Chapter Text
Hux marched down the corridor in the Finalizer's quarters deck, the section dedicated to command personnel. The immaculately tiled and polished floors glinted as he whipped past them. He was walking a little faster than usual, he noticed with distaste, but it wasn't surprising; this was his last task before he could officially count his shift as “over” and, instead of standing stiffly on the bridge checking reports, he could settle down to checking them in the comfort of his quarters. His sofa beckoned, along with another three hours of beloved admin, then five necessary hours of sleep before his next shift.
Moments ticked by as he had to pause and wait for a security door to open, and he felt his frustration manifesting itself in his brow. He was currently delaying himself by heading approximately six minutes out of the way of his own quarters, all to give Ren little more than a telling off. This wasn't the first time the glorified poser had caused him this kind of issue – trust Ren to get in the way, he excelled at it – but it was the first time Hux was personally carrying the message round to his quarters that he needed to file a report for the mission he returned from over a week ago.
Hux had tried the usual ways of getting hold of Ren; on his return to the ship, Hux had informed him a report was due; an automated reminder had been sent; a follow-up reminder had been sent; Hux sent a reminder himself. Today, when his agenda noted that Ren still remained unresponsive, Hux hailed him over internal comms. No reply. He called Mitaka in, intending to send him to Ren's quarters, but the poor man had paled at the knight's very name. So, Hux had dismissed him, and undertaken to deliver the message himself.
Hux didn't bother to wonder the reason why Ren wasn't completing the report – undoubtedly it was because he was irresponsible, disrespectful, possibly illiterate – he only amused himself to wonder what foolish excuse would be employed this time. “Meditation,” Hux's mind supplied in a mocking approximation of Ren's voice without that ostentatious helmet, “important Force matters,” “training,” “I was just really tired and forgot :(”
He was just shaking his head disapprovingly at the imagined pout as he drew up outside the door itself. He pressed the button to request entry, pushing it harder than necessary until his thumb joint hurt, as if somehow that would convey through the automated, equalized buzz sound how annoyed he was with Ren taking up his time like this.
The door puffed open, and Hux's mouth was already opened to give Ren a piece of his mind when he realised that the person in front of him was not, in fact, Ren. Instead, stood before him was a woman nearly a head shorter than himself, her long, black hair piled on her head in a decidedly non-regulation messy bun, drawn away from her face, on which was slathered some kind of light pink paste. She was wrapped in a fluffy, pink dressing gown, under which appeared to be heart patterned pink pyjamas.
Hux's planned rebuke of Ren fell away into an, “Uh.” Usually, he had time to prepare himself for any kind of non-work-related interactions, but he had planned to go into this with a clipped, righteous annoyance and come out of it with a self-indulgent bit of riling Ren up, and now that Ren was not available for that, he had nothing.
“Yes?” she said, about as neutrally as Hux supposed anyone would, when called upon while attired as she was.
“I must have the wrong quarters,” was what he managed to reply.
“These aren't mine,” she explained, pointing behind her, around a corner which Hux couldn't see, “You looking for Kylo?”
“Yes,” Hux said stiffly, “is Ren here?”
The woman leaned back inside the door, around the corner Hux still couldn't see. “Kyle!” she called, “visitor.”
“He's not getting up, wet nails!” someone called back, another female sounding voice.
Just what was happening in there? How many women were there, and what were they doing in Ren's quarters, of all places, clad in such unofficial wear? Hux shuddered to think. Was he also going to have to remind Ren of the rules against fraternisation with inferior officers? That was sure to be a fun conversation of Ren not giving a kriff and Hux being able to do little but barb his words and maybe mention the situation to Snoke. Odd, though – Hux had never thought Ren had showed any preference for women... or perhaps that had just been wishful thinking.
The woman before him remained still for a moment, her brown eyes glazing over just slightly in a way which made Hux think she wasn't entirely mentally present. Then the look was gone as soon as it had come, and she frowned, annoyed. “He wants you to leave,” she informed him, “but he wasn't very nice about it, so you're coming in.” She turned and retreated back inside, beckoning casually for him to follow.
After a moment, once Hux's brain had caught up – Ren had just communicated with the woman through the Force, and now he was being invited in against those wishes. He slipped through the door, letting it puff closed behind him.
The first fact of the place was that Ren's quarters were larger than Hux's. Hux had known this, of course – he'd scoffed over the confirmation for the allocation when Ren had first transferred over, perfectly happy to take moderately sized quarters himself – but, as he walked down the grandly inlaid corridor from the entrance antechamber to what was presumably a living space, it contributed to the sense of an impending mystery as to what, exactly, he was about to discover. He hoped it was nothing too debauched.
“You're that General, aren't you?” the woman a step in front of him asked over her shoulder. “Hanks? Hugs?”
“Hux,” he corrected. He disliked intensely when people got his name wrong. He was the General of the ship they were all currently hurtling through space on, he was the General Starkiller – how could she not know who he was? “Who are you?”
“Ushar,” she replied easily. No rank, no designation of any sort, no actual deference to him as a General; all things Hux made a mental note of for later, when he could check the ship manifest.
“Might I ask what you're...”
Hux had begun to speak with an acerbic self-confidence – it was his ship, and he demanded to know what was happening on it – but it all became clear when Ushar opened the door to the central living area and the situation was revealed. It was the second time Hux had been caused to falter in his words in the last five minutes, and he didn't appreciate it. “What is this?” he asked, minorly horrified, as he took in the scene before him.
Ushar shrugged. “Girls' night.”
The room looked like some kind of stereotypical, tacky imitation of a Zeltronian spa had taken over. There were tall glasses of something bubbly scattered around, half-drunk, the bottle chilling in a bucket of ice on the coffee table, which was scattered with cosmetic items. A holo-romance was playing off to the side. Boxes of chocolates fountained forth crunched up wrappers. There were four women – two humans, a zabrak and a twi'lek – lounging around in the pit of cushions the room had been turned into. The cushions were all pink to match the identical pink bath robes and headbands and fluffy slippers the room's inhabitants were sporting. And, at the centre of it all; Ren.
“You...” Hux started, under his breath just enough that no-one would take notice of the stammering. He had certainly not expected this. “I...”
Ren, clad too in pink fluffy bath robe, seemingly with nothing under it this time, finally took notice that Ushar had led Hux in, as he sat up quickly and angrily, removing slices of some green vegetable from over his eyes. The woman who had been painting his toenails – black, possibly the only thing that could reconcile the Ren Hux was used to with this strange, pink perversion before him – protested, but he ignored her, instead hurrying to his feet and wading his way out of the pillows.
“I told you to make him leave,” Ren growled at Ushar, but the effect was considerably diminished thanks to his appearance. The bathrobe he wore was the short, fun kind of style which only came to his knees; the pink headband kept all his hair back from his face gave him a kooky sort of bird's nest; his face was slathered with a light green version of what Ushar had on, all except for comical spaces around his eyes and lips.
Ushar glared at him. “You shouldn't have ordered me like that, then,” she said, going over to sit next to the zabraki woman, shuffling in closer than was strictly platonic and picking up one of the glasses. “I'm not some stormtrooper.”
“You're ruining the night,” Ren brandished the vegetable slice at her. It wobbled.
“You're ruining the night!” the woman Ushar was sat next to shot back. “He's here after you!”
“Yeah, Kyle,” the twi'lek said from the sofa in a tone that was very much mocking, but still friendly, popping a chocolate in her mouth. Who were these people, that they could speak to Kylo Ren like this and get away with it?
Ren turned back to Hux, glowering. The face paste made him look like a clown. The outside finally reflects the inside, Hux thought to himself while wondering if Ren had waxed his legs or if they were just like that naturally, and had to force himself not to laugh. He obviously didn't mask his expressions quite as well as he should have, however, because Ren seemed to sense that Hux was amusing himself at his expense. Seizing Hux's upper arm in a grip to rival that of a hangar-bay droid, Ren manhandled Hux back to the door of the room, away from the group.
“Unhand me, you oaf,” Hux admonished, shaking Ren off him and lowering his tone a little so as not to disturb the ladies, who, in their disregard of Ren's plumped-up edginess, had endeared themselves to him.
“Why are you here?” Ren demanded before he'd even finished speaking, also at subdued pitch.
“Why are you here?” Hux returned, hissingly. “Who are these people? Why are you not completing the mission report which you have had no fewer than five requests for? Why the hells are your quarters this gods-awful colour?”
Ren took a moment to glare at Hux.
Hux interpreted this as having the upper hand. “Well?”
“I'm not completing any more of your stupid kriffing reports,” he said as if it were obvious. “I told you that already.”
Hux cycled through his memory quickly. He remembered Ren slamming down the last report onto his desk and threatening something similar, but he'd disregarded it, because reports were Necessary, and it was not a possibility for anyone to simply not do them.
“You will do the report,” Hux replied.
“No.”
“You'll do it now.”
Ren snorted. “No.”
Hux bristled. “Ren, I have been forced to come down here – well out of my way – to extract this report from you, only to find you sitting around like some... pampered princess, when I could be-”
“Good point actually, let's return to it. What are you doing down here?” Ren frowned and crossed his arms, but his lips curled cruelly, ready, Hux was sure, to make some insult about his doing such menial work.
“That brings me to the next matter,” Hux plucked the opportunity of throwing in this additional argument, squaring up. “You have intimidated my administrative staff to the point where it is necessary that I waste my time in a way which is thoroughly unacceptable to me.”
Ren widened his eyes in mock sympathy. “Did you forget how to use a comm?”
This only pissed Hux off more, because something about the movement was ridiculously attractive. He wasn't sure whether it was the slight shrug which emphasised Ren's muscular arms, the fact that the pink really brought out the rich shade of his hair, or even the cruelty behind the act itself, but it could not stand.
“I'm quite familiar with the comms system,” he spat, “it seems that you are the one having trouble, since you failed to reply to my hails. As my co-commander,” (Hux had practised in his bathroom mirror not grimacing as he said this) “you are expected to answer your comms when I call. It is highly unprofessional of you to shirk your duty like this.”
Ren momentarily pursed his lips. His next words were caustic. “I don't intend to waste my life away at work like you do, slaving over a tablet until I look like the living dead. At least I know how to relax.”
Hux's eye twitched. “I know how to relax.” An imagined image of himself on his icy blue sofa in his black and red robe, his cat to one side, his data-pad in hand, appeared in his mind. That was relaxing.
“No you don't,” Ren scoffed. “You should see the bags under your eyes. You look more drawn out than all the Starkiller blueprints put together.”
Mentally, Hux's self-image adjusted so that his porcelain skin turned grey, the lines of his face more prominent, the room dark until only he was visible by the harsh light of the data-pad. It could not have been more different than his current surroundings of pink and fluffiness and companionship and soft lighting.
“Get out of my head, Ren,” he said, putting the warping of his imagined scene down to some Force meddling.
“I'm not in your head,” Ren replied, “you're just sad and lonely and jealous that you have to go do a report while I have a nice night with my knights – my friends. You,” he pointed sassily, “could never have this,” he pointed back to the ladies. “Now kriff off, I'm not doing the report. Maybe you should do it yourself, since you have such a boner for that kind of thing.” The door far behind Hux puffed open, presumably manipulated by the Force.
"I expect the report before the end of my shift tomorrow," Hux said, voice dangerous and low. How dare Ren speak to him like that. How dare he judge what Hux did to relax, while he was being a layabout with these random, cool ladies... doing... fun things like... painting nails and getting tipsy... and watching holo-dramas... and... he wasn't jealous.
“Leave,” Kylo told him.
Hux narrowed his eyes. “You will regret this, Ren.” He turned on his heel and marched from the room, commenting to himself once more as the door puffed closed behind him, “You will regret this.”
Kylo watched Hux retreat from the room, waiting until the door had closed to turn and make his way back to his knights. He flopped himself back down onto the floor, jostling Ap'lek's sofa cushions in the process.
“Ah kriff,” he complained as he saw his black-smudged toes stretched out in front of him, “he made me ruin my nail paint.”
“I'm not doing them again,” Trudgen said, tossing the little black bottle at him, shifting around to watch the holo and grabbing a chocolate. “You shoulda been more careful when you got up instead of rushing off to be a bitch.”
Kylo sighed over-dramatically and called out, “Cardo!” She and Kuruk were in the kitchen, probably making an unsightly mess of the place, but Kylo knew only she would be willing to finish the paint for him. Of course, he would have to take the chance that the stuff would end up even more smudged than it already was, and, now he was thinking about it, he would probably be better off just dipping his entire feet in nail polish.
A chocolate wrapper hit the side of his head. He turned to see Ushar had thrown it. “Just do it yourself,” she told him, “it's not like it's hard.”
But he wanted to feel spoiled, that was the whole point of this spa evening anyway. He called Cardo's name again, whinier this time.
“What?!” came the shouted reply, “We're making mug muffins!”
Vicrul frowned, straightening up a little where her arm was thrown around Ushar's shoulders. “In the microwave?”
“Yeah!”
“Huh,” Vicrul shrugged, settling back down again. “Good luck cleaning that.”
Kylo groaned, letting his head fall back onto the sofa cushion behind him. First Hux was on him about a report, then none of his knights would do his nails for him, now Cardo was splattering his lovely microwave with chocolate batter. This was all Hux's fault. Kylo wasn't sure how yet, but it was.
He opened his eyes to see Ap'lek looking down at him, where his head rested by her left elbow. “What's this about a report then?” she asked flatly. Kylo just groaned again and re-closed his eyes.
“You can't be procrastinating this stuff again,” Ushar nagged him over the sound of footsteps, accompanied by a smell of chocolate, and a thunk-clink of a tray with spoons being set down on the table as the cooks brought the muffins through. “Your job is important, here, Kylo. Snoke wants you to do well.”
“To hell with Snoke,” Kylo mumbled, hoping the crusty fart wasn't spying on his thoughts as they spoke. Paperwork was a fate worse than a fate worse than all the Sith hells combined.
“Then we want you to do well,” she continued.
“Plus we blew up so much shit on that mission,” Vicrul added, and Kylo opened his eyes to glare at her as she accepted a mug from Kuruk.
“You have to tell the General about that some time, why not put it in a report? You'd save him lots of time, probably. I bet he'd be so appreciative.”
Kylo accepted a mug proffered by Kuruk and waved it about a bit. “Since when do we care about saving Hux time? I meant what I said, he loves paperwork so much he probably,” he picked up a spoon and stabbed it into the fluffy top of the muffin, watching steam come out as he tried to pick a suitably ridiculous image of Hux. “He probably sleeps with all the files strewn over his bed and like,” he made a face, “rubs them on his body, gets all cozy with them at night. I don't know.”
“I'm pretty sure he does paperwork on his data-pad,” Ap'lek said, and she was right, though Kylo resented that she'd killed his roll.
“Just do the kriffing report, Kyle.” Trudgen hadn't pulled her attention away from the holo enough to face him as she'd said it, but apparently had been paying enough attention to comment, “Anything to stop him showing up and interrupting us. Girls' night is a no-business zone.”
Cardo chose that moment to vault over the back of the sofa and land heavily on the cushions. “Ooh, General Hux came over?” she asked cheerfully. Her hands were, predictably, still coated in chocolate powder. “I can't believe I missed him, I want to see if his hair is gelled that solid from close up.” She grabbed her mug and dug into the muffin.
“The General shouts too much,” Kuruk said, sitting cross legged on a cushion by the coffee table. “He should check his blood pressure, it can't be good for him.”
“Hey, a bit like you!” Cardo added, “You must call me through next time. He's cute.”
Kylo opened his mouth – partly to gape at what had just been said, and partly because the muffin was too hot and he hadn't had the impulse control to prevent eating a large spoonful. “Hey!” he started a few times, mouth full and burning. Finally, he was able to swallow. “He is not cute, and there will be no,” he wobbled his mug and spoon in a no-fingered version of quotation marks, “next time.”
“Then do the report,” Ushar shot back.
Kylo made a loud complaint noise.
“He's not gonna do it because he wants the General to come over again,” Ap'lek teased, and, to Kylo's horror, all his knights laughed. Traitors. He didn't want Hux to come over again.
“I don't,” he replied vehemently, “I want him to kriff off and stop annoying me.”
“I think that's against his job description,” Kuruk said, prompting further laughs.
“You should just do it,” Ushar said, getting to her feet after a moment more.
“Hey, where you going?” Vicrul asked sadly, not letting go of Ushar's hand.
“Babe, I gotta peel my face.”
“Wait, let me come with, it's really satisfying.”
The two disappeared off, and Kylo had to add 'his knights screwing in his bathroom' to his list of sub-par things to happen this evening. He wasn't going to do the report. He couldn't be bothered, he didn't want to, he hated writing things and making them sound 'formal'. No, tonight he was going to finish his mug muffin, paint his nails and fall asleep with his knights in front of a trashy holo-romance. Hux would get the hell in eventually and do the report himself. Give it a few more days, and Kylo was sure Hux would drop the issue.