Kylo's balcony doors were still open.
Hux had made no effort to be so stealthy as last time; he simply walked in.
The framed paper doors were open; Hux glanced in, though he knew how invasive, how childish, it was.
It was the queen's bedroom, who wouldn't want to know how a queen slept? The apartment as a whole was modest enough.
It took Hux a moment to realize that it even was a real bedroom, and not some kind of oversized children's dormitory.
The room was a rectangle with a partially open door at the other wall. Small floating lights hung from the ceiling like a canopy over the bed, which was high off the floor and half-made. The bedsheets were white, comforter black, a highly reflective white headboard installed directly onto the wall. A black dresser sat next to a vanity, filling the wall opposite the bed.
As Hux stepped further into the room, he heard something from the semiopen door across the room.
"Threepio, it's not so simple. You knew my grandfather better than anyone who's still alive. He wasn't born evil...he didn't die that way, either."
Kylo was speaking to someone, in what Hux assumed was the bathroom.
"No, sir, I'm sure people are beyond most logic. I've seen that enough, especially in your family."
A droid responded.
"Hey!" Kylo chastised, but he was laughing gently.
"Have I said something?"
"I'm sure that you couldn't ever say anything half as bad as what Beebee must have said to Poe."
Kylo's voice was calm and quiet, no reason for it to convey power.
"I must admit, that little droid has quite a vulgar vocabulary. I think he learned it from Artoo Detoo."
Kylo laughed again, punctuated by a pained gasp. "I've done everything I can for you, sir, but I must voice my concerns that you are not receiving full medical-"
"-I can handle myself, Threepio. Thank you." Kylo interrupted.
Hux moved closer to the door.
Kylo was seated on a stool before another vanity, a golden droid standing over him. Kylo only had a robe tossed across his lap to maintain modesty, body patched with clean bandages. His makeup, though the tear streaks and lipstick had been cleaned away, was still on his face. He was avoiding his own eyes in the mirror, pulling his hair around boredly, as if to fit it into a half-up bun, when his eyes glossed over the doorway.
He froze, watching Hux watch him through the mirror, then cried out shortly. The door was slammed in Hux's face.
Hux watched the closed door, trying to comprehend what he had just seen.
Kylo was built. Maker, the man was muscular, only his position and robe affording any sense of modesty. His chest was so broad, how did he possibly hide it under those robes?
"Master Ben! Your mother has forbidden you from the use of your abilities in the presence of-"
"-What are you doing here?!" Kylo cried through the door.
Hux didn't answer. His thoughts were suddenly warm and thick, full of Kylo.
Kylo was some combination of a muscled, powerful soldier and shy, embarrassed altar girl.
It was infatuating. "Go away!" Kylo demanded.
"Master Ben, your heart rate is rising sharply. I rec-"
"-Threepio, shut up!" Kylo hissed.
"Kylo, please-"
"-Why are you here?" Kylo interrupted Hux. Hux imagined that he was leaned up against the other side of the door, hiding his face in his hands.
How was Hux supposed to respond?
He spoke before he found himself able to think.
"I'm worried about you, Kylo. You were so distressed earlier; what's wrong? Can't I help you?"
There was silence on the other side of the door.
"Master Ben, your heart rate has continued to escala-"
"-Threepee, shut up before I scrap you!"
Kylo took a deep breath.
"As I told you before, I'm fine."
"We're not even married yet, and you're already lying about your emotions?" Hux asked, grinning stupidly as Kylo chuckled softly from the other side of the door.
"We are not married, and you're also already invading my privacy." Kylo shot back, though halfheartedly. Hux leaned against the door. He imagined he could hear Kylo's heart beating. "Why are you really here?" Kylo asked.
"I already told you, you worried me. You're a queen; I imagine very little could have upset you so much, or so visibly."
There was quiet behind the door.
As if knowing, Hux stepped back, and the door opened slowly. A hand, strong and slender, curled around it, and then a low, strong brow was made visible over a dark, deep eye, a strong, aristocratic, perhaps even hooked nose came into view, some kind of predatory bird glaring Hux down intelligently.
"And what did you plan to do, had you come and discovered me in distress?"
Hux stepped closer to the door, a sudden rush of power as Kylo shied slightly behind it.
"Whatever you could have needed me to." Hux answered.
Kylo disappeared briefly.
The door swung in, and Kylo stepped out, a blood-red silk robe all the way to his ankles. Its sleeves were tight, down to his wrists, and Hux marveled at how lean he seemed, like none of the muscle underneath existed, like he wasn't bulky.
It likely had something to do with the way he was dressed, to make him more feminine, more Queenly.
Hux caught a better glimpse of the gold (and excessively outdated) droid in the room, as well as a tub that was full of clear water and no doubt waiting for the Queen, before Kylo closed the door again behind him. He looked down at Hux and Hux was reminded, again, that he had to look up into Kylo's eyes.
"You've managed to capture my attention, Emperor. What would you want me to need you for?"
Hux thought immediately and had to bite his tongue to keep himself from saying, anything you would possibly ask, as Kylo's lip twitched.
"You needn't call me Emperor. You're going to marry me in...what, two month's time? Is it even that, anymore?"
Kylo's eyes softened again, he saw it, even if just barely.
"Very well, then, Hux. Or...you have a given name, am I correct?"
Kylo turned calmly, stepping out of his own bedroom, and Hux, too, was suddenly aware of how unsightly the location was for the two of them to be caught in. He followed Kylo as he wandered casually out into his own home, which was, Hux had to remember, wildly unusual, for a queen to take such little space. Not even Hux's smallest chambers on his least used ship could have compared.
"I do, but quite like you, I do not use it often."
"Ah." Kylo waved a hand carelessly. "The name so many know me by is merely ceremonial. Formal, I suppose."
He descended once more into his living room, reclining in a separated part of the couch before his robe's hem had even slipped free of the steps.
Rather than sit so primly as always, however, he tucked his legs up into the chair with him, sideways, the robe draping over them.
Hux followed, though he had not been directly invited, but did not dare to ease back into the couch. It felt completely new, like it was never used, or at least not nearly often enough to show.
It was then that Hux noticed the fine layer of dust that coated most of the room; on the glass table, over the books, noticeable enough that it had to have been from at least a month, maybe longer.
There was no way the Queen did not have a housekeeper; was this not his main living space?
Kylo seemed to notice Hux's scrutinization of the state of the room, for he sighed calmly.
"I'm so busy these days that this space is hardly used for more than sleep and its routines. I rarely even have time to eat, some days."
Hux wanted to say something corroborative, some kind of I remember days like that, the politics take you out of your body, sometimes that's all a place can be good for, but, truthfully, he could say none of those things.
Politics in the First Order didn't exist, merely power, and anyone capable of conniving, blackmailing, or seeping their way into it. There were no long, stately dinners as lavish and utterly tasteless as Kylo had to have been trained to, no hours of customs training and dance practice, things Hux assumed Kylo had begun at just sixteen, if not even younger. When Hux was sixteen, this time of night, he was sleeping in barracks with hundreds of other troopers, most of them dead now, hearing the quiet fumbling of others, slipping into one another's bunks, quiet gasps they thought they could silence. Not even he was heartless enough to report them. Where was Kylo? In a suite likely much larger than this, much more glamour, finally closing the door on everything, to slide out of a headdress heavier than his skull, a dress with more gemstones than he could ever imagine existed, wipe clean a face with so much makeup he could forget who was underneath it. What did he listen to, when he tried to sleep, but the sound of his own restless breathing?
In all the time it took Hux to consider this, he realized he had yet to speak, and Kylo was watching him attentively. Listening, though nothing had yet been said.
"You know why I'm here, Kylo. What happened earlier?" Hux begged.
Kylo, again, looked away. He sighed gently.
Hux had somehow imagined this conversation as more intimate, somehow still imbalanced, sitting at his desk as he filed paperwork, his Queen sitting on a lush cushion on the floor, leaning his head against Hux's thigh, the Emperor's free hand tangled into the Queen's hair.
Darling, what's wrong?
I don't want to worry you. But I fear you are asking for information I don't have.
"If I could explain it to you, I would. I'd like you to believe me when I say that." Kylo finally spoke, powerless. "There are just some things that simply do not make sense."
Hux pursed his lips. It wasn't a good enough answer, and Kylo knew it.
But Kylo also knew that he didn't have to give a good enough answer, not when he was curled up late at night in his own home.
So Hux let it stand. He should have been thankful, he supposed, that Kylo had graced him with an answer at all, because even that, he had learned, he was not yet entitled to.
"We have yet to decide on where our shared living space will be." Hux finally stated, changing the subject.
It was a problem he had been facing off with on his own since the arrangement, anyway; the Queen of one government and the Emperor of another, where were they supposed to live together?
Kylo hummed, deep in his chest, like he was toying with the idea.
"I suppose we can't avoid the truth. We will definitely need to live with one another after the wedding."
"You sound unhappy with that." Hux noted, hoping the disappointment in his own voice wasn't too obvious. Kylo met his eye again, sleek, smart.
"I know that you feel the same way as I do about working at home. Having anyone at all over your shoulder is inconvenient, at best."
Hux bit his tongue, because it was totally true.
"Then we shall need separate offices, at least at first. You have no reason to worry about a budget or size; do not forget, my Queen, that you are a Queen. Your subjects would likely be horrified to discover that you live in a space so modest as this."
Hux gestured about them vaguely, catching the twitching lip of Kylo's smile.
Rather than play along, however, Kylo relaxed his head, back into his shoulder, no etiquette, no pretense, no fuss. He tucked his legs closer to himself, appearing rather small where he floated out from the red. Hux marveled at the silk that constituted modesty upon Kylo's frame; the only changes in uniform Hux had experienced in even the last two years were to the color white and to add a cape, yet Kylo seemed to have an entire room somewhere tucked away filled with nothing but lavish robes that were more expensive than many of the houses Hux knew his subjects to live in, and with a good amount more color.
Yet the way the Queen moved, with such practiced grace that had become natural, did what it was perhaps intended to, and Hux relaxed as well, leaning his shoulders into the couch and stretching his legs slightly forward. It was still a stiff position, polite, attentive, but Kylo did notice.
"I must say, I have one question that I should like to know the answer to. Before we are married, though of course it won't stop us from being married." Kylo began, and Hux understood.
This marriage would be another struggle for power, doubtlessly full of manipulations, any possible attempt to use the other man.
He looked forward to it.
"Anything you could possibly want to know, I will tell you." Hux bit back the my dear he was going to end with. Kylo hummed quietly.
"How loyal do you intend to stay to me? How exclusive, I should say." Kylo asked, like it was even a difficult question. Hux had to stop himself from answering on impulse, the question felt so easy to answer.
Look at you, even now, in the dead of night, exhausted and debauched and barely clothed, how could another being in this galaxy ever compare to you? How could I ever find someone more worthy of my time?
Kylo was watching, again, listening before anything had been said, eyes kinder than before. Tender, even.
"If I answer, then I get to ask you a question." Hux countered carefully.
Kylo laughed, a sweet laugh that was somehow genuine.
"Of course."
Hux took in a deep breath.
"Surprising as you may find it, I don't seek out partners often anyway, if at all. I can't tell you the last time I shared a bed with someone else...though I can promise it has happened. More than once."
Kylo was watching. Get to the point, his eyes said.
"But, Kylo, I can tell you that I have wanted you since the moment we met," Hux relished in the way his mouth felt to form those words, the surprise Kylo seemed to adopt. "And I could never bring myself to do anything to jeopardize losing you. Besides, once we are married, what could I ever gain from looking for another partner to chase down? I'll have already captured a Queen."
He ended with a dark smile, one that was matched, surprisingly, by Kylo.
"How curious that you managed to say so much without telling me anything at all." Kylo lilted.
Hux swallowed heavily.
"You're already everything I've ever wanted in a partner, Kylo Amidala. How could I ever so much as look at another person while I have you?" He finally admitted.
Much to his distress, Kylo laughed cruelly.
"Emperor, you've never even touched me! How could you know such a thing?"
Emperor, there it was again. He'd never felt someone else say it like that before Kylo.
"You said that if I answered your question, you would answer one for me." Hux continued.
"Yes." Kylo agreed, though the look in his eyes promised he hadn't forgotten his most recent question.
"May I touch you?" Hux asked, leaning forward.
Kylo's breath huffed out of his mouth all at once, shock and surprise widening his eyes before he reeled back into his diplomatic, unreadable state. Hux stood. Kylo's jaw tightened. His whole body tensed, actually. "You said yourself that I've yet to touch you, and it's a fair question, how I could know anything without having done so. So," Hux knelt down in front of Kylo's seat, leveling their eyes, "may I touch you?"
Kylo watched him without any hint of emotion.
"But you have touched me, Emperor. In fact, it was one of the very first things you ever did to me. Why would I want to risk being struck again?"
Hux's heart skipped.
They'd never discussed this, he wasn't sure what he was hoping for, that they never would, probably. Slowly, as he spoke, Hux removed his gloves.
"I would rather prefer to try again than let that stand as the only time I've made contact with your skin. Besides, with gloves, was that hardly a fair strike?"
He extended a bare, pale hand, holding his gloves.
He watched Kylo's eyes flicker down, and how cautiously he reached out and took the gloves in his own hand. As quickly as he could, Hux traced his thumb down Kylo's hand.
Kylo had yet to answer.
Hux reached out, just as cautiously as Kylo, and though Kylo watched his every move fervently, allowed Hux to rest his fingertips against his jaw.
Hux could feel Kylo's heart pounding through his body, rapid and shallow, and Hux swore he saw the flash of a butterfly on his cheek. Only for a second, though.
He held Kylo's face with his palm, watching, waiting for Kylo to make eye contact again.
He did, finally, those deep, almost-black-almost-red brown eyes wide. Kylo had yet to respond, but he timidly reached up and held Hux's wrist. His hand was stronger than Hux's, though it seemed more slender, and Hux felt his own pulse against Kylo's hand, sharp and heavy.
Hux leaned close carefully.
Kylo gasped almost-silently.
He pulled away.
His eyes fell, and he lifted Hux's hand from his face.
"Please go home, Emperor." Kylo murmured, lowering his eyes to the ground.
Hux did not move, not right away. Kylo extended his gloves, and silently, stunned, Hux reached out and took them back. He stood up straight, and not really knowing what else to do, stepped away.
"Call me Hux." He said, before turning away and leaving Kylo in silence.