words: 3.3k
warnings: none that i know of! lmk if i missed anything!
a/n: this is a rewrite of my first hux oneshot from six years ago. hope y'all enjoy the update! merry christmas and happy last day of hanukkah!
You already know you're late the minute you wake up. There's a pit of dread in your stomach, and you curse under your breath. The only thing keeping you from bolting up in bed is the fact that half of your body is trapped under someone else's.
"Armitage," you whisper, pushing at the arm that's draped over you. "Let me up. I've gotta go."
Armitage groans and buries his face deeper into the pillows, pulling you closer. "Is that any way to address your superior officer?" he mumbles, half-asleep.
"General Armitage," you correct yourself. "Move." In case that's not enough, you kick him under the blankets.
"Ow!" His eyes shoot open, and his arm jolts away from you.
You jump out of bed and rip off your nightclothes on the way to the dresser. Your things are in the third drawer down as always.
"Do you suppose you might employ less violent methods to wake me in the future?" Armitage asks as he sits up, running his hand over his face.
"Your fault for not setting the alarm," you answer, stepping into the standard black stormtrooper trousers. "I told you it's an early day for me. Could you tighten this?" You tap the bra strap on your shoulder.
He stands, walks over, and tightens the strap. "If I'd known that having the physical evaluations this early would make you bruise my shin, I would've canceled them altogether."
"Oh, would that be the only reason?" you question. "Not because you want me with you all day?"
He hums low in his throat and presses his lips to your shoulder blade. "There. Keep that with you all day. But I expect to have it returned by this evening."
With a roll of your eyes and a smile, you turn to him. "Sir, yes, sir," you say as he helps you pull your shirt on. Once you're dressed, you stand on your tiptoes to peck his lips. Then you're running out the door, saying, "Don't forget to feed my cat!"
"She's my cat," he answers as you slam the door shut.
You have to skid to a stop when you reach the medbay waiting room, attracting more attention to yourself than you'd like. Conversations stop. People shoot dirty looks your way. You're used to it, of course. It's not exactly a secret that you're involved with General Hux. It's also not a secret that everyone hates you for it.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. Whispers of nepotism trail you like shadows, but it isn't like you've been promoted. (Not that he hasn't offered. In key moments, when he's breathing praises in your ear, he offers to give you whatever you want. You laugh it off and kiss him.)
You've barely been waiting for a minute when your number is called. The physical eval goes well... you think. You're in peak stormtrooper condition. The mental eval seems fine, too; but the doctor seems in a particularly bad mood. You're anxious to relieve the tension.
"So, doc, will I live?" you ask, grinning.
The doctor doesn't laugh. Doesn't smile. "Ever been reconditioned, trooper?"
You hesitate. The smile doesn't leave your face, but it loses its mirth. "Uh, yeah," you answer. "Yeah, once."
Once when you were a teenager and had just finished initial conditioning. Once when you started to care too much about what happened to your fellow troopers. Your friends. You were too young to experience the way reconditioning breaks you and puts you back together, but you experienced it anyway. You still pass those friends you cared too much about sometimes. You don't care about them anymore. But you care that you don't care so much it hurts. Reconditioning isn't an experience you're eager to repeat.
"Well," the doctor says. "You're due for another round within the next month."
Your smile drops as the doctor hands you your file with bold, red letters across your information: SCHEDULE FOR RECONDITIONING.
You sit there, staring at it another second before asking, "What the kriff is this?"
"It's questions like that that get you reconditioned," the doctor says, opening the door. "This is the medbay, not the hub. No special treatment here."
Oh.
Maker, you want to knock his lights out. Instead, you curl your hands into fists, grit your teeth, and march out the door.
You have duties to attend to, but your mind is on a different plane. There's no way you'll be able to bring yourself to don your armor and stand on guard in the hub for hours. Not when Armitage will be there, and you'd have to face him knowing that everything you've ever felt is about to be ripped away from you. Not when you know you'll have to act like everything is fine. The kiss on your shoulder is burning a hole straight through to your heart.
You march back to Armitage's quarters. Because it's instinct, and you don't know what else to do. There, you flop down on the bed, face buried in your hands. As much as you want to block everything from your mind, you can't. It's tormenting you endlessly. A distressed mewl and the sound of a food bowl being scraped across the floor interrupts your existential crisis once, and you get up with a deep sigh to feed the cat. Afterward, you're right back where you were. On the bed in the fetal position, trying not to think. Thinking too much.
There's no telling how long you've been there when the door hisses open and shut.
"You weren't at the hub this afternoon," Armitage's voice penetrates the silence. The weight of it is shattering.
"You didn't feed the cat," you retort half-heartedly, voice raw from unshed tears.
"I didn't expect you to be here before me. Besides, I was monstrously busy today. More than usual, if you can believe it."
You raise your head just enough to see him unclasping the collar of his uniform and slipping his boots off before slipping into the bed behind you. He wraps his arms around you and pulls until your back is against his chest.
"Now," he mumbles into your neck. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong, or shall I guess?"
Maker, you can't take this. Everything is so perfect. He's wrapped around you. His fingers laced through yours are against your chest. You can almost imagine there's nothing wrong at all. You could be a regular couple at the end of a regular long day. "Nothing," you choke, unwilling to spoil the fantasy.
"Don't lie to me," he orders, squeezing your hand. "I can tell when you lie."
"Armitage, please," you sigh. "Just... Just tell me about your day."
There's a silence before he speaks. "I..." he starts. Then he clears his throat. "What about it?"
"Anything."
So, he tells you everything, the entire itemized list of his agenda for the day. And you listen to his voice more carefully than you ever have, just savoring the way it falls on your ear. The way it vibrates in his chest against your spine. The way you can feel it on the nape of your neck. One day, you'll remember that this moment was important to you, and you won't be able to recall why.
But for now, the arm you have become so accustomed to draping over you becomes a wing to hide beneath, shielding you from whatever comes next.
You don't say a word. Not until he mentions something about approving the reconditioning list. "Did you," you start. Clearing your throat, you start again. "Did you review the list before approving it?"
Hesitation. "Well, no," he sputters. "No, but you weren't on it."
You turn over to look up at him, your beautiful fool. His voice is so sure, so confident. His eyes, however, are all full of uncertainty. "How would you know?" you question.
"Why would you be?" he counters. "You're nothing if not a loyal soldier."
Deep breath. "Doesn't mean much."
"And why not?" he challenges. His voice holds the faintest hints of anger now as if the mere implication of your number on a list is worth losing composure. "Haven't you already been reconditioned once? What could the First Order gain from sending you a second time?"
"It's not about what we gain, it's about what we lose," you tell him. "In this case, we would lose the embarrassment of the highest-ranking general of the order being involved with a lowly stormtrooper."
That silences him for a time. "Embarrassment..." he finally grits as he stands up. "Embarrassment? We'll see about this."
"There's nothing you can do," you sigh as you sit up. "You've already approved the list. My name was on the list."
"I can change the list." He's pacing the floor now, the gears of his mind turning.
"If you changed it for me, you'd have to change it for everybody."
"I don't have to do anything."
"You know I'm right."
He stops pacing. "What would you have me do, then? Give you up?"
"What other choice is there?" you ask.
Another long silence before he sighs from his chest and walks back over to you in long, determined strides. His hands are on either side of your face. Cold hands against burning cheeks, ready to brush away any tears that would dare to fall. "I'll find a way. I swear it," he promises.
You know he believes it, despite how impossible it is. So, you smile. You say, "Okay." And when he crushes you to his chest, you hold him tight, and you don't let him know that you're holding on to your last moments.
Your last month before reconditioning is a whirlwind of regular duties paired with snide remarks and smug looks from your peers. At night, when you're in Armitage's quarters, you scoop up the cat and hold her close to your chest while Armitage works late into the night, trying to find solutions. He barely talks to you aside from a kiss hello when he enters and an absent "Goodnight," when you tell him you're going to bed.
It's because he's wearing himself thin, you know that. His desk light is on when you fall asleep in his bed, and it's still on when you wake in the middle of the night. His forehead rests against his hand, shoulders hunched, hair unkempt. He's drifting off and shaking himself awake every couple of seconds, and it hurts your heart to see it.
Silent as the grave, you pull yourself out of bed and shuffle to stand behind him. He takes a deep, settling breath when you spread your hands over his shoulders and lean in next to his ear. "Come to bed, sweetheart," you whisper to him calmly as you would to a child. "You've done enough."
"Not enough," he counters. His voice sounds so tired. "It isn't enough yet. It won't be enough until you're safe."
You wrap your arms across his chest, forcing him to relax into you. Your cheek is against his head so he can feel it when you say, "I don't want to spend my last days with you without you."
After this is only a moment's pause before he takes your hand and holds your palm against his cheek, kissing it once. Twice. "This is all my doing," he tells you, His voice isn't just tired. It's penitent like he's trying to atone for something. "It's my duty to you to fix it. I cannot, I will not give you up."
He drops your hand and returns to his work. He's far too good to you. Far too good to a stormtrooper that no one else would blink twice at. He always has been, hasn't he? And you love him for it. Maker, you love him, and your heart squeezes with the realization that comes too late. You can't tell him, not before he loses you forever. So you squeeze your eyes shut against pointless tears and press your lips to the back of his head, your kiss lasting longer than you intended. There's no desire to pull away, but you eventually have to. When you curl back up in bed, the phrase "You love him, you love him, you love him," plays over and over again in your head, and the melancholy song sings you to sleep.
You're nearing the end of your time. In the final days before you're due to be shipped out, something in him seems to change. A long-overdue realization that he's powerless in the situation seems to break over him. Where his determination would harden him, he begins to soften. He speaks to you carefully. He ends his work before bed and curls up behind you. Every little thing you usually worry about in a day is taken care of for you.
On the first morning of your last week, you wake to the feeling of his lips brushing against yours. He's sitting on your side of the bed in full uniform as if he's been ready for hours. Once again, you feel instinctively that you're late for something, but you can't be bothered to care. His hand is in your hair as he just barely smiles down at you, thumb brushing against your hairline. It's the first time you've woken slowly and sweetly in so long. Even before the reconditioning news, it was rare to wake like this.
"I'm late," you mumble, despite how little you care.
"Don't concern yourself with that," he answers. "I'll take care of it."
A sigh escapes from your chest. "I can't let you do that."
He leans down, nose brushing against yours. "Why not?"
Gently, you push him back and sit up, running your hand down your face. "Because," you groan. "That kind of thing is what got us into this mess to begin with."
"Well..." he responds as he stands. His voice is teetering on the edge of saying more, you can tell. He doesn't, however. Instead, he goes through the motions of a regular morning: feeding the cat, making his side of the bed, etc.
All the while, you're contemplating what kind of punishment you'll incur from being as late as you are. Or if Armitage takes care of it, what kind of remarks you'll get. What kind of looks would you receive?
"If I married you, no one would be able to say a thing about it, would they?" he says suddenly.
Your heart lurches in your chest, but you sigh. "That's not funny."
"Good," he replies. "It's not a joke."
Lifting your head, furrowing your brows, feeling your stomach drop, you say, "You can't do that."
"Why not?"
"Because," you scoff. "I'm a stormtrooper. I'm a number on a sheet. I don't even have a name."
"You have a name," he reminds you. "I gave you a name." Then he leans down, his lips next to your ear. Slowly, tenderly, he whispers the name he gave you. The one he only uses in secret. The one that is uniquely yours. It sends a shiver through you.
You can't let him do what he proposes. He shouldn't even entertain the notion, but the wall of resistance is slowly eroding, cracking, crumbling. It's all you can do just to stammer your next words. "But you can't," you reiterate. "I mean, what would the Supreme Leader say? Beyond that, you can't just throw away your whole life to spare me. There will be others, Armitage. Somewhere down the road, you'll meet someone who was born for the kind of life you could offer, and I can't be the person who stands in the way."
At this, he grips your shoulders. "Would you have a selfish thought for once in your life, for kriff's sake?" he asks sharply. That silences you enough for him to continue. "Or if you can't, would you consider that I just might be proposing to marry you because I want to? Because I--"
He cuts himself off as sharply as he began and turns away from you, pacing the room. But even in the silence that follows, you can't formulate a single sentence. You're still sitting there dumbstruck as he runs a hand through his hair, heaves a deep sigh, and turns back to you.
"Don't you see? There isn't anyone else. There never will be, and I'll be damned before I let anyone take you away from me."
It's only then that you can gather yourself enough to speak. "But why?"
"You know why."
"No, I don't," you counter. You have a guess that you would never presume upon. It seems too much to ask for.
But then his wide eyes soften, and for the first time since you've known him, he looks vulnerable. Afraid. Like he stepped into a battle without armor or a blaster. Nevertheless, he crosses to you. Kneels before you. Surrendered. He takes one of your hands in both of his.
"Because..." he begins, looking down at where your hands are joined. Then he steels himself, looks into your eyes, says your name. "I can't let anyone take you from me because I've never loved anybody before. It goes against my nature, against everything I have ever been taught. I don't understand how you managed to change me, but you did. And despite everything, I love you. I have loved you for what feels like an age. And I know that to ask you to love me in return is more than I deserve, but I only ask that you let me save you. Please, my love, marry me."
Tears that have been threatening to show since he first said your name spill over now without resistance, without reserve. He's still gripping your hand with both of his. You lower your forehead to rest against his hands and sob against them. The grey of the world you've been moving through for the past month is blooming into light, but all you can think of is how foolish you've both been. Burying so much for so long, only uncovering the truth at the last possible minute. But in the last minute, love has become salvation, and refusing him would be the unpardonable sin.
He's been calling your name softly, and you haven't been hearing him. When you finally do, you look up at him. At his ocean eyes that have a gentleness to them like a sudden calm over a troubled sea. Gentleness that you have to be in the right place and time to see. Or maybe you just have to be the right person.
"Will you marry me?" he asks you again. Another long silence as you struggle to say anything at all. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"Yes," you finally say through a shaking breath. "Yes, but will you marry me?"
An invisible weight lifts off his shoulders as he sighs. In a swift motion, he gathers you to himself and makes you stand with him. "Of course," he mutters into your ear through a veil of hair. "Of course, I will."
And then he's kissing you anywhere his lips can reach: your temple, the bridge of your nose, the corner of your mouth. All the while, he mutters incomprehensible words to you. And though you could never hope to understand them, you can sense the warmth of them.
You're saying something, too, but you know exactly what it is. Just three words, repeated over and over again, growing more true each time you say them. And you think he notices you telling him you love him because he pauses just to hold you still against him. Just to let out a hot breath against your hairline.
But when you've been still for too long, you tilt your head up and claim his lips, and the force with which he reciprocates is nearly incapacitating. He's cradling your face between his hands, crawling over you, tilting your jaw up so he can kiss underneath it. As for you, you're sinking back into the pillows. Sinking into a moment that is all yours, a moment you'll never have to give up, and you feel repurposed as if you were brand new.