Fresh Meat

[lumy12]

Title: Fresh Meat
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Elan Sel'Sabagno, a couple OCs, and an "unknown" Jedi that we all know
Prompt: swficchallenge's Challenge #27 90s One-Hit Wonders
Word Count: 459
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: The challenge was to use one of the song titles in your fic, with a request to bold the title. I wanted to see how many I could squeeze into my ficlet without it being too ridiculous - I managed to get 13 in. (If you'd rather read the story and try to spot the titles yourself, read the un-bolded version in the community here)



He didn't blame her for being upset. The girl had never set foot in a Coruscanti lower level club before last month, and even then it was only for a bachelorette party. How could he expect her to understand? Yet he so desperately wanted her to try. Leela was so beautiful to him; she had such extraordinary zest for life. Having seen mostly the opposite in his world, Elan was intrigued and more than a little smitten with her. He'd grown addicted to her in the past few weeks.

"I never want to see you again," she told him icily.

The Balosar nodded and hung his head, looking up at her pleadingly, apologetically, and - he hoped - charmingly. "I know I'm not nearly good enough for a girl like you. But please, just one more try. Can't we just..." He let the sentence die as she quickly disappeared into the crowd.

Sighing, Elan turned back to his drink, his antennae drooping dispiritedly. He noticed a scruffy human male smirking to himself a couple barstools over. "What's so fuckin' funny?" he hissed.

"You. Makin' a lovefool of yourself over that bitch." The man shook his head. "Have some pride, kid."

The Balosar scowled. "'Least I'm not sittin' here drinkin' alone 'til closing time. I seen ya here before. Don'tcha got a life, man?"

"I got a girl at home, not that it's any of your business," he sneered. "I'm working. Just like you. I wanna be rich. And where's the money at? Sex and candy, baby, sex and candy."

Elan wanted more than money now, though he wasn't about to discuss his desires with this cocky stranger. To the naked eye, he had everything he needed -- quite a bit more than most of his species. But love did not flow through the river of deceit that was his life, and he simply couldn't fathom how to add it when the girl he wanted was so painfully different from himself. Perhaps after medical school. He'd be a different person then. He could be more like her.

In the meantime, he still had to make a living. He was a slythmonger. A damn good one, too. And he had just spotted fresh meat.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"You wanna buy some death sticks?"

"You don't want to sell me death sticks," the fresh meat replied.

"I don't want to sell you death sticks," Elan repeated automatically.

"You want to go home and rethink your life."

"I want to go home... and rethink my life." The young Balosar turned and promptly walked out of the club, unaware that the simple Jedi mind trick would save his life.

Comments

[emavalexis.livejournal.com]

Ahh! I loved this! I can't believe that nobody commented on this one -- perhaps it's the 'OC' designation? A pity.

Anyway, you took a character we see for all of five seconds in AotC and build a plausible interaction between him and another lower-level denizen, and asking some universal questions about his purpose in life. Very well done.

(And yeah, the twist with our dear Obi-Wan at the end? Awesome.)

[luminations.livejournal.com]

Thanks! This was a fun cracky response to the 90s song challenge. It did get a few comments in the community I posted it for, I believe... so in those cases my journal entries don't get as many comments (especially if the community entry was the one linked in jedi_news). And not everyone is as awesome about commenting as you are! Kinda makes me want to go write more stuff, actually. Hehe