sounds fine with it. What about your dad and Maratelle?”“I don’t know. I mean, they couldn’t stop me. If I have my original birth certificate, and Susan has hers, then I could do it.”“And it would make things easier for you and Ben.”“It’d mean that I’d be able to move to France or Germany without any hassle at all. And he’d be able to come along as my non-EU citizen spouse, which would still mean he would need a visa, but it’s half the hassle.”“So do it.”“Yeah. It’s not like me to be dithering. I’ve always prided myself on being decisive.”“Sometimes family stuff isn’t straightforward. I know how that can be.”“Yeah. Thank you.” *** At dinner, spirits were bright. Armitage had taken them all to a favourite Turkish restaurant, and they were digging into the first round of meze.Ben took a large scoop of bulgur salad onto his plate. “Listen, I know we’re ‘rich guys’ and all, but it’s still a pain in the ass. Other people have worse problems, but, like, these problems are my problems. This is my ass!”“We understand,” said Leia. “It’s your ass.”“I know you didn’t expect me to ‘go to the dark side’ and work for a Wall Street bank, and I know you didn’t expect me to shack up with another financial services parasite”— —“Do you mind?” Armitage said.“But here we are, you know.”“Here you are. And it’s okay. Things don’t turn out the way we think they’re going to.”“We like you,” Han said. “And we like him. He’s only slightly peculiar.”“Hey!” said Armitage, seizing the taramasalata and the pita breads."That only makes him part of the family," Leia said."I'll live with that."And they did.