Chapter Text
On Wednesday, Hux wakes up with the same headache he’s had for the past eight days. He wears Ren’s hoodie again, because it’s not like anyone’s going to notice, and even if they do, they’ll, what, whisper about it behind his back? That’d be new and interesting.
He expects the day to be the same as the last seven—soul-suckingly boring and too fucking quiet—and it is, until ten minutes into lunch when Rey Skywalker slams her tray down on the table and drops into the chair across from him.
“So,” she says, before he can tell her to fuck off, “heard you got kidnapped by the CIA.”
Hux raises an eyebrow. He hadn’t realized word got around already, but it’s no real surprise in this town that’s barely a fucking village.
“CIA,” he says, “FBI, KGB, who the fuck knows. They weren’t exactly forthcoming.”
Rey blinks, stupid and doe-like, the way Ren does, too, sometimes, on the rare occasion Hux manages to surprise him.
“Wait, really? I thought for sure your mom just lost it.”
“She’s not my mother,” Hux snarls, a reflex he’s never quite able to suppress.
“Ok-ay,” says Rey, “Whatever. She still called Aunt Leia in, like, a total panic yesterday, saying you’d been kidnapped by some guys in a government car. That really happened?”
Hux shrugs and messes with the shitty, still-frozen peas on his tray, trying to decide how much to tell her. That government woman—who never even gave him her name—told him not to talk about the questions, but she never said anything about the experience in general.
“It happened,” he says.
“Damn. What’d you do?” Rey sounds almost excited for a split second, before she remembers, and her eyes dim again. Hux can’t relate—this fucking headache—he hasn’t forgotten for a minute.
Rey lowers her voice, “It’s about Ben, right?” Hux nods. “I knew it,” and the spark is back again, her inexplicable energy. “I knew he was missing, I knew—” she cuts herself off with a cough and chugs some chocolate milk to hide it, but Hux knows what she means. Knew he didn’t kill himself – since that’s the leading theory, even if none of the adults will admit it.
“Yeah,” he says, feeling strangely generous, “me, too.”
He doesn’t like Rey, hasn’t ever liked her, because she’s loud and persistent, like a gnat. But the list of people who care that Ren’s gone and also believe in his sanity is about two names long, so it’s not exactly the time to be picky about allies.
“Hey,” she says suddenly, though it comes out a little too forced. “Do you want to come over today?”
Hux raises both eyebrows.
“Not to my house,” she adds quickly. “I mean—we’ve been staying with Aunt Leia the past few days, and I just thought . . . we should do something. Search Ben’s room, make flyers, post things online. Doesn’t he have some secret emo blog we can hack?”
Ren does have a blog. Hux follows him for the hilarity of it, with a grand total of 12 others, 10 of which are probably bots. But Hux gets what she means, feels the same awful itching of not doing enough.
He also hadn’t realized until this moment, but the idea of seeing Ren’s room again—he needs it. He needs to sit in his beanbag and kill some fucking Nazis with his controller—the customized one Ren got him for his birthday last year, the one he leaves in Ren’s room because Hux doesn’t even own an Xbox. He remembers the terrible, suffocating feeling of losing all that, briefly, two years ago and the relief at getting it back again. It probably won’t be the same without Ren’s fidgeting, his stupid asthmatic breathing, or his constant shit talking every fucking thing, but even a shadow of it—after eight days—
“Okay,” he says, to Rey’s apparent shock.
Frankly, he’s pretty shocked too, because in no fucking universe would he have expected to voluntarily spend an afternoon with Rey Skywalker. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Hux refuses to live with this headache for the rest of his life.
Hux could probably live with the headache, he decides, when he walks his bike over to Rey’s usual spot after school only to find that she’s not alone.
“No,” he says and starts to turn back around.
“Hux,” Rey complains, that stupid whine that must be fucking genetic. “Don’t you think it’ll be easier if we have more eyes? They promised to help.”
They being the other two stooges, Finn and Poe, Rey’s perpetual shadows. It’s not as if Hux can exactly throw stones about always hanging out with the same people, but at least Ren has a giant, usually-empty house, with video games and a flat screen. He has no idea what Rey gets out of her association with these two idiots.
“I think,” says Hux, “that if Ren knew you were going to let them snoop around his room, he’d rather stay missing.”
“Hey,” says Finn, in the same tone. “We don’t care what creepy stuff your boyfriend keeps in his closet, okay. We’re just doing this to help Rey.”
As if that’s better—Hux imagines their indifferent hands rummaging around in Ren’s shit, finding the journal Ren thinks Hux doesn’t know about, reading the notebook on Ren’s bedside table where he writes his freaky dreams—learning things about him that are none of their fucking business. But Hux can tell by the familiar stubborn set to Rey’s jaw that he’s not winning this fight.
“Fine,” he says, “Just don’t fucking touch anything.”
“This should be fun,” Poe mumbles under his breath. Rey says something back, but Hux blocks them out and bikes off. He doesn’t bother to wait for them. It’s not like he doesn’t know the way.
When Hux gets to Ren’s house, it’s empty as usual, the electric gate locked and the windows all dark.
He knows he should wait. He should wait for Rey, who will know the code to the gate and have the key to the front door. That would be the normal, polite thing to do. But Hux also knows the code, which changes every two weeks but won’t for another few days. He knows where the spare key is, in the false bottom of the garden gnome.
When those idiots finally show up, they’ll traipse up the three flights of stairs to Ren’s room, probably throw their jackets on his bed, make themselves fucking comfortable in the beanbags that aren’t theirs.
It’s been eight days, and Hux has never really put much effort into etiquette when it comes to Ren’s family. He punches in the code.
Hux flicks on the bedroom light, but the eco bulbs that Ren’s mom buys take a while to warm up, so the room is bathed in a familiar dim glow for a few minutes.
the things we put up with for the fucking environment, right
Hux whips around to stare at Ren’s beanbag, but it’s empty—of course it is. Just a memory made solid from how often Ren says the exact same thing every time he turns the light on. Hux breathes slowly and tries to ignore the throbbing pulse in the aching part of his mind.
He wanders to the middle of the room, uncertain. He just wants to sit where he always sits. He wants to get the Wheat Thins out from beneath the shoe boxes in the closet and eat the whole fucking box. He wants the familiar chime of the Xbox turning on and the loading music to fill the room. He wants—
But Rey and the others will be here any minute.
He goes over to the bed and digs between the mattress and the footboard for the book he knows is there. The battered red moleskin comes out easily enough. Hux rubs his thumb over the words carved into the cover, in Ren’s terrible chicken-scratch letters, “OPEN AT YOUR OWN FUCKING RISK.”
Hux almost risks it. He fingers the leather tie that Ren’s used to replace the usual one, to make the whole thing more theatric, probably, but—he shoves it in his backpack. He’ll read it later, just in case there’s something useable hidden in Ren’s angsty ramblings and terrible song lyrics. Just, not here—not in the still loosening dark of this room, this room that he—
“Hux! Are you up there?” Three sets of pounding footsteps. Hux turns just as the door swings open.
“God, did you break in?” says Rey. The other two are staring in open curiosity, as if there’ll be blood on the walls or something equally gruesome. Hux follows their gaze, trying to imagine how the room would look if he’d never seen it before.
Clothes and shoes left in haphazard piles on the floor, three half-empty water bottles on the bedside table, a trigonometry textbook left open on the desk—they’d had a test on Wednesday—it was why Hux didn’t come over. They never get shit done when they study together, and Hux needed to pass one test without cheating off Ren, for his own pride.
It’s just an ordinary room. It could belong to any sixteen-year-old in the world, albeit a messy, careless one. It’s just—ordinary.
“I had a key,” says Hux.
Rey pauses from where she’s tugging at the knots in her Converse. “Ben gave you a key?”
Hux shrugs instead of answering. It’s probably better if she thinks that.
“So, where should we start?” Poe asks. Hux turns to find him leaning over Ren’s desk, squinting at the overcrowded pin board where Ren’s saved every movie ticket, polaroid, and arcade stub from the past five years. Hux curls his nails into his palms to keep from telling him to back off, that those aren’t for him to look at. Because Rey has apparently decided it’s fine.
“What about this,” says Finn, holding up the notebook from Ren’s bedside table. It’s not nearly as dramatic as the real journal, just a spiral bound thing from Staples. He still shouldn’t be touching it.
“No,” says Hux, then curses himself for it. He should’ve gone for more nonchalant—these nosey assholes aren’t going to leave anything alone if he makes it all out to be some sort of secret—even if it mostly is. “That’s nothing,” he says, trying to recover.
“Is it his journal,” Finn says mockingly, flipping through the pages. Hux digs his nails in harder. It’s not as if the idiot will be able to decipher anything. Ren’s handwriting really is terrible.
“Hey,” says Rey firmly. All three boys turn to look at her. “This isn’t a joke, okay? I know Ben hasn’t exactly been—nice, to you guys, but he’s still missing. This is serious.”
“Sorry,” says Finn, and he actually seems to mean it, placing the notebook carefully back where it was.
“So,” Rey says, finally toeing out of her shoes and turning to face Hux. “Where should we start?”
“How the fuck should I know,” Hux wants to say. Because, yeah, maybe Ren tells him about his super powers and his dumb dreams and how much it sucks when his mom isn’t around, but apparently he still has secrets big enough to get the CIA, or whoever-the-fuck, involved. “I’ve been in his mind,” Hux wants to say, “And I still have no clue where he is. So, what could there possibly be in this stupid room.”
“Probably his laptop,” he says instead.
“Wouldn’t the police have that, though?” Poe asks, peering around the laptop-less desk.
“Probably.” They should have it. But—Hux remembers suddenly—but Ren also has an iPad—one of those mini ones—because he’s kind of rich as shit. He barely uses it, except on long car rides or when he’s in bed and is too lazy to get up again for his computer.
Hux goes over to the bed, runs his hands over the comforter, the seam of the sheets. Ren’s mom definitely made it after he disappeared, probably before she let the police in. Ren never makes it. And there, fallen down by the headboard. Hux grabs it.
“But there’s this,” he says, turning to show the others.
Rey grins widely. “I knew you’d be useful.”
It’s almost better than the laptop. Ren’s always suspicious that his mom snoops on there, as if she wants to know what fucking porn he looks at. But he never would’ve bothered to clear the history on an iPad, or to log out of the apps. If there’s anything useful to find online, it might be here.
Hux settles in his beanbag with the iPad and thumbs it open, sighing softly with relief when it still has battery.
“It’s locked,” says Finn stupidly, and way too close. Hux jerks forward, away from where the three of them have crowded around behind him.
“Do you mind,” he snarls. Finn and Poe back up considerable, satisfyingly spooked, but Rey stays put, unphased, just gestures impatiently.
“Come on,” she says, “do you know it, or not.”
Hux huffs, annoyed at her tone and also the presumption that he wouldn’t. It’ll be the same as Ren’s phone, because he’s stupid like that. Hux taps in 5950, and it opens, easy.
“Sweet,” says Rey.
“We’re in,” Finn whispers in a comic, low voice, presumably just for Poe, but he’s pretty shit at whispering and they’re still too fucking close. Hux turns to glare at him, because now is not the time for fucking memes.
Now that they are in, though, Hux doesn’t really know where to start. The thing is a fucking mess, crowded with six full pages of apps and absolutely no categories. As Hux swipes through each page and the magnitude of the tasks sets in, Poe says,
“Maybe we should split up?” When they all turn to look at him, he adds, “I mean, this is gonna take a while, right? Me and Finn could look for other clues, while you guys handle this?”
Hux’s eyes flick reflexively to the notebook, but it’s not just that. He thinks of the third desk drawer down, filled with old Lego figures, green army men, the teddy bear Ren loves too much to give away. Or the box under Ren’s bed filled with fucking bird feathers and smooth rocks and bright orange leaves, the shit he finds out in the woods and keeps just because he likes it. Those things aren’t for them to know about. None of this is for them. If Ren knew they were here—
“Or,” says Rey, eyeing Hux’s fingers, gone white around the iPad. “We could get snacks.”
Hux follows them down to the kitchen because he doesn’t want them talking about Ren’s room behind his back or theorizing without him. He takes the iPad, shoved in the front pocket of his hoodie—he’s not letting it out of his sight now, not with the fucking CIA lurking around.
When they get to the sprawling, white marble kitchen, Rey pulls out four different bowls and fills them, in quick succession, with cheese Doritos, frozen Girl Scout cookies, granola Craisins, and some sort of mini-carrot/broccoli medley. Hux is familiar with the extensive snack variety in this house, but it still always surprises him. Why do two people need so much food?
“Nice,” says Finn, gazing at the spread with more awe than is strictly necessary. Hux opens his mouth to make some comment about small minds being easily impressed, but before he can, there’s a rumble from the driveway, a car pulling in. They all hold their breaths in sync.
Hux glances at the clock. It’s only just five. There’s no way it’s Ren’s mom, she never gets home before eight. The police? Hux wraps his arms around his middle, pressing the iPad into his stomach. Those idiots can pry it from his cold, dead hands.
There’s the slam of a car door, and then keys jingling in the lock.
“Rey?” a voice calls.
“In the kitchen, Aunt Leia,” Rey shouts back, frantically shoving the bowls of Doritos and Girl Scout cookies into random cabinets. She’s just gotten them closed when a woman walks in and stops short at the sight of them.
It’s been a while since Hux has seen Ms. Organa in person. She looks tired, her hair only up in a regular bun, rather than the intricate braids she usually wears.
“I thought I saw a few extra bikes in the driveway,” she says. She’s facing the counter, where the three stooges have gathered around the snacks, so she still hasn’t noticed Hux over by the table. He’s not sure what expression he should have when she sees him, if it’s politer to smile or not, when things are such a spectacular fucking mess.
“I invited them,” says Rey, with a smile – so, smiling is on the table. “Sorry I didn’t ask first.” Rey glances at Hux.
“Of course, you can—” Leia starts, turning instinctively to see what Rey’s looking at. “Oh,” she says then. “Armitage.”
There’s a particular way Ms. Organa always says his name. It’s not disapproving, exactly, just surprised, like she never expects him, even though he’s frankly always here.
“Hello, Ms. Organa,” says Hux, and he thinks about trying to smile, only she’s not looking at his face anymore, her gaze drifted downward. He glances down, too, worried she can see the outline of the iPad and thinks he’s stealing her electronics, but then he remembers.
The hoodie is an old thing, soft and loose with age. Faded olive-green and, across the front, the words “Camp Tatooine” in white letters, cracked now from too many washes. Hux has never been to camp, but Ren has – four weeks every summer since he was ten.
Ms. Organa stares long enough for it to be noticeable, the rest of them staring now too. Hux uncrosses his arms to curl his fingers more soundly in the sleeves, no doubt calling attention to the size of it – it’s not that Ren’s bigger than him, he’s just longer, like fucking Gumby.
“I was just about to start dinner,” Leia says finally, her voice gone a little distant. “Will you stay for dinner?” She looks at Finn and Poe briefly before turning back to Hux, but he can’t find his voice for some reason.
“Sure,” says Poe, breaking the moment with his usual ease. “Thanks, Ms. O.”
“Of course. Why don’t you kids take the snacks into the living room, and I’ll get everything ready.” Her tone makes it clear it’s not really a question, so Rey grabs a bowl in each arm and maneuvers past the boys, who start to follow her.
“Armitage,” says Leia, just as Hux is crossing the threshold into the hall. “Why don’t you help me chop some veggies?”
Rey catches his eye from where she’s already halfway up the stairs, her face comically stricken. “SORRY,” she mouths and keeps inching up the steps. As she gets to the top, she makes a break for it, sprinting up the next set, with the other two idiots fumbling to keep up. Hux sighs and turns back toward the kitchen, stealing himself for the awkward terribleness this is going to be.
“They left you to the wolves, huh,” Ms. Organa says as he walks in, her tone already different from just a few moments ago. Hux’s shoulders drop a little. He doesn’t know Ms. Organa well, she’s rarely at home when he’s over, but he definitely hadn’t recognized whatever charade that just was. Ren’s mom doesn’t cook.
Still, she’s crouched below the countertop, banging the cabinets open, as if she really is going to make something. Hux comes to stand by the breakfast bar and spreads his fingers on the cool marble, trying to stay calm. He hasn’t done anything wrong (except for the sort of breaking and entering, but he’d been invited, really, so it wouldn’t hold up in court).
Ms. Organa always puts him on edge, though. There’s an awkward tension that fills the room on the rare occasions she comes home while he’s still over, as if she’s caught him and Ren at something untoward, when it’s always just Xbox.
“Do you need help?” he asks when the seconds tick by with nothing but pots banging together. Just as he speaks, Leia appears from behind the counter, holding the bowl of Girl Scout cookies Rey hid earlier. She doesn’t respond, just carries the bowl to the table and sits down with it, toeing out of her high heels. She eats two thin mints and then, still chewing, gestures at the seat across from her. Sufficiently thrown, Hux follows her and sits.
She tilts the bowl at him, so he takes one. The crunch of the frozen chocolate is a shock of unwanted sense memory—Ren likes to take these to the reservoir on hot days, likes the way the cold contrasts with the heat of the outcrop, warmed from the sun—
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Organa says, as she fishes another thin mint from the bowl. “I should’ve checked in with you, to see how you’re doing.”
Startled, Hux stutters, “Oh, no, that’s—fine. I’m fine.” Leia nods and wipes the crumbs from her hands on the edge of the tablecloth.
“I know you and Ben are close,” she goes on, to Hux’s growing discomfort. He digs his fingers into his thighs under the table, the insinuation in her tone bothering him more than it usually does.
“And I know the police asked you already,” she says, “and I’m sure you have no reason to lie to them, but. I just want you to know—you won’t get in any trouble.” Leia curls her hands together on the table, the way Ren does to keep himself from fidgeting. “If you know where Ben is, if you know what happened, we don’t even have to tell them. You can just tell me, and I’ll sort everything out, alright? You can just tell me,” she says again, not quite able to mask the desperation in her voice.
Just then, Hux hates Ren so much he can barely breathe with it, hates his stupid iPad and his stupid hoodie and his stupid, shitty songs, hates that he’s put Hux in the kind of situation where he has to talk to Ren’s mom, has to disappoint her.
“I don’t know,” he says, “I wouldn’t—even if I was going to go along with some kind of—stunt, I’d never let it go on this long, I swear. I don’t know.” Ms. Organa nods like he’s just confirming what she thought. She spreads her hands along the tablecloth, smoothing away invisible creases.
“Well,” she says, “I thought I’d ask.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No,” says Ms. Organa, “Armitage.” He looks up from where he’s been watching her hands, moving back and forth on the table. “This isn’t your fault, you know that? You’re—”
He really hopes she doesn’t say “good” or “kind,” for the love of god—
“—good for him,” she finishes. She opens her mouth to continue but then, maybe sensing his debilitating embarrassment, changes her mind.
“Well,” she says again, definitively, and stands, swiping the bowl of thin mints and stashing it back in a seemingly random cabinet. She pulls open the drawer where Hux knows they keep the takeout menus.
“What do you think,” she says, “pizza?”
Poe and Finn stay long enough to devoir a whole mushroom pizza before they suddenly remember a test they have the next day and beg off. Hux figures Rey said something to them. Either way, he’s glad they won’t be riffling through Ren’s stuff, but he’s not leaving, not until he finds something to make this horrible, awkward night worth it.
Ms. Organa shoos them out of the kitchen around seven, and Hux follows Rey silently back up to Ren’s room.
“So,” she says, when he’s settled in his usual beanbag, “the iPad?” She sits in Ren’s spot. It doesn’t bother him. It doesn’t.
Hux digs it out from his pocket and unlocks it again. This time Rey doesn’t crowd around him, just leans her elbows on her knees and looks at him, expectant.
It’s the same mess as before, but Hux tries not to let it overwhelm him. It’s not as if he doesn’t know what apps Ren uses the most—messages, the web, a few random games he’s obsessed with—he hates that he can never beat Hux at Words With Friends.
Hux checks Safari for still open tabs, iMessage for unknown numbers. He even opens all the social apps even though he knows Ren doesn’t use them—nothing. Conspicuously nothing. Ren would’ve had to manually log out of most of these, purposely close his tabs. Not a sign of someone taken against their will.
After a while, Rey says, “So?” and Hux has to clench his teeth to keep from chucking the thing at her. It’s not her fault, he tells himself, and it’s not his fault either—it’s Ren’s fault, and his secrets, and his stupid dramatics, like everything has to be fucking Shakespearean play. If he did this, if he really left on his own—
“Nothing,” says Hux, sharply. He stands and tosses the iPad on the bed, grabs his backpack roughly from where he stashed it by the closet.
“Nothing?” Rey echoes, standing too, following him to the door. “What do you mean nothing?”
“I mean, there’s fucking nothing, what else do you want me to say? I’m going home.”
“Hux!”
He’s shoving his shoes on by the front door when he notices Ms. Organa watching from the hall, and some old, ingrained reflex of etiquette kicks in. “Thank you,” he says, “for having me over.”
Leia leans against the stair railing, just as Rey comes down. She stops on the third step and they both watch as Hux opens the door and stands awkwardly in the threshold. The cool October air makes the hair on his arms stand up.
“You’re always welcome here, Armitage,” says Ms. Organa.
But as Hux makes his way down the driveway and starts to bike home, he has a sinking, gut-deep feeling that he won’t ever see that house or that room again.
“Do you want to come over?”
Hux looked up from the Bunsen burner he was fucking with. “What.”
Ben was doodling some kind of caricature of Mr. Ackbar as a fish-headed sea monster. “I just got the new Xbox,” he said, without looking up from the paper. “We could play Call of Duty. My mom doesn’t know they have age restrictions, she just buys whatever I put in my wish list.”
“What,” Hux said again. He didn’t have a ton of experience being invited over to people’s houses, but he was pretty sure some kind of friendship usually came first. Hux had sat next to Ben in science since he got to this stupid backwater town four weeks ago. They’d talked before, but about cell structures and food chains. Not anything that would be cause for this.
When Ben finally looked up and caught sight of the baffled expression on Hux’s face, he scowled and said, “Never mind, whatever.”
And that might’ve been it.
Mr. Ackbar droned on for a few more minutes about safety goggles and second-degree burns, and then Hux said, “Will there be snacks?”
“Yeah,” said Ben immediately, so excited Hux nearly rolled his eyes. “We have, like, the best snacks.”
“Fine,” said Hux, “Whatever.”
Hux has been staring at the same paragraph for forty minutes when his phone buzzes next to him on the bed. He stills.
It could be Rey. It could be Phasma, his partner for the shitty history presentation next week that they haven’t done any work for. It could even be the fucking CIA. There is a perfectly normal list of people who could be texting after ten on a school night. It’s not Ren, he tells himself and flips the phone over. The lock screen has already dimmed, so he thumbs it open.
One new message, just a single word,
Hux?
The last text in the conversation is from Tuesday, at 10:52pm.
Ren, Hux thinks as loudly as he can, I am going to fucking kill you.