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“Fine,” Hux says, shifting his shoulders and glancing away from the painfully eager expression on Ren. It’s an odd look to see outside the bedroom.
“Really?” Ren says, voice pitching high out of its usual tenor.
Did he ask thinking Hux would decline – did he not actually want him to come?
“If you’d like me to stay home, I can,” Hux says, glancing toward the far end of the house and ignoring a completely unjustifiable pang in his chest. He has work to do, but technically he always has work to do.
“No, no,” Ren says, one of his large hands curling around Hux’s back, just over a shoulder blade, and pulling him toward his garage. “You just – You never say yes. Ever.”
“You hardly ask,” Hux corrects, checking the time on his phone. He's meant to have a preliminary meeting with Phasma in a few hours, so she’ll notice if they go missing.
“You’re always mocking it,” Ren says, but his voice strangely lacks any of the usual bitterness.
Hux exhales, letting his eyes trail longingly as he's led past his GT-R. “I prefer a different sort of car.”
“Just get in,” Ren says, practically shoving him toward the barely road-legal Jeep. He’s been working on it for the last two hours, and Hux still isn’t quite sure why.
“You realize if I am in the car, I cannot be called to get you,” Hux says, glancing down at the black rock-sliders, a mockery of side-steps that actually hover mid-thigh and make him feel bizarrely short. He’s going to have literally climb in the bloody thing, and he’s never had to do it from the passenger side. The last time he’d been in it at all was to help Ren bleed the brakes.
“We won’t go anywhere too bad,” Ren says, somehow already inside and buckling up. At least he’s aware of one aspect of road-safety. “Stop being a kill-joy.”
Hux sighs, opening the door and grabbing the exposed edge of the roll-cage to pull himself in. He pulls at the seat belt, clipping it across his chest when Ren stares at him expectantly, and cannot help but glance down at the newly exposed nylon, realizing that it looks completely untouched, as if brand-new. “Did you replace the seatbelts?”
Ren glances at him, furrowing his brow and turning the key. “Not yet – do you think I should? A harness might be cool.”
“Ah,” Hux says, an unjustified sort of guilt building up in him. “As long as it’s in black.”
“Well, yeah,” Ren says, scoffing low in his chest. He turns around and backs out of the garage, and begins babbling as if some dam has been broken, “I was thinking a complete refab of the interior. Black on black, like the outside. I could re-do the leather myself; cast my own forms for a few small pieces if I get the plastic out.”
Hux hums, shrugging slightly and trying to will himself to return to his previous apathetic opinion of Ren’s Jeep. “Maybe a little red.”
“Yeah,” Ren agrees, turning to Hux a little too readily as they stop at the end of the street. “It’d look good around the center console, and along the dash. Inlays in the armrests.”
“Hints,” Hux says, giving a short nod. It would just look stupid with so much monotonous black, nothing to do the fact his GT-R is technically the exact opposite theme.
It would be sentimental to care about completely unintentional matching.
Ren seems to have done good work on it, at least from what Hux can tell as the cushy suspension easily absorbs every pothole. He leans against the window edge, knuckles under his chin as he watches the scenery outside turn from modern hillside villas into more mountainside chalets, each growing slowly more and more hidden from the main road.
“What did you replace today?” Hux asks, glancing sideways and watching Ren’s thoughts play out on his face.
“Oh, uh,” Ren frowns, a narrow glare suddenly aimed at the front windshield. “One of the coil springs was cracked. Front driver.”
“How unlucky,” Hux says, feeling a slow pinch at the corner of his mouth; a sharp, intangible strike hitting him against his breastbone. "And dangerous."
“It was a factory defect.”
“I didn’t accuse you of anything,” Hux says, as he shoves away the uneasiness back where it belongs. (The spring is replaced; Ren is clearly in perfect health. No need to imagine what could have happened.)
Ren lowers his voice, now practically grumbling, “You were thinking it.”
“You would need to be doing a lot to crack a coil spring yourself,” Hux says with a sneer, growing momentarily suspicious before forcing himself to dismiss the thought. He doubts Ren drove through acid.
Ren drives an entire half-hour longer, every turn going further up into the foothills, and he ignores any of Hux’s curiosity by actually trying to drown him out with some dreadful music that earns a hard flick of fingers against an exposed wrist. Hux will not suffer listening to German deathcore, or gothcore, or whatever it is ear-splitting music that is Ren has decided to be obsessed with this week.
“You’re not taking me out here to kill me, are you,” Hux says, turning his chin with his fingers and raising his eyebrows. “I assure you my life insurance won’t last you the next sixty years.”
“No,” Ren says, a short, amused twist at the edge of his mouth. A moment later, he glances sidelong, eyes narrowing, “Did you will me out of your company?”
Hux blinks back, then shakes his head shortly. He had completely forgotten the company; it would actually be incredibly comfortable for Ren to kill Hux and live as a widower, at least until anyone realized he was a murderer. The company might not have Hux to design anymore, but he has a lot of unfinished plans that could be built upon for years.
“Whatever,” Ren says, scoffing under his breath and looking back to the road. “I forgot to bring my sword, anyway.”
“Ah,” Hux intones, allowing himself the weakness of rolling his eyes. “I wasn’t aware that was where I stood in your little medieval fantasy.”
Or rather, Hux knows exactly where he is cast, and that it's much more flattering than potential victim. He won’t bring it up now, or make an example of it; he doesn’t feel like starting something in a cramped vehicle… Although, Ren seems to have taken the back seat out. It opens up a lot of free space.
Ren for his part is suddenly quiet, brows twitching slightly as he visibly rearranges his little mental delusion into something where Hux could potentially die by his hand. Hopefully, it doesn’t involve anyone role-playing necrophilia.
“Quit that,” Hux says, tempted to reach over and smooth the small furrow with his own fingers. “‘Billionaire Entrepreneur Dies in Obnoxious Jeep’ is not a particularly flattering headline.”
“You really don’t think they would mention me?” Ren says, eyes focusing as he lifts his chin, glancing to Hux and clearly attempting to be more offended.
Hux raises an eyebrow, willing his expression to stay passive as he speaks in a dull tone, “And companion.”
“Jackass,” Ren mutters, turning onto a dirt road with a few signs labeled trailhead.
“Oh, they’ve got one of my phones,” Hux says, catching a few people chatting on the side of the road with their own vehicles, most of them featuring the same over-sized grappler tires and elevated suspensions as the Jeep. “Good.”
“When are you going to reveal that mind-control wave thing you’ve put in them?” Ren asks, sarcastic and clearly making some reference.
“Not for a few decades yet,” Hux says, keeping his voice a mockery of sincere when turns his head to look at Ren with a smirk; his leans in, arm flat against the armrest. “Don’t worry, the one in yours just calms you down.”
Ren runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head, “I honestly don’t know if that’s a joke.”
“Neither do I,” Hux says, feeling his lips threaten to stretch into a wider grin that he has to rein back. “How have you been feeling lately, Ren?”
Ren just glances to him between blinks, seemingly biting back his own smile with a scrape of teeth over his lips. He sighs through his nose and slowly pulls the Jeep to a crawl, turning the wheel just slightly until he’s directly in front of a hill.
“Ren,” Hux says, leaning forward against the dash and staring up the seemingly-vertical trail. “No.”
“Yes,” Ren says, shifting into neutral and leaning down, pulling at the 4WD lever until it’s firmly in Low.
“If you kill me, I hope you’re prepared to suffer the plot of Poltergeist,” Hux says, looking to him and forcing his voice into something glacial; the same tone he uses when R&D is being especially incompetent.
Ren pauses as his hand grabs the shifter, turning his head slowly and narrowing his eyes, “You haven’t seen Poltergeist.”
It’s not toned like a question, and Hux declines to answer it like one, instead shifting his eyes back to face the windshield.
“We’ll watch it,” Ren says, voice going low and mocking.
“I would rather not,” Hux says, trying to find purchase at the seat without making it too obvious. If this doesn’t end up going pear-shaped, then he would like to avoid the mocking. “It was made in the Eighties.”
“Snob,” Ren mutters under his breath, shifting the vehicle into gear and slowly starting to go up the hill. “So were you.”
The ascent is both more and less distressing than Hux first assumed, and the large tires of the Jeep dig into the mud and slowly pull them until Hux feels as if the entire vehicle is almost completely vertical. He nearly reaches over to clutch at Ren’s sleeve when they start to spin out on patch of thicker mud, but instead digs his nails into the edge of the leather seat.
Ren doesn’t act at all like it is a problem, reacting with little of his usual anger and only flicking a pair of switches that light right up in a glaring red. Hux almost wants to snap at him for acting so calm, for handling the problem with a shocking amount of aplomb by simply holding the vehicle still like they’re on some stupid stuck festival ride. He fully believes Ren is going to reverse down the hill and take another go at it, except the moment that Ren lets up on the clutch the tires are still moving forward, no longer spinning, and somehow it pulls itself right up the side of the hill at a slow, even pace. Hux feels his mouth pull into a frown when they crest the hill, and as the Jeep levels back out into an acceptable horizontal, it almost angers him that he doesn’t know why.
“What have you done to this thing?” Hux says, feeling suddenly curious as academic interest overcomes his previous criticism for the vehicle. He throws open the door and crouches down next to the wheel, peering behind and instantly catching a slightly altered aspect to the axle. He reaches his hand through to tap at the surface of it. “Are these differential lockers? They’re certainly not stock.”
Ren’s answer is belated, footsteps quiet along the muddy ground as he walks around the Jeep. “You paid for them.”
“I stopped checking your card about the same time our limit went over twenty grand,” Hux mutters, peering around the under carriage with renewed interest, and catching a few more custom additions to the suspension than the obvious, along with a completely new exhaust system. He regrets some not paying more attention to whatever Ren did in his part of the garage, but, before the Jeep, most of it was welding junk into questionable sculptures and a bunch of creepy masks for supposed commissions.
Ren scoffs low, “I find that unlikely.”
“For anything this specific,” Hux says, turning to speak directly to Ren, only to find a belt buckle at his eye line. He glances up with narrowed eyes to catch Ren’s amused stare as he rises from his knees, and chooses not to entertain his vulgar mind. “If it looks like it’s from some vendor or mechanic. I skip over it.”
“So there is nothing I could buy that would have you furious?” Ren says, seemingly true to his surprise, even as his mouth slides into a darker smirk. “Because, you know, I miss those fights.”
“Honestly, at this point I make so much that I’m not sure,” Hux says, feeling a little too honest as he leans back into a fender, both hands curled around the flat edge. A moment later, he gives Ren as small smirk when something finally comes to mind. “I’d rather you didn’t order a wife.”
Ren rolls his eyes, “Get back in. I want to go to the top.”
“Of the mountain?” Hux says, glancing sideways and toward the rest of the trail; he can see that it seems to continue up the side of another steep hill. Does the entire thing truly go all the way to the top?
“Obviously,” Ren says, returning to the driver side and jumping back in; the size of him making the entire thing tremble.
Hux sighs, glancing between the road at the bottom of the hill and the trail up ahead, and pulls out his phone. The meeting with Phasma will need to be more seriously postponed at this rate.
They make it up the rest of the trail without any major spills, though Hux does reach over in a weak moment and clutch hard at Ren’s thumb when he nearly upends the Jeep on an overly rocky, narrow switchback. It only occurs to Hux afterward that part of this trip is probably some obnoxious fantasy of Ren’s, finding a way to unnerve Hux and force him to act even marginally like he needs comfort.
Hux fully curses that stupid knight fantasy.
It would be even more infuriating if Ren wasn’t acting so abnormally flirty. He has this terrible, small grin on his face like he never has, and they’re not even really doing anything. It’s just snarking back and forth in the middle of an admittedly dangerous situation, and maybe that is part of it: the low level adrenaline making everything said soften its usual edge against the steep, intimidating route ahead of them.
Hux would never admit it, but he even appreciates the renewed attention. Ren is an awkwardly intense starer at the best of times, but, more often lately, Hux has felt like it's through him more than at him.
“It’s perfect,” Ren says, the words a complete non sequitur in regards to the current conversation.
(Ren’s father has recently attempted to get Hux to invest in a dispensary, sending a veritable flood of emails, which undoubtedly means he’s realized his wife is legitimately serious about not financially supporting it. At this rate, it’ll take ten years before he realizes Hux and Ren are serious, too.)
“Perfect,” Hux repeats, glancing over with a single, dubious eye narrowing. “For what?”
Ren glances to him a little too quickly, “For it.”
“Oh, I see,” Hux says, keeping his voice flat and sarcastic. “I suddenly trust you.”
The terrain is now more flat and grassy, and the trail does little more than spider around the large space before heading over to an obvious drop off on a far side. A sheer cliff wall is at another angle, but the trail doesn’t so much go up as avoid it, which means this is probably the top that Ren had made goal for today.
Ren parks in a sunken area, pulling forward until only a few yards separate the Jeep and a drop-off. He reaches in the back and lifts the unmistakable shape of a camera-bag, unzipping it to pull out a pair of lenses and the camera itself.
Hux didn’t even know Ren was still dabbling in this hobby.
“You come up here to take pictures?” Hux asks, watching as one of the lenses is carefully fitted to the front of the camera. Ren's artistic ventures have all been dark, at least in palette, but photographs taken here would be undeniably serene and colorful.
Ren shrugs, staring down at the screen and seemingly messing with some settings. “I do today.”
“Vague,” Hux says, narrowing his eyes, but he follows when Ren jumps out of the Jeep with the camera cradled in one hand.
The edge overlooks the city below, though the larger shape of it is only hazily visible from the distance and the slowly setting sun. Hux hums and scans over the rest of the mountain, catching a few other trail-goers far below, and when he looks further, he thinks he might actually be able to see the vague impression of the river delta that goes out into the sea. He’s never seen anything from this sort of perspective, not even on a plane.
Hux feels like a bloody king.
He blinks when he hears the tell-tale spin of an artificial shutter, but rather than directed out across the valley, it seems to be aimed right for his head. He turns, brow slightly furrowed, and suffers another click and whir when Ren unabashedly takes the opportunity to have one outside of profile.
Hux glares for a long moment, then looks down to the camera, “You’re going to edit those into something foolish aren’t you?”
“No,” Ren says, but, by the slow blink, it is almost certainly a lie. He suddenly shifts his shoulders in an odd manner, jaw stiffening almost gravely, “I want another one. A selfie.”
Hux stares at him, aghast, “No.”
“You can take one,” Ren says, apparently sensing some primal weakness and beginning his approach. “You practically invented them.”
“I didn’t invent them,” Hux mutters, allowing Ren to shove in close at his side, throwing one of his thick arms over Hux’s damnably narrow shoulders. He hopes the dimming sky masks the way his cheeks have begun to heat, as if he’s some virginal co-ed with a crush, rather than a grown man next to someone he's been with since he was one. “I simply innovated on the stupid thing that everyone takes them with.”
“I know,” Ren says, practically chuckling under his breath. “I was there.”
Hux sighs and lifts his chin just as Ren raises the camera, setting his mouth in a line; he will not be forced to smile.
A moment later, Ren pulls back his hand and clicks at screen on the camera, then tilts it so Hux can see the picture. Neither Ren nor he are truly smiling in the shot, though Ren has a hint of a smirk, but it's the narrow panorama of the slowly-illuminating city behind them that makes the photo look almost unreal. The sheer height of the angle has made them look something obstinate and powerful, with the lights of civilization itself curling against them like a glittering, imperial cloak.
Hux had expected some mockery of a couple in a nature bar commercial, but is strangely happy to be wrong.
“Good?” Ren says, dropping the camera to his side.
Hux wants to demand to see the picture again, to hold it in his own hands, but shoves away the mad urge, “Yes, you may keep it.”
Ren huffs, shoving his stupid nose right into the crook of Hux’s shoulder and kissing lightly at his throat, “Insufferable.”
“Hypocrite,” Hux says, but rather than pushing Ren away, lifts a hand and laces fingers tight into his hair. He feels a terrible, giant thing well up in him when Ren hums and drops the hand from Hux’s shoulder to his waist, entire body curling tightly against him, and Hux realizes with some disgust that he knows exactly what it is, only that he hasn’t felt it in far too long. “Did you really drag me up here for a picture?”
Ren hums an affirmative, but as his fingers slowly drag down Hux’s spine, it feels like another lie. He tilts his head until his lips catch Hux’s in a real kiss, just for a too-quick moment before he pulls back, “Wanted to see you.”