Work Text:
Kylo Ren is a child, Hux is more sure of this than he has ever been as he stares the knight down from across the empty conference room he’s herded him into. Ren has folded himself into one of the high-backed chairs, managing to look petulant even behind the mask, and with a sigh, Hux flicks a finger across his the screen of his datapad, drawing all the blinds closed in a single, staccato movement that he hopes illustrates how much patience he has left - which is exactly none.
“The med droids said you’ve missed the last three of your check-ins - check-ins that were a mandatory condition of your release from medical, in case you’ve forgotten. Are you even supposed to be wearing that thing yet?” He nods to indicate the helmet, and Ren ducks his head, which Hux takes to mean, no, he should definitely not be wearing it, that it’s expressly against medical advice.
(That’s a subject he’d press further on, but he knows the Supreme Leader has no small disdain for Ren’s face. it’s likely that Snoke hasn’t given him the choice not to wear it, so he allows this to slide for now.)
Ren doesn’t say anything, just curls further into himself in the chair, tucking his head to his chest. "Don’t be ridiculous,“ Hux hisses, a stage-whisper, though there’s no one in the room to hear them. "Your petulance is going to cost you, Ren. That wound is going to become infected if you refuse to have it seen to.” The rest of the injuries Ren sustained on Starkiller have been healing nicely - even the bowcaster wound on his side, which had gaped open terrifyingly when Hux had first pulled back the knight’s snow-damp robes from his near-frozen skin, has netted over with new, pink growth.
The wound on his face, however, is still as angry as the day he received it - or so the med droids tell him. Ren has refused him from the moment he regained consciousness, though Hux had been the one to dig him out of the snow in the first place, the one to allow Ren to crush his hand in his own when Ren was so out of his head with pain that he’d thrashed wildly on the ship’s narrow cot, tears and blood and melting snow a mess on his face, unaware that Hux was there at all.
“It’s of little consequence. Lightsaber burns cauterize on impact - though I wouldn’t expect you to know that.” Part of Ren’s cheek is lost through the vocoder, but it raises Hux’s hackles all the same. He should have left him to die on that damned planet, he thinks, but the Supreme Leader would never have allowed that. (And there’s an insistent voice at the back of Hux’s skull that says he couldn’t have done it anyway, a part of him that remembers how Ren’s fingers had spasmed weakly while he begged for mercy - Maker, please, mercy. Apart of him that knows he never would have abandoned Ren to face that alone, even had he the chance.)
“Enlightening.” Hux is pinching the bridge of his nose now because he truly could not care less about the mechanics of lightsaber burns. What he cares about is the very real possibility that Ren’s face is rotting off underneath the helmet as they speak. "Unfortunately, the med droids seems to disagree. They say the wound is still open and weeping, that it requires debriding twice daily until that clears, and I’m afraid I trust their judgement on the subject more than yours.“
“I’m taking care of it myself.” Ren’s voice is muffled when he answers, like he’s trying not to move his mouth more than is necessary while speaking, and Hux knows. Knows that whatever Ren is doing for the wound - if truly he is doing anything at all, his word can hardly be trusted when he can’t be bothered to turn his robes in regularly for laundering - is not enough. Talking hurts, whether Ren wishes to admit it or not, and that does not speak well for the state of the wound, this many days out from receiving it.
“You can’t take care of this yourself, Ren,” he scolds, feeling very much like he is talking to an errant teenager - which is often how he feels when speaking to Ren. "The wound is on your face. It obscures your sight. I know this - I saw it when it was first received, or don’t you remember?“
Hux knows he doesn’t. Ren claims amnesia of the whole incident, and Hux believes him. The knight had already been in the throes of shock when Hux had found him, trembling so hard, teeth chattering and muscles jumping, that Hux had wrapped him in his own greatcoat before even attempting to transport him back to the ship, where the droids had been able to exchange it for a shock blanket. (But it had been too late for the greatcoat, which became just another casualty of the day, too stained with Ren’s blood, in the end, to bear saving.)
"Leave it, Hux,” Ren bites out, moving to stand, but when he does so, he wavers so that he has to grab onto the arm of the chair for support, as if his head is spinning. It lasts only a moment, and then he’s shaking it off, stalking toward the doors as if he expects Hux not to have noticed - or perhaps, to let the incident go.
Hux intends to do no such thing. "Enough of this,“ he says, sharply, catching Ren by the shoulder - and the touch, even through all the layers of Ren’s robes - sends a shockwave up Hux’s wrist. Briefly, it’s his head that’s spinning, set off balance by the sturdy feel of Ren’s collarbone under his thumb. "If you’re not going to let the med droids look at you, you’re going to have to do with me. Cease your dramatics and take off the mask. Now.”
Hux’s hand is still tingling where it clutches Ren’s shoulder, but his tone brooks no argument, and Ren is bowstring tight under his touch, every muscle tensed as fight or flight kicks in. Hux would tear off the mask his damned self, except he’s not sure how the release mechanism works, and he doesn’t relish the thought of the struggle that would ensue - though given the display he’s just witnessed, he’s confident he could take Ren in his current state.
Ren must know this too, because he doesn’t try to shake Hux off, and this close, Hux can feel the fine tremors that run down his skin. "I don’t want you to see,“ the knight says, only when it’s become clear that Hux is not going to relinquish his hold, his voice strangled. "It’s so shameful,” he whispers, as if it’s some great secret. "The Supreme Leader won’t allow me to take the mask off in my training any longer, no matter how hot it gets. He tells me he can’t bear to look upon what she did, and I can’t blame him. Neither can I.“
Hux is shocked into silence. He’d always thought Ren vain, but this is unexpected, even for him. "My face was never… it was never good, but at least I’d gotten used to it. And now this. Maker. I didn’t need to be any uglier; wasn’t it bad enough to begin with? The girl… the scavenger… she did it on purpose, you know? Marked me this way. So I’d remember, I know it.”
Ren’s voice has become thick under the vocoder, though it’s still muffled in a way that suggests he’s trying to keep his face still, even as Hux imagines tears threatening to fall. “I would have remembered anyway. She didn’t have to. I would have remembered all on my own.” Ren shakes his head desperately, then immediately makes a little noise of pain and surprise that tells Hux he should not have done that. "I was already so ugly. The Supreme Leader is right - no one should have to look on something like that. Not even a droid.“
A strange sort of sympathy settles in Hux’s chest then - something that smacks of long years spent avoiding the sight of his own spindly body, turning a blind eye to his reflection. "Ren,” he asks, quietly, fingers making unconscious circles over the knight’s collarbone. "Have you removed the mask at all since you were released from medical? Have you even seen the wound? Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.“
Underneath the helmet, Ren makes a choked sound, so pathetic and broken that Hux feels a traitorous fist clench tight around his heart. "I don’t care what you look like under there, Ren,” he says. "What I care about is knowing you’re not going to drop dead of sepsis due to your own negligence.“ That’s not exactly true; the few times he has seen Ren’s face have been burned into his brain, leaving behind a photoflash of his odd collection of features, much like what happens when you’ve started at a star for too long. But he’s in no mood to parse what that might mean for him right now.
"You needn’t worry about what I’ll think - we both know I’ll go on hating you either way,” he says, logically. "But that needs to be seen to. Better me than anyone else, right? Take off the mask.“ The words are more request than command this time.
It must be a good argument because, miraculously, Ren complies, bringing his hands up to press the release catches on the inside of his helmet, and Hux feels his breath catch in his throat at the sight of Ren’s face. He was wrong - it is as bad as Ren had thought, and worse. His skin is blotchy and caked with sweat; it’s collected in the hollows beside that oversized nose and has dried in the hair that frames his face so that it sticks to his forehead in thick chunks. The flush of fever is high on his cheeks, and the wound, if possible, looks more disfiguring than when Hux had found him on Starkiller.
It is still glistening with fluid - not sweat, but something viscous and watery, made by a body trying to heal itself and failing. His pores, even, are clogged with dirt, his skin broken out in patches from the lack of washing, the shadows under his eyes dark and unforgiving. When he pushes back the tangle of hair from his eyes, Ren’s hand is trembling.
Perhaps the worst of it is the bacta patches that are stuck to the wound - they’re dirtied, so soaked through with the fluid that leaks from the burn that they’ve glued themselves to Ren’s face, and Hux would bet a fair amount of credits that they’re the same ones the med droids applied that first night, after he’d delivered Ren onto the ship that would take them back to the Finalizer.
It’s a horrifying thought. When Hux had suggested that Ren hadn’t removed the mask since his release from medical, he hadn’t thought… surely the knight had removed it in the solitude of his own quarters. To sleep. If only, at least, to use the kriffing refresher. But now, looking at the ruin of Ren’s face and the week’s worth of grime covering it, he knows: Ren truly has not went without it, for even a moment, since the scavenger split his face open.
Hux usually has no trouble keeping his emotions in check, but he knows, this time, his disgust shows on his face, and he struggles to school his expression. "Kriff, Ren, that looks infected already,” he says, though he’s hardly an expert when it comes to medical affairs - because it doesn’t take an expert to recognize how red and raised the flesh around the wound is. Stars, he can smell it from here, the sour stench of a wound gone bad, and it churns a his stomach a little.
When he raises his hand to turn Ren’s unmarred cheek so that he can get a better look at the sorry state of the burn, Ren flinches back, scrunching his eyes closed, as if he expects to be struck. "Please… be careful,“ he whispers, his face turned to the side and incredibly, incredibly sad, his lower lip trembling though he tries to still it, to keep it from disturbing where the burn has it bisected. "It hurts.”
Hux knows Ren is speaking of more than the wound, though there’s no doubt the pain is so bad by now that it must be near impossible to think beyond it. "I’m sure it does,“ Hux agrees, his voice gentler than he meant it to be. "It hurts just to look at you.” And there’s no helping the sympathy he feels, because Ren is in such a pitiful state he’s not likely to remember this at all tomorrow anyway.
His touch is gentle on Ren’s cheekbone, and Ren turns his face obediently, the smell of infection even worse up close. When he brings his fingers up to prod along the edges of the wound, Ren whines pitifully, the flesh around it so hot it burns, and Hux hums in sympathy. "Try to be still,“ he commands, knowing how difficult it is, as he lifts one of the stiffened bacta pads to determine if there’s anything to be done for the flesh underneath with one hand while holding Ren’s jaw in place with the other.
Despite the pain Hux’s ministrations must be causing, Ren leans into his touch, his earlier tension appearing to leave his body as he allows Hux to inspect the damage. Ren lets out a tremulous little exhale, a nerve in his ruined cheek jumping so that he groans with it, and something slots into place then, inside Hux, with Ren’s face resting there in his hands.
He doesn’t remember the last time he touched someone like this, skin-to-skin, not separated by gloves or rank or duty. It figures it would be Kylo Ren to break this streak. This streak in which Hux has touched only himself, and then only briefly, scraping his nails against his scalp as he washes the suds from his hair in the refresher, only precious minutes to spare before Alpha shift begins. Jerking himself off roughly in the solitude of his own quarters, desperate for release and too tired even to truly enjoy it.
But the bacta patch is refusing to budge and his fingers are curling in the filthy, damp hair at the back of Ren’s neck and the knight is slumping towards him, more of his weight coming to rest in Hux’s hands, trusting Hux to hold him up, and Hux can do nothing for the way he pulls Ren in closer, relishing the fever-heat crawling beneath his skin.
And it’s disgusting, truly it is - perhaps the most disgusting thing he’s ever done - but then he’s raising himself up on his tiptoes to press his lips over the leaking gash in Ren’s cheek, drawing them across his severed brow, to where it has narrowly avoided his eye, down the the bridge of Ren’s nose - which had been impossible to ignore, even before - and finally, to the puckered skin at Ren’s lip, which will certainly never heal right now, will leave the set of his broad mouth even more askew than before.
The smell of infection is in his nose, and his lips are wet with water from blisters broken open and Ren is panting like he’s running a losing race - or like he might lose consciousness. The knight needs medical attention and a wet cloth before Hux even thinks about attempting to replace those bacta patches and yet, Hux realizes, as Ren tears delicate flesh open further with the way he nuzzles into Hux’s touch, delirious and desperately hungry for any touch that doesn’t hurt, he has never felt more alive. It has been so long, he never even knew he missed it.
"Your face was singular enough to begin with,” Hux decides, the taste of Ren’s blisters on his tongue and Ren's nose brushing up against the skin of his palm, “this hardly makes any difference at all.”
(Later, he’ll patch Ren’s face back together - and then some.)
---
End.