Banality
There's a regular at the cantina, and the barkeep knows his secret...and what he can get for it. Written for Fandom Empire Bingo 2025 - Prompt: Death and Sweet and Short September 2025 - Prompt: Glass and /r/FanFiction's Trope Bingo 2025 - Prompt: Drunk Confession and @fandom-free-bingo Virtues and Vices - Prompt: Being Outed and @horrortember 2025 - Prompt: "When I want to stop, I can." | addiction | bargaining | responsibility
The barkeep eyed his latest regular as the man entered the cantina. Without a word, he poured a glass and slid it across to his guest, who gave him a grateful nod of the head and an appropriate amount of credits.
It was a light crowd at the moment, still early in the afternoon. People would filter in later, after the Empire Day festivities died down and the bar crawls began.
It was no real surprise that his guest wasn’t joining the celebrations. It’d been questionable whether he’d even turn up at the cantina at all today, perhaps preferring to hide away from it all, but the barkeep supposed that the lure of the drink could tempt even a Jedi to crawl out into the world for another sip.
Not that his guest had admitted that he was a Jedi; no amount of alcohol had loosed those words from his lips. But there’d been little things: turns of phrase, references to the now-over war, other oddities. Hundreds of little confessions drug up from the depths of a bottle or two, that all added up to a very nice payout for the barkeep if he had put them together right.
The Jedi was quiet today. But that was fine, the barkeep didn’t need to hear any more from him. He’d already struck his bargain.
CONTINUED ON AO3 (496 words)