"It is an incredible acquisition on your part."
"Thank you. I agree. Kylo Ren has promise." Praise from Snoke, long considered the most discerning art critic of the new era, was nearly unheard of.
"I would say that promise has been well developed under your patronage."
Hux raised his cigarette to his lips and took a long drag as he basked in the compliment. The other guests had been impressed – naturally, for he did not make a habit of bringing fools into his home – but none of their thoughts had behind them the taste to compare with Snoke's opinion. "He has grown in the last year, certainly. I am interested to see what he creates going forward."
"As am I." Snoke leaned in closer to the painting. Mural, in its final form, was incomparable. Hux would admit himself biased, but not even the work of the old masters could compare with the flat but expanding mass of paint. With their brushes, they had created altars to their saints and gods. Ren had created a monument to art itself. It was a piece best viewed by one or two, as its sheer size lost its impact when one stood with a group, and now, with just Snoke for company, Hux regained a sense of its grandeur. It was a pity that the others had not stayed to admire Ren's work longer. But having finished their cocktails and given the necessary admiration to the work, they had migrated upstairs to the formal dining room, and Hux could no longer put off joining them.
He snuffed out his cigarette on a nearby ashtray. "May I show you upstairs?"
Snoke nodded, and together, they joined the rest of the party in the dining room. Rooms fit for a party of thirty were few and far between in Manhattan, but Hux would have nothing but the best. The parties he held here had long brought the very best of New York's upper class together, and the noise of two dozen voices that he heard from the other side was to be expected.
Still, he felt something was out of place, and when Hux opened the door, his suspicions were confirmed. The beautifully paneled room, the crystal chandelier, the massive fireplace… he cared little for the design itself, but he would not allow someone else to have better. And only feet away, Ren stood, urinating into the fireplace and ruining everything Hux had worked all his life to build. His blood went cold, and the muscles of Hux's jaw clenched as he fought to keep himself calm.
"I see he still has much to learn." After his earlier praise, Snoke's words stung even more, and they forced Hux into action.
"Excuse the two of us. I hope you'll enjoy your meals." With a nod to Datoo, who stood with his mouth hanging open, he pulled Ren from the room. "What were you thinking?" he hissed once the door had slammed shut behind them.
Ren shrugged. "I needed to go."
"You animal. I'd do well to beat some sense into –" His words were cut off when Ren pushed him into the wall.
"You have no right to speak to me like that."
"You embarrassed me and yourself in front of the most important art critic in the country, not to mention twenty-five other dealers and collectors."
"I hurt myself more than you, then." His face was red, more from liquor than anger, Hux thought. What had he been thinking to allow Ren all the alcohol he could drink at an event like this? No, what had he been thinking to allow a child to spoil such an important moment?
"Do you understand what you've done?"
"I know very well –"
"Be quiet. Just be quiet and listen to me. You're a child. A fucking spoiled brat who thinks they can go through life treating everyone like toys and trash and never have to make up for it. You think they'll forgive you for it because you know how to paint." Ren had gone terribly silent. Good. "Is that what happened with your parents? You pushed them far enough that even they couldn't love you anymore?"
"Stop it. You don't know anything." Hux could make out the beginnings of tears in his eyes.
"Oh really? I think I'm coming too close to the truth for you. They did decide they hated you, then. And I know what you did then. You screamed and shouted and had a goddamn temper tantrum over the whole thing, and you still won't admit to anyone that it was all your fault in the first place. You're the reason for all of it."
"I said be quiet."
Hux forced himself to relax. "I think I've left you with quite enough to think about. We won't be expecting your company at dinner." He adjusted his suit, smoothing out a wrinkle that had developed over one shoulder.
"I'm leaving."
"No, you aren't. We still have much to discuss." He plucked a bit of hair – dark, long, almost certainly Ren's – from his jacket. "I'll give Datoo orders to make sure you don't leave this townhouse." His eyes met Ren's, brown and steady and full of as much hate as one person could muster, and though he felt the threat there, he did not back down. "There's a powder room down the hall. I suggest you make use of it to clean yourself up or if any other urges should strike."
With the other guests safely gone, now was his opportunity. "You're in no state to be going home. Stay the night. I'll have a room made up for you." If he sounded gentle, it was only in the way a snake might seem while luring its prey into its hole.
Ren huffed. "I'm not staying here." The depth of his voice could not disguise that they were a child's words.
Hux grabbed him by his collar and pulled him down an inch or two so they were eye to eye. "That was not a suggestion."
He was braced for the blow that followed. He knew, now, to expect the warmth that flooded his system along with it, but Hux didn't yet know how to prepare for something strong. How could he? He'd never encountered Ren's – no, Kylo's – particular mixture of anger and brilliance, and it sent him over an edge he hadn't known existed.
That didn't mean his shoulder didn't hurt where Kylo's fist had connected, or that he didn't want to cause Ren just as much pain in exchange. A punch to the side of the face, then. They had both rather enjoyed that last time. He got a bit more ear than cheek, but the grunt was the same, and the stirrings in his stomach were now almost familiar. The slightest of smiles began to spread across his features as he wound up for another blow.
"Oof." Ren wasn't being gentle now. He followed the strike to the Hux's ribs with one to his stomach that made Hux collapse to his knees, gasping for breath. He curled in on himself to shield off another blow. A drunk man should not be able to do this to him. But that was what made him interesting, wasn't it?
Ren kneeled down beside him. With surprisingly gentle hands, he rolled Hux onto his back and pulled his knees away from his chest. "Are you trying to kill me?" Hux said, his voice weaker than he wanted.
"Not now." He felt well enough now to sit up, but when he tried, Ren pushed him back down. Ren's eyes traveled up and down Hux's form, and he felt like nothing so much as a specimen pinned down and ready to be cut for the vivisectionist's enjoyment. "You're interesting, General."
His title on Ren's lips sent blood rushing to his groin. He had never told Ren of his time in the military: of that much, he was certain. Perhaps Kanzer had mentioned it to Ren, or perhaps Ren had researched him in much the same way he had Ren. In either case, now wasn't the time for questions. Hux reached up to grab Ren by his hair, pull him down for a kiss, but Ren stopped his hands, pinning them above his head with one hand. The other roamed freely over Hux's body, starting by ruffling his neatly-styled hair and continuing down over his chest and shoulders to linger around his erection. "You like this. You like me."
"This. Not you."
"This?" With one hand, he ground down on Hux's erection with enough force to be painful. Over Hux's groan, he added, "No, you could get sex out of anyone. You have enough money to pay off some boy to let you fuck him, to be as rough as you want and keep him quiet about it. But you come to me. Why?"
"Cheaper." He earned a backhanded slap for that one.
"The real reason."
Hux wanted to answer, but deep inside himself, he had to admit he didn't know. Ren waited a moment for a reply, but when none came, he stood. "I'll have Kanzer bring over the paintings later this week so you can take your pick of them." With those words and a final kick to Hux's abdomen, he was gone.
He hadn't known the article in Life was coming. The magazine wasn't one of his regular reads, but when he spotted Ren's name on the cover while he was waiting for an appointment, he had to give it a look. "Kylo Ren: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" Just above the title, Ren posed with his work – something new, not one Hux had seen before – cigarette in mouth and smirking, smug as ever. The last three years, it seemed, had not had much impact on the man. Same too-long dark hair, same strong build. Hux had little doubt that the floor, had it been pictured, would have been covered in Ren's trademark filth.
After checking that the receptionist wasn't watching him, Hux stowed the magazine in his briefcase. He waited until he was safely in the back of his car and being chauffeured home to retrieve it. Smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from the page, he soaked up every word. Brilliant, genius, violent, hyper-masculine… he had said it all before. The rest of the world, down to the uncultured idiots Life catered to, was finally catching on. Vindicated, he leaned back in his seat, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips. Then, something outside caught his eye. "Datoo, pull over here."
The traffic in Manhattan was a nightmare at the best of times, but from three-thirty to seven on weekdays, it approached perfect gridlock. Still, Datoo knew his place, and so without question, he maneuvered around half a dozen yellow taxi cabs, horns honking all around them, to allow Hux out directly in front of the magazine stall.
Five minutes, twenty-four magazines, and five dollars later, Hux slipped back into his seat. That night, he stowed one of the copies in the bookshelf closest to Mural and one in his nightstand. The others were given to Datoo with instructions to personally see them delivered to a Mr. K. Ren.
Dead at thirty-seven. What a waste. Of life, certainly, for Ren hadn't even summoned the self-control to limit his self-destruction to himself. The poor girl would go down as the footnote attached to Ren's name in the history books. He should have known better than to drive in that state. She should have known better than to get in the car with him. And in the end, Hux supposed, they had both deserved what came to them.
More importantly, though, what a waste of talent. He still came down sometimes, on evenings like this one, when he was alone and the sun shone red-gold before it disappeared, to sit, drink, smoke and admire. Mural – Ren must have thought himself clever when he'd named the painting, and now that he was gone, Hux had to admit he had been – was best viewed in this light, and melancholy tasted best mixed with a good brandy. The way the critics wrote about Ren these days, one would think he had splashed a bit of himself on the canvas – blood, piss, semen, the dirtier the better - to make a masterpiece. When the idiots turned back to poetry from criticism, their romantic notions would seem less insipid.
The anger, the unbridled rage that was Ren, did live on in the painting. That much, he would cede. The black streaks could as easily have been the cuts of a saber digging deep into the wall, and the red spatters that joined them required no explanation. Fascinating, really, and a bloody mess. Just like him.
Mural would turn him a tidy profit if he ever deigned to part with it. Hux supposed that was one bright side of being dead: it made you worth far more. Pity Ren wasn't here to see it.
Tonight, even the brandy failed to sweeten his palette, so he set it aside and reached for the cigarette case in his pocket instead. The case, ebony, monogrammed, and expensive, always held the finest cigarettes money could buy, but he'd made a habit these last few years of tucking a few cheap smokes in there as well. He picked up a Marlboro and held it between his lips for a few seconds before lighting it, savoring the flavor before it burned away.
A/N: As noted earlier, many story elements are heavily inspired by the life of Jackson Pollock. The financial arrangement between Hux and Ren is similar (though not identical to) the one between Peggy Guggenheim and Pollock in the mid-1940s. He did paint a painting on canvas titled Mural as part of this arrangement, but the painting does not match the description given. He was written about in a Life magazine article from 1949 that, like Ren's, was titled "Jackson Pollock. Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" and the urinating in the fireplace story (whether it really happened or not) is also part of the Pollock legend. Pollock did die in an alcohol-related single-vehicle automobile accident. Thank you for reading!