Archive of Our Own

“How does it feel?” Rey asks him, softly, her lips inches away from his ear, her breath hot against his skin. 

It’s instinctive to shiver, a pleasant sensation that spreads from his nape to the rest of his spine in rivulets of warmth. 

She’s at his back, her heat bleeding into his body on this quiet night under the stars of Naboo. Her fingers are running down his hair in slow movements, carding through the soft strands with a tenderness that pours from every touch, as if she wanted him to get used to this – to the feeling of her, both on his skin and in his soul. 

Light and love unfurl in small tendrils, reverberating in the bond like the echo of a far-away song that his heart can’t help but beat along to. The place where her other hand rests, at the base of his neck, feels like the point from where the universe began, an unbearable brightness condensed underneath his skin. 

His mouth feels dry, his words dull, flat. He doesn’t know how to say it out loud. Half a dozen languages he can choose from, and yet he finds himself without words. 

So he murmurs, “You already know that.” 

She does. She knows him, after all.

The bond hums between them, like a shining thread of light that connects their souls, and it brims with the same overwhelming longing that has always haunted him and that he never learned how to hide, despite his best efforts. 

The kind of longing that takes his breath away, that always leaves him desperate, a greedy creature that wants and aches and needs. The kind of longing that he’s had to deal with ever since he was a kid, starved for a kind touch, a warm embrace. 

For someone to see him, to hold him, to love him. 

“Yes, I know,” she murmurs, her voice low and drenched in fondness. He can hear the small smile on her lips in the way she talks. The mere thought of the dimples currently gracing her face is enough to make him yearn even more, a physical sensation that leaves him breathless from the sheer intensity of it. “But I want you to tell me. I want to hear you. Please?”

His heart is a fluttering creature in his chest, thundering away in frantic beats. 

“It’s, uh–” he stammers. 

Words don’t come easy to him. It’s no surprise, even now – he knows he never learned how to express the feelings stirring just beneath the surface of his soul and that’s how he ended up like this, twisting the galaxy in his grasp and tearing it apart just to have a way to let out what was gnawing away at his heart. His emotions – intense and lethal and volatile – have always burned through him, a painful knot at the center of his chest, preventing him from breathing. 

He tries, now. For her. And for himself, too. 

Because, as surprising and incredible as it sounds, he deserves to try. 

“It’s good,” he manages to say. 

Her fingers keep threading through his hair, oh so slowly, turning his body liquid, melting away all other thoughts. He’s drifting, floating in the starry sky above him, and the only thing to tether him to the ground is the touch of her hand and her luminous presence at the end of the bond. 

She hums, softly. “Good?”

His heart flutters again, a dull sound in this solemn silence. He nods, letting her fingers tangle into his hair as if she were weaving a tapestry out of him. His body feels as if it were made of starlight, there where it touches hers. 

“Yes. It feels–” His breath hitches in his throat when she gently pushes his hair to the side and comes to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. Her lips are warm and soft against his uncovered skin and her hair tickles him a bit, eliciting goosebumps in its wake. His voice trembles when he admits, “It feels so good. I– I like it.”

Her lips curve in a smile against his skin and it feels as if the same smile had started to sink into his bloodstream in a burst of incandescent light. 

It’s so – intimate. 

He never felt so cherished before. 

“Mh. That’s good.”

She hums against his skin, planting another kiss to the same spot as if she wanted to rewrite it. All the tension coiled there melts underneath the press of her lips, as if she’d blown away his worries one by one like autumn leaves. Then she trails down, her hand following his spine as if to count every notch, pouring light into his body at every brush of fingers. 

“You deserve to feel good,” she murmurs. 

He whimpers. He barely realizes he’s doing it, but he must have, because her hand comes to rest at the center of his back, as if to ground him and steady him, as if to anchor him to her, to this moment. To her love for him, a shining beacon in the galaxy. 

He doesn’t know how to tell her that she’s the planet he orbits around, like a satellite. That her love for him is the gravity field that keeps him together. 

“You do, sweetheart,” she continues, as her other hand keeps carding through his hair. The endearment makes his heart ache in his chest, tugging at a need he wasn’t even aware of. “You deserve to be touched like this.” Her fingers linger against his back, warm and reassuring, a weight that centers him. “I love touching you. So much.” 

The first tears start to fall down his cheeks slowly, hitting the ground underneath him, and then all at once, like a waterfall spilling from his eyes. He doesn’t know what does it – if it’s her words or the way she speaks, with a tenderness so big and overwhelming it threatens to undo him completely. If it’s her hand on his back, gentle and grounding, or the fact that he never had someone to touch him like this and he’d never imagined it could make him feel so vulnerable and loved at the same time. 

Maybe it’s all of this combined in a storm that breaks over him, and he can’t help the sobs that heave his chest, tearing his ribcage open and letting his heart claw its way to his throat. 

Rey is there, which reassures and surprises him at the same time because he never expected her to be there for him.

She shuffles a bit and comes to kneel in front of him, her hand resting on his cheek, slowly turning his face into her direction. Her fingers dig gently in the curve of his jaw. 

Every touch sends jolts of pleasure down his spine, as if he’d touched a live wire. He never knew that touching someone could be so – physical. Visceral, in a way. 

He hadn’t been touched in so long. 

“Hey,” she murmurs, her voice a balm against his battered heart, as soft as a promise. “It’s alright. It’s alright. I’ve got you.” 

She touches him – she pushes his hair away from his face and wipes his tears with the back of her fingers. She cups his cheek into her open palm and leans in to press a kiss to his brow. She steps closer, gingerly throwing a leg over his and settling into his lap, her arms wrapped around his frame, her hands warm against his shoulders. She guides him, lets him rest his head on her shoulder, his lips pressed against the thin fabric of her tunic, his hands finding their way to her waist to hold her, to feel her. 

It’s this and a million other touches that make him feel – exposed. Raw. More vulnerable than he’s ever been. 

The ancient fear that has always haunted him creeps back in – a voice that used to tell him that vulnerable meant weak, that needing meant losing a part of himself, that loving meant submitting himself to the terrible ordeal of being left behind. A part of him – a part that, he knows, will take a while to disappear, if it ever will – urges him to hide behind a mask again, before she can hurt him, before she can shatter his eager heart into pieces. 

But Rey is a bright presence on the other end of the bond and she doesn’t stop touching him. She runs her hand up and down his spine, she presses a kiss to his temple, she holds him in her arms. 

“I’m here,” she keeps on whispering, her voice soft and gentle, her words an enchantment against all other thoughts. “I’m here. I’ve got you. I love you.”

So he lets himself feel this – this love, this gentle touch, this warmth that pours over him like a grace. He buries his head into the crook of her neck and listens to the steady beat of her heart and clings to her. 

As if drifting through an ocean of stars, but with a luminous thread to guide him back home. 

She presses a delicate kiss against his hairline. "Was that too much?"

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, it was perfect.”

✨

The first time Rey touches him after Exegol, he jolts as if she’d burned him, and coming to think about it, the most surprising thing is that she hasn’t. 

For a while, they’ve awkwardly danced around each other, letting their bodies recover from the fight, both knowing all too well that they shouldn’t push their luck with open displays of affection when it came to the Resistance anyway. 

It has been an entrancing choreography made of tender smiles and hesitant glances and a quiet conversation between their souls, but now they’re finally on their own, in the small cottage on Naboo they’ve claimed as their home, and Rey touches him and it comes as a revelation to him, the fact that he’s someone who can be touched. 

Who can be touched like this. 

It’s something easy, uneventful. It’s not as earth-shattering as the brush of her fingertips across the stars, nor as fierce as the slash of her lightsaber against his face, but it’s mundane, human. Not two Force-users fighting a war, but two lovers, slowly learning their way toward each other. 

They’re exploring the woods outside their cottage, the nabooian sun filtering through the leaves of the trees and painting her in light and shadows, and before he realizes, she reaches down to take his hand, lacing their fingers together. 

It would look perfectly normal from the outside, two figures holding hands deep into the forest, and it’s only by the way the bond thrums that he realizes how important this is to her, the fact that she’s finally allowing herself to reach out for him. 

As if taking something for herself for the first time in her life. As if allowing herself to want, for once. 

He knows the way she feels. She knows the way he feels. It’s quite obvious, too, even if they haven’t said it out loud yet. After all, he’s poured half of his life force into her soul just because he couldn’t bear the idea of living in a galaxy without her in, and she’d smiled up at him as if she’d witnessed the birth of a universe and had kissed him. She knows he loves her, he knows – though it’s hard to convince himself – that she loves him. 

Still. Her touch comes as a surprise to him and he jolts as if she’d stabbed him again. 

Her hand is not soft, smooth. Little calluses are scattered all over her fingers, her palm, the heel of her hand – a gift that years and years of labor in the harsh desert of Jakku have left her. For a moment, he wishes he could kiss everything away, rewriting her skin the way she did with his heart, pouring love in the cracks of his existence. 

Still, despite her calluses, her touch is gentle, though as determined as she is – as if she were testing it, but also silently telling him that this is real, this is happening. 

That she’s here and she’s touching him. 

He can’t remember the last time someone had touched him like this. Maybe when he was a kid and he was still someone worth loving or maybe never, because all that he remembers from his childhood is loneliness and desperation and a voice that told him that everyone he’d ever love would eventually turn their back on him. 

He doesn’t know how to react. 

His mouth is suddenly dry and yet his palms are clammy, and even though he tries, he can’t remember a single word. The only thing he’s aware of is her presence right next to him, warm and radiant, and the ferocious yearning he feels stirring in his chest at the thought, as if the touch of her hand had awoken a beast that he’d tried to abate long ago.

“Hey,” she starts, frowning, her delicate brows furrowed together. She tilts her head to the side, letting her hair – now loose from its bounds – brush against her collarbone in a mesmerizing dance. “Is this–” Her eyes briefly flicker to their joined hands, then she looks at him again, vulnerable and fierce at the same time. “Is this making you uncomfortable?” 

It takes him a moment to recover enough to speak. 

“No,” he replies. His voice comes out shaky, uneven  – as if he were two seconds away from bursting into tears. “Not at all.” 

She doesn’t look convinced, though. There’s a hint of concern in the back of her eyes and in the bond, pulsing quietly in the air around them. 

“Ben,” she whispers, so softly as if not to startle him. As if he were a wounded creature she were trying her best to soothe, to reassure, to win the trust of. He feels the tears start prickling at his eyes at the thought, because no one has ever treated him like this. Gently. As if he were something to cherish and not to destroy. “Ben, love, you’re shaking.”

Is he? He must be, because she comes to rest a hand on his shoulder and he sees the way his body trembles underneath her touch. And yet, he’s not aware of it – as if the only thing he could feel in this moment were the weight of her hand in his and the gentle pressure of her fingers on his chest, when they come to rest above his heart. 

“Oh,” he breathes out, surprised as if he were watching his body from the outside. “I hadn’t– I hadn’t realized–” 

The trembling of his shoulders, the tears in the back of his eyes, the way his heart seems to thunder against his chest – all of this because she’s touching him. 

He hasn’t been touched in so long he realizes only now how much he’s missed it. How much he’s wanted it. How much it scares him, the pressure of someone else’s hand on his skin. 

“We don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with,” she tells him. The light of the sun filters through the treetops, pouring a golden haze on her familiar face, and the freckles on the bridge of her nose are more prominent than ever. She looks as if she were made of light, though there’s a cloud in the back of her gaze when she speaks again, as if scared, “If you don’t want me to touch you–” 

“No,” he interrupts her. His heart is beating wildly in his chest, underneath her palm, but he tries his best. “No, please. I want– I want everything. With you. I want everything.”

Her eyes widen a bit, as if taken by surprise by his genuine admission. He can feel the echo of the same surprise tingle in the bond, like the last few notes of a melody, and he senses something else, too – the shock of being wanted, the way it rewrites her whole life. 

Oh, how he wants to tell her that she does just the same, just by being here with him. How the touch of her hand opens an abyss of yearning he’d thought he’d mastered, but that, it turns out, he hadn’t. The same yearning that comes alive now, underneath her fingers, that makes him lean in and tremble at the same time from the sheer intensity of it.

“I just–” he adds, then swallows. A familiar fear creeps in his chest, but he soldiers on, gritting his teeth. “I’m not used to this. Being touched. No one has ever– and it’s too much but I want– I want so much– and I don’t know –”

He’s not making any sense – words fall from his lips in a slurred mess, feelings brewing up a storm in the calm ocean of their bond – but Rey understands him all the same because she squeezes his hand once, gently, as if to bring him back to her. 

“Ben,” she whispers, his name falling so easily from her mouth, as if she’d spent a lifetime uttering it. “Ben, it’s alright. I know. I understand.”

She’s tender about it – there’s no other way to put it. Her fingers move slowly, tracing gentle patterns on his chest, and it feels as if she’s stripping him of all the layers he’s put between himself and the rest of the world in these years. He’d worn the darkness like an armour and she’s slowly undressing him of it, piece by piece. The mask is long gone, as his heavy robes and leather gloves are, but an armour like that leaves traces even once it’s fallen off, lingering on his skin, in his soul, over his heart. 

She undoes these layers so quietly and yet so inevitably, her fingers dancing against the fabric of his shirt. Naboo is a warm, gentle planet in the summer and their clothes are thin, flimsy – her touch burns through this unsubstantial layer like molten lava, flowing down his spine in fiery bursts that leave him shivering, and every inch of his skin feels raw, tender, bruised in a new way. 

He keeps expecting this touch to turn into a blow. But it doesn’t. 

There’s no pain to endure, no bruise to hide, no wound to mend. There’s just Rey and the quiet sort of love that radiates from her, enveloping him in an embrace and he doesn’t–

He doesn’t know how to deal with a touch that isn’t meant to hurt him. 

Rey must sense it, because he can hear the soft exhale that comes out of her lips and she looks at him with those warm eyes so full of love. 

It surprises him, how much being loved resembles being choked, his breath stuck in his throat and his heart hammering away frantically. It is not unpleasant or painful, though – it’s like the reassuring weight of her hand on his chest, a nice sort of pressure on his soul that tethers him to this radiant moment of happiness. 

“What if we take it slow?” she asks him, softly. In this light, her eyes are the color of the bark of the trees around them and she looks like some kind of ethereal creature he conjured up for himself out of his hyperactive imagination. She’s hesitant, but willful as always. The star he followed home, when home was a strange place. “Would that be alright?” 

He swallows his heart down and nods, quietly. 

“Yes,” he replies, so eager and frightened, longing and fear mixing in his voice. “Yes. It would be very much alright.”

The smile that breaks out on her face is stunning – bright and wonderful and dimpled, reminding him of the sunshine gently filtering through the leaves and bathing this moment in a golden light. She looks radiant and he can’t believe all of this – this smile, this surety, this steady pulsing of her heart in time with his – is for him. 

Him, of all people. A galaxy full of wonders, and she looks at him like that. 

She must sense the direction his thoughts have taken, because she scrunches up her nose and tugs at his hand. 

“Shut up,” she tells him, fierce and determined as always, even if he hasn’t said a word out loud.

It tears a stunned laugh out of him, her candid approach to it – as if she could quiet all the voices in his head just by telling them to shut up. Maybe she can – there’s not a thing in this world that she can’t do if she sets her mind to it, he supposes.  

So he lets her tug at his hand again as she starts to walk, venturing deeper into the forest, her shadow stretched over the trees around them as the daylight falls on her small frame, bathing her in light. 

“Come on,” she says, glancing behind to flash him the bright, dimpled smile he’s starting to anticipate with a flutter of his heart. “The lake must be nearby.” 

He follows her, with his body and his heart alike.  

✨

She counts the moles and the beauty marks scattered all over his face, her fingers brushing against his skin with the most tender of touches, as if she could break him otherwise. 

He feels like she could. That if she applied enough pressure, she could shatter him into pieces. 

She doesn’t, though. 

Her index follows the line of his nose, the sharp dip of his cheekbones, the curve of his jaw. Her fingers come to cover the place where the scar she’d gifted him once used to be, as if to erase even the memory of it. When he tentatively smiles up at her, she comes to caress the dimples on his cheeks, studying it with fascination. Her love for him shines in the bond – not something explosive and terrifying, but something tender and steady. 

He never knew that love could be so–

–quiet. So perfectly, blissfully quiet. 

Every time he’s loved someone, it has felt like a war, burning and devastating, tearing him apart from the inside. Instead, now it’s soft and calming, almost soothing – as if this love, instead of breaking him, were putting him together, slowly, piece by piece. 

“You can touch me, too,” she tells him, then, when she meets his gaze. 

His hands are big and clumsy. There are calluses between his fingers there where he’s given everything he had in his training, day after day, year after year of terrible, hopeless desperation. There are white little scars on his palms where a blade has sunk too deeply and patches of pinkish skin from when his old crystal had bled and cracked open, burning a layer through his skin that never quite healed. 

He doesn’t know how to touch something so delicate and beautiful as Rey. He doesn’t know if he’s worthy of it. 

“I– I don’t–” he starts, his heart in his throat. “I can’t–” 

Rey soothes him, her soul brushing against his, her hand cupping his face. He feels – held, for the first time in his life. As if he could fall back into her, and she would catch him. 

“You don’t have to,” she tells him, reassuringly. Her eyes are full of incredible tenderness when she smiles down at him. “You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to. I can wait.” Then, she lets out a small laughter, so impossibly sweet. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m good at waiting and you’re worth waiting for.”

He gulps, his hands trembling, there where they are resting at his sides. 

“I want to touch you,” he confesses, then, his voice faint and small as if he weren’t allowed to want this, or anything for the matter. “I just– I don’t want to hurt you.”

He’s hurt her too many times already. He doesn’t know how to love someone without destroying it, doesn’t know how to be gentle with these bloodied hands and battered heart of his, but Rey makes him believe that he can – that he can love her without breaking her. That love can be something that blooms, not something that binds and weights down. 

It’s just – so scary. 

Her hand brushes his hair away from his face and she tilts her head as if to look at him better. As if she didn’t want to look at anything else but him. 

“You won’t hurt me,” she tells him. She brings her fingers underneath his chin and tilts his head back, to look him in the eyes. Her lips curl in a smile and the dimples he knows so well appear on her face. It feels like – warmth, and home. “Ben. You won’t hurt me. I trust you.” 

He’s someone who can be trusted, now. Someone who can be loved and held and soothed. Someone who can love without destroying. 

It feels as if he has to be worthy of it. This trust she has in him. 

So he brings a hand to her face, cradling it. It sends shivers down his spine, the feeling of her skin against his, as if a new kind of energy had started to run into his veins. She leans into his palm, pressing a kiss to the inside of his wrist, and he feels the tears pool in his eyes. The bond hums around them, brighter than any star he’s ever seen. 

“See?” she tells him. “You haven’t hurt me. In fact–” She kisses him again, her lips so soft against the delicate skin of his wrist. “It feels good.”

What a wonderful thing to learn, that being touched can feel good. That he can touch something without breaking it apart. That he can touch Rey, and he’s not going to hurt her or break her or scar her – but he’s just going to love her, with all the strength of his eager, fragile heart. 

He thinks he can settle for this. 

✨

He cries the first night she puts her arms around him and holds him in her sleep. 

It’s a quiet night, like every other night here on Naboo. The moonlight filters through the their window, gently brushing against his face as he lies on his side, curled on the bed underneath the sheets, Rey at his back. 

She’s deep asleep, splayed on the mattress in a messy array of limbs, her body soft and warm beside his, her breath lingering against his neck like a kiss. Sometimes, she snores, which tugs his lips upwards in an awestruck smile. 

The silence around them feels almost alive, tender and delicate like a caress, wrapping him in a safety he’d never felt before Rey made a home out of him, and though he’s always had problems falling asleep, it feels easier now, to close his eyes and let the rhythmic beat of her heart, pulsing in the bond, lull him to sleep. 

As if her heartbeat were a lullaby designed for his ears only. 

He’s in that special place between wake and sleep, where everything is soft and far-away, when it happens. Rey mumbles something in her sleep, shuffles and rolls over and–

– she throws an arm over his waist, hugging him. 

His first instinct is to freeze, because that’s how he reacts to someone hovering beside him in his sleep, and for a moment his hands ache to curve around a lightsaber just to feel safe, protected, ready to attack before someone else has the chance to attack him. His heart jumps in his throat, his body shaking, fear rising in his chest like a wave he can’t help but drown it, but then–

Her hand comes to rest on his chest and a new kind of warmth spreads there, underneath her touch, as if she’d turned his skin to gold, there where her fingers rest. It’s not rage or fear that burns through his chest, but it’s – love. 

Golden, soothing love. 

“Ben,” Rey mumbles. 

It’s clear that she’s still deep asleep and probably dreaming, because she snores a bit and nuzzles her face into the place between his shoulder blades, humming softly, and yet he can feel her smile against the thin fabric of his sleepshirt. 

She’s dreaming about him, he realizes. And she’s – she’s smiling. 

He’s not a nightmare or a terror. He’s someone worth dreaming about and the dreams are pleasant. 

“Ben,” she repeats, snuggling closer. “Mh, you’re so warm.” 

The bond hums, quietly, as if pulsing in time with the soft kind of happiness radiating from her. He can feel it as it washes over his soul too, like a wave, erasing everything else in its wake. There’s nothing else but Rey, her lips against his back, her hand on his chest, the quiet sort of joy bleeding from her. She’s wrapped all over him, inextricably tangled in his soul.

He feels so safe. 

It brings tears to his eyes, this idea, because he never felt safe before, not even as a kid, not even in his parents’ embrace. There was always a voice, soft as a whisper, poisoning every moment, tearing it apart until there was nothing but bitterness and fear and he was just a screaming abyss of rage and desperation. 

But Rey holds him in her arms and he feels – safe. Protected. At home. There’s no voice in his head, but only a soothing kind of love that floods his chest and fills the cracks in his heart. 

“I want to stay like this forever,” she murmurs against his back, which does nothing to abate the tears in his eyes. Then, she proceeds to mutter something that turns his life upside down when she adds, “I love it. I love you.” 

That’s what breaks him, he supposes. That’s when the tears start to fall. 

He tries his best not to sob, biting down on his bottom lip, but there’s  no way to stop the tears streaming down his face, dampening his pillow and hitting the mattress underneath him. He feels himself shake in her embrace, raked by tremors and he realizes–

He’s loved. 

He’s truly, really loved. 

She nuzzles further into his back and even though she’s still asleep, it almost seems as if she’s picked up what he’s feeling, because she splays her fingers against his heart and brings him closer, to reassure and soothe him. 

“I love you,” she repeats, her words pressed right into his back. 

Ben tentatively brings his hand over hers and laces their fingers together and breathes deeply. Her hand is as warm as ever, and it’s surprisingly easy, letting her quiet happiness wash over him like a tide, his breath synching with hers, his heart beating in time with hers. 

When he falls asleep, he falls asleep with the notion that he’s loved and somehow, that’s enough to grant him a quiet, peaceful sleep. 

✨

Next morning, he’s drinking his caf in the small garden of their cottage, sitting on the first step of their porch and watching the sun rise slowly over the horizon, when Rey walks out and finds him there. 

“Morning,” she yawns, paddling over to him with a sleepy grin that tugs at something in his heart. 

She’s got the worst case of bed head he’s ever seen and it’s clear she’s still half asleep, because it takes her a few seconds to blink him in and sit beside him, but still, she’s beautiful and radiant and when she comes to rest her head upon his shoulder, he feels at peace. 

Which is a terrifying notion, for someone who’s been at war with himself ever since he could remember, as if the awareness of himself came with the inescapable struggle in his soul. 

He shakes his head and slowly, carefully, leans in to plant a feather-light kiss to her brow, eliciting a content hum from her as she nuzzles further into his shoulder. His lips linger for a second against her skin, just basking into this easy contact that still comes with a jolt. He thinks about her words from last night and feels himself shiver, lightly. 

It feels so big and yet so domestic at the same time. 

“Morning, sleepyhead,” he whispers, then, fondness pouring into his voice. Rey hums again, and the happiness that unfurls from her takes him aback, because they’re just sitting there, on their porch, doing nothing and she’s so happy– “There’s caf in the kitchen. Also waffles,” he adds, as if to earn this happiness. 

“Mh. In a minute,” she breathes out, then drops a kiss to his shoulder, almost absent-mindedly. She’s so casual and yet so delicate with her affection, as if she were trying to train him to accept it and he loves how gentle she is with him, how she makes every touch look both meaningful and effortless. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He blinks at her, surprised. “What do you mean?” 

Her eyes are so bright in the breaking light of the dawn, her skin glowing faintly. Her freckles look like a pattern he wants to learn by heart. She’s so beautiful. 

“You’re staring,” she points out, raising her head from his shoulder to look at him. Her brows furrow, concern in the back of her eyes. “Is everything alright?” 

It takes him all his courage to do it, but he brings his hand to her cheek, gently, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, slowly as if to savor every moment of this simple gesture. She doesn’t look away from him, but keeps her gaze on his face, as if to study it. As if she wanted to become the galaxy’s lead expert on Ben Solo. 

Well, she already is. 

“Yeah, everything is fine,” he reassures her, his hand lingering at the place where her neck meets her shoulder. “You– you kind of talk in your sleep,” he blurts out, then.

A faint blush comes to dust her cheeks, covering her freckles. Her skin warms underneath his touch, which is a detail that elicits an unexpected surge of tenderness in his heart. 

“Oh,” she lets out, tilting her head as if to lean into his touch. As if to bask into it for as long as she can, fully knowing how much it costs him to face his fears and how precious it is, this touch he allows himself. “What did I say? Nothing embarrassing, I hope. Did I recite the Jedi texts?”

He chuckles, softly. His thumb comes to brush against her flushed cheek, counting her freckles. 

“No,” he replies. Then, he takes a deep breath and he admits, his heart trembling in his chest, “You said you love me.”

Surprisingly, though her blush deepens, Rey smiles. It’s so bright it puts the pinkish dawn out here to shame and he feels his heart stutter in his chest, a physical feeling that leaves him out of breath. 

“Oh. Well.” She shrugs, but she’s still grinning, her eyes full of love and fondness and everything he never allowed himself to dream of. “You already knew that.” Then, because he must be looking at her in shock, she frowns and adds, “What? Why do you think I came here with you? Out of gratitude?” 

It tears a stunned laughter out of him and he stares at her in surprise.

“No, I–” He gulps, somewhat nervously. His heart must be loud enough to alert every living thing of his presence here, but Rey looks at him with so much love in her eyes it’s hard to care about anything else. “No one had ever said that before. Not to me.”

The tenderness that bleeds out of her is enough to bring fresh tears to his eyes. It feels like everything he does lately is crying into her arms, and yet for once in his life these tears are not unwelcome, a relic of a humanity he wanted to forget – on the contrary, he’s never felt more human and happy about it. 

“Well,” she whispers, softly. She cups his face into her hands and tugs him down, gently, so she can press a kiss to his brow. Her lips are so soft, her kisses so delicate – he feels cherished, as if though he were something precious she’s taking care of. “I love you. You deserve to hear it as often as you want to.”

He’s trembling, shaking in her embrace, and yet in some hidden corner of his soul, he finds the courage to utter, “Once more would be enough.”

She doesn’t miss a beat, her lips pressing another kiss to his skin, as if to let the words sink right into his bloodstream, erasing every other thought swirling under the surface of his mind. 

“I love you,” she repeats, immediately. “So much, Ben.” 

It will take a while to convince himself of it, but still, he lets her words wash over him, as if she were wrapping him in the warmest blanket of the galaxy. He’s loved. He’s someone who can be loved, now. And this love doesn’t come with a desperation so big it overshadows it – it brings no pain, no ache, no sorrow. 

It’s just love. 

Then, he breaks away from her, just to look her in the eyes. Warm, hazel eyes that look at him as if he were made of stars – as if the universe was made just for the chance of meeting him. 

He smiles at her, softly. “I love you,” he murmurs.

He knows he doesn’t have to say it back – that she wouldn’t ask him to, that she would be patient and would wait for him until he’s ready to say it back. But the thing is – he doesn’t want her to wait. Not again, not after she’s spent her whole life waiting. He wants her to know that she’s loved. 

“You already knew that,” he adds, quietly. “But I love you.”

There are tears in the back of her eyes and she doesn’t even blink them back in a show of defiance – instead, it’s like she prides herself in this vulnerability and lets them fall down her cheeks as she smiles at him, brightly, so brightly he’s almost blinded by it. 

It feels easy to lean in and press a kiss to her forehead and her eyes flutter closed, lashes brushing against her cheeks, as if to feel it better, this love pouring out of him.

“I’ll go get your waffles,” he tells her, then. 

Rey laughs, a silvery sound in the silence around them, and he thinks – he could spend a whole lifetime trying to make her laugh, and it would be a life well spent. 

✨

Her hand lingers on his face, cradling it with the utmost care, when she leans in to whisper, a breath away from his lips, “I really want to kiss you.”

They’re in their kitchen, the light of the dying sun slowly flooding the small space with a golden film as it filters through the glass of their windows. It gives her hair a faint auburn shine, as if she were made of the same gentle glow of the sunset out there. The room smells like flowers – like the one he’s picked up for her from their garden, a luscious, rich smell that almost feels like a blessing, after so many years spent in the aseptic corridors of a dreadnought.

There’s some sort of blessed indolence about this scene – as though it were all unfolding in slow motion, between one heartbeat and the other, the bond humming quietly around them like the echo of lullaby. 

It’s all so – quiet. Easy. Loving. The palm of her hand is warm against his cheek and elicits tendrils of heat down his spine, comforting and thrilling at the same time. 

He wants – this, and more. 

There’s a bottomless abyss of want and need inside his chest that he can’t understand and that has always plagued him, and yet Rey makes it look okay, as if she were telling him for the first time that he’s allowed to want something, and that this desire is not going to ruin him or break him apart anymore.  

That he’s allowed to want her and he’s not weak because of it. 

“I–” He gulps. He’s vaguely aware of the way his heart is racing in his chest, and yet he doesn’t really feel it – as if her closeness had the power to both excite him and soothe him at the same time. His voice is eager, desperate, when he utters, “Please.”

His back is pressed right against the counter, his body flush with hers as she cages him there, her other hand resting on the wooden surface behind him. The scent of her – flowers and sunshine and something that’s entirely hers – lingers in the small space between their bodies, her hot breath ghosting against his skin. 

It’s a surprise, how physical this is. How many details there are in a simple touch, in this closeness he’s ached for almost all his life. How a body is something that you can touch, that you can feel. 

Her lips part, her chest rising and falling slowly against his. “Do you want that, Ben?” Her thumb brushes against his cheekbone, smoothing his skin. He shivers and gasps, his breath stuck in his throat. “Do you want to kiss me?” 

He knows she’s not teasing him – she’s asking him. She’s making sure he wants this, that he’s ready for this, that she’s not pushing him. It makes him love her even more, this tenderness and care in the way she loves him.

His throat is dry. There aren’t words in all the languages he knows that could possibly convey how much he wants to – how desperately he needs to kiss her, to feel her, to touch her, warm and soft and real underneath his hands, a marvel of bones and flesh and light right in front of him. 

So he just says, “Please.” 

Rey understands him. Of course she does – she is in his soul, perfectly at home in this wreckage of heart that beats for her. So she just leans in, guiding him down, and kisses him. 

It’s slow, tender, so different from the only kiss they’ve shared on the darkness of Exegol. There’s no rush, no desperation, no sense of urgency. The bond doesn’t pulse with a frantic need anymore. Instead, it feels as if this moment were suspended in time, as if he could live forever in the space between a heartbeat and the other, as if the golden indolence of the sunset had started to run down his veins too. 

Her mouth is warm and soft, slanted over his with a tentativeness that makes his heart flutter in his chest and his body melt against hers. It feels instinctive to let her coax his lips open, deepening the kiss even though they’re both new at this, fumbling and stuttering upon this new language they’re trying to learn together. And yet, she’s willful as always, burning with a fierce determination that makes him tremble underneath her touch, his body soft and pliant, something for her to cherish and handle. 

She takes her time to explore him, as if she wanted to learn him – as if she wanted to map him, to know every inch of his skin, every pulse of his heart, every sound that slips past his lips when she comes to tangle her hand into his hair and he surrenders completely to her. 

“Ben,” she breathes out against his lips, pulling slightly away only to look at him. Her eyes are half-lidded, her lashes brushing against her freckled cheeks. There’s a flush to her skin that wasn’t there before, and it’s almost mesmerizing, in its mundane beauty. “Ben, sweetheart. You can touch me.”

Oh. 

Oh. His heart burns, as though she’d started a fire in his chest, and it feels as if it were trying its best to climb out of his throat. 

Touching her, kissing her – it comes with a heady rush, the idea that he can. That she wants him to. That he can touch her and feel her and love her. It will never cease to amaze him. 

She doesn’t force him. She doesn’t push him. She doesn’t wrap her fingers around his wrists to guide his hands toward her hips, her body, her face. 

Instead, she just waits for him, patience and love pouring from the bond. 

She leans in and kisses him again, as if to tell him without words how much she loves him, and somewhere inside his heart he finds the courage to reach out and bring a hand to the curve of her waist, his palm barely resting against it. 

She’s so – real. Solid, warm. Not a dream, but something alive, muscles flexing underneath his fingers, back arching in his touch when his grip becomes a little firmer, as if she wanted to feel him better. 

A content hum slips past her lips when his fingers close around her waist and he drinks the sound right from her mouth as she kisses him and before he knows he’s flush against the counter, her arms wrapped around his neck, both her hands in his hair, her heart pressed right against his. The kiss is slow and deep and languid, stoking the fire that burns through him, and he lets out a low moan when she tugs a bit at his locks, sending a jolt of pleasure down his spine. 

“Oh,” he whimpers against her mouth. “Oh.”

It comes as a surprise to him, this new kind of desire. He’s spent his whole life wanting, almost desperately, as if searching the whole galaxy for something to soothe the ache he felt in his chest, and yet he’s completely unprepared for the way he wants her. Body and heart and soul, as if there was no boundary between these things, as if she were a bright flare of light he wanted to drown in.

Rey pulls away just slightly, her eyes searching his face, worry twisting the lines of her face. 

“Is this alright?” she asks, quietly. 

Her fingers rake through his hair, slowly, eliciting a fire that starts low, at the base of his spine, and climbs up in licks of flame. He feels the scorching heat of it in his throat, when he tries to speak. 

He nods, eagerly. 

“Yes,” he says, his voice uneven. Her chest rises and falls against his and he can hear the sound her heart makes, where it beats frantically in her chest. The idea that he affects her, too, almost undoes him. “Yes, I–” He gulps, lets out a shaky breath. His fingers tremble, there where they rest on her waist and she’s so close– “I want– I want to feel you.”

Her lips curve into a smile and she rises to her tiptoes to press another kiss to his lips. He can taste that smile right from her mouth and it makes a ruin out of his heart, destroying it and building it anew. 

“Then feel me,” she tells him, whispering the words into his ear when she pulls away to plant a kiss at the soft spot where his jaw meets his neck. “Touch me, Ben.” 

He’s powerless when it comes to her – her body calls him, like a siren’s song, her warmth enveloping him in the most tender of embraces and he never, ever wants to leave this moment, this room, this feeling. He wants to make a home out of it, nestling his body into hers as if he could fade into her heartbeat. 

His grip on her hip tightens, while he tentatively brings a hand to her face to tilt her head back and kiss her, deeply, as if he were trying to pour love right into her like this, just like he poured life. His fingers wind in her hair, threading through her soft strands gently, slowly, worshipping her. 

It feels like warmth and love and happiness. The bond comes alive like a symphony, blossoming in that special place where their souls are tangled, and for a moment it’s the only thing he can hear, the only thing he can feel. The only thing he’s aware of, in this vast galaxy. 

When she pulls away – slowly as if she didn’t want to let go of him, as if she wanted him as much as he wants her – she flashes him the biggest smile he’s seen on her face, her cheeks flushed and her eyes bright and yet dark with want. He comes to brush his fingers against her dimples and she laughs, quietly. 

“Now, you surely know how to kiss someone silly,” she comments, leaning into his touch. 

He feels his face go red, hot enough that he could use it to cook dinner.

“I–” he starts, then swallows. His body feels electric, a new kind of pleasure coursing through him. It takes him a moment to catch his breath. “I need to work on the soup. For dinner. Is–” He swallows again, looking over her shoulder as if he could avoid being seen, if he can’t see her. “Is soup okay?”

Rey laughs again and lets him go, which makes his heart sink a bit because he wants to live there, in the circle of her arms, and yet comes as a relief too, because this kind of desire, intense and overwhelming, scares him a little bit.

It will take him a while to get used to it, but Rey, he supposes, is a patient teacher. 

“Yes, sweetheart,” she says, pressing another small kiss to his lips, chaste and tender and devastating. “Soup sounds great. I’ll help you.”

✨ 

Learning each other, he discovers, is a long, maddeningly pleasant business. 

There’s so much to explore, to feel, to touch in a body – so much more than he’d even allowed himself to imagine, to want, to yearn for in that eager heart of his – and Rey seems to be determined not to leave a part of him unmapped, as if she were an adventurer setting out to explore an uncharted sector of the galaxy. 

She runs her hands down his back when she washes him in the fresher, studies with rapt attention the patterns of moles on his face as if she wanted to commit them to memory, traces the lines of his chest when they’re lying on their bed at night. He’s starting to get familiar with the feeling of her hand in his, with the weight of her head on his shoulder, with the heat of her body when she climbs into his lap just to kiss him, softly and lazily in the first hours of the morning. The sensation of her fingers playing with his hair is both soothing and elating, which is something he thinks only Rey is capable of. 

It seems obvious to him, now – how human beings are meant to be touched. 

Soft skin, gentle fingers, warm palms, an infinite reserve of tenderness – how did he spend his whole life without the touch of someone else’s hand at the small of his back, reassuring and comforting? How did he spend his whole life believing violence and fury was all he was destined to? All that he was good at? 

He sees it now. The space between his fingers seems to be made exactly so she can slip her fingers around his, her palm pressed safely against his own as though it were a secret between the two of them. His shoulders are broad enough to let her rest her hands there, when she rises to her tiptoes to press a chaste kiss to his mouth, grinning so widely it’s barely a kiss and more an awkward fumbling that fills his heart with scintillant happiness. His lips are at the perfect height for him to bend down a bit and plant a kiss to the crown of her head whenever she’s deep in her thoughts, thinkering away with wires and tools.

There’s almost no hesitation now. 

It’s devastatingly easy, getting used to reaching out for her, finding her hand there, barely a whisper away from him, and though it never ceases to amaze him, the fact that she’s here and she still hasn’t left him, the surprises has faded away into a quiet sort of joy, that pours like a golden haze onto everything. Like drowning in the warm, yellow light of the sunshine. 

He litters her palm with small, worshipful kisses whenever she cups his face into her hand and she giggles so prettily, so sweetly . It fills their little cottage with the sound of what he now knows it’s love.

He doesn’t question it anymore. 

✨

The market is crowded today. 

It’s the first week of autumn on Naboo and the weather is slowly starting to change – a gentle breeze coming to mess with his hair, making Rey’s chestnut strands dance gracefully around her face, and a different shine to the sun, a different quality to the air, as if the world was preparing itself for a last burst of colors before they all fade away in winter. 

It’s still early for the leaves to turn gold, but it doesn’t prevent his heart to fill with wonder at the sight, after so many years spent locked away in his quarters on a dreadnought, night and day melting away, seasons sweeping by like leaves blown by a careless wind. 

It surprises him, how much he likes it. How surprisingly beautiful the galaxy is, ever since he started to look at it again. 

“We should get the fruits we got last time,” Rey’s saying, walking beside him as they make their way through the busy streets of the market. Her cheeks are a bit flushed from the wind, her eyes a little brighter in this light. The bond hums with a quiet sort of happiness that he’s learned to recognize like home. “I can’t remember what they’re called but I liked them a lot.” 

He hums, quietly. One of his hands is holding a bag full of vegetables and eggs, enough to last them for a week, while the other hand swings by at his side, inches away from Rey’s. 

“I was thinking I could bake you a pie with them,” he suggests, shrinking into his shoulders as if to hide. He knows he’s blushing, but the bond shines between them and he knows Rey likes this kind of easy vulnerability that comes up a lot in their relationship. It almost feels like she’s proud of him. “Or at least try to. I read a recipe on the holopad last night and I thought it would make you happy.”

Rey’s smile is bright and beautiful and dimpled and it elicits an answering smile from him, as if she’d tugged at his very soul. They’re so intertwined it’s hard to say where she ends and where he begins, and when she moves, he moves with her, as if they were a couple of binary stars orbiting around each other in a cosmic dance. 

“That sounds great,” she replies, bumping their shoulders together with a warmth and a domesticity that makes his heart falter for a moment. “Let’s go get them. I want my pie.”

It feels so easy, so uneventful. Mundane, in its simple beauty, and absolutely human. 

He reaches down, grasps her hand in his and intertwines their fingers without even having to think about it. Her skin is just a bit cold, courtesy of the autumn wind, but she wastes no time in squeezing his hand, as if to bask into his warmth and remind him that it’s okay, this touch. 

He knows now, that he’s allowed to touch her. That he’s allowed to love her with all the strength of his battered heart. 

Just because he can, he brings her hand to his lips to press a little, worshipful kiss to her fingers and her knuckles. 

Rey giggles, quietly, but he can sense the tenderness and the love that pour out of her like honey falling from her lips, and it feels surprisingly easy to accept it.

“Anything for you, love,” he murmurs. “Let’s go get your pie.”

Then, hand in hand, they walk through the crowded streets of the market and he doesn’t let her go for a long, long time.