Chapter Text
“When you’re Emperor,” You stretched languidly in bed, reaching through your fingers and toes. “What will come of me?”
The cushy bed sank as you sat up on your elbows, eyeing him with the look he’d come to associate with you wanting something of him.
General Hux unfastened his coat with a contemplative look. The stress lines in his face were still prominent from the day. He’d yet to relax, even minimally.
Though the clock read two in the morning, the planets, stars, and innumerable galaxies outside stalled time. Sleep had been intermittent since relocating permanently to the ship, partly from abandoning the sun and moons of your home planet. In the wilds of space, night and day bled together into a never ending purgatory.
While waiting for your answer, you admired the glistening stars drifting by the oversized window. You shivered imagining the boundless expanse before you.
“Tell me, Senator,” Hux placed his coat carefully in the closet before crawling towards you on the bed. He pushed himself into you, grabbing your hips, holding you in place. His fingers pressed into you possessively, forming light red indentations in your skin. “What have I yet to do to convince you I want only you at my side?”
You swallowed as his eyes trailed over your throat and shoulders. His muscles slowly relaxed as you ran your hands up and down his back, pushing hard against the rough knots that seemed to multiply by the day.
“Do you expect I beg?” His warm breath tickled at your neck from his harsh whisper in your ear. Hux pulled you up into him, kissing the delicate skin between your neck and ear. “Do you expect I kneel at your feet?”
“I expect your word,” You grabbed his neck to force his stare. His chilling blue eyes searched yours for any hint of manipulation. “That no matter what you become. You remember who I am when it’s just you and I.”
“And what good is my word, Senator ?” Hux said. “When I will do and promise anything to get what I deserve.”
“You contradict yourself, General ,” You ran a cold hand through his slicked hair, jostling it out of place. It toppled into his eyes and you smiled fondly at the softness it afforded his face. “How can your word mean everything and nothing?”
“Your politics are worthless in the bedroom,” Hux ran a hand under your head to tug at the soft hair at the nape of your neck.
“My politics are in the bedroom, Armitage,” You continued displacing his hair to his great dismay. “How do you assume my family’s maintained strong political clout for generations?”
“Political acumen and limitless pockets,” Hux pulled you both into a sitting position and pushed your roaming hands from his hair. He tangled his fingers with yours to stop any further destruction of his hairstyle. “Why must you always downplay your political prowess?”
“Saying I fucked my way to the top is far more interesting,” You smirked, admiring his pouting lips. “Or, people underestimate you that way, giving you an astonishing advantage. You’d think after eleven consecutive generations people would stop underestimating the Y/L/Ns. But they don’t and it burns them every time.” Passion scorched your eyes imagining the illustrious Senate floor and your innate ability to wrap anybody around your finger.
Hux admired you with a careful sense of wonder. Biting your lip, he pulled you closer towards him, wrapping his hands around your waist, putting you in his lap. Your legs circled around his waist and you shoved your hands back in his hair, unperturbed by his attempts to protect it.
“And yet you’re still skeptical that I want you to rule by my side?” Hux shook his head as you pushed him back to sit on top of him.
His head lay at the foot of the oversized bed. You ran your hand slowly up his chest and rested it threateningly at his throat. Reveling in the dark scrutiny of his gaze, you strummed your fingers against his racing pulse.
You bent down to whisper against his lips, “Your word, Armitage.” You pushed slightly into his throat and he growled, flipping you over so that he was on top once more.
One hand held your wrists in place over the edge of the bed. The other pushed into your stomach.
“Y/N, I give you my word,” Hux slid you down so your head dangled off the bed. “That I want you, and only you, to rule at my side when I become Emperor.” It wasn’t more than a whisper but it engulfed the room with a dominance only he could muster from silence.
“Good,” You slipped your hands from his grasp and wrapped them around his neck. In an attempt to save you both from slipping from the bed, Hux pulled you in closer to him. You watched him watch you and pursed your lips willing him to inquire further into the mischief in your eyes.
“There’s something else,” Hux creased his brows and pulled back for a better look at your face. He lingered on his forearms over you. “Tell me.”
“How will I be your Empress if I’m stuck in your bedroom?”
The room chilled rapidly with the tension wrapping between you. It felt like the deepest recesses of space were pulling you into the darkness. Something about asking one of the most powerful men in the galaxy something so consequential sent a shiver down your spine. And seeing him consider it made you feel weak in the knees, even lying down.
“You expect I marry you,” Hux stated plainly, betraying none of his previous emotion. “Before my coronation.”
“Yes,” You replied, bending your head to meet his drifting gaze. It fell somewhere far beyond the confines of your bedroom. Watching his mind work stilled your heart to an unnaturally slow thud. His arms were still wrapped around you but he soon loosened his grip, pulling away.
The icy room felt even more so without his warm body pressed against yours. Your lips flatlined and you set your face in an expertly disinterested stare. It was exactly the look you gave when you weren’t getting exactly what you wanted and thought you still could.
Reprocessed air lingered thick between you, like a haze forming over your figures, obscuring one another from view. While you were wholly present in the moment, Hux was not. He’d seeped deep into the recesses of his overburdened mind.
“I had no model for matrimony in my youth,” Hux’s eyes fluttered in thought, remembering something you could never fathom. “I don’t know how to be a husband. I know how to be a disciplinarian, a commander. Neither are appropriate in marriage.”
“No,” You agreed, still watching him carefully. The only sign of life in him was the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. “And even less so with children.”
“Children?” Hux practically stuttered, his voice uncharacteristically hoarse. He finally looked to you with an unbridled shock that stalled your breath.
“I’ve never seen a successful Emperor without an heir,” You smiled gently, hoping to lighten the sickening tension. “They’re quite useful. Unless they run you through too soon, of course.”
Hux pursed his lips and you accepted it as a partial smile.
“I’m not asking you respond now,” You said, swallowing the lump forming in your throat.
“No.”
“No?” You mouth fell open and you pulled into yourself. You stumbled back off the bed, wrapping your arms around you middle as you turned away from him.
“No,” Hux repeated. “I mean, you’re owed a response now.”
He padded across the floor and wrapped his arms around your waist. Resting his chin on your shoulder, he breathed deeply, settling the pain in his chest.
“I am completely incompetent regarding interpersonal, intimate relationships.” He breathed heavy against you and softly nuzzled his head into your neck. The warmth from his touch returned and you covered his hands with your own, hoping to quell the light quake at your fingertips. “If you desire the misery that surrounds me, then I would like you there.”
“Oh yes,” You spun in his arms and circled your arms around his neck. Your fingers dug lightly into the skin at the base of his hair. “The strenuous life of Emperor Armitage Hux, shrouded in misery and hardship.”
You smirked up at him and flicked his earlobe. He shook the shock away from your playful gesture with a small smile. Dragging both hands over your back and down to your thighs, Hux maneuvered your legs up to wrap around his waist.
He walked you back towards the wall beside the bed. Cool metal stung your skin as Hux pushed you into the wall with vigor.
When he finally kissed you it felt like molten lava rushing through your frostbitten veins. As if he’d restarted your failing heart moments before collapse. Using his body weight to hold you against the wall, he dragged his hands leisurely up your sides until they landed near your neck. Hux fiddled awkwardly with the fabric of your sleep shirt, tugging the sleeves from your shoulders.
He growled at the unfavorable angle and rectified the situation by carrying you to the bed. The springy mattress bounced back as you fell but sank quickly from the weight of Hux suddenly on top of you.
You were afforded no time to think. His lips were again on yours with an unhinged insistence that constricted your chest, obliterating your ability to breathe.
It was a blissful Hell in his arms. There was little light left in his soul. But such deficits lingered heavy in yours too. If this brilliant torture was Hell, you yearned to drown in its depths and asphyxiate in its grasp; One constricted breath at a time.