Chapter Text
(thank you boba for the gorgeous moodboard!)
/
From: [email protected]
To: S% bGER+ZQhqG@holo. x
SUBJECT: (no subject)
hey I got a little hunch during meditation, how is everything ? x
we’re ready when you are, just say the word x
xxx rey
/
From: S% [email protected]
SUBJECT: RE: (no subject)
Are you encrypted?
You really ought to consider taking a different netadress. Perhaps one less conspicuous?
H
/
From: f^ck-u-g3neral-99%[email protected]
To: S% [email protected]
SUBJECT: !!!!!!!!
secure now, thanks much. good to know that the miracle of fatherhood hasn’t changed you x
do we have very long ?? is everything ok ?? x
/
From: S% bGER+ZQhqG@holo. x
To: f^ck-u-general-99%[email protected]
SUBJECT: RE: !!!!!!!!
All clear for now, but yes do come. Send your ETA.
M awaits the pleasure of your company, R tells me to say thank you for doing this again. She says not to worry, nothing is quite “for real real yet”. I sense she’s playing things down. But I’m no clairvoyant.
H
/
Even from his restless lean against the kitchen counter, far away from the bedrooms, the sound of Hux's commwatch vibrating with message alerts reverberates in the fragile hush of his dark, sleeping household. It makes him wince each time.
The last one pings through and he listens for a moment after to try and discern if either his wife — forty weeks and six days pregnant and ostensibly napping her early labor away — or his baby, (soon to be the eldest of his two, an idea he can’t quite parse), Mars Armada Tico, not a Hux in name but most certainly in deportment, a standard cycle shy of two years old in her corporeal form but possibly centuries old in spirit — have been disturbed.
Seconds tick by. Nothing stirs. Their dwelling, partially carved into the side of a basalt mountain and into the ground itself to fortify its walls against Raithal’s whipping storms, swallows up every noise and turns it into the cool silence of deep earth.
His wrist vibrates again. Rey’s typed back three hours give or take, see you soon x and relief plunges through the stress in his gut at the mere thought of her arrival.
He types a final “fly safe" on the soft green glow of the commwatch’s projected keyboard, the keys clicking softly as he hits them with his index finger. In the dark his eyes strain, and he wishes he’d thought to grab his reading glasses from the nightstand. Preferring to nurse his mild irritation over that annoyance instead of feeding his worry over Rose, he doesn’t notice the sound of her feet in mismatched socks padding towards him until it’s almost too late.
He flicks an instinctual glance up from under his brows to catch sight of her, and therefore to not startle loudly in surprise, before she leans into him bump first. The distance imposed by their height difference and the belly wedged between them means she can’t loop her arms around his neck, which is her preferred method of shoving herself in between him and whatever important business he’s trying to pay attention to. She has to rest her hands up on his shoulders, peering hard into his unmoved face.
“You look like such an old man.”
Her voice, tempered low to keep it from carrying, is sweet and soothes him, despite the teasing words. He takes care not to direct his attention away from the holoscreen until the message is sent, just wraps one arm around her shoulders to pull her closer to him.
“And you look like you’ve swallowed a wampa-melon.”
The edge of his mouth curls up, knowing the risk he’s taking, but the truth of it hits him straight in the heart whenever he catches sight of her. It’s almost funny, the proportion of her belly to her tiny unchanged frame; sometimes he really has to stop himself from letting out a pathetically adoring giggle when he sees her. Yet she waddles around with such a tangible sense of self-contained dignity, one she’s steadily gained over the passage of time and experience and of watching their first youngling grow into her own, that the effect merely adds to her otherworldly beauty.
“I know. It’s great. I look really cute, don’t I? And I don’t have to do shit, you just do it for me.”
That’s always the case, he bites back from saying.
Her arms wrap around his middle as much as she’s able, chin digging into his chest with her big dark eyes cast up pleadingly. Hux powers off the projected screen on his watch, pulls her into him with his freed hand too.
“You clearly put your own socks on, that’s good."
“Ha — are you proud of me?”
“No. I’d rather fix them for you.”
She laughs from deep in her chest but it’s her belly that jumps against him, a sensation he likes but has never quite gotten used to. It’s like a little alien dances around in there, especially when she drinks jogan juice and the baby’s hands poke out against Rose’s golden skin.
“That’s so funny. I actually came out here to ask you for your help, how did you know?”
Because all I ever do is for you, and you know it.
“Not with your socks, I’m sure.” He cranes his head around to eye them, one foot in a fuzzy pink sock, the other in a pattern of cartoon Ewok faces. The textural dissonance between the two is like an added insult to injury. “You’ve some kind of a fetish for such dismal pairings.”
She steps onto the tops of his feet and huffs impatiently. Hux softens instantly at the sound of her exhaling.
“Are you feeling alright?”
She nods, tone turning down to an exhausted mumble. “Nothing new, random twinges. It’s been like this since yesterday. I can’t time them ‘cause they’re coming weirdly far apart and I can’t sleep either. It really sucks.”
He pets her hair, its black silk pulled into a hasty bun for sleeping, disobedient locks flicking out from all sides in invitation for him to play with them.
“Rey said they’ll be here in three hours.” He feels the second release of breath from her, this one a twin of the same relief he'd felt on hearing that news. “I assume she can do something then, to make things hurry along.”
“Force-assisted induction?” She wrinkles her nose with distaste. “Nah. You can do something, you know.”
The moment she lifts her eyes to him in implication, his cock twitches to attention.
“Oh , I see now; this is you seducing me.”
He can’t help it, not with her belly pressed to him, the body he knows so well shifting and growing to accommodate his child; with both pregnancies, the allure of her has been so powerful that all she has to do is toss him a look and he’s half-hard and dying to throw himself at her.
“So perceptive. Kiddo’s still out like a light in there. I thought I’d make you fuck me before she wakes up.”
On mention of his oldest, Hux wants to comment on how odd it is that Mars actually sleeps now, that maybe it’s got something to do with how they’ve started putting her to sleep in her own room, how funny it is that she had to have possession of her own space to be comfortable when she slept happily between them for months after she was born. But talking about the baby at this exact moment feels — strange.
“You’re not too uncomfortable?” He hates his own hesitant tone. Pregnancy has done nothing to diminish her sex drive, has only made her want it more, her cunt tighter and wetter than any other time of her life.
She rolls her eyes and steps away from him, the heat of her body an instant loss, her hands coming to rest on her tired hips and face pinching into a stop bullshitting me, dude kind of look.
“I need you to try and get this kid out of me the same way you put her in me. Now.”
The sourness drains off her face as he runs his eyes hungrily over her form, her sleeping shorts an old pair of his black boxers with the waistband rolled down, her shoulders and even her fantastically enhanced bustline swallowed up by a similarly stolen black t-shirt that then tightens uncomfortably over her stomach. The socks: well, those can be dealt with.
“Please?” She tacks on uselessly, having caught sight of the outline of his erection through his sleeping pants, slung low over his narrow hips.
You already had me caught when you said ‘I need you’.
“Just go to the couch, girl. You’ve done enough.”
Rose flushes red and pleased when he calls her that, trots as quickly as she’s able due to the state she’s in and deposits herself down on the cushion of the low, blanket-covered ice blue couch.
She’d bought it for their seventh anniversary, revealing it with a comment about how ugly it looked in their new dwelling, where the floors are formed by dark natural stone and the walls of red clay.
She thought of him when she saw it, then she gave it to him wearing a dress that she pulled up her thighs, revealing she hadn’t been wearing panties all day while they were out. She unknowingly offered herself up and took his seed during the month-long lapse between the expiration of his seven-year Officer’s sterilization shot and his removable arm implant, and she used this part of him to start in on the next and the biggest of all her mysterious projects.
He’d fucked her over its back, illustrating its perfect height for her to bend over the cushioned ridge, murmuring into her ear, natural colors look good together, Rose, don’t you see, terrestrial clay and sky blue are perfectly complementary, what do you want, yellow? To go with all of these earth tones? Black, to show off the cat’s hair? I love it, by the way —
Nine months later he pulled her off its once-immaculate surface as she shouted about her water breaking. They’d had the cushion replaced, and she never had another word to say about it.
Hux admires her for a moment, the way she settles cross-legged so her thighs look plush and wide. She beckons him over by taking off her t-shirt, an act she can barely accomplish on her own, wiggling her body a little as she gets it over her head with a muttered karking hells, as if to drive the point home — you need to help me. It’s only you that can serve me in this tiny and vitally important way. She doesn’t even bother with her bra without him.
His cock hardens further at the thought that he has extremely limited time in which to achieve this goal, to shove himself inside of his glowing beacon of a wife and deliver her the comfort she’s asking of him. Hux strips off his shirt on his way to meet her, sitting beside her with his hand on one of her spread thighs.
“Would you like assistance?” He offers, tugging at the shoulder strap of her bra.
“I’ll leak everywhere.”
“That’s fine. You’ve done worse.” He shrugs, trying to keep his tone mild. “Blankets wash.”
The searching look she throws his way is inscrutable. Impatience flares up in him.
“I like that you like my body even when it’s like this,” she finally whispers, her tone far-off, soft and philosophizing when she should be saying yes please daddy get me out of this thing. He decides to take it as an indirect yes, her original answer lost somewhere along the rambling path of her thoughts.
“Oh, of course, it’s a great sacrifice on my part.” He can hardly keep from rolling his eyes. “Your belly and your massive tits and your — your sunshine face are really hard to look at. But, ah, as one does —” he leans into her ear, nibbles at its rim, “I suffer through.”
When he twists the clasp off she helps shrug out of her bra without protest, choking back a laugh at his biting sarcasm and then his immediate, undignified intake of breath as her breasts fall free.
She hasn’t tolerated much attention to them, ever since she started breastfeeding — having only recently stopped, when Mars rejected the colostrum her body started preparing for the new baby.
On the other hand, she does make an intriguing sport of trying to shoot him with milk from further and further away, shocking him always when he least expects it, resulting in a “you can never quite rest without the threat of being shot in the face”-type atmosphere that reminds Hux of being at home on a Dreadnaught. It sustains his sexual fascination perfectly well through the understandable hiatus of activity.
“I love you,” she says very seriously, snapping through his rhapsodizing thoughts of putting one of her darkened nipples in his mouth. In response Hux kisses her neck, her cheek laying against his forehead.
“We really do need to focus, Rose,” he murmurs into the skin there, tickling her with his beard.
“Oh, suck my dick. I’m trying to be sweet.”
“I already know how sweet you are.” Drawing his nose up her jawline while his hand brushes up her thigh, he nudges past her sleeping shorts to discover what liquid warmth is there waiting for him.
“Yeah, yeah — I had to make sure to tell you, in case I forget while I’m breaking your hand la —”
The intrusion of his long cold digit breaks her words off into a tight little moan, and suddenly sitting next to her isn’t enough, not by half. He wants to be closer to her, take hold of her, make her feel safe.
He slots his lean form behind her, hugging her to him with one arm across her front, the other dipping back down, his stiff cock pressed hungrily into the small of her back. When he resumes stroking her swollen cunt he rests his forearm along the fleshy curve where her thigh meets her belly; she shifts just slightly and traps it there, between the familiar softness and the new, firm rise of her flesh.
“I love you too, petal.” His distraction with her pussy and her bump opens his mouth to all the tender stupid things he always wants to say to her. “You can break my hand whenever you like.”
His regard, once undammed, is an impossible thing to stop back up. She sways into him, his chin coming to rest on her shoulder as his thumb works over her clit, the vibration of his lowered voice massaging at her back.
“I think you look magnificent. I can’t fathom why you’d think I don’t. I’m always trying to fuck you about it.”
He strokes her at a pace she likes, then kicks it up a notch, working briskly to ease her towards her peak. She rewards him by bucking her hips, his unoccupied palm brushing over the swell of her belly, the surge of his desire at the contact a white-hot flood.
“You just, nnnh — like the challenge. Finding time to stick it in me.”
“I do, yes,” he agrees, speaking into her neck without thinking, cradling her jaw with his nose. His heart speeds up to think that she might be intuiting his eagerness to please her, his slavish desire to provide for her every need while she sits doing the work of creating a new tiny person that will be smart and strong and good like her, a new untouched thing in the world that’s his.
“Yes,” he repeats, meaning: thank you.
He pushes two fingers inside of her, meeting so little resistance he feels a roll of heat shiver through him.
“All I want to do is to live inside of your cunt as you get bigger, and prettier, and curvier by the day.”
Crooking his fingers, raking gently on her inner walls, he feels with the sensitivity of his clever hands the force of her grip around him. He experiments by kissing down the sensitive line of her neck, finding his target by the feel of her cunt clenching hard when he reaches it.
“Yeah,” she pants, casually vocalizing everything he’s ever wanted, “right there, daddy, yes, you know exactly —”
Thinking: I am dirt beneath your feet.
His teeth itch to sink into skin but she’s too perfect, too pure to defile, so he works out the trembling energy sparking through his entire being by licking her there instead, lapping up her sweat. His fingers dance lightly over her belly and catch a stray nudge from the inside.
With Mars, at first, any evidence of her hidden presence during sex would make him temporarily freeze up in horror. Now, something in the back of his brain where his bloodlust also lives is deeply satisfied by this evidence that Rose is so profoundly marked by him.
It makes him woozy sometimes, the idea that he made her this way, that the direct result of his mad obsession with her pokes around her guts for months straight. The daily physical toil of it proves, via his primal non-logic, her utter devotion to him.
“I watch you grow by me,” he drawls, overwhelmed, removing the hand on her belly to hold her face, which he desperately wishes his position allowed him to watch.
“I watch you mother my child. I take care of you both. And then —”
She won’t stop slicking his hand with renewed bleeds of arousal, or grinding against his straining erection, and he wants to cum in his pants against the curve of her ass, just to spare her the effort of getting fucked by him.
Then he remembers — dimly, his rational brain mostly offline — that it’s critically important he actually does the opposite of that. Fuck.
“And then I, I — yes, that’s right —” he praises her choked muted noises, pressing his fuzzy orange face against hers to keep himself tethered to this room. “I take you. Whenever I can get you.”
The way she’s tensing against his fingers, the staccato beat of her gasping — she’s so close. When his hand drops to the wet side of her neck it encompasses her easily from nape to collarbone.
I am so much bigger than you, and I bred you.
(He writes this scripture of her to himself.)
I killed worlds, and then I fucked something good into you.
(He marks down the exact sensation of holding her this way in the holy book in his head.)
“Gods,” she gasps once, a quiver in her throat swallowing the syllable up as she pulsates around him, “Armie” floating out of her mouth like a prayer as she cums on his fingers. The part of his arm that’s cradling her feels her belly tighten against it, the muscles contracting in pleasure, her attendant blissful moan smothered by her own hand.
He allows himself the privilege of riding her orgasm out with her, giving her a long few moments to catch her breath again. He waits for a sign that anything is amiss, but all she does is giggle sporadically and whine once he removes his hand from her shorts, sliding his fingers out of her cunt with deep regret.
In his sex-addled brain, he’s trying to remember which is it, does she need to cum or does he when it comes to this odd attempt at triggering labor, but the question isn’t important, not when he’s about to envelop himself in her perfect tightness. The answer pops back up the second he abandons the thought: it’s him.
Rose told him so the first go around, using big, sexy words like prostaglandin and oxytocin, her eyes widening in emphasis over the fact that his semen could hormonally induce her cervix to soften, to open up for him. Hux had found the entire concept disturbing, but her explanation, done while sitting on top of him, his cock hardening in his pants underneath her, her small hands grabbing at her breasts and saying I guess nipple play is important, too? — that, he found quite charming. And then he was inside of her and thinking of it and then he could never quite get the picture out of his head, her muscles blooming like a flower at the touch of his pleasure.
“Can you get on your knees for me, kitten?”
She does, eagerly, moving with careful grace. Sat behind her, the mismatched socks come to rest next to his thighs and Hux wordlessly drags her pink sock off, throwing it away from the couch like he’d spit on it if he could. He kisses the arch of her naked foot and gently lays it back on the couch, then takes the other leg and discards that sock too.
“I don’t think I can go very long,” she warns him, head turning to watch his every move as he rises up on his knees and pushes the band of his pajama pants down.
“Then this had better work the first time, hm?”
“I dunno. Let’s see if you still got it.”
The ache of his sustained, untended erection has never been more apparent than when it finally springs free. He nudges her forward with pats on her ass until she braces herself against the arms of the couch. Her full peachy shape reveals itself as he tugs her shorts down, parts the lips of her cunt with his thumb.
Gently, insistently, with a level of efficiency and self control that makes Hux feel very good about himself, he pushes his cock inside of her. Holding her hip and her thickened waist to keep her from bucking away, or from pushing herself onto him too quickly, he takes what little space she has left inside of her all for himself, drinking in her noises as he tests to find out what she needs from him.
“I won’t draw this out, I promise you.” Hux murmurs sympathetically when she drops her head and shakes at even his easiest rhythm, her oversensitive cunt jumping, breath hitching and breaking at his persistent movement against her. He fucks her steadily, not letting their bodies separate too much, instead just pushing as far as he can get up inside of her. “But I’m going to miss you like this.”
“Good.” She grits her words out against the background of a strangled, steady moan, exhaling her animal yell with the volume turned all the way down, all of her effort concentrated on not making too much noise. “Somehow I feel like you’re gonna get me again next year anyway.”
He blinks.
Back on his oceanic home world, where the fishing tankers docked every ten standard months — leaving a small, and therefore highly productive window for family-growing — it was common for women to stay almost continuously pregnant, gathering and raising their children together in clannish groups as their partners plucked glowing cuca-worms and schistcrabs and various other vicious, pinching things out of the sea. Imperial families, who owned a good portion of the commercial fleets, looked down on the culture; they found it barbaric.
Hux had been taken by it. He observed these women in glimpses with a nameless feeling sitting in his stomach, curious like an anthropologist about the potential value of such collectivism.
“Arkanian twins?”
Something in him shifts.
“I’m not a monster.”
But he says the words while buried inside of his pregnant wife, a heady fire licking slowly up his thighs, into her, and it’s an incantation, casts a spell that consumes him.
Her moaning melts into an ironic laugh. “Yeah, of course. Not you.”
Watching her fingers struggle for purchase on the couch’s fabric as he fucks her, Hux is struck with a mad thread of jealousy that she’s looking to something, anything but him for comfort. He cages her with his long body and covers her hands with his, weaves their fingers together and feels her gripping him, the way it should be.
He notes with quiet satisfaction how her shoulders relax when she’s got something better to push against. It feels like he’s drawn all the tension out of her and into himself and it rages there, needs sublimation and then its divine and useful release.
Rose brings one of her hands, still clasped in his, to her breasts, rubbing at her nipples with her palm. She whimpers when he spreads his fingers to squeeze at one and her milk lets down, the warm spray into their joined hands a welcome shock.
“Look at you! You good girl,” he coos, sparked to his final undoing, his blood and bones and cellular biota all in tune with hers. Seized by the tremors of his impending orgasm, he buries himself as deep as she’ll allow.
“Such a good fucking mother —” He pulls her hand up to his mouth and drags his tongue across her palm, tasting her milk, a broken moan escaping him at the sweetness of it. “So ready to feed our baby.”
“And you — are so bad at being quiet.” She admonishes, squishing her palm to his mouth, muzzling the rest of his noises in her responsive grip, her fingers pulling at his cheeks as he spills in her cunt.
Her voice is cracked from use but full of affection as she shakes his face. “Bad. Bad daddy.”
Hux’s eyes flutter shut. All he wants is to be good to her, good for her, and she grabs hold of him, her cute belly hanging off her like a testament to his power, and she tells him he’s bad.
“I gave you what you demanded.” He responds as soon as she removes her hand, feeling a touch surly as he pulls out of her that he has to leave that warmth.
Yanking his pants back up, he eyes her just-fucked cunt and the drip of seed that trails out of her, its whiteness strangely pristine among all the pink. This is the origin of all things; in a cosmic sense, and in as many different little ways as there are times he’s fucked her. The origin of his obsession, of his downfall, of his children…
Before he lets her sit back down, he draws his finger up her seam and shoves the cum back inside of her, surrendering to a resurgence of affection for her that smothers his ego when he pulls her sleeping shorts back over her ass.
“I’m still dripping,” Rose mutters, plunking herself back down with her thigh landing draped over his, and he wants to say something about what a mess he’s made of her pussy but when he looks up it’s her milk she’s mad about.
He doesn’t even think.
“Let me clean you.” Hux’s tone is insistent, gently authoritative, working his ability to direct her without her quite knowing what he’s doing. She’s in a compromised position, so, tactically speaking, it’s the best time to get what he wants. This war of attrition to let him try suckling at her has been a long and silent and one-sided one, mostly Hux staring while Rose feeds the baby, a curiosity building in him like when he was a boy watching mothers with their children as if both were a completely different species.
“Unless you want me to wake Marnie up?”
“No. ” Her eyes go wide. It’s either a blanket they’ll have to wash or his face and he watches as she chews on the idea in real time. The suspicious narrowing of her eyes says she knows what he's doing but she’s curious, too.
“No. Fine. Whatever. There’s not even that much yet. Just— come here.”
Hux does his best to move with intention, pretending he’d planned for more than just the extraction of her consent. He drops down onto his knees in front of her, balancing out the height difference that keeps him perpetually kissing the top of her head.
"Hurry up," she gripes, pushing her wet hand into his hair and pulling him towards her chest, her face flushed pink and impatient. "Don't make this weird, okay? If you do I might — I might end up liking it."
He advances down from the hollow of her throat over the smooth, vein-crossed skin of her chest, to the especially delicate zone between her breasts where it's cool to the touch when he noses against it. From this close up she smells faintly of sweat and milk and her minty, herbal perfume oil. His heart twitches when he realizes this is the same scent his babies crave more than anything, too, this physical comfort.
"It's not weird. Your body is doing what bodies do. This strange... excellent thing. And all because of me."
After short passes with his tongue to clean up the colostrum spilled on her skin by their hands, he takes her leaking nipple into his mouth and traces delicately at the pebbled surface. She breaks out into nervous, pleased giggles as he sucks down without warning, just once, seeing what it’s like. Her fingers tighten in his hair.
It's not as sweet once there's more of it in his mouth. It’s saltier and richer; leaves the slightest tingle in the back of his throat. There’s nothing left past the first pull, save a few drops that he teases out with the tip of his tongue, and he doesn’t want to test it for fear of over-stimulating her.
“I remember when you did this the first time,” she murmurs, eyes shutting as she relaxes into the feeling of having him on her after so many months of batting him away, both over-touched and anxious about her body.
“When my duct was clogged and the baby wasn’t latching. It wasn’t really very sexy at the time because everything was so overwhelming, but I never forgot the way you didn’t make me feel weird about it. Even though you love to make everything weird. It was just — you taking care of me.”
You became a creature I could never have imagined when you sowed my seed in you.
“Do you like it now?” He detaches his mouth from her nipple but keeps laving over it. The sensory satisfaction of licking her, any part of her, never loses its novelty.
“Honestly?” He raises his face to her, catching the mischief and the reigniting lust in her eyes. “I love it. I think I always have? I picture you drinking Nutrimilk all those years and instead I’m like — I could feed you and it’s — uh. Well.”
She sucks her lips into her mouth, her face when she thinks she’s said too much, but he can’t reposition himself between her legs fast enough, he moves with trembling speed to pull her to sitting on the edge of the couch and like she’s of the same mind she leans back, spreading her legs so he can push his stolen shorts aside once again and press his tongue to her core.
When he has too much to feel and nothing good to say about it he speaks in their fluid silent physical language instead, the one only she can translate.
“But, you know, I get too touched out and cranky. Mostly though I like —” She closes her eyes, dragging deep rhythmic breaths in response to his desperate ministrations, her head tipped back on the cushion. In the absence of clinging to his hair she’s absently rubbing her bump, having clearly consulted her mental manual of things that will give your husband an actual heart attack to witness outside of his imagination.
“Watching you want me. Suffering for it… getting in your head about it... Hey — softer. Yeah — fuck, justlikethat, yes, daddy that’s — yes. ” She laughs helplessly when her belly jumps, her muscles tightening again, all the extra blood flow rendering her doubly responsive to his mouth.
“Fucking… creeping on me. Watching me all the time. I love that, too. I was afraid when I became a mom you’d lose interest in me, or maybe things between us would cool down some, but —” she grinds herself onto his face, shuddering over an orgasm that comes on so quickly he pulls away, surprised and fascinated, then horrified as she cries out loud with the force of it.
“Oh, can’t keep your mouth shut?” He hisses in triumph, climbing up to straddle what little is left of her lap, hovering up on his knees to hold her face in both large hands and kiss her silent. He shoves his tongue into the wet cavity when she responds not by pushing him away but by wrapping her arms around his neck and tugging him in close.
When they separate with a pop, Rose pants hard, utterly dazed.
As if on cue, from far off down the dim lamp-lit hallway, the sound of an irate toddler yowling into the start of another day rings out. Hux is on his feet and cinching his pants before the baby’s able to drag another impossibly piercing breath through those family lungs.
“Look who’s bad now, hm? That’s you, mama.” He winks, pulling his big, smarmy, fox-like smile. “Don’t worry. I’ve got her. I happen to like cleaning up your messes."
“Wait! Help me up.” Rose sticks out her hand. Hux tilts his head at it.
"And now you require my help." He tuts. “How the tables turn.”
He savors the flash of irritation that crosses her face for just a moment before he breaks, grabbing her hand, then her shoulder and her hip, helping her get her feet under her. It’s strange seeing his normally iron-spined and unstoppable wife have to be methodical in the way she moves, reminding him every so often of the way he used to be when they were first doing the rough work of falling desperately in love with each other.
When he was undernourished and still healing the stump wound from the amputation of his shot leg, she’d been patient and malevolent and loving towards him in equal turns. He caught that special burning ember in her eyes when she saw him laid flat on his back, helpless, with only her to help him, and — young and foolish — he couldn’t understand it.
Couldn’t fathom why she was drawn back to him, day after day, as he gnashed his teeth over the phantom limb and as her colleagues began to reject her for her association with him.
But oh —
He knows now.
"Enjoy that superiority complex while you can, buddy,” she looks up at him from under her flippy bangs, still rosy and good-natured from having had two orgasms not twenty minutes prior.
“You're gonna feel sooooo bad about it once I’m pushing your melon-headed kid out. Oh, yeah, be a doll and get my shirt, too.”
Bending to do as instructed, to fetch this little intimacy of hers, he offers it to her like a gift and secretly thrills when she just rolls her eyes and throws it over her shoulder. He needs to dump immense quantities of cold water over himself before he can fetch Mars.
Rose shuffles with him to the 'fresher, her waddle an irresistible charm that overrides the sound of the baby yelling her good morning to the world. Once moving she seems so sure of herself, so quietly powerful. His fingertips span over her tawny back more for his own greediness to touch than out of necessity.
"I have fun with all of my complexes, thank you very much."
“Oh, daddy. I know you do. I wish I didn’t have to know how much you do.”