Chapter Text
“This is Ben,” Poe said.
“He’s an old family friend,” Poe said.
“Be nice,” Poe said.
He is at every party, every bar hop, every Friendsgiving and wedding and funeral her little friend group has ever seen.
And she hates him.
He doesn’t fit in. He knows it, and yet there he is, every time, in a room full of engineers and mechanics and teachers in his three thousand dollar suits and perfectly polished wingtips, sipping from a glass of scotch twice his age.
He always brings a bottle large enough to share, the bastard.
“He doesn’t have anyone else,” Poe said.
And that cut the deepest.
Because she remembers having no one.
Her friends have big hearts, hearts that welcomed her when she was alone. Hearts that let someone into their circle with an assuredly empty chest cavity.
Soulless. Spineless. Heartless.
Beautiful.
She can’t shake it, the allure of him.
It’s an inconvenience to her hatred.
His striking features captured her interest at their first meeting. Poe was so excited that “Ben’s finally free for once” and he pulled her over to meet him and she looked up and up and up until she met the most gorgeous eyes she’d ever seen. And then, in true Rey fashion, she opened her mouth.
“You’re dressed a little fancy for a Poe party, no?”
And then he smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, and she wanted him in her bed that night.
“You’re not wrong.”
He can take a joke, good.
“I came straight from work. I’m a lawyer.”
She thought she saw a hint of a grimace as he finished his sentence.
She giggled in a practiced way, and shot back, “Well, as long as you don’t work for one of those horrid fucks like Snoke.”
And that was the night she discovered the feeling of all the air leaving a room.
She practically felt Poe’s dread and looked to him for an explanation.
And then she looked back at Ben, face pinched, large sip of his drink moving down his throat.
“Well. This is awkward,” he’d said.
And that’s how she found out that Ben was a piece of shit.
A piece of shit she was hopelessly, desperately attracted to.
It’s funny, though. Poe made such a big deal about Ben’s attendance at that first party, yet he hasn’t missed a single one since.
He’s always late, of course. Sometimes an hour, sometimes two or three, but he always makes an appearance.
She tells herself she’s not waiting for him when she decides to stay despite the inevitability of an early morning. Sometimes she dozes on the couch, only to wake up to the feeling of Ben sitting down beside her, soft voice in her ear.
“You look beautiful, sweetheart.”
In the moment before she opens her eyes, she can pretend to allow herself his words. It’s a precious thing, and then she rips it to shreds out of necessity.
“Fuck off, Ben.”
It’s a routine now, their verbal sparring matches. She leans into her anger, trades barbs until the room tells them to quit, or until one of them leaves, and then she goes home and shoves her vibrator into her cunt without preamble, rough and fast, because she thinks that’s how he would fuck her, too.
————
They’re at a sleazy club for someone’s birthday, and she wears the tightest, shortest dress in her closet and Ben shows up an hour late in his suit and doesn’t even bother to try and hide his appreciation of her outfit as he saunters over.
Her friends are on the dance floor, and she’s nursing a drink at the bar and wondering why not a single person in this club holds a candle to her forbidden fantasy.
He waves down the bartender, and it’s like being a douche constitutes a drink order because it feels like ten seconds have passed between when he materializes next to her and when he starts palming a glass of scotch.
“Rey.”
Just the way he says her name is heated.
“Ben,” she bites, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
“You’re the most gorgeous person I’ve ever seen.”
She sucks in a breath, and it’s not enough, so she throws back a shot, too.
“Let me fuck you.”
She wants him to.
“No.”
“Let me eat you out.”
Jesus fuck she wants him to.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I’d shut up if I was eating you out.”
She’s leaning on the bar for balance and telling herself the flush on her cheeks is from the liquor and that she can’t want him, she doesn’t want him, doesn’t want to give a man the time of day when his days are spent getting immoral, horrid, disgustingly rich men off. She has to shake her head to get rid of the images her mind conjures up in her drunken state.
“How logical,” she hisses through her teeth.
He chuckles, and she finally looks at him straight on, takes in the look on his face, the rumpled collar of his shirt, single button undone, tie loose. She wonders how it would feel to have that tie around her wrists, her eyes, her neck as he yanks her back on his cock—
“Can I at least have a dance?”
Something akin to desperation passes across his features. She tells herself it’s a trick of the light, flashing bulbs and liquor clouding her judgment, because in no world has she ever seen Ben Solo desperate.
“No.” She forces herself to say it, even though it burns her tongue more than the shot she took. She forces herself to make her way to the dance floor. She forces herself to find a partner, then another, and another, all the while sneaking glances at the bar where he sits, waiting, sipping at his drink, always watching, unashamed.
They both go home alone.
————
She goes on dates, friends of Poe and Finn and Rose thrown at her indiscriminately, Tinder matches, pretty people that she tries to like, tries to laugh with and talk with and picture a future with and not a single one lasts more than a few nights out. None go past a heated make out or two, or hands hastily shoved beneath shirts and underwear, the occasional lackluster orgasm with her mind far away. They never get naked, and no one fucks or gets fucked, and she curses herself for comparing every single one of them to him.
They’re too nice, and she hates herself for thinking it, and hates herself for craving something worse.
So there she is, at another party at Poe’s, except now it’s Poe and Finn’s, because now they live together, because the lives of her friends progress and she’s hung up on a man she loathes.
They’re in a circle in the living room and this time the couch is full when Ben walks in late, so he doesn’t sit next to her. She tells herself the swoop in her gut is absolutely not disappointment.
She’s halfway to drunk and most of the room is right there with her, and then Poe is shouting.
“We should play spin the bottle!” His words are a bit slurred and he’s leaned on his fiancé for balance and the room erupts with excitement except for her and Ben. She knows this because for some reason this suggestion compels her to look at him, and when she does, he is already looking at her, the same stare from the club, the same stare he affixes her with at every turn, like somehow his eyes will make her forget that he spends his days searching for loopholes in the law and arguing on behalf of the lowest of the low.
It’s then that she realizes she’s memorized his face enough to watch it change, has heard him speak enough that she notices the patterns alter.
The bags under his eyes have been getting darker.
His sarcastic quips have an unfamiliar tinge at the edges, subtle humor washed away by the acrid taste of bitterness.
She tries not to notice these things. As a rule, she tries not to notice him.
But he feels inevitable. She can’t look away.
Rose’s voice pierces their carefully curated connection.
“Poe, most of us are pushing thirty. Some pushed past it a while ago.” She is sitting next to Ben and gives him a good natured shoulder check and it knocks them both out of their reverie.
“I know!” Poe shouts. “It’s like a reclamation of youth!”
And then there’s an empty wine bottle on the coffee table, spinning.
Poe kisses Rose with an affectionate smack of lips, and everyone giggles, and Rose’s spin lands on her girlfriend Kay and their kiss lasts quite a bit longer, and the room cheers, and Kay gives Snap a kiss on the cheek, and Snap blows Finn a kiss from across the room, and then Finn’s spin lands on Ben.
Poe wags his eyebrows and mutters a drunken, “This I gotta see!”
Rey watches Finn amble across the room, grin wide, and then she looks to Ben, who is watching Finn’s approach with a matching grin of his own. Something lances through her, watching him smile for a reason other than her. Then she recognizes the ridiculousness of being jealous of something she doesn’t want and takes another gulp of her drink.
She doesn’t look away, though. She watches Finn bend down to level his eyes with Ben, seated in a cozy looking armchair. Finn crooks an eyebrow, and Ben reaches up to place a hand at the base of Finn’s neck, and then Finn pushes forward to land a very loud, wet kiss on Ben’s lips.
She watches Ben laugh into it before pressing deeper like it’s a game of chicken, and then Finn laughs too, and the noise echoes through the hoots and hollers of the rest of the room, and then they break apart and Finn lands a clap on Ben’s shoulder, as if to thank him for being a good sport, and her eyes are locked on Ben’s lips now, shiny with spit and even plumper than usual. Nothing could possibly tear her gaze away.
Nothing, that is, except for Ben’s hand spinning the bottle and it pointing at her.
The room goes silent. No one is a stranger to their feud, and she’s surprised no one considered this inevitability, and she can’t look at him anymore, because she can’t know what his reaction is to this twist of fate. And then she hears Poe’s voice.
“Well, we’ve played for a while, we could switch to something—”
“No.”
Oh. That was her. She said that, the utterance ripped from her of its own accord, as if her mouth could not stand the thought of not getting to feel his. She has an excuse now, an easy one, one no one could fault her for leaning into. Surely, she does not want to ruin the momentum of the game.
“It’s fine,” she continues, and it feels like she’s lost control. It’s freeing.
And then she looks up because now she needs to know Ben’s reaction, but it’s hard to discern when he is already standing up, stalking toward the couch with a single-minded determination that almost scares her.
No. That’s not fear in her gut. It’s much warmer.
And then his hand is on her neck, fingers threading through the strands of hair that escaped her buns. His pinky brushes the top of her spine, and she wonders if he can feel her shudder. He tilts her head up as he lowers, slowly, teasing, until their lips are scant millimeters apart.
He freezes. Waits. She realizes he is making her choose to close the gap. She wonders if it’s arrogance or kindness.
She surges to meet him.
It’s like something snaps when their lips touch; his grip on her neck tightens, and he forces her head to the side so he can part her lips with his tongue. A dam breaks, months of animosity and want poured into the kiss, heated bites, lips and tongues clashing. When he pulls her bottom lip between his teeth, she hears herself let out a noise somewhere between a gasp and a moan, and then Jannah clears her throat next to her on the couch, and she remembers where they are.
She pulls away, grabs his wrist to remove his hand from her neck, all but throwing it back against his body. He almost stumbles as he straightens, and she can’t meet his eyes before he wanders back to his chair.
She’s panting, her chest heaving, and she tries to reign herself in before she embarrasses herself further.
Faintly, she registers the suggestion from someone to pick a different game, and eventually the bottle is removed and conversation resumes, but she feels worlds away.
Her lips tingle with wrongdoing, like she’s swiped Pop Rocks across the tender flesh. They fizz and sting and it shouldn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good.
It doesn’t feel good because now she’s gotten a taste of what she’s denied herself. He kissed her like he never wanted to know a world without the taste of her lips, so thorough and wanting that she’s resisting the urge to shift in her seat, to press her legs together in a chase of pressure.
She looks at him again, because she is weak.
The dark circles still protrude, and the bitterness is back in his eyes, combating against dark, penetrative desire aimed directly at her.
He is, as always, undeterred, but at least has the decency to look slightly ashamed.
She goes home, head still spinning from the booze and the taste of him, just enough to do something reckless.
Rey (2:32AM): Ben?
She watches gray dots pop up on the screen as she reaches for her nightstand drawer, gripping her largest dildo and pulling her panties to the side. She thinks he might be too impatient to take them off.
The dots stop.
She dips it into her entrance, hissing at the self-imposed stretch.
The dots resume.
She pushes in another inch.
The dots stop.
She can’t hold back anymore, and buries the toy to the hilt.
And then—
Ben (2:35AM): What do you want, Rey?
Not what she expected, and not what she needs, and she certainly has no idea what she wants. She can’t say quit your job so I can fuck you guilt free, so what else is there?
Rey (2:36AM): Never mind.
She fucks herself on the dildo and remembers his mouth against hers, and wonders how it might feel sucking at her clit.
————
She’s on another date, Tinder this time. They’re at a bar, because where else does one go on a Tinder date? She wears a strapless dress and her favorite (only) lipgloss and tells herself that tonight will be the night she gets laid.
Bazine suggested the location, and she tries to ignore the fact that they’re in Ben’s neighborhood, blocks from his office. She tries to ignore it because she’s trying to ignore him, trying to come up with a way to not let this gorgeous, smart, sarcastic, infuriating man take up all of her mental real estate. She deserves to be happy, and Ben seems to have no trouble working for a monster, and apparently her friends feel bad enough for him that they are willing to give him a pass.
But she won’t.
People make choices, and if we don’t judge them for those choices, what’s left?
So she judges him as she pines, swirling complexities shoved away in favor of attempting connection with someone, anyone else.
She and Bazine sit at the bar, swapping occupations and hobbies, sipping overpriced cocktails, and then the universe decides to force her hand.
Ben walks in.
She chokes when she sees the door open, and Bazine asks if she’s okay, and she says of course because what else can she say?
She manages to keep up the small talk for about ten more minutes, their drinks slowly dwindling, until Bazine takes her last sip and drops two twenty dollar bills on the bar.
“So, would you like to come back to my place?”
Bazine is gorgeous, and Rey should want this. She should want to go home with a gorgeous person and fall into bed with them and not feel an ounce of hang up or regret.
And yet.
Her promise to herself vanishes into dust.
“I’m sorry, I just—” and she barely keeps her eyes from flickering to Ben, where he nurses a glass of whiskey on the other side of the bar. “No, thank you.”
Bazine takes it gracefully, dropping a kiss to her cheek and exiting the bar with her head high.
Rey finally allows herself to get a good look at Ben, and what she sees gives her pause.
He looks miserable, sunken eyes and a tortured pinch to his brow as he throws back his drink, motioning for a refill.
She walks over. Denying herself is an impossibility.
“Ben,” she whispers, sliding into the stool next to him.
“Rey.”
She loves how her name sounds in his mouth, like it coats his tongue with bitter sweetness.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m celebrating,” and the lack of amusement is evident in his tone, purely resentful, shocking in nature. “I’ve been offered a promotion at work.”
She sucks in a breath through her teeth. Seems there is simply no escaping the elephant they’ve concocted.
“How lovely for you,” she bites. “More chances to dirty your hands with the blood of the innocent.”
And then he does something she didn’t expect.
He laughs.
It’s a full belly thing, deep and throaty and a lot sad, like laughing is the only thing keeping him from bursting into tears. More than one patron looks in their direction, and she smiles at them with a pinched grimace, placing a soothing hand on Ben’s shoulder in an effort to cease his boisterousness.
He switches to wheezing, choked off gasps between words.
“Isn’t that just it?” he manages. “I’ll get to work for the real winners now. No more small potatoes for Ben Solo, Esquire.” He says the title with so much ire she could flinch, and he takes another gulp of his drink.
“I’ll get to defend the truest scum of the Earth now! Snoke wants to give me some of his best clients. The ones that make the news, you know?”
She does know. They’re the ones that stuck in her mind before she ever met Ben, the ones that had her putting her foot in her mouth when they were introduced. The ones that make you scream at your TV or your phone, that make you want to punch a wall for all they get away with, all the hurt they cause, and the smiles on their faces when they walk out of the courtroom, free.
“He wants to give me his favorite billionaire money laundering rapists and thieves.”
She recoils at that, never hearing him so impassioned, unrestrained, self-loathing so evident she’s shocked she didn’t put the pieces together before.
“And,” he continues like he hasn’t noticed, laugh turned choked up sob crawling from his throat, “I’ll get to work more hours. Because when is fourteen hours a day ever enough? Especially without a life to get home to at night.” The last sentence is whispered to his glass, reflective, almost to himself, and he lifts it in a mock toast.
“To Snoke!” His voice cracks as he says it, and Rey snatches the glass from his hands, downing the remnants before she can think about the implication.
Hands empty, he rests his elbows on the table, runs both hands through his immaculate, silky waves, and hangs his head.
“I’ve never known anything else,” he whispers.
When did her eyes get blurry? It’s impossible to say. She only knows that her throat lends a wet sound to her tone when she whispers, “Ben?”
He looks up, and his eyes shine too.
“So,” he says, clearing his throat, trying to subtly wipe away the trails of wetness on his cheeks, “what happened with your date?”
She’s startled by the change in subject, and it’s a moment before she regains her bearings.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why didn’t you leave with her?”
She sighs at being asked to explain the impossible.
“It just...wasn’t right,” she whispers, not meeting his eyes.
“Poe told me the group’s been trying to set you up for a while now.”
She hoped he was going to drop it, but he seems intent on seeing his line of questioning through, and she feels her walls crumbling.
“Is there no one good enough for you? What’s wrong with all of them?” The words might seem unkind on their own, but his tone is so nearly self-deprecating that she knows he doesn’t mean them unkindly. At least, not to her.
Her resolve crumbles into dust, and she says it before she allows her filter to to catch up with her.
“They’re not you.”
This time, he is the one to suck in a breath of surprise. She feels the strangest combination of giddiness and dread, to have named the nameless thing between them. But now it’s out in the open, uncontrollable in its acknowledged state.
“Rey?”
Her name again, this time with a lift at the end, a question she doesn’t know how to answer.
And then he continues.
“I’m thinking about quitting.”
The words lance through her like a hot knife through butter. He shudders as he says it, like he’s voiced the one thing he was never meant to consider, never meant to say out loud, and she finally, maybe understands him just enough.
He doesn’t have anyone else.
Everything has been said, except for the last thing.
“Ben.”
She says his name before she looks at him, because it’s the only way to push past the nerves. His gaze is already primed to lock with hers, eyes open and sad and eager and maybe just a tiny bit hopeful.
“Take me home.”