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Chapter Text

Finn and Poe leave bright and early Saturday morning, at an hour Rey would rather pretend doesn’t exist. She pads bleary-eyed and pajama-clad into the living room, mumbles placating reassurances to Finn as he checks his Christmas gifts for what has to be the fiftieth time, and stands by the door to say goodbye to the couple once they’re finally ready to leave.

“And you’re sure you’ll be fine on your own?” Finn asks for the fifth time that morning alone, shouldering his weekend bag. “Poe said Ben doesn’t usually go home for the holidays, so at least you won’t be alone-alone, but it’s the first time we’re not spending Christmas together and I just–”

“Finn!” Rey cuts him off with all the force she can muster at seven AM on a Saturday morning. “I’ll be fine, okay? And so will you,” she assures him, cutting to the heart of the matter.

“You think?”

She nods. “Poe’s family is going to love you. And your presents.”

“Which I told you you didn’t need to get,” Poe reminds him as he joins them by the door, his own bag in hand. “Now you’re going to make me look bad in front of my own family.”

“We’ll just say they’re from both of us,” Finn offers generously, and Poe beams and leans in for a kiss.

“You’re the best,” he tells his boyfriend, and Rey rolls her eyes at their usual sappy antics before she cuts the lovefest short with a pointed cough.

“Can you two just go already? Some of us would like to go back to sleep.”

The next two minutes are a whirlwind of bye, see you in a week and call when you get there and shit, Finn, did you remember to pack the- one thing or another.

By the time their voices finally disappear down the hallway, it’s already eight o’clock.

“Thank god for weekends,” Rey mutters to herself as she falls face-first onto her bed, and then she’s out like a light.

The next time she wakes up, muted beams of winter sunlight are streaming in through the gaps between her curtains and a quick glance at her phone tells her it’s almost noon. It’s a Saturday, and the first day of winter break, so Rey’s in no hurry as she gathers her things and makes her way to the bathroom.

She mumbles a good morning to Ben on her way back to her room.

“I left you some pancakes,” he tells her without looking up from his laptop, his head poking over the back of the couch. Sure enough, she finds a stack of pancakes on the stove and a bottle of maple syrup on the counter, both of which she makes quick work of at their tiny breakfast table before wandering over to the couch.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Ben teases, setting his laptop aside.

“Hey,” she returns with a smile, and finds herself – rather impulsively – sitting down on his lap rather than beside him.

His hands reflexively find her waist – it’s habit now, after two years – and Ben indulges her whim with a lazy grin. “What’re you up to?” he asks even as she leans in to kiss him. He still tastes faintly of coffee and syrup, and it reminds her –

“Thanks for breakfast,” Rey mumbles against his lips.

“If this is how you thank me for breakfast, maybe I should cook for you every morning,” he jokingly suggests as her hands find their way to the back of his neck. His grip around her waist grows just the slightest bit tighter as she begins to run her fingers through his hair.

Rey pulls back just enough to raise her eyebrows at him. “Good luck explaining that to Finn and Poe,” she reminds Ben. “They left this morning, by the way. We’ve got the apartment to ourselves for a whole week,” Rey tells him by way of explanation, watching the realization dawn in his eyes.

“I suppose you’ve got some ideas for how we can keep ourselves occupied this week,” Ben says casually, as if his hands hadn’t slipped down to her hips the minute she’d reminded him of their privacy, as if he isn’t already thumbing the waistband of her leggings.

“A few,” Rey shrugs, a poor attempt at nonchalance.

Ben abruptly straightens up against the couch and moves his hand to the small of her back. “Speaking of which,” he says, making an admirable effort to keep his voice light. But Rey’s known him long enough to hear the hesitation that colors his voice, to take note of his sudden change in posture and the way he bites at the corner of his lower lip for all of two seconds before he realizes what he’s doing.

She leans back into the hands at the base of her spine, trusting Ben to keep her upright as she puts enough distance between them to get a good look at him. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, it’s just…” He averts his eyes for a brief moment, and she watches the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he tries to collect his thoughts. “I’ve got an idea, too,” he finally tells her, the slightest hint of a smile tugging at his lips as he turns his attention back to her.

Rey smiles. “Oh?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Ben says, and a warning flashes in his eyes before she can crack Poe’s customary joke about how dangerous a contemplative Ben can be. “It’s been two years since we started doing this, so clearly the sex is good.”

“Just good?” she quirks an eyebrow at him.

Ben rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean. And we get along pretty well, too–”

“Given that we’ve managed to share a bathroom for the last two years without murdering each other,” Rey points out, “I’d say that’s an understatement.” Despite her casual façade, she can feel her heart rate slowly picking up as she begins to suspect where this is going. It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it, before one of them realized how much of a farce this so-called arrangement had turned into? Friends with benefits don’t make each other breakfast just because, and just friends don’t carry you to your room and tuck you in when you doze off during movie night.

She would know, given all the times Finn and Poe have left her to wake up on the couch the next morning with a crick in her neck.

Taking pity on Ben, she decides to help him move this along. “Okay, spit it out, Solo,” Rey is careful to cushion her words with a grin. “Where are you going with this?”

“I was wondering,” Ben says, a slow smile growing on his face as he realizes she’s on the same page, “if maybe you’d like to do this on a more regular basis. Like say, all the time?”

“Hmm,” Rey hums, as if the matter requires further consideration. “That would be tricky,” she tells him, “since we usually have two full-time roommates.”

“We wouldn’t have to hide from them if we were dating,” he finally spits it out, all in one breath and words such a jumble it takes Rey a few seconds to work out exactly what he’s just said.

“Ben Solo,” she drawls, biting down on the telling smile that threatens to bloom across her face. “Are you asking me out?”

She must not be hiding that smile very well, because Ben relaxes just enough to give her a shrug. “I’m asking you how you feel about the idea of me asking you out.” His casual tone is belied by the way he can’t quite take his eyes off her, the way his shoulders are still tense with anticipation and always, always with Ben, the fear of rejection and failure.

For that alone, for the way her heart hurts when she thinks of how much power he’s given her over him, for how much trust he must have in her to risk his heart, Rey wants to say yes. For a million other reasons too, really, because it’s not as if she’s never thought of it, not as if she hasn’t woken up in the middle of the night to find his arm around her and asked herself, what if this were real what if this could be us what if this could be my life–

But there’s still the matter of their friends, and their living situation, and all the horror stories she’s heard about friends getting together and then breaking up over the course of her three years here in Coruscant U.

“If we’re going to do this,” she says carefully, slowly, watching the way he holds his breath as he waits for her to reach a verdict, “we have to be sure about it, Ben. We can’t dive headfirst into a relationship and risk having it blow up in our faces, especially not while we’re both still living here.”

Ben nods in agreement. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about too,” and then, because he just knows her that well – “So what’s the plan?”

Rey can’t help the way she beams at him for that, can’t help the way her lips curve upwards to match the smile he gives her. “We’re alone for a whole week, right? Finn and Poe are gone, and pretty much anyone else we’d have to explain this to. So… why don’t we just give it a try?”

“A trial run?” Ben asks dubiously.

“Exactly,” Rey nods. “And if, by the end of the week, we think we’re better off going back to the way we were…” She doesn’t want to think about the way her throat goes dry at the thought, doesn’t want to acknowledge how much she dreads the possibility of it. “If we think it’s a bad idea, then we’ll just go back to normal and no one will ever know.”

Ben holds her closer, one hand slowly running its way up and down her spine. “And if it’s a good idea?” he asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Then… then everything, Rey thinks.

“Then you’ll finally get to change your relationship status on Facebook and shut Hux up,” she tells Ben with a grin.

“He has been insufferable ever since he got a girlfriend,” Ben muses.

“You mean even more insufferable,” Rey corrects him. “So… what do you say?”

“I say…” His hands find their way back to her waist, and she can’t help the squeal that steals past her lips as Ben suddenly stands up. “I say let’s do it. Let’s give it a shot.”

Rey’s legs automatically wrap around him as Ben carries her to his room. “Okay,” she whispers against his lips, and they’re both smiling as she kisses him.

After, there’s no rush to get dressed and hurry back to her own room. There’s no rush to cover their tracks before Finn and Poe get back, no rush to spring apart before they get caught up in the moment and each other and their feelings. After, she rests her head on his chest and Ben holds her close, and Rey hopes to god the next week will work out in their favor.

Chapter Text

Once, the third or fourth time Rey woke up in Ben’s bed, she asked him why he’d crammed a queen bed into his small room.

“Sometimes I get these… well, not nightmares, exactly, but these dreams that upset me, I guess. Distress me, enough for me to move around a lot in my sleep. If I’d kept the tiny bed Finn left here when he moved, you guys would probably hear me fall off the bed at least once a week.”

He’d tried to soften the blow with a joke, tried to bury the fact that he had severe nightmares with the comical image of all 6’2’’ of him rolling off his bed. But neither of them could ignore the fact that it was the most personal thing he’d ever shared with her, that somehow it went unsaid that neither of the guys knew, not even Poe, and that Rey would never tell them.

That morning, Rey broke the tension with a muttered “I need to pee,” and quickly scurried out of his room, and they didn’t see each other again until later that night.

This morning, Rey wakes up to the warmth of Ben’s chest pressed to her back and the knowledge that she’s here to stay – they both are.

Her side of the bed – because it’s her side now, he’d told her so last night – is right next to the window, and the sight of softly falling snow brings a smile to her face. Beside her, Ben begins to stir, the arm slung over her waist pulling her closer as he noses at her shoulder.

“It’s snowing,” she murmurs, leaning into the kisses he’s pressing to her neck.

“That’s nice,” Ben whispers, voice low and scratchy with sleep. “This is nice too,” he adds, his lips finally making their way to the corner of her mouth. Rey hums in agreement and turns just enough to offer him a chaste kiss. Any more than that and she knows where they’ll end up, and to her surprise Rey finds she doesn’t want that right now. Not this time, not the first morning they have together as a proper couple. She wants murmured conversations and sleepy cuddling, all the things she couldn’t let herself have with Ben before.

Ben seems to be in agreement. “Remember that weekend trip the guys took last summer?” he asks, content to brush his lips along her temple as she places her hands over his and watches the snow fall.

“When they went to Maz’s B&B?” Rey recalls. “That was a good weekend,” she sighs happily; it was the first time the guys had left them alone for more than a day, the first time she and Ben could just be themselves around the apartment without having to worry about her self-designated ‘protective older brothers’ catching them.

“That was the first time you stayed the night,” Ben reminds her, his voice so soft and gentle it tugs at her heart. “I woke up in the morning and you were still here, still in my arms.”

Rey turns around to face him. “Just like this?”

He takes her hand in his and laces their fingers together, eyes still glazed with sleep and lips curving into a warm smile. “Just like this.”

She tucks her head between his neck and shoulder, presses her lips to warm skin and knows he can feel her smile.

“We should go for a walk,” Rey suggests, voice muffled. It seems like the kind of thing couples do, and she thinks she’ll rather like being out in the open with Ben.

“Okay,” Ben agrees easily, pulling her closer. “But later,” he adds quietly, slipping his hand under her camisole to run his thumb along her side.

“Later,” she murmurs, just as reluctant to leave their bed.

By the time they walk out of their building, the ground is covered in a fine dusting of snow. It won’t stick, not just yet, but for now the world is something straight out of a snow globe.

It’s her third year in Coruscant, but Rey doesn’t think she’ll ever stop being amazed at how beautiful winter is here. Ben takes her hand almost shyly, ducking his head when she turns to watch him twine his glove-covered fingers around her own, and she squeezes his hand and offers him a smile in reassurance.

“Come on,” Rey presses a kiss to his jawline, right where it meets his adorably flushed ear, and tugs on their joined hands. “Let’s walk.”

Christmas is still five days away, but nearly everyone has left campus. Neither of them recognize the few people they spot out and about, and Rey grows comfortable enough to tuck herself into Ben’s side and let him walk with a hand around her waist. It slows them down considerably, but she likes to think they’ve got all the time in the world. It’s a nice thought, one that warms her insides just as much as Ben’s body heat warms the rest of her.

“How long?” she asks a few minutes into their walk, when a thought suddenly occurs to her.

“How long?” Ben echoes, confused.

“How long have you wanted this?” Rey clarifies. “Us, I mean.”

“How do you know I’ve been wanting this?” he challenges teasingly, eyes bright with mirth when she glances up at him. “What if I just thought of it yesterday?”

Rey scoffs. “There’s no way your first reaction to being straddled was wow, I should really ask her out.”

Ben laughs, the movement of his shoulders jostling her just the slightest bit. “A while, I guess. By the way, my first thought was fuck, I’ve missed this. My second thought was we should do this all the time, and my third thought was why don’t we do this all the time? So I went for it. But yeah, I’ve been thinking about us for a while now. I don’t know how long exactly, but I’d say months.”

“Me too,” Rey admits. “Sometimes I just… wanted you – not like that, Ben,” she huffs when he smirks at her. “I just missed being with you, even though I saw you every day. It just wasn’t the same. I started to wonder why we never even considered dating, and then I realized I liked the idea of it.”

“That’s good to hear,” Ben smiles, and she’s just about to stretch up on her tip-toes to kiss him when she spots a familiar face walking their way.

“Rey?” her professor – and Ben’s uncle, she belatedly recalls – calls out to her when he’s about five feet away. Ben immediately turns to the source of the familiar voice, and Luke stops short as he realizes just who his student is practically cuddling out in public. “Ben!” he exclaims, his voice dripping with glee. “I wasn’t expecting to see you two around!” The unspoken together hangs in the air.

“Hi, professor,” Rey offers the older man a tiny wave, painfully aware of the way she’s still leaning into his nephew, the way Ben’s hand is curled around her waist. “No plans this year, so we’re just going to stick around campus. How about you?”

“Oh, that’s great!” Luke says brightly, turning to his thus far silent nephew. “This works out just nice. Ben, I’m driving up to Alderaan tomorrow, and I know your mother would love it if you’d consider joining us this year. And Rey, of course Leia would love to have you over too. What do you guys say?”

On the bright side, Rey’s met Leia Organa a handful of times and she quite likes the woman. On the downside, she’s just recently – literally yesterday – started a relationship with the woman’s son, something both of them had been hoping to keep to themselves for now.

There’s no hiding it from Leia now that her twin knows.

“Ben?” Rey asks quietly, leaving the decision up to him. It’s his family, after all, and she knows just enough to understand that he’s not always comfortable around them. Plus there’s the matter of Luke having invited her as well, of course.

“I…” Ben tears his eyes away from her to address his uncle. “We’ll think about it,” he announces.

“That’s good enough for me,” Luke shrugs. “Just let me know, then. Or your mother.”

Ben nods. “Okay.”

Luke grins, and Rey catches the mischief in his eyes the second before he speaks. “All right, I’ll let you two lovebirds get back to your… walk. See you around!”

He brushes past them before either of them can think of something to say, and by the time they turn around Luke’s already disappeared into a café down the street.

“So much for keeping it to ourselves, huh?” Ben sighs, his lips quirking into a wry smile.

Surprisingly, Rey finds she doesn’t mind as much as she should.

Chapter Text

On Monday, Rey wakes up for the second time that morning to find Ben trailing kisses along her bare shoulder while one hand dips just below the waistband of her shorts. It’s certainly a lot more subtle than the way he’d woken her up the first time, his groin pressed tellingly against her back, but there’s no mistaking the fact that he’s angling for a second round.

Quick as lightning, she catches his hand and pulls it back up to her waist. “Ben, the whole point of this week is to get out and do couple-y things, not stay in bed all day,” Rey reminds him with a sigh.

“Staying in bed all day sounds pretty couple-y to me,” Ben retorts, but he backs off nevertheless and doesn’t move his hand from her waist as Rey turns to face him.

“Ben.” The glare she throws him is half-hearted at best, but it does the job.

“All right, all right,” he relents, ducking down to press an apologetic kiss to her scowl. “What do you want to do today?”

She turns around in his arms and comes to rest on her back, watching as he props himself up with a hand under his jaw. “We could go have lunch somewhere,” Rey suggests after a moment’s thought. What little sunlight there is falls directly on Ben, bathing him in a soft glow as he smiles at her and brings his other hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

“Like a date?” he asks quietly, and Rey can’t put the look in his eyes into words but she’s pretty sure it’s mirrored in her own. A date. With Ben. Because that’s a thing couples do and they can do that now.

“Like a date,” she echoes, surging up to kiss him. Her sudden movement takes Ben by surprise and knocks him down, so that when Rey finally breaks the kiss their positions have been reversed. The change allows her to rest her head on his chest and listen to the hummingbird flutter of Ben’s heartbeat, to the effect she has on him, to the way she makes him feel.

Rey hopes that never changes.

“Come on,” Ben groans once he’s caught his breath, reluctantly drawing the both of them upright. “Let’s get out of this bed before I change my mind.”

They end up agreeing on the café Finn sometimes picks up the occasional shift at, knowing that none of the holiday staff will recognize them.

And even if they do run into familiar, gossipy faces, it probably won’t matter because Rey is increasingly sure that she and Ben will have some big news to share with the guys as soon as they get back from Poe’s home. It’s probably too early to tell – it is too early to tell – and she doesn’t want to jinx anything, but after barely three days together she can’t see herself ever giving up on Ben. On them.

Still, knowing in her very bones that she wants to be with him isn’t the same as telling him so just days into their relationship, which leaves them in a bit of a tight spot when they start discussing Luke’s invitation and potentially accepting it.

“I mean,” Ben shrugs, pushing his plate closer to her as she steals yet another fry. “It’s not like Luke invited you as my girlfriend, right?” It’s wishful thinking, especially given the twinkle in Luke’s eye when he’d stumbled upon them together, but they can live in denial for at least another day. “He probably invited you because… well, you’re a Kenobi. I think there’s a law against running into a Kenobi during the holiday season and not inviting them to the Organa-Skywalker family Christmas.”

Ben tactfully does not mention the fact that she’s the only Kenobi left to run into, that the reason she’s never been invited to spend Christmas with his family before is because the first time she was supposed to tag along with her grandfather, Ben Kenobi passed just two days before they were due to leave for Alderaan.

“What’s it like?” Rey asks, pushing the last of her pancakes towards Ben in return for the fries. “Christmas with your family, I mean. But also Alderaan in general – I’ve never been.”

“It’s… beautiful,” he tells her, eyes glazed over with a lifetime’s worth of memories. “After what Palpatine did to the state during his presidency, everyone pretty much thought Alderaan was done for. All of the jobs were gone, and he slashed funding across the board – education, security, even parks and rec. Things fell into disrepair, schools started falling behind, and soon people were forced to either move away or risk bankruptcy and starvation. By the time my mom ran for Senator, the voter turnout was 37% - the lowest in national history.”

Rey remembers that, remembers following with interest as Leia Organa took up a lost cause and worked tirelessly to champion it, to restore her home to its former glory. Something about Leia’s frequent speeches on the importance of home had tugged at her tiny orphan heart, had pushed her to find a home of her own. But she’s never heard Ben’s side of the story before, never seen the way his lips twitch with pride as he speaks of his mother’s legacy, and so she listens.

“I was six the first time she ran. The night she won…” Ben’s entire face lights up; she can count on one hand the number of times she’s seen him like this. “I don’t think I’d ever seen her that happy. I barely ever saw her during those first few years, but it was worth it just to see the look on her face every time she took me for a drive and pointed out all the changes she’d implemented, all the things she’d fixed. It was harder after that, once all the little things were repaired and she had to tackle the big things, like figuring out a new economy for the state. It was entirely by accident that Alderaan ended up becoming a tourist hotspot, did you know that?” he asks with a grin – boyish, Rey would call it if pressed for a descriptor, even though she’s never associated the word with Ben before. “My mom just kept fixing things up whenever she got frustrated with the Senate, and eventually Alderaan became as beautiful as it used to be and people started flocking there all year round to see the state.”

“They say it’s the most beautiful state in the country,” Rey says, a dozen tourism brochures and ads coming to mind.

Ben smiles and reaches for her hand. “It really is,” he tells her, lacing their fingers together. “You’re going to love it, Rey. And if it’s my family you’re worried about… don’t be. It’s like a rule or something that everyone in this family either loves you by virtue of being a Kenobi or simply for being you.”

Rey smirks. “Everyone, huh?”

The smirk slides off her face when Ben simply brings their joined hands up to his lips and kisses her hand. He doesn’t say a word, just looks her in the eye as his lips brush along her knuckles, and Rey has never been this flustered and giddy and taken aback in her life.

“So,” Ben murmurs, letting their hands fall back to the table. “How do you feel about spending Christmas with my family?”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Rey registers the fact that Ben didn’t really answer her first question at all – she has no idea what she’s signing up for, what Christmas with his family will be like. “If we can get through this,” she finds herself saying anyway, “it’ll pretty much be a given that we can get through anything, right?”

Ben nods, doing his best to school his features into a serious expression. “It’s the ultimate new relationship test.”

She wants that, wants the security of knowing that she and Ben have covered as many of their bases as possible before they fully commit to this. If that means spending Christmas with his family just three days into their relationship and opening herself up to days of scrutiny and interrogation, then so be it.

And the way Ben speaks of Alderaan… there’s no way she’s passing up an opportunity to let him share this with her, to let him introduce her to this place that obviously means so much to him.

“Okay then,” Rey decides, banishing her doubts and fear and worst-case scenarios to the back of her mind. “Let’s spend Christmas with your family.”

Rey has no idea how they went from “tell no one” to “introduce me to your family as your girlfriend” in so short a span of time, but things with Ben have always had a habit of spiraling out of control anyway.

So far, she thinks as Ben happily calls his mother to let her know they’ll be attending after all, his hand still in hers, that’s worked out just fine.

Chapter Text

It’s a three-hour drive to Alderaan, and the plan is to leave right after lunch so that they’ll get there with plenty of daylight to spare.

Theoretically, that should have given them plenty of time to pack in the morning. In reality, they’d both overslept and now they’re rushing around the apartment in a mad panic to pack, get dressed, and have lunch in less than ninety minutes.

“Ben, do you want your–”

“Sweetheart, have you seen my–”

They bump into each other in the hallway, Ben instinctively reaching out to steady Rey as she holds up his faded University of Naboo sweatshirt.

“Ah,” Ben grins as Rey hands him the… borrowed article of clothing. “I should’ve known it would be with you.”

She’d donned it sometime last month, when she woke up in the middle of the night and blindly grabbed the first piece of clothing she could find before slipping out of Ben’s room and carefully tip-toeing past the master bedroom door on her way back to her own room. “I’ve been meaning to give it back to you,” Rey claims, “but you know Finn and I always do laundry together, and he would definitely have found it weird if he saw me washing your clothes.”

Ben stares at her. “You realize you could have just told him you borrowed it when you were cold and didn’t have any clean laundry? You borrow clothes from him and Poe all the time, anyway.”

“… Right. Of course.”

In truth, the idea hadn’t even occurred to Rey; towards the end she’d found herself growing somewhat paranoid of the guys finding out about her arrangement with Ben. Now she can admit to herself it was because she knew they would’ve sat her down and made her confront her growing feelings for Ben, but back then Rey told herself it was just to avoid any possible awkwardness. After all, Finn and Poe are in love and happily committed to each other; they wouldn’t have been able to understand her and Ben’s practical way of doing things.

Rather than admit to all of this, however, Rey chooses to focus on a more recent development. “Sweetheart?” she echoes questioningly. “That’s new.”

At some point while packing, Ben must have unknowingly tucked some of his hair behind his left ear, leaving said ear visible. Rey is hit by an overwhelming wave of fondness and affection when the tip of his ear turns just the slightest bit pink at her question.

“I couldn’t exactly call you that before,” he mumbles, dropping his eyes to the sweatshirt in his hands.

“You did, though,” Rey blurts out unthinkingly. “But… only when you were asleep,” she elaborates once Ben looks up. “Mostly you’d just whine a bit when I tried to leave in the middle of the night, and then you’d say don’t go, sweetheart.”

Ben shakes his head with a rueful grin. “All that time and effort trying to hide how I felt about you, when all along I’d been giving it away in my sleep.”

“And here I thought that’s just what you call all the girls,” she teases, backing away to return to her room. While Christmas itself is a rather laid-back event in the Organa-Solo-Skywalker household, Leia has been known to go all out for her Christmas Eve party… which means Rey is going to need a dress, preferably one that hasn’t found its wrinkly way to the bottom of her closet.

“Hey, wait,” Ben reaches out for her hand, long fingers easily encircling her wrist. “You know there are no other girls, right?” he tells her, and she is struck by a sudden impulse to reach out and smooth the furrow between his brows. “There hasn’t been anyone else for a very long time now.”

Rey smiles, reaching up to loop her free hand around his neck. “I know,” she murmurs, pulling him close for a kiss. “There’s no one else for me, either.” Prior to these past few days, Rey doesn’t think she’d ever smiled into a kiss before. Now she finds herself doing it even as Ben tugs her closer to deepen the kiss.

The sweatshirt falls to the ground as Ben’s hands slide to the back of her thighs and lift her up, prompting Rey to wrap her legs around him.

“Ben,” she gasps, letting her head fall to his shoulder. Her voice sounds unfamiliar to her own ears, all giddy and breathless with a hint of laughter. “Ben, we don’t have time for this.”

“There’s always time for you, sweetheart,” he says, warm lips brushing against her temple.

They end up getting delayed by an hour.

It’s nearly three by the time they haul their bags down the street and get into Ben’s car, a sleek black Silencer he hadn’t been able to part with even after leaving behind everything else from his old life. You Solo men and your cars, Rey remembers Leia saying the first time she came to visit and found Ben’s car parked out front.

In any case, it’s a good and reliable car, one Rey is glad to be in as the clear roads of Coruscant give way to the ice- and rain-slicked twists and turns of Takodana. The road to Alderaan runs parallel to the length of Takodana’s forest, and Rey finds herself drifting in and out of sleep as Ben navigates the long, winding paths the state is known for.

Two hours into their drive they come across a signboard for Maz’s B&B, which Ben tells her indicates they’re about to cross state lines. Soon enough, the dense forest gives way to an expanse of snow-capped mountains, and Rey finds her nose practically pressed up against the window as she takes in the sight of Alderaan.

“It’s like something straight out of a postcard,” she marvels, catching sight of the sun’s brilliant reflection on the surface of a frozen lake.

When she turns to Ben, he spares her a glance as a smile blooms on his face, bright and open and unreserved. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Rey nods, her eyes drifting back to the scenery. “Thank you for sharing this with me,” she tells Ben, reaching out for his free hand.

“I’m glad you’re here, Rey,” he murmurs, bringing her hand up to his lips even as he keeps his eyes on the road ahead.

It’s only once the Organa mansion comes into sight that Rey remembers something very, very important.

“Oh shit,” she says suddenly, an errant thought of how much Finn would like it here giving way to the more important thought of how Finn spent two whole months tracking down the perfect gifts for his boyfriend’s family while she’s shown up completely empty handed. “Presents!” she tells Ben when he turns to check on her. “We forgot presents!”

Ben laughs. To her absolute horror, Ben laughs. “Oh god, the look on your face.” He sobers up when she crosses her arms and huffs at his reaction. “Calm down, sweetheart. We don’t do presents in my family.”

“Oh, thank god,” Rey whispers, throwing her head back against the seat. “Wait, why not?” she asks once the relief has worked its way through her system.

“It’s just…” Ben shrugs. “It’s always been that way, ever since I was a teenager. I mean, everyone bought me gifts as a kid because that’s just what you do for kids, but none of the adults ever exchanged gifts. When I got older, I realized the people in my family only ever buy each other gifts when they’ve really, really fucked up. It didn’t feel right to have that be a part of Christmas, so I told my parents I was old enough to understand and we haven’t exchanged gifts since.”

Rey takes a moment to absorb that before asking a truly important question: “Do you still get birthday presents, at least?”

Ben shakes his head as the car slows to a stop at the gate and he rolls down his window to punch a code into the tiny keypad set into the wall. “Contrite bribery is a year-round tactic in this household, so it’s ruined gifts for pretty much any occasion you can think of. My parents aren’t even allowed to buy each other Valentine’s gifts anymore, not after a certain incident with the Falcon. Remind me to tell you about that sometime.”

“Okay,” Rey mumbles absently, too busy being stunned by the fact that the Organas have an actual goddamn circular driveway, the kind she’s only ever seen on TV and in pictures. There are three cars already parked in the driveway, one of which she recognizes as Luke’s. Ben parks right next to that one, and before she knows it they’re out of the car and making their way to the front door.

“This is really fucking fancy,” she whisper-hisses to Ben as they climb the set of stairs leading up to the entrance.

“Tell me about it,” he mutters in return as one of the doors – there are two of them, because of course there are – starts to move. “This place has been in the Organa family for as long as anyone can remember. If Alderaan had a castle, this would be it.”

The door opens to reveal Leia with a wide smile on her face, one that Rey can’t help but compare to the smile Ben had given her in the car when they first drove into Alderaan an hour ago.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” she calls out, crossing her arms as she waits for Ben and Rey to reach her. By the time they’ve crossed the threshold her smile has turned into a smirk, and for a terrible moment Rey thinks this is it, this is the moment the endless teasing starts–

“My idiot prodigal son, home at last,” Leia announces grandly, allowing a beat for her statement to sink in before she moves to pull Ben down for a hug. “Hi, Rey,” she adds over her son’s shoulder, throwing her a smile.

Ben remains practically folded over in half until his mother steps out of the hug and ushers them further into the house, closing the door behind them.

“Dinner’s in an hour,” Leia tells them, eyeing their bags. “You two should bring those up and go get settled in. I’ll holler when food’s ready.”

“Okay,” Ben says, already guiding Rey towards the staircase. “The usual room for me, I’m guessing. Where do you want Rey?” On the drive over he’d told her that despite the seemingly infinite number of rooms in the Organa mansion, Leia has always been very particular about only preparing a select few for guest use at any given time. Ben learned a long time ago not to offer up just any room to their guests, and to consult his mother beforehand.

“Oh, I’ve set aside the blue room for the both of you,” Leia tells them, her casual tone belied by the twinkle in her eyes. “Luke mentioned you two might appreciate the… added space.”

While Rey gapes at Leia and Ben drops his eyes to the ground, the man in question can be heard stomping around upstairs. Just seconds later, he appears at the top of the stairs.

“I most certainly did not!” Luke protests, glaring down at his twin. “My exact words were you won the bet, and that is all I said,” he assures Ben and Rey.

Leia scoffs and waves a dismissive hand at her brother. “Oh, whatever. You implied that–”

“Don’t you put words in my mouth, Madame Senator–”

Rey watches in amazement as Senator Leia Organa, an idol of hers, and Professor Luke Skywalker, the most composed man she knows, get caught up in a bickering match the likes of which would be better suited to a couple of sulky teenagers.

Beside her, Ben groans and hides his face in the curve of her neck. “Please don’t let my crazy family scare you off,” he pleads against her shoulder.

Despite the strange, unsettling sensation of stepping into an alternate reality, Rey rests her head against Ben’s and vows, “Never.”

Chapter Text

On Christmas Eve, Rey and Ben find themselves on the receiving end of a rather rude awakening.

The morning starts normally enough. Rey blinks away her disorientation at waking up in an unfamiliar environment and rolls around to find Ben leaning against the headboard, phone in hand.

“Morning,” she mumbles, even though it’s probably lost amidst the little sounds she makes as she stretches her sleepy limbs. When she opens her eyes it’s to find Ben giving her the softest smile possible, the one she’d never even seen before this week.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he replies, ducking down to press a kiss to her temple as Rey sighs happily. After a while she coaxes her body upright and reaches blindly for the glass of water she’d left on her nightstand last night. Ben sets aside his phone as she moves to join him, and in a blur of reaching hands and sleepy kisses Rey finds herself in his lap.

She lets her eyes close as Ben leans in to rest his forehead against hers, their noses brushing together and his hair falling forward to block out the outside world. “What time is it?” Rey asks, her lips moving against the corner of his mouth.

“Just past nine,” Ben tells her, hands settling on her waist. She hums in acknowledgement, her hazy mind more interested in kissing than speaking, and he gladly obliges. Cliché and corny though it may sound, time ceases to exist whenever she kisses Ben. It used to worry her, the way she could get lost in him for what could have been anything from five minutes to an hour, with no way of telling which it was until she found the will to pull herself away. Now she chases after that oblivion, sinks into it and relishes the fact that she’s allowed to get carried away with Ben, to lose herself in the way it feels to be with him.

And for the longest time she does, she allows herself to lose all sense of time and being and the outside world, until–

“Ben!” Luke calls, his voice mock-stern as he pounds his fist against the door in quick succession. “Ben, you better not be splitting my favorite student in half with that thing!”

Rey’s eyes fly open, and she can’t tell if she’s flushed from kissing Ben or if the heat in her cheeks is a blush brought on by her professor’s implication that his nephew is–

“Go away!” Ben growls right before he tips forward to hide his face in her neck.

Luke bursts into laughter, loud, self-congratulating guffaws that reach their ears even as his voice grows fainter with distance.

“How does he know…?” Rey finally brings herself to ask, even though she’s not quite sure she wants the answer to that question.

Ben lets his head fall back against the headboard with a thud. “Have you heard about the weirdos who insist on using the urinal right next to you even when the rest of the bathroom is unoccupied?”

She nods, the movement slow with trepidation.

“My uncle is one of those weirdos,” Ben announces with a weary sigh, dragging his hand down his face. After a moment he peeks out at her from between his fingers and asks, almost sheepishly, “Did he ruin the mood?”

“Hmm, let’s see,” Rey flashes him a smirk as she very, very slowly and deliberately rolls her hips against him just once. “Not for you, obviously,” she points out unnecessarily.

Ben swallows visibly. “And for you?” he rasps, his throat dry.

Rey shrugs. “I mean, they’re going to assume we did anyway, right?” she says, words somewhat muffled as she pulls off her top. “Might as well.”

“Might as well,” Ben agrees and this time, there are no interruptions.

“How nice of you two to finally join us!” Luke crows as they enter the kitchen, earning himself a slap on the arm from a passing Leia.

“Grow up, will you?” Leia snaps at her brother before she turns to them. “There’s some coffee left in the pot, but you’ll probably have to make more. There would have been food left too, if my idiot brother here had just called you two down for breakfast when I asked him to.”

Luke crosses his arms under Leia’s withering glare. “What? You said to wake them up and I did. You never said how.”

Completely ignoring his family, Ben places a hand on the small of Rey’s back and guides her to the far end of the kitchen, where the fridge and stove are. “Eggs sound okay?”

“Eggs sound great,” she smiles, and Ben tells her to go ahead and pull whatever she wants out of the fridge while he hunts down the required kitchenware. The large kitchen – which Rey had found just as intimidating as the rest of the house when she first saw it yesterday – allows them some measure of privacy from Luke and Leia, even though she thinks she can still sense the occasional pair of eyes watching her and Ben as they work around each other with practiced ease.

“By the way,” Leia says a few minutes later, while Ben is cooking up their omelets and Rey is pulling out plates and cutlery. “Your father arrived earlier this morning. He’s out running some errands with Chewie, but he should be back before the party starts.”

“Okay,” Ben shrugs, keeping his back to his mother and his eyes on the stove. When she walks past him to gather glasses for orange juice, Rey discreetly runs her hand along his back and watches the way his shoulders relax.

“What time is the party starting?” she asks Leia in a bid to distract her, and even though Leia’s eyes tell her she knows exactly what Rey is doing, she plays along anyway.

“People usually start arriving at three, but those are mainly constituents and their kids, donors, small business owners – work guests, basically,” Leia explains. “Most of them only stay an hour or two – we’ve had some stragglers in the past, but by seven it’s completely family and friends.”

“And that’s when the real party starts,” Luke chimes in, setting down his newspaper.

Leia sighs. “That’s when Luke gets tipsy,” she corrects her brother with a pointed look, to which Luke merely shrugs.

“Anyway, we’ve still got a few things to do before we’re ready for guests,” Leia tells Rey as Ben plates their omelets. “Just some of the stuff we didn’t get around to last night; it shouldn’t take too long. Oh, and the caterers are coming at noon, so hurry up and eat before they take over this place and kick you out.” As if on cue, Ben hands Rey her plate and they join his family at the table.

While they eat, Rey tries to recall the to-do list Leia had presented her and Ben with after dinner last night, the one they’d both helped her work on until one in the morning. There shouldn’t be much left, just small things like making sure all the off-limits rooms are locked and displaying all of the holiday cards Leia has received.

Later Rey finds that she has severely underestimated the number of rooms there are in the Organa mansion and the amount of cards a well-loved Senator like Leia receives during the holiday season. She and Ben are left to sort the cards – “Ben knows the system,” Leia tells her – and display them around the entirety of the first floor, a task which takes them the better part of an hour.

Rey doesn’t mind. If nothing else, it’s a reprieve from the twins tag-teaming her and Ben with their endless teasing. She tells Ben as much when he apologizes for dragging her into this, and he shakes his head.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ben sighs, carefully arranging a card on the mantel so that the bright, messy crayon scrawl of Leia’s young supporter is clearly visible to all guests – including the majority of the local paper’s staff. “This is nothing. Just wait till my uncle gets drunk.”

She laughs and calls him a drama queen, because how bad can things get?

So, so bad.

To be fair, the first half of the party actually goes pretty well. There’s a moment, early on, when Han walks in through the front doors just as Rey and Ben come downstairs and the tension in the air makes her feel like they’ve stepped on a landmine. But then Han takes one look at their joined hands and his lips twitch with a poorly concealed grin.

“Finally,” he mutters, and when they meet him at the bottom of the stairs he claps Ben on the shoulder, nods at Rey with a smile, and says, “Good for you, kids.”

It’s a major crisis averted, and it’s the only notable moment from the first four hours of Leia’s party. Ben spends most of the afternoon playing the part of the Senator’s dutiful son, and Rey alternates between standing at his side while he makes small talk and hanging out with Luke, who watches from the sidelines and barely ever interacts with anyone.

“Don’t you know anyone here?” she asks her professor at some point, and he shakes his head.

“These are Leia’s people,” Luke says, a small smile lighting up his face as he spots his sister amidst a sea of people, effortlessly winning the hearts of her fellow Alderaanians. “Alderaan has always been her home, but it’s only home to me because it’s hers. You’ve heard the story, haven’t you, about how we were raised separately?”

Rey nods. “She was adopted by the previous Senator Organa, while you grew up with distant relatives in Tatooine.”

“Tatooine never really felt like home either,” the older man confides in her. “For the longest time it was all I knew, it was pretty much my whole world, but it still wasn’t home. You probably know what that’s like,” Luke turns to her expectantly, the way he would in class whenever he knew she had the answer he was looking for.

“I do,” Rey agrees quietly. It’s easy for her to understand Luke’s complicated feelings on Tatooine, easy to compare them to her own feelings on Jakku and Niima House. For so long the orphanage had been both a roof over her head and a cell she couldn’t escape from, and Jakku used to feel like all there was, all there ever would be. It remains a small, desolate town in an endless desert of small, desolate towns, all of them left to suffer the same fate Alderaan had been heading towards before Leia stepped up.

Maybe that’s why Rey has always thought so highly of Leia; some part of her had been hoping, waiting for Jakku to get a Leia Organa of its own, for someone to save the town and all of its inhabitants. It never happened, of course, and eventually Rey grew sick of waiting for someone to rescue her and found a way to rescue herself instead.

But she doesn’t tell Luke any of that, choosing to remain in contemplative silence with him until the next time Ben summons her to his side with a wide-eyed please save me look.

Just a few short hours later, that quiet, contemplative Luke is nowhere to be found. Instead there’s tipsy-bordering-on-drunk Luke trying to be stealthy as he tracks Rey and Ben across the house, waiting for the perfect moment before he bellows, “Chewie, now!”

Ben’s Uncle Chewbacca – the tallest man Rey’s ever met, taller somehow than Ben himself – appears out of nowhere, a feat that should be impossible for a man his size, to dangle a sprig of mistletoe over their heads.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ben groans as Leia’s guests start cheering and wolf-whistling and calling out for them to kiss.

“Leave the kids alone,” Han grouses as he reappears from the kitchen with a glass of whisky in one hand and a bottle of the stuff in the other. Unlike his brother-in-law, however, Ben’s father can actually handle his alcohol, and he shoots Luke a glare eerily similar to the one Rey’s caught Leia directing at her brother throughout the evening.

Luke has the utter gall to look hurt. “I just want to see my favorite nephew–”

“Only nephew,” Ben mutters under his breath.

“–and my favorite student–”

“Then why’d you give me an A minus,” Rey grumbles to herself.

“–be happy together!”

Ben glares at his uncle. “We were managing that perfectly fine without you,” he points out before turning to Chewie. “And you! What are you doing?”

Chewbacca shrugs, obstinately keeping the mistletoe right above them. “Just proud to finally see you with a girl,” he rumbles in that nearly unintelligible accent Rey vaguely remembers encountering in Jakku, the only reason she’s able to understand him at all.

“See, this is why I never come home for the holidays,” Ben mutters. The guests have lost interest at this point, but Ben, Han, Luke, and Chewie are caught in a four-way staring contest that’s getting more ridiculous by the second, and Leia’s disappeared god knows where with Maz so she’s not coming to the rescue anytime soon, and frankly Rey is just done with this.

She braces one hand against Ben’s chest and surges forward to plant a kiss to the corner of his mouth, mindful of his probable discomfort when it comes to overt displays of affection in a roomful of people he grew up around.

“There,” Rey announces, crossing her arms at Luke. “Now go sober up, professor. This is ridiculous.”

Luke’s eyes gleam with mischief and satisfaction. “Oh, I’m not drunk. It’s just so much easier to get my way when I pretend I am.”

And with that, he and Chewie wander off into the next room.

“What just– did he just –” Rey sputters at their retreating forms, turning to Ben once they’ve disappeared.

“I told you it would get worse,” Ben reminds her, albeit apologetically.

Han sighs. “Welcome to the family, Rey. Sorry you had to make the same mistake I did,” he tells her, pressing his glass of whisky into the hand that’s not still on Ben’s chest.

“Mistake?” she asks Ben once his father has left them.

“Falling for an Organa-Skywalker,” he clarifies, equal parts cocky and in disbelief as if he still hasn’t fully wrapped his mind around it. “And getting stuck with the crazy relatives.”

“Please tell me that’s as crazy as it gets,” Rey pleads, leaning into Ben’s side for support.

Ben wraps an arm around her waist to hold her steady. “I wish I could.”

Luke and Chewie try the mistletoe ambush four more times before the evening is up, determined to make Ben and Rey kiss for real – their words, not hers – in front of everyone.

By the time they finally get under the covers, Rey is utterly exhausted and seriously beginning to reconsider her decision to come here. But at least it’s over and done with, right? And it’s just as she told Ben: if their budding relationship can survive this, they’ll be able to make it through anything.

Warmed by the thought, Rey allows herself a sigh of relief as Ben reaches out to draw her to his chest.

“Good night, Ben,” she whispers, her eyes drifting shut.

“Get some rest, sweetheart,” he murmurs against her temple, sounding just as tired as she feels. “Tomorrow we get to do this all over again.”

Rey’s eyes snap wide open in horror.

Chapter Text

On Christmas morning, Rey hesitantly ventures down the stairs on her own after a good half hour spent trying to get Ben to keep his eyes open for more than two minutes at a time.

She finds Leia alone in the kitchen, staring out the windows at the far end of the room as she sips on her coffee. It’s just past eight, and it is Christmas morning, but somehow she’s still jarred by the sight of the famed Senator in her pajamas with no make-up and her hair pulled into a single braid.

“Merry Christmas,” Rey says quietly, to keep from shocking the older woman with her presence. To her relief, Leia doesn’t jump or tense; she turns around slowly, a smile blooming on her face as she spots Rey by the doorway.

“Rey,” Leia waves for her to come in. “Merry Christmas. I take it my son is still dead to the waking world?” She turns slightly to her left, and that’s when Rey notices a tray bearing a pot of coffee, five mugs, and a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream.

Leia follows her eyes and offers her a shrug. “Hey, it’s Christmas. If that’s not an excuse to drink in the morning, I don’t know what is. Besides, this barely counts.”

“Oh, no, that’s not… honestly, I think I’ll join you,” Rey tells her, taking a seat opposite Leia. If lunch is going to be anything like the night before, she might as well get a head-start on mellowing out. “And yes, Ben’s still asleep. I don’t think we’ll be seeing him anytime soon.”

“That’s fine with me,” Leia says, sliding her a cup of coffee. “I’ve been wanting to spend some time with you anyway, and God knows there’s no way Ben will let that happen while he’s conscious.”

She’s known Leia for two years now, idolized her for basically half her life, and on top of that her grandfather had always spoken highly and warmly of the woman in front of her. All of that means that while Rey should not fear a quick chat with Ben’s mother, she knows better than to let her guard down around the Senator.

“Oh,” she murmurs, buying herself some time by trying the coffee. It’s warm and sweet, much milder than Poe’s version of Irish coffee which is really just equal parts black coffee and the cheapest whiskey they have on hand. “This is good,” Rey comments, and it’s not even entirely a bid to distract Leia from the coming interrogation.

“Tell that to Han,” Leia snorts. “He takes one look at the stuff and just pours his precious Corellian whiskey into his mug instead.”

“Ben seems equally fond of it,” Rey says unthinkingly, prompted by the memory of a bottle hidden away on the highest shelf in their kitchen.

Leia takes the opening and runs with it, her eyes the tiniest bit narrowed as she leans closer. “So, how long have you two been seeing each other? You don’t have to tell me, of course, but I like to think I would have noticed the difference in him during Thanksgiving if you were already together by then.”

“Difference?”

“He’s… softer, this time. Happier, I think, though I wouldn’t know,” Leia’s voice lowers, and she seems to age right in front of Rey’s eyes as her shoulders slump. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Ben happy, not as an adult. It’s gotten better in the last two years, of course, but he was only… content, never really happy.”

Rey thinks of the man she’d first gotten to know when Poe introduced them to his childhood friend, of the quiet, broody new roommate she hadn’t quite gotten along with, of the fact that he apparently used to have nightmares when he first moved in. He’s certainly come a long way since then, but Rey thinks she sees what Leia means.

After all, she’s noticed a similar change in herself this week. That’s not to say that she hadn’t been happy before, or that she’d been miserable until this past week – she’d been content, just like Ben. But now there’s… this feeling of things being right, of that last puzzle piece finally falling into place, of her life being complete.

“But then he shows up for Christmas for the first time in years, and he brings you along, and everything’s just… different, this time,” Leia continues. “I think this is what happiness looks like on my son, and there’s no way I could have missed it when I visited for Thanksgiving, which means this has only been going on for a month, at most. But you two are too comfortable around each other for that,” she mutters, almost as if to herself.

Leia gets the exact same crease in her forehead that Ben does when he furrows his brows, when he’s puzzled or worried or uncertain. Rey wonders if that’s why she gives in, an instinctive response to seeing that familiar look of concern and needing to do something about it.

“It’s been less than a week, actually,” she quietly reveals, focusing on her mug while she tries to come up with an appropriate version of events for Leia. Finally, she settles on, “We’ve been seeing each other casually for a while, and this Saturday Ben suggested that we make it more… permanent.” That’s more or less accurate, isn’t it? “So it’s only been a week,” Rey looks up and meets Leia’s curious eyes, “but at the same time I guess it’s been longer than that.”

She resists the urge to look away or blush or fidget under the weight of Leia’s scrutinizing gaze, and when the other woman finally speaks it’s almost a relief.

Almost.

“Okay, so what you’re saying is… you might have slept with my son before this, but you definitely weren’t together before Thanksgiving, right?”

Rey nearly falls off her chair. “I– no, that’s not– we didn’t–”

Leia dismisses her sputtering and flailing and blushing with a casual wave. “Honestly, Rey, I don’t give a shit about that. Han and I had Ben within a year of getting together, do you really think I’m here to judge you for living in sin with my son?”

“That’s not–”

“Besides, you’re forgetting who you’re talking to. If anyone can understand what you went through, it’s me. Solo men are fun to mess around with,” Leia smirks, she actually smirks, and Rey wishes she’d just stayed in bed and avoided this conversation altogether, “but God is it exhausting to actually be in a relationship with them. I don’t blame you for wanting all the fun and none of the messy parts. Hell, if that had been an option with Han I would’ve gone for it.”

“I… um…” Rey takes a gulp of coffee while she tries to figure out an appropriate response to that. By the time her mug is empty, she’s still speechless.

“Seriously, Rey, forget all of that,” Leia reaches for her cup and pours her a refill. “All I want to know is, did you and Ben properly get together before or after Thanksgiving?”

“Um, after,” she says, taking the cup from Leia. “Just this past Saturday, like I told you.”

Leia’s whole face lights up in delight. “Ha! I knew it!” she exclaims triumphantly, nearly causing Rey to choke on her coffee. But it’s nothing compared to what she says next, her voice smug as can be:

“Luke and Han owe me five hundred dollars.”

Lunch is a small affair compared to the party from the night before, just the four members of the Organa-Solo-Skywalker family along with Chewie, Maz, and Rey.

Leia sits at the head of the table with Han on her left and Luke on her right; Ben sits at the very end of the right side, as far away from his father as possible. Rey sits between him and Luke while Maz takes the seat right across the table, with Chewie between her and Han.

For the first twenty minutes, the clearly planned seating arrangement seems to be working just fine. Maz keeps up a steady stream of conversation with Rey and Ben while the others engage Han in mostly one-sided conversation, and Rey can’t see anything going wrong as long as everyone plays their parts.

And then–

“So, Ben, do you know what you want to do yet?” Maz asks just as there’s a lull in conversation on the other end of the table, and in the sudden silence Han’s quiet snort is deafening.

“Han,” Leia warns him quietly just as Rey places a hand on Ben’s thigh and wills him to stay calm. There’s a moment when he almost looks like he’s about to say something, but he backs down when she murmurs his name and takes her hand in his own instead.

Ben laces their fingers together and turns back to Maz, and the table seems to breathe a silent sigh of relief until–

“What, are we going to pretend the kid can be trusted to make his own choices?” Han grumbles at Leia. “Last time we let him do that, he nearly murdered me.”

Leia is full-on glaring at her husband, and even Luke looks the slightest bit disappointed and weary as he stares Han down. Chewie remains silent, and so it’s left to Maz to try and defuse the tension.

“Han Solo,” she chides, shaking her head at him. “You and your exaggerations. Reminds me of that time you filled my staff’s head with tall tales about–”

“Not now, Maz,” Han cuts her short, finally turning his attention to Ben. “I’d rather hear what the kid’s got up his sleeve this time.”

Rey squeezes Ben’s hand in desperation, turns her body towards him and wishes she were big enough to block the rest of the table out, even briefly considers abruptly pulling him away from the table and leading him back upstairs to cool off.

“I’m not a kid,” Ben growls, and Rey thinks she hears Leia mutter a very quiet well, fuck under her breath.

“Fine, we’ll stop treating you like one then,” Han fires back. “Two years I’ve been pretending that everything’s fine, because your mother told me you’re not ready to talk about it. And now suddenly here you are and we’re supposed to pretend you didn’t try to run me over with your fucking car just because that old creep told you to?”

Ben is shaking with the force of his anger, and there’s nothing she can do to steady him. “I didn’t–” Rey squeezes his hand again and he stops, breathes, lowers his voice. “I didn’t try to run you down. Snoke wanted me to, but I didn’t do it.”

“But you almost did, didn’t you? You followed every single order that piece of shit gave you like his goddamn lapdog,” Han snarls. “You nearly ruined your mother’s career because you were too busy being a blind, stubborn rebel!”

“You would know all about ruining Mom’s career, wouldn’t you, Han Solo the smuggler, the outlaw, the–”

“You goddamn–”

“That’s enough!” Leia snaps, her chair scraping against the floor as she stands. “I will not let that man come between our family again, and you two are idiots if you do. Ben,” she turns to her son with an almost apologetic look. “I know you’ve changed and I know you’re trying to move on and forget all about that, but at some point you’re going to have to at least apologize to your father. I’d ask you two to talk things through, but I stopped believing in miracles a long time ago,” she adds wryly.

“And you!” She turns to Han and slaps his arm, an actual hit if the way her husband flinches is anything to go by. “We’ve discussed this! You know what drove him away the first time, are you really going to make the same mistake twice?”

Han’s eyes flit to Ben before he points his eyes heavenward and crosses his arms. “Fine,” he huffs, taking his own sweet time before he turns to his son. “Sorry I brought this up,” Han mumbles, as though that’s the heart of the matter, as though that solves anything.

At least Ben is gracious enough to let it slide for now. “Sorry I thought about killing you,” he offers in return, and Rey thinks she could live for a hundred years and still not understand Solo men because father and son catch each other’s eye and after a moment, they start laughing.

“S’okay, kid. Hell,” Han chuckles, his voice gruff. “I’d be surprised if there’s anyone at this table who hasn’t thought of killing me.”

Ben turns to Rey, his laughter fading into an amused smile, and the rest of the table follows suit. “I don’t think you’ve given Rey here any reason to hate you… yet.”

“Give it some time,” Chewie suddenly speaks up. “He always finds a way to piss everyone off.”

“What the hell, Chewie?” Han demands with a scowl at his oldest friend, to which Chewie merely shrugs.

Luke launches into a story about that one time he actually came really close to physically strangling Han for one mishap or another, and under the table Ben keeps their hands together.

“You okay?” Rey asks quietly while everyone else is laughing at Luke’s story.

Ben smiles and presses a quick kiss to her hair. “As long as I’ve got you.”

After lunch, Rey is almost scared to leave Ben alone while she helps Leia with the dishes.

“It’ll be fine,” Leia assures her when she picks up on Rey’s reluctance. “Han and Chewie always spend at least an hour in the backyard, drinking and talking and God knows what.”

“Besides,” Luke chimes in, the third member of the clean-up party. “Maz wants to talk to him. That’s the only reason we’re not making him do this too,” he reveals.

“Well, if you think he’ll be okay…” Rey says slowly, watching Ben look away from Maz for just a second to shoot her a smile.

“Okay, look,” Leia reaches out and pulls Rey into the kitchen, her voice the slightest bit impatient. “Do you or do you not want us to show you embarrassing childhood pictures? Because Maz can only keep him distracted for so long.”

Rey blinks, and then a slow smile spreads across her face. “Well, in that case…”

She and Luke get started on rinsing the dishes and loading them in the dishwasher while Leia retrieves the photo albums she’d hidden in the kitchen earlier today for this exact purpose. “It’s the first time he’s ever brought a girl home,” Leia explains when she catches Rey watching her. “This is my only chance to do all the embarrassing mom things a mother is supposed to do when her son starts dating.” She finally pulls out the last of the albums, and Luke tells Rey to go ahead and get started while he finishes up with the dishes.

“We’ve got a lot of material and very little time,” Leia says, selecting the first of seven albums. “And no matter how badly you want to, do not laugh out loud. That’ll definitely make him suspicious.”

It’s all a lot of fuss over something that doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to her, but then Rey catches sight of the first baby Ben picture and knows she’ll do anything Leia says if that means seeing all of these.

The pictures are arranged in chronological order, and the first album is limited to Ben’s infancy. Ben, squishy and red and still not quite used to being in this world. Ben, slowly looking more like a tiny person who came from Leia and Han. Ben, with his familiar ears and eyes and curls. Ben, learning to smile and laugh and crawl.

“His first word was dada,” Leia whispers as the pictures slowly move to Ben’s second year of life, a soft smile on her face as she traces the outline of her tiny son stumbling towards his father on wobbly legs.

Luke puts one hand on his sister’s shoulder in a silent show of support, and Leia shakes the memory off and goes back to sharing all of young Ben’s mishaps. Rey watches him start to resemble the man she knows today, watches him start preschool and meet Poe (she snaps a few pictures on her phone for Finn) and build race car tracks with his father. She watches as Leia starts appearing less and less in the photos and something inside Ben breaks, too, but those observations she keeps to herself.

They’re just about to move on to Ben’s third year in elementary school when the man himself enters the kitchen, face drawn in suspicion as Leia immediately closes the album.

“What are you guys doing?”

“Nothing,” Leia says easily, stacking the albums up and collecting the pile in her arms. “Just talking about how you and Rey should come visit more often–”

“Are those photo albums?” Ben lunges forward and snatches one from his mother before she can move out of the way. “What the fuck, Mom?” he demands upon flipping the album open to find a picture of his awkward seventh-grade self.

Leia shrugs. “Rey deserves to know every part of you,” she sniffs, setting the albums back down. “Besides, she thinks they’re adorable, don’t you, Rey?”

“You were the cutest baby ever,” Rey grins, reaching for the first album. “Look at you!” She flips to a random page and holds the album up to Ben, pointing at a picture of him laughing directly into the camera, all chubby cheeks and gummy smile. “I have literally never seen a baby this adorable.”

Ben’s ears start to flush, but it’s nothing compared to the matching blushes that tint their cheeks cherry red when Leia casually says, “Oh, just wait till you see your own. All parents think their babies are the cutest.”

Rey meets Ben’s eyes for just a second before she turns back to the album and pretends to be utterly engrossed in it, but it doesn’t help that the smiles in the pictures remind her of the soft, barely-there smile she’d glimpsed on his face in that split-second, doesn’t help that now she’s picturing a baby with his hair and her eyes.

“What is this I hear about babies?” Maz asks, finally wandering into the kitchen in search of Ben. “Leia Organa, you slow your horses. Rey is only twenty, and she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“What? I didn’t say anything–” Leia claims innocently, drawing a scoff from Maz and a quiet chuckle from Luke. “Okay, fine. Who wants to see more pictures of Ben?” She holds up another album.

Ben groans, his ears now thoroughly red as he steps forward and takes the album Rey was looking at. “If you guys are going to embarrass me, I’d like to at least be there to defend myself.”

That’s how they end up in the living room, all of them sitting on the floor while they pass albums around and Ben does his best to filter which photos actually get to Rey. There are less and less pictures as time goes by, to the point that nearly all of Ben’s teenage years are contained in one album, and he makes a point of quickly snatching that one up and sitting on it for the rest of the evening.

“Maybe next time,” he eventually tells a persistent Rey, and they both know it’s not lost on his family that he’s just implied there’ll be a next time. For once, though, the twins show some discretion and don’t comment on it, and Maz merely smiles approvingly at them.

When Han and Chewie finally join them, the pictures begin to come with more stories – all the blanks Leia stopped being able to fill in after Ben turned six, all the memories only Han was there to witness. Eventually the albums are forgotten as the evening turns into Luke, Leia, and Han reminiscing about the old days, with Chewie occasionally jumping in to correct Han here and there.

They end up having dinner right there in the living room, everyone balancing plates and cups on their laps while conversation flows. With her side pressed against Ben’s, Rey can’t help but notice how comfortable he is, how every part of him is as relaxed as can be, how freely he smiles and laughs and speaks.

At some point after dinner they find themselves squished into a too-small loveseat, Ben’s arm around her as she rests her head on his shoulder. Maz takes the armchair, Luke remains cross-legged on the carpet, and the other three take the couch. Someone suggests a movie, and then a while later there are cards and board games, and much later there are murmured conversations and warm drinks.

Rey burrows closer to Ben, smiles sleepily as she feels a laugh rumble in his chest at something his father said, and allows herself to drift off to sleep.

The next morning they leave right after breakfast, with Rey promising Leia she’ll definitely come back soon and Ben tentatively extending an offer for Han to call him if he’s ever in Coruscant.

As they drive past the We hope you come back to Alderaan soon! / Welcome to Takodana! sign, Ben turns to her with a smile.

“So, did we pass the ultimate relationship test?” he asks, his eyes flitting between her and the road as if it’s not that important of a question, his voice carefully casual as if the answer doesn’t mean everything to him.

But his eyes are nervous when they meet hers, and there’s the slightest hint of insecurity in his smile, and his voice carries an undertone of fear – because of course this means everything.

Her heart is warm with the memory of his arms around her and full with something she’s not sure she’s ready to name, but they have time now. Time for her to name those feelings, time for him to admit why this is so important, time for them to figure out their future together.

Rey smiles and reaches for his hand, waits for him to look at her before she declares, “I think we’re going to be just fine.”

Chapter Text

On Saturday, Rey wakes to the sound of Ben puttering about the kitchen.

She heads to the bathroom to wash up, makes a quick stop by her room to get shorts (how long has it been since she last slept in her own bed, anyway?), and enters the kitchen to find Ben making breakfast for two.

“Hey, you,” Ben smiles, looking up briefly from the French toast he’s preparing.

“Hey,” Rey replies, wrapping her arms around him from behind.  She presses her forehead to the curve of his spine and lingers for a moment before stepping away. “What’s all this?”

“I vaguely remember saying something about making breakfast more often, so,” he shrugs, shaking his head at her when Rey snags a slice of bacon off the counter. “And hey, guess what?”

Rey heads for the fridge in search of orange juice. “What?”

“It’s Saturday,” Ben tells her, waiting for her to turn back to him before he continues. “We’ve been together for a week.”

A whole week, gone by just like that. Rey can’t even remember why she ever thought being with Ben would be anything but as easy and natural as breathing. “Would you look at that?” she murmurs in wonder, setting down the carton of orange juice to loop an arm around Ben’s neck and bring him down for a kiss. “Happy one-week anniversary, I guess.”

He comes willingly, abandoning the stove as his hands find her waist and hold her steady while she stands on her toes to reach him. “Happy one-week anniversary,” Ben echoes with a slight laugh, capturing her lips in another kiss before Rey can pull away. Her fingers find his hair of their own accord, and she can feel his hands slipping down to the back of her thighs when a telltale smell hits her nose.

“Ben,” Rey murmurs against his lips before she lets go of him and steps away. A disgruntled sound finds it way past his throat, something dangerously close to a whine – not that he’ll ever admit to it. She shakes her head at him with a grin and points at the stove. “The toast.”

The haze in his eyes instantly gives way to clear panic. “Oh, shit.”

Rey laughs and Ben grimaces and breakfast, even if the French toast ends up slightly… crispier than they’re used to, is perfect.

“So,” Ben says after breakfast, as they’re on their way to get groceries. “Now that we’ve been together for one whole week–” And here they share matching grins because sure, it’s only been a week and no one actually celebrates that but it still feels like something. “I think it’s time I tell you the full story about my life before I came here.”

Rey stops short, and their joined hands cause Ben to stop too. “Are you sure?” she asks, searching his eyes for any hint of reluctance or uncertainty. “You don’t have to tell me until you’re ready to talk about it, Ben. I don’t mind.”

He sighs. “As much as I hate to admit it, my father was right. I’m going to have to talk about it at some point, and right now I’d rather talk about it with you than anyone else. I want you to know who I was before this, the way I know who you used to be. You’ve never hidden your past from anyone, Rey, especially not from me. If I’m only ever going to share my past with one person, I want it to be you.”

It’s… it’s an offering, Rey realizes. It’s his way of saying that he trusts her enough to let her in, trusts her not to run away from whatever he’s about to tell her.

“Okay,” she gives him a small smile, squeezing his hand in hers as they start walking again. “If you’re ready to tell me, then I want to hear it. I want to know all of you.”

And so, Ben tells her about the child whose mother was never around, the child whose father tried his best but just couldn’t quite understand him.

“They thought maybe Luke would have a better chance at getting through, because I was always reading and learning and writing so hey, why not send the lonely kid to live with his workaholic uncle who barely had time to take care of himself?”

Eventually Ben went to law school the way his mother had, the way everyone had always expected him to, because there just wasn’t any other path for him. He wasn’t happy but he wasn’t unhappy either, and he’d resigned himself to a life of never quite being content.

“And then, halfway through my first year in college, the scandal happened,” he says quietly, clutching Rey’s hand as they walk down an aisle of instant noodles. Ben had been eighteen the year his family’s secret was revealed, which means Rey couldn’t have been any older than ten or eleven.

But even she remembers. “The press found out about your grandfather.”

“You know, my mom tried for years to figure out who could have had that information and, of that very small list of people, who would have leaked it. Sometimes I tell myself that if I had known it was Snoke all along, if I’d known he was the one responsible for putting her through hell, I never would have gone to work with him.”

“You wouldn’t have,” Rey insists. “Ben, I know you. You love your mother. There’s no way you would have agreed to even speak to him if you knew.”

Ben shakes his head. “You can’t understand what was going through my mind at the time, Rey. I think even I don’t understand. But I was angry, and hurt, and above all I felt like some stupid kid they didn’t even trust enough to share the secret with. So when Snoke offered me an internship that summer, I took it so that I wouldn’t have to work with my mom. When he told me that my grandfather was really just a misunderstood man, I fell for it because no one else had ever told my otherwise. No one in my family ever talked about my grandfather, and I finally knew why. I interned with Snoke every summer throughout college, and then I went to work for him after graduation.”

He doesn’t tell her much about the nearly four years he worked for Snoke, and Rey doesn’t push. She just stays close to him and keeps her free hand in his as they pick out groceries, as if nothing’s amiss. Even when Ben tells her about the way Snoke would berate him for hours, even when he struggles to recount the ways Snoke tried to use him against Leia, Rey ignores the urge to drop everything and pull him to her and cry for him. It wouldn’t do either of them any good to break down in public, and if Ben had wanted comfort he wouldn’t have chosen to tell her this here.

“When he announced his plan to run against my mom in the next election, it got worse. He didn’t want me to just dig up information anymore; he wanted me to actively sabotage her, to use her trust and her love for me and turn it into something twisted, something to be exploited. I couldn’t do it… Rey, I couldn’t do it,” Ben mumbles into the curve of her neck, and she puts down her basket to hold him for just a moment.

Ben pulls away eventually – maybe two minutes later, maybe two hours later. “Around that time my mother started really looking into Snoke; she could pour actual resources into him now that he was her opponent. And when they found out that he was the one responsible for the leak, when they found out that even Palpatine had labelled Snoke too distasteful to work with, my dad didn’t even hesitate. He got a copy of the file, and he jumped right into his car and drove to my office. Just… walked right into the goddamn dragon’s lair because his son had been stupid enough to get trapped there and his sole priority was getting me out.”

This has to be it, then – the part where Ben nearly killed his father, the part where he finally snapped out of it and took the first step away from that life, the first step towards becoming the man she knows today.

“He confronted me right in front of Snoke, basically gave away every single bit of information my mom’s team had. When he was done I was just… I was in shock. It felt like I wasn’t even in my own body. Both he and Snoke thought it meant that I didn’t care, that all of it changed nothing for me. So he left, and Snoke… Snoke finally realized that the file in my father’s hand had enough information to lock him away for a very long time, and the fact that I now knew all of it made me more of a liability than anything. So he ordered me to intercept my father on his way out and run him down. An accident, he said they’d call it,” Ben scoffs, his voice sharp with bitterness. “I realized later he was never going to paint it that way; the end goal was for my father to die and for me to rot in prison.”

“But he failed,” Rey points out gently when Ben falls silent. She reaches up and curves her hand around his cheek, smiles when he closes his eyes and leans into her touch. “Snoke was wrong about you. You weren’t on his side, you didn’t kill your father, and you didn’t betray your mother. Everything he ever said about you was wrong, Ben. You are so much more than Snoke could ever have hoped to be, and he thought he could blind you to that and use your potential for his own gain instead but he was wrong.”

It seems like forever before Ben speaks, before she can breathe again. “Snoke was wrong about a lot of things,” he finally says, turning his head to press a kiss to the hand on his cheek. “Like my name. What kind of idiot calls himself Kylo Ren?”

He grins, and maybe her laugh is a little too loud but she’s too fucking relieved to care about the fact that they’re standing in the frozen food aisle with tears shining in their eyes and an abandoned basket at their feet.

“I like Ben Solo much better,” Rey tells him.

“Good,” Ben smiles. “Because Rey Ren would sound so stupid.”

It takes him about two seconds to realize what he’s just said, what he’s just implied and revealed and suggested all in one breath.

Rey kisses him before he can freak out.

The next morning, with her head on his chest and his arm around her waist, Rey says, “You know, you never did answer Maz’s question.”

“Hmm?” Ben asks, his hand still tracing indecipherable patterns into her side.

Rey turns around and props herself up with one arm, the ends of her hair falling over her shoulder to brush against Ben’s chest. “Maz’s question, during lunch. Do you know what you want to do yet?”

Because he’s due to complete his master’s soon, just a few months from now, and a year after that Rey will be done with her degree too, and who knows where life will take them after that?

“I’ve been thinking,” Ben says slowly, reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Maybe my parents were right, when they sent me to Luke thinking that I had more in common with him than them.”

Rey furrows her brow as she tries to puzzle out what he’s saying. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… I like research. And I like teaching. And I like being on campus. So maybe I should follow in my uncle’s footsteps after all and just… stay here,” Ben shrugs. “In Coruscant U. Apply to the PhD program after I graduate next year, and see where that takes me.”

“So you’d be here for… years,” Rey realizes. “You’d be here after next year, and you’d be here to see me graduate, and if I get into grad school we could still be together.”

Ben laughs, a quiet, soft thing. “Sweetheart, I was always going to make sure we’d find a way to be together. I’m not letting go of you that easily.”

She kisses him then; it would be impossible not to, not with how gentle his voice is and how happy his eyes are. “But now it’s a sure thing. We’re going to have years together.”

“Years, huh?” Ben smirks, pulling her on top of him. “Someone’s planning ahead.”

Rey lets out a little yelp at being manhandled before she braces her hands against his chest for balance. “Oh, as if you don’t already have the rest of our lives together mapped out,” she scoffs, the effect somewhat ruined by the wide grin she can’t quite hide.

Ben stills, a soft smile blooming on his face as he looks up at her. “I do,” he admits quietly, rising up to meet her. “Of course I do,” Ben murmurs right before he kisses her, and Rey wonders if you can fall in love with someone after just a week or if it’s the kind of thing that creeps up on you over a period of two long years only to suddenly make itself known.

Either way, it’s there.

Finn and Poe aren’t due to arrive till tomorrow afternoon, which is the only reason Rey lets Ben pull her into his lap halfway through the movie. Because they’ve discussed it, how they’re going to let their best friends know, and it does not involve said best friends walking in on them while they’re making out on the couch.

“What the hell is happening here?” Finn demands, his voice unnaturally high.

Rey tries to put some distance between them, but one look from Ben is enough to communicate that he needs her to stay where she is until he can… calm down. “Um,” she says, twisting around to face Finn and Poe with her shirt clutched to her chest. “Hi. I thought you guys were coming home tomorrow.”

“There’s a storm rolling in so we decided to get ahead of it,” Poe explains calmly, bringing in the last of their bags and nudging Finn out of the way. “Didn’t you get our texts?”

Her phone is charging in her room, and who knows where Ben’s is. They’ve had more important things to focus on.

“Forget about that!” Finn tells Poe, pointing at the two of them. “This! We should be talking about this!”

“We’re…” Rey turns to Ben, and she doesn’t know how they ever planned to keep this from the guys for even five minutes when she smiles like an idiot every time she so much as looks at him. At least Ben’s not much better, and they both look like fools when Rey announces, “We’re together now.”

“Finally!” Poe exclaims, a smile tugging on his lips as he roots around his pockets for his phone. “I’m really happy for you guys and I want to know all about this, but first I’ve got to make a phone call real quick.” Phone in hand, Poe wanders into the kitchen area.

Finn quickly draws their attention back to him. “Together? We leave you alone for one week and you start dating? THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T LEAVE YOU UNSUPERVISED!”

From the kitchen, Poe calls out, “Finn, honey, I’m gonna need you to stop freaking out.” And then: “Hux? It’s Dameron. You owe me a hundred bucks. Yeah, dude. No shit. For real.”

“He knew?” Finn gasps, eyes torn between his boyfriend and the couple on the couch. “Even Hux knew? How the hell did I not see this coming? Poe, why didn’t you say anything–”

“For fuck’s sake, Hux, why would I lie about–”

“Poe! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Amidst the chaos of Finn’s increasingly-high voice and Poe’s angry one-sided conversation with Hux, Ben takes Rey’s hand and asks her, eyes bright and voice teasing, “So we’re officially dating, huh?”

Rey resists the urge to roll her eyes. “Of course we are,” she tells him, pressing their foreheads together. And then, very deliberately, she uses a word she’s been avoiding all week, a word that means something, a word that she’s been wanting to apply to Ben for longer than she cares to admit:

“Hi, boyfriend.”