"Why did you touch her?" Phasma asked in her dour voice the moment they stepped into the hallway after assessing the new arrivals.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Armitage snapped, hoping his tone would get her to drop it. He shrugged out of his heavy coat and gave it to an ensign. He'd recognized Beatrice from behind instantly; she would be unnerved by how he had studied her. There was art in her form and every line of her curved: elbow to wrist, knee to ankle, hip to waist to bust. He'd know her body from any angle.
"That MO. You touched her. Why?" He stared at Phasma, trying to force her to back down. He owed her no explanations. Particularly when he didn't know why he'd done it himself. Phasma wouldn't let it go, "It isn't the best time for a dalliance. You need to concentrate. She will make you vulnerable."
"You're being ridiculous."
"You are in a precarious position. You've just been elevated above Kylo Ren, and if you don't think he will be looking for a weakness, you are a fool. Everyone wants you to fail."
"You had better hope for your sake that I don't. You don't have many friends, either, Phasma."
Though he'd known her for years now, Phasma still seemed somehow other, like she didn't exist the same way that everyone else did. He'd never seen Phasma eat or sneeze. Holding herself with preternatural stillness, she considered him with the languid patience of a dragon. She had a habit of being able to stretch a silence to the point it was uncomfortable, given her inscrutable helmet.
"Be careful, Sir," she said finally, and her tone was resigned.
It was impossible to write a speech about order when his mind was in chaos. He leaned back in the desk chair and spun the pencil around his thumb, a schoolboy trick he did unconsciously when he was trying to force himself to concentrate. He looked out the window at the snow, black coniferous trees and the grey-white clouds that undulated in lines like waves. Even though it was overcast, there was enough of the silvery light that he didn't need to turn on the overheads yet.
The rooms where he worked had been finished just that morning and still smelled of sawdust and plaster. It was a basic officer's quarters, but he was grateful he wouldn't have to suffer through another night on the camp bed. Construction was speeding along, and the essentials were all almost completed. His engineers had told him the base would be fit for action within the week. He put the speech down for now and leafed through a folio of intelligence reports. The Falcon had not yet been found. He rolled his eyes at one report about some drunken gunslinger purporting to know the location of Skywalker. Fairy stories. He set that one aside because he knew it would aggravate Ren and he checked his wristwatch again. He had told her where to find his quarters. It was not a summons but an invitation. It was a test to see if she would come to him. He spun the pencil again and returned to the speech, his ear trained to the door. He wrote four or five sentences that all said the same thing using different words. He crossed them out.
He heard her knock and knew with certainty that the soft tapping could only be her.
"Come in, it isn't locked," he said and to his great embarrassment his voice sounded creaky and high, like a teenager's. She opened the door and he wasn't sure how he had crossed the floor to her so quickly. One moment he stood near his desk, and the next moment he was tangled in her, his arms around her, his cheek pressed against her dark hair. There should have been a pause, a mutual gauging of receptiveness, a moment of caution. Instead, there was only Beatrice and his need to touch her, her presence enveloping him. They swayed where they stood.
She pulled back just a little to look at him, her arms locked firmly around his middle. Her lips quirked up in that unconscious smile of hers. He couldn't stop looking at her mouth in an unfocused way, for once his sight not his only useful sense, his brain slow to process her touch, the susurrus of her breath, that vaguely familiar, spicy scent. Her hands shifted from his back to his chest, whispering up over the black fabric of his uniform to rest on his shoulders in a way that gave him chills.
She looked up at him from heavily lidded eyes, her dark lashes lowering as his face fell closer and closer to hers. Sight was distracting now. He shut his eyes, at the mercy of darkness.
Their lips met. There was a momentary, shaky hesitation, a millimeter of distance given before they kissed again and Armitage gave in to his desire with abandon. Finally. Absurdly he wanted her hair down; his fingers brushed the plastic hair clasp and he wanted to tear it out but he didn't, afraid that any sudden movement would make her realize what she was doing and stop. Her hand rested on the back of his neck, her fingers wove in his hair. She gave a little throaty moan in response to his kissing. And in that moment, he would have lit the whole thing on fire for her.
"It was only a day, but I missed you," she laughed softly as she drew away.
It was too much. Overwhelmed, he pulled out of her arms. He had been about to do something stupid, because he was at his core a very stupid creature and not someone who deserved to be missed. She needed to be saved from her mistake.
"Leave," he ordered and turned away.
He'd felt truly seen under the brilliance of her gaze, but he realized that the rot in him went too deep for her to reach. He polluted her with his touch. If she could have seen him when his father shoved him in the trash chute, she'd wrinkle her nose in disgust, she would spit the taste of him out of her mouth. A grown man, he couldn't sleep without a light on, in terror that he would awaken to the sounds of the chute doors opening, sucking him into the cold vacuum of space. He hadn't been in there long, probably, when his father released him. Armitage had cried in relief, stumbling over the offal and crawling into the main cabin where his cheek had met with his father's boot because he was an overreacting coward. She deserved a man, not a piece of garbage.
"You are dismissed." Keeping his voice level was challenging. She hadn't left, he could feel her watchful presence behind him. He had just kissed her with the same tongue that had lapped spilled vodka off of the floor. Repulsive. He was pathetic. the lowest worm. Was she waiting to see how deeply he would embarrass himself? So she could go back to that handsome MO she seemed so close to, so that they could laugh at his expense?
"No," she said.
"I am ordering you to go!" he shouted.
"The doors are shut," she said quietly, "You don't get to give me orders when the doors are shut. That was our agreement."
"I don't own you an explanation. Just go," he spat through clenched teeth.
"I don't think you're-"
"You don't know me as well as you think you do," he snarled. He would show her how unworthy he was of her affection. It was better this way; he was actually protecting her. He loomed over her to make this as unpleasant as possible, to drive her away.
"I killed my father."
Her eyes widened, a shot finally hit its mark, and he felt a sort of triumph that she saw him as a dangerous. In numbering his father's death as the first of his sins, he won, he spat in the face of Brendol Hux. No matter what else Bea learned about Brendol, the first thing she knew about him was that he had been bested by his son. It didn't seem like that though. Armitage still woke at night to the echoes of his father screaming his name and he still panicked in total darkness, hands fumbling for the light. Enough of that. He and Phasma together had exterminated that roach, and he was no more.
Unbelievably, Bea still hadn't made for the door. That he'd ordered his father's murder wasn't enough. She'd crossed her arms, her lips a thin line, and she looked at him the same way she had when he couldn't breathe, like she could see the boot prints on his face, the belt straps on the backs of his knees.
He told her he was spineless, he told her he was weak, he told her he was a coward, but his words hit her and did nothing; she was like stone. He hurled a glass against the wall and called her a bloodless Alcean for standing there unmoving as he raged around her. She winced as the glass shattered but continued to wait. He sat on the couch and covered his face with his hands. He expected that after he recounted this humiliation, when he looked up again, she would be gone. One debasement, and it would all be over.
As cadets, they had to do rotations serving the senior officials drinks and meals. He usually contrived not to have to serve his father, but that day he'd gotten unlucky. At twelve, Armitage was one of the smaller cadets and there was something about his slightness that made everyone want to push him into a wall. But his feet were big; he was constantly tripping over them. As he entered into the room where his father was meeting Admiral Brooks, he stumbled and the cups tottered off of the tray, bouncing to the floor. His father had sworn at him, called him useless. Brooks had mean little eyes set deep in his head, and he'd made a quip to the effect that Armitage wasn't even fit for the kitchens where he'd been pupped. Armitage looked pleadingly at his father, because that couldn't be true, could it? It was alright for his teachers to say he was useless, because that was their job, and it was alright for Brendol to say he was useless because Brendol was his father. But surely he would defend his son against this pig-faced stranger? Brendol looked away from him, as though tearing the name Hux from the stain of his son. Well, boy, don't let good vodka go to waste. Clean it up! Brooks ordered him to his knees, and still his father looked away, as though he wasn't even there. He made no move to save Armitage. Perhaps he deserved to be shamed this way? Get on with it! He'd asked for a rag. Use your tongue. I bet your mother was good at using hers.
Because he was on his hands and knees, he didn't see that his father meant to kick him until his boot met with Armitage's stomach and knocked the breath from him. Brendol hadn't let up. He'd curled on the ground, his hands around his head as his father repeatedly kicked him in the back.
Armitage got lost there, still frozen in the eternal moments between kicks, the memory of vodka and floor cleaner harsh in his mouth. He'd wished for death then, that his father would just finally make an end to it. He hadn't, afterwards Brendol had taken him to the infirmary and said that he fell down the stairs because he was so clumsy. Armitage wasn't aware that he had fallen silent before Beatrice; he didn't know when he had stopped talking.
She sat next to him and prised his hands from his face, cradling them in her palms like they were something precious. It brought him back. He wasn't locked in a trash chute, he wasn't being beaten on the floor.
"I'm still here."
"Beatrice," he said as though her name were painful. He pulled his hands away and covered his face.