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The enormity of what is left to do hangs like dead weight in the flat, recycled air of his father’s ship. His ship, now. And hers. They are still many hours from the base on . . . kriff, Ben’s forgotten, or never quite heard it. His mind is in a dozen places at once. The destination is locked, though, in the Falcon ’s nav system—the planet where they’re meant to reconvene with Resistance command—and they’re shooting through the blue tunnel of hyperspace as fast as the freighter can handle, so he figures that’s enough. The least of his worries, anyway.
It’s absurd, but suddenly the only thing he wants is a shower. A real one, with water and maybe soap, though he’s not getting his hopes up in here. Frankly, the very idea that there’s a shower in the ship at all baffles him. It’s an addition that came after he last saw it, he guesses. He has a vague recollection of his mother teasingly harassing his father about adding one.
Just as practical as adding the galley was , she would say, or something like that, with how much time you spend on that ship.
But it’s there now, and he’ll risk tepid, stale water. It might not clear his mind, but it will clear away the physical reminders of the last hours. He leaves the cockpit, smelling of blood, hot metal, and burnt ozone. He stalks past the relief bunk, where Rey must be resting. He thought of joining her, but she didn’t ask him to. She’s been distant—quiet, anyway. Or maybe he has. It’s not personal. There’s a lot to process, that’s all. What they’ve seen and done and will still do.
The idea of the unmapped future makes his stomach flip and his chest tighten.
That sort of freedom . . . what the hell does a person do with that?
Lost in a muddle of thoughts, he bumps a fist against the control panel, and the door to the small refresher slides open. He’s hit with a wave of steam, weakly scented with something inoffensive and slightly sterile. He waves it away, squints, and has just enough time to process that the shower is already in use before he makes out the shape of Rey’s body through its steam-streaked door, her arms raised as if in the midst of running her hands through her hair.
She’s naked. Of course she’d naked, she’s in the shower, which is where he was planning to be, where his feet are still carrying him while his mind sluggishly catches up and orders him to stop.
He does, frozen on the spot. His eyes are less easily reined in. They trace the pale, foggy silhouette of her body. Her arms drop. From the way her head turns, he knows she is looking back.
“Oh,” she utters, like an afterthought.
Her voice echoes strangely, tinny but also deadened. She doesn’t speak again, doesn’t move to cover herself, doesn’t bark at him to get out. She just stares, waiting and motionless.
“I thought you were sleeping,” he blurts and half turns, eyes on the floor. Her dirty clothes are piled in a corner. “I’ll go.”
The shower door slides open a few inches, enough for her to poke her head out.
“Wait. It’s— Erm.” Her brow dips with an unvoiced question, and her eyes flick over her clothing on the floor, then back to his face. “Join me?”
He’s hardly absorbed her request, but words keep dropping out of his mouth.
“I’ll use it when you’re finished. I should be monitoring our progress.”
“Ben. Please.”
She slides the door open a little more. He catches a glimpse of a hip, a sliver of lean thigh, the edge of a bruised arm. The air puffing out in thick, humid clouds around her is as warm and inviting as her pleading gaze. Ben gives a mute nod, already dropping to a knee to unfasten his boots. Seemingly satisfied, Rey disappears into the steam. She leaves the door cracked.
His clothing joins hers quickly. He’s glad to be rid of them. He doesn’t care if he ever sees them again. The door sticks a little as he slides it open wide enough to slip inside with her. It’s cramped. Rey has shuffled aside to make room for him, but even then there’s barely enough, and it’s impossible to ignore the way her eyes flick over him. She’s trying not to stare, he thinks, but she is looking. At his face, at his body.
It’s hard to tell what she’s thinking. He could, if he wanted to.
He doesn’t.
He’s looking too. Her hair is plastered around her face and neck, clumping at her shoulders. Her face is pale, dotted with scrapes and cuts, though the blood and grime are already gone. Her eyelashes are stuck together with moisture as droplets roll off her nose, lips, and chin. The rest of her . . . just as beautiful.
Ben forces his gaze not to linger too long on her breasts, or her stomach, or her legs, or even her hands. He looks back to her face. Her eyes are fixed somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, but her focus is elsewhere.
“This is ridiculous,” he says, hating the silence even as he craves the intimacy of it. “You hardly have any space.”
Rey’s eyes sharpen and she steals a look at his face, mouth twisting with a small, rueful smile. “If it was space I wanted, I wouldn’t have asked you to come in.”
The water is gushing from a fixture directly overhead, forcing them to huddle close beneath it. It sputters now and then but is otherwise torrential as a rainstorm. He dips his face down, chin nearly pressed to his chest, and lets the hot water run down over the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades until it saturates his hair and starts to roll into his eyes.
“Feels good,” he murmurs.
“When I got in it was more rust than water. And cold.” She laughs quietly. “You have good timing.”
He looks down at her upturned face and notices a small reddish-brown smudge beside her nose. He thought it was dried blood, maybe a scab, but now he sees it’s only a remnant of the aforementioned rust. Gingerly, he brushes it away with his thumb, but she leans into his touch before he pulls away. He lets his hand cup her cheek. Her eyes fall shut, and her mouth tightens until she turns her head to hide her lips against his palm.
He’s about to remove his hand when he feels the slightest, softest pressure on his skin just where her mouth is. It’s brief, sweet, and sets his palm on fire despite the water grazing it. Before he can even process what she just did, one of her hands comes to cover his tenderly. The fire only intensifies, and he almost misses her words when she speaks again, a soft murmur against his skin.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
He wonders for a moment if he’s heard her right, if the water falling above them is fooling him—but the way she looks at him is all the confirmation he needs. Her skin feels warm against his, like she radiates some kind of strong, vibrant energy he currently lacks. The hot water isn’t helping; at least that’s what he tells himself when he hears his own voice asking, “In the shower?”
The nervous laugh that leaves Rey is just what his heart needs to drop to is feet.
“I meant with us,” she rectifies with another chuckle. “And… yes, in the shower.”
The fire between their hands grows bigger, increases Ben’s heartbeat, and travels up his chest: her fingers are slowly twining with his, sending small sparks along the skin she is touching. She must’ve noticed the flinch and stops herself mid-movement with a frown. “Is it— Did I scare you?”
The worry on her face makes his heart sink deeper in his chest. She’s genuinely concerned, suddenly convinced she did something wrong, and Ben has never wanted to shake his head so much.
“No,” he hastens to say. “No, not you. I just… it’s been a long time.”
He isn’t sure when someone last touched him like that—if someone ever did. Even Snoke never touched his skin; because why bother when he could remotely play with him? He’d only ever needed the Force and his words, and those had been enough to influence Ben.
And still, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed real contact.
“Oh.”
It leaves Rey in a whisper, tickling his fingers as she takes a deep breath. For a moment, she feels like she’s trying to remove her hand from under his, but Ben reacts quickly and tightens their grip on each other, lacing his fingers with hers in return.
“I don’t mind when it’s you.”
The reassurance paints a smile on her lips as she closes her eyes and nods knowingly. Still silent, she grabs what looks like an old bar of soap and motions for him to turn with a small spin of her index finger. Letting someone out of his sight isn’t something he’s used to; one of Luke’s first lessons was actually to always have an eye on everything. Still, Ben complies and turns on his heels, exposing his bare back to Rey’s eyes.
It’s been years since his skin itched there, years since any lotion applied felt like tiny sparks biting at his flesh, yet he can’t help the shudder running through him when he feels the soap gliding along the scars scattered over his back. He’s never seen it himself, but if what he usually feels under his hands is any indication, it’s probably terrible.
“It must look…” The word fails to leave his mouth, leaving him breathing out with a shrug. “I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t say a thing and uses her other hand instead, letting her fingers trace the lines Snoke drew himself, hover above the slightest ones with a caution that is unfamiliar to him. Unfamiliar, but definitely soothing. He suspects she might be using the Force somehow, either with her touch or mind, because it all feels like a soft, long graze along the scars Snoke planted along his memories too. The smell brings him back to some childhood memories, most about his father chasing him and threatening to tell his mother if he didn’t jump into the shower right now. It’s probably the same damn soap; he recognizes the smell of tintolive tree within seconds, and immediately remembers his mother’s obsession for it. This and the way her perfume always felt like home, wherever they were. It did smell like it when she hugged him earlier, but he isn’t sure yet about home. The only thing he’s sure about is the comfort of Rey’s palm running between his shoulder blades and the warmth that comes with it.
So he lets her wash the bad memories away with her fingers, lets the water drown them away and revels in the sensation of her sheer presence near him and the fact that, for once, it isn’t a dream.
-
He isn’t sure what he was expecting when he stepped inside the captain’s quarters hours later. His feet led him there instinctively, out of a pure old habit; yet he doesn’t feel as surprised as he should when his eyes catch sight of Rey’s head poking from under the blankets.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, “I just— I used to sleep here.”
“Oh— of course.”
She looks like she’s embarrassed for a moment, but also like she’s not even thinking about abandoning the ownership she now seems to have on the room. And she shouldn’t, really—she’s the captain, now. She seems to have settled here for good, given the clothes scattered around the room. His eyes linger on the bandages usually wrapped around her arms—then on her arms, as bare as they’d been earlier in the shower.
“Come with me.”
“What?”
The same embarrassment that seized him in the ‘fresher washes over him again; but this time, it’s met with excitement and anticipation.
“Come with me,” she repeats, and raises the blanket a little to illustrate her words. “It’s a large bed. There’s enough for both of us.”
The offer sounds just as unreal, and her voice just as welcoming, and once again Ben finds himself obeying with an ease no one else has ever drawn from him.
A blush reddens his cheeks as he slips under the covers. He can’t help thinking about how she looked in the shower, about what’s under the light clothes she’s wearing now. She was beautiful, and still is—especially when she’s smiling at him like she is now, like they share some sort of secret. Maybe they do; they certainly share something few people may have experienced in history, and something in him feels like this bond isn’t here by mistake. The sole thought of it is enough to let him sink deeper under the blanket. Their hands brush somewhere between them, but this time, he’s the first to lace their fingers together.
“My father took me on one of his trips, once,” Ben says after a few seconds.
Once again, Rey doesn’t say a thing, but her eyes prove how focused she is. It encourages him to dig deeper in his memories, but there isn’t much to find: one long night spent alone in these quarters, with Chewbacca checking on him every few hours. He remembers how cold it’d been, remembers the stars he’d seen passing by the small viewport as the ship flew across the galaxy. He remembers the game they played in the cockpit, and which buttons his father had told him to push on the way back home. And if he tries, he can remember the old man’s laugh, and the sensation of his hand on his shoulder.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he murmurs suddenly.
“In bed?”
Rey almost sounds amused as she asks, but he knows she’s felt his emotions. How couldn’t she, when he’s obviously filled with them? She probably doesn’t even need the Force to know there’s something wrong trotting around his mind right now.
“With the Resistance,” he says with a brief shake of his head. “On this ship. In this bed. With you.”
Something moves on Rey’s side, making Ben’s side of the blanket move as well. After a small rustle, her face pops up next to him— close to him.
“But we want you here,” she says in a whisper. “ I want you here.”
This shouldn’t be a surprise after everything they went through, but Ben feels his heart make a loop anyway as words cross his mouth in a weak tone. “You do?”
“Yes. On this ship. In this bed.” She pauses for a second, then tightens the grip she has on his hand. “Everywhere.”
“Everywhere?”
“Everywhere,” she confirms for him, then she shifts a little closer, her eyes on his the entire time as if she’s checking to make sure he’s comfortable every passing second. “Ben, I promise you, there’s plenty of people here who get it. All the former stormtroopers, former leaders, commanders… they all faced some of the same things you did. Maybe they didn’t get the…” She trails off, knowing he doesn’t want to hear the words physical, verbal, or emotional abuse, but he gets her point all the same. “But they know. They understand better than you think. I understand better than you think.”
The words make him feel as if he’s on the brink of tears, and that thick, stupid lump in his throat makes him unable to speak for a few seconds as he rolls onto his back, and she squeezes his hand. He’s not used to being touched, but something about the way she’s touching him makes him feel like he’s grounded, like he’s not being invaded but is instead being held together. It’s a mystery to him, but a beautiful one. “I understand you, too.”
Rey slowly rolls toward him, and he bites his lip, swallowing nervously as he watches her move. She gently reaches up and caresses his cheek as she looks at him, her body weight pressed against his left side like a warm, comforting blanket. “You once told me I wasn’t alone, and I know you meant that was because I was with you. Believe in your words, Ben, believe in yourself.”
He sniffles quietly, then nods as he turns his head into her palm and kisses it. “You’re too kind to me.”
“You’re too cruel to yourself.” She shivers as she moves closer, though given that the temperature in the room is warming, he suspects she is trembling for other reasons. “We are our own worst enemies, Ben. Don’t be yours.”
He laughs quietly to himself, but he nods as she rolls a little further on top of him, and for some reason, he likes it. Before Rey, he’d been terrified to let anyone touch him, but right now, he needs to be touched, he needs to touch her.
“You’re brilliant.” Ben’s hand comes up to caress the back of her head. “And I don’t deserve you.”
“You do,” she whispers, leaning forward just a few inches more. “I promise you do. You deserve worlds better than what you got. We both do, but this is the way the world is, and all the two of us can do is hold each other, okay?”
“Okay.”
He holds her a little closer, and now she covers him like a blanket. It’s a warm, wonderful feeling, and he loves the way she feels on top of him. It brings him more peace than he’d ever thought he was capable of.
It’s in this moment that he also becomes aware of just how close her face is to his. Rey’s lips are open, gently whispering his name, and she moves just a little bit closer.
“Are you about to kiss me?”
“That depends on if you want me to,” she tells him. “If you don’t want me to I’m more than happy to just sit here and hold you for a while. I don’t ever have to kiss you if you don’t want me to—“
He cuts her off before she can speak further blasphemy. “I want you to,” he says, and his lower lip begins trembling as his breathing becomes shaky.
Has he ever been kissed before? He thinks surely it must’ve happened once, twice, at the temple before everything had gone horribly, horribly wrong, but…
Rey leans in, and he feels warm and fuzzy, like he’s imbibed one too many shots of his father’s whiskey, as she moves slowly toward him. She gives him every chance to turn his head, to refuse the kiss they both know is coming, but he never does. Ben remains steady, and as her forehead presses against his, he revels in the feeling. He revels in all of it, in that final moment before their lips actually do touch.
“Ben,” she whispers, then he closes the gap between them, and presses his lips to hers, using the hand he placed on the base of her skull to bring her a little bit closer to him, his fingers threading into her hair as he kisses her properly.
Rey’s lips are a little chapped, just a touch dry, but the kiss itself is sweet, and it makes him feel safe and at home in a way he hasn’t in a very long time. He loves every second of it, he loves the head-spinning thrill of it all, and he finds himself drowning in the way they move together; he never wants to stop drowning in the way they move together.
It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and as they wrap one another in their embrace, as the kiss grows deeper and more intense, as she begins to straddle his hips, he knows it’s started something new. A crucial change has passed between them, and though he’s never needed to be touched before, he’s more than content with having Rey in constant contact with him now.
He needs her, and she needs him. Together, they’re going to heal. It’s only a matter of time.