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He’s left it too long again. Rey can tell from the waxy cast of his skin and the dull, pouchy eyes that watch narrowed from outside striking distance. Prey. Predator. Hard to tell when he gets like this.
The effects of Ben’s condition aren’t all physical. The longer his spirit goes unfed, the more his mindset starts to slip. He turns hostile and paranoid. Retreats into old thought patterns that remind Rey too keenly of the man he used to be. The more time passes, the less willing or able he is to reach out. It would be so much better for both of them if he just learnt to skip the middle bit.
‘You’re still dressed,’ she says.
‘I am.’ Ben’s throat bobs. ‘You don’t have to do this, Rey.’
The same argument every time. Only by musing on the alternative can Rey maintain her patience: Kylo Ren would snatch what he needed, secure his survival at any cost. Ben Solo agonises, abnegates, worries endlessly about the toll his continued existence takes on her. Since Exegol, his life force has lived inside her. He gave her everything he had. To keep him alive, she needs to give it back to him in regular doses.
Maybe there are other ways to do it. But the way they’ve found – this touch, this tenderness, this sweat-slick, trembling intimacy – works. Rey sees no need to fix what isn’t broken.
What wouldn’t be broken, if Ben weren’t so difficult. Rey manhandles him onto the bed. He yields easily, and not just because his strength is depleted from too long without her touch. She can sense his yearning through the shield of his professed reluctance. Even on the worst days, he never makes more than a token effort to resist. She’s everything to him now, she knows, breath and sustenance and comfort and purpose all at once.
He’s also … well. He’s still Ben. Still young and red-blooded with enough energy to power a hyperdrive generator. It needs to go somewhere.
‘Didn’t I tell you to let me know when you started to fade?’ Rey admonishes, climbing atop Ben’s lap and caging his head between her arms. She leans in until they’re forehead to forehead, lips just barely shy of touching. ‘I know you think you’re being very noble. But the longer you go without, the less use you are to me.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means you get grumpy. And then you get tired and lazy. And then–’ She nips his lower lip, noses bumping – ‘you die. We’ve discussed how I really don’t want you to die.’
Ben sighs, his breath hot on Rey’s face. ‘It still feels like too much to ask. There has to be a way I can become less … dependent.’
‘Are you saying you don’t enjoy depending on me?’
‘I’m saying I don’t enjoy you feeling obliged.’
It’s not the kind of pillow talk that sets Rey’s heart pounding. At times like these, to be honest, Ben is usually more attractive with his mouth shut.
She kisses him, and for all his arguing, Ben kisses back like he wants to devour her. She braces on his chest and feels his heartbeat pounding beneath her palms. His cock is hard against her, skin burning, and when she rolls her hips she hears a choked little moan that rather undercuts his point. ‘People take care of each other,’ she says when they break the kiss to breathe. ‘That’s how it works. So when there’s something you need from me – really need, I mean, like this – you tell me.’
He’s trembling a little. ‘I need you to keep touching me,’ he says, face scrunched up like the words are painful – or the opposite. ‘Please, Rey, just touch me.’
She’ll do better than that. Rey strips off the clothes Ben was too stubborn to remove in advance and lies against him skin to skin, their pulses in sync and their breath like the roar of the Ahch-To ocean. She takes him inside her and rocks in his lap, caressing every part of him, urging him on with words and soft touches, and as their shared pleasure builds she feels the Force within her overflow into his starving body. His inhibitions fall away. He’s moving against her, grabbing, mouthing, moaning, racing towards the frenzied peak that completes his spell and tethers him safely to the realm of the living.
Orgasm knocks Rey out. She’s weak as they come down, drained by the transfer and the aftershocks of release. Ben – more like his better self already, no longer tired or grumpy or full of self-destructive reticence – holds her close and peppers her with kisses.
‘Thank you,’ he breathes into the crook of her neck.
‘It’s not a favour, Ben,’ Rey says. She’s so tired and warm. Ready to fall asleep in his arms, and wake up in a few hours to the sight of his rejuvenated face. ‘I’d want you anyway.’