Chapter Text
“-so this tree-”
“Poe, I swear to God if you’ve dragged us out here for some Blair Witch crap-”
“-the tree,” Poe interrupted, glaring in a quasi-playful fashion at Finn. “By which I mean that big bastard over there,” he continued, waving the hand that wasn’t holding a beer toward the looming pine not too far from their camp. “So there’s a demon in the tree, right? And the demon needs a bride to escape the trunk and do demon-y things, like- like making landfills of national parks and starting vicious medical debt collection agencies-”
Rose snorted, opening the cooler to dig out another beer. “What does his bride get out of the deal?” she asked dryly, handing a second bottle to Rey.
Poe looked tipsily offended. “If I could finish this tale without interruption, maybe you would find out.” With a huff, he combed his hand through his hair, head held high- and then he cracked a wicked smile. “Massive dick. And deep pockets, but that’s clearly a minor side benefit.”
They all laughed at that, the sound echoing through the trees. Rey, barely a sip into her third beer, settled herself more comfortably in her camp chair. “I mean, what else does one want in a husband?” she asked in an exaggerated fashion, peeling at the bottle’s label with her thumbnail. “Maybe you could convince him to spare the parks.”
“Sex for conservation; very heroic,” Rose teased, cracking her own beer open.
Finn peered back at the tree. “D’you think he has a forked tongue?”
“You have a spouse,” Rey pointed out. “Two, actually, no matter what the law says. Don’t be greedy.”
“You want him, then?” Finn asked. “Because you’re sitting there all comfy, not looking at all bridal-”
“I’ll just fetch the veil out of my backpack, shall I?”
“-when you could be, you know, making a move on that fine-ass tree.”
Rey took a sip of her beer, amused. If Finn wanted a show, she would give him a show- and what did she have to lose? It was only a tree, after all, and in her current state- full, comfy, and buzzed- she felt primed for a dare. And really, she thought, setting her drink aside, a tree would be an excellent husband. Constant. Undemanding. Shady on summer days.
She said none of those things. Instead, Rey jumped to her feet with, “You know me, Finn; deep roots get me all hot and bothered.”
And by God, the next time they tried to set her up on a blind date Rey would have an excellent reason to decline.
“What kind of vows do you make to a tree, anyway?” she asked idly as she approached, reaching out to press her hand against the bark. “‘I promise never to turn you into firewood’?” A thought coming to mind, Rey glanced over her shoulder. “You realize The Giving Tree is a deeply fucked book, right?”
“That was never in question,” Rose replied, pulling a bag of snacks toward her. “Plight your damn troth, Johnson; I want s’mores.”
“Okay, okay.”
Rey swept the pine a curtsy, grinning when her friends snickered. A well-timed breeze rustled through the branches. Placing her hand once more on the trunk, Rey cleared her throat and said, “I, Rey No-Middle-Name Johnson, take you, Massive Dick McDemonTree-”
“Weddings, always so classy,” Poe said from behind her.
“-as my very lawful husband. To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, et cetera-”
For a fleeting second the bark under her hand seemed to warm. Rey faltered. Foolish, she thought. Your mind is playing tricks.
“I will never cut you down, or introduce an invasive species to your ecosystem, or carve anyone else’s initials into your trunk for as long as I shall live, because you will probably substantially outlive me.”
Rey drew her hand away, levity disappearing for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “That’s that, I guess,” she murmured, more to herself that to her audience. Before anyone could say anything she leaned forward, pecking a kiss against the bark. “Voilà,” she proclaimed, the faint taste of pine sap on her lips, and turned, throwing her hands into the air. “You behold a married woman.”
Poe offered a ostentatiously polite golf clap even as Rose rolled her eyes with a smile. Finn, a half-eaten marshmallow in one hand, grinned. “Prettiest bride I’ve ever seen, except for Rosie.”
“Of course,” Rey replied graciously, returning to her chair. Pushing aside the odd wistfulness making itself at home in her mind, she sat and reclaimed her beer. “I would never expect otherwise.”
Rose held up her own bottle in an offered toast. “To the bride,” she said quietly, a gentleness to her expression. Rose, perceptive as ever, had clearly spied Rey’s soft underbelly.
“To me,” Rey agreed, clinking glass against glass and taking a long drink.
To me, always alone and always tagging along.
- - -
Two tents, and Rey reigned supreme in one. The autumn nights were cold, and her sleeping bag- a thrift-store find- was summer-weight. Even bundled up in sweats, Rey shivered as she first dozed, and then fell into a fitful sleep.
And then a not-so-fitful, blessedly warm sleep. When she woke, cozy and comfortable, there was a brief spate of seconds when she snuggled into the source of heat behind her with a quiet sigh. Solid muscle, hot breath against her neck, evident arousal pressed up against-
With an outraged shriek, Rey scrambled out of her sleeping bag, falling on her ass against the zipped tent entrance. A man blinked at her in the filtered dawn light, looking just as sleepy as she had been moments before. “What?” he asked in a murmur, voice low and honey-thick. Rey faintly heard her friends stir in the neighboring tent as her hand groped for the zipper. He patted the space beside to him, one muscled arm curled under his head. “Come back to bed.”
“Rey?” she heard Finn ask, heard the sound of feet crunching leaves. “Peanut?”
Her fingers found the zipper. Wrenching her arm upward, she turned and squirmed through the gap when the zipper snagged, dragging herself out by sheer will and panic alone.
“What the hell?” Poe grabbed her arms, hoisting Rey to her feet. “Rey-”
He fell silent, hands tightening with bruising strength. Rose let loose a stream of remarkably graphic profanity, and when Rey twisted in Poe’s grip she found herself staring straight at her unexpected bedmate, now leaning out the opening. He looked- he looked surprisingly protective, eyes narrowed and trained on Poe’s hands. Rey’s breath caught, stuttering in her throat when his gaze flicked upward. “Let go of my wife.”
A surprised, strangled laugh escaped Poe. “Your what, pal?”
“My wife.” The snagged zipper tore when pitted against the man’s strength, and then he unfolded before them: tall, impeccably built, impossibly pale, and very, very naked. “Let go of my wife.”
Poe tried to shove her behind him, but Rey instinctively dug in her heels. “The pervert stranger has a point,” she hissed, and Poe released her quickly. Glaring, Rey turned, keeping her gaze up. “Who are you?”
“Your husband.” His mouth- a good mouth, a luscious mouth, but that was beside the point- quirked upward in a slight smile. “Wrong name, though, Rey No-Middle-Name Johnson.”
He spoke her name like a caress, like she were precious and wanted and-
“Yeah, no,” Rose said decisively. “Put your clothes back on and get out.”
He looked down at himself, frowning, and then he was clothed. In the space of a second, from nude to jeans and flannel. “I apologize,” he said gravely. “Such a sight is of course reserved for only Rey.”
Rey had never suffered from vertigo in her life, but at that moment the ground beneath her feet felt as level as a ship deck at stormy sea. “Smoke and mirrors?” she murmured, fists clenched. “That was… clever, but…”
He held out a hand, two rings resting on his palm. “But?” he replied softly. “But what, wife?”
As they all stared, the rings disappeared and he reached out further, fingertips grazing her cheek. “And my name is Kylo.”
- - -
They left. Left hastily, putting out the banked fire and abandoning whatever wasn’t easy to grab and throw into the car. The stranger watched them silently, arms crossed over his chest as he leaned back against the pine.
“Looks part tree himself,” Finn muttered as he crammed the cooler into the back of his station wagon. “Rey, you don’t think…?”
“I think he was watching us from the woods and decided to play a prank,” she retorted, barely believing her own words. “The idea that… that he’s some mystical being is just ridiculous. He’s a boundary-crossing street magician, not-”
She broke off, mind moving so fast that her thoughts tumbled over each other and collided. Not magical, not telling the truth, not hers, not anything.
A spectacular actor, she acknowledged, throat tightening as she slid into the back-seat and slammed the door shut. He would have to be, to bend a look on Rey as if she were the center of his own particular universe.
She didn’t watch as they drove away. She didn’t look anywhere but ahead, ignoring Poe’s uneasy jokes about supernatural divorce.
“Should we tell the police?” Rose asked eventually, looking back at her from the front seat. “I mean, he could try that trick again.”
Rey shook her head firmly, doing her best to repress a shudder. Nearly two decades had passed, but she could still remember the door bursting inward, the chaos, the noise. Keeping her voice level, she said, “No cops.”
Rose nodded, mouth turning down in a thoughtful frown, then offered, “We could say it was me. They wouldn’t have to know that you were there.”
“Which would work right up until the moment he told them the truth,” Rey muttered. “We just… we just leave it alone, and in a year or two we’ll have a laugh about the naked guy who crept into my sleeping bag, claiming to be my husband.”
In the ensuing blessed silence Rey rubbed the fraying hemline of her sweatshirt between two fingers, huffing a quiet, annoyed laugh when she realized that her jeans and bra were still lying on the floor of her tent. She would have to find space in her strained budget to replace both.
A wedding gift, she thought dryly, sure that Kylo (a fake name if she had ever heard one) would carry the items away. May he have joy of them.
- - -
Rey lived in an apartment the approximate size of a shoebox, in a building that had seen better days and, she suspected, had a fine colony of mold growing in hidden corners and under the dirty beige paint. It was cheap, though, which glossed over all manner of sins.
“Do you want us to stay for a while?” Rose asked when they dropped her off. “We could watch a movie, eat the last of the hot dogs.”
“No.” Rey slung her backpack over one shoulder, keeping her tone light. “Go home; I’m going to take a nap.”
A nap, a shower, a double helping of ramen in front of the tv- all of that would reset her equilibrium in time for her double shift the next day. Everything would be fine, everything would return to normalcy.
And then she opened her door.
“Are you hungry?” Kylo asked, stirring something in a pan far nicer than any she owned. He wore an apron the previous tenant had left behind, the words sweet dreams are made of cheese written in faded script across the bib. “I hope you like chicken.”
Her backpack dropped to the floor with a thump. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Husbands and wives live together,” he answered simply, then cast a glance around the room. “I was thinking we could find a bigger place, though. Maybe with a view of the mountains.”
Logically, Rey knew that she should be afraid. Fear would be a perfectly natural response to this particular situation; by all rights she should be screaming her throat raw, alerting everyone in the vicinity. Instead, she slammed the door shut behind her, annoyance bubbling up. “You had a car hidden nearby, didn’t you?” Rey accused him. “How long have you been stalking me?”
“What makes you think I’ve been stalking you?” He sounded inexplicably offended. “We first met last night.”
“We didn’t meet last night. We met this morning, when you accosted me.” The food smelled amazing, and that just irritated her further. “And you must have been stalking me, because you beat us here and clearly took a shortcut and-”
Rey stopped mid-sentence, taking in the rest of the room for the first time. “What the hell did you do to my apartment?” she asked with deadly calm.
Every bit of furniture looked… different. Nicer. New. When she placed her hand on the back of the ancient couch, the fabric was soft and unmarred under her hand.
“I reminded them of their best selves.” He was watching her carefully, even hopefully. “I brought back the things you left. Everything is in your bedroom.”
“How did you get in?”
“Doors aren’t an issue.”
When she just blinked in response he waved a hand at the front door, which immediately popped open.
“Fluke,” Rey said stubbornly, slamming it shut again and flipping the deadbolt home.
“A skill.” He pointed at the door again, the deadbolt turning unaided. “We all have our specialties.”
Rey backed up in a sudden flare of panic, nearly tripping over a stack of books. He looked so ridiculously domestic, so calm, so normal. “You drugged us with some kind of hallucinogen.”
“No.”
“You’re gaslighting me.”
“No.”
She hesitated, every sour memory from her foster childhood coming to the fore. “Are you going to hurt me?”
Rey had no illusions as to how a physical altercation between them would go. He was too big, too strong for her to take him down; she would be able to do some damage but it would take a miracle to knock him out cold. She should have run the moment she saw him instead of walking in like a fool.
His brow furrowed, genuine hurt flickering over his face. “Of course not.”
She sat heavily on cushions that no longer sagged. “Aren’t- aren’t there supposed to be contracts?” Rey asked desperately, cold dread creeping down her spine as she at last acknowledged the impossible. “Deals with devils are- I mean, shouldn’t I have been offered a book to sign in blood, or something?”
The demon cooking stir-fry on her ancient stove shook his head. “You made vows.” A brief pause, and then he added quietly, “The contract was mine, anyway.”
The table set itself- or rather, one moment it was bare and the next it was not. “I don’t own cloth napkins,” Rey found herself saying, peering over the back of the couch.
“You do now. You own whatever you please.” He filled both plates, heaping hers full. “I’m not going to hurt you.” His eyes, dark and soft, sought hers. “Will you eat?”
She didn’t move, though her traitorous stomach did growl. He moved toward her, still wearing that ridiculous apron, and stopped on the other side of the couch. “I’m not incapable of love, you know,” he murmured, cupping her cheek in one hand. His palm was warm and slightly calloused, and he smelled… nice. Not at all like brimstone. “I’ll take care of you, sweetheart.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “You- surely I’m not the first,” Rey whispered. “There had to be someone else. Poe didn’t make up that story on the fly.”
“The locals know it.” He bent down, face inches from hers. “People enjoy camping in those woods; they enjoy a good legend even more. They laugh, they pour libations on the roots, but not a one has offered their hand.”
“It was a joke.” The curtsy, the vows, the brief peck- all a joke. A fucking lark.
“It’s like the old fae,” he answered, sounding almost apologetic. “Belief isn’t necessary.”
And then he kissed her, and it was a kiss so soft and sweet that for a moment she lost herself in the promise it held: love, and security, and the comfort of always having a hand to hold. A partner who cared for her health, cuddled with her in bed, asked about her day, and-
And she jerked away, nearly falling off the couch with the force of her movement.
“Rey?”
She bolted, not even bothering to grab her keys or phone or wallet before disappearing out the door.