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It isn't love. Hux reminded himself as he sat on the edge of Kylo Ren’s’ bed, the potential Sith Lords fingers stroking lightly at the small of his back as he breathed softly and stared down at his hands. The touch was soft, affectionate and felt like it came from foreign hands. All that rage and destruction burning at the tips but coming across as easy against Hux’s bare skin.
It felt wrong.
It had been a mistake to come back here, to allow Kylo Ren to take him back into his bed. A mistake to glare and bicker with the irritable junior on the bridge and then moan and whimper under the cover of his sheets. Wrong, to let him un-do each of Hux’s buttons and open him up until he was nothing but a raw canvas for Ren to seize and destroy. To manipulate and force into submission. The fingers at his back fell away to the mattress and Ren sighed loudly as he rolled onto his back.
Hux knows that he shouldn’t be naïve enough to fall for it; knows that Ren’s looking for a way to keep the general under his thumb, something to hold over his head and use against him. He hates that he gives that to him, that he adds fuel by allowing Ren to get under his skin.
“Are we done here?” Hux asks, his tone harsh and demanding when Ren rolls his gaze enough to just look at him. Hux can feel him poking around in his head, looking for something that Hux will never give him, the truth, he nods and Hux stands from the bed and shrugs his shirt on.
“You could stay.” Kylo whispers and Hux pretends that he doesn’t hear him as he leaves.
# # #
It isn't love. Hux repeated as he sat at Kylo’s bedside in the medical wing. His datapad propped up against his knee but his attention far from Phasma’s detailed report. He hates that he’s still here, that he’d dismissed the droids and sat beside the insufferable Jedi as he slept.
He hates that Ren had actually smiled at him as he drifted in and out of consciousness when they first entered, hates that it almost made him smile. That it filled him with relief when the droids had said that he was stable, that other than a few scars and a wounded pride he would be fine. He knows better than to let Ren’s dark eyes lie to him. There is no love lost between the two of them. Nothing but spite and hatred and the need to dominate.
Hux doesn’t look up from his datapad when Kylo reaches out and brushes his fingers against Hux’s wrist, merely grunts and pretends to be lost in his work. Kylo doesn’t stop though, curling his fingers around the general’s wrist and holding so tight it was as though Hux was the only thing keeping him afloat.
They remain in silence, Hux desperately trying to keep his mind blank and remind himself that this was all a ploy, Ren’s way of trying to manipulate him.
# # #
It isn't love. Hux reprimanded himself as he listened to Kylo and the desert rat talk in the next room. Their shared connection of the force allowing for them to converse from across the galaxy. He hates that Kylo has left him there—naked and vulnerable on the Knights sheets while he plotted and connected with her.
Hux hates that his entire body ignites with jealousy as he hears Kylo’s hushed whispers, knowing that he’s just a breath way dressed in only his trousers and his compression bandage. Knowing that not even an hour before he’d had Hux pressed into the mattress, his mouth hot and heavy against the Generals and his focus entirely on what Hux would do next with his tongue. It was wrong for Hux to think that Ren would be affected in the same way—that he would resist her call and spend a few more minutes curled around the General.
Hux is dressed by the time Kylo returns and the Knight stares blankly at him as he buttons up the last of his shirt and makes to leave.
“Where are you going?” Kylo asks, more demands as he catches Hux’s hand and furrows his brow.
“We’re done, aren’t we?” Hux snaps, withdrawing his hand from Kylo’s grip. “Maybe next time you’re in need of a quick fuck. You can do it using the force.” He snaps and instantly regrets it when he feels Kylo in his head reading between the lines.
Hux doesn’t say anymore and Kylo lets him go.
# # #
It isn’t love. Hux all but sobs as Kylo forces him against the wall and cards his fingers through his hair. It should be hot and heavy, leave bruises across his shoulders and break his lips as they fight for control. Instead it’s soft and intimate and Hux feels like he’s drowning in his own skin as Kylo holds him up and makes all kinds of promises between soft kisses.
Hux isn’t looking for romance, he didn’t want to fall in love. Especially not with a spoilt child like Kylo Ren but he is. He’s known it for a while. He knows that his biggest weakness is the way that Ren kisses him even after they’ve climaxed, the soft patterns he draws on Hux’s back and the constant need to touch and reassure himself that Hux is there.
It was never about control, Hux realises as Ren pulls away and Hux really looks at him. All that raw emotion and need so obvious on the boy’s face.
“I hate you,” Hux breaths, swallowing when Kylo Ren only smiles at him.
Hux knows that Ren understands what he means. Knows now that he’s looking at the same thing he’s been trying to hide from himself for all these months—mirrored in the Knights dark eyes.
It isn't love, not really. But it was so close.