A/N: Lady Kylo is a bit more emo in this one than we've ever seen her before, just so you know. I just go where she takes me, as does General Hux.
Warnings for: cisgirl Kylo, Kylo/Hux, discussions of past death, mild alcohol abuse, non-explicit drunk sex (both parties are drunk.)
This is set a few days after "my neck is open wide", and if you don't want to read that one, just know that things got real breathplay real fast. The title of this one comes from "I'm a Ruin" by Marina and the Diamonds.
Kylo wakes howling.
Even to her own ears, the sound is guttural and ugly, and Kylo presses a fist against her mouth, clenching her teeth and breathing harshly through her nose. She imagines, for one wild instant, that someone is going to sweep into the room and rush to her aid, cradle her against their chest like a child. She is too many years and too many bodies removed from childhood, and no one is coming.
The longer Kylo is away from the Supreme Leader and the protective blanket of darkness that surrounds his being, the worse these dreams get. She'd dreamed of her father once more, of killing him. But this time instead of touching her cheek, he'd pulled Kylo's heart out of her chest and she had tumbled into the void after him, falling heartless and screaming into eternal darkness. She has only been gone from her master for a week and already she is faltering, her new teachings forgotten.
Kylo tries to calm herself, even meditate, but every time she closes her eyes, a different face appears in her mind, entirely unbidden. Her father, eyes full of trust and with only moments left to live. Her uncle, full of sorrow but still clinging to the light as only a fool would. Her mother, suffering blow after blow and never wavering. Kylo cannot stand to think of them, cannot bear to be reminded of how much she ought to hate them.
Kylo drags herself out of bed, stuffs her feet into her boots and wraps herself in her hooded robe. She needs to do something, she needs to move, to make herself so exhausted that she can finally rest.
The general's quarters are only slightly closer than the training room, which is where she'd initially intended to go, but moments later Kylo finds herself standing in front of Hux's door. She pounds on the metal surface twice and then stills her hand, already ready to drag the door open with the Force, but she stops when she hears Hux's muffled but very irritated call of, "Alright, alright!"
The door slides open, revealing Hux. His expression indicates that he had not expected it to be her at his door – of course he hadn't, because Kylo so rarely knocks. Her own mind is so loud right now that she cannot hear his thoughts, which Kylo finds distantly alarming. "Lady Ren?" Hux prompts, befuddled.
Kylo lurches forward through the doorway and kisses him, greedily drinking in the startled noise he makes. Hux has the sense to slap at the keypad, commanding the door to shut, but Kylo hardly cares. She is already untucking his shirt from his pants, desperate, wanting to use him until she can think no more.
To her immense surprise, Hux grabs her wrists tightly and drags his mouth from hers. "What the hell has gotten into you?" he asks. Can he feel it? Kylo wonders. Hux isn't Force-sensitive, but is she broadcasting her thoughts? Does the whole universe know how afraid she is, even after having fear burnt out of her again and again?
"Nothing," she says.
"You're trembling," he informs her calmly. "And you look like hell."
Kylo yanks her hands from Hux's grip. "I'm fine," she snaps. She doesn't know what to say after that, and the feeling is discomfiting. Hux is a man who loathes weakness, abhors displays of emotion unless he personally deems them necessary – such things make him uneasy, Kylo knows. She can see the conflict in his expression as he tries to decide how to proceed. He can turn Kylo away (though he no doubt fears doing so will send her storming off to destroy something) or he can give her what she came for: a distraction.
Hux decides to do neither. "You need a drink," he says briskly, and then he brushes past her, tucking his shirt back into his pants. Kylo, still feeling entirely off-kilter, follows him, pushing back her hood as she goes.
There's already a half-empty glass of amber liquid sitting on Hux's desk, and he is silent as he fetches another one and fills it. When he offers it to Kylo, she takes it, willing her hand to stop shaking as she raises the glass to her mouth and sips. The rum burns her throat and settles uncomfortably in her stomach. She can't remember the last time she drank, and it feels like one more weakness she is succumbing to tonight.
Hux settles in the desk chair, leaving Kylo no choice but to sit on his desk like a child; Hux has no friends to invite to his quarters, and therefore has no extra chairs. She towers over him like this, but when Hux tilts his chin up to throw back the rest of his drink, she can see a constellation of bruises that lingers on his throat. Bruises from her fingers.
"How's your neck?" she asks finally, after several moments of silence.
"Fine," Hux says. "Not even sore."
Kylo has calmed just enough to get a grip on her psychic abilities, and she can tell he's lying. She decides not to press the issue. She doesn't want to talk about how she'd choked Hux within an inch of his life two nights ago, too overcome by her own lust and power to realize she'd gone too far until too late. She vividly remembers the icy terror that had gripped her when she'd felt it – Hux's mind lighting up, going bright in the moment of orgasm, then just as suddenly going dark. For but a moment, she'd been sure, so sure, that Hux was dead, and the notion had been inexplicably frightening.
"So," Hux says finally, tracing his finger around the rim of his newly empty glass. Kylo summons the bottle to her hand; for a moment, it almost seems to hesitate before answering her call, or perhaps she imagines it. She should have tried to meditate longer before running to Hux for whatever strange comfort he can provide. "What's got you all riled up now?"
Kylo pours him another glass and tops off her own. "You wouldn't understand," she says, and distinctly she hears Hux think oh, don't be so dramatic.
"Matters of the Force, I presume?" he says. Hux respects the Force for its power, but he does not know the intimacies of it. Kylo has never bothered trying to explain any of it to him.
Kylo takes another sip of her drink. Rum had been her father's drink of choice, she remembers suddenly. "Yes," is all she says.
Hux leans back in his chair slightly, relaxing his usual rigid posture. "Anything we'll need to report to Snoke?"
"He will know," Kylo says, not meeting Hux's gaze. She can tell he is studying her, but she blocks out the thrum of his mind, not wanting to hear what he sees. "He knows everything."
"No one knows everything," Hux points out. So sure, so confident. Hux is a deeply flawed being, but Kylo has always admired the strength of his convictions. Perhaps that is why she'd sought Hux out tonight. He has a strangely steadying effect.
"He knows everything about me," Kylo amends after a moment.
"Somehow I don't think that's possible, Lady Ren," Hux says, lifting his glass to sip from it. When Kylo meets his eyes over the glass, she realizes he is teasing her, in his own way – not mocking, just teasing. The thin line between the two is the only thing that keeps Kylo from growing angry.
"Maybe I left the Supreme Leader too soon," Kylo admits suddenly. The rum has already loosened her tongue, she realizes, but she still has not put down her glass. "He seemed confident in me. But perhaps I am failing him again."
Hux ruminates on that for a moment. He is thinking that she has gone a little mad in her time away; Kylo isn't sure she could deny that, so she says nothing. "You could always go back," Hux says finally. "If you feel he has not – taught you properly."
"Trying to get rid of me, General?" Kylo says, because it's easier than explaining to him that she cannot just return to her master to ask for tutoring. That's not how it works, not at all.
"No," Hux replies, oddly honest. "Only trying to help, Ren."
"You are uncommonly helpful when you're drunk," Kylo muses, and Hux snorts.
"I'm not drunk."
"Perhaps you should be," Kylo says, nudging his leg with her foot. The gesture is childish, silly even, but Kylo has already sacrificed this night. She will rebuild herself tomorrow, hide herself away in her quarters and focus only on forgetting the weak parts of herself. She can do it, she's sure of it, but not tonight.
Later, she won't be able to remember the exact moment Hux puts his hand on her knee and slides it up to her thigh, but she will dimly remember chuckling at the boldness of it, even though she craves everything but coyness from him. He rises and kisses her, tasting powerfully of rum, and Kylo thinks oh, finally.
They move to his bed at some point, stumbling out of clothing along the way. Hux actually laughs at one point – when Kylo nearly trips over her own boot – and she gives him a gentle shove with the Force in retaliation. He pushes past the pressure, bears her down to the bed, and fucks her like that, chest-to-chest with her legs tight around his hips. Kylo puts one hand in his hair and lets the other roam. When she comes, she clasps Hux's throat as tenderly as she is capable of, almost as if apologizing, and he follows with an incoherent noise she takes for forgiveness.
He moves off of her after a moment, and though she misses his weight and warmth, she does not say anything. "Kylo," he says, as if from a great distance. "We should . . ."
Kylo is already gone, resting at last.
She is perhaps too drunk to dream, but Kylo isn't used to sleeping with somebody else in the bed, and Hux is rather bony in certain areas – namely his elbows and knees. It's not the most comfortable rest she's ever had, but it is rest.
When Kylo wakes hours later, she has a dull headache and a dry mouth, but it is nothing unmanageable. She can hear a shower running nearby; Hux is washing his hair and lost in thought, contemplating what he's going to say at a meeting later. For a long moment, Kylo contemplates joining him in the shower, but then she remembers her vow. She's had her last moment of weakness, and now it is done.
As she gathers her clothing and prepares to leave Hux's quarters, all the while aware of his mind humming nearby, Kylo remembers that this is not the first time she's made such a promise to herself, and it is not the first time she's been too weak to keep it.