Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Here, in the dark, the only offered light came from the hushed illumination of the slowly rotating holo set at the centre of the table. One voice rose, clear and crisp as it detailed the data it laid out before the audience. Hux’s own remained silent, caught in his throat beneath the flush creeping up beneath his collar. But, no – there was a second voice: one in the back of his mind, shouting. Demanding to be let out. To drown out. To destroy.

Hux held his silence. Before him – before them all, his own still stiff body but one amongst many – Chadri went on, voice light and lively, hands gesticulating with easy grace. He moved them too much, in Hux’s opinion. Not that he would offer it. Not that he would be listened to, even if he did. This particular junior staffer had no time for Brendol Hux Jr.

Except when stealing his ideas, apparently, and passing them off wholesale as his own.

The lights came on with sudden sharp glare, flickering up to full power. Chadri had fallen silent, though he almost vibrated with self-satisfied energy. For all his clear enthusiasm he remained an unremarkable looking young man; neither handsome nor ugly, his hair very dark and his eyes very blue. Hux was willing to admit that he at least dressed well, his lanky frame well-suited to the simple tailoring favoured by the Uyter fashion elite. There was a reason why Hux himself dressed much the same way, his own clothing high-collared and well-fitted, the long open-sleeved coat hung over the back of his chair.

Senator Gillen had risen from her chair, her movement the cool fluid grace of a mountain stream. “Very interesting, Chadri. I should like to discuss these ideas with you further, though I have an appointment to keep with Senator Depallo.” Her smile, a lovely and quiet thing, felt a benediction as she passed her eyes over the room. “Please, if there is anything else anyone else would care to add to Chadri’s presentation, I would very much appreciate your input. Feel free to bring your ideas to the morning briefing, tomorrow.”

Usually Hux drew an odd sort of peace from her presence. Today he sat very still, and very silent as the chamber erupted into motion and sound. The light chatter washed over him as a river while the others stood, gathering holopads and styluses, random pieces of flimsi disappearing into folders and bags. His own datapad sat before him, his eyes fixed upon the faint reflection he could see behind the lines of code marching across its pristine surface. The blink at the corner of his screen indicated an urgent message received. Still he did not move.

“Is there something wrong, Hux?”

He blinked, rapid and startled; inbred instinct should have had him on his feet, one hand reaching for the small knife sheathed in his boot. But he had repressed it enough times that now he simply looked up, expression bland, and hands only lightly curled instead of fisted to makeshift weapon.

Nahani Gillen stood beside his chair, head lightly tilted, pale hair like starlight upon darkly-clad shoulders. Her usually impassive features held a hint of concern, that gently maternal air that had helped her people elect her to the Senate.

His own smile, carefully chosen and displayed, was one he’d been told was charming. Though most would then whisper behind his back that it held a certain serpentine quality. Even in the deeply political maelstrom of Coruscanti life, the name Hux had earned a taint not easily erased by skill or easy social graces.

“Hux?” she repeated, and he blinked again, just once.

“Apologies, Senator. I was deep in thought.”

“Yes, I could see as much. Chadri’s presentation has brought up many an interesting point indeed.” The steel-grey of her eyes reminded him that this was a woman who missed little, even when she spoke with a conversational lightness most would have expected at a summer picnic. “I am not surprised to find they are relevant to your own work,” she added, and the tightening edges of his practised smile began to hurt.

“I am sure I will be able to refine my thoughts and offer them to you later, when you have concluded your meeting with Senator Depallo.”

“Oh, I won’t be back this evening. We are to have dinner, together, and then I shall return to my apartments.” One lovely hand rose, smoothed over the elegant lines of her robe. “But we should speak, you and I. Come morning.”

His eyes flicked down again, to the notification still blinking at the top of his holopad. He had few matters of import scheduled for the following day, though little would ever take priority over the only Senator who had even entertained the idea of hiring him. “Yes, at the briefing. I will endeavour to have something of use to you before then.”

“We could meet beforehand, perhaps.”

A faint hope curled low in his abdomen, though he paid it little heed. He’d known enough of how easily such a fragile thing could be crushed, to not allow himself to place stock in it. Only his own self could be permitted such faith.

“I will look forward to it,” he said, and now his smile had evolved to something lighter, more genuine. Crossing the room, he pressed the panel, allowing it to hiss open before he stepped back once again. “I should go and make sure I will have information fit enough to discuss with you.”

Her smile remained where she did not, crossing the threshold and leaving him alone. “Good afternoon, then, Hux.”

He bowed his head, did not look up until the door had again slipped closed. “Senator.”

For all the lights had returned to full illumination, the room felt startlingly dull without her presence. With lips pressed tight together, Hux returned to the table, his face pale and drawn in the high polished shine. He ignored it, instead gathering together his things, slipping them neatly into the satchel. Drawing himself tall, schooling his features to bland disinterest as he shouldered it, he at last moved to the door.

Upon its other side, a figure leaned against the wall; as Hux passed, it drew itself to life, then to full movement. “Trying to undermine me already then, Little Hux?”

With eyes fixed clearly ahead, Hux paused for no man. “I did not stay to speak with the Senator.” Even as he smirked inside, his voice remained flat, utterly without inflection. “She paused to speak with me.”

And he kept moving down the corridors. There were few things in life he would truly thank his father for, but that Hux Sr. insisted he keep up his physical education was one. Chadri was not a short man, nor an unfit one, but Hux’s peripheral vision said the man had to make an effort to keep up with Hux’s mindless military stride.

“The work is mine,” he said, the faint shortness of his breath quirking at one corner of Hux’s mouth; he increased his pace just an imperceptible beat.

“So you have said.”

“You can protest it all you like.” Chadri always had talked too much; even now, he could not keep his mouth shut, cheeks taking a high flush, eyes bright where they attempted to glare right through him. “I have all the research on my holopad. The entire history; searches, called records, correspondence.”

“Yes, well.” Hux’s fingers tightened over the strap of his satchel; a millisecond of pressure, then released. “If one cannot be proud of the work they have collated, then at least it seems sensible to be sure one might be proud of the thoroughness with which one has plagiarised it.”

And Chadri scoffed, even though his breath was edging terribly close to laboured. “You can’t prove anything.”

“Perhaps not.”

One foot came down harder than the last, as close to a stomp as a grown man could manage while still walking. “So don’t go running to Mummy,” he said, hissed and harsh. “Unless you want to sound like a whining little pissant. Oh wait – you do already. I’m not sure the difference would be noted. Carry on, Little Hux.”

He drew up so quick Chadri nearly tripped over his own surprise. Hux himself stood very still, and very silent. Before him, Chadri drew up his full height, enfolded a modicum of dignity about himself, and raised a narrow eyebrow. “Ooh, I finally got through, did I?” With arms folded across his chest, his eyes burned again too bright by half. “And here I thought you were nothing but a little droid, produced in perfect chrome shine from daddy’s little factory.”

Hux only raised an eyebrow of his own. No words were necessary. Chadri had made this almost too easy.

“It’s the only reason she ever wanted you,” he added, spite dripping from each syllable, a watered down venom that had Hux releasing an exaggerated sigh.

“The academy on Uyter was for Stormtroopers, Dio. The academy I attended based on the one at Arkanis was for officers. There’s a distinct difference between the two.”

“Yes, and you ought to learn it.” He came too close, the sweet scent of his favoured cologne utterly at odds with the sharp bitterness of his words. “You were trained as an officer of the First Order. But this is the New Republic.” And his lips twisted, eyes very dark. “You might as well have been a ‘trooper, Little Hux – because with your name, you’ll never be anything but another drone.” Only now did he lean back, chin tilted high, his smirk wide and almost lovely. “Fortunately for you, there are those of us who can take your work and make it useful.” With that he turned, step light as he set off down the corridor. “You can always thank me, later.”

He supposed he probably would. Hux had never actually killed another person, not directly. But murdering Chadri Dio with his own hands would be an intensely pleasurable experience. Messy, perhaps, and he did hate mess. But there were ways to minimise that. Although with the fury flowing in his veins, pure plasma fire beneath the ice of his skin and expression, he wanted the spurt of hot blood. He wanted his hands around Chadri’s throat – and then in his viscera, rooting through the man’s guts while the idiot screamed through crushed vocal chords.

Yes, it would be messy: but rather satisfying, besides. He could live with that. Even if Chadri Dio certainly wouldn’t.

Thankfully his shared office was not with Chadri, just two other junior staffers of the Senator. Both women, and both younger: another human from Uyter, and a Twi’lek who would have terrified him, had he been as stupid as the other men who kept propositioning her. He could admit she was aesthetically lovely, but there would be little real advancement for him in sleeping with her, at least at her current level. Certainly she would have been worthwhile if he sought out sex purely for pleasure, but he simply had enough to do without adding such entanglements to his schedule.

As he slipped behind his desk, he did regret one thing; it would be more difficult to work out exactly where Chadri had accessed his datacloud, given they did not work in close proximity. And despite his flaws, the man was no fool. In fact, Chadri was gifted with technology – but Hux had talents of his own.

And yet, for all he had plenty of work to do – both in tracing the exact manner in which Chadri had so neatly sabotaged his voluntary sideproject for the Senator, and the actual work he had been assigned to – he could not settle to it. The air felt peculiar, thick and strange, the faint electric hum of approaching storm.

 Hux had never had much enthusiasm for the capitol buildings. They’d been the Jedi temple once, but even that could not explain his visceral uneasiness. His usual careful discipline allowed him to work around such whimsical fancy, but with a sigh, he pushed back from the desk. While his own apartments – those given to his father – were cramped and inconvenient, they were at least nothing like these sweeping halls. And, at this hour, his father would not be home. It would at least be quiet there.

The other two staffers scarcely glanced up as he began to tidy away his desk; when he moved to the door he offered only a brief nod to indicate he would be leaving. The faint taste of thunder on the air seemed to grow only thicker as he stepped into the hall, his overcoat draped over his arms, held before him like a shield. Hux was not one to stand down on formality, but the Coruscanti summer heat proved stifling even in these airy corridors. Even then Hux would not contemplate removing his upper tunic, nor undoing the topmost buttons of the shirt beneath. There were limits to the slaveries of comfort. Hux had learned long ago to live with inconvenience.

He moved through the corridors with his head held high. Even now he would still garner the odd look. One could pass it off as his height, his military bearing – and his hair. But even without all those, he was still Hux the Younger. For that, at least, everyone knew his name.

Moving out onto the street granted him blessed anonymity. The rich scent of food stalls assaulted his nostrils, but it was the more acrid scent of burning fuel from the passing traffic that made him screw up his nose. He could search out a transport, but despite the heat and the stench, he often found it easier to walk. His home was nearby. They had not dared place Commandant Hux far from the government he had betrayed the First Order for.

Deep in contemplation, the commotion to his left registered only as dull background noise. Only at the whine overhead did he stop, though the sharp bang that followed shuddered down his spine in a burst of bitter adrenaline. Looking up, he heard screams that grew only louder, rattling in his ears. They were not his own. Not that it mattered. Logic told him instead that very shortly he would not be able to scream at all.

And then self-preservation kicked in, quickened by military training; Hux went down, hands over his head, as he threw his body into a tight roll. But he had little enough momentum, and it was too large. He would never get out of its shadow; it grew, cold and dark, above his head. Wedged now in the gutter, Hux pressed his eyes closed tighter still, knees under his chin.

What is taking it so long?

“Hey.” The voice, faintly strained, sliced through him with sharp irritation. “Hey, ginger. Can you move? I can’t hold this forever.”

Panic should have kept his muscles frozen, joints locked. But then Hux had been taught the limitations of panic a long time ago, and found himself looking up with an ease that almost hurt. Across from him, on the other side of the deathly silent street, stood a lanky young man. Younger than he was, certainly; probably in the last hoorah of adolescence. But that was not the odd thing about him – no, the odd thing was the way the kid stood there like an idiot, hands outstretched and palms opened wide.

“No, really.” The kid grimaced, one knee buckling, listing him alarmingly to the left. “You’ve got a lovely backside and all, it’s nice to look at, but can you move it? Like, over here?”

Hux rarely stumbled. He supposed he could allow it just this once as he lurched upon from the street, out of the dark shadow, and into the brighter light about the young man. There, on the ground, he winced around the taste of bile even as he swallowed back rising nausea. He could feel the eyes of a dozen people upon him, their bodies frozen in indistinct indecision. Instinct told them to move forward, to drag him to safer haven.

But then, he felt the shift of their attention to the boy beside him, and they did not move closer. When he followed their line of sight, their hesitation crystallised into perfect sense. His own mouth turned dry, skin rippling in sudden chill gooseflesh.

 A transport shuttle had fallen from the sky. Even now terrified faces peered out in clear panic from behind cracked transparisteel, white and drawn and despairing of death. And yet, they were not dead. Instead they – and the malfunctioned transport, engines sparking red death – were held at a flat height of perhaps six feet from the ground.

The boy’s arms had now begun to move down. A deep crease etched itself into his pale brow, sweat standing out upon his skin even amongst the dark freckles and moles there. Gentle as the motion appeared, his tremor only increased. With two feet to go, he swore; a second later, the entire thing crashed to the ground, to stifled screams and shouts. Even as the crowd made a little rush forward the boy went onto one knee, hand to his head.

“Fuck.”

Only Hux went to him, his own feet feeling very far away for all they remained steady enough to hold him aloft. “Are you all right?”

Blinking up from behind damp hair, the boy seemed caught between disbelief and outright amusement. “Shouldn’t that be my line?”

“I’m not the one who just…what was that?” And for all the uproar behind them – tears, panic, someone shouting for some sort of extinguisher – Hux could only stare at the boy. Dark hair, pale skin, too-large eyes; the clothing was fine enough, though not at the level of the flashy couture currently parading the capital’s streets. “You…”

“I’m not a Jedi,” he said, too fast, and too sharp by half. “But yes. That was the Force.”

Beneath the defensiveness, Hux could taste the familiar tang of fierce pride. Only then did he turn, the burst of an extinguisher sharp against his ears. People were still being helped from the vehicle, supported by the willing arms of people who could no longer be only observers. And yet, few eyes fell upon them – and those that did look to them did not do so with thankfulness, nor hostility: but instead, a strange kind of reverent fear.

Hux looked away. “Who are you?”

“No, no.” By now sitting on his arse on the pavement, the kid frowned up at him, hair pushed back from his face. “Who are you?”

Though hit with the odd compulsion to put himself down beside him, Hux frowned at the pavement, and remained standing. The world had admittedly taken on an odd spin, but he pushed it aside as he spoke again. “You saved my life.”

“Yes, well.” Hands rose, then fell. “I had to.”

Hux had nothing to say to that, and the kid let out an explosive sigh.

“I saw you. Before it happened. Walking away from me.” And before Hux could even begin to process such flawed information, he added, “I meant it, you know. You really do have a lovely backside.”

And Hux scowled down at him, even as he began to brush at the street filth that had accumulated on his once-pristine trousers. “How could you even see it?” he asked, and then, more importantly, “Where’s my coat?”

“I want to know your name.”

And Hux’s head snapped around, meeting those dark eyes. Here, now, they seemed to fill the sky: the clouding over of atmosphere with the vacuum of space.

A night without stars; a galaxy without light.

Cursing, backing away, Hux again tasted bile. The boy’s eyes widened, suddenly just dark and wide and utterly normal. And his own head ached.

“Hey – hey. Are you all right?” A hand closed over his shoulder; Hux stiffened, but even as he shook it off, the kid only held tighter. Something like joy, something like suspicion coloured his words in shades Hux hadn’t even known existed. “But no, really – how did you do that?”

And when he turned, the world really did lurch sideways. “Did I hit my head?” Squinting, now, Hux scowled as the face of his rescuer, fracturing, twisting in kaleidoscope motion. “My head hurts.”

“No. You didn’t hit it. But you…” And his hand wrapped around his, the strangest parody of a handshake. “I’m Ben. Ben Solo.” He came too close, his scent somewhere between sweet spice and mineral oil. “But you can call me Kylo.” His eyes were searching, too large and too dark by half. “I want you to call me Kylo.”

Hux’s stomach lurched again, headache spiking with dizzying silver shard. “I think you’re crazy.”

And the boy actually laughed, mouth almost as wide as his strange dark eyes. “Well, you wouldn’t be the first.”

Hux was going to say something about how wonderfully comforting that comment was when he passed out.

*****

“No good will come of it, Brendol.”

Hux kept his eyes upon the plate, fingers tight about his fork as he carefully segmented the hash into bite-sized portions. “It would be only polite.”

With a faint snort, his father flicked to a new screen on his holopad, not even looking up to retrieve his cup of black caf. “He is the son of Senator Organa.”

“I realise that.”

Setting the cup down again, his weathered face scowled over whatever it was he read; it seemed the holopad had committed some sort of personal affront against him. “Your position in Senator Gillen’s staff is tenuous enough,” he said, and something of his original accent roughened the edges of his words. “If you start interfering with the Organa faction, you will be out on your ass before the meridian.”

Hux closed his eyes. Then, he opened them. “He saved the life of your son. Your only son,” he remarked, casual as the accident that had almost taken his life. He knew it for a mistake even before he added with easy guile, “Perhaps you’d like to come say thank you, yourself?”

One hand slammed down on the table, open-palmed and harsh; the condiment shakers rattled unhappily in their cradles. “Don’t take that attitude with me.” And when Hux glanced up he met cold eyes, the exact shade of his own, lips curled back beneath the greying whiskers. “You are making a mistake – one you seem determined to commit even when I advise you otherwise. I am merely assuring you that I will be able to do nothing for you when you find yourself outside the capitol.”

His cheeks twitched, nails pressed hard into the silverware. “You couldn’t do anything for me before,” he said, perfectly pleasant. “Everything I have now, I did for myself.”

“For what good it’s done you.” Reaching for the pot, he poured himself a fresh cup, gnarled hand rock-steady about the grip. “I’ve said my piece, Brendol. Run along and make your own mistakes, and then clear up after them yourself. I have work of my own to attend to.”

The clack of the pot back on the table signalled the end of the conversation. Shaking with fury, Hux looked down to the neatly laid tableau of his meal. His appetite, never particularly voracious, had quite evaporated. But as the son of a commandant, a child of a mass exodus and exile, he was quite aware it would not be worth the argument not to finish his breakfast.

A clear morning awaited him outside, though he kept his coat hung over his shoulders. The heat had not begun yet, but the met reports had promised a stifling day to come. Hux frowned up at the smog gathered overhead and could not argue the point. And then he dismissed the world entirely and began a brisk walk, assured in his directions despite the fact he had never been to this particular destination.

Two days had passed since the accident. Much as he’d argued the point and the leave, he had been excused from his work until the following day. Senator Gillen had herself refused to allow him back. Upon hearing his protests she had even come to the apartments, lovely in her robes of state. She’d paused but a moment, fleeting and precious on her way to the capitol complex. Even as he’d smiled to see her, he hadn’t wanted her here; the assigned accommodation was too small, and too plain by half for one such as her.

And her smile had been gentle, knowing. “Stay home and get better, Hux.” Her hand had been soft against his own, a gentle press of soft skin. “There will still be work enough for you when you return.”

His father had not been there. He could but be thankful for that. Brendol Sr. had been scornful enough when he had arrived at the med centre to collect him, though he’d come only after his own workday was complete. Not permitted to leave without escort, Hux had spent hours in an active waiting room, completing his own work while steadying ignoring the tide of injured and infirm that swirled around him. There had been no concussion, no visible injury. “Shock, perhaps,” a med tech had offered, already turning away; she’d only just missed the curl of scorn upon Hux’s dry lips.

For his part, he blamed those strange dark eyes – and the headache he’d had, after looking into them for but a moment. It hadn’t cleared until the next morning. Even now, it made him think twice about seeing the odd creature again.

The other issue that had stayed his hand was the simple fact he’d received no contact from his apparent saviour. Admittedly the boy probably hadn’t been given Hux’s name, though a search had brought up his own identity swiftly enough. Ben Solo, only son of Senator Leia Organa and her common-law husband, a Corellian “businessman” rarely seen about Coruscant.

Hux had suspected as much even before he’d confirmed it; everyone in the capitol was more than familiar with Leia Organa and her peculiar family. She currently served as a Senator for Corellia, given her own homeworld of Alderaan had not survived the war. Hux rather supposed the family did not need to know Hux had detailed models of both Death Stars. He’d brought from his own homeworld of Arkanis as a child of four, and had built them during his childhood upon the star destroyers after they’d been driven to the Unknown Regions by the collapse of the Imperial regime.

But then he’d never thought of Alderaan except in the most depersonalised of ways, even as he built the things. The Death Stars themselves had been of far more interest; even now he knew their engineering with a lover’s careful intimacy. He’d also rather enjoyed designing his own variations upon the theme from late childhood, had in fact been beginning the process of refining childish idea with actual hard knowledge when his father had defected.

The grand house stood at the end of a small cul de sac, somehow stately rather than dwarfed by the taller buildings behind. But then, it was a neighbourhood built to cater to such; he’d received more than one strange look for simply strolling down the impeccable pavement.

At the gate he stated both identity and purpose to the guard. The bemusement on his face proved but a temporary impediment; Hux was waved him through while the guard murmured something half-intelligible into his comm. Hux was not at all surprised to be greeted at the door by another guard. This one guided him through the grand foyer, dressed in marble and cool silk tapestries, and to a small receiving room set to its left.

He had not waited there long when a house-servant arrived, a small woman dressed in white. Hux stood; his palms, pressed together now, proved clammy and damp. He could not even be sure why as he fixed a smile upon his lips, nodded to the woman who would barely have stood as high as his ribcage.

“I was hoping to speak with Ben Solo.”

She nodded, pleasant but brisk. “May I have your name?”

“Hux. Brendol Hux.” He blurted out the next before he could even think the words. “We met on the street.”

The woman blinked, said nothing. Swallowing hard, Hux felt his smile congeal to something quite cold, even as it changed not in size nor shape.

“He’ll know who I am.” He even managed a dry chuckle, equilibrium returning as he added, “The man with the red hair?”

And the lovely backside. But that he kept that to himself as the woman nodded, murmured her leave and left him alone. Carefully smoothing out his trousers, though not even the walk had creased them, Hux took his seat again. It would be rude to take out his holopad and work while waiting. Instead he satisfied himself by taking in the large canvas displayed above the ornamental fireplace. A sweeping landscape, it showed a land both green and very lovely. Hardly Coruscant, and certainly not the dreary climes of Arkanis. Perhaps Corellia, though his suspicions told him that this was more likely the fabled pastoral paradise of lost Alderaan.

“Ben isn’t here.”

Hus startled, turned even as he rose, already falling into a well-practised stance. An older man slouched in the doorway, staring hard at him from beneath a mess of salt and pepper hair. Despite the simplicity of his clothing, stark against the measured opulence of the house itself, Hux knew he was not as out of place as his appearance suggested. But then, he was still known to him only by reputation.

And how our reputations do precede us all, he noted, the man’s cold glare quite all the information he required. “Ah,” he said, and surreptitiously wiped damp palms on his lower hips. “Mr. Solo.”

Stepping forward, Hux put one hand out. Solo ignored it utterly, eyes fixed upon him, narrowed and dark. “Kriff knows where the boy’s got to at this hour,” he said, too sudden, eyes narrow. “I’d like to say it was some fool Jedi nonsense, but who’s to even know what’s in his head these days?”

Hux only blinked. And the man rolled his eyes, even as he skimmed them over his body with the easy disdain of a merchant. He might have struggled to hold his composure, if not for the years spent beneath the yoke of the First Order.

And Solo snorted. “He saved your life, right?”

“I – yes.” Hux kept his head high. “Yes, he did.”

“And I guess you want to thank him for it?”

“I do.”

“Fine. I’ll tell him.” Pushing himself further upright, hand back through the riot of his hair, Solo nodded with curt efficiency in the direction from which Hux had come. “If you can’t see yourself out, there’s plenty of stiffs around here who will throw you out. You don’t even have to ask real nice. They’ll do it for free.”

A moment later the man was gone, leaving Hux standing. Silent. Staring.

But he had been raised in the academy. He had been raised among exiles. He knew what it was to scratch his pride up from the dirt. With what few belongings he had arrived with, Hux turned towards the exit, and walked away.

*****

“Hux.”

Glancing up from his screen, he found one of his officemates standing just beside him -- the Twi’lek girl. Rana. Blinking owlishly, wondering if perhaps he would be needing glasses after all, he said, “Yes?”

“You have a visitor.”

With a furrowed brow he glanced to his dim-screened holopad; it didn’t need to be on for him to know what its schedule would say. “I don’t recall making any appointments.”

With a snort she flicked her fingers over her lekku. “Well, I’m not your secretary,” she said, and inclined her head towards the door. “But there’s a kid in there asking for you.”

Hux frowned through it, as if he could sense the unexpected guest with nothing but the force of his own sheer irritation. “Are you sure he doesn’t want my father?”

“Who would?”

He should argue that. Instead he only snorted, pressed to his feet as he reached for his overcoat. “Fair point.” Settling the thick fabric about his shoulders, as always appreciating the way it bulked them out somewhat, he flicked his screen to privacy mode. “If anyone else calls for me, I can’t imagine I’ll be long.”

He could hear her muttering something about secretaries again as he slipped into the corridor. Finding it far easier to ignore rather than engage, he focused upon the meeting room they shared with numerous other staff in the same area. Slipping inside unannounced, he closed the door before turning. And then he stopped dead.

Reclined on one of the small chairs – not that Hux could see how, given they were straight-backed and functional – Ben Solo flipped his hand up, gave a light little wave of long fingers. “I thought you might want to see me,” he drawled, with a casual nonchalance that Hux could imagine him practicing in front of a mirror. “To say thank you, and all that.”

For a long moment, Hux said nothing. Only after he had crossed the room, taking a place on the chair furthest from his guest, did he deign to speak. “I did come to see you.”

The chill of the words only made him blink, just once. “Did you.”

“Your father didn’t approve.”

He rocked upwards in a flash, pale skin abruptly flushed and dark eyes turned nearly black. “Did he kick you out?”

The snarl of it might have been terrifying to one who did not have to face off against Brendol Hux Sr. every morning. With a snort Hux crossed one long leg over the other, caught the reflection from the windows in the high polish of his boots. “Nothing quite so dramatic as all that,” he said, the man’s narrowed gaze a faint ache in the back of his memories. “But he did make it clear I wasn’t to come visiting again.”

Ben had lurched to his feet, hands fisted; as Hux watched with faint interest, he began a strangely purposeful pace of the room, hair wild and eyes wilder still. “It’s not even his house!” he said, turning on his heel. “You can come around whenever you want.” His mouth twisted, the determined set of his features actually making him appear even younger than his soft features alone. “And you should.”

He could feel something like a headache coming on again. Perhaps his thought at the hospital hadn’t been entirely wrong; Ben Solo might have indeed hurt his head simply by existing within close vicinity. “We haven’t even been properly introduced.”

Rolling his eyes, he stepped forward, hand out. “I’m Kylo.”

He took it without even thinking; the grip was surprisingly strong, the palms and fingers rough and callused. And he frowned. “Your name is Ben Solo.”

“Yes.” With an odd gravitas he straightened; rather than making him look older, again it gave him the distinct air of a child playing at an adult’s game. “But you can call me Kylo.” Though he clearly could not resist the sly smile when he added, “And you’re Brendol Hux. The Younger.”

“Yes.” His own haughty expression, he knew, made even those most scornful of his name think twice about their muttered insults. “But you can call me Hux.”

The sudden laughter felt too loud in the small space; Hux winced, glanced to the door even as the boy stood, threw himself down in the chair at his side: it brought him too close by half. “You’re weird,” he announced, and Hux didn’t even look at him.

“I’m not sure you’re in any position to be saying that.”

For a moment it seemed as though he hovered on the edge of offense. Then he snorted, dragging one hand back through his wild hair. It had been until recently shorn short, by its odd rise and fall; it had grown back in odd patches, scraggly and strange. But then if Ben – Kylo – pulled at it like this all the time, perhaps that was only to be expected.

But for all his earlier effusiveness, Kylo appeared to have lapsed into an odd silence. It would be easiest just to stand, to leave the odd creature to himself, but Hux was painfully aware he had not even said thank you yet. “Everything I’ve read said you were away, at school,” he said, sudden. “Given what happened out there, I’m assuming it was Jedi school?”

Though Hux himself had but rarely indulged in a good sulk, he recognised the beginnings of one on the scrunched up face. “You could call it that.”

“So what are you doing here?”

“Why?” And there was something almost nasty in the way he added, light, “Because, just a reminder: if I wasn’t here, you’d be squashed on that footpath out there.”

Taking out his holopad, Hux flicked the screen to life, frowned down at his messages, piled up like a transport jam. “Duly noted,” he said, and then gave the boy nothing more.

Kylo lasted a full minute longer than Hux would have predicted. With a snort, one hand fell down, hit hard against the upholstery of the chair. “I got kicked out. Yes, kicked out, even when my uncle was the instructor.”

Hux raised one eyebrow even as he began to staccato-tap a reply to the most urgent of his messages. “If it makes you feel any better, I had some of the direst final scores in the academy where my father was commandant.”

The sharp bark of laughter actually sounded surprised. “You don’t strike me as the stupid type.”

“I should hope not.” His smile was thin, fading as he curled his phrasing around a particularly delicate concept; he always had preferred the spoken word over the written, though he’d been sure to master both. “However, my father believed his staff were stupid enough to doctor my marks for his approval.”

The strange thundercloud of his earlier mood seemed to have lifted, though Hux did not quite like the predatory curiosity upon Kylo’s features now. It raised the fine hairs on his skin, a different kind of storm brewing in the still air. “I’ve never met your father.”

“You are not being deprived of any particularly significant experience.”

“Maybe not.” There was no need to be surprised when Kylo leaned forward, elbows on knees, fixed attention a laserbeam arcing between them. “Can I meet him?”

Completing his comm message, Hux hit send, moved onto the next in the same familiar rhythm of pure efficiency. “Why?”

“Curiosity. Not that it really matters.” And he was leaning back, shifting the broad shoulders; even in the loose fit of his shirt, Hux had earlier noted the muscle there; he kept his eyes firmly upon his work as Kylo said, offhand and easy, “You should come for dinner at my house. Meet my mother.”

At last Hux looked up, brow furrowed as one side of his mouth quirked up. “I don’t believe your father would approve.”

“My father isn’t here.” The ugly look that crossed his face, oddly, gave him the age the mismatch of his features usually denied him. But it was fleeting, a shadow behind stars; a moment later, his face had returned to the obstinate set of a child. “Forget the should. You will.”

Another message completed, another task removed from the schedule. “I’m not a cadet to be ordered about, Solo.”

“Kylo.” Mutinous, now, he tilted his head upward with an imperious hauteur best suited to someone in far finer dress. “Dinner. My mother’s house. Tonight.”

“I don’t think—”

His hand smacked the chair again. Hard. “You think too much.”

Double-tapping a message destined only for deletion, Hux allowed himself a delicate snort. “You don’t know me.”

“Oh, believe me. I know enough.” Like a localised hurricane he blew across the room, the door opening before he’d even reached the control panel. Silhouetted there, he glared at Hux with clear demand. “Tonight,” he added, and then was gone; for all he’d thrown himself around the room, Kylo moved with a startling grace. But it bothered Hux more that the automatic door still stood open even though Kylo had been well clear for long enough that it should have closed.

Muting his holopad, Hux crossed the floor with a frown. Several presses of the control panel yielded no better result. He would have to call maintenance. He didn’t look forward to explaining the circumstances, found himself wondering if he could invoice Kylo’s mother’s estate for any repair that might be needed.

“Was that Organa’s kid?”

Long practice allowed Hux to feign no surprise at Chadri’s sudden appearance – and, fluid a concept as the truth could be, Hux noted no real gain in a lie told now. His fixed gaze was still a cold and unforgiving thing when he turned it upon the other staffer.

“Yes.”

Reclining back against the wall – he enjoyed the position, seemed to think it gave him an aura of mystery; to Hux, he looked merely to be badly propping up the building – Chadri stared in the direction Kylo had apparently taken. “He saved you, right? Some Jedi trick, right out there on the street?”

“Apparently.”

The smirk he wore was a smug and self-satisfied thing. “So, this is how you jump ship: leaving Gillen for Organa, using the kid as a starting point.” And he leaned forward from the waist, a serpentine gesture to match the way his smile faintly revealed his incisors. “But here’s a helpful tip, Little Hux – if you wanted an in, you should have saved his life, not the other way around.”

Turning, his gaze sliding off the other man like oil over water, Hux returned to the chair when he’d been seated. “I don’t believe that’s how the Force works.”

“It doesn’t work at all.”

How easily they forgot – even here, in the New Republic. It seemed so easy for them to dismiss that which had saved them. The First Order, instead, had never forgotten that which had brought the Empire down around their ears.

“Ordinarily, I would agree – even with you, Dio.” With his datapad now firmly in hand, Hux favoured him a thin smile, razor-sharp and glittering. “But if not for said Force, I would be dead. I’m willing to give destiny some benefit of the doubt, for that alone.” Even as Chadri’s fool mouth opened again, Hux moved past in sleek grace, never once looking back. “Good day.”

And yet Hux had not really believed he would do it, until he stood outside the house for a second time. But this time he was recognised, welcomed in, drawn past the receiving room to another chamber. Though smaller; it held a warm and cosy air; the bar in the corner appeared fully stocked, and Hux felt his hands twitch. As the only one there, he could hardly serve himself, but his throat seemed to have never felt so dry.

When the door swished open, he turned, found nothing in his immediate eyeline. Instead something small and dark barrelled first into the room, and then into his legs. One hand shot out, steadied himself upon the bar as he looked down. With pudgy arms now firmly locked about his knees, a small girl stared up at him, her pale eyes wide and worshipful.

“Can I keep you?”

Hux opened his mouth. Closed it. Then she smiled, and he could barely begin to try again. “I—”

“Rey.” They both turned; Kylo lurked before the closed door, frown dire. Hux had not even heard it open again. “Let him go.”

Her pout would have put even his best to shame. “No,” she said, and pressed her cheek to his knee. “He’s so pretty! And his hair is amazing.” Closing her eyes in childish bliss, she snuggled alarmingly close, said to no-one in particular, “I want to keep him.”

With his hands firmly at his sides, Hux raised an eyebrow at Kylo. With a faintly harassed air he passed a hand back through his hair, shrugged with a helpless exasperation. “Sorry.”

“Well, is she removable? Or are we now bonded for life?”

With a laugh, Rey let him go. The devilish glint in her eyes was no comfort when she said with cheerful glee, “Yeah, we kind of are! Kylo rescued you. So you belong to us, now.”

The faint frisson in the air shivered through him like the approach of lightning strike. But Kylo only rolled his dark eyes, then turned them to the bar with a longing quite at odds with his training. “She takes everything so literally,” he muttered, and Hux folded his hands over his chest, looked down at the small golden shadow still lingering at his side.

“Who is she?”

“She’s my cousin.”

The girl glanced up at the spoken moniker, face open and delighted. “I’m Rey!”

He wanted to sigh. Instead, he gave a graceful nod usually reserved for encounters with Senators and other high-ranking officials. “Hullo, Rey.”

In answer she only beamed. Taken aback, Hux found he had nothing more to say to her, to this beautiful brilliant thing. A shining jewel in desert sands. It reminded him of the day his own father had taken him from the Order.

Then, from the pitted transparisteel of the decrepit ship’s viewports, Hux had watched the brilliance of the destroyer fading into the black. A remnant of the Imperial era, it had been his home for ten years. He had made it his business to know every inch of her. Even now he felt that ancient yearning for the new Resurgent-class destroyers. Then they had been but a design, though no doubt they had since become a reality. If he saw one now, it would only be a holo – if, indeed, the Republic would even admit they existed at all. Such opposing military might would be hardly likely to make the standard public broadcasts. Fearmongering was not how the New Republic liked to play their propaganda.

And small arms locked about him again: mercifully brief, this time, but still yanking his thoughts back to the present. “I like you,” Rey announced, as if anyone could have doubted it. “I’m gonna go find Aunt Leia and tell her I’ve got a new friend!”

She’d barely scampered out the door when Hux gave Kylo an arch look. “Does your mother even know I’m here?”

The swift sideways flick of his dark eyes gave him answer enough. “I told her you were coming.”

“Just now, or earlier?”

Long fingers skittered across the bar without tune nor rhythm. “You don’t trust me very much, do you?”

“Well,” Hux replied, with perfect sensibility, “I scarcely know you.”

Regret flowed through him almost immediately, given the predatory glee that had crossed Kylo’s face. “Which is why you’re here.”

With a low sigh, Hux crossed the room, neatly perched himself upon one of the chairs; though more comfortable than the ornate design in the receiving room, he had no intention of relaxing into its soft curves. “She’s your cousin, you said?” he said, and didn’t hide his doubt. “I don’t recall seeing her name.”

“What, when you looked me up?” Kylo sounded altogether far too amused when he came down, seated himself on the arm of Hux’s own chair. “Have you been researching me?”

The urge to shove at him until he lay sprawled on the floor was as strong as it was childish. Hux kept his hands to himself. “I told you, I came before to say thank you.” Raising an eyebrow, he added, “You told me your name, out on the street. I had to work out who you were in order to get here.”

“Yeah. You told me.” Shifting his weight, Kylo’s eyes took flight, frowned over at one of the picture on the opposite wall: another pastoral scene, this one before water. “She won’t appear in the family records, even though she genuinely is my uncle’s daughter.”

He’d always been a sucker for information. “How does that work?”

“She’s my parents’ ward, and they let her call them aunt and uncle because of that, but they really are. It’s just not talked about.” His hands rose, fell; there, the fingers pressed deep into the thick muscle of his thighs, outlined by the slim lines of his trousers. “The Jedi were traditionally celibate,” he added, sudden, and Hux gave a low snort.

“How very boring that must be.”

“It is.” Those damned dark eyes stared right into him, probing, searching. “I’m assuming you wouldn’t ever be a Jedi.”

“Well, I can assure you my lack of Force sensitivity alone wouldn’t permit it.”

And it had indeed been a mistake to think he could meet those dark eyes. The lopsided smile ended it; Hux glanced away, feeling rather than seeing it fade.

“I’m supposed to take her back, with me.”

“To finish your training?”

Kylo rose, a sudden bundle of sharp energy. “I’m not going.” His eyes fixed upon the lake, oddly pale by reflection. “She’s a Jedi. I can see it in her.”

“So can I.”

He hadn’t quite intended to say that. He hadn’t even quite intended to think it. And he was left with only regret when he noticed the incline of Kylo’s head towards him, eyes bright with a smile he didn’t bother translating to his lips.

“And you say you’re not Force sensitive.”

Hux smiled, false and fresh. “I wasn’t aware I needed to be.” Already he wondered if it would be rude to ask for a drink from someone he knew to be below the legal age in Coruscant, the old headache returning. And yet the smile twitched into a genuine curve when he thought of Rey herself, added, “Anyone can see she’s special.”

An odd, pinched look surfaced, concentrated about his strange eyes. Despite his height, the not inconsiderable bulk of his body, with his head dipped low and shoulders hunched forward, Kylo appeared to be withdrawing in on himself.

“You don’t know much about the Force, do you?” he asked, abrupt, almost rude. And then, stranger still: “You should come see the school.”

Hux really could have done with that drink. “I would assume it’s hardly a tourist destination.”

“You’d be with me.” Kylo’s smile was a burning plasma edge. “And I saved your life. I’m responsible for you now.” The chuckle then was a cawing sound, a dim memory of dark birds who had haunted the old academy buildings. And Kylo’s eyes were as dark as their plumage when he added, too bright: “Trust me, that would go over well with them. Ben Solo, finally taking some responsibility.”

Hux didn’t bother masking his shudder. “Interesting as the offer is, I somehow doubt I’d ever have the travel clearance.”

Something about those words appeared to suit Kylo’s mood ill; the large mouth was opening on a clear complaint when Rey all but fell into the room. Only by grasping the door frame did she prevent herself from landing flat on her own face.

“Dinner is ready!” she announced, beaming wider than her gamin features ought to have permitted. Then, her face fell with the catastrophic swiftness of black matter detonation. “But Aunt Leia can’t come.”

Already on his feet, slouched forward, Kylo resembled nothing so much as a ragged stormcloud. “Where is she?”

The harsh demand of it barely affected Rey; she only looked perfectly wistful even as Hux tasted ozone upon the thickened air. “Working,” she offered, and then turned a tragic look upon Hux. “As usual.”

Hux was too busy admiring the orphaned urchin look on Rey’s face to know what Kylo actually did. But when the painting, clear across the room, dropped from its moorings and hit the floor hard and flat, both of them started, turned, eyes wide.

And Kylo was looking at the door. “Well,” he said, and his hands softened, though the palms remained hard pressed against his thighs as he turned those dark eyes upon Hux himself. “I suppose you’ll just have to come again.”

“I’ve already said thank you.”

And Kylo frowned. “No, you haven’t.”

But there was little opportunity to rectify any such mistake when her small hand closed about his, the softest manacle his slender wrist had ever known. “Come on, Hux!” she said, already tugging him up from his chair with a frankly alarming strength. “It’ll be delicious!”

Though Hux allowed her to guide him to the table, he did not ask Kylo to walk at his side. He did so all the same.

Somehow, Hux didn’t have the urge to tell him not to.

*****

He had come prepared. Like a general marshalling his armies, Hux stood before the faint murmurs of the settling room with his battle already planned and won. All he needed to do was follow the timeline to its inevitable conclusion.

As the delegates continued to assume their assigned positions Hux checked a faint yawn. He’d stayed later than intended the night before, helping Kylo entertain Rey. The girl had been oddly distressed by the absence of her aunt, and it had taken nearly four rounds of dejarik – Hux and Rey on one side, Kylo on the other -- until she’d nodded off in the midst of Hux’s greatest victory. He supposed he’d forgive her the lapse of judgement, but it was a close thing.

Hux had taken his leave of them both shortly afterward. From the way Kylo had trailed him to the door with his brow furrowed and the wide lips pursed, it had been clear that Kylo had wanted something else from him; more conversation, perhaps. Or he’d been attempting to delay him until his mother returned. Hux couldn’t be sure which option disturbed him more.

It could only be fortunate, then, that he did not sleep much. It had allowed him to spend a good proportion of the early morning refining his presentation for these guests: a small group of interested parties, willing to be courted to Gillen’s cause. It would have been far more challenging to work on those who had no interest, but that would come, in time.

The low murmur had begun a spiral into silence; tapping a finger upon the holopad to coax it back to full life, Hux cast another glance over the room. Neat rows of faces, carefully arranged in their rows of practised political blandness, lay before him.

Kylo sat at the back of the room, eyes bright, fixed upon Hux alone.

Oddly, he did not appear entirely out of place. There would perhaps always be something faintly feral about him; a peculiarity in the way he held his lanky frame, the odd way his head tilted as if hearing sounds beyond the reach of those without his abilities. Even then, Hux could not be sure it was to be entirely blamed upon his Jedi training. Still, it had no doubt included physical aspects. Had never seen one – likely never would see one – but everyone knew of the Jedi’s weapon of choice. Imagining Kylo with lightsaber in hand was an easy thing: the gleam of its plasma burn would shine bright in his strange eyes. Typically they were blue and green, from what he recalled. But neither colour seemed to suit what little he knew of Ben Solo.

At Kylo’s broad grin, Hux skipped his eyes over him, did not linger. At least he had dressed sensibly enough. It provided a more pleasant view, at least, than the smirk on Chadri Dio’s babyish face from the front row.

“Welcome,” he said, sudden and clear; every set of eyes fixed upon him, and he allowed himself a small and beatific smile. “Senator Gillen has asked that I outline some of the reasons why we seek your support for our bid as the host of the Senate, and why you should in turn offer us that support. I hope to provide you with all the information necessary now, but I do welcome your questions at the end of my presentation.”

The prepared overview had been taken from Chadri’s earlier report. Every inch of it was familiar, conclusions he had already drawn. But seeing them through the eyes of another had a benefit he was pragmatic enough to strip mine for resources; Chadri’s manner of expression had made it far easier to see small flaws, the potential for intrinsic weakness.

Perhaps the man himself had realised the opportunity he’d unintentionally gifted. As Hux moved ever onward Chadri grew stiffer in his chair, small mouth curled in a petulant moue. But he had no room to interject as the interest grew; the moment Hux opened the floor to questions, they flowed like water, generously and easily answered. Any and all concerns followed, and they too were deflected into fresh prospects and new ideas.

And on the outside, at the back of the room, Kylo remained silent. Those dark eyes bored into Hux as he sat sprawled in his chair, legs wide, arms crossed. The one time Hux allowed his gaze to flicker to him, he met the faint smile with a raised eyebrow. He had not expected him to last so long, this impatient child who could not even complete the training inbred to his very bloodline. But Hux could sense no real interest in his work.

Kylo only looked at Hux alone.

Those eyes still lingered upon him when the lights came up, several delegates approaching him to further clarify questions already answered. He could see two other appointees conferring quietly with Gillen while Chadri seethed near her, unacknowledged.

Even as he kept watch from his peripheral vision, almost entirely focused upon the two people before him, Hux noted that Gillen seemed to take pity on Chadri; he puffed up like a Hutt lording over his den as he left the room with a delegate from Kamino. He did have to wonder if Chadri realised how unlikely it would be for any of that lot to ever defer their loyalties from Chancellor Mothma.

The room had emptied by the time his own conversations had completed. His eyes hesitated over the place Kylo had been, as if his apparent abilities had somehow granted him the ability to remain long after he’d gone.

“Hux.”

With smooth grace he turned to her, wearing that practiced perfect smile that never seemed forced when she asked it of him. “Senator Gillen.”

The scent of her was as earth after rain. The ice sheen of her pale hair, the luminosity of her skin, reminded him of the rare sight of sunlight arching through dark cloud. And she smiled in return, her bright eyes knowing where they looked right through him.

“It was very well done.”

“Oratory has always been a favoured pursuit of mine,” he demurred, and Gillen actually rolled her lovely eyes.

“I would not call that simple oratory,” she said, and again she appeared searching where her eyes sought out his own. “You were not reading a prepared speech, Hux.”

“I was working from Chadri’s brief.”

“Were you?”

There was no distinct memory in his mind of when he’d first learned to lie. It seemed a skill he’d come to so naturally he might as well have been born to it. But here, now, before Senator Gillen’s curious gaze, he was undone.

“I know you worry,” she said, very low. And he blinked, hands curling to unseen fists beneath the long sleeves of his coat.

“Senator?”

She had turned from him, attention fixed upon the last of his screens; the data flickered in her eyes like whitecaps upon some distant ocean. “Your situation is a delicate one. But I enjoy having you on my staff.”

This time, the smile had grown strained. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“You are an exceptional talent.” Before him, she was as a shaft of light, wrapped in the shadows of her gown. “I would sponsor you, to return with me to Uyter.”

A strange frisson moved along his spine, an electric charge that burned upon the very edges of his thoughts. “I would appreciate your patronage,” he said, lips oddly numb. “But I do not believe the conditions of my father’s—”

“You are not your father.” The interruption came gentle, but with the strength of the proverbial durasteel fist in a silken glove. He allowed himself to smile in return, for all it did little to mask the bitter truth of his words.

“But I am a Hux.”

“Only on one side.” And she rose, eyes flickering to the door before they returned to him. They might have reminded him of the grey skies of Arkanis, if said skies had ever held even the remotest semblance of beauty. “But I must go, Hux. Let us discuss this another time.”

“Of course.”

Watching her go had all the faint grief of loss. The long lines of her faded into the swirl of her robe as it trailed behind her; black, though only from a distance. Up close, the dark threadwork of elaborate embroidery revealed fractal repeating patterns, endless and repeating and inevitable.

“Brendol.”

He genuinely started, turned. “Lady Bulenwa.”

The dark head inclined in greeting; he’d not had time to speak with her before the meeting had convened, though they’d both acknowledged each other at her entrance. But now her pale eyes flicked sideways, a faint frown at their edges as she looked to the open door. “You seem…rather intrigued by the Lady Senator.”

“Senator Gillen is a person who deserves much admiration.”

Her amusement was a palpable thing. “Yes. I’m quite aware that your tastes are rather more…refined, than those of other young men your age.”

“She reminds me of my mother.”

One eyebrow, limned in silver and dotted with pearly accents, arched high. “Oh?”

“But I am sure there are other things you would wish to speak about.” With an arm crooked, offered, he nodded to the still-open door. “Shall we?”

The whisper of her expensive robes masked their footfall as they made their way down the corridors together. Few they passed batted an eyelid at the tableau they made; she had hosted many a party, and attended still more, in the name of her homeworld. As a staffer for the Senator, Hux had crossed paths with her often, their amiable relationship known as a long standing association between the high society of Uyter and the Senator who represented their interests.

There were whispers, of course. Lady Bulenwa would have been startlingly pretty in her youth: all pale skin and dark hair, a lean and lovely figure. Some of that remained to her now, but then Hux had not been drawn to her fading beauty. And many found it hard to believe she’d care much for his reasonable looks, given the name he bore with them.

“I see that little frightful little Dio child is still on the Senator’s staff,” she noted as they strolled quietly together. With eyes firmly forward, Hux did not miss a step.

“He has his uses.”

The bland words were answered first by a low ripple of laughter. Then she drew closer yet, her own voice a breathy amused thing. “As do we all, no doubt.”

Still he led her through the corridors, though the exit to the courtyards beyond the temple were yet far. “Would you care to take tea with me, Lady Bulenwa?” he asked, as it were but the most natural progression of their journey. “I could tell you more of the Senator’s plans for the hosting of the Senate. Surely your husband would be interested in the contracts; there would be much infrastructure that would need refined or rebuilt.”

“Of course.” Her smile retained the devastating power of her youth. “You have a place we might talk?”

They called for tea in the small meeting room where he had so recently met with Kylo. Like all, it was closed to the outside. No sound would move in, nor out. Not that he believed her to bear any of the odd volatility he’d sensed in Kylo. Even seated before him, here, he had sensed the crawl of something beneath his pale skin. Undefinable, beyond the ken of natural sciences.

But he did not want to think of Kylo, not now: not with this woman seated opposite him with perfect societal decorum, knees together and angled away. The beadwork of her veil cascaded down in fine lines, delicate white pearls scattered over the shine of her dark hair. And yet it was a shine too bright to be natural, now.

Content, Lady Bulenwa sipped at her tea, blue eyes luminous above the fine porcelain; a faint mischievous air lurked there, one that had him looking away, thinking of other eyes. But those as been as dark as the hair above them.

“It has been some time, since we last spoke,” she offered, and he reached for the holopad.

“I have been in communication with your husband.” Already he flicked through a portfolio he kept set aside for meeting such as these, narrowing his eyes at those items which felt most relevant. “He continues to be interested in the possibilities opened to his interests by the hosting of the Senate.”

“But what good would your connections be, if you must remain here?”

Though he did not drop his own gaze from the penetrating curiosity she had turned upon him, Hux swallowed, small and hard, before speaking “I have reason to believe Senator Gillen would ask for my place, amongst her transferring staff.”

“Her influence is great,” she agreed, light, lovely. “But it is not encompassing.” One hand moved over her knee, smooth over the silk. “It is not just influence you need, Brendol. You also require money.”

“Well.” One eyebrow rose, tea damp upon his lips. “That is what my charm is for, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Her own lips closed about the rim of her cup, flushed pink, tender and inviting. “You are a charming little thing, aren’t you?”

She did not need to extend her hand to offer him invitation to draw near. Even as she yet sipped her own, Hux put his tea aside, nearly untouched. In one fluid movement he crossed the floor, went to his knees. And she smiled, as he took both hands and reverentially lifted the voluminous folds of her skirt.

The taste of her pressed familiar against his tongue – an acquired one, perhaps, though he had even now not grown to like it. In the most roundabout of ways it could not help but remind him of the mundane and repetitive rations he had lived upon as a child exiled to the Unknown Regions, amongst the ruins of the fallen Empire. They had been necessary, but still merely something to sustain him. To give him simple nourishment. To bring him through to another day, and to fresh opportunity.

One ringed hand closed tight, in his hair. “Oh, Bren!”

Hux closed his eyes, and did what was needful.

*****

The faintest beginnings of evening stretched languid fingers about the twilight sky, already beginning to strangle light to what darkness the moody city would allow. With his coat heavy about his shoulders, Hux started down the steps to the courtyard below. He crossed but a quarter of it before, skin prickling, he turned back.

Long legs shifted, dark hair blending deep into the shadows about the bench he reclined upon. If he smiled, now, the truth of it had been quite lost to the dark.

“You’re still here,” Hux observed, bland. “Were you waiting for me?”

Kylo leaned forward, just enough for the soft gleam of a lamp to cast a half-mask of light over pale skin. “Well, I haven’t got anything better to do with my time.” Again, Hux could hear that faint petulant tone that reminded him of the years yet between them; his large hands were pale and white-knuckled about a covered cup held between them. “I looked for you, after the meeting. I couldn’t find you.”

His tongue passed quiet over his lower lip, retreated but a moment later. “I had some matters to attend to.” And he smiled, no teeth and with eyes unchanged. “Such are the priorities of one who wishes to maintain their ongoing employment status.”

Kylo’s own smile was a sly and knowing thing. “You’re a very good speaker.”

Compliments had never been his particular weakness. “I should hope so. I certainly devoted enough of my schooling to the task of mastering it,” he said, dry as desert dust. Though his body already inclined towards a return to his previous trajectory, Kylo spoke as though their conversation might never end.

“Do you really think they will convene the next Senate on Uyter?”

He could have walked away. In all truth he should have. Taking a delicate seat at Kylo’s side instead, he only just masked his disgust. Sitting outside had never been a particular preference of his, given that one could hardly assume the cleanliness of such a courtyard, even one within the confines of the capitol buildings. “With Mon Mothma campaigning for Hosnian Prime, it is a frail enough prospect,” he said, and frowned up at the crowning skyline of the city before them both. “But…we can try.”

“She should use you more.” At the odd sidelong look this earned him, Kylo only shrugged. “Senator Gillen. She’ll get what she wants, if she does. I can guarantee it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The frown actually made Kylo smile. “Am I not allowed to compliment you?”

“Not when you say it like that.”

“Like how?”

Hux had never enjoyed children. And yet he expected he might have had a less fraught conversation with the man’s small cousin. “Kylo, I’m tired. Is this going anywhere?”

“You could just sit here with me, you know. Relax a little.” One hand rose, tilted the closed cup in his direction. “I still have some caf.”

Hux’s expression congealed at what Kylo obviously thought was an enticing tone. “I’m not sharing your caf.”

“Why not?”

Grasping his hands about the edge of the bench, he tilted his head back, looked to the shrouded sky and the stars just barely visible behind the smog. “And it’s far too late in the day to be drinking caf anyway.”

Half an hour later they were installed together in a dark corner of a small bakery, steaming mugs in hand. Hux had at least chosen tea, though the scent alone of Kylo’s too-strong caf left his muscles tight and on the verge of jitter.

“I really am interested, though,” Kylo said, around a mouthful of some flaking pastry, barely held together with honey and spice; Hux moved his cup backward another half inch, and pursed his lips.

“Spying for your mother, perhaps?” he asked, purposefully light. “I didn’t realise Corellia had any intention of nominating itself as the host.”

Kylo snickered, as if at some private joke. “It doesn’t.” Swirling another sugar-stick into the cup, he added with sudden thoughtfulness, “Well, so far as I know, it doesn’t.”

“I didn’t realise you had any interest in politics.”

“I don’t.” Something of his usual sourness returned to his tone when he added, “But it’s hard to be ignorant of them, when you’re in my position.”

In the old days of the Republic, the Jedi had claimed to be separate – to be those who watched, those who guarded. Everything Hux had been taught instead spoke of those who wished to control without the scrutiny of the galaxy turned upon them. “Can you really read people’s minds?” he asked, sudden. Kylo only snorted into his caf, dark eyes luminous above his mug.

“You don’t really want to know,” he said, but only after he’d lowered it; beneath the table, Hux crossed his legs, tapped the toe of one boot against the table leg.

“And if I do?”

The long, measured stare crawled along his skin; his mouth tasted of ash and dust. And Kylo lowered his eyes, mouth faintly twisted. “Have you ever been to Uyter?”

Hux frowned. “No.”

“Then how do you know it’s the best place to host the senate?”

“I am capable of research.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, with an impatient wave of a long-fingered hand, bare of all jewellery. “But how do you know?”

“I’m aware the Force exists, and yet I have nothing to do with it.” The beatific smile was the sort he usually reserved for the moments before he verbally eviscerated someone. “Is that not the same?”

“No.” The irritation that so often flowed about him in constant eddy and current flickered brighter, his brows drawn very low. “Are you going to go there?”

“If it becomes the host?”

“No. While you’re campaigning.” Hunching his shoulders forward, Kylo glared at his caf as if it had made some unspoken assertion about his parentage. “Surely you should.”

No-one had ever read Hux’s mind. In the First Order, only the Supreme Leader had wielded the Force, though there had been rumours of the Knights of Ren, his unholy apprentices. But here, and now, before Kylo, Hux had no idea how to tell if Kylo had done so to him. Especially given the nonsense way he spoke now. “No,” he said, slow, as if addressing a very small child. “No, I shouldn’t go.”

Kylo actually looked insulted, as if a slight against Hux would have some relevance to his own charmed existence. “Why not?”

“You do know who my father is.”

“So?”

“So, the terms of his protection order forbid him from leaving the planet.” He could not help the impatience that entered his tone, for all no one could truly expect Ben Solo of all people to understand the vagrancies and complications of a troubled family life. “I was fourteen when we came here. A dependent child. Therefore the same restrictions he had were also placed upon my person.”

“But you’re not a dependant anymore.”

His nails, short and neat, dragged over the sleek surface of the table before he folded them into his palm. “The restrictions still apply.”

Kylo’s expression had become a rictus of disbelief. “So you can’t leave?”

And his hand rose, those nails short and well-shaped where they caught the light as he cast a hand to the street outside. “Home, sweet home.” The tea burned his lips where he now took an ironic toast, but he drank it deep all the same. And then he placed it back where it had begun. “To give Coruscant its due, at least it does not rain constantly. It never stopped on Arkanis.”

Lips pursed, Kylo had started to swirl yet another sugar-stick into his caf; Hux would have questioned why he’d ordered such a bitter strong beverage, had he not just watched Kylo down half the thing with no such addition. And he stared into what remained of it now as if he could scry from something so mundane.

“I always liked Naboo.”

One finger tapped an absent rhythm on his cup; an old habit, one he’d been prone to indulge in during examinations when his scribed answer turned out not to quite suit the question. “You lived on Naboo?”

“No. No, my grandmother came from Naboo.” Apparently he’d sweetened the caf to his liking; he pulled the half-dissolved stick with an abrupt yank, discarding it on the table. Hux scowled at the insidious creep of the spilled liquid even as Kylo took a noisy sip, then frowned. “We used to holiday there, when I was younger,” he said, and when he looked up, his eyes held an odd light utterly at odds with the dim ambience of the bakery. “I think you’d like it there.”

Pushing a napkin between them, Hux only gave a light snort. “You don’t know me, Kylo.”

“Yes, well, it doesn’t rain very much on Naboo.”

Kylo was ignoring the napkin. Nudging it closer, Hux kept his own skin well clear of the mess. “You’re extrapolating from some very scant data, there.”

“Have you ever seen pictures of Naboo?”

The faint irritation in his voice only made him tired. With a sigh, Hux screwed up the napkin, cleared the mess in three neat quick strokes. “Yes, I would probably like Naboo.” Then, balling the sodden mass in a further layer of tissue, he looked about for a rubbish bin. “Although it’s a moot point either way.”

Kylo reached over, plucked the neat ball from his hand. “What will you do?” he asked, brow furrowed, completely ignoring the way Hux scowled at the way he had discarded the napkins to the far end of the table. And his eyes, so dark, still held that odd sheen when he added, “If you can’t leave Coruscant?”

Leaning back in the chair, Hux folded his arms over his chest, fixed his gaze upon the half-empty teacup. “I have a second in engineering and project management. I suppose I’ll never be permitted to take part in military contracts, but there are civilian developments I might find interesting enough.”

“But that’s not what you want.”

The ache in his chest was old, and small; strangely, it didn’t hurt any less for it. “We don’t always get what we want, Kylo.” And he curled his tongue around the next words, light in their mockery. “But then, you’re young. You’ll learn, one day.”

“Yes,” Kylo said, sour and half-amused, “and you’re such an old man, rich in wisdom and experience.”

Hux only blinked. “I am perhaps older than I should like to be at this stage of my life, yes.”

He shouldn’t have voiced that thought aloud. But from the quiet shadows of Kylo’s eyes, Hux had the uneasy feeling he might have known them had they been kept only in the hollows of his own mind. “Come to dinner with me,” he said, abrupt, the statement of one not often denied his whimsies. Already Hux had turned his attention back to the holopad, the faint tremor of fingers calmed by the familiar pulse of work to be done.

“I have work to do.”

The hand over his held a surprising heat, the fingers long, palm callused and dry. An expletive hovered upon his tongue, evaporated when he looked up, found only Kylo’s dark eyes before him. “No.” The fingers tightened, just a little. “Come with me.”

Hux pulled back, perhaps a little too fast. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?” He leaned forward; Hux leaned back. And he grinned. “Isn’t that what friends do?” But faint irritation underlay the next words, lazy accusation though they were. “You let Rey do it.”

“Are you jealous of your eight year old cousin?”

The clear mockery of the words had Kylo scowling, left only to the most brutal thrust and parry of conversation. “Why don’t you like me?”

Even with the pout turned on him full power, Hux resisted the urge to detail thoughts about spoiled brats and uncontrolled mystical powers. Not only did he suspect Kylo had heard them all a thousand times before to no result, knew what the most immediate effect would be. And while Kylo was undoubtedly grating on his nerves now, not yet ready to risk driving him away on a more permanent basis.

Hux chose his reply with far more care than necessary. But he didn’t mean it to sound so colourless, so thin and delicate. “We barely know each other.” His eyes flickered sideways, to the movement of people on the raised street outside. “We’d never have met, if you hadn’t been forced to save my life.”

“Nobody forced me to do anything.” His hands had bunched to fists upon the table. “I did it because I wanted to.”

The weariness that hit him then was an unfamiliar as it was suffocating. People of Kylo’s odd intensity made so little logical sense. They made him tired. Hux reached for his satchel. “I really should go.”

And yet, even as he rose, Kylo already stood at his side. “Let me take you out.”

They’d garnered enough curious stares when they’d entered, even in this little store. The senator’s son, and the traitor’s get; Hux knew word had already got around about their peculiar meeting. He had no intention of making it worse. “You should be getting home,” he said, instead; when Kylo scowled deeper than even before, he had to wonder if he’d been this much of an entitled horror at seventeen.

“What about you?” he demanded. “Are you going home, or just back to the capitol buildings?”

His fingers tightened on the strap of his satchel. “I told you, I have work to do.”

Again, that odd darkness that crawled across his features like the slide of a lowered visor; the dark eyes blazed, even when there was no light. “Why do you even care?” he asked, harsh and half-hoarse. “You’re not stupid, Hux. You must know it -- that whether you succeed or not, they’re all going to leave you here. Alone.”

His thin smile held an odd kind of peace: a weapon forged long ago, familiar in its swing. “Some of us take pride in our work, Kylo.”

“You can’t live off pride.”

“Why not?” He gave a mocking little bow, stepped around the hulking lankiness of him. “I’ve only been doing it my entire life.”

Tugging the coat tighter around himself, Hux could not be but grateful for the welcome armour it provided against the strange bitterness of the air outside. The change of seasons were rarely felt to any great degree in Coruscant, given the way the sprawling planet-wide city altered its ecosystem to something beyond recognition, but the cold seeped into his bones all the same. And he shuddered at the memory of Arkanis, of rain and mud and endless grey skies.

“Hux, wait.”

He did not slow his step. “No, Kylo.”

“Yes.” Hand on him, pulling him around. With a fierce slap Hux knocked the hand away, eyes wide, lip curled over his teeth.

“Don’t ever touch me again.”

And Kylo, despite withdrawing his hand, did not back away. “You didn’t let me apologise,” he said, face a chiaroscuro of light and shadow, here on the street. And Hux chuckled, the low absence of genuine amusement.

“Well, congratulations. Now you have yet another thing to apologise for.”

The generous lips thinned far beyond what Hux would have thought possible, but Kylo had not allowed again that too-easy escape of his anger. Instead, he’d hunched forward, hair hanging in his eyes. The gleam of the streetlamps highlighted the wild curls, the flicker of the storefront signs like the twist of a spiral galaxy over dark space.

“I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Much as his bunched fist still wished very much to berth itself in the boy’s abdomen, Hux kept it to himself, turned away on a sigh. “It’s not your fault, Kylo.”

“No.” His step faltered – just a little, just enough. “But maybe I can help you.” His voice rose, a siren call from a place beyond the edges of all known starcharts. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Good night, Kylo.”

Walking away, Hux expected a hand, again – and perhaps not even a physical one. There were enough legends of the Force to tell Hux it would be possible. The space grew between them all the same. But despite that distance between them his last words were still a whisper in Hux’s ear, as if Kylo yet dogged his every step.

“Sleep well then, Hux.”

He spoke dryly, conversational, and did not turn back. He suspected Kylo heard him perfectly well all the same. “Thank you so much for your concern.”

*****

A long corridor lies open before the quick march of his boots: sleek and symmetrical, an architectural wonder of perfect trigonomic geometry. Some part of him wants to stop, to press his hands over it, to admire the lines and angles and the rich reflective shine.

But the body in which he moves, the one that is in this dream: it cares not. No – this is untrue. This person cares, but then he knows. This is his home. That truth is accompanied by an upswelling of vicious pride, but one he knows all too well. It is nothing new. Rather, it is familiar and perfect. Much as is the great starship itself.

At the terminus of the corridor, the walls open into a great chamber of chrome and black durasteel; from all sides, monitors display an ever-changing kaleidoscope of blue and red and grey, a thousand datastreams compressed before the technicians arrayed across what is surely the bridge.

The part of Hux which recognises this as a dream draws a breath. As he strides down the central catwalk towards the great viewing ports, the galaxy is laid out before him like a gift waiting to be claimed. Hux has not been offworld since his father had brought them to Coruscant, when he’d been barely fourteen. The pleasure of it now is sharp, painful, a clawed hand about his stuttering heart. Had he been himself he would have swayed with the shock, sent to his knees before the beauty of his true desire.

But he is not himself. The person whose eyes he stares through is straight-backed, halting in perfect military parade stance at the very centre. His hands move to the small of his back, gloved fingers tucked neatly into the palm of the other. Sharp eyes scan over the space before him, and in his mind Hux draws another pained breath: this is the Star Destroyer he had seen plans for, as a young adolescent. The Resurgent-class.

The Finalizer.

He has no idea where the name comes from. It simply is: true and terrible, tart upon the tip of his tongue. But Hux cannot direct the other man’s gaze, cannot turn his head to examine the ship as he so dearly longs to do. He can only stand as an observer, caught behind the other man’s eyes as he stares out upon the expanse of a system Hux can only vaguely recall from the many starcharts he’d studied as a youth. The Unknown Regions, certainly. More than that, he cannot be sure.

“Where have you been?”

Hux startles to see a figure at his side, though the person displays no surprise. How he had known the other had come up on him, Hux cannot tell; he himself had heard nothing, had seen no peripheral movement. And he proves a strange creature when the man turns to face him: clad all in black robes, crowned with a sleek helmet, the visor limned and lined in silver. The eyes cannot be seen behind it, but Hux has the uneasy sensation they are fixed upon him.

When he speaks, the voice is low, distorted by a modulator. “I have not left the Finalizer. I am called to Takodana, but now? I am here yet.”

Hux feels the man’s lips curl into a smile, one verging upon a sneer; it feels similar to a gesture he himself makes often in conversation with those who test his patience. “Your absence was noted,” the man says, and the reply he receives would have been flat even without the vocoder.

“I had explained to you earlier that it was impossible for me to be there.”

“That does not change the fact that you should have been.”

In silence, the man’s eyes return to the unfamiliar constellations, the long lines of the ship that arrow off into impossible horizon. The black-clad creature stands too close; their hands nearly brush, though both wear gloves. When he speaks, the strange vocal modulation crackles at such proximity. “Would you like to see it?” There’s amusement there, as mechanical as it is genuine. “As I saw it?”

The man stares ever forward. “I saw it the way I should have. Before my armies. Upon my base.”

“It was so beautiful, from here.” He chuckles, the sound like fingers over transparisteel. “Five fingers of death, opened. And then: closing like a fist. Choking. Silencing. Ending.”

A tremor moves through him; long tendrils of smug pleasure, sparking across his skin. Hux does not know why, but the body in which he stands shifts with an almost post-coital satisfaction, even as his irritation only grows. “You should have been there.”

“I am here now.”

That said, the creature is turning away, walking away. Even after he is gone, the odd tenseness of the bridge staff remains. The man himself pays it little heed, reading it as unease at yet another argument between their commanding officers. He seems much more content to return his gaze to the stars, counting them as if he expects to find one missing. Long moments pass, and then: a comm message, beeping from his datapad. Hux feels the smirk even though the man does not open it, does not even look down to see who might have sent such a thing.

Instead he turns, fixing his gaze upon a young man who turns from his own monitor with admirable swiftness, as though he has a preternatural sense of when he is needed. “Lieutenant. There is something I must attend to.” One hand rises, encompasses the bustle of the technicians and officers alike. “The bridge is yours until my return.”

He inclines his head, posture perfect and diction impeccable. “Of course, General.”

A thrill moves through Hux at the title: one that will never be his own. But the general himself does not care. He knows who he is. It is only what he deserves.

Again he stalks through the stark beauty of the chrome-silver corridors, the greatcoat about his shoulders fluttering like a cloak behind him. As Hux is pulled along with him it evokes distant memory of Imperial ranks, of the Grand Admirals in their whites. Perhaps that is why the general does it. It would be why he would do it.

These are familiar corridors to the general, though new to Hux himself. The general scarcely acknowledges those he moves past, his step rapid though even, giving him the illusion of gliding upon the air. They are high in the officers’ quarters when he stops before a quiescent panel. The fingers flicker out a code to coax the doors open. Inside, the coat is flung over a chair, footsteps muted upon the rich carpeting of the floor.

“Where are you?” he demands, and is met by a low chuckle from another opened door, kitty-corner to the great viewport that stretches across the furthermost wall of the general’s quarters.

“I’m right where you wanted me.”

There’s a faint familiarity to the voice, though with distance and its deep rumble, Hux cannot identify it. For his own part the general only snorts to himself, moving to strip off gloves, cap; only when they are tidied away does he move to another drawer in a low sidetable. From it he withdraws a half-pack of cigarras, a brand Hux does not recognise. Releasing one in a practised flick, the general has it lit within a moment. He stills, draws a deep breath. The relief and the heat of it, rich and warm, are faintly dizzying.

“What are you doing out there?”

When he opens his eyes, they are filled with stars. “Enjoying myself.”

That same laughter rises again at that odd distance, throaty and faintly thunderous. “I can enjoy myself in here, just as well.”

Another drag, the same hint of easy peace. “I am certain you can.”

There comes the sound of a body, shifting; a sharp breath indrawn, released on a long low groan. “But I would like it better. If you were here.”

“I am certain you would.”

The general smokes the whole thing before Hux even senses any intention to move. The low moans only grow louder, punctuated by faint gasps, the thump of what would likely be a headboard against wall. With a faint snort, the general stubs out what little remains in the delicate opalescent shell he had been using to collect every scrap of flicked ash. Now he undoes his high collar, the belt about the slim waist. Setting the jacket aside leaves him in impeccable shirtsleeves. The high boots are loosened, then toed off before he bends with admirable flexibility to remove the socks beneath. Only when they are all neatly folded does he remove the shirt, too. It leaves him only in singlet and trousers as he at last deigns to enter what Hux can only assume is his own bedroom.

He cannot be entirely surprised by the view. A man, long and lanky in his pale scarred skin, writhes upon the bed. Facedown, utterly naked, with his ass in the air; one hand has curled behind him, fingers pressed deep within himself. The narrow hips thrust into the disarray of the sheets in irregular rhythm, utterly at odds with his gasping breaths.

Leaning against the door, the general snorts as if exhaling another lungful of the sweet-scented smoke. “I didn’t say you could make a mess in here.”

“Don’t be an ass.” That faint familiarity is again lost in the hoarse rumble of arousal. “You’ve been aching for this since you fired on Hosnian Prime.” And now his voice hitches into a whine, body stiffening on the edge of double-bladed pleasure. “Don’t lie to me. I know it.”

“I’ll thank you to stay out of my head, Ren.”

“I was only there because you wanted it.” And the fingers delve deeper, his spine arching as he laughs. “Because you wanted me.”

A low growl and his trousers are pressed down, sleeveless undershirt cast aside. Already he is hard, and then the general is on his knees, shoving the other man’s head down as fingers fist in the dark hair. His welcoming laughter chokes off on a growl as the general’s fingers slide in, crooking, gliding back out to gather some of the dripping slick there. With the most casual of strokes he coats his own cock, and then the general pushes in.

The dark-haired man keens, arching underneath him. The sensation leaves Hux himself gasping for air he does not even need: a crucible, pressure and heat and fierce forced change. The general slides within it, the lubricant almost but not quite enough, the pleasure tainted with the faint drag of genuine pain. The grip on his hair loosens, the hand slipping down to grasp bruise-tight on his waist. The body entire is a strong, muscular thing in a manner Hux has not seen in his own partners since his academy days. There will never be much call for physical discipline in the senate.

It is no novelty to the man who moves within it now: the general knows this body. In fact Hux feels the echo of a kind of fierce possessiveness as he thrusts deeper still. But he does not reach around to take the dripping cock in hand. The other man seems close all the same; his breathing hitches in low pants, broken by disconnected words, murmured, tripping over one another.

The general himself moves with languid hunger, half-dreaming on every stroke; his arousal is a lazy thing, and its peak comes sudden and hard. He does not pause in his rhythm, driving through the orgasm. The other man follows soon after, fingers fisted in the sheets, his entire body trembling as if set alight and left to burn.

The general allows but a brief moment for the comedown – then he is rising, moving for the ‘fresher. Inside, he flicks on the shower. Hux notes it is water rather than sonic; quite the luxury, upon a starship. But then, he is the general.

Another presence passes behind him, slips past even as the general snorts, turning away. “I didn’t invite you to join me.”

“Not with words, perhaps.”

With a muttered curse the general turns to the sink, glances up. And, inside, Hux freezes. He knows that face.

It’s his face.

It’s older, yes. But not by much – a decade, at most. Of course the general – General Brendol Hux II – pays the interloper in his mind no heed, dashing his face with a twinned handful of cold water. And then, he stares. For a moment Hux fears he has been seen. And then, he knows he does not. The general only looks at himself. They are the same eyes, but harder. Colder. He is a man who has done what needed to be done.

“Hux.” The low plea from the shower has a predatory kind of glee, a hunter tiring of playing at being prey. “Come on.” There is the slick sound of what can only be a hand stroking over a cock. “Before the water gets cold.”

The general rolls his eyes, turns back to the shower. And Hux’s heart stops dead even as the general’s beats on. The hand of the man is extended to him, the other, about the thick length as he grins, beckons him closer with dark dark eyes that Hux knows altogether too well.

The general has been fucking a man with the face of Ben Solo.

*****

He woke hard and uneasy. The ache of his body came of an exhaustion more psychic than physical, but his cock twitched all the same, heavy and unhappy in his sleep trousers. Hux paid it no heed, staring at the cracked ceiling and seeing instead a system of stars spread out before a First Order destroyer.

Sleep well, Hux.

He rolled over, hips digging hard into the too-warm sheets, voice thick and harsh. “Damn you, Kylo.”

And then he did not sleep again at all that night.