Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6580279.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Star_Wars_Episode_VII:_The_Force_Awakens_(2015)
  Relationship:
      Hux/Kylo_Ren, Hux/Ben_Solo_|_Kylo_Ren, Rey_&_Ben_Solo_|_Kylo_Ren
  Character:
      Hux_(Star_Wars), Snoke_(Star_Wars), Ben_Solo_|_Kylo_Ren, Kylo_Ren, Poe
      Dameron, Rey_(Star_Wars), Chewbacca, Maz_Kanata
  Additional Tags:
      Catholic_School, Catholic_Seminary, Religious_Guilt, repressed_sexuality,
      Shame, Biblical_References, Blasphemy, I_Am_Probably_Going_To_Hell, Bees,
      Smoking, Finn_Does_Yoga, Rey_Is_A_Cinnamon_Roll, Pretending_to_be
      straight, Self-Harm, mortification_of_the_flesh, Belts, Dry_Humping, Oral
      Sex, Dubious_Morality, First_Time
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-04-17 Completed: 2016-05-11 Chapters: 9/9 Words: 22663
****** Adoro te devote ******
by linguamortua
Summary
     Kylo is twenty years old, a second-year seminary student passionately
     devoted to the idea of a life in the priesthood. Beneath his bookish
     exterior, he has an alarming fixation on the concepts of self-
     discipline and martyrdom. In another time, he might have a been a
     monk in some warrior order, or a Jesuit priest travelling the world.
     When he’s rewarded for his hard work with the responsibility of
     teaching a class at a Catholic prep school, he meets Hux, a tearaway
     rich kid who will challenge Kylo’s faith and shatter his self-
     control. Kylo knows that a torrid sexual affair with a seventeen year
     old will end his chances of becoming a priest, and yet for one
     intense, humid summer, it’s all he can think about.
Notes
     I'd like to thank irisparry for presenting me with the dire news that
     Adam Driver is starring in an upcoming film about Jesuit priests, and
     reserve for providing (im)moral support.
     Chapter one beta provided by Trill.
***** Chapter 1 *****
     All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for
     reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the
     man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
                                                              2 Timothy 3:16-17
Pages whispered under Kylo’s left hand as he flipped through the Psalms. The
rustle of the slick, onion-skin paper was the only sound in the room. It was a
quiet summer afternoon. When the bells weren’t ringing, it was always quiet at
the seminary. The little square window to Kylo’s room was cracked open and a
bee bumbled around it, buzzing and batting against the glass. He spared the
creature a glance. It was caught half-under the edge of the window, flying back
and forth in confusion. Kylo stretched out a hand and pushed the window open so
the bee could escape. It didn’t understand that it was free, and spun in
agitated circles.
‘Chrystostom reckoned that the bee is more honored than other animals,’ Kylo
said softly, guiding the bee away from the window with a careful hand.
‘Probably not more intelligent, though.’ The bee spiralled away, off to trap
itself in another window.
Kylo’s fingers returned to the navy blue Douay-Rheims at his side, and he
picked up his pen again. He was composing a response to his tutor on Psalm 22:
16. For dogs have surrounded Me; The congregation of the wicked has enclosed
Me. They have pierced My hands and My feet. The Psalm made him shiver. A lot of
verses made Kylo shiver. This particular one had a brutal, visceral quality to
it that elicited a physical reaction like fingernails on his scalp or lips on
his neck. It exuded an exciting aura of martyrdom. It captivated him. He
stroked his fingertips absently down the edge of the Bible as he considered,
and wrote another line of notes. His father confessor and tutor was absolutely
rigorous on interpretation of scripture. Most of Kylo’s study time was spent
carefully constructing sound theological arguments, about half of which Father
Snoke abruptly shredded.
A smile crept across Kylo’s face as he added the finishing touches to his
response. Snoke was strict, but he approved of Kylo’s dedication and rewarded
it. You’re not supposed to care about being rewarded, Kylo told himself, and
yet he sat at his desk and quietly glowed. Tomorrow he would begin his own
mentorship with a class of students at the Catholic school attached to the
seminary. Boys of sixteen or seventeen, newly learning about their faith and in
need of guidance. That Kylo, still a second-year seminarian, would be allowed
to teach them, was testament to his hard work. So Kylo let himself indulge in
the sin of pride, just for a moment. Then he closed his books, shelved them
neatly and stood just in time for the chapel bell to ring out Vespers.
Nobody at St. Luke’s Seminary was required to pray eight times a day, of course
- administration was firm on the point that they were students, and not monks.
Still, the major and minor hours rung out across the tiny campus at regular
points throughout the day, and students casually spoke about meeting each other
at None, or getting up at Prime. Snoke had ordered Kylo to come to his office
today at Vespers to finalise the details of his new role.
‘Come in, Kylo,’ Snoke said as Kylo lifted his hand to knock on the old oak
door. Snoke always seemed to know exactly when he was standing outside. Kylo
pushed the door open and padded across the worn carpet to Snoke’s imposing
desk.
‘Good evening, Father,’ he said, and Snoke gave him a dry, cracked smile.
Although he was an excellent pedagogue and a respected father confessor, Snoke
was not considered likeable by the students at large. Kylo liked him, though,
and the old man always seemed to have a smile in return.
‘Sit down and take a look at this,’ said Snoke, handing a plain brown folder
across the desk. Kylo opened it in his lap. Twelve forms were arranged in
alphabetical order.
‘These are my students?’ Kylo asked, his throat tight with excitement. He read
each name to himself. Barry, Brown, Hux, Kelly, King, Leavitt, Mitaka, Nolan,
O’Shea, Walker, Yao, Young. He felt immediately possessive of them. Their
single-page information sheets gave tantalising hints about each boy. Grades,
extra-curricular activities, a few sparse details about awards or special
arrangements. The sort of thing a teacher - a real teacher - would need to
know. Mitaka, here on a year-long language exchange from Japan. Walker, a
scholarship boy with straight As. Kelly, Irish-American and an athlete. A
palpable sense of potential radiated off the thin folder.
‘You’ll see them for an hour a week for a Bible study class,’ said Snoke,
gesturing to the sticky note on the inner cover of the folder. Wednesday, 11am,
Ferris Building, room 2, written in an administrator's feminine handwriting.
‘How you choose to use that time is up to you, although it should be some form
of guided discussion.’
‘I’ve been studying the curriculum material,’ said Kylo, eager to show willing.
‘I made some lesson plans.’ He chewed on his lip for a moment. ‘Maybe I could
show you?’
‘Kylo, you’re very diligent. You’ll be walking them through analysis that you
could do in your sleep. I have faith in whatever you’ve planned.’
‘What if they don’t listen?’ Kylo asked, flushing a little. It seemed like such
a childish worry.
‘Youngsters imitate what they see around them,’ said Snoke. ‘Nobody expects you
to have all the answers to theological debates, or to be a perfect teacher.
Your role is to interpret your faith in a way that makes sense to these boys,
and to speak and act appropriately. It’s hard for them to connect with old
teachers. Your youth will be beneficial.’
Something about the way Snoke looked at him then made Kylo feel warm. He didn’t
ask Snoke to clarify; he hurried on.
‘You spoke the other day about mentoring…’ he began.
‘Informally,’ said Snoke. ‘You won’t be required to meet all the boys outside
of class time. We are connected to St. Luke’s School, though, so it would be
appropriate and indeed useful for you to make time for any of the boys who need
more personal discussions about Scripture. As long as it doesn’t interfere with
your own studies, of course.’
‘I have a lot of work,’ Kylo agreed.
‘More than anyone else,’ said Snoke, but it didn’t sound like a compliment. He
paused, and moved a few sheets of paper minutely to the left. ‘There is a kind
of dangerous pride in being the first to rise in the morning, the most diligent
student, the most often seen in prayer. I think making time in your schedule to
be a mentor and a guide will be good for you.’
Kylo nodded, unable to speak. A tiny seed of shame was stuck somewhere between
his lungs and his mouth. His appointment as a student teacher had seemed like a
reward, but now he thought it was a correction. Not a penance, exactly, but a
way to keep him in check. He picked at a loose thread on his pants and stacked
his feet one atop the other, letting time crawl on without a word. After a
minute of silence, Snoke checked his watch and then tactfully gestured to the
door.
‘It’s almost half past six,’ Snoke said. ‘You must be hungry. Go and eat, and
come and see me tomorrow after your first class.’
Kylo stood. At the door he paused, and half-turned back, wanting to say
something. He didn’t know what, though; he never knew what to say. Snoke was
his spiritual teacher and his confessor, but he could no more confide in the
man emotionally than he could call into a radio show with his problems.
He could confess, but that was different. Sin was easy to navigate. Kylo sinned
constantly. Something was either a sin, or it wasn’t; emotions were infinitely
more complex.
‘You look like a man wrestling with something,’ said Poe Dameron cheerfully,
falling into step beside Kylo as he crossed the quadrangle to the dining hall.
Poe was always cheerful, and never wrestled with anything. Casually tousled and
stylish in jeans and a polo shirt, Poe grinned up at Kylo and easily inserted
himself into Kylo’s personal space, as he did with everyone he liked.
‘I’m thinking about a class I have to teach tomorrow,’ Kylo said evasively.
‘Right! Right, you’re teaching the youth. That’s great, man. That’s great.
You’ll be great.’
‘I thought you might have been picked,’ Kylo said. Poe got along with everybody
and had a hazy notion that he might work with teenagers once he graduated. He
was suffused with an easy charisma that Kylo tried, and failed, not to envy.
‘Too irreverent,’ said Poe. ‘Probably. St. Luke’s is nearly two hundred years
old. They don’t approve of jeans and slang and guitars.’ Kylo blushed for the
second time today as Poe gave him an appraising look. ‘You’ve got a more
classic style, buddy.’
‘Classic,’ mumbled Kylo, watching his big feet ruck up the tidy gravel. He wore
the same black shoes every day, and his plain, dark dress pants, and a black
shirt. It was hard to find shoes and pants in his size. ‘It’s not an
affectation,’ he said with sudden heat, in case that was what Poe was thinking.
‘Jesuit chic, my guy,’ Poe laughed, and gently bumped Kylo’s arm with his
shoulder. Kylo forced himself not to take a step away. Poe was a good man. He
just made Kylo feel awkward. Too earnest, too weird, too anachronistically
concerned with theology and quotations and dusty, ancient books. They reached
the dining hall and Kylo paused at the threshold of the old building. Poe shot
him a questioning look. The late evening sun highlighted his face; high
cheekbones, straight, dark eyebrows and a warm, inviting curl to his mouth.
Kylo averted his eyes.
‘I’m, er, I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll skip dinner.’
‘Whatever you like, man,’ said Poe, flashing him a movie star smile.
Kylo meandered to the chapel and found a quiet corner in which he could fold
himself down onto his knees and pray. He eschewed the hassocks and instead let
the bare floorboards creak under his kneecaps. It was dead silent here during
dinner time. Dust motes swirled in the bright flashes of stained glass against
the floor. Everything smelled like dust and stone and beeswax. Kylo reached out
and slid a finger against one of the waxed floorboards.
He closed his eyes. Time grew long and liquid. He rolled the wooden beads of
his rosary through his fingertips, one mystery at a time, shaping each
accompanying prayer with precision and deliberate slowness. The beads grew warm
and smooth in his hand. When he finished, the sun’s warmth was beginning to
leech from the air and Kylo’s stomach growled. When he stood he felt stiff and
sore, but easier in his mind. The dinner hour was long over.
It was easy to take the quiet back way to the dormitory house. He passed by one
of the older teachers and they exchanged nods, but everyone else was at their
evening recreation or prayer by now. Kylo’s room was at the very top of the
building, a small bedroom conversion in what had probably been the servants’
quarters when the house was in personal use. He had an odd little bathroom next
door with a slanted roof. Lower down, the rooms had been modernised, but Kylo’s
scholarship was limited and, lacking family to support him, he was confined to
the attic.
It suited him. His bed was narrow and the floor were wooden and the only other
rooms on his floor were used for storage. The bells rang out for Compline and
Kylo slowly undressed himself in the dark. His rosary beads clicked in his hand
as he lulled himself to sleep and then, eventually, they slid to the floor. It
was very quiet.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Summary
     This chapter helpfully betaed by arch-cutie Brawlite.
     Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in
     humility value others above yourselves.
                                                               Philippians 2:3 
Humility, Kylo told himself sternly as he rose with the sun. He repeated it to
himself like a mantra as he showered, scrubbing under the miserable water
pressure. He reminded himself again as he rubbed his hair dry with a towel and
dressed, carefully lining up the seams of his socks across his toes. Each tiny
button on his shirt was like a rosary bead; Kylo did them up looking in the
mirror and silently lecturing himself. Teaching is a service, he said in the
privacy of his own head, echoing one of his tutors’ lectures weeks before.
Snoke had already cautioned him against pride. Today he would behave
impeccably.
To breakfast he went, down the stairs, around the back of the gardener’s sheds
and into the dining hall. Three eggs, a slice of toast and a bowl of oatmeal,
as always. He mumbled a short grace over his food and ate it one item at a
time. Hardly anyone else was in the dining hall. Kylo was relieved; his
mealtime rituals drew stares or comments, sometimes. Poe bounced in just as
Kylo was taking his plates to the trolley in the corner, but Kylo managed to
slip away before he was noticed. He was too nervous for conversation today, his
thoughts all scattered.
He wondered, as he tried to comb his hair into order, if he should grow a
beard. He scrutinised himself in the mirror with a critical eye. Your youth
will be beneficial, Snoke had told him yesterday, but Kylo resented it, longing
for the outward trappings of wisdom. Instead - he stared at himself in the
glass. At his mouth, trapped in a constant pout. The unavoidable uncertainty
around his brow and eyes. He knew that he walked with an apologetic slouch,
that he fiddled and touched his clothing and hair too much. Perhaps a beard
would convey gravitas. He shrugged at himself and settled at his desk for some
final preparation.
===============================================================================
St. Luke’s Catholic School for Boys was just as venerable and old as its
brother seminary across the road, but it was slicker, somehow, more modern and
arranged as an advertisement to prospective students. Although the main
building was ancient and picturesque, once Kylo reached the top of the driveway
he could see newer buildings tucked away behind it. Two moderate-sized
classroom blocks in a red-brick imitation of the main building, a dormitory
block and playing fields lower down the hill on which the school stood. He
recalled that the school housed about one hundred and fifty students, most from
wealthy families.
It all made Kylo faintly uncomfortable. His own studies at the seminary were
largely self-directed and rooted in a loose community of adult men of faith. If
the grounds were a little shabby and the tutorial rooms old and boxy, the
institution made up for those shortcomings with a pervasive sense of warmth and
quiet erudition. St. Luke’s School practically funded the seminary, it was
true, but Kylo suspected that many of the boys sent there had little interest
in joining the clergy as once would have been the case. Still, it was a
beautiful day, and Kylo had his well-thumbed Bible under his arm and a notebook
full of class discussion points. It was hard not to be just a touch optimistic
under the circumstances.
Unbidden, an image drifted into his mind of one of the larger tutorial rooms at
the seminary, the scatter of chairs replaced by two neat rows of desks and two
equally neat rows of students. An imaginary version of Kylo sat at the front of
the room with his books open on the desk in front of him. The smell of cut
grass inveigled its way into Kylo’s fantasy; perhaps the singing of birds
outside. Yes. A boy read a passage from - from Proverbs, that would be
appropriate.
‘What do we learn from these verses?’ Kylo asked in his daydream, the boys’
heads ducking down to consult their Bibles. A hesitant hand here; a tentative
response. Kylo envisioned his own gentle, encouraging replies. How he would
take their fledging analysis and expand on it. Maybe he would set them a little
homework, just enough to get them engaged with the text but not so much to be
off-putting. ‘Go away and think of some more examples of working to your
strengths,’ Kylo told his hypothetical students.
Kylo was jerked out of his reverie by the gravel driveway turning to asphalt.
He looked at his watch. It was ten to eleven. The Ferris building was on his
right, a two-storey construction that was surely no more than a hundred years
old. It was neatly signed with a metal plaque by the door. Kylo hesitated for a
moment by the entrance, hovering, and checked the room number. It wasn’t hard
to find, and the room wasn’t empty. A young woman with an unruly bun at the
nape of her neck sat at the desk, writing a note.
‘Excuse me?’ he asked, and she jumped and then laughed. She had a wide smile
and a round, fresh face. She wore no makeup, and her blouse was a bouquet of
cream-coloured pleats. The overall effect was faintly Victorian, in a wholesome
way.
‘Hi!’ The young woman stood and shook his clammy hand in her own cool, dry one.
‘Are you the Scripture study tutor? I was leaving a note for you.’
‘I’m the tutor - I’m Kylo.’
‘I’m glad you made it. I work in the school office, I’m Rey. I wanted to make
sure you got here and had everything you need, but I’ve got a meeting so I have
to run.’ She paused. ‘Er, did you need anything?’
‘No,’ Kylo said, holding up his Bible and notepad. ‘This is really all I--’
‘Okay, great,’ said Rey, flashing him another smile. ‘I’ve got to go, sorry,
bye!’ She dashed from the room in a flurry of floral perfume and cream silk and
wisps of loose hair. Kylo hovered in the middle of the room for a moment, and
then sat at the desk.
He waited.
A bell rang, somewhere, and there was a swell of young male voices. Doors
opened and closed. There was shuffling in the hallway, and eventually the door
was cracked open and a blond head poked in.
‘Come in,’ Kylo said, and after a whispered consultation behind the door, the
class filed into the room. Kylo forced himself to sit calmly, shoulders down
and hands on the desk by his open notebook. As if he’d done this dozens - maybe
hundreds - of times.
There was no strict uniform at the school, no crested blazers or identical
pressed pants. St. Luke’s made much of its claim that boys learned self-
discipline under the school’s care. Rather than impose a uniform, the students
were required to adhere to a dress code. Suits, shirts and proper shoes every
day. Blazers, it seemed, were not required to match pants. So, while the boys
looked similarly smart, the only item of clothing they shared was the navy blue
school tie, plain except for a little gold crest halfway down.
The fashion seemed to be for narrow, modern pants in grey with darker blazers,
although one boy wore a navy suit and another sported a sweater vest. Two boys
had sneakers on in defiance of the rules. One had his tie rolled up and stuffed
in his pocket. Kylo wondered if he should insist that the boy wore it; nobody
had instructed him in the specifics of the school rules. They all dawdled in,
talking quietly to each other and casting glances at Kylo, who peeked
surreptitiously over his book as they found their seats and bickered over a
borrowed pen or an earlier quarrel.
Mitaka and Yao were easy to pick out, of course, and the hulking blond boy was
probably the athlete, Kelly. A chubby, pink boy argued quietly with his
neighbour, slender and dark-skinned and almost as tall as Kylo. A sharp-faced
redhead eyed Kylo with a look of distaste; his neighbour scribbled at the edge
of his book with a pencil. The boys settled, eventually, muttering to each
other but sitting in their seats with their books out.
Kylo laid his book carefully on the desk and ran a hand through his hair. He
arranged himself in his chair and then looked around the room.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ he said, trying to sound calm but authoritative. ‘My
name’s Kylo Ren. I study at the seminary over the road, and I’m going to be
tutoring you in Bible studies for this summer semester. You can call me Kylo.’
A touch of informality, he hoped, would help with building rapport. The boys
stared at him, some with fascination and others with boredom. He hoped he was
imagining the disdain on their faces.
‘Good morning,’ they said back, out of time and with varying degrees of
enthusiasm.
Kylo’s palms were sweating and he tried to look like he was just resting his
hands on his legs, instead of drying them off on his pants.
‘Right, so, just go around the room and tell me your names,’ Kylo said. The
boys complied. Kylo promptly forget every single one. In a fluster, he opened
his copy of the Bible and tried to remember which verses he’d prepared. ‘Er,
Corinthians,’ he said. Nobody moved. ‘Turn to Corinthians and someone - on the
end there, yes - read 10:13, please.’
‘No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is
faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you
are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’ The boy
read it in a long rush.
‘Right, good.’ Kylo took a deep breath. He knew these verses well, and had
chosen them for what he imagined was their applicability to teenage boys. ‘What
do you think this means?’
It took an age, but eventually a hand went up, and then another, and they
started to fumble their way through explanations. For a while, all Kylo had to
do was listen and nod and indicate to the next boy to speak. The minutes ticked
by and Kylo felt almost at ease. He made a suggestion here, a clarification
there. They skipped ahead to verse 23. Kylo expounded on context.
‘Great,’ said Kylo supportively, as much to himself as to the boys. ‘Well done.
So, instead of pursuing and succumbing to a temptation like lust, what are some
other things we might do instead?’ He waited.
‘Have a cold shower,’ said Kelly, to a few scattered laughs.
‘Study,’ said a boy with an Irish accent - Barry, Kylo thought. The redhead
hooked his elbow over the back of his seat to look at his fellow student.
‘Barry, you’re sexually aroused by getting straight As,’ he said in a lazy
drawl. The laughter was louder, this time, and the redhead gave a cruel litle
grin, pleased with himself. Kylo tried to look stern.
‘That’s really not appropriate,’ he said firmly.
‘But what if you were sexually aroused by studying?’ one of the other boys said
in an awkward rush. ‘Or cold showers?’
‘Yeah, you’d just be making it worse,’ said Yao.
‘Well,’ said Kylo, ‘there are lots of ways that you could distract yourself,
and it’s for each of us to figure out the best way for himself.’ That was a
good answer, he thought - a subtle deflection, like something that Snoke would
say. He had rallied. He looked down his notes for the next point, floundering.
And then, blessedly, the bell rang, and the boys started shuffling their papers
together. ‘Just, er, think about the idea of temptation and maybe-’ Kylo began,
but the boys were already making for the exit.
They departed without thanks or delay, an impatient little scrimmage forming by
the door. It was lunchtime and they must have been antsy from being cooped up
all morning. Kylo wanted to sag in his chair, but the fox-like boy was lagging
behind the others and he spotted his chance.
‘Could you wait a minute, please?’ Kylo asked, stretching out a hand to catch
the boy’s eye. The boy paused, with his books under his arm, and came over in
an insouciant slouch.
‘Yeah?’ The boy’s eyes flickered over Kylo with sudden intensity, taking in his
eyes and mouth and his attire as if seeing him for the first time. Sizing him
up.
‘I wanted to - look, sorry, what was your name again?’
‘Hux,’ said the boy.
‘Your Christian name?’
‘Everyone just calls me Hux anyway. We do surnames here. Kylo.’ Hux’s mouth
twitched with amusement.
‘Well, Hux, you know, we’re all here to learn and it’s not very kind to your
fellow students to disrupt the class.’
‘When did I disrupt the class?’ Hux asked, with a thin veneer of innocence. His
eyes were a light green, and he made them very wide.
‘There was a comment,’ Kylo started. He could already feel a blush creeping up
his neck. ‘You suggested that Barry was, er-’
‘Aroused?’ Hux asked. He shifted, and the open neck of his shirt showed a pale
flash of collarbone. His tie was hanging out of his jacket pocket. He looked
deliberate in light disarray.
‘Yes, exactly, and I think you know that it was unhelpful to derail the
conversation.’
‘Weren’t you asking us about sexual temptation?’ Hux smiled artfully, a pink
little pout. His face made a remarkable transition from sly, fox-like sharpness
to an altar boy’s innocence.
‘I wasn’t being specific as to the form of temptation,’ said Kylo sharply, his
patience fraying. Abruptly he remembered that he had absolutely been specific,
and that Hux knew it.
‘Oh,’ breathed Hux, his face making another alarming shift from innocence to
soft-mouthed worry. ‘Are you going to cane me?’ Kylo stared at him with his
mouth hanging stupidly open, trying to formulate a reply. He was very warm and
very anxious, and he tugged at the neck of his shirt for a moment. ‘Jesus
Christ,’ said Hux with a vicious bark of laughter, his voice dropping back down
to what was apparently his normal register. ‘Wow. Insert perverted priest joke
here. Nice, man. Nice. I’ll show myself out.’ And he left. It was only after
the door closed behind the boy that Kylo realised he’d said nothing about the
tie. Or the casual blasphemy.
Kylo had planned to go straight back to his room and make notes on the class,
but he found himself too agitated. He turned left out of the school gate and
made his way along the quiet road to a local park, instead. Nothing had gone as
planned - nothing. From the strangely mismatched students, to their inability
to focus. The clever cruelty that young Hux seemed to revel in, and the
wavering uncertainty in Kylo’s voice as he’d tried to bring the boys to heel.
Worst of all, Snoke expected to see him that afternoon and hear about his first
experience of teaching.
By the time he reached the park he was breathing heavily from walking fast, and
his face was sweaty and warm. He hoped he didn’t see anybody he knew there. A
handful of small children ran and swung in the enclosed play area, and there
were scattered couples and families sitting or lying on the grass. Kylo found a
secluded spot in the shadow of two tall trees. He sat down, back to the larger
of the two trees, and pulled his knees up protectively. It pressed his Bible to
his chest; he found himself stroking the soft cover as if it was a stuffed
animal.
The class was challenging, he imagined saying to Snoke. Or perhaps, it wasn’t
what I expected. Snoke would demand clarification on both of those points,
though. Maybe he could start with a rueful smile, a hint of self-deprecation.
It seems that I’m not a natural teacher.
He hoped fervently that Snoke wouldn’t ask him about specific students. He
couldn’t face talking about Hux; his sharp tongue and his pale eyes and his
obvious knowledge of his own youthful beauty. Even the knowledge of him felt
obscene. If he could just avoid talking about it with Snoke. If he could just
ignore it for a while.I committed the sin of lustful thoughts, Kylo would say
in the confessional, admitting to the same sin he committed every week, and
that would be it. It would be between him and God. God had sent him a personal
trial, but that was normal. He would overcome it. He would.
Kylo buried his face in his knees and stayed that way for a while, hiding from
the world.
***** Chapter 3 *****
     Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my
     lips.
                                                                    Psalm 141:3
Three days passed before Kylo felt able to look over his carefully-written
lesson plans, and another two before he could make himself talk to Snoke about
the class. The latter was not hard to avoid; Snoke had been called away for a
few days and Kylo had only to immerse himself in his studies and await a
summons when he returned.
Snoke had never been away for this long before, though, and Kylo had the
distinct feeling of being a child out of the reassuring view of his parents. He
assumed that was the feeling, anyway - it wasn’t as though he remembered his
parents. His daily routines were unvarying and his studies were as diligent as
ever but, every so often, he found himself thinking I could just not read this
passage. I could do whatever I wanted. This weakness alarmed him. Was he truly
so lacking in self-discipline that the absence of his father-confessor tempted
him to laziness?
Until now, Kylo had been certain in many aspects of his seminary life. One
shouldn’t speak of being good at faith, but Kylo was good at it. To fail at a
task of academic theology was a novel feeling for him. To be blindsided by
lustful feelings was similarly unnerving. He wanted to confess and unburden
himself. Confess to the lust, the laziness, the doubt - all of it. He also
wanted to never speak of it to anyone. When Snoke leaned down to speak to Kylo
in the dining hall, inviting him to a private discussion that evening, Kylo
felt a bewildering, paradoxical rush of relief and anxiety.
‘I’m sorry to have left you in the lurch,’ Snoke said in his dusty voice as
they took their seats in his study. He didn’t offer any details about where
he’d been. Kylo supposed it was none of his business. He sat quietly in the
too-small chair and waited. ‘You had your class on… Wednesday?’
‘Last Wednesday,’ Kylo confirmed.
‘And how did it go?’
Kylo took a deep breath that he hoped wasn’t too obvious and said, in as
unrehearsed fashion as he could, ‘Well, it was, er, a challenge.’
‘Of course it was,’ agreed Snoke. ‘But what would be the point of trying
something that didn’t challenge you? There’s no shame in not being good at
things, Kylo.’ The last line stung. In the moment, Kylo couldn’t parse out why
it didn’t feel reassuring.
‘I prepared very thoroughly,’ he said, knowing that it was true.
‘Classroom dynamics can’t be prepared for. What did you teach?’
‘Corinthians, on temptation.’
‘Ah, yes, particularly good verses for teenage boys.’ Snoke smiled. ‘I’ve
tactically deployed those verses many a time myself.’
‘I hadn’t taken into account how outspoken the students would be on the
subject,’ Kylo said, very carefully.
‘Misbehaving? I can have a word with the school administrator.’
‘No, no,’ said Kylo hastily. The thought of Snoke fixing his problems for him
was unendurable. ‘Just, er, rowdy. I can work it out. They were all right.’ He
silently cursed himself, for now would have been the perfect time to discuss
dress codes, conduct, Hux. But if he brought it up, Snoke would know that Kylo
couldn’t do the work himself. That would be unacceptable.
‘You’re aware that if any of the boys need a peer mentor, you can see them
outside of class time?’
‘I forgot to tell them that,’ Kylo said, flushing in an intense moment of
chagrin. He closed his eyes for a minute. He’d written a reminder to himself in
his notebook, but the class had thrown him off. Another failure.
‘You can tell them this week. And tell me, Kylo, what did you learn?’
‘I learned I’m an awful teacher,’ Kylo said, his eyes still closed. Snoke made
a sound of irritation at the hyperbole, and Kylo opened his eyes and tried to
sit up straighter in his chair. There was no call to be disrespectful in turn.
‘I’m sorry. I learned that… I learned that I’m concerned about the students
liking me. Which isn’t the point of the class. And that I lose my place in my
notes easily. And that I’m happier lecturing than discussing.’
‘That’s very important,’ Snoke said, leaning forward across the desk. ‘This
week you’ll do better.’ It sounded like an order. Snoke delivered the
pronouncement with hypnotic intensity. Hux burned behind Kylo’s teeth and for
an awful moment he wanted to blurt everything out, I can’t do better, I can’t
do it, there’s a boy who--. It took an effort of will to keep his mouth shut,
and hold out, hold out through the last few minutes of small talk until Snoke
dismissed him.
Deflated and still doubting, Kylo immersed himself in the next day’s class
preparation. He decided to try to play to his strengths and spend some of the
hour delivering a lecture. Lectures, he thought, were probably similar enough
to sermons that he could make a good effort. Psalm 141.3 was his choice. It
seemed appropriate. Caution, tact and keeping his mouth shut. The afternoon
wore on. Bedtime loomed; Kylo dreaded the next morning. He did not sleep well.
===============================================================================
‘Your tie, Hux,’ said Kylo after the class was over, injecting calm authority
into his voice in an imitation of Snoke. He had done better today, and he was
riding on a wave of confidence. The boys had listened to his instruction with
barely any fidgeting or whispering, and there had been a slow but respectful
discussion afterwards. Hux had sprawled in his seat in the front row, legs a
little too far apart and spurning the conversation going on around him. Kylo
had tried to ignore him, but when he dawdled up from his desk and let the other
boys beat him to the door, Kylo impulsively decided to act.
‘My tie?’
‘Put it on, please.’
Hux paused at the door when Kylo addressed him and turned, very slowly. He let
his books drop to the windowsill and pulled his crushed tie from his pocket. He
dangled it off his finger for a moment, raised his eyebrows. What, this tie
right here? With a languorous shrug, he let his blazer slide down his arms and
then flicked it onto a nearby chair. A little tilt of his head exposed his
neck, and Hux hung the tie around his collar and twisted it into an easy half
Windsor, fingers slim and dextrous. The tie whispered against his crisp shirt.
Hux let his eyes fall closed as he slid the knot up, up to his white throat.
He put his blazer back on, snapping it at the lapels to settle it. Kylo was
about to tell him that the show had been unnecessary, but he froze when Hux
stalked two or three steps across the floor.
‘Well?’ Hux said, tipping his head this way and that and looking at Kylo
through his eyelashes. ‘Do I look like a good boy?’
‘You really should follow the dress code,’ Kylo said, in lieu of an answer. He
busily stacked his books and checked his watch as if his next engagement was
imminent.
‘Was that all?’ Hux asked, looking at Kylo down his nose. There was an aura of
challenge about him that Kylo elected to ignore.
‘That’s all, Hux,’ Kylo said, as if he were a real teacher, with real
authority. Hux disappeared, slouching away like a big cat on the prowl. Kylo
rubbed a hand over his face. The boy was wretchedly confident and he seemed to
have scented blood. He had met Hux only twice, and yet some alchemy of their
personalities had flung them into a strange antagonism that Kylo could only
endure. He dragged himself to his feet and slumped his way to the door. One
foot caught a little on the carpet. He was all ungainly, he thought, awkward
and slow and unworthy. The encounter with Hux had made him run hot. A jittery
hyper awareness suffused him, so uncomfortable and uncharacteristic that he
wanted to peel off his skin.
‘Hey!’ said the girl, Rey, as he opened the classroom door to find her there,
hand raised to the door handle. Kylo flinched, surprised. A small sound almost
escaped him. ‘How was class?’ She had braids in her hair today, twisted into
twin coils perched high up on her head. Her blouse was dotted with tiny blue
flowers.
‘It was, er, yeah,’ said Kylo, hugging his Douay-Rheims and notebook to his
chest like a shield. She was standing a little too close, gazing up at him with
a bright smile.
‘There’s a bunch of us who do lunch together,’ Rey said cheerfully, as if they
knew each other. ‘In our twenties. I thought you might want to join us. They
were doing something drastic to beef when I walked past the kitchens earlier,
but there’s cheesecake for afters.’
Cheesecake; the thought made Kylo’s mouth water. He was hungry. He thought
about the rich, creamy sweetness. Tart berries or a sugary caramel. He
swallowed and looked away from Rey, down at the floor.
‘I can’t,’ he said, his shirt too warm and his thoughts full of Hux and the
idea of cheesecake, that he didn’t deserve, a luxury, a temptation. ‘Because,
there’s a thing.’ He brushed past her with a mumbled apology, head down.
‘Maybe next week…?’ Rey called after him as he dashed through the door and out
into the midday sun. Gluttony and lust, he thought, ducking his head against
the sun in his eyes.
What new hell would assault him next, Kylo wondered, hunching over and walking
fast. He took a meandering path down towards the road, trying to stay away from
common areas and instead navigating around the back of the school buildings. He
brushed past a bed of lavender bushes, disturbing a busy coterie of bees. One
trailed after him for a few paces, bumping stupidly against his shoulder, and
then decided that he was not sweet enough to alight upon and flew away. Kylo
walked down a narrow, secluded gravel path, shaded by trees, through an old
door in a fence and along the back of the kitchens. Past the bins and down a
chipped concrete step and then around the back of a bike shed...
... and there was Hux, leaning against the corrugated iron with his eyes
closed, his tie knot slid down and his top shirt button undone. His schoolbooks
lay in a careless pile at his feet, and he was smoking. Cigarette in his right
hand, the pack loose in his left. It might have been his first drag. He was
very still, holding his breath, and then he blew out smoke in a long, satisfied
plume.
Kylo could turn on his heel and leave now - find a different way back down to
the road and walk away. He held his breath, mimicking Hux, and considered. Then
he dragged a foot along the crumbling asphalt, slowly and deliberately. Hux
opened his eyes.
‘Are you following me?’ he asked, showing no signs of remorse at being caught
breaking the rules.
‘No,’ said Kylo. ‘I was leaving.’ He took a few paces forward and reached for
the pack in Hux’s hand. Hux evaded Kylo’s clumsy grab and rolled the cardboard
box over his fingers in a deft little motion.
‘You want a smoke? You could ask.’
‘I don’t smoke,’ said Kylo stiffly. ‘And you shouldn’t, either.’
‘Shouldn’t I?’ Hux asked, wide-eyed, and took another drag. Kylo saw the
briefest flash of his pink, pink tongue as he touched the cigarette to his
mouth.
‘It’s a vice,’ Kylo explained, ‘and so it’s not just physically unhealthy, it’s
spiritually unhealthy. Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, Hux, and--’
‘I’m sorry,’ interrupted Hux, rolling his back along the wall until he was
leaning on his left shoulder and looking up at Kylo with incredulity, ‘did you
just tell me that my body is a temple?’
‘Yes,’ Kylo said, feeling as though he was getting through. ‘Doing anything
actively destructive to it is a sin, and at any rate you’re too young to be
smoking.’ He reached for Hux’s cigarettes again; Hux almost let him take them
and then jerked them away. Kylo felt himself blushing as if Hux was the school
bully and Kylo his victim.
‘It’s very complicated,’ Hux said in a casual lie, as if the concepts of sin
and vice were beyond mortal ken. He frowned and picked a loose flake of tobacco
off his tongue.
‘It really isn’t,’ Kylo admonished. Hux shrugged and watched cigarette smoke
drift away, up into the air to be taken by the wind. Kylo let his curiosity out
for a moment. ‘Do you always do this at lunchtimes? Come back here to hide and
smoke?’
‘Mostly,’ said Hux. ‘The food’s fucking appalling.’
‘Don’t swear,’ Kylo told him automatically.
‘You’ve got so many rules.’ Hux’s pale eyes narrowed. His glance weighed and
measured Kylo, sized him up. ‘How do you follow them all?’
‘I care about them,’ said Kylo, and the resulting wash of emotion that came
over him made him look down at the ground. He felt naive for saying it out loud
under Hux’s viciously knowing gaze. The slight that Kylo expected never came,
though. ‘And I have good mentors, that guide me.’ A little flicker of
inspiration came to him, then. They were connecting, he and Hux, and so he took
the initiative. ‘I’m allowed to be a mentor to you, too. Any of the class, if
you think you need guidance.‘
‘D’you think that would help?’ Hux said with interest. He tilted his head like
a curious bird.
‘I’d do my best,’ said Kylo earnestly, wanting to. If he was close to a failure
in the classroom, he was sure that he could do better without a dozen pair of
adolescent eyes on him. He didn’t trust Hux one bit: not his wide-eyed mock
innocence or his sudden interest in a Godly life. Snoke had set him a task,
though, and Kylo wanted desperately to do better at it. Perhaps he was
misreading Hux. He might be troubled and incapable of expressing it. If Kylo
turned him away when he was in need - it was the kind of thing that the Bible
talked a lot about. There were whole parables about it.
‘All right,’ Hux said, as if to confirm Kylo's hypothesis. He stood up off the
wall and dropped the butt of his cigarette to the asphalt. He ground it out
with a quick twist of his heel. ‘Mentor me, then.’ He paused. ‘There’s no weird
ceremony, right - you don’t have to feed me a communion wafer while reciting
the Lord’s Prayer, or something?’
‘No!’ Kylo said, shocked. ‘God - excuse me - no, er, it’s just informal. We’ll
arrange a time to meet every week.’
‘Phone number,’ Hux demanded, pulling out his cellphone and unlocking it with a
swipe so that Kylo could enter his number. Kylo found himself obeying. There
was about half a minute of excruciating, awkward silence. Hux hovered, as if he
had somewhere else to be.
‘Right. Well. We’ll start with the smoking,’ Kylo said with badly faked
confidence, and he reached for the pack of Camels. This time, Hux let him take
the box. It didn’t feel like a win. Kylo thought that if he reached up and
touched his own lip, he might be able to feel the fishhook.
***** Chapter 4 *****
     So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of
     the flesh.
                                                                 Galatians 5:16
Two weeks drifted by. It was a warm, humid summer and the work ethic of
everyone in the seminary seemed to slip in favour of spending as much time as
possible sitting out on the lawns or under the overgrown trees. Meals became
less involved. The overheated kitchen staff provided light refreshments and
opened up the huge windows in the dining hall. Soon enough, people just started
taking their plates outside. Lunches and dinners felt rather like picnics.
Discipline lapsed, and even the ringing of the bells sounded lazy.
Poe stopped shaving and started a practice of impromptu guitar concerts on the
quadrangle in the evenings. He didn’t play hymns. He didn’t even play the
modern devotional music that made Kylo cringe. Instead, he strummed out bluesy
numbers, singing along with his eyes closed. The female kitchen staff
coincidentally took to the practice of evening walks. Kylo studied with his
window closed despite the heat and politely declined Poe’s request for him to
sing along sometimes.
Poe’s friend Finn cajoled the seminary administration into letting him hold
guided exercise sessions in the cool of the early morning. From an enthusiastic
recounting by Poe, Kylo gathered that Finn had quoted Romans 12:1 in a powerful
argument, delivered while Finn was still sweaty and tank-topped after a
workout. Finn was an excellent cajoler. Everyone was careful not to
accidentally use the word yoga, but each day just after Prime half a dozen of
the younger, fitter seminarians assembled on the lawn to flow through a series
of gentle calisthenics. In his less charitable moments, Kylo thought that the
sight of Finn’s smooth, muscular, shirtless torso might be the main draw. He
silently chastised himself for the thought. It was malicious, the sort of thing
that Hux would say. And it was wrong. Deeply, shamefully wrong.
The omnipresent, simmering sexual frustration engendered by Poe and Finn was
almost unbearable on top of Kylo’s new acquaintance with Hux. Kylo made
strenuous attempts to repress it all. He began each day with a cold shower,
tried to hurriedly eat before everyone else arrived at breakfast, and
sequestered himself away in his room to study for most of the day. Until now,
spontaneous arousal had felt like a purely physiological response. The intense,
hot rushes of attraction he had begun to feel had started with Hux and
overflowed, building up and spilling over into the rest of his life. Unwanted,
unchecked. Kylo was at a loss. He was warm, always too warm. He lay in bed each
night sweating into the sheets in his stuffy attic room and willing the ache in
his groin to go away.
The seminary was as busy as ever, but Kylo felt very alone.
Snoke was gone again. A terse email had informed all relevant students that he
would be giving several talks that summer to support his recently-published
theological textbook. Kylo had felt rather hurt not to have received a personal
message. He felt worse that he had to wait longer between confessions. He felt
the need to unburden himself and receive penance so greatly that it cost him
sleep and yet - and yet, Kylo thought, he could not confess an attraction to
men. Was there a penance that could repair that damage? Would the seminary
continue to teach him? In the absence of answers, he tried to endure.
Twice now he had seen Hux for classes and twice for meetings. In the classroom,
Hux sat at the front but made little effort to engage, tinkering with his
forbidden cellphone or scribbling at the pages of his notepad. Attempting to
call him to order was fruitless. Either Hux obeyed with a retort that had the
class snickering, or he simply ignored Kylo. Days later, he would make doe-eyed
apologies for his behaviour, which Kylo gravely accepted even knowing that they
were utterly insincere.
If Hux was idly disruptive in class, his behaviour in their private meetings
was even more confusing. He taunted Kylo with a melange of boyish flirtation,
outright blasphemy and sedition, tempered with requests for Kylo to explain
specific points of Scripture and promises to try harder or to work on his
behaviour. Each time Kylo thought he was getting through to Hux, Hux would make
a casually obnoxious comment. Whenever Kylo felt he should cut their meeting
short and walk away, Hux would rearrange himself into a posture of contrition
and listen to Kylo as if he were an altar boy receiving wisdom.
‘I think you speak in Bible verses because it’s easier than having your own
opinions,’ Hux said one afternoon as they sat on a bench in the local park. Hux
had been intrigued to learn that a lunchtime departure from the school grounds
was allowed under Kylo’s supervision, and he took every possible advantage to
coax Kylo into facilitating his escape.
‘I have opinions,’ said Kylo, opening his Bible on his lap at a random page.
Having the book open made him feel like a real teacher giving instruction. His
finger fell midway down the page. Isaiah 50:7.
‘But the Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I
have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame.’
Hux read over his shoulder. He leaned in to do it, pressing his arm up against
Kylo’s. Kylo could feel the warmth of his skin through their shirts. ‘Good luck
with that.’
‘With what?’
‘Setting your face like a flint,’ Hux said, resting his chin on Kylo’s shoulder
for a moment. ‘You’re transparent.’ His breath smelled like mint, but Kylo
thought he could detect the barest hint of cigarette smoke.
‘And you’re shameless,’ retorted Kylo, shrugging Hux away and retreating a few
inches along the bench. ‘I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.’ He paused. ‘Are
you ashamed of anything, though?’
‘Surely you’re not offering me confession?’ Hux looked sly.
‘Of course not, as well you know.’ Kylo refused to rise to the bait twice in
twenty seconds. ‘I’m just curious. I wonder that you’re at a Catholic school at
all, especially this one.’
‘Parents,’ said Hux, which was no explanation, but also all of one.
‘Are they Catholic?’ Kylo asked, and Hux barked a nasty laugh.
‘My father’s God is Mammon and my mother’s is Valium,’ he said with sneering
cynicism. ‘But pretending to be Christian is good for business, so here I am.’
Sympathy welled up in Kylo.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Hux rolled his eyes.
‘Don’t be. Two years here is supposed to improve me.’ He cast an artful glance
at Kylo. ‘I’m in great need of improvement.’
‘You did something wrong...’ prompted Kylo, trying to coax out a little more
information.
'Yeah, a few somethings,' Hux said, brushing his hair out his face in a way
that exposed his smooth, pale inner arm. He squinted up at the sun for a
moment, considering. 'I mean, like, the insider trading was illegal but I think
my father had more of a moral problem with the cocksucking.'
‘That’s,’ began Kylo, reddening, but he stopped, caught by his own hypocrisy. A
lecture about same-sex attraction and the wages of sin would be grossly
inappropriate as Kylo sat on the same bench, snared by his own desperate lust.
‘D’you think you'd be happier at a regular school?’ Kylo asked eventually,
hoping that the implication came through. Hux watched a bug crawl along the arm
of the bench and shrugged.
‘At least mandatory summer school means I don't have to be at home,’ he said.
‘But would you be happier?’ Kylo pressed.
‘I'm not unhappy,’ said Hux. ‘I’m bored.’ He rolled his finger over the bug,
crushing it into a long smear of yellow. He looked over at Kylo through his
pale eyelashes. ‘I don’t do well when I’m bored.’ And he smiled, all neat teeth
and pink tongue and green, green eyes.
===============================================================================
‘Lunch,’ Kylo blurted out when he bumped into Rey, who was sitting on the low
brick wall outside the seminary when he returned from his meeting with Hux. She
was in a buttercup yellow sundress with little sleeves, drinking a bottle of
orange juice. ‘Sorry, er, I mean, hello, have you had lunch? Yet?’ Rey smiled
at him beatifically, bathed in sunshine. She looked - she looked like nice
girls were supposed to look. Respectable.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about it, though. I get a whole hour so
sometimes I take a walk first.’
‘We could go somewhere,’ Kylo said, desperate to overwrite the experience of
Hux touching him with something more permissible. Rey finished her orange juice
and overhanded the bottle into a nearby trash can. She celebrated the goal with
a little fist pump and Kylo watched her, a curious girl with her baffling, easy
joy and her sun-browned skin. ‘Would you like to? With me?’
‘Like a date?’ Rey asked, and Kylo nodded. She paused before replying, an agony
of seconds. ‘Sure!’
A few minutes’ walk down the hill was a small town with a cluster of cafes and
restaurants, a rather meagre mall and some unremarkable amenities. It was
hardly a buzzing metropolis, more quaint than anything else. The locals treated
the adult seminarians with a sort of gently confused respect, even though it
was not a religious town and barely a handful of them could have afforded to
send their sons to the St. Luke’s School. Kylo rather liked it. People minded
their own business, mostly. Nobody bothered him.
Rey linked her arm with his and talked away as they strolled down the hill.
Weekend plans, work, the weather. Benign, pleasant chat. Kylo rarely had this
sort of conversation and he found himself interjecting at the wrong times, his
rhythm all wrong. In a flash of inspiration he led them down a narrow side
street until they came to a tiny noodle bar. Only the little red awning outside
indicated that there was anything here. It was cheap and quiet and Kylo often
came here when the constant presence of other seminarians began to chafe.
‘Hey, I never knew about th-- ooh, pho!’ Rey said, letting go of Kylo’s forearm
and making a beeline for the menu on the wall. Kylo chose something with prawns
and they sat and waited.
‘So, er,’ began Kylo, arranging and rearranging his books in front of him. He
cast a glance at the window, half-hoping that nobody would see him here and
half-hoping that Poe caught a glimpse so that he could go away and gossip. I
saw Kylo Ren with a girl! He shuffled his feet. ‘Where do you usually go for
lunch?’
‘Oh, anywhere,’ said Rey, and then she leaned forward. ‘You don’t date much, do
you?’
‘No,’ Kylo said truthfully. ‘It’s not forbidden. It’s just, you know.
Chastity.’
‘Ooh, wow, yikes. That must be difficult.’
‘I don’t really meet a lot of people, outside other seminarians,’ Kylo said
with a shrug. ‘I study a lot.’
‘Theology? Do you know Latin and Greek and stuff?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes to which?’
‘Latin, and Greek, and… stuff.’ Kylo found himself smiling, just a little bit.
‘Are you going to be a priest?’
‘I want to be. Do you always ask so many questions?’ The food arrived, and Kylo
escaped from his faux pas by fumbling open his chopsticks and promptly burning
his mouth on a spicy prawn.
‘It helps me get to know people,’ Rey said in between bites. ‘And I don’t
really know you at all.’
‘Sorry,’ Kylo mumbled.
‘Don’t be.’ Rey licked broth from her wrist. ‘Can priests get married?’
‘Not in the Catholic church. Well, there are a few exceptions. But not usually.
It’s an eschatological issue, really.’
‘And then there’s the celibacy,’ said Rey.
‘Right. And that.’
‘So if you can’t get married why are we on a date?’
‘Well, er,’ Kylo said, ‘you’re very. I mean. And I’m not a priest. So there’s
that.’
‘A very theologically sound argument,’ said Rey, adopting a serious look until
her grin burst out again.
‘What do you do at the school?’ Kylo asked, seizing the advantage.
‘Paperwork. So much paperwork. I file things, and I make tea or coffee, and
sometimes, if I’m super lucky, I’m allowed to answer a phone.’
‘That sounds…’
‘It sounds amazingly boring, which it is, and literally any day now I’m going
to quit and take a year to travel and, like, ride camels in the desert or
something.’
‘I could see you riding a camel,’ Kylo said, suddenly amused. Rey laughed, and
Kylo smiled, and he managed to force down his lunch while Rey told him all
about the things she was absolutely, positively, definitely going to do one day
soon.
This, Kylo thought, was probably what dating was supposed to be like. His
nerves were probably normal. People - normal people - probably got nervous
around people they liked.
‘So, this was nice,’ Rey said a little later. They stood on the sidewalk near
the main road, Kylo clutching his books across his chest and Rey holding her
hands loosely behind her back. She looked up at him.
‘It was nice,’ repeated Kylo, meaning it. There was something so comfortingly
straightforward about Rey. Even if she did nothing but ask questions.
‘I’m going to kiss you now,’ Rey advised him, and she stretched up on her toes
and pressed her soft mouth to his cheek. Then she stepped lightly away, all
long legs and the swish of her yellow dress. Anyone looking at him would just
see a tall, gangly boy looking at a pretty girl. She turned after a few steps
and waved him a goodbye which he returned awkwardly. Kylo watched her leave,
even more confused than before.
***** Chapter 5 *****
     I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have
     preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
                                                             1 Corinthians 9:27
‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ said Kylo in a rush, crossing himself
as he spoke. ‘My last confession was one week ago.’ That part was easy. He
stopped abruptly. It was Sunday morning, and he had put off confession as long
as possible, hoping that Snoke would be back (hoping that he wouldn’t be).
Hoping that some kind of meteor would fall directly on the quad as he crossed
it this morning; chastising himself for inviting disaster. Hoping for some kind
of intervention even as he opened the tiny door of the confessional and eased
himself inside, feeling ungainly. He took a while to arrange himself on the
bench, paused, let the words fall out. They sounded dull, dying in the air. The
wood polish and dust smell of the confessional, its womblike warmth and quiet,
was usually comforting. Not today.
It was usually easier to confess. This was the first time in many years that he
had felt honestly ashamed in the confessional. He took a deep breath.
‘Go on,’ said the voice on the other side of the screen. Father Solo, today. A
grizzled, aging man with a reputation for pragmatism and the subject of some
truly shocking, and possibly apocryphal, stories about a dark past. His hands
and chin were scarred and his only concession to priestly garb was a clerical
collar. He intimidated Kylo.
‘I have - my sins are - I have committed the sin of sloth. When I should have
been working I was finding excuses to do other things. And when I was working,
I didn’t apply myself to it properly. I, er, I told a few lies. Small ones.’
Kylo gulped down a hard knot in his throat. ‘And lust. I’ve thought about
others in a lustful way and looked at them, even when I shouldn’t have. I’ve
kept thinking about them later, even though I knew I shouldn’t.’ He broke off.
It seemed like such an inadequate confession, dodging around the depth of the
matter. Forgive me, Father. I have lusted after a boy. I’ve let him touch me
even though I could tell him to stop. I’ve kept meeting with him although I
know I’m in near occasion of a mortal sin. And I don’t want to stop.
‘I get the idea,’ said Solo. ‘Masturbation? Sex?’
‘No,’ Kylo protested, his voice moving from a murmur to something a little
louder, something that someone outside the confessional might overhear. ‘I
don’t do those things.’
‘Good. Keep it that way.’ Solo shifted and Kylo waited, waited for his penance.
It would be grave; a typical Sunday might see Kylo confess to sloth, and Snoke
had little patience with that particular sin. He was accustomed to spending
much of the next hour on his knees on the hard floor, murmuring his penance.
This would surely be worse. Solo was a taciturn, grim-faced man. Solo sighed,
sounding weary. ‘Look, kid, you’re what, late teens?’
‘Confession is supposed to be anonymous,’ said Kylo, trying to sound shocked
rather than critical. In reality, everyone knew everyone here, and a thin
wooden screen wasn’t enough to hide the voices of people you met every week.
There was a polite fiction, though, and Solo casually breached the convention
it as if it were nothing at all.
‘Just answer the question.’
‘I’m almost twenty-one.’
‘Right. Lust is going to be a problem for you. It’s a problem for most of us
when we’re young.’
‘So what do I do?’ Kylo asked, anguished. His stomach, empty in anticipation of
the morning’s Mass, felt uneasy and nauseous. He would never talk to Snoke like
this, but Solo’s forthrightness was oddly compelling.
‘Try not to indulge it, recognise you’re human. Take up a sport, maybe.’
‘A sport,’ said Kylo, trying hard not to think of Finn’s calisthenics on the
quad. ‘Wait, is that my penance? Do sports?’
‘You can go to the chapel once we're done here and say a Hail Mary. Then take
the day off.’
‘You're supposed to give me a penance,’ Kylo prompted, a little confused. He
waited. Behind the screen, Solo chuckled in his gravelly voice.
‘That's what I'm doing.’
‘That doesn't seem - I'm really sorry - it doesn't seem enough.’
‘Who's the priest here?’
‘You, Father, of course, but-’
‘Do you want to take the day off?’
‘No! Or, maybe, but there's so much to do and-’
‘If you don't want to do it, then that surely makes it a penance. Anyway, it’s
Sunday. What were you going to do? Study?’
‘I - I don’t work, exactly, but I read-’
‘Sitting around with your nose in a theology book is work.’
‘If it’s not for a seminar or an essay, surely it’s okay?’
‘Sophistry,’ snorted Solo. ‘You’re a seminarian. Reading theology on a Sunday
is work.’
Kylo thought about it for a moment. It was wretchedly logical. He couldn't
think of much worse than being caught between his conscience and a priest who
he was required to obey.
‘I wish there was something I could do,’ he burst out. ‘I try, and I do my
penances, and I know God forgives me but it just doesn’t seem enough, somehow.
It makes me want to, like-’ Kylo paused, his hands fluttering even though
Father Solo couldn’t see.
‘Russian Orthodox monks used to live in underground cells as hermits,’ Solo
said, his voice tinged with irony.
‘Yes, yes, like that,’ Kylo said with a shiver of urgency. He imagined an
earthy, underground chamber; his flesh withering. Becoming pale and thin and
reduced, his body decaying as his soul was elevated. ‘Something real.’
‘Are you arguing that the sacrament of penance and reconciliation isn’t real?’
Solo said.
‘No, I, er,’ Kylo replied, and Solo chuckled, an earthy, warm sound. It was
miles away from the dusty, formulaic whisper in which Snoke conducted
confessions.
‘All right, kid,’ said Solo, not unkindly. ‘Make your Act of Contrition.’ Kylo
folded his hands together and murmured out the words ingrained in him, trying
desperately to mean them. When Father Solo, in turn, recited his prayer of
absolution, his voice softened into something approaching sonorousness; Kylo
felt, rather strangely, that centuries of the faithful were observing the
moment. If he opened his eyes, he wondered, would he be looking down at himself
huddled in the confessional? He hung, hypnotised, until Solo finished.
‘Amen,’ Kylo whispered, with a roaring in his ears.
Someone brushed past him as he stumbled down the side of the chapel, but he
didn’t stop to see who it was. He folded himself down into a pew near the door
and said his Hail Mary, gripping his rosary so hard it hurt. For good measure,
he ran through Psalm 50, whispering it urgently into the pew in front of him.
His recitation got faster and faster, and he was breathless when he finished.
Kylo stayed there, huddled down, for a little while. He was dimly aware, then,
of other people coming in. The procession of the priest - not Solo today but
Calrissian, the warm, handsome older man whose sermons were always laced with
gentle humour.
He stood; they sang. He made the correct responses. Kneel - stand - sit - sing.
Kylo didn’t need to think to follow the reassuring passage of the Mass. He did
not take the Eucharist today, although he did so every Sunday. It had been his
intention to confess exactly so that he could receive it. Still. His doubts
assailed him and he stayed in his seat, aching for the ceremony but unable to
make himself move. Because it wasn’t a proper confession, said Kylo’s
conscience. And it wasn’t a real penance, and you’re going to sin again.
Kylo needed to fix it. Fix himself.
After Mass, he all but ran back to his room, taking the stairs two at a time
until he was behind his locked door at the top of the house. It was lunchtime,
and the seminarians would be trailing from chapel to dining hall in knots,
refreshed by the solemn order of the Mass and clear of conscience. Kylo knew
that feeling well. A full high Mass and Eucharist was a collectively spiritual
experience. He never felt so connected to the other students as at Sunday
lunch; they would sit around the tables, particularly solicitous of one
another, brought together anew by the twin rituals of confession and communion.
This Sunday, Kylo felt torn apart from them. Disconnected from his fellows at
the seminary and from God. Over on his desk, his cellphone chimed and he
reached for it. It was a blocky old thing; it made calls and sent texts and
little else. There was a very small list of people who had the number. Kylo
pressed the rubber button to open the message.
Are we meeting this week? Feeling particularly sinful. H.
That was how Hux texted - short, wry little messages that made Kylo do all the
work. Laced with innuendo and never sincere. He dropped his phone as though it
was red-hot and it bounced across the wooden floor and under the desk.
Kylo knelt to retrieve it, but as he folded his long legs under his body he
found himself adopting an attitude of prayer. The feeling of his knees against
the hard floor was reassuring. His phone was forgotten; he sighed, his hand
going to his rosary as it always did when he slipped into that meditative
state. It was elusive today and it chafed Kylo. When prayer failed, Kylo could
usually rely on Snoke’s firm guidance in the confessional. When penance
provided no relief, Kylo would fast, skipping meals until he felt light and
unearthly.
He had prayed today, and confessed; he had fasted since the night before and
yet. And yet. Kylo shivered, recalling the way that Father Solo had told him
about Orthodox priests. On his desk was a weighty volume on mortification of
the flesh. Kylo’s hands went to his shirt buttons. Slowly, slowly he opened
them, and slid his shirt off his shoulders. He tugged his undershirt off, too,
and unbuckled his belt. It was an old belt but the leather was good. Over the
years it had softened with wear, and it was easy to double it over in his fist.
If St. Thérèse of Lisieux could bear mortification, then so could Kylo. If the
Opus Dei could wear their cilices and suffer, so could Kylo. Christians had
been torn apart by lions. Wasn’t it a long and honourable tradition to endure
physical suffering for the benefit of one’s soul? Father Solo hadn’t forbidden
it - not exactly.
‘I am not afraid to suffer,’ mumbled Kylo, quoting, and he brought the belt
down on his back with a slap. It wasn’t nearly as painful as he anticipated. He
tried it again, harder, one stinging line from right shoulder to left ribs. He
took a long breath out and held it. Hit himself again. Harder, again. His
rosary was on the floor in front of him and he stared at it, counting off a
bead for every strike. By the time he had delivered himself a strike for each
of the fifty-nine beads, he was shaking. His hand was sweat-slick on the belt,
and he was sweating down his face, too. He hurt, burned. His right shoulder was
fatigued and sore, and he let the belt fall to the floor.
Kylo folded himself down over his knees with a shuddering breath. The wooden
floor was surprisingly cool on his forehead. He repeated Psalm 50 again and he
felt as though the words were imbued with some kind of power.
He knelt for a long time. Lunchtime ended. He was surprised when his silence
was broken by the bright sounds of seminarians walking and talking outside and
he took it as his cue to stand, creaking like an old man, and make his way to
the shower. The water was deliciously cold. He let it sluice over his back,
leaning against the tiled wall with his forehead resting on his arms.
Leaving the house later and stepping out into the summer air felt like a
rebirth. The smell of flowers was in the air; bees hummed. Kylo drifted across
the quad and into the gardens, feeling like he was hovering.
‘Kylo!’ exclaimed Poe, coming across him as he made a slow and blissful
progression along the gravel paths. He clapped Kylo on the back as he often
did. Pain flared hot and Kylo suppressed a flinch. ‘How’re you doing, buddy?’
‘I’m good,’ Kylo said, meaning it, and he smiled and turned his face up towards
the sun.
***** Chapter 6 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
     We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces
     perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
                                                                   5 Romans 3-5
It was early evening when Kylo walked across the quiet seminary grounds, the
bell for Vespers chiming out in the warm air. In a concession to the weather he
had rolled up his sleeves. He carried no phone, no Bible, no notebook; nothing
but the keys in his back pocket. He was unencumbered, body and soul. He had
spent Monday drifting around in a heightened state of calm, eating sparingly
and talking little. Now, two days after his personal ritual of penance, he was
beginning to come back down to Earth.
Kylo took the long way to St. Luke’s School tonight, enjoying the weather. He
brushed his hands through the lavender bushes along the path outside the
chapel. Circumnavigating the seminary gardens, he headed down the hill half a
mile and entered the school grounds through the back gate. It was quieter
there, and the buildings were less imposing. Coming up the front drive always
gave Kylo the sensation of eyes on him. Instead, he walked across the playing
fields, past a cluster of boys idly playing soccer, and up to the boarding
house door.
Hux was waiting for him, leaning against the wall in his usual slouch. His
hands were in his pockets. He had removed his tie and blazer and put on a pair
of sneakers, which gave him the effect of a menswear model for some achingly
trendy brand - or at least, that was the association Kylo made. Not that he
knew a lot about style. Hux’s pants were charcoal grey, his shirt a crisp white
and open at the neck. It served to make his hair look brighter, redder in the
evening sun. Kylo’s shoes crunched across the asphalt and Hux looked up through
his eyelashes. Kylo, still awash with beatitude, chose to ignore his posturing.
‘Good evening, Hux,’ he said, calmly, a little distant. ‘Shall we walk?’
‘Fine,’ Hux said non-committally, and fell into step beside Kylo. He was still
a few inches shy of Kylo’s height but he had long legs. They could walk almost
in perfect unison without Kylo changing his strides. Hux stuck his hands back
in his pockets, schoolboy-casual.
‘What do you want to talk about today?’ Kylo asked, mentally preparing some
topics of his own. Sometimes Hux would come at him out the gate with an
opinion, other times he’d shadow Kylo in a silence that managed somehow to be
sarcastic, interjecting whenever it amused him to do so.
‘Whatever,’ said Hux with a shrug, a response that Kylo had chastised him for
before. That kind of attitude isn’t useful for either of us. Today, Kylo let it
pass. Patience. Grace. Fine, he’d do the work. That was part of his job here,
to guide.
‘What do you do in the evenings?’ Kylo asked - an easy question, innocuous. Hux
shrugged again, drifting close enough that his shirt brushed Kylo’s bare
forearm.
‘I study,’ Hux said, sounding serious. ‘I walk into town, get a coffee. Sneak
out for a smoke. You know. The normal stuff.’
‘We talked about the smoking,’ Kylo said. He could feel Hux rolling his eyes
next to him, didn’t need to look across to see it, too. ‘Where do you go to not
get caught, anyway?’ The school was much bigger than the seminary, and the
students under scrutiny in a way that Kylo and his colleagues were not. Kylo
tried to think of a hidden place at the seminary where one might indulge a
smoking habit, and he fell short. Hux managed to regularly sneak a cigarette,
and to Kylo’s knowledge, he was the only person who’d caught the boy in the
act.
Hux slowed down and Kylo followed suit. With the slightest tilt of his head,
Hux gave Kylo a considering stare.
‘You’re okay, Kylo,’ he said. ‘You’re totally intense and definitely should not
be allowed out into the world on your own. You’re okay, though.’ Kylo stared;
they had stopped in the middle of the car park.
‘Thank you,’ said Kylo hesitantly, for want of a better response. It was
perhaps the first sincerely pleasant thing Hux had said to him. Kylo braced
himself, waiting for the inevitable sarcastic follow-up or uncomfortable come-
on. Instead, Hux just sized him up, and then he turned and started walking down
behind the science building and towards the maintenance sheds.
‘Come on,’ he called back over his shoulder, startling Kylo into following him.
‘I’ll show you.’
Kylo followed Hux along the narrow paths, flagstones cracked with wear. Away
from the front of the school and the critical eyes of visitors, the grounds
were in need of attention. The maintenance sheds were hidden from view. Three
corrugated iron buildings stood in a horseshoe shape around a wide empty space.
There was a little utility vehicle and a truck parked under one of the sheds.
The front was open to the elements. The other two were shut and locked up. Hux
slipped between two buildings and Kylo followed, shoulders brushing against the
walls. A cobweb tickled his face and he wiped it away.
‘Here,’ Hux said. At the very back of the shed was a wooden lean-to, tilted
with age and built up against the side of the maintenance garage. Hux lifted
the latch and the door creaked open. It was small. A selection of gardening
tools were leaned against the wall, simple things, things that were used every
day. A plastic window on one side let the evening light in.
Hux grinned, as if he’d done something enormously clever.
‘You sneak off here?’
‘No security cameras, no teachers, no prying eyes,’ Hux said. He leaned against
the metal wall of the shed, careless of the dust and dirt. ‘You don’t know what
it’s like. They watch us all the time. There’s about a thousand dumbass rules.’
Hux paused. ‘Wait, you love rules.’
‘I accept that they’re necessary for order,’ Kylo said. ‘A certain amount of
structure helps us behave correctly. You’re all young and learning, so your
school is looking out for you.’
‘My school is looking for money,’ said Hux. He arched his back and pulled a
flattened pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Kylo sighed.
‘You told me you were going to stop that.’
‘I lied,’ said Hux calmly, pulling out a cigarette with tongue and teeth. He
watched Kylo while he did it; watched him as he took out a lighter and lit the
cigarette. Hux’s head fell back against the wall and his shoulders relaxed out
of their usual hunch as he took the first drag. For the first time in two days,
Kylo felt a stab of irritation. He was trying. He was trying as hard as he
could to help Hux. And here was the boy, throwing it back in his face.
‘Knock it off,’ Kylo told him, and he snatched the cigarette from Hux’s lips
and dropped it on the floor, grinding it out with the heel of his shoe. Hux
looked up at him, poorly-concealed surprise flickering across his angular face,
and then he rearranged his features into a sneer.
‘How’s that Catholic self-control working for you right now?’ he said, and
Kylo’s jaw clenched.
‘Did you bring me here to show off your vices?’ Kylo said. ‘Is - is this all
you want from me, someone to watch you misbehave? If you’re waiting for me to
be impressed, it isn’t going to happen. You’re not sincerely interested in
anything I have to offer you.’ He paused, the slow, boiling anger that he had
worked so hard to control welling up in his chest. He realised his fists were
clenched at his sides and forced himself to relax them. Hux had to look up at
him; he was looming over the boy.
‘Maybe I am,’ Hux said, his voice dropping to the bottom of his boyish
register. His eyes, Kylo noticed now, were a very pale green, luminous in the
half-light. A burning, intense feeling began to roll through Kylo. He felt not
quite in control of himself as he took a step forward and placed a hand on the
wall near Hux’s head, elbow locked straight. Hux had made one of his impossible
transitions from mood to mood. He looked loose and languid, his eyes hooded
like Sandys’ Magdelene, his lips parted.
It was an obvious invitation. Faced with Hux’s precocious, calculated
sensuality, Kylo crumbled. He leaned in, right hand on the wall and left
hanging by his side, and kissed Hux.
‘Yeah,’ Hux breathed, drawing it out against Kylo’s lips. He was soft and warm
and tasted like sweet tobacco. It was just a brush of lips against lips, first,
Kylo trying desperately to pretend that he could stop. Then Hux pressed him,
opening his mouth all wet and inviting. His breath feathered across Kylo’s
face. Kylo’s breath caught with the shocking intimacy of it. The touch of Hux’s
tongue on his own wracked him with a shudder; his shoulders sagged and it took
an effort of will not to step forward and press Hux against the wall with all
of his weight advantage.
The birds outside were singing, but otherwise it was very quiet. The only
sounds inside the tiny shed were their own breathing, and the slick noise of
their mouths together. It seemed to Kylo an unspeakably filthy noise. It was
making him hard, shamefully and against his will. Hux was a boy, and in Kylo’s
charge, and they were only touching at the lips, and it was too much; it made
Kylo’s blood roar and rush through him. If he had been ordered to recite the
Lord’s Prayer at this moment he could not have done it. His senses were full of
Hux.
When Hux reached out with one hand and touched his hip, Kylo whined in a long
exhalation of breath. He bowed forward, his right forearm coming to rest on the
wall, his left hand moving of its own volition to cup Hux’s jaw. It wasn’t
enough. Hux pulled him in and in, bony hands on Kylo’s waist, hooking under his
belt, drawing him closer like an incubus. Hux was slight but wiry, his birdlike
bones belying his strong hands. Or perhaps Kylo wasn’t trying to resist. He
couldn’t be sure. He knew, hazily, that he should push Hux away, but then they
were clinging to each other and all of Hux’s posturing was gone.
Kylo ached. Hux’s cock was a hard line in his pants, and he was rolling his
hips in a long, slow grind again Kylo. One of his hands was fisted in Kylo’s
hair, the other had untucked his shirt and rested on Kylo’s skin. They weren’t
so much kissing now as panting into each other’s mouths.
It was easy to get an arm around Hux’s waist. It was so, so easy to reach down
under him and lift him until Kylo was holding him up against the wall. Hux
moaned and wrapped his legs around Kylo’s hips. He was slight, and the wall
took plenty of his weight. Kylo pressed his mouth to the smooth, pale dip
between Hux’s collarbones, smelled fading deodorant and boyish sweat and the
dust and soil of the shed. Raw, animal smells.
‘You could fuck me like this,’ Hux said in a rush, his voice buzzing against
Kylo’s mouth. ‘If you wanted.’
‘No,’ said Kylo, his voice hoarse, but he didn’t stop rubbing himself against
Hux, didn’t stop Hux doing the same to him. He didn’t put Hux down.
‘I could make you.’
‘You couldn’t,’ said Kylo into Hux’s neck, lying.
‘Don’t pretend you’re a eunuch,’ Hux said, his voice going up into a gasp at
the end and his hands twisting in Kylo’s hair.
‘It’d be wrong.’ Kylo was wet in his pants, leaking, sweat damp down his back.
He could come like this. He was sure of it.
‘Give me only the necessities of life,’ quoted Hux, ‘lest perhaps being filled,
I should be tempted to deny You…’ he trailed off with a short, high laugh. Kylo
shuddered with something like revulsion at hearing Proverbs so abused, at the
way Hux had enunciated ‘filled’ with lascivious glee. His cock jumped against
Hux’s.
‘Don’t,’ Kylo forced himself to say, loosening his hands so Hux slid to the
ground. Hux fisted his hands in the front of Kylo’s shirt, rumpling it beyond
plausible deniability. Kylo detached him, hating himself for it. ‘This is
wrong.’
Hux leaned in, getting up close to Kylo’s face. His eyes were narrowed, his
face sharpening back into the derision that Kylo was so used to seeing. They
were still so close that Kylo could feel Hux’s body heat, hear how his
breathing was coming quick. Kylo wondered, for an awful, sick moment, if Hux
had been specifically sent to tempt him. ‘You’re a coward,’ said Hux, venomous
and cold.
Kylo sucked in a breath. It was almost impossible to gather himself, open his
mouth and say no to Hux.
‘I know,’ he replied, closing his eyes in shame, and he turned away, pushing
the door open blindly and stumbling out into the dying evening sun.
Chapter End Notes
     Mary_Magdelene,_by_Frederick_Sandys.
***** Chapter 7 *****
     You have tried my heart; You have visited me by night; You have
     tested me and You find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will
     not transgress.
                                                                     Psalm 17:3
The spectre of Hux’s blissed-out, sweat-dewed face - eyes half-closed
reverently, mouth open, breath coming fast - haunted Kylo asleep and awake. He
had run back to the seminary after his evening tryst, hoping desperately that
nobody would see him. By the time he had reached the seminary gates and crossed
the gardens at a loping jog, his eyes were blurring with tears. He wouldn’t
have been able to see anyone watching him anyway. Someone had called to him as
he ran up the stairs to his attic room two at a time, but he had ignored them,
ploughing ahead, fumbling his key in the lock and falling inside with a sob.
‘Okay,’ he said to himself, sitting on the edge of his bed, hands pressed
between his knees. His cock ached, unfulfilled. ‘Okay.’ He scrubbed his hands
over his face for a moment. Time stuttered; he felt suspended, trapped, and
then the minutes rushed in a wash of panic. Snoke would be back by next Sunday.
A confession would have to be made. All of Snoke’s worries about Kylo as a
student and a seminarian would be proven well-founded.
Pleading sickness would buy him a week. He could choose not to confess and
receive Communion, and hope that his colleagues and tutors did him the courtesy
of politely ignoring that fact. He could partly confess; some careful phrasing,
a side-stepping of pronouns.
Kylo sank his face into his hands. None of those options were morally
acceptable. As long as he had to be around Hux, he would not be able to make a
true confession. And there was no way of avoiding Hux save by giving up his
role as a tutor. Snoke would require an explanation, and Kylo could not offer
one save by lying, which he would later, in turn, have to confess.
He imagined sitting in the tiny confessional and letting the walls shrink
inward, crushing him alive. Walking out into the road with his eyes closed and
letting chance decide his fate. Running away, lungs like bellows and legs
pumping in the hot sun until his heart exploded. Lying on the cool wood floor
of the chapel and letting himself crumble away, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Kylo didn’t allow himself dinner. A penance he richly deserved. Instead, he sat
at his desk for hours, slowly turning the pages of his books. He would take one
from the pile on his left, flip through it without really reading it, and then
stack it to his right. A hiss of white noise stopped him from focusing; his
brain was full of something like panic, held tenuously at bay by the rhythmic
turning of pages. Under it all, he was still hazily aware of his own arousal.
His skin felt a little too warm. Every tiny noise from outside or elsewhere in
the house made him tense. Fight or flight, he thought to himself, knowing that
what he wanted was neither.
The itchy, jumpy feeling persisted through the night, denying him sleep and
leaving him grainy-eyed and sullen in the morning. To his shame, he awoke to a
damp streak of semen on his sheets and along one thigh, and he hurriedly made
his way to the bathroom to clean himself. He ate breakfast - he had almost
fallen in the shower, weak from hunger - and fretfully picked at his lesson
plan. A lay sermon on avoiding temptation seemed hypocritical in the extreme,
but it was too late to change it. He imagined, with horrible, sick clarity,
giving the lesson with Hux in the room, watching him with his sardonic, clever
face twisted into a mean smile.
And then, to his confusion and disappointment, Hux wasn’t there. It threw Kylo
off; he stammered through his greeting, skipped a bullet point in his notes and
conducted the subsequent discussion in a daze. The boys didn’t seem to notice.
A more confident teacher might have casually asked Hux’s whereabouts at the
beginning of the class - no Hux today, I see - but even the thought of speaking
the boy’s name made Kylo feel guilty. Perhaps some subtlety of human speech
would give him away. Or he’d summon Hux back, somehow; the definition of
speaking of the Devil. He struggled his way to the end of the class and then
sat for a while at the classroom desk, feeling aimless.
He could go back to his room and study, or take a walk, or find himself some
lunch. He could try to hunt down Poe and see if the man’s unrelenting
cheerfulness helped. He could sneak to the chapel and hope that there was a
priest in attendance that he knew very little; maybe then he could confess
without precipitating disaster. He was sure, quite sure, despite everything he
knew about the sacramental seal, that admitting spiritual failure would be the
undoing of him.
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ he mumbled to himself, yet he still couldn’t form
a mental image of listing his particular and dire sins to a priest. ‘God
already knows, anyway. And He still loves me.’
‘Who loves you?’ Rey said cheerfully, leaning into the room sideways, hanging
off one arm on the doorframe. Her sundress was white today with lacy sleeves
reminiscent of a wedding dress, and her hair was in a high bun. She was long
and slender like a ballerina, and Kylo was terrified of her having overheard.
‘Nobody,’ he said, standing up and almost overturning his chair. ‘No one.’
‘I’m sure someone must,’ she said, and came across the floor in a swinging step
like a dance. She reached out to touch him and Kylo shrank back. She was too
clean and fresh for him to touch with his grimy, sinful hands.
‘I was talking about God,’ Kylo said, scooping up his books and trying to sidle
around her.
‘Oh, well, I hear He’s the caring sort,’ Rey said. Close-up, Kylo could see
that her nose was a little sun-burned. She smiled up at him. ‘I can’t promise
my affections will be as impressive, but did you want to come for lunch?’
‘I can’t,’ Kylo said, and he couldn’t keep the despair from his voice. He
couldn’t come for lunch, he couldn’t date Rey, he couldn’t want her, although
he liked her with a shy, awkward kind of attention that he hoped she
recognised. He tried to say something more, but his voice failed him and he
fled.
Perhaps, Kylo thought, this was to be his lot in life - careening from terrible
decision to awful encounter with no control. He fretted. He brooded. Sunday
drew closer. Snoke returned from his latest speaking engagement and Kylo
skulked around the seminary grounds, trying to avoid anywhere his mentor might
be. Poe and Finn, seeing his misery, took him out for dinner and coaxed him
into eating sushi. Father Solo gave him a long, knowing look when they met in
the hallway, and later, in the dining hall, handed him a volume about suffering
and the saints. Kylo cradled it to his chest on the way back to his room. He
read some of it. He brooded a little more. He spent long hours on his knees,
saying his rosary, click-click-clicking the wooden beads as he’d done daily
since a nun at the orphanage had slipped it into his hand as he cried, and
taught him the first prayer he’d ever known.
On Saturday night, as Kylo lay in a troubled half-sleep, Hux crawled in through
his window.
At first there was a soft scuffling noise from outside, and then the tiny,
telltale squeak of the window opening a little further. A silhouetted shape
blocked out some of the moonlight and for one tense moment Kylo experienced an
acute sense of dark visitation. Then it passed, and Hux’s skinny figure slid in
under the window and onto his desk, disturbing his papers and books with a
rustle.
‘Good evening,’ he said, his voice incongruously normal. He swung his legs
around and slid off the desk.
Hux’s bare feet hit the floor so softly that he could have been a cat. His
shoes were tied together by their laces and strung around his neck, his socks
balled up in his pocket. Even in the dim light, Kylo could see his grubby hands
and feet. His exhilarated grin, his white, white teeth.
‘What the he— what are you doing?’ Kylo said in a loud whisper. He sat up and
turned, pushing his pillow aside and hanging his legs over the top of the bed.
It exposed him more than he liked, so he pulled the bedclothes around him to
hide his bare chest. ‘Did you just climb up the outside of the building?’
‘It was only three floors,’ said Hux, dropping his shoes on the floor with a
sound that made Kylo flinch and look guiltily towards the door.
‘You shouldn’t be here.’
‘But I am.’ Hux padded across the floor to the bed. Behind him, one of Kylo’s
notebooks slid to the floor, disturbed by Hux’s entrance. ‘Do you always sleep
naked?’
‘I’m not naked,’ Kylo said stiffly, tightening the bedclothes around himself.
Hux was wearing a blue-grey henley, buttons undone, and dark pants that Kylo
couldn’t identify. His hair was rumpled and unstyled. He looked terribly young
and terribly soft, shucked from his severe suits and shirts and all ready for
bed. Kylo shut his eyes for a moment, hoping that when he opened them he would
be awake, and find that Hux was an insidious nightmare.
Instead, Hux took advantage of his blindness, swinging a leg over Kylo’s lap
and kneeling astride his thighs.
‘You ran away from me,’ said Hux. He was whispering - he would no more want to
get caught than Kylo - but it managed to make him sound more insinuating.
‘This is inappropriate,’ Kylo said, hands still balled in the bedsheets. It
made very poor armour. He could feel Hux’s body heat.
‘You stare at me, kiss me, pick me up. Rub off against a wall. And now I’m
being inappropriate.’
‘You know you are.’
‘I’m too young to know better,’ said Hux, smug with victory. With cruel
deliberateness, he placed his hands on Kylo’s chest, one-two, one on each of
Kylo’s pectorals. Then he leaned in. If Kylo did nothing, Hux would kiss him.
If he moved his hands to escape, he would be half-naked to Hux’s knowing green
gaze. Kylo waited as Hux leaned slowly forward, and then he fought his hands
out of the sheets and braced them on the mattress behind him. He leaned back.
Only then did he realise the trap; before he could move, he found himself lying
on his back with Hux above him.
‘Hux.’ Kylo couldn’t make himself say more. Looking feral with want, Hux slid
up until he was sitting over Kylo’s chest.
‘Do you like guessing games?’ Hux asked randomly. Kylo’s brow furrowed.
‘Not… not the kind you play,’ he said.
‘Guess what I want,’ said Hux, ignoring Kylo’s response. He was staring
intently into Kylo’s face, willing him, daring him to answer. By now Kylo felt
he knew Hux well enough to know that Hux would insist on him guessing.
‘You want— what you want isn’t on offer.’ A tight, choking feeling assailed
Kylo. The room, already warm and stuffy even with the window open, was
stifling.
‘And what is that?’
‘You’re suggesting intercourse.’ At the last second Kylo managed to stop
himself saying ‘fornication,’ suddenly hating its old-fashioned, sermonising
tone.
‘Intercourse,’ Hux said, mocking him anyway. ‘You’re thinking about fucking a
seventeen year old. What a pervert you are, Father Kylo.’
‘Please don’t call me that.’
‘Oh, beg me again.’ Hux grinned. Kylo swallowed hard.
‘Please,’ he said, mouth burning with shame. ‘This is wrong.’
‘I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,’ Hux said, ‘but I want to
hear you say no.’ He leaned in, so that Kylo could feel his breath, smell his
toothpaste and soap. Hux had prepared for this, Kylo realised, washed and
cleaned himself specially. ‘I don’t want to hear Bible quotes from you. I don’t
want you to tell me you’ll get into trouble, or God will strike us down. Tell
me you want me to go away.’
‘Hux,’ said Kylo. It came out half a moan.
‘Oh right, you can’t say you don’t want to fuck me, because that would be a
lie, and lying is bad.’ Hux enunciated every word with vicious precision.
‘You’re evil,’ Kylo said seriously, breathlessly, and Hux laughed, reached up,
and pulled his henley over his head.
He was pale and smooth in the moonlight and Kylo had to touch him. He put one
hand on either side of Hux’s slender waist and moved them up over his ribs. The
savagery leeched out of Hux’s face and he shivered as Kylo let his palms brush
over Hux’s nipples. The hammering of Hux’s heart in his birdlike ribcage was
the only sign that he was excited. Kylo made slow exploration of his skin, up
his neck to his jaw, down his thin arms.
Slow minutes passed. Kylo became aware that he was hard, and Hux’s excitement
was clearly visible through his thin sweatpants. With a hovering awkwardness,
Kylo tried to make himself touch Hux’s erection. Hux saw his hesitation and
shifted to fight his way out of his pants and underwear. He caught Kylo’s hand,
snatching it away, teasing him.
‘Work for it,’ he said, afire with lust and power. Frustrated by Hux’s
taunting, and already in too deep to stop, Kylo grabbed Hux around the waist
and rolled him down onto the bed. The springs squeaked and Hux snorted out a
gleeful laugh. He arched against Kylo and Kylo gasped out a shameful, high
sound. Kylo’s boxers had twisted around and they were all but skin on skin.
Kylo kicked them off and away.
Now that Kylo had Hux pinned under him, a dreadful feeling came upon him. He
had never before wanted to use his size as a weapon, but he wanted to press Hux
down into the mattress, bite at him, make him lose control. Hux seemed to feel
that; he hooked a leg up over Kylo’s hip and reeled him in. Their cocks pressed
together, Hux’s velvety-slick warmth rubbing on Kylo in a way that their
meeting in the shed had only hinted at. Kylo pushed his face into Hux’s neck
and breathed him in. It was so warm. Sweat rolled down Kylo’s back. He was so
warm. Hux was under him and his skin, his skin was hot and soft, and his cock
was hard, and Kylo had never wanted like this. He’d never had someone want him
like this.
‘Come back,’ Hux ordered, biting at Kylo’s bicep. ‘Look at me.’ Kylo looked.
Hux was wild and flushed.
‘What,’ breathed Kylo, his hips still moving.
‘Use your mouth.’
Kylo opened his mouth to speak and then realised and blushed. He slid down,
past the soft expanse of Hux’s belly, down to his thighs. He was dusted with
fair hair on his legs, and red a little higher up. Now Kylo could smell him,
musky and aroused. His cock was slender like the rest of him, and fit into
Kylo’s hand as if God had shaped it for the purpose. Kylo wasn’t ready. He
pressed his mouth to Hux’s thigh. Again, a little higher. Hux’s hands wound
into Kylo’s hair and he made a high, excited noise. The sound made Kylo’s cock
jump against the mattress. Kylo licked his top lip and hesitantly,
experimentally, tried to elicit the same reaction.
What was the most sensual thing he knew? Kylo breathed in Hux’s scent and spoke
to him, very softly, dropping his voice as low as he could.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘adoro te devote, tibi se cor meum totum subjicit.’ He ran
his lips up Hux’s cock. ‘Quia te contemplans totum deficit.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ cursed Hux, his hips twitching up a little. ‘What does that
even mean?’
Eyes closed, Kylo smiled. He licked at Hux, tasting salt and sweat on the tip
of his cock. ‘It’s Aquinas. Devoutly do I adore thee. My whole heart submits to
thee, and in contemplating thee does surrender itself wholly.’ He paused.
‘Loose translation.’
Hux propped himself up on his elbow. ‘Are you such a fucking virgin that you’ve
managed to fall in-- oh.’ Hux broke off as Kylo ran his tongue over his cock
again.
‘Only for tonight,’ Kylo said giddily, feeling drunk, feeling powerful. He
rested a hand on Hux’s belly, pushed him back down. Hux’s heartbeat skittered
under his touch, and the boy’s cock tasted good, and pulsed on his tongue. Kylo
sucked at him, lips and tongue and palate, not knowing what he was doing but
feeling Hux pant and swear and chasing his love noises. Kylo’s own cock was
aching for release, so tight and hard that even the brush of his sheets felt
like enough.
And it was. Kylo rubbed against his bed, sucking Hux off with long, greedy laps
of his tongue and then-- and then-- his orgasm rushed up on him, too-sudden,
and he pulled off Hux and whimpered, face in Hux’s hip.
‘Oh,’ he said weakly, spurting against the sheets and fucking his hips through
it, unprepared for the way it felt. He grabbed for Hux, pawing at his thighs
and belly, confused, overwhelmed. When he finally looked up, Hux was watching
with a smile that hovered between disdain and delight.
‘Get off the bed,’ said Hux suddenly. Kylo complied, his body loose and warm as
he slid to his knees as if in prayer. Hux swung his legs over the edge of the
bed, wound a hand in Kylo’s hair and fed his cock back into Kylo’s mouth. Posed
so, Hux could slide all the way down to Kylo’s throat. At first Kylo gagged on
it, not understanding the appeal, but then he saw Hux’s vicious, hot joy and it
thrilled him in turn. He let it happen; let Hux use him, wanting it. He
wondered if he would taste it when Hux came. He wondered what it would be like.
Hux grabbed his chin, turned his face up. Opened his mouth with a thumb on his
lip. Kylo obeyed. When Hux came it was sudden and bleachy and Kylo swallowed
him down in confusion, his hands laced behind his back as they were when he
took Eucharist. Hux moaned when he came, hand on his cock and the other fisted
in the bedsheets. His hair fell in his eyes.
The small room was quiet for a few seconds, and then, in unison, Kylo and Hux
both blew out a long breath. Hux reached for his pants and lit himself a
cigarette. Kylo stayed on his knees; they were bruised from kneeling so much in
the days before, but it was a comforting posture. He found his hand splaying
out, reaching for the rosary that was currently on his desk.
‘Hux--’ Kylo began, not sure what he was going to say, but he was interrupted
by Hux leaning forward and licking a quick, messy kiss into his mouth.
‘Remember me when you’re confessing tomorrow,’ Hux said, passionate like a real
lover might be. He put a hand tightly over Kylo’s mouth and then brought the
end of his cigarette down into the tender skin at the hollow of Kylo’s neck.
Kylo did a poor job of stifling his yell.
Hux smiled down at him, his canine teeth sharp and white in the dark.
***** Chapter 8 *****
 
     The one who guards his mouth preserves his life; The one who opens
     wide his lips comes to ruin.
                                                                  Proverbs 13:3
‘Hey, buddy,’ Poe called gently through Kylo’s door. Kylo groaned and rolled
over to check the time. It was almost eight in the morning; he had slept
through Prime and would soon be in danger of missing breakfast. The was a pause
and then another soft knock. Kylo peeled his eyes fully open and sat up in bed.
The covers were rumpled and he felt sticky from Hux’s visit.
‘Yeah,’ said Kylo, and was surprised to find that his throat hurt and his voice
sounded ragged. His head pounded; this, he thought blearily, must be what a
hangover felt like.
‘Are you okay?’ Kylo pulled himself to his feet and shuffled towards the door,
pausing to pick up yesterday’s shirt from his desk chair and pull it on. He
cracked open the door enough to speak to Poe, hoping that nothing in his
appearance would give away Hux’s illicit appearance in his rooms. Hux was long
gone - he’d slipped back out the window leaving Kylo gasping and touching the
burn on his neck with careful fingertips. But Poe, Poe had had a history before
making his way back to the Church. Kylo felt very exposed.
‘I, er, I don’t feel great,’ Kylo said truthfully.
‘Ooh, yeah, you’re kinda pale. Maybe you should go back to bed.’
‘I think I will,’ said Kylo, and Poe reached an arm through the door and nudged
him on the shoulder with a fist.
‘If anyone asks, I’ll tell them you’re sleeping. You want me to bring you
lunch?’ Kylo wanted to say no, but Poe was smiling his easy, cheerful smile,
being kind because that was the person he was.
‘Yes, please,’ Kylo said. He disliked extremely the prospect of someone else
selecting and handling his food, but he didn’t have to actually eat it.
‘See you later,’ Poe whispered, as if Kylo were already asleep, as he closed
the door. Kylo waited until his footsteps had faded away downstairs, and then
slipped to the bathroom, using the toilet and washing his body and face over
the sink. Back in his room, he stripped off the bed linen and shoved it under
the bed in a ball, to be dealt with later. A single fresh sheet laid over his
mattress sufficed; it was too warm for anything else. He lay down, too-warm and
aching, and tried to sleep the day away.
Monday morning dawned grey and heavy, the air thick with humidity and the sky
dark with the threat of a storm. Kylo’s malaise of the previous day had
dissipated, dispelled in part by the knowledge that he could put off deciding
his spiritual fate for another week. He breakfasted and set his bed linen to
clean in the tiny laundry room. Then he gathered his books for a private
tutorial on counselling the bereaved with Ms. Kanata, a petite and softly-
spoken psychologist. With her enormous spectacles and hand-knit sweaters, she
reminded Kylo of a drab but wise little owl. Her presence was always
comforting, and he walked across the grounds with some pleasure.
When Kylo tapped gently on her office door and pushed it open, he was surprised
to see Father Calrissian already there, deep in quiet conversation with Ms.
Kanata.
‘Oh, I, er,’ Kylo said, backing out of the room, but Calrissian beckoned him
in.
‘No, Kylo, come here. I’m here to fetch you for a meeting.’
‘A meeting?’ Kylo said, a sickly, slow dread starting to seep through him. They
knew. This could only meant that they knew about him, about Hux.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I have to take you away from Sister Mary today. You can
reschedule. Excuse us, Mary.’
Calrissian took Kylo by the elbow and guided him to the top of the old
building.
‘I thought Ms. Kanata was a psychologist,’ said Kylo, desperate to break the
silence.
‘She is, and a good one.’ Calrissian smiled. ‘But back when she and I were
youngsters, she was a nun. Sister Mary Mercy. But for her I’d never have found
my own calling. She’s got a gift for pointing people towards where they need to
be. That looks painful, by the way - you should go to the infirmary.’ He
touched his hand to the hollow of his throat, right where Hux's cigarette burn
stood out livid on Kylo's skin.
'Just a bee sting,' lied Kylo awkwardly, and Calrissian nodded and dropped the
issue.
They paused in a corridor Kylo had never been in, outside a door he did not
recognise. Calrissian opened the door.
Snoke was there, to Kylo’s dismay, as well as an enormously tall, heavy-set man
with a voluminous beard, who Kylo vaguely recognised as the headmaster of St.
Luke’s.
‘Chewie,’ said Calrissian, ‘this is the young tutor, Kylo Ren. Kylo, this is
Ilya Chuchumashev, from St. Luke’s.’
‘Call me Chewie,’ said the big man, engulfing Kylo’s hand in his own.
‘Everybody in this country has trouble with my name.’ His accent was thick and
his voice warm.
‘Let’s dispense with the small talk,’ said Snoke from the desk, and they all
say. ‘We’re here for a brief post-mortem on the Hux situation.’ Everyone but
Kylo nodded gravely; Kylo sat rigid in his chair, gritting his teeth to
avoiding blurting out a tearful apology. ‘We all agree that this behaviour
cannot continue?’ There was general agreement. ‘My recommendation would be
immediate termination, never mind the suspension that the boy's already been
given.’ Snoke turned to Kylo. ‘Since this concerns you, my boy, would you like
to add anything to the conversation?’
Kylo paused, the three men looking at him expectantly. He was clearly expected
to have an opinion on his own dismissal, which seemed strange.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally, in a rush. ‘I’m so sorry. I never meant for any
of it to happen. I was a bad tutor and a bad mentor and I should have asked for
help when things started getting out of hand.’
There was a brief and deeply uncomfortable silence. Then Calrissian leaned over
and put a consoling hand on Kylo’s shoulder.
‘Kylo, nobody expected you to predict how badly Hux was going to behave. We
absolutely don’t blame you under the circumstances.’
‘You… don’t?’ Kylo was struggling with the notion that two secret, forbidden
sexual encounters could be viewed under Catholic doctrine as nothing to worry
about.
‘Not at all,’ chimed in Chewie, the bass in his voice making him sound rather
like an Orthodox priest in full song. ‘Hux is a troubled young man. The
cigarettes. The drinking. The selling his body. None of these things I could
predict. We cannot expect you to see what we three grown men could not.’
‘He did what?’ Kylo said, aghast. ‘I knew he was smoking - I was trying to get
him to stop.’ The three elders looked at each other for a moment, and in the
end it was Calrissian who spoke.
‘Hux had been sneaking off the campus and spending time in the local bars,’ he
said. ‘He was eventually spotted by a staff member last week, in the alley
behind an Irish pub. Money was changing hands.’ He coughed delicately. ‘For
services that Hux was providing.’ Kylo remembered the easy way Hux had shed his
clothes; the way he’d fucked Kylo’s mouth with an air of experience.
‘I can’t…’ began Kylo, his voice giving out on him.
‘Anyway,’ Snoke continued, his old face pursed with distaste, ‘the specifics
are unnecessary. The young man will be expelled, of course. None of this will
reflect on you, Kylo, and Mr Chuchumashev is happy for you to continue tutoring
at the school.’
If Kylo had had any sort of decency, any moral compass whatsoever, now would be
the time to confess all, he thought. A heartful, contrite admission that he had
been as flawed as Hux - worse, in fact - would be the correct course of action.
Instead, Kylo stared down at his shoes and nodded his assent at the room in
general.
‘Can I see Hux, before he leaves?’ he asked in a fit of cowardice. He thought
fast. ‘He’s lonely, I think. His parents are distant. I don’t want to disappear
on him.’
‘That’s a kind thought,’ said the enormous Chewie. ‘And you’re not wrong about
his parents. I condone it.’ He looked around the room, and Snoke and Calrissian
gave their assent. Then Kylo was dismissed, and he found himself standing in
the middle of the corridor with the door closed firmly behind him.
===============================================================================
‘Why?’ Kylo asked desperately, less than an hour later. Hux ignored him,
folding his clothes into a suitcase with a precision that Kylo would not have
expected of him.
‘Why, what?’
‘You must have known you’d get caught.’ Kylo couldn’t make himself say it.
‘Getting caught didn’t seem to both you.’
‘How long?’
‘Since I’ve been here, pretty much.’ Hux looked up at Kylo through his
eyelashes in that wicked way he had. ‘I told you that being bored is a problem
for me.’
‘Couldn’t you have found some other way to entertain yourself?’ Kylo said. ‘Of
all the - of all the things you could have done.’ He clamped his lips together
tightly, just to shut himself up for a moment.
‘What, like extra Bible study in the evenings? Or board game nights? Or
lacrosse?’ He spat the last out with a vehemence that sounded bizarrely
personal.
‘I was right here,’ Kylo said beseechingly. ‘You could have talked to me.’
‘Yeah, I noticed how much you liked it when we talked,’ laughed Hux, pairing
two stray socks. Kylo grabbed him by the bicep then, and pulled him away from
his packing. The room was small, and they ended up almost touching.
‘Stop it. Just listen. You could have talked to me. You could have talked to
someone else.’
‘About what?’ The damnable faux innocence was back in Hux’s face again.
‘If you were in trouble,’ Kylo began, and Hux cut him off with a sharp, mean,
bark of laughter. He pulled his arm out of Kylo’s grip and looked at him with
disdain.
‘I wasn’t in trouble,’ he enunciated slowly. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing.’
‘So now what?’
‘Now? Now they'll formally kick me out, my parents will probably find me a new
school to be bored at. They’ll very carefully not shout at me, because shouting
is what the underclasses do. They’ll involve a shrink.’ Hux shrugged. ‘I’m
eighteen at the end of the year, anyway. Only one more year of this bullshit
left.’
‘Don’t swear,’ said Kylo reflexively. Hux turned back to his packing, arranging
the last few things and then closing the suitcase with a sharp snap.
‘Well?’ Hux said. ‘Any last words of mentorly wisdom before they escort me off
the grounds?’ Hux didn’t sound concerned, or surprised, or ashamed. Kylo didn’t
really expect him to. This was how it was, then - Hux was used to leaving. Or
used to being expelled.
‘When did they tell you?’ Kylo said. ‘I mean, how long did you have to pack,
and to say goodbye.’ Hux snorted at the word ‘goodbye.’
‘Saturday morning,’ he said casually. ‘They didn’t want to disrupt classes.’
Kylo felt a little sick. ‘So when you came to…’ he trailed off, afraid that
someone might overhear.
‘Don’t make a big deal of it,’ Hux said carelessly. He pulled his suitcase off
the bed with a jerk of his thin arms, shrugged on a backpack and stuffed his
smartphone in his pocket. ‘Would have been a shame to leave without seeing if
you’d put out.’
‘That’s cruel,’ Kylo said. His mouth felt thick and dry.
‘That’s what they all say. See you around, Kylo Ren.’ Hux pushed past Kylo,
suitcase wheels clicking over the metal carpet divider. Kylo didn’t turn to
watch him go. He was scared that he might end up running after Hux.
===============================================================================
Two days later, Kylo sat in the back seat of a jolting, ancient bus. He had
dressed that morning as he always did: dark shirt, dark trousers, the same big,
plain shoes. He carried nothing with him but his keys, a couple of ten dollar
bills and his bus ticket. The journey was tedious - a boring, uncomfortable
ride through a series of small towns until he came to Rodbrook. The town itself
was unimportant; Kylo had sat at his desk with a diocese listing and a bus
timetable until he had found somewhere unobtrusive in the next diocese over.
There was a small church, and it would be possible to confess. With Hux gone,
Kylo had found that a solution to his secret sins had swum to the top of his
fevered mind. He would not have to confess to Snoke, or to Solo, or Calrissian;
he would not have to share his appalling lapses in behaviour with men he saw
every day. Instead, he could take himself to a different diocese entirely and
make a full and frank confession to a priest who would never hear his voice
again.
It was a sneaking, cowardly kind of a solution. Kylo hated himself for thinking
of it, and hated himself even more for following through.
He stepped off the bus into a flurry of dust. A silver pole with a blue sign
was the only bus stop. The town - the title was really charitable - was nothing
but two long roads, a stoplight and a cluster of stores. Dry and quiet and
falling apart. There were few people out, and despite his height and his
austere dress, nobody gave Kylo a second glance. He felt as though he were in a
Western as he strode down the main street to a grey-white clapboard church.
When he reached it, he stopped with a strange jolt and read the sign: St. John
Chrysostom Roman Catholic Church. Some aspiring artist had, years ago, set the
dark blue letters over a simple outline of a bee in light grey.
Kylo walked towards the door as if compelled. The church steps bowed and
creaked under his weight, shedding old paint flakes. It was as warm instead the
church as outside, all stuffy and dusty and uncomfortable. Kylo made his way to
the back of the single room, where a modest confessional was built into the
back wall. One door was closed. Kylo hovered in front of it. He could hear the
faint breathing of someone inside.
‘If you’re here for confession, come in,’ said a voice. A surprisingly young
voice, but quietly confident. Kind. Kylo shuffled forward and folded himself
into the space, swinging the door closed behind him. They sat in silence for a
little while, Kylo reluctant to speak and the unknown priest apparently willing
to be patient. The minutes stretched out, and out, and Kylo thought that he
might have come all this way just to leave without making his confession.
Wasting the priest’s time, an inconvenience as always.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kylo said.
‘Don’t be. God doesn’t mind if you need a while.’
Kylo took a deep, sucking breath, wet through the tears that had suddenly
sprung up. Before he realised it, he was crying in big, quiet gulps, hunching
over on the bench. There was no kneeler in the confessional, but Kylo slid off
the bench and onto his knees with a crack.
‘Forgive me, Father,’ he began, the blood rushing in his ears until he could no
longer hear his own voice.
***** Chapter 9 *****
Chapter Notes
     This is it, folks - the final chapter. The story ends here. I beg
     your indulgence for any continuity errors; if you follow my_blog
     you'll know I've been recovering from a particularly nasty oral
     surgery this past week. This chapter was nobly betaed by kindly
     literary genius kdazrael whose advice I listened to and then was too
     lazy to follow.
     Thanks for reading, friends. It's been great.
     You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your
     striving against sin.

                                                                   Hebrews 12:4
A year later
                 HUX FAMILY ANNOUNCE ONLY SON TO STUDY AT YALE
     The son of Brendol Hux will follow his father and grandfather to Yale
   University this fall, majoring in Ethics, Politics and Economics. A press
release from the oil and gas magnate stated that Hux, Jr's parents are 'pleased
       and proud' to see their son admitted to the prestigious college.
   Earlier this year, a source close to the family caused scandal when they
suggested that the scion of the noted multi-millionaire had been expelled from
 three schools in a row. The source, and the rumour, were hastily quashed, and
 this paper received no response to its enquiries to the schools in question.
   Hux Jr will not be taking a gap year, and will be studying an accelerated
 program. Some commentators are suggesting that the young man is being groomed
to succeed his father, who has long been suffering from the effects of chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease. It is unclear how this may affect Hux Petroleum.
===============================================================================
The headline screamed out from the page in black and white, and Kylo hastily
folded the newspaper in half and shoved it between two of his books. There were
times when he could almost forget the hot, desperate summer a year ago. He went
whole days without thinking about Hux, sometimes. Today was not one of those
days, and Kylo had not expected it to be. Still, the coincidence of Hux’s name
in the day’s papers pricked at him. Today, he was graduating. In the joyful
press of family and friends mingling before the ceremony, Kylo had slipped away
to the library to read, one eye on the clock awaiting eleven. The eleventh
hour, he thought to himself with dark amusement.
A tiny, mean part of his conscience pricked at him. It suggested that at any
moment, someone might rush into the ceremony, eyes wild and finger pointing at
Kylo. Telling everyone that Kylo Ren was no more fit to be a priest than a
random man picked off the street. Tamping down his anxieties, Kylo tucked his
book into a storage cubby, adjusted his robe and made his way to the chapel.
The graduation gown was just shy of long enough, and it flapped out bizarrely
from Kylo’s broad shoulders. Even slouching, he felt ungainly - taller than
everyone else and horribly self-conscious. It was a relief to file into the
chapel and sit, partly disguised amongst the little cloud of black-clad
graduands.
‘Welcome, friends,’ said Father Calrissian in his sonorous, warm voice, and
Kylo could finally relax into the calming rhythm of ceremony.
===============================================================================
                           HUX JR: I’M NOT MY FATHER
An enterprising paparazzo got more than he bargained this week when he accosted
 the young son of noted oil magnate Brendol Hux at a charity ball in New York.
When asked how he felt his university studies were preparing him to succeed his
 father at Hux Petroleum, the young heir and socialite told the reporter, ‘I’m
  not my father, and my personal affairs are none of your goddamn business.'
This incident comes on the heels of an awkward moment on Yale’s campus earlier
this year. Witnesses state that a reporter approached Hux, Jr unexpectedly and
asked him to comment on rumours regarding his father’s recent hospitalisation.
Hux, then 19, reportedly made an obscene gesture towards the man and was heard
 to say that the reporter was a ‘weasel’ and a ‘shill’ who ‘preyed on people.’
 While none of the Hux family were available for comment, a representative of
    Hux Petroleum stated that Hux Sr is in good health, and that his family
 understands that Hux Jr is keen to make the most of his university experience
                before making any decisions about his future.'
===============================================================================
The town Kylo was heading for was small - so small that it didn’t appear in any
guidebooks and had no internet presence. Kylo was not without trepidation as he
received an envelope from the tired-looking pastor.
‘Is this everything?’ Kylo asked dubiously, sorting through the slender packet
of information. A single sheet of paper with an address and a contact, a flimsy
bus ticket and a letter of introduction.
‘That’s all I’ve got,’ said the pastor, shrugging. He waved a hand around the
tiny office with an air of exasperation. ‘We come for a year or so, we do what
we can, we move on. It’s not like this all comes with a handbook.’ Right in
front of him on the rickety desk was a nondescript Bible bound in red. Kylo and
the pastor rested their eyes on it at the same time, and the pastor cleared his
throat awkwardly. ‘Anyway, if you run into real trouble you can call me.
There’s no cell service out there, but I’m sure you can find a landline.’
‘Right,’ Kylo agreed, because there was nothing else to do. To turn back now
would be the most shameful kind of failure.
‘You said your Spanish was good?’
‘Conversational,’ hedged Kylo. ‘And I’ve got a Spanish copy of the Bible.’
‘Hallelujah,’ said the pastor with a very unbecoming kind of sarcasm. Then his
face relaxed a little. ‘You’re better prepared than ninety percent of the guys
we get.’
‘Thank you,’ Kylo said. He ran a finger around the inside of his plastic
clerical collar. It was still stiff with newness, and terribly sweaty against
his skin. He felt similarly stiff and untested, agonisingly aware of his
inexperience in almost every area of life.
‘Ready, then?’ The pastor looked as though all he wanted was to see the back of
Kylo and his inconvenient requests.
Kylo imagined working with some aging priest in a small, midwestern town.
Getting older. Hearing confessions and delivering the Eucharist on quiet days.
The pedestrian sins of small-town folk. The chattering of the lonely elderly.
He imagined how much time that would give him to think.
‘I’m ready,’ he said. They shook hands and Kylo left, turning out the front
yard and down the road towards the bus station. Everything he needed was in his
backpack: clothes, toiletries, money, his Bible, and an envelope of press
clippings carefully tucked into an inner pocket.
===============================================================================
Three years later
                           BRENDOL HUX DIES AGED 61
Brendol Hux, the visionary CEO who turned Hux Petroleum into one of the oil and
 gas industries most influential players, died on Sunday at the age of 61. Mr
   Hux had been struggling with the effects of chronic obstructive pulmonary
     disease and had been scaling back his participation in public events.
 Originally from Boston, Hux relocated his family to Houston after inheriting
 Hux Petroleum from his father in the late 1990s. Under his able guidance, the
   company grew from a regional household fuel supplier to a multi-national,
               multi-billion dollar petroleum shipping business.
Luke S. Walker, CEO of ForceX Drilling, said this morning, 'Brendol's death is
a real blow to us all. Hux Petroleum have been our primary shipping contractor
for more years than I care to count. Brendol was a friend and a peer mentor to
                  me and to so many others in the business.'
      Well-respected and well-liked, Hux was known for inspiring loyalty.
 'He was a real visionary,' said Patty Lowes, manager of the Houston flagship
office and Hux Petroleum employee since 1999. 'He honored his father's legacy,
but he wasn't afraid to take the company in a new direction. I've been with the
        company for twenty years, and I can't imagine it without him.'
 Brendol Hux is survived by his wife, Annabelle, and his son, Hux, Jr., who is
   already being tapped to take over the business. The younger Hux formally
                     graduates from Yale later this month.
===============================================================================
The newspaper was days old and had been read and crumpled by dozens of hands,
but Kylo held it as though it were precious. He was sitting in a cheap cafe in
Caracas, his battered old rucksack between his feet, taking a breakfast of
coffee and perico. The arrival of the news felt oddly prophetic. Another
coincidence. Kylo had been in Venezuela for three years to the month, and was
finally on his way home.
The first year was by now a blur in his memory; working absurdly long days in a
tiny, provincial hospital, more an orderly than a priest. He had heeded the
tired, middle-aged administrator when she looked him up and down (Kylo all
travel-stained and rumpled) and shrugged, ‘they always send us American kids
with Bibles. Tell them to send us doctors next time.’ He had picked up a mop or
a saw or a wad of gauze as required. He became more familiar with Last Rites
than the Eucharist or Confession.
During the second year, the locals became sufficiently tolerant of his quiet
attempts at usefulness that he had stayed on. Missionaries had come and gone.
Some higher-up in the diocese had sent a priest - a real one - who viewed Kylo
as a strange appendage and could find no use for him.
‘Just continue with your work in the hospital,’ Father Gilberto told him,
before absently waving him away.
‘I don’t think he likes me,’ Kylo said broodingly to the hospital
administrator, returning to her office with the news.
‘Why should he?’ she responded, and that was that. Kylo carried on, the soles
of his shoes wearing down and his Bible starting to smell musty with damp.
Tucked inside the front cover, his small collection of newspaper clippings
suffered the same fate. The older ones were starting to fall apart down the
creases, now, but Kylo couldn’t bring himself to throw them away. He reread
them on Sundays, in tiny fits of rebellious blasphemy, and resigned himself to
the mortal sins that he couldn’t confess to. His Spanish was serviceable,
within his tiny sphere of hospital duties, but it could not describe the
complexities of explaining the seminary, Hux, the newspaper stories. He had
never asked Father Gilberto for confession, although he knew he should.
At the beginning of Kylo’s third year, a heavy, early rainfall washed away the
only road leading to the little town. The subsidence covered the fields and
farmland in polluted water, and the Venezuelan government sent helicopters to
evacuate the hospital. Kylo walked through the empty corridors, under lights
flickering and dying from intermittent emergency generator power. His feet
scuffed on the battered linoleum. It was uncannily quiet, and Kylo found
himself clicking his rosary beads in his hand just for some noise.
‘It wasn’t me, right?’ he whispered into the dead air. ‘I mean, You’re not
trying to making a point here, or something?’
‘I suppose you’ll go home,’ said Father Gilberto later, as they sat crammed
into the last two seats of the last helicopter to leave.
‘I suppose,’ Kylo agreed, feeling bizarrely and pleasantly adrift as the
helicopter rose above the ravaged landscape.
‘I read terrible things about America,’ mused Gilberto. He patted Kylo’s knee
in a rare expression of sympathy.
In the nondescript Caracas cafe, Kylo waited until nobody in the cafe was
looking. Then he swiftly removed the newspaper page with a jerk and folded it
into the front of his Bible with the others. One for the road, he thought, with
a bubble of amusement that felt unsteady, hysterical.
===============================================================================
                         WEDDING BELLS FOR HUX JUNIOR
Flame-haired hottie Brendol Hux, Jr. is getting hitched! That's right, ladies -
   the dashing young CEO and multimillionaire is planning nuptials with his
 girlfriend Bebe Bianchini. We have it on good authority that a proposal took
place in one of New York’s most exclusive hotspots. The eligible bachelor might
   be cutting his playboy career very short indeed. Hux is only 21, and our
sources say that his mother's furious about his choice of wife. We don't blame
her! Bebe’s been in the pages of CELEB many a time. She may be a model, but it
 seems to us that she gets photographed OUT of her clothes more often than IN
them. We have this to say to young Mr. Hux: Brendol, this Italian babe is wily
                enough for any high-powered boardroom. Beware!
===============================================================================
Kylo snapped the magazine closed and shoved it back into the rack. He didn’t
need to calculate the distance to New York City. He knew it exactly; seven
hundred and seventy eight miles. A mile too far, if one wanted to be symbolic
about it. It had been a good photograph of Hux, and the first that Kylo had
seen in a very long time. He put it out of his mind and gathered a few things
from the sparse shelves of the gas station, Bible tucked awkwardly under one
arm. A gallon of milk, some tired, bruised apples and a box of mac and cheese.
Hux had filled out a little, his face refining into maturity. Bacon, cheap and
fatty but passable for sandwiches. Eggs. He’d been wearing a suit cut with
deceptive simplicity, and a plain white shirt, just as Kylo remembered him. A
new toothbrush - Kylo kept forgetting. He chose a green one.
The bored girl at the counter snapped her gum and rang Kylo up. She must have
known him by sight; Kylo had been living nearby for three months, coming in a
couple of times a week with his clerical collar and Bible surely marking him
out. She offered no courtesies, though. Kylo handed over the right bills and
grimaced at how little change she returned to him.
‘Thank you, good night,’ he said, as he said every time.
‘Uh huh,’ said the girl, and picked up her phone. Kylo stepped out into the
darkening evening, cradling his paper bag of groceries. It was a short walk
home.
Around the corner, he pulled up as a stocky man of indeterminate age stepped
into his path.
‘Sorry, excuse me,’ Kylo said, trying to move around him.
‘Stop right there,’ the man said, squaring off. He was not tall but there was a
bullish quality to him that suggested violence. Kylo eyed him, not recognising
his face. ‘You’re gonna, you’re gonna go over there, to the ATM, and you’re
going to take out your money.’ He gestured, as if the green glow from the ATM
wasn’t obvious. It lit the side of his face, sickly and unnatural. Kylo
hesitated. The man took a step forward. ‘Do it. Move it!’
‘I really don’t have any money,’ Kylo said, truthfully. And then, ‘I’m a
priest.’ Now that the man was within arm’s reach, Kylo saw that he was
agitated, his pupils dilated and his teeth grinding away.
‘Get out your fucking card,’ the man spat. Kylo crouched down very slowly and
placed his precious groceries on the floor, by the wall. He rescued his Douay-
Rheims from where it was slipping down his elbow towards his hip.
‘I really am a priest,’ Kylo said, holding up the Bible. ‘If you need money -
if you need food, or supplies, we can help you at the church. The Redeemer, on
fifth street.’
The man reached backwards and pulled a gun from his waistband. Kylo had to
stifle the urge to break into laughter - it was too ridiculous, he thought, to
try to hold up a priest outside a fading gas station in the deep South. Tom
Waits had probably written a song about it. Hux would have found it hilarious.
He wondered how hard it would be to phone Hux Petroleum and get through to
their CEO. The man’s finger was on the trigger. Kylo bit back his smile.
‘Last chance, asshole,’ the man said. The barrel of the gun wavered back and
forth. The warm wind picked up a little and a crushed plastic cup went
skittering along the asphalt. Otherwise, the evening was still and quiet.
Kylo stroked his thumb over the comfortingly soft leather of his Bible. It had
been old when he’d been given it, ten years ago. The cover was buttery-smooth;
he knew every crease and scratch. His thumb brushed against the feathery edges
of the newspaper cuttings sticking out one side.
Hux was getting married.
There were no coincidences in life, he thought. Kylo closed his eyes and
imagined a different warm, summer evening, with bees buzzing in the gardens and
the sonorous noise of bells ringing out the Hours. He smiled.
‘Do what you need to do,’ he said, and he finally let himself exhale.
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