Title: In Love When You Wake
Paring: Armitage Hux X Anxious!Reader
Warnings: anxiety, gender neutral terms for all readers. A little angsty, but it's just fluff.
Spoilers: none. But if you haven't seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, make sure you do!
Author's note: I had to write this. Title's from the Ed Sheeran song, and loosely based around some anxiety I've had lately. Also, did you know there are next to no Hux X Reader fics anywhere on the Internet? I'm in outrage.
-----------------------------------------------------------
It's daybreak, and you know it before you've even rolled over to glance at the holo-clock in the wall. It's dastardly, being cursed to wake early, to wake for no apparent reason, but here you are, and you're smothered by smooth too-warm sheets and the scent of him.
Unbeknownst to you, it's been a year today since you two began seeing each other, and despite not knowing this, you think of how peaceful he looks whilst asleep, and how you'd rather lay with him than be judged by his pet Knight of Ren.
As Armitage sleeps, his eyes fidget under his lids, in dreams seeing as much action as he does in his job. It's peaceful, observing him in stillness; the hint of bright auburn stubble taunting you with ideas of a beard to be (if Armitage would ever relent to such physical scruffiness), his milky skin. His lithe form, lain like a spread eagle, face into his pillow.
You want to take a photograph and hold onto this transitory moment forever. But the moment passes before it arrives, and you hear the rumble of his morning voice.
"Why do you always stare?" He grumbles.
It's early, you're still waking yourself. But you let out a squeak of fear - has it really become a habit to watch him stir, to blink his steely green eyes free of sleep? - and bury yourself in the myriads of sheets. Who knew living on an artificial planet, on Starkiller Base could be so cold?
"'M sorry," you breathe.
Armitage chuckles, and reaches to kiss your knuckles.
Inside this room, he is a human. He breathes and bleeds and weeps and wants like a man. He watches and wills and loves and stills in thought when he regards you. But once he steps from this space, to become Armitage Hux - he's not the man who whispers poetry at three in the morning to you.
He's merciless then. Dangerous. A man of war. Truly a force to be reckoned, to only be reconciled when he sheds his mask to return to you.
"_________? Darling, why do you hide?" His morning voice purrs with a beauty you can't deny is your weakness.
Slowly, the blankets rise from your makeshift tent, peeling away to see inch by inch, the face of your man. Your moon. Your Hux.
"Do I watch you wake too often?" You mumble, trying to find answers in his face. "If I do, I can stop. Just tell me to, and I will."
His face breaks a smile, somehow a rarity for his work life, but not for his lover. It was like watching an egg crack into a pan; watching a sun rise, watching a star being born. It turned his frown-lines away, made his face seem to be the same as the man you fell in love with those years ago. He is now not the crabby man you cower to, but the caring one.
"Never," he sighs, searching your eyes. He wipes the sleep away with a thumb. There's a look on his face that suggests he's trying to remember your face, every detail, from your (e/c) eyes to messy (h/c) strands that frame your face in disarray, your parted lips. "I'd never suggest that. I love you too much."
Your breathe escapes your lips. A grateful sigh. A blessing. He tells you this everyday. Yet every time seems like the first. Like you've never heard him say it.
Moments pass. A voice inside you wants to fit yourself against the curve of Armitage's side, to hear of what he dreamed of, to share what you had concocted in your mind. To revel together a few more moments of bliss before this daydream shattered.
It was easy pretending to believe there was no war when Armitage was by your side, in your shared room.
It was easy pretending to believe it wasn't an illusion.
It wasn't easy pretending that it would last.
"Do you have to be somewhere?" you whispered, internally hoping he would shake his head. Whisper a simple 'no'. Deny that truth for once, allow his second in command to take over for the day. Armitage had never in his life had a sick day - why not begin now? "I just want to lay with you today, love; tell me it's this day."
There is more silence between you. It's like you've constructed the wall he raises once he leaves you to craft a new galaxy's future. The air has turned stagnant, and you know the answer before he lets it become known.
He is General Armitage Hux of Starkiller Base. He is an artesian in his trade, forging new worlds. He stops for nobody.
"Forget what I said," you slip from the bed.
"Darling -," the covers slip from his shoulders as he rises.
You rush to the bathroom, an adjacent room attached to the wall. Armitage's words are cut off as soon as the door slides behind you.
What has gotten into you? you chaste your reflection above the sink.
He looks at you like a star is forming before him, but the person before you in the mirror is not to be placed into that assortment of aesthetics. There are lines by your eyes, and bags beneath them. Lips pulled tight from worry. Hair limp, near lifeless.
Of course he doesn't want to stay with you, the nasty voice in your head weaves a web to ensnare you, you look like a common slave from a little planet. That's what you were, weren't you? Just another mouth to feed. It's a wonder the general saw anything in you.
You hear a shuffle outside the door, and you picture Armitage falling into his trousers to come to you.
No, not to come to you. He's escaping while he can. He deserves someone who can see what he sees in them. And that's -
"No, no, no, no..." you gasp to the reflection, you can't stare it your face any longer. There's a glint in your eye that suggests trouble, suggests pain. "Shut up, that's not true."
There's a knock.
A pause.
"_________, open up," Armitage's voice is awake with his mind now, and you want nothing else but to ignore his pleas. "Please."
Is he begging?
The door slides to become an entrance once again, and Armitage Hux is standing there, and he's about to speak to you, but you can't look at him. Because of your outburst. He came from a family of prestige, and you from one which couldn't afford a surname.
"Darling, you can watch me wake as much as you please, I was being callous. Kylo Ren has been nothing but a nuisance lately, and I apologise for allowing my lives to lapse together. I love you. Most ardently."
A tear falls from your eye. "You - you should have a proper partner," you whisper. "Someone you can show your superiors and create an empire with. Someone you will marry and have children; adopt them, like you adopted me. You need someone who will see the sun in you. I - I can't be that person, Armitage, I am..."
He takes a small step to you. "You are you. And I love you for who you are. We chose each other - and I see galaxies in your eyes, life in your step. I love you. And I will never leave you." You can't help but relax into his touch, and fall into his arms. "How long have you felt like this? How long have you doubted you worth?"
"A while," you whisper.
A kiss is placed on your brow, and murmurs into your hairline. "I haven't found the right ring yet, I have been planning this for weeks. But will...if you would do me the honour, my _______, my love ... would you take me? In marriage?"
Your cheeks may hold already shed tears, but now, they are the happy sort.
And in a low voice, you whisper, "This - yes!"