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Love was not only a moronic word but a distraction formed from blind idiocy, something both Phasma and Hux shared the same sentiment about.
When Phasma arose from the bed that wasn’t hers but attempted to claim itself as so, she rubbed her temple and inhaled deeply through the nose. She took a quick glance around the right side of the room, the boring, bland room that held nothing of interest, nothing of sentimental worth, but it was the same monotonous room she often visited night and day.
She felt around with a hum, her dry eyelids stuck together from sleep, trying to find the body that should have been next to her if she remembered the events of the previous night correctly in her sleepy haze.
“Hux,” Her voice came out raspy, both from exhaustion and the saliva stuck in the back of her throat that hadn’t been cleared yet, “Hux, wake up.”
Beside her, Hux had been asleep on his side with his back to her, because he could never face her after sex when they went to bed, and he could never could look her in the eyes during the act either.
“Armitage.” Phasma cleared her throat, finally able to open her bleary eyes.
“I’m getting up.” Hux’s voice snapped although his head didn’t move from where he had buried his face into his own bicep.
Phasma let out a sigh and turned away, facing forward. Despite Hux’s constant prickly attitude, he was the closest thing Phasma had to a friend. A very shitty friend she had sex with, but there weren't very high standards for friendships in the First Order.
She didn’t even know how they ended up where they did. They hadn’t been friends in childhood, they only tolerated each other because Hux was Brendol’s son whether anyone wanted to acknowledge it or not, and they had been forced into close proximity.
Forced friendship, Phasma had always liked to call it.
“Mmkay I’m getting up.” Hux moaned from Phasma’s right, forcing her out of her thoughts.
Phasma never dared to consider telling him, but Hux sounded like his father sometimes. It was eerie how some phrases Hux said seemed verbatim what his father would say, from the small habitual one liners to the full blown conniptions.
“People are waiting, Armitage.” Phasma reached out, grabbing Hux’s shoulder with her lithe hand, running her soft palm over Hux’s freckle-bitten shoulder in an uncomfortable, domestic, instinct.
“People are always waiting, Phasma,” Remarked Hux who didn’t reciprocate the touch but didn’t pull away either, “But that doesn’t mean I have to pretend to care about them.”
Hux still hadn’t looked at her, seldom ever did he look at her in the morning after sex.
“Hm.” Phasma hummed in either agreement or acknowledgement.
She reached around over the edge of the bed, fishing for her uncomfortable First Order issued bra that had been cast to the side on the floor the night prior. She picked it up and slipped it over her arms then down over her chest. For a moment, she held her bust in her arms, her right hand on her left breast and her left on the right.
It was moments when she was confronted with the realisation she was in fact a human, a woman, and not just another cog in the assembly line did she feel most uncomfortable. She’d rather slaughter a family than sit in silence with that feeling. It scared her.
Luckily Hux was there to distract her and she unfolded her arms, turning to look back at him now that he had sat up and thrown his legs over the edge and given her the familiar view of his freckle and scar coated back now styling a couple scratches and hickies.
Unable to stop herself, Phasma reached out her lanky arms, wrapping one arm around his upper body and the other around his waist. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder then trailed them upward to his neck where Hux shrunk into himself, clearly uncomfortable.
“Enough.” Hux shot up like a bullet, pushing her off as if she were a blood-sucking parasite. He kept his eyes away from her as if he couldn’t bear to look at her or what he had done with her the night before.
Phasma tightened her jaw and let her hands fall down back onto the bed. Her hands seldom could be comfortable idle so they ended up subconsciously feeling the sheets and grasping handfuls of them.
She watched as Hux picked up his coat and slipped it on for some decency then disappeared into the connected bathroom.
Left alone, Phasma laid down on her back, now on Hux’s side of the bed where his body had left a warm spot that would go cold until they most likely ended back up in it by the end of their shifts.
She listened to the sound of the bathroom drawers opening and Hux cursing under his breath. It only served to remind her about how she needed to take her own advice and get up as well.
Phasma, with a great inhale, forced herself up into a sitting position and tossed her battered legs over the bed edge. She wanted to shower and scrub her skin off until she was just blood and muscle, she was sure Hux felt just the same or even more fiercely about that sentiment, but she didn’t have the time to shower, much more skin herself.
She got up to her feet and took the, what seemed to be, long walk over to the bathroom where Hux was. She slipped inside, running a hand through her short blonde hair.
“Move over.” She mumbled, lightly pushing Hux over so she could join him at the sink. She picked up Hux’s comb and ran its teeth through her hair whilst she watched Hux in the mirror.
Hux had been brushing his teeth with a dead, unblinking gaze as he stared at himself in the mirror, either thinking of something so intensely he forgot Phasma was there or he had been thinking nothing at all.
When she was done with the comb, she reached over to take the toothbrush from Hux which snapped him back into reality. She traded brushes with him before she put some more toothpaste on the brush.
Had it been anyone else, Phasma would have skipped brushing her teeth, but with everything else she and Hux did when the night came, sharing a toothbrush did nothing to irk her.
Now brushing her teeth, Phasma allowed her mind to drift back to that one question she always dwelled on: what the hell would she be if she wasn’t Captain Phasma?
Phasma leaned down to spit out the toothpaste as Hux continued grooming his hair.
“Armitage,” She finally spoke up, standing back up at full height, “A question, if you don’t mind.”
Hux finally looked at her, really looked at her for the first time since the day before. “Not a stupid one, I hope?”
Phasma narrowed her eyes which earned a scoff from the man beside her.
“Don’t you ever wonder what you would be if you weren’t a part of the order?” She proposed, holding onto the counter either to balance herself or to anchor herself against the strong emotions the question often brought her.
“What?” Hux let out a small scoff of disbelief.
“If you weren’t a part of the order, don’t you ever wonder who you would have been? What I would have been?” Phasma repeated, putting down the toothbrush in the small cup by the faucet of the sink.
Hux hummed in thought but he didn’t seem too tender about the question. “Why? Do you?”
With the question flipped back onto her, Phasma shrunk back. “Sometimes,” She admitted truthfully, “Sometimes I wonder if I would have been… a normal woman.”
“Why would you want to be that?” Hux’s voice came fast and disgusted, which rendered Phasma off guard for a moment.
“Because…” Phasma searched for an explanation, a logical reason that could possibly earn Hux’s approval or agreement. Why Phasma might have wanted his approval, she didn’t know.
“Sometimes I wonder.” She repeated, cool and low, “Sometimes I see the people on these planets we land on and I wonder, anyone would ponder it.”
“You shouldn’t,” Hux snipped, scrunching his nose in repugnance, “You would be an average woman, doing nothing special with your life.”
Phasma didn’t know why but she felt a sharp stab to her heart when Hux hissed at her, clearly annoyed she had even considered the thought.
It was stupid, she knew. She was strong, independent, feared, and revered, she was more of a man than most men in the order… and yet part of her would watch the women on the planets she landed on with a prolonged gaze, enthralled by them like a trance.
How free they were, to love, to be a woman, to be concerned about domestic things and dresses, not if she’d come back alive the next she was sent out.
“Don’t you wish for an average life?” Phasma avoided Hux’s harsh remark, opting not to enable him.
“An average life?” Hux, for the first time in a long time, let out an amused puff as if the woman beside him was a comedian, “Don’t put that on my name.”
Phasma furrowed her brows. “You’ve never wondered about it?”
“No, because I’m not moronic, Phasma. I’m not distracted by such idiocy,” Hux paused, narrowing his sharp eyes as he turned to face Phasma, “Do I need to start questioning your competency?”
Phasma’s eyes widened in surprise and her tongue pressed against the roof of her mouth.
“Of course not,” She hissed, “I fight more than you do, why the kriff would you assume that? Because I have free thoughts?”
“Mindless thoughts and questions that should mean nothing to you, and you should relinquish such foolishness.” Hux snapped back, pointing a sharp finger in her direction so fast Phasma forgot the Hux in front of her didn’t bear the first name Brendol. “You want to be a nothing woman? A kitchen woman? A woman who means nothing unless they’re beside a man?”
“I never said that.” Phasma said through gritted teeth but found herself surprisingly unable to smack away Hux’s hand in front of her.
“It sounds like you do,” Hux snarled, grabbing both of Phasma’s shoulders to give her a harsh shake, “Those women are nothing. Women like that, women who live in obliviousness? Domestic women? They’re nothing, they’re useless, women like you hold much more value.”
Hux pulled back, “Don’t insult yourself in such a horrendous manner.”
Phasma bit her bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth as she watched Hux’s hard gaze finally lift off her and onto himself in the mirror.
Hux’s words, his tone, it was all utter disgust. Phasma found herself unable to digest it. She had never heard him say such things, nor make any comments or remarks that ever implied Hux ever felt that way.
She inhaled through her mouth, too shaky for her liking.
Whilst Phasma was in a state of shock, Hux had been calming himself down. He hated the man he was slowly morphing into the older he got; how close he got to being his father in moments of weakness. Yet who was he to blame? He didn’t have any other role models.
“Phas,” Hux inhaled and closed his eyes, either to avoid looking at her or to further calm himself down and avoid another outburst, “You’re more of a man than half of the men in the order.”
He turned his head very slowly, something amiss in his gaze. Phasma didn’t know if she was seeing it right but there was something akin to pity behind the anger and annoyance that was dangerously at forced ease in his gaze.
“Armitage,” Phasma’s voice had come out quiet but stern, “I want to admit something to you.”
Hux glanced to himself in the mirror. His hair was groomed, but he was still in his boxers and wearing his coat like it was a robe. His skin was littered in the marks Phasma had left the night before, covering his scars and freckles on his sickly pallor skin.
He turned back to her. “Get on with it.” He said with a hard but hushed voice.
Phasma swallowed the lump in her throat but she didn’t curl in on herself or show any sign of hesitation. She never feared Hux, doubted she ever would.
“Sometimes…” Phasma’s gaze watched Hux’s side profile, a part of her subconsciously wishing he would respect her enough to look her in the eyes as she tried to communicate the truth with him, “…I think I wish I was just an oblivious woman, in those dresses and heels, worried about domestic duties.”
Hux fell silent after the admission, processing Phasma’s words and what they meant… to him.
Then he let out a small laugh, a small disbelieving chuckle with a shake of his head. He put a hand to his face and rubbed his cheeks, pulling his fingers down to his chin as he continued to shake his head.
“Right. Sure you do, Phas.” Hux turned his body and pushed past Phasma with his shoulder, knocking her into the countertop as he left the bathroom.
Now alone, Phasma sucked in a breath after her lungs had been sucked dry from both her own admission and Hux’s reaction.
She didn’t know what kind of reaction she expected, Hux was just another man in the order, another man in the assembly line with much bigger problems.
She closed her eyes, sucking back in a deep breath then turned around, following Hux back into the bedroom. Her expression fell back into that usual unemotive expression, the one she learned to school years ago when she realised feelings meant danger.
As did most things Hux didn’t want to acknowledge, the conversation that had just transpired disappeared into the air and Phasma knew there would never be any acknowledgment of it ever again.
There he stood, across his bed where his closet was, thumbing through his uniforms as if any of them had individuality; so ignorant, so unbothered by anything other than the schedule set out for him.
Phasma turned away to grab her armour and underclothes. She made haste to put everything back on because she didn’t want to sit in such discomfort any longer, and she wanted to avoid irking Hux further. Hux hated tardiness and if she was the cause of him being late, she’d hear an endless earful.
Phasma slipped on her clunky boots after she dressed herself, but as she slipped them on she found Hux’s hat on the floor. He probably had another one he could wear in his closet but Phasma couldn’t stop herself from grabbing it.
“Your hat.” She got up from the bed and approached Hux who turned around to face her.
He held out his hands to take it but when Phasma paused in front of him, she reached up to put it on his head herself. The act was so out of character for her Hux froze up, tensing every muscle in his body.
She readjusted it on his head, unable to stop her hands that moved with odd gentleness they weren’t used to acting out.
“How… kind.” Hux relaxed his body reluctantly.
He fled quickly from her, uncomfortable by the foreign domesticity he seldom had history with; however, as he passed the nightstand, he was stopped by Phasma’s shinny helmet staring at him.
He found himself idle by it, staring into his own reflection for nearly an entire minute before his swift and lithe hands picked it up.
As Phasma came to his side, he raised it up to carefully put it on her head. “I suppose I will see you later.”
Hux pulled back as he aimed for the door. His coat drifted behind him before he was completely out of sight.
Behind her mask, abandoned alone in Hux’s room, Phasma watched and she once again was reminded of her job, what her life was devoted to.
And for a moment, just a split moment, she wished she and Hux were anything, anybody else.