Work Text:
“I made your favourite!”
The way he’d said it over the phone Hux had been expecting to come home to some culinary extravaganza, or more likely a kitchen-based disaster, but Kylo had in fact made his favourite.
If anyone had ever asked Hux his favourite food he would probably have said some fancy multi-stage curry or a sticky indulgent pudding, but that would have been a lie. He’d have said anything to save face rather admit his love for such a plain meal as this. But it was his favourite.
Cheap white bread, lashing of margarine (not butter), horseradish, roast beef, and more horseradish. There was something about the texture between his teeth- the soft bread, the slick spread, the crunch of the meat. He could eat it forever. Which seemed to be Kylo’s intention since he’d made four rounds and had a bowl of his own unpleasant protein salad in front of himself. How he expected Hux to eat so much he didn’t say. Strange.
Hux honestly didn’t remember ever telling Kylo about his inordinate love for this particular sandwich but apparently the man knew him well enough to realise it. That made Hux’ heart warm. Or perhaps that was just the heartburn that had been plaguing him all week.
“Thank you.”
Kylo hummed but made no response, he just watched Hux closely over his spoon as he shovelled boiled egg and chicken into his face.
It was an effort of will not to sneer at his husband’s tastes but Hux managed to keep his face neutral- Kylo did deserve a reward for his kind efforts after all. Even if he had been stingy on the horseradish. Still, he’d left the pot out on the table, so surely he wouldn’t object to Hux fixing the sandwich by adding more?
There must have been something wrong with the horseradish. Perhaps the jar was passed it’s date, or it had sat in the fridge too long. The sauce really wasn’t hot enough. It took four reapplications to produce a sandwich that was precisely to his liking, and the thing looked abominable- more sauce than anything else.
Kylo just watched him trying to eat it, smiling slightly as Hux awkwardly licked sauce off fingers, palms and even his wrist once while it repeatedly fell apart. The second sandwich he ‘fixed’ by alternating between bites of sandwich and spoonfuls of sauce. It was a little embarrassing but the combination tasted so good that by the third sandwich Hux had forgotten to blush and was eating with a quick and easy gusto. He didn’t even notice when he picked up the fourth and so he found himself reaching for an empty plate.
“Oh.”
“Hungry?”
“I didn’t think so but apparently, yeah.” Hux laughed. “I’ve had hardly any appetite this month, I guess I needed to catch up!”
Kylo grinned at him. “Nausea?”
“What?” What a strange question to be asking out of nowhere. “No. I’ve just not felt like it. Bit of heartburn I guess. I think it’s just the changing weather.”
Across the table Kylo made a weird face, a mix of amused and disbelieving, but he didn’t say anything else on the subject.
“Why don’t you get a bath while I load the dishwasher?” He asked instead. “Then movie night?”
Hux didn’t entirely trust that face. He hoped Kylo wasn’t up to something, like the first time they’d planned a quiet movie night and Hux had come out of the bathroom in a towel to find the living room full of people.
“Okay… But just us, yeah?”
Kylo laughed and offered a pinky finger to seal the deal.
Closing the bathroom door Hux wriggled out of his binder with a groan. He should have taken it off as soon as he got in the house. He usually did but he’d been ridiculously overwhelmed by the food on offer.
Urgh. He really did need a bath now. He never used to get this sweaty during the day, but then his figure had taken a strange turn recently. He’d always been lucky to have an almost nonexistent chest, so the binder was more for a smooth line under his suit, but it was getting uncomfortably tight.
Hux had always been content with his body. He preferred a masculine presentation but he’d never really considered making any changes beyond his outward appearance. He was tall, his frame was too thin but pleasantly angular, he was blessed with a deep enough voice that he’d passed as a boy long before he realised it was an option. Now he was Armitage Hux, happily married engineer, and only he and his husband needed to know he was nonbinary. He wasn’t in the closet about it, it just wasn’t anyone else’s business.
Kylo loved him the way he was. He loved his body and the way it fitted together with Kylo’s. They were fantastic together, even if Hux’ chest was getting a bit fat from too many long days in the office and not enough exercise.
Something niggled at his thoughts then, like the uncomfortable idea that he’d forgotten an important appointment, but he dismissed it.
The water was cool and wonderfully soothing on his sore shoulders as he sank down into the bath. Thank fuck they’d bought a house with a six foot tub. It was like a swimming pool but it made washing his hair easier.
His head was submerged when he heard his phone bleep. He didn’t recognise the tone. Water streamed off his hair when he sat up to poke the screen as carefully as he could without getting it wet.
It was his period tracker bitching that he hadn’t updated it in three months. Which was bullshit. His last period hadn’t been that long ago. It had almost ruined Kylo’s birthday weekend, which had been…
Well, shit.
Three months ago.
Hux lay back in the bath and stared at the ceiling. It felt like there was a flashing neon sign above his head that read ‘idiot’.
His chest was swollen and aching.
He had near constant heartburn.
He’d just eaten the best part of a jar of horseradish.
He hadn’t had a period in three months.
Kylo had asked if he was nauseous, and he wasn’t but that had been the symptom he’d always been told to expect, if he was…
The word wouldn’t form in his mind.
They’d talked about it. Hell, they’d more than talked about it, they deliberately ditched the condoms to try to get…
Nope, the word still refused to form in his brain.
There were tests under the sink. Kylo had bought them after they’d first talked about it. Hux had never used one. He’d never had unprotected sex with anyone else. He’d seen plenty of movies though. People peed on sticks then sat around worrying for two minutes. It didn’t seem hard.
Hux felt ridiculous, sitting on the loo, still dripping bath water, but now that he suspected he just had to know immediately.
He read the booklet because the best engineers always do, but there really wasn’t any way to make ‘piss on stick, wait, look at window’ any clearer. It did warn that a morning test would be more accurate, but he didn’t think he could survive waiting that long.
It turned out the ‘wait’ part was unnecessary. The instructions advised to watch the liquid soak into the stick so Hux saw as the two lines appeared instantly. No ambiguous result there. Just two solid bright red lines. He glanced at the instructions again anyway, just to be certain.
Line C- Not pregnant.
Line T- faulty.
Line C & T- pregnant.
He held the test against the paper, to be doubly, triply, extra certain.
Two lines.
He felt like he was in some kind of dream. He’d even got his boxers half way up his legs before he realised he hadn’t towelled off.
Kylo was laid out on the couch with a beer in each hand when Hux finally got it together enough to leave the bathroom.
While he was dressing he’d debated how to tell Kylo, since it didn’t seem like it was going to be a surprise to him, and there was no real question whether it was something they both wanted. They were trying to get pregnant. But it still felt like a massive thing to get out of his mouth.
But when Kylo raised his feet to let Hux sit down and offered him a beer it was suddenly the easiest thing in the world to say, “thanks, but it’s not good for the baby.”
Kylo grinned, wide and bright as the sun, and showed him the front of the bottle. ‘Alcohol-free’.
“How long have you known?” Hux asked, a little peevishly as he accepted it.
“I got suspicious two weeks ago. You know, when you ate that cream and mango curry without complaining. You hate cream curries and you hate fruit, but you ‘simply had to have it’.” Kylo said, affectionately rubbing Hux’ thigh with his heel. “I thought you knew and you’d tell me when you were ready, I had no idea you didn’t know.”
“I thought I’d get sick. Isn’t that always the narrative? Early morning head in the toilet, whoops, better take a test?”
Kylo shrugged. “Not everyone gets sick, but I bet the people who don’t don’t go bragging about it. Would you wanna tell hormonal people that you’d avoided their misery? It’s like period pains I guess- people think that everyone gets them cos the smug people get punched into silence.”
“I punched you one time!”
“Right in the eye!”
“You should have knocked!”
“You should have locked the door!”
“That lock had been broken for five months and you know it.”
Kylo laughed. “True. But if I hadn’t bought you dinner to make up for walking in on you, and you hadn’t bought me dinner to make up for brutally punching me in the head…”
“Hey!”
“Then we wouldn’t be sitting here right now, would we? You and me, and our baby.” His voice cracked on the last word, but Kylo manfully covered it with a gulp of beer.
Hux smiled to himself. It was a nice thought. “I dunno, I’d been planning to ask you out for a while, I just didn’t know how you’d react to, well, me.”
“A valid concern, but you really didn’t have to flash me and then PUNCH ME IN THE…” Kylo was silenced by a pillow to the face followed by an irritated kiss.
“Shut up. Arguing isn’t good for the baby. And I did not flash you.”
“You always have to have the last word don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”