Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The blood running down his throat will make him vomit, but Ren can’t find the energy to bend forward.

There’s a flurry of activity aboard the Command Shuttle as they pull into hyperspace a full cycle ahead of schedule, a hasty retreat for the absurd reason of Ren’s safety. If a broken nose is the thing that kills him, Ren deserves the humiliation. Right now, Ren just wants to shut it all out and rest for a moment longer. If he’s silent, maybe this clusterfuck of an embarrassing situation will just disappear.

“Comm medical bay. Let them know Supreme Leader will need assistance as we dock.”

Hux. The last person he wants near right now, making plans for his medical care no less, and especially while he’s got that look on his face—like he’s worried Ren might throw himself out the nearest airlock and leave him to sort through the aftermath.

Hux is hovering—a great, looming shadow of tangled concern, anger and calculation as he has hushed, brief conversations with officers and squadron captains. Hux’s personal concern for Ren is overriding his other emotions at the moment, and that’s something Ren doesn’t want to deal with now—or ever. Ren cannot shield himself from Hux’s emotions in his current state. There’s another reason why Hux should stay away.

“Lean forward,” Hux finally barks at him. “I’d rather not witness you vomiting aboard this shuttle.”

Ren slits his eyes open, and even that much hurts. Hux is pacing with his datapad open, only giving it half of his attention.

“You’re becoming too predictable, Hux,” Ren mumbles, the words tripping over themselves, his tongue thick and clumsy and tasting of copper.

“Lean forward, you great idiot,” Hux threatens, making sure to pitch his voice quiet enough that no one else will hear him. Hux remains closer than anyone else dares.

The world swims in and out of focus while Ren does as he’s told. The blood follows him in a sickly rush, and Ren stares at the blots falling to the durasteel beneath their feet, creating a little crimson pool between his boots. His head throbs from the effort of doubling over and he takes slow shuddering breaths, finding it hard to get a full breath into his burning lungs.

It hurts to keep his eyes open where the swollen skin and bruising around his eyes is worsening, so he shuts them. Tears squeeze from the corners to fall to the ground too, and that’s unexpected enough that Ren starts to heave. He sets his teeth together and tries to keep his breathing even.

Adding a panic attack to the precarious state of his face will only make things worse.

He’s always making things worse.

Ren can vaguely hear Hux ordering officers and ‘troopers to vacate the immediate area, to give their leader space. It’s the only thing keeping Ren from succumbing to the tendrils of anxiety pulling him toward the edge of consciousness.
A cloth is shoved at him, and Ren recoils, breaking the spell, and he nearly vomits at the possibility of anything touching his nose right now, its fractured bones throbbing worse for the thought.

He takes the cloth thrust at him and holds it tightly in his hands rather than using it. That way no one else can use it on him either. Cleaning the blood away will be something he has to work up to.

“Are you my nursemaid now?” he spits out, intending to wound so he isn’t the only one cut open.

“No one else will come near you,” Hux throws back, voice calm. “What exactly did you expect?”

Better. This version of Hux is one he can deal with.

“Were we able to track any of them?” Ren asks, squeezing his eyes shut, and trying to focus on what’s right in front of him. What’s salvageable. This will help.

“No. We’ve kept a small ground reconnaissance team in the city, but those I’ve spoken to think it’s a lost cause. They’re touchy about our troops taking over for local authorities, and we need to maintain this alliance.”

Poe fucking Dameron took a swing at him in plain view of a hundred people and they have no way of tracking him after his group of half a dozen undercover Resistance members fled in a single shuttle. Sometimes Ren doesn’t understand the purpose of commanding an entire army when they’re this useless.

Ren presses the cloth to his mouth, staying clear of his nose. It’s too painful right now and he doesn’t care what he looks like, spits a nasty wad of blood and mucus to the ground to clear it from his throat.

Hux makes a disapproving sound, and Ren doesn’t look at him, but can picture the distinctive curl of his lip into a haughty grimace anyway.

“You let a Force-null Resistance leader close enough to throw his fist in your face. Then you let him escape. Should I be worried?”

Why didn’t you kill him? That’s what Hux is really asking.

Ren could lie about the reasons—something about it all happening too fast. It was so brash he wasn’t expecting it, and that threw him into shock. The truth is—Ren deserves far more than a bloody nose from Dameron. And that confession would require some explanation of what it was like growing up with the pilot protege as his mother’s ideal son, someone Ren could never measure up to during the height of his adolescence, someone who never deserved any of the resentment he received from Ren.

There’s also the not-so-small matter of the single thought that had played over and over once he had spotted Dameron across the crowded casino: You cannot take another irreplaceable person from Leia’s life. You cannot. She’s lost enough.

He doesn’t say any of this, and Hux doesn’t press him on it. Not yet. He’ll know most of it anyway, and is irritatingly good at filling in the bits Ren has never told him before.

There’s a gloved hand at the back of Ren’s neck swiping away some of the blood smeared there. Hux’s hand lingers too long for such a public space, but it’s a familiar weight Ren cannot shrug away.

“You’re a mess,” Hux whispers with a resigned sigh.

The concern drifting from Hux in waves curls into warm reassurance and Ren chases after it, wants to disappear there and hide his bloody face from the galaxy.

He presses the cloth to his nose instead.

Chapter Text

Ren splays his thighs obscenely wide so his knee is flush against Hux’s hip, his erection strained against the seam of his ceremonial dress trousers.

“I dare you,” Ren says aloud.

Hux snorts and knocks into Ren to push him out of his space, but Ren just presses in again, slouching lower in his high-backed chair. What a childish notion—the thought of playing truth or dare, especially with sexual implications, and in a very public space. “Honestly, how can there only be five years between our ages?”

They’re boring me. Do you remember what happens when I’m bored? Ren sends telepathically, a threat and a promise all at once.

“Do you know what happens when you manage to offend a room full of thousands of First Order officers, diplomats and arms dealers? All of whom you need to run your Empire?”

“Hux,” Ren begs, hissing his name, and this is their Supreme Leader in all his entitled, petulant glory.

Hux’s jaw twitches, but he manages to control the threatening smile. It’s probably the worst torture for Hux to choose neither truth nor dare, leaving Ren without an answer when he’s buzzing for it.

Hux leans back, crossing his arms at his chest. “Only the simplest minds need constant entertainment.”

In reality, Hux has been bored out of his own mind for the last hour, too. He’s never been one to appreciate the theater, even if their sky-high opera box affords the best view of the massive, well-lit stage below. They’re towering over everyone from here, and Hux likes how it’s a fitting reminder to all about who remains in control.

Wyrovian costuming is mildly interesting, interwoven with votrox crystals and silk from the native Eber worms, but the language used in the opera is complex, high and atonal—hardly what Hux would call music or lyrical, leaving them both fliching at odd moments when the ringing between their ears is too much to ignore. He supposes it’s an acquired taste, but it remains something neither of them have the patience to appreciate.

At least Hux knows when to fake enthusiasm, where Ren has spent the evening staring blankly at anyone who asks his opinion of the treasured art of Wyrovian theater performance, leaving Hux to make excuses or buffer their conversations toward more strategic, diplomatic ends. There’s nothing to do for it though. They’ve been stuck on this tour of the loyal Outer Rim planets for weeks now, and Ren’s attention can only stretch so thin.

You better choose the dare, or I’ll be forced to take the truth from you.

“What truth?” Hux mutters, and can’t believe he’s entertaining this game—even for a moment.

You know what I want to know. Who was that Lieutenant to you?

The question, the truth Ren seeks, it fills Hux’s mind until he’s sick with it, Ren’s acidic fingers itching to sink into every scar and burn and scrape from his past. It bothers him that Ren would even care. No. He doesn’t care. It’s just more fodder to hold against Hux later.

Ren’s obsession with accidentally meeting Lieutenant Aron Byron, Hux’s friend from the Academy, at a party designed to court a group of Arkanisian Imperial sympathizers, is not something that warrants any more discussion. Ever. Truthfully, Hux had thought Byron was dead—and would have prefered it that way.

Hux watches the theater performance and weighs the odds of keeping the memories of Byron, his first—first kiss, first fuck, first everything, buried so deep Ren wouldn’t be able to pry it from him if he tried.

It doesn’t seem likely, especially weighed against the odds of getting caught for a handjob in relative seclusion. Those in the rows of seating surrounding the stage cannot possibly see anything below his and Ren’s shoulders from their angle.
After all, Ren could have asked for a dare far more complicated.

Hux removes the white glove of his right hand, one finger at a time. Ren watches him with a raised eyebrow as he rolls it away and folds it neatly upon his lap. No sense in ruining a perfectly expensive glove with Ren’s come.

Keeping your truth from me is worth that much to you?

Hux reaches for Ren’s knee, squeezes the inside of his thigh hard enough to make his choice unmistakable. “Eyes forward. If your expression is anything but careful boredom, or if you make a sound, I will stop.”

Hux bends down below the wall in front of them, fakes a cough to spit into his bare hand. Easing the way with afford them speed.

“Dare it is,” Ren says aloud, giving in easily to the promise of orgasm. Slouching further, Ren releases the button and flies of his trousers with as little shoulder movement as possible, and Hux dips his hand inside, takes hold of Ren’s hot, heavy cock with practiced ease.

Sometimes, redirecting Ren away from the truth is embarrassingly easy.