Chapter Text
"Service to Satan is its own reward."
"For others, surely. But for that very resourceful witch who gathers together the Grimoire-- what for him?"
"He would be the One. The only begotten son."
-Warlock
The air smelled of tallow, grease and wood smoke. There was also a rich, sizzling undercurrent, meat and burning hair. High shrieks, like those of infants, rose cloying in the air. The obscene choir of noises was evident, after a moment, as the screams of burning cats, trapped in baskets upon the crackling pyre.
A form was already bound there, burned to nearly a skeleton. He had not cried out at all, except in one long, drawn out curse, clawed fingers ripped free from the knot that held one wrist to stretch itself helplessly toward the crowd. The jeers, the chanting of Bible verses, hesitated at that moment- the scarecrow's grasping, pointing fingers blackened, desiccated twigs, but commanding, ripping the breath from their very lungs. Yet, before that breath could reach the pyre, the old man collapsed into death and sagged loosely against his remaining bonds like some macabre and broken doll.
"My Master!" a deep voice snarled, and the second figure, being hauled toward the pyre in manacles that bound his thumbs and feet in silver-chased steel, began to fight in earnest. The once powerful frame, ruined by many battles, was still puissant enough to set three of the six men holding him to the ground. The pale, scarred creature fell to the ground and was dragged by his chains the rest of the way to the fire. The men who had fallen kicked him viciously, spat upon him, and he made no sound even as the loud sound of bones cracking rose around them. In fact, his lips curved into the coldest of smiles.
At last, the six of them lifted him and threw him upon the flames. His jaw clenched, eyes closed against the agony as the bright fire burned and smoke scorched his lungs.
A ragged cheer rose from the mob, which only grew louder as their victim visibly flinched. Stones flew. Mocking voices demanded that the witch cry out. He did not.
"Pour oil on him!" someone shouted, and a ewer of blessed oil was brought out, the shimmering ewer spitting bright sparks where even a touch of it brushed the open flames...
"Grandfather!" someone screamed.
*
Hux woke up shivering in a frozen sweat. His breath came shakily through his lips, through his lungs. He lifted a hand to rake it through hair mussed by sleep, still slightly sticky with the last day's wax. As he lowered his hand, he noticed that it was shaking, and the tremor combined with the old black tattoos on the knuckles, memories of a weak boy who was long gone, long subsumed under the aegis of the man who would one day be the One, made him snarl in a sudden fierce burst of undirected fury.
What the hell was that?
Hux knew how it felt when he shared minds. He had experienced temporary resonance with several witches over his time with the First Order, though he had never felt the slightest urge to bond permanently. He knew what it was to see through Millicent's eyes, to share her dreams, but this...
He swept his long legs out of the bed and stalked to the sinks outside the hotel bathroom, poured himself a plastic cup of water and drank it. He knew what he had seen. A part of him had been there. The demon soul integrated with his own over a decade earlier had witnessed this. What demon, what Familiar, would not have been aware when the greatest witches of the time were summarily snuffed, when the Grand Grimoire was thrust into silence by their spilled blood?
If only a Familiar might have bonded to Vader, or to Sidious, before they had been lost. Even if that Familiar had not saved the witch, they might have captured the book. The Grimoire. The greatest prize for any demon, or any demon drunk down and bound to power within a human host, any who performed the twisted ritual to become a living Familiar.
Hux splashed cold water on his face and ran it through his hair. He had no emotional reaction to the murder of Vader save annoyance at the phenomenal waste, though he had to admit the death of all those cats left him vaguely disgusted and trembling with a traumatic sort of outrage. And whoever had originated the dream was sick with longing for the man, horrified by the violence and devastated by its witness.
Those emotions lingered like oil on Hux's skin, disgustingly human, open and intimate. Even more than the remembered depression that fueled the ink on his body's skin, these feelings made him want to step under a scalding shower and scrub.
He glanced disdainfully at the figure in the mirror. Hux's body was pale and slender, though deceptively muscular. The hands, arms and ribs were covered in black tattoos. Scars curved across the back, just visible from the angle he observed. The eyes were green in this light, sharp, but wilder than usual. The hair was mussed. Everything he had sought to tame as he transformed Armitage from the weak child he had been seemed undone in that moment, and revulsion rose inside him, alongside a hint of panic.
A shower, then. Heat. Coursing, hellish heat. The bathroom was tiny, with ice cold tiles under his bare feet. He'd barely taken a step when a shadow caught the corner of his eye and his head snapped back to the mirror.
The too-mortal image of himself that had so disgusted him shuddered and opened eyes and mouth wide. Hux could feel his own lips closed. Black viscous fluid dripped from maddened, rolling eyes and wide spread maw, trailing down the bare chest of the thing in the mirror. Hux's eyes were dry and focused, and he clenched his jaw against the sight.
Black fluid drowned Hux's mirror face, poured in thick blood-like rivulets down his chest. Then the Hux in the mirror shuddered violently, bent double- as Hux himself stood stern, feeling the military strictness of his own spine- and slowly rose, the disheveled, brilliantly ginger hair giving way to a face that was a bruised, bloated nightmare with bright yellow eyes and needle-sharp yellow teeth.
"Hello, Father," he said, in a low drawl. This was not, of course, the pathetic Commandant Brendol Hux, who had died without achieving much more than a paltry witches' bond. This was the Father of the soul he'd earned. The First Order's promise. "I take it something serious is afoot?"
"Serious, yes, you could say." The mirror image should not have been able to speak, but its thin lips and vicious teeth moved and a hissing, scratched, discordant thing that one might call a voice had they never heard a human being speak echoed in Hux's ears. The yellow eyes, still rimmed in black gunk, crinkled at the corner with disturbing good humor. "The Grimoire."
"It's surfaced?" It came through Hux's mouth before he could attempt to calm himself, to be more controlled. He had only just dreamed of the last owner of the Grimoire, had only just experienced a weird sort of bond. This could mean the Grimoire was very near, and the Grimoire was power for his kind. Potentially the ultimate power. "But it's been only thirty years."
"It has been awakened by the power of a witch," the monstrous mirror Hux purred, if purrs were like crawling across broken glass. "A very powerful one. It can be grasped now, Armitage. If you have the stomach for it, you could at last become what you have always dreamt of being."
Hux's human eardrums felt itchy and slightly raw. There was a grotesque cold wet feeling, where he knew blood would be pooling, a gentle enough response to hearing this father's voice so long. But it was nothing to the terror and elation that gripped him. The Eldest. The Heir. How long he had ached for this was impossible to describe-- Hux had worked ceaselessly throughout his time with the Order, but the soul in him that was born of Hell had longed and toiled and struggled longer than Hux had been alive.
His skin felt chilled and too tight, and yet the way his heart beat in his chest, the way his lips felt sensitive under his quick-lapping tongue, was all desire. "You tell me this because I'm close," he said, mouth almost so numb that the words lost their customary crispness. "I have already bonded the witch."
The pallid, drowned image in the mirror laughed, body shaking, hunched over, horrible echoes of mirth and merriment twisting Hux's gut till he wanted to vomit. "Bonded the witch?" the Devil sneered. "Oh my dear, dear boy."
Hux snapped his palm up and pressed it beneath his nose, holding down the unworthy nausea of his human form, and a moment later, a blink later, his reflection was normal again. A thin redhead with multiple tattoos pressing a long-fingered hand across his own mouth.
He snarled and stalked into the shower.
*
Kylo woke up shuddering. He had always had intense dreams, but this one left his body feeling weak, his stomach in knots. He rarely heard actual voices in dreams and never smelled anything. But he'd smelled... that horrifying combination of wood smoke and burnt hair, scorched meat and the sweaty filth he associated with fanatic madness. His body felt hollowed, curled upon itself, and he didn't want to move until he felt warm again, though he couldn't imagine the sensation. The bed linens felt like ice.
He was afraid that if he didn't move, he would fall asleep again and fall back into that terrible dream. He was also afraid of what he would see when he opened his eyes. During the aimless road trip that led him from relic to relic of his grandfather's, Kylo had more than once noticed some red streaks that looked like blood across the outside of his old black sedan. Milk products-- ranch dressing or tzatziki sauce from takeout- had grown chunky and gross overnight in totally cold hotel fridges. His grandfather's hat, and his book, moved in the night as he slept. And now, this dream, which still rested like acid in his veins, with the terror and fury that Vader had felt.
Kylo rolled on to his back and slowly opened his eyes, looking only at the white popcorn ceiling. In the dark, he carefully avoided looking at the mirror the hotel inconveniently placed opposite his bed.
After his breathing felt like normal, he turned his head toward the window side of the room, where he'd left the artifacts on a broad computer desk next to the air conditioner. He flinched, but wasn't particularly surprised, when he saw brown-rust, dripping words scrawled wide over the eggshell walls.
They read: THEY ARE COMING.
Kylo groaned, rolled over on his stomach and buried his face in his folded arms. The skin felt cool against his eyes, and their swollen, bruised form told him he'd probably cried in his sleep. He growled, low and vicious, and then closed his fingers harshly around the pillow beneath his arms, flinging it violently from the bed.
Fuck! He thought savagely, though he didn't say it aloud. He rolled out of bed and flipped the mattress, slamming it against the wall. Then he lifted the iron bed frame, swung it so it scraped the wall, and threw it against the television, sending fragments of the screen spraying wildly.
Breathing hard, Kylo saw what he'd done and snarled, certain that between the wreckage and the blood-smeared walls the cops would not be long away once security investigated the noises he'd caused. He pulled on his favorite clothes, grabbed the book and the hat, and practically ran to the elevator down to the garage.
Fury still burned beneath his veins, impossible to control, vicious, wild. And he was exhausted and the aftermath of his dream left him with the unworthy, grotesque desire to be held... to be worthy to be held. And in the elevator, the mirror reflected him smeared, and as ugly as he remembered. A big scarecrow hiding behind mussed black hair.
And in the parking lot, the sedan was covered in dew that was deep red, like condensation had once again formed into human blood.
He wiped it down quickly with his jacket, threw his jacket as far as he could throw it, and then headed down and out of the parking garage.
The meter gate was up when he reached the exit of the parking lot. Kylo slowed and rolled down his window to face a bored, pasty looking twenty-something who lowered a magazine and cast him a disinterested glance. Kylo handed him the ticket he'd gotten when he checked into the hotel and turned back forward, waiting for the gate to be lifted.
"This isn't valid," the man said.
Kylo's head snapped around to him. "What?"
"It's. Not. Valid," the kid repeated, each word enunciated harshly and as cruelly as possible. "You have to go. To the lobby. Get the stamp."
"I have the stamp," Kylo snapped.
"Uh-uh," the kid sneered.
Kylo's long, muscular arm snapped out the window, palm open. "Let me see."
"Keep your fucking arm in the car or I'll call the cops," the kid snapped, taking a step back and holding the ticket close to his chest. "It's NOT there. You have to go to the lobby."
Kylo's eyes narrowed. He'd barely slept. The dream was still with him, the smell of burning flesh, the fear, the pain, the honor his grandfather held true to, his own panic. His rage was still a massive thing beneath his skin, hot and sharp and powerful. And his panic waned as the anger swelled, as this petty little bitch lied to him, lied about the ticket, tried to hold him back...
Why? So they could catch him, capture him, send him to prison? Rip his powers away again once his family found him?
He slowly pulled his hand back into the car and toward the steering wheel, glaring coldly at the man behind the gate. He was going to raise that gate no matter what he wanted. He was going to do it, even if Kylo had to rip his tongue out and slap it on to the button.
His fingers curled around the door handle of the driver's side door, as his eyes bored into the pallid little brat in his box.
The kid coughed. Embarrassed, Kylo thought, through his rage, as well he should be. But he didn't stop coughing. The normal noises of concern or even a coughing fit were subsumed, obliterated, by wet, violent hacking. Small sounds of helpless pain and fear whimpered through under the coughs, the kid's chest heaved as if to drag breath into lungs too busy ripping themselves to shreds. Bright red blood spattered over the kid's lips, and under Kylo's widened, staring eyes, that bright red deepened. The spatter became a gush, a fountain of blood flowing through spackled, whitened spread lips.
Kylo shrank back against the driver's seat, staring in horror, his rage melting away as the terror of what he witnessed washed it away from him.
As he watched, helpless, due to the lowered gate, the kid kept retching, spitting great mouthfuls of dark blood. And then from that blood he spat a needle. A long, metal needle. And then another. And then five more. He kept spitting needles, blood, coughing and whimpering, screaming as much as he could while screaming. Kylo's hands went white around the steering wheel.
"Raise the fucking gate," he hissed, and the streets ahead were flooded with flashing police lights. The gate, slowly, seemed to open, and Kylo swallowed bile, swallowed everything he felt, as he drove as nonchalantly as he could out of the parking lot, past the liar who was coughing up a thousand needles, past the walls smeared with blood, out of the city, to another one where he could find a hotel, and a local escort service, and the only thing he could think of anymore that could even begin to make all this ruin stop ruining him.
He left the book in the sedan, though he transferred it to the trunk to protect it. He could only imagine it was the source of all this, and he needed a break. Just a little, tiny break, before he tried to understand what was happening, tried to be whatever his grandfather's book wanted him to be. He took the hat, because sometimes he liked to talk to it.
*
Hux had no direct way of tracing the Grand Grimoire. There were rituals he could perform, though they were time-consuming and not always effective. However, he had, albeit briefly, formed a temporary bond with the witch who awakened the Grimoire. He could follow the signature of that bond far more easily and quickly than he might perform such a ritual. This was important, as the other Generals among the Familiars would have sensed the Grimoire's awakening by now. They would all be eagerly seeking it, and Hux, despite being the best of them all, was best served in his ambition by dint of being physically closest.
While he shaved, waxed back his hair in its tight style, and dressed in a well-tailored black suit, Hux momentarily shared Millicent's eyes, checking on his base to see it was proper, and none of his underlings had yet hared off after the Grimoire and their own ambitions. Satisfied, he blinked back to the mirror, and pulled on his black leather gloves, stepped into his shoes, and headed out, following the tug and the echo of that soul with whom he had shared a nightmare.
The energy was powerful, bleeding out more intensely than any witch Hux had known, yet it was wild, unfocused. No pattern or element had been aligned. Everything was ricochets of broken rainbows, showers of fire burning to the bone, then a coarse chaotic wind next. Rage, then terror, then something teeth-chattering that wasn't fear. If Hux had not known better, he would think this wild witch who had awakened the Grimoire was a child. It had hardly any more control than one. Yet, the energy was clearly that of a man.
It disgusted Hux, truly. He abhorred man-children, those too spoiled to learn to control themselves. And to have failed to collect an element or pattern by adulthood? How lazy a brat he must be.
But this was entirely irrelevant, Hux reminded himself. He did not intend to permanently bind the witch, only to use him to get the Grimoire. It didn't matter how hopeless this creature was, he only needed to manipulate its raging emotions long enough to find out where the book was stored. Hux's lips thinned into a cold line and he leaned back into the headrest, guiding his car by pure instinct as he followed the red-black, bleeding-burning, desperate-hurting and furious-guilty waves of the witch's power.
Hux lifted a bottle of water and rinsed his mouth, spitting a little bit of red back into the bottle. The witch's sheer humanity was like a contagious disease. Disgusting.
He drove for four hours until the energy he followed was thick, wild and seemed to fill the entire city around him with roiling fog of emotion and sheer magical energy. The air sparked as Hux found the hotel where his prey had ensconced himself, went through the annoying motions of hiring a room himself even though he had no intention of sleeping in it, and then used the hotel card to key the elevator.
He had left his suitcase in the lobby, and perhaps would call down later for it. For now, his expensive suits, his cologne, even his razor were less important than finding the witch and through him, the Grimoire. In fact, he sagged in the elevator, not thinking of all the germs smeared by children and sick travellers over the walls. He let his eyes half drift closed so he could feel what floor on which his quarry was located. It was annoying to allow the elevator to stop on every floor. The ding- ding- ding- interminate fucking ding- soon had a vicious headache eating away at Hux's skull. But it was important.
And he found it, on the fifteenth floor.
He stepped out on to a slightly grungy orange geometric patterned carpet, a long white corridor, and the crystalline crimson rawness of the witch's mind, now so massive in its power that it surrounded Hux, pressing down on him like humidity. His eyes flashed along the hall, zeroing sharply to where the witch might be, and as he did so, he noticed a man, dressed in skintight leather, with a leather briefcase, two steps away from knocking upon a door.
On pure instinct, Hux snapped out his arm and curled his fingers inward, tearing the man down the hallway. His closed fingers held the scream within his throat. Hux held him still as he walked slowly down the hall, amused by the shivering and the flickering, helpless gaze of the man, much larger than Hux himself. The unadulterated terror soothed something within Hux that had felt dwarfed, weakened in the presence of the witch's power, and poisoned by his all-too-intense emotions, so utterly at odds with the rigid control Hux kept over what remained of his own.
When the man was close enough, Hux pulled one glove free of his hand. He disliked showing his bare hands, for anyone else to see the tattoos, but touch upon bare skin let him read the man. Let him know he had been summoned as an escort... as a paid dominant... for the man within that room. And that, truly, was all Hux needed to know. Smiling like a shark, Hux let his talons rip through the surface of his fingertips, jabbing like long sharp needles all the way through the unfortunate little escort's throat. As he ripped them free, he touched his still-gloved hand to the bleeding, dying creature's head and sent him to a ditch just outside of town.
Poor thing.
Hux licked the fresh human blood from his claws before he retracted them, returned the glove to that hand, and strode calmly toward the witch's door.
*
Kylo did not know how long he had been pacing, except that he kept sparking electricity from the carpet when he tried to touch things, to check the time on his phone (the hotel clock was blinking at 9:05) or turn on the TV (a quick perusal of channels found nothing that would vaguely calm him down).
The knock at the door was a balm. His heartbeat quickened and he rushed over to let the man in. And blinked, because he had expected the usual professional male dominant, leather-clad and whip in hand, as had been shown on the company advertisement. Instead, he saw a man in a very pricey black suit, black leather shoes and gloves, with brilliantly red hair waxed or gelled sharply back from his handsome, if raw and sharp, features. The man was nearly as tall as Kylo, but thin as a switch, and he would have been disappointed if not for the eyes, which were like an iced-over lake with shadows, dark and sinister shadows underneath the crystalline green-blue of their surface.
The man stepped three paces into the room, closed and locked the door behind him, and then curved a leather gloved hand against Kylo's cheek, those cold eyes boring into his, the shadows underneath teeming, almost breaking through the surface of the ice.
Kylo's breath came faster.
"What do you need?" the man asked, in a calm, chill, bitingly British voice.
Kylo stopped breathing, then inhaled and slowly breathed out, leaning without thinking into the hand that cupped his face. "Beat the shit out of me," he muttered. "I need to--- I need to stop think-- feeling. I need to float."
The soft tips of the gloved fingers stroked him from temple to jaw, then burrowed deep into his hair and held tight at the base of his neck. The thin, pale lips curved into a small smile. "Of course," said the escort. His fingers trailed hard, soothing pressure down the back of Kylo's tense neck. "Is there anything else?"
"If you-- if you do it--- fuck me..." Kylo mumbled.
He had dropped his eyes, embarrassed to say the words to a sex worker, but when he lifted them, there was no smile on the ginger's mouth. Still, the firm, stroking fingers dug across his scalp again, and the man stepped forward, bending in to breathe warm and vicious against Kylo's ear.
He said, "Strip, boy."
The cool command and the disparaging term warmed Kylo's blood. His cock twitched, already thickened from his fumbled admission of what he wanted. He pulled off his tee shirt, unbuttoned his jeans, glancing carefully toward the other man as he swept his briefcase up over the bed and opened it, running his fingertips over what was inside for all the world as if he didn't know what it might be.
Those frosty blue-green eyes flicked Kylo's way, and his jeans were still around his thighs, his underwear on, and he yanked them down quickly, heart hammering at the violence of that look.
He bent over the mattress and blinked slowly, watching as the tall, slim redhead dragged his fingertips once more over the toys in the case. Annoyed at the slow play, Kylo slid one hand up his bare thigh toward his cock.
The man lifted a long, firm paddle of a blond wood. He walked over to where Kylo knelt over the edge of the bed, and then is gloved hands curled over Kylo's thighs, easing them closer to the bed so his ass was more firmly presented. He rested one hand on the small of Kylo's back and then snapped the paddle down sharply.
He didn't start light, like many did with erotic spanking. He had taken Kylo's request to beat him to heart. Every harsh, stern smack of paddle against flesh raised a heat on his skin, bright pink marks, and a growing heat, a wild helpless lust that thickened his cock every time the hard wood beat his stinging flesh.
He could feel firm, leather clad fingers press into the small of his back. His tension soothed. Pain whipped, bite after bite of building heat as the loud sharp crack of wood against bare flesh continued, harsher and louder, pale pink warming to a deep red. Kylo's soft, gasping breaths, warming with arousal, started to sound like pain sometimes, and desire at others. His hard cock rubbed against the rough embroidery on the bedspread. His fingers clenched in the fabric, struggling not to rub, to rut, until he was spent.
"Are you close?" a soft voice inquired.
Kylo managed to make a soft response that indicated a positive. The man stroked his spine, then his scalp, and pulled him upright by his hair. Warm, honey-sweet heat with only a hint of pain burst over the back of his head. Kylo moaned thickly.
His lover slid one gloved hand across his belly, and teased the sticky precum that slid over his erect cock, bobbing helplessly almost against his stomach. After teasing the skin with bare, rough leather, the ginger lubricated the glove and grasped firmly. Kylo moaned. The other gloved hand cupped his throat, held on, and the slicked glove cupped over his thick, weeping cock and pumped it, each long stroke drawing first a helpless hiccup, then a moan, then whispered blasphemous curses.
"Come." the man whispered, a casual command, and Kylo spent himself over those black gloved fingers, his body shivering and weak, vision whitening as cords of thick semen poured over his erstwhile lover's hand.
With the orgasm, most of the fury and fear that felt trapped within Kylo seemed to abate, and he sagged within his companion's arms, but rather than simply bundle him into bed, the redhead instead wiped them both off, then sat down in the leather computer chair and pulled Kylo over his lap.
Kylo's breath hitched.
Every crack, every slap of skin on skin, though glove on skin alone, had the weight of an arm behind it. Kylo moaned and squirmed, held firm by another sharp grip. His lover for the night hit him again, and again and again. Bright notes of pain rose and mixed with the sting of earlier strikes. Pink skin reddened. As it reddened, he heard a sound like syrup poured, and then felt one finger tease, slowly, around his hole, and then press slowly and gently inside.
He forgot to breathe.
The finger inside him did not move until he remembered to breathe, to relax. Then it slipped in gently, smoothly, fucking him slowly and rubbing lightly over his prostate.
"Please," he whispered.
The man's free hand smacked his bare ass again. Hit him harder, so his hole clenched around the finger inside him. He moaned. Suddenly a hand was in his hair, hard, and that finger was fucking him roughly, and then it was two fingers, and he was panting, and intermittent vicious, harsh slaps painted stripes of blistered color over his ass as he moaned and pressed back into the fingers inside him.
As he panted, merciless fingers caught again in his hair and lifted him, slamming him over the desk. He heard a wet, seductive slickness, the sound of lubricated skin, and then felt the thick head of a cock against his hole. He dug his fingernails into the laminate of the desk and begged to be taken.
Instead he was spanked, again. Hard slap upon slap. Vicious, strict blistering cracks of hard palm against bare skin, until the red flesh was singing with pain and Kylo's brain swam in pain and desire and confusion.
And then he felt gloved fingers spread his burning cheeks, felt that cock nuzzle his hole again, and moaned. "Please," he begged. He felt hot tears slip beneath his closed eyelashes. Everything else in the world, except this, was gone.
A soft kiss brushed his shoulder, and it made more tears slip beneath his blinking lashes. Kisses were not part of this.
But before he could say so, a thick, long cock pressed slowly into him, pausing so he could relax, until it was seated deep. Kylo breathed in, and at once, hard hands closed on his hips and he was being fucked. Powerfully. Intensely. Filled until he seemed to taste the lust that he was stocked full of. Moaning, begging, as his cock hardened again under the onslaught, tender and oversensitive, so that the merest brush against the cold wood made him cry out.
The ginger stroked his hair and murmured in a mocking tone, "Little spoiled brat. Thinks he'll get two handjobs a night." He bit Kylo's earlobe. "You'll come from being fucked, boy, or you won't come again," he hissed. "All you asked was to be beaten and fucked, and you are being fucked right now."
And he was. The pleasure built slow, creamy and tidal, and rose in waves, ebbing and falling, until Kylo was desperate, certain he'd never come at all. He considered taking himself in hand, but when he had lifted his hand even close, it had been wrenched aside with a vicious, 'NO.' So he let it build, and cloud-like, creamy, soft cruelty that grew inside him, oceanic...
The redhead's hand pulled his hair harshly as thick, warm fluid filled Kylo, and his body shivered as each feeling tugged him past the breaking point and he climaxed, violently, cord after cord of thick spend painted across the desk and floor as Kylo's legs gave way in exhaustion under him and his tormented mind finally soothed itself to sleep.
*
Hux dragged the witch, 6'4" and muscular as he was, to his bed. He wet a washcloth and wiped him down, then pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed over to keep him warm. Crawling over the covers, he stroked one long smooth stroke from the witch's chest to his thigh, over and over again, until the breathing was nearly the smooth evenness of sleep.
He leaned in and whispered in the witch's ear. "Where is the Grimoire?"
"Car... trunk..." the witch whispered, then grasped for him, a clumsy hold that Hux easily eluded. The witch made a whining, needy noise.
Hux exited the bed, ignoring the noises, and dressed, ripping the car's license plate from the open, helpless, floating mind. He was kind enough to lock the door after him to protect the helpless boy, though he didn't suppose a mind that delicate would last long after the Grimoire became his.
He exited the elevator, crossed the lobby, then descended to the garage. The sedan was not far, glimmering with strange rusty streaks over its black paint.
The boot was locked, but it was hardly more than the motion of a fingertip to disengage that lock. To have the boot swing open for him.
Inside was a tire iron, a few old blankets, and a dark green hoodie. There was no book.
Hux closed his jaws on a shriek and sent his senses crawling after any impression, great or small, that might have approached the sedan.
Why, bloody idiot, would you leave it in the boot of your fucking car?