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"Oh, I love this view," the Senator says, clasping his hands together with a glance out the port window. He peers outward and down with a parted mouth, presumably at the rest of the fleet. "Your people's adaptation to space life is fascinating."
A rustle and a yelped protest save Hux from having to gather a response that isn't bemused.
Captain Andrian seems to trip through the privacy curtain, hastily straightening to stand at attention. “Excuse me, General – “
“I believe I sent a memo not to be disturbed,” Hux interrupts, raising his brows and waiting for the moment when Andrian slinks away, scolded and shamed; it doesn’t come. “Was I not clear?”
“You were, sir,” Captain Andrian says, nodding shortly and speaking in a quick, clipped rush after their next breath, “However, Lord Ren refuses to be turned away. He says that I'm not high enough rank to… to give him directives.”
Hux glances across the table, watching as the Senator tips their head with a reluctant sort of patience. The cakes between them sit untouched, colorful and petit, and Hux has been rather eager to sample them since the moment the Senator’s aide laid them out in neat patterns. He's already waited through minutes of vapid conversation, yet it seems he will have to wait even longer in the wake of the usual problem sweeping in to interrupt.
“I assume he’s behind you?” Hux says, looking back up and past Andrian to the entrance; he feels both satisfied and frustrated at the answer coming in the form of a wider flourish of the curtain by a moron in a black cloak.
“General,” Ren greets, shoving past Andrian, who bows out of the small room with an awkward, visibly frantic shuffle backward. “It couldn’t wait.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Hux says, feeling a dry, unamused smirk settle across his lips, “Did you forget the passcode to your quarters again? It's your thumb.”
The Senator straightens up, staring at Ren with the sort of baffled intimidation most get at first meeting. He slowly looks back to Hux, plainly confused, and then back to Ren like it’s expected of him to pay attention to whatever fickle need is called upon to be fulfilled at this very moment.
Ren predictably ignores him completely, keeping his approximation of eyes on Hux, and lifts his chin with obvious determination. “You shouldn’t waste your time here.”
“’Waste. My. Time." Hux repeats flatly, leaning forward in his seat and settling his elbows onto the table, gesturing cyclically with a single hand before folding them both together. “Would you elaborate?”
“Oh stars,” the Senator yelps without warning, hands up around his temples and half clenched at the air. He groans in the next moment, squeezing his eyes shut. “What is – what is that? It’s like – it’s as if I’m suffering a brain freeze.”
“I’m reading your mind,” Ren says, speaking slowly and taking an audible breath, his put-upon sigh loud through the vocoder. “You’ve entrapped General Hux here under false pretenses, bringing him food prepared in a bakery famously favored by General Organa of the Resistance.”
The Senator gapes upward, expression blanching as he turns to Hux with mild panic. “I swear I didn’t know that, General. I just – I know they’re popular, that’s all.”
“Senator, don’t listen to him,” Hux says, lifting a hand in a half-hearted attempt to stave off the inevitable. “He’s only toying with you.”
“He is also married, but it’s not going well,” Ren continues, unheeded and doubtlessly smug underneath his helm, head tipping to the side with familiar arrogance. He looms further, taking a half step forward, and likely just to watch the Senator shrink further to his seat. “He cannot satisfy his wife due to fading attraction from her part and a persistent case of erectile dysfunction as consequence of spice abuse. He’s taken some sort of… supplement for tonight.”
“Toying with me?” the Senator says, voice rising in offended pitch. “He’s slandering me.”
“I think you’re uneducated on the definition of slander, Senator,” Hux says, realizing reluctantly that he’s far less averse to this display than he should be; in fact, he’s actually feeling a little entertained for the first time all night
Thankfully, Ren isn’t in his head.
“You think this is you doing Hux a favor, charity for an exile who you’d never let step foot on your worthless little moon,” Ren says, hand twitching at his side and shifting forward, laying flat on the table in front of the Senator, “A consequential easy - ”
“I – I refuse to suffer this any longer,” the Senator announces, shoving up from the table with a telltale pinching of stress around his eyes.
“Senator, if you would – or just leave, certainly,” Hux sighs, staring at the gently swinging curtain as it falls behind the Senator’s outburst. He looks up slowly, narrowing his eyes at Ren, “And you have expertly ruined my plans for the night completely, Ren. I hope this doesn't become some sort of hobby.”
“You don’t even remember his name,” Ren says, slumping down into the emptied seat with a heavy exhale through the modulator.
Hux feels a frown curling at his lips, an urge to tell Ren to get out resurfacing. “I didn’t let you into my mind.”
“You didn’t need to,” Ren says, looking back up with a short, mocking tip of his head that betrays a smirk. “You addressed him as simply a Senator three times.”
“Ah,” Hux says, glancing toward the viewport with a considering hum. He reaches forward and takes a small, white powdered star in hand - one that's been teasing him for nearly an hour. “Point.”
“Do you realize why he wanted to share these with you?”
“Political clout through romantic entanglement,” Hux says, taking a bite and nearly whimpering in surprise as a burst of syrupy fruit escapes the middle, flavor spreading sweetly across his tongue. He swallows quickly, reaching next for one of the red-frosted bars. “These are quite good. I can see why Organa’s gotten her tiny hands on them.”
“No, Hux, do you seriously – ” Ren stops, falling quiet for a few moments before reaching up for his helmet, depressurizing with a slow hiss. He shakes his hair out, then combs it backward with a sullen gesture. “Nevermind.”
“I know it’s some sort of holiday similar to Life Day,” Hux amends, offering a short shrug. He’d given little thought toward the matter aside from a chance for food that hasn’t been freeze dried for rations. “Gift giving, sweets, et cetera.”
“Marginally,” Ren confirms, an odd, frustrated curl still at his mouth.
“Have one, then,” Hux says, gesturing toward the plate with his chin just before biting into his third pastry. He’s going to be terribly sick in a few hours, not to mention unable to sleep - he's never been particularly restrained around real sugar, but generally it's not a problem. “Now that you’ve humiliated the man, may as well finish the job.”
Ren neglects to move for a long moment, a markedly discontented grimace falling across his mouth.
“What?” Hux says, hearing his voice grow bitter only somewhat out of his control. “Been to the establishment so often you’re sick of it?”
“No,” Ren says, a far too intense look in his eyes for the sight of a powdered confection. “She often took her aides there when the Senate was on Coruscant, but that was long after I got sent away.”
Hux watches Ren bite hesitantly into a chocolate heart, and glances away before anything like pity can manifest. He hardly has his own contented childhood, but it always ruins his favored mocking of spoiled princes when Ren gets too honest for present company. A message lights up on his data pad, blessedly drawing his attention before he can ruminate on it toward any further end.
“Romantic,” Ren says, his voice strangely loud after a long few minutes of silent eating.
Hux glances up from his data pad, feeling a mortifying, completely uncalled for flash of heat behind his ears. “I’m sorry?”
“The holiday,” Ren says, catching Hux’s eyes for a fleeting moment, then looking back to the table. “It’s not really like Life Day. It is. Exclusively for lovers.”
“Oh,” Hux says, recalling the Senator’s surprise at his acceptance with new understanding. “I see.”
“Little more than meant to… to make everyone else feel uncared for,” Ren continues, his voice practically a bitter snarl, slowly sinking into a mumble. “It’s a foolish holiday.”
“I take it you’ve never participated,” Hux says dryly, coming to the conclusion with very little leap of the imagination. He shifts in his seat, leaning up and reaching for the sparkling wine, and pours a liberal amount into one of the thin flutes that the Senator had generously forgotten. “Tragic.”
Ren responds with a harsh glare, reaching for Hux’s plate and blatantly stealing the last of the powdered, fruity pastries. He shoves it in his mouth with little of the reverence it deserves, sneering with unwarranted triumph.
“Now there was no reason for you to do that,” Hux says, gesturing with the flute now and tempted to dump the entire thing on Ren's end of the table. “We were almost having a conversation.”
“You were mocking me,” Ren says, his tone offended, shoulders squaring up as he straightens in his seat with a curious sort of vanity.
“Maybe if you were a little more approachable…”
“I’m never going to toady a Centrist fathead for sweets,” Ren sneers, gesturing over the table with revulsion even as he holds another pastry in hand, spreading powdered sugar across everything.
“I toady to no one,” Hux says dismissively, rolling his eyes with an affected laugh low in his throat. “I have massive weapons to bring these shallow individuals into my corner.”
Ren scoffs low under his breath, a badly hidden smirk growing at the corner of his mouth. “Were you really going to draw him further into your ‘corner’?”
“Unlikely,” Hux admits, tutting shortly and taking a slow drink of his glass, sparing a few seconds more thought toward the question. “You witnessed for yourself how very little backbone he possessed, even for a politician.”
“He ran,” Ren agrees, glancing upward with a bizarre look in his eyes, almost proud. “Tail between his legs.”
Hux nods shortly, mourning one of the few chances to have trapped some sort of influential paramour. In theory, the Senator would’ve been a very good ally to, quite literally, have in hand. “Not to mention he’s apparently incapable of fulfilling the contract, so to speak.”
A silence falls over the booth again – Hux drinking the fruity wine; Ren stealing another precious pastry. He looks up with a short breath, a familiar, yet unrecognizable look in his eyes, “Hux, I was – ”
The curtain swings open abruptly for the second time, this time without even a polite warning, “General, your Captain told me you were still – who is – ?!”
It takes barely an instant for the Senator to be gasping, wheezing and shoved up against the wall, leaving welts of red from clawing at his own exposed neck. He reaches out with a shaking hand toward Hux, eyes panicked and desperate like a suffering prey animal.
“Oh, Ren,” Hux sighs, standing from his seat after slowly wiping his hands. He leans into Ren’s side, curling his hand shortly around a wide shoulder. “Let him go.”
The Senator drops to the floor, taking deep, gasping breaths and gawking upward with fright, “General, w-what is – is this some m-m-manner of game?”
“Maybe,” Hux says, crouching down in front of the fallen senator with a low hum. He reaches forward and presses two fingers to the Senator’s forehead, urging him to settle the crown of his head flat against the wall. “I am slightly enjoying it. Ren?”
“Yes,” Ren says, his voice low, and when Hux looks back, he finds a face half covered in hair as haphazard attempt to disguise. It makes him look like the most captivating madman.
“I admit I do admire the sheer ego it must have taken to come back here,” Hux says, glancing back to the Senator, raising a single brow with little real amusement.
“I should rescind my allegiance,” the Senator spits, eyes bugging from his face and scrambling for a more comfortable posture against the wall, though not daring to actually move. “Tell others of this disrespect toward your benefactors.”
Hux rolls his eyes, shaking his head as if disappointed. “If Lord Ren could pick out your erectile dysfunction with little effort, how soon do you think he’d find other things, Senator?”
The Senator heaves a few more breaths, eyes glancing quickly between Hux and Ren before falling to the side at the curtain, shoulders curling in on his head. It takes a few more moments, but he’s soon attempting to shake his head. “I - I apologize, General.”
“Best leave us be, now,” Hux says, standing and wiping his hand against the fabric of his trousers, more for the way the Senator purses his lips than any true feeling of filth. “Don’t you think?”
The Senator stumbles and flees again through the curtain with little more prompting, hands clumsily shoving it out of his way and nearly tearing the entire thing down. It must certainly be a blow to do such a thing twice in less than an hour.
“How old were you again,” Hux asks, looking sideways and catching Ren’s eyes, still half hidden and somewhat wild. “When you defected? Or were reborn, or however it is you classify it.”
Ren stares back, distrustful, “Twenty.”
Hux tips his head, reaching for his wine from the table and doing paltry math in his head. It’s almost half a decade of opportunity missed, perhaps longer with the level of bitterness, and Hux decides on a short course of action before he can talk himself out of it. He puts the empty glass back on the table, lifting his chin, “How is it coming, then?”
“What?”
“For your first lovers' holiday celebration,” Hux says, raising his brows with an arrogance he’s having some difficulty truly feeling – he’s out on a very thin wire. “Obviously.”
Ren continues to look baffled for a long moment, then becomes outright mortified, glancing to the floor with a pitiful twinge around his eyes, “Stop mocking me.”
“Oh, never,” Hux teases, putting out a hand to stop the flight of Ren’s helmet, durasteel hitting his palm hard before it drops to the floor with a metallic bang. The helmet is a cover for shame, not anger, which is something of a good sign. “Do you know how often I get to outright threaten people?”
Ren answers with a fleeting sneer upward, shaky across his mouth.
“Not often enough,” Hux says, taking a step closer, slow and careful of inciting some manner of bolting. He hesitantly sets his hand on Ren’s arm, thumb just barely pressing into the curl of a bicep. “So I would say mine is going terribly well. And from your unsolicited bursting in here to defame that sad excuse for a Senator, I assume you’re quite interested in making it just a little better?”
Ren stares for a long moment, practically made of stone before a telltale tic travels across his clenched jaw. “He wasn’t suitable.”
“Hardly anyone is,” Hux agrees, leaning in a few centimeters further, fairly shocked himself in the next instant to meet an answering press of lips.