Chapter Text
“General…”
Hux paused with one foot on the shuttle ramp. He didn’t quite smirk, because there were already three troopers waiting for him inside the shuttle and he didn’t want to give them any ideas, but it was a near thing. When Kylo started speaking with audible ellipses, Hux’s day was invariably about to improve.
He pivoted on one heel, locking his hands neatly in the small of his back. “Ren?”
Kylo was shrouded head to foot, mask shiny and cowl carefully layered around it, like he’d spent ten minutes fiddling at it in front of a mirror. Hux took him in head to toe, and didn’t miss the way Kylo’s fists were curled at his sides and his feet were at angles to one another, rather than firmly planted.
Kylo’s gloves creaked as his fists tightened. “A word.” His voice was low, the mask’s distortion nearly obliterating it altogether.
Hux’s mouth tried to smirk again, but he overcame it. “I’m afraid I’m already running behind schedule, Ren. Perhaps you could discuss this with me over the appropriate channels while I am en route.” He shifted to turn back to the shuttle, and was rewarded by Kylo lurching a step toward him, automatic. Desperate.
Hux hesitated, lifting a brow, as though taken aback. The set of Kylo’s shoulders was nothing short of mortified. “Please,” he said quietly, like he was speaking through ground glass. “In private. A word.”
Hux watched him for a long moment, enjoying himself. He sighed. “Well, if it’s really that important.” He stepped down off the ramp and crooked a finger, beckoning Kylo after him. Kylo’s boots thumped the decking as he followed, but for once he hung back at Hux’s heels, rather than insisting on being at Hux’s side. Hux briefly considered forcing Kylo to speak to him in the crowded docking bay, for maximum discomfiture, but he hadn’t been lying about running behind schedule; Kylo had left this conversation much longer than Hux had expected him to.
They went out through a small side door and into a relatively private hallway. There were troopers twenty feet away, but they were otherwise occupied and knew better than to eavesdrop on the business of superiors.
He turned to Kylo, smiling as pleasantly as he knew how. “How may I help you, Ren?”
Kylo said nothing for an instant, just breathing hard through the mask’s faint electronic rasp. The length of his body was tense as a wound spring, nearly trembling. “You can’t leave me like this,” he said at last.
Hux let his smirk happen this time, unfurling slow and sly as a carnivorous flower at dusk. “Why, Ren,” he murmured. “I had no idea--”
Kylo cut a hand through the air. “You know what I mean.” He took a step forward, this time deliberately. Hux didn’t bother squaring his own shoulders in response; of the two of them, Kylo was the one at a disadvantage and they both knew it. “You can’t leave me in this state.”
Hux felt his smirk spread even wider. “Can I not?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Hux laughed. He couldn’t help it. Kylo sounded so petulant, so sure of himself. “If there is one thing I do not lack, Ren, it is daring.”
Kylo took another step, and although they were naturally of a height, his boots and helmet brought him two inches taller than Hux. Kylo was adept at looming; Hux was sure he perfected that in the mirror, too. His breath hissed through the grating of the mask, pneumatic and scented with leather, when he said, “Take it off. Or give me the key. I won’t stand for this.”
It was too far. Too close to a demand, the sort of thing Kylo was expressly forbidden to do in private. Hux’s hand shot out and grabbed him between the legs. The cage was hard beneath the layers of Kylo’s robes, large and cruel enough that it didn’t fit quite properly into Hux’s palm, but he gave it a hard yank anyway. Kylo yelped, which was ridiculous in general but especially so through the mask, and buckled. Hux shook the cage, his other hand still tucked neatly behind his back, as Kylo folded around the assault. His shoulders hunched, and he grabbed Hux’s arm, but he didn’t try to pull away. He knew better.
“ This ,” Hux said, leaning in so he could spit it low and sharp near Kylo’s head, “is my property. You don’t tell me when to unlock it or remove it. It stays where it is, because that’s where I want it to be. Comply, or you will dislike the consequences. Do I make myself clear?”
Kylo made a noise like a sob, his fingers twisted in Hux’s sleeve. He was probably dripping wet under his robes, flushed and swollen from the weight of the cage swinging between his thighs all day, and Hux knew better than anyone how a little rough handling could turn him spineless as a doll. He shook the cage again. “I said, do I make myself clear?”
Kylo’s breath hitched. “A month ,” he gasped. “Hux, a month --”
Hux snorted. “A month is nothing. This is not suffering, Ren. You have never known suffering. Speak to me again when you have completed three years of Imperial brute training, or spent eight months in a prisoner’s camp, or had a limb torn off and devoured before your eyes by a pack of gurrecks.” Hux stomped his left foot for emphasis. The prosthetic was immaculately designed and felt and looked nearly natural, but he enjoyed bringing it up occasionally to make Kylo squirm. Which he was doing now, although possibly for other reasons. “A month of denying your frankly appalling baser instincts will do you no harm, and in fact may do you some good.”
All the same, he gentled his touch just a bit, and rolled the cage, hefting it twice. Even through the robes, he felt Kylo’s cock jerk inside it. “This willful creature could stand a little taming, don’t you think?”
Kylo groaned, and his forehead dropped onto Hux’s arm. It was a lovely view, truth be told, Kylo bent nearly double in front of him (although facing an unusual way), his shoulders quaking and the stretch of his back entirely vulnerable. If Hux were so inclined, he might call it endearing. Appealing, certainly.
Perhaps that was why his voice came out softer than he intended when he said, “I’m already leaving you my ship, isn’t that enough?”
Kylo lifted his head. Hux couldn’t, of course, see his eyes through the mask, but he knew all the same how Kylo was looking at him. Watery-eyed, a little confused, beseeching. The same way he looked when Hux called him across the room for attention, but made him crawl the whole way.
“I’m coming back,” Hux said, although obviously that went without saying. “I have no doubt you will destroy many of my things in my absence, so let’s not add this to the list, hmm?” He gave the cage another little tug to illustrate, and let go.
Kylo stayed bowed for a lengthy moment, collecting himself, and then slowly straightened. A noise suspiciously like a sniffle came through the mask. He shook himself, and set his robes to rights. His feet shifted gingerly into a wide stance on the deck. “A month ,” he said again, but quietly, as though to himself.
Hux linked his hands together behind his back once more. “Of course,” he said, “the key is not the only way to free you. You possess a power greater than that, don’t you?” He arched a brow. “Surely someone as skilled as yourself in the ways of the Force would have no trouble overcoming paltry iron and locks?”
Kylo stared back at him, silent. Hux could nearly see the wheels spinning behind that ridiculous grill of metal.
“However,” he continued, sparing Kylo from exhausting his three functioning brain cells, “I think we both know how unpleasantly that would end for you.” He clicked his heels on the floor and nodded a quick, formal bow. “As always, Ren, I trust that your fine tactical mind and admirable self-control will win the day. If you’ll excuse me, I do in fact have a schedule to keep.”
He stepped around Kylo and headed back through the door into the hangar, spine straight and head high, despite the raging erection threatening to disrupt the line of his pants. No reason to start submitting to the whims of his body, now. After all, he had an entire month of suffering to prepare for.