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This is the recurring nightmare: Hux is barely treading some rough dark water, freezing water that makes him feel both fast and slow. His heart hammers, his eyes dart at nothing in the dimness, but his body is going numb and his hands feel like mittens, his muscles stiff and tight as cables--
He has had this dream since he was a child. It is one of his earliest memories. He had this dream far earlier than he actually approached a real body of water, one not on a ship but planetside. Where did it come from? Hux supposes it must have been some holo he watched as a kid, or maybe hearing his father talk about someone drown very early on, because Brendol would surely see no need to censor such information. It doesn't matter, he guesses. It's just always been.
The dream has chased him like an evil spirit, like an ill-tempered pet, all this time, and it gets worse in times of stress. When he first left for the academy, and when he was about to graduate from it. On the cusp of any promotion, when it was still unclear if he would get it. Any moment of uncertainty or anxiety, fear, even, this dream comes back and swallows him whole, and he must do everything he can to keep his head above the water. He doesn't have any recollection of actually dying in these dreams. Someone once told him that you can't die in a dream, or maybe if you do you wake up.
Maybe that person was Kylo Ren. He isn't quite sure, now.
He has discussed a great deal with Kylo Ren. But he had not had any occasion to discuss the recurring dream with him until after the first time they had fought as lovers, rather than co-commanders.
Lovers, a word that is chewy and strange in Hux's mouth, like a bite of unfamiliar food that won't go down. Has he ever been capable of loving anything? Or is love simply the act, as brutal and purposeful and satisfactory as it is, and that therefore makes those who take part in it lovers?
"You think too much," Ren has told him, more than once. "You ought to just act."
It's not like Hux is crippled by indecision or anything. Far from it; nobody can rise through the ranks as quickly as Hux has by neglecting action, by fretting like an old woman over every choice. But there is a kind of enviable grace to the way Ren is guided by instinct, by the Force. Comparatively, sure, Hux is stymied, uncertain, overthinks. But only in comparison.
"That's rubbish," Hux answers, because he cannot abide being told what he ought to do, even by the only person to ever tease pleasure out of his body.
"It's not."
"I'm not interested in arguing with you about this."
That's a lie. Hux would love nothing better than to argue with Ren forever, over everything and nothing. Their horns locked forever until they both succumb to the exhaustion of the fight. That, Hux thinks, that is the ultimate pleasure. To both go down together.
Hux doesn't even remember what that first fight is about. A fight, not bickering, not that pleasant cycle of comfortable argument. A fight where they shout, and throw things, both of them -- see, look, Ren, I can snap into impulsive, snarling behavior, I can throw a wineglass, I can tap into that furnace that stokes your furious power too -- and then Ren leaves, and this is does not feel mutual or fun, this is simply unhappiness. It does not surprise him that the dream decides that night is a fine time to pounce. He lies on his side, shaken awake as always, staring out into the darkness of his quarters that is broken only by the time on the clock. Those numbers are an anchor and he holds fast onto them. 0413.
Don't slip down into that water, Armitage.
Don't.
There is no going back to sleep after this dream comes, so Hux simply keeps himself still and counts the minutes until the lights are timed to rise.
The cleanup droid sucked up all the broken glass and mopped up the spilled wine hours ago, but Hux swears he can hear it drip, drip, drip down the edge of the table.
All that day, he and Ren avoid one another. He clenches his teeth more than he normally does, which is already a lot. His jaws ache when he sits down to eat his lunch in private, still poring over work. He drinks hot caf, to keep himself awake, -- though it helps that it fights off that feeling of cold deep in his stomach, the way it feels when he swallows icy water in his dream.
That night, there's no sign of Ren at all until he's just about to go to sleep -- literally, he's just pulled the covers back, standing with his back to the door in only his underwear. When he hears that innermost door slide open, he freezes, not sure what to expect. He's annoyed, but there's a thick layer of gratitude under that skin of irritation. Ren, it seemed, could not stand being apart from him for more than twenty-four hours.
"It would be lonely in my own quarters," Ren says.
"Don't you have anything else you want to say?" Hux asks, sliding into bed but not pulling the covers up to keep Ren out. Not an invitation so much as a distinct lack of rejection. You may stay.
Ren answers that question by climbing in right next to him, and Hux hates how much he loves the sudden manhandling, the way Ren helps himself to all of him, those enormous hands pawing without the slightest bit of delicacy--
All is forgotten, all is forgiven, and Hux can hardly remember what they fought over.
He is sated, so why should he have the dream again? Always, after things have calmed themselves in Hux's life, the dream fades, waiting for the next disaster to invite it back into his brain. But here, safe and selfishly pleased--pressed up to Ren's chest, stars --it worms its way back into his head.
The feeling of -- there's hardly any way to keep above -- he's struggling, the water's too --
--it's cold --
He wakes to the force of his own teeth chattering, slowly rouses, pulling himself free of the feeling, trying to ground himself, remind himself that he is here, in the present, safe in bed, warm and dry, with Ren next to him--
"Armitage," calls the low even purr of Ren's voice in the dark, and again, just like the lit-up numbers of the clock, it is a rope, a ladder, a solid thing to cling to. And cling, cling he does. He awkwardly forces himself onto his other side, so instead of being held spoons-style, he's facing Ren. He lets out a soft noise that starts with an H-sound that could be the beginning of a help. "Armitage, it's all right. It's all right."
Who were they? Was this what lovers did?
"It's all right."
The tone of Ren's voice suggests that he--he didn't mind doing this. He liked this, even. The way Ren reaches out first by calling Hux's name, and then physically, pawing him again but softer, gentler, nudging him into some kind of piled-up closeness. There's a third kind of reaching out, one that Hux has only experienced a few times before, the kind where Ren reaches into his head with the Force, petting and caressing his thoughts down soft and smoothed out. It works, it does. "Armitage, only a dream," he says. "Just a dream."
Surely Hux had been crying out, flailing, maybe. The way a child would. He must be feeling better, now that he's feeling a pang of embarrassment. Watching himself in his mind's eye as if from above, watching himself shiver and moan with feverish helplessness. "I'm sorry," he whispers to Ren. "I'm--it's a dream. Just like you said."
"Just a dream."
"One I've had. Since I was a boy."
"Mmmhm?" The way Ren is brushing Hux's hair back is almost worth having the dream two nights in a row. How could he have ever thought that their familiar arguments were the best part of their interactions, when this softness is so much better? He would have this dream every night, maybe, for the feeling of those fingertips of his cheek.
Ren smiles, Hux can see that even in the almost-nothing light. "Recurring dreams. I know about those."
"Do you?"
"I've heard you have them."
"I thought--thought you meant your own."
"I've had those too. But yours -- last night, I mean..."
"Sorry," Hux says, gruff. "I'm..."
"No, don't--I'm here."
They are as close as they possibly can be in the dark, Hux just about climbing into Ren's skin, his skin finally warming up. "Do you like this?" Hux wants to know.
"I always have."
Hux nods.
"I like this much better," Ren goes on. "Much more than you losing your temper with me."
"I've only ever lost my temper with you. You're the only one who can...get to me that way."
"I can't deny I like that. But I like this, like I said. Much better."
Hux says nothing, just holds on tight, savoring Ren's warmth, his bulk. He allows himself the fantasy that Ren has stepped into the dream, that he has truly pierced through the limits of reality and plucked Hux out of the frozen water, pulled him away to safety, forced the water from his lungs. Rescued. Saved.
"I might like it better too," Hux whispers in admission, and Ren pets Hux's head like a favorite pet, one that has finally decided to behave.
"Should I come to you if it happens again?" Ren wants to know, and it sounds so earnest that Hux cannot bring himself to be embarassed at such coddling. He nods.
"You ought to--if you know..."
"Then I will. Of course I will...You know I'll know....Just sleep...."
Hux closes his eyes, obedient -- he can feel the gentle fingertips of Ren's power pressing at his mind, the way one might shut off a data pad, holding the button down to stop it from working. In his hazy final swirl of thoughts, he decides he really oughtn't lose his temper with Ren....it really isn't worth it, not when he can have this instead. It is so easy, when he is so frightened and tired and not himself, to be bent and shaped and given over to suggestion, which is exactly what Ren has been counting on.
When Ren sent him the nightmare the evening before -- a file so easily plucked from Hux's memory, hardly required any searching -- he had done so out of spite, to frighten Hux, to punish him. But to use it as a tool this way was so much smarter. Perhaps, Ren thought, you cannot force anyone to love you, but you can force them to need you, and one thing leads to another so effortlessly after that. He holds Hux close, knowing he is sound asleep now, his breaths all perfectly even, not one longer or shorter than the last. When Ren needs affection, he now knows, he does not have to demand it. He can simply flip this switch in Hux's head, and then wait to be needed, and Hux will not turn him away.
His own dreams are blank, his own sleep sound, tinged with victory, and neither of them move out of their tight, greedy hold until Hux's alarm calls them to greet the day.