Chapter Text
“Well, you’re in a fantastic mood.”
Kylo Ren slanted a look at his companion, his red-rimmed eyes narrowed both from pain and irritation. Perhaps the look was not as effective since he was on his stomach and half his face was buried in his pillows. Phasma merely lifted a blond brow at him, as unfazed by his scowl as she had been when they were children and she had towered over him by a good foot. Time had since narrowed the gap between them in size—though she still liked to rub in how she stood about half-an-inch taller than him—but it had not diminished Phasma’s complete lack of deference towards him.
It was why she was perhaps the closest thing he had to having a best friend.
Said best friend had barged into his room half an hour earlier with what she proclaimed to be the world’s most effective hangover cure, but after she’d force-fed him a mason-jar full of the sludge, Kylo was convinced that it was probably poison because his stomach was now roiling and his head was still being rhythmically cleaved in two. If only the poison would make his death come quicker.
Especially since Phasma was determined to chatter all throughout his suffering. He’d had to endure her endless narration of the training drills that she and her ROTC unit had gone through that morning, how she was going to improve on the program someday. Kylo had sullenly refused to say a word throughout, even if just to tell her to shut up, and it seemed the silence had finally annoyed her enough to address him directly.
“I hope last night’s overindulgence was worth it,” Phasma continued in that crisp, condescending and judgmental tone that only she and her cousin managed so well. “Armitage said you were so determined to get drunk that it was easier to just let you. Hardly becoming of the Supreme Leader’s ward.”
“Armitage can go suck an egg,” Kylo muttered, not meaning it. Hux had, after all, dragged him back to his dormitory near dawn. He’d lectured and complained the whole time but, as with Phasma, Kylo had long become inured to Hux’s sneering and sharp tongue. What mattered was that when it counted, he came through.
In another life, he’d probably have found it bizarre that the two peers Kylo considered closest to him were people whom he disliked. But as things were, having hateful people be his friends sounded about right. They were both slightly sadistic, fanatical perfectionists, but they had important places in his life.
And at least they were honest about what they were. At least it was there, on the surface. They might abandon him, might turn on him someday, but he would see it coming and it wouldn’t be personal.
And for the present, at least, they were there.
Well, Phasma was, anyway. Against the dark décor of his room, she stood out like an icy moonbeam. Her close-cropped hair was the color of wheat in the wintry sunlight that she’d let in when she’d drawn his drapes and startled him out of his stupor. In her unabashedly feminine, blue cable-knit cashmere sweater dress and tall boots, she still managed to look more handsome than pretty, but there was something he found comforting in that stark, severe face. Perhaps it was that pair of canny, smoky blue eyes set against all that snowy skin—eyes that carried understanding, if not warmth or sympathy.
It was why Kylo had far more tolerance for Phasma’s brand of playfully vicious teasing than Hux’s earnest, overweening nagging.
“So what were we celebrating last night?” she asked in a deceptively brisk tone. “Another wonderful, productive chat with your adoptive papa?”
Kylo couldn’t help the snort. If Snoke knew how Phasma spoke about him, she’d probably find herself in one of those holding cells that exiled left-wing radicals said the First Order kept. Unlike Hux, whose parents were important enough to be a part of Snoke’s inner circle, Phasma’s branch of the family tree tipped decidedly downwards. Also unlike Hux, who was almost insanely devoted to Snoke’s First Order Party, Phasma was far more practical than puritanical. If the First Order no longer served her or her family’s interests, she would likely turn.
To whom? piped the quiet voice that sounded too much like someone he’d left behind years before. When Snoke’s time comes, what then?
Kylo forcefully shut that train of thought down, closing his eyes in the effort to do so. He couldn’t let himself think of that. Not when he already felt like he usually did whenever his guardian put him through meditation drills and therapy. Snoke had very unique ideas about what helped give a person mental and emotional clarity.
“So not the Supreme Leader then,” Phasma concluded without surprise. Kylo glared at her, as ineffectual as he knew it would be in terms of making her stop. “I thought not. You usually look crippled or constipated after one of your chats, not . . . ” She trailed off, waving her hand with disgust in his general direction.
Kylo didn’t take the bait. Phasma was fishing, and she would use anything he gave her to draw things out until she found something of interest to her. They stared at each other for a full minute until Phasma caved, rolling her eyes at him in irritation.
“You do realize that if you tell me, I might actually be able to help you,” she pointed out in a voice she likely reserved for the poor sods she would train someday.
That was highly unlikely. To Phasma’s credit, she had managed to do a great deal for him over the years. But as valuable as she was, he wasn’t about to go crying to her about girl problems.
The fact that he was having honest-to-goodness problems with a girl made him cringe. Twice as hard because the phrase “girl problems” was something his father used whenever he’d had a fight with his mother and his son wanted to know why there was so much yelling and object-throwing. Still, there was no denying the accuracy of the term. He was having problems and they were being caused by a girl.
Though Rey Kenobi had yet to yell at him or throw something in his direction, since the first moment he’d clapped eyes on her Kylo felt the way Han Solo looked whenever he looked at Leia Organa. Hungry, confused, tormented, resentful . . . not very romantic, but it spoke volumes of the power that a woman could have over a man.
And despite doing his best to deny and minimize it, Kylo was too honest with himself to pretend that things were otherwise. As much as he hated her for it, there was no way to fool himself into believing that Rey didn’t have any power over him.
After all, the day before had been wonderful and the night promising to be even more so. He’d had a lengthy, productive discussion with one of his tutors about his performance in the previous term, he’d won three bouts against Raynar Thul in his morning fencing class, and he’d been looking forward to an evening unwinding with his set.
Then she’d arrived and it had all gone to hell.
*
Some genius had chosen just that moment to play something from Maroon 5, and as Adam Levine appealed for the pretty little girl to put her hands all over him Kylo leaned over the railing of the dais where he and his group had settled. The glass of Hibiki he’d tossed back upon arriving was still humming happily through his blood stream and he could feel the knots of tension along his spine dissolving as the raucous, carefree energy of the crowd sank into his system. He’d been hesitant to go to a party hosted by Gant Wesell, but half an hour in even Kylo had to concede that the heir to the Undercity’s Outlander Club knew how to throw a party. The cavernous entrance hall of the home he’d rented for the purpose had been converted into the dance floor where most of the people still were, but scattered around the three-floor building were pockets of activity: gambling, a pool game, and other kinds of recreation that Kylo was thinking about exploring. He was straightening, planning to excuse himself, when some newcomers skittered into view.
Kylo’s breath clogged in his throat as she walked further into the glinting pool of the giant chandelier’s light. Just the sight of her made him think of sin. Of dark corners and soft sighs, of heat and violent relief. Every part of him seemed to ache—some more than others—and he fought the urge to tug at his collar and loosen other garments that suddenly felt too tight.
To be fair to Rey Kenobi, she’d been having that effect on him for a while. He couldn’t exactly be pissed off with her, as if she’d deliberately dressed to seduce him. Objectively speaking, she was still mostly covered up in a little black dress that complemented rather than clung to her trim figure. Her hair was done up in an intricate-looking knot that seemed like just a version of her usual three buns and her face was as bare as it usually was save for the slight sheen on her lips.
There was no reason to feel like she’d punched him in the gut.
Maybe it was because she’d been wearing Poe Dameron’s jacket over the dress. Or maybe because Dameron and his floppy hair had helped her peel the hideous thing off, smiling lopsidedly down at her as she flashed him her dimples. Maybe it was because Dameron now had a hand on the small of her back, guiding her forward into the throng of people celebrating the opening of spring term.
“What do you think, Ren?”
Alli Starwind’s quiet inquiry cut neatly through Kylo’s fantasies about snapping Dameron’s fingers off. Turning his attention back to his friends, he realized with some chagrin that they were all staring at him, waiting expectantly for an answer. In the half-second before he opened his mouth, he took a quick inventory of their faces.
Alli’s placid face was wreathed in discomfort, but the set of her jaw was firm and uncompromising. Facing her, Armitage Hux was looking particularly feral, his blue eyes bright with the kind of indignation unique to zealots. Frederic Kellar stood in between them, one large, pacifying hand on each of their shoulders. Given the discussion before he’d spotted Rey, Kylo could guess what the argument was about.
“Armed force will always be the last resort,” Kylo said slowly, gauging the expressions of his listeners. “But I’m sure that reasonable people will prevail before it comes to that. Malastare was an Empire state, after all.”
Hux smirked; Alli pursed her lips and her expression cleared, though her eyes remained troubled. It was a curious thing, how an heiress from Kuat—the opulent port city that also served as the site for the country’s largest military shipbuilding operation—was always the first to oppose Hux whenever he started in on one of his autocratic rants about how to get people—and states—in line.
Kellar grinned at Kylo in relief, sensing that the argument had—at least on the surface—been put to rest. Unlike Kylo, Hux, and Alli, Kellar was not reading for the Political and International Relations Program and didn’t enjoy debating systems of government or foreign policy. Like most Mandalorians, he had a straightforward approach to conflict: crush the opposition. If he wasn’t also dating Alli, Kellar would likely have been in complete agreement with Hux with respect to what people were calling the Malastare Crisis.
Despite the numerous upheavals their country had faced, Malastare had always known its place since the days of the Old Republic. It weathered regime change better than most states and since the First Order had taken power it had developed at an unprecedented rate. Yet peace and prosperity aside, something had changed in resource-rich Malastare over time, because it was now threatening to secede and take a valuable chunk of the country’s economy with it.
Privately, Kylo could see where Alli was coming from. The Malastare Crisis was complicated. On one hand, the fact that Malastare was daring Snoke’s wrath by championing secession was a sign of vulnerability in the First Order’s hold—vulnerability that needed to be coped with by a show of strength. On the other hand, the First Order as a party was already controversial. The United Nations seemed to be forever adopting resolutions decrying Snoke’s policies and methods and some states had already seen fit to impose trade sanctions. They didn’t need Malastare to serve as another example of brutal authoritarianism.
“Oy, Dameron!”
Kylo’s attention snapped back to the party at Kellar’s boisterous greeting. He turned in the direction of the hulking Mandalorian’s grin and found himself less than ten feet away from Rey and her group.
If he’d felt overwhelmed with her across the sea of bodies, having her walk within arm’s reach was so, so much worse. Especially since Rey didn’t look too happy to see him either, her gaze flying everywhere but at him as her friends forced her to shuffle forward. Kylo noted that she and Dameron had managed to locate the other pairing in their crew—the boy who’d been expelled from the Imperial Academy and the cute engineering student who was always with him.
And the fact that he could actually conceive of Rey and Dameron as a pair made him clench his teeth so hard he was surprised they didn’t crack. He nodded coolly at the group in general, pointedly tearing his gaze away from Rey.
“Dameron,” Hux drawled unpleasantly, cutting in right after Kellar introduced Dameron to Alli. “And . . . what was your name again? We had Dameron with us for at least two years, but you left us so suddenly just a few months in.”
As far as taunts went, it wasn’t Hux’s most creative, but on his intended target it was supremely effective.
“His name is Finn,” Dameron said tightly, his eyes narrowing with the same brash temper from their middle school days. “For someone so supposedly smart, you sure do have trouble with names, Hux.”
“You do need to remember, he’s smart by Imperial Academy standards,” Finn added with less heat. This one was clearly the more level-headed of the two—and clearly used to dealing with potshots about his expulsion. Kylo almost found the quip funny, except he’d come in first at the Imperial Academy.
Hux colored but his lips curled in some form of acknowledgment. “Well, we can’t all be so clever so as to be sent down on purpose, Finn. Interesting to see you here. Aeronautics, too?” Something ugly found its way into his eyes. “You and Dameron were always too chummy, even back then.”
“Military History,” Finn supplied readily, the veiled jeer sliding right off him. The corner of his mouth quirked. “With your cousin, as it happens.”
“Phasma?” Hux blinked, then grinned. “I’ll be sure to put a word in about you.”
Finn grinned back, his teeth just as sharp. “Oh, no need. We already had a long chat about you and why she’s the one in the Military History Program.”
This time Kylo did smile—to himself, at least. He swept Hux a covert look and saw that the barb had found its mark. As fond as Hux was of his cousin, he’d grown up on taunts about his so-called “deficiencies” as a male, about how Phasma and he were clearly meant to be living each other’s lives rather than their own. They were stupid, ignorant notions about what made a man, of course, but knowing things didn’t make things hurt less. Kylo was well-versed in that particularly frustrating reality.
Despite their argument earlier, it was Alli who swept into the fray in a transparent effort to give Hux time to rally his defenses.
“Fred, will you and Armitage see if you can get us more drinks?” she asked Kellar sweetly. To Hux—who did not appreciate being ordered around, whatever her motives—she added, “Please go with him Armitage, he never knows what to order. We’ll end up with something horrendously pedestrian if you don’t.”
Predictably, the appeal to his elitism swayed him and Hux grudgingly departed, shooting Dameron and Finn another slit-eyed stare.
Alli turned back to the group, the grin she was wearing relaxing her serenely beautiful face into something appealingly approachable. “Very nice to meet you, Finn,” she said sincerely, taking Finn’s hand in both of her own before turning to the girl at Finn’s side. “And you’re Rose Tico, right? I think we had a math class together last term.”
“Art,” Rose Tico corrected, smiling back. “You painted that abstract piece that made me think of a swan.”
“You took an art class?”
The surprised interjection seemed to thrum over his ears, sending a shiver of delight down his spine. Steeling himself against the feeling, Kylo did his best not to look like a moonstruck cow as he finally allowed himself to look at her again.
The scene between Hux and their former schoolmates had helped him pretend that Rey wasn’t there. Now that she’d inserted herself neatly into the middle of the conversation, there was no helping it.
It was small comfort that she looked mortified at drawing attention to herself, her smooth cheeks flushing becomingly. He lowered his gaze to her shoes, his mouth going dry as he fantasized about tasting her freckles, only to find that he was as fascinated by the wickedly sharp pumps she had on. It was pathetic, how he wanted her to walk all over him with those heels.
“Not everyone lives and breathes engineering, Rey,” Rose was saying with a fond roll of her eyes.
Rey flushed, her retort defensive. “I just forgot to sign up for electives!”
“You must really enjoy engineering if it absorbs you that much.” Alli was chuckling in that smooth, practiced way that his mother used to whenever he’d seen her at work. It was the kind of laugh to set someone at ease, and it worked like a charm on Rey, who turned those big pools of golden green to Alli with something akin to helpless adoration. “It’s nice to meet you, Rey . . . ?”
“Kenobi,” Rey breathed out, reaching for Alli’s hand eagerly.
And damn it all if he wasn’t jealous of Alli.
Alli.
Get a grip, Kylo told himself fiercely, disgusted beyond belief. She has yet to say a word to you and you’ve already lost the plot.
Alli had turned her attention to Rose, her eyes twinkling. “I wouldn’t mock her—you drew a vector for your final project, as I recall.”
“Is that what that was?” Finn asked, piling on.
Rose turned to swat at him, and suddenly the conversation was between Finn, Rose, Alli, and Poe, who had once again stepped in to defend his friend, this time from a mildly irate engineering student/frustrated artist.
Rey must have felt the shift, too, because she stiffened under the weight of Kylo’s stare, her posture straightening so quickly that her back almost arched. He waited a beat before he realized that she wasn’t about to acknowledge him.
“Kenobi,” he greeted softly, forcing the issue though it stung his pride to do so. There was simply no way to help himself when it came to her. He’d have stonily ignored anyone else.
She lost the battle to politeness as he knew she would and she finally turned to face him. All of the warmth that had been on her face just a few moments earlier had drained away. Her lips tautened at the corners in a perfunctorily civil smile. “Ren.”
Kylo cast about for something to say, floundering as her eyes drew him in. When she averted her gaze, her color peeking through the thin veil of her makeup, he choked out the first complete sentence in his head, something akin to terror gripping him as it occurred to him that she might leave their conversation at that.
“Did you have a good holiday?”
He instantly resented the way she blinked up at him as though, in asking the question, he’d sprouted another head. It was a perfectly polite, sensible question.
“Yes,” she answered slowly, as if she didn’t understand what he was asking. Then, like it was being dragged out of her—“You?”
“It was fine.”
It was. It had been. He’d spent the first three days giving a full report to Snoke about his first term, then the Supreme Leader had left him to his own devices after dispensing some advice. There was no reason to feel hollow and ridiculously ashamed in giving his response to her question.
Rey looked at her preoccupied friends, then out across the dance floor, clearly wishing that she was anywhere but right there. Perversely, it crossed Kylo’s mind to ask her to dance when someone else caught his eye.
The open bar was adjacent to the entrance, built up against a wall in a way that made it look like it had always been there. He spotted Hux and Kellar waiting for their drinks, their eyes roving the dance floor much like his own had been when he’d simply been passing the time.
Except that Hux’s eyes weren’t roving—they were fixed on Rey’s face, the cold blue orbs alive with interest, darting over her with appreciation that was apparent despite the sneer that Kylo still managed to see from where he was standing.
“Will you excuse me?” Kylo murmured to Rey, taking one last glance at that delicately-molded face, that slick mouth. “I just remembered that I have to deal with something.”
He strode off without waiting for her response, ignoring the curious interjections from his party as he left. By the time he reached Hux, he’d managed to get a tight enough grip on the possessive fury that he didn’t punch Hux immediately in the face. Instead he laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder, managed to say with enough gravity that they needed to discuss something urgent right away.
Hux’s chest puffed with ambitious pride and he preened, shooting Kellar a blatantly insincere, condescending apology. Kellar wasn’t happy with being left alone to carry all the drinks back, but Kylo helpfully divested him of two and walked away with Hux in tow.
It took them about ten minutes to find a quiet reading room on the second floor, where Kylo managed to convince Hux that he’d just needed an excuse to get away from the corroding presence of the plebeian Poe and Finn.
“Well, I don’t blame you,” Hux said with a smirk. “God, what is happening to the application process at this school? Dameron I can try to understand, but Finn?”
They spent a good twenty minutes ridiculing their former schoolmates and finishing their drinks. Hux had settled on vieux carré for the group—perhaps out of deference to Alli, who favored it. Kylo didn’t usually like mixed drinks, but there was whiskey in the thing, at least, and he was coming to like the bitters. Halfway through his glass, Kylo almost forgot why he’d been so determined to get Hux away from Rey.
And then Hux opened his mouth and demanded to know if there was anyone worth knowing at the party.
Kylo smirked, not seeing what was coming although he should have. “You know everyone worth knowing already. It’s almost like they crowded Imperial Academy alumni all into one block.”
Hux laughed, nodding. In that single row of student housing, there were over ten Imperial Academy schoolmates in the freshman year alone. Kylo could see Hux ticking off the people who’d shared time with them—transferees and expelled students not excepted, it seemed, from the way Hux’s lip curled. Then his expression became arrested, and Kylo saw the exact moment when he remembered that it hadn’t just been Poe and Finn who’d joined their group earlier.
“It wasn’t a schoolmate I saw earlier today and wanted to get to know better,” Hux continued, apparently not spotting the look on Kylo’s face yet. “You greeted her earlier . . . Kennedy, was it, that Kellar said her name was? . . . pretty brunette with hazel eyes and a sexy little black dress?”
Kylo took a slow, deep breath, a little over half a decade with Snoke helping him marshal his considerable discipline.
“Kenobi,” he corrected softly. He forced himself to smile, a parody of the sneer that was almost perpetually on Hux’s face. “Believe me, you’re better off not knowing her. She’s nothing—nobody.”
Hux’s brows shot up, but it seemed he was taking Kylo at his word. “Too bad,” he said with a mild sniff. “You can’t have everything—or so they say. Look at Starwind. Pretty, important, but possessed with the most idiotic ideas I’ve ever heard in my life.”
This time Kylo’s smile was genuine, and he let Hux see it and all the mockery it contained. After all, Hux was largely oblivious to mockery when he was on the subject of Alli Starwind. For someone who repeatedly concluded that Alli was too stubbornly dense to understand how wrong she was, Hux spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get her to change her mind. And thinking about ways to get her to change her mind. And talking to other people about how to get her to change her mind.
He settled into the antique wingback he was occupying, finding his center as Hux droned on across from him. In view of Hux’s obsession with Alli, Kylo surmised that he had probably overreacted to Hux’s interest in Rey. Especially since what he knew about Rey told him that she would never have any interest in Hux. It had been a purely instinctive move, lashing out to defend his territory, and in hindsight it wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done.
He’d left Rey’s side.
Left her in the company of Poe Dameron and his stupid hair.
Kylo downed the rest of his drink as something akin to panic licked at his insides. Logically, he knew there was no way he could stop them from being together. They’d arrived together, after all. They would probably leave together. They lived in the same dormitory as him. There was no reason to feel terrified that they might go off somewhere and . . .
“What’s the matter?” Hux demanded when he finally realized that Kylo had not said anything in the last five minutes.
Kylo shrugged. “Nothing,” he said evenly, staring at his empty glass. “I just want a refill.”
*
He wasn’t a happy, pleasant drunk, but at least Kylo had stopped caring for a few hours about what Rey was doing with Poe Dameron. Phasma’s wondering tone cut into his thoughts, through the pain and the haze of memories about what had followed that exchange with Hux.
“I thought Armitage was exaggerating, as usual, but . . . this wouldn’t happen to be about one Miss Rey Kenobi, would it?”
It wasn’t often that Ren gave her that specific look, but whenever he did it had the proper effect. Phasma’s voice trailed off as she assessed her friend with the clear, sharp eyes of someone who’d known him for a long time—and someone who wasn’t also suffering from a massive hangover. The blazing warning she’d read in Ren’s dark eyes was only prompted by specific things: talk of his parents, people and places from his old life.
Things that were too close to his heart.
Which, apparently, this Rey Kenobi was.
Despite appearances, Phasma did have a measure of empathy. It wasn’t much compared to most people’s, but it was there. So she held her peace for a few minutes more, considering how to approach him.
Armitage had come home at almost 4:00 a.m., too keyed up to go straight to sleep despite the exhaustion that was written all over his unkempt clothing and drawn face. He had plunked down across from Phasma and unceremoniously helped himself to half her breakfast, too preoccupied with ranting about Ren’s bizarre mood swings and poor impulse control to complain about her cooking. The notion that Ren would go and get himself absolutely, shit-faced drunk was so intriguing that Phasma had rushed to check on him. She’d originally come to gawk, laugh, and gloat, but now that she’d had a look at him and the state he was in . . .
Something Armitage had said halfway through her cheese-and-egg bagel stuck out to her the way it would only for a woman.
*
“Six bottles, Phasma, six.” Armitage took another bite, shaking his head in disbelief.
Phasma lifted her brows, gripping her coffee mug tightly and taking a deep sip. Usually she wouldn’t worry about her cousin taking her coffee—he abhorred the sugary, instant white coffee she’d discovered in Singapore—but he also usually hated her cheesy egg bagels, and yet here he was distractedly mowing one down. Suddenly Phasma regretted not attending Gant’s party—she could only imagine what Ren must have been like to get Armitage this agitated.
He swallowed with some effort after only a few chews. “One minute we’re having a laugh over those nitwits, Finn and Dameron, and the next he’s upset with me for misremembering the name of this little nobody I found pretty.”
“You found a girl you liked?” Phasma said with a sharp bark of laughter.
Armitage gave her a beady-eyed stare. “I said ‘found pretty.’ Honestly, I barely noticed her when they first came up to us because I was too busy putting Finn and Dameron in their place. And next to Starwind, well . . . “
Phasma bit back the snicker, knowing it would distract Armitage from his story if she needled him about his hopeless, disgruntled infatuation with Alli Starwind. She couldn’t help the laughter in her eyes, though, and she quickly lowered her gaze to the table when Armitage managed to rouse himself from the Alli Starwind rabbit hole that his mind had gone down.
“I only got a really good look at her when I was at the bar,” Armitage continued with great dignity, “while Kellar and I were waiting for our drinks. She and Ren barely said two words to one another and then Ren left her standing there, like they’d had a row. I asked him about her later because I wanted to know what they’d said to one another to get him to look like that—when he was coming towards me he looked furious—but then he all but bit my head off because her last name is ‘Kenobi’, not ‘Kennedy.’ Honestly, Phasma, who cares what she’s called if you think she’s nothing to you?”
*
It was a fair point and the obvious answer was that the girl was clear not nothing to Ren. Aloud, Phasma had murmured something noncommittal, but the name Rey Kenobi had lit up a corner of her mind, conjuring a memory of a unique hairstyle and an impish grin lighting up a round, freckled face. It was difficult to forget Rey when she came to see Finn so often.
The way Ren had reacted when she’d brought up Rey was all it took for the kernel of intrigue in Phasma’s mind to blossom into a healthy weed. As cute as Phasma grudgingly considered Rey and Finn to be when they were around one another, the notion of Rey and Kylo was so delicious that she could feel herself going up a dress size from just contemplating it.
The satisfied, sinister smirk on Phasma’s mouth sent a trill of dread down Kylo’s spine.
She knew.
He didn’t know why yet or what for, but Kylo was going to kill Hux.
As his mind scrambled to recall how he might have given himself away when he was plastered, Phasma moved in for the kill.
“Such a pretty girl, but too . . . fresh, too unspoiled.” Phasma gave him a vaguely patronizing look. “I suppose that may be something new for you, but she’s not the sort of girl that you should trifle around with for sport, you know.”
“It’s nothing, Phas,” Kylo snapped, rising to the bait before he could stop himself, wincing both at his lack of control and the way his temples throbbed in response to the force of his denial.
“Oh good,” Phasma replied smoothly, “because I was about to add that you shouldn’t get too attached to her anyway. I saw her on the training field this morning talking to Jagged Fel.”
“What?”
There was no way Kylo would have been able to contain that one, snarled word. Not Jagged Fucking Fel. Suddenly the smooth-talking bastard with his floppy hair and lopsided grin, whom Kylo had spent the previous night cursing to perdition, was insignificant.
“Oh I didn’t mention that before, did I?” Phasma went on, obviously relishing his fury. “Jagged Fel stopped by training today. Apparently he’s on leave and decided to stop by to see some old friends and check on the training program. Not as tall as he should be, for my taste, but my, that face, with that scar . . . ”
“Get out,” Kylo snapped at last, unable to bear any more, his head spinning from the implications of what she had just taunted him with.
Phasma ignored him. “Oh that’s right. Armitage did mention that you two were at school together, though Jag was some years older. What was it like to be in school with someone like that?”
Kylo hauled himself out of bed, oblivious to Phasma’s snort of distaste as she took in his undressed state and the way he lurched across the room. He needed a shower, some coffee, and a handful of painkillers. And then he was going to go find Rey.
And do what? came that same, infuriatingly calm voice in his head. The voice of reason that had saved him countless times over the years, as much as he hated the person to whom it belonged.
As he had the night before, Kylo didn’t give the voice an answer.
He didn’t have one.
*
Perhaps Phasma had been feeling her version of remorse, because when Kylo walked out of the shower in a marginally better frame of mind and steadier feet she had some painkillers and information.
“Rey has a class in the Arts and Letters building at 3:00,” she supplied before he could say something vicious to her. She was reading from her phone. When she looked up, however, there was still only condescending amusement on her face, not any form of apology. “I’ll let you get dressed. Get some visine into those eyes, all right?”
She exited hastily after, laughing as she dodged a jar of expensive pomade, a stream of obscene words floating on her heels.
Ten minutes later, was still laughing when she received Ren’s imperious text message.
*
“Hello, Kenobi.”
Rey froze up, her shoulders squaring in a classically defensive posture. Her face tilted to the side so that she could cast a look in his vague direction before nodding sharply.
She wasn’t ready to face him yet.
It was too soon.
She’d taken tea bags and half-frozen spoons to her eyes just that morning so that they de-puffed and calmed down.
So that no one would know how much she’d cried over how Kylo Ren had belittled her.
Rey had yet to understand why his disdain had hurt that much, but she didn’t need to understand. What mattered was that she knew where she stood with him, and she convinced herself to be grateful for the fact. As . . . unpleasant as it was—yes, unpleasant was all it was—to be looked down upon with derision, that derision was illuminating, at least.
Prior to last night, she’d entertained the deluded notion that the prickle over her skin and knot in her stomach she felt whenever she saw him was awareness. There was definitely something hovering in the air between them whenever they were around each other.
Now she knew it was scorn.
So Rey kept walking, her chin up and jaw tight, when before she might have been inclined to stay and make an attempt at exchanging pleasantries. She was done with that. Whenever she thought about how she’d lingered in painful awkwardness the night before, trying to come up with something witty or appealing to say to charm something other than a frown out of him, she wanted to roll herself in honey and throw herself on top of a fire ant hill.
She felt herself flash hot and cold when she realized that he was walking with her, his much longer legs helping him keep pace with her easily.
“What are you doing?” Rey demanded waspishly, too overcome by the sight of him to pretend indifference, as she’d planned when she’d put herself back together that morning.
He looked paler than usual, with dark circles under his eyes and lines of tension around his mouth. Despite the obvious signs of fatigue, he seemed infuriatingly radiant to her, his tall frame encased in a luxurious wool coat the color of charcoal and dark indigo trousers. The touches of dishevelment—the unfolded end of his white shirt collar, the tousled wave of his hair that suggested he’d been raking his hands through it—helped to soften him somewhat, made the imposing whole of him more human and approachable.
“Going to class,” Kylo answered softly, something inside him settling when she finally looked at him.
Her decidedly cool greeting had sent his already temperamental stomach plummeting, but he wasn’t about to slink off and make it easy for her. Sometime throughout the shower, painkillers, and coffee, he’d resolved that if he didn’t have a shot with Rey, he wasn’t about to get out of the way for Poe Dumbass Dameron or Jagged Fucking Fel.
Or anyone, really.
She could go on disliking him, but she wasn’t about to shake him.
God, even when Rey was pissed off she was beautiful. It had been a struggle to nonchalantly walk up behind her when he’d wanted to run and scoop her up in his arms. She was dressed with customary simplicity in worn jeans and a baggy ivory sweater, a worn, dangerously overstuffed backpack hanging from one shoulder. It was a novel feeling, wanting to both undress a woman and dress her up properly.
As she glared up at him, Kylo noted that Rey looked tired, the signs of strain in the tender skin beneath her eyes and the notch between her brows. He didn’t want to think about why Rey was tired, so he lost himself in the way her eyes flashed at him, green and gold, the vivid wash of color across her cheeks. She glanced at the building they were approaching, her expression turning incredulous.
“I didn’t know you took art classes, Ren,” she spat out, like it was an indictment.
“Only when I remember to sign up for electives,” Kylo quipped, absorbing the disproportionate delight he felt when the statement appeared to confuse rather than irritate her.
She turned her face away just as they reached the arching entrance of the Arts and Letters building, a graceful, neoclassical limestone masterpiece that Kylo took to admiring whenever he went running through campus. Nestled in front of the campus’ prettiest park, it formed the front side of the Liberal Arts Quad.
Kylo followed Rey with ease, keeping his face expressionless despite the urge to smile. The surreptitious—or attempting to be surreptitious—looks she was shooting him with every hall they turned and floor they walked up to were becoming increasingly bewildered.
Now that he thought about it, Kylo had no idea what class he had gotten Phasma to sign him up for. He’d gotten several calls from his tutors that he had yet to take or return, suggesting that whatever it was, it was definitely not a recommended part of his program. As they passed several classrooms and he caught snatches of conversation from the students milling about, he felt himself begin to sweat.
Jesus, what if they were doing something like contemporary art or poetry reading?
“What room are you anyway?”
It wasn’t the question that Rey wanted to ask, but she’d thankfully decided against the incredulous, “Are you walking me to my classroom?” at the last minute. He’d managed to crush her self-esteem already—she doubted she had the capacity to withstand another assault less than twenty-four hours later.
“503,” came Ren’s succinct reply.
Rey’s jaw dropped open. “With me?”
This time she’d been too slow to stop her stupid, unfiltered mouth. One of Ren’s brows arched. “As I am right now, you mean? Probably, though I imagine there will be a number of others. Other students, the professor.”
Kylo had meant to be teasing, to try and set her at ease in the face of her suspicion and disbelief. Instead her mouth snapped shut and her enticing blush became mottled with fury.
“That’s not what I meant, you asshole,” she hissed. And on that lowering note, she spun on her heel and marched off.
This time Kylo let her leave without him, smarting and trying to process just how he’d manage to blow that. He’d always been accused of having a smart mouth, though he usually had better control over it. His humor was rare and usually too dry for most people, though the few who knew him well could at least tell when he was joking.
Why had he thought Rey would know that he was trying to be charming?
He took a deep breath and let it out, forced himself to calm down. It had been a tactical error, but it wasn’t critical.
Things are only over when you quit.
Kylo was so buoyed by the thought that it wasn’t until much later, when he was alone in his room and falling into his dreams that he realized that the words had come to him in Han Solo’s voice.
So it was with a considerably lighter heart and a steadier stomach that Kylo walked into Room 503. They were pretty early—the ancient professor was apparently napping and students were still finding their seats. Rey was seated at a table with a free seat, hunched over and avoiding eye contact, her tatty backpack pointedly taking up space on the seat next to her.
He wasn’t about to tempt fate by approaching her again so soon after what had happened, so he took a seat several rows behind her, getting a clear view of her tense profile, the graceful slope of her short little neck.
Obscenely, he found himself wondering what it would be like to taste her there, to mark her so that when she wore her hair like that people would know. It gave him a measure of comfort that her skin was smooth and unmarked—he’d probably been giving Poe and Fel and other bastards he didn’t know about too much credit.
The loud scrape of a chair drew Kylo’s attention to the front of the room, where the professor had apparently awoken from his nap and unfolded from his seat. He was surprisingly tall when not hunched over in slumber, and spectrally thin, the illusion of unnatural proportions emphasized by the high-collared black robe he wore. A few wisps of snow-white hair hung from his ears, his pinched face giving the impression of a perpetual squint.
Yet despite his decrepit appearance, the voice that boomed out of the old man was enough to fill the room, its warm tones at odds with his somewhat sinister appearance.
“I am Professor Allium and welcome to Creative Writing 110,” he intoned with a smile that managed to be terrifying despite its obvious geniality. He turned and began to scrape out the course description on the board.
Filling the Blank Page: Get Started in Fiction Writing.
Static filled Kylo’s brain for a full minute as he tried to understand what exactly that meant.
In her seat, Rey turned away, fighting the urge to laugh at the look on Ren’s stupid, gorgeous, hateful face.