Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ben’s a pragmatic man. The type of man who sticks to his routine because it works. The type of man who doesn’t let academia scurry away with his spare time, because he’s less volatile well-rested, as one ex so graciously put it. The type of man who strategizes about staying hydrated. The type of man who meal-preps.

The type of man who doesn’t set different text tones for all of his contacts. No, all of them are the same. Except his father’s. His father’s is set to the most obnoxious, blaring trumpet sound he could find, as obnoxiously blaring and garish as the man himself, and, upon hearing it, Ben always has the same thought: here we go again.

Because it’s always like this. Blessed weeks, sometimes months, go by before his father’s home to roost, or at least home for long enough to remember he has a son. Han’s always off to some adventure or another, piloting the planes of billionaires and politicians, whisking them off to shadowed locales understitched with gossip and scandal and excess. And then, inevitably, he’s back, “settling down” with one more in a long procession of women who seem to get younger and younger. Or maybe Ben’s just getting older and older.

The text that breaks the reprieve is always something along the lines of Eureka, I’ve done it this time, Benny. I’ve found The One. I’m staying put, I’ll be a father, come meet her, the love of my life, my muse, my Reason. Perhaps not so eloquently, nor in so many words, but that’s the energy, the “vibe,” as one of Ben’s students might put it. He’s long since stopped hoping that this time, Han means it.

He doesn’t know why he even bothers anymore, he argues with himself, as he loosens and slips off his tie, then dithers in his entryway, like every time—why does he go? Why does he entertain this sick, ill-fated little dance of his father’s? Actions speak louder than words. The absence of action screams itself into being. It always ends in a row, a confrontation second only to a Western shootout, verbal volleys instead of bullets. Maybe that’s why: it’s catharsis. It’s an outlet for the buildup of decades of abandonment, decades of rage. A break, even, from the white-knuckled control he keeps over the rest of his life. Once in a while, something has to give. There must be a valve.

So Ben exchanges his tie and jacket for a structured jersey coat, his contacts for his glasses, knowing his eyes always start to water if he leaves them in past about 6 PM. Heads to his father’s apartment, a place that always smells vaguely musty underneath the candle smell, given it sits empty for half the year, a true bachelor pad, decorated erratically with remnants of girlfriends past—feminine touches that clash with one another, especially once rearranged by dear old dad, like a serial killer’s trophies. That’s what Ben calls them, the endless stream of girls who don’t know they’re part of a stream at all: the Trophies.

He barges in his father’s front door without so much as a “hello,” glancing about until his eyes find his old man in the kitchen, wearing an apron that he certainly got from an ex and put on for the giggles of his next little club wraith. “Well, just come on in, then, son,” Han says gruffly, glancing at him with that old dog-sly sparkle in his eye, that wry rogueish smirk. It prickles Ben, gets under his skin, every damn time. “What, no hug for your dad? I’m back for good, Benny! This calls for a celebration.”

“Oh, spare me the performance, dad,” Ben growls, and Han hauls himself out of his slouch to his full height, doing his best to be imposing.

“Don’t gimme that shit,” Han hisses, pointing a greasy wooden spoon at Ben’s face. “Not tonight. You make nice. Okay? This one’s special. Try not to fuck this up for me.”

Ben doesn’t even dignify that with a response, just shoots a dull stare at his father’s eyes. Fuck, something about the man reawakens the broody, defiant, hair-trigger teenager Ben once was.

“Jesus, kid.” Han throws up his hands, sauce splattering on the worn linoleum. “Spit it out. Go on, get it all out of your system.”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Dad. Just, you know, mentally tallying the bingo card.”

“The—oh, you know what, I’m not even gonna—”

“Remind me…we’ve already marked off the hooker…the flight attendant…the B-list actress…what’s left?”

Han snorts a deep breath in through his nose, gripping the edge of the counter and giving the saucepan a death stare, then lets it out, letting his spine round again. Is…is his father actually making a concerted effort to calm down and be the bigger person? Well, that’s no fun.

Ben wonders how long it’ll last this time around.

“Just…either man up and try to have a nice time at dinner, or get out. Your choice.”

“Wowww. Someone’s been listening to self-help cassettes.”

“Yeah. Yeah, and maybe you should, too. Look, if you’re staying, here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna go in the living room. You’re gonna introduce yourself. And you are not gonna try to stir up any shit. Not tonight, Benjamin.”

Ben stares at his father for a moment longer, still raring for a fight, knowing if he can just get Han to look at his face, they’ll be at it again, but Han studies his saucepan intently. Zeroes in on the banalities of lemon pepper and garlic powder.

All right, then. The game is on.

A snarl lodges in his throat when he rounds the corner into his dad’s living room, ready to be the usual amount of livid at the progression of younger-and-younger women, but this…oh, this just takes the cake.

Rey Nolan. Front-row Rey. Teacher’s pet, hand always half-raised, know-it-all, bossy little vixen, she of the sundresses and the gladiator sandals, she of the bulky chokers and chestnut curls. She’s lounging on his dad’s beat-up plaid couch like she just got off her feet after a long day of work, shoes off, in a flirty little dress with a sweetheart bodice that absolutely ensnares the eye, doing, of all things, homework. She startles, just a little, when she sees him, and he silently dares her not to cower, not to make up an excuse to leave, not to realize just what a world of deep shit she’s in.

She takes the dare. Cocks her head and gives him that same little faraway smile he catches her with sometimes in class. “Whaddya know, Professor,” she chirps, playing with the hem of her skirt.

Conscious of his father’s bastardly presence in the kitchen, cooking one of exactly three recipes he’s ever learned, Ben keeps his voice low, the distance impersonal but polite, when he murmurs, “You really don’t wanna be here right now, Miss Nolan.”

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to call me ‘mommy’ if you don’t want,” she replies, flippant, not missing a beat. Appearances be damned, he leans in closer, just close enough to see his breath stir her hair and her attention.

“Don’t pretend,” he growls, watching in 4k the way her throat jumps, the skin rippling over it. “Don’t say things like that when we both know you really want the opposite.” She gives that scandalized little gasp, that good-girl, I’m-so-innocent sound, but her eyes quicken, her cheeks flush, and oh, dear. His years-long standoff with his father just got a whole lot more interesting.

*

He remembers when he first noticed her. Of course he does. The very first day of class, this relatively unassuming student sat in the front row of the auditorium. Back when late August was still gripping the weather, one long, summer-dying hot flash of near record intensity. The auditorium soaked in the humid tang of early-morning sweat. He’d normally take offense to this, zero in on the one student who’s clearly in need of a hygiene intervention, but he had soaked nearly all the way through his undershirt during an ill-conceived venture outside the building for his lunch break earlier in the day. It was just the state of things, the shape of the day. Fucking climate change.

She was an early bird. As he side-eyed the students, playing his little people-watching guessing game in his head—who was dating, who would break up before midterms, who was stoned—she caught his eye. Conspiratorial, with a funny little smile, she made a show of subtly waving her hand in front of her face, waving off the smell of the room, waving at him. He gave her the courtesy of a little head dip in acknowledgement, then took advantage of her waving at a friend coming in and looked a little more.

She bore the same pearlescent sheen as her peers, and a little fantasy flashed through his head in a sensory way—how damp the stringy strap of her little sundress must be, the sheerer parts of it clinging to her skin, her hair plastered to the back of her neck until, bothered, she swept it back into that sloppy French twist—and he shook his head, shook it off. Shook off the peachy-bronze long legs, crossed demurely. The ghost of a halter-neck tanline. The beads of condensation rolling off her iced coffee onto the back of a slender hand.

It wasn’t like it was a constant thing, the fleeting attraction to one student or another. Rather rare, actually, that one would captivate his notice on a regular basis. He’s good at compartmentalizing—it’s his contractual duty to do so, after all—but he’s an uncoupled, reasonably well-built, younger guy, so the eye wanders. Normally in bits and pieces: the inside of a ruddy thigh in cutoffs, angled just so as a student readjusts. A glimpse of a tattooed ribcage through a tank top sleeve as one reaches out to pass along a handout packet. Full lips, chapped, poised around a question that’s almost hitting on something intelligent. Occasionally, the slack cheek of one who’s dozed off, the uncreased brow, the parted lips, the whole face made nymphish in sleep.

But it’s rarely the whole picture. The whole person. And it wasn’t, really, with Rey, until she started…being Rey instead of just front-row, pretty-legs, cute-nose. The way her hand shoots up, all the way up, every time, like she’s halfway through a sun salutation, like it’s a competition. The way she flounces in her seat, pouts a little, when he points to someone else instead of her. The way she leans forward, her elbows encroaching on her meager cleavage, when she’s excited, when she gets something right, pleased with herself.

But, oh, his pulse really quickened, and his clothes started to feel just a little too tight, when some droopy-eyed playboy wannabe steamrailed a conversation on Frankenstein with his weak little conspiracy theory that Percy Shelley wrote the whole thing. “What an original take,” Ben drawled, getting some titters at his obvious sarcasm, but Droopy took it as encouragement to keep going. All the old strawmans. Just don’t think a woman at that time woulda been, y’know, like, educated and shit…kinda dark to come up with for a female…and there it went, Miss Nolan’s hand shooting up, reaching for the damn lights, her whole upper body straining to accommodate the arc. Amused—he hadn’t asked for input—he raised his eyebrows at her and pointed.

“Kinda dark, huh? You know Mary Shelley lost her virginity on her mother’s grave?” Well, if that wasn’t one way to command a room. “You wanna know what was dark? The whole world at the time, dude. It was a miniature ice age, for f-frick’s sake.” She sneaked an apologetic glance at Ben, who hid his smile behind one curled hand. “They didn’t know if summer would ever come back. It was the end times, for all they knew. Famines, volcanic ash everywhere, no sun.”

“Yuh, well, like, still,” Droopy sputtered. “Like, it’s not, I mean, would she even know to worry about it—”

“Oh, I get it. You didn’t know women had developed eyes yet.” The classroom got a little raucous after that, more students emboldened by Rey’s dressing down to add their own two cents, and Ben let them let off steam for a moment while he got hold of himself accordingly. Because she had this look of cautious pride in her eyes, but was also slouching in her seat, making herself small, a little surprised by her own outburst, maybe.

Only, he wasn’t so sure she was surprised. He knew her type. Miss Perfect Princess. So prim and proper in the classroom, desperate for someone with authority to notice her, but behind it all, a yowling little alley cat. He was consumed in the idea of these little moments, where something inside snapped and she just had to bite back. Tiny outbursts at the grocery store. Thorough dressings-down when she’d reached a breaking point. And then she’d crumple it all back inside her, play innocent and doe-eyed to anyone who brought it up. Oh, I was just having a bad day. I wasn’t thinking. My blood sugar must’ve been low. That’s so not me.

Oh, but it is, he thought, watching the covert way she was glancing around the room, silently digesting the fruits of her own chaos. He finally breathed in. Breathed out. Raised one authoritative palm towards the room at large and got them all settled down again.

Since then, she’s been his favorite little vice. He looks forward to that 2 PM Advanced Literary Theory class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Three hours, three days, that he gets a little taste of that sugar-coated wildfire. It helps that she’s smart. It helps that she’s pretty.

Sometimes, those nights, when he mentally runs through the day, trying not to linger, lingering anyway, he even likes to imagine she knows what she’s doing, and she’s doing it to him, specifically. He’s had his suspicions, here and there. Catching her sucking off her own fingers, sticky from the sugar on the top of a donut. Uncrossing and recrossing her legs, slow and pointed, when he looks at her for too long. Her faraway, cozy smile, when she’s lost in her head in daydreams, maybe not-so-coincidentally aimed in his direction. Now that she’s Han’s new little Trophy—oh, all bets are off. That flippant remark about calling her “mommy…” if the poor thing doesn’t already know exactly what game she’s put her chips in, she’s gonna find out real soon. She’s in his territory now. And above the fact that she’s been haunting his daydreams lately, Ben Solo will not let his father win—not this one, not this time, not this way.

*

He catches Han’s suspicious glances all through dinner. Ben’s being nice, uncharacteristically nice, cordial, pleasant. Ben knows his father can feel the static, angry tension that ripples between them, father to son, especially given the same blood in their veins, that restless competitive urge woven into Ben’s DNA by Han’s own, and Han is clearly unnerved by the placid route Ben’s taking. He sees his father’s gears turning, trying to work out a step ahead of his son. Oh, he’s getting there. Old fuck might have fried his neurons with a few too many coke benders, but he’s not entirely stupid. When Ben volunteers to grab dessert out of the fridge (some kind of pie, pre-baked pie crust, he knows before he even gets there), he drops a kicker: “We’d better not keep her too late, she’s got a paper due tomorrow morning.” Rey flushes, and he sees those gears turn slowly, slowly, eyes-wide, brow-creased, and then—ah, finally.

“Well,” Han grits out, “now, how did we sit through a whole nice dinner without me hearing that little tidbit, darling?” He puts a hand on Rey’s shoulder, maybe a little more forcefully than he meant to, and her posture slants with the weight. She laughs forcedly, says, “Well, I guess it just hadn’t come up yet, babe. Kinda like your last name didn’t.” She smiles pleasantly as Han shoots her a withering look, pats his heavy hand, handling him like she handles Droopy when they get into it in the classroom. Nice-girl bitchiness, a beast of its own.

“And don’t worry about my grades, Professor,” she calls towards the kitchen, where he’s dawdling plating the pie, gloating to himself. “Paper’s finished. Like…ages ago. I’ll give it to you right now, if you want.”

“Do you always carry assignments around with you, Miss Nolan?” he calls as she rummages in her bag. “Does this happen often—dating your professors’ parents?” Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her wilt, gather her nerve, and sit back up, staring at him with a precious little glare as she drops the paper at his seat with a fluttery thump.

“Brought it with me in case I stayed the night,” she spits, and there it is. Little baby dragon, hiding behind all that sweetness. He salivates, at the same time as he stiffens. Anger and arousal and intrigue make a cocktail of his blood. She crosses her arms and broods, then draws her knees up, feet on the seat, the flouncy skirt slipping tantalizing inches down her thigh, where women’s hose tend to get a little more…translucent, and the competitive fist in his belly clenches tighter when his father’s fingers land there. Like it’s familiar. Like it’s his. He looks away before Han catches him looking, gets another piece of ammo. He hears snatches of Han’s whispered placations, don’t be mad, baby, he’s difficult, and Rey tosses her head coquettishly, letting him grovel.

He almost can’t stand it, watching their little lovers’ spat play out, all a fiction on Rey’s part, he’s pretty sure, designed to get more of the attention she so craves: “This is what happens,” she’s pouting at Han, sniffling tearlessly. “You don’t let people get to know you! You don’t let people in, and then look where we all end up! I—I don’t know what to do with you, sometimes.” She folds her crossed arms on the table and buries her head in them, her pie untouched, and makes little fluttery sounds like she’s crying a little, and he knows she isn’t, the little manipulator! He knows, but then he knows for sure when Han makes a show of wrapping an arm around her, whispering promises to do better that Ben’s heard a million times, shooting his son a glare, and then she peeks out of the crook of her elbow and meets Ben’s eyes with—mirth. That’s what she’s glittering with. She’s enjoying this, as much a game to her as it is to him and his father, trying to draw Ben in on the play the same way she does with a meaningful eyeroll or a little smile in the classroom.

He doesn’t return the mirth, just greets her with a stern stare, because her little game is laughable in the terms of the game she doesn’t know she’s playing. This age-old game, the Solo stubborn competitiveness, the blowout fights, the I-hate-you, don’t-leave-me Ben was unconsentingly born into. And tomorrow, the ball’s gonna be in his court.

*

Ben does his very best to pretend like it’s a normal day. He ties his tie the same way. Puts his shoes on the right feet. Puts in his contacts, toasts his bagel for the same amount of time, stacks his lesson plans the same way he always does. The only change in his routine is a coat—it’s getting cold out there.

But as 2 PM draws closer and closer, he’s feeling like his skin cannot contain him. Like he is not the same shape as usual beneath his clothes. He always feels this way, to some degree, after a dinner at his father’s. These games they play usually stretch on for as many weeks as Han can stand to stay grounded, for as long as he can wheedle and pamper his latest Trophy into staying. But it’s never, ever been like this. Compartmentalizing has always worked, because his father exists after the workday, not within it. There has never been an overlap with Ben’s professional life, though, he supposes, it was only a matter of time. Even then, it’s never been someone Ben’s even been marginally attracted to. His and his father’s types are wildly different. Han likes them leggy, on the skinny side, painted faces, sleek blonde hair. This, this spillover—it’s crossing a damn line. Causing Ben to think of crossing lines he never would’ve dared to before. It’s been ringing through his head all morning: innapropriate conduct with a student. Innapropriate. Conduct. With a student. In-app-rop-riate…CON-duct…syncopated and reshuffled a million different ways.

He can’t believe he dropped that line on her last night.

He can’t believe he hadn’t dropped it sooner. The reaction it got.

He doesn’t know what possessed him. What’s wrong with him.

He wonders how much more he can get away with, here, on school grounds. He shouldn’t. He won’t.

Oh, he will. Oh, he fucking will. She is wearing his father’s sweatshirt from the pilots’ union. His! Father’s! Sweatshirt! She gives him a guilty little cringe when she notices him noticing, makes a show of trying to cover the emblem with her sleeves, but it’s seizing him again, that poker, that fist. Oh, little girl, you are playing a dangerous game. Even more so: that mirth is still in her eyes, although she’s doing her best to quash it, make her puppy-dog sad-face look real.

He doesn’t know how he makes it through the lecture. It helps that this is a regular class, a lecture he’s given before. He mechanically shuffles through discussion groups, making a point of ignoring Rey every time her hand shoots up, higher and higher each time, until, eventually, it starts to dip and flag, and soon she’s not raising it at all. He thinks for a moment about letting her wallow in it, not even looking at her when class is over, making her come to him, but he can’t resist a level stare, his finger crooked in her direction: come here. Fidgeting with the cuffs, she obeys, meandering slowly as everyone else files out. There’s not a class in this room after his. They have time.

Finally, she stands before him, the tiny parcel of him, and a little shiver goes over her at the sudden rushing emptiness of the auditorium, when before, it was so full, a buffer of humanity—witnesses—keeping her safe.

“I swear I didn’t know,” she blurts, before he says anything, so he stays silent, lets her sweat it out. “I didn’t!”

“You know, I’m not sure I believe that, Miss Nolan,” he dithers coldly. “You certainly made it clear you’re the type to do your homework.” Her lower lip trembles, and he raises an admonishing finger. “Don’t give me those crocodile tears, either. They might work on Han, but they don’t work on me.” This turns into an impudent little glare-pout, and she huffs.

“Look, can we just…act natural? Keep it civil? Please,” she adds. “I—I don’t want my grades to be in trouble because of…personal issues.” Her fists twist in the sleeves of that damn sweatshirt, and he snorts.

“You’re asking me to just…look the other way? When you come in here wearing your boyfriend’s clothes, acting all meek and precious?”

“We’re all adults, aren’t we?” she complains, flinging her hands up. He lessens the distance between them, almost toe-to-tiny-toe with her, and she draws her arms back in, shrinking a bit.

“You might think you’re all grown-up,” he whispers, leaning down to get close to her ear, watch her pulse again—of all the things to be entranced by—and she shivers. “But you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Do you. You have your little games. I have one big one. One big, long, scary fight with my father, whom you decided would make a nice little boytoy. And let me tell you something: neither of us like to lose very much. So.” He hears her gulp, her breath coming a little faster. “Walk away now, and you won’t get hurt. But if you wanna play…well, it sure would be fun to see you try.”

She finally pulls away then, stumbling back a few steps, breathing hard, and there’s not a hint of that sneaky mirth in her face now. She’s all baby pout, all indignation. “You—you,” she sputters, scuffing at the worn auditorium floor with one shoe.

“Me, what?” He knows he’s smirking, now, the way his father smirks, and she points at him.

“Don’t—just—ooohhh,” she growls, a frustrated, raspy little sound that goes straight in the things-to-jerk-off-to compartment. Then she’s snatching up her bag, making to leave.

“Or,” he sing-songs to her retreating back, “you could make it easier on all of us.” She spins, still glaring, but stops. She’s listening. “Pick a side. Pick the right side, I mean.” Oh, this is so dangerous. This is so inappropriate.

But he watches her lips part, her arm go slack, when she figures it out. He raises his eyebrows, inviting her to step closer—he shouldn’t, fuck—and he blinks, and the next thing he knows he’s hearing her beat-up chucks squeak on the hall floor as she straight-up runs away.

Until next time, then.

*

“Next time” comes two days later, a Friday, right before the weekend, and Ben is worked up in such a state. Forever anticipating the email that he’s being reprimanded for conduct, inappropriate conduct, with a student. Forever anticipating an email from Rey that she’s picking a side. Or that she’s dropped the class.

Studiously ignoring his father’s stream of messages, starting Wednesday night: wtf is your porblem.

My girl is all upset what did u do.

She wont tell me but ik u did smth.

Benjmain fuck

Besides his father’s tirade, nothing happens. A frustrating pile of nothing. No Rey. No HR office. So he’s all brimming energy when 2 PM on Friday rolls around.

She gets there late, and he’s almost sure it’s deliberate. Her cute little clumsy attempt to be part of the “game.”

She’s in a set of corduroy overalls and a chunky sweater, the weather having finally wrenched itself towards winter, nothing of his father’s on her, and he’s jumping with anticipation, curious what her “play” will be today. He realizes he hasn’t felt this alive at work in…well, probably never. He puts on his aloof face, doesn’t pay her any undue attention, pretends not to notice she’s lingered after class until she clears her throat from behind him, then, more pointedly, a second time.

“Something I can do for you, Miss Nolan?” he says, without turning around.

“You’re kind of a sicko, you know,” she says, and he whirls, gritting his teeth. Oh, this is good.

“How long’d you spend coming up with that one?” She stamps one little ankle-boot-clad foot and glares.

“I mean it! You’re—what kind of asshole turns his dad’s love life into a competition? Are you that much of a loser that you can’t meet women any other way?” She crosses her arms, then, looking pleased with herself. Little princess actually thinks she’s got him pinned.

“I don’t, usually,” he answers coolly, leaning against the podium. “Usually, I just push his buttons and he pushes mine. Despite how much he gets around, he almost never ends up with…something I want.” He lets his gaze burn into her, lets her tremble with the weight of his meaning. Another cheek-puffing huff, like a little fish gasping in open air.

“Hey, with you…maybe he at least doesn’t have to pop Viagra so often,” he tosses out, lets the crude flirtation of it redden her.

“Don’t be crass,” she spits. “I’m—we’re waiting.” And that piques his interest.

“You’re waiting, are you?”

“Uh-huh. Waiting to…to get to know him.” Oh, she’s handed him an ace on a silver platter, and she doesn’t even know it.

“And just how long have you been waiting, hmm?” He doesn’t need her answer, smells it on her, the way she’s chewing her cheek, her gaze arcing up towards the ceiling. Waiting a long time. As in: her whole life. As in: never, not once, not yet. “Ahh. Have you told him yet?”

“Told him what,” she whispers, flushing further, oh, she can’t bear it.

“That you’re a virgin.”

“You’re disgusting. You disgust me.”

“I told you what would happen if you didn’t walk away.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you!”

“No.” She’s gasping again, flailing, at his harsh admission. “Anyway, it’s too late now. You can drop him, but you and me? We’ve got the rest of the semester.” He knows this boldness is ill-advised, grounds for firing, hell, grounds for legal action, but she looks like she’s hot under the collar, looks as deliciously, miserably trapped as a rope bunny, and he knows he’ll see no consequences from her side.

“For—for what?” she chokes out, as if she doesn’t know, and it’s at this moment he grabs his bag and starts to walk out at a leisurely pace. “For what!” she calls after him, her voice bouncing off the high ceiling, off of all the empty chairs, still warm. As the distance grows, so, too, does his predatory smirk. Oh, he’s got her second-guessing herself now, on the hook, desperate to get away, desperate to come closer.

Silly little sparrow, all sure she can play the game. Doesn’t even know the rulebook, the precedent, doesn’t even know she’s a Trophy. And everyone knows trophies don’t play the games. They’re just the prize at the end of it.

Chapter Text

After-class face-offs with Rey are charming, amusing, but they can’t be an every-time thing. Oh, how he wishes they could! Alas, academia is nothing without its arduously long, insufferably stodgy department meetings. Committee meetings. Budget meetings. Meetings, meetings, meetings. As it stands, Monday the following week he gives her a breather, and she slips from the classroom with nary a glance in his direction once class ends. Wednesday, he has to cut class short for one of those dastardly meetings. Motherfucking, shitfuck, should’ve been an email meetings.

As such, he doesn’t see his father’s text until he’s home that evening, trying to grade without pulling out his hair or punching the wall or downing several more glasses of drink (one, tonight, he’s sticking with one). Family bbq at lake. Dont b n ask hole.

*asshoil

*asshole

It’s an opportunity too good to pass up—indeed, too dangerous to decline. Skipping out on it could put him a step behind his father in this game of theirs, one he’s not sure even Han has realized they’re playing, one Rey thinks she can play without knowing the rulebook, the absolute lore. A “family” barbecue, these days, consists of Han’s old boys’ club, their assorted wives and/or Trophies, and children legitimate and otherwise. In other words: a shitshow, one that could leave darling Miss Nolan a little frazzled and lost and overwhelmed…a little in need of comfort and someone to stick up for her…and he’ll be damned if it’s Han who’s there to do it instead of him.

Better yet, she sees his father’s life is a complete riot, a bunch of men still too hung up on their “glory days” (assuming such days existed to begin with), a life of suburban misery and the kinds of white-collar vices that accompany it. Then Ben swoops in, the better, more put-together man, and whisks her off to a true fairytale. Or something.

Surely it will be far too cool out for a proper lake barbecue, he thinks, but when he wakes up the next morning it’s sweltering hot, one last early-October heat spike, the summer’s dying jab, so that evening, he exchanges his button-down for a t-shirt and brings swim trunks with him. Lets himself get a little lost and dazzled on the drive down there, thinking of bare long legs, a little low-back one piece, heaven forbid a bikini, the kind with flimsy bow-tie strings…yeah, if she’s getting in the water, he sure as hell is, too.

He takes quick stock of the evening’s cast: dad’s old frat brother Lando, complete with current wife, new baby, and 2 of the 4 kids he gets partial custody of; longtime copilot “Chewie Louie,” perpetual bachelor, this time without a date; dad, of course, and then, beside him, she of the honeyglazed stares, she of the feigned innocence, front-row Rey Nolan. She’s hanging off his arm, but he’s too busy checking out the backend of Lando’s little lady as she stoops to unbuckle baby number ??? from its carrier. One would think this was something to pick a fight about, but Lando shares an appreciative eyebrow-wiggle with Han, which makes Ben’s upper lip curl, just a little.

If either of them has the nerve to ogle Rey like that once she’s where she belongs, he’ll knock them out cold, oh, he will.

“My favorite nephew,” hoots Lando when he sees Ben, drawing him in for a hug that’s already a little loose-limbed—someone’s been pregaming. Lando introduces his new wife, his baby, does Ben want to hold the baby? Some other time…one of the other Calrissian kids—Chevy? Diesel? (yes, they all have car-themed names)—knocks into Ben’s legs and then rockets away, laughing. Dad sends Rey back to the pickup to grab another six-pack, and she lopes off without even a glance at Ben, in one of those wrap skirts girls wear to beaches and a tank top. Aquamarine—that’s the name of the color her skirt is, and it makes the golden tones in her skin pop, and he has to look away.

“Your dad tells me his new lady friend is one of your students,” Lando simpers. “That’s gotta be awkward, I bet.”

“Why, because she’s just over 1/3 of his age?”

“Well, now…I suppose that’s one way to look at it.” Ben’s about to say something like it is simply how math works when Rey comes sauntering back up, already having tucked into one of the beers, dropping the rest of the six-pack on the picnic table with a clunk. “Professor,” she says coolly, then knocks back the rest of her can.

“Try not to overdo it, it’s a school night,” he answers, unthinking, and she levels a lazy glare at him before rejoining his father at the grill. Ben observes as she sticks a hand in Han’s back pocket and lets him show her how to flip a steak. Observes her peek back at Ben to see if he’s watching, then quickly look away again when she’s caught. Lando and Chewie are laughing at him, asking if he’s always this much of a hardass to his students, and he answers, easily, “Only the ones who are unlucky enough to end up at your tables,” and they laugh again. Rey wanders to another table where they have sides set up and picks at some fruit, and then she’s striding off towards the water, where a pier juts out into the deep part of the lake. She kicks her sandals off, dangles her feet down into the water. Ben does his best to look natural about it, waiting until he’s scarfed down a hot dog and the other adults are drunk enough that their laughter rings obnoxiously loud in his ears, until the baby starts crying, and then he joins her.

“Not eating, Miss Nolan?” he asks, and she shoots him a narrow-eyed glance. Ah, so she’s playing “too cool for school” tonight. Got it. She’s shed her tank top, and he can see that there is a two-piece swimsuit, bottom half still hidden from beneath her skirt, but there’s a disappointing lack of stringy bowties.

“I’m a vegetarian,” she answers, then takes a long drag on her cigarette.

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know.” She grunts, unmoved, and he tries, “Can I?” reaching for her cigarette, but she leans away.

“You shouldn’t smoke, you know,” she parrots, and he leans closer, and she leans farther away again.

“What do you think?” He jerks his head towards the party. “Of how the other half lives. My father’s half.”

“I think they’re a barrel of laughs,” she answers, doing that wide-eyed, innocent, what’s-the-problem-officer stare. Her hand fiddling with her waistband.

“It doesn’t bother you that Han can’t keep his eyes to himself, then?”

“Everyone has eyes, Professor.” A sad little smile ghosts the corners of her mouth. “What good are they, if they’re not for looking?”

“So it wouldn’t bother you if I looked.” She huffs and stubs out her cigarette.

“That’s so inappropriate,” she whispers, looking at him from under her eyelashes like a black-and-white movie star. “I think I’ll pass.” Then she’s slipping from the pier, that beach-girl wrap skirt sitting untied and empty next to him, like she’s just evaporated. Thank goodness he thought to bring his bag with him. He quickly changes into his swim shorts and then catches sight of her tank top, lying discarded a few boards away, and, on a whim, he takes it, leaves his own t-shirt in its stead.

He follows her out towards the middle of the lake, and she turns, treading water, her hair slicked back to show the fullness of her face, the waves lapping at her water-pearled cleavage, her bare shoulders. “Are you following me?” she accuses, and he raises his eyebrows.

“Now, that would be inappropriate.” As if he hadn’t insinuated, just a week ago, that she’d be calling him daddy soon enough. She rolls her eyes and dives, and he loses sight of her, and then she’s resurfacing behind him, halfway back to the pier. He follows again as she touches its lip, then ducks under, and when he peeks, he sees her hazel eyes glittering at him in the headspace, like a crocodile watching for prey.

Tiny, baby crocodile.

He joins her, taking care not to bump his head, then says, “Clever. The lengths you’ll go to, just to get me alone.”

“You’re vile,” she answers, without bite, floating a few feet back. So he floats a few feet forward, his own feet brushing the lakebed, knowing hers won’t for a good few yards. “Why does it rile you so much, Professor? Can’t you just mind your own business?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he rumbles, and her gaze sours.

“I don’t belong to you,” she says. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

“So you admit it. You don’t belong to him.”

“I’m—”

“So what’s stopping you?” He glides just a little closer, close enough that he could lean in for a kiss. “What is he giving you that I couldn’t, hmm? Tell me.”

“I like him,” she answers, again with that innocent moue. “I want to get to know him. Is that so hard to understand?”

“Money, then?”

“Fuck you.”

“Ah, it’s money.” He reaches out and thumbs the plush bed of her bottom lip, a thing he’s been thinking about obsessively, a thing he’s gonna think about even more now. She snaps her teeth at his finger, but he pulls back quickly, laughing as they click on empty air. “Cute. You know why I think you haven’t made the right choice yet, though?”

“Don’t care what you think, thanks,” she mumbles, but she’s holding his gaze, unmoving.

“It’s because…” He hovers closer, their foreheads nearly grazing, and she sinks lower in the water, her mouth covered. “You know he’s too dumb to figure out the real you. Uh-huh. Under that pretty little oh-so-sweet exterior, there’s a scrappy little feral thing that thinks no man can tame it. So it’s safer, this way. Aren’t I right?” She bobs away, bobs up, spits out water.

“Even if you were,” she answers, “what about that, exactly, do you mean for me to give a shit about?” He growls, half-playful, and lunges to grab her waist, enjoying the way she squirms, all for show, and then stills.

“I see you. The real you. And it’s not so nice. But I happen to like that.”

“You don’t know me.”

Underwater, he lets his index finger brush up the side of her, feels her ribcage expand and contract with a hushed breath. Flicks the bottom edge of her bikini top. She looks away, but doesn’t comment. “I get it. I do,” he breathes. “You like to be chased. So I’ll chase. But if you let it go on for too long…well, you might be in trouble.”

“Oh? And what kind of detention can you give a grown woman, Professor?” she asks, her gaze flicking back up, and he watches it play out on her face: desire. She’s pleased by this. But also indecision. Guilt. Fear.

“It involves a belt.” She gasps, her cheeks coloring, visible in the watery moonlight glittering off the waves at the edge of the pier, and he laughs, reaches up one hand to brush her face. “Yes, like that…that’s about how red your ass will be when I get done.”

From far off, he hears his father calling for her drunkenly, and he lets go of her waist, watching intently as she wavers.

“Run along, then,” he singsongs, and she lets out a breath she’s been holding and slips back out into the moonlit water, elbowing up onto the pier. He hears her shuffle around for her missing tank top, and after he hears her footsteps hurrying back to land, he peeks out himself—she’d taken the bait, running along to meet his father with only Ben’s own t-shirt on, falling to her mid-thigh, her wrap skirt tossed over one shoulder. He doesn’t even bristle as he sees Han lean to plant a sloppy kiss on her, just smiles to himself as she wriggles away uncomfortably, face pinching at the taste of stale beer and old meat.

*

Rey wheedles Han into driving her back home instead of staying the night. Truth be told, the man is horny when he’s drunk, and he’s often drunk, and spending the night fending him off doesn’t sound like something she has energy for tonight.

“I’m starting my…you know,” she hisses coyly, and when he gives her a quizzical look, she rolls her eyes and says “Aunt Flo’s in town,” like she’s embarrassed about it, like it’s fucking 1950 and men are fragile. “Oh,” he coughs, then says, “Yeah, yeah, arright. I’ll just…let you go deal with that, then.” He shouldn’t really be driving, but if she tells him that, he’ll just pick a fight, so she just double-checks her seatbelt and grips her seat tightly as the car wobbles, like he wobbles, until she feels as drunk with motion-sickness as he is with beer, and soon enough they’re pulling up at her dorm.

“Just—rest up, or whatever,” he hiccups, “’n I’ll see you in a few days. I mean, just let me know when…when your lil’ problem’s taken care of.” Little problem. She wonders if that’s what he calls his son, his mistresses, his clear and abundant substance abuse. She puts on a bubblegum-bright smile and blows him a kiss before closing the car door.

She cuts through the common area of the suite she shares with her roommate, Rose, and closes the door to her bedroom, sitting on the floor in the dark for a moment, her swimsuit bottoms damp still but going stiff, and it’s as she’s wriggling out of them and reaching under the shirt to undo her swim top that she remembers—the shirt. Bastard stole her shirt like some kind of pervert, which, she supposes, he is, and left his tee in its place. What is with this guy and his father? Seeing her in Han’s shirt had him ready to blow a gasket, and now this?

She really hadn’t known.

Well, she’d known but then she hadn’t. She met Han out at a club, and he was nice enough, a gentleman wearing a swindler’s grin, and she went with it because this was the kind of thing that didn’t last, this was easy, and he’d move on soon enough. And no, he hadn’t told her his last name, but she’d sneaked a peek at his license pretty much the second she’d had a chance. Not like she has the resources to run background checks on anyone, but she’d thought, huh. What a coincidence—same last name as the gruff, stern-browed professor she’s taking this semester.

She’d known from the minute he said My son’s coming for dinner, you’ll like him. Good old Benny. The only kind of man she could imagine getting away with calling Professor Solo “Benny” was this man. As the well-adjusted, sensible person she is, Rey had known immediately the smart thing to do would be to make an excuse, head home, find some sanitized reason to break it off. But then there’s the troublemaker. The part of Rey that kind of likes to push shit over and see it break, like a cat. So she’d stuck around to see what happened.

In no small part because she’d had a capital-T Thing for Professor Solo pretty much since she saw him. In the faculty directory. Before she’d ever registered for his class.

“Hello, duh, the man is gorge,” Rose had said as they’d compared schedules—she had Professor Solo, too, but in an earlier section, for Romanticism. “If I’m gonna hear dick-jerking bullshit about Keats and Wordsworth for three hours a week, I might as well look at something pretty. I mean, sheesh, the man’s ass is built like two Broadview anthologies—stacked side by side—”

“Jesus,” Rey had laughed, but her cheeks were pink because it was true.

There was this constant problem she had, this primate urge that saw a man built like Professor Benjamin Solo—and, funnily enough, his fucking father—that made all her sense-making faculties go out the window. No thoughts, head empty, save the ongoing chant of big man. Large! Yuge! Strong! Big, large man…tall…Big Hand…

Big, big motherfucking hands.

Her inner troublemaker, the one who liked to watch everything burn—She-Devil, Rey calls her—had whispered, stay, stay. Won’t he look so cute blushing and running away? Broadview anthologies…two of ‘em…hate to have to read ‘em but love to watch ‘em leave…so she’d unwisely stayed put. She-Devil took the stage the minute she had the chance, and Rey heard her own lips making some absolutely burn-in-hell-worthy joke about calling her “mommy,” and the absolute forge, the molten metal bouncing off an anvil look in his eyes when he’d said he knew she really wanted the opposite—

“As in, ‘call me daddy?’ AS IN PROFESSOR DADDY?” Rose, shouting, jubilant, as Rey came home and recounted the awful, inadvisable, absolute shit-show of a date she’d just been on. “Ugh, why do such good things happen to such bad people?! You are bad.”

“He had to have been drunk,” Rey defended. “It’s—it was so inappropriate, there’s no way he meant—”

“Inappropriate? You’re dating the man’s father. All bets are off, sweetie.” Rose let out a whoop and then a cackle, hugging a pillow to her chest and rolling around with it, all Uuungh, YES, daddy Ben, ravish me…

She felt a little bit bad for Han. Just a tiny bit, though, because Han was kind of repulsive. “I’m not dating him, remember?” Rey had whined. “Just, you know…having a little fun.”

Any illusion that Professor Solo’s comment had been made in a moment of poor judgment kind of flew out the window after class the next day, though. He’d been crystal fucking clear that she was now the prize in some kind of weird, twisted competition between him and his father. Being, again, sensible and well-adjusted, Rey recognized immediately how unhealthy it was, how absolutely toxic, how dangerous, even. So when he’d dropped that line about picking him, like it was reasonable, like it was easy, she’d done the mature, sensible thing and ran far, far away.

“Seriously, dude?” Rose had demanded during their study date, when they went over the details in hushed voices. Smacking Rey with a manila folder, she’d added, “And you didn’t stay? Dude, it’s, like, a no-brainer. Like, I’m pissed at you. Hell, if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I’d tell you to give him my number.”

“It’s such a bad idea,” Rey had hissed back. “We need to maintain a professional relationship—”

“May I remind you that you are dating his father? Oh, sis, you are in it now,” Rose had answered, shaking her head in disbelief. “Come on, Rey. Would it hurt you to drop the good girl act this one time?”

“It’s not an act! I—I can be a good girl and still have fun, just, you know, in my private life.”

“Por que no los dos, bitch. Have your cake and eat it, too. Goodness knows, if it’s him, there’s enough to go around.”

“Rosie, I just…no.”

“Come on,” Rose pushed. “I’m with She-Devil on this one! You’re both adults, and, like, yeah, there’s the issue of grades, but if you can keep it on the DL for, like, three more months, what’s stopping you? He has just as much to lose from publicity as you do. You’re, like, basically equals now.”

“I’m done talking about this,” Rey whined, turning back to her studies, but She-Devil had crowed. She wanted more.

And it was dangerous. To want more. To want. Wanting was a thing that never got her anywhere good. Wanting was a thing that got her hurt. So, against She-Devil’s protestations, she had marched up to Professor Solo after class two days later and told him he was a sicko, a sick pervert, and a loser, because she was sensible and well-adjusted, and it was the truth.

Had she quivered inside to know that he didn’t really compete with his dad this way—that it was just for her? No.

And then he’d caught her off-guard with the Viagra comment, and somehow figured out her complete and total virginity, and she knew she had made a very big mistake, because Professor Benjamin Solo intended to play for keeps, either way, and especially now.

“No, I do not want Professor Solo to take my virginity, that’s repulsive,” she’d spat at Rose that night during another details-slash-peer-pressure session.

“Have sex with his dad, then,” Rose answered, crossing her arms. “Go on! I dare you! Do it! You won’t, because you want it to be him. Broadview editions 1 through fucking 15, baby. And I bet more than a Wordsworth of man-meat—”

“Don’t be vulgar!”

“Not gonna believe you until you have sex with his dad.”

Rey had marched to Han’s dead-set on doing just that, but she’d wilted at his front door. Because she was well-adjusted, and mature, and not because she wanted it to be Professor Solo who popped her cherry, but because she was smart enough to know you shouldn’t have sex until you’re ready! That’s all. And she wasn’t ready. And that was okay.

And tonight—

Rey inhales the collar of her professor’s shirt and hates herself for it. Smells like light sweat, juniper, the green and musky smell of lake water. Brain-fryingly large, from a big, large man, with Big Hands. Massive.

His dark eyes flashing that dangerous, furnace-light, forest-fire sunspot glare, predatory, self-assured, sure to burn her right up like wayward chaff. Following her to the pier. Following her into the water. Following her under the dock. Big man with Big Hand, chasing us, yay. Him floating closer, her retreating. The sudden, belly-flopping realization that he was standing on the lakebed and she was not, could not find a spot of solid ground, in more than one sense.

Twisting the things she said. Looking at her. Burning at her.

Her hands, twisting in the hem of his shirt, now. I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone. Without saying it, he said, you will. She feels a spot of lake silt on her inner thigh.

His thumb on her lip. Calling her cute when he yanked back, not letting her bite him. Hands on her waist, big, so big, touching the bottom of her bikini top, hovering there, as if to say I could.

Wet, and not because of the lake.

The She-Devil quaked at the prospect of being known. He couldn’t know her—could he? Not really. Nobody who ever knew her like that ever stayed, except maybe Rose. And who would want to? She’s a mess. Scrappy little feral thing, now panting on the floor of her dorm, in her professor’s t-shirt, making tight, sloppy circles without caring about the build-up because the build-up has already fucking happened, the second he told her it was a school night.

It involves a belt. She bunches the hem of the shirt in her mouth, bites down, not willing to wake Rose up, not ready to talk about the Very Big It. The Very Big Hands. Could touch, thumb-to-thumb, finger-to-finger, around her waist. Could swallow her, in hand, in mouth, in eyes, completely. How red had she been? How red had she been, and could her ass possibly be that red—? She cums with a sharp cry, a few more hiccupping little wails, feeling dirty, feeling torn, feeling like she’s still underneath that dock, her feet unable to reach the bottom no matter how hard she tried without suffocating.

“Rey…” A sleepy voice outside, knuckles rapping on her door. “Are you crying?” Face ablaze, she cries out, “No! No, um—just, fuckin’ screaming into a pillow. Sorry to wake you, Rosie.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” Rose yawns. “Just kinda zoning out, you know. Can’t read another word.” Rey waits, hoping she’ll leave, then finally relents, pulls on a pair of sleep shorts, and opens the door, hoping she doesn’t look as wrecked as she feels.

“Cool shirt,” Rose says. “Wanna tell me what you were screaming about? Wait—shit, you were out with your secret sugar daddy, weren’t you? Did something happen?”

Rey lets her in with a sigh and they sit on the bed while she recounts the whole story.

“Holy shit,” Rose says, about the following, and then “holy shit,” about the scrappy little feral thing, and then, wheezing, “holy fucking shit, Rey,” slugging Rey in the arm.

“You’re an idiot,” Rose chants, “you’re such an idiot, you’re such an idiot sometimes! Fuck, I love you, but why the hell are you back here and not over his knee taking your fucking punishment?! Girl, damn. Wait—is that his shirt?” Rose squeals, inhumanly loud and high, bunching the shirt in her hands. “You are in so deep.”

“Deeper than a fucking Cold War spy,” Rey mumbles huskily. “Fuck, like, I don’t know what to do.”

“Do him, Rey, for the love of Keats do him, and then come home and tell me all about it, I am literally begging you!”

“You are such a bad influence!”

“Says the girl dating her crush’s father! His father. Seriously, Rey.” Rose puts her hands on Rey’s shoulders. “I’m your friend. At the beginning of this I would’ve been like, girl, hell no. Don’t date a senior citizen, especially if that senior citizen is your hot professor’s dad, especially if your hot professor has weird daddy issues and is being a competitive chauvinist about it. But you know that. You know that, and you did it anyway, babe. You wanna be straight-laced and good and mature? Cut Grandfather Solo loose, drop Daddy Solo’s class, and pretend it never happened. But are you going to?”

“I really should.”

“But are you.”

Rey’s silence speaks volumes, big, Broadview volumes, fuck-you expensive ones, and Rose says, “You’re not. So if you’re gonna make bad decisions—like, I’ll remind you, every single stupid, zealous-for-the-world young adult at this school—at least pick the hot and interesting ones. At least.” Rose takes a breath, then says, “Trust me. If you’re gonna live with a She-Devil on your shoulder, when you go She-Devil, go all in. You’re just gonna be miserable with this…joint-custody bullshit.”

Rey takes a few deep breaths, then says, “I can’t think about this right now. I—I have class in the morning.”

“You have Solo tomorrow, too,” Rose points out. “Isn’t this the exact right time to be thinking about this?”

“Fuck,” Rey exhales. “On second thought, maybe I’m getting sick…”

“You’ll be okay,” Rose answers, grinning, tousling Rey’s hair. “You’ve got this. You have two generations of big, strong men fighting over you. This is your boss bitch era, this is your moment” (pronounced the French way). “You can’t lose. Okay?”

“Okay,” she answers, giving her best friend a weak smile, and then they go to bed.

*

She marches into Professor Solo’s class with…still not a great idea of what she’s doing. She and She-Devil are at war. So she dressed up, but didn’t overdo it, just a cute button-down dress she knows she looks great in, a light sweater over it, leggings, a good pair of lace-up black boots. Rose had insisted on great makeup, but she let the seductress-red lipstick blur and fade during lunch and an anxiously-consumed hot latte, smudged off most of the eyeshadow, leaving a thin patina of glitter, a hint, an implication.

She barely takes a word in the entire class. She-Devil wants to storm up there and grab him by the stupid skinny tie and kiss his face off, while good, mature, sensible Rey—who runs the show, might she add—wants to give him a cordial head nod and scurry off in the opposite direction. Suddenly he’s standing in front of her, looking down at her. “You’re quiet today, Miss Nolan,” he rumbles, and she answers, fumbling but flippant, “Sorry, Professor. Think I might be coming down with something.”

Hands-down, in front of God and everyone, this motherfucker raises his eyebrows and says, “What, did you go swimming or something? Little cold for that, don’t you think?” A totally not-natural and not-normal assumption to make, much less say, if they’re playing it cool, and she is totally starting to doubt Rose’s assessment that he has just as much to lose as she does by keeping it hush-hush. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t take the bait, and he moves on.

Even as she’s packing up, she’s not intending to stay. Even as her feet are carrying her down the few steps to the auditorium floor she’s thinking this is a very bad idea. Even as she’s waiting for him to turn around she’s thinking I’m outta here.

“Something on your mind, Rey?” he asks, leaning against the lectern, and, oh, Jesus, not really. No thoughts except Big Hands. So she just kind of stands there like an idiot staring at the ground, working her mouth and willing words to come into it. “Cat got your tongue?” Almost fondly. He reaches out and touches her bottom lip again, startling her, and this time she doesn’t try to bite.

“Now, I know you’re stubborn,” he’s whispering, “and you’re maybe finding it hard to say the words, but I need you to say them. Just tell me you’ve chosen a side and this little game of ours can be done. Hmm?” Her lips pucker and she pulls her face away from his hand. Just like that, She-Devil raises an idea, and Rey runs with it, having nothing else to run with but, well, literally running away again, and the first time was humiliating enough.

“Wouldn’t it be a little embarrassing to only win on a technicality?” she asks, and his lips turn up into a wry smile. He crosses his arms, and oh fuck the way the corduroy suit jacket capital-B Bulges when his arms flex—her mouth is dry, her mouth is watering again—she looks away.

“How do you figure that?”

“You talk a big game,” she answers, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “but you haven’t really put in much effort, come to think of it. And no, your little why I would beat my dad in a fight presentation doesn’t count.”

“Ohhh,” he says, his voice getting all growly, but, no, she won’t lose her nerve. “This is getting good.”

“Fact is, you and I haven’t done much that isn’t ogling each other in class or fighting about your father…whereas your dad, he—he courted me.” She sniffs, hating the word, but knowing it’ll rile Professor Solo. “He put in the work, all on his own, instead of just being reactive and one-upping somebody.”

“Ahh, so you have been ogling me.” He chuckles, at the same time dark and merry, and it makes her spine feel all wiggly. “Are you saying I still haven’t chased you enough, Miss Nolan?”

“You haven’t so much chased me,” she nearly-whispers, “as happened across me and gotten territorial. So—so that’s a no.”

“Hmm.” He taps the bridge of his nose, thinking, then steps forward and puts a hand on her face, looking at it, like he’s holding a piece of antique china, or checking out his manicure, not so much looking at her face as looking at the hand-to-face ratio, and oh fuck she’s thinking Big Hand thoughts again. “Given how dismal my father’s courtship tends to be, I’d say that’s a rather low bar,” he teases, and then he’s brushing back the baby hairs near her temples, like she’s just this little doll he’s sort of fussing with. “But all right, Rey. I’ll humor you.” She makes to duck away again, but his other hand’s there, catching her waist, like he did last night, saying, “Easy, now,” like he’s soothing a scrappy little feral thing. “What do you want, then? How do I court such a wild creature?”

“Are you trying to cheat, Professor?” she whispers, pouting up at him, a challenge in her eyes (she hopes).

“I’ve never been afraid to play dirty.”

“Figure it out,” she hisses hotly, and with a sort of little growl, he’s suddenly kissing—well, not so much kissing her as going straight in with his teeth, right for her bottom lip, sucking on it in a way she did not expect would be so erotic, and when he pulls back his eyes are oh, the-Amazon-is-burning, the-sun-is-exploding, firelit white-hot hungry. His thumb, stretching up from her hip just under the hem of her sweater, caressing the soft skin below her bottom rib through the much-thinner fabric of her dress, and she locks her knees so they don’t wobble. “I’d say that’s a start,” he whispers. “Be ready at eight. I’ll pick you up.” He releases her, gets back to packing up his shit. She swallows, pants a little, unlocks her knees. Lets them wobble, just a bit, while his back is turned, and then he’s heading out.

“I need to study,” she retorts, finally, and he turns around and walks backwards, the whole dense mountain of him.

“It’s a Friday, Miss Nolan. Live a little.”

“Wait—how do you know where I live?” Just as he’s backing out the door, he says, soft enough that it’s a murmur, but loud enough to echo in the empty auditorium:

“I’ll find you.”

Chapter Text

Rose has a pair of lungs on her. Oh, yes, the decibels her banshee-screams reach as Rey recounts the circumstances of tonight’s date are absolutely inhuman. Every bat in the area has gone blind, sonar ruined forever, planes dropping from the sky.

“You bitch. You bitch! Seriously, how can you go and provoke an absolute morsel of a man like that and then come in here and say auhhh, no, maybe I’m feeling sick, maybe I GHOST HIM?” At the end, Rose’s voice takes on a mocking, whiny quality that Rey’s a teeny bit offended by. Rose cups Rey’s cheeks and leans in close and says, “You, my friend, are the stupidest genius dumbass harlot I have ever met, and you are 1000 percent going wherever the hell he takes you.” She laughs manically, and Rey wrings her hands.

“He’s intense, though? Like, fucking scary intense?”

“Like, dangerous, or, like, daddy dangerous? Like, he’s gonna kidnap you and I’m never gonna see you again, or he’s gonna make you squirt without even touching you?”

“You’re disgusting!” Rey swats at Rose, who deftly ducks.

“Okay, so, the latter, then. Lingerie it is.”

“No, Rosie!”

“Yes, Reybie.” Rose is already flouncing towards her room, and Rey hears drawers sliding open, the click-clack of makeup products gathered in eager arms.

“But—”

“Shush!” Dragging her, now, to the bathroom, scrubbing at the remnants of this morning’s makeup with a cotton pad.

“Rose, what if—”

“Zip it, adulteress!” Holding up one dress, then another, to her frame, making humming sounds of approval or disdain. Rey opens her mouth, again, to protest, and Rose promptly shoves a bonbon into it and starts brushing out Rey’s hair. “No words. Let momma work, dahling. Sit here and think about Daddy Ben’s big old bitey teeth and simmer.”

That’s about all she’s good for right now, anyway.

*

Rey remembers when she met Han. Of course she does. She-Devil invariably wreaks greater havoc if she’s not fed a scrap of bad-girl mojo every now and then, so Rey appeases her by going clubbing, dancing until she can’t stand up anymore, saying an emphatic yes to molly when it’s offered.

And the men. Of course, the men. (Once, a woman, too.)

She knows the clubs they frequent—the lonely, middle-aged folk who are absolutely desperate for a little bit of sweetness to the eye and sugar to the ear. She-Devil’s feet always wander that direction when she’s allowed to be in charge. It’s…invigorating: to have the rapt, reverent affection of a recent divorcee, an overtaxed CEO, the kinds of people who love with their wallets and wonder why it’s never enough. Rey tried the sugar daddy websites for a little while, but they always want clear rules, want more than she’s willing to give. This way, she can get what she wants, soothe She-Devil’s rampant urges, and, well, it’s basically community service, too.

Okay, so they don’t know she’s their sugar baby—a lot of them probably think of her as a girlfriend, which, like, probably sucks for them—but it’s not like they don’t have the means. It’s not like they want for anything. And honestly, it’s not really about the money, either. Rey does okay for herself making coffee at a shop a few mornings a week, and the endowment the university gives to foster kids means she’s got a free ride, anyway.

It's about…well. If you honestly sat her down and asked her what it was about, why she needs, she couldn’t tell you. It’s carnal, it’s indefinable. It’s selfish. That’s what it is. Proximity to these men, these people who are sure they’re everyone’s main focus, who have never been told otherwise. They step out on their wives, they neglect their children, they blow through blow and booze and yachts like it’s all just confetti, sucked from some great universal carpet into the great vacuum force that is their existence. They consume, they don’t know how to do anything else, and it’s captivating. That’s as close as Rey’s gotten to a definition for her…pathological yearning, anyway. It’s certainly a justification for her actions, the fact that she’s a parasite—because she is. And so what? They are, too, it’s just that they have the money to act like they aren’t.

It's addictive, too, the fact that she’s got something their money can’t buy.

Sex. Oh, sex sells, and so does the lack of sex, apparently. She dances close, preens, impresses them with her ability to fake her way through the topics they deem intelligent, makes them think she really cares about who they are, deep down, in a way their children and mistresses and escorts don’t. The very first time, she lucked into it: she was 17 and a half, had had a fake ID since she was 15, and he wouldn’t have cared anyway, but when she gave him doe eyes, said I want to wait—said, I’m waiting to fall in love for the first time…but something tells me, soon enough, it could be you—she expected he’d drop her right then.

She’d just been scared, that’s the truth, but he’d salivated. All but fallen to his knees and worshipped her chastity, her maturity, her moral compass. That’s how it always goes, and she revels, secretly, in being the one person in their life who tells them no, in being the focus of their obsession because of it. They shower her with gifts, with cash, with anything, all of the things that stand proxy to love’s empty space inside them, until She-Devil gets bored and tells them they’re just too broken, that they’re holding her back, that she’s young and needs space to live her life—one of the thousand excuses she has any time she has to be the one to end it.

Because it always ends. Thank fuck.

*

But he’s different. That’s what worries her. Hell if she knows what it is. She’s thinking this as she stands, primped and precious, in the parking lot of her dorm building, watching for him—he’s not like his father, or the myriad men who’ve stood in Han’s place over the years. Or he doesn’t seem that way, anyway. Where they’re empty, he’s…full. Brimming over with something a little too bright to look at, a little too hot to touch.

Full with the thing she’s full of, in the place where love should be: want.

She tried to explain the feeling, once, to Rose, the wanting, and Rose said, “Want, like, what, though?”

There is no answer. It’s the feeling of needing to claw pieces of the world to your chest like so many scattered pearls, To eat until you’re miserable, then eat some more. To seek out any sense of feeling, anything happening, as much as you can, no matter how dangerous, no matter how hurtful—like time’s running out. Where Han and his ilk’s consumption is passive, a simple consequence of their self-centeredness, Rey’s—and, she suspects, Professor Solo’s—is obsessive. Pathological. Reactive, frantic, savage.

What do we do, if you get what you want? she asks the parking lot, silently, scanning it again for any sign of him. Do we eat each other up?

The parking lot is silent. No—it’s purring: an engine entering the other end of it, rattling and throaty, suddenly gaining on her with a vigor that almost has her looking around the lot anxiously, as though the other vehicles may wake up and give chase. The motorbike rounds the aisle, dusklight glinting off of chrome and varnish like sparks off a newborn blade, and the rider removes his helmet, dark hair falling in tousled tufts around his face: Professor Solo. He squints in the low light, studying her, and she’s pinned like an insect on a board for a moment, and then he raises one leather-gloved hand, palm up, and beckons like he’s coaxing a dog out from an alley, some scrappylittleferalthing, and she scowls even as she obeys.

She stops a few paces from the bike, regarding him dubiously. She lets him think it’s a face-off, when really she’s silently evaluating her outfit: a silky, gem-blue dress that hugs all the right curves; she’ll have to hike up the skirt some, if she’s to straddle the bike, but the fleece-lined tights underneath mean she’ll still be decent. Thank goodness she fought Rose on the spindly heels and opted for platform boots instead. Her hair’s gonna be fucked, though. He leans forward, propping an arm on the handlebar, and raises one eyebrow. “Must I give you instructions, Miss Nolan?”

“I don’t know what you usually do when you show up at your students’ dorms, so you tell me,” she quips, sucking the chilly fall air into her nostrils, soothed by the bite. He laughs that dark, mean, surprised laugh and says, “Get on the bike, Rey.” Cocks his head, eyes twinkling dangerously. “Or I can throw you over my lap like fresh prey…maybe you’d like that more, actually.” Rey spurs herself into moving, doubting he actually would—would he? He wouldn’t—and throws a leg over behind him, trying very hard not to think about fucking Broadview anthologies, or how her thighs go wider accommodating him than the fucking bike. With a huff, he reaches back for her arm, yanks her closer—wider still—then guides her hands down to his waist, where they hover stiffly until he impatiently squeezes them around himself.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been on a bike before,” he grumbles, and she huffs, fighting to keep from touching any more of him, from letting her thighs really flank him, from touching his broad, hard back with her face, her belly, her tits. “I guess it suits you,” she answers, lets him stew over it, can practically hear him as he reaches back again to pass her his helmet.

“And what do you mean by that, hmm?”

“Oh…nothing.” He regards her for another long moment, his jaw working, before she finally says, “Just, you know, it’s exactly what I’d expect from a man who never outgrew his Oedipus complex.” At that, he snorts, then chokes out a laugh.

“Isn’t that men who want to fuck their mothers?”

“They want to kill their fathers, too! Oh…but, then, I guess it has been awhile since you were in undergrad, hasn’t it?” Rey says the latter with a syrup-sweet tone to her voice, a little bat of the lashes, but can’t conceal a triumphant smirk when Professor Solo rolls his eyes and looks ruffled. Still twisted around, he fusses with the helmet, putting it over her head for her, then raps on it with his knuckles, making her jump and bat his hands away. He grins. “A little big on you.” She’s grateful for the distance it provides—when she slouches forward again to adjust her…uhh, grip…it’s okay to roll her head forward. Because the helmet is touching him. Not her face. Just before he gets the bike rolling, he murmurs something, maybe tiny little pixie, but what’s worse—what she will go to sleep thinking about—is feeling the low hum in his barrel trunk through her whole fucking body when he speaks.

It feels like an illicit thrill. All of it: the night air feeling somehow colder, more alive, all exposed on the back of a bike like this. Professor Solo, warm and solid in front of her—between her—no, not that, she’s not thinking about that!—and he’s humming, only snatches of which she can actually hear through the helmet and the rushing wind, but she can feel it. The bike at once a solid, steady thing and a fulcrum, wont to tip over, at least in Rey’s inexperienced mind. She has the unbidden, absurd thought that, despite being part of her fair share of midlife crises, none of her other sugar daddies have taken her on a motorbike.

Consumed as she is by the rush of it all, Rey kind of forgets to be anxious about, you know, him taking her to a remote cabin somewhere, locking her in a basement. Forgets she’s technically dating his father. Thus, technically cheating on her boyfriend. With her professor. Anyway, suddenly she looks up and they’re in a more tucked-away part of town, outside something called the Smash House, which, to be honest, sounds like a brothel in a really unsubtle way, more so for the pack of whooping twentysomething men spilling out of its front.

Once he cuts the engine—once Rey’s surfaced, shelled like an egg from the helmet’s humid confines, breathless and wide-eyed—she breaks into him laughing smugly at said breathlessness as soon as she can. “This is a little on the nose even for you, Professor,” she says sweetly, disembarking with fawn-wobbly legs, covering the wobble by smoothing her skirt and brushing invisible dust off her tights. “Didn’t you ever learn how to treat a lady?”

Instantly he’s crowding her, that same toothy gleam in his eye, toe-to-toe. “You’re no lady, Miss Nolan,” he answers, soft and dangerous, eyeing her bottom lip again, she’s pretty sure—what is with this guy and her damn lip?—and when she reflexively steps back with one foot, he blocks it on the other side in such a way that she pivots, and now she’s trapped, her back against the bike, which still thrums with residual warmth. “Ladies don’t date my father. Ladies don’t date his son.”

“Who says I’m dating you?” she asks, trying to keep her tone light. “Isn’t the point to convince me to? Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“Hmm,” he answers, husky and deep, turning his laser eyes on her right shoulder, where her jacket’s slipped down, showing off…not much—the strap of her dress—but at least he’s not staring at her mouth anymore.

“And bringing me to a place with a strip club name doesn’t exactly win you any points.” He laughs at that, a full-throated, belly-rooted laugh, a sound she…doesn’t think she’s ever heard before. It’s pretty. Too fucking pretty, everything about him. Want, hisses She-Devil. Wantwantwantwantwant.”

“It’s not a strip club, little pixie.” His hand comes up and she nearly flinches, tries to look cool about it, and he smoothes her helmet hair under his palm and oh his hand is so warm and when he tucks a strand behind her ear his nails flit across her scalp in a way that’s just—his mouth is moving fuck, he’s talking—“It’s a whole lot more fun than that.” He steps back and she finally inhales, even the air betraying her, smelling of him and autumn, all up close and wantable. “Come,” he adds softly, oh, stray dog in his alley she is, and then he holds out his hand.

She cuts her eyes at his palm and then back up to his face and then decisively, head high, back straight, she strides past him without taking it, beating him to the door of whatever the hell Smash House is.

*

It turns out to be far more literal than she expected. It is an alehouse-slash-place where you can literally smash things. They have to sign a waiver to get in. She’s…intrigued. It is a strange place for a first date, perhaps stranger than the man who took her to his horse farm and talked to the horses about her as if that was flirtation. The guy who talks them through available rooms—who sounds too bored to work at such a high-octane place—says there’s a few with televisions. Televisions you can just beat the shit out of, recreationally!

She’s kind of excited, actually.

Professor Solo knows it, too. He’s giving her that Cheshire-cat smile, eyes cryptic, as the room attendant walks them numbly through safety gear and instructions. The suits they wear, kinda Hazmat-style, because, again, flying shards holy shit, are decidedly unsexy, which makes Rey breathe a silent sigh of relief: if it’s cold, he won’t be able to see her nipples, and she won’t have to look at—think about—not that she does, but come on, the man is…! Anyway. There is a table where they can pick up baseball bats or hammers, and then they’re set loose on this room full of plates and cups and flimsy wooden furniture, there’s an old stereo set, a speaker—Rey hefts the hammer in her hands eagerly, her eyes on a very expensive-looking turquoise vase, but then Professor Solo pulls her back by the shoulder and spins her around and it’s not fair, that his hands are warm enough to feel through the suit, and they’re in a room alone—he laughs at her wild expression and pulls her safety goggles down, makes sure they fit. It’s almost sweet. Almost—if only the goggles buffered the Mount Saint Helen brimstone in his eyes.

They work up quite a sweat, the both of them. And not for the reasons she was kind of expecting—no, would have very much said no to. It turns out stereos are full of all kinds of things that sparkle when broken. With every broken piece of china Rey kind of wants to look around and make sure a grownup isn’t watching. So she lets out a few elated whoops—so what? Hammers get heavy really fast to her unseasoned arms, though, and she takes a mini-breather and just watches him do his thing.

This is a mistake. She feels—well, she doesn’t feel less overheated. Especially not when he makes damn sure she’s watching and drops the bat and pretty much crumples a little end table with his bare fucking hands.

Then he’s in front of her again. All toe-to-toe. Barely out of breath. “Tired already, Rey?” he teases, and, oh, her given name should not sound like a pet name coming out of his mouth! “Or has something else got you winded?” The lecher! “I’m anemic,” she answers dryly, and is kind of blindsided by the instant look of concern and wildness on his face as he yanks his goggles up and quickly scans her for signs of injury.

“You should’ve told me,” he frets, dusting splinters and particles off her arms, all harried, and a frantic giggle bursts out of her.

“Jesus! It’s a joke. Of course I’m winded, you’ve got, like, 100 pounds on me.” He shoots her a thundery glare then.

“Not funny. Lots of vegetarians are anemic, how am I supposed to know?”

“I’m not—that was a joke, too, dude.”

“Well.” He crowds in again, dropping his shoulders a little, absolutely looming. “I guess I’ll have to pay closer attention, then, won’t I.” The air is charged, ozone dancing across the roof of her mouth—or maybe that’s his aftershave—“Funny little fairy.”

“You keep calling me that. I’m not that small.” She has room to back away, but she’s not—why isn’t she?!—and he touches her face again, thumbs back the safety goggles, and surely she’s got red arcs to match his own on her cheeks. “Don’t you think so?” he muses, looking her over, and she rolls her eyes. “Thumbelina. I could just hold you in the palm of my hand.” As if to prove his point, he cups her chin, and her eyelids flutter, not in the aren’t I precious way, in the I’m going to swoon way, and he chuckles again, woodstove-throaty, and says, “You are. Overheated, I mean.” And goes for the zipper of her suit.

It's then that she wriggles away, finally unfrozen, before he has the chance to slip it off her shoulders, because this is a thing she didn’t think about, in her relief at being so thoroughly clothed: when you have so many layers on, it makes lingerie of regular evening wear. “I know you like to watch, Professor,” she huffs, turning her back, “but try your best to be polite just once, all right?”

He laughs. “There you are. Thought maybe I’d broken you already. That would be no fun.” She hears his own zipper go down, the sounds of him wadding up his own suit, and then he heads out the door ahead of her, and it’s only then that she prickles at the implication: that he does intend to break her, eventually. She hurries to keep up, and they plod to the bar portion of the building. Drinks. With men. Drinks with men, she can do.

He snags her ID after the bartender hands it back before she can, squinting at it, then leans in close. “That’s an impressive fake,” he whispers, and she scowls at him, but realizes belatedly there’s no use lying: he probably has access to her birth date in whatever part of the university portal he uses. Halfway through her drink, she realizes with a sudden chill that he probably has plenty of access.

As in, that’s how he knew where she lived.

Professor Solo, oblivious to her epiphany, turns on his barstool, his knees caging her in, albeit not touching her—small mercies. She turns, too, belatedly realizing a front-on view gives him a good look at her nipples, pebbling now, adrenaline high fading, and she sees—feels—his gaze stall there, burning holes, and he puts his hand on her thigh—not inappropriately high, just above her knee—and she burns there, too.

“Tell me, Miss Nolan,” he breathes, propping his head on his other hand, “how are you finding my first attempt?” She sniffs, pretends to think about it.

“It’s definitely…unique,” she says, finally, letting unique be a neutral word, waiting to see if he’ll read it as positive or negative.

“Hmm. You like that,” he decides, then smiles, and how did she not notice before—the dimples? “Come on. I saw you in there. All wild.” Leans in closer, his breath ghosting the tip of her nose. “I like your noises,” he adds, lower, like he’s saying something dirty, and maybe he is. She feels blood rush to her face, tosses her head, looks away.

“I’ll admit I’m a little surprised,” she says to the bartop. “It’s less forward than your usual advances. That gets you…maybe two points.”

“On a scale of…?”

“One hundred. Same as yours.” She glances at him, watches him pin the plush, pink tip of his tongue between his front teeth. It was a bad idea to look.

“What does this count as? Presentation? Central argument?” he teases, but she’s riled him, she can tell by the firmer, more purposeful press of his thumb on the inside of her thigh. “Tell me more about this rubric of yours.”

“It’s not polite to ask a lady that.” She turns back to face him fully, listens to that sharp-edged laugh, the one that always says, oh, just you wait. For what? she wants to demand—but really, she knows.

“So you were expecting me to just drag you to the closest bed,” he purrs, back in kissing distance again. “Show me I make good on my promises. That time will come, sweetheart.” She wants to spit—the arrogance of him, the vulgarity—he traces the cool shell of her ear with the searing-hot thumb of his other hand, and her words die in her throat. “But hasn’t it occurred to you I like being chased, too, maybe?” She swallows, hard, and realizes he’s genuinely waiting for her answer.

“A zero-hour rule change, is that it? You’ve made it quite clear I’m the contested territory here, but I’ll bite.”

“I’m sure you’ll try.” Predictable—he just can’t help himself, this one. “Anyway, Miss Nolan, I’ve decided it’s more fun if I make you ask for it. So there’ll be no whisking you off in the night, no other—what did you call them?—advances? Not until your pretty little mouth says please.” His fingertips skate from her ear, across her cheek, to her lips, which he taps with a finger, leaving a hot, razed trail in their wake.

“Fat chance,” she spits—means to spit, but it comes out watery and conflicted. Damn her.

“You always get so mean when you’re aroused,” he hisses back, a devilish grin splitting his face, and she finally reaches up and grabs his wrist, digging into the pressure point she knows runs down the center—nothing that will hurt him, but it definitely gets his attention.

Two can play this game. Rey can play it especially well. See, the trick to stringing a man along without giving him sex—the kind of man she’s used to, anyway—is to dole out just enough of it to keep him yearning. It doesn’t have to be anything so brazen as a squeeze to the ass or a hickey, though those have their places, too; in fact, tonight, it works just to flip open the cuff of Professor Solo’s button down and slide her fingers slowly down his forearm, just resting her fingertips in the crook of his elbow. She watches him suck in breath, stirring the air near her face, and lets her nose bump his. “I do,” she answers sweetly. “On occasion. That’s why you’re lucky you haven’t gotten me aroused yet.”

His hand finally leaves her thigh to cradle the back of hers, under his sleeve. “If that’s true, then give me back my shirt. Without washing it.” She locks her knees, begs her cheeks not to color, fights to keep her tone even—he’s gambling, she knows he is, he couldn’t know, but still.

“And just what will that prove?”

“I have a very keen sense of smell, Miss Nolan.”

“You’re disgusting.” She makes to release his arm, but he clamps down, keeping her hand there.

“Then prove it.”

“I will. I’ll give it back to you tonight.” Poker face, PLEASE come through. “When you’re wrong, I’ll expect your apology.” Finally, he lets go, and she crosses her arms, secretly wanting to hug his radiating heat closer into her skin.

“And if I’m right, I’ll expect your please.” She snorts, but she’s second-guessing herself. What if he can—? No, there’s no way—he’s just trying to get her to admit it because he’s full of himself. But what if?

Already, he’s grabbing his jacket, his keys, and she swallows down the last of her drink and hurries after him. On the bike, he yanks her arms in close again, rumbling, “Stay close, Miss Nolan. It’s cold out.” Face burning—thank goodness for helmets—she does as she’s told.

And maybe, just maybe, lets inertia slide her thighs more flush with his.

*

He’s such a prick—such an arrogant fucking prick—that she has to convince him to sidle the bike into one of the alleys near the dorm, chastising him that it won’t be good for either of them if she’s seen bringing him his shirt. “What, you’re scared people will find out you’re dating my father, playing arm candy at family barbeques?” he quips, but ultimately yields. Still buzzing with the heat of him, she hurries up to the room, where Rose is sitting up like a worrying mother, ready to jump her. “One second,” Rey calls, ducking into her room to find the shirt, which she sniffs surreptitiously. No. There’s no way.

Right? Can men tell? Can he tell?

No. Anything that would be there—and it wouldn’t—has faded by now. Surely.

Right?

“Are you packing for an overnight?” Rose squeals from behind her, making her jump.

“No,” Rey growls. “It’s worse than that. Bastard is trying to convince me he’s—ugh! It’s too disgusting, I can’t even say it—”

“That he’s what? That’s his shirt, right? Ohmygosh, from the barbeque? Rey. Did it go so bad he’s honestly demanding it back? What did you do?”

“NO!” She stomps her foot, once, fuming. “I’m telling you—it’s so not worth it—he’s so up his own ass! It’s infuriating!”

“Tell meeee,” Rose whines, bouncing on her toes. “Tell me or I swear I’ll combust! And then I’ll die, and it’ll be all your fault.”

“He’s just…trying to get in my head. Prove some shitty little point that I—that I must be so fucking wet for him, specifically, that he’ll be able to smell it on his shirt. As if that’s even possible.” She darts a glance at Rose, waiting for her to jump in with, duh, of course it’s not, like, ew.

“Welllll…since you so obviously are totally dry for him, you’ve clearly got nothing to worry about. Or else how would that be ‘getting in your head?’” Rose cackles, spins around in glee. “Did you?! You so did! It’s all over your face, dude. That’s why you’re so ballistic, isn’t it? Ooh, and I bet you smelled it, too. Does he smell as good as he tastes, or do you know that yet?” At Rey’s stricken, mortified look, Rose crowds her into a tight hug. “I don’t mean to tease you, Rey-Rey. I’m sorry, you’re so embarrassed, I know. But, I mean…come on. Fess up to it, or make it sexy—ooh, I bet he’d love it if—dude, put it on and tell him if he wants it he’ll have to take it off of you—”

“You are so gross!” Rey groans into Rose’s shoulder, leaning on her heavily. “Seriously, there’s no way, though, right?? You smell—wait, no, don’t, that’s worse—”

“No way, dude. There’s no way. Not just by smell, anyway…but honestly, is ‘you in no way interest me sexually’ really what you’re sticking with? Like, forget this ridiculous ‘nose knows’ bullshit…you’re interested! He likes a chase, obviously, but give the man at least a little sugar. Or, or…for a small fee, you can tell him your pervert roommate stole it, had sex with it, and burned the evidence. If you really, really need to.”

“He definitely knows who you are,” Rey mumbles, and Rose tilts her head.

“How do you figure?”

“He knows where we live, and shit. He knows I’m under 21. Like, he’s a professor. I’m sure there’s some mega-creepy database out there.”

“Oh. Ew. Okay, not as small a fee, but the offer stands.”

“I’ll just give the asshole his shirt. Just let him try to bluff his way into getting me to admit it.” She turns the shirt over in her hands, shrugs. “It’s kinda fun.”

“Whoooore,” Rose sing-songs as Rey heads out the door. “Sluuut,” Rey whoops back.

Outside the alley, she steels herself, then tries to think of really dry and boring things. The economy. Gas mileage. Factory work.

She can do this. He cannot bluff his way through this.

“You kept me waiting,” he rumbles from beyond the dark mouth, and she stalks over and holds his shirt out stiffly.

“Had to rummage around for it. Forgot I still had it,” she deadpans, and he raises one eyebrow, then buries his face in the shirt and inhales. She has the absurd idea that she feels like a drug dealer right now, Professor Solo the junkie sampling product in the alley.

“Just like I thought,” he purrs, tossing the shirt back at her. She catches it on reflex. “Don’t be embarrassed, Miss Nolan. Women have done worse things in men’s clothes.”

“Nice try.” He smirks at her, unstraddles the bike and gets in her space again, making her teeter, and she ends up grabbing the hem of his jacket to steady herself.

“I know you’ll keep your secrets,” he says softly, “I know you won’t tell. That’s part of the game.” His hand, on her shoulder, his thumb, slipping under the strap of her dress. “I don’t need you to tell me I’m right. Knowing it’s true is enough.” Her belly flip-flops. Not because he’s right, but because he sounds so content, so confident, where she’s feeling unsteady, untethered. He leans in to say something else, and she’s sick of this, this tactic of his, getting her all unbalanced, depending on his proximity to be enough—she’s pissed, and she wants to see him flounder for once, and she wants, she just wants.

It turns out his lips, in a proper kiss, are cool and chapped on the surface, hot and slick on the inside. Like anyone’s lips, like a thousand other kisses she’s had, for gain and for comfort alike. Behind the part of his shirt where her fist is bunched, she feels him heave for breath, his chest rolling, and when her tongue grazes his he groans, luxurious and wanton, and that’s when she nips his top lip and tugs, just a little, when she pulls back. Drunk on the stricken look in his eyes, the way he lurches forward as she backs away, that hungry, wanting part of him calling to hers. She marches backwards, pinning him with her eyes, watching his mouth open and close, and just as he starts to smile she turns and jogs the other way, out of sight. Hears him laugh that true, clear belly-laugh into the empty alley.  

Chapter Text

Western academia has a relentless fetish for Greek philosophy and myth. It’s pervasive, often—to Ben’s mind—stale, this obsession, but its roots run deep. The weekend following his and Rey’s date, it’s on his mind again as he tries to put name to the thing, the throbbing, living thing creeping under his skin, winding him tightly, making him pant.

Aphrodisiac. That’s what it is. From the name of the goddess of love, beauty, sex, and fertility: Aphrodite. Overrated, in his opinion. That’s what it is, though, everything she fucking does, her little oofs of breath as she swung the hammer, the whoops she unleashed when she broke something, his elbow suddenly an erogenous point of focus under her fingertips, the flat death-stare she pinned him with when she backed out of the alley after—that kiss. Aphrodisiac. Hormonal, carnal, erotic, heated.

Growing up, he had his share of cringeworthy moments, as most children do, coming into his sexual self. Where some kids nabbed their father’s PlayBoys and gorged, wide-eyed, on 80s reprints of the Kama Sutra, Ben pilfered his mother’s study and found only the gods and goddesses. Leia holds a doctorate in ancient world religions, and, while academic study on their connections to sex were too dry and stodgy for Ben’s pubescent mind, she had all sorts of volumes that held retellings, both for child and adult minds. Every culture has a deity of sex, for it's as close to enlightenment as most people ever get, and Ben devoured their descriptions and depictions, his first pornography.

As an adult, though, he finds Aphrodite pretty one-dimensional. Nevermind that her depictions in Western art paint her as (predictably) fair-skinned, often blonde; she’s just so popularized, so tied to orgies and words like “aphrodisiac” that her entourage gets lost in the mix. People think of bodies, heaving bosoms, swaying hips, parted legs, the high and tempestuous moan-whines of pornstars, and forget the sizzling truths: that a hammer in the right hands is more phallic than anything else. That a hotheaded, now you see me-now you don’t seesaw, a tide of wit and awe alike, is virility incarnate. That a body’s just a body, but the right body, behind you on a motorbike, still buzzed off beer and destruction and brimming with something to prove, is electric. No, most people never learn that Aphrodite had an entourage. The West forgets that to the Greeks, sexual and social intercourse were one and the same. Peitho, goddess of both charming, seductive speech and just plain persuasion; Philotes, for whom affection, friendship, and sex were intertwined—a tripartite goddesshead, then. Not just one.

But even the Greeks fall short. Yes, a lot of what’s alluring about Rey is her wit, her willingness to snap back at him, the cute little game she plays at where she pretends she’s unimpressable, unsurprisable. And maybe it’s a little pathetic, a little gauche, to try and compare a potential lover to a deity. But Ben, raised by an Icarus father and a scholar for a mother and a prophet for an uncle, damn him, finds mythos the only balm for madness. Aphrodite’s squad still ideates an eventual yielding, a softening of internal fire in favor of the domestic hearth, eventually, and to Ben that is the bitter, underwhelming part, the bite behind the shot of fervor in his veins. It doesn’t suit her.

Inanna.

Ah, Mesopotamia, in large part forgotten by the world. Where argument and speech informed the Grecian view of passion’s strange forces, for the Mesopotamians, love was inextricable from all-out war. Inanna is no mother, no caregiver, not like fertility deities in most other parts of the world, no: she is a force. She sweeps the path ahead of her with sultry eyes, then razes it with fire if it suits her. She was not beholden to one domain like the other gods of her time; no, Inanna went where she pleased, never satisfied with the power she already had. Both the battlefield and the bedroom were her dance. She knew what lay at the heart of all mortal men: sex and blood.

If Inanna really is Rey’s patron saint, he’s in for a hell of a ride, he thinks, finding himself drifting off yet again while trying to grade on Sunday afternoon. Like most deities, she’s got strong ties to earthly symbology. Ben happens to like nicknames, and especially likes the scorned-enflamed reactions they get from Rey. Tiny little pixie. Little fairy, Thumbelina. Despite her wartime wanderings, one of Inanna’s is the dove: by all rights a gentle creature, its outstretched wing a flag of surrender, its eyes deep and melancholy, its call a lullaby and a sorrow—being in the field he’s in, how can he pass up a true, close-to-home moment of irony?

Little dove. Always “little” something—he can’t help himself, her size, goddess help him, it’s alluring. Aphrodisiac. Yes, he knows she’s not that teeny-tiny. Smallish-average, really. But size is relative and, relative to Ben, most things, most people, are itsy-bitsy. Teeny tiny is a state of being, a matter of perspective. Little pigeon. Little bird. Little dove.

*

He’s got a spring in his step as he enters the classroom on Monday. The self-same spring that had him up late into the night daydreaming of goddesses: she kissed him first. He feels a little like a schoolboy with a crush, a little belly-floppy, a little hotheaded, but it’s big. It is! Not only does she not have room to blame him for it, to the school or to his father, but he gets to dangle it over her head now. She chose this, she wanted this. Oh, men and their games of women and war: it's a point in his favor, and he knows it.

Imagine his distaste when, class over with, his father shoulders in the door and stands there in its half-openness, waiting for Rey, studiously avoiding looking at his son.

He’s rankled. Positively fuming.

Not once, not ever, has his father come to his work. Not even in the early days, when Ben was a student lecturer, when Mom had insisted on coming to hear him teach, much as it had embarrassed him: his father’s never given a damn about Ben’s work. Ben’s success.

He’s either here because of Ben or because of Rey. And Ben has a strong feeling it’s the latter, because it’s just too perfect that Han would finally give a shit about someone else’s education now, especially if said person is his 2/3 younger “girlfriend.” How dare he show up here?

Ben’s gaze snaps toward Rey, who’s hurrying to sweep her things into her bag, looking tense. For a moment he’s ready to be pissed at her, thinking she’s made up some sob story to Han about Friday night, one where Ben’s the bad guy, or that she’s lured Han here to see her two suitors duke it out for some twisted thrill, but she looks even angrier than Ben feels. She shoulders through the other students towards Han, and, over the low din and babble of her classmates, Ben hears her hiss, “What the hell are you doing here?!” Han starts, wrings his hands, shoots Ben a halfhearted scowl and a half-shrug as if to say women, what can you do (Ben nearly laughs—his father really thinks he’s sympathizing with him), mumbles something Ben can’t make out.

Rey throws up her tiny hands in disbelief. “You—you are unbelievable! You know that?!” A couple heads turn, clear amusement on their faces at seeing this sweet creature, this little dove, biting the head off a grown man. Ben sidles closer; after all, it’s his professorial duty to intervene, isn’t it?

“Something the matter, Miss Nolan?” Rey whirls, looking ready to snap at him, too, before clearly remembering she’s already drawing attention, that nobody save them three know about what’s taken place. She smoothes down her skirt and says, curtly, “Everything’s all right, thank you, Professor.”

Oh, Inanna. Ben really shouldn’t have started anything. Two towheaded young men have clearly seen him stepping in, gotten emboldened. “This guy bothering you?” one grunts, putting a chummy elbow on Rey’s shoulder. Ben prickles. This little bastard probably doesn’t even know her first name. “Yeah, you bothering our friend over here, bro?” the other chimes in, cocking his head at Han, who raises both hands.

“Now, hang on a minute—it’s none of your business what—I—” Han throws a desperate look at Ben, who stares back coldly. Han’s not getting any help from him.

“I’ll walk you home if you want, Rain,” lisps the second interloper through his braces, and, with a surreptitious glance at Han—then at Ben, a dangerous gleam in her eyes—Rey loops her arm through the boy’s own and says sweetly, “I’d like that, Ty.” The pack of youth turn to go out the opposite door, their peers tittering and finally stopping their gawking, Rey casting one coy glance back at the Solo men over her shoulder. While she’s looking away, Ben sees the two boys high-fiving covertly.

Wonderful.

Han and Ben stand in silence while the rest of the class filters out, and then Ben lets out a low whistle. “Well, that went well.”

“Oh, stow it, asshole,” Han grunts, dusting off his arms, a nervous gesture. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t know this was your class or I wouldn’t have come.”

“Oh, that’s just great. Thanks, pops.” Ben lets a sardonic edge creep into his voice.

“Jeezus! You always take things the wrong way. I meant I would’ve rather you not seen all that, that…mess.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Ben turns to gather up his stuff, not really caring, to be honest.

“Ahhh, you know how women are. One out of every four weeks. Phew.” Han shakes his head. “Or more, if it’s your mother.”

“What’d you do this time? Huh? Why’d you think it would be a good idea to come here, anyway?”

“Some people!” Han gestures at the ceiling. “You try to do something nice—she told me I wasn’t interested enough in her personal life, and shit, so I tried!”

“So—wait, this is…a gesture of some sort? Coming here…to class?”

“A surprise! Fuckin’ hell.”

Ben laughs, sharp and sudden. “A surprise. Just…showing up. At the end of class. Walking in here like you’re trying to lose a tail.”

“Oh, the great relationship coach, my bachelor son—”

“—without flowers, even? Chocolates? Come on, dad! Even something cliché?”

“Oh, like you could do any better!” Ben bites his tongue at that, does his best to restrain the smirk that’s threatening to pop up—because he can, and he has, and clearly Han doesn’t know it yet. Han’s shaking a finger in his face, his brow pinched. “You and your smugness. You and your, your smarter-than-thou bullshit. You know what, that’s why I wouldn’t have come if I knew it was you. You are your mother’s fucking son, that’s why.” The shit-eating grin is inevitable, so Ben lets it happen, then slowly turns and walks away while Han continues to rail to the walls, the empty seats, the echoes. “You’re just jealous! That’s why you’re so judgy, you’re just an envious, lonely sonofabitch!”

Oh, he’s a sonofabitch all right.

*

Rey’s barely in the door before Rose is drawling, “How’d it go with Solo?” Jannah’s on the couch in their common area, Rose’s head in her lap, books lying open around them. Rey swings around and makes eye contact, and Rose raises her eyebrows.

“That bad, huh?”

“It was class? It went fine?”

“Jannah already knows, dude.” Rey rolls her eyes and drops dramatically into the beanbag chair, covers her face with a throw pillow, and shouts into it wordlessly.

“Gosh, the straights are not okay,” Jannah quips, and Rose elbows her calf. “She had a sugar mommy, once, too, remember? No, the men are not okay, and they just make it women’s problem.”

“Jesus, Rosie, do you tell all my secrets?!” Rey throws the pillow at Rose halfheartedly. She doesn’t really care—they’re dating, and it’s probably a good thing they tell each other everything—but it’s quite another thing to know that Jannah, whom Rey’s less close to than she is with Rose, knows all the sorry details of her love life. “Ugh. I’m not mad, I’m sorry, I just…do you think headassery is genetic?”

Rose raises her eyebrows and grins. “From a case study of two? Absolutely.”

“Well, I had the pleasure of them both in the same room today.”

“What the fuck? Did he—did Grandpa show up at class today? At Benjamin’s class? Is this because you ghosted him this weekend?”

“I didn’t ghost him! I just said I needed space.” Rey gnaws at her knuckles, knowing her excuse for dipping on Han isn’t gonna hold water much longer—she’s been “on the rag” for almost a week now, and he’s gonna get suspicious or lose interest.

And then she won’t have an excuse to keep Professor Solo on his toes. And she needs him at arm’s length. Every time she gets too close, she’s scared they’ll implode. Like a black hole. A quantum singularity.

“I think he thought it was, like, a heartwarming surprise of some sort? But his first words, I shit you not, were ‘Hi, sweetness, how’s your aunt?’”

“Wait, back up, he’s hitting on your aunt, now?” Jannah cocks her head.

“No, like, as in ‘Aunt Flo.’ As in, ‘are you done being a bloody hole and thus being uninteresting to me.’”

“How can this man call himself a pilot if he doesn’t even have his red wings yet?!”

“I know, right?? So Professor Solo steps in, like, ‘is this man bothering you,’ and I’m just trying not to go fucking ballistic on the both of them in front of the whole classroom, and I guess No Hands Tyler and his frat bro decided to be heroes, too.”

“No Hands Ty? The watermelon dude?”

“Yeah. That Tyler. He called me ‘Rain.’” Ty was in Rose and Rey’s honors section their first year of college, called No Hands Tyler for his tendency to hang upside down from university fixtures by the tops of his feet, like an acrobat—he was trying to make it a Thing, like planking. He’d also smashed a watermelon in half with his head in the dorm lounge and had a big, dark bruise on his forehead for a week and a half afterwards. “So I gave the Solos the stink eye, and I was all like ‘I’d love that, Ty, you’re so sweet,’ and let him put his arm around me and walk me back.”

“Oh my gosh, Rey,” Rose groans through her fingers, then laughs all sharp and manic like she does. “You’re so bad! You’re, like, the worst. I’ll bet Benjamin is fuming right now.”

Rey wilts further into the beanbag at the thought—she hadn’t even considered it: she’d taken Ty’s arm to spite Han, primarily, but yeah, Rose is right. The idea of Professor Solo being somehow more intense after this—“Fuck. Especially with the kiss,” Rey mumbles into her palms, and Rose yells, “THE WHAT?” and Rey remembers she didn’t tell her.

“I…sort of…kissed him, um, the other night after the…shirt thing.”

“Rey Nolan, you little cheater!”

“I’m cheating on Han with his son,” Rey laments, as though it isn’t all her fault, and Rose kicks at her knees.

“No, dummy, you cheated on me. How could you not tell me the absolute tea? Wait—you kissed him?”

“He kissed me back!”

“Was it good? Oh, I bet it was so good.” Rose pretends to swoon and Jannah jostles her, complaining. “Did he use his tongue? Did you?”

“Your girlfriend is right here!” Jannah crosses her arms, but she’s grinning. “For real, though. If there’s any man you’re a bit straight for, I’m not too mad it’s Professor Solo. I mean, at least it’s chose, you know, a normal Ben—the odds are bad…there’s Franklin…Shapiro…”

“Ewewew stop! Never! With every breath Ben Shapiro takes, I get gayer.”

“Good.”

Rey takes a few deep breaths during Jannah and Rose’s tangent, grateful for the reprieve, until Rose says, with a mischievious glint in her eye, “Hey, do you think there’s, like, a kinky curse for people named Benjamin? I mean, it skipped Ben Shapiro, obvs, but, like, Ben Franklin on the other hand…”

“Fuck, Rosie, please don’t quote the Franklin thing again—”

“‘Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird!’—wait, no, that was James Joyce—”

“How many of these do you know?!”

“—oh, nevermind, Franklin just liked GILFs. Something about how faces get wrinkly but WAP is forever? ‘All cats are gray in the dark’—yeah, this is, like, the exact opposite.”

“You’re rancid. You’re filthy!”

“You’ve swapped spit with two dudes from the same bloodline! Dude, ew. Is that genetic? Like, do their…do their mouths feel the same, or…?” Jannah makes gagging noises, and Rey feels her whole face heat up.

“I haven’t thought about it,” she chokes out, “and I’m not going to.”

“You should tell him, ‘hey, at least you’re a better kisser than your dad—’”

“No, no,” Jannah interjects, composing herself. “No, if you end up having to make amends with Professor Solo, tell him he’s a better kisser than Ty. Two-edged sword, baby.”

“Oh, you are a cruel, cruel woman,” Rose utters, then falls on Jannah with kisses. Rey takes the moment to retreat to her room and try to do homework like nothing is wrong.

*

Han’s blowing up her phone. Begging, pleading with her to forgive him. It was a mistake, he says. He meant well.

They always mean well. Or they think they do. How old do men have to get before they stop treating their girlfriends like their mommies? Rey knows, of course, somewhere in the back of her mind, it’s not about age, but seriously. It’s so pervasive.

Idly, she scrolls up in the conversation, briefly recapping her and Han’s situationship, then drops her phone in exasperation: it has been just over two weeks since this all went to shit and then some. Since dinner, where his adult son joined them. And then the after-class face-offs. And then the lake. And then the Smash House. And then the kiss.

Please cum over babie, he writes. He always writes “come” as “cum,” and the worst part is she doesn’t think it’s a double entendre. Let me make it up 2 u I kno ur stressd. Ill make u dinner and keep my big mouth shut. Oh, if only.

It has only been two weeks. It feels like it’s been so much longer, pulled in two different directions, trying to manage them both, stay one step ahead, look out for number one. One misstep, especially lately, from being sucked into the astral vortex that is Benjamin Solo. Alternatively, one misstep from misfortune, from being the laser focus of his primordial rage against his father and the people Han keeps company with. Go to fucking therapy, she wants to shout at them both, at herself. Like Moses of yore, she’s wedged in the impossible gap between two forces of nature. Interestingly, Han’s not one of them: they’re both Professor Solo, both laced with searing-hot ripcurrents and treacherous dropoffs—his attention, his focus, his perception, hate on this side, love (consumption) on the other. There is no way to escape unsinged, unbranded.

She won’t be getting much more done tonight, not with it all hung over her head, weighing down her bones. She goes to Han’s because she’s feeling the heat, now. She goes to Han’s because she needs a scrap of control, just an iota, just for now.

He’s got a bouquet of flowers waiting on the table, the “1/2 off” sticker only half ripped away. She lets him watch her pluck at them appraisingly, intently focused on the wilted ones of the bunch, letting him fret. This is a game she knows how to play. This is easy.

“I am so sorry, sweetheart,” he says to the stove as she lounges in the dining room, reading the same lines of Invisible Man over and over. She can’t help it, the comparison springing unbidden: does his mouth shape the same way as his son’s around the affectionate name? Does it carry the same undercurrent of heat, the same intention? No—Han doles out sweet nothings like candy, like slang, part of the show. Ben drops them like bites of flesh before a starving dog, doing, she realizes, what she does: just enough of just the thing to keep her wanting. “I didn’t know it would be such a big deal to show up—I mean, I know you want me to show up for you more. You told me so. But, ah, I’ve never been any good at showing up for people who mean a lot to me.” He shakes his head, turns back to look at her over his shoulder, and she feels a detached sort of tenderness, pity, almost—he’s so close to the truth of what’s wrong with him, yet so far. “I know you been patient with me already. And it’s not fair to ask you to keep doing it. But I do love having you around. You make me better. So tell me, please? Tell me how to show up for you, the right way.”

How many times has she heard that? she wonders distantly. You make me better. When they all say the same things to her, at what point does it mean something wrong with her, too? “It’s not just ambushing me,” she pouts. “The first thing you could think of to ask me was whether I was still…having my cycle! Is that all I am to you?” She swipes at her eyes like she’s crying, sniffles a little. They never check if she’s crying for real or not—men tend to instantly just spring into action and never actually look, as though viewing a tear head-on would emasculate them somehow. That sneaky little voice again: Professor Solo wouldn’t fall for it. He said as much. “If you’re only keeping me around to get in my pants—I gotta be honest, that just doesn’t work for me!”

“No, no, it’s not that!” Han hurries over and wraps a rough arm around her, sure enough, not actually looking at her eyes. Staring off at the wall. “No, baby, I promise it’s not that. I just—listen, I—ooh! I always say the wrong things. I always do, I mean it. Hey.” He jostles her. “And I get in trouble for it a lot. But I get even more in trouble for it when I say the wrong things at…at the wrong times. You understand what I mean?” She rolls her eyes covertly into his sleeve. It’s one of the more…original excuses she’s heard for men not wanting to see her when she’s on her period. “I wanna say the right things to you, though. ‘Cause you deserve it. Okay? Please, honey, don’t give up on me. Listen, I’d get on my knees if they still worked properly, you know how it is.”

“Sure. Fine,” she mumbles, patting his arm mechanically, and he lets go of her. “Just…okay, I see that you’re trying. I do.” Time to kiss it better. “And that…means a lot. Just…” She huffs, gives him a pouty, long stare through her lashes. “School is, like, a job for me, okay? Like, haven’t you ever had a job where you feel like you have to put a mask on the whole time? I’m proving myself there. I told you. I had a rough upbringing. It’s the first time people are taking me seriously, and I…it’s not that I don’t want you to be a part of it. I just—when unexpected things happen, especially there, I react poorly.” Anything, anything, to keep him off campus, to give her some distance from the Solo curse, please. “It’s not that I’m ashamed of you.” Oh, she is, and she should be. “I just wanna prove to the world I can stand on my own.”

He’s nodding like a bobblehead. “Sure. Sure. Of course. I get that.” All the right words. “Aagh, it was a dumb idea. Just…I missed you.” She clicks her tongue, rolls her eyes at the wall.

“I missed you too,” she finally says, numbly, and he breaks into a shy grin that’s…pretty. Like a painting is pretty.

“Ha! Knew it.” They eat, and Rey lets the cold shoulder veneer ease and fade through dinner, lets Han back into her good graces again. This is the dance she knows, the dance she could do with her eyes closed—this is normal. This is…anything but Ben.

On the couch afterwards, tucked under Han’s arm watching Friends reruns, Han jostles her and says, in the tone she knows is dangerous, “Hey. You’re not gonna leave me for that young blood who walked you home, are ya?”

“Oh, Ty? He’s just a friend,” she deflects, shifting in her seat. This one, at least, is always fun—She-Devil always gets a little extra kick. The jealousy, the grandstanding.

Sure, this time it’s directed at the exact wrong person. But it’s fun.

“Huh,” Han grouses, then slowly retracts his arm and crosses them both in front of him. “Real friendly. Hanging off his arm like that.”

“Oh, come on, babe. It’s nothing. My generation is a lot more physical than yours is, that’s all. Besides, I chose you, remember?” She snuggles closer, leaning her head on his shoulder and batting her lashes sweetly. “Let ‘em look. Let ‘em dream—Ty could never.” This, too, is part of the game: keeping her status as a wantable item, something to cherish, to possess. It’s sick that she gets off on it. Han grunts, then cradles her close a moment later, appeased.

Then her phone rings.

Rey almost never gets calls. Her peers mostly communicate through text unless it’s an emergency, so her first thought is that it’s spam, but spam calls almost never come this late in the evening. It’s a local number, and she worries it’s a coworker needing a shift picked up, so she pops out of the living room to the kitchen and answers.

“Hello?”

“Rey.” Dusky, dulcet tones. That deep bass hum, that whiskey mouthfeel. She feels a flash of heat, annoyance: however the hell Professor Solo has her number, it isn’t with her consent.

“Speaking. Who is this?”

“You’re funny, little dove.” What is with this man and calling her little? Big, answers She-Devil.. He’s big, that’s why. “I wanted to make sure you made it home okay.” It’s a sweet sentiment, but there’s a playful-dangerous note in his voice, and she prickles further.

“Everything okay?” Han calls from the living room, and Rey hears a rustle on the other end of the line. Imagines Ben putting down whatever he was reading, or drinking, or taking off his glasses, his attention sharpening.

“Uh-huh,” Rey calls sweetly. “Just a coworker.”

“Are you at my father’s place, Miss Nolan?” His voice is louder, the phone moved closer to his mouth, and she sways, hallucinating the way he leans in close sometimes, breathes her air. “I wondered what that was all about earlier today. Your little lovers’ spat.”

“A priapism? Geez, that’s embarrassing, David,” Rey answers loudly, and he snorts. “Sure, I can cover you tomorrow.”

“Ohh, and you’re hiding it from him,” he purrs, and she hears the venom of his smile. “Wonder what’d happen if I showed up there right now.”

She glances at Han, and he’s too engrossed in the television to hear, but she moves a little further away and hisses softly, “Go ahead, try it. If you wanna lose the lead you gained.”

“Oh, did I? Well, I wouldn’t want that.”

“Mm-hmm. Besides, I don’t know if you’d like what you walked in on.”

“You’re funny.” His tone is acid, heat, and she shivers. “Go on, have your fun, little dove. But since you won’t actually be covering for poor David, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good. I’ll be here.”

“Where?”

“You know where.” Hands shaking, she ends the call and flings her phone away, watching it topple to the dingy carpet. What is she doing? Didn’t she come here for control, to break away from the flames for a little bit? How, how does it all keep going so wrong?

She catches a watery glimpse of herself in the dining room window. Dark outside, now, the streetlights below cutting into the top half of her reflected head. She’s flushed, and she quickly pads to the bathroom, splashes cold water on her face, then rests her forehead against that of her reflection in the bathroom mirror. In this one, she’s whole, not fractured by interfering light and obstacles, and she whispers to herself, “What is wrong with you? What did you do?” Her reflection doesn’t answer.

That virulent heat that rises off of every interaction with Professor Solo has her heart racing. The same, usual confusing mixture of fury and arousal and wantwantwantwant. It has to go somewhere. It cannot stay, here, coursing through her, dragging its fingers through her soul, or she will combust.

She usually saves this trick as a last resort. For if her fun’s not over, if she’s still clutching for something to feel, but they’re losing interest. One little drop of sugar to a starving man. Even as she stalks to the living room and sees her mood register in Han’s eyes, even as he lets her straddle his lap and nuzzle his neck, she hates herself for doing it, hates that Ben Solo’s presence is causing her to feel this way, to act this way, to need this. She nips at Han’s earlobe, detached from herself, watching, listening to herself whisper the right things: I’ve been hard to deal with lately, let me make you feel good…

It's not that she doesn’t get anything out of it: a broad, heaving chest beneath her palms, a man’s little mumbles of adoration, a cock springing free from a waistband…they’re all things that she enjoys. In a normal, mundane way, she enjoys it. Like she enjoys a particularly good bowl of ramen, or taking her bra off after a long day, or the sound of crickets in the night air. It’s…comforting isn’t the right word, but it’s easy, this place she falls into, playing seductress, moaning around a dick like she’s starving for it. The difference is, this time she is. Starving. But not for one phallus in a world so full of them, which could belong to anyone, and might, Han or Jerry or Philip or Grant, all the men blurring together, sounding the same, saying the same things, like how the best ramen tastes the same every time, like the crickets playing the same song for centuries before and to come: no, she’s hungry, starving, wanting to the tips of her fingernails, her ankles, her scalp.

So full of want, and yet, so empty.

She cannot help it. Cannot help flitting close, again and again, to the comparisons. Finding herself annoyed when the eager press of Han’s palm on the back of her head is so very clearly not Ben’s. Wondering if he’d be as gentle and uninvolved as his father—almost hoping he’s not. When she glances up, gauging her own performance, she sees his head tipped back on the sofa, his eyes hooded, groaning, and knows if it were Professor Solo, he’d be looking right at her, right through her, and she hates that she knows he would, hates that she’s thinking about it—oh, she hates that she wants it.

She wants it to be him. When Han predictably mumbles something and passes out, his dick still out, and Rey curls into a ball on the floor, she wants it to be Ben. She sees, in Han’s sleeping face, a slanted reflection of his features, like they’re doubled by a streetlight through a window, and she knows, deep down, with a fatal certainty, how it will end.

*

Ben is halfway to his father’s place when Rey drops him a pin; she’s not there, and he tenses and untenses his shoulders, bites at the inside of his cheek. A little relieved he won’t have to go to his father’s; a little disappointed he won’t get the savage thrill of doing just that.

The address she sends him to is a quirky little coffee shop and bakery right on the lake, and he finds Rey in outdoor seating, her knees pulled up on the bench, bundled up all cute in a sweater and one of those massive, endlessly winding scarves he loves on girls. Two donuts and three cigarettes deep. She looks…well, not miserable, exactly, but tired. Resigned. She gazes out at the water the way she gazes off into space during class sometimes, in his direction. He slides into the seat opposite her, takes her cigarette wordlessly and takes a drag, then passes it back. Watching her lips close again over the butt.

“Early morning, Miss Nolan?” She shoves the box of donuts at him, swigs her coffee.

“I come here to be alone,” she answers dully, and he leans forward, closer. He knows, right then: she didn’t give it up to Han last night like she’d implied. She thought about it, that’s for sure, but didn’t go through.

She’s wavering. A breath from taking the leap. He salivates, prays Inanna is on his side.

“Why’d you bring me here, then, hmm?”

“Do you know what a liminal space is?” she asks the water. When he doesn’t answer, sensing she’s not really asking, she continues, “It’s a place where time seems to stand still. Where you seem to be between reality and unreality.” She snorts, shoves another bite of donut in her mouth, swallows—he watches her cheek distort as she chews, watches her breathe. “A rock and a hard place.”

“Hmm.” He lets his knee brush hers, casually, and she peeks at him out of the corner of her eye. “You’re in a mood.” He nearly says, Dad couldn’t get it up? but stops himself. There’s a fragile air of truce to this whole interaction; why, he’s not sure, but he’s definitely curious. When she doesn’t answer, he prods a little. “I know you didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” She swings to face him fully, stretches out her legs between his, the outsides of her knees touching the insides of his own. “Didn’t what, Professor?”

“Didn’t give it up last night.” He stretches out his index finger, brushes the tip of her nose.

“Didn’t I?” She leans in, his finger sliding up to rest between her brows before he curls his hand back in. “What makes you say that?”

He steeples his hands in front of his mouth, raises his eyebrows. “It would have been easy. So easy to say yes. To either one of us. But still, you play this game. Do you know why?” She shifts, ducks her mouth below the edge of her scarf. “Because you don’t like it when things are easy. You pick the hard way. Every time. Don’t you.” She flinches, like it stung, and now he’s unsure. Maybe he cut too close to the bone. She turns her head to stare back out at the water vacantly, and he hovers, wondering what to say.

A deep puff on her dwindling cigarette. A long exhale. He’s about to lurch forward, demand her attention, when she turns to look at him again, still with that faraway half-smile. “You,” she almost whispers, “Professor Solo…you are inevitable.”

“Am I?” He’s rapt, coiled tight, a live wire.

“Mm-hmm.” She nods slowly.

“Well, that’s…comforting.”

A pained look comes into her eyes, a foreign set to her jaw, and, like someone haunted, she hisses, “It’s terrifying.”

“Why fight it, then?” He plucks her cigarette from her slack fingers, stubs it out, cups her jaw, her skin chilled, her pulse dancing just beyong his fingertips. “Let something be easy, for once, little dove. Why don’t you?” She smiles faintly into his palm.

“It’s pathological.” She nuzzles into his fingers and he starts, instinctively, closer, feeling the carnal press of her lips against the base of his thumb, feeling his blood quicken. “And you know the best part? You wanted this.” She kisses his palm, right in the center, and he sucks in breath. Watches her grasp his hand in both of her own, studying it, like she’s looking at his fate. “You know me oh-so-well, don’t you? So why are you still here? If you so badly want this game to end on an easy note, knowing how I am?”

“Are you saying you’re still gonna make me work for it?” His voice comes out husky, his heart pounding, and she tucks her feet, pulls her shoulders up so she’s tall enough to lean further over the table, closer to his face.

“If you’re gonna insist,” she says, slow and meticulous, “on crowding into my thoughts, burning up my time? So the fuck am I.” He mumbles her name, low in his throat, and she shushes him. “I’m gonna watch you burn, Professor.” He knots his fingers in the scratchy hem of that precious scarf and pulls her into a searing kiss, feeling the scrape of her teeth on his, tasting coffee and smoke and sugar and the whole wild world on her breath. Oh, sex and war: the Mesopotamians had it right. She tilts her head, her mouth falling open, hungry little bird, and then they fall apart, both breathless, breathing in ice, breathing out clouds.

“When I catch you,” he rasps, “there will be hell to pay.”

“Promise?” she hisses back, and then she’s kissing him again, and dammit, the table’s in the way, he wants his hands on her waist, full and proper this time, her softest organs pulsing beneath his palm, but he gropes blindly and settles for her thigh, just below the ridged curve of her hip, caresses it with his thumb, and she honest-to-goddess whines, rattling the roof of his mouth. “Oh, do that again,” he mumbles against her lips, and she pulls back, laughing breathlessly.

“Call it an appetizer, Benjamin.” Oh, fuck—unexpectedly, his face heats, the tips of his ears burning, and she laughs again, tracking the blush with her cool fingertips before getting up from the table, looking like her pixie self again, rejuvenated. Inanna, coy patron! Aphrodisiac, his name in her mouth, full and melodic, more than the kissing, more than the promise to watch him burn, more than anything anyone’s said to him in recent memory, bedfellow or otherwise. He reaches for her, but she dances out of reach, her steps spry, her coffee sloshing. “Keep the donuts.” And then she’s gone, winding through an area she knows better than he does, so that by the time he thinks to go after her, she’s out of sight.

Chapter Text

Two days pass in relative quiet—Professor Solo didn’t linger after class Wednesday, beating a hasty retreat. Peeved, Rey had gone to his office only to find it empty, a note reading Office Hours Canceled for Department Meeting. Title case—weird choice. She makes a note to rib him about it at the next opportunity.

No! What is she thinking? What is she doing? Why?

They should stop this little game right fucking now. Monday’s the last day she can drop the class without it incurring an F on her record. She has the time. She can drop the class, drop Han, block both their numbers—apply to move into a different dorm after this semester, maybe—and then what? She-Devil goads. Move off campus altogether? Never take a class in the English department again? Change schools, move across the country, change your name?

This will never be over. Not after—

Cold air and smoke and cinnamon on his lips, the lake lapping quietly several feet below them. That unexpected, boyish blush when she called him Benjamin. She’s in too deep, he’s made that clear—and that was two weeks ago. One night after meeting him at his father’s place.

What have I done?

She’s startled from her Thursday evening reverie by Rose busting in the door. “Rey, Rey, Rey,” she chants, an absolute crackhead look in her eye, and Rey shrinks back in her chair, wide-eyed. Rose has her DoorDash hat on, and Rey knows she left for work an hour ago, so what’s she doing back here?

“Rosie, you look like an insane person, what is going on?”

“Okay, so don’t panic, but I’m about to go to your daddy’s house.”

“My—” she sputters, heat rising in her face. “Don’t—call him that—!”

“Seriously, he just made a DoorDash order and it’s kind of already ready and I need to go pick it up right the fuck now but you have to come with me! You have to—”

“—Rose, no! Fuck no!”

“—don’t have to get out of the car or anything but I have like butterflies by proxy? And will you just, please, there is absolutely no way I can walk up to his porch with a straight face and deliver his food unless you are in the car. We have to go. We have to.” Rose is tugging her wrists, and Rey hisses, “Are you crazy? I have to see him tomorrow—”

“You can just duck down really low! He won’t see you. Anyway, you’d have been all mad if I went without telling you about it! Plus now you’ll know where he lives and you’ll be even. Please, Reybie. Come on, we have to go, he left a really big tip—I mean, I’ll bet he’s got tip to spare—”

“If I go, you have to promise not to say anything about his penis for the rest of the night.”

“Ugh, fine. But only because I love you.” Red-faced and flustered, Rey lets herself be shepherded into Rose’s car, left running by the curb. A car behind it honks at her, and Rose flips it off triumphantly.

On the way, Rose talks a blue streak. “Do you think he has, like, a massive house? Oh, man, I bet he sits up at night and drinks, like, rich-person hot-guy drinks. Like cognac. Wait…have you been to his house? You better not have been there and not told me.”

“No, I’ve only been to Han’s house.”

“Ew! Oh, yeah—the rug burn—”

“No penis talk!”

“You said Professor Solo’s penis was off limits. You didn’t say anything about his dad’s!”

“Any penis attached to a Solo man is off limits!”

“You’re no fun, you know that?” Rose is speeding, and Rey complains loudly, and it’s quiet for just a second as her hyperactive friend takes a breather, and then: “I bet Benjamin’s carpets would never give you rug burn.”

“Please, Rosie—”

“Do you think he has, like, creepy sex furniture in there? Like a swing, or one of those spanking thingies?”

“Rose.”

“I bet he has, like, eight cats. Or do you think he’s a dog person? Ooh, maybe he doesn’t have any furniture. Or any furniture except sex furniture.”

“I get two days a week without Ben in them—”

“—yet you chose to spend Tuesday morning getting breakfast with him,” Rose snarks. “Funny how that turns out. At your super-secret breakfast favorite place that you won’t even take your best friend to—”

“I said I was sorry!”

“—gave his dad head, then kissed him the next morning with the same mouth—”

“What he doesn’t know won’t kill him.” During the banter, they’ve pulled up in front of a house, Rose’s headlights cutting through the violet dusk—a house with a little lawn, a basic concrete walkway, a house with modern windows and a modern slant to the roof and a chimney lazily coughing cobweb smoke. “Aww, this is cute.”

“Fuck, you didn’t tell me we were here!” Rey ducks down as low as she can, praying she can’t be seen through the window—the lights are off, but still. Rose snags the takeout bag from the backseat and reads out: “One pastrami sandwich, extra pastrami. No mustard, no onions, no lettuce. Extra pickles, extra salt and pepper.” Rey glowers from the front seat, and then there’s the sound of Rose’s phone camera going off. “What are you doing?” Rey hisses, and Rose grins.

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That’s what mom always says, anyway. Some straight bullshit. Anyway, see you in a minute.” She slams the door and bounces up Professor Solo’s walkway, maybe even skipping a little—totally normal. Totally natural.

Rey peeks up over the bottom of the window as Rose rings the bell and waits. A few seconds later, Professor Solo flings the door open, and Rey immediately ducks back down. Oh, it’s driving her crazy not to be able to see what is taking Rose so long—what is taking so long? Is she making conversation? Rey peeks again and sees that Rose is doing just that, gesturing exuberantly, her pigtails bobbing. With the porch light on, she can see Professor Solo looks cranky—but then, when doesn’t he? She ducks again, and, a few seconds later, looks up again, only to find his eyes shooting straight laserbeams at the car, indubitably looking straight at her.

She squeaks and ducks again. Keeps her head between her knees as Rose clambers back into the driver’s seat and pulls away. Rose is cackling.

“Why did you talk to him?” Rey explodes, and Rose makes a pfft sound.

“I’m a good DoorDash employee, that’s why!”

“Dude, he knows you’re my roommate! He has to. He has my cell number, for fuck’s sake. There’s no way he doesn’t know who you are.”

“Oh…he sure does,” Rose says casually, and Rey’s gaze snaps to her.

“What? No, you said that funny—what do you mean—”

“Jesus, relax! Just that he recognized me when he answered the door, that’s all.”

“Must be why he looked so pissed off,” Rey deadpans, and Rose bursts into giggles again.

“No…no, that’s not why…it’s because he checked ‘contactless delivery.’” Rey sputters, then slugs Rose in the arm.

“You—you are—such a shitlord! Ugh, Rosie, I have to see him tomorrow! And he definitely saw me.”

“He WHAT?” Rose slams on the brakes just in time for a stop sign. “I told you to duck!”

“You were taking fucking forever, dude!”

“Okay, now that’s on you! Dumbass.”

“You’re the reason I’m here!”

“Ugh, semantics!”

“Oh, man, DoorDash is gonna be pissed—”

“DoorDash?! What about me??”

“—better not leave me a bad review, I swear! Oh, Rey-Rey, you cannot fuck him if he fucks my rating. Promise me that.”

“No, I’ll have to fuck him and blackmail him about it to keep us out of the red.”

“Aww, you’d fuck a guy for me? Nevermind, you’re forgiven.”

“Oh, good. Wait, how did I end up being the one who gets forgiven, here?!”

“I said you’re forgiven! Why are you making a big deal about it?” Rose gives Rey a shit-eating grin, and Rey makes a show of screaming in frustration and hanging her head. Gosh, she has the worst best friend.

*

Rose Tico is a wild card. No, scratch that: Rose Tico is a menace.

Ben’s a little ruffled as he finally wrests the to-go bag from her hands and closes the door. Not just because Rey’s in the car, trying to duck out of sight, but because Rose is a hellion. An absolute terror.

She has his Romanticism section at 11 three days a week. He never paid her much mind—she tends to prefer interacting in discussion with other students than with him—until recently. Until last week, when Ben did a Very Bad Thing and misused the student portal system to find Rey’s dorm and phone number. He recognized Rose’s name, a common denominator between Rey’s room assignment and his own damn roster.

He wouldn’t have this information if he wasn’t on Student Affairs committees. And that’s definitely not what it’s for. FERPA would kick his ass if they knew. But he’s already deep in ass-kick-worthy territory, and was from the moment he found her lounging on his father’s couch. What’s another step in the wrong direction?

Since then, he’s kept an eye on Miss Tico in class. He’s noticed a subtle shift in her behavior: her glances towards him have been sly, knowing, her posture smug when she flounces to the front to hand in assignments. And then, yesterday, she’d come to his office hours.

He’d looked up from logging attendance in the gradebook and raised his eyebrows. “Something I can help you with, Miss Tico? You’re not finding the midterm paper too strenuous, I hope.” She swaggered up to the other side of his desk, slurped loudly on what appeared to be a bubble tea. Chewed.

“Nope. I’m here to talk about what you might be finding strenuous, lately.” Well, that was…forward. Concerning. His heart dropped, but he crossed his arms slowly, leaned back in his seat.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on, Professor.” She rolled her eyes dramatically, kicked at the front of his desk. “I know all about your little cat and mouse. Your father.” Her voice went lower. “Rey tells me everything.”

“Is that so.”

“Uh-huh.” The look on her face was pure lascivious glee. “Hell, I probably know more than you do.”

“Why exactly are you here, Miss Tico.”

She sighed, braced both hands on his desk, her bubble tea leaving a pool of condensation. “I’ve known Rey for a long time. I know her, as much as she lets anyone know her.” Gone was the smug lilt in her voice, the playful know-it-all-ness. Rose was serious. Dead serious. “When she gets a harebrained idea in her head, there’s no point in trying to talk her out of it. She’ll drag you right in, or else she’ll drop you.

“Her little…vice? These poor fools she strings along?” She gave him a meaningful once-over, implying he was among said fools. “It isn’t negotiable. The best I can do as her friend is…clear the path ahead. Minimize the destruction. And then…enjoy the show.” A wink. “So I am here to clear the path.”

“And what does clearing the path entail, Rose?” He surged forward, suddenly, resting his forearms on the desk, and she rambled back a few paces, raising her eyebrows with a can’t-catch-me grin.

“It entails a paper trail, Professor.” His heart leapt anxiously. He did his best to hide it. “We’re besties. I have Rey’s passcodes, she has mine. I know about the phone calls. She tells me when she’s going out with you or Han. I even have a lovely picture of you, on your bike, outside our dorm. So I’m telling you, right now—man-to-man—if you hurt her? Screw up her grades, screw with her heart, screw with her body? The whole fucking world is gonna know it.” Ben gripped the edge of the desk, feeling sick to his stomach. “Have your fun! You’re both adults. I don’t give a shit. But don’t forget that you are not in a vacuum, Ben. She has people in her corner.” The glint in Rose’s eyes was fierce, threatening, and he’d almost have felt a pang of gratitude, of sincere comfort, for the friendship between her and Rey had her fervor not been directed at him. “And hey…she’s been sleeping in your t-shirt.” Rose winked, then, backing towards the door. “You’re welcome.”

Another little dove stoking the fire. In Mesopotamian godhood, each deity employed a sukkal or vizier, a messenger or assistant who interceded between deities, between gods and their human cultists. Often venerated as gods themselves due to their proximity. Inanna’s sukkal was Ninshubur.

Ninshubur was trusted more than the others, the oldest and most treasured of their kind. They walked the earth freely, granted the power to directly bestow gifts to humankind. Inanna’s battle companion, seen dragging her back from the underworld themselves. Their star sign Orion, the heavens’ truest shepherd. Their feet clad in precious jewels, their staff impassable. Unlike the other gods, who had more complex ties to values and characteristics, Ninshubur was associated most with their passionate loyalty.

He was foolish to forget Inanna had an entourage, too.

He’s spent the hours since Rose’s office intrusion…frankly panicking. Of course there is a paper trail—phones keep records—he always knew this was a risk. But her bold statement of the fact makes it more real.

He really should stop. Cut her loose.

But that word. He is inevitable. She, by association, is the same. He cannot look at her in class, in his father’s house, and not want her. He cannot un-kiss, un-touch, her quivering frame. He cannot take back what he has done: they are on a downhill trajectory now, motion unstoppable and constant.

No more brazen pickups in front of her dorm, then. They’ll have to be more careful.

No more physical contact on campus, too. Too risky.

He curses himself, but only halfheartedly—he really should stop, right now—but he knows he won’t. He cannot. He needs fuel. He orders DoorDash. And who should show up to deliver his order but Miss Tico, Ninshubur themselves, holding out what looked to be a gift, but might have been a staff.

“I ordered contactless,” he’d said, back tensing, and Rose laughed smoothly.

“Oh, shit! Did you? So sorry, Professor. It’s been a long night, I must’ve totally missed it.” He reached to take the bag, but she’d rocked back on her heels, pulling it just out of reach, plowing forward: “I love your house! Wow, it’s just so modern. Did you have it built or was it bought?”

“Bought,” he growled, making another pass for the bag. She let him grasp the rolled top of it, but didn’t let go.

“Crazy coincidence that I ended up with your order, huh? Hey, I wanted to say thanks for the tip! It’s very generous, and, gosh, I’m so sorry about overlooking the contactless thing. Like, not just because of the tip.”

“Thank you,” he gritted out, hoping it would incite her to let go of the damn bag, and then he glanced up towards her idling car and saw her: little dove. Peeking up from the passenger’s side window—is she in the footwell? Crouched there like some goblin?—her eyes widened, and she ducked immediately, and Rose let go of the bag. “Well, see you tomorrow, Professor! Please, uh, don’t tank my rating because of this, haha…honest mistake, won’t happen again.” He closed the door, with finality, and Rose went swaggering back down the walkway.

See, there’s just no reason Rey would conveniently happen to be in her car. He knows the breach of contactless delivery isn’t an accident, either. Ninshubur was loyal, but also autonomous: they had their own designs, their own goals. Rose engineered the whole situation, turning an unfortunate DoorDash coincidence into an opportunity. For what? He suspects the answer is simply “chaos.” Enjoying the show.

His sandwich finally wrested from Rose, he types out a text to Rey, one-handed. Hiding from me, little dove? Cute.

Fuck a paper trail. It already exists, so what’s the use in trying to resist it?

He’ll see this thing through to the end. And eagerly. He’ll just have to be careful.

*

Class the next day is heavy with tension. At 11, Rose, smug and cheery in the back corner, seeming to be taking joy in actually raising her hand today, throwing out lazy, cocky takes on Erasmus Darwin. She doesn’t stay after class, but does toss him a too-loud “Have a good day, Professor” as she leaves. She’s mercifully absent from his office hours. At 2, Rey.

Fuck, he can’t think. He can’t think the whole hour leading up to it, so he switches up his lesson plan on a whim and throws together awkward discussion groups, too frazzled to lecture. His students mercifully pick up the lead, navigating his sloppy organization and filling in on their own, and he floats between groups more to keep up appearances, finding his silent presence does enough to quiet rowdy discussions and get everyone back on track. If he wants to get involved, he just has to say, “Good. Why’s that?” and zone out as the student elaborates.

This cannot continue. Him being off his game like this.

He has things to do, responsibilities.

Every time his gaze meets hers she flushes, like it’s instinct, like how roly-polies tuck themselves closed at the slightest breeze. Mechanical. Every time she flushes, he feels that sickly feeling, being cold and sweating both at once, and he keeps his jacket on, afraid it’ll soak through his button-down.

It was all well and good when he was texting her, cattily, from within his house. Now it’s crowding him in. Paper trail. Paper trail. Paper trail. Inappropriateconductwithastudent.

Yet, when class is over, he finds himself magnetized in her direction. That slow and steady slide. Debris floating downstream. She feels it, too—stands, but doesn’t move beyond that, the stream of peers splitting past her on their own current, and then, after a sudden bursting rush, they are alone.

He regards her silently. Watches her fiddle with the cuffs of her sweater, watches her flounder.

“You’re in a mood,” she says finally—clever, the same words he spoke to her on Tuesday.

“We should talk,” he blurts out, clipped, and his eyes furtively roam the auditorium. At the same time he does, she says, “Not here.” He swallows, finally thinks to speak again.

“Tonight—”

“I have an exam.”

“Tomorrow, then.” And then, “On a Friday night? Really?”

“Proctor had a sick kid last night.” She starts to pack up, and he’s desperate to touch her, for her to stay, but not here—they cannot! The paper trail, Ninshubur looming.

“You’ll come to me.” It’s a dig, a subtle reference to her hide-and-seek in Rose’s car, and she flushes again, huffs.

“That was—you know what—nevermind. No, I won’t.”

“Won’t you?”

“No.” She looks up and her gaze is shuttered, final.

“And why’s that?” Her eyes roam his face, his neck, and his hands jump as if to cross the distance, but he stills them. She swallows.

“I have my reasons.”

“You’ll come to my father, but not to me?” Her kitten tongue darts out between her teeth, scooping a divot in her left cheek. She looks away.

“Your father is a simple man, and you are not,” she answers, hushed, towards the stairs.

“You’re afraid of what will happen if you do.” She scrubs her clenched fists down her thighs, sucks in air, and then roughly shoulders her backpack up by one strap.

“You should be, too, Professor,” she spits, “and I think you are. You ask because you know I’ll say no. And I say no.” She’s wearing those goth-girl platform boots again, and they clomp down the auditorium floor and he expects her to stop, to draw him into another one of those bone-chilling kisses, but they continue, towards the door, and she calls, “You know where I’ll be.”

And that’s that.

*

Is he scared?

No. No, he’s rabid. He wants her here, wants to crash into the worst decision of his professional life.

Scratch that. He’s petrified.

Not of what will happen. No, that is a thing he cannot stand to wait for, a thing that has him more hot-blooded than a teenager on meth. He is afraid of what it will mean.

The paper trail. Rose knows. And two people is already too many for a secret. If Rose knows, so does someone else. On and on and on. Once the semester’s over, they’re in the clear, really—well, not without scrutiny, not without judgment, but beyond the border of reproach, firing, expulsion. There will be whispers. Judging glances. But all will be safe.

Or…is two too many for a secret, really? Based on her haughty attitude, her predilection for older men, Rey doesn’t have that many people in her corner—she can’t. He has a feeling Rose is it. And Rose is loyal. If she truly meant what she said about letting them…have their fun, she’ll keep her word. More for Rey’s sake, but it benefits him, too.

And should things go sour…it chills him to think about it, but Rose is his student, too. No, he won’t go there. There’s no need, not when her loyalty to Rey is unquestionable. She throws a wrench in things, for sure, but she’s made her alliances very clear: Rey first, hedonia second. As he dials Rey’s number at 11 that night, he thinks, in Ninshubur’s direction, enjoy the show.

She picks up after an agonizing amount of rings. Her voice is sleepy, but charged. “Professor.”

“Rey.” He leans back in his seat; he’s at his desk, his eyes gone dry and fatigued. Grading, always grading, no end to it.

“Aren’t I seeing you tomorrow? What’s so important it couldn’t wait?”

“Were you asleep, little dove?”

“No,” she mumbles. “Just…getting there.”

“Sleep eludes me,” he murmurs back, listening to her breaths rustling, “but maybe if I had a shirt of yours to sleep in, it would come easier.”

“I’m—I don’t sleep in your shirt, Professor Solo,” she answers hotly. “You flatter yourself.”

“Hmm. That’s not what I heard.” He waits, says her name, but then hears, distantly, the sound of a door creaking on its hinges. He can just barely make it out: “Tell him?...the worst!” Rose, indignant: “Thought he knew!” Rey, agonized: “…fucking serious—ughh! You suck.” The sound of bare feet, little dove feet, stomping back towards wherever she’s left the phone. Rose, calling, “I love you too!”

The phone jostles, and she hisses, embarrassed, poor thing, “It’s comfortable, okay?”

“That so?” He leans forward, sets his elbows on the desk. “It’s nice and soft, I bet.”

“At least you know what fabric softener is. More than I can say for your father.” The jab is halfhearted; she’s off her game, he knows, a little unguarded, a little soft.

“Mm-hmm. Oh, but I’ll bet it doesn’t smell like me anymore, does it, Rey?” A long stretch of silence before he hears an almost-sad-sounding, almost-grudging, “…No…”

“Come to me tomorrow, little dove, and I’ll give you a new one,” he promises softly, sweetly. “And then we’ll go to breakfast. No funny business, I promise. Just come get a shirt from me.”

“Why?” she rasps, and he says, “So I know you’ll go to sleep every night breathing me in.” Silence, rustling—he imagines her huddling closer into the shirt, doing just that. “You have to promise me something, though.”

“Hmm, whatsat?” she lisps, poor sleepy bird.

“Just my shirt. Nothing else. Can you do that for me?” Another long, long silence, then more rustling, before she whispers, heatedly, “Already do.” His pulse leaps, and he grips the desk, imagining her, right this very moment, nakedly swimming in his shirt, smelling of him—it’s about the most erotic thing he’s ever thought about.

And then he hears the little sound. High, nasal, slightly muffled, maybe into a pillow or the neckline of her shirt or her hand, and no, there’s no way—not uptight, chase-loving, virginal Rey Nolan—but he has to know anyway, his mouth running ahead of his brain; he’d had a plan, this was not the plan—“Are you—what are you doing, little dove? Tell me. What are you doing, Rey?” Another strangled whine, the sound of movement, and he says, “Miss Nolan,” sharp and low, and she laughs breathlessly, a rushing in his ears.

“Guess,” she whispers, mischievious even on the edge of sleep, a bite in her voice, and he growls, “No, you tell me, sweet girl. Tell me what you’re doing in my shirt right now, listening to my voice.”

“You think I’m touching myself? Huh?” she breathes, then groans again, a little louder now. “Bet you’d just love that, you arrogant—ahfucking pervert—” He claps his hand over his mouth, eyes bulging, oh, Inanna, the imagery in his mind right now. Those little fucking hands, wandering, slipping under the shirt that he knows covers everything—her eyes half-lidded, sleepy but determined.

“Rey. Rey,” he growls through his palm, bites down on a knuckle, snorts in air. “Tell me you’re not.”

“Uhhhhhmmn, I’m not,” she keens, and she surely is, and he palms at his dick, which is suddenly outraged at his zipper’s confinement.

“Tell me you’re not gonna cum all over my shirt, sweetheart. You’re not, are you? There’s no way you’re about to cum on the phone to your professor’s voice, is there?” He’s babbling, filthy words falling out of his mouth, and she’s breathing harder, each exhale a little mewl of sound, and then a frustrated little growl right at the end, and he hunches over, one hand in his hair to keep it from going straight to his own dick. “Having some trouble, baby? Those hands are just too little, aren’t they?” His voice is a growl, a rumble.

“Yes,” she whimpers, “Mm—s’not enough—”

“Jesus, Rey.” He wheezes it, oh, this was not the plan at all. “Fuck, you drive me crazy. Oh, I want my hands on you so bad. You need it, don’t you? Tell me.”

“Ben-ja-minnnn,” she chirps, high and tight, like the little bird she is, and he throbs. “I don’t need you—I don’t need anyone—but—unnhh—fuck do I want you!” These last words dissolve into a hiccuped long whine, a few smaller sobs, and then heaving, sated breathing.

He’s shaking. Vibrating with a tension, an energy, that’s too big for his body. “Rey,” he rasps, “Rey Nolan, you will be the death of me.” Another snuffle, and then heady, dopey giggles. She slurs, “Thanks for th’shirt,” and when he says her name again, he gets a mumble, and after a few more seconds, a tiny snore.

He at least has the dignity to hang up first. At least he has the dignity not to violently jack off to the sound of her sleeping. At least he has that.

*

In the morning, all the way up until he’s in the driver’s seat of his car, he’s texting her. Wheedling. Just come to me. Come get another shirt.

No, she writes back. Busy.

I know you’re not. Why are you being stubborn? Come over.

She answers, get over here or I will eat all the donuts I stg. U wouldnt want that.

Just come here, little dove.

In response, she sends a picture of one donut remaining in a box that holds several. A text that reads, Im leaving the second im done and u will miss ur chance.

He gets in the car.

She’s at that same table, chainsmoking, chain-donut-eating, and he does a double take, shivers all over, when he sees that she’s—there’s no way. He peers around the side of her, around the bulky jacket and the scarf, and, yeah. She’s wearing his shirt.

The same shirt she’s been sleeping in. The same one she’s gotten herself off in, probably more than once, but especially last night. She glances up, takes in the cold-sweat face-heated state of him, and blushes back. “I need to do laundry,” she mumbles around the cigarette.

Instead of taking the seat across from her like he’d planned—damn him and his plans—he slides in next to her, on the same bench, hip-to-hip. She tenses, but doesn’t lean away.

“Is this how you avoid smelling like a smoker, Miss Nolan? Donuts with your cigarettes?”

“I vape most of the time,” she answers. “I only smoke here. Or at your father’s.” She rolls her eyes.

“He thinks it’s disgusting. Used to, anyway.”

“Nope. Still does. That’s why I do it.” Her eyes twinkle, and she stubs out the butt. He leans in, shoulder to shoulder, and says, in a low voice, “I had a plan last night, you know.”

“Did you?” She sounds smug, but also nervous.

“Mm-hmm. I was gonna tell you to drop my class.” She flinches, looking hurt, and he coughs. “Not—your grades are fine, Rey. It’s not—it would just be nice…not to have anything in the way.”

“In the way.” He nods. She continues, “In the way of…sex? That’s what you want from me, isn’t it?” She’s heated, now, closed-off, too, and he turns, planting a hand on the edge of the bench behind her, facing her more.

“You say that,” he breathes, watching her glare, “like ‘sex’ is a singular event. Like it happens once, and then it’s over. Is that what you think this is?” She blinks, a little unsettled. “You think I’ll have you once, and then I’ll be satisfied? That you will? And we’ll go back to our little charade, our little campus, and everything will be normal?” She licks her lips. Swallows.

Doesn’t speak. So he keeps speaking. Moves his hand up to her waist, feeling the knobs of her spine under one finger. “You know better,” he murmurs. “That’s why you asked. You hoped I’d prove you wrong.”

“What…what do you want from me, then?”

“I don’t—more. Just…more. All of it—or—I don’t know.” He buries his mouth in his other hand, still caressing the back of her waist. “I’m…it’s not ethical, though. For me to have responsibility over your grades.”

“Nothing’s happened yet—”

“Is that what you call it? ‘Nothing?’” He barks a short laugh, shaking his head. “You get off on the phone with all your professors, then? Come on, little dove.” Pomegranate red colors her cheeks, and she looks away. “Oh, shy now? Uh-huh. Because it’s not nothing.” He taps her forehead, once, twice. “I’m not my father, or another pensioner you’ve entertained, Miss Nolan. I’m not gonna dress it up pretty and pretend it’s love. I will not lie to you. Don’t lie to me.”

A little tremor goes through her, jarring his hand on her waist, and she whispers, “Okay. It’s not nothing.” Looks away, out over the water, but he taps her cheek, catches her gaze again.

“Drop my class.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll drop it for you.” She scoffs and rolls her eyes, and he says, “Didn’t know professors could do that, did you? No, you wouldn’t. You’re a good student. Well, it’ll be a lot more…messy. We’re only supposed to use it for misconduct…disruption…there’s a lot of paperwork involved. Student Affairs will interview us both—”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Then drop it. Please, dear lord, save us both the hassle.” She’s about to snap back, but she hears the urgency in his tone. “I can’t—I can’t do my job with you in the room, Rey. I cannot. It’s not fair to the other students. It’s not fair to you. And I’m sure you don’t care, but it’s not fair to me, either.”

“None of this is fair,” she hisses, and he nods, eyes boring into hers. “And you started it!”

“You started it,” he volleys back, and she snarls, frustrated. “We both started it. We both could’ve stopped at any time.”

“But we won’t,” she whispers, and for a second the veneer cracks—both the prim-and-proper Miss Nolan and the wildebeest, bucking Rey, and he sees a girl who needs to hear it’s true. Needs to know she’s not alone in this…this vortex they are creating.

“We won’t,” he confirms, and she finally looks away, fidgeting with her scarf. After a long beat, she sniffs, holds her head up again. “Okay. Fine. I’ll drop it.” He exhales, finally, nods. “But only—” she shakes one finger, looking scattered. “Only if—if you—”

“What is it?”

“I want another shirt,” she blurts, blushing again, “as—as a show of good faith.”

“You know what you have to do to get it.” She glares, cheeks still aflame, and he leans in closer, letting his hand wrap past her back to her opposite hip, watching her eyes widen a little. “Just come in. No funny business. You just have to come inside.”

“Why? I—why are you so hung up on me going to your house, huh?”

“It’s another inch of ground,” he answers honestly, smirking when she rolls her eyes and huffs.

“Fine.”

“And in return I won’t make fun of you for liking how I smell so much, hmm? Wanting to wear my shirts—”

“Stop,” she whines, burying her face in her scarf. With a low, possessive noise, he surges his hand up her waist, up her back, burying it in her hair and squeezing his hand closed, knowing it’s just enough to tug a little. She freezes, drops her hands. “You don’t want me to stop,” he rumbles, then leans in to nip at the curved helix of her ear, the corner of her jaw. Oh, the feeling of her skin between his teeth—how desperately he wants more of it.

Trembling, she wrangles away from him, pulling out her phone, unlocking it with shaking hands. “Need to drop it—” She bats his hand out of her hair, but lets it be when he settles it between her shoulder blades. “Drop your…stupid…fucking class before I lose my nerve.”

“You have to work up nerve for that?” A glare at him out of the corner of her eye, and he knows part of it, too, is working up nerve for what it means. Accepting the inevitable. Surrendering to it.

“Never dropped a class before,” she mumbles, and he says, “Oh, right. Miss Straight A’s.”

“Stupid tiny…phone screen,” she growls, tapping furiously into the student portal, which is ancient and not designed for mobile on a browser. He clucks his tongue. “Yes, so many things are just too small these days, aren’t they?” Another withering glare. He just can’t help himself.

She holds her breath, honest-to-goddess, the whole way through the dropping process, then drops her phone on the wooden table with a clunk of finality. “There. Done.” Pants for breath, a light frosty cloud emerging: despite the morning getting later, there’s a cold front rolling in, unseasonably early. Fucking climate change, always. “Good girl,” he says, casually, then laughs brightly at the red hue returning to her cheeks, the hands fidgeting again, all her tells—“You liked that.”

After a moment of sputtering, getting her bearings, she hisses, “Sh…shut the fuck up, Benjamin,” and clumsily stands, rounding the end of the bench. He snags her waist in one arm, pulls her back closer—she stands above him now, with him sitting, but not by much, and this fact sends a sick thrill down his spine. “You make my name sound so filthy,” he breathes appreciatively, and she answers, “That’s because it’s your name and you’re a filthy asshole,” and she seizes him by the collar and kisses him.

Her mouth is cold. But not for much longer. He drinks in the now almost-familiar taste of her, sugar and carbon and coffee and the inescapable warm, slick taste of human DNA, swimming suspended in fluid. When they break apart, she spits, “You owe me a shirt,” and then she’s marching up the café’s porch, in the door, out the other door, waiting impatiently for him on the curb out front, arms crossed.

He follows, predatory, preternatural. Little dove, always one wing to the skies.

Chapter Text

The ride to Ben’s house is silent, by unspoken agreement. The air isn’t silent, though. It’s charged, thick on Rey’s skin, prickling, his eyes on the road, supposedly—though it seems every time she sneaks a glance at him, he’s already looking at her, or has just stopped.

It’s cold out, the air going gray, but in here, she’s sweating. Professor Solo doesn’t even have the heat on very high—no.

It’s all him.

And her, she supposes. It was gratifying last night, her revenge—that’s how she’s thinking about it; to think about it as anything but that cuts too deep to some painful truth—her revenge, then, for his hidden ace, the fact that he knew she’s been sleeping in his t-shirt.

But there is always a price.

Despite how much he infuriates her, enervates her, draws her in with a relentless gravity, she’ll miss his class. His deadpan sarcasm, the separate myth he weaves in strands between narratives, elevating them to some higher, literary purpose shared by all story—she’s never thought about literature that way, and when she squints, she finds she can’t quite tease apart these parallel presences: his approach to narrative, and her attraction to him. Part and parcel with his makeup. The angry, feral clashing they seem to keep falling back into and the relentless pace of the human storytelling tradition, unchanged for centuries.

No, that’s too grandiose. He’s an asshole, and he turns her on, and it’s fun to watch him work. That’s all.

The point is, dropping a class for the first time in her college career stings. She’s made it two years at this point without ever having to, in part because she’s sacrificed chances at a blossoming social life for more study time. Her only forays into the greater world at the behest of Rose, or in search of lightning in She-Devil’s veins. But it sates her to know she’s that distracting, that the man’s hungry enough for her, wrecked enough over her, to feel it jeopardizes his most sacred duties.

(And terrifying. No man she’s ever been with has jeopardized his work for her, inasmuch as any of them have had a laborer’s mindset in the first place. It’s almost noble that he made her drop it—almost, if you almost close your eyes and turn your head 90 degrees. Because it’s mostly depraved, what is happening. Sick and twisted.)

Her skin’s still prickling as she follows him into the entryway of his house. She’s jumpy. It’s embarrassing, really, that she pushed him for another t-shirt—even knowing what it would entail—embarrassing that she’s gotten that attached to the scent of him, fading by the day from the one she already has. Feeble, her attempt at making it seem like a goad, another strategy on the court, when really it’s just the want. All the scattered pieces, clutched in desperation, despite the fact that they sear the skin. In his bedroom, his closet, he spreads an arm open, inviting her to take her pick.

She rifles through them—of course he’s the type of man who hangs his t-shirts on a rack—plucking at hems with the kind of feigned disinterest cats model. (Contrary to Rose’s wonderings, there are no animals in the house that she can see. And there is furniture. Normal, human furniture.)

She pauses at the end of the rack, shrewdly squinting at the last t-shirt, before wandering over to his hamper, as though it’s happenstance. But she knew what she really wanted, the minute she walked in here.

It’s just not the same. A clean one, fresh from a hanger.

He makes a pained noise. “Uh—hey, those are…kind of dirty.”

“A man who hangs his t-shirts keeps dirty clothes in a dirty clothes basket? Shocking,” she says flatly, and then squats down, picking through them with a thumb and forefinger.

“Rey.” She practically smells it on him, the animal pheromones as he realizes what, exactly, is happening. “You don’t know where those have been.”

“Do you do cardio in them? You seem more like a shirtless-at-the-gym kind of guy. What, do you groom dogs in them? Do you do anything worse to them than I do to your shirts, Professor?” Miraculously, she keeps the cool, detached affect the whole way through her jabs, and she looks up to see him gripping the edge of the closet doorway, looking like every muscle in his body is tensed.

“You mean do I jack off to you in them?” He strides forward, looking for all the world like he’s fighting to keep himself in check, and squats down next to her, his broad thigh made broader by the movement, and she tears her eyes away. Close enough that she can feel the heat coming off him, but not touching. “Miss Nolan,” he clucks. “I’m not egocentric enough to do that in my own shirts.”

“Aren’t you?” she hisses—squeaks, really.

“Of course not, don’t be crude. I use your tank top, like any gentleman would.” Her cheeks heat again, remembering the tank top from the barbeque, the one he stole—damn him!—and the glance she darts up shows her a wicked grin splitting his features. He reaches out, slowly, and she almost rocks forward, eager, but he simply reaches over her arms and pulls out a shirt. “This one should do just fine,” he whispers, and she can tell by his voice that he’s still smirking.

And then he says, “I’ll walk you out.”

True to his word, he hasn’t so much as touched her since—well, not since they left the café. No funny business. Just an inch of ground gained, a t-shirt surrendered.

Maybe this is why she stops, stone-cold, in the bedroom doorway. In the hall, he senses her stillness, turns with his eyebrows raised. “I don’t buy it,” she says, voice barely above a whisper, and he sidles in close. Still not touching. One unfairly-large, muscled forearm lifting slowly to brace on the door frame, above her head, yet shoulder-height for him.

“Don’t buy what, little dove?” A bemused twinkle in his eye. Oh, the bastard.

“The gentleman act,” she spits. “What are you playing at, huh? What’s your next trick?”

“You think I’d bring you here,” he asks, his voice dipping lower, almost a purr, “lure you here with promises of complete and total civility…just to take advantage of you while you had your guard down? I’d say that isn’t very sportsmanlike.”

“You’re not very sportsmanlike.” She grounds her heels in, crosses her arms to keep her chin from wobbling. “Spare me the suspense, then, why don’t you? Spit it out, Professor.”

“And to top it all off, you think I’m a man who spits.”

“You aren’t fooling me,” she insists, trying not to let her voice turn into a whine, and he ducks his head to look more firmly into her eyes, and she swallows hard.

“I told you,” he whispers, “I brought you here to give you a shirt. That’s all. I told you, just this morning, I will not lie to you. It’s not my fault you’re used to men who lie.” She throws her hands up, growls, tension still coiling in her—where is it meant to go, if this is it?—and says, “You are infuriating!”

“You want me to be lying.” He steps closer, just by a hair, still not touching her. “You want me to trick you into it so you don’t have to say the words. I told you, little dove.” Demeaningly, he crouches a little, like one might when speaking to a toddler. “Not until that pretty mouth says please.” She wheels, feeling words on the tip of her tongue, not the right words, where are they? Grits out, “Haven’t I said enough?”

“Hmm…no. ‘Fuck you’—not close enough. ‘It’s not nothing’—that’s just the truth.” He’s counting them off on his fingers now, merrily, like he’s been keeping score. “‘I don’t need you, but fuck, do I want you’—no. Going to be seared into my brain forever, but no.” She barely remembers saying that last night, caught in the throes of her sleepy orgasm, but her cheeks flame violently, and he chuckles. “All of the filthy, fighting words you love to say, but you can’t say please?”

Her knees waver. Wobble. Wobble forward, her body carrying her where her mind cannot, kissing him with urgency. A kiss he indulges for a brief moment, ravenous on her part, almost lazy—aloof—on his, before he breaks apart, standing back up to his full height, out of her reach. Sidestepping her attempt to drag him back in by the front of the shirt. “Charming, Miss Nolan,” he huffs, “but not a please.”

She stamps one foot. “Ooh, just—just get it over with!”

“Well that’s about the least sexy thing you could’ve said.”

“No—just—ughh, fuck! You are a stubborn—condescending—prick. You…you know what I mean, just…”

“Just give in, Rey? You, of all people, asking me to just let it happen? Oh, no, this is getting too good. It’s a six-letter word, sweetheart. I know you can spell it. Why don’t you do that? Spell it, and that can count as you saying it.”

“Fuck you.”

“The words you’re looking for are ‘fuck me.’” Rey stares at him, all smug and big and nonplussed in the bedroom doorway, and it’s infuriating how she can be so flustered, so—so overcome, and he looks like he’s watching something vaguely interesting on television.

Oh, she’ll show him.

She turns and drops her bag on the floor. Drops her jacket beside it. Impatiently tears the scarf from around her neck.

“What are you—oh.” She hears his mouth go dry as she twists the hem of his stupid fucking t-shirt up, wrestles it over her head, too fucking pissed off to make it sexy at all, baring her taut belly, her tits in her jersey bralette, nipples surely poking through, and she pauses to take him in—his eyebrows are still raised, but he doesn’t look bothered, the bastard fuck! She half-turns, reaching for the band of the bralette, and then he’s wrapping the back of her neck in one wide, searing-hot palm, shoving her down toward the bed with her face in the mattress, and she hisses, “Yes,” furtively, hears him chuckle low in her ear.

“It’s. Not. A. Please,” he hisses back, his breath growling out, stirring the hair near her ear, damp and hot, and she shudders under him at the feel of it, grateful she’s slumped over the bed like this because her knees just about gave out. “You’re a stubborn girl, Rey. You take what you want. But there’s no taking.” He intercepts her hand as she gropes, trying to entice him, pins her wrist up near her lower back with his free hand, and she wheezes out a breath, liking this far too much. “You ask nicely. That’s all you have to do. Pretend I’m the barista at a coffee shop.” Despite his stern grip, he rubs a circle between her neck and shoulder with his thumb, almost tender. “Put in your order.”

“Pl…” The word sticks in her throat, her body rebelling against the very notion, and he coos.

“Keep trying, little dove.”

Face ablaze, through gritted teeth, she spells the word. P, L, E, A, S, E. It’s humiliating, and even more humiliating is the fact that it’s hard, the fact that she can’t even say a stupid word, the fact that she fucking wants to at all. His subtle weight at her back lifts, and then he lifts her with him, loosing her wrist and tugging her back so that her back rests against his front, and she wobbles on her feet. His hands grip her waist, slide up, thumbs hooking under the band of her bralette, and she can’t breathe. She cranes her head up to find his eyes crackling with underworld heat, boring into her. “Please what?” he urges, one thumb arching higher, grazing the point of a nipple, her chest seizing. “What am I supposed to do with you, Miss Nolan?” Despite the harsh edge to his voice, he bows his head down, a kiss teasing her hairline, and it’s just too much.

“Please. Please,” she parrots, her jaw working, no sound coming out, and he spins her, leans in nose-to-nose, their lips nearly grazing.

“Tell me what you want, Rey.”

“I want—I want—” A laugh burbles out, high and manic, and through giggles she finishes, “I w-want so many things I shouldn’t want.”

“You and me both,” he murmurs, still gazing at her expectantly. “And believe me, I’ll take my time coaxing it all out of you. But start with right now.” He cups the back of her head, holding her steady. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to t-touch me,” she whispers. “I’m—I want you—to fuck me. Want you to—I want you—I want you.” It’s incomprehensible, and her ears burn with embarrassment, but…but her chest feels lighter, clearer, than it has in a long time. Maybe his, too: he lets out a slow, long breath, sucks in more air. An almost-boyish smile crosses his face before it’s replaced again with that all-consuming fire, that endothermia that perhaps birthed the start of all life, or will perhaps end it.

“You sure kept me waiting long enough,” he growls, and then finally—finally—he’s flinging her on her back on the bed, and she’s giggling again, caught and carried away by that dizzying lightness, a piece of ash in his volcanic wake. He stands over her, his eyes raking across every curve of her, finally taken under by her shirtlessness, the most of her he’s truly seen uncovered (and not underwater). His fingers skate, ghost-light, from her belly button up to her clavicle, and he hovers there before seizing at the bottom edge of her bralette, dragging it up over her head with animal urgency.

She reflexively curls an arm in over herself, but he drags it away, kisses the palm with a frantic look in his eye, pupils roaming over her tits, which she does actually like—they’re small, easy to manage, and perky thanks to said smallness—but very few people have seen them. He turns, folding one leg under him on the bed, to get closer, and she titters nervously. His laser-focused gaze has always been intense, especially when focused on something specific—her bottom lip, her clavicle; it’s unnerving, and now her nipples, apparently: he rolls one between thumb and forefinger, watches it pucker, listens to her squeak, flashes her another devilish smirk, and then, without further ado, bends and sucks as much of her breast into his mouth as he can.

And he’s got a big mouth. It’s pretty much the entire thing. “Benjamin,” she squeaks, and he groans, and it vibrates her chest. He releases the tit with a wet smack, giving the nipple particular attention before he does, and she drags his mouth straight to her own, finding—impossibly—that kissing him is the less overwhelming option right now. “Can’t get enough of my name in your mouth, sweetheart,” he growls between kisses, dropping his knee between her legs, and she squirms against it mindlessly before realizing what she’s doing and gasping ashamedly, covering her mouth.

“Oh, you’re ready,” he laughs, sweet and mean, “aren’t you, little dove? Go on, don’t be shy.” She shakes her head, mutely—it’s just too embarrassing, and he tsks. “You can touch yourself on the phone with me…demand more of my shirts to defile…but you can’t say please. Can’t grind on me like you very clearly want to. Where’s all your bravado, gone, Miss Nolan?” His hand worms past the waistband of her leggings, and she watches his breath hitch as he finds her wet already, wet for a pathetically long amount of time before now. He scrambles, then, to shimmy the rest of her clothes off of her, and she whines, sitting up on her elbows, tugging at the neck of his shirt before he does the laser-focus thingy on her pussy again.

“Not fair,” she pants, pointing at his chest. “Take it off.” He smirks, but complies, and she about swoons at the sight of…fuck. She hasn’t seen him like this, not really, only underwater. And she knew, she knew it would be, from the hard planes she’s felt in bursts during kisses and other close encounters—but oh. Seeing him in full light, in stillness like this, is dizzying. And it’s not just the muscles. Out of clothes, somehow he just looks even more…large. Just…broad. Wide. Girthy, and that’s just what’s above the pants.

He's laughing again. Laughing at her. Dick. “Satisfied?” She’s still fumbling for words when he hunches again, elbows on the bed, between her legs, appraising. She shrinks under his pointed gaze, tries to close her legs, but he wrestles her down, with an “Easy, now.” Scrappylittleferalthing. “Just let me look at you.” She covers her face, unbearably self-conscious, as he spreads her open, but she jumps, squeaks, when he circles her clit with his thumb.

“Look at you,” he hisses appreciatively, his breath stirring her, cooling the wetness already embarrassingly abundant. Oh, she can’t bear it, but then he’s looking up at her, his face wolfish, hungry, as he says, “Show me.”

“I’m—what?” She props herself up on an elbow, runs a trembling hand through her hair.

“Show me how you touch yourself, Rey.” His smirk spreads wider. “Show me what you do in my shirts.”

“Ugh, you’re never gonna get over it, are you?”

“Never,” he intones lowly, gripping her thigh, but still she balks, and he kneads her skin beneath his palm. “You can close your eyes,” he whispers, “pretend you’re on the phone with me. If it helps.” She summons up a half-assed glare, but ultimately closes her eyes. Takes a few, shuddering breaths.

Just like she’s on the phone. Right.

Nevermind that she’s never once touched herself in front of another person. On the phone with one. (She’s pretended, once or twice, but that’s different.) It takes her a few halting fits and starts to find the courage, but he’s maddeningly patient, his cheek resting on her thigh, regarding her placidly every time she peeks at him.

And she has to begrudgingly admit that, once she does finally work up the nerve, his encouragement is…encouraging.

From the first reverent “Yes, that’s it” to the litany of shallow curses, the urgent sound of her own name—she’s starting to think that maybe, if she just keeps her eyes closed, she could even work up a good sweat, maybe even cum with him watching, when his hand closes over hers. Stills her. She whines at his intrusion.

“I just got into a groove,” she grumbles, and he laughs. Sucks her sloppy fingers into his own mouth with gusto, and he looks positively wrecked at the taste of her on his tongue. Now, that’s an ego boost that could keep a girl going forever.

When he releases her with a wet pop, kneads her palm with his thumb, and says, “Tell me what you were thinking about last night,” all ragged and out-of-breath and shit—that’s a shot of self-esteem she could live on.

No wonder people do sex. Sex is empowering. Still, habitual meekness and self-consciousness make it hard for her to string the words together. “Gosh—uhh—honestly I was thinking about g-getting one over on you.” He laughs with her.

“Really? Playing mean games makes you wet? Tease.” He strokes her softly, making her jump, then says, “And what were you thinking about near the end? When you nearly got there, but couldn’t?”

She licks her lips, too far gone now to fight these depraved admissions, her eyes already pinned on the objects of her demise, the things that make all other thoughts go out the window, the things that override sense and dignity. It’s easier to point, still, though, so she does, and he wiggles his fingers teasingly. “My hands? Why’s that?”

“They’re s-so—” she swallows thickly. “—big. Stupid…big hands.”

“That’s all you want me for, Miss Nolan? My big hands?” Said big hands now petting her again, like her pussy is a sleeping little cat, and damn if it isn’t ever purring. “Tell me how many fingers you had in you, trying to pretend they were mine.” She goes crimson, drops her elbow back to the bed, her back, so that she doesn’t have to look at his smug dickwad face.

“Two?” she peeps, not meaning for it to come out like a question, and he stops what he’s doing, and she whines in protest.

“Two…?”

“Three,” she whispers, squeezing her eyes shut, secretly drunk on his self-assured chuckle.

“You poor thing,” he whispers back, and then, gently but surprisingly, his fingers are probing her entrance, slipping inside. Jesus, she knows he’s trying to be gentle, but she tenses in surprise, the stretch unexpected, her eyes flying open.

“Asshole—you could start with one, maybe?!” Another dark chuckle, and she props up on her elbow again to berate him, just as he says, “Sweetheart, that is one,” and she sees that he’s telling the truth.

She…whimpers. Honestly fucking whimpers. “It only feels like two to you because you’re so tight,” he adds, an almost-pained strain in his voice, and, gee, at least there’s that—this is fucking him up, too. He’s slowly moving in and out of her, now, his broad thumb circling her clit, replicating what she showed him earlier, and she melts back down into the bed, lost in it all. That is one finger. One finger. It takes two of hers to feel this full. Holy shit what about two of his what will that feel like what will his cock feel like—she doesn’t have to wait long to find out, at least, not about his fingers. She’s eased up some, and he works a second finger in, slowly, and she keens his name, high and reedy, one hand gripping his wrist, the other snarled in the bedspread.

“Shhh, hush, just take it like a good girl,” he growls, mouth moving against her thigh. Her eyes roll back, completely gone stupid, unable to think, overcome. “You gonna cum for me, little dove? Oh, you wouldn’t. You’re such a good girl, you’d never cum around your professor’s fingers—in his bed—you wouldn’t be caught dead, would you, Miss Nolan?” At his damning, filthy words, she does just that, her whole body seizing, threatening to trap his head between her clenching thighs if not for his other hand wrenching her open again, her spasms gripping his fingers in deeper, making him spew curses. She chokes on her own spit, makes to close her legs, once it’s over, but he keeps her open, though he stops touching her clit.

When she braves a glance back down the bed, he’s flushed, all across the bridge of his nose and the tops of his ears, eyes wide, snorting in air like a bull, his hair all fucked, and she laughs dizzily. At her giggle, his eyes snap to hers, and he says, shaky and strained, “You’re—you’re gonna need another one.”

“Huh?”

“I said I think—I think you’re gonna need…to cum again. That is, assuming you really still want—fuck.” He rests his forehead on the mattress, winded, and when he looks up again, his eyes are half-crazed. “I’m not being an asshole. Just, I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Prove it, then.”

“What?”

“Put your money where your mouth is and—and show me your dick,” she demands, and he curses, pulls his fingers out of her, and drunkenly stumbles out of his pants and turns around—not that she would’ve minded another moment of looking at his ass—but—oh.

She thinks he’s proportional. Maybe. But then even that is sort of a problem because Ben is a very large man and if this dick looks normal-sized on him then—then—

She flops backwards again, unable to overthink another moment of its largeness, all swollen and flushed and angry-looking, a bead of precum trailing down the tip that she is suddenly hellbent on getting in her mouth—and that’s weird. She’s sucked a fair number of dicks in her time, but always as a…for lack of a better word, a courtesy. A bandaid on a relationship designed to fail. A tactic.

Not because she’s…mouth-horny. As in, maybe-sort-of about to drool if she’s not careful mouth-horny. “Yeah, I’m gonna need another one.” And it turns out maybe she’s not the only one who’s mouth-horny because, with a growl, he wraps an arm around one thigh and drags her roughly to the edge of the bed, and she squeaks—he’s sobigholyshit—and then his mouth is on her.

Broad, wet strokes, and, oh, she doesn’t want to think about the fact that she has thought about this. Sort of obsessively. Ever since he sucked her lip into his mouth that first time. Still, she twists in his grip, resisting the sensation—she’s still sensitive, touchy from her last orgasm—but he throws one of those massive, veiny, solid forearms across her waist and gives her a look. “Be still,” he croaks out. “and let me enjoy you.” Then he’s on her again, his mouth inescapable, though he’s being gentle around her clit. His tongue dips to slid inside her and he groans, jittering her tender membranes, and then his tongue makes way for two fingers again, a bit easier to take now.

Talking, again, each word from his mouth making her more and more into a puddle. A helpless, pathetic puddle. “Gods, I have wanted to taste you for so long,” and she hides her face in her hands, shy. He noses around a bit more, licking strips up each side of his penetrating fingers, and then, when he starts to roll her clit gently beneath his tongue, he adds a third.

She cannot think. She cannot speak. She can only whine and writhe at the all-consuming stretch, the throbbing, the steadily building pressure of her next orgasm, rocketing closer, inevitable. He purses his lips around the quivering bud of her clit and sucks, humming through his nose, vibrating her, and she cries out as she cums, grasping at anything in reach—the sheets, his silken hair—wrecked beyond a reasonable doubt.

When he elbows up over her shaking body to kiss her, his cock bobbing against her belly, hot and close, she tastes herself on him. Drinks it in, greedily, mindlessly. For the first time, her hands roam the firm plane of his chest, unfairly built, the sweat-glistened trail of dark hair that runs down, down, to the—to his—he gasps as she grasps him, nudging reflexively further into her hand, which she’s mildly surprised is able to circle him fully, touching fingers to thumb. Exploratory, she runs her fingertips up its length, and it just keeps going and going and going before, finally, she crests the ridged head of him, feels him slick there, and he huffs into her mouth and pulls away.

Casting about the room for something. She trembles up onto an elbow to watch him as he grabs lube—considerate—and condoms, stashed in a nightstand drawer. She’s speaking before she’s even thought about it. “I’m—um.”

“Yes?” He looks almost peeved to have been interrupted, and she swallows a laugh.

“Um, so—I’m on b…birth control? Like…as long as you’re, you know, clean…?” He thunders close to her again, cupping the side of her face, thumbing hair out of her eyes.

“Sweetheart,” he utters, “are you telling me you want me to raw you?”

“You’re so vulgar,” she grumbles, heat surging to her face. Then, “If you don’t want to, just say so.”

“You’re sure.” He looks to be thinking. “I have tests. Um, they’re from…maybe a year ago? But since then—I mean, not a lot has changed. Until you.”

It’s the soft, confessional tone to his voice, that foreign softness that she so rarely sees, that makes her answer easier. “I…kind of always wanted my—my first time to be—you know…” She can’t say it, not with the way his dark eyes have trapped her again at the mention of “first time.” Her inner, sensible feminist grumbles, what is it with men and virgins? But the deep, dark, wanting part of her crows at the fire, saying yesyesyesyesYES. “Um—just s-show me the tests, and I’m…I’m good to go…you know…without the condom.” He fumbles through his phone, cursing, bringing up an STI panel with his name on it, and she glances over it—nothing jumps out at her, so she nods.

“You’re sure. I mean, I can get tested again—”

“I believe you,” she blurts, and it’s true. It’s true what he said this morning, what he said less than an hour ago: he hasn’t lied to her.

She doesn’t think he could if he wanted to. That’s the worst part.

Despite his harried look as he slathers himself in lube and trundles into position, braced over her, arms like a forest surrounding her view, he can’t help gloating because he’s an asshole. “Prim and proper Miss Nolan,” he chuffs. “Secretly dreaming about getting filled up her very first time—who would’ve known?”

“Hardass Professor Solo,” she fires back, glaring, “secretly about to rawdog his student. It’s always the quiet ones.”

“Touche,” he grins, and then she feels him grappling between both their legs, the bulbous head of his cock nestling between her folds, held there, like an egg about to drop. Like she is maybe the thing he’s always calling her: little dove, about to create something unknowable. She squeaks anxiously as it slides a little further, just barely starting to feel the stretch, and he captures her face in one hand, nips her into a kiss. “I’ve got you,” he rumbles, and she wishes they could go back to throwing erotic insults at each other.

He slides further. Slowly, being gentle, true to his word, but still the stretch is—intense. Not painful, just an unfamiliar pressure, and her eyes burn a little. As if to distract her, he says, low and knowing, “Tell me, little dove. Tell me I’m the only one who’s had you like this.” She whines as something gives way, low in her belly, feeling herself make room for him the same way women have done for generations, and then it starts to feel good. “Just you,” she pants, and he growls, rutting a little further. How much more of it is there??? “Nobody else,” she grits out on a moan as the last few blessed inches slide home, their hips flush.

He grasps her chin again, guides her to look down. “Look at yourself,” he growls, “look how well you take it.” And then, more softly, “Are you okay?”

“Uh-huhhh,” she slurs, dizzy thinking about just how full she is. Surely he’s nudging her womb, or past it, deep in her belly somewhere, spearing her, if she can feel it all the way up in her fucking brain.

“Tell me how it feels, sweet girl,” he pants, giving an experimental, slow thrust, and she whines, loud and embarrassingly needy, feeling like she can feel every centimeter of drag against her walls. All her compunction, her propriety, has dissolved, the mindless, bottomless want filling every inch of her body that he doesn’t already fill. “So full,” she mewls, clawing at him as he thrusts again, “Mmmnnso good, Benjamin.”

“Fuck,” he spits, at the sound of his name, snarling even as he kisses her. “You’re so tight for me, Rey. My tiny little dove.”

She fights through the thick, carnal haze in her brain to quip, “Don’t—don’t doves have cloacas?” He bursts a laugh out against her lips, whispers, “Shut up,” picking up his pace.

“Oh—ohhh,” is all she can say, her eyes rolling back, his hands painting hot trails down her body, pawing at her breasts, her face, and he growls, like he’s pissed he can’t envelop all of her. Looking at once smug and rabid, he taunts, “Where’s that smartass mouth now, Rey? Don’t tell me I’ve already fucked it out of you.” His teeth nip at her neck, and he adds, “I’m just getting started.” He pins one of her wrists beside her head, another sick thrill zinging through her at the restraint, then grabs her other hand and guides it down to feel where they’re joined, where he’s steadily pulsing in and out of her. She trembles, feeling like a cog in a big machine, perpetual motion.

“Touch yourself for me,” he whispers, “come on. Wanna feel you cum around my cock, pretty bird.” She tosses her head, pulling against his grip, but he’s immovable. “I can’t,” she pants, “I don’t—I can’t cum again, I don’t think I can—”

“You can,” he growls, “you will. Just…just start soft. Gentle. You can do it. There’s a good girl,” he adds as she finally starts, pushing through the mild discomfort lingering from her last, blinding orgasm. The words fly out of her mouth before she realizes it, a desperate, rushed, “Uunh, say that again? Please, please,” mumbling pleases into his mouth—they come so easy now, and he chuckles, and she knows he’s thinking the same thing.

“What, that you’re a good girl? You are a good girl, Rey.” That twisted smirk. “You get good grades. You do what you’re supposed to.” He cocks his head, that fighting glint in his eye, Rey’s third (third!!!) orgasm steadily building, and he says, “Such a good girl, and yet here you are…begging for my cock like a wanton little thing. How does that happen?” Ooh, the fuckwad. Oh, she hates him. Oh, she’s clenching hard, the filthy things he says—she shouldn’t love it, but she does. He gasps out “Shit, fuck,” as he feels her tighten, then grips her wrist a little tighter. “Not such a good girl, then. More like a pretty, needy angel slut who can’t get enough of my hands on her.” He picks up the pace again as he says it, slamming into her, and the word yes bursts out of her on a high whine, each exhale a whine now, rising in pitch until—

Starbursts. The Big Bang coiled tight in her core, condensing her senses into a burst of wet heat. Her thighs like a vice on his thrusting hips, neither hand free to cover her mouth as she cries out “Benjamin” like she’s falling, her vision spotty. Impossibly, in the wake of her orgasm, he speeds up, slamming into her, but the blinding intensity doesn’t last for long—he’s just chasing his own release, and she feels him pulse inside her, new, hot warmth gushing out from where they’re joined and oh. How did she never think about this? About feeling those things, so familiar to her lips and throat, but somewhere else?

She could get addicted to that.

And to the way he sort of word-vomits when he cums. Not the usual fuck I love you, you’re so good to me princess, oohh, yeah, baby, rife with lies and lack of creativity, but something more in line with the magma and the forge that kindles in his eyes when he looks at her.

“My little dove. Take what you deserve.” Seven short words that ring in her ears for the breathy silence after, where he stays braced in her but still, quietly basking in the fit of their bodies together, and then rolls off her, tawny sides heaving in the cool air.

As their sweat cools, his hand finds hers amid the sheets. And his big dark eyes roam the ceiling, violently awake, a placid look of contemplation on his features. She looks, then looks away. Then looks again. Away. And it’s so much worse than if he’d fallen asleep.