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The planet is collapsing, but Hux goes back for Kylo anyway. Tells himself it’s because of what the Supreme Leader commanded, that of course if he didn’t go and get Kylo he’d be dead before he could draw in his next breath, and yet. In that part of his brain he refuses to acknowledge, he knows that isn’t—quite—right.
He flies the Finalizer low over the last remnants of Starkiller Base, watching trees fall through crevasses, the violent and unforgiving glow of explosions, the planet vomiting up all the fire and energy of the former sun. Everything is an ashy, white color, the stark image of a dying planet making its last desperate attempt at survival even as it’s devoured by its own insides.
It’s this bleak canvas that allows Hux to find Kylo, a crumpled black slash curled up in the snow and the trees. Hux has a medical shuttle brought down low enough that he can get off, heads down its ramp and over to where Kylo lies.
“All right,” Hux says, leaning down. “Come on, get up.”
Kylo lifts his head. Hux watches in sick fascination as a crimson stain spreads out in the snow under his cheek. There’s a long, vicious slash across his face, three more wounds on his shoulders and his side. He doesn’t look especially menacing, not right at that moment. He looks—young. Almost defeated.
He says, “You should leave me here,” and lets his head fall back into the bloody snow.
It’s a bit overdramatic, and Hux would roll his eyes if he wasn’t so pressed for time. As it is all he can do is crouch down. Slide his hands underneath Kylo’s body, and lift him up. Slinging one of Kylo’s arms across his shoulders for balance.
“Let me go,” Kylo says, unconvincingly. “I didn’t ask for your help, did I.”
Hux considers ignoring this, not giving into the bait like he knows Kylo must want him to, but the annoyance is just too strong and he hears himself saying, “By all means, if you’d prefer going against the Supreme Leader’s express wishes to have you brought back, I’ll be happy to let you die here. Not worth all the trouble you cause, anyway,” though it’s not true, Hux can’t deny that even to himself. Has the feeling Kylo knows, in that strange impersonal way he has of knowing everything Hux is thinking or feeling all the time, because instead of shoving away, or getting violent, Kylo just sighs. A mournful and irritated sound, mostly lost in the wind.
He’s surprisingly warm, pressed this way all along Hux’s side. Leaning a little into him, in spite of his protests, his face tucked into the space between Hux’s neck and shoulder. Letting most of his weight rest on Hux, a startling show of trust. Though it’s more likely that Kylo is just exhausted from bleeding out the way he has been.
The last time they were this close was two nights ago. Kylo’s bedchambers on the ship dimly lit, pale body spread out over the sheets like an offering. He’d been trembling, trying valiantly to hide it. First time Hux had ever seen his face and it had been startling, completely different from what he’d expected. Quietly vulnerable in a private, uncertain sort of way, something he couldn’t erase from himself. Making Hux think that this, more than anything else, was the reason Kylo kept his ridiculous helmet on most of the time.
It had only been afterwards that Kylo had said, soft and mostly into his pillow, that it had been his first time with someone else inside of him. His first time with a man’s fingers and tongue between his legs. An admission Hux had already guessed at, but it made him feel all the more protective, and when he’d curled around Kylo, looping their arms and legs together under the sheets, there had been no protest. No shield thrown up from the Force to prevent Hux from touching.
Kylo is tense and still beside him now in the snow, and Hux has the feeling he overheard at least part of what he was just thinking. He feels his cheeks heat up, suddenly as grateful for the grainy darkness as he is annoyed at himself for getting embarrassed over these thoughts, and not for what he’d been saying and thinking only a few minutes prior. Asks:
“Can you walk?” trying to sound neutral.
There’s a pause. Hux feels Kylo experimentally set down his right foot, shifting it a bit against the unstable ground. Then his left, the one on the outside, and he gasps. Sharp involuntary pained sound, his fingers gripping Hux’s arm tighter. Blood dripping onto the snow; Hux can’t even tell which wound it’s coming from.
“All right, come on, then,” Hux says, and loops his other arm around Kylo’s waist. Hoisting him closer, using him as leverage to drag both of them through the snow. Hoping the trees don’t start to fall before they get back to the shuttle. He can feel Kylo dragging his left foot, making halfhearted steps with his right. There’s a thick sort of warmth slipping slow through the fabric of Hux’s greatcoat as Kylo’s cheek rests on his shoulder. He feels heavier, and Hux thinks, oh you bastard don’t lose consciousness on me here—
“I’m not,” Kylo slurs, just audible among the sounds of the dying world. His mouth is right against Hux’s neck, his breath warm even in the brittle, angry cold. “‘m fine.”
Hux ignores this, because Kylo isn’t fine, but he doesn’t want to get into it with him right now. “Let’s just get you on the ship, Ren,” he mutters, and tells himself he’s just imagining it when Kylo pushes harder against him the further they walk.
The planet gives off a violent shudder beneath their feet. Hux tightens his arm around Kylo’s waist, just reflexive, and feels him wince, hears a small pained sound muffled into his skin.
“Careful,” Kylo growls, when they’ve taken a few more steps together. “A general should know better than to be so clumsy.” Though there’s still no heat behind his words, and the annoyance sounds mostly forced.
Hux mutters, “If I wanted to hurt you, you’d know it,” and studiously ignores the faint amused noise that procures. They both know well enough that Hux could not actually hurt Kylo Ren, not if Kylo truly wished to avoid it.
A crimson line of dots leading up to the point they’re at now, though it’s mostly smeared over by the snow. Hux can see the medical shuttle waiting, blinking red and blue lights in the near distance, and he wonders why they haven’t already come out with a stretcher.
“They aren’t as loyal to the Supreme Leader as you, General,” Kylo says, mocking. Still curved so hard against Hux’s side it’s making Hux list a little to the right. The shoulder of his greatcoat is almost completely soaked in blood, now, from Kylo’s shoulder as well as his cheek, and Hux wonders if it’s possible to remove stains like this with the Force. “They don’t understand the value of having me back on the ship alive.”
Hux remembers seeing officers and stormtroopers backing away from rooms where Kylo’s lightsaber was making its rounds and thinks that yes, they do understand. Just not in the right way. Not like—
He wants to ask Kylo if he really thinks that the only reason he came back for him was because Snoke said to. Before he remembers that that’s what he’s been telling himself since he set off in the medcraft, that it’s what Kylo will want to make himself believe too and therefore they should just keep it as an established fact between them. No matter what Hux might actually. What his actual feelings might—
He shakes that off, says, “Don’t be such a child about everything, Ren,” without thinking, and is promptly chastised by Kylo clamping his mouth shut, refusing to speak again. Waves of hostility and irritation floating off his frame, not even trying to mask their projection from Hux now, and Hux wishes he wasn’t so affected by Kylo. Wishes every single thing Kylo says or does didn’t make him want to react in kind, whatever the situation.
Wishes, in a vague and unformed way, that they were both a little bit better at this.
They get near enough to the shuttle that the med team comes out, finally, amid the upheaval of snow and trees and explosions. Despite Kylo’s refusal to speak to him, he is still leaning against Hux, bleeding profusely into the fabric of his clothes. Breathing a little shakily, staring at the technicians in their uniforms. Clinging to Hux like he’s all that Kylo knows. Like he’s raised Kylo from the ashes of some dawning new planet.
“Don’t think so highly of yourself, Hux, it’s unbecoming,” Kylo mumbles. His mouth is very warm against the side of Hux’s neck, the movement of his lips more than a little distracting. Hux knows he is technically supposed to be annoyed with Kylo right now, but he just. He makes it so difficult, most of the time.
Out loud: “Could you not read my thoughts all the time, it’s creepy and invasive,” as he’s supporting nearly all of Kylo’s weight onto the shuttle. Both of them ignoring the stretcher. Blood dripping onto the shiny steel floors.
“I’m not reading them intentionally,” Kylo says. Sliding himself onto the stretcher, his fingers grazing over the back of Hux’s neck as he goes. Though perhaps that was accidental. “You just—think very loud.”
Half-conscious of his actions, Hux reaches up. Touches his head. Wonders how long he’s been blaring his thoughts. If Kylo Ren has been aware of every single thought he’s had from the moment he was first brought on board the Finalizer.
Kylo gives him a look that is trying very hard to be exasperated but mostly just comes across as fond. Maybe even amused. “You’re still doing it,” he says, and then winces as his side hits the stretcher. Hand coming up on instinct to grab at Hux’s own, fingers folding over his wrist. As if they weren’t just gripping each other the whole walk over.
The shuttle hums under their feet, lifts off the ground just as the planet gives another violent death throe. Cracking along its edges, simmering with underground heat. His weapon. Not quite his life’s work, but near enough to make him mourn its destruction as though it was. The one and only thing he ever did that made Brendol Hux look at him with more than disdain curving his upper lip.
It’s too close, right now, for him to feel anything over. He’s just numb, mostly. Numb and cold and in a medical shuttle with Kylo Ren and four technicians, all of whom are faceless and silent. Waiting.
It isn’t where he expected to end up earlier today.
Kylo’s fingers are still on his wrist. As though he’s forgotten them there.
Hux thinks, deliberately, I’ve never had to be aware of my own thoughts’ volume before, you know, and is rewarded by the faintest tug at the corner of Kylo’s mouth. He isn’t talking now, and Hux has half a second to consider worrying before Kylo shakes his head at him. Shifts a little on the stretcher. Blood still leaking sluggish and dark from his face. He’s acting remarkably calm, staring placid at the ceiling, until the technicians move in with hypos, loaded with painkillers.
Immediately Kylo jerks back, which just makes him grit his teeth harder. Hux can feel the thready pulse in his wrist speeding up in direct correlation to the rapid intakes of breath, short and choppy. “Hey,” Hux says, and, “Don’t,” and a lot of other platitudes he’s not even really conscious of as he stands there, letting Kylo squeeze his hand.
“Fuck,” Kylo moans, staring at the ceiling. A few glass jars rattle ominously on their shelves; everything not tied down lifts about half an inch off the ground.
Don’t be so dramatic, Hux thinks, just to watch Kylo’s annoyed face return. And then, a little softer: You’re okay. I’m here.
Kylo’s lips twitch; amusement, not quite mocking, flashing across his face. But his breathing has calmed down somewhat, the various objects in the shuttle restored to their rightful places. His fingers loosening their death grip on Hux’s wrist until, finally, he gives a short nod. Mouth thin. Blood still dripping from his face, his shoulders. The ugly hole in his side.
Hux turns to the med techs. “Stitch him up,” he says. “Now.” Trying to make it sound all threatening, very much ‘if you don’t do this Snoke will find you’, but even he can hear the way his voice shakes.
Kylo makes a tired, protesting noise, watching them try again with the sedatives. “Don’t fix this one,” he says, gesturing with his free hand to the garish rip in his cheek. Glancing in a vaguely apologetic way at Hux, who for a moment is completely distracted by the color of Kylo’s eyes. Can’t believe he never noticed before, really noticed, that they’re brown. Not dark, they want to be hazel but can’t quite get there. They’re half shut and the left one is kind of ringed with blood. He looks like a sad Bantha getting ready to make half-hearted arguments and oh. Suddenly Hux registers, in a violent and angry way, exactly what it is Kylo just requested.
He supposes Kylo thinks he’s very clever, waiting until he was lying down and totally incapacitated before saying anything. Hux sort of wants to punch him anyway.
He says, a little too loudly for the space they’re all currently inhabiting, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” and then, “Do you want an infection, Ren? Of all the childish things—”
Kylo is glaring tragically at the space behind Hux’s shoulder. “I didn’t say not to treat it, Hux, I just don’t want it healed.”
Hux figures out what all of this is about very, very fast.
“You want that scar so you’ll be deformed like Darth Vader,” he says. Accusatory.
Kylo rolls his eyes.
“Your obsession with him is really weird, you know?” Hux says. “Normal people don’t fetishize their grandfathers.”
There’s a tense set to Kylo’s jaw, a stubborn look in his eyes. Hux can feel himself once again reacting to Kylo, as he always does, rather helplessly. Doesn’t have to be a Force-sensitive to know what Kylo is thinking right then: I’m not ‘normal people’.
This is the part where Hux would throw his hands in the air and storm off in a huff, if he were a lesser sort of man. “Fine,” he spits. “You know what, just—fine. Keep it.” He glares at the senior medical tech, snarls, “Let it get infected and you’ll have to explain yourself to Snoke,” and then, angrily, he wrenches his hand free of Kylo’s. Though the violence of the movement is immediately belied by the way he touches the edge of Kylo’s blanket, feeling faint tremors run through those long limbs as they finally get him sedated. Kylo’s eyes on his the entire time he’s being wheeled into the back of the shuttle, right until the anesthesia pulls him under.
Hux drags his hand down his face. Tries not to notice how he still smells like fire and ice and that odd, custom-made body wash Kylo uses. Goes and sits in the cockpit, watching the Finalizer loom closer.
The pilot clears his throat.
Hux shoots him a look. “What,” he growls.
The pilot shakes his head. “Nothing, sir,” he says, placid, pressing a few innocently lit buttons on the control panel as they begin their descent.
Hux glares sullenly out the window. Sometimes he thinks the officers on his ship are too opinionated for their own good.
~
Several nights later finds Hux standing before his private bathroom mirror. Faint smear of toothpaste on one corner of his mouth, gray shorts hanging off his hips. His hair is disheveled, falling just past his ears. All the gel washed out for the night. The only time he allows himself even a modicum of relaxation.
He had (unfortunately) allowed Kylo to see him like this, that night. Worn his uniform until Kylo’s trembling, slender fingers took it off, each button unsnapping, Kylo’s breathing growing more and more unsteady the further he got. His eyes skating over Hux’s chest, drawing attention to his freckles with his hands, and then later with his mouth. Kylo had been honestly fascinated by Hux’s freckles.
He glances at them now in the mirror. They’re just freckles.
Wiping the toothpaste off his mouth, Hux walks back into the main area of his bedchamber. Dims the lights to a low reading level, sits on the edge of his bed. Begins to prepare himself for another night of decidedly not worrying about Kylo Ren.
His door clicks.
It isn’t really supposed to do that without Hux’s permission.
The door makes that soft, familiar whirring sound it makes when Hux has entered his thumbprint into the lock. Begins rising up, and Hux thinks of how unfair it is that he’s going to die in his underwear on his own ship. Brendol Hux would not approve.
Then it’s open, and for a second Hux sees no one in the hall. Starts to think it was a glitch, he’ll have to fire someone or call for repairs or something, he’s not sure what, but before he can so much as push off the mattress Kylo materializes in his door. As it slides shut. Just sort of—appears, a shimmering hazy outline and then Hux blinks and there he is. Standing in black shorts and nothing else. His whole waist wrapped in white gauze. Shoulders stitched up. Sort of hunched in.
“Um,” Hux says.
“I thought you’d appreciate it if I didn’t walk down the hall to your room like this,” Kylo says. Sounding a little tense. “It might have given the crew some ideas.”
Hux clears his throat. Thinks maybe the crew already has some ideas of their own anyway. “Thank you,” he says.
They’re both quiet for a minute. Staring.
The scar on Kylo’s face is—not as bad as Hux had envisioned. A long, slightly raised reddish line bisecting a path from his forehead to his jaw. It has the shiny slick appearance of very recent healing. Makes you want to look at his eyes, which are apologetic and a little bit miserable.
He says to the floor, “Your disapproval about the scar was very loud,” and he says, “Even when I was under, I couldn’t stop hearing your voice.” He looks a little bit irritated. As if it’s Hux’s fault.
Hux says, stiff, “I see you got it anyway,” and stands up. Feeling his chest doing that odd tight clenching thing it does whenever he’s around Kylo. The thing that’s been happening more and more often recently. The thing he used to try and blame on Kylo, before he realized it was, honestly, all him.
“I’ll have an excuse to wear the helmet now,” Kylo points out, folding his arms across his chest.
“You mean you’ll have an excuse to keep telling people you’re exactly like your grandfather,” Hux grumbles. Glancing again at Kylo’s face. The scar doesn’t really do anything to hinder his—how attractive he is. If he holds his head at a certain angle Hux thinks his hair will fall over a little part of it, which—hell, that’s probably something he’d like.
Kylo snorts, and Hux realizes he heard all of that. Glares at him, thinks about telling him to get out of his head, or to shut his mouth and keep his opinions to himself. Just be grateful that he’s still standing there, because Hux took the trouble to go down to the base as it was collapsing and got him out, risking his own life, and Kylo is alive now because of him, Kylo can go off and do whatever it is Snoke wants him to do for the final part of his training and never have to deal with Hux again, never have to see Hux again—
He’s being kissed before he’s aware that Kylo even moved. Soft lips moving hesitant and unsure against his, Kylo’s fingers on his jaw. Tilting his face the slightest fraction up so he can position them better, then dropping his hands. Letting them come to rest, warm, on the bare skin of Hux’s hips.
Their mouths open against each other. Kylo exhales quietly, sounding very nearly sad, and something light and careful slips into Hux’s brain. Almost like a touch. Allowing him to hear Kylo’s voice, in his own mind, when he thinks
(hux)
small and private and as vulnerable as he’d been that first night.
Hux feels his hands lifting of their own accord, gripping Kylo just below his injuries. He thinks, don’t leave yet, and gets a quiet, I won’t in reply.
Good, Hux thinks, and Kylo’s dimmed his lights almost entirely now but Hux can still feel the smile on his stupid, broken, perfect face.