Chapter Text
Hux can feel the piece of flimsi flexing under his glove as he storms into Ren’s chambers. “What,” he spits, “the pfassk is this—thing—you filed?”
Ren looks up at him blandly, blinking those too-soft eyes back at him. “It’s a requisition, Grand Marshal,” he says.
“For a sex worker.”
Ren just watches him.
(Hux hates it. Hates how even under the new Supreme Leader’s eyes, he still feels like a bug. He’d known Snoke had despised him, and it didn’t matter, because Hux got results and the results were the important part—but fuck if it doesn’t hurt a bit coming from Ren, who’d come to the First Order as a blood-soaked mess who hadn’t even wiped the viscera off his face until Hux had given him a cloth.)
Hux tries again. “This form isn’t part of the official First Order—”
“It is now,” Ren interrupts. He gestures vaguely with his hand, and the flimsi clenched in Hux’s fist glows at the bottom, the footnote highlighted. “You’ll note the original Empire documentation it was adapted from has been cited at the bottom, as is proper First Order procedure.”
“This isn’t—”
“It is,” Ren insists. “Palpatine used these documents. So did Vader. The forms are all in the Empire archives.” He sets his jaw, scar shifting on his cheek. “Or weren’t you aware of that?”
Hux glares at him, and then opens his gloved hand, lets the flimsi fall. Turns sharply before it hits the ground, storms right back out of Ren’s chambers.
It doesn’t matter, of course. It’s not like Hux needed to sign off on the karking thing. It had passed his desk as a courtesy, same as every other piece of paperwork. Hux isn’t required to do anything about it, he just likes to know what the kriff is going on. Something about this stings, though. It’s…insulting, to be subjected to Ren’s personal paperwork.
Certainly, Hux had gotten the title he wanted, but Ren is irritatingly competent as Supreme Leader. Hux isn’t a fool—he’d realized early on that his review wasn’t necessary, but saying so would have been a stamp of approval on Ren’s leadership that he is unwilling to give, and so Hux continues to read over documentation that doesn’t require his input, his signature, or his corrections. Documentation that is a waste of Hux’s time, but he’s trapped himself in this, and there’s no way out now.
(Ren was right, Hux learns, about the archives. He hadn’t known—there were entire sections of the archives that Brendol had deemed unimportant, and they’d been shuffled into a tertiary backup—but the moment Hux pecks the form number into the search index, the system finds not only the template Ren had adapted, but every single instance of the paperwork that had been filed under the Empire. It wasn’t just Palpatine and Vader, either. There are copies of the form labelled with Krennic, O; with Tarkin, W; Sloane, R; and Hux, B.
(He closes the archives without pulling up any of the files, cold sweat prickling on his back.
(It doesn’t matter.
(It doesn’t matter at all.)
“I’ve taken your objections about the requisition into consideration,” Ren says later that week.
It’s a rare occurrence, but they’re in Hux’s chambers this time, with Ren lounged out on Hux’s couch like he belongs there. His knees are splayed wide and his gloves off, as he idly swirls the liquid in his glass with the Force while Hux resists the temptation to lean back against his desk. It’s 0400 hours, and his back is killing him, palms sweating in his gloves, but this is a business meeting, and Hux will give Ren nothing.
“I didn’t make any objections,” Hux says. There it goes again—his shoulder twitches under his greatcoat, a symptom of the stress he’s been under. It’s the only reason he still has his greatcoat on even though they’re in his chambers, and it’s long past the time when he should have taken the karking thing off. “Formal or otherwise.”
Ren grins coldly at him, idly gestures at his own temples. “You’ve been thinking.”
What Hux has been thinking is none of Ren’s business, and never has been. “By all means, advise me of my…what I’ve been thinking.”
(He’d almost said something about secret desires, but he doesn’t want to imply to Ren that he has any. He shouldn’t. This is the career he’s wanted since he was a child, the title that Snoke wouldn’t give him, the prestige and power in an organization he has believed in since the very first time Rae Sloane put her hand on his shoulder and he knew what true power was.)
“No need,” Ren says dismissively. The whiskey Hux had grudgingly poured for him spirals up out of the glass to form a replica of Starkiller, and then just as quickly dissolves back into a liquid, continues swirling up and around the sides of the glass as though gravity is not applicable within the confines of its walls. “You were right.”
Hux exhales, relaxes infinitesimally under the greatcoat before another twinge up his spine causes him to straighten again. “I’ll have a slicer wipe the—”
“It is a security risk,” Ren continues. He makes a gesture as though he’s sliding something through the air toward Hux, and on cue, Hux feels his datapad vibrate in the pocket of his greatcoat. “I’ve filed a request for an additional security detail—a squad of special ops to be stationed immediately outside the door, and one individual to watch my encounter on the security cameras. I’d thought to use a droid, but have included a non-disclosure agreement if it’s assessed to be better with a human observer.” He shrugs one massive shoulder. “Ethics didn’t seem to care much either way.” An odd expression crosses his face, twisting his scar for a moment as he frowns. “I think they thought me paranoid, actually. We’ve been under contract with the same sex worker agency since the beginning, and the number of incidents is so infinitesimally small as to be statistically insignificant.”
Hux stares at him. “You’re going through with it.”
“Of course,” Ren says. “Why wouldn’t I?” He tilts his head, stares at Hux a moment before smiling.
(It doesn’t reach his eyes. It hasn’t in years. Not since…before Starkiller, at least. There was a moment, after Crait—Ren had come to him at 0500, a sleepless, red-eyed mess, babbling about apologies and confusion in his mind, and spaces where Snoke used to be. Hux had slapped him across the face, told him to pull himself together. The next day, Ren had himself again, and they hadn’t needed to discuss anything that happened, because there was nothing to discuss. There was only the revelation that Ren was just as good a fit in the First Order as he’d always claimed he was, back when he was too soft and went red in the face when he was scolded, back when he’d looked to Hux for guidance. Back when he could have passed for any other Outer Rim trash that Hux might have liked to fuck on his off-hours, outside of the organization where nobody would have needed to know about it, and there wouldn’t have been any paperwork.)
“Why not indeed,” Hux says tightly. His back is aching, and it’s a monumental effort not to glance at the bedside table, at the myocaine he keeps there so he’s got a chance in hell of sleeping. The sooner the Supreme Leader leaves, the sooner Hux can shower and lie down, stare at the ceiling until the meds put him under. Maybe he’ll take them before the shower, put himself to bed in a haze. Anything to get the pain lancing up his back to just settle, just for a little bit, because between his spine and his pending migraine, he feels like some kind of a mannequin, standing here waiting for orders from—
“I’ll take my leave,” Ren says abruptly, standing in a swoosh of black robes, and calling his gloves back to his extended hand. “I’ve scheduled the requisition—”
The sex worker, Hux thinks bitterly.
“—for two days from now. I’ll block the time period off on my calendar, but as always, I’m otherwise available should anything come to your attention that would benefit from mine.”
Hux nods. He should step to the side, put his hands behind his back, every inch the proper Grand Marshal, but his back is a half-second away from locking up, and so he stays where he is, resting just barely against his own desk and bracing himself that way, inhales and holds it so that he doesn’t have to smell Ren as he passes. There’s no reason for Ren to pause as he passes Hux. There’s no reason for Ren’s fingers to press against the back of Hux’s greatcoat, but Hux keeps staring forward, and after a moment, the pressure lessens and he hears the beep of his door as it slides open at Ren’s command.
He waits until the door closes before he moves, begins his end-of-day routine. He is half-asleep before he realizes that he didn’t take anything before bed—and he doesn’t feel like he needs to, either.
It’s the strangest thing.
He glances over Ren’s requisition the following day as he waits for his tea to steep. It’s for the best that he never eats anything in the mornings, because his stomach twists as he reads through a list of Ren’s sexual preferences—or lack thereof.
From what he can tell, all Ren is looking for is a man willing to top him. There is no age range specified, no physical appearance requirements. No kinks listed. The section for additional information contains only a note that the session will be observed for security reasons, and a link to an attached non-disclosure agreement. It would look desperate if it weren’t for the fact that Ren apparently has the time and inclination to fill out a form for this instead of just—finding a trooper, getting fucked, and filing the paperwork afterwards, so that the liaison exists forever in the computer systems of the First Order. Or, failing that, doing whatever it is that other personnel normally do. Shore leave, likely. It’s what Hux used to do.
But this form—it’s a vulnerability that Ren apparently doesn’t care about exposing to Hux, and it makes Hux wonder about how Ren would look, during. Whether he would prefer to lie on his back, or if he’d be on all fours instead, exposed and vulnerable as some anonymous sex worker fucks him and he thrusts back into it.
It’s a visual that Hux doesn’t need.
(His tea ends up oversteeped, bitter as the bile at the back of his throat.)
Hux sits on the request for an observer for twenty-four hours, and then sends it back into the pool for someone else to pick up.
(If Ren thought it needed to be him, Ren would have asked.)
His backache has returned, and he skips his evening shower in favour of meds and an early bedtime. He’s just about to fall asleep when he realizes that Ren’s appointment should be occurring now—and then it’s like the drugs leave his system completely, and he lies in bed awake, staring at his ceiling, his back a dull ache and his stomach twisting.
Hux shows up at their morning meeting exactly on time, even though he fully expects Ren to skip it. The meeting is in Ren’s chambers, and Hux halfway expects them to reek of sex—but there’s nothing there except recirculated air, and the scent of tarine tea, which is the first thing that day which has managed to cut through Hux’s headache. He blinks, stands in the entrance trying to figure out—
“Hux,” Ren says, sweeping into the front room from the bedchambers beyond.
He doesn’t smell like sex either, doesn’t even have the nerve to have damp hair—from all Hux can tell, Ren has been up for hours, dressed and blowdried and otherwise perfectly groomed, with absolutely no indication that he’d spent last night getting fucked in a number of ways Hux cannot even begin to imagine.
“Supreme Leader.” Hux’s voice is gritty, and he flinches as it scrapes out of his throat. He should have had tea in his own chambers to straighten his voice out, but he hadn’t, and now he’s the one who sounds as though he’d spent the entire evening with a cock down his throat, whereas Ren sounds just as high-born as he usually does.
(Ren is wearing some kind of a formal robe with a deep vee in the neckline this morning, exposing more of his neck and his collarbones than what Hux is used to seeing. His skin is unblemished but for the moles scattered across his body like constellations.)
Ren gestures vaguely. The holoprojector lights up, navigating itself through a series of commands as though it’s responding to Ren’s thoughts, which it probably is. “Tea?”
“Please,” Hux murmurs. Winces. He hates that please is the word that came out of his mouth. Hates that he’s taking off his gloves and tucking them in his pocket even though he doesn’t need to, even though he can work his datapad with the gloves on.
Hates that the tea is steeped perfectly, tastes wonderful.
(Hates that the brush of Ren’s bare fingers against Hux’s hand when he handed him the glass had greater curative powers than the tea.)
The next requisition is in his inbox at the end of the day. Hux glances at it, and then down at the signature to confirm it’s one of Ren’s. Then he pushes it aside, deals with everything else on his desk. Tucks the flimsi into his greatcoat as he leaves his office for the day, heads back to his chambers. Pours himself a glass of whiskey, changes out of his uniform into his silk robe. Sits down on the couch, and spends half an hour petting his cat, ignoring the piece of flimsi until the whiskey has warmed his stomach, and Millicent has fallen asleep next to him.
It’s a lot of buildup for nothing. The requisition is exactly the same as the last one, just on a shorter time frame—a generic request for a male sex worker to top the Supreme Leader the following evening. No physical requirements selected. No kinks or fetishes checked off. The observer request form is still required, so apparently Ren hasn’t given up on that particular piece of pageantry, and the non-disclosure agreement for the observer is attached, just the same as the last one.
Hux scowls, finishes his drink, and leaves the flimsi on the couch when he goes to bed.
He’ll put the observer requisition into the pool tomorrow morning.
Hux spends the next day on the bridge surreptitiously checking his datapad, waiting for the observer task to be picked up—which it is, almost immediately.
Then he spends the rest of the day watching all his crew members on the bridge, trying to determine if one of them is the one who has picked up the Supreme Leader’s request. He has a good eye for people, and keen observation skills, and he can’t see anything different among any of the people working on the bridge. No signs of anticipation, nobody on edge. Hux doesn’t even sense any changes when Ren himself sweeps onto the bridge later, spends an hour just hovering there, splitting his time between watching everyone down in the pit, and watching the TIE formations outside the observer deck.
(He doesn’t stop to talk to Hux, only glances bare-faced in his direction, and then turns and swoops out back to—wherever he needs to go prior to his appointment. To do whatever kind of preparation Ren usually does for these sorts of things.)
Hux stays on the bridge past the point where his shift has ended. No one leaves the bridge early on assignment, and no one has called off for the bridge shift that follows.
He has a screaming migraine when he goes to bed that night, bad enough that he lets Millicent up on the bed even though she knows she’s to sleep in her own bed rather than his.
Ren is just the same at their morning meeting. He’s brewed Hux’s tea in advance, but Hux keeps his gloves on this time, so Ren’s bare fingers brush the leather, and Hux’s headache does not diminish, not even after his third cup.
There’s no evidence that any of this is changing Ren, or helping him, or improving him. By all accounts, it’s a useless expense.
“Paperwork from last night,” Ren murmurs, handing over a stack of flimsi.
“Did the droids not pick this up at midnight?”
“Yes,” Ren says. “This is the paperwork I finished afterwards. I’m in meetings much of the morning, I didn’t want to delay your review.”
“Ah,” Hux says, the words sticking in his throat. He closes his gloved hand over the flimsi. It’s too thick a stack for him to be able to slide into the pocket of his greatcoat, and he’s stuck with holding it. “Thank you.”
Ren’s mouth twitches, but there’s nothing more that comes out. After a moment of silence, Hux turns on his heel and leaves Ren’s chambers.
True to his word, Ren’s calendar is full. Hux doesn’t see him for the rest of the day.
The requisition tucked into the midst of the paperwork that Ren completed last night—after his appointment, apparently—is exactly the same as the previous requisitions.
Hux scowls at it.
It’s not working. There’s absolutely no way it’s working, because if it was working, Ren wouldn’t be requisitioning sex workers so often. He wouldn’t be filling out the same bland requisition forms, he would have some sense of—his own preferences, what he wants, what he needs, what gets him off.
The form in front of Hux, just like all the other forms, is the requisition form of an absolute virgin, who has no fucking idea what he’s after, or what would satisfy him.
Hux frowns, files the requisition, and stares at the observer request for a long time before sending it into the pool.
Five minutes later, he puts down his cup of tea mid-sip, opens up the work pool, and assigns the observer request to himself.
“Thank you, Supreme Leader,” Hux says. He nods sharply, even though it sends a jolt of pain down his spine, and leans forward to de-activate the holocall. “Well?” he asks, turning. “At ease, everyone—and back to work.” He waits another moment until the bridge settles down into its regular routine, and then slowly walks to the railing, where at least he can lean on it, take some of the pressure from his back that way.
Irritatingly, as soon as he settles into a position that’s marginally less painful, his datapad goes off.
It’s a message from Ren, which is odd, because as much as Hux hates to admit it, it’s not like Ren to forget something—and it’s not like him not to call back immediately if he had.
Hux reads the message, squints, and reads it again.
Supreme Leader Ren: Are you alright?
Grand Marshal Hux: Excuse me?
He watches the datapad, the little indicator that Ren is typing flashing for a few moments before the next message surfaces.
Supreme Leader Ren: It ’s not perceptible to anyone else, but I thought you looked unwell on our call just now. I didn’t want to bring attention to it. But I’m concerned.
Hux weighs his options. Under Snoke, he would have denied it, just the same as he denied it under Rae Sloane, and before that, under Brendol.
But none of them had the Force.
(Well, Snoke did, but Hux never saw any evidence of him using it for something as petty as checking on someone’s health the way he knows Ren does. If there’s an opportunity for Ren to be intrusive about it, he’ll take that opportunity, every single time, and lying about it now is guaranteed to get those ice-cold fingers right down the inside of Hux’s skull at their next in-person meeting—which, irritatingly, is scheduled for tomorrow morning, because stars forbid Ren goes one karking day without rubbing it in that now that he has a Grand Marshal, he actually doesn’t need one.)
Supreme Leader Ren: You have sick leave, Grand Marshal. I won’t be personally offended if you take it.
Hux takes a deep breath, prepares a scathing retort—but his breath catches in his chest, something twinges in his spine, and he grips the railing rather harder than he’d intended to as his vision goes grey momentarily. When his vision clears, he looks down at his datapad.
Supreme Leader Ren: Let me know if you want me to reschedule tomorrow morning’s meeting, Grand Marshal. I’ll speak to you then.
So he’s dismissed, then. He’s dismissed, and he cannot even find the energy to object.
He opts not to reply, but accesses his profile to mark himself as unavailable for the remainder of his shift, knowing perfectly well that the status update will immediately alert Ren. There’s no need to say anything other than that.
(He certainly won’t say thank you, because Ren’s intrusion was neither needed nor wanted.)
It takes only a moment to hand the bridge over, and walk back to his chambers, careful of his posture and his back. When he gets into the safety of his rooms, he allows himself to set his greatcoat down on his desk, rather than hang it up, and then go immediately to his bed, lie down without even taking his boots off.
He doses himself with myocaine, closes his eyes, and focuses on breathing.
A few hours later, he’s feeling well enough to pick up his datapad again, sort through any messages he missed. He’s feeling well enough that he could go back to the bridge—certainly, it would look better for him if he did—but there’s no benefit to it, really, because Ren is due back before the end of his shift, and Hux isn’t particularly interested in having an in-person altercation with Ren in front of everyone else, particularly when he still feels if he moves wrong, it’s likely to show on his face, and then Ren would never let him live it down.
There’s still a section of blocked-off time on his calendar.
Hux frowns at it. His meetings should have been automatically rescheduled when his status changed, and he taps the meeting in order to manually—
—it’s the observer assignment. A special assignment, so of course it wouldn’t have been modified by his status change, of course it wouldn’t have been rescheduled, and he’ll have to do that manually, or send in a droid—
—and he realizes that he has no intention of doing any such thing.
Sighing, he reaches over to his endtable, thumbs through his collection of meds, and pulls out three stims. One to hasten the speed of the muscle relaxant that he’s already taken, another to act as a slow-release painkiller, and a third, a low-grade stimulant that won’t interact poorly with the slow-release. He rolls the sleeve of his tunic up and injects the first into his system, cringing as the chill from the fluid goes through his veins and the pain from his spine starts to come back.
He checks the chronometer.
If he forces himself out of bed now, runs a bath, he can lay in hot water while the original painkiller works its way out of his system, and then stay there until it’s time to take the slow-release. The stimulant he’ll tuck into his pocket, take it with him in case he needs it to stay awake during the observer shift.
Dealing with Ren’s paranoia seems like the furthest thing from important right now—but Hux is just high enough to admit to a certain level of professional curiosity about just how bad this is for Ren that he keeps filling out the same ridiculous form, and getting unsatisfying results.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, Hux thinks as he carefully sits up, and starts the slow process of moving across his room into the refresher.
The water is so warm his skin goes red instantly. The pain of adjusting to it blanks out the pain in his spine for a moment, and it’s perfect. He lies there, completely naked, legs fully extended, the jets pulsing hard at his back, and counts his breaths while he waits for—
—ah, there, the back pain has returned.
Hux checks the chrono, and nudges the floating projector for his datapad, gesturing it into life as it floats on the surface of his bath, projecting its image up above the water. He has enough time to go through his inbox, but knows he shouldn’t, and he’s just contemplating beginning to sort through his holograms of Millicent to select the best ones when there’s a small flashing alert at the corner of his screen.
He glances up, grimaces.
Special assignment commencing in one hour…
As if he would forget.
He thumbs the alert irritably, meaning to dismiss it entirely, but his finger twitches as it passes over the image. This technology was never meant for baths quite as hot as this, and instead of being dismissed, the alert expands to fill the screen, providing information on what’s required of him (observation of an encounter between Supreme Leader Ren and an external contractor denoted by a generic string of letters and numbers), where he is required to be (security room A3057, 1950 hours, identification required), and, horrifyingly, a link to the security feeds from previous encounters.
This time, Hux’s finger doesn’t slip. He deliberately opens the link, because there’s no way he’s going into this assignment cold. If there’s some kind of Republican…deviancy to occur tonight, Hux would really rather know about it in advance.
As the video loads, Hux settles back into his bath, gets his cup of tarine tea.
It’ll be good blackmail material to have this on Ren, he thinks.
After all, it’s what Ren would do to him.
There is no Republican deviancy on the security footage.
There isn’t even any First Order deviancy.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Supreme Leader of the First Order was on all fours on a narrow bed while a naked man ploughed into him from behind, Hux wouldn’t have thought anything untoward was happening in the video.
Ren is still dressed, for pfassk’s sake. He’s wearing loose black robes that cover him from neck to wrist to ankle, the excess fabric gathered up at the small of his back to allow the sex worker access. There’s enough excess fabric that it pools around his legs, covering them completely. Hux has a full view of Ren from the side, but the question of whether or not Ren is even aroused is entirely unanswerable, because his genitals are hidden by the drape of his robe, his face is hidden by the loose waves of his hair, and both his hands are relaxed on the bed as he supports himself.
The volume on the video is turned as loud as it can be, and the only noise in the room is breathing—and neither the sex worker nor Ren are out of breath. The sex worker is very fit—his abs are visible, pert ass tightening as he thrusts into Ren. Nice biceps, strong thighs. Ren—well, Hux wouldn’t be surprised if Ren were meditating, because he looks completely disengaged.
No wonder he keeps rebooking, Hux thinks sourly. It’s a wonder he’s even able to—
—on the security footage, Ren’s breath catches, and his body goes tense, hands clenching into fists.
Hux glances at the timestamp. It’s been exactly thirty minutes of fucking, and Ren appears to have come untouched.
The sex worker rubs his thumb across Ren’s back in a motion so small it’s nearly imperceptible, and then starts to pull away, before Ren brings his hand back, catches the sex worker’s wrist.
“Go ahead,” Ren says, voice graveled and low. “Finish what you started.”
The sex worker says something in a language Hux doesn’t recognize, and Ren moves his hand, puts it back down on the bed again. Hux speeds up the recording, watches the sex worker finish fucking Ren at double-speed, watches him pull out and remove the filled condom and dispose of it. Watches his lips move as he speaks with Ren afterwards. Slows the footage down to normal speed to watch Ren stand up from the bed, robes immediately falling into place around him. Pauses the video when Ren brings up his hand to brush his hair back from his face.
Ren’s face is the face of someone who has just concluded a stressful meeting.
It’s not the face of someone who has been satisfactorily fucked.
Hux sighs, cues up the next video. Skims his way through that, taking a few extra moments to admire the sex worker—this one is bigger, with light brown hair that stands up around his head in a stylized cut that the First Order definitely wouldn’t allow, the kind of hair that Hux might like to take hold of and tug on if his partner were amenable to it. Less visible musculature than the previous sex worker, but much more bulk, making for a significantly better view. Like the last recording, Ren is completely covered up, completely disengaged, and when the sex worker shifts his hand around in order to touch Ren, Ren says something sharply in another language, and the sex worker puts his hand right back where it was on Ren’s hip.
This time, Hux catches the black glint of the cock ring the sex worker is wearing, waits for that tell-tale shudder through Ren’s back, and then watches the sex worker unhook the ring, finish himself off immediately afterward while Ren waits there passively, refusing to get up from the bed until the sex worker has left, and then getting up so quickly in a flurry of robes that it’s impossible to see anything other than the fact that, again, Ren looks completely dissatisfied.
Well, if that’s what Hux is going to be watching tonight, it’s not worth a moment of his time worrying about it. He’s seen supply closet liaisons more graphic than this. He carefully picks up the floating projector and sets it off to the side, sinks back into the bath.
Ten more minutes.
The observation room is heavily guarded by red-armoured stormtroopers standing outside the room, weapons at the ready. (Sith troopers, his ass—Hux knows damn well they’re his soldiers, trained from birth, just re-suited in armour that Ren finds more aesthetically pleasing.)
“He in there?” Hux asks crisply.
The trooper closest to him hesitates a moment before answers. “He uses the other entrance.”
Meaning that they have no idea whether he’s there or not. Lovely.
Hux makes a point of drawing his datapad from his pocket, and taking a note. “And the external contractor?”
“Currently being escorted from bay six,” responds one of the troopers from the door. “Would you like me to patch the feed into the observation room, Grand Marshal?”
Hux considers it briefly, discards the idea. “Unnecessary. I assume I’ll be able to see on the cameras when the Supreme Leader arrives?”
“The cameras cover seventy-five percent of the room,” the same trooper says. “I don’t believe they’re focused on the door, but I can re-focus them if you like.”
“No need,” Hux says. He notes the trooper’s identification number, and then nods. “As you were.”
The troopers nod, shift away, and Hux advances to the door of the observation room, which opens immediately to his command cylinder. Hux steps inside, lets the door slide shut behind him, and then takes a look at what he’s going to be contending with for the next…well, if the historical footage is any indication, the next forty five minutes of his life, give or take any negotiations still to happen.
The trooper wasn’t incorrect—the camera doesn’t cover the door. The reciprocal glass, however, absolutely does, and Hux is a little shocked to realize that he has floor-to-ceiling visibility of the entire room. He glances at the control panel, notes the camera and the recording software, the large red button for security, an intercom. Everything is a typical First Order setup, except for the glass.
Hux blinks at the setup, and then looks at the camera. Leans over the console, and navigates through the system to confirm there’s nothing in the other room indicating the reciprocal glass is there. Hux is completely invisible, but he’s uncomfortable with the configuration of the room anyway, especially considering he wasn’t aware that this tech was being used at all. He sets his jaw, checks the chrono. Two minutes until the meeting starts, which means thirty-two minutes until the bulk of it is over.
Hux glances at the chair, opts not to sit. (Doesn’t think about what any of the prior observers might have done or not done in this room—it’ll be easier on his back if he stands, so he stands.) Looks through the glass just in time to see Ren coming in from the side entrance.
He’s dressed as he has been in all the previous footage—long black robe, covered from neck to wrists to ankles, soft black shoes on his feet. His hair hangs loose around his face, which is set in a sullen pout as he glances over the room.
(The bed is a single bed, and Hux cannot quite get over that part, because it’s just so—stark, for absolutely no reason. As though Ren is going out of his way to ensure he’s not enjoying himself.)
Hux glances over at the security monitors, sees the troopers outside shifting over to accommodate the external contractor. He’s dressed in a robe as well, with the hood pulled up to ensure anonymity, and Hux respects that. At least the agency understands the value of discretion. He leans over, adjusts the volume so that he can listen to the negotiations—only there aren’t any, just Ren reaching into his robe, producing a datapad, and handing it to the contractor.
The contractor looks at the datapad, looks at Ren, and then applies his thumb to the bottom of the pad before handing it back. Ren makes that same absent-minded gesture he always makes, and there’s a short ping coming from the screen at the desk. Hux glances over, without stepping out of parade rest.
(His back twinges.)
Even from a distance, he can see that it’s the exact same nearly-empty requisition that Ren always fills out. Presumably the NDA, consent to be recorded, and other associated documents are attached, and Hux very nearly doesn’t check them—but he’s signed up to observe, and with an irritated sigh, he walks back to the screen, and makes a cursory attempt to at least scroll through everything.
“Pardon?” the sex worker says in the other room.
“…nothing,” Ren responds, his voice odd and lilting. “Continue.”
The bed creaks. Hux finishes scrolling through the document, presses his own thumb to the datapad to confirm he’s read it, and turns back to see that Ren is already in position on the bed, just the same as he always is—all fours, his weight on his knees and his forearms, hands loose, hair hanging over his face.
Hux checks the chrono. Five minutes after the hour. Thirty minutes remaining, plus whatever time they take to clean up in the end. Hux taps the console screen to push the documentation over onto the datapad sitting on the desk, picks it up, and carefully paces the room while he reads the entire thing in detail, just to make sure nothing is missed.
He’s halfway through the NDA when there’s a moan from the other room. Hux glances up cursorily, notes the parted lips on the sex worker’s mouth, and is just about to look back at his datapad when he glances, accidentally, at Ren.
Ren’s head is up, hair pushed back from his face, mouth open as he moans again.
Hux blinks.
This is…not usual.
And it gets even less usual when Ren actually pushes up onto his palms as the sex worker fucks into him from behind, tilting his ass back into the blond’s hips.
“Alright?” the blond asks. His accent is as crisp as Hux’s own, indicating a reasonable education, at least, before switching careers to—
“Yes,” Ren sighs. He’s up on his knees now. The contractor leans back in response and braces himself on the mattress, switching the movements of his hips to short, upward jabs. Ren bites his lower lip. “Can we—switch positions?”
“Of course,” the sex worker says. He puts one hand on Ren’s hip, slowly pulls out. The condom is lube-wet and slick-looking in the light. “How do you want it?”
Ren bites his lip again—a horrendous habit, and probably one that contributes to that god-awful sulk he has when things aren’t going his way. He turns around to face the sex worker and lies down on his back. “Like this,” he says.
The sex worker considers him, and then smiles, cat-like and prideful. “You look good,” he offers, reaching down and pulling a triangle-shaped pillow up from the side of the bed, setting his palm possessively on Ren’s robe-covered calf. “Here, lift up.”
Ren does so, lets the sex worker put the pillow underneath his hips, his hands completely hidden by the folds of Ren’s robe.
“There,” the sex worker says.
Hux glances down at the paperwork again. It’s signed with Xixor, of all the improbable names. Xixor looks as though he’s fairly satisfied with himself, and Hux is irritated for a reason that he can’t quite figure out.
“Ready to go again?”
Ren gestures with his bare hand, the sleeve of his robe sliding back to his elbow and exposing a long length of bare forearm.
He’s muscled there too, because of course he is.
Hux looks back down to the datapad, pages through over into the next document and starts reading through the—
Ren moans.
Hux looks up.
Ren is shifting his head, moving it on the pillow, hair pooled out around him like some kind of—oh, fucking hell, he’s inadvertently looking right through the glass, and Hux feels a shudder go through his body.
Ren’s pupils are dilated. He’s not looking at Hux right now—he’s looking at the place where the console is—but Hux is standing close enough to the glass that he can see Ren’s pupils are dilated, and his face is flushed. It’s nothing like the recordings Hux watched, where Ren looked bored and disengaged at the best of times.
Right now, Ren looks as though he’s getting satisfactorily fucked. As Hux watches, Ren brings his hand up to his thigh and actually pulls his knee in closer to his chest so that Xixor fucks into him harder, leaning forward over Ren and bracing himself on the bed, his hand far too close to Ren’s waist for Ren to be comfortable with it—but Ren isn’t objecting, and Hux wants to scream. He can see the exact shade of lacquer Xixor is wearing on his manicured fingernails, and he’s not interested in that at all, not when he’s trying to count the moles on Ren’s suddenly exposed calf, not when he’s watching the way the robe is shifting as Ren gets fucked, hard and fast, and Ren’s breathing is actually picking up now into a pant, and Hux feels—
“Harder,” Ren demands like the pillow princess he is, tapping Xixor on the forearm. “Fuck me harder.”
Xixor nods, straightens up so that he’s vertical, and braces himself on Ren’s calves this time instead, pistons his hips harder. Hux watches in horror as Ren falls apart completely, back arching and hand actually going between his own legs, and if Hux were in the sex worker’s place, he wouldn’t allow that for a damn moment, because that’s not what this is about. If Ren wanted to get himself off, he could have gotten himself off in his own goddamn room. There is no fucking reason for him to go through this entire charade and all this paperwork if what Ren actually wants is his own big meaty hand clutching at the fabric pooled between his legs.
“You look gorgeous like this,” Xixor says.
What an asshole comment. Any fucking fool could see that Ren is—
—coming, actually, with the way his hand spasms between his legs, the way he arches his back and his neck, the way it almost looks, for one moment, as though everything in the room is hovering, just a little tiny bit, and maybe Hux is hovering too, because he’s feeling oddly light-headed at the moment, disoriented and disorganized and—
—there’s a loud clatter as the datapad Hux is holding falls to the floor. Hux curses and bends to scoop it up, wincing as his back twitches, looking through the glass to see if they were able to hear the noise—
—and he makes eye contact with Ren through the glass, just for a moment. Ren’s eyes are only half-open, eyelashes fluttering. There are tears in the corners of his eyes, and his nose looks like it’s starting to run. His lower lip is raw.
Hux looks down at the datapad.
The screen is shattered.
Hux stands on the other side of the glass once the room is empty, and the droids have cleared everything away.
It is impossible to see through the reciprocal glass from this side. Even knowing exactly where it is, even knowing the layout of the furniture on the other side, it is impossible to see anything from this side other than a blank durasteel wall.