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The word around the hospital is that Dr. Solo doesn't wear a wedding ring, and many a young resident has peeked when he removes his gloves post-surgery. The rumor mill runs rampant with whispers of him, but they all seem to harken back to the fact that the man is a bachelor, and much too handsome to stay one.
There has never been a girlfriend- or fiancee, or wife- stopping in to check on him or bring a fresh change of clothes during a twenty-four hour shift.
The man has never reserved time for a getaway in the seven months that he has been at Beth Israel completing his fellowship in vascular surgery. In that time, little has been learned by the staff about his personal life.
Dr. Solo has the best handwriting they have ever encountered from a fellow.
He eats alone in the staff cafeteria when he bothers to eat at all.
According to his degree, he graduated from John Hopkins medical school in Baltimore, but beyond that, no one knows where he’s from.
He always offers to work holidays.
The rest has been left to speculation. It has been noted that he does not pay any special attention to the female staff, leading to the theory that Dr. Solo isn’t interested in the female population at all. This argument was countered by several flustered women who noted that he wasn’t paying special attention to the men working with him either. The debate was out, and every nurse, doctor, and medical assistant had an opinion to share.
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“All I’m saying is, I’d have his babies.”
It was their typical pre-op banter. Through the window, Jen, Lauren, and Ishani could see Dr. Solo scrubbing his hands with the hospital’s antibacterial soap.
The patient was already sedated and positioned for a routine dialysis catheter placement.
It was Christmas Day, approximately a quarter past seven in the evening.
Lauren rolled her eyes at Ishani. “Please. Like he needs volunteers.”
“I should’ve brought mistletoe.” Jen said. “Strung it up above the operating table. It would have been festive.”
“You’re both ridiculous. And thirsty.”
Jen bumped Lauren’s hip as she laid out the sterilized instruments. “Don’t act all holier-than-thou. I’ve seen you staring at him when he’s filling out charts and you think he won’t notice.”
Lauren blushed. “He’s nice to look at, but I’m not going to sexually harass the poor guy.”
Ishani laughed. “Oh c’mon, it’s just teasing. Not like we have a shot with Dr. Tall, Dark, and Brooding anyways.”
The sound of a door handle turning could be heard, and they cut the chatter. Dr. Solo walked in with the attending surgeon, and the mood sobered to strictly business.
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The hospital’s security was top-notch, so Rey had already jumped through quite a few hoops by the time she reached the wing where Ben practiced. A woman typing at computer smiled at her and asked who she was looking for.
The identification sticker Rey had been handed downstairs must have given her high enough clearance to not be questioned. That, and people tended to trust her more when she was wearing her fatigues.
“Dr. Solo. Is he with a patient? I can wait until he’s available.” Her voice was steady, because she had trained it to always be steady. But Rey hadn’t felt this anxious since the last time she’d seen him and she’d boarded a plane.
It had been eight months.
The woman before her (Her I.D. read Debra, Rey noted) rose her eyebrows but kept her friendly smile. “He’s currently in the operating room. Are you a family member?”
“I-“ Rey hesitated. Kriff, why was her heart beating so fast? “Yes.”
Debra kept smiling at her. “I’m not sure when he’ll be out. It might be a few hours.”
Rey nodded. Of course, when she’d imagined this moment, he was right there in front of the elevator doors and opening his arms to her. But she could wait.
“That’s fine. Is there somewhere I could sit in the meantime?” She was tired, after all. The jet lag was pulling at her bones.
“There’s a waiting area just down the hall that is likely to have some open chairs.” Debra directed her with a hand pointing to the left and Rey thanked her.
The space was nearly empty. It’s Christmas, Rey reminded herself. Not exactly a popular day to schedule operations. There was one middle-aged man slumped in a corner and tapping at his phone and an older woman in a wheelchair doing what looked like sudoku.
Rey took a corner seat and pulled her military-issued backpack to rest at her feet. Her nerves were getting the better of her, so she closed her eyes and paced her breaths.
She didn’t intend to fall asleep, though it wasn’t very surprising that she did.
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Ben was exhausted. The surgery had gone without a hitch, as expected, and while the comfort of his bed sounded divine at the moment, he had little desire to return home. Not tonight. There was a reason he offered to pick up all the holiday shifts that nobody wanted.
He had been at the hospital for thirty-six hours though, and he couldn’t avoid home forever.
He stopped by his small office first, tucking some paperwork into his bag along with his keys and phone before locking the door behind him.
Ben was almost to the elevators when a woman called out “Dr. Solo?” and stopped him on his path. It was Debra, the friendly middle-aged medical assistant stationed at their main desk. She was smiling at him. She was always smiling.
“There’s a visitor for you in the waiting room. A relative, she said.” Debra pointed to the hallway as if he didn't know where the waiting room was, and Ben… Ben hadn’t been this confused since he took that absurdist scriptwriting class in undergrad upon Hux’s recommendation.
“Relative?” He asked, unconvinced.
Debra nodded, and, heaven help him, smiled again.
It didn’t make any sense. Ben had no family. He had parents, sure, but they were what some might call “estranged” and he couldn’t imagine that his mother had hopped a plane and shown up at the hospital on the evening of Christmas Day to patch things over.
He turned down the corridor, intent on discovering who the imposter was.
It was late and the waiting room was mostly empty aside from three people and a few culturally-neutral winter decorations scattered around the otherwise barren space.
His eyes locked onto her immediately. Her camoflauge, ironically, made her stand out amongst the white linoleum blurring into white walls.
It felt weird, the sudden tightness in his chest that he had long ago associated with Rey but almost forgotten. He pressed his hand against his lab coat, right where he knew his inferior and superior vena cava converged on his heart.
She was no impostor. She was, however, asleep. Her head was weighted down, chin tucked into her chest and lips slightly parted. He wondered how many hours of travel she’d logged today. Definitely upwards of fifteen, though he could only make an approximation. For safety and security reasons, she couldn’t tell him her exact location when she was deployed. The best he got was mentions of the weather, like when she told him the nights were chilly and he had packed a pair of fluffy Kermit the Frog socks in her next care package.
She loved those kriffing socks.
Ben moved forward once he’d taken her in, not wanting to wake her but unable to resist. He knelt in front of the soldier so they were eye-level and placed a hand on her knee, giving it a gentle press.
She woke up, always alert, and her eyes locked onto his. “Surprise.”
He laughed, chest still tight. It felt like someone had put one of those battery-powered weasel ball toys under his ribs and it was knocking around in search of a way out. Rey wrapped her arms around his shoulders and Ben leaned in, letting his nose burrow against her neck.
“Merry Christmas, Dr. Solo.”
He kissed the tender skin under her ear. “Merry Christmas to you, Mrs. Dr. Solo.”
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The first thing Rey said when they arrived home was, “Ben, where’s your tree?”
He shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed and reluctant to admit the reason. “It just didn’t feel right without you. Decorating, I mean. I would have made things festive for you if I had known you’d be here.”
She was holding his hand, which was good because that felt normal and safe, and everything else was making him feel oddly nervous.
“It was a last-minute thing,” she told him again, just like she had said in the car. “I’ll explain. But first I want to make out with the hot doctor I met today in the waiting room.”
Rey winked at him and ran her thumb along the sensitive skin of his inner wrist like she’d done the whole drive back to their apartment.
Ben gripped her wandering hand and pulled it to his lips, kissing the ‘B’ tattooed on her ring finger. Rey hadn’t wanted a ring, knowing she’d hardly get to wear it. Instead, his initial was inked in the ring’s place, and he bore a corresponding ‘R’ on his own finger. It worked well, considering all the hand-washing and glove-wearing he dealt with. “Does he know you’re a married woman?”
She quirked an eyebrow. “I cannot recall if I mentioned that little detail.”
When she glided her fingers into his hair, running her nails over his scalp, Ben groaned. Loud. Much louder than he’d intended.
It had been a lonely eight months, and Ben Solo knew a lot about what it meant to be alone.
Tears came suddenly to his eyes, so fast that he didn’t have time to blink them back before Rey saw. Her playful smirk fell away and she cupped his jaw between both of her hands.
“Ben?” She asked. Then she was the one looking nervous.
This is humiliating, Ben thought. Rey seemed so compose. Surprise, she’d joked when he’d found her in the waiting room, and she’d been wittily bantering with him since. He’d tried to keep up, but his seams were quickly coming undone.
I’ve missed you something awful, his heart cried. I worry that you won’t come home, or that they’ll send you home in a box. I have nightmares.
And worst of all, the part he cannot say: Do not leave me again. Stay. Please.
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When Ben Solo married Rey Niima, they were on the same page when it came to careers.
Ben only had a year and a half left in his surgical residency. His work was demanding, and before he had fallen for Rey, he had thought himself married to it. It was his entire identity. Everything that Ben had come to understand about himself was tied to his position as a surgeon.
Rey changed that, but he hadn’t realized just how much until she left for another deployment.
She was as strongly tied to her work as he was to his. A fighter pilot in the Air Force with three tours under her belt, Rey had spent most of her adult life stationed on bases and the occasional air craft carrier.
Ben knew she didn’t have much taste for the civilian life, and he didn’t mind the fact. Poe had introduced them at a dinner party three years ago while Rey was on leave. Dameron, his buddy from med school who’d gone on to join the Medical Service Corps, had served at a combat support hospital in Germany where he met and befriended Rey.
Their romance grew slowly, tentatively. Neither Ben nor Rey had expected it. When Rey had offhandedly remarked that she’d signed up for a program that paired citizens with soldiers for a pen pal, but apparently never got matched up, Ben revealed, his ears pink under his hair, that he’d always enjoyed writing letters.
She’d understood when she got his first two months letter. His script was beautiful. It was art. She pinned his letters to the wall above her bed, even before they started to mean something more.
After the first few months though, the letters’ contents shifted from casual information like the current state of politics and movie recommendations to questions.
Rey started it. She asked him why he’d become a surgeon. His next letter provided her with a fair bit of personal backstory and his corresponding query: And you? How did a ray of sunshine like you decide to be a fighter pilot?
That was the real beginning of things. Rey held her breath every time there was a mail call. She didn’t pin up his letters after that. They were getting too personal and- dare she say it- flirty. She was not at all inclined to leave them out where prying eyes could see the kind words that Ben Solo had penned to her, just for her, from across the Atlantic. Her mates would tease her relentlessly. She found a cardboard box someone had discarded by her base’s dumpster and used it to store their correspondence.
Rey didn’t carry around much. She was used to temporary homes. The box became her most precious possession.
Ben Solo couldn’t believe that he could feel so connected to someone he’d only met in person once, for a mere handful of hours. Rey snuck into his stray thoughts. He’d catch himself wondering about her on the commute home from work, while he was drinking his morning coffee, in the middle of a surgery. It was a strange experience. He waited for it to run its due course and die out.
Only, his daydreams of her didn’t go away. Not as the months slipped by and the chill crept in, announcing that summer had passed and another season had turned. Not as the streets were dressed up in tinsel and Christmas lights. Definitely not when Rey was back in the states for two months of training.
She was at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas, miles from him but closer than she had been in a year. They called, made plans, and he spent a weekend in a state that he had no other reason to visit aside from the pilot who clung to him like he was worth waiting for.
No, the daydreams didn’t go away at all.
He showed up on Poe Dameron’s doorstep one day to ask what he was supposed to do about it.
“Solo, you’re crazy, you know that? Never turned your head to look at a pretty face when we were in med school, had your nose stuck too far in a textbook to even notice ‘em. And now you’re what? In love? You don’t even know her!”
That had Ben bristling as retorts fought to fly off his tongue.
He did know her. He knew she loved Hubba Bubba gum even thought it was sweet enough to rot her teeth. He’d just sent her three packs of it in the last care package, after all. He knew she’d grown up in foster care under the surveillance of some British monster of a man named Plutt, that she’d picked up her accent from him. He knew that she’d always felt utterly alone, like him.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying, Dameron. I came to you for- Kriff, never mind. I can’t believe I was going to ask you for advice.”
Ben pushed back in his chair and made to leave but Poe shoved him back down with two hands on his shoulders. “Alright, man, alright. Calm your tits.”
Poe sat down across from him. “I’m just pulling your chain. I didn’t realize,” Poe scratches his head, “didn’t realize you guys had gotten so close. Rey’s great, don’t get me wrong. I love the girl, I just wouldn’t have thought she was your type.”
Ben had to admit that he wasn’t sure he had a type. As far as he knew, Rey was his type, and it was a fairly recent discovery.
“I want to marry her,” Ben said. “She’s coming back in a month, right around Easter, and I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
And he did. Rey came home. Ben had arranged to meet her at the airport. Two days later, he asked, she said yes, and they were engaged.
The wedding was three weeks after. Ben hadn’t planned for it to happen so quickly. He wasn’t even convinced that Rey would say yes. But when they talked about planning a ceremony after her next tour, spending a year apart exchanging letters and e-mails, Rey asked shyly if he wanted to wait so long. Because she didn’t. They shared a month of newlywed bliss before she was gone again.
Poe had been worried for them, warning Ben that having a spouse in the military was one thing. Trying to keep that marriage healthy and intact while Ben chased after his own dream of being a renowned surgery would be asking a lot.
Ben wouldn’t hear it. Rey wanted him. Wanted him. And Ben Solo, who had never been entrusted with something as precious as Rey Niima and her heart, was determined to prove himself worthy. They would make it work. They’d take care of each other in ways that Poe, despite his well-meaning advice, couldn’t understand.
And they did. At least, at first he thought they did.
Rey didn’t always know when she’d get to use a computer or phone, but she would give him notice when she could and Ben blocked off time in his schedule for every opportunity to hear his wife on the other side of the world. He sent care packages and they exchanged letters, though the post truly moved at a snail’s pace.
From across the ocean, Rey believed in him, and it was more than he had ever hoped for.
It was good. It was enough.
Around month four though, Ben started to miss her in a painful way. Not just the ordinary every day I-wish-I-could-kiss-you-right-now way. They’d never had anything but a long distance relationship , after all. If he was being honest with himself, part of him was glad. He knew he’d find a way to screw things up if they were together day-in and day-out.
But now he missed her. He’d find himself doing ridiculous things, like stroking her pillow while he fell asleep and buying the wine she liked that he couldn’t stand the taste of, just so he could see its familiar label in the refrigerator.
It got worse with time. Most days he was fine. He trudged on, not happy, but determined and focused. He distracted himself with his fellowship. At home, he stayed busy with menial tasks he’d never bothered with before- like alphabetizing his book collection and repainting all the light switches.
Ben had spent most of his life alone and it had never bothered him much. But he hadn’t loved anyone before the way he loved Rey. It changed everything, he realized.
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He had turned away from her, wiping harshly at the water gathered in his eyes. She hugged him from behind.
“Sorry,” Ben muttered.
“Don’t be sorry,” Rey said.
“I just, I don’t know sweetheart, maybe I feel overwhelmed.” That wasn’t quite it. There was a thought that had been weighing on his mind since they left the hospital. He let it out. “How long do you get to stay?”
Rey’s cheek was warm where it nestled over his spine. Ben focused on that evidence of her presence.
She shifted and pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades. Her hands moved, flattening over his torso and spreading heat everywhere they wandered.
“I was hoping we could talk about that, but let’s eat first, yeah?”
She’s deflecting, he thought. This is bad. This is not a good sign at all. What could be so hard to stay that she has to build up the courage?
He felt panicky because, in his most honest moments when he lay awake late at night in their lonely bed, Ben sometimes thought that Rey might leave him.
He was not adventurous like her. On the contrary, he was rather boring. Skilled, maybe. Intelligent, sometimes witty, and eager to please her in and out of their bed - but boring. Rey was a free spirit, and he feared that she might come to see him as an unnecessary anchor. A burden. These were insecurities he’d batted away since they’d met. After all, they were in love. Rey did want him. She chose him. But he wondered if their time apart felt like a breath of fresh air to her.
It didn’t feel like that for him. It felt like the sun had gone out.
He panicked and blurted, “I would follow you. Rey, baby, you gotta know that. If I could, if they would let me, I’d enlist or join the Medical Corps or whatever it is they wanted me to do and I would just go where you went and I could help people wherever they stationed us. I’d be happy, as long as I got to keep practicing medicine.” He took a deep breath and turned toward her. “I know it doesn’t work that way. I just- I just want you to know that I would. I don’t need to be a lauded surgeon. I’d be content helping people anywhere in the world if it meant I could sleep next to you at night.”
There. He’d said it. If there had ever been a time when he valued his career and the prestige that might come with it over love, it was long gone. He wanted her more. She should know that.
“Oh Ben.”
She kissed him, a bit sloppy and wet, and didn’t pull away until she’d run out of breath. Ben leaned after her. He kissed the corner of her mouth, her jaw, her neck. Rey’s hands wound into his hair. She was strong, and she held him to her like she wanted him there.
Good, thought Ben hazily, that’s good.
A knock came from the other side of their door.
“Food,” Rey breathed.
“Hmph.”
When they didn’t move for several seconds, the knock insisted on being heard again.
“Ben. Ben, just a second. I’ll get it.” She moved out of the circle of his arms, pressing her fingers to the place where his lips had been.
She returned from the door holding a white plastic bag with a yellow smiley face printed in the center. Rey had wanted Chinese takeout from their favorite place in the city. Ben had lamented in the car that he would have made her favorite dishes if he’d known about her return, but Rey had just giggled, held his hand in hers, and dialed the number of First Wok with the other.
“C’mere,” Ben held out his hand. “We can eat on the couch.”
Then she could sit on his lap. He didn’t want her all the way at the other end of their kitchen table, not when she was finally so close.
She fit between his thighs and let her legs sprawl across the empty space on the other end of the couch. “I’ve been practicing something for you,” she said and she passed him a takeout box. “Watch this.”
Rey popped open the lid of her orange chicken and lo mein and deftly lifted a piece of the chicken to her mouth with a set of wooden chopsticks.
“No way!”
“I know. It took a while, but I was determined. You remember about two months ago when I was stationed for a few weeks at a base in Turkey? I found this sushi bar in town and made a fool of myself mastering these things.”
“I’m impressed, baby.”
“As you should be. Now you can’t tease me anymore for being culturally obtuse.”
Ben laughed and bit off the end of an egg roll. “Rey, you’re good at everything. The only dirt I had on you was your poor chop stick performance.”
She snorted and they fell into a comfortable silence as they ate. Ben kept one hand wrapped around Rey’s right thigh, running his fingers up and down her stiff cargo pants and feeling the warmth of her body beneath.
One full minute passed without conversation, and the silence ceased to be of the comforting kind.
“Rey, did you-“ Ben stopped himself, swallowed, and said, “Do you know when you have to go back? I’ll ask for time off work.”
“Kind of.” Rey licked her lips. “Not really. I have a bit of news.” She reached for both of his hands in a manner that conveyed seriousness. For one brief moment, Ben thought she was going to tell him that they were having a baby before he remembered that he had not seen her, let alone made love to her, in over eight months. She would probably look a bit more, well round if that were the case.
“Okay,” he offered nervously.
“I’ve been offered a promotion and relocation. To the States. To Florida, specifically. I’d be a flight training instructor.” Rey paused and squeezed his hands. “I- I have to give them an answer by the end of the week, but I wanted to talk to my husband first.”
Ben was trying to think of five hundred things at once, which resulted in exactly negative one coherent responses. “Oh. Wow,” he said.
The corners of Rey’s lips, previously lifted in a hesitant smile, fell. She sucked her cheeks in and pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to process. I thought, after what you just said before, that… well, never mind that.”
When Ben looked up from where he’d been focusing on their clasped hands, he realized that Rey’s eyes were full of shiny tears. She started talking fast like an auctioneer calling out bids.
“You wouldn’t have to move out with me, Ben. I would understand. We never really set a plan for something like this happening, I know. I get it. And really, I don’t even need to take it. If, I don’t know, if it’s not…” She breathed a bit raggedly and turned her face away, sliding a hand from his grasp and swiping quickly at her eyes as if he wouldn't notice.
“I don’t want to force you into something. That’s what I’m trying to say.” The words were softer and she still wasn’t looking at him, face turned away as she wiped roughly at her nose.
It was a lot of new information. Ben thought he’d gotten the biggest surprise of his year when he found Rey waiting in the visitor area at the hospital. A perfect Christmas gift, This was bigger. Definitely bigger.
He released Rey’s other hand and cradled her cheeks between two warm palms. “Did you bump your head during some turbulence, baby? Because you’re crazy if you think I’m not looking up houses in Florida on Zillow before the night is over.”
Rey looked at him with hopeful eyes, though she was going to take a little more convincing. “Ben, are you sure? I don’t want you to do this and regret it, if you can’t find a job you love out there or you have to give up a great opportunity. If you were unhappy. I wouldn’t be able to stand it if you resented me. I’d rather us just make do and visit often if that was the case.”
He did what he’d been aching to do and kissed her. Really kissed her. Not the semi-appropriate PDA they’d shared at the hospital. Not even the more heated kisses from before the delivery guy interrupted them.
It was a take-my-time sort of kiss. A kiss to reacquaint himself with Rey’s perfect mouth that he didn’t get to taste enough. A moan-like-you-mean-it kiss.
And she did. Moan, that is.
“I take it all back. You have to come. It’s non-negotiable.”
Ben laughed, sliding his cheek over hers and tucking his face into her hair. She’d let it down in the car and it smelled fantastic. Rey had used Head and Shoulder’s shampoo for as long as he had known her. Ben loved how the fresh, clean scent blended with the smell of her lotion. Like warm laundry right out of the dryer and a hint of mint.
“I’m sure there are openings for surgeons in Florida. All those retirees need someone to fix their insides.”
“You’re gross.”
“I heal people. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Rey was laughing as she leaned her head down near his hip, right next to where his beeper was attached to his belt loop. “Paging Dr. Solo. There is a female patient in desperate need of ravishing.”
Ben snorted. “That is not how a beeper works.”
Rey’s hands were on his hips, pulling at his tucked-in button down shirt. “C’mon Solo, what’s a war hero gotta do to get some attention around here?”
He focused on keeping his voice steady as Rey’s fingers grazed his skin. “War hero? I thought you were a desperate patient in need of ravishing. Baby, you gotta give me the plot if we’re gonna role play effectively.”
She was laughing, hands wandering, and Ben was finding the top button of her shirt before he gave up and lifted her off the couch.
“I’ve been waiting for my pilot to come home way too long to welcome her on the couch.”
Rey’s legs wrapped around his hips as he walked them back to their bedroom. She pulled away from the kiss long enough to look him in the eyes . “This definitely cracks the top five of my Best Christmases list.”
He squeezed her thigh. “I would like to see this supposed list.”
“Sorry Doc, that’s a confidential document.”
“What if I promise doctor-patient confidentiality?” He pried.
“I’ll have to-“ He’d slipped one hand under her shirt. Rey breathed with a shutter. “I’ll have to think about it.”
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Rey had been handled by the hands of Ben Solo enough times to know that the man was justified in his confidence. That was why it surprised her when, after he’d laid her out on their bed and they both were bare, he kept asking “Is this okay?”.
It wasn’t a consent question, because there was hardly a scenario Rey could imagine when she’d say no. He wanted to please her, wanted affirmation. Needed to know she was enjoying his touch.
The fourth time he’d murmured the question, lips against her pale belly, she spread her fingers through his hair and said, “Ben, stop. Talk to me.”
He pulled away immediately, bracing his hands on either side of her thighs and leaning over her, but not touching her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He mumbled. His eyes had slipped close.
Rey sat up, fingers still in nested in his hair where she ran them in a soothing pattern. She waited.
When Ben looked at her again, it was with dismay.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
Ben sighed, pulling her hands away to hold them against his chest. “I just- it’s been a while, you know, and I just-“ He shook his head. “I want this to be good for you.”
Rey frowned. “Ben, it’s always good.”
He moved his mouth a few times, forming unfinished words. “Okay. I don’t know. That’s good, I just,” He ran a thumb along the back of her hand, “I guess I don’t really know what I’m trying to say. It’s fine.”
But she was good at reading him. Better than his parents had ever been, better than Hux, even better than Snoke. She took a guess.
“Is it not good for you?”
“No!” He looked sick. “Kriff, no Rey. No. It’s always good. Like you said. Always, always. If you had any idea how many times I’ve thought about that last night we had before you left. Rey, too many. And that weekend at the lake house.” His eyes were imploring. “I see it in my dreams.”
Rey could see the memories in her head already and she wondered why they were wasting time talking about them when another theory hit her.
“You’re not afraid that I’ve… lost interest, are you?”
The answer was clear from the way he tucked his chin down against his neck. He looked so vulnerable. It broke her heart.
“Ben, why? We’re married. Does that not mean the same thing to you that it means to me? Because marriage to me means forever, it’s- it’s a covenant, it’s-“
There were tears in her eyes that she really couldn’t explain except that she was home, finally, with the man she loved, and it was Christmas, and he was doubting the promises that she’d been holding to desperately from the other side of the world all these months .
“Shh, baby. Shh, don’t cry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He cradled her head against him, something he was really good at due to the size and breadth and warmth of his hands. “It’s the same. It’s the same for me. I just get scared sometimes, that’s all.”
She could feel the warmth of his lips pressing against her hair and heard a mumbled forgive me.
“I know it’s been hard,” She told him. “Going about daily life without each other and just having to rely on the Skype chats and e-mails to stay connected, to feel close, but I never questioned if we were worth it.”
Ben was still stroking her hair like she was a child, but it felt nice to be held. “Rey, you’ve always been worth it,” he promised.
“Why would you think I don’t feel the same? Ben, I called you every chance I could. Every single one. The guys teased me all the time for it, for coming back so lovesick.”
The last comment left Ben with a sense of pride that he would have to evaluate later. He liked that the men and women of her squadron knew that Rey was his, that she longed for him like he did her.
“It’s nothing you did, Rey,” he assured. His hands stayed in her hair, holding him to her where she couldn’t see his face.
He didn’t want to say this out loud. It stung enough when he thought it.
“I just would lie in bed some nights, you know? Right here, alone, and look at where you used to be, and I would think of you somewhere miles above the ground in a cockpit, so brave, out there with the people who have been your family the past decade. And then I’d think about me and the twenty-four shifts I put in at the hospitals. How no one there even knows where I’m from. It’s my fault, I know, for being so reserved, so focused. I think about me on this track through med school, through residency and the fellowship, and how all I’ve done the past decade is read and operate and stitch people back up.”
He shouldn’t have brought any of it up. He should have just made love to her like any good man would have done, because God only knew how touch-starved they both were. Yet he said, “I think of you and of me, and I wonder if I’m enough.”
Rey gave a little cry that he could feel against the bare skin over his heart.
She pulled away. Her own hands came up and pinned his to the mattress.
“Those are lies, Ben. They’re all lies.”
“But now I can’t help wondering,” he said. “Will you be happy? If you take the position and we move?”
“Of course! How can you ask that?”
“Just think about it, Rey. Your team, your brothers and sisters. I know they’re your family. If you take the job, you’ll have me. I promise that you’ll always have me. But just like you didn’t want me to resent you, I don’t want to be the thing that keeps you away from your family and your calling.”
Rey was quiet, but he could feel her lips moving softly over his collarbone and her hand warm against his ribs.
“I think being away from you has made me realize that you’re my family now, Ben.”
“Really?”
“I’m always going to love my mates, but it’s not like I’m leaving the Air Force for good. I’ve served for ten years, Ben. They were good years, but I’ve been feeling like I need to go on to the part of my life. You know? And I kept thinking about us on this last tour, about what our future could look like.”
She brought one hand to his cheek and turned him to look down at her. “I would imagine coming home to you, every night. Waking up with you every morning. All the little moments, the sweet and the annoying and the simple, that we could share. I never thought I could have that with someone, but I really, really want it with you.”
“I want it too, sweetheart.”
He kissed her, and this time he didn’t bother stopping to ask if it was good. The sounds she made were enough encouragement.
“I’m home, Ben. I’m home. I’m here.” Rey couldn’t have said if the words were for his benefit or hers, but they felt good to stay, like an affirmation. Like a promise.
* * * * * * * *
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams