Work Text:
It's when he smiles.
She's never seen it before, and it pauses her in mid-conversation with Finn.
His lips—the ones that are always trembling or too red or too full—part and he has teeth. Of course he has teeth, but she'd never seen them. She tries to remember the forest. The last time he'd hissed at her, spitting words about the Force and teachers. Maybe he had teeth then.
But as one of the pilots tells a story about getting stuck in an air vent for six hours, Rey watches across the mess hall as the rest of them laugh and snort their caf and wipe tears of laughter from their eyes—and Ben Solo smiles.
He'd arrived a month after Crait. His shuttle had entered their stratosphere with a message for General Leia Organa. Rey had watched as Poe had screamed at her about traps and emotional warfare, but Leia had stepped out of their bunker and headed through the field towards the black shuttle. Poe had organized all Resistance members to hold their weapons on Kylo Ren as the shuttle ramp dropped. Rey had stood at a window with her heart in her throat, breath catching at the sight of him.
Leia had spoken to him briefly before her hand had squeezed his shoulder and her other had taken the offered lightsaber. A flash of fear as Rey remembered the way Han Solo died, and then confusion as Leia led her son towards the bunker, walking in front of every blaster and disappearing with him behind a door.
That was three months ago.
And now Ben Solo is here. And he sits at the pilots' table. And he smiles.
Rey looks away, taking her bread roll—freshly baked, not powdered and risen—and stashing it in her pocket. She stands with her dinner tray, places it gently in the pile to be washed, and heads back to her bunk.
She'd thought he would have sought her out by now. She'd thought that maybe they had things to discuss. Leia never explained to them why he was here, just that he wasn't there anymore. She'd thought maybe… maybe it had something to do with her.
But in his spare time, when he wasn't handing over First Over schematics and strategy and passcodes, he was trying his best to make friends. Finn was the only person still not welcoming him. It had taken Poe some time as well, but last month when Ben had covered Poe's X-wing against the First Order, the two of them had taken on thirty TIE fighters alone. It had significantly changed Poe's views. Ben had even found Rose down in the engine room one day, spending the day fixing a few droids with her. Finn had thrown a fit, not speaking to Rose for a few days until Rey had to step in.
Rey finishes her bread roll on her bunk and waters the dry flower she'd found in her wanderings on this new planet. She goes to sleep early, wondering what other things make Ben Solo smile.
~*~
A great many things, it turns out.
An extra serving of spice cake. A solid hit to a practice dummy. The hum of a repaired calcinator.
And people make Ben smile too.
Poe Dameron can knock his elbow with his own easy grin in place, and when Ben leans down to listen to the whispered camaraderie, Ben Solo smiles.
Snap Wexley can spill his Bribb juice down his front at the evening meal, and when the pilots laugh and Snap grabs for cloths with a sheepish grin, Ben Solo smiles.
Rose can jump up and down in the hallway, screeching joyfully about the medical droid they'd started on together, and when she grabs his wrist and tugs him along behind her, Ben Solo smiles.
"Just talk to him," Finn grumbles one morning.
Rey pulls her eyes off of Ben Solo's teeth as he bites back a grin at Poe's joke. "Hm?"
"You're obvious, Rey." Finn sips his caf moodily, and Rey blinks at him.
"Obvious?"
"I don't know if you're doing this for me, or if you're actually mad at him—"
"Doing what?" All of her attention focuses on Finn — Ben Solo's teeth pressing into his bottom lip fades away.
"Avoiding him."
Rey swallows. "I'm not the one avoiding—"
"I don't care if you want to be friends with him, too." Finn sighs. "Poe tells me I'm being unreasonable — that if he could get past being tortured by the guy, then I shouldn't hold a grudge. But I know you and him have a connection or something." Finn hisses the word, like it tastes unpleasant in his mouth.
"I— I don't think we have one anymore. It's been… quiet." Rey frowns down into her cup of caf.
"Well, either go talk to him, or stop staring at him," Finn says. Rey's eyes snap up to him. "It makes me uncomfortable to have you just… stare at someone when I'm trying to talk to you."
Guilt digs into her ribs. "I'm sorry, Finn. I didn't—"
"Don't apologize." He stands. "Just… do something different."
Once she's alone at their table, she realizes that her eyes do drift, and her mind does wander. Ben Solo's teeth appear again when his lips part, a small smile as Poe slaps him on the back.
Rey stands — a bit premature, seeing as she has no idea what she's about to do. She climbs off the bench, knees getting a bit stuck around table legs, like a child just learning to move. Two steps away from her table, she abruptly turns back, grabbing for the tray she forgot to clear. The utensils clatter as she tries to drop everything into the washing bin, and her fingers dip into something sticky—
"Get it together," she hisses to herself.
She crosses the mess hall, finding it so much larger than she'd remembered, and just when she approaches, one of the pilots bids them goodnight. She quickly slides into his place at the table, just next to Snap, and directly across from Ben.
"Sunshine!" Snap slings an arm around her shoulders, but Rey's eyes are glued to Ben. His eyes flicker to her once, and then he focuses down on his spice cake.
Spice cake makes him smile.
Poe welcomes her, asking if she's heard about their recon mission this morning. Before she can answer that yes, she'd heard, Poe launches into the story, embellishing and reenacting.
Poe's stories make him smile.
Snap mocks Poe, correcting him and slamming his fist on the table with a booming laugh whenever Poe tries to exaggerate his side of the mission. The table laughs and shoves at each other.
His new friends at the pilots' table make him smile.
Rey sits quietly, enjoying the laughter and nodding at the right times, but her mind is elsewhere.
Because none of these things are making Ben Solo smile anymore. Not since she sat down. He only stares down at his spice cake, taking small bites, and listening to Poe tell the same story as he did before.
And she feels like a ripper-raptor has sliced open her stomach, leaving only a gaping hole.
~*~
Rey spends half a day on the holonet searching for the word "joke."
Many of the results are not funny. Some are easily guessed, such as "What does a Copgotter eat for breakfast?" A handful of Nans, of course. She rolls her eyes.
But she finds one that's told like a story with intricate details to commit to memory in a three-part structure. The joke isn't until the very end, and when she reads it, her lips part into a smile. She memorizes it and bounces into the hangar the next day, a printed version of it tucked away into her trousers.
Ben is doing maintenance on his X-wing with Snap, and Rey beelines for them. Snap will enjoy a good joke, and hopefully if she does it well, Ben will too.
"I have a story," she proudly announces and places her hands on her hips.
Ben glances at her before turning back to his toolkit. Snap smiles big. "Sure, Sunshine."
She takes a big breath, and begins in a theatrical voice, "I was in a cantina yesterday and I met a human male who has nine fingers—"
"There's a cantina out here?" Snap asks, brows lifting.
"Er… I mean a watering hole." She blinks as Snap shrugs and gestures for her to continue. "And I met a man with nine fingers."
"Who has nine fingers?" Poe cuts in, joining them with a greasy towel between his hands.
She looks to Ben. He could walk away at any moment. "The man I met in a cantina yesterday—"
"There's a cantina out here?" Poe looks to Snap with wide excited eyes.
"No, I mean"—she huffs—"it was more like a watering hole."
"Which one?" Poe wipes his sweaty face in the inside of his shirt.
She squeaks something, trying to regain her footing, and then she hears, "She's trying to tell a joke."
Looking over to him, he's twisting a wrench and frowning at his shoes. He doesn't look up at her when Poe and Snap give big Oh's and give their attention fully to her. Like a child doing a puppet show.
She stammers her way through the rest. Snap laughs broadly, and Poe grins big at her and continues to repeat the punch line for hours after.
Ben continues twisting his wrench, tightening the bolts on his X-wing.
~*~
Leia is able to barter for a new cruiser from an old contact, and the Resistance moves its base to the outer rim so their mechanics can work it into top shape. Rey doesn't mind the change of scenery, but she has to replant her dried flower in the harsh earth before they board the shuttle out. Rose is ecstatic, bouncing everywhere she goes and bubbling with enthusiasm in every sentence.
When she sees Ben's name on the list of mechanics heading over to the cruiser, she types her name. She would have done so anyway. She would have contributed and done her part. But while she excelled at engines and repairs, she managed to sign up for firing systems and defensive shields just under his name.
They show up for the transport to the cruiser bright and early, and she's shocked to see him out of black. Dark grey trousers with his black boots and a light tunic. She can't think of anything as they listen to instructions in the hangar except he looks like his father.
He fixes things with the Force.
Of course he does — Rey does, too — but it still surprises her to find wrenches floating towards him and levers lowering all on their own while he focuses on the computer system.
Maybe that's why he doesn't hear her approach.
Or maybe he does hear her, and just ignores her. As always.
She's considered carefully. She knows that he was offering her more than the galaxy when he offered his hand. She knows that when she does catch his eyes, they dip to her chest, or her waist, or her hips before they inevitably move away. And she knows that when Rose reaches up on her tiptoes to press a "goodnight" kiss against Finn's cheek, he blushes and the corners of his mouth curve upwards.
So when she reaches out with the Force to find that they are alone in this section of the ship, and when his heartbeat picks up as she comes to stand next to him at the computer monitor, she knows she at least has a chance when he turns to give her his attention.
"How's it coming along?" she asks, hardly knowing what it is she's asking about.
His eyes flicker quickly between hers, just as they had in the turbolift when he took her to Snoke.
"We'll know more once the generators start running." His voice is low and dark, no need to speak loudly in this quiet room.
She nods, like he's said something important. And then she reaches up on her toes — like Rose does — and presses her mouth to his.
His lips are cold and soft. They don't move against hers, so she rolls back down and watches his mouth, waiting to see if that did it. If she could bring him any joy like a spice cake does.
The nothing that crosses his features slices her in two.
Until the datapad between his large fingers clatters to the floor, and his hands are on her jaw, tilting her face back, pressing his body to hers, and pushing his lips to her lips. A rattling breath is drawn from her lungs into his, and his mouth opens hers, his tongue slipping to taste her.
Her hands rise to his elbows, not knowing where to go.
He tilts her face, and before she can catch a breath, he's inside of her again, searching, testing, taking. Rey is lost. The feeling of his tongue along hers — his lips demanding things from her — it's better than she imagined in her limited fantasies. She didn't know a person could do these things to another person.
Her hands slip up, sliding along his shoulders until she's stretched on her toes again. One of his arms wraps around her waist, and then they're pressed tightly together, his thin tunic bringing forth the memory of his chest — how wide he is, how much she wanted to touch—
She moans, something quiet and yearning. And he pushes her back against the console with his hips tight to hers.
She can feel him.
"Rey? Are you still down here?"
At Rose's voice they jump away from each other like a coiled spring shooting off in different directions.
"Yes!" she calls out, pushing her hair back into place as Ben retrieves the data pad he'd discarded.
Just before Rose bounces into the room, Rey glances at him, hoping to see something on his face. Besides his flushed cheekbones and kiss-bruised lips, he looked entirely normal, as if nothing happened.
Rose had turned on the generator. It was time to test the firing systems. And Ben Solo still hadn't smiled.
~*~
They don't stand near each other on the shuttle back. But Rey's lips are still buzzing, and it's like she can taste him whenever she wets her lips.
She isn't sure what she expected. Kissing him softly is still kissing him. And in the innumerable flashes of fantasy that she's had of that moment, she's never figured out how they ended. Her daydreams would press on hungrily and in some instances they would find a mattress and burn brighter. But she's never dreamed of a moment where the kiss ends, and he smiles down at her with a "thank you."
She already knew in her heart that it wouldn't be like that. And so she slinks off her to bunk at the end of the long day, skipping dinner and dreaming of things that could have happened if Rose hadn't interrupted.
~*~
Nothing changes. And Rey is not sure what she thought would.
He still sits with the pilots, grinning at Snap and nodding with Poe. He still bites into his spice cake with a content curl to his lips.
And Rey still watches.
And Finn still grumbles about it.
When they work on the cruiser next, there are more engineers in the control room where he is fixing the firing systems. The only difference is that she thinks she can hear his heart beating amongst the voices and creaking gears. She listens to it pound as she works with the wiring in the console he had her pressed up against the day before.
She considers opening the bond at night as she's halfway between clothed and naked, wondering if he's pressed on the other side of it, like a door she could open and he could fall through. She lies in her bunk, and runs her fingers through her slippery entrance, thinking about kissing him again. Only this time he would smile down at her and whisper her name against her skin with parted lips and dimpled cheeks—
She comes, a squeaking sound bursting from her throat as she slaps her hand over her mouth to keep from waking her bunk mates.
~*~
She decides to take a risk the next evening. Standing with her serving of spice cake wrapped in a tissue in her hand, she waits for Ben to come out of the mess hall. She'd left early and paced in front of the doors until the pilots started trickling out.
Finn and Rose pass her with a "good night," and she manages to nod back while her throat constricts and her heartbeat lives in her fingertips.
He lumbers through the doors, chatting with someone, and it's not until they're steps closer that Rey sees that it's Kaydel. Rey blinks. Kaydel gestures quickly, eyes bright and dripping over him.
And then she laughs, and Ben smiles down at her. A curl of his lips, stretching up to his eyes.
And it slices her, like a saber through her gut — to see him grin so easily at someone… someone who wasn't her. She feels acid in her stomach as she runs back to her bunk, and when she throws herself down on her pillow like a child, she wonders if her chest has truly cracked in two. She tries to breathe through it all for an hour, the smell of spice cake drifting to her nose from where it's crumbled in her hand.
Perhaps the reason he hadn't smiled at her is because she couldn't make him happy. Perhaps there is someone else who could. Rey thinks on it as a slow tear falls across her cheek.
Kaydel stumbles through the door half an hour later with another of their roommates, and Rey listens to them giggle and hush each other.
"Rey!" Kaydel whispers. "Rey, I have the most wonderful thing to tell you!"
She stares at her wall and feigns sleep.
In the Jakku desert, she had to get used to people stealing things that were hers if she didn't take care of them. In her time with the Resistance, she'd forgotten how.
~*~
They go out to the cruiser again the next day. Rey requests a change to the mechanical wiring room, and with a gentle nudge from the Force, the officer approves without comment.
She's in the bowels of the starship, sparking wires together and stripping copper when she feels a presence. There's leagues of space between her and the next technician, so she knows the person approaching is coming with a purpose.
The Force tugs on her ribs, curling low in her stomach and tasting sweet on her tongue. Ben is coming. Her heart pounds even as her lungs ache.
She's pretending to rewire a console when she finally hears his footsteps. She's conducting electricity as he turns into the small room she's working in, and she shocks herself with a yelp as he whispers, "Rey."
She sucks her finger into her mouth and turns to him. His eyes flicker down to her injury before coming back to her face.
"Do you need a medic?"
She thinks he might be joking. It was a spark against her skin, nothing more violent than what the Force had done to them months ago as she sat shivering in a scratchy blanket, reaching out for his hand. But she feels his anxiety nonetheless.
"No, it was nothing."
With nothing else to say to each other, she spins back to the wiring. It's quiet as she tries to remember which section she was working on.
He steps up beside her and says, "How's it coming along?" — the same inane question she asked him last week. Before she kissed him.
She feels her skin burn and her pulse thrum. He's wearing his father's clothing again, and she has to curl her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching for the linen.
"We'll know more once the generators start running," she echoes back to him.
He's close to her when she looks up to his eyes, dark and wanting. She thinks maybe it his cue to kiss her now, but he simply swallows and looks away. And she thinks of Kaydel, and spice cake, and practice dummies, and all the other things that aren't her. And before she can say anything, he steals the exact words from her lips with—
"I shouldn't have kissed you. Not like that. I'd like to apologize."
She watches him stare at the circuit board, and feels her own apology float away. "Apologize?"
He nods. "I wasn't thinking—" He interrupts himself with a deep breath, and says, "I took what I wanted instead of…" He swallows and Rey can hear his throat click in the quiet room. "I should have honored what you wanted—"
"Did it make you happy?" She can feel her blood rocketing through her veins, the possibility inching closer.
He closes his eyes and presses his lips together, like trying to keep his soul inside of his skin and says, "Yes. Painfully so."
He gasps in surprise when she curls her arms around his neck, forcing herself into the space between his front and the wall paneling. She's up on her toes again and pressing her dry lips to his. A half second of hesitation before she tries to push inside his mouth, parting his lips and tasting spices and caf.
Pulling away from her mouth, his hands on her waist to hold her back, he stares down at her and says, "You don't have to— It doesn't have to be like this—"
"I want to make you happy," she whispers.
And she thinks maybe the way he gazes down at her as his hand lifts to her cheek might be worth every smile she's seen in the past three months.
"I have something," he mumbles, shuffling through his pockets until he produces a small bundle. He holds it in the tight space between them and uses the Force to unravel the twine until a small green stem in a handful of dirt curls upward toward her. "Kaydel said you used to have a flower. And it made you smile."
Rey stares at the little stem in the palm of his hand, a small leaf shivering with the breath between them.
"I found a clearing this morning, about an hour's hike from the base," he says. "I can… I can take you there sometime. If you'd like." He takes a shaky breath and Rey tears her eyes away from the life in his hands. "But I thought you might want to pot this—"
"You brought this for me?"
Her mind is spinning with the thoughts of an hour's hike and asking her roommates about her knickknacks and the scent of him standing so close.
"I thought it would make you smile," he says. "You don't smile much, and I thought maybe it had to do with me. That you didn't want me here—"
She presses her mouth to his again, and he just barely moves the plant out of the way and onto the table before she wraps her body close to him, bringing their chests together.
He tilts her face so he can taste her, and her back lands against the wall. Her arms slither around his chest, feeling the thin linen under her fingertips as she slides over his broad back. She sighs into his mouth and his tongue twists around hers, making her toes curl. Tugging at his tunic, she pulls it out of his tight trousers, and the first touch of her fingers to his skin makes his hips roll into her.
"Sorry," he rumbles.
She drags her short nails across his sides and his body shakes with it.
"Ben," she says against his lips. "Could you be happy? With me?"
He stares down into her eyes, his nose brushing hers as he says, "I came here for you. Any lifetime where I can be close to you makes me happy."
The heavy stones that had been pressed against her chest for all these months lift one by one, and she feels a calm and a focus in the Force. She smiles at him, and he holds her face in his palms carefully, like catching sunshine.
"Perfect," he murmurs, before pressing his lips to her again.
Rey smiles as he kisses a path down her jaw. Rey smiles as he helps her tug his shirt over his shoulders. And Rey smiles at the look in his eyes when she jumps up around his waist, their groins pressed close together.
She thinks maybe she can live without Ben Solo smiling at her. If he continues to stare at her with open-mouth wonder in the way he is now, maybe she can live without it.
If she can hear his sighs when her wrappings come off, and his groans when his fingers dip into her trousers, and his whispered praises when she kisses his neck — maybe she doesn't need to see the way his cheeks dimple and his teeth bite into his bottom lip.
Ben has her held against the wall, his trousers at his ankles and hers pushed off of one leg, and he's holding her up with his arms, murmuring about wanting to give her a bed and wanting to put his mouth everywhere on her skin. She's burning and overflowing and so close to the top of the hill inside of her chest. Ben pushes inside of her, burrowing deep and taking up the empty spaces, and she throws her head back against the panel with a clang.
Her mouth falls open and her eyes squeeze closed, and Ben keeps pushing inside of her. He pants against her face as her lashes flutter open, and she feels like there's nothing she can do but wait for the storm inside her hips to coalesce.
And when she looks to Ben to tell him he can move, the corner of his mouth is tugging upward. His teeth peek out from between his full lips, the air hot between them. His eyes rove over her face, like he's never seen anything like her. And just as he starts to pull out to push back in, she spies a dimple at the corner of his lips.
She gasps, and her body contracts, clenching down on him, aching to pull him closer and finding no room left inside of her. He grunts as she ripples around him and chases the memory of a smile just for her.
When she's floated back down to herself, she finds her thighs squeezed tightly around his hips and his arms around her ribs the only thing holding her up. His eyes are wide and watching her face. A slow grin spreads across her lips, and as he continues to pump into her with a heavy pace and breathy moans, she realizes she knows how to make Ben Solo smile.
His teeth graze her neck as his thrusts fall out of rhythm, and when he finishes inside of her with a growl, she runs her fingers through his hair, bringing his face back to hers and whispers, "I love you."
Sweat drips from his temples onto her fingertips, and he's still inside of her when his eyes flutter in astonishment. His lips tremble, and part into a smile.
When he says it back, Rey doesn't even hear it — too stunned at his teeth and his lips and the obvious evidence of his love for her on his face.
She laughs, tears in her eyes, and when his grin widens and he asks her what she's laughing about, she pushes back his damp hair and says, "I just really like your smile."