Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He strode with long, confident steps down the school hallway, destination in sight and determination in his heart as he tightly gripped a small stack of posters in one hand and red colored duct tape in the other. Kylo Ren. The man, the myth, the legend. Complete with a limited edition 'Thorn For Every Heart' tee, black skinny jeans, overpriced headphones around his neck, and hair down to his shoulders with a slight curl, Kylo Ren was everything a middle school girl could dream of, and everything a middle school emo boy hoped to be.

Unfortunately, Kylo Ren happened to be a junior in high school.

No matter how ashamed you are to admit it, everyone has an emo phase. Kylo Ren, however, never grew out of his. Instead, he got a job at Hot Topic just so he could get a discount on shitty band tees and Darth Vader dolls-- sorry-- figurines. He would be teased mercilessly if he weren't so fucking ruthless.

As it stands, he--

"Rey! What the fuck!?" Kylo Ren yelled, pausing in front of the water fountain where a shorter girl with a no-nonsense expression and hair in three small buns was standing on tip-toe to finish pasting a poster with Vote Rey for Student Council President-- Your 'Rey' of Hope written in big letters above a hand-sketched picture of a ray of sunlight flooding a darkened forest with light. Kylo Ren frowned, as much as he hated to admit it, her sketch was excellent.

"Oh!" She said, turning to face him with a completely innocent look on her face. "I'm sorry Ben, were you hoping to put a poster here first?" She smiled, and Kylo Ren immediately began to simmer with silent rage.

Did he want to put a poster there? Did he want to put a poster there? It was only the most coveted campaign spot in the whole school! There were only so many walls, most of the school was made up of windows for some reason (much to the dismay of ADHD diagnosed students everywhere), and Principal Organa was very strict about where students could and could not put up posters after the...unfortunate event last year.

There was really only one place in the entire school where it was guaranteed that every single student would see it. That was above the water-fountains by the cafeteria. And she had taken it. Kylo Ren's face twisted in disgust. Not only had she taken his spot, she'd also called him ' Ben' even though she knew he changed his name to Kylo, and she had the nerve to smile at him while doing it! He could see straight through her little innocence act, and she was pure evil.

He strut past her, completely ignoring her question in favor of covering her poster up with his anyway.

He stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked over at Rey with a satisfying smirk.

She tried, and failed, to stifle a laugh.  

"What's so funny?" Kylo Ren tried to maintain his cool composure, but his smirk faded fast and his arms fell a bit lower.

"Nothing, it's just--" She burst into a fit of giggles again.

Heat began to crawl up his neck, and he brought his hands back down to his sides and clenched his fists.

Rey took a deep breath to compose herself, pasting back on the mask of fake professionalism. "I just can't believe you're think that sign could beat me in an election. You strut over here like a man in charge, like you know what you were doing, then you’re rude enough to cover up my poster in front of me...and it's all...it's all for that? " She pointed at it, a smile tugging at her lips.

Kylo Ren was trying very hard not to lose it. He sent a silent prayer for patience to Darth Vader, and asked "What's wrong with it?"

"For starters," She said, not even hesitating, "You used perhaps the most cliche campaign idea in the world. ' Free drinks on me!' above the water fountain? Where did you get that idea, Pinterest?"

"No!" He shouted, a little too quickly. Browsing Pinterest for campaign ideas seemed like a good idea at the time...he should have accepted Hux's offer for help.

"Also, the skulls seem a little tacky," She added, "but that's just my opinion."

She turned back towards the water fountain and took Kylo's sign down again, but rather than throw it away she simply walked towards Kylo Ren and handed it back to him with that same kind, innocent looking smile. "Take my advice, Ben, you don't want to embarrass yourself."

Barely containing his rage, Kylo crushed the sign into a small paper ball as Rey turned and walked away.

He grit his teeth, and tried to count to ten like Hux taught him.

He didn't make it past three. "My name isn't Ben, it's Kylo Ren!" He yelled, throwing the crumpled up ball straight at her head just as sixth period let out and the halls flooded with people. Rey simply picked up the paper ball and threw it in the trashcan behind her. It landed perfectly.

"Don't vote Kylo Ren for Student Council President!" She yelled in a chipper voice, "He litters."

When Kylo Ren returned home, he coped with his earlier humiliation in the only way he knew how. He locked the door to his room, cranked up his angry music, and sat down to brood.

He needed a better campaign. He needed to beat Rey. First, winning this election was almost entirely about the power involved, but now? Now his pride was tied up in the whole thing as well. Besides, why would she even want to be Student Council President in the first place? She was already star of the soccer team, and popular, and friends with Poe, which made her more popular. With Poe and co. dominating theatre, couldn't they at least leave something for him to come out on top in?

He closed his eyes, MCR's 'Thank You For the Venom' playing in the background, and leaned back in his chair. He attempted to take deep calming breaths.

Not even four seconds into his count, he remembered that stupid, sweet smile she gave him, remembered her condescending tone, remembered that disgustingly impressive trashcan shot, and completely lost it, screaming in rage as he stood up, sweeping everything off of the desk in a fit of furious passion.

Then, Poe began to knock on the door.

"Go away!" Kylo yelled, kicking the door to further stress his point.

"This is my room too you know!" Poe yelled back, trying to be heard over Kylo's music. "And for the love of God, Ben, turn that shit down."

This time, Kylo didn't even bother correcting him. He just crawled onto his bottom bunk, closed his eyes, listened to the music, and screamed into his pillow.

A few minutes ticked by, before he once again heard the fierce knock on his door. He lifted his face up from his pillow. "For the love of God, Poe, I said--"

"This is Leia." Her voice was firm and harsh, and it stopped Kylo mid-sentence. "For the last time, you can't just lock Poe out of your room when you're angry. Now, I'm going to count to ten--"

"Don't bother," Kylo Ren muttered, silencing his record player and moving over to unlock the door. "It doesn't work anyway."  

He unlocked the door, then immediately returned to collapse on his bed again, staring up at the ceiling with a look of pensive reflection on his face.

Poe sighed the sigh of a defeated man. “Really, Ben? Again?” He looked down at all of the things Kylo had swept off his desk, now all lying in disarray on the floor. ‘I just cleaned this stuff up, too.”

“My name isn’t Ben, it’s Kylo Ren. We’ve been over this.”

“Sure, whatever ‘Kyle,’ but would you mind not throwing my stuff all over the ground?” 

"I'm not sorry," Kylo Ren said with a huff. "You shouldn't have had your stuff all over my desk."

"This is my desk!" Poe shouted, before taking a deep sigh to calm himself down. "If I had a dollar for every time you threw a temper tantrum and destroyed things, I would get change for those dollars, put the change in a sock, and beat you with it." 

Kylo Ren ignored him. Poe was his absolute arch-nemesis, and the day he moved into Kylo's house was probably the worst day of Kylo Ren's entire teenage life. Han rescued Poe from some sort of trouble a few years back and took him in. It started off casual, with Poe just crashing at their house from time to time, but eventually when everything fell apart at Poe's house Leia's mom gene kicked in pretty hardcore and she took him in completely, no questions asked. Now Poe says Han Solo is like the dad he never really had, and Rey and Finn kind of say the same thing as well.

Kylo Ren hates his family. 

"Your idle threats mean nothing to me, Poe Dameron," He said after a time. "Talk about beating me all you wish, but you completely underestimate my power. I'm growing stronger and stronger every day, and soon when I get cast as Hamlet over you you'll see that--"

Poe cut him off. "First, I was kidding, I'm not going to fight you Kyle."

"Kylo."

"Whatever. Second, the cast list is already out. Didn't you see it?"

Kylo Ren shot out of his bed completely, racing to his desk and flipping open his laptop, flinging it open and pressing refresh on his email faster than Poe could say "William Shakespeare was a flaming homosexual." 

Full of passion and excitement at first, Kylo Ren's face fell flatter and flatter the further his eyes skimmed down the list without seeing his name. 

Hamlet-- Poe Dameron.  Of course. He shouldn't have even been surprised. 

He kept skimming, seeing name after name of people he didn't care about.

"I know your name is on there somewhere." Poe said, picking up one of his model airplanes to tinker around with. "Maybe somewhere near the bottom?"

"I can't find it." 

Poe sighed, setting down his airplane and coming up behind Kylo. 

"No, wait, see! Here it is!" Poe said, pointing to a name on the screen. "Gentlemen #2." 

Kylo Ren stared at the screen in annoyance and disbelief, his face completely devoid of emotion, betraying nothing. "It says Kyle Lauren."

"Isn't that what you said you go by now?" Poe said in genuine confusion. 

"I go by Kylo Ren! We've been over this! It's on a sign on my door!" Kylo's fists were clenched tight, growing white at the knuckle. 

Poe frowned. "Try and cheer up, okay? It'll be okay. I think Han said he'd take us out for ice cream later. Your dad's the best." 

Kylo exploded once again. "I'm lactose intolerant! God! I hate this fucking family!" He slammed his laptop shut, pushing himself away from the desk and moving towards the door to their room. 

"Where are you going?" Poe asked.

"I'm going to Starbucks to pressure Hux into giving me a free drink. Please move out." He turned, and slammed the door behind him.

"Have fun!" He heard Poe call out behind him, "If Hux tries to talk you into joining the dark side, don't do it!" 

Even after all this time, Kylo Ren could never quite tell when Poe was joking. 

Chapter Text

Join the debate club, Ren! Hux had said. It will be so much fun, Ren! Hux had said. You’ll be so good at it, Ren! Hux had said. And now? Now he was spitting mad, speaking 250 words per minute in a room that kept getting hotter and hotter in a suit that just didn’t quite fit right. He never should have let his dad help him go suit shopping.

He slammed his hands down on the desk in front of him, shouting “My opponent dropped my second contention!” as the veins bulged in his forehead.

“For the last time, giving a speech about what an idiot you think I am doesn’t count as a second contention.” The other debater, not nearly as passionate as Kylo Ren, sank back down into his chair again and straightened his papers, demeanor cool and collected. He knew he’d already won, and Kylo Ren knew it too.

He left the round in a huff. He’d lost, of course, which brought him to 0-3 for the day. It was safe to say he wouldn’t be advancing to quarterfinals. The topic was stupid in the first place-- voting ought to be compulsory in a democratic society-- and his opponent chose ‘freedom’ as his value structure, which in Kylo’s opinion seemed just as stupid as the topic. The guy couldn’t even be bothered to go with ‘autonomy’ at the very least. Kylo Ren obviously chose ‘national interest’ as his value, and was absolutely ripped to shreds, despite the fact that he knew he was right!

Apparently according to what the judge wrote on his ballot, the correct way to address a contention about Australia’s successful compulsory voting turnout wasn’t “Fuck Australia!” Also, apparently calling your opponent and idiot and dramatically sweeping your papers off the table is both inconvenient as well as unprofessional.

He made it back to where their team was congregated and collapsed into a chair just as Hux walked over to where postings were, glanced at them just long enough to see that he broke and his rival hadn't, before whispering "tragic" in a quiet yet savage way and walking back over to Kylo Ren.

“How is your first tournament going?” Hux said with a smile (or at least, as close to a smile as Hux was able to get). Kylo Ren glared in response, and Hux’s "smile" fell. “That bad, huh?”

“I’ve lost three out of three. My judges are complete idiots. They don’t know anything.”

“It is only your first tournament. No one does particularly well at their first tournament, no matter how smart they might be.”

“Shut up, Hux.” Kylo Ren snapped, “You don’t understand me. No one understands me.”

"Wait," Hux stopped, leaning in closer to Kylo until he was inches from his face. "Are you wearing eyeliner?" 

"Maybe." Kylo snapped again, "But even if I am it's only because I understand the importance of making your eyes pop. Wearing eyeliner is nothing to be ashamed of." 

Hux shrugged, not bothering to justify Kylo Ren's fashion statement with an answer. No matter what he tried to argue, eyeliner with a suit only works if you're a girl. He pulled out his ballots to look over them before his next round. He "smiled" again, which was the Hux equivalent of bursting into laughter, and read the words aloud. “Almost every word that came out of your mouth was too shocking for me to stomach, but considering you made your opponent cry and leave the room, I didn’t have any other choice but to give the round to you. Please try to avoid referring to Stalin as a national hero in the future.”  

“There’s no way that actually says that,” Kylo Ren said, snapping out of his mood and grabbing the paper from Hux’s hand. He read through it, then actually burst out laughing. “What kind of case were you even arguing to get that response?”

“Come to my next round and see for yourself. My aff case is ridiculous.” He stood up, adjusted his tie, downed an entire bottle of water, and turned to go, case files in hand. Kylo Ren sighed, but followed after him anyway. It wasn’t as though he had anything else to do.

Principal Leia Organa folded both her hands in her lap, cleared her throat, and said in a firm voice, “You’re both off the team.”

“ What!?” Hux and Kylo Ren both said in unison, jaws dropping.

“This is an official order from your head of school. I don’t care that you’re the debate captain Hux, your behavior has been completely unprofessional and given a bad name to our school. Sure, you might win trophies now, but are you willing to compromise our school’s reputation for moral integrity in order to secure those trophies?”

“Yes.” He said, still staring straight ahead.

Principal Organa pretended she hadn’t heard him, instead turning towards Kylo. “And Ben, frankly I must say I’m very disappointed in you. I’ve been sincerely hoping this little phase you’ve been growing through was temporary, but now that I know it’s affecting your behavior outside of our house as well...well, we’re going to have to have a talk about it later.”

Kylo Ren’s face turned beet red, and he glanced at Hux out of the corner of his eye. Hux was still staring straight ahead. Kylo Ren wanted to remind her that his name was Kylo Ren now (no one gave Reginald Kenneth Dwight a hard time when he changed his name to Elton John), but he figured it probably wasn’t the best time.

"I would at least like to add that in the final round of this last tournament, my opponent was flowing on notebook paper. The postings were in comic sans. It wasn't as though everyone were taking this tournament too seriously."  

Suddenly, a thought hit Kylo and his eyes widened. As funny as this whole thing was to him, Hux was an entirely different story. Hux needed the debate team if he wanted to get into West Point. Currently, his position as debate captain served as the main leadership position he had down on his resume. While Hux did have around eighty other activities he was pressured by his father into doing so it looked good on his resume, Hux’s father would probably not be too receptive to hearing that he was kicked off the debate team. Besides that, Kylo Ren could tell just by the way Hux acted at tournaments that it was something he legitimately enjoyed.

“I don’t understand why you think Hux did anything wrong.” Kylo said, with a noncomital shrug for effect. “I completely understand kicking me off the team, sure words don’t mean anything in themselves except what we think they mean and all words are just neutral sounds which mean different things depending on language or culture and sure I stand firm in not letting society tell me which words are ‘good’ and which words are ‘bad’, but I completely understand why you have an outdated view on language. It’s a thing that happens to old people. But Hux? Hux didn’t break any rules.”

“According to this ballot, you argued a case in a Lincoln-Douglas value debate that voting ought not to be compulsory in a democratic society because some people don’t deserve to vote, and from a practical standpoint forcing stupid people to vote only drags down the entire political system. You used utilitarianism as your value, then tried to argue that physically and mentally disabled people should not vote, as well as argue that only people who are young, physically fit, and obedient should be able to join in the democratic process. When someone pointed out that your ideals were almost identical to Hitler’s, you dismissed it as ‘reducto ad nazi’ and said you, and I quote, ‘could not understand why that was a bad thing.’ Upon looking into your past cases and ballots, I discovered, Mr. Hux, that you routinely make your opponents cry as a result of getting too invested in the debates, and you also align your ideas so closely with the Nazi party that other schools are beginning to talk. I believe that is a good enough reason to dismiss you from the team, don’t you think so as well Ben?”

Kylo Ren didn’t answer, but instead just pouted.

Hux silently nodded, and Leia dismissed them both.

“Your foster mom is a bitch,” He snarled as soon as they were outside the door of her office. “God, now I have to figure out how to get another leadership position at this school for next year. I can’t go into my senior year just like any other average student. I can’t believe I’m off the team. I've been debating for years...” The unspoken implication was of course that Leia never paid any attention to the debate team at all until her son started causing trouble on it. Still, just because everything was always Kylo Ren's fault didn't mean Hux had to point it out all the time. Sometimes Kylo Ren just sort of knew. 

Kylo Ren stopped midway down the hallway, gripping Hux’s arm.

“You should run for office with me.” He said, eyes filled with a glimmer of excitement and mischief. “You could be my VP.”

Hux looked at him skeptically.

“Come on.” Kylo urged, “It’s just me running against that bitch Rey for president, and your only opponent for VP is Finn. They’re no competition.”

Hux still hesitated.

“Don’t make me end up stuck with Finn as my VP.”

“Fine.” Hux sighed. “I’ll run for Vice President in your stupid student council election.”

“I think you mean our stupid student council election.” Kylo Ren smiled. “Hux, I think it’s time we implement some of your methods now when it comes to securing votes.” 

"I've read Machiavelli's The Prince front to back eight times, with me on your side there isn't any possible way that you could lose."

They shook hands, and, somewhere in the world, a puppy died.

Chapter Text

“Hi, welcome to Hot Topic, are you ready to check out?” For Kylo Ren, working at Hot Topic was like being a diabetic kid trapped in a candy store. Day in and day out he saw the coolest band tee-shirts and three different Darth Vader bobble heads, but making minimum wage didn’t give him enough disposable income to afford any of it. Still, he got to wear whatever clothes he wanted and sometimes he even got to choose the music. It was just dark enough in the store to suit his aesthetic, and a paying job is a paying job.

Besides, he could never see himself working somewhere like Starbucks with Hux. The people there were rude and pretentious, and almost always wrote ‘Kyle’ on the cup. His dad offered him a job at the garage almost daily, but he would probably rather die than work a day in ‘the family business.’

The best part about working at Hot Topic was that he never ran into anyone he knew. Hux said it was because no one at school would be caught dead in Hot Topic, and yet Hux never seemed to complain when Kylo bought him things like those Slytherin sweatpants or the twin skull friendship necklaces that they could both wear. Sure, Hux still hasn’t worn them, but he didn’t complain about them either. That’s what matters.

“Phasma!?” Kylo Ren’s jaw dropped when he saw the older girl. Sure, Phasma had a bit of a punk aesthetic and tended to hang around him and Hux’s squad more often than not, but he never imagined she was cool enough to shop in Hot Topic! “What are you doing here?”

“I’m just picking up a gift for my sister,” She yelled over the music, pulling a giftcard from the small rack on the checkout counter. “She’s going through a phase.”

“Oh. A Phase.” Kylo gave a small nod. “Right.”

“By the way, I hear you’re running for my spot as StuCo president?”

“Yeah!” Kylo smirked, “I have it in the bag.”

“Well, you have my endorsement.” She didn’t smile. She never really smiled. Truthfully, she was a bit terrifying. Then again, so was Hux. Then again, so was he.

“Thanks Phasma.” He handed her receipt, “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Yeah actually,” She said, tucking her receipt and wallet back into her purse. “Don’t tell anyone you ever saw me here.”

Fifteen minutes later, the mall was slowly closing down and he had the pleasure of an end of the week with several different employees. He’d been crossing his fingers and saying silent prayers to Vader all day. Today, he had a feeling he’d be promoted to store manager, which would come with not only a pay raise but the respect of every other employee in the store. He’d wanted it forever, and today the current store manager was stepping down and giving away his power a la George Washington.

Thirty five minutes later, “Congratulations to Orson, he’ll be the newest store manager! I passed the proverbial baton this morning, and now you’ll all be reporting to him.”

Kylo Ren was frozen in shock, not even realizing he’d been holding his breath until his vision grew spotted and his chest grew tight. That was his position! He deserved it! He’d been working at this store a full year longer than Orson had, and besides, Orson couldn’t even pull off his nose piercing. He felt like the walls were closing in.

“This is bullshit!” He shouted, standing before he could stop himself. Day in and day out he worked his ass off at this store, restocking the shelves even when he wasn’t asked, refolding band tee-shirts that seventh graders messed up just for the hell of it, keeping his cool that one time they played a One Direction song. He closed almost every night of the week, and everyone could see how many hours he worked at this store, and they’re giving the promotion to Orson of all people?

A guy in the back whose name Kylo couldn’t remember rolled his eyes. “Not again.” He muttered. Kylo’s eyes shot toward him.

“What did you just say?” Kylo said slowly, rage creeping into his voice.

The guy leaned further back in his chair in response, staring Kylo Ren down as if daring him to be offended. “You whine and complain all the time. If you’re wondering why you didn’t get promoted, that’s probably the answer. You have the worst attitude in the entire world.”

That’s when Kylo Ren lost control, lunging at the guy, picking him up by the shirt, and decking him right in the jaw. The guy didn’t fight back, instead immediately taking the role of the victim and bringing his hand up to his face, wiping the blood away from the corner of his mouth as he took several steps back.

And that’s how Kylo Ren, emo king, was forever banished from his beloved Hot Topic. He took one last long look at the new Fall Out Boy tees and the edgy looking sweatshirts, before being whisked away for good. Now he’d have to do all his ordering online, without the employee discount.

Shit. This meant he had to start working at Han’s shop, didn’t it?

Rey can change someone’s oil in 17 minutes flat. She was Han Solo’s number one employee, and from the moment Han realized the care repair shop would never be able to be named ‘Han and Sons’ he made her his right hand man to make up for Kylo Ren’s stunning lack of enthusiasm as far as car repairs go.

It’s not like Kylo was bad at mechanics or anything. In fact, having grown up with Han Solo as a father, he was pretty great with mechanics just by default. Still, every single second he spent in that God-forsaken horrid shop was like a sneak preview of the torment he could expect when his ass plummeted straight down into hell (as he knew it doubtless would, one day).

Despite natural talent, if you don’t work at something you become shit at it after awhile. Kylo Ren easily became shit at taking care of cars.

“Han, I know I’ve always said I hate your stupid shop and I know I’ve always said I would never work here in a million years, but I’m sort of in need of a job right now--”

“For the last time, son, it’s weird when you call me Han. I’m Dad.”

“Fine. Father. I need a job right now so if you wouldn’t mind...I mean, if you have any openings available…” He trailed off, hoping his father would interrupt him again with a job offer.

“You haven’t helped me out in the shop in years,” Han began, scratching his beard. “To be completely honest I’m not confident you still have the ability to change a flat tire.”

He took one look at his son’s still hopeful face, and sighed. “Fine. I bet we could use you to fill our secretary position. Rey is always saying she needs--”

Kylo Ren sighed a very loud, very dramatic sigh which he topped off with a pointed groan.

His dad ignored it. “--someone to sort through some of the paperwork in there, and she hates dealing with the customers. Say,” He stopped, a question popping into his mind. “Why did you leave your old job anyway?”

Kylo thought this was probably not the proper time to bring up his returning need for anger management skills. “I quit.” He lied with perfect ease.  “I thought it was about time for me to move on with my life.”

“Well I’m proud of you, son.” Han slapped Kylo Ren on the back, and Kylo Ren flinched in response. “You know I’ve always hated that loud music they play in there. And it’s always so dark, too.”

Kylo’s smile came out more like a grimace, but no one could say he didn’t try.  Han pointed him into the garage where he could find Ren who would explain to him what he needed to do.

She was confident, and infuriatingly at home in his dad’s shop. Life seemed so much more unfair to young Kylo Ren in that moment. She smiled and waved when she saw them, despite the fact that they were absolute enemies and everyone knew it.

“Hey Ben--”

“Kylo.”

“ Kylo. Are you just here to see your dad?”

Kylo Ren frowned, wishing that were the case. “No, I’m the new secretary. I figured it was about time I helped with the family business.”

Ren’s smile fell flat as she realized she would have to spend a lot more time with Kylo than she ever hoped to. Still, she was grateful there was someone aside from her to do all that secretary work. Things were so much smoother for her when she could just focus on the cars.

She repaired her broken smile and regained her composure. “There’s some paperwork behind the desk over there that needs sorting through, and it would be fantastic if you could take calls as well. If you need any help, feel free to ask me.”

She turned around before he had a chance to respond, wiping down her oil stained hands on the small towel attached to her belt and getting back to work.

She knew what she was doing. Kylo Ren could tell just by looking at her. She was whistling a bit, some tune he didn’t recognize, and he could tell very easily why his dad liked her so much.

He never thought he’d have to compete with both Poe and Rey to be Han Solo’s favorite son, and yet…

She was in her element here. Then again, she seemed to be in her element everywhere. On one hand she wears florals and pastels a lot, so it’s easy to not think much of her, then she’ll do something like join the soccer team and completely tear it up on the field. She’s in charge of the model airplane club, and mercilessly capitalizes on Poe’s popularity to advertise using his face. Kylo swears at least half the people in that stupid club are only there because they think Poe is cool. In fact, he’s pretty sure Finn doesn’t know the first thing about model airplanes. The only reason he’s there is so that he can have one more thing in common with his stupid boyfriend.

And then, as if he could summon demons just by thinking their names, the two terrors arrived.

Rey shot up from under the car (unfortunately, she hadn’t hit her head on it coming up like Kylo used to do when he was younger) as soon as she saw them, her face lighting up like a dozen candles as she waved at them with a genuine smile.

Kylo Ren groaned, something he’d been doing more and more often in recent days, and slammed his head on the desk.

“Rey!” Finn cried, running over to her and throwing his arms around her neck.

“Ow.” Kylo muttered, rubbing his forehead where he’d smashed it in his fit of passion.

Rey laughed, and Kylo noticed (not for the first time) how high and pretty it sounded. It annoyed him to know end. Finn was only gone for five days and yet the trio acted like it was the first time they’d seen each other in years.

“Finn was only gone for five days, there’s no need to be so melodramatic with the reunion.” Kylo Ren called to them, physically unable to keep his nose out of other people’s business.

The others pointedly ignored him. “How was college?” Rey asked.

“University of California was okay, CU-Boulder was pretty nice, and I lost interest in Pepperdine when I realized they would only give me a sports scholarship if I played basketball. I don’t even like basketball that much compared to tennis and soccer.”

“Wow, what a pity that not all of your first choice west coast schools want to throw money down at your feet for playing with balls.”

“Yeah, you’d know all about playing with balls, huh?” Finn snapped back, effectively shutting Kylo up. “Say hi to your boyfriend for me next time you hang around Starbucks for scraps of attention.”

Rey whispered “savage” under her breath.

“ He’s not my boyfriend!” Kylo Ren argued.

All three members of the terrible trio rolled their eyes.

Poe spoke up, “How about we not make fun of Kyle for being super gay.”

Finn looked surprised. If there was one thing Poe was usually always up for, it was making fun of his foster brother for basically everything under the sun. “Wait, why are we passing up an opportunity to make fun of Kyle?”

Poe shrugged. “It’s...well, it’s because no one should be made fun of for being super gay, especially when Be-- Kylo has so many actual flaws to make fun of.”

“That’s...actually a bit sweet in a weird Poe sort of way.” Rey said.

“Besides,” Poe continued, “I’ve seen him cry way too much for me to take him seriously.”

“You’ve seen him cry?” Finn asked, low-key surprised.

Rey laughed, “Almost everyone’s seen Kyle cry. Don’t be fooled by the eyeliner and emo band tee shirts, he’s a real crybaby underneath all that edginess.” They all laughed.

“See,” Poe continued, “I’m allowed to make fun of him, and you’re both allowed to make fun of him, but I won’t let anyone else.”

“So you won’t mind if I rub it in when I beat him in the election?” She asked.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

"Poe," Finn began, as if it were a realization he was having for the very first time, "You're super gay."

"Yeah, I know, so are you. That's kind of the point of us dating." 

Kylo Ren, who had been silently seething throughout this entire conversation, finally burst. “You’re not going to beat me in the election! Also, I’m right here . I can hear everything you’re saying about me. Also I’m not even that gay , also if I finally lose it one day and start shooting people, you three are going first !” He took a breath, clearly not finished with his tirade, “And as for you Finn, don’t act like you weren’t part of emo culture too once. You’re not better than me and Phasma and Hux just because you ‘grew out of it.’”

“It’s not just a phase, mom.” Finn mocked. The others burst out laughing again.

Kylo just glared, seething with rage. A phone rang.

“You should probably get back to work,” Rey said through her laughter, gesturing to the ringing phone, “I’m sure being a secretary is really difficult. Those calls aren’t going to answer themselves.”

It had been one hour and twelve minutes since he had begun to work at his Han’s shop, and he already knew with absolute certainty that he needed to find a new job as soon as humanly possible.

Life just wasn’t fair.

Chapter Text

The government class was covered in happy posters that felt like they belonged in a third grade classroom. There was one depicting the thrilling saga of how a bill becomes a law, complete with an adorable little bill with a face and a hat and everything. There was also a poster with the full preamble to the constitution, settled right snug next to “Aristotle’s Six Forms of Government!” and the worst one, a large poster in the center of the classroom with the words “Think before you speak! T~ Is it true? H~ Is it helpful? I~ Is it inspiring? N~ Is it necessary? K~ Is it kind?” The answers to most of those questions were usually nos, and yet that didn’t seem to stop anyone from speaking.  Honestly, the whole class was a train wreck.

Today, as was usual, almost every single head in the classroom was ducked down, giving up in the struggle to stay awake. Rey tried to pay attention and stay alert, because she was planning on voting in the next election and she really did want to stay involved, but honestly the more Hux talked the more she wanted to nod off like the others. Finn had fallen asleep almost as soon as the class started, and Rey had to nudge him occasionally just to get him to stop drooling all over his desk. She found it disgusting.

Almost every student in the class had thought at one point or another that it might be a good idea to put some sort of a limit on how much Hux was allowed to speak during civics class, but no one had yet been brave enough to actually voice those opinions. Finn was the only one who really didn’t seem to mind. He always said it was a good thing, because the more Hux talked the less the rest of them were expected to.

Today they were asked about how they personally have interacted with their government. Rey dressed up every year for the fourth of July, and Finn’s claim to fame was the he once got a picture with the president’s dog, but no one else in the class seemed to have much to say on the topic.

Then came Hux. Hux, who got a (mostly) hypothetical boner every time someone brings up politics. Hux, who believed himself destined for glory the day he was born. Hux, who had apparently willingly gone to watch over eight sessions of their state senate in his lifetime. Hux, who waxed poetics for approximately fifteen minutes about all the senators he’s written letters to, about all the representatives he’s been in contact with, about all of the bills he’s supposedly helped draft, about how he’d always made it a point to stay politically involved because he’s going to be a five star general someday and yada yada yada.

Just when almost everyone believed they wouldn’t be able to last another minute without dying of boredom, a single hand shot up into the air.

Poe’s.

“Yes Mr. Dameron?” Their teacher interrupted Hux mid sentence, and Hux gaped, offended that anyone would cut him off mid sentence. He hadn’t seemed to realize that no one was listening save Kylo Ren, who was hanging off of his every word as if writing to a senator was the most impressive thing in the world.

“I wrote to the mayor when I was five asking him to save the platypuses in my neighborhood.” Poe said with a yawn, still leaning back in his chair. A girl in the back giggled, obviously finding him adorable, He continued, “I ended up in the newspaper and everything. The mayor saved the platypuses. It just goes to show that if you’re unafraid to participate in the democratic process, you really can make a difference. I gained a great respect for our government that day.”

Sounds of really? and that’s so cool! broke out all around Poe, who simply shrugged and took his newfound glory with all the humility of a simple boy doing the best he can.

Their teacher was gushing, as if Poe’s story of government participation was one of the sweetest most touching things she’d ever heard. “What a fantastic example of government interaction! Thank you so much for sharing, Poe. Many times people assume that writing to a senator or mayor won’t do any good. They think their voices won’t really be heard, or maybe even that the issue they care about isn’t important enough to be addressed, but that simply isn’t true. You’re the perfect example.”

Poe beamed with pride and flashed Rey and the now wide awake Finn his signature winning smile.

“Whatever.” Kylo Ren muttered, “So what, he saved a platypus when he was five. Big deal. That’s not even interesting,”

Their teacher heard him, chastising him with a frown and a stern glance. “Now Ben, please direct your attention to the poster on our wall. Were your words true? Were they helpful? Were they inspiring or necessary or kind? Please think before you speak next time.”

“My name’s Kylo.” He spat half under his breath. She didn’t seem to hear him. No one ever did. He hung his head. He was so misunderstood.

The bell rang, and everyone was only too happy to jump out of their seats the second class ended.

“I think there’s still a plaque with my name on it in the park there, actually…” Poe was saying, all the way out the door.

At lunch, still reeling from the political boner he got during government class, Hux was only too willing to help Kylo start drafting a speech for the election.

“When you’re elected president and I’m elected vice president, we can reinstate my place on the debate team.” Hux stabbed a tater tot with his fork, bringing it leisurely up towards his mouth in a manner which could only be described as elegant. He wasn’t even using ketchup. Disgraceful.

“I’m not sure student council president has that kind of power,” Kylo responded, tapping the table with his pencil and ignoring his untouched lunch. “Besides, ‘vote for me so I can get Hux back on the debate team’ doesn’t seem super compelling for a campaign speech.”

“Nonsense, Ren.” Hux replied, stabbing another tater tot. “When we rule, we can do anything with unlimited power. Trust me.”

Only with Hux and Kylo Ren could ‘I’ll have unlimited power’ and ‘trust me’ go together in the same thought.

“What if I made tee-shirts?” Kylo Ren said, digging around in his backpack until he came across one of his small notebooks. “Look, I sketched this shirt design in Stats which I think is quite promising.”

Hux took the notebook, looking over it with narrow eyes. He turned it upside down and squinted. He flipped it around again, studying it in great detail. “I think this is probably the stupidest shirt design I’ve ever seen.” Hux stated with a sense of finality, pulling out his own pencil to begin drawing on it.

Kylo Ren frowned. Although he’d never admit it to Hux, he had’t really just thought it up in stats. He’d been thinking about the idea all night and had been quite proud of it.

"Here's a concept," Hux began, pausing in his drawing for a second. "What rather than focusing on posters saying good things about you, we just say horrible things about Rey and Finn."

Kylo paused, thinking about it for a second, before responding. "Don't you think that might reflect more negatively on us than on them?"

"It worked for Phasma," Hux said with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

Completely by coincidence, Phasma entered the room at that moment and Kylo Ren called her over.

"Yeah?" She said, sliding into the seat next to Hux.

"Is it true you used a smear campaign  to win the election last year?" Kylo asked, still skeptical.

"It honestly wasn't that hard. My competition were a bunch of bumbling idiots." She glanced over at what Hux was drawing, and her eyes immediately widened.

Hux looked up at her with a face that clearly read what ?

Phasma shook her head and took it from him, ripping the paper out and holding it out for everyone in the group to see. "You tried to put a symbol that looks oddly like fascist iconography on a campaign shirt. You can't just do that, Hux, we've talked about this."

"What?" He asked, clearly still confused.

"This looks akin to a swastika or wolfsangel or black sun." She pointed again.  

"Does it really?"

Kylo Ren just stared at Hux, then at Phasma, then at Hux again, then at Phasma.

"Hux!"

"Alright, yeah, so maybe I used a bit of fascist iconography as a reference photo, but this campaign symbol is entirely original." Hux argued, "It's resemblance to the gammadian cross is just a callback to its original representation of goodwill and good fortune, which is exactly what I bring to those who vote for me. Also, it's mainly just the colors and lines that are similar to it in the first place."

"It's a swastika," she deadpanned.

"I think it's pretty," Kylo chimed in, squirming a bit in his seat at the awkwardness of the situation. Sure, he didn't want to use a nazi hate symbol for his presidential campaign, but he didn't want Hux to feel bad either. Besides, it looked more like a sad Christmas tree skirt or a weird looking star with a circle around it than it did a cross or swastika. And even though it looked weirdly imposing it was fairly well drawn as far as fascist symbols go. 

Hux raised his eyebrows at Phasma as if to say see, I told you I know what I'm doing .

She just shook her head. "There's no way you're going to win my seat without my help." She tore the shirt design in half without batting an eye. Hux remained expressionless. Kylo's eyes darted between the two of them, waiting for Hux's reaction.

Hux stared at her, still expressionless for at least a full minute. None of them spoke.

Finally, with a sigh, Hux picked up his pencil again and began a new sketch. "Fine. I'll find another reference photo."

Kylo Ren took a deep breath. "So anyway, about my speech."

"About the smear campaign," Hux said at the same time. Hux's voice was louder and thus he won out.

Kylo Ren didn't mind too much, always waiting for an opportunity to bash his rivals.

"I'm almost entirely certain Finn is using Poe's face on his campaign posters, which in my opinion is a cheap way of getting votes," Kylo began passionately. "I don't even understand why he's running. All he ever does is follow Poe and Rey around anyway."

"Or Poe follows him and Rey around. Or Rey follows him and Poe around." Phasma stole one of Hux's tater tots. "I swear it's like every single one of them is the third wheel."

"He runs from everything else, why not run for president too." Hux scoffed.

"What about Rey? How can we pick her apart? I respect her as an equal on the soccer field, but I don't want her as president. We have to keep the power within the squad."

"We're a squad?" Kylo asked.

"Of course we're a squad."

"Can we not say 'squad'?" Hux looked disgusted.

"As far as wrecking Rey is concerned, for starters we can—" He stopped, realizing he didn't quite know what to say next. How could they destroy her rep? She seemed unfairly perfect. "We can..." He trailed off.

The three of them had so many connections and knew so many people that they all had to have a head start. Painful as it was to recall, people remember Hamlet much easier than Gentlemen #2, and Rey was also a soccer star, head of the model airplane club and an active member of the robotics club (Poe was always going on about some sort of robot they were trying to build. He even named their cat after it. BB-8, he thinks?) not to mention regular appearances in the gay-straight-alliance.

All Kylo Ren and Hux had were their stunning good looks and killer intellect.

“We could just lie about it, you know. We could tell people anything and if we’re colorful enough they’ll believe it,” Hux said. “Like Abraham Lincoln said, ‘ The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.’ ”

“I’m fairly certain that wasn’t Abraham Lincoln,” Phasma said, stealing another tatertot, “But I’m on board either way.”

Kylo Ren pulled out his android and pulled up google.

“I think I read an wikihow on running a successful smear campaign once.” Hux said, pushing his plate completely towards Phasma so she could just finish off his now slightly cold tater tots. “Don’t vote for Rey, she cheats.”

Kylo Ren was still scrolling through his phone.

Phasma quickly shot back, “Don’t be fooled by that sweet facade, Rey preys on those weaker than herself.”

“Like Kylo Ren.” Hux said with a smirk, which almost caused Phasma to break her always serious and slightly terrifying face in exchange for a laugh. But not quite.

Kylo Ren was oblivious to the insult, still staring at his phone as he knit his eyebrows in conclusion.

“I once heard Rey say she actually likes brussel sprouts. Do you really trust her as president?” Phasma asked, voice taking a dramatic tone.

"Rey is a republican." Hux tossed out. 

Phasma shook her head, "That might be too horrible of a rumor to spread." 

Hux held up a finger, “Is Rey in the middle of a passionate polyamorous relationship with her two gay friends? If so, do you really trust this person as our president?”

Phasma gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “If we bring that up people will obviously point to the fact that we three are in a passionate polyamorous relationship as well.”

Hux gave her a pointed look in response, and Kylo Ren said “Hux isn’t my boyfriend” without even looking up from his phone, as if at this point it was a pre-programmed response. After he said it, his eyes finally rested upon whatever he was looking for and he lifted up his phone, victorious.

“I found it!” He shouted, looking between the two of them.

“Found what?” Phasma asked.

“That quote was from Hitler, Hux, not Lincoln.”

“Was it really?” Hux asked, seeming completely undisturbed. Kylo Ren rolled his eyes at his casual response.

Phasma gave a small, disappointed sigh. “Hux, do you even try?”

Hux merely shrugged.  

Phasma reached over to straighten Hux’s tie (he didn’t try to stop her this time, he was used to it) before slowly rising to her feet, “Hux accidentally being horribly offensive is usually my queue to leave. Please try and keep yourselves out of trouble for two seconds. Also, Kylo, if Hux produces any sort of fascist symbol for a tee shirt burn it before it sees the light of day, and erase any signs that I ever knew you two.”

The two boys waved goodbye to her, and Kylo Ren sighed. “Maybe I’ll just stick to ‘Vote for Kylo.’”

Hux was disappointed, but he didn’t argue. Sometimes, friends make sacrifices.

Chapter Text

"To be...or not to be...that is the question. To be, or not to be, that is the question. Tobeornottobethatisthequestion. To. Be. Or. Not. To. Be. That. Is. Th--"

"Do you need help answering? Because I vote 'not to be.'"

After listening to Poe practice only the first line of the famous Hamlet soliloquy eight thousand times, Kylo Ren was completely and absolutely done. The role should have been his anyway. Kylo wouldn't have had to practice the lines at all, really. He felt a strong personal connection to Hamlet, really. Like Hamlet, he also hates his family, wants his uncle dead, and longs to rule the entire galaxy with an iron fist. Well, maybe Hamlet didn't want to rule the galaxy, but that was entirely beside the point. The similarities didn't stop there, either. Both Hamlet and Kylo Ren like to wear black. Both Hamlet and Kylo Ren think about death more than is strictly necessary. Both Hamlet and Kylo Ren give strong and passionate monologues regularly. Also, both Kylo Ren and Hamlet have best friends who seem very much done with their shit.

(Looking back, like Hamlet he might have remembered some story told around a thanksgiving table featuring his mother being involved in a little more incest than anyone was comfortable with, but Kylo tried as best he could to block that family story out of his memory. Ick.)

"These lines are some of the most famous in the entire play, I have to say them with the proper impact." Poe explained, clearing his throat and making unholy noises which Kylo could only assume were his attempts at a vocal warm up. Poe even led vocal warm ups in theatre class sometimes, but Kylo never participated. He just moved his mouth around and hoped no one would notice. "Maybe if I got a skull..." Poe trailed off, talking more to himself.

Kylo Ren openly scoffed. "You're just showing once again that you're completely ignorant of how Shakespeare is truly intended to be performed. Hamlet didn't even have a skull in this scene. If you've read the full play you would know that. The skull doesn't come into play until later when Hamlet has the conversation with the grave digger, and even then he only holds the skull for one monologue. It's a total misinterpretation. Frankly, I'm disappointed in you. You're just showing once again how little you're able to pull off such an important humanistic character."

"Speaking of successfully pulling off characters, aren't Gentlemen supposed to be a bit more polite? Especially to their future kings."

Kylo Ren rolled his eyes, standing up and taking his construction paper and crayons with him. “I can’t focus around you. I think your stupidity is rubbing off on me, and I need full brain power to finish these fliers.”

“You’re going to need a lot more than brain power if you’re going to beat Rey in this election.” He laughed, “No offense, but she has it in the bag.”

“I don’t need to be around this sort of negativity,” Kylo Ren brushed his glorious long black hair over one ear. “I’m going to Starbucks to be with Hux. He’s got both talent and creativity.”

“Two things you apparently sorely need.”

“Hux has never acted a day in his life and he could probably recite that God-forsaken monologue better than you can.” Kylo said, rising to his feet with his campaign materials gathered in his arms.

Poe groaned, collapsing on his bed and throwing his script over his head. “Hux, Hux, Hux. I hate that guy. He’s my arch nemesis.”

Kylo Ren stopped dead in his tracks, hand just resting on the door knob. “I thought I was your arch nemesis!” He yelled, swinging around to face Poe.

“Oh my God, Ben, just shut up and let me rehearse already I literally do not care about you at all.” Poe said with another long groan, turning the page in his already well-worn script.

“My name isn’t Ben!” Kylo Ren huffed in indignation. “It’s Kylo Ren now. We’ve been over this a million times!”

“Yeah, sure, whatever you say ‘Kyle.’” At this point Kylo Ren was almost sure Poe was doing it on purpose. He continued despite Kylo’s death glare, “Also Leia told me to pick up some milk earlier so if you could do that on your way home that would be great.”

“I’m lactose intolerant! God ! I hate this fucking family.” Kylo Ren turned the knob and stormed out the door, slamming it behind him.

“Don’t slam the door!” Leia’s voice called from downstairs. Kylo ignored her, hurrying down the stairs and slamming the front door on his way out as well.

The bell that rang when you entered the tiny startup coffee shop where Finn worked had a charmingly pleasant ring to it, and when you walked through the door the art on the walls and the quirky atmosphere made it seem just like home.

Kylo Ren hated home, and thus he preferred Starbucks.

“I’ll have a white chocolate mocha with soy milk.” Kylo Ren ordered, taking an excruciatingly long amount of time to find his wallet and locate his money. They people in line behind him were getting more and more distressed. Even the barista was getting impatient.

Hux was giving him the strongest bitch face in the entire world, before finally giving up and saying, “For Christ’s sake, Ren. If you’re going to hold everyone up this long I’ll just pay for your drink myself.”

The people in line behind Kylo all applauded, and Kylo Ren smirked. All was going according to plan. Hux just rolled his eyes. He would think Kylo Ren were clever if it weren’t for the fact that this was the second time he’d done that this week. Hux shouldn’t keep giving him free coffee, but some days he just couldn’t help himself.

Besides, it was kind of cute that the supposedly terrifying and powerful Kylo Ren would only drink white girl coffee.

When Kylo Ren got his coffee, he couldn’t hide the smile that crawled across his face when he saw that, once again, Hux hadn’t failed to correctly spell his name on his cup.

He sat down at a table with a seat reserved for when Hux goes on break, and pulled out his stack of construction paper and crayons to start cranking out posters using some of the ideas they’d thought up with Phasma. Once he got started, he was able to make one after another fairly quickly, each flier using the same black and red combination Hux liked so much from earlier. A pleasant compromise.

He took a black and white picture that Phasma had expertly photoshopped and taped it onto one of the pages. It portrayed Rey reading the Communist Manifesto, and definitely looked striking against the red backdrop. The caption was witty, or at least he thought so. It said Quit Stalin-- Save Our School. He thought it was striking and edgy. He was quite proud of it.

The second featured a picture he didn’t even have to photoshop. All it took was a bit of digging around to find an actual photo of her actually eating brussel sprouts and actually smiling. The caption was simple, A Vote for Rey is a Vote for Vegetables. Matched with the casual lies he was spreading about how he planned to add more and more pizza days to the menu, he was sure the impact would be profound.

The third involved a picture of Rey sleeping, a photo that he’d happened to procure while--

“Hux!” He said, gesturing to the chair next to him as soon as his friend went on break. “I’ve started on the smear campaign posters, and I really think it’s all going really well. Now, I’m hoping that even though the school is practically all windows we can still find some good places to hang them up.”

“Did you seriously bring crayons?”

“They were all I had.” Kylo Ren shrugged, completely undisturbed by his own unprofessionalism. “Now listen, I think Rey is a complete fucking bitch.”

“You’ve said that exact line to me twelve times this week.” Hux deadpanned.

“Well it’s true.” Kylo Ren burned his mouth on his coffee, and scowled.

“It’s only Monday.”

“So as I was saying,” Kylo Ren continued, “I need to find a new job more than I need my parents approval. I need to find a new job more than Finn needs a shower. I need to find a new job more than you need to get into Westpoint.”

“I highly doubt that.” He sighed, then asked the question he knew his friend wanted him to. “What happened at work today, Ren?”

“So I’m just working my job, answering calls, everything is completely normal, right?”

“Of course.” Hux couldn’t care less.

“Then Rey walks over and gives me that stupid sickening smile. You know the one.”

“Obviously.” He didn’t know the one. He rarely paid attention to things like smiles.

“And she just drops this whole stack of papers down on my desk to sort through, as if I didn’t have enough papers. This is the worst part though. Are you ready for this? Are you? The papers were covered in grease. It was disgusting. I swear she did it to gross me out.”

“Oh no! How horrible.” It was obvious now that Hux was faking his concern, but Kylo didn’t seem to notice. He was lost in his frustration with the girl.

“Have you ever noticed how stupid her hair is? What’s wrong with just putting it in a ponytail like most of the other white girl athletes? Even one bun would have been okay. Two buns she would have looked too much like my mother. But three buns? Who puts their hair in three buns? And I just sit there, all day, staring at her damn buns.”

Hux just stared at him, bored and sipping Kylo’s coffee,

“Not like that.” Kylo specified quickly. “One day I just want to get a pair of scissors and cut one off. She’s a snake. I know her perfect act is a lie, I just have to find a way to prove it , you know? Dig up something bad enough to make sure she can never get voted into office.”

“Like Jefferson, Burr, and Madison digging up the Hamilton Reynold’s Affair.” Hux threw out, attempting to put some of his useless political history knowledge.

“Exactly!” Replied Kylo Ren, knowing nothing about the Reynold’s Affair. “I’ve considered digging through Poe’s stuff, but I’m not sure if he’d even have anything. If I could find a diary or something…”

“What are the chances of you getting into the inside?” Hux mused, “Pretending to see the light. Coming around to Poe, developing an understanding, and with luck you’ll be invited to her house to hang out with them.”

“I feel like that would take too long.”

“But wouldn’t it be worth it?”

Kylo Ren paused for a minute, thinking over the situation. If he just had the opportunity to be alone in her room for a bit he could definitely find some sort of diary or journal. He knew once he found it that there would absolutely be something condemning in there. No one was that perfect, it was that simple.

But would be be willing to make that sacrifice? Would he be willing to degrade himself to the level of attempting to become friends with the self-called ‘holy trinity’ and not complain eighty-seven times a second? Heaven help him if he could.

He could endure their laughter, their mockery, their name-calling, and their general all around annoying behavior. He could endure ‘Ben Solo’ and ‘say hi to your boyfriend’ jokes. He could endure complimenting Rey (maybe) and pretending to be impressed by Poe. Who knows, he might even ask Poe for acting pointers (actually, that might be going too far). He could endure.

“Alright, pack up the smear posters. We’ll put them up later. For now? I’m in.”

Hux stood, downing the rest of Kylo Ren’s white chocolate mocha. “I have to get back to work, but tomorrow we’re going to model airplane club.”

He stalked back towards the counter, slipping his barista apron back on and nodding at Kylo Ren. He sighed, and began packing up his things just as the holy trinity walked through the door and stalked up to the counter.

“Traitor.” Hux hissed at Finn as he walked over.

“I quit working at Starbucks for that startup a whole year ago and you’re still caught up about it?” Finn asked, “Get over it general gingerbread.”

“What did you just call me?” Hux narrowed his eyes.

“Absolutely nothing.” Finn held up his hands in a sign of surrender.

Poe stepped forward, “We’re just here for Be--”

Kylo Ren coughed.

“--Kyle.” Poe corrected.

“Close enough.” Kylo Ren muttered to himself, not wanting another fight.

Poe continued, “Leia’s a bit worried about you storming out of the house earlier. She wanted me to come check on you. I had a gift card. She says dinner will be ready in an hour.”

“I’m not hungry.” Kylo countered. “And I’m going out with Hux.”

“We know.” Finn said. His comment went ignored.

“He’s lying, he’s not going out with me tonight. I’m closing.” Hux called.

Kylo Ren shot him a betrayed look, and Hux merely shrugged. Hux had a dedication to the plan that Kylo Ren lost in the face of adversity. Hux wouldn’t give up once a challenge came along. Hux would gladly pretend to be friends with Rey only so he could betray her if he would be able to get away with it like Kylo Ren could.

“Fine. I’ll be home for dinner.” Kylo Ren sighed, sticking his both hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans.

Poe smiled his charming Poe smile, and Kylo couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

When the holy trinity received their drinks, they read Ray, Fen, and Joe.

Yes, there was a reason he and Hux were best friends.

Chapter Text

“Hey Ben, ca--”

“Kylo Ren.”

“Kylo Ren, can you try and see what’s wrong with that vending machine when you’re finished typing up those letters? A customer tried to ask me about it earlier.” Rey wiped her greasy hands on a small towel and readjusted one of her buns, looking up at Kylo Ren expectantly.

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Kylo Ren shrugged, pretending like he hadn’t just been watching her do repairs. His dad trusted her explicitly, and him not at all. It didn’t seem fair to him, until he watched Rey work; he saw how efficiently and intelligently she got the job done, and suddenly it made sense all over again exactly why Kylo Ren was the third favorite child in a family where he was technically the only child.

He hated her.

He stood up reluctantly and waltzed confidently towards the front of the shop where the vending machine sat. “What seems to be the problem?” He asked aloud, possibly to the vending machine, possibly to himself. The vending machine did not answer.

It looked like there was some sort of problem with the control board, and the change returner needed fixing...that wasn’t easy to fix. He searched his brain to see if he could still remember how to do stuff like this. They’d lost the manual ages ago, but that shouldn’t be a problem.

He opened up the vending machine and removed the discriminator, pulling up the latches and making sure to keep the area shaded. He removed the cassette tube too, it wouldn’t hurt to clean that as well…

Before he knew it, the machine was back in perfect working order, and he was strolling back over towards his desk. He stopped, looked down at his hands, and changed his mind. His first stop would be to the bathroom to wash off all that dirt.

“What was the problem?” Rey asked as he passed by her.

“Something to do with the control boards.” He said over his shoulder.

“Oh, that’s a shame.” She said, sounding annoyed at one more thing she would have to deal with. “Do you need my help?”

“No, I don’t need you.”

“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Is it that bad? Do we need to call in a specialist to repair it?” It seemed ironic calling a vending machine repair company to a repair shop, but Rey’s specialty was in cars, not messed up control boards in vending machines.

“No, I already fixed the problem.”

She stared at him as he walked toward the bathroom, then stared at the door as he washed his hands, then stared at him as he walked out of the bathroom and toward his desk, then stared at him as he pulled out a few quarters, walked toward the machine, and used them to buy himself some oreos. Then, remembering the plan he made with Hux, he offered her an oreo. She turned it down.

“Kylo…” She said, and it didn’t escape his notice that she remembered his new name, “I didn’t know you had any talent in repair.”

“My dad is Han Solo, loathe as I am to admit it.” He said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. In a way, it was. “Just because I hate it doesn’t mean I can’t do it. The amazing Rey! She can change your oil in 18 minutes flat! Fan-fucking-tastic. I can do it in 17.”

Just because he promised to try to make friends with her didn’t mean he was going to succeed right away. He needed to take baby steps. Go from full on roasting the holy trinity, to lightly toasting them.

Rey was tempted to ask him about joining the robotics club, then immediately realized what a completely awful idea that was. She looked at him for a bit, until he became so uncomfortable that he had to look away. He sat back down in his chair again and moved papers around, creating busy work for himself.

Then, realizing that he was in the perfect moment to do what had to be done, he asked the question.

“Hey Rey...when does model airplane club meet?”

“Today we would like to welcome two new members to the RC flying club!” Rey said in a light, cheery voice. She began to clap, hoping others would as well. No one else clapped along. She elbowed Poe in the stomach, and since she practically knocked all the air out of him, he picked up the hint and began to clap along as well. Finn sighed, and clapped too, and finally the others joined in begrudgingly. The entire situation was uncomfortable for everyone involved. “Everyone say hi to Hux and Kyle!”

“Kylo.” Kylo Ren clarified, nodding to the other members in the room. “Kylo Ren actually. Not Kyle.”

Hux and Kylo Ren looked around the room. Hux was scowling and a freshman took a step back; Kylo Ren rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet and tried to pretend as though he belonged. “So...what exactly do you do in model airplane club?” Kylo Ren asked, after a few too many seconds of silence.

“Well for starters, it’s technically called remote control flying club, not model airplane club.” Rey intended for her tone to be sweet and casually informative, but Kylo Ren could see past it into the truth of her condescending attitude. She pointed toward a table full of cookies and juice boxes.  “We also have snacks. And we build model airplanes.”

“It’s really not that difficult to figure out.” Finn said.

No one mentioned the huge elephant in the room, which was of course the question of what Hux and Kylo Ren were doing in model airplane club in the first place. The Phasma/Hux/Kylo trio spent most of their time making fun of the model airplane club, not attending it. Phasma would be so disappointed if she knew.

“You were new here once too, Finn.” Poe slipped an arm around Finn’s waist, and Hux made a disgusted face. Hux was not a homophobe by any means, in fact Hux was gay as the 4th of July himself, but he was an extreme Poe/Finnophobe. He wasn’t alone. Kylo Ren typically wanted to throw up when he spent too much time with them as well.

Poe continued, addressing Kylo Ren and Hux directly, “Sometimes we meet at someones house over the weekend. Typically Nathan’s house, since his dad is rich,” the sophomore who Kylo assumed was Nathan waved his hand, “And usually we just talk about planes a lot and sometimes go race them in the gym.”

Apparently, ‘we talk about planes a lot’ meant Poe talked about planes a lot and all of his followers listened with rapt attention. Poe didn’t technically lead anything, but Poe also lead everything. Rey might have been in charge, but it was the Poe Dameron show all the way (that unstoppable dork).

“Why am I here?” Hux leaned over and whispered, fifteen minutes into Poe’s excited talk about planes.

“Because if you’re sending me straight into the pits of hell, I’m dragging you with me.” Kylo Ren spat back, wondering for the fourth time that hour if an election was worth this torment.

Everyone else seemed to be having such a great time, and Kylo Ren couldn’t for the life of him understand why . Did they simply enjoy each others company that much? This group of eight dorks, five of whom Kylo Ren hadn’t heard of nor cared about, spent half their lunches hearing his obnoxious foster brother teach them how to paint accurate windows and how to go through hoops in a pylon race.

Finally, another boy spoke up.

“Go right ahead Jackson!” Rey said, “Share your thoughts.”

He cleared his throat. “So what if, and this is just a concept I’m proposing here, what if like...we did a thing...where we made a model airplane, you know? Like we usually do. Except this airplane is really big.”

“Really big?” Rey asked.

“Really big.” The boy confirmed.

“How big are we talking here?” Poe asked, leaning forward in his seat to show his interest.

“Like….maybe big enough to fit a person in or something, you know? Really big.”

Kylo Ren scoffed, unable to hold in his annoyance any longer. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

“Kyle, do you know why none of us have been making fun of you while you’ve been here?” Rey asked, “Even though normally you’re extremely easy to make fun of.”

Kylo Ren opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. “It’s because RC flying club is a complete negativity free zone. We don’t call people stupid here for presenting ideas. Understood?”

“Understood.” Kylo Ren mumbled with a frown.

“Now what were you saying, Jackson?” Rey took a seat and crossed her hands in her lap, giving Jackson her full attention once again,

Unshaken by the whole affair, Jackson continued. “I think it would be cool if we like...if we all like...worked together , you know? To build a model airplane big enough to fit a person.”

Kylo Ren tried, he really did, but he couldn’t even count to ten before exploding in annoyance yet again. “That’s just a regular airplane!” He threw his hands in the air and stood up to face Jackson. “A model airplane big enough to hold people isn’t a model airplane anymore, it’s just a regular airplane.”

There were murmurs around the group. Jackson put his finger out and shushed Kylo Ren, continuing. “It wouldn’t be like a regular airplane, because it would be a model airplane. It would just be a working model airplane that works.”

“Oh, so it’s a working model airplane too now, is it?” Kylo Ren mocked, “I don’t care about this bullshit non-negativity zone. If I see an idea that’s stupid, I’m going to call it stupid.”

Hux rose to his feet and quietly excused himself, grabbing a cookie on the way out.

Finn quietly sipped his juicebox from the corner.

“Also,” Kylo Ren continued, “Did this punk just shush me? I don’t tolerate that kind of disrespect.”

“Kyle,” Rey rose slowly, placing an arm on Kylo Ren’s shoulder, “You’re overreacting, and I think you’re starting to scare some of our younger members.”

“ I’m overreacting? How am I overreacting?”

“Well for starters, you’re yelling and waving your arms around like a lunatic.” Poe said. He turned to Jackson, who now looked like a deer in headlights. “I thought your idea was very creative, Jackson. We’ll definitely look into it further. You can sit down now.”

Kylo Ren threw his arms up in the air and turned around, muttering “This is bullshit!” as he took his seat again.

“Kyle, calm down.” Poe said, taking a step towards Kylo Ren. “What are you even doing here anyway, man?” Kylo Ren didn’t answer. Poe pressed the issue further. “Did you come here just to try and mess this up for me?”

Kylo Ren took a deep breath, and tried to mentally pump himself up for the words that were about to come out of his mouth. In this moment, he would swallow all of his pride. It was like he was preemptively admitting defeat, but they knew not what was to come. Kylo Ren could do this. If he was lucky, they might not even laugh.

“I wanted to make new friends.”

Rey sighed, and the holy trinity exchanged one single, understood look. “All in favor of kicking Kylo Ren out of the RC flying club, say aye.”

The vote was unanimous.

Kylo Ren grit his teeth and clenched his fists. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Ni--

He didn’t make it to ten. All eyes on him, he straightened his scarf and turned quickly and dramatically enough for him to feel wind through his hair. He stormed towards the door and, taking one last look at the RC flying club and the holy trinity, kicked one leg of the snack table and watched the whole thing clatter to the ground. Cookies crumbled under the crushing weight of the juiceboxes. Someone’s open soda can spilled on the floor. A bag of pretzels slowly slid toward its doom.

“Your snacks were shit anyway.” Kylo Ren slammed the door of the model airplane club, determined never to return.

Chapter Text

“Just swallow your pride and apologize, Ren. It shouldn’t be that hard.”

It was easy for Hux to say things like that. He rarely got himself into situations where he needed to swallow his pride, and he never apologized. He always made Kylo Ren do all his dirty work, and Kylo Ren was tired of it.

But still, out of the two of them he was the only one with any real chance of making friends with the holy trinity. “I don’t know if I can apologize.” Kylo Ren fingered his hole absentmindedly as Hux watched him with disdain and disgust at his actions.

“I really wish you would get some jeans without holes and tears in them. That might be a good start, at least.”

Kylo Ren stopped stretching out the already ripped hole in his faded skinny jeans, giving Hux a death glare. “I’m already apologizing, let me live.”

“So you are apologizing.” Hux smirked, victorious, and Kylo Ren sighed. Yes, he was apologizing. He’d decided on it a long time ago, he just hadn’t realized it.  

“Yeah, but stop smiling about it.”

Hux didn’t stop smiling about it. “Just remember what Abraham Lincoln said. ‘The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.’”

“I swear to God, Hux,” Kylo Ren said through grit teeth, “If you keep quoting Hitler and claiming it’s Lincoln I’m going to scream.”

Luckily for him, he didn’t have to go far to apologize.

Finn and Rey were in his room along with Poe when he got home, and his eyes narrowed and grew dark immediately upon seeing them. He was about to yell at Poe for disrupting his sacred space, when he remembered he had to be friends with them. He sighed, and successfully counted to ten. He didn’t even take time to celebrate his progress before saying the dreaded words.

“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could think through a way to say them more elegantly, and he felt like such an idiot standing uncomfortably in the doorway or his own room, hands in the pockets of his skinny jeans, as he did the thing he vowed never to ever do.

The holy trinity gaped at him, completely taken by surprise. They all exchanged looks with each other, not quite knowing what to say. Yes, for the first time in his teenage life, Kylo Ren gave a seemingly heartfelt apology. And he didn’t just stop there.

“I didn’t mean to ruin model airplane club or anything. I just...thought going to it would be a good way to make new friends.”

“And why do you want to make new friends?” Finn narrowed his eyes, extremely distrustful of the other boy. Whether that was because Kylo Ren was borderline evil, or just because he had an instinctive distrust of any man wearing eyeliner, the world may never know.

“Oh can it, traitor. As if you don’t know what it’s like to switch allegiances.”

“Well, here’s a tip,” Finn replied, “You’re never going to make friends if you keep insulting people.” He held his head high and crossed his arms, firm in his convictions. There were three things one could be certain about: death, taxes, and the inevitability of Kylo Ren’s betrayal. He could not be trusted.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” Kylo Ren winced at his own words.

The three again exchanged a look that Kylo Ren did not understand, and Finn lowered his arms and sighed in resignation. “Your apology is accepted.” It was a reluctant acceptance, but acceptance nonetheless.

“I looked it up on wikihow,” Kylo Ren explained, not entirely lying, “How to be best friends with people you hate. Wikihow said I should be forthright about my intentions.”

“Okay.” Rey crossed her arms over her chest and took a seat on Poe’s bed. “So what are your intentions?”

“I don’t want to participate anymore in whatever spat we have.” Kylo Ren shrugged. “It’s petty and I’m done with it.”

“You tried to set my hair on fire!” Rey yelled back, voice indignant and firm.

“ Two years ago! ”

“And again last month!”

“And again last month.” Kylo Ren sighed. “I just think...at this point I would really appreciate your friendship, rather than your backhand words. I’m willing to cease calling Poe and Finn gay--”

“Which we are.” Finn said.

Kylo ignored them, “--And I’m also willing to convince Hux to stop hissing ‘traitor’ at Finn every time he walks by. I’ll let Rey hang up her poster above the water fountain near the cafeteria--”

“Which I’m already doing.”

“--And I’ll also stop insulting and attacking you all. Now, I don’t expect instant love or friendship, and I’ll give you all some time to think it over.”

“I’m in.” Rey said, without a moment's hesitation. “I mean, I’ll think about it at least.”

“I’m on board with a truce, even if I don’t understand why.”

Neither of them suspected a thing. It was almost impossible for Kylo Ren to keep from outright laughing. Did they really think he’d just run to them with open arms asking forgiveness if he wasn’t going to get anything out of it? Hux was right; they were all so naive. What would it be like to want to believe so desperately that everyone was good all the time?

Finn was suspicious at least. “ Why though?” He asked, and Kylo wasn’t quite sure if he was talking to him, or the other two.

Rey answered, assuming he was asking her. “It’s like Abraham Lincoln said, ‘the best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him a friend.’ It’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Kylo Ren stared in complete and utter shock. His world was changing, ideas rearranging themselves as everything he thought was real suddenly faded away.

If Hux’s quote really was from Lincoln, which other ones were too?

Rey continued. Again. Finn was the only one concerned with Kylo Ren’s look of shock. “I agree with Abraham Lincoln. The only way to destroy Kylo Ren the enemy, is to turn him into Kylo Ren the friend.”

And yet another plot twist occurred. Kylo Ren needed to sit down for this, He finally crossed away from the door and sat on his bed. “You got my name right.”

Rey shrugged, and looked toward the floor.

“You can’t just make friends like this!” Finn argued, still not sure why Poe and Rey weren’t running as fast as they could in the opposite direction. “Friends are made through shared experiences. Common interests. We’ve all been through hell and back together multiple times, he ,” he pointed to Kylo Ren, “has not.”

“Ben!” Kylo heard his mother call him from downstairs. “I’m leaving, come say goodbye.”

The holy trinity looked at him expectantly. He groaned and got off of his bed, walking out the door and slamming it behind him just to show his mother how inconvenienced he was.

He stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at her.

“Don’t just say goodbye to me from up there, come down and give me a hug goodbye.” Leia ordered. Kylo Ren would rather do anything else.

He took a few more steps, and then stopped halfway down them, still staring at her.

She gave up looking for a hug, and began talking to him about details. “If you need anything, just call your father. He’s about as responsible as a sack of dead toads, but he’s better than nothing. I have my phone with me and I’m always just a text away, and please don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

Kylo looked confused, and she noticed.

“Did you forget I was going out of town?” She asked.

“ Shit.” Kylo replied, hiting his palm against his forehead. He had forgotten she was going out of town. He spoke without thinking, going yet again with another low blow. “It completely slipped my mind. Probably because I literally do not care at all.”

Leia frowned her disapproving mom-frown (usually reserved for one of Kylo’s moods), and pulled up her suitcase handle.

“I love you Ben.” She said, still with her frown as she turned and began to walk towards the door. “And I meant what I said about not getting into trouble.”

“Yeah, what am I going to do?” Kylo Ren called after her, “Throw a crazy party with my hundreds of friends?”

A hypothetical lightbulb just made an imaginary ding! in his head as the idea came to him. He would bond with the holy trinity, gain major popularity points to help in the election, and trash his mom’s house.

He raced back up the stairs as fast as he could, throwing open the door. The holy trinity stared at him, and he yelled “We’re going to throw a party.”

They stared at him for just long enough for Kylo Ren to second guess everything he’d said in the last hour, and then, just when he began to feel stupid, Poe Dameron grinned.

Chapter Text

It wasn’t as though Kylo Ren was un popular. Sure, he didn’t have a lot of friends, but a lot of people were afraid of him, and that was kind of the same thing, right? Still, he’d never felt a great need to throw wild parties in the past.

Of course now that he’d started planning one, he couldn’t for the life of him understand why. He discovered quickly that throwing parties was his new passion. Although he’d never actually thrown one before, he couldn’t believe he’d never realized that it was the perfect way to both destroy his mother’s house and disappoint both his parents all in the course of one night.

The only reason teenagers wouldn’t throw parties is because they don't want their parents finding out about it, but Kylo Ren was different in that respect as well. He was excited to see his mother’s face when she walked through the door and saw red solo cups cups littering her floor. He was also excited, in that strange way of his, to see his father’s sad disappointed eyes as he looked at him from the other side of the table during yet another stern lecture about his behavioral issues. Sometimes he wondered if his parents actually thought he would change, or if by this point trying to fix his ‘issues’ was just a formality.

His mother had been gone for a little over 26 hours, and in that time he had bought a few fun decorations from Party City, put together a playlist of all the sickest tunes (including that new Panic! At the Disco album, even though he liked their old sound better), talked to Phasma about using her connections to get them a keg, and cleared the house of all breakable valuables before realizing he didn’t care if valuables got broken and moved them all back again.

The only thing left to do was advertise his sick rave all over school.

“We have to make flyers, obviously,” Rey said with a confident little nod of her head. “We can get together at my house after school and make them, and that combined with simple word of mouth should result in a large enough crowd.”

Finn’s eyes flicked to Kylo Ren, and Kylo shifted uncomfortably as the others looked at him, as if realizing that this plan required he be let into their inner circle even to the point of him going with them to Rey’s house.

He tried to keep his expression neutral, but inside he was doing backflips and screaming prayers of thanks to Darth Vader that his plan was falling together so smoothly.

“And...I guess…” Rey began slowly, Kylo Ren looking at her with eyes wide and full of false ignorance, “You should probably come too, Kylo...since the party was your idea and all…”

All three of them stared at Kylo Ren, waiting with baited breath for his response. It was clear they were all hoping he would say no. Asking him was, of course, merely a formality to keep him from feeling bad as they slowly isolated him from his own party plans. This was just the opportunity he had been waiting for, however, and he was not going to turn it down.

“That sounds like fun, Rey.” It took all his strength not to choke on the words.

From the minute he said them, every second that went by throughout the day was just a countdown until the moment of truth. He would continue his charade of being friends with those idiots, he would find something suspicious in Rey’s room, he would throw the party of the year, then he would cut off ties with the bitch and spread whatever he found everywhere.

He could hardly wait.

In Spanish, they talked more about conjugations. Hux passed him a note from across the room that read simply, ‘ eres basura,’ with a smily face. In Government, Kylo Ren almost flipped a table during a friendly discussion about the necessity of the electoral college. In theatre, Kylo congratulated Poe on a job well done not once, not twice, but three times during rehearsal. He also tried to hit on Ophelia, but his line sounded less like he was interested in her as a person and more like he was interested in experimenting with the concept of necrophilia, and either way it’s hardly relevant.

Finally, he ended up at Rey's house, awkwardly sitting on her bed as the others continued the constant fun banter they seemed to always be engaged in.

Poe leaned over to give Finn a kiss, and Kylo instinctively wrinkled his face in disgust.

Rey noticed. “Kylo, if you’re going to spend most of your time hanging all over your nazi boyfriend, you can’t keep making disgusted faces at Poe and Finn. It’s hypocritical.”

Kylo grit his teeth, forcing himself to be friendly. He got the feeling that she was sincere this time. She wasn’t actively trying to make fun of him, which somehow made it all worse.

“We’re not dating.” He snaped, brushing his long hair out of his eyes.

“Okay.” She was slightly surprised, but hadn’t cared much either way.

“We’re not,” he insisted, as if she hadn’t believed him.

“I believe you.”

“I’m not gay,” He clarified, “I like girls too.

She blinked. He couldn’t explain why he found it so important that she knew he was interested in girls as well, considering there was no part of him that was interested in her at all, but it was.

“I’m sure.” She said, not nearly as sarcastic as Kylo understood her to be.

“Bisexuals exist, you know. We’re not just confused.”

“I never said you were.”

Poe, sensing the awkardness, chose this time to interrupt.

“So.” He walked to Rey’s craft shelf and grabbed some supplies. “Let’s get these posters started, shall we?”

Rey, anxious for any excuse to turn away from Kylo Ren, grabbed her small travel camera from its spot on the organized chaos of her bedroom floor and aimed it at Poe, who struck a pose as Rey yelled “Smile!”

Kylo rolled his eyes, but Rey turned with a laugh and caught him in the act with another quick snap of her camera. She turned it around again and looked at the pictures, nodding her head. “We can stick this new Poe picture on some flyers and hang them. That’ll guaruntee people will come.”

Finn scoffed. “Yeah, if we want a gangle of underclassmen Poe fangirls at the party.”

“Hey!” She scolded, “You were an underclassman Poe fangirl once too, you know.”

Finn crumpled up a piece of paper from Rey's craft shelf and threw it at her head. It hit her, of course, because Finn was always a perfect shot.

“Excuse you!” She said, tossing the paper ball back in the trashcan behind him. “That was scrapbook paper. That stuff is expensive.”

“Speaking of hypocrisy,” Kylo Ren said out of the blue, “You always give me a hard time about not being creative, but your idea of a good poster is just sticking Poe’s face all over it to mercilessly capitalize on his popularity.”

“The difference,” Finn pointed, “Is that our posters work.”

“I guess we could be more creative, if you have any better ideas.” Rey shrugged.

And so they developed a working system. Poe would think up a fun phrase to put on a flyer, and Rey would write it down because she had the best handwriting. When they messed up (which they did often) Finn would turn it into a ball and throw it across the room to send it flawlessly into the trashcan. Kylo Ren had the completely unnecessary job of doodling on some of the posters, which really did nothing but make him feel like part of the team.

“Look,” He said after a half hour of doodling the exact same skull on another poster, “I’m not really doing much here. I’m just going to use the restroom. Where is it?”

“Down the hall.” Rey pointed.

He nodded, and swiftly began his trek down the hall to the restroom. He threw open the medicine cabinets, opened the drawers, and pulled open the shower curtains. Apparently she didn’t do drugs, because he couldn’t find any in the medicine cabinet, or anywhere else really. Did people put illegal drugs in their bathroom? Where else would someone keep them?

He peeked outside the bathroom to make sure the door to Rey’s room was still closed, then he hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. Apparently, she wasn’t a secret alcoholic either. That counted out the two most obvious ones.

Then again, he was pretty sure Phasma might be a secret drug dealer, and that didn’t stop her from getting elected president.

He gave up, and walked back up the stairs to Rey’s room in resignation, just as the others were getting up.

“Oh you’re back, great!” Poe said, “We’re about to go downstairs to get some snacks.”

“I’m not very hungry,” Kylo Ren muttered quietly, “I think I’ll just keep working on these posters.”

They were out the door before he even finished his sentence, and as soon as it shut he sighed in relief. They were incredibly trusting, and it would have been sweet if it weren’t so ridiculously ignorant. He strode over to her bookshelves, full of purpose.

Model Airplane Aerodynamics, Automobile Engineering - A Home-Study Course and General Reference Work on the Construction, Care, and Repair of Cars, Trucks, Tractors, Outboard Motors, and Motorcycles; Ignition and Starting Systems; Also Instructions on Aviation and Diesel Engines, Great Expectations, Antigone, History of the Peloponnesian War, and Jane Eyre.

Well. No accounting for taste.

Disappointed that he couldn’t find any dirt on her bookshelf, he tossed around some of the things on her desk to see if he could find anything there. He picked up her camera and went through some of her photos. Pictures of Poe and Finn being gross. Action shots of Finn and Rey kicking the soccer ball around that Kylo could only assume were taken by Poe. Pictures of Poe running lines. Pictures of Poe’s hand reaching for the camera to keep Rey from taking pictures of Poe running lines (Poe took theatre very seriously). Pictures of Poe playing Curly in last semester’s performance of Oklahoma!, and surprisingly a few photos of Kylo Ren’s Jud Fry (he was particularly proud of landing this role, even if it was double cast, because even though Poe still got a bigger role than him at least he had a name for once). He also saw pictures of all three members of the trinity that they must have taken themselves because the angles were absolutely hideous.

The pictures were all actually pretty cute, though Kylo Ren was loathe to admit it. He’d noticed it when they were together, and he noticed it now looking through the pictures. Rey and Poe and Finn had fun, even when they were doing mundane things. They seemed to thrive off each others company.

He wanted to smash the camera.

Instead, he sat it back down again and remembered he had to hurry and find something before they came up the stairs again. He moved over to her dresser, opening first her sock drawer, then her shorts drawer, and finally her underwear drawer.

Sitting buried in a stack of bras sat exactly what Kylo Ren was hoping for: a diary.

And he found it just in time. As soon as he pulled it out to flip through it, he heard feet on the stairs again and the chatter of the three friends growing louder and louder until what had just been distant white noise was now fully formed sentences. He slammed the drawer shut and unzipped his backpack from the bed, shoving the diary inside, deciding to read it later.

He heard Poe and Finn arguing as they walked down the hall. “I’m just saying, if you’re the funny guy in the relationship, and I’m the funny guy in the relationship, then who’s gonna be the straight guy? There can’t be two funny guys. There has to be a straight guy.”

“But neither of us are straight, that’s the point.” Finn argued, giving Kylo a weird sense of deja-vu.

“ I’m talking theatre terms here!” Poe stressed as he opened the door.

“Oh!” Finn exclaimed, as if the entire situation suddenly made sense, which to them, Kylo guessed, it did. “In that case, Rey’s the straight guy, obviously.”

“But she’s not dating us,” Poe argued.

Finn just shrugged. “I beg to differ.”

Kylo Ren took that opportunity to get the hell out of dodge, trying his hardest to avoid further suspicion. He scratched the back of his head and shifted his feet, saying “I actually think I’ll be heading home. I don’t feel that great right now. Do you think you guys can hang these up tomorrow?”

If anyone was suspicious, they didn’t say anything.

“Don’t you need a ride with me?” Poe asked him taking a step forward and crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’m fine,” Kylo Ren responded, “I can just walk.”

He grabbed his backpack and slung it over one shoulder, pulling his headphones out of the back and putting them around his neck so that he could listen to his music on the walk home. “And one more thing,” He turned with his hand still on the door handle. “Rey, you’ve been consistently calling me ‘Kylo’ now that we’ve been trying to make peace with each other. That means you’ve known my preferred name this entire time, and have still chosen to mock me with the title of ‘Ben Solo.’ I don’t appreciate it.”

He slammed the door behind him. Talk about a flair for the dramatics.

Chapter Text

‘y r u not here ?’ Kylo Ren texted Hux, leaning against the railing of his stairs as the party raged below him. He should have known better than to let Poe and Finn and Rey pass out the invites and flyers, because now the whole party was stuffed full of people Kylo Ren didn’t particularly know or like.

He waited, albeit impatiently, for Hux’s response, tapping his feet to the beat of the music he’d picked out. He’d had a cup of beer, only to realize he didn’t much care for the taste. He continued to drink it anyway, mainly because he wasn’t sure what else to do.

Hux finally responded. ‘I have better things to do than spend all evening at a high school party with a bunch of underage wannabes who can’t even handle their alcohol. No offense.’

Kylo pursed his lips, trying to think of a suitable response. He downed the rest of his beer. ‘like wat’

After a minute passed with no response, Kylo Ren sighed impatiently and sent another text that said simply, ‘?? ?? ?’

Hux didn’t respond.

He walked rather slowly down the stairs and pushed past the crowd of loud sweaty dancers to get to the kitchen, where he refilled his now almost empty cup of beer. He took another sip and noticed with surprise that it tasted slightly more pleasant than it had earlier. He downed it in one go, then wandered over to his living room to throw himself onto a couch.

He watched his party guests from an outsider's perspective, disappointed that he wasn’t having more fun. How many of these people were drunk? He closed his eyes and let the sweet sound of MCR’s I’m Not Okay (I Promise) wash over him, when suddenly--

“This music sucks!” Some jock friend of Finn’s yelled over the noise from on top of the table.

There were murmurs of agreement from party guests below him. Kylo Ren heard someone call “I listened to this song in middle school !” Laughter followed.

He sneered, and sat up again. It wasn’t his fault they had no appreciation for actual good music. They probably expected him to play dumb pop music, but Kylo wasn’t going to do it. He refused to sacrifice everything he stood for just because a few disgruntled party guests couldn’t appreciate real music! Besides, Kylo Ren didn’t listen to the radio. He was better than that. He didn’t even know what songs were popular.

Rites of Spring came on, and he sighed when he heard a few more people groan at his taste.

Suddenly, a wild Poe appeared. Kylo blinked up at him. “What do you want?” He asked, but it came out slower than he intended.

“I know you like this stuff, but dude we have to change the music. People are getting annoyed.”

“But I don’t want to!” Kylo argued, sounding much whinier than he intended.

Poe opened his mouth to respond, then stopped, taking a closer look at Kylo. “Are you drunk?” He asked in surprise.

“No!” Kylo Ren shook his head quickly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’ve only had one or two drinks.”

“Whatever.” Poe shook his head, making the split second decision to not deal with a tipsy Kylo Ren. “I’m not asking permission to change the music, I’m just saying I’m doing it. I just need your laptop password so I can get on spotify.”

“This isn’t fair!” Kylo whined, “This is my party--”

“Our party.”

“This is our party, but the only people here are your friends!” He grew angry very angry suddenly, standing to yell “I hate almost everyone in this room!” at a volume a little too high before getting a bit dizzy and sitting down again.

“It’s not my fault your friends would rather vape behind a walmart than show up to your party.” Poe ran his hand through his hair, then threw his hands in the air. “Whatever, Kyle. Hang out here if you want, I’ll figure out your password on my own.”

He walked away, and Kylo Ren swung his feet on the table and pouted. Luckily for him, Poe would never be able to guess his password. His laptop was ironclad.

He wandered back into the kitchen for more beer.

Poe, meanwhile, took a long look at Kylo Ren’s laptop, his brow furrowed in deep thought. Finn and Rey came up behind him to see what he was up to.

“I’m trying to figure out his password so I can change the music. I swear if Mr. Brightside comes on I might lose it.”

“Here, move over.” Finn said, pushing Poe aside for a bit. He looked at the keys, then back at the screen, and closed his eyes in thought. He opened them again, and typed reysucks into the computer.

The welcome! message flashed on the screen.

Three beers and a change in music later, and Kylo Ren was wandering around his own house smashing objects. He picked up a vase, stared at it for a few seconds, and then threw it at the wall, giggling a bit as it smashed into pieces. He stopped abruptly and his eyes widened, surprised at the noise that came out of his mouth.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly and picked up a crystal ashtray, dropping it on the ground as well. He felt absolutely no remorse. It was a stupid ashtray. No one in the house even smoked.

He pulled out his phone and sent Hux another text. ‘ i dont need u to have a good time im having a great time without u i made new friends.” He smiled, and went back to work.

“Haha that’ll show them.” Kylo muttered as he smashed his own possessions.

He meandered back upstairs again, smashing a few pictures frames on the way up.

“Kylo, what are you doing?” Rey’s familiar voice sounded from behind him. He swung around, wobbling a bit on the stairs before grasping the railing and narrowing his eyes at her.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” He snapped, picking up a picture of her and Han smiling next to a car they fixed together and snapping the frame. Apparently, he was stronger than he looked.

Rey frowned. “Kylo, you’re drunk.”  

“You’re drunk!” He shouted back at her.

“Actually, I’m the designated driver.” She sighed, and looked at him for a few seconds, trying to decide if a drunk Kylo Ren was something she really felt like dealing with.

He picked up the last photo frame on the wall, but Rey plucked it out of his hand before he got the opportunity to throw it on the ground. He looked up at his empty hand in confusion, then turned back to her. “I hate you.” He spit at her, stomping the rest of the way up the stairs.

She huffed in annoyance and followed after him.

“Stop following me!” He yelled at her, swinging dramatically back around. “I don’t need your help, and I won’t let you stop me!”

“You’re going to regret destroying your own property once you’re not drunk anymore.” She said, part of her knowing it was a lost cause.

“If no one else is going to do it, then I’m going to do it. What’s the point of throwing a party if no one is going to destroy any property? I want to make them suffer...everyone will regret...they’ll be sorry then...disappointment…” He trailed off, words slurring together so much he was almost unintelligible.

He was so angry. She came up behind him and placed her hand on his back, leading him slowly to his own bedroom. A couple was getting a little too steamy on his bed, making lewd noises and slowly peeling off each others clothing. Kylo lost it.

“Get out of my room!” He swept everything off of Poe’s desk again, and the couple broke apart, looking at him in confusion. “That’s my bed! Get off of my bed!” He stomped over to them and grabbed a pillow, hitting them both with it until the guy zipped his pants back up and the two left the room with disgruntled sneers on their faces.  

He turned again to Rey, sticking an accusing finger out to her. “And you. What are you even doing here? I hate you! I hate you I hate you! I don’t want you in my house, I don’t want you in my room, I don’t want you in my life.” His face was bright red, and his veins were bulging out from his face as he yelled.

“You’re just some bitch who’s always around.” He shut his eyes tight, attempting to take a breath to steady himself. He wobbled in place. “Everywhere I turn you’re always in my way, and every second I’ve had to pretend to be your friend has been an annoying thorn in my side that I can’t get rid of.”

She blinked in surprise, unsure of where this was coming from all of a sudden. “Kylo, maybe you should sit down.” She led him over to his bed, but he shoved her with all of his drunken strength. She stumbled back a bit, but was otherwise unphased.

He collapsed on his own bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“I just don’t understand what you have that I don’t have I don’t understand.” He was quiet suddenly, going from furious to sad in under five seconds. Rey shifted her weight uncomfortably. “How are you the son my father never had? I hate you.”

She took a step towards him, but he shot up and gave her a glare to make her stay put. She stopped, and he fell back onto his bed again.

He continued, “It’s so obvious that my parents like the three of you more than me, and I don’t know why. I’m their son. They think-- you all think I act out for attention. I know you do. I don’t. I thought maybe if I got elected president they’d be proud of me, but then you were there again ready to take that away too, and it’s just not fair. ” He sounded like he was starting to get choked up a bit, and Rey got the very strong feeling that she should have left a long time ago.

She walked toward him and sat beside him on the bed without thinking, ignoring his angry glares.

His eyes were red now, and only getting puffier as he rubbed them.

“Stop pitying me.” He said, wiping the tears from his eyes, too drunk to be embarrassed about them. “I don’t want it. I just want you to go.”

“I’m not invincible, Ben.” She said quietly. “I make mistakes too. I...I feel lonely sometimes, like you do.”

“I’m not lonely. I have friends. I have Hux, and Phasma, and the debate team and some of the theatre guys like the ones that Poe hasn’t stolen. I have friends. I’m not lonely. I’m not…” He trailed off, and Rey noticed uncomfortably that he was staring at her lips.

She glanced at the door, knowing she should probably leave. Still, it was so interesting to see Ben being so open and vulnerable for once.

And then, before she had a second to realize what was going on, he was leaning forward to press his lips against hers. His lips were warm, and his eyes were closed. He tasted like beer and bad decisions, and before she had time to register the fact that she wasn’t completely repulsed, she had already stood up and was backing away from him.

He blinked, looking up at her. He didn’t seem surprised that he’d kissed her, and he seemed equally as unsurprised that she’d broke it up. She turned and left the room without saying a word, closing the door behind her.

He threw himself back again, staring up at the ceiling. He had the worst headache, and everything seemed to be spinning. He could hear faint pop music-- maybe Lady Gaga?-- playing outside his room, and he could only feel as though this whole party had been one big disaster.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket to text Hux again, holding the phone high above his head.

‘ i miss you.’ No response.

‘this party would b more fun w u here even if u laugh at me.’ No response.

‘answer me’ He was beginning to grow frustrated at this point. Did Hux really think he was better than him? Better than this? If Hux was here he wouldn’t have made so many mistakes.

‘?? ? ??? ??? ?’ It had been how many minutes. Two? Three? And Hux still hadn’t responded?

‘wat r u wearing’ He sent with a slight smirk.

‘ im doing a lot i regret but i woudln’t regret doing you’

‘hux’

‘hux’

‘answre me’

‘im isss ou’

He gave up, throwing his phone across the room. He closed his eyes, feeling suddenly even more tired and slow than he had just seconds before. He hoped Poe and Finn were having as miserable of a time as he was.

He was so tired that he barely registered the sound of his mother yelling “Everybody out-- Now! ” as the music and chatter completely halted downstairs.

Kylo Ren passed out.

Chapter Text

When Kylo Ren woke up, he had what could easily have been described as the worst headache in the history of the world. He sat up, was hit with a rush of nausea, and fell back into bed again with a groan.

“Fantastic.” He heard Poe’s over-peppy voice say from his side of the room. “You’re awake.”

Kylo Ren groaned even louder, throwing a pillow over his head. The least Poe could do was turn off the damn lights and shut the blinds.

Poe crouched down next to the head of Kylo’s bed, saying “You fell asleep right before all the fun started, Kyle. Leia’s downstairs waiting for you. She’s not happy.” He slammed a bottle of advil on Kylo’s bedside table, then walked out of the room to go who-knows-where.

There was no avoiding this. He was going to have to go downstairs.

He’d made a lot of mistakes in his relatively short lifetime, and he knew just by how little he remembered of the night before that about half those mistakes had been made in the last 24 hours. At the time, scheduling a party for the night his mom was supposed to get home sounded like a fantastic idea, mainly because he wanted to see the look on her face when she walked in on it. He would already get in trouble for the party, that was kind of the point, so it was either go big or go home.

He didn’t feel bad about lying to Poe about the whole thing either. Sure, he’d told Poe that Leia wasn’t coming home for another two days, but in the end it really was Poe’s fault for believing him in the first place.

He groaned again, flipping himself over to dry swallow the Advil Poe set on the table next to him. Since he was going down, he would gladly take Poe and the others down with him.

He slowly and miserably got out of bed, and then he slowly and miserably made his way down the stairs, running his fingers through his long hair and wondering if he should go back upstairs and shower before seeing his mom.

“Ben!” He heard her call, and he knew it was too late. She’d heard him on the stairs. He groaned again and walked the rest of the way down, turning into the kitchen to see her seated at the table with her legs crossed, a cup of straight black coffee in her hands. Her face was terrifyingly serious, but Kylo Ren stood defiant.

“My name isn’t Ben, it’s Kylo Ren.” He said, sticking his chin out a bit.

His mother shut him down quickly and savagely. “I don’t have time for your delusions this morning Ben Solo. I don’t think I have to tell you how disappointed I am in you. Now Poe’s already told me--”

“Poe told you the party was my idea!?” Kylo yelled, clenching his fists. “I’m going to kill that guy! Did he tell you he was the one that advertised it with his stupid little friends? Did he tell you that he was the one that brought in all the alcohol? Because he was. I don’t even like the taste of beer.” His case was weakened by his terrible hangover.  

“You will not be killing your foster brother today,” Leia scolded, “And actually, he told me he wasn’t going to say anything because he didn’t want to get you in trouble, but I see you have no such qualms. I knew it was your idea because you wrote ‘fuck you mom i hope you like my party’ on the mirror in eyeliner. Poe’s situation is different, and we’ll deal with him separately. As for you, your father is coming over for dinner tonight. We’ll talk about it then.”

Kylo Ren just stared at her, a million thoughts running through his head. Poe really wasn’t planning on ratting him out? He felt a small twinge of guilt before shoving it away. Kind feelings towards your enemies never help you win, and he was in desperate need of a win.

“For now,” His mom continued, “You can start by giving me your phone.”

“ What?”

“I said give me your phone,” She repeated, voice remaining firm. She took a sip of her coffee.

“This isn’t fair!” He argued, “I’m almost 17, you can’t take my phone away.”

She sighed, wondering for a moment what went wrong, and held out her hand.

“It’s upstairs, get it if you want.” Kylo huffed, turning and stomping toward the door.

“Ben, where do you think you’re going?”

“Out.” He called back, slamming the door behind him.

He rang the doorbell at the Hux household, sighing impatiently as a full minute went by without anyone opening the door. He rang the doorbell again. He glanced at the perfectly trimmed bushes on either side of the overly ornate doorway belonging to the classy white house. The house was large, and Kylo didn’t like going to it because it made him feel inferior. He rang the doorbell again. A bird whistling through the trees nearby made Kylo Ren want to ring its neck. He rang the doorbell again. A man next door started up the lawnmower, and the smell of grass mixed with the unbearable headache he had made him want to die.

The door finally opened, and a businessman with an expensive suit opened the door. Hux’s father was always impeccably dressed, even on the weekends.

“Hello Mr. Hux,” Kylo shifted his weight and fought the urge to look at the ground. “Is Hux home?”

“Bren is doing homework now, he does not need company.”

“But it’s the weekend!” Kylo argued as Hux’s father slammed the door.

Kylo Ren sighed. If he had his phone he could just text him. Then again, Hux rarely responded to his texts in the first place, and when he did it was usually just to correct Kylo’s grammar. Instead, Kylo opened the gate on the side of the house and went around to the back, feeling thankful once again the Hux lived on the first floor.

He picked up a rock, and threw it at Hux’s window. He picked up another rock, and another, and another, until finally Hux opened the window. He groaned when he saw Kylo.

“What are you doing here, Ren?”

“I wanted to see you.”

“Yeah,” Hux replied, “I got that from your texts last night.”

Kylo blinked in confusion, completely oblivious to what his friend was talking about. “What?” He asked.

Hux ignored the question. “You don’t have to throw rocks at a window if it’s on the first floor, you know, you could just knock."

Kylo Ren approached the window, gesturing to it as a silent request for entrance. Hux, who had popped out the screen for easy escape years ago, nodded his consent.

“I’m surprised you managed to crawl your way out of bed,” Hux snarked as Kylo climbed in, “You seemed completely wasted last night. That’s exactly why I don’t go to parties. I’m not dumb enough to let down my inhibitions to that extent around that many people.”

“Good for you.” Kylo said, but stopped when he saw Hux’s mac turned on with paper scattered around in front of it. “Wait, were you really doing homework on the weekend? I thought you just said stuff like that to get your dad off your case.”

“I have to present five potential college essays to my father at the end of every week, now what are you doing here?”

“Why won’t you make eye contact with me?” Kylo asked.

“I am making eye contact with you.”

“No you’re not,” he argued, “You’ve been looking past my ear when you talk to me since I got here.”

Hux raised one eyebrow. “Do you really not remember any of last night?”

“I know I had fun,” Kylo lied dismissively, “And I know you missed out on a great party.”

Hux, having heard all he needed to hear, sat himself back down in his spinny chair and focused his attention back on the essay he had been writing before Kylo Ren had arrived in the first place.

“Are you really going to choose writing a college essay on a Saturday over hanging out with your best friend?” Kylo complained, staring at a perfectly scrambled rubik's cube on Hux’s dresser.

“Oh, is Phasma here?” Hux asked, not looking up from his essay.

In frustration, Kylo swiftly grabbed the rubik’s cube and tossed it straight at Hux’s head. Hux, used to this sort of behavior from Kylo, grabbed it from behind with perfect reflexes and solved it within forty five seconds.

He scrambled it again and threw it back to Kylo, who caught it and solved it in three minutes before throwing it back to Hux.

Hux caught it, scrambled it, and said “Three minutes? You're slower than usual.”

“Yeah,” Kylo laughed dryly, “I’m more hungover than usual too.”

Hux carefully set the cube down on his desk before finally turning and looking his friend in the eye. “Ren, what are you doing here?”

“I’m going to be grounded.”

“Going to be?” Hux leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.

“I left before I had the chance to be punished so that I could see you.”

“How romantic.” Hux scoffed.

“We’re not dating.” Kylo replied, missing the joke, if there was one. “I got my phone taken away though, which kind of sucks. That’s why I didn’t text you before coming over. I figured this might be our last chance to hang out outside of school for awhile.”

“You got your phone taken away?” Hux asked, with sudden interest. “So you haven’t seen any of your conversations from last night?”

Kylo had a sudden surge of panic, thinking he might have told Hux last night about his moment with Rey, before squashing it. There was no moment with Rey, Hux wouldn’t have any right to be angry about it anyway, and even drunk Kylo wouldn’t have been stupid enough to text him about it. “No, I haven’t.”

He watched Hux visibly relax in his chair with suspicion, but made the choice not to mention it to him. Whatever text Hux must have accidentally sent him, he obviously wanted to forget it. Kylo Ren could respect that. 

The two boys stared at each other for a few seconds, before Hux broke eye contact once again and stared down at his desktop. “I really do have to finish writing these essays though. If my dad hears you in here he might ship me off to military school or something. I also have to write a new debate case tonight.”

“You got back on the debate team?”

“No, but my dad doesn’t know that. I work twelve hour shifts on the weekends now and buy trophies on the way home so he doesn’t know the difference.”

“That doesn’t seem very practical.” Kylo scratched his head.

“Neither does throwing a party to get your parents to notice you.”

Kylo frowned, and turned to climb out the window again. Hux didn’t say goodbye.

Chapter Text

“So let me get this straight,” Han Solo began, leaning in closer and looking his son in the eye, “You threw a party while your mother was out of the house, caused two thousand dollars worth of damage, served alcohol to minors, and willingly got wasted yourself?”

Kylo glanced at his mother out of the corner of his eye, then looked back at his father again. He nodded.

Han broke eye contact with Kylo, picking up his knife and fork again to cut another bite of his steak. He took a large bite and chewed it silently while his son and ex-wife still stared at him. He swallowed, then reached for his glass of water.

“Well…?” Kylo asked, sick of the suspense of waiting for his father’s reply.

Han smiled a bit, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I’m proud of you son.”

Kylo’s eyes widened, and Leia stomped hard on Han’s foot under the table, resulting in a stifled groan of pain and a resigned sigh.

“What I meant to say was,” Han corrected, looking at Leia pointedly to show that he really was on her side in this, “I am very disappointed in you, and neither me nor your mother raised you to behave this way.”

Leia nodded.

He continued, “Your behavior recently, for the last couple of years in fact, has been outrageous. We were willing to let it slide because we believed it to be a phase, and because you had never acted out like this before, but now we see that we were wrong. Starting today, you’re grounded indefinitely.”

Kylo Ren kept his face emotionless, pretending this parents disapproval had no effect on him whatsoever. “How long is indefinitely?”

“Well, let’s see. You’re turning seventeen next week, correct?” His father asked.

Kylo nodded his head.

His mother cleared her throat, “You’re grounded until you legally become an adult.”  

Kylo’s eyes widened and he slammed his palms against the table, jumping out of his seat. He expected to be grounded, sure, but for an entire year? That was ridiculous! “You can’t do this!”

“We can, and we are,” His father said, “Now sit down, you’re upsetting your mother more than she already is.”

Kylo sat down.

“We’ve already decided to take away your smartphone and give you a flip phone without a texting plan for you to use to contact us only,” Leia slid him a crappy burner phone, which Kylo then picked up between two fingers and looked at with extreme distaste. “We’ve also decided that while Poe is paying for half the damages, you will be paying for the other half out of your own pocket as well.”

“But-but that’s almost a thousand dollars!” He stammered, angry that at the very least he didn’t even cost his parents money. “How am I supposed to pay for that?”

“You should have thought of that before you threw a party that resulted in, somehow, the destruction of every valuable object in the house.” Han replied, unfazed by his son’s distress. Images of all the items he’d angrily smashed the night before flooded through Kylo’s brain. He should have listened to Rey when she told him to stop, although he’d never admit that to anyone. His father continued, “And as for how you can pay for it, you’re just going to have to pick up more hours at the shop. I’m sure I can find more work for you to do.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” Kylo Ren said, pushing his untouched plate of food away and standing up again, pushing his chair in.

“Then we have at least that much in common.” Han stood as well. He turned to Leia, “The food was wonderful, as usual, but I should be getting back to Chewie. He doesn’t like being left alone this long.”

“Of course.” Leia said, standing up as well. “Would you maybe like to bring home a little something special for him? I can get a little doggy bag.”

“Would you?” Han asked, staring deep into Leia’s eyes. “I think he would like that.”

They made deep, meaningful eye contact (for way, way too long in Kylo’s opinion). Kylo scowled, and used that as an excuse to stomp all the way up the stairs to his room, slamming the door as hard as he could on his way in.

“It’s just not fair! ” He kicked his rolling chair, and it rolled all the way across the room before stopping at his rug.

“I honestly don’t know what else you expected to happen,” Poe looked up from the book he was reading, casually lounging on his bed. “You broke everything in the house.”

“How come you’re not grounded?” Kylo crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at Poe, boiling with rage. He was supposed to ruin his mother’s nice house, see her face when she realized what he’d done, and then flawlessly blame Poe for it all. Now it was just a mess.

“I was going to lay low and take equal punishment, but once I found out you were going to try and pin it on me Finn and Rey backed me up and we told your parents it was entirely your fault.” Poe shrugged, licking his finger and turning the page in his book, “I got stuck with half the costs as punishment for not stopping you. Also, thanks for drunkenly destroying the house. Real smart.”

Kylo opened his mouth to respond with something witty, but Poe was already back to reading his book, and nothing came out. Instead, he gave a frustrated yell and kicked the wall again, before flat-out faceplanting on his bed and burying his face in his pillows.

He lay there for quite awhile, face buried in his pillows, tossing around the idea of just lying there until he accidentally smothered himself, when he remembered.

He kissed Rey. Drunkenly, sloppily, embarrassingly, he’d actually tried to kiss Rey ( in this very bed! ) and looking back on the affair, he remembered being vaguely disappointed that she hadn’t kissed him back.

He cringed, and considered for a minute whether or not it would be worth it to just have the whole earth swallow him where he lay. Yeah, he had been vaguely aware all day that it had happened, but he hadn’t weighed upon exactly what that meant until that moment.

Would things be different when he saw her? Would she try to bring it up to him? Had she told Poe and Finn? Would Poe even mention it to him if she had? The memory was distant, like some far off thing locked away in his mind, but he knew it had happened. Had he said anything embarrassing? Did he cry? He probably cried. She was going to hate him. Didn’t she already hate him? She was going to laugh at him. Didn’t she already laugh at him?

And why was he disappointed that she didn’t kiss him back?

He squeezed his eyes shut tight, and thought very seriously about just staying home tomorrow. No, he couldn’t do that, his mom would never let him. He couldn’t skip, because she was the principal of his school and would almost certainly notice.

Kylo Ren stared at the ceiling. He realized, with some disatisfaction, that the only way to properly move forward was to pretend the whole thing was imagined entirely.

He had more important things to focus on in regards to Rey, like reading her diary and finding out her secrets.

Her diary!

In all the hullaballoo of party planning and getting in massive trouble, he’d completely forgotten that he actually had his archrivals secret thoughts in his possession. He shot up immediately and reached for drawer on his bedside dresser where he’d tastefully stuffed it before stopping, hand mid-reach.

Poe was still reading across the room from him. Had he seen Rey’s diary before? Would he recognize it? What were the chances he would even notice what Kylo Ren was up to?

He could just bring it to school and present it to Hux and Phasma tomorrow, but Hux had been acting weird all day and he felt as though it was something he needed to read for himself, first. When she actually did spill secrets, then he would share it with them.

The next day before APUSH, the only class Hux and Kylo shared without the holy trinity, Kylo slammed the diary down on Hux’s desk.

“What’s this?” Hux asked, eyeing the old broken purple notebook with disdain.

Kylo jammed his hands in his pockets, “It’s Rey’s diary. I stole it from her room while we were planning the party.”

And just like that, all the weirdness from the day before disappeared. Hux opened it up and flipped through a few pages before looking back up at his friend. “Have you read it yet? Did you find anything good?”

Kylo Ren cleared his throat and lowered his head, hands still resting in his pockets. “Uh, yeah. Yeah I have.” He scratched his head. “There isn’t anything wrong with her.”

He said the words so quickly that Hux almost didn’t catch them.

“There’s what ?” Hux repeated back, hoping he’d heard Kylo wrong.

“I said there’s nothing wrong with her. I skimmed through it last night after Poe went to sleep, and there’s nothing worth a smear campaign about. She’s never cheated on a test, she’s never had any secret affairs with teachers, she doesn’t sell drugs, she can’t even spell marijuana right, and she doesn’t even swear in her own private thoughts.”

“Let me keep it,” Hux replied with grim determination written on his face, “I’ll read through it in class and find something you missed. No one is that perfect. The other shoe has to drop, Ren, and we’ll be there to catch it.”

Kylo Ren wasn’t entirely sure he understood Hux’s metaphor, but the idea of leaving Hux alone with Rey’s journal was something Kylo felt strangely uncomfortable with. “You’re going to read it during class? It’s APUSH! Paying attention is vital in APUSH.”

“Oh please,” Hux laughed dryly, “As if I need any more information about World War I.”

He had a point. Kylo acquiesced halfheartedly, and went back to his seat again, his eyes darting over to Hux throughout the entire lesson.

When class got out, Kylo lost track of both Hux and the notebook, and didn't see either of them until lunch, when Hux slammed the notebook down on their usual lunchtable and chugged a carton of chocolate milk in one go.

"This fills me with...hope," Hux said, lip curled in disgust as he pointed to the notebook and shook his head, taking a seat.

“What?” Kylo replied, completely and utterly confused.

“It’s so good. It’s so pure. It fills me with hope in the knowledge that there is some good left in the world….I hate it.” He glared at the thing, as if it were responsible for both global climate change and the Chicago Cubs’ hundred year losing streak.

"So there's not one thing in this entire diary worth making fun of her about?" Kylo asked again, one more time, just to make sure.

"There is one thing you skimmed over before," Hux reached across the table and stole Kylo Ren's carton of milk, taking a slow sip. Kylo didn't notice. "Of course, it seems like more of a lapse in judgement than anything we could actually use against her."

But Kylo was already skimming through the journal to find it.

"It's near the back." Hux helped.

Even if I did find Ben attractive, his personality completely messes up any chance I would ever have of falling in love with him. His personality practically begs for a slap in the face, and yet...sometimes he has these moments, when we're alone in the shop and he's just humming while he works, where I can almost forget what a horrible person he is. Sometimes I catch him looking at me when he thinks I don't notice.

Kylo Ren set the book down, staring at it in surprise. How on earth had he missed that the first time?

"We could use that somehow," Hux pointed to the diary again, noticing that Kylo Ren had finished reading. "That's not the only time she mentions you. I guess you could say you're a recurring character.

Kylo Ren groaned and banged his head against the table. This made what happened while he was drunk all the more complicated. Still, it didn't mean she was in love with him or anything just because she ranted about him sometimes. He rants about her all the time.

"We could probably make copies of all the 'best of' quotes and post them all over the school," Hux said, thinking out loud.

"How would that help with the campaign?" Kylo asked.

Hux just shrugged, "It wouldn't, but it would be hilarious."

"That's fair," Kylo said, and yet he still merely tucked the diary back into his backpack. He wouldn't do anything yet, but soon, he promised. Soon. 

Chapter Text

Many teenagers suffer from addiction. It wasn’t a completely unreasonable thing. Some people are addicted to drugs, others to television or social media or alcohol. Kylo Ren just happened to be addicted to reading his archrivals private innermost thoughts.

God, what an asshole.

She really was a great writer, if Kylo was going to be completely honest with himself  (just one more skill to add to the list of things she could brag about) and it was easy for him to occasionally get invested in the events of her everyday life.

“Carol did what after the soccer game?” He would find himself muttering. “Fuck Carol.”

He’d brought the diary with him to work after a quick glance on the schedule told him Rey would be out that day. If he didn’t have her to banter with, he didn’t really have much to do in the slow hours of the day (and now that he had to pick up extra hours, he had a lot more slow hours).

What he hadn’t expected was Rey deciding she wanted some extra dollars in her pocket and putting herself on the schedule without letting him know.

“Rey!” He yelled, stuffing the diary in a drawer before she had the chance to see that he had it. “What are you doing here? I thought today was a day off for you.”

“Finn and I are picking up some extra shifts at our jobs to help Poe out with the expenses for the damages at the party.” Gracefully, she didn’t mention the fact that they were Kylo’s damages.

Kylo Ren scowled, as if personally offended and disgusted by every word she spoke. “Of course you would help him.” He spat. “You were also really quick to rat me out.”

“I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, but I don’t really care either way, and as for ratting you out, you made it quite clear that you wished our truce to be over after you tried to pin the entire plan on Poe’s shoulders.” She began to roll up her sleeves while simultaneously avoiding Kylo’s judgemental gaze. “That being said, I do still plan to be civil to you, if you would be so kind to extend that same courtesy to me.”

She looked up, making direct eye contact with Kylo Ren. “That is, unless you decide you’d like to kiss me again, in which case we’d have much bigger problems to deal with aside from simply being civil.”

Kylo blanched, which was a true accomplishment considering how pale his pasty ass already was, and immediately began shuffling papers and pressing buttons on the landline. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He said, starting up the computer and moving the mouse around.

“Alright,” She said, with a shrug and a small smile, “If that’s how you want to play it.”

Kylo Ren spent the next two hours folding papers, making google spreadsheets, and talking to strangers on the phone. Rey spent those two hours talking to the strangers who dropped off their cars, changing oil, and messing around with motors. Occasionally, they acknowledged the others existence.

Finally, after a while, Rey tried to make small talk. “How’s your week going?”

“Well,” Kylo bit back, “I go to school, I come here, I go home, and I’ll be doing that and nothing else every day for the next year, also it’s all your fault. So I’d say my week is going just fantastic.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” She replied in a pleasant tone. If Kylo Ren wanted to blame all his problems on her as the universal scapegoat, he could. It didn’t matter to her either way. She would just continue to be nice, and one day, maybe far off, she’d be rewarded for being the bigger person in the end.

Sure, he’d lied to her and pretended he wanted to be her friend for some reason that had never become clear to her, and sure he’d drunk kissed her while still spitting insults at her, and sure he had now decided to pretend the entire thing didn’t happen because...well, because, but…actually, that was all pretty shitty. She found herself staring at him, wondering how on earth a couple as sweet as Leia and Han could produce someone that unpleasant. She felt that he must have been sweet in elementary school. Then again, the way Finn talks about how Kylo and Hux used to boss him around when they were friends in middle school, Kylo’s always been a little shit.

Still, he wasn’t an unattractive little shit.

They made eye contact, and she held it until he finally got uncomfortable enough to break it.

“I’m going to the bathroom, don’t touch anything on my desk while I’m gone.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” She replied, watching him as he left.

When he came back, his eyes widened as he beheld what was literally the worst possible thing that could have happened that day. She had gone behind his desk, and was currently staring at her own diary.

She picked it up, flipping it around in her hands to make sure it was really hers (as if Kylo would actually own a purple journal). She looked up at him, and he once he saw the look in her eyes he didn’t quite have the heart to be mad at her for touching his stuff without permission.

“This is mine.” Rey pointed at the journal, looking straight through Kylo Ren.

“Yeah.” Kylo replied, scratching his head and blinking up at the florescent lights. He could think of no ways to talk his way out of the situation, and yet his pride would not let him throw himself on her mercy and ask for forgiveness. So, in true Kylo Ren fashion, he continued to simply be an asshole. “What are you going to do about it?”

She stared at him, as if she expected anything but that to be the answer. She blinked a few times, then shook her head, remembering he expected an answer.

“What am I going to do about it?” She repeated, “ What am I going to do about it? Kylo, you broke into my house and stole my journal! How on earth do you justify that?” She shook the journal at him in anger, and her face was beginning to turn bright red. She was scary when she was angry, but he was a bit miffed she wasn’t throwing around any big swearwords yet; it wasn’t realistic for someone to be that perfect all the time.

“To be fair,” He replied, “Technically I didn’t break into your house, you invited me.”

She seethed silently for a second, clearly struggling for any words to express how upset she was. Eventually, she merely hugged the diary closer to herself and walked swiftly and purposefully toward the door, pushing past Kylo Ren on her way out.

“Where are you going?” He asked, spinning around to look at her again after she pushed past him. “You’re still on the clock!”

She didn’t answer. He sighed, and looked over at the car she was halfway through fixing. The owner of the car would be back in around thirty minutes, expecting it fixed, and the chances of Rey coming back were extremely low. Kylo ran a hand through his hair, exhaling in a huge sigh as he realized he would probably have to be the one to fix it. He pulled his long hair back into a very short ponytail and set to work.

Kylo called Hux from the landline at his work as soon as he got the chance and explained the entire situation, minus a few important details. Hux, who was tiring quickly of Kylo’s incompetence and constant dallying and was determined to end Rey quickly once and for all, set his own plan into motion. The following events in the election happened swiftly, and spread quickly, thanks to Hux and Phasma’s team efforts:

• A girl stepped forward claiming the reason she didn’t make it onto the soccer team was because Rey sabotaged her equipment.
• A boy stepped forward with ‘evidence’ that Rey had cheated off of his APUSH test
• A freshman claimed Rey had been stealing his lunch money every morning for the past year.

The people who believed the stories were planted firmly in two camps, either the “voting for Rey would be feeding into a corrupt system” camp, and the “it’s literally just a student council election no one cares” camp. The former camp was the more passionate one, however, and thus Hux didn’t even need to take on the responsibility of passing on the word and making smear posters. He and Kylo’s supporters did that for them.

Sure, he lost a lot of money paying students to come forward with fake stories, but what his father didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He knew his father would hardly miss a few hundred bucks slipped out of his fat wallet.

It was a matter of sliding in next to someone wearing a Rey button and saying, “How can you support her, now that it’s all come out? Oh, you didn’t know? Well…” It was a matter of taking her posters down and putting Kyo Ren’s posters up. It was a matter of planting moles, secret whisperers to discuss her legitimacy in hushed voices. “I heard she might not even be able to run…”

Kylo Ren, living life without a cell phone, was perhaps the last one to hear the news of Rey’s supposed treachery when he got to school the following day. When he did hear, he was not nearly as happy about the whole thing as Hux thought he would be.

He slammed Hux’s locker shut and crossed his arms, demanding an explanation.

“What the hell did you do?” He asked Hux, ready to throw another classic Kylo tantrum if necessary. “You didn’t clear this with me first before running this smear campaign. You and I both know these are lies.”

“Oh please, Ren,” Hux grabbed the corner of Kylo Ren’s sleeve and pulled him away from the front of his locker, reopening it again. “It’s just like Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.’ If we can do this to Rey, why not?”

“That’s not a Lincoln quote and you know it.”

Hux carried on as if he hadn’t heard him, “I’m honestly surprised you’re not more enthusiastic about this idea. It is to help you after all. Besides, it’s not like you were getting much done on your own.”

“She’s already pissed off about the diary,” Kylo Ren started, “And now we’re just adding insult to injury. We just bumped the competition up to an entirely new level, and I’m not sure she can handle it.”

It wasn’t as though he felt bad about the whole thing, after all, Rey was still the enemy (really! she was!), he just couldn’t help feeling like the bad guy for pulling something like this right after his failed stunt with the diary. He wondered if she was writing about him now. She probably was.

“Remind me again why you suddenly care so much about that bitch’s feelings?” Hux snapped, grabbing his Stats book out of his locker and slamming it for himself this time. He leaned in, so until Kylo Ren could practically feel his breath, “Careful Ren, that your personal feelings don't interfere with the campaign. You're the one who wanted me on your side." 

Damn. He was right, wasn’t he? Kylo Ren hated having to make strong moral decisions like this. It would be so much easier for him if he just knew whether or not Abraham Lincoln had actually said that.

He nodded reluctantly. “Yeah. Yeah I guess you’re right. Thanks Hux. We have the election now in the bag I guess.”

It wasn’t until he saw the new signs posted all over the school that he realized exactly how savage the other side was willing to get. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be angry that all his “Kylo Ren” signs had been redubbed “CRYlo Ren” signs, or surprised that no one had ever thought of that nickname for him sooner.

Chapter Text

“Ben Solo, I don’t know what you’re wearing but it’s absolutely inappropriate for Easter Sunday,” Leia said as Kylo Ren marched down the stairs. She pointed back up to his room, saying “Now go back up there and put on a buttondown at the very least. Would it hurt you to put a little extra effort into what you’re wearing today? If not for Jesus at least put on a tie for your mother.”

Kylo Ren stuck out his lower lip and crossed his arms in silent rebellion, not budging from the stairs.

Poe stood to Leia’s right and was wearing a scratchy looking blue button down with a horrendous pink tie. The real clincher was the tiny little pastel easter eggs decorating the awful thing, and yet Poe still wore it with pride. When he first came down the stairs, Leia greeted him with an “aw” and a “don’t you look festive this morning.”

Kylo Ren, however, didn’t conform to normal beauty standards. He showed up ready to go to the easter service in a black tee with “Stop Bi Erasure” printed in blue, pink, and purple. He wore his normal skinny jeans, but because it was easter he spent a little extra time making sure his eyeliner was absolutely perfect. It was a special occasion, after all. Also, he wasn’t even planning on bringing his headphones and iPod shuffle with him, so it wasn’t as though he weren’t making an effort.

“This is non negotiable.” Leia said again, voice uncompromising. She was not in the mood for her son’s antics. “Either you go back upstairs and change into something more appropriate for church, or you stay in your room instead.”

“Fine, I’ll stay home.” Kylo shrugged, turning to go back up the stairs. “I’m already grounded until next century, it’s not like staying in my room will be any different.”

Poe whispered something in Leia’s ear. Kylo Ren saw, and narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

Leia turned toward her son again, saying “Change your clothes right now and go to church with us, or I’ll drop you from theatre until you learn to prioritize your family.”

Kylo Ren groaned, and stomped up the stairs to change clothes in stony silence.

“And be quick!” She called up behind him.

He slammed the door to his room just so his mother knew he wasn’t going to be happy about it, and then quickly stripped out of his bi shirt and skinny jeans in favor of less flattering khakis and pastel green polo shirt. He looked in the mirror, and absolutely hated himself. He kept on his eyeliner just out of spite-- a subtle victory --and didn’t wear a tie.

He stomped back down the stairs and pushed past Poe to get to the door, opening it and getting in the car without stopping for Poe and Leia. He sat in the back. Although he felt entitled to shotgun, sitting shotgun with Hux and Phasma was an entirely different experience than sitting shotgun with Poe and Leia.

For starters, when he hung out with Hux and Phasma he didn’t feel like a third wheel. Still, better to sit in the back and be a third wheel than sit in the front and have to have a conversation with his mother lasting longer than five minutes.

They began chatting away in the front seat about a whole myriad of boring bland topics, from what she was cooking for dinner and whether Han was bringing Chewie over, to Poe’s role as Hamlet and the things he’s thankful for this Easter.

Finally, bored out of his mind and looking to start a fight, Kylo piped up from the back seat. “I’ve been thinking, and I really think this whole going-to-church thing has prompted a revelation from God.”

“Really?” Leia said, glancing quickly away from the road to read her son’s face.

Kylo Ren nodded earnestly. “Really.”

“And what did God say?” Poe asked, voice laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“God told me that it’s really hypocritical for you to give me such a hard time about not wanting to go to church as if church is some big grand sacred life-saving thing when we only go to church on Easter and Christmas anyway. God told me that if you really thought church was as important as you act like it is on the ‘special holidays’ you might actually live that way.”

“God really told you all that, huh?” Poe asked, taking a few jellybeans out of his pocket and popping them in his mouth.

Kylo grimaced at how unsanitary it seemed. “God also told me your stupid easter tie is bullshit.”

“How can a tie even be bullshit? It’s an inanimate object.”

Leia, still keeping her eyes firmly on the road and two hands tightly gripping the wheel, said “I’m sorry you feel that way, Ben, but if it really bothers you that we only go to church on Easter and Christmas I wouldn’t mind trying to make it more regularly.”

Kylo muttered something unintelligible.

“What was that?” Poe asked, hoping Kylo would say something stupid and disrespectful again. He loved it when Kylo got himself into trouble with the power of his big-ass mouth.

“I said, your sad devotion to this ancient religion hasn’t made you any less shitty of a mother.” Kylo repeated louder.

Leia slammed on the brakes a little too hard at the stoplight they’d rapidly approached, but aside from that betrayed no other emotion. Her lips were thin and tight. “Ben, don’t test me. Do you want me to send you to your dad’s next weekend? Because I will if you keep disrespecting me.”

“No.” Kylo said, pulling the lever to recline all the way back in his seat.

“What was that?” Leia asked.

“ No ma’am.” He repeated.

“That’s better.”

Kylo couldn’t text through church, because he didn’t have a phone. He didn’t doodle, because his mom kept giving him disappointed looks. His polo shirt was itchy. He hated polo shirts. The woman in front of him had the biggest, most hideous hat. Didn’t she know it was disrespectful to wear a hat in church? Kylo Ren didn’t know a lot about church, but he knew that at least. Poe was doing a better job of pretending to pay attention than Kylo was. Kylo clicked his pen, knowing it would annoy Poe. Poe became annoyed, but did a good job of hiding it. Kylo Ren clicked the pen louder. Poe grit his teeth. Kylo Ren clicked the pen faster. Poe ripped the pen out of Kylo Ren’s hand.

Kylo Ren now had no pen, either, and so he sat in silence and tried to pay attention.

He mourned for a minute the loss of his sunday school days, because then at least they provided him with snacks and a coloring sheet. They provided coffee for everyone, but Kylo Ren only liked coffee with lots of milk and they didn’t have a soy milk or lactose free alternative.

He tried again to focus, and then finally gave up. He checked his watch. He’d officially been in church for twenty minutes, and hadn’t caught on fire yet, which in his book counted as a success.

“Oh joy,” Rey said, rolling her eyes when Kylo Ren came into view. “It’s Ben.”

“Kylo.” He corrected, stepping on one of the little plastic eggs she was filling without so much as an apology.

Rey moved the pile of eggs away from Kylo’s feet, and threw away the egg Kylo ruined without any complaints. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I’m not using your lame faux-name.”

“Ben!” Leia called from inside the house. “Will you help Rey fill the rest of those Easter eggs?”

Kylo Ren groaned. Rey put on this stupid easter egg hunt for the kids living on Leia’s block annually, and Han and Leia thought she was a saint because of it. This was year four, and by now it had become a huge family tradition. Poe and Finn helped hide them, and Leia made a nice easter dinner for them all after all the kids left.

Kylo Ren always escaped before he was given any actual responsibilities, then arrived just at the right time to take the candy away from the kids after they did all the actual work. Sometimes Hux joined him in terrorizing the children.

This year, he just didn’t get away in time.

“Mom!” He yelled back, “This isn’t even my easter egg hunt! God, just let me live!”

“Don’t talk back to me,” She replied, walking over to stand by the doorframe. “Don’t forget what we talked about earlier.”

Kylo Ren sighed, “Yes ma’am.” He grumbled, plopping himself on the ground in a huge pile of angst to help Rey stuff the eggs.

“I hate you.” He said, picking up a piece of chocolate and putting it inside an easter egg.

“Trust me, the feeling is mutual right now.” She replied, stuffing a few starburst in another egg.

Kylo picked up another chocolate, this time sticking it in his mouth. Rey watched him eat it, and Kylo felt discomfort creep through him as he licked some of the chocolate off his lips. Rey looked away, and Kylo looked towards his lap, picking up another egg to fill.

“I always thought you looked horrible in skinny jeans,” Rey said, picking up several jellybeans for an extra big egg. Kylo still didn’t look at her. She continued, “But that was before I saw you in khakis. The khakis are somehow worse.”

“Thanks.” He said, not sounding the least bit thankful. He ate another chocolate.

Rey smacked his hand away as he reached for the pile. “If you’re going to eat all the chocolate, you might as well not help, alright?” She moved the chocolate closer to her and further from Kylo. “You’re absolutely useless. There’s no point to these eggs.”

“Hey Kyle, isn’t that what your mom said to you when you were conceived, too?” Finn said, snaking up behind Rey and catching the end of the conversation.

Kylo gave an obviously forced fake laugh that made everyone else close to them uncomfortable. A baby cried somewhere in the distance. “You’re so hilarious, Finn. So glad you’re here.”

“Can you start hiding some of these eggs in the back?” Rey asked, handing Finn a huge pile. “And get Poe over here too, will you? Ben isn’t any help at all.”

“ Kylo isn’t any help at all,” Kylo corrected.

Finn scooped up the eggs. “Yeah, him too I’m sure.”

“Ren?” Hux asked, opening up his window. “What are you doing at my house? It’s Easter Sunday. I have Easter Mass. I’m in a suit.”

“You always have a suit,” Kylo Ren shrugged, “It’s nothing different.”

Hux paused, face quickly turning from scowl to confusion in half a second. “Are you wearing khakis?”

“No.” Kylo said quickly, “Anyway, why are you going to mass? Aren’t you an atheist?”

He let out a cold laugh, “My mother is ridiculous. She insists on going to Easter Mass despite the fact that we’re all atheists in this family. It’s just for looks. She doesn’t want to go to mass, she wants people to see her go to mass.”

“Oh.” Kylo said. They looked at each other for a beat. “So do you want to come get candy with me?”

“She wants people to see us go to mass. As a family.”

Kylo Ren still stared at him blankly, not understanding the problem at hand. As if family were more important than chocolate. “I’m really grounded. Like. Really. I snuck away from a family easter egg hunt to come and get you, and now you’re going to tell me you have better things to do? That’s just pathetic.”

“The great Ren is standing in front of me calling me pathetic in khakis and a polo shirt.”

“Do you want to fight me?” Kylo balled his hands into fists.

“Every time you open your goddamn mouth.”

It took five more minutes of convincing, but finally Kylo gave up, marching back to his house and leaving Hux and his dumb suit behind. Looks like he’d have to terrorize children on his own.

When he finally got back to his house, the easter egg hunt had just ended.

Perfect.

He quickly ran up to his room, getting his big black mask with the rad as heck voice changer and putting it on along with a large black sheet. This scared the kids every time.

He ran up behind a small squad of girls, yelling “ Surrender your candy!” through the black mask. The girls ran, and Kylo dumped their eggs into his bag.

He thought of it as just getting into the easter spirit. After all, if Kylo Ren didn’t sin, Jesus died for nothing.

He slept through Passion of the Christ and didn’t even feel guilty.

Chapter Text

The reporter for the school newspaper had been assigned to her first story on the hot gossip column (a column hated by teachers, but beloved by every student). Her assignment? Interview as many people as possible to get all the details on that insane fight that broke out in the cafeteria. Honestly, school elections were not supposed to be that violent.

The two students looked at each other. The girl spoke first, saying “Honestly, I don’t even know why they’re fighting in the first place. Sometimes people are different. That’s just how it happens. Not everyone has to be the same, but that doesn’t mean you should hate people for being different than you.”

The other boy added “I didn’t even know they had group names until this whole election started.”

The reporter stopped, looking up from their notebook. “They have group names?”

The boy nodded. “I think it started as a joke. Poe Dameron called him and Rey and Finn ‘the holy trinity’ once, and it spread like wildfire.”

“Anything Poe Dameron says spreads like wildfire.” The girl cut in, looking dreamily ahead at one of the Model Airplane Club posters with his face on it, as if lost in Poe’s eyes.

“Uhh...yeah…” The boy continued, “One of their supporters called Hux and Phasma and Kylo Ren ‘the unholy trinity’ as a joke and even though everyone thought it would spark another fight, the three actually embraced it wholeheartedly. Something about it being edgy? So anyway, now they’re The Holy Trinity vs. The Unholy Trinity, and even though some people are skeptical about electing satan as their president, I think I actually like Kylo Ren a lot.”

“Kylo Ren?” The girl wrinkled her nose. “You never told me you supported Kylo Ren.”

The reporter decided to change the subject, before another fight happened. “So were either of you on campus the day the big fight happened?”

The boy shook his head, but said “I wasn’t, but my brother was. He said Rey just lost it and started beating the shit out of Kylo Ren.”  

“Really?” The girl sounded surprised. “Because I heard Rey didn’t actually do much. She threw the first punch, sure, but then Phasma just lunged at her and threw her against the wall. Their fight was apparently legendary; bringing a new meaning to the word cat fight, you know? I could never fight like that. It was like all the beef they had with each other on the soccer field just came out in defense of their friends.”

“Yeah, I definitely think Phasma had every right to start fighting Rey.” He shrugged, “And I’m not just saying that because I’m afraid she’ll kill me if I don’t.” He chuckled.

The girl looked at him, surprised by his answer for the second time. “You’re really taking Phasma’s side in this? After all the shit the unholy trinity said about Rey in their campaign?”

“It might not have been fair of them to say it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.” The boy argued. “I’m not sure if I do trust Rey that much. She’s too perfect. I’m not surprised to find Kylo was able to dig up some dirt. Besides, she does capitalize on Poe’s popularity a little too much.”

“I saw Kylo Ren get votes by threatening eight freshmen!”

“That’s just politics.” The boy shrugged.

“And you’re just a hypoc--”

“So back to the fight,” The reporter cut in, sensing the tension and wanting to get back to the good stuff. She gestured to the boy, “You heard Kylo Ren took most of the damage.” Then to the girl. “And you heard that most of the fighting happened between Phasma and Rey, so--”

“ Actually,” The boy said, “I think Finn might have gotten involved too. He’s weirdly defensive over Rey-- super protective. He plays football, doesn’t he?”

“He plays everything.” The girl agreed.

“And what about Hux?” The school reporter asked. “Did he participate in the fight at all?”

“Not really.” The boy shrugged. “My brother said he mostly just screamed at Kylo Ren for being a whiny bitch while Phasma kicked everyone’s asses.”

The reporter looked confused. She had stopped taking notes a long time ago and was now just there for the hot gossip. “Alright, I’ve been confused about this for awhile, are Hux and Kyle dating, or do they just hate each other?”

“Both.” The two students answered at the same time.

“I heard Phasma ripped someone's locker off its hinges.” The girl told the reporter.

“Phasma definitely ripped someone's locker off its hinges.” The boy confirmed.

“So do either of you know how the fight started?” The reporter asked.

“I didn’t know when I said ‘fight me’ that she would actually try to fight me!” Kylo Ren complained to Hux, who was begrudgingly treating his black eye in the boys restroom. “People don’t fight her when she says ‘fight me.’ What is it that makes Rey so special, huh?”

“She’s not an asshole.” Hux said. “No one wants to fight her.”  

“Says the biggest asshole in the school.” Kylo Ren grumbles.

Hux merely shrugged. He would get offended and stop nursing Kylo Ren’s black eye, but the accusation was a fair enough one. He was an asshole.

Kylo continued his rant, “Yeah, maybe I haven’t been the nicest to her recently, but she didn’t have to punch me in the face . She could have really injured me! I could be in the hospital right now! Then what? I’m surprised they’re not expelling her. Honestly, it’s the only fair thing to do when one student attacks another outright and unprovoked.”

“Stop blinking so much,” Hux said, paying no mind to Kylo’s ranting.

Kylo blinked again, then apologized, before going right back at it. “And even if an argument could be made that I had it coming, she crossed too many lines with the smear campaign her and her awful friends have been running against me. Yeah, sure, we tried to frame her for cheating and could have gotten her in serious trouble, but that wasn’t even me and the accusations cleared after a thorough investigation. I would much rather be framed for cheating than have people know I sleep with a blankie-- and for the record it isn’t even a blankie it’s an exact replica of Darth Vader’s cloak and of course it’s valuable I paid a lot of money for it --so the fact that Poe gave her pictures of that to pass around was completely humiliating.” He took a huge breath, prepared to launch into another monologue. Hux stopped him.

“Framed for cheating? Don’t you actually cheat?”

“Yes,” Kylo responded quickly, “But that’s completely beside the point. The point is--”

“Honestly,” Hux interrupted again, handing Kylo and ice pack and taking a step back, “My favorite was the ‘CRYlo Ren’ line. I can’t believe we haven’t used that before, it seems so obvious in hindsight.”

“You’re not helping.” Kylo pouted, swinging his legs up to sit criss-cross on the school bathroom counter as he held the icepack to his face.

“I’m just tired of you whining about Rey all the time. You have an obsession.”

“It’s not an obsession.” Kylo argued.

Hux stared at him for a minute, until Kylo finally sighed, saying “Fine, it might be a bit of an obsession.” He shoved the ice pack back toward Hux and hopped off the counter, heading toward the door with the expectation that Hux would follow behind.

“Don’t throw this back at me,” Hux said, taking the ice pack with an air of obvious offense that Ren would reject his attempts to heal him, “It’s going to hurt more if you don’t ice it. It’s basic science. I’ve always known you were an idiot, but I never pegged you as a masochist, Ren.”

“If I don’t ice it, it will hurt more?” Kylo repeated. “Good. I need the sympathy.”

Hux considered mentioning that Ren could easily just pretend it hurt more, but then he realized that he didn’t even give a shit. He followed Kylo Ren out of the bathroom.

As soon as they were out the door they were greeted with yet another massive sign.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Kylo Ren groaned, “It’s only been five minutes.”

Kylo Ren is a Kylo SIN! It said in bold, red text over a large white canvas. He recognized the handwriting as being Finn’s just from all the times Finn had written “Kyle Lauren” on his starbucks cups.

Hux straightened his tie and continued walking. Kylo sighed and followed after him, saying “It’s not even that creative or witty. Kylo Ren is a Kylo Sin? Give me a break…” He straight faced his way past at least seventeen signs that all read “Crylo Ren Can’t Win” until he finally parted ways with Hux and sat in his usual desk in the back of the physics classroom.

He took a long breath. As much as he hated physics, it was the only class he had without anyone he knew, and it was kind of a relief to be alone for once. He didn’t have Hux pressuring him or Poe to compete with or Finn irrationally hating him or Rey being...well... Rey all over the place. It was quiet, with zero expectations. He put his feet up on the desk and looked his teacher in the eye, daring her to yell at him. She didn’t. She knew it wasn’t worth it.

Just as the bell rang, however, a mysterious stranger brushed against his desk and dropped a large yellow envelope. Kylo Ren took one, long look at it, before muttering something that sounded like “I don’t have time for this shit” and slamming his head on his desk in resignation. No one around him noticed. As his teacher droned on and on about physics things that he probably should have been taking notes for, he finally lifted his head from his desk and picked up the envelope. He looked around. No one was paying attention to him. He slowly opened up the envelope, then reached in to take out what was inside.

Inside, he found pictures of himself.

Shit.

There were pictures of him dunking freshmen into trashcans, vandalizing school property, literally kicking someone while they were down, and of him stealing some kids Easter candy, plus humiliating photos of him crying, him losing control and smashing a television set, of him unironically reading Twilight (it was a phase and only lasted one month for God’s sake!), and pictures of that horrible horrible play he was in during his freshman year that he tried to erase from all memory. And those were just the picture he had time to flip through before giving up altogether.

At the bottom of the stack was a note, reading simply “ Retract all your accusations against Rey or these photos will be everywhere first thing tomorrow morning. I have all the negatives. XOXO.”

He never thought Rey and Finn would stoop this low. From Hux and himself, sure it was expected, they were friends with Phasma after all. From the holy trinity themselves? Absolutely not. They were supposed to be above such things. He scowled at it. No wonder it wasn’t signed. It didn’t seem fair to him; if you were going to do a despicable deed, you should at least take credit for it. Then again, it seemed as though he was getting all the credit for Hux’s poor life decisions.

And what does Hux get? Scholarships, probably...'read The Prince eight times', my ass.

He pushed his long hair out of his eyes and quickly gathered up the photos, shoving them all back into the envelope. He would go to his mother this afternoon before leaving from school and sort things out about Rey, and burn the photos as soon as he had the chance.

Just when Leia thought she couldn’t get any more disappointed in her son, right?

Chapter Text

Kylo Ren burst through the door of his bedroom with hot tears in his eyes, rather like a petulant child. Why should he get the blame for all the shit Hux pulled? Honestly he should have just let his friend take the fall.

Principal Organa suspended him for two days, but of course that wasn't the first nor the last time that had happened to him. Hux was right about one thing though: there was nothing Mom Leia could do that she hadn't done already. He didn't have a phone and he didn't have a life and he already had absolutely no freedom, so all his mom could heap upon him was just another round of fresh steaming disappointed looks.

“I wish I could just wish away my feelings!” Kylo Ren yelled, kicking his rolling chair all the way across the room before throwing himself down onto his bed. He looked up at the ceiling. He looked at the clock on his wall. It was a stupid little airplane clock with wings like hands that move around. Poe picked it out, and although Kylo hated it, it was fairly effective at informing Kylo of the time.

Poe was gone, Leia was gone, and Kylo had absolutely nothing to do. He didn’t have Rey’s diary to read anymore, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do homework, especially if he didn’t have to go back to school for another two days. He was fairly certain his mom was going to make him go to his dad’s for those two days, but he was trying not to think about it. For now, he would enjoy his time in his room alone.

He fell asleep on his bed almost immediately.

When he woke up, at least three hours had gone by and the room was a lot darker than it had been earlier. Kylo Ren had to turn on a lamp. He’d realized upon waking, that he had a very sudden and very bizarre craving for chocolate milk. He groaned, fairly certain he wouldn’t find any downstairs.

He got out of bed and stretched, letting out a huge yawn, before running the rest of the way down the steps. It had been a few hours, but he was still alone in the house. He considered jamming out to music now that no one could tell him to turn it down, but for some reason the idea did thrill him as much as it usually did.

He opened up the cabinet and pulled out the powder to make chocolate milk, and then threw open the fridge and took out the syrup too for good measure. He has a constant battle with himself to figure out which one is better, and in the end he usually just goes with both. When he tried to grab a carton of soymilk however, his poor little lactose intolerant tummy was dismayed to discover that they were completely out of soymilk (Kylo Ren had the temptation to throw a fit, especially since he didn’t use the last of the soymilk and he always told Poe that he wasn’t allowed to use Kylo’s soymilk just because you ran out of your own milk because you’re not lactose intolerant and can’t you just let me have this one thing??? Anyway, Kylo didn’t throw a fit, because it just wasn’t worth it, okay?) and so he decided to take a field trip to the store.

He stood in front of the door for ten full minutes with the keys, wondering if it was really worth getting in even more trouble and sneaking out of the house just for a carton of soymilk. On one hand, if he was going to sneak out he might as well do something fun. On the other hand, he was tired and didn’t really want to do anything fun. All he really wanted was chocolate milk, and Poe made it so he couldn’t even get that.

He sighed, and rested his head in distress against the door, angsting.

He was going to sneak out of the house to buy soymilk.

An hour later Kylo Ren walked the dark streets of his small suburban town alone, carton of soymilk happily in hand as he walked back to his home. He silently prayed to Darth Vader that Leia would still be wherever the hell she was when Kylo got home from school, and that she wouldn’t notice he was gone, and that when she did notice he was gone she would think it fully justified because honestly woman, you’re my mother and you can’t even make sure our home is stocked with milk that’s lactose free? 

He turned the corner, dropping the full container of soymilk on the ground as he saw a shadowy figure dragging a huge duffle bag with-- is that a body -- shoved inside. His mouth fell open. The figure, hearing the soymilk hit the ground, dropped the bag and straightened their back, looking around to see if anyone was watching. Kylo Ren ducked behind a tree, wishing for once that his scarf wasn’t as billowy and praying the wind wouldn’t blow it from behind the tree. The figure shrugged, and set back to work carrying the body.

Kylo followed the figure, realizing he had nothing to loser. He stayed a few feet back, and praised Darth Vader that he was dressed in all black. Everyone laughs, but now he’s the one in the perfect position to spy on an actual murderer without getting caught. At least, it sure seemed like this person was a murderer. Why else would they be dragging around a body in a duffle bag? Or at least, it seemed like a body.

He wished he could see the guy’s face, or at least any recognizable part of him, but it was much too dark for him to actually make out any features. Kylo followed the man all the way towards the woods for quite a ways until they reached a creek bed somewhere deep within the back trees of the neighborhood park. After all that walking, Kylo Ren was tired and out of breath. He could only imagine how much more tired the murderer was, considering he’d been carrying around a duffle bag with a dead body in it the whole time. Really, Kylo shouldn’t have even been complaining about exhaustion at all.

The man unzipped the duffle bag and dumped the body unceremoniously into the creek. Kylo moved a bit from his hidden position in the hopes of seeing the body’s face, just out of curiosity. What he saw caused the blood to drain out of his already pasty-ass face.

He turned, and immediately starting throwing up the contents of that night’s dinner.

I shouldn’t have snuck out of the house I shouldn’t have snuck out of the house I shouldn’t have snuck out of the house I shouldn’t have snuck out of the house I shouldn’t have--

The body was Phasma’s.

Suddenly, Kylo Ren’s phone rang. “Shit, shit, shit shit, shit! ” Kylo muttered quietly as he fumbled around for his stupid 2005 flip phone. Did his mom really have to figure out he was missing and call him now of all times?

The man, hearing Kylo’s phone, whipped around with a panic stricken face. Only, the face wasn’t a man’s face at all.

It was Rey.

Kylo Ren froze in place, looking from Rey to Phasma’s body and back to Rey again. Then, not knowing for sure if she had seen him or not, Kylo Ren ran as fast as he could toward the main road. He fought exhaustion, fought fear, fought everything with only one thought in mind.

I finally have dirt on that bitch!

He finally reached the main road and ran out right into the middle of it to flag down a car driving at a speed limit way too fast. He waved in the middle of the road jumping up and down and up and down and up and down to get the driver’s attention but driver didn’t slow down and Kylo kept jumping and yelling and Kylo didn’t understand why the driver wasn’t just stopping already and before Kylo could move out of the way--

When he woke up, the first thing he realized is that he wasn’t in his own bed. He opened his eyes to see flowers everywhere, and a few cards propped up saying things like “get well, maybe” and “don’t die (unless you want to)” and a sweet looking nurse in the corner who looked way too pleased to see him up and moving a bit.

“Oh good, you’re awake!” She said, her voice a higher pitch than he expected. “I’ll inform your mother right away. You’ve certainly had quite the experience.”

He shut his eyes tight again, wracking his brain to remember...remember... something , but he couldn’t figure out what. He had to tell someone something, something really important about...about...He groaned in tragic misery, and the nurse said, “Still hurts, does it? Well you’re going to be hurting for quite awhile. That car certainly did a number on you.”

Car? He was hit by a car? He couldn’t remember anything. He panicked. What year was it? He glanced at a calendar on the wall: 2016. What day was it? He had no clue about that one. Who was the president of the United States? George Bush maybe?

“Ben!” A chipper voice said in the doorway, “You’re awake!”

Ben? Was his name Ben? He couldn’t remember at all. If that’s what this girl was calling him, though, Ben must be his name. How could he forget something like his own name? Also, what the hell was this girl doing in his room?

“Rey,” Said a tall boy with rugged good looks and sexy hair, “He just got hit by a car.”

“Yeah?” Rey said, gesturing with her hands for him to continue.

The boy shrugged. “That’s it. That’s all I had to say. Ben Solo just got hit by a car, and I thought I would just remind you of that pleasant fact.”

“He could have died!” Rey said, giving Poe a playful shove.

Ben decided that he didn’t much like the handsome boy with the rugged good looks, but the girl seemed sweet enough. He found her hairstyle to be slightly childish, yet charming. He was struck by how confidently she carried herself, and how carefree she seemed in her mannerisms.

Dare he say it? He fell in love instantly.

She rushed to his bedside, saying “Ben! I can’t believe you’re alive!” He sensed fear and trepidation in her eyes, her pulse seemed to be moving quickly and there was a thin line of sweat on her forehead. She must have been really worried about him to have that big of a physical reaction to seeing him alive.

“Who are you?” He asked, reaching up to place a hand on her face. “Are you an angel?”

She cocked her head, clearly confused. “Ben...do you not remember me?”

The handsome boy’s eyes widened, and he took a step forward and looked at Ben. Rey turned toward the handsome boy, saying “Poe I don’t think he remembers it...any of it...I think...I think we’re safe.”

Years seemed to melt off her face, and Poe gave a deep sigh of relief.

She turned toward Ben again. “I didn’t think...I didn’t think I would be this scared of losing you because, well you probably don’t remember this but there’s always been so much...so much…”

“Sexual tension?” Ben suggested.

She nodded. “Exactly! And now...well…”

She knelt next to his bedside, roughly taking his chin in her hands and bringing her mouth to meet his. He responded hungrily and passionately as she ran one hand through his long, black, luscious hair. He moved, despite the pain in every inch of his body, to wrap an arm around her back and press her closer to him. He could feel the cold air seep into the back of his hospital gown and he just knew he was flashing Poe, but he couldn’t care less. At that moment there was only him, and Rey, and her hands and her mouth and the one thought that this stranger is beautiful.

Poe coughed, and was about to say something when the door was opened so quickly it was practically ripped off it’s hinges. Everyone in the room could practically hear the villain theme playing as the sexy redhead strutted into the room, stopping at the foot of Ben’s bed as the girl pulled away.

Ben, in a horny haze, stared up at the sexy redheaded stranger.

“Who--”

“Ren, what is the meaning of this?” He gestured to Rey, the word ‘this’ dripping with disgust. “The minute I found out you’d gotten in that tragic car accident I rushed to your bedside, thinking you would be weak and desperate for my attention like you always are, but no. Here you are with her , as if I don’t matter at all.”

“Do I...do I know you?” Ben asked, looking up at Rey who had sprung away from him rather quickly and was now standing closer to Poe.

“Do you know me?” The sexy redhead echoed in disbelief.

Poe took a step forward, “Hux, it seems he’s lost his memory. Almost all of it. I haven’t talked to Leia yet and I don’t think she’s seen him, so I don’t know yet how permanent this is.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Hux said, quickly whipping around to send Poe the death glare before coming back around again towards his friend’s bedside.

“Why did you call me Ren?” Ben asked, confusion still written across his face.

“Don’t listen to what these assholes tell you,” Hux said, “Your name isn’t Ben Solo, it’s Kylo Ren. You picked it out yourself. You’re Ren. That’s your name. That’s what I call you. These people are only here to make fun of him.”

“It’s not like that!” Rey said, taking a step forward. “You don’t understand the complexity of Ben and I’s relationship!”

“Me and Ben’s,” Hux corrected, “And perhaps I don’t understand ‘the complexities’ of your relationship, but I also don’t care. His name is Kylo Ren, and I don’t know what you guys are even doing here.”

Kylo/Ben shut his eyes tight, getting more and more stressed out by everything around him. Rey seemed so perfect, but this redhead seems so cold and hard and, well quite frankly Hux’s personality was probably no longer the only hard thing in the room.

Kylo/Ben didn’t know too much about himself, having just woken up apparently from a horrible car crash, but it was a pretty good guess that he probably wasn’t a filthy man slut. Still, he had a horrible headache, probably had half his bones broken, and might have permanent long-term memory loss, if he wanted to be a man slut for one day so be it.

Hux took the place next to his bedside that had been Rey’s minutes before.

“I know you say all the time that we aren’t dating--”

“We aren’t dating?” Kylo/Ben asked.

Hux ignored him. “--but I didn’t know exactly how much I cared until I was about to lose you. I forgive you for getting me kicked off the debate team and for being an annoying and whiny little bitch 90% of the time, and I can’t imagine my life without you in it. Ren, will you--”

Kylo/Ben didn’t even let him finish, but quickly closed the gap between them in a kiss just as passionate as the one he shared with Rey. Hux kissed all the way down Kylo/Ben’s jaw until he got to his neck, all the while sliding his hands further and further up Kylo/Ben’s hospital gown.

Rey, who had been watching with some shock and disappointment up until this point, shrugged and sat on the end of Kylo/Ben’s bed to watch, fully enraptured in the scene in front of her.

“You’re next.” Hux said to her in a low, gruff, sexy voice. Rey found that oddly enough, she didn’t mine. Kylo/Ben only got turned on even more at the thought of Rey and Hux kissing.

Kylo broke away from the kiss for just a second to take a deep breath and get some air, he had just been hit by a car afterall. As soon as he opened his eyes he saw a Finn at the foot of his bed. He didn’t know how he knew the boy’s name was Finn, but he just looked like a Finn.

“Finn?” He asked, just as Hux took Kylo Ren’s mouth in his again.

“Woah.” Finn said, staring.

“I know.” Poe responded, also staring.

Finally, Hux broke off the kiss and began to move in on Rey, who quickly held up her hands in the universal stop movement. Hux and Kylo/Ben both looked at her expectantly.

She looked at Kylo/Ben, then back at her friends, then back at Kylo/Ben.

She turned to Kylo/Ben. “Promise me you’ll go by Ben. Promise me. Promise me you’ll forget Kylo. Will you do that for me, please? Forget Hux for a minute, and look at me. You don’t remember anything, but search in your heart and you’ll see that Kylo doesn’t feel right. That Kylo is sick. He’s unhealthy. Be Ben for me please?”

Kylo/Ben slowly nodded. “I’ll be Ben.” He said softly.

She breathed a deep sigh of relief, looking almost as though she was going to cry a bit.

Then, in a voice so soft you had to try very hard to hear it, she said “I’m dropping out of the election. You can have the presidency.”

Chapter Text

When he woke up from his afternoon nap, at least three hours had gone by and the room was a lot darker than it had been earlier. Kylo Ren had to turn on a lamp. He’d realized upon waking, that he had a very sudden and very bizarre craving for chocolate milk. He groaned, fairly certain he wouldn’t find any downstairs.

He got out of bed and stretched, letting out a huge yawn, before running the rest of the way down the steps. It had been a few hours, but he was still alone in the house. He considered jamming out to music now that no one could tell him to turn it down, but for some reason the idea did thrill him as much as it usually did.

As if the heavens were shining down upon him for one single moment in time, there was an almost full carton of chocolate soymilk in the fridge that he was fairly certain hadn’t been there earlier. He shrugged, and drank almost all of it straight from the carton.

Then he just stopped, set the carton on the counter next to him, and stared into space. Goddamn, that had been the single weirdest dream he had ever had in his entire life. He half felt like he needed to sit down and have a serious heart-to-heart talk with his subconscious, and half felt like he should take a nice long bath in holy water.  

The surprising part of the dream hadn’t been that Poe had drank all the soymilk, or that he’d found the lack of soymilk tragic enough to sneak out of the house over, or even that Rey was the zodiac killer (in fact he was still fairly certain Rey probably was the zodiac killer). The surprising part was how easily Rey and Hux had agreed to a threesome. He would have to think about that one for a very, very long time.

He scowled, both disappointed and disgusted with himself. What a nightmare. Still, as horrible as it would have been to have lost his memory and ended up in love with both Rey and Hux, it might have been worth it just to have Rey step down from the election.

Hm...the election. Would his suspension negatively affect his chances? Was it common knowledge that he’d been spreading lies? With luck, no one need know that he was the one spreading them around.

He took another swig of his chocolate soymilk, thinking that even in spite of recent mistakes, it still needed more vodka.

“Mother,” Kylo complained yet again, “It’s not fair for you to send me to dad’s house. Isn’t being suspended punishment enough? Are you really that willing to leave me to die?”

Leia sighed and look toward the heavens, mentally counting to ten before continuing to usher her son and all his stuff into the car. “It’s not a punishment,” She repeated for the umpteenth time, “It’s just visiting your father. You really should start spending more time with your father anyway.”

It didn’t hurt that the more time he spent with his father, the less time she had to spend with him. No matter what she tried to argue, he knew that was the real reason. He’d gotten to be too much trouble, and now he was being hoisted into hell until she could figure out what to do with him. Well he wouldn’t stand for it!

Instead, he sat.

When he got to Han’s house he discovered, unsurprisingly, that Leia had not technically informed Han that they were coming. Han looked surprised, but not disappointed, and he and Leia had a stare down for two minutes before Han welcomed them both inside and had Kylo take his bags to his room. He could have sworn they could read each other’s mind.

He sat on his bed and listened to his parents argue in hushed voices down the hall into the living room. Kylo was past feeling awful about his parents’ broken marriage, but he wasn’t going to pretend like it wasn’t his fault. It was obvious both of them blamed the others’ parenting for how he’d “turned out” (as if having Kylo as a son was the worst parenting mistake they could make).

He heard broken bits of conversation:

“If you weren’t so lax with him all the time--”

“What he needed was to learn from his mistakes, not be punished for them--”

“--what he really needs right now is structure, but--”

“--our son hates us, and I’m not entirely sure I blame him--”

“--sending him to Luke was a bad idea, and now--”

“--he wanted to learn martial arts, what was I supposed to do? You were just as okay with it as I was--”

“--I didn’t know he was going to start that fire--”

“Why can’t you just admit that you made a mistake, Han!?”

The voices grew a little louder as the door to his room was pushed open slightly and a small black nose could be seen through the door. The nose entered the room, followed by the massive fluffy body of Han’s big brown Newfoundland dog. Upon seeing Kylo, the dog practically catapulted himself onto the bed, literally knocking Kylo Ren over.

“I swear to god Chewie, if you try to sleep in this bed tonight I’m filling your water bowl with windex.” Kylo whispered to the huge mound of fur, “There is not room on here with the two of us.”

The dog made a low, mournful sound and Kylo’s heart melted. He reached out to pet the beast, and finally just gave up and wrapped his arms around it. At one point, this dog had been as big as he was. “I’ve missed you,” He said in a soft voice as Chewbacca began licking his face. He blocked the big tongue with his hand, and silently thanked the dog for the distraction. He honestly felt like he was thirteen again.

Kylo sighed, and reached over Chewie and into his bag to pull out his iPod shuffle. He didn’t want to deal with any of this emotional baggage bullshit right now, and maybe if he’s lucky he could just sleep for the next two days.

He wasn’t lucky.

“It’s just like bring your son to work day!” Han had said, trying to make his voice sound slightly excited. Han didn’t ‘feel safe’ leaving Kylo Ren at home all by himself, considering his penchant for ‘getting into trouble,’ and thus decided Kylo would have to go with him to the shop...all day.

“While you’re here, you might as well get some work done,” Han had said, dropping a huge pile of papers and envelopes in front of him. He spent the next four hours licking envelopes and shoving papers inside of them as his dad told him stupid stories about the old days.  

He talked and talked, the whole time never once asking Kylo about any of his stories, and the whole time Kylo Ren felt as though he was inching closer and closer towards his death.

“Han,” Kylo said finally, “Is Rey working at all later today when school gets out?”

He regretted the question as soon as it was out of his mouth. His dad’s eyebrows raised. A scowl formed across Kylo’s lips. “She’ll be fixing up that mustang this afternoon while I’m in meetings,” Han said finally, returning to work. “Although I doubt she’ll want to talk to you considering what you pulled at school recently.”

So Leia had told him why he’d been suspended, huh?

He thought perhaps Han might finally ask him why he hated Rey so much, and part of him hoped he would ask him that, but Han didn’t. Han didn’t ask anything about him at all.

Another three hours of envelope licking later, and Han had left to go in meetings, leaving Kylo Ren completely alone until Rey arrived. When she did arrive, she seemed almost surprised to see him, as if he being suspended from school meant he would also be suspended from her life. They made uncomfortable eye contact for just four seconds too many, before she gave a curt hello and placed all of her stuff next to him behind his secretary desk.

He wondered if after working this job she would go find Poe and Finn and the three of them would all spend time hanging out in his room now that he wasn’t there. He wondered if she was going to be the one sitting on his bed as they idly talked, maybe even putting her feet up on it as they all ignored his posters on the wall. Poe was probably having a spectacular time getting the room all to himself.

He shook his head, snapping himself out of the scene.

“You pretended to be my friend, snuck into my room, and stole my private journal. How can you expect me to even look at you after that?”

He crossed his arms, going on the defensive. “You punched me in the face.”

“You read my private journal!” She repeated, louder.

“I have a black eye now, and it still hasn’t gone away.”

“You read my private journal.”

“You found those….those awful pictures of me,” He replied, “And put them up everywhere. ”

Finally, Rey lost it. “You read my private journal!” She yelled, “How on earth are you still trying to pretend that we’re on equal footing here as far as awful things goes? You never even ap--”

“I’m sorry,” He cut her off, sighing after he said it and running his fingers through his hair. “I never said I’m sorry, and I am, and it was shitty to steal your journal. Are you happy?” He asked, not breaking eye contact with her this time. Her gaze was just as intense, but she was surprised by his sincerity and faltered in her response.

Kylo continued, “The writing was actually really good. I mean, it held my interest the entire time. Have you ever considered writing a--”

“Whatever you’re about to say,” Rey interrupted, “Don’t even think about saying it. I accept your apology.”

“So you forgive me?”

“I never said that.”

Rey got to work, and they both worked in silence for a bit on their respective jobs before Rey finally said, “I wouldn’t have had to use those pictures if you hadn’t have spread all those lies about me, you know.”

“I know.”  Of course he knew. Rey was too perfect to ever filthy herself with dirty politics. If he weren’t so horrified by the photos he would have been proud of himself for driving her to that point.

He didn’t know why, but it felt important to him that she forgave him. “I wasn’t the one who spread the lies, though. I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, and if I were you I wouldn’t trust anything I’m saying, but the whole thing was Hux’s idea.”

“Then why are you the one suspended for it?” She sounded skeptical, obviously.

“I took the fall for Hux. If he got suspended it would ruin his chances at all the big name schools he’s aiming for, and we all know I don’t have lofty aspirations.” He kept talking. “I knew he was only doing it because in his weird twisted way he thought he was helping me. I even yelled at him, believe it or not. I just felt so bad about your diary. I pretended I didn’t feel bad, I don’t know, to look cool or whatever, but I hate that I’ve been hurting you so badly. I hate you, but...I don’t know.”

As soon as he finished talking he put his head down and went back to work sticking papers in envelopes, as if willing the conversation he’d started to end.

Finally, Rey threw down her wrench. “Why do you spend so much of your life pretending you don’t care about anything? Obviously, you care about things!”

“What?” He asked, surprised by her outburst.

“Yeah, you throw petty child tantrums eight times a day and you have the impulse control of a two year old, but why do you keep pretending you only care about yourself? Why do you pretend you hate your parents, and why do you push everyone away, and why do you pretend you don’t care about your friends? You obviously do. You’re hurt when your parents don’t notice you, and you take the fall when your friends do the wrong thing, and any time you show anyone any other side of yourself you pretend it doesn’t exist. Why?” She crossed her arms, and stared at him, not planning to get back to work until he gave her a response.

Kylo Ren, who had stopped mid-envelope lick, went back to work as soon as she finished. He refused to look back at her, but could feel his hair catching on fire under her gaze. He realized she wasn’t going to budge.

“I don’t need to give a response to you of all people.” He still didn’t look at her. “Just because I apologized doesn’t mean I want to open up with all these feelings you’re so sure I have.”

“Fair enough,” She crawled a few inches and picked up the wrench she’d thrown a minute before, sounding slightly disappointed.

When Rey suggested he open up a bit, she hadn’t know what she was getting herself into. What had previously been icy silence had soon enough been transformed into a steady stream of Kylo Ren complaining about...well, about everything, from teachers to parents to how bossy Hux is apparently.

“I’m sorry,” He said, not sounding the slightest bit sorry, “I just...I need to rant sometimes, okay? Whether you’re in the room or not, I just…” He squeezed his eyes shut, resisting the temptation to kick another stationary object. “It sounds angsty and overdramatic to be that guy that complains about how much he hates his parents and how unfair they are and how horrible they treat me, but it’s true and...and nobody fucking believes me!”

He continued, “You think my parents are like the fucking Madonna and Joseph,” He threw his arms in a vague gesture in her direction, “But you don’t hear them fighting every time they’re together about how big of a mistake you were, and maybe you don’t think spending a few days with Han would be horrible but when he’s around you he actually makes an effort to share your interests. He always treats me like a little mini-him, he always has treated me that way, and he won’t fucking listen to me when I try to tell him I hate fixing cars!”

Rey raised an eyebrow, “ Do you hate fixing cars?”

“Yes!” He yelled, then paused. “Actually, not really. I mean, it’s not my favorite thing to do, I mainly just hate it because--” He stopped, narrowing his eyes. “I thought I told you I didn’t want you to talk to me.”

“Ben,” She said, voice taking on an exasperated tone, “You have been in a continuous state of talking to me for the last two hours. What am I supposed to do? Sit here in silence while you ramble.”

“Yes!” He responded, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. He picked up a manilla envelope and tried fanning himself with it before throwing it on the ground again. “Why is it so goddamn hot in here?”

Rey took that moment to slide back underneath the car again. It was like a hiding place, true, but it was a damn good one. The more he talked, the easier time she was having understanding why he was constantly crying out for attention. It was almost enough to feel sorry for him, but did he have to be such an ass all the time?

She rolled out from under the car again.

“I need you to help me fix this car,” She said, against her better judgement.

“What?” He responded, an almost angry look in his eye.

“You’re going to help me fix this car. If you’re anything like me at all, it might help you relax.”

Kylo Ren stared at her, and for a few seconds she’s thought she had made a horrible horrible mistake. Then, without making a noise, he stood up, removed his scarf, put his hair in a small ponytail, and got with her underneath the car.

She briefly explained the work she’d been doing on it, and he picked up what needed to be done really quickly. It was easy to forget he was a whiz at shit like that when all he did was complain day in and day out.

They spent the rest of the afternoon working on cars together in complete silence.

Chapter Text

They decided impulsively to switch jobs for the day. Rey had practically pulled in all-nighter studying for a chem test the night before, (a chem test Kylo already knew he wasn't going to bother trying to make up upon returning to school), and could barely keep her eyes open. Kylo realized it didn't matter if he fixed cars as long as no one knew he was fixing cars, and although Rey hadn’t felt great about getting paid a ton to watch Ben Solo do all her work for her, she justified it with the fact that in a way, she was helping him . He wouldn't admit it, but she could tell that fixing cars was cathartic for him in the same way it was for her. It was a good, mutually beneficial system. Kylo pretended he wasn’t doing it for himself, saying that doing some of her work for her was the least he could do after all the shit he’d pulled. 

That was the most surprising part of the whole experience. He kept apologizing, not that she forgave him in the slightest, but it was almost endearing if not a bit pathetic that he was so incredibly lonely he would swallow his pride enough to apologize to her. She didn't know exactly when between the complaining and fighting and hating they'd managed to reach a sort of truce, but she was almost positive it had something to do with the fact that Ben Solo was incredibly lonely. He'd complained several times about the fact that none of his friends had even attempted to contact him since he'd been suspended, which seemed even harsher to her now that she'd found out he was only suspended to cover Hux's ass. If that was even true, that is. 

After about an hour of Rey watching him work, Kylo Ren turned to face her with the look of dawning realization on his face. “I never watched you destroy the negatives of those photos.”

It took a lot to keep her from laughing. As if changing his tune and being friendly for a second was going to make her drop the greatest leverage she had against him?  

“That's not going to happen,” she said, trying not to feel guilty as his face twisted into surprise and panic. She was quick to justify her answer, “Those negatives make us equal. No matter what you do or say, we’re only talking to each other as a matter of convenience, and without those negatives I just can’t trust you.”

He glares at her for several minutes, then sighed in slight distress. She wasn't about to start feeling sorry for him about it. If he didn't want photos of him vandalizing school property, he shouldn't have been vandalizing school property. Her hands were clean enough.

If he was going to say something else, he thought better of it and returned to working on the car. She shuffled a few papers around and took a phone call. Honestly, being a secretary was probably the easiest job in the world, if not slightly boring, and she had no idea why on earth Ben complained about it so much.

“Dad, I can’t cook,” Kylo said later that evening after Han proposed his idea for father son bonding time.

Han looked completely unfazed, saying merely, “That’s fine, neither can I.”

The idea to bond over cooking was perhaps the worst idea either of them could have come up with, for several reasons. First, although part of Han Solo had always harbored a secret wish to teach his son how to grill properly, man-to-man, there was no way Han would ever be stupid enough to let Kylo Ren near a fire. Not after the last time. Second, the only time Kylo Ren can properly cook anything is when he’s high, and there’s no way he would share that fact with his dad. Third, aside from grilling, Han’s usual meals consist of frozen microwavable cuisine with the word “Man” slapped in the title.

Still, a part of Kylo still had faith in his father, and he felt excited at the prospect of actually learning to cook. Learning to cook sober , that is.

They decided on sushi, which Han felt was a relatively safe option, and they set to work. All Kylo’s hopes of a normal father-son cooking experience were dashed, however, when Han asked him to pull the fish out of the refrigerator. He opened the door, and there was a huge unidentifiable fish covered in saran wrap on a paper plate.

“Han,” He called back, “I don’t see anything in here.”

“There should be a deep sea bass in there,” Han replied, still focused on finding a cutting board, “I caught it just last week.”

Kylo Ren stared deep into the fish’s cold, dead eyes. The fish stared back. Kylo Ren closed his eyes, breathing in the disgusting fishy smell, before whispering “same” and reaching in to grab it and get it over with. He was hit with an overall sense of wrongness. This was not how sushi was supposed to be.

“Is it even safe to skin your own fish to make sushi? Don’t they use, like, smoked salmon for this shit?”

“Watch your language, son,” Han said, a hypocritical statement considering he’d muttered ‘bullshit’ approximately twelve times that workday. “Of course it’s safe. I caught that fish myself.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Kylo muttered. Han didn’t hear him.

“You know,” Han said, grabbing some vegetables out of the fridge and handing them to Kylo to begin cutting up as he skinned the fish. “I made sushi for your mother when we first started dating.”

“And you wonder why she divorced you?” Kylo snapped back impulsively. Han glared at him, completely unamused, and Kylo muttered an apology and began cutting the vegetables.

Suddenly, Kylo Ren was struck with an idea and swung around to face his dad. The knife, which was balancing rather loosely in his hand, swung with him, and for the first time since the great drug smuggling incident from Juarez to El Paso in ‘89, Han Solo saw his life flash before his eyes. The knife went across Han’s arm leaving a nasty gash, and Kylo wasn’t sure whether or not to panic or laugh.

Han was a true man, however, and after washing up the cut and wrapping it in bandages, he emerged from the bathroom full of determination and quiet anger.

“I’m really sorry dad, really, I am!” Kylo babbled upon seeing his dad emerge from the restroom, Chewie trailing behind him looking exceptionally worried for a dog.

Han walked past him in silence, heading back to the kitchen.

Kylo continued babbling, “I wasn’t looking where I was going and the knife just slipped. It absolutely wasn’t on purpose at all.”

Han grabbed a paper towel and began wiping some of the blood off the counter.

“Just don’t tell mom about this please and don’t get me into any more trouble, I promise I wasn’t trying to stab you on purpose I’m just really bad at cooking I told you I was really bad at cooking.”

Han stoically grabbed the knife and continued cutting the vegetables with grim determination, grimacing as he moved his injured arm.

“Can you answer me please?” Kylo continued, “Because I feel like you’re mad at me, which isn’t entirely fair considering even Chewie can see it was an absolute and complete accident.”

Han began boiling the rice. Kylo didn’t offer to help, but instead gave up and sulked off to his room until Han finished up cooking. Stabbing his dad really had seemed like a great idea in the moment, but he was hoping they would all take a field trip to the hospital and he wouldn’t have to touch that disgusting fish. Now, however, his father seemed to have an even stronger determination to finish cooking the sushi, with or without his son.

Kylo Ren stared at the wall until Han finally called him in to have dinner, and he could have sworn he heard the funeral toll of bells as he walked to the kitchen. Han sat at the table, a plate full of sushi rolls in the middle. The smell was enough to make Kylo run out of the room.

He took a seat. Han placed a roll of the homemade sushi on Kylo’s plate. Kylo stared at it. Kylo Ren was about to suck it up, close his eyes, and take a bite, when he spotted out of the corner of his eye what looked to be a bit of blood in the rice. His eyes widened, and he immediately felt like he was going to throw up. Han looked at him expectantly, and Kylo blurted out “I can’t eat this, I’m a vegan” before taking the time to sort through the consequences.

Han just looked at him. Kylo blinked. Finally, Han just said “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Ben is a vegan now?” Han asked Leia the next morning when she arrived to take him back to school. “I fixed him dinner and everything, but he didn’t eat it. Said he was trying to be a vegan, and ate carrots and mixed nuts instead.”

Leia’s eyes widened, and she glanced at her son. Kylo sank into the couch as the consequences of his actions began to catch up with him. Sweet merciful god, could he have thought of nothing but vegan? Of all the excuses, did he have to choose the one that would damn him?

“It must be a new thing,” She replied, “But I think it says something good about his progress if he’s taking a stand for a cause for once. Honestly I think--” She noticed his arm, and covered her mouth with her hand in shock. “Dear lord, Han! What happened?”

Kylo Ren’s head shot up, and he made eye contact with his dad for a split second before Han said, “Nothing, my hand just slipped with the knife last night.”

Kylo was ushered into the front seat of the car with all of his stuff, and his mom spent the entire car ride going on and on about how proud she was of him for finally taking a stand for a cause, and how little things like that can really make a difference, and how she really feels as though he’s turning a new leaf, and how she’ll start cooking healthier options for him as well.

He considered mentioning that she couldn’t even be bothered to remember he’s lactose intolerant, but then decided against it, just grateful she wasn’t lecturing him on proper behavior returning to school.

Poe sat in the backseat, rolling his eyes every five seconds as Kylo described his descent into veganism. He could smell bullshit twelve miles away.

Chapter Text

He strode with long, confident steps down the long hallway. Kylo Ren, the man the myth the legend, had returned to school. Girls and boys alike stared as he walked past, and he heard whispers rustling behind him wherever he walked. He’d busted through the doors wearing his favorite ‘Stop Bi Erasure’ shirt and heavy blue eyeliner, long scarf wrapped around his neck to say that he was just itching for trouble. He wasn’t, of course, but he figured if he was going to have that reputation he might as well own it.

Kylo stalked over to Hux as soon as he saw him, stopping in front of him with his arms crossed and an angry expression.

Hux raised his eyebrows, still wearing his signature scowl, and waited for Kylo Ren to speak. When he realized he was going to have to be the one to break the silence, he sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What are you upset about this time, Ren?”

“Where have you been?” Kylo asked, trying to disguise the hurt in his voice.

“I could ask the same of you.” Hux began walking, and Kylo followed beside.

“I was stuck in hell for a few days, but the very least you could do was come visit me. I was bored out of my mind,” Kylo ranted, “I had no one to talk to, no one, not one single person!” Except Rey, but he wasn’t about to bring that up.

Hux gave Kylo a look that he couldn’t quite interpret, but he assumed it was meant to end the discussion. He adjusted his tie. “I’m sorry if you were bothered by the fact that I have other interests aside from just following you around, Ren.”  Hux had stopped in front of his locker, and pulled out a file, “But if you would stop complaining for five seconds,  I could show you what I’ve been working on.”

Kylo blinked. “If it’s another one of your campaign ideas, I’d rather talk about anything but that right now. I’m not in the mood to get suspended again.”

“This,” Hux began with a smile too sinister for a high schooler, “Is a loophole.”

He opened the file and spread out a few papers across his locker. He pointed to one of the papers. “This is the constitution for debate club. It’s separate from the constitution for the speech and interp group. Although forensics is considered one activity, speech and debate, at this school technically speaking the clubs are separate. Furthermore, though Organa banished me from the debate team, she never technically banished us from the tournaments themselves. We could still join the interp team and compete in tournaments, and she has no justification yet for banning us from interp as well.”

Kylo rolled his eyes and sighed. Hux was ridiculous. When he realized Hux was awaiting an actual response, however, he voiced his incredulity. “First, you guys wrote a constitution for your lame-ass nerd clubs? That’s so...extra…”

“Says the theatre kid,” Hux quipped back.

“Second,” Kylo continued, ignoring his jab at The Great Art, “You’re a debater. You make fun of interp kids. Do you really want to be the guy yelling at a wall? Furthermore, my last speech and debate experience wasn’t exactly the best in the world, hence why we got kicked off the team in the first place. It doesn’t seem like something I want to do anyway.”

“See, that’s the thing,” Hux said, using his most convincing tone, “That’s because we entered you in all the debate events. I wasn’t thinking straight. You’re an interper, Ren, I can see that clearly now, it’s your calling.”

Kylo wrinkled up his face in disgust, “I thought you said all interpers were shallow self centered talentless pricks?”

Hux stared back at him for a few beats too many, blinked twice, and said “I don’t see your point.” Kylo turned to walk away, and Hux grabbed his shoulder. “Just think about it, will you?”

“Fine.” Kylo turned his head to look back at Hux. “I’ll think over it. After schools for Hamlet start today though, and a true art form like that takes time. I doubt the answer will be yes.”

Then, Kylo Ren walked away, pushing through the crowd of whispering voices on his way to class. 

He thought about it all throughout APUSH, turning the idea around in his mind. On one hand, it would take up time that could be better spent doing other things. On the other hand, he was grounded for life, so it wasn’t like he had many better things to do anyway. It would give him an actual excuse to get out of the house and spend some more time with his best friend, something he hadn’t been able to do much in light of recent events. Also, interp is basically a mini play where Kylo would play every character. There would be no chance of Poe upstaging him if Kylo was the only one in the show.

But he would have to wear an uncomfortable suit again and be around all those pretentious fucks in the speech and debate world. He could see the appeal for Hux, standing around in a stiff suit discussing politics and how great Hux was. He could tell Hux missed the competition, and if he had an outlet for it again maybe he would stop going so hard in the election. It would certainly give Rey a break.

Not that that factors into his decision in any way.

He sighed, and placed his head on his desk. He’d made up his mind a long time ago, hadn’t he? He was going to become an interper.

He sat down with Hux at lunch with the news, then asked “What exactly does this entail?”

“Well,” Hux said, pulling out a stack of rules and regulations. “Read through all these in your spare time, and then of course you’ll need to start pulling pieces. You should start with a prose, which is just any section from a book that you will read and perform. I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing a humorous interpretation acting piece of Mein Kampf, and you might be interested in doing Anne Frank again, since you loved being in that play so much. You would have to spend most of the piece acting as a woman, but you do that enough in your normal life so I doubt it would make much of a difference.”

“Wait, what did you just say?”

“I said you’re basically a woman.”

Kylo shook his head, “No, not that, earlier.”

“Oh.” Hux cut a piece off of his pizza with a knife and fork and took a bite. “I said I’m doing a humorous interpretation of Mein Kampf.”

Kylo Ren stared at his friend in horror, then stood up, leaving his pizza behind. “I’m...uh...going to go check out some books from the library. I’ll see if maybe I can find some stuff there, but...uh...yeah.”

Hux looked minorly confused, but shrugged and returned to eating his pizza anyway.

Sometimes Kylo thought he needed different friends.

Chapter Text

Theatre was always an escape. It was a safe haven, a heaven on earth, a time to shine, and a place to let go. Kylo Ren loved nothing more than to hide his life under the stage makeup and costuming, burying both his past and present under the comforting blanket of borrowed sins. It was a time for him to forget everything-- the darkness inside him, the war eternally waging in his heart and soul, the sexual tension between friends and foes, his shitty home life-- everything, instead replacing all his fears and hopes and dreams with those of whatever character he took on.

He considered himself a method actor, and some days got a little too into his parts. He was the Daniel Day Lewis of his time. He was Heath Ledger, locking himself in his apartment for months at a time descending into madness. He was Shia LeBouf, dropping acid out of dedication to the arts. There was no one in the world who understood method acting more than Kylo Ren.

But goddamn it was hard to get into character as Gentlemen #1. He tried to create a backstory for himself-- his wife had a mistress, and he himself was slowly falling for character of Polonius due to his wisdom and total daddy aesthetic-- but it still didn’t seem to make his character any more authentic. He was constantly told, “Ben, stop upstaging Poe,” and “Ben, you’re dimly lit in this scene for a reason,” and “Ben, why are you even onstage during this scene it’s supposed to be a soliloquy.”

A pig wearing a suit would do a better job directing the show, and he was sick and tired of people underestimating his talent as Poe stole the show once again.

He mainly sat in the back during rehearsals. Though he was supposed to be going over lines, he didn’t actually have any of those. He did homework instead, and even browsed the internet for a bit, looking closer into some of the interp rules Hux talked to him about. As he was browsing through the online school library, he heard their director praising Poe some more. She went on and on about the raw outpouring of emotion he seemed to have during Ophelia’s funeral scene, to which Poe simply replied, “Thanks, I’m a method actor.”

Kylo slammed his laptop shut, looking at the time on his stupid new flip phone. Two more hours of after school rehearsal.

He shot Hux a text. Sure, he was still kind of pissed at him for what went down earlier, but he could admit he was being a little bit petty, and it wouldn’t do him much good to alienate one of his only friends. He could text Phasma, but hanging out with her without Hux was a little bit terrifying.

hey , u busy after skool? ;3

Hux didn’t respond. Two minutes later, Kylo sent another text.

theatre really blows. might swing by starbucks after if ur there

No response.

sometimes ur really a dick u know that? i cant tell if ur ignoring me or not and if u wanna b srs about r friendship u cant just ignore me i am fragile and i dont lyk--

Hux responded, and Kylo deleted the draft.

Ren, you like theater, you never shut up about it. Also, I thought you were grounded. Also, you owe your parents a thousand dollars, are you sure you should be spending all your money at Starbucks? I’ll just come over tonight after your mom is asleep and we can go out.

Hux used the wrong spelling of theatre, and Kylo didn’t respond.

“Ben, get off your phone. I expect you to take theatre seriously in this class, and if you continue to be disrespectful to your fellow actors I will be forced to replace you,” His director snapped at him from across the room. Of course. Now she acknowledges his existence.

He couldn’t wait to just go home. When had his place of greatest freedom become his personal prison? Probably when Poe joined. Screw that guy.

When he got home that night, he found that Leia had made one of his favorite dinners in the entire world. Honestly, he felt that his mother couldn’t really cook at all, but she did make some of the best casseroles in the entire world. While many kids would turn up their nose at a good casserole, Kylo Ren couldn’t get enough of them. Today, it was a sour cream enchilada casserole.

Considering the god awful day he’d had, it was the most welcome sight he’d ever seen. He sat down at the table. He was willing to survive another awkward Poe-Leia-Kylo “family dinner,” if only for the blessing that would be the mexican goodness about to grace his taste buds, when the most unappetizing dish was placed in front of him.

He stared at it for fifteen seconds, then looked up at Leia. “What the fuck is this?”

“Ben,” Leia said in a firm voice, “I don’t condone that kind of language in this house and you know it. You’re walking a thin line.”

Poe smiled and took a bite of his delicious looking casserole, looking Kylo directly in the eye.  

Kylo, meanwhile, looked back down at the “food” placed in front of him. The cauliflower chickpea patties stared back at him, not blinking nor backing down. Obviously, you know, because they didn’t have any fucking eyes. He didn’t know whether to ask for a bun to at least eat them burger-style, or run as fast as he could in the other direction. He prayed to Darth Vader, hoping the very floor he rested on would open up and swallow him whole deep into the pits of hell, perhaps even taking Poe and his now clearly sadistic mother with him. He took a bite, and his life flashed before his eyes. Never had been this close to the grave. A single tear rolled down his cheek, as he took one last mournful look at the casserole that was so close and yet so far out of his grasp.

He pushed his plate away. “I’m not very hungry. This looks like shit.”

Leia set down her fork, and cleared her throat. “You told me you were a vegan, and I was finally proud of you for taking a stand and being an activist about something. I try so hard to support you, Ben, but every day you make it more and more difficult. I spent the last two hours going out of my way to make this special vegan recipe for you, and this is how you repay me? No, you’re going to eat the meal I prepared for you and you will not leave this table until your plate is cleared, do you understand me?”

Kylo’s eyes stung, and he closed them tight, willing his tears to stay away. He opened them, stared down Leia, and took another bite. He would not go gentle into that good night. He would not go down without a fight. Rage, Kylo, Rage against the dying of the light. He took yet another bite.

On one hand, he could sit here all night if he had to. He could see who backed down first, him or Leia, although he knew that in the end it would be him. What was she going to do, stay up all night just to make sure he didn’t leave the table? Then again, that would mean he would miss out on sneaking out with Hux tonight after dark.

He could flip her off and run upstairs. It’s not like she could ground him any more than he already was, nor could he disappoint her more than he already had.

He could give up and eat the damn chickpea patties, but he actually valued his life and didn’t really feel like dying today. He could open up to his mom and explain that he lied about being vegan, but somehow that too felt like a loss. Besides, he couldn’t do it right now in front of Poe, facing his smug face as his mother lectured him yet again.

Then again, he would have to come out as a carnivore eventually. His birthday was sneaking up soon, and he refused to be stuck eating some sort of gross vegan concoction on his special day.

He took a deep breath. He had lasted a single day before giving up, but he had to surrender. He had to face the truth, and embrace honesty. It was time. She would be angry, sure, and he would be punished, sure, but in the end all martyrs had to die to have a place in history. That was what made them martyrs after all, and that’s exactly what Kylo was: a martyr, dying for his beliefs. His belief that his dad was a piece of shit who couldn’t cook worth a dime.

“Leia,” He said, not having it in him to refer to her as ‘mom’, even in such a time as this, “I’m not really a vegan.”

Her face fell. An entire night of cooking wasted.

“So you lied? You’re not really into activism? Ben--”

“Kylo Ren,” He corrected.

“Ben,” She repeated.

“Poe,” Poe said.

“Why on earth would you lie about being a vegan? It’s getting to the point where it’s hard to trust a single word that comes out of your mouth, and at a certain point it’s almost like you lie for sport. I almost think it’s time to put you in therapy.”

Kylo snarled at the suggestion, but caught and put on a more calm face almost immediately after. He refused to validate her fears.

“You don’t understand. You never understand me,” He snapped back, refusing to deal with her judgment at the dinner table for yet another night.

She took her napkin out of her lap and placed it on the table, done with both her dinner and her son. “I understand that you can’t seem to be honest with me or your father about anything in your life.”

“Mom--”

“And furthermore, you let me go out and spend a fortune on vegan cookbooks because I was trying to connect with you, and you could not even give me the decency of sparing me the trouble.”

“Just listen to me--”

Poe took another bite of his casserole.

Leia continued, “I just don’t understand why anymore, nor do I really want to, but if you continue--”

“ Mom!” Kylo finally yelled, slamming his hands down onto the table, “Dad was trying to make me eat his sushi!”

She stared at him, blinking a few times. Then, much to his surprise, she burst into laughter.

Poe, who was awaiting another massive shitstorm, stared in disbelief. So did Kylo.

“Mom?” He said in confusion, almost worried.

“He did that on our first date, you made a good call. We did get divorced for a reason after all.” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood, ending family dinner.

“So...just to clarify...he’s not getting in trouble?” Poe asked.

“No, he’s not getting into trouble,” Leia said, eliciting a sigh of relief from Kylo. “In fact, I’ll take you to Barnes and Noble tomorrow to take back those cookbooks. We’ll keep this little secret from your father, alright?”

Kylo just nodded, feeling for the first time in a very long time a strange sort of connection to his mother.

Chapter Text

Kylo Ren woke up without his alarm clock to help him, eyes springing to attention faster than an uncomfortable boner during an especially spicy episode of a tentacle porn Hentai.

He put on his best outfit, making a careful effort to perfect his eyeliner and wear his favorite scarf-- the one that billowed behind him almost like a cape when he walked.

With every step he took, he only had one single thought on his mind: tomorrow is my birthday! He went downstairs to scarf down his breakfast before school, leaving little post-it notes around the kitchen that said nothing more than “tomorrow is my birthday. --kylo” and when he got to school, he made sure he told every single person that he passed.

He’d even made little flyers. They said Kylo Ren’s Birthday. Remember. in big block letters with the date underneath it. It looked ominous, and he loved it.

He’d had way too many “my family forgot my birthday” moments in the past, and there was no way he was ever taking a risk with it ever again. The first time was a fluke. The second time was a misunderstanding. The third time was an accident. The fourth time was a mistake. And last time? Last time he swore that it would never happen again. Ever since then, he’s taken every precaution to make sure that no one around him could ever possibly forget what day it was.

Unfortunately, that meant that the day before his birthday was perhaps the loneliest day of the year. All of his friends avoided him like the plague because of his non-stop “casual reminders,” and he couldn’t find them if he tried. Instead, he went to the library to browse for a solid prose piece during lunch.

The thought occurred to him that he could do Hamlet. It might be nice to be the star for once. In ten minutes, he would do the entire play better than Poe could do it in hours. Then again, that meant he would have to cut the entire play down to ten minutes. He browsed for about an hour, but never found anything that he could even consider using. Honestly? He didn’t even know where to start. Like most other things in his life, he gave up shortly and decided to try and pick it back up again later.

When Kylo Ren went back to work at the shop after his after school rehearsal for Hamlet, he was surprised to find that he was actually maybe possibly a little bit excited to see Rey. She looked up at him when he walked through the door, and smiled without seeming to realize it.

Not that that meant anything. They were still enemies, completely. Rey smiled at everyone. Everyone.

He nodded in greeting at her, and went to sit behind the secretary desk to procrastinate on all the busy work he got paid for. Finally, as if he couldn’t take it anymore, he looked up to say “By the way, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s my birthday tomorrow.” He looked down again and returned to cutting business cards.

“I know.” Rey said, causing him to almost stop completely out of shock. No one ever remembered his birthday without a reminder.

“No you didn’t.” He said, “You’re just saying you knew so you wouldn’t look bad.” Then again, why would she care about looking good to him and not hurting his feelings anyway? Kylo Ren would have forgotten her birthday on purpose, even if he did remember it. In fact, he often had.

“Of course I know. It’s the same day every year, isn’t it?” She replied, turning her full attention to the car again.

Kylo stared at her, mouth open as he lacked things to say. Noticing, he closed his mouth and shook his head, clearing it from all thoughts of Rey. Even if she had known it was his birthday tomorrow, that didn’t mean she actually cared. He busied himself by pulling up a library database on the shop’s desktop to take another shot at browsing for pieces. It’s times like these he wished he was actually a big reader….

“What are you doing?” Rey asked, putting one hand on his shoulder from behind. He yelped, and then quickly tried to cover it up with a sneeze. He’d been so lost in his work he hadn’t even realized she’d gotten up to take a break.

She mercifully decided not to comment on the sound.

“It’s a speech team thing, you wouldn’t understand.”

She leaned forward to get a closer look on what he was doing on the computer. “It looks like you’re just looking up books to me. What are you looking for?”

He quickly closed the tab and spun around in his chair to face her. “I get that you’re trying to be all helpful, God knows why, but I don’t think you can help me with this. I’m just trying to find books to turn into acting pieces for this competition, and I know you’re not much of a reader.”

“I actually really like reading!” Rey said.

Kylo scoffed. “But your bookshelf selection sucks.”

Rey paused, a curious look coming over her face as she asked “How do you know what my bookshelf selection looks like?” Before realizing she didn't really want to know. “Never mind. I have a kindle,” she explained, “and I can probably help you out.”

“I don't want your help,” he snapped back.

“Alright, if you're fine with performing The Littlest Hitler, because I swear that's what Hux is going to come up with. Or maybe you want to revive your Freshman performance in Diary of Anne Frank?”

“No!” He said quickly. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Fine. What do you have?”

She looked at him for a very long time, uncomfortably long actually, and he was just about to yell “spit it out already” when she finally said, “How about you come to the library with me after we get off work and I’ll help you pick out something nice?”

He considered telling her to fuck off and let him do it himself, before remembering how excited Hux would be to micromanage the entire thing for him. The image of him starring as Anne Frank in a horrible and more than slightly offensive parody of one of the most beloved novels of all time at a competition where he was already barely allowed to be there flashed into his mind, and he knew he needed any outside help he could get. He sighed.

“That….sounds nice.” Sure, it sounded like the words were being slowly pulled out of his throat, but at least he said them.

And that’s how he ended up spending the night before the most important night of the year at the library with his sworn nemesis.

It was wild how he wouldn’t be let out of the house for anything other than school and work, but the second he mentioned Rey was taking him to the library it was suddenly fine for him to be out and about. They trusted her explicitly, and it almost made him decide to turn in for the evening anyway. Still, she was extraordinarily patient with him, and...he was getting to the point where a little bit of extra patience was exactly what he needed.

“Honestly? I know usually no one likes reading memoirs all that much, especially people our age, but considering the way you’ve described interp it seems like the best possible place to pull pieces would be from a memoir. Camp out in this section for a while, and you will find something that speaks to you.”

“Will I?” He asked.

“Yes,” She nodded firmly. “I believe with complete confidence that you have to have some interests outside of early 2000s scene music and being an asshole. What does Ben like?”

“Ben is dead.” He said, flipping through a few of the books on the shelf.

“Sure thing Taylor Swift,” she muttered, “You hang out here then, not-Ben and browse through some of these. I want to take a peak in the early brit lit section for a bit.”

He nodded a single time, and she wandered off in a different direction. When she returned, she was surprised to find that he actually did have a book in his hands. Her expression brightened immediately.  

“Did you find one that spoke to you?” She asked.

“I think I did,” He responded.

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

“So…” She said, “Are you ready to go, then?”

He looked around the library for a bit, and then, realizing he didn’t have any other business to attend to, looked back at her with a disappointed frown. “Yeah, I guess I am then. Thanks for helping me out, I guess.”

“Do you need a ride home?” She asked, realizing again that he didn’t have a car.

“No, I can walk,” He responded quickly.

“But I gave you a ride here,” She insisted, “It’s not a problem.”

“I want to walk. I have to get my steps in.” He glanced at his wrist.

“Oh, do you have a fitbit or something?”

“No,” He said again, a little too quickly. “I count them. My steps. I just count my steps. As I walk. I have to get them in. A certain number that I count to when I walk. It’s multitasking. It’s a whole thing. My birthday is tomorrow. Goodnight.”

And with that, he turned and marched out the library door.

In his room, there was a single book light attached to his bed. Around the light, a single solitary moth was flitting around it, going closer and closer every second and then drawing back. He couldn’t stop staring at it, no matter how hard he tried. He knew he had other things to do, but he couldn’t make himself do any of them.

“Kyle, why are you staring at that light?” Poe asked from across the room, pausing from memorizing his lines, “You’re going to give yourself a headache like that.”

“It’s me,” Kylo responded blankly, not even bothering to correct him about the name.

“The light?” Poe scrunched his nose in confusion.

“No dumbass, the moth,” Kylo responded, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Poe was still struggling to understand it. “You are...the moth?”

Kylo just nodded from his spot on the bed, still not taking his eyes off the lamp.

“Care to elaborate?”

“It naturally gravitates toward the very thing which kills them,” Kylo said, as if in a trance. “Why do they do that, Poe?”

Poe sighed a great, deep, melancholy sigh and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Of course it was just another over dramatic moment from overemotional foster brother. What else?

He went back to memorizing his lines without even commenting on the existential crisis happening across from him, and Kylo Ren stared at that moth until the moment he finally drifted off into sleep.

Chapter Text

One of the worst parts of Kylo Ren’s birthday was that, unlike other teenagers, Kylo didn’t even get the benefit of receiving money in the mail from his grandpa.

The next worst part of Kylo Ren’s birthday was the singing. That god-awful singing that came once a year yet haunted his dreams for months afterwards.

“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday Ben Solo! Happy Birthday to you.” His mother and father sang to him. Poe stood in the corner with Finn and Rey, all singing together in perfect Harmony. His uncle Luke had respectfully declined the invitation by sending it straight back to them unopened in the mail as he had since the day Kylo Ren had ‘accidentally’ set his martial arts studio on fire rather than attend another class. The cake was vanilla, which was not his favorite flavor. Knowing his mother's cooking, it was probably dry and bland anyway.

Seeing his mother and father together in the same room was always strange, and it usually only happened on Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, or anytime they felt their son needed a stern talking to.

Hux wasn’t there, because in the Solo-Organa household, “special birthday dinners are reserved for family!” Apparently Poe and Rey counted as family, and Kylo Ren still wasn’t sure why Finn was there. Kylo Ren knew the truth-- Hux wasn’t there because Han and Leia felt that Hux was a “bad influence” and distrusted him to the fullest extent. Kylo Ren couldn’t imagine why.

So there he was, in the center of a room full of people he hated as they all sang to him, a stupid party hat attached to his head.

Poe’s cat jumped up on the table and began to lick at Kylo’s cake.

“BB-8, no !” He yelled, racing to the table and lifting the cat off of the cake. Kylo Ren’s face wrinkled in disgust, but he actually sent a silent prayer to the heavens that he now had a more valid excuse to avoid eating his birthday cake.

“You all sing off-key.” Kylo Ren stated, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at his family members. It wasn’t true. Rey had a voice like an angel, Poe was  musical theatre god, and Finn was shockingly good at harmonies. His dad and mom tried at least. Still, ‘you all sing off key’ was as close to a compliment as Kylo Ren could get.

“I’m so sorry about your cake, Ben.” Leia said, coming up behind him and placing a hand on his shoulder. Kylo wriggled away from the hand, taking a step to the left.

“I don’t care.” He shrugged, voice cold.

Han clapped his hands together, shouting “I bet we still have some ice cream in the fridge!” in a pleasant voice. The holy trinity followed him into the kitchen, eyes wide and smiling.

“Come on, honey. Let’s go get some ice cream. Everything will be okay, see? It’s your birthday, after all.” Leia said in her comforting mom voice.

“I’m lactose intolerant!” Kylo Ren snapped, completely losing his composure. His mother didn’t flinch or shy away. Her son’s tantrums were saddening, sure, but she worked at a school. She had seen much scarier things. “ God! I hate this fucking family.”

“Ben!” Han called from the next room. “Don’t speak to your mother that way.”

“And you’d think,” Kylo Ren continued, “That my family would at least get my name right on my fucking birthday. ”

Han and the terrible trio emerged from the kitchen with their bowls of ice cream.

    Still, despite it all, Kylo was thankful for his birthday because it meant that his mother pulled out the lighter to light his candles...and forgot to put it away.

Kylo Ren wasn’t allowed near lighters very often-- not after the incident-- but it was his birthday, and he deserved it.

He pocketed the lighter as soon as he knew no one was looking, then immediately stomped upstairs to his room with it, pulling out a bucket that he knew wouldn’t melt and grabbing a stack of Poe’s old papers, lighting them on fire one by one by one, burning away any thought he had except for the beauty of the fire licking up the paper, consuming it whole. He grinned, the fire lighting up his face as it provided the only source of light in the room.

He could hear the merriment downstairs continue despite it all. At least Kylo could admire their persistence in not letting Kylo Ren spoil his own special day for them. He hadn’t wanted anyone to come up after him, and in fact he would have only been anxious and angry if someone had, but he still felt shorted knowing that an effort to coax him back down hadn’t even been made.

His constant reminders had made sure no one ever forgot his birthday, but they hadn’t managed to guarantee no one would forget him on his birthday. And since it was a Saturday, that meant he didn’t even have the benefit of Hux and Phasma celebrating with him. He hadn’t even gotten to see them all day, and Hux hadn’t even written him a Facebook message or posted a picture of them together on Instagram. Even Poe had posted pictures of them together on Instagram, although Kylo hadn’t been smiling in a single one of them.

Then, as if coming in on cue to wrench him out of his despair, he heard the noise of a single rock hitting his window. He looked up, immediately grabbing a water bottle and putting out the flames.

Leia needed to invest in a new fire detector, all things considered. Perhaps he should bring it up to her sometime.

He heard another rock, and walked over to investigate. He wrenched open the window, and another rock hit him right in the forehead.

“Fuck . What was that!?” He asked, scream-whispering out the window. Another rock hit him in the face.

“ Who is that?” He called again.

“Nobody.” He heard Hux’s voice calling out from the shadows.

“Hux, I know it’s you. I’d recognize your voice anywhere.”

Hux stepped out into the light, the porch light perfectly reflecting off of his face to make him look like some kind of a Greek god. Kylo Ren’s savior.

Hux acknowledged him with a curt nod.  

“How did you get down there? Why did you get down there? If either of my parents see you here they’ll kill you.”

“It doesn’t--” He stopped and cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter if they kill me, I’m always looking for an excuse to die.”

“ Hux! ”

“It was a joke. Jesus Ren, calm down and come down. I could honestly care less what your parents think of me. Besides, most other parents love me.”

“Do they?” He asked, skeptical.

“No.”

“Listen,” Kylo finally said, after staring at Hux for a solid four seconds. “I love having you here, I really do, but now is...not really the time. At all. It’s too rash, too sudden--”

“--Too like the lightning which doth cease to be ‘ere one can say it lightens?” Hux finished.

Kylo just blinked back at him, confused. “No, that’s not exactly where I was going with that, but go off and be pretentious I guess.”

“I thought you were making a reference. I won’t apologize for your lack of culture.”

“ Anyway ,” Kylo Ren said, shutting the window.

“Wait!” Hux yelled before it shut all the way. Kylo lifted it back up again, unused to seeing Hux actually care this much about talking to him. “Is that all you’re going to give me?”

“What else do you want from me?” Kylo asked, lifting an eyebrow and crossing his arms.

Hux paused, face turning red as he took one single step back into the darkness again. It took Hux a little bit too long to formulate a response.

“I want to….take you out for your birthday?”

“You actually want to celebrate my birthday with me?” He asked, surprised. “I thought you hated birthdays. You said it was a capitalist scam to get you to celebrate another ordinary day closer to death. Hux, if this is a prank, I swear--”

“It’s not a prank, Ren.” He could hear Hux rolling his eyes. “Just come down here so me and Phasma can take you to McDonalds or something.”

So he did.

A half hour later they were all sitting in a booth in the back of a McDonald’s, with Kylo Ren holding firm to the belief that it’s always better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Besides, what were they going to do, ground him?

Hux made a steeple of his fingers, a serious expression on his face as he sat across from Kylo Ren. He took a deep breath, and Kylo Ren began to get a bit nervous as to what exactly was about to come out of his best friends mouth.

“Your music taste sucks.” Hux finally said plainly.

Kylo Ren just gaped. “Wait, is this an intervention? On my birthday?” A look of betrayal painted his face.

“Don’t try to argue with me,” Hux continued, “I know you collect band tees like Phasma collects Freshman tears, but just because a thing has a lot of merchandise for sale doesn’t mean the thing is good. Take, for example, Superwholock--”

“I don’t--”

“I know, I know,” Hux shushed him, “You grew out of that phase. I think it’s time you grew out of emo rock bands from the early 2000s as well.”

“Ren, you’re 17 now,” Phasma added, “Hux is right. It’s time for you to by some new CDs. We can help you.”

“It’s probably better than whatever the hell you two listen to!” Kylo Ren crossed his arms over his chest defensively, leaning back in his chair as if to prove himself disinterested by Hux’s cruel words. Then, upon thinking about it further, he realized he had never really figured out what kind of music Hux listened to. “What do you listen to anyways?” He asked, a look of disgust crossing his face.

“My favorite band is Sabaton.”

Kylo Ren pulled out his phone, quickly googling the band before staring up at Hux again with a bored yet disappointed expression on his face. “A swedish heavy metal band that sings exclusively about historical battles... I am disappointed but not surprised.”

Hux merely shrugged. Phasma steered the conversation back on track. “So if I give you some new CDs for your birthday do you promise you’ll listen to them? For our sake, if nothing else.”

“Why can’t you just love me for who I am?” Kylo grumbled.

“You know we love you,” Phasma began, making Kylo Ren smile, “we just don’t like you very much sometimes.”

The smile disappeared.

“I can’t believe I’m being attacked, in my own home, on my special day,” Kylo grumbled, taking a McNugget and shoving it into his mouth.

“Excellent, now that that’s out of the way,” Phasma said in an emotionless voice that was still relatively cheery as far as Phasma was concerned, “Let’s get fucked up.”

She pulled out a pipe and a bag of weed, saying “It’s Cloud 9” as she began packing the pipe.

“Oh, I don’t--” Before Kylo Ren had even finished, Phasma had pulled a brownie out of her bag and slid it across the table over at him. He smiled, and began unwrapping it.

It was almost midnight on Kylo Ren’s 17th birthday, and as it came to a close he spent the last remaining moments with his two best friends getting high in the back of a McDonald’s in the middle of the night, surrounded by hobos. Yeah, he would get in huge trouble when he got home at 7am on a Sunday morning, but in that McDonald’s in the moment he felt like God.

Chapter Text

“You really hurt Leia last night by sneaking off like that on your birthday. It’s not just your day you know, it’s an anniversary for her, too.”

“Yeah?” Kylo replied, turning away from Poe so that his body was facing the wall rather than his foster brother’s desk. “I’m sure she’ll get over it.”

“Her and Han seemed kind of angry.”

 “What are they going to do?” Kylo scoffed, “Ground me?”

He could hear Poe take a breath, about to launch into some sort of guilt-tripping monologue that his mother probably put him up to and cut him off before he got the chance.

 “Can you spare me this right now? I feel like shit. I didn’t realize hangovers could be this bad and I would appreciate some peace and quiet considering I’ll probably die in a few hours, and then you’ll be sorry. You’ll all be sorry. I bet you might even cry at my funeral.”

“You can’t get hangovers from smoking weed, Kyle.” He could hear the eye roll in Poe’s voice. He picked up his second pillow and put it over his head, trying to block out any other sounds and light. Can’t get hangovers from getting high? Tell that to his hangover.

“Anyway,” Poe continued, completely unphased by Kylo Ren’s dramatics, “She wants to talk to you downstairs. That’s what I came to tell you. Your dad’s here too.”

Kylo Ren was disappointed to find that he could still hear Poe through his pillow.

He finally got around to shuffling downstairs to confront his parents so that he could listen to another forty-five minute lecture about how worried they were and how out of line it was and how they’re going to put bars on his window so he can’t sneak out anymore but how they’re doing it for his protection because they care about him. He successfully got through it without openly laughing at their efforts to be decent parents.

He considered mentioning to them that if they really wanted him to stop sneaking out they should really start keeping better track of him. Because honestly? If they’d spent more time with him or acted interested in him in the slightest, maybe he wouldn’t need to sneak out as much. He wouldn’t mention that though, because he was a little afraid the suggestion would prompt them into deciding to force him to participate in family bonding activities.  Individually with each of his parents, of course, because they aren’t an actual family since they both gave up on him and on each other.

You know what? No, fuck them, he is going to bring it up to them.

“Maybe if you’d paid more attention to me last night and made an effort to include me and make me feel important on my actual birthday, I wouldn’t have felt a need to slip away. Maybe if you’d called me by the name I prefer to be called and knew enough about me to make me a cake I would actually like, maybe if you remembered I’m lactose intolerant and bought me ice cream I could actually eat, maybe if you respected the fact that Poe, Finn, and Rey aren’t nice to me and I’m not comfortable with them around and I would have rather it just been us, or at least just us and Poe, and maybe if you didn’t treat me like such a fucking inconvenience every other day of the year I would have had a good enough time on my birthday to hang around.” He’d rushed through the sentence without taking a single breath. And honestly? This much honestly exhausted him.

He wasn’t done yet though. “At the very least you could stand to be less hypocritical and stop throwing double standards at me all the time. You say it’s going to be a family-only birthday so I can’t invite my two best friends, and then you let people show up who aren’t even family just because they’re friends with Poe. Just be honest with me and say you hate my friends.”

“Okay,” Han said, “I hate your friends.”

Kylo stares at them. He just stares.

Was that…seriously all they got out of this conversation?

Leia looks kind of like she’s been hit by a car though, and Kylo Ren doesn’t feel as satisfied about it as he thought he’d be.

He turned around to storm back up to his room so that he wouldn’t have to put up with any more of this bullshit. He assumed the lecture portion of their talk had concluded.

Before he got more than one or two steps away, however, something happened that froze him completely.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, about this at least, and I’m so sorry.”

Kylo almost couldn’t believe it. His mother was actually admitting he was right and apologizing to him. He never in a million years thought this would happen and now that it had he isn’t sure how he should respond to it.

Han fills the silence, “We could have tried harder to make your birthday about you. But B—” He stops before calling him Ben, for once respecting Kylo’s wish to leave that name behind him. Kylo does notice his dad still doesn’t call him by his new name. He doesn’t say a name at all. “But I don’t want you to ever think that we don’t care about you. It’s true I may not always be the best at showing it, but I love you more than you know. I may not always know how to connect with you anymore, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

Okay, the disbelief grows more and more each time his parents speak.

He’s not entirely sure he isn’t dreaming. Is this just some weird dream as a result of last night’s weed? Or are his parents actually…saying they love him genuinely and trying to be good parents…

“I…uh…” Kylo Ren coughs a bit, not because he needs to but because he wants to fill the silence, “I actually have to go back upstairs and work on a speech. I…I love you too.”

He spins around before he has the chance to look at either of their faces and speed walks all the way back upstairs to his room without looking back.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck.

That was the weirdest conversation he’s ever had with either of his parents.

Is it because he actually opened up about his feelings?

Is that what happens with honest and healthy communication?

Was that considered an honest and healthy conversation?

He had a lot to think about, but instead, he headed straight for his bed and threw the covers over his head before Poe had the chance to see him. He knows he just woke up. It seems a bit unreasonable to go back to bed right away. But halfway up the stairs he thought he’d started to cry and that’s something he abso-fucking-lutely didn’t want to be dealing with right now.

He’ll just sleep it off with a nap, like a headache. Can you sleep off crying? Is that possible? He tries it for about twenty minutes, then finally emerges to pull out that memoir he’d gotten from the library with Rey so that he can have something to read instead while he tries to calm down and repress his emotions.

It worked a little bit. He mentally thanked Rey, then remembered he hated Rey and mentally took it back, then remembered there is no God, so no one is hearing his thoughts anyway and it doesn’t matter what he does mentally.

He does actually have to start writing that speech he told his parents he needed to start writing, though. With everything else going on between the whole ‘rejoining the speech team’ thing and the ‘operation have a good birthday for once’ thing he almost let the election slip his mind.

Almost.

But tomorrow they were giving speeches, and unlike Hux, he hadn’t begun writing his final speech the second he decided to run in the first place. Kylo doesn’t want to call it procrastination because he’s not a procrastinator, not like Poe who does everything at the last minute and somehow still manages to pull everything off. He’s not a procrastinator because it’s not like he never thinks about it. He has creative ideas floating around his brain all the time.

He just waits to write them down.

Until the last minute.

Like a procrastinator.

Shit.

He has one Sunday to write the best campaign speech in the history of campaign speeches. Maybe he should look some up to get some ideas. He doesn’t want to sound too derivative though. It should come from the heart.

He can do this. He’ll be fine. He can absolutely do this.

Chapter Text

Backstage, a few minutes before the candidates began giving their final speeches, Kylo Ren paced back and forth rehearsing exactly what he was about to say, putting inflections on different words each time he practiced a sentence. He feels confident enough. He spent hours the night before preparing the best speech ever written, so he really sees no reason why this won’t all turn out in his favor.

“Well Madam President,” He hears Finn say as he walks backstage with Rey, “Are you nervous for your big speech?”

“I’m not nervous at all, actually. I started working on it a few weeks ago and went to some of the teachers in the speech department to ask for their feedback on my delivery.”

“You shouldn’t call her Madam President if she isn’t even president,” Kylo sneers. “Excessive arrogance isn’t a good look on you.”

“You must be an expert in it, huh?” Finn shoots back, “I forgot it’s your favorite attitude to wear.”

Before Kylo has the chance to come back with something devastating and witty, Phasma pokes her head backstage to tell Finn it’s his turn to speak.

“Break a leg!” Rey yells.

“God, I hope not. I’ve got a game this week.”

“Actually,” Kylo Ren says with a very smug smile, “Break a leg doesn’t actually refer to breaking any actual body part. It’s a reference to the curtains on the sides of the stage which are also called legs. They used to be poorly built in older theatres and because of that, if the applause was loud enough the legs would literally break and the stage would fall apart. It’s basically a saying to express a wish that the recipient of the compliment do a good enough job that the applause—”

“Ren.” He’s cut off by Hux.

“Yes?”

“No one cares.”

Kylo looks around. It’s true. Rey stopped paying attention ages ago and Finn wasn’t even around anymore.

“Can you keep it down?” Rey asks, “I’m trying to hear Finn’s speech.”

“Whatever,” Kylo mutters. He pops in his airpods. Hux is too busy rehearsing his speech to pay any attention to him anyway. He got these airpods for his birthday and they’re already his new favorite possession.

He cranks up “American Idiot” to get in the political mood. He tries not to worry. He feels confident in his speech. So what if Rey’s been practicing hers for longer? She still probably doesn’t have anything of value to say.

Before he knew it, Phasma was back and prompting Hux to make his entrance. He pops out one of his airpods and moves closer to the stage to try and get a good enough view of Hux’s speech.

Hux practically glided onto the stage, approaching the microphone looking cool, collected, and put together. His hair was slicked back, and he’d gone all out wearing an all-black suit and tie. Kylo Ren, who was wearing a matching all-black suit and tie (plus, much to Hux’s chagrin, eyeliner), clapped as he approached the mic. Everyone else remained silent, waiting...afraid…

“Friends...acquaintances...peers...” Silence. The most respect any speaker on the stage during an assembly has had in ages. “Today is the end of Finn’s bid for the presidency. The end of the chances of a regime that acquiesces to disorder. At this very moment, my opponent plans to lie to us students while secretly supporting the treachery of his preferred presidential candidate, Rey. This fierce speech, which I will now recite to you all, will bring an end to their lies and trickery, to their cherished broken policies and promises. All remaining candidates will bow to me as Vice President and will remember this as the last day of Finn and Rey!”

Kylo Ren, Phasma, and the entire speech and debate team cheered their assent. Hux nodded in their direction and continued.

“For those who do not know me, I am Armitage Hux, and I will be your next Vice President. I am a reliable, honest, transparent, and responsible candidate. My opponent is nothing but a mouthpiece for his boyfriend and lover, making him fickle and easily manipulated. This school needs strong leaders to fight for the rights of its students, providing all with the ability to be heard and represented, not someone who can be bribed and coerced into doing something for the specific interests of one group. This administration needs a VP with strength, good organizational skills, maturity, and strong rhetoric. I possess all of these traits. It’s time to bring order and structure to a high school that has recently fallen to chaos. I will usher us all into a new age if you have the intellectual ability to acknowledge me as the one true candidate and elect me.”

He stares into the audience as if expecting them to know this was the end of his speech and applaud the appropriate amount. It takes a minute, but finally, someone catches on and realizes the speech is over.

The room responds in polite applause, with Kylo Ren yelling his support from behind the stage.

Finally, Phasma came for him, too.

“Kylo Ren, you’re up. Knock ‘em dead.”

She gave Kylo a slap on the back that knocked the air out of him for a hot second.  

“Thanks,” he hissed after finally catching his breath.

He walked onto the stage, attempting to exude a strong level of confidence and competency. This is fine. This is great. He’s Kylo Ren. He’s incredible. There’s no reason for him not to be elected.

He takes a deep breath.

“As most of you know, my name is Kylo Ren and I am running for class president,” Kylo Ren began, “I could ramble on and on using cute little jokes and fun anecdotes and inspirational sayings, but I know you all want to leave just as much as we do so I’ll attempt to make this brief and get to the actual point of what I intend to do when I am in office.”

He scans the crowd, taking in the sight in front of him. Phasma gives him a thumbs up from the front row, which is a fun contrast to her completely straight face. Kylo continues, “As President, I will help all of us fight for proper nutritious foods in the cafeteria. In practice, this means a removal of Michelle Obama’s disgusting snack machine replacements as well as extra pizza days each month. I will also fight to get you all the spirit days and funding distribution we all want. I will make sure that the debate team gets the funding it needs and that fine arts are treated equally to athletics regarding funding and recognition.”

He gives a pointed look toward Finn, who happens to be the poster child for every single sport in the world. He doesn’t think supporting the arts will make his popularity tank with the jocks of the school, but he did the math and they happen to be in the minority compared to the rest of the student body. Besides, with Rey on the soccer team and Finn doing everything else, it’s not like he has a shot winning their votes anyway.

“Also, on the topic of fine arts, I will make sure that casting in the theatre department is fair so that people other than Poe Dameron can get the chance to be cast in lead roles. Eliminating favoritism is a goal I hold close to my heart.”

Kylo scans the crowd again, just to make sure everyone is interested. It’s time for his closing arguments. “Finally, I will help hold fundraisers to move our school dance from the Gym to the Marriot ballroom so that we can have a Prom that’s actually decent for once, and I will also make sure that we get that long longed-for homecoming theme of Proms Over Baghdad.”

The small troubled minority who have been campaigning for that theme gives single loud “whoop!” noises from the back.

“I will make absolutely certain that college is free for everyone. Thank you very much, good night! And remember, Kylo lives matter.”

“FUCK Kylo Lives!” Finn shouts from the front row. There’s laughter and some scattered applause which Kylo Ren reacts to with a scowl (he’ll throw his tantrum later) and Kylo begrudgingly trudges off the stage to join him, Hux, and the few people running for insignificant officer positions whose names none of them had bothered to learn.

That was fine. That was totally fine.

Can he actually provide free college for everyone? No. No, he can’t. Would he provide free college for everyone given the opportunity? Absolutely not. But these lemmings are too dumb to realize that anyway, and it sounded like a good closer to end the speech with.

He’ll vandalize Finn’s locker later or something, and then he’ll pay.

Before he has the opportunity to ponder this too deeply, Rey takes the stage for her speech. Kylo is completely focused now, his eyes trained on her, taking her in completely and watching her mannerisms as she approaches the stage. He’s only paying such close attention because it’s important for him to get a full understanding of everything she says in this speech so that he can refute it in one-on-one conversations with on the fence voters right before the actual election.

As she begins speaking, he can see very clearly why she went to a teacher for help practicing the speech. It does sound professional and well delivered. Not that Kylo Ren needed any extra training like that. He was on the speech team after all.

She says something else and brushes a piece of hair out of her face. Her hair is down for once, which is interesting to Kylo because at this point he wasn’t even sure if her hair was capable of being down. He’s only ever seen it in those stupid buns because she’s never seen any purpose in letting her hair get in the way of things. She’s dressed up now, though. Professional. It’s a good look, not that he’s about to tell her that. Not that he thinks she looks good.

No ideas she has can be more thorough and well thought out than Kylo’s new initiatives. He’s sure she’s sweating on the inside, maybe tweaking bits of her speech on the spot because she knows how superior Kylo’s speech was.

What is he doing?

He can’t let his thoughts wander like this. He needs to focus. Focus. Listening to this speech is important, definitely, yeah. He tunes back in again to hear:

“Thank you very much!” followed by applause.

Did he just spend the entire speech thinking about her instead of what she was actually saying? Wait, was the applause for her more applause than the applause for him? If there’s more applause for her, is it because her speech was legitimately better than his speech, or is it because the conclusion of Rey’s speech means the conclusion of the assembly which means everyone gets to leave? Maybe her speech was so bad they’re just clapping because it’s over.

She crosses over to Kylo when she leaves the stage. She sticks her hand out, and he stands and shakes it.

“It’s all out of our hands now,” She says, sounding not half as worried as she should be, “May the best man win.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Kylo shoots back, “He will.”