Chapter Text
Kylo Ren walks into the refresher with a package tucked under his arm, takes a deep breath, and looks at his reflection.
His eyes, he supposes, are okay. Well, the color is okay; they’re slightly more interesting than common brown eyes. His eye shape has always bothered him, how they droop at the edges and are too narrow on his face and when he smiles they disappear into tiny creases. They often look slightly swollen, and his chronic dark circles don’t do him any favors. And his eyebrows are short and uneven. Still, his eyes are the least of his problems.
His nose…that might be the biggest problem. It’s always been too big for his face, too long, slightly bumpy. It was the first part of his body that changed when he was barely a teenager and has been a source of shame for him ever since. When he first designed his helmet he hadn’t created enough room for his nose and the bridge chafed and blistered against the poorly-lined interior.
His mouth is similarly too big for his face. Kylo has, on occasion, caught himself with his mouth slightly open, his large crooked teeth visible. In those moments he knows he looks extra ugly, common and backwater and entirely at odds with the First Order’s standards of symmetry. He’s glad that on the rare occasions when he smiles his face is covered up so no one can see how distorted his face looks, how he bizarrely has dimples along his jawline.
Kylo wonders if having more of a jawline would help balance out his nose and mouth. As it is, his face sort of descends from a very sharp chin to a neck that wrinkles, another element of his body he’s gone through great pains to hide.
Kylo leans against the mirror and closes his eyes. He’s never been at peace with his face, probably never will be, but at least he has the ability to hide it every day. No one in the First Order, save the Supreme Leader, knows what he looks like. No one ever asks or seems to care.
Until General Hux asks one day after bending Kylo over a table in an empty conference room and fucking him. They’ve been meeting like this for over two month-cycles: both keep their clothes on when they fuck, removing only what’s necessary.
“I’m curious about your face, you know,” said Hux. “You might try to look like a machine, but I know you’re human.” The hand resting on his shoulder could pass for an affectionate gesture.
“You don’t want to know,” Kylo had replied reflexively, breaking away from Hux’s hands and pulling up his leggings. He turned to face Hux, putting as much of the Force as he could into his words. “General. You don’t need to know what I look like.”
There was a moment where he thought Hux had absorbed the command, but then he blinked and looked at him disdainfully. “Ren, I know I’m not Force sensitive, but you know better than to try and mind-trick me.”
Back in the refresher, Kylo opens the parcel. It’s filled with small, discreet brushed duraluminum vials, tubes, and sticks, along with a palette, sponges, and an assortment of synth-hair brushes. All the products enclosed are designed to correct, tone, and sculpt his face in what the cosmetics manufacturer promises is a naturally polished look. Part of him can’t believe he’s resorting to wearing cosmetics and wishes he’d scrapped this idea—along with the difficult process of ordering the products without having them connected to him—in favor of black-market surgery. The other part knows Hux will find him completely disgusting and will end what little relationship they have should he ever see Kylo’s bare face.
The parcel includes a tutorial, designed to be played on a datapad or portable holoprojector, demonstrating how to apply the cosmetics. Kylo loads it, and a digital rendering of his face appears, one he’d uploaded while ordering the products. The image slowly morphs into the finished look, the skin becoming clear and unblemished, cheekbones and jawline softly defined. His eyes look larger, clearer and brighter, and in combination with fuller eyebrows they soften his mouth and nose, pulling them into proportion with the rest of his face. Kylo finds himself smiling despite himself. The tutorial gives him the hope of appearing attractive, at least while the cosmetics are on his face.
An hour later, after dutifully following the steps, he looks in the mirror and wants to cry.
His skin certainly looks healthier, the dark circles beneath his eyes erased and the large moles and pockmarks which mar his face smoothed with primer and covered in opaque foundation. Everything else is a disaster. Kylo’s eyes and brows look garish, far too defined to appear natural, and his attempt at correcting his deep-set eyes has resulted in a strange cat-eye effect. He supposes the contouring on his jaw and nose are passable if he only faces forward, but it’s painfully obvious that his jaw and nose aren’t really shaped. His lips still appear too large and are now too pink and shiny.
The only thing worse than Hux seeing his bare face, Kylo decides, is the abuse he’ll receive if the makeup is plainly obvious. He can hear Hux sneering: really Ren, you expect me to believe you were born with pink lips and smoky eyes? No, Hux will be crueler than that. I asked you to take your kriffing mask off, not come to me wearing another one. Do you wear this every day, or just when you think you’re going to get fucked? You look like a pleasure droid made by a species that had no concept of what humans deem attractive.
Kylo snarls angrily, tears in his eyes, and throws his datapad to the ground. (Through some miracle, or perhaps just the Force, it doesn’t crack.) He leans his head into his hands. He has to get better at applying the cosmetics, if not tonight than by tomorrow morning. What if Hux wants to fuck him tomorrow? Wouldn’t refusing to remove his helmet count as an admission of his own ugliness?
Never mind that he still has to worry about making his hair look good after he removes his helmet. Typically, Kylo braids it back so it stays out of his face, but that only makes his ears look larger. He sighs and wishes he’d gotten them pinned when he had the opportunity. He’ll have to wear his hair down and hope it doesn’t get in the way. At least it’s decently full.
Hux doesn’t proposition Kylo the next day, which he decides is good because he still isn’t happy with is ability to properly use the makeup. He goes lighter on the eye makeup, though his brows still look cartoonishly strong for his face. He avoids wearing anything on his lips, and thinks they look better for it. Hux doesn’t say anything the following day, and then Kylo’s off-ship for a week recovering Dark artifacts for Snoke. In his spare time, he continues practicing applying the cosmetics, refining his technique. By the time he’s en route to the Finalizer, it’s a routine he can cycle through like a kata.
He opens with a clean face, then applies toner followed by a matte primer. Next, he covers his face and the underside of his chin in opaque foundation with a sponge, concentrating on covering the dark circles around his eyes and the moles and freckles everywhere else. He rubs primer onto his eyelids, blending it into the creases. After loosely dusting his face in translucent powder, he slides a cream contouring stick underneath his cheekbones and at his temples, followed by a cream highlighter across his cheeks, forehead, and down the bridge of his nose. He blends both until they flawlessly fade into this face before working on his eyes and brows.
The eyes are tricky, but Kylo feels more confident doing them now than he did when he first got the cosmetics kit. Using his thinnest brush with a neutral cream shadow, he angles the brush from the bottom of his eyelid near his lash line to the edge of his eye, then outlines the crease. A lighter eyeshadow goes across his lids and under his brows, and he finishes by setting with a powder and defining his lashes with a light coat of mascara. He fills in his eyebrows, putting most of the pencil on the underside, then steps away from the mirror in his onboard refresher, examining his face and making minor adjustments. He covers his lips in a thin layer of balm, having decided that changing their shape is out of the question, and sprays the cosmetics in place to keep them from smudging.
After working a texturizer through his hair and making sure it looks attractively tousled, Kylo sets his helmet on top of his head, locks it in place, and covers it with his cowl before exiting the refresher onboard his shuttle.
General Hux is waiting for him when the shuttle lands.
“Welcome back, Commander. I trust your mission was a success?”
“I was able to recover the Dathomirian artifacts requested by Leader Snoke without an issue,” Kylo replies. As they walk toward the command bridge, the conversation easily transitions into a report on the mission. At some point, Hux gently rubs his shoulder against Kylo’s, causing him to flinch.
“We have to stop meeting like this, Ren,” he says under his breath, keeping his eyes focused on the hallway ahead.
“Where would you take me?” Kylo replies. It’s the boldest he’s ever been in public, and he can feel the shock reverberating off of Hux.
“My quarters. 2100. Preferably without,” and Hux shoots a glance at him, appraising the helmet, “anything on.”
For once, Kylo feels something close to confidence.
It’s fleeting, though. By the time 2100 rolls around and Kylo makes his way over to Hux’s quarters, he's having a hard time keeping his nerves in check. He’s spent the day checking his face to ensure none of the makeup smudged, making sure his hair looks alright, destroying a weapons droid in the armory out of anxiety, checking to make sure his hair doesn't smell strange. Kylo is certain Hux will be put off by his voice and decides at the last moment, as the blasteel doors to his room begin to open, that he will speak as little as possible.
But when he gets to Hux’s quarters and unlocks his helmet, Hux’s response is merely “You are unfairly lovely, Ren,” before he seizes upon him and furiously kisses his lips, dragging him toward the bedroom. He barely has time to worry about Hux noticing the foundation caked onto his face, never mind anything besides getting his clothes off and getting close to Hux.
Now that Hux knows what he looks like, he seems to be insatiable. Barely a day goes by when Hux doesn’t want to see his face, and Kylo finds himself getting better and faster at applying the cosmetics. He’s still anxious and shy whenever Hux kisses him, worried that one day he’ll rub up against his cheek and half the foundation and contouring creams will have transferred over. But the days pass, Hux says nothing, and Kylo suspects that Hux doesn't even realize he could wear cosmetics.
It’s only after two weeks, when he’s lying in Hux’s bed on evening feeling exhausted and overstimulated and content, that his sense of security shatters.
“I’m hopping in the sonic,” says Hux, pulling himself up from the bed. “Join me?” It’s an invitation he’s extended before, one Kylo always declines.
“What if I like smelling like you?” he replies, rolling over in bed.
“What if I like my sheets staying fresh?”
“I just don’t want to shower.” Kylo frowns, trying to come up with a better excuse.
Hux tuts. “Ren, it’s okay. I know you wear cosmetics, just take a shower with me—”
Hux knows. Kylo’s breath hitches, his stomach drops, and he’s suddenly hit with a wave of shame.
“You don’t want to see me without them,” he mutters. “Just…just trust me.” He’s not sure whether he wants to scream or cry.
“Ren—Kylo—I’m not attracted to you because of what you look like.” There it is, thinks Kylo, he thinks I’m horrible. Hux frowns, bites his lip, and continues. “No, no, it’s not that, I meant to say I was attracted to you before I knew what you looked like! And you look,” his eyes dart up at the ceiling, and Kylo is certain he’s trying to think of some tactful way to tell him what he looks like. “You’re handsome,” Hux finally says. “Kylo Ren, I think you’re really handsome.”
“You’re lying,” Kylo says reflexively, because of course Hux is lying.
“Read my thoughts if you want. I promise you I’m not.”
“You’re…you’re only showing me what I want to see,” says Kylo. He can feel the tears starting in his eyes, and although all the cosmetics are waterproof and he always makes sure to use a sealer, he doesn’t trust that they won’t smudge. Appearing in front of Hux with smearing makeup He flings the sheets away, pushing himself out of bed and bending down to pick up his clothes from the floor.
“You’re being a child, Ren.”
“Stop talking,” snaps Kylo, “or so help me I will shut you up.” He throws on his robes blindly, not caring whether he looks rumpled, and closes his ears to Hux’s protests. “I shouldn’t have ever agreed to show you my face,” he adds as he locks his helmet onto his head and turns to leave.
Behind him, Hux calls out feebly.