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Ben Solo never liked sleep.
The concept of it sounds wonderful: a period of time where one can rest from the events of the day and recharge for the next, but he’s never had any luck with it.
When he was younger, his nanny droid would bring him a warm glass of moof milk and play data-tapes of Leia or Han’s voice telling him stories in a low, soothing voice at bedtime, trying to lull him to slumber. He could vaguely remember waking up agitated in the middle of the night, his little feet padding softly towards his parents’ quarters, his nose running as he sniffles quietly in front of his father’s dozing figure until Han notices. With a hoarse chuckle, Han would pick him up and carry him back to his room, whispering about adventure as they climb into bed together. He is always alone when he wakes up.
It takes two weeks of this happening every night and both his parents looking worse for the wear in the morning until the nanny droid becomes fitted with the data-tapes, the droid automatically alerted every time he stirs. He remembers the last time he stepped into his parents’ room as a child.
He thinks he would fare better at the Academy, finally being in a place where he belonged. He’s supposed to belong, at least. Your parents are sleeping better , a voice in his head would whisper, now that the monster is out of their home. Shaking his head, he sits up and tries to meditate, just as Uncle--Master--Master Luke had taught him. Breathe in, empty your thoughts, breathe out. The bags under their eyes are gone. Your mother is laughing again. Breathe in, empty your thoughts, breathe out.
There is no comfortable position. No matter how he laid down on his cot, his bones feel brittle, his skin itching all over with the sensation of a thousand ants crawling all over his body. His stomach swirls like a maelstrom, and he blames it on the caf he had in order to stay awake through one of his lessons. Pathetic. You can’t even sleep right. He promises to skip the caf the next day, and his consciousness floats on the surface even as he wishes to be pulled under.
It eventually saves him, not being able to fully succumb to sleep. If he had drifted off that night, he wouldn’t have been able to prevent Luke Skywalker from killing him. Maybe you should’ve let him. He isn’t sure whose voice had said that, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t stop him from seeing the expression that greeted him on his uncle’s face from that night--the green glow of his lightsaber making his features grotesque and terrifying in the dark--every time he closes his eyes.
As Kylo Ren, he loathes it even more. He has too many responsibilities and he is weary from the raging feelings inside of him, and there is nothing that sounds more attractive to him than a few hours where he could be unconscious and uncaring of the world around him.
Instead, he lays stock-still on a bed that’s a tad small for his stature, his blanket barely covering his massive frame. An average stormtrooper might imagine the fearsome Kylo Ren to have an enormous bed of silk and down, something fit for a king, or at least, the Supreme Leader’s apprentice. However, such luxury is not allowed for him because decadence leads to complacence, and complacency leads to weakness. But gold lamé robes don’t count-- the sarcastic thought comes to him unbidden--and he flinches, waiting for a punishing strike to come.
It doesn’t, and he wonders if Snoke is more successful at sleeping than he is.
--
Rey has always been a light sleeper.
Sleeping, for her, is a necessity so that she can have enough energy to explore ruins and haul scrap, but she doesn’t particularly enjoy it. Every minute she spends with her eyes closed is a minute not salvaging, which means fewer rations. Fewer rations mean more days of near starvation and fewer opportunities to put away something for when there is nothing to trade.
It’s the difference between making sure that her home is secure and being caught unaware by brigands who happen upon her AT-AT--a lesson she had to learn the hard way the first year she spent alone, when she came home from a day of salvage to find her precious water stores gone. The following months Rey set aside a portion of her haul and free time to craft motion sensors and electroshock traps, and her water barrels are hidden from view with the AT-AT’s escape hatch welded shut to prevent outside access to her belongings.
It’s the possibility of her missing her parents coming back for her.
So she rests, hovering right at the edge of wakefulness, half-listening for footsteps or any signs of disturbance in her corner of the Jakku desert. Her quarterstaff is propped on a nearby wall for easy access in case of an intruder, and a small satchel containing her most important belongings lay by the head of her hammock, for when she finally hears the rumble of the ship she’s waited for so long.
On some nights, when the work has taken a toll and her body is pushed beyond exhaustion, she acquiesces, willing herself to fall into a deep slumber.
It doesn’t come easy, despite the fatigue. The slightest noise--a skittering bug, the night winds rattling a loose panel--tickles at her consciousness. Her limbs feel like lead, and she can’t stop shivering. How is a person supposed to get comfortable and fall asleep like this? She frowns but strengthens her resolve, committing herself to scavenging extra material the next day to be able to fix the insulation and heat shielding.
Pulling several sheets around her to ward off the cold, she imagines sapphire blue waters surrounding a rocky island blanketed by green trees, and she desperately tries to sleep.
--
It’s a different cot now--a different everything, really. A different ceiling, different walls, a different life. He’s laying on a standard-sized bunk, similar to the one in the Falcon, although he supposes he won’t fit quite the same on that bunk the way he used to as a child.
“Trust me, kid, one day you’ll hit a growth spurt and you’ll be as tall as your Uncle Chewie!”
It’s a dumb joke, one that he thought was mocking him at the time. Han, however, found it so hilarious that he had forgone his usual gruff snicker in favor of a throaty laughter, and tears start prickling at Ben’s eyes as the sound of Han’s mirth echoes inside his head.
A sudden quiet falls over everything, the hum of the flagship’s engine swallowed up by the vacuum of sound that accompanies--
Rey.
--
She shifts on her side as she feels the mattress dip low to accommodate Ben’s figure beside her at the same time he turns his head to look at her.
“Hi,” she breathes, then noticing the unshed tears in Ben’s eyes, “Is something wrong?”
“No,” he hurriedly replies. “Just thinking.”
“Regret?”
“About many things.” The corner of his mouth lifts then, a small and honest smile. “Not about this.”
His voice is so soft, and she resists craning her neck closer to hear him better.
“Why are you still awake?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I asked first.”
“Trouble sleeping. Thought that after the war I’d finally be able to sleep but I suppose that would’ve been too easy,” he huffs in grim amusement. “Your turn.”
For a moment Rey was tempted to deflect, to lie, just as she’s wont to do, but he’s looking at her with an openness that reminded her of that night in Ahch-To, of him patiently listening to her pour out her fears, feelings she’s never shared with anyone else before.
“People keep telling me they know me--no one does.” “But I do.”
She takes a deep breath. “Worried. About tomorrow. And then after that.”
“Huh.” Ben looks away for a moment, his jaw working. She can see his ear sticking out from under his hair, and she feels the urge to reach out and trace its shell.
“Before this, my purpose was waiting,” she says after some time. “Then it was finding my place in all of this. Then fighting against the First Order. Now… I don’t know. There’s just so many things I’m uncertain about.”
“I know the feeling.” He’s still not looking at her, but she can see the tip of his exposed ear turn red. “If there’s one thing I’m sure of, though, it’s you. You always end up doing the right thing.”
Rey feels light-headed all of a sudden, giddy, like the time Poe found a bottle of Daruvvian champagne and shared it with everybody. Back then she felt warmth spread from her head to her toe the moment she took a sip, the liquor bright and sweet, leaving her limbs tingling pleasantly. Only this time she didn’t have a single drop of alcohol.
She thinks of his bare fingers brushing against her fingertips in the light of a fire. “You’re not alone.” It repeats in her head, and she looks down, dropping her chin towards her chest.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she whispers. “Back on the Death Star. Then again on Exegol, when I stood against the Emperor and you were gone. I didn’t know where you were.”
“You’re not alone.”
He turns sharply to her, “Rey--”
“Dying wasn’t so bad, you know. It was kind of peaceful. A time to finally rest, be one with the Force.”
Ben shifts closer to her and opens his mouth to speak, but she continues.
“And then I felt a pull, strong and insistent, familiar. Then I opened my eyes and there you were...,” Looking at me like I hung the moons. Like you would die for me. She lifts her head, meeting his eyes.
“You’re not alone.” " Neither are you.”
If someone had asked her, Rey would not have been able to tell who moved or when it happened, but they are lying so close to each other she can feel his shallow breath fanning on her skin. “Rey, I… I feel it, too,” he says in a low voice, and she feels it reverberate in her chest.
Oh, how far we have come since that fateful day on Starkiller Base , she thinks. Who would’ve thought we’d ever get here?
She touches her forehead to his and hums, the heat of his skin radiating all over her body from a single point.
“You feel warm. It’s nice. It used to be so cold in Jakku.”
If he was startled by the contact, he didn’t give any indication. She watches his eyes hesitantly flicker to hers. “Will you stay?”
In the low lamplight, she can see his hazel eyes glinting, his pupils having swallowed up the flecks of brown surrounding them. His gaze flits like a butterfly all over her face, landing on her brows, her jaw, her lips.
Nodding, she closes her eyes first, knowing that if she stares into his any longer she might tip over the edge and tumble into its depths, where she might find the answer to a question she’s not ready to ask out loud just yet.
Rey, once again, dreams of an island. This one has a castle tucked away on its side, a garden balcony overlooking a vast lake surrounded by verdant hills. She’s never seen this island before, but she feels a calm settle on her body like a thick blanket at the same time Ben’s breathing evens out, and she sleeps.
--
Ben stirs, his limbs heavy but his body feeling pleasantly toasty except for a wet spot on his shirt. He slowly opens his eyes, indulging in a satisfying yawn, his muscles tingling with the need for a good stretch.
Then he looks down and blinks a few more times to check if he’s actually awake, because it can’t be real, the sight that greets him: Rey’s sleeping figure is tucked in Ben’s arms, her head resting on his left bicep, and her face pressed to his chest.
He lets out a soft chuckle when he realizes that she is drooling a little, causing the spot. The rumble of his amusement rouses Rey, and her grip on his shirt tightens as she sleepily looks up at him.
“Ben?”
“How…?” He asks incredulously, like he couldn’t believe his luck.
She turns away to lie on her back, and Ben has to tamp down the impulse to stop her, to pin her to his chest, to demand that she never leave his bed ever again. Don’t be greedy.
“How what?” She yawns, rubbing her eyes.
“How are you still here? How is the bond still connecting us?”
Tensing up, she stops rubbing her eyes and peers at him, “Should I go?”
He hates himself a little for causing that look of apprehension on her face. It’s a reflection, a ripple, of the one she had in Snoke’s throne room, just before the force of their opposite convictions tore the Skywalker lightsaber apart.
“No, please,” he says hoarsely. Stay forever. “I just didn’t think the bond could stay open this long.”
“Oh,” a bloom of pink colors her cheeks, and she suddenly becomes more interested in picking at a loose thread on the blanket than in continuing the conversation.
Confused by her sudden bashfulness, he stills her hand with his own. She doesn’t pull away, but she still won’t meet his gaze. “Rey?”
A beat, then she sighs, “The bond closed in the middle of the night. Woke up in my own bunk.”
“But you’re…?”
“I walked here. Didn’t want to be alone,” she admits sheepishly, peeking up at him through her eyelashes.
An image of Rey creeping quietly through the halls of the ship to his quarters comes to mind, and he lets himself laugh. It bubbles up from deep within him, and a distant part of him is struck by how similar it sounds to his father’s, a quick sharp ache pulsing in his jaw, like he had just bitten into an extra sour gruffle fruit. But even with the soreness he found himself unable to stop smiling after hearing that Rey--precious Rey--is actually, physically, in his bed right now.
“I shouldn’t have--,” she chokes out, hurt flashing through her features as she moves to get up. Ben gently catches her wrist and draws her back close to him. I don’t deserve you. I never will. But I will take whatever you give me.
At first stiff in his arms, she slowly relaxes and molds her body against his, her fingers tracing shapes on his chest. They stay like this for a moment, holding each other, their breathing synchronizing.
Before he can talk himself out of it, Ben blurts out, “Can I kiss you?”
The grin she gives him then is earth-shattering. It washes over him like holy fire, consuming him whole and cleansing him of his sins. There’s a new lightness to his soul that he knows he will never be worthy of, but her perfect smile burns and razes his entire being, and he welcomes it, accepting this baptismal.
Her hair is in need of a brush, her face and arms are indented with the pattern of the wrinkles on the sheets, but Maker help him, he cannot stop staring at her. Ben thinks his heart might stop beating from how beautiful she is.
Rey props herself up on her right elbow and hovers above his reclining figure, a curtain of her hair tickling his cheek, an eyebrow raised. “What happened to kissing me?”
He smirks at this, then a wince, his face hurting from all the smiling he’s been doing. He supposes he should just accept that it’s going to become a frequent occurrence around Rey.
Surging up, he claims her lips with a boldness he didn’t know he had, and she gasps in surprise, giving him better access and allowing him to deepen the kiss. Their first kiss was urgent, born out of relief that they were both alive, a manifestation of pent-up feelings. This one, however, is tender and slow, with Rey’s fingers buried in Ben’s hair, his right hand gently cradling her jaw while his left is anchored to her hip. Ben’s nerve endings feel exposed, like frayed wire, and he feels a shiver run through Rey’s spine. Their mouths move together--taking little sips, savoring, drawing breath from each other’s lungs--until they are dizzy with the taste of each other.
They kiss for what feels like an eternity until they have to pull apart for air. Rey looks thoroughly ravaged, her lips slightly red and swollen, and her chest is heaving as she breathes deeply. Ben changes his mind from earlier. This is the most beautiful he’s seen her.
I will do anything for you. Just give the word.
She beams at him and attempts to fix his mussed hair, unsuccessfully, but she tries anyway. It’s a simple gesture, but Ben has never felt more cared for in his life than at this moment, and in the afterglow, he starts crying. Crying for everything that’s happened to him, for everything he’s done, for everyone he’s lost. Crying for this woman, who looks alarmed but calmly starts kissing at his tears, holding him while whispering back words he had given her a long time ago--separated by space and time but bound by a red string of fate--over and over again.
“You’re not alone.”
--
A comm pad buzzes on the nightstand but it stays there, as Rey kisses the top of Ben Solo’s head and embraces him, closing her eyes as he mumbles, “Five more minutes,” against her chest.