Chapter Text
It’s not like she ever sets out to do it, but over the years, Rey Logan has managed to make her daddy cry more than once. He’s always quiet about it, like he is about most things. Doesn’t call attention to it but he doesn’t hide it, either. Clyde Logan keeps things close to his chest, but he doesn’t deny his feelings.
He always says Mama taught him that.
Then they look at each other all gross and dopey and…it’s sweet.
Rey decides she won’t settle for less than that, the way her parents look at each other, the way they seem to forget sometimes that other people are in the room.
Based on their first meeting (and second, and…well) she never would have thought Ben Solo would be that person for her.
The building is supposed to be air conditioned, and she supposes it is a little cooler than outside, but still: hot. She wipes her face off on her t-shirt again, and Mama frowns but then shrugs, patting Hazel’s back in the carrier.
Gosh, Mama must be half-melted. Rey pats at her pockets. She saw a vending machine in the mail room off the lobby. Surely even Mama won’t be opposed to a Coke before lunch.
Daddy brings in another box. “Where you want this one, Sweetpea?”
Rey frowns, unsure what it even is. “On the bed, I guess? I don’t even remember packing that one.”
“You didn’t.” She pulls the box open and gasps. “Daddy!” She stretches up to hug him and he laughs. “Are they really mine?”
“If you want ‘em.”
Rey pulls the top book off the stack and hugs it to her chest. “Of course I do!”
“Sorry to interrupt, but we need your car moved for the next family.”
Rey turns fast, cheeks heating with the glare of her anger, and glares at the guy in the doorway of her dorm room.
“Got two more trips,” Daddy says, giving Rey another squeeze and turning.
“I need you to unload and move your car.”
Daddy raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything. Rey follows his example and bites her tongue, no matter how badly she wants to tell him off.
“You did real good, Sweetpea,” Daddy says, and she’s so tired but she can’t not smile.
“Do you need anything, Honey? Are you warm enough?” Mama pats at the blankets and smiles, eyes a little misty behind her glasses.
“I’m fine, Mama.”
“That’s a bald face lie but I know what you mean.” Rey laughs a little bit and then groans because ouch. Mama clucks her tongue and adjusts the pillows.
Ben’s quietly arguing with Daddy, trying to get him to sit, and Rey cranes her neck, not wanting to miss a moment. Mama squeezes her hand as Ben settles the baby in Daddy’s hold and then looks at her, a proud, dopey grin just for her. Rey can’t help but return it and it’s like time slows down for a moment. He tilts his head, that silent nod that says go ahead, Sweetheart. Rey turns her head, smiling at Daddy and his first grandchild. “Bennett Clyde Logan-Solo,” she says. Mama sucks in a breath and squeezes her hand again then kind of pats it a few times, a fluttery little movement. Rey flips her hand and squeezes back.
Daddy looks up at her, glances at Ben, back to Rey and then down at Bennett, and Rey watches the first tear roll down and slip past his smile.
“Watch it!”
“Rusty, wait!”
Rey puts the microwave she just carried up two flights of stairs on top of the suitcase still open on her bed and spins around. She steps into the hall and scoops up her little brother just before he darts past the door, and glares at the asshole RA who yelled at him. Aunt Mellie hurries past him, breathing hard. “Sorry, he just took off on the stairs,” she says. “So much for letting him tire himself out in the grass.”
Rey fishes a Matchbox car out of her pocket (put there by Rusty earlier, of course) and sets him down in the corner by her roommate’s bed. He rolls it back and forth on the mostly empty desk as Daddy brings in her other suitcase and tucks it into the closet for the moment. RA guy has her refrigerator and just stands in the doorway glaring. “Well? Where do you want it?”
“By the outlet,” she mumbles. Rusty darts past her knees and RA guy freezes and puts the refrigerator down with a grunt.
“Russell Logan, you come sit with me!” Mama says, firm but not loud, still nursing Hazel in Rey’s desk chair. Rusty opens his mouth to yell about it.
“Rusty,” Daddy says, and her little brother huffs and sits on the floor at Mama’s feet.
“Sitter fell through,” Daddy says, and Rey watches the RA-asshat’s eyes flick to Aunt Mellie and then back. The way his jaw’s working he’s grinding his teeth. Fuck you, she thinks, wishing she could send the thought straight into his brain, because she sure as hell won’t say it in front of Mama.
“What’s left?” she asks Daddy, hoping nothing too valuable is sitting on the sidewalk without someone there to watch it.
“’Frigerator was the last of it.”
Rey nods and grabs it, planning to drag it to the corner outlet because she can’t quite get her arms around it or the right leverage to pick it up. RA Asshole kind of nudges her out of the way and picks it up. “Don’t scratch the floor,” he mumbles, then at a normal volume, “Watch the kid.”
Mama and Daddy go back to the house, laughing that they need to “rescue” Uncle Lee and Uncle Dayton from Rusty and Hazel. More likely all four of them are camped out eating all the cookies.
Ben’s parents are in and out, his mom in particular not wanting to go back to the hotel, but she’s making an effort not to crowd them. Hasn’t stopped her from ordering the nurses about but she’s trying. Kind of.
It’s not as strained as it used to be, but Rey can see it’s wearing on Ben, and she watches his shoulders uncurl as the sound of Leia’s low, sensible heels fades. Bennett coos in his sleep and Ben settles gingerly on the edge of her bed, arms around both of them and chin on Rey’s shoulder. She sinks into his warmth and studies their son’s features again.
“He has my ears,” she says with a frown.
“Thank goodness!”
“I like your ears, Ben.”
“Yeah, I know.” He presses his lips to her temple and strokes Bennett’s cheek with his pinky finger. “But you have terrible taste.”
“I married you.”
He just kind of hums and holds on a little tighter.
She yelps and sits straight up, nearly falling from the bed and then shrieking as the area rug her roommate, Rose, brought squishes under her feet. Someone pounds on the door again and Rose mumbles and lifts her head. Rey throws the door open. “What?”
Solo just points down, where water is seeping out under the door into the hallway.
Rey just points to the right, indicating the neighboring room that shares a bath with her and Rose. A shriek echoes and the door flings open. “Oh, heeeeeeey,” Kaydel Ko Connix says. “Was just going to look for you, Benny! Shower’s clogged and I was, um, shaving my legs and didn’t notice it overflowed.”
Her current boyfriend flings an arm over Kay’s shoulder. “No overnight visitation,” Solo says, then takes off his glasses (wait, Solo wears glasses? How did she never…not important). Rose stumbles over and leans around Rey.
“What the fuck, Kaydel? Were the two of you seriously fucking in our SHARED shower AGAIN?” Rose doesn’t wait for an answer, just grabs the cleaning caddy from under the sink.
Solo helps Rey clear the floor under the beds and check the closets, and he carries Rose’s carpet to the balcony by himself. “Maintenance can’t do anything about the drain until tomorrow, but at least it’s not completely blocked.”
Rey nods, too tired for more.
Rose is busy drying the various boxes and bins from under the beds. “Uh, Rey?”
Rey turns, crying out in dismay as Rose holds up a sodden paperback.
The Logan-Solo family Christmas is a little delayed, but even the kids are fine with it, busily cooing over their nephew and informing Rey that “Santa found us at your house just like you said, but we saved our stockings for when you came home.”
She doesn’t miss the way Daddy claps Uncle Dayton on the shoulder. Ah, so that’s who spent two nights assembling Hazel’s dollhouse and Rusty’s new bike while Ben and Rey were in hospital.
“I promise we’ll never smash birthday and Christmas together, little man,” Ben says, fastening the fresh diaper and swaddling their son once more.
Technically Bennett was born very late on the 23rd, but by the time they got released to go home it was so late on the 25th they all just went to bed. Hazel follows on Ben’s heels, tugging on his pants leg until he bends down to listen to her, Bennett curled safely in one arm.
“Daddy always reads this for me and Rusty,” she says, climbing up beside him and settling in. “Here, I’ll do the pages so you can read it for baby Bennett.” Rey meets Daddy’s gaze across the room, both of them smiling as Rusty perches on the arm of the couch and leans in close when Ben begins to read.
Rey mouths the words, recalling the first time she ever heard it, her first Christmas as a Logan before it was even officially her name, Daddy reading it even though Rey was “too old” to admit she liked it.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…
“You don’t have to do this,” Rey grumbles, sorting through the box of soggy books, Daddy’s favorites for various reasons.
Solo shrugs. “I’m here. Not like I’ll be sleeping anyway. Here, this one’s mostly dry, just that edge of the cover, see?”
Rey nods and takes the book, placing it into a plastic storage bin. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he mumbles, but he maybe doesn’t sound so asshole-ish.
Most are saved, a few will have wavy pages, but a couple of the older paperbacks are beyond hope, and one cracked leather volume of fairy tales splits apart when she tries to pick it up. Solo doesn’t even give her shit when she tears up.
And when he presents her with a small but surprisingly heavy box three weeks later, she discovers he has dimples. When she shrieks and throws her arms around his neck, he makes a little oof of surprise, but he doesn’t pull away until she does, and his cheeks are a little pink.
Not that hers aren’t.
“How um…how did you…” she gestures to the box.
“Hairdryer and clear contact paper,” he says, pointing to the wavery paperback. “Used bookstore off campus,” is what he says about the second paperback, a different copy but even the same edition as the one that was ruined. He taps the black leather binding. “I have a friend who works in the library. He made some calls and turns out there’s a whole bookbinding hobbyist movement.” Rey flips open the new cover, strokes her fingers over the handwriting. Some of the words are gone, but she traces their ghost, the note from the great-grandmother she never met committed to memory years ago.
For my Clyde on his tenth birthday. Never stop hoping or believing in love. Curses can always be broken.
Love always,
Grandma Sylvia
She’s not ready. It’s all too soon and she isn’t ready to let them leave. She’s a grown woman, married and with a baby of her own and a job she loves waiting for to come back at the end of her maternity leave, but once Mama and Daddy have everything in the car, kids in the back, and the larger gifts secured in the bed of Uncle Lee’s truck, she’s twelve years old again.
“I don’t want you to go,” she admits in a whisper, and Daddy wraps his arms around her again, rests his cheek on top of her head.
“And I don’t want to leave you.” He straightens, gently holds her back by the shoulders so he can look her in the eye. “You will always be my little girl, and I can’t say I love having you so far away, but you got a life of your own. You’re happy, and I can’t think if anything I’d ever want more for you.”
Rey sniffs and nods, pulling her sweater tighter around her flannel pajamas and shivering as the breeze kicks up, biting at her ankles, bare feet shoved into the first pair of shoes she found.
“Now, you tell your Mama bye and then get your butt in the house before you freeze.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, Rey Anne.” He kisses her cheek. “Go on, now.”
They pretend it’s just the cold making him sniff.
“Oh, fuck off, Solo! What do you mean you have nowhere to go? It’s Thanksgiving.”
“And my family’s all out of the country.”
“What about your friends?”
“What friends?”
“What do you—BEN!”
He rolls his eyes in exasperation. “What, Rey?”
“You must have SOME friends?”
“I don’t do friends.”
“Oh my God! Go pack a damn bag. I can’t believe this. I am SO telling Rose about this. No friends…” Rey throws her hands up and storms back into her dorm room. Rose left yesterday but Rey had a night class and didn’t want to drive home in the dark. Running into Solo in the hall had been a shock. She grabs her cell phone and calls home, knowing it’s fifty-fifty whether anyone will notice a text message before they actually get there.
“Hey Mama,” she says before she can second-guess herself. “I just found out my friend has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving. Can you squeeze in an extra plate and maybe have Daddy get my sleeping bag out of the shed?”