Archive of Our Own

Hux is peeling grapes and ignoring Mitaka when Phasma throws her lunch tray down and announces that she has news.

“I was just talking to Poe,” she says, her eyes widening when she sees that she has the attention of Hux, Mitaka, and a freshman named Thanisson who appeared when Hux wasn’t looking. “And Poe heard from Finn, who’s dating Rey, who would know, that Vampire Boy escaped from the lunatic asylum and they can’t find him.”

“Just in time for Halloween!” Mitaka says, gleeful, as if Phasma has announced the return of Haunted Hayride nights at the farm outside of town.

“They don’t call them lunatic asylums anymore,” Hux says, his heart doing a stuttering skip-step already. He returns to his grape peeling, lest Phasma suspect that she’s affected him with this unpleasant gossip. “And he wasn’t even in one of those, to my recollection.”

“To my recollection,” Thanisson says, attempting to mock Hux’s accent. Mitaka snickers, then glances at Hux and looks appropriately terrified when he sees that Hux has noticed.

“Regardless,” Phasma says. “He escaped from his facility, whatever they call them these days. And he is on the loose, and likely headed back here to take revenge upon his enemies and whatnot.”

“How terrifying,” Hux says, as flatly as he can. His heartbeat still feels unsteady, and he curses under his breath when one of his short nails nicks the skin of the grape he’d been working on. When he was ten years old his uncle told him that surgeons practice their dexterity by attempting to peel grapes without breaking the skin, and though his uncle might have been lying and Hux has lately decided he would rather be an engineer than a neurosurgeon, his habit of lunchtime grape-peeling persists.

“I’m not saying it’s terrifying,” Phasma says, giving Hux a hard look when he glances up at her. She’s his main competition for the title of the school’s snottiest cynic who is also a largely overlooked dork. Nobody pays attention to this competition except perhaps Mitaka, who likely misses the intricacies and/or doesn’t really care, but it’s still important to Hux to always have a cooler head and a more intelligently grim outlook than Phasma, and vice versa. “I was thinking more like,” she says, leaning toward Hux and lowering her voice. “We should look for him.”

“Whatever for?”

“Whatever for!” Thanisson says, mocking Hux again. Mitaka doesn’t laugh this time. Hux fixes Thanisson with a long, withering stare that at least makes him shrug uncertainly before Hux returns his gaze to Phasma’s.

“There’s probably a reward,” Phasma says. “For, you know, recapturing the local lunatic.”

“That’s ridiculous, and even if there were, what-- You’re going to lasso him and drag him to a police station?”

“Maybe.” Phasma folds her powerful arms on the tabletop as if to prove that she could take on Ben Solo, who was getting rather large himself before he disappeared from middle school amid rumors of a mental breakdown. Hux didn’t take the rumors very seriously; in elementary school there had been rumors that Ben was a vampire. The only evidence was that he wore his black hair long, had pale skin and an eerily intense stare. He also had a habit of hissing at other kids when they annoyed him, but that was only after the vampire thing started and he decided to run with it.

“How would you even find him?” Mitaka asks.

“We could ask his former best friend where he thinks Ben might be lurking,” Phasma says, sliding her gaze back to Hux.

“Me?” Hux snorts. “I still have a scar from the time he hit me in the head with a nutcracker.” He holds back his fringe to display it.

“A nutcracker?” Thanisson says, nearly shrieking with joy at this development. He seems to be quite entertained by Hux’s every statement, and ballsy enough not to hide it. Thanisson has bad acne and is so thin that he looks like he might be carried away by a strong wind, but he also has the potential for handsomeness, were he to overcome these factors, and perhaps he knows it. He holds Hux’s stare, and only his heavy swallow offers any indication that he’s intimidated.

“It was the holidays,” Hux says, regarding the nutcracker.

“You were also eight years old,” Phasma says. “And you were friends with Ben after that, mostly. You used to play that game with him.”

“We all played Knights of Ren with him.”

“Yes, but you actually got into it.”

“Fuck you, Phasma, I didn’t--”

“What’s Knights of Ren?” Thanisson is grinning like he already finds it very funny. Hux can feel his face coloring.

“Can someone tell me why is this mosquito with unfortunate skin is sitting with us?” Hux asks, pointing at Thanisson and giving Mitaka an accusing stare.

“He’s in band with me,” Mitaka says, as if this alone is justification for Thanisson’s presence.

“I play trombone,” Thanisson adds, also defensive.

“The point,” Phasma says sharply, her hands closing into fists over the table. “Is that we should go looking for Ben on Mischief Night, tomorrow. Even if we don’t find him, it would be a laugh, wouldn’t it? Vampire hunt?”

“You didn’t even think he was a vampire when you were eight,” Hux says, snarling at her.

“Yes, but that was his nickname, and he was sort of one of us, yeah? I’m not actually saying I’m going to clobber him over the head and return him to his loony bin. Maybe we’d just get to hear about all the horrors of the institution, or whatever.”

“Oh, how festive.” Hux can’t stop scowling, though he usually avoids facial expressions. He pops the rest of his grapes in his mouth without peeling them, hating the roughness of the skins between his teeth. “You do whatever you like,” he says. “I’m not participating in Mischief Night this year.”

“What! Why not?”

“We’re fifteen now, Phasma. Much too old for that nonsense.”

“On the contrary, I think it’s the prime age for Mischief Night glory. It’s a Friday this year, and we all have midnight curfews now.”

“I don’t,” Thanisson says.

“Who invited you?” Hux snaps. He’s truly losing his composure now, face still hot. He gathers up his trash and keeps his eyes lowered as he rises from the table, feeling Phasma’s eyes on him. Mitaka and Thanisson are staring at him, too, and god knows what they’re all thinking. A rare emotional outburst from Armitage Hux will surely be analyzed in his absence.

“Just think about it!” Phasma calls as Hux turns to leave without looking back at them.

Hux doesn’t want to think about it at all, so naturally he spends the remainder of the day obsessing over the thought of Ben Solo being back in town, and where he might have been all this time, and what might happen if they were to cross paths now. It’s not entirely inaccurate to suggest that at one point Ben was Hux’s best friend, though they’d always fought, less often with whatever bludgeoning object was in reach as they got older. Ben was absolutely infuriating, moody and needlessly emotional, loud, pushy, dramatic and overbearing. But he also invented the Knights of Ren game and conscripted Phasma, Finn and Hux as players when they were in elementary school, after the student body had largely accepted that Ben probably didn’t suck blood for sustenance.

And Hux had in fact, in secret, really loved that game.

He’d mostly loved it because Ben, in a rare showing of deference, perhaps because he was the moderator and therefore not in direct competition, had allowed Hux to create a ridiculously overpowered character who eventually became the ruler of the entire galaxy that the Knights of Ren inhabited. Hux was crowned Emperor of the Galaxy in a coronation ceremony so elaborate that Finn quit the game in a rage that very day. This was of little consequence, as they had by then filled out their ranks with Mitaka and Ben’s cousin Rey, though Rey also quit soon after the start of Emperor X’s reign of what might be called terror.

The game itself was only occasionally fun when they were gathered around the table with their score sheets and the other players. It was far more enjoyable when Hux was traipsing aimlessly through the woods behind the baseball fields with Ben on weekdays after school or Saturday mornings, talking about his character and about Ben’s, a non-playable Knight who was similarly overpowered in theory, the ruthless and mysterious leader of the Order of Ren. Outside of the score-kept games, in the stories that Ben and Hux made up and sometimes acted out together, Lord Ren aka Kylo was Emperor X’s personal enforcer, and Hux would get red-faced with simmering excitement as they walked around talking about what Emperor X was demanding and how fearlessly Kylo Ren was accomplishing these tasks for him.

Things changed just before the start of eighth grade, when everything got weird and uncomfortable and Hux retreated into himself, leaving Ben and Kylo to fight their battles alone. When Ben was yanked out of school in spring and nobody knew why, beyond something Rey mumbled about Ben ‘needing help’ and going elsewhere for said help, Hux told himself daily, for the remainder of the school year and all summer long, that he shouldn’t feel guilty for abandoning Ben. It wasn’t a vicious betrayal, after all; Hux didn’t tease Ben in front of the others or tell him directly that he no longer wanted to be friends with someone who had sudden crying fits that frankly scared the shit out of Hux, among other things Hux didn’t know how to deal with. Hux simply stopped showing up in the woods after school and on Saturday mornings.

Ben never complained. He never even gave Hux long looks across classrooms. He just retreated deeper and deeper into his black clothing and long hair, until both seemed to fully swallow him up between public tantrums and the fistfights he sometimes got into with other boys in the hallways. Hux had been almost jealous, at first, that Ben was throwing punches at other guys. But these fights were different from the nutcracker-wielding ones they’d had as kids, and Hux eventually could no longer pretend that he might have prevailed, as Ben got bigger and meaner and in more and more trouble. Then he was gone.

Hux is in a daze on his walk home from school. He cuts through the woods behind the football field as usual, pausing twice on the quiet trail to listen for what he thinks might have been a footstep not far off. He gets goosebumps across the back of his neck the second time it happens, and tries to picture what Ben might look like now, a year and a half later and after many rounds of whatever constitutes ‘help’ for someone like him. Hux hurries along the path after turning back a third time and seeing nothing beyond the thickly gathered pines and tall weeds. There’s no breeze; even the air is as still as held breath.

At home, Hux locks himself in his room as usual and searches the internet for any news articles featuring the name ‘Ben Solo.’ There’s nothing beyond a two-year-old local news story listing winners of a youth poetry contest. Hux feels his face heating again. Ben had caught hell at school for this, of course; he was so bad at lying low, so determined to stick out and attract every kind of negative attention possible.

The winning poem had been about a fearless knight. Hux had read it with a kind of bile-rising horror, then had thrown away the cheap newsletter it was printed in. He wishes now that he’d kept it, though it would surely again make him want to puke. There was something about the knight’s sworn loyalty to ‘a bloodthirsty emperor who burns like the sun,’ and reading this had made Hux feel like an insect pinned inside a museum case, placed hideously on display and stabbed through the heart.

The poem was what had tipped Hux over the edge, not the emotional outbursts. He had avoided the woods the following day, and the day after that, and it had so quickly seemed impossible that he would ever go back.

He’s jumpy and distracted for the rest of the night, especially after the sun goes down and he can’t see whatever might be looking back at him through the ground floor windows as he goes through the motions of dinner in front of Fox News with his father and stares unproductively at his homework afterward. In bed, he lies awake and feels his heart beating too fast as he glances again and again at his bedroom windows. He’s closed the blinds on both, and he can’t stop imagining Ben on the other side of them, glowering up at Hux’s second floor bedroom from the dark lawn, maybe wearing a clown mask or some other fucked up thing.

Is it even the kind of thing Ben would do? Hux doesn’t know anymore. Perhaps Hux never meant enough to Ben to count as one of the people he would return here to enact revenge upon. Perhaps there’s no truth to the rumors of Ben’s unlawful absence from wherever his family stuck him, though it seems unlikely that Rey would lie, and if she were worried about it she would indeed confide in Finn, who tells Poe everything, and Poe does have a very big mouth.

But it’s of no concern to Hux, even if the whole thing is true and Ben is back, lurking somewhere around town. What did Hux ever really do to Ben? What proof does he really have that Ben was even talking about him when he wrote that line about an emperor who burned like the sun? Hux is far more prone to burning in the sun.

He tells himself over and over that he’s being ridiculous, but he can’t sleep.

Morning arrives with a sluggish grey glow from around the borders of his blinds. Hux only managed to doze off once or twice, waking each time from upsetting dreams about being chased through the woods. The lingering film of these dreams hangs about his head while he brushes his teeth, making him remember the dreams he used to have at twelve, thirteen: dreams about being in the woods with Ben, pressed between Ben and a tree. Sometimes Ben was in a full knight’s armor, all black, breathing harshly through the face mask and refusing to answer when Hux begged him to speak. Sometimes he was just Ben, breathing in Hux’s face and holding him motionless with his sad, piercing eyes, which Hux normally refused to look into directly, as if Ben’s gaze alone might do him some harm. Once, in a dream like that, they were kissing desperately and with their mouths open, tongues touching. Hux had awakened seasick with arousal that felt like it belonged to someone else. He’d been so happy in that dream, buzzing, electrified with glee and relief and even confidence, when in reality the thought of crazy Ben Solo lurching toward him for a kiss was pure horror.

“I’ll be going out tonight,” Hux says to Brendol at breakfast, Fox News again blaring away as they each have their cereal. “If that’s okay,” he says when Brendol glances over at him. “Sir.”

There’s more sarcasm in the ‘sir’ than Hux intended. Things have been different between them since last year, when Brendol was drinking more and Hux was doing what he could to hold what passes for the family dignity together. The drinking is less dramatic now, since it reached peak drama on an evening when Brendol backhanded Hux with a brutal strength that seemed to come from nowhere and then broke down sobbing at the sight of Hux’s shocked expression and wet eyes. Now they largely avoid looking at each other, and it does well for their roommate-like relationship.

“Fine,” Brendol says, stirring his cereal. “Be back by midnight.”

“Yes, sir.” Hux says it kindly this time. He never quite knows how it will come out.

School is in full pre-holiday mode, many students dressed up in sanitized versions of their costumes, though Halloween is not until tomorrow. The teachers give out candy and there is a general atmosphere of no pressure to get much done in class.

Hux doesn’t approve. He doesn’t like candy. He used to love Halloween, but now he’s not sure why. There was a time when he’d trick-or-treated with a large group that included Ben, who always had some elaborate costume and would spend most of the evening fully in character, something which Hux had found mortifying when they were in the presence of the others, especially when Ben went as Kylo Ren, which was often the case. And yet somehow it had always been so fun, once a year, to be with Ben amid the chatter of the group as they moved through the neighborhood in the dark, collecting bright little packets of cheap chocolate and trying to scare each other with morbid stories about what had gone on in this house or that, the ones with their porch lights off and their curtains pulled.

Hux sees Rey and Finn sitting together with Poe and the other athletes at lunch, and he considers walking up to them and-- What? Asking where Ben is at present? He’s too nervous about what they might say, and he tells himself it’s simply none of his concern. Phasma remains friendly with everyone, because she is, Hux must admit, truly fearless, but Hux hasn’t talked to any of those people in years.

“Have you changed your mind about tonight?” Phasma asks when she sits beside him, again interrupting his grape peeling. Mitaka and Thanisson are elsewhere, perhaps making out with each other in the band locker room. Hux tries to deny that he would be jealous if that were true.

“I don’t have any ideas about where Ben might be,” he says, “If it’s even true that he’s hanging around town somewhere.”

“Really? Nothing?”

“It’s not as if I knew his mind well. Whoever did?”

“But you and him--” Phasma breaks off there and looks somewhat apologetic when Hux glares at her. “I thought you knew him best, is all.”

“Well, if I did, it doesn’t count for much now.”

The truth is that Hux does have an idea about where Ben might go if he came back to town, a location where it’s unlikely that anyone else would think to look, but he doesn’t want to share it with Phasma and can hardly accept the fact that he’s even considering at least walking by to see if anything about the place looks unusual.

He hasn’t been there since he was twelve years old. It was rare for him and Ben to venture there together, though it was their favorite setting for their Emperor and Knight adventures. It was far enough from home to present a somewhat daunting journey at that age, and very off-limits, already condemned and locked up behind gates that were easy enough for two determined boys to scale. It had made Hux’s heart pound to sneak in there with Ben, even though he didn’t believe Ben’s bullshit about having once seen his grandfather’s ghost in a window on the crumbling second floor. The place had an air of danger and of dark history that was magnetic to them both, and in an ironic way it had also felt like the safest place for their games, where they would not be overseen by cooler kids or anyone else who didn’t understand why it was still so fun to play this particular brand of make-believe.

After school, Hux joins Phasma in the woods with her burner friends, who have weed, cigarettes and a bottle of coconut vodka that they’re passing around. Hux shares a cigarette with Phasma and shakes his head at the weed; he’s tried it before and hates the muggy complacency it brings. He’s watching the vodka bottle, waiting for it to make its way to him, not wanting to ask for it outright.

“I heard a rumor that crazy old Ben is back in town,” Wexley says.

“Wouldn’t know,” Phasma says, and Hux is offended by what might be her attempt to protect his feelings by not discussing it with this crowd. He’s also grateful.

“Are you going to drink all that yourself?” Hux snaps when Wexley looks at him expectantly. “Give it here,” he says, snatching the vodka.

“Oh, I forgot,” Wexley says. “Mr. Tight Ass young Republican likes his liquor.”

“How could you forget?” Pava asks. “Are you one of the rare few whose shoes he didn’t puke on at the New Year’s party?”

“I was fourteen when that happened,” Hux says, glowering. He drinks from the bottle again, hating the cloying coconut flavor. He prefers the original recipe, or rum.

“And you’re fifteen now,” Wexley says, reaching for the bottle. Hux turns away so he can take another generous gulp. “So worldly, so wise.”

“Why the hell did you get coconut?” Hux asks. He passes the bottle back and wipes his mouth with his other hand, wincing. “That’s vile.”

“I work with what my mom has on hand, Armitage.”

Unwilling to abide the use of his first name, Hux leaves soon after, telling Phasma that he’ll call her later. It’s four o’clock and the waning sunlight has already taken on a burnt, buttery glow. If Hux is going to actually check the decrepit old Skywalker Mansion for any signs of Ben, he’ll have to start heading that way now, lest he not make it before nightfall. He’s already walking in the opposite direction from home, toward the main road that runs along this stretch of the residential district. He tells himself that if not for the vodka he might have rejected this stupid plan, but even before drinking he’d begun making preparations. He left his backpack and books in his locker, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist what will probably only amount to an uncomfortable trip down memory lane. It's as unlikely that Ben Solo’s face will appear in one of the mansion’s windows as Anakin's ghost ever would have on the many occasions Hux looked for it, but still he keeps walking, keeping his eyes only on the ground ahead as he makes his way along the increasingly empty stretch of highway that leads there.

Anakin Skywalker was Ben’s grandfather, and in Ben’s mind this gave him full ownership over the weed-wild grounds and crumbling mansion that had once belonged to him. Hux supposes that Ben’s family does own the property, and their refusal to do anything with it must be emotional in nature, as Ben’s grandmother was killed there in an ‘accidental’ fall down the stairs that resulted in Skywalker losing custody of the couple’s infant twins and disappearing during the investigation into his wife’s death. He later died in a bizarre electrocution incident after having been badly disfigured in some other unknown accident, thus allowing for his many years of living on the lam. Once a prominent Republican senator, everything about his rise and fall is legendary and much talked about in the area and has been for as long as Hux can remember. The mansion Skywalker bought for his beautiful young wife as a wedding gift stands now like a morbid monument to blind ambition and changing fortune, and Hux feels watched by its presence even before he’s in sight of it, walking along the two-lane highway that the mansion’s long driveway branches off of.

Trees with crispy brown and yellow leaves rustle against a stiff wind as Hux draws closer, the sun beginning to sink into a vibrant orange now. He tells himself he’s only going to take one look and leave, that he won’t even risk scaling the gate, but as soon as he sets foot on the end of the weedy, cracked driveway he feels pulled forward, compelled, as he always did as a kid, with Ben walking at his side and telling stories about this place that were true, partly true, complete bullshit, or part of their Knight and Emperor game.

This sagging old estate had been Emperor X’s grand fortress. On one of the occasions that they’d dared to venture inside the house they had found a massive old armchair with wooden legs and cracked leather upholstery. Hux had declared it his throne. When he sat in it, half expecting it to break even under his puny weight, Ben had knelt at his feet and bowed his head. Something about that gesture, years before Hux could possibly say why, had made Hux’s heart beat so fast. He still remembers the way Ben’s hair tumbled forward in silky waves as he lowered his head, like an offering.

“Fuck,” he mutters under his breath, standing in front of the sullen, looming old mansion and hating himself for being here, for thinking about Ben’s hair, for so many things. It’s ridiculous to imagine that he’ll find what he’s looking for here, which is something like: forgiveness, closure, warm nostalgia. Ben himself.

What’s left of the imposing structure of the house is like the opposite of warm nostalgia: it projects the smell of rot and creaks against the wind, which has picked up and is dragging leaves across the long stone steps that lead up to the barricaded front door. All of the ground floor windows are boarded, but a few of the boards have been torn away, revealing only a dense darkness inside. On the second floor, most of the windows have been broken, a few shards of glass clinging to their frames here and there. Hux shudders as he watches these windows, unable to keep all of them in sight at the same time. It’s absurd to imagine that Ben is in there, of course. It was their special place once, but things were spoiled. Ben would probably hate to come back here now. Hux is certainly regretting it.

He walks around the right side of the house, unable to make himself leave even as the sun begins to really go down, the last of its light blazing along the treeline like a forest fire. The high weeds in the yard are so overgrown that they’re barely traversable, and the side of the house is lurid with graffiti. Hux had always hated seeing new lewd messages and threatening symbols painted there, as if this was a form of disrespect to him, the Emperor. Ben had cursed the graffiti artists for disrespecting his grandfather, whom Ben had a strange and childish reverence for, despite Skywalker’s disgrace.

Around the back of the house there is an old swimming pool, drained now. Hux goes to the edge and peers down to find it clogged with dead leaves and muddy rainwater. Something about looking down into it makes him shiver and move back, as if someone might come up behind him and push him in. He surveys the house’s back windows and the large back patio that was once screened-in, now open and skeletal. The boards that covered the doorway that leads from the patio into the house have been torn away. Hux and Ben once tore some previous boarding there away themselves, with tools they’d sneaked from their fathers’ garages. The smell inside the place had made Hux gag when they first tried to enter. It wasn’t just the dead raccoon that they eventually discovered; there was something else, something harder to define and to do with failure, disappointment, and the stale imprint of death.

Ben was the one who described this phenomenon, and Hux had rolled his eyes, though he understood what Ben was getting at. He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but there was some tangible remnant of tragedy in the place, and it stank like a warning not to come any closer. But of course they had ignored that and crept inside anyway. It had been thrilling, and Ben was so ridiculous that it seemed nothing truly bad could happen while he was there at Hux’s side, boasting and making up stories. The world Ben lived in was so well-insulated from reality, for as long as he could keep it that way.

The sun is almost entirely gone. Hux resigns himself to leave. He’s never seen this place in the dark before, and doesn’t care to now. Even the woods surrounding the property feel too quiet, no birds or bugs or frogs singing in the trees like they ought to be, and it occurs to him that older kids probably come here on Mischief Night with spray paint and booze and that if some of the meaner, dumber ones caught him here alone it could go quite badly for him. He takes one last look at the house, wanting to see something looking back at him and also terrified that he will.

What he sees, from the darkness inside the back patio doors, is the flaming ash at the end of a lit cigarette.

Hux turns on his heel, his heart slamming. Possibly there is a dangerous homeless person in there, or the kind of cruel older kid Hux doesn’t want to run into, or any number of individuals who would do him harm. He hurries away, not quite running until he hears footsteps across the house’s old wooden floorboards, then on the patio.

“Hey!”

The voice is commanding, self-possessed, and familiar.

It freezes Hux in place, but he can’t make himself turn until Ben is right behind him, walking in hulking steps and looking much bigger than he did last time Hux saw him.

“The hell are you doing here?” Ben asks. He’s glowering, his cigarette dangling from his lower lip. He drags on it and Hux realizes, through the narrow channel of his laser-focused terror, that it doesn’t smell like tobacco or weed.

“I--” If Hux had actually expected to find Ben here, he would have prepared something to say. As it is, he’s speechless and stammering, his mouth hanging open. Ben looks different: taller, stronger, somewhat less awkwardly composed of oversized and mismatched features. His hair is the same, overlong and wavy, and his attire is all black, a long-sleeved shirt with rips in the elbows and at the collar, tight black jeans and tall boots with lots of straps. Ben’s eyes are different in the sense that they no longer look sad, just dangerous, striking through Hux like twin hot irons and holding him in place. “What the hell are you doing here?” Hux asks, when he can finally speak.

“I asked first.”

Ben’s voice is deeper than Hux remembers, and he remembers the change in it very well. Hux had envied Ben terribly when he suddenly sounded like such an undeniable man, and that was nothing compared to how he sounds now. Hux feels like a child peering up at an adult, though Ben is only a few inches taller than him and actually two months younger than him.

“I came looking for you,” Hux says. He scowls, annoyed at himself for confessing, but what other excuse could he possibly have? “I heard-- That you were in town.”

“In town.” Ben scoffs and drags on his cigarette again. “Yeah, I’m in fucking town, sure. Fuck. How did you know I’d be here?”

“I didn’t, I just. Guessed correctly.”

Ben studies Hux for a while, smoking. He’s frowning, but no longer looks like maybe he wants to kill Hux for being here. The last dim glow from the sunset is fading fast, and Hux has no flashlight. Soon they’ll be standing in the dark together.

“What’s that you’re smoking?” Hux asks, because he can’t think of anything else he might possibly say.

“Clove.”

“Oh, jesus, of course.” Hux probably shouldn’t be making fun of Ben, in his position, but he can’t help it. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing here, since I told you?”

“Maybe.” Ben takes another drag, and another long look from Hux’s head to his feet and back up again, taking his time with this appraisal, such that Hux feels annoyed by the scrutiny. He’s further annoyed when Ben smirks as if he’s sensed this. “Man, it’s weird,” Ben says, muttering. “Little Armitage.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry, would you prefer Emperor X?”

Ben snickers as if he can see the blush that burns across Hux’s face, though it’s really too dark for that.

“C’mon, Emperor,” Ben says, flicking his head toward the backyard. “Into the fortress. I have provisions.”

Hux wants to protest or at least hesitate, but he moves as if enchanted, following Ben through the yard and past the pool, across the back patio. He tries not to fixate on how developed Ben’s arm and back muscles have become, obvious even through his ripped shirt. Ben looks as if he’s been doing daily physical labor in whatever institution he was packed off to. Hux doesn’t want to go into the house, but he can’t resist following Ben inside. He moves slowly, afraid to trip or step on a weak board that will send him plummeting into the basement that they were never brave enough to dare entering as kids. Ben pulls a small flashlight from the back pocket of his jeans and clicks it on.

“Here we are,” he says, shining the flashlight over a sleeping bag that is surrounded by fat candles and candy wrappers. “The humble abode.”

“Are you seriously lighting fucking candles in here?”

“I seriously am.” Ben squats down to do just that, digging a matchbook out from the same back pocket and setting the flashlight on the sleeping bag.

“Well,” Hux says, standing and watching this, his heart still slamming while he tries to appear as calm as possible. “It’s good to know you’re still a lunatic.”

Hux only meant to chide Ben for how dangerous the candles are. He feels something cold and heavy drop through him when he hears what he’s said and considers to whom he’s said it, and under what circumstances. But Ben just laughs.

“It is good,” he says, standing after he’s lit six candles. “I agree.”

He shakes out the match and stands staring at Hux, the last of the clove cigarette still pinched between his lips. Ben looks eerie in the light thrown from the candles, and the damp, gaping room they’re standing in is positively terrifying in this light, which may be Ben’s intention. Outside, the early evening light is purple through the open doorway.

“Why are you here?” Hux asks again, more softly than he’d intended to.

“Because this is my home.”

“This rotting old mansion? Or this town?”

Ben drags on the cigarette, then drops it to the floor and stamps it out, grinding his boot onto it.

“I don’t know,” he says when he looks up at Hux again. “I guess I intended to find out.”

“Where have you been?” Hux braces himself for the answer, though Ben seems strengthened by his time away, if anything.

“Vermont,” Ben says.

Hux laughs. Ben just stares at him as if that was a serious answer.

“What were you doing in Vermont?”

“School. There’s a school there for gifted kids.” Ben puts his now-massive shoulders back and tosses his hair. “Gifted kids who happen to be fuck-ups in traditional school settings, to put a finer point on it.”

“Ah.”

“I’m sure rumors of my imprisonment in a hospital for the criminally insane are alive and well.”

“I-- I don’t know. You know I don’t talk to anyone except Phasma.”

“And Mitaka,” Ben says, with a weird emphasis.

Hux snorts. “I’ve never liked him. He’s just always around.”

“I saw you on his Facebook. You two looked pretty chummy.”

“You look at Mitaka’s Facebook?”

“Just keeping tabs on the old gang.”

“Right.” Hux doesn’t use Facebook; he deleted his when Brendol tried to friend him. Phasma has one, but Hux never lets her take his picture. He can’t remember ever letting Mitaka take his picture, so perhaps the one Ben is referring to was taken at that New Year’s Eve party, when Hux was blackout drunk and possibly getting very chummy with Mitaka.

Ben squats down by his sleeping bag. He picks up a heavy black jacket and reaches into the inside pocket, producing a metal flask that glints in the candlelight when he stands again. He holds it out to Hux.

“Rum,” he says when Hux takes it uncertainly.

“Where did you get a flask full of rum from?”

“I know a guy.”

“What guy?” Hux drinks from the flask. It’s blessedly good stuff, at least compared to the coconut vodka. “What guy?” he asks again when Ben just stares at him.

“Just a guy I met in Vermont. He gave me a ride here.”

“And bought you alcohol? Sounds legit, has he appeared on To Catch a Predator yet?”

“That show’s not even on anymore. Is it?”

“Is he here?” Hux asks, turning in a circle as panic climbs through him. He drinks from the rum again, though he knows he shouldn’t, as he needs to keep his wits about him in this impossible situation.

“He’s not staying here,” Ben says. When he swallows, Hux can hear a nervous hitch in it, the first sign that Ben isn’t completely in control of whatever fucked-up situation he’s in. “He’s got a motel room.”

“Oh.” Hux isn’t sure what he’s being told. “Why don’t you just stay with your parents?”

“Well, Armie, because I ran away from school.”

“Don’t call me that. Why’d you run away?” Hux withholds the follow-up question, which answers itself: Why did you run to the town where your parents live if you don’t actually want them to catch you.

“I’m supposed to be on medication,” Ben says. “According to some asshole doctor who won’t listen to me and doesn’t care that I can’t even get a boner when I’m on that stuff. So fuck them, just, fuck it. They don’t believe I can manage without their zombie pills? Watch me.”

“Yes, you’re obviously doing great, traveling around with strange men who provide fifteen-year-old boys with liquor.”

“Shut up,” Ben says, sharply enough that Hux is startled. He drinks some more rum, attempting to use the flask to conceal this fear. “I’m more clear-headed than I’ve been in years,” Ben says.

“Right. Does your gentleman friend know you’re staying in an abandoned mansion outside of town?”

“He knows where I am.”

“Who the fuck is he?”

“He’s older than god, okay?” Ben says, snarling. “So stop looking at me like I’m a hooker. He just wants to be my mentor, he hasn’t laid a hand on me.”

“Jesus fuck! Your mentor? In what?”

“Life.”

“Ugh.” Hux drinks more, his heart still pounding. He remembers now why he’d always loved being with Ben so much. It isn’t because they’re particularly compatible or that they even remotely understand each other. It’s because Ben is so uniquely bizarre and open about his own strangeness, and talking to him like this is addictive. There’s never any use trying to predict what Ben will say next, and despite the threat of some old creeper maybe lurking in the shadows, Hux doesn’t want to leave. He wants to hear more. “So what’s your plan?” he asks, passing the flask back to Ben. “Going to renovate grandpa’s house with your mentor? Your parents might intervene, don’t you think?”

“This is just a stop along the way,” Ben says. He does that hitched swallow thing again, then drinks from the flask. “I just wanted to say farewell to my old haunt on All Hallow’s Eve. And to my grandfather’s ghost.”

“Right, the ghost. That’s who we’re here waiting for?”

Ben turns to look into the shadows, as if waiting for the spirit of Anakin Skywalker to emerge and introduce himself. Hux steps closer to Ben without meaning to. He’d always found it strange that Ben claimed to have seen his grandfather here, though Anakin died in another state entirely. The grandmother who perished here is the one Hux might expect to see, if he actually believed in ghosts.

“So,” Ben says, when no ghosts appear. “How’s-- Everything?”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, like. School, and. Everybody. And you.”

“What, your Facebook stalking hasn’t told you?”

“Not about you,” Ben says, mumbling. He’s looking at one of the flickering candles on the ground. His lips are wet from the rum. “All I know is that you party with fucking Mitaka, apparently.”

“I do not. Everyone was at that party. Which you should know, since I was there.”

“Ah, so you haven’t, like, become cool?”

“Who even says ‘cool’ like that?”

“You know what I mean.” Ben looks up at him and narrows his eyes. “How’s Phasma?”

“Same as ever. Only she has a girlfriend who lives in Ohio.”

“How’s that work?”

“They met online, in some thing to do with this show they’re both obsessed with. They Skype about it every night. It’s tedious.”

“To you maybe. That’s cool. I didn’t know Phasma was--” Ben makes a vague hand gesture. “Into girls.”

“Surely you did. I knew.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, I could just tell.” Hux’s face is blazing now, so hot that it might be visibly red even by candlelight. He used to think he could just tell about Ben, too, before he even knew the same about himself.

“Obviously Mitaka is gay,” Ben blurts, sounding suddenly so much like his child-self that Hux laughs.

“I don’t know,” he says, though he agrees with that assessment and in fact has watched gay porn at Mitaka’s house after finding it in his browsing history while he was out of the room. “I don’t really want to talk about Mitaka’s sexuality, if you don’t mind.”

“Fair enough.” Ben seems to consider asking about Hux’s, but it feels like a moot discussion already, a particular sort of sticky tension growing between them and making Hux feel far more drunk than he actually is. He snatches the flask and drinks more anyway. “It’s cool, you know,” Ben says, watching Hux drink. “That you knew I’d be here.”

“Stop saying cool.”

“Sorry, I forgot what a snob you are about diction.”

Hux almost spits out the rum in his mouth, laughing. “Diction?”

“What? I’m using the word correctly, I don’t see what’s so funny.”

But Ben is smiling, a little. Hux almost wants to say fuck, I missed you, so maybe he really is getting drunk.

“Do you play Knights of Ren at your fancy school for delicate intellects?” Hux asks. He hopes not. It was theirs, really. Though Ben invented the game, it came to belong to both of them.

“Hell no,” Ben says. “That stupid shit?” He scoffs.

Hux feels like the floor has given way beneath his feet, like he’s plummeted into the dank basement below. He drinks more, and notices that the flask is growing lighter.

“So you’re cool now?” Hux says, more bitterly than he should have. “You look like some kind of--” He gestures to Ben’s arms and chest and then regrets it. “Athlete.”

“I work out,” Ben says.

Hux snorts. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah, thank you, thanks for noticing. I guess you’re more into-- What? What were you ever into?”

It’s a cruel question, considering Ben knows the answer. Hux was into the Knights of Ren game, into living in a fantasy world that he couldn’t inhabit on his own.

“I swim and I play the violin,” Hux says tightly. These are his extracurriculars, maintained for the sake of his future college applications. He wishes he was actually passionate about either of them, and he almost wishes he could tell Ben about the previous year and all the shit Brendol put him through, which had felt like the only extracurricular Hux really had time for. He didn’t even tell Phasma about it, because her family is perfect and she doesn’t understand. Her sister and her mother join her on Skype calls with the Ohioan girlfriend on occasion.

“I mean,” Ben says, his face changing in a way that makes Hux worry that he’s taken on some kind of pathetic expression. “People still see me as a pain in the ass. Even up there, in Vermont.”

“I’m shocked.”

“Anyway.” Ben squats again, picks up a candle this time and stands. “Want to help me look for the ghost?” he asks, holding the flame just under his chin.

“Are you serious?”

“Do I look serious?”

“No.” But yes, actually. As a kid, Ben could grow so quickly grave, all the humor draining suddenly from their interactions. Hux still finds it disorienting.

“Just grab the flashlight,” Ben says, walking around Hux. “Or a candle, if you prefer. And follow me. If you dare.”

“If you dare is right-- Ben, this place is not safe, you know, the boards are rotting--”

“Oh, Armie, have you actually turned into a chickenshit? I’m surprised.”

“Why do you keep using my first name?” Hux snaps, bending down to swipe the flashlight. “You never called me that.”

“I thought maybe you were going by that now.”

“What? Why?”

“Because in that picture of you and your chum Mitaka the caption he wrote was ‘me and Armie getting crazy.’”

“What!” Hux is going to murder Mitaka. It will be festive, for Halloween. “I didn’t-- I didn’t see that, I never look at Facebook, fuck, I can’t believe Phasma didn’t tell me, that little shit--”

“Damn, Hux, calm down.” Ben is grinning when he turns back, holding the candle under his chin again and clearly pleased with himself for managing to make Hux unravel. He did always enjoy that. “It’s like not like you have a reputation as a stoic ice prince to maintain, or anything.”

“Fuck you,” Hux says, but it’s mild, and he hurries forward, following Ben’s steps exactly, lest he come across an errant board. At least Ben is leading the way and will presumably absorb any danger ahead before it can reach Hux.

“So, remember,” Ben says, turning just his cheek toward Hux. “We’re looking for the ghost of a young man. That’s the one I saw when I was ten. The way Anakin looked when he first bought this house.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does, it was the ghost of his dashed hopes or whatever.”

“You speak pretty glibly about it now,” Hux says, remembering the angry reverence with which Ben had once told his grandfather’s story. According to him, Anakin was betrayed by some political rival who had pretended to be a friend, and afterward went into a shameful spiral that resulted in the accident that took his wife’s life. “I just can’t believe you ever came up here alone,” Hux says when Ben has no comment on his glibness.

“You mean you can’t believe I came here without you?”

Hux has no comment on that.

They move slowly through the rooms on the first floor, and when they’re in the front foyer Hux notices that Ben is letting the hot wax from the candle drip over his fingers as they walk. He thinks of remarking on this, but Ben probably wants him to. Ben always had a thing for displaying his uncommonly high threshold for pain. It had made Hux queasy, though he has a similar thing. There had been many a dare between them, and much one-upmanship when it came to enduring something painful without screaming or crying.

“Maybe the ghost won’t show tonight,” Ben says when they’re nearly back to where they began. “Since it’s not Halloween yet. Or maybe we’d have to go up to the second floor to find him.”

“Please don’t,” Hux says, embarrassed by how desperate that sounded when Ben turns to look at him. “I mean-- Jesus, even you’re not stupid enough to think you won’t fall through the floor.” The second floor has bad water damage from years of rain that has leaked in through the decaying roof. They never ventured up there as kids.

“Worried about me?” Ben says. “Interesting.”

“It’s not interesting, fuck you, I’m not--” Hux hears himself getting flustered, and sees it reflected in Ben’s pleased little grin. “What, why-- Why wouldn’t I be concerned, I mean. We were friends, were we not?”

“You tell me, you’re the one who stopped talking to me.”

Hux opens his mouth to say something about that poem and how deeply it had scared him back then, how completely unprepared he’d been for what it seemed to imply, but Ben turns around and laughs before Hux can even put the words together in his own head.

“Just kidding,” Ben says. “I don’t really give a shit.”

They walk back to where Ben left five candles burning. Hux realizes only then how incredibly dangerous it was to do so and how frightening all of this is even now, for the same reason he’d been afraid to look directly into Ben’s eyes during their treks through the woods after school. Ben is avoiding Hux’s eyes now, throwing his head back to drain the last of the rum from the flask.

“It hasn’t been that good,” Hux says, because one of them has to say something. It’s so dark, too quiet. “Since you’ve been gone,” he says when Ben looks at him.

“What hasn’t?”

“Life.” Hux shouldn’t have said that. His throat feels dry. “Brendol lost his job, and--”

“You still call him Brendol?”

“Yeah. Do you still call yours, uh. By their first names?”

Ben shrugs. “I don’t talk to them that much. They’re paying good money to keep me out of their hair, right?”

“Mhm.” Hux has always thought Ben’s problems with his parents are pretty much bullshit. They obviously care, however frustrated they get with him. Ben doesn’t know what it’s like to really be abandoned. His mother is alive, at least.

“So what happened with Brendol?” Ben asks, muttering. Hux can hear Ben breathing in the silence that follows.

“Nothing.” He’s sorry he even tried to bring it up. “He got a new job, so. It’s fine.”

“But--”

There’s a sound from the front of the house that makes them both go rigid. Hux’s pulse hammers when he recognizes that it’s a footstep, followed by a dragging noise like one of the loose boards over the front windows being pulled away.

“That’ll be Snoke,” Ben says, whispering. He looks scared, too, like he would rather encounter the ghost.

“Snoke? The old man who drove you here?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what he’s called? What the fuck, Ben--”

“Benjamin?” Snoke calls, his voice like a pile of dry leaves crunching underfoot. It sends a chill down the back of Hux’s neck and along his spine, freezing him in place. That’s not the voice of someone who won’t expect anything in exchange for ‘helping’ a boy like Ben. Hux feels certain of it, instantly.

“Please,” Hux says, his voice tiny and stretched-thin as they listen to Snoke moving through the house, toward them. “Please, Ben, I don’t want to--”

Ben nods and holds his finger over his lips. His eyes are wild with something like regret, or fear that’s been thrown suddenly onto him like a bucket of ice water, now that he’s seen it reflected in Hux’s eyes. He bends down and collects his jacket, blows out all the candles and clicks the flashlight off, throwing the room into full darkness, only a square of dusky moonlight visible through the back doorway.

“Ben?” Snoke shouts, more impatience in his tone already. He’s closer to them now. “Where are you hiding?” he asks, and the mock playfulness in his tone is so vile that Hux has to cover his mouth to hold in a horrified whimper of dread that might have given them away. The beam of a powerful flashlight cuts through the room next to the one they’re in. Ben feels for Hux’s arm in the dark and slides his hand down to take hold of Hux’s. Hux threads his fingers through Ben’s and holds on tight, squeezing. They move very slowly as Ben guides Hux through the room, toward the back doorway.

For three excruciatingly careful steps they are silent, and Snoke’s flashlight beam moves into another room. Then Ben steps on the wrong board and a loud creak reveals their location. Ben curses under his breath and Hux glues himself to Ben’s side, wincing as the flashlight beam arcs toward them again, falling upon the sleeping bag and the still-smoking candles.

“Are we playing a game?” Snoke asks, rapidly coming toward them now. The flashlight is blinding when it hits them. Hux can’t see Snoke at all, only the light. “Oh,” Snoke says, sounding pleased. “You’ve found a friend?”

“Don’t let go,” Ben says, whispering this shakily into Hux’s ear. “Okay?”

Ben takes off running before Hux can agree, holding Hux’s hand as he bolts for the back door. Hux doesn’t need to be asked twice; he runs behind and then alongside Ben without looking back, even as they hear Snoke’s heavy footsteps dashing across the old floorboards, pounding over the patio, and just behind them through the yard. Snoke might be laughing under his breath; Hux can hardly hear anything but his own slamming heartbeat and ragged breath as they make for the woods behind the mansion.

They hit the tree line and run even faster, still holding hands as heavy brush gives way to their crashing retreat, thin branches scratching at their cheeks. Neither of them looks back as they run farther and farther into the woods, and Hux isn’t sure if he can hear Snoke just behind them or if he’s only imagining things. Surely an old man can’t keep up with them for long. The woods are dark and deep, and Hux doesn’t know his way through them, but he doesn’t care. Ben is here. Nothing bad will happen while Ben is here with him.

But Hux has grown too old to really believe that, and he’s jittery with terror when they finally stop running after what feels like a long time and when nothing but thick forest is in sight, both of them breathing in great heaving gulps. Ben pulls Hux around the side of an enormous old pine tree and presses him there before leaning onto him like a human shield, scanning the darkness behind them for any sign that Snoke is still following. Overhead, the clouds that were obscuring the almost-full moon slide away, offering a measure of eerie illumination.

“Is he--?” Hux asks, grabbing the front of Ben’s shirt. They’re so close that he can feel the heat of Ben’s body hovering over his, coupling with his own even as they come just short of pressing together.

Ben shakes his head, but he’s still searching the woods, looking unsure. Beads of sweat gather over his temples, and Hux is so crazed with adrenaline that he actually has to stop himself from reaching up to smooth Ben’s wind-whipped hair back into order. They stay hidden against the tree as they both begin to breathe more steadily, no sounds of footsteps or flashlight beams emerging from the surrounding dark. When Ben shifts his gaze to lock onto Hux’s there’s apology and fear and also something far more fragile in his eyes, something that Hux once held in his hands and smashed to pieces.

“Why--” Hux starts to say, but then he can’t get the rest of it out, or doesn’t want to.

“I don’t know,” Ben says, shaking his head. “I don’t know, fuck, I never know why I do anything--”

“It’s okay,” Hux says, though it markedly isn’t. “We got away, it’s--”

“I just can’t believe you were there,” Ben says. His voice has tightened. He puts his hands on Hux’s shoulders, pressing them back against the tree. “When I heard someone walking around back there, behind the house, I thought it was Snoke, and I didn’t even care, I didn’t care what happened next, what he would do to me, or-- But it was you, it was you--”

Hux wraps his arms around Ben’s neck and clings, pressing his face to Ben’s throat. Ben pulls him close, his chest shuddering against Hux’s when his breathing grows heavy again. Hux can’t remember the last time someone hugged him. His mother’s funeral? He holds on tight, trying to swallow down a shaky, spreading-warm feeling that’s building in his gut, because it’s threatening to turn into actual sobbing, though he’s not sad, not even scared anymore. He wants to cry pathetically just because this feels good, so good, and because he doesn’t want to let go.

“Hux,” Ben says, his mouth moving in Hux’s hair. “You fucking-- Why did you--”

“I missed you,” Hux says. He’s still got his eyes pinched shut, his hips and stomach and chest and everything pressed as snugly to Ben as he can manage, one hand clutched in Ben’s hair. “I wanted you to be there, in that house, in our fortress. So bad. And you were.”

“But you always-- You thought I was a fuck-up, like everybody else.”

“No, but-- You were my-- I loved our stupid game. Fuck you for saying it was stupid. I know it was. But I loved it, just. It was, like. The only good thing I had, after my mom.”

Hux clamps his lips together and makes himself shut up. Seven years later, and he still can’t say my mom without his voice wavering a little. Ben takes a deep breath and lets it out, his thumb moving across the small of Hux’s back. His other hand is warm on Hux’s neck, holding him in place. Hux tightens his grip on Ben and attempts to burrow in even closer, needing Ben to know he doesn’t plan to stop doing this anytime soon. He could do this all night.

“I loved it, too,” Ben says. “You made me feel, like-- Like, so shitty, sometimes, Hux, you asshole, but also like I could do anything, like. Like someone actually gave a fuck.”

“I did, I do. I miss you, I’m serious, shit, and it’s my fault you left, I fucked everything up--”

“That’s--” Ben laughs-- bitterly, angrily --and Hux knows it’s over, that he’s spoiled things again. He tries to make his face as passive as possible when Ben pulls back to look at him. “That’s bullshit,” Ben says. “You’re not the reason I’m gone.”

Hux stares down at Ben’s chest, disturbed by that phrasing, as if it means Ben isn’t even here now, not really. As if this is just Ben’s ghost that he found in that place, only he’s so solid, so warm. Hux sucks in his breath and holds it when Ben touches his face, tilting Hux’s chin up so that their eyes meet again. Ben’s are burning, burning-- It does hurt, just as Hux always feared, to look at him like this. Hux exhales and tries to clear the hurdle of his old, razor sharp fear, thinking of that dream about kissing Ben and the queasy pleasure of waking from it, relieved that it hadn’t been real. Even then some part of him had also mourned for a thing he would never let himself have.

He still doesn’t want that Ben, as he was in those days-- Frothing and uncomfortable and failing to hide those ears under his hair. This Ben, however. He feels so big when he staggers forward to pin Hux to the tree with his weight, and the blazing need in his eyes is not repulsive anymore. Now it’s something that Hux wants to soothe with his tongue, an old and still bleeding wound that he longs to press himself against, to heal.

“You wrote that poem,” Hux says, perhaps unwisely, but he doesn’t know how to kiss and he’s waiting for Ben to show him, peaked and aching.

“That poem?”

“About me-- Burning. Like a sun. It scared the shit out of me.”

“I-- Oh. That contest thing? I didn’t think you would read that.”

“Well, I did.”

Ben snorts, and Hux worries again that he won’t actually get what he now wants so much that he feels like a throbbing nerve in Ben’s hands, barely held together by his bones.

“I wrote, like, a lot of those,” Ben says, mumbling. “About you.”

“Fuck, Ben, will you just--”

“Listen,” Ben says, shushing him. He’s scanning the woods again, tucking himself around Hux while he surveys their surroundings. “Do you hear that?”

Hux is going to groan and call his bluff. Maybe Ben doesn’t know how to kiss either, though it seems unlikely. Then Hux hears it, too: something cracking in the distance, followed by a high peel of laughter.

“What the fuck?” Hux goes rigid against Ben’s chest, half-turning, ready to kill Snoke with his bare hands if he dares to try and spoil this.

“I don’t think it’s him,” Ben says. “It’s coming from over there. I think I know where we are now.”

Ben pulls away. Hux wants to whine in complaint, but he takes Ben’s hand and lets himself be pulled, too. They wind through the trees, which are very tall and thick and old here, until they come to the edge of a short cliff that looks over the valley where the older and cooler kids sometimes have bonfires on nights like this, when there’s a chill in the air but before it’s properly cold. There are ten or so of them down there now, the bonfire just getting started. Hux lets go of Ben’s hand and moves behind him, watching from over Ben’s shoulder as Poe laughs with Pava, both of them holding beer bottles. Rey is there, too, wearing Finn’s jacket and sitting beside him with her shoulders hunched, looking glum while he wraps an arm around her and tries to console her. Even Phasma is there, the traitor, and Hux sniffs in disapproval when he sees that she’s dragged Mitaka and fucking Thanisson along with her. They’re both hanging at the periphery, sharing a beer and trying to not look terrified while Phasma moves easily among the others, haughty and charming.

“Wow,” Ben says, backing up until he bumps into Hux, who puts his hand on Ben’s waist, not wanting him to forget that they were just about to kiss or fail to realize that Hux is still humming painfully with the need of it. “Weird,” Ben mutters, still staring at the kids down below. Ben and Hux are far enough away from them to avoid being spotted, but if they wanted to be seen it would only take a shout and a wave.

“Do you want to go down there?” Hux asks, dreading Ben’s answer. The others would be impressed with Ben now, and glad to see him. “To tell Rey you’re all right?”

“No, I--” Ben turns and frowns at Hux, looking at him like he’s crazy. “Do you want to?” he asks.

Hux shakes his head as hard as he can. Ben smiles, the same crooked and disarming as fuck smile that Hux had once felt quite kingly and ingenious for earning, when nobody else could seem to make it appear.

They walk over to a massive oak that stands alone among the pines. Ben spreads his jacket out at the base and they sit on top of it, their backs pressed to the trunk. Seated, they can hear but can’t see the kids below, just the odd shadows thrown by the bonfire when someone crosses in front of it, reflecting on the opposite slope of the valley. Hux settles his shoulder against Ben’s with tentative determination, not sure how to proceed. Ben sighs and presses his leg along the length of Hux’s, then rests his hand over the place where their thighs meet. Hux almost regrets it when he puts his hand on top of Ben’s, though it feels good and makes Ben lean against him more heavily.

“I forgot how big your hands are,” Hux says, as if they were actually this big back then.

“And yours are all delicate.” Ben laughs when Hux shoulders him. “No, it’s good. I like that, it’s regal. You’re refined.”

“Fuck you.”

“It’s a compliment!”

Ben turns his hand over, pressing their palms together. Hux hears himself swallow. Ben will certainly have heard it, too.

“You can’t ever do that again,” Hux says. “With some-- Man, like that. He really didn’t touch you?”

“No, jesus!” Ben shrugs and threads his fingers through Hux’s. “I think he was a cult leader or something. He might have been, like. Bringing me to his lair for some other cult member to have, admittedly.”

“God! Fuck! Why would you--”

“I told you, I don’t know! It was interesting, I find fucked-up people interesting. More interesting in the wild than the ones at my school, anyway. What do you care?” Ben elbows Hux, who is glowering, his heart racing with the fear that Ben will never not be on the verge of disaster. “Huh? Hux? You want me for yourself, is that it?”

“What do you think?” Hux turns his scowl on Ben. “You arrogant-- Are you going to make me beg?”

“For what, Hux.”

“You--”

Ben presses his lips to Hux’s, laughing a little when whatever Hux was going to say transforms into a soft gasp against his mouth. Ben’s eyes are closed, so Hux closes his, too, and leaves his lips parted around another breathy exhalation, this one more of relief than surprise. Ben licks at him gently, coaxing, and Hux licks back, though he’s not sure if he should. He feels hot all over, despite the dropping temperature, and his hand gets sweaty when Ben’s tongue brushes against his with careful intent, then more sloppily, then with fucking brazen hunger-- Or maybe it’s Ben’s palm that’s getting damp, or both of them. Hux doesn’t care, as long as Ben’s tongue keeps sliding against his with this devouring certainty that makes Hux fear he’ll start drooling, because his mouth has grown so wet already. He reaches up to cup Ben’s cheek, draws him closer, never wants to stop. Distantly, he remembers that it can’t be much later than six o’clock, despite the thick curtain of night already around them. He moans against Ben’s lips, weak with joy at the thought that they have another six hours to stay here and do this. Hux would prefer six days, but this is good, this is so fucking good that he can’t believe he’s continuing to inhabit the body that it is happening to. Like maybe he should have died of too much surging bliss already.

“Ben,” he says, breathing this out when they break apart just barely, Ben’s face still pressed to his.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing, I just--” Hux shakes his head and kisses Ben again, more confidently now, with deeper passes of his tongue, his lips opening wider. It’s insane that this should feel like the exact, perfect, life-changing thing that Hux has needed for so long and has suffered without: pressing his mouth to another mouth, to Ben’s mouth, and feeling Ben’s arms wrap around him, letting himself be pulled halfway into Ben’s lap, doing all of this almost in earshot of the bonfire kids and their beers. Hux can hear bottles hissing open at intervals, and he laughs against Ben’s mouth at the thought of Phasma wandering up here and finding them like this, or Mitaka.

“What?” Ben looks worried, like maybe Hux is laughing at him.

“I’ve never felt like the luckiest one out of all of us,” Hux says. “Out of all of my friends, I mean. Or anyone, just. I-- I can’t believe you still like me?”

Now he’s just being kiss-drunk and stupid, and it’s possible that the rum is catching up with him as his racing adrenaline mellows. Ben isn’t laughing, anyway. He looks quite serious, doing his suddenly-grave thing as he strokes and then kisses Hux’s cheek.

“I could never even believe you wanted to be my friend,” he says.

Hux moans and kisses him again, wanting to press his tongue over every old hurt that Ben ever carried with him, particularly the ones Hux inflicted himself. Ben tastes like clove and rum and faintly of cheap candy bars. Hux will never forget it, or the smell of the bonfire below and the pine needles fanning together in the wind overhead, mingling with the softer scent of the oak leaves. They’re just getting started and Hux is already struggling to ignore his awareness that this is a finite moment in time which will eventually come to an end. It would hurt less if he could believe that Ben will stay here and not return to Vermont.

“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” Hux says, as if this pathetic confession might make Ben at least want to stay. “Could you tell?”

“No.” Ben smirks like maybe he’s lying. “You’re a good kisser, I mean-- This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life, so.”

“Yeah.” Hux nods in agreement and pulls Ben back for more, his hands snagging on Ben’s ears when he drags him forward.

They slump against the tree and cling to each other, kissing until Hux feels his lips fattening and then throbbing with a kind of buzzing overuse. Ben’s mouth is very wet and red, too, and Hux drags his thumb over Ben’s bottom lip when they take a break to just breathe each other's air. Hux has been tenting his pants to varying degrees since he felt Ben’s leg pressing against his, but it’s not the sort of inconvenient, naggingly insistent arousal he’s familiar with. This is more like a wave he’s riding and riding and riding, never quite breaking. He might pass out from overstimulation if he stands up, but they don’t need to stand up just yet.

“There’s nobody like you,” Ben says. “At my school, or anywhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody who wants me to be their knight.”

“You still want that?” Hux is tempted to laugh, but he’s too full up with something that’s expanding in his chest to make room for it.

“Yeah, I mean. Those are like, all my happy memories of being a kid. Just walking around with you, and the way you’d listen to my stupid stories. Nobody else really did, even in the game.”

“They weren’t altogether stupid.” Hux lowers his eyes and toys with the rip in the collar of Ben’s shirt, sneaking his fingertips inside to brush over his skin. Ben sucks in a shallow breath when Hux strokes his collarbone, and Hux has to bite his lip to stop himself from beaming. Ben has his legs spread awkwardly, as if to accommodate something Hux is reluctant to look at directly even in this light. He imagines sliding his hand down-- fuck, the very thought of feeling that heat against his palm. He fears that trying anything so bold and real might make him black out or throw up or go off in his own pants, so he sticks to pawing at Ben’s chest through the holes in his shirt.

“Do people know about you.” Ben makes it sound like it’s not a real question, probably because he can guess the answer.

“Know what about me,” Hux mutters, also not a real question.

“That you’re-- gay?”

“That would be right word in my case, yes.” Hux rarely even applies it to himself in his own head, though he’s long past denial. Though it’s accurate, the diction has never felt quite right to him.

“So do they?”

“No,” Hux says, wincing. That’s not quite true, but it’s hard to explain why. “I mean, Phasma does, but we only talk about it in this kind of-- glancing way, and I’m not even sure why anymore, because I don’t care that she knows. I’m sure Brendol has figured it out, but he’ll never admit it, and he won’t give me a hard time as long as I don’t, like, force him to think about it. If my mother was alive, maybe, but-- Since I’m all he has left--” Hux shrugs and drags his eyes up to Ben’s, then away again. “Mitaka probably knows. Sometimes I feel like Poe Dameron does, but I have no clue why, I haven’t even spoken to him since I was about eleven years old. He just looks at me with this dumb sympathy sometimes, ugh. Do people know about you, at your school?”

“Yeah. It’s not a big deal there.”

“Must be nice.”

“I guess. I mean, yeah. It is. Do you think you’d get shit for it here?”

“I can’t really know for sure, can I?”

“Yeah.”

Ben touches Hux’s face, coaxing him to meet his eyes again. Hux waits to feel annoyed that they’re talking about this, which he likes to pretend is such a non-issue that he doesn’t even think about it, except at three or four o’clock in the morning sometimes, when he’s lying awake. But after the initial throat-tightening weirdness comes an unexpected calm, and he’s glad Ben asked, he’s just so fucking glad that Ben is here.

“Tell me about your school,” Hux says. “Is it posh? Do you have an organic juice bar and a yoga room?”

“Actually, yeah.” Ben wrinkles his nose and grins. “We totally have that shit.”

“I knew it. And the teachers, are they all old hippies? Do you sit in circles and talk about your feelings in geometry class?”

“I’m in trig,” Ben says, clearly intending to brag. “Not geometry, and no, we actually do real schoolwork in our classes, you know, between our daily emotional meltdowns.”

“I’m in trig, too,” Hux says, sharpening his tone to match Ben’s. “Honors trig, actually, and I’m the only sophomore in the class.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t cry that much anymore, and my school isn’t actually just a daycare for fuck-ups and hippies, it’s a good school and I had to apply to get in, and only like six percent of the applicants are accepted--”

“Then why did you run away, genius?”

They stare at each other, eyes narrowing. Ben grabs the front of Hux’s shirt and yanks him forward, kissing him differently now, breathing hard into his mouth and dragging his teeth against Hux’s tender bottom lip. Hux whines and does the same to Ben, nipping at him and panting when Ben moves down to kiss and suck at his neck. He tugs at Ben’s hair a bit, experimentally, and moans when Ben growls in response, sinking his teeth into the soft skin under Hux’s jaw.

“I loved fighting with you,” Hux says, remembering this aloud. “I-- You hit me with a fucking nutcracker two weeks after my-- I loved that, I needed that, you--”

He’s not going to actually talk about his mother’s funeral right now, but it’s true, it was important, that everybody was treating Hux like he was suddenly made of glass except for Ben, who was the same Ben as ever, impossible and angry and rising to all of Hux’s baiting taunts. Hux had needed to fight, to hurt like that rather than how he was always hurting anyway; it had helped in some strange way. He’d felt tough, bleeding from the head. Like maybe he would actually survive her death after all.

“I’m sorry,” Ben says, still kissing Hux’s neck.

“Sorry? Ha, no, I-- I have this scar, I sort of love it, I don’t know, now it just makes me think of you--”

Ben sits back looking remorseful but also hungry and somewhat frantic, as if Hux is a meal he’ll need to eat quickly. Hux pushes back his fringe and grins when Ben’s gaze slides to the scar. It’s just a little white dash, about half the size of the base of the nutcracker that Ben nailed Hux with after Hux called him a crybaby at a holiday assembly during which Ben had gotten visibly upset after having stage fright and forgetting his lines.

“You were so mean,” Ben says, brushing his fingertips over the scar. Hux presses into the touch, which feels like some kind of circle closing and also good enough to make him shiver.

“I just knew how to provoke you,” Hux says. “You always gave me the response I wanted. You were always-- Giving me what I wanted, even when it was a nutcracker to the head.”

“I got in major, major trouble for that.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I mean your mom had just--”

Ben slides his hand down to cup Hux’s jaw and gives him an apologetic stare, his lips twitching. Hux shrugs, though it’s true that he still doesn’t talk about it, even now. Following Brendol’s example, mostly.

“I suppose you have to talk about your feelings all the time,” Hux says, looking down at Ben’s mouth when he speaks. “At that school.”

“Yeah. But it’s not, like. The worst thing. It doesn’t make you less of a man or any bullshit like that.”

Clearly Ben is thinking of Hux’s father, too.

“I actually saw him cry,” Hux says. He looks toward the valley, at the shadows from the bonfire. It must be quite big now, really roaring. “You know, when she was sick and when she died, he kept it from me if-- But last year, I actually saw him-- He went on this year-long bender after he got fired. And he. I don’t even remember exactly what I said to set him off, but I was sick of picking up after him and he cracked me across the face one night for saying something about it, you know, for daring to mention it. We were both sort of stunned after he did it, like, frozen, and then he just broke down, completely-- To see him sobbing like that, that was worse-- I’d rather he’d have hit me again.”

Ben exhales noisily and nudges Hux’s cheek with his nose, trying to get Hux to look at him. Hux can’t look at him. He’s not sure what would happen if he did. Nothing good, certainly. Ben relents and puts his hand on the back of Hux’s neck, his other arm looping around Hux’s waist and tugging him closer.

“I mean it’s fine,” Hux says, sharpening his tone again when he feels something fluttering in his throat like a threat. “It’s better now. He mostly lets me do what I want, he got a new job, and he doesn’t drink as much, since-- It’s fine.”

He says so like he’s arguing with Ben about it. Ben doesn’t say anything, just lets Hux hide his face against his throat and curl onto his chest. Hux grips the sleeve of Ben’s shirt and holds it so tightly that he’s sure he’s widening the holes there. He’s mashing everything that’s trying to expand within him as flat as he can get it, even as his shoulders jump and his breath hiccups. He can feel his eyelashes getting wet, and knows Ben will feel it, too, against his skin, just over his thudding pulse.

“It’s okay,” Ben says, whispering.

Hux shakes his head. He doesn’t trust his voice to make a real argument that it’s not okay, crying like an idiot about something that happened over a year ago, with no real damage done, and on this one night in his life when he was maybe going to get to be happy. He leaves his face pressed very tightly to Ben’s throat, even as he coats it with incriminating tears, until the whole side of Ben’s neck is slippery.

Ben strokes Hux’s hair and lets him make an ass of himself without comment. Hux wants to backtrack, to not even attempt to talk about any of this. How could he have so overestimated his ability to do so without transforming back into the wibbling child he had to kick into submission when his mother was gone? He’d worked so fucking hard. Even Ben, with all his breakdowns and tears and messy emotions everywhere all the time, has never seen Hux cry before. Not even a little. And that was a record Hux was quite proud of. He’d certainly held it over Ben’s head often enough as a kid.

What is wrong with you, Solo? I didn’t even cry when my mother died.

Only he did, so much, when he was alone and out of sight, buried in the blankets on his bed.

“It’s okay,” Ben says again when Hux has at least got his eyes to stop leaking. Hux attempts to use his hair to dry the side of Ben’s neck, as surreptitiously as possible, which is not very.

“I’m just-- I’m tired,” Hux says, regretting it when his voice still sounds all cut up. “I hardly slept last night.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know, people were saying you were-- Here, that you’d escaped from some awful place where you’d been taken. I thought maybe you’d want to kill me or something.”

“Oh, jesus.” Ben laughs; he actually seems flattered, his fingers still soothing through Hux’s hair. “Why would I want to kill you, exactly?”

“Because I abandoned you, or, I don’t know, it’s stupid, but it kept me up all night, this kind of horrible dread.”

“Of seeing me?”

“No, of never seeing you again, in fact.”

Hux lifts his head then, tentatively, still not meeting Ben’s eyes. He can feel Ben looking at him, seeing his splotchy cheeks, red eyes, and the hot blush of shame that’s surely spread all the way to his ears.

“It’s crazy,” Ben says. “I didn’t even realize I was still so in love with you.”

Hux looks up at him then, feeling the slow roll of those words as they tumble into his gut.

“But I totally fucking am,” Ben says, and he scoffs. “As soon as I saw you it was like, instant. Like, oh shit. Like getting punched, like-- Great, here we go again.”

“You can’t say you were in love with me back then,” Hux says. His voice is better now, at least, firmed up by pure shock. “You were twelve.”

“Uh. I loved you way before that, Hux.”

Hux has to look away, at nothing in particular. He hears Ben’s breath coming quicker. He feels it, too, because he’s still leaning on Ben, slumped against his chest. It’s so like Ben to dump an insane love confession onto this moment, spoiling things. Though Hux supposes he can’t complain, as he’s the one who just sobbed about his father like an infant.

“What will happen now?” Hux asks, because they might as well get this part over with.

“Now?”

“Yes, I mean-- Tomorrow, where will you go? Back to school, I imagine?”

“I don’t know.” Ben’s eyes are hard when Hux chances a peek at them. “I might get kicked out.”

“Why-- For leaving?”

“Yeah, and for refusing my medication. I just-- I hate it. And they won’t listen. And my parents think the fucking doctors always know best, but they don’t. This one doesn’t.”

“Yes, but-- Forgive me, but maybe whatever they had you taking was preventing you from doing things like running away with cult leaders who are collecting child brides along the highway.”

“I wouldn’t have been a bride, jesus!”

“Ben, that is hardly the point!”

Ben grunts and looks away, glowering now but still allowing Hux to cling to him, still holding him close. It’s gotten colder out, and the moon is behind clouds again. Down at the bonfire, someone is playing a guitar. Probably fucking Poe.

“The point,” Hux says, “Is that-- and brace yourself for the stupidest thing I’ve ever said, because here it comes-- The point is that I want you to be my fucking boyfriend, okay, and if you’re agreeable to that I’d like to know where you’re going to be, you know, living, come tomorrow.”

Hux isn’t sure that he’s ever managed to knock Ben speechless before, but he seems to have done it now. Ben peers at him with his eyebrows lifted, searching Hux’s face as if he’s waiting to see him laugh and deny that he meant that. Hux considers it, because his cheeks are so hot they must be nearly purple by now.

“I just made out with you under an oak tree for half an hour,” Hux says instead. “Are you really so shocked?”

“I’m not-- Shocked just.” Ben lets out a shaky breath and presses his forehead to Hux’s. “It’s just weird to actually get something you wished on fucking stars for as a kid. It’s never happened to me before.”

Hux withholds a groan at the mention of wishing on stars. Ben is truly unbelievable. Hux is forced to picture him at Disney World with his parents, tearfully peering up at the fireworks show and making a demented wish that spiteful little Armitage Hux would someday cry and beg to be his boyfriend. Of course Ben wanted a fucking boyfriend at age ten, of course. It’s so like him, over the top and audacious and embarrassing.

And yet: Hux is kissing him for it, more desperately than he’s ever done anything.

“You haven’t answered either of my questions,” Hux says, murmuring this against Ben’s wet mouth after he’s allowed this to go on for so long that his lips are throbbing again.

“Questions?” Ben says, looking dazed. His voice sounds even deeper now, maybe because he’s hard. Hux can feel it against his thigh.

“My questions,” Hux says, grabbing Ben’s face when he tries to duck in for another kiss. “About-- The stupid boyfriend thing, and also what you’re going to do next.”

“Just tell me what to do,” Ben says, looking so pathetic that Hux almost misses how arousing this request is. “Please, Hux-- Emperor. I await your command.”

“Oh, jesus,” Hux says, but he’s beaming, resisting the urge to literally squirm with happiness while Ben gives him a pleading look, seemingly serious. “Okay, well. I can’t speak to your medication needs, obviously, but I do think-- It sounds like you otherwise really like your school, in Vermont.”

Ben groans and lets his head fall back. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s pretty, uh. I’m actually am kind of cool there, Hux.”

“Christ, of course you are.” Hux tries not to look disgusted when Ben tips his head forward again. “Have you had a boyfriend before, up there? Do you have one already?”

“No.” Ben seems to at least be trying not to smile smugly. He’s failing. “I mean, yes, I’ve had one before, sorta-- But I don’t have one right now.”

“I guess you’ve done all sorts of things, then.” Hux casually moves his thigh away from Ben’s tented pants. He’d thought maybe Ben was thrilled just to have some nervous pressure there, but that was clearly a ridiculous assumption.

“Who cares what I’ve done?” Ben says, flushing. “It was awkward and lame, mostly.”

“Right, I’m sure.”

“It was, though. I was just kind of settling for whatever I could get, so it was usually kinda depressing. The guys I really wanted never wanted me. Until you, until literally like, this moment.”

“Hm. Anyway, you’re going to go back. Aren’t you?”

“You tell me.”

“Ben, I’m serious.”

“So I am!”

“I think you should,” Hux says, though it makes his ribs ache to admit it. “At least to finish your sophomore year, yeah? And you could come home-- If you want-- For Thanksgiving, and winter break. And then for summer, and then-- If, at that point, you wanted to come back here for school, well.” Hux adjusts his posture, and his tone. “We can reexamine the issue at that time.”

“Okay.” Ben’s eyes brighten. “What else?”

“What do you mean, what else?”

“What else should I do next?”

He’s probably hoping for some kind of lewd response, but Hux has something different in mind. A true test to see if Ben will do as he asks.

“I think you should go to your parents’ house,” Hux says. “So they’ll know you’re okay. Tonight-- But not until just before midnight, just before my curfew.”

Ben face falls, but he’s nodding. “I know,” he says, mumbling. “I-- I know.”

“They must be flipping the fuck out. Have you let them know you’re all right, at least?”

“I left Rey some cryptic messages saying I’m fine, and told her to pass them along. I used pay phones, so they couldn’t track my cell.”

“Where the hell did you find functioning pay phones?”

“Snoke knew where some were.”

“God, of course he did. What did you even talk about with him? How did you meet?”

“I was at a coffee shop near the school, trying to figure out what to do next. Trying to get up the nerve to really run, I guess. It was raining, and I was soaked. I didn’t have any money for a drink. Snoke walked up to me with this mocha thing with whipped cream and said they’d given him the wrong drink, and did I want his while he went back to reorder.”

Hux groans. Ben smiles as if he’s enjoying telling this horror story already, when less than two hours ago this mocha-bearing predator was literally chasing them through the woods whilst cackling.

“Then he came back with his drink and asked if he could sit with me,” Ben says. “I felt like I had to say yes, because, like, I was drinking this thing he’d given me. Then he started talking to me about what I was studying, and he was actually pretty smart, like, we talked about philosophy--”

“Of course you did.”

“And theater, because I’m doing theater now, so go ahead and start making fun of me for that.”

“I’ll refrain for now.”

They talk for hours, sitting there at the base of the tree and pausing occasionally to kiss until their puffy lips feel raw enough to require rest. Ben tells Hux about the road trip with Snoke, about his school and the friends and enemies he’s made there, and about the play he’s writing. Hux manages not to roll his eyes much. He loves Ben, loves this so much fucking much, never wants Ben to stop talking, but at least half of what Ben says is still ridiculous and overwrought, and even if Hux loves those parts, too, he can’t help judging.

Hux tells Ben about what he’s missed at home: who is still an asshole, who became an asshole in the interim, who thinks they’re hot shit now and who has simply continued thinking they’re hot shit.

“So you mostly just hang out with Phasma and Mitaka?” Ben asks, and Hux enjoys what he thinks is some lingering jealousy in the way Ben pronounces Mitaka’s name.

“Yes, mostly. Phasma has no qualms about imposing upon any social gathering she can physically access, so sometimes I get dragged along on more glamorous adventures. And Mitaka has started bringing this little shithead named Thanisson around. A fucking freshman. He makes fun of my accent.”

“Want me to kick his ass?”

“Yes. But no, not really. I think he might be, ugh, Mitaka’s boyfriend. If you want to peek over the cliff there, you might be able to see them making out behind a boulder or something.”

“No thanks. He’s probably just jealous.”

“Who-- Thanisson?”

“Yeah, that Mitaka used to like you, or maybe still does.”

Hux makes a face. “I don’t know where you’re getting that from.” As soon as he wakes up tomorrow he’s going to begin hounding Mitaka to take down whatever awful picture of him that gave Ben this impression. He’ll threaten a lawsuit if necessary, but Mitaka usually does what Hux commands without hesitation.

“Maybe he’s jealous of your accent, too,” Ben says, tracing Hux’s sore lips with one finger. “I was so fucking jealous when you moved here, sounding like that.”

“Really?” Hux had been seven years old, nearly eight. They moved to this town to be near the office of a doctor who was trying a revolutionary treatment which did not save his mother. Brendol talked constantly about moving back to the UK after she died, and Hux lived in fear of it, mostly because his rivalrous friendship with Ben felt like the only thing in the world that still belonged to him, though also because his English grandparents are terrifying conservatives and he already sensed that people like them would someday hate him, though he wasn’t sure why yet.

“I used to try to do your accent,” Ben says. “At home, in secret, I’d record myself to see if I was getting it right. One of the characters in my play is British.”

“Does he have red hair?” Hux is joking, but the look on Ben’s face makes him worry.

“Ideally he would,” Ben says. “But there aren’t any talented red-haired actors at my school. And the wigs we’ve got in wardrobe are fucking awful.”

Hux actually drifts off to sleep at one point with his head on Ben’s shoulder, possibly while Ben is discussing his play. When he wakes he experiences a brief stab of panic before he remembers where he is and feels Ben’s chest rising and falling beneath him. The next thing he feels is guilt for dozing off while Ben spoke, but when he lifts his head Ben smiles at him, seemingly unoffended.

“You really were tired,” Ben says. He neatens Hux’s fringe, his fingertips tickling over the old nutcracker scar when he does.

“What time is it?” Hux asks. Only a few voices from down in the valley echo upward now.

“I’d have to turn my phone on to tell you the time,” Ben says. “I’ve got it turned off--”

“So it can’t be tracked by your parents, I know.” Hux groans and rubs at his eyes before digging his own phone from his pocket. He curses when he sees it’s only half an hour till midnight. “I’m going to have to beg a ride from someone down there,” Hux says, wincing. “Or I won’t make it back in time. Brendol probably won’t care, but, just in case-- I’d really rather not be grounded if you’re going to be around at all, tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Ben nods and kisses Hux’s cheek, yawns. “Yeah, tomorrow-- It’s Halloween.”

“Indeed.”

“I’ll be here.” Ben kisses Hux on the lips for what Hux has to accept as one last time, at least for tonight. “I might be grounded, though. I mean, I definitely will be.”

“Right,” Hux says glumly. He lets Ben help him up, then allows Ben drape to his jacket around his shoulders. Hux threads his arms through the sleeves, overcome for a moment by the scent of Ben all around him-- sweat and the staleness of that old house, but also things much finer, like woodsmoke, leather, warm skin. The jacket is enormous on Hux, and he wears it like armor as they make their way slowly down the steep slope that leads into the valley, Hux praying that someone who remains at the dwindling bonfire will have a car. He’s not sure what’s going through Ben’s head as they approach the others, until Rey sees them coming and he can guess well enough. Only she, Finn and Poe are in sight, all three staring at Hux and Ben with open shock.

“Ben!” Rey shouts, her eyes wild with some combination of glee and outrage. She runs at Ben full force, fists pumping. Hux steps away, standing clear.

“Hey,” Ben says in a kind of grunt, trying to play it cool even as he allows Rey to catapult onto him in a hug that’s also kind of like a punch, making him stumble backward a bit as he absorbs her weight. When she pulls back she tries to make her spritely face look furious, and she punches Ben in the sternum. His only response is another grunt.

“What the hell are you-- Where have you-- What is going on?” Rey glances at Hux when Ben doesn’t immediately answer. “Armitage?” she says, pronouncing this in a way that makes Hux snarl a little. “What were you two doing up there?”

“Nothing,” Ben says. “Just catching up.”

“Catching up? Ben, you fucking ran away! And those-- Those phone messages? You said you were on a spirit quest, what the fuck!”

“Hey, man,” Poe says, walking over with his calming voice and stupid expression of peaceable understanding, the one he always wears for Hux, who doesn’t strictly want it. Finn hangs back, looking uncertain while Poe clasps Ben’s arm. “It’s good to see you,” Poe says. He sounds like a fucking teacher, or a guidance counselor. “Rey was real worried. Have you been by your parents’ place yet?”

“Not yet,” Ben says, tightly. He’s always been jealous of Poe, who plays every sport and is a member of almost every school club, just as Ben’s mother once was. Poe has been winning the Governor’s Honors Star Pupil Community Excellence Award for as long as Hux can remember. Ben’s mother is the Chair of the board that awards it.

“Are you okay?” Rey asks, shaking Ben by both arms. Her eyes have gotten wet, just slightly.

“Yes.” Ben glances at Hux, who feels implicated. “We just need a ride back to town. I’m going, you know. Home now. I’m sorry.”

Rey hugs him again, more briefly this time, then steps back to let Finn slide his arm around her shoulders. Finn seems as stunned by the now-oversized spectre of Ben as Hux felt when he first saw him.

“Finn is my boyfriend now,” Rey says, clapping her hand against Finn’s chest. “Just so you know.”

“My mom told me,” Ben says. He stares at Finn, who straightens his shoulders and stares back, looking like he’s ready for a fight if one is required. “Hi,” Ben says.

“Uh.” Finn glances at Rey, who smiles. “Hey, it’s-- We’re really glad you’re okay.”

“So glad,” Poe says, nodding, again with his guidance counselor energy. He brings his hands together, clasping them in front of his chest and shaking them there a few times. Possibly it’s some kind of zen ritual. Hux feels himself snarling again. “How about we all head home now?” Poe says, eyebrows lifting when he sees the look on Hux’s face. “Finn and Rey have dibs on the cabin seats, but you guys are welcome to ride in the truck bed.”

“That suits me fine,” Hux says, relieved that they won’t be forced to make small talk with the others during the drive. “Thank you.”

He clambers into the truck bed behind Ben, disliking the dirty floor of it very much but unwilling to take Ben’s jacket off and lay it down as they did beneath that tree. That tree, Hux thinks, trying to spot it up on the hill in the dark as Poe starts the truck and pulls out of the gravel lot near the clearing where the bonfire has been doused. When the clouds reveal the moon Hux sees the tree in the distance, and his whole chest aches for what they had up there, something that’s already over, even as Ben finds his hand and squeezes.

“Give me your number,” Hux says, feeling desperate. The drive will take less than fifteen minutes. It’s not enough. He pulls out his phone, wielding it clumsily in his left hand while Ben keeps hold of his right. “We can Skype, or whatever, can’t we?” Hux doesn’t like how unsteady his voice sounds. The air feels so much colder already, blowing across the back of the truck bed as Poe picks up speed. “You can be my fucking Skype boyfriend who lives in another state.”

It already feels like something Hux made up, all of it, even as Ben peers at him with a look of sleepy adoration.

“Everyone at school will be jealous,” Ben says. “When they find out I scored with my first love. And that he’s a hot redhead.”

“Scored,” Hux mumbles, shaking his head. “Go on, give me your number, hurry up.”

Ben powers his phone back on and enters Hux’s number when they’re only five minutes away from Ben’s childhood home, any need for subterfuge expired. Ben must be nervous, because he’s gotten quiet. It occurs to Hux, when Ben yawns for the fifth time since they left the bonfire site, that he probably hasn’t slept much since leaving school.

“Was it even hard?” Ben asks, when Hux is looking up at the stars.

“What?” Hux expects to find Ben smirking, making some kind of dick joke, but he looks suddenly very sad, in the old way that had frightened Hux as a boy. He’s staring down at their clasped hands. “Was what hard?” Hux asks, shifting so that his mouth is closer to Ben’s ear. He doesn’t care if the others see.

“When you stopped being my friend.” Ben attempts to laugh, but it’s not remotely convincing, his fingers twitching between Hux’s. “Was it like, at all hard to keep away from me? When I scared you away with that stupid poem?”

“Are you joking?” Hux stares until Ben finally looks up at him. Poe is driving through Ben’s neighborhood now, nearly at his house. “It was the second most miserable thing that’s ever happened to me,” Hux says. “Making myself do that, out of fear, or because I hated myself, or fucking-- Whatever, I was a dumb kid. And I wanted-- If you had just shown up crying on my doorstep or something, I would have crumbled. I would have been yours again if you’d so much as looked at me sadly.”

“But I didn’t, I couldn’t-- There was no fucking way I was going to roll over and show you my belly again, after you--”

“I know--”

“I mean, you broke my fucking heart, do you even know?”

“Yes.” Hux swallows. The truck is slowing, pulling up to Ben’s house. “Yes, I-- I broke mine, too, but you’ve just now put it back together, so don’t get mad at me all over again, all right? Please?”

“I’m not mad,” Ben says, whispering. The truck is idling. The Solos’ front porch light is on. “But you can’t bail on me again without even-- You just can’t. Okay?”

“Okay.”

To prove that he means it, Hux kisses Ben’s hand, though he can see from the corner of his eye that Poe is watching them from the driver’s seat, waiting for them to get out.

Ben climbs out first and goes to the passenger side window, where Rey has stuck her head out. Hux gets out, too, though walking the rest of the way will mean cutting it very close with his curfew.

“Come in with me?” Ben begs when Rey reaches out to tug on his hair.

“Hell no,” she says. “I’ll come over tomorrow, though, I promise. First thing. But you really need to do this-- You know, alone, I think.”

Ben groans, but he’s nodding. He thanks Poe and waves to Finn, who continues to look like he’s not quite sure he knows who Ben is anymore. Poe drives off, and Hux is left standing at the end of the driveway beside Ben. They both stare at the Solo house. It’s smaller than Hux’s house, though Hux would wager that Leia and Han have far more money. Brendol likes to put on airs.

Bugs sing in the bushes under the house’s front windows, and somewhere in the backyard an owl hoots three times in quick succession. Hux listens to Ben breathe and wonders if he should reach for Ben’s hand. Before he can decide, the lock on the front door clicks open from within. Ben turns away, already breathing more heavily. The door slams open and Han appears, looking murderous.

“Ben!” he shouts. There’s real fury in it, but something else, too, a broken thing that’s asking to be repaired. Hux wonders if he should run, but he can’t seem to move as Han stomps toward them, Ben still turned away and pinching his eyes shut now, grimacing pitifully like a child pretending that he can hide from the inevitable.

Han is breathing hard, too. He grabs Ben by both shoulders, spinning him around. There’s fear on Han’s face as he takes in the sight of Ben’s, as if he’s afraid to find some evidence of injury there. Ben is attempting to keep his expression hard and flat. He’s mostly failing; even as Hux backs away he can see Ben’s lips start to shake.

“What--” Han says. “Where--” He touches Ben’s face and turns back for the house, where he’s left the door hanging open. “Leia!” he shouts, loud enough to wake the neighbors. “It’s him!”

“I’m sorry,” Ben says when Han turns back to him. “Dad. I didn’t mean to--”

Han huffs and yanks Ben into his arms, hugging him so fiercely than Hux has to look away, blinking a sudden burning sensation from his eyes.

“Don’t you ever--” Han says, his voice very clipped as he holds Ben against him, something like tears or rage or both held back behind it. “Don’t ever do that to us again, not ever, you-- We were out of our heads, what were you-- Thinking, what, why--”

“I know, I’m sorry, I don’t know--”

Leia appears in the doorway just as Hux is wondering if he can slip away, forgotten. He remains frozen in place as he watches Leia move swiftly across the front walk and down the driveway, her eyes locked on Ben’s. Han steps away, and Ben falls into Leia’s arms when they open for him. He crumples against her with an apologetic whine, dropping his head to her shoulder.

“Mom,” he says, a tiny croak that Hux can barely hear. Leia closes her eyes and strokes Ben’s hair, kisses his big ear and whispers something into it.

“You,” Han says, pointing at Hux, who had begun to believe he really might slip away unnoticed. “You’re Brendol’s kid, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Han does a half eyeroll thing, presumably at being called ‘sir.’ “Did you run away, too?” he asks. “Do I need to call up that-- Your father?”

“No,” Ben says, lifting his head from Leia’s shoulder. “Hux was just getting a ride home, he’s got a midnight curfew. Poe dropped us off.”

“You were with Poe?” Leia asks. She clears her throat when she hears herself sounding broken up, and dabs at the corners of her eyes while still peering up at Ben.

“No.” Ben snorts. “You really think Poe wouldn’t have told you right away if I was with him?”

“I hardly know what to think, Ben. Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Again, Ben looks at Hux as if to give him credit for this. Hux shrinks, feels himself blushing. “I’m okay,” Ben says. “I just-- I need to sleep, I haven’t slept in like two days.”

“C’mon,” Han says, slinging his arm around Ben’s shoulders. “Get inside, hell. Maybe you’d like to personally get in touch with the Vermont police and tell them to call off the search?” Han turns back to Hux when Ben only grunts at that suggestion. “You need a ride home?” Han asks.

“No,” Hux says, though it’s got to be midnight by now and the walk to his house will take ten minutes. “Thank you, sir, but it’s not far--”

“Nonsense,” Leia says, so sharply that Hux feels like he’s in trouble, and he supposes he probably is. “It’s the middle of the night, you’re a child, and I can smell the rum on this one’s breath.” She glances at Ben. “So I’m going to take a wild guess and assume he shared it with you. I’ll drive you, I know where Brendol’s house is. Let’s go, now.”

Ben gives Hux an apologetic look. Hux would love to be rescued from Leia’s offer of a ride, but he knows Ben is no position to refuse anything his parents suggest right now.

“I’ll text you later,” Ben says to Hux.

Han snorts. “Oh, so you do still have your phone, huh? That’s interesting, that’s good to know.” He marches Ben toward the front door, his arm still around Ben’s broad shoulders. Ben looks back at Hux once more and waves.

Hux flinches when Leia takes hold of his arm.

“This way,” she says, softly, maybe because she’s noticed the open terror on his face.

There’s a black Audi sedan parked in the driveway. Hux climbs into the front passenger seat, hands shaking as he buckles his seatbelt. As soon as Leia shuts the driver’s side door he feels trapped. They have interacted before, of course, but it was always tense and weird. Hux has never liked the way she looks at him, at everyone, as if she can see straight into people and read their true intentions. He’s newly glad that he managed not to come in his pants at any point this evening.

“So,” Leia says once she’s backed out onto the road and put the car in drive. “Care to enlighten me on what the hell is going on with him?”

“He just--” Hux was going to blurt everything as if coerced, that easily, but he reconsiders, not wanting Ben to feel betrayed. “Something about his, um. Medication?”

“Ah, this again. I’ve told him, if he needs to adjust his dosage or try something new, all he has to do is speak to his doctor about it. He operates under the assumption that no one actually listens to him, especially the people we pay to listen to him.”

Hux realizes then that she’s nervous, too, speaking rapidly and without a filter, both of her hands on the wheel. There’s a glint of repressed panic at the corner of her eye, and that look reminds Hux so much of Ben.

“Well, go on,” Leia says, her expression morphing into pure steel when she glances over at Hux. “How did he even get here?”

“I’m sorry, but. Can’t you ask him?”

Leia sighs. For a while she’s silent, as if weighing how much interrogation she has the energy for right now.

“Haven’t seen you in a while,” she says, watching the road. “You and Ben used to be joined at the hip.”

“Yeah. But, he. Moved away for school, so.”

“Mhm, I seem to remember the two of you detaching from each other before things got that drastic with him. He would never tell me why.”

“It was my fault,” Hux says, staring at the windshield.

“What was your fault?”

“Everything. That he got bad enough to need to be sent away. I did that, I abandoned him, and for no good reason, just because--”

“Armitage,” Leia says, so kindly that Hux looks over her. He hasn’t heard anyone say his name like that in a long, long time. “It wasn’t you, or anything you did. It really wasn’t. It’s much more complicated than that, I’m afraid.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Hux hates the way his voice hitched with the question, but he doesn’t mind the sympathetic look Leia gives him when she hears it, or the way she briefly touches the back of his head, as if she couldn’t resist.

“Yes,” she says, the steely look returning to her eyes. “It just takes work. And he has to do some of the work himself. And he’s not always willing to. Maybe you could--” She shakes her head. “Sorry, no, I’m delirious, I haven’t slept-- But I do like the idea that you two might be friends again, even if it’s a long distance friendship. Is that something that’s happening?”

“Yes, yeah.” Hux is nodding furiously when she looks over at him. “That is happening, yes. I really missed him, I don’t have that many friends--”

He makes himself shut up, staring out the passenger side window as his house comes into view. Leia puts the car in park after they’ve rolled past the mailbox.

“Your dad doing okay?” She asks this as if she knows the answer: yes, but then again, not really.

“Okay enough for now,” Hux says. It’s the first time he’s ever answered this question honestly.

Leia peers at the Hux household, bending over the steering wheel. All the windows are dark, and Brendol forgot to leave the front light on.

“Well,” Leia says. “If you should need-- Anything. Any friend of Ben’s is a friend of ours, and also a priceless commodity, frankly. Though I’m told he’s quite popular up north. I think the kids at his new school respond more favorably to his-- Showmanship, shall we say. But you.” She looks over at Hux. He can only bring himself to meet her gaze from the corner of his eye. “He’d kill me if he knew I was saying so, but he’s put me through hell the past two days so I’m going to say it anyway. You’re special, I think, to him.”

Hux nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“Is that his jacket?” she asks.

“Oh-- Yes, sorry, here--”

“No, no, keep it, you can return it tomorrow.”

Hux dares a glance at her then, and sees that she understands at least some of how tonight went.

“Thank you,” he says, feeling meeker and younger and smaller than he has in years.

“Take care,” she says. “I hope we’ll see you around-- More of you, I mean.”

“Yes.” Hux opens the car door with a visibly shaky hand, steps out and bends down to peer back in at Leia, unable to stop nodding. “Yes, I hope-- Yeah. I’ll be around. Thank you, again.”

“Thanks for not calling me ma’am,” Leia says, and when she grins Hux sees something of Ben in it.

He crosses the yard in a blur of churning emotions that seem big enough to swallow him up entirely, feeling suddenly drunk, or maybe just hungover. Leia waits until she’s seen him unlock the front door and slip safely inside. He stands at the narrow window near the door and watches her drive away. When he turns, the dark house seems alien, like a bad dream he thought he’d awakened from.

Brendol isn’t awake to catch him breaking curfew. There are three beer bottles near the sink, which isn’t bad, though he certainly had whiskey as well. Hux opens the fridge and stands staring into it for a while. He’s extremely hungry, but nothing looks good to him. He feels his phone buzzing in his pocket before he can decide on anything, and he pulls it out to see five new texts from Ben. Then comes a sixth, then a seventh.

Reeling and scared in the back of Poe’s truck, they’d decided to use code names for each other in their phones.

Kylo Ren: hey I’m in my room now
Kylo Ren: pretending to sleep
Kylo Ren: I’M SO SORRY about my mom jesus fuck
Kylo Ren: is she being a dick
Kylo Ren: what is she saying
Kylo Ren: is she still there???
Kylo Ren: please don’t listen to anything she says about me

An eighth message arrives while Hux stands there smiling down at his phone, then a ninth and tenth.

Kylo Ren: are you home yet?
Kylo Ren: text me when you’re home
Kylo Ren: please

Hux feels bad for making him wait, though he wonders how many more messages might come if he held out for another two minutes.

Emperor: I’m home. Everything’s fine. She wasn’t mean and didn’t say anything bad about you.
Kylo Ren: are you sure
Emperor: Yes, Lord Ren, calm yourself.
Kylo Ren: haha
Kylo Ren: I missed you calling me that.
Emperor: Me too.

Hux eats Oreos at the kitchen table and exchanges texts with Ben until he can hardly hold his eyes open. He goes up to his bedroom, puts his phone under his pillow and crosses the hall to brush his teeth, wash his face. He had assumed he would frantically jerk off as soon as he dropped into bed, but now it seems like that can wait until morning. Stripped down to his underwear, he rolls onto his side in bed and pulls out his phone, grinning and suppressing the urge to kiss the screen when he sees new messages from Ben.

Kylo Ren: so I talked to my mom a little
Kylo Ren: she said i can’t leave the house and i have to go back to school on monday
Kylo Ren: but she also said you could come over tomorrow and do halloween with us
Kylo Ren: if you want
Kylo Ren: rey and her parents and probably finn will be here
Kylo Ren: they’re gonna carve pumpkins and roast the seeds and all that
Kylo Ren: they probably even bob for fucking apples
Kylo Ren: all that corny shit
Kylo Ren: but at least we could hang out together
Kylo Ren: watch scary movies maybe
Kylo Ren: hux?
Kylo Ren: are you asleep?

Emperor: I’m here.
Emperor: I’ll come over tomorrow.
Emperor: I’ll even bob for apples if necessary.

Kylo Ren: good
Kylo Ren: and that’s right you will
Kylo Ren: got an apple you can bob for right here hux
Kylo Ren: just kidding
Kylo Ren: miss you already

Emperor: Me too
Emperor: Get some rest.

Kylo Ren: ok
Kylo Ren: you too

Hux stares at the screen, his eyes watering more from exhaustion than emotion, though it hurts to even hesitate as he wonders if he should actually send what he types next. If he were more clear-headed, he certainly wouldn’t. But it’s been so nice, this whole night of murky-headed stumbling into surprise after surprise. He tells himself not to be such a coward, hits send.

Emperor: I love you, Ben. Goodnight.

He stuffs his phone under his pillow and tries to resist checking to see what Ben’s response is, but when the phone buzzes a fifth time he can’t help himself. He blinks his eyes as clear as he can and reads the new texts.

Kylo Ren: oh god I love you too
Kylo Ren: hux
Kylo Ren: so much
Kylo Ren: sleep well
Kylo Ren: dream about me

Hux obeys this command slavishly, having so many dreams about Ben that he feels like he’s swimming through them, from one into another, all night long. Some are anxiety-wracked: running through the woods while pursued by an unseen enemy, or begging forgiveness as Ben cries about having his heart broken and refuses to kiss Hux again.

Most memorably, Hux dreams that he goes to Ben’s house for the Halloween festivities only to turn up at a fully restored Skywalker Mansion, where he is admitted into the house by the ghost of Anakin, a man with eighties hair who is blue and glowing, his face stern as he shows Hux into the drawing room where Ben sits in the chair Hux once proclaimed as his Imperial throne. The fireplace is roaring, and Ben is drinking wine. He’s also a vampire, something that is immediately evident and somehow not scary at all. Ben smiles at Hux, showing his fangs, and beckons him closer.

They move through the many lavishly restored rooms of the house and the manicured grounds behind it, pausing occasionally so Ben can give Hux savage, welcome love bites. He sinks his fangs into Hux’s wrist first, then his neck, the soft swell of his bicep, the delicate crook of his elbow. Hux not only allows this but invites it greedily, tugging on the hood of Ben’s long, dark cloak to ask for more. In the dream it feels so good, incredible, like a kiss that sinks into his skin with vicious pleasure that belongs as much to him as it does to Ben.

At one point Ben lifts Hux’s shirt to press his sharp but painless teeth into the indent over Hux’s left hip, biting deeper, deeper, until Hux thinks Ben is going to tear a chunk of him clean away. He wouldn’t even protest if Ben did; he would moan with approval.

Hux wakes from this dream so sticky and sated that he has to lie perfectly still for a while, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom and trying to remember the last time he had an actual climactic sex dream. He’s certainly never had one so creative, but Ben has always brought Hux’s imaginative side out. When his mind is less fuzzy he digs out his phone to check the time. It’s almost ten in the morning, much later than Hux usually sleeps, even on a Saturday. He has four new messages from Ben, all sent about an hour earlier.

Kylo Ren: you can come over as early as you want
Kylo Ren: I looked up some pumpkin carving patterns
Kylo Ren: which is dorky as fuck I know haha
Kylo Ren: text me when you’re on your way ok?

Hux grins and rolls onto his side, opening a new text message not to Ben but to Phasma, unable to resist what now feels like the smuggest bragging.

Hux: So the news as of this morning is that I found our wayward Vampire Boy and he is now my boyfriend.

He’s still typing You’ll have to advise me on the delicacies of interstate Skype relationships when Phasma replies.

Phas: WHAT
Phas: WHEN
Phas: WHY
Phas: Well I know why
Phas: Poe came to my counter this morning
Phas: Ordered a PSL (lol) and told me he’d seen Ben
Phas: Said that Ben “looked well”
Phas: I asked what that meant
Phas: He said “bigger and more grown up”
Phas: So I take it Vampire Boy is fit now

Hux: He is indeed.
Hux: Like. Incredibly so.

Phas: Well done, Arms!
Phas: Come here and tell me everything!!
Phas: I’m stuck here til noon
Phas: On fucking Halloween, lame eh?
Phas: So many PSLs, Arms
Phas: So many people “treating themselves”
Phas: Fuckers

Hux laughs and sits up in bed, to make sure he’s not dreaming. He gets a head rush and goes to the window, yanks open the blinds. It’s ridiculously bright outside, and the light already has a golden edge to it, maybe just because it’s caught by so many trees along his street that have gone yellow and red, throwing off a kind of combined orangish glow.

He showers and dresses in a state of foggy glee that makes him nervous at moments, because he’s afraid that it might be like a pane of very fine glass, easy to shatter. By the time he makes his way downstairs he’s anxious to get to Ben’s house and see that it’s still the real Solo residence and not some vampire dream mansion. He almost misses Brendol in the den, watching the news in his robe.

Hux pauses in the foyer. Brendol half-turns, waiting to hear from him. He’s so cautious with Hux now. Hux can’t decide if he hates it. He could probably just do whatever he wanted. He hasn’t been punished for anything since that day Brendol smacked him. Not even when he got shit-faced at that New Year’s Eve party and came home looking green and stinking of booze.

“All right, Dad?” Hux says, still standing in the foyer.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, yep. You?”

“I’m-- Yeah.”

“Get in late?”

“A bit, sorry.”

Brendol shrugs one shoulder. “Get your breakfast?”

“I’m going to Starbucks, Phasma is working. She’ll give me free shitty pastry. I’ll, uh, probably be gone for most the day. You know, it’s Halloween--”

“Right, well, good. Have your fun. Be back by midnight.”

“Yes--” Hux considers the sir, wonders how it would sound now, then just drops it. “Did you get candy?” he asks. “For the trick-or-treaters?”

“Shit, I haven’t-- I’ll get some this afternoon.”

Brendol turns to Hux fully then, maybe to thank him for the reminder. Hux can’t remember the last time they actually met each other’s eyes. Still somewhat dazed, Hux lifts his hand and waves. Brendol waves back, as if from an already distant shore, looking back to see Hux standing on the deck of the ship that’s bearing him away. Hux thinks of his mother, how she once bought them matching bow ties. Hux had been five years old; it had been his fifth birthday, in fact. He’d felt very distinguished then, imitating his father. He remembers being glad that they had the same hair color, like it represented something special that Hux, too, had earned. He leaves the house before he can say anything stupid.

The cool, clear air outside makes him feel less like he’s floating through a good dream and more like he’s awake in the real world, moving toward something solidly good. He pulls out his phone, aware that Ben is probably checking his every five seconds.

Emperor: On my way to you now, just going to stop by Starbucks and pick something up first. You want anything?

Predictably, Ben’s response arrives before Hux can stuff the phone back into his pocket.

Kylo Ren: nah that’s ok thanks though
Kylo Ren: what time do you think you’ll get here?
Kylo Ren: only asking bc I’m about to take a shower
Kylo Ren: don’t want you to have to hang out with my parents while I’m naked
Kylo Ren: also
Kylo Ren: my friends tell me I text too much
Kylo Ren: i’m just a really fast typer
Kylo Ren: you can tell me if it’s too much though
Kylo Ren: i won’t get offended

Hux would normally consider strategy in this scenario: maybe leave the guy hanging for a while, make him sweat it out, make him want a response that much more. That seems like the smart thing to do, but Hux stops walking and types a message as soon as new ones from Ben stop popping up.

Emperor: It’s not too much. When you’re away at school I’m going to be desperate to hear from you nonstop, so.

He at least waits until he’s in sight of the Starbucks before pulling out the phone again. It’s only buzzed four times, maybe because Ben finally got in the shower after sending the fourth message.

Kylo Ren: ok good
Kylo Ren: cause you’re gonna hear from me nonstop for sure
Kylo Ren: miss you like crazy already, fuck man
Kylo Ren: get here soon

Walking into the Starbucks feels a bit like strolling across a sitcom set. Hux supposes it’s the inauthentic coziness, though the nutmeggy smell and the autumn light through the windows actually make the corporate-cultivated coziness somewhat authentic, in an ironic way. Phasma beams at him from behind the counter like she’s about to start clapping and cheering when she sees the look on his face. Hux can only imagine how ridiculous and giddy he must seem, even from a distance. It’s worth it, though. Feeling this way.

**