Chapter Text
Rey
“C’mon, Rey,” Finn prodded her, “you know you want to meet him! This is a perfect time. Personally, I think he’s a cocky bastard with too many endorsements filmed in his unmentionables, but don’t think that I haven’t noticed that every time his name is mentioned around you, your ears turn red.”
Rey gasped with indignation, fighting the temptation to reach up and cover her burning lobes. “They do not!”
Finn chuckled as Rey rolled her eyes at him. “Do, too! Don’t forget I saw your childhood bedroom. You’ve got it bad, Fai-Rey!”
Rey huffed out a breath. “Do not,” she insisted under her breath. Finn nudged her bicep a few times to get her attention again, a big grin on his handsome face. Rey frowned to try to discourage him from continuing the conversation. She shouldn’t expect anything less, though. Nothing was sacred around Finn. It was one of the things she loved best about him.
“Aw. Don’t be that way, tiny dancer. You know I only have your best interests at heart. When was the last time you had a date? Now that you have that gold medal hanging around your neck, it’s time to have some fun. Besides, we’re the host country. We must be hospitable! I’ll introduce you – nice and casual - no big deal, right?”
International diplomacy? Spreaders of good sportsmanship in the name of Olympic values? She was just about to get on board with that argument when Finn opened his mouth again.
“Who knows? Maybe you two can make cute little fencing babies together. Uncle Finn will buy them their first foils!” Finn waggled his eyebrows at her, swinging his hips lasciviously and thrusting an imaginary sword. Rey gasped with laughter and outrage as the agile beast avoided the backhand she attempted to give him before he ran ahead of her to put his arm around his friend from the American team, Poe Dameron.
“Ugh! Finn! Alright, fine,” she gave in, yelling after him, “but there better not be any innuendo or…or…hip wiggling…or anything!”
Finn called back to her with wicked intent, “You know me, dahhhhling! Mwahahahaha!”
That’s exactly what Rey was afraid of. She was in so much trouble.
Finn had been harassing her about meeting Ben Solo ever since they met in front of the Olympic Village ten minutes ago. Now that she thought about it, Finn had been harassing her about meeting Ben Solo ever since he had come home with her one weekend more than a year ago and raided the room she had used as a teen. Posters and magazine articles about Ben Solo papered every corner of that space. When he saw it, Finn’s eyes had widened until she thought they would pop out of his well-groomed head. He had turned to her, right hand raised in oath, and solemnly promised her that as her best friend on the team and in the wide world at large, he would never, ever let her live that down.
Apparently, Finn meant to make good on that promise tonight. Good grief.
It wasn’t just that Rey thought Ben Solo was hot, though the good Lord knew that he was. He really, really was. It was that he had a single-minded determination to be the best fencer on planet Earth. Full stop. The intensity was there in every look and every movement. He fought angrily and with a diabolical grace that would send chills up the spine of anyone in his path. His passion spoke to her. It made her want to be better. To equal him in every way.
Rey had wanted to be standing on the top of the same podiums as Ben Solo one day. And now here she was.
If she were telling the truth, the only reason Rey was excited to go to the party that the International Olympic Organization was having for the fencing teams was that she might get to ogle all that dangerous, sexy-dark energy from afar.
Rey had been told that the IOO held these dry mixers after the events so that the international fencing community could get to know one another. It was really a networking event. Teams met, but individuals met coaches and agents at these events. Many competitors lived and trained in different countries in between major competitions. Rey herself trained with Luke Skywalker in Arizona a few months of every year since she had turned fifteen.
When they walked into the venue, people in the official gear of their respective countries were milling around holding glasses of freshly-pressed juices, trading collector’s pins, and talking to old people in suits. Honestly, it all looked about as much fun as a root canal or a proctology exam, but as Rey knew there were no guarantees she might never be here again, she was determined to make the most of it.
The team made the rounds, meeting, and greeting as many other teams and guests as possible, determined to create goodwill for Great Britain’s fencing community. After they did their duty at the cattle call, Rey, Finn and some other friends planned to hit the pubs. She had a feeling she was going to need to meet several “teams” of tequila shots after Finn introduced her to Ben Solo.
So far, though, Rey hadn’t seen him, so there was always the hope that the notoriously anti-social Solo had opted to ditch this obligation.
Rey had half convinced herself that this would be the case when she saw him on the way to the hors-d'oeuvres table. He stood taller than almost everyone in the room, his hair as dark and shiny as a seal pelt. It hung to his shoulders, styled with a careless hand into something so incredibly sexy that she had to feel sorry for other lesser men. And they were all lesser.
Rey noticed that Ben had dispensed with the officially-issued and undoubtedly required United States Olympic Association uniform. Instead, the world-champion and three-time Olympic gold medalist was in his signature unrelieved black. She doubted anyone would dare to call him on it.
She laughed at the sight. Ben Solo reminded Rey of Maleficent crashing Sleeping Beauty’s royal christening. She half expected him to part the crowds and point a long finger at the silver-medalist he had defeated the day before to proclaim that the man would prick his finger on an epee and be plunged into a hundred-year sleep.
A lull in the conversations caused that laughter to rise over the crowd and draw the attention of more than a few pairs of eyes.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, for Rey, two things happened in the very next moment.
First, Ben Solo’s dark eyes looked up to catch her laughing at him. His assessing gaze registered recognition and then narrowed on her before traveling insolently from the top of Rey’s head, down her body to the tips of her rubber-soled shoes and back again. It was lazy. It was blatant. It was the most erotic thing that had ever happened to her.
She knew she must be hallucinating. Ben Solo had just ogled her. Rey squeezed her legs together to stave off the stab of lust that had just set her lady bits on fire. She felt as if she had just been caressed by a welcome hand and it sent a telltale shiver up her spine despite her best efforts to contain it.
As if compelled by some unseen Force, Ben Solo strode forward, parting the crowds just as she had envisioned and didn’t stop until he was well inside her personal space, smirking at her with liquid, dark eyes as brown-black as strong coffee.
The second thing that happened was a large hand lightly slapped her shoulder as Finn stepped forward to make introductions. “Ah, Solo,” Finn greeted him, “congrats on your win, man. Really. Though I know I speak for many of us, when I request that you not appear anywhere on packages of skivvies as part of future endorsement deals. It’s fucking strange ripping into a new pack that sports your likeness. No offense, but I don’t want to think of you when I’m naked.”
Ben snorted at that but didn’t have the opportunity to respond. Because Finn wasn’t finished.
Not.Even.Close.
“So, yeah,” Finn began, delivering the introduction like the Queen of England has just popped in for tea, “Ben Solo, I’d like to make known to you my best friend and, as of today, Women’s Olympic Gold Medalist, Fairey Kenobi, known to her friends and brooding foreign men who clearly have the hots for her, as Rey.”
Pausing to turn to Rey, Finn extended the humiliation. “Rey? I’d like you to meet the dark and virile knight of the fencing world, Ben Solo, who cornered me after your last bout today and demanded that I convince you to meet him, though I doubt he wanted me to tell you.”
Rey could feel her face go up in flames. She was going to kill Finn. Slowly. After all, she had the skills and equipment back in her room to do it. She could feel the eyes of all the guests around them glued to their conversation. Half that crowd was agape. The other half were laughing their asses off.
Hold it together, Rey. Hold it together. He’s just a man. He’s an athlete like you. Somewhere out there, he also has a mother. He puts his pants on one leg at a time. He probably drools in his sleep. Finn humiliated him, too.
Taking a deep breath, Rey stuck out her hand and gave him her most disarming smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Ben. I’ve been a fan for a long time.”
Rey could feel Finn grinning widely as he set a hand on each of them like a referee telling two boxers to fight clean. "Just remember, you two," Finn interjected, "I expect to be named a godfather of your first child. 'Finn Solo' has a nice ring to it."
The darkly handsome man in front of her nodded at Finn but didn't break eye contact with her for a moment. "Thanks, Finn. Now fuck off." Finn smiled to himself and chuckled. "Fucking off..." And then he was gone.
Ben took her hand, holding it longer than was strictly necessary, his deeper-than-deep voice purring at her. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you as well, Rey. I’ve been watching your awakening career with some interest. You’re an absolute scavenger.”
Rey frowned. Scavenger? He had been following her career. What the hell? “I’m sorry? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
Ben leaned forward, his eyes and hair capturing her full attention, his broad shoulders blocking out the rest of the room.
Gods he smelled good.
“I mean that you’re hungry, little pixie. You fight like you are guarding your last meal and you don’t let up until you are satisfied.” Ben’s words could have been about the intensity of her bouts but given that he had not yet let go of her hand, she was sure that his meaning had nothing to do with fencing.
That got her back up. Cocky bastard, indeed.
Did he really just think that she was going to roll into bed with him? She wanted to slap him. She wanted to lick him.
Whatever he saw in her face, one dark brow arched high in challenge. “What do you say we get out of here and get to something that feels more crucial?”
Rey understood what Ben meant immediately. “Sabres?”
A sardonic gleam filled his eyes and the corner of his mouth lifted in the most wickedly sexy curve she had ever seen.
“Sabres,” Ben Solo confirmed.
Oh, it was on.