You were lying in the middle of the floor. A number of your coworkers managed to notice your presence and walked around you. Others trampled your legs. Grunting, you would swallow the pain and remain in your prone position. Eventually you turned so that it was your back against the floor. You sighed heavily, feeling rather sorry for yourself. All that candy, wasted. Your intentions had been to be kind yet professional to the Knight of Ren, and he only considered your work to be garbage. Garbage! Keln had referred to you as trash again that day. With another heavy sigh, you rolled onto your side. Despite your failed attempts to please him, Commander Ren had insisted that you, for a fourth time, ready his quarters for him. Who the fuck didn't like candy?
Flowers wouldn't do either, you reasoned; and it was not as though you were attempting to romance him. Still, you wondered if leaving only the wine would be sufficient. What if he had come to expect more and was displeased that you surrendered to your many failures so easily? You released a low sound that was akin to a growl and flipped onto your back. A pair of stormtroopers marched past you, breaking apart from one another to avoid stepping on you. You appreciated the gesture, you did.
And then came the one individual that would neither step around you nor trod on your person. He simply paused, his boots mere inches from your body. You stared up at the ceiling though watched him with great caution in your peripheral. A second individual approached from the other side. Another set of boots, the toes of which almost brushed against your uniform. General Hux and Kylo Ren considered one another. They were having another disagreement, and your presence was of no consequence.
After addressing the General by name and approaching, Kylo Ren had begun to speak of an alteration he wished to see. You were quite thankful it had nothing to do with you; at the same time, you wished he had been requesting a different officer to ready his quarters. Or an actual maid. This was not exactly what you had signed up for when you had joined the First Order and completed your training. General Hux responded, the two almost in one another's face. You blinked as their chins—well, you reasoned, General Hux's chin and the edge of Kylo Ren's mask—obscured your view of the ceiling.
The general would probably have appreciated your gesture at putting candies on his pillow, you thought. He most likely would have graded you on the designs, finding any and all flaws. A part of you wished you could prepare his quarters for him just to see. Although apparently he had a cat, and said creature might decide to bat away the candies—and would the candy poison the cat at all? You would feel horrible if that were to happen. No, you decided, it was best that you did not prepare the general's living quarters for him.
You blinked upon realizing that their faces were still in close proximity to one another's. If either of they were to be bumped, General Hux would either be kissing the bottom portion of Kylo Ren's mask or sporting a bloody, possibly broken, nose. Before either of these things could happen, however, the redhead broke away, swerving around to see through the tasks that had apparently been assigned by Supreme Leader.
Kylo Ren lowered his chin, dipping it towards his chest so that he could peer down at you in that menacing way of his. You briefly wondered how well his peripheral vision was, but then considered that with how strong he was with the Force, he probably did not need to see anyways. He could sense things, after all. He hovered over you as these things filtered through your mind. Then he, much like the general, turned and left in the direction from whence he came.
With a heavy sigh, you returned to your musings over whether or not to attempt a new decoration for his pillow. If he did not like candy, would he have an aversion to all foods that were placed there? A stuffed animal would likely be butchered by the lightsaber that would be run through your body in no time flat.
Dopheld Mitaka advanced down the hallway towards you. "Lieutenant," you greeted him with sincere politeness. His eyes drifted down to you, and the man paused. He stood with his feet near the bottom of your shoes. His arms were crossed behind his back initially, however he soon dropped them to his sides. "Commander Ren does not like chocolate, vanilla, or swirl...or strawberry-flavored candies. Do you think he dislikes all sweets?"
"Men prefer to not have feminine touches such as sweets on their pillows." It spoke volumes of how well he knew you, to understand what you were implying.
You heaved a sigh. "A condom would be awkward." His cheeks reddened and his eyes bulged in his head. The man spluttered out nonsense for a second before you waved a hand. "Sir, if I leave only the wine, he... Well, Lieutenant Mitaka, what if he wants food with his wine?"
"He may not want food with his wine, (L/n)."
You nodded, your gaze drifting away from your superior and up to the ceiling. "Cheese it is."
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You were downright miserable as you slunk through the corridors of the Finalizer. Quickly you were learning the shortest paths from various portions of the Star Destroyer to Commander Ren's quarters. This time when you entered he was not standing, not looming over his bed as he had been the other times. The man was seated on the stool you had saw put to place in his room. His elbows were rested on his knees and he was staring—you assumed he was staring, however with a pitch-black helmet, who could really tell?—at the tray of cheese and crackers that you had set beside the bottle of wine and glass.
"You made TIE-fighters with the crackers..." That masked face turned to consider you. "I didn't realize the First Order was put in place to raise artists."
You raised a single hand, which was set in a fist, and lifted only your pinky finger. "Just being fancy, Sir." He turned back towards the tray, however did not move an inch or say another word. Unsure what else to do, you walked to the edge of his bedside table. Lifting the pate knife, you kept your pinky finger raised as you dipped the knife into the cheese spread then lathered one of the crackers in it. You set the covered cracker back down, plucked up a toothpick, and stabbed one of the cheese blocks. You lifted this, twirling it around, and then replaced it on the tray. You turned to Kylo Ren, who straightened on the stool.
When he rose and stepped closer to you, you prepared yourself for the inevitable. Thus your eyes widened considerably when he lifted the speared cheese cube. He used the toothpick between his fingers and two others to spear all the cubes of cheese. These he placed into your hands. "Take these to the garbage then return." You left his room with a mixture of feelings. So! Kylo Ren liked cheese spread! You tossed out the blocks of cheese, though once again you hated that you were wasting food, and then, as he had ordered, returned to Commander Ren's living quarters.
You had to say, you were impressed. He had used the cheese spread as a sort of adherent to build a cracker-shaped TIE-fighter that was, you had to admit, much better than yours. The Force-user did not so much as look at you when you entered the room. He poured himself a glass of wine, swirled the liquid inside the cup, and said:
"Garbage."
You felt rather deflated. Kylo Ren did not have a penchant for cheese spread. He merely had an uncontrollable urge to one-up people. So what if his artistic skills were better than yours! You would show him!
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You were sitting in front of the garbage chute, seriously considering throwing yourself in and down to the compactor. Banging your head against the wall directly below the opening, you groaned. If you continued to provide him with food he did not want, there would be many snacks wasted. Perhaps, you thought, taking a deep breath and straightening up, you were going about this the wrong way. Commander Ren was a man, as Dopheld Mitaka had implied. And you? You were not, though sometimes you wondered if maybe men were women and women were men and everyone was just confused.
Regardless, you decided that you would inquire as to what men would want on their bed.
"A naked woman," one of the officers said, as though there was nothing better. You pondered for a moment, considering who you could strip and place on the Commander's bed for him. Ass on his pillow could possibly result in pink-eye—unless he wore his helmet to bed, in which case he probably did not have to worry about that.
In the end, you decided it would be better to not put a naked woman on his bed, and thus you traveled around the Finalizer in pursuit of another wise individual with whom you could converse. And that was when you remembered that Captain Phasma was a female, as you asked her:
"As a man, what would you want placed on your pillow?"
Thankfully, she took it as a hypothetical inquiry and replied, her voice definitely not masculine, "A clean pillowcase." It was logical, and it reminded you that you did need to change Commander Ren's sheets that day. You thanked Phasma, ensuring that you referred to her as Ma'am before heading away.
At lunch, you approached Keln. You were loath to admit that you required any assistance from him, what with his opinion that you were trash. Still, your emotionally abusive friendship with the man was one of the few long-term relationships you had at all with an officer of your own rank. Thus you grabbed your tray, filled it with food, and plopped down beside him. He did not so much as greet you. The man was in a mood today, it seemed, huffing and rolling his eyes when you presented yourself to his line of vision.
"As a man, what do you have in your bedroom at night?"
"Tissue and some lotion." You nodded. Kylo Ren had neither of those things. Though you tried not to think about what he would do with such things—you had a notion, but nudged it away then punched it in the face when it bounced right back—you figured that it would not hurt to try. If anything, you could inform the Commander that you feared the air conditioning aboard the ship would render him with a runny nose and/or dry skin. To make your excuse more believable, you also provided him with a cylinder of lip balm.
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Okay, okay, you screamed inside your head. You should not have made a smiley face with some of the tissue. And perhaps you should have foregone the wine as well. What would he think? That you were telling him to get drunk so that he could take advantage of himself? You huffed, eyes running along the doors as they slid open, and stepped inside the man's quarters.
"Commander?" you intoned, trying to keep face.
The man once more was devoid of his cowl. Kylo Ren was standing directly next to his bedside table. He lifted the bottle of lotion in one hand, extended his arm off to the side towards you. You stepped forward and seized the object. He picked up the box of tissue and did likewise. At last did the man lift up the lip balm. He held it on its side, displaying the top label. You found your cheeks heating up. You had forgotten that some of the lip balms provided were scented. You had never intended to give him very-cherry flavored/scented lip balm.
"That... That one's mine," you stuttered out. "I think I mixed the two. That's my cherry; I'll take it back."
"Pray tell, what flavor you were intending to leave here?" that mocking voice inquired. You opened your mouth to answer, however discovered immediately that you were unaware of the other flavors. Original was a possible response, and yet there was a chance he would press further. Your superior closed his hand around the cylinder, turning to you again. You ducked your head. Flinching when he raised his hand, you found your head spinning in more than mild confusion at the sensation of the tissue and lotion being lifted out of your grasp. He replaced these on the bedside table. "You may leave."
"Do... do you want a different lip—"
"No," he said simply, emotionlessly. "Your cherry is fine."
You quickly left his room, practically running through the halls to retreat as you tried to figure out how to feel about that. You paused at the entrance to the garbage chute. If you threw yourself in, would everything be better? Crumpling, you laid down in the middle of the floor. The night crew had a harder time avoiding stepping on you, many of them having never encountered a trip hazard such as your body before.