h3llcat:

Twitter Poll Drabble – Week 4 – Based on this poll  ● my twitter @h311cat

Here is this week’s new poll! Go vote!

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Kylo knows something is wrong the moment he sets foot through the door. The lights are off; he can’t see into the shadowy abyss that their living room has become, but the house feels… empty. He finds himself almost hesitating before flipping the switch, squinting as the incandescent lighting illuminates the room with a soft glow.

The room felt empty because it is. Or, nearly.

The coffee table is nowhere to be seen, the matching end tables are gone from their posts on either side of the couch, the entertainment stand and the TV that sat upon it are both missing from their place against the wall. The couch and armchair are the only bits of furniture left standing.

His first thought is that they were robbed, but the room is impeccably clean as always, and Hux’s car had been in the driveway. He would have told him if that were the case. And it’s not like anyone would want their coffee table, of all things. So what…?

His own line of thought is interrupted when his gaze is caught by a fluorescent green cover on the electrical socket near the baseboards where their TV once would have been.

Oh no.

He spins in a small circle, dread settling in the pit of his stomach at the flashes of green, shocking against their white walls, where all of their sockets are.

He’d been afraid of this.

“Hux? Babe?” He calls out into the echoey house, a smidge of frenetic energy to his voice. He turns to hurry up the stairs only to have his progress thwarted by a gate firmly affixed across the bottom step. He swears under his breath as the hard plastic meets his knee before stepping over the damned thing and making his way up to their bedroom.

“Hux?”

Yellowed light filters out into the hallway from beneath the door, and he holds his breath as he reaches to open it, afraid of what state he’ll find his husband in.

Hux is propped up by a generous mountain of pillows against their headboard, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, and his eyebrows are knit together in concentration. He holds an empty toilet paper roll in one hand and one of Millicent’s toy mice in the other, a wider assortment of her playthings resting in a pile on the top of his rounded belly.

“Babe? What… what are you doing?” Kylo tries to infuse his voice with a warm smile as he watches Hux push the mouse through the cardboard tube then promptly toss it into a small trash can beside the bed.

“If an object is small enough to fit through a toilet paper roll, it’s a choking hazard,” Hux explains, sparing Kylo a glance that somehow manages to make him feel like an idiot for not assuming as much. Hux picks up another toy, this one a ball with bells inside, and presses it to the opening. It doesn’t fit through the tunnel, so it is placed in a basket resting on Kylo’s side of the bed.

“Ah, right. Of course.”

“How was your flight home?” Hux asks eventually to fill the silence.

Kylo lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, passing a hand awkwardly across the back of his neck as he takes a few more steps into their room. “Fine. Mom sent me with some old books for you, but I’m not sure you’ll have much use for pregnancy tips from the 80’s.”

Another silence that Kylo doesn’t know how to fill, four more toys dropped into the garbage.

“Hey, babe,” he ventures, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of the furniture downstairs is gone. Do you… uh… do you know anything about that?”

“Phasma and Mitaka moved it all to storage for us while you were away.”

“Oh, they did? W…why?”

“We can have it brought back when our child is two and a half years old. That is the average age that they can walk unassisted, and will no longer be in danger of bashing their brains out on the carelessly unguarded sharp edges of furniture.” Hux sets his project aside to fix Kylo with a small, disappointed frown. “You’re going to be a new father, Ren, you don’t need a television.”

“Ah, babe, I don’t need a TV, you’re right. I didn’t mean it like that. We’re going to have our hands full.” He places his hands now across the swell of Hux’s belly, fingers splayed wide as he rubs them over the curve in a greeting to their unborn little one.

Hux smiles and lays his own hands atop Kylo’s to follow the movement. “Oh, and, Ren? Don’t be surprised when you go into the garage. I found a buyer for your motorcycle.”

Kylo freezes. “You did what now?”