Chapter Text
It happens so quickly that Leia isn’t even really sure what she saw was real.
They’ve landed on a particularly stormy planet, and Rey is one of the only people who doesn’t mind making several trips in the lashing rain. She loves it, and Leia supposes that’s to be expected from a girl who spent 19 years on a desert planet where water was rationed out like a luxury. The younger woman splashes into the hangar, wringing out her clothes, when Ben approaches with a blanket. Rey tilts her face up at him, smiling, as he wraps the blanket around her shoulders, rubbing her arms to warm her up.
It happens so fast, but there’s a moment where Leia thinks that Rey is about to tilt her head, where Ben is about to lower his, where Rey will stand on her toes to meet him.
But the moment passes and they both look at their shifting feet, and Leia wonders if she really saw it at all.
Except, it happens again in the mess hall, when Ben wipes a smudge of something off the corner of Rey’s mouth, and it would be so easy, wouldn’t it, for him to close the gap and kiss her.
“What’s the problem?” she asks later. “You like her. She likes you. So why are you dragging your feet?”
“I’m not,” he says, scowling. Then, softer, “You think she does?”
Leia rolls her eyes. She can’t help it. “You’re just like Luke—you’re staring so far off in the distance you can’t see what’s right in front of you.“
He opens his mouth to argue, but there’s a chime at his door and he grants access. It’s Rey, pink-cheeked and a little out of breath. “Leia,” she says in surprise. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt…”
“That’s all right.” Leia looks between the two, and if she wasn’t sure before, she is now. “Did you want to talk to Ben about something?”
“Mother,” Ben hisses, like he’s thirteen instead of thirty, but Rey colors.
“Yes, but I can come back…”
“No, no, I was just leaving,” Leia says. She gets up, giving her son a knowing smile. “He’s all yours.”
You’re the worst, Ben accuses through their Force connection.
She just winks at him. I know.