Chapter Text
His association – for lack of a better word – with Hux had started when the ginger nerd found him crying in the bathroom one day, during class hours, and had just watched him making a mess of himself without saying anything. Maybe he was getting off on seeing someone else humiliated or something. Kylo, slumping on a toilet seat, hadn’t trusted himself to insult him away, he wasn’t sure he would be able to form understandable words in his state. Hux didn’t try to help or ask what was wrong he just stared at him. After a few minutes, when Kylo had mustered enough will to try and whipe his eyes and his runny nose against his sleeve, not even bothering to use toilet paper and leaving dirty lines on the cloth, Hux finally spoke:
“I’d rather eat your snot then kiss Gibbs.”
So he had heard. A bunch of girls at lunch hours were probably insulted that Kylo had taken the right to sit at the other end of their table and they had decided to play a game between themselves.
“So, would you rather kiss Gibbs or…Kylo Ren?” the blond one with pretty pink nails had asked. She had said Kylo Ren like the very obviously despising quote that it was in her mouth.
“Ew Emma, how do you always manage to make these things so gross?”
“That’s the game’s requirement Tina. Like, that’s why we play it.”
In the end Tina had been fairly quick to pick Gibbs, the massive PE teacher who managed the feat of wearing a ponytail while being more than half bald and was sporting a healthy beer gut, because really, he might be ugly, but you’d have to be another kind of freak altogether to consider even wanting to smell Kylo Ren.
“Have you seen the size of this thing in the middle of his face? And the saucers that are his ears? He must have elephantiasis or something. Besides, I’m sure is room is like, full of dirty socks full of jeez”, had concluded Tina, approved by a general laughter of pure disgust.
Kylo had finished his meal quietly and then had managed to make it to the bathroom before letting it go. He hadn’t managed to stop when Hux showed himself though.
“Yeah but that’s because you’re a well-known sick fuck,” Kylo managed to answer after swallowing a sob, sniffling. The salt in his tears had made his skin dry. Drops were falling from the tap, indifferent. A tile was chipped and the next one was half broken. You could see some glue residue on the wall.
Hux smirked at him, like the whole business was a good joke, before finally unzipping his pants and taking a leak.
Kylo didn’t really know why the whole episode mattered, because he considered Hux to be underneath even him in the school’s hierarchy, but it did. They didn’t become friends, exactly, but they began to acknowledge each other in the hallways.
Hux was widely known as a horrible suck up to teachers, correcting the other students when their answers weren’t satisfactory, the last one to be picked in any sport’s game, —not because he was weak but because he was such an horrible cheat that whoever was suicidal enough to pick him always ended up loosing because of the advantages conferred to the opposing team–, always sneering at you with his nose up even when you gave him wedgies or threw food in his face. Once he got permission from a teacher to set up a chess club, and absolutely no one turned up. Even the ones at the very bottom of the food chain avoided him. No one even bothered to call him something else than by his family name. Compared to him, Kylo had the vague advantage of being a weird sorry emo and not just plain detestable.
But Kylo guessed he had nothing to loose in terms of reputation anyways, and after a while, they began to take their lunch together, more often then not in the parking lot. There was a sad piece of grass near the entrance, with a bent garbage disposal, and people mostly left them alone when they sat there. This was a great selling point, even if Kylo’s fingers started to get numb in the early November wind.
Hux had weird eating habits. His bag was always full of metal tins containing fish in water or in a kind of wine sauce. It stank. He always ate it very neatly though, with proper cutlery.
“Why do you always eat this shit?” Kylo asked him after the fourth of fifth time they’d eaten together.
“Proteins," Hux answered laconically. "I’m small, if someone ever corners me I want to be able to take it. Plus I’ll have you know that fish is very healthy.”
Somehow, the answer didn’t surprise Kylo. The redhead continued eating daintily with his fork, seemingly unbothered by the admission.
“Yeah? Why don’t you train instead?”
“I do that too. Judo lessons.”
A car left the parking lot, its exhaust system leaving a warm and foul trail in the air.
“I’ve never seen you react when they amuse themselves with you though,” Kylo remarked, before taking a bite of his sandwich with a wondering face.
“Well,” Hux explained haughtily, “I’d rather take revenge afterwards than scaring them away once and for all. They have to reveal themselves and then pay.”
“I’ve never heard of you taking revenge either,” Kylo countered.
“That’s because no one talks to you.”
“Asshole.” Kylo threw a piece of bread at him. Hux didn’t even bother to duck, didn’t even close his eyes.
“No, the truth is, that’s because I’m good. If I left evidence, I’d get punished. It’d defeat the purpose.” Hux answered, tossing neatly the empty tuna can in the garbage bin.
Kylo was kind of impressed. When people made fun of him, it hurt, and he wallowed in it to make it worth it. But it seemed to please Hux to be treated like shit, because then he had an excuse to hurt people back.
In light of this conversation, he wasn’t surprised to ear a ruckus one day after the morning classes while walking to his locker.
“Who the fuck would do that!” he heard a girl cry. Tina.
The hallway stank. More precisely, it smelled like shit. That was, Kylo discovered, because someone had injected some in Tina’s locker through the little breathing holes. It had apparently ruined both her lunch and her favourite sweater. People were beginning to flee the scene after having satisfied their curiosity, because the smell was really bad. Kylo left only after hearing with added pleasure that the janitor wouldn’t clean it up because her stuff wasn’t strictly school property, so Tina would have to do it herself. School staff wasn’t going to suffer the consequences of stupid school pranks.
For the first time in quite a long time, Kylo felt something like elation expand in his chest.
“I see what you meant”, he said when he sat down next to a sneering Hux in the parking lot.
“Yeah well, mackerel always gives me quite the bowel movement.”
* * *
As it turned out, Kylo quite enjoyed vengeance too. It didn’t deliver the instant gratification of physical violence, but you could inflect a longer lasting torment on whoever had wronged you. And Hux’s list, which he offered him to add to as he saw fit, was quite extensive. His list of retribution methods was quite well rounded too. Fake love letters were a good way to sow discord among groups of friends. Kylo was particularly impressed by Hux’s protocol of picking up drafts in the classroom dustbins and archive them for future use if he ever needed to copy someone’s writing. Anonymous notes to the principal pretending to be very anxious about a classmate abuse of illicit substances also proved quite disruptive and annoying, all the more so when they turned out to be justified.
“Can’t let the principal chase after ghosts after all,” Hux had say when Peter Guttman had been found to be carrying.
Peter Guttman had been very fond of giving Hux wedgies. Nobody had tried that on Kylo, because he didn’t look like he would take it without a fight. But Hux’s knitted jumpers sent quite another message. Now dear Peter would have other things to worry about.
Hux also liked to spit in the random shakes and bottles of water that people had the misfortune of leaving behind in the locker room. “They all have something to pay for anyway,” was Hux justification. Kylo was happy to provide him with healthy and non-judgemental loogies.
But what he enjoyed the most was messing up cars and bikes. There was a simple joy to destruction that he didn’t find in Hux’s careful planning and sly tricks. So when Hux unleashed him on a particular vehicle, he let repressed rage guide him, like a red humming haze.
* * *
It was pouring outside that day. They had to stay inside for lunch, and, of course, Tucker, emptied the remnants of his soda can into Hux’s neck while leaving the cafeteria.
“Nerds”, was all he said, a seemingly carefree gesture that provoked the glee of his clique.
Tucker and Hux were well acquainted as the former regularly used the later as a human stress relief device. Tucker felt very justified in that crusade because Hux had once mocked his girlfriend in history class for asking where the iron curtain was stacked after the cold war. It usually went quite well, Tucker having never been able to figure why he so often got flat tires lately.
But this time Kylo was there, and taking his revenge cold wasn’t a second nature for him yet. And so he got up, violently grabbed Tucker by his hoodie to make him take a step back, and punched him square in the face. Tucker let out a shocked noise, and right after that, a good amount of blood began to flood from his nose.
“Oh my god!” was the only thing his girlfriend managed in the relative silence this series of events had created in the room. She hurried to his side to put worried hands on him as if he was a poor lamb.
When the first few seconds of stupor passed, Tucker’s friend grabbed Kylo by his hair and managed to slam his face into the cafeteria table. He lifted it and was about to slam it again when Hux viciously planted his fork in his forearm. The avenger let out a wounded yelp, but Hux still got viciously backhanded for his trouble. The whole incident became a lot dirtier very fast.
Kylo and Hux only managed to avoid being suspended for three days because they were widely known, even among teachers, as bullied loners. Kylo admitted that it was a good thing that Hux usually went the quiet way to get revenge. They only got detention for the rest of the month, which would give them enough time to write a 5,000 words essay each about the ill conceived method of answering violence with violence.
“You imbecile,” Hux hissed at him, while they were walking back to the bus stop that afternoon, apparently under control expect for his blotched cheeks. The nap of his neck was still sticky with his sugar and he smelled like Mountain Dew.
“Now he’s going to be on to us. We could have wrecked him so good. Do you understand what you’ve done? This is a total waste. The principal didn’t even punish him more than us.”
He let a few moment of silence express his anger better than his words could.
“Worse than that, the school will phone my father. Then, on top of being humiliated and dirty, I’ll take a second beating. Not for getting into a fight mind you, but for getting picked on like a weakling.”
Kylo could see how only having to deal with the Mountain Dew and differed retribution would have been better. The air was turning cold and it felt nice against his throbbing temple and the scratch in his eyebrow.
“I’m sorry," he said. “It’s just that…I’ve never had someone to care about before. It messed with my judgment. I won’t happen again, unless you say the word, Hux.”
Hux raised an eyebrow, not believing him or surprised that he could be reasonable after all. The bus arrived and they both got on it, sitting in the first row.
“Fine then. But you’d better behave. Or you’ll make me regret associating with you.” Hux finally said, his bag clutched in his lap. He seemed nervous, even if is tone was calm.
“Your dad beats you?” Kylo asked when the conversation didn’t seem to pick up.
He hadn’t needed to deliberate much about asking the question. Hux had already seen him at his most abject, and they had no illusion about salvaging any kind of pride between them.
“Yeah. He’s a military freak. I’m a huge disappointment to him because I have good grades but zero charisma. He knows I’ll be obscure. I’m not worth of his name. The only satisfaction I give him really is when I fuck up in a fashion obvious enough that he can make me pay for it.”
Kylo considered that a moment. Hux didn’t even seem particularly angry. The bus hit a bump in the road, which jolted everyone.
“You’ll be fine,” He told Hux. “You can take it. You’re a mean bastard. I liked your move with the fork, it was a neat trick.”
“Thanks” Hux answered easily enough, a smile coming back on his face. “He doesn’t even hit hard anyway, that’d be acknowledging me as a man.”
Kylo liked that the smile was a bit twisted. They shared a pretty disgusting protein bar he had brought in his bag, and Hux waved dumbly at him when he got out of the bus. It was expected of him to act like a nerd anyway.
That evening he received a text from Hux.
Even if you don’t have a brain it was nice to have a big brute on my side for once.
Sorry again!!! I hope it wasn’t too bad with your dad :s Good night. Kylo replied, torn between satisfaction and regret.
* * *
His mother discovered that he had finally managed to make a friend the day when he refused to stay at home even if he had a cold. Kylo never ever skipped a reason to miss school. Even the day when he had hurt his little finger while assembling some Ikea shelves he had rolled himself on the ground until his mum allowed him to stay in. She couldn’t believe that he was willing to go even if she had heard him cough a good part of the night, and at first she worried that he had gotten into drugs and couldn’t stay away from his supplier for too long. She had become so annoying with her nagging about his health and hers Ben, is there something we should talk about, I won’t be mad, just tell me that he had just let out the name.
“It’s not that for fuck sake, it’s Hux.”
“Hux?” she repeated, not understanding. “What’s that?”
“Aaarrr, I can’t believe it,” Kylo moaned. “Hux is a person. He’s my friend okay? I can’t leave him alone to face them,” he spat.
Leia was speechless for a moment.
“Honey, that’s wonderful! Why didn’t you tell me you had a new friend? You should invite him over!”
“You wouldn’t like him anyway, seeing has he chose to befriend me,” was all Kylo said, shoving coughing pills in his pocket and leaving the house with his hair tucked haphazardly in his scarf.
* * *
“You don’t look well,” was how Hux greeted him when he took his place next to him in the bus. “You haven’t put your eyeliner on.”
“Well I’ve got a nasty cold, so point me in the direction of whoever you want to get contaminated, I’ll spit my lungs in their faces,” Kylo answered in a raspy voice.
Hux seemed pleased by the prospect rather than scared to catch something himself. He was as enduring as a parasite after all.
“Also,” Kylo continued, “my mother thinks you’re a goddamned miracle.”
Hux snickered meaningfully.
“You are really a sorry bastard if I’m your happy ending.”
Kylo smiled at him, his nose buried in a Kleenex that was already going to shreds.
“Do it to Emma,” Hux decided after a moment of reflection. “It’s high time this bitch started paying in increments.”
Kylo was very glad that he had managed to get out of bed. He did fake sneeze on Emma, a good mouthful of spittle and snot. She screamed like someone has thrown acid on her face. The sound was like music to his ears.
* * *
All anybody was talking about in class a few days later was how Brendan almost died –and by that you had to understand got nasty burns on his hands– during chemistry class.
When Kylo mentioned this to Hux during lunch at their usual spot in the parking lot, Hux said nonchalantly:
“Well he did make me trip on purpose. In the stairs.”
“Hux, what did you do?” Kylo asked, his tone hued with admiration.
“Nothing you can prove.” Hux smirked. He looked like a satisfied cat.
“Here, for you.” Kylo said, opening a Tupperware, which contained a greenish looking lumpy cake. He had invested in black mittens but his fingertips were very red.
“Err…thanks”, Hux answered, peering into the box but not quite daring to grab a piece of the thing Kylo was offering.
“Yeah, it looks weird and it’s not even very good but I made it with protein powder and avocado instead of butter. Hence the vomit colour. There’s also soymilk. And oats. A real freak cake.”
“Oh,” was all Hux said. He picked a square and set himself to eat it in regular efficient bites. “You know, you should dye your hair soon. In the sun light I think I can see your roots.”
“Oh really?” asked Kylo worriedly, patting is hear with a hand hurriedly wiped on his jeans. As if he could touch the colour. “I hadn’t noticed. Is it very obvious?”
“No, it doesn’t really show in artificial light. Your natural colour is quite dark anyway.”
“Shit, I don’t think I have a bottle of dye left.” Kylo tried to look at his roots with his phone’s camera. His dad was usually quick to make fun of him for dying his hair. Why hadn’t he said anything this time when it could finally have been useful? “I’ll have to wait until this weekend. I hope nobody else notices…”
Hux put the last bite of cake in his mouth, chewed and swallowed before saying:
“There’s a mart near where I live. I’m sure they’ll have black dye, it is after all the most generic colour.”
“Yeah?” Kylo asked hopefully. Then his expression darkened. “But…how would I get back after?”
Hux shrugged like the whole business was no big deal. Like he wasn’t suggesting that they hang out outside of school.
“I’ll lend you my bike. You can return it tomorrow morning and we’ll walk together to my bus stop.”
Kylo really wasn’t going to argue.
“Okay. That could work. Okay, let’s do that.”
He felt a sort of thrill at the idea that he was going to see Hux’s house. The last time he had been asked to come over at someone else’s house was for a birthday party in the first year of middle school. He had dressed up as a ninja turtle and everyone else had made terrible fun of him because they were all wearing Gap or something, and not any costumes. But Ben had hated his mum the most for not telling him anything. She could have saved him from crippling embarrassment. He debated for a moment sharing the story with Hux, but then he did.
“You’re lucky,” Hux said. “I wasn’t invited anywhere after primary school. At the last birthday party I went to I thought it was aesthetically pleasing that everybody was drinking big glass of white milk with their brownies. I did the same because I wanted to belong. I was young and naïve. But of course, I’m lactose intolerant.”
“Of course,” snickered Kylo. “Must have been a nice mess like only you can manage them.”
* * *
Kylo wondered how it was that all the marts seemed to smell the same. Like spice, detergent and overly sweet fruit.
“Maybe there’s a Mart fragrance, Hux suggested. Like they do for Abercrombie and Hollister. Keeps the customers coming back.”
Kylo snorted. There wasn’t much of a choice as far as the hair dye was concerned, but as Hux had predicted, there were at least two blacks to choose from. Kylo elected to buy the one with the glossy Indian lady on it. After that, they walked to Hux’s house. The neighbourhood seemed a bit more well off then his own, but equally non-descript, too new to really seem lived in. Kylo’s plastic bag was dangling from his hand and the sun was beginning to set. Hux let out a sigh and said:
“When it’s calm like this, I feel like I can almost forget that I’m the perennial scapegoat of a closed reputational system.”
Kylo let out an amused noise, but he didn’t laugh outright.
“I don’t get it,” he told Hux after a pause. “Like, why intelligence isn’t more valued. You could be useful to people, if nothing else. For homework and stuff.”
“God that would be awful,” Hux replied easily. “I’m supposed to use my intelligence against them, not for them. Anyway, let’s not talk about that. Tell me something about yourself. If it’s good, I’ll give you a snack at home.”
“Okay, well…err,” Kylo looked around him for inspiration. There wasn’t anyone in the street. His knee hit the plastic bag. “I started dying my hair when I was fourteen. My mum got mad as hell and my dad asked if I planned on joining Kiss.”
Hux snorted at the out-dated reference. “Why did you want to have black hair by the way?”
“I…I had read a nice description in snow white…I know it’s ridiculous, but I thought it would make my face more, like, coherent or something…” Kylo trailed off.
Hux smiled, and Kylo understood why he made people uneasy. You couldn’t know if he was mean or if he could see right through you and knew something about yourself that you didn’t. It was a bit unnerving. It was a Hux smile. But in the end the ginger boy simply said:
“It was the right choice.”
He offered Kylo some sort of Greek yogurt, in which he himself put a sour cherry preserve and some crunchy granola. It was nice. They ate it at the counter of an impersonal modern kitchen. Kylo wanted to see Hux’s bedroom but he didn’t dare to ask. There were no pictures in the kitchen, nor in any other room that he had went through.
Hux’s bike was red and claimed to be a rock glider, a surprising choice for the suburbs. Kylo was able to sit on it without needing to make any adjustments. Sometimes he forgot that Hux was nearly as tall as him. Hux stayed at the door until he turned the corner of the street, a dark silhouette against the light of the house behind him.
* * *
On November 22, the school had organised a social media workshop to teach kids how they could be useful professional tools - on top of enabling stalking and exhibition, as Hux had put it. An easy-going guy from an obscure organisation about work skills training came to give them a Power Point presentation about the wonderful opportunities that blogging and twitting could bring you. Everybody in senior year had to attend. Kylo found Hux’s bright red hair in one of the last rows of the auditorium, and practically ran before someone else could take the seat next to him. The seats in the back were very coveted and it was one of the rare situations where Hux being Hux wouldn’t guarantee him a space.
The presentation was roughly as uninteresting as the description of the event had set it up to be. Kylo and Hux occupied themselves with a silent game of noughts and crosses.
“Say,” a guy named Daryl abruptly asked, leaning into Kylo’s space to seize an easy opportunity to be funny, ”if I wanted to get a glimpse at your sad life, would I find some demos of your emo music on MySpace?” At least his taunt was more or less related with the presentation.
“I don’t sing,” said Kylo to toss him a bone. Not reacting usually excited further the bullies, because their ego didn’t allow them to quit the conversation on a defeat.
“Oh I see, German metal lip-synch videos then?” Daryl pursued in an ecstatic voice, covered in the glory of his friends' mean laughter.
This time Kylo stayed silent. Daryl had had his laugh, he could go back to whatever inane conversation he was having with his group before genius stroke him. But apparently Daryl had decided he was on a strike.
“Oh, no, did I got it all wrong? You’re not a music guy, you run a my little pony forum!”
“Oh my god, that is so likely!” approved Shannon, a girl Kylo did land his eraser to on the first day of school. Of course the speaker went on oblivious to the small ruckus that went on at the back of the room. He must have been quite used to engaging a dispassionate audience.
Kylo remembered the promise he had made not to let his anger take over. There were worst things to be accused off, he told himself. He inhaled as deeply as the stale air of the auditorium permitted it, and tried to unfocus his gaze. But what really worked was looking down at his lap, trying to mute down the laughs. Because then he saw that Hux’s hands were clenched into tight fists.
* * *
There was some heavy snowing in early December and the bus service was momentarily discontinued for security reasons. A lot of people didn’t bother to show up, but of course Kylo couldn’t miss school now. His mum offered to pick him up with the car after work.
“Could we drop Hux on the way?” Kylo had asked, his heart beating a little fast with the admission that yes, he had a friend now. “He lives not very far away from the school.”
Never in his life had he obtained a favour so easily. So now he and Hux were waiting for Leia to finish work and arrive, snug into a corner of the low voices only of the school’s library. Luckily there was no one around expect for the librarian, who seemed engrossed in her phone. Kylo found an old teenage magazine forgotten on one of the tables and, after flipping through the beauty pages, decided to subject Hux to an ominous Have you found your soul mate test.
“Okay, let me read it to you,” he began, after deposing a pile of black mittens, scarf and hat on the table next to the magazine.
“Must you really?” Hux asked in a suffering tone, half hidden in the hood of his coat. The cold had kept his cheeks and the tip of his nose very red all day, and the rest of his skin very white.
“Yeah, it will distract you.”
“Oh, so that’s all it’s about” Hux said in a mocking voice. “Really Kylo, how often do you need to be reassured that I actually like you?”
“As often as possible. You have to compensate for an awful lot you know,” Kylo answered with a smile.
Hux could tease him all he wanted, the truth was that Kylo knew he was actually very nervous to meet his mum, and he hoped this kind of silly occupation would allow him not to be too anxious.
“Okay so, first question. What goes through your mind when you see him/her?”
“Thank god.”
Kylo let out a pleased laugh at that, that he remembered belatedly to stifle not to attract the librarian’s attention. He licked his lips and fished into his bag before discretely bringing a piece of candy to his mouth. Hux shook his head when he offered him some with a kind of eye choreography.
“I’ll tick my heart flutters then.” He decided. “Next question: Would you introduce him/her to your parents?”
Hux snorted. “God no. I don’t want you to flee.”
“Okay, so that’s one square. Guess I’ll skip the what do your friends think of him/her.”
“Depends,” Hux objected. “What do you think? Do you think you’re good for me?”
“I don’t know if I’m good for you, Kylo frowned, pushing the candy against his teeth with his tongue. "But I know you are good for me.”
“Tick the corniest answer then,” Hux decided.
He was shuffling through newspapers without really reading them. It had left black stains on the tips of his fingers.
“Okay, next question.” Kylo carried on. “How do you feel when you are apart from him?”
Hux didn’t comment on the dropping of the her option. “Like I’m alone in the world,” he answered as if it was perfectly obvious, not ever bothering to look up from USA Today.
“The test wasn’t made for intense shit like that Hux,” Kylo said, but he was ticking an answer none the less. That got him a reaction.
“It’s a test about fucking soul mates!”
“Yeah, but you know how people always do stuff half-heartedly in our rotten society. Next question. Do you share the same interests? Oh my god, one of the possible answers is he threw my hat in the mud. What the fuck is that? That test was literally created for us.”
“Well..I guess we do both get bullied a lot. Does that count as a hobby?”
“Err…I’ll just tick yes then. Next. How does he treat you?”
Hux thought for a moment. “Like a friend. But put the cheesiest thing they have because that’s how it feels to me to have a friend.”
“Okay.” Kylo declared, gleefully circling something. “I knew this test was a good idea. Last question then. What does your heart say? I don’t believe this shit, one of the answers is literaly friendzone with a crying emoji.”
Hux didn’t seem overly impressed.
“Kylo, we basically did the test with the understanding that its entertainment value resided in its extreme lameness.”
“I know but they’ve really outdone themselves. I have to count your points, so try to answer the last question.”
“Okay. What does my heart say?” Hux pretended to have to think very hard about the question. “I guess…I’m grateful that I’ve found you.”
Kylo was lost in thoughts for a moment, the pen digging in his chin. Hux returned to nonchalantly flipping through his newspaper. Kylo finally decided on an answer. He then went at the end of the magazine to calculate the result of the test. He smirked.
“Hux, I’m very emotional…apparently we are totally twin flames”.
* * *
“Hello Mrs Organa,” Hux said with a voice Kylo had never heard before. “Thank you for driving me home.”
Kylo sat in the back with him, the old family car looking very alien now that Hux was sitting in it.
“No problem at all,” Leia told Hux, smiling at him in the rear-view mirror. “Kylo talks about you all the time.”
“Mum!” Kylo cried in protestation. He had taken pains lengthily briefing her during the morning ride especially to avoid this.
“He does?” Hux asked, an eyebrow raised. But Kylo knew him well enough by now to know that he was very pleased with himself.