Chapter Text
Ben isn’t even supposed to be here. He never goes to the market in the middle of the afternoon, on a Wednesday, when it’s absolutely packed with teens fresh out of school and moms trying to corral toddlers away from the toy aisle and everyone fresh out of work grabbing pre-made sandwiches and deli meat.
He never comes here when it’s this crowded. It’s a 24 hour supermarket, he usually shops during bouts of insomnia, when the market is empty and overbright.
He just needs one thing, the special oat milk he uses in his protein smoothies, that’s it, he tells himself, he’ll be in and out.
What’s the worst that could happen.
This. This is the worst. Beyond the worst. A walking nightmare.
He turns the corner into the frozen aisle and sees her.
She looks little, not just small but young , the fresh face of a kid on the body of a teenager and her hair is pulled into a bun and she’s just scowling at one of those Hungry Man frozen dinners.
Ben’s heart rate is always a little high, but it nearly doubles, beating close to 200 beats per minute. His body temperature shifts from regular warm to freezing cold and then on fire. He cannot breath, or move, or control his limbs, which have gone heavy and slack.
He falls to his knees in the middle of Kroger, oat milk rolling away and leaking.
“Hey,” she says, noticing him. “Uhm—are you okay?”
Her voice. Her voice. It pulls on something inside of him and he actually groans. How can she sound like Christmas morning when he was six? The first time he rode a motorcycle, the call of the moon.
He can’t speak, can’t stay here— looks at and her and— fuck she’s just a kid, she’s got a backpack that has doodles all over it. He’s gonna be sick.
He used every inch of his willpower to pull himself up off of the linoleum floor and then he runs out of the market, barely making it into the woods before shifting.
He doesn’t even think about his car, just keeps running until he’s too dizzy and has to stop to puke behind a tree, forcing himself to face the reality of what just happened.
He imprinted.
He fucking imprinted and not even on another wolf, not even an adult human. Some kid. Some kid in shitty clothes with beautiful eyes who eats the trashiest frozen food for dinner.
Snoke is going to kill you.
Ben thinks of his pack leader, of what he would do with someone like her— he feels another wave of nausea.
He tries to calm himself, tries to fix this somehow.
Snoke is never going to know.
This never happened. You’ll never see her again. It’s the only way to really protect her.
And you can handle whatever pain that brings. End of story.
Ben waits until his breath comes back before running the rest of the way home, resigning himself to get his car another day.
It seems utterly unimportant in light of the rest of today’s events.
He isn’t hungry, he just goes to his gym room to run some more but this time as a human. He sweats until his body aches. Then he lays down in his bed, alone.
He can’t forget her though, knows he will likely spend every night for the rest of his life remembering her face scrunched up with worry, remembering the sound of her voice.
Are you okay?
No. He is definitely not okay.
Fuck.
**
Rey’s phone burns in her pocket.
She probably should call Finn, let him know where she’s currently heading, but…
“Hey, Finn! This weird guy dropped his wallet at Kroger yesterday and I’ve taken it upon myself to give it back.”
She doubted he would take it well.
Scattered gravel and dirt crunch under her shoes as she makes her way down the shabby sidewalk. Whoever this Kylo Ren is (she can’t believe that’s the actual name on his license), he only lives about a fifteen minute walk from Plutt’s pawn shop.
Rey’s left hand clenches around the wallet she’s carrying, the worn black leather supple underneath her fingertips. He’d gotten up from his knees so fast the day before that it must have fallen out of his pocket without him noticing. He was out of the store before Rey could so much as call after him. She’d picked the wallet off the tiled floor of the frozen aisle, Hungry Man dinner forgotten. She’d thought about leaving it at the Customer Service kiosk. He’d come looking for it eventually, right? And even if he didn’t, it wasn’t really her problem.
And yet, Rey had hurriedly tucked the fallen wallet into her backpack. No one had noticed, thankfully, and she’d picked out a frozen Stouffer’s macaroni and cheese as if on auto-pilot.
Last night, after she’d already changed into her pajamas and brushed her teeth, she’d pulled out the wallet before climbing into her bed. She’d tentatively pulled out his license, breath lurching at the man’s picture. He hadn’t been smiling, and Rey traced the tip of her pointer finger against the plastic, wondering what his face would look like if he did smile.
An odd thought to have for a super weird stranger who had like, a panic attack or something on his knees in front of her. In the middle of Kroger.
Rey had taken note of a few different things about him.
His name was Kylo Ren. He wasn’t an organ donor (dick). He lived a little over a mile away. And he’s twenty-five (ten years older than her, so basically old as balls).
And now here Rey is, slowing to a stop in front of what she’s pretty sure is Kylo Ren’s house. It’s nothing too special, doesn’t stand out. Although not much in this town really stands out, except for the wolves that howl at night.
Sucking in a deep, fortifying breath, Rey cuts through the scrubby lawn to the front door, hand reaching out and ringing the doorbell before she can lose her nerve.
At first she doesn’t hear any signs of life coming from the other side of the door. No shuffling feet, no voice calling that they’ll be right there . It’s why Rey is so startled when the door suddenly opens and a very tall, very shirtless Kylo Ren is peering down at her with wide eyes.
She’s clearly picked a bad time.
“Um.”
“The girl from Kroger,” he croaks out, sounding like he’s been out in the sun all day with no water.
“It’s Rey.” Her voice sounds much more assured than she feels; Rey is quite proud of herself for this. “You, um, you dropped your wallet yesterday.” And then she holds it out to him, keeping her gaze on his face and not--not--
There’s a lot of him.
And Kylo just sort of...stands there staring at her. His eyes drift all about her face, drinking in everything about her as if it’s very important that he do so. Her brain logically supplies to her that this should make her skin crawl, that he should frighten her. Instead Rey just feels...perfectly fine.
And then Kylo Ren is clearing his throat and snatching the wallet from her hand. “Ah, thank you. I--I had a seizure, yesterday…” He trails off, his excuse sounding half hearted to both their ears.
Rey shrugs. “You were really high, I get it.” It’s not like it would be the first time she’s seen someone so fucked up they can’t function, but she keeps that to herself.
“I wasn’t, actually.” He sounds resigned, and Rey tilts her head up at him with a furrowed brow. He doesn’t seem to be lying, and he doesn’t really look like someone who is on hard drugs. He looks healthy and strong.
Rey nods, gaze going down to her feet as she feels her cheeks begin to heat up. So this is it then, she supposes. All this build up for a kind of awkward one-minute conversation.
She slides a step back, glancing up at him and opening her mouth to wish him farewell, when a thunderous expression crosses his pale face.
“Wait wait, why the fuck are you going to strange men’s houses that you don’t even know?”
Rey blinks, taken aback by his sudden anger.
“I could be a fucking pervert! I could be a Ted Bundy-esque son of a bitch with a bunch of bodies buried in my yard because I murdered them and--and--stop fucking laughing.”
“Sorry, you’re just...kind of dramatic.” Rey chuckles, coming down a little bit from her laughing fit. She grins up at him and the corner of his mouth twitches. She remembers what she had thought about the night before, about what his face might look like if he smiled. “Anyway, my foster dad will flip if I’m not there to help with customers soon.”
The slightly upturned corner of Kylo’s mouth flattens again into a hard line. “Who?”
“Plutt. He runs the pawn shop. Anyway, I’ll see you around, Kylo Ren.” She snorts again at his absurd name, turning and making her way back across the lawn.
“Rey!” he calls out after her, making her pause and look at him over her shoulder. The wind catches her ponytail and loose bangs, whipping her hair around her face and somewhat obscuring her vision.
So she misses the longing on his face when he says, “Thank you!”
**
He wishes Rey hadn’t come here. He wishes he didn’t know her name, or where her foster dad works.
Foster care, that explains the frozen dinner.
His wallet has three hundred in cash still stashed inside, not to mention credit cards. He cannot fathom why she didn’t take it, she obviously needs it.
Rey could have grabbed the cash and tossed the rest up to customer service.
But instead Rey came here, to his house to give it back.
Rey.
It’s a beautiful name, unusual.
He groans, because he knows what’s going to happen now. He probably would have started stalking the Kroger every afternoon eventually but now knowing where she lives, maybe lives, he knows the shop, knows there’s a shitty apartment over it, it has him losing his mind.
He wants to give her the money. Maybe he could find a way to quietly support her, get enough info to start an account in her name so she can go to a good college far away from him.
Maybe she’s almost graduating, maybe she’s actually eighteen, or just about, and she just looks a little young from not eating vegetables or being well loved.
He feels horrible immediately, he shouldn’t be thinking like that.
He tells himself he won’t go to Plutt’s Pawn Shop for a full two days. He never believes it for a second, but he still feels like the biggest creep in the world when he shows up there on Sunday.
He’s not sure what he wants. To make sure she’s okay, that Plutt isn’t—hurting her in some way. He can feel his blood boiling at the idea.
A little bell dings over the door when he opens it. The space is cramped and overfilled with junk, stacked from floor to ceiling. He hears a voice, Rey’s voice, from the back.
“I’ll be right up!”
He almost leaves, tries to leave is more accurate, but he just can’t. Not when he knows she’s here.
So he just stands there like an idiot until she comes out.
She’s in jean shorts and an oversized red t-shirt with some Japanese logo on it. She looks kind of dirty and—definitely not eighteen.
“Oh!” she says and her eyes light up. “It’s you.”
“Yep,” Ben says, like an idiot.
“Well, can I help you find anything?”
Ben swallows, he’s not even sure what to say.
“Is Plutt here?”
Rey’s eyes narrow and she looks a little sad as she shakes her head.
“Sorry, just me.”
“You run this store alone?”
“On weekends, yeah, so he can go out with his friends.”
Ben hates it. She should be with her friends, having fun. She’s just a kid.
“So uh, did you need something?”
Ben blinks down at her. He didn’t think this through, just says the first thing that comes to mind.
“It’s a long shot but I was hoping you had a compression chamber for a radiator for a 1967 Chevy Impala.”
He’s sure she will shrug or pretend to look around, but instead her eyes light up.
“Do you have a 67’ Impala? That’s such a sweet car. I don’t have a compression chamber for that year but I found a '71 crashed out in the dump and got some amazing parts.”
Ben can’t even speak, he just stares at her.
“I don’t have a car to rebuild but I’ve made some other stuff,” she tells him proudly. He’s very proud of her, he wants to hold her and tell her she’s amazing.
“That’s impressive.”
She shrugs but she looks pleased at his words.
“Are you—are you hungry? Do you want me to like, order you a pizza? As—as a thank you. You brought my wallet back with everything in it.”
“Of course,” Rey says a little quick. “I’m not a thief.”
“I know,” Ben says. “Just wanted to say thanks.”
Rey looks at him, squinting one eye. Then she shrugs and says, “I like cheese and olives.”
“Cheese and olives it is.”
They make small talk until the pizza arrives and then little Rey eats four whole slices before he finishes two.
“Do you—do you get enough to eat here?”
Rey looks around, prickling.
“I… I get by just fine. Plutt isn't so bad.”
Ben looks at her with a face that clearly states he disagrees.
“I’ve lived in worse places,” Rey tells him.
It breaks his heart.
“How old are you?”
Rey bites her lip, toes some dust on the floor with her sneaker.
“I’ll be sixteen in a few months.”
Fifteen. She’s fifteen years old. Ben exhales slowly.
“Listen,” fifteen, shes fucking fifteen, “ I’m going to give you my number. I know you don’t really know me, but if something happens—if you’re hungry or scared or something. You know, I owe you. For the wallet.”
He can see her deliberating, he’s pretty sure she’s going to call him a creep and tell him to fuck off.
But she doesn’t, she shrugs with a little smile and says, “Thanks, Kylo.”
Ben nods, content for now to just eat pizza with Rey and hope that she will turn to him in future if she needs anything, help or food or money or… just a friend.
Fifteen years old.
He is so totally screwed.