It’s Late, Your Leadership

by Armorweave (Shimmersilk)

Summary:

Snoke is dead, and now begins the reign of Kylo Ren. Insecure in both his personal identity and his new role, the troubled Supreme Leader consults General Hux — his formal rival, yet a brilliant lifelong tactician — on matters of state.

Ever mercurial, Ren is unable to control his violent temper when provoked by the overworked, exasperated general, but without the protection of Snoke, Hux has nowhere to run when Ren returns the insults with cruel acts of humiliation and assault that quickly devolve into a psychosexual obsession.

Hux, a victim of serial childhood abuse, quickly crumples when thrown back down the well of waking nightmares he thought he’d clawed himself out of. Meanwhile, the war rages on, and by the time Ren realizes what he’s done to the man who could have been his greatest ally, it may be too late for either of their souls…

On September 13th: We backtrack to Kylo returning to romance sexily passive-aggressively terrorize a more and more despondent Hux into the galaxy’s most dubious consent, but is the general truly going to accept that this is his lot in life yet again? Does he even have a choice?

Notes:

I both love and hate it when new content completely affirms my headcanon. The first Legacy of Vader issue ties so neatly into a subseries of my Kylux drabbles that I’m retconning it into an alternate ending to Kylo’s 1:1 consultation with Hux. This is the place of divergence in the storyline, so everything that comes before it is the same plot you know, and everything after it is my own gross fantasy and not reliant on any media. It’s quite likely the rest of the series will inspire more works, though. Long live Kylux!

Chapter 1: Lieutenants and Lickspittles

 

Per usual, General Armitage Hux doesn’t know quite what to expect from Kylo Ren except that it can’t be anything pleasant, especially not at this hour. The time, nearly three hundred hours, grates on Hux more than the advent of being summoned by this hulking boy of a man, a pretender. Three hundred hours. Never mind that Hux was already up, that he almost always is when it feels like the foundation of the Order, his Order, is crumbling beneath his feet. But Hux isn’t stupid, and he doesn’t forget. He remembers how to bow and scrape. He remembers how to keep his thoughts quiet and his visage proud and alert.

 

“Reporting as ordered, Supreme Leader,” Hux greets upon entering the meeting room, standing tall and falling into parade rest with his thick woolen greatcoat swishing around his polished boots, and his gloved hands lightly interlocked low and smartly behind him. The small yet well-appointed place which seats four attendants and the presenter they’d face is empty except for the general and his newly self-promoted ruler. “What is your command?” Hux asks him.

 

Kylo Ren turns from the twinkling void beyond the large trapezoidal viewport to regard Hux. They hold each other’s gazes momentarily, Hux’s mossy green eyes peering slightly up into Ren’s hazel irises. Hazel, yes. They always seem so much darker than they are, like Ren’s unkempt and overgrown hair, but it’s rare to see him like this, unmasked. Hux would much prefer him covered, to be spared from his sloppy presentation, but like virtually everything on his mind, he keeps that to himself and merely waits for Ren to speak.

 

Before the Supreme Leader bothers, he looks Hux up and down as if considering his approach. The wrinkle across his nose evens out, but the corner of his mouth twitches. A grimace? A grin? It’s impossible to tell. Then he allows, “At ease, Hux,” despite omitting his subject’s rank. “You are a trusted advisor.”

 

Isn’t this a tribunal? The room is too small to accommodate the entire High Command, but a few of its members could gather in an intimate assembly to witness Hux’s deposition for initially contesting Ren’s elevation over his own. He clenches his jaw, willing his mind back into silence before it’s too late, before Ren sees inside of him. “I… Yes,” he agrees with none of his practiced poise. “Of course. How can I assist you?”

 

The new Supreme Leader asks about the old, of his tactics, of his plans. Ren knows nearly nothing of them, nothing his usurped title should demand. He has spent his time here as a vicious dog, as a threat, as a treasure hunter, some dark monk, and an admittedly remarkable pilot, but never a student of politics or military procedure as if to purposely distance himself from his immediate heritage. Ren is, in a way, helpless, although it’s stunning to hear him essentially admit as such.

 

Despite the recent and ongoing chaos, despite his uncertainty, Hux is glad to provide his aid. He’s glib, flattering. He tells Ren that Snoke is dead, that his goals mean nothing when the might of the First Order is now in his living hands. Snoke may have rescued the Imperial Remnant from certain ruin, but his mysticism, his waiting, and all of his delegation left his domain weak and stagnant. “You could fulfill the dream of so many of our forebears,” Hux assures with genuine hope and pride, seeing himself as the guiding hand of revolution, as ever, in all but name. “You could truly rebuild the Empire.”

 

He should like that. Ren should appreciate the obsequities, but all he does is glare, and then he looms in toward Hux close enough to knock heads. Hux holds his ground, but leans away from Ren whose akimbo stance spreads his voluminous, leathery black cloak like wings extended in a dominance display. “My forebears shaped the galaxy as we know it, General. Your bloodline produces lieutenants and lickspittles,” Ren, proclaims. “Do not speak of my people in the same breath as yours.”

 

It has been a very long time since Hux has felt small. He isn’t. He isn’t small. Slim, but not small, not for decades. Not even Snoke with his towering height and gargantuan projections ever truly managed to make Hux feel quite so much like a boy again. Snubbed. Reviled. Used. Snubbed. Reviled. Used. And then, as if his brutal mood had never appeared at all, Ren straightens, his expression mercurially softening, becoming pensive instead of deadly. “Tell me of our resources,” he inquires. “What do we have? What do we lack? Who threatens us? Who might we use?”

 

“Whom might we use?” Hux thinks. What he says is: “We possess a formidable fleet of…” He stops. Should he have said “you possess”? The uncertainty, the self-censorship, the ridiculousness of this situation — it’s too much. Armitage Hux tells himself to be patient. He’s been patient for so long, and now it will be only a few months, maybe a year until reckless abandon finally and fortuitously does this overgrown toddler in.

 

One more hour, maybe two. That would still be early — late? — but it’d be fine, especially for a soldier or one who keeps their hours as Hux once did before this reign of chaos. One, maybe two fewer MIA reports to file or condolences written to nexts of kin. One day, just one day when his peers look upon him without wishing they saw his father Brendol, without being seen for the weak little bastard that man had dismissed him as. One day to be recognized, to be appreciated for all he’s done. Just one, maybe two. That’s all it would have taken.

 

“Well, Ren, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what we have,” reports Hux matter-of-factly. “It’s certainly less than we did before, no thanks to you.” He smirks morosely as Ren glowers. “A trusted advisor?” He practically chokes on the words. “If you had trusted my advice, the Resistance would be destroyed, and we’d still have the Supremacy, its fleet, and its foundries and shipyards to build more all while mobile. We’d have decades of supplies and research, generations of minds building things you only know how to break. Phasma…” Hux is almost to upset to speak her name. Almost. “We’d have her if you hadn’t been so busy playing hard-to-get with your desert trash rat. And Crait? We’d have ended this long before that debacle if you’d really ever considered consulting me. Ren, I was dragged through hell and back for Starkiller because you decided to throw a family reunion instead of defending the base. He made me get you, Snoke did. There were hardly five units of blood left in you by the time I found you napping in the snow. I almost died for you like everyone else, and now you want my advice?”

 

Kylo Ren leans casually against the edge of the central table and cocks an eyebrow. “I forgot how fond you are of your speeches, Hux. Are you done yet?”

 

The general shakes his head hard enough to liberate a few strands of his honeyed copper hair from its carefully gelled and parted style. “No. You asked for my advice, and here it is: do whatever you want, and I’ll continue to fix your messes.” Whatever he meant to say next dissolves into a single wry chortle. “My mother was” —Hux searches for the term— “I suppose a princeling like you would’ve called her a scullery maid, did you know that? Everyone else does. I’m sure she’d be proud to see how far I’ve climbed, cleaning up after the Supreme Leader instead of a mere commandant.”

 

Hux isn’t sure why he’s still alive, but as long as he has breath in his lungs, he’s not quite finished. “And it wasn't only our ships and our officers; it was my children, some so young they’d never even learned what they’d be fighting for, let alone tasted battle. And Snoke. You know I don’t care. You know what he put me through, but do you really think I don’t realize you killed him? You’re a liar. You’re an infant. You should have run back to your high and mighty mother’s pretty white skirts while you still could. Lieutenants? Lickspittles? At least all my people were on the right side of the war.”

 

“Do you feel better now, Hux?”

 

Hux blinks. Yes, he does… and then there is the doom. “Supreme Leader, I don’t know what came over me. Please, I— Ugh!” Hux staggers back as a wet plop splatters at his feet. He stares daggers up at the fleshy, moist lips of its source until he follows the finger protruding violently from Ren’s massive clenched fist.

 

“Go ahead,” Ren encourages. “Clean it up.”

 

“No,” Hux asks softly, wiping a fleck of saliva from his cheek along with an angry, wayward tear.

 

“You’re not very good at this,” Ren appraises. “Perhaps you’d make a better lieutenant.”

 

Memories threaten to overwhelm Hux. Snubbed. Reviled. Used. Glass embedded in his palms like splinters. Spilled liquor dripping down his pants. Piss joining it when Brendol’s fist around his wrist to pull him away and into a beating. “Clean it up,” Brooks had said, and so Hux had tried. How was he to know that was joke when the man had demanded so much more behind closed doors? So much worse? But Ren isn’t joking.

 

This will be the last time Hux finds himself on his knees. The number of times he’s made that very promise is known only to the stars, but this is the last. It’s the last time he fully flattens himself like a toad lest a fault be found in his performance. He tries not to think of how Ren’s unwashed boots have just tramped across the formerly pristine floor. The mud beneath them doesn’t matter. The gore. The shit. Hux slides his tongue across the finished steel in tight rows like a mop, his body rocking as he laps up the frothy slime.

 

There. It’s done. This is the end. Hux expects no less when Ren approaches him. It’s the thing he wants the second most, the thing he’s had to push back almost all of his life: the commitment to making everything go away. No more snubbing of his rank or oversight of his abilities and efforts. No more revulsion at his existence that neither he nor his mother ever chose. No more jokes. No more licking. No more sucking. No more crying. No more kneeling. No more begging. Nothingness seems so nice by comparison, but Hux knows he deserves more. At the very least, he deserves to make Ren pay for this.

 

“Make me pay?” Ren asks. He lifts Hux’s chin with a brush of the Force until he’s standing on his knees at a height with his lightsaber, and only inches away from it. “I could have left you to perish in the throne room. A dozen times I could have left you, and yet here you are making the same poor choices. You’re the expert, Hux,” Ren insists as if in this one case he, too, is not, “so tell me: how do we deal with traitors?”

 

Hux’s already pale face blanches. He can smell Ren’s sweat through all his layers, a cold, dry must as the words are Forced from him. “Interrogate them. Corral any collaborators. Question the entire chain of them, or observe them for further leads. Then, indenture or execute them depending on the extent of their crimes.”

 

“Hmmph. All your false claims, your defamation… Let’s say that’s dismissible, but what is the sentence for a direct threat against your Supreme Leader?”

 

Hux again shakes his head. “I didn’t say…” He drones off. It doesn’t matter, not with Ren. He already knows this. “No one would dare such a thing.” Hux swallows. “No one has.”

 

“And if he did?”

 

“The aforementioned procedures would almost certainly culminate with execution at the discretion of His Leadership. A public ceremony for a public offence to restore morale. A private termination is advised to otherwise protect it. Expected methods include death by hanging, firing squad, or ejection from an airlock.”

 

The black monolith of Kylo Ren towers over Hux and his fate like a god of judgement. He searches Hux’s face, but he doesn’t probe far, he doesn’t have to. There is hostility, but also a certain loyalty in this man. Not to his new commander or even the First Order, but to his personal vision of the future. It’s beautiful, maybe the most beautiful version of the galaxy Kylo has ever seen. It’s calm. United. Elegant. Fair. The Supreme Leader rests his hand on Hux’s shoulder before returning to admire the view. “Rise, General. We’ve all had a difficult week. Take a few days to gather yourself.”

 

Glad to shake away the eerie, unwanted gesture, Hux stands rigidly. Suspension disguised as leave? Fine. That’s fine. That’s good. “Thank you, sir,” Hux says, nodding toward the turned back of the now silent Ren. Then he straightens his uniform with a few tugs, sweeps his hair into place, breathes, and leaves to find the nearest lavatory in which to empty his stomach.

Chapter 2: Miscommunication

Summary:

Hux spends the next day sequestered in his rooms with little to do but lose himself in drink and dismal thoughts. When Kylo visits late at night, he finds not the slutty, willing partner he’d imagined of the general, but a drunken, sobbing mess whom he nonetheless takes advantage of.

Notes:

This chapter fleshes out the first two of the three drabbles that inspired this work. Please prepare yourself for maximum cringe.

Too much sleep is almost as draining as too little, finds General Hux. It’s not quite a new discovery, only one that is sorely revisited, for what use was there in setting a timer when his calendar had been cleared? When he suspected he might never wake again? Yet Hux is alive, and so he rolls sluggishly out of bed in the early afternoon, his joints stiff and his muscles tight after being subjected to nearly eight hours of torpor.

There are no incoming comms, no requests, no meetings. Hux sits at his desk console and listens to General Parnadee’s morning address to the troops. It’s good. Not as good as the one Hux would have prepared, he thinks, but it serves its purpose. More than anything else, it serves as proof that all of this is real: Snoke is dead, and Kylo Ren is the Supreme Leader of the First Order. Bellava said so herself, and Hux trusts her as much as he can trust anyone, not only for her brilliant campaigns that would have put the old Moffs to shame, but for her glancing resemblance to a long lost friend. Hux doesn’t think of that, though, only that he’s glad Bellava’s okay. At least she survived all of this. Good. She’ll do well. Good. Now what?

While oversleeping may be no stranger to Hux, purposely idling is completely novel. What exactly is he meant to do with himself? Eat? Eat. Hux is famished, his most recent meal having been unceremoniously sacrificed. The senior officers’ mess should still be serving luncheon, but dining there would require Hux to leave his suite and venture into the halls of the Finalizer. He can’t do that.

Ren is strict, Hux tells himself. His humor is twisted. He expects every interpretation of his order to be upheld, or he’ll go ballistic and exact his vengeance. Time off means time away, time unseen. This is Hux’s punishment, being suspended like a naughty schoolboy when he’s needed most, and while the camera shows no guards posted outside his door, there may as well be for how trapped he feels by a few cryptic words. Still, Hux intends to follow them to the letter. It’s better not to even open the door, really. It’s reinforced. It’s safe here. Ration pouches are good enough, and fresh tea to wash them down. It’s safe here.

***

Twelve hours later, tea and rations have long since transmuted into expensive whiskey and cheap cigarras. Another round of each, and Hux surmises this will mark his second night in a row — morning? — hurling down a vacc tube. He doesn’t much care. For now, he’s still comfortable, sprawled indecorously over his silver-framed powder blue sofa, his pleated midnight robe soft and warm. He reads — or commits to the outward appearance of doing so — on his datapad. It’s still the collection of insipid preapproved poems he bought earlier, Hux figures, although at this point, he’s scrolled through half of the documents on the device so that the hazy words instead detail contraband confiscated from a Separatist transport detained during the old wars.

Hux sets the pad aside and rubs at his face with his free hand while expertly balancing a slender, fuming cylinder against his cut crystal glass with the other. What time is it? An austere chronometer hanging on the sparsely unadorned wall suggests Hux should have been back in bed ages ago, but the drowsiness that had plagued him all day is nowhere to be found when he needs it.

What is there left to do? Hux doesn’t intend to be up long enough to win another game of chess against his computer, and he abhors leaving them unfinished. A holomovie? He has a sizable collection of them, originals untouched by censorship, although they are less of an entertainment option, and more of a medium of study, of knowing the enemy and their worlds and their foibles that might otherwise go overlooked. That’s work, so, no.

Music? No, it’s all too happy or too somber or too loud. The holoprojector? That could improve the ambience better than any patriotic anthem. The chandelier-like device suspended over the circular marble caf table is state-of-the-art. It can simulate a slew of soothing environs, even the bridge. The option has been tempting Hux for hours, especially during his earlier stint of aggravated patrolling about his quarters, but he’d thought better of it, as he does now. Now he just sits smoking and ignoring the siren call of another drink until the need arises to relieve himself of some of his copious libations.

Within the refresher, Hux considers for the umpteenth time that there are ways to fix his restlessness that are far more effective than alcohol. They’re as frightening as they are potent, even though they are inhaled or swallowed and no longer injected, jabbed haphazardly into overused, collapsing veins. It’s all the same. Merely thinking of them, Hux can still feel his racing heart slow and his mind muddle as his body falls limp and even more pliable, more vulnerable, only to rise groggily with precious time lost, and in enough pain to actually fantasize about the drugs and sleeping his life away.

“Get rid of them,” Hux mutters to himself. He should; he doesn’t need them anymore. It would just be a bit of tidying up to dump them down the incinerator hatch, right? Never mind the ecological hazard and the implosions that would likely result in, such a task is far easier said than done. Hux has organized and reorganized everything he owns tenfold during his day of pacing and fretting, but the stash is different. These are emergency supplies. They’re useful. They are unthinkably valuable, part of a diversified portfolio worth a small fleet if Hux ever needed to sell them. But more than any of that, and more significant than the constant stirring of unwelcome memories, retaining the contents of the hidden compartment means that Hux has power over his choices. Some of them, at least.

Hux sits back down and lights another cigarra. For the briefest moment, he also considers touching himself. It seems like the normal thing to do at this point, doesn’t it? Maybe not. Not for Hux. A sour taste fills his mouth, and he takes a long drag of the fresh cigarra to banish it, reminding himself that he’s fine, that he’s not broken, that he’s normal, no, exceptional. The whim fades. Ashes are tapped into the empty glass instead of the dedicated ceramic dish that’s already overflowing. Then there’s a sound. Hux pays it no mind. There are always sounds aboard a ship, as any spacer knows, no matter how well appointed and maintained. He is still convincing himself of this when the lights flash red and the alarm blares.

It is only seconds later when the front door slides open with a jagged jolt that Hux begins to act. The cigarra smoked down to its filter singes a small hole in the dark blue silk he wears as he drops it to draw his blaster. His blaster… It’s gone. The holster is gone, shed with the rest of Hux’s uniform, but he shouldn’t need it. That door may as well have been sealing a bunker. This is a bunker, a safe room. It’s safe here.

As both proof and conjecture thereof, in warbles Hux’s spider probe equipped with firing capabilities far greater than his own expert marksmanship. Its complement of remote droids swarm from unobtrusive nooks concealed throughout the suite to annihilate the intruder, the assassin. Hux is not about to go down in a simple hit. If Ren wants him dead, he’s at least going to lose some of his prized operatives before they succeed. 

Hux is still dodging for cover with infinitesimally less grace and speed than he imagines when the alert suddenly ceases and his mechanical guards retreat. Kylo Ren strides through the last of them wholly unfazed, his face almost serene. Hux snaps up into a passable parade rest with the aid of the sofa’s nearest arm. “What’s happened?” he blurts, out of breath. “Is it the Resistance? Are we under attack?”

Ren’s eyes narrow. “You’re alone,” he states like half of a question, paying absolutely no heed to the prior fracas. “I thought you’d be at a resort by now. Nar Shaddaa. Canto Casino.” He glances about the sitting room, the door clumsily shutting behind him. “Although you’ve managed to recreate the smell. Your company’s left, then?”

“My company? What-I… No? I don’t understand.”

“It’s fine,” Kylo assures. He hangs his cloak on a hook by the only exit and drops the gloves he pulls off onto the console table beside it. And his lightsaber. And his belt, the wide strip of leather striking a palpable bolt of fear in Hux greater than his reaction to the deadly weapon. Ah… Brendol. He’s the answer to the question Kylo doesn’t even finish forming. That could be useful, but not now. This is about blowing off steam, winding down after a stressful day, not punishment. “It’s fine,” Kylo repeats. “I don’t mind seconds.” That’s a lie. Not Kylo Ren, never. The other Knights might have enjoyed sharing their plentiful rentals, but not their master. Kylo Ren is different. Discreet. He is discerning with the men and women and less binary beings who come to him freely and leave with hazy, harmless memories of nights very well spent.

“It’s late, Your Leadership,” Hux announces, clearly not appreciating Kylo’s open-mindedness. He babbles on, asking what’s wrong, what urgency has brought his guest here. “These are my rooms,” he tries to explain, already gorging himself on Kylo’s finite patience. “Supreme—”

“Just get your lubricant.” The simple request is met with an expression that would better suit a freshly beached fish, yet Hux still looks good. He always has, and no less so now that he’s finally available. Snoke was permissive when he wished to be, and had largely allowed his apprentice to entertain himself however he saw fit, but it went without saying that the face and voice of the First Order was off-limits. Besides, that could have been construed as cooperation where Snoke without any façade fostered if not outright enmity, then staunch competition between the two most prominent protégés.

“Lube, Hux,” Kylo requests again, and the skinny redhead in his pretty robe just stands looking like he might shit himself. For a second, Kylo’s certain he’ll insist his prowess with mechanics is largely macroscopic, that this isn’t a hangar, that he doesn’t have turbine grease or machine oil for his starfighter. What he actually purports is no less idiotic.

“Supreme Leader, I-I don’t have any.”

Kylo snorts, “You? Really?” It’s always on Hux’s mind: sex. Men. Countless men. Sometimes trios and quads of them in every human shape and color imaginable all stuffing their cocks into him. “I doubt you could have done better for yourself if you’d been brought up in the Navy you covet so much.” A long sigh escapes Kylo. He doesn’t want to argue. There’s no need to provoke a fight he has no interest in, even if Hux dares to lie to his face, or if his sudden noninclusive change in taste is utterly insulting. 

General Hux has studied the records that Emperor Palpatine sought to destroy, applying his insight toward his soldiers’ regimens as his father had done before him, and this simply is not what they were like. Is this part of Ren’s rebellion? His attempt to distance himself from the asceticism of his former faith? But does he no longer sit in meditation gathering his mystical energy? Does Ren not collect holy trinkets as they did? And does he not fight as they did? Does he not kill? Does he not plot for power and seize it? He does, he’s still a Jedi in all but name, so then how could he ask for this? Why is he like other men, puppetered by this basest of urges like a dog in rut? Why isn’t he better than them? Why isn’t he like Hux? Because it’s a test. This is another test of loyalty.

“Supreme Leader, tell me what I can do. I can run through Snoke’s last initiatives. I spoke out of turn before… I didn’t realize how important it was to you.” It, not he. No implications. No insinuation. No blame. Hux releases the sofa to gesture courteously toward one of the four matching armchairs across from the caf table. “Tell me what I can do.”

“I did,” Ren warns, declining the offered seat. “I won’t again.”

This isn’t a game. This isn’t a test. Hux ignores the old lessons that taught him begging never helps. He forgets the vows he made to stop demeaning himself with pointless pleading. Hux watches the last smoldering embers of the cigarra perish on the cold, polished floor. “Kylo, please.” It’s not enough. It never is.

There’s little in here. A few trifles on display. A couple of decent paintings. Kylo supposes the overhead holoprojector can fill the room with else anything Hux could desire in lieu of more commodious appointments, but the place is still unexpectedly plain, and no larger than that of any other general. Hux prefers understated elegance, Kylo figures. Also, he’s rarely here, working more often from the bridge or his public office instead of this one here. That’s a nice desk, Kylo gleans from a glimpse through one of the open doors. It’s sturdy and sizable, unlike the somewhat antique-looking furniture of the parlor or anything in the hyper-modern cabinet of a kitchenette, but there’s nothing wrong with a time-tested classic. “Take that robe off and get on the bed.”

A wave of cool joy washes over Kylo as Hux stumbles out of his way. He expects to be struck, but the Supreme Leader only sweeps by him on the way to the bedroom. Fear is good, appropriate, but Kylo requires only compliance, wants only the calm of release. A mere pluck at the loom of the Force sends Hux padding after Kylo, his fitted black slippers almost soundless on the floor while his nightstands are searched. They’re empty of anything useful at all. The fresher, then.

“Please, don’t,” Hux implores so intently yet so quietly that Kylo turns to look at him. Meekness doesn’t become the general. Kylo almost tells him this, but it’d be a lie. The duality of pride and shame only makes Hux more stunning. Shame?

Oh. In the refresher. Medicine, but not in the medicine cabinet. There’s a panel hidden in the same fashion as the private security system Kylo had painstakingly overridden as one of his first executive orders. Inside of it there are stimulants. Tranquilizers. A dozen strains of pure, uncut spice. It’s enough to incapacitate a battalion, but that’s a problem for another day. Kylo doesn’t mention the narcotics as he rummages through the drawers and cubbies of the spotless space. All he needs is lube, and there is none to be found. A power play? His men must bring the assorted paraphernalia: prophylactics, toys, lubrication. Fine. Kylo takes the nearest thing he can find and returns to the adjoining bedroom.

Hux has changed so much in only a minute. Confusion to determination to panic to… What is this? His face is red and wet. His white fists clench the robe he removed to his chest, still effectively covering the body he’s seated at the foot of the large bed laid out in neutral linens. Kylo grabs at the garment, surprised that he has to give it a second, more furtive yank before it flies across the room to land in a heap. Hux uses his hands and his hunching to hide himself. It’s an adorable act that he drops when he sees the can that Kylo holds.

“No, Kylo. Supreme Leader,” he corrects, his eyes still streaming, his soft, pink penis peeking shyly through its bright orange nest. “No, that’s shaving gel.”

It’ll be fine, soothing even. “All fours, Hux.” The bulge aching in Kylo’s trousers grows when Hux does as commanded without any additional aid, his full, prodigious scrotum jiggling tantalizingly between his legs as he climbs up into position. Perhaps there’s some truth to the crass insinuations about bollocks, for he continues to defy Kylo openly with his thoughts. “Jedi,” Kylo can hear over Hux’s sniffling as clearly as if the words were spoken. “Meditation. Monks. Floating rocks. Laser swords. Virgins. Sexless.” This unsolicited visit is nothing to him; it’s his own response that upsets him, and the fear that Kylo might have found his hoard, that it will be the excuse he needs to denounce and arrest him. Nonsense. Not if Hux behaves himself.

As nice as the frontal view is, the reverse is even better. Hux presents his round little ass to Kylo in the form of two firm handfuls molded into shape by three and a half decades of First Order, né Imperial, preening and posturing. The orange fuzz that covers his crotch is nowhere to be found from behind. His dark rouge hole is puckered and mesmerizing against the surrounding fair skin, begging to be fingered and tasted. His knees part instinctively to meet Kylo’s height, his weight balanced right at the edge of the bed for easy access between his slender thighs. His back is arched, only highlighting his irritatingly smooth complexion and excellent proportions. Even his feet are perfect, scrubbed and pedicured, the toes curled and pointed delicately at the floor, yet all the while he trembles and cries.

The volume of Hux’s sobs becomes conventionally audible when Kylo peels his trousers and briefs down to his boots. It increases when he tucks his tunic and base layers up and in and out of the splash zone. But why? Because he thinks that’s what Kylo wants, and he has learned to behave himself. Hux is filthy. Yes, he’s cleaned up on par with the classiest of whores, so much that Kylo could believe he got here first, but that’s essentially what Hux is at heart: a proper slut, greedily awaiting satisfaction.

Hux is not made to wait any longer. Kylo wedges his thickly muscled thighs between Hux’s calves, and depresses the can’s nozzle, lewdly ejecting a stream of glossy gel into the crack of the general’s ass. He slathers more of the impromptu lubricant over his hooded cock before taking its head in his fist and guiding it toward the quivering target. Hux’s sobbing is over the top, but Kylo doesn’t mind. That’s a sound he was trained to tune out for years, even his own. Especially his own. This could be authentic, like the scream Hux’s ruckus suddenly evolves into at the precise moment of penetration, but Kylo knows it’s performative.

While Hux doesn’t buck as Kylo might have predicted, his discordant notes adequately sell the point. Then he’s done, his body as ready and relaxed as if he’d bothered to enjoy a spa day. Good, it’s better this way. Kylo would have played along, but unlike Hux, he doesn’t prefer it rough. He likes to savor his meals, and Hux is a feast.

The brief quiet of the room erupts with Kylo’s low moans as he indulges in the rich appetizer of watching Hux’s surprisingly tight hole peel the foreskin down his glans. Kylo’s cock looks massive pressing inside. It is massive, objectively. Wielding it requires more care than most weapons do, and so Kylo rocks Hux’s hips gently into his, pushing in and pulling out of the rim, teasing his surprisingly tight sphincters apart nice and easy, exercising them until they no longer readily wink shut. Only then once Hux is familiar with the stretch and pressure does Kylo push deeper. Only then does he begin to eat his fill, but something is strange here.

Kylo Ren has a talent for pleasing his partners, for perceiving their limits and their desires, for making an art of sex, for making it the fantastical union that others can only dream of. Except years of serving Snoke have spurred Hux to coat his core thoughts in so many strata of topsoil that reaching them would require no gentle tap, but the utterly counterproductive psychic equivalent of an oil derrick.

With the tenderness of an archaeologist unveiling a buried relic, Kylo dusts away only the uppermost layer: weariness. Underneath it is… compulsion? A habit? A vice. Hux has more of those than Kylo had realized. What is this one? One more level down, Kylo decides as he feels Hux subconsciously push back even as his body welcomes him. Oh. Hux has garnered many boons through this precise exchange: his carnal companionship for improved status. This has become a routine for him, always playing the roles that others expect of him. It’s a bore. Then that’s not what Kylo will grant Hux. The general’s prominence was already going to be restored, perhaps even elevated, for there is merit to keeping the counsel of at least one advisor who’s unafraid of speaking his mind. Instead, Kylo will give Hux a gift: a return to truly enjoying his beautiful body.

General Hux has never liked being touched, but he’s always liked being looked at. That’s almost like being seen, or at least it’s a fine first step. This is the most anyone has seen of him in twenty years, and yet Hux feels more irrelevant, more ignored than ever before. Kylo is a sorcerer, and yet he sees only what he wants, like all the others before him. Like the worst, of them Kylo doesn’t just use Hux, but touches him, letting the closeness of their bodies hold his black layers up while his hands wander and massage. They luxuriate in the slimness of his waist. They pinch at his nipples. They tickle the hairs trailing down his navel until they dwarf Hux’s completely decent genitals, cupping, kneading, and stroking them until autonomic male mechanics override Hux’s predisposition.

“There,” Ren declares as if he’d invented erections.

It requires great concentration from Hux to keep not only his mind quiet, but the bile locked down in his gut. Almost more than the rest of this does, it disgusts Hux that Ren was right about the shaving gel. It’s fine, particularly by the metric that it isn’t spit. Hux doesn’t put commissary trash on his face; the stuff is warm and slick, and the light fragrance of fresh timber should help cover up the unclean odors he imagines being expressed from him. There’s unfortunately nothing to be done about the sounds, the slow shlorp-shlopping resulting in Ren’s newfound interest in pulsing himself shallowly against his prostate.

Hux grits his teeth. He tries to keep Ren out of his head. He tries to stop thinking at all, but he’s too sensitive. He gasps and hates himself for improving Ren’s experience based on his wolfish panting, his howling as each undulation seemingly unveils another inch of him. He must find this more engaging, for he releases Hux’s agitated, dribbling penis to return his now slightly sticky grip to either of his narrow hips.

It scares Hux. It all does, how it’s the same but different, or different but the same. None of it hurts, not much — that’s the biggest difference. Hux could tell himself it’s because he’s intoxicated and half asleep if that weren’t more of a similarity, or that nobody has ever found it amusing to stimulate him although a dozen others also tried to prove just how much fun he was having. No. There is only one difference: time. Decades. Hux is no longer a tooka kitten being impaled by a nexu, and yet this feels no less unfair. Hux would prefer the pain that haste heightens. He just wants this to end. His knees are tired. So are his shoulders. His elbows no longer brace for the impact of Ren’s attack and fold beneath him.

“Please,” Hux asks into his sheets. This is taking too long. He can’t do this anymore. “Please,” he tries again, and Ren actually steps away, pulling out so slowly, so smoothly that Hux shivers despite himself before he instinctively crawls up the mattress toward his pillows and away from the Supreme Leader. “Please, let him be done,” he prays to any deity that might suddenly choose to listen after all this time. “Please let this be over.”

“Let me finish. Help me finish.” Fine. Kylo can be accommodating. He was getting close just as they were, so was Hux, but it doesn’t matter. The general lies seductively prone, breathing hard and ready for more, for his unspoken preference to be met. Kylo kicks away his boots and out of his trousers and compression briefs to appease him. The rest takes longer — the neck guard, the quilted tunic, the ribbed shirt of armorweave, the breathable sleeveless top. And then it’s all off, and Kylo is on the bed administering a fresh squirt of gel atop the mess of lathered foam he’s made.

Resisting dirty talk is obscenely challenging, but Kylo has the distinct impression that Hux would not appreciate it. He shows his admiration through compliance instead, accepting that a workout is also a proven way to wind down even if the more demanding position forces him to sacrifice his ability to watch his cock vanish into Hux.

“Kylo, please.”

There is actually still much to see, Kylo realizes. Hux’s hair catches the faint overhead light, glowing like a campfire at dusk. His shoulders tense and ripple as he grasps at his pillow in anticipation, but the rest of him relaxes. He likes it here on the bottom, being taken, but only if he’s in charge. His partners forget that. His trios, his quads. He wants it like this, flat as a plank, legs together as if to fit into a narrow bunk instead of this bed which can, and undoubtedly has, slept three grown men. He paces his breathing again, readying himself as Kylo slides in place around him. This time when Hux vacuums him in, he doesn’t scream in an admittedly tantalizing simulacrum of pained surprise, but whines like an untrained puppy already begging for more meat.

Kylo gives it to him, planting his palms beside Hux’s armpits to provide enough purchase to sink the bulk of his weight and the entirety of his cock into Hux’s ass with a firm clap. “ Fuck, you’re good,” Kylo huffs, helplessly failing the challenge. “I knew you’d be good.” The words manifest without any thought, an immaculate conception of filth. The pillow hugged into Hux’s face absorbs half his high, keening response. Clap! He just takes it, his velvety tubing straightening with ease as Kylo pushes just beyond the curvature of his colon. It almost hurts, the fist of sphincters squeezing the base of him, the tip beating against a warm, wet wall. “I always knew it. I knew it.”

Clap! Ridiculous sounds permeate Kylo’s lips, he can’t help them. Even more amusing ones escape Hux’s hole. They embarrass the general. They make him feel dirty, sloppy, but Kylo likes them. He likes them so much that they subtract precious minutes from his timer. It’s been, what, ten? He can last so much longer than this, but right now he could almost pop like the pockets of air he’s fucked into Hux bursting out around his cock and sounding no different from flatulence, but feeling like heaven. Clap!

They’re close. So close, but they could be closer. The pushups Kylo performs atop Hux are not enough. Closer. Closer. “You’re so sexy, Armitage.” Kylo falls into him, pummeling him relentlessly, embracing him, kissing the name into his silken hair free of its usual pomade-enabled severity. “Armitage,” Kylo repeats, enjoying the tumble of the phonemes no less the second time and temporarily withholding his ugly grunts to whisper into Hux’s ear: “I could fucking marry you.” He means it, overcome with the idea that he will never want nor need anyone else. He’s a commoner, and a bastard, but he’s proven his worth. And he’s beautiful. What more is needed of a consort. “Would you like that?”

“Pop,” speaks Hux’s ass. “Clap,” add his thighs and buttocks. Both are excellent points punctuated by the piggish pillow squealing that’s in perfect sync with each of Kylo’s plowing thrusts. Hux needs more evidence, more convincing. Fine, he’s persistent, but not unreasonable. He requires a precision strike right at fulcrum between not enough and too much. He can take more, probably prides himself on that, but Kylo refuses to leave a single tear, a single bruise behind, only a deep soreness, a memento of him, an ache for more, an ache to say yes. He’s almost there. Kylo can feel him boiling inside. Hux’s innards flutter around him, but he holds it all in, as Kylo must, unwilling to finish first.

“Give yourself to me. Let go. I have you.” Kylo buries his face between Hux’s shoulders and into the tabac-infused ginger nape of the man he’s fancied far longer than he’d ever thought he’d admit. He pulls down ever so slightly, just enough that he can truly, fully lean into Hux as he the man so obviously desires. Kylo performs with a speed that other men cannot, in the way that other men cannot sprint like him, leap like him. This is a gift. Something good, new, fresh. “I have you,” Kylo promises again, and then, like so many speeders, he crashes, but not before Hux does.

The remnants of the Empire were lonely, bored, and overwhelmingly male. Many of them left wives behind, or sweethearts. They became something they had never been beneath Palpatine with fraternization becoming even more forbidden, and pockets lined with credits that were meaningless without brothels in open space, and dangerous during covert planetside missions. So, amongst themselves they traded with neither the old Imperial ingots nor the dataries they’d been melted into, but in favors and influence for what they sought.

Brendol Hux won much of the new currency through the son he never wanted, assuming the boy would break beneath his most depraved cohorts. He didn’t, and Brendol grew rich indeed, funding his projects and elevating himself to Snoke’s right hand before the forces he had guided even knew that name. That, far more than the professional hurdle he posed, is why Brendol is dead, but all of those memories live on in a neat little bundle… Or they did.

He peeks inside, Hux does, unwrapping just a little end of the bundle during his times of greatest need. Then he seals everything back up after he’s reminded himself of what the galaxy is like without sensible rule, what men can be like at their worst. How else could he accomplish what Tarkin had only dreamed of — not only destroying an offending world, a conspirator, but the seat of the enemy itself? There were children in the Hosnian System. There were animals, parks, songs, and wine, but there were also men, and now they’re all dead. They’re dead like Brendol and every predator who entered Hux’s room uninvited, and Hux couldn’t be prouder of his victories.

Just a peek, that’s all that’s needed, never more, except Kylo Ren has found that bundle. He’s climbed up into the closet like a spoiled brat who can’t wait until Empire Day and he rapes away at the wrapping paper faster than Hux can plaster it back together. It might be forgivable if he had just come and taken what he wanted like all the others. No, no of course it wouldn’t, but this isn’t right! No one can see. Nobody can know.

Hux applies another layer of bonding tape, but Ren’s too strong, too heavy. Hux can feel the power of the muscles he’d only assumed were there beneath that ridiculous ensemble. There is no fighting Ren, no running from him. Another layer. Ren is kissing him, sucking at his neck and his earlobes. Another layer. Ren pets Hux, strokes his jaw, his sideburns. He whispers things Hux tells himself he cannot hear, and then he really can’t hear them. It’s too loud — his own wailing. Ren has won. The bundle has been shredded apart.

Hux can’t keep it in any longer, and so he explodes, his lode struck just right and geysering dramatically from him like a volcanic eruption. The sensation should be a soaring accompaniment to Kylo’s shuddering final slams and the roar he courteously aims into the air. Hux’s moans should be ringing out in ecstasy, but all the man does is yowl like an infant stung by a wasp. It sends Kylo careening, flung into deep and icy waters.

Gasping, Kylo untangles himself from Hux and springs back and out of him with a juicy sopp  before he can sink along with him. There is no moment in which to enjoy that, nor the ass that’s been slapped as red as a ripe berry or the frothy cream it dribbles. The sheets dampen around Hux like the blast radius of an acrid, yellow liquor bomb, spreading like the crying, like the voices Kylo knows aren’t there, like the blood he knows isn’t there. Kylo’s still drowning, still bleeding. They’re crushing him, stabbing him, hitting him, pulling him, pushing him, and he tells them that he’s sorry, that he’ll be good, that he just needs a break, that he’s just tired, that it’s late, Your Leadership.

It’s not real. It’s not here. It’s not now. Hux isn’t even Force-sensitive, and yet he lands a crippling blow, a psychic barrage that sends Kylo floundering back again, grabbing his clothes and covering his ears. That doesn’t block anything out. He can still hear all of Hux’s partners, all of his trios and quads as he hastily dresses, shoving himself still half-hard into them while staring at an empty decanter and the ashes of at least a dozen cigarras. And he can hear Hux.

“Please.” The general sounds so much like a little boy, a soft little thing, that Kylo almost thinks of returning to him, of comforting him somehow. “You’re hurting me.” No, he’s not. He didn’t, but neither did he please Hux. Kylo’s superb eyesight glimpses no sign of that when Hux curls on the piss-soaked bedding around the pillow saturated with his tears. “Please stop.”

Apologize to him. What else is there to do? This was a mistake, a miscommunication. This isn’t what Kylo wanted. He hadn’t known. He hadn’t. How could he with the illusion Hux had cast? The diversion? Could he take tonight away? Maybe, but that would mean exposing himself to more of this, risking losing himself in it. This is a suffering even Kylo has not known, not like this, although only Snoke could have been behind something of this magnitude. Hux must have known. It’s why he was reluctant to speak of Snoke or perpetuate his plans any longer than he was required to.

Kylo swoons, barely catching himself. He has to get away. Look at that decanter: Hux might not remember this night even without his intervention. Get away. Shut the noise out. Shut out the blood and sweat and shit and tranquilizers. Shut out the tearing, the screaming, the beatings, the surgeries performed on a child with no agency. None of that matters. None of it’s real anymore. Hux will forget, and besides, he belongs to Kylo Ren. Everything does. Hux should thank him for slaying Snoke. He should be grateful to serve his new master. He should be fucking grateful.

Notes:

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Chapter 3: My Place

Summary:

Kylo, unable to cope with his guilt, validates himself and last night’s unintentionally brutal attack by forcing the shaken general to perform and endure debasing and painful sex acts that further unravel their psyches.

It’s warm in her arms. Armitage could stay here for ages, but he knows this is a special treat. People aren’t meant to see him, not even his mother. He’s big enough that she’s not allowed to do this anymore, except when only the staff is home and the nurse droid is charging, she sometimes comes upstairs and does it anyway. Armitage won’t tell. Armitage likes secrets almost as much as he likes her smell, as much as he likes his belly full of sweet milk instead of bland porridge. He only wishes she would speak to him while she feeds him.

 

Armitage says nothing, and neither does Mother. She just rocks. Her rhythm is strange, though. So are her arms. So is her smell. Something isn’t right. Something is happening. Bad news? Rebel attacks? Have people died again? Is Father in danger? Maybe they’ll get him this time. He’s important, isn’t he? That’s why he lives in a fairy tale house with fairy tale servants.

 

When Armitage dreams, Mother can spend as much time with him as she wants, and in plain sight because the Rebels get Father, an. She doesn’t have to cry anymore because Father calls her to his rooms to fight her while his wife is out. Instead, she sings the way her son thinks she did once when he couldn’t sleep during the monsoon rains. And they talk. They talk about everything even though Armitage doesn’t understand all the words yet, especially through the fog of her Arkhani accent that has already been tutored, and at times, shaken out of him. They’ll talk and sing as much as they want to, and coming upstairs won’t have to be a secret anymore, not from Father, and not from Miss Maratelle. 

 

That’s Armitage’s biggest secret of all: he hopes that before the Rebels lose the war, they’ll win one small victory here, that they’ll take Father away and make him cry. They’ll hit him and call him names and feed him porridge and nobody will ever see him or talk to him except for the stern droids that clean and dress him and tell him what to do. Doesn’t Mother want this, too? She should be excited. Armitage knows she didn’t mean to have him. He wasn’t wanted like the children he sometimes catches glimpses of beyond the windows, or the ones he hears about in depth when Father brags about his cadets, but Mother doesn’t hate him. Maybe she even loves him.

 

Maybe. Something isn’t right, but Mother still rocks Armitage. She still feeds him. That should be enough even if she doesn’t smell like buttered biscuits anymore. He takes the slow, salty trickle that she gives him, enjoying her nearness even if she doesn’t taste as sweet as before. He only gets one good drink, two, three squirts, and Mother puts away her first bubby tip. Armitage takes the second eagerly into his mouth, wondering if it was always this big, this bitter. And is this how Mother has always rocked him? Not side to side, but up and down, like shaking, like what Father does when he’s mad?

 

There are voices here. They sound far away even though they’re not. One of them is groaning. If he’s hurt, Mother doesn’t care. Armitage tries to tell her, but her bubby is like the dumdum he used to wear when he was still learning to be quiet. Maybe it is Father. Maybe the Rebels blasted him and now he’s dying. That must be it. Armitage would smile if he could, but his mouth is too full, and his head is starting to hurt. Everything is starting to hurt.

 

“Mammy?” Armitage tries to ask. “Mammy?” He thinks of opening his eyes, of looking up to catch her attention, but he can’t risk it. With his eyes closed, she is still Mother and not someone with blond hair, but no face. She was blonde, wasn’t she? It doesn’t matter; as long as Armitage doesn’t look, then she can be real again, and he can be in her arms on Arkanis instead of his bed lost in space. This isn’t even one of the bad nights, not really.

 

The visitors will be gone soon enough, and it will just be Armitage and Mother. If he tries hard enough, maybe he’ll remember her voice. Maybe she’ll even sing to him, he thinks, but she doesn’t get the chance. Too much of the milk that isn’t milk gushes wrong into his throat, and Armitage chokes and sputters, no longer able to pretend to be asleep.

 

***

 

A rattling, rasping cough throws Hux violently from his evaporating dreams and into the now-cold cup of tea he’d brewed as strong and dark as most pots of caf… some good it had done. Hux sits fully up to extract a full packet of disposable tissues from his desk drawer and sacrifice it in the mopping up of both the drink and the pool of drool he’d been aspirating. 

 

Too little sleep is worse than none at all. Every unintentional lapse into unconsciousness is marked by either nightmares or the temptation to make it last forever, but each time Hux wakes, and with a new opportunity to remember only the things he hates about himself. Like, why didn’t he speak up? Of all the things he’s said to Ren, how could he not muster the right words when they’d mattered most? Why hadn’t he fought? It doesn’t matter if he wouldn’t have won. He never would have, but at least he could have tried.

 

Stop that. There’s no time for self-pity. There’s too much to do. Hux wipes at his face with the least soiled tissue before throwing them all in the wastebasket and reactivating the computer console sleekly integrated into the glassy surface of his bureau. Fourteen hundred hours, reads the holographic interphase. There’s a new meeting scheduled in twenty minutes. The details show it’s a one-on-one with the ship’s captain. No need for that. The request in his inbox tells Hux what Peavey wants, and so it’s granted, for the man is skilled and dutiful no matter how annoying.

 

Petitions? Granted when possible. Evaluations? Results perused, and feedback issued favorably. Hux will not allow his mood to touch his work, not when he has something to do again. That’s easy enough when there’s nothing on his schedule that can’t be done from his room. There is nothing he can tell himself to feel safe here any longer, but it’s still better than leaving. He can’t go out looking like this. People might know if he does. People might know. People might know.

 

“No!” Hux wheels himself back in his chair hard enough that it rebounds slightly when it cracks against his office wall. “No, don’t,” Hux tells the shadow in the corner… the shadow of a plant, a fern on a tall pedestal beneath a suspended orb of full-spectrum light. Hux glances around once more, then frowns, rolling back to his desk and stabbing a few commands into the illuminated keys of the computer. Light. Illumination. He turns the suite-wide settings all the way up at the cost of aggravating his throbbing headache. There, no more shadows. No more jumping at them. Maybe this evening it will be Hux who addresses his own soldiers instead of General Parnadee once more, or General Quinn.

 

Or not. Hux’s heart won’t stop pounding in his ears. There are still too many shadows. He forgoes tea, and guzzles a pint of fortified water in the kitchenette, but it doesn’t help. He’s in the refresher before he knows it, palming the innocuous bio-coded button beneath his sink. He stops as he reaches for the second of five above the medicine cabinet. Instead he switches on the mirrored display.

 

The digital reflection doesn’t look like General Hux. This man is baggy-eyed. Sallow. Hungover. Little orange bristles sprout about his lip and jaw, but Hux is supposed to be clean-shaven besides the sideburns accenting his youth and the earliness of his success as much as the lines of his dignified face. He could look like that again after a bit of rest and a shave; he just has to retrieve what is left of his gel, but it’s easier to accept that this pretender wearing his uniform is really him. Hux deactivates the display, and in his determination to sooner burn his bedroom down before returning to it, absentmindedly exits through the wrong door, the stench of the unattended mess hitting him instantly. Hux stumbles back into the refresher and promptly completes the five-part sequence.

 

 

There was a connection between them. Kylo has rarely felt that, not for long. The only people he’s ever been close with have either forgotten him or turned against him. Hux should have been different. Maybe he can be, although not like before. Things have changed now. Kylo still feels himself tripping over Hux’s mind, and nearly his robe and slippers, too. He was embarrassed by the man who could have been everything to him. He feels lied to. A lesson must be taught, the dark side demands it. Kylo will not only be obeyed, but respected.

 

The door to Hux’s freakishly bright quarters opens automatically when Kylo approaches this time, although the general is not in plain sight, but behind one of the doors. The bedroom, he assumes at first from the signature of misery it emits, but there are active life signs coming from the fresher, and not a mere imprint. Very well, Kylo will wait. He takes a look in the office that likewise opens and shuts for him. An empty cup. A couple of datapads. A few plants. Hux’s desk-computer displays code that is meaningless to Kylo. A training simulation, he assumes. A holographic reality program.

 

Hux is drawing nearer. He’s calmer than Kylo might have imagined. That’s a good step, Kylo thinks until Hux walks right by him and sits down at the desk. He types there for two minutes while Kylo regards him. His motions seem sluggish. Is he inebriated again? No, it’s something else. He’s still in command of enough of his faculties to write whatever this is, no matter how diminished. It won’t be the same today, courting the pathetic creature Hux had drunk himself into. This will be fair. Righteous. Growing bored, Kylo finally interrupts, “General.”

 

 

That is not a shadow. Bootheels snap. A right arm raises, inadvertently swiping a datapad to the floor.

 

“No,” Kylo judges Hux’s poor execution of the formal salute.

 

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. What happened to fighting? To Hux defending himself? He ducks his head, staring at nothing, at anything other than Ren, and stands ill at ease. “W-wha-how may—”

 

“You forgot something,” chides Ren.

 

Blinking, Hux thinks. “I don’t understand.” The phrase is familiar and greasy. “Sir. Sir, I’m sorry.”

 

“That’s not enough.”

 

Hux backs toward the door, but Ren is faster. He reaches out and touches him, grabs him by the shoulder. Hux thinks of swatting his hand away, even if it means losing one of his own, but he doesn’t take the risk, nor does he run. He lets Kylo push him down until he’s kneeling on his heels, and doesn’t fight when words that are not his own fill every part of him until they are Forced out. “Thank you, sir. Thank you for everything.” Sweating in the cool room, Hux shakes his head. “Thank you… Th-th…” No, he can’t say that. He won’t say the rest. He won’t. He won’t. He weeps, “Thank you, Supreme Leader, for showing me my place.”

 

“Look at me.”

 

“Please, I can’t.”

 

“Look at me!” Kylo doesn’t wait, opting instead to snap Hux’s chin up in his thumb and forefinger, his black glove accentuating the general’s exaggerated lack of color. His jade eyes blink rapidly up into Kylo’s. “This is where you belong, do you understand?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Louder!”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“You will do as I say, when I tell you to do it. You will be appreciative and cordial. Do you understand me?” Kylo rubs Hux’s chapped lower lip with his thumb firmly enough to expose a gummy snarl. “Do you. Understand me?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Good. Then get up, and get your lube.”

 

“I can’t.”

“Excuse me?”

 

“I can’t.” Hux’s head swims. “I don’t have…” Does he mean the gel? It worked, but it burned later, itched like a rash long after the shower ran cold. It’s not safe. It’s not lube. “I don’t have any.”

 

Ren bends further to wrap his hand around Hux’s throat. “You told me you understood. Did you lie to me?”

 

“No. No, Supreme Leader.” Hux babbles before Ren can squeeze the life from him. “I didn’t make it to commissary.”

 

Suddenly, Ren spins and points to the desk. “How can you manage all these projects and forget something so simple?”

 

Because Hux thought this was over. He thought, for a moment, that this hadn’t happened. Kylo wouldn’t have done such a thing. He’s different. His Knights maybe — they have been a plague upon entire generations — but not Kylo. He’s dangerous, but he’s civilized. Hux takes the opportunity to hang his head and suck in air, but it feels void of oxygen. Never underestimate Ren. Never. “I’m sorry sir. It won’t happen again.”

 

“See that it does not.”

 

“Yes, sir.” Hux waits for Ren to leave, for the shadows to just be shadows again. He has to concentrate on not falling over. He almost fails, nearly falling asleep slumped on the floor, but Ren isn’t gone. He’s saying something.

 

“Take it out.”

 

Hux dares to glance up, unwilling to repeat one more time that he doesn’t know what Ren means. Take it out. Kylo already has — Hux hadn’t noticed him pull his own penis through his clothes as if to relieve himself. Hux doesn’t ask why Kylo wants this. He only wishes he were too tired or too smoothed out not to hate himself for reaching into the flap of his trousers to obey.

 

“No, pull them down.”

 

Nodding, Hux sets his belt aside and raises himself enough to pull his flared trousers and briefs to the top of his boots.

 

“Actually, take all of it off.”

 

The motions required for standing have never been more complex, but Hux manages. He considers turning around before unsnapping his tunic, but that’s the wrong choice for at least two reasons that his sedated mind still readily offers. Hux also doesn’t bother with the proper creasing or draping of his uniform. That’s not what Kylo asked for, and speed is of the essence. If Hux proves his obedience, proves he’ll do anything for his Leadership, then… Then… Hux doesn’t know. It’s not his place to know, not anymore.

 

There. He’s naked. His clothes are stacked, if not quite folded, in a bundle held to his chest. Hux surrenders it when Ren holds out his hand, and the Supreme Leader tosses it into an empty corner of the office.

 

“Down,” Ren instructs.

 

Angling away from Ren’s exposed bits, Hux complies, cold shooting up his calves without the buffer of his uniform. That’s nothing compared to the stench wafting toward him. Beneath a marathon’s worth of Ren’s dried sweat and unscrubbed skin are far worse odors: urine, feces, and once-fresh timber. He hasn’t even bathed.

 

 

The face Hux pulls is priceless, but he says nothing, only waits. It pleases Kylo greatly that the general hasn’t entirely forgotten his training… and that he has such a nice chair. Kylo spreads himself into it, watching Hux’s overt fear of being told to suck him off nearly consume the man before taking his cock in his gloved hand. He tells Hux to do the same: “Play with yourself.” Was the order not clear? Hux seems so confused. Kylo leans into the tall back of the seat. “Tug your little mushroom. And look at me. Did I tell you to stop looking at me?”

 

“No, sir.”

 

He looks sick, starved, as if in only one day he’s managed to lose a significant portion of what little weight he has. In a way, it’s equally irritating and exciting to see Hux like this, somehow even worse than yesterday, and touching himself as if he’d only just discovered his genitals. How about a better angle? “Perch on your toes and part your legs.” The result — Hux’s improved posture and the view of his digits framing his hanging ball sack — is slowly achieved, yet worth the wait. The man’s bullshit masturbation, however, might demonstrate the galaxy’s most lackluster technique. He’s not even hard, but how could he by just waving it around like a flag in surrender?

 

Kylo showcases a more successful method, one he thinks of as “strangling the swan,” but Hux doesn’t watch that. His eyeline has shifted to Kylo’s brow, which is fine since the Supreme Leader’s own wanders between Hux’s shapely toes and the sinew quivering beneath the skin of his abdomen. This could all be over in seconds if Kylo wanted, but he’d much prefer to make Hux squirm.

 

No. No, that’s not enough. Kylo remembers why he’s here: retribution for the last eleven hours of chaos. Hux tried to infect him with his vile memories and throw him off balance. Since then, Kylo has not only been tending to his new regime, but cleansing himself of his weakest instinct: to provide aid to the downtrodden. It’s what Ben may as well have been bred to do. It’s what they all did — the Organas, Naberries, Skywalkers, and even Han, maybe especially him with what little he once had. No matter how intensely Kylo scours Ben away, he returns like a fungus, and now he’s flourished in the dank soil of Hux’s dark truths.

 

Ben Solo tells Kylo to stop beating off and put his penis away, to ask Hux to dress. He tells Kylo to fix the bedroom that nobody’s been in since he left last night. He tells Kylo to sink to his knees, to offer a sincere apology with no expectation of appreciation, let alone acceptance or forgiveness. He tells Kylo to promise such an attack will never recur. Kylo should ask him if he wants to forget, maybe even offer to blunt the edges of the old memories that are too ingrained to truly be removed. The Supreme Leader can be merciful.

 

On and on drones Ben Solo, but none of his points matter. Yes, Hux has more or less done what he’s been told, but that’s not enough. He lied. He hid himself, turned himself away and into a minefield. There must be consequences for that. Besides, few things shock Kylo Ren anymore. The sensation was exotic. Erotic. Not the pitiful boy, no, but the pain he endured. The agony he shared through their brief connection was exquisite. All of that poise instantly gone, everything pouring out of him, even his piss. More. Kylo wants more.

 

 

He’s wheeling closer. That eliminates the need to look Ren in the face, but the smell Hux hoped he’d only imagined becomes unavoidably real, as does its source. In the lighting Hux wishes he’d never turned up, the thing is worse than Hux might have assumed. It’s ridiculous, like a pornographic fantasy of a penis that nearly no one actually has. And it looks grafted onto him, like it came from a donor several shades darker than Ren. The fat mauve tip still partially hooded by a thick collar would look more at place on a violet-skinned Keshiri.

 

While neither the lack of hygiene nor the presence of any disease can be discerned through the violent throttling of Kylo’s shaft, nothing can assuage Hux’s determination to be as far from it as physically possible, especially when Ren ceases his frenzied masturbation. The demand he expects never comes, as if Ren would never be so crass, but Hux knows what he’s meant to do. He can’t. He won’t, not without an order. If he does it, the sweet taste might be gone forever. He can’t lose his mother again.

 

 

She’s dead. She’s been dead for twelve years, but Hux never bothered to discover that, unlike Kylo who investigated the general in search of leverage. The project was no cheap undertaking, but Hux is more than well connected enough to have similarly tracked her all the way from her brief detention by the New Republic, through the relocations and name changes they’d afforded her, to her untimely accident, and into her final resting place. Hux thinks of her almost as much as what Kylo had mistaken for promiscuity, but the men? The kidnappings? Starkiller? He doesn’t know how to explain to her any of the things he’s had to do, and so he let her go, everything but one harmless memory, one Kylo wishes he did not understand… one he’ll allow Hux to keep.

 

Ben is right; The Supreme Leader can be merciful. Kylo hadn’t realized he’d forgotten to wash. He doesn’t even have his lightsaber. If Kylo wanted, he could trace the oscillations of the tortured Kyber powering it, but he assumes the weapon is still in what remains of the training hall after his rage subsided enough to permit any form of work. Kylo can indeed be merciful, yes, but not soft. “Get up, Hux.”

 

Kylo stands, pushing the chair into the datapad’s corner and offering a steadying arm. Hux, wise enough to accept the help, is fluidly hefted to his feet and pulled toward the desk. “Up.”

 

“I’ll get some,” Hux swears, sweating. “I don’t have any, but I’ll get some.”

 

“It’s too late for that,” Kylo dismisses, lifting Hux onto the desk like a toy.

 

“Please,” Hux begs as his legs are shoved apart. His eyes widen when Kylo removes his gloves and spits loudly into his right palm. He tries to scoot away, but only succeeds in sweeping his teacup to the floor where it shatters.

 

It would be remarkably simple to seriously damage Hux if Kylo wanted to, and he does want to, but pain is clearly not the best way to make the general suffer, not by far. The general’s squeal is precious when Kylo takes hold of his pretty little cock and tugs it properly. Hux doesn’t know what to do with himself. His fists curl. He scans the room, his neck swiveling in search of some conjured exit beside the one he accepts he cannot reach. Then within seconds, he’s red in face and growing if not remarkably long, then deliciously thick.

 

“This is how you do it,” Kylo directs, taking the opportunity to lean in and kiss Hux’s collarbone, to taste one nipple and then the other before dedicating his left hand to the cinching and kneading of the general’s nuts. That ends all signs of resistance, like scruffing an unruly cub.

 

More spit. Kylo focuses on massaging the slight upward curve of the shaft — Hux’s glans may be unfortunately naked, but it’s still sensitive enough through a flagrant lack of handling that a few slips of Kylo’s loose hold there would end this demonstration far too early. That wouldn’t do, not at all. This is what embarrasses Hux — the truth that he enjoys this, that maybe he always did, that those men might have been right about him and justified in using him like a filthy little slut.

 

This time it’s no fantasy, no misdirection. The sedatives have taken care of dishonesty and leave Hux mewling through parted lips. What need is there to pull and twist and slap when this is beyond better? Kylo can’t even think of anything dirty to say. With minimal pressure and precise ministrations, he already has Hux squeezing his eyes shut and slumping into the wall.

 

Before it’s too late, Kylo takes his own flagging cock, pressing it to Hux’s meat handle, delighting in the contrast in size and color accentuated by the abundant light. Gripping both is tricky, but Kylo prioritizes Hux’s stimulation, pulling his sack like an udder and wrapping each finger around his shaft. The thumb is enough for Kylo, thrusting through it against the veiny topography of Hux who rasps with each wet kiss to his cockhead. And so Hux’s counter begins with two minutes left and Kylo prepared to only barely outlast him.

 

Tapping into Hux’s thoughts has never been easier. Disgust at everything. Fear this will never be over, that there will never be a day where he’s left alone, that this is all there is. And he thinks he might be dying. As much as he seems to think death would be better than serving Kylo, he has a healthy terror of the void. The excitement of the cock massage, the frottage, they’re dragging him into it, he thinks. He is still telling himself it feels terrible, that he does not want it. The timer is still counting down when Hux decides he might have a chance after all, that fighting Kylo Ren is a good idea.

 

 

Ren is unarmed. Hux should feel the lightsaber pressing into his thigh or swinging into it, but it’s not there. Lust is clouding Ren’s mind, and insanity. If there was ever a moment in which to act, it’s now. There is a blaster the bureau drawer. If Hux can just get down, he could stun Ren in his distraction long enough to dress and flee from here. But he’s not that distracted. Tears well in Hux’s eyes as Ren digs his nails into his scrotum and yanks their penises about like a jammed industrial lever, huffing, “Did we not already discuss treason?”

 

“Stop,” Hux hears himself whine. He’ll be maimed, beaten, and dragged into the reeking bedroom and used in a more traditional fashion. Or they’ll stay here. What if he’s pressed some button on his desk? What if he’s being recorded? Can High Command see him? Rae? No, not Rae — Bellava. Can she see him?

 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Do you always think of your mother when you’re about to come?” asks Ren, his speech breathy and high and pressed into Hux’s turned cheek. “Do you alternate between them? The one your people abandoned to the Republic, and the one you convinced everyone had perished?”

 

The tears fall down Hux’s cheeks. “What?” he asks, as his heart begins to palpitate.

 

“Sloane’s probably gone at this point. What would she be? Eighty?”

 

“I don’t—Let go, please. Re—Supreme Leader, that hurts.”

 

“You never told her, did you? She could have helped you, but you were too afraid. Let her see. You can feel her watching you give yourself to me.”

 

He can. Ren makes him do it.

 

“You love it.”

 

He does, but he still kicks and scrapes at Ren’s shins. The blaster is right there, as are other armaments Ren surely hasn’t found yet, and Hux can’t reach any of them. He’s dying. He grasps for Kylo’s wrists, tries to stop him, tries to free himself, but he can’t. Kylo isn’t even using the Force, not physically, but Hux can’t do a single thing to stop him. He should have told Rae regardless his career, regardless of his dignity. She could have helped him become nothing, just another tech, a faceless engineer like the most Father had ever expected from him. He could have been safe.

 

“You love it.”

 

He’s dying, but he loves it. Sometimes they touch him long enough that something comes out, but it’s not like this. Hux doesn’t do this. He’s never done this, not like them. He’s dying. He’s dying. He clutches his chest. His heart is about to burst. “Stop! Let go!”

 

 

General Hux is no longer leaking tears and cum, but exploding with each voluminously, back arched and limbs twitching, kicking toes now curling like his fists around nothing but waves of pleasure. There’s no time to bask in any of it. Kylo shuts most of Hux’s panicked ecstasy out in order to concentrate and complete his intended lesson. Hux was always going to rebel, put up some ridiculous obstacle whether it was running or stabbing or blasting or biting or foolish, foolish words. Now Kylo can complete his finale without reproach.

 

There is no taking his time, no easing Hux open. The second jet of Hux’s cum coats Kylo’s cock perfectly. Even the shaving gel was a better lubricant, but that’s the point. Kylo drags Hux’s hips closer to the edge of the desk and uses momentum and determination to impale him to the hilt. He’s tighter than before, swollen and irritated and flopping into the wall. The sedatives do nothing to dull the pain, only Hux’s reactions, so Kylo drinks it in, taking the corner of Hux’s colon like a teenager piloting a stolen landspeeder.

 

Hux can’t muster up any of his idiotic protests. He barely breathes, just rasps clenching and rigid while his shrinking worm and throttled sack dance atop his writhing belly. His green irises are still flashing in confusion when, as expected, Kylo bursts shortly after him, coming so shallowly that his seed spills pink and watery onto the floor beneath them without even pulling out.

 

It’s good, but not that good. Maybe nothing will top that first night, but this also isn’t over yet. Careful not to dislodge himself, Kylo lifts Hux into enough of a sitting posture that they can make eye contact that Hux barely maintains. Already recovered from his brief, soundless paroxysm, Kylo speaks clearly, “If you lie to me, I will hurt you.”

 

“Take it out.”

 

Softening or not, Kylo thrusts hard between Hux’s legs, eliciting a high whimper. “I’ll hurt you if you disappoint me.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Stop apologizing, and do better.”

 

“I… I will. Please, sir. Take it out.”

 

“You are alive because you are useful. You will be useful to me, won’t you?”

 

“I… I will. Yes, sir.”

 

With a nasty pop, Kylo decouples from Hux. There’s more blood than he would have thought. More of a mess than a minute, maybe less should have warranted. It all drips down the back of his thighs when he stands, shivering and gripping the desk for dear life, unable to balance himself unaided. Kylo stoops and picks up Hux’s discarded undershirt to wipe his hands and crotch. “Good,” he sighs, “because you’re needed.”

 

“Yes.” Hux nods, never really looking up again. “Of course, sir.”

 

Kylo gives himself another once-over, dabbing away splashes he’d originally missed. “You were right about addressing the casualties. They are innumerable, but the fatalities have been logged,” Ren explains. “The numbers are grim, but they’ll be recovered. You will see to that — you and Engell through your recruitment.” Kylo tucks himself into place and straightens his belt. “First, there will be a memorial the day after next. I will leave the planning to you. Whatever funding you need is yours, if you don’t already have it. You will speak eloquently as you always do on behalf of your children, Phasma, and any other officers deserving of honors. Appoint whomever you wish to aid or join you, and make it good.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Satisfied, Kylo picks up the wayward datapad and hands it to the disoriented ginger while nudging the remains of the broken teacup into a pile with his boot. “Watch your step, General Hux. Fix yourself up and eat something.” Kylo pauses at the office door. “And Hux?”

 

“Yes, Supreme Leader?”

 

“Don’t forget the lube.”

Chapter 4: What’s Best for the Galaxy

Summary:

With his poor tactics tanking the First Order’s efficacy, Kylo alleviates himself by first brutalizing a dissenting commander, then beating and taking advantage of the now morosely obedient Hux when he attempts to reconcile with the Supreme Leader as a fellow survivor of Snoke’s abuse.

Notes:

The contents of this chapter are notably violent. Please review the warning tags before continuing.

 

Six weeks later

 

Luke did this. His last stand has bolstered a boldness within the masses. Not only does he have them digging for records the Empire buried, but he changed the Force somehow. It’s fuller. There are new roots of it, new shoots, new budding branches. Kylo tears them out, shears them, but there are always more. Once he was called the Jedi Killer, but their Order lives again while Kylo’s crumbles. He shouldn’t have fallen for Luke’s ploy. He should have gone for the Falcon and ended Leia, and Rey, the pilot, the traitor, and the Resistance.

 

“—too vast to be patrolled, let alone governed,” advises General Quinn. “Pryde and his reserves will not be enough if we do not focus on our key planets, sir. Our shipyards, Centrist worlds, agroworlds, mines? They will fall while we struggle to bring new territories under our domain, and then our expansions will surely fail as well. We may as well serve them all to Organa, waiting on her hand and foot.” 

 

Tightening his grip around the edge of the conference table, Kylo Ren scours the faces of his most elite commanders. “You think we should stand still?” he asks, sternly scanning each of them before returning his attention to the prior speaker. “Let the enemy reinforce itself? General Quinn, you have united four dozen systems in Wild Space and the Outer Reaches beneath our banner. Your history is impressive, but you’re slowing down, aren’t you?” Kylo slits his eyes. “You’re losing your touch.”

 

Unflapped, Quinn continues, “Sir, no, but we will lose those critical holdings if we redeploy our forces Coreward. We must crack down on dissent and espionage.” Quinn looks to the newly appointed Director of Security who nods curtly.

 

“The Resistance may have limited firepower,” defends the Director, “but their disease spreads through spycraft and sabotage. If we turn our eye for a moment, their ascendency will grow and fester. Orlok, my predecessor, also had high ambitions, but we all know what became of him. We must be measured and careful, or our overeagerness could spell the end of us.”

 

Quinn steps back in, leaning in toward the table to regard Kylo as he turns his back and watches the stars instead of the officers. “Precisely, sir,” he contends. “We can send scouts, launch probes, but large-scale occupation and re-education of the wayward masses is not a possibility until we pull the weeds from both our terrestrial assets and our own ranks. Your expansionary bid is admirable, but we simply do not have the forces to make it a reality.”

 

“No,” Kylo almost laughs. “There is only one Force that matters,” he tells the shimmering void, “and it has shown me the way. We will be triumphant — I have seen it,“ he swears with enough conviction that it might be true. “We have more soldiers than you’ve accounted for. Our cadets have been well trained, Quinn. Just graduate them.” Kylo regards the Council once more, shrugging toward its youngest member. “Process them,” Kylo demands. “You and Quinn will see to it. Ensure they are ready: a battalion for each populated star system in the target sector. The First Order was raised from scraps within Unknown Space, but it is high time the rest of the galaxy sees that we are everywhere, and that our might did not end with Starkiller Base. We are stronger than ever… Are we not, General Hux?”

 

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux replies by rote, having pulled up the appropriate form on the digital panel he’d been regarding during the discussion, and now signing the document with his approval.

 

“Sir, if I may,” Quinn remarks, staring daggers at the blank, unmet gaze of the colleague who ought to be his most vociferous ally on this matter. “Regardless of their training, the cadets are still at most sub-adults. They are staunch warriors, yes, but not yet suited for independent deployment, let alone long term self-maintenance and enrichment during protracted campaigns.” Sighing, Quinn proffers a kerchief he uses to dab at his high, gleaming forehead. “Several academies were lost with the Supremacy,” he continues, abandoning his polite tones, “and twice as many nurseries. We do not have the numbers, sir, to throw away more lives.”

 

The Council and their audience lean back on chorus when the Supreme stabs a finger toward Quinn. “Their lives are mine,” Kylo utters coolly. “It is my soldiers’ duty to die for me. All of you will die for me if I wish it.”

 

“Yes, but we cannot—”

 

“Then give me your children,” Kylo taunts, his teeth flashing. “You have so many of them. Your boys are too old, but the girls are small enough, all three of them, and the one on the way. Test me further, and I will have it cut out once it’s ripe.”

 

Quinn blinks, shaking his head, unfamiliar and uncomfortable with what he hopes is only macabre humor. Nonetheless, he replies with all solemnity, “They are of good stock, Your Leadership, and promisingly bright. They will make excellent officers and administrators. They would be wasted on the front lines.”

 

Genuinely curious, Kylo ponders aloud, “General Engell, you’re Head of Recruitment. How many children and of appropriate age would you say are shared between our vetted officers?”

 

“Sir?” she asks.

 

“Don’t tell me you’ve never considered it,” he accuses of the woman who’d put even the largest cartels of child traffickers to shame.

 

The Council shares furtive glances as if they hadn’t, none more so than General Parnadee, a matriarch with a slew of grandchildren. Hux grasps her hand below the table before she gets to her feet as Quinn does, bellowing, “Supreme Leader Snoke never would have stood for this!”

 

Kylo effortlessly surpasses his ferocity. “Snoke is dead! His ways are dead! I am your Supreme Leader. I am the First Order.” The hilt of Kylo’s lightsaber is unclipped and readied in his hand before he notices it’s there. Even Hux has learned. It’s time to open the rest of their eyes.

 

Unphased, Quinn blusters on. “We haven’t even gotten to the Director’s report — how many defectors has it been this week? Are there still more of our own men and women in the holds than rebel traitors and miscreants? You may threaten us, but you cannot be everywhere, waving your sword around. Things would be different if you could, but how are you going to conquer a sector with a handful of terrestrial units and less than a squadron per star system? Snoke dragged us out of the mire. He believed in you, he made you. You cannot allow his legacy… His…”

 

“How many children, Engell? Any corps. All of them?” Kylo asks again of the prim woman with her smartly swept-back bob.

 

Amret Engell watches her wincing colleague clutch his midsection as she runs the numbers in her head. “Half to three-quarters of a million. Triple or quadruple that if you include enlistees. They skew much younger, sir, and perhaps we could allocate more funding for the FFI to further inspire them?”

 

“FFI?” Kylo inquires over Quinn’s moaning.

 

“The Fruitful Families Initiative, sir.” 

 

“Yes.” Kylo aims his unignited saber at Requisitions and his aide, earning a startled jump from both men before the weapon is re-clipped. “Make it so.”

 

They are doing just that when Quinn slumps over the table, reaching out across it to Parnadee and Hux before wheezing out a red mist. There are some gasps, but not many. Most of the Council remains trained on Kylo with proper military attention, if only to avoid Quinn’s demonic eyes. Their vessels have burst until his blue irises seem to glow as they dart around within crimson orbs. He gargles and twists, blood trickling from his mouth and nose, then his pores, his tear ducts. He writhes in his seat, burbling up something dark and foul as he attempts words only Kylo can interpret for him.

 

“I do not forgive you,” proclaims the Supreme Leader in gentle tones that might have spelled a benefaction from anyone else. He looks back to the stars, relaxing the taloned fingers he used to facilitate manipulation of the Force, and outstretching his arms triumphantly. “Soon it will all be ours. The last dregs and dead-enders of the New Republic will fall.”

 

The congregation gasps. Kylo would be pleased if the fear filling the room was all for him and not incited by a simple tool, yet it’s a mere blaster that rattles them more than their Supreme Leader. Kylo doesn’t even turn as he snaps Quinn’s wrist, pulling the service pistol away from his temple, and stripping the weapon mid-air before the components clatter plastically to the floor. He summons Quinn flying face first into the transparisteel beside him with a crack.

 

“For the first time in history,” Kylo concludes, “there will be true order. You’ll see. Most of you will.” He tosses Quinn to the center of the table, leaving a bloody smear dripping down the viewport. He returns to watch the body twitch once, then still before asking, “Are there any other questions?” He meets eyes with each occupant of the silent congregation before focusing on the sturdy dark-skinned woman sporting a low and tight bun of braids. “General Parnadee? Do you and Hux have anything to share?”

 

Hux stoically shakes his head at his neighbor who answers for the two of them, “No, Supreme Leader. Well said, sir.”

 

“Good. Expect to reconvene in a week’s time so I can hear of your progress and success. Hux, stay,” Kylo orders as if commanding a dog. “The rest of you are dismissed.” The other officers are saluting and lining up to leave when Kylo has an afterthought. “Director, notify me when Quinn’s widow is brought aboard.”

 

“Of course, sir,” he agrees, and files out last, not sparing a glance behind for either the corpse or the man who’d not entirely unwillingly take its place.

 

The door shuts, and Kylo sighs at Hux’s maintained hail, “At ease. Put your arm down, you look ridiculous. Tell me what more there is. News. Recommendations? His irritation returns hurriedly as Hux blinks dimly. “Well?” Kylo taps Hux’s forehead. “Are you even in there?”

 

“The, ugh, the officers…” Hux tries. “They will be more amena… honored if they are permitted to raise their firstborns, and regardless of age if possible.” He stares between Kylo’s brows and finds a semblance of his old rhythm. “The tithe might be amended based on age. We could prioritize incentives for younger, fecund couples capable of producing healthier offspring. The older ones may be less willing to do their duty if they have little expectation of conceiving again.”

 

“Fine. Good. What else? I’ve barely seen you, not out here. What have your spies found? Any signs of the scavenger?” 

 

Hux doesn’t deign to ask which spies. “No leads, sir, but no bounty has been posted — like you asked — to avoid interference.”

 

“So you’ve been doing nothing?”

 

“I’ve been with R&D, sir, and the cadets. Engell is good, but she isn’t Phasma. We need new techniques and technologies if we are to succeed.”

 

“What do you have to show me?”

 

“An improved battle drill if you wish, sir, but it needs—”

 

“You’ve been avoiding me and doing nothing.”

 

“No, sir. I was ensuring the soldiers will be prepared and equipped for what comes next.”

 

“And what is that?” Kylo watches Hux’s lips work fruitlessly. “Your performance has been… uninspired, Hux. What are you on this time? It’s a miracle you look as well as you do, which is saying nothing much. Mixing some uppers with your downers?”

 

“No.”

 

“I told you to stop.”

 

“I-I am.”

 

Kylo paces away and wheels right back. “Who were you with last night?”

 

“Wh—I was at R&D, and then the drills went late.”

 

Kylo’s fingers flex. “Tell me, you junkie bastard.”

 

Hux trembles. “I was with the soldiers. The drills. I-I was tired. Surplus bunk by the barracks — I slept there. I hoped you wouldn’t mind.” Hux gulps. “I hoped you wouldn’t come for me there. I was tired. I’ve been so tired.”

 

“Perhaps you wouldn’t be if you slept in your own bed. Perhaps you’d also be dressed properly” —Kylo resumes pacing in quick, angry bouts— “for a meeting of a council you once led.”

 

Confused, Hux looks down at himself for anything he’d forgotten.

 

“What was your friend Parnadee wearing, Hux? What is he wearing?” Kylo points to the body, but Hux shies away from the view. “How are you so uncomfortable with death? Force knows how many people you’ve reduced to ash, how many worlds you’ve poisoned and cored and enslaved, and you can’t look at this, can’t even bring yourself to eat proper food.”

 

“I ordered steak for—”

 

“Look at him! What is he wearing?”

 

“Uniform in the style of colonels and the older admirals. Seamless double breasting. Same cuff title. New pen-pendant. Jeweled pendant in place of the sigil patch. It’s-it’s nice.”

 

“It is the uniform of the Supreme Council. Don’t bother retrieving yours; it’ll be refitted for Pryde since you clearly don’t belong here. He’ll have your coat, too. You don’t need that in R&D.”

 

“Steadf— Pryde will be of great use to you. He is everything they say,” Hux resignedly recommends. “And he has an… unassailable sort of luck about him.”

 

“You think I need luck?”

 

“No, sir. I only mean that he will serve you well. He also lives up to his name. Use him. Station him on the bridge, and he’ll be all the fiercer.”

 

“Would you really cede everything you used to work toward just like that?”

 

“If you wish it, Supreme Leader.”

 

“What do you really want?”

 

“I want what’s best for the galaxy.”

 

A cruel little smile plays at the corners of Kylo’s mouth. “Do you still think that’s you?”

 

Humorlessly Hux concedes, “I am at your command.”

 

The smile burns out. There is no fault in Hux’s answers, only deference. “I pushed harder than I needed to,” admits Kylo. “It is so difficult to trust anyone. What do you really think, Hux? It’s still there, your uniform. You’ll look wonderful in it. Your rooms are yours for the rest of the week.” Reaching out, Kylo rubs Hux’s upper arms before pulling him close to kiss each of his smooth cheeks. “Perhaps a bit of time apart will ease things between us. Now tell me please, what else is there?”

 

“You’ll be upset.”

 

“I won’t.

 

Hux diverts his gaze to the table. “Don’t call them back… not with that,” Hux proposes, meaning the gore, “but you need to control the story that’s already spreading. Make a public notice that Quinn may have been a hero, but he became lost in the old ways and was sowing disruption. You did what you must here, but question his wife lightly. Put her up in guest quarters under guard by a med-trained team for a few days. Release her with a small stipend for the good years Quinn gave us, and a grant of immediate enlistment in the academy for her sons in hope they may restore honor to their family.”

 

“Yes, good,” Kylo agrees, squeezing Hux’s hands. The brief exchange seems to have exhausted the general. “Hux…”

 

“Sir…?”

 

“Your habits. I was brusque, but I need you focused and alert. There are doctors—”

 

“I’m not using, sir. Not today. I’ve only been taking enough to stop, and I will. I’ll do it.” Hux withdraws his hands. “There’s no point if it all keeps coming back. It never goes away. Not anymore.”

 

Kylo deflects the pointed comment. “It was a long time ago. You’ll move on.”

 

“Like you have?” Hux accuses with glassy eyes.

 

Kylo expected another tirade, not this. Now he is upset. “What are you saying?”

 

Nothing at first, then it all floods out. “He spoke of you like a son during my first meeting with him. You were barely nine, but I already hated you by the end of it. If I hadn’t, I think I would have tried to warn you before you showed up fourteen years later. I already knew who you must be. Who else could have so much promise in the Force? My operatives could have made it happen back then. A letter to Chandrila. The Corellian circuits? I could have told them the danger you were in. I could have told them the lengths he would go through with his apprentices. The things he did to perfect them.”

 

Why Hux finds the need to work his mouth in these meeting rooms goes above and beyond Kylo’s comprehension. “I don’t want to talk about Snoke,” he states with grave resolution.

 

“You don’t have to,“ Hux brushes on. “I’m saying I’m sorry. I didn’t know how long it would go on. The others had a couple years in them at most, but you were different. He said your connection was so strong you could talk through space without machines. You could feel each other’s thoughts.”

 

A single terse utterance: “Yes.”

 

“Then you knew how much he admired you. He might have even cared for you, in a fashion. That must have made the things he did so much harder.”

 

Kylo tools with his lightsaber. “What things?”

 

“The ones that started in your mind. The lies. The things he did to make sure you weren’t him anymore.”

 

“The enemy? A Jedi? A weakling.”

 

“Someone who didn’t need his darkness. Someone who knew he was already wanted, and unconditionally so.”

 

“Hux—”

 

“Snoke took many things from me, but never that, not like he did from you. It had a smell, you know, the lightning. It was on you so often, like the cologne he used to mask his rot. I hadn’t seen the scars until… B-but those aren’t all from battle,” Hux recovers. “Some of them came from an animal, and not a beast, but a monster. They were clawed into you.”

 

Kylo half huffs, half smiles dismissively. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“I tried not to. I thought less of it as your prominence grew while mine plateaued. I was spiteful, and you weren’t nine anymore. I used to think that mattered. I was wrong, I’m sorry, but you can be yourself now! You don’t have to do the things he did. There are doctors. Soothers. Maybe we should both—”

 

Hux braces himself against the wall with one hand and wipes the blood from his lip with the back of the other. This isn’t the first time he’s been seized by the Force, so barely fazed, he reorients himself toward Kylo, continuing, “What you and the scavenger did was a miracle. You had no more chance against him alone than I do against you. I’m proud of you, but I’m so sorry. I’m–” 

 

There is no softening the impact the second time. “Hrghng.” Nor the third. Hux slides to the floor, but is immediately heaved over the table close enough to smell the bile leaching through Quinn’s stately uniform. “You’re out of control,” Hux wheezes, struggling for breath. “You’re… ruining everything. This isn’t you. This isn’t… what you want. You’re going… to get us… killed.”

 

“I’ll start with you.”

 

Ignoring the sharp pain in his chest, Hux drops into the nearest chair, spinning it toward Kylo and inhaling deeply enough to finish what very well might be his last words. “I wish you would. When you’re not there, they are — the ones from before. I can’t sleep. It doesn’t matter when or where I try. You need help, more than anything Steadfast or I could ever provide. And you know about him, don’t you? You know how many times I’ve tried to kill him for what he did. You know he’s the last one left, and you dangle him before me, tell me he’ll take my place.”

 

Of course he knows now. In retrospect, escaping Hux’s wrath may be why Pryde was sequestered in reserves and not fighting at the front of the action. Kylo could claim ignorance, but there’s no point to that. He shouldn’t have to. Hux apparently needs another lesson. How dare he suggest that… How dare…

 

“You were still bouncing on Han’s knee when my father started sending them to my room. I thought he had just tired of sharing his with me. It was nice at first, the privacy of a place to myself, until they came at night. One of them liked me. Not the right way, but for a long time it was better. And then he was gone, and there was Pryde. He’s a monster too, only I had the scars grafted away… the ones you could see. I should have helped you. I’m sorry.”

 

Kylo moves in. “Tell me you’re sorry one more time, and—”

 

“Fine. I was happy it wasn’t me anymore. I told myself you were still the enemy, still a Jedi traitor, that you were dangerous and deserved it all. Then I saw your face, how it had changed from when you first arrived, and how that had changed from the ones the paparazzi managed to snap when you snuck away from your Temple. Snoke didn’t even give you time to settle in before he decided afflicting your mind wasn’t enough. You had black eyes and nosebleeds nearly every time I saw you. It was easier after you made the helmet. Easier for you. Easier for me to pretend. Easier to just hate you. I should have done something.”

 

Every word of it is true — the feelings, the facts. All of it, except something Hux could never understand. “You are a façade built atop a ramshackle foundation. One good shove, and you came tumbling down. Not me. Snoke destroyed the weakness I had let in. He taught me how to release it and replace it with power. I didn’t kill him for being effective; I did it because he had nothing more to show me that I couldn’t learn on my own. He was in my way.”

 

Hux can only nod. “It felt good, but he’s still there, isn’t he? You can still feel him inside, haunting you. Don’t listen. You can be free. You can be anything. You can be anyone.”

 

“You know nothing. You want me to leave. You want to be the Supreme Leader. You want to be… Emperor. You always have. You think Palpatine was an ordinary man. Rich and brilliant, but ordinary. That he still has you fooled is a testament to his craft. You could never do what he did. His strength in the Force was legendary.”

 

“What?” Hux wheezes.

 

“You were pawns, all of you Imperial zealots, and he was Sith. It was by no happenstance that my grandfather served him. They were bound by ancient shadowed ways to fulfill the demands of their line. What they did took one thousand years to accomplish. Do you have that? A millennium?”

 

General Hux struggles for an answer. And air. The adrenaline that fueled his tirade has worn away and left behind only a man miserable to look upon with concealer running down his cheeks like a chalky mudslide. “Leader Ren,” he croaks. “Please. I think I’m hurt.”

 

“𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑝 ℎ𝑖𝑚. 𝐼 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒. 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑝 ℎ𝑖𝑚, 𝐵𝑒𝑛. 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒. 𝐼 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑠ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑙𝑒𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑜.”

 

“No,” Kylo tells The Interloper.

 

Hux digs his nails into his palms. “I won’t say anything. I swear it.”

 

“𝐵𝑒𝑛.”

 

“No!” Kylo flails outward, backhanding Hux and laying him sprawled on the floor. “No.” Kylo lifts him one-handed by the back of his belt. It snaps open, heavily depositing its former occupant with a small groan and shudder. Another lesson. One more.

 

Hux barely protests as he is again hauled up over the table, this time by his trousers. It’s when they’re yanked down with his briefs that he musters up a rasping, “Not here. Please. I ordered steaks for you, and roasts. Let’s go to my quarters. I’ll have one too. I’ll put on the uniform. Then you can take it off, and we can… we can…”

 

“So you can freeze up again? I’d get more out of Quinn.”

 

Hux cries.

 

“𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑝.”

 

“No.” Kylo has to hold Hux up with the Force so he doesn’t fall down the sloping edge he’s slumped over. His ass looks good enough to eat, let alone fuck, but Kylo has lost much of his appetite. Something else. Something better. Something worse. 

 

Hux rarely makes a peep anymore when Kylo takes him, but the belt he picks up is different. Kylo snaps the length of synthleather across his rump like a lash, and Hux explodes into a moist rattle. “Count them,” Kylo commands. It takes three more strokes, each harder than the last, before Hux catches on.

 

“Four, sir. Five.” His skin rips beneath the belt. “Twelve, sir.”

 

Kylo is enjoying this more than he thought. He’d nearly forgotten the joys of such mundane techniques. Enough blood runs down Hux’s thighs for Kylo to doff his own trousers and rub his stiffening cock in it to facilitate entry between them with a hard enough push, but Kylo prefers this. There is some number, he imagines, that will assuage his ill temper. He just hasn’t reached it yet.

 

“Twenty-three.” The whisper is barely audible. “Please.” Hux tries to wrest free from his intangible bonds.

 

Not enough. “You missed one,” Kylo lies.

 

“Twenty-two,” Hux tries to correct, but Kylo won’t stand for it.

 

“Start over.”

 

“My… ribs.”

 

“Do you want me to use the buckle?”

 

“No. Please.”

 

“Then count.”

 

The thud bounces dully around the walls. “One,” Hux manages, before going quiet.

 

Kylo doesn’t stop. Hux is still conscious, if barely, and Kylo intends to beat him until he either takes it all back or his flesh hangs from him in ribbons. No, that’s not it. He just knows too much. Letting Hux leave this room alive would be incomparably foolhardy. This is one last bit of fun before Kylo calls for two body bags to be brought in. The belt snakes like a whip, cracking through the increasingly rank air and into Hux’s ass. “Count!”

 

“Please.”

 

“Count!”

 

“Stop. Please. I can-can’t… breathe.”

 

“If you can speak, then you can breathe.” It’s what Kylo means to say, but is that not what Snoke insisted? “If you can speak, then you can breathe. If you can breathe, then you can fight, boy. Get up, Ben Solo.”

 

“Noh dis, boah dah,” mutters Hux.

 

Kylo lowers his arm, the belt tickling the floor. “What?”

 

“Did I say it rig… Did I say it correctly? ‘Not this, but that.’” Hux inhales shallowly. “Ar dúirt mé i gceart é? Father?”

 

He’s delirious, but Kylo doesn’t care. “I wish he were here instead, self-righteous prick that he was, Brendol would have been a marked improvement over you.” Untrue, and unspoken. What Kylo says as he massages the back of Hux’s sweaty scalp is: “You feel no pain.” But Kylo does. He doesn’t understand how Hux was lucid as long as he was, let alone living, but Kylo Ren takes all of it, staggering into Hux, painting his padded tunic in bloody stripes.

 

Kylo has never done this before. It was Rey’s strange influence he thinks, although he hasn’t so much as felt her presence since his ascension. Then it was The Interloper and her constant meddling, the meddling that only made Snoke’s lessons more severe. But this isn’t of the light as Kylo immediately feared… This is the answer! This is why he was drawn to Hux. He is a crucial resource, not how Kylo had originally intended, but as an invigorating cocktail, a walking transfusion, a renewable source of pain and, therefore, power.

 

It’s an exhilarating rush, the same as the first one, maybe better. This time it doesn’t scare Kylo. He drinks it in, still humped over Hux who doesn’t get any of this. How could he? He might not feel the reality of the mess he’s become, but he certainly detects just how hard he’s made Kylo, and that the belt is still clenched in his fist.

 

In his distraction, in his revelation, in his revelry, Kylo lets the bonds falter. Hux tries to squirm from underneath him as soon as he notices, thinking of the bottles of lubricant on his night stand, in his shower, on the counter of his kitchenette, and in his desk drawer, and wondering if he should have kept a fifth ready in his pocket. Too spent to question his relative lack of pain, he only begs, “Not this. Not here. Sit down. Please. I’ll…” Hux cannot bring himself to name the act that Kylo once teased.

 

“𝐵𝑒𝑛, 𝑛𝑜.”

 

Why not? The agony coursing through his arteries could be put toward meditating on the Force, on its secrets, yet Hux’s offer is too tempting, so Kylo does sit. He watches rapt as Hux peels himself from the table as if hardly injured to pull up his underthings and trousers before kneeling to reach into Kylo’s. Whatever foreplay, whatever coyness Hux might have assumed all those years ago is absent now. He is… efficient. Rolling Kylo’s nuts in his palm like lucky dice, he vacuums his cock into his mouth, licking underneath along the ridge and the veins that branch out to the sides.

 

“Ughh.” It sounds like a complaint, but it isn’t one; it’s a compliment. Hux doesn’t look up, doesn’t stop. “Mmghm.” Kylo thinks of making him, of grabbing a fistful of sweaty orange hair and yanking it back until those beautiful eyes are forced into his, but between the pain and the pleasure — it’s all pleasure — all he can do is throw his own head back and moan, “Oo-hhgh.”

 

It is not entirely lost on Kylo that Hux’s true condition has not changed. The general’s expert breathwork as he takes more of Kylo down his throat puts undue strain against his fractured ribs. It’s exquisitely awful, as excellent as Hux’s slurping suction. Carnal acts do nothing for Hux other than heightening his despair regardless of any orgasm eked out of him. Kylo has grudgingly accepted this, but he still typically makes an attempt to last adequately. Typically.

 

Hux gives Kylo’s cockhead the brunt of his attention. He rolls his tongue around its perimeter like a patrolling guard, tugging with all the strength of his cheeks, releasing only to bob the shaft up and down past his tonsils. Kylo’s clean, more or less, but Hux sucks him like he’s the finest, sweetest popsicle on a sweltering summer afternoon.

 

If Kylo had known Hux would be this good, oral would have been the preferred entrée, and real penetration the dessert if there was even room for it. Either way, Kylo likes Hux on his knees. His surprising flexibility affords a vast array of positions, but Kylo prefers ones of worship, of supplication. Far too long Kylo was made to do the same. Not anymore. Never again.

 

“𝐿𝑢𝑘𝑒 𝑡𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑢𝑏𝑚𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑐𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 ℎ𝑖𝑚. 𝐻𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 ℎ𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑓𝑎𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠.”

 

“I’ll pull his hair,” Kylo thinks at The Interloper. “Fuck his throat raw. Make him gag. Make him spew his nasty radish casserole onto my cock. Make him lick it up. Make him strip. Make it slow. I’ll use the belt again and tell him to call me Daddy.” He’ll tell him… “Oh, I’ll tell him Mother — Mammy — isn’t here to save him. She’s dead like Rae, like Rey will be.” He’ll ban the name. Ban it like Ben Solo. All versions of it, forbidden across civilized space. “That’s it,” he’ll tell him. “Suck Daddy’s cock.”

 

The Interloper does not take the bait to leave. Or maybe it’s not her. She’d be too weak for this. First Kylo broke her heart, and then his pilots broke her body, inundated as must have been with burns, shrapnel, and the unsurvivably cold, airless, and irradiated hell of space. It makes no sense that she’s alive. Maybe she isn’t, but she’s still all honey and linen and lilies distant enough to be pleasant instead of overwhelming. She feels right, like balance. Is it her?

 

“𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑒 ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑚𝑒.”

 

Kylo is tired of being tricked. He is home, and he doesn’t require balance. Hux’s mouth is a sanctuary. It is excellence itself. The closeness of Hux’s victory only to have it smashed upon the shattered Supremacy, the very vessel he’d fancied as the seat of his own command. The men. The mother. Brendol. Pryde. Snoke. Kylo himself… It is a well with no bottom. Hux is the path deeper into the darkness Kylo’s sworn himself to. He is passion. He is a plaster for all the leakages letting the light in.

 

Hux’s thoughts are so hazy, like a sleepwalker’s. His only conscious endeavor is to be quick and quiet, but Kylo openly demonstrates his appreciation, moaning through the mingled misery and newfound rapture of Hux nibbling each nut into his mouth. He almost wishes this room weren’t so thoroughly soundproofed, and that someone would dare interrupt this. It’s Hux’s worst nightmare that his circumstances become known. Why not use that?

 

The idea of marriage returns to Kylo. Not keeping Hux as a concubine, not even a consort, but as his legal and publicly declared husband. Assuming their real dynamic wasn’t uncovered, he’d be satisfactorily devastated by the scandalous public opinion that sharing a bed with Kylo is one of his more egregious plays for power. It would be perfect. It will be perfect, with a true proposal this time. He’ll use Snoke’s ring, plucked from his severed hand. He’ll string the ancient gold and obsidian thing through a chain of jade pearls and diamonds. It’ll be magnificent.

 

“𝐵𝑒𝑛. ”

 

All of that will come later; at present there is only Hux’s infantile tugging and suckling of Kylos testicles, and the working of his shaft with a hand lubricated by precum and slobber. Hux lets the cock slip through his fingers, jostling its wide rim with each slip up and down to the root. It’s too much; Kylo is coming now, and without warning. “Oooo,” Kylo creaks out, his face contorted into a sour pucker.

 

Hux, in his experience must sense something, but he is only fast enough to release Kylo’s balls instead of also taking Kylo’s cock back into his mouth where its eruption can be contained. The general’s gorgeous ginger hair is the first to be besmirched, then his eyes, and so directly that Kylo couldn’t have aimed truer if he’d tried. But it’s the third squirt of spunk, little more than a dribble, that lights a spark of Hux’s personality anew.

 

Hux’s terror booms over Kylo’s residual moans, terror of being caught like this. It twists Kylo in his seat, sending him grasping for armrests that are not there. He struggles to take in air, to think of anything but his cum better slicking Hux’s hair, blending his concealer, starching his tunic with no need for neither powder nor steam iron. Then it fades, the orgasmic wave does, and all that’s left is Hux’s pain and his incensed consternation at how to triage this disaster. And then, that too is gone, leaving behind gratitude that Kylo had accepted his compromise at all, and without the slew of additional disgraces that were in fact considered.

 

“𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟.” 

 

She did, but Kylo can’t. He watches Hux meekly look up as if for permission before unsnapping his tunic and using a corner of his undershirt to dab the offending stain from his uniform. Beneath it, they both find his chest is the deep reds and violets and blacks of succulent berries. The right side looks vaguely misshapen, uneven, irregular like Hux’s breathing. This confrontation with reality is enough to reverse Kylo’s curious work. Hux goes morbidly still, his mouth falling into a silent and rictus shriek as every lash, every fracture, and every puncture returns to him.

 

“𝐿𝑒𝑡 𝑔𝑜 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛.” 

 

How? It’s dizzying, like an ice bath after a soak in a sauna, but Kylo cannot halt the exchange. He watches, helplessly obeying The Interloper as Hux suddenly animates, tucking the undershirt back in, closing his tunic, even collecting his belt and aligning it around his waist before tilting back onto the floor, sprawled like a drunkard. Hux’s fervent little breaths quicken, and then they become so shallow as to have ceased altogether.

 

Kylo stands energized and effervescent. From his vantage, General Hux is so small and meaningless, like Quinn, albeit less odorous. He’s bleeding, though, inside and out. The sorry bandage made of his regulation briefs is saturated and leaking, but that won’t be the end of him. It’s the blood filling his lung that will be the end of him, the slow starvation of oxygen to vital organs, most his brain. Hux is in shock. He’s dying.

 

“𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑝 ℎ𝑖𝑚.”

 

No. Kylo will let him go. He’ll move on. Hux lived in the past regardless of the future he’d dreamed up. Kylo doesn’t need him. He doesn’t want him. The evacuated bowel stink coming off of Quinn is nauseating mingled with all the sweat and cum and blood and bile. It’s time to go. This experiment is complete. This is the end.

 

“𝐼𝑡’𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒.”

 

No. It’s over. It was fun until it wasn’t, but it’s over now. Kylo trudges heavily toward the door.

 

“𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑚.”

 

Kylo’s palm hovers over the exit panel. “How are you doing this?” There is no answer. Of course there’s not. Kylo tries a different question: “Don’t you know who he is?” He hazards a glance behind him. “Don’t you know what he’s done?”

 

“𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑣𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒.”

 

Kylo’s stomach flips. This isn’t him. This isn’t how he’s supposed to feel. He shouldn’t care that she knows. He should delight in it. It should make her give up.

 

“𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛’𝑡 𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑆𝑛𝑜𝑘𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒, 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑜𝑤𝑒𝑟. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒. 𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜 𝑖𝑡 𝑎𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛.”

 

“No.”

 

“𝑌𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑡 ℎ𝑒𝑟, 𝑡𝑜𝑜. 𝑀𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑟.”

 

“You’re not real.” Kylo could leave covered in blood as he is, and nobody would look twice at him. In fact he’d look more natural with it upon him. Anyone who poses questions about that or either of the corpses is nobody the Order needs. That’s it, then. The Supreme Leader is done here. He leaves Hux like he left The Interloper: to suffocate alone.

 

 

Five weeks earlier

 

The longer Kylo Ren stands outside of Hux’s suite, the less he actually wants to enter it. He can feel the general roaming about inside. The man is nervous, no doubt expecting at all times that Kylo might barge in as is his wont and privilege. The first two times were admittedly messy. Threats were made. Kylo regrets those maybe more than anything else. A gift won’t erase any of it, but it might encourage a mutual change of pace. That’s absurd. Kylo realizes this even before Hux’s panic spikes when his door is rung, but it will be better this time. This can work. Can’t it?

 

To be continued…

Notes:

If you enjoy this work, you absolutely must read The Inaugural Waltz of Kylo Ren. They have a lot of themes and timing in common. Most notably, Kylo also discovers Hux’s past by humiliating and attacking him, but he begins from a place of complete hatred and not a tense, dangerous obsession. The extreme abuse little Hux suffered in the past is actively brought back to life as part of Kylo's “payback” while he batters and rapes the adult general aboard the damaged Supremacy. Some of that content is not for everyone, but there are warnings in the particularly obscene chapters to help you mitigate the worst of it and enjoy the story.

Kudos. Comments. Thank you!

P.S. If the Gaeilge is wrong, that’s because it’s from a galaxy far, far away. Just joking. Tell me if you know better, and I will fix it right away. My headcanon is that like the actor who plays him, Hux grew up speaking a different language (space Irish), then learned Basic (space English) with a pronounced native accent, then he put on a false (space Cambridge) accent in his professional life (except, Hux’s entire life is professional) for so long that it became natural.

Notes:

Please leave kudos and comments to let me know what you think!