Chapter Text
When she knocked on his door, she expected to be the weird one.
When the man opened it in a chartreuse suit jacket, a pair of jet black boxer briefs (she got stuck there for a second because holy shit , what a dick) and equally dark socks crawling up his calves, she realized she was probably not the weird one.
His gaze was bright as it slunk down her body. Like a lecher who was only curious. He didn’t say anything, merely turned up a bottle of Jack Daniels and looked at her. After a long pull, he gave one of those movie-man grimaces.
“What can I do ya for?” he asked, like someone’s midwestern father. It was a little hard to hear him. Classical music played from somewhere in his apartment, at a volume just above comfortable.
Rey weighed her options thoughtfully. He was big. In a way that automatically activated her flight or fuck response. She had her taser though. It probably had enough shock to take him down.
“I just wanted to know if I could get out on your balcony real quick?”
An eyebrow darted up. “You trying to rob me, Polka Dots?” She must have looked confused because he pointed vaguely in the direction of her crotch. “They’re cute, and 6C definitely does not deserve to see them. But then again, you showed the whole neighborhood, so I guess he’s not special.”
Rey felt herself go so red hot so fast that it hurt. An equal mix of rage and embarrassment.
(Okay, so, yes, she’d definitely been making out with that guy on his balcony. Which was how she’d dropped her clutch. And how everything had gone bouncing out of it. And how’d she’d watched, through the slats in the balcony as her ID bounced down into the potted plants on the balcony below.
Of course, she’d only dropped the clutch because Danny had gotten too handsy. She’d had every intention of fucking him. Except that he had dirty fingernails and kept trying to shove them inside her.
Danny was meant to only be good for a free dinner—crummy prix fixe, with overdone steak but he was moderately funny so it was fine—and a solid dicking. But she could not bear the thought of those disgusting fingernails. Made her Sahara-dry. That and he’d been trying to finger her on his balcony when it was well below freezing.)
The guy’s face was serious as he licked his lips, tongue darting out to catch an errant drop of bourbon.
“Look, I think my ID fell down here into one of your plants. I just want to look really quick.” She blinks big. Going for doe eyes. “Please?”
At least Weirdo had clean fingernails. He gave her another up and down look. Not suspicious, but not assessing either. “Come in.”
Rey stepped into the apartment. He—or someone—had done a lot of work to the space that made it look like an adult lived there. Two of the walls were covered in book cases, with a small space carved out for a flatscreen TV. To her right was the sliding glass door, and said balcony. There were a lot of plants too. Enough that they stole her breath in surprise. Covering surfaces and filling corners and hanging from the ceiling.
Plants weren’t really her thing, per se, but she did recognize a couple of spider plants, a fern and something she only remembered because of its name: A swiss cheese plant. In addition to the books. The space was very...decorated. Both magazine-like and lived-in.
He gave her a ridiculous bow, from the waist and gestured in the direction of the glass door. Her heels clacked against the hardwood floor as she crossed the room. She could feel his eyes on her, but chose to ignore him instead.
The door opened with a steady woosh, and the cold barrelled in around her.
“Fuck,” they said in unison, and exchanged a look.
It was a decent view of the city. Fancy-ish. Not high-rise views but good enough. (Good enough that she paused for a moment and took in that twinkle. It had the nerve to be a bit magical, to make her feel that blend of possibility and melancholy loneliness.)
The door slammed shut behind her and she turned to see the weird guy settling on one of the lounge chairs. He simply looked at her as he folded his arms behind his head and stretched out the (excessively) long length of his body. She glanced up and realized with a frown that he probably could see her undies very well indeed.
“Where’s your coat?” he asked.
Grabbing the lapels of her pleather jacket (eleven dollars, clearance rack, Forever21), she said, “You’re looking at it.”
His dark eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything. She didn’t point out the hypocrisy, either. Rey didn’t have any names for the plants he kept outside. But if the inside of his apartment was vaguely jungle-like, then the outside was a dense, hardy forest. They covered the balcony, the big ones resting in their own massive pots and the others sitting on tiny tables, or in hanging pots on his wall.
Rey moved to the corner when she thought she’d seen her ID fall and bent to search the plants. They smelled good too. An embodiment of everything corporations wanted to make the holidays smell like
“Jesus, Polka Dots, you got a nice ass.”
“Fuck you,” Rey retorted without looking back at him. It had to be here somewhere. The sounds of the city rushing below her with the perfect background for her growing panic. Shit , she was going to have to get a new fucking ID, which probably meant finding at least a day or a half day off work and—
"So. Rey 'No Middle Name' Johnson. Hair: Brown. Eyes—"
Rey whirled on him. Weird guy was sitting as he had been before, only he was holding her ID in his hand.
"Motherfucker," she said, both resigned and incredulous.
He merely blinked at her, his eyes hooded. "I was going to give it back to you. But then you talked so much shit about my jacket."
Rey’s jaw clenched. "I didn't say a word about your jacket."
"Your eyes talked a lot of shit about my jacket," he said, holding up a hand to ward off anything else.
Rey stuck out her hand for the ID, but he ignored it. "Why no middle name?" he asked.
She sighed and stuck the heels of her hands into her eyes."I didn't know it. When I went into foster care. It didn't matter."
"But Rey though? R-E-Y? Not like, R-A-E even. "
She huffed. “Apparently, I was pretty adamant about the Y. I guess whoever filed the paperwork was trying to do me a favor. Can I have that back now?”
Weird Guy stuffed the ID into the pocket of his horrible jacket as she opened her eyes again. “Wait,” he said, “finish the story first.”
She blinked. “Do you mean the story of how I got into foster care?” At his nod, she exploded. “No, you freak, that is not the kind of thing you go around telling strangers.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Telling a stranger is the best. You never see that person again.” His voice dipped. “But someone still...witnesses your shit, you know?”
Expression flattened, he gazed out beyond her. Beyond the city around them even. He lifted the bottle to his lips and took another small sip, like he was just wetting his mouth. Rey collapsed onto the other lounger, elbows on her knees and hands lifted to cup her face. She didn’t say anything for a long time. His skin was turning pink. Red. He didn’t seem to notice—or care.
“They found me. I don’t remember where. I do remember that it was a gas station. The guy found me, when he went to the bathroom. I guess I was...standing there? Waiting. I don’t know. But anyway. I knew my name was Rey. Or that I was called Rey anyway.”
I don’t know was easy to say. It was harder to say that her feet had started to hurt, so she’d sat down on the ground and drawn shapes in the dust. It was harder to say that there had been two men. The first man had taught her that no matter your age, they would look at you like meat, and the second had taught her that perhaps they weren’t all bad.
She was pretty sure the name her parents had given her wasn’t Rey. It could have been anything. Rachel. Kathryn. Beatrice. But she could remember her mother calling her a ray of sunshine. She could remember that. (She could remember that without hurting.)
Rey ran a hand through her hair. It was starting to snow. Hard. They were both going to freeze to death. Good. A fitting end for this shitty Valentine’s Day. “Foster care,” she said slowly, “until I was eighteen. A bunch of fucked up homes. But I got lucky. I got out okay. I’ve made some friends. I have a job. I’m in school. My apartment is a shithole. But it’s the shithole I share with my best friend, Finn.”
He was watching her, his head tilted just a little, puppy dog style. “Finn,” he repeated. “P-H-I-N.” Rey let out a wet laugh and was surprised to find she was crying. Must have been the cold. “Hey,” he said, a voice so gentle, that she wished he would be quiet, “that’s fucked up. I’m sorry.”
His head was still cocked to one side, his inky hair turning white, when she said, “So, what’s your shit?”
Weirdo gave her a strange look as she gestured for the bottle. He passed it and watched her mouth as it latched around the end. Rey drank so long, it would have had a lesser person choking.
“Out with it,” she said, refusing to relinquish the bottle when he flipped his fingers in a gimme motion.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Tale as old as time. Mommy and Daddy didn’t love me enough.”
“So, not a girl?” Rey asked, and winced.
“Not a girl,” he agreed. He was wearing the closest thing she’d seen to a smile. To her horror, she smiled back, before promptly flipping it into a frown.
“We should go inside,” she announced. “It’s cold. You don’t have any pants on. Or shoes .” Or a shirt underneath that fugly-ass jacket, but that was beyond the point.
She stood and offered him her hand. His fingers in her palm were like chunks of ice. And yet.
(And yet, it knocked her sideways like maybe she’d never been touched before this very moment, holding hands with a giant half-naked moron.)
He only let her help him part of the way because at a certain point it ceased to matter. He was too tall. He gestured for her to lead the way back inside. On the other side of the locked glass door, Weirdo peeled off his soggy socks and wriggled his toes on the floor. He wasn’t graceful about it either, stumbling from cold or alcohol or both. When he asked for the bottle, she gave it to him.
Rey sniffled some more and toyed with her clutch. “So, if you give me my ID, I’ll call an Uber or something.”
He looked at her for a moment, and flipped the ID through his fingers, like she’d sometimes seen people do with pens. It barely made a sound, but it was about the only sound in the room, save his music. A soft flick flick flick.
Just when she thought that he might not, he pressed the ID into her palm and her fingers closed around it tight enough to leech the color from the tips. But she didn’t move. She didn’t look him in the eye, but she didn’t move.
“Do you wanna play Scrabble?”
She jerked her head to look at him. It was his turn to look away, rubbing the back of his neck with a charming sheepishness. (She didn’t not want to play Scrabble.)
“I’m not good with words and stuff. I like math much better.”
His nose wrinkled. “We could play Monopoly.”
Rey let out another laugh and his expression turned. He looked stung. “Sorry, I’m not really laughing at you. I do like Monopoly. I’m gross and cold and stuff and I should probably go home and shower.”
“I got a shower,” he replied, jerking a thumb toward his hallway. A long beat passed and Rey swayed inside her boots, pulled in one direction and then the other. So, so weird but: she didn’t want to go.
Then he said: “Look. 6C didn’t deserve you, Polka Dots. But the night doesn’t have to be a complete loss.”
Rey took a deep breath. This had bad idea written all over it. In big, blinking, neon red letters.
“Is this like, a thing you do?”
“A...thing?”
“Yeah. I don’t know, is this a weird rape and murder scenario thing you do?”
He made an aggrieved noise, a huff. “I— you knocked on my door.”
(Hm. Fair.)
“I’ll pay you,” he said, the words low, like they’d been choked out.
Rey’s lips curled involuntarily. “Oh, fuck you . You think I’ll have sex with you because I grew up poor or whatever?”
A blink and purse of his lips. “I’m not paying you for sex.”
“For companionship , then?” Nod, brief and sharp. Rey crossed her arms and sniffled. She really wanted out of these clothes. “I don’t know if I believe you. And I don’t wanna get raped and murdered.”
Weirdo rolled his eyes, muttering to himself. “Jesus fuck—” He lumbered over to the coffee table and snatched up his phone. His next words were directed at her. “Enough with the rape and murder. Just google me.”
There he was. Or, a well-coiffed, probably sober version of him. Benjamin Solo, with a handful of meaningless letters behind his name with an office line and an email where he could be reached. VP, Acquisitions something-something.
“Benjamin,” was all she said.
“Call me Ben.” He rubbed his mouth with his hand once and then again. “You can send P-H-I-N my address. Phone number. Let someone know where you are. I...” The hand at his mouth squeezed into a tight fist, pressing hard for a second. “I think I’m realizing I...would rather not be alone tonight.”
(She could see that it had cost him something to say it, to admit it.)
Rey sighed. “How much?”
He opened his mouth, a disgustingly pretty little oh , like he went to say something and closed like he thought better of it. “How much do you want?”
Eyes narrowed, Rey said, “Five grand,” and rattled off her Venmo.
He smiled with too much teeth. “Done.”
Her phone buzzed with the transaction, but her stomach dropped, and she counted back, realizing where she’d miscalculated. “How much would you have given me?”
“Twice that,” he answered with a lazy flick of his wrist. He started tapping at his phone again.
“You’re serious?” He nodded and she went on: “I said I wasn’t having sex with you. I’m not having sex with you.” (Probably.)
A closed mouth smile threatened to cross his face. “Okay. But I’m really good at it, so you might change your mind.”
“Oh my God, now I know you’re lying.”
Weird Guy—Ben—clicked his tongue and shrugged.
To pretend the entire situation wasn’t happening, she walked over to a sprawling plant, set on a table in a gorgeous jade and gold pot. She reached out with a fingernail (self-administered Sally Hansen manicure) to stroke one of the dark, glossy leaves.
Ben made a little sound that could only be called distressed and she turned to find him watching her, his shoulders slightly tensed. He cleared his throat and then: “Please. Sophia doesn’t like to be touched.”
“Sophia.” She failed to turn the word into the question it was meant to be, and he didn’t say anything at all. “Do they all have names?”
He did the thing again, passed his tongue over his teeth. “Yes.”
She pointed to another plant next to Sophia. “What’s this one?”
A little sigh. “Rose.”
Quelling the laugh rising in her throat, Rey pointed to another. “And this one?”
“Dorothy.”
Rey made a noise (she was pretty sure the laugh was going to come whether she liked it or not). “And this one?”
A much bigger sigh. “You know.”
“Yes,” Rey agreed, breathless with the effort of holding herself together, “but I want to hear you say it.”
That music blared on in the lull, and they stared at one another. His eyes were hazel. They were hazel and beautiful and a little bit sad, and his gaze was heavy on her lower lip as she bit into it.
“That’s Blanche Devereaux.”
The sound of her laughter was louder than his music by a lot, and she laughed until her stomach hurt and she’d sunk to the floor with tears streaming down her face. He didn’t even crack a smile (which only made it funnier).
She laughed the whole time he disappeared around the corner, toward what she could only assume was the kitchen, based on the layout of Danny’s apartment. After a lot of rustling, he returned with a bag of dill pickle kettle chips. Her favorite.
He ate and watched her pull herself back to rights. When she was able to speak again, she whirled a finger in the air and asked, “What is this shit?”
A massive crunch. “Rachmaninoff. And don’t call it shit.”
That sent Rey into another peal of laughter that she couldn’t explain and he kept eating. “I think you picked the wrong companion .”
She was struck quiet by the sight of him sucking chip residue off his thumb. “No. I don’t think so.”
Throat suddenly dry, she gave a hard swallow. “Ben?”
“Yeah, Rey?”
“What if I want to have sex?”
He finally gave her a smile, a real one this time. “Then you will have to pay me .” Ben shoved more kettle chips in his mouth and said: “Want me to show you how the shower works?”
Licking her lips, Rey nodded. She was going to fuck the weirdo in 5C, with the ugly jacket and bourbon breath.
(Shit.)