Chapter Text
“You don’t like me.”
“Don’t I?” The youngest delegate of the Galactic Senate raised her head and studied Ben Solo.
“I can tell.”
The Senator shrugged, not looking up from her datapad, hoping he’d think she couldn’t be bothered to pay him any mind. “I don’t even know you. How could I possibly determine whether you’re worth liking?”
“It’s fine, you know, you not liking me. Most people don’t like me. My own Uncle…well, you heard him.”
“Hm, yes,” she murmured, scrolling to the next document. “We work with what we have, I believe.”
“That is what he said.”
“You pout like a spoiled youngling,” Rey, Senator of Jakku, Niima Province said. She smiled despite herself, just for a moment, the expression there and gone again in a flash, but he saw it. She knew he did, because he let out a breath and relaxed into the sofa, the cushions groaning as he leaned back and stretched out his legs, his bare—bare—toes reaching the edge of the carpet.
“You’re going to fall,” she said, then scowled at the screen on the small device in her hand.
He wiggled his toes, tapping them lightly against the polished duracrete floor. “You should take a break.”
“Some of us have work to do.”
“Do we? Or are we simply avoiding one another’s company, Senator?”
“We’re in the same room, Jedi, and you’ve been here two standard hours.”
“Not a Jedi,” he muttered, ever the petulant child, no matter the years of his age. Rey lowered her datapad and looked at him. Pouting again (still?)—she knew it.
“Hm, yes, not-a-Jedi Ben Solo, scion of the Skywalker legacy, heir apparent to the great Jedi Master—”
He crossed his arms and tilted his head, studying her at an angle, mouth moving until a dainty, silver ball clacked against teeth, emerging to rest against his lower lip before retreating, there and gone in a rather literal flash. He wore a sleeveless tunic, armholes extended in long slits so that pale flesh and the barest, teasing hint of dark ink flashed when he moved, the neckline likewise slashed to below his breastbone, revealing swirling lines and the wink of metal on his chest. Everything about him designed for distraction.
“—Luke Skywalker,” she finished.
“Former.” He crossed his legs, one ankle resting atop the opposite knee, and leaned back, arms stretching along the back of the couch, reaching almost end to end. “Former heir apparent. Failed apprentice.” The wide legs of his not quite white trousers hung loose and flowing with every movement. She would have been tangled, likely fallen off the couch with one foot caught in the opposite leg’s covering.
Rey hummed and continued pretending to read the most recent amendments to the trade bill her committee was to review. “Yes, yes, a failure of a Jedi but, what was it, talented enough to protect me inside a locked room.” She didn’t bother to guard her tone (a dangerous habit, that, letting her true emotions, her own opinions, have free reign). Perhaps if she was someone important, like the Chancellor, or more exposed, like Senator Tico (the Younger), who had been in the midst of a hyper-jump when a threat became an incident, perhaps then she’d have more of a care.
An incident.
An explosion which only by chance missed causing any physical harm and it was simply an incident.
She couldn’t help wondering once again which of them was meant to be insulted by their current…predicament. After all, she was the youngest Senator by far, from a planet that until recently had no direct representation, and her own constituents had been more interested in sending her away than any possible good she might be able to bring them. Her security had been an afterthought, his assignment the last on the list, deemed almost unnecessary. Hard to say which of their abilities was more in question.
Solo stared at her, jaw flexing as he chewed on words fighting to escape him. Perhaps she should make some small effort not to pick fights with her (for lack of a better term) bodyguard.
And, more importantly, temporary roommate for the duration of the nebulous current threat.
He watched her, for a moment almost wary, studying her as if he weren’t quite sure yet whether she might be predator or prey. He frowned and the ring in his left eyebrow winked in the light. She wondered, possibly not for the first time, how many others she couldn’t see. How many rings and studs pierced his skin, how many lines of ink danced across his body as he moved? His mouth shifted, a twitch, perhaps even a smile, and he leaned forward, eyes dark (a trick of light and shadow, it must have been).
Rey looked away first, her body pricking with awareness. It was unsettling, his steady gaze, the strange glint of something there in his eyes. Whatever it was called out to her, beckoning that restlessness inside her that was the cause of all her troubles, the thing that once awakened refused to go back to sleep.
The thing that was her salvation—for a time…
“You don’t have to stay in the same room,” she muttered, eyes firmly back on her screen and the not-at-all enthralling proposal to redefine the allowed percentage of “ores of varying origin” to be mixed with Haysian smelt used for…what was this one again? Droid bodies? Starship flooring? Something Haysian smelt wasn’t even necessary for, surely.
“Shall I wait in your bed, then?”
“No!” she snapped, exiting the document. Frying pans. Haysian smelt handled frying pans. That didn’t even make sense.
He was smiling when she hazarded a glance in his direction. Pleased with himself, smugly amused and…well, she didn’t care to think too deeply on what else he might have felt.
“I don’t sleep there anyway,” she muttered too quickly, then closed her eyes as her mind caught up to her tongue. Shouldn’t have said that.
“Oh?”
The silence was too much, heavy and loud and waiting. Expectant. “It’s too soft, exposed.”
“Makes sense.”
It did, really. Too much, in a way, but the fact that he understood that…well, it was another of those unsettling things about not-a-Jedi Ben Solo. She set the datapad aside and stood, leaving the room. Away. She needed to be away.
Unfortunately, with the entire Galactic Senate on lockdown after a small explosion, the next room would have to do. Perhaps it was a good time for a bath.
***
Water.
Rey squeezed the excess from the rag and dragged it up her leg, ankle to knee, before squeezing again, careful that the excess ran back into the shallow pan.
A curious thing. Precious. As essential to life as the Force itself, and yet some worlds had an excess. Wasted it for decoration, fountains and falls and…she swirled the rag in the pan again and repeated the process on her calf.
The housing afforded her as Senator for Jakku was functional, but small. Outdated fixtures and equipment, a living space, bedroom, and refresher with worn but serviceable furniture and faded rugs she suspected had been scavenged from empire-era derelicts, possibly the same ones she’d once crawled about, seeking anything those before her might have missed.
She switched legs, standing on the small towel and propping her left foot on the stool, in the pan of warm water.
The ‘fresher was the sole luxury of her senate apartments. The newer spaces and private homes in the area featured state-of-the-art sonics or old but effective sanisteam hybrid showers, but this building, possibly only this wing, had water.
Hot, free-flowing, on demand water that tasted only the slightest bit metallic and not at all salty, unlike what was so hard-won on Jakku.
She had water.
Rey squeezed the rag over her knee and dragged it up her thigh.
She had water and yet she couldn’t quite break the habit of using it sparingly, couldn’t let herself forget that even this, a sponge-bath with an entire pan of fresh water, was a luxury.
A gift.
She’d used the spray one time, and had an anxiety attack before the tile was even damp.
She could hear the Jedi—or, she supposed, the not-a-Jedi—in the other room, banging about in what passed for a kitchen. I don’t like droids, he’d said flatly, when she explained about the cooking droids in the wing being shared, and usually reserved days in advance.
She’d told him he could cook then, expecting more of that sullen petulance, but met only with a short nod and a demand to know what herbs and cooking spices she had, and whether the salt was from Crait or Batuu (from a box, the salt was from a box, and beyond that he was welcome to read the label).
Her ears rang, pressure rising in a roar until she couldn’t hear anything else, and she shook her head. The ventilation and grav-pressure system must be having issues again.
Something hit the floor with a clang, and she met not-a-Jedi Solo’s shocked gaze. His eyes darted down, then back up, and he licked his lower lip, a nervous tic. “How—”
With a pop and a whoosh of air he was gone, and she almost wondered if she’d imagined it, only there was a spoon on the floor where he’d been standing. It most certainly had not been there before.
***
He wanted to talk.
There was food (and it did, in fact, smell amazing) and Solo wanted to let it get cold while talking.
Let him talk, but Rey would eat.
He glowered at his bowl, glancing up at her every few seconds, as if trying to gauge whether she’d be open to discussion.
By her third bite after his second try, he gave up with a huff, rolling his eyes and muttering to himself—allowing her victory, for the moment at least. She suspected it would come up again, this strange…shared hallucination? That must be it. The close quarters, the stress of the lockdown, the nebulous threat against the senate at large, it was all combining to make her think he’d been in the room and he…well obviously he’d imagined something else and there was no need to discuss it.
Better to have a full stomach and decent sleep.
She grabbed another hunk of bread.
***
Her bedroll and flat pillow from Jakku waited on the closet shelf.
“I hope you don’t expect me to make use of that.”
Rey glanced up to find the not-a-Jedi in the ‘fresher doorway, fragrant steam rolling out into the room from behind him. Damp tendrils of hair curled slightly in toward his face, ears poking out and a red stone winking from the top of one. Dark pants, not so dissimilar from the ones he’d been wearing earlier, hung low enough on his hips to reveal a trail of dark hair leading down from his navel, where a blue stone adorned a metal ring, and a stylized image of…suns? Moons? Something round, anyway…lay inked on either side. A drop of water beaded on his shoulder and ran down his chest, clinging briefly to the metal ring through his left nipple before falling to the floor.
Three lines of text in language she didn’t know, one with loops and whorls and flourishes, marched across one side of his chest, something in the same language curled over his ribs on the opposite side.
“It’s a poem,” Ben explained, stepping into the room and stealing all the air as a strange roaring started in her ears. “Part of one, anyway. We’ll need to be better friends for me to show you the final stanza.”
He’d washed off the dark liner from around his eyes, but they were no less striking for it. His lips shone, though, some sort of mask leaving them glossy and full.
Soft. They looked soft.
They were probably sticky. She hoped so. Sticky and tight and uncomfortable and…and…and she was going to stop thinking about his lips. And how miserable they probably made him. Yes, that.
She shook her head, and her ears crackled and popped. Perhaps she should summon a med droid in the morning. Resolutely ignoring him, the youngest member of the current Galactic Senate spread her blankets on the floor, tucked herself into the corner of the room, and settled in to sleep.
Then she heard the frame and mattress of the bed creak and groan, giving under the weight applied. The weight of her temporarily assigned, Jedi-adjacent bodyguard.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going to bed,” he replied, yawning exaggeratedly and settling into the pile of pillows and smooth sheets.
“This is my bedroom.”
“Hm, yes, more pointedly it is the only bedroom, and as we have established, the bed is too soft, so you sleep on the floor. Force knows I am not spending the night on the sad excuse for a couch out there.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the door. He bent one knee, folded an arm behind his head. Rey lay on her side, barely able to make out the bands of ink on his skin in the dimness of the room. It was too dark to be sure, but she thought she saw another curling line of ink creeping above the pants, to the crest of his hip. She almost fancied it glowed a faint blue against the shadows.
“Why are you here? Really?”
He turned on his side, eyes seeking hers in the shadows. “Why are you?”
“I was elected.”
“Mm.”
His breathing evened, lashes dark shadows on his cheeks, and she allowed herself to relax.
***
Warm. So warm. Too warm, really. It must be time to move to the other end of her AT-AT. Sandstorms would start soon.
Rey shifted, attempted to kick off the light blanket and turn to her side, seeking a cooler spot.
Trapped.
Something weighed her down, heavy, too hot, and she couldn’t move.
She struggled, pushed, fought.
Whatever it was got heavier.
The hold tighter.
Someone grumbled in her ear.
Rey’s eyes snapped open, and she gasped, scrambling back against the wall. Solo sat up in the bed, chest heaving as he stared at her, his eyes wild.
“How did you do that?” Solo demanded.
“Me? You were in my bed!”
“I’m still there.” He gestured at the blankets pooling in his lap. “Haven’t moved. Why were you in bed with me?”
“I wasn’t!”
He sat up, swinging his legs over the edge and bracing his hands on the edge of the mattress as he leaned forward. “Tell me what happened on Jakku. Tell me about the rebellion.”
Something about his voice made her skin crawl, an echo inside her cry out in longing. “I’m calling…someone…” she insisted, standing on shaky legs and stumbling to the main room.
“Rey!” Her guard’s voice echoed from behind her…and then suddenly he was there, perched on the small table in the same posture as her ears roared and her limbs prickled with sensation.
The Ben on the table surged to his feet, hand out, twisting slowly. “How are you doing this?”
“I’m not!”
“It isn’t me.” He took a step, just one, toes flexing against the bedroomcarpet-livingroomrug-howwasitboth. “Rey, tell me about the rebellion.”
She looked at his hand, raised her face to meet his eyes, and it was there, plain to see even before it escaped his lips and graced her ears.
“Please.”
She shook her head, backed up a step and turned—
—ran straight into his chest as sound rushed back in, the air processors almost deafening after that strange bubble of—
“Why is the Force connecting us, Rey?” he asked softly, voice and gaze and touch more gentle than she could have imagined of him. “How?”