Chapter Text
“Excuse me? Please tell me this is just one of those caffeine-fueled nightmares that I get when I fall asleep at my desk,” Rey whined, digging her fingers into her temples where a headache was blooming. Ben tugged a hand through his already messy dark hair.
“The idea of being my girlfriend is a nightmare for you,” he repeated incredulously, leveling a glare that would have made anyone else shake in their boots at her. Rey groaned, and shook her head.
“You told your mom, the scariest woman I have ever seen, that you,” she poked a finger across the desk at him, “and I were dating. And not only did you lie to her, you told her that we would BOTH be attending Thanksgiving with your entire family.” What scared Ben the most about this situation was not the prospect of his family finding him out to be a liar. No, that would be fine. They were used to disappointment. It was the complete calmness that his associate professor, the only one who was willing to work with him in the entire university, had adopted during the conversation. Ben had known Rey for two years, and she was nothing if not emotive. If she wasn’t talking with her hands and facial expressions, she was liable to commit murder.
Across the desk, Rey took a series of calming breaths. While she wasn’t pissed off at the situation per se, she was mad that he hadn’t thought to consult her about everything earlier. And beyond that, Rey had a bit of a crush on him. She never planned to do anything about it, especially since they were coworkers. Now she had to fake being his girlfriend in front of his entire family. No big deal.
Ben’s knee started bouncing, and he started drumming his fingers on his closed laptop. “So will you do it or not?” He winced internally at the harshness of his words, but he was growing impatient.
“Yes. Fine, I’ll do it. But you owe me. You owe me so so much,” she declared, pushing her rolling chair away from the desk and standing up.
“How about dinner?” he blurted out, “Just so that we can go over our story and everything. And talk about midterms.” Ben’s face went bright red, and she could see him fighting the urge to mess with his hair again.
Rey pretended to consider his offer for a second, tilting her head to the side in deliberation. “Sure, but only if it’s Maz’s, and you pay.”
“Deal.”
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Rey dug into her waffles like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Maz made the best breakfast food in Naboo, and her diner was open all day and all night. Maz’s was mythic in the eyes of both the staff and students of the University of Varykino, and Rey had fallen in love with the quirky diner instantly. It's retro flooring with neon yellow walls and bright red booths had a charm that you couldn't find anywhere else nearby. Ben was not of the same tastes. Maz’s smelled like grease and maple syrup, and he knew the cloying stench would cling to his jacket for weeks.
“So,” Rey began around a mouthful of syrup-drenched waffle, “how much did you tell them about me?”
Ben cringed internally at her manners, but answered anyways as he systematically shredded his waffle. “Not much,” he mumbled, “just that we work together and that you co-teach my philosophy classes. And that you’re working on your doctorate. That was really it.” That was certainly not all that he had mentioned when his notoriously nosy mother had given him the third degree. He wasn’t going to tell her that though.
“I can work with that. How did we start dating? Love at first sight? Did you pick me up at a bar? Oh, our students started shipping us and we decided to see what would happen!” Rey teased, propping her chin up on her hands. Flustering Ben was a hobby and a skill that had been carefully built up over the past two years.
“Shipping? What even is that?” Ben questioned with his eyebrows scrunched. God, he could be so adorable sometimes, Rey thought.
She laughed. “Your age is showing, old man. It’s when you think two people would make a cute couple and you want them to date.”
“That’s weird, but whatever. I might have told her that I asked you out one night and that we ended up getting along and you ended up being my co-prof and we kept dating and now we live together and we’ve been dating for a year and Imayhavetoldherthatweweregoingtolivetogether.” His face had gone an even brighter shade of red, stretching up to his ears that just stuck out of his unruly hair. Rey’s eyes widened. Ben continued with his word vomit, “But don’t worry, it’s only for the holiday weekend and then we can ‘break up’ and everything will go back to the way it was before, okay?” He was breathing hard after his impromptu speech, and a strand of his hair fell over his left eye.
She softened a little from before. It was obvious that he really wanted to impress his family, and from the conversations she’d had with Ben, she couldn’t blame him. His mother was a high-achieving senator from Alderaan, and his father had been her rough-around-the-edges Secret Service agent. Ben Organa-Solo had big shoes to fill, and social anxiety and total disdain for politics had turned him into an outcast within his own family. He railed against structure until he had wound up an English and philosophy double major in Varykino, all things his mother had disapproved of greatly. He’d graduated with his bachelors and masters degrees in four years, and had his doctorate in philosophy by the time he was twenty-five. The university immediately offered the prickly man a position among the faculty and ten years later, he was still there. Rey also knew that he was trying to mend his relationship with his mother, despite him evading the topic when it came up in conversation. She could understand his dislike for family talk, what with being orphaned in her youth. Just because she survived Plutt didn't mean she wanted to relive it.
“It’s okay, Ben. We’ll figure it out together, yeah?” She smiled brilliantly.
“Yeah,” he smiled shakily, taking a deep breath for the first time that night. “I’ll drive us up to the lakehouse on Wednesday since classes are over. It’ll be maybe three or four hours at most, and then we can drive home on Friday and have the weekend off. Is that okay?” She nodded, crossing her legs under her in the booth as he continued. “My uncle, Leia’s twin Luke, will probably be there. He’s, uh, kind of a hermit. He inherited my grandfather’s land and hasn’t really left the property since then. Chewie and Lando will be there too. They were Han’s buddies when he worked for the Service, and they’re kinda weird but they’re kind of my uncles. The only other person I could think of that would go is Leia’s old assistant, Amilyn Holdo, from when she was a senator.”
“I bet she never had to fake-date Leia when they worked together,” she mumbled under her breath.
“What was that?” Ben asked, gaze shifting to Rey.
She smirked mischievously. “Nothing, I said nothing.”
Ben narrowed his eyes, but chose not to dignify her with a reaction. Instead he decided to fumble with the check that had been laid down sometime during their conversation. He slid his credit card into the folder, and caught Rey’s gaze again as the waitress picked up the check. “Anyways, so I’ll pick you up at your place at nine a.m. on Wednesday, okay? And if at anytime anything makes you uncomfortable, just tell me and I’ll call it off. I really don’t want to jeopardize our friendship more than I already am.” His full lips pulled into a frown. “I’m sorry for putting you in this position, Rey.”
She shook her head as they both slid out of the booth. “Listen Ben, I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t mean it. We’ll be fine, really, how bad could it be?”
The answer was very, very wrong.