Chapter Text
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
A full moon on a dark night,
And the road downhill all the way to your door.
-Irish Blessing
The summer evening is warm. The residual heat of a fat yellow sun lingers through twilight, broken up and made tolerable, even pleasant, by a soft breeze that smells of wisteria. It grows along a wooden trellis framing the entrance to Hux’s brownstone walk-up, and as he’s standing beneath it now with his date, he thinks that perhaps he’s never been this lonely.
“I had a nice time,” Hux finds himself saying. It’s true, honestly. Or, rather, he hadn’t had a bad time, even if that isn’t quite the same thing. He clutches his foil-covered takeout bowl to his chest, trying valiantly to suppress the unwarranted flight response that is making him shift his weight from one foot to the other. Hux has seen Dopheld Mitaka’s eyes flicker to his lips more than once since pausing here, where Hux is resolutely not inviting him upstairs.
“I had a nice time as well,” Mitaka says, hovering just a bit too snugly in Hux’s personal space, looking as though he wants to say more.
It’s not that he doesn’t like the man; it was Hux that had asked him out after all, following months of catching furtive glances and politely returning shy smiles, and a little persistent elbowing in his side from Phasma.
“You’re in bed by eight on Saturday night with computer code for company,” Phasma had told him one evening. “You need to put yourself out there.”
And so he had. They’d done the usual thing: drinks at their after-work dive, dinner at a nice little Italian place on Fourth Avenue. Technically speaking, there wasn’t anything objectionable about the experience. Not overtly, at least. There had simply been one too many miniscule moments of awkwardness - Hux having to scoot to the other side of the booth when Mitaka sat too close, the way he’d managed to ask just the wrong question about Hux’s family, and how it had made Hux slightly squeamish when Mitaka tried to pay for his dinner. Not only that, but their conversation had always come back to work, to code and inefficient workflow. They are too much alike in that regard. The sum is just off; the expression is missing variables.
Mitaka reaches out to run a thumb softly over Hux’s knuckles where they are white against his takeout dish, and the bowl subsequently makes a delicate crunching sound as it contracts in Hux’s hands.
Mitaka gives him a radiant smile that suggests he did not even notice, and then says, “I’d like to see you again, Armitage.”
And there’s another thing. Hux hates being called Armitage, and he wonders if Mitaka thinks he’s being clever by demonstrating he’s somehow gotten around the fact that Hux has all but eradicated his first name on anything official at work.
“I had a nice time,” Hux repeats noncommittally, voice a bit stiffer. “I’ll see you at work on Monday?”
Mitaka glances to the stoop of Hux’s walk-up, the door that leads to Hux’s apartment, and gathers at last that he is not going to be invited inside. He nods then and plasters on a smile that manages to be both wounded and understanding. It makes Hux’s throat tight.
“Yes,” Mitaka says. “Goodnight, then.”
Hux waves a brief one-handed goodbye as Mitaka sets off for the train station, glancing back once over his shoulder. Tugging his phone out of his pocket, Hux taps out a message to Phasma that reads simply: I prefer my computer.
He replaces the phone, ignoring the near instant vibration that is undoubtedly Phasma’s scathing reply, and trudges up the steps. His feet feel heavier, as though he’s been awake for several days, and run a marathon on top of that. He slips his key in the lock of his ground floor flat and considers that he’d left here three hours before with such a sense of hope.
Hux sighs as he steps inside, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. He is wrenched out of his somber self-reflection rapidly, however, by a number of things. First, every light in the apartment is on, and it makes a muscle in his cheek twitch. The television is playing Star Wars at full volume, and there is a cacophonous wail just distinguishable as Black Sabbath coming from the room at the end of the hall. Ben’s room.
Hux glances to his right, where the living room and kitchen are bisected by a granite-topped island. Ben is rifling through the refrigerator, bottles clinking, while a pot boils furiously on the stove, bubbles foaming over the edge.
“Ben!” Hux cries, melancholy forgotten in his panicked ire. “You’re boiling over!”
His roommate stands up, closing the refrigerator door and popping open a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. “Shit,” he growls, moving quickly to pull the pot off the burner. Sipping his beer, he turns a knob to reduce the heat, and then drags the pot back on, sloshing water all over the stove as he does. Hux blows out an exasperated sigh, fingers twitching with the desire to snatch up a dish towel and clean up the mess.
As though hearing Hux’s thoughts, Ben makes to do just that, although he merely grabs the first absorbent object that comes to hand: an oven mitt. He’s swiping at the water with it before Hux can even formally object. With a resigned groan, Hux drops his takeout on the counter and sinks down onto a bar stool.
Ben sips his beer and eyes his roommate. “How was the date?”
Hux shrugs. “It was a date.”
“That bad, huh?” Ben picks up a wooden spoon and stirs the pasta he’s boiling.
Hux finds himself thinking that he would rather have stayed home tonight and eaten whatever pitiful excuse for Italian food Ben is concocting. They have been roommates for almost two years, and friends for most of that time. After they’d gotten past the initial awkward phase of dancing around one another as they determined boundaries and preferences, Hux genuinely enjoyed Ben’s company.
At twenty-nine, Ben is younger than Hux by five years, but Hux has always thought the man to have an old soul. Perhaps it is the military experience that Ben never speaks about, or the family he doesn’t seem to have. He plays his music too loudly, he leaves dishes in the sink past the twenty-four hour agreed upon deadline, he sometimes steals Hux’s gourmet coffee creamer, and he tends to leave the door open when he showers, but Hux doesn’t think he’d trade him.
He’s grateful, even, when Ben opens the refrigerator door again and rifles out another can of Pabst, opens it, and sets it in front of his roommate. Hux hates cheap piss beer, but right now he is just glad for the alcohol content and the familiar camaraderie.
Ben leans against the opposite side of the counter, eyes flicking to the television and lips curling into a smile at something on the screen before his attention returns to Hux.
“Wanna talk about it?”
Hux sips his beer and intends to say no, not at all , but Ben is regarding him with honest interest, which isn’t something Hux has enough of in his human interactions. His fellow software engineers are by and large a squirrelly lot, with a handful of people skills between them, and Hux supposes he’d be at least marginally at risk for decompensation if not for Ben’s colorful company.
“I should really take you up on the offer to teach me to play Call of Warfare,” Hux complains. “It seems like everyone in my field is obsessed with those games. I hardly have anything to talk about to interest anyone.” This isn’t entirely true. Mitaka hadn’t mentioned video games, but Hux is hesitant to delve into the truly personal details by divulging just how lonely he is. He raises an eyebrow when Ben starts chuckling.
“Call of Duty, Hux. Not Call of Warfare.”
“Whatever.” Hux rolls his eyes and drains half his beer, trying not to wince at the taste. Ben is smiling at him.
“You have plenty of interesting stuff to talk about,” he tells Hux.
Hux grunts dubiously. “Yeah? Like what?”
Ben flicks the tab on his beer can, and it makes an obnoxious pinging sound that captures Hux’s attention while Ben talks, such that it takes a few moments for his words to sink in.
“Well, there’s that disaster of a trip you went on after you graduated from college. There’s your field study in grad school. The time you met the Secretary of Defense. Your secret adventures in ethical hacking…”
Hux has looked back up now, surprised at the way Ben is rattling off these things with genuine appreciation. He realizes that he’d not really expected Ben to remember any of the trivia about Hux’s life that he’d imparted over the years in passing conversation. Their eyes meet for a span of long seconds as Hux considers whether he is equally as versed in Ben’s history, but his attention is wrenched away once more by the boiling pot on the stove.
Ben glances over his shoulder the moment Hux focuses on the erupting water, and utters another string of vibrant curse words as he turns the heat off and then jabs at the pasta with a spoon.
“Great,” he mutters. “I’m the only asshole on Earth who can’t boil noodles.” He pulls the pot from the stove and sets it in the sink, running cold water into it.
Hux has circled the island and come to stand beside Ben, peering down at the mass of congealed pasta.
Ben gives him a sidelong look. “Now you have to take me out to dinner, since this is your fault.”
Hux looks at him sharply, a flicker of surprise drowned out by a surge of regret when he sees the amusement plain on Ben’s face, the jest sparkling in his dark eyes. Hux returns his attention to the mess in the sink to hide the damnable flush that comes so easily to his pale cheeks.
“You can’t scrape this out with anything metal, Ben,” he says, perhaps a little too harshly. “Use the wooden spoon, and…”
“I know, Hux,” Ben sighs. “This isn’t my first rodeo.”
Ben sounds miffed, and when Hux looks at him again, his brows are knit, one corner of his lips turned down in a scowl. Hux immediately feels badly for barking at him.
“I’ve reached my quota for public appearances for the day, but we could order a pizza,” he offers in a conciliatory tone.
Ben looks at him, and for a moment Hux thinks he is going to refuse, but then his expression clears and he smiles. “You’re buying.”
Hux actually would have bought the pizza, just because he figures that is the sort of thing one does when they’re being nice, but Ben still beats him to the door when the bell rings half an hour later. Afterward, they are ensconced side by side on the couch, Ben with his ham and pineapple slice and a beer, with Hux having graduated to scotch. Hux’s orange tabby, Millicent, is asleep beside his thigh, purring loudly.
Hux is trying to pay attention to Star Wars, and thinking that the Death Star has abysmally inadequate defensive capabilities, when his phone rings. Pulling it from his pocket, he sees that it’s his mother. Thumbing the end call button, he tucks a foot under him on the couch and watches as Luke Skywalker races across the surface of the doomed Imperial weapon.
Then his phone rings again. It’s his mother, again. Annoyed, he accepts the call and holds it up to his ear.
“Mother, now is not the best time. Can I call you later?” His tone is clipped, and he instantly regrets it with a thrill of alarm when he realizes his mother is crying. His discomfiture must show on his face because Ben is looking at him with concern.
Hux pushes himself off the couch, striding to the glass door that leads to the patio. “Mum?” he says as he pushes the door open and slips outside into the quiet summer evening. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I’m not okay,” she says. “Armie, your father…”
Hux winces at the nickname. No matter how assiduously he’s tried to divest his mother of it, she is unwilling to let it go. Neither of his parents would compromise on his attempt to assign himself a name of his own choosing during a rebellious ninth grade streak, either. In fact, his father had been rather righteously offended, as Hux was rejecting both Armitage—which was his grandfather’s name—and the middle name he’d been given for his father: Brendol.
Hux presses his palm over his ear, blocking out the din of passing cars. “What about Dad?” he says loudly into the receiver.
On the other end, his mother’s sobbing cuts off in a shallow breath. “Armie, he passed away this evening. He’s left us.”
“He…what?” Hux’s knees suddenly feel like jelly, and he gropes behind him for one of the patio chairs. He collapses into it heavily.
“He’s gone, honey. I’m so sorry. I know you two didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and I wish you hadn’t fought with each other that last time... Oh god, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” She starts sobbing harder, but muffled now, like she’s covering the phone with her hand.
Hux cannot respond for a long, numb moment, his mother’s words merely clawing at the surface of his comprehension, refusing to sink in. He can feel Ben’s eyes on him from the living room, though Hux cannot bring himself to turn and meet his questioning gaze.
“When…when is the wake?” Hux finally manages. It’s a practical question.
“This weekend. We’ll have it here, where he was happiest.”
Hux doesn’t know about that. Brendol Hux hadn’t been happy since retiring from military service. “I’ll try to get a plane ticket,” he says, instantly regretting the choice of words.
“Try? Armitage Brendol Hux, this was your father! I need you here. And I want you to bring your fiancé. I don’t know how much comfort I’ll be, and well...you’ll need him here.”
Hux feels his whole face heat up. The truth is that he doesn’t have a fiancé, and he never did. He’d made that up in a defensive fit during a fight with his father about grandchildren, among other things. And he’d picked the only person he had a picture of on his phone to wave in Brendol’s face: his roommate, Ben.
“Mother I don’t feel like that’s a good idea. This isn’t the best time to introduce him to—”
“You should have already done it, Armitage! It’s too late for your father now. You could have… Lord Jesus in Heaven, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
Hux’s heart is thumping erratically, ears ringing. He tries a different approach to escape this sinking ship. “Look, he’s working, Mother.”
“If Benjamin loves you he’ll get the time off.”
“Mother that is not fair.” Fucking hell , could this get any messier?
“Well life isn’t fair, is it? ” Her logic is sound. She sniffs and adds, “I’ll ready up your old room for you two. I’m sure Ben won’t mind seeing what you were like as a teenager.”
Hux’s head is spinning now, and if he weren’t sitting already, he might have fainted. He opens his mouth to tell her the truth—that he’d been lying about being engaged for more than half a year—but he can’t bring himself to add something more to her burden. He swallows, and rasps out a meek confirmation. He barely hears the remainder of the conversation, mumbling acknowledgements to the myriad details his mother lays out. At last, she tells him at length how much she loves him, and they hang up.
Hux sits for a long time on the patio, twilight deepening around him, the city street dappled with color from passing car lights. He’s dimly aware that he is clutching his phone tightly enough that the edges of the case are biting painful grooves into his palm. He uncurls his fingers and thumbs a password in, scrolling through his directory absently until he finds the icon of his father’s bearded face next to the words Old Man .
Swallowing, Hux blinks back hot tears and turns the phone over. He forces himself to think about how often they’d fought, how many hurtful things Brendol Hux had said to him over the years. He needs that bulwark against the flood of insurmountable emotions roiling in his chest. He’s not ready for this.
Hux jerks in surprise when the glass door slides open, even though the sound is soft. He turns his head and blinks up at Ben, who is casting a long shadow across him.
“Hey,” Ben says. “You all right?” His brow is creased with concern.
Hux waves the phone in his hand as though that has an answer for Ben, then says, “My dad just died,” and starts laughing. It’s a high-pitched, panicked sound, and Hux immediately covers his mouth with a wrist, biting down on the fabric of his shirt.
“Hux…” Ben’s voice is low, tone cautious, and he lifts a hand to Hux’s shoulder. Squeezing gently, Ben uses his other hand to drag a patio chair closer. As he sinks down onto it their knees brush, and the hand on Hux’s shoulder trails down his back with comforting friction. Sound from the television blends into the monotonous noise of the street below, though it’s like someone has turned the cosmic volume down, and all Hux hears clearly is the jumbled cacophony of disbelief in his head.
That, and Ben’s voice.
“I’m so sorry, Hux,” he says, that big hand moving back up along Hux’s spine, making him want to lean into it. He wants to bury his face in Ben’s shoulder and weep, but he won’t, afraid that if he starts, he won’t stop.
Hux’s manic laughter subsides into quivering shudders, and he scrubs at his nose with the back of one hand. Taking a deep, shaky breath, he nods. “It’s okay.”
Ben’s hand pauses, thumb and forefinger poised at the base of Hux’s neck, and Hux glances over in time to see his roommate’s brow furrow and the corner of his lips twitch. To his credit, Ben doesn’t refute Hux’s statement, inane and untrue though it may be.
“What can I do for you?” he asks instead.
Hux can’t help the compulsive internal response: Get on a plane and come to Georgia with me and pretend to be engaged to me since I’m too pathetic to really have a partner, and oh, by the way, I already told my parents we were getting married because I wanted to upset my father and I haven’t spoken to him since.
Instead he takes a deep, quavering breath and tries to plaster a smile on. It feels stiff, awkward, and Ben’s eyes crease.
“I could use a drink.” It’s the first thing Hux thinks of - a mundane, safe request to which it’s easy enough for Ben to acquiesce.
Ben opens his mouth, closes it again, then traces a comforting circle with his palm between Hux’s shoulderblades. “I’ll make you one,” he offers. “Do you want to stay out here?”
Hux thinks about it for a moment, then shakes his head. “I’ll come inside.” He sounds remarkably calm in his own ears.
Ben nods and unfolds himself from the chair, and Hux instantly misses the pressure of Ben’s hand on his back. Following him back through the patio door, Hux sinks down onto the couch again as Ben gathers Hux’s empty whiskey glass from the coffee table. Hux watches him move to the kitchen, opening the freezer to take out ice, and Hux is transported to that night back in Georgia half a year ago when he’d last spoken to his father. When Ben had unwittingly become Hux’s fictional fiancé.
They are standing in the kitchen, Hux and his father. His mother is at the table, working a crossword. Hux is standing before the open freezer door, cracking ice from a tray and dropping it into his tumbler. Brendol is sipping his own cocktail, having followed Hux from the living room to continue his story about Hux’s younger brother.
“Did I tell you that wife of his bakes a mean Shepherd’s pie?” Brendol’s bushy, half-white eyebrows go up in that way that indicates he feels intensely about a thing.
Hux rolls his eyes as he tugs the whiskey bottle out of the abundantly apportioned liquor cabinet over the stove. The ice cubes jingle as he pours two fingers of Glendalough into his glass. He starts to cap the bottle, then pours a little more.
“You’ve told me a hundred times, Da,” he grunts.
Brendol points at him with his glass, the liquid inside nearly sloshing over. “It’s high time you got yourself a woman like that, Armitage.”
Hux sees his mother raise her head from the crossword, her pen frozen above it. Hux bristles and ignores the jibe with a tight frown.
“Domhnall and Holly are going to make your mother and I grandparents before you, and he’s ten years younger than you!” Brendol’s eyebrows are nearly at his hairline.
Hux slaps his glass onto the counter, and his mother scoots her chair back, stands up.
“I’m never going to give you grandchildren, Da. Which you know perfectly well, so you don’t need to keep bringing it up!” That might not be totally true, about the grandchildren. He won’t have a partner that will ever bear any, but there are other ways. He’s too bitter to think about that in the moment, though.
“Armie…” Aislain Hux touches his elbow, which is quivering. She squeezes with her familiar ‘don’t fight with your father’ warning, but Hux doesn’t care.
Brendol barrels past the heavy admission Hux has delivered. “The least you can do is settle down and come home for the holidays. Find you a decent girl.”
Hux’s throat is tight, and his mother’s nails are digging into his arm with her own anxiety at this impending explosion. Impulsively, Hux tugs his phone out of his pants pocket, nearly drops it, pokes some buttons, and finds the first picture of a man he comes across. It’s his roommate, Ben Solo, sitting on the terrace of the bar down the street from their apartment. His long, roguish black hair is teased into a halo around his glowing face, slightly crooked teeth white in a huge smile, mid laugh, eyes sparkling. Hux thrusts the picture into Brendol’s face, inches from the glasses perched on his nose, so his father has to cross his eyes to look at it.
“This is Ben. My fiancé. ”
What Hux had thought such a declaration would solve, he is still not sure. His father had been aware for years that Hux preferred men, but Brendol had honed a maddeningly boorish way of pretending not to know. It was that, partly, that they’d fought over that night, as well as Hux’s impatience with the constant comparisons to his younger brother. The result had been that Hux had stormed out, half drunk, and walked the two miles to town where he’d checked into the only motel in Tully.
His mother had come around the next morning to try to patch things up, but Hux was hungover and uninterested in forgiveness. Instead, she’d driven him to the airport in Atlanta and asked questions about Ben the entire time, which, trying to avoid the topic of his father, Hux had answered.
What does he do for a living? What’s his family like? What do you two do for fun?
Some of it Hux had made up, some he knew. Ben’s a security consultant, which Hux assumes is a sort of specialty he acquired in the military service he either can’t, or won’t talk about. They watch a lot of movies, which mostly Ben picks, but Hux invariably enjoys. They talk about politics. Hux watches Ben play video games and offers commentary Ben may or may not appreciate.
When it comes to Ben’s family, though, Hux doesn’t know much about them; just that they are estranged, which Hux understands intimately. While they are mostly okay now, it hadn’t always been smooth sailing with Hux’s own family.
With a start, Hux is pulled back to the present moment, realizing just how not okay things are.
Time , Hux thinks to himself as Ben puts a glass of scotch in his hand and settles on the couch beside him. Hux had thought he’d have more time . Not just to casually dig himself out of the six-foot hole he’d dug with his lie about having a fiancé, but to reconnect with his father.
“I hadn’t spoken to him in half a year,” he says aloud, lamenting it to himself as much as informing Ben, who sips his beer and frowns. Hux thinks the dark expression is sympathy. “I didn’t even mean for it to be that way.” Hux rests the glass of scotch on his knee, stares into its amber depths. “I kept meaning to call. I stopped being mad at him not long after I left home. It’s not like anything we fought over was new. And he…” Hux’s throat is suddenly tight, and he takes a drink. He notices that his fingers are pale, trembling. It’s shock, probably. He’s cold, too.
He feels Ben’s eyes on him, dark and hawk-like, and the air is heavy for a time with unsaid things. Hux’s thought process is little more than a series of images, flickering one after the other through his mind. Brendol and him at the pond behind the house, fishing. Brendol dressed up as Santa Claus for Christmas and drunk as a skunk, always making his boys laugh. Grilling hot dogs on the back deck. Sitting in his rocking chair on the porch, armed with a fly-swatter.
Ben’s hand on his knee startles him out of this miserable reverie once again, and Hux blinks at him, realizing his eyes are swimming. He desperately does not want to cry, as that will serve only to cement this as truly, undeniably real.
“I’m here if you need anything,” Ben says gently. He looks as though he wants to say more, but doesn’t.
Hux nods mechanically and nearly blurts out his secret, but nerves get the better of him. Instead, he drains the rest of his scotch and gives Ben a weak smile. “Thank you. Really. I think I’m just going to go to bed."
Ben nods as well, removing the hand from Hux’s knee to pick up the remote control, thumbing the television off. Music still blasts from his bedroom down the hall, and Ben seems only to notice it at that moment.
“I’ll be up for a little while, if you need…anything,” he says, giving Hux one last glance before he stands and shuffles barefoot down the hallway. A moment later the music clicks off, and Hux is alone in silence on the couch, clutching his empty glass.
Hux sits there for a long moment, mind blank and shoulders heavy, before he finally forces himself up and into his bedroom. He goes through the motions of getting ready for bed in a robotic fashion, and climbs beneath the blankets at half-past ten.
He’s still awake at 1:00 A.M. He can see a ribbon of yellow light beneath his door, meaning Ben is up as well, and the thought is driving Hux to distraction. He can’t possibly tell Ben the truth, not if he expects to preserve the peace in the apartment. So, he turns over in his head all the possible scenarios he could recount to his mother to tell the story of why he and the love of his life (because obviously he’d told her that’s exactly what Ben was) broke up, and how he might then go about comforting her in that respect. She’d become quite invested in the lie, which Hux had embellished over the last six months rather than refute; there is an entire litany of fabricated dates, a terribly sappy admission of love, stories of visits to Ben’s family in New York which had never taken place, and a vastly over-detailed account of Ben’s awfully romantic proposal.
How the hell is he ever going to get out of this mess?
Does he even want to?
Hux pulls the blankets over his head, trying to shut out the proximity to Ben and the temptation to lay this all on the table. What would he even say to him? Wouldn’t Ben simply think he was mad, or desperate, or worse , actually in love with him? Secretly pining? Which is worse: admitting to the morass his lie has landed him in with his family (for of course his mother had told everyone Hux had ever known in Tully and some people he hadn’t) or asking Ben to go with him to Georgia and pretend to be his mythical fiancé (and oh, by the way, please also ignore any implications of that, Ben)? Of course, he could just tell his mother that Ben couldn’t get the time off work, or had a family emergency, or…something. But Hux could just see her face, wearing that same look of disapproval Brendol had so often adopted for his son, who never did things in the right order
With a grunt of frustration, Hux flings the covers back and sits up, feet dropping to the floor. Standing, he crosses to his bedroom door and hovers there, hand on the doorknob, heart thundering in his ears. Before he can talk himself out of it, he lets himself out into the hallway.
Ben’s door is open, and Hux wonders briefly if that is auspicious. It’s only a few steps before he’s standing at the threshold, eyes squinted as they adjust to the light. Ben is lying on his stomach, propped on his elbows on the bed with a laptop open before him. The screen is filled with words, too small for Hux to distinguish what they are, but it seems to be something Ben doesn’t want him to see, because his roommate clicks the laptop shut. Are his cheeks pink? Hux is partly blind at the moment and isn’t sure.
“Hey,” Ben says, sitting up, cross-legged. “You okay?” His dark hair is mussed, straggling from its black tie and framing his face in a way Hux has always thought is nice.
Hux sucks in a deep breath. “I told my parents we’re engaged.”
There. It’s out there. He braces himself against the door frame with one hand, shifting a foot back into the hallway as though he can flee more quickly that way.
Ben just looks at him, lips parted for a long second before he croaks: “You...what?”
Hux’s damnably pale skin blotches. He rubs at his nose, which suddenly itches where capillaries are expanding with embarrassment.
“Just what I said,” Hux reiterates. “The last fight with my dad, he kept telling me I needed to get a girlfriend and have grandkids and I just…snapped. I showed him your picture and said you’re my fiancé.”
Ben stares at him. His eyes, which Hux knows to be hazel, are impossibly black. His cheeks are definitely pink now.
“I mean,” Hux rattles on, “I didn’t have any other pictures of men on my phone, is why. Why you, that is. I just wanted to get him off my back.”
Their eyes had been locked up until this moment, when Ben breaks his gaze, looking at his window. Hux cannot read his expression, and has to tuck his hands beneath his arms because they won’t stop shaking.
“Right,” Ben says, turning back to him. “Glad to be of service?” His tone is dubious, one eyebrow raised. He too, crosses his arms.
Hux feels like he’s drowning in the deep end of a murky pool, and suddenly wishes he’d put more thought into this conversation. Made some notes. A Powerpoint. Anything. His face is hot, eyes watering with mortification.
“It’s just that, I mean my mother overheard it all. She was in the kitchen that night. I intended to tell her I’d made it up but…um. I forgot. And now she’s…she really wants me to bring you. To the wake.”
Ben is silent for a long moment, and Hux braces himself for more questions, for rejection, for some scathing comment on how shabbily Hux had used him.
Instead, Ben says only, “Okay.” Two soft syllables.
Hux’s mouth falls open. “Okay?”
Uncrossing his arms, Ben shrugs, looks down at his hands in his lap. He picks at a fingernail and murmurs, “Yeah. Like I said, anything you need.”
Hux is awash suddenly with incredible relief and shame in equal measures, forming an unpleasant crowd with embarrassment. “Are you…sure? It’ll be a few days. Can you even take the time off work? I don’t want you to use up too many of your vacation hours. And my family can be…difficult.”
Ben looks up again. “I’ll worry about what I use my vacation time for.” His tone is almost sharp, and Hux flinches. His next words are gentler. “And I’m no stranger to difficult families.”
Hux stares at him for a long moment. He looks so much younger than his twenty-nine years, despite the scar that runs from above one eye to the curve of his jaw. Perhaps it’s the oversized US Marines hoodie, the careless hair, or the way he’s pulling at a string on the cuff of the shirt that makes him seem vulnerable. Either way, Hux feels like he’s doing something wrong, and that he should get out while he still can.
And yet.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Thank you...I know this is…really stupid. If I was in my right mind I probably would never have brought it up, but I really don’t want to add anything to what my mother is going through right now, or have to explain to…”
“Hux,” Ben interrupts. “It’s all right. Just go to bed. Get some rest. It’ll be fine.”
Hux isn’t sure he believes him. At the very least, sometime over the next twenty-four hours, Hux is going to have to come somewhat clean about the fact that he very much did not forget to tell his mother about the fake dissolution of his fake engagement. There are inumerable details of Hux’s elaborate fantasy he’ll have to find some way to school Ben in, all while hopefully avoiding a full admission of just how much thought he’d put into it all.
“Right,” Hux mutters, blushing anew. “We can talk about it tomorrow.” He turns to go, then stops, facing Ben again. “Thank you,” he adds softly.
Ben nods, offers him a wan smile. “Like I said, Hux.”
Anything you need. The words echo in Hux’s memory with a heavy thrum in his chest. Had anyone ever said something like that to him? He thinks that Ben might actually mean it, and suddenly Hux’s earlier declaration resounds with an ugly knell in his head. “I didn’t have any other pictures of men on my phone is why. Why you, that is.” What total bullshit.
Hux thinks of trying to retract that, standing in Ben’s doorway, but decides there isn’t any way to do so without it being colossally awkward - as though the level of inelegance ascribed to this situation could possibly intensify. And so he simply nods again, too fraught with confusion to speak, and retreats to his room.
He lays awake the rest of the night, his only comfort in recalling each and every detail that he had shared with his mother, and allowing himself to imagine what it would really be like to be engaged to Ben Solo.