Work Text:
Ben’s Wednesday starts out much like any other: he wakes with the sun, goes through his workout routine, glares at the words inked over his heart until his anger melts away and hope dares to flicker through him and leave his cheeks flushed, showers and gets dressed, and heads off to work.
A completely normal morning routine, for a completely normal day.
Normalcy gets thrown out the window sometime around eleven in the morning.
"Wait, no! Mr. Solo was very clear about not wanting to be disturbed—"
Mitaka's panicked squeak is the first thing he notices about the scene playing out just beyond the confines of his office, but it's quickly cut off by a fierce voice made sharper by her prim and proper British accent.
"I don't give a rat's arse about what that spoiled bastard wants! Leia sent me here with good reason and I'm not leaving until I deliver her message one way or another, so I suggest you get out of my way—"
Ah, another one of his mother's minions.
Ben sighs and reluctantly rises to his feet; he knows his mother's type, and his competent but meek assistant is in no way equipped to deal with that signature Organa protégé blend of righteous anger and bullheaded determination. Best to just let this angry British woman deliver her message, curse him out, and then send her along on her merry way so that he can get back to his work.
Poor Mitaka is reduced to squeaks of protests as the silhouette of a woman approaches the frosted glass door, and Ben won't deny that he takes some measure of satisfaction in wrenching the door open just as she lurches forward to barge into his space.
He's prepared for a face flushed with anger, for wide eyes filled with hatred, for a torrent of vitriol to pour forth from a scowl.
Instead he's met by the sight of an adorable little furrow framing doe eyes and soft peach lips parted just so as the woman blinks at him.
She's cute when she's angry, especially when she physically shakes her head like a cartoon character trying to snap out of something. Apparently it works, because within seconds they're toe to toe and she's poking his chest with a single finger and oh, she would be the perfect height to tuck right under his chin—
"You! Where the fuck have you been while your father was rushed to the hospital?"
And just like that, all thoughts of wrapping this adorable, beautiful, perfect stranger of a woman in his arms vanish into thin air.
The world stops spinning. His blood runs cold. There's a ringing in his ears as he tries once, twice to find his voice.
"He what?"
Later, much later, after he drops everything to follow Rey - her name is just as unexpected and cute and pretty as her - to the hospital his father had been rushed to after a heart attack, after he spends hours holding his mother while they wait for news, after he and Han awkwardly make up while trying to hide their tears… After possibly the most eventful and unexpected and exhausting week of his life, he finally decides to take his father's words about life being too damn short to heart and ask Rey out.
It seems fitting, somehow, that she beats him to it.
Once they've helped Leia bundle Han into the car (with the latter keeping up a steady stream of grumbling the entire time) and watched Threepio drive his parents away, Rey turns to him with a smile that blooms into a laugh when her stomach unexpectedly lets out a rumble.
"So, as I was about to say: we've been here all morning dealing with your father and I know a pretty good diner right around the corner, would you maybe want to have lunch together?"
Ben smiles so wide his face hurts from this unfamiliar new exercise. "I would love to."
They end up in a cramped little booth that must've been made for kids, but it's worth the discomfort when she reacts to their knees bumping together with a shy little smile. A comfortable silence - something he'd thought of as a mere myth until right this second - settles over them as they decide on their orders, but as soon as he turns his gaze back to her after thanking their server he finds Rey already looking at him.
"I've been meaning to ask— and I know this might be a sensitive thing, I promise I'm not being forward here or trying to pry because I think we're... I mean, we barely know each other, that would be crazy—"
It's the most impulsive thing he's ever done, reaching across the table for one wildly gesturing hand and giving her a reassuring smile.
"Rey, it's okay."
Miraculously, it works.
She smiles back and nods, takes a deep breath before trying again. "It's just... I've seen pictures of you. Like, a lot of pictures. Not in a weird stalker way, I promise, you're just always at one event or another.”
It comes with the territory, he supposes, of being the CEO of a successful startup, but saying that out loud would feel like too much of a boast. So he says nothing instead, choosing to focus on Rey. It's no hardship to devote all of his attention to her hazel eyes.
"And you always have this... intense look on your face— just like that, that's the one!" Rey says, pointing at him with a teasing little note in her voice.
"It's my resting bitch face," he deadpans, and when she lights up the entire diner with her laugh he's reminded once again (for what must be the hundredth time this week) just how much he wishes she could be the one, as impossible as it is.
Because it's always seemed a little impossible, the words on his chest - a little cruel, even, given the fact that he's the farthest thing away from conventionally attractive. But for them to have come from Rey, the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in all his life?
It's so far removed from the realm of possibility that it exists on another plane of existence entirely.
So he brushes away the thought once more, and waits for her to pick up her train of thought.
"What was I— oh, right. Anyway, so I'd only ever seen you with that look, but the day we met, when you first opened the door..." Her wide grin turns into something softer. "The look on your face when you saw me... I just have to ask, and please don't feel like you have to answer right now or even ever, I know it can be very personal, I just—”
And suddenly, he knows exactly where this is going.
It's like that day at the office all over again, only it couldn't possibly be more different.
The world doesn't stop, it just feels... suspended in this moment, in this little eternity that stretches out between before and after. His heart skips a beat. He can still hear her laughter echoing in his ears.
"Ben," Rey whispers, and it sounds exactly the way it did in last night’s dream of waking up by her side, even her smile is identical, and her eyes, her eyes sparkle just like they did in the golden light of dawn.
"Ben, what was your first thought when you saw me?"
The future fractures into a thousand different possibilities from this moment onward, and Ben lives them all in the span of mere heartbeats. And it's risky, fuck it's the biggest risk he's ever taken in his life, but even just a glimpse of the life they could have together is enough to give him the courage he needs.
"You were... I could hear you in my office, and Rey—" Can she tell, just by the way he says her name? She's still looking at him with those bright, hopeful eyes, and he thinks maybe she can.
"Rey, you were so angry," he says with so much more fondness and warmth in his voice than the memory deserves, but then she lets out the faintest little oh, her lips parted in surprise just as they'd been that day, and his heart soars with hope.
"And I'd dealt with my mother's angry employees before, of course I had, but you... you were nothing like what I expected. I took one look at you and even as you knocked my world off its axis, I couldn't help but think of how cute you looked even in your anger."
There, he's said it.
It's done, it's out there, it's... it's exactly the right thing to say, he realizes with an overwhelming swell of relief and joy as Rey smiles at him through her tears.
“She’s cute when she’s angry,” Rey murmurs, her voice thick with a swirl of emotions he knows must match the ones washing over him right this moment.
Because that's it, that's exactly what had crossed his mind upon seeing his soulmate – his soulmate - for the very first time. Which means... which means so many things, all of them wonderful and impossible and perfect, but for now all Ben can focus on is—
Rey muffles a snort into her palm as she struggles to meet his eye.
"Oh my god, I gave you the most embarrassing tattoo of all time, didn't I?"
And suddenly those words that have brought him so much pain over the years - cruel jeers whenever he had to go shirtless, sleepless nights wondering why someone would lie even within their own mind, lonely years hoping that maybe, just maybe...
Suddenly they're the most beautiful combination of words known to mankind.
He grins at her flushed cheeks, discreetly scopes out the rest of the quiet diner before he yanks at the v-neck of his tee to proudly show off her mark in all its glory, her very first thought upon meeting her soulmate: oh no, he’s hot.
Rey laughs and laughs and laughs, and then she reaches across the table to kiss him until he's sure he could die happy.
Two years later, he hears her laughter echoing down the hall once again, just minutes before they're supposed to meet at the altar. Ben grins to himself, knowing she's found out about the inscriptions he had engraved inside their wedding rings to match the words that had led them to each other.