Chapter Text
Living with Bazine Netal had somehow been the worst nine months of Rey’s life. And she’d spent three years with a junk trader as a foster father.
It wasn’t even so much about the revolving door of significant others Baz brought home or how often she stumbled home drunk in the middle of the night. It was the inconsideracy of her nature. The piles of dishes left in the kitchen - which made no sense because the garbage was full of takeout containers; the hair and makeup sprinkled along the bathroom sink after a two hour occupation. Their small two-bedroom apartment didn’t give a lot of leeway for clutter in the shared space, but somehow Baz managed to occupy all of it.
Rey had taken to keeping her toiletries in a small shower caddy that she kept in her bedroom, as Baz’s products had slowly encroached over the entirety of their bathtub shelves until Rey’s products were left on the basin floor. She washed her own dishes without touching Baz’s, she kept her towels, plates, bowls, cups, and cleaning supplies in her closet.
Mostly she just stayed in her room, unless she had to cook or wanted to watch television when Baz wasn’t home.
Rey had once slept in a cemetery, yet answering that ‘roommate wanted’ ad posted on their university’s online forum was still perhaps one of the worst decisions she had made to date
So when Baz’s flavor of the week began making a steady appearance in their apartment, Rey preferred to keep herself scarce and out of the way.
And then she met him.
Rey was struck by him initially. Not that Baz ever brought home unattractive people, but this new one was just so much. He was massive, taking up so much of their tiny apartment with his broad, muscled frame. Wavy black hair hung in perfect coifs around his long, intriguing face.
But it was his eyes that were the most startling.
She walked in that first day and was able to slip by before he noticed her, talking to Baz across the kitchen counter. She only left her room the rest of the night to use the bathroom and grab food after she was sure they’d gone to bed, tiptoeing into the kitchen with one of her plates to heat up leftovers.
When she turned around to set the food down, he was standing in the entryway, and she nearly threw the plate she was so startled.
“Goodness,” she breathed, shaking her head. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”
Too quiet, for a man his size.
His hair was a mess, framing his face in the most perfectly unruly manner. Sex hair, her mind supplied unnecessarily as he stepped around her to grab a glass from the cabinet and fill it in the surprisingly clean sink with tap water.
He looked down at her from his heightened vantage point, and she was struck completely by his eyes. They were a mesmerizing mismatch of green and brown, surprisingly bright despite how intense the rest of his features were. He responded, and she had to clear her throat as she looked away.
“Sorry?”
“I’ll try not to scare you again…”
“Rey,” she supplied, breathlessly leaning over her plate of food on the counter as he moved behind her.
“My apologies, Rey,” he said, his voice a deep velvet. Liquid in the way it wrapped around her name, something she always found so simple before this moment. Now, it was almost nothing to imagine how it might taste when he panted it against her mouth. “I’m Ben.”
“Nice to meet you, Ben,” she blinked, unable to meet his gaze as it prickled against the back of her neck. She cut a corner of her square of lasagna, shoving the fork into her mouth as he drank his glass of water just feet away.
“Nice to meet you as well, Rey,” he responded, the glass clinking in the sink beside her as he set it in the basin. His voice was liquid smoke as he spoke just beside her. “I hope to see more of you.”
“I’m sure you will,” she responded, hating the way her voice suddenly sounded so small. “Since you’re dating Baz, and all.”
He almost seemed to pause behind her, though she couldn’t be sure, so enamored with her reheated lasagna.
“Right.” His voice, so unnecessarily sultry just a moment before, was suddenly hard in his response. “Good night.”
She barely squeaked out a reply before he was storming away, the footsteps she’d not heard when he entered almost thundering through their apartment. Baz’s bedroom door opened and shut, and Rey practically shoveled the remainder of her late dinner into her mouth, washing the plate and fork quickly before slipping back into her bedroom.
Her heart hammered in her chest all the while.
It showed no signs of slowing.
...
She tried not to think about Ben the next day as she shuffled through her classes, or the day after during her shift at the cafe. She tried, but he still infiltrated her thoughts during lulled hours, digging into her mind like an insect burrowing into the warm dirt. It dropped seeds of spiraling thoughts, planting roots deep in her brain that were impossible to pluck. Their brief encounter left an imprint on her mind like a brand, having her analyze and overanalyze the interaction until she felt bent on driving herself mad.
Why was he affecting her so deeply? Gods, she didn’t even know this man.
What, suddenly she was all weak-kneed for a broad chest and a deep voice? She encountered hundreds of broad chests and deep voices between school and the cafe.
Pull yourself together, she told herself as she lugged her heavy backpack up the three flights of stairs outside the apartment. He’s just an attractive dude. He’s dating your shitty roommate. You don’t even know him.
And yet her heart still skipped a beat when she opened the front door and found Ben and Baz lounging on the couch. His eyes seemed to zero in on her as they darkened. Noticeable even in her quick glance before she tucked her face to hide the blush spreading over her cheeks.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled, darting in front of the T.V. and down the hallway to her room.
“That’s my roommate, Rey,” she heard Baz explain before she closed her bedroom door. “She’s super weird, sorry.”
If Ben responded, Rey blocked the sound with the click of her lock. The sigh that left her lungs seemed to empty them completely, stress she didn’t know she’d been carrying weighing heavily on her shoulders. Her backpack fell to the ground with a dull thud, and Rey sank down with it a moment later, forehead pressed against her knees.
What the fuck was she doing?
Taking a few minutes to just breathe, Rey grabbed her backpack, digging out the contents for her secondhand laptop and textbooks. She needed to pull herself together and get through her homework. Finals were coming up soon, and then it was just a few short months before she could move out of this shitty apartment and away from her shitty roommate and her shitty roommate’s inarguably attractive significant other that probably wouldn’t even be around by then, based on Baz’s dating history.
Groaning, Rey hauled her things up to her desk, sitting down heavily. She pulled her bag of snacks from her desk drawer and began thumbing through her statistics homework.
...
It was three full hours and a burgeoning headache later that she finally pulled from the depths of homework hell, rubbing her temples together and stretching. Her stomach grumbled, clearly dissatisfied with her decision to avoid the common area of her own apartment while Ben was here.
It was an odd line of thought that she assigned this date of Baz’s a name. All the others were all flavor of the week or Baz’s latest toy, never human enough to her to warrant any further preoccupation in her mind. Yet Ben felt like a person to her. A different type of other in her brain. Not Baz’s boyfriend at all - Baz was barely even part of the equation.
That line of thinking was terrifying in how innocent it felt. As though Baz played no role in her introduction to Ben.
With a sigh, Rey stood, stretching her stiff muscles again and moseying toward the door. In a completely embarrassing moment of fear, she pressed her ear to the thin veneer of her door, listening for any unsatisfactory sounds that might be emanating from the other side.
It was… remarkably quiet.
She slipped out, slinking down the hallway like an assassin might creep up on their prey. Taking a deep breath and feeling absolutely ridiculous, she squared her shoulders and walked into the common space.
Ben and Baz were still watching television, although they’d accrued takeout containers at some point during her homework reverie.
Ben’s eyes locked onto her form in the darkened room, tracing over the shadowed outline of her body. Eyes heated even in the dim light.
“Hey, Rey,” Baz greeted, making Rey pause. She looked at her roommate, who was still watching T.V. “Getting dinner?”
“I was planning on it,” Rey said cautiously.
“Wanna watch T.V. with us?”
Her head was reeling. Blinking several times, she didn’t even hear her own response as she slipped into the kitchen. Outside of a few painful attempts at bonding when she’d first moved in, she and Bazine had done well to ignore one another’s existence, going about their daily lives without the need that some roommates felt to be as close as possible. Rey liked it this way. It was natural, leaving few opportunities for scarring when they parted in a few short months.
Bazine was throwing a wrench into their silent understanding.
And yet.
With her leftovers reheated, Rey’s feet moved automatically into the living room. She sat very primly beside Ben, who had moved his empty food containers off the coffee table and onto the floor. She grimaced but said nothing, watching some romcom that felt supremely out of place with her own inner turmoil. She ate her food silently, listening to Baz’s quiet laughter, trying and failing immensely to focus on the plot.
Because Ben was just beside her.
Even though he’d moved to accommodate her, he was still overly large, taking up what felt like half the couch just to himself. One arm slung over the back behind Baz, he stretched out comfortably, and Rey practically shoved her knees into her mouth trying to be smaller.
If she touched him, it was over.
What, exactly, would be over she couldn’t properly identify, finishing her food and settling back against the couch. Cursing herself all the while for her own idiocy in agreeing to being here. She could have made an excuse about homework, or work, or literally anything else that would allow her to squirrel away in her room. But no, no, she couldn’t allow herself even a modicum of relief when Ben sat silent and stoic beside her. Huge and massive and quiet and so unbelievably beautiful she wasn’t sure he was real.
Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben.
His name played in her mind like a needle skipping across a vinyl record. Baz stood abruptly, collecting their empty to-go containers and taking them into the garbage while complaining about the clutter. Wringing her hands in her lap, Rey chanced a glance at him from the corner of her eye.
He was already watching her. Those intense, depthless eyes, trained on her like she was the only thing he could see. Like his girlfriend wasn’t currently rinsing their used cutlery in the sink.
Her mouth parted, and the way his eyes darted to her lips was unmistakable.
Breath stuttering in her chest, Rey licked her lips, pulling the bottom one between her teeth. He tracked every miniscule movement, those eyes missing nothing.
Working up enough nerve, she found herself moving unconsciously closer to him.
“Ben?” Her voice was hoarse, and the way his shoulders shook when she broke the silence had her hand broaching his from across the cushions of the couch.
“Do you guys want anything to drink?” Baz called, and Rey jumped, retreating from Ben’s body and looking toward the kitchen.
“I’m okay,” she called, her voice small, glancing at Ben just in time to catch his furrowed brow, eyes darting toward the kitchen with a darkness she wasn’t sure she didn’t imagine. She curled against the arm of the couch, not as far away from Ben as she’d like, wondering how awkward it would be if she retreated into her room now.
Baz sat back down, Ben adjusting to her revisited presence and moving closer to Rey surreptitiously. Unpausing the show, Baz kicked her feet up onto the cushion, making Ben adjust again and closing the already small gap between them.
He stretched his legs out as Rey shifted awkwardly, ankles crossed with her toes tucked against the ground.
And then.
And then.
Like Baz wasn’t sitting right beside him. Like they were alone, two people circling around a mutual attraction that they were both too shy to acknowledge. Like he didn’t currently have a hand around his girlfriend’s shoulders, around her roommate’s shoulders.
Ben pressed his leg against hers.
Every muscle in her entire body locked up all at once, stiffening beneath her skin like heat-blasted clay. She froze, holding her breath, waiting to see if it was an accident. If he’d move his leg once he realized how firmly he’d pressed it against her own. Once he realized his mistake.
But then she looked at him.
He was facing straight forward, eyes locked on the screen as another romcom that Rey had no interest in played in bright colors and artificial laughter. Baz had moved, tucking herself against his chest, shoulders shaking with mirth that Rey couldn’t hear with the way her blood was rushing around her ears. His eyes darted to her, quick but unmistakable, the intensity searing beneath her skin in strips of fire. Lasers scarring the ground of her psyche.
He pressed his thigh more firmly against hers.
Intentional. Purposeful. A silent affirmation that whatever jumbled mess she had going on in her chest was at least partially understood. Perhaps even echoed in his own.
Baz snuggled closer to Ben.
Rey barely hesitated before she pressed back, her muscles flexing in response to his physical inquiries.
Yes, yes, I see you. I see you.
She watched the way Ben inhaled with a sharp gasp, one unnoticed by Baz as she watched this shitty movie. He nudged her thigh with his, exhaling slowly when she nudged back.
The heat beneath his denim jeans seeped beneath her thin cotton pants, suffusing her veins with the warmth of his body in this singular form that he was allowed.
The intensity mixed with the innate impropriety of their predicament and Rey felt her entire body heat from the inside, arousal building between her legs as her abdomen clenched. He was so impossibly close, and still just out of reach. Like her fingertips were straining, skimming an idea that was lightyears away.
Ben moved again, a hand settling on his thigh. She watched, enraptured, as his fingers drummed against his jeans. A sigh heaved its way out of his chest, his form sliding the couch a few inches in the most calculatedly relaxed action.
It brought his hand against her thigh, his pinky now sliding against her yoga pants every time he moved. Continuing to drum his fingers, acting as though nothing was amiss.
As though she wasn’t seconds away from combustion beside him. As though every slither of his skin against her clothed leg wasn’t sending licks of heat across her pelvis, the rigidness of her spine refusing to relent into a more comfortable position out of fear that she’d melt right then and there. Melt right into him, mirroring the way Baz was curled against him with her head on his shoulder.
On her boyfriend’s shoulder.
It was like a cold bucket of ice water dousing the heat that had been engulfing her flesh. His thigh, his pinky were still touching her, but it was wrong, wrong, wrong. He wasn’t hers, he was Bazine’s. And yes, he was touching her; yes, there was this unbelievable attraction, this magnetism she’d never before experienced. This undeniable heat that built between them with the barest touch of clothed skin. A bonfire of sensation that threatened to tear her apart, build her back together for this man she barely knew.
He wasn’t hers.
A painful resolve shot through her like a bottle rocket, and Rey closed her eyes. She basked in his short attentions for another moment longer, her own pinky, already against her leg, stretching of its own accord.
It brushed against his, sparks igniting from this infinitesimal contact that sent pins and needles up the entirety of her arm.
She gasped. Listened to his echoing gasp beside her.
And she stood up.
“Sorry,” she breathed, sparing both Ben and Baz the briefest of glances. “I have to work early, I should probably get to bed.”
She didn’t work tomorrow. Saturday was her weekend day off, but chances were that Bazine didn’t know that, so Ben didn’t know that.
Fuck, she thought, practically running into her bedroom and slamming the door shut. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
She’d need to be out of the house first thing tomorrow morning.
Homework at the cafe, her mind quickly filled in, and she sighed as she ripped her t-shirt over her head, pants and underwear following.
Chest heaving like she just ran ten miles, Rey sprawled across her bed, letting the cool air of her bedroom pebble her nipples and race across her overheated skin.
Her hands worked automatically, fingers parting her lower lips as she circled her own clit with a determined precision. She tried desperately to shove any thoughts of beautiful black hair and endlessly deep eyes from her mind, using the arousal brought about by the firm press of his thigh against hers to lubricate her fingers without thinking about him.
Yet, minutes later when she came, she bit her knuckles to stifle the groan of his name.
...
Sometime later, once she’d put pajamas on and paced a hole in the floor of her bedroom, a telltale knocking began beating against her wall.
The rhythmic thump, thump, thumping had her confused for a half-second - as many times as Baz had people over, Rey had never heard her having sex - before Baz’s breathy whines and groans came muffled through their shared wall.
Rey wanted to scream.
She had no right to bear the jealousy currently beating against the inside of her lungs. There was nothing to be jealous of.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her phone and headphones, plugging her ears to block out the sound.
If there was any jealousy, it was regarding the fact that Baz was getting railed within an inch of her life right now and Rey hadn’t been laid in months. Her workload at school and her strenuous hours at work made even a quick hookup nearly impossible to schedule.
It had nothing to do with the man currently fucking Baz. Nothing.
When the thumping crescendoed and Baz practically screamed her release, Rey turned the volume of her music up, pulling a pillow over her face as though it would stifle the memory of the sounds as they circled between her ears.
It was another half hour before she moved again, aggressively tugging the buds from her ears once she was certain there was no more noise to studiously ignore.
She opened her door just as Baz’s bedroom door flew open, Ben standing in the muted illumination coming from the kitchen’s stovetop light that Bazine always left on. He blinked at her, as though surprised at her wakefulness. As though he hadn’t just had her roommate screaming loudly enough to wake the neighbors.
It was another moment before she realized that he wasn’t wearing a shirt. Or pants. The expanse of his chest on full display, littered with moles, heaved a breath as he took her and her short pajama shorts and her crop top in.
Eyes danced over the length of his impossibly long, impossibly thick legs protruding from a pair of black boxer briefs that left very little to the imagination.
It was… a prominent bulge. And suddenly she understood, to an extent, the ecstasy that had bled through her bedroom wall a short while ago. She was surprised, in fact, that she’d avoided overhearing anything prior.
Ben cleared his throat, and mortification shot through her veins as her eyes darted up to his. They were looking at her with a clustered mix of emotion she couldn’t detangle at the moment, looking instead at her hands against her stomach. She gestured vaguely to the bathroom.
“You can go ahead,” she said quickly, swallowing down the jealousy just as it attempted to rear up again.
He seemed to hesitate in her peripheral. Like he was giving her another moment to change her mind, to dart into the bathroom before him and stake claim on territory that is ninety percent Bazine’s.
His murmured, “Thank you,” made her squeak out an incoherent response as he stepped past her, closing the bathroom door with a click that felt like a finality. She thought to step back into her room. To ignore the demands of her bladder and lie down and stare at the ceiling as it crept closer and closer to her anxious body.
Then the toilet flushed, and the sink ran, and the door opened again, and she had to pretend it didn’t sting just a little when he stepped past her without another word.
…
“How was work?” Baz asked as Rey came through the door with her schoolbooks. She blinked in surprise at her normally nonchalant roommate as she extinguished candles around the living room, a pep in her step that Rey could probably contribute to the previous night’s excavations.
Work. Right. She’d been at work. Not working, but Baz didn’t need to know that.
“Oh, it was--”
“It’s so funny,” Bazine interrupted, making Rey clamp her lips shut. “I invited you to watch T.V. yesterday because I wanted to make things awkward for Kylo, so he’d get the hint and dip out, y’know? But then, last night, he fucked me harder than I’ve ever been fucked in my life.”
Her roommate spun on her heel, eyes alight with a mischievous excitement that made Rey’s lungs constrict. “I’m not sure why, but it’s like you’re my lucky little sex charm or something!”
The smile forced out was more of a grimace, but Bazine paid her no more mind as she grabbed her purse and keys from the floor and end table, respectively.
“Anyway, I’ve got a date with my Chem T.A. so I probably won’t be back until late tonight. See ya!”
The door shut before Rey processed the last forty-five seconds of conversation, sitting heavily on the couch in the disarray of their living room. There were so, so many reasons to be upset with Bazine. Her lack of tidiness, her disrespect for Rey in their shared space, her inconsideracy, the fact that she would eat Rey’s leftovers despite never having spent a penny on groceries.
All of these things tally up to a horrible roommate.
And yet she’d never been so angry with Bazine as she was in this moment. This unscrupulous anger that festered from the callous words of a selfish woman who bragged about her boyfriend’s dick game and then breezed by as she prepared for a date with another person.
And it made no sense. Because it wasn’t her business. And Rey had learned at a very young age to keep her nose out of anyone else’s business that wasn’t her own. As long as she kept herself in check, keeping up on her studies to propel herself to the life she hoped for, what anyone around her did really didn’t concern her.
But the anger wouldn’t dispel.
She made herself some lunch as she stewed, having nothing to distract her. Homework completed and submitted, she sat on the couch in the untidy living room and turned on Netflix.
She had just pulled up The Great British Baking Show in an attempt to calm down when there was a knock at the door.
It was automatic, the way her hand wrapped around the baseball bat just beside the door. The one Baz had scoffed at when she’d set it there, but something Rey wasn’t willing to part with after her upbringing. She’d scared a number of package delivery persons with it, but it was in her hand all the same when she yanked the door open.
And there stood Ben.
His chest was heaving, like he’d just run up the steps outside their apartment. His stance was wide. The stance of a man that had something to say, something that needed to be heard, to be witnessed.
He took her in, eyes roving over her body much as they had the night previous as she stood in her bedroom doorway. He barely even glanced at the bat in her grip. And she refused to see it as an acceptance of her person, no matter how much she wanted to romanticize that this stranger knew her.
“Bazine isn’t here,” Rey said automatically, before Ben could ask.
“I know,” he answered. Her mind jumbled again as the judges on the television behind her drolled on about the pumpkin pastries the bakers were meant to perfect for their technical challenge. Like a short-circuit, two neurons attempting to connect and make sense of the way this day was progressing.
“She’s on a date with someone else,” Rey blurted, immediately cursing herself. Why would she say that? Now she was involved. Now she’d made it her business.
“I know,” Ben said again, shocking her further. She blinked at him, and the surprise must have been evident on her face. “Rey, I’m not an idiot. I knew exactly the type of person Bazine was before she decided to pursue me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“You don’t,” she scoffed. Ben leaned against the doorframe, those intense eyes piercing straight through her chest. They sunk below her flesh, stripping her away piece by piece until she was nothing but nerve endings. And then further, seeing every atom of her genetic makeup.
She’d never before felt so bare.
“Can we talk, Rey?”