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Chapter Text

Week 1: Canthem House



Night one of their trip home on the Millenium Falcon, Rey had fallen asleep like a lazy starfish, suctioned to the conduit pipes behind the cockpit. Night two, spread-eagle underneath the dejarik table. Night three, Ben had to carefully pull her, limp and snoring, out from under the control console in the cockpit.

On the Falcon, Rey would fall asleep in the nooks and crannies, as opposed to the bunks. It’s the same when she gets to Canthem House: Rey just won’t sleep in a bed.

She seems comfortable enough in the house, when they first show her around and let her explore. It’s obvious that she’s most surprised (and excited) by the kitchen, and her free access to it. The cryofridge is something she’d never seen before, and they often find her just sitting on the kitchen floor in front of it when they have their backs turned. She also shows interest in Han and Chewie’s garage, as well as Ben’s room, where she likes to crowd into his personal space and touch all of his things and crawl all over his bed and try to make off with his model ships and tumble holobooks off of his desk and the shelves that she can’t reach-

...Ben wishes she’d take interest in her own room, is all.

She seems to prefer spaces around the house that are small and well-hidden, but still close to where Ben and his family are throughout the day. It’s in these odd places that Ben’s certain Rey is sleeping, and not the guest room Leia had set up for her.

It takes Ben several days to uncover her top three nap sites.

Day 3 of having Rey in the house, Leia and Ben are lounging in the main room, reading and studying. Han and Chewie are rustling in the garage, tinkering with the Falcon’s exo-layers in preparation for their trip to Takodana in a few weeks.

Leia and Ben are playing very convincing roles of two people who absolutely have no idea at all whatsoever that their new resident is hiding under the sonic sink.

When the cupboard door creaks slowly open, they don’t turn their heads. When they hear the cryofridge door open and close, they don’t turn their heads. Even the sticky pit-pat of Rey’s bare feet striking the kitchen tile doesn’t turn their heads (though Ben’s head twitches to look at his mom, who’s also trying to bite down on a smile at the sound).

Finally, Leia can’t seem to help it. “Snack?” She asks Ben innocently.

Ben pretends to consider, purses his lips, and nods. They power off their datapad and holobooks and rise to head to the kitchen. They hear the sonic sink cupboard door close.

His mother makes a show of opening and closing all of the cabinets above the sink. “Should we make some flatcakes? Flatcakes sound pretty good to me right about now.”

“I could eat some flatcakes,” Ben agrees, leaning just to the side of the sonic sink.

“Oh but, sweetheart- who’s going to flip them for us? My wrists are too sore, and you have- that- thing…” she looks at Ben, floundering for a moment, “-where you don’t...like to flip them.”

Ben gives her a sarcastic, smooth, mom thumbs-up.

It’s the same ploy she and his father used to use on Ben when he was Rey’s age. Same as it had back then, it works.

She tumbles out from under the sonic sink with a tiny fist raised; a sonic-whisk clutched in it like a saber as she announces, “I COULD FLIP THE FLATCAKES.”

The next day, they find her huddled in a tiny Rey-ball under the sink; the upper lip of her open mouth is lifted against the handle of the flatcake spatula she has clutched to her chest, pressed against her cheek and eye. Leia snaps a holopic. They grab a pillow and a blanket from Ben’s room, maneuvering them snugly beneath and around the scavenger under the sink.

x

Day 5 of having Rey in the house, Ben discovers her second hiding place: the worktable in the garage.

He and Rey have been in and out of the garage most of the day, helping Han and Chewie with basic maintenance and a bit of “cleaning-house.” (Which is code for “cleaning out the disgusting cobwebs and food crumbs stuffed in every hidden crevice of the Falcon.” Rey actually enjoys it, the little weirdo.) After lunch, though, Rey disappears again.

Ben and Chewie are taking a break, sitting in a couple of dingy chairs inside the open garage. Han’s laugh is gravelly as he tightens a few loose bolts on the cargo lift. “Your mom showed me the holopic of the little speck asleep under the sink, last night.”

Ben takes a swig of water, nodding with his cheeks full. He swallows and hands the canteen back to Chewie. “I think she prefers dark, cramped spaces.”

Han snorts. “To be fair, it’s what she’s used to. I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knows Canthem House better than we do.”

Probably, Ben thinks.

Han tosses his mag-wrench unceremoniously onto the garage floor. It skids to a stop in front of the workbench as he lumbers toward the third decrepit chair, beside Chewie, and plops himself into it with a tired sigh.

The three of them admire their handiwork; soaking up the setting sunshine that’s bouncing off of the cockpit’s transpariglass.

Suddenly, the soft dragging of a steel tool on cement can be heard behind them.

They all turn in their chairs to watch a small, tan arm appear from beneath the workbench, feeling around for the mag-wrench Han had tossed.

Chewie is the first to turn to Ben and Han with a bemused head-tilt.

Han shoots him and Ben a conspiratorial wink and hefts himself out of the chair, slowly making his way toward the workbench. Ben follows, strolling to the opposite side.

“Coulda swore I tossed the mag-wrench this direction,” Han stage-whispers, scratching his chin. No one could call Ben’s parents good actors.

“Damn,” Ben replies stiffly. “Maybe we should check under the bench.” Okay, whatever, so Ben isn’t a great actor, either.

Ben and Han quickly drop to the floor with a loud, “ Gotchya!” and the garage fills with the trill of Rey’s startled little-kid yelp and hiccup-y giggles. Ben reaches to tickle her out, and Rey wiggles out from under the bench into Han’s chest, grinning and bouncy, looking back to make sure Ben is giving chase.

Before she can run, though, Han snags her up like a football and takes off. Rey squeals, dissolving into laughter that sounds like pink soap bubbles popping in the air.

Ben jogs toward them, grinning.

“Chewie, quick!” Han hollers.

Only a Wookiee well-versed in the art of toss-the-toddler would’ve seen what was coming: he catches the giggling girl Han had tossed from a few feet away with ease. Ben knows from personal experience that Chewie would never have missed—they used to play this game when Ben was little, too (much to his mother’s horror).

Rey is on cloud nine. Her giggles pop and float above their heads, bouncing in the sunset-flooded garage.

Chewie warbles at Ben and he opens his arms.

When the hysterical little girl lands in his outstretched hands, it feels a little like he’s caught the sun itself.  

That night, they find her splayed, belly-up, under the workbench—wrench clutched loosely in her fist.

Han snorts. “Kid, grab your mother before we move her, will you? I smell a holopic series for the books.”

After Leia takes the snap, Ben tucks Rey into his arms and treks carefully back inside the house.

But later that night when he wakes briefly to turn over, she’s curled around Ben’s feet, one arm settled atop Ben’s blanketed shin, tiny mouth in an ‘o’ as she drools on his sock. She’s still clutching the mag-wrench in one of her little fists—he can feel the cold weight of it even through his blanket.

He sits up, blinks his sleep-squinted eyes a few more times, yawns, and tosses the lower half of his blanket to cover her, too.

x



Day 7, they can’t find Rey anywhere in the house. The family gathers in the main room after splitting up to search.

“Chewie and I already checked the Falcon and the garage--no Speck.” Han looks to his wife.

“Not in the kitchen or our room, either.” Leia looks at Ben.

“I couldn’t find her anywhere in the main or guest rooms, or the hall closets.” It takes him a solid sixty seconds of blank-faced nail-biting before he realizes his parents are still staring at him expectantly. “What?”

“Your room,” they answer synchronously.

They follow Ben down the hall and into his bedroom, where they check under his bed, beneath his desk, and in between his shelves. When he slides his closet door open, Ben shoves aside his hanging clothes to reveal Rey, curled into the furthest corner atop a heap of discarded shirts. She’s clutching one of his fighter-class X-Wing models and snoring lightly.

Han and Leia stand behind Ben, peering around his shoulders to see for themselves.

Leia makes a soft sound and pulls out her holocam. Han smirks and lays a hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“My closet? ” Ben whispers. “What’s next, my underwear drawer?”

That night, Ben and Rey sit on his bed as he reads her to sleep, and without rolling his eyes, he lets her burrow into his side and under his blanket.

“Just this once, Sun Spot,” he murmurs. It’s not her bed, but at least it’s a bed. 

Week 2: Shopping

Han thinks the whole ordeal is over the top. He can see it clear as day on the little speck’s face: Rey isn’t interested in any of this.

He’s sitting with Ben at the center of Coruscant’s infamous skymall, plopped on a bench in the middle of a furniture outlet he’s certain they could’ve ordered from via datapad, instead of making a kriffing trip out to it like a mission they’d been assigned.

He isn’t about to go picking any fights, though. Not today, anyway. Leia has stars in her eyes, trailing Rey around the little girl’s department, and Han can’t bring himself to ruin it for her. His wife is clearly having the time of her life.

Plus, watching Rey eye all the pastel colors and glitzy pillows and rainbow linens like they’re vocabulary in a language she has no interest in learning is a damn riot.

Poor little speck looks bored to tears.

Ben snorts, “look.” He elbows Han to gesture to where the girls are now, in the bed section.

Twin grins spread across their faces as they watch Rey army-crawl away from a distracted Leia—towards an empty hover-box. They snicker when Leia turns away from the sales employee just as Rey’s successfully tucked herself inside the box.

“...Rey?” Leia calls. She twists and bends to look under the beds. “ Sith spit ,” they hear her mutter. Han and Ben laugh, which is a mistake--Leia’s baleful glare settles on the pair of them.

With synchronized pointed fingers, they give up Rey’s hiding place.

Leia has her hands on her hips and a reluctant smile on her face when she peers down inside.

Rey’s little head peeks out the top of the box, looking up at his wife, who is beaming helplessly down at her. “Let’s try this, then,” she says, and instead of finding a hover-cart or a carrier, Senator Leia Organa pushes the hover-box around the outlet as if it’s what everyone should be doing.

x

Han is surprised by how fun it is to watch Leia try to find Rey some clothes.

Just like the furniture, Rey is completely uninterested. She’s holding Leia’s hand, now, which Han takes as a sign of her growing exhaustion with this whole “shopping” trip ( ditto, kid , he thinks) because, so far, Rey only takes their hands when she feels tired. She’s still hesitant to reach out for Leia and Han (Ben might as well be her personal jungle gym for all her hesitation to reach for him), but then again, it has only been a week.

Its exemplary, he thinks; how Rey doesn’t make a show out of her burned-out boredom—doesn’t  huff or puff or scrunch her face at all. Even Ben used to do that. Hell, sometimes still does. Han still does. But not Rey. She’s this tiny, patient shadow beside his wife.

As he and Ben warm another bench (his teenage son having long since fallen asleep; arms crossed, head lolling, mouth open, drool and all) Han watches the little speck closer.

She doesn’t spare the clothes much attention. She looks at what Leia shows her, and touches what Leia hands her, but for the most part, Rey’s attention is on Leia herself.

They slowly wander in and out of racks hand-in-hand. Leia chats idly; about the kind of clothes she likes, what she used to wear when she was Rey’s age, her favorite colors, things like that.

And Rey just grips Leia’s hand and listens, eyes blank and unseeing on the clothes, looking perfectly content to bask in Leia’s voice and presence no matter what the kriff they’re doing.

It does Han’s crusty heart some good, this warmth.


POV Switch -- Leia

In the end, Rey doesn’t pick anything for herself. Leia could tell straight away that she’s even less interested in clothes than she had been in furniture and room colors.

So Leia winds up choosing a few neutral-colored pieces, sewn with fabric less course than what Rey is currently used to, but still reminiscent of desert-wear; small tees, ranging from beige to grey to faded brown, and light cargo leggings in the same colors. Even with Rey’s total lack of excitement over the garments, Leia feels a motherly thrill, imagining the girl all wrapped up in clothes bought with her in mind--clothes Rey can wear because they look nice, not because they’re practical for scavenging.

She leads Rey through a few other racks, hoping something will catch her eye. To Leia’s delighted surprise, Rey finally perks when they reach the shoes. She seems drawn to one pair, in particular; tiny, light-blue sneakers.

They’re a perfect match for Ben’s giant black pair.

Leia searches the shelves for the corresponding box with Rey’s size. “You like this pair, sweetheart?”

Rey’s head snaps up at the question, and Leia looks down with eyebrows raised in askance. Leia thinks the happy surprise on Rey’s face is probably due to the novelty of wanting something she can have.

What she doesn’t realize is that it hadn’t been the shoes at all.

Rey had never been called “sweetheart,” before.

She takes Leia’s hand with renewed energy; cheeks pink, a happy twinkle in her eyes.  

x

The following next few days, Leia sets out to arrange Rey’s room.

She’d ordered Ben to take Rey into the city for the day--to show her the market and the Coruscant Street Fair. Even hands over her chipcard for him to take Rey to the toy store with. (Likely a huge mistake--a teenage boy unleashed on a sprawling metropolis planet with a near-limitless amount of credits? Kriff knows what he’ll really bring back. She’ll chide herself later.)

It’s the perfect diversion.

“A little to the left,” Leia tilts her head. “Wait, perfect-!” Chewie bleats dramatically, dropping the iron bed frame. Its sand-colored mattress bounces with the impact. “ Perfect .”

Leia hopes beyond all hope that Rey likes it.


POV Switch -- Ben

Rey is in a trance ; her eyes reflect all the colors and lights of the toy store with wide, childish wonder. She touches everything, everything , and her mouth hasn’t closed since they walked in--hanging open just like a little kid’s awestruck face should.

At some point, the store attendant seems peeved by her determination to examine everything with her hands--especially when she handles a few rare collectables. A good hard glare from Ben does an effective enough job of ensuring he keeps his mouth shut.

Ben doesn’t want anything or anyone to ruin this for her.

“See anything you want?”

Rey is holding a buildable ship model--the same brand-line as the ones Ben had built as a kid; same ones that still sit on his shelves--when her head whips up to stare at him open-mouthed. “What?” She asks, as if she hadn’t heard him right.

“We’re shopping, Rey. For you. Pick something.”

Rey’s eyes assess his face.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Ben tugs on her top bun. “A toy or two to play with is necessary. You’re six. That’s what six-year-olds do; they play with toys.”

Rey looks back down at the model in her hand like it’ll turn into sand at any moment. It breaks Ben’s heart a little--she looks so confused. He can’t tell what by; the toy, the fact that she can just- have it, or that she’s meant to be playing with toys in the first place.

Ben bends at the knee to grab the boxed version of the ship model. He’s looking down at it as he holds it between them to show her. “See this? ‘Ages 6 and up’,” he reads. He watches as she takes it out of his hands. “That’s you, sun spot. Now c’mon,” he stands and offers her his hand. “Let’s find a new dejarik set, while we’re here.”

Her dimples finally make an appearance. She clutches the boxed model to her chest with one arm and reaches to take Ben’s hand with the other.

“Not for you,” Ben clarifies, mock-serious. “Mom never gives me her chipcard and I’ve wanted a new set for years.”

Rey giggles.

On the hoverbus ride home, she sits in his lap with the ship model and a stuffed bantha in hers, feet swaying happily in the air.

X

When they open the front door of their house, they’re greeted by fur. Lots of mangy brown fur.

“Chewie.” Ben says, mouth full of hair. “Hullo.”

Rey just squishes further into the wookie’s leg fur. “Big bear,” she says.

It’s only been a week, and even Ben recognizes Chewie’s fond shyriiwook for “Little bear.” He greets her with a soft bleet.

“My room?” Rey asks, chin on Chewie’s knee, craning her neck all the way back to meet his eyes. “Leia said I was only allowed in Ben’s while they fix the guest room.” She looks over at him with the same question in her eyes. “ ‘My’ room?”

Chewie mewls in response, and together he and Ben each take one of Rey’s hands. She still looks confused as they weave their way through the entryway and past the main room, down the hall, stopping in front of the door.

Ben has to admit even he’s curious what his parents and Chewie managed to get done in the last few days.

When Leia slides the door open, Ben and Rey are frankly both pretty awestruck.

He doesn’t know how she did it, but of course she did it. She’s Leia kriffing Organa.

The space vaguely resembles the inside of Rey’s fallen, hollowed-out AT-AT. (Albeit warmer, safer, and much more comfortable.)

They must have boarded up a portion of the room, because it’s a few sizes smaller than it had been a few days ago. The holopaper walls--like Ben’s--are customizable by datapad; Leia already has the walls set to 360 images of the upper-deck of an AT-AT. The hololights that line the walls are adjustable; set to warm, desert-like tones. The rest of the room is fairly bare, save for the industrial, sand-colored bed at its center and a large, matching industrial table and workbench. His mom’s left a cup of colored pencils and vintage sketch-paper on its surface, and what looks like a new datapad beside that. It looks like Leia and Han had even taken a storage box off of the Falcon (the one Rey had taken to hiding “missing” household treasures in when no one was looking) to rest at the foot of the bed. One of Ben’s ship models sits waiting, half-built, on its off-white surface.

It only dawns on Ben after his own open-mouthed surveying of the room that Rey is sobbing in Leia’s arms.

“I’ve never had a-a,” she hiccups, “r- room before .” Leia is squatting by the door, embracing a shaking Rey in her arms. Rey’s face is red and tear-streaked as she tries to get another look at the room from where her chin is resting on Leia’s shoulder. But her eyes are puffy from crying and Ben can see her squeeze them shut as she continues to sob.

“Do you like it?” Leia asks. Ben doesn’t miss the watery tone in his mother’s voice.

“ I love iiiiiiit ,” Rey wails.

Ben snorts and puts his hands in his pockets, wandering back over to the doorway where Rey ditched her new toys to hug Leia. He takes out the stuffed bantha and walks over to Rey’s new bed to situate it there. He sits on the bed and surveys the room again.

“Mom…” he starts.

Rey and Leia finally extricate themselves from the embrace, Rey sniffling as she rubs her ruddy face with her arm. “Yes?” Leia asks.

“My room could probably use some redecorating....”

She laughs.

Chapter Text

Rey is six and half, and she’s sitting in a dopper’s office. She doesn’t know what a dopper does, and she’s never been to one’s office. Ben had to explain that doppers make sure she is healthy. She feels fine. She hates the smell in here a lot. Actually, she hates everything about the white room. She’s never seen anything so clean. Never been anywhere so quiet. It’s so bright and white. She hates it, and it makes her nervous. 

Leia is talking to the dopper now, while Rey sits on a high-up bench across from Ben. She doesn’t know why she has to sit on the bench while he gets to sit in a chair. Every time she gets off of the bench, though, Ben catches her before she can reach the chair next to him, and lifts her back onto the bench. It’s annoying.

She tries again, but his arm bars her from the chair beside him. He snatches her back into his arms for the fourth time. She huffs. She kicks and thwacks with her legs and arms. Ben only laughs. It makes her madder. “Why can’t I sit with you?”

He sits her back on the bench, but this time he stays standing, leaning on the bench beside her. “Because you’re supposed to sit up here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did the dopper say I’m supposed to sit up here?”

Ben’s mouth twitches, which Rey knows means he wants to smile. “‘Dopper’?”

Rey scrunches her nose. She hates when people repeat things she’s already said, very clearly. “Dopper. The dopper. With that ear thing that hurt.”

“Doctor, Rey. It’s ‘doctor’, not ‘dopper’.” Ben doesn’t do a good job of hiding his smile behind his fist.

She punches his arm. “I DIDN’T KNOW YET. DON’T LAUGH. HE STUCK SOMETHING IN MY EAR AND IT HURT AND I COULDN’T HEAR GOOD.” He keeps laughing, because Ben is a bantha butt. He leans over to fix one of her buns, and Rey lets him. She shouldn’t, because he’s being mean. She does anyway.

“Are you gonna stay if I sit back down?”

She glares up at him and answers with a fast, “No.”  

Ben grabs one of her little socked ankles. “...Don’t make me,” he warns. His face and voice are serious. But Rey knows.

She bites her cheek to keep her smile away. She doesn’t want to smile. But she loves this game. “NO.”

He grips her other ankle, turning his head a little but still looking down at her. “Last chance, gremlin.”

Rey giggles with anticipation. “NO!” She tries to shout, but it turns into shrieking and loud laughing as Ben pulls her off of the bench and swings her up and up and up, until she’s suspended completely upside down.

She is laughing so hard it hurts her tummy. He lowers her so she can touch the floor with her raised arms. She can barely see through her eyes because her smile is so big. She laughs and shrieks and grazes the white floor with her palms as Ben moves her around the office.

That’s when the dopper and Leia come back in.

Ben unfortunately lays her back on the bench. She wishes they could play longer. She is still smiling and breathing heavily through the last few giggles, because that was fun, as she sits up. Ben clears his throat and sits down again. Rey watches Leia  join Ben in the chairs that Rey wishes she could sit in, too. Leia elbows Ben in his side, and he elbows her back.

Rey feels a little better, until the dopper stands in front of her, blocking a lot of her view of Leia and Ben. He’s holding what Rey thinks looks like a very big datapad, but stretches when the doctor pulls on either side.

“Okay, Rey,” he says. Rey’s face pinches at the sound of his voice. Rey doesn’t trust him. He had stuck something cold and pointed into her ears, before. She didn’t like that. “I need you to lay back, so I can scan your vitals, okay?”

Rey shakes her head and tries to get off of the bench again. But the doctor’s hand reaches for her arm to stop her, and she doesn’t trust him- so she bites his hand.

The room gets really loud really fast.

The doctor shouts, “WhAH-!”  

“Rey!” Leia and Ben also shout.  

It’s too much. Rey hates it all; the weird smells, the doctor, the thing he stuck in her ear, and the hard, high-up bench she didn’t want to sit on.

Rey runs toward the door, jumps to smack the panel, and it slides open.

Just like she would in the junkyard when hiding from Plutt or Teedo, she zigs and zags. The halls are slippery under her socks. She almost falls, but catches the wall on a sharp turn and keeps running.

She’s zigging and zagging and running and huffing and- “OOF!”

Arms wrap around her before she can fall from the impact. She ran right into someone--she starts to panic that it’s the dopper--”NO! LET ME GO! LET ME GO!”

But when she smells Ben, she opens her eyes and goes still. But her body doesn’t calm down. The burst of energy from her escape is making her feel tingly, like she’s still running.

Ben lifts her into his arms.

Her heart is beating really fast. She wraps her arms around Ben’s neck really hard. She squeezes and she knows it’s not a gentle squeeze but she can’t stop. He smells like Canthem House. He smells like Leia and Han. Like his blankets, and the piles of shirts she likes to hide in.

Rey feels the energy start to calm down. Ben’s here.

His hand is making big warm circles on her back. “I didn’t mean to run,” she says quietly. She can hear people around them. Thinks she can hear Leia and the doctor making their way around a corner. She doesn’t want anyone but Ben to hear her, though. “Are you mad? Is Leia mad? ”

Ben turns and walks them further down the hall. Rey can’t see Leia or the dopper, because her head is turned, her cheek pressed into Ben’s big warm shoulder. All she can see is the white walls they slowly pass.

“We’re not mad,” he says. She can feel the rumble of Ben’s voice. “You were overwhelmed. It happens.”

Rey closes her eyes, because she doesn’t like the white walls. She wants to pretend she’s in Canthem House, and that Ben is trying to get her to fall asleep by carrying her around the house and talking to her about ships. She pretends that’s where they are, now.

“Does the dopper have anything else to stick in my ears?”

“I don’t think so,” she feels Ben rumble. She opens her eyes, lifts her head, and sees the first room they sat in, before going into the white room. Ben sits in a chair in the corner, and Rey pulls back a little to look at his face. She wants to make sure he isn’t lying. “All that’s left is a scan. It’s easy.”

Rey can tell he isn’t lying. “No more ear shit,” she demands. Han and Leia and Ben all use that word, sometimes, when they’re being really serious. Rey wants to sound really serious.

Ben laughs. He stretches out both of her ears because he’s a huge bantha butt. “No more ear shit, ‘promise.”

“Rey, sweetheart….”

Rey twists in Ben’s lap to see Leia walking into the room. The dopper isn’t behind her. She looks worried and sorry. Rey feels really bad. “I shouldn’t have bitted him, I’m sorry,” Rey says. “I’m sorry, Leia.” Everything tumbles out fast. Her kid voice is frustrating because she feels like she’s gasping for air sometimes between words. “I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry.”

She isn’t crying, because she swore she wouldn’t. She just feels really really bad. Rey doesn’t want Leia to think she’s bad. That she bites everyone. That she can’t do something that Leia needs her to do, no matter how much Rey hates it.

She crawls off of Ben’s lap to walk solemnly toward Leia.

Leia kneels and opens her arms wide, though. Rey’s eyes go wide, because Ben was right and Leia isn’t mad. Rey’s pace is faster so she can fall into Leia’s arms. It feels so good. It feels like it does with Ben. Like she’s warm and safe in Canthem House. Like everything’s okay because she’s home.

“You okay, sweetheart?” Leia’s hands are on Rey’s little waist, holding her straight to look into Rey’s eyes. “Doctor Milo didn’t mean to startle you, but we should’ve-”

There’s a loud BEEP.

Rey jumps in Leia’s hands.

Ben is squatting behind her with that big, stretchy datapad in his hands. In loud binary, it announces, “S c a n   c o m p l e t e .”

“Done,” Ben says, holding the pad up for the dopper, standing behind him.

Rey hadn’t even seen him.

She looks back and forth between Ben and the dopper. “What?”

The dopper smiles down at her. “I just needed one final reading on your vitals, Rey,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of something like this sooner,” he says, looking at Leia. Maybe it’s because she’s still being half-held by Leia, with Ben right beside her, but Rey thinks he seems a lot nicer, all of a sudden.

She forgets to apologize for biting him, but she smiles, just a little. “No more ear shit.”

Leia laughs, Ben snorts, and even the dopper chuckles.

“Senator Organa, I’ll send you the results by this evening. So sorry for the fuss.”

“No, I’m sorry.” Leia laughs again, standing, but pulling Rey a little closer. Rey bumps into her leg with a happy feeling in her stomach. “She’ll warm up to you, I promise.”

The dopper looks a little paler than a tick ago, Rey thinks, but he smiles politely and says, “Until next time, then.” He seems hesitant to offer Rey his hand--the same one she’d bitten. Rey feels really bad again. She shakes it and remembers to apologize.

Ben laughs nearly the entire way home, while Leia crosses her arms and pinches the bridge of her nose. Rey is too busy staring out the maglev train windows to notice.




Next Day:




“You bit him?!” Han hollers. He holds his palm low for her to smack with hers. They high five and Han pumps a fist between them. “Way to go, kid, that’s two for two in the Organa-Solo house.”

They hear a muted shout from inside the house, “I WAS FOUR, DAD, SHUT UP!”

Chapter Text

Physical closeness is something that Rey is slowly teaching herself. Being alone in the desert all day every day for two straight years would set anyone back a few basic human comforts. But she’s learning, and Ben finds himself curiously cataloguing her progress.

What he finds the most curious is how different she behaves with his parents and Chewie, versus Ben.

For instance.

She’ll sit on the couch in the main room on the very edge of the cushion closest to where Leia is sat. Like there’s an invisible barrier between them—like she wants to get past it, but won't allow herself to until Leia reaches out first.

She’ll trail exactly one full stride behind Han in the garage, or aboard the Falcon. She’ll stare at the bottom seam of his vest like she wants to reach for it, but waits—every time—for Han to give her a look, or a smile, first.

She’ll tinker or read or play with her datapad almost precisely two feet from Chewie’s dusty cot in the garage, during his daily nap. Like she doesn’t even want the wookie to know she’s there.

But with Ben it’s a whole other story.

She wanders into his room without hesitation, several times a day, where she proceeds to sit beside him on his bed, lean her back against his as she reads or builds one of her models, or even climb into his lap—while he’s studying. When he’s at his desk doing homework or assembling a ship model or practicing calligraphy, Rey will squeeze herself beneath it and draw on his feet, or climb up the side of the desk like a hothmonkey, sitting atop it with her own book or datapad. Or even just sit and watch him like a spaced-out statue.

She’s like his tiny shadow.

And when she wants picked up—sometimes because she’s tired, sometimes because they’re shopping and she doesn’t like the crowds, sometimes just for the hell of it—she’ll turn to Ben first. Always. She’ll face him, stretch her arms up and pinch her brows, her huge hazel eyes expectant. Sometimes when he doesn’t see her right away, she’ll tug on his shirt, wrap an arm around his leg, or hold onto his arm until he does.

There’s an instinctual confidence in Rey, when she wants to invade Ben’s personal space—a marrow-deep certainty that he will never turn her away.

And he never does.

He doesn’t mind. She’s so small and warm. It’s like carrying around a little furnace, except it’s squishy and can wrap its arms around your neck and fall asleep and drool on you. Sometimes he even catches himself thinking her kid-snores are kind of cute.

Which is weird, for Ben. Even as a kid himself, he’s never much liked children. He’s also never been- tactile. Mostly avoided touching others, sometimes even his parents, especially once he became a teenager.

With Rey, though, suddenly he doesn’t mind. He likes that she’s comfortable around him. He likes that she isn’t afraid to reach out for his hand or crawl up his back, or into his lap. He likes that there’s never been that awkward barrier between them. That neither of them really had to work at this bond between them—it’s just there. Even when he’s in a sour mood or acting like a jackass or throwing shit around his room. It doesn’t scare Rey off, like she knows she can calm him just by being there. By caring.

For the first time in Ben’s life, he feels strong. Rey relies on him for so much more than he’d ever been prepared for; comfort, attention, affection, even just a space to eat and play and learn where she isn’t alone. It makes him feel good. Needed. Purposeful.

And Rey offers it all in return, tenfold.

When he’s had another argument with his mom or dad, when he can’t control his frustration, when he’s stressed about homework or regretting his decision to be homeschooled in order to watch her, Rey offers him something no one else has ever offered him before: validation.

He doesn’t think she’d even know what the word means, and yet she’s a master at providing it.

“Sorry, Rey, I’m just- tired. Homework is stressing me out.”

“That’s okay, Ben. It sounds hard.”

“I feel like I’m not learning anything! This tutor acts like she knows me, but she doesn’t.”

“Yeah, she doesn’t know you!”

“And dad told me to ‘suck it up’, like he always does. I hate when he says that.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say.”

“And then she just- closed the door in my face. Because she had a conference call.”

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

He never even realized that it was missing from his life until suddenly he has it every day.

He never realized what a relief it would be, to know he isn’t overreacting, or being “too much.” Suddenly he doesn’t have to feel guilty every time he feels lonely and talks about it. He doesn’t have to apologize every time he feels frustrated or stressed. His doubts and fears and anxieties don’t pile up and threaten to implode.

He sleeps better; his chest pains practically gone, the voice in his head having disappeared. He studies harder; has a clearer head, and helps Rey when she’s stuck with her own self-studies. He even kriffing eats healthier, having to cook for two every weekday.

And it isn’t just the validation of an understanding friend. It’s the teasing and familiarity and comfort that only a best friend can give.  

“I don’t wanna talk about chemistry anymore, I’m too hungry. Can you make some mac n’ cheese?”

“Look! Ben, look look! I finished the YT model! Come see!”

“I can’t read this, will you help?”

“No, you pour and I flip. That’s how it is, remember?”

“I bet you ten credits I can solve the puzzle faster than you. 3...2...1-go!”

It’s only been a year and Ben knows that without Rey, he’d be someone completely different; someone darker, meaner, angrier. Someone who's violently alone. Possibly mad with it. 

It's only been a year and Ben knows that without him, Rey would be equally, possibly fatally alone. 

It’s only been a year and yet Ben already knows with every aching cell in his body that he would do fucking anything for his tiny Sun Spot.

It's the happiest he's ever been, and if the only way he can show his appreciation is by letting her crawl all over his bed and desk and lap and shoulders and back when he's trying to study chemistry, he thinks it's the easiest price he's ever paid. 

Chapter Text

Han and Chewie are leaving for Takodana and won’t be back for a standard month. It isn’t news to Ben. It isn’t even as painful as it usually is.

But Rey is so put out it’s depressing.

In fact, he realizes, it’s the first time he's seen her so upset since Jakku.

Yesterday had been spent watching Rey move as if in slow-motion. She’d insisted on helping Han and Chewie pack and load the Falcon. But it was clear to anyone looking at her that she was being torn in half; wanting to go with, unwilling to leave. So she moved as if underwater, carrying any cargo she could lift herself into the freighter with a solemn, faraway sadness.

It fucking sucked to see. Ben wanted nothing more than to spare her this kind of sadness, and yet it was impossible to keep her from. 

Now, Ben is leaning in the giant garage doorway, his mother beside him as they look out on the landing pad. They watch quietly as Rey, Han and Chewie form a small, sad circle at the base of the Falcon’s ramp.

Rey isn’t crying, but it’s obvious in every tense line of her small body that she’s forcing herself not to. Ben thinks she might even be a little angry. He isn’t really sure how, but he can sense it.

Han kneels in front of her, an awkward smirk glued to his face. “We’ll be back before you know it, Speck.” He says. “There’s no way we’d ditch you.”

Ben’s heard the same spiel himself. A hundred times.

Rey is like a small statue. She’s just staring up at Han. They can only see the back of her head, but Ben and Leia can clearly see Han’s throat bob nervously, his eyes a little glassy, so they can imagine how heartbreaking the expression on her face must be.

Chewie bleats something. “Shut up, I’m not gonna cry ,” Han insists. It must chip away some of Rey’s stony expression, though, because Han softens. “Sorry to leave, kid. I know what it must feel like.” He takes one of her hands, and waits for her to say something.  When she doesn’t—just looks down at their hands and tenses again, like this time she will cry—Han looks to Ben and Leia for help.

Neither of them know how to give it.

So he settles for, “Speck, I’ll be back. Promise ,” kisses the top of her head, waves at his son and wife, and hurries up the ramp.

Ben sniffs derisively. “Well done,” he mutters.

Leia doesn’t look away from the ship when she sighs and says, “he’s always been shit at goodbyes, hasn't he.”

Chewie bellows his farewell, which Leia and Ben return, before he slowly reaches down to lift Rey up, wrapping her in a long, fuzzy embrace. She buries her face in his fur for a moment as he bleats something softly to her, before he gently sets her back on her feet, and follows Han up the ramp.

They watch the Falcon’s ramp rise, the pulsers ignite, and the two of them make their way slowly toward Rey as it lifts into atmo.

When it’s gone, Leia lets out a tired exhale. “Well. Guess that’s it.”

Ben grinds his teeth, staring at the top of Rey’s head. As soon as he'd reached her, she'd glanced sadly up at him and taken his hand. She's gripping it tightly--so , so quiet as she gazes up into the sky. For someone so young, it’s unnerving. It makes Ben feel helpless. “Rey, he’ll be back.” He says, a feeble attempt to soothe them both, he thinks. “It’s not an empty promise.” He tugs on her hand gently to pull her closer, until her temple bumps into his hip.

“Ben’s right, sweetheart. Han always comes back,” Leia offers softly, leaning closer on Rey’s other side to rub her back.

They can feel Rey crying, now. It’s still unnervingly quiet—so unlike the messy wailing Ben used to unleash when he was her age, watching the Falcon fade into atmo.

She’s so strong. Fucking six years old, and she’s facing her worst fear with a straight spine and the quietest sobs Ben's ever heard. It’s heartbreaking, and there’s nothing they can do about it except tuck her close between them and let her feel it--let themselves feel it. A part of Ben feels guilty for the twinge of catharsis he feels; Rey's tears might as well be his, too. For once, he lets himself feel sad, instead of angry.

For once, it feels right to admit to himself that he'll miss his dad, too. 

x

That night, they distract her with flatcakes for dinner, letting her flip them all. She tries to make one in the shape of Chewie, and Leia tells her she can see it. Ben tells her it just looks like a burnt blob, and lets her get away with her retaliation—wiping her gooey, batter-sticky hands all down the front of his shirt—because it makes her laugh.

Leia puts on her favorite holovid; a cheesy romance that makes Ben roll his eyes. But Rey loves it instantly. She points at the lead man and says he looks like Han, and Leia nods knowingly. Ben’s always thought it was half the reason his mom liked the trashy vid so much in the first place. Apparently, Rey likes it, too. He has to admit that there’s nostalgia in the sound of the music--a familiar, blues-y soundtrack that’s accompanied his father’s shitty farewells for as long as Ben can remember.

When Rey falls asleep on the couch, Leia gathers her up and takes her to her room. When Ben meets her in the hallway, Leia turns out of Rey’s doorway to kiss Ben’s cheek. Her eyes are glittering and warm as she lifts a hand to his face. “You okay?”

Ben leans into the gesture. “Fine.” Leia pinches his cheek, which surprises him. “Ow?”

“You hate it, too. When he leaves. It’s okay to admit it, sweetheart.”

Ben rubs his cheek with an ineffective glare. “I’ve grown out of it.”

She pinches his cheek again and he huffs, which makes her snort. “Have not. I know because I haven’t, and I’m your mother.” She smiles at him, soft and understanding, and it makes Ben feel just the slightest bit better. Then she sighs. “We should be more careful. Our bad habit of bottling everything up is already rubbing off on Rey. And I think it’s best for everyone if she doesn’t turn out too much like us.”

Ben thinks about that as he lies in bed.

Thinks about how it hasn’t even been a full month, and Rey already walks a little like Han. Talks a little like Leia, and acts a little like Ben. How she curses and smirks and jokes like a Solo, smiles and charms and teases like an Organa.

No, he doesn’t want her to bottle everything up.

But he thinks he doesn’t mind, that he can see bits of their family weaving seamlessly into her character already.


x

“Do you think Chewie’s hair is longer? Do you think Han has a beard now? Han would look funny with a beard.”

Ben pours the caf into a mug and blinks one eye at a time, still swaying on his feet as he tries to wake up.

“Do you think the Falcon looks any different? Do you think they added anything to it?" She pauses to gasp, "do you think they painted it?”

He shuffles over to the bar, melting into one of the stools. His mother walks into the kitchen with a bag of groceries as Rey orbits Ben with her fidgeting and impossibly animated chatter. She's too kriffing excited for how early in the kriffing morning it is.

“Do you think they saw rathtars? Do you think they brought one back with them?!”

Leia laughs. Ben slowly lowers his forehead to the bar counter, willing himself to fall back asleep. He’s thwarted when the familiar sound of the Falcon’s pulsors fill the kitchen.

Rey should’ve ripped the tile up from the floor for how fast she peals across it, through the sliding glass doors, and out onto the landing. Leia rubs Ben’s back as she passes him to follow Rey at a more leisurely pace. He groans and lifts his heavy head to stumble out after them.

Chewie, only halfway down the Falcon’s ramp, already has his arms full of Rey. She screeches something in shyriiwook that makes Chewie throw his head back and hug her tighter.  

Then he puts her down, and Rey books it up the ramp to find Han herself. It tugs at Ben’s chest. He used to do the exact same thing.

They hear his father's familiar, roguish laughter spilling out of the ramp. When he totters into view, it’s with Rey attached like a barnacle to his right leg, giggling and red-cheeked and looking so thrilled she might as well have been offered a basket of choco-topped flatcakes with a bow on top.

Han staggers down the rest of the ramp and onto the landing pad so he can bend over and pull her up into his arms. He pokes her chest and says with mock-severity, “I keep my promises, kid.”

Rey squeezes his neck so tight they hear him cough.

Chapter Text

Leia had thought for years now that Ben would never truly be friends with Shara’s boy, Poe. No matter how close in age they were, no matter how similar, or how often Shara and Leia arranged playdates...both mothers had known they couldn’t force it. And after Shara’s passing--after Poe had moved to Yavin with his father before coming back to attend university--she’d given up trying. Though Leia, herself, remained close with the boy (even going so far as to assist Poe with his scholarship applications, same as she'd done for Ben).

But while most assumed Ben’s dislike for the pilot stemmed solely from his jealousy over Poe’s close relationship with Leia, she knew better.

“Ben, why don’t you introduce them while I wait for Holdo?”

After celebrating the receipt of Ben’s acceptance letter to the Coruscant branch of Theed University, Rey had begged to visit, curious to see for herself the campus Ben would be attending in a few months. Apprentice Legislator Amilyn Holdo--university alumni and a close friend of Leia’s--had been all-too-happy to offer a personal tour.

Leia, Ben and Rey had only been exploring for little over an hour before running straight into the 21-year-old rising star of the New Republic Defense Fleet.

Leia could tell that her 18-year-old son would rather bite off his own tongue than use it to make introductions. But she lived for these teasing moments, and trusted Rey to keep her son in check.

She watches with mirth glittering in her eyes as her son groans, slumping to let Rey slide clumsily off his back, where he’d been carrying her most of the day.

When the pilot himself finally catches their eyes and strides over to greet them, Leia watches with a fond snort as her son straightens his spine. Rey, meanwhile, watches the approaching stranger with awestruck eyes, taking immediate notice of his flight gear.

“Poe Dameron,” Ben greets stiffly, “this is Rey. Rey, Poe Dam-”

“That’s a starfighter class helmet- and the Resistance insignia!” As always, the eight-year-old is an unstoppable flurry of energy; her entire body leans forward, arm shooting up as she gestures to the helmet tucked between Poe’s arm and hip. 

Poe’s signature side-smile appears on his handsome face, revealing pearly teeth and the youthful beginnings of crows feet. “‘Sure is, Little Miss.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Poe offers her the helmet. “Think you have a starfighter class-sized head?”

Rey leaps forward for the helmet with an eager smile and sparkling eyes.

With Rey’s attention diverted, Poe nods at Leia’s son with a cheeky smirk, a quick “Hey, buddy. Been a while,” and a hair tousle that Ben dodges easily, with his height advantage. She hears her son grunt something in reply before Poe’s attention returns to the small girl standing, thoroughly distracted, between them.

“So this is the famous Rey I’ve heard so much about!” Poe booms, entirely for the benefit of her helmet-ensconced ears. She’s positively swallowed by it; her little hands holding onto either side so she can tilt it enough for her face to peer out of the orange veiwplate.

Leia snorts as Ben stealthily tips the helmet forward from the back, blinding Rey. It only makes her titter, blindly reaching behind to smack Ben's hand away. Leia watches Ben and Poe orbit Rey with twin smirks; two boys twice her size and age who are completely helpless to her gravitational pull.

Then Rey asks for a better look at Poe’s pilot suit, asking him a million questions; about his T-85, his astromech droid, simulations, training drills, flight patterns. And as Poe acquiesces with mirrored enthusiasm, squatting down so Rey can explore and evaluate the elements of his flight suit, Leia watches her son tense.

She'd always known her son was...possessive of the scavenger girl. It's an echo of the way Ben used to hover at Leia's heels as a boy, anytime Poe had taken up an ounce of her attention. She sometimes regrets not making more of a point to ease her son's jealousy when it came to Poe Dameron, but she'd never known how to address it without exacerbating Ben's feelings.

That old jealousy tenses his shoulders, she can see. But rather than pity, Leia feels inexplicably warm, watching him forcefully unwind himself for Rey's sake. It wouldn't be so easy for him if it wasn't for her bright smile--if it wasn't for the occasional whipping of her helmet-head to check that Ben’s listening, too, and the unconscious way she keeps Ben tapped into the conversation. It’s something subtle that Rey likely doesn’t realize she’s doing, but makes all the difference.

As the girl in question scuttles over to Leia to show her the helmet and to give her a vigorous recounting of everything she’s just learned, Leia keeps one ear on the conversation between the boys.

“So she’s...your guys’-”

“House-mate.”

“And Leia-”

“Her legal guardian.”

“And you’re her-?”

There's a long pause before her son replies, “...Personal bodyguard.”

Leia smiles at the sound of Poe’s surprised laughter filling the hall. Rey whips her attention back to the boys.

"Ahhh ,” Poe exhales, clapping a heavy, friendly hand on Ben’s shoulder with a grin. “‘Missed that dry Organa humor.”

It's the first time since they were boys that Leia thinks she sees a carefully-curated friendship between them. Thinks suddenly that she just hadn't looked hard enough, before. It's unique, and unconventional, certainly, but- sturdy. Familiar. Not entirely unlike her husband's relationship with Lando. The thought makes her snort, to Rey's confusion.

The two of them walk back over to the boys, and Poe makes a swift retreat for his flight simulation. “Gotta head back," he smiles at Leia after leaning forward to give her a quick, respectful peck on the cheek, before looking down at Rey to retrieve the helmet she reluctantly hands back to him. "But I’d better be seein’ a lot more of you, kid!" He playfully pushes her shoulder, to which Rey dimples. "Got an X-Wing to tour you through.” He winks at her. Rey is nodding and beaming so hard it looks painful. “And I’ll be seein’ a lot more of you ‘round campus here soon, huh, Benny?”

Ben's eyes twitch at the nickname, but he doesn’t retort as Poe takes off down the corridor, waving back at them. 

Rey tugs at the back of Ben's shirt, still buzzing from Poe’s offer as Leia’s son lowers himself to let her crawl onto his back again. “You and Poe are friends?” She asks.

Leia sees Holdo round the corner down the hall, smiling. Leia waves back and makes her way down the hall to meet her, listening absently for her son’s reply.  

“...We grew up together.” She hears Ben grunt as he heaves Rey up.

“Ben, have you ever piloted an X-Wing?”

“Only in simulators.”

Rey still gasps, “How many simulations have you done?!”

Their directionless chatter continues for a while--the perfect white noise to Leia and Holdo's similar light conversation as they all walk.

Leia’s ears do perk again, though, when she catches Rey’s enthused, “I like Poe,” and her son’s answering groan: “Of course you do.”

Leia coughs to disguise her chuckle.

Poe Dameron: the love rival Ben pretends he has, and the friend he pretends he doesn't. 

Chapter Text

It’s a slow, rainy day in Coruscant. Ben is on the hoverrail home after spending a few hours in the city library with Sotna, his new partner in his Civic Law course, when he feels a hot pain slice down his shin.

It makes him hiss, bending over and tugging up his pant leg to survey what feels like split skin--though what could’ve possibly cut him, Ben has no idea.

There’s nothing. But it hurts.

What the hell?

He clutches his pant leg with a bloodless grip, wracking his brain for a source of pain until-

Fuck.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

x

He bursts through the front door with a grimace, hurrying past the living room and down the hall, until he’s panting in the nine-year-old’s doorway.

“What happened?”

Rey's head whips up, eyes wide. She tries to twist her torso on the edge of her bed so he can’t see her sliced-open shin.

“Nothing!”

But Ben can see the blood, and it sets something loud and terrified off inside of him--he’s hovering over her in an instant.

She’s trying to squirm away but Ben is already kneeling, carefully- carefully lifting her knee with one hand while the other lifts her ankle to see the long, angry red cut on her shin. He can feel the shock widening his eyes as he looks between her face and the blood that is literally dripping down her leg. “What the fuck happened?!”

“Don’t yell!” She yells.

Ben’s eyes narrow dangerously.

“...I was just tinkering with a part in the garage- I dropped it, and the sharp edge caught my leg on the way down butI’mtakingcareofit! ” She rushes out. She’s gripping a bloodied wrap, obviously stripped from her bare left arm to act in place of a medwrap, the little idiot.

“Why the fuck didn’t you comm me?!”

“Because I don’t have to! And I said stop yelling!"

Of all things, Ben can’t believe Rey is telling him what to do as she bleeds profusely. Can’t believe she didn’t call him. He works his jaw, temper flaring as he takes the wraps out of her hands and looks up at her.

Her features are pinched and growing red—clearly trying her damndest not to cry. He closes his eyes for a moment and tries to breathe deeply in through his nose, forcing himself to calm down. Bacta, he thinks. She needs bacta.

He reaches up to gently pinch her cheek so she’ll blink back the tears. Ben stands to lift her bridal-style—careful of her leg—so he can carry her to the kitchen where the medkit is stored and the natural light is brighter. “Hold the wrap on it,” he says, voice softer. She squirms unhappily, claiming stubbornly that she can walk. It’s a bullshit protest—Ben can feel her pain like it’s his, and it fuckin’ hurts. 

He sets her on the kitchen bar and makes his way over to the sonic sink to find the medkit. He sweeps it open on the counter beside Rey, pulling out medwraps, bacta spray, and patches. He sets to work cleaning the cut.

Rey doesn’t make so much as a peep, even when Ben can feel how bad it stings.

After a few quiet minutes filled only with the soft hiss of the bacta spray, Ben works his jaw. “What if something worse had happened? What if I’d been gone longer and you’d been left to fuckin’- bleed out or some shit.”

Rey remains stubbornly silent, watching his hands work with a tight jaw and steely eyes.

When she still doesn’t reply even as he finishes wrapping the wound, Ben straightens to block her from hopping off the counter—the way he can tell she wants to—by placing firm hands on either side of her hips. Even as she sits on the bar, Ben still towers over the nine-year-old.

“Rey,” he says, voice stern. “Tell me why you didn’t comm.”

She’s breathing fast through her nose, lips mashed together in frustration.

“Rey.”

“I can take care of myself!”  She bursts. Ben doesn’t move as she thrashes her arms out to push him away—hitting his chest with fists tight and tears held bravely at bay. “I can take care of my own self! I always have! Stop yelling, stop being mad! I don’t know why you’re mad!”

Only one tear falls and Rey swipes at it with an angry huff. She sniffs and leaves her arms stretched straight in front of her; hands flat on Ben’s chest as she forces back any extra waterworks.

He lets her breathe unsteadily for a while, until her huffs and hiccups fade into longer, tired exhales.  

“I’m mad because I was worried,” he says.

She looks up at him with dewy lashes and stained-glass eyes.

He lifts a hand to swipe the second tear away with a thumb long as her cheek and broad as her button nose. “I’m mad because you can take care of yourself, but you won’t let me take care of you. And I want to take care of you. Know why?”

Rey stares.

“You’re my best friend. You’re not supposed to hide your pain anymore. That’s what I’m here for—you’re supposed to share it with me. You’re supposed to tell me when you’re hurt, or hurting. And I’m supposed to help heal you.”

He watches her lips wobble and cheeks redden; watches her nose crinkle and eyes sweep closed. Watches a few extra tears slide helplessly down as her fingers dig into his shirt. His other thumb rubs a small circle around her knee as she sniffs.

“I’m mad because I lose my damn mind when you’re hurt, Rey. I don’t know what I’d do if anything...if anything happened to you,” he admits, throat tight.

When he's finished wrapping the gash, finally, she gestures for him to pick her up; the way she did when she was about a head and a half shorter. He still lifts her easily; carefully wrapping her injured leg around his waist so her shin doesn’t jostle. She clings to his chest like a tired starfish.

“Jakku is far, far away, Sun Spot.” He sways them, just a little; a slow, left and right twist of his torso that soothes them both. “You don’t have to bear pain—any pain—alone. Not anymore.”

Her fingers clench on the fabric of his shirt just over his shoulder blades. It makes Ben smile. She’s so warm. So small.

So strong. His girl. The strongest person Ben knows.

He feels her chin move on his shoulder. “Me too,” she sniffs. She lifts her head to bring their foreheads a together. “When you’re hurt- I’m here, too.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“But don’t cut your leg open.”

“Sounds good.”

“‘Cus it really hurts.”

“Sure fuckin’ does.”

Their eyes are closed but Ben knows she’s smiling. He is, too.

He maneuvers her gently onto his hip so he can make his way around the kitchen bar toward the cupboards. Teasingly, he murmurs, "you're heavier than I remember." 

"Bantha butt," she mumbles back. “Flatcakes?” She asks as he scrounges for the tools. She’s watching him tiredly, cheek still resting on his shoulder, and it smoothes every one of Ben’s edges from the harrowing bus ride home.

“Flatcakes.”

“You’re my favorite person in the whole galaxy,” she says.

Ben laughs.

10 years later

“Why do I smell bacta.”

Rey winces.

Ben leans closer. “Rey. What happened.”

“If I tell you, you have to promise not to get mad, because I won the sparring match so it was completely worth it.”

“Tell me.”

She hesitates a moment longer before answering in a rush. “I was sparring with Finn and he was pushing me out of the ring, so in order to regain the offense, I took an accidental swipe of his saber to my hip. He didn’t even mean to and I won now don’t freak out.”

Ben’s jaw does that thing it does when he's about to freak out. He steps closer, his voice crackling, but muted. “Let me see.”

Rey winces again. “No.”

“Rey.”

“I’m fine! I just patched it up!”

“You’re not fine, you’re a reckless idiot.”

Rey scrunches her nose and narrows her eyes. “If that isn’t the most ‘pot, kettle’ thing you've ever said-”

“Let me see, Rey. I might be able to heal it.”

That shocks the frustration clean off of her face. “What? I thought you hadn’t been practicing?”

He huffs. “I don’t practice the 'saber shit. Luke already taught me the forms when I was a kid, and I don’t plan to use those. Healing is practical.”

Rey hardly registers that he’s already bent to the floor, kneeling in front of her and lifting the hem of her shirt so he can carefully peel back the bacta patch to check on the wound. She’s too busy surveying his face. Seems like Ben Solo is always surprising her--and somehow not surprising her at all.

A tiny smile tugs on her lips. “You’ve changed a little.”

“Have not,” he grunts. It makes Rey laugh, which jostles her midsection just as Ben’s hand hovers over her wound—the pad of one of his fingers accidentally rubs against it. She hisses. His eyes whip up to her face. “You okay?” He asks quickly.

“Yeah, just stung.”

“Sorry.” He looks back down at the wound with sharp, worried eyes. “I don’t- I’m not sure how to heal you through the bond. Not without- physically being there...” his voice trails off, and Rey can feel his quiet frustration--his pent-up concern seeming to vibrate in the air around them.

“Calm down,” she laughs softly. “I’m not dying.” Rey’s looking down at him with what she’s sure is the lamest, most grossly lovesick gaze of all time. ‘Reckless idiot’, he’d called her. Too true, she thinks; leaning back on one arm, she seizes the title like a trophy, carding her free hand through Ben’s hair, behind his left ear. “I’m fine, Ben. Even better now that you’re here.”

She sees the small upward twitch at the corner of his mouth as he carefully adjusts the patch back in place, letting the bottom of her shirt fall back over it. He doesn’t stand, just rests his forearms on the edge of her bed on either side of her thighs, bracketing her between them. He’s looking up at her from between her legs with that signature intensity of his. Rey’s hand is still in his hair, and somehow the tickling sensation in her fingers curbs her usual embarrassment at being caught admiring him so openly. The bond flutters like the sweet, serene butterflies in her stomach. She can feel how much Ben likes the feeling, himself--how much he savors the sensation of her fingers in his hair.

“So you won the spar?”

Rey grins. “I won the spar.”

That subtle smile of his threatens to overwhelm her by how drastically it changes the rest of his face. His cheeks look almost boyishly round, erasing some of his usual sharp lines. His eyebrows—usually low and tense—are relaxed; no anxious line between them. His gaze is so full of warmth, Rey could sunbathe in it.

She feels a little light-headed. Drunk on his softness. This is Rey's favorite kind of Ben. Has been since she was a kid, sitting atop the kitchen counter as he fusses over her scrapes and bruises. Still grinning, she gently tugs on a tuft of his raven hair. “Thanks for double-checking that I survived the equivalent of a butter-knife wound.”

Ben allows the teasing hair-pull with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t do it again. You can win a spar in a million better ways.”

“Which you know from experience.” Rey grins impossibly wider.

His pride and affection lap across the bond in warm waves. “Which I know from experience.”

“I miss you.” His hand finds the side of her neck; a hot shock of love piercing the bond just as it does every time they touch like this. Rey melts. His fingers are so long--his pointer and middle tickle the edge of her scarred ear as his thumb makes slow, gentle swipes along her cheek. He doesn’t have to say anything for her to feel the pang in his chest at her words. “You’ll come soon?”

He hesitates. It’s nearly an answer in and of itself, but he swallows and says, “Only if you swear not to be rash just to win a dumb spar.”

She closes her eyes and leans further into his hand. “That’s a shitty answer.”

“It’s all I’ve got for now, Sun Spot.” They meet in the middle, foreheads colliding in a soft stalemate they’re becoming all-too familiar with. Ben’s voice is both gruff and soft when he speaks next--so low that it sends a ripple of goosebumps across her skin. “I miss you, too,” he rumbles unsteadily. “Like a hollowed man misses his heart.” They share a long, shivery exhale. “It’s with you. It’s always with you, Rey.”

As it always so cruelly does, the bond fades too soon.

Rey is alone in her room, but the flutter in her stomach erupts in a chaos of pounding wings as his confession lingers in the air.

Chapter Text

“When’s Ben coming back?”

Rey and Rose are sitting in Ben and Paige’s apartment, waiting for them to get out of work, tackling their homework together at the kitchen table. Rey is intent on the holotexts in front of her, clicking her stylus against her teeth as she distractedly replies, “Uhm...soon? Why.”

She hears Rose shift and fall unusually quiet.

Rey’s eyes settle on her friend. “Why, what is it?”

She fidgets for a second longer before sighing, tossing her stylus aside in frustration. “How do you talk to him? So casually?”

Rey squints like the question hurts her eyes. “I just...do?”

“But doesn’t he...you know, intimidate you? I mean, you’re only fourteen and he’s like- a man. Doesn’t that intimidate you?”

“...I don’t think so.” Rey’s features pinch at the thought. “He may be an official advisor, now, but Ben...hasn’t changed. Well- he's..taller. And sometimes he has facial hair, which- I guess is sometimes weird. But not- it isn’t bad weird.”

She can feel Rose cataloguing every microexpression on her face. “So you don’t think he’s hot?”

“...‘Hot’?”

“Hot. Like Poe Hot.”

“I thought we were talking about Ben?”

Rose groans. “We are talking about Ben. We’re talking about hot guys we know. Poe and Ben. Come on, Rey, you and I are homeschooled--it’s not like we spend a ton of time around boys our own age! So Ben and Poe are what we’ve got.”

...Sometimes Rose talks so fast Rey feels dizzy.

“SO?!”

Rey startles, angling herself slightly away from her friend. “So what?”

“SO, do you think Ben is hot?!”

“I don’t know?!”

Rose bends her head back and lets out the longest groan Rey's ever heard.

It’s not at all like talking about Poe. Rey and Rose (even Paige and Sotna) can confidently talk about Poe’s looks because it’s safe to--it’s one of those ‘everybody knows it’ kind of things. Even Poe knows it.

Of course Rey doesn’t dislike the way Ben looks. But she realizes she's biased; Rey and Ben have helped each other pick outfits, played with each other’s hair, swapped teasing remarks over bedheads and growth spurts, and are so casually tactile with one another that sometimes she feels like she knows Ben’s face and figure better than her own. But this is the first time she’s been asked to admit out loud that yeah, sure, she likes the way Ben looks. Always has. But saying that Ben is- 'hot'...it feels different. Like confessing a secret.

“You do so know-!”

Rose is interrupted by the hiss of the front door. “Hey-o!” Paige’s airy voice halts the interrogation, bless R’iia. “You two still in the kitchen? Ben finally got his speeder bike back from the shop, and hooo baby does the new coat of paint look good.”

Rey can’t hear what Ben’s reply is, all she hears is the familiar, deep cadence of his voice.

She has no idea what her body is doing, but at the sound of his voice, a terrifying spike of what feels like adrenaline shocks Rey's spine straight. She feels feverish; cheeks and ears on fire, heart rate kicking up. And absurdly caught-out--like she'd been doing something wrong.

“Yup! Still in here,” Rose calls.

Rey can’t seem to look at Ben at all when he enters the kitchen with Paige. 

Paige squats so she can set her chin on the table between the girls and grins. She looks equally scheming as her sister when she asks, “Soooo~? What’re you girlies talkin’ about? And why is Rey’s face red as the sun~?”

“Nothing.” Rey’s heart does another hard swoop as she scowls at the Tico sisters. “I’m just- your apartment is hot. I don’t...feel good.”

And then she feels two huge, warm hands cupping her cheeks from behind.

“Hmm.” She can feel the dark rumble from Ben’s chest as he bends over Rey’s head to look at her—his face upside-down and mere inches from hers. Rey’s heart is beating so fast she feels light-headed. She’s also terrified of holding his direct attention while she’s having these awful feelings. She doesn’t want him to know. “It’s not hot, you’re just embarrassed about something,” he says, smirking. “What were you talking about?”

Rey's heart plummets through her stomach. Rose can't tell-!

She shakes her head to dislodge his hands and rips herself from the chair with a clamor, panic in her throat, face on fire. “WE WERE JUST STUDYING!” She shouts at him, fists clenched.

Then all she can see is the shock on everyone’s faces in the silence that follows, so she books it out of the kitchen.  Rey runs down the hall and into the bathroom, door panel hissing shut behind her. She’s breathing heavily as she collapses against it, sliding slowly down, confused and frustrated by her racing heart, hot face, and embarrassing outburst. 

It all feels terribly out of her control; her whole body overheating, and her kriffing pulse pounding so loud. It all- it...it makes her want to cry.

She hears a soft knock on the door panel and shakes herself back from the brink of tears, trying to gather herself enough to answer when Rose offers a soft, “Rey? I’m so sorry, Rey, I didn’t mean to tease you so bad-”

“No, Rose, it’s okay.” Rey interrupts, running her arm across her nose quickly. She stands and faces the door, still reluctant to open it because her face and ears are still hot. “I just felt...woozy. Got a little overheated and- I don’t really know. I’m sorry.”  

If possible, Rose sounds even more concerned. “Do you need a glass of water or something?”

Rey closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, “No thanks, Rose, I'll- I’ll be out in a second.”

She listens for her friend's fading footsteps before making her way to the ‘fresher sink, splashing cold water on her face and the back of her neck, and wishing she were small enough to crawl down the drain and stay there for a few days.

“Hey." She jumps when she hears a second, more insistent knocking. “What did I do?”

Rey would laugh if her heart-rate hadn’t kicked back up so fast. “Nothing.” Kriff she hates this she hates this she hates this. “Just got- dizzy from the heat and took it out on you.”

“...Well come back out, laserbrain. I feel bad.”

“Good.”

Rey doesn’t want to open the door, but she doesn’t want to hide, either. She just wants whatever’s happening inside her body to knock it off.

She opens the door panel and-

It’s like a freighter slams into her chest.

Ben has his hand in his raven hair, his elbow against the doorframe. His face is as open and warm as ever, but now she realizes how attractive the light facial hair looks across his sharp jawline. How much she likes his dark eyes and long nose. All of his dark beauty marks she used to connect with a marker to make constellations. His insanely full lips. Suddenly even his hair looks- the slight waves in it look so good.

Her eyes can’t stop traveling over what seems like an entirely new Ben. She realizes, mouth suddenly dry, that he’s shed his jacket and is wearing his favorite form-fitting, black henley that’s shrunk on him over the years; hugging his pectoral muscles, barely containing his biceps, and short enough on him now that, with his arm raised the way it is, she can see a hint of his toned abdomen, and a bit of the ‘V’ that cuts into his waistline. She snaps her eyes back up, but then she’s staring at the tendons in his raised forearm--something Rey had never ever thought about until this moment. Even his hands! The same ones that have always been a comfort; warm and protective--are suddenly...attractively large. Masculine.

…

Yes. Rey absolutely thinks that Ben is hot.

“I promise I’ll turn the heat down if you come out-” Ben pauses, and straightens to his full, broad height in front of her, effectively filling the doorway. His face is worried. Even the familiar crease between his brows is suddenly more striking than it'd ever been before. His voice...“Rey? Seriously, what’s-”

And the only thing Rey can imagine doing without letting him catch onto her cluttered, embarrassing thoughts—is shoving him.

“How am I s’posed to come out when you’re in my way, you goliath.”

As soon as it’s out of her mouth, she knows it was too sharp, not nearly light enough to sound teasing. She hates, hates, the look he gives her: confused, a little hurt. He straightens himself slowly, shaking his head as he clears his throat, “You’re getting harder and harder to read, Sun Spot.”

Something inside of her lurches at Ben’s melancholy tone, and heats at the nickname.

What the kriff is happening to me?!

Luckily, Ben still knows Rey better than she knows herself. A terrifying thing, at the moment, but exactly what she needs as he offers up the perfect distraction. “I just want to show you the upgrades on the bike.”

She tries to relax herself, and forces a smile. If he bumps her shoulder on their way back down the hall, Rey lets herself believe the uncomfortable new tightness in her chest is due entirely to excitement over the glossy new paint-job.

Deep, deep down, in the sandy pits of her sunburnt soul, Rey knows exactly what’s happening. Knows what this feeling is.

But Rey hasn’t been a scavenger for a long time.

She doesn’t have to unbury it if she doesn’t want to.

So it remains.

Hidden and warm.

Chapter Text

It’s the beginning of a planet-wide holiday--a week-long break in the ceaseless blur of council meetings with Ackbar and fleet events with Paige and public forums with his mother--and Ben has finally arrived at Canthem House, only to decide he can’t stand to be trapped in the stifling kitchen for one tick longer.

Not with his mother grilling him about his fellow advisor, Tu’Niv, and the holopress’ trite, ill-founded insistence that she and Ben had looked ‘awfully friendly’ at the Galactic Alliance Holiday Ball. He just manages to get along with Tu’Niv, but holojournals never bother with semantics, and Ben Organa is one of the youngest senior logistical advisors in senate history, making him a marketable target for Galactic City’s bantha fodder gossip.

His being a bachelor doesn’t help matters, but Ben has more important things to invest his time and energy in than romance.  

He slides the garage door panel open, turning down drinks with his mother to seek the only company he’s really been looking forward to since the start of holiday.

There’s a familiar, loud clatter and clang of tools and grunts that spill across the landing pad. Rey and her scrap-heap speeder are situated at the center, looking too-small in the same space the Millenium Falcon is usually parked. Usually.

Ben wonders if his father will make an appearance while the rest of them are on holiday. It would make Rey and Leia happy.

He decides not to linger on that doubtful possibility as he quietly approaches, watching Rey tinker and tut at her work. She’s sat on the ground next to her speeder, wearing a dirtied, tan tank top and a pair of leggings; pilot’s standard-issue grey under-armor that she’d likely inherited from Paige at some point. She’s barefoot, as she always is when she’s home, and her chestnut hair catches glints of auburn in the setting sun.

She hisses, and there is the tiniest wisp of smoke rising from where her hands are--Ben can’t see, as her back is to him.

He starts towards her again. “Still soldering the headlamp wiring? Thought you’d finished that ages ago.”

Rey’s head whips around to face him, aggressively flicking a few stray hairs out of her freckled, grease-streaked face. A slow scowl scrunches her features. “Leia said you wouldn’t be by the house until the end of break.”

Ben is surprised by the petulance in her voice. “Decided to make sure you weren’t dying of boredom, what with Paige and Rose off-planet for the holiday.” He knows Sotna's bored to tears. 

Rey turns back to her work, grumbling and seemingly flustered at having been interrupted. Still, Ben squats beside her and swats her hands away and yanks the wiring just the tiniest bit further from the metal frame, so she can better see and work with it.

She huffs, but quickly takes advantage, her soldering pen returning to work.

“What’s with the attitude?”

He watches her eyes narrow, resolute not to look at him. “What ‘attitude’.”

“Rey.”

There’s a short silence before she lets out a long breath. She sets the soldering pen on the wet sponge beside her dirty foot, but still doesn’t look at him. “I’m just- disappointed.” He notices her cheeks are a little pink.

“About…?”

Rey looks so reluctant to answer that it’s nearly comedic. She brings her arms in to cross them around her midsection, leaning forward a little as she swallows. “I thought you’d tell me, when it finally happened.” Her eyes find his. Ben is shocked at the hurt in them—by the betrayal written all over her face. “Instead I had to find out from a holojournal.”

It doesn’t take long for Ben to piece it together. “Rey-”

“I’m not a kid anymore, Ben,” she interrupts. Her face is still a canvas of her emotions--a fatal flaw she and Ben share. “I know- I know I’m only fourteen, and-” It’s hard to hear Rey struggle for the right words. It’s the surest giveaway that she’s upset. Always has been. “-And that it probably feels childish or something--to confide in a best friend who’s so much younger than you. But I...I know enough. You could’ve told me.”

Ben stares at her for a moment. “You think I wouldn’t tell you if I was dating someone?”

Rey shrugs, sad eyes sliding away from his. “I get it….”

It frustrates Ben, all of a sudden. That she doesn’t realize how ridiculous the whole situation is, and that she actually believes the kriffing holojournals. More even than that--it frustrates Ben that she thinks he’d be so callous and uncaring as to hide anything--even hypothetically--from her. She's his best friend. 

But Rey had said it herself; she’s fourteen. And Ben remembers how uneasily logic and emotion coexist, at that age.

“First of all,” he starts. Rey looks up at him. “It’s a load of bantha shit. The ball sucked. It was boring as hell, and Senator Tu’Niv happens to be a mutual friend of Dameron’s. She was telling me about the botched date Dameron had recently taken her on, and it made me laugh. Which is when all the holocams started snapping.” He pauses to snort at the widening of Rey’s eyes before explaining further. “Yeah. That was it. According to the holopress, though, we’re married with 2.4 children and a loth-cat.”

A slow smile is blooming on Rey’s face. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Bantha shit?”

“A whole load of it.“

Rey laughs, and it unwinds her entire body; her arms falling away from her midsection, hands planted behind her so can sit back and smile at the sky. “I should’ve known. I really should’ve known.”

Ben takes a moment to look at her, squinting a little. “Or you could've comm'd and asked, like you always do when the 'journals gossip about me or mother.”

She’s still smiling, "I know, I'm sorry."

“Did you really believe that?” He asks her.

“Well, not anymore, obviou-”

“No--do you really think I wouldn’t tell you. If I was dating someone.”

Rey blinks.

“Do you really believe that I feel- embarrassed by you? By our friendship?”

Her face falls again, and her shoulders fold forward again, like she's guarding herself. “I don’t know...sometimes,” she shrugs. “You are ten years older. It’s not like I don’t understand.” She picks up the soldering pen to fiddle with as she talks. “And I’m a girl, too, so....I don’t know. Maybe you feel weird confiding in me.”

Ben’s eyes are sharp on her face. “Is it weird for you?”

Her fingers pause, eyes meeting his. “What?”

“Talking to me, a guy, about things...like that.”

“Things like- what.”

Kriff's sake. “Relationships. Romance.”

Her hazel eyes are solemn, and for some reason, Ben realizes, staring into them, that he'd never before been able to imagine Rey falling into the whole ‘cycle of life’ spiel he’d given her all those years ago. He’d never been able to picture it.

Now, he imagines a figure.

Faceless, standing beside Rey. Teasing her to get her attention, to turn her cheeks pink. Taking her to dinner, to holovids, on late-night flights through the city. Making her laugh, consoling her when she cries. Embracing her stubbornness, her pride, her grease-stained clothes. Sharing her insatiable curiosity, her galactic wanderlust.

Taking her hand, holding her, loving her.

...It’s inevitable.

Rey is the most lovable person in the galaxy.

Of course someone will fall for her.

And Rey-

Someday, Rey will fall for someone, too. Someday Rey will choose them.

Her cheeks are definitely pink, now. “Uhh- I uhm. That- that stuff isn’t really- I don’t think about it a lot.” Suddenly, soldering the wires is a priority. She huffs an awkward laugh and picks up where she’d left off. “Who cares about that stuff anyway, when we have more important things to talk about like- running a government and fixing junker bikes and eating all of Chewie’s hidden snacks before he and Han get back, and-”

Soldering smoke curls into the air again, Rey’s flush still vivid across her nose and cheeks as she continues chatting nervously.

But something in Ben feels off, now. Like there’s been a cosmic shift. His awareness of Rey and her age--her future--abruptly expanding to encompass brand new territory: romance.

Suddenly Ben wishes he'd stayed in the kitchen and accepted his mother's alcoholic offering. 

"If I promise to tell you when I'm dating someone, will you swear to tell me when you're dating someone? Fair's fair." 

Rey's hands and chatter freeze for a moment. "Yeah," she says, voice soft. 

"Good." 

"Can we talk about something else? I don't like talking about this. I still think cooties are real." 

That makes Ben laugh. He stands so he can sit on the ground at Rey's other side to help her work. "They are real. I know for a fact that Dameron has them." 

Rey swats his arm, but smiles. "Does not." 

"Does so." 

"Then I bet Tu'Niv has cooties, too." 

"Probably." 

Rey snickers and picks up the soldering pen. Ben bumps her arm so she messes up, and Rey retaliates by rubbing her greasy hand down the front of his crisp work shirt. 

Chapter Text

Ben is nineteen, Rey nine, when Leia tells him that Darth Vader was his grandfather.  

He’s very, very angry that his mom didn’t tell him sooner. Rey doesn’t think it’s Leia’s fault, but she feels bad for Ben when he storms out of the house. 

Rey hugs her weary guardian before following Ben out the door.

He just keeps walking, and walking, all the way to the sky park that’s a few miles from Canthem House. It’s a warm summer evening—almost nighttime. The sky is mostly pinks and purples. Rey has to jog sometimes to keep up with Ben’s strides, but wants to stay a ways behind, anyway. 

She vaguely knows who Darth Vader is, through stories from uncle Luke, but remembers little. She wants to ask Ben more about him, but will wait. She doesn’t want to upset him more. 

Finally, he starts to slow down. 

Rey hides on the opposite side of the big brylark tree Ben sits beneath.

Rey quietly sits, too, waiting patiently. She doesn’t think he knows she’s there, but she wants to be close, just in case Ben needs her.

She settles quietly, and thinks about Leia. Thinks about her face when Ben had shouted, “why not tell me sooner?! It explains everything!” And she thinks about Ben’s face when, even after Leia had insisted he was wrong, he’d gone on with, “No wonder you’re so fucking afraid of me!”

That’s when Rey had come into the room, and Ben hadn’t been able to look at her. That’s when he’d left. 

Rey’s eyes close, her head resting comfortably against the tree trunk as the sun lowers in the sky. It smells good, here; the way parks only smell in the summertime. The trunk is still sun-warm. Rey is just about to fall asleep when she hears a muted thud and a grunt. A shooting pain spikes in Rey’s knuckles and up her arm. “Ow!”  

She hears Ben swear softly to himself. “Rey, I know you’re there.” She’s clutching her left hand, confused by the pain, when Ben’s shadow falls over her. “I knew you’d follow m-” his eyes stray to her hand, and Rey’s stray to his; Ben’s left knuckles are scraped and bleeding. But he’s the first to react, kneeling to survey her invisible injury. “Fuck,” he spits, taking her hand.

She should be making sure he’s okay. That’s why she followed him. “It’s-” 

“It is not fine.“ 

“It’s yours that’s bleeding!” Rey snatches her hand back with a huff and grabs his. He seems satisfied that she isn't truly hurt, but Rey doesn’t know what to do with his raw scrapes and blooming bruises. 

She watches Ben sit beside her. He apologizes, softly. 

“Why are you saying sorry?” 

“I shouldn’t have punched the tr- I should've known you'd feel it, too.” He runs his hand through his hair. 

Silence lingers for a while. There's a tension Rey knows will only go away if she addresses what he doesn't want to. 

“Ben, I can't remember who Darth Vader is.” 

He blows out his breath—as if he’d held it knowing she’d knock it out of him eventually—and twists himself to rest against the trunk again. Rey mirrors him.

The stars are starting to show in the purpling sky above. Coruscant’s cityscape twinkles in the distance like moonlight on an ocean wave.

“He’s nobody.”

“Don’t lie,” Rey says.

He sighs again. “I’m- not. He’s dead. He’s not here, so he’s nobody.” Ben plucks up some of the grass beside him, but lets Rey hold his injured hand. “He used to be...a really, really bad guy.”

Rey rolls her head against the trunk so she can look up at him as she listens.

“'Darth Vader' wasn’t even...it's a fake name. He gave it to himself and wore it to hide his real one.”

“What was his real name?”

“Anakin Skywalker.”

Rey’s still watching his face, ready to hug him at the first sign of distress. But the hand Rey’s holding feels steady, and Ben shuts his eyes and breathes slowly as if tired, not distressed. “'Skywalker', like uncle Luke.”

“Yeah, like uncle Luke,” he affirms. “Mom was raised by the Organas, though, so she never bore the name.”

“That was a very confusing conversation,” Rey remembers. It had happened a few years ago, when Leia'd explained to Rey that Leia, too, had been adopted. (Something sacred, shared between them. Rey is still warmed by the memory.)

Ben sniffs. “Tell me about it.”

“And ‘Skywalker’ sounds better than ‘Vader’.”

At that, Ben outright laughs. A rarity, the older he gets. Far more coveted a sound. It makes Rey smile, sitting up slightly so she can turn her body to face his left side, to listen better, while still slumped against the trunk.

“You’re right, it does.”

It’s officially nighttime. The sky is a dark, warm summer blue. The air somehow smells darker, too. Rey would like to go, now, but Ben is still staring off at the cityscape as if he’d rather disappear into it than return home.

“Ben, what did Darth Vader do? That was so bad?”

He rolls his head to look down at her, now, though it’s too dark to see much. “He killed a lot of people," he says softly. "A lot of innocent people. He even tried to kill his own wife.”

Rey’s eyes are wide. They sting a bit, too, when she realizes- “Leia? And Luke, his hand-" She remembers, now. 

Ben swallows. Nods, gently. “He might not have tried to kill them, outright, but he hurt them. He hurt everyone he ever cared about.” At that, Ben’s head turns away again. “He was a monster.” Rey hates, hates to watch him swallow a second time like this; as if in pain. As if it physically hurts him to admit what he does, next. "And he was my grandfather."

Rey's lower lip will not stop wobbling. Her vision goes blurry. Her eyes and nose sting. “Ben-” she chokes, “you’re not-” she takes a sudden breath in, voice thick. “You’re nothing like-" and suddenly, she’s sobbing like she hasn’t sobbed in a long time; "-Darth Vader-her-herrr!" 

“Rey-” he lets her squish herself into his side, her grip tight, if a bit awkward, around his midsection. “It’s-”

“It is not fine!” She sobs, voice muffled by his shirt. “Y-hic-you told Leia it ‘explains everything’! You said no wonder she’s af-afraid of you!”

She can feel Ben searching for a response. “I didn’t know you’d heard.”

“Well, I did! I always hear! I always-” she inhales through her nose, a thick, wet, sad sound. “I always know when you’re in pain!” She lifts the hand around his front to wave in his face. The lingering sting in her knuckles a fresh reminder. “I know!”

She feels him slowly rest his cheek on top of her head, bobbing slightly with her heaving and crying. The hand that isn’t trapped by Rey comes up to hold hers.

“You’re not a monster,” she says stubbornly, if watery. “You’re not even a Skywalker, you’re-” another loud, wet sniff, “-a Solo!”

She can feel Ben lift his head, but her eyes are cinched shut to try and stem the leaking, so she can’t tell whether or not he’s looking at her.

He is.

“And Leia and Han and- Chewie and Sotna and Paige and Rose and me, we all love you, Ben Solo!”

It's too loud for the quiet summer night. He shushes her gently with a near-laugh.

As he sits, stroking Rey's hair and willing her to calm down...Ben realizes that for the first time since- maybe even before his mother's confession, that he feels...

Well, he feels like Rey's right. He feels like Ben Solo.

Not the Grandson of a Sith Lord. Not the namesake of a Jedi Master. Not the lost heir of Alderaan, or Naboo, or a Sith throne. 

Just- the son of a smuggler and a rebel. 

Just himself; someone Rey will cry for. Someone she loves. 

Maybe it’s the exhaustion catching up with him, but Ben thinks it’s so right that it should be her, of all people, to unburden him. That a lost girl with no last name should be the one--with little more than a tight hug and a heartfelt, snot-leaking speech--to make him realize that a name doesn't mean shit, anyway. 

He smiles to himself, looking down at her still.

A lost girl with no last name and two hearts; her own, and Ben's. It's a wonder she can carry them both, when her own is so big. 

"Thank you, Rey."

"Now say it back, bantha butt!" She shouts, still crying, just a little. 

He laughs. He laughs and hefts her into his arms to carry home. "I love you, too, sun spot." 

Chapter Text

It’s the first time he’s ever seen Rey and Ben spar. They haven’t even started yet and Finn’s skin itches like the air itself is curdling at the scene. He’s sure there’s no way it’s a fair fight. Rey, sixteen and five-foot-six, toe-to-toe with Ben, twenty-six, six-foot tree of a man; easy head and a half on his opponent, shoulders twice the breadth of hers, biceps nearly the circumference of her head.

Ben is intense and intimidating when he’s minding his business, but in a spar….well. Finn remembers theirs, several months ago. (Ashoka's laughter still haunts him and his back still hurts.) 

Master Tano motions for them to start.

Gradually, it becomes obvious who has the upper hand.

Rey’s a bouncing laserbeam to Ben’s heavy floodlight; he is powerful, but overbright, seen from miles away. She’s a sprightly pinpoint--impossible to catch. It’s obvious that she's been honed for this, and that Ben has strength, but little finesse. He looks as if he wouldn’t have it any other way. Rey is essentially handing him his ass with a stick, and he’s smiling, eyes lit up.

Not for the first time, Finn wonders what it must be like to have a bond in the Force like theirs. 

Finn can feel others in the Force, but he knows it isn’t as- substantial as the way Rey and Ben can feel each other. 

It’s been almost a full year since Finn moved to Yavin and met her. Almost a year since they became inseparable friends, close confidants, and Master Tano’s first “grey” students of the Force. Every day since he arrived, they’ve made each other laugh, shocked each other stupid, bruised and abused each other in training, settled each other’s fears, shared secrets, argued like family, and slowly revealed their difficult childhoods to each other. 

She’s his best friend, and she’s the first person Finn thinks he might know as well as he knows himself.

So by proxy, Finn also knows a thing or two about Mister Ben Organa-Solo. Probably more than Rey’s meant to divulge and certainly more than Ben would like, he’s sure. He even thinks he understands their relationship, sometimes. Finn feels a similar anchor to Poe Dameron--the man who found him, who saved him from a life he hadn’t wanted, and went out of his way to befriend Finn, after everything. It’s what Ben’s done for Rey. 

But then the man himself touches down on Yavin and Finn thinks all over again that he doesn't know Ben at all.

All Finn knows for sure is that every time he's here to see her, Ben likes to...crowd Rey’s vision a little. Remind her that he’s a Big and Important Presence in Her Life by inserting himself into their lessons with Master Tano, and hovering in the kitchen when they're helping Luke prepare meals, and doing chores around the temple where, conveniently, Rey's been assigned her chores.

That’s easy enough to understand. Finn's a dude, too, after all. He knows the price of such feelings. The instinctual selfishness. Blind spots. 

What Finn doesn’t understand is how Ben can stand to leave her, every time.



X

“Hey. You.”

“Finn. My name is Finn.”

He turns to face Ben Solo in the long temple corridor. It’s very early in the morning, so the light isn't strong. Still, what little there is warms the stone floors beneath them.

The man looks damn tired. Like he hasn't slept any of the six standard days he's been here. Rey had looked similarly exhausted this morning when she’d roused Finn for an early breakfast send-off. Ben should’ve been on the Falcon by now, preparing to take off.

Instead, he’s staring at Finn like a student working through a confusing algorithm. “...What?” Finn asks. He’s never been afraid of Ben, per say, but he’s never been easy around him, either. Not unless Rey’s there to soften his edges.

“Finn," Ben starts. Finn stands a little straighter. “I wanted to say goodbye.”

...Oh now this is new. He stares at the other man, at a loss for words.

Ben clears his throat, clenches his jaw. “You know that- Rey is important to me,” he says.

It’s such a plain and obvious understatement that it makes Finn snort. “Yeah, I gathered that after the second visit when you knocked me on my ass in the training ring just for teasing Rey about her scary war-cry, which-” he holds up a finger at Ben, “she thought was funny, too, if you remember.”

Ben just waves his hand as if to wave away the old argument. “That- I was just- frustrated, that day. Anyway-” it’s something very new, to Finn; seeing Ben Solo trip over his words. “You’ve been a good friend to her. You mean- more to her than you might know.”

Uh I do know, thankyouverymuch, he thinks petulantly, if a little embarrassed. (And chuffed.) He coughs awkwardly.

“Dameron, too," Ben continues. "He speaks highly of you. After every visit. Which I know are- frequent.” This is said with a considerable amount more attitude, and it strikes Finn, suddenly, as- actually funny. Even endearing. “He likes a lot of people but speaks highly of very few, so. I wanted to say thank you. For being a good friend. And for being there for them.”

When I can’t.

Finn thinks Ben’s said it aloud, at first. But when he catches the splotch of red climbing the man’s neck, he's stunned to realize that Ben Solo had thought the words so strongly he'd actually projected them in the Force.

“How can you stand to leave?” Finn blurts. Ben meets his gaze with hard eyes. “How can you do it to her over and over again, knowing what you know about her past?” Finn swallows, knowing, deep down, that the twitch under Ben’s eye could be the first beat of a war drum. Still, he can’t keep himself from saying it. “She dies a little, every time you leave. None of us see her cry, but we know she does. Sometimes for days, after. Master Tano and I can tell because the orchids outside her window wilt, for kriff’s sake-”

“Please stop. Please.”

There’s no mistaking the desperate edge in Ben’s plea. Finn watches the man swallow, as if to keep from begging.

Even the blooming warmth of dawn seems to curdle at the sound. Silence lingers for several breaths.

“I know,” Ben says, finally, his voice breaking over the words. “It kills me, too. Every time.” He says it quickly, like ripping off a bacta patch. His lower lip twitches a few times; his nostrils flare. Somehow the break in his voice, alone, says more than words could. 

Finn thinks again about what their bond must be like. Remembers his conversation with Master Tano after the first time he'd met Ben Solo. The first time Finn had watched him climb back into the Falcon, and hadn’t known how to comfort Rey.

“Well," Tano had sighed, "he is her bondmate, after all.”

“Her what now?”

Master Tano's smile had been slow and glinting. "Her bondmate. They’re a dyad in the Force; two halves of a whole.” She’d waved her hand in front of her nose, dismissively. “But that’s all just a bunch of fancy Force jargon. In the most basic sense, it is a deep, deep love, and to separate, even temporarily...it is a unique, acute kind of pain. 

Finn remembers the way Ben had walked toward Rey that day, to say goodbye. He remembers Rey's fake smile--the worst Finn'd ever seen. He remembers Ben's stiff shoulders, walking forward the way a man might walk toward the gallows. 

'A unique, acute kind of pain.' 

“...Seems heavy,” Finn thinks aloud now, unhelpfully.

Ben lets out a gusty breath, running a hand through his hair as if to distract Finn from the quiver in his bottom lip. It's all so strange to watch. This tree of a man, looking like a wind-whipped tulip.

Is this the Ben Rey is always talking about so fondly? 

“Yeah,” Ben admits. “Anyway. Thanks. Goodbye. Stay- uh. Healthy.” And he just turns and starts walking back down the corridor.

Finn laughs. He can’t help it. It ruptures the density between them like light shattering ice. “Stay healthy’?”

Ben doesn’t stop walking, just grunts. 

Finn laughs again. “Nah, that’s lame as hell, man.”

All he gets in reply is a middle finger.

Finn hustles after Ben, smiling because he feels like he’s finally on the inside of a joke he’s been left out of for nearly a year. He bumps the back of Ben’s arm and walks alongside him down the temple’s front steps. “You know, you're right. You should tell Poe to stop visiting as often as he does. It’s starting to get annoying. He has his own room, now.”

The twitch at the corner of Ben Organa-Solo’s mouth makes a year’s worth of glares and grunts and ‘hey you’s melt like sugar in water.

He makes no promises, but that slight, slight twitch of the mouth had been enough.

When they finally reach the landing pad, and see Rey standing at the bottom of the ramp with watery eyes and a fake, quivering smile, Finn pats Ben’s back, just once, and leaves him to it.



X



The next time Ben visits, Finn realizes how he does it; how he manages to leave Rey, time after time.

It’s because, time after time, Rey welcomes him back with a smile like sunrise. 

Chapter Text

Rey’s fifteen the next time she and Ben connect in the Force, and it's all because she and Finn are being reckless idiots. 

“Ow!” She yelps. Finn’d caught her behind the knee, the nerfherder. “Cheap- shot-! ” She huffs, whacking his wood-sabre with hers.

The night is dark and humid, insects singing a perfect summer’s night chorus. She and Finn are playfighting in the center of a circle of glowrods they’d stuck in the ground for light.  It’s a bit of a game they’ve come up with; sneaking out of the temple at night just to joust or play tag or practice using the Force the way they want to. A few nights back, she and Finn had trekked far enough into the jungle to stumble across some mossy stone ruins that are far enough away from the temple to be completely out of sight and ear-shot. So they can spar and play and laugh over another successful escape.

“No such thing when there’s no rules,” Finn protests. They whack-thwack-shwoop at each other’s sabres. “First to step out of the ring loses?”

CRACK. Their sabres locked together, they lean forward, grinning and panting. She shoves at Finn so forcefully he stumbles back. “First to step out loses,” she confirms. 

They parry and sidestep, playing dirty with the occasional Force push.

But just as Rey is gaining ground, pushing Finn further back, he stumbles. As he tries to catch himself with his sabre hand, he overcorrects the swing—bringing it straight down, hard, on Rey’s wrist.

The sound rings quick; muted and hollow in the quiet night air, and Rey shouts. More than a mere bruise or scrape, it feels as if something’s cracked.

She stumbles back, too, dropping her sabre. The pain is just starting to swell when Rey takes her wrist in hand with a hiss.

Finn is up in a flash, hand on her shoulder. “Shit! I’m so sorry! I’m sorry I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that!”

“I- ahh-,” she hisses. “I know I know I know-” Rey isn’t any good at soothing him when it feels as if she’ll have to swallow her tongue to keep from crying.

Without really hearing Finn's panicky directions, she nods, starting to blindly follow him back to the temple as she cradles her throbbing wrist. 

They don’t make it very far from the ring of glow rods as a sort of fog starts creeping into her cranium. Abruptly, all she can hear is her own breathing. It echoes, the way it only does when she’s in deep meditation. Or- the way it had that time so many years ago-

It’s louder than the shuffling dirt beneath their feet, the foliage Finn is rustling through, even the choir of insect song.

She stops, closes her eyes, and tries to wrangle the pain-

Rey
Rey
Rey?

She stills even further; her breath, again, echoing. Vaguely, she registers Finn, several paces ahead, stopping and turning to ask her something. She nods mindlessly but doesn’t move. No longer breathing, she listens to the deep echo of a strong, familiar voice.

Are you
Are you
Are you okay?

What
What's 
What’s going on?

Wrist swelling and heart racing, Rey feels a shock of instinctual recognition. Is Ben-?

You’re
You’re in
You’re in pain-
Tell me
Tell me what's happened.

She squeezes her eyes shut, focusing. It’s getting harder, though, through the confusion and pain. She thinks Finn says something about going ahead to wake Master Tano. She nods, cringing, grateful to finally let a few tears loose now that Finn can’t see.

“Rey?”

Her eyes open wide.

And she’s-

He’s-

“...Ben?”

He seems equally shocked to be suddenly standing a mere few feet in front of her in the middle of the humid summer night, in the Yavin jungle.

Did Finn hit her over the head, too? Has she missed something? “I thought you were on Takodana?” 

Ben takes a moment to survey the dark woods surrounding them, obviously as confused by his abrupt physical presence as she is. “I am on Takodana.”

“Why is the Force connecting u-hhhss… ” Kriff, it hurts. 

“Rey-” Ben sets aside Force logistics as he steps into her space. He surveys her injury with giant, gentle hands. “What the fuck happened?” He demands.

She feels like she’s back on that cold slab in the Underworld. Below ‘Yard ‘82, teeth chattering as she’d called out for Ben in the Force. She remembers his rage; a flame kindled by his concern; so fierce it’d consumed him from the inside-out. She can feel how distressed he is now—can feel that same rising anger. He’s projecting a hundred scenarios at her in which she was attacked, kidnapped, assaulted-

“We were playing with the practice sabres,” she grits out. “It was just an accident- a slip of the hand.” It’s difficult to try and project ‘it’s not a big deal’ when all she can really, truly think is ‘ow ow throbbing ow ow‘. " Finn and I snuck out to train...Master's gonna kill us ...."

“Fuck- I don’t know if I even remember how to heal-”

Rey closes her eyes again, wincing. “Ah -hahh,” She can’t help but whine as he moves the injured wrist.

Suddenly the steady echo of her breath—it doubles, synchronises with Ben’s. It’s loud ; deeper, in and out. It pulls something in her. Almost like a thread inside her arm, being tugged slowly down, down, and into Ben’s hands. Connecting. Tugging, tugging, more with every breath in. And the pain- slowly, it...ebbs. More with every steady breath they share. As if Ben Solo is pulling it from her body.

Rey can’t look away from his face; eyes closed, mouth tight, inhaling and exhaling. He has the faintest blue hue around him—the same color she’d seen so many years ago, the day he’d first found her. The day he’d healed her in that warm Force plane. 

Once the pain is gone—truly, absolutely absent—Rey’s breath comes a little faster. She looks back and forth between her wrist and Ben. 

Ben opens his eyes and stares at her with the same questions in his eyes. Though he admittedly looks- tired. Less panicked than he had before, but...exhausted.

“We’re not doing this,” she says. “The effort would kill us.” She’s learned about Force Projection. Masters Ashoka and Luke have both warned Rey and Finn of the dangers it poses to Force users. They’d brushed it off with a mutual eye-roll months ago, but now Rey searches for an alternative answer to what’s happening between her and Ben right now. “If you can touch me, it isn't-“

Rey is so confused. 

In typical Ben fashion, he doesn’t seem concerned with his casual use of incredibly complex Force abilities. He lifts her now-limp wrist, twisting it slow and gentle, checking her face for signs of pain as she checks his face for the same.

“Ben,” she’s starting to really panic, herself, now. “You’re not doing this, right? Force projection is incredibly dangerous-” Her voice rises in the Black Forest. “It could kill you, you know!”

The asshole chuckles. 

Chuckles . 

“I’m serious!” 

“I’m not strong enough in the Force to project.” Oh, Rey seriously doubts that . “And we wouldn’t be able to touch like this,” he says calmly, now wiggling her wrist around by her sleeve like it belongs to a doll. Rey can tell he’s just riding the relief high from managing to heal her. 

-WHICH-! IS ALSO INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS. 

“And did you- is your wrist okay?!” She shrieks, seizing hers back in order to survey both of his. He doesn’t flinch, though. She senses no pain in him at all. Only the slightest slump in his broad shoulders. “Ben-“ her eyes are wide, pinned to his. “How are you doing all of this?” It’s practically a whisper. 

“I’m not,” he says. “The Force must be connecting us.”

“...The bond?” She asks. It seems only a little silly to ask Ben, who’d forsaken his lessons in the Force ages ago. Though Rey suspects that he still studies texts on the holonet when he has time. Because he's a huge, nosy nerd who likely doesn't want to be out-academicked by Rey. He wouldn’t know about Force projection otherwise. 

Ben gazes around the forest. “Don’t know....” 

“Rey!” 

She whips her head around at the sound of Finn calling her name; Master Tano likely in tow.

Ben turns back to her with a tiny side-smile. "Tano?" His smugness is so Trademark Solo it makes Rey want to kick him. “You’re in deep shit, now.” 

“Shut up. We're not done talking about this-“

But just as she’s about to stick an accusing finger in his chest, Ben’s vanished. 

Finn is breathing heavily and looks so guilt-stricken it’s physically painful. “I’m okay,” she says. Master Tano hurries up to her, a fusion lantern in one hand. Rey squints at the sudden blue light, reaching for Finn’s hand to calm him. To let him know through the Force that she’s no longer in pain. 

But he’s stepped aside for their Master to get a better look at Rey, and she has nothing to distract her from the deep worry in Ashoka’s blue, blue eyes. 

Rey feels abruptly ashamed. “I’m sorry, Master-” she starts. 

Ashoka pinches her cheeks, stretching them wide. 

Rey makes a vague, inarticulate noises that don’t really resemble anything like words at exactly the same moment as Finn starts to explain why they were out there so late and how sorry they are, all as Rey gestures helplessly with her arms; her Master holding her cheeks and staring stoically. 

Finally, she releases Rey with a deep inhale and says, “You’re alright, then?” Rey can tell her Master is running a diagnostic on her Padawan with hard eyes. “You’ve healed yourself?” 

Rey and Finn exchange a very, very quick glance, and Rey admits (rubbing her cheek) that, “Uh- no. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you someone else did, though.” 

Master Tano squints suspiciously at her. She looks back at Rey with tired, rueful eyes. “It’s 0200 in the morning. I don’t wanna hear it until the sun is up and I‘m three cups deep in caf. Stow it.”

Rey nods, hoping she’s projecting how truly apologetic she feels. Master Ashoka gestures for her and Finn to make a line and start marching back to the temple. Then she takes the glow lamp and thumps Rey and Finn on their “huge, idiot teenage heads.”

Rey swears she can hear a faraway echo of Ben laughing. 

Chapter Text

Rey is alone in the upper levels of the temple, trying to meditate, when it happens again. 

She knows he’s at the gym, alone, because he'd sent her a holomessage update once he'd left the medcenter. It’s late at night on Coruscant—Rey's willing to bet he’s at the top floor so he can see the city lights. She envies his being home. She knows it's important he's there--she's so glad he is--but still, she's sad, too, that she wasn't able to join him. The trip was too last-minute for Ben and Han to come and get her. 

He’s in a tight-fitting black shirt, the short sleeves straining around his incredible biceps, and black jogger sweats that hug his long, perfectly-muscled legs in all the right places. He’s the kind of sweaty that is somehow not disgusting—it just makes him glisten. Attractively.

He hasn’t noticed Rey yet, still coming down from his workout as he stares out over the city, holding a towel on the back of his neck as he catches his breath. 

(She wishes her hair swished like that when she was drenched in sweat. He doesn’t even kriffing smell bad. He smells spicy and strong. It’s rude.) 

Rey has never felt so painfully sixteen as she does staring at a heavy-breathing, glistening Ben Solo; admiring the strain of the black fabric pulled tight across broad pectorals and massive, massive arms. She can’t stop staring at the shadows his back muscles make. Kriff, and his legs...so long-

Rey is beyond caring, at this point. She’s still too young to think too long or hard about her growing attraction to the boyman she’s grown up with. For now, she can chalk it up to puberty. Just hormones and separation anxiety doing a sexy samba in her remaining teenage brain cells.

Finally, he registers her presence, turning toward her as he stands. “Rey?”

She tries to school her stupid teenage thoughts, swallowing loudly as all of his bared muscles flex and shift with his movements. Such a triumphant symphony of human anatomy, it's truly unfair. “Hi,“ she replies lamely. 

“Were you-“ he takes in her lotus pose with amusement blooming on his face, “-meditating?”

”I was trying -“

"That’s hilarious.”

Rey juts out her chin and wrinkles her nose. “How so?”

“You have the attention span of a bantha flea.”

She glares, offended. He laughs. Even at her expense, it’s nice to hear. Kriff he looks good , she thinks, the glare sliding off her face as she stares at the dimple in his cheek. 

"Why has the force connected us now,” he ask-states, in typical Ben Fashion. 

“Don't know. What time is it on your end?”

He sighs. “Late. I should be asleep, but I haven’t….”

Rey winces.

“I haven’t been able to, these last few days.”

"Sotna...."

He just nods once, shoulders tightening. 

Rey closes her eyes and breathes out. She's been worried, too. When she opens them, she looks up at Ben and pats the space beside her on the floor. He joins her. 

Neither of them looks at each other, instead training their sightless gazes on the cityscape. Rey always feels fortunate that she can occupy Ben's views like this. He knows how to pick them, that's for sure. 

"She'll be okay," Rey says. "Rose comm'd me today. She said Sotna's fever broke last night."

Ben doesn't often answer when one isn't necessary, and Rey never forces him to. Watching him, Rey thinks all over again how much she loves Ben Solo. Even more than she loves his hulking shoulders and giant, gentle hands, she loves how deeply he cares. "Did you give her the flowers?" She asks.

"I did." 

Rey smiles. "Did you read our card out loud to her? Han wanted you to read it out loud." 

Finally, Ben's lip twitches. He gives her a quick side-eye and nods. "I did." 

Rey perks further. 

"It made her smile."

"Good." She leans her head on Ben's shoulder. Grateful, every time, that the Force allows her to touch him even when he's entire systems away. 

"I should-" Ben huffs, frustrated, "-comm her more. It isn't hard, it doesn't take much time. She asked me to, when I left. I haven’t. I holocall you constantly, I keep up with Mom and Paige." He pauses, unconsciously putting his arm around Rey's knee to pull her closer. "I should comm Sotna more." 

Rey hums.

“...I don’t know why I don't.”

It isn’t really a question, but Rey thinks she might have an answer. “I think it might be because Sotna’s one of your pillar friends, Ben. You know? Like Poe. They’re always there. You don’t feel compelled to comm them to ‘catch up’ because...you know you can always pick up where you left off with her, no matter when or where. They’re- she's a pillar friend.”

Ben is quiet.  

Rey parks her chin on his shoulder so she can stare at the side of his face. “She knows.”

He sighs.

“You’re not as hard to read as you think.”

He hums.

They sit, quiet, comfortably contemplative. It feels luxurious to sit together in the dark, looking out at the city lights and the jungle night. 

“Sotna told me to give you a 'fat kiss' for her.”

Rey’s heart gives a little kick. “Tell her she'll have to give it to me herself.”

Ben huffs a laugh. She feels him kiss her head with such reverence it feels like sinking into a hot spring. "She knows you'd be here if you could." 

Rey swallows. “I miss you, Ben….” She murmurs. It feels selfish, given the context. But it’s the truth. It’s Rey’s constant, unforgiving truth.

He turns his head so that he can nuzzle her hair. "You're our next stop."

She smiles and lets his dulcet promise lull her to sleep.  

Chapter Text

Ben doesn’t know what the fuck is up in his lower stomach-pelvis area but whatever or wherever it is hurts like a bitch. 

In fact, he’s doubled-over in the motel on Tatooine, considering whether or not he has to pass gas, throw up, or die. 

“You good?”

Ben can only groan. The urge to strangle his father isn’t foreign, but Ben seriously considers breaking his “no Force” rule just to keep the fucker from touching him. “Do I look ‘good’?!” He hisses, bringing his legs up tighter to his torso. It does little to curb the deep ache.

It feels like a metal spoon is stirring his innards like stew. 

His dad just scoffs, sitting on the opposite cot as Chewie exits the fresher. “Is this one of those- Force magic- transfer...things?”

Ben’s face twists with pain and confusion. “ No- what?”

Han makes himself comfortable on the bed, leaning back as if on vacation and not as if his only son is dying in agony a few feet from him. “I know something that you don’t,” he says smugly. 

“Dad ,“ Ben growls.

“Think about it, Benny.”

Rey actually laughs when she sees him bent forward on his knees, clutching his stomach. 

“Holy kriffffff,” he groans.

She snorts. 

Oh my god , is all he’s capable of thinking. 

Rey returns to her horizontal repose, significantly cheerier than she’s been all day.

You go through this every- you go through this for an entire week? Every month ?! 

She laughs. “Not usually an entire week. Only a few days, usually. But I have to train through it.”

Ben’s head whips around with saucers for eyes. 

She nods. “Yeah. You’re lucky the bond didn’t connect us last month, when I was having migraines. Cramps don’t usually keep me down, but-” she shifts in bed a bit, clutching the thermopad Master Ashoka’d procured for her. “Today’s just- worse, for some reason. Probably something I ate….”

Ben does not try another touch-transfer over the bond, but he does lean down to kiss her sweaty temple. “I am--from the farthest depths of my black heart and the deepest parts of my male extremities-- so sorry.”

She smiles. Closing her eyes again, she says, “just bring pain killers with you next time.”

Chapter Text

Sometimes their complete lack of control over the bond is torture.

Rey is freshly eighteen when the Force Bond connects them- in the middle of- 

Ben’s gut drops through his balls the moment she appears, because he immediately realizes what’s happening. 

It’s not like Ben doesn’t...understand. He’d messed around at her age, too--same as any teenager. But as soon as she’d moved in—once Canthem House no longer felt like a cold prison that belonged almost solely to himself—Ben carefully kept that shit locked down.

Even when he’d moved out, when he had the privacy to explore again, he’d kept a tight lid on personal frustrations. Sometimes, when he’s stressed, or overtired and can’t sleep, he brings himself off in bed, or in the fresher. Mostly, though, he relies on sleep aids and willpower. He doesn’t care if he’s “repressed” if it means he’s transferring exactly none of that across the bond. 

...He had not been prepared for Rey to do the transferring.

The worst part isn’t that it’s happening. The worst part is that, because of their bond, Ben knows that it’s happening.

And with this kind of timing-

“-then take the informant out.” Dameron appeals. “He’s our best chance at cutting off the newer members before they can bounce again. Right, Solo?”

Ben swallows. Through the bond, Rey is right there —lying on top of the Forceforsaken conference table like an entire meal; her body long and lean and tan. She isn’t naked, but Ben can see an arm between her legs--hand hidden by a lifted thigh--beneath the waistband of what must be the galaxy’s tiniest shorts, and she’s wearing- oh, fucking gods she’s wearing one of Ben’s old sleep shirts. 

It’s almost more explicit than if she were naked.

Moreso because it’s Rey and because he can fucking feel everything she’s feeling right now and she’s so caught up in- her moment that she doesn’t even realize they’re connected .

Ben knows he needs to get the kriff out of this conference room, but he is frozen stiff in all the worst places as she arches into the sensations. He cannot, for the life of him, hear anything over the soft, wounded sound of her sigh. At this point it’s the most acute kind of torture; the burning, ghostly sensation of her soft, deft fingers trailing down, down-

He stumbles up abruptly from his seat. “Bathroom-”

He’s halfway down the hallway when Ben realizes Rey’s in her own room. It’s the middle of the kriffing night, on Yavin, and she should be the fuck asleep .

He only barely makes it to the base ‘fresher, locking the door behind him with shaking hands. His breath is coming faster, and- shit - he’s- 

He’s hard. Harder than he’s ever been. 

Fuck , he’s hard in the middle of a strategy debrief . He wants to tell the Force to hang up-

Fuck-

Rey moans, and Ben slams his hand on the door of the fresher room.

-it’s like she’s touching him, too.

Fucking kriffshit sith spit- FUCK!

She gasps. The Force must not be done torturing him, because she appears at the opposite end of the fresher room, eyes and face suddenly alert.

Then she’s springing from her bed like a geyser.

BEN?!

Calm down, I didn’t actually see - 

Her face is as red as sweetberries, and she is decidedly not calming down as she launches her pillow at him. 

You-?! Did you-! Oh my gods, oh my gods, OH my GODS-

“Calm down, Rey,” he tries to command, but his own voice is so shredded by arousal it’s more like a choked growl. At least her hand isn’t- there anymore—sensations largely replaced by a panicked flood of shame and embarrassment—but R’iia give him strength... his shirt and those shorts on her -

He doesn't know who he’s talking to when he deliberately thinks, Don’t panic- 

“Don’t panic?! What the hell are you doing here?! ” She’s yanked her blanket up off the bed as a shield, thank fuck. 

“Not my fault,” Ben chokes. Force Bond. 

She looks furious. And so red. And her tan thighs are peeking out from her blanket and Ben has a boner he needs to deal with that she cannot see .

He manages to remain by the fresher sink, strategically adjusting himself as soon as Rey looks away. She puts her head in her hands, sitting back on her bed with her elbows on her blanket-clad knees, swinging back and forth between the mental mantras Ohmygod Ohmygod and Ican’tbelievethisishappening Ican’tbelievethisishappening.

With all the embarrassed adrenaline Rey’s hurling at him from across the bond, Ben can’t help but start to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

Rey’s red face whips up, pointing a threatening finger at him. “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Ben Solo, or I will Force-rip your head square off your shoulders.”

  He sits himself on the toilet and lifts his hands in mock-surrender. “I’m not laughing at you.”

Her face does that adorable pinching thing it does when she’s embarrassed, and yanks her blanket over her head, tossing herself back down with dramatic finality. 

Once his dick finally gets the memo of a false-alarm, Ben breathes a sigh of relief. He thanks every god he knows of that Rey hadn’t seen anything. 

“...I’m sorry, Ben,” Rey mutters miserably from under the covers. 

He stands, knowing he’s still in the ‘fresher, but feeling as if he’s in Rey’s quiet, cozy temple quarters on Yavin. He moves closer, sinking to the floor to sit with his back against the side of Rey’s bed in this half-and-half Force plane. He leans back, his head close to the blanketed lump he knows is her head, and breathes in the distinct, sweet smell of her. 

Despite the- inconvenient context, Ben is happy to see her. To feel her. He misses her incessantly. The Force may have a fucked sense of humor, but the bond itself is- Ben is grateful for it.

He swallows. “Don’t be- embarrassed. It’s, uh...it’s normal for you to...you know. Do that. And- explore. At this age,” he tries to soothe her. “It’s not something to be ashamed of.” 

He feels her shuffle on her bed, still fully encased in her blanket and embarrassment. 

Ben clears his throat, still sorting out what to say even as it tumbles out—always a little awkward these days with Rey. He wishes he could be as easy with her as they’d been when they were younger. He runs a hand through his hair. “It’s hard to predict when the bond will connect us.” 

Rey is silent, but he can feel her spike of nervousness—a squirm in her gut he recognizes as something she’s not telling him.

Ben turns to look down at her. Only her eyes are peeking up at him, the rest of her face hidden by her blanket. He narrows his eyes. “You’re shielding something.” 

“...It’s just- something Luke mentioned a few days ago. A theory he has about the bond.”

Ben’s eyebrows pull together. “What did he say.” 

Rey’s eyes slide away from his and she burrows under the blanket again. She’s silent for a while before he hears a muffled, “Ask him yourself, bantha butt.” 

It bothers him immensely that she’s keeping something important from him. Important enough to shield it in the Force, no less. But this whole ordeal has been such a trespass on her privacy that Ben doesn’t feel right to push her. “Laserbrain,” he grunts, instead. She’s still so embarrassed and horny that Ben can’t physically stop himself from teasing her. “Goin’ at it at what- 2 in the morning, your time? You should be asleep,” he shakes his head and tuts with mock severity. “Kids these days.”

Her arm shoots out from the depths of her covers to hit him. “I- was- ‘ exploring ’ !” she mocks, punctuating every word with a fist to his back. Ben laughs. 

“Well you were exploring in the middle of a meeting with the rebels-” he snakes his own arm behind him, without turning, to find the section of blanket he knows is hiding her side, and wiggles his fingers to tickle.

She squirms and laughs like she has since she was six- loud, bubbly, adorable. You're gonna make me wake up the whole temple! She projects, too breathless from laughing to say it out loud. 

They settle again, and Ben turns his body just enough so he can tuck her in. She feels warm. Soft. Like she really is right here, beneath his hands. 

“I miss you, Sun Spot,” he admits, one large hand smoothing her hair.

She lowers the blanket to her chest to reveal the rest of her face, and suddenly, all over again, she isn’t the kid he remembers. Her jawline is so sharp; cheeks carved where there used to be baby fat. Even her lashes seem longer. They sweep lazily over her eyes, and Ben feels…mesmerized. 

His hand stills—spanning the length of the side of her face. 

Rey is-

Devastating. 

“Miss you too, Ben,” she clears her throat after her voice breaks on his name. “You’re still visiting next weekend, right?” 

He swallows, coming back to himself. “‘Course.”

“Good. Master Tano’s cooking.” 

Ben has never trusted Ashoka’s cooking. He makes a face, but doesn’t complain aloud.  “Mother’s coming, too. She misses you.” 

“A two-for-one?” Rey dimples. He smiles softly back, until hers begins to slip. "Ben?"

"Rey?"

"...Thanks."

Ben kisses her temple and waits for the connection to fade as she slowly drifts off, her fingers knit with his. 

Once she’s fully disappeared, Ben clears his throat and stands from his place on the ‘fresher floor. 

Food poisoning, he decides. I’ll tell Dameron it was food poisoning. 

Some days the bond is torture. Some days it’s Ben’s salvation.

And sometimes, somehow, it’s both.