Work Text:
There was a quiet moment in most days when Hux would indulge himself:
He would collapse in the confines of his bedroom and cease to think, cease to move.
It was quiet, then. Peaceful. He would call it meditation, if only the surrender attached to the practice could be avoided. (He was a general, and would never admit defeat.)
No, instead, Hux stayed firmly rooted in the present. He would stay there, slumped against the hard metal wall, cool black tile beneath his fingers. And he would rest, and he would remember home.
(rolling mountains, soft and lush with green, green trees and bushes and grass, overgrown and tangled together like forbidden lovers;
ice-cold water, constant water, drowning the world with life, falling against a backdrop of grey skies and rumbling clouds, its coldness slicking his skin bared to the winds;
rocks, sharp and cutting, touch-one-and-bleed, individual and alone, standing like mountains of their own in grand and stretching lakes that extended beyond the horizon.)
And Hux was content.
And Kylo could feel his contentment rolling off him in soothing and warm waves, during evenings between the hours 1900 and 2000.
There would be no sound coming from the general's room. There would be no rush of activity, no words, nothing to alert Kylo of his predicament.
The Knight would be worried if he couldn't sense Hux's extraordinary and alluring sense of peace.
Hux never let Kylo be with or near him during this time. Weary and quick to anger, Hux had once confided in him (shouted at him, more like) that he needed this time to recover. That he didn't need a lover to comfort and hold him.
So Kylo stepped back, and he honored Hux's wishes.
Mostly, for the most part.
It was on a calm day - few and far between with the First Order - that Kylo screwed up.
On the Finalizer, Kylo would usually just make a few rounds down the corridors before pursuing his own Force or weapons training. He was on the ship, according to Hux, to intimidate the crew but not to interfere with its efficiency.
The crew was peculiarly silent, and that alone should have been warning enough for Kylo. But he couldn't help his nature, and he pried into business not his own.
It was his third round about the bridge when he realized that someone was missing. He actually felt stupid for having not noticed it earlier.
Instead of asking one of the officers on the bridge where their precious general had gone, Kylo proceeded to probe the soft and pliant minds about him. The bridge’s peculiar silence, at least, gave him a better environment to concentrate. Which was on the contrary to Hux’s argument that Kylo thrived off of chaos and mayhem -
- and yes, there was the general himself. In the loud thoughts of a young and pretty dark-skinned woman on the bridge. Her fingers tapped away at the screen in front of her, but her thoughts were preoccupied by her superior.
(It was nothing lewd, of course. Otherwise, he’d likely have killed her on the spot.)
Carefully tuning into her thoughts without attracting her attention, Kylo caught glimpses and snatches of conversations and briefings - though the one in particular he sought was a piece of gossip passed along the Finalizer’s cafeteria.
Did you hear? … the General, he left last night … no one, no … yeah, Laurra saw him leaving … no, Laurra wasn’t drinking again … probably had something to do with family business - oh, you didn’t know? … the General’s from Arkanis …
Arkanis.
Of course.
Quickly ridding his connection to the young officer’s thoughts, Kylo glanced out the large viewing window to confirm his suspicions - which were right, of course. There, below, the large and formidable ship, was the drearily blue planet in a constant downpour: Arkanis.
Hux’s subordinates were incorrect. Hux had not left the ship briefly for family matters, but for himself.
Hux had a way with people, he knew. He could portray tolerance and patience for his crew most admirably, but in truth? He would much rather be alone than have to...fraternize, socialize, if you will.
(But he could stand Kylo, usually. It was not so bad with Kylo, because Kylo usually wore his helmet and his helmet made him look less human: less selfish, less self-interested, less emotional, less weepy, less pink and soft and weak.)
And so now here he stood on a mountainside in Arkanis, surveying the world at his feet. Here, Hux could be whomever he wanted to be.
Today, he was a conqueror of worlds. He stood there, the strong wind running fingers through his usually stiff and rigid hair. And there, below, were small people moving this way and that, like insects crawling on their bellies in the earth. Hux had watched them for hours; he had watched their comings and goings through the small city, so domestic and everyday that he’d wanted to vomit in his mouth, a little. He admired order, but none so dreary as this.
Cocooned in his thoughts as he was, the general did not notice the knight’s approach.
“What are you doing?” came the strange rumble of the helmet’s scrambler.
Hux retreated from his fantasy with regret, annoyed at the knight’s presence. “I could ask the same of you. How did you find me?”
“Easily enough,” the creature in the mask said. At Hux’s continued irritation, he added, “With the Force.”
Hux frowned. “That’s cheating.” But he collected his small bag from the dirt under a nearby tree, preparing to make his (unwanted!) departure. He’d been here long enough.
“Now what are you doing?” the knight asked once more, catching Hux’s arm before he could march back whence he came.
“Obviously, I’m leaving this grove.”
“No, don't, I -” The knight stopped, either frustrated or lost for words. Hux could not tell, but he knew that either was equally likely. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Oh?” Despite himself, Hux was intrigued, adjusting his bag on his shoulder. The strap was rough on his smooth skin; he was wearing naught but a black, sleeveless under-uniform shirt on his upper half. He preferred to feel the ceaseless ice rain on his bare skin.
“You don’t have to leave,” Kylo said. “I know you prefer the silence.” He hesitated again, raindrops beading down the side of his battered helmet. Had Hux been poetry-inclined, he might have noted that they resembled tears. Though that was preposterous, as there was nothing there and then to be sad about.
“Don’t leave it there, Ren.”
“I wanted to make sure that you were intact,” the knight admitted finally.
Hux raised an eyebrow. “I am perfectly healthy, thank you.”
“I see that now,” Kylo said irritably.
It was oddly endearing. But acquainting himself with his lover was not in his day’s plan.
He would perhaps visit Kylo later that night, once he’d mentally remapped his home planet. Given that Kylo had no intentions of hauling him back to the Finalizer, he had at least two more hours to himself - far away from anyone. Alone and free on this peaceful planet, with no social obligations and with plenty of room for thinking and dwelling and reflecting.
That would be nice. (His personal quarters in the Finalizer did not feel nearly as private. Strangely, he’d always felt a second presence hovering over him, but the feeling did not seem malicious. And it wasn’t like he ever had to interact with it; it hardly bothered him during his retreating sessions.)
“Then just leave, Ren.” Hux tugged his arm back (not ungently) from Kylo’s slackened grip. It was not difficult; both of their arms were slippery with rainwater.
The mask nodded slowly, mentioned something of meeting him back at Hux’s small pod, and retreated into the darker part of the forest. (He was not happy, but he wanted Hux to be.)
He was always one for dramatics, Hux thought fondly.
Then Hux, too, left on his merry way in the opposite direction. He only had two hours left to himself, and he intended to make the most of them.
Later, during that night, his incurable (and intolerable, really) fondness for Ren had not ceased.
Pleased by how his day had turned out, Hux had found himself in want of only a little more.
He had been fully prepared to put himself to bed, alone, and call it a day, but he could tell that his lover was upset about something - likely of little to no consequence. However, his hostile attitude was bothersome and would likely end in the destruction of First Order technology, and so Hux yielded wearily to Kylo’s unspoken wishes.
And that night, in a room surrounded by stars and warmth, Hux did not complain. The large, muscled arms that held him tight (which was ridiculous - he would not fly away in the night) were far from the cool and the harsh, living nature of his home planet, but they were not soft and weak and disgustingly human.
They were Kylo Ren, and Hux was pleased with having that.