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Rey has only the faintest understanding of marriage out in the greater galaxy. It had always sounded a little too much like ownership for her liking.
So when Ben asks, more nervous than she’s ever seen him, if she’d consider marrying him, her first answer is a resounding, offended, “No kriffing way.”
Ben sulks about it for weeks and she doesn’t know why.
They’d laid there in the dark one night, wrapped in each other’s arms, and in the moment before she fell asleep, she heard him whisper, “It’s okay. I understand if you don’t love me the way I love you.”
She wakes the next day wondering if it was a dream, but the lingering, sorrowful glances she sees on his face make it clear she’d really heard him – and he doesn’t know how wrong he is.
She corners him in the halls one day, gripping his shirt and dragging him into an alcove despite his protests.
“Rey, what are you–”
She pushes him against the wall, cutting him off. “Why do you think I don’t love you?”
He stands there, blinking at her wordlessly for a moment, before dragging his hand through his hair and looking away. “You heard that?”
“Of course I heard that,” she growls. “Stars, Ben, I’ve always loved you.”
She sees as he starts to smile, but then his face falls and he looks dejected again. “You just…don’t want to marry me.”
She sighs slowly, tapping her toe against the wall. “Maybe I just don’t know what that means.”
His hand slides into her hair and she looks up to see the softest expression on his face. “It means everyone knows I love you more than anyone else.”
He pulls her in close, whispering against her forehead. “It means you are mine, and I am yours.”
He kisses her gently, smiling as he speaks. “It means nothing comes between us.”
She chuckles, winding her arms around his waist. “How is that different from now?”
He hums and rests his chin on top of her head, her ear pressed to his chest. “Well, it isn’t, not really,” his voice rumbles above his heartbeat. “But it’s like… like a promise.”
“All right, then,” she murmurs. “I’ll marry you, Ben Solo.”
His smile is like the sun, she thinks.
She’ll never tire of it.