4/8/1
It's been more than eight months since Kylo first set foot on Lirium, but the green light of early morning still seems off to him. Probably because he was born on Chandrila, so his idea of morning involves golden-yellow light. Green, yellow, whatever, it makes the backs of his eyelids glow red, and wakes him up enough to enjoy being wrapped around Rey.
His wife. He feels that tingle through him.
He's not sure if anything's different, though it certainly feels good.
Thinking about it, he's not sure if any of this has been a change per se, instead of him, and her, taking yet another step on the way to where they belong. The great DESTINY that Luke or Snoke would speak of. The mythical feeling of knowing what comes next and where you're supposed to go and all the rest of those words that so often felt like platitudes spoken by someone who already figured their life out. Though given how both Snoke and Luke ended, Kylo's extremely doubtful that either of them knew much at all about their own personal destinies.
She makes a soft "Mmm?" sound. The sort of thing either of them will do when they're not entirely sure if the other one is awake.
He kisses the back of her neck, and stretches, feeling soft and lazy. "The little boogers will miss you if you don't get up soon, won't they?"
She nods, and he feels her hair brushing his cheek. "C8 will go searching for you if you don't ask for a cup of coffee in an hour or so…"
He sighs at that, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her shoulder. "What would be involved in us getting a day or three to just lay around in bed with each other?"
She laughs. "Crippling illness."
"Let's not do that."
His arm is around her waist, hand nestled between her breasts. She strokes her fingers over it, down his arm, and makes a soft purring sound.
He kisses her ear, smelling her hair, feeling her body against his. Part of him, the part that's usually up and interested in some touch first thing in the morning, is looking to move this out of sleepy snuggles into something more active. Another part, namely his brain, is actually thinking about how to get them a full day or two where they've got nothing to do but sleep, eat, and play with each other.
"If we were to just lay around… You'd want another adult here, right?"
She nods. "Chewie or Poe."
"Finn and Rose are here all the time, right now," Kylo says. And they are. They've gotten their cottage mostly set up, and the medical droid more or less working, and right now they're all working on getting their med center set up. It's slower than they'd like, but faster than it would be if it were just Rey working on it with the kids.
"And expecting a baby any day. They may be a bit busy soon."
"So, Chewie or Poe, and Finn and Rose. At least one adult who can be paying full attention to the children."
"Mm hm." She rubs against him a bit, rocking her bum against him, encouraging the bit that's poking her gently.
His hand shifts to her hips, stilling them. He's appallingly bad of thinking about anything but sex when he's having sex. "Shhh… Trying to think here."
She takes his hand in hers, kissing his palm, and gently sucking his index finger, then leading it down her body to slip between her lips. "Later, your brain can work later."
He groans against her neck, and surrenders to his body and hers.
Slick, wet glide, soft, languid friction, and sun dappled morning. He's woken up to considerably worse in the past.
He's kissing her neck and shoulder, sliding his finger over her again and again, finding that long, firm glide that lights her up. She's rocking against him, teasing him, making him rise harder, fuller.
It's just a little twist of her hips, and a little shift of position, and the teasing is over, and the low, dull itch of wanting slides into the glorious satisfaction of all over scratching.
There are many things that Kylo appreciates about his current life, and myriad aspects that he could have never guessed at. This is one of them.
Sex has flavors, or colors, or variety, or… whatever. He hadn't been expecting that, at all. Previous to his time with Rey, sex came in exactly one flavor: desperation. He'd go as long as he possibly could, shutting his desire down until he just couldn't anymore, and would then get off as hard and fast as he possibly could with whomever was available, to then ignore it again until he just couldn't ignore it anymore.
The first few times they got together, he thinks of those as starvation sex. They were both so hungry for touch, for pleasure from someone who mattered, for another body to cherish your own. He knows that getting touched regularly after so long without certainly changed him. It changed her, too. Though, like many things with them, the change manifested in different ways. He's finding it easier to keep himself emotionally less volatile. She's becoming more comfortable letting people touch her, not just sexual or romantic touch, but little things like when Finn hugs her, or one of the children leans a head against her. She doesn't immediately try to yank away when someone tries to make contact. She no longer automatically sees touch as a threat, and he's becoming less threatening.
But neither of them are starving anymore. Right now… soft, easy, slow and lazy, appreciating the glow of morning with a person you adore, this is snack sex. He's not staving off hunger, just having a bite because he likes the taste.
There's spirit sex, like last night, where their bodies are certainly present, and a lot of the fun of it, but their minds lose their edges and they blur into each other. He knows his body enjoys it, but he's fairly suspicious that it's much more about what's happening in his head than in his shaft.
There's meal sex, which is most of the sex they have. Happy bodies enjoying each other. And maybe it's not always great, but it's always enough. And for someone who's been on starvation rations, knowing there's a meal coming in the next day or two matters, a lot.
Laying with her, calm and sated, having enjoyed their snack, he's thinking that a day or three of just them and just this… together… would be… He's not sure. A bit of all of it, probably… Banquet sex. Any want, any need, and time enough to explore and satisfy them all.
He really likes that idea.
Later, in her shower, which does, these days, produce hot water on demand from the shower head, he's rubbing soap against her.
"What would you need?" she asks.
"Mmm?" he replies, rubbing her shoulders and back. (Not necessarily doing a very good job washing her off, but enjoying touching her quite a bit.)
"To take a day or two off. I need someone to be here with the kids. And a good reason to leave. 'Bye, Poe, have fun with the kiddos, I'm off to have a lot of sex,' isn't going to fly."
He laughs out loud at that. "Maybe not, but it sounds good to me."
She turns to face him, water rising off her back. Then up on her tiptoes to kiss him, followed by a turn round gesture.
He does, and sits on the floor of the shower. It's not anything he's ever sought out, but he's found he really, absolutely, ridiculously, adores getting his hair washed. Three-quarters of him not having chopped it all off as it's gotten longer is he loves having her wash it. He's tall enough that she has a hard time doing it if he's standing, so down he goes. Her shower is just big enough for him to do it and not end up with his knees right under his chin. In his bath, he's got plenty of room, so they usually do it there. (But for some reason his hair is a bit sweatier and messier than usual this morning and really needs a wash.)
He sighs, leaning his head against her hip, as she reaches for the shampoo. He hears the click of the bottle, and leans his head forward, so she can get everything easily. For a moment, he relaxes, feeling her fingers rubbing through his hair, making firm circles against his scalp, and he purrs.
Then he attempts to figure out what he'd need to do to be able to leave for a few days.
He did it before, when his mother died. He just left. But he's got the sense that was what most people would refer to as a 'special circumstance.' The war was, as much as it could be, over, and for a few days there just wasn't all that much that they needed him for.
Right now it feels like as soon as he opens his door, and C8 brings in that cup of coffee, new people wanting something from him will come streaming in, as many as he'll allow.
Allow being the operative word.
"I think I'd just have to tell C8 to clear my schedule. And keep the comm near so that if something major blew up I'd be able to get back."
"Would we stay here, then?"
It occurs to him that's a reasonable assumption. If they weren't on the Supremacy, then they'd be here, right?
That's just… not what he was thinking about by 'able to get back.'
"No?" He twists his head, looking up at her, water streaming down both of them, suds draining away across his shoulders and back.
"No?"
"People travel. For fun. I know it's a thing people do."
"Not a thing I've ever done." She's looking down at him, curious.
"Me, either. But… it's a thing we could do."
Curious is intensifying, and he can feel that this is very interesting to her, in a nebulous sort of way. "Where would we go?" she asks.
He's completely out of his depths on that. It's not like he's got years of vacationing experience, or for that matter, is widely traveled in the sense of actually going to places instead of orbiting above them or visiting one, specific, area in a place, to do a job (break things, capture people, kill them, put the Fear of the First Order into the local populace: most of the places he's been he either can't or shouldn't go back to), and then leave.
She can feel he's literally clueless on that, so she tries another angle. "How would we get there? I don't have a ship, and I'm thinking Chewie isn't going to loan me the Falcon for a day trip."
Kylo chuckles at that. "Getting there isn't a problem. I've got transportation." Technically, he's got an entire fleet of transportation. Locating something that can get them from point A to point B shouldn't be that difficult. "Just have to figure out what to aim it at."
C8 cannot be incredulous. It's just not in his programming. But for someone who's not capable of it, he's got an awfully convincing impression of it. Part of his programming is an extremely complex learning algorithm, and sometimes Kylo wonders if C8 is just learning emotional responses from the people around him. Or at least learning to mimic them.
However it's working, C8's face is, as always, blank, but he's developed this little head tilt that goes with when Kylo says something he wasn't expecting.
"You want me to empty your personal account and transfer the credits into… currency?" C8 says.
"I just said that. Was something about that unclear?"
Again, C8 cannot be incredulous, but he's definitely puzzled by this request. It's clear he wants to say something like: Have you developed a glitch in your programming? Instead, "The reason why you'd want to? Currency is… bulky and heavy and usually only good in the system you got it. Why would you want it?" comes out.
Kylo is actually aware of all of these things. He's also aware that he can't stare C8 into submission. "I just do. Can you arrange it?"
C8 thinks for a moment. "It will take some time. The entire store of 'petty cash' on the Supremacy is only 411,874 credits, and there's 517,987 in your account."
He'll admit that's not an obstacle he was expecting. He knows he gets paid. He didn't think his salary was much beyond the average officer's. He's having a difficult time wrapping his head around the idea that he's got more money in his account than the Supremacy keeps on hand. Then it occurs to him, it's not the amount. It's that he wants actual currency, which apparently, the Supremacy rarely uses. Getting physical money into hand is the issue, not how much he's been paid. "How much petty cash do we go through in a month here?"
"About 250,000 credits."
"Then leave that, and set an order to go find more currency for me."
"Yes, sir."
"Who am I seeing today?"
"This morning, the generals keeping up the border with the Unknown Region want to meet and talk about setting up shipping lanes instead of ship registrations." Kylo remembers reading the report on that. They've fired on ships that had been properly registered because it took too long to get confirmation they had been registered, and they've let others through because they'd faked registrations. If everyone who had legitimate business went through a few lanes, that would speed things up and make it easier to tell smugglers from legitimate business.
"You've got Major Frakes this afternoon." He knows that means his formalwear is close to done, and supposedly needs to be fitted again. He's uncertain why it needs to be fitted multiple times. His casual clothing didn't, but everything Frakes has made for him has fit well and been quite comfortable, so he's not going to begrudge him the twenty or so minutes it'll take to handle this.
"After Major Frakes, you've got Admiral Schiff, and a meeting about the state of the fleet." Kylo nods at that, too. That's a standing one. Every month they talk about how his ships are doing, where, and what's hit the point where it basically can't be fixed again and needs to be scrapped and replaced. Every month that one makes his teeth grit. So many of their ships are floating wrecks. If Snoke had put half as much into the fleet as he did Starkiller… Apparently that was his great gamble. If he could build the biggest, baddest weapon around, it didn't matter if he let the rest of the fleet get threadbare.
Kylo supposes it worked, to a degree. In less than a week, Snoke took out the Republic, and what was left of the Resistance, handing Kylo victory, but setting him up to try and hold that victory with fewer than half of his men, no Starkiller, the Supremacy literally holding together by will power and steeltape, and every other ship in his fleet months, if not years, behind on maintenance.
So, far, he's been lucky, or blessed, enough that no one's been willing to try to tangle with him. He knows his citykillers are more than set to go up against a planet, or a star cruiser class or larger ship. If more than 200 people fit onto it, he's ready to blow it from the sky.
Small though… His fighters are… woefully understaffed. Snoke had more than a million of them, fully crewed, spread across the galaxy. He's got 600,000 fighters, 500,000 that are fully crewed, and only 300,000 of them are in good shape. His own star destroyer and larger classed ships are… ranging from falling apart to serviceable, depending on how much action they'd seen, and how many resources they've been able to scavenge.
And since he's not raping every planet that falls under his sights, the money and materials needed to fix everything is coming in more slowly than his men would like. Everything is better than it was the day he took over, for example he's got the Supremacy back into better condition than it was before Starkiller fell, but the Order is not as better as it would be if Hux were in charge.
He knows Schiff will again suggest that there are a large number of mining colonies they could just take, and if they were to do that, within a year, he'd be back to full strength.
Kylo figures that he's got about three more meetings with Schiff before he mutinies, likely taking most of his flight command with him, and goes after those colonies on his own, trying to get the materials to get his ships fixed. He's honestly not sure what to do with that. He wants that kind of man in charge of his fleet. That level of dedication makes Schiff very good at what he does. And that level of dedication to the fleet means that Schiff has real support. This isn't the sort of thing Kylo can take care of by just spattering Schiff's entrails about his office. If he does that, Schiff's second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on, in command, will eventually lead his own ships against him.
That said, he doesn't want to go back to using the First Order's playbook.
"C8, every time Schiff and I meet, he gives me a list of mining colonies."
"Yes, sir."
"Go over the list, and find me the five of them most willing to join the Order."
"Join how?" C8 asks.
He's not exactly liking this, but they all keep suggesting things like this matter and would help. "The ones that belong to people who might want a formal alliance with us. Who'd be willing to fob off a colony or two for one. Or the colonies most willing to ally with us if we give them better terms working for us than their parent planet."
"I will do that, sir."
Kylo rubs his forehead. "C8, do we have diplomats?"
"No sir."
"Of course not." Neither Snoke nor Hux ever saw any need for a bargaining chip beyond, Do what I say or die.
Kylo takes one last sip of his coffee. The cup's empty. Time for his day to begin, for real.
When he meets with Frakes, Kylo's in a fairly decent mood. Setting a good price for access to the 'free trade' lanes in what's going to be the border to the Unknown Region, and changing their policy from shoot on sight to disable, capture, use or sell anything attempting to cross the border without permission should bump his coffers up a bit.
Not quite as lucrative as just grabbing entire planets' worth of stuff, but it'll help.
He can feel Frakes before he enters his office. The door is shut, and Frakes is afraid of what might be behind it.
C8 opens it, and Frakes does his best not to sigh out loud when he sees Kylo sitting at his desk, by himself, no 'disturbing imagery' about.
"Jon," Kylo gestures to one of the seats at his desk, and sees that Jon has a soft cloth bag filled with what he assumes is formalwear.
Given that he's supposed to be trying this on, Kylo realizes sitting around his desk probably isn't the right plan, so he stands, and then opens the door to his personal room.
"My Lord," Jon nods, and follows him.
Once inside his room, Kylo says, "You can call me Kylo."
Frakes looks at him, purses his lips, eyes wary, and says, "I'm not sure that I can, sir."
Kylo can feel that truly is honest. The idea that Kylo has a first name, let alone that he'd about allowed to use it, is boggling to Frakes. "Master Ren or sir, then." My Lord, is what he called Snoke, and he doesn't exactly enjoy hearing it aimed back at him. Especially not out of the mouth of anyone he respects.
Frakes nods at that.
"Do you prefer Major Frakes?"
"Whatever you like, My—Master Ren."
He supposes this is to be expected. The last person he dealt with here who felt comfortable calling him Kylo was…no one. That never happened. His knights called him Ren. Phasma called him Ren. Hux would call him Ren or go out of his way to avoid using his title. Mostly because Hux refused to admit that Kylo was the Supreme Leader of anything, let alone him.
"What do you have for me, Jon?" Maybe if he uses his first name enough, he'll eventually start to feel like he can do it, too.
That gets a satisfied, if slightly nervous, look out of Frakes. Kylo can feel he's proud of what he's made, that it's good, and afraid that Kylo won't like it anyway.
He lays the bag out on Kylo's bed, and opens it, showing off what's inside. "Two outfits. One's full on, affairs-of-state, FORMAL, the other one is the step between your command blacks and that." He lays the pieces out into two separate outfits.
"Semi-formal. Black trousers. You'll note these are just plain, black ebanthal wool. Warm, very soft, people who know fabric, and that'll be most of them at a lot of these things, will know this is expensive and rare.
"Shirt, gray sand-washed silk, v collar, pinned cuffs." Kylo's not entirely sure what those things mean, other than the shirt is very soft looking, with an almost velvety texture, and that there are little holes in the cuffs that he assumes the 'pins' go through. It's shaped quite a bit like his usual shirts, aside from the pinholes and lack of texture on the sleeves. "Cufflinks." He shows off a set of small disks, they're some sort of silvery metal with the Order's symbol embossed on them, and set in black lacquer.
"Band collared black jacket, also ebanthal wool." This one looks a lot like a combination of his tunic and shirt. The shape is about the same. Thigh length, collar that comes together just below his laryngeal prominence. The sleeves are part of it, and embroidered in silver silk on the left arm is his personal symbol. There's a thin bland of black embroidery at the collar and cuffs, black on black, with the embroidery just a bit shinier than the black of the wool.
"It goes with this belt, worn at the waist, outside the jacket." And again, this is similar to his command blacks. It's not quite as wide, the leather is glossy, and the hook for his lightsaber is gleaming lacquered black. "And these gloves." Again, similar to his command blacks, just shinier and more expensive.
"Cloak. More of the ebanthal wool. The lining is the same silk as your shirt."
Kylo nods. He's fine with more visible gray in his outfit.
"With this one, you wear your hair up or down. If it's up, a black tie, like you're using today, will work just fine."
Kylo nods, looking at it. It's his command uniform made of more expensive material with a bit more gray, and some expensive details, like the thread and cufflinks. Shinier and more expensive, indeed.
Kylo nods at it. "You appear to have grasped my aesthetic."
Frakes smiles, pleased at that. "Okay, onto the formalwear. Same basic trouser, with a silver satin stripe down the leg." That's a little flashier than Kylo would normally go, but he also wouldn't normally attend something requiring an outfit like this, so he figures it makes sense for this to be outside his normal boundaries.
"The shirt, black silk, high band collar and pinned cuffs." This is more what he thinks of as silk. It's got a bit of sheen to it, while looking decadently smooth to the touch, and unlike the v neck, which just pulled over his head, this one opens in the front. Like many of his tunics, it appears to close with a line of hooks and eyes.
Jon touches an expanse of steel gray silk with a thin silver pinstripe. "Vest. This goes over the shirt and under the jacket."
Kylo's seen vests before. His father was fond of them. He liked the fact that they were an easy way to stick extra pockets into an outfit. But this is nothing like the vests he wore. This is fancy. The silk almost shines in the cold light of his room, and the silver pinstripe does. The buttons are black, and there's black silk banding around the edges.
"Why?" Kylo understands why you wear a shirt under your jacket, warmth and ease of cleaning. He doesn't understand why you'd put a vest on top of that, unless it's some sort of armor, or like his father's, you use it for extra storage, but as best he can tell this is just silk.
"You'll see when you put the jacket on. For now, just trust me on it." Jon touches the jacket, which is when Kylo begins to get an inkling of why you'd wear a vest under it. Unlike the rest of his tunics/jackets, this one doesn't come together in a band collar. He doesn't think it fastens at all. He's not seeing any buttons or hooks and eyes. "Wool silk blend, silk lapel, silver detailing." Like the trousers, the silver embroidery framing the lapel and on the cuffs is flashier than Kylo would normally go, but not painfully so, and he's intrigued by the silk of the lapel against the wool silk of the body of the jacket. They're both black, but the different textures add something to the look.
"No cloak for this. Don't want anything to take away from the line of the lapel or the detailing on the jacket."
Kylo can see that. There's got to be a full day, if not more, of embroidery on the jacket, so you wouldn't cover that with a cloak.
Jon gently touches the embroidery. It's a thick line of silvery-gray thread whirling into a complex knot of sharp twists and turns. Through it twines a thin silver-white line of looping swoops. "I wasn't sure how you'd like something like this to look."
Kylo's also not sure how he'd like something like that to look, too. But he's not put off by what's in front of him. "It's fine."
Jon nods and moves onto the next bit of the outfit. "Cufflinks." Just two silver bars, about as wide across as his thumb. "Last piece," Jon's holding it out on his hand to Kylo. It's a… he's honestly not sure. It's a band of silver, about as long as Rey's pinkie finger and twice as wide, with some sort of clasp under it. "For your hair." Frakes pantomimes using it to clips his hair back. "If you're wearing it back, you'll use this to hold it in place."
"No mark of the Order?" At least, Kylo's not seeing one.
"If you're wearing this, no one is going to be mistaking you for anyone else. This is for when you're hosting or attending as a guest of honor."
Kylo can feel that Frakes is trying to tell him something, and he's not getting it.
Frakes swallows, looking at each outfit, thinking, feeling somewhat nervous.
"Jon, I'm not going to get angry at you for telling me something I need to know, and" he gestures to the clothing, "this is the sort of thing I know almost nothing about."
Frakes takes another breath, and says, "Okay. This one," he points to the semi-formal clothing. "This is for the sort of thing where you're representing the Order." He's still thinking… "Let's take a step further back… Uh… Do you know the difference between a palace and a castle?"
Actually, he doesn't. Until thirty seconds ago, he thought they were synonyms. In fact, outside of books, he's never even run into either, and on top of that, he's not sure what that might have to do with clothing. "No."
"Okay…" Frakes nibbles his upper lip. "It's about how you display your power. A castle is a place where the ruler lives, works, rules, but it's fortified. It's protected by walls studded with guns, armies shelter there, ready to attack, weapons are its defining feature. It projects power by accumulating weapons and strength in one place, and making sure that anyone who comes near knows an attack would be suicide." He touches the belt, and the hook for Kylo's lightsaber. "The Supremacy is a castle, and this is an outfit for a warrior king. For the man who displays his power as a visible threat. It may be subtle, the way you walk around with just the saber and no guards, telling everyone who gets close enough to notice that you know you're the most dangerous man in any room, but it's there."
Kylo's following that well enough, and figures that fits.
"A palace is also a place where the ruler lives, works, rules. But it's not fortified. There may be guards, but there are no walls, no large weapons systems, at least, not visible ones. It's the symbol of a ruler who projects his power by letting everyone know that he knows that by attacking him, they'll damage themselves.
"It's the mark of a man who knows his power benefits everyone around him. The man who knows that what he offers is more valuable than what anyone could get by taking him out. The man who knows he's the key feature of an indispensable system." Kylo can feel that's where Jon wants the Order to go. That's his hope for a system of laws. Part of his reason for joining up in the first place.
Jon touches the semi-formal outfit. "This is now. You don't need to try this on. I know it fits. You know it fits. It'll feel like another skin, and you'll wear it without a thought."
He looks to the formal one. "This is the future." He looks at it again, stroking the silk of the vest. "Honestly, you haven't earned this, yet. You haven't built your palace. And there's no mark on it because… This'll sound stupid, but… You haven't put your mark on the Order, yet. You've taken it away from Snoke, but it's not yours, not yet. You'll get there, but… not yet."
Jon looks at him, blue eyes bright and eager. "One day, you will be the Order. You won't represent it, which is what you're doing now, you'll be it. People won't have a line in their mind between the two of them. You won't be the Master of The Order, you'll be The Order, the embodiment of all the good the Order does, and when that's true, this is what you wear to show that off."
Jon pauses again, a breath of uncertainty and fear, and then squashes it down and commits to it, "When you're ready for this, you will be 'My Lord.' Master… that's what, a teacher? Sir? The greenest ensign on his first day answers to that. Hell, they call me sir. This is the outfit of an Emperor, secure in his Empire, and you'll wear it to things where you wish to convey that."
Kylo nods, thinking, liking this idea, and then says, "Thank you."
Jon nods, too. "I'd like you to try this one on, though. I'm not sure about the silver piping or the silver pinstripe. We might want to go just gray, or pewter. I want to see it on you, get a feel if it's too flashy."
"Okay."
Kylo feels a little odd stripping down to his underwear to try the outfit on, but… Jon measured him for it in the first place, he's placed his hands all over his body, and he's already in his own room, so…
Jon looks away while he strips down to his underwear and socks, which Kylo appreciates, though he feels silly for appreciating it. He routinely trains in only a pair of trousers and his gloves, but for some reason he's feeling significantly more naked right now than he does when he's doing that.
That idea spurs another one, so as he's pulling on the new trousers (very soft, a bit tighter than he normally wears them, but not uncomfortable) he says, "Speaking of warrior kings. My command blacks, besides the gloves, have no armor, and the gloves only give me a few seconds of heat protection against my saber."
"Do you want a suit of armor?"
"I don't think my fighting style would mesh with Storm Trooper style armor, but some sort of armored blacks would be of value. I haven't been in a real fight in quite a while, but I'm sure it will happen again, and these days, it's important that I return from the fight."
Jon nods, looking at Kylo now, seeing the body under the clothing, and the disk against his chest. There's a flicker of recognition, and Kylo can feel him thinking that whatever it is he's wearing on the necklace, that's the direction he needs to go to put his mark on the Order.
"Let me know the next time you train, sir, and I'll watch. By the time you're done, I'll have a good idea of what your armor should look like so it can move with you."
"Thank you." He pulls on the vest, slipping it over the shirt. "I like this." He feels odd liking it, but he does. Snoke would accuse him of being his father's son when he was mad at him, but… Well, he is.
Jon glows at that. Then he thinks of something else. "How is the off-duty wear working for you?"
"Quite well." Kylo says with a little smile, remembering Rey liking it.
Jon glows brighter at that.
"Is the jacket too small?" Kylo asks when he finds that it doesn't actually close.
"No, it's supposed to do that."
Kylo feels like he should be done, but he's noticing there's a belt and two little bottles on his bed. He pulls the belt to him, and then stares at it. If the jacket doesn't close, he's not sure where to put it. "Uh…"
"Through the little loops at the waist of the trousers."
"Under the jacket?"
Frakes nods.
He can do that, though it takes him a moment to figure out how to feed the belt through the clasp, and then the metal tongue through the hole in the belt, and then shoving the leather back through the clasp to fasten it. (A ridiculous design if you ask him. All of his other belts have a latch, press side A into side B, and they fasten together.) It feels odd to have a belt just hiding under most of his clothing. Doesn't seem to be much point of it if you can't see it, or hang a weapon from it.
But maybe that's the point of it, there's no weapon hanging off of it. It's just sitting there, kind of useless and expensive. It's got to be expensive, it's good leather. He can tell that just by the feel of it.
"Do I want to know how much this costs?"
"Maybe." Jon shrugs. "Probably much less than you'd expect. For an average person, this is a few months of income. For you… Many of the people who make these fabrics will donate several meters of them in multiple patterns, just to have them seen on you. That takes the cost down considerably."
"Oh."
"I paid for the wool, because I needed a lot of it for the trousers, cloak, and jacket. The rest of it… I just had to say who it was for, and it, and several other versions showed up, gratis, on the hope I'd use them for you."
"People will give you things, on the off chance I may wear them?"
"Yes, sir. If you do, it's good advertising for them. If you were anything approaching a common size, they'd be sending pre-made outfits. As is," he looks up and down Kylo, "I'm not putting you in anything off the rack. It won't fit right, and no one's better off with you looking shoddily dressed."
Kylo's got no idea what to do with that.
Frakes is looking him over, eyes critical… "I'm still not sure about the silver." He's looking up and down Kylo, making him feel naked in a way he's never been. Dissected, but not threatened. It's a unique sensation, and Kylo's not sure he likes it. "Maybe pewter… Maybe black satin…" He's slowly walking around Kylo, occasionally touching the clothing on him. "The shirt's good… Trousers hang right… You need different underwear for this… briefs, not shorts… Vest… maybe black, silver trim, silver buttons…" He nods again… "Black satin trim on the jacket and trousers. Just hints of light, not too much of it." He chews his bottom lip. "Black satin… It'll reflect light the way silver does, but only when the light hits it right… Yeah…" Then he stops roaming around Kylo. "This is close. It's not quite there yet."
Kylo thinks of the token on his chest. "I'd like it if you kept some gray in it. Maybe not the silver, but… definitely gray."
Frakes thinks about that, circling Kylo again.
"What are the two little bottles?" Kylo asks. Obviously, he's dressed enough that Frakes is circling him, watching carefully, so whatever they are, they aren't part of the outfit. But he brought them, so… maybe they are?
"Cologne. I've noticed you don't wear it, and wasn't sure if that's personal preference or just something you weren't aware men who wear the kind of outfit I'm fitting you for tend to wear."
"The latter." Cologne and perfume are things Kylo knows exists, but doesn't come into contact with on any regular basis. Though, as he's thinking, he remembers Rey in the scented blue bath, and that unknown floral wafts through his senses and his body responds, lengthening, which is when he realizes, comments about taping it down notwithstanding, he normally has on a tunic that comes to his mid-thigh which is more than heavy enough to keep any exuberances his body may wish to display pointing discretely down, and his current outfit consists of trousers snug enough Frakes wants him wearing different undergarments, and an open jacket made of a much lighter cut of fabric.
He shifts out of that mindset, fast, banishing the image and scent of Rey. He catches the tail end of Jon saying, "…on your wrist, and then rub it on your throat."
Kylo nods.
Jon's still circling him. "Do you own shoes? Not boots, but actual shoes?"
Kylo shakes his head.
"These trousers go with shoes. They don't get tucked into boots."
Kylo supposes that's probably why they don't narrow below his knee.
"We've got your boot size on file. I'll make sure to get some shoes with these."
"Thank you." Kylo does something he hasn't, not yet, and walks across his room to his mirror. Staring at himself, seeing the first draft of an image Frakes is trying to bring to life, Kylo gets it. He can feel another piece of where he's taking the Order shift into place.
He has power, in the sense, as Hux so crudely put it, of having the biggest damn shaft in the galaxy. Hux got off on beating people with it. But… stretching the metaphor to the breaking point if not slightly beyond, the point of getting hard is to create something, not smack someone in the face with it.
Creation is supposed to feel good. He was literally designed through a billion generations of evolution to create things. Specifically more humans, but… he's feeling washed in a flow of both the physical and metaphysical all blending together into a somewhat jumbled, but clarifying sense of where this is supposed to go.
"Jon…" He rubs his lips together, feeling like he's standing on the edge of something, about to get closer to it. "I normally take my lunch alone, but… would you be willing to take a few days, think more about castles and palaces, and then have lunch with me, and just, talk, about how you think this works?"
Jon looks startled at that idea. He's still staring at the suit, debating maybe making the silver accents just a bit thinner, or maybe damping down the sheen, or… Once he realizes what he's been invited to do, a flush of pleasure bursts through him, and he blushes slightly.
"Yes, sir. I'd be honored."
He runs later than expected with Frakes, but Kylo's satisfied with how that worked out.
Later than expected means Schiff, who is already expecting yet another meeting that doesn't get him what he wants, is grinding his teeth to nubs.
Kylo feels the wave of frustration off of him well before C8 escorts him into his office.
Before Schiff can say anything else, Kylo says to him, "Five. Pick the five colonies you could do the most with."
"You're giving me permission to take them?" Schiff is so pleased at the idea Kylo's almost loathe to squash it.
"No. And I will not be doing that, either. I'm having a list drawn up of the five I've got the best shot of coming to a diplomatic accord. If there's any overlap between your list and that one, those will be the first ones I move on."
Kylo can feel this spark Schiff's interest. "Diplomatic accord, how?" He's eager, but wary. Like he's afraid to put too much hope into this idea, but it's still there, a tiny spark, begging for fuel.
"We have things of value to offer in exchange for materials."
And that apparently killed it. "Sir," Schiff's eyes have narrowed, and he's speaking like Kylo is especially dense, "if we could pay for this, I would have already done so. I understand you wish to… distance yourself from Supreme Leader Snoke, and in most cases, I approve of it, too, but we cannot get what we need, in the quantities and speed we need it, if we keep playing nicely."
Kylo nods. Again, that puts Schiff off balance, that tiny spark flares. It's the first time he's granted Schiff his point, and that seems to be helping to get him to listen to what he's going to say next. "While I should have more credits to direct your way, soon, that was not the value I was thinking. Our fleet is not in the best shape ever, but it is still bigger and more imposing than anything else in the sky. We can offer security. There has to be someone who values that, and if not, then we can use that fleet and our troops to offer the people on the ground enough security to have a minor or major insurrection and come over to the Order if they so desired."
Schiff thinks about that. For a good long minute he's silent, turning the opportunities over in his mind. Kylo feels it when the spark flares into a flame. A tiny flame, but a flame nonetheless. "It'll be your recruiting stations, big scale."
"I hope we can take them without having to—"
Schiff shakes his head. "No. The ones that produce enough to be worth it for us, produce enough that it's worth it for their home worlds to protect them. They're state-of-the-art facilities, colonies their home worlds spent money and time setting up. They aren't going to give them up for protection."
"Then we'll start with the smaller ones." Kylo smirks. If he learned anything from his parents, this is it. "Setting up a functional insurrection takes time. We might as well see what we can get by offering security to the small ones, and seed insurrections on the big ones."
Schiff smiles at that. This is better news than he was expecting.
"That said, how are we doing?"
Schiff gives him a tired look. "Better than I'd expected, not as well as I wished. We're within 80% of our target for flight crews." Kylo knows that Schiff set those targets low, not expecting to be able to find what he needed. Pilots, mechanics, flight engineers are worth more than double their weight in gold right now. Not only did Snoke destroy the Hosnian system, which held the capitol of the Republic, it also held three of the four largest deep space/hyperspeed flight training programs in the galaxy. (That's part of why the capitol was there. They moved it to stick it near most of the high density military training programs. The theory being they'd need to defend their training programs, so might as well stick the capitol there, too, and not dilute their forces. That was before anyone knew Starkiller was a possibility.) Kylo controls the fourth, but even he doesn't have the capacity to make sure he's got enough pilots. Everyone is hurting for pilots right now.
Kylo listens to Schiff's report, making the occasional note for himself, and nodding along. At the end of it, as Schiff is about to leave, something he said to Rey about transportation springs to mind. "If I wanted a small ship, with hyperspeed, no Order markings, able to comfortably transport two people, can you get me one?"
Schiff grins widely at that, figuring a ship like that, actually several of them, is step one in Mission: Foster Insurrection.
"Give me a week. How many do you want?"
Kylo, able to feel what Schiff thinks he's doing says, "Start with the one. I'm sure if we need to, we can expand from there."
The fact of the matter is, The Master of the Order does not need money. Not on the scale that's being presented here.
His treasury people are extremely interested in why the man who can have whatever he wishes, just by naming it, would want three boxes containing… of all things… hard currency. When they got the message from C8, they actually double checked to make sure it wasn't a joke or something.
It took some time and effort to hunt down currency. The records say they have it, but… Locating it is a different story. It takes more than a week to just track it all down.
Who even uses currency? They have literally trillions of credits in their hands, but…
If the Master wishes the equivalent of a mere two hundred and eleven thousand credits in assorted currencies (as much as they could safely muster without going into the petty cash they actually need)… Then the Master gets (eventually) three boxes filled with various circles and triangles and squares, and bits and bobs of a multitude of precious and semi-precious metals and papers.
Maybe he's running a secret mission of some sort? Very secret. And that, combined with his request for a non-Order marked transport capable of hyperspeed, and his sudden interest in new clothing, gets even more gossip started.
This is the first of the rumors to come to Kylo personally. General Ritter, his commander in charge of a third of his inner rim territory, pulls him aside and says, quietly… "Master Ren, I… Don't wish to intrude in that which I'm not supposed to know, but… there is conversation… suggesting you are thinking of a mission, and… I'd like you to know that if you ever need an extra set of hands, mine are at your disposal. It's been a few years, but once upon a time, I was very good at things like this."
Since Kylo does not, in fact, have any such mission, because he was not, on any level, thinking of personally visiting any colony in an effort to rally support for the Order, this very discrete and polite inquiry throws him for a loop. If he'd been wearing his mask, General Ritter would have never caught the look on his face, but because his face is naked, and because he's got nothing, at all, percolating along those lines, he sees the confusion.
"You don't have a mission in the works," Ritter says, looking like he's about to die of embarrassment.
"What conversation?" Kylo asks.
Ritter swallows, hard, because now he's got to open up about how closely they all watch him, and the level of talking they do. "Master Ren…" He inhales, fast, wincing. "It hasn't escaped our notice that you appear to be gearing up to… infiltrate something, perhaps. The clothing, the currency, the blaster, the ship…"
Kylo's face is a mask of perfect stone, now.
"I'm sorry, Master."
Kylo nods. "Perhaps more time managing your own affairs, and less on mine, would be warranted?"
"Yes, Master Ren."
As Ritter is trying to vanish, and is working his way out of Kylo's office, Kylo can feel that he's got a whole new level of gossip about to start spewing, namely, if there isn't a mission, what the hell is the Master about to do? Run away? Not a lot of currency for that, but unlike credits, it is untraceable and…
Kylo sighs. "Vacation. I'm planning on taking a few days and not being the Master of the Order."
That startles Ritter to the point of stopping him, and his thoughts, dead in his tracks. "Oh. Yes, sir. That's…" deeply surprising to him. The idea that Master Ren may do things like relax is utterly foreign. Snoke never, as best as he knew, took a day off. But… many of the rest of the officers do, at least on occasion. Especially now that they aren't actively fighting a war. "May I ask where you're planning on going?"
Kylo still doesn't know. "No, but you're welcome to offer suggestions if there's a place you think is particularly nice."
Ritter shrugs. "Nice for what? Do you want a city, or beach, or space port, or… what do you like to do?" And, again, it's clear that the idea that Kylo might like to do things is also utterly alien to Ritter.
Kylo doesn't say, that's part of what I'm attempting to find out. "Some place big enough I can just blend in."
Ritter nods. "The clothing. That'll go a long way. There's nothing like taking the uniform off at the end of the day. My wife says I'm a different person when I'm wearing it."
That's more than Kylo ever guessed about Ritter, or the nature of uniforms.
He's thinking about where to go to blend in. "Imperial city. More than a trillion people there. What's one more? No one will notice an extra ship."
Kylo nods. "Coruscant." It doesn't feel right, but it's certainly possible. He nods again. "Would you want to go on a mission that involved going under cover?"
"Very much, sir."
"Noted. There may be one in the near future." Much to Kylo's displeasure, "diplomatic" channels are much slower than military ones. C8's still trying to set up meetings with half of the systems he's interested in.
"Thank you, sir." And Ritter leaves him, looking quite pleased.