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Kylo relaxed against the smooth, water-polished stones of the side of the pool - somehow not too warm, nor too cold, but just the perfect temperature to bleed into the knots in his muscles and undo them. Training as much and as hard as he did was essential, of course. He could not expect to remain in top condition if he did not, and hours of every day were spent pushing himself to his limits. He was used to that. The sonics did well enough to get the sweat off of him, but there were some things that nothing repaired as well as heat.
Snoke had sent them to Thamneen IV to negotiate trade rights for some ores the Thamneen system was rich in, and that the First Order wanted their own sources for - there were some sorts of negotiations for which a Knight of Ren was useful, of course, but this had clearly been a job for Hux, not for Kylo. So there had not been any objections - indeed, no-one had even noticed when Kylo had slipped away to the Joran bathhouses.
The Joran springs had many pools into which the geothermal springs flowed, and the bathhouse management had taken advantage of it - there were no completely private pools, but a sliding scale of admission prices ensured that there were some that could be nearly guaranteed to be quiet and secluded, and in which the water was a few degrees warmer. It was to the warmest and most private of the pools that Kylo went: silent but for the splash of the water on the rocks when he moved, unattended unless he rang the tiny metal bell on the table with the towels, and as yet empty of other patrons.
The steam coming off the water had made him smile as he shucked off his robes and piled them on one of the low benches by the wall, and it had lived up to its promise; he had ducked his whole body under the surface, held his breath for a long moment and come up again, spluttering slightly as he cleared the water from his eyes and mouth and shook it free of his hair. It was perfect. He could taste the sharpness of the minerals in the water, and imagined them already seeping into his tired muscles.
The pool was big enough he could float on his back, stretched out full length and weightless in the water. It was not a life of many luxuries that he led, nor should it have been - decadence was too often the enemy of function, and the vice that sank empires, and he would not fall prey to its temptations - but this was simple and good and healthy, and he shut his eyes and gave himself over to the meditative quality of the soaking, feeling the Force and the gentle currents in the water as one and the same thing.
The sound of cloth thumping onto wood brought him out of his trance, and reflexively he curled in on himself and slipped beneath the surface. He knew whoever had entered would have seen him, all of him, but this was a bathhouse after all, and the rules were different. A little casual nudity would be forgiven with no more than momentary awkwardness.
He surfaced, wiped the water off his face, and looked up at the newcomer, intending to offer a greeting -
“Oh,” he said, the word settling like a rock in his stomach. “It’s you.”
Hux looked over his shoulder at Kylo and raised an eyebrow. “Full marks for observation, Ren,” he said, unfastening his jacket.
“What are you doing here?” Kylo stared at Hux, pushing himself back toward the side of the pool as though having a wall at his back was somehow a strategic advantage here.
“I should think you would be capable of working that one out for yourself.” Hux folded his jacket and set it neatly on top of the greatcoat he’d dropped on the bench, then began on his shirt. “You seemed to be doing all right when I came in; I do hope my presence is not sufficiently horrifying to you that you have forgotten how one bathes oneself.”
Kylo blushed, annoyed at his condescension. “I have not. I only meant, this doesn’t seem like… your sort of place.”
“In what way?” The eyebrow had stayed raised, but it was somehow becoming more pointed.
“Well.” He watched Hux shrug his shirt off his shoulders, and catch the shoulders as they hit his wrists, before any part of the fabric touched the floor. “It’s quite… public.”
“I see no-one here but you,” Hux said, infuriatingly logically. “Which certainly makes this more private than many places I have bathed in my lifetime.”
Kylo realised, much too late, that he hadn’t been prepared for Hux’s bare shoulders, or any part of him apart from his hands and face. His skin was… white. Startlingly so, as though he hadn’t seen any sun on it for years - the white of new paper, precious and fine.
“It’s traditional to go naked,” Kylo blurted, hating himself, hating the roughness in his voice that still made him sound like a youth barely grown.
Hux smirked. “Really, Ren, you must think I never leave the ship. I’m quite aware.” He grasped the hem of his undershirt and pulled it up over his head; the straps and collar brushed over his hair and broke up the gel, leaving it a wild riot of copper.
Kylo swallowed, made himself stop staring and look at the rippling water instead of Hux’s shoulderblades and the ivory column of his back. “I’ve never seen you do anything like this.”
“Well, I do,” Hux said, as he folded the shirt. “Not often, certainly - but I wouldn’t miss the chance while we’re here in Joran. Especially after a long day of trade meetings.”
He unfastened the clasp on his trousers and stepped out of them - he would have left his boots at the door, as one did, as Kylo had done, and walked up with cloth sandals on over his uniform socks, and they were there, incongruously pink and tucked under the bench.
His legs were just as white, just as slim as the rest of him - Kylo supposed he would bruise extravagantly, but at the moment they were unmarked save for a slight purple blotch at the point of one kneecap that might just have been shadow.
Kylo couldn’t keep watching. It was too blatant, too entirely obvious how he couldn’t look away, and so he had to - he had to find a way to stop. Before Hux noticed, and before those regulation black underpants came off and everything became quite impossible. He ducked back under the water again, forcing himself to close his eyes to keep the sting of the water out of them.
He stayed under as long as he could hold his breath, until his pulse hammered in his ears and he had to come up again. When he cleared the water from his eyes, trying not to gasp too loudly for the air his lungs demanded, Hux was already in, as far to the other end of the pool as it was possible to be, submerged to his shoulders. He’d put his head under; his hair was slicked back to his skull again just as it always was, and he had his eyes closed and his head tipped back against the stones.
Kylo felt dizzy: it was too hot, or he’d been under too long. He turned his back on Hux, put his belly to the stones and leaned his cheek on his crossed arms, waiting for the slight spinning sensation to leave him.
“I’m sorry you feel the need to drown yourself to avoid seeing me nude,” Hux said dryly.
“I wasn't drowning,” Kylo said, and left it at that.
Hux seemed content to leave it there too; neither man spoke for a long time, long enough that Kylo was beginning to wonder if Hux had fallen asleep, and if so, whether he should wake him, or slip away carefully and quietly even if that might leave him to drown. Surely he would wake if he slipped under.
Snoke would probably not look favourably on him letting the General drown, he decided eventually, despite how much he resented this whole situation. He would get out, and get a towel, and then he would make sure Hux was awake, somehow - perhaps he could make noise - and then he would leave and put this whole episode behind him.
He rolled over in the water, and - Hux was looking at him.
There was a light sheen of sweat on Hux’s face, highlighting the angles of his cheeks and jaw, the straight line of his nose. He looked more relaxed than Kylo thought he had ever seen him before.
“So you are awake,” Hux said. “I was starting to wonder if I might have to fish you out.”
Kylo scowled. “I was relaxing,” he said, hating Hux; why did he have, on top of everything, the ability to steal all Kylo’s best lines?
“Well, watch that you don’t relax too much,” Hux said. He stretched a long pale arm out to the side, where there was a neat pile of things set carefully away from the reach of any stray waves, and took up one of the rounds of fibrous material that Kylo had seen piled in a pyramid on the table. He began a neat circular polishing motion starting at the opposite wrist.
After he’d scoured one forearm he looked up at Kylo, who was still watching him, having temporarily lost the will to move; the water was warm, still, always, and Hux’s skin reddened so prettily where he’d scraped it clean.
“I thought you said you knew how to bathe,” Hux said, and there was still that edge of smugness to his voice, but it was a table knife now, not a dagger. “And yet here you are, watching me as though you’ve never seen the like.”
Kylo swallowed. “I know how,” he said, feeling like he was walking on a bridge made entirely of soggy and fraying ropes. “I don’t… do that bit.”
Hux looked sideways at him. “But this is the best part,” he said, as though it were self-evident. “The feeling of… I don’t know, being… remade. Completely new. Getting rid of everything old that’s clinging to you, and stepping out with a new skin on.”
It was the most poetic thing he’d ever heard Hux say, and he had no idea at all how to respond to it. So he didn’t: he lay back against the stones the way Hux had, and shut his eyes. Mostly. He left just enough of a crack that he could peer through his eyelashes at Hux as he progressed up his arm to his shoulder, switched hands and did the other arm, then started in on his neck, chest, and belly.
Hux was looking down at what he was doing, his face set in soft concentration as he scrubbed diligently. Suddenly Kylo could see the small boy he must have been, making a careful effort to get every last bit of dirt off, being told by someone - no doubt an attentive nanny - to make sure he did it properly. It was a sudden and vivid image, stirring discomfort in his chest. He almost thought it was Hux’s thought, strayed or broadcast, but the flavour of jealousy was entirely his own. But whether he wanted to be the carer or the one being cared for mattered very little; he wasn't either, and he pushed the feeling away.
Hux stretched around himself to work the little round scourer over his ribs on each side, and around to his back. Then he turned sideways, tucked a leg up on the ledge he was sitting on, and brought his other foot up into his lap in an astonishingly smooth stretch.
Kylo’s mouth went dry. The water still lapped around Hux’s chest, and he couldn’t see much, but the ease with which he moved suggested both a great deal of practice and a state of relaxation that Kylo simply couldn’t comprehend - this was Hux, Hux who was made entirely of structural durasteel and scorn, Hux whose vertebrae were as flawlessly aligned as his battalions, Hux who couldn’t bend a rule - but could somehow bring one leg pointed out straight, like a dancer, up and over the other to rest his heel on the edge of the pool, and then stretch himself, chest and arms, the length of the extended leg until he pressed his forehead almost to his knee.
Hux held the stretch for a long moment, then sat back up with a sigh so utterly satisfied that it chased away any lingering thoughts Ren might have had of Hux’s childhood, and replaced them with… others.
Kylo had had those thoughts about Hux before. Of course he had. The man was beautiful, and he knew it; he was powerful, and he knew it; he wore everything he was and everything he could do and had done already like a cloak, pulling his shoulders back, impossibly regal. Kylo could think of no greater contrast to the instinctive hunch of his own shoulders than the way Hux, though much smaller - so very much smaller now, without his uniform - held himself. Like a man who knew that in a different time, he would have been knelt to. And he might yet.
Inconspicuously, Kylo moved a hand to his belly, above his slowly hardening cock. He wouldn’t touch it, not yet - he knew it should be not at all. Self-denial even in the midst of self-indulgence. It felt somehow right. But he couldn’t just lie here and watch Hux rearrange his limbs into another perfect stretch and hold it, calf pressed to his chest, ankle hooked into the crook of his elbow, while he scrubbed the back of his thigh.
All that creamy pale skin was pink now, everywhere he’d scrubbed: pink and smooth and new, just as he’d said.
It crystallised in Kylo’s chest how much he envied Hux, how much he wanted to believe that he could somehow scrub hard enough to remove anything of himself. But he was fixed, stuck, case-hardened; not the lithe creature on the rocks opposite him, now breathing through a stretch that opened his hips up and brought his foot up to touch his big toe to his temple.
It didn’t seem to be an effort, even.
Kylo hated him, and hated himself, and reached down to palm his cock, in the same heartbeat.
Hux let go of the stretch, and turned to begin the process on the other side. The sweat was beading on his face now, and he bent to dip himself into the water, a quick splash that sent beads of water down his spine and little waves dancing over to slap against Kylo’s neck.
He didn’t appear to be paying any further attention to Kylo as he went through the stretches, in the same pattern, working away with the little scrubber until he had cleaned everything possible. Kylo watched, and tried not to give away the tiny movements of his own hand - almost worse than not touching himself at all, so slow and insufficient, but the water was so warm, and he couldn’t quite breathe if he didn’t touch, if someone didn’t touch him.
He needed Hux to stop. To stop, and in fact to never have started, because he would never be able to stop seeing the slim shape of him twisted into impossible contortions. He would never be able to see Hux’s perfectly straight back without thinking of the way the ridges of his spine stuck out when he wrapped his hands around his ankles.
Finally Hux slid from the seat, into the water up to his neck; ducked himself again, surfaced with the water dripping in sparkling rivulets from the end of his nose and chin.
Kylo closed his eyes for real, now, as Hux bobbed under the water again. He was playing, perhaps. Anything seemed possible, even the fearsome General Hux playing water games. It didn’t matter. Kylo needed air, or water, or something, but he wasn’t getting out of the pool until he could do it without Hux watching.
And then the splash as Hux surfaced, right next to him.
“Ren,” he said softly.
Kylo twitched, badly; he left the hand shielding his crotch where it was, but his eyes betrayed him with their wide and startled stare. “Don’t do that,” he growled.
“Why not?” Hux wasn’t smirking, but it was the expression he got right before that happened. “You were watching me that whole time, you can’t tell me I actually surprised you.”
“I wasn’t,” Kylo protested.
“You were,” Hux said. “Don’t think I need the Force to tell me when someone’s looking at me - not when I can see their irises from under their eyelashes. But none of that is germane to the situation.”
Kylo made a face at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The situation,” Hux said patiently. “Being that I need someone to do my back. I can’t reach.” His tone of voice was far too amused for that to be the truth - or if it was, it was an extremely convenient truth. Kylo doubted very deeply that anyone who could put their foot behind their ear would have trouble reaching their own back, even the tricky bit in the middle.
But Hux was holding out the little round scrubber expectantly.
Kylo took it, dropping his hand back into the water with a splat that kicked up drops onto Hux’s face. He snorted, and turned, presenting his back to Kylo. “Scrub fairly hard,” he instructed.
Kylo brought the ridiculous thing up to Hux’s back, and began, up and down over his skin. Hux reached back and tapped his arm: “Circles,” he said warningly. “You know how I like it.”
“I’ve never -” Kylo started.
“No,” Hux said. “You know how I like it. You watched me. Don’t be difficult.”
Kylo gritted his teeth, and made circles, over and over, until the blush of blood came up under his skin; the scrubber had softened with the water and the heat, and it took a while. He watched the tiny shifts of Hux’s muscles under his skin, and didn’t reach out with his other hand, didn’t reach out, didn’t touch the soft lines of him even so close. Even though he thought Hux might let him. Perhaps especially because he thought Hux might let him. If he did - but it could not be.
“You’re done,” he said eventually.
“Am I?” Hux glanced back over his shoulder, and then seized Kylo’s arm - the arm connected to the hand that was still covering his cock, his last-ditch effort at dignity lost. “I don’t think I am, quite. But I think we’re done with this.” He waded over to the steps, towing Kylo behind him. “You see,” he said conversationally, as they climbed the steps, “I don’t think you fully appreciate the proper way to do this. They leave all these supplies here, intending that we use them. And I wish to use them. So you’re going to keep making up for spying on me.” He handed back a towel, wrapped one around his own waist - and then looked consideringly at the array of small vials on the table as Kylo hurried to secure the fabric around his waist, wishing it would do more to hide him. His hair was still sending drips down his back.
“This one,” Hux said, plucking a vial of thin clear liquid from the bunch and handing it over to Kylo, who was still fumbling with his towel. He unrolled a third towel, and shook it out flat onto the ground, next to the pool where they could still feel the heat of it. “Sit,” he said, and Kylo did; as much as he wanted to disobey, Hux had the right of it. He had watched. He had watched, and he would watch it over again, perhaps for the rest of his life, behind his eyes. Kylo owed Hux something for that.
Hux grabbed his wrist, turned his palm up, and uncorked the vial, tipping a small pool of the liquid into the hollow of Kylo’s palm. “Careful,” he said.
Kylo’s hands were always warm, and they were warmer now with all of him still running hot from the water: a sweet, rich, nutty scent rose from the oil cupped in his hand.
Hux knelt on the towel in front of him. “Put your hands together,” he said, “and spread the oil.”
“I know how to do this,” Kylo said, through his teeth.
“Do you?” Hux stretched slightly. “Fine. Go on, then. But I am paying attention.”
Kylo rubbed his palms together, and then Hux looked over his shoulder, the corner of his lips quirked in a definite, unmistakeable smile, with just an edge of something dark.
“Remember,” he breathed. “I’m renewed - nobody has ever touched this skin before you.”
Kylo bit down on the tip of his tongue, and the oil dripped from his suddenly trembling hands to run down his wrists.
“Well, come on,” Hux said. “Show me.”
Kylo breathed through his nose, the air thick and sweet with the scent of the oil. He could do this.
He brought his dripping hands to Hux’s shoulders, and tipped them both over, letting the thin oil course down his back. Then he swept his palms back up from the small of Hux’s back to the wings of his scapulae, spreading the oil over his skin before it could soak into the towel at his waist.
Hux was warm too, so much warmer than he looked as though he should be. Under Kylo’s fingertips, he was soft with the oil, delicately muscled, and firm but not tense, with the exception of a knot or two Kylo made a note of as he ran his thumbs over Hux’s back in broad ovals. They were where he expected them, for a man who did most of his warfare from behind a desk.
He hadn’t lied: he knew more than enough about massage to feel his confidence returning as Hux’s skin drank in the oil, leaving him almost luminescent. And when he dug the knuckle of his thumb into the pair of knots just under each shoulder blade, pressed in until the muscle slid away, and again, and again, Hux made a tiny noise, something almost like pleasure.
“I know this,” Kylo said again, but this time he knew he sounded more convincing. “I have to, so I can make sure I can do it to myself if I need to.”
“You’re so self-sufficient,” Hux breathed. “The perfect little soldier. If only you could follow orders.”
“I’m not a soldier,” Kylo said, digging his thumbs in harder. “I’m a knight. It’s different.”
“I’m a soldier,” Hux said, half a laugh under the words.
“You’re the General.” Kylo moved to Hux’s lower back and squeezed at the strong cords of muscle there, the ones that kept him so uncompromisingly upright. “You’re different too.”
Hux hummed, acquiescence if not agreement. “Perhaps.”
Kylo could feel the oil drying up, and ran his hands in broad sweeps over Hux’s back, pressing it in where it hadn’t sunk in of its own accord, bringing it up to the base of his neck, almost into the damp strands of red hair at his nape.
He was so small under Kylo’s hands, so very small. He thought he could almost wrap his hands around Hux’s waist and have them meet; he wanted to try. He knew now about the bird bones of Hux’s wrists, about the deceptive strength hidden under the porcelain skin of his upper arms. He knew the way Hux’s ribcage expanded as he breathed, and the flutter of his heartbeat, fast now, though he tried to slow it.
Kylo would know Hux’s bones like his own, now; he would know this body by touch as well as sight, mapped out inch by inch.
Under the towel, his cock reminded him of the inches of Hux he wasn’t touching, couldn’t touch. Wouldn’t touch. But wanted to, nonetheless.
“There,” he said, because the oil was gone now, well and truly - it had sunk in minutes ago and he could no longer pretend there was anything but the velvet softness of Hux’s skin left against Kylo’s hands. He wanted to lean in and press his mouth to it, to bite gently at the smooth flesh that yielded so sweetly to his hands, that would yield even more sweetly to the points of his canine teeth. It would taste of the oil, if he licked, just there in the hollow of the tendons of Hux’s neck.
But he did not; sat back, folded his hands in his lap and watched Hux run his own hands over the skin he could reach, testing that Kylo had the right of it and the oil was gone.
“Is it… enough?” Kylo whispered hoarsely. He didn’t want to come up off his knees, not yet, not until he’d had a chance to steady himself; perhaps he would stay here while Hux dressed, let him leave, and then - then he could take the vial, and oil his palms, and think of Hux’s white, white shoulders.
Hux looked at him, then; glanced over the flush spilling down his chest, to the clasp of his hands in his lap, forcing his cock between his thighs.
“Not yet,” he said, and smiled: slow, dangerous, predatory.
Kylo bit back a noise of dismay.
“Come here,” Hux said. “You’re still missing out on the last part, the best part.”
There was a depression in the floor, near where Hux had laid the towel, with a little grate in the centre. It was still near enough to the pool to be able to reach in, and Hux retrieved from the table a large earthenware jug and pointed at the dip in the floor.
“We’ve been sweating for most of an hour,” Hux said. “We’ll wash our hair.”
He tipped the contents of the jug out on the stone: a cake of some sort of soap, and another bar of waxy-looking stuff, like butter.
“Come on,” he said, the edge of command back in his voice - and then with a flick of his fingers, the towel fell away from his hips and was discarded on the floor, and Kylo curled in on himself involuntarily, pressing himself down, looking at the stones and the water and anywhere but the neat, bright ginger curls that framed Hux’s cock.
But he had seen it. And he would never be able to forget it.
“Ren,” Hux said, warm and taunting. “What are you afraid of? That I’ll see how hard you are? That I’ll see how little control that vaunted training buys you?”
He watched Hux’s ankles, his long slim feet, approach until they were so near he could smell the oil on Hux’s skin again.
“Silly boy,” Hux chided, and his fingers were strong as they hooked Kylo’s chin up, made him meet Hux’s eyes as he crouched down in Kylo’s space, balanced on the balls of his feet, thighs open to show off their blue-white insides. “I know already. I watched you touch yourself, before - while I stretched. I saw how you couldn’t help yourself, looking at me. I saw everything. There’s no point in you hiding now.”
Kylo shivered, dizzy with the nearness of him and the lack of blood to his head. He looked up at Hux, mute, pleading - was there no mercy in him?
There was not. Hux reached out with the hand that wasn’t under Kylo’s chin, and tugged the knot of his towel loose.
“You like it,” Hux said, a calm observation, command assumed as easily as breathing. “Being on your knees. That’s fine. You can stay that way. But you’ll come here.”
Kylo lurched up to his feet, though he couldn’t feel them under him, and took six wobbly steps at Hux’s elbow to the spot where Hux pushed him down again.
“Good,” Hux said; brushed fingertips over his neck that made his chin drop to his chest. “Stay.”
He knelt, too, and reached out to dip the jug into the pool, a perfect stretch like a white stone statue, a water bearer from an older age.
“Head down,” he said, pushed Kylo farther until he had to spread his knees for balance. Kylo could see nothing but dark now, and he closed his eyes as Hux lifted the jug high and tipped it, two-handed, to pour the water in a careful, steady stream over Kylo’s head.
Kylo stayed down, held muscles that wanted to tremble still and waited for the second dousing, which soaked his curls through, trickled down the angles of his cheekbones and off his parted lips. He breathed, tasted the salt of the water, waited.
“Good.” That was perhaps the only praise he would be offered, he thought, but it was rare enough to hear even that from Hux’s lips.
Then something cool and hard was pressed to his scalp, and moved in circles, and he thought for an incoherent second of the scourer before the astringent herbal scent told him - the cake of soap, foaming up already into thick lather as Hux worked it into his hair.
Hux’s fingertips made tiny circles against his scalp, firm and purposeful.
“What,” Kylo breathed, uncomprehending. How did he merit this, this careful washing of his hair, when he had done nothing that wasn’t already a payment for an earlier transgression?
“Hush.” Hux squeezed the back of his neck, just at the base of his skull. “Pay attention.”
So this was a lesson, then. That made enough sense that he could fit it into the framework, and he did pay attention - there was nothing more important in the galaxy than Hux’s fingers in his hair, and the suds, and the sharp clean smell of the soap.
Hux worked back from the nape of his neck, over his skull to the top of his head, then returned from his hairline over his ears, cupping his palms around them as his fingertips spread the soap through Kylo’s hair, until Kylo’s whole world was nothing but green herbs and the gentle prickling of trapped bubbles popping in the tiny curves and crevices of his ears.
He almost didn’t hear the quiet instruction, “Breathe,” and got half a breath in before the water hit the back of his head again, sluicing the suds away onto the floor where they puddled and slid over the stone to the grate.
“Good,” Hux said; that was the third time, surely some sort of record.
He wasn’t good. He wasn’t, not with his cock still aching where it hung untouched between his legs; that was the wrong word, would always be the wrong word for him. But if Hux wanted to say it, Kylo would let him.
Hux set the jug down with a heavy clunk, and carded through Kylo’s hair to see if it had rinsed clean, as thorough in this as in everything else he did.
He must have been satisfied, because he took up the second bar, rubbed it vigorously between his palms until his hands and fingers glistened. Then he buried them in Kylo’s dripping hair, spreading the light oil through handfuls of the wet black waves, working the oil in and the water out.
One final rinse, and then the pad of his thumb, under the point of Kylo’s chin, and challenging green eyes: “Do you understand?”
Kylo nodded. He understood. Hux’s cock was more than half-hard too, and he had a high colour in his cheeks and a redness to his lips that suggested he’d been biting them.
Yes, he understood, all of it, all of it.
Hux stared him down for a moment longer, and then the decision was made, and Hux closed his eyes and bent forward, knees spread and forearms across his thighs, another perfect stretch.
Kylo could not match his grace as he leaned out over the water to fill the jug, but he brought it brimming to Hux’s neck and poured, every drop darkening the fall of ginger hair, just as Hux had done for him.
His hair was shorter and finer than Kylo’s; it only took one jug to soak it completely. Kylo took up the bar of soap, the bubbles settled now from when Hux had used it on him, and considered him, the bow, the bumps of his spine up to his neck, the way his ribcage stood out above his flanks, so pale.
Kylo’s frustration and discomfort had eased, loosened from him by Hux’s fingers and washed away with the suds. He was calmer, now, as calm as he had ever been, as he brought the bar to Hux’s head, and smoothed it over his hair, leaving its trail of bubbles, building and building; and he was calm as he set his fingertips against Hux’s neck and began making little circles, just as Hux had done.
Hux, too, was calm, pliant under his hands, no more challenges from him now; Kylo worked, and Hux leaned farther into his thighs, pressed up into Kylo’s touch, pushed his skull into Kylo’s palms.
Kylo wanted to look at his mind, in that moment - wondered how different it would be to the regimented and orderly mind he knew, logical to a fault (and what a fault it was). This man, chasing his touch like a spoiled pet, could not be the General who terrified thousands, who held the unthinking obedience of millions. Kylo couldn’t reconcile this slim body kneeling before him with that… personage, any more than he himself currently felt like the master of anything at all. Hux, here and now, was just a man, a wildly beautiful man with a body like a piece of art, and Kylo would wash his hair because he wanted it done, because he enjoyed having it done, and because every moment this lasted was another moment where Kylo could look at him without shame, touch him without recriminations.
There would be consequences, of course there would. There were consequences for even the tiniest action. Surely one of this magnitude could not fail to leave its mark. But he dared for a moment to hope - an emotion he did not have often, anymore - that it could be… good.
Hux shivered, a small, contained tremor. Cold, or overstimulation, Kylo thought. More likely the latter. The room was warm, or at least, he felt warm, the core of a very tiny sun smouldering within him as he looked down at how large his hands were against Hux's skull, how deeply auburn-red the strands of his hair as they clung wetly to Kylo's fingers.
He wished he could see Hux's face. He would know, if he could see, what great and terrible thing he had unleashed.
But then, if he could see - if he did know - he would no longer be free to imagine that Hux might be chewing that plush bottom lip again, might be squeezing his eyes shut as Kylo had, not just to keep out the water but to keep out the world. Might be brushing the tips of his fingers, safely hidden by the curve of his back, over all the secret places Kylo wanted to learn for himself.
It was a dangerous thought, with no towel to hide him anymore and Hux's head nearly on his knees. He could feel the sparking throb low in his belly, between his legs.
All he knew was that Hux was here, and in this moment he was Kylo's responsibility and his reward, both the red and the black of his ledger. He did not need to know anything else.
He had worked over Hux's whole scalp twice, and he knew he couldn't draw this out for a third round, no matter how soft Hux looked like this: he would lose this moment anyhow, and it was better to end it himself than to risk Hux’s irritation by continuing well past the point where it was useful. So he filled the jug again, and as Hux had done, told him “Breathe,” and waited to see Hux's ribs expand before he poured the warm water over Hux’s head.
He rinsed Hux's hair a second time, needing to be sure he had cleared every trace of the soap. Then he reached for the other bar, and let it melt against his hot palms, until he thought there was enough, and he took a breath, and took a chance, and smoothed Hux's hair out of his face, tipping his head up and back.
The clean hair pulled at his fingertips; he went slowly, aware at a bone-deep level of the face he could halfway see now. The startling eyelashes, water-spiked and fluttering every time Kylo's fingers caught a knot; the elegant nose, with a drop of clear water on the tip that Kylo wanted to brush away for him.
Hux sighed, the tiniest of sounds, and the sun in Kylo flared, burnt all the oxygen in his blood and scorched at his heart. With a noise like pain, he caught his breath, and the pale eyelashes parted, green blazing beneath - too close, too close.
“Ren.”
And there was the General again, the man who could lead an empire, overlaid on the ethereal creature with his bright hair and white limbs.
“Hux,” he breathed, unable to say anything else.
Hux sat up, and Kylo couldn't help it: he knew Hux would see, Hux would know, but Hux already knew, and Kylo looked down at thighs so pale he could see the tracery of blue veins underneath the skin, and then at Hux's long, slim fingers, loosely curved, held in front of his hardening cock not out of any sense of shame but just because that was where they were.
Hux lifted one of those hands, pressed it to Kylo's hot cheek. “You see the job is not fully done,” he said. “Will you finish it, Kylo Ren?”
Kylo took a long, shuddering breath through his nose, and reached for him.
He might have looked like cold white stone, but Hux was very warm as he wrapped his arms around Kylo's shoulders, pressing their chests together as if to trap Kylo's heart between them. His mouth found the too-fast pulse-flutter where Kylo's neck met his jaw; Kylo felt the puff of air when he laughed.
“You’re so nervous,” Hux mused. “Why? Am I not giving you exactly what you want? And couldn't you take it even if I were not?” He slipped a hand between them, trailed down Kylo's belly to wrap around his cock.
Kylo didn't let himself make the noise he wanted to make, though it felt as though it echoed in his chest anyhow.
“But then, I understand. This is dangerous, you giving in to me.” Hux’s hand was soft, dry - so different from his own callused grip. “If you give me this, what can you hold back, after? But I'm a good commander, Ren. I take care of my troops.” His thumb circled the tender head of Kylo’s cock.
“Not - like this,” Kylo said, proud of how he didn't quite gasp.
Hux snorted. “Fraternisation regs. You know better. I couldn't have this with anyone under my command. This -” He twisted his wrist cruelly, and Kylo's perfectly trained body betrayed him with a spasm, his hips snapping forward into Hux's grip. “This can only be between us.”
The words didn't quite make sense. “You can only… with me?”
Hux's sigh now held a real edge of exasperation; he hissed, “That’s what I said. And you will exploit your position as my co-commander, and put your kriffing hands on me, Ren, or I’ll find a new co-commander myself.”
Kylo's hands clenched involuntarily around Hux's waist, fingertips meeting at the small of his back.
“That's it.” Hux bared his teeth against Kylo’s shoulder. “Just like that. That's what I want.”
“You want - this?” It was unbelievable daring, and he shuddered as the words left his mouth - it could only have been worse had he said you want me.
But Hux tightened his grip on Kylo, dug the nails of his other hand into Kylo's shoulder. “More than just this. Stars’ sake, Ren, it's like you’ve never done this before - give me your hand.”
He knew what Hux meant, of course, though it took his stunned mind a few seconds to really process the command. He could touch - indeed, he needed to, Hux needed him to, as impossible as it seemed that Hux was sliding into his lap, thighs bracketing his on either side, still stroking him more gently than anyone had touched him in a decade.
Hux's cock bumped against his belly, and he couldn't bear it another moment: he caught up both their cocks in one hand, his fingers wrapping over Hux's, and pushed both their hands down roughly, the way he usually did.
Hux yelped, and slapped his hand away. “Don’t take the skin off it. I know you enjoy choking the life out of things, but -” He reached out to the side, blindly, and found the vial of oil. “Use this, and go gently.” He uncorked it, and poured some into Kylo’s hand and some into his own, and brought Kylo’s hand back to their cocks, with their fingers intertwined.
With the oil, everything was suddenly soft and slippery, and it was easier to slide their hands up and down, to hold the blood-hot length of Hux in his hand and run the pad of his thumb over the head, so different from his and yet so alike.
Hux put his head back against Kylo’s shoulder. “That’s it,” he said. “Slowly - make it last a little.”
It must have been a very long time, then, since Hux had last done this, if even this poor substitute for intimacy was something he wanted to draw out. But Kylo’s pulse was thudding hard in his throat and slowing down was probably wise.
“What if someone comes in?” he said, clutching Hux closer at the thought, as if to shield them both from view.
A laugh bubbled up in Hux’s chest. “Oh, Ren, some days I marvel at you. Do you really think -”
Then he sat back, a little bit, enough to scan his face, and Kylo didn’t know what he was looking for, but he found it: “You do. I see. Kriffing hells, I thought - all right, let me clear this up.” He climbed off Kylo, suddenly too far away, and Kylo fought the urge to reach for him and pull him back, wanted to whine at the loss of his heat and his touch but didn’t, didn’t -
“I paid off the front desk, to keep us alone,” Hux said matter-of-factly, staring into his eyes as though there was nothing shameful about what he was saying. “I had hoped, when I knew you were here and I knew it could be just you and I, alone - I thought you might. Respond to me. And you did, even if you made me drag it out of you that you wanted it.” He shook his head. “You could have just asked and saved me trying to get my ankle behind my ear. Though it’s nice to know I still can, I suppose.”
Kylo could feel the heat in his cheeks, cursed his too-expressive face - “What do you mean,” he said, his voice dull with embarrassment, “what are you - you planned this?”
“Not exactly,” Hux said. “I took advantage of a strategic opportunity. But - you must know I’ve wanted this.”
Kylo shook his head, as though it would clear the ringing in his ears. “You… wanted this.”
Hux’s eyebrows drew together. “Couldn’t you see it in my mind? I - just assumed you knew, and didn’t want to act on it because it was unseemly.”
“Why would you -” Kylo stopped himself hard, biting back the words. “No. I never looked. It wouldn’t have been right, I didn’t need to look in your head - and I never thought -” No, that was too dangerous again.
“You never thought I could want you.” Hux finished the sentence for him anyway, and put his clean hand to his temple as though it hurt. “Stars above. What a situation, Ren.”
“I disappoint you,” Kylo said, and stared at his knees so he didn’t have to see the pain on Hux’s face anymore. “Always. You’ve made it clear.”
Hux laughed, the hand slipping from his forehead to cover his mouth for a moment before it dropped to his lap. “Everyone disappoints me, Ren, my standards are terribly high. It doesn’t stop me from being willing to compromise.”
“Is that what I am? A compromise?”
“If I’d waited for the perfect lover, I’d die a virgin,” Hux said. “And I am equally certain that I am no-one’s idea of the perfect lover either.”
Kylo’s mouth went dry, and there was no hiding it, no hiding the way he looked back up at Hux - over those slim, pale limbs, the fine lines of him, the mouth still elegant even with that half-smile full of secrets.
He stopped at Hux’s mouth. He couldn’t look back up to his eyes.
He watched the half-smile slip away.
“Oh,” Hux said softly. “Oh, Ren, just come here -” And he didn’t even wait for Kylo to do as he’d asked, just knelt up and leaned in himself, catching Kylo’s shoulders and pulling him in against his chest.
Hux ran his nails over the planes of Kylo’s back, and he shivered, clutching at Hux in return, which earned him a pleased noise and a whispered “That’s it, that’s it.” It emboldened him, and his fingers were still slick with the oil, though both of them had softened somewhat; he reached for Hux’s cock, carefully taking it into his hand and stroking slowly, slowly, until Hux was almost purring against his shoulder. “Good, that’s so good, Ren, that’s perfect.”
He shuddered at the word, like an arrow to the gut, and Hux gave an almost-soundless laugh: “Oh, so that’s how it is, is it?”
His hand found Kylo’s cock, and stroked, as he murmured, “Perfect, Ren, your hand is perfect right there, I love it.”
And Kylo twitched, every time, and he knew it was coming and couldn’t help it, couldn’t help how he clenched his hands as though he could catch the word and keep it.
“Mmm,” Hux said, and stretched luxuriously against him, a roll of his shoulders pushing his chest against Kylo’s. “Sit back - your knees must be sore after this long on them, you beautiful thing.”
Beautiful was as bad as perfect, worse even; Kylo muffled a whine in Hux’s shoulder. He let himself fall back, onto his elbows, pushing his feet out to the side - it hurt, moving after so much time, but he didn’t care as long as Hux moved with him.
“I wish there was anything softer here,” Hux said, and leaned down, braced on one elbow, and tucked one of the discarded towels under Kylo’s hips, as though it mattered if there was anything soft in Kylo’s life - as though he would mind a bruise. “I don’t think we can do everything I’d like to do to you.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Kylo gasped, dizzied by the words, “do it -”
“No,” said Hux, mouthing at his chest now, too close to leave alone; “you’re right, it doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t matter because we’re going to do this again - now that I know you want it - now that I know how good you are, how perfect -”
“I need it,” Kylo groaned, finally just saying it - “I don’t deserve it but please, Hux -”
And Hux’s hand was speeding up, tacit permission for Kylo to do the same - he could smell Hux’s sweat under the fresh herbs of the soap and the sweet oil, and Hux dipped his head and bit at Kylo’s collarbone, a sharp nip that made him buck his hips up into Hux’s hand, and it was so different from how he usually felt when he touched himself, so overwhelming having all his senses full of sweet and rich and green and Hux that his orgasm surprised him: he curled in on himself, pushing his forehead into Hux’s chest, and turned the shout he would have let out into a strained growl as he came against Hux’s stomach.
Hux petted him through it, held him so he wouldn’t fall back and crack his skull on the stones; held him as he came back to his body, and realised Hux was still hard, rolling his hips against Kylo’s in tiny movements.
“Let me,” he panted, “just let me -” and he slipped back, to his knees, crouching in front of Hux again, the position feeling entirely right to his exhausted muscles.
He’d never done this before, but it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to take Hux into his mouth, the flavour of the minerals in the water indistinguishable from the bitter-salt of Hux, and the buttery-sweet oil made it a delicacy. He licked, and then met his fist with his lips, and sucked hard - and Hux’s hands made fists in his hair as his hips stuttered and he came, bowstring-taut and silent.
Kylo couldn’t swallow it all, not without choking, but he did his best, and wiped his chin on the back of his hand as he sat up enough to brace Hux against his shoulder.
They were silent for a few minutes, while they got their breath back, and Kylo’s mind drifted over thoughts about how soft Hux’s hair was, where the fall of it brushed his shoulder, and how his hand still lay curled on Kylo’s thigh as though he’d forgotten it there.
Eventually Hux mumbled, “We need water.”
“There’s… a lot,” Kylo said, running his thumb over Hux’s hipbone. “Just there.”
“Drinking water,” Hux clarified. “Although. I’m filthy.”
“Me too,” Kylo said, and what was happening on his face was probably best categorised as a smile. “Do you want me to do your back again?”
Hux lifted the hand on Kylo’s thigh to run the backs of his fingers over Kylo’s abs. “What a good idea,” he said. “And I’ll do yours.”