The Red Dress
Suggested Theme:
Main Theme- Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush
It takes exactly seven minutes and twenty seconds for Kylo to polish off his bowl of soup. All the while, Hux is absolutely pleased by Kylo's appetite and by his own slight manipulation. He clearly hates mess food more than anyone in the First Order. If I knew that before, I would've threatened him with the mess's meatloaf when he broke that control panel in conference room B13—
"I take it ship cuisine hasn't changed since I died." Vader asks. Hux bites his tongue from asking Wait, I thought you couldn't eat anything and had to subsist on tubes. Because Darth Vader was once a man named Anakin Skywalker.
Not really, it's just most of us at the Academy are trained from an early age to handle bland, nutritional gruel. The Commandant told me that the Jedi did something similar. Hux sees Vader shake his ghostly helm in disapproval.
"Of all the things to borrow from the Jedi…." Hux doesn't mention the Commandant's Stormtrooper program. He doesn't want to sour the mood between them. A silence elapses between them to the point where Hux realizes that he doesn't hear the light scraping of the silver spoon against the bottom of the soup bowl. He looks at Kylo who is staring right back at him. They don't look away from each other and barely blink like they don't want to lose the other for more than a second.
Force, this is awkward. We've been staring at each other for a solid two minutes now! I don't want to spend my entire day in a staring contest! Okay, I just need to find a way to break the silence because Kylo is not going to do that. Not with his sore throat and all. Hmm, but how? I guess I could ask about the costume room, but that could offend Kylo since I did invade his privacy. However, he left that door open, and I had no idea what the layout of his massive quarters would entail. So…maybe I should bring that up later. I could just say hello, but who would say that now? It would be so random. Vader, please, help me here! Hux pleads as he continues to stare into Kylo's earth-brown eyes.
"Be funny." Hux waits for half a minute, presuming that Vader will elaborate further and offer him an example. But the painful silence continues between him and Kylo.
Be funny. Well, I tend to be funny by accident like when I clapped in the middle of Jacen's first theatrical performance, but Jaina was the only one who laughed at me. At least openly. Um, I don't think I know any jokes that Kylo would get without me giving him a history lesson on the Nagai-Tof War. So how does one be funny on purpose? Hmm, I think I did that once when I was like nine and it was—I'VE GOT IT! Hux bolts to his closet.
"What are you doing?" Vader's words leave his ghostly helm slowly like he was confused.
Being funny!
Kylo watches as Hux disappears into his tiny closet for about five minutes. Hux comes back out with a bundle of rose-red chiffon and black slippers; he then goes to his desk and rummages until he finds a thick, red datapad. He hustles into the 'fresher but not before giving a saucy little wink in Kylo's direction.
And for nearly thirty minutes, Kylo has to wait for Hux to reemerge.
The silver door slides open, and the first thing Kylo hears is some piano keys playing and a chime of wind bells. The first thing he sees is Hux dressed in the rose-red chiffon and black slippers; he has one leg resting on the ground and the other propped up like he's going to propose. He has his arms resting on top of the thigh of the propped leg; he has his face hidden by those flowy sleeves.
"Out on the wiley, windy moors,
We'd roll and fall in green.
You had a temper like my jealousy,
Too hot, too greedy."
Kylo half-expected a woman's voice to emerge from the bathroom; instead, he hears Hux's voice. Hux starts off singing almost as high as a soprano, but Kylo can hear a deeper timbre lurking beneath the birdy warbles. Hux then unfurls himself and gives him such a smoldering look accompany by his red hand caressing his own thin lips before going more downward.
"How could you leave me
When I needed to possess you?
I hated you, I loved you, too!"
Hux rises like a Corosian phoenix about to take flight. He then sways his arms from the left and then to the right as he sings the second line; his fingertips dance with the air, while his eyes are locked onto Kylo's as if he were his prey. On the final line, he brings his arms down, almost like he's trying to shield himself, but then raises his hands towards his face like he was going to cup his own chin.
"Bad dreams in the night
They told me I was going to lose the fight,
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering,
Wuthering Heights."
Hux, for about the first two lines, walks out from under the 'fresher's small arc and has his arms raised in front of him like he's doing a bad zombie impression. He takes dainty steps forward until he's about half a meter from the bed and then begins to spin. The spinning makes Kylo realize that Hux is wearing a red, tasseled dress; he had no idea how…arousing it is to watch Hux spin with the fringes lightly slapping against his pale thighs.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
During the first line, Hux stops his titillating spinning to do a quick arabesque but without going on pointe. He raises his left leg all the way to his head, and Kylo swears that he can see the see the outline of Hux's matching underwear. He flails his arms around like a flash in the pan dancer before wrapping his arms around himself, almost constricting the sharp angles of his thin body. But that glorious scene lasts only for a line, and then it devolves into a series of sidesteps with his mismatched hands forming a window frame.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
He repeats the dance sequence again, but ends it with a slight twirl.
"Ooh, it gets dark, it gets lonely
On the other side from you!
I pine a lot, I find the lot
Falls through without you!
I'm coming back, love!
Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream,
My only master!"
Hux sticks out his left arm out and sways back and forth like he's a sailboat for the first two lines; he then spins into an almost choo-choo motion with his arms. But then he does two pelvic thrusts while caressing the sides of his own face; Kylo adamantly denies that he gets hard at that. Or when Hux bends backwards and lowers himself onto the ground, presenting his pelvis for a line. Thankfully, the next two lines have Hux rising back up and moving his shoulders and arms forwards and backwards like an odd crabwalk. However, the final line undoes Kylo's denial when Hux's pants at master and the way he crosses his arms against his chest to mimic a heartbeat. Kylo has never been more grateful for the tray and the blanket hiding his erection.
"Too long, I roam in the night!
I'm coming back to his side, to put it right.
I'm coming home to wuthering, wuthering,
Wuthering Heights."
Hux breaks Kylo's trance by going side to side with his arms sweeping to the left and right like he's rollerblading. And then he returns to his wuthering spins.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
He repeats the dance sequence from nearly three stanzas ago.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
And again.
"Ooh, let me have it!
Let me grab your soul away!
Ooh, let me have it!
Let me grab your soul away!
You know it's me, Cathy!"
Hux then begins to pull at the air like there's some kind of invisible rope. Kylo tries to imagine Hux as one of those unfunny mimes, but it does nothing to dissuade his hardness. I have something for you to grab; I'd let you grab it! Kylo clamps down hard on his tongue to prevent that treacherous thought from slipping out. On the final line, Hux points at Kylo and then squats down with his mismatched fingers skimming the ground. He rises up once more to move his hips around like he was a belly dancer.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
He adds a back-bending hip thrust before returning from the same dance sequence from earlier.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!
Let me in-a-your window!"
It's the same sequence like before, but Kylo can hear a slight rasp like Hux is getting tired. Well, dancing like you're having a seizure while being sexy must be quite exhausting! He halfheartedly thinks, but his mind keeps coming back to Hux's swaying form.
"Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy,
Come home, I'm so cold!"
Hux then moves backward with his left arm sticking out in front of him like he's trying to keep someone at bay, while his right hand moves up from his chest to his mouth like he's regretful of that rejection.
Oh, that's actually pretty powerful—And now, he's waving back and forth like a possessed broom. And taking a hop back after every ten seconds of waving. And it still doesn't turn me off. Force…Kylo keeps his hands gripping the tray, so he doesn't face-palm at his own baser desires.
Hux mercifully stops after a minute of ridiculous waving and hopping.
"So was that funny?" Hux asks with such a goofy grin on his face and his hands resting on those hips. Kylo chooses to bite his lips rather than verbalizing an answer.
Vader can see that Armitage's strange musical number was his way of being funny. And all Armitage wanted to do was make his grandson laugh. But instead, he unintentionally aroused him. Vader takes in a deep, nonexistent breath before answering for his grandson.
"He can barely contain his laughter."
Author's Comments- Here are the links:
Here is the music video that inspired this entire one-shot and was an utter delight to watch over and over again. Although, to be clear, Hux is no Kate Bush, but he tries his best: a href=" watch?v=Fk-4lXLM34g"Link/a
Hux isn't wearing the exact outfit Kate Bush wears in her music video, but, again, he tries his best to mimic Kate Bush. For at least this song. I always felt like Hux isn't a purposeful funny person like he doesn't really tell jokes and possibly resorts to dry snark when he's on-duty. So he has to resort to an old childhood trick of mimicking something crazy to get a chuckle out of Kylo. Instead, he gets a chub. Kylo's chub. Although, not literally.
Next, one-shot should be about Kylo and Hux watching a movie together, while Vader sits through that painfully awkward situation. And Mitaka is still missing.