comment with your character's name and canon in the subject header. use rng or pick one of the options below for your au scenario.
I. living conditions
01. my roommate’s boyfriend is staying over so can I please sleep on your floor 02. all our friends are drunk 03. we live in halls opposite one another and i keep seeing you change in the window please close your blinds 04. you’re the RA and you’re trying to bust me for having hermit crabs 05. you’re baking cookies in the communal kitchen at 3am and I’m angry but also really hungry 06. clearly we’re both really uncomfortable at this party 07. you peed on my car. you were drunk. I was in the car. there will be hell to pay. 08. my friend dragged me to this party and I just saw my ex quick make out with me 09. sorry my roommate puked on your shoes 10. my roommate borrowed your contraband hotpot and managed to set it on fire
II. chance meeting
01. it’s pouring and my final paper is in my backpack so I guess we’re stuck under this tiny awning together. do you think they’d deliver pizza here 02. waiting outside for pizza to be delivered but both of ours is super late 03. I know I keep coming to this [cookie/coffee/etc.] shop and for some reason it’s always your shift but don’t you dare judge me I need this for my sanity 04. I found your USB drive still in the computer (and potentially regret finding out what's on it) 05. you decked me in the head while you were playing frisbee golf 06. your school mailbox is right next to mine 07. what do you mean we’re under a tornado warning?
III. campus community
01. I’m really passionate about this cause and I will give you this flier if I have to shove it down your throat 02. it’s 3 am and I’m still in the library studying for finals and I’m losing my grip on reality and I think I just saw a ghost 03. we’re the only two people in this club. what is this club even for 04. humans vs zombies, all bets are off, friendships mean nothing 05. I thought I was the only one who liked the waffle station in the cafeteria 06. we’re studying in the library and there are two people very obviously fucking in the stacks and we keep sharing embarrassed glances 07. what are you doing at this table at the career fair 08. I saw you sneaking captain crunch and cutlery out of the dining hall 09. my computer crashed and you’re the student worker at the IT center 10. we’re both on athletic teams that aren’t as cool as the football team and they give us shit 11. you’re part of the guerrilla theatre club on campus and crashed my class for a performance
IV. credit hour woes
01. hey I have to [photograph/draw blood/film/insert major here] someone for class, will you be my guinea pig 02. we’re the only people who ever talk in discussions it’s awful 03. group project 04. both of us turned up to the wrong room for this lecture and neither of us know where it's supposed to be 05. we’re both donating blood in the blood donation van in the quad to get out of the same class 06. wait, I actually have a competent lab partner? 07. waiting for office hours 08. we started racing up the three flights of stairs to class for some reason and we can’t stop 09. vicious battle over the only left handed desk in the room
V. limited resources
01. you keep using my preferred shower stall in the floor bathrooms when I’m trying to get ready for class 02. you keep parking in the space outside my student house you absolute asshole 03. you're the only person in the room when i break the printer and i'm panicking (so don't be a dick about it please) 04. neither of us bought the expensive textbook but there is only one copy in the library and it can’t leave the building 05. this awesome professor only has one TA slot and we’re rivals 06. you keep reserving the good study room in the corner of the library with the windows 07. I’ve been sitting in this seat all semester why did you decide to sit in it today 08. you’re REALLY GOOD at using the right search terms for the academic databases and I’m on a deadline 09. we’re always at the fitness center at the same time and end up competing on the treadmill 10. can I borrow a dryer sheet? I ran out and the ones in the vending machine give me a rash
[ Jumbo sized lotion, obviously, in this college AU thriller ft. criminal scum.
The apartment isn't so spacious that she can't detect his heavy footfalls. He's a large man, after all. Thudding strides come with the territory. Impatient, she's swinging her legs over the side of the bed without waiting for him to find her, leaving destruction in the form of rumpled sheets and dirty footprints in her wake.
If she wants the truth, she can't wait for him to come to her, formulating a lie to stave off her suspicions and soothe her. The book is still in her hands — an old philosophy text with dog-eared pages and that old book scent clinging to its bindings — cradled protectively to her chest when she cuts him off in the divide between kitchen and living room. As if a mocking reflection of it, his hands dwarf the manilla envelope in his grasp.
Her eyes skip downward and raise to his, knowingly. Accusatory, almost, with how it bores into him and aims to pin him in place. Perhaps she has. There is nowhere for him to escape in his apartment, and she won't be chased off so easily with evasions and half-truths. A poorly planned idea, she realizes; cornered animals are always the most dangerous, lashing out in the most furious ways.
Its contents are a mystery, but she isn't so sheltered that the sight of an unmarked package doesn't warrant skepticism. As a teenager, Plutt had coerced her into enough of his back-alley trades and covert dealings for her to draw a connection, a conclusion based on her own experiences. As an adult, she has still been roped into his business, kept there by his threats to expose her involvement and consequently ruin her chances at a scholarship and a future without him.
Whatever Ben thinks of her, she isn't an idiot. But it isn't the envelope she tries to pry off of him. ]
Ben. [ It would be solid, if not for the slight waver in her voice. Not fear, but something she can't name. Something that feels close to betrayal, ridiculous as it is when she reminds herself she has not known him long. When she reminds herself that, perhaps, she doesn't know him at all. ] Or is it Ren?
[ His father had mentioned him as Ben in passing. The school directory lists him as Ben Solo, but that doesn't account for which name he goes by, which is the truth and which is the lie. Her voice drops, lowers, quieter. It isn't quite imploring, but it does edge toward desperation. Desperation driven by her apprehension.]
Who are you?
[ That's the million dollar question, isn't it? It's a simple question with what is likely to be a not-so-simple answer. ]
[ Something sticks in his throat as she segues to that first question. He recognizes a power move when he sees it. Snoke and Hux are full of them. To hear it come out of Rey's mouth leaves him feeling a little disgusted with himself for having allowed this world he's a part of to taint her already. No, that's not right. Maybe she was always this way and it simply brought it out of her.
Whatever it is, it doesn't make him want to give her a straight answer. To cave to her demands. It makes him want to be contrary and unpleasant and stoke the frustration he's feeling after dealing with Hux. He drops the envelope on his desk, then glances at the book in her arms. ]
You were in my bedroom.
[ Conversationally. As if it were somehow equal in weight to what she is asking of him. Surely the credentials he has on file with the university answer her question. He is, as always, Ben Solo. He wants to again feel like Ben Solo. She made him feel like Ben Solo. ]
What conclusions have you arrived at?
[ He decides to ask her that first. Obviously she has concocted something sinister in her mind, used it to levy that look of mistrust on him. He doesn't much want to humor it when she has denied him the benefit of the doubt after insisting over and over that she was interested in him. She wanted to know more, and now looks repulsed to have stumbled across it. ]
[ It isn't the type of dumbfounded 'what' that demands clarification. Rather, it's upset, small, a barely audible syllable as she remains, unblinking, in the doorway. What said in disbelief, unable to comprehend the analytical approach he takes to her. Contrasted against the emotion building as a lump in her throat, tightening her fingers against the hard cover of his book, it seems a cold, indifferent regard for her simmering distress.
Surprisingly lax for a man that has been caught, red-handed, pretending to be someone he isn't. Immediately, she decides she despises the callous formality of it. It isn't the first time he has regarded a critical conversation as though it were a unit he was teaching, and it undoubtedly will not be the last, but it's a trait she can't stand. ]
If I had made any conclusions, why would I still be standing here? [ To Rey, it's a perfectly logical argument that he hasn't considered, firmly spoken to suggest as much. The gears in her mind have been turning, yes, but she doesn't want to travel down those dark corners and assume the worst. She can't. Not when she had thought the best of him, liked him in spite of his obvious flaws. Massive prickishness included. ] I need to hear the truth from you.
[ Her lips press together, tightening. It is, she surmises, the only way she can begin to trust him in this. ]
I don't want you to play games with me.
[ Recovering, that comes out harder, more assertive. She has been on the receiving end of that before, albeit never romantically. It hurts more, however, potentially coming from him as he tries to fish out what she thinks she knows. ]
[ Starting there is easy, so it's what he allows to come out. No game but the one that Snoke is running, that Snoke has pulled him and Hux into. Two young boys, drawn in from prestigious families, made to serve his political agenda through blackmail and skewed morals. They had that in common, of course, but Hux had taken to it more easily.
He gestures into the kitchen, to the table, invites her to sit at it, and then moves to join her. This is a conversation to be had sitting down. He has not decided what it will entail yet, but he starts with her most obvious question — his name. It's almost a cruel joke. ]
I'm Ben Solo. You're an educated young liberal. I'm sure you are familiar with my mother, Leia Organa. [ He explains this with patience. ] That is who I am. Armitage Hux is a work associate of mine. The name he uses to address me is an alias.
[ All of these pieces are easy. They are facts, dissociated from the uncomfortable truth of his extortion and the crimes that had allowed for it to happen. He had been a fool to think it would be as easy as drifting away from it. In his pocket, his phone vibrates. For a moment, he doesn't react, thinking it best to keep his attention on the present conversation. On her, and the answers she believes he owes her.
(He owes her nothing, whispers the dark part of his mind. She has only projected assumptions and expectations onto him.)
He pulls out the phone after a moment, turning it over to consider the notification from Hux, then rests it on the table. ]
[ Said somewhat defensively, and her inability to budge from where she has frozen in the kitchen doorway — even as he moves beyond her to sit, and gestures for her to follow suit — only projects that image. Like he is accusing her indirectly of worming her way close to him because of his connections.
It's a habit she can't contain. She's weathered too many distrusting glances from foster families with their tight-lipped smiles and veneers of pleasantness, always looking to her as the outsider. Someone to scrutinize if their belongings were misplaced and missing. ]
And you wouldn't need an alias unless you're involved in something dangerous, illegal, or both. I know how these things go, Ben.
[ Or involved porn, but Ben Solo is definitely not who anyone should expect to be headlining adult videos. The less logical justifications are as follows: he's on the run (impossible, or he wouldn't have settled into a college town), he doesn't want to dirty his repute by attaching his name to his business, he's reinvented himself. She shoves all of those aside, finally finding a seat as she drags it across the tile and drops into it, swiveling to face him more fully.
The book, eventually, gets placed on the dining room table. ]
I know you don't trust me. [ He had made that painfully clear to her. 'I want to trust you,' lamenting that she hadn't earned the right. Not yet. She can't demand it from him, as he's lectured, no matter how desperately she longs for it. No matter how fervently she wants to demand it from him. ] But, one day, you'll have to tell me. I don't want a relationship built on secrets and lies.
[ Then again, perhaps he never would come clean. Hux's big mouth had cornered him into a confession, after all. It's a dismal thought that occurs to her with no shortage of disappointment. ]
[ That much, he will tell her. It's, in its own right, a counter argument to the way she contends that he doesn't trust her. It shows again that he wants to, yearns to, but he lacks the faculties. He has lived a life — well, she knows. She has enumerated it. Dangerous, illegal, or both does not foster trust. It is an atrophied muscle.
But there is a steadiness in his voice as he says it. Strained underneath, like he is worried for her now. But sure. That much, he wants to separate her from. Frankly he doesn't want himself involved with it either — it had been recent that Snoke had fractured Ben's relationship with Han Solo beyond repair, that had driven his mother's efforts to reconnect, and he is still reeling from it. That, however, is a more complicated situation. Keeping Rey out of it is not.
Looking back at it now, he almost wants to suspect her of being already involved with them. Rey came to his apartment and Hux happened to show? Hux had been there to draw his attention to Rey too. She'd been drawing attention to herself for longer than that, but he'd been the one to push Ben to talk to her. It's paranoia, plain and simple, but — ]
Tell me you aren't involved with him.
[ It would not be the first time, he thinks, Snoke has done something like this. ]
[ At its core, it's a confirmation of her worst fears. Her deductions hadn't been so far-fetched, then, but the truth is significantly better than Ben forcing her to remain blissfully unaware. And for what? To appeal to her, pretend he's someone he isn't to keep her?
No, that isn't it. He's afraid, she realizes, from the stress that tenses his voice. More than that, he has removed her autonomy, ignored every insistent assurance that she can defend herself, by making the choice to shelter her. To deprive her of that information, as though that will protect her when she has already entangled herself by associating with him.
It won't. His colleague knows her face now, and Ben has already involved himself with her. She means to say as much, but his demand draws her up short, and the vehemence suddenly transforms into an explosive combination of incredulous anger and hurt. As though she's been slapped, she reels back in her seat, expression pinching together. ]
What are you accusing me of? [ From the sound of it, he believes she's — what? Someone's amoral lackey, sent to keep an eye on him? A seductress that's been implanted in his life to spy on him, keep him in check? It would be laughable if it wasn't downright insulting to imply she's the one playing games and being paid to do it. ] I'm not involved with him. I don't even know who "he" is because you won't tell me.
[ The "how dare you" for his insinuation is implied in tone alone, the pitching decibels in her hardening voice, sounding more betrayed than when they'd originally begun. Having difficulty opening up to her — aggravating, but acceptable. Rey knows how it feels to mistrust, to distance one's self; she'd done so for most of her childhood, and still retains some of those habits. But keeping massive secrets under some foolish guise of "not involving her", and then going on to distrust her so strongly that he would accuse her of infiltrating his life to the point of spreading her legs just to achieve it —
She borders on furious tears, pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she isn't done making her point. ]
All you're doing is keeping me in the dark. I can't protect myself against a threat I know nothing about.
[ In the end, she'll simply be woefully unprepared, and contending with a potential boyfriend that wants to shelter and coddle her like a child when she is more than capable of defending herself. Relying on herself. She has told him so, time and time again, and even now he refuses to listen. ]
[ He wants to believe her. The incredulity certainly can't be faked. Not by her. By anyone else, but Rey was blunt and direct and painfully incapable of disguising her feelings. If she had reservations, she had never made them known to him. Watching the fury convert to a wetness in her eyes, however, is what ultimately gets him to surrender the fear that she is another effort to pull him back under.
Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. He glances away from her, frustrated with himself and his choices and Snoke and Hux and all of it. A huff of breath marks his difficulty, but it sounds like annoyance. He recognizes that immediately and drops his chin. ]
You will not be in danger unless you become a threat to the man who Hux and I both work for. While I was attending Coruscant, before I began my post-bach, I worked on his political campaign. Occasionally, he solicits further favors from me.
[ Is that adequate? It hardly feels like it's the tip of the iceberg, but if he offers up the name of a major sitting politician and admits the corruption that got him there, and Ben's role in it, then he knows he'll not only lose her, but he'll have threatened Snoke, and Rey will not be able to help herself. She will wind up on his radar, and he will destroy whatever prospects she has. Her scholarship would be the first thing to go. ]
Hux arrived here because he believed I was avoiding my responsibilities.
[ It's the clinical remove that she hates so much, the distance in his voice that emphasizes that this is something he grapples with conveying the full truth of. But he doesn't know when it will be enough. He doesn't know what she wants, except to scour every inch of him. If she does that, she will come up cold. He gets to his feet. ]
Illegal favors. [ She supplies, latching onto the absence of his denial. ] You only work for a politician, but you sound just like one.
[ Omitting pertinent details to paint a prettier picture, dressing up stories to make them more palatable, sanitizing the dirty, ugly reality of it all. Politics aren't her arena, but she isn't stupid, and it's insulting that Ben would assume she would simply smile, nod, and accept that summary for the shallow explanation it is. Like there's nothing so glaringly amiss about it. And now he means to avoid her, excuse himself from being under fire, with that poor excuse of starting dinner.
It isn't a kind compliment. The sharp twinge in her voice clarifies that exasperated, agitated disappointment. She could press for more, but his clever evasion and formal speeches make that seem an impossible avenue to travel. With his knack for expunging what he does not want her to know, to hear, it's more likely that she'll either tear her hair out or his by the end of the night, and she has to come to terms with the fact that he doesn't trust her.
That, more than anything, has taken to playing on a loop in her mind. He doesn't trust her. In fact, he trusts her so little that he would accuse her of the unthinkable, and then pass over it without remorse when he's proven wrong. She chokes on that upset when he rises, jumping to her own feet. ]
You need to avoid me, you mean. [ Her hands fumble for his phone where it still rests in the middle of the table, and then promptly shove it square into his chest for him to take. Given his glances toward it, and her new knowledge of what business he's involved in, she can only imagine what's waiting for him. ] I'm going to finish my paper.
[ And to ignore the fact that this first date is obviously going swimmingly, and find a private place to cope with the new assault of information and her feelings toward it. Which sounds more mature than 'storming off', which is precisely what it is, though not out the door. If she does, she knows she'll never return, never want to hear him out.
Her bag is still settled in the bedroom, and so she turns to leave in that direction. ]
The kind of favors that make people go away. That ruin them, the way Snoke would ruin Rey if he found out about her, if he knew that Rey was the reason he'd neglected to answer those messages, if he believed for even a moment that Rey had any inkling of what Ben had done to help him get elected. He had sabotaged his own mother. Given up the dirty laundry of her father, his grandfather, in hopes that it would assassinate her character to be associated to a monster.
Now he's the monster.
He has to wonder how many conversations have happened in her campaign office with Dameron on whether or not she should switch to Leia Skywalker for her next run. Own it. Grapple with it. Deal with it. He'd never know, of course. They'd never let him inside.
He has no business in the midst of this. He should be doing what Rey's doing — writing a fucking paper. Instead she's stomped off to be furious with him. Miraculously, not right out his front door.
He'd certainly expected it. From the moment she had confronted him, Ben had anticipated that she, like every other person he'd ever invested trust into, would see something distasteful and abandon him. Decide that he was not worth it. Move on. Her disdain was surely palpable. But she remains. Angry, moody, unable to look at him. But still here.
Strangely he doesn't know what to do with that.
So he makes them dinner. The prep work takes somewhere around twenty minutes. It's nothing fancy. But it's enough time to get sauce simmering and pasta boiling and a salad thrown together. Nothing needs his attention anymore, so he heads into the bedroom to find her. ]
He has notifications from Hux flashing across his screen, commanding his attention. A covert manilla envelope to preoccupy himself. Illegal dealings that, quite clearly, take precedence. The criminal world doesn't allow for less than an all-consuming commitment, after all. Plutt has been a prime example of that filthy greed, expanding his underground activities, always demanding, never content. Her parents, too, in their inability to choose her above their own addictions. Rey herself, even, for how she can't quite claw and crawl her way out of it completely.
Ben won't be able to stop. They needn't build an intimate rapport for that to be glaringly obvious. It comes with the territory, she knows, and he has not expressly stated an interest in ending his unsavory career. The opposite, in how casually he'd spoken of it, dropping details as though it were as mundane and expected as the weather forecast. Growing closer to him won't change his involvement. Cultivating their connection won't prevent him from choosing his lifestyle before her, each and every time.
Prioritizing it over the people around him, just like her parents.
It isn't an entirely fair comparison to make, but she's already drawn the conclusion that he doesn't want a girlfriend so much as the girlfriend experience. Someone to care for him, to come home to, who won't ask questions when she's left alone for long hours in the night or when Hux comes knocking at the door again. She can already see how that future would unfold.
The broad outline of his shoulders in the doorway is a surprise, then, but it doesn't turn the situation on its head. She's still aware of what he thinks — had thought — of her. In the privacy of a closed room, most of that righteous anger has melted away; for that reason, among others, she doesn't immediately turn to him, back to the door where she lays on her side, propped up on her elbow. Her eyes are too bleary and red-rimmed, and her her complexion has turned pathetically, tellingly splotchy, to want to face him. Even with the clear smell of food wafting in the air to indicate he hadn't just been hunched over his desk, plotting God knows what.
To her credit, she's managed to get some work done in spite of the ordeal. Not much, but some, scribbling away on printer paper to add new arguments, new notes, or edit in rewrites of blocky sentences. Much more to her credit, her boots stand at attention, discarded on the floor, this time. All in all, she has made herself comfortable there as though it's her own room. ]
I'm not done yet.
[ Is all that she says, hoarse but terse, without moving to glance at him. Anything more, and she wouldn't be able to rein in the aggravation and aggressiveness. ]
[ Perhaps he should listen to her, take the obvious hint to remove himself from the vicinity lest he distract her. She's obviously not ready to face him yet, not ready to process what he has done. But neither is he — neither has he been for the years he has been getting himself deeper and deeper into it — and he feels no better for it.
Besides. The kitchen and living room are stifling, her absence suffocating. He could not stand to stay there.
Instead of respecting her need for distance, he sits on the bed behind her. At first, he keeps to the edge of it, a veritable gulf between them. But he slowly reaches down to pull off his shoes and then slides to lay down at her back. It's a queen mattress. With her sprawled as she is, they do not need to touch, even when he folds his hands over his stomach, elbows out, and stares at the ceiling. ]
Then I will wait.
[ There's a timer going in the kitchen. Maybe the sauce will boil over, or stick to the bottom of the pan, or some similar tragedy. That anxiety cannot even penetrate the haze of the one that has him riveted to this spot, paralyzed. The anxiety that tells him he might just lose her. ]
[ Obstinate, she doesn't react beneath the dip of his weight or the shifting mattress. Not initially, at any rate, as she pours herself into her paper to otherwise distract herself. If nothing else, investing herself in her work has been known to prevent her mind from working overtime, wandering to darker places when she'd rather keep it leashed. Her pen remains determined against the page as a result, filling the room with a chorus of wrinkling paper and their combined breathing.
Their combined breathing. She can only bear him so close but so out of her reach for a handful of moments. Eventually, she grits out an aggravated grunt in her throat, and throws her pen down on the page. Hands free, she plants them on the mattress so she can turn to look at him.
He's too close with the flipping and fidgeting around she's done just to inelegantly confront him, but she doesn't move back or angle her head any differently on the pillow. ]
Wait for what?
[ An apology? That's laughable. He doesn't deserve one, and the thought that he might be trying to ply one from her begs her to be defensive. Wait for her? That's less likely. She has always been the one waiting, and never the opposite. ]
[ He turns his head sideways to look at her. She's so close. In his bed. So many different ways he had imagined this — it's enough to make his breath hitch now, despite the unpleasantness of the circumstances. His eyes roam across her face, admiring it, taking in the markers of distress that he left in her. How already, in just a few days, he has started to ruin her.
With one hand he reaches up to touch the side of her face. He shouldn't. It breaks his own rule. But so does — or should — lying in his bed, leaning in this close to her. God, he loathes Hux. Really could kill the guy right now for taking this from him. No. It's not Hux. It's him. He's the problem that pushes people away, that had already begun to upset her with this shitshow earlier. ]
Your schoolwork is more important than this. Please. Finish.
[ He smooths his thumb over her cheek as he says this, then drops his hand away before he makes the mistake of pulling her in like he wants to. ]
[ But he's here now, right in front of her, and the tension between them will plague her if it isn't dissolved. Despite how resolutely that sentence begins, and how committed she is to clearing the air so she can tackle her schoolwork, it fades out and wavers on the last syllable.
Because he's touching her, blurring boundaries again, and it's unfair how rapidly the stress seeps out of her as a result. Unintentionally cruel, really, for how the tenderness of the gesture makes her want to forget her anger if he'll only just continue. She has to cling to it fiercely as to not shove it aside, even as her eyes flutter closed beneath the spell of that caress, teeth pulling back her lip and only releasing it once he's removed his hand from her. ]
Ben. [ It doesn't resemble the sturdy chastisement it should in the aftermath of his accusation. Instead, his name is a breathless exhale out of her lungs, clearly affected by the close proximity. ] You don't know how angry I am with you. It's all I can think about.
[ That's far from a secret. At this point, she has to reassert that to remind both of them that she is, when all she wants is to pin him down to the bed and show him just how aggravated she is with him, lose herself in that. Unhealthy coping mechanisms abound. ]
You owe me an apology. [ Some of the smokiness in her voice clears, but not all of it. It isn't intended to sound like 'you owe me an apology so put your mouth between my legs and get ready to live there for the rest of your life,' but that's how her tone relays it, and the magnetic effect he has on her is to blame. She ignores that throatiness and eases her hand down the bed, brushing the backs of her fingers against his. Trying to nudge him into, at the very least, allowing her to hold his hand. ] I've done nothing to deserve what you've accused me of.
[ It's easier to say than blatantly admitting 'you hurt me.' Nevertheless, it's implied, and it would take someone truly obtuse not to realize it. ]
Does any part of this feel fake to you?
[ Her. The connection they have. His feelings toward her. Now that the moment has passed, it seems even more ludicrous that it would be manufactured. ]
[ As though welcoming the permission she grants him, he turns his hand over in hers, twines their fingers, allows the warmth of her touch to soothe some of the fear and anger that had hit him when he'd heard Hux there and never cleared. It had been too long since he was caught off guard. Too long since he had dared to want anything for himself, and he had hardly realized how badly he wanted this until he was presented with what might take it away.
Or, worse, what might make it clear he'd never really had it in the first place. She's right, of course. She deserves an apology. But an apology would overlook the complexity of where it had come from, the explanation she deserved. He grapples with that for a moment, wearing all the sheepishness of a scolded child in the slight pout of his soft lips. ]
It would not be the first time. For me.
[ Not for her. She has never been fake with him. She has never been anything but honest and earnest and he has repaid it in kind by indulging all his worst habits.
He hasn't told anyone about it. There is no one to tell. He grapples with it now, feeling as though his declaration is woefully insufficient for the truth that Snoke had trapped him repeatedly, punished him for his compassion by twisting him into positions which he could use against Ben in order to keep him loyal. Obligated. Easily ruined, where he could never work again.
Some part of him has begun to doubt his own telling of events for it. If, perhaps, Snoke had only set him up to genuinely commit the acts that he had been able to pain Ben as committing. There were girls who, like Rey, had earned his trust, who Snoke had revealed would testify to his voracious, violent appetites with them. Paid girls, he had guessed, but maybe not. Maybe he really was that kind of monster.
Maybe Rey was not safe here with him.
He raises his other hand to drag at his face, wiping his eyes. Tears don't come, but only because he's not properly in touch with that part of himself to reach them. He has forgotten the feeling. ]
[ He doesn't have to elaborate. The realization takes a moment to sink in — he'd attested to never having a relationship, she thinks, just before the pieces of the puzzle slot together — but it does after a quiet, contemplative moment. A moment of scanning him silently, wondering who would stoop to grotesque lengths in the name of a game.
His employer, evidently. The women he has hired to infiltrate, as Ben had accused her, and that tells her all she needs to know of the quality of their character. Her brows pinch for a moment, incensed, though not toward him. The injustice of being fooled with sentiments that are fake, hollow, ugly things. That, she reasons, must be the root of his distrust. The cause of his lacking love life. Something close to understanding flickers across her expression.
At that, her fingers lock tighter, but never with enough pressure to strangle his. Only enough to pluck at his, turn them over, absently committing the shape and texture of his skin now that she has been permitted to have it for herself. She has to wriggle some to ensure she isn't pinning it to the bed, or between them, when she moves suddenly to plant her arm beside his head — prop herself up. Face hovering above him, some of her hair tickles the curve of his cheek where it curtains around them, as if creating a private space. ]
Do you think I'm anything like them?
[ The tone that carries through that inquiry hints that she doesn't need an answer, that it should be fairly obvious she is in a category of her own compared to those who would use him. If not for the severity of the betrayals that litter his past where his previous partners are concerned, she would point out that surely they would send someone less honest, less prone to digging their heels in, less apt to tell him to fuck off.
Or maybe his boss is aware those are the traits Ben looks for in women. She wouldn't know. She's not sure she wants to know what the others will like, given their manipulation of him, and the sudden possessive, protective inclination she feels. Her other hand raises, tracing the path his own hand had taken along his face. ]
Is that why you don't want to touch me?
[ She had presumed it was a rule intended to preserve his ethical purity, questionable as it is when they've crossed every other line, and her scholarship. Now, she has to pause, reconsider if it comes from some deeper place when she has all but begged him to do away with that restriction. ]
[ He studies her. He wants to give honest reply to whether or not she's like them, and some part of his mind is telling him that she must be, in some way, or he would not have been attracted to them both.
But that's nonsense, of course. His attraction to Rey had been a sneaking thing, insinuating itself into his life under his nose. A product of passively observing her in his space, allowing her in without ever really having to allow her in or reach out. She is dirty and coarse and blunt. She has no resemblance to the other women he has taken wary interest in, not even in body type. But that is precisely what makes her a good counter now that he has stopped being taken in by them.
Then she connects it to his rule on contact, and his expression contorts in some disdain. He does not appreciate the connection in the slightest, but it does provoke him to consider the influences. Yes, it is a matter of ethics. Of expectations from the others in the college. And maybe more than that. A product of being convinced that she will see something that disgusts her in him — like this — and turn away, and he might be less invested if he were not buried in her cunt.
He weighs that. His other hand comes up to push the curtain of her hair back over her shoulder, to open up her face more so he might examine it in the light of — well, not day exactly, as his blinds in here are decidedly shut. But light. ]
You could not be more dissimilar. But strategies change, and I thought — [ He huffs out a breath, dodging her gaze then. Feeling sheepish and foolish and perhaps a little self-involved. ] I was mistaken.
[ Yes. That's close to an apology. She can't be so surprised, can she? She's always taken him for a massive prick. Her words. That she was correct about him cannot be so surprising. ]
I do not want questions to arise over whether you deserve the grade you earn. [ She's going to be dissatisfied with that. He can already feel it. He's shutting the conversation down, offering nothing up. He chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, sliding his jaw back and forth. Then — ] But i suspect it plays a role in my anxiety around our earlier messages. [ A pause. He finds her eyes again, and his are shining and wet. ] Why did you come in here? Why didn't you leave? [ He'd been sure that she would. ]
[ 'I was mistaken' earns him a flat, unimpressed look. Like yeah, buddy, she figured that one out. Albeit an admittance of wrongdoing, it's too vague for her to count it as an apology. ]
You were. [ Saying any more than that would just be beating him over the head with his blunder, but — ] And you hurt me because of it. Everything that I've said, everything that I've done — none of it has been fake. You're cheapening it by accusing me of the opposite.
[ Actions speak louder than words, and he appears abashed enough for her to conclude that he has learned from that mistake. That he feels as absurd as he should for slapping her with that label, making that presumption, and won't be repeating it. Still, she needs him to have that understanding of how it had affected her, pointedly refusing to allow either of them to just skim over it. That would be doing her own feelings on the matter a disservice. ]
I'm giving you a chance. A real chance. [ A fighting chance. She had insisted she wanted to know him, and this is the only the beginning of that, now that he isn't hiding. Distrust aside, he must trust her enough to disclose that. Or, conversely, he had been willing to part with that harbored secret to keep her from getting fed up and walking out of the door as he had feared she would. The latter would not be surprising, though she hopes for the former, if only because it indicates she has made some progress in proving he can trust her. But, more than that, the significant reason for her decision to stay — ] There's something here, Ben. A connection I've never felt with anyone else. I'm not going to just give that up.
[ Because she has never known good things to enter her life, and she has never been able to let go. Not without being forced to, and even then, there is no guarantee. And it isn't solely a physical pull that she feels, even if the sexual magnetism is overwhelming, overpowering. She almost clarifies that, emphasizes that she had meant more than fucking her when she had committed to his aversion of touching her at all, but she swallows it down. ]
I've known plenty of bad men. [ She continues. Briefly, her mind darts to Plutt and his compatriots, lips pinching. ] I don't know what you've done or why, but I know you aren't one.
[ It doesn't make sense with what she knows of him, doesn't fit with the impression she has. A massive prick sometimes, yes, but not a criminal overlord of some type. Not someone like Unkar. ]
I don't think a bad man would care about my grades, ethics, or me. [ She remarks, soft in its wryness. It won't eliminate the moist glean to his eyes, she suspects, but she leans in afterward to brush her mouth to the apple of his cheek. ] I wish you would care a little less about the first two. You've already invited me into your apartment and cooked me dinner.
[ If that were to be revealed, questions over her grades would be arising with or without the sex. To ensure it doesn't sound pushy rather than just blatant honesty, however, she quickly adds: ]
But if you want to wait, we'll wait. I'm good at waiting. [ Probably not so much, in this case, but she's making a concentrated effort. ] I just know I want to give whatever it is between us the chance it deserves.
[ God, she makes it sound so easy. She makes it sound like faith is easy to come by, easier to hold onto, like she has some secret skill for telling the good from the bad and she is beyond questioning which he falls into. If only he had that certainty in himself. His eyes drift shut for only a second as her lips brush his cheek, as though he is afraid to stop looking at her.
Afraid to allow her to touch him. Maybe, yes. Afraid he might break if he does let her. With her here, with her pressing her fingers into the cracks of his barely sustainable life, he begins to notice how close to cracking it is. How thinly he is holding himself together.
In some ways it feels like he has entered a different universe. She had been so angry with him, he was prepared for the possibility that this was unsolvable. But she's not asking him for anything. Not really. He has told her only the barest of the truth, and he has every intention of dealing with what's in that envelope. He has no choice. Yet she's here. She's not running. She's offering him a chance, expressing a belief in him despite the way she'd judged him earlier, and —
And offering herself to him.
He doesn't deserve it. He knows that like he knows that he's breathing her in right now and he knows that her skin is warm and soft and begging him to touch it. But —
The timer on his phone goes off in the kitchen with an unwelcome, upbeat jingle. He grimaces, shuts his eyes, and withdraws his hand from hers. He sits up slowly. ]
[ Whatever he has prepared for them will, without doubt, burn into wasted, inedible mush if she dallies. Still, she's overcome with the compulsion to drag him back and coerce more than dinner's ready out of him. Worse, the urge to lock the door and disappear beneath these sheets with him, blocking out the remainder of the world until there is only him, and her, and them in this private bubble — away from the ugliness that awaits them both beyond the threshold of his apartment.
It wouldn't solve anything. She can't keep him here. The impossibility of it doesn't eliminate the temptation.
So, no, she isn't just hungry. Thirsty, more like. But she's also a starving college student who can't afford much more than soggy, greasy delivery that she has to make last for multiple days. Someone that isn't used to meals without first having to work for them, as Unkar had demanded, and even then she'd received meager offerings that tasted more like cardboard. The conflict is written across her face plainly, unconcealed, but she eventually sits up — too quick, and her head spins with it — and slides off the edge of the bed. ]
I'm always hungry.
[ It's almost comical, how solemnly she says it. He's released her hand, but she grabs at his again, practically dragging him through the doorway into he kitchen. Fitting for the relationship and how she's nearly dragging him through it, to be honest. ]
Tell me you aren't using dinner as an excuse to avoid me again.
[ He's surprised by the way she tugs him along. He's surprised by most things about Rey, to be frank. But quickly that surprise melts into something that's more akin to awe, reverence, appreciation. He tightens his hand in her grip and fumbles after her, out of the bedroom.
He turns off the burners with his free hands, moving the pots off them respectively. Then he turns the timer off with a tap of his phone screen. There are notifications waiting there. He watches them for a moment, then tucks the phone into his pocket. Not something to worry about just now.
Reluctant though he is to borrow his hand back, he needs it for this. He starts straining pasta over the sink. ]
I have no intentions of avoiding you.
[ But it takes him a while to say more than that. He gets the pasta all the way drained. He doesn't bother with a serving bowl, just sets it back on the cool unused burner and sticks a serving spoon into it. Then he pulls bowls down from the cabinet. This isn't Chez Kylo alright. It's a college apartment, and though he may be a philosophy major, he's not living his most refined life. You're lucky he folds his socks. ]
I'm thinking. [ He decides to offer that up while he works through it. He pulls a bottle of wine off the top of the fridge and sets to corking it. ] Will you close the blinds? [ it'll make him feel better about having her here, now that she's drawn his attention to it.
While he's uncorking, he finally starts to explain, ]
I expected you to leave. What you have offered me instead is … unprecedented, in my experience.
[ In his life, at least. For him. People would rather leap to accepting that he is a bad man. It's simple, right? He does bad things. Terrible things for no reason other than money and the validation of an older mentor. He swallows thickly around that. ]
[ He isn't avoiding her, and so there is less motive to vigorously cling like saran wrap, to nudge him back toward the sensitive matters at hand. Once he's freed his hands to begin pulling at bowls, she detaches herself to pad away toward the kitchen's windows to close the binds — and then, for good measure, above his desk.
She casts one long, lingering look outside the window pane as she does. It's surreal, seeing the landscape of her own dormitory from his perspective. Like she can finally understand what he must see from his vantage point. Paige isn't home, thankfully, to peer back at her. To see that she has to take precautions to keep Ben as dirty laundry when she'd much rather step into the light of day with him. It isn't as bothersome as she originally suspected it would be, however; she gets to have this for herself, keep him to herself, without the intruding opinions of others.
Returning back to where he's setting out wine, she doesn't hesitate to press in behind him. His apartment isn't hers, isn't familiar, but she takes to it as if it were her own by leaning up around him to sort through the cabinets. The first attempt is futile, just bowls and plates; the next holds the glasses she's searching for, and she plants them on the corner in front of him before reaching her grubby hands in the strained pasta.
It's just a few strands of noodles, but she slips them into her mouth, chewing them over as she props her chin between his shoulder blades and winds her arm loosely around his abdomen. ]
No one has ever given you a chance before?
[ Is that what he means? A pang of sympathy shoots through her, too relatable for it to veer into pity. Her scholarship, and Maz's fondness for her, feel like the first chances she's gotten to prove to herself that she can amount to something, rather than feeling like she's been written off. Overlooked, on the outside looking in. ]
[ Now that he has (tacitly) given her permission to touch him, he realizes how much she had been holding back prior. Rey invites herself to his cabinets, to the pot of pasta, and then wraps herself around him, pressing herself against his back. The cork comes out with a pop then, and he sets it aside. The questions she asks are deceptively simple. At least, they seem simple for her, given how readily they come out. But Ben wrestles with each one.
He pours them both a glass and then sets the bottle aside. He picks up both glasses and twists in her embrace so he can hold one of them out to her with greater clarity of intent. ]
Others would disagree with your assessment of my character. [ He settles on that, ultimately. It's where the divergence happens. She didn't go so far as to say he was a good man by any means, but not bad. That's new. ] A man who has done the things that I have, who continues to do them, would not deserve an opportunity.
[ Something hangs at the end of that sentence. It takes him a moment to figure out what it is. ]
People aren't always defined by their actions. [ She cocks a brow, challenging, as if to resolutely state she won't back down from that counterargument. There are those she has taken just to survive; he would not be the first to criticize her for them, to try to elicit shame from her, were that the case. But they don't define her and who she is, who she will become. ] Shouldn't you know that?
[ What with his expertise in philosophy, his studies in ethics. But it seems an insignificant conversation to pursue in the grand scheme, confronted with that inquiry. No matter his intent, she reads it as accusatory, lips thinning out to a frown.
No one has ever changed for her. Her parents couldn't be bothered to do so, and neither will Ben. She can't change that, can't change him, and she mulls over it as she glances into the depths of her glass. ]
The only person you should ever change yourself for is yourself. That's in your hands. I learned that a long time ago. [ He would resent her otherwise, and the act would be fake. A facade to placate her, to keep her. It would never truly be real, sincere, earnest in the way she wants. ] But I can bring out what's already there.
[ The parts of him that don't seem to mesh with the concept of Ben as a criminal, as a dangerous man, as someone involved in dealings so treacherous he can't even recount the full truth of them. That, she thinks, is a worthy compromise. ]
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bakerstreet2018-07-02 12:23 am
no subject
The apartment isn't so spacious that she can't detect his heavy footfalls. He's a large man, after all. Thudding strides come with the territory. Impatient, she's swinging her legs over the side of the bed without waiting for him to find her, leaving destruction in the form of rumpled sheets and dirty footprints in her wake.
If she wants the truth, she can't wait for him to come to her, formulating a lie to stave off her suspicions and soothe her. The book is still in her hands — an old philosophy text with dog-eared pages and that old book scent clinging to its bindings — cradled protectively to her chest when she cuts him off in the divide between kitchen and living room. As if a mocking reflection of it, his hands dwarf the manilla envelope in his grasp.
Her eyes skip downward and raise to his, knowingly. Accusatory, almost, with how it bores into him and aims to pin him in place. Perhaps she has. There is nowhere for him to escape in his apartment, and she won't be chased off so easily with evasions and half-truths. A poorly planned idea, she realizes; cornered animals are always the most dangerous, lashing out in the most furious ways.
Its contents are a mystery, but she isn't so sheltered that the sight of an unmarked package doesn't warrant skepticism. As a teenager, Plutt had coerced her into enough of his back-alley trades and covert dealings for her to draw a connection, a conclusion based on her own experiences. As an adult, she has still been roped into his business, kept there by his threats to expose her involvement and consequently ruin her chances at a scholarship and a future without him.
Whatever Ben thinks of her, she isn't an idiot. But it isn't the envelope she tries to pry off of him. ]
Ben. [ It would be solid, if not for the slight waver in her voice. Not fear, but something she can't name. Something that feels close to betrayal, ridiculous as it is when she reminds herself she has not known him long. When she reminds herself that, perhaps, she doesn't know him at all. ] Or is it Ren?
[ His father had mentioned him as Ben in passing. The school directory lists him as Ben Solo, but that doesn't account for which name he goes by, which is the truth and which is the lie. Her voice drops, lowers, quieter. It isn't quite imploring, but it does edge toward desperation. Desperation driven by her apprehension.]
Who are you?
[ That's the million dollar question, isn't it? It's a simple question with what is likely to be a not-so-simple answer. ]
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Whatever it is, it doesn't make him want to give her a straight answer. To cave to her demands. It makes him want to be contrary and unpleasant and stoke the frustration he's feeling after dealing with Hux. He drops the envelope on his desk, then glances at the book in her arms. ]
You were in my bedroom.
[ Conversationally. As if it were somehow equal in weight to what she is asking of him. Surely the credentials he has on file with the university answer her question. He is, as always, Ben Solo. He wants to again feel like Ben Solo. She made him feel like Ben Solo. ]
What conclusions have you arrived at?
[ He decides to ask her that first. Obviously she has concocted something sinister in her mind, used it to levy that look of mistrust on him. He doesn't much want to humor it when she has denied him the benefit of the doubt after insisting over and over that she was interested in him. She wanted to know more, and now looks repulsed to have stumbled across it. ]
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[ It isn't the type of dumbfounded 'what' that demands clarification. Rather, it's upset, small, a barely audible syllable as she remains, unblinking, in the doorway. What said in disbelief, unable to comprehend the analytical approach he takes to her. Contrasted against the emotion building as a lump in her throat, tightening her fingers against the hard cover of his book, it seems a cold, indifferent regard for her simmering distress.
Surprisingly lax for a man that has been caught, red-handed, pretending to be someone he isn't. Immediately, she decides she despises the callous formality of it. It isn't the first time he has regarded a critical conversation as though it were a unit he was teaching, and it undoubtedly will not be the last, but it's a trait she can't stand. ]
If I had made any conclusions, why would I still be standing here? [ To Rey, it's a perfectly logical argument that he hasn't considered, firmly spoken to suggest as much. The gears in her mind have been turning, yes, but she doesn't want to travel down those dark corners and assume the worst. She can't. Not when she had thought the best of him, liked him in spite of his obvious flaws. Massive prickishness included. ] I need to hear the truth from you.
[ Her lips press together, tightening. It is, she surmises, the only way she can begin to trust him in this. ]
I don't want you to play games with me.
[ Recovering, that comes out harder, more assertive. She has been on the receiving end of that before, albeit never romantically. It hurts more, however, potentially coming from him as he tries to fish out what she thinks she knows. ]
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[ Starting there is easy, so it's what he allows to come out. No game but the one that Snoke is running, that Snoke has pulled him and Hux into. Two young boys, drawn in from prestigious families, made to serve his political agenda through blackmail and skewed morals. They had that in common, of course, but Hux had taken to it more easily.
He gestures into the kitchen, to the table, invites her to sit at it, and then moves to join her. This is a conversation to be had sitting down. He has not decided what it will entail yet, but he starts with her most obvious question — his name. It's almost a cruel joke. ]
I'm Ben Solo. You're an educated young liberal. I'm sure you are familiar with my mother, Leia Organa. [ He explains this with patience. ] That is who I am. Armitage Hux is a work associate of mine. The name he uses to address me is an alias.
[ All of these pieces are easy. They are facts, dissociated from the uncomfortable truth of his extortion and the crimes that had allowed for it to happen. He had been a fool to think it would be as easy as drifting away from it. In his pocket, his phone vibrates. For a moment, he doesn't react, thinking it best to keep his attention on the present conversation. On her, and the answers she believes he owes her.
(He owes her nothing, whispers the dark part of his mind. She has only projected assumptions and expectations onto him.)
He pulls out the phone after a moment, turning it over to consider the notification from Hux, then rests it on the table. ]
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[ Said somewhat defensively, and her inability to budge from where she has frozen in the kitchen doorway — even as he moves beyond her to sit, and gestures for her to follow suit — only projects that image. Like he is accusing her indirectly of worming her way close to him because of his connections.
It's a habit she can't contain. She's weathered too many distrusting glances from foster families with their tight-lipped smiles and veneers of pleasantness, always looking to her as the outsider. Someone to scrutinize if their belongings were misplaced and missing. ]
And you wouldn't need an alias unless you're involved in something dangerous, illegal, or both. I know how these things go, Ben.
[ Or involved porn, but Ben Solo is definitely not who anyone should expect to be headlining adult videos. The less logical justifications are as follows: he's on the run (impossible, or he wouldn't have settled into a college town), he doesn't want to dirty his repute by attaching his name to his business, he's reinvented himself. She shoves all of those aside, finally finding a seat as she drags it across the tile and drops into it, swiveling to face him more fully.
The book, eventually, gets placed on the dining room table. ]
I know you don't trust me. [ He had made that painfully clear to her. 'I want to trust you,' lamenting that she hadn't earned the right. Not yet. She can't demand it from him, as he's lectured, no matter how desperately she longs for it. No matter how fervently she wants to demand it from him. ] But, one day, you'll have to tell me. I don't want a relationship built on secrets and lies.
[ Then again, perhaps he never would come clean. Hux's big mouth had cornered him into a confession, after all. It's a dismal thought that occurs to her with no shortage of disappointment. ]
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[ That much, he will tell her. It's, in its own right, a counter argument to the way she contends that he doesn't trust her. It shows again that he wants to, yearns to, but he lacks the faculties. He has lived a life — well, she knows. She has enumerated it. Dangerous, illegal, or both does not foster trust. It is an atrophied muscle.
But there is a steadiness in his voice as he says it. Strained underneath, like he is worried for her now. But sure. That much, he wants to separate her from. Frankly he doesn't want himself involved with it either — it had been recent that Snoke had fractured Ben's relationship with Han Solo beyond repair, that had driven his mother's efforts to reconnect, and he is still reeling from it. That, however, is a more complicated situation. Keeping Rey out of it is not.
Looking back at it now, he almost wants to suspect her of being already involved with them. Rey came to his apartment and Hux happened to show? Hux had been there to draw his attention to Rey too. She'd been drawing attention to herself for longer than that, but he'd been the one to push Ben to talk to her. It's paranoia, plain and simple, but — ]
Tell me you aren't involved with him.
[ It would not be the first time, he thinks, Snoke has done something like this. ]
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No, that isn't it. He's afraid, she realizes, from the stress that tenses his voice. More than that, he has removed her autonomy, ignored every insistent assurance that she can defend herself, by making the choice to shelter her. To deprive her of that information, as though that will protect her when she has already entangled herself by associating with him.
It won't. His colleague knows her face now, and Ben has already involved himself with her. She means to say as much, but his demand draws her up short, and the vehemence suddenly transforms into an explosive combination of incredulous anger and hurt. As though she's been slapped, she reels back in her seat, expression pinching together. ]
What are you accusing me of? [ From the sound of it, he believes she's — what? Someone's amoral lackey, sent to keep an eye on him? A seductress that's been implanted in his life to spy on him, keep him in check? It would be laughable if it wasn't downright insulting to imply she's the one playing games and being paid to do it. ] I'm not involved with him. I don't even know who "he" is because you won't tell me.
[ The "how dare you" for his insinuation is implied in tone alone, the pitching decibels in her hardening voice, sounding more betrayed than when they'd originally begun. Having difficulty opening up to her — aggravating, but acceptable. Rey knows how it feels to mistrust, to distance one's self; she'd done so for most of her childhood, and still retains some of those habits. But keeping massive secrets under some foolish guise of "not involving her", and then going on to distrust her so strongly that he would accuse her of infiltrating his life to the point of spreading her legs just to achieve it —
She borders on furious tears, pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she isn't done making her point. ]
All you're doing is keeping me in the dark. I can't protect myself against a threat I know nothing about.
[ In the end, she'll simply be woefully unprepared, and contending with a potential boyfriend that wants to shelter and coddle her like a child when she is more than capable of defending herself. Relying on herself. She has told him so, time and time again, and even now he refuses to listen. ]
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Some of the tension leaves his shoulders. He glances away from her, frustrated with himself and his choices and Snoke and Hux and all of it. A huff of breath marks his difficulty, but it sounds like annoyance. He recognizes that immediately and drops his chin. ]
You will not be in danger unless you become a threat to the man who Hux and I both work for. While I was attending Coruscant, before I began my post-bach, I worked on his political campaign. Occasionally, he solicits further favors from me.
[ Is that adequate? It hardly feels like it's the tip of the iceberg, but if he offers up the name of a major sitting politician and admits the corruption that got him there, and Ben's role in it, then he knows he'll not only lose her, but he'll have threatened Snoke, and Rey will not be able to help herself. She will wind up on his radar, and he will destroy whatever prospects she has. Her scholarship would be the first thing to go. ]
Hux arrived here because he believed I was avoiding my responsibilities.
[ It's the clinical remove that she hates so much, the distance in his voice that emphasizes that this is something he grapples with conveying the full truth of. But he doesn't know when it will be enough. He doesn't know what she wants, except to scour every inch of him. If she does that, she will come up cold. He gets to his feet. ]
I need to start dinner.
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[ Omitting pertinent details to paint a prettier picture, dressing up stories to make them more palatable, sanitizing the dirty, ugly reality of it all. Politics aren't her arena, but she isn't stupid, and it's insulting that Ben would assume she would simply smile, nod, and accept that summary for the shallow explanation it is. Like there's nothing so glaringly amiss about it. And now he means to avoid her, excuse himself from being under fire, with that poor excuse of starting dinner.
It isn't a kind compliment. The sharp twinge in her voice clarifies that exasperated, agitated disappointment. She could press for more, but his clever evasion and formal speeches make that seem an impossible avenue to travel. With his knack for expunging what he does not want her to know, to hear, it's more likely that she'll either tear her hair out or his by the end of the night, and she has to come to terms with the fact that he doesn't trust her.
That, more than anything, has taken to playing on a loop in her mind. He doesn't trust her. In fact, he trusts her so little that he would accuse her of the unthinkable, and then pass over it without remorse when he's proven wrong. She chokes on that upset when he rises, jumping to her own feet. ]
You need to avoid me, you mean. [ Her hands fumble for his phone where it still rests in the middle of the table, and then promptly shove it square into his chest for him to take. Given his glances toward it, and her new knowledge of what business he's involved in, she can only imagine what's waiting for him. ] I'm going to finish my paper.
[ And to ignore the fact that this first date is obviously going swimmingly, and find a private place to cope with the new assault of information and her feelings toward it. Which sounds more mature than 'storming off', which is precisely what it is, though not out the door. If she does, she knows she'll never return, never want to hear him out.
Her bag is still settled in the bedroom, and so she turns to leave in that direction. ]
no subject
The kind of favors that make people go away. That ruin them, the way Snoke would ruin Rey if he found out about her, if he knew that Rey was the reason he'd neglected to answer those messages, if he believed for even a moment that Rey had any inkling of what Ben had done to help him get elected. He had sabotaged his own mother. Given up the dirty laundry of her father, his grandfather, in hopes that it would assassinate her character to be associated to a monster.
Now he's the monster.
He has to wonder how many conversations have happened in her campaign office with Dameron on whether or not she should switch to Leia Skywalker for her next run. Own it. Grapple with it. Deal with it. He'd never know, of course. They'd never let him inside.
He has no business in the midst of this. He should be doing what Rey's doing — writing a fucking paper. Instead she's stomped off to be furious with him. Miraculously, not right out his front door.
He'd certainly expected it. From the moment she had confronted him, Ben had anticipated that she, like every other person he'd ever invested trust into, would see something distasteful and abandon him. Decide that he was not worth it. Move on. Her disdain was surely palpable. But she remains. Angry, moody, unable to look at him. But still here.
Strangely he doesn't know what to do with that.
So he makes them dinner. The prep work takes somewhere around twenty minutes. It's nothing fancy. But it's enough time to get sauce simmering and pasta boiling and a salad thrown together. Nothing needs his attention anymore, so he heads into the bedroom to find her. ]
no subject
He has notifications from Hux flashing across his screen, commanding his attention. A covert manilla envelope to preoccupy himself. Illegal dealings that, quite clearly, take precedence. The criminal world doesn't allow for less than an all-consuming commitment, after all. Plutt has been a prime example of that filthy greed, expanding his underground activities, always demanding, never content. Her parents, too, in their inability to choose her above their own addictions. Rey herself, even, for how she can't quite claw and crawl her way out of it completely.
Ben won't be able to stop. They needn't build an intimate rapport for that to be glaringly obvious. It comes with the territory, she knows, and he has not expressly stated an interest in ending his unsavory career. The opposite, in how casually he'd spoken of it, dropping details as though it were as mundane and expected as the weather forecast. Growing closer to him won't change his involvement. Cultivating their connection won't prevent him from choosing his lifestyle before her, each and every time.
Prioritizing it over the people around him, just like her parents.
It isn't an entirely fair comparison to make, but she's already drawn the conclusion that he doesn't want a girlfriend so much as the girlfriend experience. Someone to care for him, to come home to, who won't ask questions when she's left alone for long hours in the night or when Hux comes knocking at the door again. She can already see how that future would unfold.
The broad outline of his shoulders in the doorway is a surprise, then, but it doesn't turn the situation on its head. She's still aware of what he thinks — had thought — of her. In the privacy of a closed room, most of that righteous anger has melted away; for that reason, among others, she doesn't immediately turn to him, back to the door where she lays on her side, propped up on her elbow. Her eyes are too bleary and red-rimmed, and her her complexion has turned pathetically, tellingly splotchy, to want to face him. Even with the clear smell of food wafting in the air to indicate he hadn't just been hunched over his desk, plotting God knows what.
To her credit, she's managed to get some work done in spite of the ordeal. Not much, but some, scribbling away on printer paper to add new arguments, new notes, or edit in rewrites of blocky sentences. Much more to her credit, her boots stand at attention, discarded on the floor, this time. All in all, she has made herself comfortable there as though it's her own room. ]
I'm not done yet.
[ Is all that she says, hoarse but terse, without moving to glance at him. Anything more, and she wouldn't be able to rein in the aggravation and aggressiveness. ]
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Besides. The kitchen and living room are stifling, her absence suffocating. He could not stand to stay there.
Instead of respecting her need for distance, he sits on the bed behind her. At first, he keeps to the edge of it, a veritable gulf between them. But he slowly reaches down to pull off his shoes and then slides to lay down at her back. It's a queen mattress. With her sprawled as she is, they do not need to touch, even when he folds his hands over his stomach, elbows out, and stares at the ceiling. ]
Then I will wait.
[ There's a timer going in the kitchen. Maybe the sauce will boil over, or stick to the bottom of the pan, or some similar tragedy. That anxiety cannot even penetrate the haze of the one that has him riveted to this spot, paralyzed. The anxiety that tells him he might just lose her. ]
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Their combined breathing. She can only bear him so close but so out of her reach for a handful of moments. Eventually, she grits out an aggravated grunt in her throat, and throws her pen down on the page. Hands free, she plants them on the mattress so she can turn to look at him.
He's too close with the flipping and fidgeting around she's done just to inelegantly confront him, but she doesn't move back or angle her head any differently on the pillow. ]
Wait for what?
[ An apology? That's laughable. He doesn't deserve one, and the thought that he might be trying to ply one from her begs her to be defensive. Wait for her? That's less likely. She has always been the one waiting, and never the opposite. ]
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[ He turns his head sideways to look at her. She's so close. In his bed. So many different ways he had imagined this — it's enough to make his breath hitch now, despite the unpleasantness of the circumstances. His eyes roam across her face, admiring it, taking in the markers of distress that he left in her. How already, in just a few days, he has started to ruin her.
With one hand he reaches up to touch the side of her face. He shouldn't. It breaks his own rule. But so does — or should — lying in his bed, leaning in this close to her. God, he loathes Hux. Really could kill the guy right now for taking this from him. No. It's not Hux. It's him. He's the problem that pushes people away, that had already begun to upset her with this shitshow earlier. ]
Your schoolwork is more important than this. Please. Finish.
[ He smooths his thumb over her cheek as he says this, then drops his hand away before he makes the mistake of pulling her in like he wants to. ]
We can talk when you're done.
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[ But he's here now, right in front of her, and the tension between them will plague her if it isn't dissolved. Despite how resolutely that sentence begins, and how committed she is to clearing the air so she can tackle her schoolwork, it fades out and wavers on the last syllable.
Because he's touching her, blurring boundaries again, and it's unfair how rapidly the stress seeps out of her as a result. Unintentionally cruel, really, for how the tenderness of the gesture makes her want to forget her anger if he'll only just continue. She has to cling to it fiercely as to not shove it aside, even as her eyes flutter closed beneath the spell of that caress, teeth pulling back her lip and only releasing it once he's removed his hand from her. ]
Ben. [ It doesn't resemble the sturdy chastisement it should in the aftermath of his accusation. Instead, his name is a breathless exhale out of her lungs, clearly affected by the close proximity. ] You don't know how angry I am with you. It's all I can think about.
[ That's far from a secret. At this point, she has to reassert that to remind both of them that she is, when all she wants is to pin him down to the bed and show him just how aggravated she is with him, lose herself in that. Unhealthy coping mechanisms abound. ]
You owe me an apology. [ Some of the smokiness in her voice clears, but not all of it. It isn't intended to sound like 'you owe me an apology so put your mouth between my legs and get ready to live there for the rest of your life,' but that's how her tone relays it, and the magnetic effect he has on her is to blame. She ignores that throatiness and eases her hand down the bed, brushing the backs of her fingers against his. Trying to nudge him into, at the very least, allowing her to hold his hand. ] I've done nothing to deserve what you've accused me of.
[ It's easier to say than blatantly admitting 'you hurt me.' Nevertheless, it's implied, and it would take someone truly obtuse not to realize it. ]
Does any part of this feel fake to you?
[ Her. The connection they have. His feelings toward her. Now that the moment has passed, it seems even more ludicrous that it would be manufactured. ]
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Or, worse, what might make it clear he'd never really had it in the first place. She's right, of course. She deserves an apology. But an apology would overlook the complexity of where it had come from, the explanation she deserved. He grapples with that for a moment, wearing all the sheepishness of a scolded child in the slight pout of his soft lips. ]
It would not be the first time. For me.
[ Not for her. She has never been fake with him. She has never been anything but honest and earnest and he has repaid it in kind by indulging all his worst habits.
He hasn't told anyone about it. There is no one to tell. He grapples with it now, feeling as though his declaration is woefully insufficient for the truth that Snoke had trapped him repeatedly, punished him for his compassion by twisting him into positions which he could use against Ben in order to keep him loyal. Obligated. Easily ruined, where he could never work again.
Some part of him has begun to doubt his own telling of events for it. If, perhaps, Snoke had only set him up to genuinely commit the acts that he had been able to pain Ben as committing. There were girls who, like Rey, had earned his trust, who Snoke had revealed would testify to his voracious, violent appetites with them. Paid girls, he had guessed, but maybe not. Maybe he really was that kind of monster.
Maybe Rey was not safe here with him.
He raises his other hand to drag at his face, wiping his eyes. Tears don't come, but only because he's not properly in touch with that part of himself to reach them. He has forgotten the feeling. ]
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His employer, evidently. The women he has hired to infiltrate, as Ben had accused her, and that tells her all she needs to know of the quality of their character. Her brows pinch for a moment, incensed, though not toward him. The injustice of being fooled with sentiments that are fake, hollow, ugly things. That, she reasons, must be the root of his distrust. The cause of his lacking love life. Something close to understanding flickers across her expression.
At that, her fingers lock tighter, but never with enough pressure to strangle his. Only enough to pluck at his, turn them over, absently committing the shape and texture of his skin now that she has been permitted to have it for herself. She has to wriggle some to ensure she isn't pinning it to the bed, or between them, when she moves suddenly to plant her arm beside his head — prop herself up. Face hovering above him, some of her hair tickles the curve of his cheek where it curtains around them, as if creating a private space. ]
Do you think I'm anything like them?
[ The tone that carries through that inquiry hints that she doesn't need an answer, that it should be fairly obvious she is in a category of her own compared to those who would use him. If not for the severity of the betrayals that litter his past where his previous partners are concerned, she would point out that surely they would send someone less honest, less prone to digging their heels in, less apt to tell him to fuck off.
Or maybe his boss is aware those are the traits Ben looks for in women. She wouldn't know. She's not sure she wants to know what the others will like, given their manipulation of him, and the sudden possessive, protective inclination she feels. Her other hand raises, tracing the path his own hand had taken along his face. ]
Is that why you don't want to touch me?
[ She had presumed it was a rule intended to preserve his ethical purity, questionable as it is when they've crossed every other line, and her scholarship. Now, she has to pause, reconsider if it comes from some deeper place when she has all but begged him to do away with that restriction. ]
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But that's nonsense, of course. His attraction to Rey had been a sneaking thing, insinuating itself into his life under his nose. A product of passively observing her in his space, allowing her in without ever really having to allow her in or reach out. She is dirty and coarse and blunt. She has no resemblance to the other women he has taken wary interest in, not even in body type. But that is precisely what makes her a good counter now that he has stopped being taken in by them.
Then she connects it to his rule on contact, and his expression contorts in some disdain. He does not appreciate the connection in the slightest, but it does provoke him to consider the influences. Yes, it is a matter of ethics. Of expectations from the others in the college. And maybe more than that. A product of being convinced that she will see something that disgusts her in him — like this — and turn away, and he might be less invested if he were not buried in her cunt.
He weighs that. His other hand comes up to push the curtain of her hair back over her shoulder, to open up her face more so he might examine it in the light of — well, not day exactly, as his blinds in here are decidedly shut. But light. ]
You could not be more dissimilar. But strategies change, and I thought — [ He huffs out a breath, dodging her gaze then. Feeling sheepish and foolish and perhaps a little self-involved. ] I was mistaken.
[ Yes. That's close to an apology. She can't be so surprised, can she? She's always taken him for a massive prick. Her words. That she was correct about him cannot be so surprising. ]
I do not want questions to arise over whether you deserve the grade you earn. [ She's going to be dissatisfied with that. He can already feel it. He's shutting the conversation down, offering nothing up. He chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment, sliding his jaw back and forth. Then — ] But i suspect it plays a role in my anxiety around our earlier messages. [ A pause. He finds her eyes again, and his are shining and wet. ] Why did you come in here? Why didn't you leave? [ He'd been sure that she would. ]
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You were. [ Saying any more than that would just be beating him over the head with his blunder, but — ] And you hurt me because of it. Everything that I've said, everything that I've done — none of it has been fake. You're cheapening it by accusing me of the opposite.
[ Actions speak louder than words, and he appears abashed enough for her to conclude that he has learned from that mistake. That he feels as absurd as he should for slapping her with that label, making that presumption, and won't be repeating it. Still, she needs him to have that understanding of how it had affected her, pointedly refusing to allow either of them to just skim over it. That would be doing her own feelings on the matter a disservice. ]
I'm giving you a chance. A real chance. [ A fighting chance. She had insisted she wanted to know him, and this is the only the beginning of that, now that he isn't hiding. Distrust aside, he must trust her enough to disclose that. Or, conversely, he had been willing to part with that harbored secret to keep her from getting fed up and walking out of the door as he had feared she would. The latter would not be surprising, though she hopes for the former, if only because it indicates she has made some progress in proving he can trust her. But, more than that, the significant reason for her decision to stay — ] There's something here, Ben. A connection I've never felt with anyone else. I'm not going to just give that up.
[ Because she has never known good things to enter her life, and she has never been able to let go. Not without being forced to, and even then, there is no guarantee. And it isn't solely a physical pull that she feels, even if the sexual magnetism is overwhelming, overpowering. She almost clarifies that, emphasizes that she had meant more than fucking her when she had committed to his aversion of touching her at all, but she swallows it down. ]
I've known plenty of bad men. [ She continues. Briefly, her mind darts to Plutt and his compatriots, lips pinching. ] I don't know what you've done or why, but I know you aren't one.
[ It doesn't make sense with what she knows of him, doesn't fit with the impression she has. A massive prick sometimes, yes, but not a criminal overlord of some type. Not someone like Unkar. ]
I don't think a bad man would care about my grades, ethics, or me. [ She remarks, soft in its wryness. It won't eliminate the moist glean to his eyes, she suspects, but she leans in afterward to brush her mouth to the apple of his cheek. ] I wish you would care a little less about the first two. You've already invited me into your apartment and cooked me dinner.
[ If that were to be revealed, questions over her grades would be arising with or without the sex. To ensure it doesn't sound pushy rather than just blatant honesty, however, she quickly adds: ]
But if you want to wait, we'll wait. I'm good at waiting. [ Probably not so much, in this case, but she's making a concentrated effort. ] I just know I want to give whatever it is between us the chance it deserves.
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Afraid to allow her to touch him. Maybe, yes. Afraid he might break if he does let her. With her here, with her pressing her fingers into the cracks of his barely sustainable life, he begins to notice how close to cracking it is. How thinly he is holding himself together.
In some ways it feels like he has entered a different universe. She had been so angry with him, he was prepared for the possibility that this was unsolvable. But she's not asking him for anything. Not really. He has told her only the barest of the truth, and he has every intention of dealing with what's in that envelope. He has no choice. Yet she's here. She's not running. She's offering him a chance, expressing a belief in him despite the way she'd judged him earlier, and —
And offering herself to him.
He doesn't deserve it. He knows that like he knows that he's breathing her in right now and he knows that her skin is warm and soft and begging him to touch it. But —
The timer on his phone goes off in the kitchen with an unwelcome, upbeat jingle. He grimaces, shuts his eyes, and withdraws his hand from hers. He sits up slowly. ]
Dinner's ready, if you're hungry.
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It wouldn't solve anything. She can't keep him here. The impossibility of it doesn't eliminate the temptation.
So, no, she isn't just hungry. Thirsty, more like. But she's also a starving college student who can't afford much more than soggy, greasy delivery that she has to make last for multiple days. Someone that isn't used to meals without first having to work for them, as Unkar had demanded, and even then she'd received meager offerings that tasted more like cardboard. The conflict is written across her face plainly, unconcealed, but she eventually sits up — too quick, and her head spins with it — and slides off the edge of the bed. ]
I'm always hungry.
[ It's almost comical, how solemnly she says it. He's released her hand, but she grabs at his again, practically dragging him through the doorway into he kitchen. Fitting for the relationship and how she's nearly dragging him through it, to be honest. ]
Tell me you aren't using dinner as an excuse to avoid me again.
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He turns off the burners with his free hands, moving the pots off them respectively. Then he turns the timer off with a tap of his phone screen. There are notifications waiting there. He watches them for a moment, then tucks the phone into his pocket. Not something to worry about just now.
Reluctant though he is to borrow his hand back, he needs it for this. He starts straining pasta over the sink. ]
I have no intentions of avoiding you.
[ But it takes him a while to say more than that. He gets the pasta all the way drained. He doesn't bother with a serving bowl, just sets it back on the cool unused burner and sticks a serving spoon into it. Then he pulls bowls down from the cabinet. This isn't Chez Kylo alright. It's a college apartment, and though he may be a philosophy major, he's not living his most refined life. You're lucky he folds his socks. ]
I'm thinking. [ He decides to offer that up while he works through it. He pulls a bottle of wine off the top of the fridge and sets to corking it. ] Will you close the blinds? [ it'll make him feel better about having her here, now that she's drawn his attention to it.
While he's uncorking, he finally starts to explain, ]
I expected you to leave. What you have offered me instead is … unprecedented, in my experience.
[ In his life, at least. For him. People would rather leap to accepting that he is a bad man. It's simple, right? He does bad things. Terrible things for no reason other than money and the validation of an older mentor. He swallows thickly around that. ]
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She casts one long, lingering look outside the window pane as she does. It's surreal, seeing the landscape of her own dormitory from his perspective. Like she can finally understand what he must see from his vantage point. Paige isn't home, thankfully, to peer back at her. To see that she has to take precautions to keep Ben as dirty laundry when she'd much rather step into the light of day with him. It isn't as bothersome as she originally suspected it would be, however; she gets to have this for herself, keep him to herself, without the intruding opinions of others.
Returning back to where he's setting out wine, she doesn't hesitate to press in behind him. His apartment isn't hers, isn't familiar, but she takes to it as if it were her own by leaning up around him to sort through the cabinets. The first attempt is futile, just bowls and plates; the next holds the glasses she's searching for, and she plants them on the corner in front of him before reaching her grubby hands in the strained pasta.
It's just a few strands of noodles, but she slips them into her mouth, chewing them over as she props her chin between his shoulder blades and winds her arm loosely around his abdomen. ]
No one has ever given you a chance before?
[ Is that what he means? A pang of sympathy shoots through her, too relatable for it to veer into pity. Her scholarship, and Maz's fondness for her, feel like the first chances she's gotten to prove to herself that she can amount to something, rather than feeling like she's been written off. Overlooked, on the outside looking in. ]
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He pours them both a glass and then sets the bottle aside. He picks up both glasses and twists in her embrace so he can hold one of them out to her with greater clarity of intent. ]
Others would disagree with your assessment of my character. [ He settles on that, ultimately. It's where the divergence happens. She didn't go so far as to say he was a good man by any means, but not bad. That's new. ] A man who has done the things that I have, who continues to do them, would not deserve an opportunity.
[ Something hangs at the end of that sentence. It takes him a moment to figure out what it is. ]
Do you expect to change me?
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[ What with his expertise in philosophy, his studies in ethics. But it seems an insignificant conversation to pursue in the grand scheme, confronted with that inquiry. No matter his intent, she reads it as accusatory, lips thinning out to a frown.
No one has ever changed for her. Her parents couldn't be bothered to do so, and neither will Ben. She can't change that, can't change him, and she mulls over it as she glances into the depths of her glass. ]
The only person you should ever change yourself for is yourself. That's in your hands. I learned that a long time ago. [ He would resent her otherwise, and the act would be fake. A facade to placate her, to keep her. It would never truly be real, sincere, earnest in the way she wants. ] But I can bring out what's already there.
[ The parts of him that don't seem to mesh with the concept of Ben as a criminal, as a dangerous man, as someone involved in dealings so treacherous he can't even recount the full truth of them. That, she thinks, is a worthy compromise. ]
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'blackboard discussions' just gave me ptsd flashbacks
you're welcome
pure evil
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