Chapter Text
It’s mid-morning when they land back at the Resistance Base.
Hux sighs deeply at the thought of having to be polite again, closing his eyes a moment to settle into his act before opening them again and descending the boarding ramp. He’s dressed in some of his new clothes: a grey shirt with long sleeves and slim black pants. The morning light glints pleasantly against the silver triangles of his necklace, hanging heavy over his shoulders – the sight of it sends a pleased, possessive warmth through Ben.
There are a few pilots and mechanics hanging around the airfield doing maintenance on the x-wings. There’s a feeling of vague dread and irritation coming from them as Ben follows Hux down the ramp onto solid ground again.
He looks out over them and spots the pilot from the canteen.
“Hux, you head on to the workshop and get started on that thing I asked you to do,” Ben says meaningfully, locking eyes with the pilot frozen across from him. The look on Ben’s face causes a pulse of fear to ripple out from the pilot, and he holds the man’s feet down with the force before he can make a run for it. The droid gives him a smile in reply, slightly more malicious than he should let it be, before doing as he’s told.
Ben marches towards the pilot, still frozen to the spot.
He towers over the man, giving him a long, icy look and taking a little too much enjoyment in the thoughts spilling out of the pilot to be healthy – oh god, he’s going to snap me in half like he did with that table, this is how I die, I never should have called him a droidfucker to his face, fuck, he’s the General’s son what was I thinking, fuck, fuck-
Slowly, purposefully, Ben leans down to level his face with the pilot’s.
“He has a vibrate function,” is all Ben says to him. “It’s amazing.”
The pilot’s mind seems to short out at that, all thought stopping dead in its tracks. As Ben lets his grip with the force go, the man in front of him goes bright red, emotions flooding back into his mind with all the force of a tidal wave, mostly settling somewhere between horror and acute embarrassment.
With that, Ben leans back up to his full height, turning sharply on his heel to stride confidently back to his workshop. He tries not to look too smug as he does.
*
When he gets to the workshop, Hux is holding his BB unit namesake up in the air and looking at it like a proud parent whose child has just said its first words.
“He’s learnt sarcasm!” Hux explains, sounding like he might be crying actual tears of joy if he had tear ducts anymore. “You beautiful, mutant shit-show of a droid, you finally did it!”
If BB-Hux could scowl, Ben thinks it probably would. Instead it hisses like an angry cat down at the red-haired man holding it.
“I’m keeping this one,” Hux declares, holding BB-Hux to his chest. “He’s mine now, I love him. His name is Millicent.”
Ben snorts. “I’m not sure I dare to try and give him his propulsion mechanics at this point. Pretty sure he’d attempt to set the base on fire if he had any control over his lower body.” He looks down at the angry droid held to Hux’s chest. “Truly, you are Hux the third,” Ben tells it.
There’s a little line of BB units outside the door to Ben’s workshop, along with a cleaning droid that looks like it’s been stepped on and a kitchen droid with an arm that’s been half-melted in some sort of oven accident. How are there so many of them that need maintenance when they’ve only been gone less than three days?? He’s disappointed to find BB-8 waiting there among them for repairs.
“I expected better of you,” Ben shakes his head at BB-8 as he rolls inside with the others. The tiny droid croons sadly up at him, hanging its head guiltily. “No, I’m not mad, just disappointed.” He starts on fixing 8 first anyway while Hux coos sickeningly at Millicent on the other side of the workshop. The damage isn’t too bad, just a few servos jerked out of place.
A familiar presence in the force is running very quickly towards the workshop; Ben turns around in his chair and looks at the door expectantly, just a moment before Rey barrels in.
“Why is the entire base talking about you and your droid’s sex life?” she demands breathlessly. She flicks her eyes over towards Hux briefly, doing a double take at the new hair and beard before shaking herself out of it, determined not to be distracted. She glares at her cousin again. “You’ve been back half an hour and already it’s all I can hear, what the fuck, Ben.”
Ben smirks up at her from where he’s sprawled lazily in his chair. “That was fast.”
“The plan is going nicely, then,” Hux agrees. He’s stroking Millicent’s head like it’s a cat while the smaller droid mutters insulting little beeps under its breath. He turns around to ignore Ben and Rey, holding Millicent up in the air and making kissy faces at him. “Who’s a little murdermonster? You are, yes you are!”
Rey looks uncertainly between them. “So…you two are…?” Ben rolls his eyes, but nods and pulls down the collar of his shirt to reveal one of the dark bruises Hux left on him last night. She grins so wide at the sight that her mouth threatens to spill off her face, bounding over to Ben to spin him around in a bone-crushing hug.
“Finally!” Rey crows victoriously, “I am going to have so much fun getting revenge on you for all the shit you pulled with Poe and Finn.”
“Hmm, well maybe I’ll keep the sugarleaf truffles I got you for myself, then,” Ben teases, pulling the box off his desk to wave them tantalizingly in front of her.
“You will not,” Rey grins, snatching the packet out of his hands. She stuffs two into her mouth at once and sighs happily at the taste. “If it wasn’t for me capturing Hux, you wouldn’t be getting laid. You owe me,” she says with her mouth full.
The waves of pride and relief at seeing her cousin happy betray her.
*
Ben’s plan to get everyone off his back is simple.
Instead of protesting against the accusations levelled at him, he leans into their opinions with reckless abandon. He holds Hux’s hand in public. He wears shirts with collars low enough to let hickeys be seen. He presses his lips against the droid’s cheek in the middle of the canteen.
And the moment he hears even the slightest thought of disgust, he levels a long, considering look at its owner before firing back with some ammunition of his own.
The combination of his ability with the force and connecting Hux to the Resistance mainframe has made it alarmingly easy for Ben to dig up the sexual proclivities of the staff on base. He offers no judgement – he’s not really in any position to, honestly, with Hux sharing his bed, and he might actually start to feel bad about these gross violations of privacy if he did – just a statement of fact, to let them know that he knows.
So when a mechanic looks scandalized as he ducks down to press a kiss against Hux’s neck, mind shrieking about improper uses for droids, Ben just gives him a bored expression, and says “Biths, huh?”
The Resistance base very quickly learns to leave him alone.
Rey doesn’t approve in the slightest. For one thing, Ben seems much too pleased to her about the vague sense of fear he’s stirred up in his fellow Resistance members. It’s creeping too close to something in the dark side of the force, enjoying things like that, so she threatens to tell Leia everything unless Ben starts joining Luke and his padawans for morning meditation again. She’s only partially appeased when he does, though; Rey still thinks Ben is being an absolute creep. He agrees, of course, he knows he is, so he promises Rey that he’ll stop once the message sinks in.
Hux hadn’t entirely approved of the plan either, at first. It does paint a lurid picture of him as a mere object belonging to Ben – but then again, that’s the point. The more people believe it, the easier it is for him to hide his humanity in plain sight, and the less they see him as ‘General Hux of the First Order’ and more as Hux, the droid. They start to treat him much the same as they treat C-3PO, a curiosity in the background noise of their lives with the occasional use.
Slowly, life on the base begins to ease for the two of them, and Hux starts to believe he might finally, truly be free.
*
*
*
“Rey, dear, have you seen Hux?” Leia asks a few months later.
They’re in the middle of a new offensive – the First Order has started to regroup, a new leader at its helm, and undoubtedly another of Snoke’s puppets. Finn and Poe have just returned with a new batch of stolen data that needs to be sorted through as fast as possible to be of any use. With the fastest processor among their droids, the Resistance officers have finally relented to Leia's requests and they've been using Hux to dissect information lately. He is efficient and precise in his work, pleased to be given a task of his own, and is slowly gaining favour among the Admirals, too.
“Not since this morning,” Rey replies to her Aunt, reaching out in the force to find Ben. Wherever he is, Hux will usually be close by. “Hmm. Not in the workshop…”
Rey reaches out towards Ben’s ship and snags on a feeling she’s been waiting to pounce on for months.
“He’s in the ship,” she grins widely, “I’ll go get him right now, you stay put, General.”
She rushes out of the war room, pulling Finn up from his desk as she goes.
“Rey, what?? I’m in the middle of-“
“Come on,” she says insistently, tugging him along behind her, “we’re going to go get revenge on Ben for all those times he cockblocked us.” Finn is not a vengeful person, generally, but the thought of getting one back on Rey’s cousin hurries his pace. They pick up Poe in the airfield on their way, where he’s been working on his x-wing. He looks like life day has come early when Rey tells him where they’re going.
Carefully, Rey sneaks them up into the ship, and bursts into the living room.
She expected to find Hux and her cousin making out. At most, she expected some awkwardly tented pants and embarrassed faces. What she did not anticipate was a very naked Ben buried balls-deep in Hux, who he has bent over the back of the couch.
Rey screams.
Ben screams.
Poe slaps a hand over Finn’s eyes.
Hux just looks annoyed, turning around to yell “Don’t go soft now, asshole!” at Ben.
Rey screams some more. Vision still obstructed by Poe’s hand, Finn just looks confused. Rey calls the retreat, running screeching back out of the ship, Poe gently pushing Finn back towards the exit after her, but not before turning to give Ben an encouraging thumb’s up.
“We’re even now!” Poe says cheerfully. The pilot leaves the ship, closing the boarding ramp back up behind him.
To Hux’s great irritation, Ben pulls out and flops down on the couch with a wounded, mortified groan, mood well and truly ruined. He covers his face with his hands, refusing to move them when Hux tries to tug them away.
“This is the start of a war,” Hux announces furiously.
“Please, stars no, let this be the end of it,” Ben’s voice comes muffled through his fingers. “This is how I die, naked and embarrassed, it’s all over.”
The droid hums thoughtfully down at his lover’s theatrics. He gently circles his fingers around Ben’s softened cock, trying to coax it back to hardness, but Ben only stays buried under his hands in abject misery. An idea suddenly comes to Hux, slowly lowering himself down to rock his own erection against Ben’s body, leaning in close to whisper seductively in his ear.
“…If I do the wavy thing, will that get you back inside of me?”
“Hnnghh.”
It works. It always does.