Chapter Text
Subject Age 22, Body #01
18 Years Post-Battle of Endor
Specialist Mission #31, Target: (Redacted)
Dispatch method: N/A
Snoke’s faceless guard shoves Hux unceremoniously into small, dark quarters, before pushing a bundle of fabric into his arms that the naked droid supposes is meant to pass for clothing. He turns sharply to level his best icy look at the guard, but the hulking thing only stares back at him blankly before hitting the panel to slide the door shut, lock engaging with a heavy clunk. Hux sighs irritably. Stars, but he hates the guards that populate Snoke’s citadel; they never speak, and their dark, hooded robes and smooth, faceless masks give no clue as to what or who might lie underneath. He’s not even certain they’re sentient.
With a frown, he gingerly unfolds the bundle the guard had gifted him with and snorts immediately upon inspecting it. As if the cotton-candy-pink hair his handlers have fitted him with isn’t insulting enough, the clothing appears to be some form of lingerie better suited to a Twi’lek, gauzy and sheer and of absolutely no practical use. He would rather greet his target naked than stoop to wearing this, thank you very much.
Hux looks around the room for somewhere to hide the awful thing and feels his spirits drop further. Whoever this apprentice of Snoke’s is, their quarters are…well. It’s not that there’s a mess to be made, since the gloomy room only contains one wide, low bed (unmade, Hux notes with a wrinkled nose) and nothing else. Two doors, to what he assumes is a refresher and a closet. But the metal walls are littered with deep scores and burns and scrapes over every inch – even the ceiling and floor seem to have caught some of the action.
This is not a person that takes care of their toys. And Hux is about to be that toy.
The droid sighs again, carefully hiding the gauzy clothing between the mattress and the bed-frame. He’d known he would be punished for his little…outburst, after mission #30. He couldn’t really get away with dispatching an entire unit of specialist First Order personnel in cold blood, no matter how careful he had been to destroy all the evidence, but the thought that the Supreme Leader himself might be the one to hand down punishment had never crossed his mind – a mistake he won’t soon forget. Hux had been shuttled off to the citadel with little circumstance and informed of his ‘mission’ with malicious glee.
So here he is, in only a pink-haired scalp-piece trying to arrange his target’s messy sheets into some semblance of order. Ridiculous. For the first time in his dubious career in “espionage”, as his handlers rather charitably call it, he won’t even have the pleasure of killing his target once the night is over. (He glances at the gouges on the walls and very pointedly does not think about whether he will be the one destroyed by the end of this.)
He drapes himself artfully across the bed, one of the black sheets wrapped low on his hips, and thinks please, stars, don’t let this one be into any weird shit, and waits.
*
Subject Age 16
12 Years Post-Battle of Endor
Hux is going to die a virgin.
Of all the things he could be thinking at this moment, this is the ludicrous thought that his mind chooses to linger on. The Supreme Leader’s faceless, soulless guards are wheeling his gurney towards the throne room, Hux’s father and a handful of officers and scientists close on their heel. He’s felt, first hand, how Snoke can reach into a person’s thoughts; he should attempt to think of something dignified in these final moments of his life. Of his long dead mother maybe, waiting for him on the other side…no, too sentimental. She died in childbirth and he never knew her. His nanny droid did an exemplary job in replacing the woman. Besides that, he’s never held any particularly strong beliefs about there being an afterlife. Only in this moment, minutes away from his inevitable, painful death, if the other test subjects have been anything to go by, does the idea of an afterlife become appealing.
I’m going to die a virgin, his mind unhelpfully supplies again unbidden, along with a profound sense of injustice. One day, years in the future, he will be unspeakably grateful for this fact; but at this moment Hux is 16, crippled by the Academy’s experiments and sexually frustrated – perhaps these last minute regrets were inevitable for a teenager, he thinks.
Hux sighs deeply, watching the high arches of the ceiling move past above him. He is the last of the Academy’s test subjects for the droid project; were it not for his father’s influence, he’d probably already be among the corpses and drooling, mindless messes the other cadets in the test group have been turned into. If his father feels any regret for enrolling him in the program, he does not show it. Nor did he betray any reaction to Snoke insisting that, despite the thirty-odd failures that came before him, Hux will be the one to survive.
It doesn’t matter, he supposes. He’ll be dead within the year either way – the previous round of experiments have ruined his spinal chord beyond repair, he hasn’t felt his legs in months, and he’s fairly sure he’s caught pneumonia in the cold citadel the Supreme Leader resides in. (But perhaps he could have squeezed in a pity fuck before he dies, at least.)
Ease your mind, child, the wretched voice of Snoke spills into Hux’s mind, cold and clammy like everything else in this place, and he shudders in his gurney. I have foreseen your transformation. You will be making use of your new body soon enough.
Hux tries very hard to keep his mind blank in response.
They wheel him into the throne room where Snoke awaits them. He’s turning over the orange kyber crystal Hux had picked out between his bony fingers; he hadn’t really understood what difference it made which kyber crystal Snoke attempted to place his mind inside. Some Force superstition, perhaps, when really he’d only childishly picked it from the selection of crystals presented to him because it matched his ginger hair. Lying on another gurney to one side of the throne is the artificial replica of Hux’s body. The face- his face’s eyes are closed serenely, no dark purple bags under them like his real eyes. It isn’t quite as gaunt as he has become, coloured with a faint dusting of pink over the cheeks that his sallow face hasn’t seen in years. The droid body’s red hair shines bright and vibrant, even in the gloom, where his own is matted and greasy, and he notes with some envy that the new body is taller than he’s managed to grow, though no less slim.
“Well, child?” Snoke prompts, and Hux starts – the adults have been talking for a few minutes now while he’d been lost in thought, it seems. “Shall we begin?”
Hux swallows and nods sharply, schooling his features into cold determination. His father is giving him a curious expression that he can’t decipher; he resolves to at least face his death with dignity under the Commandant’s gaze. Snoke’s guards wheel him up to the foot of the throne so he lies side by side with his replica. In a heavy, shambling effort of a motion, the Supreme Leader raises to his feet, shuffling achingly slowly down the steps, before hovering one gnarled hand over Hux’s forehead, crystal held delicately between thumb and forefinger in the other.
“You will serve me well,” he soothes, and Hux feels no comfort at all. Then Snoke’s fingers touch his forehead, and there is only pain.
Distantly, he thinks he might be screaming; there is a feeling like lightning or electricity burning through his body, grinding through his bones and setting him on fire, until Hux can’t feel his body at all and he is the lightning, a pure, violent agony without form or senses. Any moment now, surely, surely if there is a merciful creator, he will be dead and this will be over – but it keeps going and going and burning and ripping and hurting until he feels like- like a lightning bolt searching for the nearest thing to ground itself and dissipate this miserable energy, he snags on something and gratefully hurtles his consciousness towards it, screaming for release.
For one blissful moment, the pain breaks, and Hux’s awareness spreads through this vessel, whatever it may be-
- and then someone turns his new body on, and a whole new kind of agony begins. He thinks he might be screaming again – his mind is full of feedback, thousands and thousands of binary signals shouting and clamouring for attention from all sides, assaulting him with information he doesn’t know what to do with or how to process and too much too much too many, turn it off, turn me off, please, I can’t, I can’t, let me die.
Someone must take pity on him, he thinks, or perhaps his screaming has already broken his voice synthesizer, because in the mess of ones and zeros something is suddenly switched off; he chases it, and one by one the binary begins to obey him, sensor by sensor, circuit by circuit shutting down, until everything disappears and it’s just him again, alone but for one lingering connection, neither physical nor digital, tying him to the artificial body.
Months from now, Hux will find out that it took him a full week of screaming and seizing before his voice synthesizer shorted out, another thirty hours to switch himself off – but in this moment, there is only perfect nothingness.
*
Subject Age 22, Body #01
18 Years Post-Battle of Endor
Specialist Mission #31, Target: (Redacted)
Dispatch method: N/A
By his internal chronometer, Hux has been lounging around Snoke’s apprentice’s room for about five hours now. It’s getting late into the evening, around 2200 in the standard Imperial day cycle, by his estimation, and he’s yet to see hide or hair of his bedmate. It’s not that Hux isn’t a patient droid – but he’s made the bed ten times, smoothed out every wrinkle, inspected and catalogued every gouge in the walls, nosed through every closet and cranny (only black robes, how dull), and now there’s nothing left to distract him from his mind wildly imagining what sort of hideous, awful beast he’s about to submit himself to.
Which is why he’s wholly unprepared for the sight of the pale, awkward man that does limp into the room half an hour later.
Hux shifts minutely in his position lying sideways across the bed, back to propping himself up on one elbow with a sheet preserving a single, laughable shred of modesty over his narrow hips, tilting his head curiously at the dark-haired human – but that small movement is enough to startle the man, it seems, because his head snaps up wildly in alarm.
The man throws out an arm and Hux finds himself flung violently towards the wall, lower body crashing against the headboard and the Force pinning his neck against the ruined walls. Definitely the apprentice, then, the droid thinks mirthlessly and with no small amount of irritation.
“Stop,” he barks out, and the fact that he’s able to speak at all seems to surprise Snoke’s apprentice enough to let him drop back down onto the pillows.
The dark-haired man’s mouth opens and closes of its own volition a few times, lips trying to form words and failing miserably as he attempts to make sense of the intruder in his bedroom. Hux reaches a hand to his neck, gingerly pressing against the synth-skin to check for dents in the metal underneath. Finding himself intact and thanking the heavens for durasteel, he turns his attention to the man still floundering in the entryway – barely a man, Hux thinks, he can hardly be much older than twenty. There are dark circles under his eyes, and in only a black tank top and training leggings, the bruises and scrapes littering his arms and shoulders are clearly visible.
“…A…droid?” the man mutters, more to himself, before his expression darkens and what could be a handsome face twists into something ugly and furious. “What the fuck,” he hisses, “what the fuck? Who sent you?”
“Snoke,” Hux answers, aiming for something light and easy but not quite masking his irritation. He knew being sent to warm the bed of the Supreme Leader’s apprentice was a punishment, but the man has been in the room less than three minutes and already it’s a trial. “Who else?”
“What,” the man snaps out again, hands clenching and unclenching into fists, air seeming to crackle around him. “Why would he-“
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Apparently he’s going to have to spell this out. “I have been ordered to serve your needs, my Lord Apprentice,” Hux says evenly.
“Why would he…what is this,” the man continues, starting to pace now and completely ignoring the droid in his bed. “Is this- is this what Snoke really thinks of me? What, that I, that I can’t control my base desires, now?” he spits, more agitated by the second. “That I need some cold, metal hole to stick my dick in, to keep me sane, is that it? I’m not so- so pathetic that I’d reduce myself to fucking a damn pleasure droid-“
“So don’t fuck me then!” Hux interrupts loudly, truly exasperated and openly glaring at him now. “It’s no skin off my nose.”
That, finally, gets the man to look at him, and he seems surprised that Hux is still there, taking the droid in fully for the first time. His pale, porcelain skin, spread languidly against the black sheets, the barely visible, hair-thin seams that separate his synth-skin into a jigsaw puzzle of pieces, slim waist and narrow shoulders, long legs...the apprentice flushes, as if it’s only just truly hit him what Hux is here for. Good grief.
“What’s your name?” Hux asks, forcing himself to soften his voice and slinking seductively up the bed like he was taught to years ago. Obviously, a different approach is needed with this idiot.
“…Kylo Ren,” the man grits out eventually, still standing stiffly at the doorway, and it occurs to Hux that- oh. Oh.
“Am I the first to share your bed, Kylo?” Hux tilts his head curiously, and by the way Kylo flushes an even deeper shade of red, he’s pretty sure he’s hit the mark. Lucky me, a virgin with anger management issues.
“I’m not supposed to-“ Kylo starts, hands waving in the air as he struggles to find the words, “I’m not supposed to have…attachments. To people. It’s forbidden.”
Hux huffs a quiet, ironic laugh under his breath. “How fortunate for you then, that I am merely an object and not a person,” he smiles crookedly. “What was it? A ‘cold, metal hole to stick your dick in’, you said?” Kylo swallows nervously. Is this awkward boy really who Snoke has placed all his faith in, who shredded the metal walls of this room, Hux wonders? His dark eyes flit over the droid’s body, straying every few moments to where the sheet still just about covers Hux before pointedly looking somewhere else.
“Is this a test?” Kylo asks quietly after a while.
For me, maybe, Hux thinks sarcastically. “Ask Snoke yourself, why don’t you?” he sighs out loud instead.
The dark-haired man bristles, drawing himself to his full height. “Fine,” he snaps, “I will.” His eyes take on a glassy quality, looking into the middle distance as if he’s listening for something – Snoke hasn’t been in Hux’s head since he was ripped out of his original body, but he still recognizes that look Force users get when doing their telepathic nonsense. Kylo blinks the expression away after a while, limping a few steps further into the room and finally allowing the door to slide shut behind him. He waves a hand absently to lock it, brows knitting together in confusion.
“Well?” Hux prompts.
“He said you’re- my reward,” Kylo says haltingly. “For recent- it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you deserve me?” Hux teases, leaning back on his elbows and looking up at Kylo through his lashes (pink, to match his hair; Hux can appreciate that attention to detail from his handlers, at least). Kylo shrugs self-consciously before stumbling a few steps further towards the bed. “You’re limping,” Hux says gently, patting the space beside him. “Come sit down and let me see.” He shifts, unnecessarily, to the side to make more space, letting the sheet fall away, and from Kylo’s sharp intake of breath, Hux knows his spell has been cast.
The Force-user sits down heavily, eyes now very much focused between the droid’s legs. “You’re…really a droid?” he mumbles. “You don’t have- I can’t feel you, in the Force, but you’re so…”
“So what?” Hux smiles, reaching a hand out to tilt Kylo’s chin up with one thin finger. Without that petulant expression, the man is handsome, in an odd, crooked sort of way. Hux lets his fingertip trail down from Kylo’s chin, over his Adam’s apple, his collarbone, down along the swell of his firm pectoral muscles to the hard ridges of his abdomen. Perhaps this won’t be such a punishment after all – he’s certainly been ordered to bed worse looking men and women in his short career.
“Real,” Kylo shudders under the attention. “How did he know I- my…preferences?”
“The Supreme Leader is supposed to know everything, is he not?” Hux tuts, leaning into Kylo’s space until their lips are only inches apart. “Which is it, that I’m built like a man? Or the pink hair? I could be a woman next time, if you like,” he laughs softly.
“No,” Kylo says sharply. “I like- this. You. You’re very…pretty.” And then, unexpectedly, he leans forward to close the distance between them, kissing Hux tentatively and gently and not at all like somebody who could rend metal walls into a patchwork of vicious grooves with a mere thought. Hux shifts a hand up to tangle his fingers in the dark locks of hair, guiding Kylo into a better angle. The droid sucks sweetly on the plush lips against his own, humming appreciatively when Kylo copies him, big, clumsy hands coming up to pet at his silky pink hair, bold enough to flick his tongue out and press deeper into Hux’s mouth. Kylo’s hands move down suddenly to grab Hux’s ass, easily pulling the droid onto his lap. He leaves his hands there, Hux notes with amusement, kneading and squeezing and trying to pull him against- oh.
“Impatient,” Hux chides with a smirk, pulling away from the kiss but grinding obligingly against the stiff bulge pressing insistently at him anyway. It’s worth it for the startled gasp it punches out of Kylo alone. This is almost too easy, the poor boy already eating right out of Hux’s hand. He thinks, briefly, of being alone and cold and horny and sixteen in this very same citadel and takes pity, continuing to shift his hips slowly. “You’ve decided you do want your reward then, I take it?”
“Yes,” Kylo breathes, looking up at Hux wildly. He gulps. “Please.”
“Ah, but we were going to take care of those injuries first, weren’t we?” Hux soothes, sliding his fingers smoothly up underneath Kylo’s shirt to tug it over his head. He frowns a little at the mess of scars, bruising and scabs over the torso revealed to him; he didn’t think Force training was quite so…bloody. “Poor thing,” he says, all mock sweetness, stroking his knuckles along Kylo’s jaw. “Want me to rub bacta on these?”
Kylo squirms uncomfortably, seemingly torn between chasing every gentle touch and wanting to pull away from the softness of concern. “I don’t need it,” he grumbles eventually, pawing at Hux and trying to pull him closer again.
The droid pulls back entirely instead, Kylo hissing his displeasure and chasing after him. “Let me see that leg you were limping on, at least,” Hux murmurs, fluttering his eyelashes, and he hooks his fingers over the top of Kylo’s leggings and goodness, finally the dark-haired man seems to get where he’s going with this if the startled, pleased expression he suddenly dons is anything to go by. The taller man eagerly shifts his hips up to awkwardly tug his leggings down and off, along with his underwear, and Hux can’t help but be a little charmed by his inexperienced enthusiasm.
He’s a little less happy when he sees the leg Kylo limped in on. “Stars, Kylo, what did you do?” he asks with genuine concern at the sight of the large, messy gash ripping across the man’s right calf. It’s been haphazardly stitched together – possibly by Kylo himself – and the surrounding area is bruised and angry looking.
“It’s fine,” Kylo grunts, but the pained expression he makes when Hux presses his thumb against the wound gives him away. “Forget it, can we- can you-“
Hux shuts him up by pressing a gentle kiss, barely there, to his knee, just above. For whatever reason this idiot seems to be important to Snoke, and left alone this injury looks worryingly likely to get infected. That’s what he tells himself, at least, completely ignoring his long dead, definitely non-existent conscience piping up with a thousand worries about this naïve boy. “How about,” the droid mouths against the inside of Kylo’s thigh, “you let me put bacta on this, and I’ll blow you for being good afterwards.” Kylo makes a choking noise and goes bright red again. Hux smirks up at him. “Good. We’re agreed, then.”
He gets up and disappears into the refresher, knowing full well that Kylo’s eyes are glued to the slight sway of his ass as he pads away. He’d found the bacta before in the bored hours he’d been waiting, so he’s back out soon enough, kneeling between Kylo’s legs again.
“There we go,” he says soothingly, rubbing the bacta gel over the wound. He feels Kylo tensing up underneath his hands.
“It’s enough now,” Kylo grumbles, reaching down to grab the droid’s wrists and pull them up closer to his waiting erection.
“Tch,” Hux tuts again, but before Kylo can complain any more he abruptly ducks his head down to suck the tip of Kylo’s dick. The man gives a full body jerk at the sudden sensation, shuddering when Hux pulls off with a wet pop. Kylo’s cock is long enough that he can wrap both hands around it, one twisting firmly at the base of his shaft and the other up towards the head, and thick and leaking precome already; this won’t last long, but he can hardly blame the poor touch-starved thing, so obligingly he replaces one hand with his mouth, lapping from the frenulum up around the slit before swallowing Kylo down.
“Shit,” Kylo curses above him, hips stuttering and bumping his cock deeper still. He wasn’t built with a gag reflex – small blessings, Hux thinks, but he’s not entirely sure how deep he’s built to take something in his throat, either. He slurps noisily, tongue swirling up and down the shaft as he goes, Kylo’s thighs trembling beneath him. He likes to think, under Madam’s tutelage, that he’s become particularly good at giving head.
He pulls back a little to look up at Kylo through his eyelashes, considering dipping back down to try and take him to the base when, before he can, Kylo is suddenly coming in warm, wet spurts. It takes Hux by surprise enough that he opens his mouth, Kylo’s cock slipping out and streaking his face with ropey streams of cum.
“Shit!” Kylo curses again, but now there’s a note of panic and embarrassment to it. “Sorry, fuck, I’m sorry-“ He yelps when Hux sucks the tip of his cock again in response, giving one last weak twitch at the sensation.
“Shhh, it’s fine,” Hux hums gently, feeling oddly pleased with himself. Kylo looks down at him awkwardly, ready to protest again, but he’s easily distracted enough when Hux raises a finger against the cum on his face, gathering it up and licking his finger clean. “It’s flattering.”
Kylo looks unconvinced. “Should I- uh. You-“
Hux raises himself up off the floor to stretch contentedly along the bed next to Kylo. “Hmm?”
“Don’t you want me to…?” Kylo shuffles alongside him, seeming disappointed suddenly. “You’re not hard.”
That punches a laugh out of Hux, and the taller man’s face instantly sours and curls in angrily on itself again. Hux has the decency to feel a little bad, at least. “Kylo, I’m a pleasure droid,” he laughs even as he reaches a hand out to try and smooth the crease that’s formed in Kylo’s brow.
“So?” he huffs. “It’s still- polite, isn’t it? To reciprocate?”
“You’re sweet,” Hux smiles with a genuineness surprising even himself, tugging Kylo to lie down too. (He very pointedly does not tell Kylo he’s the first to ever offer, kissing his pouting lips instead.) Kylo’s bad mood doesn’t last long under the renewed attention, melting bonelessly against him, but-
“There’s really nothing you want me to do?” Kylo mumbles against Hux’s lips. “I can,” he pauses, distracted when Hux introduces his teeth, “get hard again pretty soon, I can last longer,” he promises, so terribly earnest that Hux’s heart would break a little, if he still had one. What a shame, the droid thinks instead, that this awkward, brittle thing belongs to Snoke; he might be tempted to keep him for himself otherwise. But at the thought of Snoke, he-
“You know,” Hux says slowly as the gears both figuratively and literally turn in his head. “Perhaps there is one thing you could do for me in return.” Perhaps; he thinks of his kyber crystal, of his blueprints, of the droid project’s data files still somewhere in this citadel.
Perhaps indeed.