Work Text:
The sand had a smell.
It was familiar and desperate and Rey hated it. Well, she didn’t hate it, per se, but she was sick of it. Rey was a scavenger. She was a slave to a horrible lump of a creature named Unkar Plutt. He squeezed the life out of his ‘children’ and kept them desperate and hungry. If she brought back a shiny bit of metal that was to his liking, she would get a ration.
Rey hadn’t eaten in three days.
She was out on her landspeeder, searching desperately for any little glimmer of metal. A hulking leviathan of scrap that might be her next meal. And there in the distance, she saw it, shining in the setting sun. She’d have to get back soon. The wastes were treacherous at night, and if she went missing, no one would look for her.
Rey was alone.
She kicked her landspeeder into high gear and sped across the burning sands toward the glint. It never seemed to get closer, and her stomach hurt so badly that she ached clear down to her toes. She’d never make it back by dark. She’d have to camp out here in the open, unless the scrap was shelter.
She rode on and on, and the shine never grew closer. The pain in her stomach grew, she threw the speeder frantically into a higher speed, but the sun set, and she got no closer.
Rey woke with a startle. It was dark and cool, except on her right side where Finn was radiating heat. He roused when she moved, his dark brown eyes finding hers in the low light of their room.
“You okay?” he grumbled, pulling her closer, and nuzzling his nose in at the base of her neck.
She shifted a bit, and moved her arm so she could scratch at his scalp with her short nails.
“Rey?” he said, his voice rumbled through his chest and against her side.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I had a nightmare I was back on Jakku…”
“Ullllg, don’t talk about Jakku,” he moaned, overdramatically. “That whole planet is a nightmare…” he rolled onto his back, then looked back toward Rey, her arm pinned under his neck. “Except the part where I met you. That was ok.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that, the last bits of the nightmare vanishing in his company. The new Jedi turned onto her side, reclaiming her left arm and draping the right over his chest. “You are the only good thing to come out of my life on Jakku,” she said warmly.
“Damn right,” Finn replied with a sleepy smile. He kissed her forehead. “You going to be able to fall asleep again or are we busting out the holovids?”
They’d established the holovids helped pretty early on in their relationship. They both had pasts, they both had nightmares, and sometimes, laying in the dark alone was a worse punishment than anything thought up by either of their respective captors.
“No, I think I can sleep,” she answered, running a mental inventory.
“Great,” he said, and meant it, because that’s just how Finn was. He intertwined their fingers, yawned and closed his eyes.
She watched him fall asleep. Watched his lips part and his breathing even out. Then she rested her head on his shoulder, and closed her eyes.
Rey dreamed of rain.