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Hux is sitting in the potential ruins of his own creation on a hard and undoubtedly filthy carpet. He is studying the narrow lengths of his bony feet in the gloom of early dawn with the focus he is legendary for. He has pulled on his undergarments an hour or more ago and slid his arms into the black of his dress shirt for a laughably ineffectual grab at warmth and perhaps dignity though that cause is long lost. When he shifts pages rustle and rasp beneath him. One is stuck stubbornly to his shin. He takes a long, shuddering breath and runs a thin hand through his coppery hair. He feels as though he is in mourning, the ache within him is so panicked and pained. If he were a lesser man he would hang his head between his bare knees and cower like he once had as a boy after his father had struck him and the old bruises ached hard enough to stop the air in his lungs. He pushes that thought away. Some paths are only dead ends once walked again.
Beside him, warm and naked and curled at his side like a sweetly sleeping cat, is Rose. He doesn't even know her last name, his ignorance has been willful. He reaches over to adjust the collar of his long black coat where it has fallen off her shoulder, assuring himself that he is merely being polite. It would not do for her to be cold. He swallows, turning his regard firmly away from the tilt of her nose and the sweep of her lashes. Her black hair is spilling over the arm she has pillowed her head on and he bites away the urge to dig his fingers into it, to tangle and thread her to him. To yard her bodily towards him and sink his teeth into her skin, devour her whole like some sort of monstrous snake. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you, he scoffs wryly. There are few literary figures more miserable and self destructive than Heathcliff. Solo would be a far better fit for such histrionics.
He instead turns his eyes back to his bones, to the intrusive light of day slowly nudging further into his sanctuary of dust and pages and the soft breathing of the woman pressed against him. He must gather the scattered pieces of his armor and wage war on the world once again. But everything has changed now, like a lightening strike in the dusty desert blinding the entire landscape. Suddenly there is she and nothing else can hold his attention like it once did.
Armitage Hux is wildly, miserably, appallingly in love and the last thing he is ever going to do is allow anyone else to know it.
--
Ben Solo has been missing for three days. Hux might have even bothered with a tinge of worry if his own nights hadn't been filled with streams of inky hair cascading over him, with the quirking lips and the rolled eyes of a laughing woman who seemed completely at ease shrugging off his vitriol and arrogance. There is a sweetness he has never known to his off hours and he is so terribly frightened by it that he feels like a shaken, spitting cat. His hackles are constantly raised unless he is with her and then he feels as awkward and unsure as a child entering a new classroom for the first time. He doesn't know where to place himself in relation to her but instead circles her like a shadow, hovering nearby while she tends her store occasionally tossing out dry comments. He strides beside her down the street to her apartment with his arms crossed determinedly behind his back so he doesn't reach for her hand. He finds himself checking the clocks constantly until his days end. He found the hours between – without her - interminable, but soon enough the reality of Solo's absence has darkened his door.
Snoke was furious, hissing over the phone lines that Solo had best be found and dumping the onus on Hux to be the finder since they were ever so close. Hux pulled a face like he had swallowed something sour. He hadn't been aware that Solo and he were such dear bosom companions.
Resentful of this role of apparent babysitter and its encroachment on his time, Hux had muttered an overly polite affirmative and picked up his cell phone to dial the oaf.
It rang once then cut to voicemail. Hux rolled his eyes. Petulant child.
“Good morning, Solo. Taking an unexpected sabbatical, are we? I have no doubt that such a break is very well earned for all the hard work you put in,” he said with heavy sarcasm, dangling a lure so cruel that he did not doubt Ben would take it. The man was in love with self inflicted misery. “So perhaps with this largess of free time you would be so good as to meet me for lunch today at the usual place, say noon? I thought you'd be very interested in meeting my lovely new paramour. She truly is something special, though I suspect you already know that.”
He hung up and leaned back in his ridiculously expensive leather chair, swallowing an undignified snort of laughter. Love truly was for fools.
--
Rose arched a brow at the affected disdain Armitage was holding himself with. After sweeping into her bookstore with a scorching stare and waving her over like a king, he now sat ensconced in a fusty wingback in a perfect, sinfully costly charcoal grey suit and blue tie. She was willing to bet her life that he had a personal shopper like some sort of diva. He even went so far as to admire the fine manicure of his nails and she promised herself right then and there that her life mission was to buy him something he'd rather be caught dead in than wear and make him do just that. Something knitted in bright hues with cheap wool. He had just offhandedly explained that he had invited the other man, Ben Solo, here for a cup of tea and a cruel trick. Something about the girl with the yellow bicycle he had been obsessed with for ages.
“Isn't he your friend?” she scoffed, placing his cup of tea gently on the small table before him. He thanked her airily and despite herself Rose grinned. He was an utter jerk but the air between them thrummed with a heady tension. Every look he sent her, pale and blond lashed, shot through her like lightening. She wanted to scrabble into his bony lap and wrench her fingers through his slicked back hair and muss him up with her hands and lips until he was hers again. She wanted to unravel everything coiled so tightly within him. And she knew, from the way his eyes had just trailed over her body, that he wanted her to.
“Friend is a very generous appellation,” he sniffed, shooting her a lingering glance so heated that Rose felt the blush rise to her cheeks. He stared at her mouth for a moment so hungrily she bit it to keep him from doing the same.
“You're a monster,” she breathed, annoyed at his cruelty but excited all the same because his fangs were sinking venom elsewhere. That didn't mean she was going to let him get away with it. She shot an unsubtle glance at the door. “I've got to go do some inventory,” she said sweetly. “I'll be back soon!”
Armitage scented blood in the water and arched a fine brow suspiciously. “Yes, go do business my girl. I'll be here.”
She thrilled inwardly at his offhanded propriety even as she rolled her eyes at his patronizing wording and made some very stern attempts to shake herself loose of his cruel, effortless charisma. He's going to bleed you dry Rose, she couldn't help but think. He knows no other way.
In the back she pulled her cell phone out and without hesitation, searched through her contacts until she found the right number. She knew only one woman who owned a yellow bicycle around here because they were fast becoming good friends, only one woman so effortlessly bright and lovely that the room seemed to shine when she grinned. Something deep and fond had tugged at her from the first sight of her, like catching the distant words of a long forgotten song in her ear.
Armitage Hux might like to play with his food, but Rose was far more merciful.
--
Ben burst through the door with all the tact and self discipline of a drunken warlord, crashing into the entryway in a heave of wind and rain and trench coat. His black hair was soaked and wild; he looked unhinged. From his vantage point in his comfortable (enough) dry chair, Armitage smirked. Solo's eyes found him after a moment and he visibly shook himself, straightening his spine as though he were about to march in front of a firing squad. The bob of his adam's apple was apparent even from across the room. He came forward slowly, shrugging off his soaked coat and crushing it heedlessly in one huge fist. He lumbered like a fettered giant, practically shuffling his feet in his imagined manacles. Such reluctance! Why did Snoke see such power in this overgrown boy? All Armitage could see was a heavily bandaged heart still bleeding freely in his every step. Such an excess of weak points in his armor it was hardly a sport to find them anymore.
Honestly, Hux had never felt better and soaked up this short lived advantage with all the mercy of a well paid off judge. He would grant him absolution but not quite yet. Let him sweat.
“Still raining?” he asked absently, casting a sideways look at the water still trickling over the windowpanes. This city was insufferably wet.
Ben nodded shakily, his glance hungry as it skittered about the room. He tossed his wet coat over the arm of another chair and folded his massive form down into it. He wore a deep navy cable knit sweater Hux himself had admired in a Louis Vuitton ad and perfectly fitting black jeans. Even scattered and soaked and pathetic Solo still managed to outrank him somehow, like the hero in a movie had just entered the scene and upstaged him. Hux's mouth thinned.
“Snoke is concerned with your absence, Solo. You ought to know by now he doesn't coddle such nonsense.”
“I've been sick,” Ben husked in a low voice, swallowing and running his hand through his hair. The strands sorted themselves into ridiculously handsome disarray and Hux sneered, annoyed and refusing to reflexively fiddle with his own. Ben hung his arms over his excessively long legs, clasping his hands loosely. It looked almost like prayer.
“How terrible for you,” he drawled. He allowed a long, uncomfortable silence to draw thinly between them.
“Where is she?” Ben murmured, clearly choking on the words.
“Who?” Hux asked, feigning confusion.
Draw out the cut. Make him bleed.
“The girl,” Ben grit out from between clenched teeth and Hux sensed the line in the sand drawn with blood but it was not his own. It was completely, irrevocably Ben's blood pouring down between them. How gauche, how pedestrian to feel such pain so openly! He opened his mouth to respond with something scathing, something to cut and mock and jeer but something twinged in his chest and stopped his tongue.
Slowly he remembered the scarlet of Rose's red scarf in the rain at Pike Place Market and the hot sear of jealousy that had burned through him like a forest fire. It had left him scorched and dead within, lost in a sea of confusion he did not know how to face. Now he had done the same to Solo, and seeing the bleakness in the other man's brown eyes; such a wrenching, lonely misery... he suddenly knew he did not want to salt the soil. He cursed himself hotly for going soft and steadfastly refused to search out Rose with his eyes.
“I've never met her,” he said instead, each word surprising him as it left his mouth.
Ben blinked, looking so inexplicably stricken that Hux felt as though he had betrayed the other man even further. He supposed he had.
“Why did you lie?” he murmured, whipping a hand over his ridiculously plush mouth. Such a mishmash of awkward, ungainly features cobbled together in such a melancholy face.
“Because it was to my advantage to,” Hux replied with an exasperated sigh. “Do not wear your heart so obviously on your sleeve, Solo. It's a weakness both friend and foe will take advantage of. How have you not learned this in our line of work?”
“And which are you?” Ben asked, voice low and newly threatening. Those limpid eyes were sharpening, cooling. The breadth of his shoulders was suddenly something to worry over.
Here it was, the darkness and savagery Snoke saw in Ben Solo clouding the air like spilled ink in a fountain. It spread swiftly over them both. Come then, Solo, he thought waspishly. Let us all see you.
“Both and neither,” Hux drawled smoothly.
A kernel of something uncertain had taken root in Armitage's guts and he looked up as he felt eyes upon him, catching sight of Rose near the café. She was watching him steadily, as though she knew things about him he would rather she did not. Hux opened his mouth to heave more oil on the fire but stilled. It was beneath him to bother with Solo anyway. He would let the fish off the hook before it was swallowed.
His mouth pressed together firmly, and he grudgingly offered Ben Solo a weakness of his own despite every instinct screaming at him to keep silent, to hunch over his wounds and keep the bleeding internal.
“My affections,” he winced inwardly at his outdated wording, “are otherwise engaged.”
The words hung awkwardly in the air between them. He met Rose's eyes again, held them long enough for Ben to take notice. He twisted in his seat, his dark gaze landing on her with surprise. The threat of him dissipated into the air like it had never been. Taking advantage of the moment Rose approached, a mug of hot coffee with cream clutched in one hand. She handed it to Ben with a wide grin, eyes crinkling.
“You looked a little damp so I thought I'd bring you something to warm up,” she smiled gamely. “I think I remembered your usual.”
Ben took it with confused grace, staring up at her as though she was an angel of mercy. Rose shot Hux a look. What had he done to this poor guy?
“This is Rose,” Hux murmured, caressing her name in his mouth like velvet on the tongue.
“Hi,” she smiled. “You're Ben?”
He nodded, subsiding into his chair as though a huge weight had been lifted. He looked down at his coffee and took a fortifying mouthful. The mug looked ridiculously small in his hand. Uncouth giant, Hux sniffed inwardly.
The front door swept open again, a blast of cold air and rain spraying inward and a woman shook off her umbrella and dumped it into the bin, throwing off her hood with a relieved sigh. Rose shot Hux a look to see him arching a brow at her in both admiration and annoyance. She had outfoxed the fox. She shrugged, smirking.
“Rose!” Rey's lilting, cheery British tones lifted up behind her and Rose waved her over with a happy smile.
“Rey! I'm so glad you could come!” She grinned, and smiled sweetly at Hux. He kept his eyes on her, shrewd.
Rey crossed the room towards them, pulling off her beat up tan rain jacket and shaking out her curling hair with an exasperated laugh. Even damp and cold in a plain white blouse and jeans, Rey looked incredibly, heart wrenchingly beautiful.
Before her eyes Rose watched Ben's every muscle tense. “Yes, let it never be said that a little rain could stop me! Good thing, living here.”
She came to a halt beside them, first smiling brightly at Hux and reaching over to shake his hand in greeting before shifting her eyes to the other man who was staring up at her with a shell-shocked longing so naked, a hunger so palpable that Rose winced in sympathy for him. So much for playing hard to get.
The bright white smile slowly fell from Rey's face as she beheld the man staring back up at her. For a moment it looked as though the hand she was offering up to shake twitched upwards, reaching for his cheek. She was searching his face with as much intensity as he was doing her own and slowly, hesitatingly, Ben stood up to his full height before her. He towered over her but Rose felt as though he might drop to his knees before Rey if she so much as breathed at him.
“Hello,” he said awkwardly, his deep voice hoarse. “I'm Ben.”
“Hello Ben,” she replied softly, her face tilted up to look at him with a fierce, awestruck hope in her eyes. She looked wild. She looked enraptured. “I'm Rey.”
“Rey,” he breathed, and a wide, lopsided, disbelieving smile spread over his face. “Rey.”
With an irritated huff Hux stood and swept his jacket up, stepping neatly past the enamored duo. As fast as a snake he snatched Rose's hand and tugged her away.
“If you're quite done matchmaking,” he sniffed sourly.
“Did you see that?” Rose gasped, shamelessly glancing back over her shoulder at Ben and Rey. “It was like a movie! It was like a dream! Love at first sight in real time, I can't believe it!”
“I suppose, if the plucky heroine falls in love with her morose, whinging stalker,” Hux replied waspishly.
“It was like the first time I saw...” she stopped herself, “James McAvoy.” she grinned.
“Oh?” he asked, tugging her behind a narrow shelf of books. “And did James McAvoy spread you over the carpet and make you scream his name the first time he made love to you?”
Rose blinked, cheeks flushing. Did he even realize what he had just said?
“He didn't even need to throw my books around to do it,” she chirped. “Much politer.”
“I see,” he drawled. “I hope you and James are very happy together,” he sneered. “And I paid for the books I ruined.”
“Maybe after closing I'll let you throw a few more since I beat you so soundly today,” she smirked.
Hux shrugged indolently, forgetting Solo and his awkward ecstasy in favor of brushing her hair back and leaning down to drop his lips to the soft skin below her jaw. “Quite alright, darling girl. I always get mine in the end.”
--
So what now, he thinks coolly, the setting sun pouring a torrent of warm, orange light across the black tiles of his office. The light was merciless, casting his white skin with fire, his hated freckles lurid across the bones of his cheek and the pale back of his hands. He turns his chair further into it, admires the sheen of industry from the high skyscraping hotels and buildings cascading before him into the horizon. The streams of cars crawl along the highways without cease. The sidewalks are thick with humanity and here he sits, above them all.
He could take his ample stockpiles of money and spoil Rose rotten. He could drape her in diamonds and silks and keep her luxuriously, lusciously locked up in his penthouse like his own personal pearl. He could come home after a long days work and sweep her off to fancy parties and orchestras and whittle away the hours eating caviar and sipping champagne with her hanging off his arm. He hates the idea of sharing. And if he understands anything about the woman he has found himself snared by she'd laugh her head off and tell him where to stick his diamonds.
He could give up this life of power plays and dollar signs, sink himself instead into her dusty little nook of old pages and worn carpets, don ugly sweaters and god forbid khakis, and help her peddle Faust and Atwood and cups of bitter coffee. He could help her put away the books on the highest shelves when he saw her struggling. He could handle the petty cash and insist on sourcing the most impeccable brands of tea to replace the swill she doled out now. The idea is laughable for all its quaint charm. He's no kind and quiet book pusher. He would die of boredom within the week and probably strangle her alongside him.
No, their future lay somewhere in the in between. Between the bloodied business deals so craftily close to criminal and the patched chairs and heavy covers of far too many books to ever read. There might be a life there for them, something within the dire and the dear that he would have to fight for and she would find laughably easy. There was a softness to her that he would rail against even as he coveted it. There was a cruelty to him that she would fight against even as she worshipped it. She would wear him away like glass in the sea until his edges were blunted but he would always, always cut. He would reach for a ring of Roses and he would catch her in his hands despite the thorns. He would bleed and bleed and not let go.
The in between. This was them, and despite everything he was, the roiling mass of venom and pettiness and cutthroat persuasion and cheap shots he would always take... despite years of thinking he had nothing within him left that could want like a normal man, he was eager for it. He wanted. It gnawed within him mercilessly, all slavering tongue and sharp teeth hungering for her taste, the pulse at his throat pounding her name. He wondered sometimes if she was as hungry for him.
Turning away from the fading purple cityline as dusk fell, Armitage snatched his coat from the hook on the door and stepped swiftly from his office, taking the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. He swirled himself into the coat and listened to the hurried tap of his polished shoes as he rushed down flight after flight. Soon enough he pushed himself past security and out of the wide glass doors into the flow of pedestrians rushing to and fro. For once their cheap colognes and pushing shoulders don't bother him. For once he feels in some small way that he is one of them, joined to them. He has somewhere to be, someone to be with.
Deep in this city of lights and cars and crime and the endless waves of humanity spilling through it, she was waiting for him, just for him. He quickened his steps.