Work Text:
Passing time in the halls of Skywalker High School is utter mayhem. Rey prefers to avoid the hoards of students rushing from one class to another by straightening up her classroom before each new wave of students comes in.
Today is no different. Just as she finishes wiping down a table, a cluster of girls sling their backpacks onto it. Rey pauses to examine the group as she moves to wipe down the neighboring worktable. "Where are your safety goggles, Kira?" she admonishes one of the newcomers, her rag sweeping away the sawdust.
The girl rifles through her pack, frowning. "Can I run to my locker, Ms. Williams?"
"Can you get back here before the bell rings?" The girl dashes off as Rey wrings out the rag over the sink.
A brusque knock at the door, and in strides the English teacher from the next classroom over, followed by a gaggle of teenagers carrying goggles. The sight of him turns Rey's stomach. She drops the towel in the sink before approaching him.
"Why are you here?" she asks, marching over to meet the intruder.
Ben Solo purses his lips. "I wanted to see for myself what could have possibly been making so much noise last period."
"Why are you here?" she snarls.
"Your classes have been making quite the racket." He surveys the students already spread out through the shop, tools whirring and engines roaring to life. "Could you shut them up?"
Stunned, Rey gapes. "What?"
"Next door, my students are beginning to read Romeo and Juliet today. You lot are so loud we can't hear ourselves think."
"Sounds like a problem to take up with maintenance."
"We both know the school won't pay for thicker walls. So I'm here to address the source of the commotion that keeps interrupting my classes."
Rey shakes her head. "It's auto shop. There's noise."
"Well, we're about to begin reading a very important play and we could use a little less noise."
She shrugs, but Ben doesn't budge. He just frowns at her, brown eyes darkening. "Have you no respect for Shakespeare?"
A couple of students trickling into their seats pause to watch their teachers' exchange, choking back giggles. The bell rings, interrupting the standoff and signifying the start of class. Still, Ben looms before her, crossing his arms.
"Couldn't you simply postpone this lesson? Perhaps your students could break out their textbooks and do some reading." He scrutinizes the shelf of tattered books, covered in dust, by the door. "Looks like that doesn't happen often. They could really benefit from it." A sneer eclipses his even tone, and Rey's jaw aches as she tries clamping down on the rising deluge of words threatening to explode.
"They can't learn from textbooks all day," she counters. "Auto repair involves practical experience. And practical experience involves power tools."
"I'm sure it won't be a problem, Ms. Williams," he growls. "It's not like much learning takes place here anyway." He stalks away as Rey gulps in air, counting her breaths in an attempt to calm herself before beginning class. Still, her voice quakes as she calls roll.
The next day, Rey tells her students to fold up their coveralls after the bell rings.
"But Ms. Williams," one student calls with a wiggle of her hand. "I thought we were finishing our engine repair exams today!"
"In order to practice our, um… We're going to watch a movie about cars," Rey says. "Pull out your notebooks and draw the coolest one you see."
In the dim light of the projector, Rey cranks up the volume until the walls tremble. Through the sheetrock separating her classroom from Ben Solo's, a distant "Force, no!" trickles in before the film drowns out all other sounds.
"So now we're watching the entire Fast and the Furious franchise," Rey explains, biting into her peanut butter sandwich. "Which will take three weeks of class to complete. Three loud, long weeks."
Finn's nose wrinkles. "I bet those neighboring teachers are enjoying that."
"They are," Rey says, a vision of Ben Solo's customary scowl eclipsing the dingy couches in the teacher's lounge. "They are indeed."
"Isn't Ben Solo one room down?" Rose asks through a mouthful of her salad. The welding teacher chews thoughtfully once Rey nods in response. "Are you mad at him or something?"
"Oh, I'm not mad at him," she says sweetly through a thin smile. "I just wish he would rot in hell."
A reproachful look from Finn does nothing to tarnish the glee sparkling in Rey's eyes. "Next week, you'll be complaining when he sends his journalism students to interrupt your classes with polls. The two of you have been arguing for months. Can't you let it go?"
"No!" Rey's peanut butter sandwich turns to crumbs as she grinds her teeth. "Like he ever would."
Finn exchanges a glance with Rose before clearing his throat. "The First Order club reserved the gym for the Valentine's Day dance. Had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to chaperone when they came to sign up for the room."
Rey grins. "Supervising a bunch of sweaty teenagers on a Friday night isn't your idea of fun?"
Finn shudders. "Never."
Rose's fork clatters as she tosses it back into her lunchbox. "We're going out on Valentine's again, right?"
"Wouldn't miss it," Rey says. "It's the only part of Valentine's worth looking forward to anymore."
A knock on her classroom door after school startles Rey from her stack of quizzes. Tucking the red pen in behind her ear, she swivels at her desk to find Ben Solo at her door. He smooths his suit jacket, and smooths it again, fidgeting until Rey addresses him.
"What do you want?"
"My printer broke."
"So?"
"Would you—" He swallows. "Could you please take a look at it?"
The pile of quizzes beckons to Rey—the faster you grade me, the faster you go home, they plead. Arguing with Ben, as much fun as it is, will only delay her further. Any longer and she won't have time to change her oil tonight.
"Sure." Even as she pockets a pair of tweezers from her desk drawer and stands to follow him to the printer, Ben's eyes narrow suspiciously. No snide comments, no protests, just Rey following him silently next door to examine the problem.
When she sees the printer wedged between Ben's desk and the wall, she sighs. It's jammed alright, a ripped sheet of paper sticking from its output tray. Unplugging the printer, Rey flips open the front cover and begins fiddling around, trying to tug the paper loose. It pinches as she tugs. A couple more futile pulls prompt Rey to pull out her tweezers.
"What are you doing?" Ben asks over her shoulder. She turns to him, and finds herself face to face with his chest.
"Fixing it," she growls. "Give me some room." First she removes the print head, then she gingerly plucks at the paper. Most of it wrenches free from the rollers; only a few torn shreds remain clamped in the machine. The tweezers make quick work of the cleanup.
"That should fix it," she says, wiping the ink on her jeans. "Run a test print to make sure."
"Now or…?"
She nods, turning to avoid conversation. Color leaps out from the walls—book covers and student posters, overflowing bookshelves, framed prints of famous paintings and grammar rules. It's overwhelming, all the color, but each time Rey tries to look away, she finds a new object to examine.
The printer whirrs as Ben starts it up. During the startup sequence, Rey spots a pink book lying next to Ben's computer. "Romeo and Juliet?" she snorts, picking it up and flipping through the pages. "I can't believe you have to teach this kriff."
Ben tugs at his tie, looking everywhere but her. "It's not kriff, it's literature. Some of the finest writing in the history of the world."
"It's a satire about horny teenagers," Rey scoffs.
His Adam's apple bobs; his gaze flick to her and away again. "It's the epitome of teenage romance. Students connect with the play, despite its antiquated language, because they identify with its themes of love and family. What teenager hasn't loved someone they know they can't be with?"
"What teenager actually reads this?" She tosses the book back onto the desk. It lands with a plunk on a neat stack of papers, scattering them. Ben groans, reaching through his hair to rub the back of his neck.
"Careful. Just because it's hard for you to understand doesn't mean others don't like it."
His snide tone, his patronizing refusal to look at her—it's all too much for Rey. "There you are," she says, poking a finger at his chest. "I've been wondering where you were, hiding behind all the 'please help me' bullshit."
He still won't look at her. "You didn't have to help."
"If you think I'm unjamming this printer again the next time it clogs, you're wrong. Let's see if you like waiting for the janitors to get down here." Smacking the printer, she spins and marches out of the room.
The bell rings, and the auto shop empties in seconds. Removing her safety glasses does little to relieve Rey's pulsing temples. Quiet settles where the purr of engines and growl of power tools have blurred into a headache. Her whole body aches for a moment to rest after standing all morning, but she has work to do. Or rather, a colleague to irritate.
After an incident involving two freshman and a round saw, Rey had purchased a stack of safety posters to hang in her classroom. Maybe when students zone out during her lectures they might internalize the guidelines posted around them. She could've asked her TA to put up the posters earlier, but she saved the task for fourth period.
Right now, separated by a door and a breath, Ben Solo instructs his ninth grade students in the way of Shakespeare. What better to disrupt their English studies than a hammer and a pack of fifteen posters?
She could use sticky tack to secure the flyers, but that would be too quiet, too kind. Picking up a sign, she reaches for a nail and begins hammering it into the wall she shares with Ben. Three posters later, and there hasn't been a peep from his room. All she has to show for her effort is a handful crooked signs and an intensifying headache digging into her brain.
Dropping the hammer, Rey switches off the lights and slumps into her chair, pushing aside a stack of papers and laying her head against her desk. At first, the blood pounding in her ears demands she breathe in time to its rhythm, and her world is consumed by a throbbing desire to sleep. Closing her eyes lessens the ache, so she sits in the darkness until the cool metal of the desk soothes her forehead.
A deep voice filters through the silence of Rey's classroom, familiar yet surprisingly gentle. It rises and falls, and when Rey holds her breath, she can make out what it says.
"'O me! What fray was here?'" The phrasing is not Ben's own; he must be reading to his students. "'Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here's much to do with hate, but more with love. Why, then, O brawling love, o loving hate, o any thing, of nothing first create!'"
This Ben who reads aloud has never spoken to Rey. She finds herself stilling her tapping feet in order to hear better.
"'O heavy lightness, serious vanity, misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms. Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health. Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.'"
The rhythmic reading pauses abruptly, and an unfamiliar longing settles over Rey as she almost hopes to hear more.
"Why is Romeo making a list of oxymorons? What's he saying here?" Ben asks. The delicious image of a class of students falling asleep at their desks before Ben flickers across Rey's imagination, but she hears him call on a student.
"That love and hate aren't separate emotions?" a strong female voice pipes in. "Romeo can feel them both at the same time."
"Have you ever felt love and hate at the same time for one thing or person?" Ben asks. "For the next two minutes, turn to your partner and share your thoughts. Go!" His classroom erupts into a cacophony of chatter. Rey's left pondering the question, but returns to hanging posters when the line of thought increases her headache.
Later that day, the headache morphs into a full body ache, confining Rey to bed where she arranges for a substitute to take over her classes tomorrow. Kriffing flu season. When she wakes up the next afternoon, groggy and disoriented, she attempts to untangle herself from her quilt and clean up her apartment, which has been sorely neglected the past several weeks. But her limbs refuse to cooperate, so she reaches for her laptop.
Rey only realizes what her fingers have searched for on their own accord when she clicks on the link to Romeo and Juliet. Ready to turn the movie off and search for something—anything—better, she pauses as a yellow Monte Carlo streaks top-down across the screen. With a car like that, maybe this play is worth a watch after all. Since her brain turned to mush, she has nothing better to do.
When Principal Holdo partners off the teachers to brainstorm College Preparedness Week activities at the after school staff meeting, Rey almost wishes she was still sick in bed. "Cross-department brainstorming produces brilliant ideas!" Principal Holdo reminds the teachers when she's met with groans. Instead of complaining about the meeting with Rose and the other career-subject teachers, Rey finds herself paired off to brainstorm with Finn and Ben Solo.
"The gym teacher and the auto shop teacher," Ben sneers as he takes a seat across from Rey and slings his book bag onto the table. "Brilliant ideas indeed."
Finn lays a hand across the table, meant for Rey. His message is not lost on her, but as she keeps her mouth clamped shut, she imagines ripping out one by one the pages of that stupid pink book peeking out of Ben's pack.
"What sort of activities would help students learn about how to plan for university?" Finn asks, squinting at the whiteboard where Holdo has written the meeting's goal in swirling black letters.
"Did you two even have to attend university?" Ben asks innocently, leaning back in his chair. Behind his wide brown eyes, Rey catches a hint of a smirk.
"You know damn well we had to in order to teach," she says.
Ben smiles, taking in Finn's football jersey, the goggles slung around Rey's neck. "I wouldn't really call blowing whistles at kids or letting them play with cars teaching."
How Finn can sit there and take it, Rey doesn't know. But she does know that she's had enough of this man with his black ties and pretentious attitude. "Fuck you," she hisses, nails stinging into her palms.
The adjacent tables quiet as the other teachers turn to stare at the spectacle unfolding before them. Ben stands, too, and then it's just a snarling, aching silence that stretches between them. "What did you say?"
"I said, fuck you." Rey leaps to her feet, fists balled and throat raw. "You're afraid that you're not as smart as you think you are. Well, I've got news for you. You aren't. You're nothing but an asshole with garbage taste in books!"
So focused on staring down Ben, Rey jumps as Principal Holdo walks up and rests a hand on each of their shoulders, a spark of irritation barely concealed in her grimace. "Rey, Ben, since you two seem so enthusiastic about helping our students, why don't you chaperone the dance?"
Rey peeks at Ben, dread written in the lines of his forehead. "I, uh—we're actually busy that night—"
"Busy with the dance, you mean!" Principal Holdo says, an edge of finality brooking no further arguments. "Thank you for volunteering."
As love song after love song plays during her prep period the next day, Rey catches herself swatting at the radio. A quick switch, and her room goes quiet, except for the hum of the heater and the click of her pen against paper.
Through the wall, Ben's voice snakes, dynamic and gentle, so different from his taunts yesterday. "'My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!'"
Unbidden, angel wings and knight's armor float into Rey's mind from the Romeo and Juliet adaptation she watched when she was sick. What had her addled brain been thinking, picking that movie? Karking waste of time. Clearly the sickness did nothing to influence her memory, though. She can almost whisper along with Ben as he reads: "'Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.'"
Bantha fodder, the whole lot of it. She switches back on the radio, anything to drown out his voice and that crinking play.
"Kriffing students!" Rey mutters for the third time that hour. On her side, she rests against the cement floor, wrench in hand. The final period of the day ended with a busted desk and a pair of lab partners with detention slips. Now she has a desk to fix before she can go home.
The bolts squeak in protest as she tightens them. Over the noise, she hears the door swing open and footsteps approach.
"I'm busy," she says. "If you've got late work, leave it in the basket."
"I'd like to…" Her guest lets out a sigh of frustration, and Rey recognizes who stands behind her: not a student, but her least favorite coworker. "I'd like to apologize to you."
Shocked, Rey nearly drops her wrench. Surely she must be dreaming. This can't be happening, and yet—
"It's my fault. I should never have goaded you into that conflict."
She doesn't turn—won't turn—but the familiar fire raging in her belly subsides at these words. A few turns of her wrench, and the desk's leg is secured again.
He won't let her be. "I was weak and foolish, and I owe you an apology."
Rey waits the for the punchline, but it doesn't come. Ben simply waits for her reaction.
Phantom guilt prickles. So Rey leans over her shoulder and says, "Thank you." He raises an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, too. For telling you off."
He chuckles. "Principal Holdo deserves to hear that, not me."
"Agreed." As she stands, brushing off her hands, she catches his stare, half reproach and amusement.
"So, do you need help with that desk?"
She looks him up and down. "From you in a suit like that? Is that even possible?"
"Very funny." But a smile ghosts at the corners of his mouth. "My father taught me my way around a toolbox. I'm not utterly hopeless."
In reply, Rey tosses him the wrench and leads him to the back corner of her classroom. "This table needs fixing, too."
Admittedly, her expectations are low. Yet Ben surprises her by tightening the table's squeaky legs without hesitation. "Not bad," Rey concedes.
"You're impressed." He hands back the wrench and Rey ignores the way their fingers brush as she grabs the tool.
"My freshmen could do that." Satisfaction washes over her as he stumbles over a retort. Then he pauses, examining the floor.
"Are we—are things okay between us now?" It's Rey's turn to stare. Absently, Ben tugs at his tie, ready to rip it from his neck if he's not careful.
"Things," Rey repeats flatly.
"I mean—" He glances around the auto shop, hunting for words to approach the tentative peace they've been circling around. "Is it easier when we're fighting?"
"Easier than what?"
He gestures between them, hand grazing her ribs. "Than this."
The contact raises goosebumps along Rey's arms. She hopes he doesn't look too closely at her and notice them. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You do," he says, a soft resignation in his tone where frustration normally might flare. "Look, we've made it five minutes without fighting. A record."
"Careful, Solo," she says, tucking the wrench in her belt. "Don't get too ambitious."
The searching look he gives her speaks of regret and a longing masked in bickering that Rey knows she's seen in a thousand arguments between them. As he turns to leave, he adds, "Your classes have been quieter than usual recently. Thank you."
"I'm not doing it for you," Rey calls, but Ben keeps walking.
Early on Valentine's morning, the door to Rey's classroom swings open before she has a chance to pull out her key. By the light of the desk lamp, Ben Solo lounges in Rey's chair drinking coffee.
"Your room is next door," Rey says, slinging her backpack to the ground.
"I know." He stands, holding out another red cardboard cup. "I brought you coffee."
Bitter roasted warmth drifts through the air, and Rey perks up as it reaches her nose. How did he know she had skipped her morning coffee in order to make it to school on time? Her mouth waters, but still she hesitates. "Thank you, but…"
"Today's going to be a long day. You need sustenance."
"What's next, little pink cupcakes with hearts?"
"Don't push your luck, Williams." He leaves the cup on her desk before walking out, a small saunter in his step.
Rey briefly imagines returning the coffee to Ben merely to prove she can resist the temptation, but she lasts all of thirty seconds before gulping it down and tossing the cup into the trash.
Before she knows it, the clock strikes six and Rey's forced to dash from her home to her car and drive back to Skywalker High for the second time that day. Scheduled to begin taking tickets at seven, she squeaks into the gym with seconds to spare.
Finn would collapse with a heart attack if he could see the place, streamers taped to his beloved wrestling mats and bleachers draped with banners. A pang of envy stabs Rey when she thinks of him, with Rose at their annual dinner.
In the dim light, Rey sees a tall, black-suited figure standing next to the ticket booth. There's no mistaking his posture or suit for a student's. Walking to him, she stumbles as she spreads her legs farther than the slit in her dress allows, cursing her choice to trade her coveralls for a black slip. When Ben spots her wet hair and clean nails, he cocks his head. "Taking your chaperone duties seriously, are you?"
"What?" She tucks her feet under the hem of her black dress. If he saw her heels, Force knows he'd tease her.
"You took a shower."
Instead of grating against her nerves, this ribbing sets her stomach fluttering. "You brought a book to a dance," she says, pointing under his arm.
He gestures to the gym, to the First Order students setting up the concessions table. "It looks as if I will be in sore need of entertainment tonight. Perhaps you should've brought a book, too."
Rey tugs her phone from her dress pocket. "Got it covered."
For the first half hour, they man the ticket booth, shoulder to shoulder at a cramped table with a crooked sign announcing "V-Day dance this way."
"You can't be serious," she says when Ben reaches for a student's money, fumbles for the proof of admission stamp, and spills quarters across the floor. He frowns at her tone.
"I—"
"I mean, it's more efficient if you count the money and I stamp the hands."
Ben nods thoughtfully. "A system. Good idea."
Rey's palms unclench, the fight she anticipated never arriving. "Thanks."
The music blares loud, the lights burn low, and the students command the dance floor. Rey only has to leave her post a few times to admonish students for grinding too closely or trying to sneak off. Whenever she looks up to scan the room, she finds Ben watching her from the bleachers over the edge of his book. He makes no effort to hide when she detects his gaze. On one of her infrequent rotations around the dance floor, she pauses by his perch.
"How's the book?"
"I can't hear myself read over the music," Ben admits, shaking his head. "But it looks promising. Another day." He closes it and waits until Rey climbs over the first row of bleachers to sit with him.
Sliding off her heels, she gasps in relief. There they sit, side by side, as they watch the couples twirl by.
"Did you ever go to these dances while you were in school?" she asks, curious. The idea of a younger Ben awkwardly escorting his date around a dimly-lit gym amuses her, but he shakes his head.
"Once or twice, at my parents' prodding. But I tried to avoid them at all costs. I prefer reading about balls to attending them." He glances from the dance floor to her. "How about you?"
"No, I—it wasn't my scene."
Ben nods. "I'm glad that you're here, even though it's not your 'scene.'"
Her palms slick against her knees, Rey stands. Nervously, she rattles off some excuse about patrolling the dance floor and takes off as fast as her aching feet allow. When she turns back, Ben still watches her, faint confusion etched into his brow.
The First Order club's clean up crew dwindles from twenty to two, and then it's just Rey and Ben in a gym still covered in glitter and balloons.
Pushing a broom, Ben sighs. "Is this how you imagined spending your Valentine's Day?"
"No," Rey says, arms full of streamers as she wends her way to the trash. "You?"
He surveys the gym distastefully. "I imagined less glitter and people, and more essays to grade."
"So you're saying this an improvement?" laughs Rey.
"Yes," he says, no trace of laughter in the word. "But it needs music." The DJ's equipment long packed up, he reaches in his pocket for his phone. With a few taps, the speakers hanging from the gym ceiling crackle to life.
"If you play more of that kark we had to listen to the whole dance long, Force help me, I will—"
A melody that Rey has intimately acquainted herself with springs to life, piano and strings and a soft, slow rhythm that begs her to stop and swim between its notes. "It's the sort of song that demands to be danced to," she says. "Better than anything that's been played all night."
"Well, maybe we should dance," he suggests, dragging the broom in his wake as he approaches her. One hand tugs at his tie; a flush spreads up his neck.
Rey doesn't skip a beat, picking up streamers one by one. "I don't dance."
"Neither do I, but we could try." Then his hands meet her waist and pull her close. The broom clatters to the gym floor, and then they're swaying, Rey and Ben, in an embrace far too intimate for her liking.
Initially, Rey concentrates on the rhythm of the music and her hips, ignoring how her arms wrap around her partner, how he examines her face even as she looks away. Rocking side to side almost soothes Rey, the motions foreign but the feelings familiar. "Are we doing this right?" she says, partially to break the silence lounging between them.
"You'll be relieved to know I have no idea," he murmurs in her ear. Kriffing Ben Solo, with his kriffing whispers, sending all sorts of jitters jumping up her legs.
Wracking her brain for something—anything—to say, Rey remembers why they're here. "I'm sorry again about your Valentine's Day."
"I'm not," he says.
"Surely you'd rather be holed up at home alone, reading your beloved Romeo and Juliet? It's, what, 'the epitome of romance'?"
Ben grimaces at his words Rey throws in his face. "It's a shit play," he admits. "One of Shakespeare's worst."
"A shame," Rey says. "I rather liked it."
Shocked, his eyes light up. "You read it?"
"Watched it, actually."
"And?"
"It's not bad. Although they die in the end, so it's sort of a waste of time."
Ben Solo's smile is equal parts earnest and longing. "But they love each other so much that they choose to die together rather than face the future alone."
Rey laughs, but instead of teasing, it comes out black and bitter. "No one would really do that," she says, even as she's ashamed of the bite in her voice.
Ben doesn't snap back. He studies her face—she feels it as she examines their shoes shuffling in tandem—and then pulls her in until her head rests on his shoulder. "You're not alone."
Heat radiates from his chest, scorching her cheeks. "Neither are you." The music swells—she'd swear he planned it just so—and she has to lean into whisper, "I think fighting with you is easier, but I like this better."
Where the boldness comes from, Rey doesn't know, but for the first time this evening she's not longing to be sandwiched between Finn and Rose in a booth drinking wine and pretending they don't have assignments to grade in the morning. For the first time this evening, in Ben Solo's arms, she's right where she wants to be.
So she leans up, pulling his head down to meet hers. She kisses Ben, first rough and eager, then softly, the way his mouth moves against hers. The song fades into something new before they break away.
"How much of this gym do we have to clean up anyway?" Rey asks, scanning the room.
Another rare smile from Ben, this one positively devious. "Finn's your friend. He should understand."
They walk out to the parking lot, hand in hand. For some reason, Rey's stomach bubbles at this, even though they've already kissed, for kriff's sake. Their two cars, lined up side by side, beckon to them. A question.
When she notices Ben pulling at his tie, glancing from the cars to her, she rests her free hand over his. "Follow me back to my place?" she says. He nods, and in that moment, Rey sees a row of Valentine's Day stacked side by side, each one filled with whispers and kisses and Ben.
A vision she'll pursue, until their two cars become one and their adjacent classrooms too far apart for their satisfaction. For now, though, she's content to speed home, heels flung on the floorboard, the promise of Ben's company tailing her home.