Summary: hux is working late, but you try to convince him to get some rest
Warnings/Tags: gn!reader; established relationship; mentions of a prior injury; a little bit suggestive at times but nothing too wild; very soft hux in this one; I fear we shall all need to go to the dentist after this on account of the tooth-rotting levels of fluff 🥰; as always, let me know if I've missed anything!
Words: 3146
Author’s Note: so this is a little outtake from 'time after time' that I'm actually posting before that story goes live, as a little treat ☺️ in the longer story, it's situated somewhere between chapters 29 and 30! ultimately, I really liked this scene, but I just couldn't get it to meld into the narrative of the longer story, so I'm posting it separately instead! I think it should still read totally fine as a little drabble – there are a few moments where I reference events from the larger story, so if you feel like there's a little detail that lacks context, that's probably why 😅 also, this scene takes place very late in the timeline of 'time after time,' so the relationship between hux and the reader is very well established by this point. I really hope y'all enjoy and I would lovelovelove to hear your thoughts! 🥰🥰
Armitage barely noticed the buzz at the door as he leaned over his desk, eyesight beginning to go a little fuzzy as he attempted to focus on the forms and diagrams on his data screens. Then he came back to himself. You were sleeping. Kriff, he hoped the noise hadn’t woken you. He pushed himself from the chair and stumbled a little unsteadily to the door, muscles stiff after hours of not remembering to move. He peered at the tiny screen for the cam that was trained to the exterior of the door. It was just a transport droid, no doubt delivering a freshly pressed set of uniforms. Pushing the button and sending door sliding open before the droid could buzz again, he collected the clothing and dismissed the droid.
He pivoted on his heel back into the room, uniforms in hand. It never failed to send a little thrill through him when both his and yours were delivered to what used to be only his quarters. Maybe it was silly, but it was another treasured reminder that you really were together. With that pleasant thought in mind, he set the crisply folded general’s and captain’s uniforms on the low table in the living area. He didn’t want to risk waking you by placing them in their proper location in the bedroom closet.
He had settled back down at his desk, mind already puzzling through the problems in front of him when he heard a soft sound from the direction of the bedroom. Then he heard you speak.
“Armitage…” Your voice was still thick with sleep, but the sound of his name on your lips was always impossibly sweet. He turned toward you instantly to find you leaning against the doorframe of the bedroom, attempting to rub the sleep from your eyes. He was about to try and convince you to go back to bed when he noticed something that caused a faint heat to begin rising in his body. You were wearing his sleep clothes. He had gotten back frustratingly late from a meeting that went far longer than necessary, and you had already been asleep when he quietly entered your shared quarters, so he wouldn’t have seen. But the tiny silver bands near the edges of the short sleeves and the hems of the shorts marked the otherwise unassuming black garments as unmistakably belonging to part of a general’s clothing allotment. Armitage swallowed thickly.
“Are… are you wearing my sleeping clothes?” he asked quietly, feeling the internal heat in his body begin to externalize itself in the form of an embarrassing blush. You nodded sleepily, beginning to make your way to him. He still watched your footsteps carefully in case you might become unstable, but you crossed the floor without incident, even if he could tell that you still favored your uninjured leg slightly.
“Mmhmm…” you confirmed as you reached him, resting your hands on the back of his chair. “You weren’t there to hold me, so I had to opt for the next best thing.” Your fingers wandered to his shoulders. Armitage’s blush had increased to a veritable blaze, and with the way the warmth of your hands was soaking into his skin, he was beginning to find it very difficult to breathe. “Although I must admit,” you whispered, lips at the shell of his now very reddened ear, “they’re a very poor replacement.”
Armitage was feeling quite faint indeed. Even if he had wanted to say something, he doubted any words would have made it past his lips. Your fingers pressed into his shoulders, finding all the places where his stress was tied in tense knots and slowly massaging them away. He suppressed a small groan at the heavenly feeling.
“You never wear the short ones anyway,” you murmured. It was true; Armitage had spent too much of his life feeling cold, first on rainy Arkanis and then on the desolate ships of the Imperial remnant. His wiry frame had never held onto heat well. Now that he had the choice to be warm, he wasn’t going to waste the privilege. You helped with that too, he mused as the places where your hands met his shoulders radiated with liquid warmth that was seeping into the rest of his body. “You don’t mind, do you?” There was maybe just the barest hint of hesitation in your question, like you weren’t perfectly certain. He reached one hand up to clasp over yours, momentarily stilling your rhythmic movement on his strained muscles.
“Not at all,” he assured you. He was so far past not minding. In fact, the thought of it was causing very… distracting images to begin to form in his mind. You hummed lightly in response to his answer, and he could feel the gentle press of your lips against his disheveled hair. Your fingers began kneading at his shoulders again, and he let himself relax more fully into your tender touch. Then he caught a glimpse of the time on his data screen.
“Love,” he said softly, reveling in the way the term of endearment could fall so easily from his lips now. “It’s late – you should go back to bed.” As much as he wanted you to stay, he was determined not to let his own bad habits affect you, especially not while you were still healing.
“Not without you,” came the soft but stubborn reply. A small smile pulled at his lips. Your sleepiness seemed to have made you more endearingly uninhibited.
“You need your rest,” he reminded you, gently pulling one of your hands from his shoulder and placing a warm kiss on your knuckles.
“So do you,” you responded, your other hand now carding through his hair, sending a pleasant humming sensation along his scalp as you freed the last of the orderly orange strands from their gelled attention. He realized his resolve was weakening.
“I have work to do…” he said softly, trying to convince himself as much as you. Reluctantly, he dropped your hand, placing his arm back on the armrest of his chair as he once again pulled himself toward the desk. He hoped that the action of returning to work would shake the tiredness he could feel steadily growing in his body. It seemed you weren’t having any of that though.
You trailed your hand over his shoulder and down the length of his arm, your touch setting off sparks on his skin even through the rumpled fabric of his uniform top. He struggled to regulate his breathing. You came into view then as you moved between him and his data screens, letting your fingers linger on the back of his wrist as you leaned back against the edge of his desk. The sight of you still soft and languid from sleep, clad in his sleep clothes, was almost more than he could bear. He bit down hard as he struggled with both the exhaustion and sudden heat that were steadily rising in his body.
“Armitage, you can work next cycle,” you told him gently as you leaned toward him. His breath stuttered in his lungs.
“I— I really should try to get this finished,” he stammered out, even though everything in him wanted to give into you. You seemed to search his face for a moment before coming to some kind of conclusion. What you had decided Armitage could not guess.
“Alright,” you whispered, but there was less defeat in your voice than he would have expected. He watched as you pushed yourself from his desk, hoping to steal a kiss as you passed back behind his chair to return to the bedroom. But that was not the motion you made.
Armitage had to grip the armrests of his chair in surprise as you instead moved forward and slid onto his lap, easily slotting yourself against him. Your head was tucked into his neck, your hands curled up against his chest, legs swung sideways across him. It was a long moment before he could breathe again. The warm, comforting weight of your body against him was such a familiar, welcome feeling that he instinctively began to melt into you.
“What are you doing?” he asked breathlessly, his lips against your forehead.
“You said you needed to work and that I needed to rest,” you murmured back. He could feel your quiet words vibrating against his chest. “But I sleep better when you hold me. So I’m compromising.” Even through the sleepiness in your voice, Armitage could hear the light teasing that threaded through your words. Kriff, he was so in love with you.
“You’re not going to be able to sleep like this,” he told you, unable to keep the smile from his voice. You shrugged against him.
“How do you know?” you responded, adjusting your position on his lap and snuggling closer to him. He gritted his teeth, only too aware that he was losing this battle. When he remained still for a moment, you spoke again: “You can work. I’ll just be here.”
Armitage let out a huff of affectionate amusement at your words. Nevertheless, he pulled himself back toward his desk, trying to train his attention on the data screens. He was not particularly successful in that endeavor. Every instinct in his body was telling him to wrap his arms around you, to pull you closer. You were literally in his lap, pressed against his chest, and he was focused on work that was seeming less and less important by the minute as he became more and more aware of your body against his. He was struggling mightily to read over a diagram when he felt you move.
Your hands had found their way to his uniform collar and were slowly loosening the dark fabric from around his throat, undoing some of the topmost fastenings. His skin flushed, reacting immediately to the soft brush of your fingers.
“I thought you were supposed to be sleeping,” he reminded you, his lightly scolding tone no doubt getting lost in the rush of affection that he couldn’t suppress from his voice.
“You seemed uncomfortable,” you offered by way of explanation as you pulled the high collar away from his neck. “I was just trying to help.” Before he could respond, he was suddenly frozen in place by the feeling of your warm lips pressed tenderly to the revealed skin of his neck. He gripped the armrest as his breathing became fevered and uneven. He knew the battle was lost.
When your lips fell from his skin, he pulled back, letting you lean slightly into the support of his arms so that he could see your face.
“What?” you asked with a bright smile, the question suffused with false innocence.
“You are incorrigible,” he responded, tilting forward to press his forehead against yours, brushing your noses together. The action caused a spiral of sleepy giggles to bubble from your lips. Despite his attempt to affect mock disapproval, Armitage couldn’t help the way his face pulled into a smile at your reaction.
“I learned from the best,” you retorted happily, planting a tiny kiss on the tip of his nose. There was no way to hide the way his whole face went pink.
“Well, now I see why you were so good at your work, Captain,” he teased, still surprised at how easily such a response came to him when he was around you, “you can be very convincing indeed.”
“I’m not sure how good it made me at my work,” you replied, and Armitage could hear the laughter in your voice, “since this manner of persuasion is saved for you alone, General.” Your eyes were glittering and so, so soft as you looked at him. If he hadn’t already admitted defeat, this would have been the moment he would have happily given in. There was something about knowing that there was a side of you reserved solely for him that never failed to make warmth bloom in his chest.
“Hmmm… a brilliant tactician then,” he mused as he brought your head to where he could press a kiss to your temple. You hummed happily in response.
“Does this mean you’ll come to bed then?” you asked with a small yawn. Armitage was all too aware of the way your fingers had found his collar again and were slowly opening more and more of his uniform top, revealing the black shirt beneath. The skin of his chest was no doubt a humiliating shade of pink under the thin fabric as his body reacted to your gentle touch.
“Fine,” he acquiesced with an exaggerated sigh of mock-resignment. From the way you laughed, it was clear you heard the affectionate joking in his voice.
“Thank you for your sacrifice, General,” you teased back. The way your fingers were idly tracing patterns across his chest was making him feel quite dizzy.
“Far from a sacrifice,” he whispered against your temple, the joking gone from his voice, “I consider it a privilege.” You ducked your head in slight embarrassment at his words as he pressed another kiss to your hairline.
“Then why did it take so much convincing?” you murmured against his chest. There were a hundred ways Armitage could have answered that question, most of them coming down to the fact that he had gotten good at denying himself the things he wanted. This was not the time to delve into that particular subject; he wanted to keep the conversation light, aware of the fact that you seemed to be growing sleepier by the minute as you curled against him.
“Well, your methods of persuasion were perfectly attuned to your intended target,” he mused, tracing a finger along your cheek. “Perhaps I found the process of being convinced… enjoyable.” He could feel the way your skin warmed at his words.
“Now who’s being incorrigible?” you rejoined, unable to keep a smile from blooming on your face despite the teasing mock-accusation in your voice.
“You did say you learned from the best,” he reminded you, eliciting a small laugh as you tucked your head against his neck again. Kriff, you made everything in him feel so light. He could have stayed there all rest period, but he was too practical to think that the current position was a viable long-term sleeping option for either of you.
“Love, I hate to say this, but you are going to need to get up so that I can keep my promise,” he whispered against your ear. He couldn’t help but chuckle at your small whine of annoyance. Nevertheless, you crawled from his lap as his hands hovered over you, still anxious that you might become unsteady. He missed the feeling of your body against his immediately.
He stood from his chair as soon as he was certain that you were able to stand without incident. You leaned back against his desk slightly, arms wrapped around yourself as though to ward off the chill in the air that was more apparent on your bared skin now that you weren’t curled against him. Armitage placed his hands on your shoulders as you gazed at him with tired eyes.
“Go to bed,” he urged you softly. “I need to change, but I’ll be right there.”
“You promise?” you asked. Kriff, he couldn’t say no to you when you were looking at him like that – not that he was planning on denying you anything.
“I promise,” he assured you, planting a kiss on your forehead. You hummed lightly as his lips found your skin and offered him a soft smile as you vanished back toward the bedroom. Watching for just a moment to make sure your injured leg didn’t fail you, Armitage then slid into the refresher and finished the work you had been doing to loosen his uniform, the memory of your fingers still lingering against his skin. He pulled on his sleeping clothes – garments he used significantly more now that he was with you. Then he padded through the darkened rooms, turning off his data screens as he made for the bedroom. You were right: his work could wait until next cycle.
He stepped softly into the room, taking a moment to notice the way the starlight streaming in through the window cascaded over your form, bathing you in a silvery glow. His breath skipped a little in his lungs. He crawled under the covers with you, and he could tell that you were already half asleep by the way your breathing had deepened. You blinked your eyes open slightly as he slid onto the mattress next to you, a tired but genuine smile forming on your lips.
“This is so much better than just wearing your sleep clothes,” you murmured as he pulled you into his arms.
“And this is so much better than working,” Armitage sighed. “But you can wear my sleep clothes any time,” he added, the words barely above a whisper. Something about the soft darkness in the room and the way you were folded so happily against him was making him feel a little brave.
“Oh yeah?” He could tell from the hazy quality of your voice that you were on the verge of sleep. “Why?” He stroked a hand down your back, considering his reply. If he confessed now, with you already barely conscious, maybe you would wake up thinking you had dreamed it.
“I find it quite… attractive.” The word was a paltry one for the way heat had suffused his body at the sight, but it conveyed his meaning well enough for the moment. Perhaps there would be another time for him to be more explicit about his feelings on the subject. He blushed deeply in the dark.
“Then… I guess… I’ll have to wear them more often…” It was clear you were struggling to stay awake with the way your stumbling words kept trailing off. Armitage continued the gentle motion of his hand moving lightly up and down your back.
“I find you quite… appealing… no matter what you wear.” Again, the word paled in comparison to the way he felt about you. But the sentiment was true, the proof only too clear on his very reddened cheeks that he was grateful you couldn’t see.
“Armitage… are you saying…?” Your question faded from your lips as your breathing deepened. Armitage was relieved. He wasn’t sure that was a conversation he could have with you without it resulting in you getting far less sleep than you needed. Heat still spread throughout his body at the thought though. He closed his eyes, working to match his breathing to yours. There would be time for that on other nights.
“Sleep well, love,” he murmured, his lips pressed to your forehead in a reverent kiss as he wrapped you even tighter in his embrace. “You need your rest.”
sometimes im like “tone down the Self to fit in” and other times, the voice of God comes to me in a dream and says “I didn’t make you crazy for no reason”
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