Chapter Text
“Oh! Oh, god - Oh fuck!”
Ben pressed one large hand flat just below the nape of Rey’s neck and curled another around her hip, hitching her ass up higher while simultaneously pushing her down into the mattress as he fucked into her from behind.
“Feels good?” He grunted into her ear. She could feel the hot, wet slide of his chest against her back with each breath-stealing thrust. It was incredible. Near magical. Just so, so good.
It always was with Ben, though. Every single goddamn time. That was why she kept coming back - it was why he kept inviting her back, more like.
Their bodies were physically compatible; and that might have been a clinical way to think of things, but it was true. They were a round peg and matching hole (pun not intended). They fit - even if their lives and social standings didn’t quite.
“Oh my god, Ben - yes - fuck! Right there.”
“You like that, baby?” He pounded home - hard - once. Twice. A third time. “Are you gonna come for me? Come all over my cock?”
She nodded (because that’s really all she could do) and rolled her head so she could muffle her moans with his pillow. It was made for that, she thought. One hundred percent goosefeather down covered in silky, black shams; created exclusively for fucking girls into.
Ben, it seemed, didn’t like that. He fisted the lowest of her (now mostly undone) buns and jerked her around so he could claim her lips in a searing kiss.
They didn’t do that at first, the whole kissing thing. It was kind of a rule of Rey’s. She didn’t kiss anyone she wasn’t dating and, well, she didn’t really date anyone anymore, but his mouth was almost impossible to resist, so eventually she stopped trying.
“Don’t do that,” he hissed. “Why do you think I bought this place? I want to hear you when I fuck you in it, sweetheart.”
She moaned again, loud and low and uninhibited this time.
She knew that wasn't really why he bought this obscenely large penthouse. He bought it because it was bigger than his old one. It had more room for his boring, leather-bound books and the walls dripped with that cold, stick-up-his-ass-rich-boy vibe he so seemed to dig.
Even so, it felt nice to hear. Really nice. Too nice, probably.
“That’s it,” the speed of his thrusts increased. His hips slapped against her ass, filling the bedroom with the lewd, wet smacking sounds of her arousal (which was dripping down her thighs at this point) and their flesh. “ Fuck,” he sighed, “you feel so good. You have no idea.”
His tone was earnest, but what he’d said wasn’t necessarily true. She did have some idea. Mostly because he went on and on about it every time they had sex. If he was to be believed, she had the tightest, wettest cunt in history. The absolute pinnacle of pussy.
But she knew better than to put too much stock into things people said in the heat of the moment. If she did that, she’d also have to believe that he ‘needed’ her or that he ‘would never get enough’ . She might start thinking silly things about him caring for her and wanting something more than what they had now.
He didn’t. She knew he didn’t. He’d been explicitly clear about that. They both had.
“Fuck. I’m gonna - I need you to come.” He snaked a hand around her front and started rubbing tight, hard circles around her clit, practically forcing her to fall over the edge of the cliff she’d been toeing for a while now.
“Oh fuck!” She cried. Her orgasm was just as earth-shattering as always, at once both rolling through her like a wave and bursting across her nerves with all the shocking heat of a firework.
He followed shortly after, pumping into her a few more times with sharp, messy thrusts as she convulsed around him before painting her walls with his spend.
She didn’t really do that whole thing either before Ben; the ‘no condoms’ thing. They used them the first few times they were together, of course, but after a while…
They were both clean, she had an IUD, and it was so good to actually feel him inside of her, hot and hard and impossibly large. And they way he’d growled in her ear the first time she let him come inside of her? God. She still got shivers just thinking about it.
Plus, they’d both assured the other that if they did find new sexual partners that they would be open and honest about it. This wasn’t a relationship. All of that weird, confusing pretense didn’t have to exist in this space they’d created for themselves.
Of course, Rey was well aware of the fact that if (when) Ben did find someone else, that that was the moment she would be kicked to the curb.
That was a problem for Future Rey, though. Current Rey was living firmly in the afterglow of an amazing, no-strings-attached orgasm.
“Christ,” Ben sighed, rolling over onto his back and pulling her with him. Of course, Rey did her best to squirm away, as she always did, but he was too strong.
He liked to cuddle. Secretly, so did she.
“Let me go,” she whined as she wriggled within the iron-band hold of Ben’s arms. Her attempts at escape were half-hearted at best, but she had to put on this show, she had to prove to him that she didn’t rely on any of this half as much as she actually did.
“No,” he murmured into the soft skin behind her ear. “Never letting you go again.”
That hurt, actually, because she knew he didn’t mean it. No one did. No one ever wanted to really keep her. She rolled her eyes and huffed in annoyed amusement anyway.
“I will have to leave eventually.”
“No,” he repeated, kissing a line down her back. “You don’t. You could stay.”
He did this, sometimes; invited her to stay the night. Rey wasn’t really sure why. It crossed a line, tread too close to something they weren’t. And anyway, she always said no - so why did he keep asking?
“I can’t.”
“You could. But you won’t.”
“I can’t, actually. I have to be at the garage early tomorrow.”
“Again?”
“Plutt has some kind of delivery coming in and he needs someone there to receive it.”
“And he can’t do that himself?”
“You know he won’t.” Even if he wanted to be, Rey wasn’t sure he would have been able to get up in time. Alarm clocks and Unkar Plutt were not the closest of friends.
Ben’s grunt-like sigh disturbed the hair at the nape of her neck and sent a shiver down her bare back. “I don’t get why you work at that place.”
“Oh, you know… money? I’m certain you’ve heard of it. I need it to pay for silly things like rent and food,” she laughed. “I can’t live on dick alone.”
“You could live on this dick,” he said, punctuating the least-smooth line in history with a shallow pump of his hips. She could feel him, soft now and wet with their combined release, against her ass cheeks.
Past experience told her it wouldn’t be long before he was hard again and ready for her, so it was now or never.
“I have to go,” she insisted, fixing Ben with a hard stare when he tried to tangle her legs with his beneath the sheets.
Eventually, he relented. “Fine,” he sighed, releasing her and flopping, dejected and overdramatic, onto his back.
She slid off the mattress and took stock of the mess of clothing littering the ground. They hadn’t really cared where anything landed when they’d stumbled their way back here earlier, lips mashed together and fingers tearing at fabric in a desperation to just get it all off.
“Do you know where my underwear are?”
“No,” Ben said, his eyes lighting up in a way that told a couple of things concurrently; one, he knew exactly where they were and, two, she wouldn’t be finding them any time soon.
He sat himself up fully and rested back against the headboard as he watched her, arms stretched over his head in a way that put his body on perfect (and almost certainly purposeful) display. As if to say, ‘look at what you’re missing out on. You could be sleeping curled around this.’
Like she didn’t already know.
Rolling her eyes, she resigned herself to the fact that she would be riding the train home commando. Again. “You perv. What about my bra?”
Silently, Ben pointed up to the lamp beside his door and the tiny scrap of heather grey cotton hanging from the top of it.
“Thank you,” she said, pulling it down and then over her head before scooping the rest of her clothes up into her arms.
He looked down at his phone with a deeply furrowed brow. “Since when do you work on Tuesdays?”
“Oh, um,” Rey worried at her bottom lip with her teeth and turned around as she slid her shorts on. “I picked up a new shift recently.”
“A few. You picked up Wednesdays too, right? And didn’t you text me last Sunday that you couldn’t come over because you had to work in the morning?”
“Yeah, so?” His remarks felt like accusations, even if they probably weren’t, and Rey felt herself shifting into defense-mode. “Some of the guys left, so we’re pretty shorthanded at the moment - and I already told you that I need the money.”
“Okay.” She couldn’t see Ben from her current position, but she could practically hear the way he splayed his hands in front of his chest. “I just -” he paused with a huff. “It seems like it would be difficult to juggle all of these hours and school. That’s all.”
He wasn’t wrong there. God, she hadn’t wanted to get into this.
“Yeah, well… I’m taking a break from school.”
“What?” Rey didn’t want to turn around - she really didn’t want to - but his tone left her with no choice. He just sounded so upset. “Why?”
He stood on the far side of the room, dressed in nothing but a pair of grey boxer briefs, and demanded answers from her. Answers that, frankly, as her fuck-buddy, he wasn’t really owed. She let the sadness she felt inside boil over into anger.
“I couldn’t afford it,” she said with a shrug, dismissively, like she didn’t actually care one way or another.
Except she did. She really did. Her heart had broken when she’d realized she was going to have to put off school for at least another year, but there was nothing to be done about it.
“That’s why I’ve picked up so many shifts. I’m putting everything I can into savings and… I don’t know. Maybe next fall.” Because even the spring semester was out of the question at this point.
Ben opened his mouth and then quickly slammed it back shut again - like he was stopping himself from saying something he knew he’d regret.
He stood there for a moment, as silent and still as a statue, until, eventually, he sighed and rubbed his hand across his jaw. He looked tired all of the sudden, but it wasn’t even nine.
Without a word, he turned and made his way into the hall.
Rey had no choice but to follow him - the kitchen was on the way to the front door, after all - and when she saw him staring into the mouth of the open fridge, she stopped just shy of the island counter, feeling awkward, for some reason.
Like a chastened child. Like she’d been caught doing something she shouldn’t - which wasn’t even the least bit true.
They stayed like that for a while; their bodies separated by a sheet of grey speckled marble, the apartment silent, save for the quiet hum of his building’s central heating.
She should have left. She could have. It wasn’t as though he’d explicitly told her - or even asked her - to stay, but, for reasons she could not name, her feet remained glued to the floor.
“How much is your tuition?” Ben asked after what felt like far too long.
He pulled a bottle of water from one of the fridge’s door shelves and then a glass from an upper cabinet, but did not turn to face her. Somehow, he just knew she was still there, watching him. He probably knew that she was twisting the worn fabric of her t-shirt in her fingers too.
He knew her too well.
“... What?”
“Your tuition,” he repeated, his back still to her. “How much does it cost? Per year.”
Rey hummed uncomfortably and tapped her fingernails against the counter. “Why do you want to know that?”
“Can you just -” Ben sighed again. Heavily, this time. He turned around, glass of too-expensive water in-hand, and rubbed the bridge of his nose between closed eyes. “Just tell me the price.”
“Nine thousand. Dollars,” she added. Like it was necessary. Like it was possible he thought she was talking about monopoly money instead. “Give or take. And that’s before… fees and books and… I just can’t afford it right now. Like I said, maybe next year.”
Her face was all hot, and she knew that she shouldn’t be ashamed - she had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of - but shame turned over in her belly, anyway; wretched and writhing and mean.
Ben’s voice was cool and calm when he spoke next. “And if you could afford that, you’d go? This year?”
“Yes,” she huffed. Couldn’t he see how badly she felt already? Couldn’t he tell that he was only making it worse? Didn’t he care?
If he did, he didn’t say so. He studied her and she watched his Adam’s apple bob as he took a long drink before setting the glass down hard on the marble.
“I’ll pay for it, then.”
Rey felt as if she’d been hit directly in the center of her chest with a wrecking ball. She was breathless. “What?” She gasped. “No - no, you can’t.”
“I can,” he said, seeming the slightest bit indignant. “I’ll write you a check right now.”
“No,” Rey squeezed her eyes closed. “I mean you won’t. I won’t accept that. I can’t.”
He had the nerve - the absolute gall - to seem genuinely confused by her refusal.
“Why not?”
“W-why?” She stammered.
Wasn’t it obvious enough?
“It’s too much,” she said, a shiver running up along her spine. “I can’t afford to pay the school. I’m not sure when I’d be able to pay you back. It’s better if I just - no.”
“You wouldn’t have to pay me back. It would be a gift.”
A gift. God! The word alone made her feel sick to her stomach.
“I - I couldn’t ask…”
“You’re not,” he said, smoothly cutting off her continued weak attempts at denial. “I’m offering, Rey.”
Wordlessly, she scoffed. He was ‘offering’ her thousands of dollars in exchange for absolutely nothing - like that was something people just did every day.
If life had taught Rey one thing in the last twenty two years of scraping her way through it, it's that there was no such thing as a free lunch.
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch?”
Again, Rey rolled her eyes. For someone who was so smart, he was very good at playing dumb. “You really expect me to believe that you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I - I want to help you. School is important to you and…”
“And what? You want to take care of me?” Her fangs were out again, and they were even sharper now. “Are you going to be my sugar daddy, Ben?”
Clarity broke over his face. Rey watched in real time as an epiphany revealed itself, unfolding in front of his eyes, and her heart dropped into the soles of her tattered sneakers.
Because she’d been mocking him. Bluffing. Just kidding around.
She hadn’t been serious. But he was. Deadly.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly, puzzle pieces still fitting together inside of his head. “I could be.”
“No, Ben,” she swallowed, though her throat was dry. “No. I was joking.”
He wasn’t listening to her. He was far too busy genuinely considering a terrible idea to do that. “It could work. I don’t know much about how… but that doesn’t matter, I could -” His eyes snapped up to hers. “I could be that.”
“No. You can’t.”
“Why not?”
Why not? There were a hundred reasons. A thousand. Millions, perhaps. But she couldn’t think of even one of them.
“I can’t do this right now, Ben,” she said, already scurrying back towards the door.
“Then when?”
He wasn’t going to let up, was he? Stubborn bastard.
“Just - later! I’ll text you,” she shouted before the door slammed shut between them.
She didn’t stop, then, not until she was outside of the building, her flush worsened by the hazy, liquid heat of the late Chandrilan summer.
Exhaling quickly, her lungs burning like she’d just run a mile, Rey leaned back against a wall of absurdly smooth stone and shook her head.
So much for her easy-breezy fuck-buddy situation.
“Fuck!”