Hux does not miss things; there has not been very much in his life to miss. As far as Hux is concerned, the constants of his childhood–his father, life at the Academy, his rivals and enemies and pawns. He has fondness for a few formative non-family members, but for the most part, Hux’s mind is aimed, always, at the future.
Which is why it’s so strange to see Hux touching the food at the table in front of him like it is art, like some strange trove of artifacts, something that requires further study, and then requires locking up in a museum.
“What is all that?” Ren asks. He’s pretty familiar with a lot of food that Hux has never eaten, a result of his nomadic childhood traveling on political business with his mother and, well, leisure trips with his father to a wide variety of casinos and watering holes.
“You’ll love this, kiddo,” Han had often said, and he was wrong about a lot of things, a lot of things, but not about that, because Ren–Ben–had a hearty appetite and wasn’t too picky. Sandwiches slathered with colorful sauce and covered in spicy little vegetables, he recalls, were his favorite, once upon a time.
But this, whatever it is Hux has in front of him, doesn’t look or smell familiar. Breads and cheeses of some kind. Nothing Ren has tried.
“A gift from a very old friend of my father’s,” Hux says. His pronunciation of the word friend makes it clear this person was anything but. “She remembered my favorites.”
His mother? No, couldn’t be. Ren knows even Hux becomes isolated with emotion when his mother is brought to the forefront of his thoughts. But someone else who knew him long ago.
“I would have eaten these every single day if I could have. Just these. I was a finicky boy and didn’t like much food. But my father said a man needed to eat meat. Or else. So I ate it. And nobody eats what they like at the Academy. I forgot about them.”
He didn’t, though, that was a lie. The slow, deliberate way he tears the bread with his hands is almost unbearably sensual; it is the way he wouldn’t do it if he really had forgotten. Ren gets a jolt right up his spine when Hux meets his eye and indicates that he sit down, so that he might share this strangely intimate little feast with him.
“You’ll love this, Ren,” Hux says, and Ren has no reason to doubt him.
