12/31/1

Kylo almost doesn't recognize Jon when he comes, along with his mom and sister, to help get Rey ready. Rationally, Kylo knows that Jon has to have lounging about clothing. In fact, he likely has things like pajamas, and socks, maybe shower sandals, or… just things. He's not always on duty. That said, Jon in a pair of slim trousers and a button down shirt with the sleeves bunched up above his elbows… It's just nothing Kylo ever imagined.

"Come on," Jon says to Kylo much earlier than Kylo expected him to come and collect him. Apparently, part of this getting ready for the evening thing means he's being booted out of his own rooms, and, apparently, no, their place on Lirium just won't cut it, so Jon's grabbing him and…

He's got no idea.

That's not true. He chooses to have no idea. About three minutes worth of focus would get him all the idea he could possibly want on the subject of how and why and what is supposed to be happening.

"Why now?" Kylo asks, deciding to get some clue.

"So you don't just sit in your office and hover, tracking what they're up to on the other side of that door."

Kylo glares, but there's no heat in it, because that's pretty much exactly what he was going to do.

Kylo rarely thinks about the scale of the Supremacy, but when it hits him that it's an eleven minute elevator ride, followed by a five minute walk, and a seventeen minute tram ride to get to the wing of the ship where Jon's rooms are, it's really hammering home exactly how much territory he's got just here.

"What's the final count?"

"Guests or Order?"

"Both?"

"Four point two million of us on the Supremacy. Ten thousand, six hundred and five guests."

"We're at… Twenty-two percent of capacity here?"

"Something like that."

Kylo nods. "Full house next year?"

Jon smiles. "With any luck."

"What is that?" Kylo asks a few moments after they get to Jon's rooms. He's just sort of pacing around, not sure what to do with himself, suddenly very aware of the fact that he's supposed to get dressed up and deal with more than five hundred strangers tonight.

Apparently, Jon has decided that this is not what he wants Kylo to be doing, so he's got… a solution.

"It's vodka."

Kylo gives Jon a look to indicate, in that he saw the man pour it, that he was not, literally asking what it was. "That part I gathered from the bottle. Why are you giving it to me?" (Though, given how they got here, and the whole, there's a massive party thing tonight hit, and since he's not keeping Rey in a calm or positive mood about it, his own nerves started to frazzle, so he started to pace around Jon's rooms, jittering slightly with his hands, it's possible that he knows why Jon just poured both of them a drink.)

"Because we're still four hours out, you aren't even dressed yet, and you're pacing around, nervous, and it's only going to get worse. That's reason one." Jon shoots his drink back, and holds out Kylo's glass, which is much less-filled toward him. "Reason two, you don't like glad-handing assholes, and if I had to guess it's because it makes you feel nervous and uncomfortable. Alcohol is a traditional remedy for that sensation."

Kylo glares at the glass. It's stupidly tiny. He's got no idea why anyone would want a glass that barely holds three swallows of liquid. "I don't like how it tastes, and I don't generally like how it makes me feel."

"So you do drink?"

"Rarely. Four times. Three of them were fun while I was doing it. Two of them made me wish I was dead after. The most recent two times were nice, but…" He eyes the glass. "I'm wary."

Jon sighs. "It's vodka, Kylo, it doesn't taste like anything, and this is 20 milliliters. At your size this should make you feel just a bit calmer and a touch more mellow. If it does more than that, it'll be out of your system long before we get to the party. This is us, experimenting, seeing if we can find a way to make this more pleasant for you. You want everything to be soft and easy for Rey. Well, I'm aiming for you to have as good of a time as you can, so…" Jon gestures with the ridiculously tiny glass in his hand.

Kylo rolls his eyes but does take it, drink it, fast, and then chokes. "You said it didn't taste like anything."

"It doesn't."

"It tastes like fucking alcohol."

Jon rubs his eyes. "Were you ever a teenager? Yes, alcohol tastes like alcohol. And this is sixty percent alcohol and the rest is water. That's not what people mean when they say it doesn't taste like anything."

Kylo sighs, and sits down in Jon's living area, watches Jon's fish flit around in their bowl for a few moments, and then says, "I was twenty-three the first time I had a drink with alcohol in it. My knights and I split a bottle of Corellian Whiskey. I didn't like the way it tasted. I didn't like the way being drunk felt. I really didn't like the dream/visions that went with it. And waking up the next morning did nothing to disabuse me of the idea that alcohol and I weren't meant to be good friends."

Jon sits next to him. "So, I guess the answer is, no you really didn't get to be a teenager?"

"Probably not on any level you're thinking of."

"First kiss?"

Technically, he was twenty-six the first time he kissed someone, but since that was three years after his first visit to the pleasure specialists, and he knows what Jon's actually asking, he answers, "Twenty-three."

Jon doesn't wince, but it's close.

"First dance?"

"A few months ago. Unless you want to count a wedding I went to when I was seven, or the one dance we tried to have at Luke's school where I stayed glued to the wall and didn't move the entire half hour it was going on before he shut it down."

"Those don't count. First party?"

"Again, either being seven at a wedding, for the first Order shindig."

"Okay, so at some point we have to figure out how to get you to a real party, because these aren't real parties. If for no other reason than so you can figure out how to actually have a good time at your own wedding."

Kylo smirks a little. "I think I can figure that out."

"Good."

Kylo looks around Jon's rooms. "So… You got to be a teenager and went to a lot of parties."

Jon smiles, pours himself a full shot, and takes it. "And had a splendid time doing it."

Kylo waits, and waits for another beat before saying, "How does that work?"

"How do you mean?"

"Pretend that I'm some strange alien who somehow got to the age of almost thirty-two without ever actually attending a real party. How does it work?"

Jon snerks. "Uh… Okay… So, first off, for me, I'd be somewhere between a guest and staff at these things. Mom doesn't much like traveling, so she doesn't go off world. But a lot of our clients are off world, and they want last minute fittings and whatnot."

"So… she sends, what, sixteen-year-old you off to do that?"

"Yep, and fourteen-year-old me, and eighteen-year-old me, and twenty-year-old me. I was twenty-four when the First Order got to Coruscant, and my career path radically changed."

"Why didn't you just set up your own shop?"

"Speaking of aliens… No credits, no tools of my own, no materials, no shop, no name, no brand… Unless I wanted to apprentice with another designer, oh, and by the way, I can't use any of mom's looks, and again, dressmaking is something men don't do on Coruscant… So, Mum notices the First Order is recruiting, and gives me the 'it's time to get out,' speech. Well… the First Order wanted armor designers, and I figured it wouldn't be that different… And next thing I knew I was on the Supremacy putting an armor assembly line into order."

Kylo nods. "So, you just… go to these things?"

"Not exactly. I always went with one of my sisters. A lot of people aren't comfortable with a man dressing the bride. But, I'm just as good with a needle and thread, and last minute jobs are quicker with two sets of hands, so…"

"So, you go, you measure, you… fit…"

Jon's nodding. "And some of these weddings are three or four days long, with multiple outfits, but… Really, that's not all that much work. Fix a bead here, snip a thread there, do a last minute seam re-stich, hope the bride didn't gain five kilos in the three weeks between the "last fitting" and the wedding. That was a bitch to work out right, had to remake the damn thing almost from scratch. Mostly, though, the months before the wedding can be hour after hour of nitpicky banthashit and fine sewing until your eyes fall out, but once you're at the party, it's fairly light.

"Eventually, the bride goes to wherever the wedding is. They do their thing. Maybe she changes into a new dress, and then party time. These people want my mom happy, so, we get 'guest' status, real food, nice seats, all the alcohol we can drink as long as we stay sober enough to sew, a good hotel room, or suite, and… Well, I'm pretty enough, look good in a suit, especially one I made myself, people at weddings tend to be in a romantic sort of mood, and I had a lot of fun with a lot of very pretty people."

Kylo eyes Jon's drink. "Something you're hoping for tonight."

Jon smiles a bit at that, too. "I certainly won't mind if it happens. It's been… longer than I like to go… And well, there's going to be a lot of attractive women and at least a few attractive men hoping to get you into bed tonight, and when they fail miserably, I might decide to console them."

Kylo's laughs. "A few? Speaking of teenagers…"

"Like I said, it's been longer than I like to go. Someone's been keeping me up at night, and not in a fun way. Which means something else hasn'tbeen up at night, and it's about time I do something to remedy that. As much as I possibly can."

Kylo laughs at that, too.

Jon settles back against his sofa, hands laced behind his head. "There are perks to being the guy who designed the layout. I know every blind corner in this set up, and… okay, back up, this is something you do not get to do tonight. And this is absolutely not me suggesting you try this. This is my plan for the evening, and you don't get to copy it. You're the host, which means you cannot leave for ten to fifteen minutes in order to have a good time. You don't get to do this until you're a guest at one of these things. I'm not the host, so no one cares what I'm up to, and I'm going to use every fucking one of those blind corners, because there's literally nothing in the universe that feels like getting your shaft sucked by someone in perfect formalwear so close to the party you can still hear it, knowing that any second someone could come around the corner and catch you. And I've beyond earned it."

Kylo laughs at that. "Alley. Not a blind corner, and… well, if you can pick your partner up…" He sniggers a bit more. "That was fun."

Jon's grinning. "Oh, I'll bet. Anyway, you don't get to do that tonight. Not as the host."

"And how do I go about getting myself and Rey invited to one of these things, as guests…"

Jon laughs at that. "Give it time. By the end of this, there'll be people hoping to get the Master to show up on their home territory just for the status of having said he was there. But… Make sure you've scouted the territory before you drag Rey off into what you think is a blind corner. There are three in the setup here that really are blind, five that are wired for sound and video that only look blind. Anywhere you go will likely be set the same way."

Kylo doesn't exactly pout, but that is putting something of a damper on any potential plans he might have for blind corners. They sit there quiet for a while, before Kylo says, "How do you get them to do it?"

Jon blinks. "Uh…"

"You don't just walk up and tell them to suck you off, right?"

"Generally, no."

"Generally?" Kylo can't stop the disbelieving lilt of his voice.

"It's really not going to be that kind of party."

Which would be the first time that Kylo's ever contemplated parties where that sort of thing might happen. "What the hell kind of parties have you been to?"

"Weddings, which are giant fertility rituals in a lot of cultures." His look fills in a lot of the rest of the blanks for Kylo. "I was… gods… seventeen, eighteen… And… There was this one… Okay, everyone who gets tuffed puts a coin in the bride's purse, one coin each time, and if she can still lift it at the end of the night, the wedding was a failure."

"Where was that?"

"K'riniar."

"Why have I never heard of this place?"

"Because you were raised in a culture that hates fun."

"Apparently." Kylo eyes the bottle. He can feel it. This is working. He is looser, his muscles, his mind, and he's feeling a sort of pleasant goofiness. "I still don't know how it works. How do you get a stranger to suck you off?"

"Is Rey the only…"

"No. I… saw the Pleasure Specialists a few times, and... I mean, I know how to get them to do it. And once I was Supreme Leader, I had officers more or less throwing themselves at me, and took advantage of it a few times. I can read minds, at least when they're thinking at me that hard, so with them I didn't need to ask, I just sort of got in their way, with no one else around, and they just… offered. But… I've never just… gone up to someone and asked."

"It works pretty much like it did with the officers. You've got something they want. They've got something you want. Usually there's talking involved while you work that out, and then you find a quiet place and get to it."

"What did they want from you?"

Jon sighs and shoots Kylo some irked side-eye. "I get you're not being intentionally insulting, but… wrong question."

"They wanted me for my power."

Jon rolls his eyes. They've been over this before, but… Given how bad Kylo is at this sort of conversation, practicing may be in order, so Jon turns the topic a bit. "They wanted you for your body. There's not an officer naïve enough on this ship to think that sex'll get them anywhere. They wanted you naked."

"I can read minds and feel emotions. Power. They wanted my power. Status, they wanted to be able to say they'd had me."

"Yeah, the power between your legs. You look like you've got twenty-five centimeters and could fuck someone into next week and back with 'em, and then flip 'em over and make them beg for more. I get that somewhere along the lines they beat the ability to appreciate this out of you, but you've got a really nice body, very intense eyes, and a great voice. People respond to that." Before Kylo can say anything, Jon adds, "And if you blush at that, I'll slap you. Just take it as your due and leave it there."

Kylo doesn't blush. He does chew his lip. Then he says, "Seventeen, eighteen on a really good morning."

Jon laughs. "Force, if I can get that out of you on 20 mils of vodka, you must be a blast on a full shot."

Kylo rolls his eyes. "The ones you're intending to go sweeping through tonight aren't in this for my body."

"Only because they haven't seen you."

Kylo shakes his head. "You like me too much."

"No, I like you just enough. If I liked you too much, I'd be in your lap, and this would be awkward as fuck."

Kylo rubs his forehead. "I have no idea how to respond to that."

Jon grins at him, and it's clear that he's mostly just teasing Kylo. Mostly. The alcohol is hitting him, too, making him a bit more open than he'd normally be. "Generally, something vaguely flirtatious and teasing would be good. Like, for example patting your lap, saying something like 'hop on,' and if I tried to up the joke by getting on you, you'd laugh and gently push me away. Or you can shut me down cold. Or you could suddenly develop an interest in my fish."

Kylo's eyes flick to the fish. "How long have you had the fish?"

Jon laughs. "Kylo, if you want to do this thing where you get people to join you because they want to, you are going to have to learn how to flirt. Sexual attraction is part of the toolbox of getting people to like you, so you can't not use it."

"Rather save it up for Rey."

"Which is fine. I'm not saying you've got to have sex with other people, I'm not even suggesting contemplating it, but you do have to be able to have a light, friendly, suggestive conversation without getting in too deep."

"Do I look like someone who's ever, on any level, of anything, had the ability to judge where too deep was and avoid it?"

"No. Which is why we're going to learn."

Kylo looks around Jon's rooms, seeing the picture of him and Lane. His voice is softer as he says, "How do you do this?"

Jon can see what he's looking at, and how he's looking. "Speaking of too deep."

"Sorry. Just…" He's looking around. "How do you lose something that matters so much and keep going? Let alone… I had to…"

"Had to what?" Jon'll happily keep this centered on Kylo until the end of time, because right now talking about him is a hell of a lot easier than talking about himself.

"Burn my name, hide my past, kill… everything… Just to keep moving, and… And it didn't really help all that much."

Jon swallows. Kylo's staring at him, eyes wide and dark, and… needing something. "Uh…" He sighs. "I lost… a lot. But… not everything. And that makes a difference…" He keeps watching Kylo looking at the pictures of he and Lane. "And… I had someone who loved who I was before I lost almost everything. And, if I let that person go, let him burn to the ground… I was loved, Kylo, cherished, and… I loved him back, loved him more than myself, more than I thought I ever could, and… I didn't die. And what would it mean, if I killed the man my love loved more than anything else? I couldn't hurt myself because it would have hurt him. That's eventually what kept me moving. What kept me from turning my blaster on myself.

"And, uh… If I just roll up in a ball, and drift through the days, and let myself shrivel away… Everything he loved about me dies. And I can't do that to him. Maybe… You believe in ghosts and forever and whatnot, but… For me… This is it. Right here, right now. If Lane's out there somewhere, I can't find or feel him. All I've got of him are memories and pictures. So, when I'm gone," he nods to the picture, "we are, too. And… I can't let that happen a minute sooner than absolutely necessary.

"I'll get tuffed as much as I can tonight, and I'll enjoy it when it's happening, because it still feels good, and I'll miss him, and I'll wish I was with him. I'll fuck in corners because I still haven't been willing to bring someone back to our bed, but… one day it'll happen." He looks at his hand, rubbing his thumb against his wedding band. "And that day I'll wake up, and I'll miss him, but with any luck, I'll also feel good about whomever I'm in bed with, because… because it's part of being alive, and happy, and he wanted that for me.

"That was one of his vows to me, that he'd always put my happiness first. One of my vows to him, too. That we'd share and cherish each other's joys. And bodies, and pleasure, and fucking… That's part of it. We… really liked fucking… neither of us were anything approaching celibate before we met, and we just did it more after, and… Yeah… He'd kick my ass if I gave it up."

Kylo blushes as he gets a feel for some of the thoughts, memories in Jon's head.

"So… uh… I made my vows, and I can't betray them by letting myself wallow in misery." Jon checks the chronometer. Three and a quarter hours to go, and it's not like they've got to start getting dressed anytime soon. He pours himself another drink, and a half shot for Kylo.

Kylo shoots it back, wincing again. "Don't you have something to put that in that actually tastes good?"

"Floof."

Kylo rolls his eyes. He intentionally doesn't use words like that, and especially not around Jon. But… "Takes one to know one, right?"

Jon laughs, long and loud at that. "King of the Floofs." He's smiling, watching Kylo for a moment, who is pleased that what he said landed well.

Kylo looks at the glass and the bottle. He gets up, finds Jon's cooler, and looks around in there for a liquid he actually likes drinking. He's got some sort of pink liquid. He takes a sniff, some sort of fruit juice';he doesn't recognize it, but he's sure it doesn't taste worse than straight vodka. "Glasses?"

Jon gestures to the shelf below the cooker. Kylo grabs one, pours it mostly full of juice, and then adds a full shot of vodka to it, figuring if he drinks it slow, he can just sort of stay here, feeling pleasantly loose. He taps the rim of the glass with his index finger. "I've dealt with more than enough shit for six lifetimes, and I'm done choking down things I hate when I don't have to." He take a sip. The juice is some sort of citrus, sourer than he'd pick for himself, but he can't really taste the vodka. "Better."

Jon watches him do it, amused, thinking that's a good way to look at life, and then that amusement fades as he really watches and feels the holes in Kylo's life and the things they're talking about.

Jon's voice is serious as he says, "Who'd you lose, Kylo?"

Kylo's quiet for a long moment, playing with the glass, before he says, "Myself. Literally on that one, I was born Ben Solo. My hope. My heroes. My parents. My faith. My Lord… My… everything. One after the other after the other. The day I cut Snoke in half was the day there was nothing left."

Jon nods. "Come on. We've got hours, and I'm willing to bet you've never actually started at the beginning and just told someone the story."

"Rey."

That surprises Jon, and then he thinks about it for a moment. "You told her, or she felt it?"

"There's a difference?"

"Yeah. I can't just pull it out of you. You've got to think about it and arrange it and put it into context for me. Which means you've got to think about it and arrange it and put it into context for you, too. So, talk."

So, Kylo does, and he tells the story of a boy named Ben, whose parents loved him, and had big dreams for him. And Jon knows all about that, because his mother had big dreams for him. But Ben's parents didn't understand him, or worse, did understand him and tried hard, so very hard, to not let him be who he was. And he can feel Jon understand, to a degree, because there was once a boy named Jon, whose mom knew what and who he wanted, and did everything she could to get him attached to a woman, including sending him to a lot a parties he was probably too damn young and immature to handle, in the hopes that maybe some pretty girl would catch more than his eye. (And his older sisters, not nearly as attached to proper Imperial behavior, and sure that their little brother was vastly too young to be trapped into a wedding by a baby, made sure he had an implant before he got his fourteen-year-old self to the first of said parties.)

Kylo talks about how his heroes failed him, and worse, turned on him, and Jon doesn't have firsthand experience with that, but he's good with empathy.

He talks about part of joining the First Order was not having anywhere else to go, and Jon knows all about that. And part of it was the idea of stabilizing things, and Jon remembered that, too. And the horror of seeing how none of it was real, and Jon doesn't know much about that because from where he was, setting up a process line for armor design, spending a lot of long days and nights with the Tactical Design Wing's Commanding Supervisor, a young Major with dark hair and eyes and an easy smile, he didn't see much of anything else.

He talks about what felt like hours of watching those beams of light heading toward the Hosnian system, and how… How there was just nothing he could do. How the Force was supposed to offer calm and quiet and all of those good things they'd learned about in Luke's school, and yet the most powerful Force user he'd ever seen was in the back of his head, cackling with glee, knowing that billions of people were going to die in an instant, their Force snuffed out. How, standing there, he could remember his lessons about the Force, the giver of all life, the thing that allowed stardust to breathe, and feel, and think. The thing that had the plan, the thing that set everything in motion according to its will. It gave Snoke all of that power and all of that rage and pain and hate and let him throw it around the galaxy, hurting trillions of people because he liked it and… And there were no answers. Nothing to tell him why any of this shit had happened and… And Jon can listen, and look concerned, but he can't exactly emphasize with Kylo losing whatever was left of his faith, because Jon never had any. He wasn't raised in any church, and never expected the universe to make any sort of sense.

Kylo lost his dark… He wasn't expecting that. When he killed Han he felt a little light, one he hadn't known was still lingering in his mind, go out. And when he killed Snoke, he felt a massive, achingly heavy shadow fall off of him, and he hadn't known that wasn't him. As long as he had been, that weight had been there, and suddenly it wasn't. And worse, he didn't know what to do without it. He'd spent his entire life chained to something drowning him, and breaking the chain was great, but that didn't mean he suddenly knew how to swim.

"You got Rey, right? She was there to—"

Kylo's inelegant snort stops Jon's line there. "I lost her that day, too. I couldn't be kind, light, Jedi Ben. That's why she was there, to save 'Ben.' She didn't want Kylo, not then, and we fought over the lightsaber, blew it and the throne room up, and she left me unconscious on the floor. I woke up to Hux getting ready to murder me."

Jon nods slowly. "I woke up to echo of…" He doesn't have words for that sound. He doesn't think there are words for that sound. "The feel of the ship jerking, and the ceiling hitting me in the face because our wing lost gravity for two days."

"And for a second, you didn't know what was wrong, just that it was?" Kylo asks.

"Yeah. For a second. And a minute. And… three days actually. I didn't know for sure for three days."

Kylo winces at that. "Did they… find a body?"

Jon shakes his head. "No. It was three days before they could tell me that the entire section of the ship he'd been in had been completely vaporized. There's no chance he, or any of them, felt anything. She… hit… as best they can tell, five levels below where the design center was. No one at the impact site felt, or knew, a thing. One second, they were there, and the next they were… Subatomic particles."

"What'd you do, then?"

Jon lifts the corner of his lips, but it's not a smile. Up to that point, he'd been hoping that Lane was on the far side of the rip, communications between the sides were sketchy at best, and everyone who could work, was working, full out, on trying to get both sides stabilized and connected to each other. But, on the third day, when they'd gotten both halves more or less together again, and had finally gotten a count of who was still there… Lane wasn't among them. "Cried a lot, drank a lot, had a long chat with my blaster, drank some more, put the blaster away, cried more, drank more, passed out for a day or so, and then got up with the worst hangover in the history of hangovers, commandeered an empty chunk of the R deck, and rebuilt the Tactical Design Wing." It's been long enough, he can say that without crying, but not long enough yet that he can say it without feeling bleak. "What'd you do?" Getting the attention back on Kylo helps.

Kylo shakes his head a little. He really doesn't like thinking about what he did those few days. "Made some appallingly bad tactical decisions. Embarrassed the hell out of myself in front of everyone. Let the Resistance escape because Rey and my mother were on the ship, and I could hate both of them more than I'd ever hated anything at that moment, including Snoke, because they were abandoning me, again, but I couldn't kill them. Got back to the Supremacy. Let Hux handle… a lot. Beat my punching bag until it broke. Beat the wall until that broke. Destroyed the weights, the bench, the mirrors, and a big part of the floor with my lightsaber. Debated beating the other wall, but Hux showed up with some stupid shit that had to be dealt with, that he assumed I wasn't competent to deal with. That he'd picked to show me specifically because he was sure I couldn't handle it. He was standing there, face, hair, uniform perfect, bored expression on his face, hate and disgust pouring off of him, as he was looking at me in the wreckage of my training gym, with a retinue of other officers, figuring it'd take him about a month to get enough support for an effective coup. Darth Tantrum wasn't a fit leader for the First Order. So I decided I was going to outlive him, if for no other reason than to piss him off, and that the only way to do that was to be a good enough Supreme Leader that he wouldn't be able to raise an immediate coup. So, I took the shit he had, and handled it. Competently. Much to his, and my, astonishment. I'd never had to do any… administrative stuff, or… lead anything bigger than a flight squadron before. I was even more surprised to see that I sort of liked doing it. And two days later, as I was thinking about how to deal with the next problem, Rey showed up in one of my visions, or I showed up in one of hers, and things started to change."

Jon nods, glances at the chronometer. "Speaking of changing. We've got an hour." He nods to one of the doors off his sitting room. "Bedroom and refresher are in there. Don't use all the hot water."

Kylo gets up. "I'll try not to."

In the refresher, out of his clothing, Kylo takes a moment to just look at himself.

He smirks a bit; it's really not 25 centimeters. Especially not right now, when it's just dangling about, waiting for him to get in the refresher. Outside of some of the pictures he and Rey have looked at, and he's suspicious as to if they're accurate, he's fairly sure human men don't come equipped with twenty-five centimeters of shaft. It's just… not a thing.

The rest of him, though…

Rey likes to look at him… Jon appears to like looking, too. And he's noticed the occasional other person who's enjoyed the view, too, but…

Jon's right, the ability to internalize that on any level got beaten, literally and figuratively, out of him.

So he looks, and tries to actually see. See himself, his physical body, here, now. Not M'Gll's disgust because he couldn't keep his desires to himself. Not Luke's disappointment because he wasn't ever going to be a proper Jedi. Not his mother's fear, or his father's worry. Not Snoke's hate. Not Hux's revulsion. Not Phasma's cool one-upsmanship.

Not the black clad monster he wrapped himself in to protect the shreds of a soft heart hiding underneath.

His body, here, now, black hair to long, angular feet.

The scars are real, and likely eternal, he'll have them as long as he breathes, but… They're starting to fade, some. They're what his eyes find first. He notices, as he looks from the tip of his eyebrow, down across his chest, to his shoulder, his arm, and his side, to his arms and legs and the myriad small marks he collected over the years. The cuts he had the time and inclination to get enough bacta on to heal close to clean. They're all fading or faded. The raised ridges of flesh have either smoothed out, or are starting to. He brushes his hand across his face, and now, by feel alone, he can't tell where the scar is, because it's no longer a chasm cut into his flesh. Just a shiny pink line.

It's been more than a year since he's bled.

He took a lot of bruises in the fight at Qualeen Prime, but he didn't get cut.

More than a year since he's broken a bone.

More than a year to heal.

He knows that's the longest stretch of his adult life without an injury. He suspects it's the longest stretch of his life, period. Even child Ben got hurt, a lot.

The body under the scars gets his attention next. He's not as lean as he was as the Master of the Knights of Ren. Real food and sleep has taken care of that. He might be broader across the shoulders and chest and thighs, he knows he's broader across the waist and hips. Some of it's muscle, some is fat, but apparently letting his body have the nourishment and rest it needs has made him bigger than he used to be.

He doesn't mind.

He's pale. Unless Rey's vision of him out and building with the Maji becomes a regular thing, he's always going to be pale. That's just genetics and lack of natural sunlight.

But he doesn't have a pallor anymore. He doesn't look sick. The purple circles around his eyes have faded. His too red lips and too red scars and too bright eyes that always gave him a feverish look with his too pale skin have faded.

The gauntness has faded.

The pain and the loss and the anger and… And the marks they all left on him, are faded.

And in front of him, there's a body, shattered glass edges worn down, gnarled scars rubbed smoother, bones too close to the surface covered over by forgiving flesh.

And looking, he can see that he's a thing, a physical, visual thing, that probably isn't handsome. His idea of handsome is more of Hux, or Jon, or Lando, men who are smooth and polished and evenly proportioned, and not of a too big, too sharp, too… everything, him. But, it could be attractive.

That his physical self could induce, and possibly encourage, desire, and not just for power or gain or…

Thumping against the door. "You know how to use the refresher controls, right?"

Kylo supposes that, given the things he doesn't know how to do, and the huge bath in his room, that's a legitimate question.

"Yes."

"Then move it. We're on the chrono, Kylo. Hurry up."

He nods. Time to get moving.

Jon has noticed that his mother's touch and attention brings out the best in the women she sees to. He's unaware of the fact that he, too, can have that effect.

But in an hour or so, Rey will certainly see the difference, and appreciate it.

Getting out of the refresher, Kylo's not entirely certain what to do. The formal wear he's expected to wear to this thing is not, in fact, located with him, in the refresher. Meaning he's not going to get changed in here.

He knows what he'd do normally. If he were with his knights. Or back in the communal showers of Luke's school. Or with any other soldier under his command he trusted enough to be in this sort of situation with. He'd just towel off, head into the bedroom, where the fresh clothing likely is, and start getting dressed.

Because him being naked has never been an issue before.

Putting the clothing he just took off back on to go two meters, wait for Jon to get into the refresher, and then take it back off again, to change into his dress clothing seems ridiculously stupid to him.

And… Okay… Jon likes men. Jon likes women. Jon has, presumably, been in changing rooms before without getting weird about it, so…

He dries off, wraps the towel around his hair so he doesn't drip all over the place, and heads out to get dressed.

Jon's reading. He's sitting on his bed, datapad in hand, drink nearby, eyes scanning over something.

He glances at Kylo, blinks, smirks a bit, and says, "You're right. That's not twenty-five centimeters." He gestures to the suit bag over the end of the bed, and says, "Suit's in there. New one. I've got you matched to Rey for tonight." And then gets up to use the refresher.

A moment later, Kylo hears the water turn on, and from there, getting dressed is fairly simple.

He's dressed and brushing out his hair when Jon comes back. His towel is around his waist, which… is probably where people who are used to people wear things like towels when they're going to be casually somewhat naked around other people.

Or something.

He winces a little, puts that away for things to remember for next time, and that gets him thinking. "Not that I mind the company, but tell me I get to do this with Rey next time."

Jon sniggers at that. "Missing her already?"

"I don't have to try and figure out how to behave when I'm with her. I know." He starts to pull his hair back.

"You're doing fine," Jon says as he heads into the rest of his rooms, fiddles around with something, and then comes back with two more drinks, handing one of them to Kylo.

Kylo takes a sip before saying, "That doesn't sound like, 'Of course you can get dressed with her next time.'"

Jon's smirking at that. "You miss out on the surprise if you're getting ready with her. And, at least in my experience, people like having their mate see them and then go mute and stupid because they look so good it freezes their brains solid."

Kylo sighs. "She's appreciated that in the past."

"So, she's likely to appreciate it in the future, too." Jon heads to his drawers to pull out his underthings and socks. "Okay. I've been wondering about this for a while. The wedding I'm not supposed to be planning…"

Kylo turns from the mirror where he's pulling his hair back. "Yeah."

"Isn't she already your wife?" Jon asks, slipping into his socks.

"Yes."

"Uh…" Jon's just staring at him. "Do… Jedi do it differently than everyone else?"

"Jedi don't get married at all." Kylo turns back to the mirror, stares at his hair, pulled back, tight and severe, and takes it out of the ponytail, running his fingers through it, letting it fall free. "Most of them are celibate for vast stretches of their lives. And Maji don't have any traditions, yet. So… maybe we get married first, and have weddings later. Does… no one else do it that way?"

Jon wiggles his hand as he's pulling up his shorts. "Occasionally. Usually, if the lady's up the duff—" He can tell by the blank expression on Kylo's face that he's got no idea what that means. "Pregnant." Kylo nods. "They might sneak a fast contract signing in, and hold off on the party until later. But, usually weddings celebrate the start of the relationship, not the… middle."

"That's how the Kinears did it. But… You and Lane didn't have a wedding a week after you met, right?"

"Two years later."

Now it's Kylo's turn to stare at Jon.

"It's different."

"How?"

Jon's not sure how to explain that. He spends a moment thinking about it, and finally says, "There was a time you and Rey weren't married, right?"

Kylo takes the time to think about that, really think about that. "I'm not sure. There was a time she wasn't in my life, not as a person, but… There's always been this… presence, hope… feel… And I knew it was her within a few hours of 'meeting' her for the first time. We've… as long as I've known her… been connected. So… if married is about you and yours until the end of your days… I've felt that, since I saw her. Granted, in the beginning, I was fairly sure she was the one who was going to kill me, so 'end of our days' had a somewhat different context, but…"

Jon sighs and nods. "Okay, it doesn't work that way for normal people. Granted, normal people don't have visions of one another. And normal people can't tell what each other are thinking. And for normal people there's often this romantic love thing that goes along with spending the rest of your days together…"

"And they can't teleport to each other, and cosmic destiny isn't a factor… Yeah… Extenuating circumstances. As of right now, unless Poe comes home with a spouse tomorrow and wants a wedding the day after, we'll be the first Maji to have a wedding, so I guess we'll set the traditions. Or we'll do it the way we like it, and everyone else will just… do whatever they do."

Jon's staring at Kylo, really looking at him, and for a moment Kylo's starting to feel a little uncomfortable. He takes another sip of his drink, and finally says, "It'll work better if you just ask."

Jon nods… "Probably. Not sure if I want to."

"Well, if you keep staring at me like that, I'm going to know your question whether you want me to or not, so ask or get your mind off of it."

"Okay… Uh… Keep in mind, I'm not trying to be insulting."

"I can feel that. You're curious."

"Yeah." Jon looks nervous. "Do you… actually love Rey? Or is this… all… destiny and Force stuff?"

"Yes?" Kylo says, with a bit of question in his voice. He's not entirely sure how to explain this to Jon. Then an idea hits. "Think about Lane for a moment. Happy things."

"Okay," and Jon does.

Kylo smiles a little, letting himself ghost along on Jon's feelings. Pleasure, and comfort, and sex, and home, and joy, and sorrow, and ache… "Okay. Thank you. Yes, I feel that way about Rey. And there's also this destiny thing. And there's the Force meddling. But the core of it is that feeling of… just… right."

Jon nods at that. "Okay." And then he starts getting dressed in earnest.

Kylo glances at the stuff Jon's putting on, eyes slightly narrowed. It looks familiar, but it's not his usual uniform, and it's not the sort of suit Kylo just put on, so… "We have dress uniforms?"

"I have a dress uniform." Jon says pulling the jacket closed. "Kinear and Schiff do, too. I haven't put them into a full production line, yet. Assuming they haven't burned them or something, the rest of your officer class still has First Order dress uniforms with their First Order badge ripped off and the Order badge attached."

Kylo nods.

"Yeah. Getting them rolled out for everyone else is on the list."

"Thank you." Kylo looks Jon up and down. He's in a slim and trim blue-green suit. The trousers are straight legged, and there's a jacket, top of the thigh length, asymmetrically cut from his middle waist to his right shoulder. It's a soft fabric, with black detailing on the cuffs and collar, and three white stripes, two of them with a silver Order hexagon in the middle, on his left sleeve. The Order symbol is on his right shoulder, in silver, a clasp for the jacket. On the left there's a gleaming black name badge. A gray belt with a black buckle wraps around his waist. The trousers are close to the leg, with a black stripe down the side, in the same thread as the detailing on the cuffs and collar. "I like the pants. The… bulgy things on the other ones, I never liked them."

"Jodhpurs. The bulgy things are jodhpurs. They date back, way, way, way back to before fabrics that stretched and when officers actually used to ride animals into combat, and the extra fabric allowed for better range of motion in the legs."

"Okay. I always thought they looked frighteningly stupid."

"Then it's a good thing that I'm not the one who decided they were a good addition to the First Order Uniform."

Kylo winces. "Right. Sorry. Uh…"

"Most of the uniforms pre-date me. And I designed armor, not the uniforms, not until after I took over Tactical Design. But… Just as a way to work on saying the right things, try to keep in mind what the people around you do so you don't unintentionally shit on their work."

"Noted."

"And until you're good at that, having non-committal or positive opinions on things is likely a good plan." Jon checks his hair. In that all he's done is towel dry it, it's not even remotely ready, yet. "Scoot," he says to Kylo, who is in front of the mirror. Kylo scoots, as Jon gets his brush and goes to it.

Kylo looks at his current outfit. It's… different. "I like this."

Jon nods, rubbing something through his hair.

"The cuffs… They're not actually green, right?"

"The fabric is black, but the fibers reflect light with a green tinge. You mentioned wanting some colors occasionally, and I've got some on Rey, so…"

Kylo smiles at that. "I like it a lot. This is pretty much exactly the color I was trying to get on Gidi Secundus, but they wouldn't make a suit for me like that."

Jon looks surprised by that. "If you told me they wouldn't make you a suit in orange or yellow, I'd understand. You'd look awful in those shades, but… Blackened green? That color's pretty much made for you."

Kylo sighs. "Apparently, the only men in their culture who wear black or anything approaching it are pleasure specialists looking for clients, and the tailor suggested that wouldn't be a great outfit for a nice night with my wife."

Jon laughs hard enough at that, he's curling in on himself and his shoulders are vibrating. Finally he says, "I'd literally have paid money to see how that worked out. Do you think you would have figured out what was going on before someone pinched your ass, or after?"

Kylo rolls his eyes. "After. He didn't want to explain that to me, so the conversation about colors was fun." Kylo's eyeing his toiletry bag. Those little bottles Jon gave him all those months ago are in there. He's explored them enough to have opened both and sniffed at them and… They're fine. One is sort of dry and woody, and the other one is kind of wet and ocean-y. But he's still never worn cologne before and isn't exactly sure how one goes about doing it.

(He assumes it's got to be more complicated than just pour the stuff over himself. Because it seems like everything in the world is more complicated than he thinks it should be.)

Finally he grabs the nearest of the bottles and says, "What do you do with this?"

There's a second where Jon looks like he almost can't believe Kylo doesn't know how to do this, then another second where he's not shaking his head about the holes in Kylo's education, but he shifts that aside, and says, "Take the top off, put your wrist over the top, flip it over so the liquid touches your skin, flip it back so the liquid is no longer touching your skin, remove the bottle, put the top back on, and then rub your wrists together and on your neck."

"So… just a drop or two?"

"Yeah. Less probably. If it's not enough you can always add more, but too much isn't going to be doing anyone any favors."

"Okay." He takes his jacket off and pulls up his sleeve, and takes care of it. After a minute he says, "It smells different."

"Yeah. They react to your body chemistry. No scent will smell the same on two different people. Similar, but not the same."

It's still woody, but dry is fading, and there's some sort of warm spicy scent coming through. Kylo decides it's pleasant enough, and doesn't go heading for the refresher to wash it off.

Jon puts his brush down, glances at the chronometer, and says, "Finish your drink, and then come on, time to go."

Kylo looks pleased, swallows the last few gulps, and says, "Finally. I hate waiting around."

Jon smirks. "Wait until we get to that wedding I'm not supposed to be planning. We'll stuff you in a room somewhere for what will feel like months while the girls get ready and the guests show up and all the rest of it comes together."

Kylo smiles. "Yet. Not planning, yet."

And that gets a genuine grin out of Jon.

Notes:

I'm almost sure I don't have to say this, but... on the off chance there's an impressionable young person out there reading this: Yes, alcohol is a traditional remedy for social anxiety. That said, there are newer, better, more functional, with fewer unfortunate side effects remedies for social anxiety out there, and you live in a galaxy where they are a thing. So, unlike Jon and Kylo, who, apparently, do not live in a galaxy with things like mental health professionals (Which likely explains a hell of a lot about how the Star Wars world works.) don't self-medicate, go out, find a professional, and talk to one about it.

Meanwhile, for those of you who want to know why Kylo isn't trashed: he's averaging 3/4s of a shot an hour and weighs 92 kilos.

Also, "floof" is about the equivalent of calling someone a pansy. It's rude, indicates a certain level of femininity/fragility/prettiness that's considered "inappropriate" in a male, but not a slur.