Work Text:
Rey jolted awake to a giant hand smacking her on the side of the head.
“What the kriff-“
She froze.
Ben Solo was in her bed.
She simply sat there gaping at him for a minute, trying to process this new development. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, trying to shake off the lingering vestiges of sleep. She looked again.
Yes. Still there.
It’s not like she’d never seen him when he shouldn’t be there. Their bond had been something that she’d spent a lot of time thinking about, especially recently. But she hadn’t seen him since Crait. Several months ago.
She had assumed he had blocked her somehow, their connection being deadened, but obviously not. Obviously the Force works in ways that Rey had no idea about, despite her attempts at studying the Jedi texts that she had taken from Ach-To.
She stared at him, emotions warring within her. She’d never really seen anyone sleep before, always being alone and sleeping in her own room separate from everyone else on the base. Not that they were shunning her. Rose had asked her on numerous occasions if she wanted to be “roommates”, but Rey preferred to be alone. It was how she was comfortable.
But now there was someone- a very large someone, she realized with slight annoyance- sleeping in her bed. She knew distantly that he wasn’t actually there, only projecting, but since he was solid and tangible it was harder to keep that fact at the front of her mind.
What was she supposed to do? The kriffing Supreme Leader was sleeping in her bed.
Realizing that she really did not want to explain this on the off-chance that anyone entered her room, she shook him a little bit to wake him.
“Ben,” she whispered, ignoring the tingles that shot up her arm with the contact. She shoved him a little harder.
“Ben!” she said, closer to his ear. Still he didn’t wake.
She started to grow frustrated. How was he such a deep sleeper in his…profession? Still not completely awake and therefore much less concerned than maybe she should have been, she jostled him a little roughly this time.
“Ben! Wake up, you moof milker-“
He shot straight up, grabbing her wrist with one hand and throwing his other hand out automatically, summoning his lightsaber from somewhere and turning to her with wild eyes.
Rey held her breath, and for a moment time seemed to still. He didn’t activate his weapon.
Ben’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, blinking hard in the darkness. His pulse visibly raced on his neck.
Abruptly, he let go of her wrist.
“What are you doing here?”
Rey refused to acknowledge the goosebumps that rose on her arms from the roughness of his voice.
Instead, she raised an eyebrow.
“You’re in my bed.”
Ben glanced around, and then mirrored her expression.
“You’re in my bed.”
At an impasse, and not really knowing what to do, they just stared at each other for a few moments. Rey imagined under normal circumstances that this would be extremely awkward, maybe even dangerous, but these were not normal circumstances.
She was still uncomfortably aware of his lightsaber, however, and realizing what she was gazing at, Ben slowly put it next to him. As he let it go, it vanished from her sight.
She wasn’t sure what to think about that.
“Well,” Rey finally said, hating the silence. “How long is this going to go on?”
Ben kept his calm facade on, his face not giving anything away. His voice, however, was wry.
“You ask as if I have any idea of how to control it.”
Rey frowned. She had assumed he was blocking her somehow, but maybe neither of them could control it. Maybe there was no reason for it, and it connected them at random intervals. This time just happened to be in the middle of the night.
Resigned, Rey blew out a breath and began gathering her blankets.
“Alright, well, scoot over. You’re hogging all the covers.”
Surprise flickered over his expression before he covered it with a frown.
“You’re just going to go back to sleep?” He sounded befuddled.
“Yes,” Rey said nonchalantly, even though her heart hadn’t stopped pounding since he opened his eyes. “But not with you taking up the entire mattress.” She looked at him pointedly.
“You’re in my bed, here,” Ben said. “I’m not taking up the entire mattress.”
Rey made a frustrated noise.
“Yes, well, I’m sure your bed is bigger than mine! So scoot over!”
“I’m at the edge.”
Rey had to stop at that. How strange is this man? Who sleeps at the edge of a bed when you have enough room to splay out in the middle of it?
Then she realized her predicament. If she was at the edge of her bed, and he was at the edge of his, then they were going to have to sleep…this close together.
She refused to blush at the thought of sleeping nearly pressed up against Ben Solo.
“Fine. Fine. It doesn’t matter. Just go to sleep.”
“You’re not going to kill me in my sleep?”
She gives him an unimpressed look.
“If I had planned on doing that, don’t you think I would have done it instead of waking you up?”
Ben continued to look at her, working his mouth in that way that she definitely did not get distracted by, and finally sighed.
“Fine.”
He rolled over, putting his back to her, and Rey did the same, pulling the covers up to her chin.
She laid there with her eyes open, wide awake now and not able to find sleep as long as his body was so tense, only a small space away from her own.
Finally, several hours later, she finally sensed him relax. Rey closed her eyes, expecting him to disappear now that he was asleep.
He didn’t.
She pondered this. This particular connection had lasted much, much longer than any other time it had occurred- and with no apparent reason. What was the point of connecting them when they were just sleeping?
Deciding to think about it later, Rey put it from her mind, letting Ben’s steady breathing lull her to sleep.
It wasn’t until she awoke the following morning that she realized it was the soundest sleep she’d had in many, many years.
***
Kylo Ren awoke several days later to the scavenger girl again sprawled across his bed. This time, her leg was thrown over his own. He tried to ignore it.
Should he wake her up? She had woken him up, when the roles were reversed just a few days prior.
He gazed at her, hair splayed on his pillow and lips slightly parted. Completely relaxed.
No, he couldn’t wake her. He knew how difficult it was to get a decent night’s sleep. Though, oddly, the last time she had been here he’d had a nightmare-free rest for the first time in over a year.
He tried not to think too hard on that.
He was still baffled that the force kept connecting them when they were asleep. It didn’t make much sense, especially since the first several times had been when they were both wide awake. Now, however, it seemed to only want them to be together when they were both at their most vulnerable.
They weren’t even sharing dreams, as Kylo had discovered sometimes happened with force bonds. He had been researching them often since Crait, when their connection had mysteriously gone quiet. Obviously it wasn’t because of Snoke’s death, since they had definitely connected afterwards, but it still confused him. None of it made sense.
He sighed, deciding to just try and ignore her presence and get a few hours of sleep before his mission tomorrow.
The next night, he wasn’t even surprised to feel someone next to him. He glanced over, just to make sure, and yes, it was her. She was lying facing him this time, curled up into a little ball.
He couldn’t get over how non-threatening she looked like this. In the waking hours, she was strong, fierce, a fighter. But here, she was soft and delicate and small.
She sighed in her sleep, rubbing her cheek up against his pillow and wrinkling her nose a little bit. It was, dare he say it, cute.
Quickly shaking off that thought, he turned away and forced himself back to sleep. She would be gone in the morning, like always, and that thought reassured him. He wished she wouldn’t come back.
He wished in vain. The next night, like clockwork, he woke to a small hand on his arm. He didn’t bother checking the identity of the hand. Her even breaths filled his ears, and he would never admit it, but they somewhat soothed him back to sleep. He hated that he was getting used to this- used to her. But he couldn’t deny the peaceful nights of sleep he was getting every time she came. He hadn’t slept this well since he was a child. The thought troubled him deeply, and he fell back asleep with a frown on his face.
On and on this went, every night she wound up in his bed, and every night he got a perfectly peaceful night of sleep. It was unnerving. Even more unnerving was the progression of physicality. He wasn’t sure who out of the two of them was the one moving, but every night they seemed to be closer and closer together.
First it was a single touch, like a leg or a hand on him, and then she would be pressed into his side, as if huddling for warmth. Then their legs would be tangled together, and then his arm would be around her, and then her head would be on his chest. It was getting to the point that if he woke up and she wasn’t lying practically on top of him, even if she was pressing painfully on the myriad of bruises he acquired throughout the days, he grew unsettled. On one such occasion, she had simply been rolled over, her back to him, and after listening to her breathing for several more minutes, he fell back asleep.
It was a worrying development. Very worrying.
He had to remind himself on multiple occasions that they were enemies fighting on opposite sides of a war, and that they shouldn’t be cuddling every night through whatever god-forsaken force bond kept connecting them.
It was simultaneously Kylo Ren’s heaven and his hell.
He thought he would nearly go mad one night, two months into their nightly routine, when he had woken up to her wrapped around him like a vine, her head neatly tucked under his chin and all of her limbs tangled with his.
And he most definitely was not proud of how aroused he got on the night that she had her face pressed into his neck, her soft breaths blowing against his jugular and her lips dragging along his skin with his sharp inhale.
She was destroying him in his most fragile state, but yet he couldn’t keep his hands off of her either, it seemed. One night he found himself holding her from behind, his arms wrapped firmly around her middle and his faze nuzzled into the back of her neck. He had tried to slowly pull away, mortified. But she had stirred and sighed contentedly, and he couldn’t bring himself to let go.
They were both starved for physical touch, tenderness, soft skin to hold. They had both been alone for so long that now it seemed they were being forced into a kind of dangerous addiction.
Because Kylo was so used to having her to hold at night that now he wondered if he would ever be able to sleep without her.
On the night exactly three months after their first nightly meeting, Kylo awoke to fingers lightly trailing his face.
He fluttered his eyes open slowly, the fingers stopping on his cheek as he focused on the face half a foot from his own.
Hazel eyes stared at him, widened with a mixture of guilt and caution. Her fingers were still on his face, and her cheeks were flushed attractively. (Why did she have to be so pretty? He had agonized for months about her long lashes, the freckles across her nose, her heart shaped mouth. Torture.)
He realized belatedly that he was holding her again, his arms around her and his hand at the small of her back. Their legs were tangled together as well, though neither of them moved. They probably should have, now that they were both awake. But they didn’t.
He wasn’t sure how to respond to her gentle touches. Should he be angry? Should he brush it off with a sarcastic comment? Should he ignore it completely?
He couldn’t decide, so he just waited. She would have to react first, other than blushing as if he had caught her doing something far more embarrassing than touching his face.
After lying still for a minute more, her hand started moving again. Slowly, cautiously, her eyes staying fixed on his as if looking for a reaction.
He refused to give her any.
Her hand trailed down the side of his jaw, brushed just under his lips, and then traced the line of his nose. Over an eyebrow, past the scar she had given him, and back down his cheek. this time, however, she moved further down. Her eyes finally broke their connection with his and followed her finger instead, trailing a line down his neck. Over the pulse that was thrumming rapidly there.
She seemed to notice, because her eyes flicked back up to his.
This time he couldn’t help having a reaction. There was something in her eyes that made his hand on her back flex, as if trying to pull her closer to him. She seemed to understand, because she inched closer to him on the pillow. Those eyes, wide and bright as ever, stayed on him as she drew closer. Inch by inch, until their noses were nearly brushing. She stopped again. They laid there, staring, waiting for the other to move, until their bond gave a low hum.
Kylo thought he saw Rey shiver, but then she gasped as her hand went through his chest. The last thing he saw were those hazel eyes staring at him as she shimmered and disappeared.
After three months, their nightly connection had broken. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but something in him wanted to curse this force bond. He wondered how Rey was reacting, lightyears away somewhere. He realized he had no way of knowing when the next time he would see her would be, and something inside of him twinged. They hadn’t spoken a word to each other since the first time, but he was used to her body being there. Her warmth.
He also dreaded going back to the nightmares. Yes. The nightmares were why he was disappointed.
***
Rey lied awake, her hand still laying on the sheets where it had fallen after Ben had disappeared.
Three months exactly since she had first woken up in the middle of the night to Ben Solo in her bed, and this was the first night when their connection had broken. She couldn’t help but think it was her fault.
Three months she had managed to mostly keep her hands to herself. And coming from a former scavenger whose closest point of contact with anyone had been at the end of her staff, that seemed pretty impressive.
She had woken several times after that first night, to find their bodies tangled together under the sheets, closer and closer every night it seemed. But always he was there, and always she just went back to sleep, too tired to bother with it or too touch-starved to move away.
But now she had grown used to it- had gotten used to the way his arms felt wrapped around her and had gotten used to his warm breaths moving the hairs on her head. She had gotten used to having someone.
Rey rolled to her back, staring at the ceiling.
She hadn’t told anyone about her new sleeping arrangements, not even Rose, who Rey had grown close to in the recent months.
She especially hadn’t told Leia.
Not that it mattered now.
Rey rolled again, huffing, squeezing her eyes tight against any more thoughts of him. She would be fine. She would fall back asleep, just like she had done three months and a day ago, and everything would be back to the way it was. The way it should be.
But she couldn’t help feeling an empty hole in her chest, and she lied awake until the sun came up.
As dawn broke, the rays of light spilling in through her window and reaching towards her, the bond hummed to life once again.
Rey smiled.