Chapter Text
You woke languidly to a golden, syrupy glow fluttering through the semi-transparent cloth covering the windows. Your body languished and relaxed, as only the deepest of sleep left it. The mattress was soft beneath you, as you rolled over to snuggle deeper down into the mass of crisp white linen coverlets. The sheets perfumed with the scents of far-off fragrant woods, warm spices and cut through with clean citrus soaps. Then, as your body ignored your demands to stay oblivious to your surroundings, something else you dismissed as momentarily too inconsequential to at first bring you awake. Tangling yourself for a moment longer, deeper into the scent to chase the last moments of sleep. Defiantly trying to refuse that your body was waking. Breathing at last a slow, deep, relaxing sigh as you slowly gave up and permitted yourself to accept that you were waking, relaxed still until you realised exactly what those smells meant.
Him! Your eyes flew open with both the realisation and the deafening memory of the night. In that first moment of true wakefulness, frozen and unsure of what emotion or need to give in to first. Guilt was the obvious; it was all around you. You could smell it on you, you could feel it on and under your skin, and the hiccupped sob that stuck in your throat did nothing to take back control. Did you panic and run, or was it better to stay hidden and still? Should you seek to comfort yourself, or should you accept guilt and berate yourself? Then, as the anxiety took complete control, it felt like a knife was being punched into your stomach. Your automated defences taking over, searching first as you had taught yourself for so long, to look first for the danger, to appease if possible. Him, You, Hux, Kylo; both of them! What had you been thinking, what had you done, how had you allowed it?
Upon finding yourself alone, you fought to free yourself from the tangled mess of sheets. Shuffling to perch atop the pillows crowning the head of the bed. Curving your body into a smaller space, spine curved, knees pulled closer, and then, in an attempt to take control of yourself, you punched out. Your hand curled into a tight fist, nails biting into your palms, as the heel and side of it hit a quick, hard, repeated swipe at the wall above them.
The noise, as it connected to the wall, was hardly subtle, but not too loud. Still, you ended up scolding yourself for the noise it had made and the attention it could risk. Furiously sickened at yourself, your loins slick with leftover desire and your belly thick with dread at what you had done. This time, you had really done it! This time, you really had slept with the enemy, granted, you had unwittingly been in bed with it for a long time now, but this time, you had really, really messed up. This dalliance hadn’t been to save anyone, to forge alliances, or to keep your children and yourself safe. It had been completely out of desire for yourself and what you wanted; not even a sliver of your behaviour had been compelled by need, and it was disgusting how easy it had been to enjoy it. Given how well you had collaborated, it was fair to say that you deserved every ounce of anxiety-filled loathing you felt for yourself right now.
You didn’t even realise that you had attempted to leave the bed until you hit the floor. You did not even stop to take in the breath it forced from your lungs as you fell. Landing in a mess of fabric and limbs with a heavy-sounding thud, knocking over the nightstand. Cursing internally as you made more of a noise, drawing yet more attention to the fact that you were awake. One of your legs caught in the mess of bedding and slipped as you tried crawling. The knee of the other stung as it scraped rug burns onto your skin as you fought to clear yourself across the tight woollen weave of the floor. Frantically kicking out to free yourself, pushing yourself to attempt a shaky stand, your legs too weak to take your weight, panicked need making you crawl instead. You needed to run from your own disgust at yourself; you had to hide, and your own room would be safer than this.
Desperately scrambling to get away from the bed, to escape the room and the fresh blooming of shame, as you realised that even if you had gotten back to your rooms completely unseen, your absence from them overnight wouldn’t have been unnoticed. Everyone permitted into this network of attendants, servants and droids had to have known where you had slept. Your cheeks burned alight with the shame that everyone knew you had finally willingly betrayed not just yourself but the Resistance. You had surrendered the last thing you had to the enemy.
“Pet!”
Instinct made you not only tense, but also to ignore the uncertainty and concern laced so heavily into the one word. A word that he normally spoke with so much conviction and control, that you wished he had done now. Carrying on moving for the door, not listening to the failing attempts to get you to stop, his tone falling further from its usual tone of command as he gently pleaded for you to listen to him. Nothing registered as you worked your way past him, not catching on to the fact that he had not attempted to move or approach you until you pushed up into a shaky crouch and failed to dodge past him.
His reaction to catch you was far swifter than your own reflexes to save yourself, as, with a short cry, you tumbled back down towards the floor. Stopped only from slamming into it, as he intercepted you and, with a deft twist, took control of the fall. Twisting onto his back to offer himself up and to cushion your body with his own.
“Breathe!”
The clipped command had once more retuned back into its crisp, authoritarian tone, but for all it had been an instruction that he expected to be obeyed as though an order, it had not yet lost the earlier desperate tinge. And perhaps it was for all that that you, instead of fighting him, lay lax in the circle of his arms. Your palms flat against his chest as you lay there, almost buried against him as you obeyed his command to breathe. Listening to him with growing conviction in him as he calmly repeated the order and stroked your hair and down your back.
“You need to slow your breaths, don’t think, just breathe.” This time, he forced more calmness into it, his tone authoritative, but still with a strained hint as he struggled to keep his worry entirely hidden from you. Then, almost you welcomed it, as he wrestled your limp form so he could rise to more of a seated position, freeing a hand to reach atop the bed to drag down a sheet, bundling it into a loose cover for your modesty. Realising at some point that his struggles to move you had not been because you were fighting him, but that you had instead gone so lax that he struggled to keep you upright.
Where it touched, the wool of his clothing was soft, but not smooth enough not to be noticed as his weight shifted. One arm kept loosely around your waist to keep you steady against him, the other arm reaching so he could take your wrist in his hand and move it under the sheet to press against you. Holding it palm first against you to feel the seesaw of your abdomen as you sucked in deep, heady lungs full of air that slowly calmed you towards rest.
After a while, you groaned and pressed first against him as you tried to sit up. Then, as you fell against him once more, you felt him shift to relax and allow you to settle again into his arms. Shushing and holding you as a shaky sob caught in your throat, your head spinning. Numbness and pins and needles running up your arms and legs, working into your toes and fingertips. Everything not numb seemed to hurt; your chest hurt from your heart thudding against your ribs as it beat a hard, heavy tattoo from your torso up to your head.
“Good girl, just breathe for me” This time, when he spoke, both the authority and the panic had entirely gone as he murmured your name, brushing at the strands of hair that sweat had left plastered to your forehead and cheek.
“I fucked up, Pet, but it seemed wrong for either of us to refuse you anything.”
“Hux?” Your voice was a croak breaking into a whisper, almost as gentle as the feather-light brush of fingers stroking your lower arms and the palms of your hands, slowly encouraging the feeling to return to them and with it something else, relief. You shook your head at his continued attempts to excuse his behaviour and refused to listen. Twisting in his arm to face him and perhaps daring to touch him, or perhaps permitting yourself to reach for him as you placed your fingers against his lips. Cutting him off physically as his eyes widened caught a fraction too late to hide the contained shock, before the corners crinkled softly into a genuine smile as you spoke.
“Hux, I asked, this time it is entirely my fault.”
Your voice was quiet, barely wavering despite the deepening of emotion that instead settled firmer like balm against the empty twisting of your guts. Laid thicker there as the lips that had softened to kiss your fingertips uplifted to join the amusement in that warmed his eyes as he spoke, again, though this time almost like he absent-mindedly shared a thought and completely altered the landscape of the conversation.
“Is it wrong to be so enamoured Pet, when you use my name?”
The sensation of thumping in your chest returned, though this time with a calmer rise and fall to your chest. Amazed all over again at how a man so in control of an empire, and normally so steel-clad in rules and regulations, could look suddenly so out of place and so human. Perhaps it was because you had rarely seen him so, but was it wrong that the very man who had inspired the panic and the shame of earlier, now brought you back towards serenity and security? Now the bashfulness written across his cheeks deepened your guilt, his tongue darting to moisten his lips as you traded your own thoughtless admission aloud.
“Is it wrong that I want you to kiss me?”
His jaw squared at that, and for a fraction of a click, you could have sworn he almost stiffened, passing it off as him shifting to tuck you tighter to him. The crown of your head under his chin, as he tightened his grip and repeatedly swallowed thickly, perhaps an attempt to banish the risk of temptation, or worse, as you feared when he spoke into his hair, anger.
“No.”
There was finality in the conviction of that one word. A refusal, for all his grip tightened to display a different struggle, and his mouth pressed to your head to kiss it. Sighing deeply, his shoulders falling downwards as he leaned his weight back, keeping you close to his chest as he pulled you to lie on the plush, rugged carpet with him.
“Pet I cannot, you cannot have this worry again.”
He kept you close, whilst you slotted one leg over his closest thigh. Frowning as you sought the words to explain, to rationalise what you could not. Once, you would have bitterly blamed him for all your behaviour, and perhaps he was right to refuse you. Whilst he had sculpted this behaviour and laid the fuse for the panic your foolish behaviour had ignited. His body warmed the spaces between you. The sheet he kept for your dignity, pulling it across and around your back with one arm, and the other altering it to fold around you. The arm around you, offering a physical comfort you craved enough now, to cling loosely to him. One of your arms lay over his chest in needless fear that he would move to take himself away from you. Another sigh before he spoke, pulling your chin to make sure you had to meet his eyes as he spoke his conviction to you.
“This is my guilt and not Pet. I should have displayed more self-control and had you wait.”
It was good to have him find words to recognise your own feelings, even if it was only a partial truth. One that had you frowning as you wondered if he came to him purely from his own intuition or as he nodded and spoke his name in a clear acknowledgement of your blossoming question, from Ren’s hidden intervention. That brought a pause from both of you and forced you to break eye contact, though you still kept bodily close to him. Whilst his thoughts were unreadable to you, you wondered if your own were to him right now. The hand at your back rose to catch the nape of your neck and settle under the base of your skull. Cupping it as you digested your feelings into more tangible thoughts. He was right to his fears; the clear sense of them had been that your behaviour upon waking was borne of honest fear. But you could not deny that there were losses to his refusal, losses that made you regret your inability to control yourself. But to just accept what you craved without what you feared would not have been truthful to anyone, you had wanted far more than you had offered last night, and would have in the throes of passion allowed far more. If Ren had communicated as much to Hux then they both had already shown enough restraint and self-control not to have pushed for their own pleasure also.
Something in that realisation made you look up, unintentionally meeting his gaze and leaving you caught there. His facial features made it clear to you that there was less of a fear of whether he knew than an understanding that he did know, and that gave you something new. It was something you had never felt you had before in this lopsided relationship. For the first time, you came to the understanding that in this small way, you held power over him.
Your head tilted as silently you watched as it shifted in an indecipherable way across his whole body. A change that seemed to show as confidence clearer in him than the shock blooming within you. It was an openness and vulnerability in the way he held himself that you had never before seen; the reaction from both of you settled far more easily with you than it should have. His earlier refusal was tossed aside as, with infinite tenderness, he pressed his lips to yours. Gently yielding to you as you pressed for more, unsure of who led as you opened your mouth to the briefest and softest touch of his tongue against your own before he pulled back from the kiss. His eyes had gone dark, and no attempts were made to hide his desire from you, for all his voice did not quaver to voice the terms to him agreeing to your demands for affection, to keep the boundaries in place for you.
“For now, this is the line to keep you safe, no more than this, my love.”