“Hux, Stay Behind Me!” (Love Confession)

Hux shakes, Ren stops.

There’s no voice left in his throat to scream, but he needs to. It’s too intense, too close, too fast, too—

“Too soon?”

“Too much.” Hux would rather die than explain himself further. He wishes, for a moment, that Ren would use his wondrous mumbo-jumbo Force bantashit to spare him the humiliation of articulating a proper answer.

“You don’t want me to touch you.” It’s not a question, but it exudes uncertainty and caution; Ren is a lot less of a monster than what he prides himself to be.

They’re just equally pathetic, then.

“It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind.” He says, and it’s calm, open, sombre. Hux chokes on barely contained fear.

Kissing had been more simple. Mouths touching are not an issue. Ren’s lips had been soft and burning and wet and inviting, and those massive warm hands had felt fucking fantastic on his hips no more than two split seconds ago, but now the air tastes like asphyxia and rotting corpses, and there’s no memory left of the backwards walk they’ve pushed-pulled from Hux’s living-room to his bed, nor of the continuous double flips Hux’s stomach had made while Ren was pouring growls over growls against his neck—

“I’m not interested in a reluctant partner,” Ren insists, then it’s silence. He looks like a ghost, blurred behind a veil of regret and denial; Hux can already see drinking himself into a stupor for the following standard week, wondering just how much defective can one single person be. For once, he wouldn’t be referring to anyone but himself.

“I miss it.” The words leave Hux’s mouth without his consent, but his mind is screaming, and there’s no way to silence it. Touch me. I don’t remember how to be normal anymore.

“Do you?” I never was.

“Sometimes.” Wait— Don’t.

“Okay.” The hand stops again; it was counting Hux’s ribs on his chest. He feels the urge to twist and twitch against the point of contact, to sink back into the mattress and push himself further at the same time.

Ren’s confusion is slightly disturbing. Embarrassing, almost.

He’s going to ask questions, or worse, he’s going to rummage around until he finds what will satisfy him. Hux doesn’t customarily enjoy evisceration. Unpleasant memories are filed away deep in the back of his consciousness, many of them, far and close in space and time, memories no one is allowed to tinker with, not even himself, and Ren is too close.

History repeats itself, personal or galactic. Hux’s mind is slipping off reality already.

Touches burn.

“I understand.”

“You don’t.” He misses contact so desperately. It isn’t for lack of interest.

Nostalgia of an unknown land; someone must have invented a word for that, somewhere. Longing for a garden which key got lost even before being forged. Hux has a desire for the dead, the never-had, the I-will-never-have.

Probably will never have? Ren seems to be offering. Unbelievable, they’re starting to build a truce right above the most fragile part of their— relationship. Interaction. Necessity of cooperation. Rivalry. Whatever it is that they are for each other.

“I think I do.” Ren glooms over him with his space-pale face and void-black clothes, focused, larger than life and yet less intimidating than ever.

There’s pressure again, this time on Hux’s cheek, on his neck, along the pale length of his collarbones. Under his shirt, despite the fact he’s still clothed. No hands match the relaxed tides of energy rolling over Hux’s body; it’s not warm, it’s not cool, it’s not even there.

It’s perfect.

“The Force— I didn’t think you could use it like this.”

“How does it feel?” Bright amber eyes skim over his face. Appraising. Curious. Hux has never met someone so distressingly, unbelievably, uncommonly handsome.

He holds his breath, Ren falters.

“We can just pretend this never—”

“Acceptable. It’s acceptable.”

It’s a start. Ren isn’t trying to crack him open and take everything he can, despite how plain it is that he wants to reach, to touch; he’s holding back, playing by Hux’s rules. It has never happened before.

They have never been this close before either, and somehow it now feels the only acceptable distance between them.

“The Force hasn’t been kind to us,” we have to be kind to each other. Hux can feel the unsaid in his head, barely-there, obscure and sullen.

Some could say it was written in the stars, their meeting, that it was a curse, a blessing, their destiny. 

Destiny, that thing Ren forces himself to believe in, and Hux refuses to acknowledge on principle despite all the evidence.

“No one ever has.”

“Can I go on?” Let me take care of you, you frightened monster. Maybe the dark whisper in his mind is a product of his imagination; perhaps he’s finally lost it.

Hux has been hallucinating before. People, things. A red cat. It usually just depends on how many days he goes by without sleeping.

But he has to believe something is real.

He has to. He wants to.

“Yes,” me too.

It’s perfect.

Me too.

—

For @kyluxpositivity week 2021 / day 5: First Time

Hiraeth is a Welsh word for nostalgia, longing, or desire for a home that doesn’t exist anymore or never existed to begin with. (I’m not Welsh, I found this on-line, I hope I haven’t used the world inappropriately. It has just generated a thought-chain that has brought me to write this, and I thought it would have been nice to pay a little tribute.)

Things can get better, with the right people, at the right time. Maybe for Hux too. And maybe Kylo can be saved. Just a little, just barely enough to survive.

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